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Jeffrey Sachs: Global Economic Meltdown & Destruction of Europe https://youtu.be/J4r9Wo29FzU https://t.co/gVsTG2UPlW
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses the precarious state of the global economy amid geopolitical conflict and strategic realignments. He notes that the US–China trade and investment relationship “is never going to be what it was ten years ago,” with the period of dynamic, mutually investing ties effectively over. Europe–Russia linkages are damaged “perhaps to the point of no return in our generation,” making Europe the big loser in this breakup. Sachs identifies a trend toward regionalization, with trade and investment within Asia strengthening, and within Africa likely strengthening, while Europe becomes economically adrift after severing ties with its main natural resource provider, Russia. He emphasizes that the world economy still hangs in the balance in the short term.
If the United States resumes war with Iran, Sachs puts the probability at about 50 percent or higher, warning that the results would be devastating under any circumstance. He characterizes the United States as having “deinstitutionalized” governance and describes Israel as an “out of control” state pursuing continued war. A simmering conflict, if reignited, would magnify short-term economic impacts dramatically. He argues that the US’s attempt to maintain preeminence through regime change and war operations is contributing to the breakup of the previously integrated world economy, and that the digital economy’s dependence on bytes reinforces a US-centred security order that will increasingly separate from China. He predicts Asia will become increasingly integrated, with the United States’ dominance waning as a result.
In discussing Europe’s prospects, Sachs argues that Europe should have recognized that the United States worked to keep Europe and Russia apart, and that Europe’s embrace of expansion into Central and Eastern Europe and the idea of a “new wall” against Russia was misguided. He asserts that Europe’s leadership has pursued a failed economic and geopolitical strategy, leading to economic decline, with industry shuttering and no clear bright spots. He critiques the current European leadership, suggesting that new political entrepreneurship is needed for Europe to regain prosperity, relevance, and security.
Sachs critiques the notion that the war in Ukraine should be ended by arming Europe to take on Russia, contrasting with his view of open, mutually beneficial trade historically. He argues that economics, once framed as win–win and beneficial for global development, has been reframed in Washington as a tool for preserving American dominance. He recounts a shift from open trade as a beneficial system to an emphasis on military and geopolitical objectives, citing Eldridge Colby and Jake Sullivan as proponents of organizing economics for power rather than prosperity. He contends that globalization did not fail; rather, the US share of world output declined as China rose, and the misallocation of economics toward power has harmed both the American public and global economic well-being.
Regarding naval blockades and economic warfare, Sachs notes the shift toward piracy-like practices, with talk of seizing ships and blockading nations such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. He predicts that, while the United States may struggle to sustain broad blockades or confrontations, the farther one moves toward Asia, the less effective US power becomes. He foresees that Europe, if it continues to challenge Russia directly, risks war and devastation, while Asia’s rise will diminish US sway. He concludes that the United States is the most dangerous country in the world when it pursues global dominance at the expense of national well-being, and that Europe must reassess geography and power realities to avoid further decline.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor Jeffrey Sachs, to discuss, what's happening to the global economy. So thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: As always, great to be with you.
Speaker 0: We see that the wars against Iran, Russia, and, well, the economic war against China, as well as The US seeking to dominate its own backyard, it's pushing the global economy towards the edge. And we see that a lot of the economic dependence set up over the past decades in terms of reliable access to maritime transportation corridors, natural resources, technology, currency banks, it's either severed or, you know, being weaponized, it seems. I was wondering, how do you see the current state of the global economy now? I mean, is this a temporary disruption, or do you think there's risk of a complete breakdown?
Speaker 1: Well, there's clearly been some important breakdowns. The US China trade and investment relationship is never going to be what it was ten years ago, dynamic with confidence, with the mutual investments in both directions. I think that period is over. Clearly the Europe Russia linkages are damaged perhaps to the point of no return in our generation. That's very significant.
Europe is the big loser in that breakup. Clearly, there is regionalization taking place because there are simply more risks of anything related to long distance trade and logistics. So trade and investment relations within Asia are strengthening. Trade and investment relations within Africa are likely to strengthen. Europe is rather bereft because it broke relations with its main natural resource provider supplier, which was Russia.
And all it looks to is a completely unstable, nasty, and disdainful United States right now. So Europe is completely adrift economically. These are deeper trends that are not going to be changed by any of the events in the next weeks or months. But I think it's very important to say at the outset that the world economy still hangs in the balance even in days and weeks. Sounds melodramatic, but I think it's true.
If The United States resumes the war with Iran, which I think we have to put it 50% or higher, the results would be devastating under any circumstance. And we're at that precipice. We have completely deinstitutionalized United States government. We have a a absolutely out of control Israeli military state. It's become nothing more than a war state, it wants continued war.
If the war that is on simmer right now turns back to boil, then when we meet after that if that happens, will be dramatically accelerated, magnified and made horrendously worse in its short term economic impact. But the point is because of essentially US efforts to somehow maintain a kind of preeminence that The US no longer has, but the attempt to maintain it through regime change and war operations, the breakup of what was an integrated world economy is real and unlikely to return anytime soon. I should add that the very nature of the digital economy, the interpenetration of bytes in the digital economy means that The United States from a military and security point of view is determined to create a US centered part of the world that is separate from China's. And that also means that by nature of the technologies, The US is going to break the trading system in one way or another for many years to come. And that's not just Trump's petulance.
That will be a national security perspective in The United States that's widely shared in Washington. So we're in a fragmented world, but I think the fragmentation leaves Europe really outside of everything. It leaves The United States probably aiming mainly to control what will be an increasingly unruly Americas which will not accept the the increased US dominance that The US is trying to impose right now. And I think Asia will become increasingly integrated, and the winner of all of this will be Asia.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I agree. It seems that, well, at least Europe will be the big loser here. My concern always after the Cold War was that with NATO expansion, we redivided the continent, which makes Europe weaker in terms of the security, economics, also politics, and now we see this manifest itself as some mass hysteria and very rational war enthusiasm. So, you know, Europe cut itself off from Russia.
We see Middle East being reorganized, and essentially, is now putting all its eggs in The US basket because this was the source of stability over the past eighty years. But even The US now is very openly losing its interest in a less relevant Europe. How do you see the possible pathways now, though, for Europe? I mean, is there a way to restore its prosperity or relevance, security, or or do you think it it's already played all the cards it could?
Speaker 1: Well, I the Europeans should have reflected on the fact that it was The United States that worked very hard to keep Europe and Russia apart. And so for decades, it was The United States that was warning against Nord Stream and against the closer relations between Germany and Russia. Meaning that those links were good for Europe, especially good for Germany as the main economy, main economic motor of Europe, I should say. And The United States viewed that as a risk to America's own preeminence and its own political sway in Europe. So Europe should have noticed that they had the leverage.
But Europe played along completely with The US. It became enamored of the idea that we will expand into Central And Eastern Europe. I like that idea, but I did not like the idea of building a new wall to exclude Russia. This is an absolutely absurd idea from Europe's point of view. Europe should reverse this.
This is geography. They will wake up. Somebody will look at a map again and ask how did we bring this about on ourselves. This is really complete self harm. But if you look at the current leadership, of course it's not going to happen with people like Vanderleijn or Kayakalas or Starmer, god forbid.
Maybe the British will never come to this idea. But the point is that the European political leadership has bought into a completely failed economic and geopolitical strategy and now is a failed political class. And until that changes one way or another with new political entrepreneurship in Europe, Europe is just going to be in decline economically. We see it. Industry is shuttering up, and there is no bright spot in the European economy right now at all.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I recently, you know, read the speech of Elbridge Kolby, the undersecretary of defense for policy. And what I thought was remarkable was it didn't really suggest that the war in Ukraine should come to an end. The the speech more suggested that the Europeans should just, you know, arm themselves and and take over. So in other words, outsourcing the war rather than ending it.
And as we've seen, the Europeans now just approved this $90,000,000,000 to Ukraine. They called it a loan, but I think that's more to deceive their own public because this money is not coming back. But at the same time, there seems to be growing preparedness to also or get more directly engaged in this war with Russia. But as we see this, we also see opposition growing in Europe as well because, as you said, the political elites and the public, they're not necessarily on the same page. Do you do you see any any shifts here, like people waking up among the public, or do you think that the current political elites are too entrenched?
Speaker 1: Let let me say something about Colby and something about the funny thing that happened on the way to our current disaster. I've been teaching international trade now for forty six years. And when I studied as a student, we studied international trade and why it was good, why it was mutually beneficial. And we spent about fifteen minutes in the semester on what was called the national security exception. And I remember my professor who was a learned professor of international trade saying, well, you know, all the good things we're talking about trade, we should remember that there might be exceptions if national security is at stake.
And it was about a fifteen minute aside. Now this is the way that economists, I would say good economists, view the world. And good economics in this regard goes back to Adam Smith. We celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Wealth of Nations this year. Adam Smith's idea was that an expanding world market is mutually beneficial for all of the participants.
And he was a great humanist and he said everybody will benefit. Even today's bereft and colonized peoples will gain strength through international trade and the flow of ideas and there will be a rebalancing of the world so that all parts of the world will benefit from open trade. And Smith advised the British monarchy and parliament of his day in 1776, give up the American colonies. You don't need military control. Just trade with the America.
You don't need to have an imperial policy. Eventually, or soon enough actually, the American Revolutionary War broke out. By 1781, The U the British colonies were now independent of Britain. But the point was that economics as a discipline has recognized that open trade is mutually beneficial. Of course, trade under colonial imperial imposition is not.
But open trade among sovereign nations is mutually beneficial. What happened in The United States is that as The US lost its nerve with the rise of China in particular, but more generally with the catching up of many countries so that The US dominance or share of the world economy was going down, was that economics was taken over, I have to say, by the international relations people who view the world not as win win, but as win lose. And suddenly, the idea that economics should be ordered to preserve American hegemony became an increasingly interesting discussion in the American scene. I found it never very interesting. I found it absolutely ignorant of basic economics and also wrongheaded.
Because fundamentally for me the rise of China was not a threat. It was a benefit first to the 1,400,000,000 people of China and ultimately a gain for the whole world through trade, through China's innovations, and so forth. But from the American point of view, conceptual point of view, people like Eldridge Colby or people like Jake Sullivan in the Biden administration, economics became the instrument for continued American hegemony. And the last twenty years has been spent on honing the instruments of economic warfare, that we should think about trade and the flow of technology mainly from a military and geopolitical point of view, not from an economic point of view. So the main idea was, now we have to remake the economy to suit American dominance or to protect and extend American dominance.
Jake Sullivan who was the national security adviser for Biden now teaches at Harvard University, my old stomping grounds. And he's written a piece in foreign affairs recently, our important journal for discussion of geopolitics. Again, basically about how economics should be run for the sake of American power. Well, to my mind, all of this is mind boggling in its economic ignorance and its economic destructiveness. But this kind of discussion dominates right now.
Economics is no longer about economic prosperity and well-being in The US, even I would say university context. It's about power. And it's about how we can head off China's rise. And how the information technology world should be organized so that China is not a beneficiary. Or how the NVIDIA chips are kept out of China's hands, and so forth.
All of this has reoriented our thinking in an extraordinarily destructive way. Because we are taking down the basic scaffolding which made the world economy achieve economic growth and development for the developing countries to a large extent. And people in The US say globalization failed. Globalization did not fail. Globalization provided the basis for worldwide economic progress that happened to be especially rapid progress in the developing and emerging economies.
That's success, That's not failure. But what economic growth did was diminish, in particular, the share of The United States in the overall world output. And that is what is unnerving to these strategists, so called. They wanna keep American dominance, not American well-being. So the American people are suffering from this absurd war that we're in because this Iran war is tragic but also completely absurd.
It never should have happened. Any sane president would have known not to do this. Trump brags in fact that since 1979 all the presidents of The United States refused this war but I did it. Which is a testimony to his complete lack of understanding and insight not a tribute to his bravery. It's a tribute to his impulsivity, his recklessness, his absence of process, his ignorance.
Not to any prize that he has But it's part of this idea that we're playing with the world economy for the sake of American power. Not even for the economic well-being of the American people. So Glenn, as you said, everywhere in Europe, the public is disgusted. And they're going to be more disgusted in the coming months because their living standards are going to go down further. They're disgusted in The United States.
Trump's approval ratings are plumbing new depths each month now. He's down to 34% approval rating and I think it's 62% disapproval rating and a couple percent don't know, few percent don't know. But this is happening all over the so called Western world which has turned economics into a weapon aimed at Russia and at China rather than as an instrument for well-being that might actually help Russia and China as well as helping ourselves. So this is basically what's happened. And that's why it doesn't surprise me that mister Colby in in the Pentagon would view an ongoing war as a good thing.
Because from their point of view, they're not looking at what's good for the American people. They're looking at the question of what is good for this conceptual idea of American dominance?
Speaker 0: Well, when we look at this weaponization of economic connectivity, of course, blocking Chinese access to technologies or stealing the sovereign funds of Russia, that's one thing. But one area of economic warfare that has historically been a source of war has been naval blockades. And, yeah, this restriction of access to maritime transportation corridors, it's it didn't seem like it was a key challenge over the past few decades, but now we see you probably saw the a recent speech by Trump where he kind of brags that, well, we are we are essentially pirates now. We can seize ships, take their cargo, and it's not just talk. We've seen the blockade on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, just random also hijacking of tankers over the years.
So we see going after Russia's commercial fleet, the Europeans now. The UK plus nine other countries are setting up naval alliance to contain they call contain, which means confront Russia. We also see the threat of possibly The United States seeking to intercept Iranian vessels all the way to the Strait Of Malacca, which would then be essentially war on China. Did do where do you see this going? Is this is this, again, back to history of, you know, if you want to trade, you need to have a powerful navy to, you know, make sure commercial vessels are supported by guns?
Speaker 1: This is all shocking because some of the most basic principles of international statecraft have have been freedom of navigation on the high seas And for The United States to be championing piracy, well, at least Donald Trump says out loud what others try to not say out loud. I think this piracy of The United States will prevail in the Western Hemisphere. It won't be challenged from outside, certainly. And it will be challenged from inside the Western Hemisphere. In the end, Latin America, though it is under the sway and military dominance of The United States, will not accept what is happening right now.
But it will take some years because The United States is not only putting on blockades, not only directly overthrowing governments and it will do so with Cuba most likely very soon. But it is also intervening in the political systems and elections of almost every country. So it is in the short term turning The Americas into a bastion of US dominance. And this will probably succeed in the short term because I don't think Russia or China or anyone else from the outside will challenge this. But the farther away you go from The United States, this becomes unworkable.
And The United States will not succeed in the end in blockading Iran. The US doesn't even have the naval capacity to do so. It doesn't have the staying power to do so. It can't even keep a comprehensive blockade from a strictly military point of view, but from geopolitical point of view and with China and Russia and others that oppose this, I don't see this lasting. If Europe is stupid enough to take on Russia and Russian shipping directly, there will be war between Europe and Russia, and Europe will Europe will be devastated.
The European current class of political leaders, with a few exceptions that a few people who are honestly thinking about this, but I'm thinking of the main characters of Mertz and Macron and company. They will in their short period remaining in government possibly lead Europe to destruction not just to economic decline which they've been doing for a number of years. The further one goes towards Asia in this, the ability of The United States to have sway diminishes fast. I think one of the lessons of the Ukraine war and the Iran war is that The US military dominance is not impressive anymore. This is a matter of change of technology.
It's a matter of the rise of military power of Russia, of China, of North Korea, of Iran. It's the nature of technology itself that the big expensive US weapon systems are not especially tuned to the kind of warfare that we have now. So I think the closer one gets to Asia, the less relevant The United States becomes. And that's why I said at the outset of our discussion today that I think Asia as a whole will become more economically integrated. The US will not have choke holds that it can hold.
China has a formidable Navy already and it has a very sophisticated AI empowered military that it's building very rapidly. And it's not naive about US intentions, to say the least. So I don't see The US being able to prevail in its overall strategy or aim of hegemony, nor do I think it can project power in Asia. And if things really get tough and China acts in its own neighborhood the way that The United States is acting in its neighborhood and say that China decides for whatever reason and I hope it never comes to this and it doesn't have to but China blockades Taiwan. The implications for The United States are extraordinarily devastating actually.
Yes, we're building semiconductor fabs in The United States, but nowhere at a speed or depth that can begin to replace the supply chains that come from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. And if China asserts its regional power like The United States is doing, The US does not have a military response. Every war game in recent years has shown that. And that change is accelerating and we're seeing the limits of US technology actually because they're expensive and they're poorly tuned to the changing world, which is why the Pentagon is scrambling to come up with some kind of new technology model. But that's years and years and years ahead.
So all of this is to say, I don't believe that The United States can impose its will even in the Iran war. I think that it may well try to do so in the coming days or weeks. And then let's talk again because the whole world situation in the short term is going to be dramatically worsened. And everything we're saying will not fit the reality even in four or five or six weeks of a renewed outright war in which the physical infrastructure of the Gulf Region is heavily damaged. And that's the likely outcome.
So all of it is to say The US is on the wrong track. Irrational, very poorly led, rather desperate to keep control over what it no longer controls. And therefore, as I say often, The United States is by far the most dangerous country in the world because it's a it is trying to do what it can't achieve. And when you have that gap of aspiration, which is global dominance and the reality, and you try to pursue your delusion, you end up creating a great harm. And all to add that it is spurred by its junior partner in all of this, Israel, which has even greater delusions, biblical delusions, biblical scale delusions that are absolutely bizarre and that prod the American delusions.
So it's a it's quite a quite a dangerous situation, but there's no good outcome for The United States. And until the European political class changes and understands the basic realities of geography and of changing power and technology, Europe is just going to be completely out of this whole scene.
Speaker 0: No. I agree. The Europeans should realize geography is destiny, but with The US, though, it's certainly it's a resilient country, but I wonder how much stress it can absorb because this whole idea that it can replace energy supplies to Europe, East Asia, all of this assumes that the other great powers will just sit by and not respond, and that its vessels will simply also remain obedient. It's, yeah, well Yeah. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how the the The US is isn't so resilient. The US has a shiny a a shiny and very bright dominant technology sector. So Silicon Valley hats off to a lot of accomplishments, no doubt. But if you travel in the mainstream of America, there's a lot that's broken down and people are very unhappy for understandable reasons. And the infrastructure is decades out of date.
The difficulties of working day people are very, very significant. And none of this is being attended to by this political class in Washington, which is out of date by at least thirty years in its understanding of America and understanding of the world. It's a completely money driven corrupted political class to begin with. And the things that are said in The United States have very little resemblance to the reality of the world right now. So I don't think The US is so resilient in in any way and the unhappiness is very great.
I think people could look at the question that's asked by Gallup of the American people are, is the country on the right track? And this hovers around one out of five Americans saying yes and the vast majority of Americans saying no. And that reality has been with us for a while and nothing that's happening, nothing, not one element of Trump's delusional world is putting America on the right track. So Europe and The US share basically this decline. They were the privileged part of the world.
They're not anymore. They're both flailing around to try to understand that and they're both failing to understand that. Europe by clinging to The United States which has no interest in a political way in Europe. And The United States by clinging to the delusion of dominance that it proclaimed thirty four years ago at the end of the Soviet Union that wasn't even true then, but is completely delusional today.
Speaker 0: I agree. I think, yeah, that's a perfect description of where we are now. But I've already taken too much of your time on a Sunday morning, so thank you very much for taking
Speaker 1: my with you. Let's talk soon. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Einar Tangen: U.S. Destroying World Order to Keep Hegemony https://youtu.be/JD5nJ6NOCS8 https://t.co/4qTogkCYe5
Video Transcript AI Summary
Einar Tangin and Glenn discuss the forthcoming Xi Jinping–Donald Trump meeting and the broader strategic landscape shaping U.S.–China competition.
- On the Trump–Xi meeting: Tangin expects very little substantive outcome. China’s strategy toward the United States is to keep engagement open rather than push Trump into a corner, despite Trump’s past actions and their consequences. He notes a narrow scope to be discussed in a California meeting, with Trump volunteers unprepared and pushing “the usual maximist stuff.” China is signaling that Taiwan will be a red line. Beyond that, the Chinese may accept limited concessions such as grain, gas, or oil purchases, but no sweeping arrangements. The overall takeaway: continued engagement, but not a game-changing breakthrough.
- U.S. energy and global strategy: Tangin argues the United States uses energy as a tool of influence, aiming to control access and shape markets (the petrodollar legacy, strategic chokepoints). The Ukraine war has accelerated Europe’s decoupling from Russia and the U.S. seeks to expand similar dynamics in East Asia. He emphasizes that the energy game is dynamic: oil prices impact inflation, and long-term, demand destruction and a shift to alternatives (electricity, renewables) will reshape markets. He points to new energy tech and scale: batteries and storage (CATL’s battery capacity) enable large-scale decoupling from fossil fuels; China’s plans to deploy up to 50 nuclear plants at a time and to pursue commercially available fusion power could transform the energy landscape. The U.S. may face higher exploration costs and geopolitical risk in sustaining high oil output, while heavy reliance on fossil fuels could erode long-term economic viability.
- Global consequences and who bears the pain: In the short term, countries without reserves (notably parts of the Global South, including India) will face fertilizer and diesel shortages during planting seasons, with potential 15–25% yield reductions and elevated inflation. Food security risks loom as energy costs ripple through fertilizer, transport, processing, and farming inputs. The analysis highlights fertilizer nitrogen production’s energy intensity and the cascading nature of energy in food supply chains. The discussion stresses that global south economies will be hit hardest early on, with food and fuel inflation compounding social and political pressure.
- The Iran war and maritime strategy: The discussion connects the Persian Gulf crisis to broader blockades and maritime competition. A naval blockade approach risks escalation and confrontation with China, which has extensive trade links through ASEAN and other partners that would be harmed by disruption. Tangin notes that China cannot be easily forced into combat in Europe or the Middle East; any escalation involving tactical nuclear use would be dangerous. He suggests that Europe’s elites may push for confrontation against Russia, but the political climate and energy constraints could destabilize Western allies and push towards alternative alignments, particularly with China.
- China’s strategic posture and alternative world order: Tangin emphasizes that China has a model that emphasizes no ideology between states, sovereignty, and mutual non-interference, echoing a Westphalian framework. He describes China’s global governance concept as a peer-to-peer, negotiation-centered approach, where disputes are settled at the table rather than through force. He frames China’s proposition as simple: “No more ideology between countries. Every country should be secure. Security should not depend on the insecurity of another country. Every country has the right to choose its own path of development.” This is presented as a peaceful, governance-based alternative to U.S.-led hegemony.
- Europe’s strategic crossroads and the future: Europe faces existential economic strains, competitiveness challenges, and the temptation of isolationist or right-wing governance. The conversation predicts prolonged political volatility if energy prices and inflation persist, with potential swings between different leaderships. China’s strategy, in this vision, is to promote internal diversification and consumption-led growth while engaging with international partners on a governance framework that reduces the incentives for confrontation.
- Concluding note: The speakers agree that Europe’s willingness to embrace China’s model, rather than clinging to a confrontational U.S.-led paradigm, could shape a more stable global order. They caution that the old order has ended, and creative destruction is underway, with China advocating a negotiated, governance-based path forward.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Einar Tangin, a senior fellow at the Taihi Institute and also a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation. Thank you very much for coming back on. There's a yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of ground to cover today. As always.
Speaker 0: Well, I wanted to ask you first, though, about what we can expect this month from this expected meeting, at least, between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. It was supposed to have already taken place, of course, but it was postponed by the American side. What what are you what are you expecting from Trump's visit?
Speaker 1: Actually, very little of substance. You know, Glenn, this is a situation where China's strategy towards The United States is as we have discussed before, is to continue to engage. They do not want him, you know, kind of painted into a corner like he's done in Iran, and then doing something, you know, that can't be repaired. Although many of the things he's done, the people he's resulted in deaths, Obviously, those won't be reversed. So they I was quite surprised.
Many people thought that the meeting would be called off. I thought they would continue, but I was surprised at how narrow the scope has become. There was a meeting in California to discuss the issues. Apparently, the Trump side was not very prepared. They were just, you know, the usual maximist stuff.
You know, you you you do this for us. You you help us with the Straits Of Hormuz, and things like this. And then those were all nonstarters. China is is signaled that Taiwan is going to come up as a red line. It's not clear what Donald Trump will do about that.
Other than that, I think you can expect the the Chinese to say, okay. We'll buy some grain or buy some gas or oil or something like this. Not that The US needs to sell more gas than oil at the moment. And unfortunately, the price of grain by the time it's ready for delivery, if it's a new crop, is gonna be much more expensive. So as I said, continued engagement, do not expect any kind of broad sweeping arrangements, just something that Trump can go back to The United States with and say that, you know, declare victory, but nothing really changes.
Speaker 0: Well, you said The United States doesn't really need to sell more of its energy, and it's a part of the reason for this is, well, the way The US has used the war in Ukraine to, will decouple Europe from Russia, so make them more dependent on American energy. They're now seemingly doing the same with East Asia. How do you see this? Yeah. So, yeah, so decoupling them from the Middle East and energy and making them dependent on The US instead.
A lot of this seems very deliberate, at least with the Ukraine war. This was stated, you know, some think tank papers long before The US even provoked the war back in 2014. So how do you how do you see this wider competition? Or it's not so much competition as The US grab for international energy resources. If not grab it
Speaker 1: for itself, at least cut off others. Yeah. I mean, the The US strategy towards energy has always been about control. That's why you had the petrodollar after the seventy three crisis. It was all about, okay, how do we turn this lemon into lemonade?
They were successful for a while. Unfortunately, it led to a lot of borrowing, which has resulted in the massive debt bomb that The US has. In terms of more lately, it's not just Russia. There's this goal of preventing China's rise by interfering with its oil imports. You know, the simplistic ideas that they have in Washington is if we cut off their oil, that will stop their economy.
So you saw within this last year and a half, you saw attacks on Nigeria, which sold oil to US, obviously Venezuela, and then Iran. And then you have these, you know, talks about choking choke points like the Straits Of Malacca, in addition to Hormuz, in addition to the area along the Red Sea. So The US is thinking that it can cut it off, but what they're not really thinking about is that times are dynamic. Russia does have tremendous amounts of oil and gas reserves and more that can be developed. It was a question of market before, and now it appears that the market's gonna be very good.
China will be switching away from oil that is not know, cannot that can be cut off in essence. And that means that they'll be much more leery about entering into more deals in The Middle East, also Africa, and South America, simply because it becomes a strategic risk issue. If they can get oils from and gas from the stands and from Russia, and or piped through friendly countries, I think that's where they will go strategically, or at least that's what I would anticipate. So in terms of what The US is doing, you have to separate what Trump is doing, who's kind of a useful idiot in my book, from the long term goals of the neocons, Pentagon, etcetera. They really I mean, before Trump was around, they were trying to figure out how they would contain Russia, make sure Russia and Europe didn't get together, because of the resources and manufacturing and technology know how.
They've successfully done that. The question is, what happens next? And it's it's just not clear. I mean, you you can sell only so many bombs. The fact is we can't make enough bombs.
Now, I misspoke when I said The US doesn't need to sell gas and oil. I mean, it is not a a, you know, a major impact on The US. It's the oil price that is killing US. Oil prices are set internationally. Obviously, as they go up, that increases inflation.
The oil companies are very happy. They're taking their existing stocks and selling for much more. You've seen doubling of profits almost across the board with the oil companies, and expect to see more as they cash in on this very favorable situation. The US would like to be the world's largest exporter of oil and gas. It's already the largest consumer, but the question is price.
If you start drilling in the areas they're talking about, you're not talking about the low hanging fruit anymore. Arctic takes a lot of manpower. It takes a lot of investment. You're stuck up in a place where, you know, for six months of the year, there is absolutely no sunlight, and it's very expensive to man and crew these remote areas, or if you're going into the sea, etcetera. So the low lying areas where you could get oil at reasonable prices are going away.
So that means that the price of oil has to go up to about where it is to make it really profitable to make these type of investments, but you have to see that on a long term basis. You've already seen some pushback by American oil companies over Venezuela. They've said, no. We don't wanna put a $100,000,000,000 into Venezuela, re up it, and then face the risk that there's a change in Washington, and then all of a sudden Venezuela says, you know, you you guys attacked us, and we're nationalizing the oil companies again. They they've been down that road once before, and they're very, very leery.
They've been looking for absolute guarantees by the government, the US government, that any investment they put in there will be, you know, obviously recouped in the event that there is some sort of change. I don't think that anybody would sign that, but you never know Trump. So the energy situation is going to change dramatically. You're already seeing demand destruction. That means that people are just switching, period.
Instead of having a a pump, a irrigation pump that runs on diesel, they're now switching it over to a couple of electrical panels, which will be a a lot cheaper. They have to get a a slightly different motor, obviously. But long term, they'll recoup their costs at the higher costs of of diesel in less than a year. And after that, it's a substantial savings above what they are. I don't know if they are gonna go to electric tractors.
That's probably something to watch as people look at it because there's a lot of farm equipment that uses diesel. If you can switch those over to a free and plentiful solar or wind power, you're in much better shape. Also, the the cost of of solar per watt generated has dramatically decreased by about 10 times, is my understanding, since about ten ten, fifteen years ago. So as a result, you can buy that. You can recoup your your investment very, very quickly, and you're independent.
You don't have to, you know, ask for somebody to run the tanker down there. You have a battery, solar, or wind power, or a combination, and and you're pretty much off the grid. You can run your your household. You can run your farm, and you're going. So when I'm when I'm talking about this, there's demand destruction like this where people will switch out, which means that the total volume of oil will probably go down, which means that The US, say, if it starts producing more oil and gas, but at higher costs, right, it's not gonna work out very well long term.
So, you know, when I say The US doesn't need to do that, it doesn't need to double down in a market, which could, in effect, start to deteriorate. There's about 40% of oil, which is used in everything from chemicals to perfumes, obviously clothes and things like that. Long string hydrocarbons are very unique, you know, very important to a lot of processes. That doesn't go away. But the 60%, which is, you know, fueling ships, etcetera, those in fact could be changed.
We saw that just this last week, CATL had a order for 60 kajillowatts of power. I don't quote me on that. I guess it's it's a big number. All I know is that one kilojoule one one of those units, one of those 60 units can run 750,000 homes for an entire year. So think about that.
That that is amazing. That's just the battery. You know, you put energy in and things like that. Things are profoundly changing. China has said that they can now manufacture 50 nuclear plants at a time, and they already have 30 that are on tap.
So you're gonna start seeing real changes, and this is part of their original plan to decrease their amount of coal. About 60% of electricity is produced by coal in China. And this was part of their plan to reduce that because obviously, nuclear is a lot less expensive. But down the road, as I said before, they put in their five year plan that they want to have commercially available fusion power. Fusion is just like nuclear, except you don't have radiation.
It's safe. There's tremendous amounts of almost unlimited fuel for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. So it's not something that you're gonna run out with. If that is the case, then oil, literally, you know, only 40% of the existing market before the Iran for air you can really count on the rest of it is not going to be useful. And even with jet fuel, if you you're not gonna need it as much because you can make jet fuel from biofuel, things like this.
So there are alternatives that will be pushed, especially during these very, very difficult times. So I'm just saying the energy equation as we know it is changing dramatically because of what The US has done, and their assumption that everybody needs more oil and are willing to pay high prices is probably wrong.
Speaker 0: You know, that's an interesting development, though, that while The US destroying the trust in reliable access to hydrocarbons, this kind of a threat to energy security, it actually plays well for China to some extent, though, by being the key a key supplier of of renewable resources and, you say, cleaner energies technologies. But this overall war, though, that is the war against Russia, Venezuela, Iran, the common thread, as you pointed out well, obviously, is energy markets. But the The US is also part of this world. They're currently burning down. So how does this how do you see the wider impact for the world economy?
I guess the distributional pain, where who will have a more difficult time absorbing what is coming our way? Because it's the energy is playing into the food markets. Of course, some are more vulnerable than others.
Speaker 1: Well, okay. So you have to look at this short, medium, and long term. In the short term, it's countries that do not have reserves. I'm hearing various things about, for instance, India. You know, 1,400,000,000 people, they need to be fed.
They have not had access to I mean, they they can't get the fertilizers they need. And if they do get them, it's at very high price because they're competing against global markets. Obviously, diesel is a big issue because their farm equipment and everything like that runs on diesel. This is the planting season. Once the planting season's done, it's over.
You didn't get the crop in the ground. It's not like, oh, you know, I can wait a few more weeks. You're you're not gonna get the maturity that you want. Without the fertilizers. You're looking at a 15 to 25% cut depending in your overall yield.
So meaning, if you were you were anticipating a 100,000 bushels, you would get somewhere between seventy five and eighty five thousand bushels. If you start looking at that on a overall period, you're you're you're talking some very, very serious pain. If there is droughts, if there are other things which are the normal course of things, you could be looking at a very, very difficult year and high inflation for food, perhaps food shortages because there's only so many going around. I mean, already, you know, countries are thinking about stopping feeding pigs and things like that because they take up too much of the food chain. You get a kind of eight to one, ten to one, ten times as much energy has to go in in terms of, you know, agriculture into a beef in order to get one, you know, one pound of beef out there.
So it's not a thing. So they you know, you're hearing that saying, look. We're gonna try to discourage that simply because we can't afford it, and the prices anyways will will go up. And, obviously, people will say, well, I can't afford a steak, so I'm not gonna have one. In in terms of who pays, you know, it's gonna be India.
It's gonna be the global south, especially over the initial phases for the same reason that India is having problems. They don't have any reserved or, you know, a few days, few weeks at most. So they're gonna get hit really hard. Now they're talking about how they could, you know, set up emergency funds to help them buy this, but how do you pay it back? You know, their economies are are are being hit hard.
They're gonna have food regular inflation, food inflation, fuel inflation. This is is not good. I mean, I was somebody asked me, he says, well, what's the big deal? I said, well, okay. So let's just take bread.
Bread is between 1525% pure energy from the you know, you have to get the not pesticides, but the fertilizer there. So there's energy to get the fertilizer. The energy itself the fertilizer itself comes from stripping hydrocarbons from gas. I mean, not hydrocarbons, stripping. Okay.
You you you not hydrogen. I keep thinking hydrogen. Alright. But you you strip you strip these from the gas. In order you have to pull the gas out of the ground, and you have to put it in container.
Most of it is compressed. That takes energy. Then it's put on a boat, special boat that can carry it. That takes energy. Then it's taken somewhere where energy is processed.
It's nitrogen. I'm sorry. So the nitrogen is stripped out of that. That takes energy. Then it has to be delivered to you, that takes energy.
Then it's put on the ground by your tractors, etcetera, that takes energy. And then you have watering it, irrigation, that takes energy. Harvesting takes energy. Then you go into the processing of the wheat or grains and things like that, takes energy. Then, you know, the plastics that it goes into takes energy, and it's put on trucks and delivered to you, and that's all energy.
So, know, when I explain it that way, they suddenly realize that a you know, an oil and and fuel prices is gonna result in a food prices.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It seems, yeah, even if everything gets back on track today, much of the pain has already been incurred. That is, as you said, it's very difficult to catch up, especially with, you know, with the coming food shortages. I did wanna switch, though, into the Iran war because this is, of course, the the source of much of these problems in addition to all of these other other conflicts.
Then, yeah, I guess, the the the control over the Strait Of Hormuz or the blockade, which The US has also put on it. This fits within a larger spectrum now of of, yeah, blocking international waterways. There's always been a key component of great power politics that is the maritime hegemon has always sought to control the the key corridors. And we see now the blockade on Venezuela to Cuba around Iran. There's also this yeah.
The Europeans, the rest of the Americans are also now considering putting in place what would essentially be a naval blockade on Russia, whatever consequences that might have. But, you know, at some point, this is gonna move towards China. And you as you've seen, Trump made this comment that, well, we're doing piracy now, that this is what we do. We seize ships and take the content. I mean, there's this strange incrementalism.
When they began seizing ships, they tried to refer to some pretend it was legal by referring to their own unilateral sanctions as if that makes anything legal. Any country can put sanctions on anyone. But now, of course, we've gone through these steps as we always do this incrementalism, and now all pretense is thrown away. And, you know, one can call it what it is, piracy. But how does this eventually affect China, you see?
Because that is, I think, the ultimate target. That is the peer rival of The United States. So are they coming to the Strait Of Malacca? How how how are you seeing this?
Speaker 1: Well, obviously, they're they've been hinting around at that. And the other question is they would need local countries to go along with it. But the problem with that is that these same local countries, and ASEAN, etcetera, depend they have a very, very entangled and profitable relationship with China. The amount of trade continues to go up because, actually, of the, you know, the sanctions that The US was put on, because Chinese companies set up in other countries. They import Chinese intermediate goods, and then they assemble and sell them off as, you know, coming from that other country.
If they cut off access there, it's gonna be very, very difficult. Now, I don't know, you know, in The US, we have not been above trying to create regime change, pushing our candidates in who are willing to do whatever it is that we want. It's possible that we might go that route. We've done it before. Or just try to entangle things, false flag attacks, whatever.
I think they would love to have that. I don't know that it necessarily helps The United States, and this this goes back many times. We discussed the fact that there is no endgame. But but if The US got everything it wanted, what would the endgame be? Oh, we're we're on top of the hill?
For how long until somebody pushes you over? US is acting on a set of assumptions just as I was describing about oil that are outdated and lack, you know, reflection. They don't think, oh, are are those assumptions still value valid? They're just plowing ahead. I mean, when the president of The United States says, yeah, we're pirates.
I I don't I don't know what to say about that. Yes. It's it's very good at keeping the Epstein files off the front page. The press will, you know, run around after this little white rabbit and say, oh, look look what he said. Look what he said.
But, you know, what does it mean? It means that we're deteriorating. Everything you said, Glenn, went into a world which is heading in the wrong direction. You know, the question is, are are we backing our our way into some sort of worldwide conflict? Maybe it's not at a nuclear level.
Maybe it's just a trade and blockades and things like that, but it's not gonna work. You know, this this idea that somehow you can prevent countries from developing, especially the size of Russia and China, who have other allied nations who also are gonna say, oh, we don't wanna be part of the the negative downward spiral. We wanna go up. We prefer China's approach, which is non non ideological and pragmatic to The US approach, which is, you know, either with us or against us ideologically and, you know, literally. So The US is scoring a lot of own goals here.
The irony being that you you hear people in Washington saying, oh, China did this. Okay. So China got Trump to say, I wanna be a pirate. They got Trump to invade Iran, to kidnap the president and his wife of of Venezuela, to threaten all these countries. I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
But what is bothersome is that so many people are reacting to it emotionally. There's still lots of people who support Trump even though his base is fracturing. They say, oh, he's a straight talker. He's a great guy, you know. He really tells it like it is.
You know, he's he's doing things. Well, what is he doing? I wrote a long article about the fact that he has accomplished nothing. I mean, yeah. Yeah.
He's terrorized migrants. Okay. Okay. So he's removed a million people from, you know, the the work chain. That's not a victory.
That's costing our a lot of small farmers their livelihood. They're going bankrupt because they don't have the people to run their farms. What else? Does he develop health care? No.
It's gone in the opposite direction. Health care is more expensive. Did he he promised that there would be a golden age, that manufacturing come down come back? Quite the opposite. It's leaving.
He promised you to look at prices. I mean, that he would, you know, be a champion for the ordinary person. Make sure that their cost of groceries and gasoline and everything would go down, but it hasn't. It's gone the other way. So I I wish the press were looking not at all the things he says, but the things that he hasn't done and asking him those questions because that is really the issue here.
I don't care what he says. I know why he's saying it. He wants to divert attention from his failures, but why is the press buying into this? It it befuddles me. I I know people in the press.
I talk to them about this. They acknowledge it, and yet the reporting remains the same. And they, of course, blame their editors. They say, well, the editor wanted us to follow-up on what the last thing he said or on the first six things he said over the last two days, so we don't have time. So in essence, the fourth estate, which is supposed to hold those accountable for their words based on their actions, and no longer function because they can be easily distracted like cat in a ball of yarn.
It's it's a bit sad. Obviously, Trump has learned to gain the system, but the system should not respond by cooperating.
Speaker 0: I agree. But I'm thinking, whatever discussions or the however discussions will go between Trump and Xi Jinping, it doesn't seem like it matters much. I mean, if you cut if you cut, you know, away from all this noise, the comments, whatever deal they might sign, at the end of the day, if you take a step back, then nothing has changed, though. The the overarching objective of The United States is to push for an international system based on US global primacy. There's US hegemony, global dominance.
And as we've seen with Russia, Iran, any peace deal is simply a temporary pause to regroup and try to fight from a position of strength. And I know that China always seems to favor, as you said, stability over confrontation. And for this reason, it's also taken a quite a cautious position with Iran, and I guess, yeah, to a large extent, wisely so, preventing the Iran war from taking on a global format. I mean, this is you you see important conflicts, be it from Ukraine to Iran, how it can become how it can spread, become more internationalized. But and this is obviously a very dangerous thing.
But this focus on stability over confrontation, what does it actually mean in practice? Because this conflict is coming to China either way because I think China is a key target here.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, obviously, and they and they know it. I mean, the the one way I've been very impressed by is we discussed this before. They were surprised by Donald Trump during his first administration. They thought he would talk tough about China, but he's a businessman and he knows I mean, all his campaign gear was made in China. All the phony cufflinks and watches that he gives to people are also made in China.
When I say phony, he he says they're solid gold, but then they they're only 14 carats gold plated and not even very well, according to a number of stories. They thought, oh, he's a businessman, you know, he's he's not gonna go that direction, and there were people within China who kind of said, yeah, don't worry about it. This is just normal American politics. You always make China the villain, and then when you get in inside the office and realize what the realities are, you don't do that. Well, he started acting out, and whether it was his own idea or he was easily led by the neocons or the people who, you know, the the China hawks, he got it.
So China was surprised, but they're no longer surprised. I I know a lot of people at the think tanks here in in China, and they do a tremendous amount of modeling. They try to figure out, you know, what what are the thousand things that Trump might do or say, or issues he might introduce. They study his his background, his psychology, everything like that. And then, basically, they write a response.
And I don't know if you've seen it, but, you know, Xi Jinping has a briefing book, and in that briefing book, he has responses to probable scenarios and how they should approach them. So I don't think there's gonna be any kind of real surprises from the Chinese side. Obviously, Trump, just before any meeting, will try to throw something on the table because he thinks that gives some leverage. You know, he'll make some announcements. He'll put more tariffs on Chinese companies or people or or or say something.
But once you've done that twice, it becomes predictable, and this is kind of you know, the Chinese are just watching this. Think of Donald Trump as, you know, from my perspective, you see him as a large spoiled kid, but this large spoiled kid has is armed with nuclear weapons, and he controls one of the most powerful economies on earth. So what do you do? You you can't spank him because you might light off a nuclear weapon. So you you have to figure out some way of engaging him, keeping him steady.
Remember, this is a time game. At some point, Trump goes away. And every day we get closer to the midterms, I, you know, I predict he will lose both House and Senate. And when that happens, then, you know, I it's not clear whether he'll accept that. If he'll try another, say, you know, congress, it was all illegal.
It was phony despite the fact that he was the one person most involved in trying to rig the elections through encouraging redistricting to favor Republicans and Republican states and things like that. He can try. I don't think it's gonna work. The American public, 61% in the latest polls by Ipsos, says 61% thought it was a wrong thing to go into Iran. People are about the same numbers are are disenchanted with the current economic situation.
There are some supporters, but the vast majority Americans are not in favor of what Donald Trump is doing or the what it's bringing to the country. So when when we start looking at this, how does China view this? We're taking a long term view. Engage with him. They know that they're the target.
They are looking for to basically lead by example. China is still growing at a much faster rate, more than double the rate of The US. In fact, right now, it's about 10 times. And that is really going to be the bellwether for many countries? Should I stay with The US, be bullied, told what to do, get involved, be involved tangentially in proxy wars, or do I go with a country that does not insist or tell me what I can and can't do?
They simply said, we'd like to trade with you. I mean, it's not even close, Glenn. I mean, if you think about it, you know, what country wants to be bullied by The US? And if you are with The US, you know you're gonna get bullied. So, you know, gradually, I've talked to a lot of of ambassadors here from other countries.
It's about a 150 plus ambassadors from other countries or ambassador rank from other countries and places here in Beijing. And, you know, it's a small community. People know each other. You run into people. You can take the temperature.
And even those countries that are supposedly, you know, have the relationship with The United States, they made it clear that they're doing everything they can to decouple from The US. Not not completely, just they say, for safety's sake, we cannot be that close to The US. They're not reliable. They're changeable. Even when Donald Trump goes, the fact that he was elected twice means that the bookends of of political discourse and action in The US have moved.
The US is a wounded animal. It might be self wounded, but the fact is it is acting out. It is blaming everybody else. The richest, most powerful country on the earth is being victimized by countries in Africa which can't feed their people and have water problems, etcetera. I mean, it it sounds laughable, but the fact is that is exactly what is happening.
So what country wants to go with The US? China offers something completely different, and I do believe that that will be the deciding factor. The US can't bully everybody all the time. I'm still hoping that the world comes together. They go to the three actors here, which are, you know, Israel, Iran, and The United States, and they say, knock it off, Israel.
You have to give up your nuclear weapons. The Middle East will be a nuclear free zone. In exchange, there will be multiple guarantees against this. No one is to support any kind of movement that is, you know, in favor of separatism, terrorism, or or extremism. And The US, you have to pay reparations for the damage you've done, only to Iran, but also to their supposed allies in The Middle East.
I mean, tens of trillions of dollars were lost because these countries are no longer seen as safe places to live and do business. You know, Abu Dhabi, I mean, I and so many friends saying, where are you going? Well, I'm going to move to Abu Dhabi. Why? Well, it's a great place to do business.
Weather's great. You know, everything's wonderful. They're leaving. Prices for real estate have gone down 30%. I'm not saying it can't recover, but the only way it can recover if is there is long term peace in The Middle East.
And that can never happen while one pugnacious country that has pushed a genocide isn't has over a 118 nuclear weapons. And given the fact that they attacked six countries, there's no reason to believe that they're pacifists. You know, they've said all already that they're now gonna tuck a target of whole places, Turkey. Right? This is an expansive country.
It's only seven and a half million people, and it wants to take on, you know, what what is it? A couple 100,000,000 Arabs throughout the Middle East on this theory that somehow they were given this land a long time ago. So it's US has to pay repatriation. They have to pay for the damage they've done. They have to remove the sanctions.
Yeah. And Iran has to give up any, you know, kind of proxy situations. Then I think you could have a piece there as as Asa said, remove the the nukes from Israel. I think those are the tenants of any kind of lasting long term peace. Short of that, all you have is what you referred to before, a series of stopgaps where you have temporary pauses in an ongoing war.
Speaker 0: Keep always thinking that the Trump isn't the only problem, though. I mean, he has he's very loud. He has, yeah, some character flaws, lack of morals, you know, to be kind with, you know, that modest description. But the the wider problem we look at the international system, though, is that The US is in relative decline, and it's it can either try to facilitate a multipolar system that brings stability, or it can attempt to restore hegemony by defeating adversaries. So the latter obviously demands massive wars.
And even its allies, abused as they are, such as the Europeans, they don't have the political imagination to to envision anything other than collective hegemony. This is yeah. This is what their ideology has committed them to. So it kind of makes me so no matter what Trump or his next successor, which will follow similar policies will do, you know, the vassals will blindly follow The United States, it seems. But it kinda takes me to my last question because I did wanna ask how how do you think China could well, may might be involved in well, its relationship change with the Europeans.
Because without being hyperbolic, it does seem that Europe were heading towards a war possibly with Russia now. That is the Germans are spending more on its military since 1945. The European capitals are openly talking about war with Russia. They're setting dates. We see now more direct attacks on Russia, not just, you know, assisting or, you know, carrying out these attacks on Russia's Black Sea coast, but we also see the attacks on the Baltic coastline of Russia using NATO territory.
I mean, it's it from what I hear, it's it's not a very good mood in Moscow at the time in terms of allowing this to continue to happen. So if we do see a direct war, how do you think China would respond to such a scenario?
Speaker 1: The same way it does in all these scenarios. It's not in a position to say, okay. We're gonna help Russia fight. You know, we're gonna send troops to fight in Europe. That that there's no way that that's gonna happen.
They can't send ships there because they couldn't resupply them. They'd be shot out of the water before they ever arrived. In terms of sending troops, if you're going to have a battle of that sort, I'm less concerned about troops than to tactical nukes and nuclear weapons use, because they it would be, you know, an escalation situation. One side uses a tactical nuke, and all of a sudden, you have a full nuclear blown nuclear war. So but I I would add one other possible scenario, and that is that the European electorate is not happy.
There's a real divergence between what I see as the elite existing governance structure people, and, you know, the general populace. And this is going to get worse, especially with this food shock. Europeans already had the energy shock. It has decimated the industrial capacity of places like Germany. Many companies just simply closed down, moved out.
First time Volkswagen has ever closed a factory. Know, things things are are tough there. This is a lot of it is driven by energy. If you do not have competitive energy prices, how are you going? Also, your your prices of labor are higher.
Building is higher. Compliance is higher. How are you going to compete in a global situation, especially when you have competitors? Not just China. You can look all over Asia.
They're very fast. If you start looking at high, you know, labor added value, obviously, that's not gonna be Europe either. So Europe Europe is in an existential crisis right now. They have to find a way to stabilize their economy, their competitiveness. What what can they offer the world that they can continue their highest, you know, highest level of lifestyle.
That's very difficult. It would be going in the opposite direction of what they're doing now. That means putting money into universities. Yeah. It's so that you're investing in the future, not guns and bombs.
Even with these added, you know, weapon systems, you still need people to man them, and that is going to be a problem. And then on top of that, once you add it all up together, young people are not gonna be in favor of being conscripted, drafted into a war that they don't understand or want. So they're not gonna follow it. The old people are getting hit by price increases. They're gonna be unhappy, and so are everyone in between.
So you're gonna you're gonna see a lot of political change. People are hungry, and they're, you know, exhausted. They don't see a future for themselves. These they're that is not a vote for the incumbent. That's a vote for anybody else who promises anything else.
The irony there or the bad part of that is you're seeing the rise of the right. A lot of them, neo fascists, you know, out and out, you know, sympathizers with the Nazis and things like that. They tone it down, but this is where they come from. But they're very isolationist. They believe that the money should be at home, that you should build up the things.
Do they have real economic plan? I don't think so. They just say, you know, invest at home and everything will be fine. Isolationism does not take in the fact that they may already live in a very complex world of, you know, interrelated cons. If if you're, you know, if you're you're taking a drink of beer, you think, oh, it's German beer.
Well, no. The equipment now is increasingly made in Asia, And, like, some of the attitudes and things like that, those are also made in Asia. The hops might be from from Germany, but maybe not. It might be imported from Czechoslovakia or some other place. So that we live in an interconnected world, and that's the way we've kept prices down.
And if you abandon that, you're see skyrocketing inflation. So my prediction is you see the right come into power. They're unable to solve things, make it worse, you know, then you get another group on the other side coming into power. And you have a period of prolonged instability where you have the seesaw effect. You know, one is up and the other one's down, and then, you know, the electorate turns the other one because they wanna they wanna change the problems, but the only alternative they have is to change the leadership.
New leadership has to deal with the existing problems, And in most cases, they do not have any kind of new thinking or ideas about how they can solve these things. Yeah. China's looking at this. They're trying to gauge how bad it will be. You'll note that over the last, I don't know, six, seven years, I've been talking about internal, you know, maintaining their economic growth through internal consumption.
And I think that's where they're continue to go. Control what you can to the best of your ability, and then react to what you cannot control. And I think that is, in a nutshell, what China will continue doing.
Speaker 0: I think that's important role China could play, though, in terms of accommodating a new world order. You know, Friedrich Enieszczyn and well, others always made a point that when when there's change, all change will require first that, well, the old dies, and then for something new to be created, this this creative destruction. But, you know, they make the point if the old dies without something else to replace it, anarchy is essentially the the predictable outcome. And it seems that's kind of where we are. The old world order has now essentially come to an end, and there's nothing really to replace it anyway yet.
And we therefore see all this chaos. So if you see at least the thinking in Europe, the war is seemingly the only option forward now because there is nothing else. It seems that, you know, if if if the China could elevate some different form of model for the world to work together, some new path to prosperity, cooperation, it it it could make, again, the the alternative to war. I think that's at the moment what the world needs, because at the moment, it's all only, you know, grabbing your guns and trying to restore a world which has already gone away, which has passed away. So it's I'm not sure if, yeah, you have any final thoughts in terms of an appealing format for a new world order.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I actually
Speaker 0: Big question. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. No. It's it's actually a question I get asked quite a bit. My answer is very sim simply that Europe's unwillingness to listen or look at a model that has been proposed is is not an absence of a model.
It is simply their stubbornness and their clinging to the old paradigm. So what China has proposed is is very simple. No no op no more ideology between countries. And this goes back basically to the West Treaty of Westphalia that ended the, you know, the wars between the Catholics and Protestants. They say, okay.
I'm not gonna insist that you become a Catholic. You don't insist that I become a Protestant. I do what I do on my side of my border, and you do what you do on yours. This is exactly what China is saying. They're saying every country should be secure.
Security should not depend on the insecurity of another country. Every country has the right to choose its own path of development. No country has a right to interfere with the internal path that they're trying to pursue. And then finally, countries are as they are. They're a mixture.
They're complex, different peoples, languages even. You have to respect who they are. If we start dividing countries into little smaller and smaller pieces, it doesn't create peace. It just creates new sources of conflict, age old, trying to go back to the old days and talk about how things used to be. Can't swim in the same river twice, but also part of that is respect for the sovereignty of these nations.
And then China said there should be a global governance initiative, and this means that people should sit around a table instead of throwing tanks at each other. We should talk. Figure it out. It all ends up at the negotiating table anyways. Why is it necessary for young men, women to die?
Why is it necessary for destruction of property? This does nothing for the world. So I do think that China is proposing it. It's just as I go back to my first things. They're not proposing it in the way that The US used to propose things or that the colonial powers proposed things.
They didn't propose them. They just, you know, basically imposed. So China is trying to lead by example. If you don't want to see it or you want to view it as as evil, that's fine. There's no way anyone can make you do that.
So, you know, Europe's problems are problems of choice. They're in bed with a bad partner. They can't seem to get away from it. There are other options, but they're completely blind to it. I I always think of it as as, you know, somebody who is in a bad marriage where they're being abused by their partner, but they don't see any way out of it.
And unfortunately, that's something that has come from realization within Europe, and it is beginning. So, you know, you start looking at Spain. I know he has his his problems, he's getting a lot of good press out of this, and that's kind of offsetting what, you know, is the politics of what he's doing. But the fact is, he makes a very compelling case that it's time to put the ideology away and start just thinking about the good of your people.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now I this is why I've been a bit optimistic about China's, what is called, the global civilizational initiative that is essentially for civilizations to begin to cooperate again under this Westphalian format, which we desperately need. So, well, thank you for, yeah, taking the time on a Saturday. I very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Always enjoy our chat. Unfortunately, I gas on too much. But
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Gilbert Doctorow: European Naval Blockade on Russia? Europe-Russia War Coming https://youtu.be/JTfjvDET6iA https://t.co/mqmHJATTJj
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gilbert Doktorov discusses volume two of his war diaries, noting that volume three will likely come out between six and eight weeks from the time of the interview, depending on production in Arizona. He argues that 2024 was a period of transition from a Special Military Operation (SMO) to a war with the West, encompassing the United States and Europe, and accompanied by a new Russian nuclear doctrine published in November. This doctrine lowered the threshold for Russian use of nuclear weapons against those supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine, reflecting a shift from threats centered on ICBMs to concerns about medium-range missiles, particularly those deployed by the United States and Germany.
Key events shaping this shift include long-range missiles such as Taurus missiles discussed by German air force leaders in March 2024, which Russia intercepted and published; the intent to use Taurus missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge; and the broader implications of Western missile supply for Russian security. Putin’s interview with Tadel Zerubian in St. Petersburg helped assemble these pieces into a new strategic framework. Doktorov asserts that these developments culminated in a revised nuclear doctrine in 2024, changing how Russia perceives its strategic threats and the potential use of nuclear force.
Doktorov notes personal changes in 2024, with daily interviews becoming a routine and a shift toward integrating breaking news into analysis. He emphasizes that volume two includes many references and links to these interviews, though not full transcripts to avoid ballooning the volume. He contrasts volume two with volume one, asserting volume two’s emphasis on ongoing discussions rather than simple interviews.
In 2025, the focus of his commentary shifted to negotiations: are negotiations real and substantial, or just hot air? This became a driving theme for volume two, while 2025 is also identified as the year of Trump, which altered how issues on the battlefield were interpreted and evaluated.
The host then frames the current context (2026) as NATO’s overt involvement, with surveillance drones over Russia’s Black Sea coast and predictable strikes, plus attacks on the Baltic coast near Saint Petersburg. He asks how long this can continue given Kremlin pressures and potential escalatory responses. Doktorov argues that Putin is not Russia itself in a monolithic, democratic sense, but a political actor with elections approaching and with a circle of advisers who range from liberal to conservative. He critiques the tendency to treat Putin as the sole arbiter of Russia, urging the use of the same analytic techniques applied to France or the United States to understand Russia’s internal dynamics and the legitimacy of its governance.
Regarding deterrence and potential Russian responses, Doktorov rejects the notion of necessary plausible deniability for Russia. He contends that Russia could respond by targeting military assets in the Baltics or German outposts, arguing there is no reason to apologize for asserting rights in Eurasia. He cites Sergei Karaganov as a proponent of taking decisive action and suggests Russia has both the capability and the will to counter Western actions. The discussion covers the German chancellor Merz’s push for European military leadership versus von der Leyen’s leadership in Brussels, the risk of Germany attempting to dominate Europe militarily, and the broader implications for Europe’s cohesion and future projections.
The conversation turns to the United States’ role, with Trump’s stance on NATO funding and defense commitments questioned. Doktorov suggests Europe should not expect U.S. military rescue if provoked by Russia, given U.S. demands for European defense spending. They discuss a UK-led group forming a naval alliance against Russia, while considering the possibility of a naval blockade and Russia’s willingness to defend its shadow fleet.
Finally, they touch on Europe’s broader global stance, including threats of sanctions against Israel for grain purchases from Russia, and EU attempts to influence energy markets and East Asia. Doktorov argues that Europe has become ideologically driven and increasingly irrelevant as a geopolitical power, warning that European leadership’s irrational policies, censorship, and centralized power undermine credibility.
In closing, Doktorov predicts that the war will eventually end without U.S. reconciliation, with Russia achieving its minimal objectives along the Dnieper and Nederseh, and he suggests a five-year horizon for Europe and the United States to catch up before a decisive confrontation. The host and Doktorov acknowledge the escalating danger and the potential for a major conflict unless a dramatic shift occurs.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Gilbert Doktorov, a historian and international affairs analyst. Thank you for coming back on the program. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: My pleasure.
Speaker 0: So you recently published volume two of your war diaries. This is as I understand, I haven't gotten to read it, the whole thing, but this is largely about the period when the Russia Ukraine war evidently switched from being simply a war between Ukraine and Russia to becoming more obvious European Russian proxy war. I was wondering, yeah, if you could say something about your new book and that period.
Speaker 1: Alright. Well, I'll I'll use the plural here because volume three twenty twenty five will probably come out between six and eight weeks from now depending on the speed of the production company in Arizona that is doing the layout. 2024 was, as you say, and as I described in the book, was a period of transition from an SMO, from the Special Military Operation concept, to a war with the West, collective West, not just with Europe, but with The United States, and with a new nuclear doctrine by Rashud, came out in 2024, which was the culmination of warnings to the West that have been started as early as March and April of that year as a result of the actions on the ground, as a result particularly of the new threats to Russian security coming from Europe and also from The United States in the form of long range missiles, which were being put up by the Germans. Already medium well, let's say, 300 kilometer range missiles. I've been supplied by the British and the French under a well, it's a common missile scalp in French.
And what's the shadow of the I forget exactly what it was. It was the British the British Storm Shadow. These have been supplied and had been more or less neutralized by the Russians. They learned how to handle them. But longer range missiles were on offer from The United States and from Germany in particular.
It's Taurus missile. And as early as March 2024, when there was intercepted and published by the Russians, the conversations between top level air force people in Germany discussing how they could get around this the chancellor Scholz's prohibition on supplying such weapons to to Ukraine. And that be that that conversation with intent to use the the Taurus missile to destroy the Kerch Bridge, which was the iconic achievement of engineering, bringing together the Mainland Of Russia and the Crimean Peninsula. So that was scandalous, and it tipped off a wave of rethinking in Russia over what their security threats were. Ultimately, in the in the revised nuclear strategy, came out in November, it was all put together, pieces which came out from March through September when when president Putin had a very important interview with Tadel Zerubian who was on the streets of Petersburg just off of the Palace Square.
Principles were set out piece by piece and all culminated in a nuclear doctrine, which seriously lowered the the threshold of for Russian use of nuclear weapons against those who were equipping or or equipping Ukraine with long range weapons, long range missiles, and the sources of production. That was a very and also the the whole notion of what the nuclear threat was or the strategic threat to Russia changed from having been based for decades on ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, which were the key issue in the in the SOFT treaty of the strategic arms limitation treaties. Now the Russians saw as the biggest strategic threat to themselves medium range missiles that that The United States had already agreed under Biden to place in Germany during this current year in 2027. So they were they adopted their or read they they they readvised their strategic doctrines around this new reality. So that was the that is what I see is the key point, which makes the what I'm describing 2026, sorry, 2025 different from the preceding volume one, which was 2223.
Also, of course, my own life changed during '24 when I started doing almost daily interviews. The Indians were the first to bring me into that very, very frequent review of breaking news and which compelled me to get my mind around issues which otherwise I might have ignored from week to week. That was the case in in my volume one. There were breach there were there were periods which I was not covering in a daily or even weekly sense, which in 2024 I was necessarily because I was being invited to, as I say, get my mind around some some some issues before the general news came out from the West because I was dealing with a a broadcaster who had access to to what was being said or stated before it reached the general public. And I also, in that volume two, put in a lot of references, a lot of links to many of these interviews.
It's because I didn't burden it too much with the transcripts because I don't know what then the whole volume would balloon it out. But a few I did give just so people have a taste for what these discussions, like the one that we're having now, are like. And I call them discussions rather than interviews because in in this case, and in one or two other cases, the the invitee, the holder of the platform, once you are, engages in in a in a in a discussion. So this is the the feature of 20 of volume two. Volume three will be different from the one one by Yongle.
I won't go on about it. But 19 sorry. 2025 was the year of Trump. And the whole attention, the whole nature of of what I was covering changed from what's going on in the battlefield or how it's being evaluated by other commentators to how we evaluate the course of negotiations. Are they real, substantial?
Are they just hot air? So those issues became the driving force of all commentary in 2025. Oh, there you have it.
Speaker 0: Well, if you forward two years on to 2026, we see now that the the involvement of NATO countries in this war is well, it's very overt now. If we look at this whole process over the past four plus years as being this incrementalism or salami tactics, now we see it being quite blatant. For example, yesterday, we saw NATO surveillance drones monitoring Russia's Black Sea coast, and then this morning, very predictably, the strikes are coming in. And we we also see similar these attacks that is attacks on the Baltic Sea coast in Russia, around Saint Petersburg. This is also seems, very likely or one one could say even more with greater certainty, almost certainly an attack coming out of the Baltic States.
I mean, this is how long do you think this can go on? Because from what I understand, the pressure is building up in the Kremlin not to simply allow this kind of escalation control on the side of the Europeans that they can simply launch attacks on Russia and pretend it's Ukraine, and Russia can't do anything in return?
Speaker 1: Well, we spend a lot of time these days talking about mister Trump and about midterm elections and how his handling of the or or his look for a for an off ramp to the war on Iran that he and Israel launched, how that is modified according to the political calculus of the November elections. Strangely, we don't apply the same kind of logic or analytic approach to mister Putin. We behave as we we deal with him as if, well, he is the whole of Russia. That's that's been going on for for two decades. There's only one man whom you you want to listen to in Russia, and that is mister mister Putin.
And we don't consider him as living in a democratic country, which he is. There are all kinds of deformations in democracy as we as I know in the big neighbor to my to my west in France where the president is, in effect, a king. But we don't we only talk about that occasionally. Here in in in Russia, yes, mister mister Putin. It is a political animal, and he also has elections, by the way.
Not his personal presidential election, but he has, like mister like mister Trump, he faces parliamentary elections. And in the case of Russia, they have to take place before the September 26. And so there is it's not just you and me and and the Western observers who remark on these dramatic and destructive attacks on Russian refineries and other critical infrastructure, which are enabled by the by The United States and European intelligence on a daily basis, providing the targeting information necessary. Not where the target is located, that's pretty obvious, but how you get to it because these drones, they don't fly at several kilometers heights, they fly just at very low levels, and they can smash into electric electric power lines and all kinds of obstacles on the way if they aren't properly guided. So that critical information has been provided from the West.
No. The Russians a lot of Russians are enraged by this. And while I agree completely with peers who are saying, oh, look how popular Putin is with the sev it is now 70 rating, down from 80, but that really doesn't make much difference. But they're not talking about the party politics in Russia. They're not talking about the collapse of support for United Russia, which was traditionally, going back decades, 30% of the electorate versus about 20% or 18 of the electorate for Communist Party and maybe 12% of the electorate had been for Zhornowsky's part of the ultra right.
Now they've dropped from 30% to 20%, which means I mean, to my to my understanding, they're very close neck and neck with the communists. And from 20%, it's pretty hard to stretch yourself over to 51% even if you're playing electoral games with how you how you designate the the winners in electoral districts by the party party lists or by candidate names. So the the elections in September are not a foregone conclusion to get to a backing of mister Putin's policies. On the contrary, they will be highly contested in the seagull whips. So as I say, we have to apply we have to apply to Russia the same analytic techniques that we use in examining what's going on in France and what's going on in The States.
But for some strange reason, those of us who all admire mister Putin's Russian refuse to recognize that this is democracy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's how do you think, though, if, essentially, this pressure builds up so much that Russia has to find a way of responding? How how do you think this could, you know, I guess, manifest itself? Because I've heard talks now about Russia invading the Baltic States. This seems very unlikely.
I'm not sure what they would exactly do there. It it seems more likely that Russia might be moving towards something similar, what the Europeans are doing, this kind of strikes on Russia with a plausible deniability. But, of course, the Russians don't have a proxy state to to attack from. So how do you think the the Russians might approach this if if they decide to step over this line and begin to attack in a way that it you know, they know where the attack comes from, but, again, plausible deniability?
Speaker 1: I don't see a reason for plausible deniability. What what they would be counterattacking is by every international measure, it causes belly. When the Estonians and the Latvians and Lithuanians permit Ukrainian drones to fly over their territory and attack the Russian Baltic ports, you go to war over that. So I don't see why they they have to look for a proxy or an excuse If they want to be a world power, which they want to be, but not a global power in the sense of being able to project their military might around the globe, but at least in their region, at least in Eurasia, then there is no reason to be apologetic. In fact, there's a demand that you just assert your rights, as you and I have discussed, and as you as a theoretician in this domain of deterrence, have made very clear, either you use it or you lose it.
And there are many people in the start of of course, the the bad boy of Russian geopolitical thinking is Sergei Karaganov. And going back two and a half years, he he made it very plain that Russia has to do something. And he just he's expanded on that in his most recent published statements. But always at the cutting edge that Russia cannot just take this trespassing on its red lines idly or jawbone about it or respond in ways that are utterly inadequate to the level of damage that's been done to them. And so invade the Baltics?
Why? No reason whatsoever. Nothing to be gained and a lot to be lost. Just attack the military assets in the Baltics, including, by the way, the German military outpost. I think it's in Lithuania.
They've got several several thousand people there. Oh, blow them up. That'll be a good signal, and it's completely within international law. Now if you want to say, well, well, isn't this the path to World War three? I fall back on on a colleague in a in a very small minority of of commentators, and that is Paul Craig Roberts, who's been saying but saying at least to you before I've I've joined part of his argumentation that this type of turning the other cheek is is leading us in exactly the opposite direction that you would think prudence takes you.
It is leading us to either a a violent an overthrow of the existent powers that be within the Kremlin and a violent a violent counterstrike that could really be World War three, or mister Putin himself follows the the advice of everyone around him now or of many people around him now and doesn't just jawbone, but actually uses military action against NATO countries in a very selective and legally justified way.
Speaker 0: Well, I think that's a good point. People often view this the retaliation as being dangerous because it does push us towards World War three, which I guess isn't wrong, but it's also that dilemma, the the failure to uphold one's deterrence. I mean, I've when I listen to the media and the politicians across Europe, the the the logic is somehow that, well, if if anyone thinks that Russia has any right to retaliate, then, you know, then they're spreading Russian propaganda. But this is a very dangerous self delusion, this idea that we can continue to attack Russia and somehow they would never respond. I mean, this kind of rejecting that Russia should have any deterrence, it's it's taking us down this very strange path.
And I'm glad you mentioned Germany because they seem to be, to a large extent, at the forefront of this new strange mentality where well, essentially, it's a social the the reality is a social construction in which, you know, if we say that Russia has the right to retaliate, then it has. So as long as we all pretend that this is completely legitimate, we're just helping Ukraine, there's no reason to be concerned about the Russian retaliation. I mean, it's it's good for deluding our own public, but we're not deluding the Russians. They they know what's happening. So how how do you see German Germany playing into this?
Because, you know, chancellor BlackRock Mertz, he continues to plummet in the polls, of course, but but the policies nonetheless continue as they do across Europe. That is, you know, Mertz has this dream about building the largest military in Europe. He's quite open about the desire to escalate the war against Russia. He oversees his deindustrializing economy. He wants to purge the political opposition as, you know, said he plummets.
Where would you think that this is heading for the Germans?
Speaker 1: Well, in Russian folk wisdom, you have this image of a couple in the bed, and each one is trying to pull a blanket over himself. Now, actually, there are three people in this bed, and each of these three or three groups, they're trying to pull a bank blanket to themselves and leave the others exposed. Miss chancellor Mats, as is, as you say, he's laying claim to being the military leader of Europe based on the industrial military industrial potential of Germany and its population, of course, with the 80 what is the eighty, eighty five million? I've lost track. Million people, which is one of the most populous countries in in Europe.
And, of course, the the best manufacturing industry until the Chinese more or less destroyed the German auto industry. And he is making claims. At the same time, he's laying claims, is working against another German whom his party helped to put into position as the president of the European Commission, Vandelayen. And he has publicly disputed her rights both to run the military of Europe and to run the legislation of Europe as it affects businesses and and the economy. This is a public spat spat that came out of the book last week, and von der Leyen had to go to Germany and and try to make peace with with Merits, but they she can't make peace with him because they're both aspiring to top leadership positions in Europe.
And he has a much more powerful position than she does. So hers is bureaucratically created, and this is by election in in the most powerful country in in in the continent. So there there you have two parties that are that are trying to pull pull the blanket over. So so it's because I say that because she had, several weeks ago, been a very strong local advocate for a response to to NATO's being diminished or or shriveling with The United States withdrawal from Europe. She responded by by a clarity and call to all of European Union members and Serpentina NATO members to join in a United Europe army, which, of course, she would head.
And after all, she can make reference to various service as the minister of defense of Germany before coming to Brussels. Well, that didn't fly with a lot of people in Europe. Now mister chancellor Merzys attempted to pull the blank to him has been equivocal in the ways that it's received. The French have said yes and no. There's the big dispute over the the this jet jet fighter project, which the Germans and the French had coauthored and now is very great doubt.
And the but generally speaking, the French and the British are very quietly trying to pull the blanket to themselves because nobody there wants to see a Germany that runs Europe, not just politically as Germany has since the days of of chancellor Merkel, but militarily, which is the pretension of Pistorius, the minister of defense today, and and of and of his boss, Mertz. And what you would get as a result of this is Hitler's dream come true. So there people do have a memory. They know what World War two was fought about, which was largely to prevent just what mister Mertz has advocated.
Speaker 0: Well, one of the another issue is, probably, I guess, this Trump split with Mertz with Mertz. Obviously, the two men don't like each other very much, but we saw that Trump no. Sorry. Mertz was trying to make himself Europe's front man in in Washington with the war in Iran. That is, he went to Washington.
He positioned himself very much as being the number one supporter of Trump. This is when he thought that the war against Iran would go well. Now, of course, he's he sees that the war isn't going well, so he, you know, he goes where the wind is blowing, and he's now criticizing Trump. And as a result, we now see Trump threatening to draw down US forces in Germany. Given this split that's emerging, let's say Russia now sees this this attack on itself by obviously, by the Europeans to be untenable, and it decides to strike.
Well, for example, some German arms industry, if not logistics, as well as targets in the Baltic States. How likely do you think it would be that The United States would, I guess, come to the rescue of the Europeans now?
Speaker 1: Well, the the American rescue effort has been in doubt ever since Trump came back into into office. He made scathing comments about about NATO, not quite as open as Macron had done a couple of years earlier saying NATO is brain dead, but close to that. So the he's also made it clear that without a 5% budgeting of of European NATO members for NATO for defense, United States would not abide would not honor its obligations under the NATO treaty of one for all and all for one. And so I think I don't I think it is reasonable to say that Europeans should have no expectation of Trump coming to their aid if they by provocations and by giving Russia legally valid casus belli, as they are doing now, find themselves in the direct war with Russia. And Europe now is totally disorganized in terms of defense principles, objectives.
And the only thing that unite that unites all of Europe is the lack of the technologically advanced armaments, both defensive and offensive, to to last for more than a few days in a war with Russia.
Speaker 0: Well, the most recent news now, of course, is The United Kingdom leading group of 10 European countries who are gonna create a naval alliance against Russia. The language they use is meant to sound defensive, so they're gonna contain Russia's Russia at sea, but this, of course, comes at the backdrop of the threats being made with well, from the Americans to invade Kaliningrad. You heard we've seen also the targeting of Russian vessels either by boarding or piracy, however one wants to frame it, of what's referred to as Russia or Russia's shadow fleet, but also we see direct attacks on Russian civilian vessels as well under the guise of it being the European sorry, being the Ukrainians. But given that this is now being set up, we we it's kinda obvious the direction this is gonna head. They're gonna seemingly well, do a little bit like what Americans did with Venezuela or Cuba or now with Iran.
This is starting to look like a naval blockade, which is an act of war. Some would say that the Russians invited this on themselves given that they didn't uphold their deterrence in any other area. But do do you think this is, like, a more of a PR stunt, or do you think they're actually moving ahead with this?
Speaker 1: As long as the current Russian leadership backs off each time that Europe, NATO, United States advance, this will continue. However, I don't believe they can back off much longer. The issues that you and I are discussing are being discussed publicly in in Russian social media, and it's not at all flattering to the current leadership of the country. So either mister Putin and his colleagues will change policy and strike back. And they did a little hint when they had the Russian naval vessel accompanying two shadow fleet tankers through the Strait through the English Channel.
They were giving indications they're ready to defend their shadow fleet with naval force. The issue, coming, is that Russia has all the military wherewithal to sink everything that NATO could throw at There is they're joking that there are more missiles in Kaliningrad than there are people in Kaliningrad. So the it's all there. The question is where is the will to use it? And mister Putin has been very poor in performance of that, But I don't think this can continue much longer.
His colleagues are getting more assertive. The public is getting more assertive. And it it doesn't look good if he were to stay long with this turning the other cheek. I think he he he will have to change his policy or someone will replace him.
Speaker 0: I see that the spokesperson, Peskov, was making the point that if the Europeans try to put what is essentially then a blockade on naval blockade on Russia, then they would put an entire a naval blockade on the all of the European Union. Again, I'm not sure if it's blowing hot there or exactly what this would entail, but, obviously, the know, they also locked themselves into position. Once you begin to utter this rhetoric and nothing would happen, you know, this would be a further disaster for your deterrent, and they would there would be even more pressure to come back hard later in terms of, you know, restoring this. So it's again, it seems very, very dangerous what is being done. I I did wanna ask, though, about how you see the Europeans also pushing this on the rest of the world.
The European Union, they threatened the possible sanctions we see now against Israel for buying grain from Russia. So everything that was done in Gaza, attack on Iran, Lebanon, all of this was well, not just looked other way, but also had some support from the European Union. But now, of course, buying stolen grain from Russia, this is where they drew the line. And it's interesting the wider context because we now see that the EU also putting some pressure on East Asia not to buy Russian oil as, well, energy markets are coming under squeeze. Do you I mean, do you see the EU being able to push this, or is this just posturing?
Speaker 1: Well, just posturing would mean that they are consciously aware that there's nothing behind these threats. I don't think it's just posturing. I think they they are making these statements, assertions because they correspond to their deep beliefs. And it corresponds to their deep beliefs because they are not politicians. They are ideologists.
Politicians are people who look for practical solutions. The European Union has stopped looking for practical solutions for at least twenty years, not just last week. And it's coming at it's breaking at the seams. I couldn't believe last week when I turned on your news, and I heard a debate, actually something resembling a debate, over the harmful effects of European legislation, regulations concerning building construction, housing construction in Europe, which affects Holland. And The Netherlands was saying, these spokesmen for the last one saying, this is terrible.
It makes the cost of new housing exorbitant. People can't afford it, and we are not building enough new lodgings to meet demands. There was an open space, but we all know, every one of us who have I bought and sold property two years ago and had to fill out 50 pages of description, technical descriptions of the buy sold and what I bought, where ten years ago, it was like three pages, when I had to have performance of an energy of the or a proof, which cost a thousand euros. Some some someone came to my new apartment to confirm that the electricity works properly. All of this rubbish, which affects everyone that buys and sells and bills in Europe, is finally coming out on Euronews, and who's behind that?
Well, not just Madame Van der Leyen. It's the whole silly European parliament. They're ideologists, And the whole green movement, which took control simply because it was an essential partner for a coalition of the European People's Party, which the European People's Party held its strength in the last parliamentary elections for Europe. But its colleagues, the socialists, lost. And so to maintain Madame Fond du Leigne in power, they had to do a deal with the Greens.
The results of all this are that Europe is cracking at the scenes in every which way, not just at the military defense issue. But the military defense issue, it's the most irrational. From Kalos's statements, what you have said, are indicative of the utter insanity of the people who are running Europe today, telling Southeast Asia not to buy Russian oil when there's no alternative, when 90% of the oil of several of those countries was coming from the Middle East and now is blocked. And she's saying, oh, don't buy Russian oil. It makes Europe totally irrelevant as a geopolitical player, totally irrelevant.
They will laugh in the face of Europe. The Japanese laughed in the face of the new prime minister, laughed in Donald Trump's face when he told her not to buy Russian oil. And she said the German the Japanese economy could not do without it. So let's talk about something else. These attempts to to play a global power when you don't have the wherewithal and when you really don't know what you're talking about, which is the case of Kalos most of the time, make a mockery of Europe.
Speaker 0: Just no. I couldn't agree more than what you're saying about the irrationality and growing irrelevance and the and the ideologues. That is the policies now of of Europe. They can't defend this in any rational way, which is, I think, also why this increasingly well, irrational foreign policy is always complemented with growing censorship and, yeah, centralization of power. But, yeah, my last question, though, is just about the the changing relationship now between The United States and Russia because I think you you, much like myself, was somewhat optimistic in the larger parts of 2025 about the possibility of The US and Russia toning down or producing some of these great power tensions, which, again, risks taking us to, well, World War three essentially.
But now it looks like the Russians are also starting to give up on this idea that Trump can actually deliver on any of the things that he said. And, well, in the in the context of this, we see, of course, the foreign minister of Iran, Arakci, coming to Russia, meeting with Putin, and this apparently didn't go down well with Trump. I I was wondering how do you read the situation?
Speaker 1: Well, I'd like to use a scalpel, go a little bit where you get where Russia stands. Mister Keskov is is the spokesman for mister Putin. But there there are around him. Around Putin, there are liberals and there are conservatives. The liberals are a very small minority general because they're the holdovers from the Yeltsin years.
Now, mister Vishakov, who went to the great lengths to describe to the public the one and a half hour long telephone conversation between Putin and and Trump, which was initiated by Trump two days ago, if he's a liberal, and he and mister Kharkonov would be at one of his throats. Let's be clear about this. Mister Dmitryev, who is Putin's emissary to many of the talks with the Americans, hey, he's a liberal. He is an American asset, to be very precise about it. He worked for many years with American corporations.
His English is fluent. His knowledge of American business culture is terrific, which is why he was chosen to be a counterpart to to Trump's emissaries, Kushner and and Witkoff, but he's not a strong defender of Russia's interests. So you've got in the circle of Virginia, you've got people who are aggressive, and you have people who are very turn the other cheek and very hopeful of a reconciliation from The United States, just as you have division of such people in Iran, which is why they never concluded in December 2024 just after put Trump had been elected. They didn't conclude an agreement with with Russia on military alliance. So these in these countries, you've got you've got pro Westerners and anti Westerners.
The anti Westerners now are, I think, in majority in circle around around the Putin, But there are very important people like Ushakov, who is a close adviser to Vladimir Putin and was an ambassador in The States. So he knows the issues very well, but he's politically on the other side for accommodation. I don't see an accommodation in The United States as being a reality. Despite all of the talk of Ushakov and of Pieskov in the last day, how wonderful this one and a half hour conversation is, The United States, as you said at the beginning, is still providing critical and military intelligence, enabling the devastating effects on Russian oil refineries and critical energy infrastructure. So the two nations are, the traditional terms of diplomacy, at war and everything but name.
And to think that they will have a reconciliation or there are such big deals business that Dmitryev is talking about all the time is, to my appraisal, nonsense. I believe this war will end without any help from mister Trump. It'll end because the Russians will achieve their minimal objectives of reaching the Dnieper and taking Nederseh, and that will be enough. And and the rest of the world will have to live with that. So I I believe there will be an end to this war.
I don't expect to have 10 volumes of of war diaries. I think that the current volume four, which is now at a 115 pages, maybe will go to a 100 250, and we'll be cut off by what I just described.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's hard to see this going on for, yeah, at least that much more that much longer. But it appears that we reached this breaking point, though, where it's not possible for Russia anymore not to respond to the Europeans. And, again, there's so much happening at the same time. On one hand, you see the The US stepping back and leaving this to the Europeans.
You see Ukraine beginning to falter on the front lines. And at this point in time, when the Europeans do not have this Ukrainian shield behind them and the big Americans standing behind them, this is the point in time where they decide to really step up and go essentially make it very obvious that this is a direct war on Russia. And while this is happening, them putting themselves in the crosshairs of Russia, we see on the Russian side all this pressure on Putin. We see the essentially, the lessons taken from Iran that they should have retaliated and gone up the escalation ladder as opposed to just allow the West to dictate to go up and down as they please without Russia following them. So it looks as if we're heading into a war now now.
I know, yeah, this is not not getting any headlines, but it in the media at the moment, but this is at least how I see it, though, that a major war is coming unless something dramatic happens to change the situation. I was wondering, yeah, do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. I agree with you. The only thing that is to is to be discussed in in in weeks ahead is how this war will play out, how long it will last. I'm predicting like a week because that's about the extent of European munitions, and using conventional weapons. The thing that's bizarre about it all is that every all the announcements that are made, two two two thousand twenty nine is kind of the target date for the war.
That's when they say the Russians will attack, but, actually, the the obvious inverse is meant when they will attack Russia. And so it's all it's all out there at the moment when Russia still has the window of opportunity that enables Putin in February 2022 to make to initiate his special military operation. He knew that after 2018, he had a ten year advantage on The United States and probably still bigger advantage in strategic weapons against Europe. And so he went in. And that still holds, although it's diminishing.
We're now five almost five years into this war. And and so the, I'd say, five years remain before Europe and America will have caught up to the necessary stage to wage war with with with Russia effectively. This is a time for Russia to finish it up and finish off Europe. They have the capability. They have the will.
Speaker 0: Well, like I said, disaster pending. So, no, it's it's so depressing to see the irresponsibility of the politicians, and I will put the media in the same class as they all seem to insist the moral thing to do is put some blindfolds on and march towards the cliff. But, yeah, here we are. Anyways, thank you for taking time off today and to speak with us, and have a good one.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for the invitation, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Attack On Iran Could Be Imminent https://youtu.be/g8h8IFWuNE8 https://t.co/LW6RMITcQn
Video Transcript AI Summary
In the dialogue, Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, a Tehran University professor and former Iran nuclear negotiation adviser, discusses the prospect of renewed U.S. aggression against Iran and the stability of any ceasefire. He says that since the ceasefire began, preparations for war in Tehran have been ongoing “twenty four hours a day,” driven by the belief that Trump will not accept defeat and that the “Zionist lobbying” and the Israeli regime remain behind the war. He suggests that although it is not certain, a new round of conflict could erupt over a weekend or soon after markets close, noting that the U.S. and Netanyahu’s positions previously clashed with ceasefire terms. He recounts that Iran had insisted on an off-ramp when Netanyahu accepted the ceasefire, but Trump then claimed the Strait of Hormuz would remain open while maintaining a siege on Iranian ports, implying that an off-ramp was possible but not pursued.
Marandi emphasizes that the Strait of Hormuz was never closed by Iran, except to ships linked to adversaries, and argues that the escalation followed Netanyahu’s actions despite Iranian signals. He asserts that even if a limited agreement allows more ships through, the broader pain from any renewed conflict will persist, potentially causing a global economic depression if critical infrastructure is destroyed or if negotiations on Hormuz or Gaza/ Lebanon ceasefires are delayed for weeks due to fighting.
On the U.S. side, the host notes that the U.S. was in trouble and desperate, pointing to missile defenses and ammunition shortages as signs of strain, and remarks that Trump accepted Iran’s 10-point plan as a ceasefire framework but later abandoned it, while presenting an extended ceasefire as a favor. Marandi agrees that Trump’s actions have been inconsistent and that the Iranians might expect the U.S. to pursue assassinations and infrastructure strikes again, with Iran prepared to retaliate robustly.
A key point is Iran’s stated willingness to escalate in response to attacks on its leadership and critical infrastructure. An Iranian MP, associated with the Islamabad delegation, reportedly warned that if any assassinations occur, Iran will target leaders of Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) because they are complicit in the war. The discussion outlines that Iran would retaliate not only against Israeli targets but also within the Persian Gulf region, potentially striking infrastructure and power facilities, with implications for the region’s electricity and climate conditions during the hot season.
Marandi argues that Iran has already demonstrated strategic restraint, saying that Iranian authorities aim to minimize civilian casualties and that Iranians would respond to attacks on critical Iranian infrastructure by striking broader targets in the Israeli regime and in regional partners. He contends that Iran does not initiate escalation but escalates in response, pointing to past cycles where Iran’s retaliation was effective without targeting civilians. He notes that Iran has assets across its mountainous interior, including deep underground factories and bases, which he claims the United States underestimates, leading to miscalculations about Iran’s missile and drone capabilities.
Regarding the broader geopolitical landscape, Marandi notes rising Western and Israeli concerns about Iran’s expanding influence, while acknowledging growing sympathy for Iran in parts of the world, including some shifts in India and Latin America. He highlights the Putin-Trump dynamic, suggesting Putin’s meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister and Russia’s praise for the Iranian people signal a strengthening axis of resistance against Western pressures. He also remarks that Iran’s resilience under sanctions and its ability to mobilize regional allies, such as Hezbollah, complicates Western expectations of quick regime change.
Finally, Marandi suggests that Iran’s role on the global stage is shifting perceptions of Iran’s strength and legitimacy, and he foresees continued pressure, potential escalation, and a regional balance of power that narrows Western maneuvering space as the crisis evolves.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you for coming back on the program. These are appear to be quite troubling times, though. What I hear is that another US attack on Iran could be imminent, which, you know, could also have, an additional component out of a limited land invasion.
I was wondering how how do you see it from there in Tehran? How stable is this ceasefire?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being on your show. Since the ceasefire began, they've been preparing for war, literally twenty four hours a day. And the assumption was that this is not over, especially since, Trump is not the sort of person who will accept defeat. And the the the thirty nine day war did not go well well for The United States.
It was a horrible war for the world and for humanity. But, ultimately, the Iranians won the war. And so the belief here was that that would not be acceptable for Trump, and that would not be acceptable for the, the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime that is the true force behind the war. As we recall Joe Kent in his resignation letter, he said that this war is all about the Zionist lobbying the Israeli regime. So there's no reason to think that anything has changed in the last couple of months.
So it is possible that we will have war no one knows for certain in Iran, but it is possible we will have it this weekend after the markets close because apparently killing Iranians when the markets are closed is better so that, you know, god forbid, stock prices don't go down or anything like that. It could, of course, be tomorrow morning. It could be tomorrow evening. It could not happen this weekend. But I think that the problem is that Trump is incapable of, using an off ramp.
We saw that earlier when the Iranians and the Americans had a ceasefire agreement, Netanyahu tried to wreck it by carpet bombing Lebanon. And so the Iranian said as long as he is violating the ceasefire deal, we won't allow those extra ships to go through the Strait Of Hormuz because I should point out that the Strait Of Hormuz was never closed by the Iranians. It was only closed to ships that were linked to Iran's adversaries. So Iraq had no problem, the Russians, the Chinese, and, of course, Iranian ships never had any problems. But the agreement was within the agreement, there was going to be more ships passing through that included ships belonging to The Emirates, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, and the I don't know which one I missed.
But in any case, those extra ships would be going through. And, because of Netanyahu, it didn't happen. And Trump sided with Netanyahu even though the Pakistanis pointed out clearly that the, the the ceasefire included Lebanon. But here's the point. When Netanyahu ultimately was forced to accept the ceasefire, even though now he's again killing, Lebanese citizens twenty four hours a day, like in Gaza, he could have Trump chosen the off ramp because the Iranians when Netanyahu accepted that, he's right.
The Iranians said, okay. Now we'll allow those extra ships to go through. And Trump almost immediately afterwards said, the Strait Of Hormuz is open. It's never going to be closed again. The Iranians have promised, and we said a lot of nonsense, of course.
But then he said that but I'm keeping the siege on Iranian ports and the Persian Gulf, the Strait Of Hormuz, in place. So he could have chosen that as an off ramp. That was possible, especially since Netanyahu accepted ultimately the ceasefire, at least for a couple of a few hours. So the belief is that he is incapable of moving in that direction, and, therefore, he's going to continue following falling into the escalation trap. And, that's why they believe that inevitably we're going to have another round, which will be devastating for the global markets and for the the For global trade and for the global economy.
Because as things stand, the the global economy is going to suffer enormously, and we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. But even if there's some sort of agreement, let's say, a few weeks' time between Iran and The United States to allow more ships to get through and the siege, let's say, on the trade of Hormuz to come to an end, then, things will still be very bad. And the the pain is is is he is still is on is on its way, the real pain. But if there is war, then that means that not only will there be devastation, especially if they target Iran's critical infrastructure, Iran will do the same to the Israeli regime and to those Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, which will, of course, make in future much less oil and gas and energy and fertilizer available for the global markets for a very long period of time and lead to a global economic depression. But if the war goes if if it's a major war and it goes on like the thirty nine day war, the Ramadan, then I think, it's we can be confident.
We can be pretty sure that there will no longer be any oil or gas coming from this region for the years to come. I mean, it will just be a very long term economic depression for the world. But even if it's a short war, and as I said, it will still and if if some critical infrastructure is destroyed, it will it will lead for to an economic depression for two reasons. One, because there will be less oil and gas available. But the second reason is that any negotiations to partially open the Strait Of Hormuz or to open the Strait Of Hormuz and to lift the siege on and and to to revive the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, that'll be put back for many weeks because they'll be fighting.
No one is going to be negotiating, about ships going through the strait, Iranian or otherwise. So or a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. So and that that will definitely be catastrophic for for global trade and business and the global economy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The Trump diplomacy is quite strange because, you know, besides all the the the the propaganda and his efforts to control the narrative, we know some things for certain. That is that, The US was in getting into deep trouble, and Trump was getting desperate. We know this from the numbers of the the the missiles, interceptor missiles, that this was not sustainable. They couldn't absorb the pain, and they couldn't, well, essentially, they didn't have enough ammunition.
So we knew that things were going bad. They wanted a ceasefire. We also know this because, otherwise, The US wouldn't have accepted Iran's, 10 plan as a condition for ceasefire, whatever Trump says about Iran is begging him. But what but what happened thereafter is, again, this I guess, it's, you know, it's a lot of deception. He walked away from he he never talked about those 10 points again, And then, you know, he offers now an extended ceasefire as if he's doing the Iranians a favor.
So in in some regards, it's sometimes, can be good at controlling the narrative. Sometimes, he goes, well, it stops being believable. But that's why it's a bit strange that after finally getting the guns to go silent, he wants to start this thing up again, which, you know, would make you think that they have something up their sleeves, something that they would do do different this time around. And, you know, from your perspective there, sitting in Tehran, what do you think The US would do if, different, if they now, as you suggest, could invade or attack over the next few days, if not today?
Speaker 1: Well, the only thing I can think of is that, they will continue to do the same as they did before, assassinate, bomb infrastructure, terrorize the population, and also probably go more after critical infrastructure as he had threatened to do so before. But the problem would be that, the Iranians will strike back. And we've heard just today from a very senior Iranian MP who was a part of the delegation in Islamabad, that if any assassinations take place this time around, that Iran will take out the leaders of the Arab regimes in in the Persian Gulf, meaning Kuwait, Bahrain, The Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. That's what he said. And because he said that they are complicit, they without them, this war can't take place.
So if they start murdering our leaders, then they will destroy their palaces. And I would assume that would also mean destroying their not just their critical infrastructure, but their intelligence agencies and their defense ministries and and that sort of thing. So Iran will take the the its retaliatory violence to a very different level. So Iran has already said that critical infrastructure will be responded by striking critical infrastructure in in this in in the Israeli regime, but also in our in our region. So when you it's a it's not a situation where the Americans will win.
And we already see that Iranians are defiant. People are on the streets. They see The United States as the aggressor. The world sees The United States as the aggressor. I don't see how this will do it Trump any good.
It will just do make things a lot worse for him because at the end of the day, Trump is going to be answerable to Americans for their economic hardship. And one of the disturbing things that we all we often hear in The United States is there that there are people who are sincerely anti war and who are against the the the murder and slaughter of innocent people who care about the children at, in Minab who the Americans massacred on day one. And there are others who don't really care, but they say they talk about jobs and they talk about inflation. And, like many elites, they talk about American lives and American soldiers who are not victims at all in in all of this. But but in any case, both groups of people, their voices are going to grow louder, whether those who see the United States regime as being as they point out that it is aggressive and barbaric and doing all of this for the sake of Zionism and for a genocidal regime or and those who are going to say that you're ruining our livelihood, our farms are going to go bankrupt, our businesses are going to get ruined, American lives will be lost, and The US economy will suffer, and deficit will grow.
These two forces combined, though completely unrelated to one another, one is moral, and the other one is simply is is selfish, but they're it's going they're going to make Trump suffer, enormously, as a result of the war. It's not a situation where he can win. I don't even believe that the Israeli regime will win. This is not because the after two and a half years, we've seen what has have happened to the image of the Israeli regime. Across the world, it's despised.
People are watching now what's going on in Lebanon even though western media is not reporting it and western journalists are quiet about it, or they're misrepresenting it, trying to portray it as, like, Hezbollah targets, and they're ignoring Gaza. But people across the world are see still seeing these images in a much censored social media is still coming through. But in addition to that, as people's personal lives become much more, influenced by the global economic catastrophe heading our way, they're going to blame Israel. They're going to blame Zionism. They're going to blame Netanyahu.
They're going to blame Trump. So I don't see how the Israeli regime benefits from this. It hurts this. It hurt it is hurt from all of this. The only person who would probably benefit would be Netanyahu who thrives on crises, at least for now, and the fanatics in his, in his coalition.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, with the usual Iranian response, though, it's what's been interesting in this thirty nine day war has been this tit for tat. That is they've been able to essentially follow always up the Americans up the escalation ladder, denying this to The US, which is quite important. But what is interesting is the assassination of Iranian leaders. We never saw the Iranians doing this in kind and also the attacks on Iranian, you know, nuclear plants.
This is also something we didn't see the Iranians doing either. Do you think it's possible that Iran will, I guess, yeah, go go further up that escalation ladder this time around?
Speaker 1: Well, I I think what the MP said about the Arab regimes would basically mean that they would the chances that they collapse altogether would be much greater because if The United States starts targeting Iranian leaders and the Israeli regime as well, this Epstein coalition as I like calling it, I like to call it, and then alongside that, they start start targeting Iran's critical like power stations and so on. Then these Arab leaders and and their elites around them, they'll be targeted too, and then their critical infrastructure will be targeted. And that will be at a time, and this is, I think, very important, that we are nearing the hot season in the Persian Gulf region and in the Arabian Peninsula. So the month of May is a transition month. It it by the May, it gets very hot.
And in middle May in the May, it is getting hot. And then the sandstorms and the humidity and all that, when you combine that, it becomes very difficult to anyone for anyone to to work in these countries unless there is, you know, electricity, unless, unless they, have the ability to to stay cool. If they lose their electrical power plants, it is going to be very difficult for the, I don't know, fifty, sixty. I don't know how many American troops are they are now because they brought in a lot of equipment for ground attack. So there may also be extra troops.
But the tens of thousands of American troops stationed there is going to be much more difficult for them, not a great thing for morale, and the population too. So let's say their leaders are being targeted. Their their kings and princes are being targeted, and they also lose their electricity and, the heat and the humidity is going through the roof. I think it would be catastrophic, not just for the global oil and gas markets and and so on, but also just being in these in these countries. And the Iranians have warned them.
I mean, the Iranians don't want to target anyone. Act the Iranians are far more humane than any of its their antagonists. In in when they fired missiles at the Israeli regime, they didn't target schools and synagogues. And when they did the same in these Arab regimes, they didn't target civilian civilians either. Iran had has something like 3,400 marchers.
The the the five Arab regimes that were targeted, American assets targeted, American bases targeted, and retaliatory targets, the targeting of infrastructure linked to the West. In all, despite all the damage in these five countries, only handful of people were killed. Something like 10 to 20 people died. Something like that. I mean, I I checked the number on deep sea, and that was more or less the number I got.
People can look up look that up for themselves. So compare the three thousand four hundred, three thousand five hundred, I don't know the exact number. I don't remember it now. Iranians who died and a handful of people who died in all these countries. And the same is true in the Israeli regime.
So Iran does not want to kill people. Iran has been very careful not to kill people. It's been very careful to fire at targets and installations in a way in which ordinary people don't die. But people will have to leave. They will have to leave.
If if, if Iran's critical infrastructure is struck and their critical infrastructure is struck, it is far worse the weather in those countries than in Iran. And right now in Tehran, you've seen you've been to Tehran in the mountains, we have snow. You know, you you see the snow above the city. It would be difficult if they start targeting our critical infrastructure, but there, it would be just completely intolerable. And then, again, if their leader if their family the ruling families are are targeted, that would mean the collapse of each of these regimes.
I don't I don't think that The United States is thinking this through. Maybe in their arrogance, they're they're saying that all we'll just, you know, hit them and they'll collapse like they did before the twelve day war and before the thirty nine day war. But, but I still think that they this exceptionalism that they have, and and, of course, Zionist ethnic superiority, sense of superiority perhaps leads them to believe that, well, this time we'll we'll we'll, you know, we'll make the so called regime fall apart.
Speaker 0: But I just wanted to go a bit back to the the the possibility of The United States attacking. So we kind of can we'll figure out what they might do, but what what make you suspect that an attack could be coming? Have you seen significant shifts in the troop levels? What kind of weaponry are you seeing? And, also, what do we know about the whereabouts of these troops just in terms of what they might go after?
Are they gonna invade some islands in the Strait Of Hormuz? Are they are they gonna go after Yemen? Obviously, because of the troop levels, it can't be some kind of a full scale invasion as what they did to Iraq. But, surely, there's something else, a smaller limited invasion, I'm assuming.
Speaker 1: They brought in a lot of equipment for ground troops. They've also brought in, you know, ammunition for their planes and so on. But most of my from what I've been told, most of these flights have been to prepare for a ground war. And I don't know details, but two places that I've heard that there's a large cons contingency that's practicing or training or at least already for for fighting. You know, one is a part one is in Kuwait and one is in Bahrain.
And where there are there are large numbers. I don't know. Maybe there are more now in The Emirates and and Saudi Arabia and and Qatar too, but these are the two countries that I've I've heard of, and Kuwait in particular and Bahrain in particular. I've heard that in Bahrain, they they were they were practicing, and in Kuwait, they're in they're they're in large numbers. So the expectation is that they could play out in two ways.
Either the Americans want to go for a long war again, which is I don't think they can, personally. They may go for a they may go for a short war, as we've been hearing, where they would strike very hard and fast, but the Iranians will retaliate. And there could be, and there probably will be some sort of land offensive and also attacks deep inside Iran, like the attempt that was made near Isfahan before. But, again, you know, the thing that I what I said earlier, regardless of the fact that the Iranians are going to retaliate, and Iran has missile and drone bases across the country, and the Iranians will definitely allow them to come in if they carry out a land attack, and the Iranians will then pound them. The Iranians are not going to sit there and let you know, they're they're not going to prevent them from taking territory.
They're going to play smart. They're going to, let them come in and then hammer them for days and weeks and and months if necessary. But, but more importantly, for in the broader picture of things and all that, you know, is that the any attempt, any move to ease tensions, to open up the Strait Of Hormoz is going to be delayed for many, many weeks because the fighting will, you know, take weeks for it to, you know, finish and then to die down and then to have some sort of deal. So it is make going to make the global economy definitely move towards a depression regardless of how much critical infrastructure is destroyed, regardless of that. So any violence will put this the the global economic situation much worse, in a much worse situation.
And this, think, got Trump can does not comprehend. Iran is not controlling the Strait Of Hormuz from the shores. It's not the nineteenth century, it's not even the twentieth century. The ability to control the Strait Of Hormuz comes from hundreds of kilometers inside the country and from many, many different locations. And Iran's capabilities near the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf Of Oman and the Strait Of Hormuz are also unknown to The United States.
That is also a major they miscalculated on Iranian missiles and drones and and these sort of capable Iran's antiaircraft capabilities. It the it's definitely the case that they're going to miscalculate on Iran's other capabilities. Iran has not shown them, and it has not used them. They're deep underground in the mountain the the mount the areas around near the, Persian Gulf and, all the way up to the border of Iraq and until Northern Iraq. It's all mountainous territory, and the terrain is is very difficult.
And, lots of Iranian installations are hidden in these different areas. And, when the time comes, Americans will have to deal with them things that they know very little about. The reason why the Americans have made so many miscalculations about Iran's missile and drone capabilities is that the factories themselves that produce them are underground. The bases are underground. The factories are underground.
So the Americans think they know the numbers, but they have no idea, how many missiles and drones Iran has. As we speak, as you and I are speaking, Iran is making missiles and drones and other military hardware because everything is everything that is of great significance is deep underground.
Speaker 0: Well, Trump recently made this comment that Iran is at a state of collapse. So, apparently, everything is falling apart. You know, they're they're they're begging for a deal. And this, yeah, this blockade naval blockade is tightening every day, which is suffocating Iran. So but if this is the case, though, if if the economic war on Iran is, so successful, one would think that time would be on the side of the Americans, which, I guess, makes the question why you know, it doesn't fit in their narrative.
If if they're so successful at this economic war, why why go to war with, Iran? So it does seems to be well, there's been some dishonesty from the beginning, so let's, yeah, not be too surprised here. But but how do you how do you assess it, this, I guess, attrition warfare? That is both the Iranians and the Americans are taking pain. But how do you see, you know, time being on the Iran side?
What is a good way of assessing it if you're
Speaker 1: Well, you know, this is very similar to the argument that the Iranians are deeply divided and the leadership you know, I I always stress in interviews that, no. They're not there's no division. That doesn't mean they're diff not differences. There are 90,000,000 Iranians and 90,000,000 different views. And I'm sure that when political leaders and military leaders and and security leaders or, you know, when they're sitting around at the table among themselves, they have very different opinions.
But that that is very different from a division and the decision making process. The decision making process is clear. You have a supreme national security council. You have a leader. They've designated the speaker of parliament to be in charge of negotiations.
He makes the decisions. So it's clear that, there's no division. And so saying that it's chaos and there's division, that serves someone's interest or it's either propaganda or it's there's it's serving some other purpose. In in this regard, the the the claim that Iran is falling apart and that the sanctions are or the the siege is working and Iran well, first of all, it's quite interesting how they gloat about starving Iranians. It's just like they gloat about starving Cubans or Syrians.
And it's like, you know, these people have really there's nothing left in of and, you know, there's no sense they they have no concept of humanity, these people. But this is nonsense. I mean, is the economy suffering? Of course, it's suffering. They bombed pharmaceutical factories.
They bombed, you know, many different factories. They destroyed businesses. And then, you know, when they block ships from coming and going to Iranian ports, of course, it's going to have an impact. No doubt. But we're at war.
And just like during the thirty nine day war and the twelve day war before that, the Iranians won the war not because they were not hurt, but because they tolerated the pain, and, they tolerated the pain more than the Americans did. That's why, as you earlier pointed out, Trump accepted Iran's 10 plan as the framework for negotiations because he needed a ceasefire. Whereas at the beginning of the war, he said Iran must accept unconditional surrender, and the same was true at the during the twelve day war. He said that then too. So, of course, Iran is going to be hurt, it's it ordinary Iranians will face difficulty.
But that's war. But how about the other side? I mean, they keep talking about the siege and how as effective it is. Well, that siege is intensifying the damage being done to the global economy, through the, the the the very few ships that go through the Strait Of Hormuz. Now less ships than even before are going through the Strait Of Hormuz.
So the the global economy is going to suffer catastrophe faster than before. And one critical mistake that they made, Glenn, is that the Iranians at the beginning of the war, they expected a siege on Iranian ports, and they planned for it. And they're implementing those plans, obviously, to to minimize the the hurt. You know, trade routes through neighboring countries and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Turkmenistan and then on Central Asia, the Caspian Sea to Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. Iran has many borders, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, and so on.
But all that aside, the Iranians thought that the Americans were going to impose a siege on on the ports when they initiated their joint aggression with Israeli regime. They didn't. And so the Strait Of Pohormuz was almost closed for a month and a half, and Iran was selling its oil at very high prices, and early on its petrochemicals too, before they targeted Iran's petrochemical plant, but at very high prices. And and and then only late in the day that they begin to implement this, siege on Iranian ports. So Iran is way ahead of them.
And, also, Iran has been selling its, I don't know exactly how much it is, but between a 150 to 200,000,000 barrels of oil, on the seas. And from what I'm hearing, it's about it's almost finished. And they have all that money, and they sold that oil at huge had a huge, you know, at very high prices. Before they couldn't sell that oil, the oil was on the high seeds. So they've they've sold all that oil at very high prices, and they have that money now.
It's a lot of money. And in in times of war, expenditures, you know, do go down because the focus is on managing the war. So, the Iranians have a clear advantage. The South and the Iranian economy has already been under siege. This nonsense about oil wells, you know, that's just propaganda.
Iran has had its oil wells, exports shut down under Trump during the first term. You recall as well as I that it was Trump's revived the maximum pressure. We were we were not exporting any oil except for very small amounts, and most of that was, a debt that we had to China for some you know, for projects that a project or something that they did in Iran. Iran was paying them back with oil, like, 100,000 barrels a day. Very small amount.
Iran wasn't exporting them. So Iran knows how to deal with its oil wells. It's not like the Arab regimes in the, you know, on the other side of the Persian Gulf with where they never they never experienced sanctions. But the Iranian and the entire Iranian economy is is has been constructed in an environment of sanctions. I'm not saying it's sanctions proof, but it's it's it's it survives more easily.
It sustains itself much more effectively than, countries, across the world that are now going to experience a crisis because they don't have sanctions. They'll and then suddenly, they're going to be facing a a a catastrophe thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, that they don't know how to deal with. So the the the siege against Iran began late. Iran has sold a lot of oil at a very, very high price, and, Iran's economy has been living with under siege and sanctions for decades. And Iran's adversaries, they have none of experiences.
Speaker 0: Yeah. When I hear this, talk about another US, wave of attacks against Iran and, you know, planning for a short war, it feels like they already made this mistake. Why why go down this route again? Again, if I was the one advising, I would say, you know, this my my warning would be that the The US doesn't get to decide when the war is over. Also, as Iran showed the first time around, they're not able to dictate the terms of the war.
That is, claiming, you know, Iran can't shut down the Strait Of Hormuz. Iran can't hold the Gulf States accountable for participation. You know, all of this was, well, essentially very, very flawed. And that's why I was wondering what possible surprises the Iranians might have because, again, would it seems almost, you know, very predictable that Yemen would shut down the Red Sea. It wouldn't be inconceivable that Iraq could make a move against Kuwait.
The Gulf states could lose their desalination plants and their oil installations. I mean, it's gonna be very hard to control all the variables to the point that one would feel comfortable in confidently predicting how this war against Iran would go. I guess this is why it's so hard to comprehend after just getting out of it and getting the ceasefire and then being able to pull off this narrative that it was Iranians who came to Trump despite all the evidence pointing the other way. Going back to this, it seems like a disaster. But, yeah, just as a last question, what what surprises might the Iranians have helped their sleeve?
I'm not saying the governments are whispering in your ear telling them what they're planning to do, but, you know, you're you're there in Tehran. You have a general idea what cards can be played. And, also, Iran's allies, they have autonomy of their own. So what what do you expect?
Speaker 1: Well, just as Hezbollah has shown itself to be far more powerful than, the West was expecting, and we discussed this before. They were saying how Hezbollah is a spent force. The West basically took control of Syria through Al Qaeda and ISIS, and there's now a proxy of The United States. And they they they imposed puppets in Beirut, the prime minister and the president, and then you had the Israeli regime. So Hezbollah was finished.
But now we're seeing that Hezbollah's hitting the Israeli regime hard, and there's talk that they're removing some of their troops from Southern Lebanon because they're so vulnerable. So, you know, imagine if those capabilities exist in Iraq or in Yemen, and I'm talking about on the ground, troops that can move beyond borders and, and do damage. That's one thing that I can think of. Second is when the Iranians start strikes start striking the Israeli regime again, the regime obviously, does not have the number of, surface to air missile capability, surface to air missiles that they that they would need. Last few weeks is not nearly enough to make up for what it needs.
So Iran, if they continue down this path, then they can swiftly begin to start striking targets with the within the Israeli regime without much difficulty, if any. The third is that the Iranians would go after more sensitive targets in the Persian Gulf region. That could include the ships now. If they could start targeting the ships in the Persian Gulf, they can start targeting the critical infrastructure that they haven't destroyed yet. I think the commander of Iran's missile said that, you know, don't count on oil from the Persian Gulf for many years to come if there is war.
So that could happen. But also, I think and I'm speculating here. I've heard, and I don't know I I don't remember who told me this. Think it was some I mean, this was a while back. This was during the previous war at the beginning.
And I don't recall who told me this, as I said, but, but I think it was so incredible. They that person was saying that the Iranians have the ability to sink US ships, but they don't do so because that would we would need to be higher up on the escalation ladder for Iran to do so. And as you know, and as everyone knows, Iran did not start this war. Iran did not initiate any phase of escalation whether against the Israeli regime or against US proxies in the region or US assets. Every time they escalated, Iran escalated.
One good example was when they bombed Iran's gas installations in the South Parrs Field, and then Iran struck Qatar and The Emirates and somewhere else. I don't remember. And then Trump put out that truth social saying, I didn't know about it. The Israelis won't do it again. That was Iran's retaliation, and they hit very hard.
So Iran does not initiate escalation. And as I said said earlier, Iran is very careful not to have people killed, and the numbers show that. I mean, anyone can do searches, and they'll find out. But, if Americans now go for critical Iranian infrastructure, that would be, I would say, very high up the escalation ladder. And then I think that if Iran were to if if Iran indeed has those capabilities to strike deep, deeper than what it has now, then, you know, I think Iran would start sinking US ships.
And there have already been statements made by senior Iranian officials that that is, that is on the card. So, there are many things I could do. I but, also, remember what I what we discussed earlier on where Iran the Iranians said that if our if their assassinations carried out, then, the leaders of these regimes, a member of the delegation who was with us in Islamabad, a senior MP, said this, a very well known public figure, and he said this with, he's he said this this as a fact, not his opinion, that Iran will take out these regimes, these leaders because they are a part of the war effort against Iran. Because without these five Arab regimes and Jordan, The United States cannot wage war against Iran. It's just not possible.
Logistically, it's not doable. And so, there are all these options that Iran has. And, again, The United States has brought in lots of weapons to the region, but Iran has been preparing itself during this time. And for Iran, it's not that difficult. This is it's on home turf, and it's been preparing for this war for two and a half, three decades.
So, you know, we are where we are. We didn't have to be here. I spoke about this before in your show, the the leverage book going to Tehran. I I I advise all your viewers to read it. They deal with a lot of the lies and myths that that Western media and Western think tanks and West Western academia has been saying about Iran for all these decades.
But, also, they point out that, you know, if The United States doesn't move towards rapprochement, it will move in this direction. And that's and when they wrote this book, they were antagonized, demonized, and marginalized, and yet they everything that they said turned out to be correct. So now we have a global economic crisis. The lives of everyone will inevitably be impacted in in a big way. And as and if we continue to go up the escalation ladder, then I think, the catastrophe will be beyond beyond imagination.
Speaker 0: Well, let me squeeze in a last question. The Putin and Arakji meeting, that is foreign minister of Iran. He met with president Putin in Russia. There's been a lot of talk about this. Apparently, it didn't make Trump very happy at all, which led to a tense, ninety minute phone call between Trump and Putin.
What do you think is the significance of this? I mean, this, because whenever one looks at this greater Eurasian chessboard, one always looks at these three powers that is Russia, China, and Iran getting closer. Of course, if you throw India into the mix, it's becoming, you know, kissing her's worst nightmare. So how can we interpret what what happened, or what do we know what was, what happened there in Russia?
Speaker 1: I think many Indians are are realizing just to before I respond to the first part of the the the question itself, many Indians are realizing that their economic suffering, and they they've suffered a lot. Even though Iran has allowed a number of Indian ships and Pakistani ships and Bangladeshi ships to to to go through even though they belong to these regimes in the Persian Gulf that were complicit in the war. But the suffering of the Indians is at the hands of The United States and the Israeli regime, and they're increasingly recognizing that. So that may have a significant impact in the months and years ahead on how they deal with these countries. But, the meeting with, president Putin apparently went very well.
And president Putin praised the Iranian people, a lot. And that sort of reminds me of another book of one of our mutual friends, and that's Alacer Book once wrote a book on, on resistance and the Islamic revolution. The book is called resistance, and then the subtitle is about the the Islamic revolution and so on. And that's also a good book to read. The the resistance of the Iranian people during this period, uh-huh, of course, decades of of sanctions and terrorism and and three wars, but this particular war has has made people across the world see Iran in a very different light, and Iran has become very popular.
And this is what people from across the world tell me. From Latin America, I I I don't know if I told you this before in private. I'd said this on a couple of programs. One of my Brazilian friends who's a Marxist and and and has very good connections, he told me that, a very well known Brazilian Marxist, one of the major figures in Brazil, said that if Iran wins this war, I'm going to become a Shia. So the sort of the the way in which people are now viewing Iran is very different from what it was just a few months ago or especially after Gaza has been changing.
But, like Hezbollah, Iran, the axis of resistance. And this is the exact opposite of the situation for Zionism and the Israeli regime and Trump and The United States. They see that in a much more negative light. So there's a big transition taking place in the way in which people in many parts of the world are viewing, Iran and and the world. Even in The United States, Iran is gaining support from quarters that I would have imagined I would have imagined to be impossible just a while back.
So, but Trump, I mean, Trump obviously, when he spoke with Putin, it was definitely linked to the trip. But I would imagine that this trip went I think the trip went very well from the statements made by the foreign minister and from the statements made by president Putin and the foreign ministry in in rush in in in Russia. Because Iran's I think two things are happened here. One is that and this I know for a fact. Iran outperformed Russia and China's wildest expectations even though many of us in Iran were not surprised.
I would say that I think Iran did better than I expected, but I expected Iran to win this war. But I think that many of our friends, you know, they they're they've been influenced by Western narratives, even those who are in the non Western world and those who are critical of the West. And they're in shock that the the war ended this way. So president Putin, I think, that that this this meeting went very well, but but it's very different president Putin one because Trump, when he won the presidency, took all the swing states, won the majority of the vote. He had a mandate, and he said clearly many times on the campaign trail that he's going to end the war in Ukraine in one day.
Well, it's a year and a half now, and the war in Ukraine is still going on as far as I know. So and they met in when was it last year? In Alaska. Nothing came with that. And they've had multiple phone calls.
Still the war is going on. So I'm I've I I'm not quite sure that it's going to have a much of an impact. I think at the end of the day, it's going to end, on the battlefield and, probably with the collapse of the global economy, unfortunately.
Speaker 0: You know, I think also Iran has created a bit of an uproar in Russia in this regard as well because they began to question what they've been doing over the past few years because The US I mean, they have a lot of similar experiences as the Iranian studies, this fraudulent diplomacy, the the deals which would never be would never be followed through to begin with, and, of course, this existential threat, which is not which is based on the efforts to degrade and weaken and try to collapse the country. Many people in Russia now, from what I hear, argue that they should have changed course already in June when, not just Iran, but Russia also had this, surprise attack that is that was the same one month the Russians had attack on their nuclear deterrent, which was well, quite obviously, it was not only Ukraine who carried out this one. So now, of course, there's a lot of pressure for the Kremlin to do as the Iranians, that is, being more prepared to go up the escalation ladder, restore their deterrence, and, yeah, except that the emperor doesn't really have any close. So, anyways, you already taken a lot of your give me a lot of your time.
So thank you very much as always, and I hope to see you again very soon.
Speaker 1: It's a great pleasure being on your show always, Glenn. It's thank you very much for having me.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning https://youtu.be/ptmxmBOVgSI https://t.co/jYlzovQQcT
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson discusses with Glenn about the Iran conflict, focusing on narrative control, economic warfare, and the feasibility of different strategic options. Key points across the conversation:
- The reality vs. narrative: Johnson argues that the current sea of propaganda makes it hard to unpack reality, especially the claim that the U.S. blockade can cripple Iran. He contends the blockade is impractical in multiple ways and that political theater surrounds ship seizures.
- Blockade viability and limitations:
- Iran’s oil trading: Iran loads oil and ships it within 75 miles of its coast; the U.S. Navy will not approach closer than about 200 miles. Iran can threaten ships with short-range missiles, cruise missiles, and drones if the U.S. comes closer.
- Moving beyond Iranian waters: If Iran uses a convoy of 20 tankers 75–100 miles off its coast into the Indian Ocean, the U.S. lacks enough ships to stop and seize every vessel; seizing ships requires keeping ships tied to port, reducing impact.
- Imports and border routes: Iran can bring in goods via routes into Bandar Abbas and Chabahar and through Pakistan; Pakistan reportedly has six different routes into Iran. This dilutes the blockade’s effectiveness and undermines the “total cut-off” narrative championed by supporters of economic warfare.
- Statements from Trump and Iran’s response: Johnson notes Trump’s statements about Iran’s leadership being chaotic and the possibility of lifting the blockade as a potential setup for a different narrative. He emphasizes that Iran’s leadership, according to his sources, remains cohesive and prepared.
- Iranian leadership and past experience: Johnson highlights that Iran’s top leaders (Pazeshkin, Oraci, Golubov, and IRGC figures) were shaped by combat and share a history of fighting a US-funded adversary. This background, he argues, makes them better prepared to handle current threats than some US figures.
- U.S. domestic political dynamics: The discussion touches on U.S. politicalConstraints and the difficulty of selling any deal domestically, particularly given lobbying (APAC, etc.) and internal political risks for those who sign a controversial agreement.
- Russian role and diplomacy:
- Araki’s weekend actions: Araki starts in Pakistan with a hardline Iranian position (rejecting a U.S. return to talks unless the blockade ends and uranium enrichment remains within a treaty framework), then moves to Oman to coordinate Hormuz management, then to Russia for talks with Putin and Lavrov, and finally back to Pakistan to relay messages.
- Putin’s support: Putin publicly backs Iran, signaling readiness to coordinate, with Russia providing security guarantees potentially akin to its North Korea approach. Russia also offers intelligence and technical assistance to Iran’s military and economy, signaling a broader strategic alignment against Western sanctions.
- BRICS and sanctions: Russia and China are moving away from enforcing Western-style sanctions on Iran, signaling a pivot to economic integration (including currency diversification and gold). This shifts Iran’s position relative to Western pressure.
- Economic and strategic implications:
- Rare earth supply and missiles: Johnson notes that the U.S. cannot easily replenish precision missiles (Patriot, THAAD, Tomahawk) because critical rare earth minerals (like samarium, neodymium, dysprosium) are controlled by China, which withholds them as leverage.
- Energy diplomacy and China: Iran’s oil shipments to China and the risk to Western interests in East Asia complicate U.S. aims. Johnson argues China can keep receiving oil via convoys, limiting U.S. ability to fully disrupt Iranian trade.
- Strait of Hormuz and strategic leverage: Iran’s stance suggests it can pressure Gulf states and deter foreign bases if it secures a more favorable arrangement, potentially using Hormuz as leverage in global trade and currency arrangements.
- Possible paths forward and timing:
- The discussion questions how long the economic warfare can persist and what would cause either side to blink. Johnson suggests that if Iran’s economy doesn’t collapse in the anticipated three weeks, the U.S. will face a choice between declaring victory or pursuing a more protracted negotiation.
- There is skepticism about a decisive, lasting American victory; Johnson emphasizes that there is no viable ground option, and air and maritime options face significant constraints.
- Historical lessons and perspective: The hosts draw parallels to past U.S. conflicts and emphasize learning from history (e.g., not underestimating adversaries, recognizing costs of war) and suggest that current leadership may be underestimating Iran’s resolve and capability.
The conversation concludes with reflections on the need for informed diplomacy and the value of historical insights from figures like ambassador Jack Matlock, acknowledging that strategic miscalculations have repeated patterns across eras.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst and writer at Sonar twenty one. I have left a link in the description. So, I'm glad to see you again, Larry.
Speaker 1: It's already been you've been staying busy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: Educating the world like a good professor.
Speaker 0: I'm trying to finish a book at the same time,
Speaker 1: so it's
Speaker 0: long hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's tough. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, I guess what makes much more difficult, you know, this time with these wars now is that there's so much focus on narrative control. And with all this sea of propaganda, even unpacking reality has become a formidable task. And Right. Then, of course, you need analysis on top. But but when we look at something clear, undisputed, such as the how The US has depleted its weapon stockpiles and inability to ramp up production to significant levels, it means that Trump, he can't really continue this high intensity war with Iran.
Correct. And I was wondering, you know, he has to respond to this in some way. He can't pack up and go home. So is this why you think Trump agreed or not agreed. He pushed a ceasefire, Why started these fake negotiations and also switched to economic warfare?
Speaker 1: Yeah. The I mean, the the economic warfare of it is particularly puzzling because it is it rests on some assumptions that frankly are false, that, that Iran is entirely, you know, 99% dependent upon the oil being loaded at Karg Island and that The US blockade is ineffective. I mean, it's 100%. It can shut down anything. So let's let's first address that myth.
Iran loads up an oil tanker, sells it out through the Strait Of Hormuz, and keeps that oil tanker within 75 miles of Iran's shore and can sell east or, you know, it's better it sells to to the east. The United States Navy was not going to approach that get gonna get closer than 200 miles from the Iranian coast because Iran has short range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones that can hit those ships. If they get in any closer, they they are vulnerable and Iran will attack them and possibly sink them. So that's why I say this is we've got all this political theater where The United States is touted. See, we've seized this ship.
We've seized that ship. Well, so there's first the distance problem with the blockade. The Iran can basically they stay a 100 miles to close to their shore. US won't touch them. Now, once they get out of Iranian waters, then you get the second problem for The United States.
If Iran's let's say they take a convoy of 20 ships, 20 tankers selling along the coast, a 100 miles off the coast, 75 miles off the coast. Then once they hit that spot in the Indian Ocean from Arabian Sea to Indian Ocean, they then scatter. The United States does not have enough ships to stop and seize every one of them. They might be able to seize one or two, but that's not going be crippling to the Iranian economy. And remember that if a US naval vessel seizes a ship, then at least one of the naval vessels involved in that operation has to stay with that ship where it's taken to port or wherever.
They don't just say, alright, we captured you, tag your head and then leave. No. So that's the second problem with this, quote, blockade. The third problem with the blockade with respect to imports. You know, the same the same principles apply in terms of things can be brought into Iran by keeping them close to the Iranian shore until they reach Chabar or Bandur Abbas Chabahar or Bandur Abbas is they got this wide open border with Pakistan.
Pakistan reportedly has identified six different road routes and railroad routes into Iran that are being used to ship thousands of 40 foot containers that normally would be on a cruise on a ship. So that may that may add some of the transportation costs a little bit, but the point is Iran's not cut off. And the entire economic war model that Scott Besson is touting is cutting off Iran from all sources of potential support, and it's just impossible. They can't do it. So this statement that Trump really we'll see what happens this week.
The the statement Trump released yesterday on his truth social page said that, oh, Iran, its leadership has collapsed. Nobody nobody's in charge and, oh, you know, we're we're gonna have to help them. I'm thinking, oh, that's curious. So, you know, if if Trump turns around and says, in order to help Iran, we're gonna lift the blockade. So he may be he could be setting that up as an excuse.
The problem with declaring continuing to declare Iran's leadership as chaotic, broken, riven with strife, it's just not true. I started looking into it in earnest after, you know, I had a conversation with professor Morandi, and he described how when he enlisted in the the Baji, you know, he was a volunteer. So this is the Baji was sort of subservient to the IRGC. He fought along the older brother of the Ayatollah Moshtaba Khamenei. The the younger brother Moshtaba actually enlisted in the Iranian revolutionary guard corps.
So I said I sort of said, let's look at all the other key players. Let's look at Posehkin, the president. Let's look at Oraci. Let's look at Goluboff. And then, of course, let's look at the the head you know, got the head of the RIRGC.
Obviously, he was fought during that war. It turns out Pozeskin was a medic and serving with the IRGC. Araci, he was an enlisted guy in the IRGC. Golubov, also IRGC. So basically, all your top five leaders or, you know, people that are out front, they're all former IRGC.
They they got ties together. And you remember what it was like your time in the military. You formed friendships. Now you guys weren't under fire, but you still formed friendships in the military that last a lifetime. And this is the same thing that happened to these guys that, I'm not saying they all served at the same time, but they all had that same shared experience of fighting what was for Iran at the time an existential war against a US funded entity.
So in a way, you know, what happened with Israel last summer and then what's happening now, they've they've experienced this before. So if anything, I would argue, the current Iranian leadership is better prepared, better equipped by virtue of their shared experience in combat to deal with the current threats issued by The United States. Whereas by contrast, all The United States has got is Pete Hegseth. And, you know, he's he's not exactly the brightest light bulb in the tanning bed.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This new efforts to shape the narrative that is that the Iranian leadership are so divided. That's why it's impossible and to get a deal. And, also, this is why Trump out of charity is extending the ceasefire. I mean, it's, it's an interesting narrative, that they're trying to push.
But, you know, the reality, though, is is quite the other way around. In in The United States, the leadership is it seems to be extremely divided. That is I kept thinking, you know, who who can actually make a deal with Iranians now? Because, yeah, Whitcoff and Kushner, they don't they don't seem to have much credibility anymore. They seem like cutouts for Mossad at this point.
I mean, there's no yeah. The the Iranians don't seem to have much faith in them. And then Right. I I I would have bet something on Vans, but, you know, whatever horrible deal they can get now, it's, nobody wants, I think, to have their fingerprints on such a deal because that's the end of their political careers if, you know, you have, APAC and, well, all of them smearing whoever signs this horrible deal. So do you see this being a problem on the American side?
The
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, they're they're not paying attention to what the Iranians are doing. So let's look at the events that unfolded over the weekend with Araki. So first, he starts in Pakistan, and in Pakistan, he delivers, basically, a paper, a new policy position of the Iranian government. And instead of one that's going, beg The United States to come back to the table, we're we're hurting so bad. We we gotta get out from under this.
No. They did the exact opposite. They said, okay. Yeah. Our still original the 10 demands, those remain.
But the first step is this blockade's eliminated or there's nothing else to talk about. And once the blockade's eliminated, then we'll talk about the Strait Of Hormuz and just let the Americans know as far as nuclear enrichment efforts, that's off the table. We're not talking about that anymore. They can forget about that. We signed the nonproliferation treaty.
We're still part of that treaty. We're we're just like any other country in the world. We have a right to enrich uranium and we're gonna abide by the international law and tell the Americans that's the case. So Iran took a tougher stance, not a not a weaker stance. Then he flew to Muscat in Oman and talked with the head sheikh there and basically to coordinate, hey, going forward, let's recognize that the Strait Of Hormuz is in the territorial waters of Oman and Iran.
Some have argued that that's international waterway. It is not. Those are territorial waters of each country. And so Iran's coordinated with Oman, how we're gonna manage this, we're gonna work together on this, etcetera. And so then, originally, was supposed to fly up to Russia, but he turned around and flew back to Islamabad to get the message back, you know, basically, okay.
What did what did the Americans say to you? And just to, you know, thank the Pakistanis for all they did. And then Pakistan basically lifted the restrictions, security restrictions that have been in place because of the potential for attacks. It was a sign. No further no further talks, with The United States.
Then a rashi flies to, Moscow, has, extended meeting with, Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov and Ushakov, Yoriy Ushakov, and the head of military intelligence. So it was the whole it wasn't just it was a whole shooting match. Diplomacy, military intelligence, military support, and the president Putin saying, you know, it wasn't a protocol as you say, I don't meet with foreign ministers. I meet with the president. No.
He met with the foreign minister, and the exchange was very warm, very friendly. And the message that Putin put out in public was we're 100% behind you. You've got our backing. So, you know, The United States is in a bit of a bind now because Iran is certainly in no mood to surrender, and Iran frankly holds more cards. And the global this is the week that the full impact of the cutoff of the oil from February 28, it is now taking hold.
And we've seen just in the last twenty four hours, the the price of Brent has gone up about $89, the same for West Texas Intermediate. So those two numbers had been below 100 last week. They're now well up well over 100, and they're gonna be headed higher.
Speaker 0: Well, I saw Marco Rubio. He made several references to or claims, very specific claims that the Strait Of Hormuz are international waters. So this is something Iran can't set up a toll with. But this is just again, this is factually wrong, as you said. Yeah.
It's not international waters. And, you know, he could have pointed to the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Seas, which would then allow for transit passage. But the problem is that Iran hasn't ratified it, but maybe more importantly here, The United States hasn't ratified it either. So it means it's not a very good argument for for The US to make that Iran should ratify it and permit it if The US won't do it either. So Oh.
So there's not it doesn't really have a leg to stand on, which is why, I guess, you know, they just create their own reality saying that it is international waters. But Right. It's no. It's it's not a great it's not a great argument. However, Iran, though, by allowing Trump to shift this into a low intensity economic war where The US can then replenish its weapons, it seems as if Iran is allowing Trump to fight this war on its own terms.
I mean, for me, it's a bit strange because I think one of the reasons why Iran has been winning this war is because it it rejected essentially, the escalation dominance of Trump and the the the allowing The US to dictate the terms of this war. So for example, you know, striking the Gulf bases, shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz, essentially not allowing Trump to dictate what are legitimate targets by doing this and also, you know, not allowing The US to decide when the war ends. This was an important move, I think, which made it possible for Iran to put significant pressure on The US. It just seems if The US now says, okay. We're gonna take it off the high intensity war because we can't do it anymore.
Yeah. Now we're gonna do this blockade where we fire on your ships, hijack some of your ships, and you, you know, do some massacres in Lebanon and but you you can't do anything in return. It it seems like they're now essentially accepting battlefield, which is shaped by The United States.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah. Actually, here's the the the The United States can't replenish its supply of precision missiles for one very important reason. I've looked it up now for both, and I was just while you're talking, I was listening and but I wanted to just double check. For both the Patriot PAC three interceptor, the THAAD missile, also a defensive missile interceptor, the Tomahawk missiles. There are there are according to open source analysis and technical discussions.
There are at least four to six specific rare earth minerals. They're known as rare earth elements that are required to produce a Tomahawk cruise missile. Let's see, samarium, neodymium, dysprosium, and others. So a lot of these go into magnets and such for precision. But guess who controls all those rare earth elements?
China. And China is withholding. They're not they're not trading those freely and sending them to The United States because the Chinese recognize The United States is talking about attacking China. And China's got a why would we give you the means to attack us by providing you with the essential elements that you need to produce, you know, the magnets that are involved with the precision guidance systems in these in both the Tomahawks and in the Patriots and in the Thats. So it's not just a simple matter that The United States says, oh, we're out of this.
Come on, guys. Let's work harder. Let's run the factories twenty four hours a day. Let's let's put some more money in there. We're gonna produce these.
They don't have the materials they need to produce them. So that, I mean, that changes the picture entirely right there.
Speaker 0: What about the peace talks now then? Is it only performative, or is there any substance left there, you think?
Speaker 1: Well, no. We'll see what the so Trump talked to Putin today, and I haven't seen a readout of that. That conversation apparently just took place within the last couple hours. So I I and I suspect that it's not a coincidence that on Monday, the a raci is in talking to Putin, and now Putin today on Wednesday is talking to Trump. And and and I'm certain one of the issues is Iran.
And and Russia will Russia will be happy to see what it can do to broker an end to this conflict. But at at the same time, Russia's get taking a tougher stand with respect to Ukraine and NATO. But just as, you've you've, commented on it in your previous broadcast that Lavros remarks last week that, we are that Russia is at war with NATO, not possibly going to war, but is at war. So present tense. So the Putin will continue to talk to Trump even though I think there is growing recognition on the part of the Russians that Trump is mentally, he's not there.
Yeah. He he indulges a lot of fantasy and confabulation and thinks he's agreed to things he hasn't agreed to or thinks he's accomplished things he has not accomplished.
Speaker 0: No. I think my my impression is that the the the recent escalations we see from Europe, that is this massive drone program, the very open rhetoric they have about essentially fighting Russia, combined with, I think, what is very clearly cut now, attacks from NATO territories and, of course, the assistance from the NATO countries to strike the oil refineries of Russia. All of this put together, I think this could be the straw that, yeah, broke the camel's back at there's there's too much anger building up now, I think, and also Yeah. Yeah. Well, they they can't continue like this.
So it seems if something is gonna escalate. But related to the Iran war, again, I I don't see why if I think if Russia stays away from Iran not to anger Trump, it essentially makes them as subservient as Europeans. I mean, you can't have The US assisting in attacks on Russia in this way, and somehow Russia, you know, if if it doesn't respond in some way, this isn't this weakness won't be rewarded. It would be seen as, again, a weakness. Right.
But but how about the role then of the the Russians? I mean, what how how can they play a role in the they're playing role in negotiations or simply providing support for Iran or strengthen the autonomous hand of the Iranians? Or how do you see Russia, I guess, their role in this wider game?
Speaker 1: Well, a couple of ways. One, they can provide security guarantees to Iran. Some concrete security guarantees perhaps going as far as doing what they did with North Korea. Basically, if you are attacked, we will consider that an attack on Russia. So it could potentially go that far, which would be, you know, would put The United States on notice as well as Israel for that matter.
So that that could be one way they they could play a role, a decisive role in getting a negotiated settlement because that is one of Iran's critical essential demands. The other though element is what Russia's been doing, you know, doing, you know, at least since last June, providing intelligence, technical advice, and materials assistance to improve both the armaments and the operation of equipment in with the Iranian military. So Russia recognizes Iran is a critical to a member of BRICS going forward and will play a vital role in the economic expansion of the BRICS nations once once it's out from under all of these Western sanctions. See, already, it it actually actually is freed from that because both Russia and China who had been signatories and willing to support sanctions back in, you know, eleven years ago when they signed the JCPOA, both have now said, no. We're not doing that anymore.
We're not gonna enforce sanctions against Iran. So that way they're free to deal with each other and in their own currencies. And The United States says, well, we're not gonna let you use dollars. They say, fine. Well, we use our own currencies.
We're gonna stop buying treasuries. We're gonna buy gold. So this is this is actually where The United States effort to try to control the situation is is end up isolating itself.
Speaker 0: But one of the consequences of or it seems one of the key objectives of what Besant refers to as, yeah, project economic fury that is going after Iran's economy, It appears to be also, of course, targeting China as the overwhelming majority of Iranian oil will goes to China. So I'm assuming that the people sitting in Beijing are aware that China is a key target in in this war. But how much oil is The US able to shut down in terms of, yeah, well, overall energy exports to East Asia? And because I see reports that The US is trying to replace it with American energy Yeah. Much like the, you know, NATO's proxy war against Ukraine has allowed or enabled The US to replace Russian energy supplies.
Similarly, you see some trends well, some developments taking place also in East Asia in which The US is pushing its own LNG projects and and, yeah, essentially trying to replace some of energy from The Middle East. Do you think or is is this something that's making China nervous, or do you think it's at at too low levels? Or how do you see this?
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. I I don't think it's making them nervous at all. It's it's frankly irritating them or making them angry that the the I think they're getting tired of this Scott Besson bullying and the things that the that he can coerce China into doing what The United States demands. The The United if China can receive all the oil it needs out of the Persian Gulf, in particular, if they sail in convoys, The United States doesn't have enough ships to stop a large convoy.
It simply doesn't. And then particularly if it's Chinese flag vessels, United States is not gonna risk going to war with China because China does hold the edge here completely. So this is United States has boxed boxed it itself in with these threats that it can't really deliver on because the it's not gonna they're on the Iranian economy becoming crippled in the next two to three weeks. Okay. But at the end of, you know, at the May, the Iranian economy is still gonna be okay.
In fact, it may be a little bit better because, know, it's assuming the ceasefire is gonna hold. And see, this is the problem The US had, that Trump has in particular. There is no good military option going forward. They, you know, you've got three basic options. You've got air, you've got ground, and you've got maritime.
Well, there is no ground option And we know that because the way the current command structure is set up for this operation, you have the joint forces commander, the commander of CENTCOM, which is Brad admiral Brad Cooper. Then you have what's called the combined forces aviation component commander. That's an air force general, commands all of the air operations in the region. And then you have the combined forces maritime component commander who's an admiral. Now, so those two guys, they basically manage the operational forces, the naval forces and the marines and the aviation forces, primarily air air force, but also coordinates with the navy.
But you what you don't have, you don't have a ground force commander because there is no mission yet that's considered viable, plausible for ground forces. So the air guy is briefing, I'm told, that, you know, he's told his boss, Brad Admiral Cooper, look, Coop. We have you know, we've expended a significant percentage of our precision guided missiles during the first five weeks of this war against Iran. We've hit about every viable target there is to hit. Now, we can go back in and start hitting some of those targets again, but this time we're gonna be up against a more formidable foe because Iran has taken advantage of the last three weeks to improve its air defense systems, thanks to the Chinese and the Russians.
And they've just you know, last week, last Thursday, I believe, there was a we had a sudden flash on on telegram channels about, oh, there are explosions in the air over Tehran. We thought, man. Here goes. They breached the ceasefire. No.
It was Iran conducting a live fire exercise with his new air defense systems. So they're ready to go. So the advice coming from the Air Force general in charge of air operations is saying that apart from the fact that we don't really have many more viable targets to go after that are military targets, we got two other things to consider that the number one, we're running real short on these precision missiles. And if we in fact get tasked or the there's a need to use them in China, we're not gonna have them. And and and as we talked about before, the the it's not a matter of just kicking in an order to say, hey.
Produce more. That's not gonna happen. The second thing is though Iran is positioned to retaliate and inflict more damage on US the remaining US positions in some of the bases throughout the Gulf Region, as well as on the Jordan's airfield, Malawiksalti, as well as on Israel. So that this could increase the damage that the West has to contend with. So that's where, you know, and the same maritime option, the ships, aircraft carriers, and the marine amphibious units, they've got to stay offshore about 220 miles.
If they get in, they get inside that envelope, they're targeted and they are vulnerable. So you've got the fact about how close US Navy can get to conduct military operations. And then you have the actual numbers. Do they have the actual number of ships to be able to actually blockade, you know, a thousand ships? They do not.
So that's why I say this is, this is sort of I'll call it blockade theater.
Speaker 0: But so if they're unlikely to go back to war, that means just continue this drawn out economic war or economic fury, as Besant calls it. But how how long do you think this can go on though? Because for a a lot of the economic pain being built up, such as the fertilizers, it will still take a while to really, you know, go through the system in which you will have the shortage of food and the spike in prices. So how how long do you think before well, what do you think is gonna crack in terms of make what makes it too painful for either The US or Iran? I mean, what is gonna make one side blink first?
Speaker 1: I I think I think candidly, it could be as soon as three weeks simply by I I draw the three weeks from Besson's claim that, you know, Ron's you know, the Iran supposedly, its oil wells are gonna collapse. They're gonna be they're gonna be in desperate economic straits in three weeks. I think in in three weeks, The US is gonna come to the realization that the predictions about the collapse of the Iranian economy turn out to be just as good as the predictions about the collapse of the Russian government if they just killed the top officials on February 28. Turned out that was not true, and these claims about the economic pressures on Iran are gonna turn out not to be true. So then, you know, then they got a problem.
They're gonna have to come back and say, do we do? Trump's only viable off option is to figure out how to declare victory. Oh, we've wiped out their air force. We've wiped out their army. We've wiped out their navy.
We've wiped out their nuclear force. They've obliterated it. So we've won. So we're we're gonna we're gonna move right along. We're gonna come back home and focus on Cuba.
But but, you know, the the reality is Trump's gonna have to do a version of what he did last May in the Red Sea where he declared victory and pulled out.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The problem, though, is always the straight of our moose. This is I think this is the main problem because this is what can essentially make Iran quite a powerful country, not just economic benefits, but the the ability to essentially pressure the Gulf states to stop threatening Iran by hosting the bases or trading in dollars or simply just having them pay reparations. Because you also seen some reports that Iran is somehow putting extra toll on countries who either back sanctions or who has participated in in the tax. So they're creating an economic incentive system to abandon this anti Iranian alliance.
So Yeah. Exactly right. So so this is either now or never, it seems, because if one wants to declare victory and go home, yeah, the region will look very different after a year's time. It just seems it's gonna be very hard to sell in Washington, especially with the powerful Israeli lobby standing behind them.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think this was one of the other reasons for Oraci's visit to Moscow to enlist the help of Vladimir Putin in dealing with the Gulf Arabs. Because Putin and the Russians still have some decent relationships with with the Saudis and the Emiratis that no. I think I think Putin's gonna make a very compelling argument to him. Say, hey, guys. Look.
You you you hitched your wagons to The United States who promised you security and promised to protect you. And as you could see, that didn't work out at all. It's, you know, The UAE in particular is facing economic collapse. I was amused yesterday, but they said, oh, we're pulling out of OPEC. Well, great.
You're not producing anything anyway, so, you know, you're not gonna be missed at this point. It's only when the oil flow of oil gets going again. And that's where, you know, Iran's gonna have a lot of leverage that countries that want to align themselves with Iran, pay fees in yuan or in the real, I guess the Iranian currency, that that those countries will be able to start moving goods. So the the disrupted supply line will actually get to be able to come back online to to a limited extent. It's still not gonna be open the way it was.
But, you know, countries that are, as you said, allied with Iran, they'll be able to pass freely through the through that strait. The problem will be for those ships destined for countries that are not supportive of Iran. In fact, that are condemning Iran, etcetera. Iran will let them just, you know, let them suffer. But it's they'll do it in a polite way, and they'll do it in a sort of a it won't be just a a threatening, you know, like the mafia hitman saying, hey, pay us the protection money or your store might catch on fire tonight.
It won't be that. But Iran will make it clear that, hey, there's a there is a benefit of being our friend. You know, be our be our friend. One of the benefits is you get a safe passage through the Strait Of Hormuz.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, that's usually why great powers have always sought to control key maritime corridors for this exact reason. Yeah. Not just military benefit, but also the economic and political capital that comes with it. My my last question was just about the the recent phone call now between Putin and Trump.
Because as we know, there's a lot of focus on Raghdi, the foreign minister of Iran going to Russia meeting with Putin, and and everyone was, you know, wondering how how this can be interpreted by Trump because it seems as if the Russians are now going full in in terms of offering their backing and friendship to the Iranians. And and now, of course, Putin and Trump held this ninety minute phone call. As Ushakov stated, this was mainly they mainly talked about Iran. On the Ukraine issue, I think Putin suggested a ceasefire on May 9, which is the victory day when, yeah, the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany. But but most of it was on on Iran.
Right. Do you know the significance of these these talks?
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Trump's looking to Trump is desperate to get an exit out of this. It's it's blown up on him. His his opinion, you know, the public support for him is down around 33%, 64% of the public that disapprove of the job that Donald Trump's doing. And the price you know, we'd had sort of a lull in the rise there'd been in the first five weeks, there was an initial spike in the price of gas.
The ceasefire was declared, and then Trump administration started unloading oil from the strategic reserve in order to try to suppress the depress prices a little bit. That's over now. Gas and diesel are headed back up, and they don't have any more strategic reserve to apply to it. They he's been Trump has clearly been told, my understanding, by his military advisers that there is no military solution, that they don't have a magic weapon they can pull or magic operation that will force Iran to surrender and open the Strait Of Hormuz, that Iran can effectively continue to keep that strait closed as long as it wants by virtue of the fact that The United States does not have a means to counter Iran's ability to launch short range ballistic missiles, coastal defense cruise missiles, and a variety of drones, both maritime surface drones, underwater drones, and the conventional drones that fly through the air without a care. So, you know, he's he needs help and he's looking to see if if Vladimir Putin can help and, you know, Putin, I'm sure will be willing to offer, you know, his good offices, but not at the expense of Iran.
If anything, to to help maybe to help Trump find some face saving way out. But this is, you know, Iran despite Trump's claims to the contrary, Iran holds the Trump cards, not Trump.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This persona of Trump that is gonna be both a strong man, which would be respected, as well as the peace president. At some point, I think the two would come into attention because wanted to pressure all countries to essentially, yeah, reorganize according to his will. And now, of course, it's pushed him into using military force. It's the it's it shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of Americans have turned on him.
I know that there's a hardcore MAGA base who, you know, who accepts the argument. Well, before, America first meant no war, but now it means America first that we defeat all our enemies. But this this efforts by Trump to sell himself as a great war president, it seems so Yeah. He has self destructive. Indeed, they always have to go back and revisit, you know, his whole selling point that he wasn't gonna do this war.
That's why I was this war. So that's why I was so, yeah, taken back by this speech a while ago when JD Vance made the point that, well, in the past, when we had this forever wars, the difference is those presidents were stupid, and Trump is very smart. I mean Okay. This is not what you wanna hear when you when you explain why they flipped to such an extent. But, yeah, here we are.
Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think the West fully appreciates that this current group of Iranian leaders, you know, whether from Pazeshkin, although he doesn't, you know, control the Islamic Council, to the Moshtaba Khamenei, the new Ayatollah, to the head of the IRGC, to Oraci, and to Galibaf. Though the those men when they were the ages of 17 to well, Golubov and Orochi to, you know, up to they were probably 25, 26. Pozhakian was the old man in the group. He was in his thirties. But they all fought in this war against Iraq that I mean, that shaped that shaped their lives.
That was an existential threat. 200,000 Iranians died, soldier wise and maybe as many as sixty, seventy thousand civilians. So that war experience is part of them. And so now, you know, at the time they were the foot soldiers. They were on the front lines.
Now they are controlling the reins of power. And they understand what war is. They understand the costs. They understand the sacrifice. And that's the problem for The United States.
We don't have anybody, including Hexath, that really understands what what they're potentially facing. These guys know. They've been there. They've done that. They got the t shirts.
Now they're in a position, you know, I I liken it to the what The United States experienced in the early sixties until the assassination of John f Kennedy where, you know, here's Kennedy who just, you know, twenty twenty years earlier was ever driving a PT boat out in the Pacific and got cut in you know, his boat got cut in half and, he had to save his men from dying. He knew what the cost of combat was. And so you jump ahead to 1962 when there's this in the face with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He's reluctant to go to war because he knows what the cost of war is. And he actually had to hold back some of the generals.
Again, these generals had been some of it had been colonels or majors during that war. They'd got a taste for it. But right now, you don't have even Hegs Hegseth is the the only guy with any military experience. The rest of them are civilians, and they they they think that this is like a video game. And Trump Trump's, you know, failing mental faculties, his critical thinking skills, he just he believes the last thing he's told.
And he's been told lots of crazy stuff by people like retired general Jack Keane and retired general Kellogg and Lindsey Graham. So, you know, depending on who he listens to, he may be inclined to think, oh, yeah. We can fight our way out of this, and then he's gonna find you no. You can't.
Speaker 0: Well, that's an old truth, though, that well, every generation has seemed to have to learn to respect war by having a war themselves because as we see the former generation die out who actually did fight this kind of wars, like second the Second World War, we end up, yeah, with people who it sound like they're playing video games, who don't appreciate the consequences and the cost of war. Right. And when you couple this with this tendency to underestimate the adversary, be it the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, I mean, at every turn, the assumption that the adversary will just fall apart if one blows hard enough at them. I mean, this is it it keeps happening over and over again, but I don't see any learning curve. It's it's it's very frustrating.
You know? The Chinese were gonna fall apart with a little bit of sanctions on, you know, the semiconductor exports. Well well, imports for the Chinese. The Russian economy was gonna fall out fall out fall apart within the weekend with these sanctions. And, course, they're gonna be defeated on the battlefield.
The Iranians, you know, air campaign was, you know, gonna kill their leader, and then Iranians would just take to the streets waving American flags. I mean, this is it's really crazy stuff, but this is yeah. This I think this is all also a curse of the unipolar moment which we left behind in which there is no respect for any when when there is no opposing centers of power, there's nothing to respect. There's no one that can balance you. And, also, war becomes something you know, when we drop bombs on people far away, it's not on our lands.
But this could change fairly soon. So any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: I say, know it's particularly frustrating for you as a historian that, you know, because you're to tell people about history and hoping, hey, can we learn some lessons from the past? They might be be applicable here, you know, in this, you know, I don't know how much you've studied of the American Civil War, but the outset of this war with with Iran reminded me very much of the Washington attitude at the at the battle, the first battle of Bull Run. And, it was just fought out in the Virginia countryside out past Dulles Airport. Anyone that's been to DC now, and you had people that went from Downtown DC. They got in their carriages.
They rode out to the battlefield. It was about a good three hour journey to get there via horse and and carriage with, you know, picnic baskets. Oh, this is gonna be a lark. We're gonna watch this great victory. They're gonna overrun the confederacy.
Oh, great. And, man, it turned out just the opposite. And then it turned into a grinding four year war. And, you know, that's that's what happened to The United States. So that they thought February 28, we're gonna decapitate the Iranian regime.
The people of Iran are gonna rise up and overthrow the molests, and we'll be on our way. And the exact opposite happened. So it's important to listen to people like yourself, Glenn, with all the research and and and scholarship that you've accomplished. Let's learn some lessons from the past that might keep us from making mistakes in the future.
Speaker 0: I agree. That's why I loved having on, a few times, ambassador Jack Matlock because Yeah. He's a walking, talking history book. You know? He's well, he's 96 now, but, you know, still very, very sharp.
And, you know, so he he shares the lessons of you know, he was stationed in Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the nineteen eighties when he was the ambassador of Reagan negotiating an end to the Cold War. He explained to me how before they were able to negotiate peace with the the Soviets, the first they had to deal with the hawks in Washington because everyone was convinced that the Russians don't really want peace. I mean, it's a pretty much a copy paste of exactly what's happening today.
Speaker 1: Exactly right.
Speaker 0: Some of our leaders should you know, because they're so clueless. They their Russian experience seems to come from binge watching James Bond movies. They should really pick up the phone, speak to ambassador Matlock, and, you know, get some some of his experiences, but they don't. So, anyways, I've already taken a lot of your time. So thank you very much, and I hope, yeah, to see you again soon.
Speaker 1: Alright, my friend. Thank you. We will see you. Thanks, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Brian Berletic: U.S. Is Grooming Europe for War with Russia https://youtu.be/Ef0sHx33C-g https://t.co/3YxFUaAZtw
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this conversation, Brian Berletic, a former US Marine and political analyst, discusses how the United States pursues a pattern of strategic sequencing that targets rivals one by one, often using negotiation or peace as delaying tactics or outsourcing parts of conflict to allies. He connects this to a broader framework outlined in a 2019 Rand Corporation paper and to a speech by Elbridge Colby, the US undersecretary of war for policy, arguing that the US aims to keep Ukraine’s war ongoing by shifting more responsibility and escalation to Europe, thereby pressuring Russia while also targeting Iran and, ultimately, China.
Berletic frames Pete Hegseth’s early-2025 pivot as Europe taking over a proxy war against Russia and Ukraine, with Europe increasing defense spending and doubling down on Ukraine support. He says this demonstrates a natural progression where Europe becomes the frontline in the proxy conflict, while the US maintains involvement through its command in Germany and intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities. He asserts that the US is fighting Russia through Ukraine and Europe, and that there was never an intention to defeat Russia outright in this phase; instead, the aim was to create multiple dilemmas for Russia, Iran, and China as described in the Rand paper. He notes that the US sought to destroy Russia’s energy exports to Europe and replace them with LNG from the US, turning peacetime relationships into wartime dependencies.
The host pushes back on the idea that evidence is ignored, highlighting how public discourse often promotes the Ukraine war as beneficial for the US, while the real dynamic is a shift toward European engagement and energy decoupling from Russia. Berletic reiterates that Europe’s energy dependence on the US mirrors how Europe was cut off from Russia through war, paralleling Asia’s potential energy realignment. He points to the Nord Stream destruction as part of a long-running strategy to subordinate Europe to US interests and to enable a broader energy strategy that pressures Asia similarly. He claims that US corporate and political influence in Europe, including the EU’s governance and non-democratic manipulation of information spaces, results in a system where national sovereignty is eroded in favor of a US-led foreign policy.
They discuss elite capture, where a handful of individuals in European Union leadership and other allied governments operate for US interests, often through think tanks and institutions like the New York Times’ reporting on CIA involvement in Ukraine’s internal security apparatus. Berletic argues this results in client regimes and a lack of true national sovereignty, making European and East Asian leadership more pliant to US strategic aims. He notes that the EU’s approach—treating opposition as a temporary obstacle to be overcome—has facilitated centralized power and an ever-tightening foreign policy framework that undermines independent decision-making.
On China, Berletic argues that US actions against Iran are also aimed at Asia, cutting energy flows and pressuring regional states to depend on US energy. He points to LNG projects prepared in advance of conflict with Russia, designed to be economically viable only if energy flows can be constrained, and he describes a broader energy-dominance framework aimed at surrounding China with US-backed energy dependencies. He asserts there is a coordinated plan to surround China with hostile proxies and to leverage energy as strategic leverage, transforming countries like Vietnam, Japan, and South Korea into instruments of US policy.
The discussion then touches on what happens if allies resist this burden-sharing, suggesting that truly independent leadership in Europe or East Asia would reject the arrangement as unsustainable. Berletic argues that diplomacy is not dead, but multipolarism—led by Russia, China, and Iran—offers a path away from US-led hegemony, albeit with ongoing conflict and upheaval. He closes by emphasizing the importance of alternatives to Western media narratives and the need for multipolarism to reduce war and promote a more equitable global order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Brian Berletic, a former US marine, political analyst, author, and also host of the new Atlas, and I will leave a link to his podcast in, the description. Thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me back on.
Speaker 0: So you often make the argument that The US pursues strategic sequencing that is more or less a staged approach to how it confronts rival powers, so essentially seeking to take on one at a time. And for for this reason, when The US engages in negotiation or peace, you make the point that it's essentially delaying tactics, just setting it up for a later time, or at times, it can also include a different division of labor that is to outsource some of the war to allies. And, well, I thought about you when I was reading the this recent speech by Elbridge Colby, The US undersecretary of war for policy, in which he makes it, well, I would say unmistakably clear that The US is not seeking to put an end to the Ukraine war. Rather, it's outsourcing it to the Europeans who should continue to fight and escalate. I I was wondering how did you make sense of this speech?
Speaker 1: It's just a update of the division of labor that US secretary of defense Pete Hegseff announced, at the very beginning of 2025, almost as soon as the Trump administration came into office. He talked about how The US needed to pivot elsewhere, now we know, to Iran and ultimately onward towards China. And he said Europe is going to take over, basically feed itself next into this proxy war taking place against Russia and Ukraine. That is exactly what Europe did. He told Europe they are going to spend more on defense, and they have.
And he told them they're going to double down on their support for Ukraine, and they have done that as well. And we're watching the natural progression of of all of this take shape into Europe itself throwing itself into this proxy war against Russia itself. It's dangerous, very concerning. The rhetoric coming out of Russia knowing and seeing this taking shape themselves is very, very concerning. And, unfortunately, that's that's what this was always going to end up being anyway.
And I and I distinctively remember warning people that didn't matter who you voted for in 2024, this is exactly what was going to happen. The whole reason The US was fighting this war against Russia and Ukraine in the first place, and it is a US war on on Russia simply being fought through Ukraine. Again, go back to the 2019 Rand Corporation paper extending Russia. The whole purpose of this is to create one of many dilemmas for Russia. They're doing a similar strategy toward Iran and ultimately China.
Create all of these dilemmas and extend Russia as much as possible. It was never their intention to overwhelm and defeat Russia with just this war against Russia and Ukraine. It was just one of many policy options that were in that policy paper that have since been implemented. And one of the things they were talking about was destroying Russia's energy exports to to Europe and how The US was going to ramp up LNG exports to Europe. At time, it made no sense because Europe still had access to plenty plentiful, reliable, cheap Russian energy.
And they said even in the paper, they said, in peacetime, this has a very low likelihood of succeeding, except it has succeeded. And do you know how they managed to make it succeed? They took peacetime, and they simply turned it into wartime. And the only way this policy of keeping Europe dependent on American energy and off of Russian energy and extending and undermining Russia is by keeping the war going. So there was never any intention at all ever of The US wanting to make peace with Russia, and this is the exact same reason why the US has absolutely no interest in making peace with Iran.
Because, ultimately, all of this against Russia and Iran is meant to target not just China, but also Asia. And I would I would argue that the war on Iran and disrupting all energy coming from the Middle East and disrupting not just China's supply of energy from the Middle East, but all of Asia's supply of energy from the Middle East. This is simply The US doing to Asia what it has already done to Europe. They cut Europe off from Russia, from from energy through war, and now they're using war to cut Asia off from energy from The Middle East.
Speaker 0: You know, it's a I guess what's very frustrating about this whole thing is that all the evidence is there, yet there seems to be this very deliberate desire to just live in our own fake little world, the way it's being sold, essentially. As, you know, you can look towards the people who discussed the the benefit of the Ukraine war, from Graham, McConnell, Kellogg, Romney. You know, the list is long where they make the point that this is gonna be a good war. We can fight with Ukrainians. We don't have to waste our own soldiers, and using Ukraine to knock out Russia, we can focus on the Chinese instead.
It can be said in the open, but again, it's not a world which these people are comfortable living in with. So they essentially ignore it. And the same with what you said with decoupling Europe from Russia in terms of energy. This is a disaster for Europe, but, you know, they said this long in advance, all the strategic documents, Nordstrom is a bad thing. Then, of course, just as they said they would, they knock out Nord Stream, and then, you know, they can sell all the stories.
Yeah. It's a Russian playbook. Obviously, Russia destroys its own infrastructure. We we repeat it. Even when it's exposed, then we say, okay.
Well, I guess Russia didn't do anyways. We will embrace any ridiculous story as opposed to face reality. So it's yeah. It's it's it's quite weird that this is actually real. But but it seems if now not if.
It seems kind of obvious that the goal is to outsource the war to the Europeans, which will essentially make the Europeans into the new Ukrainians. And these escalations, they worry me, though, because primarily well, the main two things is the massive drone program, which is done very, very openly, and it's becoming very hard for Russia not to respond to this and making matters much worse. We know now that the attacks are coming out of NATO territory, that is out of European states, then the Finland and the Baltic states. All of this is happening while The US is pulling back and handing this war to the Europeans, which seem to be very eager to take over. I mean, do you think the Europeans are being set up for war?
Speaker 1: Yes. Absolutely. And I I would say the Americans are backing away in in the sense of absolving themselves of responsibility, but they're very much still involved in the war. The The US command is still in Germany overseeing the entire war. All of these drone strikes deep inside Russian territory, again, according to the New York Times itself and and as is obvious to to all of us who know, the the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities required to do this effectively.
It had it had to always have been The US. They admit it was the the CIA and the US military overseeing this drone program striking deep inside Russian territory. Not only that, but also the maritime drone attacks taking place all around the globe targeting tankers carrying Russian energy exports. So The US is still very much deeply involved and overseeing this entirely, but they're absolving themselves of responsibility, and they're they're putting the Europeans out there in the front. And and also, as you mentioned, getting the Europeans ready to to be the next proxy into the breach as Ukraine slowly crumbles.
I think you will you will watch a very gradual incremental salami slice approach, having the Europeans just get a little bit more involved. There was a a a little bit of a scare where people thought maybe British warplanes were trying to intercept Russian drones over Ukraine, but they might they might just have floated that story out there just to test test the waters a little bit, and they might actually start doing things like that to incrementally get Europe more and more deeply involved. They're already utterly involved in in the war. The US is fighting Russia through Europe just as much as they're fighting it through Ukraine in in many ways. We we know that European weapons are going into Ukraine.
And as you mentioned, the drone production, we we knew this wasn't really all taking place inside Ukraine at all. All of these weapons, missiles, even tanks that that they say Ukraine is is making, they're not making any of those. It's all being built all across Europe, in The United States, in in other US proxy territories, and then it's simply being as finely assembled in Ukraine, and that's how they just can say it was made in Ukraine. And so it's it's a whole process has been taking shape for for years, the the whole course of this proxy war. And, unfortunately, it does look like Europe is going to end up in almost indirect conflict with Russia.
And people will say, why is Europe doing this? Because this doesn't serve their interests at all. But this is the danger and the power of American political capture over these countries. They they control the information space. They control the political space.
US corporations are working in tandem with some of the largest European interests, but American interests are are actually dominant even in in Europe in many cases. And so this is this is why this is happening. And this is the same reason why we watched the the Persian Gulf Arab states go along with the the US war of aggression against Iran. This is why we're going to watch countries like Japan, South Korea, The Philippines. They'll go along with US escalation vis a vis China.
Even though their largest trade partner import and export is China, they'll go along with it because their governments are politically captured. And, ultimately, those handful of individuals this is this is how elite elite capture works. Those handful of of individuals work for US interests at the expense of their own country's interests. They are their position is owed to The US, and they do everything on behalf of The United States.
Speaker 0: This incrementalism, it's really yeah. It is very subtle because you don't notice it from day to day, but given, you know, this war has been going on, at least since the Russians invaded more than four years now, the rhetoric and openness, it is quite evident what happened. For example, in this country, in in Norway, when the Russians invaded, we had a prime minister who made it very clear that under no circumstance would we send weapons to a war in to a country at war. Now, of course, four years later, it's not a single member of parliament who opposes sending weapon, not a single member of parliament suggests that we should even talk to the Russians. While today, I looked in the paper, and I see a headline that Norwegian drones will kill Russians.
This is it. So there's no more pretense. You know, the hatred is already out there. The the intention is there, and it's you know, it would be an have been unthinkable to have this kind of language and positions only four years ago, but it's it's this incrementalism. He builds up all the centers being wiped away, and it's yeah.
It's quite it's kind of frightening when you see, yeah, the the the this shift and how the public just walks along and follows this. But I wanted to ask about this concept you just brought up, the elite capture, because if you live in Europe, you tend to get the impression that a lot of this political leadership, they, well, they weren't they were trained, if you will, very closely with The United States. Sometimes their loyalties are also not very clear. I mean, this is not shouldn't be controversial to see to say that Europe has a denationalized political leadership, very much influenced by The United States. But how how do you see the The US the the Europeans?
What what kind of instruments are there for this elite capture?
Speaker 1: I think the European Union itself played a central role in all of this. The European Union was essentially a a layer of bureaucracy. The US draped over Continental Europe and smothered inter individual national sovereignty. And and we can see how Europe systematically searches for, hunts down, and eradicates any any sense of national interests within the entire European Union. And I I I can't remember what the referendum was for, but it was maybe Ireland being part of the European Union or something like that.
And and there's many, many examples of this. I'm I'm sure you could provide several as as well-being in Europe, where they have the referendum. It doesn't go the way they want it, so they just hit the information space for a a year or two, and then they do it again and again and again and again until information space has been sufficiently manipulated, and they get the results that they want. Except that's not that's not actual self determination. That's using the the illusion of democracy and self determination to manipulate and control people and to to channel them in a direction that is actually objectively contrary to their own best interests.
And having all of these European countries collectively placed under the European Union and subjected to a collective foreign policy that is detrimental to all of Europe's best interests and each individual member state's best interests? How how is that is objectively against the best interests of big business in Europe, the ordinary people across Europe, all kinds of of, groups of people, big and small, all across the continent. And you can see how it has harmed Europe, over and we could just talk about the last you know, since 2014, actually. And before 2014, I actually thought there was a good chance that Europe would work its way out from under US, subordination because they were they were building the Nord Stream pipelines. They were working closely with Russia and with China, and I thought for sure that they were going to to make it.
But then, again, The US provoked war, and under war, you have you have so many options to manipulate people emotionally, politically, economically, in terms of military power, and that's exactly what they did. They used the conflict they created with Russia in Ukraine to upset that process that was taking place, to cut Europe off from Russia, and also to begin the same process of cutting off, Europe from cooperation with China. And so all of their alternatives were removed. The US literally just blew up Nord Stream, and and then through the the persistence of this war with Russia, they've forced Europe to cut all energy incrementally off from from Russia. And so this is what has fully and completely subordinated Europe to The United States.
And so primarily the European Union, there's a lot of institutions and programs The US runs in Europe very similar to the National Endowment for Democracy, by parallel or adjacent organizations and institutions, both American government programs and private corporate foundations, and they've just chipped away at it. Like you say, it happened so slowly. People really didn't notice it until it was too late, and they've already accumulated this huge amount of power over Europe, and there's really nothing Europeans can do now to organize against it, unfortunately.
Speaker 0: Well, the EU is has a very interesting history. It has a tendency of looking at opposition as a temporary speed bump to over be overcome. That is well, for example, the EU constitution they wanted to have back in 2005. Two of the few countries who had a referendum on it, France and Netherlands, said no. So then they sat down and think, okay.
How can we overcome this opposition? Okay. Let's reframe it as a treaty instead. So they made it into the Lisbon treaty, essentially rewrote it and just packed it in as a treaty so there wouldn't have to be a referendum. But then, of course, the Irish still needed a referendum, and they also voted no.
And then they had a, you know, a campaign to, well, reeducate them, enough pressure, and they made them vote again the following year, And then they got it right. And, yeah, this is how it advances. And they've all this way of reassuring that, you know, as the EU, you know, takes on this power, you know, they're still gonna have a a unanimous decision making, these kind of things, but now you see Wunderland say, well, we can't have this this mix as a hostage to unable to make decision. We have to be able to defend ourselves. So so now, of course, they're gonna centralize more and more power, something that's causing, yeah, quite a lot of tension.
So it is it's becoming a very well, I would put it as an ugly project, but I'll probably get in trouble for calling the EU an ugly project now. But this is what it's become. However, the the when whenever you look at how The United States is trying to put Russia on hold that is handed over to the to the Europeans, it's obviously because, well, they they couldn't defeat Russia, and The United States has other objectives. The main adversary of The United States, the mere peer main peer rival would be China then. How do you see China fitting into this wider sequencing logic?
Because, you know, they they seem to be deprioritized at this moment. The The US is still in Europe. They're still fighting Iran. We're not seeing that much pressure against China at the moment.
Speaker 1: I would argue that the The US war of aggression against Iran is actually a direct move against not just China, but even US allies, I would call them proxies in Asia. And if you look at the the energy exports from the entire region, not just from Iran to China, because Iran was basically exporting almost all of their energy to China, that that has been reduced, mainly through The US blockade. The US is is lying. They're not they're not controlling all shipping in and out of Iran, but they are turning back some of those ships, and that and a lot of those ships are bringing hydrocarbons to China. But the problem is the whole conflict, and this was they knew this was everyone knew this was going to happen if the US attacked Iran.
They knew they would close the Strait Of Hormuz. They they knew Iran would retaliate. Whatever you hit inside Iran, they were going to hit in any country hosting US troops, which is practically every country in the region. And that's that's what happened, and it reduced, gas production and then, therefore, exports and also oil exports. And it got so bad that there are countries now here in Asia, countries like Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, that are buying more gas now from The United States than they are from The Middle East, and this is unprecedented because they got virtually all of their energy from The Middle East.
Some of these countries, 90% or more of their energy came from The Middle East. Now they're buying it from The United States. And just like The US did to Europe, vis a vis Russia, they had all of these LNG export projects that they were building that people said, why are you building this? There's no way you're going to compete with steady, reliable, cheap gas from The Middle East, except The US always knew that we're getting these ready for a reason. Just like we were getting, LNG export projects ready for Europe for a reason before it was economically viable, We we were getting them online and ready because we knew we always knew we were going to start a war with Russia and Ukraine, and we were going to force Europe off energy from Russia, and we would have the solution already there in the process of coming online.
And they are doing the exact same thing. So I stumbled across this Alaska LNG project, run by Glenfarm, and that that's exactly what it is. They've been working on it for years, and it it makes no economic sense. And if you look at presentations from, like, last year, 2025, the they were sitting there basically pleading with the audience. Yes.
This makes economic sense. They mentioned contested waterways many, many times because they said if Asia is getting energy from us in Alaska, it's it's like a virtual pipeline. There's no way anyone can touch it. And there's so many other contested waterways that aren't very safe out there, but but they didn't say that, well, it will be The US and its war of aggression against Iran next year that ends up closing those waterways and making this otherwise unviable project suddenly viable. So it it it was a it was a definite premeditated conspiracy.
They are doing exactly to Asia what they have done to Europe. And, of course, how does this affect China? First of all, they're they're deliberately cutting China off from energy from the Middle East. That was like, half of their imports, of energy were coming from the Middle East. But then now they're forcing countries in Asia, not just US proxies like Japan, South Korea, The Philippine, but even countries like Vietnam to place themselves under energy dependence on The US.
And that gives The US extraordinary control and and leverage over these countries strategically, politically, to to basically transform them into what The US has already transformed Europe vis a vis Russia. They can transform these countries in Asia into battering rams, all aims at China. So it will accelerate that process that was already underway. And and what they're doing is essentially surrounding China with hostile nations that are dependent on The US for energy really have no other option. You know?
So people could blame Vietnam for buying energy from The US, but what was their alternative? It's it's mainly cooking gas at this point. Not buy it and then just leave tens of millions of people without cooking gas. It it really wasn't an option. So The US got got a lot of countries in Asia exactly where The US wanted them, and they had the solution already in the works and ready to take advantage of it.
There's a there's literally a a national council of energy dominance created by the US government for this specific purpose, and it has transcended. It's not president Trump doing this. This began all the way under the by Obama administration, and it has been incrementally advanced every single administration since then. And, The US will have Russia and China in a situation where they're surrounded by hostile US proxies, and The US will be chipping away at Russia and China themselves. Just like The US is just outright attacking Russia with these drones, they will begin a process of of doing something similar with China, almost almost certainly.
Mean, this is what they're openly preparing to do.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's sometimes you wonder why the different leaders don't appreciate what's happening because on one hand, the the Trump is talking about how he wants the Ukraine war to come to an end because, you know, he's so appalled by all the killing and, you know, even though The US is still up to its eyeballs in terms of how it's involved. But at the same time, I saw The US only yesterday was The US secretary of energy, Chris Wright. He was in Croatia.
He's, you know, promoting Trump's peace pipeline peace yeah. Trump's peace pipeline framework in which he advocated how all these countries who have always been dependent on Russia for energy, well, that's a horrible position to be in. So they would all be liberated now, and they would have now American energy. And, again, it's, yeah, it's very in your face, but at the same time, it it also begs the question, well, the only reason why they would go for more expensive, and I would say less reliable American energy, would be because the war is going on. So, you know, to what extent can they afford to actually let the war die out?
I mean, towards the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev, you know, he made a point to the to the Americans that is if, know, we put an end to the Cold War, we we also have to recognize and and manage what this means for the power structures because the whole alliance systems, which put Washington, Moscow in a, I guess, a very powerful position, have become dependent on war. So if we end the Cold War, we also have to keep our hawks in mind that we have to walk away from some of this. But it does look like The US is prepared in any ways to walk away from this war. It's just shocking that the, yeah, the the European leaders don't don't seem to mind that they're just gonna be deindustrialized and be put in a situation of perpetual conflict with, you know, the world's largest nuclear power. It's yeah.
No. It's hard to see why. But but what do you see being the possibility, though, of keeping this Iranian thing going on long enough? Because in Europe, you could hand over the war to the Europeans. Fine.
They seem more than willing to throw away their economies and send their sons and daughters to die. But in the Middle East, you know, you can't hand over the war to the Gulf States. First of all, they don't have the capability, but also they they're not willing to fight either. How long can The United States keep in The keep itself in this position? Because it's bleeding out as well in terms of ammunition.
Speaker 1: Well, at the level that they were expending munitions from from the beginning of this most recent phase, because, again, The US has been on and off at at war with Iran since the end of the Biden administration, actually. People remember Israel as behalf of The US attacks Iran in late twenty twenty four. At that at that level of munition expenditure, there's no way they could continue sustaining it. But, of course, there's a ceasefire right now. Except, ceasefire or no ceasefire, the amount of energy coming out of the region and and going to Asia has been has been strangled, it has been reduced significantly.
I I would I would surmise that if energy does start flowing through, whether it's from Iran or first from some other states in the region, The US will just start it again for a week or two weeks, strike at maybe Karg Island, have Iran retaliate against energy production in the Persian Gulf Arab states, and reduce all of that capacity again and and thus reduce exports out of the region. So, again, The US has been building these otherwise completely irrational LNG export projects to Asia. The only way they make economic sense is if this war with Iran continues, And it doesn't have to continue at the pace The US was was pursuing it in the beginning. They just got it going. They did this initial damage.
Some people are saying it might take a year or more for some of the damage to be repaired in terms of of energy production and exports in in some of the Persian Gulf states. So all they have to do is maintain that and just keep the flow of energy under threat and reduced while they make this transition. We remember that the transition from Russian energy to American energy is in terms of Europe, that's still actually taking place. They had they still haven't completely cut themselves off from Russian energy. So it's a process that's gonna stretch over a couple of years.
The US wants to accelerate this as quickly as possible, but there's also a limit to how fast they can speed through this. They don't want to do it overnight because it would be too obvious. That's number one. Number two, it might it might create so much instability that nations might say, oh, look. Enough is enough.
We just you know, no matter how much we benefit from US policy, this is going to just literally just destroy our country, which it's going to do anyway, but these these people need to be kept in the delusion that somehow they're they're going to benefit by by cooperating with The US through every part of this. And that that includes the Persian Gulf Arab states, proxies of The US hosting US troops. And no matter what they say publicly, they're benefiting from this relationship, and they feel they're so far insulated from the worst consequences of it. I'm sure The US made all sorts of assurances to them, to their European proxies, that somehow down the road, this will all be better for them. That's what convinces them to go through these very, very difficult times.
That and the fact that, ultimately, if everything goes completely wrong, they have the financial means to just leave and go somewhere else and leave everyone in their country behind. I mean, that's that's ultimately what will happen to the Ukrainian population. Their their US proxy leadership could just leave and go somewhere else if everything went totally, catastrophic. And so that that's unfortunately where we're at, which means there won't be peace in Europe. There will not be peace in The Middle East, and this conflict is eventually going to migrate its way directly to Asia.
If you're here in Asia, of course, you see The US trying to encourage The Philippines to become more more militant towards China over these could they're like World War two rusted out shipwrecks that they're fighting over. It makes no sense at all, But the the Filipinos are doing it because The US told them to, because they're politically captured by The US. So that's why they're picking a fight with their largest import and export trade partner. And Japan, we see them becoming increasingly militarized. I was just watching a a senate hearing where they were celebrating how how bold Japan has become, how they're going to start exporting weapons.
They're making US Patriot missiles and exporting them back to The US. It's it's surreal, but it is actually happening. And considering the direction everything in Europe went and everything in The Middle East, the direction that has gone, I don't know why people would not expect and just assume it's going to continue in that direction here in Asia.
Speaker 0: Well, yeah, Romano Prodi, the former Italian prime minister and also former president of the European Commission, he made the prediction that at some point, Russian gas will come will start to be sent again to Europe, but only once the Americans have taken control of the pipeline infrastructure, that is to be able to get their cuts. So it's I think people, they do behind all this rhetoric of, you know, Russia did it or people on the sailboat. I mean, all of this stuff is all the nonsense. I think, you know, some people know what's happening, but as you said, there's no way of breaking out of this either. We also don't see that the connectivity connectivity between many of these Eurasian powers, it's also increasingly by land.
I mean, both the Chinese as well as the Russians have a very, you know, heavy land based infrastructure connecting with with Iran, be it road, rail, energy. How how do you see this fitting into the wider calculations of The United States to, I guess, disconnect Iran as a, you know, very strategic piece of real estate.
Speaker 1: Well, that's true. The the Belt and Road Initiative is is one massive Chinese project that stretches across Eurasia, and even beyond that, the massive reserves that China built up. I mean, this is all evidence that China knew this day was coming, and they invested heavily in preparing for it. Russia as well. I I remember, again, before 2014, I was wondering, you know, why why is Russia building its military up in the way that it was?
Because it it seems excessive at the time. But, of course, they could see all of this coming, and they were preparing for it. Iran has been doing the exact same thing. The the mosaic defense that I spoke about at the very beginning of the conflict, which almost certainly helped them prevail through at least this phase of the war, That was something that they had been preparing for years, the ballistic missile program. And as you mentioned, there's these linkages between Iran, Russia, and China overland.
I don't think that they're sufficient enough for, say, Iran to export energy to to China to replace what they were doing by sea. I mean, just transporting by sea is so much easier than, say, by rail. If there was a pipeline, that would be a different story, but there is no pipeline, not that I know of. So they prepared for this. The question is, did they prepare enough for this?
And what can, say, Russia, China, and Iran together do to, say, help the nations in in Asia that are now being forced to pick between no energy at all or placing themselves, under US energy dependence, which is a horrible place to be because they're not just going to sell you gas as an extra cost. As as expensive as it will be, there's always an additional cost of a political exchange that needs to be done The US will expect, and and they will use that energy as leverage. That's the whole reason they set this up. This is the leverage that they have over Europe, whether Europeans were agreeable to what they were telling them or not, and it will be the same case for Asia. So we have to kinda wait and see what's how this all works out.
I I know that Russia, Iran, and and China prepared for many, many years, decades in some cases, for this eventuality, but I'm not exactly sure how much they can do for, say, the rest of the multipolar world. The US is is pretty much trying to destabilize, strangle, and knock over and leave Russia, China, and Iran isolated and alone. I don't know I don't know what they can do. We have to I I have to look into it more.
Speaker 0: Regarding just as a last question, about this division of labor as you define it, what happens if these strategic allies, do not want to play this role or take on this burden? Because, I guess, one of the lessons from the Gulf States is, you know, what is the benefit for us? We host all this American bases, and it doesn't give us security. Instead, it it will crush us. And, you know, I'm assuming or hoping that one day the Europeans will come to the same realization that, you know, why why did we accept, you know, being frontline states for The United States as opposed to finding a common security architecture with the Russians as, you know, we initially agreed in the early nineties, you know, which would have prevented all of these conflicts and wars.
And if, of course, then East Asia as well, I mean, why to what extent? So what happens? So if these allies, be it Philippines or or any others, Japan, realize that this is not a great division of labor, that is they will be destroyed in in order to, you know, contain or weaken an adversary of The United States. Because I I keep making the point why I don't understand why the Ukrainians will continue to fight. You know, they could have gotten a good deal anytime over the past well, better deal, at least, was looking now over the past twelve years.
Every day, the deal will get much, much worse, and, you know, The US isn't there to help them. I'm just what what happens? At some point, surely, the allies must recognize that this, I guess, burden sharing is hardly equal.
Speaker 1: You you're absolutely right. If Europe, and that includes Ukraine or these countries in East Asia, Japan, South Korea, especially, if they had independent leadership, sovereign leadership, of course, they would say this arrangement makes absolutely no sense. The US is a liability. It's it's not going to protect us. Protect us from what?
What war would would South Korea be having with either North Korea or China when their China is their their largest trade partner, imports and exports. Why why would China wanna go to war with these countries that they're doing business with? And the same goes for Ukraine. Russia had no intentions of going to war with Ukraine before 2014. They Ukraine's one one of its largest trade partners at that time was Russia, And the only way this was flipped upside down was because of political capture by The US.
They got the independent sovereign leadership, however imperfect it was. People could argue how how well that that government worked for the Ukrainian people, but they scooped it out, and they replaced it with a handpicked client regime. And then they built up a whole structure around it to make sure that client regime stayed in power. Again, back to the New York Times admitting that the CIA took over all of their internal security apparatus. That means that no matter how the Ukrainians feel about it, US is going to be able to keep their handpicked client regime in power in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, they they seem to have the ability to do that through the European Union all across the rest of Europe, also in Japan and South Korea. It doesn't matter who the Japanese people or South Korean people vote for. They always get an obedient proxy, to The US. And so when you're faced with that sort of situation, unfortunately, there is no way out. This is why Ukraine is being consumed by this proxy war.
You you you said it perfectly. It makes no sense for Ukraine to continue. They had so many possible ways to get out of this, and they haven't. It's completely irrational, and it can only be the result of being politically captured. And an irrational handpicked client regime put in place serving US interests at the expense of Ukraine, Same goes for Europe.
Same goes for East Asia. And I I honestly don't know what the solution is. I mean, obviously, the people inside these countries need to try to find a way to organize against this. But it's just it's just so hard when your information space is under American control, your political space is under American control, and in many cases, US troops are literally occupying your country. South Korea, Japan, The Philippines host US troops.
Europe, I'm I'm sure you know, hosts thousands and thousands of US troops in in many countries across Europe. And so it's it's an empire. And so how do you fight an empire when you're inside and underneath the empire? It's very difficult. So there's no good answer to to that.
There's no appealing answer to that question. I guess it comes down to people dissatisfied with this working together with multipolarism to undermine the power The US uses to capture and control these countries and try to reverse it and try to help one country after another out from under US subordination. And we got we gotta hope that that that can work, and we have to try to work towards that.
Speaker 0: Well, let me squeeze in one last last question. That is well, if that's the allies, what about the opponents? Because it appears that whatever, you know, goodwill or enthusiasm there was about the Trump administration, that has faded away. And, you know, I remember I was at the Valdai meeting where the the Russian president attends as well when Trump was reelected, and, you know, there there there was, you know, some genuine optimism that I think, you know, that they thought this is someone we could work with, you know, get an end to this century of hostility between US and Russia. I mean, rationally, why do we have you know, what what are really our conflicting interests, especially now that the world becoming more multipolar?
And, you know, they they many believed in the rhetoric. I yeah. Again, I want to focus on past tense. I think this has all gone away, but that's kind of my point. It appears that many are waking up now to this strategic sequencing.
And, well, most of America's adversary, if you see the Iranians, you know, after two negotiations where they were where it was said they were close to deals before they had this surprise attack, And now, of course, after two of these, yeah, fake negotiations, they now had the negotiations in Islamabad, which were also well, I would put it frame it as a hoax. It doesn't seem very serious in any way. All The US has committed itself to the starting point of the Iranian 10 plan. It was thrown out the next day, so it it doesn't mean anything. And the same with the Russians.
They saw seven years of nonsense over the Minsk peace agreement, the Istanbul agreement was sabotaged by The US and UK, and now, you know, Trump has been just pulling them along all of you know, these are not serious negotiations anymore. And I think the Chinese will also come to this realization, if they haven't already, that The US isn't looking for a way to harmonize interest and manage competition. They're looking to knock out their rival. So what what does this mean? Do you think diplomacy is just dead?
Are we heading towards world war? How do you see this?
Speaker 1: Well, people have to understand that the the whole reason there was no change with the incoming Trump administration is because presidents are in charge of nothing. Congress is in charge of nothing. It is the unelected corporate financier monopolies inside The United States that are running everything, that are benefiting from everything, a $1,500,000,000,000 defense budget. That is the arms industry benefiting from that. Big oil is benefiting from these projects that they proposed, got approved by the US government under Obama, Trump, Biden, the the current Trump administration, projects that made absolutely no financial sense at all until wars of aggression were fought by The US to make them viable.
So when you have interests like that, we're driven by perpetual power and profit and ultimately global domination. You you cannot deal with a country like this, with diplomacy in the the way we we think about diplomacy. You there's there's nothing you can say to to it's like trying to negotiate with a virus that's eating your body alive. You you need to identify how it works and how to displace it, from the global body and push it back to a more proportional role with within the the the the global network of nations. And that's what that's what multipolarism basically is.
That's what is driving it. It is displacing US led unipolar hegemony. It is offering alternatives, not just in terms of how countries interact with one another, but corporations, goods and services that countries can get access to without fueling the corporate financier interests that are driving US, foreign and domestic policy. And so this is this is what's going to have to happen. People are going to have to forget about you know, The US will never accommodate anyone anywhere at any time.
They will never accept, you know, being a part of of the multipolar world. They want global domination. So as long as that's their obsession, multipolarism has to be resolute in displacing them from around the globe. Because everywhere you don't, just like a virus inside your body, if it's in that part of the body, it's going to to eat it away, and eventually, every everyone will get sick and die. And as, you know, as those with viruses, they end up killing their hosts in the process.
And that's what global empire has always done, has become unsustainable, and it itself ends up collapsing. And and so this is this is why multipolarism is so necessary. This is why that that is the solution. And I think I think Russia, China, many other countries have always understood this. They use diplomacy as a way of trying to make this transition from US led hegemony to a multipolar world as painless as is possible, that as you can see, there's still tremendous death and destruction and instability caused through this process.
We could only hope that it continues transitioning in the right direction, and it minimizes the death and destruction caused by by US aggression. I I still think it's too little at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, you once told me that to understand what The US is doing, don't listen to the words coming out of their mouths in Washington look at the policy papers, which have been funded by the arms industry through the think tanks they fund. And, yeah, sadly, that appears to be very, very, very true. And, yeah, it's I just think we're moving into a very dangerous area now that, essentially, the the vessels of The US is now signing up to be to go all in as frontline states while the adversaries have now become you know, have woken up to know that there are there is no diplomacy anymore. There's only delaying inevitable war. So it's, yeah, it's not a great position to be in.
Anyways, thank you so much for taking time. Do have any final thoughts before or final words before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. I just you know, a lot of people feel depressed when they hear these type of conclusions. But, again, multipolarism is a real thing. Everyone on every level, big and small, can invest in, and that's it's our only hope, and it's what we have to try to do. And even you and I, creating alternatives to Western media, basically Western propaganda.
We try to offer an alternative to what, US special interests are trying to force people to listen to and believe. This all, I think, does make a difference, and we all have to, in our own way, continue trying as what what else can we do? And as always, thank you so much for having me on.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: Araghchi Meets Putin as Russia Goes All-In on Iran https://youtu.be/h19ssmpSIEE https://t.co/vtzHDQpKTE
Video Transcript AI Summary
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and the host discuss escalating geopolitical tensions centered on Iran, Russia, China, and the United States, with examination of diplomacy, strategy, and international law.
- Wilkerson notes Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian’s meeting with Vladimir Putin and suggests Beijing should be part of any further diplomacy, saying the significance lies in Putin’s assertion that the US faces allies and cannot make headway unilaterally. He praises Wang Yi, Sergei Lavrov, and Abbas Kamel (Abbas Rishi) as true diplomats who execute their leadership’s will with finesse, contrasting them with what he sees as other actors.
- The host reflects on Russia’s wartime aims in Ukraine and Iran’s security concerns under sanctions, arguing that both Moscow and Tehran had reasonable demands (Ukraine’s neutrality/NATO expansion, ending US threats near Iran). He asks whether a durable common ground is possible or if the conflict will become protracted, with one side capitulating.
- Wilkerson outlines a broader, global contest he calls a renewed great game, with theaters in the Arctic (Russia inviting China to share its Arctic coast and potential new shipping routes), the Baltic states, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the bottom theater of Iran. He asserts the conflict is being waged against China through proxies and warns that a lack of leadership in the US, including figures like Rubio, Hegseth, and Trump, jeopardizes strategic interests.
- He discusses BRICS (including Russia, China, and India) and the potential for a 30,000-kilometer-per-hour Agni missile with a 5,000–7,000 mile range, highlighting its significance for multipolar alignment. He suggests this bloc could alter the global balance and accelerate moves away from US-dominated frameworks.
- The host asks about US misjudgment of Iran’s resilience. Wilkerson says the US assumed air power would compel compliance, a belief he says is flawed. He critiques the emphasis on JCPOA-like outcomes that appear to offer aTrumpian victory, rather than addressing ballistic missiles and other issues.
- The discussion touches international law, UNCLOS, and the Law of the Sea Treaty. Wilkerson argues the US should revisit and potentially revive international law, including UNCLOS, to manage straits like Hormuz and to reduce conflicts, noting that neither the US nor Iran has ratified UNCLOS. He criticizes the current administration for disregarding international law to serve strategic aims but stresses the need to reengage with treaties and norms.
- They address Iran’s nuclear issue. Wilkerson expects attempts to frame any deal as better than Obama’s JCPOA, potentially including transfer of uranium to Russia, while the Iranians may accept a negotiated arrangement if it halts bombing. They discuss possible Turkish mediation via law-of-the-sea frameworks and international law as a stabilizing mechanism, lamenting the fecklessness of the UN and the current UN Secretary General.
- The host notes Netanyahu’s difficulties in Lebanon and questions Israel’s future status as a Jewish state, predicting demographic and political challenges ahead.
- On Iran’s peace proposal, Wilkerson says Trump would likely reject it to preserve leverage and position for a JCPOA-like framework, arguing that the administration’s endgame is to claim a victory and move on, regardless of regional consequences.
- Finally, they anticipate a likely imminent phone call between Putin and Trump, predicting a tense exchange about Ukraine and US policy, with potential but uncertain outcomes. Wilkerson reiterates concerns about the broader multipolar shift, domestic political pressures in the US, and the risk of escalating conflicts without coherent strategy.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who spent decades in the US military from serving in the mid nineteen sixties during the Vietnam War to becoming the chief of staff to The US secretary of defense. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Secretary of state. Secretary of state. Oh, I That's
Speaker 0: so this mistake once before. Sorry. US secretary of state, not defense. I apologize. And thank you for the correction.
Colin Powell, I should add, which was, of course, quite a troubling time in The United States as well with the invasion of Iraq, and, I guess there's a lot of parallels to our present era. So I I wanted to start off with what's been happening very recently now. That is Iran's foreign minister, Haragh Shey, he went to Russia and has now met with president, Putin. And, you know, both their countries see themselves as fighting in an existential war in which The US, I guess, is a common adversary. What do you think, though, is the significance of this meeting?
Speaker 1: Well, what he needs to do now is drop by Beijing and see Xi Jinping. I think the significance of the meeting is pretty much summed up by the words that Putin uttered following the meeting. It was sort of to me like in your face empire. You may think that you're gonna pursue this to the nth degree, but this country that you're pursuing it against has allies. One of its allies is fairly formidable.
It's me. And if you wanna talk, I'm willing to talk, but you aren't gonna make much headway with this particular war. So why are you wedging it? I mean, that's kind of the way I read it. But what I'm really impressed with, again, I I had this conversation yesterday with another individual who is somewhat skeptical.
I said there are three true diplomats in the world, Wang Yi, Sergei Lavrov, and Abbas Rishi. They are proving their mettle, and and he actually came back with with this as a counter. Well, he's doing whatever the IRGC says because they're in control. They're in control. There's no one else in the Islamic Republic Of Iran in control but the IRGC, so he's doing whatever they want.
I said, bingo. Bingo. That's what a really good diplomat does. He does what his leadership tells him to do, and he does it with finesse. He does it with, dare I say, diplomacy.
He does it with quintessential skills. He doesn't deviate. Not a Witkoff, not a Kushner, not there to make billions of dollars off contracts that they can affect on the sides of the talks. He's there for the government such as it is and what it is, and he's doing their bidding, and he's doing it well. And this meeting with Putin was a quintessential example of that.
Oh, well, you're you're yeah. You can have your opinion. I have mine. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm I'm also thinking that the two countries, they there's other things in common. That is the absence of diplomatic solutions have resulted in what was initially quite reasonable demands being escalated to some extent. That is that is Russia initially had some demands of restoring Ukraine's neutrality. That is NATO's incursion into Ukraine was considered an existential existential threat. But in the absence of any political will or solution, this manifested itself into a territorial dispute where the Russians now are seeking to to control the territory that they can't afford ending up in the hands of NATO.
Now with the Iranians, it looks like they also had quite reasonable security concerns. That is, they can't live under crippling sanctions for decades more. They don't want to have the, perpetual military threats on their borders, and this essentially manifested itself into the crisis of, Hormuz as controlling this essentially allows them well, not just to have reparations and pressure on countries to stop threatening Iran by, well, not hosting US bases. But, you know, if if there was any serious negotiations, some of these things could be solved. But, you know, for the Russians, they saw seven years of, you know, sabotaging the Minsk agreement and sabotaging Istanbul.
The Iranians, of course, had two negotiations ending up in surprise attacks, and now, yeah, these negotiations don't seem serious either. So how do you see us going from here on? Is this gonna be essentially a war in Iran and Russia? Well, mainly focusing on Iran, which will just end in one side capitulating, or do you think there is a, I guess, a common ground? Let
Speaker 1: me back up, if I may, to what my original conception. I never remember whether I've discussed it with you at length or others, but let me just rehearse it a bit here. I think what we're looking at, as I've said many times before, is we are engaged in a global struggle. Call it the great game renewed, if you will. But we're engaged in a global struggle.
I see it developing in the Arctic, majorly in the Arctic right now because Russia has invited China at China's request, something we denied China when they asked, for example, to be a member of the Arctic Council, up to the Arctic. And essentially saying, you can share with me my coast on the Arctic, which happens to be the longest, most effective. Canada may have a few more kilometers, but Russia's got the most effective coastline on what is going to be a new passage for commerce and other things. So that's the top of the theater. The middle of the theater, if you will, is the Baltic and the Baltic states who are trying their best to start a war with Russia.
The center of the theater, if you will, is Ukraine. And then next to that is Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and The Caucasus in general, and Central Asia even more in general. And then the bottom is Iran. And it's all about and I don't know if Donald Trump knows this. I don't think he does.
He's too stupid to know this. But there are people behind Donald Trump who know this. There are people in the Pentagon who know this, and I don't mean Pete Eggs out. We are waging a global conflict with China through proxies, and that's what this is all about at the top of the strategic spectrum, if you will. And if if you don't follow that from the perspective of the mistakes we're making, then you're missing what is really going to eliminate this empire in a far shorter time than I thought it would take to eliminate it.
And by eliminating, I don't mean 340,000,000 people are going away, but I mean the power of the empire is dwindling rapidly. And it's all under Donald Trump's leadership. It's all under Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio's leadership. So I have to think that they do know a little bit of what about what they're doing. And what they're doing, of course, is what stupid people do, and Clausewitz is full of this sort of thing.
When they're losing, they double down on whatever it was they were doing. In our case, it's two things and two things only, sanctions and military power, military power and sanctions. So that's the landscape, I think, that you have to look at, that we're going after China through various proxies. That's the reason, for example, this morning, I had a long conversation with a person from Ukraine who wants Zelenskyy gone, wants him gone, and cited polls to me, which I don't doubt. Polls showing that 60 to 80% of the Ukrainians want him gone too.
But he's managing the polls. He's managing the word that comes out of Ukraine, and most people aren't getting this. But the Ukrainians want this to stop. They want it to be over with. And I'm telling her, I'm sorry.
It isn't going to be because you are a pawn in a much bigger global struggle, and Iran is just the latest chapter in it. I think other leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping in particular, but also Modi in India, who is hosting, you may know, the next BRICS conference in India next month as I understand it. And I just stumbled on some really interesting information. They've just developed the Agni, a g n I, I believe it is, five, which is a 30,000. Yeah.
You heard me right. 30,000 kilometer per hour missile. It's road transportable. It's erectable on the road, fireable on the road. It has a 5,000 mile range with a 7,000 mile capability if it's extended.
This is an incredible missile that no golden dome could ever even dream of stopping, and it has nuclear warheads, of course. So BRICS is coming up as an alternative, of course, but it's coming up very slowly, and maybe this is gonna speed it up, accelerate it. But it is coming up as an alternative to individual countries regardless of their alliances like Russia and China disputing all this. So it's gonna be 60% or better of the world disputing all this. Into this comes the Iran conflict, which has its own below that level of geopolitical discussion.
It has its own exigencies. And they are things like we might be in recession by June. We might be in depression, global depression by September if we keep this crap up. So the big question to me is how much longer will the idiots in charge of us, Rubio, Hegseth, and Trump, go on with this at the behest of the people behind the curtains if the people behind the curtains are gonna start tweaking them a bit because they understand this is gonna be a disaster. Unless unless they're all queued up to jump ship.
Unless they're all queued up to go elsewhere as it were. And I I don't know what the answer to that question is, but I'm seeing this happen. And I'm thinking to myself all the time I'm watching it happen. Man, this is a disaster. This is a disaster from Russia breaking the Monroe Doctrine again and sending another ship to to Cuba, to Turkey, Erdogan, deciding to send help to Cuba, to what's going on in Iran, what's going on elsewhere, and saying the empire seems to be Washington seems to be oblivious to all this at the superficial level of Donald Trump.
So how do we get out of this? How do we even arrest this momentum towards our own demise that is really accelerating? At the same time, we deal with our domestic problems, which are deepening, and get rid of Trump and get rid of this administration so we can get some sense into what we're doing. If you wanna continue to pursue this strategy, that's fine. It's a strategy.
You can do it, but you've gotta be smarter. You have got to be smarter because the other side is not stupid, and the other side is winning to include in Southwest Asia. Go back to how it's All Ron has to do to win is not lose. All we have to do to win is a spectacular victory, achieve a spectacular victory. Bibi is proving in Lebanon right now that he is an idiot suddenly.
I always thought he was smart. If devious, if demented, homicidal, maniacal, and so forth, yes, all those things, genocidal, all those things. A Hitler, yes, all those things. But I thought he was smart enough to realize not to take on something that would destroy him almost in his face, and he's doing that in Lebanon. He's doing that in Lebanon.
And we're aiding and abetting it, of course. I don't know to what extent, but I think we are aiding and abetting it, ammunition, things like that. So that that's a frenetic summary, but we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in the empire, and we have no leadership whatsoever. No leadership that knows what's going on, that understands it, and can deal with it in at least a halfway smart way.
Speaker 0: It seems like this crisis, it works on so many levels. That is the Trump administration is now in a crisis. You can argue that even The US Republic, definitely the US Empire, but also the wider international system. Everything appears to be cracking at at the moment of and I I was wondering, though, with with the war now against Iran, not just the initial attack and assumption that it could be defeated, but also the the the the assumed exit strategy or the the failure to accept how what kind of peace they would have to, well, have to accommodate if if they want to put an end to this war. I'm just wondering, how do you see The US mid misjudging Iran's resilience as well as its willingness to absorb all this economic and military pain?
Because it based on this initial what seemed to be an initial assumption about a weekend victory, it it seems it was so predictable that this would go so terribly wrong. So how do you think they ended up in this situation?
Speaker 1: They didn't recognize, as I've said many times before, the nature of the conflict. They thought it was just another deal where they go out and bomb people, and after a few bombs fell or a lot of bombs fell, those people would be compliant. That's not happening, so they don't know what to do. And with the air force officers, chairman of the joint chiefs, I feel like that is actually feeding it because the air force is the service in the empire that thinks that bombs solve all problems. They don't.
They never have. They never will. I think we're at a point now, if if you parse some of the tactical language around Trump right now, we're at a point where they are desperately searching for what I will call something as good as the JCPOA, but has attached to it an aura of Trumpian victory. So that's how they boil this down to a way to escape. It doesn't count on Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett and Lapid screwing it up, which they probably will try to do.
But what they wanna do is they wanna achieve some kind of JCPOA like agreement that looks like it's much better than the JCPOA, has a longer timeline, if you will, has more things included in it that the IAEA can check up on and so forth, that bastard organization that really belongs to us still, and come out of the war with this triumph that they got something better than Obama got. Look what Trump got you. Look what we did in terms of the nuclear program. I think they boiled it down pretty much to that. They're prepared to forget the ballistic missiles.
They're prepared to forget all the other things that we once said. We're absolutely adamant in terms of determining whether or not we quit this war or not. They're just looking for a nuclear agreement that they can tout, hold up, and say, we've achieved what we wanted to achieve. That probably includes someone like Russia taking the highly enriched uranium for an interim period of time or forever in practice. I don't know.
But I think that's where they are now with regard to a prima facie end end of this conflict. I don't know if they're gonna get that or not. The Iranians, if they're smart, will detect that, and they are smart, and they will probably go along with it and work out a deal, and that'll stop the bombing at least. And maybe the straight will go back to some kind of normal practice. Don't know.
I made a comment on Turkish radio the other day yesterday. God, I can't keep up anymore. About how we ought to Valenasser was on there and Ronnie and I and living in London. And they kinda poo pooed this. But I said, you know, if you went back to the law of the sea treaty, you would not only be returning to international law in an almost total absence of it created mostly by the empire, but you would have some practical solutions to this.
You could have a framework within the law of the sea treaty about archipelagos and straits and certain straits like the Strait Of Malacca, the Bab Al Mandeb, and the Strait Of Hormuz, and a few others in the world that are critical, really critical for economic travel and and for global success in that travel. And you could forge a a treaty compliant, reinvigorating the law of the sea treaty regime that Iran would accept and that we would accept. Why don't we do that? Well, nobody wants to this is characteristic of what I deal with. Nobody wants to return the international law.
International law is dead. Well, if you wanna go there, then you wanna be purely Hobbsian. You wanna join John Mearsheimer. If you wanna say, the world is back according to Hobbs, and we aren't gonna have any international law, no international criminal court, no law of the sea treaty, nothing. We're just going back to rape, pillage, and plunder, and he with the biggest gun to plunder and rape is gonna win.
That's where we're going. I don't understand that. Why don't we wanna resurrect one aspect at least of it and give it some oomph, give it some success? I know the United Nations is feckless right now, particularly with this secretary general and this security council, but let's try it. Let's try it.
Let's go back and say, okay. We're gonna affect the law of the sea treaty with regard to this straight. It's a very important straight. Interestingly, the way I read the treaty is you would comply with about 75 of what Iran apparently wants, and you would comply with about 50% of what we want. But most of all, you would comply with the world's need to have the straight open and functioning.
And you could get all these ships out of the way. You could get people going again. And so but we're not gonna do that probably because, one, we don't understand international law. Two, we're not signatory to the law of the sea treaty, although we have said we will comply with it and do largely, and we're the largest enforcer of it. What is freedom of navigation operations by the empire?
What is it about except law of the sea treaty and enforcement thereof? Glenn, I don't understand these people. I I do not understand them except that I go back to my original comments. They're all so frightened of losing and losing big time to China and maybe a consortium of China, India, Russia, the BRICS in general, that they'll do anything to stop that. They'll kill anybody.
They'll bomb anybody. They'll sanction anybody. They'll do anything to stop that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's well, I think I saw Hagsteth there. No. Or no. Sorry.
It was Marco Rubio referred to the Strait Of Hormuz as international waters. It's technically, it's not international waters, but as you suggested, UN the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, it it then permits or, yeah, allows for passage, transit, you know, for the purpose of passage. The problem is that neither The United States nor Iran, though, has actually ratified UNCLOS, so the United Nations Commission on the Law of Sea. And as you suggested, this is exactly what they both should. I think this is the role of international law, as you suggest.
That's one of the problems of our time because, you know, international law in accordance with the UN Charter established after World War two was when there was a balance of power. So both sides have an incentive to accept some restraints on themselves in return for a reciprocity from the other side. I think after the Cold War, you know, if states don't balance themselves, you would assume that the political West would begin to shed constraint on itself, embrace new concepts, like humanitarian interventionism, democracy promotion, anything that removes constraints for us but keep it on others. But that was that was predictable in a unipolar world when there's one you know, why would the one center want a law that restricts itself? But now that we're pivoting or already back in a multipolar world, it doesn't make much sense to assume that other countries will abide by rules which we're looking for, you know, exemption from.
But
Speaker 1: What way, though, to give give some oath back to the UN and particularly to UNCLOS? You have Iran claiming that because they are signatory to the nonproliferation treaty as well as the additional protocol, and even beyond that, my understanding when I was a state, they have gone in terms of their promises and written promises to the United Nations with regard to their nuclear program, and they're not signatory to the law of the sea treaty. Come on, country. You can't pick and choose like that. You're looking more like the empire.
You can't do that. And I know why that is because Amadina Judd told me in New York at the UN General Assembly Group, why? And I know. Yeah. You you were looking at the Strait Of Hormuz, and you're saying you don't want it to be ruled by UNCLOS.
Sorry, dude. You don't get to pick and choose like that. Now if we had a decent secretary general, if we had a secretary general like Helen Clark would have been, had we not stopped her from becoming secretary general, You'd have some remonstrances on the world stage. You'd have her standing up and saying, you peckers, get in there and get this straightened out. If you want, I'll help you.
I'll bring a hammer with me. That's the way they ought to be operating, but they're not. And they're not operating that way because Gutierrez has no guts. He has no courage. When we picked him, we picked him for that very reason.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, on the international law, it's I I think the nonproliferation treaty is a good example. Well, first of all, international law must mean something. There has to be some interest in abiding by rules. And if I look at the proliferation, countries like Libya and Iraq who gave up their weapons of mass destruction programs, they were destroyed, while North Korea and Pakistan who developed their nuclear weapons are safe.
So that's some it's very much the wrong message one wants to send to the world. And same as with Iran, they signed a nonproliferation treaty, so they should have the right for a civilian nuclear program. But now they're told they're not. Meanwhile, Israel, which didn't sign it, has acquired nuclear weapons, and there's no consequence. So, you know, you can only do this for so long before the the fabric, the international law itself begins to fall apart.
But I agree. I don't think the solution should be to just walk away and embrace the chaos. There has to be some efforts to revive it. But my my point is always then we also have to accept it because the unipolar moment is gone. We can't just demand others follow the rules while we exempt.
But
Speaker 1: I agree a 100%. In fact, I think it's more important that we, if you're referring to Europe and The United States in particular, follow it than others. It's absolutely important that we do it because we are the enforcers, really, when it comes time to implement Mao Zedong's dictum that international law comes out of the barrel of a gun. We're the Russia, China, Us, India perhaps, we're the enforcers of it. And if we refuse to enforce it, it's feckless.
It's ridiculous. And sometimes, empires in particular need to do things that are against their interest in the immediate term, but in their interest in the long term. We've lost that idea. We've lost that concept. I'm not even sure it enters Donald Trump's mind.
I'm not sure anything with regard to the relations of nations enters Donald Trump's mind other than money.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, that's why I hear that when Heksef talks about international law as something that constrains The US, then it's yes. It is. That's what law does. It's constrains, but it also constrains the other guy.
The assumption that the other guy will allow himself to be constrained if our side does not, it's it's absurd. Again, if there's a unipolar distribution of power, it can go on for some time, but not in any other situation. I do wanna pick up on something you said before, though, that you said the Baltic states seem very eager to start a war with Russia. I assume that you're referencing the drone attacks on Russia, which well, I think it's more or less confirmed now that it's originating from the Baltic states. I would even be doubtful if they even just transit the Poland and the Baltic states because that's quite a long flight.
It seems almost more likely that they're launched from the Baltic states as well. But what what do you think this means, though? I because it's a weird time to pick a war with Russia when the Americans no longer stand behind the Europeans. This is, understand there's a need to escalate when the war isn't going, Europe's way, but I can't seems suicidal.
Speaker 1: I can't explain it except in the terms that you just ended with suicidal. And that is that they think that if they get a real hot war with Russia started with a NATO member, that we'll be back. We'll be back with bells and and banjos. We we'll be back fully. We won't have any choice.
I got news for them. This administration, at least, doesn't think that way as far as I can tell. If you get into a war with Russia, you're on your own. And Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, you don't want a war with Russia. You really don't, especially not a Russia now that's hard pressed in two theaters, the Southwest Asian theater and the Ukrainian theater.
And with the empire basically succeeding in one aspect of the struggle in Ukraine, and that is defying reality in terms of Ukraine. As I was saying, the woman in Ukraine who's talking about the polls, I think she's being honest. I think I've followed her for a good while. I don't know what the percentage is, but it's well over half of Ukrainians want this damn war over. They want it over, and they want the squads that come and steal their children to put them in the front lines to stop.
They want the killing to stop. They want the dying to stop. And yet Zelensky persists because the Europeans to an extent and America to an extent and larger extent than I thought from something I heard yesterday. At least I think it's reliable. We are still backing backing Zelenskyy 100%.
Still smuggling things into him, still sending things openly into him. So, you know, okay. You're at war with China, but are you prepared to accept that in this war with China, this pseudo war with China, this prior to the big war with China, are you willing to accept all these casualties? The apparent answer is yes. And the apparent answer, I suppose, with regard to the Baltic Sea and the areas impinging there on, is it okay if you wanna strike the bear in its cave, so to speak, go ahead.
That's alright with us. And I'll get on the phone, and I'll call Saint Petersburg or Moscow or wherever Putin happens to be, and I'll say, this isn't me. Handle it on your own. And then I'll go away gleefully and say, another another problem created for the people who are most opposed to us, China and Russia. I don't know, Glenn.
I really don't. It it I cannot ferret out any coherence to this administration. None whatsoever. In any sphere can I ferret out any coherence in in the sphere of Venezuela, of Cuba, of and now we got Turkey helping Cuba? So we got two countries violating the Monroe Doctrine on Cuba's behalf.
I've got another tanker as I understand it, Russian tanker headed for Cuba, also full of oil. And we don't seem to have anything but tactics to display against this wider tapestry of strategy that aims at us. I'm gonna be I wish I were a fly on the wall at this meeting in India. I would particularly like to hear what Modi has to say and how that is impacted by and adjusted to by Russia and China. Because the three formidable powers in this group, truly formidable powers, India, because of its population, as I said, its growing military capability.
This missile, the Agni five, apparently was developed by what the the d d r d o or some development and something in India. It's an incredible missile. It's better than anything we have. It's better than anything we have in our arsenal if the facts being published about it are true, and it's nuclear. So this is a formidable alliance developing even with Russia and China as the sole partners.
But with India in there and then other Asian countries coming along because they see the handwriting on the wall, this is a formidable alliance. We can take this alliance on all day long. We're gonna lose. We're gonna lose badly.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, about the Russian, though, I think there was Ottoman Bismarck. He allegedly said something along those lines that it's easy to to lure the Russian bear out of its cave, but it's much more difficult to put it back in. And I Yep. I think that's, you know, summarizes the situation we're in.
If you wanna provoke a conflict with Russia, yes, it's one thing if but but if it doesn't work, this, you know, with Iranians, it was this decapitation strike with the Russian. It was, you know, bleeding them white. But when it doesn't work, there's no way of putting an end to this. And I think this is the same problem we're seeing now with Iran. Again, I think it was considered you know, it's a bit of a gamble if the cap decapitation strike wouldn't work.
Okay. We'll just put an end to it and, you know, try again another day, but it seems as if the the Iranians refused to go back to the way things were. That's why I was also wondering, how do you think if there's a central defeat for The US in Iran, what what does it actually mean, you think, in terms of, I guess you know, it's not a military defeat. The US army is not gonna be defeated, but it would be a political, geopolitical, as well as an economic defeat, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're gonna lie about it as much as they possibly can, and they still got a MAG at center that believes them. They're gonna fashion it as a success. And as I said, they're gonna haul out whatever agreement Iran makes with them on the nuclear program as an indication of better than Obama. It's successful, and everyone will forget about all the other things we demanded because that'll be at the heart of it. And maybe it'll include something really visible and obvious like uranium going to Russia for five years or, you know, some other provision where whereby the Iranians seem to concede a lot rather than not much at all.
I don't know. But I I I'm sensing that that's at the heart of what they're talking about right now is declaring victory and getting out. And the way you declare victory is you achieved some kind of a nuclear agreement that you can tout as better than the one Obama achieved. And that's it. That that's their limited view right now after all these expansive things they've talked about from ballistic missiles to never have any uranium ever again in in Iran to really regime change, which, of course, is what Bibi wanted and what Bibi told them in that now highly reported meeting what Bibi told them was possible, possible very easily.
And now look at Bibi. Bibi is about to lose his ass in Lebanon. I mean, they're getting their rear end handed to them in Lebanon. And pretty soon, if they keep on doing what they're doing, is to kill any Lebanese citizen visible on the horizon at any moment of any day even though there's a ceasefire. If they keep keep on doing that, they're gonna even destroy the one possible ally they have in Lebanon, which is the government, of course.
And he's done. He's toast. I think it's really questionable whether he is gonna make it through this election period. If make it through in terms of being reelected and make it true in terms of maybe even being alive. But who knows?
And I don't think Lapid and and Bennett will be any better than Netanyahu. So we still have the same problem. We just have a lesser light, if you will, in terms of the brainpower managing that problem in in in Israel. And I still cling to my supposition and my prediction, not a supposition or prediction, that Israel won't be here as a Jewish state. It's gone.
It's done. It can stay as a democratic state, a real democracy, not the apartheid state it is today, accommodating all the citizens that might be members of it. And eventually, of course, the Palestinian population topping the Jewish population, which won't be hard now because I'm as I've said before, I think I've heard a million, a million and a half have already left. It's not a safe haven anymore. That was the promise to all those European Jews.
You need a safe haven. Go there. Go to Palestine. You'll have a safe haven. It'll be yours.
Blah blah blah blah blah. It isn't safe. It isn't safe at all. If they didn't have those bomb shelters, half of Israel would be dead right now.
Speaker 0: No. I think, yeah, after this this wars are over, the world will look very different. Just my last question is perhaps I should have started with this question. It's Iran recently put forth a proposal to to United States, and there's some indications that Trump is well, it's at least signaling that he will reject the Iranian offer if he hasn't already done so. What do you make of this peace proposal?
Speaker 1: I think you've gotta do that if you're Trump because you can't seem to be so forthcoming with the first, you know, offer. This isn't the first offer, but with with any offer that seems premature, you've you've gotta fight until the moment comes when you can do the JCPOA over again, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Messed the acronym up even now. Until you can top that in the vernacular, in the way you present it, you can't accept things that look like they would impact that in a negative way. So you've gotta get the Iranians down to the point where they at least are sending things that look like that's the issue, and then you claim victory, and you you leave. That's not gonna please Netanyahu at all, and it's not gonna please those powers that think that this is perhaps one of the most important, if not the most important theater in this campaign against China.
Now not to say you couldn't I don't know how much damage we've done to the Southern Railroad. I don't know what China's ability to repair and Iran's ability to repair that is. I doubt it'll be an Iranian top of the list priority to repair it. Probably will be for the Chinese, though, and it will give the Chinese additional access to Iran on the ground in order to help them do that. But I'm not so sure that's gonna make any difference to this administration, which is increasingly going to be captured by the fact that they are going to be absolutely blown away in the midterms and the Republican party with them.
I think Virginia's recent vote on its redistricting issue is a good indication of that, but it's just one indication. I think there are others all across the country, and I think it's just gonna get worse for them. So their their focus is gonna be increasingly domestic, especially those people who are the vilest people in the administration, in my view, other than Exeth whose focus is, of course, gonna be overseas. But I think they're gonna be just totally consumed as we approach the midterms, either with the chicanery and the downright skullduggery they throw out to try and reverse the situation or with the situation itself where they're gonna lose so badly or both, probably both. I think it's gonna be a disaster, utter disaster for the Republican Party.
Speaker 0: Let me squeeze in one last last question. Now with the meeting between the Iranian foreign minister and and Putin in the sorry. That's yeah. In sorry. In in Russia.
What it seems to signal that the Russians are now all in in terms of their backing of Iran. How do you think this you know, do think it will impact The US Russian relationship anyway? Because, you know, they're trying to solve their own, you know, their own proxy war in in Ukraine. And I think the patience kind of is running out a bit in Moscow anyways. I think, you know, this will probably good for Putin to some extent because it's being seen as weak by essentially, you know, playing along with this, you know, all fake diplomacy while This US is still engaged in, well, a proxy war against Russia.
But how do you think it's gonna, yeah, shape or shake relations shape relations between The US and Russia?
Speaker 1: I think that might depend on what is going to be an inevitable phone call between Putin and Trump. How soon it comes is anybody's guess. My guess would be sooner than later. And it's gonna be a tap a testy phone call. Both men are gonna start out probably with amenities and, you know, the pleasantries and so forth, and then it's gonna get down to Putin saying, you haven't done what you promised to do, and I'm very, very unhappy with it with regard to Ukraine.
And Trump's saying, well, you just stood up with the foreign minister of the country I'm most violently at war with right now and said you were on his side, and then it'll go from there to wherever it goes. But the two men have a habit of working something out, however ephemeral it might be, especially on Trump's side. But I would I would expect at least a fifty fifty chance that this workout, this solution won't be so ephemeral because of all the things I've just described that even Trump, Luddite that he is, is probably aware of more and more. I haven't even mentioned Epstein. It keeps just raising its ugly head every time I pick something up, and it's still there.
It's still going full bore. Iran has not wiped it out. Maybe it has with the MAGA core, but it hasn't wiped it out with 60% of Americans. And so he's got all these problems he's gotta deal with domestically as well as Putin, ultimately, Jinping and maybe Modi and the Bricks in general. I don't know that he has the wherewithal in his head, in his brain to do to deal with this.
So then you have to ask, does his cabinet and I I look at Besson. I look at Patel. I look at Rubio. I look at Hagsef, and I say, no. He doesn't.
So how does Putin not come out of this with promises that Trump won't keep or worse, no promises at all? But I do think that phone call is imminent.
Speaker 0: Well, it's always a great pleasure to speak with you, my friend, and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this. And, yeah, have a great day.
Speaker 1: You too. Take care, and Hail Norway.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alastair Crooke: Iran War Is Now a Global War for World Order https://youtu.be/OW3_a-oUrVQ https://t.co/wuDe1yM6ch
Video Transcript AI Summary
In a discussion on the risk of a broader war with Iran and Russia, Alastair Crook discusses the current state of Iran-related negotiations and strategic calculations. He notes a lot of propaganda and confusion, and asserts there has been a substantive change, though it’s important to understand what that change is. He mentions there was never a proposal for Aradshi to meet with Kushner or Whitcroft in Islamabad; Trump called that a fantasy, stating there was no point to talks until Iran and its allies produced a plan of what they want. He recalls that Iran’s negotiating position was outlined in a ten-point plan given to the Americans for Islamabad talks, which Trump described as a realistic basis for discussion, and notes that the points have not changed. He reflects on the JCPOA, rereading it and considering what Iran would want to return to, suggesting the JCPOA feels like a “parole from prison” given the military bases, sanctions, UN resolutions, and IAEA inspections that would accompany a return. He describes Iran’s new investigation process principles as not discussing the nuclear issue until Iran has resolved questions about the war, the blockade of Hormuz, sanctions, and the seizure or refitting of tanker ships by US officials. Iran says it will discuss Hormuz and a potential discussion of CICEFAR later, and possibly military issues later; Khalibat tweeted that Trump claims “he has all the caste,” but Iran says “one is Hormuz” and Iran controls Hormuz while threatening to continue, and can also control the Bab al-Mandab, the Red Sea, and pipelines. He notes the American blockade is porous, with vessels passing through, and explains Iran’s ongoing oil earnings during the war—citing that four tankers recently earned nearly $1.8 billion, with Iran continuing to move tankers along the coast into territorial waters. He emphasizes Iran is not prepared to capitulate and suggests Iran is a civilizational, revolutionary state, not just a conventional nation-state.
Crook then analyzes prospects for negotiated settlement. He argues there is no path to a simple solution, comparing the situation to Brexit, and identifies two major roadblocks. The first is Trump, whose approach to Iran is influenced by dislike of Obama and the desire to present a better JCPOA to outdo Obama; he asserts that a deal more favorable than Obama’s JCPOA would still face opposition from Netanyahu and Koali, and suggests Trump’s incentive would be to present a symbolic win like 430 kilograms of enriched uranium handed over as a trophy, which Iran is unlikely to do. He discusses Vance’s Islamabad discussions and wonders whether Trump would accept a deal that extends timelines and increases monitoring if it is not a “win” for Trump. The second barrier is Israel, where Netanyahu faces pressure over war outcomes against Iran and Hezbollah; Crook describes Israel’s shift toward a more messianic, apocalyptic stance, and cites Israeli defense minister Katz’s apocalyptic language. He argues restraint is unlikely in Israel and suggests Israel may push the United States to continue the war, though he questions whether this aligns with American interests.
Crook contends that if a settlement with Trump is possible, it would still require addressing Israel, which may not cooperate. He notes European Union insistence that sanctions on Iran will not come off for values or regime change reasons, and positions this within a broader context of a multipolar world where Western actors struggle to adapt to new power dynamics. He reiterates that Iran’s objective is to break the paradigm of sanctions and Western control, including the dollar hegemony and the financialized world, and to resist the imperial structures backing those policies. He concludes by observing that the war is a broader contest that could threaten the American-led world order, and that the time is on the side of Iran in a material sense due to its revenue from oil and control of Hormuz, while Western economies face cost of living pressures and potential shortages.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is 04/27/2026, and I have the great pleasure of being joined by Alastair Crook, who is a renowned British diplomat and negotiator who worked for decades on, yeah, addressing conflicts in The Middle East. Yeah. Alistair Crook is also the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and the link to this great substack can be found in the description. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Always a pleasure joining you.
Speaker 0: So it seems that we are, you know, in the risk of a greater war with both Iran and Russia, but I thought we can start with Iran. First of all, there's a lot of confusion here. That is, are we you know, are the peace negotiations still going on? Is is the ceasefire actually still here? But overall, I I also see the problem of how we can end this war.
That that is is The United States seeking an end to the Iran war? And if so, what do you think is the possible off ramp or exit strategy of The United States?
Speaker 1: Well, there is a lot of propaganda, and there's a lot of confusion. Most of it is propaganda. A lot of it is propaganda. So, I mean, okay, because there has been a substantive change take place, and we ought to try and understand that. But first of all, to say that there was never a proposal for Aradshi to meet with Kushner or Whitcroft in Islamabad.
This was a fantasy created by Trump, but it was not it doesn't refer to any plans or proposals. Trump has said very clearly, well, you know, there was really no point to having any talks with them until they get their act together and produce a plan of what they want. We don't know what they want, but, of course, he does because what Iran wants was sped out very clearly in a 10 plan that was given to the Americans for the Islamabad talks in which Trump said was a realistic basis for discussion, if you recall, at that time. So they they have put out very clearly in those 10 points the negotiating position, and they haven't changed for it except now. And for some time, I've been saying and I I looked through and reread the JCPOA even though I've been one way or another dealing with it for more than twenty years.
The I reread it, and I looked at that, and I saw, what on earth would Iran want to go back to that? It's like, you know, being on parole from prison. You know, you've been on parole for a few weeks' leave, and then, you know, the the prison gate is opening, and you're gonna go back into your cage. I mean, not a literal cage, but a cage you've been surrounded by military, American military bases everywhere, the cage of sanctions, of tariffs, of UN resolutions, resolutions, of IEA inspections. I mean, would you want to go back to that?
And what's happened over the last few days and what Haraji's been busy with, what he went to Pakistan to do was to tell them their new investigation process principles, which are basically simply not that different except one bombshell event. They're not prepared to discuss the nuclear issue. They're not prepared to discuss it until they have resolved the points about the war, about the blockade of Hormuz, about the attacks on them and on Iranians and and also the sanctions that are being imposed, you know, that tankers are being seized and, or or refitted and seized by US officials. So they said, this is it for the moment. These are the things we're going to discuss.
We're going to discuss Hormuz, and we're going to discuss CICEFAR or not, may not be, and we're going to discuss the ending of the attacks on on us and on others like Hezbollah in Lebanon. So we're going to deal with that. Maybe later, we'll talk about military issues. That's what they say. And Khalibat did a a tweet, I think, last night, and he said, Iran, you know, Trump keeps saying he has all the caste, but listen to our caste.
One is Hormuz. We control Hormuz, and we'll continue. We are able to control Babalmanda and the Red Sea, and we can control pipelines. And what have they got on the other side? Well, they got a naval blockade, and the question really he didn't put it in these terms, but I'm saying, which is the shorter timeline?
The the timeline between the Iranian blockade, which is passable. It's open to specific vessels. But what is the timeline between that creating serious damage in the western economy and the timeline of the Trump and American naval blockade, which is not very much observed, which is really quite porous, block vessels have been passing through out of style. How long before that puts real pain on Iran? And the answer is contrary to what Trump believes that, you know, after the April 26 yesterday, no no Iran's oil supplies, it's all gonna crash and they'll be broke.
It's not true. I mean, first of all, Iran is continuing to get tankers out by following the coast very closely into territorial waters, getting their tankers out, loaded tankers out. They have been earning more in a month of the war. They're earning earning twice what they ever earned in the best years beforehand. Just one day, you know, four four tankers leaving Cargillon a little while ago produced an income with seven and a half million barrels of oil, produced an income of just under $1,815,000,000.
They have oil at sea. They have something they before the war, they put 200,000,000 barrels at sea. They have a 130 left, I think. 100 well, a 100 to a 130. So they can go on for months, really.
And we and in any case, though, it's a misunderstanding of the nature of Iran and the nature of their strategy to see if they're about to capitulate or or or to to surrender. And we go into the reasons for that. But they are not just the usual nation state that you you take out a baseball bat and you bash them and you take away all their money, and then they'll come on their knees and beg beg for your indulgence. So, I mean, Iran is, in many ways, a very different vehicle. It started as a revolt against Western modernity where he influenced the state coup d'etre and others, but it was always a civilizational state, civilizational and a revolutionary state, and not just a sort of nineteenth century linear autocratic ideation that tried to enforce a national identity.
They deliberately didn't force a national identity, and they felt, you know, Islam was a civilizational element in it. So I don't think I think that, you know, the calculation the Iranians feel is in their favor, and I don't think they are thinking of I don't know that. I I admit it. Daily. I don't know how long whether they intend ultimately if they bought the right deal to to talk about the nuclear issue.
I don't think there's any chance of Iran handing over 430 kilos of enriched uranium to the American ever. But so we're in in in a slightly new era, which is why I think this going on in in Washington because the Trump's hope, I think, for, you know, finding a quick and neat solution to this to this conflict evaporating. I know there are people who who who feel that, you know, a solution could be put together. I don't see a path to the solution, and I can explain why it's like Brexit.
Speaker 0: You know, actually, yeah, that's my next question. I was gonna ask what stands, what prospects are for, yeah, for a negotiated settlement. But, yeah, first, this you described the the, yeah, returning to the JCPOA as a, yeah, almost a prison, and it does feel like this is the war objectives of Irondo, that is a prison break in which Hormuz the control of Hormuz is essentially the main instrument towards this end because if they have a Strait Of Hormuz where they can set up a toll, set conditions for transit. Essentially, the countries who put sanctions on Iran, who threatens it with war by hosting bases or actually attacking, all of them can be, well, to some extent, disciplined if they want to have proper access. So it seems very critical for Iran if they don't wanna go back to the past decades of crippling sanctions and the threat of war all the time, that the that the, yeah, that the Strait Of Hormuz is not nonnegotiable.
But so I I wanted to ask how you see the possibility, therefore, of an actual negotiated settlement. But in making matters comp more complicated, you can throw in Israel's territorial ambitions and, of course, the desire to, well, crack Lebanon like it did Syria. So how how do you see, yeah, the possibility of actually meeting halfway somewhere in a negotiation?
Speaker 1: Well, going back to your what you just said, I I would just add to it. I'm sure you intended it. But, you know, the we've seen, you know, sly lines are beginning there's a sort of rumbling of catastrophe already apparent because various crucial elements to us byline pass through almost as well as oil and gas, a e m, stop uric acid, gallium, all of these things pass cruel. And, you know, what happens is that they go on getting slightly, slightly worse, and then they break. And when they break, we in the West are going to feel the consequences directly.
There won't be touch up in the petrol stations or gasoline stations. There will be no difficulty getting no children to school as a consequence. There will not be the food that you want. You will not have aluminium foil in the shops any longer. Aluminium comes almost overwhelming.
So, I mean, it is, you know, we're in this never world at the moment that we all have heard that it's going to be so serious, yet it hasn't fully impacted. In Australia, has. In Ireland, it has where the protests about not being able to get cars fueled. But it's it's about all the sort of economic experts of the West that stay this this this this day in. So what I'm trying to say that I don't think there's a path through this was certainly not in, you know, one that's going to be very easily achieved is this, is that there are two major roadblocks in the this process.
And the first major roadblock is Trump. I mean, I'm not just talking about his mental state, which we all know is a contributory. I mean, in the Syriac, a dominant because he still, you know, runs a show in Edinburgh White House. He hasn't been off like Biden, but he's largely removed from it. He's very much in control of it.
In control, I say loosely in control, but nonetheless, he likes to be present himself as being there. But more than that is that, you know, the roots of this in many ways in his feeling about Iran has been his dislike of Obama and and the sense of rivalry that he's always felt with Obama. So what he's always said was that Obama's JCPOA was terrible. It was awful. It was perfected, and I can do much better.
But he needs something like that, a better JCPOA than Obama to prove that he Trump was the better negotiator. There's a long history to this sort of bitter rival. And, when you look at this, I mean, even before what I said at the beginning about the change in tactic, I mean, there wasn't gonna be a better JCPOA coming out of this. It would be if there was a JCPOA two, it would be more favorable for the Iranians than the first one. Otherwise, it would be none.
So it would have to be more favorable. And that would not go well with with Kraut, nor would it go well with Netanyahu. And so the the first thing is, you know, the only thing that could really assuage him, he in advanced recognized that the was the one thing that could do it would be the Iranians would suddenly handle 430 kilos of of enriched uranium, and he would hold it up, right, in a a trophy, a football trophy at the end of a game and say, look. I won. I won.
We succeeded. There'll never be a nuclear weapon. Well, I I don't think Iran is going to do that because they realize this is their, you know, a great asset for these negotiations, and they're not gonna hand it over. But, also, you know, Trump didn't like it when Vance started talking from Islamabad by all the reports we hear was that, you know, when Vance was saying, you know, well, yes, they will continue to charge a fee on Hormuz, and they will have control over it, and they'll share it with Oman, etcetera. But then they will become more powerful.
You know, Iran will become one of the big states because if they have if they control Homos and get fees for the next, you know, half year or a year, I mean, they'll have money roaring in. So supposing Vance went back to these talks with, you know, with his two minders, Kushner and and Whitaker. If you if he went back and he came back and said, look. We've got a, you know, a deal on three point six seven in Richmond, and the timeline would be extended, and there would be monitoring and all of that. Would Trump say, okay?
Or would he say, but this isn't a win for me because this is just JCPOA. This is Obama's JCPOA, and this doesn't, you know, doesn't show that I've achieved anything. So I think there's a a real problem there, and, of course, there's still the other problem of his mental condition. I think various people have spoken that it's come late. We've got more direct knowledge.
Robert Barnes and others have explained what how it's more than just being harassed. It's sense of confabulation taking place of huge anger and pepper, unable to take criticism, unable to really understand what's going on. I mean, very serious. And so one question is, you know, well, how would the team manage this if things get worse? How would they manage Trump?
Not the conflict, but how would they manage Trump? I mean, it seems from the reporting that it not this Saturday, but the Saturday before, general Kaine said, no. And it seems even this last Saturday when there was a meeting about Iran, there was some sort of agreement by the team when there was a proposal for further mass bombing, electricity, and infrastructure, all of them, maybe by one, said, no. This is a war crime. This is not a method we cannot expect.
This can this continue? I don't know. I mean, you'd have to ask someone better equipped in the American skill for how long can this go on like this because there's no realm railway I can see for them to change that so so so so so easily. I mean, you know, the twenty fifth amendment is I mean, there's unlikely to be possible. Either we should be prepared to go down the road of some sort of indictment indictment or I don't know.
But this is the second reason I say it's extremely this is the the first barrier that I described to coming to some sort of agreement is, you know, if it's not about the nuclear, what would it be? I mean, nearly the next stage then would be possibly not for another attempt to to to go in to Isfahan and take out if it's really in Isfahan, to go and take out the enriched material from Isfahan. After what happened, I mean, it was you know, Joe Kent keeps telling him, well, you know, if you go on like this, you end up being like Jimmy Carter. After Jimmy Carter's disaster attempt to rescue the hostages from Iran, the host deceased in the embassy there by Iran, and when the helicopters crashed, and you remember it was a disaster, he lost any presidents, so it can't keep spelling in bar, and I think it hurts. So I don't know if do bar.
Well, that only leaves what what's what's there, bombing, carpet bombing. And it hasn't succeeded in destroying Iran's missile capabilities. So we're talking about either just repeating, bombing mountains pretty pointlessly, or it will be more likely just bombing civilian infrastructure around killing people, you know, knocking down lots of apartments, which you have to ask the lawyers if that's going to be considered a war crime or not. Anyway, maybe he will double down and say, well, I've got a profession. They'd not agree because otherwise, my polling my chances for the midterms are fading very, very far.
We've really got to an input pressure. And and so I don't really see what it is that Trump could, you know, obtain for this these events. Iran is not about to, I mean, fully open. I was listening to to some of the sort of Gulf States, and they said, we can't have tolls there. They must be open.
It must be without tolls. We'll have to we can't accept that. You know? It's not possible, which is one of the reasons why the Pakistani Pakistanis, of course, are very close to Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia, oh, we can't have tolls on Hormuz. It's got to be as it used to be before, on the twenty seventh February.
Come on. I mean, what do you mean? You know, you don't like tolls. I mean, nor do I. I used to be able to read newspapers without paying anything.
You know, you go into online and you could read them, and then there were suddenly, there was a subscription and a toll posted on it. And, of course, you know, I got used to, you know, reading them for free, and it's always an adjustment, painful adjustment, when you really have to pay. If I drive a car on a motorway here, I have to pay toll. I mean, you know, grow up. This is how things are.
And the proposal to put a toe is I'm not a lawyer, but I think it's legal under the UN treaty on law of the seas, because all of Hormuz, the actual Strait Of Hormuz is within Iran's territorial water or Oman's territorial water on the other side. There's no international water there at all. It's too too narrow. So they so they will continue with us, I believe. And and so doesn't offer a very easy solution to deal with.
His barricade, his naval barricade is. Iranian vessels are going in, and they're coming up. We've seen that. Deutsche shipping put it in the Financial Times, And I think Trump was rather angry with its dead sort of 30 Iranian ships in the last few days. This was a few days ago that had had traveled The Straits at this time.
So where is the the the solution other than sort of bombing, which won't be a solution because it won't cause the Iranians to come back. I mean, one of the things that is so clear is the change in atmosphere in in in Iraq. I mean, there is a new energy, a new sense of the revolution. Updated, it's the young more than the sort of older generations who participated in the revolution. No.
These are youngsters. These are great columns of young women armed to the teeth going out onto the streets every night in support of the Iranian state. I mean, it's it is it's a real it's something that is going to have long term impact, I believe, beyond Iran in places like Russia and China too. That's what I hear that, you know, this sort of robust expression of a rejection of one, you know, reality and the determination to find and keep their own sovereignty. And that makes it, you know, is also acting against an agreement with America.
You ask the young. I mean, you can see it. It's on the the the the the many of the videos. You ask ask them about what they see that's Gripska, and they say, why are we negotiating with America or so? Why why are our leadership talking to them?
Why? When they bomb in our houses, in our schools, in our hospital? No. Because the mood is the mood is hardening at another level as well, which is important. It's not reflected in in the Western, you know, me here and their understanding.
But you've only got to look at the videos and the evidence there. I mean, you see these columns of women going out to defend bridges and power stations and so on that may feel threatened. And then you come to the second barricade. Supposing you find a solution with Trump, how do you find a solution with Israel? And I wrote a paper for the about how, you know, Israel had changed.
Some fifteen years ago, I said, you cannot go understanding Israel through sort of secular, rational, enlightenment type of structures. You have to understand that it's becoming conflict of religious polls in The Middle East. And it it really has changed further in that direction because what we see Israel has now become much more messianic, apocalyptic, eschatological. 70% basically of the Israeli, Jewish Israeli support support this. And the most important thing, I think, was, you know, it's it's not some passing moment that is going to come and and and and go with the elections, and then we'll have us back to an Ashkenazi secular regime.
Because as the great Jewish historian, Gershun Shalom has has written, you know, Mescanism has been a very important impasse in the Jewish phase over the years from sixteen hundreds in the nineteenth century with Yeager Brandt and others. And he predicted from Samioseko that religious line is which he said, he predicted in recent decades as aligned with Likud and the settlement, and this is him, I'm quoting him, operates as a militant, apocalyptic, and radical messianic movement that tries to force the end by demanding that the state engage in, for example, massive territorial control. I. E, this is Hemingway, they demand territorial conquest for end of times reasons. So forcing the end is about forcing redemption and the messianic age coming into being.
So my point about this was, you know, if you go back to the Reagan administration when they tried to and to a certain extent, he didn't posing a restraint from this. Is this likely in the new atmosphere of Israel? I mean, are they going to accept a restraint because that might be in America's interest? And it is in interest, let's be quite clear. Yeah.
Of course, it's in America's interest. They don't want the whole Middle East set alight in a sort of move towards Armageddon. They don't want that, so they call for restraint. But look. You know?
Is it reasonable to think that that's gonna happen? I think not. Because I think and if you listen to the latest statement by Katz threatening everything against, you know, that Israel will attack this disgusting country of Iran, remove this. I mean, the language was extraordinary. It was purely apocalyptic language coming out of the defense minister of Israel.
So I don't think restraints is gonna be possible, and it's not possible because in Israel, Netanyahu's under huge pressure because the people are saying, well, your war on Iran will fail. It didn't achieve any of its objectives. And your war on Hezbollah, which you told us was all successful, so successful, Hezbollah had been eliminated. Now we find it was never true. And you tell us that thought that, you know, the the war on Iran is going to be a great success.
It's not true. So he is in. So he needs the success. And so what you see in in the press, in Israel press, even today, this morning, we have to get the Americans to continue the war. Is this in the American interest?
I doubt it. But this is in the, if you like, the messianic interest of Israel to get The US to continue the war. And so what's going to happen? Well, when you look at it, when there is a divergence of interest in The United States, who I would argue actually the interest of the public and part of the interest of Trump personally is to find a solution to an end to the war, and that is the American interest margin. Not everyone in America agrees with that.
Mark Leven won. But if you put it aside, I mean, I would say, actually, at the end of the day on this, Israel doesn't give a damn about America, and it doesn't give a damn for the Gulf space either. It has something which surpassed all those rational, you know, mechanistic strategies of saying, but it's not in your I mean, surely, it's not in Israel's interest to go to a major war we've been around. Well, I remember Sartrej six or seven years ago in the the video to the liquid, which I watched then. And he said, listen.
This was the plan. We're going to, you know, get rid of all the Arabs from the land of Israel. But I have to tell you, to do this, to complete the plan, we have to have we we need a major crisis or a big, big war, and then we will finish clan. In other words, you know, to tell them that if you do something silly, you'll get a poker you know, you'll get Armageddon. They want harmony with this race either through the path towards salvation, redemption.
So I find it very difficult to see, you know, a simple path. I don't think, you know, the the the idea that Iran can be persuaded by Russia and China to go back to a JC Cleo A type prison is is is is now on the caste, and and now Iran has said on the record publicly, no. We're not talking a nuclear issue. Now we're talking Hormuz, and we're talking our economic caste, and we're talking about sanctions and tariffs. And you this is going to be the discussion.
You know, maybe if all that's resolved, who knows? We can talk beneath your issue again.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So well, that's not The United States, but I saw from the European Union making the point that sanctions will not come off Iran because of, you know, values. The regime has to change this and that. And, it's intended to sound very principled, but it also comes off as, well, delusional times. But they do the same with China and Russia.
That is they if they fail to achieve anything, I think part of it is because there's difficulty in transitioning to a multipolar world because they you know, being what they want to get, they you know, it prevents them from seeing what they actually can get or how they want the world to be. They they fail to see how the world actually is, and they often frame it
Speaker 1: in morality. Yeah. That's my point about mechanistic sort of secular thinking that, you know, is so embedded in a particular their particular grasp of reality because they're completely incapable of seeing that others have different ways of thinking and see reality from a different perspective, and they can't understand that. And, of course, this is why I said I can't see Iran going back to this PCPA or o a agreement because they know. I mean, we're talking, oh, he's had many years was the first sanctions put on.
They're never going to be mixed. Not by not by Israel has any say. And, of course, Fond du Lehen is representing Israel as much as anyone else in in this process. No. Of course, there must be containment sanctions siege on Iran, break the Iranian spirit, and that gets also some support from Gulf Of States, but principally from Israel and from elements within The United States.
So this is why I keep saying, you know, Iran's aim in this war is to break the whole paradigm, master paradigm of putting Iran you know, you put it in the words of the. Exactly.
Speaker 0: Just a final question then. It seems like this is then a war of attrition both in the military sense, but also economic. That is who can absorb the most pain. And, of course, inflict pain on the other side. Do you think it's clear, though, that the time is on the side of the Iranians, or how do you see because it seems all sides are under great pressure now.
Speaker 1: Oh, no. The the time is on the side of the Iranians in an unqualified way. They have been, I mean, they have been making more money during this war. I mean, revenues. I don't think you're talking about businessmen, but money, revenues to the state has come in far, far high since they've had control of the state, almost straight with homeowners and charged peasman.
You know, Iran is not short of money, and it has, you know, more probably a 130,000,000 barrels of oil still at sea on the sea that they will sell or gradually, they can keep going for a long time. They may start charging fees for passage to the to Balmanga Strait too. They they the whereas we in the West are closer. And as I say, I don't think people have appreciated that we have about two weeks before it's going to really hit. And when it hits, you know, people won't be able to afford to fly.
They won't be able to easily get their cars with fuel. I mean, there are many things. Cost of electricity and things are gonna go shooting up. And Europe is going to be in dark pain. We are I live here in Italy, and there's a huge cost of living crisis.
You know, there has been no increase in real wages since Italy joined the euro. No increase in real incomes. Since then, that's a long, long time to sort of squeeze and squeeze and squeeze down. And, you know, people, when there's been protest and the trading on the state, how do you expect people to go on when, you know, the income that they're getting has rung out by week three of a month and they have, you know, four weeks in a month? I mean, you know, it's just not working.
So I think, you know, the pain is going to come very much. You know, the the economic elites, the ones that are are trading. But I just want to say one thing if you've got a minute before. I know you want to finish. But I I would just say that this is also something much bigger.
It is, and this is why it's part of a a global war. The other thing that Iran is facing in this war is, if you like, the financial architecture, not just the dollar hegemony, not just the petrodollar, but the whole structure by which the Gulf States were sort of set up in '73, keep the oil price high and transfer the enormous excess savings that came from this into Wall Street and this underpinned the financialized world that we live in, which incidentally is the source of much of our problems because it's come at the price of, if you like, depressing or suppressing it, the real economy in favor of an economy that is all about trading, about making instant money on on markets, but not by actually producing things in the real world. It's much quicker. You can make a a few 100,000,000 in in an afternoon by trading insider trading on the markets. And one of the things that I think is gonna be a long time consequence of this war is a consequence of the complete destruction of markets and pricing that's taken place as a result of all of this insider trading of this, I mean, complete disparagement that people can see for themselves.
You know, we pick up the paper and they say, oh, well, oil has just gone down, you know, from '98 to '93. Try buying a barrel of oil at that place. It's just completely manipulated. If you want to buy a barrel of oil, you're gonna have to pay over 200. Sri Lanka has just been paying well over 200 to get oil just to keep going.
I mean and so what's pricing? What are markets? What is this market that says the price of oil is 93 when you actually have to pay double that price to get a real bomb, physical oil, oil that you can put into the system and keep it running. It's, you know, I mean, this is going to be a huge have a huge empire. So Iran, that's why the Iranians are saying, I'm sorry, but if you want to have the relations with Iran, you've gotta get rid of Microsoft and Amazon and all of your links, we don't want that type of economic umbrella which has suffocated us and been antagonistic to us since for forty seven years.
The umbrella of the hegemony of the dollar and the hegemony the hegemony of the military coupled with a hegemony of a financialized world coupled with, if you like, the the the sense of the control of the UN, the IEA, and all these structures that are employed against Iran. So I think this is you know, they did has this global aspect. And
Speaker 0: No. That's interesting. I don't think Trump expected that this war, which was supposed to be a quick Venezuela like operation, would turn out into a war, which could bring down the American led world order. It's, yeah, quite a dramatic development. Anyways, thank you very much as always for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure to join you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Richard Wolff: Petrodollar Decline Unravels the U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/WEeVlIYXl0Y https://t.co/gqNsRYfETZ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn: Welcome back with professor Richard Wolff to discuss economic fury, the economic weaponization of the US campaign against Iran. How do you assess this effort, given the mix of oil sanctions, open markets for oil, and port blockades?
Wolff: I’ll be blunt: I don’t know how to answer cleanly because the statements keep flipping on/off and have become “herky jerky.” The steps are inconsistent, sometimes increasing supply of oil and pushing down prices, other times constraining it. It’s not clear which way any given move will go, and the sequence is hard to parse. He notes that Gulf states are pressing for dollar swaps—foreign central banks can access dollars via swaps rather than buying them on markets. These swaps have shifted from weekly to daily, signaling worry about dollar access. The Gulf states—UAE and others—allege they depend on dollar-denominated oil revenues to service debts incurred through investments abroad. If dollars tighten due to strait closures and sanctions, they may be forced to sell assets in the US, including Treasury securities, which would lower bond prices and raise interest rates, potentially triggering a US recession. They could also sell holdings in the American stock market, affecting prices. Wolff emphasizes this as a surface manifestation of a broader global liquidity and debt dilemma tied to the Persian Gulf and the dollar’s role in the world economy.
Glenn: So essentially the petrodollar is being unraveled because if Gulf states price and sell oil in dollars, but if they’re not exporting and not receiving dollars, they can’t pay debts or roll them over. They might sell treasuries or assets to cover shortfalls. How far can the US hold this position?
Wolff: I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think the likely scenario is a political and economic squeeze. Trump has lost parts of his base—issues like the Epstein file and the economy’s inflation and job market. He relies on a narrative of victory; his base may be shrinking, while the wealthier 10% who own stock might be more supportive as the stock market stays buoyant. If the Gulf states must exchange dollars for debt relief or to cover losses, the government may have to grant more dollar swaps to prevent a spike in interest rates and a stock sell-off. Steven Bannon has warned that war could cost Trump the election, so the administration may shore up swaps to protect markets. Wolff suggests this is a desperate regime trying to exit a bad position with minimal damage.
Glenn: You describe a broader pattern: the petrodollar’s decline, and the US dollar’s dwindling centrality in global reserves. How does this fit into the larger arc of American empire and capitalism?
Wolff: It fits as part of the decline of the American empire and the corresponding decline of American capitalism. BRICS, China’s rise, and the shift away from dollar-dominated trade illuminate a trend toward reduced dollar dominance. Sanctions in Ukraine exposed the limits of that model, and there’s growing acceptance of payments outside the dollar for oil. The United States remains influential, but the dollar’s dominance is waning, and there’s no clear strategy to reverse that trend. Manufacturing has moved to other countries, notably China, which maintains low inflation and large-scale production. The world is moving toward multipolar arrangements, and the dollar’s preeminence is no longer assured.
Glenn: Given this trajectory, is there any viable way to salvage the petrodollar, or is it beyond rescue?
Wolff: I don’t predict the future with certainty, but I view the larger context as a decline in American hegemony and an erosion of dollar dominance. The war in Iran, like the war in Ukraine, demonstrates the limits of sanctions and the unintended consequences of aggressive confrontation. The dollar’s global reserve role is shrinking, and other powers are willing to transact outside it. He emphasizes this as a systemic shift, not a temporary setback.
Glenn: Any final thoughts on how history and memory shape current policy?
Wolff: History often gets reframed to fit current aims. There’s a tendency to present “victories” regardless of outcome, especially in wartime rhetoric. The dialogue in Europe and the US reflects a mix of nostalgia for past dominance and struggle to adapt to a changing global order. The conversation ends with questions about how Europe and the US should reorient foreign policy toward a multipolar world, where old assumptions no longer hold.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Richard Wolff to discuss economic fury, which is the, yeah, new arm of The US war against Iran. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Glad to be here, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So the name given to the war against Iran, Epic Fury, you know, filled Trump with great pride that he picked this name. He mentioned it in quite a few speeches, but Scott Bessent has now complemented it with economic fury, which is the, yeah, the economic war or sanctions policies against Iran. And well, my first thought is it's been a bit confusing because first, there's a, you know, there's a sanction on all Iranian oil, then they open up the Iranian oil to help stabilize the markets, then there's a blockade on Iranian ports. So the consistency is not always clear. How do you assess this new efforts to strangle Iran, which is this project economic fury?
Speaker 1: Well, I know this may be a troubling thing to hear me say, but I really don't know any anything else but to tell you. Along with others, I know I'm not the only one, we have stopped following the kind of herky jerky on again, off again statements because they are so often the way you just described them, inconsistent one with the other. You don't know whether the earlier one is true and the second one an exaggeration, or the second one is the correction of the first one. And before you can resolve that, he has a third one, and then it becomes crazy. And and so I don't know how to answer, basically, your question.
It's a perfectly good question, but I don't know how to answer it. It is inconsistent. Either you are going to take the steps that make oil supply more plentiful and drive down the price or you're not. And anything you do can be interrogated as to which way it it on balance, which way it goes. But if if he does almost at the same time allow there to be less oil and then at the same breath more oil, well, you don't know.
You don't know what's gonna happen. By the way, there are other examples too, not so well, attended to. Mister Besson is now going to have to decide, he may already have done it, on the request of the Gulf States for what are called dollar swaps. This is not unimportant. A dollar swap is usually an agreement between The United States, either the treasury or the Federal Reserve on the one hand, and foreign central banks on the other.
And the reason you establish it is you have reason to believe that the global supply and demand of dollars is going to be disturbed. And mostly, there's going to be a shortage of dollars. I can go into the reason for that. But if you worry about a shortage, you will enhance, you will increase your swaps. Why?
But all the swap means is that a foreign central bank doesn't have to go into the market and buy dollars if it's short of them. It can simply grab a bunch from a swap agreement. It used to be that this was done on a weekly basis. Now it is done with these latest ones on a daily basis, which is already a warning sign. Somebody's very worried about access to dollars.
So the minute you start looking into this, you discover who's worried, which shouldn't surprise you. The Gulf States, you know, The United Arab Emirates, all of them. They I don't know whether each of them is, but many of them have now put pressure on The United States to give them, when they don't have them, credit swap facilities, or do we if they do have them, to make them much larger? Okay. Now why would they do that?
And the the only reasonable answer is that they depend on receiving income in dollar form from selling oil and natural gas. They have borrowed over the years to invest in many countries, so they have dollar denominated debts. Well, they expected to be able to pay off their dollar denominated debts around the world with the dollars coming in from oil and gas. But there are no dollars coming in because this Strait Of Hormuz is shut, and the blockade, if anything, makes it worse. So they don't have the dollars.
So they can't pay off their debts. And they can't pay the interest. They can't pay whatever the portion of the principal is, which means here's my guess. I don't know what I'm about to say, but I'm gonna guess. They have informed the American government, mister Trump, that they must pay off their debts, they cannot sell the oil, they're gonna start selling their ownership of American assets.
Okay. What does that mean? It means two things. Number one, they're gonna sell treasury securities. Wow.
That's gonna if you understand, a fire sale of treasury securities brings their price down, and that raises the interest rate. We are on the edge of a recession right now. If the gold states en masse were to sell lots of treasuries and if that were to stimulate others around the world who don't wanna see the price of their assets as treasuries go down, you're going to see a dangerous spike in interest rates in this country at a time when the the Trump administration wants everything other than that. Number two, you're going to see the American ruling class that invests in the stock market see a significant player in the American stock market, The Gulf States, selling whatever it is they have to get the dollars just like they need to sell the treasuries to get the dollars to cover their debts. Okay.
This is a tangential story, and I'm sorry to bother you with the with the economics of it. But the bottom line is you're beginning to see why a significant number of commentators are waving their fingers warning that this event, which seems to be localized in the Persian Gulf and the the Sea Of Arabia and so on, is in fact dangerous for the whole world economy. And the this swap problem is is the surface manifestation of this global problem, which has a particular salience for The United States because so much of the Gulf dollar business is here in New York with the stock markets and with the treasury.
Speaker 0: So so, essentially, the petrodollar is being unraveled to some extent. Because if oil is priced and sold by the Gulf States in US dollars well, the Gulf States aren't making the money. They're not exporting, which means they're not getting the dollars, which means they're not reinvesting them into The US. Now they have to instead of buying the treasury bonds, they have to sell it. Well, where exactly is this going, though?
I mean, how how long can The United States hold on to this position? Because, well, I know you don't have a crystal ball, but a lot of this is unprecedented. We haven't seen this. But this isn't just a speed bump. This is something, you know, hitting deeper into the system, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I'd let me give you I have no crystal ball. I don't believe in it. No one else does either. But having said that that with that caveat, let me tell you what I think is likely now going to happen.
Mister Trump has lost a great deal of his mass base. What do I mean? Two things. People who voted for him because of one or two or three issues, those people he has now lost. The The two or three issues, in case your your audience is interested, is the Epstein file.
The government is exposed, excuse me, as having not released most of that relevant information, holding it back, redacting redacting it in ways that are protecting the president and so on. So people who expected him to deliver on the promise to open everything about the Epstein files right away because he's committed to, transparency, he's lost those people. You know? That's one. Number two, the economy, the availability of jobs for young people, and the price, the level of inflation for everybody else.
And he's it's a job market here is awful. Young people, my students who are getting master's and PhD degrees in in university here, you know, are talking to me about a lifetime being an Uber driver or a Lyft driver, not because they are simply excitedly upset, but seriously in somber tones, there are no jobs. And the inflation is not over for Americans. He promised to bring prices down. He he explicitly played with the ambiguity that economists, when they talk about inflation, are talking about the rate of increase, whereas the common people, when they talk about it in the media and so on, are really more talking about the level.
And because we had a serious inflation, during this decade, people want the prices to come down. That's not happening. He's unable to do that In one or two sectors with lots of fanfare, he does it. But meanwhile, the cost of living keeps rising currently between 34%. Average wage increases are not even that high.
So the the mass of people are upset about the economy, and the Democrats who have no courage on the Iran issue and have, yeah, not much on the Epstein either are able to to make an affordability the big issue, so they're beating him up, with that. And then finally, Iran. The war on Iran means he loses the people who wanted him to be the president who doesn't have war anymore. He coined remember the phrase forever wars. Alright?
Well, he's he's he's still stuck in Ukraine. Now he's added Iran, and it's clear to the American people, more clear than I've ever seen before, right from the beginning, that that this is not a good idea. This war is not going well. And when you have even little things like the strange firing of the head of the US Navy just at the time when the Navy actually has a major task in front of it, the blockade, that doesn't look good. And who knows what this ex head of the navy, who by the way is not a naval career person, he's a wealthy donor to the Republican Party who got that job as a gift.
So he may not be happy leaving. He may be speaking soon, in a way that the Kelly, the senator from Arizona does and so on. So all of these things are bad for mister Trump. So and why am I telling you this? Because he cannot afford well, I'm telling you, he cannot afford a spike in interest rates.
He cannot afford it. He is, at this point, in my judgment, relying on two things to survive politically, whatever remains of the MAGA base. And, again, notice Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, two of his former stalwart promoters, are now referring to him, and I quote, he is insane. I am very sorry I ever supported him. Those are quotations from Greene and from the other guy the other guy.
Carlson. Yeah. Carlson. So his base is really in trouble. So what has he got left?
The answer is the richest 10% of The United States. People who look to the stock market are happy. The stock market is very high. It's even high in the last, you know, few weeks. It it took a momentary dip with the Iran war, but it basically it it presumes that this war will be over soon, and it will not cost any rich person anything.
So they can keep their money in the stock market. They can continue to buy and to sell and to borrow money and invest that money in the market. Therefore, Glenn, here's the closest I'm gonna come to a prediction. If the stock market starts to tank, and could an exodus of the Gulf countries, if they didn't have an access to the swamp, could it do that? The answer is nobody knows.
It could. Therefore, my guess is the government will give the Gulf States all the swaps they want. Basically, give them an advanced access to as many dollars as they need to pay off as many debts as they have without selling treasuries or disinvesting in The US stock market because it's too dangerous. His his ability is too small. Yesterday, mister Steven Bannon, a former adviser pretty close to him and a far right wing, personality in this country, was begging for the war to be over because otherwise, and I'm quoting, we will lose power in November.
In other words, he's so worried about it, and there are enough people around him who are that whatever mister Trump says, I don't care. We're fine. None of that should be taken seriously. They are now worried that they are in a fight that they may lose, and and they are very anxiety ridden about it. They clearly I mean, footnote.
They clear and the evidence now is is really pretty overwhelming. They told themselves that they could go into Iran and decapitate, they love that word, decapitate the Ayatollah and kill a few other leading generals and advisers and that the system would collapse. There would be no whatever glue held the country together would be gone, and United States could then dictate terms, for a new government, regime change, and a new shah of Iran replicating more or less what the Shah of Iran used to do for The United States, that was a and that would be a glorious it would allow them to say what by the way, Vance there's an a clip of Vance a year ago talking about war in Iran. I don't know if you've seen it, but it is going around in this country like, when they say viral. It's a viral clip.
It has Vance explaining why going into the war with Iran is a wonderful good idea, a real a a very strong endorsement by the vice president in which he says the following. Previous presidents all knew that Iran was a disaster for The United States, but they were, I'm quoting now, too dumb too dumb to do anything about it. The difference is mister Trump isn't too dumb, and we're going to do it when where Obama didn't and Bush didn't and Clinton didn't and we're gonna do that was their and that's why when Tulsi Gabbard and other intelligence officials told them they were wrong about Iran, They it was too beautiful a story, too wonderful an encapsulation of how they want to appear to the American voting public that they just didn't listen. It was too attractive. And now the herky jerky that we began this conversation with, the on again, off again oil management, this is a desperate government whose plan is shot, whose opportunities in that direction are all gone, and it's trying desperately to to figure out how to get out of this.
And the person that I know you interview from time to time, and I caught him recently on one of your programs, John Mearsheimer, he puts it very, very well. You know? It's a desperate effort to get out of here with minimum damage at this point, and even that is proving to be harder than they can figure out how to do.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So that speech by Vance. I thought that was extraordinary. I was hoping for some deeper analysis why all former press presidents, you know No. Did not do it, and this one did in terms of how the economic situation had changed or something.
But instead, was just, well, those they were dumb. Trump is smart, and this is why we've done it. I mean, it's hard to believe this is really it belongs on some Saturday Night Live or some parody, but, yeah, that was real. I if I would have just seen a quote, I would have to fact check it because it sounds so worth the talk.
Speaker 1: Oh, My students, Glenn, my students raised their hand and said, a speech like that proves that the dumb one is the one who says it. A way of you know, no analysis, no see, they were all dumb. And then now that it's proven that the hesitancy noted in the earlier president sounds now like they were brilliant, that they understood the limits of what they could do, and this one doesn't. It it's it's extraordinary. And it looks very bad.
You know, it's another one of the thousands of misstatements. You know, the the shooting of the boats in the Americans have taken that to heart. Very interesting. You know, for several months, they would kill two or three people in a boat near Venezuela. They would shoot the boat with rockets and kill the fishermen.
No arrest, no trial, no lawyer, no nothing. Just kill them. That lost mister Trump all kinds of support. I remember being on a television program explaining to the American audience that when we arrest people for drug traffic, which we do inside The United States, they automatically are entitled to a lawyer. They automatically are entitled to a trial.
They are automatically entitled to defend themselves. And even if we find them guilty, that it's not a capital crime in this country. You don't get executed for drug traffic. You can get imprisoned. So here we have a complete negation of the entire legal apparatus of it, and that is too much for a significant number of people who otherwise would like mister Trump, but they can't.
They can't go with this.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, a bit like Tucker Carlson. I was a bit happy to see a person like Trump come along and, you know, talk about peace again because none of our politicians in Europe talks about peace anymore. And so I was a bit optimistic, but I think this has been all that optimism has been shattered. But I just want to go back to the to to the Iran war because it seems as if if the war continues, The US will suffer immensely as you outlined very well.
However, if Trump leaves as well and the the Strait Of Malacca is is under Iranian control, which doesn't seem like it can do much, then Iran has already now announced its measures. It has already now set up a toll, which it will get its reparations from so it can rebuild from The US attack. And we're told that that those who have attacked or sanctioned Iran, they will pay an extra bonus on top of that toll, and they won't be accepting dollars. So it appears that no matter what The US does now, it's yeah. There's no going back to the way things were.
And I'm wondering if this is what's saying of the desperation in the White House now, because I don't see any good outs anymore for Trump. I mean, I I would I'd probably advise him to, you know, just adjust to the new world. You some things you can't change, but but politically, especially for a person like Trump who always have to claim victory. You know, you can have a plane shut down. It's a great victory.
Everything's a victory. One gets chased out of Yemen. Oh, we won. You know, it's it's he he has a skill for this, though, selling everything as a victory, but I don't see this happening this time around.
Speaker 1: I wish I agreed with you, Glenn, but I don't. So let me tell you why. He succeeds because that's what the American people or at least a large part of the American people, that's what they want to hear. They want their leader to be a great victory. You know?
Americans participate in sport not very much, but they are absolutely entranced by watching major sport events. The NFL, the hockey league, the basketball, they are enormous businesses here with billions and billions of dollars involved because the American people are passionate about their team. They want their team to win. The spectator who is ennobled by the victory of the team he is a spectator of is the way Americans in deal with sports. It's also the way they've come to deal, with politics.
Mister Trump will declare a victory. He already has. He has declared that the assassination of the Ayatollah equals regime change. He's made that simple equation so he can repeat over and over again because the people know that they their their religious and political leader was killed and dead and then they go you know, that that was popular just as the abduction of Maduro was popular because we won, we we prevailed, we you know, the rest of it is murky and disputed. So I don't think he has to worry.
He is going to win no matter what. He is going to overwhelm the media, which it turns out he still can do, again, not because of him, but the media itself does not want to be thought of as unpatriotic, uninterested in victory. You for example, you will not see any expression of sympathy or empathy for anything Iranian. The Iranians are bad. The Iranians are negative.
The Iranians have been killing people. I appeared recently on a debate. There was an America ex American diplomat, and he was going on about the awful things the Iranians have done over the last forty seven years, you know, since since the the mullos took over. Okay. For an American, where forty seven years includes Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, to be an American diplomat to be finding fault with Iran because it has killed so many people.
It's just for me, you know, I I know the numbers. This is this is an achievement. You are the you're the ambassador of the country that is the rogue nation of the world that has 700 military bases killing people all the time, and you're gonna attack little Iran who hadn't killed very many people at all. It's it's extraordinary. So here here's what I think is he's gonna do.
He's probably going to have some dramatic maneuver that he can sell as a victory. There'll be some marines who take over an island somewhere in the Persian Gulf. There's lots of islands. Go take one. Doesn't matter if there's nobody on it.
Just go take it. Photographs, landing, troops raising the flag, whatever. At the same time, you and Israel bombed something, bomb another part of Tehran or bomb, some region you hadn't hit before, knock out a few bridges, maybe, an electric plant, maybe a plant, who knows, and then say the Iranians have asked us to have peace. And now that there's a new regime, we change the regime and we punish them. They, they better or else we will come right back and and finish the job.
But, you know, we we are decent people. We've won what we were we came here to do. And so we're leaving. And that will be the best he can do. He will be attacked.
Tucker Carlson isn't that stupid nor is Marjorie Taylor Greene nor are all the others who are critical. So he will suffer, but that will be the comic book story that will be told, and it will be told to large numbers of people, even those who don't like him because it conforms. Let me give you the proof. When I travel around the country, and I sometimes do, and I'm asked to give a talk about, you know, the twenty and first twentieth and twenty first century US economic development. And I mentioned the war in Vietnam, and then I I use language like this.
And then in 1975, the war ended, The United States lost, and the Communist Party of North Vietnam won. And how do you know they won? Because they're the ones in charge of Vietnam now, and that's a big clue. The students laugh, but I would bet my money that more than half of the students in the room, if asked by questionnaire in the next ten minutes, who won the war in Vietnam, they would answer The United States. And that's what they think.
And it's not because they ever studied the war, they didn't. And it's not because no one ever talked to them about the war, People probably did. It's just that in The United States, America wins and everybody else doesn't win. When the president and so it's important for your European audience. When the president of The United States says, as he has repeatedly, that ever since World War two, the European nations have taken advantage of The United States, cheated it at every turn, and that he's tired of it, and he's not gonna allow that to continue.
That's what most Americans probably believe. And I say, oh, probably only because I wanna know admit, of course, there are people who don't believe that. But that is you know, we won World War two, then the Marshall Plan was our extraordinary kindness in helping you over there rebuild after the war. And some of those debts you haven't even paid back. And, you know, when I explained to people that the Marshall Plan required that the dollars given to Europe be spent on American exports, and therefore, it was a kind of Keynesian stimulus, They know what I'm saying, but they don't want to go there.
They resist. So that's what I think he's gonna do. He's gonna play to the one hand he has left the American desire for a victory. He has to end that, so he's gonna have a victory. And I'm afraid let me push you further.
If I'm wrong, then the way I'm gonna be wrong is he's gonna actually make a serious military effort against Iran, and that will make everything worse. Then then he's then he's gone. Then he's gone for broke. He will lose the American election overwhelmingly. You should be aware that there's a sizable group of Democrats and even a handful of Republicans who have committed themselves.
If they take that lower house of the parliament, the house of representatives in the November elections, they will take power on the January 20, and their first act on the first day will be the impeachment of what will then be ex not ex president. Sitting president Trump will then face his third impeachment.
Speaker 0: Well, I think history in Europe isn't always well, historical memories tend to be manipulated over time as well. There's a very interesting polling which is found in France where they looked in 1945. This is when they asked people, you know, who was mostly responsible for defeating Nazi Germany. And this, again, at the end of the war, you have a over overwhelming majority of French saying, well, that was the Soviet Union. You know, they took out between what is 85% of German casualties was on the Eastern Front.
So, of course, it's the Soviet Union rooted in facts. They they do this they did this polling every few decades, and in 2018, that was the last time, I think, they ran it, and then only 15% of French believed that it was Soviet Union who contributed the most. 15. I mean, so history is has no impact on reality anymore, and I think it was 11% of Americans who recognized it was a Soviet. So we we're living in a very post reality world.
It's but but historical memories are supposed to serve current realities. And, you know, it's Walter Lippmann wrote a a lot about this. The basic foundations of how we see the world, the heuristics. If if if you challenge this, people will go to great lengths to ignore it so you don't shake up their perception of of reality. And
Speaker 1: There's a same just a footnote, Glenn. There's a famous photograph, which I wish I I don't have it, but I have seen it. It's a photograph of a little window, in a in an American post office, and it must have been, I don't know, 1943 or something like that. And there's a person there buying stamps and giving money and getting the stamps. And over the the the counter where the the worker, the postal worker, is giving the stamps are two style they're not photographs.
They're sketches. One is of uncle Sam, you know, with the top hat and the image that we've had of him with the the stripes and all that. Uncle Sam, arm in arm with someone labeled uncle Joe. It was Stalin. Looked like Stalin.
Big mustache. Uncle Joe and then I I used that photograph. I explained to my students we were allied with the Soviet Union in the war. They look at me, my student. They look at me wanting to see if I'm about to tell a joke.
Then they nod, then they listen. We have a famous senator from Alabama. Tommy Tuberville is his name. He ran for the senate and won, having been the coach of the football team that all of Alabama love. K?
When he ran for office, he gave a speech and where he talked about his grandfather and his father and they struggled and that he was mostly proud of his father who fought so valiantly in World War two against the communists. And he had to wait until the reporters two days later because no reporter on the spot said a word. Two days later, the reporters went back to him and said, did you mean and, of course, the poor man said, yes. Yeah. Fought the communist.
Had to be explained to him. Communists were our allies. Fascists were the enemy. Oh, he said. That was it.
He sits in the senate, mister Tuberville, and orates. He's a specialist on military affairs.
Speaker 0: The same in the Canadian parliament or celebrating a Canadian who fought against the Soviets, in World War two. And and you have to ask, well, which Ukrainians were fighting the Soviets in World War two? Like, which ones? Did they they're the ones who are backing now, the ones screaming Slava Ukraini and, you know, doing you know, dressing up in swastika. So this is I don't think people remember the history well at all in terms of, you know, yeah, who was on each side.
But just to yeah. As a final quick question here, do you do you see any ways of saving the petrodollar where we're now, or is this now beyond rescue?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, again, I'm I'm not gonna predict the future. But Yeah. As I have as you and I have discussed on more than one occasion, I believe the the way I make sense of the larger context of what's going on is the decline of the American empire, and that means the decline of American capitalism. And part of that story is the decline of the role of the dollar. The rise of China is part of that story.
The BRICS Alliance that the Chinese have worked so hard to create is part of that story. The the American, deal, Kissinger, Saudi Arabia that set up the petrodollar system back in the seventies is part of what is now falling apart. And so, yes, I think all you're seeing here is a acceleration of the decline. I think the war in Ukraine has accomplished that partly by exposing the ineffectiveness of sanctions. And I think what you're seeing now is, you know, one of the great lessons of unintended consequences.
You go to war in Iran, you think it's a lark. It'll have no more effect than snatching mister Maduro and his wife from their bedroom. You're making unbelievable mistakes. And in my judgment, those are the mistakes a declining empire makes, and those are the the mistakes that then accelerate the decline, which generates more mistakes, etcetera, etcetera. The dollar is not playing the role in global reserves that it once did.
The percentage is clear. The Iranians are accepting payment in not in, dollars anymore for oil. I don't see any reason to suspect that other countries won't do that. I have I don't see any strategy in The United States that can cope with that or is even being put forward as a way of coping with that. There are proud statements that the dollar is still strong.
By the way, that's true. The dollar is still an important part of the world economy. The United States is an important part. I I would never say otherwise. I don't say the empire is dead.
I don't say American capitalism is finished. I say it's in decline, and I'm watching that decline now year by year by year. You know? The promise of the last 10 presidents was to reverse the decline of American manufacturing. Everyone promised it.
None of them delivered it. Mister Trump is not delivering it either. Manufacturing keeps going down, and that's because it moved. It didn't die. Manufacturing is being handled by China and a few other places.
They're doing it, and they're doing it very well, and they're developing new technologies every day and new products every day. They are doing the job, And they're they're very conscious that they're the leader, and they have to keep their prices down. Look. We worry here in The United States about inflation. And what is inflation?
Three or 4%. In China, inflation for the last several years has been less than 1%. You never read about it in The United States, but for obvious reasons, you don't read. They don't have the problem. They are producing enough material that they can go on and on.
That's why they can produce drones forever and missiles forever. They have an immense border with Russia so that they can share all of that with Russia, and Russia has the Caspian Sea, which allows it to share it with Iran. Of course, Iran isn't gonna run out if Russia and China help, which they are. You gotta face that. We don't.
We just don't. We have destroyed their army and their navy and none of this is true. None of this makes any sense. None of this takes into account the support they have. Venezuela had none of that.
Even Cuba doesn't have that. Iran has it. It's just it's fundamentally incapable here. And since Americans, being one, are just as smart and just as careful and just as thoughtful as anybody else, you have to explain why they would be doing what they're doing, why they would elect a character like Trump, why it would be possible for him to talk the way he does, destroy a civilization, go out there and kill the people that are laying mines. What is this?
What is it? Childish but desperate, and that has to be explained. And for me, these are symptoms of a declining empire whose people have never to this day been prepared to imagine that their empire would decline and to ask themselves the question, what is the appropriate foreign policy towards Europe, towards China, towards the global South if you're a declining empire? We we are a hegemon. We deal with these issues as a hegemon.
It's as if history had stopped. Like Fukuyama. Right? History is over. United States is at the top, and so it will be forever.
The decline of every other empire the human race has known will stop here, and ours won't decline. I mean, once you lay it out, it's so crazy that you realize the denial is also a part of the decline.
Speaker 0: You know, that's a great point. One often sees this common trend in decline of empires, even the decline of civilizations, the the the refusal to accept decline itself, this retreat into delusions, something we're not lacking at this side of the Atlantic either in Europe. So but we can address that topic at different times. So thank you very much for taking time.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. And I would like to address particularly something that strikes many of us here, Glenn, as a bit of a mystery. It looks to us as a kind of hysterical demonization of Russia in a way you know, it would have been inappropriate when it was the Soviet Union. But now, just Russia, what in the world is going on? What I need an explanation.
I would like to explore what makes so many in Europe so clear about something which here looks like you've lost your your marbles here with what with what we hear. And listening to Macron or Starmer or Mertz or, Callas, I mean, wow. You know? Something something terribly went wrong. Anyway, thank you very much, and I look forward to our next opportunity.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Michael Hudson: Iran War Ignites Global Financial Armageddon https://youtu.be/pPvP9ojKmpY https://t.co/zIydkp5Fv8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Michael Hudson discusses how the Iran war is accelerating a global economic crisis and signaling a struggle over what the world economic order will look like after the current system breaks down. He emphasizes that energy markets are central to the ripple effects, since disruptions affect fertilizer and agricultural inputs, pharmaceuticals, helium for hospital and tech uses, and highly refined fuels for transportation. In India, fertilizer prices are rising; in the U.S., farmers face constraints from higher input costs and the need to borrow to plant, risking profits as crop prices may not compensate the costs. He notes that crop traders may profit more than farmers, and that the wider impact cascades into electronics and manufacturing through electricity-intensive processes like aluminum refining.
The broader point is that energy is the linchpin of the economy; a disruption in energy flows threatens production across sectors, raising unemployment and undermining manufacturing. Hudson argues that the Iran threat, and the possibility that the United States and Israel would destroy Iran’s refining capacity and electricity, would provoke a depression larger than the 1930s because the physical flow of goods would be constrained beyond what debt relief or wartime Keynesianism can fix. To avoid this, he says, the world must restructure how trade, payments, and international reserves work, which would require reform—or replacement—of the United Nations, since U.S. veto power and international-law violations hinder cooperation and the transition away from fossil fuels toward atomic, solar, or wind energy.
He characterizes the current dynamic as an economic mutually assured destruction: Iran resists being crushed by U.S. and Israeli aggression, while the U.S. seeks to maintain dominance by weaponizing energy and finance. He attributes extreme risk to the U.S. political leadership, describing the internal White House tensions and the possibility of a nuclear impulse as driven by political personalities who would gamble with civilization rather than accept a loss of dominance.
Hudson then contrasts Iran’s position with the U.S. and its allies, noting that U.S. military capability is constrained: the United States has burned through missiles and bombers and cannot easily invade Iran on land. Iran, despite punitive actions against its navy and air force, retains a resilient defense and decoupled administrative networks, and it wields moral authority by opposing what it sees as American-dominated, one-sided control of oil, food, and the dollar. He argues that other countries confront a choice: align with a more independent, multipolar order or accept continued pressure from the United States to surrender sovereignty or face economic isolation.
He critiques the Western use of the term liberalism as misapplied, arguing that the term in contemporary discourse often denotes neoliberals who favor deregulation and reduced government, whereas, historically, public control of essential services and strategic sectors—transportation, banking, health care, education—guided growth. He compares China favorably for keeping banking under public direction and maintaining state-led credit for productive investment, arguing that Western economies have shifted toward financialization and rent-seeking, fueling inequality and instability. He posits that open, liberal trade and investment are not genuinely open under U.S. dominance, since the dollar’s supremacy and centralized control enable coercive extraction.
In closing, Hudson emphasizes that the real question is what economy and political system will replace the current liberal order, with attention to why China’s model—combining public banking, subsidized infrastructure, and state-led development—has produced higher productivity and living standards. He calls for a realistic redefinition of democracy and economic policy to prevent further polarization and decline, and for an international framework that supports productive investment and equitable growth rather than financial extractivism.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Michael Hudson to discuss the devastating global economic struggle, which is resulting from the Iran war, and also essentially what is becoming then a, you can say, a competition for the economic world order that will follow well, whatever this world order, whenever this world order comes to an end. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: It's always nice to be here because the questions you ask are have to do with the how the whole economy throughout the world is evolving.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And there's so much happening all at once, and these are really, again, historical times when we see the economic architecture from the past eighty years falling apart in front of our eyes, and we wanna I'd like to know what what might follow after this and also explain how the different actors behave. And you wrote you published very recently an excellent article with the name yeah. The sorry. There was the title postponing the world's financial winter for how long.
And I would recommend everyone to to read it, and the link is in the description. So I thought a good place to start would be the energy markets because this is obviously a big hit for the world economy. The US war on Iran essentially plunging all these international energy markets into crisis. I was wondering if you see a silver lining for The US in terms of these energy problems.
Speaker 1: Well, energy markets is just about everything. You have fertilizer, for instance, and fertilizer prices, I'm told in India, have already gone way up. Certainly in America, they're going up to such an extent that farmers are saying if they pay for the fertilizer and for the equipment and for all the other inputs whose price is inflated, they're not going to be able to make money on their crops. Well, course, crop prices may go up because all over the world there's going to be a crop shortage without fertilizer, but farmers need to go to a bank and borrow before they can spend for the spring planting and and the summer and that usually entails selling the crop in advance for a guaranteed price. So the big companies that are the crop trading companies are gonna make a big profit, not the farmers.
So they're really, really being screwed. And, of course, they're the ones who are most loyal to Trump and the and the Republicans. So, of course, they can afford to screw the the farmers because they're, they're his base. But pharmaceuticals are also in there. That's made out of all this, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals.
Already the neon, I'm sorry, the helium, has already been stopped and so that interferes with the, hospital scanning machinery as well as cryogenic freezing of computer chips, then you have just the basic energy for transportation, especially the highly refined, airplane fuels that have already led to huge cutbacks in the airlines planned flights for this summer for the tourist season. So energy is really the whole economy and people, you get the sort of simplistic economic analysis say, well, energy is 10 of GDP, so GDP will go down 10%. But that's not very helpful because if, you have all sorts of things that you need to make a profit, product. And if you don't have energy for it, then that means all the other things are not able to be employed either. And you have unemployment and manufacturing industry.
Aluminum has already been cut back because aluminum's really made out of electricity to do the electrolytic refining of the bauxite. Right down the line, the effect will be more than a 10%. And the genius of Iran's political stance is, if you, the rest of the world, do not stop The United States and Israel from destroying us, which is their explicit threat, They're going to blow up all of our bridges. They're going to destroy all of our refining capacity. They'll destroy all of our electricity.
They'll bring about a regime change and reimpose a police state like the Shah had that led us to have the revolution to overthrow him in 1979 to begin with. If you're just gonna sit by and let the let the world ignore all of the body of international law and the laws of war that the United Nations Charter was supposed to do, then, we're not gonna go down alone. We're going to take the other Arab oil producers with us. That's going to cause such a shortage that it's gonna cause an international depression worse than the nineteen thirties. And the reason why it's worse than the great depression is because that was really a financial, depression, but a cutback in energy and the tangible physical flow of goods is part of the production process itself that that cannot be solved by writing down debts, cannot be solved by saying, let's have a war economy and military Keynesianism to pull us out of the depression.
It's much more serious. So in terms of the world economy, it it's all going going to suffer if other countries do not restructure the way in which all of world trade and payments and finance and how countries save their international reserves is all reformed together. And that requires really a reform of the United Nations or even a it's sometimes easier to create a whole new institution, a new United Nations rather than trying to fix something that is so broken by the United States interference and the corruption not only of the veto power that the United States has to prevent the United Nations from doing anything that The United major that the United States doesn't want, but the corruption of the Atomic Energy Authority acting basically as a spy for Israeli terrorism against Iran or for the fact that the United States is driving the United Nations bankrupt by refusing to pay its bills. And the fact that the United States is blocking any kind of international movements to cope with the global warming, and replace fossil fuels, oil, and gas to begin with with either atomic energy or solar energy or wind energy or, alternatives.
So all of the the entire spectrum has to be changed as a system. It's not just, oh, let's just get the oil flowing again. And that's why I don't I don't understand why the stock markets are saying, well, maybe there can be a a happy medium and everybody can, make a there'll be a position in between global depression and total surrender of Iran and total control shift of international control of the oil trade to The United States to weaponize it to become, basically the world dictator and do to the world what threatens to be the result of destroying OPEC trade today. That's that's the choice, and this choice is seems to be unthinkable as far as the large investments, investors behind the stock and bond markets are concerned.
Speaker 0: What you're describing though is an economic, mutually assured destruction. That is, and I and I can see why, yeah. I think you used that word as well, by the way, in your article, but I can see why Iran is is is is doing this because and no one came to its aid, essentially. That is when The US and Israel attacked in this way, in a very savage way as well, destroying infrastructure, targeting nuclear reactors, talking about killing an entire civilization. Know, what I saw in European papers were, well, now the, you know, the Iranians will have time for will have the opportunity to have freedom now that we you know, now that they have been liberated from, you know, the the dictatorship.
And, essentially, every article, especially in the beginning, seemed to be about how to legitimize this. No one's talking about the international law or pulling back. So, again, if it's only them gonna be destroyed, again, destruction of their civilization, yeah, of course, they wanna push back in this way. But, yeah, it's it does appear to be something that seems like a mutually assured destruction. But if The US you know, it doesn't want the I guess, doesn't want the international economic system to completely melt down, but it doesn't wanna give up its dominance either.
So where do you see this going? Is it
Speaker 1: It would rather crash the whole economy, the world economy, and itself than give up its dominance. It's willing to crash everything. And then you have the personality. Trump wants to be famous. And how, how can you be more famous than ending ending civilization and pushing and taking a thousand years to rebuild it from atomic war?
He will go down as the person that ended the whole, a whole historical epoch of civilization. He he has a motivation for blowing up the world and he's appointed Hegseth is his is the head of the war department who is a Jesus freak who believes that, well, if you end civilization, Jesus will come and he'll save the Christians and send them all to heaven and everyone else to hell. You have crazy people in charge. And so it's not a this is not a situation that you can handle according to all the rational models. It's an irrational model, as you've seen by all of the newspaper reports of the fights that are occurring within the Situation Room of the White House when there are the generals are simply refusing to give Trump the code for the atom bomb because he would they said he would have used it last Saturday.
That's how crazy it is.
Speaker 0: You know, it's, it's just it's incredible that that it's actually gone, to this, distance or length, especially for someone, you know, like Trump was gonna bring Iran who ran on bringing back normality or ending the forever wars. And about the religious dynamic of this, I mean, it's it's quite strange. On on one hand, you see them being overly religious in the way they justify war and try to mobilize, the military and the public, except for when the pope criticizes war, then suddenly there's zero respect for religious authority. I mean, it's it's it's quite extraordinary. It doesn't seem very genuine, to be honest.
But but what do you make of the Iranian defense here, though? Because, again, they're faced with an existential threat. They wanna take down their their their opponents. How how do you see their their ability to withstand all of this? The Economically, this.
Speaker 1: Let's compare the, Iranian and The US ability. The US is, essentially used up most of its available missiles, its bombs, its, missile launchers, it's cut back its airplanes, it's afraid to move its navy within shooting distance of Iran. So The United States has lost its military power to compel. That's why Trump said, well, the army says I can't involve can't invade on land to grab a Karg Island or to grab the uranium. We tried that and it failed.
So if I can't have a military invasion like we we had in such a nice operation in in Venezuela, and if I can't just bomb them because they have their anti aircraft radars that are going to shoot down our planes and the refuel refuelers and, will lose their aircraft. And it's not gonna knock them out anyway because Iran's defenses and Iran's whole administrative network is so decentralized, then we have only one solution, the atom bomb. That's why he asked on Saturday, give me the atom bomb codes. I don't see why the rest of the world doesn't see, where this is is going to lead Because way back in the nineteen seventies, when I worked with Herman Kahn, the Hudson Institute, it was all about working, out what the sequence of political and military responses would be to an atom bomb, and it pretty much means that everybody's going to need one. And, you'd think I mean, the the joke is that in trying to prevent the fiction, the pretense that Iran was trying to get an atom bomb, now everybody realizes we need an atom bomb.
If we don't have our own atom bomb, Israel can bomb us. Israel is the only country in the world that's permitted to have 200 atom bombs to use against whoever it wants, and we can't. So we need 200 countries. Let's we we all need them too. This is the double standard that's occurred.
And, again, countries are not taking steps to isolate The United States and Israel and say, look. If you're going to go down this route of threatening the atom bomb, if you don't get take control of the world oil trade to weaponize it and use it as a choke point to say, can't get oil unless we succumb to, your foreign policy and give and agree to shift our investment, in our major industries into The United States, as a center that you're going to force us into a depression by cutting us off from oil. If if if you're you're you're offering threatening exactly what, Iran has, anticipated for the threat. So, the the US military doesn't have an ability to do anything to really conquer Iran. All it can do is bomb it.
And the Iranians have, main have, despite what, Trump says, their navy is not destroyed, maybe half of it is. Their aircraft is not destroyed, maybe half as it is. The missile launchers are not destroyed. What were destroyed were the balloons that they bought from China and inflated to look like missile launchers, which were, bombed that, Trump said we've destroyed all of their, missile launchers. So Iran is in a a much stronger military position defensively, and Iran's not an offensive power.
The only countries that Iran can threaten are its, Arab neighbors, in the in in West Asia. It's not going to be a world power in in the sense that America, or China is a military power. It's not going to be an investment power itself because it's been stripped of its foreign means of investment. It's not even going to be a major trade power. What is giving it all the power that it has is the moral power that it's got saying, we we are not going to stand up for letting The United States become the world's dictator and using, oil trade, food trade, the dollar as weapons against other countries, to maintain one-sided exploitative control over them.
We're not going to let that happen, and somebody has to draw the line, and it's Iran that has drawn the line. That's what that's what its moral power is, and other countries really don't have any choice except either to tell Iran, you're right. We have to make a change. We have to stop this, aggression by The United States and Israel to say, we will destroy your economy either militarily or economically if you don't do what we want, or they'll, isolate, themselves from The United States and Israel by going their own way. And essentially, that means isolating The United States, until it ends its military and, financial attempt to weaponize everything that it does in every economic and, social, activity.
Speaker 0: It's interesting that this role fell on the Iranians to essentially check The US on this because you and I spoke have spoken before about how a confident hegemon, that is the British in the nineteenth century or or the Americans in the twentieth century, they when when they're confident, have an interest in having an open, liberal, international economic system. That is everyone should have access to technologies, industries. There should be, you know, free access to international trans transportation corridors by sea or land. There should be free access to currencies, banks, etcetera. But but once the hegemon is in decline, it will seek to will reverse its decline by essentially weaponizing all aspects of economic connectivity.
So all the connectivity, which was previously a source for global growth, is now weaponized to restore the hegemonic power. Now, you know, we we see this being used against China, I think, yeah, to to a large extent, not just tech, energy, transportation corridors, but also increasingly Russia. But Iran, it looks like they yeah. They're the one who put the foot down, and but they they also have some abilities to the Strait Of Hormuz. I think this is quite fascinating because by stripping The US of control of the Strait Of Hormuz, I mean, they they can do a lot of other things.
I see now that they set some conditions. They essentially set up a toll booth now, and they said we have you have to everyone has to pay toll, especially the countries who attacked Iran or sanctioned Iran. They have to pay reparations, so that's an additional bonus on top. And, also, they don't want dollars anymore. This is quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Well, they that's not possible they have dollars. They had dollars, and The United States has confiscated them. If you have dollars, you The United States will immediately steal them as they stole Russia's $300,000,000,000. The dollar is unusable by any country that wants its own national sovereignty. I wanna say, you used the word liberal, and this is a completely misused term in general.
The takeoff of the industrial nations, Britain, Germany, The United States, they were not liberal. The word liberal has come really means neoliberal. It means no government. Liberal means Mark Thatcher, Ronald Reagan in today's vocabulary. And it means, you you dis you have to dismantle all government subsidy of the economy, instead of the governments running, natural monopolies such as transportation and communications and, providing free schooling and free health care.
All that was nineteenth century. It wasn't neoliberalism. The word they used was socialism in one form or another or social democracy perhaps. But, they did not use liberalism. They rejected the whole idea of free trade in order for governments to shape the markets to so as to prevent rent seeking, shape the markets to prevent real estate prices from going up by taxing away land rent, to prevent monopolies from taking place either by things like the antitrust act of the Sherman antitrust act of 1890 in America and Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting.
Or the but better yet, the government will take all of these natural monopolies into public hands as was done the case from Europe to The United States. United States with the Erie Canal and on. So as to and there was a whole doctrine of looking at government capital formation. Public infrastructure investment was a a factor of production. But unlike industrial capital or capitalist capital, private sector capital and industry capital, the aim of government investment was not to make a profit.
It was to lower it was to provide its basic services for key sectors at subsidized rates or even freely so that you lower the economy's overall cost of doing business. And at the end of all of this, there this this government control was, in finance achieved most clearly in Germany and Central Europe at the end of the nineteenth century where the government and industry, and the banks moved hand in hand to direct the financial system to, provide credit, not to make money financially for financial investors, but to finance capital formation and industry, to build factories largely in the arms producing industries, of course, but to produce actual industry. Well, there was a all of this was what classical political economy was all about. The ideal of the whole political doctrine of industrial capitalism was cap was to minimize economic rent. It was value theory.
That's what Ricardo talked about. John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, they were all talking about how do you keep prices in line with actual cost of production, the value, and get rid of economic rent, which is the excess of market prices overvalue because of the special privileges that, we inherited from medieval European society. The privilege of absentee hereditary land ownership by a landlord aristocracy, the monopolies that were created by international banks in the fourteenth century on to enable kings to have a revenue to carry their war debts, and general banking to provide credit for economic growth. Well, there was a after World War one, all of that plans for how to develop an industrial economy was essentially put aside and finance replaced industry as the focus of gaining wealth and making a fortune, throughout the West. And if you look at today, the most successful economy in terms of growth of production, living standards is China, and what it's done is exactly the same principle that made The United States wealthy and productive and so dominant in the nineteenth century.
It it's kept natural monopolies in the public hand. Transportation is very inexpensive. It's subsidized. Health care, education is subsidized. But most of all, China's kept banking in the in the hands of the government.
So the bank of the People's Bank of China will create credit for actual tangible production. Unfortunately, lot of this has gone into overproduction of real estate, but the idea is you're not going to make loans for financial speculators to borrow money, buy a corporation, and then essentially loot it, with and, leave it, which is what's happening, in the West. Certainly all week long and for instance, in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, there's a discussion to say, well, the major banks and major investment funds that have lent money for private capital formation to take over companies and finance their in the shitification, their downsizing and essentially just looting these companies, were not letting pension funds cash in their holdings unless they take 50%, 80%, lose lose all their money because the whole American economy has become a bubble. So when I talked about what's the effect of the energy stopping before, one of the effects is to bring down this whole highly leveraged financial sector, the whole debt leveraged, buyouts and the debt pyramid, mainly in The United States, as in the depression, The United States was the most highly debt leveraged economy, the whole financial sector will be coming down.
So what what will be destroyed is not only a physical output, it's the whole system of financialization that has led The United States to lag so far behind China, for instance, in countries that, instead of being liberal, say, well, the government has to play a positive role in providing for certain basic needs and to prevent, exploitation. If you don't have a government strong enough to prevent a financial oligarchy from developing, then, you're going to end up like The United States, a failed economy. Or like Germany and most of Western Europe, a failed economy as a result of their neoliberalism. So, I just wanted to be very careful about using that word liberalism. It's a it's a it's an a term against government and against socialism specifically.
That's what caused the whole reaction against industrial capitalism because industrial capitalism itself was evolving into socialism, into a government playing an increasing role in the economy by investing in infrastructure, by preventing monopolies, by taxing away, or preventing land rent and monopoly rent and financial exploitation from occurring. So there there there's a whole ideological superstructure that is gone by the wayside, along with the collapse of, production. Ideology is the last thing to go apparently.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's a good point. Often the word liberal is used because of the openness of the system. But but But it's not open.
No. No. No. I agree. And and and there's nothing else.
Speaker 1: United States says if any if we have open trade, then we can't control it. The United States says there cannot be open trader investment. If we can't grab if, there's if everybody can use the dollar, then we can't grab it all from them and force them to do what we want. Nothing is open. It's a closed system controlled centrally by The United States.
Liberalism is central planning, but it's central planning not by government, but by the financial sector and by the political, military sector. That's a liberalism. You have to realize that central centralized planning, not by the government, not by democracy, but by financial wealth and and the military to protect its dominance.
Speaker 0: No. That's yeah. That's where I was going. I I think the rent seeking rent seeking, not just from the their own public, that is the American public, but also from other countries as well. I think this is why, yeah, the the the assumption of countries who break away from The US led economic system that they would only suffer, but we see, well, like in the Russian case, that they can actually make have have many benefits as well from not, yeah, paying these rents.
But given that this is The US situation, when he was a hegemon, he had, you know, certain privileges in terms of everyone using the dollar, everyone using the banks, everyone using its technologies. How how do you as The US now struggles as a declining hegemon, it seems to be pursuing a very different approach. It's has a very, I guess, extractive approach to to trade. He wants to maximize
Speaker 1: But that's that's
Speaker 0: one of years. If you don't Maybe that's an other story. But who who in who in this situation do do you think wanna invest in The US economy given that it's kind of obvious what they're going for now?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the fantasy of all this. Donald Trump says, well, you know, we we can go one of two ways. Either we Iran you know, we'll attack Iran, to make one last stab to grab its oil, which is how we began. That's nothing to do with Iran wanting an atom bomb. It's nowhere near an atom bomb if America wants its oil.
Or in in that case, will be a world depression. But if there's a world depression, he Trump said, we'll come out ahead. We look at us. We have oil. We have gas.
We we don't need oil oil and gas. Other countries will suffer more and that means we will suffer less than they do and that's what winning is in a shrinking environment, to suffer less than your, opposition. Well, that's his fantasy. But he doesn't realize that, well, the yes. The United States has oil, and gas, but it doesn't have industry.
It doesn't have any means today of being, of producing industrial goods, because it doesn't have an industrial labor force. And even the construction labor force, most of the blue collar work and the dirty work, the low low wage work was being done by immigrants, and Trump has cut that all off. So you no longer have the in immigrant, personal care, restaurants and other things that immigrants do, crop, crop picking that immigrants do, or the blue collar labor working in factories because there aren't any factories now for them to work in. So immigrants have always done, the hard work just like you, is the case in the Arab, Emirates where it's mostly an immigrant population. Same thing in Saudi Arabia.
That's that's how countries recruit the labor force. And the The United States cannot compete industrially or agriculturally with other economies to say, oh, well, we'll export something for you and, for for what you need. You sell sell us what we need, your raw other raw materials, your high, your your whatever it is you produce. Because the the cost of labor is so high in The United States, not because Americans' living standards are high. The the living standards of labor in America have gone down steadily ever since 2008 and really since nineteen eighties or the '19 late nineteen seventy nine was really the key for American labor living standards.
You could afford to buy housing there out of the wages that you had, but especially since Obama's bill out the banks and the junk mortgage fraud that, essentially wiped out a lot of the low income people. And since 2008, all almost all the growth in wealth in America has been, as we've said, to the top wealthiest 10% and its wealth of the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, not the industrial economy at all. So the industrial the American industrial economy has been essentially, dissolved. You had America make it a deal with, Korea and, also with Japan to build affiliates in The United States. And so, Korea said, well, you know, we'd came over here.
We tried to hire American labor. They're not good at construction labor. They're just too, sloppy. We we have to bring our own labor over. Same thing with Taiwan.
They had a multibillion dollar, big, plans to build a computer chip factory, out west. And they found out, well, we have to use our own workers. We can't use American workers for it. They there's essentially, no one wants to be a blue collar worker in The United States, and the only people who do were willing to do the blue collar jobs are now being deported, or under threat of deportation, because they've immigrated and doing a blue collar job is how you get a foothold, in in this country. So, there's this fantasy that somehow if, there is a world depression, America can come out the winner is all of a sudden going to show that America's hollow.
It will be like, like, John McCain called Russia a gas station with atom bombs. Well, that's all that America would be left with under Donald Trump's alternative. To say, okay, we've brought the rest of the world in depression. We have oil and gas, and we have the atom bomb. We don't have any industry, and our agriculture is broke.
So he's turned in he's turned America into a gas station with atom bombs if he goes that route of causing of forcing Iran to defend itself by saying if, we're going to be attacked and destroy our economy, we're going to bring all of the world with us, which is going to force you to make an alternative or just to live in a permanent depression until you figure a way out of it that'll save us along with you. That's that's the political dynamic at work that I see.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This assumption that if the international system breaks down, the global economy somehow, The US will be able to float to the top. It's well, some of it can have some strength in that argument in terms of The US having a lot of energy sovereignty, but their whole similarity one often hears with World War two, it seems a bit, yeah, wrong because, you know, in World War two, there was the the emergence of the big business. There was a lot of technological development, and, overall, after the war was over, The US was the world's factory. It was the world's bank.
These days, it doesn't it outsourced its industries. It's the largest debtor country in the world, in world history. So it's not it's not positioned well as it was back then. So the idea that one can come out strong in a war like this, it doesn't make much sense. But my my my my last question, though, was just on on the partners of of The US.
Because if The US is shifting towards extracting more economic concessions, and you hear that you see this in Europe where, you know, Trump can hand over the Europeans any trade deal they have to sign, whatever. You know, they have to show up at his golf course and sign deal they don't wanna sign. You see some some suggesting that The Gulf States should repay The US for the weapons it has spent in fighting Iran. In East Asia, there's been comments that Taiwan and others should begin to shift their high-tech industries towards The United States. So, again, this very extractive economic, approach, which is now kicking in to reverse the decline.
You know, nobody wants to do this. It appears that the main leverage The US has is that it's a it's the security dependence, The US' security guarantor. But a declining hedge bond often invites insecurity. It doesn't provide security to the same extent as evident in both Europe and and the The Gulf States. So how do you how how durable do you think this is?
Speaker 1: Well, that's just what the Emirates have just said. We we had thought, two things. We thought that when we bought US weapons, they were going to work and the the weapons are only like to have an expensive Rolls Royce in the garage. It looks nice but it's not really the most efficient car. The weapons are not to fight with.
They're not to fight a war with. They're not to attack. They're not to defend. They're just to hold on the ground and to make America happy. The weapons don't work and having a base here, has ended up a threat.
When America attacked Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Arab countries said, well, we weren't consulted. And the European consult countries said, wait a minute. Donald Trump wants now us to die to the last year European was, trying to have a land invasion of Cark Island and Iran, so we'll die when America's not willing to do. The fact is that, America's acting unilaterally by itself in its own interest, and so having a US military base there is, essentially putting yourself as a bull's eye for Iran and, similar all over the world, to, to destroy because The United States military bases are there is a means of attack. They're not defensive.
They're aggressive. And if they're aggressive against any enemy, the enemies the, opponent is going to fight back and wipe it out, and they'll whip out the country that has the military base in it. So obviously, that's not safe. But most of all, I'm glad you mentioned the thought that, Trump has said, well, Iran has to Iraq has to pay us for all the costs that it had for the war we we waged to destroy them, and, we're gonna get pay capture the repayment for that by grabbing its oil. That's he said that explicitly, and so he's grabbed its oil.
And there is obviously, he wants to do the same thing with the Arab OPEC countries. Well, we defended you. Now you have to pay us for the cost of defending you with our military industrial complex of overpriced missiles and aircraft and missile launchers and everything else that didn't have anything like the military effect that we told you it would have. It we're a paper tiger to use Mao's phrase. And, why on earth would any country want an American military base being a military being a paper tiger that's not going to defend it, that just makes it a bull's eye, a target of countries that America is trying to launch a war with as it tries to threaten to destroy them if they don't surrender their sovereignty, to The United States and to Trump personally.
Speaker 0: It seems like a strange time in world history to be banking on US security guarantees. I mean, it's you know, that's it's just it's not in The that The US doesn't have the possibility anymore either. It's I'm I'm so I'm very shocked by when I look around the world how how little adjustment there actually is to the new realities that is this new distribution of power. The assumption that we can still have the hegemonic policies of the nineteen nineties and apply them to 2026 when the distribution of power clearly is now post hegemonic and, yeah, multipolar.
Speaker 1: This security you talk about for seventy, for eighty years now has been a fiction. It's the enabling fiction to say we will provide you for security in case that Russia invades Europe. That's as if Russia is going to invade Europe. Russia has known it's a a fiction to think that Europe needs security against Russia. Russia wants to be left alone by Europe, and it's willing to fight Europe and to bomb Germany and England and France if they try to attack Russia as they're doing or provide Ukraine with missiles to attack Russian oil and refinery production as they're doing.
Russia has already turned its back on Europe and wants to go with the East because Europe is part of a failed civilization. It's going it's going downhill and it's Russia's not only rejecting Europe economically but its social values and its rotten political system. A system that says, if you say that you're against a genocide, we're throwing you in jail. This is a democracy. We're in charge and, you cannot in a democracy say, oh, we're against we're the Palestinians shouldn't be exterminated.
That's against civilization. You go to jail. Germany said that, Britain said that, and France has said that, and they're arresting people to say that. I mean, this is a despicable culture for the rest of of the world, and they're seeing the whole nakedness of, the the the fact that Europe is not a democracy at all and that all of this say saying, we're here to protect you. You have to pay us to protect you is really just you have to pay us to be able to put in place a military system to threaten you with disruption if you don't do what we want and, follow trade policies that are unequal and benefit us, not you.
America has to win as Donald Trump says, and you have to use the dollar that we can just print to get buy up your industry, your raw materials, and other things. You have to pay the debts that are you run up from running trade deficits as a result of following the the pro American investment policies that the World Bank and the IMF produced that say don't produce your own food, buy buy American. The whole system that was supposed pretended to be keeping the world economy prosperous and free turned out to be making it more and more unequal, more and more polarized, less and less safe, and more or less prone to leading to exactly the culmination of this, irrepressible conflict that we're seeing today?
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was I was interviewed two days ago by a German newspaper, and and, you know, I was making the point that if Europe wants to reverse its decline, it has to end the dividing lines in Europe. That is end the conflict with Russia, you know, remove Ukraine from the front lines of of this new war. And and I was asked, well, to what extent is possible because our values are so different, because we have liberal democracy and the Russians are so authoritarian. I was like, this is the same Germany.
I mean, where where again, where you protest against the genocide and they throw you in jail. I it's it's no. It's quite extraordinary that this is still the the very narrow framework we have to interpret the world around us that is simply, you know, good guys versus bad guys. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Well, the whole question is what is democracy? What seems to be democracy, in the West is exactly what it was in, Aristotle's day in Greece. He said what claims to be democracy is really oligarchy. But you can let people vote for who is going to be the personal leaders and the administrators, but you cannot vote for what kind of an economy are we going to have, what kind of a society we have. All of that is determined by the wealthiest, oligarchic parts of the population.
The the whole purpose of democracy is supposed to be how do you run an economy to prevent it from polarizing and to act on behalf of the population at large, increasing its, living standards and its productivity and its happiness. That can only be done with a strong enough government, in a position to prevent a financial oligarchy from developing and polarizing the economy and dismantling government authority to put the authority in the hands of the creditors and the landowners and the wealth holders. So the whole idea is that the whole ancient Near East, Babylonia, Sumer, they all had rulers who would prevent debts from impoverishing the economy from prevent the land from being forfeited to buyers to centralized landowners who accumulated it all, to prevent the ancient Middle East, West Asia from suffering in the way that Western civilization did from classical Greece to the Roman Empire. And we're still living in the results of that idea of oligarchy creating a government, calling it democracy, and saying government not controlled by the oligarchy is not democratic. When, you and that a country like China whose government is trying to act on behalf of increasing productivity, wealth, and living standards is called, an autocracy.
Well, this is this is the vocabulary of deception that we're, we're living in and that a part of this, resolution of the economic conflict we're having today has to be a resolution of the ideological misuse of language to provide a a more realistic vocabulary to explain why it is that Western economies are polarized and, getting poorer and poorer and other countries, China is not. What is it that China's doing that we're not doing that has enabled it to uplift its population? That, there has to be that discussion, which hasn't even begun yet. It's it's still in the unthinkable phase.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Far away. Well, thank you very much for, yeah, sharing your insights. It's, quite extraordinary what we're seeing. So, yeah.
Thanks again.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for having me, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Trump's Defeat in Iran & Decline of the U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/8lRC8r8Qzk4 https://t.co/HD0L1FaIY9
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jeffrey Sachs argues that we are witnessing the limits of Western power, including the limits of U.S. power, and that this is part of a long-term trend toward the waning dominance of the Western world as Asia rises. He frames the broader arc as follows:
- After World War II, Europe lost its colonies and the United States emerged to replace European empires, competing with the Soviet Union as the two major imperial powers. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States appeared to be the sole superpower, leading to an era some called the unipolar moment. Sachs contends this moment was largely an illusion economically: for about a century and a half leading up to 1950, the West dominated, but the long-term trend was the narrowing of the gap between the West and Asia.
- From the end of World War II onward, Asia began a sustained process of catching up in literacy, education, infrastructure, and industrialization. While Western economic and military dominance remained evident, Asia’s rise gradually altered the balance of power. By the 1990s and into the 2000s, Asia’s relative power had grown substantially, with China emerging as a major economic and technological force.
- The “unipolar moment” faded as reality: Asia has been rising since the mid-20th century, and the post-1991 euphoria in the United States about unipolarity was economically questionable. Sachs notes that even at the height of U.S. power, the U.S. could not defeat Vietnam or sustain European empires, and that China’s rise began well before 2010, becoming evident in manufacturing and heavy industry led by China.
- He highlights the Ukraine war as another demonstration of the limits of American expansion and NATO’s enlargement, arguing that the war marks the end of NATO enlargement and challenges the notion that the U.S. could redraw power on Eurasia at will. He recalls Zbigniew Brzezinski’s idea of U.S. dominance over Eurasia and argues that Putin’s stance showed that such dominance would not be realized.
- Sachs emphasizes that technology and economic growth diffuse over time, making monopolies unsustainable. He cites historical examples: Britain’s early industrial edge, Germany and the United States catching up, and even the limited lasting power of nuclear monopoly due to espionage and scientific advances. He argues that “choke points” are a recurring meme that eventually fail to prevent rising challengers.
- He discusses realist theories: offensive realism (John Mearsheimer) arguing that great powers cannot find stable balance and constantly seek advantage, versus defensive realism (and Kissinger’s Concert of Europe-inspired view) suggesting some stability through negotiation and norms. He notes that U.S. strategists often view China and Russia as destabilizing and dangerous, though he himself advocates cooperative accommodation with China, avoiding confrontations over red lines and arms sales to Taiwan.
- Sachs connects these ideas to ideology, noting that dominant powers often rationalize dominance through imperialist or civilizing ideologies. He references Robert Kagan’s liberal imperialism concept and traces it back to European imperial thought, suggesting that Western mentalities persist even as formal empires fade. He argues that imperial mindsets continue in Britain and the United States, with imperial ideologies shaping how power is exercised and justified.
In sum, Sachs frames the current era as a gradual but undeniable shift away from Western, particularly American, dominance toward a more multipolar order led by Asia, with the Ukraine war and Iran as illustrating events showing the limits of unipolarity and the enduring, complex dynamics of great-power competition.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is Friday, 04/24/2026, and we are joined by professor Jeffrey Sachs. Thank you for coming on. I'm yeah. I've been wanting to speak with you about this, what appears to be the, yeah, the decline at least of the hegemonic era after the Cold War.
Because after the Cold War, we really saw that the image of The US as being all powerful was very important to shape the international system. That is, states linked their security to The United States as they tended to monopolize the security, and other sorry, other adversaries tried to keep a very low profile, not to provoke The US. But as we know, hegemons become overstretched and exhaust themselves, and it seems this is what Trump wanted to reverse. But with the Iran war, it seems instead it exposed even more so the limits of US power. I was just wondering how how do you see this, or how do you assess the, I guess, the longer term relevance of the Iran war?
Speaker 1: Certainly, we're seeing, the limits of US power. No doubt. I think what we're seeing is is a long term trend. A long term trend actually that is a decline of Western hegemony or an end of Western hegemony, which one can date already back to the end of World War two when most of Europe lost its colonies around the world. The United States, in a way, replaced the European empires to become an American empire.
It competed with the Soviet Union as the two major imperial powers, but The US was within that competition in some way always dominant economically and technologically. That was a very frightening time because these were two nuclear superpowers that were at each other's throats often at least in proxy wars. When the Soviet Union dissolved or disintegrated in 1991, it looked to The US leadership and to much of the world that The US was the sole superpower and was completely dominant. But I would say the long term trend that had led to the decline overall of Western power after World War two was continuing. What happened at the end of World War two with the end of the European imperial age was that the rest of the world and especially in Asia was given new space for catching up technologically, catching up in terms of education levels, literacy, urbanization, industrialization.
And so all the way back from the end of World War two on, there was a narrowing of the gap between the industrialized West, which broadly speaking was Europe and The United States, and the countries of Asia, and at least some partial economic development success stories in other parts of the world as well. So the way I view it is that for around a hundred fifty years, roughly speaking, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of World War two, the Western world and especially Europe dominated the world. That really was a Western hegemony. Basically, Britain in the lead of that, but a number of powerful European countries with imperial possessions around the world. After World War two, the gap between the West and the rest narrowed.
Within the West, The US was clearly the dominant power, but underneath the surface was the year by year economic progress of much of Asia. And that means that on a long term trend, not on a year to year trend, but on a long term trend, the dominance of the Western world was bound to diminish. But I would say two things hid that. The dominance of The US and Soviet Union made it look like it was really a two empire affair battling with each other, and it was easy to take one's eyes off of the rise of Korea or the rise of Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, the so called Asian Tigers, or even the rise of China economically, began in the late nineteen seventies. So it looked like it was two powers battling each other when more fundamental change was underway.
And I keep coming back to Asia as central to this because Asia's home to 60% of the world population and has always been the center of gravity of world population and of the world economy for two millennia or more. And so what was happening was that Asia was slowly coming back from a century and a half of European imperial rule. But that was beneath the surface. It was gradual. It was year to year.
And it looked like The United States and the Soviet Union were duking it out so that when the Soviet Union ended in December 1991, there was one superpower remaining. The end of history was declared. The United States looked like the sole superpower. It was the unipolar moment. US was the indispensable country.
Every superlative one could imagine was given. The neoconservatives in The United States believed their own headlines. And the portrayal that the fundamental change in the world was US dominance became the meme. But I would say the from an economic point of view, the fundamental story was the year by year, step by step narrowing of the gap between the West, again meaning Europe and The US, and Asia. And the rise of Asia was the real story in terms of relative power.
Now one could add a few points that even in the heyday of US power, The US could not defeat Vietnam. The US could not overcome the anti colonial wars and anti colonial sentiments. The US could not keep European empires intact or replace them with the American empires in much of Asia, though The US influence in postwar Japan and Korea was nearly total, we we can say. But all of this means that from my point of view, the unipolar moment after 1991 was an illusion to an important extent. If you were looking at this as an economist as I was during that period, I was rather routinely saying that Asia is rising and that this is creating a different kind of world.
If you were in geopolitics, power projection, and military, it didn't necessarily look like that. And what's interesting, I think, and I think it would be fun to actually go back to look at what the strategists were saying about China back in 1991 and 1992 when the unipolar moment was projected. My memory, which may be wrong, is that they weren't saying much about China, That China was not viewed as a likely important actor. It was a poor country that assembled goods for US markets. It would be good if it rose in power perhaps because it would continue to check Russian influence.
But I don't think that China was viewed as a strategic issue by The United States until after the start of the twenty first century and really until around 2010 when Obama started talking famously about the Asia pivot or the China pivot. So all of this is to say, Glenn, that the broadest trend of all in the world scene, in my view, is that from 1800 to 1950, roughly speaking, the Western world led by the European empires and within Europe by Britain dominated the world. They industrialized. They had the vast preponderance of military power. They had the vast preponderance of technology.
The overwhelming leadership in science. Whether that balance was in Europe or The United States already began to shift by the beginning of the twentieth century, but decisively shift shifted at the end of World War two. But taking the West as a whole, that dominance of the West peaked around 1950. And while there was no well, I'd say the the headline was European empire is over, India independent, People's Republic Of China declared, and so forth. Those political headlines started a deep economic process that we loosely call catching up.
It's not an adequate phrase, but at least for the first fifty years of the period from 1950 to 2000, it's not a bad phrase to think that what was happening in Asia was catching up in the sense of literacy for the first time, mass public education for the first time, basic infrastructure being built that had not really been built during the European imperial heyday. Catching up no longer is the right phrase because China's clearly in the lead technologically in a lot of areas now, and The United States is by far not the hegemon or the sole superpower in the world. On most criteria, economically and technologically, China is at least the peer of The United States. But I would say in manufacturing almost across the board and in heavy industry almost across the board, China's way ahead of The United States right now. So in this sense, the idea that American hegemony is coming to an end, I would say that has been true gradually for decades.
I would say that the post 1991 euphoria in The United States about the unipolar world, and it really was euphoria. I was around to see it, to see it in the think tanks, to see it in the universities, to see it in Washington, to of course listen to it in the rhetoric of every president and so forth. This was always, in my view, economically ignorant. I was also part of a debate back in the nineteen nineties. Was the rise of Asia real or something that was going to collapse.
And there were articles about the myth of the Asian miracle and so forth. And my view all along was we're seeing a a long term real catching up process. And again, after 2010, a going ahead process in many ways. So I never bought into this unipolar story as being real. And having witnessed the Vietnam War debacle, I always felt that America exaggerated its power.
I would say that the Ukraine war is another demonstration of the clear limits of American unipolarity because basically, the Ukraine war was the end of NATO enlargement and the end of The US putting its pieces on the board wherever it wanted. We can remember that in this unipolar moment, Svyniew Brzezinski basically had the idea that The United States would come to dominate Eurasia, nothing less, and that Ukraine would be the pivot for doing that. And president Putin basically stood up and said, no. Not on, my watch. It's not gonna happen.
And the Ukraine war is essentially a war of the limits of American expansion. So the the limits were already demonstrated. The US thought that it would just blow off Russia financially, economically, by sanctions, or militarily, or through subversion inside with some kind of color revolution or something else. And all of that proved to be a complete illusion as well. So long answer to the question.
Yes. We're seeing the limits of Western power. We're seeing the limits of US power. But my answer is that Western power, which is a relative concept after all, has been waning because of the rise of Asia already since seventy five years, since the middle of the twentieth century, and the unipolar moment was never real. It was always a bit delusional to think that The US was riding supreme.
Now having said all of that, The US clearly still has a lot of power and a lot of influence and a lot of destructive capacity. So this isn't the collapse of US power, but it is definitely the limits of US power.
Speaker 0: It's interest interesting or by comparison though that in the nineteenth century, much of the power politics was seen through the prism of Britain versus the Russian Empire. And then as this rivalry was going on, you saw new powers emerging at the periphery, The US, Germany, Japan. And, yeah, to some extent, this is what twentieth century was as well, The United States versus the Soviet Union. And then but, of course, now in this rivalry, you saw especially ace Asia really emerging at the periphery, and there's still this assumption that the the normal state of things, which is, again, the Western hegemony, that will go back to this somehow. But but but I'm This curious
Speaker 1: is a a basic point that and it's a it's a basic lesson of all of history, is that advantages of any one place are temporary. They could be temporary over the course of centuries or they could be fleeting over the course of decades depending on what you're really looking at. But technology, which is usually the key to giving some kind of advantage, military technology or productive technology. And in the case of the nineteenth century, I put the steam engine as absolutely central to that unique advantage of Europe over the rest of the world. Wasn't the only advantage, but it was very key.
Eventually, ideas, technology, know how diffuse. And so keeping a monopoly of power is almost never possible. You can try to hold trade secrets. You can try to limit the exports of high technology, but reverse engineering, copying success stories, understanding the underlying science and technology. This is a worldwide gift.
And so leaders find competitors because the basis of that leadership was typically some kind of real substantive technological advantage, very often a military advantage that had come, but then one that was quickly copied elsewhere. Of course, the whole nuclear age, it was like that when the atomic bomb was developed at Los Alamos and then dropped as a demonstration by Truman, a demonstration to Stalin by killing massive numbers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US planners thought that The US would have the atomic monopoly probably for about thirty years. It lasted four years because the Soviets spied, because they had great scientists, because of a lot of things. But monopolies don't last.
The idea that The United States has choke points is a constant meme. You know, it's almost ludicrous, but you go back to the beginning of 2022. The US talked about cutting off Russian banks from SWIFT as the nuclear option. It was gonna bring down the Russian economy. We had the choke points.
We had the definitive hold on power. It basically meant almost nothing in the end. So this is a a constant refrain of history that if if one country takes the lead, which Britain did in industrialization at the late nineteenth century and then especially after the Napoleonic Wars, other countries innovate, catch up, steal good ideas, narrow the gap, and often leapfrog. And that was true of both Britain of Germany and The United States vis a vis Britain in around 1870 onward. And this is but it was kept within the Western family, I would say, broadly speaking for a long time.
It led to many racist ideas that this is a white people's hegemony, that this is a European cultural hegemony, that this is a Christian hegemony. But the idea was that, yes, even as the reach of technology spreads with Germany and The US, it's somehow all within the broader family. It's the Western dominance. One country and one country only joined that by the end of the nineteenth century, and that was Japan. And Japan began its own imperial adventures on the basis of imitating the European empires.
And very cruelly, Japan invaded China multiple times and other parts of Asia in imitation, I would say, of the European empires. But other than Japan, this was a this this was a a western white Christian hegemony over the rest of the world, and it was taken by and large to be a permanent feature. There were glimmers of insight that this was temporary. Napoleon supposedly warned that when China awakes, the world will tremble. And, you know, he supposedly said that in, I think, exile already in the eighteen tens.
But the point is that the natural dominance of the West was assumed. It became very deeply part of the mindset of The US and Europe. After World War two, Europe accepted that The US would carry the lead baton, but still the assumption of Western dominance prevailed. And I'd say it still prevails till today in some mindset change. China is viewed as an absolutely improper intrusion, as something that can be contained, as something that needs to be contained.
How did we let that happen? Our biggest mistake was we let China into WTO is a constant refrain in Washington. We let them develop as if that's the American choice. But that's also part of this delusion that the natural order of things is the western dominance. In any event, I think that's over.
That's the point.
Speaker 0: Well, in in realist theory, though, it's often assumed that states are security maximizers. That is if we're unbalanced, we'll continue to expand. So NATO expansion, Middle East, all of this until we're balanced. Once once we're balanced, then we'll seek a new status quo in order to essentially maximize our own security. And you would think that as NATO expansion came to a grinding halt in Ukraine as NATO has been balanced by Russia or what we see now with The Middle East or what we see with China, you would assume that there would be a diplomatic effort to shift to new status quo.
Do you see it? But I I I don't see it essentially. Instead, if I look at Iran, I think there this this is part of the reason why there can't be a peace because Trump only wants a hegemonic peace. And, you know, we we saw that The US was quite desperate for a ceasefire. They agreed to Iran's format, then walked it all back once, you know, the guns went silent.
And now The US appears to be marching toward all out war against Iran. Is this based on their reluctance to, I mean, find a peace that's not based on dominance, or or what do you think Trump's place?
Speaker 1: This this is a great question, and I think it comes to the very schools of thought of realism. There is the school of thought of our good friend John Mersheimer, offensive realism, which says that you can't really find an equilibrium among the great powers. They're they're always looking for an advantage. They're always annoying each other. And in John's theory, you end up with what his great book is titled, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
John says, no, there really can't be balance of power that's satisfactory. In what is sometimes in in US schools called defensive realism rather than offensive realism, the idea that security is at the center, but you can find a kind of modus vivendi of the great powers and a bit stay out of each other's way and treaties can matter and stabilize things to a bit is the predominant view. I would say Kissinger was somewhere in between the two. Strangely, Kissinger studied the Concert of Europe. This was his great model, the nineteenth century relative stability of the major powers of Europe through a concert of systematic negotiation and basic norms of behavior.
But Kissinger also succumbed to the offensive realism that when the other side is down, take advantage of it. So he was in favor of NATO enlargement in the nineteen nineties even though he knew it would provoke Russian unhappiness. And others argue for that prudence is feasible. I think the I think what one of the things that makes John Mersheimer's work so important is that while I I don't agree with it myself as the the necessary description of international politics, I think it's not a I think let me put it positively. I think it's a very good description of the mindset of American strategists.
So American strategists don't take enough as a basis for stopping. They there there is a problem in The United States, which is if any other major powers are standing, we are threatened is the idea. And so The United States has a and by US, of course, I mean Washington. And by Washington, I mean mainly the security establishment. Has a very hard idea, a very hard time with the idea that Russia is a stable great power.
It has an extremely hard time with the idea that China is a stable great power. It's gonna have a hard time with India being a great power. Because in the American mindset, and I think it is I don't wanna over interpret John Mersheimer's thoughts, but I think he does portray, right, the idea that it's too dangerous just to leave these other powers. You can't really trust them, and you should do what you can to undermine them. So John does generally view China as a threat that we should be doing what we can to contain.
I disagree with that viewpoint, actually, rather deeply because I don't view China as a threat to The United States at all. And so I would like to work on cooperative accommodation in a number of ways and stay out of each other's red lines and stop The United States stopping from arming Taiwan and many other things that I think would make the world a lot safer. But the American mindset is it's a dangerous world out there and we have to push wherever we can. And we have caricatures of that. Our most caricature ish senator who is a warmonger every occasion.
If you want a new war, you trot him out is Lindsey Graham. He's always saying, we need more war. Don't stop. Escalate. Whatever it is, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Taiwan, whether it's Iran.
And there is a course like that. One theory is they get campaign contributions from military contractors and so they're mouthpieces for them. They're warmongers in other ways. But there's also an idea that America should be the unipolar power and that it should fight its way to do that if necessary. And it should put a stick in the spokes of any other major power to tie that power up in knots and create trouble for it.
And that, to my mind, is an accurate description of American foreign policy making and statecraft, but also a disastrous approach that is unnecessary, destabilizing, and ultimately dangerous for The United States itself, not to speak of all of the rest of the world.
Speaker 0: Well, when there's extreme power disparities, or over the past centuries of Western dominance, it makes often sense for it to generate or be accompanied by ideologies of superiority. So when you address the rise of the rest, as you say, or the rise of China, the reaction one often gets would be, I guess, encapsulated in in work. Like Robert Kagan, he wrote the book, The Jungle America and Our Imperial World, in which, essentially, the answer is the garden, which would be The Us, the civilized Us, would have to go out and trim back the jungle again and civilize it. I mean, this is this is a
Speaker 1: very deep ideology. It goes back centuries. It is it's also very interesting from the point of view of the history of thought. Philosophers, inadvertently, or inadvertently often really are just the scribes of power. And so when countries become powerful, the philosophy arises to underpin that power.
And we had centuries of European ascendance and then a hundred fifty to two hundred years of unchallenged European dominance over the rest of the world. Basically, while Europe lost some battles, it won most of the wars in Africa and in Asia. And a whole ideology developed many variants of it, scientific racism, pseudoscientific racism, I should say, but scientific racism. And and of course, the religious impulse, god's on our side, and many other similar philosophical ideas, the civilizing mission. We have the key to civilization and even the most enlightened subtle impressive thinkers like John Stuart Mill were basically imperialists.
John Stuart Mill worked for the East India Company. He wrote tracts for it and he wrote that it's Britain's mission to bring civilization to backward India. And so it's okay if there's a tutelage period. This is what empire is for. So a lot of ideology developed and it goes away very, very slowly.
You look at British and French behavior, while they don't have empires anymore, they absolutely have imperial mentalities and often even more naive and militaristic than than The United States, which actually has an empire. But British british Russophobia and Britain's drum beats of war against Russia in Ukraine is they're even louder than in The United States and cruder and more simple minded, but they come from a longer period of empire. The the idea that the British dominance is natural, inevitable, that Russia was the enemy of British dominance, and if they still continue that battle even though they're an island, not an empire. And it it it it would be humorous if it weren't so dangerous.
Speaker 0: Well, in the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill advocated for a liberal empire. Today, we have NATO advocating for liberal hegemony, so there's some consistency in history, though. But
Speaker 1: I say we learned everything we know from the British Empire. Everything America thinks it knows from the British Empire. And and actually the links are very direct. Of course, language, culture, direct education. It's it's all there to to be seen.
And if Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar and Rhodes was the great imperialist of Africa, the great in the large at the beginning of the nine twentieth century. Clinton sucked that up at Oxford so that when he became president of The United States in the nineteen nineties, he was filled with American grandiosity that he had somehow learned from the British experience.
Speaker 0: Well, you have a big day there in New York, so I wanna thank you for taking the time to speak
Speaker 1: with us. Anytime.
Speaker 0: Great
Speaker 1: great to be with you. Talk to you soon.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Pepe Escobar: Connectivity Wars - The U.S. War on Multipolarity https://youtu.be/XzzDdssl_rw https://t.co/YeMnzUH2Hh
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this conversation, Pepe Escobar and Glenn discuss the evolving architecture of Eurasian connectivity and the role of Iran within it, emphasizing a shift toward multipolar economic integration and the strategic battles over international corridors.
- Escobar outlines the “war of connectivity corridors” as a core framework of the New Silk Roads/Belt and Road Initiative. He identifies at least four major corridors, with two others envisioned but currently speculative:
- North–South International Transportation Corridor, which would span Eurasia and bypass Swiss intermediaries, sanctions, and SWIFT.
- The Russia–Iran–India corridor as part of Three Bricks.
- IMEC (often framed as India–Middle East–Europe Corridor), which would center on Haifa as a trading hub linking the Arab world, Europe, and India; this project is effectively stalled.
- A separate but related concept involving the Arctic/“Northern Sea Route” as the Chinese interest in an Arctic Silk Road, connecting Northeast Asia with Europe.
- The China–Iran railway (completed recently) tied to the East–West Corridor, which the United States reportedly bombed inside Iran, highlighting ongoing attacks on connectivity projects.
- He recounts field observations from Iran (Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, the Caspian port Bandar Anzali) to illustrate how ports and rail links are developing, with India investing in Chabahar (cranes paid for by India) and China potentially expanding cargo through Chabahar to Bandar Abbas, then Gwadar. The proximity of Gwadar and Chabahar is noted as a strategic constellation for China, offering alternate routes to Europe and the Middle East.
- The broader strategic narrative: the 20th century’s battles for control of sea lanes persist, but new corridors threaten traditional maritime dominance. Escobar argues the current conflict targets multipolarity, with China and Iran at the center, and the US/Israel seeking to constrain Eurasian integration and BRICS.
- The International North–South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is highlighted as a central prize, with Russia financing railways inside Iran and potentially piping a route around the Caspian Sea. India’s role in Chabahar remains significant, while China’s cargo flows through multiple routes, including to Chabahar and Gwadar.
- The conversation also covers Malacca and Hormuz as chokepoints. The US-Israeli strategy appears aimed at undermining Iran and constraining Chinese energy routes via Malacca. Escobar notes that China diversifies energy sources (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Power of Siberia) to reduce exposure to chokepoints like Malacca, anticipating possible blockades. The possibility of bypassing Malacca via Gwadar–Xinjiang or other routes is discussed, though such bypasses would be costly and time-consuming.
- The strategic calculus around Malacca is linked to Indonesian arrangements with the US and the potential monetization of straits. Escobar warns that a disruption of Malacca would threaten global trade and benefit alternatives, including the Arctic corridor where Russia emphasizes sovereign control and regional diversification, with China also seeking Arctic routes.
- The discussion touches US naval strategies to “cut off” Russian access to seas, including the Black Sea, Baltic Sea, and the Arctic, while broader divides and “divide and rule” tactics underlay the Western attempt to isolate Russia and China. The Arctic is presented as increasingly important, yet still one of several corridors that Eurasian powers will use to diversify routes and energy flows.
- Iran’s toll system is mentioned, with hints that participants in sanctions may face higher costs or preferred use of yuan alongside the dollar, reflecting broader moves toward alternative currencies in international trade.
- In closing, Escobar indicates he plans to visit China to gauge official perspectives on BRICS, BRI, and the Nielsen rules, noting that China views the multipolar challenge as a long-term project and that Malacca remains a taboo but increasingly contested issue.
Overall, the dialogue maps how Iran fits into a broader push for Eurasian connectivity, the contested future of major corridors (INSTC, North–South, East–West, Arctic), and the strategic friction between a US-led order and a rising multipolar infrastructure network centered on China, Iran, Russia, India, and their partners.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Pepe Escobar, a journalist and an author. Thank you for coming back on. It's it's good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure, Glenn, and greetings from Buddhist, peaceful Southeast Asia.
Speaker 0: Well, I think the first time we met in person was in Moscow. I was working there
Speaker 1: Years ago.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It feels like ages ago now, but I was already there for a department focusing on the Greater Eurasia initiative that is for Russia to integrate its economy, you know, through industries, physical corridors, financial instruments from China to India, Iran. And US journalists have been working on this as well. So, yeah, that's been a while, but but the whole this whole initiative is seen as an effort to essentially, yeah, reorganize the international economic architecture. And, of course, Russia and China tends to form the core, but India, Iran, many others have an interest in this multipolar economic architecture.
I thought a good place to start today would be yeah. To ask you, how how do you see Iran's role in this whole thing, in this construct?
Speaker 1: Well, stepping a little bit away, but not so much from the war, Glenn. This is one of my latest columns this week. I I sent you a copy, which is an update on the what I called years ago, the war of connectivity corridors. So, basically, we have all those connectivity corridors part of the New Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative. There are at least six of them, maybe seven, in fact, including the Maritime Silk Road, east to west.
Then there's the north to south, the north and south international transportation corridor, Three bricks, Russia, Iran, and India, which is something that I had the privilege, in fact, to follow last year in Iran when we were in Iran at the same time. And I remember they were very busy talking to them all the time. And on my side, I was working on this documentary, which is, the first one, in the world in English about the corridor. And we we were very privileged because we had full access. We had all the permits so we could go from the Caspian Sea to Bandar Abbas, Persian Gulf, then Chabahar, Sea Of Oman, and see everything and especially what's lacking.
And the problems, of course, and the challenges and the problems. And I talked to some absolutely first rate traders and geopolitical analysts in Iran about it. So that is one of the key new corridors of the future. North to South across Eurasia bypassing Swiss, bypassing sanctions, bypassing SWIFT. And then there are two more corridors.
There are, I would not even say in progress, but for the moment, they are more like pipe dreams. One of them is IMEC, and the denomination is it's a misnomer because it's not only India Middle East corridor. Most of all, it is Israel, Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Europe, and India corridor. And the idea is to place the Port Of Haifa as a key trading port connecting with the Arab world, connecting to Europe, and connecting to India. As it stands, you can say that this is dead.
And in fact, even Saudi Arabia is practically saying by not saying that this is dead. And then there are the Turks. And as you know very well, Glenn, they are always hedging. So they are even resuscitating a wow. A long gone idea from the late two thousands, early two thousand and tens, a pipeline from Qatar across the Arab world to Turkey, and then they can sell Qatar gas to Europe.
For the moment, also, it's just a pipe dream. So in this column, I try to analyze the pros and cons of these four corridors. But the logic is the same. The 20 century is gonna be a war of connectivity corridors at the core of Eurasia development and Eurasia integration.
Speaker 0: Well, yes, some would suggest that much of the past, at least two hundred years, have been organized around wars over connectivity. I mean, in the early nineteenth century, we know when the the Russians were expanding out from the center towards the periphery. This put them in a clash with British India, so Exactly. This is what's yeah. The the Machinder theory, that is that you have land land powers connecting versus the sea power.
And then, of course, in the twentieth century, we had the yeah. The discontinuing, and it's fascinating because if you look through the strategic documents, it always for The US, Britain, they always formulated, you know, their claim to world power is controlling the seas. That's how they connect the world, and then the land power is Russia, worst case in the you know, connected with Germany or even worse connected with China would then begin to rival the maritime powers. This has always been a key focus of geopolitics, and it does appear we're still into this. I mean, if you look in with the k with the BTC pipeline, for example, I remember in the February, that was a very big thing, the Baku Tbilisi Kian, and then this was a way of skirting for the Europeans to go under Russia and above Iran.
Exactly. Even getting Ukraine connected into the NATO orbit. This is a way of getting the energy transit country to ally with the energy consumers against energy producer Russia. So we we already seem to be very deep in this connectivity war. But Yeah.
What do see being the wider consequence of what's playing out now in this war with Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, I would say that the number one thing would be what's gonna happen with the International North South Transportation Court. Russia is deeply involved. They are helping to finance, railways inside Iran. They could even finance a railway skirting the Caspian Sea to the left of the Caspian Sea because the Russian sink is gonna be much, much faster than trying to upgrade the Iranian port structure in the Caspian. And they are right, Glenn.
I went to the port of Bandar Anzali in the Caspian, and it's stuck in the seventies. There's a lot of work to do, so they start getting, for instance, big cargo ships from Astrakhan. I saw some Astrakhan ships in the port, but small ones, not big cargoes. So this is essential. And what's India going to do?
We're all asking the same question. What about the relationship between Iran and India when two days before the decapitation strike in February 28, Modi was being received in Israel and they came up with that motherland and fatherland shtick? And it's a huge problem because India is a huge investor in Chabahar. When I was in Chabahar, was fascinating. I was talking to the port authorities.
They said, you see those cranes over there? They were brought by a pay brought, bought, and paid for by India. They are investing. It's a bit of a low at the moment. This was last year.
But they promised that, in a few months, they're going to, you know, help us develop all their parts of the port. The port is expanding very, very fast. It's very impressive. It reminds me, you know, like when Shenzhen thirty something years ago, to give an idea. You know?
So, so what's what's gonna happen? The Chinese, of course, they look at Jabahar. They say, look. We can go there, and in ten minutes, you have everything you need. And, and they told me, look.
The Chinese we always have Chinese cargoes coming here. I in fact, I saw two while I was there. Most of them go to Bandar Abbas, but some of them go to Chabahar. If they are, for instance, stuff that is going to be sold in Eastern Iran or could be sold in Iran or in Afghanistan. There's a very good road there recently finished from Chabahar to the Afghan Iranian border.
So the Chinese there's a strong possibility the Chinese will end up taking over. Chabahar is gonna be one more extra connection in their string of pearls of ports and not far from Gwadar, which is crazy. You know, the distance from Cembaharto, Gwadar is 80 kilometers across the border. There there is practically sister ports. So China could use both easily.
They're already using Gwadar, of course. So this this is the the big big if is what's gonna happen to the North South corridor. And we didn't even talk about the Russian connectivity corridor, which is a thalasocratic corridor, which is the northern sea route that the Chinese call the Arctic Silk Road. This is a corridor that the Northeast Asia, specifically, they are immensely interested, South Korea. It's something that we see in in in those discussions in Russia during, the Vladivostok forum and some Saint Petersburg.
We're gonna have the same discussion in Saint Petersburg, you know, about two months from now, in fact, less than two months from now. And, of course, the Southeast Asians are also interested in using it because Southeast Asia can connect to Vladivostok, then you take the North Sea route, and you are having Murmansk, and you are almost in Europe. So these are the it was not part of this column, of course, but these are the two key new connectivity corridors, the North South and the Northern Sea route. And, of course, the Chinese, they keep adding to what they have. For instance, something that is in the column as well.
They finally finished the China Iran railway only a few months ago. And guess what the Americans did? They bombed a stretch of this railway inside Iran two weeks two or three weeks ago. Very important because this is from Xinjiang. Of course, everything starts in Xinjiang, but then it goes everywhere.
It goes through different Siberia, it goes through Kazakhstan, middle corridor. And this one is particularly interesting because it's Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and then it crosses the border in Turkmenistan, enters Iran. And from Iran, it can go to Turkey, and from Turkey, it can go to Europe. And for the Chinese, this is a key corridor. This road this this railway, sorry, the Iranian stretch, it's part of what they call the East West Corridor, and it's one of the most important corridors of the Nilsack Roads of BRIG.
There you go. It's all there, and and everybody is interconnected. And the Central Asians are connected with all these corridors as well. So it's important for them as well because they also receive Chinese merchandise that stays in their countries, and the rest keeps going.
Speaker 0: Well, given that well, you you mentioned the the the attacks on the on the Chinese, yeah, connectivity.
Speaker 1: I know Iran Railway. Yes.
Speaker 0: Yes. Yeah. This is quite important, and I I also think the, yeah, the connection with Pakistan is important. I mean, if you follow this China Pakistan connectivity with rail and road and then cutting down to the ports of Gwadar, which a Pakistani port, which operated by the Chinese, is quite an impressive infrastructure where you see, essentially, this new Silk Road recreating the world as it was before, you know, European maritime powers took over the world five hundred years five hundred years ago. But as you mentioned, I also noticed that the The US and Israeli bombing of Iran, not only did it target Chinese infrastructure, but it it also targeted part of the railroads, which would connect the international North South transportation corridor, the Russia, Iran, India.
So so there seems to be a war on multiplarity here that is obviously, this seems to be a key target. Do you think China stands out uniquely in terms of a country The US would like to weaken as a result of attacking Iran?
Speaker 1: Glenn, in fact, this is a war against multipolarity. There's no question. The number one target, of course, is China. But this is a war against Iran, against China, against the interconnection, against Eurasia integration and interconnection, against Russia on another level because this is the the the other war up there, which seems to be a never ending as well, and a war against bricks. No question about that.
And but this has been announced since the start of Trump 02/2000, when, he's he started first blabbering about bricks, which he still has no idea what BRICS is about. It doesn't matter because the only thing that register in his four year old psyche, ah, they want to bypass the US dollar. That's the only thing that registers. So war against everybody. It's the empire of chaos, lies, plunder, piracy, and we bomb everybody that we don't like.
This this is the American foreign policy now. Right? So obviously, the Chinese know it's extremely complicated because it's still not clear, especially for us foreigners. Even if we have access to China, we talk to people in China. I'm going back to China next month again.
I was postponing it because of the war. But one of my first questions to anybody is, okay, what is more important for you, BRICs or BRI or the Nielsen rules? And how do they interconnect? And the second question is, are you fully aware that this is a war against especially against you? If you follow, I would say, independent media like our friends in Guangzhou in Shanghai, When you read some of their best contributors, scholars, scholarly contributors, they don't get into detail, but this is more or less they understand that this is a war against China, of course, and this is a war to try to prevent sources of energy reaching China, which is something that they are seeing in front of them nowadays with the American blockade.
And there's already the blah blah blah about the Strait Of Malacca, which is inevitable. But they have been prepared for a potential blockade of the Strait Of Malacca for at least twenty years. And that's why they diversify their sources of energy. So you have multiple sources of energy. You have oil from Kazakhstan, you have a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, You have gas pipeline from Myanmar.
You have power of Siberia, which is full capacity now, and soon power of Siberia too. And, of course, all the effort that they made to diversify internally. And when you travel in Xinjiang, it's it's mind boggling because you see miles on end. Everything is elect electrified. You see forests of solar panels, wind turbines, those solar farms where you have that pole, you know, irradiating energy hundreds of kilometers around.
And something that I learned from our Uyghur context, Xinjiang has so much energy that they sell energy to the rest of China. So that explains why China nowadays is, I would say, eighty eighty four to 86%. They don't need to import oil and gas. So their import of oil and gas is about 14%. It's not much compared to the their national needs.
But they know that Malacca continues to be a very, very tricky situation. And now it gets even more tricky, I would say. This deal that the minister of defense of Indonesia made with the secretary of war in Washington, signed in Washington, While Prabow, the president, was going to Russia and spent five hours talking to Russia. This is Indonesia hedging all the time, but they cannot hedge there's there's there's a limit to their hedging because the other BRICs, especially China, are gonna say, what the hell are you doing? Are you considering giving overflight rights to the the Americans in our Indonesian territory.
And at the same time, they're saying, look, maybe we should monetize Malacca. So now there's the idea in Jakarta. Okay. They looked at what happened in Hormuz. Malacca is very, very straight.
Territorial waters once again divided between Sumatra in Indonesia and Malaysia, so both of them can charge charge a rite of passage. Why not? So I'm sure this is gonna happen sooner rather than later. So so every everything, of course, is changing, but this is gonna be particularly important. And, of course, who doesn't like that?
Singapore. But Singapore is not in the Strait Of Malacca. The Strait Of Malacca is to the north. Singapore is on the tip south of of the Malaysian Peninsula. It has nothing to do with Malacca.
Malacca is a Malaysia Indonesia affair. So all these things are they are advancing in parallel, so it's dizzyingly complex. But it's a completely different system, and we still don't know where it's going. But the Malacca angle for China is crucial, and I'm sure that it will exert a lot of pressure on Jakarta about this defense agreement with the Americans.
Speaker 0: So when The US develops naval strategies for for putting this well, limit the reliable access for the Russians to seas. On the West on the western borders of Russia, they have three seas which can be cut off. Yeah. There's the Black Sea, Baltic Sea, and the Arctic. You see that The US is going after all three.
That was part of the purpose of, you know, toppling the government in Ukraine, shutting down the Black Sea fleet of the Russians. Essentially, I would make the Black Sea NATO lake. You know, you have NATO now speaking openly about making the Baltic Sea a NATO lake by challenging Russia in Kaliningrad, of course, getting Sweden and Finland into NATO. I think the, you know, the former NATO secretary general, Rasmussen, even said we couldn't put a blockade now in Saint Petersburg if we would want to. I mean, it's kind of aggressive language.
While an American general said we can invade Kaliningrad, and there's nothing Russia can do. And as as well, you see the militarization of Scandinavia and The US ambitions on cutting off the Russians in the Arctic. Yeah. So overall, I think this is also a goal of taking Greenland. So they you know, they're going after the Russians, but when you don't wanna go after the Chinese, you have the dual island chain, which is important, but They're in all American documents, which, you know, since the '19 well, for for a long time, but also the Chinese documents, there's always special place for the Strait Of Malacca, where they see this is where the Americans would come to try to cut out the or shut down the the, yeah, the Chinese connection with the world.
So Mhmm. As you said, closing off between Indonesia and Malaysia, I think at the narrow strait area, it's just, like, 2.8 kilometers, something. It's it's very narrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Is easy to shut down. But do do you how do you see us moving towards that, though, the the war in Mala over Malacca? Do you think this is a possible actual war, or do you think I mean, do you see a link between Iran to Malacca, essentially?
Speaker 1: There is already, Glenn. Did you see that they boarded an Iranian ship not very far from the Strait Of Malacca? So, you know, this is probably a message. We can is an Indo Pakom operation. And I was joking with with some people saying that, basically, this American task force or invincible Armada cowards because they are not in the in the Gulf Of Oman.
They are in the Arabian Sea or in the Southern Indian Ocean. They are very, very far from the Persian Gulf or the Sea Of Oman. I was joking that this is already an Indo operation, much more than Centcom. And then when you see that they apprehended a a ship already in the Indo Pakom area, that's the beginning. This this is just the the beginning.
So the Chinese, I'm sure they are horrified about that. I couldn't read any deeper analysis so far. Maybe they are in Chinese military channels, only in Chinese on Weibo or in on WeChat, whatever. It's possible. So this is something I'm trying to do in the next few days.
But, obviously, they are horrified because this is exactly what they have been thinking since the early two thousands when they started their very, very well coordinated diversification. But they still everything still, every all the oil that they import from the Persian Gulf has to go through Malacca. They they cannot get rid of that. You know? The for instance, they were thinking about Gwadar because Gwadar, could build, which is something that they could, but it's gonna cost a lot of money, take a long, long time.
A pipeline from Gwadar to Xinjiang across Baluchistan and then parallel to the Karakoram Highway would be a mega engineering feat. Yes. They could do it, but it's very costly and would take a lot of time. But it's still it's there. The the idea is still there.
Then they would completely bypass Malacca. That's one possibility. But, of course, it all depends of because we are in the I would say it's, what, three weeks ahead, the meeting between Xi and put sorry, and and Trump in Beijing. It's gonna be on the fourteenth. So, obviously, Trump is positioning himself to arrive in Beijing with strong cards in his hand, extortion cards, intimidation cards, typical Trump administration.
The Chinese, of course, as we know, they are cool, calm, collected. They play goal. This means that they surround the adversary and it's they see long term. They don't play this stupid poker that the Americans do, but, of course, they are worried. And, of course, they're worried even though they have this gigantic reserve, 1,300,000,000 barrels of oil in reserves.
This is something we cannot even imagine, but they have it. They accumulated this. They they were ready for something similar to what's happening now. Not Malacca, but Hormuz as Malacca, in fact. Because at as it stands, not much oil is flowing through Hormuz because, of course, of the second blockade.
The first non blockade, the Iranian blockade, it was free for all in terms of Chinese cargo. Now with the second one, it's more complicated. But we still have not arrived at a real cliffhanger. Will this invincible Armada have the balls to actually board a Chinese tanker in international waters. I don't think they they they will take that risk, and the Chinese are betting on it as well.
But of course, the quantities they are receiving are not enough compared to the to the past. Was 1,300,000, 1,400,000 a day from Iran, plus the others then, plus the oil from Saudi and UAE.
Speaker 0: Well, as you said, the Chinese, they they know what's going on. They they they see what's happening, and there's this incrementalism in which we're moving towards it. First, we see this, you know, partial blockade on Venezuela, and, again, the the Chinese see their part of the target. You know, the American weren't subtle about this either. They've made it very clear.
It's not just it's not that they have to open up to The US. It's that they have to shut down the trade with the Iranians. And then, of course, now we have the blockade on Cuba. We have the hijacking of Iranian ships. We have the piracy and hijacking of the Russian ships.
And so you see this, again, connectivity wars, if you will. So and given that the Chinese see themselves as being well, they're the pay rival of The United States. They are the ultimate target. What what you think the how do you think the Chinese are gonna react to this? Because they do have a calm demeanor.
You know?
Speaker 1: Exactly. I'm waiting for I'm very curious now to go to China because I decided to go because I think maybe there is this an an interval before Trump arrives. It will be the best time to go, and then start asking questions there. And while Trump is there, it's the perfect money to a perfect moment to talk to. Of course, as you know, talking on the record with Chinese officials in China is immensely complicated for for us, foreign journalists and analysts.
But, of course, we have our connections. In my case, scholarly connections, former PLA officials now retired. And even if we talk off the record, many many of them, they talk, but they say, look, it has to be off the record. No problem. We always get nuggets of information that you won't find in Xinhua, in Global Times, in China Daily, etcetera.
But, for the moment, they are not even, it's typical Chinese, they are reflecting upon it. So it's too early to talk about it. But obviously, this strikes a nerve. Malacca for them is a taboo subject, And now it's getting very, very close to home. With this first seizing relatively peaceful, there was no gunfire involved apparently.
But it's it it was obviously an Indo Pakon message to the PLA Navy, especially. And that's why this is so dangerous. Let me ask you something, if you allow me. Lam. Considering your fabulous experience in Russia, how do you see the Northern Sea route being implemented for good within the next few years?
They they say when you go to those roundtables in Vladivostok, for instance, they say, okay. There are lots of challenges, but it can be operational by 2028, 2029. Do you think that's realistic?
Speaker 0: Well, I've been to those Eastern Economic Forums in Vladivostok as well and, yeah, on those panels. And and, well, the yeah. It they had the timeline. I'm not sure if if they're able to get it up and running by then. But, again, it's on on one hand, it's a very competitive advantage because the Arctic Corridor of Russia I mean, this is, yeah, connecting Europe with Asia through the Arctic.
It's it's it's it saves a lot of time and money, so it's a very competitive international maritime route. And it will be pretty much the only one in the world which is not dominated by the United States Navy, so it's a it has a lot of benefits. And even if The US would try to well, force its way, if you will, you need the search search and rescue ports, all, you know, all these things across the Russian Arctic coastline, so there's no way to really circumvent the Russians there. So so it the the Russians have great leverage there. And, also, because of the, you know, the the relationship with China, I get, you know, everyone gets impression sometimes that the the Russians can get a bit answered because the the you know, they will be more dependent on China than Chinese on Russia.
You know, the Russians overcome this by having a certain degree of strategic autonomy and also diversifying their partnerships as we've seen in the Arctic to make sure not just to invite Chinese, to also invite the Indians
Speaker 1: and Koreans, the Indians. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Exactly. But but also because the ports and all are sovereign Russian territory, it's it creates more balance in the relationship with with the Chinese. So kind of has all the perfect recipe for for being a a good project. But this being said, it has limits as well.
I mean, the Arctic is can't become the main corridor. It's simply one of many, which which allows countries to diversify. And again, so I think often people see it as, you know, it gives the potential of a Russian stranglehold, but I think this is because it won't it won't reach that degree of traffic. It's I think if anything, having more corridors, it it prevents other countries from using corridors as a weapon because then people lose trust in it. And so the Russians have an interest in keeping it open, to have trust in it, but it can never be so powerful in terms of the amount of traffic that it would, pose any threat or, you know, give the Russians too much power.
So overall, this seems like a, yeah, quite a reasonable project. But nonetheless, The US, its hegemonic strategies builds on and has always done so on maritime supremacy. And that means two things. All the oceans have to be under US control, and also have delivered reduced the physical connectivity on on the land. So you may wanna make sure that Germany is cut off from Russia, you know, bombing Nord Stream, all of this is achieved.
You wanna make sure that Chinese are cut off from the Russians. The Russians are cut off from the Indians. Turkey is cut off from Russia. So you it's, yeah, essentially the the divide and rule. I think this is, how the maritime powers Yeah.
And if you go to the Russian, you know, conservative scholars, Savitsky and others in the nineteen twenties, they made it clear. This is they this is why they consider the maritime powers to be naturally imperialistic because they're they they can only dominate if they divide, and they had a vision that the Eurasian land powers, they can only become competitive if they cooperate because, yes, China's more powerful, but China's objectives can't be achieved without cooperation with India, Russia, Iran. So there's a natural incentive to cooperate. So this is why they kind of frame the land powers as being more cooperative while the maritime powers are inherently, yeah, more imperialistic. Think that drifted a wee bit away from your question, but I I I do think it has a lot of potential.
The Russians have all the icebreakers. They have the they're building the infrastructure, new technologies, especially drones, make a lot of the infrastructure required for search and rescue much cheaper and reasonable, especially in areas which have not that, yeah, populated there, which aren't that heavily populated. So I tend to be optimistic about the Arctic Ruto, but but the problem is in the past, it was just a frozen desert. There's not that much competitive strategic interest. But now with maritime corridor, all of these natural resources becoming available, It just it's it's lined up for being, you know, taking the center of a zero sum geopolitical standoff.
Again, that's why the American wants Greenland. So
Speaker 1: Exactly. And wow. And Putin is personally implicated. It's what he tells us in Vladivostok every year. This is a federal project, and they are investing a lot of money in Arkhangelsk, in Murmansk, in the ports.
So and they take this as a matter of national security, so it's extremely serious. And at the same time, the interest is Chinese because one of their corridors, for instance, they cannot use for the moment the Trans Siberian. They cannot use the Trans Siberian anymore because of sanctions. So that's why they are investing so much in these middle corridors, the East West corridor, etcetera, going south. Going through the North, it's impossible.
Going to the deep deep north in the Arctic is perfect and relatively fast.
Speaker 0: And yeah. Well, that's why it's funny that a lot of our stock on the Pacific Coast Of Russia is connected also now with India. So India will also partake in the in the Arctic project. Okay. Don't consider India to be an Arctic country, but but this is kind of the weird stuff because once Sweden, Finland becomes became part not become became part of NATO, you essentially have old Arctic states.
You have old Arctic states are NATO members except for Russia, which is half of the Arctic. And be in the past, the Russians, because they wanted to integrate with the Europeans into having, you know, common European home as Gorbachev framed it, they essentially earmarked all Arctic cooperation with the western countries. But now that it's become obvious that there will be no common European home. We'll only have a block politics. The Russians are looking towards the East.
So now the Arctic's becoming this roof of Eurasia in which they're inviting Eurasian powers instead of the West. So I think in the future, we're gonna kick ourselves for what what what we have done that is the Europeans because, you know, all this Arctic gas, which was supposed to fuel our industry's cheap gas for the past next thirty years, this has now been signed over to the Chinese instead because we are obsessed with defeating the Russians instead of finding a political settlement. So it's just I think historians will look back at this period here as one of the most ridiculous and, yeah, full of self inflicted
Speaker 1: All questions. No question. Yes. And you you saw their latest 90,000,000,000, and they and they think they actually think in Brussels that this is going to be paid by Russian reparation stores.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I saw that. But that but that's why they call it a loan, 90,000,000,000 Yeah. Yeah. To Ukraine.
How is it a loan? They can't pay it back. And then they explain, oh, well, after we defeat Russia, they will pay in reparations. So, essentially, the Europeans can't afford peace anymore because peace has you know, they have to defeat Russia. Otherwise, they don't get their money back either.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, they're gonna they're gonna get their money back.
Speaker 0: I always ask, though, what exactly is this plan? If you see Russia considers this to be an existential threat, how do you defeat the world's largest nuclear power, which considers it to be in a fight for its survival? Exactly to what extent do you want to be successful? I mean, this is a horrible war on so many levels, the humanitarian, strategic. I mean, anyways, I wanted to just get back to the the Iranian Chinese aspect of this, though, because the from what I hear now, the Iranians have begun to outline the rules of its new toll system.
That is, everyone has to pay toll. If I'm not mistaken, those who participate in the attack on Iran or sanctions Iran, they get a little bit of extra bonus on top in terms of what they have to pay. Also, they don't want dollars. So
Speaker 1: Only the house. Yes. Probably the house, but, obviously, they will accept yuan, but not they won't advertise it. The back the backup currency will be yuan.
Speaker 0: So so is it how do you see this impacting then? I mean, this is why countries want control over international corridors, maritime corridors, then you can, you know, extract political concession and economic ones. And this would effectively strip The US of much power, though. Is this why the Americans can't leave Or or, you know, even though they more or less lost the war against Iran, is this why Trump can't go home?
Speaker 1: Of course not. Because if he gets this off ramp wherever that is, this is admitting your strategic defeat. The strategic defeat is already there for the whole planet to see. The thing is the degree of this strategic defeat is going to be extremely humiliating or there's gonna be some face saving in built. We still don't know.
But he has to take an off ramp and he's begging for an off ramp. That's that's a completely different story. The Iranians can sit on the current situation for months Even though they are paying a horrible price, they already pay a horrible price in terms of the infrastructure that is destructed. There are numbers floating around reaching as much as $270,000,000,000 to rebuild what was destroyed during the war. So obviously they badly need a toll booth in Hormuz.
This is going to help. They cannot expect the Americans paying reparations because this will never happen. Or they will have to force the Gulfis, especially Emirates, which are for all practical purpose at war with Iran now, not Saudi Arabia, but but The Emirates to pay reparations. So what are they gonna do? Attack The Emirates again?
Yes. They can. They can immobilize The Emirates in a matter of hours. Very, very easy. And in fact, if the Americans attack again, the number one target apart from Israel is gonna be The UAE and not The Emirates, Abu Dhabi specifically.
Dubai, the business model of Dubai is already dead and it's not coming back. Dubai
Speaker 0: How and so? The business model is.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Because I would say the conceptual brain of aligning with The US and Israel in a war against Iran is MBZ, Mohammed bin Zayed. He's a very, very dangerous gangster, in fact. Did you see that he sent his son to Beijing, was received by Xi Jinping, and he was lecturing Xi Jinping in Beijing about the Iran Russia relationship? It's absolutely mind boggling.
These people are self they are gangsters and self entitled. That's even even even worse. And they made their bet a long time ago, Those famous 1,400,000,000,000, I think is a little bit too much, but it's probably much less than that, that they committed to invest in the American economy and the Americans can build all the data centers that they want in The Emirates. And, of course, the direct connection with Israel, which is part of the IMEC as well. Assuming the IMEC one day would happen, probably not.
The the link between Haifa and The UAE is essential for the core, and they still have to build it. They have to build these railroads don't exist. If you sum it all up, I think it's over 1,000 kilometers of rails that still have to be built, linking Israel with The UAE. So they made their bets even before the war. And obviously, provided their own territory for US attacks against Iran.
The Iranians won't forget that ever. There will be payback. It has already started, but it can get much, much more hardcore later on. And if the Americans try something funny in the next few days, once again, rumor meal, but we have to deal with the rumor meal as well. There could be something happening within the weekend.
Well, the Iranians already said what's gonna happen. It's very, very simple. We attack Fujairah, we attack Yanbu, and we close the bubble on Mandeb. That's it. Can you recover from that?
No. Nobody can.
Speaker 0: No. Yeah. When Yemen closes down the Red Sea, I think this is then it's game over.
Speaker 1: That's game over. Everybody knows that, Glenn. Everybody doing models or whatever, everybody knows that. And that's why nothing happened with Bab El Mandeb so far because this is the ultimate joker. Then it's total collapse.
The global economy is already collapsing even more because of this absolutely ridiculous blockade, which is not blockading anything. Ships continue to to go through. And it's fascinating because if you if you if you navigate in the Iranian territorial waters, Pakistani territorial waters, and Indian territorial waters very close to the coastline. That's it. You go from Karg to Mumbai.
Very simple, you know. And I'm sure a lot of cargoes now are doing that. Tankers are doing that now. You you why do you need to navigate in the middle of the Arabian Sea? You know that the Americans are there.
Or at least they tell us that we we we still don't know where exactly they are placed. There's no visual identification of where these destroyers are placed somewhere between the Arabian Sea and the Southern Indian Ocean. That's very, very far away from the coastline of Iran and Pakistan.
Speaker 0: Given that they're so far away, the the region gets so stretched out as well, which means you need a a lot of ships. So Of course. Just from the, yeah, the man to manpower, the ships being used. I mean, they're really exhausting the resources, making matters worse at some point, You know, where do you dock? Where do you do the maintenance?
A lot of these are gonna make them very vulnerable. So it's a it's a dangerous strategy they're playing if we're going to back into full out war. Mhmm. The The US could be in very bad shape. So
Speaker 1: Yes. No. It's a we go back to war, these ships are going to be attacked by missiles and drones, swarms of missiles and drones. There's no quest the the Iranians are just waiting. This will be part of the the war two point zero.
One of the first things. Okay. Let's attack the the US Navy, whatever they are.
Speaker 0: As the Chinese would say, interesting times. So thank you very much for taking the time. Any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Glenn. I hope to see you in in Russia soon.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going soon, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Cheers. Take care. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe https://youtu.be/8dUsurWcFdI https://t.co/5mRKQONfB1
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this discussion with Glenn, Professor John Mearsheimer analyzes the U.S. handling of the Iran war under Trump, the role of Israel and the lobby, and the broader implications for the international system as power shifts from unipolar to multipolar.
Key points on U.S. strategy and diplomacy
- Trump’s approach is a unique form of diplomacy: he pursued a ceasefire grounded in Iran’s 10-point plan as a starting point for negotiations, then moved to a blockade of Iranian ports and allowed escalation elsewhere. The aim, according to the speakers, was to gain breathing space to rearm and regroup, and to press Iran into concessions.
- The absence of a viable military option: there is no credible American military path to victory in the Iran war. Escalation would be Iranian-dominant, and further escalation would damage the world economy, creating political and economic consequences domestically and internationally.
- The administration’s diplomacy is hampered by incompetence, notably in Ukraine-Russia diplomacy, which erodes confidence in negotiating with Iran as well. The Israeli lobby adds pressure to avoid a peace that acknowledges Iran’s gains.
- Four goals in the war, from an Israeli perspective, are regime change, eliminating Iran’s nuclear enrichment, destroying long-range missiles, and stopping Iranian support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Israel and its lobby view the situation as existential and push for continued pressure unless Iran is decisively defeated. From the U.S. perspective, this means consensus among allies is fragile and often subordinated to domestic and lobby pressures.
The strategic logic of the blockade and escalation
- The blockade is not a war-winning instrument. The naval option is constrained by ship counts, wear on assets, potential Chinese escorts, and reciprocal Iranian actions (Iran already captured ships in retaliation). Iran’s tolerance for pain is high, and the blockade is not a reliable lever to force compliance.
- Air power failed to defeat Iran, confirming that the war cannot be won through bombing alone. Ground invasion is unlikely due to limited American combat troops, political will, and public tolerance for casualties. Consequently, the U.S. has turned to naval coercion via the Strait of Hormuz and global oil interdictions, but this too is unlikely to compel a definitive Iranian capitulation.
- A ceasefire is seen as essential to halt the fighting and begin negotiations; however, the ceasefire has not achieved meaningful negotiations because the blockade remains in place, and Iran has demanded its end as a condition to return to talks.
Possible Iranian responses and risk dynamics
- If the United States were to resume massive bombing, Iran could launch a “Goderdammerung” response—shutting down the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, attacking energy infrastructure and desalination plants, and wrecking the world economy. This would imply a broader regional and global calamity, with Iran threatening to pull down others with it.
- The Iranians are expected to leverage the Strait of Hormuz and toll revenues, and to press for sanctions relief and ongoing control of the Strait as bargaining chips. The blockade may inflict pain, but Iran has shown a high capacity to tolerate it, making the naval option unlikely to deliver victory.
Europe, diplomacy, and the evolving alliance system
- Elbridge Colby’s remarks suggest Europe should take primary responsibility for conventional and Ukraine support, reflecting U.S. weapon stock depletion and a shift toward East Asia as the priority theater. This signals a “buck-passing” of security obligations and a withdrawal of the United States from Europe at the conventional level.
- The Colby framework implies the U.S. is reorienting away from Europe and toward East Asia, potentially weakening NATO cohesion as American weapons support diminishes. This could push Europe to diversify security arrangements and rely less on U.S. guarantees.
- There is a broader pattern of “divorcing” from allies: as the Gulf, Europe, and Ukraine face continued pressures, the alliance system frays. The U.S. may seek to offload security burdens, while Russia and China adapt by intensifying their own strategic ties and exploiting the rifts within Western alliances.
The multipolar world and regional flashpoints
- The discussion emphasizes that the world has moved from a post–Cold War unipolar moment to a multipolar system, with East Asia (China) as the primary U.S. strategic focus, but with persistent, volatile conflicts in Europe (Russia-Ukraine) and the Middle East (Israel-Iran, and allied networks like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis).
- The speakers stress the interconnections among conflicts: resolving Israel-Iran involves Hezbollah and Hamas; resolving Ukraine involves European commitments and American supplies; and the evolving alliance structures—where the U.S. may reduce its conventional footprint in Europe—could heighten tensions or provoke Russian reactions.
Final reflections
- The conversation closes by acknowledging the plastic, uncertain moment in world politics: many possible futures depend on diplomacy, leadership choices, and how quickly new equilibria are formed among emerging great powers. The two speakers stress that avoiding a major conflagration will require careful diplomacy, recognition of interlinked flashpoints, and a willingness to rethink traditional alliance structures in a multipolar world.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is the 04/22/2026, and we are joined by professor John Mearsheimer. Thank you again for coming back on, my friend. It's always good to see you.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Glenn, and glad to be back.
Speaker 0: So I'm trying to make a bit sense out of The US strategy in the Iran war because it seems to me that Trump was in a difficult spot, and he needed an out. So he accepted the ceasefire conditioned on Iran's 10 points as starting point at least for negotiations. Then he finally had it, but he then moves forth with this blockade on Iranian ports, and then there appears to be a sabotage of the Islamabad talks. I'm trying to make sense of this. I mean, is this was this only to get breathing space to rearm and regroup, or is did the Israelis intervene to keep the war going, or is this just a unique style of diplomacy that Trump is pursuing?
Speaker 1: It is a unique form of diplomacy. There's no question about that. Whether it makes any sense is another matter. And I think it's quite clear it doesn't make any sense. I mean, the bottom line here is that Trump needs an exit strategy.
He he just has to put an end to this war, sooner rather than later. And the reason for that is that he has no military strategy that he can turn to that can allow him to win the war. There's just no military option here. As we've talked about before, if you go up the escalation ladder, it's the Iranians who prevail, not the Americans. So there's just no military option.
Furthermore, the world economy is teetering and the longer this goes on, more damage that's gonna be done to the world economy. And by the way, if you do go up the escalation ladder, that'll really be another hammer blow to the world economy. And this has political consequences inside The United States for President Trump, not to mention the fact that it has huge economic and social consequences for countries all over the world. So he's under tremendous pressure to come up with some sort of agreement with Iran that allows us to walk away from this. The problem that he faces is that he's incompetent.
The administration is incompetent when it comes to diplomacy, and the best example of this is a subject you and I have talked about ad nauseam, which is the Ukraine Russia war. You wanna remember that president Trump promised when he came into office that he was going to settle that war. And in fact, he said that he might even settle it before he moves into the White House. And he's made a complete hash of those diplomatic negotiations with the Russians. It's really quite remarkable as you have recorded in a whole slew of different interviews with a variety of people over the past year or so.
It's really quite amazing. So why would anyone expect him to be any more adept in negotiating with the Iranians than he has been in negotiating with the Ukrainians and the Russians? He's just not a good diplomat by any stretch of the imagination. And to add to the trouble, he's got to deal with Israel and the Israel lobby. And this is a very important issue, Glenn.
The fact is that the Israelis understand that up to this point in time we've lost the war. We meaning The United States and Israel. We had a set of goals going into the war. Four main goals, as you know, regime change, getting rid of Iran's nuclear enrichment capability, getting rid of their long range missiles, and getting them to stop supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. We failed on all counts.
And on top of that, as everybody knows, the Iranians who did not control the Strait Of Hormuz before February 28 and did not have a toll booth located in the middle of it, control the Strait Of Hormuz and have a toll booth located right there. So the Iranians have won. From an Israeli point of view, this is a disastrous situation because the Israelis view Iran as an existential threat. You and I can disagree with the Israelis but that doesn't matter. They think it's an existential threat and of course the lobby here in The United States goes along with Israel no matter what.
So the end result is that Israel wants to continue the war. It's just very important to understand that. They want us to continue hammering away at Iran to try to beat them into submission. And if we don't beat them into submission, well, we'll just destroy them. Do what we did in Gaza to Iran.
That's the Israeli view and that's the Israel lobby's view. So if you think about the situation in Ukraine going back there and then you think about the situation with regard to Iran, you see inept diplomacy on the part of the Trump administration in both cases. But in the case of Iran, the situation's even worse because you've got Israel and the lobby leaning on him not to come up with a peace agreement that reflects what's happening in the war, which is another way of saying which reflects the fact that Iran has won. So Trump is veering back and forth between two positions. One, which is pushed forward by the economic realities and the realities of what has happened in the actual fighting to work out some sort of deal.
He has powerful incentives because of the state of the world economy and because of what's happened in the fighting to cut a deal. He understands he has no military option. He understands we've effectively lost. And he understands the damage that could be done to the world economy. That tells him, let's cut a deal.
But on the other side, he has the Israelis and he has their minions here in The United States. And they are powerful and they're honeycomb throughout the entire administration to put enormous pressure on him not to cut a deal and instead to play hardball with the Iranians. So what you see him doing is wavering back and forth between these two positions. And in the end, we have been unable to get a ceasefire, much less meaningful negotiations started. You want to understand, we don't even have a ceasefire yet because the ceasefire involved shutting down the fighting in Lebanon between the Israelis and Hezbollah, which has kind of been done.
And number two, opening the strait. And the strait opened for one day and then because President Trump wouldn't take off the American blockade of the strait, the Iranians put the blockade back on. So we haven't even fulfilled all the conditions that were required for a ceasefire, much less began to move seriously towards an agreement. And all the time this is happening, the clock is ticking on the world economy and this is a very dangerous situation.
Speaker 0: Is it possible though with the ceasefire that this could be a way for The United States to get Iran to fight the war on America's terms? Because this appears to be one of the things that has failed since the beginning. That is, when The US attacked, it looked as if Trump would have favored to do a little bit of bombing and then stop, and, the Iranians essentially didn't wanna give him this kind of escalation control, and they made it clear that any attack would get a massive response. So yeah. So shutting down the Strait, Rimuz, attacking the Gulf allies, essentially denying The US this kind of escalation control.
Now, in the ceasefire, it seems to follow the same logic. Yes. Initially, The US appeared to agree to this 10 plan, at least as a point of departure to to start discussions, but then it seems to be this incrementalism. Well, The US should be allowed to put a blockade on Iran. Should Israel should be allowed to bomb a little bit in Lebanon.
US should be able to seize or fire on some Iranian ships and to keep it, I guess, low intensity. Do you I mean, is it is it is it possible that it's just to get the war under control, or is it the ceasefire gone gone wrong? Because I think Iran will probably interpret this as a wider effort. Well, whatever minor escalation there's now, the overarching objective would be the effort to destroy their nation or wipe out their civilization to use Trump's language. So do do you think this is has anything to do with how the war is fought or just to bring it down, the intensity of it, and limit the targets that Iran are, you know, targeting?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's a great question. And let me give you my two cents on it. I think that what Trump wants to do here is he wants to use military leverage to get the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire and then to come to the negotiating table. And he wants to use that military leverage to get a good deal.
Not a great deal, he's not gonna get a great deal. Know, he wants, I think, to get something that's better than the JCPOA when it comes to the nuclear enrichment issue. But but he he needs, he thinks, military leverage to do that. So let's talk about military leverage. My view is that any country has any great power, should say has three levers that it can use, three military instruments that it can use to get what it wants, either through coercive purposes or by fighting the actual war.
And one is air power, two is ground power or land power, and three is naval power. Those are the sort of three instruments that a state has. And we started the war on February 28 and waged it before the ceasefire largely with air power. We struck Iran from the air and we struck them with naval aircraft, but we didn't have a blockade at that point in time. It was all about air power.
And that air power campaign, Glenn, failed. That's why you moved to a ceasefire and that's why we can say today that up to this point Iran has won the war. The air power campaign failed. And by the way, everybody knew or let me put it differently, everybody should have known beforehand that air power alone was not going to defeat Iran. The historical record is clear here.
So that's air power. Then there's ground power. And here we're talking about using ground forces for invading, for the purpose of invading Iran. This is not a serious option. First of all, we don't have many combat troops at all in the region.
You know, there's talk about 50,000 American troops in the region. Only a small slice of them are combat troops. And the idea that even if all of them were combat troops, you could invade Iran and do something to end this war is not a serious argument. We don't have the combat forces there to launch a ground invasion. Furthermore, President Trump is allergic to boots on the ground.
Furthermore, the American people are not willing to tolerate the kind of pain that would be required if you were going to launch a full scale invasion of Iran. Just think about how deeply concerned we were about the life of that pilot who was shot down. The idea that he might be killed was a horrible thought. Our tolerance for pain over the Iran war is not very high. The idea that you're going to launch a massive ground offensive into Iran, suffer lots of casualties, have soldiers coming back in body bags, that's just not possible.
It's just not going to happen. And seems to me that President Trump, although he occasionally hints it may be a tiny ground force incursion, The ground force option is just not a serious option. So what I'm telling you is up to now the air power option was tried and failed. We have no serious ground power option or land force option. And unsurprisingly, what have we turned to?
We've turned to the naval option and we have a blockade on the strait. And furthermore, we're running around the world hunting down ships carrying Iranian oil way out in East Asia or Southwest Asia. And the question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you think this blockade is gonna bring the Iranians to their knees. And I would say to you, first of all, Glenn, if the blockade is such a war winning weapon or is an effective war winning weapon, why didn't we turn to it earlier? Why are we only turning to it now?
And the answer is it's not a war winning weapon. First of all, I don't think the US Navy can sustain a blockade for a long period of time. We have a limited number of ships. The wear and tear on our ships is enormous. I think a lot of ships, based on what I read, are getting through the blockade.
We run the risk at some point that the Chinese will escort ships into the Strait Of Hormuz, which will put us in a very difficult position because then we'll have to face the fact that we might have to attack Chinese ships if we wanna prevent those Iranian cargo ships or oil tankers from going into the Gulf. I mean, there's all sorts of trouble that one can imagine with this blockade. And I think very importantly what you saw today is that the Iranians have captured two ships in the Persian Gulf. They've seized two ships in retaliation for the two ships that we have seized. So they're playing tit for tat.
Moreover, the Iranians have made it manifestly clear that if you want to come back to the bargaining table, you have to put an end to the blockade. So at some point, Trump is gonna have to end the blockade just to go back to the bargaining table. He can't dilly dally forever and ever. We have to get negotiations going here, And that means he's going to have to take the blockade off at some point. But my previous point is the blockade's not going to be that effective.
Is it going to inflict some pain on the Iranians? Yeah. But the Iranians have demonstrated that they have a high tolerance for pain, a much higher tolerance for pain than we do. So the naval option is not a war winning option. We have no war winning option.
You know, President Trump talks about sort of going back to air power and a lot of people say we're going go in and bomb this and bomb that. That's not going to work either. If it was going to work, he would have done it. We tried bombing, it didn't work. What's the new formula that's going to allow us to succeed?
Oh, we're going go in and destroy all of their energy infrastructure and basically make Iran unlivable. That's not going to work, everybody knows that, because the Iranians can retaliate. So we're out of options. And what he has to do here is he has to get a ceasefire in place ASAP, and then they have to start negotiating. And he has to come up with a clever set of proposals that he can work on with the Iranians so that we can work out some sort of deal and shut this down as much as possible and rescue the international economy before it goes off a cliff.
Speaker 0: Well, this tit for tat, so this has been one of the interesting, well, ways this war has developed. That is whatever The US does, it appears that the Iranians can mirror it and go up that escalation ladder with the Americans. But that's why I'm wondering if this is what The US will do. What do you expect on the Iranian side? Because there doesn't seems to be a diplomatic path here.
At least it seemed to be too far apart at the moment. The US, again, it will it might do this heavy air campaign and then, yeah, complemented with the sea blockade. Some people like Keith Kellogg are, you know, arguing for a land campaign as well that is to seize islands and these kind of things. But what do you see Iran possibly doing? I know the IRGC has suggested they that they could do things like cut undersea Internet cables or, you know, they could shut down the Red Sea.
Indeed, Yemen has more or less, you know, has said that they're prepared to enter the war now. But what is the secret weapon you think of Iran if The US, let's say US pursues this strategy of just bombing Iran, inflicting as much pain as possible, and then, yeah, either in perpetuity or just until they decide to leave. What what do you expect to see from the Iranians?
Speaker 1: Well, if you're describing a situation where The United States goes back to a massive bombing campaign, where they're attacking energy infrastructure, bridges, and doing enormous amounts of damage inside Iran, killing many, many thousands of civilians. I think what Iran will do is that it will shut down the Persian Gulf completely. It will shut down the Red Sea, and it will attack energy infrastructure and desalination plants all across the Gulf. It will do everything it can to wreck The Gulf. It's what I call the Goderdammerung response.
We're gonna bring everybody down with us. Right? The idea that you're just gonna inflict punishment on Iran and get away with it and everybody else is gonna be able to stand idly by while our country is destroyed is not in the cards. We are gonna take others down with us. We will take every state in The Gulf down with us and we will wreck the world economy.
And we will do that by shutting down the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. And this will have disastrous consequences over the long term and surely everybody understands that. That would be the threat that I would make if I were playing their hand. And I believe it is a very formidable threat and I believe the people in the Trump administration and people all around the world understand this is what is likely to happen if The United States turns the dogs loose and really goes after Iran's infrastructure and its population in a major way. And that's why I think it's not going to happen.
This is why I say if you go up the escalation ladder, the Iranians hold all the cards. You can do enormous damage to Iran, but the fact is they can do even greater damage to the world economy and to states in the region.
Speaker 0: But I was wondering, though. I sometimes you get some commentary that, you know, that well, yes, that this could melt down the global economy. But do you think there's anyone that there would be some in the administration who would think, you know, so what? Because The US is independent on the Strait Of Moshe. The US doesn't have to be reliant on energy from the Middle East.
Is it some I guess, based on history of, you know, World War two that, you know, whole world burned down, but The US remained, and now it was the last one standing. Do you think there's anyone who would, you know, maybe not welcome such a scenario, but who would be willing essentially to sacrifice the Gulf States if it meant weakening or destroying Iran and weakening, for example, China significantly, or do you think that's over the top?
Speaker 1: No. I think that Israel and its supporters will be inclined to adopt the position you just described. Again, it's very important to understand that from Israel's point of view, Iran is an existential threat. And they thought that when we went to war against Iran on February 28, that the end result would be that Iran would suffer a staggering defeat. We would win, we meaning The United States and Israel.
And the exact opposite is happening. And what we're talking about here, Glenn, is working out some sort of agreement that reflects the fact that Iran won. We may get certain concessions from the Iranians, but they won the war and they'll do very well in these negotiations. That's just the way it works. The winners on the battlefield are the winners at the negotiating table.
Common sense tells you that, but the Israelis definitely don't want that. So they're gonna push very hard for us to start the war up again, and the Israelis and their supporters in The United States will be inclined, not all will buy this argument, but they'll be inclined to make the argument that we can withstand the response that Iran comes up with after we turn the dogs loose. And I think that at that point, I think President Trump will side with common sense and he will go to great lengths to tell the Israelis that they just have to accept the fact that we lost and that we're going work out a deal with Iran. Because President Trump has a deep seated interest in avoiding an economic catastrophe. I mean, there are all sorts of people who are students of international economics who say that if this one spins out of control militarily and economically that you could end up in a situation analogous to what you had in the 1930s.
You could have a Great Depression. And there are some people who argue and these are not foolish people, these are smart people who argue you could have an economic depression worse than you had in the nineteen thirties. Is that for sure? Of course not, because we don't know exactly where this train is headed. We live in an uncertain world and how it all plays out is very hard to say.
But it just seems pretty commonsensical that if you shut down the Gulf completely, you shut down the Red Sea and you wreck all of those GCC countries that the economic consequences worldwide are just enormous. It's not only gas and oil, it's the fertilizers that come out of the region, out of the Middle East, out of the Gulf, out of the Red Sea. It's the aluminum, it's the helium. It's just hard to imagine us doing anything to create a situation like that, and it would just seem to me that we will go to great lengths to avoid that. But again, I think there'll be pressure from Israel and from its supporters in The United States to really go after Iran and to not reach any sort of any agreement that gives them concessions, major concessions.
Speaker 0: Well, I think one of the reasons why we get locked into this wars and not able to pull out, even now that the war has been lost is, you know, so or even predict the consequences that will come. You mentioned the global depression. You know, we have a possibility of a famine. It's because in human nature, there's always the assumption that the present era is permanent. You know, this has only been thirty five years since the Soviet Union collapsed.
It's it's yeah. The the the current era, it's the conditions of it, it hasn't been here for very long, and the assumption that it would stay like this forever is is quite extraordinary. So you often get the impression that politicians aren't ready to make the necessary adjustments because they don't appreciate or recognize the severity of the situation. But but on that, though, how how willing do you think how long do you think how far do you think Trump is prepared to go to put an end to this thing? Because let's say he goes in, just takes what remains of American missiles and just carpet bomb what they can of Iran, but they can't achieve what they want.
Is it just pulling back then and going home? I I mean, do you think it's possible for The US to leave the Middle East without having the Strait Of Hormuz open? Because this seems so critical if the Iranians can hold the Strait Of Hormuz. We've already seen more or less what they can do to dismantle The US presence in the Middle East. They can, you know, collect their, you said, toll, but, yeah, that that would be reparations as well.
They would be able to I think The UAE already said that they might start to sell some of their oil in Chinese one, or they they're open to it. There could be efforts to pressure these countries to scale back the presence of this US military bases in the region, something that I'm sure some of them are already discussing if that invites conflict instead of bringing security. So it seems like a massive cost for The US to leave without the Strait Of Hormuz being opened. But, again, if if it can't be achieved, what do you do? Do you think it's possible for The US just to leave?
I know Joe Kent advocated for this, but is it possible?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a difference between The United States leaving with the strait closed or open versus The United States leaving with Iran in control and with a toll booth on the road or or in the strait. I think that Iran is going to end up controlling the strait, and it's going to have a toll booth in the strait. I think it's linked to the business in good part of reparations and sanctions. I think that it's hard to imagine The United States and Israel, certainly Israel, but The United States even paying reparations to Iran for all the damage it's done. And in terms of sanctions relief, it's gonna be almost impossible to get the American sanctions off of Iran because that would have to go through Congress, and Congress is anti Iran in the extreme.
They may get the international sanctions off. But given the problem that we're gonna face with sanctions relief for the Iranians and given that we're not gonna pay meaningful reparations, they're gonna want to keep the tollbooth in place for a long, long time. And furthermore, they're going to want to control the Strait just because it provides them with huge amounts of course of leverage. Anytime The United States or Israel in the future start to play tough or threaten to play tough with Iran, I think the Iranians will just remind The United States and Israel that they control the Strait and they will shut things down once again. That's a powerful deterrent.
So I think no matter what, Iran's gonna end up with control of the strait in a very obvious way, and they're gonna end up with a tollbooth in the middle of that strait. And it may be that boats or ships traversing that strait or they're going through that tollbooth will have to pay a new one. Who knows on that count? So I think that's a given. But the discussion or the question that you raise gets at the fact that we're at a very plastic moment here.
And what I mean by that is that there are just so many different issues on the table and how they're all resolved, how they all fit together is just very hard to say. If you ask me, sort of, where is this train headed? What does this all mean for The U. S. Military presence in The Gulf?
And that was one of the questions that you were pushing forward. I don't have a clear answer. I'd be curious to know what you think, but do you think we're going to go back to the naval base at Bahrain? Do you think we're going to go back to any of those bases in The Middle East that have been either destroyed or badly damaged? Do you think that the Gulf states that hosted those bases are going to want us back?
And what about the negotiations? How do the bases play in the negotiations? Do we make concessions on the bases so that we can get a better deal on the nuclear enrichment issue? In other words, will the Iranians be more willing to accommodate us on nuclear enrichment if we are willing to put an end to the bases in the region. I'm not saying that will happen for one second, but this all remains to be determined.
I mean this is what the negotiations will hopefully resolve. And if they don't resolve these issues, this conflict will just go on and on forever and that will not be a good thing, obviously. But what I'm saying here, Glenn, is you raise a great set of questions, but what the answers are just not clear here.
Speaker 0: Well, I think a lot of the conflicts we have today, be it with the Russia, Iran, China, they all many of them have some of the same origin. That is the wider transition of the world order, that is sort shifting distribution of power from a unipolar to a multipolar. Now in the hegemonic system, I think the hegemon will have an interest in building alliances. That is that's a good way of her maintaining a hedge money. That is, like in Europe, divide the continent into dependent, thus loyal allies and the weakened adversaries.
You're see the same dynamic in The Middle East when the Chinese try to negotiate some more well, improved relations between the Saudis and Iranians. This essentially could become a you know, if peace breaks out, then what's gonna happen? Then the Saudis will be less, you know, loyal or obedient, and the Iranians won't be contained. So one does need an alliance system to preserve a hegemonic position. And I think as the world becomes multipolar, many of these states probably have an interest to have a more independent political position, but then you need to to diversify your ties.
That is not to tie yourself too much down with one actor. So I think from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, across the region, many countries now looking to diversify and decouple a little bit from these alliance systems. And especially if you have a declining hegemon, not saying that The US is, you know, finished. I think this people ask me how I compare it to, you know, Britain in 1956, but I think by no means The US will remain a massive power. It's but but relative decline, I think, is important.
Because if a power is in relative decline, the alliance system, of being a form of a well, monopolizing on security. Every everyone wanted to tie their security to The US in the nineties, but if it's a declining hegemon, and it might use the frontline states to weaken its opponents, you know, you see this in the Gulf States. They have to question whether or not this is a good position still to be. I mean, it's not the nineteen nineties. I know they're talking about this in East Asia and South Korea, because whenever one enters an alliance, yes, one gets security, but one can also provoke a response.
And at the moment, the security, the gain, it seems to be reducing while provoking, for example, China isn't worth it. And at some point, I think Europeans will talk about this as well. But I think this is a overall shift, I think, in the international distribution of power. So I think at the end of the day, The US will have less interest in the Middle East simply because it has better priorities, and the Middle Eastern countries will have to diversify, and, you know, the Saudis will have to hedge a bit. And yes.
I think there will be no going back to the way things were. I mean, this is historical times. You can't have a country, for example, like China, you know, with this spectacular rise, and then the world order will remain the same. There has to be massive changes, and I think that's what we're undergoing. Some of them will be, you know, born through blood and fire essentially instead of, you know, through diplomacy.
But, no, I I don't think we're going back to where we
Speaker 1: were. Yeah. No question about that. Let me just tell you how I sort of think about the world at macro level to try to make sense of it. And I'm not arguing that this is an approved solution, but it's just my sort of simple framework for thinking about how the world looks today.
Of course, you know, up until about 2017, certainly through all of the nineteen nineties and the first decade and a half or so of the twenty first century, we lived in a unipolar world. And in that unipolar world, The United States was by definition the only great power. That world went away, in my opinion, in about 2017. And we now live in a multipolar world. And what's very important to understand about that multipolar world is that for The United States, the most important region in the world is East Asia because China is a peer competitor in the sense that China is a rising great power that threatens to even be more powerful than The United States.
I'm not saying that will happen, but China is a formidable adversary for The United States. So you now have this multipolar world where East Asia is of paramount importance for The United States. And The United States still cares about two other areas of the world. One is Europe and then the third is the Persian Gulf. So that's sort of the macro view I have at the highest level.
But then if you look at the Ukraine Russia war and you look at the Iran war, what you see is that these two conflicts almost are guaranteed to never go away and to have to create a poisonous security environment in both Europe and in The Gulf. And why am I saying that? It's very important to understand, I think, that from Russia's point of view, the situation in Ukraine is an existential threat. From Ukraine's point of view, Russia is an existential threat. I fully understand why both actors in that conflict, Ukraine and Russia, view the other as an existential threat.
And Europe has piggybacked with the Ukrainians to the point where the Europeans think Russia is an existential threat and the Russians think the Europeans and the Ukrainians together are an existential threat. And when you have two sides that both think the other side is an existential threat, how do you shut that down in any meaningful way? So I think you're gonna have huge problems in Europe moving forward, mainly based on the Russia Ukraine conflict. Turning to The Gulf, as I said to you before, the Israelis view the Iranians as an existential threat and Israel's supporters in The United States view Iran as an existential threat. And Iran views The United States and certainly Israel as an existential threat.
But let's just focus on Israel and Iran. Those two view each other as an existential threat. How are we ever gonna get a meaningful ceasefire between Israel and Iran? Especially when Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and has no intention of giving up that support. And the Israelis view Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis as not as dangerous as Iran but almost as dangerous as Iran and joined at the hip with Iran.
So what you're going to see moving forward, even if we get some sort of agreement between The United States and Iran, is a permanent state of hostility between Israel and Iran in the Persian Gulf or in the Middle East. And then back to Europe, you're going to see endless trouble moving forward, a poisonous relationship. You and I have talked about this before between the Russians on one side and the Ukrainians and the Europeans on the other side. So again, just to go back to where I started, you have these three great powers in the system now, right, who compete with each other in all sorts of different ways. And with regard to The US China conflict, from an American point of view, China is the principal threat.
East Asia is the number one area of the world. If you look at the other two areas of the world, Europe and The Middle East, you have this very dangerous situation that doesn't seem to look like it's going to go away in both of those areas. And my final point would be to you, Glenn, you can tell all sorts of stories about how you hook the Chinese up to what's going on in The Gulf. Very easy to do. And the Russians, of course, were already involved in Europe.
They're one of the principal participants in the war in Ukraine. And the Russians, of course, are involved in The Gulf. They're helping the Iranians. Both the Russians and the Chinese are helping the Iranians. And the Chinese, obviously, because they fear an American containment strategy in East Asia, the Chinese have a vested interest in seeing the Ukraine war go on and seeing the Americans pinned down in Europe.
And in a certain way, they even have a vested interest in seeing The United States remain militarily in the Persian Gulf because that means they won't be able to go to East Asia to contain China. So what I think you see with this rather simple framework that I'm putting on the table is that we live in a very dangerous world and there's not much prospect that I can see. I hope I'm wrong, but there's not much prospect of creating a more peaceful world moving forward.
Speaker 0: No. I'm not sure how the new, yeah, equilibrium will be established. But but but I'm I'm curious, though, of what The US goals then would be towards Europe because, you know, if you have a world becoming polar, The US can't be everywhere, has to make priorities. So The US more or less prioritizes the Western Hemisphere and East Asia, where you said its peer competitors. Well, then The US has to get out of the Middle East and Europe.
Again, this is why the Iran war doesn't make much sense in the wider strategy, and but in Europe, it seems even more important to get out of because they consume a lot of resources. But more importantly is perhaps by having a too heavy American footprint in Europe, they're pushing the Russians closer to to China. So when Trump said, wanna put an end to this war, you know, in twenty four hours, which was never, you know, realistic, but at least it seemed to reflect that he recognized how the distribution of power was shifting. But that being said, I kind of assumed that he wanted to put an end to that war. But now we see this kind of this new statements.
I I I did send you an a link earlier on with head undersecretary of war for policy, Elbridge Colby, was you're making some remarks. It didn't sound like you wanted to put an end to the war. On the contrary, you called for the Europeans to essentially step up to the plate. He sounded not to end the war, but to outsource the war to the Europeans. So while the Europeans would like to pull the Americans into the well, deeper into the war, it seems the Americans want to outsource it to the Europeans.
But do you read it the same way, or or do The US want to put an end to it or just to make it a because if it's a European war, then they can continue to contain the Russians, and, you know, it's the Europeans' problems and the Russians for you know, they they signaled they're willing to improve bilateral ties with the Americans even though The US is still involved in in Ukraine in terms of intelligence and sending weapons. But do you do you see a willingness to end the war? Is it, like perpetual war, forever war, which is possibly a strategy just to drain the Russians and, yeah, make sure that the Europeans do it on their own?
Speaker 1: Well, you should put that speech that Elbridge Colby gave in Europe up on your website so that people can access it. Glenn sent it to me. I'm talking to the audience here. Glenn sent it to me earlier today and I read it very carefully. And of course, Elbridge Colby is a very important figure in the Pentagon and his statement that Glenn sent me on April 15 is I think enormously important.
And my interpretation of it, Glenn, is it said nothing about solving the war or shutting down the war in Ukraine. This was all about what I would call buck passing, shifting the responsibility for security in Europe at the conventional level almost completely over to the Europeans, and shifting responsibility for supporting Ukraine in the Ukraine Russia war almost completely over to the Europeans. And this was a case of moving almost completely away from the Biden approach to dealing with Ukraine, where we were fully involved in the process and committed to fight till the end. And I think it's very clear that what's going on here is that The United States is deeply committed in Iran and in the Iran war, and we are using up significant amounts of our weapons inventory in The Middle East in this Iran war and that is weakening our position vis a vis the Chinese. If you look at the numbers of THAAD missiles and Patriot missiles and smart bombs and Tomahawks that we've expended in Iranand by the way, Glenn, just to get off the subject that we're talking about for one second, one of the reasons that president Trump does not want to start the bombing campaign again and start the war up because it would involve Iran retaliating against Israel and The Gulf States is that he would have to use up more of the American inventory of weapons.
They don't want to use any more weapons than they have to in a future conflict in the war against Iran. So we have very powerful incentives not to start the war up against Iran because we have so depleted our inventory of weapons. And this has huge consequences for East Asia, where we're supposed to be in the process of containing China, the principal threat to The United States. So what Elbridge Colby is saying very clearly to the Europeans is we can't provide the weapons anymore for you to give to the Ukrainians. You Europeans have to develop the necessary weapons and you have to do it quickly for Ukraine.
We can't do it because we have other responsibilities. So this is, I think, Colby speech, a clear statement of the Americans divorcing themselves from Europe at the military level. It's basically saying to the Europeans, You deal with the Ukraine war. They're not saying, You shut down the Ukraine war. In fact, I think the document reads like we expect the war to go on and on and that's hardly surprising.
We failed to shut the war down. They're not going to shut the war down. In fact, they have no interest in shutting the war down. The Europeans want this war to go on forever and ever. And the end result is that Ukraine is going to have to be supplied with lots of weapons.
And the question is where are they going to get those weapons? And up to now, it's been pretty much a case with the Europeans by the weapons from The United States and then give them to the Ukrainians. And what Colby is saying is the cupboard's bare. There are no American weapons we can give you. We're running through weapons in The Gulf at an incredibly rapid pace and that's having huge consequences for East Asia which is strategically the most important area of the world.
So in a very important way, what Colby is doing is divorcing The United States from Europe, especially at the conventional level. That's the way I read it. Do you disagree with that?
Speaker 0: No. I think they're yeah. No. They're handing it over or or cutting it cutting their ties further. I think this also could be a consequence of the Iran War as well.
The the fact that Trump has put a lot of all the rhetorical efforts to blame the whole thing on the Europeans, it it that could provide a a a reason or at least to get mobilize some support from decoupling The US a bit more from the from from the Europeans. But that also puts the Europeans in a well, puts us on a much closer to war, I think, here in Europe because with the lack of American weapons, the situation is going more and more in Russia's favor, and the Europeans will have to escalate in a big way, which you see all these drones being made and sent and the very openness about our participation in this war. And at the same time, the reports now of the Baltic States and or Finland allowing their territory be used to be used to strike Russia. At some point, you know, the escalation will put more pressure on the Kremlin to respond, and there is a growing pressure. And all of this is happening at the same time that Americans are divorcing themselves, so now the Russians would have less constraints to retaliate.
I mean, why would they fear striking some German logistics center if if America's not standing behind? Is it the same as the Baltic States? The reason they've been behaving this way is you had always, you know, big bad uncle Sam standing behind you. If if uncle Sam's not there anymore, you know, and instead of toning it down, they have to escalate. I think we're looking at a recipe for war.
But
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this gets to this whole point we were making before about what a plastic moment this is. I mean, just listening to you talk, what about the American security umbrella, the American nuclear umbrella over Europe, especially over Eastern Europe? If something happens in one of the Baltic states, what are we gonna do? We, meaning the Americans.
It's really hard to imagine The United States getting into a fight with the Russians in one of the Baltic states at this point in time. So I think the Russians are kind of flexing their muscles these days vis a vis the Baltic States because they understand that. The other thing is, Glenn, I wonder what's gonna happen when Ukraine finally loses this war. I mean, it's hard to say what the final arrangement is going to look like. But at some point the shooting is going to stop, number one.
And number two, the Russians are going to end up controlling a huge slice of Ukrainian territory, which they've already annexed. I mean they've annexed for Oblast and Crimea. And this is going to be seen as a devastating defeat for NATO. Right? NATO lost.
And President Trump will blame the Europeans. And if you think about Colby's speech, Colby's speech is putting President Trump in a position where it will be easy to blame the Europeans because the Ukrainians have lost not lost now. We're divorcing ourselves, and at some point the Ukrainians are gonna lose. And when they lose, Trump will be able to say, we shifted the burden almost completely onto the shoulders of the Europeans. We were doing well, or the Ukrainians were doing well up until that happened, and then Ukraine fell apart.
And of course it's because of those pathetic Europeans who wouldn't help us in The Gulf, who wouldn't help open the Strait Of Hormuz or who wouldn't unilaterally open the Strait Of Hormuz. Of course this is all nonsense but this is the rhetoric that he'll use. And this will just further tear at the seams of the alliance. It'll just make a bad situation worse. So I think what you're going to get in Europe, and I'd be curious to know what you think about this, I think you're going to get a situation where The United States is much less committed to Europe and to NATO.
And at the same time, the relations between the Russians on one side and the Ukrainians and the Europeans on the other side are gonna be even worse in the future than they are now.
Speaker 0: No. I've no. I agree. I think it was also very predictable. Indeed, on on this podcast, I interviewed the the German general, general Harald Kuyatt.
He was the head of the entire German army, and he also had the highest military position within NATO. Forgot what it's called. Yeah. And, anyways, my my my my point is three years ago, he was May he he made the point that, you know, he was speaking very openly about what was actually happening unlike the rest of his countrymen. He was making the point that, yes, US and the British sabotage the Istanbul agreement, all of this.
But he also made the point, again, three years ago that we're losing this war, as you and I were always saying back in those days. And but the consequences at some point, The US, when it's being lost, they will, you know, have the common sense to pull away. And at this point, we, that is the Germans, will stand to face a very angry Russian or Russia all by ourselves. And I thought that was interesting. That was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to him as well.
And I I think that's where we are now. The the war is being lost. The US is handing it over to the Europeans, and now we're gonna face a very angry Russia. And instead of seeking to make a peace, we're making it much worse because many of the European leaders seemingly genuinely believe that Russia is an existential threat, so they don't have any political imagination for peace, so it's only escalation. And but I think on the wider I think there's also mutual divorce because you mentioned before the missiles being depleted.
Once missiles or weapons are being depleted, people lose trust in alliances. That is, you know, the South Koreans are asking, you know, why did the Americans pull out their thou and the patriots? In Europe, they're saying, oh, all these missiles were supposed to get to fight the Russians being delayed or diverted. And even in the Gulf States, they're saying, oh, why are the the air defenses, they you know, Israel's being prioritized. So you're seeing this side distancing themselves, and on the other side, you see the Americans who are essentially blaming some of the partners.
They're, you know, they're not a force amplifier anymore. They're drained on US resources. They're not gonna be able to look after their own backyard or go contain China. And and, yeah, all of the failings are their their faults. I mean, Europeans, they're the ones to blame in you know, for Ukraine, for Iran.
So I I think you see a a mutual split. And, again, I don't know what would follow, though.
Speaker 1: Just one other dimension to this, Glenn. I I like to say that when you think about the poisonous relationship that's gonna exist between Russia on one side and Europe and Ukraine on the other side, that there's six other potential flash points that are loosely associated with Ukraine. And of course the Ukraine war could start up again. You It, know, we'll get some sort of frozen conflict, that could start up again. But then there are the sort of other potential flash points that I focus on or I have focused on.
One is the Arctic, two is the Baltic Sea, three is Belarus, four is Kaliningrad, five is Moldova, and six is the Black Sea. But you know if you think about it we're talking about not the Baltic or Kaliningrad, we're talking about the Baltic states themselves and potential trouble in the Baltic states. So you could add that as a seventh category. But all of this just goes to show that the potential for really big trouble in Europe moving forward is really enormous. And I would argue that you and I like to say that there's no real Russian threat there and that the Germans and the Europeans in general, especially the West Europeans are hyping the threat.
This is classic threat inflation. But if the Russians were to go into one of the Baltic states with military force or into Kaliningrad, there was a fight over Kaliningrad or something in the Baltic Sea. This would really give the Europeans cause to think that the Russians are coming, this is the second coming of the Soviet Union and that would just make a bad situation worse. Anyway, all of this is just to say you can tell all sorts of stories about how a conflict down the road just takes the present situation, which is very bad, and makes it even worse.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, if someone would have asked me a few years ago or only last year if a Russian attack on Estonia is likely or the Baltic States, I would say, you know, it's it's crazy talk, but there is the security dilemma. Now I'm not so sure anymore because Yeah. After all that Estonia, for example, been doing, you know, having its geographical position there as well on the Baltic Coastline, I think it's quite it's become increasingly likely, I think, that the Russians will do something in retaliation. I it's probably gonna be more something something where they can have some plausible deniability, but overall, I I think we're moving in that direction.
But but that goes back to the whole idea, what what is the security? Because Europeans are recognizing that things are all these flash points we're talking about. But their their their well, their assumption, their the cause of this conflict is, well, it's the Russians wanting to restore empire. So, okay, we can have security, but then we have to defeat the Russians. I think it's just the wrong we which would trigger a security dilemma.
We need to to bring it down. I think this is the problem. Anyways, I think we ran out of time. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: I just make one final point. It's kind of a big point, but it's just worth throwing out on the table when we're talk while we're talking about the big picture here. And just to segue away from Europe back to The Middle East, If you look at the Israel Iran conflict, in recent times I've focused on trying to think about how you could settle that conflict, and I focus mainly on Iran and Israel. But what I've come to realize over the past week or so is that that's not the right way to think about it because it's not just Iran and Israel that you have to deal with if you wanna come up with a settlement. It's also Hezbollah and Hamas.
I think the Houthis are much less of a problem, but Hamas and Hezbollah are inextricably linked with Iran. And of course, for Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, especially Hamas, matter enormously. So if you're going to work out some sort of modus vivendi between Israel and Iran, you have to include Hezbollah and Hamas in the equation. And how do you do that? I don't know.
So it just goes to show that these conflicts that we're talking about, you know, whether you're talking about the Russians and the Ukrainians in Europe or whether you're talking about the Israelis and the Iranians in the Middle East, multidimensional. Right? It's not just those two players who matter. They have all sorts of interests and they're linked to all sorts of other flashpoints in ways that make it very difficult to think about how you shut down the conflict either in Europe or in The Middle East.
Speaker 0: I agree. And, yeah, thanks for bringing back to the original point across the Middle East because I think this can be well, can spin out of control. You know, often people assume that the alliances are also written in stone, but a lot of the countries which have been hostile to Iran, be it Saudi Arabia and maybe lesser extent Turkey, you know, if Iran would weaken, they you know, their position would change as well. The Saudis aren't quite comfortable with Israel's territorial ambitions. The the Turkey is also very aware of the hostility of Israel towards Turkey.
So Yes. If you lose your Iranian boogeyman, then suddenly you're next on the chopping block perhaps. So there's a you know, you don't necessarily wanna defeat your enemies. So I think that, yeah, instead of having this zero sum thinking, there might be countries in the region who wants to find a new equilibrium, something that puts a check on the Iranians, but also on the Israelis. So, essentially, move away from this hegemonic vision where of, you know, US global primacy or Israeli regional primacy.
I think this is yeah. I think the alliances can switch more, that the stability we see in the alliance systems throughout the Cold War probably is something of the past. But, again, anything can happen now, as he has said.
Speaker 1: It is a plastic moment as we were saying before, and it it it is hard to predict exactly where this train is headed. But you can what's so depressing, Glenn, is that we can tell just, you know, one horror story after another. I mean, you know, cooler heads will prevail and we won't have any really disastrous conflicts down the road. But it's gonna take a lot of luck and a lot of smart policy making and a lot of diplomacy to avoid trouble moving forward.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm not looking towards our political leadership, least with great confidence. Maybe new people will come in. Anyways, John, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you have a big day there in Chicago, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Glenn, as always.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: No Peace - U.S. Prepares for 'Total War' Against Iran https://youtu.be/1AZPNUaXJ-k https://t.co/KTUG9F2MDC
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this discussion, Colonel Douglas MacGregor argues that the Islamabad peace talks were likely a fabrication and that Iran showed no real interest in negotiating. He asserts there was no evidence of Iranian intent to negotiate in the last talks, and notes that Vice President Harris’s momentary outside call during a meeting suggested to him that Netanyahu, not Trump, was effectively in charge of decisions affecting the conflict. He claims the White House comments about a possible ceasefire or talks are “nonsense” or designed to calm markets, and predicts the Iranian ceasefire deadline (3 AM Iranian time) would not yield a negotiated halt to hostilities. He says Iran is preparing for renewed attacks and for the possibility of a quicker American strike.
MacGregor frames the conflict in strategic terms, contrasting American offensive power with Iran’s defense-focused posture. He describes the United States as a power that “banks on the offense, the ability to attack beyond its normal limits,” while Iran operates from within its borders with substantial underground storage and a defense-oriented program. He emphasizes Iran’s capability to wage a long-range, dispersed defense and to strike from 500 to 1,000 miles beyond its borders, complicating sustained air and naval operations. He believes the opening phase of any renewed U.S. campaign will be “far more intense”—more sorties, missiles, and bombings aimed at targets that could influence the outcome, focusing on infrastructure to degrade the Iranian state rather than merely military targets.
Regarding resources, MacGregor estimates the Iranians have substantial unmanned systems (perhaps 45–50,000) and missiles (15–20,000, possibly more) with ongoing underground production capacity, aided by external resupply from China and Russia. He suggests the United States may have replenished some missile stocks, including air-to-surface missiles and anti-missile stocks, but questions the current readiness of destroyed radars and other critical C4ISR assets. He anticipates greater use of carpet bombing and destruction of critical infrastructure (bridges, power plants, desalination and oil infrastructure), describing this as an effort to destroy the state.
On ground forces, he notes reports that President Trump has been reluctant to use them and expresses skepticism about their usefulness in the Gulf, given supply and medical evacuation challenges. He mentions potential but limited appetite for ground operations by Special Operations forces and the Army/Marines.
MacGregor discusses global repercussions, warning that Iranian destruction could trigger famine due to Gulf-region fertilizer supply chains, rising fuel prices, and energy insecurity worldwide. He claims Europe is already facing energy crises and political upheaval, predicting governments will be overthrown as they confront shortages and the realities of energy dependency, and asserts the petrodollar system is dead or in decline, with China potentially stepping in as a financial hub. He argues that the multipolar shift will constrain U.S. power and that Europe should re-engage with Moscow, possibly under a new arrangement akin to a Manchurian-style convention to manage straits and regional influence.
In the European and Asian context, he says NATO is finished and warns that Western media have misrepresented Russia’s intentions, instead blaming Western leaders for the escalation. He criticizes Western support for Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian actions have been complicit in wider war costs, and he contends the broader goal of Israel’s regional plans has driven U.S. policy toward Iran. He predicts open revolutions or political turnover in Western Europe, calls for Europe to move away from wind/solar dependence in favor of more traditional energy sources, and urges a diplomatic resolution to end the war with Iran through mediation rather than continued conflict.
Toward the end, MacGregor casts Trump as trapped by a Washington status quo and the Israel lobby, expresses pessimism about congressional restraint, and reiterates his view that the current approach is unsustainable. He closes by reiterating the need to end the hostilities and find a different path forward, arguing that Iran should logically oversee a new, negotiated framework for the region.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is 04/21/2026, and we are joined by none other than colonel Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran, author, and former adviser to the US secretary of defense. So thank you very much for coming back on. Sure. So we seem to be in the final hours before the ceasefire expires.
We're told there were gonna be a meeting in Islamabad, then there's been uncertainty whether or not this is actually the case. It's it's difficult to see where we're going here because on one hand, we hear the stories that The US has depleted a lot of its missiles and intercepted missiles. On the other hand so they would want to get out of this. On the other hand, this appears that they're too far away for an actual peace deal. So is the best thing we can hope for an extension of the ceasefire, or will these negotiations take place, or are we going back to full scale war?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the notion that we were going to hold talks again in Islamabad was always fiction. There was no evidence for any Iranian interest in doing so. The last talks were disappointing. The Iranians showed up with 70 people, large quantities of data, information, maps, so forth, in the expectation that there was an intention to negotiate and come up with some sort of mutually agreeable solution. There wasn't.
And know, when you have someone like Vice President Vance getting up during the meeting to go outside and take a call for Mr. Netanyahu, it suggests that these are not really negotiations. It also suggests that Mr. Netanyahu, not Mr. Trump, is in charge, and I think effectively for the purposes of deciding whether we will or will not fight, that's probably accurate.
So I think president Trump was trying to calm the markets again. He's done this several times, said things that were patently false about the likelihood of the war ending sooner rather than later, and that the Iranians were desperate for talks when they weren't conveying the illusion, I suppose, that we were somehow another winning this conflict in the Persian Gulf. We aren't. And as a result, I think there will be no talks. The ceasefire expires at 3AM, you know, tomorrow in Iran.
That's Iranian time. And I think the Iranians are preparing to be attacked again, and they're also preparing for the possibility that we will attack even sooner. So at this point, I think we should just dismiss whatever comes out of the White House as effectively nonsense, largely designed to calm the public and manipulate the markets, but I think that's over now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This appears to be a common theme with Trump that is to always declare victory no matter what happens. We saw this with Yemen and well, almost all instances. There's always a victory somehow no matter what happens on the ground. But how do you expect this war to be fought, though, if this the news stories we read are correct, the the amount of missiles which have been used?
I mean, it seems to be a very significant part of America's stockpile. To what extent is it reasonable to continue a war to this regard or it will or at this high intensity? I mean, will The US try to do a low intensity war? Will they focus on ground invasion? Or it doesn't seem like it's possible to sustain do another forty days of this kind of warfare.
Well, let me answer that question. But before doing so, let me
Speaker 1: sort of provide you with a strategic overview from the vantage point of people on the outside looking in. When I'm talking about people, I'm talking about the rest of the world that is watching what we are doing and what Iran is doing. Increasingly, we're seen as this aspiring supernational authority that wants to impose its will on everyone everywhere. Iran has opted to stand up against this, and the world is very anxious to see what the outcome will be. We have always had the ability, certainly since I would argue 1899, to project power.
In fact, that was the whole purpose of President Teddy Roosevelt's great white fleet. And he was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the Spanish American War began and that was the first time that we attempted to fight beyond the Western Hemisphere. We sent a fleet to Manila Bay in The Philippines, and we managed to defeat the Spanish fleet, which was rather antiquated, and we discovered we had no ground force that we could put ashore to claim victory. And so then we sat in the bay and waited for some period of time until some troops arrived and the rest is history. But since then, we have been able to do that.
We are not inherently defensive. We are a power that banks on the offense, the ability to attack beyond its normal limits in order to impose our power. Now, the Iranians aren't inherently defensive power. They spend perhaps one, maybe 2% of what we do on defense, and their investment has been in fundamentally defensive weapons. Contrary to the sort of unending Israeli propaganda and the propaganda by their agents that control our mainstream media, the Iranians can't really reach very far beyond their own borders.
So they are in a a strategic defense posture. And if you look at the two, one is operating six, seven thousand miles away from its logistical support base, its manufacturing support, and the other is operating essentially from within the boundaries of its own country. And as a result, there is a home court advantage as we say in basketball. And the Iranians have invested very heavily in a new form of warfare that has reduced us to a position very similar to what was happening on the Western Front in 1914 and 1915. That if you try to move against Iran, you are identified, you are targeted, you are attacked from anywhere from 500 to a thousand miles beyond Iran's borders.
That makes it very difficult when you're dependent upon air and naval power to attack your opponent. That means you have to move your support and sustainment thousands of miles. You have to periodically refuel, reload from a great distance. Iranians don't have to deal with that, and most of their critical facilities and stores are underground. Now that's the picture, so what can we expect to happen now?
I think that we have replenished our stocks in the theater. We have sort of resupplied all of our platforms, naval and air, with required munitions. Now, how long will they last? I would say you would see something again similar to what we did the last time. I think there will be greater emphasis on an initial period of intensity.
In other words, the first forty eight to ninety six hours will be more intense than what we saw previously. In other words, more sorties, more missiles, more bombings, and these will be concentrated on what are allegedly critical targets that if sufficiently damaged could influence the outcome of the operation. Remember, this is this is an air and missile operation. That means that everything depends upon the targets you select. You're looking for targets and and portions of a targeting system that will give you a strategic advantage over your enemy, that will convince your enemy to give up, to say enough's enough, I can't go any further.
And we've been trying this really since the end of the first world war. There were massive bombing attacks, long distance strikes, interdiction, as well as close air support in the last six months of the war. We tried many of these things, and then when World War II came, we doubled down on all of this. We saw a lot of people experiment with different ways to approach this during the Spanish Civil War. But my point is that certainly since 1945, the air power community in The United States has been trying to prove that the air power community can do everything.
So it was always foolish to expect that anyone who is a member of that community like General Cain, the Air Force four star, would step forward and say, you know, I don't think you should do this, mister president. If you try to do it, it probably won't work. It would be a strategic disaster. No. I think what, he probably said is there are pros and cons.
There are things we can do and maybe things we can't, but, we can certainly do the following, laid out what was essentially a plan for an air and missile campaign. So now what I think you're going to see is a far more intense opening salvo. That salvo will be designed to be, in president Trump's words, a war winning operation. It's going to be so furious and so devastating that the Iranian forces and their citizenry won't recover. That means the objective now is to destroy the Iranian state.
That needs to be understood. When you begin attacking bridges and road networks and railways, power plants, desalination plants, oil infrastructure, that's about destruction of the state. You have moved beyond what you consider to be critical military targets and are focused largely on critical infrastructure. I think that's what you're gonna see now. And we did that during the second war.
Its effects were mixed. The most important thing we did during World War two in retrospect were two things. Number one, we destroyed the fuel distribution and manufacturing system. So you couldn't produce fuel, you couldn't redistribute it. That opened the path for the Soviet armies in the East.
And then the second part was that you couldn't refuel your air force, and that also meant that all of your air forces were concentrated on the protection of your cities. Now the Iranians don't have an air force. The president talks about destroying the air force. They really haven't had an air force of of significance since the Shah left, so they have very few aircraft. That was never a major player, just like the navy was never a major player.
The navy consists largely of fast speed boats, unmanned submersibles, unmanned service craft designed to operate in the Persian Gulf. Not much further. So everything relies on missiles, target acquisition, match the missiles, the unmanned systems to the to the various missiles or various targets. We think the Iranians have perhaps 45 to 50,000 unmanned systems remaining, maybe more. They certainly have somewhere between 15 to 20,000, maybe some more missiles.
I would say that that is more than an adequate supply to sustain Iran through several weeks, and they still have the ability beneath ground, out of reach to manufacture missiles and manufacture drones. How many? How rapidly? I don't know. But we also know that the Chinese resupplied them, the Russians resupplied them.
When you turn to our side, do we have another thousand joint air surface to surface missiles? We expended a thousand of those in the first three weeks, most of those frankly in the space of a week. I don't know, I suspect we've probably replenished those stocks. There are others where we've replenished with as much as we can provide, particularly your anti missile missiles, your PAC-three, your THAAD missiles. What have we got in terms of radars?
Well, that's a grim picture. The radars that have been destroyed have not been replaced. They cost hundreds of millions of dollars, take years to manufacture. Whether or not we have anything left to put on the ground, I don't know. It could be that we would bring in whatever is left around the world.
But my point is, I think the Iranians are in a better position than we are. That doesn't mean that we'll they'll win and we'll lose. It's too soon to say that. Then the other point is how many precision guided bombs do we have and do we have unguided bombs? I suppose we probably do.
And if you're trying to demoralize your enemy, we still periodically rely on the provision of say b 50 two's each of which carries 9,500 pound bombs. You do the math, how many b 50 two's can you fly over an area, that's called carpet bombing. That clearly can be done. Then the Israelis have been reprovisioned as much as we could afford, but I don't think their air and missile defense is likely to be infinitely more capable than it was. I think they're in a tougher position.
We still have a lot of missile defense in the fleet. So that's the picture. We have a lot more ships now at sea, we have more carriers out there, more pilots, more planes. I think we have replaced the losses of the KC-one 130 five's, the fuel tankers. So I think we're gearing up for something similar to what you saw before, only far more intense up front.
Now you asked about ground troops. What I find interesting based on the reports that you read, and I'm I'm not on the inside. I'm not attending any of these meetings, so what I'm dealing with is hearsay, Glenn. That means I'm reading what the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others who are fed things by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency and so forth and from the Pentagon, and what they're suggesting is that president Trump has been unenthusiastic about the use of ground forces. He has said, I don't really wanna do that.
That's a very good thing because I can't imagine any operation involving the use of ground forces in the Persian Gulf to seize islands, it would make any difference to the outcome in The Gulf. I just can't imagine it. I don't know what they would be used for because it's not going to give them control of The Gulf just because they're sitting on an island. And I always worry about, you know, how do you resupply them? How do you evacuate people that are wounded?
All this sort of business. Now, we'll see whether or not they try to do something. I'm sure Special Operations Command wants to do things. I'd be very surprised if people in the Army and the Marines don't want to do something. But I'm encouraged that president Trump at least has expressed reservations about it.
So what will the Iranians do? And I think this is very important. We talked about the enormous damage we're prepared to do. They made it very clear that they will destroy most of what's on the West Coast Of The Persian Gulf, and that is a great concern to the entire world. If you stop and consider that the ingredients for your fertilizer, about 50% of these things, urea, nitrogen, phosphate, and so forth, 50% of it comes out of the Persian Gulf.
And you're going to destroy this infrastructure? I think we're looking down the line at famine across the global South. It's unavoidable. We talk in terms of liquid natural gas and petroleum. Those are already problems.
There are people rationing things already in India, in Indonesia, in Thailand, Vietnam. The cost of a barrel of jet fuel, I'm told, is now over $240 a barrel and rising. It's not even on hand. Apparently, Britain is going to run out of anything in about two weeks in terms of both jet fuel and heating fuel. And of course, all these countries in Western Europe that have gone crazy on the green energy business are in terrible positions, and they've also shut down many of their nuclear reactors.
Now the French haven't, but the Germans have, and I'm sure this is an emergency status. I think what you're gonna see happen in Europe now, governments are gonna be overthrown. You're gonna see new governments come to power. What can they do? Well, we'll see.
I don't think they're gonna be able to correct the problems very quickly because most analysts that have looked at the what I would say the magnitude of destruction from the first round and said it'll take a year, maybe two years if we were to stop now to recover in the Persian Gulf. And most people understanding what I've just outlined to you are concluding accurately, I think, that, that will take five to ten years to recover. And we're not sure what recover means because a lot of this infrastructure in The Gulf may never be rebuilt. I mean, the decision may simply be made not to go back in there. And if anybody does go in there, I would say it would probably be China because right now the sort of global what's the right word?
The sort of global safe area for cash and money is increasingly going to be China and not The United States. And I think that's where things are headed. If you look at just the credit markets, people are going to go to China to borrow, not come to The United States. And I think the petrodollar is already dead. Whether or not the yuan replaces it is anybody's guess, probably could, but it may be a basket of currencies.
And I think The Emirates and the Saudi House of Saud, all these people are really in danger of losing their countries in the sense that others will take over in their absence because we know that large numbers of the Gulf elites have already fled to Egypt and Europe and other places. And again, we don't know what will happen in the region this time around. You have the Turks that have geared up in my estimation to be far more involved this time around than they were previously, so are the Egyptians. I don't see how Israel fares very well through all of this because whatever incentive may have existed in the past for the Iranians to exercise restraint no longer exists, and I think they've made that very clear. They're ready to go to a total war fitting.
We've never done that, and the lesson of history is he who goes to total war fitting certainly in the twentieth century has a better shot of winning if he does it immediately than the person who does it. Remember, we forget that Hitler did not totally mobilize the German state and nation and people for war until mid nineteen forty three. How could you possibly wage war on multiple fronts the way they did and expect to win? On the other hand, the Soviets lived in a state of war mobilization and went to total mobilization very quickly. We did too, and so did Great Britain.
We are not going to do that to defeat Iran. That's an impossibility. Now, I should be careful because I'm sure you've seen the report that apparently General Cain, in his infinite wisdom, suggested to President Trump that it might be useful to consider conducting operations in the Strait Of Malacca against Iranian vessels. I think that's a catastrophe. But it's not unusual for someone who's already losing a war to think that they could expand the war to other areas and conceal the loss in one place and ultimately bring it to a successful close elsewhere.
I'm not sure that's a good idea, but I know that there are people that probably think that way. And there are foolish people out there who say, well, fine, then we'll also stop Chinese ships because after all, the Chinese are supporting, the Iranians. That's your opportunity to spread and widen the war even further. And one of the reasons the Chinese have been so sensitive to the South China Sea is they know from their history that whoever controls the South China Sea ultimately controls the flow of resources into and out of China. The Royal Navy did that.
The French did it before the Royal Navy, and ultimately, the Imperial Japanese Navy did it. So the bottom line is I see no good news here, no good new direction. The ideal outcome frankly at this stage would be to simply end this series of hostilities and put a stop to the whole thing and admit that we cannot, employing our military power, gain control of the Strait Of Hormuz. What the Iranians have got, they're going to keep. And it's up to the rest of the world once this war ends to sit down with Iran and work out something similar to the Mantras convention, was created in 1926 and put the Turks in charge of the Dardanelles.
By the way, the Turks have handled that very well. There haven't been any problems there. A similar convention can be set up, and I think the Iranians are the logical choice given their strategic position to run it. We don't like that. We're opposed to that, But we keep forgetting we don't live there, Glenn.
You know, we don't live in Asia. We don't live in Europe. We don't live in Africa. We live in the Western Hemisphere. It's a huge problem.
It's a strategic reality that we really don't want to accept, and we don't want to accept the fact that warfare has now changed dramatically. And with the right mix of missiles and unmanned systems and space based surveillance and good communications, command and control, a much lesser power with fewer resources can be much more effective against the maritime aerospace power that doesn't have those advantages.
Speaker 0: Seems that bringing the fight to the Strait Of Malacca would be a good way of pulling China closer into this war. That's a, yeah, disaster on its own. But you get the impression that there's growing concerns around the world. They're especially vocal, I think, in Asia now that the well, the entire world is being sorry, the entire world order is being dismantled. That is international law itself is rejected.
I mean, there's always been violation of international law, but at least people were making excuses for breaching it or pretending as if it wasn't being breached. Thus, you know, upholding the legitimacy of international law by even breaking it. But this time around, there seems to be just refuting it to some extent. I I was wondering what is the wider picture that you see from around the world? Is this deliberate dismantling of the world order?
It's just it's yeah. It it seems to be, yes, getting some strong reactions around the world and not not just on the economic sphere. There's a massive pushback, and especially with in regards to Iran, it's quite a remarkable achievement that there's now so much empathy for Iran around the world. I haven't seen this before in my lifetime. So what do you make of this?
Speaker 1: Well, if you look at India, India sees itself as as dependent upon an extension cord that plugs at one end into India. Let's say for simplicity purposes, the socket for the plug in is in Mumbai. And then the rest of the extension cord goes through into the Persian Gulf and plugs into the various oil states, Emirates, and Iran and so forth. That extension cord was suddenly pulled out of the wall, and it's something that the Indians never really anticipated. No one seemed to think that there was any reason why anyone would disrupt the flow of resources out of the Gulf to India, but India also does roughly $180,000,000,000 a year of business in the Persian Gulf.
So a great deal of commerce and money and resources are flowing into and out of the Persian Gulf as far as India is concerned. India is sensitive to international laws and norms. India is opposed to the use of force to solve anything if it can avoid it, and they're shocked now that The United States has opted for the use of force to solve Israel's problem, let's put it that way, with Iran. Because if it were not for Israel, we would not be at war with Iran. Let's be frank.
There's no real reason for us to do so. We have this, you know, the wealth of propaganda out there that's been created over the last three decades to try and demonize Iran and turn it into public enemy number one for The United States, but that's a lot of nonsense. When nine eleven occurred and we suffered the losses from the two towers that were destroyed in New York City, 1,000,000 Iranians poured into the streets in places like Tehran and elsewhere at night and held candlelight vigils to mourn the loss of life in The United States. There was real hope at that point that some sort of improved relationship could be fashioned as a result of this tragedy. They tried very hard and we essentially spit in their faces.
It's unfortunate, they were very supportive of us in ways that most people don't know. Once we were in Afghanistan and then subsequently if it hadn't been for this General Soleimani that we were so anxious to murder, we couldn't have stopped the war against us in Iraq. He was instrumental in going in, persuading the Shiite militias to stop fighting, picked up the Imam that was responsible for leading the Shiites, brought him back to Isfahan, put him in a corner and told him to study theology until further notice. Subsequently, when we fought ISIS, those Shiite militias liberated Christians, liberated Sunnis, liberated Yazidis, liberated Druze, anybody that was oppressed by ISIS. And they fought very hard with us, not against us.
All of these things were swept away in favor of Israel's agenda. And Israel's greater Israel project agenda is the problem. The destruction of life in Gaza, the destruction of life in so called West Bank in Palestine, now the destruction of life in Lebanon, all of these things are inextricably intertwined with the desire now in Israel for us to destroy Iran. It's what it's all about. There is no particular reason why we should be involved in.
How many times have you heard Americans stand up and say, we're not really dependent upon the resources in The Gulf? Why are we there? It happens all the time. But we've had this long term agreement that enshrined the petrodollar as the currency for the purchase and bartering sale of oil. Now that's been destroyed.
I don't think we're gonna ever see that come back again. That's been a cornerstone in the edifice of our prosperity because we came out of the Vietnam War completely broken financially. We could not cope. That's the chief reason we came off the gold standard, and that also then made the petrodollar preeminent. This was Nixon's way of extricating ourselves from this terrible economic disaster that LBJ, President Johnson, and his friends had created in Vietnam.
Well, all of that's water under the bridge now. I think we're out of The Gulf and I don't think we're coming back. And that's why I said I don't think we can afford to go back because we can't finance what's required there. Only China could do that. So this whole war has been nothing short of a disaster strategically for us.
The intelligent thing to do now is end it, to step forward and say this is the wrong instrument. We were wrong. We shouldn't have done this. We're going to try and find a different way. We are looking for help from others to help mediate this.
But that means that we behave like a normal power within this multipolar system. And you know, Glenn, there's no appetite for that in Washington. We want to be the supernational authority. We want to establish the rules of the game, and then we want to dominate the game, and we want to win the game. That's over.
Those days are past.
Speaker 0: Well, I think this adjustment from the global primacy to the multipolarity is gonna be yeah. Probably bring us to more wars. But in this war, it seems to have consequences. Of course, Asia is being impacted in a great way, especially economically. But in Europe as well, we see Zelensky is making the point that the lack of air defenses now is as bad as it could possibly be.
At the same time as the weapons are drying up, he's complaining that The US has been disrespectful to his country because, you know, Witkoff visited Moscow, but not Kyiv. We see the EU complaining that The US weapons, which are supposed to be sent to Ukraine, are being delayed or diverted. The Europeans are talking about the NATO establishing a NATO without The US, a different NATO that is. And, at the same time as you're seeing the situation going worse, the Europeans still appear to be escalating. That is this massive drone programs they're sending to Ukraine seemingly along their territory to be used to strike Russia's Baltic Coast.
And, yeah, we now see that the Russia is essentially warning that all of these factories producing all these drones are considered now legitimate targets. So where do you see all of this going? Because they seem I don't wanna say I'm I'm wondering how to describe this best. There there seems to be some massive, not panic, but delusion. I'm not sure what is a good word to describe what is happening in Europe now, but it's yes.
There there is not much strategic thinking. It's just this obsession with defeating Russia. Yet the weapons are drying up, lack of capability seems to be compensated with more belligerent language and dismissing of all the red lines. So where do you think this will take us?
Speaker 1: Well, my perception is that the misrepresentation of Russia's true intentions, which never had anything to do with conquering anybody anywhere, is going to vanish in an energy crisis that the current governments in Western Europe in particular can't master. I think that's the final straw. So the globalist leaders who want to maintain this war against Russia will be unable to do so because they'll be thrown out of office. I'm still surprised that we have not seen open revolution in places like Germany and Great Britain. I think we will in the future.
The situation in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales is really bad. We've already seen the Irish come out into the streets. I think we're gonna see more of that. They may be the canary in the coal mine for the British Isles. I hope so.
But the people that are running the show in parliament are simply out of touch with reality. They recently refused licensing for more drilling in the North Sea, even though they know that the oil deposits there are enormous and the need for the energy is overwhelming. But we're still dealing with these people that live in this illusory world where wind and solar power are going to replace carbon based energy. It's not gonna happen, not this way. I mean, perhaps at some point Tesla's dream of harvesting energy from the atmosphere will work, but in the meantime, we have to use what we've got.
We've got to survive on that. I think Europeans are concluding that, And I think in Germany, you eventually you're gonna see a return to the status quo, which is these people that are running things are gonna be gone and they're going to have to restart nuclear power plants and they're going to have once they've thrown these people out, they're going to have to come to terms with Moscow and and they should. Again, everything, all the abuse, the insults, and the lies hurled at Moscow have to be fundamentally dismantled. That's very hard to do when the media is controlled by these globalist governments. The media has not told the truth.
They've portrayed Ukraine as a sort of luminous group of patriots fighting desperately for their freedom. That's a lot of nonsense. Ukrainians were built up for the purpose of attacking Russia by us. We encourage this. We cultivate.
When I say us, I'm talking about we and the Europeans. NATO is finished. Exactly what I thought would happen at the beginning of this crisis in January 2022. And I said so. NATO is done.
The Europeans must find a way forward for themselves that makes sense. And I think eventually this will happen. I hope sooner rather than later because president Putin has restrained the use of Russian military power. He's held it back. He has everything he needs to finish this war decisively this year.
There's no question about that. He also has the means to flatten substantial areas in the Baltic States, in Germany, Poland, elsewhere, anywhere in in Great Britain for that matter where they're manufacturing these drones to be hurled against Russian infrastructure and against Russian citizens. He has sat on all of this. He has declined to do those things. He's held the force back.
The Russians want to do it. He does it. I hope that European governments will outpace, you know, the Russian desire for action. I really do because it would be disastrous for that war to unfold in Europe. And the Europeans today have, they've lost their fear of war, they don't understand just how bad it can be.
And I think these governments, once they're replaced, new people will come in and they'll behave differently. And this banned Korenski and the corruption in that regime, it's underpinnings which are, you know, the worst imaginable criminality that they have to be revealed. The truth has to come out. How many times have we heard about these supposed atrocities committed by Russians only to discover that they were committed by Ukrainians? And that's that's not to suggest that in wars, all sides make mistakes.
We all know that. We committed terrible atrocities on more than one occasion. Most of the time, they were accidental. Some of the time, they weren't. But what the Ukrainians have done is unforgivable, and this has got to stop.
We have to stop them. I wish we would stop immediately. I had hoped that Donald Trump would pull the rug on that one. It turns out he's been unable to do anything. He is truly the prisoner of the Washington status quo, and I think that extends to what's happened in the Persian Gulf with Iran.
The Congress has done nothing, nothing to really restrain him, and that's because they're all on the payroll. You have a few voices here or there, but the Israel lobby and its agents in The United States have ensured that the money flows to those who support Israel. Hopefully, that will change. There is a vote this week on the war powers resolution. I hope that that produces something, but I I don't I'm not optimistic.
There's just too much inertia in the system. And Donald Trump, he cannot get past his three rules that he learned from Roy Cohn, you know. I'm glad that other people have picked up on that. I waited a long time to talk about it because I'd hoped that that would not be the case, but I think we have to be honest, it is. His three rules of deny, deny, attack, attack, and twist everything into a victory, that seems to be the case.
When I listen to the president who was confronted with a question by a journalist, mister president, why did you put your face on the on the figure of Jesus Christ and then send this out? And he said, well, I I thought of myself as a as a physician who was healing people. Well, that's absurd. He had an opportunity to be truthful. And what should he have said?
I'm in terrible mistake. I apologize for for offending people. It was in bad taste, and I shouldn't have done it. I regret it. And I hope people will help me get beyond that.
That that's what should have happened. But he can't tell the truth. And just as we were talking before the show, I said the Iranians are not gonna talk to us. Everybody knows that that's paid any attention to them. There's no point in talking to us.
Remember, they too watched our little soiree with mister Putin in Anchorage. And what did we do? We showed up with nothing. And president Trump seemed to think he was going to charm the Russians into doing whatever he wanted so that he could walk out and pretend that he was this heroic figure that won the war. The Russians came with proposals, substantive material.
The Iranians came to Islamabad with a group of 70 people with substantive materials. They thought they were there to actually negotiate a solution. They discovered that's not what it's all about. All of it has been about the same thing. You must submit to Israel.
You submit to Israel's demands, the war stops. Well, here's a news flash. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This deny deny, attack attack, and claim victory. It has it comes with a great cost, though. It it I I I can see why it's assumed that we have some benefits, but such as with this, you know, the picture of Trump as Jesus, it comes off just so much worse. But you can say the same in Iran when when, yeah, The US killed all those little girls.
If if if he would have come out, just said, you know because I assume this was accidental. I think that's reasonable to assume. You know, they said this was an accident. It's a horrible thing. These things happen in war.
It should never have happened, you know, this week. Yeah. And then then you could put to bed this whole matter to rest instead. This whole idea that Iran is launching tomahawks at its own schools. I mean, it just makes the matter so much worse and keeps the whole, I guess, wound open.
It's I I just I think this this strategy of his the the night and night attack attack and spin everything as a victory, it has to have some exceptions. Otherwise, it's a very self destructive.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a portion of the base that supports him that believes in something that was widespread in The United States certainly at the end of the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century. And there's a statement, my country, right or wrong, but always my country. In other words, whatever your country does, you defend it to the bitter end. But one would think at this point in time that we, like every other power, at some point have made mistakes and that identifying those is the only way to move beyond them. But he's not the man to do it.
And he keeps telling everyone we have the greatest military in the world. Well, we have the greatest military in the world designed to refight World War two. It's not the one we need. It hasn't been what we needed since 1991. But instead of recognizing that, he keeps telling everybody, oh, I rebuilt the military during my first term.
Well, we put money into the old structure, didn't build anything new. And, you know, this is this is our problem. It's sort of like the army of Frederick the Great that marched out to meet Napoleon in eighteen o six. It didn't work and they were destroyed. We've got to get out of this mess that we're in.
If there's anything good that comes out of this, is that we will see a turnover in Washington because Americans are not stupid. They see what's happening. And I think this assumption that everyone is going to rush into the arms of the left is wrong. I think Americans are saying, wait a minute, everyone has betrayed us. Elections don't matter.
We go to the election booth, we vote, and we get the same damn stupid outcome. So I think if nothing else, that realization is beginning to set in in The United States. That's a good thing.
Speaker 0: Well, colonel, thank you for taking the time and sharing your insights. As always, it's been very interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Wang Wen: China's Perspectives & Role in the Iran War https://youtu.be/cY6pogM1LzE https://t.co/adV9hikWdV
Video Transcript AI Summary
Wang Wen, professor and dean of the Changyang Institute of Financial Studies and the School of Global Leadership at Renmin University of China, discusses Beijing’s view on the Iran war and its broader implications for China and the international order.
- China’s position on the Iran conflict: Beijing emphasizes a resolution through political negotiation and opposes unilateral military action not authorized by the UN. China calls for a ceasefire, an end to hostility, respect for sovereignty and development rights, and opposes the maximum pressure campaign and long-term sanctions. This stance reflects adherence to international law, multilateralism, and safeguarding global peace, while aligning with China’s strategic interests as a major energy importer and advocate of multilateral solutions.
- Context of a shifting world order: The justifications for a multipolar world are growing. The U.S. and Germany are viewed as nearing the end of their post–Cold War order, with the world entering a multipolar era. Two features cited: the U.S. has largely lost the capacity to dominate globally and may retreat to regional influence, while emerging powers (China, Russia, India, Brazil, and others) rise and constrain U.S. ability to contain them. Iran is seen as part of this broader transition, with the possibility of greater regional and systemic shifts over the coming decade.
- China’s cautious but steady approach: China maintains a low-profile stance and continues normal trade with all sides (including the U.S., Israel, and Iran) while urging ceasefires and political resolution. US sanctions targeting Chinese banks and Iran are deemed unreasonable threats; Beijing signals it will counter such measures if pressed.
- Belt and Road and Middle East investments: China’s Middle East investments and the Belt and Road Initiative (BI) face disruption due to the war. Oil imports via the Strait of Hormuz (about 35% of China’s oil) and China’s broader energy security are affected. China’s approach emphasizes diversification: expanding overland corridors (e.g., North–South routes, Eurasian Railway Express, Trans-C-Cascadia paths, Central Asia Land Corridor) and increasing energy sourcing from non-Middle Eastern suppliers (Russia, Central Asia, Africa, South America) to reduce reliance on maritime routes. Investment in Iran (about $5 billion, with projects across the region) has slowed as the war continues, with evacuations and impeded progress, though China’s strategic emphasis on diversified transport and energy remains central.
- Taiwan issue and potential conflict: Wang argues that if China intends to resolve Taiwan by force, the U.S. would have already lost the capacity to stop it; a peaceful resolution is increasingly likely. He states that any use of force would target independence rather than the general public in Taiwan, and reiterates China’s long-standing preference for peaceful unification.
- US–China–Russia triangle: The conflict reshapes this triangle. The U.S. is constrained by Iran, becoming more erratic, and signaling toward China and Russia. Russia benefits from higher oil prices and the Ukraine situation, while China faces oil-import pressures and market volatility. Overall, the U.S. strategy appears less capable of containing both China and Russia; both Beijing and Moscow gain strategic leverage in this environment.
- Risks and opportunities for China if the war continues: Energy security risks rise due to higher oil costs and potential disruption to Middle East trade, complicating BI projects and regional diplomacy. The situation increases the appeal of diversification of energy sources and transport corridors. However, China typically prefers peace and stability as the best path for growth.
- The new book and strategic opportunity: Wang promotes his book, New Strategic Opportunity: China and the World toward 2035, arguing that the world’s turbulence highlights China’s peace, stability, and prosperity as valuable. He contends that no matter the adverse environment, China can seize new strategic opportunities by focusing on domestic development, reinforcing that the longer the U.S. seeks conflict, the more China upholds peace and rises.
- Closing observations: The interviewer notes the broader perception of China’s growing influence and responsibility in shaping a responsible international system, with Wang affirming a peaceful, opportunity-driven path for China’s rise.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by none other than Wang Wen, professor and dean of Changyang Institute of Financial Studies and dean of the School of Global Leadership at Renmin University of China. So thank you for taking the time. I I know you're a big voice in Beijing, so I appreciate taking the time to speak with us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, professor. Every time when I conversation with you, I really enjoy.
Speaker 0: Likewise. I today, though, I wanted to focus a bit on how China is affected by the the war in Iran because it does impact China in many ways. So, yeah, I guess it's a very first wide question would be how Beijing, you know, interprets this war against Iran. Is it seen then mainly as a regional conflict between The US and Iran, or do you see it in the context of much wider systemic rivalry that also includes China?
Speaker 1: Well, I think Chinese government stands regarding the colonial conflict in both US, Israel, and the Iran is very, very clear. China emphasize China emphasizes a resolution of the dispute through a political negotiation and opposes any unilateral military action not authorized authorized by the UN. The Chinese side has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and end to hostility and advocating for respect for long sovereignty and legitimacy development rights while opposing the maximal pressure campaign and the long term jurisdiction. And I think position adopted by the Chinese government is not only a ground getting the principle of international law, but also reflects the China on the strategical, you know, interest, specifically its standards as a major well, it's a a standard as a major energy important and starch advocates of multilateralism. And more importantly, I I think, arranged from the ultimate imperative to safeguard global peace.
Because as a scholar, I must say for in today's world, there are too many wars. And it has been only seven thirty seven years since the end of the Cold War. Yet within these thirty seven years, the world has released the outbreak at least 150 quick big war mid military conflict. As a scholar, I must say, for in today's world, there are too many wars. It has been only thirty seven years since the end of the Cold War.
Yet within these thirty seven year, the world has witnessed the outbreak of at least 150 military conflicts, including, like, Gulf War, Euraspect War, the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, ill Libya, Bulia, Ukraine, as well as now in Middle East. And the the vast majority of these media conflict have involved in The US, whether initiative directed by The US, involving US participation, or backed by The US support. The example set by the world's the biggest, superpower is quietly, frankly, terrible. So now you ask how Beijing's thinking. I think, consequently, the Chinese strategic community now is focused on the issue that this particular war further disrupted the international order, the destabilized the global economy.
First of our folks lie on a deeper and more long term questions for, for example, the international order look like following the end of The US, Germany. Peace, be established within the multipolar world. Long term regional dialogue and free work be a crisis and dispute be truly and foundation resolved. And what specifically responsibility and contribution must China undertake in this regard? So we we we we we think about so many long term perspectives after the war.
So I think this war well, yes, maybe they produced a lot a lot a lot of the huge influence.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's interesting. Well, let's call it a contradiction because often in the West, the last thirty plus years have been referred to as an era of stability, you know, time of peace when there was order and rule of law. Yet if you look over the past thirty plus years, we've seen, you know, the Yugoslav wars, the twenty year occupation of Afghanistan, the illegal invasion of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and yeah. I would even put the Ukraine and Iran also in the category of Western wars, but also you can put the genocide in Gaza.
I mean, it's it's quite a long, long list for an era which we consider to be a period of peace. But even when this comes to an end, we now see that, yeah, that all the rules seems to be thrown away. That is from the American side now, they're shutting down, you know, access to international waterways with Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. We're talking about the destruction of entire civilizations, and it's a quite a brutal language. You know, if if this is if this war in Iran is part of the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar world, or do you see this war then being an important turning point in the global order?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I cannot speak on behavior of a Chinese policymaker, but I can share some popular views on the Chinese strategy academy. Now more and more Chinese scholar believe that The US and Germany has reached its end, and that so called post Cold War order is draw to a close. And that the world is entering a new era of, as you mentioned, the multipolar multi polar meeting. And the multipolar error is characterized by at least two points. One feature is that The US has totally lost the strategic capacity to dominate the world.
It is maybe in the future, US will decline to a a regional power, ordinary power ordinary regional power. Percents is a strategic leadership only in in some specific region and a a a specific fields rather than on global or comprehensive level. You know, now The US now are like a decreed decrepit old boss. The look at their alliance. Japan is humbling it.
The European country, to be honest, is disturbed disturbing it, and Canada is pushing back against it, and Israel now is kidnapped. In sense, The US is quite a very pity finger, and it is being manipulated by all its former allies. So what is even more pity, more irritable is that the the president Trump still believe for himself. He is constantly winning, and so it's a very pity. So I'm I sometimes feel very quite sympathized towards the American people.
They ought to be spending money, currently used to wage wars on improving their domestic livelihood and infrastructure instead. So the second point or the second feature is the successful rise of emerging economies such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, as well as the other regional power, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania, a lot a lot of emerging economy. And the The US no longer possesses the strength to contain the continual rise of any this emerging economy. Iran, the same apply over the coming decade or perhaps even longer. Provided that Iran adopts a wider domestic and foreign policy, I believe it will ultimately break free from the short call of nearly half a century of US inception and achieve a newer rise up.
So in short, we are currently in the transition phase, one in which an old hegemonic order is to give way to a newer multipolar landscape.
Speaker 0: And then but, I guess, overall, many people get the impression of China that it's always a bit cautious in international affairs. This is well, especially been the case, I guess, since 1978. You know, the peaceful rise don't create too much waves in the international system in terms of negative reactions from other great powers. And it seems to have been well, some would argue that it might have changed a bit over the past few years, the willingness to stand up a bit tougher against The United States. But that being said, in in the Iran war, it looked like China kinda kept this traditional profile that is very well, somewhat cautious and low profile stance.
And how are you assessing this? Is this just restraint in order not to, I guess, globalize a regional conflict, or is it limited influence? And, yeah, the given now that it's not just about Iran, it also appears to affect China in a big way. That is when the Americans put a blockade on Iranian ports, they're very open that, you know, this is also intended to deny China oil from an important source. Meanwhile, they're also now talking about sanctioning Chinese banks that trade with Iran.
So how are you seeing this? Do you expect this to continue? The, I guess, the restrained response from China.
Speaker 1: I think it's, as you mentioned, the so called rebellious rate culture and a law prefi, not only in Iran issues today, but also maybe in in the past, mentioned even in Russia and Ukraine are quite a conflict. I think that these these serves precisely to demonstrate the the underlies political philosophy of China's foreign policy, advocating for ceasefires and and to hostility while you're emphasizing the resolution of dispute as through a political negotiation. And, simultaneously, concurrently, China always that will not cease its normal trade relationship with both sides warning warring parties. During the for example, during the Russia and Ukraine conflict, China maintained the normal trade time with both Russia and Ukraine. Simi similarly, the current war, China continue to conduct normal trade with US, Israel, and Iran.
So nowadays, The US threat to section China banks engaged to train with Iran. I think this is very unreasonable. Of course, some threat from US sometimes often like the paper tiger. So US threat China like it. China response to US sections often undoubt like this.
Come on. Go go ahead. Try to section me. If you attend to import sections, we will certainly take countermeasure to you. So this is a China very clearly signal.
So in the coming months, I I I think The US will not dare to take such action, of course. They are key to ensure the success of president Trump on coming with China, provoking China as this juncture would result in yet another political setback for Trump. And view from this perspective, China has no has long seen see the through this, true nature of US as a pip tiger.
Speaker 0: But, I guess, a key concern for China would be that over the past few well, for many years now, it has been financing this expensive Belt and Road initiative, which has well, a large part of it is connecting this Eurasian landmass through different, you know, roads, railways, ports, digital connections, and The Middle East has been an important area where it has invested. I I also can't help but to notice that when The US and Israel are bombing in Iran, they're going after a lot of the transportation infrastructure. Again, overall, this is yes. Hinus also an attack on on the Chinese investments. Do you do you think this well, how does this affect China?
Will it, I guess, reduce focus on the Middle East, or will will China change its trade routes? Or what what can we expect to see from Beijing?
Speaker 1: Actually, China's investment in Iran now is about 5,000,000,000. Since the outbreak of war, of course, projects have grown to hold across the wider area. Personnel have been urgently evacuated. Investment prospects have become under certain, and the progress of subsequent investments has been severely impeded. Over the past months, also, China capital markets have experienced fluctuations approach 10%, resulting in losses for a lot of investors.
First of as about 35% of China's oil imports pass through the Strait Of Hormuz, the nation's energy security has also become impact impacted. So while these shocks are certainly not severely enough to fund the fundamentally the stabilized China overall economy. But I I have to say these shocks have nicely send a very strong and more, stronger much stronger strategy signal to Beijing. That is imperative to advise the Bell Law Initiative in a sustainable and a high quality matter. Because as we all know, the BI seek to faster the connectivities.
More importantly, the core objective of BI is to construct a great number of overland oil applied across the Euro Asia continent, thereby reduce excessive or rely on energy importinations on maritime shipping laws. View from this perspective the importance of overland continents, such as expanded North Lord Of China, European Railway Express, the Trans Cascadia Transport Corridor, and Central Asia Land corridor has risen significantly. And the other thing say that there is a growing emphasis on increasing the allocation of energy resources from non Middle Eastern sources, including Russia, Central Asia, Africa, and South America in order to mitigate dependence on any single maritime shipping land. So in short, the strategic change, bonds, down to two key, terms, the diversification of transport corridors and the the diversification of energy source.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Seems like a good, yeah, response. But many people also do when they look to assess how China will react or be impacted from this war, they also look towards Taiwan. I mean, what kind of lessons do you think the Chinese strategists, you know, draw if they look towards a potential conflict or, you know, at least a Taiwan scenario? I mean, for many in the West, they argue that this is a a great opportunity or a window opportunity for China to do something in in Taiwan given that the Americans are tied up in Ukraine.
They're tied up in The Middle East. Others are pointing that it's also maybe a necessity for China to you know, might solve this issue now given that The US is becoming increasingly reckless. But beyond this, do you do you see the war making, you know, conflict over Taiwan more or less likely?
Speaker 1: Well, I understand the subtext of your question like that. Given the current conflict with Iran, which could potentially diminish US military capability or tie down its strategic assets for a long time period. Will China sell it to its timeline for unifying it happen for by force. I was asked a very simple question a few years ago when Russia and the Ukraine conflict broke out. So but but my point is that if the Chinese Mainland intended to resolve the Taiwan issue through military means, The United States would have long since lost the ability to stop it.
The US simply lacks the capacity to defend Taiwan. Whether or not China Mainland ultimately chooses to use for to unify Taiwan is not a decision contingent upon whether The United States has the ability to prevent that unification. What I wanna say is that there would be no military unification without the move towards Taiwan independence. Any use of force would be directed at independence separate, not at general public people in Taiwan. In other words, even 30 ago, when US military power was arguably at its peak, Had Taiwan declared independence, the Chinese military, Chinese Mainland would still have proceeded to unify Taiwan by force.
So my logic, my reasoning is that the Chinese Mainland has consistently and patiently sought a peaceful resolution to this issue. In fact, anyone who truly understand the Taiwan issue will recognize that at this moment, the likelihood of the peaceful resolution is growing even stronger, And the prospect of such a resolution is growing even closer and closer.
Speaker 0: Well, if the if this war, though, in Iran is intensifying a shift towards a multipolar world, how does it affect China's relations with other great powers? So with with The United States, because on one hand, The US seems to be getting, well, more unhinged, if not aggressive, but also China might rely more on The United States. At least that seems to be part of the the sign of The US. Or with Russia, I was thinking if, yeah, the energy supplies from The Middle East now are becoming less and less, well, reliable. Does this cement or deepen China's dependence on Russia?
Or, I guess, overall, how do you see, yeah, China's relations with The US and Russia being affected now, or what direction will it take after this war?
Speaker 1: Yes. I think that this conflict has significantly shaped the balance of the triangle or the relationship among The US, China, Russia. Previously, The US acted as a relatively proactive party in this dynamic while China, Russia occupied comparatively positive position, I mean, in the past. But now, The US fights itself heavily constrained by Iran. It has become increasingly, erratic, even, going so far as to make over overtures towards China and Russia.
And while the Russia and the China, the two nations have gained the greatest strategic initiative, Russia now, of course, has emerged as a beneficial of the massive surge in oil prices and even more so of the situation on Ukraine battlefield. And China has experienced some repercussions regarding oil import and its stock market. Yet on the whole, the strategic pressure it faced from The US, it's primarily competition, has diminished. So I think that, as I mentioned right now, conversely, as president Trump sought to successfully reach the China in middle May, he found it necessary to make convictory gestures toward Beijing. Moreover, to avoid losing the Middle East election in November, Trump simply cannot afford to jeopardize US and China relations.
So view from this perspective, both China and Russia have see these strategic maneuvering space in in impact in their respective contests within The US. And they now host more stronger cards in these, you know, geopolitical games. The US nowadays has permanently said goodbye to the era in which it could effectively contain both China and Russia. So I think for those experts who would truly grasp the nature of strategy, It appears that The United States may have won every battle yet, but US lost anti war. President Trump may be the master of every, tactical maneuver, but when it come to overall strategy, he proves to be a fool.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Fool seems to summarize it well. But also, yeah, you mentioned that Russia, it, you know, it has benefited. Of course, it comes with both risks and opportunities because the war, I think, is seen you know, the war in Iran is seen with great concerns. It destabilizes the entire region.
It's you know, threatens to burn down the whole Middle East. Iran is a key strategic partner. It's a key, you know, transportation node in the Eurasian system. So, yeah, partner in SEO, the BRICS. So it's not a good war in this sense.
But if you look at the economics, the the oil price, you know, of course, this takes a pretty yeah. It adds a good chunk of money into the Russian economy and also makes it very difficult to keep unity in the West on the sanctions against Russia. But, again, it comes both with pluses and minuses. But if this war continues, what what do you think would be the main risks or opportunities for for China, or is it mainly risks, I guess?
Speaker 1: Yeah. As I said, if the war continue or escalate the risk to China are very evident, China energy life lies would remain vulnerable and to disruption. The cost of the imported oil would rise, potentially trickling infection, and China foreign trade order in The Middle East to contract. Furthermore, a dialogue initiative that you mentioned, the project would face risks region from the set of fees to, default among other, complication. There are a lot of risks.
So that's why I I think, I often tell my foreign friends that China is a major economy, least inclined to see the war break out anywhere in the world. So that's why over the past forty years, China has never launched a war or joined a war or involved in a war. So because we know only through peace can China achieve better development. So that's why I I I I I want to, borrow your, important, platform to recommend my new book this month. Now this book, ranks high on China's bestseller list.
The book's name is new strategic opportunity, China and the world towards 2035. This new book, it's top three in China's bestseller. I'm talking about the new strategic opportunity. I my central means of my new book is that no matter how adverse the international environment may become, China assesses the capacity to burst, seize, and create a new strategic opportunity. The more war that occur and the more turbulent the world becomes, the more the world will come to recognize just how important the China peace, stability, and prosperity truly are.
So China's new strategic opportunity is that wherever the world happened, China focus on ourself domestic solution. Then we can find and seize more and more new strategic opportunity. So you, professor Ding Tseng, you visited China many times. You can see nowadays in China, China is a 1,400,000,000 people enjoying a secure urban governance free from gun violence, universal access to five g network, a state of fuel with a new energy vehicle, a society that has completely eradicated absolute poverty, Cashless, no cash payment, cashless payment, ecosystem by everyone, rely our grief free of, back out, a high speed railway network, and also a low customer prices, and also a fully delivered service capable of bringing any field to one Nowadays, even in the in the foreign social media, these festivities of China's national governments are increasingly becoming the envy of more and more developing countries people, not maybe more and more developed countries, people. So as as I often said, the more in this book, in my new book, as I said, the more The United States seek to instigate war, the more China strive to uphold peace.
For United States, every war serves as another step down to let down of decline. Conversely, for China, the long the longer it succeeds in maintaining peace, the more sustained angle its rise will be. So this is China's greatest opportunity.
Speaker 0: Well, let's yeah. I like to hear peace framed as opportunity. It's it's not so common anymore, but it does make a lot of sense, and I wish more more countries did so. It is funny. I I spoke a few days with Chas Freeman.
He was the former US assistant secretary of defense, and he was making the point because well, he was a translator, also diplomat with Kissinger when he went to China in the late seventies. And he was making the point that today, China represents the international system the way The United States pretended it was in the past. So it does appear that China is taking over that mantle, which is, well, good news if China handles it in a very responsible way, what it which it appears to do. Anyways, thank you very much for taking the time, and I look forward to seeing you in Beijing soon. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jack Matlock: How NATO Expansionism Broke European Security https://youtu.be/_7dgtdNXOGM https://t.co/r9gUkATun1
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jack Matlock, the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, argues that the end of the Cold War was not the Soviet Union’s collapse alone, but a process that was ideologically and practically over years before 1991. He says there were no winners and losers in the closing of the Cold War; the end was negotiated in the interests of both sides, with Gorbachev abandoning the communist ideology that had driven the conflict. The Soviet state’s monopoly in the economy and the shift away from a socialist system were central to the transformations, and the Soviet Union likely would not have collapsed if the Cold War had continued. He notes that in negotiations on German unification, Gorbachev was assured that NATO would not expand eastward, and that a Malta-style agreement had committed the U.S. and U.K. to not use force in Eastern Europe to preserve the system there and for the West not to take advantage—that commitment was written and reiterated in a letter delivered by him. He rejects the idea that the U.S. and the West defeated the Soviet Union; rather, internal pressures and changes within the Soviet system precipitated its dissolution.
On NATO expansion, Matlock confirms that a promise was made but not codified in treaties. He recounts Secretary of State James Baker’s February 1990 discussions with Gorbachev about German unification under NATO, suggesting that while NATO expansion would be unacceptable, the U.S. recognized a stabilizing European military presence. He notes that Gorbachev understood the points, and later said expansion would be unacceptable, while acknowledging that some American legal interpretations limited East German sovereignty in the matter. He emphasizes that the expansion of NATO would turn it from a defensive alliance into an offensive one if used beyond Europe, especially in the broader context of post-Cold War security. He cites the Russian view that NATO’s eastward expansion threatened Russia and the later issue of missile defense bases in Romania and Poland as particularly provocative.
Matlock argues that the West’s approach to Russia after the Cold War was a major misstep. He says the U.S. and Western Europeans treated Russia as a pariah and sought to shape Russia’s internal politics, including pressure on Ukraine and the 2014 coup context. He highlights the 1990s effort to broker a pan-European security structure and the danger of “unipolar” thinking after the Cold War, warning that a perception of Western moral superiority undermined sustainable diplomacy. He criticizes Western interventions in Serbia, Iraq, and Libya as examples of hubris and mismanagement, asserting that such actions worsened regional stability and produced blowback, including the rise of extremist forces.
Regarding Ukraine, Matlock suggests that NATO’s insistence on eventual membership for Ukraine and Georgia was ill-advised, given popular resistance within Ukraine and the risk of provoking Moscow. He cites Minsk 2015 as an attempt to halt further conflict, noting that Russia agreed to certain conditions but that Western partners continued arms supplies, complicating ceasefires. He stresses that the Donbas and Crimea issues were deeply rooted in historical borders and language rights, and that external attempts to dictate internal politics were unhelpful.
Looking forward, Matlock laments the erosion of diplomatic norms and argues that the U.S. and Europe are ceding leadership to China, which he sees as better at pursuing peace and developing new energy and technology sectors. He calls for a re-examination of security architecture and a renewed commitment to diplomacy and dialogue, noting Pope Francis’ recent calls for frank discussions on peace. He concludes by acknowledging the tragedy that no one is focusing on peace in current conflicts, including in Iran and Ukraine.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Jack Matlock, The US ambassador to The Soviet Union, who contributed greatly to negotiate an end to the Cold War with president Reagan in the late nineteen eighties. So thank you very much for taking the time, sir.
Speaker 1: Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 0: So I'm a big fan of, yeah, your books, your work, and, of course, also your history, your, I guess, contribution to diplomacy and history. It's quite impressive. I based on your work, though, I thought a good place to start would be from your from your perspective, what are the main misunderstandings about the the end of the Cold War?
Speaker 1: I think there have been several serious misunderstandings among most of the commentators. First of all, the idea that the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union is incorrect. The Cold War was over ideologically and practically at least two years before the Soviet Union broke up. And second, the idea that we we that there were winners and losers in the Cold War that somehow The United States and the West won and Russia lost is quite incorrect. We negotiated an end to the Cold War to the interests of both countries and everybody else for that matter.
And that was a negotiated in without victors. That in occurred because Gorbachev actually abandoned what had been the ideology that had caused the Cold War in the first place. And that is the communist ideology which was totally incompatible with our political system and ways of life in the West. The idea was that there was going to be a worldwide proletarian revolution which would bring about a society that first was communist but would become first was socialist but would become communist and that the state would actually wither away. Of course, what happened in the Soviet Union and the other communist countries was that the state took control of everything.
And instead of what they called it a socialist system, it was for all practical purposes a state of a condition of state monopoly capitalism. And but that was being abandoned. Now at the same time, of course, Gorbachev was trying to bring the Soviet Union into, you might say, the European system. And I remember that when we were negotiating on such issues as German unification, he would say at times by the way, we assured him that if he allowed Germany to unite on the terms that West Germany had set that there would be no expansion of NATO to the East. Even earlier when president Bush and Gorbachev met in Malta and announced the end of the Cold War officially, one of the conditions there was that the Soviet Union would not use force in Eastern Europe to preserve the system there and The United States would not take advantage of that.
And that was announced in writing. As a matter of fact, that commitment to president Bush reiterated in the letter to Gorbachev that I delivered when we got back from that meeting. So the idea that the cold war was a defeat for the Soviet Union or that the Soviet Union broke up because of the pressure of the Western alliance are simply incorrect. The Soviet Union broke up because of internal pressures and probably would not have broken up if the Cold War had been continued. So I think those basic misunderstandings fed many of what I consider the mistakes that were made subsequently.
Speaker 0: This promise to never expanding NATO after the German reunification, it often becomes a very hot topic in the media. Many politicians and academics, journalists, they dispute it. They say such a promise wasn't made or it was a misunderstanding. But this was made at several occasions though, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: Well, the promise was made. It was not incorporated in in in the treaties, but parts of it were. To go into a little more detail, in February when when secretary of state Baker came to Moscow in in I think it was February, the hot topic then was the question of German unification because the communist regime had been sort of overthrown in in East Germany. And first of all, we set the The United States said, alright. We we need to negotiate this in what we call the two plus four format.
And I would say Europeans and others said, well, what do you mean? And keeping us out of it. And we said, look. The core issues are between The United States and The Soviet Union. We'll coordinate what we do with our allies, but we have to initially work this out directly with the Soviet Union.
And so the idea was that we would try to get an agreement and then we would refer it to our allies, the the other four, which were the some victors in World War two. You know, at the end of World War two, there were certain agreements between, on the one hand France, Britain, and The United States and the Soviet Union on the other. And some of these gave the Soviet Union rights in Germany and Eastern Europe. And in order to legalize the unification of Germany, we had to have legally the approval of the Soviet Union. So when Baker came to Moscow in February, he he he proposed to Gorbachev.
He said, think about this. In that sense, he was throwing out an idea and that wouldn't it be better to have a united Germany, a member of NATO, then cut loose from NATO because and then he began to imply. He said, after all, we would need still to make sure that Germany does not go nuclear, that Germany does not pursue the policies they did before, and we need a NATO for that. And Gorbachev answered that, of course, in the expansion of NATO would be unacceptable, but he understood the points that Baker was making. And he added that, you know, it has been the policy of the Soviet Union to try to exclude you from Europe militarily.
But we now understand that some American military presence could be a stabilizing effect. So we are no longer trying to exclude you from Europe. But then he added, of course, you you don't really need 300,000 troops stationed in Europe to perform that. Later in other conversations when the question of expansion of NATO came up, Gorbachev would say, well, if you do that, you're gonna have to take us too. I would have to say this was in the background of both sides in effect calling for the same end.
Gorbachev spoke beginning in a speech in the UN in 1988 saying that we have a common European home, which should be without barriers and and so on. And on on the other hand, our president and and also, I think, prime minister Thatcher, who was then the of a Europe whole and free. And, you know, by the end of by 1991, the world had a Europe whole and free. So the later in the nineties when a new administration began to consider to expand NATO, I would say not only did I had testified before the senate foreign relations committee that that would be eventually a catastrophe if we started expanding NATO and continued it. And I was joined in a statement by, I think, more than 30 of the senior people who negotiated the end of the Cold War.
Now the reason we said that was that the the NATO had been conceived as a defensive alliance in order to to make sure that Soviet Union could not successfully invade Western Europe. There was a great fear that that was their intent. And indeed if you thought of the Soviet Union and its then East European allies, they had military forces that in quantity were superior to those in the West. I might say that later when all the documents have become available, it is clear that the Soviet Union never intended to invade the West. Their policy was that if the West started a war, they would respond and try to push to the English Channel, but that was planned as them as a response to what they would have considered aggression from the West.
But what I'm trying to say now is that the idea of bringing more countries into NATO would turn it from a defensive alliance to an offensive alliance if these forces were used particularly outside Europe. One of the arguments that people for expansion made in the nineteen nineties was out of area or out of business. In other words, we had to use the NATO alliance militarily outside Europe or else there was no point to it. They also testify people who are not even involved that, oh, there was never any agreement regarding expansion. Now what I say now is whether or not there was an agreement, and certainly we were given assurances that we wouldn't expand NATO.
But whether or not that is true, it was a huge mistake to start expanding NATO. Another point I would make is that it was not so much the sort of article five of the NATO, yeah, of the NATO treaty that worried the Russians. I know the Russian ambassador to Washington whom I had dealt with many times when he was a deputy foreign minister at the Soviet Union, Yuli Voronsov, told me sort of in the mid nineties. He said, look. You know, we don't worry about your your article five.
We're not going to obviously attack these countries or any others. What we worry about is basis. If you if you then put your basis in it, that is going to be very worsened to us. And in fact, in the two plus four agreement, though there was no mention of NATO expansion, there was a provision that the territory of the former East Germany would not be used to base any foreign troops or any nuclear weapons. In other words, what was then accepted in the treaty as NATO expansion.
And the fact was as and let me back up a bit that the fact was that after Baker had returned to Washington, he was told by the lawyers, now if East Germany if Germany unites, there's no way you can exclude part of it from the NATO alliance. So a lot of these issues got mixed up. And the so but the expansion really and then next NATO in the nineties was used in an offensive way against Serbia. All but a declared war was declared against Serbia, which had not attacked any NATO member. And in fact, we were extending NATO protection to others as Yugoslavia began to break up.
That was one of the first things that created, I would say, extreme tensions in between The United States and then Russia. Another point I should make is that when people talk about Russia always being aggressive and so on, it was precisely the president elected president of the Russian Federation who paid the the key role in bringing the Soviet Union down. And and, also, he was a firm supporter Baltic independence, which was declared legally before the Soviet Union broke up. So in effect, the the the breakup of the Soviet Union was not something that the West was pressing for. As a matter of fact, although Bush the first Bush administration was firm in supporting the restoration of independence of the three Baltic countries, We actually, for a number of rational reasons, wanted the rest of the Soviet Union to preserve a voluntary federation, the sort that Gorbachev tended time to support.
So the idea that we brought the Soviet Union down is obsolete the opposite. We were doing our best to support Gorbachev in negotiating a new union treaty to the point that when when president Bush after visiting Moscow visited Kiev, he spoke to the Ukrainian parliament. They were called the Ukrainian parliament, he recommended them to inner Gorbachev Federation and said that they should avoid suicidal nationalism. But we said at the time that this was a speech meant for all of the non Soviet Republics, not just Ukraine. And when he spoke of suicidal nationalism, he was thinking of what was going on in Georgia with at that time.
But it was clear that we did not want the Soviet Union to break up at that time, that is The United States. But, of course, events got ahead of things and it and, yeah, by by certainly November, it was clear that, well, it was probably going to break up. And so, obviously, The United States, we immediately sort of after December 25 when Yossen sort of took over in Russia and and and and with the cooperation of others ended the Soviet Union, we immediately proposed the to recognize the successors. Because one of the things that worried us throughout was the proliferation of nuclear weapons. So one of the conditions for recognizing the independence of Ukraine and others was that they they relinquished their nuclear weapons.
I know this has become an issue later. And the most of these, by the way, were scheduled to be eliminated under arms control treaties we had with the Soviet Union. And as a condition of recognizing their independence, they had to agree to abide by these agreements. In other words, those nuclear weapons that were in Ukraine, first of all, were never under the of the control of Ukraine politically and and practically the codes and so on were in Moscow and passed on to to Gorbachev to Yeltsin. And and second, these it is not at all clear that if Ukraine had kept them, that they could have maintained them and and so on.
But in any event, the return of those reference to Russia, which at first was resisted by the Ukrainian parliament, was insisted upon by The United States and because we feared not that they would be used against us necessarily but that this technology would seep out into, you know, elements that would use it. And I might add that is still a much more a threat in the future than any government actually using them. And and one of the big issues we had in the nineteen nineties was a cooperative effort to make sure that the nuclear materials and nuclear weapons in Russia were, first of all, reduced as we had agreed earlier, and second, that the materials were secured. That's one of our more successful efforts in the nineties. But now so I wanted to explain that background because so many people say now, oh, you know, if Ukraine had just kept those weapons, Russia would not have attacked them.
That was never a practical or political possibility.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I hear that argument all the time as well. But I think people often forget that in the nineteen nineties, a lot of great statesmen, George Kennan, yourself, and others, many were warning against essentially, yeah, going for NATO expansion instead of pursuing this new pan European security architecture. So I was wondering why did we fail to establish then a common, well, a common European home as Gorbachev would have said, or at least a common European security architecture? Cause we did have some agreements, like the charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990 and the organization for security and cooperation in Europe set up in '94 based on these principles, all essentially originating from the Helsinki Accords of how to have a common Europe.
But why did we fail?
Speaker 1: I think there may have been a variety of reasons, but in fact, I think we and particularly in The United States, but also in other Western countries, we're were responding to domestic politics. And in the case of The United States, we have a very large numbers of voters in in states like Pennsylvania and Illinois from Eastern Europe. And and they were determined to get these countries in NATO because they traditionally looked at Russia as as a threat. And that was one thing that sort of politically I know when I testified against NATO expansion during the intermission, some of the people came up to me and said, look, be practical. Yeah.
That the president needs those electoral votes. They're two swing states, Pennsylvania and Illinois, and all those East Europeans are demanding we go into NATO. So I would say in the case of The United States, it was largely, not entirely, a matter of the internal politics. But second, you had the growing influence of what we call the neoconservatives, the neocons, those who actually both Reagan and Bush had sidelined. At that time, most were Republicans.
And but I would say both of Reagan was able to sort of sideline and ignore their advice. They advised against most of our arms control negotiations. They wanted the center to continue to use force because and to bring down the system. They were thinking of of a a regime change, which by the way was something that neither president Reagan nor the first president Bush thought of. I mean, they they did not think they were trying to bring down the Soviet Union.
Reagan's idea was communism is a crazy idea and but if that's what the Soviets want, that's their business. What we object to is they're forcing it on other people. So there wasn't an idea that we had a mission to try to change their political system. What I'm trying to say is that suddenly you had a philosophy of being expressed that The United States won the Cold War and that now it was the sole superpower and that, therefore, it could determine the future of other countries. That there had been two superpowers that ran the world, and now there was only one.
And so we were in what they call a unipolar world. Now there are several things wrong with that. First of all, yes, The United States had much more power both militarily and in the terms of economics than any other country. But and but military power is not power is power to destroy, not power to build. And the economic system is one which if which could be, I say, responsibly managed to the benefit of everybody or by the more powerful states turned into a weapon.
Now I lied to my sorrow. I said beginning in the nineties, The United States started to do both to sanction other countries for things that really have nothing to do with The United States but what we considered their behavior internally. And a second, of course, we by expanding NATO and then beginning in in the twenty first century to put bases there was basically violating, I would say, the whole spirit of what we should have been building. But you ask why we didn't, obviously, we should have been building a European security structure. In fact, a world security structure that included everybody.
And what strikes me is that after the Second World War, we were wise to insist that France and Germany who had been antagonists for so long bury the hatchet and start cooperating. We were great inspirers and pushing for what later became the common market. But after the end of the Cold War instead of and the breakup of the Soviet Union, instead of bringing Russia and the East European countries into a unified security structure, we we began actually to treat Russia as a pariah in many ways. That was done in a number of ways. And and I think that and that spirit I think was expressed by secretary of state Madeleine Albright, our first woman secretary of state when in justifying the in effect, war against sir Serbia, she said America stands tall and can see the future.
Walk, you know, absolute art. I think this this I think was absolutely incredible hubris. And and I would note, by the way, but those who say we need more women in high politics. Yes. We should have our leaders whether they are male or female on the basis of their merits.
But all three of our women secretaries of state have been warmongers. Let's face it. So one's sex or gender doesn't necessarily determine one's political opinions or or sort of abilities in certain respects.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's often cuts a hole in the assumption that women would be more peaceful leaders than men. I think we're all pretty flawed in this regard. But I yeah. I also see that the prospect of a hegemonic peace that is peace through dominance or strength was very appealing, which contributed to dismantling the work that had been done for pan European security architecture.
But beyond the beyond, I guess, creating a Europe without the Russians, which unavoidably became a bit of a Europe against the Russians, organized around EU and NATO, what you see any other mistakes being done in terms of how we could have managed this relationship with Russia? Because it is interesting when everyone reads the memoirs of, for example, former CI director, Robert Gates, or well, you can he mentioned many. They they they all recognize that relations were mismanaged and that, you know, we are now paying some of the consequences of this mismanagement. But what do you consider to be the main mistakes being made thereafter?
Speaker 1: Well, the expansion as we continue to expand NATO, we not only began to expand NATO, but in the first decade of this century, we began putting military bases there. And the most sensitive of those as far as Russia was concerned was the establishment of anti ballistic missiles in Romania and Poland. Now these missiles it turns out, although most people didn't understand it at that time, could be used either offensively or defensively depending upon the software. So there is no I would say no There it is easy to understand that you that Putin, the press the Russian president would find this threatening, And he made it very clear. He made it very clear in a speech in Munich in 2007 how why how he considered the expansion of NATO and particularly the plans to place bases there, bases that could practically be used to attack the Soviet Union.
Now so and yet we went ahead with this And despite that and so and then later, particularly during the Obama administration, we purposely tried to bring about, I would say, a Western oriented government in Ukraine. And this is something that anyone who sort of knows history should have known that that was totally unacceptable to any government in Moscow just as any expansion of any, I would say, outside power into the Western Hemisphere was considered virtually a casus belli by The United States. Yet, we continued to do that. And I think this is one of the the big issues that weighed upon Vladimir Putin's mind. And and he warned against it publicly, and but later we went ahead and at one point, you know, our our representatives were bragging that they spent billions trying to, in effect, determine the government of Ukraine.
And so when later when a coup d'etat occurred there, I think Russia had every reason and certainly president Putin to feel that this had been fueled by The United States and its West European allies because they had representatives openly trying to promote specific candidates in Ukraine, which in fact became in control of Ukraine in 2014. And so this is a very complicated situation, but not only did The US and the West European allies trying to determine the internal politics of Ukraine so that it would in effect be hostile to Russian. Something that certainly The United States would have reacted very forcefully if it had happened to us. I can bear witness to that because I was in Moscow in 1961 during what we call the Cuban Missile Crisis. And let's recall what that was all about.
The United States had attempted to invade Cuba unsuccessfully, and Cuba had asked the Soviet Union to supply nuclear weapons. Now it was under traditional international law that was not a violation of international law, particularly since The United States had nuclear weapons poised in Turkey and also Italy that could reach the Soviet Union. This was before neither of us had intercontinental missiles. These were very immediate range. Of course, our president Kennedy considered this totally unacceptable and ordered a ordered a quarantine, he called it, of Cuba.
And we came very close to a nuclear exchange. I was sitting in Moscow then and translating some of Khrushchev's comments. But finally, Khrushchev backed down and agreed to take those weapons out. And in effect, Kennedy declared victory. Although he had agreed that we would remove the missiles in Turkey, but that could not be publicized.
In other words, he forced Khrushchev to make it look as if he had backed down when in in fact there was a deal. But having seen that, having been through that, it was very clear to me that trying to influence the internal politics of Ukraine against the wishes of Russia was not a good idea to put it mildly. And in fact, when at The United States insistence that NATO declare that someday Ukraine and Georgia would be members. This is in 2008. It was clear to me that that this was going to create very, difficulties.
And so at that time, polls showed that two thirds of Ukrainians did not want to be in NATO. This country was increasingly divided and increasingly the politics were pushed by those in in Western Ukraine, the areas that traditionally had never been part of Russia, but had been in the Austro Hungarian Empire and then in Poland. And I might say that the current borders of Ukraine, which the current government is trying to recover were borders created by Hitler and Stalin. So in effect the Ukrainians and the West Europeans who are supporting this are ironically trying to enforce something created by Hitler and Stalin. Think about that and think about how that resonates with Russians.
And so the issues there are are very deep and I think increasingly tragic. Both countries I think have have followed policies which are not in the interest of their people. And it's difficult to see how this is going to be resolved, but where things have come now. But I must say that when we look at the causes, attempts of The United States and its West European allies to control an area which is absolutely vital to the security of Russia was I think an important causative factor. We've reached a point now that is very difficult to see how that's going to be resolved so that it doesn't negatively affect all of us.
Speaker 0: Well, in terms of ending the Cold War, we see that diplomacy was very important, and we were, I would say, blessed with having some good statesmen at this point in time. But, well, how do you make sense of the current political leadership across the West, both The US and Europe, comp compared to diplomacy, which, you know, helped to bring an end to the Cold War. Because when I look at people today, be it Mertz in Germany, the rhetoric there, or Macron in France, Starmer in The UK, all three of them, by the way, talking now about war with Russia, or, you know, Trump in The United States who is, you know, hardly a benign leader himself. How do you make sense of this that we don't have we don't seem to have diplomacy anymore? I often ask why why why none none of our political leaders or even journalists, they want to even discuss the security concerns and interest of our opponents, not just the Russians, but all opponents.
It's very confusing. Sorry. There was a very long question about, yeah, how do you make sense of the current political leadership?
Speaker 1: I can't make sense of it. I can only say that I think that previous norms of diplomacy have simply been abandoned. And we talk about democracy. You know, can be mean several things. The one thing it can be a process that the citizens or residents, citizens of a given country should determine its government and so on.
That's a process. Or you can begin to put labels on countries. Oh, some are democratic and some are not. I think the labeling can be quite false. The United States is not in the final sense a total democracy.
We are a republic and a republic which by any current analysis is run by an oligarchy, an oligarchy which is divided and yet it is one in which the majority of the people do not decide our policies. And I think that has happened also to some degree in other countries. But the idea that somehow there is a division between democracies and non democracies and that it was the duty of The United States to, quote, spread democracy even if it means changing governments. I think that was very, very similar to the idea the Soviet Union had until Gorbachev that it was the vanguard of the proletariat and had to support what they call proletarian revolution throughout the world because socialism in their definition and communism was the future of the world. In effect, we with just a few changes tended to to try the same thing.
Now we used very high flown language. We said that, you know, human rights are very important and we need to enforce them. You know the problem with that is first of all it's a misnomer. What we really should be talking about is civil rights. I think that human beings do not enter the world with rights.
In fact, they're totally dependent upon other people and every other mammal is. So the idea that and I know this is enshrined a lot of of rhetoric that should be. The fact is that every great civilization or defines their values and their rights and one needs to understand that. And an attempt, you know, on those grounds to interfere in other countries is going to create great difficulties. So that I think the idea that and it was expressed first by one of our scholars, Hokuyama, that in effect, the end of the Cold War meant that the what they call the West and democracy was the future of the world and it was the was the duty of what they call the democratic countries to spread it to other countries.
And that I think was a fundamentally mistaken idea. Not that human rights what we call them that these rights are not valuable things, but to consider that anybody who doesn't agree with you on that somehow at fault gets it all wrong because I think that civilizations have risen and fallen and throughout the last few millennia of human history. But to think that there is one formula that fits everybody I believe is simply fundamentally incorrect. And the idea that the fact that The United States and the West survived the Cold War in better economic shape and others than the others who are trying in effect to adopt our system as we tried to persuade them. But once they do, we find that the West is actually sanctioning Russia economically and and so on instead of keeping them in the I would say the one world economic system that that was created after the end of the Cold War.
So that I think that this feeling of righteousness when we shouldn't have has undermined the ability of straight thinking. Right now I cannot understand how any German government could tolerate the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. I mean, all one of our Germany now is not going to be competitive in many ways because of a high cost of energy. And how you look, I would say a misapplication of policy toward Ukraine. And the idea of the West Europeans that Ukraine as a democratic society is simply struggling.
Ukraine is one of the least democratic countries in the world and it has a government that was achieved by coup d'etat by a minority and it is one of the most corrupt. Now it is not that the Ukrainians are bad. They're wonderful people. I happen to be one who knows both Russian and Ukrainian. I got my PhD in Slavic languages, and it is tragic the way that I would say West European and The United States have been pushing for something which is not in Ukraine's interest.
And so without going into all the details of the house, I'll say one thing that when the agreement was made in Minsk in 2015 that in effect Russia at that time though it had taken Crimea where the majority of people clearly prefer to be in Russia. That at that time, president Putin agreed refused any attempt to bring the Donbas into Russia, but said that Ukraine must return to what it had originally had that is to recognizing the Russian language of also political validity and and to grant amnesty. But France and Germany, which were parties to that, continued to supply militarily supply the Ukraine with forces that were attacking the Eastern so that one can say one of the reasons Russia opposes a ceasefire now is that they had one before and not only Ukraine but also Britain and France that were parties violated it because they were supplying military weapons and later of course the former German chancellor said, oh well, they signed that just to give Ukraine a chance to build up their military to take it. So, you know, I think it is tragic and I think that President Putin made a horrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine.
But and I'm not I am not one that justifies that. But I have to recognize that my own country and NATO illegally attacked Serbia over what was something that Serbia had not attacked any NATO country. And then The United States with some, but not all of the NATO allies attacked you Iraq on fabricated grounds that they had nuclear weapons. When they didn't, we completely occupied the country. Hundreds of thousands of people probably were killed and they stimulated a revival of the the Islamic extreme Islamic groups.
So I mean don't we understand that actually The United States and some of its NATO allies and then later we had the case of Libya. And yes, Qaddafi was a current in many respects. No question about that. And there was a a UN Security Council determination that we should protect the the opponents of Qaddafi in Benghazi, but that was expanded to a war that ended in the assassination of Qaddafi just as the war in Ukraine had ended in the assassination of Saddam Hussein. Now these were certainly bad guys in many ways, but wasn't the responsibility of outsiders to deal with them, particularly to deal with them the way that brought about internal conditions that were worse for everybody there.
So there was a certain hubris and a feeling that, oh, we can do things that others can't and maybe physically. There was also the idea that by use of force you could topple a government and get something better. It doesn't happen. And one of the great dangers now when people talk about needing regime change in Russia is that if president Putin is removed by force, you are probably going to get something even worse because there are forces there that are already arguing that Russia has to use its nuclear forces to defend itself. And when the West Europeans start sending weapons to Ukraine that they used to attack Russia, I think already former president Medvedev has said that, you know, we will consider any of the factors that make these weapons the legitimate targets.
You know, I'm not saying that this that this is a a good policy or not. I'm just saying I think you have to look at the realities and why Germany would be involved again in arming rebels in any area that was once part of the Soviet Union. I I think is almost inconceivable and I can't understand why the current government is doing it. But I I can see that let's put on a broader context. Right now, I think both in economic ways and political, China is profiting greatly from all of this because to most of the world they seem to be the only great power right now that is asking for peace and tending to support it.
And I think it is really, you know, catastrophe that we in the West through our own hubris and I think misunderstanding of the situation is an effect an effect conceding leadership in many of these areas to China. Certainly, they're doing a better job of developing alternative energies, And they're increasingly doing a better job of of engineering and and producing things like electric cars and so on. So how we continue to think of wars and use of the military to change things, I'm it seems to me that that is not very rational. In saying so I'm not endorsing the Chinese government or the things they do internally. I think that's something that the Chinese, only the Chinese can change if it needs changing.
About the hubris that somehow we in the West possess superiority over the others, which seems to lie behind some of this, I think is deplorable, and I hope it will change. Let me also say that we haven't mentioned the Near East, and that, of course, is a as right now, one that is dominating many things. And all I can say is that I think the recent exchanges between Pope Leo and the president of The United States show that for once we have a pope that is calling it like it is. There were charges during the second world war that Pope Pius did not condemn what was going on. I'm not a Catholic, but right now I do think that our American Pope the first is telling the world something it needs to hear.
Speaker 0: Very much agree. And that's one of the, I think, great tragedies as well that no one is speaking about peace anymore. One is currently engaged in this war with Iran, also war with Russia. People are talking about a possible war with China. At least Europeans and leaders have sat by for four years while all these hundreds of thousands of people have been dying in Ukraine, and they didn't even pick up a phone to discuss the security architecture or some way to mitigate the security competition with the Russians.
It's it's quite appalling. Grotesque, really. But, yeah, hopefully, we'll be turning a corner. Anyways, Ambassador, thank you so much for taking the time. I think I've already taken a bit too much of your time, so I very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on and for listening.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Scott Ritter: Russia Threatens Strike on Finland & Baltic States https://youtu.be/OOLUsj50ZEE https://t.co/pkkglN0EJx
Video Transcript AI Summary
Scott Ritter discusses the widening role of European drones in the Ukraine conflict and the potential Russian response. He argues that Russia is aiming to elevate the conflict this year and may prepare a summer offensive, moving from shadow policy to official action. He contends Europe is acting as an active participant by supplying drones and intelligence to strike Russia’s depth, calling it an act of war and warning that there will be consequences if it continues. He believes a decisive Russian strike could deter Europe and force a reckoning about European military capability and funding, suggesting that a single, devastating blow to the identified target set could end Europe’s ability to support Ukraine’s drone war.
The conversation then moves to potential targets for a Russian strike. Ritter rejects the idea of token “warning strikes,” arguing that Russia should strike decisively to obliterate the targeted systems and demonstrate that it can alter the strategic balance. He posits that a large strike against not only the Baltic states and Finland but also Germany could occur, and contemplates the U.S. response, noting that NATO’s Article 5 may not be triggered since the actions are by individual European nations rather than a collective NATO decision on drones. He predicts that under a Trump administration, the U.S. might withdraw support if Europe provokes a broader conflict, which could hasten NATO’s demise. He asserts that a decisive summer offensive by Russia could bring Donbas under its control and escalate implications for European security and U.S. commitment.
On the Ukraine battlefield, Ritter cites indicators of a spring Russian offensive, with front preparation, control of critical terrain, and attrition of Ukrainian forces through well-planned cause-and-effect operations. He notes Ukraine has exhausted its reserves and that if Russia seizes Sloviansk and Popasna, much of Donbas could fall. He also comments on Hungary’s elections and their impact, dismissing the significance of Hungary’s influence on European or Ukrainian battlefield outcomes, arguing that the €90 billion aid package does not resolve Europe’s structural problems and may not significantly strengthen Ukraine.
Ritter discusses the wider geopolitical consequences, including the Iran situation and its economic impact on Europe, arguing that European energy security has deteriorated and that NATO’s unity is strained. He claims the U.S. is abandoning NATO in practice, and Europe is left with insufficient defense capabilities. He also questions whether the U.S. would sustain a renewed conflict with Iran, arguing the risk of a large-scale war would be economically devastating for both continents and would likely push Europe toward peace negotiations with Russia and Iran.
Regarding China, Ritter contends the U.S. rhetoric on sanctioning Chinese energy flows has had little practical effect, as China continues to source Iranian oil and resist U.S. pressure. He emphasizes that China views energy security as vital to its economy and will respond prudently, maintaining that American posturing has not restricted Chinese energy imports.
Finally, Ritter suggests negotiations continue intermittently with Iran and Russia, with Islamabad’s technical teams working toward a final peace agreement and Trump seeking a narrative of victory through a peace deal. He asserts that Russia may have a strategic window to secure a settlement, with Trump wanting to present himself as pivotal in achieving peace. He concludes that the conflict could be moving toward a Russian advantage as Iran’s war and European economic strain ripple through.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We're joined today by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, a US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and an author. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 0: We see now that the Europeans are speaking quite loudly and proudly, I would add, about all the drones they're sending to Ukraine to fight Russia. But at the same time, there's also reports now as, yeah, we all know that some of the drones that have been hitting the Russian Baltic Sea Coast is coming from the Baltic States and or Finland. And we now see that the Russian Defense Ministry, it published this list of European facilities that are now potential targets of Russian strikes as they're producing drones, which are being used to attack Russia. Now I even saw the Russian Security Council secretary Sergei Charguu making the point that Russia has the right for self defense given that these are attacks from European territories. I I was wondering what you make of all of this because is this, you know, hot air, or do you think there is, yeah, that they're actually gonna start to step up the efforts to restore their deterrent?
Speaker 1: I think that Russia is looking to bring it into this conflict this year. I I think they have plans in store for this summer. You know, the Russian approach has always been to avoid escalation and focus on mission accomplishment. That they've allowed so called red lines to be crossed because strategically you would lose more by being seen as over responding. You might mobilize or stiffen support for Ukraine that is otherwise diminishing.
I think this time, however, it's different. We see that what had been done in the shadows is now official policy. We see in Ramstein nations bragging about the role they're playing, that this has become a de facto proxy conflict. And When we speak of drones, you know, we're not talking about the tactical drones on the battlefield, we're talking about drones that are used to carry out strategic strikes in the depth of Russia. This is an unsustainable model for Russia.
I think that the time has come for Russia to step up and make Europe understand there is a price to be paid for irresponsible activity. What Europe is doing, just so everybody understands, is an act of war. It's not it's not that Europe's an innocent party here. They are active participants in a conflict. They are planning these attacks.
These drones that are being produced are being produced knowing that they'll be given to Ukrainians who will then use European provided intelligence to strike Russia's depth. And as I said, I I believe that this is unsustainable model, and I think the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Security Council have made it clear that there will be consequences if this continues. So I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's very strange that this is I I made this argument myself because, you know, to be a bit cautious about the path we're going down, but it's almost it's very easily dismissed these days, which is kind of strange because the reason why most of these European states never supplied weapons to to any country in a war would be because that would make the Europeans a participant to the conflict. Yet now we see the involvement as deep as it can be to the point where, yeah, the Ukrainians will play a very minimal role potentially. And yet the whole idea that the Europeans are becoming participants or have become participant is just rejected as Russian propaganda, which is what you say when you wanna make a descent go away. But so it is shocking.
But what do you see being the possible do you see a possible warning strike first against Estonia or Finland, or do you think they will do something larger going after the, you know, key logistic nodes in Germany, for example?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not one to advise the Russian government on anything. I think warning strikes would be inconsequential and actually, I mean, if you're going to strike a NATO country, or as they say, if you're gonna strike the king, kill the king. I think Russia gets one shot, and it should be a devastating shot that takes out the totality of the target set identified by the Russian Ministry of Defense in a way that completely obliterates the the potential of Europe to carry out their goals, their stated goals, objectives of supplying Ukraine with drones to be used in a proxy manner against Russia's strategic depth. It also sets the signal that, you know, Russia can change the the target deck anytime it wants to, and the outcome will be the same. I think that Europe needs to be put on notice that they're playing in the big boy arena.
You decide to step into the ring with a super heavyweight fighter, and he just knock you out. Because otherwise, this this will just continue to be a war of incrementalism that that will solve nothing. The other thing is by hitting decisive decisively, you you fundamentally define the debate. Now it's a put up or shut up time for Europe, and Europe will find out that they simply cannot go to war with Russia. They're not positioned to go to war with Russia.
They don't have the resources. So then Europe will also have to have a debate about are they going to drop everything in a time of existential economic crisis and rebuild a European army that cannot exist, does not exist, won't exist? You know, The United States is leaving. I don't think The United States will have any sympathy for the Europeans for doing what they did. You know, this is this is fundamentally an act of war that is is is taking place.
And so, you know, the Europeans, I think, are hoping for incrementalism that can lead to drawing The United States back in. You know, the longer you have a debate that's open ended, the more likely bad things are going to happen in terms of outcome. But if you present Europe with, you know, a bloody nose and the fact that your hand is cocked to hit them again and The United States now has to look at this, you make everything very clear with a decisive strike. So, I think the time has come for a decisive strike. I don't think the Russians would be publishing this list, and Sergei Shoja would be saying what he's saying if the Russians weren't prepared for a decisive strike.
Speaker 0: Well, if it would be a large strike, again, not just the Baltic States and Finland, but again, then primarily Germany as well. The the big question is what would the Americans do? So lately, we've seen all these tweets by Trump that, you know, made us a paper tiger. We haven't you know, you didn't do anything for us. We're not gonna be there for you.
Do you think do you think they would just ignore it altogether, or would it be some what would be the response of The United States essentially? Would it be nothing, or would it be going all in? Well, I'm doubting the all in by now, but, essentially, NATO would be over then if they wouldn't do anything. Trump might be fine with that. So do you expect the American reaction to be?
Speaker 1: First of all, this isn't your classic, you know, we were attacked. We were collective defense. This is selective countries in NATO acting in a manner outside of the NATO framework. NATO as an institution has not made a decision to provide drones. It's a German decision.
It's a it's a British decision. It's a, you know, decision by individual nations. And so they legally, it's going to be hard to make the case that Article five is even triggered. But at the end of the day too, The United States knows more than anybody about fool around, find out. And here we have the Europeans fooling around and if Russia makes them find out, I don't see The United States rallying to their cause.
I actually see Donald Trump saying, you brought it upon yourself. This was stupid policy. We told you to seek peace. Instead, you promoted this war and you weren't there when we needed you. We're not gonna come now.
Your honor, I think this is the end of NATO and I think that's another thing that's gonna go into the calculation of Russia is the accelerated death of NATO by launching a strike. Of course, it's a gamble. I mean, who knows how things will happen? Europe may rally and The United States comes back and NATO unifies. But I think all indicators are that that's not going to be the case.
And I think that the Russians are looking for a decisive summer. And the decisive summer will come, I believe, with, you know, offenses in the Donbas region that will bring back the totality of the Donbas plus deeper penetrations. And I think it will be putting NATO on notice or Europe on notice that Russia's done playing games. If they want to you you can only sit there and threaten Russia with war so many times before Russia actually says, okay, let's do it. I think Russia is at the okay, let's do it standpoint.
Especially look, economy is doing quite well right now thanks to the global energy crisis and no matter how this shakes out, Russia now has fixed a lot of their economic problems that might have held the hand of the Russian government before out of fear that a conflict with Europe could trigger an even deeper economic crisis. I don't think Russia is afraid of that right now. I think all conditions are green for Russia to strike, Europe if it continues its policy.
Speaker 0: Well, as all of this is happening, and I think one of the reasons, of course, the the Europeans might be escalating now is that the well, the war isn't going well, and it appears that the spring is offensive of the Russian side is now going or has started. Do you see this as well, or is it too premature?
Speaker 1: Well, I see indications. It's I wouldn't go to Las Vegas and put my my mortgage on on anything at this point in time. But Russia has been, you know, preparing the battlefield if you, you know, follow what's going on. I I follow, you know, a very good Russian journalist who published a Substack page that, you know, provides updates on the battlefield with very good maps and explanation of what the Russians are doing. And what you see, the Russians have been painstakingly setting up the front for a major effort by taking critical terrain, key terrain, cutting lines of communication, and by attriting the Ukrainians, know, luring the Ukrainians into counterattacks, know, having well thought out cause and effect actions, doing something on the assumption Ukrainians would then counterattack and then receiving that counterattack and and and and destroying the Ukrainian force and thereby eliminating reserves.
Ukraine has no reserves now because of these ridiculous counterattacks that they've been undertaking, the Russians have continued to prepare the battlefield for what logically would be an offensive design to no idea why they're banking, but there we go. Slovansk in Penometorsk, the last two big populated areas in Vilnabastin. If that urban belt falls, all of Donbas falls. So I think that's the goal of summer is to bring an end to the issue of the Donbas, meaning that it's no longer a question of Ukraine giving up territory. Russia's gonna take it.
Speaker 0: I got the feeling that the the European enthusiasm about sending more money, weapons, and partaking more and more directly in this war, that part of this was held back by the Hungarians, Orban specifically, blocking a lot of the the military aid, which was supposed to be sent to Ukraine. Now that Orban was defeated, what do you think would be the significance of this? Because it's I think some people might have exaggerated how much of a Europhile the new president is, but sorry, the new prime minister is, but but it still is quite significant that the new leadership of Hungary might define hunger Hungary's national interest somewhat different from what Orban did. Look.
Speaker 1: Who cares? I mean, I I I don't mean to be too but but who cares? So what Europe now is gonna be able to spend €90,000,000,000 on on Ukraine? Where does that money go? You know, is this money going to actually bolster Ukrainian capability?
Are they gonna provide Ukraine with the Patriot air defense systems they Ukraine says they need? Where are the Patriots gonna come from? The United States isn't providing any patriots to Europe. All patriots are being diverted to American use. So I just think that this is a lot of talk.
The reality is on the battlefield and nothing that happened in Hungary is going to impact what's going on in the battlefield. Nothing whatsoever. This is all in, you know, inside baseball, European wannabeism. The fact of the matter is the Hungarian elections don't do anything to resolve the fundamental dysfunction of Europe. I mean, yes, so they can they can pass a $90,000,000,000 aid package, but it doesn't solve France's problems, Germany's problems, England's problems.
These problems still exist. It doesn't bring an end to the economic crisis. It doesn't resolve the energy security issues. The International Energy Agency says that Europe runs out of aviation gas in six weeks. That's right in the middle of summer travel season.
What happens when the entire European aviation industry is grounded? What's that do to the economy? How does Orban affect that? Orban doesn't affect anything, nothing. This is just theater and it's always been theater.
This is dysfunction in the extreme. Europe isn't going to suddenly be united with resolve and going to be able to do things. Still getting that and turning that 90,000,000,000 into something else. You're still dealing with an inherently corrupt Ukrainian government that's falling apart as we speak, fighting amongst themselves. All you do is encourage corruption.
I'm glad they got this resolved because now we get to watch what happens to the €90,000,000,000 and how quickly that disappears and how little impact it has on anything, and then Europe may wake up to the fact that nothing they do is going to turn the situation around in Ukraine.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's a no. That's excellent point. I often hate that myself that is all this money they don't really have, but they have to use it for buying American weapons, which Americans can't sell anymore.
If they're running short before, they have to spend it on the Middle East. And, anyways, key problem in Ukraine appears to be the manpower issue. But the Europeans appear to wanting to help in that area too, that we see chancellor Mertz, well, seemingly agreeing to Zelensky's demands of expelling refugees so they can send them back to Ukraine to fill up the trenches, which is another goes under the label of or banner of a pro Ukrainian policy by it's a has quite extreme what what they're doing. But I wanted to ask how how overall do you think now the the war in Iran has affected the the war in Ukraine? Because besides the weapons being diverted, you know, the Ukraine being taken out of the headlines, are there any other problems or impacts of the war?
Speaker 1: The biggest one's economic. You've already taken a very bad energy security situation in Europe, and you've turned it into an absolute disaster. You know, in order to resolve this, they're gonna have to buy energy that doesn't exist on a on a spot market. They're gonna be gouged. So you're taking a continent that already is knee deep in economic problems, you're making it what deep in economic problems?
And, you know, it it it it's gonna make European industry more dysfunctional. It's gonna create internal political rifts inside an already divided Europe. I think the big thing out of this war for Europe was the economy. The the second thing, of course, is that I think the permanent damage that's been done between United States and Europe, the end of NATO. I think NATO's over.
I I don't think there's any trust between Europe and The United States for any number of reasons. I mean, The United States has not been a trustworthy ally, you know, and The United States created an impossible situation for Europe demanding that they respond to, you know, to to the Iranian cross crisis, a crisis Europe didn't want. But Trump is holding it against them. He's literally the boy who's taking the ball and going home. And I think that's problematic too because now Europe is confronted for the first time with the necessity of having to defend itself.
In the past, there was theoretical discussions about what would happen if The United States walked away. Well, The United States is walking away and Europe knows that. So now they're having the uncomfortable discussion and Europe is realizing they don't have anything. Europe has nothing. There's no army.
There's no defense industry. There's no air force. Without The United States, Europe is literally nothing. Yet they are involved in a proxy war with Russia using drones. I think this is the other big thing is the absolute realization of how little power Europe has from a military standpoint.
Speaker 0: You know, it's I I I don't always understand what what what the strategy is. You would think at the point in time when the Americans are pulling back and essentially, you know, the big, yeah, the big American support behind you goes away, you're you know, you would be a bit more cautious the way you approach other great powers such as Russia, but it doesn't seem to affect the posture, though. They're they're still doing the same as it did before. But on on the topic of Iran, do you think this might be coming to an end now? I think we all watched the well, it's a bit we'll have to take everything Trump says too seriously, but, you know, he seems to think the war is coming to an end.
The, you know, the Iranians did say that the Strait Of Hormuz will are is open, but, you know, the way they defined open is very different from what Trump is describing, which sounds like an unconditional surrender for the Iranians. So what do you think is happening at the at this moment?
Speaker 1: What's happening is exactly what I said is gonna be happening. We have two realities in the world. We have the the real geopolitical reality that is what the ground truth is in Iran. The United States and Israel lost for war. They didn't accomplish any of their objectives.
They hold no leverage over anyone whatsoever. Iran holds all the cards. The US has reached the capacity of its ability to escalate conventionally without crossing into outright war crimes. This is why Donald Trump, you know, chose to, you know, move towards a ceasefire. A ceasefire that Iran didn't want, but was pressured into accepting because of China, who is suffering economically from this conflict.
So, you know, you have the the Iranian reality, then you have the American reality, which is fairly centered on Donald Trump's ego. This is a political problem for Donald Trump. This isn't a national security problem for The United States. We're not trying to, you know, solve a giant international foreign policy crisis. We're trying to solve a domestic political crisis for the president because he entered a war he said he would never enter and he lost.
He can't admit he lost. So now what has been happening, I said that negotiations that took place almost a week ago almost succeeded in having a final treaty. But politically, Trump couldn't accept this because to accept that treaty on the during the timing and the conditions put forward would mean that The United States is acknowledging defeat. So Trump scuttled this agreement and then went on a week of posturing. And that posturing was designed to create the perception of American power that America is compelling Iran to do things.
But what Iran is doing are things that were already agreed to in the in the Islam revolt memorandum of understanding that was almost signed, but Trump killed it. There's this is just game. This is act of political theater. What we see the president doing is trying to create the impression that without his decisive intervention, without his massive blockade, without his threats, none of this would be happening. This is all happening because of him.
And the Iranians are just basically concluding the agreement. I think there's too many people that take a look at what's happening and and accept Trump's statements at face value. The the reality is nothing his statements say conform to reality to to what's actually going on. The Strait Of Hormuz isn't open. Strait Of Hormuz has been selectively open.
The Iranians are in control. They dictate what passes through, how it passes through, and what things are charged. You know, Trump can claim that, you know, he's the one responsible, but the bottom line is it's the Strait Of Hormuz is opened under terms that are acceptable to Iran, terms that Iran put on the table. The other thing I wanna remind people is while all this theater is going on, there are technical teams in Islamabad that have been at work ever since these negotiations began, finalizing, clarifying the, you know, the the technical details of what will be an eventual peace treaty. But I again, in unless something very bad happens politically to Donald Trump, he can't go on with this war.
It's a political it's politically devastating for him. The American economy will suffer and, you know, we know in elections, it's the economy stupid. And so, you know, Trump has no choice but to find peace. He's just finding it use in his own little weird Trumpian way where he has to convince a portion of the American public that he's playing five d chess and that he he's a genius and that everything he does is brilliant and none of this outcome would have happened without his intervention. Meanwhile, the Iranians just deal with reality.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I noticed the way this has been reported on, you see a clear split that is what can now almost be described as the MAGA cult. They they see this confirming it as a massive victory, but it is a good point. I mean, he he keeps lying over and over again, and yet we should somehow take everything at face value. It it doesn't really make much sense.
But if The United States under Trump now decides that they will go back to essentially, yeah, total war, at least, yeah, this full intensive war with Iran, how how long can The US go on now? Because, from what I understand, there's been a lot of flights into the region over the ceasefire. A lot of the stocks have been replenished. How much well, what is the fighting power and versus the restraint on how long The US can keep this going?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's a saying that's attributed to Albert Einstein. I don't know if it's actually him or not, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. The United States lost the war. Remember, they started with all the precision guided strike weapons they wanted, all the defense capabilities they had and they got beat. So you're telling me they've restocked the same capabilities that they just got beat on.
And so what are they going to do differently this time? Their target deck is totally diminished. Anything of value was struck. Anything of retained value has been evacuated. They don't have a target deck.
So they're just gonna blow up buildings to blow up buildings, which is what they were doing near the end of this conflict to begin with. So that's not victory. They can't more they bomb, the stronger the regime gets. There's no regime change there. And Iran has shown that these underground missile cities are pretty much invulnerable and that they continue to launch missiles and there's nothing United States can do to prevent that.
And remember, while The United States has been replenishing, so too have the Iranians. They've been building more missiles, more missiles, more missiles. They've been repairing. And so we're just gonna start where we left off with Iran inflicting huge damage on US bases on nations that support The United States, on Israel. And then in the end of The United States, confronted with the fact that its normal strike packages don't cause any change in the Iranian behavior.
We'll threaten to strike energy targets. And and then the rest of the Arab world will step in and say, you you can't because then they'll strike us and it's all over. We lose everything. And, you know, the Saudis aren't happy about this. Nobody I think The United Arab Emirates might be the only country that's happy about what The US is doing, but that's because they have no choice.
They're facing their own existential crisis. So I I I just I can't imagine Trump doing this because this would be the war that cements the fact that he lost. There will be no recovery from this. Our economy, the global economy, will collapse. Again, I just want to ask people to think what happens when all European airlines shut down.
It's not about tourism, people. That's how things are moved. That's how commerce is done. Trade is done. And if you're shutting down that, remember, as goes aviation fuel, so goes diesel fuel.
So, you're going to be seeing a reduction in the ability of trucks to transport. It's the end of the European economy. The European economy will not function. And the same thing is going to happen to The United States. So, Trump can't continue this disastrous model in perpetuity.
Iran literally holds all the cards. So, Trump has to be smart enough to know that the lies that Pete Hegseth told him in the first phase are still lies today. Nothing's changed to suddenly make it the truth. This is why I think that you're seeing Trump be so aggressive because remember, half the play here is Trump's ability to convince a significant portion of the American audience that you know, he was this decisive player here, that without him, we wouldn't have a peaceful outcome. And so there's this theater taking place right now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think it went on social media, wrote something along those lines. If he wasn't president now, the world would be ripped apart or something along these lines, which is usually the kind of thing you hear from an arsonist masquerading as a fireman. But but one other area that way all of this could spread the war further would be the Chinese aspect because it seems that the blockade on Iran, to some extent, at least, is aimed to target China given that they are, well, overwhelmingly so, the main importer of Iranian oil. And we also heard some comments from an American senator and also Besant that, yeah, the Chinese shouldn't get oil, and, yeah, this was kind of part of the objective.
But also threats of sanctioning Chinese banks for trading with Iran, it looks whether or not this was initially an objective or if it's just becoming a, yeah, a side effect, it nonetheless seems to be intensifying or worsening relations between The US and China as well. Not the best move probably given the problems, they're facing already with Russia and Iran. But, do you think this is contained, or do you how do you expect the Chinese to respond to this if the blockade continues?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, we need to understand that this oil this issue of oil and energy security for China is a very sensitive one because, basically, this war has exposed the soft underbelly of the Chinese economy, which is sustainable supply of of energy. You know, Iran the lack the the the cutting of Iranian oil to China is significant. There hasn't been replacements found. China needs this energy. And this now has caused a different stance.
The Chinese have been quite articulate in saying, do not challenge the dragon on issues of sovereignty. You know, Besson can say what he wants. They can sanction banks. They have to be careful because China's loaded for bear. And, you know, there's a lot of cards China can play economically now that this has become an existential issue because, you know, in the past, China went to avoid, you know, you know, you know, causing economic difficulties on the periphery of a of a larger well functioning Chinese economy.
But left unaddressed, the issue of energy security could, you know, cause great harm to the Chinese economy. So I don't think the Chinese are messing around. First of all, how many Chinese tankers has The United States turned around? The answer is none. You know, so I I think, again, this is rhetoric on the part of United States.
I think the impact is zero. I don't think we've stopped one Chinese flagged vessel nor do I think we are gonna stop any Chinese flagged vessels because there is no legal justification for this. And and China has been very strict. You know, The United Arab Emirates sent a team, high level delegation to to meet with the Chinese and they started to lecture the Chinese about Iran and the need to cut back support and they were cut off. And the Chinese foreign ministry said, you don't get to tell the dragon what to do with its, you know, with its foreign relations.
We do what we want to do when we want. We've been friends, but, you know, not friends enough that you get to tell us what to do. And and this is the Chinese approach right now. So I I think, again, Scott Bessen first of all, you have to understand we don't have a well thought out plan. If we did, we would have executed it upfront.
This is a plan that's being made up as it goes along, you know, and again, it's designed to shape perception, not reality. The perception is that the president put China in its place. The reality is the president's words and American action haven't impacted this at all. China continues to get a flow of energy from Iran, and The United States hasn't been able to stop that.
Speaker 0: If this is compelling, China to take a more forceful stand in international in international system, that's quite a horrible achievement to be made given that for decades now, they they kinda had us as key strategy not to create too many waves, not to raise their voice too much in inter international system in order not to, you know, invoke any great power rivalry. But if they're put in a situation like this where they're now, you know, forced to take some action, I mean, this is a, yeah, this is a disaster if one wanted a benign China. Just my last question, though, is about the you know, behind all the bluster, I mean, all these statements by Trump, we they were gonna they're gonna give up all of their uranium enrich uranium studies, Iranians, and we're gonna give them nothing back. They're not gonna get any money, nothing. I mean, behind all this it doesn't make much sense.
So behind all this, is there any negotiations going on which gives you any reason for optimism either with Iran or Russia for that sake, or is diplomacy you know, does it seem dead at this point?
Speaker 1: Well, we know for a fact that the peace talks in Islamabad never ended. JD Vanson, Whitcoff, and Kushner went home. The the senior Iranian delegation went home, but both sides left a number of technical experts who are continuing to work out, you know, to finalize the Islamabad memorandum of understanding as a final deal. And so, you know, think there's a I I think there's a deal here. I think we're going to see a deal.
I I think, you know, Donald Trump just has to create the perception that he that this deal wouldn't have happened without his without his decisive intervention.
Speaker 0: Well, that would be often his, you know, his crazy comments. They seem irrational, but it could be a rational move if if it's in an an expectation of a deal being made because if he thinks a deal is gonna be made, the one of the biggest constraint would be to sell a defeat to The US the American public because, you know, he, as I said before, he's got a midterm coming up. But if if he can do enough, you know, chest beating and, you know, strong man poses before the the the the peace deal, then perhaps he will this will help him sell a defeat as a victory. So it maybe he knows what he's doing. I get the impression often that he's a bit all over the place and getting more erratic, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.
But, yeah, how about the Russian issue then? Because we haven't really heard much more of the negotiations. I mean, there's still talks, but I get the impression from Moscow that they're not putting much weight into this anymore, that they don't really think it's gonna move to anywhere significant.
Speaker 1: I I think I mean, again, this this is this is analysis done in a vacuum because there's as you said, there's not much data out there to put your hands on. My feeling is that Donald Trump has given the Russians a blank check and has said, do what you need to do to get to where you need to get. And we you know, the window is not gonna be open forever, but, you know, I think Trump has said you you have, you know, this year, and you have until the November election or right before the November election to to turn what Trump wants, I believe, is a Ukrainian peace deal that he can present to the American people before the midterm elections. So he can now become the peace this is his whole theme right now. My dissonance of intervention leads to world peace.
And I you know, he keeps talking out, you know, we have overseen the greatest reset of the world, etcetera. I I think that Trump has a completely hands off posture on Ukraine and is basically giving the Russians an open door to do whatever they need to do to get this thing wrapped up so that come, you know, August, the there won't be a discussion about Ukraine giving up territory because Russia will have taken it. And I think you'll see a more fundamentally weakened in chest and chasing Ukraine and Europe. Again, I I think a Russia a decisive Russian strike against Europe would be extraordinarily demoralizing for Europe and and could help push Europe into accepting the necessity of a peace treaty. So that's what I think is happening right now.
I think Trump wants Trump needs this war to come to an end politically and this is all about politics. This is all about the politics of Donald Trump. I think he's basically giving the Russians just telling the Russians, we're not interfering. You do what you need to do. And then if the results get to where we can bring you know, what we hope you do is, you know, create the results that you'll make many of the Ukrainian objections moot, and then we can finalize it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it appears that it might be more coming to an end now in in Ukraine that is well not it can still go on for many months, but I don't think it's gonna be possible to you know, it seems like the bench is almost shifting in Russia's favor. So it's gonna be impossible to turn this around, especially after the consequences of the Iran war. So Yep. It still surprises me that none of the Europeans are picking up the phone to call the Kremlin and at least start to talk about, you know, possible solutions.
But, yeah, here we are. Anyways, thank you very much for taking time. Well, thank you very much for having me.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: Diplomacy Fails - Strait of Hormuz Shut Down Again https://youtu.be/zx-QDyvwFxU https://t.co/bXcysVEvS6
Video Transcript AI Summary
Chas Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defense, and Glenn discuss the current state of diplomacy and security in West Asia, broader great-power dynamics, and Lebanon, Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz.
Freeman argues that West Asia shows an ongoing, long-running unraveling, with a core issue being whether the United States still understands diplomacy or relies on inexperienced envoys and “the cronies or the son-in-law” rather than seasoned diplomats. He asserts that the Iranians understand diplomacy and seized an opportunity when the Strait of Hormuz was opened under Iranian-controlled conditions, which could have set the stage for a long-term management arrangement for the strait. Instead, the Trump administration’s response—doubling down on the blockade—led Iran to retract its opening, returning to essential closure and increasing pressure on global economies, including higher gasoline prices for American consumers. Freeman contends the credibility of Iran in this context is greater than that of the United States, and he speculates that the blockade may have been a pretext for a military action that did not materialize.
Freeman notes several shifting tactical realities: the U.S. blockade has drawn down the global oil market, and oil markets have changed with India paying Iranian oil in Chinese yuan, suggesting a potential move away from the petrodollar. He observes that a substantial portion of the US Navy is in the Arabian Sea or Gulf of Oman conducting the blockade, with deteriorating shipboard conditions. Iran, by contrast, appears better positioned in a war of attrition, with stored missiles and the ability to resume bombardment if needed. He mentions that Iran has oil to export and can sell it, highlighting the strategic geography beyond Hormuz.
On Gulf states, Freeman says Saudi Arabia does not approve the blockade and has been in touch with Tehran; Saudi Arabia is the GCC’s best-positioned state but remains under pressure. The UAE is caught between blocs, Oman is relatively exempt, while Saudi Arabia acts as a conduit for Kuwait and Qatar. Iran has threatened to call on Ansar al-Law/Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea if needed. Even with an open strait and sailing ships, the global oil shock remains likely, and a broader energy realignment could benefit Russia and Venezuela, with Venezuela not yet seeing a substantial production rise. Freeman emphasizes that if the Strait of Hormuz is opened as a mere tactical victory for the U.S., it would be hard to argue for a comprehensive peace process in the region.
Freeman asserts that Iran’s strategy emphasizes regime consolidation rather than collapse, with its missiles and energy reserves enabling continued pressure. He argues that China has a different position: China defends the UN Charter and the international system and benefits from a global, multinodal order. China seeks to preserve access to the Persian Gulf and aligns with Pakistan as an intermediary, while developing a broader regional strategy that can facilitate a Belt and Road integration, including energy routes and LNG imports. He notes that China is seen by regional actors as a defender of international law and a stabilizing interlocutor, contrasting with US actions that undermine the rule of law domestically and internationally. China is also doubling down on Central Asia routes and the Power of Siberia gas pipeline, with the possibility of energy swaps from Iran.
On Lebanon, Freeman describes an illegitimate Lebanese government aligned with Israel’s objectives and Hezbollah’s resistance to coercive measures. He views Israel’s strategy as destroying Hezbollah’s military and political influence in southern Lebanon, blowing bridges and imposing a Gaza-like model in Lebanon. He predicts a recurrence of a phony ceasefire with Israel continuing its operations, potentially triggering a new confrontation with the United States and Netanyahu’s government, unless the Trump administration capitulates to Israeli priorities. He frames Iran as achieving a regional peace objective through a comprehensive, region-wide approach, rather than mere truces.
Regarding diplomacy and negotiations, Freeman criticizes “fantasy foreign policy” driven by media narratives rather than real negotiations. He argues that the Islamabad meeting with Iran’s delegation was not a true negotiation, and the American side lacked expert staff and real leverage. He contrasts this with Iran’s delegation, which arrived with hundreds of knowledgeable participants and full authority. He notes that the overall approach has been amateur, with no binding documents or real settlement.
Freeman closes with reflections on historical U.S. grand strategy, noting the United States’ tradition of exporting its values, but arguing that today’s approach is inconsistent with the rule of law, international diplomacy, and lasting peace. He contends that the current trend favors Iran in the Gulf struggle and that China remains a stabilizing, influential actor amid US and Israeli actions.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is the 04/18/2026, and we are joined by Chas Freeman, the former US assistant secretary of defense. So thank you for coming back. It's always good to see you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Glenn. Good be here.
Speaker 0: So you have, you know, a lot of diplomatic and political experience from what appears to be all the major flashpoints in the world. That is you were with Kissinger in China as as interpreter in the nineteen seventies. You were The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. You also had a key role in designing the post Cold War security architecture in Europe. So I was hoping to get, yeah, your perspective on understanding the times we live in because at the moment, I don't feel feel we don't have too much diplomacy.
That is we're fighting Russia. We're fighting China. We're fighting Iran. And in every instance, it's always the assumption that we have to defeat our opponents. Our political class no longer talks about peace.
If there's any suggestions about diplomacy, it usually comes from the military, never from the diplomats. And it appears we're only pursuing peace through strength, which are, you know, fighting words. So if we take a step back, how are you assessing, I guess, the unraveling of all of these regions all at the same time?
Speaker 1: Well, I yes. Sorry. Yeah. No. I think in West Asia, which is the topic of the day, of course, the unraveling has been going on for quite some time.
But I know that there's a great deal of confusion now about the state of play. Essentially, perhaps The United States does not understand diplomacy anymore. There's no evidence that we do. We certainly don't field experienced diplomats to do important things. We send the cronies or the son-in-law of the president to no avail, the vice president to no avail.
But the Iranians clearly understand diplomacy. And they just gave Donald Trump an opportunity to declare victory and leave by opening the Strait Of Hormuz under their control, of course. But opening the Strait Of Hormuz, would have set the stage for a meeting, perhaps a conference, to discuss the long term management system for the Strait Of Hormuz. And it is clear that Iranian equities there have to be taken into account. They can't be ignored, much as we would prefer the previous regime established by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, that is increasingly ignored certainly by The United States and now by Iran.
So when the response to the opening of the strait under these controlled conditions was not an exit strategy but a doubling down on the American blockade of the Strait, Iran retracted its opening. And so we're now back to essential closure. There are several strange things about this. First, if you think of the strait as a sort of door, you know, Iran left the door slightly open, was peeking around the door. If it saw a friend coming, it would open the door in return for a payment.
If it saw someone who wasn't a friend coming, it would shut the door. So the response to this by Donald Trump was essentially completely irrational. It was to close the door and lock it, padlock it. That maximizes the pressure on every economy in world. It basically will tip the global economy into recession.
It ensures higher gasoline prices for American consumers, which is the primary concern of the president as he faces the midterm elections. And he's characteristically dealt with this whole issue with public bombast and statements that appear to be totally disconnected from reality. For example, he now claims that Iran has agreed to everything. Well, if Iran has agreed to anything, why are we doing what we're doing? Why aren't we talking?
Iran says it hasn't agreed to anything. And so, the credibility of Iran in this regard is, I'm sorry to say, as an American, much greater than that of The United States. What will happen now? We don't know. But one possible explanation for the continuation of the blockade is that the Trump administration planned to go out with some kind of military bang this weekend.
Many people have reported that there were plans to do that. And Iran upset those plans by basically offering an opening of the strait. So where do we go from here? Sooner or later, there has to be some kind of negotiation. It will not be, know, I guess I should say that one thing has been apparently at least partially resolved.
And that is the dispute over whether Lebanon is part of the make believe ceasefire that was announced a bit back, a while ago. The answer is yes, it is. And Donald Trump has now prohibited Israel from conducting further aggressive operations there. That isn't stopping the Israelis, by the way, from violating the new so called ceasefire in Lebanon. But it does answer the Iranian condition that there be a discussion and arrangement for a region wide peace, not just one between The United States and Iran or Israel and Iran.
What will happen? I don't know. My sense is that both sides are playing for time. My sense is that Iran is more likely to win in that contest than The United States. It has a great amount of oil afloat beyond the Strait Of Hormuz, which you can sell.
It won't be deprived of revenue anytime soon. Incidentally, the oil market has changed. India just paid for Iranian oil in Chinese yuan. So we're looking at we're looking at the unraveling of the petrodollar arrangement as a consequence of this. But the main thing is a substantial part of the United States Navy is now in the Arabian Sea or the Gulf Of Oman conducting a blockade.
And we're hearing reports that conditions aboard the ships are deteriorating rapidly, that the crews do not have access to basic necessities, that food is running out, that systems are breaking down. And this is not a formula for a long term sustainment of a blockade. So I and I think at the moment, it looks as though Iran is better placed than The United States in this war of attrition. I'll stop there.
Speaker 0: In terms of the Gulf States, how likely or how how would you see the likely strategy of them moving forward? Because do they have much faith in the blockade, or do they will they take a more active participation? How do you see, you know, the likelihood of Saudi Arabia, for example, joining in the fight?
Speaker 1: Well, the Saudis have been quite clear that they do not approve of the blockade. They've asked if it'd be ended. They are in touch with Tehran. Foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran have conferred at least once recently. Saudi Arabia is actually in the best position of any country in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Kuwait and Qatar are basically isolated in the Persian Gulf. The Emirates is caught between the American and the Iranian blockades. Oman is basically exempt from both, but not a major player. Saudi Arabia is now the major conduit for the exports and imports of both Kuwait and Qatar because it has access to the Red Sea. The Iranians, of course, have declared that if necessary, they will call on Ansar al Law, the Houthis, to once again close the Bab El Mandeb and blockade the Red Sea.
So the Saudis are under considerable pressure as are their neighbors. But so far, Saudi Arabia is still exporting about six or 7,000,000 barrels of oil a day through the port of Yanbu. Iran had struck a pumping station on the East West pipeline in Saudi Arabia, but that seems to have been repaired. I take that as a warning shot that if necessary, Iran can shut down Saudi exports as well. Meanwhile, even if the strait were in fact opened and ships were sailing through without difficulty, the global oil market is in for a major shock because it takes three weeks, a month, for these ships to arrive at their destination.
And around the world, there is desperate search for alternative sources of energy. This is working out very well for Russia, which is once again, exempted from sanctions and therefore able to increase its oil exports. It may be a boon to the American control of Venezuela as well. But we have yet to see any significant increase in Venezuelan production and exports. So Donald Trump, by opting to padlock the door to the Persian Gulf, is taking a huge risk both domestically in terms of his politics and internationally.
And I would note that, as I said, if you were pursuing purely American interest, if it really was America first in West Asia, you would have accepted the opening of the strait and found that as an excuse to start something like the fictitious peace process that existed between the Israelis and Palestinians only in the minds of Westerners. I mean, there were no effective negotiations. But the peace process became an excuse for not resorting to violence. And the same thing could happen in the Persian Gulf with the Strait Of Hormuz. When and if there is a serious meeting about that issue, then I think there's going to have to be some kind of international regime agreed with Iran.
That is something like the Dardanelles treaty, guess, that recognizes an Iranian role in the management of the strait but establishes agreed rules of engagement there and a regulatory mechanism of some sort that prevents an abuse of Iranian power of the sort that we have now seen. In any event, the bottom line is of the many different shifting objectives The United States and Israel have put forward, none have been achieved. Iran has been pushed into a nuclear weapons program, I believe. Rather than had it removed, It has not had regime change. It has had regime consolidation.
Its missiles are not exhausted. It has an ample supply with which to restart the bombardment of Israel and its neighbors if it is required to do so. The Strait Of Hormuz, which was open, is now closed and under Iranian control. Israel has failed to annex Southern Lebanon, and interestingly, with the opposition of Donald Trump being the key factor there. And that's the last gamble that Donald Trump has taken.
He's now caught between his Zionist donors in The United States who want the war to continue, who support Netanyahu's desire for the war to go on, and his Israeli blackmailers under the Epstein files. How long can he sustain a defiance of Netanyahu and the Israeli government, we shall see. That is another factor in terms of clocks ticking, not to the advantage of The United States.
Speaker 0: How about the way diplomacy is done now? Is is this how it used to be? Because I'm thinking when we had the when they announced the ceasefire, I know that it's not always documents being released, the conditions of a ceasefire, but first, we were told that it would be based on Iran's 10 plan, but then we never heard anything about that 10 plan again. There were disputes about whether or not Lebanon was included in that ceasefire, even though the Pakistani prime minister insisted it was. And even after this, you know, you would also assume that there would be some clarity around whether or not The US imposing a blockade on Iran would be a breach of the ceasefire given that it's an act of war.
But even after all of this, we see now the whole negotiations Trump takes to social media and sends out these messages. The the blockade is open. It it will not be put back in place, and the Iranians will give up all their nuclear material. And soon thereafter, you know, the Iranians, again, also now communicating on social media, says, well, none of this is actually true, and now because The US didn't lift its blockade, Iran reimposes the the blocking of the Strait Of Hormuz. It's just it's very it's it's it's very confusing, the whole thing.
It's just it would have been is it usual not to have any common documents, something that can be put out there? Because at this moment, it's it's like teenagers quarreling over Twitter. It's it's very yeah. It doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 1: This is yet another example of fantasy foreign policy. That is foreign policy by media manipulate manipulation rather than by a serious effort to reach an understanding with the other side. We've seen this pattern again and again and again. We've seen it in Ukraine with the talks in Moscow. We've seen it in Gaza with the phony ceasefire there.
We've seen it now in Lebanon. We've seen it with Iran. No, it is not usual. It is not usual to declare an agreement when there is none. There's been no meeting of the minds in any of these instances.
And this just underscores the amateur hour that American diplomacy has entered. Our envoys are totally inexperienced, not knowledgeable of the regions they're dealing with, novices in terms of their understanding of history, geography, and so forth, and not up to the technical specifications. So what we saw in Islamabad in the meeting between J. D. Vance and Mr.
Ali Baf and Araq Chi, the Foreign Minister of Iran, was not a negotiation. It was an American performative act intended to imply that there was a negotiation which didn't exist. The Iranian side arrived with 70 some people in their delegation with the full authority, apparently, of the authorities in Tehran, including the IRGC, the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to conduct a serious negotiation and reach agreement. They had technical staff with them who were prepared to discuss issues in detail. The American side was heavy on politically connected people and very low on experts.
And it was essentially there to present an ultimatum. But it was an ultimatum that had no really effective leverage behind it. The assumption by the or the American delegation had to bow to the preposterous claims of Donald Trump, the sole now functioning authority in The United States on these matters, that somehow The United States had won the war, confusing death and destruction of the Heg Sethean variety with victory in the Clauserizian or Sunza sense. Namely, the purpose of war is to achieve adjustments in relations and policies that is a political result, not simply to cut up the enemy and inflict suffering on the enemy. So Iran has shown that it can take an enormous amount of punishment and continue to fight.
His full strategy, as I've mentioned before, was the same as Muhammad Ali's Broke a Dobe strategy, that is allow the enemy to punch you as hard as it could in the effort to exhaust it and weaken it and to wait for the moment to deliver your own countermeasures and counter blow. So that's where we are. Iran has not changed in that regard. It can still and it would does does not want more punishment, but it can dig it. It is not clear that Israel and The United States have the capacity to do the same.
The ability to intercept missiles by both has been greatly depleted. Iran has successfully kept American major capital ships, aircraft carriers, at a distance of 500 or 600 miles, 1,000 kilometers or so. Because if they come within any closer to Iran, they are subject to attack and they're avoiding it. As I indicated, the situation in an aboard ship, the ships that are conducting the blockade is apparently deteriorating fairly rapidly. Iran, on the other hand, is now digging out its troves of stored missiles that where the tunnels were blocked by American and Israeli bombing.
It is preparing to enable those to be fired. So I don't I think this is a war of attrition. And we're very poorly fit suited to such a war. We don't have the industrial base to immediately replenish what we have expended. Iran may have such an industrial base underground.
There's every indication that it does. So here we have a strange situation in which the most powerful military in the world and its cadet in Israel are unable to overcome a what is basically an isolated and not very strong Iranian military.
Speaker 0: But you also have a fairly strong background from China, and I was wondering how you read the Chinese response there because they're quite quiet and cautious like they well, they always are. You know, this either this could be just a more peaceful nature or they can, of course, just see that time is on their side. That is do not do not cause too much disruption in the international system. But it seems like a lot of the things being done now targets the the Chinese that is cutting blocking Iranian oil going to Iranian oil going to China or these threats now of sanctioning Chinese banks or trading with Iran because the Iranians are allegedly terrorists. Even you have people like Scott Bessent going out, you know, warning the Chinese they're not gonna get in more Iranian oil.
This is you know, the US Navy stopping Chinese ships, civilian vessels from picking up oil. This is, you know, this is a clear escalation, and I was just curious. How do you see the Chinese position? I mean, are they does this reflect the weakness? Will they have to yield some to US demands, or do you think they're gonna be pressured to take a more harder stance?
Sorry. As always, a very yeah. Big big question. So
Speaker 1: Quite a few questions. Yes. Yeah. Well, the Chinese have many interests at stake here. The major one you referred to, and that is that they have emerged as the defender of the UN Charter International Law and the international system, whereas The United States is the despoiler of that system.
The Chinese have a big stake in this maintenance of the system which brought them to wealth and power. That is the system pioneered by The United States, sponsored by The United States, the Pax Americana, but without The United States. The Chinese want to root this in a global multinodal system. Anyway, that's one thing. The second thing is, of course, the Chinese do have a stake in sustaining their access to the Persian Gulf.
In that regard, they're not different from any other country on the planet. And essentially what The United States has done is declare economic war on every country on the planet. So why wouldn't the Chinese sit back and enjoy watching The United States isolate itself and make enemies where it formerly had friends? So that's the second thing. There's a lot of very silly armchair strategic reasoning going on in The United States that somehow China's existence is at stake or that what we're doing in The Middle East is a fatal blow to China or a strategic setback.
But that is not true on several grounds. First, the Chinese are in fact well positioned because of their leadership in renewable energy and their deposits of coal, as well as their very, very large strategic petroleum reserve to ride out any crisis quite well. It is costing China some relationships in the region because the world, and East Southeast Asia in particular, has become dependent on Chinese exports of diesel and jet fuel. And these have now been suspended on the principle that charity begins at home, I guess. So but China's not China will will be hurt, of course, but it can manage the level of pain that it will suffer.
The second element here is that China is being pushed closer to Russia. The power of Siberia's gas pipeline discussed for many years and not pursued, in fact, is now being pursued. The Chinese and the Russians are conferring frequently on strategic matters and acting in concert in the UN and elsewhere. So there are other factors here. China's close relationship, not an alliance but a protected state relationship with Pakistan has been activated.
Pakistan has emerged as the essential mediator, at least passing messages between Tehran and Washington, and vice versa. To call this a negotiation is, I think, stretching things. It's message passing. But it's very important. And as I've mentioned before, Pakistan also convened the Egyptians, Turks, and Saudis in a meeting which empowered it to go to Beijing to get Chinese backing for an effort at conciliation in The Gulf.
But also to plan the development of a military industry complex in the region that would be independent of Western, specifically American, dependence. So lots of things going on. None of them really hurt Chinese influence. In fact, on the contrary, China is emerging globally in image terms, as I said, as the defender of the international order as The United States destroys it. China is regarded clearly by the countries in the region as a valuable interlocutor diplomatically.
It has a major interest in opening the Strait Of Hormuz and will play a role in arranging whatever is done eventually to regulate that Strait. And I'll just end it by making an obvious point that it will not have escaped the Chinese understanding that what Iran has done in the Strait Of Hormuz, they could do in the Strait Of Taiwan. So, you know, this cuts both ways. They may have less interest in depriving Iran of its sovereignty in the Strait than any other country does because of that complication. We have Donald Trump apparently going to Beijing.
Not clear what he claims it will be a great moment in history, But then every moment is great is a great moment in history for him apparently. And we will see what happens. My sense is that The US China relationship is in pursuit of minimal stability and nothing else. That is to say each side wants to avoid making unnecessary trouble for the other or provoking the other into doing something that could be potentially disastrous. And that brings me back to the question of Chinese shipping to The Gulf going through the Strait Of Hormuz.
It's not clear to me what the rules of engagement for the American blockaders are with regard to shipping of nuclear harmed superpowers. I hope we never find out how far they are prepared to go. Now the last thing, the response of the Chinese to the assaults on Iranian sovereignty, territorial integrity, and diplomacy have are apparently evoking a direct Chinese response. We're told that China will supply greater air defense capabilities to Iran. That would be logical.
It's his right to do China's right to do that as a non belligerent, a neutral country, very much resembling Lend Lease and other things The United States did in the years approaching World War II when we declared neutrality, but nonetheless took it side in defense of Great Britain and other countries in Europe against the Nazis. So I think the Chinese have a stake in the survival of Iran, but it's a complicated one because of the legal issues connected with control of straits. And the Chinese are, for the most part, in observance of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, they have one aberrant aspect of behavior, which is that they apply straight baselines where they are not permitted by the treaty. That's a technical issue which probably nobody listening to this wants to learn about, so I won't explain it.
Speaker 0: Fair enough. But the the a a key interest of of China in Iran isn't just the wider geopolitics that is of The United States, the oil supplies and all. But a key project for Iran has also been the development of this Belt and Road Initiative, this vast, you know, trillion dollar infrastructure projects which are connecting the Eurasian continent. One of them, at least. They have also other projects, of course, but but Iran seems to be a key node in this.
And I also noticed that The US and Israelis have attacked a lot of railroads, ports. Some of this seems to fit within or affect Russia's and Iran's and India's international North South transportation corridors, but others are also connected to China's Belt and Road Initiative as, again, Iran is an important node. Do you think this is deliberate to undermine the, you know, this this larger projects of integrating duration powers, or it is just because, well, infrastructure is used to keep the economy going and, you know, moving militaries. How do you see this?
Speaker 1: I think it's both issues, both a strike at the Belt and Road Initiative and an effort to destroy the underpinnings of Iran's economy. I note that among the strikes was one on the port in the Caspian, which is a central element in the East West Belt and Road Initiative. It is interesting. The Chinese have clearly responded to the increased danger maritime traffic by doubling down on their focus in Central Asia. It's not just the power of Siberia pipeline that is being emphasized, but other routes.
By the way, there is a pipeline that extends from Turkmenistan, is a major producer of gas, to China. And that pipeline can be supplied with swapped gas from Iran. So Iran does already have one outlet to its north for energy exports. It's not completely bottled up in the Persian Gulf. So I think geopolitically the influence of this war is quite obvious.
First of all, every country now is more interested in electrifying its economy and getting away from dependence on imported oil and gas. That's happening even in The United States despite our undying love for the internal combustion engine. So we've created a huge market for Chinese technology, solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, and for electric vehicles in which China leads the world. And so this is one big effect. Nobody is going to trust freedom of navigation again after saying the world's most powerful navy violate that principle.
Know, Iran has a point in terms of The United States conducting a blockade against the Strait Of Hormuz. This is a violation of a ceasefire agreement, clearly. It is, as you said, an act of war, and it is illegal, therefore. So The United States finds itself in the odd position of confronting a China that stands for what we used to stand for, namely the rule of law. And not terribly convincingly, perhaps, because China lacks the rule of law effectively internally.
And it's a real question whether a country that does not respect the rule of law domestically can be trusted to respect it internationally. There's clearly a relationship between the two domains. The fact that The United States is violating international law has something to do with why unconstitutional practices and illegal practices are growing in our domestic context. So this is all very interesting. And one other point is we see the beginning of the development of ad hoc conferences as a means of dealing with issues that the United Nations is clearly incapable of dealing with.
So we have a group of what, 40 countries meeting under French and British auspices to discuss what to do about the Strait Of Hormuz. And they can't come up with a military solution because, first of all, there is none. Second, they don't have the capacity to project power effectively anymore. Therefore, they're going to have to come up with a diplomatic strategy if they're capable of it. I mean, so far they've been incapable of doing that.
On other issues, Ukraine war, for example, European security architecture, Gaza, Israeli genocide, the security of the state of Lebanon. And of course, I should also comment on the discussions between the Lebanese and Israeli governments in Washington and what they do and do not mean. But I'll leave that for later if you're interested.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I was actually next in line of my questions, but I I did yeah. Just have a thought when when you argued about the rule rule of law domestically and internationally. Often, values, they they don't necessarily have to transition from the domestic to the international.
Academic American academic, John Hertz, he wrote in I think it was 1950 or maybe '52, he wrote that countries that are more the more democratic countries are internally, the more they often resist the democracy internationally. That is because Yeah. They have perceived themselves to have better values, so they wanna protect the values from the rule of the majority. So Right. But so so it sounds strange, but it does make sense at some level, I guess.
Speaker 1: But Well, this is a is a is a this it's a resonance between the two domains. You're quite right. And The United States, of course, has been fiercely defensive about our own sovereignty, even as we tread on others' sovereignty. We don't belong to major international institutions like the International Criminal Court or and so forth. And we are serial violators of the principles we ourselves propose for the international order.
Why? Because we don't want foreigners telling us what to do. Well, we tell foreigners what to do, I guess. Foreigners increasingly pay no attention. And that is emphatically the case with mister Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
We shall see what happens there.
Speaker 0: I was I just had a talk with ambassador Jack Matlock, and he was making the point the reason why The US was so fiercely opposed to the Soviets was not because they were communistic and choose themselves, but because they were trying to impose this on everyone else. He's making the point that today, he said, we we are the ones who are Yeah. You know, ideological. We're the one who are imposing our way of governments on all other countries and pursuing this, you know, limited sovereignty. So it is interesting, yeah, that ideology of a hegemon can come with this kind of principles that seeks to promote, I guess, sovereign inequality amongst states.
I did wanna get to the Lebanon issue, though, because you mentioned, well, Israel seemed to have a goal if if well, I interpret it as such as essentially putting a massive occupation on Southern Lebanon based on the villages they're destroying and, well, more or less openly saying so. How do you see the strategy playing out now that the ceasefire in Lebanon is tied up to the ceasefire with Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, obviously, the Israeli government is very frustrated, particularly by the intervention of Donald Trump and by the manner in which he announced that intervention, which was unilaterally on social media and not consulting with the Israelis. One has to assume there was a private communication to Israel backing this up and threatening to cut off the weapons for this invasion. But that is a matter of conjecture. Anyway, let me make a comment first about before I get to Lebanon, let me make a comment about messianic foreign policy. I think Jeb Hadlock is correct.
But it's equally true that during the Cold War, we had a messianic approach, at least rhetorically. We tried to export both democracy and capitalism to areas of the world that had been liberated from colonialism. And there was quite a contest between us and the Soviets. We had the better model, as it turned out. And Francis Fukuyama rather overstated things when he claimed that history had ended, but there was a break.
There was a moment in history. There was that Seidenvented. There was a turning point when the Soviet system collapsed of its own defects. But I would argue that we have consistently, The United States has consistently from our very birth been messianic in terms of trying to export our values. We began with a revolution and continued over the succeeding centuries to insist that others do things our way because it was superior.
I won't get into the history of missionary activity in places like China, but this is very much part of the American character. I thought one of the great moments in our diplomatic history was when in the Shanghai Communique issued by Zhou Enlai and Richard Nixon on 02/28/1972, we declared that The United States and China had fundamentally different values, different socioeconomic systems and ideologies, but that that should not impede our cooperating on matters of common interest. That is a proper diplomatic approach, and I only wish it were being applied today. With regard to Lebanon, first of all, this is a discussion between an essentially illegitimate Lebanese government and Israel. And I say essentially illegitimate because that government is set up along the confessional lines that the French imposed on Lebanon during the colonial era.
So the president is always a Maronite Christian. The speaker of the parliament is always Shia, and so on and so forth. And and the the the demographics in Lebanon have changed fundamentally. And now Shiites are a majority And the major force in Lebanese politics and representation in parliament is Hezbollah. It's not just an army, it's a political movement, a political party with enormous authority.
And in many ways, it's fascist. I'm not very fond of it. I mean, it does it is a state within a state and performs a lot of functions for those under its authority that the government can't perform. But one of those functions is the defense of Lebanon as a state against Israeli aggression, which the Lebanese army is incapable of doing. So here we have a talk between Hezbollah, of course, is not part of these talks.
It has repudiated them to claim that they're illegitimate and that it won't be bound by them. It will take advantage of anything that comes out of them, of course, if it can. But essentially, we have a Lebanese government which is threatened by Hezbollah domestically. And it used to deal with this issue by cleaving to Iran, who was part of an Iranian Hezbollah operated sphere of influence. Now it's trying to replace Iran with Israel, basically, enlist Israel against Hezbollah.
And Israel's purposes are very clear: they want to destroy Hezbollah in disarmament. And by doing so, they would remove any obstacle to their military operations in Lebanon. And it's very clear that in Southern Lebanon, they've blown up all the bridges over the Itani River and other rivers severing Lebanese South from the rest of the country. They are applying the model of Gaza to that region, That is destroying physical infrastructure, murdering anyone who they can strike, and driving people out. Unlike Gaza, people in Lebanon have somewhere to go.
You know, we've had some very, I should say, frightening objectionable statements from people like Jared Kushner about why don't we just bulldoze part of the Negev Desert and move all the Gazans there. But the fact is the Gazans have stayed put. The Lebanese have not. They have moved out. Now they're coming back.
And Israel has actually established a parallel to the so called yellow line in Gaza, an invisible border. And it shoots people who cross that border because it declares them to be terrorists. Because otherwise, why would they be crossing the border? I mean they must have something nefarious in mind. Maybe they're just trying to get home.
But anyway, so what we're seeing in Southern Lebanon is a repeat of Gaza. And that should be pretty sobering because it suggests that Gaza was not an aberration. It's a pattern that Israel proposes to impose on other areas that it chooses to annex. And of course it is a state unique. It has no borders, no agreed frontiers whatsoever, constantly expanding.
This is it falls short of the definition of the normal definition of a state. Lebanon is a great caution in many ways. But what's going to happen there? My guess is that we will see a repetition of Raza then. That is to say, a phony ceasefire will not be will cause will Israel insist that everyone else ceasefire while it continues to fire
Speaker 0: at them
Speaker 1: and to pursue its strategic objectives. And this is probably going to lead to some kind of blow up between the Trump administration and Israel, or more likely the capitulation of Donald Trump to his Israeli minders. So that's what I see happening. I do go back to the point, however, that the proclamation of a ceasefire and its apparent backing with some sort of threat to Israel do represent a victory for Iran in terms of insisting that there be a comprehensive region wide peace, not just a ceasefire or a truce between it and the countries that attacked it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I saw the message by Trump insisting that well, he told them that there would have to be ceasefire in Lebanon and, yeah, Israel, something along the line better follow what I told them. I'm not sure if that has to shed some of the narrative that Israelis are controlling him to, you know, search some autonomy or power or if it's an actual threat, maybe it's a bit of both. But it
Speaker 1: Well, it's an indication, Glenn, of his desperation to get out of the mess that he's made in a war with Iran where he basically enlisted to implement Israeli objectives. There have never been any clear American objectives in this war. It's been all over the place. And so he wants out. And as I pointed out before, his training in New York real estate had two elements.
One was that you made deals by through coercion, bullying. Now you threatened to bankrupt or ruin your proposed partner in a deal, and that's how you got a deal. That was Roy Cohn's lesson to Donald Trump. You never accept defeat. You always punch back.
You don't have any regard for the facts. You make up facts because the court of public opinion is more important in the real estate context perhaps in New York than the underlying reality. Unfortunately for Donald Trump that is not true internationally. The reality persists even if you misdescribe it or ignore it. Second element in his training is that when you get in trouble, you declare bankruptcy and walk away with no obligations.
And that's what he'd like to do with the Persian Gulf. That's why I'm so surprised that he didn't have the wit to accept the Iranian opening of the strait as a victory. It would have been a perfect excuse for him to say, I intimidated them. I imposed my will on them. They had to open the strait.
This is a major achievement. Give me the Nobel Peace Prize. Ask some Norwegian to invite me to Oslo, and so on and so forth. So he didn't do that, which suggests that his Israeli minders were still guiding the policy.
Speaker 0: So likely back to war then. Now what is a ceasefire? Well, doubtfully will lead to an actual peace agreement, I guess. But
Speaker 1: Not likely, but, you know, the one of the amazing things about the roller coaster we've been on in this war is the gullibility of so many people. I mean, look at Trump's ability to manipulate the market. Quite extraordinary. And people's wishful thinking that the best is about to occur because Donald Trump proclaimed it would is really remarkable. I've never seen anything quite like it.
And I'm a minor investor. Having emerged from my government service penniless, I've been trying to rectify that condition with some success. So I follow the market, and it is very much manipulated by this charismatic, slightly insane, maybe more than slightly insane man in the in the White House.
Speaker 0: I still can't believe he was able to talk down the oil prices by $15 by simply claiming that more or less Iranian capitulated the Strait Of Hormuz. And it's now it's quite extraordinary after all all these years. People still believe his words. I mean, the Iranians still even had to come out arguing that, you know, reality isn't shaped in social media posts. It's on the ground.
You know, it what Trump says isn't real. You know, they kinda dismiss it, and then no. And still, the market seems, yeah, overly optimistic, if not gullible. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. I've said enough to hang myself, I think. I wish you all the best and urge you to keep up the good work of providing access to people who, myself excluded, know what they're talking about.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you again for taking the time out of your Saturday. So cheers.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Daniel Davis: Breaking News - Iran Reopens the Strait of Hormuz https://youtu.be/RIr_Rri0h6c https://t.co/FqgGg1B8pQ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Lt. Col. Daniel Davis and Glenn (Speaker 0) discuss the rapidly evolving situation around the Strait of Hormuz, the Lebanon ceasefire, and the broader implications for war, diplomacy, and global energy.
- Iran asserts the Strait of Hormuz is open, contingent on conditions tied to the Lebanon ceasefire. Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi said the strait would be open “in conformity to the conditions that were set when they did the original ceasefire,” and the period of that ceasefire “expires… local time” in a few days. Iran’s stance includes three conditions: ships must be commercial, passage of a military ship is prohibited, ships and cargo must not be linked to any belligerent state; ships must pass through the route designated by Iran to avoid mines; passage must be coordinated with Iranian forces responsible for the passage, acknowledging Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps control of the strait.
- The United States position is contrasted: President Trump stated, via Truth Social, that there is “no truth” to a deal reported by Axios about unfreezing Iranian assets in exchange for reprocessed material, and asserted he would not give any funds. Trump suggested he’d personally press to obtain the reprocessed material. He also claimed Iran promised never to close the Strait again. Iran’s side emphasizes a two-way street and that the strait’s openness depends on their terms, implying an incompatible dynamic with Trump’s one-way demand.
- The Lebanese ceasefire is central to the conditions for Hormuz opening, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ibrahim Al-Faqqar warning that if the naval blockade continues, it would be a violation of the ceasefire. This sets up a potential contradiction: the Strait may be “open,” but the openness is conditioned on Lebanon and on how the blockade is treated.
- Market reaction: oil dropped about 12% on the announcements, though observers warn the details matter greatly and a true opening depends on mutual compliance and ongoing events.
- Military and diplomatic dynamics: both sides are preparing for renewed hostilities. The US has increased interceptor and offensive missiles and prepared systems (JASMs, Tomahawks, SM variants). Secretary of Defense and Trump indicate a readiness to resume hostilities when the ceasefire ends, though President Trump also notes possible diplomatic maneuvers. Iran is reportedly excavating tunnels, refurbishing underground missile facilities, and moving assets, while the US is reinforcing with ships and air traffic. Diplomatic efforts are occurring with multilateral engagement, signaling negotiations could extend beyond the current window.
- Ground invasion scenarios: a US ground invasion of Iran is deemed physically impossible or highly impractical. Estimates suggest requiring 400,000–500,000 troops, with Iran’s mountainous terrain and fortified positions providing a lethal environment. Even efforts to seize coastal sites like Hormuz or Bandar Abbas would be costly and strategically indefensible, potentially yielding only temporary gains.
- Endgame options presented by Davis as the three main paths for President Trump: (1) negotiate a settlement on terms minimally acceptable to Iran—likely including control of the strait, security guarantees, and reparations; (2) a sudden “firestorm” of bombing and energy-system strikes to coerce concessions; (3) maintain the blockade and pursue a prolonged economic pressure strategy, wagering on longer-term pain. All options carry significant downsides for the United States and global markets.
- Economic and global risk: even a diplomatic breakthrough could leave lasting effects on energy, fertilizer supply, and broader economic stability. Experts warn of a potential global recession or even depression if the crisis persists or worsens, due to disruptions in oil, fertilizers, and related sectors.
- The discussion closes with cautious optimism about diplomatic space, balanced by realism about the profound challenges and the likelihood that the ultimate outcome remains uncertain, with substantial economic and geopolitical risks no matter which path is pursued.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by lieutenant colonel Daniel Davis, a four times combat veteran and host of the Daniel Davis deep dive YouTube show, which I will leave a link to in the description. So thank you for coming back on. We see, yeah, a lot of developments. Iran declared that the Strait Of Hormuz is open.
Trump has apparently tweeted that it's open. It will never be closed again, although Trump will keep the blockade on Iran. So what exactly is happening? Is this peace, or may that be a bit premature?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's way premature. There there's a ton of things that have to happen right now. Number one, foreign minister Abbas Arakshi this morning, when he announced that the Strait Of Hormuz was back open again in conformity to the conditions that were set when they did the original ceasefire was contingent upon the fact that there was now a ceasefire in Lebanon. So they said, okay. Now that you did that, we're gonna do this.
And then he specified for the period of the ceasefire, which expires, I think, in The US time midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday morning, I think, local time. So that only gives us a few days, number one, before it to be open. So nobody none of these tankers, none of these companies, none of these countries are gonna just start flying tankers through The Gulf right now, I think. Now there there could be some that are probably that are already full that have been just floating around there that probably would love to get out. And so you may get some, but there's not exactly gonna be a flood of people coming out because none of the conditions have been met.
Then you had immediately president Trump, in response to an Axios report that came out and said that there's a deal on the table where The US would pay $20,000,000,000 for the reprocessed material. It wouldn't be characterized like that. It would be a reef unfreezing of Iranian assets in exchange for them to deliver all of the 400 and something kilograms of reprocessed 60% material, etcetera, Trump immediately put out another truth social and said, nope. No truth to that, whatsoever. I'm gonna get all of that reprocessed stuff.
I will not give $1 for it. We will not release any of the funds, etcetera, which seems to just, you know, take the oxygen right out of what should have been an opportunity because the fact that the president had put a lot of pressure, and he specifically pointed out that he put pressure on Israel to tell them to have this ceasefire, and he she said, I something like I told him to do it in all caps or something, and they're just gonna have to be quiet. I can't remember the phrase he used right off the hand, but he was definitely emphatic that he told Israel to have this, but then went out to links to say that that's not connected with the opening of the Strait Of Hormuz. I I don't know if he just wants to have credit for it. They're like, no.
No. I did this on my own. It wasn't because of that. I don't know. Abbas Arakshi said it was definitely because of that.
And in fact, the, the foreign ministry spokesman, Ibrahim Al Fakkar, for Iran says this is contingent upon the implementation of certain terms and conditions that the ceasefire in Lebanon and if the naval blockade continues, it will be considered a violation of the ceasefire. So he's saying that The US, can't keep its blockade open or it's gonna be a violation, but president Trump said it would continue. So he's saying the Strait Of Hormuz is open for all the traffic we want out, but it's gonna continue to be closed for the Iranian traffic. So, we'll wait and see how that's gonna work out, but the Iranian side said, even this is contingent upon three things. He said, one, that the ships be commercial and that passage of a military ship is prohibited and that the ships and their cargo not be linked to any belligerent state, so that's a pretty big limitation.
The ships pass through the route designated by the Iran because apparently there's some, mines in there, so they wanna make sure it doesn't get hit by a mine. And then it said the ships must be coordinated with the Iranian forces responsible for this passage as the US Central Command confirmed before the war that control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps over the Strait Of Hormuz. So we'll see how this actually transmits because you have both sides saying very different things. Now the the oil market is thrilled. I mean, it dropped 12% almost immediately upon these two announcements, but, you know, the the the devil's in the details that they say, and these are pretty big devils.
Speaker 0: I agree. It's like always, it's yeah. It's it's sold us great optimism, and I think Trump is also good at talking down the oil prices. But, yeah, as I said, it might be a bit premature. At the same time, though, we see that, yeah, the Lebanon ceasefire, well, is unlikely to hold, and there's also indication that The US might be preparing for new renewed hostilities.
They're also now talking of a possible ground invasion. Do you think this is put on hold now that, well, this seemingly the negotiations are moving forward, or do you think this is, you know, not a little pause before we move on?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Everything is moving concurrently. That there's there's move in the diplomatic realm. There's move in the political realm, and there's move on the military realm. Everything is going forward as though none of the other things are gonna succeed, and and they'll they'll execute whichever one seems to and this is all parties, whichever one seems to give their their side the best chance.
So there is no question. We've seen open source reporting that the Iranian side has been doing all kinds of excavation. A lot of the tunnel systems we've hit, a lot of these mountain sides, a lot of these underground missile cities, they're doing reprocessing work. They're also moving, assets around and probably in from one tunnel to another or something like that to to cross level. They're getting ready for more.
They're probably as fast as they can, probably manufacturing more drones and more missiles to, you know, to the extent that they're able to do that. And the The US side is definitely doing the same thing. We've seen lots of air traffic. Additional forces have been sent to the region, additional ships. So so we're definitely continuing to build up, and and every indication is to include secretary Warren yesterday saying we are locked and loaded and ready to go when this ceasefire comes to an end.
President Trump yesterday in front of the White House was specifically asked, when the ceasefire period comes to an end, are you gonna resume hostilities? Without hesitation, he said, yes. Definitely. Now he's probably saying that to add negotiations pressure or whatever, but that's what he said. That's what the secretary of war said, and this is what the US military is doing.
So they had been radically and dramatically sending additional interceptor missiles, offensive missiles, whether that's the JASMs, the the Tomahawks, the s m the s I think it's s m twos, s m threes, all kinds of ranges of weapon systems have been restocked so that in the event that the order is given, then they will re reengage again and continue on the war with where it was. So everything is happening concurrently, and then, of course, the the diplomats are are hard at work, and so, obviously, lots of things behind the scenes have been going on. President Trump mentioned a number of, Middle Eastern powers thanking them this morning on Truth Social after he made that, indicating that there is multilateral diplomacy going on where everybody's trying to find a way out of this. So the question is, which is gonna succeed? And and we've got such a narrow window.
We're talking four days before this comes into an to an end here unless the sides agree to extend it, which I think is probably 75 probability because both sides had some advantage in doing that, both in more military preparation as well as more oxygen and more space for negotiations. But, I mean, again, when you see that the conditions being set by Trump and by the Iranian side on what it means that the strait is open are incompatible. So is one side gonna give or the other? Because otherwise, the strait isn't really open, if if the two sides don't agree. So and then then the push and the pudding, then we'll see on these trackers how many ships actually go out.
And is there a flood of ships going out or not? I mean, that that and so far, nothing is but we've had a bunch of dueling social media posts. So we'll see what actually happens on the ground.
Speaker 0: But still, the this contrast or and also this Truth Social post by Trump, they being very explicit. Yeah. The Iranians have opened up. We will not end our blockade. You know, it, again, it could just be a show of strength or, you know, appealing to his own audience because he really has to sell more or less a victory that The US is in the driver's seat.
But in in Iran, though, if they see this as a complete breach and, yeah, that doesn't fit within the, yeah, the wider agreement, do you how do you expect or do you expect them to follow through with this, or why why suddenly did the Iranians become so lenient in terms of being prepared to meet these demands?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we'll see how lenient they are. I mean, that that statement by their foreign ministry spokesman didn't sound very lenient. It sounded very, very limiting, and very exacting and said, hey. Either it's a two way street or it's a no way street. So that's why I say it's incompatible with what Trump said because he said it's a one way street, my way.
And you're gonna open up everything, and I'm gonna keep everything closed, but that's the opposite of what the Iranians are saying. So we'll see what what actually transpires. And maybe it's not even open at all. Maybe this this is just, like I said, dueling social media posts that don't translate to anything happening on the ground. That that's a big problem here because Trump has all been declared an end.
Trump also said Iran promised they would never close the Strait Of Hormuz again. He promised they are definitely gonna give us all of their nuclear dust, as he calls it. No word on any of that from from the Iranian side. So one has to wonder what what is all president Trump's confidence based on? Is he is he letting the cat out of the bag?
Is he letting people know what's actually secretly going on behind the scenes, and later on, we'll find out that's true? Or is this just stuff that he hopes is true, and he's trying to say it by if I say it enough, it'll become true. Unfortunately, we got to experience both of those kinds of things happening, so we don't know what that's gonna mean either. Bottom line is that there's a lot of verbal action, a lot of written words, but so far, no physical action. And in fact, speaking of The US blockade, I was looking this morning at one of those ship trackers that tracks all the traffic coming in and out of The Gulf, and and they did like a a super fast motion that looked at all the traffic in the three days, the I think the last three days of The US blockade, and they said that there are still a number of ships that are US sanctioned ships that have gone out of The Gulf.
We claim that 13 ships or 14 had been turned back, but the graphic on the ground shows that actually quite a number. And I don't remember the exact number, but it showed them physically moving through The Gulf and out past the blockade line. So, mean, you tell me. Is it has it been blockaded or not? I don't know.
Speaker 0: It's hard to tell. It's such a war of narratives that reality, yeah, becomes difficult to see. But it it does seem very unlikely, though, that Iranians would give up their nuclear material for nothing in return because then they would only leave themselves weaker and with a worse hand to play later on.
Speaker 1: And, you know, and I I mean, I'll I'll go so far as to say there's zero chance of that, that they're just gonna hand that unless and if they turn that over, there's gonna be something substantial in return. I think the days are over when Iran is just saying, alright. We'll do what we're told. We'll we'll we'll capitulate, and we'll submit an order to end the fighting here. I think that they that what happened with Operation Midnight Hammer, the Israeli attack in 2025, and then now this one has led them to conclude that it's pointless to to ever trust the US is gonna do something willingly or that by them being, self restrained, that that's gonna restrain us.
I think they now see that it will only encourage us to do more later on after we get more ammunition restocked or whatever. So I I don't think they're gonna let that go, and it is a major point unless they get something pretty significant in return, something that has even a version of a security guarantee and some kind of reparation. So even when they're talking about opening up the straight here, apparently, that does not mean that they're not gonna be charging a toll even for stuff that they allow out. They still have to have that going on because they're gonna try to make, you know, some revenue as well. But, you know, there's a there's these signs and billboards all over buildings in in Tehran, billboards where there's this hand holding hold of the the Strait Of Hormuz, and I think that's that's emerging as a symbol of their resistance and defiance.
It's saying, we have the leverage here. And so the idea that they're just gonna let that hand open and then just stand back and and let it go back to any version of what it was before is in it's inconceivable to me. I I just can't think there's any chance that they're gonna do that because that that along with their missile force has been the the real, demonstration that they have some real leverage here and that they can't just be coerced anymore because they play that hand. I I just don't think there's any chance that they withdraw, though they would be foolish to do so, and and they have not shown themselves to be foolish so far. So, we'll see what they extract for any concept concept of giving away that reprocessed material.
Speaker 0: Well, it appears that then the possibility of a ceasefire here or prolonging it or ending up with a permanent peace agreement seem, well, somewhat unlikely. I hope I'm wrong on this. I could be wrong, but if I'm not wrong, we end up in a return to these hostilities. What do you think it's gonna look like? Because for a while, many people have made the comment that a ground invasion of Iran seems like a, well, a foolish idea given the, well, the the geography, the size of the territory, and, well, many other variables.
But do you think a ground invasion could happen now?
Speaker 1: No. There there's no chance of that because there's the physical we don't have the capacity to do so. I mean, physically, we would need four or 500,000 total troops, to be able to even mount a credible possibility to to Lackett, Hechtold, have a ground invasion with the potential of taking these sites, taking the capital city, etcetera, and that massive mountain ranges on the entire western part of the country make it as close to a physical impossibility as you can get to have an army try to invade and to go through. There was just no routes that you can come in there. And even if you still had, some have said, oh, well, see, this is why we shouldn't have given up Afghanistan because there are some planes and stuff you could come in on the western side I'm sorry, on the eastern side of the country, and you could roll toward the West.
But even if you look at that, it's very constricted there, and it it would be like going through a gauntlet. It would be almost death to go through there because you'd be a shooting gallery because they could hold the high ground on either side. So even that doesn't really hold it. Therefore, the only thing that we have troops on the ground to do now is to have some kind of a raid, or maybe you could take Harg Island, that would come at extremely high cost and be tenuous at best, and and I argue that there would be no chance to hold it long term. It would be like when the Ukraine side had that incursion into to Kursk Oblast in Russia.
They were able to do it for a period of time, and for, I think, seven months, they held some territory there, but they were a dead man walking from the beginning because Russia the the whole country there, all they had to do is just slowly squeeze the thing down, and that's exactly what they did. And it would be the same thing here. If we took even if we succeeded at the moment to take Harg or or Banderabas, for example, or or any other point target anywhere on the coast, what have you gained from that? Just like what did the Ukrainian side gain from having that piece of territory? It gained them nothing, and it cost them profound amounts.
It would be the same for us here. So we have the the capacity and the numbers of troops that we could conceivably try to take some territory, but it would be an ephemeral victory. I mean, not even a pyrrhic victory. It would be a temporary tactical success that would breed a strategic failure. So there's no rational ground option at all for The United States here.
Speaker 0: So, yeah, given that this is the situation we're in, how do you see the possibility of actually ending this war then?
Speaker 1: Well, that that is the problem because as I see it, there's there's a few options that president Trump has, and all of them are bad, because once we we embarked on this war that any kind of sane analysis would have shown in the concept phase that there's no military solution here. There's no path that you can compel compliance to to get what you want, whether it's assassination of the leader, you know, a big shock and awe bombing campaign. The country's simply too big. As as you've said numerous times, even on my show, it it it's like part as big as a good portion of Western Europe, and and the the terrain is just terrible for an offensive side there. So it it was foolish from the beginning to think that you could, but we did anyway.
So we went through it. So now we are where we are. Whether we should or shouldn't have been is no longer a question, but now then the absolute question is what now? Because since you're already engaged and you've already committed to a course of action and you don't have a ground component to even threaten anything on the ground, the question is gonna be what can we do now? And as I see it, there's three main possibilities here.
One is that Trump has a negotiated settlement on terms that are minimally acceptable to the Iranian side, and, you know, their 10 plan is is the basis, that they're willing to talk. They're not gonna get all 10 of those. They don't have any, I think, dreams about getting them. That's their biggest wish list. But there are a few things on there, that I think are probably nonnegotiable.
Control of the straight or at least the, you know, a tollbooth kind of situation is probably on the list. Some kind of security guarantees and reparations of some sort, whether that's freezing unfreezing of their assets or or something else like, again, charging that toll maybe. Some of those kind of things and keeping their missiles and keeping their proxies. That's that's, I think, gonna be their nonnegotiables they're gonna have to get in, and Trump's gonna have to agree some version of that. He could doctor it up any way he wants to at home, but there's not many people in his camp, and or in Israel that would be, that would probably be quiet on that.
I I can imagine Israel doing whatever it took to sabotage any of if he was moving down that path. The other one is that he can say, alright. You know what? I'm gonna double down. So when this period comes to an end, whether it's next Wednesday or if they have an extension, whatever, at some point it's gonna come to an end, and then he says, I'm gonna double down and I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a firestorm like you have never seen before, and I'm gonna blow up everything, you know, all these targets, energy systems, infrastructure.
We're gonna rain down holy hell on you unless you compelled to our some version of our 15 plan. And and then he may say, I'm gonna try that just to see if it works. Iran has been unequivocal of what they would do if that case and so far, every time they have said something since before this war started that if you attack, we're gonna do this. So far, they've done everything they have claimed. So there's no reason to think that this wouldn't be the next one, that they would respond in kind to the GCC countries, Israel, our assets in the region, etcetera, and it would be, just lights out for you know, with the oil industry for an extended period of time regardless of the Strait Of Hormuz open or closed.
That's number two. And then I I think maybe number three is he could say, let's just play for the long game. I'm gonna keep this blockade, you know, And we're gonna see who can suffer the longest. Can you suffer because we're shutting down everything? We'll bring in new sanctions.
We're gonna have, as he called it, operation economic fury. And then who who can suffer the longest? And he may calculate that I think we can suffer longer than they can. That's a bad play, but as I see it, those are the three broad outlines. I don't I don't see another viable alternative, and those are all bad for The United States, and we could go into each one of them, but there's no good one.
That's that's what we need to understand. You know? There is no good victory narrative that can come out no matter what words come out of president Trump's mouth, and they will no matter what he does, but, if he chooses, I think, b or c, we're gonna be in a world of hurt, and so is the world economically. So option a is the, is the best of the ugly options that gets things off the table and allows him to just turn and focus back to the midterms, you know, like everything else, he'll he'll eat a lot of crow here, he'll take a lot of domestic heat, but there's so many other issues here in The US that, you know, they'll then turn to something else, and he's good at changing the narrative anyway. That's what he should do.
We'll see what he does do.
Speaker 0: It does seem a bit strange to well, given that you have a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of this cease negotiations, it's essentially gives a veto, alright, to the Israelis, though, because they can anytime break this one, and then negotiations fall apart. But let's stay optimistic for a second. I hope that Trump picks a wise path, will put an end to this war. How much damage has already been done? Because the global energy situation is quite poor, and we see now this having, yeah, massive impacts around the world and also the fertilizers.
This is also something that's beginning to really worry me. I mean, how how how big of a how many how deep are we into these troubles?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I had a former British Commodore who's now an expert in the energy field since his retirement in The UK, and and he argued, there's a number of economists that have argued this too, and we showed some of them on our show recently. But, commenter Steve Jeremy has said, listen. I think that we already have baked in already. If this ends on next Wednesday and we have a miracle, a diplomatic miracle, we've already baked in, in his view, a recession because of the way the economic and the energy and the fertilizer situation you mentioned, how all these things have compounding effects, and how it's going to even if it does end next week, and even if the strait did completely open up today, it's going to take months, a couple of months at minimum, to get all of these tankers restarted again and coming back.
Five of the six GCC countries had already suspended or greatly suspended their production of the oil physically pulling it out of the ground because they ran out of storage space for it. So that's got to be undone, and that's that's a a lot harder of a problem than it may appear to be. So it's gonna take some time for even the flow to start once all the insurance companies are saying, alright. We're willing to take the risk again, and the the carriers themselves are willing to take the financial risk. So there's a lot of things it's gonna take, even once it's open, to finally get the flow back anywhere close to what it was on the February 27.
I mean, many, many months into the future. So that means all these problems that are already there are gonna compound, and the I'm I'm agreeing with you that the the fertilizer one may be one of the biggest ones along with helium because that has economic impacts and food security impacts because now that people are planting right now to include The United States, in Asia, in the fill Philippines, and also Australia that I've seen so far. They're planting now, but they're doing it with less fertilizers than they need and and at a higher cost, of course, diesel also. All that's raising the cost to produce the food, but then that means when it comes time for harvesting in the fall, you're not going to get as much, so that's going to be a scarcity coming in, and that's going to then last until the next planting season. So these are problems that are going to have manifestations many, many months from now into next year, probably at the minimum, and that could that whole thing together is gonna cause a potential for an economic recession, a global recession.
And if this doesn't get solved here, then we could be facing the possibility of a depression.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's well, in retrospect, there will be after this war is over, there will be no way looking back at this, I think, and considering any of this to have been a success. But it's nonetheless worth being slightly optimistic about the efforts, at least, by by The US and the Iraqi.
Speaker 1: Believe me. I wanna be optimistic as well because anything that any any diplomatic space, and this is what is being created here, that gives us a chance to get this over so that we don't have the worst of those consequences later on, is to be enthusiastically supported, and I definitely do. But being realistic, we're still gonna be in trouble. There's there's no good way out of this, and there's no way to escape it without some problems. The question is how big will those problems be?
Speaker 0: Well put. That's what I was trying to say. Thank you so much for taking the time. I know you have to run, so thanks again.
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah. Thanks so much. I always appreciate you, Glenn. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Naval Blockade & Ground Invasion of Iran? https://youtu.be/BwUL5ftAi38 https://t.co/iIOt94MejP
Video Transcript AI Summary
Syed Mohamed Marandi discusses the collapse of the Islamabad negotiations and the wider implications of the current U.S.-Iran confrontation.
- On what happened in Islamabad: Iran participated despite low expectations, aiming to show willingness to resolve the crisis if Americans are reasonable and to ensure the world sees Iran’s efforts. The Iranians believed the United States lacked will to make progress. During talks there was some progress on various issues, but near the end the United States shifted to a hard line on the nuclear program and the status of the Strait of Hormuz. Vance claimed Iran wanted to build a nuclear weapon, a claim Marandi notes was contradicted by former counterintelligence official Joe Kent’s resignation letter. Netanyahu reportedly maintains direct influence, with Vance reporting to Netanyahu daily, which Iran views as undermining an agreement. Netanyahu’s insistence on control and “being the boss” is presented as a central obstacle to any deal. The ceasefire in Lebanon was touted as failing, with Netanyahu and Trump accused of conspiring to wreck it, and Iran’s actions after the ceasefire aligned with this view. The Iranian delegation flew back by land after the flight to Tehran was diverted, reflecting the perceived danger and the Washington Post piece calling for the murder of negotiators. Iran’s approach is framed as attempting to resolve the problem while signaling willingness to negotiate if U.S. policy becomes reasonable.
- On the blockade and its consequences: The U.S. blockade on Iranian ports has just begun and will likely worsen the global economic crisis, pushing more countries to oppose the United States. China is angry as Washington dictates terms against oil and trade in the region. The blockade could be used to strangle China’s energy supplies, creating a double-edged impact by simultaneously worsening the global crisis and pressuring U.S. allies. Iran says it may respond by striking ships in the Red Sea and blocking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman if the blockade continues. Iran notes it has substantial financial resilience from oil sales at higher prices without middlemen, with about 100 million barrels left to sell after selling half of its declared oil stock, and it views energy shortages as likely to trigger broader economic disruption, including shortages of helium, LNG, and fertilizers.
- On war readiness and possible outcomes: Iran anticipates a major assault and is preparing defenses and offensive capabilities. Iran argues negotiations were not taken seriously by the United States and believes the U.S. is buying time. Iran would view victories as having the United States back down, preserving Iran’s rights, and protecting its regional allies, with a long-term ceasefire. Iran contends it should control the Strait of Hormuz to prevent future aggression and seeks compensation for damages caused by the conflict, emphasizing sovereignty over Hormuz and peace for Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and Yemen. Iran states that if the U.S. and its regional proxies strike, Iran would respond by targeting energy and infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.
- On broader geopolitical shifts and regional dynamics: Marandi argues the current crisis accelerates a move toward a multipolar world, with the United States’ hegemonic position eroding. The UAE is portrayed as pushing for war, while other Gulf states are increasingly wary. He predicts a possible land invasion of Iran, but emphasizes Iran’s long-term preparedness and resilience. Weather and terrain are cited as factors likely to complicate a potential U.S. invasion, particularly in the hot summer conditions of the region.
- On potential definitions of “victory”: Iran’s victory would involve U.S. backing down, Iran preserving its rights, a long-term ceasefire, and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. A broader victory would see the end of supremacism in Palestine and the end of genocidal actions in Lebanon, with peace across the region as a key objective. The discussion ends with the notion that a shift toward an American focus on its republic, rather than empire, would benefit global stability.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome
Speaker 1: back. We are joined today by Syed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a great honor being on your show.
Speaker 1: Well, last we spoke, you were in Islamabad for the negotiations, which we now fail no. Which we now know failed. It's at that point, when you spoke, it was still unclear what exactly had transpired. So I was wondering, given the significance of the negotiations breaking down in terms of possibly, yeah, restarting the war, what do we know about what happened in Islamabad?
Speaker 0: Well, before we went, I met people in the delegation at the airport. And also on the plane, we spoke. And, in the hotel before the negotiations, we we had different conversations. And it was clear that no one had any real expectations. The belief was that, Netanyahu was the person in charge and that the Zionist lobby was dictating terms to the United States government and that the chances for any success were very slim.
But Iran participated for two reasons. Just like before the twelve day war, Iran knew there was going to be an attack. Just like before this war, Iran knew there would be attack, but it negotiated both to see if Trump, wanted an off ramp and, and all, but more importantly, to make sure that people across the world and Iranians recognize that Iran was attempting to resolve the situation so that no one could later blame Iran for not negotiating and thus causing or being also responsible for war. The the same, the same logic applied for this trip. There was they believed that The United States did not have the will to, make this successful negotiating progress process.
And but also Iran wants to make sure that everyone knew that we were willing to we are willing to to resolve the problem if Americans are reasonable. So there were low expectations. When the negotiations took place, from my understanding, during the day, there was progress on different issues. But near the end of the day, The United States suddenly shifted position and took a very hard line, especially with regards to the nuclear program and, been reassuring that Iran has and the status of the Strait Of Hormuz. So when the talks broke, it was expected that the following morning there would be further talks.
Then later we saw Vance walk away, claim Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon, which, of course, Joe Kent in his resignation letter, being the highest ranking counterintelligence officer in The United States and then a Trump appointee rejected. So, obviously, he wasn't telling the truth, and also saying that Iran didn't accept our demands. So, of course, Iran won't accept demands. Iran didn't wasn't the side that lost the war, but and those demands violate Iran's sovereignty anyway. But I think what was what came out from the negotiations was clear for the Iranians that bans had no mandate because, doctor Golubov, the speaker of parliament, who's also a professor an associate professor at my university, he, he had extend extensive conversation with Ayatollah Khamenei, and he had a mandate.
He negotiated. He did not call Tehran during the talks, but, Vance was constantly on the phone. And one of the people who he spoke to was Netanyahu. And as we know, Netanyahu himself said, that Vance reports to me, and so do other American officials. Every day, they report to me, which I find extraordinary that he can talk like this, and no one in The United States and The US media and the US government, show any outrage.
Basically, Netanyahu is is saying, I'm the boss. And so it was clear that Netanyahu will not allow an agreement to be achieved, and thus he is pushing the world towards a great economic catastrophe. And we also saw that when the ceasefire was agreed upon, because Lebanon was a part of the ceasefire. So Netanyahu, the and Trump conspired to wreck the ceasefire. And, so even then, it was Netanyahu who was pushing Trump.
And that's what forced Iran not to abide by its commitments. As soon as Netanyahu, made it clear that they would not abide by the ceasefire in in Lebanon, Iran blocked, continued to block those extra ships that were supposed to be going through the Strait Of Hormuz, as a result of the ceasefire agreement. So Netanyahu, for the last few days since the cease fire, he's been impeding, any, easing of the global economic crisis, and he's making it worse faster. And then now, of course, by imposing the block, blockade himself, Trump is quickening the pace of global economic collapse. So this is basically where we are.
When, by the way, when we flew back, as we discussed last time, after the Washington Post, piece, the, opinion piece where it was advocating that they murder the, that The United States and the Israelis murder the negotiators. We, of course, all thought that the chances that our plane would be shot down were very high. So the Iranians, flew us basically into Iran, but immediately landed near the, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan border in the city of Mashhad, a very second largest Iranian city. And, from there, we, we drove to Tehran, which is about a thou well, I took a train, but others some drove, some I mean, some took cars, some took buses, and I took I and others took the, a train. You know, it's about, I guess, a thousand kilometers roughly.
So we came by by land. But, it's quite extraordinary that the Washington Post, US media, the Fifth Estate would now be advocating crimes against humanity in this way, competing with the most ugly of the, lioness, you know, killers, in in politics. But, you know, that's where we are today. So, also, the ceasefire isn't really working, and but nonetheless, there's discussions now or talk about extending it. On the other hand, Trump is saying he doesn't necessarily want it extended, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to say what is happening. But we also have The US blockade now, as you said, on Iranian ports, which, you know, can't help but to think that a key target of this would be China given that the vast majority of this oil will be heading to China. How successful is the blockade so far, though, on Iran? And and what do you think how how how durable is it in terms of and the consequences it will have?
Speaker 0: Hard to say because the blockade has only just begun. It's I think it'll take a couple more days to figure out what's happening. I think that that it's going to make the global economic crisis worse, and it's going to turn more countries against The United States because, for example, as you rightly point out, the Chinese are very angry. The Americans are basically dictating terms to China and saying that you cannot have oil and, that you cannot do trade and then you're not allowed to enter this part of the world. And and we've already seen that happen in Venezuela, and now it's clear that the Americans want to strangle the Chinese through controlling the means of energy.
But it's a it's a more it's a double edged sword because, simultaneously, he's intensifying the global economic crisis. And for, US allies who are much more vulnerable than China, this is going to be catastrophic, and the catastrophe is going to happen earlier, sooner, quicker because, because now nothing or at least the plan is to have nothing leap straight forward. Most Iranians have also, by the way, as I'm sure you know, said that they will if this blockade continues, they'll start striking ships in the Red Sea, and they'll block the Red Sea in the Gulf Of Oman. That will make things even worse because the Saudis are now exporting, I guess, roughly 4,000,000 barrels a day from the Red Sea. And, of course, trade goes with the Red Sea.
But, in addition to to that, the as the Iranians escalate and as the world goes towards crisis, the Iranians don't have a shortage of money right now because, the Iranians have been putting a lot aside a lot of money during the last few years, especially in gold. But, also, the Iranians have made a lot of money during the past few months ever since The United States began increasing its presence in the region and then during the war. Iran has been selling its oil at a much higher price without middlemen, without discounts. And, Iran also had 200,000,000 barrels of oil on the seas, and, it sold about half of it now. And it still has another 100,000,000 barrels, which it will probably sell within a few weeks, and that's a huge amount of money.
That's, itself, I guess, two months of Iranian exports of oil. So but it does indicate how much you know, how little oil is left on the market. Ex ex oil is all disappearing. Russian oil on the seas was not as much as Iran, but they they also had oil and tankers on the sea. They've they've finished all of that.
They've sold theirs. Iran has sold half of its oil. So, you know, this is this just shows how how bad the situation is going to be shortly with regards to all energy related items and helium and energy related commodities. And and, you know, this is when when the factories run out of helium and run out of LNG and when they when agriculture is, faces a crisis because of a shortage of fertilizer and all that, I think I think then we're going to see dramatic change. At the moment, from what I'm hearing from people who understand politics far better than I is that we this is the tip of the iceberg and that we're moving very swiftly to a turning point where things will go downhill very fast.
And Trump is intensifying the the speed towards which we are moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: You know, definitely, I think, going into a global economic crisis as a consequence of this. Often pointed out that even if the war would come to an end today and everything would flow freely, still the the lack of fertilizers now will have some massive repercussions on the food prices, which would then again spread the conflict further. But besides the economic aspect, do you see the possibility now of The United States going back into, you know, the same high intensity war against Iran? Or because I I wasn't sure how to interpret the blockade. On one hand, it looks like it it could be an effort of escalation control.
We put a blockade on your ports. You know, you don't respond, and, you know, it could be more favorable to the high intensity conflict where the Americans might be running out of interceptor missiles and, you know, losing a lot of planes. But at the same time, the Americans are moving a lot of military hardware into the region, it seems, troops as well. How do you assess it, though? I mean, as a threat, how do you see the capabilities and the willingness of The United States to go back to this high intensity fighting?
Speaker 0: Well, the Iranians are expecting a a major assault, and, they are preparing day and night. And they too, like the Americans and the Israelis, are rearming and reorganizing and preparing defenses and prepare preparing offensive capabilities. So Iran does not, you know, doesn't see the negotiations as necessarily serious at all, and, that most probably the Americans are buying time. The Iranians are naive. As I said before, there you know, before the twelve day war, many thought Iran was caught off guard.
Iran wasn't caught off guard. Iran had to negotiate for the sake of its own, for the sake of its own you know, so so that its own people, first and foremost, would see that we tried. Because if we did not negotiate in The US, assault Western media, which like the Washington Post, which is right now calling for the assassination of negotiators, they would be the first to say, well, if the Iranians had negotiated, we wouldn't be where we are. They're never going to blame the aggressor. They're going to blame the victim.
And then a part of Iranian, well, global, public opinion would be affected, but most importantly, Iranian public opinion part of it would be affected if we want to make sure everyone is on board. And that's that was true about the the the forty day war, the Ramadan war, and that's true now. So the Iranians are going to definitely continue engaging with negotiators, but Iran's not naive. And, as we saw when the Israeli regime began hammering Lebanon, Iran cut off. It stopped its side of the bargain and said, well, nothing is going to leave the we promised to do to to increase the number of ships going through the Strait Of Hormuz, that stops.
So, ultimately, by violating the ceasefire, The United States is hurting itself more than it's hurting Iran. The Israeli regime is hurting the global economy more than it's hurting Iran and or Hezbollah. And by doing that, the Israeli regime is being viewed across the world as a a reason for, global misery and the rising, hardship that we're seeing across the world. So after two and a half years of genocide and now genocide in Lebanon, they're going to be blamed across the world. So Iran wants to make sure that it is seen as trying to solve the problem and that people see that it is Netanyahu and Zionism that is pushing the world towards economic catastrophe catastrophe.
So Iran is preparing itself for war. But every day that goes by where we have a ceasefire, this is putting more pressure on Trump because the the global economic crisis is is is approaching. Now we don't believe that Trump will disobey, Zionists the Zionists. They are the ones in charge. They're in control, and so is Netanyahu through through the Zionists.
The only way in which we can bring about change is to put so much pressure on Trump, economic pressure, that he is forced or the US government is forced or some Zionists in The United States are forced to prioritize America over Israel. In other words, to make it so painful that they say, no. We cannot continue listening to letting you know the cost has gone, to if the cost is too high. But still, we believe that there will be a war. We believe that there will be a land invasion.
There will be a massive attack on Iran, a massive active aggression, and there will be propaganda talking and you know, from from proponents and supporters, all of them will say how great successful it was. They've captured here. They've captured there. Perhaps a couple of ships will, you know, quietly, or quickly, pass through the Strait Of Hormuz, and they'll announce some sort of victory, but it's not going to work. The Iranians are prepared.
They're preparing further, and they will strike back. They'll destroy, the the facilities in the Persian Gulf, the oil and gas infrastructure, and everything else that's necessary on the other side of the Persian Gulf and in a in a bigger way than last time, Ron, as we saw during the last day of the war. Ron hit very, very hard. But, there's also another element here, Glenn, and that is that, we're we're approaching the you know, we are leaving we're this is the end of spring. When The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and when it, attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait, those were carried out well before mid April.
And they were during the pool weather. In the next four weeks or so, the weather goes up very much. It and and it did then we enter the that hot season. So you'll have sandstorms in the Oregon Peninsula. You'll have few great humidity, and, and it'll be very hot.
Fighting under those conditions is very difficult. I I have experience of that because during, Saddam's war against Iran, I did fight in the South in in the summer, and you can barely do anything, during the day. You can, you know, you it's just it's it's very difficult. So I think that, American troops, will not be able to perform, well, and under such difficult circumstances. And the the damage done to American hardware, military hardware will will increase because of the humidity humidity, the heat, and the sandstorms.
I just don't see any opportunity. And, you know, the Iranians, just as they prepared themselves for over twenty years, for oh, well over two decades, and we've discussed this together for years, everyone can go back. You know? All the things that have happened, we've predicted before the war. You know?
Just as Iran prepared itself, and it has a huge missile and drone capacity. And as if when the war starts, you'll see Iran hammering them day after day after day again, twenty four hours a day, both the Israelis and the Americans and the the the proxies in the region. But they've also prepared themselves for an American invasion. They even just prepared themselves for an American air strike or an American air attack. They prepared themselves for a land invasion.
So the Americans really think that they'll just walk in and do what they want. They've already failed in their operation to steal Iran's rich uranium. They will definitely fail on the battlefield. So the weather is no longer, appropriate. It's sort of like winter in Ukraine, if not if not worse.
The the summer in in the Arabian Peninsula is and then imagine if there is war, then if they started striking Iranian targets or Iranian infrastructure and we start targeting infrastructure on the other side of the Persian Gulf, if we strike their electricity in this weather, in the weather that we're going to have in the weeks ahead, everyone will have to leave. The the the the Persian Gulf, these Arab regimes, the weather there is good for, let's say, six months a year and terrible for six months or good for seven months, six months, something like that, and terrible for five, six months a year. So if Iran strikes their electricity, then everyone will have to leave not over the like, a week. Everyone will have to leave immediately. All of these regimes will immediately collapse, especially since they're you know, the the elites in these countries are so well off that they they cannot tolerate any form of hardship hardship.
Whereas in Iran, they cut if they strike our electrical power plants, I mean, Tehran at in the in the in the middle of summer, it would be warm. We'd we'd be uncomfortable, but it's not at there's no comparison. Right now, as you know, there's snow on the mountains to the North of Tehran. A lot of snow. It's so it's last night, when I was out, it was I had to wear a jacket.
It was and with my jacket, a light jacket, I was so cold in Central Tehran, not in the North where it's more mountainous. So it would be both very difficult for American soldiers, and it would and if you and if there's if the two sides are striking one another, it would be the end of Kuwait, The Emirates, Qatar, and so on.
Speaker 1: The London National, this sounds like a disaster. I mean, with such a large territory and also the limited troops on The US side, it it doesn't seem like they have anything near the troop levels they would require. Also, planning a land invasion, it seems like something want to do prepare well for, especially for countries like Iran, which appears to you know, with its mountains and the oceans appears to be built like a fortress, it seems well, it wouldn't be the first country I would wanna invade. How do you see The Gulf States' appetite, though, to return to this war? Because you I I get the impression there's some mixed, feelings there.
The UAE, they seem to be, strangely optimistic, while others may be a bit more cautious. So how how do you see the the willingness to perhaps to take on a bigger role in the war against Iran if we go back into now a full scale war again?
Speaker 0: I think that's more or less how it is. It is The UAE that's seems to be pushing for war and probably the first country that will be eliminated. And the others are increasingly worried about the situation, including Saudi Arabia. But, but as I said, the Iranians, if there's war, that would mean that, like, for The UAE, just it'll be finished. If Iran's infrastructure is destroyed, it'll be difficult.
But if UAE's infrastructure is destroyed, it'll be the end. And it can it's a tiny country, and it can be destroyed very swiftly within a a day. You know, they they're you know, they they they're arrogant. The arrogance of the ruling family and, their reliance, on Israel and The United States is, is extraordinary. My I'm not sure, but I heard that the Emirates, their direct flights to the Israeli regime have once again been, established.
They stopped, I think, during the war. It's just, they don't seem to recognize the amount of anger that exists in Iran among Iranians, towards that regime. It is, it is it is enormous. And when they did on the last day after the ceasefire strike Iran, Iran hit them much, much harder in return. So, yeah, except for them, though, everyone else wants an end to this.
But I don't think that that's what's going I don't think that's going to happen. I think the Americans, are preparing for a major assault on Iran, and the Iranians are preparing. They've been preparing for many, many years. And, now they're just putting the final touches on whatever it is they have, and, they've they're working twenty four hours a day to prepare for the next phase. And as I said, in my opinion, some may disagree, time is on Iran's side because we're approaching summer.
It makes those regimes more vulnerable. It makes life more American soldiers more difficult. But the global economy is a ticking time bomb. And every day that the, straight up almost is closed, it create it intensifies this the crisis. Countries put more pressure on Trump.
Internal politicians in The United States, American people, put more pressure on the Trump regime. And, the, you know, the possibility that, US national interest, which are completely at odds with Zionist interest, I consider the Israeli regime to be the enemy of the American people. But, the the the divergence, will become so great. This is the calculation here, that it will become so great that the elites which are bound to Israel will have to make a decision to pursue a different route.
Speaker 1: This is the last question. What what do you think a victory could look like? Because it both Iran, it's you know, what what he wants to achieve is essentially to, yeah, push back the heavy military the American military presence, has been built up quite powerfully and all the economic architecture built up with it. And, you know, it's yeah. It's it's a it's difficult thing to achieve also given that the the Americans aren't I can't imagine they were going down, you know, without, you know, possibly even using possibly a nuclear weapon if they have too great of a humiliation.
Meanwhile, it's not clear. Well, I think The US victory would be, I guess, defined by regime change and, making balkanizing Syria, perhaps, not just balkanizing Iran. Iran. Yeah. Sorry.
But but how do you see this? So why what would the victory look like?
Speaker 0: Well, it depends. I mean, ultimately, victory the the final victory would be ending at this at the supremacism in Palestine, ending the genocide ending the genocide in Lebanon too. The Israelis are slaughtering families day and night out of rage and anger that resistance is effective, so they take it out on women's children. But in at this that would be the real victory. But at this stage, I think what Iran would define as victory is The United States backing down and the Iranians, preserving their rights and, Iran's allies in the region, having protection, no longer being attacked, Long term ceasefire, let's say.
But but also I think that the Iranians' victory will mean that Iran controls the Strait Of almost permanently. And, it didn't have to be this way. Iran ambition to control the Strait Of Hormuz. But Americans started this war and its proxies in the region, know, Qatar, The Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait, they all were all involved. Jordan, were all involved.
And, so that's the price they pay. So the Iranians, in order to make sure that this never happens again, this war of aggression never happens again, it believes it has to control the Strait Of Hormoz and also for to receive compensation. This is a means of doing it. So sovereignty, the Strait Of Hormoz, and peace and quiet for its allies across the region. Iran didn't start the war.
Iran had no stage escalated even now that Iran said it's going to if this siege on the Australian foremost continues, they will respond by blocking the Red Sea and, Bab El Mandeb and the Sea Of Oman. This is its you know, Iran is saying this and and plans to do it in response to The US siege. And Iran refraining from allowing more ships to leave the pass through the Strait Of Hormuz and leave the Persian Gulf is in response to the violation of the ceasefire agreement where the Israelis have been slaughtering the people of Lebanon in violation of the agreement. And during the war itself, it was always the escalation began on the American side, the Israeli side, and then Iran would retaliate. So Iran struck, let's say, energy and so the energy, infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, oil and gas, after Iran's infrastructure was targeted.
So, you know, Iran doesn't want this, but, ultimately, I think that the victory would mean sovereignty, control over the Strait Of Hormuz, and, peace for people in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, and Yemen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it seems like a big ask. But if you look at the shift in the world order, the one that was organized for the past decades around The US hegemony and how it's rapidly shifting towards a multipolar system, it's it's it's not as if the world isn't changing at an incredible rate already. So it's yeah. I mean, it looks as if Iran's gonna probably exit this war in a stronger position.
I know there there's been a lot of deaths and destruction in Iran, but the the the wider distribution of power, the the geopolitics of it appears to be possibly coming in Iran's favor. If so, this would go down as one of America's worst wars, greatest disasters, you know, compared to Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or any of the other that this is a yeah. This is gonna be a massive disaster, it seems, for the empire. But perhaps if, it incentivizes The US to instead focus on rebuilding the republic instead of the empire, perhaps, you know, everyone benefits at the end.
Speaker 0: So Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 0: Absolutely. I mean, if if someone actually came and, you know, said that I I really want to be American first, I think the entire world would welcome that.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for taking the time and sharing your insights. Thank
Speaker 0: you for having me, Glenn. Great honor.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Trump's Naval Blockade & Ceasefire Collapse https://youtu.be/78osgairBb4 https://t.co/Vdpq297L2J
Video Transcript AI Summary
- The discussion centers on the Strait of Hormuz blockade amid a claimed ceasefire. The hosts question the ceasefire’s meaning, noting the blockade blocks Iranian ports while talk of abiding by a ceasefire continues. They describe the blockade as highly scripted and incomplete: “The US has a version of what’s going on… stopping every ship. There’s not a ship getting out.” Meanwhile, Iran appears to allow some ships to depart, and China-bound oil shipments have reportedly left the strait and were not stopped.
- They compare the situation to “Japanese Kabuki theater,” with a security-guard-like role for some actors and limited real authority. The discussion emphasizes Iran’s multifaceted defense capabilities: coastal defense cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and drones (air, surface, underwater) that could threaten ships within about 200 miles of the coast. The Abraham Lincoln reportedly suffered damage within 220 miles of Iran’s coast, with Trump later acknowledging multiple attack sources.
- On enforcement challenges, it’s noted that effective interdiction would require helicopters, destroyers, and other assets; however, aircraft carriers with helicopters still cover only limited areas. Tracking ships at sea is difficult without transponders, making enforcement complex.
- The blockaded objective is debated. Early Trump administration moves lifted sanctions on Russia and Iran to keep oil flowing, but more recently sanctions on Russian oil have been reimposed while efforts to choke Iranian oil continue. The global oil market shows a dissonance: futures prices suggesting relief, but actual dockside prices for oil can be extremely high (up to around $140–210 per barrel). The economic impact is emphasized as potentially severe and not aligned with market signals.
- There is critical discussion of Donald Trump’s leadership and decision-making: he is portrayed as emotionally volatile, with shifting beliefs and a tendency to see in headlines what he wants to see. A vivid analogy likens Trump to a child living with an alcoholic father, reacting to threats and stimuli rather than rational policy. J. D. Vance is highlighted as one of the few who has opposed Trump’s war approach and faced pressure from others close to Trump.
- Diplomatic moves: Russia and China are described as stepping up efforts to broker peace, working with Saudis, Emiratis, and Iranians, and even approaching Turkey. There are signs that a peace process could be built around resurrecting or reformatting JCPOA-style arrangements, such as on-site IAEA inspections and nonproliferation commitments, potentially making them permanent. The possibility of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is discussed as part of broader regional negotiations.
- The blockade is criticized as unsustainable, with concerns about maintenance bases (Diego Garcia) and the risk of escalation if ships are forced into closer proximity to Iran. It’s noted that China has warned it would treat interference with Chinese maritime traffic as an act of war; Iran could still route commerce through Turkmenistan and other corridors, limiting the blockade’s effectiveness.
- The broader geopolitical shift is highlighted: the United States is losing influence in the Gulf. UAE resistance to Iran and the Saudis’ precarious balance are pointed out, with Iran signaling it could charge fees for entering the Gulf. The dollar’s waning influence is noted, along with rising Chinese and Russian influence in the Gulf region.
- The wider consequences anticipated include energy and food shocks, with cascading economic effects globally. The prospect of extended conflict, internal U.S. political chaos, and potential impeachment pressure on Trump are discussed as factors that could influence the war’s trajectory. The hosts suggest that while a negotiated settlement could emerge, the path is fraught with contradictions, shifting alliances, and competing narratives between Washington, Tehran, and regional players.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is, 04/15/2026, and we are joined by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst who now publishes at Sonar 21, and I will, leave a link in the description, which I highly recommend. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy our conversations.
Speaker 0: Glad to hear it. And let's start with the Strait Of Hermos because Well Well, we are in a ceasefire, at least so we're told, yet a blockade has been put now on Iran's ports, which is a act of war, which is a strange escalation to do during a ceasefire. And, yeah, it tends to be brought into the conversation by by spokespeople at in the White House even at the same time as they're saying we're abiding by the ceasefire. So it's unclear what the ceasefire means, but at least they're not shooting at them, it appears. Right.
But what is the likely success of this blockade? Because from what I understand, they have to keep a fairly safe distance, and the waterway is not narrow when you go this far far down south. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this this is all it's like a Japanese Kabuki theater. It's very stylized, very scripted. The The US has a version of what's going on. They are stopping every ship. There's not a ship getting out.
Boy, they've got a lockdown type. Meanwhile, the other reports indicate that, you know, ships are that Iran's allowing ships to leave, and those ships are not being stopped. The the people I've that are in in a position to know what's actually going on described it as one described it. He says, it's like it's like a security guard at a mall. You know?
Yeah. He he's got a uniform and but no real authority to do much and not not terribly effective. So this could potentially heat up. But as you noted in your introduction, there is a Iran has the potential. They've got coastal defense cruise missiles.
They've got close range ballistic missiles. And they have a variety of drones both underwater and on on water and in the air. Sort of the three dimensions that they can use against any ship, any US ship that gets within, say, 200 miles of the coast. So Abraham Lincoln, for example, it in March, it had gotten within 220 miles of the coast, it got attacked and suffered damage that even Donald Trump later admitted. Yeah.
They've been attacked from 17 he said 17 sides. So right now, it appears that Chinese vessels carrying oil for China are have been have left the straight and are making their way to China and have not been stopped. Now this could all change, but if The US you need to do a proper interdiction on these ships, you need helicopters. Destroyers, you know, they can come out and threaten to shoot you, but they're not going to carry that job out. And once you, you know, it's putting, even if you had an aircraft carrier and the two marine, they look like small aircraft carriers.
They carry lots of helicopters. Still they can only cover a limited area. And it is it's stretching air assets. It really is putting a strain on US air assets is what I'm hearing. That both the maintenance costs, the stress, the time up in the air, and then it's not easy to figure out where ships are.
You know, the ocean these oceans and are big and the the ships don't have there's not a easy automated way to track it. I mean, I I I learned that the hard way over, you know, in working with the the Joint Special Operations Command over twenty three years. And when we would do exercises, some that were maritime, try and you know, unless you put a transponder on a ship and it turns on it sends out a beacon like friend or foe, then fine. You might be able to track it. But otherwise, there's no way to know you know, you can ping you can see something on radar, but then necessarily tell you what it is.
So the the this and then we get to what's the purpose of the blockade. And this is where the Trump administration's all over the board. Early on, they they immediately lifted sanctions on Russia and Iran. Why? Because they wanted the supply of oil, keep the supply of oil up.
But now this week, they've reimposed sanctions on Russian oil, and they're trying to shut down the flow of Iranian oil, and they've already lost 20% of the world's supply. And yet the oil markets are acting like, oh, boy. We're gonna happy days are here again. Prices that are going down on the oil futures, but the actual price people are paying where the ships finally dock is like 140 to I've seen one price as high as $210 a barrel for Singapore. So this the economic gut punch that's coming from this, the West is they got their eyes closed.
And and what compounds this is the literal craziness of Donald Trump. He has he is out of touch with reality. He doesn't remember from one day to the next what it is that he has said. He says things that he believes sincerely are true that just are not true, you know, such as Iran's begging begging for negotiations. No.
They're not. Not at all. We're we're the ones begging for those negotiations. Iran Iran can live without it. And Trump is having he's emotionally volatile, yelling at people, having getting angry.
And so the the best description I've heard of it is, it's like kids living with an alcoholic, abusive father. You know, don't wake dad up, tiptoe quietly, don't do anything to get the old man angriest because he's gonna start punching you or beating you. That's how they're treating Donald Trump right now, which is frightening. So there there is a lot going on behind the scenes that this is this is not some great five d chess game that you know, the Trump's maneuvering and trying to accomplish this objective or the other. No.
Man, he's he's making it up as he goes along piece by piece, and the the only one that has been, you know, been firm about this is a bad decision. This is wrong has been J. D. Vance, and Trump's gone out of his way to humiliate and isolate J. D.
Vance.
Speaker 0: And, well, I often wonder when I see these tweets that, you know, today, tweeted out that China is very happy that I'm opening the Strait Of Hormuz. I'm doing it for them, for the Chinese at the same you know? And at the same time, putting a blockade on Iranian ports in which 90% of the oil goes to China. And at the same time, that same day, Scott Peasant comes out and said that, well, we're gonna sanction probably two Chinese banks at least for trading for buying Iran in oil because Iran is, you know, sponsor of terrorism. That's the argument.
So and at the same time, you know, The US is opening the Strait Of Moose for China. I mean, is if I don't know who who the audience is for this, though. I mean, the Chinese is now are not sitting there going, oh, well, wonderful. How kind. I mean, is it for the MAGA cult?
I mean, who it's hard to see who this is for. But with all with the naval blockade, as you said, it requires a lot of naval assets which are being overstretched. But with more assets in the region, they have to dock somewhere for maintenance. A lot of the logistics, it appears, have taken some damage and hits. To to what extent do you think this makes The US more exposed, though?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's it's it's unsustainable. And, you know, we're we're winning. We're in control. Then why is the George H. W.
Bush carrier sailing along the West Coast Of Africa to get to Persian Gulf region? Why didn't it take the shortcut and come through the Med, down the Suez Canal, and then through the Red Sea? Because they're scared to death that they'd get sunk by the Houthis. Scared to death. That's that's the reality.
And and you and you you bring up the excellent point about where they're gonna get the maintenance and service for these ships. If nothing else to be refueled, refitted. That's Diego Garcia is the close really the closest base. So, you know, it's The United States has got itself in an unsustainable military operation. And so what's going on is Trump's pronouncements.
Everything is being done for the American audience. The gist of him is, hey, things are cool. Things are all right. Don't worry. It's all great.
The reality of what's actually unfolding out there is something else. And meanwhile, know, like they're attacking China yet, we've seen in the last this week, at the end of last week and into this week, China and Russia have taken stepped up their activities in trying to broker a peace, working with the Saudis, working with the Emiratis, working with the Iranians. Russia approached Turkey. Hidan, the Turkish foreign minister signed on board. Yeah, we'll do that.
So there's actually work to work around The United States. Ignore The United States as not being relevant any longer. But to conduct these air assets that are required, and the naval assets required to try to do an interdiction, it's going to get stressed out. To to be to be the most effective at it, they've got to be close into the Iranian shore. But the closer they get them, the more vulnerable they are that if this war kicks off, it goes goes hot again.
You know, right now we have a ceasefire that's in effect until Monday. There are Pakistan is, you know, undertaking significant efforts right now to try to get the the negotiations back on. J. D. Vance, I've learned, he was the one that had agreed to the Iranian's 10 peace plan, or 10 plan for negotiations, restarting negotiations.
Trump then under pressure from all of his Zionist donors, then backed away and said, we didn't accept any of that. They were actually making some progress until Vance was basically told, you know, shut up and come home. Stop talking. But now, the realization about the economic effects, the negative effects on The US economy and the global economy, it started to hit home. You know?
God, I the more I watch this Scott Bessett, the more I dislike the man. I mean, he just, you know, you wanna just go and punch him in the face. He's such a Weasley, oily character. They tried to pretend that things are great and things are not great. You know, it's anecdotal, but my one of my neighbors is a rancher.
So he's got a ranch 20 miles outside of where we live. But he was commenting that he's had to pay, you know, the the price of diesel is up over $2 a gallon. So, you know, that's that's adding almost 40% to his fuel costs. Fertilizer is triple the cost. And then on top of it, he needs to buy we've had a drought in Florida.
And so the hay, the grass that normally would feed cattle hasn't grown. So he's had to purchase hay or trying to purchase hay. He says, it's very difficult to come by right now. He said last year, he bought 40 bear 40 bales of hay, $40 a a barrel per bale. So, you know, that's you get you know, it's now $90.
So it's it's more than doubled in price. And he instead of 40 bales, he needs he needs 90. So he's he's now up to, you know, dollars 3,600 as opposed to $1,600 You know, so again, almost more than double the price. And he says, I'm in the red. That's happening to farmers and ranchers across The United States and around the world.
So what we're looking at here is the the beginnings of what's going to be a collapse of the global food system potentially. I mean, it could get that serious. So this is very Trump administration is a bit like Nero fiddling away while Rome is burning. They they don't they've not putting out the fire and instead the the policy moves are as you pointed out, they're completely contradictory. You know, one minute, oh, we don't need the who cares about the Strait Of Hormuz?
We don't need it, said Trump. And then the next minute he's demanding in the most foul language possible that Iran open the Strait. And then he's complaining that the Europeans aren't pitching in to help. Then he turns around and he blockades it so nothing gets out. And now he's saying, oh yeah, we're helping China.
China loves us for what we're doing because we're stopping the flow of oil to China. I mean, it's it's all over. It it it's a a complete, scatterbrained approach. And the only thing that explains it, it's not five d chess, man. This is this is a mental illness.
Speaker 0: Well, that's why it just looks like this shock to the system is difficult to absorb, especially now. I mean, if it happened, you know, like, three decades ago, maybe it would have been easier. But we now have all this just in time logistics where we don't rely on warehouses, so everything has to run smoothly in order to reduce logistics cost. So they that that can't absorb much shock. You have people where you have record numbers living paycheck to paycheck, who are in, you know, severely in debt.
So if you suddenly have a slight increase in food prices or energy, it's very difficult to absorb it. Now we're gonna have this massive energy shock where the prices double. We have a massive food shortage coming up. Prices are spiking. I mean, you can see how the problems will just, you know, start to spread through the entire system.
And, you know, I would like to make predictions, but because it's so all encompassing, it's gonna, you know, affect everything. So it's it's quite dramatic. I mean, such a massive shock to the system. I don't think they know what's coming down the road. Well, I guess we shouldn't take too much listen too much to what Trump is saying as opposed to what he's doing, but he did say, you know, that this war will soon be over.
Of course, he's been overly optimistic since day one. But do you think he's expecting a defeat of Iran? Because I see a lot of US military hardware being moved into the region. Or do you think his desperation is kicking in, so they need to find an out?
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's more about creating a narrative that he thinks will sell that sounds good on Fox News. He literally he he confines himself to watching Fox, reading the New York Times, and not doing much else beyond that. So he's got really a narrow information flow, up until about two or three weeks ago, he wasn't getting the bad news. He was not, because if he'd get bad news, he'd fly into a rage and blame the person that was delivering the news. This is Shakespearean.
I mean this is a modern version of King Lear that has gone mad. And, you know, no one's come up with a solution, a fix. What do we do with this guy? You know, he should he should actually be removed from office, receive medical care, you know, being being one of those, you know, care facilities for people with dementia. But, you know, instead, he's allowed to still be in charge of this country and to make decisions, irrational decisions at that.
You know, to think that it was a good idea to send out a picture of himself as Jesus and, you know, healing healing the sick. And then he turns around to say, oh, that was a doctor. What are you talking about? And, you know, there's growing concern within the White House, I'm told. And I'm told by somebody who's in a position to know.
So this is this is worse than than the Biden situation. Biden, you know, could fly off the handle too, but he was relatively harmless. Trump is not. Trump has a viciousness to him, and he's lost all empathy. And so this, you know, right now with with the information that's coming out about the so called blockade, it appears that the Navy is deliberately lying to him, telling him what he wants to hear.
Meanwhile, there are efforts underway to restart the talks and to use the whole nuclear issue as the way to get out of this. J. D. Vance wants to exit the war, and the way you exit it is basically you resurrect JCPOA. You don't call it that, but that's what it is.
It would be on-site inspections by IAEA, continued support of the nonproliferation treaty by Iran. But instead of a ten year time, you know, an agreement to the last ten years, this will be a permanent, a forever agreement. That that'll be Trump's. That's why he'll be able to say it's a much better agreement than what they had before because now he's got a permanent, forever agreement, and Israel's safe. There are also reports out today that there's going to be a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
And that, again, that goes back to one of the demands that Iran made. So, yeah, if they pull that off, the the problem is Trump is very much being driven around by Bibi Netanyahu. So even though vice president Vance may be given the green light to do certain things, he doesn't have the ultimate authority here. And Trump's decisions are very mercurial. One day he's in favor of it, and the next day he's opposed to it.
Speaker 0: I saw him give an interview where he was arguing, you know, we we could have well, again, we could have this war over with soon. We we can get a deal which make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. And, you know, this gives me some optimism because this sounds like an out. Mean, if if this was the goal, you are not to have a nuclear weapon. They could have kept the JCPOA.
They could have easily got another agreement, something with, you know, with, yeah, commitments plus transparency, something they can verify. But it's the fact that it was first linked up to these other issues that is on limiting its ballistic missile program or decoupling from its regional partners. You know, all these things were also to capitulate its it's conventional deterrence. So I I thought, you know, this could be a sign of optimism. On the other hand, I always blame myself when I listen too much to what Trump is actually saying.
It's Yeah. More interesting to see what he's actually doing. But otherwise, he's also he's pushing a narrative, though, the victory narrative. And he always refers to how many leaders he's killed, infrastructure destroyed, the military targeting, which has been diminished. How how do you see this stuff?
Because does he genuinely is this a selling point, or do you think he genuinely believes that a lot of killing equals victory? Because I thought, you know, the the forever wars in The Middle East, the one thing to prove this, US the can have all these tactical victories, but it doesn't win. Right. I mean, it's or do you think this he's not appreciating this, or is it again, he's just selling a war?
Speaker 1: Well, he he's telling what he's being told, or he's repeating what he's being told. And so the Pentagon had through Hegseth, they're they're basically lying to him. They're not giving him the true picture of what this conflict actually is. So they get the tout, oh, we've we've blown up this and we've blown up that. Meanwhile, they're not reporting that Iran has rapidly rebuilt, repaired several of the sites that we thought we quote had destroyed for twenty years that are now back in operation.
And the what I am hearing is within military circles, the planners, they are extremely concerned about new weaponry that China has introduced. Now, they're out saying, oh, China China's promised Trump that they're not introducing weapons. Well, a, I'm not sure that China has even said that to Trump. But even if they said it, they're not doing it. They're doing the exact opposite.
So there is real concern that the air that there has been a significant upgrade in the air defense system on the part of with the assistance of China that f 30 fives, all the fourth generation fighters that The United States has flown into the region, that they will be vulnerable and will likely be shot down, at least some.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I've seen some, yeah, reports of Chinese aircrafts delivering unknown material Mhmm. In Iran. I'm assuming that these are weapons. And, well, I I didn't take that Trump's comments that serious about China's promise, you know, because it looks like Trump and the Chinese essentially want the same thing.
Trump Trump needs headlines which suggest that the Chinese, you know, respect his authority, that they wouldn't dare to send weapons, and the Chinese are also happy with the headlines that they're not supplying weapons. So it seems like they both win. But, of course, I do think the Chinese are supplying. But what is the likelihood, do you think, though, that there could be that, well, if the ceasefire is extended or if there's another peace agreement or if there's an actual peace agreement? Because I I always thought that the main challenge for Trump is, on one hand, he who like an out, but what the Iranians demand as an out, it essentially prevents well, it's too big of a price to pay to humiliating defeat, especially after making all this victory laps claiming to
Speaker 1: have won. Yeah. Well, he'll be able look. I think if it he can build the narrative and avoid the humiliation by simply selling the story that, hey, I have got a permanent end forever and ever. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
He can sell that and then, you know, excuse the lifting of sanctions as they're on. We're gonna make, know, fulfill our promise that Iran's gonna become a great economic power. The other the other component of this though is what happens with the war between Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel. So, you know, I think Israel has suffered enough damage in that war that they're also looking for a way out. So if they can get some sort of a new ceasefire agreement in place with Hezbollah, I think they'll take it.
Still doesn't solve the Gaza question. But the the other there are sort of other pressures here is that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and their associates, they've got significant investments in The Gulf, particularly in The United Arab Emirates. And they're at risk of losing that money, so that's that's the other incentive to try to get a negotiated end of this as quickly as possible so they can try to salvage their investments in in those countries. I I don't think UAE is recoverable now. I think it's beyond recoverable.
But you'd have had direct intervention diplomatically with the Chinese with The UAE yesterday or the day before and also with the Saudis and the Qataris. So and Russia's as well as talking. So Russia and China are working together to try to create a peace settlement that will exclude The United States. The United States will not be party to that. And who knows?
They could they could conceivably pull that off. I don't I don't rule out anything on that front.
Speaker 0: But I remember, yeah, after the twelve day war, we spoke in length. I remember about the damages to Israel's infrastructure, economy, industries. Do we know anything yet about the hit they've taken? Because it is I mean, there's limits on the information coming out, but what what do we know? Because it's certainly the reports we're getting, they do not cover.
Yeah. You know, that extent of damage. And I yeah. So I'm just wondering what what we know so far.
Speaker 1: It it has been substantially worse, and we know that because if they had not caused significant damage, the Israelis would not have the censorship on that they do because they would allow the media to come in and say, our our air defense system has worked spectacularly. We haven't been hit. We've got all the all the structures that are standing. We're in great shape. They haven't done that because the opposite is true.
They've taken a serious drugging. And, you know, they're also working this this respite. You know, we're now eight days into this, and it ends next Monday. We'll see if he gets extended. It may get extended.
There'd be there is the the Trump administration is desperate to get a deal done. And, you know, Iran's ready to go back and fight. So we'll see if if if Trump makes any further concessions. They they will portray it as, oh, came begging to the table, begging to, you know, please come back. Let's let's we can't we gotta keep talking.
That is all Iran's doing. And, you know, Iran there's no guarantee that Iran will come back to the table either.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, it's been a few humiliating rounds, I'm thinking when Trump said, oh, we are we have some constructive talks, so we're not gonna hit them. And then for the foreign minister then to come out and say, no. We actually have no talks at all.
I mean, if they really wanted a peace, this seems like a very strange game to play. Yeah. But what do we know now about the Iranian position, though? Because I've, you know, I spoke to some Iranians now who made the point that they have had the that the negotiations seemed, well, let's say, strange in the slum about that. It's events, you know, couldn't really answer questions.
He had to pick up the phone or call all the time. You know, God knows who. But also, I was told that at the end when they thought that the negotiation was still going, Vance essentially and his team just packed up and say, okay. I guess we're done and broke it off. So it's very hard to read this kind of diplomatic behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was that was, I think, the most telling part from professor Morandi that, you know, didn't have the courtesy to say, okay. Hey. Listen, folks. Foreign minister Araci, we've just got to recognize we're at an impasse.
We're not gonna be able to solve anything at this point. We're gonna go now. We're go back and brief president Trump, then maybe we can get together next week or the following week to try to see if we can make some more pro you know, they nothing like that. It was just, okay, we're out of here. And, know, the Iranians wake up and said, where where the Americans go?
Oh, they they beat it. Now I was when I when I first heard that, I got I I sent professor Morandi a note just saying, hey. I hope you guys are talking to the Russians or the Chinese about getting having them fly you back to Iran. Because if you're at least under Chinese or Russian protection, they won't try to kill you. Whereas if you're flying on an Iranian airplane, they'll try to I wouldn't put it past them and try to shoot you down.
I guess what happened is they flew on a Pakistani flagged airline back, and that that prevented Iran from being attacked by Israel.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's so strange that this is a new thing, killing leaders and negotiators. It's yeah. We can normalize a bit too quickly, I feel. But Yeah.
It's gonna make it very difficult to have diplomacy in the future. Indeed, the the the fact that this wasn't the argument, I remember, in this Washington Post article that, yeah, that this should be a form of deterrent if you don't agree to ideals which would kill the, you know, negotiators personally. Like, this is it's very it doesn't look like a good stable peace agreement can come from this. Right. But overall, though, where do you see this conflict going now?
Do you if the blockade's not gonna work, the negotiation are moving forward, the military capabilities are built up. I mean, are we going just back to war?
Speaker 1: I I think I think that's where we're ultimately headed. I I mean, I can look. From from a logical standpoint, you can see that there is a there's a clear exit ramp here for Trump. They can can can exit out of this war and try to start men or try to, you know, get get an economic solution in place that will start to repair the damage that's been done by having closed down the Strait Of Hormuz and having shut down basically the export activities out of United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudis. I mean, Bahrain is Bahrain is toast.
You know, they're US base there is not coming back. Similarly, Kuwait has suffered some significant damage that may be unrecoverable. But just because we can see the logic in that, you know, let's solve it. I the pressure that Trump is under from Bibi Netanyahu is significant, and he's shown that he's unwilling to really confront them and and and say, look, The United States is gonna chart its own path forward. And this still doesn't this leaves unresolved the situation in Gaza.
It leaves unresolved the situation in Lebanon. And, you know, I had to go back and look. I didn't didn't realize it, but, you know, this Lebanese war has been going on now for fifty one years. You know, it really the civil war in Lebanon between the Christians and the Muslims, the Shia in particular, you know, got kicked off back in 1975 when the Phalanges, you know, this Christian sect attacked and killed about 35 Shia civilians. And boom, civil war was on, and that raged until it was sort of a truce in 1990.
But, you know, now in the ensuing so in the ensuing thirty years, we've we still had these constant flare ups. So 2006, Israel again invades Southern Lebanon. There were bombings in Beirut in the nineties. So, you know, the conflict has never really gone away. And now in this latest round, you know, Hezbollah's, you know, holding its own and inflicting serious damage on Israel, which Israel can't sustain.
So I I could see the efforts to bring a peace, but but to come back to what you said, let's look at what Trump is doing. Is Trump telling US military units, okay, start withdrawing. Let's pull back. We're gonna we're gonna scale down. No.
Just the opposite. Let's send more. We're ramping up. Now, I think the debacle that happened in the surrounding the rescue of that downed pilot or the crew member from the f fifteen two weeks ago. I think that has finally persuaded both the Pentagon and the White House that any any kind of ground operations out of the question, just too too dangerous, too costly, too unpredictable.
So they're gonna continue with this economic pressure. One school that's advocating the complete blockade of Iranian ports believes that if we shut down their ability to send oil out, it will ultimately damage their ability to produce oil, and then they'll be in a crisis. They won't have any income, and then they'll implode. And there are some within the Trump administration that give that very serious credence. I think it's it's crazy, but that's what they're they're pushing.
Speaker 0: Could that be the goal of the ceasefire, though? That is just to lower the intensity because as the war is going now, the The United States is using all this all they're using all these expensive interceptor missiles. The you know, their assets in the Gulf States are being attacked. Israel's getting attacked. So it kind of this high intensity war doesn't really work in US advantage.
But if one can call a ceasefire and then at the same time begin to, you know, gradually bleed the Iranians instead putting some, you know, blockade on their ports, you know, which would also hurt the Chinese. Essentially, have some try to search some escalation control. A little bit like what was achieved in Ukraine where, essentially, NATO countries can fire their missiles at Russia and then pretend it's Ukraine and the Russian country responds. Something similar that allows them to begin to drain and, you know, mow the lawn, if you will, in Iran without Iran being able to respond in a significant way. Or or do you think it's delusional that such a blockade can be enforced properly and Iran would not retaliate in some way?
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. I I I think I think it's delusional on their part because the the blockade of ports is not Iran's only, outlet. In other words, they can go through they can go through Turkmenistan. They they can go through you know, so there there are there are roads in to it's not their only access to the outside world.
Now those ports, yeah, volume wise, it it can have an effect. But again, I don't don't think The United States has got the naval power in place to really stop it, to stop it completely, and particularly if they start using the Chinese. Chinese have signaled very strongly that they're not gonna put up with this, and that if any attempt by The United States to interfere with Chinese maritime traffic is going to be resisted.
Speaker 0: How so, though? What are the Chinese saying?
Speaker 1: Oh, they said they they they said they would treat it as an act of war. So
Speaker 0: says it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean that and I know that The US military planners, that's the last thing they want is to be, you know, to get into a war with China because I think it's now pretty apparent United States wouldn't last two weeks with China if they actually got into a full blown war because we we simply don't have the strategic depth. We've we've drained our inventories of key weapon systems, Thads, the Patriots, you know, the PAC three batteries. You know, JDAMs are way down. JASMS that, we've used extensively way down.
Tomahawks way down. And then you get to the supply chain problem, which China controls. To rebuild some of those weapons systems, you need the rare earths that China is not providing now, and we don't have a good alternative to go to.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It looked like yeah. The if China not if well, given that China is the main peer competitor of The United States, And ever since the days of Obama back in 2016, at least, the goal was to pivot to Asia Mhmm. To contain none of what's being done now by Trump seems to make much sense. I mean, when it came to power, he suggested I will wrap up the Ukraine war.
I'll get I'll end the forever wars. I mean, all of this made sense if the objective was to transfer the resources to the Western Hemisphere in East Asia. But now that The US is still fighting in Ukraine, at least, you know, selling weapons, it's you know, still has its intelligence assets there and now also doing this forever war with Iran. It's hard to see how the wider or larger strategic objective, you know, in this massive shift of power can actually be achieved. It's it's very strange to watch given that it looked like Trump had a very, you know, strategic outlook when he came in and how little it corresponds with his actual actions.
But let me just ask a last question. How how do you think what what will be the wider consequence of this? I mean, of course, energy crisis. We may have food crisis. But without a crystal ball, what do you think are likely developments we might see from this war?
Speaker 1: Look. The we're trying to figure out what what the hell are they gonna do. It's it's gonna be the The US is losing influence in The Gulf. Basically, it promised all these Gulfies, hey, we got your back. We can protect you.
You sign up with us, we'll protect you. Well, turned out they couldn't protect them. The most bizarre actions and behavior is that of The UAE. They they are they are the most virally opposed to Iran, and they and they've taken the biggest beating of all the with maybe the exception of Bahrain. The Saudis are still they're they're they're playing a double game.
They're still trying to stay in bed with The United States, but they're under pressure to seek an accommodation with Iran. So they just announced that the pipeline that flows to the Red Sea that had been sabotaged, already hit the other day. They've now repaired it. They're flowing. The oil's moving again, but they don't move that much oil.
I mean, it may just like 7,000,000 barrels per day, which, you know, sounds like a lot, but it's not a lot. It's still 50% about what they were putting out before. And it's still vulnerable that if this war goes hot, the Houthis will take out that port, that terminus. So the ability of The United States to dictate the future of that region is limited. The power of the US dollar is going away.
We saw the auction for treasury bills. Was, again, it dropped in terms of percentage of foreign buyers. So the Fed had to step in and buy up that amount. So I think you're gonna see an expansion of Chinese and Russian influence throughout The Gulf. And I don't see Iran backing off from using, know, let's say, charging the user's fee.
If you're gonna come into The Gulf, you're gonna have to pay a fee. One way that they're gonna recover and pay for the damages that were done as a result of this war launched by The United States and Israel. So Trump's erratic behavior is that he's not gonna get better. In fact, we will see further deterioration. I honestly don't know if he'll make it to the end of his term because his behavior is so odd and it's creating real concern now in Washington.
So that's gonna be at play.
Speaker 0: Yeah, the ability to lead the seeming personal meltdown, the the collapse or not collapse, but what are the divisions within MAGA and decline of his administration. I think all of this is, yeah, creating a lot of panic and desperation, which is not what you wanna see in the president at war, but, yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1: Well, and the the news about the midterms, the it's it's the the prediction markets, the poly markets as they're called. They are growing, showing a growing probability that the Democrats are gonna sweep, not just the House, but the Senate. And they could be, they could have as many as a majority of 54, 55 senators, with Republicans losing, you know, well over 10 seats. So this is And then at that point, you know, Trump has no agenda left, And and, you know, he he can be mad all he wants. The question is, will the Democrats impeach him, or will they just let him sit there and sort of twist slowly in the wind like a body hanging off of a scaffold?
Know, J. D. Vance has tried has tried desperately to try to keep Trump from going down the path of going to war with Iran, and he failed. And, know, there you're gonna see it's gonna be a mixture of political chaos in Washington and with the possibility of Trump making some very irrational, dangerous decisions. But sort of the good news for Iran is it's got solid backing in relationships with China, with Russia, and increasingly, it looks like the Asian countries, since, you know, they're to go in their own direction.
And I'm talking Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, that the influence The United States once wielded there is slipping away very, very rapidly.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Not the best statecraft we've seen. So I know you have a busy day ahead of you, so thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Alright, my friend. Just keep doing the good work. The the world benefits from your wisdom.
Speaker 0: Will do.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks. Take care. Bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Trump's Naval Blockade of the Strait of Hormuz https://youtu.be/H_2lvQHuAYo https://t.co/qv0vOu24pi
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn discuss the chaotic state of U.S.–Iran diplomacy and broader U.S. foreign-policy dysfunction as of mid-April. Sachs argues the events are not linear or transparent: a ceasefire seems announced, but then Israel escalates in Lebanon, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and U.S. officials debate the format and basis of negotiations without consistency. He notes that the United States previously demanded a maximal list and Iran countered, but those details fell away and no clear path emerged. In his view, there is no “deeper cleverness” behind the moves; rather, a chaos in the process.
Sachs emphasizes that one partner in the conflict, Israel, does not want a ceasefire or negotiations and aims for Iran’s destruction, which helps explain the abrupt shifts around ceasefires and mediation. He points to the U.S. “blockade” and the inconsistent signals from Trump and his aides, including the claim that Iran was “begging for further negotiations,” which Sachs sees as inconsistent with the earlier hard demands. He suggests the episode is not a rational statecraft process but a one-person show centered on Donald Trump, with advisers around him either skeptical or insufficiently influential.
Sachs cites NYT reporting (as an inside-account example) that Netanyahu and Mossad pitched war to Trump, with Vance and other senior officials doubtful or opposed, yet Trump pressed ahead. He describes this as a potentially individualized decision-making process rather than a formal, institutional policy debate, implying a de-institutionalized approach dominated by a few insiders and Trump’s impulses.
He also contends that Trump’s approach—bluster, bombing threats, and attempts to “bully” through negotiations—has not been historically effective and may reflect a delusional or incompetent leadership style. Sachs notes Trump’s publicly erratic posts and rhetoric, including provocative statements about civilizations, which he reads as signs of mental instability or at least a departure from normal presidential conduct. He contrasts this with Iran’s demeanor, which he says appears polite publicly, though Iran is not simply yielding to U.S. demands.
Beyond Iran, Sachs broadens the critique to U.S. strategic thinking: the United States has failed to anticipate multipolar realities, leading to miscalculations with China, Russia, and Iran. He argues that sanctions and choke points have not produced expected outcomes and that both China and Russia have responded in ways that contradicted U.S. expectations. He attributes much of the problem to a “deinstitutionalization” of U.S. decision-making: incompetent or poorly chosen personnel, a perceived corruption of political power, and leadership that operates more as a personal show than as an organized, collective process.
Sachs contends that the underlying backdrop is a decline in U.S. relative power and a failure to adapt to a multipolar world, which, coupled with internal political polarization and an ailing administrative system, drives the current instability. He suggests the trade policy and sanctions experiences during the Trump and Biden periods illustrate a pattern of amateurish, impractical decision-making in high-stakes geopolitics.
The conversation ends with a reflection on how the current U.S. apparatus—especially in security and foreign policy—appears increasingly improvisational, with governance processes sidelined in favor of personal prerogatives and reactive moves.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is April 14, and we have the great pleasure of being joined by professor Jeffrey Sachs. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be with you, Glenn. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 0: So we see that The US Iranian negotiations appear to have failed and largely because The US set conditions, which more or less amounted to capitulation. And as a result, The US is now starting a naval blockade on the Strait Of Hormuz even before the ceasefire has expired. So I was wondering, hey. How do you make sense of this?
Speaker 1: The the events day to day, of course, make no sense. You're it's very hard to discern. A few days ago, Trump was going to destroy a civilization. In the evening. Suddenly, there's an announcement of a cease fire.
The next moment, Israel is essentially carpet bombing Beirut. The straits don't open. Then The US vice president goes for marathon session of negotiations completely unclear about the format and the organization. And to my sense, completely inconsistent with the statement that had been made two days earlier that the basis of the negotiations would be Iran's 10 plan, which we never heard of during the visit of Vance or the aftermath. Then the negotiations fail, then The US blockades a blockade.
This must be a first. We object to the blockade, so we blockade you. Then we hear statements made by Trump that Iran is begging for further negotiations. So honestly, this is not either linear or very transparent or very clear. I don't think that there's deeply a profound cleverness beneath all of this.
I think there is a chaos that is part of this story. Part of the chaos is that there are two partners on one side of the war, Israel and The United States. Israel doesn't want to cease fire. Israel wants the full destruction of Iran. It's not hidden that fact.
So the moment there is a supposed ceasefire, Israel goes into escalation mode in Lebanon and then we have a weird day of debating whether Lebanon was part of the ceasefire. The intermediary Pakistan says definitely yes. Iran says of course. Israel says of course not. The United States hems and haws.
So this is not deep. This is simply that one partner in this war, Israel, does not want a ceasefire and does not want a negotiation. Then there's a question of what the negotiations are about. The United States had put its maximal demands before. Iran had rejected them.
Iran had put back a counter list of objectives. Donald Trump had posted that those were acceptable as the basis of negotiation. Then we didn't hear of those again. Okay, what's going on there? Well, in some sense obviously, The United States and it's a strange term to use, Donald Trump because it's not The United States, it's one person, believes that he can bully and bluster his way to some kind of outcome.
And this is the overwhelming idea that he has had all along. That he could demand huff, puff, bluster, post, bomb, whatever it is that that will yield an outcome. This is partly a delusion. Partly, it may be, it may be strangely enough, the Iranians are very polite in their public demeanor in the negotiations. This may be taken as a sign of weakness by The United States which does not believe in politeness or expressions of hope for trust and other things.
Iranian negotiators say, we would like trust with The United States, Trump thinks these people must be idiots. I'm trying to kill them. What are they talking about? And so it may be this kind of bizarre, even cultural, absolute lack of contact that is taking place. Trump, whether delusional or for whatever reason, believes that he can force his way through this.
That he to put it in his vernacular has all the cards. And the Iranians, I think at the core believe that they have a lot of the cards to use that strange expression in this context. But I don't think that they are simply exceeding to US demands. If that were the case they would have exceeded to US demands a long time ago. If anything has become clear in recent weeks, it is that The United States cannot actually militarily defeat Iran.
That's the overriding lesson. So why the bluster and demands and bombing and threats and killings of by Trump, which didn't work before. Why would they work now? But clearly, Trump believes that they will work. And I don't think he's bluffing about that.
I think he believes that he can either bluff or bomb his way to success. It seems to be the case. I wasn't there and I only heard it of course second hand. But that Trump was calling constantly to Vance during these negotiations. If that's true, it's also a little pathetic and very bizarre.
But it could actually be the case. It would certainly underpin what I believe is a fact. I may be wrong, but I believe that this is really individualized behavior. This is not the US government in some institutional way rolled out to accomplish something. This is a one person show.
I think a delusional, incompetent one person. But my interpretation, Glenn, is that it's one person, Donald Trump. Maybe that's wrong, maybe that's naive, maybe I'm just reading superficially the reality. But I don't see a deeper reality in this than an incompetent, delusional old man blustering and shouting and bombing and killing, trying to get his way with a partner who doesn't want to have any way other than complete destruction. So that's why it looks so weird.
It is weird. That's my interpretation.
Speaker 0: Well, it's certainly very confusing statecraft. Use the word delusion, and I I often wonder if there is some lack of rationality behind this because when we heard the reasons to go to war, be it nuclear weapons or Iran being this, you know, irrational mullahs, which can't be deterred, or this assassination attempt on Trump, which was also attributed to the Iranians for some reason, you know, then this was the reasoning. I didn't see this wasn't very convincing. And then, of course, the reaction was this regime change war, and they seem to have severely overestimated how fragile the government in Iran is and also the assumption that the regime change could be done with air campaign. Also, Iranian reaction that Trump made a point that they could not predict that that they would start to strike all the bases, shut down the Strait Of Hormuz, and essentially pursue a long war.
But in advance of the war, this is, you know, this is what we were discussing on my podcast. Yeah. This was the likely thing they would do because they see this as an extensional threat and they need to deter. But I just it begs the question about the the irrationality behind the whole thing. How how are you assessing this?
Because it's none of the reasoning or reactions or assumptions seem to be based on anything that makes much sense.
Speaker 1: As best I can judge, again, we're outside the room as it were. But from all accounts, this seems to be a deinstitutionalized and irrational process. Meaning that as you and I are close observers of governments and how they act normally. How they behave, how they process information, how decisions are made. It's usually with files, bureaucracy options, deliberation, memos, and then final decisions that have a character of group decision.
And in The US political system on paper, it's more complicated because we have at least two branches of government that would normally be involved. The judges not, but the legislature certainly. There would be deliberations. The President of The United States would meet with senators and congressmen. Senior administration officials would be routinely briefing key members of Congress and congressional committees.
Congressional staffs would be engaged. There would be not quite an all of government process, but a very extensive process. We sometimes have the absolute detailed records of such a process. The most famous example being the Cuban Missile Crisis when the executive committee of President Kennedy met repeatedly and it was taped. And it's been studied by historians for decades.
And that executive committee had principles from each of the key departments of the government. From the Pentagon, from the CIA, from the Justice Department, from the State Department. And so the principles would go back to their own headquarters of their own ministries And then there would be process there as well. And there was written documentation, there were verbal arguments, there were diplomatic back channels and so forth. When we look at the current process, it's very hard to discern any of this right now.
What is reported, and it's pretty widely reported, is Trump and a few people around him. Mostly yes people, listening to Trump opine and make decisions. This is not a rational process. We've now heard repeatedly, and especially I wanna commend a paper I often criticize, The New York Times has had inside accounts that have seemed very credible, detailed, and not denied in any way by anybody involved. That have portrayed this as Netanyahu and the chief of Mossad pitching a war to Donald Trump in a small group where the rest of the group from Vance, the CIA director, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, were all skeptical of this.
Some thought it was farcical. But Trump said, yeah, this sounds good. And Mossad played the card that the Iranian leaders were all meeting together. Let's kill them all. And so they went for it.
With Trump making the decision, Vance reportedly saying, disagree with this, but I will support you, mister president. With the others expressing various degrees of doubt and skepticism about the likelihood of success. This seems to me like Trump's show. That is not a normal process for grave decisions such as this. We can then add the absolutely bizarre behavior of Trump in the last couple of weeks.
But he's bizarre for his whole public life, but especially in the second term. And I would say especially in the last six months where something even seems haywire compared to previous bizarre behavior. Trump seems to be unhinged. He is making statements and posts that are outside of, let's say, not just three standard deviations, four standard deviations of the normal. Kinds of statements that we have never seen in American history by a president.
Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards. It was Trump's attempt a few days ago at public diplomacy, let us say. Civil your civilization will end to never return. I'm paraphrasing. This evening was another.
Trump's attack on Pope Leo yesterday. His posting of Trump as Christ and then saying, no, that wasn't Christ. That was the Red Cross. Of course, that that was just Trump trying to get out of a PR disaster. But the rest is absolutely bizarre.
And we have to, we have to factor in the real possibility that not only is there no institutional process, but that this man has lost his mind. I It's not a partisan statement. The previous president of the other party, Joe Biden, lost his mind too in the last year. Something that was denied by those around him. A bad sign for The US, but we should remember it because it was just two years ago.
Many of us heard from people meeting Biden that he wasn't all there. But this was strongly denied by his team until one evening in a debate. He had to stand there by himself. And then we saw that he wasn't all there. And then some people rather disgracefully said, oh no, he was on medicine.
He had a cold that day and so forth. They hid his dementia during the past year or two of the government. Well, Trump shows profound signs of mental instability right now. They can't hide Trump because in the middle of the night he starts posting on his true social. These seem to be unfiltered.
They are not put on by staff. They are put on by Donald Trump, the one and only. And they are irrational. And they are a sign of of of some kind of serious mental problems. This is being widely talked about in the last few days in Washington right now.
So this is not me piping off. This is something that has become the common currency in Washington as well. None of it looks like normal government at the moment. The saddest part for me is that even if everything else were true about what I have just said, and I'm not sure, but that's how it looks. We would normally have members of Congress taking some action in this context.
It's their constitutional obligation. It's their assignment under the constitution, war and peace. And they're not acting because it's the party in charge, because Trump is even more dangerous to Republicans than he is to Democrats. Because with Republicans, he can wipe out his own partisans more easily than he can the opponents. And so they are paralyzed and terrified And repeatedly vote not to say anything about anything.
We don't wanna be bothered. Leave us alone. We just wanna hold our jobs. So they duck their heads, take no responsibility, and we're off to the races as it were.
Speaker 0: No, think definitely with Trump we see there's some deficiencies with his personality. There might be some mental problems adding on top of this. And the fact that he divorced himself from key institutions also, of course, undermines rational statecraft. But as you said, we saw similar things with Biden that is not just a cover up, but that also begs the question who was essentially running the White House when he was not mentally present. So, you know, you could point to maybe a polarized society and political system where where you don't only hate the opposing side, but you make excuses for your own because you have to protect them and because the alternative is someone, you know, you think is the enemy.
But
Speaker 1: but it's I knew by the way during the Biden period since it was more typically my former colleagues or friends that were in the administration. I knew that even the most senior people in the administration barely saw the president of The United States. So even the most senior people in departments were telling me, oh, we don't really know what's going on. It's the White House. There are a couple of handlers, his wife, couple political advisors, couple insiders.
That's how the administration was run. We had the same phenomenon at the aftermath of World War one when Woodrow Wilson had a stroke. And this was known inside but kept hidden from the public by the wife. And so this is an American tradition actually of incapacitated presidents. Were not a parliamentary system where there's a prime minister who's head of the lead party of the coalition of a parliament.
Where presidential system where one person is vested with the profound powers. And when that one person is incapacitated, the first instinct of the powerful around that person, whether it's the wife or somebody else, is to hold on to the power and hide the fact of the incapacity. And I think that there is a reasonable chance that this is what's happening right now.
Speaker 0: But it just seems the problem is wider because just very briefly, that is under under the the the policies against China, the assumption the intelligence suggested that if we just cut them off semiconductors, the economy will begin to falter. We saw the Europeans, they were shocked that the Iran no. Sorry. That China would respond with two sanctions because they assumed that China would think the discipline would be legitimate. We saw the same with the Russians.
The assumption everyone bought into that it was unprovoked even though all evidence suggested otherwise. We assumed that they would be beat on the battlefield, that they had a hopeless economy that would collapse within a week. They would be isolated internationally. All these things which were very easy to realize was were not true. We we still base our policies on it, and when the reactions come, you know, you see the politicians are genuinely baffled.
It's just I I don't understand anymore what what is how how this is real. The the
Speaker 1: incompetence of the administrative system in Washington is extremely high now. First, remember that in The US political system, when a new government comes in, the top six or seven levels of the hierarchy actually are political. People are vacated. The people that come in, especially these days, are incompetent. This is a corrupt political system in which money buys the office.
And so the people that are coming in are not people of deep professional talents. They are people that are either placed in the position by a powerful interest that has paid for the campaign or perhaps they're a friend of Trump or Biden. But we have a deinstitutionalization. All of the issues you mentioned have been handled by amateurs of the most amateurish kind. The entire trade war last year was again just like this war with Iran.
Handled by a few people completely out of knowledge or professional experience or training for these issues. Trump is whatever one, whatever else one says about him, completely illiterate economically. He has no concepts of what he's talking about. No formal training and no understanding of even basics like trade deficits. Then he picked Howard Lutnick, a incompetent business friend from New York.
Peter Navarro, I think the worst PhD my economics department ever issued. An utter incompetent with no professional reputation or experience but an ardent protectionist. And it was a handful of these people that implemented last year's illegal destabilizing, confused, and failed trade policy, including with the retaliation by China, which in two days told The United States, you can't win, you just lost. And so, yes, this is exactly what has happened. With Biden, I sought the same thing, the same issue that you just raised that they thought Putin would fold or fall immediately.
Our sanctions, the nuclear threat of cutting Russia off from SWIFT, this will bring down the Russian economy and so on. My god. Are you kidding? So this has been simply a deinstitutionalized process, not competent people, and with an objective which is impossible to achieve. And the objective is a hegemon, a would be hegemon that has lost a tremendous relative amount of power and influence flailing around to protect its dominance.
And that is the story of Ukraine. It's the story of China, and it's the story of Iran in three different cases. Each one of which is the assertion by these amateurs in a failed process that The United States can simply pound its way through anything. And this is Trump's MO until this moment, which is I make the demands and the other side folds. None of it works.
He was gonna settle the Ukraine war in a phone call. He was gonna show China who's who. He was going to choose the next leader of Iran. So that's a personal level delusion. It's an institutional failure.
And the backdrop is a failure of The United States to recognize a multipolar world. That's the fundamental failure. Because if there was the overarching idea, hey, we have to deal with other people. We have to deal with other governments. You'd have already a different kind of response.
But the basic point is we don't have to deal with anybody. We're The United States Of America. We have the most powerful military in the history of the world. We can do what we want. They'll fold.
I demand a 100% not 95%. All of the backdrop thinking comes from the broader structural factor of a decline of US relative power. But then it runs through this collapse of our governmental processes, the corruption of Washington politics, and at this point, the personalization of decision making.
Speaker 0: Well, through history, one often sees a large empire. They often build these complex bureaucracies. Then when they come in decline, you see this bureaucracy becoming slow, corrupt, and also very hesitant to resistant to reform. And the elite competition, it continues to intensify. So it's not unprecedented, but I'm not sure where this is coming from, to be honest, but
Speaker 1: Yeah. In in The US case, just to say, The US bureaucracy has always been less of a structure in most of the government than in other governments because of this very high turnover of, and politicization of the senior levels. The one place where that's basically not true has been the CIA, which is a core to US foreign policy, which has been structured and you put in a director who was quickly owned by the rest of the organization. So the deep state has been there. But for what's happening now, it's people like Hagsett or Lutnick or Trump really making decisions.
They happen to be awful and ignorant and unstable, delusional, but they're really making decisions. So that is that is actually the surprise as it were.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking time. I know you have a busy day there, so
Speaker 1: thanks Great to be with you. Good. Thanks a
Speaker 0: lot. Bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jiang Xueqin: The Iran War & the Battle for the Petrodollar https://youtu.be/P_DHMUdOVdo https://t.co/d2wOIE5Guu
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this discussion, Zhang Shuay Shin and Speaker 1 analyze the evolving U.S.-Iran confrontation through the lens of global power dynamics, the petrodollar, and the shifting balance among major powers.
- The war is framed as primarily about preserving the petrodollar. Speaker 1 argues the United States, burdened by enormous debt, seeks to maintain the dollar’s dominance by controlling energy trade through naval power and strategic choke points. The belief is that the U.S. can weaponize the dollar against rivals, as seen when it froze Russian assets and then moved to stabilize oil markets. BRICS and others are moving toward alternatives, including a gold corridor, challenging the petrodollar’s centrality. The aim is to keep Europe and East Asia dependent on U.S. energy, reinforcing American hegemony, even as historical hubris risks a global backlash turning growing powers against Washington.
- The sequence of escalation over six weeks is outlined: after the American attack on Tehran and the Iranian move to close the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. eased sanctions on Russian and Iranian oil to maintain global stability, according to Treasury statements. Escalations targeted civilian infrastructure and strategic chokepoints, with discussions of striking GCC energy infrastructure and desalination plants. A U.S. threat to “bomb Iran back to the stone age” was countered by Iran proposing a ten-point framework—encompassing uranium enrichment rights, lifting sanctions, and security guarantees for Iran and its proxies. The Americans reportedly suggested the framework was workable, but negotiations in Islamabad stalled when U.S. officials did not engage seriously.
- The broader objective is posited as not simply a tactical war but a strategic move to ensure U.S. imperial supremacy by shaping energy flows. Speaker 1 speculates Trump’s motive centers on keeping the petrodollar intact, potentially forcing China and other partners to buy energy with dollars. Iran’s willingness to negotiate in Islamabad is linked to pressure from China amid China’s economic strains, particularly as energy needs and Belt and Road investments create vulnerabilities for China if Middle East energy becomes unreliable.
- The proposed naval blockade is discussed as difficult to implement directly against Iran due to ballistic missiles; instead, the plan may aim to choke off alternative routes like the Strait of Malacca, leveraging trusted regional partners and allies. Iran could respond via the Red Sea (Bab al-Mandab) or other leverage, including the Houthis, challenging Western control of energy corridors. The overarching aim would be to force a global energy reorientation toward North America, though it risks long-term hostility toward the United States.
- The roles of great powers are analyzed: the U.S. strategy is described as exploiting Middle East disruption to preserve the petrodollar, with short-term gains but long-term risks of a broader alliance against U.S. hegemony. Europe and Asia are pressured to adapt, with China’s energy needs especially salient as sanctions tighten Middle East supply. Russia is identified as the principal challenger to U.S. maritime hegemony, while China remains economically entangled, facing strategic incentives to cooperate with the United States if required by economic pressures.
- The dialogue considers NATO and Europe, arguing that the real contest is between globalists and nationalists in the United States, with Trump viewed as an agent of empire who may threaten the existing globalist framework. The speakers discuss whether this competition will redefine alliances, the future of NATO, and the possibility that a more Eurasian-led order could emerge if Western powers fail to maintain their maritime advantages.
- Finally, Russia’s role is emphasized: Moscow is seen as the key counterweight capable of challenging American maritime dominance, with the war in Iran serving, in part, to counter Russian actions in Ukraine and to incentivize alignment with Russia, China, and Iran against U.S. leadership over the next two decades.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Zhang Shuay Shin to discuss the developments between The United States and Iran. So thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Ryan.
Speaker 0: So I I well, the the first thing I think about is in regards to this war is that the Iranian targets all seem to be very well calculated in terms of economics. And I think this is interesting because usually in all American wars, they there's some economic interests to go to war. But now we see them well, not just shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz, but you see them when they essentially forced Americans to spend their expensive interceptor missiles. All of this has seems to have an economic underpinning. But the really big thing appears to be the possible attack now on the petrodollar.
I was wondering how do you see how do you see the vulnerability of the petrodollar in this war?
Speaker 1: Right. So I would argue that right now, this war in Iran, it's primarily about maintaining the petrodollar. Because these past ten years, the world has become increasingly concerned about the viability of the petrodollar. Right now, The United States is $39,000,000,000,000 in debt. The United States, right after the the Russians, invaded Ukraine froze over $200,000,000,000 in Russian assets, which makes the world question the legitimacy as well as the credibility of The US financial system.
Because if the Americans can weaponize the US dollar against the Russians, they can weaponize US dollar against everyone. So after that, you saw this massive exodus from US treasuries. And right now, China is establishing the, gold corridor. So BRICS is trying to create alternatives to the petrodollar. But for the Americans, the petrodollar is the very basis of their empire.
And quite honestly, it's the very it's a it's the objective of their empire. So The United States right now is in a fight tooth and nail to protect the petrodollar. What this basically means is to use its naval supremacy, its control over strategic choke points, maritime choke points to control trade access, and basically force nations to depend on US resources. So we saw that United States in January attacked Venezuela, and now it's attacked Iran. Recently, these past few days, there was a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's main export hub, which basically took off 40% of Russian oil from the global market.
And so Europe and East Asia are now forced to depend on The United States, North America for energy. And right now, we're seeing a pivot from Europe and East Asia over to North America. And so that's a strategy in place where The United States basically wants to take take off Russian GCZ oil and force the world to buy from The United States, which protects the petrodollar. But what we know from history is that this sort of hubris will lead to a backlash, and it will lead to the world unifying against America eventually. Because quite honestly, America used to be the policeman of the world and has become the pirate of the world.
And so maybe in the short term, you will see the strategy working out, but definitely in the long term, you will see the world becoming much more aggravated by this piracy.
Speaker 0: So what do they need to achieve then in in this war? Because well, I was wondering if you were surprised that the Americans appeared to have walked away from the negotiations. At least that's what it seemed like in Islamabad. Do you is is this to continue the war then, or or is it simply because they can't or the petrodollar won't survive if the Strait Of Hormuz is with Iranians? Or what is the thinking here?
Speaker 1: Right. So we've seen a very strange sequence of events these past six weeks. The war's been going on for about six weeks, and we've seen a lot of strange event events. So the moment that the Americans attacked Tehran and and killed their supreme leader, the Iranians basically closed off the trip of Houmouz. And in response, what the Americans did, which was very surprising, is they basically removed sanctions on both Russian and Iranian oil, allowing the Russians and Iranians to make a lot of money selling the the oil.
So that was sort of surprising. And Scott Bezin, the the treasury secretary explained that this is to maintain global stability. He's afraid that oil will reach $200 and this would destabilize the global economy. And as this world progressed, we saw The United States escalate to attacking civilian infrastructure like universities, bridges, and railways. In fact, there's real concern that the Americans in Israelis planned to choke and strangle Toronto to death, meaning cutting off the railway system, the roads, which would put Tehran under siege.
They couldn't get food and water from the other parts of Iran. And Tehran, a city of 10,000,000 people, would be in a lot of trouble if that that that were the case. So what we were seeing was constant escalation. Then last week, we were on a brink because Trump basically declared that if Iran did not open the Strait Of Hormuz, then the Americans would bomb Iran back to the stone age. And Iran obviously would would would retaliate by destroying GCC energy infrastructure and the desalination plants.
So last Tuesday, we're really on the brink, and it seemed as though we were heading towards war three. But then Trump did something completely surprising, which is he basically offered an unconditional surrender. Iran had a 10 plan, which included that Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium. It also included that all economic sanctions against Iran would be lifted. Iran will be given sovereignty over the Shreve Hamuz, and all security guarantees will be applied to both Iran and its proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas.
So these were the 10 points that Iran demanded. And Americans, Donald Trump basically said that this is a workable framework. And so they agreed to meet in Somabad to discuss these 10 points and use them as a framework for a possible long term ceasefire. We know that once they reach Islamabad, J. D.
Vance, Dierk Kushner, and Siegf Reykov basically blew off the Iranians. They were not serious about negotiations. The Americans went in with some goodwill hoping to reach an agreement, and that and that's where the Iranians went. But the Americans just just basically said, no. We're we're gonna stick to our original demands, and so the negotiations went nowhere.
And so now we're back to where we were a week ago. So the big question then is, why would the Americans do this? What what's the point of this ceasefire? And so we we can only speculate here. Okay?
So so so let me try to figure out how Donald Trump thinks because he's a businessman. And what does he want? Well, his main objective is to maintain American imperial supremacy by maintaining the petrodollar. And that basically means forcing China and Japan and South Korea and Europe to buy energy using the US dollar. That's what the petrodollar literally means.
And so maybe the point of this war was to destroy the GCC and Iran's capacity to deliver oil to the world market and force the world to rely on North America, Canada, Mexico, and The United States. K. So let's just say that is the main objective. And, obviously, Trump can't announce this because this would piss off the entire world and you have the entire world against The United States. Well, in order for him to pull this off, he would basically need to gauge China's reaction because we know that China and Iran are very strong allies.
China has invested a great deal in Iranian infrastructure as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and China buys a lot of oil from Iran. In fact, China buys about 90% of all Iranian oil. So, basically, Trump needs to figure out, can I pull this off and would China agree to buy oil from me? Okay? So he's a negotiator, he's his businessman, he's practical, he's trying to figure out what the pressure points on China are.
And I would make the argument that this Iran Iran agreeing to this Islamabad negotiations would not have been possible if China did not apply pressure on Iran. K? I would make this argument because the Iranians have been negotiating with Americans these past few months, and they know that the Americans use these negotiations as a pretext in order to, assassinate leaders, in order to, do surprise attacks. So the Iranians know the Americans have absolutely no credibility at all. The Americans are not serious at all about peace negotiations.
And these past few weeks, the Iranians have been adamant saying, you start this war. We're just protecting our sovereignty and there's some point in negotiations. Let's just fight this to the better end. I think that was the right approach. This is what you this is the attitude you must take against bullies.
So why is it that the Iranians suddenly had a change of heart and says, fine. Let's negotiate in Islamabad. In fact, set a pretty they set a pretty high level delegation to Islamabad, including the foreign minister, to partake in these negotiations knowing that Israel has a history of assassinating negotiating teams. Okay? So they put their diplomats at tremendous risk.
And I think the only explanation is that right now, the Chinese economy is under a lot of strain. China receives about 6% of its oil and energy from The Middle East, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With China receives receives about third of its energy needs from Venezuela, Russia, and Iran combined. And China's been very lucky in that these three places have been sanctioned. So China was has been able to receive these these the oil at a very deep steep discount, which has really helped the Chinese economy.
And now and now a lot of this energy is being is moving offline. So the Chinese economy is a lot under a lot of stress. So Trump's trying to figure out, can I when I go to China in mid May, can I propose to Beijing? Hey, man. Let's have a grand alliance where you start to buy energy from North America.
And he's trying to figure that out. And given that Iran agreed to negotiations, I think that he's figured out that the answer is yes. China must agree because of the state of their economy. And this is why we saw right after the negotiations were canceled, Trump announced a naval blockade against Iran. Because he knows that right now, China's a lot of strain and he can bring China into into an agreement and and thus protect the petrodollar.
So so that's my explanation for what's going on. I could be wrong. It's all speculation, but I think this is what makes the most sense so far.
Speaker 0: The naval blockade, this is well, a strange conception because it's it's unclear how it's gonna be upheld because they're not naturally in the strait either. They will be far away. So it's essentially, the blockade is would it entail attacking Chinese ships entering? I mean, it seems absurd. What if they would the Iranians open up for Indian ships?
Are they gonna start attacking Indian ships? It it doesn't really make that much sense. How how do you see this? What is how this blockade actually function, or is it just meant to choke off the the Iranian ships?
Speaker 1: Right. So from a practical perspective, it's actually very hard to implement because if you go close to the Iranian coastline to the Strait Of Hormuz, then you're in range of Iranian ballistic missiles. And so the Americans won't risk that because we we've seen that their aircraft carriers, including the Gerald Ford, Naple, Lincoln have intentionally stayed away far away from Iran's ballistic missile range. So they're afraid of ballistic missiles, and they know that these ballistic missiles can sink their aircraft carriers which would be sorry. Which would be a tremendous tremendous defeat strategically for the Americans.
So I think this is a pretext to choke off the Strait Of Strait Of Malacca. Right? So there are two major choke points for East Asia to receive oil from the Middle East. The Strait Of Hormuz is what Iran controls. And so in response, America plans to choke off the Strait Of Malacca, which is right now basically controlled by Indonesia and Malaysia, both of which are American military allies.
And these these nation have been heavily infiltrated by the CIA. So I think that's the grand strategy to basically use the Strait Of Malacca to chop off East Asia from the from GCC Energy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But if the Americans actually go through with this attempt to blockade, the the Iranians would probably respond with their ally in Yemen, that is to close off the Red Sea at Bab Al Mandab. So I'm just it it seems that this could be well, it just seems like this plan is weak at many levels. But it kind of begs the question of how what do you see being the likely success of The United States achieving its objective, not just with the blockade, but also with preserving the petrodollar because Iran is quite resilient. And I'm assuming that the Chinese, you know, much like with the war against Russia, that they they know that they could be next on the chopping block or that they at least are the ultimate targets.
Speaker 1: Right. So what America is mostly interested in is trying to sustain its debt. Right now, America has $39,000,000,000,000 in debt. That's not that's not that's not a promise long as nations continue to buy up US treasuries. And we've seen these past few years a movement away from US treasury and more and more towards gold.
The Chinese especially are moving towards, gold. So how do you force East Asia and Europe to continue to buy US treasuries? Well, if you are the only supplier of energy, of oil and gas, LNG, they have absolutely no choice but to sell their gold and buy US treasuries in order to sustain their economies. Right? So, yes, you're absolutely right in that the Iranians have countermeasures.
The Iranians could use the Houthis to close off the Red Sea. They could attack the pipeline that connects Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. There's many many measures that the Iranians can do, but the influence of the Iranians is contained to the Middle East. Remember, the ultimate objective is to knock off Middle East oil and energy from the market And that is very easy to do as long as long as you continue to provoke this war. Now, I think the next step is a ground invasion in order to force Iranians to attack GCC energy and desalination plants.
Right? So the entire goal is to destroy the Middle East, which will force the world to pivot to North America. So in a long in in a short term, this strategy will work out because there's absolutely no alternative, for the world to, the Middle East energy. But in the long term, this will create a great deal of animosity, towards United States, which will ultimately destroy their empire.
Speaker 0: Well, Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy and also, yeah, former president of the European Commission, he he said something interesting along those lines. He was making the point that, well, at some point, Europeans will have to start getting energy again from the Russians if they wanna thrive. But he also made a prediction that the energy would open once the Americans would begin to control the energy infrastructure between Russia and Europe. So, essentially, the Americans taking over Nord Stream, this is when the energy will start flowing again, which is, well, an assumption, I guess, that that that that Americans want to be in control over the energy architecture. Otherwise, they will not permit it.
But but but beyond this, you know, what what Trump might be planning, our common argument is often that Trump is not necessarily fully in control, that he's all if not compromised, at least under great influence from various interests, be it the neo cons or the Israelis. How do you see this, the extent of Trump's control? Because well, given how different his second administration is compared to the first, one often gets the impression that it doesn't always matter who, you know, sits on the throne in The US.
Speaker 1: I think in the first administration, there was a lot of concern within the deep state and the neocons and the different political factions who were in Washington DC about Trump's capacity
Speaker 0: to be
Speaker 1: a leader because he was outrageous in his speech, in his rhetoric. The Europeans were very much concerned about Trump. Trump started this trade war with China that was hurting the global economy, and it was hurting American consumers. Trump did not seem like a viable leader, and he did not seem as though he can maintain the empire. And people felt that if he stayed in office longer, the Europeans would drift away, China would drift away, the entire world would drift would drift would drift away, and American hegemony would would die.
But then what happened, of course, was that Biden came into power, and Biden was essentially comatose. He did nothing for four years. So Putin invaded Ukraine, and Americans didn't really have a forceful response. I mean, they did do a lot of things like blow up the Nordson pipeline. They sanctioned Russian energy.
They removed Russia from the SWIFT system. They sent they froze 20,000,000,000 in Russian assets. They did a lot of things, but none of these things were actually useful. And the empire decided that regardless of what we feel about Trump, he is forceful. He will act.
Whereas Biden and the Democrats may not act because essentially they're a bunch of pussies. And so the decision was made to reinstate Trump in 2024, and that's why we are here today. So Trump is an agent of empire. He is doing what the empire requires. Okay?
And so what what happened before during the Europolem moment, basically from 1991 up to today, was that America had a lot of goodwill and it was able to achieve the consent of the world, mainly by co opting the global elite. Right? So all these elites in Europe, in Russia, in China, they were mainly concerned about engaging as much corruption as possible so they can basically transfer their ill gotten gains into America. And this doesn't work really well for the elite for a long, long time. But obviously, these nation states are were not were not very happy with the state affairs.
That's why you saw the rise of Putin in Russia and the rise of Xi in China because there was a lot of concern among the nationalists that America was hauling out these these countries. And they were completely right in the matter. So so now you're seeing a direct challenge to American empire. And so the only challenge is you don't have the consent of these nation states, then you must use force to enforce your empire within these nation states. And so before the American military was used in order to guarantee peace in the passage Americana was used to guarantee a national trade.
They were the policemen of the world in order to maintain the rules based national order. And now that's and now that Russia and China and other nations are questioning the legitimacy of the rules based national order, what Trump is doing is he is transforming the military, the American military from a police force into a pirate force in order to extract tolls from, the world. So we are in this situation because Trump's first strategy was to use tariffs, like, on the world, right, to force Europeans to pay tariffs to the American empire. But the supreme supreme court struck that down because they said that the he said that Brantz doesn't have the authority to enforce tariffs only congress does. So Trump's like, well, you know what?
If con if you want me to enforce tariffs, then I'll just enforce tolls. Okay? I'll make the world pay tolls in order to have trade around the world. And and that's why we're seeing the Americans employ went through their navy into the Caribbean to block trade into the Western Hemisphere. That's why we're seeing this war in Iran to block off the world from Middle East energy.
And that's why we're seeing right now the the US Navy basically boarding Russian shadow fleet tankers, basically stealing shadow fleet tankers. And and we'll see more of this as the months go by.
Speaker 0: Yeah. What's interesting with Trump though, there's some consistency here. I mean, many people, I guess, mistook his rhetoric for being, you know, all about peace. But if you listen to what he said all the way going back to the nineteen eighties, he was essentially scolding all the Japanese and others for for, you know, taking advantage of The US the way he saw it. So he he didn't say that we shouldn't have a big empire.
He just said the empire they should pay us for the privilege of being protected. So it's not that he didn't want an empire. It seemed he just wanted a better return on investment. That is, you know, you have to monetize the empire somehow. Otherwise, the the empire will kill off the republic.
So in other words, they should feed it. It looks as this is where his his main difference is, but that means not just extracting from adversaries, but also allies. But I don't think it's limited to Trump. I think overall, The United States will tilt more and more in this direction because as they have said, they exhaust themselves with $39,000,000,000,000 in the hole. This it's not as if you can vote for a Democrat, and suddenly they go back to paying for the security of allies anymore and having generous trade agreements, the the there's no going back after, you know, exhausted to this extent.
Sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is a really important point that you make. Okay? So remember, in 2016, when Trump first came into office, he was seeing the same things you're saying which is everyone's taking advantage of us, especially China. So let's impose tariffs and make sure that that it's America first, that America is winning in this in this trade relationship.
But after Trump left office, Biden came in with the Democrats and they institutionalized his policies. Okay? So during the first Trump administration, a lot of it was personal, especially his tariff war against China. And then Biden and the Democrats made it institutional. And so we're sort of the same, process here where maybe Trump leaves office in 2028, the Republicans lose, the Democrats come come into office, and they won't change anything.
All they're do is institutionalize it and make it a long term sustainable policy because this is what benefits American empire.
Speaker 0: So how will the great powers respond then? Because The US, obviously, is shifting the strategy. It's becoming more extractive and more aggressive. Again, it's not going well, it's not going down without a fight. How do you see the the Chinese and the Russians, well, reacting to this?
You mentioned before that China's it's gold corridor in terms of shifting more to, yeah, gold instead of being reliant on the US dollar. But what is it being the overall all strategy here? Because my impression is, at least from the Russians, that they the the interpretation that Trump was someone they could make peace with and, you know, reset relation, it appears to be backsliding. I think they were quite appalled by what has happened to Iran, not just the attack on economic infrastructure, but also the, you know, the killing of its leaders. And it seems, yeah, very much to go against their interest.
And, also, Trump never actually did what he promised, which was to end the war in Ukraine. In all fairness, this could have been done if you would have cut off, you know, the intelligence agencies still working there.
Speaker 1: Alright. So, again, I think we give too much credit to Trump. I think that this is a natural response of empire to its decline. We historically, empires have never have never gone quietly into the night. They have flailed against the wind, and they have tried to destroy the world as they decline.
And so we can see much more hubris. We will see much more thuggery and piracy in America. We have a rule about Trump. And so I think we are in a situation because of the limitations of Chinese strategic thinking. So when China built the Build and Road Initiative, which was proper, with with which was a good strategy of trying to secure resource independence from The United States, the problem was that when these Chinese ships went to collect commodities from overseas, they were escorted by the US Navy.
When they came back, they were escorted by The US Navy. It was the US Navy that guaranteed the protection of Chinese trade. And it never occurred to Chinese policy policymakers that one day, one of these days, America could be like, why don't you steal the cargo? You know? Why are we escorting these Chinese ships around the world?
Why don't countries steal it? And so it never really occurred to Chinese pause pause policymakers of this possibility. And I don't know why why this is the case, but, we we can go into many possibilities. But the the reality is that China is now in a lot of trouble where China has invested $200,000,000,000 into the Middle East in infrastructure. China right now imports 50 to 50 to 6% of its oil needs from the Middle East.
Now that the Strait Of Hummus has been closed off, now that this war is raging in The Middle East, China is in a lot of trouble. And again again, this is all has to do with the limitations of Chinese strategic thinking. And so now China is in a lot of trouble. And in a short term, China has actually no choice, absolutely no choice at all, but to agree to Trump's demands which is that China will become a major purchaser of American American LNG. China has actually no choice in the matter.
Okay? Absolutely no choice. There's no there's something China China can do. Now, in the mid and long term, what's gonna happen is that Russia will start to challenge America in the seas. It's gonna challenge America American maritime naval supremacy.
Basically, what what Russia is gonna do is it's gonna arm its shuttle fleet. And there's no way that that Russia could defeat America militarily in the seas, but America will be forced to fight a war of attrition and over time, the American Navy will be downgraded. It will be degraded. And it'll be very hard for the American Navy to replenish its lost ships. And so that's what what we're seeing in the long term.
In the in the short term, there's absolutely nothing Russia and China can can do.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I often think about the current situation. It resembles a little bit like before World War one. That is you saw Germany building and becoming stronger and stronger in terms of industrial production, steel production, essentially all the key measurements. Meanwhile, the British controlled the seas.
The entire their ability to actually compete against the British was, you know, was in hand of the hands of the British. So all they had to do is is begin to cut off or threaten their supply lines, which is why the Germans also had to find, you know, other other possible corridors, either land or sea. But it's a little bit with the Chinese, I feel. They have all this. Well, probably one of the motivations behind the Belt and Road Initiative that is you can't rival The US as the economic leading economy while the Americans are then organizing their or, you know, organizing their supplier lines and their their physical transportation corridors.
It doesn't make much sense. But this return to, I guess, well, piracy, as you say, or or choking off these different transportation corridors, We've seen, of course, the blockade on Venezuela, Cuba, the hijacking of these Russian ships. By the way, the hijacking of Iranian tankers have happened for some years now before this war as well. So so I I get it that our hegemon in decline will begin to weaponize all the economic levers of power. There's access to its technologies and industries, transportation corridors, banks, currencies, all of this is weaponized.
But The United States isn't all powerful either. I mean, how what is the main challenge for The US to hold out? Because as you said, they're struggling with their own debt. This is all their economic trouble is also translating into social and political instability. So it looks as if, you know, they they they can't afford to play this game with the Iranians for too long that, you know, at some point, they will have to put an end to this thing.
Speaker 1: I think, like, the goal is to have this war continue for as long as possible. And the reason why is that if there were peace in the Middle East, what would happen is that Russia, Iran, and China would get together and form a trade alliance to counter America's control over the seas. And this trade alliance could extend easily into Europe, into Africa. This is what what McKenna calls a heartland thesis. Right?
Where America and Britain, the way for them to maintain their empire is by controlling maritime navigation. And the great concern is that a power would emerge in Eurasia to unite the heartland and basically negate Anglo American naval power. And so this war in Iran cannot stop. If it stops, then Russia could achieve its North South trade corridor and China could implement its Belt and Road initiative. And given the how America is starting to behave, then I think that Europe, The Middle East, Africa would happily join this trade alliance and basically try to try to ignore the Western Hemisphere and Britain.
And so there's no way that Brit that America will seed Iran and and leave Iran alone. It's gonna send in ground troops to create as much chaos as possible and try to disrupt the Belt and Road Initiative. What we're seeing is that the Israelis and the Americans are targeting railways in Iran, which is crucial to the Belt and Road Initiative. And so we can we will we can expect maybe mowing a lawn of Belt and Road in in in infrastructure for years and years.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I couldn't help but to notice the targeting of the railroads as well, as well as some ports in the Caspian. So this entire
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 0: International North South transportation corridor from which have been building from Russia, Iran to India, this is being undermined, but also, of course, Iran's connectivity with with China. So but but I'm just wondering about the feasibility here because how what exactly can boots on the ground achieve? But, also, can The United States get the boots on the ground? Because they're quite overextended already.
Speaker 1: Right. So the boots on on the ground, it's basically to maintain the war. Right? So the problem with air with air warfare, which is what the American syndicators have been using for the past six weeks, is that your your it's gonna be very hard to maintain your your air power. We're already seeing some planes crashing because they're not well maintained.
We're seeing the Iranians adapt very creatively and resiliently to American air power. So you you can only establish air supremacy by having boots on the ground. And so I I think the main objective of of of the boots on the ground is not necessarily to take over Iran. I mean, that's a suicide mission. But it's basically to secure the coastline and try to degrade Iran's air defenses and basically force Iran on the defensive.
The main objective, I think, if if I'm fighting this war, I think my main objective is to choke off Tehran. Basically, to cut off all railways, cut off all roads, and basically force the population into starvation.
Speaker 0: So this is where you think we're going? I think so. Destroying the population or as Trump would say, kill off a civilization?
Speaker 1: That's right. That that that would be the strategy moving forward. Yes. To to basically besiege Tehran.
Speaker 0: Just a such a big country. It seems hard to yeah. Again, if the railroads are undermined. But it it also has his domestic problems, though, the that Trump needs to you know, it's not a popular war among the public, and it has some fierce political opposition only intensified with the political polarization. I I I do wanna ask about NATO, though, because this is was often perplexing to many Europeans because while, you know, in the Gulf States, they're now discussing the extent to which, you know, being frontline states for The US is actually harmful to the security, they're having some of these talks in East Asia as well.
But in Europe, I mean, they must be the most loyal, obedient allies or frontline states of The United States. I I'm I'm convinced they would have possibly joined the war on Iran if you would have asked them before it went south. But but but why why is does it seem to be such an objective for Trump to, I guess, undermine NATO? Because this is the main I mean, the Europeans don't have much political imagination to have security without The United States. So, you know, it looks like a massive resource to have the Europeans essentially buy whatever America wants to to, yeah, use, you know, use their currency, buy their energy, buy their expensive weapons.
I mean, the Europeans will do anything if they believe America will be there for them. So I make this big show out of we're not gonna be there for you anymore, because if there's one thing that would make the Europeans break off and seek an independent path from The United States, it's essentially The US has to shut the door on them because they're not otherwise, they wouldn't shut the door on America. So it's a bit strange how I can understand that NATO's not that the Europeans, they're not really a force amplifier. They're not bringing much to the table. They're a bit of a cost, but still, it's a bit, yeah, strange how dismissive he is of them, though.
Speaker 1: So I think that the real war is actually not between United States and Iran. I mean, the real war is between between the globalist and the nationalist. Right? So in The United States, it'd it'd be a war between the financial elite as as represented by the city of London and Wall Street versus MAGA in America First. And so what Trump wants to do is basically transition America from an empire into something called a technique, which is the idea of a greater North America.
Right? So move away from the world and just focus on consolidating greater North America, taking over Canada, taking over Greenland, taking over Mexico, taking over Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua. Okay? So so these countries that Trump has been pissing off for the past few months. Okay?
But the grand vision is to transition America into greater North America and become a continental fortress that sells resources to the rest of the world because the rest of the world is at war and in in in in desperate need of both fertilizer and energy. And so Trump really sees NATO as part of the deep state, as part of the globalist globalist class, and so he's using this war as a pretext to severe relations with NATO. Basically, Trump would be perfectly happy if NATO were to go into Ukraine and be absolutely massacred by the Russians. That would solve a major headache of his. So, yes, there is this war going on between United States and Iran, but we have we have to forget that there's but we we should not forget there's also a shadow war going on between the globalist and the nationalist in America.
This is also why Washington DC is supportive of Trump's war because the globalist want Iran to be humble. They want Iran to be destroyed so that they can extend the hegemony of the empire. And they think that Trump is a useful idiot, a puppet in order to achieve this goal. And that's why the Democrats have not stopped him. You know, there was recently, two weeks ago, no kings protests in United States, millions of people.
And like, you you you were allowed to say no kings, but you were not allowed to say no war. Right? You would think like that people would be much more governized by an anti war settlement than it is than they are are by like an anti tyrant settlement. But during the protest, which were organized by democratic lobbyist lobby groups, which were very pro Zionist, you you are not allowed to voice any anti war settlement. So it just goes to show you that all of Washington DC is fully behind this war, and they think that Trump will be the scapegoat.
That that that even if this war goes badly, Trump will be the one that takes all the blame. The Republicans will will be wiped out in the midterms, and then Democrats can steamroll back in office in 2028. And then they can implement a globalist agenda and destroy MAGA once and for all.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This language, though, the globalist versus the nationalist, it's fascinating that the the first time I read about this divide was by Samuel Huntington, none other. Back in 2004, he wrote this article Dead Souls, where he was making the point that all this globalization had essentially created a a political elite detached from the nation. So he was making the prediction that the future divisions in the world would be between the cosmopolitans or globalist versus the nationalist or patriots. So I thought it was insightful.
Again, it's 2004. Yeah. It's been twenty two years. And if you listen to a lot of the new populist leaders we have, this is what they're yeah. Marine Le Pen to Afte, this is essentially the same language they also use now.
Let me just ask a last question. How does Russia fit into this? Because all the pieces kinda make sense there. I understand the the rivalry between The United States, China, the the the problem of Iran, but but Russia is, you know, is an energy superpower in many ways. It's not doesn't have to be an opponent of The United States.
It's within this rivalry between the cosmopolitans and the and the and the nationalists. It's it belongs to the the latter, it seems. So how how do you see this, yeah, impacting the thinking in The United States? What is the most partner to Iran and China should have had?
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Right now, United States' main adversary is not China. It's really Russia because Russia is the only country that has the resources, the political will, and the territorial integrity in order to challenge American hegemony. And so right now, America's major concern is is Russia.
And this war against Iran is really seen as a way to counter Russia's aggression in Ukraine. Basically, once Russia went into Ukraine, America has actually no choice but to attack Iran in order to counter Russia's possible control over the heartland. And so this is going to be the defining struggle for the world for the next twenty years, not between United States and China, but between Russia and America. And the great question is, where will the world align over the next twenty years? If history is a guide, most countries will start to align with Russia.
Because if you go back go back to the Peloponnesian War, the main aggressor was Athens. And what happened ultimately was that the entire world ultimately aligned against Athens because Athens was seen as the great aggressor. So right now, the great aggressor is America. And we can see that the world, especially Europe, and Iran, and China turning to Russia as the great salvation. And what Russia will do is start to challenge America in the seas.
Again, I don't think there's any hope that Russia will win against America in the seas, But Russia has absolutely no choice but to start to challenge America.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Negotiations Collapsed - Return to War https://youtu.be/nRYcvX1eX5k https://t.co/dniTWbByPq
Video Transcript AI Summary
Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, speaking from Islamabad where US-Iranian negotiations are taking place, says the talks have collapsed. He asserts that the United States behaved with arrogance, sought to dictate terms, and did not respect Iranian sovereignty or independence. He characterizes the Trump regime as having attempted to force Iran to lose and claims the United States is becoming an openly extremist regime, with media and think tanks reportedly naming negotiators as targets. He states that Iran is returning to its position after the collapse and that the situation remains open to future developments.
The interviewer notes that Washington Post coverage and Western rhetoric have included calls to murder negotiators, and asks where the most difficult point in the negotiations was. Marandi responds that the United States does not accept Iranian sovereignty and wants control over the Strait of Hormuz; he says Iran views its nuclear program as legitimate and legal within international law, while the United States demands capitulation. He argues the US was not serious from the outset and suggests the talks may have been a ploy to gather more information about individuals, though Iran sought to engage publicly to demonstrate a search for solutions. He mentions that doctors Vandebaut and the speaker of parliament made the right move in engaging publicly but had long been skeptical about any meaningful outcome.
Marandi notes significant regional context: the Israeli regime is reported to be slaughtering civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, while Western media and governments are said to overlook these actions. He predicts a high likelihood of renewed aggression against Iran and asserts that Iran has spent the 40-day war reorganizing and strengthening its defensive and offensive capabilities, having learned from prior conflicts. He emphasizes that Iran has not initiated wars since the revolution and that responses have followed Western escalations. He argues that there are no factions within the Trump regime that are distant from the Zionist lobby and asserts that the negotiations showed that Vance and his aides intended to push for capitulation, not a negotiation.
The discussion then turns to possible mechanisms for peace, including US opposition to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and potential toll arrangements involving Iran and Oman. Marandi says he has not been briefed on the latest details but that the issue was discussed; he reiterates that Iran’s control of the Strait is in accordance with international law, even as he notes the law of the jungle prevailing in practice. He asserts that Iran did not carry out aggression and that US demands are unacceptable at multiple levels.
Marandi expresses optimism about regional dynamics, arguing that Western narratives are unreliable and praising Iran’s stance and sacrifices by groups like Hezbollah in Syria and Palestine. He contends that the empire will be defeated and that the Islamic Republic will emerge as a power in Western Asia, opposing ethnosupremacism and genocide.
Regarding potential US actions if negotiations end, Marandi warns that the US could attack, but Iran would retaliate by destroying oil and gas infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, potentially leading to a broader energy crisis. He contends that any blockade would further harm the global economy and asserts that Trump’s course could push the world toward a global economic depression. He attributes US incentives to the Israeli regime rather than American public interest, suggesting that certain US allies’ priorities align with Israel over global stability. He says he will seek to obtain a fuller picture on the ground upon returning from Islamabad and notes that Vance’s tone appeared more positive than Kushner or Wittkopf at times, though the situation remained fluid.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is Sunday, April 12, and we are joined by Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, who is in Islamabad, where the negotiations are taking place between The United States and Iran to try to transition from the ceasefire to an actual peace agreement. Could you share with us how the negotiations are going?
Speaker 1: Well, the negotiations have collapsed. And as I think most Iranians expected, The United States was behaving as it usually does. In other words, with arrogance and without any regard for sovereignty and for the independence of nature nation. Trump regime has basically attempted to dictate terms to the Iranian people, and, obviously, that is something that is unacceptable. They failed during forty days of war, and they cannot win at the negotiating table, meaning forcing Iran to lose.
And we're seeing The United States turning into an openly extremist regime where even the media now is calling for the murder of the negotiators, Washington Post, and Western elites, think tankers, and others are naming individual naming sorry, naming me, naming others, as targets, which is not going to have an impact on the way in which Iran conducts itself. It's only exposing The United States and the empire even further. So we are on our way back, and we'll have to see what happens.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I saw the same article in the Washington Post and the yeah. This rhetoric coming from leaders that is the best way to put pressure on Iran to accept America's terms is to essentially threaten to kill all the negotiators, and the people are there in Tehran as well as the political leadership. This is quite a fuggish language. But do you know why or we and at what area did the negotiations run into an end?
Because what I understand is well, from what I understood, there was three rounds, and they all broke down, and Vance made some comments that Iran failed to meet America's demands. Where where where was the most difficult point to make a deal?
Speaker 1: Well, The United States simply does not accept Iranian sovereignty. Iran's nuclear program is legitimate, legal within the framework of international law, and The United States wants capitulation. The United States wants control over the Strait Of Hormoz, and, there are a host of different issues. The point is that The United States was not serious at all. In fact, from the beginning when we're on our way here, the belief was that this is probably a ploy to, have more information about the whereabouts of different people.
But the Iranians felt that even if the negotiations have no use, it is important for the Iranian people and for the people across the world to see that the Islamic Republic is engaging and that it is seeking solutions. Because the same Washington Post that is calling for the murder of our delegation would also say if we did not come that if we did not come to Islamabad that the Iranians do not want a solution. So I think the negotiators, doctor Vandebaut, the speaker of parliament, made the right move. But, my opinion, and I said so before and so have others, that, my opinion was that, this these negotiations will be nowhere. And I think those who've been following me yesterday at the media center on the sidelines of the negotiations saw that I was highly skeptical.
But in any case, I think the chances for renewed aggression are very high. We see that the Israeli regime is slaughtering innocents in Lebanon and in Gaza every day, and the western media and western governments are looking away because, of course, they support these genocidal attacks. And I think that quite probable that a renewed assault on the Iranian people will begin in a not so distant future.
Speaker 0: So there's no fallback option here. This does this mean going back to war, or will will they wait out the ceasefire period and then go back to war, or do you expect, you know, the hostilities to possibly start immediately with the pass US possibly targeting the Iranian delegation, there in Islamabad as they all headed back home?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, do show this a few hours after I leave so it doesn't cause distress for our families. But I think that anything is possible. The United States may attack today, attack tomorrow, next week, the Israeli regime, they can end up an attack at any time because these are regimes that have no dignity, no honor, no sense of morality. The last two wars, the twelve day war that we had last year was an was was a Lisk Creek assault that happened as we were negotiating, as you know. And it was intended to catch us off guard, which wasn't really the case.
I mean, this is a myth that has been spread around. Iranians were expecting attack, but, of course, their their weapon systems are advanced. And so they struck and hit or without us being able to defend ourselves properly. And the recent war, if you can hear me, recent war was the same. We were negotiating the foreign minister of Oman.
Again, sorry for being repetitive, but he spoke of significant progress and then were intact again. So there's no reason to imagine that Trump Netanyahu will wait for two weeks. If they do, it's only to rearm themselves. But, of course, Iran is also rearming. I mean, some people say you should not wait, you should continue the war and not accept the ceasefire.
Actually, I think that that's not really a strong argument. If you recall during the twelve day war or after the twelve day war when we after Netanyahu was begging for a ceasefire for the last three or four days, ultimately, we accepted. And people were saying, why did Iran discontinue? Well, back then, Iran knew that if the war continued, The United States would join. And we had significant shortcomings in the way in which we were fighting the war because we never fought a war with it in in this new era with the new technologies.
And so during those eight months before the the between the two wars, Iran made many changes. And, during this forty day war, roughly forty days, the, Iranians emerged much stronger than during the twelve day war even though that the aggressor was much larger. The Israeli regime is not can't be compared to The United States, and whatever the Israeli regime has, of course, is from The United States and the West. But the point is that Iran spent that time wisely to reorganize and to prepare itself and to be able to both improve his defensive and offensive capabilities. So I think that right now, as we speak, the Iranians are cells as well.
Of course, we're not aggressive. We don't initiate wars. We've never initiated a war. Since the revolution, we've been attacked in by the West three times. Saddam Hussein, when he invaded the West, supported him during the they gave him chemical weapons.
And during the last few months, The US entered the war directly. Then, of course, the two wars that we've seen in the last year. So, we've never initiated hostility, and we've always been, responding. And even during this war, every time The US and the Netanyahu regimes, they escalate they escalated first, and then we would respond. But we never escalated.
So we didn't begin the war. We didn't escalate initially. Every time in response to their escalation, we would escalate. I'm just saying this I know you know this, but I just want your viewers to keep all this in mind. These are, I think, significant points.
So those who are saying that dance is different from Whitkoff and Kirchner, no. They're they're not. He's a he's just as he's captured by the forces that dominate his politics just like everyone else. And I think it's extremely naive for people to think that there are factions in the Trump regime that are more distant from the Zionist lobby and their and their factions that are closer. These negotiations showed quite clearly that the intention of Vance and his two bodyguards was not to find a switch.
Speaker 0: I I I was I got the impression one of the sticky points around the the peace agreement would be how to resolve the issue of the Strait Of Our Moose. That is Iran, possibly with participation of Oman, would set up essentially a toll to, yeah, get reparations. First of all, I got the impression The US opposed it, and then The US at least want to participate in it to get in on the action. I again, I'm not sure how much of this is correct and to what extent this impacted the negotiations.
Speaker 1: Well, I haven't been actually, they're in meeting now that where they're discussing what the place, and, I've been very busy, with media. So I've, I'm not up to date, up to speed, on these issues. But you're you're correct. That's more or less what, what happened. And, of course, next time, if, god willing, if I'm, around, I'll I'll get more information, and I'll I'll let you know.
On the way back, I'll probably get a fuller picture of what's going on if that's any use. But but and, of course, preparations is is legitimate. This was a war of aggression, and it was unprovoked. And Iran's control of the Strait Of Hormuz is in accordance with international law, even though international law doesn't exist anymore because we now in the with the law of the jungle. But the point is, though, that the there are multiple areas in which Vance was, basically demanding capitulation, and, which type of capitulation is not working.
Iran did not lose the war. And in any case, Iran is a sovereign country. It didn't carry out aggression against anyone. So the demands made by the empire just for us, totally unacceptable at multiple levels. Iran is not like any other country perhaps on this planet.
It's fear fiercely defended. It has principles. Many I I would argue vehemently that Iran the Islamic Republic Of Iran is by far the most principal state. And despite all the Western propaganda, the reality is beginning to show. Here in Pakistan, the West, there are proxies in the Persian Gulf that fight for decades to create hatred towards Iran and largely by spreading extremist ideologies here.
But, the Iranian delegation is treated as celebrities by people, as heroes. And it's amazing how much loved Iran is across the country and across the different, communities and different segments of society. So the reality is shining through. I have no doubt that The United States is not going to succeed in their hegemonic sorry. My cough will go away.
In their hegemonic ambitions towards Iran and the axis of resistance. I I do not believe that the Israeli regime will succeed against Ezbollah. Ezbollah is the post heroic force, in all of this struggle to draw Israeli forces away from Gaza during these two and a half years. And, ultimately, they made huge sacrifices. And I think after what has happened in Syria and all, increasingly, the documents are coming out of the policies of the Al Qaeda, Virginia, and Damascus are becoming clear.
Hezbollah, I think, or anyone who used to make claims against it has been vindicated. And its course of action in Syria, it was absolutely correct in opposing ISIS and Al Qaeda, and they made the greatest sacrifices for the people of Palestine and the people of Gaza. So people are waking up to this reality that the Western narratives and Gatari, Erdogan, Saudi, Emirati narratives are not reliable, and western narratives are not reliable. And I'm I'm optimistic that despite the painful days ahead and sorry if I'm not focused because I'm constantly looking to see if they're moving towards the vehicles to go to the to leave. But I'm I'm very optimistic about the future of this region, and I'm sure that the empire will be defeated across the region and to the Islamic Republic Of God to emerge as power in Western Asia, great Western Asia, but to stand up against ethnosupremacism and genocide.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I know you have to get on the plane any second. So, yeah, just please let me know if you have to go. But let me just ask how if The US now walk well, if The US has walked away from the negotiations, what cards do they have to play if they're going back into war? Because as the negotiations were going on, Trump was taking to social media arguing that they were already clearing out mines in the Strait Of Hormuz because the Iranians didn't know where they put the mines apparently.
Well, again, this is, you know we don't have to take him on his words. And then also that, American warships were already sailing through the Strait Of Hormuz. And, if Iran wouldn't, essentially abide by US demand, The US may may put up a naval blockade. The last one, I'm not sure it came from Trump. That could have been the media.
But what do you think the Americans are gonna do if they go back back now to the military option?
Speaker 1: Well, it's quite possible that they'll slow after infrastructure humanity, but Iran will immediately retaliate and destroy the oil and gas and infrastructure in the Persian Gulf region because those regimes are complicit in. Right now, if The United States strikes Iran, it still has to do it through these countries. So when Iran strikes back, then there will be no more oil and gas, whether from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, and that will be permanent. And if they blockade Iran, that apps that oil too will no longer be, contributing to the market. So it creates a further crisis, further energy crisis.
I think Trump is, moving towards destroying the global economy and pushing the world towards a global economic depression. Not recession, but a depression. And we're already moving in that direction, as you know, and hardship is coming, but it's not something that happens overnight. It's not, as if it's not like when they bomb apartment blocks in Tehran or Beirut or Gaza where people are crushed underneath immediately. What the these these words are doing is that it's emptying it's creating massive shortages of energy and the petrochemicals and the fertilizer and so on and and other problems that that are multilayer.
That's the the money that these Arab dictatorships make, they go to The US stock market, the bond market. They purchase US goods. These are no longer happening like before. And so I think that the problems that this is going to cause will be not sudden overnight, but because we're already in moving towards prices, it will be quite quick. But I think that some mistakenly thinks that that he can work wonders and that Iran or that Iran will habituate or that he'll defeat Iran overnight with his overwhelming force or that if he destroys Iran's electrical power plants or whatever that the Iranians will come, and submit.
It's not going to happen. We saw what happened during the last forty days. It was exactly as we had predicted, and this is something that you have been you and I have been talking about for very, very long time now since the beginning when we've been I had the pleasure of being on your show. So I I think that Trump is is going to cause great harm to the global economy unless, of course, something happens where he backs off, which at the moment, because he is surrounded by Israeli cursors, I don't see that happening because their priorities are not The United States. Kushner, Wittkopf, the the Zionist lobby, the Israeli regime, their priorities are not the American people.
Their priorities are not the global economy. They're not India or Brazil or South Africa. They are the Israeli regime. And so they will sacrifice whatever they feel is necessary for the Israeli regime. As Joe Kent pointed this out very openly in this resignation letter, the highest, you know, high ranking the second highest ranking, I think, intelligence officer appointed by Trump in his resignation letter said that this is all about the Israeli regime and the violence lobby.
Iran is not a threat. Iran is not making a nuclear weapon, but, they want this war, and it's not for America. It's for the Israeli regime.
Speaker 0: Alright. Just my my last question, though. Do you know anything about the, I guess, the mood or the tone of the negotiations? I mean, in the media, of course, we see the direct threats against killing of the, yeah, the Iranian leadership and the delegation there with you. But do you know how it was with Vance and the American negotiators?
Was it hostile or professional? Do do we have any other information about how this, negotiations went?
Speaker 1: Well, I would right now, if I was over there if I was, about twenty, thirty meters away from where I am now, would probably be able to answer that question. But I'll I'll get more of that, and I'll I'll I'll let you know because they are actually discussing last night. Because since it was very late at night, they were awake till morning. And then, of course, when bands decided to leave, the plans changed. So I I don't know the tone, but my understanding is Oh my.
That they were they were basically dictating terms. They were making demands, and they expected capitulation. And to me, they're they're living in an alternative universe. They have no idea what Iran is in France, or they do. And but yet they're saying, who cares?
There's a global economy crashes. It's all.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was surprised by the language as well. And, when I heard that the the Iranians failed to meet our demands, I thought this is a you know, if if it sounds as if they were coming there expecting capitulation. So
Speaker 1: They didn't meet our demands.
Speaker 0: Oh, well. Anyways, I know you are rushing out of Islamabad there, so thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Pablo. I haven't really contributed to to your knowledge of your audience, but it is, you know, it is rushed. You and I just spoke about the fact that we're leaving this thought we'd do something very swiftly. Let me ask a journalist right now. Just let me see what just one moment.
Vance was much more positive. Was much more positive than Kushner and Wittcombe, but then suddenly their tone and it should change. That's what she tells me right now. But I'll get more information later on because we are live, so I just I asked she gave two or three sentence explanations a very short explanation, and I'll try to get more from her and others and the negotiators paid for it.
Speaker 0: Right. No. We'll have a time to speak later. So thank you for taking the time, though, and you have a yeah. It's very much so a safe trip back.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Have a good day, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Stanislav Krapivnik: Iran Lesson - Will Russia Retaliate Against Estonia? https://youtu.be/o2faaNCDvy4 https://t.co/ikjx1gwGhi
Video Transcript AI Summary
The conversation centers on a view that the United States has failed in its proxy conflicts with Russia and Iran and that power is shifting to a multipolar world led by non-Western states. Stanislav Krapivnik argues that Russia’s pivot away from the West undercuts Western unity and that Europe is increasingly exposed as the West’s policies erode, with Russia becoming a leading anti-Western force for years to come. He frames the shift as not just multipolar but anti-Western in direction, noting that Russia’s stance has turned against the West and that the West’s “genocidal” actions and moral claims have damaged its legitimacy. He also asserts that the West’s actions have helped bring to power leadership in both Russia and Iran who are less amenable to Western influence. He highlights Trump’s regime-change actions as reflecting realignments away from West-facing regimes and notes the long-running Iranian threat as a consequence of Western policy.
Key points covered include:
- The shift from a Western-centered world order to a multipolar order led by non-Western powers, with Russia and Iran resisting U.S. and European influence.
- Russia’s movement away from Western integration toward an anti-Western bloc, and the idea that the West’s moral posture has deteriorated, with calls that Europe’s rulers have failed to uphold moral standards while supporting aggressive actions.
- Iran’s history of being pro-Western but ultimately rejecting Western dominance after regime-change attempts and pro-West leadership were removed; the discussion notes that Iran has demonstrated resilience by countering Western pressure and has weakened American influence in the region by striking American targets and allied interests.
- Ukraine as a proxy conflict, with NATO involvement, and the view that Western leaders are pushing Ukraine into escalating confrontations with Russia. The speaker cites evidence that NATO and U.S. forces are deeply involved, including drone and missile strikes attributed to American planning or directive, and suggests that Europe’s leadership is moving toward broader war, despite public appeals for limited engagement.
- The role of Turkey and the Baltic states: Turkey’s shifting position and its anger over Ukrainian actions; the Baltic states’ treatment of Russian minorities and the geopolitical risk of escalation if Estonia’s airspace is used for drone strikes against Russia, seen as potentially triggering a larger European conflict.
- The argument that Europe’s security architecture is collapsing under its own hubris and dependence on the United States, with accusations that European populations are being molded toward war, militarization, and possibly even mobilization and conscription in several states (Germany, Poland, etc.).
- The claim that deterrence must be reasserted; the speaker argues for making an example of Estonia as a warning to deter further cross-border aggression and to prevent a larger war, asserting that Europe’s leaders are too eager to escalate, risking a broader confrontation with Russia.
- The broader cultural and historical analysis of Europe’s relation to Russia, including Peter the Great’s attempts to connect with Western Europe and Russia’s long-standing pendulum between East and West, with the speaker asserting that today Russia views itself as separate from Europe, forming a distinct civilization and political orientation.
- The potential for a larger war in the near term if European leadership does not adopt a more prudent approach; the speaker warns that Orban’s political fate could accelerate conflict, and emphasizes that Europe must acknowledge deterrence realities or face nuclear risks.
- The closing remarks echo Easter greetings, with the speaker returning to the grim prognosis of European demographic and political trajectories, highlighting a view that Western policy has empowered elites while threatening mass casualties and societal upheaval in Europe.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is the 04/11/2026, and we are joined by Stanislav Krapivnik, a former US army officer who was born in Donbas and, well, has returned. So thank you again for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 0: So we see that The United States has now essentially failed in both its proxy war against Russia, but also its war against Iran. And this is happening at a very crucial point in world history as power has shifted from a global hegemony to a multipolar distribution of power in which now two centers of power are, yeah, have resisted the US military. Now not only is it multipolar, but unlike the former multipolar era, this is a multipolarity which is led now by non Western states. I mean, the defeat in Iran and Russia, it really seems to intensify this shift away from a world order organized around the West, obviously. Do I was just wanted to ask first if you see the wars in the context of world order as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, with with the irony of all of this is is one, Russia has always tried well, has in the past. It's not trying too much right now. Trying to be part of the West. And the West has always been looking down at snows going, you're not good enough.
You you you may look like us, but you're not good enough. And now Russia has in in a very large swing to the to the hell with the West. And and Russia swings that way, the pendulum swings pro West, anti West. And it's very much in the anti West camp that will be there for years, not decades. It's now one of the leaders in the West that's corroding away and collapsing.
And it could have actually been the savior of the West, but, you know, that that's how that goes. The the people you spur today may be the ones that own you tomorrow. So, you know, that's or whose hand you're gonna need to to pull you out to whatever hole you step in tomorrow. Alrighty. Yeah.
That's why you treat others like you wanna be treated yourself. That that that's Christian morals, and the and the West has given up. I know it was a long time ago. It's yeah. Do unto others as you wish for for those and then read a morality lesson while you're at it.
It says you're supporting a genocide left and right, which at least I will give the Europeans the the Western Europeans that they, except for the British who are still doing it anyways, are not supporting the Israeli genocide. At least verbally, they're not supporting genocide. Then, again, of course, Mertz was crying for Netanyahu, I guess, his his love love toy love boy over there that you know, how much Germany has to support the Israelis. But at least the the the are actually growing a backbone of the Italians and and stopped any pretenses of support. Iran the interesting part is, though Iran was never could have never been considered a part of the West, Iran's government was very pro Western.
I mean, let's let's be realistic about And so when Trump said that we changed, I mean, he he's absolutely right. He is absolutely right. He did the generational regime change. The people that were pro West, the people that wanted to make a deal with the West, the people that for forty years did not develop nuclear weapons even though they could. Because by the way, the earliest article I've seen is Jerusalem Post 1986.
Iran is gonna have nuclear weapons in a month. I know it's shocking. In a month. And they've been selling that same hitting that same drum for forty freaking years. Well, the people that that wanted to be close to the West, they're all dead now.
Or most of them are dead now. They're not there's still some people left. The and the West killed them in one form or another. And the West not only did parts of the West kill them, the rest of the West came out sanctimoniously and charged them with aggression for responding to being attacked and people and the leadership being murdered and civilians being butchered, particularly the well, we'll just start off with, of course, the school and the little girls. And if people will come in are the the younger generation, the one that whose psyche was formed in the fighting the American proxy in Iraq that it had invaded Iran, People seem to forget that part.
It wasn't just a border war. Iraq had invaded Iran in a surprise attack. And then that long war, I mean, Khomeini junior there at 17 was an infantryman, volunteered for two years on the front lines watching his friends die. This is what formed their youth and their mentality. It's it's rather ironic that these are the people the West has brought to power in both Russia and in Iran.
So and you're right. And the West has shown its incapability to actually do it. Let me let's let's not celebrate that this is all over. The the you know, as as this American saying goes, it's all over by the dying, and and that's the truth. There's still gonna be a lot of dying left because the conflict in Iran is not over.
We will see if if this pseudo on and off ceasefire lasts out to the end of next week. It does give Trump an out
Speaker 0: from
Speaker 1: his bombastic stupidity. And and, you know, off on a tan well, it's not really off on a tangent. I I had an interview yesterday with Robert Barnes, and he was telling me what he got from his close sources in in the White House. They were close to Vance and other people. He said Vance has been working like a madman to keep Trump under control.
Trump is is off the reservation, which if you don't know what that means, when the Americans put Indians on a reservation, and and part of the peace treaties, which were always broken, all of them were broken, start judging who you're dealing with, well, from the little facts like that. They would provide food for the Indians, so they'd usually provide rotting meat or nothing at all. And it's usually because of corrupt supply side people suppliers. And then when the Indians if the Indians had to go hunt, that was forbidden for them to go hunt, so they really had a choice of either starving or or hunting. But if you go hunt, you've gone off the reservation, which which is where the saying goes, which means you've broken the rules and you've you've, you know, you've gone out somewhere in in the radical areas.
And which, by the way, for the Indians meant the the the American army would come in there and massacre after that. So it's either slow starvation or or or or fight. But in Trump's case, you know, off the reservations means he's he's gone off to La la land, and he's actually started to get desperately and very dangerously insane. So where this goes, I don't I don't know. More likely, there's still gonna be quite a bit of dying left.
There's a lot of dying left in Ukraine. The the the future shield, even if NATO comes in as as a Americans will go in. I mean, it's it would neither were the Turks. In fact, the Turks are now there's now proposals from the Turks to move the Turkish navy and to blockade a desk. They went for you know, there there's a saying of lay with curse, get fleas, and the Turks have definitely got Ukrainian fleas after they supported Ukraine as much as they did it, selling them weapons, building a new ships for them, which are never gonna be delivered now.
And Ukraine responded by attacking a a Turkish tanker in Turkish waters with a drone. I mean, that's that's a slap right into the teeth of Erdogan or more like a spit in his eye. So he can't let that go, and the Turks the the Turks are outraged after everything they've done for the Ukrainians. They they should have known better who they were getting in bed with. Now they have the Ukrainian fleets that they have to deal with, and and the Turks are outraged.
And they're they're just looking that that swing you know, Turkey is probably 60% pro Ukrainian population views versus pro Russian. And now it's it's it's not even 60% pro Russian. It's probably closer to 80% pro Russian after Ukraine's unabashed aggression against Turkey. And and, you know, there there's still and just as another hit to the world markets, you know, is Europe created a Frankenstein monster, and that Frankenstein monster is continuing to pay Europe back. Prices are skyrocketing in energy to the that's declining the European Union even faster.
So what does Zelensky do? Putin declares a thirty hour ceasefire. Zelenskyy more than likely I mean, act you know, not more likely, a 100% through Azerbaijan. Ukrainian drones struck two Russian oil platforms in the Caspian Sea. Granted, there's not much to burn on a platform.
I mean, there there's any they're they're drilling platforms, and any oil that may be coming up is under underneath, and it's going into pipelines to pull out. So you hit something on top. You may hit some kind of fuel canister or something like that, but, you know, there's not much to burn on top of oil platform, realistically speaking. But the fact of the attack, that that has, you know although it has price pressure on in the market only in one direction, which then translates, of course, to boom. It's not gonna stop Russia from getting fuel for for itself and for the Russian military.
It will scare the markets even further, and and it just drives prices up for everyone. It wouldn't by the way, all those idiots in The US or the value signaling to Ukraine and writing, oh, this is great. Well, yeah, you get to pay more. Obviously, it enjoyed bankruptcy even faster.
Speaker 0: You know, when you said, yeah, that the the the Russians were never considered one of the Europeans, it's it's really a you know, it it builds into a wider historical failure in in my view because it was you know, you can go back to Peter the Great three hundred years ago who really wanted to Europeanize Russia, again, not just putting well, of course, some of it was modernizing its industries, becoming a maritime power on the Baltic Sea, but also this cultural revolution just to reshape Russia to be, yeah, more more European. And as you said, it was never accepted, though, by by many of the European states. That is the Russians were still seen as the Asiatics of Europe, the barbarians at the gate of civilization, essentially remaining the other, you know, the East to the West, all of this. But what I found interesting in the nineties was Boris Yeltsin. I mean, for me, he was like the second coming of Peter the Great, except he didn't bring forward a navy or prosperity, but he wanted to, again, just remake Russia as European as possible, but more in the geopolitical sense.
That is, he was rushing so fast to the West that he just ignored all the traditional partners in the East. And, of course, once he threw away alternatives, you know, he wouldn't be rewarded. Now he could be exploited. I kinda look towards this often as what the Americans can do to Europe now. We only have one partner.
They can put any deal on the table. But but I think this is why what has happened now is so significant. It's not just Gorbachev's common European home over the past forty plus years, which has been thrown away or that possibility. It's, you know, Russia's Western centric foreign policy for three hundred years. That is that modernization development kinda meant you had to look to some extent towards the West, but this is now you know, you've all the Russians have all these partners in the East now.
It's very different, and I it just it's it's frustrating as a European because I made the point for the past decades now that Russia in Europe would be a source for revival. That is a powerful Europe, which will have autonomy in contrast to what we did by redividing Europe, by expanding NATO. This is what's gonna make puppets out of us, prosperous, weak, and lacking in security and, of course, being vassals as well. I mean, we should have worked towards having no dividing lines. However, if you try to push that argument in Europe, no one wants to hear it.
All they wanna know and not just since 2014, but just in general, just you have to support the dividing lines because, yeah, no good reason given. And all they wanna know is that you're in the trenches on our side. This is it. The whole aspiration of having ending the dividing lines of Europe is nonissue. But I I wanted to ask, though, the while the war isn't over, as you said, neither in Iran or in Ukraine, we do see that some of the the system of The US hedge money seems to be falling apart.
Because if you wanna hedge money, you have to base it on alliance systems. That is you divide the world into dependent allies and the weakened adversaries. And now that The US is obviously in decline and you see the consequence not just in Ukraine, but also in the Gulf States, you know, the Gulf States are now rethinking, you know, to what extent are we inviting the Americans? Are we secure, or are we vulnerable? They are saying the same thing in East Asia.
I'm hoping we'll have soon have these discussions in Europe because, you know, how much more punishment can we take before we accept reality? But it seems like we still have this dual pressure. On one hand, the European leaders are still angry. They wanted to defeat the Russians so we can restore the political West. At the same time, there's a lot of pressure now.
You have to adjust the reality before it's too late. For example, with the, you know, the the Baltic States example is is a great one. I mean, by attacking Russia through Baltic States territory, you know, this is seen as, oh, now it can break the Russians, bring back the political West, but it's also what would essentially leave Europeans, much like the Gulf States, completely exposed and, you know, the Americans not coming in to save the day. I was wondering, how do you see this? Do you see Europe backing off, or do you see going full ahead, moving towards a direct war with Russia?
Speaker 1: You know, Peter the Great, while I won't say it's not proper to say Peter the Great was trying to get in Europe. Peter the Great was trying to get into Western Europe. We we were getting back into East and we're getting well, we were we are Eastern Europe. No one quite literally, Russia is one fourth of the European continent. People should have forget that, or or subcontinent, depending on how you look at it.
You you you could consider Europe one big peninsula of the Eurasian Continent. But, you know, we we we're getting actively back into parts of other parts of Eastern Europe, which we call the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at that point was made up of almost half of of its territories Russian territory that had been conquered by Lithuania. And Lithuania had become a Russian state because it's 90% Russians. But then with unity with Poland, everything, radically different. In its own time, Lithuania could have been Russia, as opposed to because it it was quite literally competing to become Russia, because most of its population were Russians, and they were Orthodox Christians.
So, yeah, history takes its turns. It looked in a different direction, and and it and it eventually gave up its or lost its empire and subsumed by Poland. But having said that, I mean, Russia Russia was somewhat backwards at that point, but not nearly with the way people think. Let's not forget Russia was one of the earlier one of the countries that was earliest in adaptation of gunpowder weapons. In fact, cannon was something that starting from, Ion Grozny, Ivan the Feared, was very actively developed in Russia, and that helped drive and break the the various Mongol entities.
When they charged in, it helped destroy them at the battle of Malodoy, where, you know, Yan Grosny's army just absolutely exterminated the invading Crimean Kakhanat, which they're called Crimean Tartars now, thanks to the Soviets that renamed everything. But they were Mongols. They were part of the of the Golden Horde, and they had a contingent of Turkish Janissaries. And they were exterminated. There was out of 45, 50,000, I think there was, like, two or 3,000 that were made at home or running.
And this was in large part due to gunpowder weapons that the Russian state was very actively developing, very actively buying up in every direction and fielding in in larger quantities. A lot of western, Central European armies were fielding. So that was a there there was a lot of development. What what Peter the Great was working was not to get into Europe. Like I said, it was get to get accepted, a, by Western Europeans, specifically the Western Europeans, and, b, to get the newer technologies like shipbuilding.
And by the way, the first Russian ship was not in the the first Russian fleet was not made for the Baltics. The first Russian fleet was built in Varunis and floated down into the Black Sea to crush the Turks. In fact, while we're at it, one of the the interesting things was in one of the Russian Turkish wars in the eighteen hundreds, Russia started Russia was the first country in the world to start using the exploding cannonballs. And they they bottled up the Turkish fleet and just exterminate, burned it to the well, I'd say burned it to the ground, but, really, they only burned it to the to the sea. Then the rest sank, and the Western media went absolutely ape shit.
Not pro oh, look. Look. The Russians have beat the Turks, which who we've been supposedly fighting now for, you know, three hundred years. But, oh, oh, those dastardly Russians, they massacred the poor Turks, the poor Turkish fleet. So we see this as a continuation of
Speaker 0: of
Speaker 1: the same propaganda you see right now. When the Western Europeans are fighting the Turks, those dastardly Turks. But when the Russians did it to all of those evil Russians fighting the Turks. So it it's the same thing, and and you're right. It's absolutely the the European the the central and Western Europeans have been very ignorant of of what need they what what's in their own best interest.
The I mean, Russia the only time they look toward Russia is when they need someone to pull their chestnuts out on the fire, as the saying goes. They need Russian blood, and they need Russian gold for something. Say, fight Napoleon or fight whomever else, Frederick DeGraea, his own time, and so on. That's when they started peeling the Russia. And, you know, World War one, Russia was driven by pan Slavicists.
And let's not forget, Slavs are 50% of the Caucasian race, white literate. Slavs are are half the white people in the world. And, unfortunately, very, very disorganized and had been pushed and used by other entities to fight each other for a millennium. It's longer even that millennium. Russia was driven by pan Slavicism and a strong drive of orthodoxy.
In World War two, Russia was driven by the proletariat and work and workers and people working class unite. Today's Russia, in particular, the people are driven by real politics. The last four years, actually, longer if you think Russia from 2014, the Russophobia that's just poured out of every pore in in Europe and the rest of the West has done a lot to sober people in Russia, and that's why the swing, the anti Western swing has gone very, very hard very, very quickly. And that's the West's own fault as as an entity. So, yeah, we we you know, I I'm of the opinion, honestly, that those Ukrainian drones did not fly through Poland and the Baltics.
I'm of the opinion those Ukrainian drones, or maybe better to say Estonian drones, were lifting off from Estonia a lot and and flying into Russia. They they had, you know, about six months ago, five months ago, they had an explosion when these drones blew up in the middle of Estonia, and the Estonians didn't blame Russia for drone warfare. In fact, they tried to hutch it up as much as possible. Video still got out. Photos still got out.
Exact same drone. They hit they hit the ground in the middle of Estonia. Nice little crater there. Chunks of drone in every direction. Airplane style drones.
So this is nothing new, but the, you know, the pressure on the Kremlin to make an example out of Estonia is insane. And when you consider that half the Estonian population is Russian, has been Russian since the September, You know, the it's the city of Narva, which is attached to the new entity called Estonia by the Soviets because there was no Estonia. There was no Latvia. There was a Lithuania, but there's no Estonia in Latvia. These states didn't exist.
They're they were created by the Soviet Union because they were chopping up the Russian map. And they these though the people there obviously were there, they never had states of their own. They have no history of self government. They they were they had a small brief time where they suddenly appeared after the Russian revolution and civil war, and then they disappeared subsumed in the Soviet Union, and there were territories that were added onto them, Narva being one of those. You know, Narva Narva was founded as a as a fortress by the Danish king Vladimir.
So figure out the names. But quite literally, his name was Vladimir. But in December, but that was the fortress. There was a a Russian city there located called Radvek. Rad Radvek.
Someone of that sort. I I gotta look it up to the exact name of it. That was on that location since the September. So that area is, know, the Estonians Russians in Estonia have no rights. They're not second class citizens.
They're noncitizens, period. They get a great passport. They have absolutely no rights. But they're 50% of the population. They were listed as 35, but when you consider they can't leave and the Estonian youth, Sercengan, has been running out of Estonia for the last twenty years and leaving en masse, Even though Estonia keeps counting them as if they lived there, there these are people that come back once, maybe twice a year to go visit their parents.
That's it. Or or and they don't live. They haven't lived there, and they a lot of them can't even speak Estonian. They can't speak Latvia. They don't speak English or German.
So and the Russian population can't go anywhere, so the Russian population is actually as a percentage has gone up quite a bit. Norway is 95% ethnically Russian, and these people have absolutely no rights. Estonia that sponsors SS parades every single year, government sponsored, government people coming over there. Literally, Latvia and Lithuania does the exact same thing. And and now the after this, these attacks, the attention toward White Hell and his Narva, part of Estonia, has gotten very high publicity in Russia.
You know, let let's get our people back. That's the mentality of over these fake Soviet borders that were created by Soviet Union. And it could have been avoided if Russians were just treated normally in Estonia, but then again, for that to happen, you wouldn't have the regime in Estonia that you have today, and it wouldn't be supporting the the Ukrainians that it does now. So the intention is we have to get deterrent back, and Estonia is the easiest candidate as the testing ground on how we get our our deterrent back. I'll make an example of it.
And, no, I don't think Europe is gonna go the rest of well, Europe. The rest of the EU is gonna go march off to war for Estonia, especially all things considered in a moment. But is it a larger war as you had asked previously? I know I didn't answer that. I think there is.
There's gonna be a larger war. Unfortunately, I don't think the European leadership is is gonna get smart enough to avoid this. And if Orban loses these elections tomorrow, I guarantee you that that time schedule just got moved up very, very quickly toward a big war, probably within the next year, two years maximum. That Orban's been one of the, probably one of the biggest breaks on this rush toward let's not have a war with Russia. And and just to understand how insane and stupid these people are, The EU who is practicing or it'll soon be the EU.
The the NATO army will be the EU army because all they have to do is switch patches and put a new patch on. Same people. They were practicing for mass casualties on a big war with Russia, and their projection was they may have to take up to a thousand wounded a day. You people are smoking crack. Ukraine and this is a very limited conflict, and the Russian military is still very limited by the political that by the by the political heads of what it can and cannot do.
Ukraine is suffering around 1,200, 1,500 dead a day and about two thousand wounded a day on a very limited conflict. If this goes into all out war, you know, they one thousand wounded a day, let's try about ten thousand wounded a day. The the European system is nowhere near able to to cope with what what's coming its way. But but we see the militarization going every direction. I mean, when Germans up to age of 42 cannot leave the country without permission from the Ministry of Defense, that's the first big steps of euphemization of Europe.
When when Germany is condemning journalists, they're not quite shooting them yet, but that'll come in time. They'll take them out in the woods and shoot them just like the Ukrainians did, disappear them if there are inconvenient voices just like the Ukrainians did. And then Ukrainians are probably shoot showing them how to do it properly these days because Ukrainian quote advisers are all over the place and training all the right winger or the right and it's not right to say the right wing or the Nazis. Nazis are not right wing. Nazis, national socialism is anything but right wing.
Uh-huh. But all these groups, you know, they're they're being trained by the Ukrainians. They're infiltrated through, and they're being brought in as advisers. So Europe is heading in the same direction. Look.
That Turkish well, he he's German, born in Germany, of Turkish descent. Journalist, I can't I can't remember his name. You know, they they barely got his wife's accounts back open. Because his wife's accounts were closed. He never broke any laws, but he did immorality for the European Union, and they've banned them from being able to buy food, sell buy work, sell use money.
And and unlike, you know, when you excommunicated somebody in in the middle ages, and and once they're excommunicated, if they wanted to leave, by all means, please leave, you're being allowed to leave. You can't leave Germany. He's there to be the the sit there and starve and die slowly as the example to everybody else, to the rest of of the Western Europeans and particularly Germans of what not to do if you don't wanna die slowly and starve and be murdered by your government on on on a slow scale. So the Germans, yeah, the Germans are are are bringing back the draft. They're they're looking like the other countries.
Hey. The the Poles brought back the draft during Easter Easter holidays two years ago so that nobody quite noticed. They woke up post Easter celebrations and, ah, we have a draft. You know? The laws have been passed.
That's nice. And they they do this they're doing the same thing in a lot in a large parts of Europe. So Europe, non Russian, non Belarus Europe, and and hopefully, we can still say after Sunday, non Austro Hungarian Europe is still in a rush to go to war. It's it's it's a suicidal rush, absolutely, but it's a rush to go to war.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, actually, I read in the paper today, this morning, that the Germans had to revert this not leaving the country because it was too much. But in the other areas, of course, they continued to, well, let's say, lose their minds while pushing more more and more more in this direction. I think part of this, I guess, idea of joining the war against Russia is the delusion of escalation control. That is we can join the the war, but we'll do it on our condition.
So we'll we we can still, you know, limit the fight to Ukrainian territory and Russian territory. I just I you know, one of the key lessons from the Iran war should be that one doesn't get to dictate the terms anymore. It's like when Iranian began to attack all the American bases in the region and shut down the Strait Of Hormuz when the Americans more or said, well, that that's not part of the rules. We were planning on, you know, limiting it to, you know, your your territory, and you can maybe strike Israel. I mean, it's this is the delusion of escalation control, and I think this is this is linked to the unipolar moment because if you didn't follow the rules set by The US and Europeans for how the rules war should be fought, you will be crushed as opposed to being little bit crushed.
So I I don't think they appreciate that the rules have changed. You you mentioned this Europe. I I and that's that's a good point. I I I make that mistake myself. And it's interesting that in the only using word Europe to exclude Russia, there was a lot of literature in the academia about this in the nineties that European Union gradually began to refer to itself as Europe, you know, in a wider efforts to push out the Russians, you know, from Europe in the security realm, economic, political, but also conceptually.
So simply, Russia's not the European. This was kind of what what was discussed, and now it's I find myself referring to Europe and Russia as if it's not, you know, the largest country in Europe. But but I I wanted to ask, yeah, about the the Baltic states again, though, because, you know, I remember when they joined both the EU and NATO, in other words, Europe, in 2004, their whole argument was that the Russians should be happy because now they're joining the community of, values. So as they're joining this liberal democratic club, if Russia's worried about the rights of the Russian minorities, well, this is a guarantee. But now it's twenty two years later, they you know, they're the people who are born there, their parents born there, grandparents born there.
Why why can't they still vote? Why can't they get, you know, positions in government? Why, you know, why are why are they second rate citizens? And, you know, it's as if people believe that this was not a geopolitical project. This was actually a community of values.
I I don't think it was deceptive. I think people actually believe this stuff. And
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0: But but, again, I I sorry. I'm getting to my question. No. No. No.
The the war. Again, one of my main takeaways was one of the reasons I think Trump had to back out eventually is because he couldn't didn't have escalation control. He couldn't go up that escalation ladder because the Iranians followed him all the way up. Whatever they did, he wouldn't the the Iranians would mirror it. And I'm thinking to what extent the Russians have taken a page out of this book because they did not do this.
They decided, well, let's just focus on finishing the military operation in Ukraine and not stir up a direct conflict with with NATO. But if now Ukraine will begin to fall apart, I mean, its army at least over the next few months, we see this rhetoric now coming from the British, French, and German that, well, then we have to step in to essentially turn the tide. Well, not using those exact word, but as you said, that they're all now talking about war with Russia. So did you see Russia changing its approach, not just to Ukraine, but to the Europeans as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, in a and and by the way, in in lot the the excuse the Baltics use for Russian minority is they were Soviet colonists forced foisting on us. They remind that these areas were part of Russia since, Peter the Great defeated, Charles the not so great. And and out of, defeating and taking these territories, he then paid for them. He paid for Russia bought that land.
He didn't buy the people. The people aren't even mentioned in the contract because the people had no rights between sweet the Swedish Empire, which was defeated and the Swedish Empire, quote, sold. But this is the same level of, you know, when America bought the Midwest from or or the the the Southwest from Mexico after American troops were occupying Mexico City. It was very easy to and they they they paid a some ceremonial fee for that, you know, symbolic fee. Well, the excuse for not giving Russian citizenship in these areas had been and and, by the way, Russians Russian intellectuals in those areas were part of the movement for independence back in 1990.
For the reasons not to give them was, oh, they're all Soviet colonists. In Latvia, that's more or less that's more true. I mean, there were people, obviously, Russians that were living there since the empire before them, since the seventeen hundreds. But as Russian land, rush there were two Russian small principalities, Volus, in South in Livonia, but they were been exterminated by the Crusaders back in the out of the October. So after that, yes, the Russian president Livonia was there, but then again, we flew to Estonia, and you see that, you know, Narva, the Russian presence in Narva has been continuous since about before Narva was established, since about the September.
So to call them colonists, you know, they they've only been there for the last thousand years. They're they're they're called colonists, so that doesn't fly very well. So and you're right in that and I've been saying this too. Look. Russia just has to has if we don't wanna be in a nuclear war, I'll say, I'll take the Americans.
The Americans would never sacrifice even the smallest American town or village for London or for Paris or for Berlin or definitely for some Warsaw or, God forbid, some Riga or, you know, any of these other cities. They're not gonna do that. No matter what the Europeans wanna delude themselves into believing. Although, again, see, Russians have started us through. We're not Europeans.
That by the way, that is a swing in Russia. We're not Europeans. We we're not part of that civil we're our own civilization, and we don't even though we we're not gonna call ourselves Europeans anymore. That's a big swing in Russia right now, the Russian psyche. We don't want anything to do with those people.
And that's, by the way, what a lot of European EU businessmen don't seem to understand. They think that once however long this takes, once this conflict is over, they'll just get to walk back in and start working as if nothing happened. No. There a lot of these companies are not welcome. It's gonna take at least a generation, if not to get the the bad taste out of everybody's mouth from from what's gone gone on since to a smaller degree since 2014 and a very big degree since 2022.
And deterrence has to be if deterrence is not reinstalled, we're looking at nuclear war. I mean, that that's sooner related because Europeans are gonna do something stupid. The Europeans have not started talking. And Europeans, again, the EU has started talking about we're gonna arm ourselves, become a nuclear power. Well, you know, when you have a nuclear power next door, somebody wants to become a nuclear power next door who every single day tells you, we're gonna exterminate you.
We're gonna destroy your country. We're gonna break you into 40 different entities. We're gonna do this to you. We're gonna do that to you. Oh, now we're gonna get nuclear weapons.
The pressure on the Kremlin to do something before they get nuclear weapons is gonna be insane. It already is insane. And Iran has played a huge role in that because what do we see in Iran? You're right. Iran has has has has wiped out, I mean, leveled 13 American bases up and down the Persian Gulf, has smacked around American companies and industry in response.
I mean, they don't go after everybody. When they get hit, they they respond to Israeli and American owned companies first and foremost, but happened to be all in particular, American companies all over The Gulf or Southern Gulf. When Iran had 30 universities bombed by the outside of calling the Zionist coalition. I don't know what else is best describing between the Christian and the Jewish Zionists, both heretic cults. They bombed 30 Iranian universities without giving prior warning.
Oh, a little war crime. You know? What's what's a little war crime between the Zionists for breakfast? Iran has bombed all American and Israeli affiliated universities, but they gave them a day warning to get everyone out. That that's the difference between the Iranians and the Zionists.
They they actually gave told everyone, get your people out and keep them at least a kilometer away because we're gonna wipe these buildings out in response. And they've done this continuously. They haven't hit hospitals as opposed to dozens of hospitals hit by the Zionists anywhere they they fought and so on. And and what does what's the message? And I've been repeating this message myself.
I'll admit that straight off on Russian television, and you see and I'm not I'm I'm probably one of the less aggressive ones that have been saying this is flat out. Take the lesson. A US is not gonna go to nuclear war. Europe needs to or the European Union needs to know deterrence, and the only way to do that is you can make an example of something. And Estonia, I think, is the prime example now because whether they are launching these drones out of Estonia, whether it's Ukrainians or Estonians launching a drone, or they're just passing through Estonia, The fact that the Estonians knowingly allow their airspace to be used, they are now part of the war no matter how they look at it.
Really realistically, if they're really flying all the way through, then Poland and Lithuania I mean, Poland and Latvia are part of this war and all stop. But let's just concentrate on Estonia. Estonia is a prime place to make a a very hard smack upside the head and tell everybody this this crap is over. We're gonna treat each one of you as a declaration of war when you do this, and then we're gonna destroy you at a declaration of war. Look at Estonia that's still smoking.
That's it's gonna have to be that way. Otherwise, you risk a much larger war. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a thousand to save a million. Or in this case, from your for the European Union, may be about three to 400,000,000. But, unfortunately, this is this is where it's gotten.
It's gotten the very large part because Russia's policies has been, well, Russia's policy has been incremental, trying to incrementally advance its positions and not do any bold moves because, again, just like the European Union, the West is projecting its own very warped and modern values of Russia. Russia's projecting its own values onto them. That's a bad tendency in humanity is to project your own values and your own position onto others. And Russia's position has been, well, if we if we do too big of a move, we'll scare NATO into a war. Like, no.
You'll scare NATO out of a war. You're doing the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You scare the euro you scare the the NATO or the EUers into here comes the Russian sledgehammer, and they'll be more than happy to talk. If we look at even the the weapons, the heavy weapons, the first heavy weapons, the first tanks that were handed over to Ukraine were handed over from Slovakia. Why Slovakia?
Prefits of Slovakia. Slovakia is small. And if Russia was to strike Slovakia, it's no big deal. But Russia didn't. And they went, okay.
And the rush was on. The doors swung open. The gates swung open, and they started flooding Ukraine with whatever war supplies they could get their hands on. It it did go incrementally, except Russia didn't respond the way it sure responded, and deterrence was was done, at least on that level. A very wrong move.
Russia had symbolically struck Slovakia or the border areas, So next time we're going after Berlin, everybody would gotten the message very, very quickly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
It's those damn Slovaks. You know, you can't really control Bratislava. They're they're insane. Oh, they will all be peaceful now. At least, you know, more peaceful than for but they didn't.
And I was saying back then, we should strike them. You should strike them absolutely because otherwise things will all go worse, and they've gotten worse. So now we're down to either we have a full on war with the European Union or make an example, They're still hesitant to make an example, which just feeds the war hysteria in in the West because it doesn't see any any backlash to itself. You're right. They think it'll just be in Ukraine.
Every time we escalate, it's just the Ukrainians getting hit in their meat anyways. Who cares how many Ukrainians die? They're not real people anyways. They're not part of the West. They're just proxies.
They can die as as many of them can die as we want. We don't give a damn about those people. That that's the reality of the West. And so far, they've been proven right. All the responses have gone back to Ukraine instead of going back to where it should, at least the the Baltics.
And Iran has shown, you know, what are you afraid of? Look what we've done to the Americans, the Americans. Look what we've done to the American base. Look what we've done to their allies. Are we dead?
Are we in this free? No. And you're a nuclear superpower. And that's the message that is in Russia. That's the message resonating on on even in state television.
The pressure is on in immensely. Strike strike hard and make an example. And it it's the proper thing to do to bring back deterrence. It should have never been deterrence was was lost in a in an attempt to not lose deterrence, in an attempt to not escalate the war, but it was again, Russia is projecting the the Russian leadership projecting Russian values. We don't want a war.
We don't want a big war. We've been pushed into this one on onto the Europe Western Central European leadership, and that was a big mistake.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I think part of the problem is that the European leaders as well as well as the media deluded themselves because the rhetoric over the past four years has been, well, you know, it's in our every we have a right to enable Ukrainians to defend themselves. And framed like this, I would say, well, that sounds awfully reasonable. You know, the Ukrainians are you know, they're fighting for their homeland. Well, why shouldn't they be helped?
The problem here, though, is that NATO set up the Ukrainians for this. I mean, they they're the one who toppled the government. They're the one armed them, trained them, sabotaged all the different negotiations as well as the 2019 election outcome. So and for a very explicit purpose, seeking to use the Ukrainians to impose a strategic defeat on Russia. So as you said, when you have people like the EU foreign policy chief, Kayakawas, calling for the breakup of Russia as one of the ideal outcomes, you you can't simply lean into this innocent you know, we're just helping the Ukrainians.
Like, this is a war against Russia as well, and the Europeans, I mean, they're participants. I had a talk with John Mersheimer, and I said, well, you know, because we are in a proxy war with Russia. So, Glenn, Glenn, we're way past this. We we are now fighting a direct war. And and I think it's important.
But, I when you say this in Europe, they say, oh, why are you repeating the Russian propaganda? But you have to accept reality as it is. If you delude yourself, you end up doing very foolish things, and the consequence, I think, is about to come. So I I agree with you, though. I think if we end up in a direct war, then a well, not necessarily a great war, but at least a direct clash now between Russia and a NATO country.
It will probably be one of the Baltic states, I guess Estonia is the most likely candidate. Do have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the the Baltic States and by way, yes, you're right. This is so far past the war. When the HIMARS appeared, I was saying from day one, these are American soldiers fired at HIMARS. This is American from day from from start to end. Oh, oh, Ukraine is fired.
HIMARS is not Ukraine is fired. It's just Americans fired at HIMARS. It's America fired at HIMARS at Russian infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, killing Russian civilians. And the New York Times back in December December '24, they came out with a big article. You know?
Yeah. It's it's all Americans. You know? Just underlining everything I've been saying. And on the Russian television, they're looking at me like I was, you know, lost my marbles there.
It's like, oh, it's great. It's no. It's American. And the New York Times just confirmed everything, even that the attack on missiles were not something that Zelensky's regime dictatorial regime asked for. It was American generals demanding attackers and using attackers on Russian cities.
Now Lugansk was just recently hit. There was a university hit. There was a school hit. You know? Big surprise there and so on.
This this is nothing new. So this is and Lugansk. No. No. Anybody doesn't know yet that it's my home city, my birth my birth city.
The the the this is this is yeah. You're right. Absolutely. This has gone so far off of proxy into a full fledged war. I mean, NATO staffs are be have been several NATO staffs have been wiped out.
By Russian missiles. Native generals, the, you know, the ones that tend to go off into the into the forest in the middle of the night or into the mountains to go mountain hiking in the middle of the night and then fall off and mysteriously die. Yeah. How else can we write off the the the losses or just don't mention them? So, yeah, they this and this is nothing new.
I mean, when you have military staffs sitting there, foreign military staffs sitting there planning and doing everything but the execution portion of somebody else's war, you're not proxy. You're absolutely fully neck deep in the conflict. Right? There's no other way to look at it. And, again, Americans aren't gonna fight this war.
Absolutely not. They're gonna make money off of this war. You know, I absolute some little wake up for the meat called the the European Union because guess what, gentlemen? Ladies and gentlemen, you are meat. You're the next wave of meat for the Americans to make money off of you.
Like it or not, look at look in the mirror and and and understand you are material that will be used to make a lot of money for Western for Western finance sitting in New York and maybe in London, depending how if the English can not get themselves evolved this time. They did in World War one and World War two. They were trying to make money off and get everybody fighting and got sucked in both times. Maybe this time they won't get sucked in, but the point is the the Central Western Europe is already in this fight. It's only gonna get worse for them.
Look. The Americans are gonna go neutral, but they're gonna feed Europe, and they're gonna continue pushing your Well, the non Russian Europe, they're gonna continue pushing into war with the Russian Europe because they're gonna make money off of this. They've been talking about this since 1998 in the open, not not in a major well, it's like I said, I think the first article I read was in Forbes, if I remember correctly. Yeah. We need another good war.
And the good war was World War two because it got America out of the Great Depression. They were talking already in '98 about it. So if you're talking '98 about it in something like Forbes, means they've been talking about it since the early nineties amongst themselves. You know, it doesn't trickle that fast up. And and, yeah, they've been preparing the the biomaterial called Europeans for a big war for the last twenty years, thirty years actually, and they're planning on making money on it.
America has plenty of equipment that's been mothballed. M one tanks, m one avon tanks, Bradleys of different generations. And they you know, what what do you do with equipment that's been mothballed? Well, you either pay money, chop it off, or you find somebody to sell it to. And and Europe is gonna be the battleground that they're gonna get on there.
And let let's just face reality. For the white race of Europe, it's their it's their Ragnarok. You're not getting out of this alive. Europe white Europeans in most of Europe are turning into a minority as it is, and after this big war are gonna be absolute minorities. They're gonna be a replaced population.
Yeah. I'm gonna drop another very uncomfortable thing to people. When the elites are talking about lowering the human population down to somewhere between half a billion to a billion people, which means exterminating the rest, and the golden billion. And most of the the Europeans thought, oh, we're gonna be part of this golden billion. Europe is gonna be part of that territory.
You're not on the list. You'll be exterminated and replaced, and you already are being exterminated and replaced by other populations that are easier to control. Because the golden billion is only because they're gonna get if it's not a half billion, it's only the people that are gonna get to live. The golden people are gonna be that 1% of the top, and they're gonna have another 20% that's gonna be educated manager and professional class that services their wealth. You gotta have engineers.
You've gotta have military and police and so on. And the bottom 80% is gonna be the serfs on the neo feudal neo feudal technological state or states. Everybody else gets to be dead. So, you know, and then you wonder if the the serfs are gonna be envying the dead before this is all over, consider what their lot of life is gonna be. But Europeans are not gonna be part of this, the average European.
They're going to be wiped out one way or the other, they're to be replaced and mixed with other nationalities that are being actively brought in as replacement. Look, this we didn't know mass migration. Of course, they knew mass migration would do what it does. It's it's it's designed that way. Only an idiot who absolutely is not paying attention to history, is not paying attention to reality, would would think that, okay, let's bring in twenty, thirty million people, You know?
Well, let's bring in 8,000,000 people into England in one big wave of over twenty years, and they're not in the wood that could become the the average key totalling Englishman. Of course, they're not gonna do that. They instantly form long claims. They instantly form separate entities. But because these people are from all over the world and they're in a foreign land, they become ruthless, they're easier to control.
And for societies that are used to be controlled more easily. To get rid of the population, you get the population you want, or some mix, admix, and all you all you gotta do is just look at the reality, you know, posters of we are Europe. One white girl, a Pakistani or an Indian, an Arabic guy, and an African guy. We are Europe. That's the poster.
And then the next poster, defend Germany or defend Europe. It's all white guys. That's the message right there. The people that need to be taken out is the white European male, and then the rest has to take care of itself. And so, you know, wake up or your children won't have a future.
And your own leaders are the ones that are gonna do this to you. I don't know how else to say it.
Speaker 0: Well, on that very dark, Clint. Thank you, Stanislav. And the holy cross today,
Speaker 1: you know, Easter. Yeah. This is warm.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And, yeah, still a great weekend so far. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You you too, man. And and happy Easter to everybody. Yeah. Happy Easter.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Max Blumenthal: ‘Israel First’ in Iran War Sparks MAGA Civil War https://youtu.be/TVmTEA9ViNU https://t.co/RNzoYcyWkZ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Max Blumenthal discusses what he calls the all-encompassing, defining influence of pro-Israel interests in the United States, arguing that Israeli influence has shaped Donald Trump’s career and policy from the beginning. He traces this to Trump’s inner circle and to figures connected to pro-Israel billionaires in New York, such as Charles Kushner, Howard Lutnick, and Steve Witkoff, and to the Adelsons’ network around the Republican Jewish Coalition. He cites Trump’s early appearances with Adelson-backed circles and his 2015-2016 remarks at the RJC convention, where Trump suggested making a deal between Israelis and Palestinians and referenced a Palestinian state, which Blumenthal says alarmed the Adelsons and the RJC.
Blumenthal asserts that Trump’s 2016 rise was financed by Israel-first billionaires, with Paul Singer shifting from initially opposing Trump to backing him for the Iran policy he desired. He claims Singer’s money helped Trump move toward a war with Iran, aligning with figures like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and other pro-Israel advisors who provided influence, while Bannon was sidelined. He argues Tucker Carlson and other voices in the first term may have constrained war with Iran, but that the second term brought even more pro-Israel personnel, including Mike Waltz in national security circles, and Marco Rubio continuing to push the Israel-aligned line.
Blumenthal details what he describes as a cultivated, orchestrated process of influence over Trump and his advisers, culminating in a February 11, 2020 or 2021 meeting in the Situation Room where Netanyahu dictated terms to Trump to strike Iran. He describes the room as divided between an “A Team” of pro-Israel figures (Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, and others) and a dissenting “B Team” (J. D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and another figure) who had little real influence. He asserts that Netanyahu, with Mossad director David Barnea briefing Ratcliffe, steered Trump toward war with Iran, and that many within the administration recognized the war’s insanity but did not oppose it due to fear of repercussions.
Blumenthal contends that the ceasefire in the region was sabotaged by Israel and that President Trump’s posture is effectively dictated by Israeli leadership. He cites Rubio’s post-briefing disclosure that Israel would attack Iran regardless of U.S. preference, and says the ceasefire’s terms, as drafted by the State Department for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, indicate that Lebanon should be included; Israel, he says, launched a major assault in Lebanon—killing hundreds and attacking areas around Beirut and the American University of Beirut—in an attempt to provoke Iran and place the United States on the spot to reject Lebanon’s inclusion.
He argues this demonstrates a “coup” in the White House, with Trump acting as “the first Israeli president,” and says the ceasefire is a hoax being sabotaged by Israel. Blumenthal points to domestic political consequences in the United States, noting Joe Kent’s resignation as a sign of MAGA discontent and arguing that Netanyahu has destabilized presidencies across the board. He claims that within MAGA, overt Israeli influence exists in influential media and political circles, including financiers and podcasters.
Blumenthal lists prominent figures he claims are effectively Israeli foreign agents within MAGA infrastructure: Josh Hammer, Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Hugh Hewitt, Dinesh D’Souza, Sebastian Gorka, Brandon Tatum, Todd Starnes, Laura Trump, and Don Jr.; and he asserts that Salem Media Group operates as an Israeli foreign agent, with Brad Parscale as a registered agent overseeing a contract between Israel’s foreign ministry and Clock Tower Strategies, delivering tens of millions in payments to influencers. He claims Laura Trump and Don Jr. own a stake in Salem Media, signaling a merger between the Trump orbit and Israeli interests.
Finally, Blumenthal argues there is a fusion of ideological zeal and institutionalized influence, with a battleground between MAGA voices not paid by Israel and others who are funded to propagate Israel-first narratives, and he predicts a major clash in upcoming party conventions over U.S. policy toward Israel. He concludes that the clock is running out for Israel and that the country’s strategy relies on continuing aggressive actions, including bombing, to resolve its problems.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Max Blumenthal, journalist, author, and editor in chief at the media outlet, the Grey Zone, and I will make sure to leave a link to it in the description. So thank you again for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Glenn. Great to be back.
Speaker 0: So from according to the New York Times, part of the problem with or one of the reasons for Trump engaging in this disastrous war was that the Israelis apparently had a key role in convincing him. Now you not just in the past, you you have made this very strong argument that Israeli influence in The US is quite powerful to the extent that you essentially have Israeli agents in the White House. I was wondering how how how intrusive is this influence?
Speaker 1: Well, it's all encompassing, and it defines Donald Trump's entire career. And, you know, even if you go back to Fred Trump, gifting land to the Chabad Lubavitch cult, which has a very pronounced presence in Donald Trump's inner circle, it goes back to his father's time. Donald Trump's entire world is surrounded. I mean, his his world, his political world is defined by pro Israel billionaires who are his counterparts coming up in New York. Charles Kushner, for example, who is also a very corrupt real estate baron.
Howard Lutnick was someone who was in Trump's world as the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and someone who was also closely connected to Jeffrey Epstein. Steve Witkoff was Trump's longtime golfing buddy, major real estate baron who's very much a part, along with his sons, of the Zionist political world and the Zionist movement. And so, when Donald Trump was running for president, however, he wasn't fully locked and loaded with the liqueud mindset, and you can see that in his first speech, which I always come back to, to the Republican Jewish coalition, which is effectively run by the Adelsons, was run by the Adelsons. They have their annual convention at the Sands Casino, which is owned by the late casino baron Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Trump appeared there, I think it was 2015, 2015 or 2016, and he made some comments that were unacceptable and said, you guys are, you know, all in real estate. You know, I know you guys.
We need to make a deal. We need to make a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. He he was already thinking, I'm gonna get a Nobel Peace Prize, and I'm gonna solve the world's most intractable conflict because I know all the people that are on Israel's side, and it should be easy to move them, and they called him an anti Semite for saying that, and they said, you know, he's playing on stereotypes that Jews are all involved in real estate, and we're all slumlords, but the real problem was that Donald Trump said, You're going to make a deal. We will have a Palestinian state. That was the problem because that's what the Adolesons have been working against.
That's what the RJC was working against. So the next thing you know, Donald Trump appears on Capitol Hill. Was the first time I've ever seen him in person, and it was an anti Iran deal rally, a rally to cancel Obama's signature JCPOA. Ted Cruz was there, you know, Tel Aviv Ted, he's always been a huge recipient of AIPAC money. His office is basically run by Israelis.
I'm I'm not being glib when I say that. Like, an Israeli operative is his main legislative aide, but, no one cared that Ted Cruz was there. You could see who was going to win, who was going to be president by being at this rally, which was clearly sponsored by Adelson or some Israel lobby forces that wanted to cancel the Iran deal, and it was Donald Trump. As soon as he gets there, people just converge on this field in front of the US capital, and Donald Trump is the is is, like, far far and away the front runner. And, you know, you had all these pundits, Trump will never become president.
He's he's never gonna win out of this primary. You know, the Clintons had this Pied Piper strategy to elevate Trump because they thought he'd be the easiest to defeat, but it was at that point when he made this bargain to shatter the Iran deal, the JCPOA, which suggested that there was a deeper bargain to actually go to war with Iran, but first, had to set the stage for the war, that Donald Trump was going to be the front runner. He was going to get hundreds of millions of dollars from the Adelsons, and then other, what I would call, Israel first billionaires would supplement that support. And in the American system, that counts for a whole lot, pretty much I mean, the the the presidential campaign is really a campaign for who can raise more money. Paul Singer started to donate to Donald Trump.
This was someone remember, Singer was the original donor to, the Steele dossier, which was created to discredit Trump and paint him as a Russian asset. Paul Singer was actually an originally a never Trumper. He was a neoconservative who was sponsoring candidates like Marco Rubio because one of the things was Paul Singer has a gay son, and so he believed in the right of men to marry other men in The United States, and Donald Trump was seen as too conservative and too close to the Christian right. Paul Singer eventually came around and said, You know, what matters more is we have a war with Iran, and Donald Trump will do what I want. So Donald Trump brought all of these figures on board by 2016, and while he was promising this war on the deep state, he was adopting figures like John Bolton into his cabinet because he would see him every night on Fox News.
Mike Pompeo, arch Christian Zionist. He sidelined Steve Bannon was quickly sidelined, someone who believed in the America First agenda. There are still voices in Trump's ear like Tucker Carlson in the first term who were influential and may have actually stopped the war with Iran, but you could clearly see Donald Trump moving towards the ultimate goal, suggesting there had always been this bargain behind the curtains to wage war with Iran. That's why he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian major general who's the second most important figure in Iran, some something guaranteed to set the stage for retaliation and bring The United States into an escalation trap with Iran. And that assassination was the result of pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, who was working through the then CIA director, Mike Pompeo, to push Trump to retaliate for a series of skirmishes in Iraq with the popular mobilization units and the, you know, the axis of resistance, specifically around the US embassy in Baghdad, and then killing Soleimani.
And then when Trump came back into office, the relationship with the Adolesons was even more pronounced, more intense, and I think many people were so angry, including myself, were very angry at Biden and Blinken and the Democrats for enabling the for supporting the Gaza genocide, which opened the door for the ultimate prize for the Israel lobby, which was the war on Iran, and the personnel that surrounded Trump coming back into office for the second for his second term were even more pro Israel than during the first term. There was no Steve Bannon or anything to offset the influence of these Israel first likudnik elements you had. Mike Waltz, who was initially supposed to be the national security chief. Mike Waltz was is one of the Israel lobby's favorite pet projects on the Republican side. His entire career had been funded by the Israel lobby.
You can look at someone like Mike Lawler in Congress as, following in Mike Walters' footsteps, and you can see the same kind of rhetoric there. They never stray from the Likudnik Netanyahu line. You had Rubio, of course, who Trump attacked in 2015 for being too close to Adelson. He Trump there's actually a Trump tweet slamming Rubio as a tool of Sheldon Adelson before Trump became that. Rubio also, as I mentioned before, major recipient of Paul Singer's money.
Then you have Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, you know, filling the shoes of Steve Bannon, who's now on the outside, slamming Trump for being too close to Israel. Susie Wiles worked on Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020 campaign. This was not known to the American public when Trump brought her in. Was just known that she was this super lobbyist. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, was actually Qatar's main lobbyist in The United States.
She was getting over a $100,000 a month from Qatar, but she has proven to be completely malleable and, you know, has hold secret meetings with Miriam Adelson all the time, who tells her, We have to criminalize speech on behalf of Israel. Who am I missing? Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, went to Israel on a private or not a private tour, on a very public tour with a settlement organization, an organization that actually physically displaces Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem called Aterat Kohanim, as well as, which is the main pro settler TV, online network, and gave a speech endorsing the concept of the third temple, which means the destruction of the Al Aqsa compound. Pete Hegseth took the most extreme line possible in order to advance through the ranks, the extreme line possible on Israel. I'm I'm probably missing someone, but you can clearly see, just to wrap up, you know, my survey of Trump's personnel and his funders, you can see how this played out in the situation room when Trump decided to go to war on Iran.
I'm not talking about the February 11 meeting that you mentioned, Glenn, in your question, but either just because this is something we can see, anyone watching this can look up the photos of the situation room and how it was divided. Donald Trump was in Mar A Lago when he went to war on Iran, and he was surrounded by Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and, I think there was one other figure who I might be forgetting, and that was the pro Israel a team, all the people who had been basically installed by Israel. And then team b was actually at the White House without Trump, J. D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and one other, the the those who were more likely to dissent from attacking Iran, who had no influence whatsoever on the policy, and these were figures.
Oh, uh-uh, John Ratcliffe, that's the other one who is on A Team. John Ratcliffe is another figure who is in Congress, who is supported by A Pac throughout his entire career, who is identified in leaked audio that I obtained from a private, off the record APAC session, back in 2025 or sorry, 2024, identified as one of the helpers for APAC on the inside of Donald Trump's national security team by APAC CEO, Elliott Brand. So so Ratcliffe was there, and then you have the secret February 11 meeting, Glenn, that you mentioned that it the New York Times revealed. We all knew something like this was taking place because Netanyahu was in town at that time. Highways were being shut down.
He was given presidential level security, and then he storms into a situation room meeting, which is highly unusual for any foreign leader, and he sits at the head of the table while Trump sits to the side, and he dictates to Trump and begins fear mongering and tells Trump Iran will have a nuclear weapon within a week. It has a delivery mechanism to attack Europe. It will soon be able to attack The United States. You must strike Iran now. Behind him on a livestream telecast is the Mossad director, David Barnea, who had been constantly briefing John Ratcliffe, and Trump fell into line.
He knew what to do, and all of his team, though, the A team that had been cultivated by Israel, also including CENTCOM chief Dan Cain, the Pentagon brass, who was never a fan of this war, they all started murmuring to themselves, this war is insane. What what Netanyahu is saying is bogus. Like, even Ratcliffe said, this is ridiculous. Marco Rubio called it BS, but what did none of them dare to do? Tell Trump how they felt.
They're all a bunch of yes men, and they knew that if they expressed real reservations about this war and got in the way, well, they could be in serious trouble. They may not continue to rise through the ranks. Marco Rubio wants to run for president, They just got out of the way and let it happen, but that's what what The New York Times isn't telling you is what I have just been explaining for the last five or ten minutes, I don't know how long I've been going for, which is that that meeting was the product of years and years and years of cultivation, manipulation, grooming, threats, rewards, carrots, and sticks from Israel and its cutouts in The United States for the very figures that surround Trump, and, grooming of Donald Trump himself by this foreign apartheid entity. It was essentially a coup, and this war is the result of a coup.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was I spoke to Joe Kent, and he was, making the point that, it was, you know, not like regular lobbying, that it was quite intrusive that they would have, yeah, Israeli citizens there in the in the rooms when they're talking about highly sensitive issues, and the the way they just kind of blend in with with the Americans. It was quite extraordinary. You never have foreign leaders, yeah, intervening to this amount, to this extent. And I I, yeah, find it interesting how you refer to the to the well, the the Russia Gate, essentially, because this I know you coined the term Israel Gate.
I mean, this this is the real influence, isn't it? The the how they influenced the the election. I mean but, of course, while Russia Gate was bogus, this appears to have, some, yeah, actual real evidence behind it. And it's interesting also how you argue this explains a lot how the first Trump administration was very different from from the second in terms of his, appetite for war. But how do you see then the Israel's role now in the ceasefire?
Because I found it a bit, well, let's say suspicious that that the most violent attack on Lebanon had to happen on the first day of the ceasefire.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And and and when I mentioned Israel Gate first, when I first said this is Israel Gate, it was because the I think one of the opening shots of Russiagate was that the NSA had taped a call between, Sergei Kislyak and I think it was Jared Kushn no. No. It was Michael Flynn.
Michael Flynn and Sergei Kislyak. You remember that? So Michael Flynn was supposed to be the, national security council chief for Donald Trump, which would have been I mean, if you look at Michael Flynn's activity now, it's kind of wild to consider that, and the national security establishment in The US wanted to get Flynn out, so someone in the NSA leaked the contents of this call and they said, Oh, Flynn Flynn was stupid. He was he was overseas, so it was easy for him to be spied on. He's he's has a back channel, a secret back channel with the Russian ambassador.
They're colluding. But what were they actually talking about? This is what was never told to the American public. Jared Kushner, who is one of the key Israeli moles in Trump's inner circle, who's married to Trump's daughter Ivanka, as we all know, and is the son of Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner had been asked or told by instructed by Netanyahu to get to pressure Trump to veto no, to not to not, veto a US resolution sorry, to to sorry. Yeah.
He wanted The US to veto a UN resolution condemning Israel for settlement activity when they came in, and Obama actually abstained on that. So it was all about Israel. The call between the Russian ambassador and Michael Flynn was being held on behalf of Netanyahu in order to protect Israel's annexation of the West Bank, and The US public was never told that, so the real scandal was Israel gay. And, by the way, the Russian ambassador refused to do that. And then if you look at, actually, a lot of the billionaires that are said to be Russian billionaires, you know, who were involved with Trump in some business capacity or another, They so many of them are dual Russian Israeli citizens.
Haaretz, the Israeli liberal paper, actually did an expose about this. So in many ways, Russiagate was Israelgate. But to your question, Israel will not allow Donald Trump to end this war, and Israel decided that Donald Trump would begin this war. Marco Rubio, after his first briefing with the Senate Gang of Eight, the main sort of power brokers in the Senate, bipartisan power brokers, told them that Israel was going to attack Iran whether we liked it or not, and so we had to follow them in there, and he came out to the press and made this very revealing disclosure, which should have been a much larger scandal, but US media consistently covers up the scandal of Israeli control. It still was enough to upset a lot of people, including Tony Blinken, who was the former secretary of state, someone who's very close to Israel himself, and who's, you know, the man who raised him.
His stepfather was effectively an Israel lobbyist in France. His grandfather was an Israel lobbyist, and Blinken said, You know, I was Blinken was on the national security team under Obama, and he said that the Israelis tried the same exact thing. They said, We are going to attack Iran. You must follow us, and we actually said, No, and you are not going to do that because we still have the power to stop you. Trump didn't have the power to stop them, apparently.
So Rubio effectively admitted that Israel that this war was launched for Israel, and now we can clearly see that the ceasefire was a hoax, and it it is being sabotaged by Israel. And, again, we have very clear evidence. It's all happening in broad daylight. The I believe it was the State Department delivered a draft of a statement to the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shebaaz Sharif, which he was to post on his Twitter X account, articulating the terms, of agreement for negotiations in Islamabad between The US and Iran. And those terms clearly stated, I mean, the way that he posted this draft, he posted it without taking out the header that said, to be posted by Shavaz Sharif, and then he edited it, and so he revealed that The US had provided it to him.
The terms clearly stated that the ceasefire would involve Lebanon, that Lebanon was involved in this process, and that meant that the war on Lebanon that Israel had launched, including the ground invasion, would be paused, at least. So what does Israel do? The biggest massacre that we can remember since the 1990s in Lebanon, over two fifty killed, attacking areas of Beirut that are I would call them, like, anti Hezbollah strongholds, like, the area around the American University of Beirut bombing the Corniche. These are, like, wealthier, Sunni heavy areas. They're They they attacked all over Lebanon, just slaughtering the civilian population.
Today, attacking, the government center in Nabataea, and that's their way That was their way of first trying to provoke Iran into attacking Israel, Netanyahu using his own population again as pawns and human shields in order to blow up this ceasefire. Iran hasn't fallen for the provocation, but also to test The US and ensure that The United States is put on the spot to declare that they do not see Lebanon as part of the ceasefire deal, and of course, they fell right into line. JD Vance caught on the tarmac in, I guess it was Budapest. He was put out there to, like, kind of keep him away from the whole process, and he said, Well, I think all of these terms that everyone's talking about of agreement on the ceasefire are actually AI. He actually said that.
Lebanon was never included. J. D. Vance just lied. So once again, Israel is determining what The US can and can't do with this war, and it demonstrates the coup that has been undertaken in the White House, where effectively Donald Trump is the first Israeli president, not that other presidents haven't been doing Israel's bidding, but when I say Donald Trump is the first Israeli president, he talks like an Israeli leader when he calls for bombing Lebanon, bombing Iran back to the Stone Age.
That's what Israeli leadership has said about Gaza and Lebanon for decades. You can just Google Israeli Stone Age Lebanon, and many statements will come up. Remember, there was, the Israeli defense minister calling the population of Gaza human animals. What did Trump say in in front of the White House on Easter? That, he can threaten them.
He can threaten to bomb them back to the Stone Age because they're animals, and then he threatens the death of a civilization. It's, again, it's Israeli language. What is Donald Trump's strategy in Iran? He has no strategy. He's letting Israel determine the strategy.
What are his objectives? Well, his main objective now is to open the Strait Of Hormuz, which was opened before the war, but beyond that, the strategy is regime change because that's the Israeli strategy and state destruction. Effectively, Donald Trump is inhabiting the role of an Israeli leader, and the when the Israeli leader comes to Washington, he sits at the head of the table in the situation room.
Speaker 0: Just well, I I thought it was also shocking that once Israel began to bomb in this manner, and, they claimed, well, Lebanon was not a part of it, I I thought this was really the the moment for for Trump that he could push the Israelis aside a bit because this war has been an unmitigated disaster for The United States. I thought when the key national security interests are at stake, this is when the breaking point will come when he'll push the Israeli aside. But, again, instead, they said, well, Lebanon's not part of it. So canceling essentially the ceasefire, which The US needed so badly. But do you see, do you see the any of this having any impact in terms of in terms of fracturing the relationship, though, between The US and Israel?
Because the the kind of, you know, the the Tucker Carlson, if you will, and, I guess, Joe Kent's. They you know, I've never seen this before. This is quite new.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, what Joe Kent did was astounding and, obviously, extremely brave. He's the highest ranking US official to resign from any government over a war since Vietnam, and that says something about where MAGA is, where Donald Trump's base is, and where the American public is. First of all, Benjamin Netanyahu has destroyed one presidency after another or attempted to destroy those presidencies. He destroyed Joe Biden with the Gaza genocide because Biden could not extricate himself from his bear hug of Netanyahu.
He couldn't stop thinking, I am a Zionist. I must do what Israel wants, and he didn't understand the Democratic party base is sick of seeing children being slaughtered day after day after day. And then Kamala Harris, who is also very much a creation of the Israel lobby and also, you know, relied heavily on Silicon Valley money, she couldn't pull away either, so people walked away from the Democrats, and now the same dynamic is happening with Donald Trump in actually more extraordinary fashion. So one of two things happens. Either, one of these parties, the Democrats or Republicans, gain executive power and completely reorient the Israel US relationship so it is not this unshakable bond, and that Israel feels real pressure and is sanctioned for its behavior, or their presidency will be destroyed because they will face a master's revolt from their base and from the key sort of faces and voices of their influencer class, which is an open revolt within Donald Trump's base.
Donald Trump has now taken the, I would say, unprecedented step of personally attacking three, three or four of the key influencers who were some of his most loyal supporters, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones. There may be one other. I mean, Alex Jones took a lot of hits for January 6 while Donald Trump kind of, like, walked away. Candace Owens was was very influential in creating TP USA and also, you know, being the face of, you know, black Republicans turning away from the Democratic Party. Tucker Carlson was one of the most loyal figures, and the most popular American broadcaster.
His show on Fox was one of the only cable news shows anyone watched, He was constantly defending Trump and shaping the America First Agenda, and he's attacked them all to the point where he has said that Brigitte Macron, the former high school teacher of Emmanuel Macron, is more attractive than Candace Owens. I mean, he went that low. This statement was a product of pressure from Laura Loomer, the fanatical anti Muslim Israel first influencer who has really very little popularity herself, but has managed to get more private time with Donald Trump than Trump's own wife, Melania Trump, and she basically took credit for this, saying she played a series of clips of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones denouncing Trump to get this statement, and now others are joining the fray. Benny Johnson this is highly significant. Benny Johnson was basically, the the most corporatized, choreographed, scripted MAGA bot, and he is if if Benny Johnson did anything, it was always to, you know, follow instructions from the top to support Donald Trump through some talking points that were handed to him, and he was also very close to Charlie Kirk's TP USA.
He is now denouncing Netanyahu, stating that Netanyahu should not be allowed in the White House. This is hugely significant. It suggests there's going to be an even greater mutiny. Donald Trump's approval rating is in the toilet for a president at this point in his second term. Israel's approval rating among Democrats is 20%.
Okay? 80% of Democrats see Israel in a negative light. The number's obviously much lower for Republicans. You have that class of Fox News baby boomers who, you know, are racist towards Muslims. They're just addicted to bombing brown people.
They don't know right from wrong, so they look at Trump as a kind of moral locus, a moral guide, but even the numbers among Republicans are collapsing. Republicans under 40 do not support Israel anymore. So the writing's on the wall, and Donald Trump is preparing to escalate this war with Iran in which he has already lost, and the global economy is something Americans generally don't think about, but in a week or two, they are really going to start feeling the burn of the closure of the Strait Of Hormuz, and it's going to get even worse for Donald Trump. So he's now, like, in the middle of this circular firing squad, and who supports Trump? I think this is one of the most important things for people to understand for the purpose of this conversation, is who among the MAGA podcast to stan commentary that supports Donald Trump.
It is not fully appreciated and is not discussed, you're not allowed to discuss this in US mainstream media, that these figures are effectively unregistered Israeli foreign agents. I'll just, like, read off some names. If you're not American and you're not in our, you know, media world, you might not recognize them all, but these are some of the most, visible figures in, you know, in the in the MAGA podcast world. Josh Hammer, you know, Israel Fuster, has very little popular appeal, but you just see him everywhere because he's astroturfed. Dennis Prager from, PragerU, which is this major propaganda mechanism which has been actually affecting educational curricula in Florida under the watch of the Israel first governor, Ron DeSantis, where they're actually propagandizing children in favor of Israel.
Prager, I think, is a Jewish convert to evangelical Christianity. Larry Elder, one of the major Black Republican influencers, radio hosts, Hugh Hewitt, who is someone who is out there supporting the Iraq war, is like a very, very, mainstream Republican AM radio voice, Dinesh D'Souza, Sebastian Gorka, who is on Trump's NSC team and has a radio show that's nationally broadcast, Brandon Tatum, Todd Starnes, and then Laura Trump and Don Jr. Okay, what do they all have in common? They all are broadcast through something called Salem Media. Salem Media is an Israeli foreign agent.
It is listed in a Foreign Agent Registration Act form with the Department of Justice as the delivery mechanism for a major contract between Israel's foreign ministry and clock tower strategies through a German firm called Havas to propagandize the American public. We're talking about 10, $10,000,000 of direct payments to podcasters and influencers, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars to to cover the deliverables. And the Salem Media Group chief strategy officer is a reg federally registered Israeli foreign agent named Brad Parscale, who heads Clock Tower Strategies. Laura Trump, who is Trump's daughter-in-law, and Donald Trump Junior, who is Donald Trump's daughter, now own a 30% stake in Salem Media, so they have effectively merged through this foreign agent business deal with the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The Trump family has merged with the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
You have an Israeli Foreign Ministry official whose name is on the contract, and Brad who is Brad Parscale, the main foreign agent who's registered here who's presiding over this gargantuan contract? He is the former campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 campaign who created Donald Trump's digital media strategy. However, in October 2020, Pascal was arrested at his home, tackled by police because he was said to be beating his wife, was involved in was said to be abusing alcohol, and had 10 high powered firearms. So he got basically a Baker Act, was tackled on camera. You can go online and see this video.
He's a huge guy. He was six foot six, and that meant that he could no longer work in the Trump campaign, so Israel moves in and says, we're gonna give this guy the opportunity of a lifetime, and we will infiltrate Trump world through Brad Parscale and gain all of the data that he used to effectively move the American public to support Donald Trump, and then we're going to take over the whole world of influencers that operates that's willing to basically be paid and be bought off. And there are other figures that I can't prove they're part of this contract, but I see them reading off the talking points. Glenn Beck, this washed up fitness influencer, Jillian Michaels, who's been attacking us at the Grey Zone and Joe Kent, and, Laura Loomer herself. So, basically, you have a war between MAGA voices or America first, who are not paid by Israel and are just sick of being dominated by a foreign government, and many of them are also sick of seeing children be slaughtered and wars be started that are destroying our economy, and then everyone almost everyone else seems to be a part of this foreign agent racket, and we're not allowed to talk about that in US media because you'll be accused of being an anti Semite, but it's one of the biggest scandals along with this entire coup that has taken over the White House and taken us to war that I've seen in my lifetime.
Speaker 0: It's incredible. I was gonna ask if this really influence was ideological or institutional, but I think you answered that very thoroughly. So
Speaker 1: Well, yeah. I mean, that's a great question, and just really quickly, I mean, I think the ideology can be institutionalized, but the people who are directing this campaign, who are ideologically zealous about this war, whether they're behind the curtain and they're operatives, they're like Israel lobbyists whose names we don't know, or they're more prominent figures like Josh Hammer or, Mark Levin, who is the key, you know, voice of Netanyahu's coterie in The US at Fox News pushing Trump. They don't have a lot of popular appeal within MAGA, so they rely on institutionalizing their views by basically buying off the very transactional, easily corrupted class of people that rode on Donald Trump's pirate ship into power. So, I mean, there's a blend of ideological zealotry and institutionalization, but, you know, I highly doubt, you know, if somebody came in from, I don't know, if Abu Obeyta from Hamas was allowed to come to The US with suitcases full of cash and give it to MAGA influencers, some of them might be delivering the exact opposite message tomorrow, and, the reality is that MAGA itself is done. America First as a brand has moved beyond Trump and is looking for another vehicle because they don't believe in any of this stuff, and they are in the wilderness now, just as, you know, those of us who came more from the left were went out into the wilderness after Democratic president after president, I mean, not just Biden, but Obama, Clinton did Israel's bidding, and I think you're gonna see a major clash when both Republican and Democratic conventions convene, and both have to select a you're not gonna have an incumbent president, so there's going to be a major civil war in both parties over this issue.
And I don't I don't see how it can be avoided that there has to be a change in policy after all this. I think the clock is running out on Israel, and all it can do at this point is bomb its way out of problems.
Speaker 0: Well, Max, thank you so much for taking the time. It's no. It's a fascinating topic and also a bit frightening, but it at least
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 0: It is frightening. This MAGA civil war, at least some truth might come out eventually, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, well, through, through your interviews, a lot of truth is coming out. So thanks for what you're doing, and thanks for giving me the time to talk about this. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: World Changed Forever as Iran Defeated the U.S. https://youtu.be/H2K3qDshr70 https://t.co/33vIYTDCQb
Video Transcript AI Summary
In a discussion about the Iran confrontation and its wider implications, Glenn and John Mearsheimer analyze the sequence of events and underlying dynamics behind President Donald Trump’s statements and policy shifts.
- Trump’s two Monday tweets frame the episode: an initial threat to “wipe Iran off the face of the earth” to force concession, followed by a reversal to announce a ceasefire based on Iran’s 10-point plan. Mersheimer emphasizes that this sequence reveals Trump’s desperation to end the war and to secure a ceasefire quickly, then to shift to negotiations with Iran’s plan as the basis.
- The framework of the negotiations is contrasted with the US’s prior maximalist aims. The United States had demanded four core goals: regime change, Iran’s nuclear enrichment cessation, elimination of long-range missiles, and cessation of support for groups like the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Mersheimer notes none of these have been realized, while Iran reportedly gains leverage through control of the Strait of Hormuz.
- The Iranian 10-point plan is presented as a basis for negotiations that would, in effect, concede the big US demands. Trump’s evening tweet signaling acceptance of the 10-point plan is read as a defeat for the US position and a shift toward Iranian maximalism on its own terms. The claim is that the ceasefire, if it occurs, would involve concessions that Iran had already proposed.
- The feasibility of a ceasefire is questioned. Iran’s open Strait of Hormuz depends on Israel halting attacks in Lebanon (on Hezbollah), which has not happened. Therefore, a true ceasefire is not in place, and the Israelis’ actions are seen as undermining any potential halt to hostilities.
- The broader strategic picture is outlined. Iran’s leverage includes allied groups (Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas) and the ability to close chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandab strait via the Houthis. The discussion notes Iran’s large missile/drone arsenal and potential to threaten American bases, though Mersheimer stresses that sanctions and the prolonged war have devastated Iran’s economy, which complicates assessments of its strength.
- The role of external powers and economies is highlighted. Mersheimer argues that the global economy—especially oil and fertilizers—drives the push to end the conflict. He suggests China and Pakistan, with Russian input, pressured Iran to negotiate, given the global economic risks of a prolonged war. He also notes that the New York Times reported that all 13 US bases in the Gulf were damaged or destroyed, undermining U.S. presence there.
- Domestic political concerns are discussed. Trump’s ability to declare victory while acknowledging defeat creates a political hazard. Vance is presented as a potentially capable negotiator who could press for a ceasefire, but there is concern about internal political blowback if he concedes too much.
- Israel’s position is considered crucial. Netanyahu’s government is described as having promoted the war, and the war’s outcome is said to damage U.S.-Israel relations. There is speculation that Israel may consider drastic options, including nuclear consideration against Iran, given the perceived failure of conventional means.
- The Ukraine war and its relation to the Iran conflict are explored. If Iran’s war ends or is perceived as winding down, European capacity and willingness to support Ukraine become central questions. The U.S. may shift blame to Europe for Ukraine’s defeat if Russia advances, while withholding weapons to Ukraine to avoid further strain on U.S. stockpiles.
- The discussion on rationality in international relations emphasizes that states act rationally when their decisions align with a plausible theory of international politics and a sound decision-making process. Mersheimer argues Europe’s behavior toward the U.S. is not irrational, though he criticizes its liberal-theory basis (NATO expansion) as potentially misguided but not irrational. He contrasts this with Trump’s Iran attack in February 2029, which he deems irrational due to a lack of a plausible theory of victory.
- The multipolar world dynamic is reinforced. The war’s outcomes are viewed as weakening U.S. ability to project power, diminishing transatlantic cohesion, and boosting Russia and China’s relative position. The loss of Gulf bases and diminished American influence are expected to push Europe toward greater strategic autonomy, with NATO potentially becoming less meaningful by 2029, depending on future leadership.
- Final notes include concerns about the political risk for Vance as a negotiator, the likelihood of a difficult peace process, and the possibility that misperceptions and propaganda—analyzed through historical parallels like the Vietnam War and Walter Lippmann’s ideas—have locked leaders into an “evil enemy” narrative that complicates peacemaking.
Overall, the conversation portrays Trump’s messaging as a sign of desperation to end a costly conflict, the ceasefire as a fragile construct dependent on Iranian terms, Iran’s expanding leverage in the region, the fragility of U.S.-Israel and transatlantic bonds, and a shifting global order moving toward multipolarity with lasting economic and strategic consequences.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is Friday, April 10, and we are joined by none other than professor John Mersheimer. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: It's always my pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So these are, yeah, crazy times indeed. We saw that Trump threatened to wipe out the entire Iranian civilization with its 90 plus million citizens. Then he embraced this sudden ceasefire, which he then seemingly undermined immediately thereafter. Then he claims victory and, yeah, begins to distance himself from some of the key requirements of this ceasefire deal. It's a it can be confusing.
So I was hoping if anyone can shed some light on this, it would be you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it is somewhat confusing for sure. And I think because president Trump, you know, frequently contradicts himself and says outrageous things that it sometimes feels like it's hard to make sense of what's going on here. But I I actually think it's quite straightforward. And I think if you look at his two tweets on Monday, it it tells you a great deal.
And what exactly am I saying? I think at an over arch from an overarching perspective, you wanna understand that president Trump is desperate to end this war. He fully understands that we are close to going off a precipice, that if this war is not shut down, we could end up in a global depression that's worse than we saw, in the late nineteen twenties. And he wants to do everything he can to avoid that. So you get two tweets on Monday morning and on Monday evening.
And they're very different tweets for sure, but they both show evidence of the desperation. In the morning, he says that he's going to wipe Iran off the face of the earth. He's gonna destroy Iranian civilization forever. This is a genocidal threat of the first order. This is the kind of language that you expect from Adolf Hitler, not from an American president.
And what's going on here is he's desperate and he's threatening to annihilate the Iranians to get them to throw up their hands before he has to attack them that evening. He wants them to concede defeat. By the end of the day, he does a 180 degree turn and he says there's gonna be a ceasefire. But most importantly, he says that the ceasefire will be based on Iran's 10 plan. Now you want to understand that there are two plans on the table.
One is the 15 American plan which has all the maximalist demands of The United States and Israel. And then there's the Iranian 10 plan, has all the maximalist demands of the Iranians. And he says that the negotiations will take place on the basis of the Iranian's 10 plan. This is really quite remarkable. He says the 10 plan provides a workable basis for an agreement.
And again, these are the maximalist demands of the Iranian government. He says furthermore in the tweet that almost all of the points of contention between the two sides have resolved. Again, remarkable. What's going on here? He's basically found the off ramp and the off ramp is to concede defeat.
It is the only off ramp. He's long had two options. One is he could go up the escalation ladder, which is what he was threatening to do in the morning. But as I've argued for a long time, he can't go up the escalation ladder because he loses at every step. And the idea that he's going to obliterate Iran, this is not acceptable.
This cannot be done. So he can't escalate, so he's gotta find an off ramp. But the only off ramp is surrender, is to concede defeat. And what he does in the second tweet, again, he reverses gears, goes in the opposite direction, and he concedes defeat. He says, we're going to negotiate on the basis of the 10 Plan.
This means none of our demands are going to be achieved. None of the big four demands that we made before the war started and after the war started are going to be realized. And we're going to negotiate on the basis of the maximalist demands that Iran has put on the table. So what I'm saying to you, Glenn, is if you look at the morning tweet and you look at the evening tweet, you see that Trump is desperate. He's desperate to end this war, and he wants to get a ceasefire as quickly as possible, and then he wants to start negotiations.
Speaker 0: But it seems like he wants, to have it both ways because, yes, his concedes defeat will accept, you know, that Iran will set up a toll on the Strait Of Hormuz, will put a ceasefire, which includes Lebanon, all these things. And but then once the ceasefire is in place, he seems to be still wanting to claim victory. So now his tweets are about, well, you know, you better not put any tolls on the Strait Of Hormuz, and, you know, Lebanon's not included. It looks like he wants to have it both ways. He concedes defeat to get the ceasefire, but once he has the ceasefire, he wants to make this victory claim.
Because I noticed that Pete Hegsef, he also tried to do this victory lap, was just reading out all the people who are dead, you know, all the people they killed as a way of suggesting that this was victory. But it's and did you see it in a similar way that he well, did you see the the the attempt to claim victory here? Because, you know, what they had agreed to and what they're claiming, it's there seems to be a massive gap there. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, Glenn, they don't have a ceasefire because to have a ceasefire, the Iranians have to open the Strait Of Hormuz. And the Iranians have refused to open the Strait Of Hormuz because the Israelis are bombing Lebanon and attacking Hezbollah inside of Lebanon. And the Iranians say there will be no ceasefire. The Strait Of Hormuz will not be opened until the Israelis stop attacking Hezbollah and that hasn't happened. So the Israelis are undermining the ceasefire.
You want to understand here that first of all there's the ceasefire but then there's the negotiations to end the war. But before you can get to the negotiations, you have to get a ceasefire. But we don't have a ceasefire. That's a key point to understand. And the question is whether or not president Trump is gonna be willing to lean on Netanyahu in a really serious way to get him to stop attacking Hezbollah.
And then we'll get a ceasefire. Then the strait will be opened. But in terms of Hegseth and Trump declaring victory, this is putting lipstick on a pig. Come on. This is it's clear.
We've lost. I you just wanna think about it. We went into this war with four demands. One was regime change. Two was Iran would get rid of its nuclear enrichment capability.
Three is Iran would eliminate all its long range ballistic missiles. And four, Iran would stop supporting the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. None of those four demands have been realized. None. Furthermore, Iran now controls the Strait Of Hormuz, which gives it enormous leverage.
Furthermore, Iran still has a huge inventory of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, which allows it to attack American bases in the region, American forces in the region, the GCC states that are allied with The United States, and Israel itself. So Iran is in an excellent position today compared to the position it was in on February 27. And furthermore, as I said, President Trump in his truth social post on Monday night, this is April 6, said we're going to negotiate on the basis of the 10 plan that the Iranians have put on the table. This is a clear defeat. And by the way, it's an even bigger defeat for Israel.
And in Israel there is all sorts of talk to that effect. The Israelis fully understand that if you look at where this train is headed, this is a catastrophic defeat for them. And, of course, it is for president Trump as well.
Speaker 0: Well, in the future as well, if Israel or any of the Western states would want to attack Yemen or, you know, attack Lebanon or genocide the Palestinians again, then Iran could just, yeah, shut down or increase the toll. You know, they have some different steps up the escalation pattern on the Hormuz. They can, you know, block some ships. I don't know. There's this gives a massive instrumental power to the Iranians.
I mean, they seem like they will exit this conflict as maybe superpowers a bit too much, but at least, yeah, adjacent to a great power. This is this is quite a, yeah, instrument of power they have. And as you said, they didn't have this before the war.
Speaker 1: So Well, there's two points to be made. First of all, I think you don't wanna overestimate how powerful a position Iran is in. Because of years of sanctions and because of the destruction we've wrought on Iran since February 28, Iran, in a very important way, has been devastated. This is a country that has been wrecked in a lot of ways. So the idea that they're coming out of this war in great shape is wrong.
They're gonna have to spend many billions of dollars over many years to recover or to come close to recovering from all the damage that we and the Israelis have inflicted on them. There's no question, however, that given the fact that they control the Strait Of Hormuz, they have a huge amount of leverage. And I take it a step further, Glenn. You want to remember that the Houthis are their allies. They're one of the three groups that the Iranians remain very close to, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas.
And the Houthis can they can shut down the strait that leads out of the Red Sea as they have done in the past. So the Iranians working with the Houthis have the ability to shut down traffic coming out of the Red Sea, out of the Strait Of Bab El Mandab, and they have the capability to shut down the traffic coming out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait Of Hormuz. So they do have enormous leverage. There's just no question about that. And, this is gonna present huge problems for the Israelis moving forward and for the Americans moving forward.
And by the way, Glenn, just to take this a step further, if you look at the maximalist demands of the Iranians, One of them is that all American military forces leave the region. I find it hard to believe that that will happen, but I would note that we have 13 bases. Well, let me put it differently, we had 13 bases in the region on February 28. And the New York Times reports that of those 13 bases, all of them have either been destroyed or badly damaged. I just want to think about that.
Our presence in The Gulf has been seriously undermined by this war. The 13 bases that we depended on are basically gone or almost gone. And then you have to ask yourself the question, are the Gulf states that hosted us on these bases going to want The United States to come back and rebuild those bases. And as I said, there's also the question of whether we're going to want to do that. And then there's the point that the Iranians want us out of the region.
So what our military presence in the region looks like when all the dust settles is hard to say, but we are going to be no more we're not going to be more we're going to be less influential, have less power in The Gulf, less power projection capability in The Gulf, when all is said and done than we had before February 28.
Speaker 0: It's quite extraordinary that, how horrible this war was. And, but, again, it was defeat, but I'm I'm not sure what else Trump could have done than to accept defeat because there was obviously a growing desperation. I was just wondering how where you think most of the pressure came from. Was it that they were running out of missiles, interceptor missiles, in other words, the military? Was it the massive economic pressure, especially the growing oil prices?
Or was it, you know, fueling the political havoc at home, loss of voters? So we what what do you think or or is there other dimensions to this disaster that we're missing?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the secondary factor is that militarily, we couldn't figure out how to win the war in any meaningful way. Just the you know, ground invasion didn't make sense. We couldn't use the Navy to do much of anything. We just didn't have many options and I think that was becoming manifestly clear. And you want to remember that in this rescue operation, where they got the second pilot out, we lost more aircraft that day than we have lost on any single day since the Vietnam War.
And think about that. Since the Vietnam War, right, we have never lost as many aircraft in one day as we lost in this rescue mission. This just tells you that we were not doing well militarily. So I think that was of secondary importance. I think what's of primary importance here is what's happening to the world economy.
I think the Chinese and the Russians are very scared about what the long term consequences of this war are going to be for the world economy, and that includes the supply of food around the world as well as oil and gas. And I believe the Chinese put pressure on the Iranians and talked at great length to the Pakistanis about getting Iran to come to the negotiating table, and to work out a ceasefire and then get talking about settling this war. I think the Chinese understand full well that this will have disastrous consequences for everyone, and I wanna underline that word, everyone, if this war continues. This war has to be shut down. If you look at what's happening in East Asia, and this includes countries like South Korea, The Philippines, Indonesia, India, and the potential for really grave damage in China and countries like Russia, over the long term everybody understands.
And I believe the Trump administration understands that we have to shut this one down. So I think you see Trump trying to do that. It's Trump who's actually been pushing hard for some sort of exit option, some way of settling this war. No question that Trump is deeply interested in doing that. But the Iranians, as I've long argued, have a vested interest in stringing this out.
The Iranians don't wanna settle this war quickly because the longer the war goes on and the more damage that's done to the international economy and the deeper the panic that Trump is in, the more leverage the Iranians have. So it's no problem, I think, from the Iranian point of view if the ceasefire doesn't work out Because as it goes on, the conflict that is their leverage increases. But nevertheless, I believe what happened here is that the Chinese working with the Pakistanis and directly with the Iranians put great pressure on Iran. They might have even brought the Russians in to put pressure on Iran to go to the negotiating table because this one has to be shut down. So I think as you look at the situation today, you go back to those two tweets of president Trump on Monday, this is April 6, and you ramp forward up to the present, and then you project out into the future.
I think it's the global economy that really is driving the train here.
Speaker 0: Yes. Probably true. I think even now that well, even if the war comes to an end now, the amount of damage that has already been done is quite tremendous, especially for the Europeans and the Asians. We can maybe put Africa in that same category. But but we've seen some reports of more US troops heading to the region.
I I don't know. I haven't seen the exact numbers, but do you think this is I mean, it seems unlikely that Trump wants to have another go at this because I'm not sure what it's gonna do with the troops. As you said, boots on the ground never really made any sense at all. Or is it just for pressure to hope that The US will have a little bit more leverage in the negotiations because, you know, this is just a two week ceasefire supposed to produce an actual peace agreement. Then that that peace agreement is gonna be very difficult for Trump to get because at the moment, the ceasefire deal, which is a bit ambiguous, there doesn't seem to be a written paper which they can point to, it's, you know, it it's it's easy for him to harmonize, you know, his claim for victory and also the need to, I guess, capitulate.
But, in an actual peace agreement, it's gonna be very hard to square this. I'm I'm just just wondering how how do you see the possible ways of this war actually ending? Because, again, we have to get from a ceasefire to an actual peace agreement. Or do you think Trump's just gonna try to extend the the ceasefire indefinitely and get, you know, like, I don't know. Just try not to get any pen on paper so he doesn't have to admit defeat, essentially.
Speaker 1: Glenn, he has to admit defeat. He admitted defeat Monday night. Again, we're we're on the precipice. We've got to shut this one down. He has no choice here.
You talk about sending ground forces to the region and a ground force option. That's really going to work well. That's going to get a quick agreement? Are you kidding? That's just going to make a bad situation worse.
There's no ground force option here. There's no naval option. There's no air option. I guess he could use nuclear weapons and destroy Iran forever. We could do that, we have that capability.
Is he going to do that? No, he's not going to do that. So he's got to shut this one down. And, he's between a rock and a hard place because the Israelis won't cooperate with him. The Israelis won't even allow him to get a ceasefire.
Again, the Strait Of Hormuz is still effectively closed. The only ships that get through are the ones that the Iranians let through. So he can declare victory and talk about the fact that we've gotten everything we wanted and our goals have been achieved and so forth and so on. But nobody's going to believe that. We lost.
The Israelis lost. The problem is that there are just so many alternative media outlets where this is all made clear, your show being one of them, that they can't put lipstick on a pig and get away with it. Pete Hegseth can say we won, Donald Trump can say we won, but who believes that? Hardly anybody. You see this in the Israeli case, you know, they'll be talking about all the wonderful things they've done because the government has a vested interest in saying that, but all sorts of people are going to point out that this is a ludicrous argument.
They didn't win. They lost. What I would say to President Trump, and I don't think he needs me to tell him this because I'm sure his advisors are telling him this, This thing has to be shut down immediately. I am sure that this is exactly what Vance is telling him. I bet a lot of money on that, that this has to be shut down.
And they're sending Vance to head this team of negotiators because they know Vance, is capable of reaching some sort of agreement. You don't want to depend on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. I mean, are basically Israeli assets, not to mention the fact they're incompetent. They have a demonstrated record of incompetence now. So you want someone like Vance in charge and hopefully he can shut this down.
But it'll be tough. You know, Glenn, just to go back to the Ukraine war and think about all the endless conversations we've had on ending the war in Ukraine. President Trump was determined to end the war in Ukraine even before he came into office. But if he didn't settle that war before he came into office, he was gonna settle it after he came into office. And he's been a colossal failure.
Right? He and his lieutenants have bumbled around and really made a hash of the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. It's the gang that can't shoot straight, right? Well, here we are now trying to shut down another war and it's the Trump administration again. And the question you have to ask yourself is can they do it?
If the cast of characters involved just President Trump, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, I'd say we're in deep trouble. But Vance is our great hope here. He's the new boy in town in terms of negotiating with an adversary and we're just all hoping that he can pull it off. I'm sure the Chinese and the Russians, not to mention the Indians, the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Indonesians, people all over Africa, people all over the world are pulling for Vance to work out a ceasefire than to sit down and negotiate some sort of settlement so that we can get the strait opened and we can get the fertilizer. We have to get that fertilizer flowing and we can get the oil and gas flowing as well.
We're not going to immediately go back to the status quo ante in terms of how much those goods come out of The Gulf, but it'll be a good start. But we have to do this immediately. And I believe that President Trump understands that. It's just difficult to miss what's going on here. I'm sure that countries all around the world are calling the White House every day saying this is a colossal disaster.
Something has to be done. And again, I think the Chinese and the Russians fully understand this. These are the responsible stakeholders in the system, the Chinese and the Russians, not The United States. But I think at a certain point even The United States, even the Trump gets the message. This is my reading of the situation.
And again, Glenn, I would say just go back and look at the two true social posts that he wrote on Monday. What he said in the morning about annihilating Iranian culture, and then look at what he said in the evening. Did a 180 degree turn and said, we accept Iran's 10 plan as a basis for negotiations. This is truly remarkable and it reflects the desperation. And by the way, just if he doesn't understand if I'm wrong, if he and his lieutenants don't understand, just give him another week or two.
They'll understand what's going on here in terms of the world economy.
Speaker 0: I think we should all probably be happy that, Vance will take over some negotiations, but something good could come from this. So if he is successful, at least he should be more successful than Whitcoff and Kushner, then perhaps Trump will have the wisdom to also send him to Moscow because I I it seems more well, Van seems more genuine, not just in opposing the Iran war, but actually wanting to put an end to the Ukraine war as well. It doesn't seem to have any more appetite for throwing more lives and money into this big black hole. So, again, something good could come from this perhaps, but it it is Can make one
Speaker 1: can I make just one quick point on what you said? You do wanna remember though that if Vance negotiates a settlement in which we lose, and this is certainly true in The Gulf, and I believe it would be true in settling the Ukraine war, the right in The United States, the neoconservatives, which are a key element in the Republican Party, will blame him and go after him hammer and tongue. So you just wanna understand that politically for Vance, he's in a very dangerous situation. There's no question that for the good of The United States, for the good of the Trump presidency, and for the good of the world, we need him to behave in smart and brave ways to end this disaster. We we just need him to do that.
But if he's successful, and let's hope he is, he will pay a political price here in The United States. And the question you have to ask yourself is whether that will affect how he approaches these negotiations. He is surely aware of the point that I just made. I mean, he's a very smart man. Whether you agree with his policy views or not, he's a smart man and he has surely figured this out.
But let's just hope that he puts the good of the country and really the good of the world. It sounds funny saying that but really we are talking about the good of the world here above his own narrow political interests and does work hard to get a settlement and is successful.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's a great point. Actually, didn't consider the the domestic politics of the whole thing, but, making the kind of humiliating piece which has to be made well, maybe not humiliating, but well, yeah, perhaps humiliating. It's definitely gonna come at a price.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No. It's gonna be a humiliating piece. I hadn't thought of the language you used but I think you're right.
And and as I said to you before, I don't think you can put lipstick on a pig in this case. It's just not gonna work because people like us are gonna point out what's going on and even places like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal will in the end have to fess up and say that this is a real defeat. And by the way, you'll see this in Israel as well. I mean, you know, we talk about Donald Trump making a catastrophic mistake. I mean, Bibi Netanyahu, a huge mistake.
And as I said before, you do not want to underestimate the trouble they're having in Lebanon. Right? They're not doing well. The Israelis are not doing well in Lebanon. So Israel is in, you know, terrible shape as a result of what's happened since February 28.
Speaker 0: Well, it's a good point because I think the Israelis also bet everything on knocking out Iran here. I mean, that was supposed to be the head of the snake. And because they were already overstretched. They're not successful in Gaza. They're not successful in Lebanon.
And and now, of course, this none of the objectives were achieved in the war against Iran, and I saw today that the IDF, it told Knesset, the Israeli parliament, that the new government in Iran was, quote, more extreme. So, again, this goes a little bit against what we're hearing from Washington, that this is a better government, easier to work with, but I think that made never they never made any sense. You can't, you know, you can't bomb a country to bits and then assume that relations will be better, especially if the country bomb to bits comes out on on top in terms of the war. So, yeah, it it I do wonder, how how the Israelis are gonna deal with this because they they can't really afford to back down either because they, again, they bet everything on this. I mean, if what you're saying is correct, that The US presence will be diminished severely in the Middle East, Israel's position will be weakened.
Iran, which was the main adversary, which was supposed to be destroyed in this war, if not regime changed and, you know, broken up or at least chaotic like Syria, Now it's gonna come up on top. I mean, this is a horror show for the Israelis. It's it's hard to imagine that they will accept this. I'm not sure what else they can do, of course, short of launching a nuclear weapons at the Iranian capital. But how how do you think the Israelis gonna deal?
Are they gonna you know, will this fuel domestic divisions into a civil war? Will they, you know, seek another victory on a different front? How are they gonna deal with this? Because it's just hard to see how they're gonna recover.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Before I try to answer that question, let me just also point out that this war has done significant damage to The US Israeli relationship. The United States is now in a catastrophic war. Right? This will be long seen as the most foolish foreign policy decision The United States has ever made.
You know, the Council on Foreign Relations did a big study a few months ago where they surveyed American diplomatic historians and they asked them what was the most foolish foreign policy decision that any president in the history of The United States had ever made. And what was clearly ranked number one was George W Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Well, there is absolutely no question in my mind that the decision to attack Iran on February 28 will be seen as a much worse decision than the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. There's no question that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 led to major league trouble. It was a catastrophic decision in its own right.
There's no question about that. Did enormous damage in the region to America's reputation and so forth and so on. But it, in my opinion, pales in comparison to the decision that president Trump made on February 28. Now, in terms of US Israeli relations, it is becoming manifestly clear because there's an abundance of evidence that it's the Israelis who led President Trump into this war. This big New York Times story that recently came out that described the decision making process made it clear that hardly anyone in the deep state, hardly any of Trump's close advisers were enthusiastic about this enterprise.
And in fact, many of them were serious doubters, including the head of the CIA, the vice president, and so forth and so on. But President Trump did it because Prime Minister Netanyahu and David Barnea, who was the head of Mossad, convinced him that this would lead to a quick and decisive victory. So it is widely recognized that it is the Israelis who led us into this disastrous war. That's point number one. And point number two, as we are watching what's happening now, it's the Israelis who are preventing us from getting a ceasefire to put an end to this disastrous war.
This point is not lost on most Americans. So U. S. Views, the American public's views, the American elite's views on Israel is undergoing a sea change. You could see it in the poll data.
And in my opinion, this situation only gets worse with the passage of time because once the shooting stops, the dust settles, and people begin to reflect on the causes of this disaster. And you want to remember one thing, Glenn. I learned this during the Vietnam War. When a country loses a war, everybody goes back to the causes. They want to figure out how did this ever happen.
When you win, you don't care that much about the causes, right? You won and you celebrate the victory. When you lose, especially when it's a disastrous loss like this, people are going to want to say to know, How did this happen? How could a country like The United States do this? How could President Trump, who had been such a great politician and had been so careful in the employment of military force, allowed himself to fall off the cliff like this.
What happened? And what they'll discover very quicklybecause again, the evidence is clearis that it was Israelis who led him by the nose into this disaster. And that is going to damage US Israeli relations. So you want to remember that on top of all the things that you and I have talked about up to now, US Israeli relations are going to be badly damaged as well. So your question is where do we go from here?
And in particular, where do the Israelis go from here? I think this is gonna cause huge trouble inside Israel. I think it's going to lead to all sorts of domestic unrest. There are gonna be serious political fights between Netanyahu on one side and other political leaders on the other side as to who's responsible for this and what price should be paid and so forth and so on. But I think most importantly and most disturbingly is I think the Israelis will begin to think long and hard about using nuclear weapons against Iran.
I think for most Americans we understand, and this is certainly true for Europeans as well, that Iran is not a serious threat to us. I mean, Iran is not a serious threat to The United States. They did not attack us. We attacked them. How is Iran a serious threat to The United States?
You just can't make that argument. But that's not the way Israel thinks about Iran. Israel thinks that Iran is a mortal enemy. They think this is the second coming of the Third Reich. They've convinced themselves that Iran is determined to get a nuclear weapon and to use that nuclear weapon to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.
They don't believe that Iran can be deterred. And they now understand, the Israelis now understand that they can't prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with conventional means. This is what the war demonstrates. They can't do it even with us, conventionally. The only way they can do it is with a nuclear weapon.
And given how ruthless the Israelis are and how willing they are to engage in genocide and murderous behavior, I would not put it past them to use a nuclear weapon against Iran. So one could argue that yes, Israel is in deep trouble and that the Iranian threat is not less than ever, it's greater than ever. You can make that argument easily from their perspective. But the question you then have to ask yourself is where does that lead? And, you're talking about a country that has no problem executing genocides, and, that is convinced itself that it will face a genocidal state armed with nuclear weapons in Iran down the road.
In that situation, you can imagine them trying to use their or using their nuclear arsenal against, Iran.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it all seems to that for Netanyahu, the the effort of portraying Iran as dead set on acquiring nuclear weapons and also being profoundly irrational that this is was also instrumental in terms of making Israel's problems into the Americans' problems, because that would be the only way one could conceive Iran as a threat to The United States. If it would require weapon nuclear weapons and have no way of being deterred and, you know, being devoted to using this in an offensive manner. But it is interesting that they seem to buy into their own rhetoric, though, about the irrationality of Iran and its determination to acquire a nuclear weapon. But it all seemed that this is gonna be devastating for a Trump administration, I'm thinking, though, because Trump's whole bit, I think, was, you know, what he was able to appeal to.
He was he was looking at The US relative decline, that is its power in the world, its military, its economy, the the work of well, position of people in society, and he essentially blamed this on weak and foolish leaders. So the weakness of Obama, the weakness of Biden, and also the foolishness of engaging in all these wars. So the solution was essentially strength. You needed a strong man. That was Trump.
He was strong, and that is you know, if he was just tough, decisive, and assertive, this is this is essentially the medicine that will bring America, you know, make it great again. And also, his toughness would be matched with, you know, this intelligence, his high IQ as he he always say, because he wouldn't do this harder this foolish forever wars. And but now, you know, he went in. The the rhetoric was all about no no one else dared to do this. Trump did it, but there's a reason why no one else did it.
And now, of course, he is the war president, and he did something foolish. I mean, his whole persona, his whole the core of making America great again seems to have been damaged, and even he lost his key supporters, and you probably saw him scolding Tucker Carlson and, Alex Jones, Candon's own Candon's own of these people who had supported him when he was a peace president. So he essentially had a lot of problems already before this war, and all these problems are now much, much worse. So how do you think this is gonna you know, the international economy, of course, is a mess. The military defeat was an embarrassment.
But what do think this is gonna do to the political situation within The United States?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that this is all going to destroy the Trump presidency. I mean, he may remain in office all the way to the end of his term, but he's damaged goods in a truly serious way. But you want to think about sort of where we stand on the world stage today. Before this war started on February 28, the Trump administration had already done enormous damage to America's position in the world in large part because the president, who is the ultimate unilateralist, was wrecking international institutions, paying no attention to the rules that underpin those institutions. He was disregarding and disrespecting international law.
And he was treating allies with unmitigated contempt, especially the Europeans. He was talking about invading Greenland. He was talking about making Canada the fifty first state. And if he went to East Asia, the Japanese and the South Koreans this is before February 28 had real doubts about relying on The United States for security. And of course, in the course of twenty twenty five, he had seriously damaged what had been good relations with India.
US India relations went south during 2025. So The United States, before February 28, was in real trouble in terms of its foreign policy. And what's happened since February 28 has just damaged us further. If you look at U. S.-European relations, you think about all the damage that was done over the Ukraine war, then all the damage that was done over Greenland, And now we have this situation where President Trump is effectively trying to blame the Europeans for the fact that we can't defeat Iran.
He's implying that if only the Europeans had sent their military forces, especially their navies, to the Middle East, we would have been able to break through the Strait Of Hormuz and we would have ended, Iran's stranglehold on the world economy. But that didn't happen. We failed. But why did we fail? Not because of The United States, but because of the Europeans.
So if you think about US European relations today, they're terrible. And what about other countries around the world? The Japanese and the South Koreans, the Indonesians, the Indians. I mean, The United States is a rogue elephant. Do you want to get too close to the Trump administration?
No. You want to keep your distance. So I think in terms of our foreign policy, he has, you know, done even greater damage than he did before February 28. And I don't see how he digs himself out of this hole. In fact, I think if anything, his behavior will become more erratic with the passage of time.
This is a man who thinks he's a genius. He thinks he has the Midas touch. He thinks anything he does works out well. And he always emerges victorious. He simply is not gonna be able to make that argument in this case.
This is not like all the previous cases that he got away with. And he's therefore seriously damaged goods as president of The United States, even if he manages to shut this one down reasonably quickly. And that remains to be seen as we were talking about before. And in terms of his standing here in The United States, there's no way he's not going to take a huge hit politically. And you see him already, as you pointed out, going after people like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones.
These are all people who have been big supporters of his in the past and he's now in a major league war with them and this is not going to help his standing. And furthermore, if you just look at what's happening inside the MAGA base, you look at what's happening with Christian evangelicals under the age of 50, I think he has truly profound political problems at home and on the foreign policy front as well.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was also expecting that after disasters such as this, of going through this process you described before, that is having some openness, where did we go wrong, air out of trouble, you know, learning something from the mistakes, I would assume that he would seek to blame others. I guess the Europeans would NATO would be a good fall guy, and also divert attention, maybe go for a quick victory that is seize Cuba or Greenland, something like this, such a shift focus as quick as possible because you don't wanna sit around thinking about all the things, having too many debates in the country about all the things you did wrong. This can't do anything well for him, so I guess erratic behavior moving forward is a pretty reasonable prediction. But if we take a step back to the wider picture, what do you think the world will look like after this?
Because you and I spoke in the past about the merges of a multipolar world that is simply the international distribution of power suggest the concentration of power we had in the nineties is now dispersed. Now you have many centers of power. The the fact that, well, it it looks as if this would intensify this development.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that The United States has obviously lost this war, and that will become manifestly clear to more and more people. That's for sure. I don't think it will diminish American power. I think American power is based on material capabilities. And I think losing this war will not affect how much power The United States has.
In making this point, I like to point to the Vietnam War. We lost the Vietnam War. It was a catastrophic defeat. It was a decisive defeat, but it didn't affect American power. We remained as powerful as ever.
But this is not to deny for one second that losing a war in Iran will have a profound impact on our ability to project that power around the world and to influence other states in ways that are favorable to The United States. So this really matters. So again, I just want to be clear. We will remain as powerful as ever. And we do live in a multipolar world.
As you know, Glenn, my argument is we've lived in a multipolar world since 2017. And the other two great powers on the planet are China and Russia, and they're not going away. And in fact, one could argue that they're better off as a result of this war vis a vis The United States. But it's not that China and Russia have become more powerful relative to The United States because of the war. I don't think that's what's happened.
I think that America's ability to project power and to influence other countries has been seriously damaged and that works to China's advantage and to Russia's advantage. In other words, just to take the Russian case, the Russian economy, has benefited from The United States taking sanctions off of Russia in terms of selling oil. And furthermore, the Russians have benefited from the fact that there are less weapons available for us to give the Ukrainians to fight against Russia because we're using up weapons and munitions at such a rapid pace in Ukraine excuse me, in Iran. So this all works to Russia's advantage. And in terms of China, what's happening in East Asia is that we're pulling forces out of East Asia.
We're pivoting away from East Asia because we have to move forces that are physically located in East Asia to the Middle East. This works to China's advantage. It doesn't change the balance of power, but it changes our ability to contain China in East Asia. It creates a situation where our allies in East Asia really don't trust us very much anymore. Not only are we pivoting away from East Asia, moving military forces out of the region, but also can you trust American judgment?
Do you think that The United States is a responsible ally that will take care of you in the crunch? I think if you're Japanese, a Japanese leader or a South Korean leader, the answer to that question is no. You can't depend on The United States the way you once thought that you could or the way that you once could. So again, you see the damage that we have done to ourselves. And again, to go back to our discussion of The Gulf and where we end up, we may end up losing those 13 bases, never returning to them, and having much less ability to project power in The Gulf after February 28 than we had before February 28.
So you see, our power position around the world in terms of our ability to project power, influence other countries, has been badly damaged. And again, as we were saying, as you and I have said on numerous occasions, we have done enormous damage to international institutions, international law, and our treatment of allies before, before February 28. So The United States is in just so much trouble.
Speaker 0: You know, I think, you know, what I might say is a relative decline as you have the rise of other other powers. Because if Iran could have been knocked out, that would have been something that would have weakened the Russians, the Chinese, and, I guess, strengthened the hand of The United States. So but what measuring well, the ability to project power in terms of the alliance system as well is probably also a good approach because, as you said, The Gulf States are in a very vulnerable position now. I know the rhetoric now is a bit harsh towards the Iranians, but at some point, if The US presence is expected to diminish, then they're gonna have to try to make some peace with the neighbors. I would say, eventually, the Europeans would have to do the same.
We can't fight against the Russians on our own. If the Americans will reduce their presence, we're gonna have to learn how to get along with the Russians, and, you know, you can say this this is might be some of the calculations they're having in East Asia as well. On on NATO, this is seems to be one of the not a casualty, but one of the organizations which has also been hit hard by the Iran war simply by the mutual accusations. The how do you think NATO will be affected by by the way this war ended?
Speaker 1: Well, I think this is all disastrous for NATO, or or to put it in slightly different terms for transatlantic relations. And I think the main reason is that president Trump is going to need a scapegoat for this disaster. And I think that the Europeans will probably be the number one scapegoat because he won't blame Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the person he should blame. And he can't really blame his advisers because none of them were enthusiastic about this. Maybe Pete Hegseth was.
Maybe they'll get rid of Pete Hegseth. But I think what he's gonna do is he's gonna blame the Europeans, and he's gonna make the argument that if the Europeans had antied up, if they had come to our rescue, we would have won the war. The reason we lost was because our allies failed us. And given that situation, what we should do is basically stop supporting them. Will he end the alliance?
Just put an end to it? I don't think so. He might. But I think that he will so seriously damage the alliance, that in the end it'll be largely meaningless. The other thing is, Glenn, he has what, two years and three two years and nine months left in his presidency, almost three years left.
You know how much damage he's done in the first, let's say, fifteen months? Can you imagine how much damage he's going to do in the remaining two years and nine months? It's going to be enormous, right? And in the meantime, the Europeans have to come up with some sort of defensive strategy for dealing with the Russians. I mean, you and I think their assessment of the Russian threat is completely overblown.
But the fact is the Russian elitesI mean, excuse me, the European elites do believe there's a serious Russian threat there. Let's take that as a given. And they also recognize that they can't rely on The United States anymore. The transatlantic partnership no longer exists. Call this a partnership?
It's no longer there. So the Europeans over the next two years and nine months have to figure out how to deal with this situation And that's gonna push them to put NATO in the background and not take NATO seriously. So I find it hard to believe that NATO will be a meaningful alliance in January 2029 when President Trump steps down. Now one could argue he may step down before then. He could be impeached, he could have medical problems, and J.
D. Vance could become president. And who knows what Vance would do? I tend to believe that Vance would have a more positive attitude towards NATO than Trump would. But how much more positive is hard to say.
We all remember his Valentine's Day speech in Munich in February 2025. Mean, Vance didn't look like he was friendly toward Europe then. And if he became president, maybe he wouldn't be once he was in the White House. Who knows for sure? But the future of NATO looks grim, to put it mildly.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It seems to be heading towards an end. But but but by extension, what what will all of this mean? That is the the the loss in the Iran war as well as, all the weapons and money that was spent, the economic, further economic problems for the Europeans.
What does this mean for the Ukraine war? Because, I see Zelenskyy has been taking to Twitter, and now that the Iran war is over, encouraging everyone to shift focus back to Ukraine. But it's gonna be hard to see the, yeah, the the appetite for Trump to deepen involvement there. Or how how do you think well, if, you know, if take into account all of these different variables, what would you expect how would you expect the Ukraine war to be affected by the loss of the Iran war, but also the fragmentation now we see of NATO?
Speaker 1: I think, first of all, I wish that Zelensky were correct and the Iran war was over and we could now focus on Ukraine. I think we're gonna be focusing on Iran for the foreseeable future. I mean, this is a catastrophic situation. And with regard to Ukraine, let's assume that I'm wrong and that two weeks from now the war is effectively over. I don't think that's gonna happen, but let's assume that happens.
Okay. And let's assume that we focus on Ukraine. What does that mean? Are we gonna give Ukraine a whole bevy of weapons that are gonna allow Ukraine to prevail on the battlefield or do well on the battlefield? I think the answer is no.
I don't think they're gonna get those weapons. We have run down the inventory to the point where the last thing we wanna do is give precious, weapons and precious, military assets to the Ukrainians. Just not gonna happen. And with regard to the Russians, we need Russian oil and global oil markets. It we just need it, right, to head off economic catastrophe.
And, so the Russians are gonna continue to do well economically, at least in the short term. And I'm sure the Russians are getting ready to launch a major set of offensives against the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians, as you and I have talked about many times, are in desperate straits, and we're not in any position to rescue the Ukrainians. And this is a perfect situation for president Trump to say the Europeans are responsible. As you know, he's been pushing in that direction for a long time.
So what do Europeans deal with the Ukraine situation? Because you wanna understand that if people like you and I are right, Glenn, and it's only a matter of time before the Ukrainians collapse on the battlefield and the Russians push them out of Donbas and the Russians conquer even more territory on the Eastern front, president Trump is gonna want to avoid being blamed for that. And he's gonna wanna blame the Europe the Europeans for Ukraine's defeat. So I'm sure he, in his head, is positioning himself to create a situation where if the Ukrainians lose to the Russians and the Russians win a victory in that war that he can say it's the Europeans' fault. We were in the fight for a long time, and as long as we were in the fight, the Ukrainians did quite well.
But we could not go on forever because we had other responsibilities around the world. And by the way, in those in terms of those other responsibilities in places like the Middle East, the Europeans would not help us. So we were in a position where we had to turn the responsibility for dealing with Ukraine over to the Europeans, and they failed. They are responsible for this defeat. So what he'll do moving forward, is he'll blame the Europeans for what's happening in Ukraine while at the same time not giving the Europeans the necessary weaponry to give to the Ukrainians to hold their own on the battlefield.
And furthermore, he'll blame the Europeans for the defeat in, in Iran. I mean, this is the way president Trump operates. He's not somebody who ever accepts responsibility. So I I think that is what the future looks like.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think in one tweet, he was able to squeeze in both blaming the Europeans for Iran and also say bye bye to Greenland or something. So he seems to be, yeah, preparing both for the blame game as well as a distraction, it seems. But, no, this well, you can see what's gonna happen, I think, in in Ukraine. It's a bit strange the Europeans aren't preparing themselves.
They're not sending more weapons, but preparing themselves in terms of picking up the phone. That would be a a good first move before this whole thing begins to begins to unravel. But I I I spoke recently with colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and he he was making the point that he feels not just United States, but Europe is growing increasingly irrational. And I after that, I thought about asking you actually because do we have a good theory in international relations about, I guess, rationality in declining hegemons or collective hegemons, both United States and Europe? Because it seems over the past years now that we're in well, at least relative decline as there's problems in society, the assumption we had we built up a society about, you know, ideological superiority.
How how would we do you expect society and our leaders to embrace, you know, reason fully with military defeat such as we suffered in Iran or, yeah, economic decline, social havoc? I mean, how do you I know in political realism, we put we assume that the state is rational, but but, you know, at least for the neoclassical realists, they would challenge this assumption. So how how would you assess, or how do you expect the the the reason or rationality of states to function in the years to come?
Speaker 1: Well, as you know, I wrote this book with Sebastian Rosato called How States Think, which deals directly with the question of rationality. And in fact, the opening case that we talk about is Putin's invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 02/24/2022. And our basic argument in the book is that states are rational if they pursue a policy that's based on a theory of international politics that makes good sense, that it's a plausible theory. And if you don't have a plausible theory underpinning your policy, then what you are doing is acting irrationally. And we also said that the decision making process matters as well.
You have to have a decision making process that allows all the key players in the room to voice their opinions in a rational, legal way. So that was our definition. I think if you look at various cases like Putin's invasion of, of Ukraine in 2022, I think that was clearly rational. He thought that NATO expansion, was a threat to Russia. He thought it was an existential threat.
And he launched a preventive war to make sure that Ukraine did not become part of NATO. So that was, in our opinion, a rational decision. One could argue that it was the wrong decision. One could argue it was an illegal decision. One could argue it was an immoral decision.
But whether a decision is rational or not depends on whether or not you have an underlying theory that is a proven theory and that that theory underpins the policy. Now, let's just talk a little bit about the Europeans. I believe that the Europeans' behavior towards The United States, which often is labeled as irrational, is actually not irrational because it has a simple theory that underpins it, which you can argue is a legitimate theory. What am I saying here? The Europeans have a deep seated interest in keeping The United States actively involved in Europe.
The Europeans want the American pacifier to remain in place. Another way to put this is the Europeans want NATO to remain intact. And therefore, they want to do everything they can to accommodate the Americans so that the Americans don't get angry at them and the Americans remain in Europe. Because it's so important from a strategic point of view for the Europeans to have the American pacifier in place. Now you can argue that that strategy is wrong.
You can have a different theory that says that it would make much more sense for the Europeans to grow a backbone, understand that their close relationship with The United States is over, that they can't depend on the American pacifier anymore and therefore they should act differently. A good realist like me would say that's how they should behave. But that's not to say that the strategy they have employed is irrational because there are different strategies based on different theories out there. And the question is do you have a plausible theory? And I think that the Europeans' behavior towards the Americans is based on a plausible theory.
I think it's the wrong theory. But there are lots of different theories and those theories are all plausible. I could go into this in greater detail, I won't now. But anyway, I think a lot of what the Europeans do is not irrational. I do think it's wrong, right?
But just because something is wrong does not mean it's irrational. And let me just give you one example of that. It's NATO expansion. NATO expansion was opposed by almost all realists because all realists like me have a simple theory that says if you move NATO up to Russia's border, the Russians are gonna react and you're gonna have conflict. You're going to have really serious trouble.
Therefore you do not want to expand NATO and if you do expand NATO it's going to lead to big trouble. There was a whole set of liberal theories that underpinned our policy. Not realist theories. The realist theories were rejected. The advice of realists like George Kennan and John Mearsheimer were ruled out of court.
But the liberal theories said that what we want to do is we want to move NATO eastward and what we want to do is we want to create a zone of peace in Eastern Europe. And that zone of peace will be based on a series of liberal theories. One is democratic peace theory. The idea was that if we could spread democracy eastward into Eastern Europe to include Russia at some point, we would create a giant zone of peace because democracies don't fight other democracies. They also relied on the theory of economic interdependence.
The idea was you would move the EU eastward. You would create a situation where you had a great deal of economic intercourse in Eastern Europe and maybe eventually include the Russians in that. And the end result is economic interdependence produces peace and we would all live happily ever after. So there were a set of liberal theories. These are prominent theories that are highly respected in academia that underpin the policy.
If you read the commentary of Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright at the time of NATO expansion, this is in the nineteen nineties, their policy prescription for NATO expansion was based on these liberal theories. I thought it was wrongheaded, but I did not think it was irrational. That may sound funny to certain viewers, but I think there's a difference between whether one thinks another theory is wrong or whether you think it's irrational. So I think a lot of what is done in international politics one can think is wrong, but it's not necessarily irrational. But I could go on, there are lots of cases of American behavior in particular, but even European behavior times that would fit under the rubric of irrational.
Speaker 0: No. I think that's a good, you know, way of explaining it. And no. I I would agree. I don't think the European policy was irrational.
As you said, it was a powerful theory, and, you know, you can link it a little bit both in political realism as well as liberalism. That is the hegemonic peace. As long as The US was all powerful, you know, the Europeans could benefit. For one, there there would be no great power rivalry as The US all all power concentrated in The US would essentially mitigate the international anarchy. There would only be one center of power and no anarchy.
Second, because it was The United States, we assumed that the liberal democracy and human rights would be elevated, so we would have this democratic peace as well. And, also, you can put a third leg on it, would be that The US would be the pacifier in Europe, which would allow Europe to function as it had because we never been stood together since after World War two when the Americans came. So so yeah. No. I that you can argue that's given that they can explain what they were doing.
It is it is rational, and I think that's also why they were willing to make an enemy of Russia by expanding NATO because this made sure that America's presence was cemented. But my my view, though, is that it could have been a good strategy, but it became the only strategy, which meant there's no political imagination for anything else. So now that the actual political realities of it, that is that the unipolar order that is it's not just a policy, it's an actual distribution power, is gone. And we see that for this reason, it's in America's interest to shift its policies that is focused less on Europe. Now it starts to feel irrational because now we're just, you know, returning to hope and expecting The US to stay in Europe out of, you know, just some alliance of democracies even though it doesn't serve necessarily its interests.
So it is very strange to see. Let me just ask sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, can I just make two more points about this whole subject of irrationality? Because this is a very important subject. People surely who are watching this show will wanna know whether it was rational for president Trump to invade or to attack Iran on February 28. And I believe it was irrational.
And why do I think that? The basic theory that underpinned the decision to attack Iran on February 28 was that we could use air power alone to topple the regime and put in place a regime that would basically dance to America's tune, would throw up its hands, surrender to us and do what we wanted, okay? We know from the literature on international politics, which is well understood by many people in the policy world, that it is virtually impossible to create regime change with air power alone. There is no theory of victory that can be considered rational that is based on the idea that you can use air power alone to produce regime change. In fact, the literature says that's impossible.
So what president Trump, not only what President Trump did in deciding to go to war on February 28 was not only a foolish policy, it was irrational because he had no plausible theory of victory. Just very important to understand that. Let me give you another case. The decision that The United States made before the war started in Ukraine on 02/24/2022. What's really remarkable in the run up to the war is despite the fact we thought we, the West, The United States in particular, thought The United that the Russians were gonna invade Ukraine.
We did nothing, virtually nothing, to stop it. Then the war started, negotiations started in Istanbul, and both sides were making very good progress. And The United States told the Ukrainians to walk away from the negotiations. Then later, I think it was in November year, general Milley said that Ukraine had reached the high watermark. Remember, the Ukrainian army had done quite well in two big offensives during 2022.
General Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said, Ukraine has reached the high watermark. Let's cut a deal now. He was told to close his mouth and not raise the issue again. Now the question you want to ask yourself is why was that the case? Why was The United States not attempting to prevent war and then why did it tell the Ukrainians to walk away and tell General Milley to keep his mouth closed?
The answer is actually quite simple. We thought that we could bring the Russians to their knees with economic sanctions. We had a theory of victory that was based in part on the Ukrainians holding the Russians off on the battlefield, number one. But number two, we believe that we could use crushing sanctions to cripple the Russian economy and literally knock the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers. That was our theory of victory.
I thought at the time that it was wrong. I thought that it wouldn't work. But I think it was a plausible theory of victory. I think at the time most people I know thought that it would work. They thought that we had so much economic leverage.
They thought all of this globalization of the 1990s and the early 2000s had created the situation where The United States sat at the center of this economic web that allowed it to use its coercive leverage over countries all around the planet. The way we've done with Iran, the way we've done with Venezuela, the way we tried to do with China. That's what we thought would work with the Russians. And I think it was a plausible theory of victory. I did not think it would work.
I had a different view, a different set of theories. But the point is it was not irrational. It was wrong, but it was not irrational. But again, to go back to Trump invading Iran, that was irrational because there was no plausible theory of victory there.
Speaker 0: My view on the Ukraine war, though, was initially, I thought it made a lot of sense. That is if you spend all these years investing all this money and training to build a massive Ukrainian army of hundreds of thousands of men, why would The US and NATO accept it to go neutral when you can use that big army to fight and weaken Russia as a strategic rival. So, again, I think it's, you know, brutal, and I wouldn't advise it. But, yeah, it may made sense, rational. But my my view is that after you mentioned November 2022 when general Milley said, well, it doesn't get better than this.
This is when we strike a deal. It feels like at that point, we were a bit swept away already by our own propaganda. That is that the Russians were inherently weak. They would they they could be defeated. Their economy you know, their gas station masquerading as a country.
And and and at this point, it looks like all the rhetoric we had to fuel the war, suddenly, we began to buy into it. And here, I started to wonder how rational is this? Because if someone came along and said, well, actually, we have to assess what the Russians actually have, then immediately, no. No. Well, that's pro Russian.
You can't you know? So so suddenly, our ability to assess the information available to make reasonable predictions, it it seemed like it was all gone. And you see that today as well. Everyone more or less understands that the war can't be won, but they still want to fight it. I mean, for me, now there's no reasonable strategy anymore.
There's no reasonable theory of victory anymore. So it feels as if, yes, it began rational, a bit brutal, I mean, Ukrainians to fight their arrival. But now I feel like we drifted far away. But, again, it's just my view.
Speaker 1: Well, just leaving aside the the issue of rationality where I think I've said enough Yeah. Let me make another point. I think, Glenn, when countries get into major wars, it's very difficult for them to get out. I've said over the years, and I think it's because for me the Vietnam War was a formative experience, but my rhetoric is it's easy to get in. It's incredibly difficult to get out.
I like to say it's like turning a giant supertanker around in the water. You don't do it quickly. And I think Iran may actually be something of an exception because of our whole discussion about the economic consequences. You know, if you take what I was saying before, and I know you agree with me on this, that the potential economic consequences here are catastrophic, right? The incentive structure may be such that we do shut this war down quite quickly, right?
And it would be, I think, quite unusual in that regard. I mean think about the Afghanistan war, twenty years. Vietnam, oh, that went on for year after year. It was very hard to get out of that war. And this is what happens when a great power like The United States or major powers like the Europeans get involved in a war.
It's just very difficult to walk away. It's the whole sunk costs argument. And I think that is what has really paralyzed the Europeans and made it very difficult for them to get out. The other thing is, and you know, you were talking about this in the context of Benjamin Netanyahu before, that, you know, after a while, you begin to believe your own arguments about Iran. You know, if you say Iran is the boogeyman for forty years at some point along the road, even if you didn't believe it in the beginning, you certainly believe it after forty years.
And I think in terms of the Europeans, before the war in Ukraine started, I don't think the Europeans thought the Russians were a great threat. You wanna remember in 2008 at the famous Bucharest summit, NATO Bucharest summit in April 2008, the Europeans, in the person of Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, argued against bringing Ukraine into NATO. Merkel was adamantly opposed, as was Sarkozy. It's not like the Europeans thought there was this great Russian threat out there that had to be deterred. In fact, they thought, like you and I, Glenn, that if you expanded NATO to bring Ukraine into it, Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war.
That's what Merkel has said. Right? That's why she was opposed. We agree with her. But anyway, The United States foolishly pushed ahead and we ended up in this disastrous war.
But I think what's happened over time is that the Europeans have convinced themselves now that the Russians are the second coming of Nazi Germany. If Putin is Adolf Hitler, that the Russian army is the Wehrmacht, then oh my god, if they don't do something, they're gonna have the Russian army on the beaches of Dunkirk. I mean, I find it all hard to believe, I know you do as well, but they do believe that. But it's very interesting if you think about the change that has taken place over time in European thinking about the Russian threat. And by the way, just to elevate up another 10,000 feet, if you go back to NATO expansion and the decision to bring Ukraine in in April 2008, it is very important to understand that we were not interested in bringing Ukraine into NATO because we thought there was a Russian threat to Ukraine or a Russian threat to Eastern Europe.
That's the realist view. The United States, was driving the train on NATO expansion, was not operating according to realist theories. Otherwise, they would not have expanded NATO into Ukraine. They were operating on liberal theories. You ought to remember that Putin was at Bucharest.
They invited Putin Putin to Bucharest. The Russians and The United States and the Russians and the Europeans actually had quite good relations at the time. We didn't see Ukraine as this great threat. Now Ukraine is seen as a really powerful I mean, Russia is now seen as a really powerful threat. Sorry, not Ukraine.
Russia is now seen as a very powerful threat. It's really quite remarkable, the change that has taken place over time. But I bring all this up because it just shows you how difficult it is now, right, for the Europeans, to change their view and and put an end to this war, which is you and I, Glenn, agree would be in, the interest of every European state.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now this is, this was the warning of, Walter Lippmann that when you go into war, you have all this incentive to build up your adversary as the just the embodiment of evil. And then when it's time to make a peace, you can't make peace anymore because you just convinced everyone that you're fighting evil. And that's essentially, yeah, where I think where we are today. Anyways,
Speaker 1: any final thoughts before we wrap up? Just one final point. You wanna remember that in the Iran war a few weeks ago, president Trump called for unconditional surrender, which is powerful reinforcement for your point.
Speaker 0: Yeah. He did not get that. So no. It's very difficult to climb down after making such a thing, but I'm hoping that Trump's ability to shift focus and, BS his way out of things could be something that helps deliver peace, but, we'll see. Anyways, thank you so much for being so generous with your time.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Glenn. As always, I enjoyed our discussion immensely.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: After the Iran War - A New Global Economy https://youtu.be/pmiG0Gplu9Q https://t.co/H6Mhs4Gaem
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alex Kraner and Glenn discuss the Iran ceasefire and the market's reaction, along with broader geopolitical dynamics and historical patterns around war and finance.
- On the ceasefire and markets: Alex argues that reading optimism from markets is unreliable, noting that markets can remain irrational for longer than a person can stay solvent. He was surprised by the ceasefire and authored a newsletter piece suggesting the peace was unlikely to hold and that the probability of lasting peace was near zero. He observed the ceasefire narrative already fraying as he finished his article. He emphasizes that the ultimate incentive for war is the conquest of collateral: Iran’s vast natural-resource wealth (estimated at about $35 trillion) could become collateral for Western banking interests. He contends that war is driven by a desire to secure new money-like collateral to prevent systemic collapse caused by fiat money expansion and liquidity injections.
- Narrative and hypocrisy in war discourse: Glenn notes how narratives about values, feminism, or democracy are used to sell wars. Alex adds that wars are often sold by demonizing the other side, citing examples from past interventions (Syria, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, Allende, Ortega, Chavez, Maduro, Castro) to illustrate a recurring pattern of manufactured villains and “slaying dragons” to justify action. He also cites Afghanistan as an example where Western intervention harmed women’s rights and long-term outcomes (mass malnutrition and stunting among children) despite rhetoric about protecting women.
- Lebanon and the ceasefire framework: They discuss whether Lebanon was included in the ceasefire framework as communicated by the Pakistani prime minister and why Israel then attacked Lebanon. Alex argues the U.S. may be posturing to present the ceasefire as a U.S.-led result, while Iran shaped the negotiation terms. He also suggests the U.S. was already preparing for broader action, including ground invasion plans and troop movements.
- U.S. strategic posture and global ambitions: They consider whether Trump’s administration genuinely sought to retreat from global policing or if transition plans were undermined by the Iran decision. Alex recalls a shift in 2019 where Trump reportedly resisted war against Iran, then changed course on 28 February, risking severe consequences. He argues Europe may bear more hardship from the conflict, with the U.S. potentially cushioning its own impact, while Europe could face stagflation, currency pressures, and social unrest.
- European exposure and dollar dynamics: Glenn notes hedge funds betting against European stocks and asks how Europe will fare if the ceasefire holds but the damage persists. Alex describes Europe as cornered: cutting off Russian energy while maintaining vulnerability due to limited alternative supplies (Qatar/US), and the potential fragility of dollar liquidity for European banks. He warns that swap lines could be withdrawn, threatening the euro and triggering inflationary crises. He cites Eurostat data showing high living-cost pressures and suggests social revolts or civil unrest could emerge across Europe. He forecasts a possible major war against Russia as a political stabilization tactic.
- Global realignment and multipolarity: They foresee massive fracturing in the Middle East and Europe, leading to a multipolar global order. The United States could retreat to its own hemisphere and rethink its monetary system, with the banking oligarchy remaining a central lever of power. They discuss Gulf states’ vulnerability to Western policy and consider whether Saudi Arabia, among others, will fare better or worse depending on access to U.S. dollars and geopolitical alignments. Alex argues that the broader strategy aims to reconfigure Eurasia by weakening or fragmenting Iran, Russia, and China in sequence, using proxy wars, regime-change efforts, and economic coercion.
- Long-run structural shift: The conversation concludes with the assertion that the current dynamics reflect a persistent pattern: Western powers leveraging financial and military instruments to secure strategic advantages, while portraying their actions as defending democracy and rights. They reiterate that the overarching driver remains financial hegemony and control of collateral, with the war system persistently extending into Eurasia through interconnected corridors, ports, and infrastructure projects. The dialogue ends with the claim that wars are driven by banking and financial interests rather than purely ideological aims.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alex Kraner, a market analyst, author, and a former hedge fund manager to to discuss the Iran war and the reactions in the market. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the invite, Glenn. Always good to join you.
Speaker 0: Well, I said Iran, or I guess, technically, it's peace now or a ceasefire, but it's not upheld very well. And the the chances of this transitioning from a ceasefire to an actual peace agreement, I mean, I I tend to be very pessimistic. That being said, the market seemed to be very optimistic. It's as if the conflict and all the underlying causes have already been resolved. How are you assessing this, yeah, the ceasefire which has been reached and the way the markets have reacted?
Speaker 1: Okay. Let me knock out the markets first. I've spent my life professional life in the markets actively trading commodities, financials, currencies. I would read exactly zero into that. The the fact that the markets feel optimistic doesn't mean a thing at all.
Markets can be very, very delusional in the short term, and they often are. And, you know, that short term, it can last, you know. As they say, you know, markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you can be solvent. So I would read exactly zero into that one. With with regards to the how do you call it?
The very surprising announcement of ceasefire yesterday, I have to say I was very surprised. And yesterday, I I wrote an article for my for my for my newsletter, and it took me, I think, about three or four hours to write the article. And by the time I wrote the thing because, you know, as I was writing out my sentences and paragraphs, I would often go online to check, you know, to to do a bit of research to make sure that I'm not writing out nonsense. And basically, by the time I got to the conclusion, my conclusion was that it's very unlikely that the peace that the ceasefire will hold and that the, you know, I I think that the probability that it will lead to peace is very close to zero. And in fact, before I hit send on that on that article, I I went one last time online to to see where we were, and I saw that the the ceasefire was already being breached, that the the narrative was the narrative was already, you know, coming apart, and that all makes a very poor foundation for peace.
But more importantly, we have to always go back to the ultimate incentives for war in the first place, and that is we we have discussed this before. This is the conquest of collateral. And, you know, if you follow day to day news, you would think that it's about Strait Of Hormuz. It's about women's rights. It's about the veils.
It's about the, you know, clerical regime in in Tehran, freedom and democracy, ballistic program, nuclear program, all these things. All of these are merely pretexts. The ultimate reason is that Iran is fifth or sixth wealthiest nation in terms of natural resource wealth. They are estimated to have about $35,000,000,000,000 in natural resource wealth. And if the Western Empire, which still enjoys the support of The United States as its military enforcement arm, if they could gain political control over Tehran by, you know, installing maybe Shah Reza Pahlavi again on top of the government, then that natural resource wealth would become collateral of Western banking cartel.
And $35,000,000,000,000 could go a very, very long way to refloat the system, which is fraudulent and which is currently imploding upon itself. You know, it's being it's being squashed together by liquidity that's being flooded into the system from from whole cloth. The problem is that for every dollar, euro, yen, or, you know, whatever you have, that's printed out of thin air and put into circulation, it dilutes the currency that's already in circulation. So it's making everybody in the system poorer. And this will continue until they manage to conquer new money good collateral so that the system can be, you know, kind of reinflated and it can take off the ground again.
This is ultimately always the reason for war. This is why all wars really are bankers' wars and why they will never give up because for the bankers it's either bringing new collateral into system or it's their whole system imploding. They don't know how to do anything else. They don't plough field, don't build anything, they don't write novels or symphonies, they do absolutely nothing. They just pull money out of thin air, lend it to us at interest, and then collect services on those debts.
That's what they do. That's the only thing they do. And they will sacrifice every nation that they occupy, like The United States, Great Britain, France and so forth, completely in order for their system to be to survive and to continue.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And I'm also often surprised by how people buy into narratives. Like you said, they're believing that all of this is real. All countries through all history as have always had to sell wars. Usually, you have strategic competing interests, and they're sold as good guys versus bad guys.
I mean, if you look at how things, you know, the the the governments which were rejected, if you go back to the nineties, Russia was so eager to be part of the West. It was willing to turn its back on traditional allies, former Soviet Republics, China, anyone in the East who might slow down its, you know, its sprint towards the West. But, you know, this this was not good enough because, again, it's a certain size of the country. Same as China. Whenever we criticize China, and I was like, oh, they claim Taiwan.
Well, they always did. They they never stopped claiming Taiwan. We recognize that Taiwan is, you know, a part of China. What changed is the size of the Chinese economy. It grew more powerful.
And as you said, with Iran, I think they can open a strip club on every street and follow you know, adopt every law we have in the West. They still wouldn't be accepted. And but that on the other side of that coin, you know, we will back genocide, which we have proven. We will put in ISIS leader in Syria. We'll back actual Nazi groups.
And as Trump suggested, willing willing to kill an entire civilization, and we'll have the NATO secretary general cheer it on. So the the the idea that this is all about values and principles and headscarves, I mean, it's it's quite ludicrous, and it's also a bit frightening, have to be honest, when people actually buy into this this that this is why we are bombing well, not we, why The US and Israel is bombing Iran because they want to liberate women. I mean
Speaker 1: Yeah. They
Speaker 0: every time. Every time. I mean, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I I have to say that amazes me, you know, because we have seen this film so many times before. You know? They always demonize the other side in order to justify the war. But, you know, it was just a few years ago that they were doing the same with, you know, when they wanted to go to Syria, then Bashar al Assad was the worst person in the world. He was killing his own people.
And then before him, it was Muammar Gaddafi. He was killing his own people. And Saddam Hussein was a madman. He was killing his own people. And Slobodan Milosevic was a madman.
And then, you know, in other parts of the world, you had Salvador Allende. He was, you know, he was a communist, horrible, horrible. We have to go kill him too. And Daniel Ortega, he was he was horrible. He had to be done.
And and Art Benz and Noriega and Hugo Chavez and Emmanuel no. Not Macron. Nicolas Maduro and in Cuba, Justin Justin Trudeau's father. Castro. Fidel Castro.
Sorry. You know, so it's always we always create these villains, and then we pretend that we're going around the world slaying dragons, slaying evils to make the world safe for democracy and human rights and progress and so forth. But it's as if nobody looks back to remember these stories and then to look and to say, well, where exactly did we create this shiny example of prosperous democracy? You know, look at where Syria is today. It's in the hands of an Al Qaeda terrorist who just until recently had a $10,000,000 bounty on his head.
Today he's an honored statesman everywhere in the West. And then look at Libya, which used to be the most prosperous African country with the highest standard of living under Gaddafi. Now it's a failed state with open slave markets ruled by warlords. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan everywhere we went we created mayhem and destruction, And we caused immeasurable pain to the people, destroying their countries, destroying their infrastructure. Yet there are still people who buy the story every single time.
That is just amazing. I suspect that we're arguing with with, you know, artificial bots in bot farms because I can't believe that anybody is that stupid. It it can't be.
Speaker 0: I remember the scandal. There was some CIA papers that was leaked, I think, by WikiLeaks that in Afghanistan, there were you know, the the war was losing its appeal. So the occupation was losing its appeal among the Europeans. So the CIA suggested, let's, you know, frame it as as being about women's rights because that's popular in Germany, France, and the countries where they're losing interest. And and and, you know, you didn't even need the leaks.
You know you know, that's their job. You have to sell a war. I mean, it's just I don't know. I got sidetracked. It's just it always shocks me to see that people are actually buying into this.
Speaker 1: It comes to women's rights, you know, let's go back to Afghanistan. The United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021. They were there to bring democracy and freedom And then when they withdrew, everybody had their hearts broken over the rights of women and girls. And I don't know if you remember, but for a period of several weeks you couldn't even turn on the TV without hearing women and girls uttered a 100 times. It was all about women and girls.
But then when you look at the achievements of Western occupation of Afghanistan, you found that more than 50% of all children born in that time when The United States was in charge of Afghanistan, the children sustained permanent stunting for malnutrition. So more than half of the children were stunted for malnutrition, for life, because the women did not have enough food to give to their children. So what are we supporting women and girls for? To have only fan accounts and to become professionals running I don't know what in their cubicles and to commute to and from office every day and then I don't understand. But you know the frustrating thing is that there's there's always a segment of the West that's willing to swallow absolutely any lie that is thrown their way.
Speaker 0: I remember after this report came out about Afghanistan, you you even saw I remember there was an article coauthored in The Guardian by the NATO secretary general in Stoltenberg and, you know, got some Hollywood celebrity, Angelina Jolie, with something a title, something along the line why NATO is now the leading organization to protect women or something. I mean, you you can't make it up, but but, you know, people want to believe this, and this is important. It's in human nature. You want to see that you're on the good one of the good guys that well, what what you're doing, what you're participating in, what's being done in your name is for something greater. And then just, yeah, some horrible selfish interests.
But let let let me ask about this ceasefire because one of the reasons why we got off to a rough start was obviously Lebanon. That is, you know, the the the main mediator who are facilitating the the or proposing the peace agreement. A ceasefire was the Pakistani prime minister. He confirms that Lebanon is part of the peace treaty sorry, the ceasefire. And shortly thereafter, Israel begins to bomb, like, yeah, the hell out of Lebanon, which is kinda strange that they would wait for this vicious attack onto the first day of the ceasefire.
But put that aside, the Americans also came out and said, well, Lebanon's not part of the ceasefire. What do you make of this? Was this just a way of of allowing Trump to step down a bit after he made these crazy remarks, or or was it the Israelis stringing the Americans along? Or how do you make sense of this? Because this, you know, could be what sinks the whole ceasefire, though.
Speaker 1: Well, again, you know, if I was well, if I was going to be charitable to the Trump administration, which I'm which I, you know, no longer see any reason to be, but if I if I was, you know, thinking from their own point of view and pretended that they have some constructive goal in mind, I would say, well, you know, this has been such an embarrassing defeat for them that defeat for them that it for domestic audiences, they need to pretend that they're in charge, that they're in control, that it was Iran who came crawling to them begging for a ceasefire, and that they are dictating the terms of the ceasefire, of negotiations. We all know that this is not true, that the reality is that The United States has been begging for a ceasefire, and that the Iranians are in control of the framework for any negotiations. So the 10 points are Iranian, they have been carefully formulated, they have been carefully communicated by the Pakistani prime minister to the American side. It has been received as such, there's no doubt about that. And if people in The United States can read and write English, then they understood the message and they know what the message contained.
And there's no doubt about it that Lebanon was included in those communications. So now to pretend that no, no, no, we never said anything about Lebanon, this is very disingenuous and I think that it will only move those consumers of the news cycles that don't really pay close attention to events and don't have an attention span longer than that of a goldfish. Most people can tell that there's a deception. Why? I I I think that because Trump administration has to pretend that they're in control, that they're winning, that this ceasefire is the result of their glorious victory in over Iran, they have to also show to the Zionist elements who have apparently predominant influence in American foreign policy that, you know, they're not putting any constraints on on Israel.
But if I was if I was more critical, I would say that this is very typical, that The United States is treaty incapable. You know, we already know now that while they were negotiating with the Iranians in February, they were sending weapons to the Kurds to infiltrate Tehran and to prepare a color revolution. So they were preparing the bombing campaign, and they were already activating the, you know, Mossad and CIA elements to try to overthrow the government while they were negotiating or pretending to negotiate with the Iranian government. Now apparently, there are reports about a large surge in American troops in the region in an apparent preparation for a ground invasion. I think they're talking about 50,000 troops, which I don't understand.
I don't see what they hope to achieve with 50,000 troops. But, you know, we saw all these videos with with Chinook and and these other helicopters bringing an aircraft bringing bringing American troops from The United States to the Gulf region. For what reason? It's not for picnics. Obviously, they're coming to attempt to wrest control over the Persian Gulf and the Strait Of Hormuz from the Iranians, but they need time for this.
Right? They need time to prepare that ground invasion. And I think that this is why The United States asked for a forty five day ceasefire rather than two week ceasefire. Iranians agreed to a two week ceasefire under certain conditions. But I I don't think this is going to hold.
And I think that at best, we're gonna see a two week ceasefire and then renewed renewed hostilities.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I can't imagine 50,000 troops going very far in terms of trying to seize the Strait Of Hormuz. I mean, this, as Lindsey Graham said, you know, once we get the Strait Of Hormuz, we're gonna make a ton of money. How how do you yeah. We're again, on well, this is what's interesting with the Iran war, though.
That is the the narrative control is quite horrible compared to all the other wars. There, everyone has marched in line. They all made clear that this is about good values versus bad values, civilization versus the barbarism. But on this one, you know, Trump keeps making references to, oh, we're gonna get all their oil, and we're gonna destroy their civilization. It's a little bit like Venezuela.
I think the Europeans would have gone fully along with it if they would just have changed the language, stop talking about the oil and talk more about democracy or freedom or human rights or something, and then they could have, you know, put their full weight behind it. But what is the economic relevance, though, if they see of the Strait Of Hormuz or the, I guess, political economy might be more apt?
Speaker 1: Okay. So that's the part where I'm a little bit confused. I mean, it's it's not confusing what the what the impact of the closure of the Strait Of Hormuz is. That's almost obvious, you know. One fifth of the global oil supply is constrained.
One third of the of the supply of of natural gas no. Sorry. 20% of natural gas. This is much more you know, oil will continue to flow, but natural gas will not, apparently. You know, the the the the the Qatari ability to export gases, I think, is now shut down completely and probably won't be brought back online very, very soon.
And then there's a question of urea, you know, the feedstock for artificial fertilizers. Almost inevitable result will be famine in in large swathes of the world. So, you know, this misadventure might cost millions, maybe tens or hundreds of millions of lives in in the global South. And who knows where else? We'll find out how severe it will be.
So that's not confusing. What is confusing, Glenn, is that, you know, it was not so long ago, it was in January that Trump brought his delegation to Davos, and they pretty much declared war on globalism. They said that globalization failed, that they were talking about implementing the American system of political economy. Secretary of trade, Jameson Greer, in his in his remarks, he explicitly mentioned Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln and so forth. So to me, I thought, okay, this could not be more clear and more explicit.
The Trump administration has made their intentions very clear, very categorical and so this must be it, you know, which what does that mean embracing the American system of political economy? It means that bring your capital, your resources back home, you impose tariffs to create a protected market for your, you know, manufacturers and mom and pop businesses and you allow your economic system to invest itself at home, to bring prosper to build prosperity, to repair the infrastructure, to create jobs that pay good salaries, to go back to the economy where, you know, one blue collar income could support a family and put children through school and university and so forth. And so I thought that made all the sense in the world. And I kind of believed it because Trump has made those remarks repeatedly over over many years. And then he's been, you know, he's been trying to we know this from insiders whether, you know, colonel Douglas MacGregor was an insider to the previous administration.
And he you know, it appears that Trump definitely wanted to bring American troops back home from Syria and from Iraq and from Afghanistan, which is also part of all this. You want to bring your troops home. You don't want waste the nation's resources policing the world and and maintaining hundreds of military bases everywhere. And then Trump also wanted to bring troops back from Germany even. And we know that there was tremendous pressure exerted on him in 2019 to go to war against Iran and he said no, he declined that.
So I, you know, I was kind of inclined to believe that he was sincere and that he really wanted to turn away from being the global hegemon. So if that were the case, then the Strait Of Hormuz wouldn't matter all that much to The United States. That is, it will be a secondary thing because The United States is very much self sufficient. They have their own oil production, they have Venezuela and Mexico there in the neighborhood, they have Canada to the north, all very resource rich nations. And so, you know, American economy could have restructured in accordance with the American system of political economy.
And I thought I believed in a very bright future longer term for The United States, you know, maybe the following October at least. But something happened on twenty eight February and he did what he knew not to do in 2019 and what every president before him knew not to do because there were all these reports, all these intelligence findings that kind of built a consensus that attacking Iran would be a colossally idiotic thing to thing to do. And if we go back to that famous speech by General Wesley Clark when he said seven countries in five years, right, the timeline for those five years starts in 2001 which would imply that the neocon plan for Iran was to regime change it within 2006. Well, we are twenty years past that point which means that all of this pressure, all of this burning desire to take control of Iran was never realized because nobody dared, because everybody knew it was mission suicide. And I believe that we've discussed it on your podcast as well that it was obvious that it was mission suicide because Iran had all kinds of capabilities to make this a catastrophic endeavor for for for Trump.
So I was convinced that he wouldn't do it because who is that dumb? Nobody. It can't it just can't be. Well, he he went ahead. He pulled the trigger.
And now we are where we are. And I think that the consequences will be very disastrous only I think that they will be more disastrous for Europe and for Great Britain than they will be for The United States. You know, The United States has many ways to cushion the blow. As I said, you know, they are a very resource rich country, they have resource rich neighbors, They obviously have no problem of using their political and financial and military power to bludgeon their neighbors into submission and use them effectively as their colonies. So I think that The United States will not be able to avoid a stagflation from this, but I think that Europe and The United Kingdom will have a much more severe crisis as a result of
Speaker 0: it. I'm glad you brought up the Europeans. I was looking for a segue there anyways. No. But I was wondering how how they will be affected by this because, you know, Trump isn't wrong.
And even though he started the war, it's not The United States that's so reliant upon this. It's Asia and Europe. And I just saw now, was it two days ago or three days ago, the Financial Times, they had an article with the headline, something along the lines that the hedge funds are making now record bets against European stocks. So in other words, they're betting on things going south in Europe fairly soon. So how how are you assessing or what are your expectations?
Because even if this ceasefire would hold, the war would be over, there's a lot of damage that has already been done. And by the way, Strait Of Hermosa is not open. So what it makes how do you make sense of what's gonna happen to Europe now?
Speaker 1: Europe has largely painted itself into a corner. They, you know, cut their access to Russian oil and gas deliberately in spite of the fact that one fourth of Nord Stream pipelines is intact and could deliver, I think, twenty five twenty five million cubic meters of gas per year, if I remember. It's anyway, it's from from a 100,000,000 or billion cubic feet or meters. I forget the exact number, but it's a very large number. Quarter of that is could still be delivered to Europe, but they won't have it because, you know, Russian hydrocarbons are not worthy.
We're too good for it, and so no deal. Even at a cost of destroying European the European economy. Instead, they decided to rely primarily on Qatar and The United States. Now we know that Qatar cannot deliver anything either. And now we know that The United States might blackmail Europeans for access to natural gas.
And so they they've really put themselves in a very, very difficult situation. And but then there's another very, very significant vulnerability to European economies, and that is that, you know, most of the global trade is still conducting in US dollars. And, you know, under conditions of distress, European banks have had a lot of difficulty with dollar liquidity. And The US side, the Federal Reserve has kind of helped them out by creating these very large swap lines so that Europeans can access dollar balances to conduct foreign trade. But, you know, all these swap lines could be could be canceled at any time.
And, you know, they they might not be canceled under Jerome Powell, but we'll we're gonna have a new Federal Reserve chairman that will be nominated by Trump. And so that relationship might become very rocky, and I I know as a fact that European bankers are extremely worried about this. So, you know, if they lost if they if they had to buy dollars at, you know, market prices and, you know, euro could collapse. The euro could collapse, and the the result would be a big jolt to the inflation to to inflation, price inflation in euros. It would be a crash of the euro.
It could be a crisis of stagflation because you would get very sluggish or no economic growth and accelerating levels of price inflation. And so that bring us brings us to you know, that that falls already on a how do you call it? A lot of dry tinder for social revolt because people are already people are already suffering in Europe. I think that according to Eurostat, and these these figures are a few months old so it might be worse by now, but across the Eurozone, about 35% of all households in Europe have difficulties making ends meet. And in some countries, goes beyond two thirds.
So two thirds of all families have difficulties making ends meet. That's not prosperity, that's not economic success. That's a society that's moving closer and closer to the edge of a massive social revolt. And so I think that and then you know like people who are specialists in this area say, like I'm talking primarily about David Betts of I think Imperial College in London who is saying that European nations are now explosively configured for a breakout of civil wars. And so we might be looking at revolutions and social uprisings or civil wars in many European countries.
And I think that the ruling establishment will try to avert this by orchestrating a major war against an external enemy. And I think we know what we're talking about here, and I think that the whole continent is being prepared actively for a big war against Russia. And I think that this big war might take a few years, but I think that unless we push back very decisively against this, Europe might share the same the same destiny as as as Ukraine.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The the language coming coming out of Europe is quite extraordinary. You would assume at some point that the reason would start to kick in, and, you know, if you see that, well, we we don't get the the energy we needed from the Middle East, we don't get it from Russia, The United States becoming more unreliable. At some point, we would seek to diversify and improve some of the relations which have been harmed, but there only seems to be an effort to double down, though, on this continued proxy war against Russia. And I think one of the triggers could be these efforts of seizing Russian ships, which they will now see as a possible flashpoint or even allowing Finland, Baltic States territory to be used to strike Russia in the North or even the Scandinavians for that matter.
Did how do you see, though, the world, I guess, reconfiguring? Because they're not the only ones. The the Europeans, I mean, I hate to say this European, but we are not doing very well on the international's ranking of reason and rationality. I think it was the the foreign minister of Hungary who made that point that we have a crisis of reason in Europe now. But how do you see the rest of the world?
Because the Gulf States paid a very heavy price for being frontline states for The United States. And I hear you know, if you follow some of the media in East Asia, you see that this is also a concern there. Like, why did we bet so much on this partnership with The US? Where will they actually protect us, or will they lead us into trouble? So how do you see I guess, you know, we should this many variables playing out at the same time, one shouldn't make too many bold predictions, I guess.
But where do you see the overall trend going in terms of the world changing? Sorry. Very large question.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Look. I I think there's going to be massive fracturing in The Middle East and in Europe, and I think it's going to result in the prevalence of a multipolar global order. I think that The United States will have to withdraw into its own hemisphere and will have to find its identity, whether it's it wants to be hegemon or it wants to be like a pivot power in its own how do you call it?
In its own hemisphere that actually has good constructive and friendly relations with its neighbors. But I think in order for that to happen, you're gonna need a complete reformation of the monetary system because, you know, going back to that saying that all wars are bankers' wars, United States is still completely dominated by the banking oligarchies. And they don't see the world as you and I see the world. They see the world as slave labor and natural resources that have to be turned into financial flows that only accrue to their banking institutions. And they you know, that's their levers of power.
That's all that's all they know how to do and that's all that's the, you know, that's the that's the only plan they have. But, you know, with regards to the Gulf States that you mentioned, I find it very amazing. You know, I think that, you know, Henry Kissinger famously said that it is very dangerous to be an enemy of The United States, but it is fatal to be a friend. And I think that they're now just learning that, this is actually true, and, you know, it's it seems that it's their turn now. I thought that Saudi Arabia would have wizened up to this a little bit at least because, you know, the they have been at the receiving end of some very nasty stabs in the back from The UAE and Israel.
And, you know, they've they've been setting up military outposts in Somaliland and in Southern Yemen, practically surrounding Saudi Arabia and making it very, very vulnerable to being simply cut off from global trade. And then when you look at so many of these IDF soldiers that have, you know, on their on their uniforms, they have these shoulder patches of Greater Israel that includes a very large chunk of Saudi Arabia as well, you would think that they would choose the side of Iran in this war because obviously The UAE, Israel, and The United States will ultimately cost them their kingdom. You know, once let's say once Iran is out of the way, well, the next easy picking, low hanging fruit would be Saudi Arabia. But for some reason, instead, they joined the other side against Iran, which to me is amazing. But I think that the explanation is that Saudi Arabia has I don't know how much money exactly, but I think it's more than a trillion dollars sitting in their accounts with the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.
And, you know, they've seen what Western bankers will do what they were they would dare to do to Russia even though Russia is a nuclear power. So I think that if they if they chose the wrong wrong side in this war that they would be cut off from their money and they'd probably never see it again. And I think that this is the reason why for them maybe the short term considerations are much more important than the longer term considerations. And I think that the ultimate result is that, you know, a lot of these Gulf kingdoms will disappear, and then Saudi Arabia maybe will be reconstituted in some way. But I think that as far as Iran, Russia, China are concerned, they will they probably have no choice but to push these conflicts all the way to the point where they will create a completely new and different security architecture on Eurasian landmass because this, you know, this British geopolitics where you're constantly fomenting wars everywhere against, you know, any power against any power to keep everybody weak and divided and make sure that they are the clients of Western banks and Western corporations, of Western military industrial complex, I think that that has to end because it's just creating millions and millions of casualties of war, destroyed economies, suffocated growth, suffocated development.
And I think that people now understand that if you allow this to persist, it's always going to have exactly the same results as as it has done over the last two hundred years.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now what you mentioned before that you were optimistic about Trump because of, well, essentially, what appeared to be economic nationalist policies, which fit into the whole American system. So I'm thinking, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, this whole system followed on with, Friedrich List and others. But the the there appears now that even the Iran war follows a little bit the logic of something different that is going back to empire. Because if you look at all those things that are infrastructure that's being hit in Iran, all the railroads, the ports, a lot of this is the corridor that connects Iran with China, but it's also the international North South transportation corridor, which connects Iran with Russia and India.
So this is it seems that the the way they're prioritizing this infrastructure, which has been built up over the years now, is to essentially take a sledgehammer towards this whole greater Eurasian project. And, of course, if you can't regime change Iran and make it into a new new Syria, just fragmented and chaotic, then at least destroy all the infrastructure. It's I don't sure if you see it the same way. Do you think this is still a war aimed only towards Iran, or do you think Russia and China are also targets here?
Speaker 1: Oh, no. No. It's it this this juggernaut never stops. I think that if if they manage to overthrow Vladimir Putin's government in Russia, that they will use Russia against China in exactly the same way that they used Ukraine against Russia. So, you know, they they take over political power in a country, and then they use that country's economic and military power to turn against the next victim.
You know, they they didn't go fight Russia themselves. They militarized and weaponized Ukraine to fight Russia. And then if they succeeded if if they succeeded, they would militarize Russia against China. And then if they succeeded in Iran, they would probably cut off Russia from its North South international transport corridor. They would force Russia again to depend on the Arctic and Suez trade routes.
And they would continue using their divide and rule until they had complete and total hegemony over the Eurasian landmass. I mean this is the Macandarian politics that goes back to, you know, I would say probably quite a bit longer than a hundred years where, you know, the the the British have perfected this system of constantly using war and intrigues to pit power against power, to keep them all weak, and to dominate everything. And, you know, there isn't a point in time or space that they say, right, okay. So I guess we have a big empire now, we have a bunch of really rich colonies that we we exploit. We can stop here.
They never stop. And whenever any nation becomes a bit more powerful, a bit more prosperous, you know, kind of like Libya that want to be left alone, that they want to develop their economies for the benefit of their own people, It has to be destroyed so that, you know, like that malignancy never rests. It always is looking for targets to attack, which is why we're in the state of permanent warfare now. And all of these wars are coming from the West. They're not being instigated by Iran, they're not being instigated by Syria, by Russia.
It's always the West that is fomenting these wars.
Speaker 0: I agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and the dynamic always always always leads back to the to the financial centers, to the to the banking oligarchies.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: New World - Iran Ceasefire Fails, NATO Is Dead & the U.S. Risks Civil War https://t.co/ynBEhx13y2
Video Transcript AI Summary
Lawrence Wilkerson and Glenn discuss a fragile ceasefire in Southwest Asia and what it signals about broader geopolitics and U.S. strategy.
- Ceasefire prospects and Lebanon: Wilkerson says, as a military professional, ceasefires need the first week or two to establish, and with Iran-related communications, longer to restore contact with dispersed forces. He notes Netanyahu’s continued bombing in Lebanon and Beirut, arguing this is a major impediment to a durable ceasefire, with Iran having made clear that if Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire the deal may fail.
- NATO and U.S. commitments: Wilkerson declares NATO effectively dead, though not formally, predicting the U.S. will disengage from NATO in practice as Ukraine’s conflict accelerates the decline. He links this to a broader reevaluation of U.S. alliances, suggesting a shift away from formal alliances toward other strategic arrangements, especially given changes in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East.
- U.S. role in Southwest Asia: He argues the United States is moving toward “offshore balancing” or withdrawal from the region, citing aging maritime assets, vulnerable aircraft carriers, and a changing energy/security architecture that lessens the need for a permanent U.S. ground presence. He predicts a transformation where pipelines and land routes become more important than sea routes, with Central Asia (Caspian energy) and the broader Eurasian land corridor strengthening, while Gulf oil dynamics and the Arab-Israeli tie weaken.
- Russia and China in a multipolar world: Wilkerson contends power is shifting toward a multipolar order. He suggests Russia will become a major land and maritime power, leveraging Arctic routes and expanding naval reach, while China leverages both the Belt and Road and maritime interests (including deep-sea fishing and ports). He emphasizes the need to accept this shift rather than fight it, warning against a Thucydides trap scenario if the U.S. doubles down on containment.
- The Middle East and regional realignments: He describes potential strategic shifts, such as Saudi Arabia redirecting Gulf investment toward Syria and away from Israel, and Israel’s future as a “tool” rather than the driver of U.S. policy. He fears Israel’s days could be numbered if the wider regional energy and political alignments move against it and if U.S. support falters. He calls for a genuine two-state framework and democracy in Israel for long-term viability, but doubts such changes will occur given current leadership.
- U.S. domestic politics and leadership: The discussion touches on the perceived degradation of U.S. institutions (Congress, Supreme Court) and political finance concerns (Citizens United). Wilkerson criticizes the leadership around Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, accusing them of pursuing religious-nationalist agendas and purging military leadership to build a partisan base. He cites the potential for internal conflict, including a possible civil dimension in the United States, exacerbated by polarization and militarized factions.
- Iran and diplomacy: Wilkerson presents two opposing paths for the Iran question: a subterfuge scenario where negotiations are used to lull Iran into a false sense of security, followed by renewed pressure, or a serious diplomatic track led by a serious U.S. president to end the war and negotiate a settlement that satisfies Iran’s terms (reparations, sanctions removal, regional security guarantees). He doubts the current leadership will pursue genuine diplomacy, anticipating muddled outcomes or renewed strikes.
- The ceasefire’s optics and escalation: He suggests the ceasefire could be a tactical pause while threats of escalation persist, with the Iranians possibly misreading U.S. diplomacy. He notes the risk of renewed Israeli actions against Iranian targets or proxies, and the potential for further bombardment or military missteps (citing past U.S. missteps as cautionary examples).
- Cultural and geopolitical macro-trends: Wilkerson emphasizes the erosion of Western-led order, the rising importance of land-based energy and trade corridors, and the need to recalibrate how the United States engages a rising, multipolar world. He uses historical analogies (Halford Mackinder, Monroe Doctrine) to describe the strategic pivot toward inland power centers and away from exclusive maritime dominance.
- Concluding outlook: The conversation ends on a bleak note about continued instability, the potential for regional and domestic turmoil, and the sense that without new leadership and a fundamental rethinking of strategy, the current trajectory risks further deterioration of global stability and U.S. influence.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to the US secretary of state. Thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Good to be with you, Glenn. I always like coming to where is it again? Norway? Sweden?
Speaker 0: Same. Same. Well, we have a ceasefire now, at least so we're told. And it appears to be already falling apart. I don't want to be overly pessimistic.
It could just be a rough start. But given the dispute over whether or not Lebanon should be a part of the ceasefire, it appears that a key component is being challenged. How are you assessing the situation, the possibility of actually arriving at a peace here?
Speaker 1: First, as a military professional, I have to offer the opinion that I've been around a few ceasefires, both chapter six and chapter seven and other things, and it's difficult. It's extremely difficult. You've got to give the first week or two even to establishing it. That's the first point. Second point is with Iran, it might be even longer because they have had a lot of their communications to outlying forces, if you will, destroyed.
And so it has to be runner, motorcycle, car, you know, whatever that they deliver the messages. So that's the first thing about ceasefires that is demonstrating itself here possibly. But the second thing, and you insinuated it and it's more important, there's no inclination whatsoever of b p Netanyahu to stop in Lebanon. Now he is murdering at the rate of a 100 or so a day civilians, not Hezbollah fighters, civilians. And it's kind of a mystery as to why he's doing it other than Hezbollah itself is handing him another defeat just like it did in 2,006.
Even his own IDF captains are telling him, this is not good. We're we're not winning this. So he usually reacts to that sort of message by bombing the bejesus out of everything he can find. In this case, buildings, hotels, dry cleaners, you name it, all over Beirut and the rest of Lebanon. And so you put your finger on what I think is the greatest impediment, and Iran has made that clear.
If it's not a ceasefire in Lebanon as well as elsewhere, then the deal's off.
Speaker 0: Well, it's I saw that Joe Kent, he reacted to Trump's outburst that perhaps it's time to well, he didn't say leave NATO, but that's kind of the direction it's going. And Joe Kent tweeted something along the lines that we will leave NATO so we can take the side of Israel when Turkey and Israel eventually, you know, clash in Syria. Well, I guess I have a a twofold question. Do you did did you see The United States leaving NATO? And, I mean, I think NATO now has the most obedient secretary general ever.
And so but I guess that's not the main driver here. But will The US leave NATO, I think? And do you think such a clash is possible in which The US would actually yeah. Well, if not fighting the Turks directly, at least, well, push heavy heavy on the side of Israel?
Speaker 1: I I think NATO's dead. I've said that before. I'll say it again. I think NATO's default. It may take a few months, even a couple of years to die completely so that everyone pronounces it dead and says a prayer over its grave, but it's dead.
And Trump might not make any formal declaration of that, any formal declaration of The United States leaving NATO, he's not that kind of guy. He's not definitive. He's mercurial, and he's wishy washy. And it's very difficult to get really cogent statement out of him. Even more difficult today than it was in the past.
So I I don't think that'll be formal in that sense, but it'll certainly happen. It's a it's a fait accompli, I think, already. Ukraine has put the dagger in its heart, but the dagger was already there when we stiffed Russia after George h w Bush and didn't follow-up on our promises to essentially allow Russia into Europe. Every president after that in his own way, starting with Bill Clinton and seventy eight days of bombing, put paid to that promise. So that's that.
The other aspect is Erdogan or whomever might take over for him, Fiddan or whomever, in Turkey is not stupid enough to make an enemy in your face of The United States at this particular juncture. Were he to be antagonistic to Washington from a distance as it were, I could buy that on certain issues like the Kurds and Syria and Israel eventually. But I don't see any burgeoning relationship between Israel other than an antagonistic one. And if we come off of Israel, which I think we are going to do, remember, I think Israel's our tool, not the other way around. In the very near future, possibly over the next eighteen to twenty four months, either as a force majeure move away or a pronounced and solid, we're through with you, move away.
I think we're going to. And that's gonna really disturb a lot of these billionaires who've been placing their bets on this relationship and pumping money into the congress and the presidency and elsewhere in the country, trying to persuade everyone that they can, that Israel is essential to The US's defense in Southwest Asia. At one point, it was, but now we're leaving. Mark my words, we're leaving. We are either going to go back to offshore balancing, which we should, never should have abandoned it, or we're just gonna leave and not even do offshore balancing because we, frankly, are getting limited in our maritime assets, and our maritime assets are getting increasingly dated.
Take our carriers, for example, which have shown their vulnerability in this conflict. They will not get any closer than that, what we call in the Pacific, the thousand mile line. That's the reality of carriers in this world of drones and high speed missiles. So we're seeing a transformation that's taking place in a number of stages on a number of levels now with this war in Southwest Asia, which incidentally which is what a lot of people like general Van Riper who did the Millennium Challenge war game in 2002, I think it was, maybe three, and others who have studied this situation have predicted that this essentially would be, one, the end of The US presence on the ground anyway, in any significant way in Southwest Asia, in The Levant even, in North Africa even, and it would be the end of eventually Israel as a Jewish state in The Levant. It could prosper as a democracy were to be able to achieve that.
And it will probably be the end of even maritime interests in the region since we are now exclusively only dependent on ourselves for both LNG and oil. And the only country that we have that ties us really ties us strongly to the Strait Of Hormuz, other than the global impact on the economy and so forth, were it to be closed for an extended period of time, is Japan. Because Japan still gets much of its product through the Strait Of Hormuz from Southwest Asia. That really has been the strategic interest of The United States for some time, not its own petroleum, but Japan's petroleum. And that relationship is getting very dicey too at the same time for many of the same reasons colored a bit differently.
Korea, the other countries in the region that are beginning to see what we really are, Most staggeringly, Korea, because I think what I'm hearing from the peninsula is get out of here. Leave. The faster, the better. But they just don't have the politicians yet to take that on and do it. Maybe Kim Jong might help him a little bit.
Kim Jong un. So it's all unraveling. The entire global framework that we crafted after World War two, mostly at our immediate behest, it's unraveling, or mistakes, you might say, but it was inevitable. It was inevitable. As Colin Powell said to me in 1989 at Fort McPherson, Georgia, they're all gone, Larry.
The Thatchers, the Meteorons, the Coles, the Majors, they're all gone. When they are all gone and when people who don't have their feet in the war, even as 12 year olds, are in charge, the world is gonna change majorly, and you're not gonna like it, Larry. He was right.
Speaker 0: Why did he say that? Why oh, I know why they had left. I mean but why why why why are there no qualified politicians replacing them?
Speaker 1: He had seen and this is my surmise because we only talked about that specific issue a couple of times over the years ensuing sixteen years. Most notably, when I was working for him in a private capacity between '97, my retirement, and his assumption with the state department along with me in 2000 December 2000. When we were doing things like going to Nigeria to oversee with Jimmy Carter and the Carter Institute, the election at that time of Okanoobie, and other things like they're going to Haiti, for example, to see if we could calm things down there. And we had a chance to chat about it again. And I I think his principal concern was that what h w Bush had started, and even he himself at the end of his term in '93 had started to befoul the nest of, that is a rapprochement of significance with Moscow, bringing them into the political alliance as well as the military alliance, and then spreading it out into a new European security architecture, which would include Russia.
When he was thinking about the possibilities of that actually happening and realizing how fragile the chances were that it would happen, then he saw chaos. And he saw the chaos not so much because there were no colds or Mitterrands, that was part of it, certainly, but because the memory in the population at large, like most memories of cataclysmic events, would be so fragile, if not gone, that there'd be no force, if you will, to keep them together and no force to keep us in their midst. And I think he was right.
Speaker 0: So across, yeah, NATO, we're fragmenting. As you said, NATO is dead in East Asia, beat beat South Korea, Japan, Taiwan. They're beginning to reconsider some of this alliance system. And but how about West Asia? Do do how do you see The United States either leaving or being kicked out of of West Asia?
And is this because the Gulf States decide the alliance is a vulnerability? Is it that The United States loses interest, or is The US essentially expelled by, for example, Iran holding on to the Strait Of Hormuz and putting crushing limitations?
Speaker 1: That's a huge question, and I don't wanna conflate Southwest Asia with West Asia in general. And by that, I simply mean I don't wanna conflate what's happening in Iran and what is gonna force us out of our ground positions in the Arab countries and possibly Egypt too. I I suspect Egypt. I suspect they're gonna get tired of us too. And we may get tired of giving them the $3,600,000,000 every year just to get them to keep the peace treaty with Israel.
After all, if there's no Israel to keep the peace treaty with, there won't be any money for the Egyptians no matter who's there, Sisi or whatever. But I think it's different as you go north. You start with Turkey. You have to throw Afghanistan in there, Pakistan in there, of course. You have to throw Western India in there because Western India is very different from Eastern India.
You have to throw the Caucasus, I think, in there. You have to look at what's happening and what is the principal axis for this inexorable shift of power. And it's the same principle axis that existed when it came the other way, being to the West and made America, if you will. It's going back the other way, and that's the principle axis through Dushanbei, Samarkand, Tashkent, and so forth on into Zhengzhou province in China. And I think that's gonna make that area extremely important, particularly when all the pipelines that are pumping under construction, envision for construction are finished, and oil is moving more or less North south south north rather than East West and fueling these economies to the point that they're even greater than they are today.
If you look at the economies in Central Asia right now, they are staggeringly successful. You it doesn't matter that they have Nazarbayev and people like that in charge of them, autocrats, basically, with golden statues to themselves in the town square. They are very successful. The hotels that we used to equate with Paris and with London oh, well, sometimes with London. The Ritz and maybe would meet that criteria.
And then you look at what's in these cities now, and they don't even compare. These hotels are magnificent both in their grandiloquence and in the cost of their rooms and the luxury of staying there. Central Asia is sitting on top of enough natural gas and oil at a time when the transition is gonna have to take place. Otherwise, we're gonna destroy ourselves. But that's fifty to seventy five years probably.
They're sitting on top of the energy in the world that is most important, not least of which is under the Caspian Sea if they can ever figure out how to deal with that. So I think those relationships or force are gonna have to be maintained. South of there is a different ballgame altogether, and I include in the South of there the Southern Rim Of India. And I include Southwest Asia because I think China is gonna make sure we don't come back once we're out, and I'm confident we're gonna be out. Substantially out.
We'll sell we'll sell battle groups and strike groups and things through the South or through the North Arabian Sea and through the Indian Ocean in general. And maybe our relationship with the Indian Navy will stay solid because though Delhi is not all that happy with it, the Indian Navy is very happy with operating with the US Navy. They're learning a lot from it, and the interoperability is growing. That might become so obvious to the civilian leadership in Delhi though that it gets curbed considerably. Not to say that India and The United States aren't gonna stay fairly close.
They are, I think, just because of China, if nothing else. But it's gonna be a different world. It's gonna be an entirely different world, and we don't seem to recognize that, Glenn. We don't seem to recognize it. And where we do recognize it, we're fighting it tooth and nail.
Look at what we just started doing with the Israelis being the lion's share of the bombing. We're bombing the hell out of that railroad that China had finished all the way to the Persian Gulf and was gonna come up into the belly of the Caucasus and be its final southern road base road initiative. They're bombing it. They're bombing the bejesus out of it now. Every day, they're bombing that railroad.
That's not because they want Iran to not have a railroad. That's because they know where that railroad's going. And that railroad will obviate almost immediately in conjunction with the other four, most of which in some way or other debouched into Europe, north, central, central, south, that railroad will take 60% of the commerce that China now generates, which is probably about 40% of the world's commerce, off the seas where America has domain, if you will, or thinks it still does, and put it on land. We don't want that. We don't want that at all anymore than those Portuguese wanted it when they did it before some thousand years ago and drove the Portuguese Portuguese off the water because they're charging too much for commercial shipping.
So they built a land route, and the land route was cheaper by quite a margin, and it put the Portuguese out of business. We're gonna get put out of business in terms of maritime supremacy because land is gonna be the essence of economic contact. And these pipelines prove it too. Running north, south, and east, west, they're not over the water. They're on land.
And I think that's where we're going. The Strait Of Wormuz, the Strait Of Babab Mandeb, Babab Mandeb Strait will still be there and commerce will still be flowing, but not nearly to the extent it is today because we're going over land because China is saying we're going over land.
Speaker 0: I feel like this is the revenge of Halford Mackinder that is the
Speaker 1: To an extent. Yeah.
Speaker 0: The the whole concern of the British. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look at what Putin's gotta do. He's gotta make a decision here. And I I see him thinking about it. Every now and then, he'll make a remark or Sergei Lavrov will make a remark that leads me to believe that they're thinking about it, and they have people working on it. But which way does he go?
I mean, with the Arctic doing what it's doing right now and I just read the latest report. Man, are we getting sea ice melt four, five times faster than we thought we would. And that's got its own negative ramifications too. But Russia's got the longest navigable coastline. So all of a sudden, Russia, who didn't have a warm water port, has a coastline that demands maritime power.
So he's gotta make a choice here. I mean, he's got significant maritime power principally in his submarine fleet, but he's got it elsewhere too. But I I suspect we're gonna see Putin building more icebreakers in particular, and he already has a hoard of them, and other ships that comply the Arctic as the Arctic becomes more pliable. And he's gonna have to think about becoming at least in that direction a maritime power. So he's gonna be both.
He's gonna be the world's biggest outside China land power, and he's also gonna be maritime power. And I heard someone the other day, I think it was Doug McGravy, I wanted to reach into the screen and shake Doug. I wanted to shake him. He said China had no maritime interest. The largest deepwater fishing fleet in the world, 6,000 ships fishing so ardently in the Antarctic that the Antarctic council had an emergency meeting over the depletion of the krill, the basic building block of protein on the face of the earth.
And so, I mean, China has no maritime interest. Come on, Doug. Wake up. You're too much a soldier. I like Doug, so I'm just saying that because I wanna hurl rockets at him.
China does have interest in the deep sea. Very, very integral integral interest. We get focused on the South China Sea, the Dash 9 Line, Taiwan, and all that crap. Meanwhile, they are fishing all over the world, and they just built the world's state of the art port on the West Coast Of Peru, and that's maritime. So there is an interest there by that state, which is the magnet of all this change really because of its economic power.
But Russia's got a decision to make. Do we go both ways? Do we look east and west? Do we look north and south? Do we just be remain a major land power, 10 time zones or whatever?
Or do we start courting people in the rest of the world? And that explains, I think, why Putin seems to have this incredible affection, that's a long term, attraction to Donald Trump because he's the present president, however, faultily of The United States. And Putin doesn't wanna destroy that relationship. He's still looking in that direction, and he's looking in the other direction too, and he's looking north. So he's got a real tapestry to deal with.
And I've so far, I've seen I think the confidence in his administration and the people in general, even in the Douma and some, that can handle this. But can we replace Putin and can we have a, you know, have a leader afterwards who might be even smarter than Putin or better at dealing with all these multiple responsibilities that are falling on Russia now? They are the key geostrategic location outside China, and now that they're tacitly allied with China, they present the world with a tremendous challenge. Europe to Europe in a significant way. Europe has to accommodate them and learn to live with them and benefit from that living.
It can't fight them. It it'll be destroyed if it fights them. It'll destroy itself if it tries to fight them. And that's that's my big concern about this US approach to China that's all bullets, bayonets, and sanctions. It's stupid.
It's just downright stupid.
Speaker 0: I think unlike the nineteenth or twentieth century, the the Chinese and the Russians aren't aware even though they are land powers, they're not willing to cede the the oceans to The United States. And I think you're right that the Chinese have both the road belt and the road. That is they're gonna focus on the sea as well. But the Russians as well, they I think they see their territory as important to tie together a duration continent as East West also, North South, especially with this international North South transportation corridor, which The US and Israel is, as you said, bombing now in Iran. But they they also have the ambitions of being a maritime power.
You mentioned the Arctic route, of course. But if you look at the the way they are flirting with countries like Indonesia, you you see that they do have some significant naval aspirations. So they've been a naval power, a real one since Peter the Great, at least, and Yeah. They intend to to remain one.
Speaker 1: And when they sail that old tanker, and I think it made port in Matanzas, Cuba, that was in your face now. In the in the Monroe doctrines, the Trump doctrine, whatever you wanna call it, call it what you want in your face. I'm in Matanzas offloading war. And also two years earlier when they sent Khorshkov, the frigate, and all my military mates said, oh, that frigate, that's nothing. That frigate had hypervelocity missiles on it that would sink a US aircraft carrier in a heartbeat.
Kirov, I think her name was. And they sent a nuclear attack sub in there too. So the Monroe Doctrine has been dead ever since they did that if it weren't dead beforehand. So Putin knows what he's doing. He do he does it selectively.
He does it for real fundamental reasons that are positive for him, and I would argue positive for what I'm talking about. You have to accommodate this power shift, not fight it. Because if you fight it, you'll wind up in John Meersheimer's sandbox with this Thucydides trap, and you'll get beaten, but so will a lot of the world.
Speaker 0: Well, this is the problem, though, the the adjusting to the new world. I think this for for me, this was the first thing I thought about when I read the article by Krauthammer back in 1990 when he wrote about the unipolar moment. He coined the term. You know, because he he had a very rational approach saying, well, so much power is concentrated now. In the future, probably the world will have a multipolar distribution power, and then we'll embrace that.
But it doesn't work like this because you have leaders who are ideologically committed now to having one center of power even after realities have have changed. So it's very difficult for but, you know, you have some you know, even Spigniew Brzezinski, you the national security adviser, he he, you know, he wrote almost a bible on the unipolar moment with the grand chessboard. However, less focus he gets is on this book on the on the choice. I think it was in 2012 when he recognized that, well, actually, the distribution of power is becoming multipolar. America has a choice.
It can either accommodate it and carve out the position as a first among equals. That is a very favorable format for a multipolar world organized by The U. S. Or it can resist it, but then see the rest of the world essentially create a multipolar world in opposition to The US, a balancing something along bricks. And, you know, so he he took at least some pragmatism with them.
But but at this point, you know, we already build an ideal ideological structure around us being, you know, the hegemony of the West is is the foundation of having peace and stability in the world. You know? So this is we there's no adjusting to reality. Yeah. I mean, people often leave out the human aspect here, the assuming.
There's also a flaw, by the way, in political realism, which, yeah, both me and Mersheimer belong to. That is the it's often the assumption of the rational state, I think, is not very rational at all.
Speaker 1: And they forget people. They forget people. They don't read they don't read a lot of poetry. I may be mistaken. John and I have never talked about that.
I'd love to talk to him about it. Do you read any poetry, John? Anybody that reads good poetry, and I'm talking about all over the world from Persia to China to, you know, the English poets who we so tout all the time, usually dwelling in the dwelling in the eighteenth century, nineteenth century, eighteenth century mostly. But if you read poetry and you understand what poetry's power is, then you understand that there's an element to human life that is quite significant that has nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with emotion, human emotion, which is probably one of the most unpredictable things on the face of the earth. You never know when it's gonna go up or down or do this or do that.
Look at economic crises, for example. Most economists who are worth a damn will tell you that the key to a really deep economic crisis is when the people lose confidence in the system. You would take all the statistics and put them out there and array them and say, oh, there's gonna be a depression. There's gonna be a recession. If you still have the people's confidence, you can work your way through it.
You can just see a few of those things indicating something bad is coming, and the people latch on to that, the people being the majority, and lose confidence in the system, and it completely collapses. That's really what happened in twenty nine to thirty two in this country when we had a great depression. Because if you look at the power indices and you look at what we had, you could see what we were gonna do in World War two. You could see why Yamamoto looked at Pearl Harbor burning, apocryphally or not, but very accurately accurately said, I fear what we've done is awaken the sleeping tiger and filled it with a fearful resolve. He was absolutely right because he did as a young captain, he'd been in America.
He had seen us from New York to California, from Michigan to Texas, and he knew what we were capable of. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about confidence and people doing what they have to do when they have to do it and doing it more based on emotion than on strategic calculation. Both are necessary, of course. The Mersheimers and the poets are necessary. But if you forget the poets, you're lost.
You're going down. That famous poem by Matthew Arnold, is not really touted much in the world of literature except by the real Cognizante. And those lines at the end of that are just up he wrote at the end of the eighteen hundreds in the romantic period, and he predicted everything that's happening today. And the poem that's the most emotional in that sense is Dover Beach, where he concludes with and we are here as on a darkling plane, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night. That's where we are.
That's where we are today. Of course, he was talking about the Huxley brothers and John Henry Cardinal Newman, religion dying in the world, and science taking over. But aren't we looking at the same thing today in different clothing? Pete Hagstad is trying to bring religion back just like John Henry Cardinal Newman did with the Catholic church, but Newman was a lot smarter than Pete Eggseth. But we've we're still in the same struggle, at least America is, and it's causing it to taint its foreign policy.
Where else do you get someone who calls the Pope's emissary in and choose him out for what Leo said? And essentially tells him, apparently, if it's being reported accurately, and I have sources that tell me it is being reported accurately, sources in the Vatican, that it's accurate. That in fact, we actually suggested we might wanna do a on the pope, you know. We might wanna move the Catholic church to America like the French did. That's how stupid and ignorant we are today.
We're playing in the past with forces that once unleashed are extremely dangerous and difficult to get back in check again. And we have an idiot at the top. And we're in this period that you and I were just discussing, however briefly. And this is not the period where you want an idiot leading the country that's declining against the country that's ascending. You just don't because then you get what you and Mearsheimer are talking about.
Well, I I won't attribute it to you, but you get what John's talking about. Inevitability of a war, and we're gonna lose. We're gonna lose big time. My concern is the whole globe's gonna lose because this is gonna be nuclear.
Speaker 0: Well, the problem is often when the social scientists put together theories, but it assumes it's the same people when when we're rising as when we're declining. I think we need more strategies and theories on how to manage decline because when site is rising, with economically or whatever, it's they usually then begin to embrace a very cosmopolitan mind mindset, openness, all of this. When there's decline, it's in human nature, you retreat into the tribe. Then after this, you will have more vicious nationalism.
Speaker 1: And the paranoia.
Speaker 0: Yes. Very much so. So so, you know, when when you're declining, it's not just we have to plan for a weaker army, worse economy, but you also have to take into account a very tribal mindset, more angry, more vulgar, more aggressive and more hateful of other series. I mean I find it often shocking that people don't appreciate how hateful we have become. I mean, if you open any newspaper and read about our adversaries being the the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, you know, forget about even discussing rationally what their interests are, but the way they are portrayed.
I mean, there's something horribly happening in our societies, and we can't even talk about it. It's quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: And the man manifestation of that, a recent manifestation, not that it hadn't manifested itself before, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which incidentally, Glenn, I don't know if you're following it at all, we we still don't know who did that. We know categorically that the person they arrested, the rifle they have in possession, did not do the assassination. So what are they doing? What is the Trump administration doing with this incident which doesn't rival a presidential assassination or even doctor King's assassination or Bobby Kennedy's assassination? But it was an assassination of a leading figure, and it associated itself directly with Israel and The US relationship with Israel in a way that many people in the intelligence community in this country think is damning of Israel and damning of its prime minister.
And yet we're not even looking at it anymore. I I I can't even find it anywhere in the press. This is terrible that we do things like this, that we just hide these crimes and push them away when we can't find a convenient scapegoat or, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald, for example. I'm not trying to compare Charlie Kirk with John Kennedy, but it is the same kind of phenomenon. And it's the same kind of symptom of decay of empire and decay of thinking and decay of brainpower.
It you could even go back to the Vietnam war and say that's where it started significantly for the empire. Anyway, it's a mess. It's a mess, and we're not gonna get out of it by fighting our way out, by sanctioning our way out, by challenging everyone in the world to a duel. That's not gonna work.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It contributes to further polarization as well. I mean, if at least if there's openness and investigations then and airing out the trouble problems, then a society can at least organize find consensus around the truth as whenever it is hidden, then country will will society will always polarize and follow convenient narratives instead. I I did wanna get back to something you said before, though, in terms of the consequences of of the Iran war. You mentioned that if there is an Israel.
And I thought, yes, this is an interesting point because it begs the question to what extent this permanent damage being done has already been done during this war, which might not be over. I would bet it's not. But do do you see Israel being in danger, and can the Gulf States recover from this, essentially go back to the way things were?
Speaker 1: I think not. Especially your latter statement to the to the way things were. I think that's impossible now. If it's not impossible at this moment, you and I are talking, Glenn, it's impossible because Iran is gonna make it impossible. Think that's a fatal complaint.
And I think MBS has already shifted the sovereign wealth funds plans away from Israel and towards Syria instead. In fact, I have it on really good authority that he's already shifted all that investment he was gonna make in a pipeline that would run up through Northern Saudi Arabia into Israel eventually, Haifa, and then across to Chehon probably. And Israel was gonna benefit not only for transshipment fees, but also it was gonna get its oil for, you know, now and forever, if you will, from Saudi Arabia that way. Now he shifted all of that over to Syria. Quite a decision if it has been made.
And I, like I said, I have some pretty good sources that tell me it has been made. That money's gonna go that way now. Well, that's gonna dry Israel up unless The United States is prepared to fund all of its petroleum where from wherever it might come. And that that also includes funding them developing the oil field and gas field they stole in the Mediterranean from the Gazans. It belonged to them, but now they're stealing it from Gaza.
And the one that they have in their own territorial water or their own economic zone, I forget which it is, in the Eastern Mid, Extreme Eastern Mid, and they're stealing Lebanon's. That's one reason he wants to go ahead with Lebanon because he doesn't want Lebanon ever to recover to the point it could challenge it. This is all gonna go to hell in the handbag very shortly because of the moves that are being made by much of our more powerful countries in the oil and gas markets than Israel. In fact, Israel has no power in those markets at all except what it can shoot or kill for. And it showed that with Mark Rich and Glencore and all that stealing from Sodom and Zain, stealing from Syria when we had the war with Iraq, the real reason for the war with Iraq.
If you've read Gary Vogler's book and also Dennis Fritz's book, Deadly Betrayal, you know that the war was fought for Israel as much as anything else, which is why Israel was pitching for it. So I think their days are very, very numbered. If they were to suddenly shift to find the political oomph and the political will to shift to a one state solution that included a truly democratic state. Since Likud took over, Israel has not been a democracy. That's all a farce.
But if they were to shift and if they were to accommodate despite the power of the wound as Yasser Arafat used to say all the time, despite that, if they were to shift and have a real democracy that treated its citizens roughly the same across the spectrum of citizens it would then generate, then Israel could survive that thing. And Palestine could come back in a significant way. The right of return, the return to the '67, all the UN resolutions could be fulfilled. It isn't gonna happen because of crooks like Tony Blair and Donald Trump. But that is something that could happen if we can get rid of this detritus that is plaguing us now.
These grifters, these money hungry bastards, if we could get rid of them and get some decent leadership across the board, including in the UN, new secretary general is desperately needed, and a revamping and revising of the UN Security Council is desperately needed. And the first thing I do is kick Britain off. I wouldn't even let Britain be a member of the UN Security Council anymore. They're just there on our toenails, if you will, standing on our toenails and hurting our feet. So if we could do these things, we could do them in a decade, maybe a decade and a half, and we could get the world squared away again as it were, and maybe at least partially salvage some of our reputation and some of our power in the world that we've Twittered away.
I don't think it's gonna happen. I don't think it's gonna
Speaker 0: No. I saw a comment by Tucker Carlson today, in which he was arguing that why is it that no president well, why is that every single president is more interested in governing governing the world instead of governing The United States? I thought that was interesting, especially when it came to Trump because I thought he was the ultimate president who would essentially, you know, say, okay. I will abandon the empire to save the republic, but I haven't seen that in any way. If anything, he seems to be doubling down on the mistakes, which he was Yep.
Criticizing when he was in opposition, but then, you know, follows the same policies.
Speaker 1: Which in my international relations book, which kind of focuses on Fred Hartman's the relations of nations, which is a terrific book in its sixth edition. It's still a terrific book. Those are small people. People like that are small people. They're the people that throw the rocks in the cogs of international relations.
I like that phrase too. Fred used it at at Newport at the Naval War College when he was there lecturing. The relations of nations. Not only is it sort of poetic, it also says it better. What are international relations?
Well, they're the relations of nations. And one of the first prerogatives of a smart power that it should avail itself of 100% of the time is never have more enemies than you can handle. Look at what we've done. We've created an enemy out of the whole freaking planet. It's incredible of the terrible leadership we've had since roughly h w Bush.
It's probably unprecedented. I can't say that because there were some really poor times in there, but we weren't so hard pressed by international relations and power. But we've had some terrible presidents. Probably more terrible ones than the great ones. Certainly more terrible than the great ones.
But we're we've been damned for a generation here, and we need to get undammed. We've been damned in our congress. Now we're damned in our supreme court too. I was looking at some of the opinions expressed the other day. We you know, we have this amendment going to change the constitution with a very short amendment that would just eliminate the effects of Citizens United and the decisions before it, which would be a terrific boon to our political process to get all this black money out of it.
And we've been stunned at how fast it's moving. We already have 26 states. We only need 39, I think. Two thirds of the states two thirds of the congress, three quarters of the states. I think we're gonna get it, and we're probably gonna get it within the next five or six years, which will be a real boon to our political process.
But five or six years, you can destroy yourself. And with this kind of leadership we have right now, we just might do that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was speaking to judge Napolitano. I actually had him on this program, and he expects a civil war in so there's a lot of pessimism going. But, you know, in in what what you mentioned with the institutions and all being corrupted under this power is one thing. But but also the international system, one should ask whether or not empire hedge money becomes a curse.
Because if you go back to the 1990s, you know, not only was The US admired by the whole world almost, but a leading foreign policy or strategy by China, Russia was to get along as well as possible with The United States. It's a you know, well, I would only put The US in this category. The Europeans have been no better themselves. I mean, mean, were also seen as a preferable partner to a lot of countries. But the way you see now, essentially, all of this being reversed, the power diminished, reputation diminished.
I I have a feeling if we hadn't gone down Krauthammer's path of, you know, not not not just the hegemony of The US, but this effort of having the hegemony of the political West. It it could have been very different. But, you know, we are where we are. And I I I did wanna ask you, though, how you see again, I just wanna get back to the ceasefire again to go full circle here. What what do you make how do you make sense of this?
Because as the ceasefire is now in place, we also see troops being mobilized or sent to the region. Is this is this just as a insurance, like reassurance? Because in Iran, of course, they're not trusting for good reason much of the diplomacy. They see it as being very deceptive. Is this primarily an effort by Trump to get out of a horrible war he didn't wanna be in?
Or do you see Trump also buying time for a possible escalation? I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other. It could be, of course, you know, trying to end the war or taking advantage to ramp it up. But how do you make sense of this ceasefire?
Speaker 1: I think there are two ways to look at it. More than two, but two principle ways to look at it. One, it's another subterfuge, just like you suggested. And I think probably Abbasarichi, the foreign minister of Iran, is looking at it that way right now. And maybe Pryoshkin, the president, and maybe the speaker of the Marjolice and others too.
I would if I were they. And that that that and I just simply just say Netanyahu's objection is strenuous. You know, I I'm gonna keep my war going in Lebanon to hell with you and your diplomacy was all orchestrated ahead of time. And he was playing the bad guy and the guy whose badness would give the impression to the Iranians that this was a genuine effort. And so what we're gonna do is two or three days from now, we're gonna blow the hell out of again, or maybe even make an assault on the uranium.
Think that's what we were doing earlier. By the way, we lost some very expensive aircraft. We lost some people we haven't even reported yet. We lost assets in a way that made us look as stupid. Really, Glenn, as stupid militarily as Jimmy Carter's military looked like in, what was it, '78 or whatever that we pulled off operation Eagle Claw.
And we had the helicopter pick up and run into the c one thirty in the desert and run, crash and burn and kill eight or nine people. This was even dumber than that. So that had to be a shock to old PDX and a shock as it was reported to Trump too. But there doesn't seem to be any dissension there. They're still working together, sadly enough.
And so that's one thing that could be happening. We could be trying to lull the Iranians again into something that they think we're going to ceasefire. Think we're gonna do diplomacy, and we're gonna hit them again in whatever way we can. That's one possibility. The other possibility is we're serious about this.
We're serious, and Donald Trump finally figured out after that story broke in the New York Times and elsewhere about how he made his decision to start the war. Bebe was the sole counselor. Everyone else from general Kane to JD Vance to Marco Rubio, Pete Pete Hagsteth was a sycophant all the way. But everyone else was cautioning, and Beebe was saying, just do it. You'll see they'll collapse.
They'll collapse. Go ahead and do it. I think that's probably a pretty accurate summary of what the decision making environment was like. So is he really serious? And being serious would mean figure out a way you can get out of this war and declare victory, and to hell with Netanyahu.
If he's really serious, then we have some hard negotiation ahead of us, and so do the Iranians. I mean, I got their 10 points right here. Same 10 points I would've laid out if I were they. I mean, reparations, end of all sanctions, gone from Southwest Asia, you know, all these things. Will that be negotiable?
Will they be able to work out something if they do go to genuine diplomacy in Pakistan or wherever they might do it? I think I think it would if we had a team on our side led by a president on our side who were serious about finally serious about stopping a war. But I don't think that's gonna happen. I think we're more likely to find a muddle through. Or the first thing I described, we're we're trying to fool them again and strike them in the middle of it, or we'll get somewhere down the road and strike them again because Trump will get mad and I agree and realize he can't negotiate his way out, not in any way that'll look good.
And we're coming on the midterms. And right now, all the polls show the Republicans are gonna take a shellacking, and I do mean a shellacking. So, I mean, if it's a free a reasonably free and fair election, which is a question too. If it's an election, period, is a question. So I we don't have anything good to look forward to except maybe in the second possibility if some success were to be achieved.
And meanwhile, Glenn, Hagsef is preacher packing, I call it, old southern term. You put the good strawberries on the top and the rotten ones on the bottom. He's preacher packing the military in all ranks. He's getting Christian nationalists everywhere he can in the rank structure so that when time comes for the military to make a decision one way or the other with regard to the elections or whatever, he'll have at least a sizable contingent in the military that'll take his side.
Speaker 0: Is that the reason behind the all the purge, the firing of the general? You see this as being building a Trump loyal army?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And the way he's recruiting, the states he's recruiting from, the Christian nationalist counties he's recruiting from, the evangelical base he's recruiting from, the the conversions at the end of advanced individual training in the army, for example, they go to the river and baptize 60 or 70 recruits in the name of Jesus and God. You can't make this stuff up. I mean, this is something I was watching you've probably seen this movie Orlando Bloom sort of grew to maturity in it. It's about the Crusades.
Ridley Scott did the movie, and it takes a lot of license with Richard Courde Leon and the Crusaders and and Saladin and the confrontation between the Crusaders and Saladin on two or three occasions. One where he takes Jerusalem, of course, and Orlando boom Blum is allowed to march the citizens out because he's been such a great fighter and everything. Saladin has respect for him and all. So it's it's Hollywood. But the times and the customs and the actions of the crusaders, I think, are very well displayed.
They were there for money and profit. They were there for money, profit, and land. Oh, I'm here for the pope. Where's the pope? Where's the pope?
Have you got him here with you? Oh, he's not here? I'm here for money and profit and land. I mean, that that and even if the pope were there, he'd say, of course, you're looking for money, profit, and land for the Catholic church. So, you know, Pete Hegseth has this warped interpretation of the crusades, but that's what he believes.
I'm convinced that's what he believes. And when he gets down on his knees and prays in front of the troops and begs them to get down with him and pray, he's serious. He's serious. That's a dangerous man.
Speaker 0: Well, if this is preparing for, well, what could then essentially become a civil war, it's quite
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Quite quite troubling. But
Speaker 1: Could be a civil war with with different segments warring in it. You could have the Christian nationalists, the dominionists, the dispensationalists, and such looking to achieve Armageddon a little a little closer to home, and you could have genuine Christians in there who take to the streets or whatever too to protest that manipulation of and ultimate denigration of Jesus Christ. Because there are some like that who are really getting angry at Hegseth and angry at people like John Hagee sending money to settlers on the West Bank even now. And there are other people who are getting very, angry at the MAGA crowd and some of the MAGA faithful getting very, very angry at the people getting angry with them. So you have the potential for a lot of different people out there on the streets, and we have 400,000,000 guns in this country.
Speaker 0: More guns than people. It's quite an extraordinary statistic.
Speaker 1: Well Some of them were floating across the Canadian border underneath drones. You heard about that one? No. These entrepreneurs up there in Wisconsin and Minnesota, they put 10 or 12 Smith and Wesson p 30 eights or whatever under a drone in a bag. They only cost maybe 4 or $500 in in The US.
They float them across to a buddy's backyard, drop them in the backyard, pick them up later, and sell them in Toronto for $2 apiece. It's it's the invasion of Canada.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's what you get for these new technologies.
Speaker 1: It's driving the FBI crazy.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking time. We're almost out of time. So it's yeah. I wish there would be some more happy news, more optimism given that the war possibly came to an end and the ceasefire still is in place, one would hope, yeah, who would have some optimism, but I don't see it quite yet. But
Speaker 1: I don't know either. And I tell you the place I would most not like to be because I'd probably get so angry, I'd get myself killed real quickly, but is in Lebanon, where they're just killing men, women, children, anybody that happens to be under their bombs.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. So BBC reported on it that Israel had struck Hezbollah command centers across the country. Yeah. And this Yes.
Well, what you're seeing is just residential buildings being blown up with women, children, and men, yeah, scattered. So it's quite horrible.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of friends there who tell me that it is absolutely the worst they've seen, and they've been there for a long time. So they've seen a lot of bad times. You don't know where to go. You don't know where to turn. You walk out in the street and there's a bomb.
Speaker 0: Just feels like everyone can see where this is going, and and no one is trying to, you know, go for course correction. It's not just the Middle Middle East. You can say the same about Europe. I I can see where this is going and going. That is the war against Russia.
This is gonna escalate very soon. And, it's just it's very predictable where we're gonna go, and, again, nothing. It's quite depressing.
Speaker 1: There are some people out there with gasoline cans just sprinkling it.
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for the time.
Speaker 0: Thanks again.
Speaker 1: However morose it was.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Israel Breaks Ceasefire By Attacking Lebanon, Iran Retaliates With Missile Strikes Against Israel https://youtu.be/4JLpmWX_Eu8 https://t.co/vVi3XlTXKI
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn welcomed Seyyed Muhammad Marandi, a Tehran University professor and former Iran nuclear negotiator adviser, and asked about the terms of the current ceasefire and why clarity is hard to get. Marandi explained the progression: the U.S. initially demanded unconditional surrender, then shifted to a “15 plan,” which Iran rejected. Iran developed its own plan, with the Supreme National Security Council sending a modified version to the leader, Ayatollah Bahamani, who finalized it and sent it to Pakistan. Trump ostensibly accepted Iran’s framework as the basis for negotiations, though “that doesn’t mean that we’re going to have peace” and there’s little faith in U.S. willingness to concede the 10 points Iran presented. He described the U.S. as an empire whose capitulation is unlikely, given internal and international pressure and the current closure of the Strait of Hormuz. He warned that the U.S. military footprint in the region would be hard to sustain and would face logistical and environmental strain, which could complicate any new war; nonetheless, Iran is preparing for the worst, having previously negotiated with the U.S. twice and seeing both efforts end in renewed conflict. He attributed recent Israeli actions against Lebanon as an effort to derail the ceasefire, noting that Israeli leadership (Netanyahu) appears motivated to induce more violence to gain leverage domestically, while Western media outlets largely abstain from criticizing these actions.
Glenn pressed on how to interpret the two-week window for negotiations and whether Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire remains valid. Marandi reiterated skepticism that the full Iran-focused 10-point plan would be accepted by the United States, calling Trump inconsistent and unpredictable. He suggested the two-week period might be extended if negotiations progress modestly, but doubted any comprehensive agreement would be reached given the U.S. tendency to resist rights-based terms and to change positions rapidly. The two discussed the possibility of renewed U.S.-Iran conflict, with Iran continuing to strike at Israeli targets and American assets in the Gulf if necessary.
The conversation then moved to the question of who bears responsibility for the broader regional disruption. Marandi argued that Gulf regimes (the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar) are not in a position to fight Iran; without electricity and infrastructure, they would suffer cataclysmic losses. He asserted that the U.S. could not unify the Gulf states in a new campaign and that Iran would control the Strait of Hormuz if attacked. The UAE’s rumored strike on petrochemical facilities was cited as an example of the ongoing broader conflict. He also suggested Lebanon’s fate is tied to whether Israel continues striking Lebanon or shifts its focus back to Iran, and warned that a failure to constrain Israel would undermine any peace talks.
Marandi asserted that the ceasefire’s terms could be undermined by the “Epstein class” influence over Western media and governments, arguing that the global media’s support for Israel’s actions betrays a broader humanitarian and democratic legitimacy crisis in the West. He also noted that Oman’s cooperation around Hormuz might be part of a negotiated arrangement, given Oman’s more favorable relationship with Iran and its geographic position on the strait. He stressed that Iran’s apparent victory could reshape global power dynamics, weakening the U.S. and empowering Iran and other Global South actors, with implications for the petrodollar system and regional alignments.
Towards the end, Glenn and Marandi touched on the potential long-term regional changes, including borders and governance in the Gulf, and the broader economic and political costs for Gulf monarchies. Marandi attributed the crisis to Zionist influence on U.S. policy and lamented missed opportunities to pursue normal relations with the United States, referencing authors Flint and Leverett and their book Going to Tehran, which he suggested could have altered current events if heeded. He concluded by reiterating that lessons were not learned and that the war’s consequences would be lasting.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Seyyed Muhammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So, it's good to see you again, and I'm glad to hear Tehran is more quiet today.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a pleasure being on your show. Yes. I'm at home, and things are more quiet, but, Israeli regime has been slaughtering, Lebanese today, and they've been carpet bombing all sorts of different cities and in violation of the ceasefire agreement. Although Trump says it's not a part of the ceasefire, but the Pakistani prime minister has said very clearly, and he tweeted that Lebanon is part of the ceasefire.
And since the regime is continuing its slaughter and they are just targeting ordinary people, The Iranians have fired missiles, and they shut down the Strait Of Hormuz again. So it's unclear where things are going to go, whether we're going to have continued airstrikes against us by the Israeli regime or not, I think that probably will continue, and we'll have to see what the Americans do.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I should have said we're recording this now today on the April 8, and you were just saying before we start recording that as we speak, Iranian missiles are now flying towards Israel in response to Israel's breach of the ceasefire agreement. But, I guess a good place to start would be then, what are the actual terms? Because I find this to be quite extraordinary that, it's, quite an important ceasefire. I mean, the whole world is, you know, captured by this war against Iran, and we we're getting, you know, world's Wall Street Journal saying this, Reuters saying that.
I mean, what are the actual terms, and why is it so difficult to get a very clear cut answer to this?
Speaker 1: Well, first, The United States said, that Iran surrender. They said unconditional surrender, at least Trump did, like in the previous twelve day war. And then gradually, that evolved into the 15 plan, which Iran rejected. And then Iran began to develop its own plan, which the Supreme National Security Council gave to the leader Ayatollah Syed Mushtagh Bahamani, and he made some changes. They finalized a plan and sent it to Pakistan.
And, ultimately, Trump agreed that this would be the framework for negotiations. Now that doesn't mean that we're going to have peace. It doesn't mean that The United States will agree to these 10 plan these 10 points even though they are very reasonable. But The United States being the an empire and an extremely arrogant empire, it's very difficult to imagine them capitulating and accepting the rights of a nation. So my personal view is that either we're going to go back to war, but it would be difficult for The United States for a number of reasons.
One is that there's a lot of internal pressure in The United States. That's why Trump accepted this in the first place, the Iranian framework. And, there's a lot of international pressure on The United States. And remember, the Strait Of Hormuz right now as we speak is closed. And, in addition to that, I'm I used to I was in the war many years ago, so I'm not I can't say I'm an expert on military affairs when I thought it was the nineteen eighties as a volunteer, but that was a long time ago.
But US equipment brought obviously. Yeah. Have to remain in the region. That's the Persian Gulf gets very humid and hot, and, they will have sandstorms in the Arabian Peninsula. And if I recall correctly, in the past wars against Iraq, subsequently, the US military had lots of damage, and they had to spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars to repair all the trucks and the planes and and all that.
And and this time around, they're not even well protected because their bases have been destroyed, they were rushed into the region. And it was supposed to be a very short war where where they would easily defeat Iran. And so I think it's going to be very difficult for The United States to maintain this force in the region without the it becoming a a a larger and more difficult burden as each day goes by. But still, the Iranians are preparing themselves for the worst. They're not going to because we already negotiated with Americans twice, and we saw how both of those attempts to negotiate turned out.
One, as we're negotiating, they carried out they launched a a 12 war, a Blitzkrieg attack. And then last month, again, we were negotiating, making progress, and they launched another war. So it's not as if the Iranians are going to have any faith in the upcoming negotiations. And as I said, as we speak, Israelis are doing whatever they can to prevent peace from spreading. These vicious attacks on Lebanon just slaughtering women and children.
Hundreds so far have been murdered in the last few hours. It's just unbelievable carnage. This is being done to prevent the ceasefire from working. And Trump, by changing his position, by saying that Lebanon is not a part of it, is showing both his own weakness, and, it is showing us that we should be prepared for renewed war despite the difficulties that that would have for The United States.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So Joe Kent, he was, well, tweeting out a recording of himself where he was making the argument. If The US wants this peace deal to work, then they have to find a way of restraining Israel. His argument was that Israel will do anything possible to disrupt this peace or prevent. And, again, that's not really delving into conspiracy theories because if you follow the Israeli media today, they are, you know, devastated almost.
I saw also video of people like Mark Levin, you know, not not in Israel, of course, but almost shaking out of, you know, frustration that the ceasefire could have been accepted. And so so, again, I I
Speaker 1: guess taking a lot of yeah. I'm sure they're taking a lot of pleasure in the bombing of Lebanese cities and the massacre of women show and children because that's how they really are. And that's really what Netanyahu is doing. He's trying to destroy the ceasefire, but, also, he wants to kill people so that the Israeli people will, you know, give him some more, leeway, give him more because this is a genocidal society as we've seen in the polls.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I've been watching those videos out of Lebanon today as well. Apparently, been been just bombed nonstop the whole day. And they also yeah.
The videos are coming out of residential areas, so just men, women, and children slaughtered. And for for all the people who are you know, say that they're relieved that there's a ceasefire, it's very strange that there's not more of them speaking out against this because this is well, predictably, this is, destroying the ceasefire. Well, it's a violation of the ceasefire.
Speaker 1: But Well, Glenn, I'm sorry for interrupting you for the second time. But why why would they say anything? I mean, Trump has been saying that he is going to obliterate Iran for a few weeks now. Recently, he's been saying he'll take Iran back to the stone age. And just less than a couple forty eight hours ago, he said that he's going to erase the Iranian civilization from the earth.
Have you seen any major Western journalists speak up in outrage about the threat to carry out the greatest holocaust in human history by far? Have you seen any western even opponents of Trump? Have you seen the Washington Post, the Guardian, or any of these, progressives mainstream or, you know, liberals or conservatives, those who are in the mainstream? Have have any of them expressed outrage saying, Europe, you want to commit, you know? Have you seen the New York Times put out a big, piece, shaming Trump and saying you're a war criminal?
No. Because the m for the empire, we are all worthless. We are all Amalek. Just like just like with the Zionists, we are all Amalek. We are we are subhuman to them.
We're subhuman to those journalists who have 2,000,000, 3,000,000 followers, hundreds of thousands of followers, but have said nothing. So why should they be outraged by the slaughter of Lebanese women and children? In fact, what they will try to do is justify it. You'll see in Western reports that these are Hezbollah strongholds or Hezbollah bases, whereas they've known throughout that the Israeli regime carries out the Dahi doctrine. In other words, flattening the city, just like, mowing the law in Gaza.
Dahi is Southern Beirut. They mean, you know, destroy it. And mowing the law means lawn means Gaza flattening it. That's open policy, but none of these Western journalists say anything because they have no moral compass. And when I when I say this is the West is governed by the Epstein class, that's exactly what I mean.
The media is owned by the Epstein class. These are just media workers for the oligarchy, and the governments are owned by the Epstein class. Otherwise, what sane person would watch this slaughter and not be outraged?
Speaker 0: I think that's a fair point. I I saw this, yeah, also, news report coming out of BBC where they allegedly interviewed an Iranian in Tehran who argued that, well, you know, if The US will destroy all power plants, bridges, and also even drop drop a nuclear bomb on Tehran and wipe out everything, I guess, you know, it would be better than living under this government sorry, regime. And this is kind of the yeah. So, you know, it's the the I think it's important because it's not as if this genocidal mindset is limited to Trump alone. It's very much something you see beyond, which is kind of frightening.
And, also, it's very self destructive for the West, you can say, because in the West, the whole political West is bases its legitimacy on the whole humanitarian, liberal democratic narrative. So when you're, on the other hand, you know, going providing legitimacy for a holocaust against the the Iranian civilization, then it's you you spark a legitimacy crisis within as well. But I I did wanna ask, this is the ceasefire is supposed to be the the terms over the next two weeks. But over these two weeks, negotiations have to, you know, persist for something more concrete, you know, something where Trump can't just tweet something out in twenty minutes from now where he, you know, essentially puts Lebanon out of the deal or yeah. How how is is the two weeks enough?
Do you think anything can actually come out at the end of these two weeks?
Speaker 1: I think if things go very well, the two weeks will be extended, and maybe they'll agree on some minor issues or some easier issues to deal with. But I don't believe that we're going to have an agreement with The United States over the, you know, the the 10 points that that that Iran has put in the plan because that's not just how that's not how The United States works. It is an empire, and and it's an arrogant empire. And Trump is the most arrogant of the arrogant, emperors of empire. And in addition to that, Trump is he's all over the place.
He'll say something today and something else tomorrow. He'll say something this morning, something else this afternoon. He'll some say something in the in one sentence and say the opposite in another. So I I do not envy those who are going to be negotiating with the United States directly or indirectly or passing messages back and forth. But what isn't what I think is right now, the the the big question is whether we're going to have renewed fighting between Iran and The United States in the coming weeks.
Again, I I I think the Iranians I'm sure that the Iranians are preparing themselves as we speak for further bloodshed and further attacks. But I think that it will be, as I said earlier, difficult for Trump to restart this war because it's already very unpopular. It has gone nowhere, and there's absolutely no sign that Iran has, grown any weaker. For for for forty days, the Iranians have been firing missiles day and night at the Israeli regime at The US, missiles and drones, at US, assets in the Persian Gulf, and as at proxies that are complicit in the war. There's no, there's no end to the capabilities of Iran, for the months to come.
The my understanding is that Iran has far more missiles and drones than anyone can imagine. We've discussed this before. Iran has been preparing itself for this war for twenty five years, and Iran is very confident about its capabilities and the failure, to, in that operation that was to, steal Iran's uranium. I think that also contributes to the pressure on Trump. So I think for a host of reasons, it's going to be difficult for him to restart it, but I I think that, again, Iran is not going to take any chances.
It's going to prepare itself.
Speaker 0: Well, is it possible that the war takes on a different form if The US wants to exit from the war and essentially hand it over to The Gulf States or hand it over to Israel, is it possible that it will only well, transition to only Iranian Israeli war that is they say, well, Lebanon's not part of the ceasefire. Iran says, well, then Israel's not part of the ceasefire, and and just takes on different format. Because I also saw a report right before we logged on that Mirage fighter from The United Arab Emirates, was apparently attacking, an Iranian target that is the petro sorry, petro petrochemical facilities on this, I guess, Lavon Island. And yeah. So, again, it is I saw the some statements coming out of The UAE as well that they wanted the reparations from Iran.
So I'm not I'm not sure why they wanna keep this war going. I mean, they're very vulnerable, especially if The US doesn't want to have a a leading role anymore. But is it possible that this becomes The US excuse itself and hand over to the, to the Gulf states and the Israelis?
Speaker 1: Well, the Persian Gulf regimes are not in a position to fight Iran. And if they do you know, again, as I said earlier, we're heading towards warm weather. Here, you've you've been to Tehran. We have mountains full of snow right now. We have no you know, if if if we have no electricity, let's say, it'll get very hot in the summer, and it'll be difficult for us to sleep at night in the heat if we don't have our cooler the AC on.
But in The Emirates, if they don't have electricity, if they don't have, their critical infrastructure, everyone will have to leave. The same is true with Kuwait and Qatar. And this you know, all the assets of these regimes are right alongside the coast. They're deserts. In fact, it's Yemen and Iran and Iraq and Lebanon have forests.
They have, you know, forest seasons, but these countries are deserts. All they have is oil and gas, and they're totally dependent on this for their economy. And all of their installations are right in front of Iran. They're not deep inside. These countries are small except for the Saudis.
So if they want to get into conflict with Iran, I think that would be the end of these regimes. It would end very swiftly. So the Emirates should, you know, mind you know, remember, you know, that they are not important and know their place, And the Iranians will control the Strait Of Hormuz. So if the Emirates wants to fight, then Iran will hit it, and it will not allow it to use the Strait Of Hormuz, and probably the ruling family will be gone within a few days. And the same is true with others, so I don't see them to be in being in any position to confront Iran.
Regarding the Israeli regime, that is quite possible. As Iran strikes for because of the violations and the slaughter of women and children in Lebanon, the Israeli regime may retaliate. And then since the Israeli regime uses American, tank the Americans help them refuel Israeli jets, then we'll have to see, you know, what role The United States will want to play in all this. So that could lead again to Iran US confrontation. But we've had Iran, and the Israeli regime strike at each other before.
That was the twelve day war, and we've been seeing that, in the past forty days. The Iranians are more than prepared to continue to do this, to to strike them time and time again until they stop. But then the Strait Of Hormuz will remain closed, and then the world will recognize that it is the Israeli regime that is taking them, their people, their societies, their countries towards catastrophe. Netanyahu and the Zionists are pushing the war world towards a global depression. And so by violating the ceasefire and slaughtering people in Lebanon and restarting the fight.
They are blocking the normalization of the flow of oil and LNG and fertilizers. So the pressure will build on Trump and the Israeli regime. And, for example, India, whose government has been close to the Israeli regime, I think they know quite well where their economy is heading and who is responsible. So will the Indians continue to show the sort of support they did after all the Israeli regime has done to their economy? Who knows?
Speaker 0: Well, I saw Pete Hegseth giving a speech. Well, he gave a lot of speeches, but it appeared the way I interpreted it, as a great effort to try to sell this war as a victory. So, you know, he said the Iranians were begging for this deal. He went on listing all the people they had killed as a way of portraying this as a victory, but it it did make me think, though, that the the pressure that Trump must be under because he has to sell this as a victory. As you said, he he initially argued that the only acceptable outcome was the unconditional surrender of Iran.
But now suddenly, they're gonna the Iranians and Americans will meet again to negotiate. But instead of negotiating enrichment, Iran enrichment, ballistic missiles, regional partnerships, they will start to negotiate, Iran's control of Hormuz. It's, how it should set up the toll booths essentially to to charge ships for transit. They're gonna negotiate removing all sanctions on Iran. It's gonna be very difficult for Trump, I'm thinking, to sell this as a victory when, you know, this is not what you would negotiate with, an adversary which just capitulated.
It doesn't really make much sense. So, you know, I don't mean to demean his skill at BS, but, this goes far beyond that, I think.
Speaker 1: Yes. We've reached new heights in in BS when it comes to Trump and banks that but I think the the important thing right now is that until we have a real ceasefire, I don't see the normalization of the flow of energy from the Persian Gulf region happening. And on the other hand on the other hand, if these Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf want to behave in a confrontational manner to Iran, I mean, they're going to have to pay compensation. They're going to have to pay reparations for what they've done. But if they want to push, then they will be definitely on the losing end.
I think after forty days when the superpower and its Israeli and ally, which, of course, has all the weapons that the superpower can give, along with all its proxies in the region who directly supported them and other regimes who indirectly supported them, like Turkey and The Republic Of Azerbaijan who helped Israelis and Americans in their own way, the governments. If The United States couldn't defeat Iran under those conditions and was seeking for a ceasefire, then what in the world does The United Arab Emirates or Kuwait think it's going they're going to do to Iran? So they should, you know, step you know, stand down, be calm, and accept the fact that they lost this war. They were complicit. They they helped carry out this war.
But, again, I think the big question is what's going to happen in Lebanon. Is Iran is now going hitting the Israeli regime. Is the Israeli regime going to keep striking Lebanon? Is it going to now start striking Iran again? So it's not at all clear that we're even going to get to the negotiations.
And if we do get to the negotiations with the Strait Of Hormuz being closed, it's not clear how much forward we can go. Because if The United States is not willing or capable of reining in their mad dog in Tel Aviv, then I think, the purpose of the talks, will be, you know, on there will be no purpose for those talks. Yeah. The well, how do
Speaker 0: you unpack, though, the the deal now for the for the ceasefire? I when they said no more strikes on Lebanon, but the Israelis are already occupying Lebanon. They're in Lebanon. Are they are they under this deal, withdrawing, or are they holding their positions? Or, what what exactly is expected, from each side here?
Speaker 1: I I don't know those specific details. That's a that's a very good point. And, actually, I asked someone about this who, he didn't know either. So I guess that'll come out in the days ahead. If I if I get any news on that, I'll send it to you, so that you could use it for your subsequent programs.
But I don't I don't know. That's a that's a very good question because the the method in which Hezbollah has been fighting this time around is very different from what it was during the war the previous war. And, Hezbollah has been much more fluid this time around, and it's been, they've been fighting less like a conventional force than a command than a commando force, and they've been hitting the Israeli regime very hard. So where are the lines exactly? That is a, you know, open question.
Last time, Ezbollah held them back. And Ezbollah gave that way. And the only reason why the Israelis came in was after the ceasefire, the Israeli regime violated it, and the government in Beirut was United States. So they lack of the army in the South and his regime after this was not one of them, they moved forward. This time around, since the battlefield is much, as I said, much it's a different type of war, and Hezbollah has been very successful.
It's unclear to me, you know, what a ceasefire would be unless, of course, it means that the Israelis would have to return to the borders, which are clear or to where they were before this war, which are which is more or less clear, but I don't know.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It just seems extraordinary that that this is what's, disrupting the entire, ceasefire because, again, if the Pakistani prime minister, which, you know, were the go between guy, argues that the Lebanon is part of the deal, and now we hear from the from president Trump that, no, it's not, it's, it's not part of the deal. This is, he called it a, quote, a separate skirmish. I mean, it is quite extraordinary. I mean, there must there must be some new document.
I mean, this is it's just shocking to me that there's nothing to be, to be said there. But, also, even if it was or wasn't either way, one would have to explain why this intense bombing began exactly today on the first day of the ceasefire, why this, you know, brutal carpet bombing of Beirut? It's, I mean, one one can only interpret it as an effort to disrupt the ceasefire, but if The US wants the ceasefire, why no pushback then against the the Israelis for for doing this? I mean, at least wait a week until, you know, the ceasefire seems to be settling. It's it just seems obvious obvious, effort to to disrupt the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And, you know, again, it's rep repetitive what I'm saying, and I apologize. But is there any condemnation coming from Europe or United States for the carbon bombing? Is anyone outraged? Are there any sanctions going to be put in place? No.
So the Israeli regime can do whatever it wants, and that is basically why, the Iranians, are going to have to meet force with force because The United States and the West allows the Israeli regime to get away with everything. I mean, they've gotten away with genocide for two and a half years. True. The world has turned against it. Public opinion has turned against it.
Ordinary Americans are turning against it. But still, the the the the elites in Washington and across Europe, they fully support, the genocide and the genocidal acts. So for Iran, how can you negotiate with a regime, a Trump regime, where the the the president changes his position? As you said, the Pakistani prime minister very clearly says it's a part of the agreement, and this is the Pakistani prime minister who's who listens carefully to what the Americans say. I don't want to be insulting or anything, but I think you saw his tweet where he basically cut and paste the American, tweet.
And and and then he he tweeted it as his own, and then I they had hit they had to change it. It was clear that the text was an American text. So when the Pakistanis are so deeply influenced by the government, so deeply influenced by the, United States, when it says that Lebanon is a part of the ceasefire, and it is definitely a part of the ceasefire?
Speaker 0: Well, let's just move one one step further. That is, into the actual deal that's being made because, what shocked, I guess, much of the American media was that, Trump accepted that the Strait Of Hormuz would be, controlled by Iran. Or or more specifically, was it's supposed to be both the Iranians and Oman supposed to be able to co manage it or both at least be able to to to get some fees for using the strait. Is this an effort to set up kind of a collective, I guess, security arrangement or economic arrangement as opposed to only having Iran do it, or or was this part of a compromise? Because I can see why Iran can claim can claim it.
That is if he wants reparation for what was done against it. But Oman, is it more just about the geography, or, or is it about the collective security? Or how how how do you make, sense of this?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, Oman has had a much more reasonable relationship with Iran. And during the last forty days, you've I'm sure you've seen and your your viewers have noticed that Iran has left Oman untouched even though they too have American faces. Iran has because Oman has behaved better than the others, it's treated it differently. And Oman, of course, is, the country that owns the other side of the Strait Of Hormuz. And it would be easier for Iran if Oman, was cooperating with it with regards to the status and and the management of the Strait Of Hormuz.
Now what exactly would the relationship be, and what would Oman get out of this? What would Iran get out of this? That, I think, is something that will have to come out of negotiations, but those negotiations have been taking place already. And the Iranian parliament is preparing a, a law, with regards to the management of the Strait Of Hormuz. But the interesting thing is we would have never moved in this direction if The United States had not launched this war.
We had no plans to take control of the Strait Of Hormuz, but The United States basically pushed us in that direction. And I must say, Glenn, that by controlling the Strait Of Hormuz, Iran becomes a much more powerful country than it was before, but also by really winning the war. And I'm not saying the war is over. By winning the war, the Iranians, I think, have turned into a much more powerful country. This is something that I think we discussed earlier a few couple weeks ago, maybe.
Iran is much more powerful today, and in my opinion, The United States is a much weaker entity than what it was before. And I think countries across the global south will see this as a major sign of US weakness. Countries that almost universally, except for China, whenever The United States bullied them about trade and tariffs, now perhaps they will become a bit more assertive in defending their their rights. The Indians, the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, across the world, across the global majority, they've been bullied, and now Iran has basically told the Americans no, and the Americans did the worst crimes against the country along with their allies, and they failed. So I think that Iran becomes much more powerful.
The United States becomes, relatively speaking, much weaker. And the Israeli regime loses because it did not succeed in this war, and it's and its main supporter has lost a lot of credibility and authority, and that is bad for the regime itself. But, also, the big losers are these five family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf. They, they want to have their cake and eat it too, and now they are hungry and have no cake.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was, I interviewed yesterday a common friend of ours, Alastair Crook, who was making the the same point that, Iran's, well, seeming victory in this war is quite transformative to the entire international system that is not just a military victory over the the former global hegemon, but also, the economic aspect of it. That is yeah. You can argue the controlling Australia or most, only the fees would well, some say would amount to somewhere up to a 100,000,000,000 a year. I'm I'm not sure.
I haven't, you know, checked the numbers. But but, anyways, it's it's quite a significant, yeah, just the money. But it's not just this. It's also, as you said, the ability to stand up to The United States. This trade can then be organized in, in other currencies, which then puts the petrodollar under under stress.
It would also, essentially, elevate the cost of being an American frontline state, vassal, ally, whatever one wants to call it. And this, again, would have ramifications even beyond the Middle Eastern region. That is Europe, East Asia. So this is gonna have huge a huge impact. But but it's no.
It's it's it's quite extraordinary what what has happened and how foolish it was for Trump to actually get into this war. I mean, when he saw all the former presidents who had a great pressure to attack Iran but never did, the idea that this was just because they weren't as strong as him, you know, not as decisive as opposed to not being as foolish. I mean, it's just it's quite amazing. But the it it's been some reports that it, it was China that, also called Iran and asked them to accept the ceasefire deal to get an end to the to the war. Did you have any information on this?
Or
Speaker 1: I doubt that such a thing is true because what was important for Iran was for Trump to give up his 15 plan and to recognize Iran's 10 plan. And that again, Iran is under no illusion that Trump is going to come to the negotiating table and say, okay. I I accept, and, everything is finished, and let's move on. But that, I think, was important. It was a very symbolic moment, I think, for the entire world.
It I think it symbolizes a major shift in in in global affairs. Perhaps and, again, we could have war, but perhaps in a way, one of if not the most significant, one of the most significant moments since, the second World War. I personally think it may be the most significant, the last forty days. But, for Trump to make that transition, to to accept that, that is a humiliation. There's there's no way there's no other way to look at it, and that was important for Iran.
But at the same time, Iran is, again, under no illusions. It's continue right now, it briefly opened the Strait Of Hormoz and closed it again because of what the Israeli regime did. It's firing missiles at the Israeli regime, and it's also fired missiles and drone drones at these Arab regimes after that strike was carried out against Iran. So Iran is going to prepare itself in case Trump wants to go back to wars, feels that he has to go back to war. But I should also, by the way, point out that the Strait Of Hormuz has Iran is going to be treating friendly countries in a different way than countries that have cooperated with Americans in this in this in this aggression.
So, I think the what, you know, Chinese ships and Russian ships and Iraqi ships will be treated then differently than Saudi ships or British ships or American ships or Canadian ships or Australian ships.
Speaker 0: Well, just a last question. Given that this war has already spread, and, it's not merely a war only between The United States and Israel oh, no. Sorry. And and Iran, as obvious with Israel attacking Lebanon. But but also, you you mentioned previously that, some borders could be changed in this war.
For example, Iraq might, seize Kuwait. Well, I mean, it's not as if Iran, you know, is this puppet master who controls everything in the region. It has regional partners and allies, but they have some autonomy in, in in their own interest. I mean, it's how much can be expected to well, can we expect everything to die down as a result of this? I know this is the driving force, but do do do do you see, other parts of this conflict continuing?
For example, Kuwait ending up as Iraqi territory.
Speaker 1: Well, the strength of Iran, part of it lies in the fact that it has these alliances. There's no doubt about that. Iraq has played an enormous role in, this war, and it has, to a degree, liberated itself of American occupation. Not fully, but it has made it's achieved major results. Yemen too, and, of course, Hezbollah, taking this opportunity to hit back at the Israeli regime so that it can take back its countries, the the the occupied territory, and have a real ceasefire because the Israeli regime has been killing Lebanese civilians every day since the so called ceasefire, just like they do in Gaza.
So this it's, you a collective strength, but the future depends on these Arab family regimes. If these regimes did not allow The United States to use their airspace and their territory and their sea and their their shoreline, we would not have had this war. Americans could not carry out a war under, those circumstances. It would have been much more difficult, and I I don't think that they would have launched the war in the first place. If these regimes rethink their foreign policy and behave normally like normal countries instead of conspiring and bringing in foreign powers to to, to to create and create a platform for them to invade other countries.
If if they discontinue that policy, things they will be safe. It it will never be like what it was before. Those Epstein class billionaires are not ever going to come back to The Emirates and Qatar and all those corruption there that, you know, I can't explain here, that that they're very well known for. That's that's not going to come back, fortunately, for them, for their own people. But, but they can live normally.
But if they choose a different path, I don't think their countries will exist in future, and then the borders will change.
Speaker 0: You know, that's a great point. I mean, even even if the ceasefire would hold, a permanent peace deal would come through after this, the damage that has already been done I mean, people focus on the global economy with the energy, the and and the the the fertilizers, all of this. But but for the Gulf States, it's gonna be very hard for Qatar, United Arab Emirates, to recover from this, it seems. But, no. It is I feel like we're gonna be dealing even if a piece is reached, the repercussions of this is something that we will have to deal with for many years to come.
So, yeah. Interesting is is one word to say, but, yeah, it's, quite disruptive. And, I keep going back to the point. It's it's quite amazing given how predictable a lot of this should have been that they still chose this war. But, yeah, let's hope the ceasefire holds, but I I share your pessimism.
So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Just one final point, and I've said this in in a couple of other places too, if not more, that, you know, it didn't have to be this way. If the Americans didn't listen to the Zionists, we would not be in this situation at all, and the global economy would be much better. The Zionists have brought this about. And, you know, two American authors, as I said earlier, you know, I I said to you, Flint and Hilli Leverett, I don't know if you know them. Do you have you read their book yourself, going to Tehran?
No. It's it's a very good book, and I advise people to read it. If American when they were both White House they worked in the White House under George w Bush, and Flint resigned. Flint Levert resigned over Iraq. But they were people in power, and they wrote a very good book on Iran.
I don't agree with everything in it called going to Tehran. And, they were attacked from both the Republicans and the Democrats and all the think tankers. They were demonized and marginalized. And, but if they had been listened to, if that book had been read and people had listened to them, we wouldn't be where we are today. And by now, Iran and The United States would have had normal relations, but, the Zionists wouldn't have it.
And even though Hillary, she's Jewish, but she was demonized for for this book. Very two very, very, very decent people. Very, very, very principled people. But, you know, this is this is what Zionism does. It is destructive just like it they carpet bomb Beirut.
They carpet bomb everything in our region, and they carpet bomb the prospects for peace, stability, and prosperity for people across the world. And the energy crisis that is now beginning to show itself is a result of this.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Oh, that's, well, it's important historical fact of that, especially after the September eleven attacks that Iran was working very hard to improve and even work relations with US and even work with The United States and and, well, so so many times to normalize relations. And Russia too, by the way. That is it's often pointed out that Putin was the first one who called Bush after the attacks, and he saw this as an opportunity to transcend the whole Cold War legacy and instead find himself on the same page and work together. But sometimes But also they don't take yes as an answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, also, because Iran at that time, and I at that time, believe the official narrative of 09/11, and we thought that The United States had learned its lesson. Only years later and I've I've ignored a lot of people and probably have done injustice to some. Nine eleven for many years. And now my views have is during the last couple of years have evolved very drastically.
I've seen Tucker Carlson's documentary and other evidence. And but back then, Iran really thought The United States had learned a lesson that not use using extremists and terrorists and tech theories and what you know? That that was a that was that caused such damage and that they would change. But soon we saw Wesley Clark tell us that the plan is to invade seven countries in five years. And now when you look at it, I think it becomes clear what all that was about.
The only thing was that instead of five years, it took twenty five years, and the last country didn't work out as planned.
Speaker 0: Now we installed an Al Qaeda leader in Syria. I just feel like we've seen this movie before. Didn't care for it, but, here we are again. So, no, lessons not learned, it seems. Well, I know you're quite busy there in Tehran.
So as always, thank you very much for taking time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. It's always a great honor being on the show.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Iran Destroys U.S. Aircraft - Trump Threatens Total War https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RU8yBjJNUaE https://t.co/CxzhaEfU0J
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson and the host discuss the extraordinary and escalating tensions around Iran, the Middle East, and the United States’ role in the region.
- The guests reference recent remarks by Donald Trump about Iran, noting Trump’s statement that Iran has until Tuesday to reach a deal or “I am blowing up everything,” with a quoted line describing Tuesday as “power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran,” followed by “open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards or you’ll be living in hell.” They describe this rhetoric as madness and suggest the rhetoric signals a potential for a severe U.S. action.
- They contrast Trump’s stated plan with the capabilities and willingness of the U.S. military, arguing there are three distinct elements: what Trump wants to do, what the U.S. military can do, and what the U.S. military is willing to do. They discuss a hypothetical ground operation targeting Iran, including possible actions such as striking Natanz or a nuclear-related site, and potentially hitting a “underground missile factory” at Kesheveh, while acknowledging the risk and uncertainty of such plans.
- The conversation details a Friday event in which a U.S. F-15 was shot down, and the implications for the broader operation: A-10 Warthog, F-16s, two Black Hawk helicopters (Pave Hawks), and two C-130s were reportedly lost, with speculation about additional losses. They discuss the Pentagon’s statements about casualties and the possibility that other aircraft losses were connected to a rescue attempt for a downed pilot. They estimate several U.S. airframes lost in the effort to recover one pilot and discuss the high costs and risks of attempting CSAR (combat search and rescue).
- The speakers reflect on the status of U.S. combat leadership and the debates surrounding purges of senior officers. One guest emphasizes that the fired leaders (Hodney and Randy George) were not operational decision-makers for Iran and argues the purge appears political rather than war-related, describing it as part of a broader pattern of politicization of the senior ranks.
- They discuss the Israeli war effort, noting significant strain from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and questions about Israel’s manpower and reserve mobilization. They mention reports that 300,000 reservists have been activated and talk of an additional 400,000 being considered. The discussion touches on claims that Israel is attacking Iranian negotiating participants and how the U.S. could be drawn into a broader conflict. They critique the Israeli military’s leadership structure, arguing that young officers with limited experience lead a reserve-based force, which they view as contributing to questionable battlefield performance.
- The Iranian strategy is analyzed as aiming to break U.S. control in the Persian Gulf and to compel adversaries to negotiate by threatening or constraining energy flows. The guests detail Iran’s actions: targeting oil facilities and ports around Haifa and Tel Aviv, Damona (near the suspected nuclear sites), and claims of missiles hitting a major building in Haifa. They describe widespread civilian disruption in Israel (bomb shelters, subway tents) and emphasize the vulnerability of Israel given its manpower challenges and reliance on U.S. and Western support.
- The broader strategic landscape is assessed: Iran’s goal to control the Gulf and oil, with potential consequences for global energy markets, shipping costs, and the international economy. They discuss how Iran’s actions may integrate with China and Russia, including potential shifts in currency use (yuan) for trade and new financial arrangements, such as Deutsche Bank offering Chinese bonds.
- They discuss the economic and geopolitical ripple effects beyond the battlefield: rising U.S. fuel prices (gas increasing sharply in parts of the U.S., including Florida), potential airline disruptions, and the broader risk to European energy security as sanctions and alternative energy pathways come under stress. They note that Europe’s energy strategies and alliances may be forced to adapt, potentially shifting energy flows to China or Russia, and the possibility of Europe’s economy suffering from disrupted energy supplies.
- Toward the end, the speakers acknowledge the difficulty of stopping escalation and the need for major powers to negotiate new terms for the post-unipolar order. They caution that reconciliations are unlikely in the near term, warning of the potential for a broader conflict if leaders do not find a path away from continued escalation. They close with a somewhat pessimistic view, acknowledging that even if the war ends soon, the economic ramifications will be long-lasting. They joke that, at minimum, they’ll have more material to discuss next week, given Trump’s actions.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, former CI analyst and author at Sonar twenty one, and again, a great place for information. So I will leave a link to Sonar twenty one in the description. So thanks again, Larry, for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Hey. Boy, I wish we had other things to talk about such as great vacation spots in the world or, you know, a wonderful cuisine to cook on Easter Sunday, you know, something like that. But good God, we're in the midst of madness.
Speaker 0: Yeah. We were just talking before we started recording here that Trump may have lost his mind. I mean, I I often make the point. I was the one who was one of the people who were excited or optimistic about his reelection. I kind of bought into the whole peace ticket and ending the Ukraine war, ending the forever wars.
I mean, he was bringing on Tulsi Gabbard. It's I thought it was a good reason to be opt optimistic as the alternative was essentially more Washington, more war. But, yeah, I guess it doesn't matter who you vote for, but except Trump, he appears to be yeah. The rhetoric, it's yeah. It's quite concerning.
He just gave an announcement saying that Iran has until Tuesday to make a deal, and then and this is a direct quote. Otherwise, quote, I am blowing up everything. I mean, it's Well,
Speaker 1: read read the rest of it too. I mean, the the I mean, the language that he used was just unbelievable. You know, I want to get the let me see if I can find it and get the get the quote exactly right. He said, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it.
And then quote, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah, president Donald J. Trump. I I woke up to this this morning and went, what in the this is crazy territory.
This is madness of King George. I mean, it's like it's like that, the scene that there was a movie with, George Clooney years ago, and and, I forget the name of the actor who played this lawyer who was representing this young woman who had been violated by a pharmaceutical company. And in the midst of the deposition, the lawyer starts taking off all of his clothes and screaming and ranting. That's what Donald Trump just did here. He just he might as well have just taken off his clothes and run around the White House outside naked.
It is the the the the time for the twenty fifth amendment to be enacted has come. The Trump's cabinet needs to they need to say, okay. Let's let's get him into a a nice white coat that the arms wrap around the back. He can give himself a big hug and walk him out of the White House. He has completely, gone off the off the rails.
Speaker 0: Well, I guess this was always a risk of the Trump presidency that this whole strategy was always the same, that is do maximum pressure and then get a deal. Well, his maximum pressure on Iran was war, and now he doesn't know how to get out of this. And I think this is why the panic has set in because he he can't stay. I mean, this is gonna result in disaster. And, also, he can't leave because without the Strait Of Hormuz, the whole region would be reshaped to Iran's advantage, and it would be the also the end of his presidency.
So Correct. He he really got himself trapped in this, and should have been predictable, I think. I mean, there was no real justification for this war. There's a low chance of success and, of course, extremely high risk, especially linked to the lack of an exit strategy. Again, very similar to a lot of these forever wars.
But how do you see things going with the ramp up? I mean, I I can see that he's gonna blow up everything. That's possible. He might even go for Cargill, and I mean, Iran's retaliation goes against the Gulf States, not directly against The US. So it might be a price he's willing to pay.
It's a bit like with the Europeans. They're willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. He's he might be willing to do the same with the Gulf States. Yeah. But but but over the past few days, how what do you make of this the planes being shot down, the rescue missions?
Yeah. What what is your take away from this? Because these guys were supposed to be unimpeded. They were supposed to have air dominance. That's what he told everyone.
Speaker 1: So let's differentiate between what Trump wants to do and what the US military can do and what the US military is willing to do. I think, you know, those are three different areas. The chess pieces prior to Friday morning in Iran were all lined up for a US ground operation. It may have involved something such as I guess they had found an airfield, an unused airfield that was, you know, about 200 miles in Iran, 100 miles plus inside the Iranian border, that was near Natanz so that they would go in there, land, and then helicopters would be refueled at that site, and they would continue on with special operations forces to hit Natanz and try to take control of enriched uranium that they believe might be there. And I say that I'm just I'm making that judgment based upon what I'm seeing.
I'm not nobody's feeding me information on this. But I think as sort of preparation for that operation, that's where this F-fifteen gets shot down. Now, all of a sudden, boom, the entire plan starts to fall apart, or it has to be delayed. One of the, you know, one of the guys I worked with for years, he was the last colonel to command AFSOC, Air Force Special Operations Command, that was located up at Hurlburt Airfield in the, you know, the armpit of Florida. And he was involved in Vietnam in what they call CSAR, combat search and rescue missions.
And, you know, a lot of what happened in those pilot would get shot down. And when you, you know, you'd send out two or three different aircraft back then, two or three different, helicopters and such to try to affect the rescue. And more often than not, some of the rescuers get shot down. And so instead of losing just one person, end up losing, you know, six, ten more. Well, that's exactly what happened on Friday.
Now, the Pentagon saying nobody else was killed. I I've personally, I I think they're lying because there was there was one video that looked to be a c one thirty, Hercules that that was hit in the air, caught on fire, and the fire would be could be explained because that c one thirty also carries a load of fuel that can be used to refuel helicopters. But it crashed and exploded. But what we do know is that even according to the Pentagon, that in addition to the F-fifteen, an A-ten Warthog, it was shot down. Pilot got out.
Looks like they lost an F-sixteen. They lost at least two Black Hawk helicopters or advanced, they're called Pave Hawks. They lost two of those. And then they admit they lost two C-130s that were on the ground and stuck. And so, the Pentagon claims we blew them up.
Well, you know, again, I think those two may have been even connected with that operation. But when you sit down to try to rescue one pilot, we lost at least five other types of aircraft, airframes, fixed wing and rotary wing. Well, you know, if you had that many losses, just one and consumed. The US, you know, the command headquarters that MacDill Air Force Base, the CENTCOM headquarters, the combined air operations center there, I think it's still up and functioning at Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar and other locations were just, you know, all hands on deck trying to find and locate that pilot because they didn't want him to be captured by Iran. So, you know, this is worried more about political optics, you know, that we can't oh, we can't have Iran celebrating the capture of a US prisoner.
But in the course of it, we lost let's say we lost close to half $1,000,000,000 in aircraft yesterday, something like that, between all the different aircraft that went down, just to save one guy. You know, this is the absurdity of it. So if their if their plan is to put more aircraft into Iran now that they know that Iran's air defense is active, they have a loitering missile rocket, call it what you will, They launch it, and then it's like a glider. It's hovering around until it hones in on a target, and then boom. And it's not readily detected by conventional means the the aircraft, US aircraft use to detect threats.
So now they've got to take that into account. So Trump wants to launch a ground operation. I'm not you know, I don't know whether it is to take Karg Island alone or take Karg Island and then hit Natanz or Boucher, one of the nuclear power plants with a special operations raid, maybe try to hit an underground missile factory in Keshavah. You know, I don't know if it's one or all three, how ambitious is. But he wants to do it.
The military, I think right now, based upon the losses that they incurred on Friday are sticking back and saying, I'm not sure we can do this. Because as part of their planning, they've got to assume, okay, we're going to lose 10%, 20% of our airframes. Do we have enough CSAR, you know, the combat search and rescue crews available to carry out that kind of mission if it unfolds? And I'd say the answer there would be no. I mean, it would be almost a nightmare of how many aircraft we'd have to put into the area and that, again, be vulnerable to getting more shot down.
And then there's a question of, are senior officers willing to do this? And I think there's growing doubts on that front. The early optimism and enthusiasm that was accompanied this mission when we launched the attack on February 28, that's gone. You know, the sort of the excitement that fueled the particularly the younger guys, you know, the the lieutenants and captains and the who have never really experienced anything like this. They're all jazzed up.
Yeah, man, we get to go to war. And now all of a sudden, the reality of war is starting to hit home. And we don't know how many were again, in this attempt to rescue this pilot, I believe that there were probably at least six people killed and then several wounded, maybe more than 10 wounded. So, you know, it's a pretty heavy price to pay for rescuing, one pilot. Then it gets back to the this this is now the debate goes back to the debate of our combat pilots, you know, the Tom Cruise Top Gun model.
Does that even make sense anymore given the technological advances that have taken place and the capabilities to do remotely piloted aircraft where you don't actually you know, you could fly an F-thirty five remotely. You don't need a pilot in that. In fact, if you don't have a pilot in that, that plane can actually do more performance wise without a pilot because a significant expense in these combat aircraft is to build in life support systems because a human body can only stand so much g force. I don't know what the one point is where basically it shuts down the blood and the body, you can't live. You can't survive it.
Whereas the aircraft without a human being, man, it can, you know, do a lot of maneuvering. And that's not just The US. That applies to the Russians and Chinese. So but, you know, here we got the system. It's still it's an anachronism of the twentieth century.
If you go down, we're gonna come save you. And it's an honorable thing. And listen, the the PJs, the parachute, the the, you know, the the the air force, the para rescuers, they are terrific. They are an incredible lot. The pilots that are flying, you know, particular, I think there was a lot of task force 160 pilots engaged to this.
You know, a lot of very brave capable people being asked to do something incredibly stupid.
Speaker 0: Maybe something the good can come out of this, though. I mean, when The US had this success against Venezuela, it fueled this hubris which led to that attack on on Iran. Maybe, you know, some humbling is good before The US starts a war with Russia or China, which, you know, might end the world. So that being said, of course, this is already spiraling very quickly out of control. And Yeah.
As I said, optimism is largely gone, which means either one can adjust to these realities or one can, I guess, restock, you know, the chairs on the Titanic? And then it appears that that that might be something being done. I'm not sure how you read this current purging of US generals. I saw a hearing with Pete Tegseth where he was asked, how many do you know how many you fired? And he didn't know.
Apparently, it was eight. And then he was asked why? What's the reason for it? And he more or less, yeah, didn't answer this. So what do you make of this?
Because it's an interesting time to begin to purge your military leadership. I'm not sure if it's related to a ground war or what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually, I don't think it is. I've been fortunate to have a conversation with a friend of mine who's a he was a retired he was a senior officer in the Joint Special Operations Command arena. And so, know, what he shared with me, and let me just read this. He says that George, Randy George, the general who's the chief of staff of the army and Hodney were glorified administrative clerks. Nothing else.
They're not war fighters at all. Zero real influence in Iran. Both are big time military industrial corporation supporters. Both are Obama Biden appointees. Both are responsible for force development and new weapons fielding since the Ukraine and and Azeri wars.
Complete failure over four years. The best they could do is say it is possible to shorten off the shelf and new technology for drone warfare in three years. Well, said basically, none of these guys that were fired, the Chaplin, Hodney, and Randy George, they're not at all in the chain of command for operational decisions relative to the war in Iran. They're not in a position to be asked to deploy forces to support an operation. Now, that doesn't mean that they did not voice a strong disapproval.
You know, that's possible. But I would feel more comfortable reaching that judgment if since they resigned or have given up their jobs that one of them would have come out and spoken out. Instead, I think more of what we're seeing with this is it's a political purge. Heck, Seth and Trump, they're going after minorities. You know, they're going after black women, black men.
I mean, it really comes off as a racist tent. They're assuming that these people have these positions for because of DEI. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But what this continues a trend that started really in earnest under Barack Obama of politicization of the senior military ranks that you want people that are loyal to the president. But, you know, when they take it, they their oath is sworn to uphold, protect, and defend the constitution, not the political career of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump.
But instead, that's what it's become, that, you know, we saw it back under, Obama when they went after General Stanley McChrystal. And the irony there is McChrystal is just a he's sort of a dyed in the wool Democrat. They're very supportive of the kind of policies that Obama was pursuing. But, you know, he got accused of having said something unkind about Obama. So this is when you start changing military leadership because, you know, number one, the military leaders shouldn't be out in public making any kind of public statement about policy.
Their their job is to come up with and lay out military strategy and advise the president on what appropriate courses of action are. But if given an order to do something that they feel is wrong, immoral, illegal, resign. Resign in protest. You can do that. But none have done that over the years.
And so what we've got is sort of the creation of a Praetorian Guard where, you get rid of the old guard that was loyal to Joe Biden, and you bring in new guys who are going to be loyal to Donald Trump. And I don't I don't want anybody in leadership who's loyal to one guy or the other. I want someone who's gonna uphold the the the damn constitution. And that's so what we're seeing going on here is more of a political perch. I think it's not directly connected to the war.
Speaker 0: Okay. Well, I guess that's good, I guess, to to some extent. Well so well, you mentioned, yeah, the the problem with The United States, well, directly with Iran. That is it can't it can't, you know, leave without the Strait Of Hormuz open. He he can't open it by force, so Trump is left with now threatening to destroy the country, bring it back to the stone age unless or blow up everything in his words unless they do as they want.
But as the foreign minister of Iran said, you know, humbling or disciplining America, it's it's something they won't have an opportunity to do again. They can rebuild the bridges and everything. But, also, I think the the leading concern for them is that if this can be seen as success for The US, then The US will be back to finish the job later. So both so The US is in a dire strait. Of course, the Iranians are suffering greatly too.
But what do we know about the Israelis here, though? Because there's there's very tight control on information coming out. They put a lot of restrictions, and the Western countries, at least their media, very obediently follow this. So but still, sometimes we see some pictures coming out, and, you know, they're not untouched either. So Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, they're taking they're taking serious damage. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, what do we know?
Speaker 1: We know that Iran has been targeting now their oil refinery. They've essentially shut down the port at Haifa and Tel Aviv. They have hit, targets in and around Damona, the nuclear reactor, the site where the most most folks believe are the they keep their nuclear weapons. So and then I just got a before we came on air, I just got another heads up from somebody who follows this that apparently an Iranian missile just hit a a major building in Haifa, and that building has collapsed. And apparently, there were some, you know, key or Israeli military political figures in that building.
So Israel's going out of its way to try to pretend that nothing's happening. But what information does come out, you're beginning to see, you know, videos where they go into the subways in Tel Aviv, and people have actually set up tents on the subway platforms because they're spending so much time, in these, in these bomb shelters that, they don't have time, you know, to live above ground very easily. So and it's Israel, by virtue of its size, it's a very small country. And population wise, it doesn't have a lot. They've now run into grave difficulty with their offensive in Southern Lebanon.
The Hezbollah is inflicting tremendous losses on both in terms of machinery as well as personnel. And Hezbollah now has FPV, drones that are being that are fiber optic. So they, you know, they can't they're not subject to the normal detection and interference of conventional drones. They haven't they didn't have that back in 2006. So on top of, you know, RPGs and other systems, and, you know, it wouldn't surprise me that they've got some advanced U.
S. Equipment courtesy of the Ukrainians. So, you know, the weapons that have been stolen out of the largess of The U. S. Have made its way into the hands of Hezbollah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think the troop levels in Israel is really the Achilles' heel for them because they're not there's no lack of political will, it seems, and they get a lot of weapons, which they need, but it's mobilizing the required troops. I've seen some comments from the head of IDF as well saying that, yeah, that the IDF could collapse on itself Mhmm. If they don't resolve the manpower issue. So given this, it's a bit strange they choose now to discuss the re well, occupying Lebanon, given that this will require a lot of troops.
Yeah. But but but beyond this, though, I've I've also heard now that all these claims by Joe Kent, at least, that Israel is deliberately attacking and killing the people who will negotiate on the Iranian side with The United States. Correct. But this is well, I'm just wondering, to what how do you make sense of this? Because if The U the more The US is humiliated in this war, though and, again, the longer it goes on, the more The US will be humiliated.
This will have a backlash within The US. I mean, that is the people rising up saying, why do we allow the Israelis to pull us into this wars? It just seems like this isn't really in Israel's interest to put The US in such a vulnerable position. And also, The US could be chased out of the region unless it gets a proper deal. So how do you make sense of this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, was no thought given to a strategy and then coming up with a plan to implement said strategy. It's more like it's feelings, it's emotion. Israel Israel is guided by this extremist Zionist mentality right now. Now, Bibi Netanyahu is not a, you know, he's really not a believer. He's just he's just going along with it because it's politically convenient at this time.
But the people like the Ben Gavirs and the Bezalil Smotrich, they are true believers on this, and and they believe in in fact, what they're trying to do is create the conditions were in which it will put the Jewish people in danger of being exterminated so that the Messiah will return. I mean, is this insane, ridiculous, theological crap, but they really believe it. So they are trying their best to manufacture Armageddon in order that the Messiah will come to save them, and then saving them will destroy all the Amalek, finish the destruction of the evil Gentiles, Get rid of those Christians and Muslims. That's really what it's all about in their mind. So we can't dismiss or dismiss that as a factor.
We can't ignore it and pretend that it doesn't matter. It absolutely does matter. But then then you confront the reality. And as you pointed out, the Israeli military, it's a reserve army. And it really was modeled after, if you will, a little bit a little after the Soviet Army in some aspects because the Soviets never had the concept of a strong noncommissioned officer corps.
And when we're talking non commissioned officers, we're talking basically sergeants, you know, whether it's a staff sergeant, sergeant major, you know, senior enlisted personnel who've been in the army for, you know, ten years or more. And, know, by virtue of being that longevity, they learned a thing or two about how to survive both bureaucratically and in combat if necessary. But what happens in is when new officers come you come in, you got a lieutenant who shows up. He's like 22 years old. Okay.
Got just got out of West Point graduated college. Don't know anything And then, know, that that's where they start to get indoctrinated. And they're usually with a company like in the US Army with a staff sergeant who's 30 years old. So this 22 year old is accompanied by a 32 year old man and is able and if if that young officer is smart, they'll listen to what the 30 year old has to say. Well, in the Israeli army, you get a 22 year old captain and a 22 year old staff sergeant.
I mean, you get people that are at their ages, they haven't even really had the experience. It's more like a political promotion. And so that's what the Israeli army lacks that. That's why they are so poorly disciplined. That's why they are terrible with their tactics in the field because they're they're led by people that don't know what the hell they're doing.
And we've seen this over and over and over throughout the years. Now they're talk of trying to they had activated 300,000 reservists for the war in Gaza, and they haven't won that. They haven't defeated Hamas after now two and a half years. And now they're talking about the need to call up an additional 400,000 reservists. I don't think they have that many people that actually do it.
I mean, the total population of Vizure right now is reportedly around 10,000,000. It may have been reduced with people leaving the country. But even with 10,000,000, when you're talking roughly calling up 10% of your total population, I mean, that that that's almost the entirety of men between men and women between the ages of 18 and and 40. They're just you know, it doesn't work because, you know, that's supposed to be sort of the heart and soul of your workforce too. So, if they're getting pulled out, you know, who's left there to try to carry on what minimal economic activity is occurring?
Speaker 0: Well, as whole US has trapped itself, the Israelis are exhausting themselves, what do we know about the direction Iran is taking? That is the second Khamenei now and the overall strategy of the Iranians. Because, well, on one hand, it looks like one of the things which are really notable is how Iran is just following The US up this escalation ladder. That is what The US does. Iran shows it can do the same.
And I guess this is the biggest deterrent. That is it's very predictable. And one of the reasons I think Trump hasn't yet, you know, burned down all of Iran as he now threatens to do on Tuesday is is exactly because they can do the same against America's allies. Yeah. But but what do you see being their wider strategy?
Is it just, like, how is it just to force The US to leave without without the Strait Of Hormuz? Or how do you see this? Yeah. No.
Speaker 1: I I think Iran's now ultimate strategy and one I believe that both the Russians and Chinese endorse is breaking The US control and influence in the in the Persian Gulf that so many of the Gulf Arabs, particularly the Emiratis, Qataris, Kuwaitis, Saudis, Bahrainis. They've been dependent upon The United States, and The US and turn has been dependent upon them. You know? So especially with the Saudis and the Emiratis buying a large number of they have a fairly significant control over a number of US treasury bills. Trump has always seen them as sort of because they're accepting payment for oil in dollars.
And so, this Persian Gulf oil became an important source for money flowing into The US coffers, trying to help keep our economy afloat. But, you know, Trump one Iran's strategy, I think, is twofold. Show these countries that there is a serious physical economic cost to being friends with The United States and allowing The United States to conduct military operations from your territory. The Saudis, Kuwaiti the Kuwaitis in particular, Bahrain, they've paid a heavy price on that, Emirates as well. So that's number one.
Number two, maintain control of the Strait Of Hormuz so that you will economically squeeze those countries to the point that they're gonna have to make a deal with Iran, not just Iran, but also now Oman. Because Iran is also shrewdly, working with Oman to say, okay. Hey. Let's let's basically create, you know, a cover charge. You you want to come into the Persian Gulf?
Got to pay a cover charge. You want to sell anything in and out. But to that end, Iran right now says, we're not going to let anything go out that's going to benefit The United States or Europe. You know, any anybody that's aligned with Israel and supporting Israel's attack on us, they're not getting a dime out of here and including the governments. There are serious concerns about food supply in The United Arab Emirates.
The situation may not be as dire because so many people that lived there previously have left. So you've got a substantial reduction in the number of people needing to be fed in The Emirates. Same applies to Qatar and Kuwait. Kuwait and Bahrain, you know, any expatriates living there, they bailed out. The US bases that used to be in Bahrain destroyed.
They're in the process Iran is in the process of destroying what remains of the presence in Kuwait. Same same in Saudi Arabia. The Prince Saud Air Base has been repeatedly struck, and a number of aircraft the pictures are emerging showing CH-47s. That's the big helicopter that's got like two big propellers at either end. At least one of those has been destroyed, if not more, in Kuwait on the ground.
So Iran's strategy is to take control of The Gulf, take control of the oil, liquid, natural gas, anything else, and the fertilizer coming out of that, that because of the world's need for that, they'll be able to get a control over who gets in, who gets out. And, candidly, there's nothing The United States could do about that. And China, you know, some think that China because China has investments in The UAE and in some of these countries. That's true. But what has happened now with the the Iran has shifted the game so that people that want to come out, they got to pay for the fee is in yuan, not in dollars.
So it's it's actually strengthening the Chinese financial sector. And we just saw yesterday, day before yesterday, that the Deutsche Bank, has now started to offer Chinese bonds in lieu of US treasuries. So China is now beginning to forge some economic relationships with the West that actually are detrimental as far as The United States is concerned. So I think that's what Iran is seeing as part of this strategy that cut off, get The United States out of the Persian Gulf, shift The Gulf to where it's gonna benefit China and Russia. And is that part Iran sees itself as a critical future partner with both Iran and Russia in economic growth.
So I think that's sort of the broader strategy here.
Speaker 0: Yeah, the economic war, I think that's the here, a bit overlooked and an interesting component of this whole thing because in most wars, there's always a strong economic incentive. That is we always see when The US goes to war, the oil companies, you know, the stock value goes up, the weapons manufacturers go up. We see also economic benefits that is, for example, the war with the proxy war against Russia. As the war goes on, the the Europeans, of course, become even more dependent on The US. They're willing to sign horrible trade deals.
They buy the weapons from The US. The Ukrainians can be stripped of their natural resources. There's a lot that can be done to pursue economic benefits in the time of war. But with the Iranians, though, they appear to have really gone directly at the throat here that is, yeah, going after the economic benefit of this whole war, not just by shutting down the Strait Of Moose, but now as we see selling the oil in once, this is already being done.
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 0: It's yeah. It's it's it's quite extraordinary, and there's not much that can be done to I mean, for completely destroying Iran and hoping that, you know, mass brutality will compel it to, yeah, take the knee and do whatever America says, but it's very hard to imagine this as well. So, yeah, it begs the question of how where exactly is this going? Because on Tuesday, Trump will either need to back down in a very humiliating way, or he will burn down the entire Middle East. So it's hard to say which one it will be.
Speaker 1: Well, we do, you know, there is room for confusion on that because we know in the past, you know, where Trump made similarly dire threats against Hamas. If you don't release the hostages by Saturday, there'll be oh, hell's gonna be brought down on you. And, you know, nothing happened. So I'm I'm hoping that this is actually the course of action, the outcome here, that he's just blowing smoke, blowing steam. If he does decide to go after, try to destroy Iran's oil, the ability to export oil, he is then compounding the economic pain that The US citizens are already suffering.
The, you know, the price of gas going up is accelerating, not decelerating. You know, a week ago, like here in Florida, so on February 27, we were paying $2.54 a gallon. As of a week ago, it was paying $3.64 a gallon. So it had gone up a dollar 10. And then yesterday, when I went to fill up again, it's gone up another $0.30 So it's now actually up to $6.9.00 $95 It's going to break $4 very soon.
And, you know, I know there are some places in the world people say, oh, that's cheap. But I'm telling you, this is Florida, which is used to relatively inexpensive gas. That's happening across the country. In fact, there are some places here in Florida, they ran out of gas. There was no more to be had.
So the the unhappiness among the Americans over the economic costs that are accompanying this war and what they don't understand is let's assume that under, you know, the magical thinking in this world that the Iranians on Tuesday say, okay, we gave up. The strait's wide open. Anything can come in and out. We're sorry. Okay.
The damage that's been done to the production facilities in The United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Bahrain are significant. So it's not just a matter of going back on and turning on a faucet and the oil starts flowing. There's going to have to be some significant repairs, and that could take months. Or in the case of, like the aluminum smelter, years, just years to get some of that back online. So and then even if you the flow of oil starts, those ships right now the ships that are on the sea, they're charging $140 a barrel for that oil that's out there on the sea right now.
The oil future for Brent is lower. It's like $1.11 or I mean $111 per barrel. Because they're betting in the future that this price surge is going to end. So that $140, a barrel right now, it's it's it's gonna probably it's gonna probably go up to 200. And so this the cascading effects of this kind of boost in the fuel is enormous.
And then, you know, then we start getting into the complications of what has this war done to international air travel. So there are a number of airlines that may very well go bankrupt because number one, they're faced with higher fuel costs. They're going to have to pay they're going to have to boost the prices of tickets for passengers. Qatar Air that used to fly regularly in and out of Doha, not doing that right now. Similarly for Emirati Air.
God, and that is a great airline. Got to tell you. I've flown on that before. It's a fly business class. It's luxurious.
But, you know, they're not doing too much. And so that's it's put an end to those kinds of flights. The European airlines that used to fly to China. Now how the hell do they get there? Because they can't fly they don't fly across Russia because of sanctions.
So what what this has opened up to is a whole another economic window for for China. Chinese airline, man, they fly direct to Europe. You want to get to Paris or Rome? Yeah, go out of Beijing, Shanghai because they fly directly across Russia. They don't have to worry about sanctions.
So they can now the Chinese now can fly places that US and European airlines can't. So we haven't even seen that shake out. That's what I say. There are so many layers and levels in the economics of this that the you know, even financial analysts really aren't paying much attention to it yet. So that's the I I I don't know if Iran understood that at the outset when they closed down the Strait Of Hormuz.
But if they didn't, then I'm pretty sure now they've got a pretty good grasp on it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, once they shut down the Middle East and as well as having no transit through Russia, there's not that many ways the European flights can get to Asia. I mean, you can go through Turkey, that little thin corridor, but it's still it's it's pretty narrow. And, yeah, I know British Airways. They they said that it was unfair, the competition the competitiveness of China because
Speaker 1: Old let me let me cry crocodile tears.
Speaker 0: I thought that was the old Crimea River. I mean, nobody told you to stop flying through Russian territory. You're you're the one who put the sanctions on. You know? And Yeah.
But, again, if you fly Chinese Airways, then you can fly from Beijing to London, but the British can't operate the same flights because they have to go all the way around Russia. It's much more expensive. That's it's longer time. That's more fuel cost. And, yeah, overall, they can't compete with the Chinese, and it's just it has a lot of levels to it.
But just as a last question, what do see as being the wider ramifications here? Because the well, for example, the Europeans, they seem very much locked into the to the sanctions. They won't walk away from it. But I saw now that in an interview, the former prime minister of Italy, Romano Prade, he was also the former EU commission president. I actually had an opportunity to meet him once in Kazakhstan.
Interesting. Like, one of the good leaders in Europe before, you know, this class of horrible political leaders took over, you know, he was making the point that Europe will yet again begin to restore the importation of Russian gas and oil, but it will do so when the Americans come in, know, seize some of the not seize, but take over some of these assets, the pipeline infrastructure, whatever it is. And once it's under American control, then the Russian gas will begin to flow again. And I think it's a very good prediction. So you can kind of see what's happening, Russian gas will yet again come to Europe, but this will have to be under American administration.
The Europeans, if they just do something to do it today, if they do it today, then they can salvage their economies, can prevent this deindustrialization, at least slow it down, They can be controlled over their own energy infrastructure, but they know it. If they don't, they know what they're going to end up with, that is they will lose their economic autonomy. But, yes, there's no course correction. It's very predictable the direction we're going, yet nothing will be done. How do you see, though, the the wider ramification now of of what's happening in Iran?
Because I said, it's not just the energy. It's the air travel. Well, it hits all sectors now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that the Europeans are having a Thelma and Louise moment. They don't realize it. And that I'm referencing the movie where Thelma and Louise, they drove off the cliff, and they're in midair, and, you know, nothing usually good comes of, the landing. But the Europeans right now are pretending like they're still on the road, they've still got a that they're traveling the highway with a destination.
And it's just now a matter of choosing which route to go that, oh, we don't have anything to really worry about. Yeah, we got some minor problems here, but those can be adjusted. No. They've driven off the cliff. They just don't realize it.
The crash is coming. They're they're they're not producing enough of their own fuel, oil, petroleum, petrochemical products to survive. They're dependent upon a large portion that comes out of the Persian Gulf. Well, that's not common. They are paying much higher prices now for oil and natural gas from The United States.
They could have had cheaper, from Russia at one point, but even Russia's now playing hardball. You saw Japan talk, you know, I wonder what the what the Japanese word for chutzpah is, you know, the the the Yiddish word for, you know, being pretty ballsy and asking for something. But the Japanese went to the Russians and said, okay. Yeah. You know, those sanctions where we wouldn't buy oil from, we'll buy now, but we want to buy at the sanctioned price at $47 a barrel.
And the Russians went, nyet, nyet. No, no, no. That's not happening. If you want to buy, you're going to pay the market price. And the Japanese are like, Oh, we need some gas.
Can we come talk to you about it? And the Russians basically said, If you're coming to talk about a sanction price, tell you what, you lift all sanctions. If you're going to keep sanctions on us, we're not selling you a damn drop of oil. So you figure it out. So from that standpoint, Russia's in the driver's seat in this in a big way that they can now push back against these countries that want to keep sanctions, but they're going to have to have oil and natural gas.
And when they discover that The United States, which what happens in three, four weeks when The United States puts an embargo and any further shipments of oil and liquid natural gas overseas, because we've got to have it for ourselves. All of a sudden, these people who are counting on this coming in, what do they do? The lights get turned off. Know, that's where I think a large number of people in Washington and in the European capitals are still in some denial. They believe their own nonsense about, oh, we're winning this war, against Iran.
Iran is on the ropes. Any day now, they're gonna collapse. And no, Iran's the we're we're now in the sixth week of this war. And I I think this this war could easily go on, for another three to four months. And in the process and they say, okay, well, at the end, Iran will be ruined.
The world will be ruined. Okay? The world, the disruption of supply chains is going to take place, that's going to lead to famine, hunger. I mean, this is I don't mean to sound so apocalyptic, but this is not a minor bump in the road. This is, this is a major, emergency, and the world still refuses to, accept it as such.
And if Trump goes through with the threats that he made this morning, this is going to really spin this thing up into a new level and raise, in my view, the the likelihood of an actual world war where other countries will be involved.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, it's I have a hard time imagining us getting off this, this escalation elevator now. But what what's really required is usually what one has after great wars. That is the great powers or large powers at least sit down together, come up with an agreement that is what what we should be discussing now.
Have our leaders sit down and say, listen. The whole unipolar moments over the whole idea of the political West, you know, dominating the world after the Cold War, This system has obviously come to an end. We we have to negotiate something new. So the Russians, we're not gonna continue to expand the NATO. We're not gonna continue to push our military infrastructure closer to your borders.
The Iranians, we recognize you're a legitimate actor. I mean, if if it's just that this is never done, you know, ahead of wars. It always comes after. And so it looks like there, yeah, there won't be any off ramp anytime soon. So, sadly, slow positive note to finish on this time, but, yeah, I'm I share your pessimism, though.
There's Even if the war will be over today, the economic ramifications now, they're already entering the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's going be difficult. So the only good news out of this, we'll still have something to talk about next week.
Speaker 0: Trump is keeping us busy. Oh, yeah. That's all. Thank you, Jesus. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thanks again, and, yeah, have a lovely weekend, what remains of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You too, Glenn. Enjoy your holiday spot. Try to work less. You get some rest and relaxation with the kids.
I'll work
Speaker 0: on it. Thanks. Okay. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Ray McGovern: Why NATO’s End Is Long Overdue - Time for a New Strategy? https://youtu.be/J7JDMRg_rJ4 https://t.co/l9D0jEeZHd
Video Transcript AI Summary
Ray McGovern emphasizes the erosion of the post-World War II security architecture, especially the U.S.-led system that emerged after the Cold War and aimed to globalize the Transatlantic Partnership. He argues that this expansion has strained the United States economically, militarily, and institutionally, and that security has become more volatile as empires exhaust both capabilities and moral legitimacy. He uses NATO’s history to illustrate how shifting perceptions of threat—historically the Soviet menace versus modern Russian and German sensitivities—shape alliance dynamics. He notes that many Americans were taught a one-sided narrative: NATO was created to contain the Warsaw Pact, while the Soviets also felt threatened by Western actions. He recalls his own indoctrination, the evolution of NATO, and the Warsaw Pact’s creation in response to West German NATO entry in 1955, explaining that “security is indivisible” and that each side’s fears drive the other’s behavior. He observes that polls show the U.S. losing its status as Russia’s main adversary, with Germany becoming the more prominent concern, which complicates the security calculus.
Speaker 0 adds historical context, referencing John Lewis Gaddis and the Cold War’s security competition, where blocs prompted mutual insecurity. He discusses the Helsinki Accords and the attempt to reduce security competition, contrasting that with post-Cold War optimism that NATO expansion would stabilize Europe. He notes opposition among some American leaders to expanding NATO and argues that the Ukraine conflict reveals a problematic belief in “force for good” through military blocs, suggesting that expanded NATO has contributed to the current crisis rather than preventing it. He highlights the potential consequences of continued reliance on NATO and U.S. guarantees, questioning the credibility of Article 5 guarantees in an era of waning U.S. commitment.
Speaker 1 recounts his experiences in Munich (1968) with Radio Free Europe and his opposition to encouraging Czech resistance to Soviet tanks, arguing that the Brezhnev Doctrine has a modern analogue in Ukraine. He describes the sequence leading to Crimea’s annexation, including the 2014 Maidan events, Western negotiations (Minsk Accords), and the dynamic between Western leaders and Putin. He argues that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine arose from a perception of NATO encroachment and Western deceit, asserting that Moscow’s actions were a response to attempts to place Ukraine in NATO orbit and to secure a vital Black Sea port. He states that Russia halted further invasions in 2022 after Ukrainian negotiations to avoid NATO membership and a ceasefire, and he contends that Western actors, including Boris Johnson, pressured Ukraine to continue fighting.
Speaker 0 contends that the war’s conduct was shaped by Western promises and the perception that NATO’s expansion would secure democracy. He criticizes European leaders like Kaya Kaltois (Kallas) and Zakharova’s exchange to illustrate the political theater around NATO and European security. He stresses that European leaders’ rhetoric—such as calls for “no Russian red lines”—and the reliance on U.S. military power created incentives for continued conflict. He also critiques the influence of the military-industrial complex, warning that profiteering from defense production drives war.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the CIA’s dual role: one branch “for lying to the public” and overthrowing governments, and another “analysis division” that historically aimed to tell the truth. He cites the 2007 unanimous intelligence assessment that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed, noting that later officials removed or reframed statements about immediate threats. He references George W. Bush’s admission that the 2007 estimate deprived him of a military option, and he points to Tulsi Gabbard’s 2019-2024 reluctance to label Iran as an imminent threat. He argues Iran is not a direct threat to the United States but is linked to Israel and regional dynamics, including Netanyahu’s role and the 2003-2007 Iran/Iraq/Israel calculus. He mentions Joe Kent’s resignation as a dissenting voice against continued war in Iran, suggesting that some military leaders and officials pushed back against aggressive policy.
Speaker 0 wraps by noting the evolving U.S.-Israel relationship and the need for responsible diplomacy. He highlights the broader international realignment: NATO’s credibility waning, Europe reassessing security guarantees, and potential shifts in alliances with the Gulf States and Asia. He closes with a cautious note that genuine diplomatic leadership and intelligent intelligence analysis could help establish a more stable order, rather than perpetuating disruptive escalation.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Ray McGovern, a CI analyst for twenty seven years. He chaired the national intelligence estimates and prepared the president's daily briefs. So thank you. It's, yeah, been about a month.
It's good to see you again, Ray.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn, for having me back after all the things I said before.
Speaker 0: Well, I thought a great place we could start today would be, I guess, I think the commonality, what we see in Europe, East Asia, The Middle East, it is really not just collapse of world order, but I guess the security architecture that is after the Second World War, we saw that The United States, well, essentially built a security architecture led by The United States after the Cold War. I think the ambition was to essentially globalize the Transatlantic Partnership. But as many predicted back then, it would it could exhaust The United States economically, militarily. And as we often see with empires, they can exhaust institutions as well as the, I guess, moral compass as well. You know, listening to the last speeches of Trump, I guess the moral issue is becoming quite relevant.
I was wondering how how do you see this? I mean, again, you were there. You had a key role in a large part of the Cold War. How do you make sense of how the world is, I guess, being turned on its head at the moment?
Speaker 1: Well, Glenn, one of the advantages of having this color here and being so old is that I've seen a lot. When I think about how I was indoctrinated, I was born in 1939, just a week before Germany invaded Poland. I remember lots of things when I was an early teen. And one of the things I remember is that, wow, the Russians were going to take over the rest of Europe, right? No one told me that it took Eisenhower and Truman to tell Winston Churchill, No, we're not going to attack the Soviet Union just now.
Yeah, they suffered 27,000,000 killed in the war. Now you think now's the time to do them in, right? Well, no. I got we're tired of war. We're coming home.
Nobody told me that that's what Winston Churchill was like, except my grandmother, my Irish grandmother. Winston Churchill is a bad man. Okay? I didn't pay attention to that. I read his whole all six volumes of what what do they call it?
Winning the war or whatever they call it. So I didn't know all that stuff. And when NATO was created, well, I was able to to read then and read some early history, and I realized that NATO was created to contain this Soviet menace. No one told me that the Soviets felt menaced by us. So, you you've written books on this, Glenn, but maybe some of your listeners would be interested in this kind of chronology.
So I'm told in 1949, NATO had to be created to stem the Soviet advance into Western Europe. Nobody told me about what Truman did with respect to the Balkans and Greece and how he overthrown governments, lightened nobody told me about that. Okay? What people did tell me is that NATO had to be established because of the Warsaw Pact. Now, I hate to admit this, Glenn, but it was decades later that I realized NATO came in 1949.
The Warsaw back in 1955. I think that's about six years later. So it wasn't like I was told, I was taught, I was brainwashed, really, into thinking, well, this Soviet threat was inexorable and we had to create NATO to contain the Warsaw Pact, sort of like an anachronism in one of Shakespeare's plays, right? What came first? The alarm clock?
Anyhow, I'll work with that. So, I mean, this, I think, will be illustrative of how this fairly well educated fellow with a master's in Russian studies and all that stuff. It took him until he started working at the CIA and was brushing elbows with really intelligent people. In those days, we had terrific people. In my Soviet foreign policy branch, we had the best of the best.
And we could tell it like it was or like it is for the first two thirds of my career. Suffice it to say that when NATO was set up, just Lord Dismay, I think his name was. Was a British court lord. He was the first general secretary. And he said, look, the whole purpose here is to keep the Americans in Europe, keep the Russians out of Europe and keep the Germans down.
Okay. Made sense to me. Didn't really I didn't really think about how the Russians look at this particular since NATO came first. So that's 1949. Why did the Russians build the Warsaw Pact?
Well, it was a matter of reacting to NATO. But what happened in May 1955? Oh, that's when West Germany became a member of NATO. Wow. Oh, did that have any Well, yeah, it was right then that the Russians created the Warsaw Pact.
So, you know, this whole business about who feels threatened by whom, Americans and maybe even Norwegians need to kind of get out of the mindset that we were people my age were brought up in and realized that everyone has sensitivities and threats that they see, that there's no stability, there's no balance unless one side takes into account the legitimate fears of the other side. And you don't have to go back too far in history to realize that the Russians have been scared as hell, not so much of the French anymore, that was two centuries ago, of the Germans. The last thing I'll say here on this little thing is that when I joined the CIA, you know some Russian, you know a lot of Russian, you're fluent in it. Glavnivrak. Okay?
Vrak is enemy. Glavnivrak is the most important, the chief enemy. Glavnivrak. That's what the Soviets considered America, the main enemy. And of course, we retaliated.
They were the main enemy. Now guess what, Glenn? Not many people know this, but polls were taken extensively through Russia last year. And The US has lost its place as Russia's Klavnivrak. Who's the main enemy now?
You guessed it. Germany. So, things have become very, very complicated. We have Ukraine on the one hand. There's lots of people that don't understand why Ukraine.
And again, that had to do with NATO, and we can prove that for God's sake. And then we have this unprovoked war of aggression on Iran, which, my goodness. Easter is tomorrow. Maybe we can kind of pray that somehow we'll get out of this without a nuclear exchange. Sorry to carry on so long here, but when you think back on NATO and how I looked at it and how I look at it now, and now it is disintegrating, I just thought I'd treat your audience to something you already know and that I'm just beginning to articulate as having been indoctrinated through my younger years?
Speaker 0: Well, the the security competition you described, it's written a good book on this is written by John Lewis Gaddis on the Cold War, and he kinda made this point as well that towards end of World War two, The United States, of course, had the nuclear bomb. The British were very eager to invade the Soviet Union as soon as the Germans had been defeated. That was the idea, then we'll break out, you know, and stab the Russians in the back. And for this reason, the Russians then or the Soviets built up a powerful force in Eastern Europe. So the the assumption being, you know, if you attack, then, you know, they can plow west.
And then, of course, the Western countries look at this as a threat, so then they form NATO, and then, of course, put a German in Germany into the mix as well, and then the other side establishes the Warsaw Pact. So you have this security competition going back and forth with these big block systems being built. And, again, this was the whole point. You know, every scholar on international security knows that military blocks, they create security competition. Security for one is insecurity for the other.
So we always had this goal, at least from the Helsinki Accords in '75, that we would begin to reduce the security competition, have something inclusive or security with each other instead of against each other. But, you know, when the Cold War came to an end, we had this opportunity. And when people then started to say, well, let's just expand NATO, you know, this worked in the Cold War. Why overcome? Why why abandon the bloc system?
I mean, it's quite wild, which is why so many leading American politicians and military men were opposed to it, said that this was a horrible idea. Why would we go back to this when we finally were able to overcome it? And and that is why it's so frustrating to see now, for example, with the war in Ukraine. This idea that NATO's world our only purpose is to help the oppressed peoples of the world and strive for democracy. I mean, it's very cartoonish.
It doesn't it's hard to for me to accept that people genuinely believe this, that that's why we toppled the government in Ukraine because we wanted democracy. That's when NATO expanded is attempting to expand, at least pull Ukraine into its orbit. And when the Russians say, well, you know, this is an existential threat to us, you know, we have the audacity to say, no. No. No.
But we're just there to promote good governance. I mean, this is it's really wild that this is where we are. And after getting out of the Cold War, avoiding nuclear annihilation, now, yeah, we're we're essentially back at this insisting that Ukraine has to be in a in a cold war military bloc, that this is the only way we can have security. I mean, it is if we end up in a nuclear war, it's gonna be a one of feels like a very dumber reason to end up in a nuclear war. But
Speaker 1: Yeah. If there are any historians left, the history they write will not be believed by anybody. Let me go back to my duty with the CIA. I was in Munich in in 1968. It's an open secret that I was working with Radio Free Europe.
In those days, the intelligence community, the CIA, was running RFE. Now, RFE had some very talented folks, mostly East Europeans working in their various bureaus. But they had made a big mistake back in 1956, Okay, when Hungary started their stillborn revolution, it was largely encouragement from the West to the Hungarians that they were, Fight them. Fight those tanks. We'll give you a lot of support.
Well, the support was rhetorical support. That was, as the Soviets looked at it, they had turf, and they were not going to allow a revolution there. So long story short, I was sent out there in 1968. And my main mission was, since I had been a Soviet foreign policy analyst, to make sure that the director of RFE and of Radio Liberty, that they knew that we wouldn't be able to send troops into Czechoslovakia. Okay?
The Prague Spring, my goodness, Dubcek. Everybody was so enthusiastic back home in Washington. But I and many of my Soviet specialist friends said, no, The Russians are never going to allow this. So look, don't encourage the Czechs to throw tennis balls at Soviet tanks. So I was able to do that, okay?
It was terrible. We heard the Smettenes, Memoy Vlat, we heard the last Prague Radio go off air. But at least we were not responsible for thousands of deaths encouraging the Czechs to resist. And as you know, the Czech Republic finally is free. Now, what's my point here?
My point is that anyone who knew a little bit about post war Europe knew that the Russians were not going to allow not only Hungary, but Czechoslovakia to slip out of their orbit. Was that terrible? Of course, it was terrible. But security is indivisible. If you feel threatened, you're going to do things.
So, we started calling that the doctrine. Okay? Now, it's not a big leap to take the Brezhnev doctrine down and apply it to Ukraine. What was The US and NATO trying to do in Ukraine? Well, obviously, get them into NATO.
And what did the Russians do? They reacted. Now, there is not one scintilla of evidence that it ever entered Putin's mind that he would be annexing Crimea or that he would be feeling a really desperate threat. Until? February 2014, when Western Intelligence Services overthrew the duly elected government of Yenkovitsch in Kyiv.
It was building for a while. People kind of knew it was coming. But in the end, you had Frank Walter Steinmeier, now president of Germany, then foreign minister, the French foreign minister, a Polish foreign minister, and an observer from Russia, Look, this was on the 02/13/2014. Look, look, it's okay. We'll hasten the elections.
Yanukovych can stay. We'll have a kind of a peaceful resolution to this thing. Look, don't worry about it, okay? So, what happened? Obama.
Obama called Putin. Where was he? Oh, he was in Sochi for the Winter Olympics. And Obama said, No sweat. Look, we've got this deal.
It's guaranteed by Frank Walter Steinmeier, foreign minister of Germany and his counterpart in France, so forth. Don't worry about it. For God's sake, don't stir up any trouble. Relax. So what does Putin do?
He relaxes. Biden at the same time calls his counterpart in Russia. Talk about betrayal. Talk about betrayal. What happens the next day?
The people on the Maiden are incited to shoot the cops, shoot the but demonstrators shoot them all from these perches in this whole building. And Yanukovych had to flee for his life. Now, that's the background there. If you want a little point where Putin started to say, Oh my God, what are we up against here? Not only the deceit, but the whole business about seizing Ukraine and to NATO, or our only ice free NATO port.
It's like Sevastopol. And so what did he do? He convened his advisors to say, What are we going to do? Now, was the next day, okay? That was the fifteenth.
Well, they said, Well, the first thing we have to do is make sure that our main naval port doesn't become a main NATO naval point, right? Vladimir Vladimirovich? Yeah, that's right. So what do we do? Well, we have to seize Crimea.
Well, seize, that doesn't sound right. I'm trained in the law. We have time. How did Crimea become part of Ukraine? Wasn't it part of Ukraine?
Well, yeah, but you probably remember Mr. Putin at Khushchev way back when he first took power in 1954. Most of his good support came from Ukraine. He was born almost in Ukraine on the other side. So, he said, Hey, let's give Crimea to Ukraine.
And everybody said, well, not a good idea. I mean, didn't matter. They're all part of the Soviet Union, right? And so he took out a piece of paper. Mr.
Putin, remember this one? He took out a piece of paper. We called it a ukaz ukaz in Russia. Said, okay. From now on, bring me over for Ukraine.
That's the way they did it in 1954. Putin says, I don't like that. I think we should maybe yeah, we to have a plebiscite. We have a referendum. They arranged that.
And a month later, I think I don't think these numbers were exaggerated, but well over 90% of the people in Crimea, many of them are Russian stock, approved the annexation of Crimea. So all of a sudden, nexing Crimea becomes a real, real mortal sin with the Russians. Will they stop at all? And then, of course, there was this seven year charade where the West and Angela Merkel and what was it? Holland from France had owned up to this, that they played Putin.
Look, we're going to have the Minsk Accords. We're going to have everything. And meanwhile, they built up the Ukrainian army to NATO standards with NATO weaponry, took seven years, and Merkel later smirked. So the Ukrainian army wasn't worth a damn before, but then it was fine. And the Mystic Accords of course.
Putin has been played. And all I'm saying here is that Ukraine fits the pattern of Hungary, '56. Czechoslovakia, '68, which I was there for pretty much. And it's a different regime now. Most people don't remember that in 1991 or so, the Soviet Union collapsed, right?
Oh, wow. Collapsed. So did they still want to take over the rest of the world? No. Like, how about the rest of Europe?
No. I don't think so. So so the rest of the story is clear. When the president of The United States, namely Joe Biden, gets up in his last inaugural address and he looks around and he says, if anyone thinks anyone in this room thinks that Putin will stop in Ukraine, god. How naive.
He'll go to Poland. He'll go to the Baltic States. He won't stop in Ukraine. And the American people don't know that Putin stopped in Ukraine. Stopped in Ukraine in April 2022, as soon as the Ukrainians worked out a deal saying, Okay, we forswear any participation in NATO membership.
We'll have a ceasefire. We'll deal with Crimea later. That happened, Okay? And what happened? Boris Johnson, as you know, in The US came in and said, Oh, no, no, don't do that.
Don't do that, Ukrainians, because we're going to support you for as long as it takes. And we're the superpower here. So look, you fight to the last Ukrainian. That's what it's come down to. Russia has won that one.
NATO is really in dire straits. As I said on your program a couple months ago, I don't think there'll be another NATO summit. I think one is scheduled for Tirana in Albania for next well, no, half a year from now. I think NATO is pretty much on its last legs. And this latest, talk by Trump about how he probably should get out of NATO.
What is a Article five guarantee worth today? If the Estonians get in a dust up mostly at their initiative with the Russians, do you think that they can count on Trump to come to their aid under Article five of the NATO treaty? No way will they do that. As you know, the EU, under Kayakalas, is willing to have an even stronger guarantee in the Article five of the NATO treaty to make sure that EU countries will come to the aid of anyone who, you know, is attacked them. You know, lastly, the Europeans really fit the description of the Vatican.
It sounds strange, Yeah. You know, I was around when Stalin was alive, right? Stalin said, somebody said, oh, the pope is he's just not gonna like me. Stalin says, so how many how many divisions does the Vatican have? How many divisions do the British have?
Or the French? Or the Germans? Now, they don't have any. And so luckily, they have figured out that the Russians are gonna attack, but not for a couple of years until Europe builds up, Okay? And of course, the thing we haven't mentioned is the military industrial complex.
You can't look at any of this unless you realize that a lot of people, a small minority, but a lot of them are profiteering on each and every bullet and missile that is produced to wage these wars. And that's a major factor indeed, as you know, and as I hope most of your audience knows.
Speaker 0: We used the word indivisible before. That's an important word in international security. That's some the idea that, you know, everyone's security is tied together. Kissinger once made that point that if one state is has 100% security, that means a 100% insecurity for someone else. That is you know, you have to develop security, the idea that, they're all interlinked.
And indeed, the word indivisible security, this was actually used in the Helsinki Accords of '75. This was used the in the 1990, the charter of Paris for a new Europe after the Cold War was declared over. It was unused in '94 when they developed Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This was supposed to be the keyword, but then when we noticed in the nineties that the Russians were weak and getting weaker, and we went with, you know, hegemonic peace under an expansionist NATO, we instead came up we replaced this idea of indivisible security, and we came up with, you know, force for good. That is, yes, now NATO will just march forward.
It, you know, doesn't have to harmonize the security with other great powers. It's, you know, we when we expand our power, when we intervene militarily, it's a force for good. No one is threatened. I mean, if you see this logic moving forward, it almost makes a little bit of sense what you know, when you start trying to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit, something everyone knew would trigger a war with Russia, that some people could believe that, well, you know, no one can fear us. We're just a group of democracies trying to, you know, promote good governance.
There are people who believe that. That being said, however, we do have indications that there's been some lying as well. And I'm thinking then, you know, one of my countrymen, Iain Stoltenberg, was the NATO secretary general, you know, he was insisting over and over again that that, you know, the Ukraine war had nothing to do with NATO expansion until 2023 in September, I think it was, when he suddenly comes out saying, well, actually, Putin did put this condition to us. You know, there will be no war if we don't expand NATO, and we, of course, rejected it. I mean
Speaker 1: We said no.
Speaker 0: This is the these are the people, though, who are organizing our security, and somehow, we're surprised that Europe now is on fire. Well, not just Europe, the wider world, I guess. But you mentioned Kaya Kallas arguing that, well, if NATO's gonna well, she implied if NATO's gonna die, we should have another security arrangement without the Americans, which is a strange argument to make because NATO essentially is The United States plus a few vassals. But but how would this work, though? Because
Speaker 1: Well, maybe they can get all the troops from the Vatican to support them in in place of The US. I mean, it's ridiculous on its face. But of course, if you look at what else Kayakalus has said, it's not unusual for her to say unbelievable things. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, when Alice was talking to the Queen of Hearts and she said, These are things that are impossible to believe. And the Queen of Hearts says, No, they're not.
You just need practice, my dear. Well, on any given day, I believe six impossible things before breakfast. So, you know, I have to tell you that as a Sovietologist, and especially a guy with a sore throat, I read everything, mostly in Russian, if I have the time. And Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Lavarov's Foreign Ministry, did not spare herself going after Kayakalas during an almost four hour briefing of the press on April 2, I think it was. And she said, Well, this is the kind of people, you know, that you have.
A person asked her a question. It's really worth recounting, I think. It may have been a planted question. It was the last one. The question was this: Today is a special day.
It's April Fool's Day. So, have a question for you, Maria. Since the level of literacy is so poor at the top of EU ranks, maybe we should allocate seats in our universities to bring people up on matters of history or matters of geography or so forth. And Zakhara, whether this was staged or not, says, Yet. There's just nothing to laugh.
I'm remembering that from my Russian teacher. Okay? She didn't quite get business about laugh needs an object. When we acted up, she said, Who are you laughing? Why are you laughing?
This is nothing to laugh. Okay? Well, that's what Zakharov said. This is not a laughing matter. Her words in Russian.
Okay? She says, Look, call us. You want to put her in a university? My God. No, it's grade school she needs.
Grade school. She admitted that when she heard recently it actually was last year during the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II she said, Ma, you know, Russia and China were involved in World War II. That's news to me. So, we put her in a sixth grade. And so far, she earns a a d'in d'var.
She gets a mark of two, which is flunking, okay? Five is the highest, two you're flunk. And she goes after, oh yeah, Annalene Bayerbock. Yeah. The as weil German foreign minister and now, what, president of the general assembly of the UN, who famously said, we want the Russians to make a three sixty turn in their relationship with the rest of the world.
Zechariah says, Okay, we'll give her a two as well, and we'll put her in grade geometry. Oh, Liz Truss. Yeah. Liz Truss comes in as a Hanover says. Now Liz Truss, when she was asked about two integral parts of Russia, know, oblast in Russia, whether she was asked by somebody, Well, will you ever recognize those parts as part of Russia?
And she said, Never, never, never. And then the ambassador, British ambassador, whips his ear and says, oh, they're all right? They've been part of Russia since the 1200s. She said, oh. Anyhow, all I'm saying here is that who are these people that the Russians have to deal with?
They're illiterate. They bubble to the top through a system of negotiations, of coalitions, and so forth. And not one of them is worth a darn, and all of them are expecting elections within the next year. Now, the Russians have an amount of patience that most people don't understand. They're willing to wait until the German and the French and the British people begin to realize, and other people in Europe, I daresay, begin to realize they've been had, that the Russian threat is no longer a big threat that was manufactured.
And that's the saving grace here. Okay? Because if it comes to the point where NATO, the various states say to themselves, Oh my God, we can't depend on The United States to save us anymore. That's not bad news. That's good news.
Why? Because Biden was lying through his teeth when he said the Russians won't stop in Ukraine. They will say, I'm I'm Poland. Know what there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin, in the last twenty five years, ever had it in his head to expand Russia's borders, unlike NATO, which wanted to expand its border to include Ukraine. And thereon hangs a very sorrowful story with a million Ukrainians already killed, maybe 500,000 Russians, all of which need not have happened because the Russians did stop its demonstrable.
The Ukrainian negotiators, one of them's name is David Arakhamia, best friend of Zelensky, was the lead negotiator. He came back a couple of years ago and he told the Pravda, Look, this is what happened. And he explained exactly what Boris Johnson did, when he did it, and the treaty or agreement that had been initialed but not signed. Will the Russians stop? They already stopped.
I'll just say that one more time. And so the good news for the Europeans is, oh, wow, no threat for Russia? But the bad news is Heinzmetall, which was dead in the water in the mid nineties when they were supposed to be building a common European battle tank. Right? Well, they're stuck to shut up for the last decade, and now it's going to go down again.
If and when the Europeans finally come to their senses, the Russians don't covet Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, anywhere else. They just want to be left with indivisible security, which is a kind of highfalutin way of saying the golden rule, okay? Do unto others as you would have others do it to you.
Speaker 0: Well, not to come to the defense of Kaiakullos, but she did say in front of camera that she was planning to get really smart because she was going to read some books about history. Planning to, I would but it is, I think, part of the problem, though, it appeared that after the Russians invaded Ukraine, with all this, well, so called intelligence arguing that, well, now the Russians, you know, they want to essentially conquer, you know, restore the Soviet Union or Russian Empire, all of this nonsense. And and a lot of the logic across Europe was, well, when we look towards the Baltic States and some of the most, you know, some of the worst lunatics, some of the most radical anti Russian fanatics we have in Europe, we essentially said, oh, well, they had it all right all along. They warned us that Russia would one day just try to conquer all of Europe. They were right.
So essentially, we handed over the car keys to these people, to the Bierbachs and the Kayakullas and the Vanderlanes and the Mertz, and and we ended up with some very Yeah. And and unprofessional people. And also in Germany, some of the worst Germans are now taken over. And I would put, you know, BlackRock Mertz in that category. But I guess, you know, I think we we could afford to be responsible in this way, that is to put crazy leaders saying wild things.
And I would put the Scandinavian countries in the same category. If you look at the way that Denmark is talking, you know, we need respect no Russian red lines, we have to hit them deep within. Mean, this is a country of 5,000,000 people. They're advocating openly of striking Russian cities. I mean, the world's largest nuclear power is just crazy.
But my point is, as long as the Americans were standing behind us, you know, even small Scandinavian or Baltic countries can, you know, stand up against Russia and threaten it, and as I should openly say, we're we're the ones attacking you. It's our weapons, our intelligence. But now that Americans are pulling back, this becomes suicidal. I mean, there has to be some reason entering the mix again, where they essentially say, oh, maybe we take the crazies out of the mix and start to put in, you know, the same people again. It just but it kind of begs the question, and that's kind of your area as well, that is of intelligence from your time in the CIA.
You know, it seems like it has two purposes. On one hand, you should inform your political leadership, but they also have a second role, which is to sell wars. And I think that's what went wrong in Ukraine, well as you can argue what has influenced Trump in Iran. That is the people who are supposed to inform, you know, they have an agenda. They're looking to sell a war.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Glenn, as you know, I've described the CIA as two separate and distinct intelligence agencies, one for lying to the public and everybody else and overthrowing governments and sometimes torturing people. And the assessment, the analysis division where I worked, which was totally separated from the operatives and which for most of my career, we could tell the truth. As Truman intended when he set us up way back in 1947, he talked about, I don't want treated intelligence. His word.
In other words, tell me like it is. And we were able to do that, at least on the Soviet Union, until Bill Casey and Bobby Gates came in and pretty much corrupted the whole analyst's structure. So, what I'm saying here is that there is some good advice. Witness the fact that, as we've said before here, back in 2007, a war against Iran was prevented by good intelligence analysis. I just outlined that again.
After the debacle on Iraq, where after five years, a bipartisan Senate study concluded in June 2008. The evidence seduced to justify the war in Iraq was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent, period. Okay, think about what nonexistent entails. So anyway, somebody sensible in Washington said, look, they're going to do the same damn thing on Iran, the neocons. And they got Bush, and they got Cheney, and they're going to do it.
And they're going to do it the last year going out. 2008. What do we do? Well, the first thing we do is we find somebody honest that will run an honest intelligence estimate on Iran nuclear. They couldn't find anybody.
No manager of intelligence with a good record. They all had been corrupted by what they did. But they found Tom Finger from the State Department. He came in, long story short, in November 2007, issued a unanimous statement to all 16 US intelligence agencies at the time. Quote, Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and has not resumed work on a nuclear weapon.
Every year since 2008, 2009, up until last year, that was reiterated verbatim by the intelligence community, again, unanimously with high confidence. Oh, what happened this year? Well, the head of national intelligence decided that she wouldn't say anything about it this year in the annual threat assessment. And then when she was quizzed before Congress, she said, well, you know, it's not for me to say what an immediate threat is. Only the president can.
And you know, blah, blah, blah. So, what I'm saying here is that it's really sad that after my being able to brag about my analysis division from 2007 until last year, I can't even do that anymore. If you have any doubt about whether the 2007 estimate stopped a war or played a huge role in stopping it, just well, don't buy it. Go to the library and look at decision points, George W. Bush's memoir.
And he says on page something, 2000 something, February something, he mostly written it himself, he says, That eye popping estimate deprived me of the military option. Quote, For how could I authorize a strike on the nuclear facilities of a country that the intelligence community says has no active nuclear weapons program? Period. Bummer. I mean, if further proof were needed, he did write that page, and it's true.
And he was going to authorize that as Cheney and he rode on their horses back to Wyoming or Texas or something, and let the next administration deal with it, that's how close we were. Why do I say all that? There's no estimate now. There's not even a mention of the fact that there is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon, and has it been since 2003, even though the analysts believe that. The head analyst, Tulsi Gabbard, was unwilling to say that in this year's threat analysis, nor was she able to say that there was anything near an immediate threat that required The US to attack Iran.
Lastly, as most of your people know, Iran is no threat to The United States Of America. Could not be for decades the real responsible analysts say. It was judged to be an attack on or a threat to Israel. And I think that I feel conscience bound to explain why we attacked Iran. I mean, with Iraq, used to talk about an acronym, OIL.
O for oil, I for Israel, and L for logistics, the permanent military bases that we coveted in Iraq. This time, it's real easy. Aye. Aye for Israel. Now, you don't have to believe me.
Here's three little things here. Netanyahu gloated and bragged by saying, I've been waiting forty years for this. I couldn't persuade any of The US president to attack Iran. No, I did it. Okay.
Secondly, and I want to read this because it's, it's not really something that I want to mispronounce, Okay? Our Secretary of State, Rubio, who also serves as the National Security Advisor, which means that he's the funnel through which all intelligence and related material go through up to the president. A very powerful position, two headed, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. So, two days after the attack on Iran, he's asked by the press, and you could see it, it's a video. And he says this, quote, Rubio.
Quote, We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. Action? Action. Yeah. 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 on American forces, we would suffer higher casualties. Period. End quote. So, who went first?
Who mousetrapped whom? Or who I'm sure they coordinated this thing. Well, Israelis have gone. Now we have to go. I mean, hello?
Is it not clear why? And the last, if further proof were needed, was the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, pretty much one of her deputies. Okay? Joe Kent is his name, a gutsy guy who was a rabid Trump supporter until he saw he, an army veteran, 11 combat tours in Iraq, until he realized that this was just a big deception. This is what he said in his letter to the president.
Okay? After much reflection, I have decided to resign. I cannot, in good conscience, support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. And it is clear we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby, period.
Woah. What's Joe doing now? Well, he's got lawyers, I'm sure, trying to defend him from an FBI investigation. He's being maligned. They're saying that his grandmother wears combat boots to church on Sunday, that they're digging out anything they can.
But he told the truth. He's a model for others within government. Take those generals who have just been fired. Are they just going to sit back and retire or join the board from General Dynamics? Or are they going to speak out?
Are they going to say, Look, we quit because our deranged chief of staff, chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his superior have ordered the eighty second Airborne and Marine detachments to do what is a fool's errand, and thousands of guys are going to be killed. We don't want to be responsible for that. We quit. Yeah, right. They were fired.
I think they quit for cause. I just wish they'd speak up for God's sake. They quit. They might as well let the rest of us know why why they quit. Sorry.
I get a little exercised about these things. No.
Speaker 0: I thought the, yeah, the input of Joe Kent was very important to to, yeah, shed some light. And it's, again, it's very hard to go after his record. He's you know, to suggest he had other motivations than what he did. I actually had him on my podcast a few days ago. He's no.
He's again, you know, he wants the best for his country, as he said, who with it's quite clear from his record. But it also reveals a much deeper divide within The United States now on the Israel question, because there didn't used to be any dissent there at all, this sin. That is that the idea that The US and Israel has to be joined at the hip and their interests are, you know, identical. Now you see the split. So again, but this is also an important alliance of The United States.
So it just feels like across the globe now, be it the alliance with Europeans, with the Gulf States, East Asia. I mean, they're discussing now in South Korea how much should we trust, you know, remaining in this alliance that's set up in the Cold War, and, of course, Israel as well. This relationship will probably also be have to be reviewed. So, no, it's I it's good that there's adjustments. I just I I prefer incremental slow reforms.
This yeah, this is very, very disruptive to the international system, though. But, of course, you couldn't continue the way you were either. Do have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the Israeli factor, as I've explained, is critical. And the fact that Israel has lost a lot of support, especially with the younger generations, that's also critical. However, our Congress is bought by the Israel lobby. And so, that's the thing that has to be overcome.
Just wanted to maybe just broaden this out a little bit more. When we talked about Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, people need to remember that he was in Beijing on the 02/04/2022. And this was a prearranged opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Now, why do I mention this? It's because I believe that China played a major role in giving Putin the support he felt he needed to do what he did, that is invade another country.
Let's not dress up, invade. It was invade. Did he have any other options? That's the question. And the answer that John Mearsheimer and I agree on is no.
He tried all the other options. He tried the Minsk process to the nth degree so he would not have to invade. But there were reasons. And the shelling of all those Russians in the Donbas was one of the main reasons. Russians care about the expatriates, Okay?
So, what am I saying? I believe that the key factor here and I'm not alone in believing this, but not too many people have adused this was when Putin went to Xi and he says, Look, now, Comrade G, I know that this goes against your whole position on Westphalia and sanctity of borders and not invading other countries. But look, I think I have to do this. I have to invade Ukraine to stop NATO encroachment. And so what did, in my mind's eye, what did she say?
He said, You mean after the Winter Olympics are finished, right? Poochin probably, Yeah, of course, of course. Now that's reality. The Chinese changed their whole damn foreign policy outlook from Westphalia to when a country's core interest is threatened, they can respond. That was the new Chinese rhetoric for the next couple of months.
Big, big difference. You have to watch these things, okay? So, what Putin does, he comes home, the Winter Olympics finish on the February 20. Donetsk and Lugansk form their countries recognized by the Duma the next day. They ask for protection the next day.
Putin invokes the UN Charter the following day. So, what am I saying? I was saying this was not just a little snippet of this means that the Russia China alliance is rock solid to the point where Beijing will make allowances for violating West failure, okay? And to the extent that the Russians can be counted out to bail out the Chinese in extremis. What does this mean?
It means a hell of a lot when you come to not only Ukraine, but even more so Iran. And I just hope that the saving grace is that Putin has a good sense to call I'm sorry, Trump has the good sense to call up Putin and say, look, can you help me out on this? This is getting out of hand. Because that's what he did four weeks ago, right? If he does that again, I think there's some help from not only the Russians and the Chinese, but the Pakistanis.
Even the Saudis seem to be interested in what the Pakistanis are trying to do. There's a lot at stake for the Gulf States. Oman has already made its little bilateral arrangements with Iran. So, I see some hope, but it's kind of an Easter hope. We'll have to see what happens not only tomorrow, but the day after.
And thanks very much, Glenn, for having me on. I felt like I had a history lesson of where I've been, as well as where NATO has been these last seven decades.
Speaker 0: I appreciate it. And, well, often we see new world orders, big international institutions only come into place after major wars. So I'm hoping that we'll see some great diplomats and responsible people from the intelligence community that can facilitate something. So thank you as always. It's, yeah, good to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Joe Kent: US creation of ISIS, the threat of Israeli influence, and the disastrous war against Iran https://youtu.be/teapZxaBgDI https://t.co/raAyvh8g7e
Video Transcript AI Summary
Joe Kent, former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, explains why he resigned over the war against Iran, arguing Iran posed no imminent threat and that the war was driven by Israeli influence and a regime-change agenda.
Key points:
- Imminent threat and escalation: In his view, Iran was not on the cusp of attacking the U.S. during Trump’s second term. Iran followed a calculated escalation ladder, stopping proxies during Operation Midnight Hammer and returning to negotiation afterward. After the attack on nuclear sites, Iran retaliated in kind, then returned to talks, indicating a calibrated approach rather than irrational behavior. The “imminent threat” cited by some officials was viewed as primarily tied to Israeli actions against Iran, not Iranian intent to attack the U.S. directly.
- Regime-change as miscalculation: Kent contends that regime-change aims in Iran—similar to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya—are flawed. He believes attempts to remove the Iranian regime strengthen it instead, and he personally did not want another costly war in the Middle East.
- Israeli influence and the policymaking process: He describes a multilayered Israeli influence network—strong PAC presence, intelligence sharing, and media/think-tank leveraging—that shapes U.S. policy. Israelis push for no enrichment and regime-change outcomes, using media echo chambers and direct access to U.S. decision-makers to steer policy in a direction that aligns with their goals, sometimes at odds with longer-term U.S. interests or what Trump might publicly advocate.
- Intelligence versus policy sales: He notes that intelligence briefings can inform or sell a policy. Israeli influence can bypass traditional channels, presenting threats in emotionally resonant terms (e.g., fear of Ayatollahs obtaining a bomb) to push for aggressive stances. This has contributed to a cycle of escalation and military action.
- Negotiation space and red lines: The administration’s narrowing of red lines around enrichment (from broader nuclear nonproliferation to zero enrichment) limited potential deal space. The Iranians did show willingness to negotiate on enrichment levels, monitoring, and proxies, but the Israelis and policy ecosystem continually sought broader prohibitions, complicating any potential agreement.
- The Iran-Israel dynamic: The Israeli objective appears oriented toward regime change or a state of chaos preventing Iran from leveraging its regional power. Kent argues the U.S. has enabled Israel by subsidizing its defense and offense, creating pressure that constrains U.S. policy and international leverage.
- Strategic and regional assessment: The Gulf, Straits of Hormuz, and regional energy security are central. He argues that the U.S. cannot easily open Hormuz militarily in the long term and that any durable arrangement would require restraining Israel, easing sanctions relief for Iran, and returning to a sustainable regional security framework.
- Iran’s current strategy: Iran has managed to deter substantial American escalation by threatening to disrupt energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz and by leveraging proxies and regional influence. The leadership has shown discipline in controlling proxies and presenting a credible threat that optimizes Iran’s strategic position.
- Great power dynamics: China is seen as a major beneficiary of the current cycle, gaining leverage as global energy transactions shift away from the dollar and as U.S. attention diverts to the Middle East. Russia’s posture is also affected; sanctions and energy markets interact with Iran’s actions, while Russia and China could exploit the distraction and reframe influence in their favor.
- Syria and broader war lessons: Kent emphasizes that regime-change in Syria contributed to instability, with various factions and external powers (Turkey, Israel, HTS, Al Qaeda offshoots) complicating the landscape. He remains skeptical about the future stability of Syria, warning that competing external interests could lead to further conflict.
- Prospects for de-escalation: A path to de-escalation would require restraining Israel’s offensive actions, offering some sanctions relief to Iran, and engaging in constructive regional diplomacy to reopen Hormuz. He suggests a sustainable deal would avoid large U.S. troop commitments and focus on practical counterterrorism cooperation, stable oil flow, and avoiding regime-change rhetoric.
Overall, Kent argues that the Iran war was driven by a dominant Israeli influence, a flawed regime-change impulse, and a diplomacy dynamic that prioritized aggressive measures over practical, balanced engagement. He advocates restraining Israel, pursuing a pragmatic, limited set of objectives with Iran, and reframing U.S. regional strategy to reduce perpetual conflict in the Middle East. He also warns that without de-escalation, the conflict risks drawing the U.S. into a prolonged and costly cycle with broad regional and global repercussions.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center. So thank you very much for taking the time to come on the program. You recently resigned as the counterterrorism direct director over the war against Iran, and I thought a good place to start would be why you think the war against Iran was a mistake.
Speaker 1: So as I said in my my resignation letter, I believe that Iran posed no imminent threat to us, as in Iran was not on the cusp of attacking us. Since president Trump came back into office, we watched, and people with access to just the Internet can verify this, we watched the Iranians observe a very calculated escalation ladder. They stopped their proxies from attacking us as they were attacking us under the Biden administration when Trump came back into office. They sat at the negotiating table with us up until the twelve day war and Operation Midnight Hammer. Once Operation Midnight Hammer was complete, and mind you, during the twelve day war, they didn't attack us at all.
Once we attacked them and hit their nuclear sites, they responded by firing an equal amount of missiles as we dropped bombs at a very empty quadrant on a base in in Qatar, and then they immediately got back to the negotiating table with us. The only imminent threat, as Secretary Rubio said, was from the Israelis. The Israelis attacked Iran, and we knew that during this iteration of the war, that the Iranians would understand that this was an existential threat to their regime, that that the goal would be regime change, and so that they they responded by retaliating against us. But again, this this whole series of events wouldn't have taken place if the Israelis would not have attacked. So there was no imminent threat, and I also am just against us getting involved in yet another regime change war in The Middle East.
I'm not a fan of the regime in Iran. I understand they are a terrorist threat, especially from my portfolio and my perspective as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. However, using a regime change tactic that failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, that to me was just a recipe for disaster. But it was exactly what the Israelis wanted. And so watching the Israelis really force the hand of my government something I was not going to be a part of.
And then I have a lot of personal reasons too, my background of fighting in our wars in Iraq and Syria and Yemen and other places. I really did not want to see any more young Americans lose their lives in a needless war in The Middle East, and I I just personally could not be a part of that any longer.
Speaker 0: How do you explain this to the the Israeli influence? Because it's often pointed out that that the Israeli and US interests that, yes, while they overlap, they're also not exactly the same. Indeed, over time, we see, at least over the past few years, their interest appears to diverge more and more. Why is it that Israel has such a great influence over the decision making in Washington now?
Speaker 1: So honestly, I think it's a combination of things. Like, the Israelis are very effective at what they do. They're a small country, and so they use a very sophisticated layered approach influencing the American government. Obviously, their their grip on congress, I think, is well documented. They have very active political action committees that use Americans who support Israel to provide a bunch of money to different political candidates, and that gets them a certain degree of access.
We also have a very close relationship with the Israelis in terms of intelligence sharing. It's because the Middle East is a very challenging place to operate, and the Israelis are a very competent intelligence service. But because we rely on them for so much of our intelligence, personally believe that we've gotten a little bit too close with them because of us not understanding a lot of what's going on in The Middle East. We will take what they say basically as the only opinion worth counting in terms of intelligence collection. But if you've worked in the region for quite a while like I have, you do realize that the Israelis use their intelligence to influence us as well as to inform us, and they are usually pushing for a very different objective.
In this administration, for example, the Israelis did a very effective job of eliminating the potential for a negotiation between president Trump and the Iranians. Now president Trump had always said that his policy was Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The the Iranians in their own way agreed with that. The supreme leader, the former supreme leader before he was killed, had a fatwa or religious decree that prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. So Iran basically agreed, we don't want a nuclear weapon.
Now Iran wanted the ability to enrich uranium, they wanted the ability to produce a nuclear weapon should they choose so. They basically didn't want to go the route of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and say, hey, give up everything, which meant you would then be vulnerable to a regime change war. And they didn't want to go the route of Saddam Hussein saying, hey, we're gonna develop one or or, you know, pretend that they may have had one. So their their approach was pretty pragmatic. The Israelis recognized this as a threat to their goal of regime change because they saw, hey, Trump's gonna get to the negotiating table with these guys.
He's gonna get a deal because President Trump is, know, he prides himself on being a deal maker. So what they sought to do was use their multilayered influence network to move the red line from no nuclear weapon to no enrichment. So no American official said no enrichment in this administration. In the previous administration, Secretary Pompeo had said Iran can't enrich, but he was really the only one who said that. When we came back in in January '25, the Israelis used their official engagements, and then they also used their their folks in the media, pro Israel sympathizers in the media and in the think tank sphere, to say just over and over again, essentially, the American policy is no enrichment or enrichment equals a bomb, as in if you can enrich any uranium, then you're going to have a nuclear bomb.
And they did this, you know, through repetition, they would put it on the news the same night they'd be in the White House lobbying for these different things, or they'd be over at more of the intelligence agencies lobbying for these different things. And so they were able to influence US policy and basically convince President Trump that his new policy was no enrichment. And now we found ourselves in this quagmire where we bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, we take away their ability to enrich, but the Israelis come right back, like you heard Mark Levin do on TV the other night and say, well, there's still some uranium there, and we have to go in and actually, it's not enough to bomb it, we have to go physically get it, which means we have to put boots on the ground, we have to control ground. Again, it gets us stuck in this quagmire, and so that that right there is really what I call the the pro Israel eco chamber or really just the ecosystem that they've developed throughout multi levels of our government.
Speaker 0: Because my impression from Iran was that if it was solely an issue of of having more transparency around the civilian nuclear program, that is that they wouldn't develop a weapon, that a deal could be made, that their frustration often came from linking the nuclear issue to the issue of, well, supporting regional allies or having certain limitations on ballistic missiles or drones. Is do you see then this being Israeli input that is trying to link the nuclear issue to a lot of other issues to essentially make it impossible to get a deal for, you know, the purpose of pushing war?
Speaker 1: Yes. The Israelis were very good at moving the red line. So when when president Trump scoped the negotiations very narrowly to no nuclear weapons, and then even in the enrichment sphere, there was some play before the twelve day war and even after the twelve day war. I mean, Witkoff, Stephen Witkoff is is a very good negotiator as well. And him and the Iranians were in very real talks about, you know, what level of enrichment would be allowed, how it would be monitored, and so this was really just trade space.
I think the typical negotiation back and forth that takes place in any healthy negotiations, and so the Israelis would would come in and say, Oh, but actually, it's not the enrichment. It's not the nukes. It's it's the ballistic missiles. Don't you realize these ballistic missiles can reach your bases? Well, I mean, most of our bases were on Iran's borders.
That was kinda like a no brainer. And then they would say, well, it's not those those ballistic missiles. It's their medium and long range ballistic missiles. And then it's their proxies, their support for the regional actors. But again, those are issues, I've spent a lot of my career actually fighting Iranian proxies, but Iran showed that they could get ies under control, and and they did that when Trump came back into office.
They didn't respect the Biden administration. They were they had attacked our troops in Iraq and Syria over, you know, around 200 times since October 7. But then when Trump came back into office, because in the first Trump administration, he had killed Qasem Soleimani, they said, okay, this is not someone to play with. Let's get the proxies under control. And they showed that they were able to do that.
So again, we were we were in a healthy trade space for negotiation. So this idea that you hear frequently from American officials that Iran is like just these these psychopathic jihadis like they're members of ISIS or something that we can't negotiate with. I I just don't think any data supports that whatsoever. They showed that they would observe the escalatory ladder. And again, look, I I'm not a fan of the the regime in Iran.
I'm not a fan of the IRGC. I wish that the the Iranian people would would get rid of them. Unfortunately, we've set that goal back. I mean, there were protesters that were on the streets in January protesting against the economic conditions in Iran, and I think that actually has more of a chance of of getting rid of that regime than anything an external actor is gonna do. But instead, we we came in and by trying to remove the regime forcefully, I think we only strengthened it.
And this was always our prediction, because I think this speaks to human nature, but also just to the culture of the region and the culture of the Shias. So we worked really against our own stated purpose for being over there. And now we're in this cycle of like, are we trying to get the uranium? What's our actual strategic goal? Whereas the Israelis keep moving the ball forward because their goal really is just to either get rid of the regime completely or have the regime in a chaotic war state where they can't, you know, launch attacks against Israel.
Speaker 0: You said before that intelligence services kind of do two things. One, they can inform, but they can also sell a policy. When it comes to, I guess, portraying the Iranian government as being completely irrational, that is, you know, they're crazy mullahs who just wanna acquire a nuclear weapon to, you know, blow up the world. Is this is this something that is sold to the public to kind of build public support? Or is it or do you see some of these ideas being shared by the decision makers?
Say, for example, in Washington, do they do they, I guess, buy into the idea that Iran is as irrational as, you know, as one often gets the impression from from listening to the speeches and the media? Because I thought what you mentioned in the beginning is quite important is this the Iranians going carefully kind of up the escalation ladder. They're preparing to go up, down. A lot of this indicates very you know, the rational calculations of a state as opposed to, you know, a Shiite version of the Taliban, say.
Speaker 1: You know, unfortunately, most senior decision makers, unless they have a background in the military and in The Middle East, they have to deal with such a large portfolio. They don't have time to to deeply study these issues. And a lot of times they won't have time to do a deep dive with, you know, an analyst who's covered these topics for decades. It's available through them, some of them take that opportunity, but a lot of them just, they just simply don't have the time, and this is again, this is where the Israelis, they play a weak hand very well. They will use their access to senior officials, usually from political channels, but also through official government engagements, and they will come in and they will kind of do an in run around the intelligence process.
If Mossad or one of the other Israeli intelligence organizations wants to give the CIA or give one of our intelligence agencies intelligence, it actually goes through a process, a pretty rigorous process. It's not perfect. Some things get through that just, you know, aren't true. However, it still is a process, and there's somewhat of a John DeSai that that that's put upon it. And the Israelis know this.
They know the game. So they'll have their senior officials come and engage directly with our senior officials, and they won't usually talk intelligence. They'll usually say something to the effect of, you know, they're within two weeks of getting a bomb and you know, you don't want to be the one that's gonna be responsible for these crazy Ayatollahs because Ayatollahs just sound crazy, right? You don't want the Ayatollah to get a bomb because then that's gonna be on you. And then it will be repeated that night on the media, on conservative media usually, in this case under the Trump administration, but we've seen it done under previous administrations too, on Democrat media as well.
And so they use this echo chamber very effectively, and it's also how they do an in run around intelligence process. And again, the Israelis, just because so many of them are dual American citizens, and they sound literally just like I've been in the room with Israelis who, you know, went to school in Miami and Ohio and, you know, Washington State where I'm from. And so it actually can be very disorienting in a way. Like we get a little we as Americans, one of our weaknesses with the Israelis is we get too comfortable with them. Like they do a really good job of not feeling foreign, especially in a region like the Middle East where everything feels very, very foreign.
They they do a great job of of using that access to their favor, and it's just something that we have to really, really have our guard up for.
Speaker 0: You know, one of the reasons I was very optimistic about Trump's reelection was, you know, he he was pushing hard for, you know, ending the proxy war in Ukraine. He was gonna end the forever wars, which, of course, The United well, a lot of Americans are now also become exhausted about. And and I kept thinking now about this thing that colonel Lawrence Wilkerson told me when when he was in talks with Obama during his time in the White House, and he said that there was this strong bias for war in Washington. That's what Obama told colonel Wilkerson. And I was wondering how how it how do you make sense of it?
Is this how why did Trump go down the route of a war with Iran, you think? Because he, you know, he seems very much genuine in his in his previous, well, desire to not get engaged in any of these forever wars. Indeed, I think he was the first president to have his whole first administration without now starting a new war in decades. So why do you think he shifted on this issue?
Speaker 1: Yes. That's a great question. I I would agree, though, with the premise that Washington is, in general, just for the wars. There's obviously the the military industrial complex aspect of it. I mean, Washington DC, it's built on defense contractors, essentially.
So you're you're gonna get very little pushback when you wanna start a new war, you know, arm a new proxy group, get engaged in a new proxy operation. So that's just I think kind of the default bipartisan factory settings, if you will, of Washington DC. In this case, I do think that President Trump, again, the Israelis, the way that they influenced him, and then also I think that they played to his psyche in a way, they said, look, you you've already done historic things with your military. You were able to go in and take out the leader in Venezuela. You know, that was a flawless operation.
It was historic. Protesters are already on the streets here in in in January. All you have to do is a couple strikes, and this whole thing is gonna be easy. It's gonna fall, and then you're gonna be historic. I think they they they pointed out to him, and and this was, you know, echoed by the the pro Israeli lobby, but also a lot of the the more neoconservative, neoliberal types that just said, look, Iran's been a pain to every president, they've been a threat to every administration for the last forty seven years, you're the only one who's strong enough.
This is your place in history. So I think they played his psyche very effectively, unfortunately. And think a lot of Trump's instincts, and this is the man that I know, I think a lot of his instincts said, don't take the trap. It never works out. But it was overridden, I just think, by the persistency of the Israeli lobby and of their surrogates within the media and then the access they have within the government.
I still think and hope, and this is why I'm trying to do as much media as I can. I think he has time to kind of wake up and see that, like, this is not going to be an easy thing. The Iranians right now can essentially win by not losing. They're affecting world energy prices because of their grasp on the Straits Of Hormuz. I I think Trump is good at seeing the big picture.
So I I truly hope and I truly pray that he he can kinda shuck off all of the people who led him down this path and do a very Trumpian move and come to a quick peace if that's even possible at this point.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I guess what is interesting with Iran, though, is there doesn't seem to be much escalation dominance over it. In other words, it's not possible to continue to escalate until Iran will have to back it down. It seems that they can go pretty much all the way up this escalation ladder. I mean, they have a lot of regional targets.
They can shut down, you know, the Red Sea if they want. They can, you know, hit desalination plants of the Gulf States, which would essentially leave make all the expats leave. They can destroy the finance there, shut down their energy operations. So it looks like they have they can continue to climb at least a few more steps up this escalation ladder. So how do you assess now the the strategy of the Iranians?
What what they will do next if if there is escalation?
Speaker 1: I think the Iranians studied the wars of the last two decades to their to their their East and to their West, and they they saw that essentially you can win by not losing. And so I think for them to keep enough of their leadership alive, and they obviously have a lot of depth in their leadership, and I think their leadership has only been strengthened because of the strikes that we've taken. I think that there's a lot of support right now for the regime, whereas just a couple months ago, there probably was less. But also they've done a very impressive job with being able to manufacture and disperse their ballistic missiles and their drone capability. And I mean, anybody who can look at a map of the Straits Of Hormuz, it's pretty pretty narrow section there that if they can every now and again get a drone, every now and again get a ballistic, every now and again get some mines in that, then they mess with world energy and they and they know it.
And I think the way that they're using the Chinese and other world powers to say, hey, you guys can get your oil through. We're not going to trade in the dollar, but you guys are welcome to use the Straits Of Hormuz, I think is very shrewd of them. And they also just know politically that this is not going to be a popular war as it drags out. So I think that they found kind of their steady state right now, where they realize they can continue to strike targets in The Middle East. They can make this very uncomfortable for the GCC countries, which for now we sort of have the support of, but I think that erodes more and more.
We're already seeing a lot of fraction fractures in our relationship with the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, which is key for us to be able to project power against Iran as well. So right now, I I personally don't see very many downsides to for the Iranians for them to continue this war. I think they I think they realize with a very minimum effort, they can continue this far longer than we can.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's an interesting framing. If they just hold on, they can win. That's one of the lessons of many wars going from, I guess, Vietnam to the Iraq war.
That is The US would win on premise or always on the battlefield, but at the end, if one can't stick it out, then, yeah, it does it's step not necessarily how the success ultimate success can be can be measured. But given the the Iranian objectives, though, seem to be organized around removing threats from the region, that would be US bases. The it looks like the Strait Of Hormuz would be key to this. I mean, they can tax the Gulf states for reparation. They can pressure them into removing US bases from their soil.
They can, as you said, can pressure countries to sell their oil in other currencies than the dollar. A lot of this seems aimed then to distangle The United States from that region. Do you see it possible can I mean, can The US leave or, I guess, declare victory and go home as long as the Strait Of Hormuz is not under US control? Because it doesn't seem like it's possible to bring it under US control either. I might be wrong, of course.
Speaker 1: No. I think we're in a conundrum right now, because I think the idea that we're going to forcefully open the Straits Of Hormuz, I mean, militarily, could we do it? I mean, we'd probably need to build a coalition to do it. I think we can always muster enough, you know, hardware and military might to do something temporarily, but as we just talked about, I mean, if we temporarily open the Straits Of Hormuz, eventually the Iranians would find their footing again and they would, you know, use insurgent tactics and they would make the Straits Of Hormuz less secure, which would go back to messing with, you know, international energy shipping. So I don't think that we can do it in the long term.
Could we, you know, do it really quickly and have it not last? I'm sure that we could. But I think a lot of this at the end of the day is going to boil down to like a cost benefit analysis for us. Like what is it going to cost us in terms of not just dollars and military hardware, but also political capital to take a swing at militarily opening the Straits Of Hormuz? And if we end up having it not last or failing, like what political costs we play there?
Or do we just get to a negotiating table with the Iranians? And for me, the formula has always been that President Trump wants to get some kind of a sustainable deal that doesn't see us committing a ton more military resources or burning more political capital. And I think he could get a deal like that. However, if he doesn't restrain the Israelis, the Israelis will do what they've been doing for the last couple weeks. Basically, every time you would see President Trump publicly say he wants some form of de escalation to facilitate negotiations, you should you would see the Israelis basically within hours come in and literally bomb the targets the president had just said not to bomb.
He said, not gonna hit energy infrastructure anymore. The Israelis would come right in and hit energy infrastructure to keep the war going because they're they're terrified that president Trump will get a negotiation, that he will push the Israelis to the side. So I I think in order for there to be any potential for a deal that reopens the Straits, that sees us and Gulf allies maintaining our relationships and returning to anything that even closely resembles the way we had it before, we have to restrain the Israelis first. Otherwise, we're just gonna find ourselves in this repeated cycle.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Because many analysts I've spoken to, they they seem not to be sure whether or not it's the Israelis which are forcing America's hands, such as what you described, or if there's some elaborate game between, you know, playing good cop or bad cop. But it's very much the Israelis then that are pushing this through.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, yes. I mean, from my vantage point, it is because we've always had a very limited goal in Iran. And most people in this administration, at least publicly, would acknowledge that the idea of regime change is just, it's never worked before. Nobody wants to try to defend it. Nobody wants to bring that up.
But the Israelis really, really wanted it. And so now that we're headed down this regime change path, it very much appears the Israelis are in the driver's seat. I mean, again, back at the very beginning of the war, you know, the Secretary of State, even the President himself, came out and they're like, well, we had to strike Iran because the Israelis were going to, showing everyone that we really couldn't restrain the Israelis, which is absolutely absurd because we're paying for their defense. We're giving them the ability to go on the offense. We're helping them defend their own homeland.
So again, this lack of balance in our relationship and the amount of influence they have over our government, and they're making very big decisions that we're paying for both in terms of, you know, the actual cost, but then also, we've lost, you know, 13 American service members here, and the Israelis have not lost that at all, fighting in in this war that's being pursued for their objectives.
Speaker 0: Well, if Trump would call you today, though, you you mentioned that he wants some from the de escalation to reach a deal. But what could an agreement look like? Because so far, it looks as if The United States and Iran are miles apart. What could a possible deal look like? Would it be finding some common security architecture for the region, or how would the core security interests of Iran as well as the key security interests of The United States possibly, I guess, be harmonized?
Or is it not possible with our I guess, an all encompassing political deal just to find a way of deescalating and, yeah, getting out of this conflict?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I think the first step to to getting the the conflict to stop and get to get the Straits Of Hormuz open is us showing the Iranians and really the Gulf the the GCC countries too that we will we will restrain the Israelis, that we will cut off significant amount of their military aid to to prevent them from going on the offense. And I think we have to be very firm and probably publicly firm with the Israelis and say, like, you will not go on the offense anymore. We will help you with your defense if you're attacked, but we are done supporting any offensive operations that you're that you're going to do. And if you don't listen to us, then we're gonna cut off all military aid, which Israel knows they need for their very survival.
So I think until we show that we're going to do that, I don't think the Iranians are gonna take us very seriously. And I think the GCC countries won't take us seriously either. Once we do that, I think it's very possible to incentivize the Iranians to basically kind of come back out from the cold and to say, look, you guys have a ton of oil that you can't sell right now, a ton of natural gas, the world needs that, let's open the straits, let's lift sanctions on your energy resources, and let's get essentially the oil and the commerce flowing once again, Let's get your economy rebuilt. We're never gonna be able to give them reparations as they're they're demanding right now. But I think sanctions relief and restraining the Israelis would get them to the table and potentially even I think turn the corner.
I don't wanna be overly optimistic, but I think turn the corner in the region where everyone can at least agree that these wars that we've been fighting, you know, basically nonstop since, well, even before nineeleven, but you know, for the last twenty to forty years, depending on however you wanna do the math, they just haven't been productive for anybody and for us to work out our differences at the negotiating table as opposed to these endless wars.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm glad you brought up these endless wars because we already had so much, I guess, bad experience. That is twenty years in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, the very costly war, both in terms of blood and treasury in Iraq, which essentially ended up putting a key balancer to Iran into making it more Iran aligned. We had, you know, Libya, which became a mess. Syria, where we now have jihadists essentially ruling the country. How do you what would be your key takeaway or, I guess, the the lessons from these wars?
Because, yeah, we we we never seem to learn these lessons, I guess. But besides having an exit strategy, how how do you assess, I guess, the commonality of this wars?
Speaker 1: Regime change doesn't work. I mean, we're not going to be able to come from 7,000 miles away, a completely different culture, and through the barrel of a gun, take out the leader and then be greeted as liberators by the people. I mean, I don't know how many times we need to relive this. I mean, just last night, Mark Levin, who I would like to discount, the president listens to him, was desperately tweeting for us to arm the Iranian opposition so that we could create chaos in Iran and topple the leaders. I mean, it's just the same formula over and over again.
So I frankly think that anyone who advocates for any kind of regime change in The Middle East should be expelled from any kind of foreign policy circles just because it's had such a disastrous consequence. Then I think we have to be very, very judicious about what our actual needs are from most of these countries, and really tailor our policies based off that. In general, what we need for most countries in The Middle East is we need them not to harbor terrorists, we need them to cooperate with us in terms of, you know, counter terrorism operations and counter terrorism intelligence, which most of the countries in the region do because most of the terrorist organizations threaten the countries in the region, unless we screw things up so badly and we install literally the former leader of Al Qaeda in Syria. It's a different story, but you know, it kind of is what it is. We need CT cooperation from them.
And then also we kind of just need the oil to be able to the commerce and the oil to be able to flow. And that's very, very limited when you limit your objectives to very realistic things that only our countries and most countries in the West need. It actually makes it fairly easy. But if we start saying we need things like democratic law and order and we need women's rights and gay rights and all these different things and we need to go wag our fingers at them about their morals, etcetera, And we want to fund different proxy groups against governments that we don't like. That's when things get very, very complicated and we just find ourselves in this never ending cycle of involvement in a region quite frankly that I think is important.
I'm not saying it's not important, but I don't think it's as important as other things that are taking place in the world. So again, we've got to know what we actually need from the region.
Speaker 0: That's always a problem with, I guess, funding or supporting a political opposition. That is, it's usually the most violent actors that would soar to the top in any, you know, regime change war or revolution. Indeed, if you go back to World War I, the Germans seeking to support an opposition in Russia to take the Russian side of the war resulted in them, you know, shipping in Lenin and contributing greatly to the Bolshevik revolutions, which then, yeah, gave them the Soviet Union to be troubled with for the next few decades. And it seems to be also be the same case often in in most of these proxy wars. I mean, in '99, when we fought against Yugoslavia, we backed the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which, well, the at least the Republicans in The United States at that time recognized or consisted of some very unsavory figures that is were engaged in a lot of different forms of crimes, but but also different opposition groups throughout The Middle East.
But you have brought up the example. You you said we helped to install al Qaeda leader in Syria. How how do you I guess that was not the ideal outcome, but how do you see The United States, I guess, contributing to, well, to to to training or arming or, putting essentially Giuliani in the driving driving sorry, the at least the position of the presidency where he is now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I mean, really the the story of what what took place in Syria never would have happened if we wouldn't have gone into to Iraq in the first place. I mean, the Iraq war led to this in terms of forming ISIS and Al Qaeda in the region. But really, when we went into Iraq, we messed things up so badly there that we installed this very pro Iranian pro Shia, mean Iraq's a Shia majority country. Saddam kinda held the lid on that, and as you said, was a counterbalance to Iran.
We took out Saddam. We unfortunately partnered with a lot of Iranian proxies essentially, who had actually fought against the Iraqis in the Iraq Iran war, put them in power, and at the end of the Iraq war, as we're getting ready to leave in 2011, you had a lot of the Gulf States and the Israelis especially who said, wait a sec, this is no good. Now we have a Shia crescent that basically goes all the way from Tehran all the way into Damascus. Baghdad is a massive staging grounds for them. The Israelis had always been at odds at odd with Assad because Assad was supporting Hezbollah, supporting Hamas, and helping Iran do so.
So we had this Shia crescent. And so, we we had to go and basically put out a a brush fire that we started. Syria's kind of the opposite of Iraq, and you had an Alawiite Assad, who was sort of a version of Shia, but the majority of the country was Sunni. So when we went to go either start or help, you know, spread, depending on how you look at it, the Arab Spring and the popular uprising. The Arab Spring had started in Tunisia.
There were some organic protests that took place in Syria, to be certain there was, and a lot of that was, I think, relatively secular, relatively cosmopolitan Syrians protesting against the Assad regime, but then we came in and we armed a lot of the the more radical Sunnis. There was the free Syrian army, again, some some secular, some defectors from the military, but the most effective fighters that we found were some of the hardline Sunnis who quickly allied with Al Qaeda. The the Al Qaeda in Iraq had died down, a lot of them to include Sharia himself and Baghdadi, the the first leader of ISIS, were imprisoned in Iraq. They were let go. Once we left, they made their way to Syria, and we ended up supporting a lot of these proxy groups with the idea that they're going to help us against Assad.
We even heard in Hillary Clinton's leaked emails where she said Al Qaeda's on our side in Syria, and so we were supporting, you know, Al Qaeda, which eventually morphed into ISIS, and then again, we have to go back in and put out the brushfire that we started. ISIS became so powerful, but they had a different, a slightly different ideology where they said, you know what, actually, we don't care that much about Assad, we care about the global jihad. And so they started conducting attacks in in in the West, in Europe, trying to inspire attacks in America. And so we had to then go back into Iraq and back into Syria to take out ISIS. Meanwhile, Jelani is a pretty smart guy.
He he broke off from ISIS. He wanted to stay focused on his his home country of Syria. He was chosen by Zawahiri, the leader of Al Qaeda at the time because we just killed Bin Laden to run Al Nusra, which was the the branch of Al Qaeda inside of Syria. Eventually, he realized that was somewhat of a toxic brand itself, and, you know, it had put a target literally on his head. And so then he changed the name to Hayat Tahrir al Sham, which was very Syria focused, got a lot of support from the Turks.
We knew the Turks were supporting them, but we needed the Turks for our operations against ISIS, again, the brush fire that we had started. And then from there, the HTS got a lot of support from the Turks and we kind of ignored them for quite some time, but we still had this goal of getting rid of Assad because again, Assad was a threat to the Israelis because Assad was supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. And so we allowed the Turks. We supported the Turks in supporting HTS, and then eventually they were able to overthrow the Assad regime. And again, this is where President Trump's initial, I think, gut instincts were correct In December, after he had been elected but wasn't inaugurated yet, and the Assad regime fell, President Trump said, like, hey, Syria's a mess.
It's always been a mess, and it's none of our business, frankly, which I think was the right approach. Unfortunately, the Turks were able to basically rebrand Jelani as Al Sharra to make it seem like, you know, we could make Syria into this great cosmopolitan place in the Mediterranean. And, you know, to be fair, the HTS government, they they have done they they have done a lot of bad things, and they've had members of Al Qaeda infiltrate their ranks. They're very sympathetic members of Al Qaeda. They've taken in foreign fighters.
However, there does seem to be at least some element of Sharia's government that is trying to stabilize Syria. So the verdict's still out on how this is gonna work. I I personally don't trust Sharra. I don't trust his government. But that's that's where we're at with Syria.
But again, the only reason we we have to put so much effort into this is because we we tried this regime change war. We were led down this path by the Israelis. Iraq got us in there in the first place, and it's it's kinda one of those, like, when we when we know this full history, like, how are we even going down this this route in another country in The Middle East?
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think it was one point. I read some reports that within Syria, the the US government or Pentagon was supporting one faction, which was fighting against another faction, which had been backed by the CIA. I I don't remember the details because it started to get too convoluted, but it looks as if, yeah, we, yeah, got stuck in a very overcomplicated game. But how do you see Syria developing now, though?
Because a lot of the anti Assad coalition was based on essentially being an anti Assad coalition. In other words, when Assad was removed, then we suddenly have Turkey, Israel, the different groups now under Jolani in in Syria. Of course, The United States has its own interest. Do do you see the ability of all these different actors to harmonize their interests in terms of stabilizing, I guess, Syria for some common good? Or or do you see Syria unraveling into, I guess, Israeli backed or occupied territory versus Turkish supported faction?
Or how do you see this? Because we just saw, I guess, a week ago or something, the first border attack that is some Iraqi militias launching some GRAD missiles into into Syria, which is an interesting development within the radar, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's there's a couple of different things I think that could take place in in in Syria. Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic, you know, about the future for Syria. There's gonna be a major clash, and I think the first flash point is going to be between the Turks and the Israelis. Although the Israelis definitely wanted Assad gone because of Assad's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, They're very worried about Jelani and about HTS and and how close they are with the Turks and having them on on their border.
As a matter of fact, in terms of just like, you never can anticipate what blowback you're gonna get. Hezbollah was, I think, severely what was severely degraded post October 7 by Israeli operations, but also a lot of folks in Lebanon had kind of gotten wary of Hezbollah dragging them into conflicts. However, once Jelani took back over and a Sunni Al Qaeda government was installed essentially on their border, they they remembered just a decade ago when ISIS was trying to penetrate their borders, and it was Hezbollah that fought them off. So this actually gave Hezbollah a lot of political momentum to gain support back from the people. And so the the the Israelis, are wary of Jelani.
They support the Druze that are to the South. They support a lot of the they have relationships with some of the the Alawiets. So they're at odds with what the Turks want, and they also view the Turks as an existential threat, as a regional threat to them as well. So I I think the Israeli interest and the Turkish interests are gonna come to a head in Syria. This puts Jelani in a very precarious position because I think he doesn't want to anger either one of them.
He likes to have good relations with the Israelis. He likes to have good relations, obviously, with the Turks. But then a third wild card factor is that basically what swept Jelani and HTS to power was a, you know, a very radical element of the Sunni population, many of whom were affiliated with ISIS for quite some time. But now that ISIS is mostly defeated, a lot of them are willing to, you know, say that they're not members of ISIS anymore, or they're members of a new group, but they're still very, very hard lined and they want Jelani to take a hard line against Israel, and they want Jelani to give support to a more traditional, you know, Sunni, South West type of government. And so if Jelani goes and he has to and he cracks down and he is a good counterterrorism partner to us, it's going to put him at odds with the base of support that brought him into power in the first place.
So he has to play this dangerous game right now where he can't crack down too hard on the terrorists that are a threat to him. Otherwise, they will consume him. Although he's got a lot of pressure coming from us and from the West to do counterterrorism operations because we are very concerned, especially since the two main refugee camps, Al Hole and Al, Rogue, have basically been emptied out. So we we have people that have been under detention, for about a decade, and these are families. These are kids that have been radicalized in this environment, and also thousands of ISIS detainees.
We got about 5,000 of the worst ISIS detainees out of Syria and into Iraq, they can be tried in the Iraqi justice system, but there's still another 25 to 30,000 ISIS, at least sympathizers, that have now been reintroduced into the Syrian population, and Al Sharjah Jelani, his government, they lack the capability to track all these people to make sure that they're actually reintegrating into society. So they're kind of out there. So there is, under the, right just below the surface, the architecture essentially of what was the Islamic caliphate that he has to deal with, and if he cracks down too hard on it, he could be consumed by it. If he doesn't crack down hard enough, he's gonna lose support from the West, And then meanwhile, not that I'm sympathetic for Jelani, but from to the North and to the South, he has his two competing masters of Turkey and Israel. So that place could erupt very, very quickly, given all the pressure that there is in the region.
Speaker 0: Often heard, yeah, comments that the the different ISIS fighters, somehow they they don't tend to target Israel a lot, neither Jelani. But I I spoke I did an interview recently with Ted Postal. He yeah. As you know, he's a, yeah, nuclear scientist at MIT. He focused a lot on nuclear weapons and its delivery systems, and he was making the point that if Israel now feels trapped and the war is being lost against Iran, that they could reach for a nuclear weapon.
And he said that this would be a tragic mistake because while Iran is not a nuclear weapon state, it could be considered a threshold state or at least to have enough know how and material to put together a bomb, and not something they would likely do. He he he at least predicted that their strategy would be to not cross that line unless they would be attacked by nuclear weapon. But then in a relatively short time, they would be able to assemble something and then launch back at Israel. Again, it's it's assumptions. We don't know everything about the Iranians.
But to what extent do you think this is a possibility, though, that we could be moving in that direction towards the possibility of not just nuclear war, but even a nuclear exchange?
Speaker 1: There's gonna be immense pressure put on by the hardliners in Iran who whoever ends up ruling Iran, whether it's the Ayatollah's son, who already we we assess that he was a little bit more hardline than his father. And I'm sure watching his father get killed that didn't, you know, moderate him whatsoever. I I think that a lot of the hardliners that we saw that were pressuring the old Ayatollah to move towards a nuclear weapon, they're going to end up being vindicated because the the former Ayatollah before we killed him, he said, hey, this is a good spot for us to be in. We don't wanna develop a nuclear weapon. We wanna have the ability, but no nuclear weapon.
This gives us the maximum negotiating leverage. And for a while, he was he was correct. But unfortunately, we basically destroyed literally killed that school of thought. And so now all the hardliners right now and and and I warned people these hardliners are not to be messed with. I mean, these are the guys who were the students of Qasem Soleimani who fought us in Iraq, who fought us in Syria, who funded and trained Hezbollah over the years.
These are very serious people. They're now saying like, look, we told you so. You cannot negotiate with the Americans. You cannot negotiate with the Israelis. The only way out of this basically is the North Korea solution.
I mean, think all of them right now are pointing to North Korea being like, you know who's not getting invaded right now? North Korea. And so I think this is again why we have to deescalate this as soon as possible and get them to the negotiating table. Because I kind of, this has become a self fulfilling prophecy at some point. We basically just yelled nuclear enough and nuclear weapons and WMD and enrichment that now it's kind of just going to happen because of, again, because of our, a brush fire that we created now will become this new crisis.
So I would be shocked honestly, if just logically the Iranians aren't aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Now again, like they can enrich and they can I'm not a nuclear expert, I'm a counterterrorism guy, but like the ability for them to enrich and then build a bomb, like a really simple one, they could probably do that. But in terms of like delivery system, they're they're good at ballistics, etcetera. But I just think that's a much longer timeline than the pro Israeli lobby will have you believe. They'll make it sound like, you know, by the end of the week, they could be, you know, putting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles that could reach America, and that's just simply not the case.
Speaker 0: I often made the point that it's probably we should probably hope for the Iranians having a lot of drones and ballistic missiles, not well, simply because if if they don't have a conventional deterrent, then they will be more inclined towards acquiring the ultimate deterrent, which is, of course, nuclear weapons. So this idea that a country shouldn't feel safe and also lack conventional deterrent, this is a recipe for disaster, especially if a possibility of nuclear weapon down the road exists. I I I did finally, I wanna ask you also about, I guess, the wider great power dynamic here, the way you see it, because this is not just again, the war against Iran hasn't just set the whole region on fire. It does impact other great powers, be it China or Russia. So Russia, for example, under the Trump administration, I know for a fact there's been a lot at least there was more before, a lot of enthusiasm that it would be possible to improve this bilateral relations that is after the cold war and post cold war.
You know, we had like a century of poor relations, and the idea was that the Russians would be able to perhaps, yeah, dramatically improve relations with The US as they don't really have that many conflicting interests besides NATO. And but but, of course, the the war in Iran has also impacted the the way they think, and you can say the same for China. I was just wondering how do you see the, I guess, the wider great power dynamic being influenced by by this war?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Honestly, I think China is probably the biggest winner in all of this. I mean, we we we had to remove a lot of our combat power from the Pacific. So if China did choose to do something against Taiwan, they they they could, or or they're much closer to being able to do that successfully than they were a couple months ago because we're very distracted right now back in CENTCOM like we have been for the last couple decades. But then also the fact that you have a lot of countries that are now settling their their petro dollar transactions away from the dollar.
They're using the yuan, and the Iranians have even, like, kinda, I think, publicly said that they're gonna accept, you know, the the toll essentially from the Straits Of Hormuz. They're gonna settle transactions in oil in the yuan. I mean, that's a direct threat to the petrodollar, which is a direct threat to the dollar as a reserve currency holder. So in terms of playing like a very long strategic game, this is all playing right into China's China's hand, and this is how China fights. So I think in terms of, like, if we care about great power competition, then we should, and we and we should be very wary of what China is is doing right now globally.
This was a catastrophic mistake because this played directly under their hands. The Russia dynamic, I think, is very interesting. I think we're giving Russia an opportunity essentially to do to us what we did to them in Ukraine. And President Trump even came out and said this when a reporter asked him, hey. Are the Russians giving any kind of intelligence or support to the Iranians?
And Trump said something, know, to the effect of, like, well, you know, if they are, they'd probably just say that that's what we did to them in Ukraine. But also in terms of like, we were attempting to squeeze Russia, I don't agree with this, I don't think it really worked. We were attempting to squeeze Russia by sanctioning all of their oil, gas, natural resources, or natural oil, etcetera. But then when we affected the Straits Of Hormuz and we cut off or at least restricted 20% of the world oil flow, that oil coming out of Russia was suddenly back on the market. So we weren't able to affect Russian oil that way in the way that we were trying to.
But then the Ukrainians went and they started hitting, you know, Russian infrastructure targets as well, which again has created more scarcity on the market, which has had a dramatic impact on the price of the pump throughout Europe. We're starting to feel it here in America. We're gonna see the second, third order effects in terms of fertilizer production, manufacturing components as well. So in terms of like playing the true great game and great power competition, getting involved in the quicksand of the Middle East, I think, is is the quickest way to allow Russia and China to maneuver effectively on us.
Speaker 0: Do you see in terms of the Friver Wars you spoke about, do you see the Ukraine war in the same context? Because in Ukraine, we did something similar. We started backing somewhat radical forces. I'm thinking about the rights sector, Assal, all of these different groups. Well, over time, we don't seem to be able to have that much control over it anymore.
That is at least I get the impression from Trump that he he would like to see concessions from Zelenskyy to put an end to this war, which he's not able to get from Zelenskyy. Did or how how do you see this? Is this how how do you explain Trump not being able to end this war, which he had hoped to do? And, again, I would I assume that this was a genuine intent to put an end to the Ukraine war, but at least America's participation in it kinda quickly. But now we're a year into this administration, though.
Speaker 1: You know, with Ukraine, I I think by the time Trump came into office, Russia was already winning, and the Russians just have a much different outlook on what winning looks like than we do in the West. I mean, the Russians are completely comfortable of losing thousands and grinding it out, you know, meet meter by meter literally until they retake what they view as their their territory. And we were never prepared. We as Americans, I don't think we're ever prepared to be engaged in in a fight like that. Again, I think we thought it was gonna be easy.
I think we thought that we are gonna support the the Ukrainians who valiantly wanted to fight for their own country. I'm not you know, I I think it's I think it's admirable what the Ukrainians have done. They wanted to fight for their own country, but I think we we allowed ourselves to believe that that that narrative would beat geography, and you just can't beat geography. Geography wins every single time. So Trump, I think, really started out with bad hand dealt to him.
But coming in and not quickly cutting off the Ukrainians and saying that we're not gonna support the war anymore, that showed the Russians that we're not 100% committed to ending it, which in case I think the Russians, especially Putin who's been in the game for as long as he has and has even publicly said that dealing with American presidents, doesn't really care because they come and go, and really it's the guys in the dark suits that are in charge. I think we just didn't acknowledge all those factors. And so I think if we want to be able to affect peace there, I think we should, we should be telling the Ukrainians like the same thing we're telling the Israelis. Like, hey guys, you're done going on the offense, work towards peace. And then in terms of, like, proliferation, I'm sure there's a lot of people in Ukraine who are saying, like, we never should have given up on nuclear weapons.
The the the the the way that we've aggressively gone after Iran is gonna show every country throughout the world that you need to have nuclear weapons, and you should never ever give them up.
Speaker 0: Just last question. How do you see the Iran war ending up now? I mean, I know you don't have a crystal ball. There's a lot of actors with many competing interests. There's a lot of things that can go wrong or yeah.
We don't know the intent. But based on where you're sitting now, watching where this direction is going, do you think we'll continue going up the escalation ladder, and or how how do you see this coming to an end? Because I see, you know, Trump wants to put an end to this, but he seems to be pushing the different directions. On one hand, he's warning, you know, we're gonna, you know, burn everything in Iran to the ground if they don't put an end to this war. On the other hand, he's also saying, listen.
This straight over moose, This is up to the Europeans and the regional actors to resolve, so we might just go home. So how do you see or if if you would make a prediction. I'm not gonna hold you to it. As I said, too many unknown variables there, but where do you think this might be going?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like you said, lot of variables. Look. Unless we restrain the Israelis, we're gonna just end up back in this cycle. Now the cycle could could play out in rapid succession, or it could take a little bit longer.
Trump's gonna make some kind of announcement tonight, and like you said, that could be he just says like, hey, you guys open the Straits of we're done, or it could be we're gonna continue the war, we're gonna up it, it could be a misdirection play, I don't know. But unless we restrain the Israelis, gonna end up either getting committed to something that reopens the Straits Of Hormuz, know, cobbling together alliance, and the Israelis might let that play out for a little bit, but then they're going to come right back and demand more regime change, or they're going to take actions inside of Iran against the Iranians that provoke a response that make us then respond back into this cycle. I fear that if we put boots on the ground, not only we're gonna lose more American lives, and then when we lose American lives, the emotional response from from the American people will be that, hey, we've already lost some lives here. We can't just leave. We we we have to finish the mission.
Finish the mission. You hear the Secretary of War constantly say this. Just finish the mission. And and again, what is the mission? Is it regime change?
Do we dominate all of Iran? How how do you even do that? But if we start losing people on the battlefield, it's going to be a recipe for us getting sucked into this for quite some time. Now if we go in and we're sick and we we pull off a spectacular, you know, commando style raid and we and we take out the uranium, I think that's what Trump is is is, you know, he he he's at least hearing that that course of action because Levin is talking about it. And even if we did that successfully, I just think that that would be like a midnight hammer again.
And then in six months, the Israelis are gonna come back to us or take action that gets us pushed back in here. So for me, I don't see this thing ending, and I think there's gonna be ramifications because the Iranians, think, are are are like right now, they believe that they're winning. And unless they get some concessions from us in terms of sanctions release, relief or at least being treated like a normal country in the region, I think they're they're going to keep somewhat of a stranglehold on the Straits Of Hormuz. That way, even if president Trump says, we're leaving, we're done, you guys figure it out, they can still mess with world energy costs, which we will have to deal with regardless of how militarily involved that we are. So, unless we restrain Israel, I just don't see us having a way out of this, regardless of what we say or what we do.
Speaker 0: Well, I want to thank you for taking the time, and I share your concerns about whenever war becomes emotional. And this is a problem, I think, with a lot of political leadership across the political West. Is political leadership that often communicates in emotional slogans, you know, where their leader is bad, you know, if either we bomb him or you empower him, this kind of rhetoric. It never takes us anywhere good. It's always full of yeah.
I guess it comes in the absence of strategy. So, yeah, I was saddened to see you leave your position. We need more common sense people, but I can, of of course, understand where your where your objection came from. So thank you again for taking time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Raj. Great chatting with you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Iran War Broke U.S. Empire & Alliance Systems https://youtu.be/KJsNuI9VVyI https://t.co/174eTCBbi2
Video Transcript AI Summary
In a discussion with Glenn (Speaker 0) and Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Speaker 1), the speakers analyze the current Iran war in the context of a shifting world order. Sachs argues that two things are unfolding simultaneously: the erratic behavior of the United States (personalized in Donald Trump) and the broader question of American hegemony, alongside battlefield realities that challenge the claims of “shock and awe” and irreversible American victory.
Key points raised:
- The US, under Trump, exhibits “brazenness, lawlessness, the viciousness” in rhetoric and actions, including a statement about sending Iran back to the stone age. Netanyahu’s speech is described as equally shocking, with Netanyahu portraying himself in a biblical, godlike framing and extending “10 plagues” to Iran.
- On the battlefield, the idea that American power guarantees victory is questioned. Counterattacks in Israel and the Gulf region have occurred, downing American jets and showing Iranian retaliatory capability and waning missile defense. This challenges the notion that US military supremacy is unassailable.
- Sachs notes a stark contrast in public opinion: in the United States, there is widespread opposition to the war; in Israel, the public appears to largely support the war and the associated violence.
- He characterizes the conflict as one driven by a “war of whim” with unclear aims, and asserts that the claimed U.S. “shock and awe” does not align with the observed battlefield and morale realities.
- Beyond Iraq/Iran, Sachs discusses broader structural factors: American hegemony is pursued as a policy objective but often unfulfillable; the military-industrial complex and figures like Trump contribute to the propulsion of war; personal traits of leaders (described as psychologically unstable by some forensic psychiatrists) influence decision-making.
- A possible path toward de-escalation, according to Sachs, hinges on dialogue among global peers. He suggests that Trump listens to leaders he regards as peers (Putin, Xi, Modi) and that these leaders need to tell him to stop, though he remains skeptical whether this would be sufficient.
- Sachs emphasizes a multipolar world as the reality: countries should avoid hosting US bases, which he argues undermine sovereignty and security. He advocates neighbors engaging with one another, cooperation with major powers (China, Russia, India), and reducing dependence on the United States.
- He critiques Western and European reliance on US leadership, noting that Europe’s internal politics still echo imperial mindsets and that NATO’s expansion and anti-Russia policies have complicated security. He argues that European and Gulf leaders often pursue “peace through strength” rather than genuine diplomacy.
- Specific regional advice includes: be wary of US hegemonic guarantees; avoid dividing lines that empower a hegemon; pursue regional engagement (GCC-Iran dialogue) and view China, Russia, and India as potential partners rather than adversaries; understand that technologies (AI, data centers, chips) are not substitutes for credible security.
Towards the end, Sachs reiterates that the current approach is producing insecurity and economic crisis, urging readers to adjust to a multipolar reality and to seek regional cooperation over reliance on US dominance. He closes by expressing the hope that governments will embrace reason and adapt to current realities.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss what is happening in Iran, but also in the wider world order. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you.
Speaker 0: So we see that the consequences of this war against Iran, it's well, it's difficult to measure. We see it on the global economy, the world order, but also the alliance systems. So that is over the past decade, you can say even eighty years, many countries from The Gulf States to Europe, East Asia, they essentially bet their entire security on, yeah, US protection that is linking themselves to The US hegemony. This now, as the head of US hegemony is in decline and Trump appears to becoming more and more erratic, again, we see that the whole order is unraveling very quickly. Of course, a lot of this came the last speech by Trump, of course, is something that also put some shocks through the international system.
I was wondering, how do you assess this?
Speaker 1: I think two things are are going on simultaneously here and in Ukraine and in other crises. One is the extraordinarily erratic behavior of the United States government and personalized in mister Trump. He shocks the world. He shocks most Americans. Nobody can really rationalize the brazenness, the lawlessness, the viciousness of, US actions and of Trump's rhetoric.
His line about, sending Iran back to the stone age shocked everybody in the world, I think. We can add that his partner in this crime, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a similarly shocking speech that fewer people saw the day before and the start of the Jewish Passover holiday. And in the Passover holiday, which is the story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, God visits 10 plagues on the Egyptian people. And in Netanyahu's speech, he visited 10 plagues on the Iranian people. It's, again, a speech of shocking brutality, and also a a geopolitics, I would say, of maybe the ninth century BC, the mindset, the the biblical framing, Netanyahu casting himself as god is all so stark, so sharp that anyone that is watching what is happening right now sees that we have a an extraordinarily violent war that seems to have justifications coming out of ninth century BC mindsets or simply psychopathic ideas of sending other nations to the stone age.
We heard Trump chortle about the destruction of a bridge in which nine people were killed crossing the bridge, which was a nonmilitary target and reportedly ninety five people injured at the attack on the bridge and the president was delighted by that. So this is one thing that's happening is all over the world and inside The United States, there is a sense of absolutely violent and lawless regime in The United States. The second is the battlefield. American hegemony ultimately tests on the belief, rests on the belief that America dominates the battlefield and all of the rhetoric of Trump and Netanyahu has been since the start of this operation. But it's true in every US operation that shock and awe will overcome the foe, and that the inevitability of US victory is so overwhelming that, everyone will bow down to The United States.
More and more, that idea is unraveling. One say that it unraveled decades ago in Vietnam. One could say that the same failure was shown in Central America in the Contra Wars. One could argue that the same has been seen throughout The Middle East and Afghanistan, that this overwhelming force doesn't prevail. But each time, the same proposition is put forward, that the might of The United States, the unprecedented ability to project power and force is overwhelming.
And Trump made that claim a couple of days ago, and then the next day, two American fighter jets were downed, and counterattacks, came, in Israel and in the Gulf Region again. So to many observers, many people, you are, meeting with and discussing, the battlefield evidence, is quite the contrary of what's being claimed by The United States. Iran seems to have a continuing massive retaliatory force. The depletion of anti missile systems seems to be real. The breakdowns of morale in The US even reportedly forcing aircraft carrier to return to base because of some kind of insurrection or insubordination or collapse of morale among the sailors as reported seems to show the opposite.
So there's a fundamental question, what is America's power? And ultimately, that turns on its military and economic power. And second, what is America's intention? And that turns on the statements, the goals, the behavior of the US government. On both counts, this is a shocking period to mean, let's say on the question of aims and goals, this is shocking.
We can't even piece together as hard as we try exactly why we're in this war. This seems really to be a war of whim. That's the best description that I've heard of it. And when it comes to American power, debate is open and the days will tell what the real situation is. But at least to this moment, the American and Israeli claim of shock and awe overwhelming the Iranian government is not true.
And quite the contrary, it seems that there's a lot of worry, in fact, beneath the surface that the ability to defend against, especially the Iranian missile attacks is waning and in the Gulf Region almost nonexistent. So this is why the whole world is watching this in in amazement. We are seeing fundamental things play out, and they're also extremely dangerous. They can escalate to nuclear war without question on the one side, on the side of Israel. The, I would say, the level of violence, dehumanization of Israel's foes, the biblical language, which in this case of the Bible, the Old Testament story of the Israelite capture of their promised land is so ruthless, so violent, so genocidal that the rhetoric and mindset coming from Israel suggests no no limits.
That seems to be not just tactical. That seems to be actually ideological. The hatred for the other in Israel seems to be unbounded. And a difference of The US and Israel is that in The United States, the public opposes the war quite overwhelmingly. And, nothing that Trump has done has changed that.
And this unease and opposition is very widespread. In Israel, I'm sorry to say, it seems that most of the public backs, the war and backs the violence, and backs the idea behind the war of the hatred of the other side and the belief that the other side is an implacable foe that must be totally annihilated, which again is maybe ninth century BC mentality, but it seems to be infused in the society.
Speaker 0: Well, common friend of ours, John Mersheimer, he keeps making the point that he no one has told him any story of how this could end in a positive way that is in US victory, and it's a good point. I I just find it difficult to see what the best possible outcome is. The whole idea that if there's just enough death, destruction, and carnage, then somehow the Iranians would simply capitulate. It seems like part of the problem with this strategy, though, is that what The US demands of Iran is the capitulation would then become an existential threat. You know, if they would have to give up even their conventional deterrent, what would stop the destruction of Iran?
And there seems to be some parallels to the to the war or the proxy war against Russia. That is if we just escalate enough, then we'll get a deal. But when your adversary considers this to be an existential threat, there is no bowing down. It's only escalation. So do do you see any possible end to this war?
Or how how can this be ended? Because at the moment, it doesn't seem that Trump can is willing or her to Yeah. To to to pack up and go home.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that this is the point, the difference of, can, and will. Of course, Donald Trump can and should pack up and go home, but it's very unlikely to happen. And the backdrop of all of this is the continued American assertion of hegemony. That's not only Trump. That is, the dominant American foreign policy idea that America must be and is the most powerful country in the world in every region and must constantly prove that or demonstrate that if there are any doubts.
So a war in Iran is not about Iranian issues. A war in Iran is about demonstrating America's full and unconstrained power, and it must be proved to the whole world that it is full and unconstrained. That's the backdrop. That goes beyond the question of Trump. But on top of that problem, which is the assertion of hegemony, which is a claim that The US believes in and makes, but cannot fulfill because The US doesn't have the predominant power to do that other than in utter destruction.
There is the personality of Donald Trump, and personalities make a difference in wars. Wartime leaders make a difference. And the more we understand the situation in The US, the more, the personality factor plays in. You know, we can give structural reasons for the American demands on hegemony. This is something that goes back decades.
We can also talk about financial motivations and, the pressures, or not even pressures, I should say, the lobbying and the money making from the war profiteers. There's no doubt that a lot of Silicon Valley Palantir being case number one is a great proponent of these wars. By the way, just parenthetically, they want to test their new AI driven weapon system. So this is also for them experimentation, it's lab work, the fact that people are killed and there's a war, all the better. It's very realistic.
We can see how these weapons work. There's a certain madness, greed, tens, hundreds of billions of dollars driving this, saying is true in Israel. So there's a side of this that is very direct. But I was saying that even with all of those structural features, the claims of hegemony, the size of the military industrial complex, the huge money making and grift that goes into this, the personal grift of Donald Trump and his family who are the most corrupt officials in US history mean, corrupt family and and president in US history. There's a personal element of psychological instability here that I believe is is at work, which is that Donald Trump is a is psychopathic.
This is a a clinical judgment that is made by forensic psychologists and psychiatrists since he came on the public scene and made repeatedly. And I think very cogently. This is not a man who gathers information and rationally processes it and maybe vicious, but is highly tactical, closes the deal and so forth. This isn't an unhinged man who is impulsive, paranoid, psychopathic, and a megalomaniac. This is not the kind of person one wants in the presidency of the United States.
Would say that Netanyahu has similar psychological traits. These are very violent, unhinged people, and it means that, stepping back is not easy. Everything is a test for them of their own world, as well as brought more broadly a test of the American political class mindset of hegemony, which despite all the evidence to the contrary of the fact base of hegemony is still believed in Washington. So we have a very big structural and individual problem of getting any kind of de escalation or any kind of resolution. I have one and only one thought about this, frankly.
It's not a very persuasive one perhaps, but it is the one that I've been, holding, which is that Donald Trump, listens to the extent that he listens at all. He listens to those he regards as his peers, and he does regard president Putin, president Xi, prime minister Modi as peers that he wants to be part of and live up to. These are leaders of superpowers. He inevitably, almost without exception, expresses respect for them, for the power that they hold, for their lead of superpower nations, they need to tell him to stop. It's I think it's extremely important.
They need to tell him, Donald, this is not going anywhere. This is not going anywhere good. This is not helping you. It's not putting The United States in a better position. It is not helping any country in the world.
It's dangerous. It needs to stop. I don't know if that is even remotely sufficient under these circumstances, but I think it is important to try. This is not the bluster we're going to enter the war against you. Quite the contrary.
It is to try to explain this has to stop because if it continues on the path that it's continuing, it's going to bring us all to disaster.
Speaker 0: Well, certainly having some, yeah, coordination and more cooperation by the great powers, Certainly something we need. If Putin and Xi are able to do this, it would be great. But what do you say, though? Well, you've been you have advised many governments around the world over the years. And what would you tell the the allies of The United States?
Because it it appears that well, the Gulf States, they very much also have embraced this principle of a hegemonic peace. Also the Europeans, I mean, if we looked to Venezuela, for example, their their main concern was that Trump talked about the oil rather than human rights, but actual actions to work really against. And I I assume as well, if he would have included them from the beginning, they would have been much more supportive of the attack on Iran as well. Instead, he let them, you know, wait until the war had failed before inviting them in, in which they now do not want to partake. But but they they also, especially Europeans, have very much embraced this the idea of peace through strength, which is a nice way of saying, you know, militarism instead of real diplomacy.
That is will be so powerful that our opponents will have to do what they're told, yet they they shouldn't arm themselves to balance our might. So this kind of hegemonic idea of peace, this is something not just the Gulf States have benefited from, but also Europeans still don't wanna give up on as we see in the conflict with the Russians. So how would you how would you advise them today if they still, you know, pick up the phone and call and ask, you know, given The US losing its position in the world, you know, where do they go now?
Speaker 1: Of course, I've been saying exactly for the the last decade at least, be careful of The United States. It's, got a delusional foreign policy. It believes that it runs the show, but it gets, you into deep trouble. I have repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times, my favorite adage of Henry Kissinger that to be an enemy of The United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. How many times have I said that to governments, or in, the European Parliament or to the Gulf leaders personally in recent years, not just because of this war, but because of all of the circumstances that go back a very long time.
I do not believe, for example, that countries gain any security whatsoever in hosting US military bases. I've argued for years and suggested for years that these countries invite The United States to go home. You don't get security. These bases are a magnet for conflict. But more than that, they suborn your own sovereignty.
European countries remain eighty years after the end of World War II, semi occupied by The United States. And The United States meddles deeply in European politics to a shocking extent, actually. And so my own recommendation has been repeatedly, this idea that you are finding security in The United States is wrong. The United States has its own rather bizarre ideas about the world, which is hegemonic control. If you subscribe to that, you're subscribing to an unreality.
And moreover, if you host The United States Military and CIA on your soil, then you are also basically relinquishing your sovereignty. You cannot speak straight. You will find that if you are in politics and you oppose The United States, you will be knocked out of your politics within your own country. And so generations of politicians arise that can't even find the words to express opposition to even crazy American ideas. And there are so many crazy American ideas because hegemonic dominance is an unreality.
And if everything is built on the foundation of an unreality, there's a lot of craziness that goes along with this. So Glenn, I I was in the Gulf Region last year speaking with leaders exactly expressing this sentiment. This is before the war. This is not an ex post idea that these bases will not protect you. I said to friends in The Emirates, you know, why are you joining this coalition with Israel and The United States?
You think that this is really prudent, that this is correct, that this is accurate, together with Israel that has committed a genocide, before the world's eyes in Gaza, you're part of the so called Abraham Accord. This makes no sense for you. This is no security. This is no realism. Whichever your favorite foreign policy position is, well, I think realism is, if it's done right, means that you are taking a realistic view of the situation.
And the idea that The United States is going to protect you is not exactly realistic. You know what I heard? Oh, but mister Sachs, we're getting NVIDIA chips. We're getting data centers. This is key for us.
This is that actually was the currency of foreign policy, I would say, in the last couple of years. We turn on or turn off the data centers in your country, the high end chips. Well, these are now all being blown up by the day, by, Iran. A data center does not have anti missile defense, systems around it. So governments need to take a much more realistic understanding.
We're in a multipolar world. That's the foundation. The United States political leadership, and by that, I mean the the White House, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Armed Services Committees, the military contractors, they don't accept that. They don't get that. They don't believe in it.
They think, well, AI and NVIDIA chips in our weapon systems, in our, Palantir, based target identification systems, in our AI empowered killing systems. This is still dominance. They wanted to show in Gaza, we can kill everybody. We can level Gaza. By the way, after a genocide, Hamas is still there and still operating.
Israel couldn't achieve its gains even in a small neighborhood that was bombed and leveled over two years. Now we're talking about Iran with almost 100,000,000 people and a formidable technological base and military base. This is also something that is the mindset of The United States cannot understand, which is that there are technologically sophisticated people everywhere. And Iran is one of them. They view Iran again as medieval, if not stone age, But they don't understand that Iran has highly sophisticated technological capacities, and those have been also put at the service of the military.
So I think the advice was right, but not heeded. And today, I say all the time to any government, look at your neighborhood, be friends with your neighbors. Don't let the American empire divide you because your safety and well-being depends on your neighbors. And don't build or think you're going to build the wall, whether it's the Berlin Wall or a new wall to hem in Russia, or don't think in The Gulf that you can be on our side, on, the Western Side of the Persian Gulf, but on the Eastern Side of Iran, that's the enemy. Don't think in those terms.
Look at your neighbors. Make peace with your neighbors. Cooperate with your neighbors, trade with your neighbors, and then on a regional basis, that your safety and well-being depends on good relations with all of the major powers. China's not your enemy. Russia's not your enemy.
India's not your enemy. The United States should not be your enemy. But we also need The United States to get beyond the mindset that, it displays now, which is either you're for us or you're against us. That's, the American mindset borrowed from the Athenians, in, the Peloponnesian Wars when they told the Melians, if you're not with us, we kill you. Unfortunately, that is part of the American playbook as well.
But countries cannot succumb to that without giving up their own sovereignty and their own future. And now in a multipolar world, they don't have to succumb to it. So this is my basic advice in general, which is don't let the American empire divide your own neighborhood. I say it in Japan and Korea, China is not your enemy, it's your neighbor. I say it in the Gulf region, Iran and the GCC should be the first ones talking with each other.
Not only do they share the Persian Gulf and the Strait Of Hormuz, but they share a lot of other things as well. They share culture, history, transit points, ecological risks in a very dry part of the world beset by major water crises. I say this in every and I say it to the Europeans. Russia is not your inveterate enemy. This Russophobia is a historical fiction.
It's a complete misreading of history, but it's also a complete misjudgment about European security, which can only be achieved collectively with Russia, not in opposition to Russia. And so this is the same everywhere. Empires divide and conquer. The United States has used division as a way to extend hegemony. It's always saying the one on the other side is the enemy.
It's always trying to extend to the other side. The US position, ideologically in The Middle East is we already run the gulf. Now all we have to do is, bring Iran back into the fold, which we happen to succeed in doing in 1953, but then lost in the nineteen seventy nine revolution. We need to bring them back into the American empire. So every region faces a divide that The US stokes.
The US tells ASEAN, oh, China's your enemy. It tells Japan and Korea, China's your enemy. It's stoking these divisions. And of course it has stoked the division with Russia because the whole point of the end of the Cold War and there I was present personally at the watching at the highest levels, was that peace had come to a common European home, but The US wouldn't have it. It needed to expand NATO.
It needed to keep an alliance against the country that no longer existed for a threat that absolutely didn't exist, but it needed for American hegemonic purposes to expand NATO, and not just to expand it, but right up to Russia's borders and to put in anti ballistic missile systems and all the rest and to abandon treaties with this that had been signed with the Soviet Union in which Russia was the continuation state. So that was the mindset. Europe fell into it so dutifully, privately uneasy, publicly without a murmur. And by the way, as crazy as this mindset is, let me just add two points. Europe has its own hegemonic mindset that remains even eighty years after the end of the European empires.
So Europe ran the world in a rather vicious way for a long time in Asia and in Africa. That mindset's not gone. So that's why the subservience to The US imperial mindset is not so hard because it's also seen to an important extent as keeping the West dominant. And so the Europeans, yes, they're subordinated to The United States, but in a way, it continues to be a projection of the Western dominance in the world. And they view The United States as therefore, in a way, helping their empires that no longer exist, to continue their international, control.
So that's really part of what's happening right now. Europe goes along because the idea of controlling the Middle East, that's a totally European idea. That's not just an American idea. That has deep roots. The worst of this is the British.
The British absolutely still maintain the trappings and mindset of empire that has gone for almost eighty years, but it's still there. And so we hear the most remarkable rhetoric coming from Britain vis a vis Russia, or, other, showdowns where Britain has no power to deliver on any of this, but to make a lot of rhetorical and political mischief. What's interesting is even in the Iran war, there's been a little bit of hesitation by the British. This shows how completely outrageous this war is because the British elbows never hesitate, to support an imperial venture. I have always said America's basically our successor empire.
But in this one, it's so outrageous that the British have tried a little bit. Don't bring us in. This is, almost, unprecedented. The British jump into every American war, but not this one because it's so completely outrageous what's happening right now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think that's inherent contradiction of the hegemonic peace, though. If you wanna be a hegemon, you have to you're very dependent on the alliance system because you divide regions into dependent allies versus the balanced or contained adversaries. And I don't think often European leaders appreciate this that once you one once you are in a conflict then with your opponent, be it Russia, then this is what makes them so dependent on The US. This is why they have to sign all these horrible trade deals.
This is why they end up in this situation. The same with the Gulf States. I mean, their conflict with Iran is the reason why they've become hostage to The US, and I think it was acceptable when The US was more of a comfortable hegemon. But now that it's declining, and it's as Mark Kurutti said, NATO's also not just for protection, it's for power projection. If this is for power projection for The US and so they're being used to go after rising powers, and then The US isn't in the position to defend them anymore, then it looks like a disaster.
It's just shocking to me that there's not more efforts to readjust to current realities.
Speaker 1: What what's so interesting about it is that it does not deliver. It delivers insecurity. It delivers economic crisis and the publics know it. So the politicians that continue their subservience to The US in Europe are profoundly unpopular. They're running strongly against public opinion.
The leaders in The Gulf Region that continue their subservience to The United States and Israel, because this is a US Israel War, are very much facing opposition from what's called the street there, but just is public opinion. The public in the Gulf Region does not want to be an ally of Israel in this, but this is the position that their governments have put themselves into by saying our security is an F-thirty five or our security is an F-sixteen or our security is a military base of The United States. Unfortunately, it's a very naive idea. But it is the idea that got them into this and it traps them not only in their national interest, but it puts them in direct opposition with their own publics. And you can watch step by step as Trump is reviled in Europe right now.
His net approval rating is something like minus 70%, and that was before the Iran war. In other words, maybe 15% approval rating, 85% disapproval rating. The man's despise for very good reason. He's a despicable person. But the governments have continued to try to appease him, try to support him, try to say that we're on side, and they lose support.
We're seeing this in Italy right now where prime minister Maloney basically made her politics as Trump's best buddy in Europe. And that was a calling card for a while, and it no doubt made some people in Italy feel that, well, at least we have The United States, you know, on the inside track. But now it's completely turning because young people are saying, what is this? We're siding with this. This is madness.
Madness. And so you see everywhere in Europe, if you side with Donald Trump, you lose your own political base. That doesn't necessarily mean you lose power immediately given the constitutional order. Maybe you have a parliamentary majority that can last two or three years, but you don't have a political base within the country.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time, and, let's hope that governments begin to embrace reason again and, yeah, adjust to realities.
Speaker 1: Very good. Glenn, great to be with you. Talk to you soon.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: World Disorder - Nuclear Weapons & World War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0vegr3nf0 https://t.co/bM3PHUmKH8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Chas Freeman and the interviewer discuss a rapidly unraveling international order and rising tensions in the Gulf, with implications for Europe, Asia, and global security.
- Freeman argues that the five-century European domination of the world is over, Pax Americana is dead, NATO is moribund, and the Atlantic alliance is failing. He claims Europe views NATO as a defensive alliance but sees neither role NATO purportedly serves, and notes European countries (Spain, France, Austria) restricting U.S. access to bases and airspace in relation to Iran actions.
- He describes a rearranged Gulf regional order being shaped by war, with Iran’s position strengthened. He highlights Donald Trump’s rhetoric as decoupling the U.S. from guaranteeing passage through the Strait of Hormuz, pointing out that the Strait cannot be opened by force, and that other actors must negotiate to ensure their energy exports remain routable. Freeman notes Macron’s similar view and explains that the solution would be an agreement with Iran, accompanied by IRGC verification and a signaling code for safe passage.
- Freeman identifies Iran gaining two outcomes: the end of oil sanctions due to global price concerns and the acquiescence of the world to its de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz. He asserts Gulf Arab states have little choice but to negotiate with Iran, and that other regional players (China, India, Japan, Turkey, perhaps Bangladesh) are already anticipating this, with a Korean vessel reportedly passing through after negotiating with Iran.
- He observes the geopolitical rearrangement: Pakistan is favored by China as a mediator, offering extended deterrence to Saudi Arabia; Pakistan’s strong Shia population and cultural ties to Iran put it in a pivotal role. Israel’s and the U.S.’s disinformation campaigns in the Gulf are noted, as are attacks on desalination plants and the vulnerability of Gulf states that harbor U.S. bases. Oman is highlighted as the only Gulf state anchoring U.S. naval presence and maintaining relative peace with Iran.
- Freeman also points to the broader shift in regional security arrangements: a move away from dependence on Western military technology, with the Pakistan-Turkey-Egypt-Saudi alignment seeking more autonomy and potential Chinese participation in security architectures. He highlights the five-nillar meeting in Islamabad and a joint statement with Wang Yi outlining principles for Gulf security, suggesting a tilt toward regional solutions.
- He notes the European Union’s sluggish diplomacy and lack of appetite for active diplomacy, contrasting Macron’s call for Europe to shape the world with reality. He argues that proxy wars are fading as the U.S. exits Ukraine as a proxy battleground, and Europe cannot rely on American arms in the same way, given stock replenishment needs and Israeli priority.
- Freeman discusses nuclear proliferation concerns: Iran’s potential push toward nuclear weapons, and possible regional moves by Saudis, Turks, Egyptians, and others toward their own nuclear capabilities, including Japan’s latent capabilities and the broader fear of a chain reaction of nuclearization across regions, including Europe and Latin America (Brazil and South Africa’s defense agreements). He suggests Europe might need a more vigorous self-defense posture and a rethinking of security architecture beyond a Russia-centric framework.
- He emphasizes the difficulty of achieving diplomacy amid eroding trust, noting that Western leaders lack imagination and that the UN and NATO's relevance has weakened. He envisions a Eurasian security framework that includes China, Japan, and Korea, moving toward a pan-Eurasian approach rather than block-based security.
- On how the current war might end, Freeman argues that the conflict is unlikely to end at the negotiating table; instead, Iran is expected to continue pressuring Israel, and the conflict could persist as Iran maintains its missile and deterrence capabilities. He suggests the end is likely to come on the battlefield with Iran achieving objectives, while Western and regional actors may fail to secure a lasting stabilization. He concludes with a wary note on leadership and responsibility, lamenting the absence of statesmen capable of forging a new security architecture.
- The discussion closes with a blunt observation about leadership, the unpredictability of Trump, and the uncertain future of American involvement in West Asia, leaving open questions about how or when the current war might actually end.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Chas Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defense, the interpreter for Nixon during his China visit in '79, also the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and, yeah, one of the great diplomats and thinkers. So thank you very much for taking your time.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for your excessive praise. Glad to be back.
Speaker 0: Well, again, as we've discussed before, these are quite troubling times. The international order appears to be unraveling fast, both, you know, the distribution of power and the legitimacy which upheld it. And we see now these further escalations in Iran. The stakes are high. It appears we're only gonna go up this escalation ladder.
And NATO is obviously fragmented, as we hear from the different speeches. And as may Trump made it clear, The US might not come to the European's defense. We also see Ukrainian drones entering, attacking the Russian Baltic Coast from apparently what is the Baltic countries' territories. And, you know, it's it's the whole system appears to be unraveling quite fast. I was wondering if you take a step back and assess the big picture, what what do you make of this?
What is it that you expect?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you're right. Clearly, the five century long European domination of the world is over. Clearly, the Pax Americana is dead. Clearly, NATO is moribund in the process of dying. The Atlantic alliance doesn't work.
Donald Trump imagines that the purpose of NATO was to provide cannon fodder in support of American adventures abroad. Europeans have seen it correctly as a defensive alliance against external attack, but it is neither it is performing neither role now. And so I think it's on the way out. We see European countries, starting with Spain, where you now are, deliberately denying the use of bases in airspace to The United States in support of our aggression against Iran. Now we have the French who don't have American bases on their territory denying the use of their airspace.
I gather Austria did that, although it's not a member of NATO. It's still relevant fairly early on. And we see the the unraveling of of the mutuality, the the common values, interests, and commitments that made the NATO alliance so successful for so long. In The Gulf, the regional order is being rearranged by war. This war is going to end, and here I want to refer to the pathetic speech of Donald Trump the other night, belatedly trying to justify this war by depicting Iran as a ravenous monster about to take over the world and so forth.
And not very convincingly. But he said something very significant in that speech, which I don't think many people have paid attention to. He said, effectively, The United States understands we cannot open the Strait Of Hormuz through the use of force. We're not going to attempt to do it. If you are dependent on the Strait Of Hormuz for your economic livelihood because you import or export hydrocarbons from there, or fertilizer, or sulfur, or helium, or whatever.
It's up to you to go and open the strait. Well, so here you have a statement. The strait cannot be opened by the use of force, something which Macron has also said correctly. But you have to go and figure out how to get your cargo through. Well, there's a way to do that, and that is to do an agreement with Iran.
If you get an agreement with Iran, and you are not hostile to Iran, you are not sanctioning Iran, you are not facilitating attacks on Iran from your territory, then you can contact the Iranian the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and apply for a permit to take your ship through the Strait Of Hormuz. They will come on board your ship. They will verify the ownership, the nationality of the personnel aboard, the cargo, where it was loaded, and where it is destined to be unloaded. And if the all of this passes muster, they will then give you a code with which you can signal the Iranian shore defenses and small boats as you go through the strait, and they'll let you pass. Short of that, you don't get through.
And so we also have news that Iran and Oman are busily working out a protocol for joint management of the Strait Of Hormuz. What does this all mean? It means, in effect, first of all, the Gulf Arabs have no alternative but to negotiate with Iran because they cannot survive indefinitely with the Strait Of Hormuz close to their exports. Second, other countries have anticipated this. China, India, Japan, Turkey, I think Bangladesh, some some others.
I've gathered there's a Korean vessel that's gone through alright. They have worked out an appropriate agreement with Iran. So Iran has already gained two things in this war. One is the end of the embargo on its exports. The embargo on the sanctions on oil from Iran have been lifted because of concerns about the impact on global prices and particularly the price of fuel in The United States as we go into midterm elections.
And second, it has gained the acquiescence of the world, Fotomia, in its de facto control of the Strait Of Mormuz. And this fundamentally alters the geopolitics of the region. It leaves the nations of the region with no alternative but to work out some kind of modus vivendi that will preserve the peace. And, you know, this is a little hard to see at the moment because, for example, The United Arab Emirates has been actively urging The United States to double down on the war. And the Israelis have mounted quite a disinformation campaign, claiming the Saudis are doing the same, which is not true.
We've had just to finish this up, in terms of rearranging the geopolitics and of The Gulf and and thereby of the world, we've had a meeting in Islamabad between the Turks, Saudis, Egyptians, and Pakistanis, which resulted in some sort of agreements, which we don't know the details of. But following up that meeting, the foreign minister of Pakistan flew to Beijing and jointly issued a statement with Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, with five principles for a settlement of or rearrangement of of the architecture of security in The Gulf. So this is interesting on several levels. First of all, one thing that these four countries, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, have in common is a desire to wean themselves from dependence on Western, and particularly American military technology. They have the capacity between themselves, the money, the industrial capacity, the technological acumen, backed by China to develop a military industrial complex in the region that will enable it to become far less dependent, not perhaps entirely independent, but far less dependent on The United States and the West, and therefore more independent in its orientation both internally within The Gulf and and beyond it.
Second, Pakistan has clearly been anointed by the Chinese as the preferred mediator. It has one of the largest Shia populations in the world. I think it may be the third largest in the world. It shares that with Iran. It has a long border with Iran.
It has had its ups and downs with Iran, but its culture is heavily Persian influenced. And it now has a very strong relationship with Saudi Arabia in which it implicitly is offering extended deterrence with a nuclear weapons component to the Saudis. So this is already an array a rearrangement of security in the region. One final note, obviously, because they are being hit since they harbor American bases, That is those other than Oman, which has provided an anchorage for the US Navy at Dukham, a port on the Gulf Of Oman. That's the sole exception.
Oman saw that port attacked early on in the war, but seems to have made its peace with Iran, so not been attacked again as far as I know. The rest are being attacked. Some of the attacks appear to be false flag. For example, the desalination plants in Kuwait. Iran has denied that it attacked them, but they have been damaged.
And if Israel were to pick out the country in The Gulf that it is least the least affinity with, it is Kuwait, which has been very strongly supportive of the Palestinian cause. So I don't I think we can't rule out the possibility that whatever happened in Kuwait was in fact an Israeli false flag operation, not something from Iran. But be that as it may, these countries now understand that as long as they have an engagement in the war and involvement in supporting American or Israeli activities against Iran, they are going to be subject to attack. And it is dawning on people on Israel as it is in The Gulf that this war may not end. It may go into a less intensive, lower intensity conflict phase in which from time to time, Iran strikes targets in Israel with its residual missile force, which to which it is adding, by the way, the manufacturing is deep underground and it's continuing.
And the best intelligence is that somewhere between a third and a half of Iran's missiles have been expended, meaning another half or two thirds are still there to be used. The interception capabilities of Israel and The United States have been successfully attrited and depleted so that we're now seeing waves of attacks in Israel that routinely got through the defenses. The latest struck a drone factory apparently in a city in Central Israel. So what is going on is a lot of behind the scenes diplomacy, a lot of military posturing, continued exchanges between The United States, Israel, and Iran on the on the battlefield. Some of them not going so well for us.
And it's a bit of a farce in the middle of all this for 40 countries, all of them close to Israel and The United States, to gather in London to discuss military options for the Strait Of Hormuz rather than diplomatic ones. One can say that Europeans seem to be true to their recent selves, in that they don't have any appetite for diplomacy, but are very good at making empty commitments to warfare. That's where I'll end here.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's well, it seems that it will take a lot of diplomatic efforts to adjust to these new realities because it's been delayed for so long. Indeed, if you look in the Middle East, we seem to have ignored that Iranians exist, that they have their own interest for for a very long time. Of course, you can apply the same to Europe. For the past thirty plus years, we essentially built institutions such as NATO and the EU said, you know, they represent Europe and, essentially, well, the largest country in Europe shouldn't be a part of it.
So, you know, so they don't have representation. So we also, you know, pretend as if Russia's not there, and it makes it very difficult now that the power distribution has shifted. That is, you know, if you would return to diplomacy, it's we start with a pretty bad hand. That is The United States is now seen as simply using diplomacy as a cover for surprise attacks against Iran. The Europeans aren't much better.
They don't even talk to Russia in their conflict. So I was wondering how how do you see this moving forward? Because Macron just made this speech where he was arguing Europe has to build a new order, and it can't just be passive. It has to contribute in the construction of a new international order. But but as you said, the the only thing we've seen from the EU are, you know, condemnations of Iran for defending itself, and and, of course, this now initiative to begin to, you know, put together a group of countries who would like to see the Strait Of Hormuz being opened, but probably not having any military solutions to do so.
Do you think how do you think it's possible to, I guess, restore this diplomatic path? I mean, is it probably gonna be regional in The Middle East? That is it has to be between the Gulf States and Iran because I think the Gulf States have recognized that they're kind of vulnerable. That is in the past, if, you know, you hedged your bets on The United States, you were more or less you know, you were bulletproof. You you had the ultimate security guarantee.
And but it seems for both the Europeans and the Gulf States, they will have to, I guess, adjust to a new security arrangement. But but how did you see this being feasible? Because it's usually, countries, they need a long time to adjust to such new realities.
Speaker 1: Well, don't look to The United States to be helpful in the revival of diplomacy. I would not agree with you that Witkoff and Kushner represent diplomacy. Perhaps a sort of pseudo diplomacy, a performative sort of diplomacy that, as you said, has been used twice, at least, I think more times, as a deception to enable a surprise attack. The United States has essentially disassembled its its diplomatic expertise. The secretary of state doesn't believe in diplomacy.
He believes in kidnapping chiefs of state and government and blowing up boats on the high seas and using force. And my colleagues in the Foreign Service, the diplomatic service of the United States, are demoralized, and many of them have left. And we know that policies are made now without reference to interagency discussion. They come out of some part of Donald Trump's body, whichever is being engaged at the time. So that is the state of American diplomacy.
Europe Europeans still have the capacity for diplomacy, but seem to lack the will to employ it as you as you indicate. I think Macron is correct. It's not a new French statement to say that Europe needs to get its act together to help shape the world rather than be the victim of others or the object of others, he's right. But is there any prospect of that in the short term? I'd say that the prospects have gone up because of the realization in Great Britain that Brexit was a terrible error and that Britain having been essentially given the cold shoulder by The United States under Donald Trump, now needs to reengage with the continent and maybe even find a way a way back into the European Union.
It would have to be a reformed European Union. European Union is not capable of making decisions on crucial matters as it has repeatedly shown. Several other things have happened, Glenn. One is I think proxy wars are a thing of the past. We had a we had a proxy war going on in Ukraine.
It was between the two former bipolar overlords, The United States and Russia. The United States has dropped out of that. And Europeans, had been given the opportunity to enrich American arms manufacturers by buying weapons to transfer to Ukraine will now find that they can't get those weapons because the American stocks need to be replenished, and Israel has priority over them. So all of this is to say that things have changed. One last point of irony is that we have Ukrainian military advisers now in The Gulf showing Americans and others how to use drones because the nature of warfare has changed.
Clearly, The United States has not reconfigured its armed forces to deal with the age of drones and and the total transparency of movement on the battlefield. The best equipped armies in the world to do this are Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is providing its expertise to the American or Arab side, Israeli side, I assume. And Russia and is providing its expertise to the Iranians. So we have a very different situation already.
And I have not mentioned a key factor, and that is that it's very clear that we have provided the advocates of nuclear weapons in Iran with an irrefutable argument that they need to develop them. Now there is no other effective deterrent to the kind of attacks that Iran has experienced for the last several decades culminating in this in this war. Iran is determined that this war will end in such a manner that further provocations and attacks are not are not undertaken against it. And it it has to look at the several examples. Negative in the case of colonel Gaddafi, positive in the case of Kim Jong un, that suggests that the only point of safety now that international law no no longer inhibits aggression or human rights or other war crimes violations.
The only path for safety is the possession of nuclear weapons. Iran has reached that conclusion, in my view. It has also, in my view, very likely decided to build an ICBM to be able to deliver nuclear weapons to The United States, as North Korea has done. And if Iran does if if when, I should say, not if. When Iran feels a nuclear weapon, you can expect the Saudis to accept a Pakistani base on their territory with nuclear weapons and try to acquire their own nuclear weapons, the Turks and Egyptians will follow.
And there's no way that South Korea, where the majority of public opinion strongly favors a nuclear weapon, that South Korea will not also develop these weapons. Japan, we're told by the People's Liberation Army, has the sufficient plutonium to build 5,500 warheads, you know, which I don't think it needs. But it's a reminder that of Japan's nuclear latency, and the discussion in Japan is now openly questioning whether that latency should not be breached and made active. In Europe, you also have a refocus on nuclear weapons, with Germans arguing now that maybe they need to do something in that realm. So we're seeing the beginning of the unraveling of the American military presence in Europe, the growth of a desire for a much more vigorous self defense capability, the absence of any serious thinking about security architecture to include Russia, no diplomacy aimed at threat reduction.
And meanwhile in The Gulf, Israel and The United States have lost the war they started, but don't quite seem willing to admit it yet. I expect as the bombing of the bridge north of Tehran by The United which was apparently under construction, not in actual use, by The United States, which is a war crime. This is infrastructure unconnected to any military advantage of Iran. I expect that the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iran, which is included in tax on universities, schools, hospitals, and so forth, much like the Israeli playbook in Yaza and in Lebanon now. I suspect that this foreshadows some cataclysmic denouement of the war with United States, as Trump has promised, hitting Iran very hard in the next couple of weeks in order to be able to quit.
And if The United States quits, where does that be mister Netanyahu and Israel? I don't know.
Speaker 0: Well, this is why it's often preferable to have this slower adjustments rather than this massive disruptions because they, yeah, they they lead to this kind of thing. For example, nuclear proliferation if the whole former security architecture breaks down like this. I think the Polish prime minister also made some references to that, you know, it might be required for Poland also to acquire nuclear weapons. I mean, it's Yeah. As you said, this is very problematic when security is not primarily pursued through mutual threat reduction.
Instead, going back to this idea, if we only have more weapons, bigger guns, then this will bring peace. You know, everyone thinking the same way, it looks like a recipe for disaster. But, again, this is why you need diplomacy where you're, you know, put yourself in the shoes of other government.
Speaker 1: But you're a political scientist, and you probably are more familiar than I with the writings of Kenneth Waltz, who basically argued that the ideal state was one resembling his vision of Texas in the frontier era where everybody had a gun and therefore everybody was very careful not to shoot at anyone else. He believed that if everyone had nuclear weapons, we would be a lot safer. I think that's frankly preposterous, but we may be about to begin to test his thesis. And by the way, you know, it isn't limited to Pacific Asia and West Asia that, you know, we're talking about. We also have the possibility other possibilities.
Brazil and South Africa have just done a mutual defense industrial production and innovation agreement. And South Africa retains the material for the bombs, the six bombs that it built. It dismantled the bombs and the cruise missiles designed to deliver them, which it built with some assistance from Israel. But it has the technology. Brazil had a nuclear weapons program and was dissuaded from pursuing it.
So, you know, there are other areas where things might break out, especially now that The United States has decided to amend the Monroe Doctrine, which was never popular in Latin America, to exercise hegemony through purely military intimidation. So, you know, there's clearly a new world emerging. It doesn't look like a very nice one. And I think in the case of The Gulf, there are possibilities which are sort of interesting. There's a possibility of an Islamic pan Islamic cooperation.
You could turn over with the Pakistanis doing the the the mediation. You could use the organization for Islamic cooperation, which has 57 members, to provide to come up with common rules based on Islam, the differences the in doctrine between Shiism and Sunni Islam are very minor. There are differences in practice worship practices and expectations and different schools of thought. But the lore of Islamic statecraft is something they have in common. Iran, of course, has its own pre Islamic tradition as well.
But there is possibility to construct a new cooperative security architecture in the Persian Gulf. Perhaps that might inspire Europe to do the same. Europe needs a cooperative security arrangement, not a a security architecture that is based on confrontation between Russia and the rest. So, yeah, I think there's some possibilities here, but who are the statesmen? Where's the Bismarck?
Where's the Palmerston? Where's the, you know, where's the Metternich to put all this together? Perhaps there's someone hiding North of the Arctic Circle in Norway who will come forward, a superhero, and and do this, or maybe someone from Malaga.
Speaker 0: Well, I don't see anyone waiting. Well, I don't see anyone in the European leadership ranks ready to make any big steps.
Speaker 1: No. It's really quite pathetic, really. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well well, this is what I was thinking as well. If it was if we're purely purely rational, we would, you know, look towards what we've done over the past thirty five plus years. That is if you go back to the early nineties, many countries recognize that it would be ideal to seek have a security architecture with Russia instead of against Russia and keeping the blocks. But I think the reason why I went with returning to military blocks by expanding NATO was simply because a good argument, I would add, that this is what would bring The US into Europe, and I think this is also something The US ambassador to NATO said in the in 9496.
He's made an argument that, you know, NATO which included Russia wouldn't be the same that brought The US to Europe. And, again, it's a reasonable argument. And if you want stability in Europe, you want the American pacifier, I can see why one would make that argument. But now, thirty years later, when The US deprioritized Europe, have other things to do, you know, the rational thing would then be to reconsider the block politics, you know, whether we should go back to something like the organization for security and cooperation in Europe. The problem is that it's once we now reached, you know, reached a conflict, this clash with the Russians, too too many emotions start to enter.
It's a bit like what George Kennan warned that in '98, he made this warning that at some point, the Russians will hit back, and then we'll just gonna be outraged and pretend as if this is just, you know, imperialist Russians, you know, who can't work with. Right. If we could just assess it, okay, Russia respond to what we did, maybe we readjust. But but this this is just emotional sloganeering.
Speaker 1: You know, there there is another context possible. You know, one of the objectives of the Partnership for Peace was to provide a mechanism for defense integration that did not include the independent stands in Central Asia, who were part of the OSCE. But clearly, Tajikistan is not a European country, whatever it is. And it's a delightful country, I'm sure, but not European. And so the question is, what's the framework?
I mean, and if you do go back to the OSCE, I think you have to now make it pan Eurasian. So you need to involve China, Japan, Korea, both Koreas perhaps. And in other words, you have to have a different framework for for this. One of the one of the issues, of course, and this is where Russia comes in in the European balance. One of the one of the reasons The United States felt obliged to stay in NATO in Europe was European demands that we balance Germany, which without the American presence would be the dominant power or would have been the dominant power in on the European landmass.
That is of great concern to the British, of course. They like to divide and rule Europe Europeans, which is why they don't want Russia, and it's too big to handle. And it would it would cramp their style. But, you know, now maybe we I need to think about the Eurasian context for for security architecture. Perhaps Eurasian an overall Eurasian context and and then some sub Eurasian gatherings within it that are all part of one whole.
Anyway, you know, I'm an old man. I'm not going to be around to be able to put that together. So I leave you leave it to you.
Speaker 0: Actually, I at the Valdai meeting in 2024, I asked president Putin about this, the exact same thing that is the Eurasian solution to the European security architecture. Because, you know, in the East with BRICS, for example, they they have this, you know, security with each other instead of against each other. That is within BRICS. You know? They Right.
It's Russian sorry. It's China and India. You know? They're not gonna cooperate. Well, they're then gonna ally up against The US.
You know, you can have Iran and The United Arab Emirates. Again, they're not gonna partner up against anyone either. Same with Egypt, Ethiopia. So you have all of this, but we had that in Europe as well after World War two. The whole idea of the European steel co community was that we seek security with other members, not against nonmembers.
But after the Cold War, it switched. No longer would we seek security with each other, but instead we would look towards the externals, how to defend from Russia. And then, yeah, suddenly you go back into this block thinking.
Speaker 1: So Yeah. And the and and the French thinking about how to French fry Algeria and so forth. You know, the focus, you know, a focus on external defenses all very well. But if you do it the wrong way, you make enemies rather than eliminate them, and Europe has done it the wrong way.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. After I made that proposal, it was picked up in the local media at home where they made the point that, you know, sounded like I advocated for some kind of Soviet Union conquering Europe or something. You know, I was I was suggesting a security architecture that moved beyond block politics, but it was treated as a surrender, you know, because you can't criticize NATO. It's yeah.
As you started saying, it's a bit of diplomatic immaturity, think, that it's not possible to think beyond the block
Speaker 1: lack of imagination, a lack of ability to adjust to new realities. Very clearly, realities we confront geopolitically, geoeconomically are quite different from those that we grew up with. And we we seem to be unable to to recognize this and act accordingly. You know, it's it's really quite remarkable that after World War two, there was a there really was a remarkable group of of people in The United States and Europe who who came up with some very new and effective institutions. Think, you know, the United Nations, which is now essentially irrelevant and clearly needs to be either revamped or replaced.
NATO, which we've talked about, which no longer fulfills the purposes for which it was established because they're irrelevant. There is no active threat from Moscow if there ever was one. Know, and the mythology is that Russians want to invade Europe. No. They kept getting invaded from Europe, as I remember.
Anyway, and, you know, we have you know, we can't get over the trauma of the hostage taking in Iran in 1980 and so on and so forth. Just the Iranians can't get over their trauma either. You know, maybe we all need to have some kind of put on some helmet and have AI erase our memories and start over.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, you almost paraphrased George Kennender again from the nineties, because he was making the same point that there's no political imagination apparently for anything else, because he was making the point that after all these decades of a cold war, we finally put this behind us, and he kind of, yeah, criticized that there was no political imagination then beyond, you know, okay, who should be on the inside of our block and who should be on the outside, that this was the extent of our political imagination to create a more, yeah, stronger security architecture capable of reducing all this competition for security. So no. It's yeah. But, anyways, if we can do it in the nineties, given how hot tempered the and immature the leaders are today, one isn't filled with optimism.
But where do you see China in this, though? Because they are now, you know, rushing into you know in terms of purchasing power parity, they've been the largest economy in the world since 2014 in terms of real GDP. You know, they will get there sometime at some point, but anyways, either, you know
Speaker 1: Well, you know, they they could get there quite suddenly if the dollar, instead of appreciating, were to depreciate devalue, which is something that could happen since central banks are now ridding themselves of their treasury holdings and looking to diversify their reserves, not necessarily into Chinese currency, but into many currencies. And more and more, we see arrangements being made for direct settlement in local currencies of trade transactions. So, you know, I think we're also looking at the the at a looming financial revolution, a rewriting of the rules and and the and if or the existing financial order. Well, China now comes out of this war pretty well. I think has now overtaken The United States in global popularity, has a reputation for reliability.
This is according to a latest Gallup poll, just published, I think, today and or perhaps yesterday. And it's just gained a huge market for its electric vehicles since only The United States is now sticking with the internal combustion engine, and everybody else has got the energy shock now, the oil and gas shock to consider and wants to electrify. So Chinese leadership in in solar, wind, nuclear energy now, and and possibly fusion. They seem to be on the verge of commercializing fusion, but certainly in electric vehicles and the like guarantees them a global market of immense dimensions and a technological lead in these crucial fields. But China's also emerged as the go to country for mediation and rapprochement between enemies, as we saw between Saudi Arabia and Iran earlier and between Palestinian factions, between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It's no accident that talks are taking place in Beijing under Chinese auspices. And now working with Pakistan on trying to come up with a way of producing a new durable order in the Persian Gulf, which they've made proposals about, as has Iran, as has as has Russia, but notably the West has not. And I think the the answer to the failure of imagination is vested interests in a vanishing order. We imagine somehow that our Western supremacy can continue, that the benefits that we've had under the Pax Americana can continue, and and and that is not true. They are these benefits are being shredded before our very eyes.
So, yeah, a it's often said that generals prepare to fight the last war. Well, it looks like politicians prepare to conduct the last sort of diplomacy that was relevant and not the new diplomacy that is relevant. And that's sad. That's very sad. One has to hope that youth, which I can no longer claim, will come up with some answers to this.
Speaker 0: Well, I've been a bit surprised by China's I mean, I was expecting maybe them to step up and play a diplomatic role that matches their, I guess, their economic position in the world. On on one hand, I'm very glad they haven't taken advantage of this crisis to build some anti American block, you know, because this is because all all conflicts now seem to be globalized, but it would have been it seemed like they could have played a role in terms of
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: No. I mean caliphate security, though.
Speaker 1: If they were playing the classic European American power game, then, yes, they would have done that. I don't think they're interested in that. I think they're very selfish. They seem to agree with George Washington that one should not have entangling alliances because they're liabilities. They get you in trouble.
You end up fighting other people's wars for them. And they don't seem to aspire to the kind of hegemonic leadership that The United States has aspired to. And they don't have the messianic impulse of either the American Republic or the Soviet Union. I don't think the Russian Federation has a messianic impulse now. I suppose it might arise yet again from the Orthodox Church or something, but I don't see it at the moment.
India also does seem seems more concerned to practice an India first policy. China's got a China first policy. United States claims to have an America first policy, but doesn't. I mean, we're we're this war in West Asia is serves no American interest at all. It is destroying our global alliances.
It has devalued our reputation. It is depleting our military capabilities. And the Trump proposal that we cut every domestic program in order to fund a $1,500,000,000,000 war budget. I suppose now that it's Department of War, can't have a defense budget. The you know, this is this is basically stripping ourselves naked for an unknown purpose.
I guess my British ancestors, before they were diluted by Saxons arriving, used to paint themselves blue and go on the battlefield naked. Maybe we'll come down to repeating that. You know? But
Speaker 0: Well, I I am a bit surprised by some of the diplomatic behavior, if you will, coming from Trump because in these last speeches he gave, he very openly mocked Starmer. He made references to Macron's wife hitting him. And, you know, I'm I'm by no stretch of the imagination a fan of Starmer Macron or Mertz or any of these. I would consider it to be horrible politicians. But, again, it it seems very I'm sure, let's say, unbecoming or uncivilized way
Speaker 1: It's undignified.
Speaker 0: Doing politics.
Speaker 1: Undignified. It's vulgar. You know, he aspires to be the turd in the punch bowl, apparently. That is not something I think most people are anxious to become. But he behaves in a petulant manner that it resembles you have children, so you know what they're like at two and a half.
That is that is a predictor in the case of our esteemed president, who, by the way, is showing more and more signs of dementia, incompetence. There's an article in The Guardian today saying, you know, if he were your aged father, would you take away his car keys? You know? People are becoming concerned about that. But the twenty fifth amendment to the constitution does not provide an answer to his removal from office because it requires the vice president and the cabinet to declare him unfit for duty.
And the cabinet is composed of the most incompetent sycophants in our history. So
Speaker 0: Still, though, there could be a way out of this war if he would step down and JD Vansk, he apparently does not have the same appetite. He's been one of the bigger critics of this war.
Speaker 1: He's not as charismatic charismatic by any standard as Trump. He's probably not a very nice man. He's certainly quite mean spoken as Europeans can attest, as Zelensky also experienced. So I don't see see him as a diplomat even though he's being offered as the interlocutor with Iran. Now that Iran is correctly judged that Witkoff and Kushner are are worthless as interlocutors.
So, yeah, well, we don't know what's going to happen. This is only 2026. There are many more horrors before us as we go forward, I don't doubt.
Speaker 0: Just the last question. How how do you or, you know, if you look into your crystal ball or, you know, any informed guessing, how do you see this war moving forward? Because Trump seems to be offering doing two things at the same time. He's, you know, he's talking about the war being over, soon peace. You're never sure if he's talk you know, trying to talk down the oil prices, and at the same time, he's going, you know, with full escalation.
You know, they they could be the same thing. He wants peace, but he thinks it can only be achieved by maximum pressure. But but either way, you know, do do you see this war coming to an end over the next two, three weeks as he suggests, or is this gonna be a long war with reckless escalation moving forward?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's fruitless to try to analyze that question by reference to the statements of Donald j Trump, because he's clearly more interested in manipulating the stock market than he is in strategic reasoning about the war. He doesn't know how to end the war. I think he is a prisoner of logic, which basically declares that Clausewitz and Sunzer were wrong, and the purpose of war is death and destruction, and these are ends in themselves. Or maybe he argues, you know, he imagines that you don't need to end a war with a negotiation. You know, you just annihilate the enemy.
This is actually the American way of war, of course, formed in our civil war, unconditional surrender followed by the moral rehabilitation of the enemy. World War I, also unconditional surrender, and the victimization of the enemy in that case in the form of reparations and other approaches to the Germans. And World War two, again, unconditional surrender, moral rehabilitation of the enemy. The Cold War, unconditional surrender, but nothing after that. You know, we had no imagination about how to to go back to Kennen's remark, you know, the only thing we came up with was mutual threat reduction, arms control.
You don't reduce your arms with a country you're prepared to develop as a friend. Anyway, that was our focus. Now it's over. We don't even have arms control. We have the opposite.
We have nuclear arms races both going on and about to begin. So how does this war end? It ends the same way the war in Ukraine will end, on the ground. At some point, Russia will decide it has achieved what it needs to achieve, and there will be an end to the war. But there's not going to be an end to the war at the negotiating table because in that case, the West, Europe basically, and the Ukrainian government are not interested in compromise.
Iran is not interested in compromise. Israel is even less interested in compromise. Its objective is to build a greater Israel through territorial expansion, and it's conducting that in Syria and Lebanon as we speak. The means by which to secure a greater Israel is to eliminate Iran as an effective competitor, and Israel's focused on that. Israel doesn't want to ceasefire.
That is why it keeps assassinating Iranians who are put forward as interlocutors and negotiators. And so how does this war end? It ends when Iran decides it's achieved its objectives. And could that be in two or three weeks? Unlikely.
I suspect this war is going to go on quite a while until and I don't think Iran is gonna run out of missiles with which to torment the Israelis. There are beginning to be messages out of Israel which suggest a very high level of distress. Nobody likes to dive for the bomb shoulder three times a night. Nobody likes to see the buildings around them suddenly collapse. Nobody likes people who are wounded.
We don't know what the human toll is in Israel due to military intelligence clamped down on the press. But anyway, I don't think this war is gonna it may peter out over time. But as you said earlier, apparently, this generation of politicians, if not are not really statesmen, and they don't seem to be able to understand when you have to change the game because you've lost the old game. So I think we I would not underestimate Iranian determination to tough this out and Israeli inability to come to grips with the new realities. I think Donald Trump is being forced seriously to contemplate walking away from all this.
And then you have an interesting question because the American people are not in a mood to provide more military assistance to Israel so that it continue rampaging through West Asia, dragging The United States into unnecessary and disastrous wars. And so Israel's ability to count on the American veto and the UN and to protect it politically or to count on endless war supplies is not certain. And, you know, maybe maybe inertia will carry Israel forward, maybe not. So how does it end? Not on any terms that do anything useful for us or Israel, for sure.
Now as I've said, Iran has already gained some of its objectives, and and to the sanctions on its exports of oil. The de facto recognition that it controls the Strait Of Hormuz and will be able to manage it in partnership with others. Maybe not just Oman. Maybe if the other Gulf Arabs made peace with Iran, it would admit them to the management council of the tollgate in the in the Gulf Of Hormuz. Russia's saying the dissolution of NATO had a great boost in its oil revenues.
And, you know, if you talk to Russians now, some of the most awful will say, well, good heavens, we're getting everything we wanted. Now what do we do? You know? So, I had a conversation the other day with a Russian friend, we agreed that both countries are led by strongmen. His strongman is sane, mine is not.
That's the only difference.
Speaker 0: Important difference. What's that about?
Speaker 1: It's an important difference.
Speaker 0: Well, it looks like this is part of what you suggested. The frustration of Trump though is that the Heg Sathian logic isn't working. That is because he expressed this frustration that, you know, we we destroyed their navy, their air force. We're they take taken out all these military targets, so we must have won. Look at all the people we killed.
We killed so many of their leaders. But, you know, if this was the logic, then The US would have won Vietnam. It would have won the Iraq war. But Right. It's not just killing people.
It's there has to be as you said, there has to be an extension of politics. There has to be a political objective being met. And as long as the Iranian sees this as an existential threat, and they will continue to to push back, then, you know, simply murdering people and trying to bring them back to the stone age, to use the language of Trump, it doesn't really achieve much except
Speaker 1: Oh, and but you'll notice his prior experience. There are two parts to that that are very relevant. One is that he had Roy Cohn as his attack dog, McCarthy's principal assistant, one of the nastiest men who ever existed. And and his real estate deals were all done coercively, you know. And he if you cross him, he sues you for, what is it, $10,000,000,000 the BBC is supposed to pay?
I don't know. 1,000,000,000,000, I think. Anyway. And then the second point in his experience is when he does fail, as he has in this war, he declares bankruptcy and walks away with no obligations. So I don't know what he'll do, but nobody knows what he'll do.
I doubt he knows what he'll do. But it's a pretty bad picture when you're dependent on utterly unpredictable whims and caprices.
Speaker 0: I like the bankruptcy analogy there. But, anyways, thank you very much as always for taking the time.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, and keep up the Go to a Red plan.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Joe Kent, Trump's former Counterterrorism Director, on Iran's strategy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=teapZxaBgDI&t=2550s&pp=2AH2E5ACAQ%3D%3D https://t.co/0G7As3949M
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speaker argues that Iran studied the wars of the last two decades and concluded that you can win by not losing. To preserve leadership, Iran has kept a core leadership alive, and the leadership has been strengthened by the strikes faced. There is a belief that there is currently a lot of support inside Iran for the regime, more than a few months ago when support appeared weaker.
The speaker notes Iran’s impressive capability to manufacture and disperse ballistic missiles and drones. They point to the Strait of Hormuz as a narrow chokepoint that Iran can exploit by intermittently deploying drones, ballistic missiles, and mines to disrupt world energy flows. Iran is using this leverage while allowing oil to move through the Straits, and they are leveraging relations with China and other world powers to keep oil flows open, suggesting a strategic use of economic diplomacy. The claim is that Iran is deliberately signaling that oil can pass through but that the regime is willing to complicate that flow when it serves their aims.
Politically, Iran is portrayed as knowing that a protracted war would not be popular globally, so they have found a steady-state: they can continue striking targets in the Middle East and make life uncomfortable for GCC countries. This ongoing pressure is seen as something they can sustain while external support for them remains, though the speaker expects that support to erode over time.
The speaker also highlights a fissure in relations with Saudi Arabia, describing growing fractures that complicate the ability of the United States to project power against Iran. Saudi Arabia’s cooperation is deemed key for countering Iran, and the rifts undermine that dynamic.
Overall, the speaker concludes that, from their perspective, there are few downsides for Iran in continuing the war. They believe Iran can maintain their efforts with minimal exertion and continue the conflict far longer than the United States and its allies can sustain, thereby preserving and potentially strengthening Iran’s position over an extended period.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: I think the Iranians studied the wars of the last two decades to their to their their East and to their West, and they they saw that essentially you can win by not losing. And so I think for them to keep enough of their leadership alive, and they obviously have a lot of depth in their leadership, and I think their leadership has only been strengthened because of the strikes that we've taken. I think that there's a lot of support right now for the regime, whereas just a couple months ago, there there probably was less. But, also, they they've done a very impressive job with being able to to manufacture and disperse their ballistic missiles and their drone capability. And, I mean, anybody who can look at a map of the Straits Of Hormuz, pretty pretty narrow section there that if they can every now and again get a drone every now and again get a ballistic every now and again get some mines in that and they mess with world energy and they and they know it and I think the way that they're they're using the Chinese and and other world powers to say, hey, you guys can get your oil through.
We're not gonna trade in the dollar, but you guys are welcome to use the Straits Of Hormuz. I think it's very shrewd of them. And they also just know politically that this is not going to be a popular war as it drags out. So I think that they they found kind of their steady state right now where they realize they can continue to strike targets in The Middle East. They can make this very uncomfortable for the GCC countries, which for now, we sort of have the support of, but I think that erodes more and more.
We're already seeing a lot of fraction fractures in our relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is key for us to be able to project power against Iran as well. So right now, I I personally don't see very many downsides to for the Iranians for them to continue this war. I think they I think they realize with a very minimum effort, they can continue this far longer than we can.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Michael Hudson: World Will Not Be the Same After the Iran War https://youtu.be/htokR5lYvv0 https://t.co/bOBMMjOTT5
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Michael Hudson and Glenn discuss how the war against Iran is reshaping the global economy and international order.
Hudson contends this is World War III in the sense that energy, fertilizer, and oil exports are fundamental to the world economy, and the conflict targets these choke points. He notes a recent US stock market rally of about a thousand points, driven by hopes of reversibility, while insisting the war’s effects extend far beyond Iran and are irreversible. He asserts the US is waging a war to maintain control over the world oil economy by preventing any sovereignty that could export oil outside US influence. This includes sanctions on Iran and Russia, and earlier sanctions on Venezuela, with the aim of ensuring oil proceeds flow to US-controlled channels. He argues the US sought to control the Strait of Hormuz to decide who gets Gulf oil, but Trump’s advisers warned that attempting to seize Hormuz would leave troops as “sitting ducks,” yet the underlying goal remains “grab the oil.” He claims Iran’s objective is to guarantee security by removing all US bases in the Middle East and by relief of sanctions imposed by US allies; without that, Iran claims the world will not return to the previous order.
Hudson emphasizes that the war disrupts key supply chains: oil, fertilizer, helium, sulfur, and related inputs. Although Iran allows oil exports via Hormuz for payments, it does not permit fertilizer exports, impacting the upcoming planting season. He forecasts the world entering the most serious depression since the 1930s due to these interruptions and the consequent financial ripples.
On the financial system, Hudson explains that since the 2008 crisis, the US pursued zero or near-zero interest rates to rescue banks, enabling asset price inflation in real estate, stocks, and bonds. He describes a shift where non-bank lenders and private equity could borrow cheaply and buy up assets, creating a debt-led, Ponzi-like dynamic that depended on continued access to credit and rising asset prices. As long as rates stayed low, this system could keep rolling; now, with 10-year treasuries around 4.5 percent and 30-year mortgages above 5 percent, the cost of rolling over debt intensifies. The war-induced disruptions to energy and inputs threaten defaults and a feedback loop of debt collapse, catalyzing a depression.
Regarding the broader international system, Hudson argues Europe is following sanctions on Russia at great economic cost, with Germany already experiencing GDP declines after energy sanctions in 2022. Europe’s shift away from Russian energy, the Ukraine-Hungary/gas dynamics, and the broader energy choke points threaten the cohesion of NATO and the EU. He predicts Europe may suffer consumer price increases and living standard cuts as deficits expand to subsidize heating and energy, leading to a reordering of alliances and economic blocs. He characterizes Asia–Russia–China as increasingly separate from Western systems, with a shift toward Asia as the growth center and Europe/US lagging. He asserts the West’s operational vocabulary frames the conflict as a clash of civilizations, but the underlying dynamic is a clash of classes, where the US seeks to subordinate others through energy and trade controls.
Hudson argues the current trajectory signals not simply a decline but an abrupt systemic change: the end of the postwar Western-led order. He calls for rethinking international institutions and law, including a new framework to replace a discredited United Nations and to organize economic and military arrangements that protect sovereignty outside US-dominated systems. He highlights the need for energy and food self-sufficiency to resist weaponized foreign trade and to avoid being drawn into US-imposed economic chaos.
In closing, Hudson points to Britain’s looming non-viability under deindustrialization and limited energy resources, illustrating how advanced economies may struggle to adapt to a new multipolar order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we are joined by professor Michael Hudson to discuss how the war against Iran is impacting the global economy. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad to be back, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So we often discuss the deteriorating state of The US economy, as well as the global economy, which is now based obviously on the foundation which is no longer sustainable. The US knows this is the case. Some countries try to adjust to new realities. Others are trying to delay. Others are trying to reverse what has happened.
But this war against Iran, it really seems to intensify all these dangerous symptoms which we speak of, and it seems like the world can't really go back to the way it was after this war. I was wondering how do you assess it, because this war impacts the global economy on so many levels. Energy, obviously, fertilizers are key, but how do
Speaker 1: you see the ramifications of this war? Well, we've discussed before how I think this is World War three precisely because energy, fertilizer, and the other exports of, oil producing countries are so important for the entire world. That makes it a war that has worldwide implications. And despite the fact that in the last hour or two, the stock market in The US has gone up a thousand points because they imagine that somehow, what has happened is all reversible and that, when Donald Trump says, well, Iran is talking about making an agreement and there are signs on the Internet that Iran says, well, all we're trying to do is protect ourselves, that somehow the world will go back to the way it was, not only before the attack, but really back to the nineteenth century, maybe the eighteenth century. The this isn't simply a war in Iran.
This is a war that, as we've discussed, it's a war by The United States to maintain a choke point on the entire world economy by controlling oil because everybody needs it. And, the reason it went to war with Iran is the same reason why last month it went to war with Venezuela and kidnapped the president and, took Venezuelan oil under US control so The United States can can decide who will get this oil from Venezuela and who will get the money from the oil exports, The United States. Now the The United States, as I think we've discussed, realizes that in order to, base its foreign policy on the ability to cut off oil shipments to the world, it has to, number one, prevent any other country's sovereignty from being able to export oil that's not under US control. And so so far, The United States has imposed sanctions, first on Iran that remain in place. Secondly in Venezuela, which are now relieved, and finally on Russia.
So that the only place where America's allies that agree to impose the sanctions on Russia can get their oil is from places that The United States controls. That's why the United States was so insistent in trying to con last week, and trying to control the Strait Of Hormuz through which much of the Saudi and OPEC oil is exported apart from the Saudi pipeline. Well, Donald Trump apparently is listened to his military advisers that said, look, our any troops that we try to grab the Strait Of Hormuz Islands to control it are going to be sitting ducks. And this is not a defensible situation. And any rate, Donald, don't you wanna just grab the oil?
And Donald Trump has said, despite that, yes, the real aim that we're in Iran and have waged the war has nothing to do with Iran wanting to get an atom bomb because it hasn't been trying to get an atom bomb. It has really nothing to do with Iran's foreign policy. It just wants American oil just like it wanted to grab Iraq's oil and has grabbed Iraq's oil. So all of this this fight is an attempt to use oil and control of its exports in the same way that Donald Trump has used his tariff policy of saying, we will create chaos in your economies if you don't agree to follow the what US diplomats ask you to do in the form of what Trump called gives back givebacks for his access to The US economy by reducing tariffs to a a less extreme level. Well, he's saying the same thing, basically now.
He wants to, grab Iraq Iran's oil. And with that, he will complete the long attempt by The United States stretching, for OPEC since, I guess, 2003, to take control all of the OPEC, the Arab monarchy's oil. And Iran was the last country of all of these, Iraq, Syria, Libya, the whole range of oil exporters. So now The United States alone, is seeking control of of the the Near Eastern oil. Well, that's supposed to give it a stranglehold.
The problem is that Iran is not going to allow itself to be conquered even though it said that, it's, willing to permit, oil exports again and to stop locking them, if other countries will supply its guarantee its security. What it means by security is number one, removal permanently of all US military bases in, The Middle East. And, of course, the largest military base is Israel, which, of course, The United States is not, going to do. Iran will also insist for its security that all of the sanctions that have been imposed by America's allies, by Europe, Japan, Korea, and others be relieved. Until these sanctions removed, until The United States removes its its presence, and in effect surrenders and admits that it's lost the war with Iran, the world is not going to go back to the way it was.
And even if somehow miraculously The United States would say, alright, we've given up our foreign policy. We are no longer going to be The United States as an imperial power. We're going to be just another country following the rules of law that the United Nations lay down. You know, we're, we're going to go back, to a normal world Even if it were to do this obviously impossible policy, the fact that the the oil has been interrupted and the helium supplies that were coming out of the Middle East have been blown up. There are no cutters.
Helium is already cut. And so the foreign companies that were obtaining helium before, certainly here in The United States and throughout the world, have all put cutbacks on helium. There are cutbacks on fertilizers. And although Iran is permitting oil exports through the Strait Of Hormuz in payment for $2,000,000 per ship, it's not permitting fertilizer exports. And so you're having the world going into the planting season.
So no matter what happens, the world is going to be in the most serious, depression since the great depression of the nineteen thirties. No matter what happens, there is no way of avoiding this depression. And that's what's so crazy about the stock market and its recovery. It's as if somehow they can't come to terms with the fact that the actions taken by The United States and Israel are irreversible. Who's going to pay for the reparations to Iran for all of the damage done to make them whole?
All of this is going to take probably at least the balance of this year to work out. So the whole world to answer your question, The US economy and the rest of the world are going into a very serious depression.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This the the energy aspect of this whole thing. I mean, it's you see some clear consistency coming from The United States over the past decades, but Trump has been often more, well, call it blatant or honest as opposed to his predecessors, where he very openly said that in Syria, we want their oil. We want their energy. In Venezuela, we want their oil.
And, of course, the latest now with Iran, we want their oil. It's well, you know that other leaders the other presidents are thinking the same, but it's interesting that it's being said in such an open way. How do you see, though, the this impacting the financial system? Like, to what extent would be energy trade linked to The US financial system? Because, again, with such a financialized economy, if something goes wrong there, something, you know, could unravel in The United States, it seems.
Speaker 1: Well, first, regarding your first comment about the fact that Trump's policy is simply following that of, the all the preceding American presidents. There has been no change at all, and you'll notice not a single former president, not Biden or, Obama or either of the George Bushes, not a single president has criticized Donald Trump and what he's doing. And in fact, the German leaders are all applauding Trump even though they're not letting, America use the airspace over Spain and, Italy now blocking the American airspace in Sicily and France, they're still maintaining the the, sanctions. And nobody in the world, no country has come out and accused Trump of being a war criminal, violating the international laws of war. Nobody's it's as if they are all hesitancy even to imagine a world that is not run by The United States in the way it is.
And such was the confidence in The US economy, to answer your question, that, ever since the crash the junk mortgage crash of two thousand eight, the financial sector has been very overburdened. And the solution by president Obama was to say, well, there's only one way to get the banks out of the negative equity that they've fallen into, and that's to pursue the zero interest rate policy. And with low interest rates, that made it profitable for the banks to lend to real estate, to lend to buyers of stocks and bonds, and that pulled the value of their the price of their collateral, their backing their real estate mortgages and their corporate loans to pull not only to pull The United States, financial system out of the negative equity that it was in, but to achieve the aims of, the Obama administration and the Wall Street interests behind him to, greatly provide a bonanza for the financial sector. Since 2008, American wage levels have been absolutely flat. 40% of Americans today don't have any savings at all.
All of the growth in in wealth has been financialized growth in wealth, real estate, stocks, and bonds. And this is the result of the low interest rate zero interest rate policy making it profitable for private capital. All of a sudden, non bank lenders have big firms, Blackstone and others, have borrowed from the banks at a very low interest, like 1%, and they bought all sorts of companies to do, what required a new word to be introduced into the English language, ensifification, to buy the companies and, just sort of bleed them for whatever they could and to maximize the financial returns by debt leveraging and, to buy them on credit on so little credit with 1% or even 2% interest rates that they could get everything that they could make over this minimal low interest rates. And so you have this enormous financial inverted pyramid based built on this bank credit. And the Federal Reserve system, as treasury secretary Bessent has noticed, has extended enormous credit to the banks based on collateral that they've put up from all of this.
The Federal Reserve will create the credit for banks that will then make make the loans to private equity and then, put all of pledge all of this their collateral, with, the Federal Reserve. So it's been a asset price inflation. In the monetarists, Milton Friedman, monetary economists, make this false assumption that creating money is going to increase the price index, meaning consumer prices. That's not what banks lend money for. They lend money for assets to buy real estate stocks and bonds and what and and the value of a home or an office building or a a stock company is however much the bank will lend against it.
And the lower the interest rate is the more money that can the larger the loan can be capitalized on the basis of whatever the buyer or owner of this asset can squeeze out of it. So you you've had The US economy squeezed in terms of the labor force is squeezed, real economy, the industrial economy has been squeezed and to pull out all of these commitments to the financial sector. And, the this financial, asset price inflation has attracted pension fund money and private investment money, all of which is committed to, somehow making this financial debt pyramiding work. And the only way that you can make it work is to turn the economy into a Ponzi scheme, where you lend the debtors the money to pay the interest to keep current on their loans so they don't default. Well, now you've just seen the interest rates on thirty year mortgages, to, this week went over 5% and the ten year treasury securities of four and a half percent.
This is all of a sudden there's no zero interest rate anymore. All of a sudden all of these loans that have to be rolled over, from the large banking institutions that have made these loans to the private capital companies, find themselves unable to recover their cost of capital by lending these companies enough money to pay to continue the Ponzi scheme that is underway. That's the whole problem for the economy. And the fact that the, war on Iran is it has created irreversible for the time being, interruptions in the chain of payments that was based on oil and gas and ammonia and fertilizers and sulfur and helium. All of these thing there these breaks in the chain of payments are going to lead to defaults.
And once there's a default, you have this exponential growth process of debt reversed, and you have exponential shrinkage on the way down. That's what a depression is.
Speaker 0: You know, it's what's hard to predict how it will play out as well given that there's so many variables and so many actors who will be affected by this. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any country in the world who won't be affected, especially due to the energy alone. But if we look at the other great powers, how do you see them being affected by this war? I mean, we we we see the energy well, for example, energy war, it's not just, you know, with Iran, with with the Russian, for example. You know, NATO's tried to cut off or at least limit the reliable access to a lot of key maritime corridors or choke points, as you referred to them earlier on, for Russia.
That is not to limit Russia in the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and also in the Arctic. We see the efforts to not just to, well, hijack Russian oil tankers, but now they wanna seize the oil as well. It's, you know, attacks on its refineries. We you know, the Chinese are worried about these choke points. They they're they're also worried that The US going after Iran is a way of targeting China's own energy access.
And, of course, India will also be greatly impacted by this. The Americans had just convinced them to reduce their purchases of Russian oil, and now, of course, all of it has to be reversed and indeed encourage them to buy more Russian oil to keep the markets up. Yeah. How do you see the, I guess, wider international system adjusting to this? Because The US is trying to sell it very hard, that this is Iran's fault, but but this is The United States that had attacked Iran with Israel, of course.
Speaker 1: Well, is the international system is not adjusting. Russia has said, well, Europe has stated, the NATO countries have stated they're going to stop by buying Russian gas and oil, but actually they've been managing to get some, ever since 2022. Europe has already said that, I think by May, they're going to stop, importing Russian oil and gas. And so Russia says, well, why not stop right now? They've all they've already threatened to break all of their long term contracts that they'd promised.
You know, we'll we'll sell our oil and gas to other countries. And, obviously, with Hormuz closed, the Russia has no problem at all finding other countries to import this. Europe seems to be committing economic suicide by following the sanctions on on Russia, and you'd think that it would see the results that have happened to Germany, above all, of, cutting off, Russian gas and oil. The the the whole of Europe is going to end up looking like Germany looked like after 2022, and its GDP has been going down, and probably will continue to. It seems, not it seems not only dead set or not importing Russian oil and gas, but, Ukraine has cut off the, gas the pipeline supply to Hungary, and I think, the Czechia also.
And, this is, this is a non NATO country. Ukraine has virtually declared war on Hungary, and NATO is supporting the attacker, the foreign attacker of a NATO country. I don't see how NATO and the European Union can survive all of this, you know, because the result of this economic, crisis of is going to force the governments either to violate all of the restrictions on how large can a government deficit be as governments try to pay subsidies to the homeowners and the business to heat their homes or office buildings and have a like presidency to turn on the lights at the higher gas and oil prices. Something has to give. And so far, what you're having is Mertz, in Germany saying, we have to cut back living standards.
We have to cut back social spending to spend more on military to fight Russia so that Russia cannot invade us again and take over East Germany like it used to. This is crazy. There's still the this is the enabling myth of, that, Europeans have, been told that they need American support to protect them against this, the fact that, elephants are going to, somehow invade or flying saucers will invade. Anybody. They can make in any kind of an enemy, that the Russians actually have any interest in invading, when, invading Europe.
Or, obviously, Russia has turned its attention towards Asia and some of most countries. You'll notice a change in the vocabulary of the newspapers and television and media over the last year. I think thirty years ago when I was writing archaeology books, we called Mesopotamia, Iraq, Iran, the Near East. Well, then then it changed to the better term, well, Middle East. But in the middle of what?
In the middle of Europe and Asia. Well, now the word that is used in polite company is West Asia. It's not the Near, Near East that's part of it's recognized that this is now and henceforth part of Asia. And this the whole world's growth area is going to be a part of Asia leaving Europe and The United States, leaving the West behind. So it's a it's a polite way of saying Asia is the East, no longer the West.
And that is the division you're having in the world. America's allies, in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, plus Japan, Korea, and Philippines in Far East Asia, that that's part of a whole different economic block. And what we're seeing is something that I think for years the Americans call, well, it's a clash of civilization. But it's not a clash of civilization. It's a class of it's a clash of an attack on civilization by what The United States is doing and its allies and, breaking all of what people think are the laws of civilization.
The laws of national sovereignty, of non interference with other countries affairs. The laws of war where you're not supposed to attack civilians but limit your attacks to, military targets. You're not supposed to go to war without declaring war. You're not supposed to make sneak attacks, and pretend for war. You you almost every international law in the last few years, and I could almost say decades, has been broken by The United States and president Trump and, his foreign secretaries have said, we don't need international law anymore.
International law no longer serves The United States. But this international law was the integument that is was supposed to hold civilization together. The laws of decent civilized behavior. Well, you're seeing the, the ethnic and religious hatred from Ukraine to Israel to the fundamentalist Christians, that are violating, you know, all of these respect for individualism, respect for freedom, and yet The United States calls this class a clash of civilization between democracies headed by the Ukrainian and, Israeli democracies and the end of The US under Trump against, autocracies, meaning countries with a strong enough government to resist this attack on civilization, of which I must say Iran has been even more, strong than, Russia in making this defense of itself. But, to be sure, it wasn't really left with any alternative.
It's fighting for its its existence and its unwillingness to surrender and essentially to follow what Patrick Henry said, in The United States, in the American Revolution against Britain. Give me liberty or give me death. Well, America didn't have the concept of martyrdom, but, certainly, Iran does and, so did Africa in the British and Dutch and European attack on African tribes in the nineteenth century, willing to fight even against machine guns. That was the morality was, you don't, we're fighting for a way of life against, against people who want to enslave us or deny us of any kind of self independence and self support of autonomy, of the ability to make our own future. This is this is what the fight's all about, and it's ultimately a moral fight, as well that is finding itself translated into, an economic fight and a trade fight, and is leading that's what's leading to the the split.
And it looks like this, no matter what Iran may agree to regarding, oil trade from, through, The Gulf and other countries, this split is going to continue because it's the it's the last chance by America to hold on to a power that it can't hold by being a prosperous country, offering other countries a win win scenario and a or any benefit from, joining and subordinating their interests to American interests. American interests are now juxtaposed to those of every other country quite explicitly in American foreign policy. And yet other countries aren't realizing that in order to avoid being subordinated to American policy at the cost of being pushed into depression, closing down their major industries, unemploying much of their industrial labor, and actually deindustrializing while the rest of, the world, West Asia to the rest of Asia is, growing that, this is this is the the world's destiny. There's no attempt to say, oh, what kind of institutional change a structural change do we need? This is not a marginal change.
And I think we need a new word for it. The word remember the Great Depression? When people had coined that word, it seemed like, what's the depression? Well, you have the world going up, and it's just like a little bit of a downturn to go up. Depression was a euphemism, intended to be a euphemism for just a slight interruption.
But, of course, as it became a plunge leading to World War two, it took on a bad word. So then a new euphemism was developed. Well, recession. Recession was supposed to be even less than a depression. Okay.
A recession is, only a slowing or a a bit of a just, you just tread water until you return to your growth path. But the growth path that the West has followed now has ended. We're, not only, stable it not growing, But as you see in Germany and Europe, you're having the economies actually turned down and you're seeing a desperate downturn in the global South countries that cannot outbid the more the wealthier Asian countries from bidding from obtaining oil and gas and helium and other products, fertilizer at higher prices. So something is going to have to give for all of these countries. And it's not only The US market that where you're going to have an inability of many companies to pay their debts to the banks because of the high price of energy, but, you're going to have, the same break in the chain of payment by countries with heavy foreign debts that, all of a sudden also have to now pay heavy trade deficits to pay for the oil and the gas and the fertilizer and the other commodities whose distribution has been interrupted and whose price is going up to crisis levels.
And there's no way of using regression analysis, trend analysis to project this. It's off the charts everywhere. And if you look at how the stock market has done, even in today's recovery on Wall Street, what's up more than anything else are the high technology, information sector monopolies. And yet all of the growth in these seven big companies that have been leading the whole Nasdaq average in The United States have been companies whose expansion requires energy. And I think we've just before, there's hasn't been very much increase in electric utility output at all in The United States.
There's no energy for them. So what did they do? Well, they begin to say, well, let's go to where the energy is. Let's go to Saudi Arabia and The Emirates and let's go to Bahrain and Google and Amazon and other company Facebook. These other countries have been relocating in the OPEC countries.
But now, Iran has said, well, we will not be secure as not only as long as other US military bases there, but as long as the OPEC economies are in a symbiotic relationship with The United States, depending on The United States for all of their investment in this energy and saving all of their oil revenues by investing in The United States. As long as that symbiosis exists, they're going to be a a threat to our security by being part of The US, group that is encouraging war on us and destruction in on this. So this whole attempt to somehow solve the expansion of The US information technology sector by investing in the OPEC countries is being wiped out as Iran has been bombing all of these centers to say, we want you you, other Arab, Emirates and monarchies, sheikdoms. I hate to call them monarchies. That sort of elevates them in in size to we want you to relocate along Asian lines because you you can't remain as part of The US or we won't feel secure because you're going to try to attack us again and again and again to follow your US, controllers.
So this is part of the political sit system, how it is intertwined not only with the financial system in general, but specifically with the, information technology sector that has been, leading the whole stock market boom and all of the array of companies sent around this sector.
Speaker 0: What I find fascinating though is that for decades now, at least over the past forty, fifty years, there's been a lot of work and literature on what you more or less described as a benign hegemon. That is, said The United States, you know, if it it needs to restore this ability to to dominate. And, countries should see this as being a benefit. Well, we had all these ideas of a benign hegemon, but, you know, it was rooted very much in this concentration of power, which meant that there wasn't any competition. But, you know, making that point short is what's been argued since the seventies and eighties was essentially what happens over time when The US power will begin to wane, when other countries will have rival technologies, when other countries will have their own, you know, navies, they will seek to, you know, not be dominated by The United States.
You have other rising currencies, economies. What happens overall when the hegemon is declining? And the argument then will be, well, it wouldn't be possible for The US to be benign hegemon because a benign hegemon would then secure. It would have open access to maritime corridors, would have free access to technologies, free access to, you know, use of banks, currencies, all of this. But once you have a declining hedge fund, it it has two problems.
First, one, of course, it's it's it's less reliable because it's bankrupt, and also likely it would use a lot of its economic instruments of power as an instrument to keep other great powers down. And, essentially, what would the benign hegemon do if it's in decline? It would have two options. Either it could stop being a hegemon or it could stop being benign. So this, you know, more aggressive approach to essentially restore control over international oil supply or, you know, cutting off tech for the Chinese, cutting off oil trade for the Russians.
All of this is was very much predicted by many people, yet it seems to come as a shock. I my my question, though, was
Speaker 1: Let me say one thing before we just on your vocabulary. We need a much better word than decline. The people who you mentioned who we forecast a decline didn't have a clue as to what they were talking about. A decline is something you know, it's like a business cycle. It goes up and down, then it always recovers, up and down.
But, every there's no there's never been any such thing statistically at the cycle. Here's what happened. There's certainly the so upsweep of the psych upsweep of the psych upsweep upsweep of the cycle and then a crash. Upsweep, it's a ratchet effect. It's not there's no decline.
It's a crash. A decline is sort of like the counterpart to an ascent. The ascent is slow, exponential perhaps, growing, peaking, and then a crash. And that's what's happening now. And it would have been a decline if other countries would have thought of, yes, there'll be a decline.
We have to think of what's going to take the place of the system that, we've been working in under US leadership. But they haven't. And so the this ending we're seeing the ending of an era, not a decline, but an abrupt change. And this change is not stemming from without. The ending of the American power did not re result from any foreign civil war or for or other war against American dominance.
The end came from The United States itself in trying to juxtapose its interest to every other country thinking, you know, we're going to put sanctions against, everyone who doesn't agree with this against we we we hate China because, they're more prosperous than us. We hate Russia because Russia's supporting China. We hate Iran because we don't control its oil. We hate, Iraq and Syria because we don't control, its oil. And now Trump in the last few days has said, we're really angry with Europe because Europe didn't send its navy to commit suicide and, all be killed by joining us in opening the Persian Gulf.
He said, hey, Europe, if you want oil, why don't you send your navy to open up the the Persian Gulf and go and come and get it? We don't need it. It's our war, but your problem. That and well, if the it's The United States, all the way from the Bushes, through Obama, through Trump that has given the rest has closed off The United States from the rest of the world and virtually declared war on the rest of the world, leaving the whole rest of the world with no option except to join Iran. That's what's so amazing in all of this, that it's, The US has ended its own empire.
Well, many of the people talking about decline say there are slow processes that change all of this, but they didn't they've never acknowledged the inherently hostile, position of The US to other countries saying, we will not join any institution internationally in which we do not have veto power and any country wanting the sovereignty to pursue its own interest, we will treat as an enemy and call it an autocracy. An autocracy is a country with the strength to say we will go our own way and not submit to The US democracy, Ukraine, and Israel style. I mean, this is what it is. So we're seeing the we're seeing a systemic change, And a systemic change is a changeover. The the world is no longer part of the past trends.
Those trends and the connections that have, created this trend as a matrix are all ended now. And, you're having a new world trying to structure itself, and there's been so little thought about it. The guests that you've had on your show talk about it, but, we're pretty much in a minority and, other people haven't thought, well, in order to have an alternative to The US run International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and a control World Court and Army, We need our own international organization and ultimately our own military force to defend ourselves so that what has happened to Iran and the rest of the Middle East and the other countries that America has gone to war with again and so often since the the nineteen fifties. So this will never never occur again, certainly not in the way it has. And so that we can have a world that indeed is supposed to have a body of international law and rules of war so we're never plunged into this kind of crisis again.
That nobody's talking about how to what kind of a monetary system, a financial system, a trade system, a new body of international law, and a meeting to replace the United Nations, which is now as obsolete as the League of Nations had become by World War two time.
Speaker 0: No. This is, yeah, a great point. I mean, it's easy to point out the mistakes and the decline of the existing system, but what should come next? You know, you would hope there would be more debates around this, but that's a, yeah, excellent point. I I just my last question was, I guess, more specific.
I wanted to look at well, just ask when you see this shortage of energy and fertilizers to focus on these two, how do you see the how can we essentially trace the ripple effects through through the timing? No. Not. It's a specific it has a very vague and wide question, I guess.
Speaker 1: Everybody's answer is going to be the same. Without fertilizer, crop yields fall. And when crop yields fall, prices go up is the way markets work is the people with the most money get to buy the crops that are left available when they when they fall. That's what happens in a crisis. Farmers make more money when there's a crash of output, when there's a when the harvest fail and the prices go up than they make when the the harvests are fine.
Well, in America, you're still having the agricultural system give subsidies to farmers to grow corn to make gas a hole from. That's crazy. I mean, you'd think that in a logical society, these American farmers making gas a whole would be growing food crops to feed the population. That's not happening. I'm not sure what other other countries are going to do.
There's going to probably some countries will shift from plantation export crops to food crops to feed themselves. There's going to be throughout the world a recognition that, you need food self sufficiency to, save yourself from The US weaponization of foreign trade in food, in oil, in fertilizer, and just about anything that The United States can create a choke point for and weaponize. You have to stop foreign trade from being weaponized in the first place. So obviously, there's going to be a lot of people. There are warnings especially for Africa and parts of starvation.
For the big countries in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, they're gonna be okay in terms of agriculture because they have a lot of people can eat soybeans. Their westerners may not like them as much as Asians, but soybeans are very good for you. High protein, there are all sorts of solutions. Brazil and, Latin America, can probably do okay, but Africa is a real problem because of the distorted monoculture economies that Europe, backed by the World Bank, have created there, especially since World War two, where they've gave up the self sufficiency that they that World War two forced them, to do. And now they're back in a wartime situation where, the only way of survival is to become self sufficient, and that self sufficiency is probably going to last longer than a return to the kind of international specialization of labor that you had between the trade surplus countries and the trade and payments deficit countries.
All of that's going to be changed. The whole philosophy of economic growth is going to be changed to reject the World Bank's emphasis on plantation agriculture and US for foreign ownership of raw materials, land, and basic rent yielding resources.
Speaker 0: It's funny how the world is flipped on its head in this way because ever since World War two, the the countries who allied with The United States, they had reliable access to to international trade. They could make they could afford to make themselves dependent on these trade networks, and they could essentially take this, you know, Ricardo's comparative advantage to the extreme, you know, don't have to co make their own food, don't have to do, you know, develop their own fertilizers. They can become completely dependent on energy. But now, meanwhile, the countries who are adversary adversaries of The United States, they have to develop self sufficiency in many ways that that that technology will across the board. Now that The US is, well, struggling, let's say, this, and the system is breaking down, we see that the lack of strategic autonomy of some of its allies is is quite shocking, and Europe, I think, is a great case.
So I'm not sure if you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Yes. Let's look at Britain. And Britain has access to foreign trade, certainly. But what is it going to how is it going to trade? What does it have to pay for its imports in?
It's been deindustrialized by the combination of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and the conservative and labor parties together have deindustrialized it. So how on earth is Britain going to survive? What does it have to offer the world for, for food and essentials and energy and the other things that it needs? It doesn't have the North Sea oil anymore or rather it's, dwindled way down. I guess Norway is all in Scandi is also finding that its reserves in the North Sea are getting sort of low.
How are, what are these, countries going to do now that they followed neoliberal economics and deindustrialized?
Speaker 0: We'll find out shortly, I guess. It's surprising, though, how how quickly everything changed from the nineties. You know, it was more or less consensus around the end of history that this was it until now this massive crisis. And, well, many people did warn, though, that the war on Iran would just exacerbate all these poor fundamentals, but yet here we are. So, thank you as always for taking some, time and to, yeah, share your insights on these issues.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you've given me a chance to talk about, the big questions.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: Iran War Destroyed NATO, Gulf States, Israel & U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/vBlS-S9AEoY https://t.co/aSZsinEoRj
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas MacGregor discusses the evolving and unclear state of the U.S. war posture in the Persian Gulf, challenging the repeated claim that “we’ve already won.” He notes that each time President Trump makes lines about victory, Iran responds with substantial missile and drone attacks, calling into question whether Tehran’s defeat is real. He says inside sources suggest Iran’s ballistic-missile capability may have been reduced from 100% to around 70%, and their air defenses have been effective against unmanned surveillance aircraft, but Iran “has always been willing to absorb the strikes,” believing the payoff justifies the damage.
MacGregor questions why the campaign, which has involved significant air and missile strikes, would move to ground troops when such a shift would require overcoming robust Iranian air defenses, a deep intelligence-surveillance network, and potential shoulder-fired missiles. He argues the administration’s narrative lacks a truthful assessment from the U.S. side and suggests the president is desperate, facing domestic and international humiliation if he admits the truth. He criticizes the unilateral pressure on Iran and the Europeans, noting commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged (15 million barrels of oil a day offline) and Lloyds of London won’t insure ships through the Strait, highlighting how the economic and logistical costs of war already bite far beyond Iran.
The host, Glenn, and MacGregor discuss the broader strategic context: Israel’s pressure and neocon aims to remove Iran as a threat, and the possibility that the war’s aftershocks would realign regional power. MacGregor asserts that the war’s sold premise—“short campaign, Iran off the board, Israel safe”—was never credible, and that Gulf Arab states have discovered they cannot rely on the U.S. to guarantee their security indefinitely. He notes the Chinese mediation offer via Pakistan has not been seriously engaged by the U.S., while Russia remains opposed to the Ukrainian war and skeptical about Western aims. He predicts Iran would seek to end Western involvement by moving to a negotiated settlement if possible, but believes the U.S. is not prepared to walk away, given domestic and pro-Israel pressures.
On the regional and global implications, MacGregor emphasizes that NATO’s relevance has faded in the post–Cold War era and that European publics are largely indifferent to long-term U.S. troop deployments abroad, especially if they threaten domestic economies. He foresees a possible shift toward a “petro-yuan” backed by gold as an alternative to the dollar, noting China’s gold hoarding and new energy-finance dynamics. He argues the Gulf Emirates have bet on the U.S. staying engaged, but their security dependence is fading as the U.S. signals a potential withdrawal.
Regarding Russia and Europe, MacGregor says Russia understands how the U.S. government operates less than Americans do, blaming “Zionist billionaires” and financial capitalists who control much of Western policy. He contends Russia and China will back Iran, and that NATO is effectively finished, having “died on the battlefields of Ukraine.” He suggests Europe must rethink its strategy toward Russia, abandon the weaponization of relationships with Moscow, and foster cooperation with their powerful neighbor rather than treating Russia as an existential threat.
In closing, MacGregor contends there are two possible paths: (1) Trump announces unilateral end to U.S. involvement and opens negotiations with Iran, which he believes is unlikely due to the Israel connection; or (2) the U.S. escalates with ground operations in the Gulf, which MacGregor views as impractical given the need to neutralize Iran’s comprehensive strike networks and the terrain of key islands. He predicts the Iranians hold the strategic initiative and that the administration faces a “train to hell” scenario if it pushes forward. The discussion repeatedly returns to the central tension: can Washington disengage and accept settlement, or will it double down in a costly, potentially unsustainable confrontation that reshapes regional and global power dynamics?
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran, author, and a former adviser to The US secretary of defense. As always, thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Oh, happy to be here.
Speaker 0: So we're getting some mixed messages from president Trump. That is do you
Speaker 1: That's a that's a big change.
Speaker 0: Well no. Yeah. Good point. So what well, we heard here that the that The US already won the war. But if the Iranians don't agree to a ceasefire, they will destroy all of the infrastructure in Iran if they don't open the Strait Of Hormuz.
At the same time, he also argues that The US is ready to leave, and the Strait Of Hormuz should be the problem of the Europeans and the regional states. So how are you assessing the state in this war? Because, I guess, you know, I understand, you know, there's a lot of different audiences to communicate to. And, you know, one wants to put pressure while at the same time have something offered on the table. But how do you make sense of the current position now?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure a decision has been made. Or if it has, he's not sharing it. I think it's a very strange set of circumstances. I mean, you have the claim, this insistent drumbeat, we've already won. We destroyed everything that could be destroyed.
They're down to nothing. They can't keep up. They're running out of missiles. Their back is against the wall, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Well, if that's true, why is it that every time he makes some sort of statement along these lines, a wave of missile attacks comes out of Iran?
Tactical theater ballistic missiles, drones that do enormous damage to Israel and to frankly the Gulf Emirates. I mean, if that's really the case, why hasn't Iran already hoisted the white flag? I mean, I I just don't. I think that those claims have to be dismissed up front. What I am hearing from people who are on the inside that I trust is that we have perhaps reduced Iran's ballistic missile capability from 100% down to perhaps 70%, that their air defense has been very effective against the unmanned surveillance aircraft, selectively against other kinds of aircraft, but has not performed as well as they'd hoped.
But they have always been willing to absorb the strikes. They've always known that their infrastructure would be brutalized, and they think the the payoff is is worth the trouble. So that's the first thing. Second thing is if things are going so well, and we've had so much success with the air and missile campaign, why do we want to introduce ground troops into the equation? Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
So I don't think you're getting a truthful assessment from The US side. I think the president is desperate. I think he faces public humiliation inside The United States as well as overseas if he admits the truth. And when he starts talking about, well, maybe I'll just leave and dump all of this into the lapse of Europeans, we ought to stop and and consider a few things. First of all, commercial traffic through the Strait Of Hormuz has fallen by about 95 to 97%.
15,000,000 barrels of oil a day have been taken offline. The physical shortages have already hit so hard that right now Singapore jet fuel is selling at $231 a barrel. And as long as the war persists, the real people who shut down the Strait Of Hormuz who are not Iranians, they're sitting in London. They're called Lloyds of London. The insurance brokers aren't going to insure anything that goes to the Strait right now because it's a war zone.
So if you really wanna open up the Strait, you've got to stop the war. Simply passing an ultimatum against to the Iranians and then turning to the Europeans who were really never consulted on this whole business, neither were the Japanese, neither were the South Koreans. I mean, frankly, we ignored all of our lives and simply acted independently in a way that we decided to act. And it was never really in our interest to do so. When you turn to a friendly country country like India, you discover the Indians are apoplectic.
Well, they do a $180,000,000,000 of business in trade a year with The Emirates. Suddenly, that's gone. And if we continue to destroy infrastructure in Iran, the Iranians have said, fine. If you hit our desalination plants, if you hit our oil infrastructure, we're gonna turn around and obliterate everything in the Persian Gulf. So what does he plan to do?
He wants to land troops on some islands presumably? Right now, the United States Navy sails 500 to 800 miles away from the Gulf and stays on the move cutting giant squares in the ocean because it doesn't wanna be sunk. It doesn't want its ships on the bottom. How do you get the troops in there? Can you get close enough without being detected and without coming on fire to sort of put the troops in a position from which they can attack something?
Then how do you propose to attack wherever you want to attack? Can you account for all the potential air defense systems that might be there, including shoulder fired missiles? Can you ensure that you've neutralized this brilliant network of intelligence surveillance reconnaissance platforms with strike systems that are all over Iran, and they're miles deep inside the country, anywhere from 10 miles to 200 miles to 300 miles. You know, all of these questions are never really answered. It's the big hand wave.
Oh, successful. We're brilliant. We've done everything right. These pesky Iranians are too dumb to surrender, but we think we've done enough damage. Now from whom have we not heard?
Who is really in charge? Israel. Why are we in this war? Because we suddenly decided that Iran was this satanic evil element in the international system that had to be purged for anyone anywhere in civilization to be safe? No.
That's a lot of nonsense. We're there because Israel wants Iran taken off the board, which is the the phrase used by the neocons in Washington. This whole thing was sold from the very beginning on the on the assumption that, first of all, this will be a short campaign. We would be surprised if they didn't fall apart in ninety six hours. That's what I was told.
Secondly, once we've taken Iran off the board, Israel is safe. It has no worries. It can bully the region. It can push its power and influence to the limits. And, oh, don't worry about the Turks.
We'll keep them under control. We're close with the Turks. Turks don't want trouble with us. They'll do what we say. So the attitude in Israel was fine.
Now we just need to obliterate Iran. And, oh, by the way, if we do this right, we and you can move in and take control of the oil fields. Never mind Iraq, don't mind Syria, don't mind Turkey, forget those things, they're not important. And the Emirates, they depend on us for everything, so they'll do what we say. Well, the Emirates have discovered that depending on us is not a very good idea.
We have been woefully unprepared for the attacks that have been launched against them, and they paid a terribly heavy price for our bases and their support to us. So where are we today? There is no trust between The United States and Iran. Zero. The Chinese have offered to mediate through the Pakistanis.
We have not really responded to that, but we have given no evidence that we'd be interested because the worst thing that could happen to us in the minds of people in Washington is that the Chinese supplant our power and influence in The Gulf, and the Chinese are well on their way to doing that. So you're not gonna take anything that's on offer from the Chinese. Well, what about the Russians? Well, we're still trying to harm Russia. We haven't given up.
We're still doing everything in our power to sustain this fiction in Kyiv called a Ukrainian government. We keep helping MI six and other countries in Europe to put standoff attack weapons in there so that periodically they can wake up the international community to the realization, look at us. We have powerful drones that can reach just outside of Saint Petersburg and destroy an important oil terminal for Russia. Well, that's about all they can do. And inside Russia, as you know, there is tremendous discontent right now with the way the war is being handled.
Russians want an end to the war. They're sick and tired of the nonsense. So it'll be interesting to see what happens in two weeks when the ground dries out in Eastern Ukraine. Will the Russians push ahead and and finally put an end to this war, or will they sit there as they've sat for months and months and months now behind this defensive line? They take some casualties, certainly not on the skill of the Ukrainians, but nevertheless, it's a it's a constant irritant.
So all of these things seem to be coming together right now, and I think president Trump realizes he's gotta make a decision. He said, can we do everything? Probably not. Then what can we do? How much longer can we keep this up in the Persian Gulf?
Everybody forgets we're visiting. We're not a resident. We're very dependent on other people's harbors, other people's air bases. How much longer can we do this? How many missiles can we produce in a particular day?
Five, seven, six, eight? How many can the Chinese produce? And how about the resupply from China? Where does that figure into all of this? We haven't even talked about the space based intelligence that's been on, loan to the Iranians.
So he's got to answer this question, and I think tonight he he recognizes he's got to go one way or the other. He's got to say it's over. We've won. We're leaving, in which case Israel is in trouble because Israel hasn't won, and Israel must have us backing them unconditionally to win anything. So I don't think the Israelis will approve of that, And it's very hard for me to believe that the immensely powerful Zionist billionaires in The United States who are real really the foundation for the Israel lobby's influence and power are prepared to throw Israel under the bus, as they say.
So I I I find that hard to imagine. And perhaps president Trump will say, well, we're going to continue to support Israel. Well, that's like saying, you know, I have all these dead cats, but I'm gonna continue feeding them as long as possible because that's what Israel looks like right now. It's in ruins, and it's not getting any better. We don't know how many people have died, but certainly a lot more than the Israelis were prepared to accept.
I think that's pretty obvious. So what do the Iranians want? Well, the Iranians want us out of the Persian Gulf. What have we done for decades? We've surrounded Iran, placing bases wherever we could from which we could threaten Iran.
Iranians have said, no thanks, not anymore. The Sykes Picot states that were created at Versailles in the aftermath of World War I, gone. We don't accept that anymore. So what do they want besides us out of the Gulf? They want change in Israel.
They're not going to accept a peace with the Israelis or us as long as we continue to back Israel's campaign of mass murder and destruction in Gaza and on the West Bank. They're not going to come to peace terms with the Israelis as long as the Israelis are expanding into Lebanon and killing people there by the thousands or expanding into Syria. So how do we deliver on Israel? Are we really in control? I don't think we are.
Speaker 0: No. I spoke to an Iranian as well who made the point that if they go up the escalation ladder, they can do a lot of different things. Some most of them I would have predicted, but one of them I thought was interesting that is to reward Iraq for its assistance. They could also change the borders of the region since you, you know, mentioned the Sykes Picot. That is the Kuwait could go be joining Iraq essentially.
So there's a lot of surprises which seems to be outside our control at the moment in terms of how the region will be impacted by this. What I wanted to ask as well though was how do you see the region beyond The Middle East being affected? That is especially the NATO relationship. I find this to be interesting. That is for on one hand, Trump has been arguing that NATO is now a paper tiger.
Marco Rubio said perhaps we should just you know, we have to reconsider this relationship. They're only they're there when we need to help them, not the other way around. And, I kinda can understand from both sides. That is from the European perspective, the Americans never told them, didn't inform them, never cared, and then now they want them to go on the suicide mission into the Strait Of Hormuz. On the other side, the Europeans blocked the access to military bases, airspace.
Poland was asked to hand over some Patriot batteries to help out The United States and region, and they declined. So I kinda can understand where the mutual frustration comes from, but what what do you think this war, though, will do to the transatlantic partnership?
Speaker 1: Several years ago in 1991 during the air campaign, while most of us that were prepared to invade Iraq were sitting on the sidelines watching the air campaign unfold in front of us, we were literally up on the Saudi border watching all of the sorties every night that went in with bombers and various kinds of aircraft. And one night, this was very early in the morning, actually this would have been about four in the morning, I was trying to get some rest and I was suddenly awakened by a soldier. He said, sir, quickly, get to the CP, we need you right now. I said, okay, what's happening? He said, well, we have a report that we're under fire.
I said, really? I thought that was interesting. I didn't think the Iraq Easter in the air campaign would risk an attack, but all things are possible. So I got up, walked into the command post and I said, now what's going on? Said, well, Ghost troop, that was G troop, has an observation post up here.
That meant a couple of Bradleys up on the border, and they say they're under fire. I said, what? You know, get this man on the phone. Well, this man on the phone was very we we have air to ground bombs fully on our location. Well, I've never heard of anything other than air to ground bombs.
I haven't heard of any antigravity bombs. And I said, what the hell? Is this man sober? Of course, there was no liquor to consume, so I assumed he was. And the next thing I get is, well, we we need help.
We need help. And one of the sergeants who was there was a very smart non commissioned officer. He said, yeah. That's a great idea. Let's all get under the artillery fire with ghost troop.
In other words, if everybody up there is under fire, why are we going up to join them? Why don't we do something intelligent and try to find out where it's coming from and whatever? Anybody who thinks that American soldiers are stupid is wrong. They're actually very intelligent people. So finally, got the executive officer on the phone and he said, look, I'm sorry about this.
This man had been watching flares that were dropped by A-10s and others and these flares were dropped to distract air defense weaponry so that the missiles ended up being diverted by the flares and instead of striking the target. I think that's kind of what Donald Trump is asking the Europeans to do. Hey. We did something immensely stupid. We're sending The United States into a recession and most of the world is at risk of going into a depression all because we went into the Persian Gulf for Israel.
And we've set back, you know, the world for God knows how long, ten years before we recover because food, fuel, feedstocks, fertilizer, the big ones right there, the four f's are screwing us. You know, we're screwed. Thank you so much. Yeah. Let's all go down to the Persian Gulf and contribute to this catastrophe.
And Trump said, well, if you're not gonna help us, well, we don't need you. You know, this goes back to the false assumption that the North Atlantic Treaty was designed for anything other than defense. And the defense was against the Soviet Union, period. That's it. And ever since the Soviet state system collapsed, we've been trying to repurpose and repurpose the famous statement.
If NATO is not out of area, well, then it's out of business. We don't need it. And I told everybody in NATO, get smart, get out. You don't want to go to all of the hell holes that we have identified for invasion and occupation. But Europeans, well, you know, we're afraid and, we really need the Americans here.
It's vital to our security. Okay. Fine. Here we sit. Now the Europeans are saying, this is a dumb idea.
Don't really wanna participate in this. And why aren't we talking to the Iranians? Because the Iranians have said, look, the Strait Of Hormuz is closed to countries unfriendly to Iran. That's all. Which means, even though the numbers of tankers used to average 75 a day going through the strait, now it's three to four.
But that number can rise provided the tankers and their destinations are not to places unfriendly to Iran. So many people are saying, well, let's talk to the Iranians. And the Americans are saying, that is unacceptable. You can't talk to those people. If you do that, you're going back to Munich.
You're negotiating with Hitler. Yes. Here you go again. So we're in a bit of a pickle and I think the Iranians hold the strategic initiative. They are not at the end of their rope.
I think he's got to make a decision. Do I bail on this? It's a stinker. I made a mistake. Find a way to get out and blame it on other people, which is the standard Trump approach.
Or do I say no, I'm going to obliterate you. You know, you refuse to negotiate with me, the great marketer, the great salesman, then I'm going to wage a war winning air and missile attack, and I'm gonna bring in ground troops, and I'm gonna cut you off for the gulf and force the gulf open. And I think the Iranians are sitting there saying, okay, go ahead. Because if you're gonna put ground troops anywhere in that area, you have to neutralize all the strike weapons, neutralize the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance network, stop all potential air defense including shoulder fired missiles. Because if you can't do that, first of all, they may never reach the destination.
They may be shot out of the sky before they get there because they're gonna have to fly in. I don't see a massive amphibious assault working. That means that they have to get there without already being identified in Kuwait or Bahrain or The UAE, and I don't see that happening. So I think the Iranians hold a strategic initiative, and we stand an excellent chance of ending up like a giant 14 or 15 or 16 or 18 wheel truck headed down the side of a mountain for a concrete wall. We'll just end up battering ourselves against the concrete wall one more time.
Speaker 0: I heard many commentators argue that, you know, if The US could just control the coastline, then they would be able to control the Strait Of Hormuz. They don't seem to recognize that, you know, there's a vast amount of territory behind the coastline of Iran, which can also be used to target. But either way, the coastline would be there was a vast area, so it doesn't really make much sense, especially if one hasn't planned for this in advance. But
Speaker 1: Well, what about Bandur Abbas? That's a city of 580,000. They also have a uranium mine that's not far from the city where they harvest yellow cake. They also have a desalination plant there. The desalination plant could be destroyed, that would harm the people that live in Bond Rabas, but I think they have some backup plans for that.
But the bottom line is, what are we gonna do about that? Are the islands all sit in proximity to Bondar Abbas. If you can't control Bondar Abbas, what makes you think you can control these little islands? In other words, it's a it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't. And the Iranians may take the position, let them all land, and then we just erase the islands.
And see, this has been a problem that we've been dealing with in all of our war planning for years. You have the Marine Corps and the Navy that want to repeat World War two. They talk about island chains. Well, unless the island is about the size of Borneo, the island is gonna be annihilated from the air. Top attack, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, they'll all land on top of you and kill everybody on top of the island.
And we've attached so much significance to little islands without understanding they no longer hold a strategic value that they did eighty plus years ago. They're just an invitation to lose people. And that's the other issue. Assuming you get on there and you can survive for any length of time, how do you feed yourself? How do you evacuate wounded?
And then ultimately, how do you get out when it becomes clear this is a dumb idea? At least the British in the Dardanelles were able to pull vast numbers of ships into the Dardanelles and systematically evacuate the 500,000 troops that were there. That's not so easy in the Persian Gulf. You know, if you stand above Karg Island and look down, you're on top of an escarpment. All of the terrain is very high, and it's very, very steep.
So what are you gonna do on those islands? The other thing is the notion that all of the oil will cease to move at that point is false. The Iranians have other means of exploring oil. Now they're making a lot of money right now. That's obvious.
They're charging toll. But, again, you you listen to the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and others, they're very intelligently saying, look. We need to end this. We'll get together. We'll have a commission.
Maybe we sign a treaty that that guarantees access to the Strait Of Hormuz. We did that after World War one for the Dardanelles. We have a treaty. The Turks control the Strait, but it's all carefully measured. It's all carefully managed.
The Turks do not arbitrarily say you can come and you can't. They haven't done business that way. That can be organized as well. But the key thing is we can't be in The Gulf. Our time there is now over.
And if we can't be in The Gulf, I don't know where else we're going to be.
Speaker 0: Well, this could have fit within Trump's wider plan. If the goal was really to pull out of Europe and The Middle East, then, well, this is really the time he can clearly argue that the Europeans weren't reliable, that the Middle East should look after their own problem, and then focus on the Western Hemisphere and East Asia if this is to be an objective. But a key problem, though, is Israel here because The US and Israel do appear to be joined by the hip. And Israel, of course, has been pushing hard for this war for several decades now. It finally has the war.
If Trump now decides, you know, no matter how he wants to end it, even if he just declares victory, we don't need the Strait Of Hormuz. We'll go home. Where does that leave Israel? Because if they're locked in a war with Iran, which they don't wanna end, is The US still able to leave? And if The US is able to leave, what to do with a vulnerable Israel armed with nuclear weapons, which is not ready to give up this fight against Iran.
I mean, it's you know, one doesn't wanna be hyperbolic, but on the other hand, this is a very strange situation to be in, and and there's a lot of desperation. And then a lot of countries have bet all or nothing on this conflict.
Speaker 1: Glenn, you're absolutely right. The key thing to remember about NATO is that once you leave the Beltway, you drive across America. The vast majority of people don't even know what it is. And if you ask people, do you know that we have US Army ground troops in Germany? They'll say, really?
I didn't know we had any troops in Germany. And some people who moderately smart and educated will say, why after eighty years do we still have troops in Germany? So I don't think that's a big deal here at home. Now you'll have all sorts of people in Washington who will hurl abuse at Donald Trump for destroying NATO, the greatest alliance there. It's all crap.
Nobody cares. The electorate does not care about that, but they care about the economy. And this is accelerating very bad trends. If you talk to someone like Alastair MacLeod, he says this is the end of fiat currency. And all you have to do is point to the rise of the value of gold.
And as gold goes up, the value of the dollar goes down, down, down. We are seeing in real time the yuan petro take shape. In other words, instead of a petro dollar, you get the petro yuan. I think that's coming. And the interesting part is it's gonna be backed by gold.
China has been hoarding gold, purchasing gold, buying gold. It has a vault in Riyadh, a vault in Hong Kong. It's real. That's the future of bricks. That's where they're headed.
Now, will it will it ultimately encompass a basket of precious metals or something? I have no idea, but it's got to be based on some tangible concrete value and right now that's gold. Now we can't do that. We just can't. So what do we do?
Do we watch our currency go down the toilet? A lot of people think that's where we're headed. And Nasim Tully, you know him, the man who originated this idea of the black swan, he's been saying for months and I agree with him that frankly speaking, gold is now the reserve currency. It's not the dollar. And if the yuan is backed by gold, well, I guess yuan will become the petro yuan.
So I think we've lost. We've actually lost by this stupid action, all because of Israel's greater Israel imagination and aspirations. And because the Israelis hate all of their neighbors, think all of their neighbors are inferior and deserve to be essentially exploited, bullied, and and run and and governed by them, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 0: So how does this end then? I mean, if Trump doesn't pull back again, it's hard to say. He made some reference to this, but, again, he pretended to do peace negotiations, you know, during two surprise attacks. So, again, I I I do think at some level, he he doesn't want this war, that his intentions from not just the first presidency, but the second was to avoid these kind of things. But now that he's in this war and he can't really, well, afford to pull out, it seems, what are the options for Washington here?
Can they I mean, do they put boots on the ground? Do they do they try to invade Yemen? Because, you know, if Yemen shuts down the Red Sea, I know it's a huge country. It's like, what, 34,000,000 people? It's I I wouldn't wanna enter this country, but, again, desperate situation results in foolish policies.
So what do you expect to happen from here on?
Speaker 1: Well, one of two things. Either he announces, I've decided unilaterally to end our involvement in this war, and I welcome opportunity to negotiate with the Iranians and to assist in any way possible to return the Persian Gulf to normalcy. That's an admission that he made a mistake, which is fine. He made a mistake. I don't know if that'll happen or not.
Personally, I would welcome that development, but I think the Israel connection really makes it impossible at this stage. We don't understand the connection that Israel has to Trump. I don't understand all of it, but I understand enough to know that yes, you're right. When I spoke to him in April 2020 in the Oval Office, it was supposed to be short, turned into a longer session. And I was enormously impressed with the things that he had to say.
And one of the things that was very clear to me is he didn't want a war with Iran. In fact, he was looking for some sort of negotiated agreement. And I'm sure he felt that way when he was elected. However, these Zionist billionaires were very instrumental in his winning that election, not only because of the money he was given, his campaign was given, not only because of the many ways in which his family and he had been enriched by the Zionists, It's also by what they didn't do. They didn't provide any support whatsoever to his opponent.
And the last time around when he lost the election or lost bid for reelection, they invested heavily in his opponent. So he knew they could deliver the goods. In other words, if he had them on his side, he could win. But when he did that, he had to make some promises. And I think one of those was that he would back Israel's attack on Iran.
Whether or not he was aware that Israel's plan is to turn most of the region into the facsimile of Gaza, I don't know. But that's really Israel's answer for Iran, Gaza. And whereas we started out with this decapitation nonsense, and I think a lot of that goes back to Israel. We can get the leadership. If we get the leadership, this will encourage internal upheaval and so forth.
Then they lied of about thirty thousand people being killed, that wasn't true. It was about 3,000, and they had a very important role in stirring up that violence, passing out weapons and encouraging people to shoot at police and so forth. It failed. So then the decision was we'll try the decapitation, that'll probably work. It didn't work.
So what is the goal now? Well, since Lloyds of London shut down the Strait Of Hormuz and the Iranians can now charge people to move through it, the idea is that you have to destroy Iran. Period. The destruction of Iran, the disintegration of its society. And after all, that's what we wanted to do to Russia.
That's what the Europeans don't understand. That's what we wanted to do. And when I say we, I'm not talking about the average American. I'm talking about the same people who are backing Trump now. We're very interested in the same thing in Russia.
Destroy Russia, rape it, divide it, fragment it, steal its resources. Well, now we're turning to Iran with the same purpose in mind. And I just don't know that Donald Trump can get off this train to hell, and that's what he's doing. He's riding a train to hell.
Speaker 0: But this is a last question. How do you see Russia responding to this? Because I always make the point that the Russians were genuinely very optimistic when Trump got reelected because with the Russiagate thing being over and Trump seemingly having the genuine objective of improving bilateral relations with Russia, be it either for, you know, common views on the world in terms of, you know, conservatism or just pragmatic and great power politics that are getting Russia on our side of the ledger instead of pushing it towards Iran. It's nonetheless, whatever the reason was, it seemed genuine. And now, of course, we're one year into this.
It's you know, The US, much like the Europeans, are still participating in the proxy war, and the surprise attack on Iran appears to have shook the Russians a bit. That is the willingness to throw out the rule book, kill leaders, you know, attack nuclear power plants across the board. They they also lost some faith in the whole diplomacy. How do you see Russia, though, responding to this? Because on one hand, I see the disappointment, but there's many who also seem to have a hope that, you know, there won't be another Trump, someone who really actually wants peace with Russia.
If he does want peace, of course, as you said, it's a even though it's Trump behind the wheel, it's the same objective. Nonetheless, it seems to destroy the to destroy Russia, break it up, and seize its resources.
Speaker 1: Well, first of the Russians do not understand how the American government works. Very few people beyond the borders of The United States do. The most astute observation that Putin has made is that he's spoken with several presidents and then discovered that nothing really changes because others are in control. Now some people call it the deep state. Okay.
I call it Zionist billionaires, people that are among the wealthiest in the world. They dominate Wall Street. They are financial capitalists. These are not people who made money from building anything, from creating anything. These are the kings of financial transaction.
And they have enormous quantities of money, and they're willing to employ that money in pursuit of their agenda. We talked about what the agenda in Russia originally was. Now we're looking at the same agenda. The good news for them is that if this works, then Israel will be in charge of the entire region in their minds. And that means that they, from their positions in New York and London and the banks, they're controlling everything because ultimately that's what they wanna do.
They want to control the region's resources. Now my view is that's not gonna happen. And I think that the Russians are now figuring out it probably won't happen. If anything, we have demonstrated not our brilliance and our supremacy in every field. We've demonstrated that our superiority isn't that great, that our effectiveness is not what they thought it was, that there are more chinks in our armor than either the Russians or the Chinese or anybody else really thought.
That's the danger of using military power when you don't need to. There was no pressing reason for us to attack Iran, none. And when you have to go back to Netanyahu talking points into 1982 and the bombing of a building that contained Marines where the Marine guards had not even been issued ammunition, what a disaster, That's your justification for destroying a nation of 93,000,000 people. Or that they simply say things you don't like, but they're a threat to Israel. Okay, I think the biggest threat to Israel other than Israel itself at this stage is probably Turkey.
And in fact, that's what Naftali Bennett has said and even Netanyahu has admitted that, which means I guess the expectation is so as long as they control us and our armed forces that if we're successful at utterly destroying Iran, then we can turn our attention to do the same thing to Turkey. Disaster. Insane. So NATO is finished. NATO died on the battlefields of Ukraine.
It's over. The Russians need to wake up and discover that they, not anyone else, but they are going to have to settle this war. The only way I think they can do that is by advancing. So we'll see in two weeks when the ground is thoroughly dried out whether or not President Putin is willing to finally end the war. And he can do that.
He has the military power to do it. There's nothing really standing in his way. He can obliterate all the opposition. But he's got to do it. No one is going to help him.
No one is gonna offer him a good deal. Doesn't exist. And Trump, no matter what he privately thinks, has demonstrated he can't deliver. Now we're dealing with the gulf and the Russians are watching this, and I think the Russians have always advised the Iranians to be conservative, to cooperate, to negotiate. Whether or not they continue to do that at this stage, I don't know.
But I think that now more than ever, the Russians and the Chinese will back Iran. So I see no evidence that whatever we do is going to result in the outcome that the Israelis want.
Speaker 0: Well, sorry. Let me squeeze in one very brief last question.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute now. You said that was the last one, Glenn. It's better be a short one.
Speaker 0: I know. Well, I know you hate this word when, well, what is the strategy here of the Europeans, you think? Because, well, they they they seem to have bet everything on backing The US hoping to win over the love of the Americans. But but now suddenly they have this, you know, they they Iran is essentially the conflict where they decide to turn the back on The US. Well, what do you think is the strategy now?
Because they don't have energy from Russia, from the Middle East. The American backup is kinda gone. Ukraine is falling apart. The Middle East, again, the mess. Well, how do you how do you make sense of their current positions?
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that in nineteen sixty four, sixty five, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was approached and asked whether or not the British would support the Americans if they intervened in Vietnam. And he said in a very straightforward manner, absolutely not. We have no intention of involving ourselves there. Did that destroy our relationship with Britain? No, of course not.
But in those times, people understood the limitations of treaties and alliances, and the alliance with us pertained primarily to the Soviet threat. So I think you're still going to have bilateral relations between us and the Europeans regardless of what happens. They buy a lot from us, we sell them a lot, we buy a lot from them. That's still unchanging. But the energy question is critical and they are not prepared to go on the same path to extinction that the Gulf Emirates are on.
The Gulf Emirates are finished. I don't see those being rebuilt at all. We are not coming back. That was very clear from Trump when he said, well, we'll just leave and that's it. We've done as much as we can, or we'll do whatever we can to obliterate Iran, after which we will leave too.
Alright? So the Gulf Emirates have bet on the wrong horse, and they have cultivated hostility for their big neighbor. They're paying a terrible price for it. The Germans, the Poles, the French, the British have done the same stupid thing towards Russia. They have cultivated an enemy in the big neighbor to the east.
Huge mistake. Unnecessary. You know that. I know that. Russia has no interest in invading or threatening Western Europe.
That means you need new governments. You gotta get rid of of mats for God's sakes. I was so happy to see the AFD announced quite recently, we support the complete removal of all US forces from Germany. Absolutely. Should have happened thirty years ago.
We should never have stayed in that country. There's no justification for it whatsoever. And I think others are gonna reach that conclusion. De Gaulle was right. We should remember that.
Orban has been right. The British need a new government badly, and so do the French. And before they get that or when they get it, they may end up fighting an internal rebellion of various types and sorts. As David Betz has pointed out. I don't know if you've had David Betz on your program or not.
Speaker 0: I did.
Speaker 1: But he is absolutely right. So these are things that have to be dealt with, that have to be addressed, and can only be addressed by the Europeans. And while they do this, put an end to the hostility with Russia and tell these maniacs I like them. They're wonderful people. Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, the Baltic States, stop.
Stop the stupidity. You've got to live with your neighbor and get along with your neighbor. It's not that scary an idea. And by the way, that's what Bismarck told them back in 1879. Knock it off.
Get along with the Russians. Whatever you think you're suffering from, it's not as bad as you think it is. And he was right. It wasn't. It got a lot worse out of the Soviets.
That's a different era, but that was catastrophic. We we gotta get out of this business of treating Russia as this perpetual Stalinist threat. They're not.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for accommodating my second last question. And, as always, thank you for your time.
Speaker 1: You owe me, Glenn. You
Speaker 0: owe me. I'll make it up to you someday. Thank you.
Speaker 1: See you. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Theodore Postol: Iran Already Has Nuclear Deterrent to Israeli Nuclear Strike https://youtu.be/JtUobr7xGz4 https://t.co/7ExrGjkKgq
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion with Theodore Postal centers on Iran’s potential to develop nuclear weapons, how they could be produced with existing materials, and the catastrophic consequences of a regional nuclear exchange, particularly involving Israel and Iran.
Postal explains that Iran already possesses 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride in canisters, with about 50 kilograms per canister and roughly 400 kilograms across ten such canisters, enough to produce 11 atomic bombs if fully processed to 90% enriched uranium. The material could be converted to metal in a compact process inside tunnels using centrifuge cascades (he notes a cascade of 174 centrifuges as an example) to raise 60% uranium hexafluoride to 90% enriched uranium over weeks. He describes a compact, vault-sized setup for converting enriched UF6 to uranium metal, including a high-temperature, corrosive process with uranium tetrafluoride, lithium or calcium, and a high-pressure container to yield 90% enriched uranium ingots. He asserts that assembling a simple plutonium- or uranium-based weapon—conceptually depicted as a sphere with two explosive plugs and conventional explosive-driven segmentation—could yield a functional device without any need for testing. He claims Iran could produce 10–11 such weapons within weeks, with multiple cascades shortening timelines.
Postal emphasizes that Iran could carry out such production in tunnels or other hidden spaces, not solely Isfahan or Fordo, especially after the U.S. abandoned the JCPOA and monitoring waned. He argues that the edict attributed to Ayatollah Khomeini would allow Iran to use nuclear weapons if attacked or its existence is threatened, even if it has not yet completed weaponization. He asserts this makes Iran capable of retaliatory action once equipment and sufficient material are present.
Moving to potential targets and effects, Postal describes a hypothetical Iranian response to an Israeli nuclear strike on Tehran. He presents a scenario in which the Iranian targeteer seeks maximum damage, deploying several low-yield nuclear devices to maximize death and destruction. He outlines the progression of a nuclear detonation: a small, short-lived fireball producing intense heat and X-ray radiation that heats surrounding air to about a million degrees, creating a powerful blast and a fireball that expands rapidly. The ensuing fires generate a buoyant updraft, drawing in air and creating a large-area conflagration with fire-driven winds of hundreds of kilometers per hour, leading to firestorms and widespread destruction over tens of square kilometers.
He contrasts blast effects with fire as the principal killer, noting that even a lower-yield weapon would produce lethal prompt radiation at certain ranges, with many people dying from the fires and radiological effects in the ensuing hours to weeks. He describes radioactive rain and fallout dependent on weather patterns, wind directions, and timing, potentially affecting cities like Tel Aviv downwind from the epicenter.
Postal argues that a nuclear attack would be met with a nuclear retaliation even if Iran lacks weaponization at the time of the attack, resulting in millions of deaths and horrific destruction on both sides. He provides grim visualizations and describes the aftermath, including decimated streets, incinerated interiors, and the catastrophic impact on shelters and infrastructure.
Toward policy, Postal urges Israelis to adopt a live-and-let-live approach toward Iran, arguing that current strategy has eroded Western support and could provoke unacceptable consequences. He asserts that the war as seen from the Israeli-American perspective has already been lost and calls for a credible diplomatic stance, with mutual recognition of Iran’s right to exist and a shift away from sneak attacks or coercive diplomacy. He notes American public sentiment shifting against defending Israeli actions and suggests Israel must rebuild an economy strained by conflict, implying a broader reevaluation of regional strategy and alliances. He concludes with a stark warning: attacking Iran risks millions of deaths and a disaster beyond prior experience.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Theodore Postal, a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He's an expert in nuclear weapons delivery systems, missiles, missile defense, and has worked as an adviser at the Pentagon. So thank you again for coming back on. So we spoke after The US and Israel had launched its first surprise attack on Iran back in June 2025.
And at that point, you mentioned that the Iranians have probably nuclear material to build at least
Speaker 1: Yes. They
Speaker 0: do. 10 nuclear weapons, and they're already a nuclear threshold state. So it almost seems foolish, as you argue then, not to to develop a nuclear deterrent given that The US and Israel will be back
Speaker 1: to try to do They don't even need to develop a nuclear deterrent. All they have these materials. Let me just, you know, let me just explain a bit if it's okay, what they have. Let's talk about what they have, how they can use it, and then what it would look like if they retaliated after an attack by Israel, a nuclear attack on Tehran. I I think given what we have so far seen with regard to Israeli and Iranian behavior, it's my guess that the first one to use nuclear weapons, they are going to be used, will be the Israelis.
They are far more reckless and aggressive than the Iranians have been. That's my that's my guess. But the point that I think is important for all of your reader of your audience to understand, and I pray that there are many Israelis listening to this, is that an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran can be retaliated against. The Iranians will be able to do it even if they have not yet built nuclear weapons because the time between going ahead and building those nuclear weapons. In those remember, I just showed you those tunnels which are everywhere, and I'll show you equipment that could easily fit in those tunnels and be used.
And it's my guess that there's a lot of equipment of this kind already in tunnels that may or may not have been used already to build a final nuclear weapon, but they don't have to have done taken the final step. They could be following the edict of the Ayatollah Khomeini that they should not build nuclear weapons and just have this equipment sitting there because the edict the the edict also says that if Iran is attacked and its its its existence is is is is under, under doubt, is under threat, then it would be justified according to this edict to use nuclear weapons. So they are in a position if they have this equipment, and they do have it. So let me just is that shall I just take a minute or two and and then I'll tell you what they can do, what the consequences of this would be. That's important as well.
Alright. So why should anyone understand that this that that the the Iranians almost certainly have the ability to to build nuclear weapons? This is because they have this 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride. I'll show you where uranium hexafluoride is in these in these canisters. So here's a canister of uranium hexafluoride.
It's got about, 50 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, and it's very rugged. It's maybe a meter in length, so it's not big. Weighs the total weight is about a 100 is is is about 50 kilograms, a 100 pounds, and it's got, 25, 30 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride in it. That's enough to give you a nuclear weapon when you take the uranium hexafluoride and you convert it to uranium metal. Alright.
So how do we do that? Well, just to show you how large these containers are, here's 10 atomic bombs worth of uranium, 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride. It's about about not quite 400 kilograms. They have 408 kilograms. So, really, they have 11.
If you do a more careful arithmetic, they can make 11 atomic bombs with this material. Okay. This is for 90% enriched. These containers have 60% enriched. So you wanna you wanna convert the 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride to 90%.
Well, what you do is is the reason it's uranium hexafluoride which is a chemical substance is because it's kinda crystal the uranium hexafluoride is kind of a crystal. If if this glass container contained a very small crystal, you know, small amount of uranium hexafluoride, only that, and its temperature was maybe a 100 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, 40 degrees Celsius, 50 degrees Celsius. That you would not see the crystal there. It would you would only see a clear container because it would be a gas. Uranium exafluoride would be a dilute A very thin gas.
And the reason, you want it as a thin gas is you're gonna is you're gonna put it into these what are called centrifuges. Let's we're not gonna worry about exactly how these centrifuges work. All we need to know is that the Iranians have these centrifuges and they know how to use them. That's all we need to know right now. And they have cascades of these this is a particular cascade.
We know this is a particular cascade of a 174 centrifuges where the, where the, enriched uranium is is is is put out, which could be 90% enriched. Now you would need a few weeks of time with with one of these cascades to enrich the 60% gaseous uranium hexafluoride to 90% enriched uranium, but it's still uranium hexafluoride. So I need to convert that to metal. Let's not worry about that. That'll give me we won't worry about a critical mass.
Let me just alright. We'll worry about that. So what what I what I would do is simply blow I have a device. I don't have I have that's the size of a of of large closet that has, that would be blowing very, very toxic high temperature gas, hydrogen fluoride, through, through particles, through through a gas of uranium hexafluoride. So I would so this is a very high temperature, very toxic materials, but you can you can build something that's, you know, you know, feet in size to do this.
You have a reaction chamber. High temperature hydrogen fluoride, high temperature uranium hexafluoride. What comes out is is is is are small particles of a green material called uranium tetrafluoride, and that green material can be easily separated out with what's called a cyclone separator. So all the particles precipitate out. I take those particles.
I put them into a container with, lithium or calcium, and I heat the container up. It's a it's a high pressure container. The react chemical reaction occurs at some point. I get very high temp so this is a very high pressure, but it's you know, consider my desk here. You wouldn't want obviously, you'd have some vacuum, but it's not something that, you know, is a big facility.
And then what you do is the metallic uranium, precipitates out. It's heavier than the magnesium magnesium chloride or or calcium chloride, and you have this. This is your this is an ingot of uranium. 90% enriched uranium. Alright.
That's all doable in a tunnel. A a few hundreds of square meters of floor space is all you need. A few hundreds of square meters. This is not a big act you, of course, need baffles and but this is the kind of equipment you know the Iranians already have this. Then you machine it.
Now to build a nuclear weapon, all you all you need to do is assemble. You have some way. This is a this is a cartoon design. In this cartoon design, you have a a sphere of uranium two thirty five, and you have two plugs of uranium two two and a little bit of conventional explosives. Very easy to build.
The conventional explosives drive these two sections. It's actually not the the right scale, but it doesn't matter. That means there's no notional cartoon into this sphere creating a critical mass. I have some material like beryllium and plutonium, which is gonna generate neutrons, and this thing will go nuclear and give me a 15 kiloton yield. I don't need to test this.
Let me repeat that. I do not need to test this weapon. This weapon never needs to be tested before I use it. So I can have 10 or 11 weapons without testing them that I can deliver with total confidence that they will work. I can test this device with uranium with depleted uranium to make sure that the assembly process works.
You know? So I I I make a few and then once I have the device, I just assemble it with uranium with 90% enriched uranium. No problem at all. United States did this for Hiroshima. We never tested the Hiroshima bomb.
We didn't bother. The bomb that was tested was the Nagasaki bomb, which was made of plutonium. The reasons you need plutonium, you'd have to test is another story. I don't need to go into that now. Alright.
So so let's, let's again, step back and say, well, okay. I have 10 or 11 of these weapons. I can build them I can build them within within weeks. In fact, I can potentially build them in in in a shorter time than a week because I may have multiple centrifuge cascades. One of these cascades could could take four or five weeks to enrich the necessary amount of 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride to get 90%.
But if I have two or three of these cascades, I could do it in a few weeks. There's no reason that they don't have several of these cascades. I mean, they've been building these center they they've been building thousands of these centrifuges. We don't know how many of them they they have stashed away. Everything wasn't necessarily in Isfahan and Fordo.
You know, we didn't have any numbers we toward the end when when when we we, the Americans, broke the, the the treaty or the under the the the, the agreement we had to limit for Iran to limit its enrichment capability. When we broke that agreement, we we lost the ability to monitor their construction of, of centrifuges. They said, okay. If you don't if you're taking away the agreement, you know, we're not gonna let you look at the we they let us for a long time watch the, 60% enriched uranium, which they started to enrich after after we after Donald Trump broke the agreement. And incidentally, Joe Biden shouldn't get off on this either because Donald Trump broke the agreement, Biden became the president, and he didn't immediately reinstate the agreement.
And I can tell you why. And and it's it's that's important because he's surrounded by these idiot democrats. We we talk about idiot republicans. We there's plenty of idiots and stupidity to go around in The US, national security community. And what these idiots were saying, oh, we are now in a position to extract further concessions from, the Iranians.
So let's not give them back the the treaty. Well, I don't need to tell you. You're you're a more studied person on these matters. You reach an agreement. You meet the terms of the agreement.
You don't start rebargaining again. And Biden deserves a large number large amount of the negative credit for this disaster having occurred. It's not simply Trump. And and I think all these interviews where you see, like, Jake Sullivan there, and he's saying, oh, you know, Trump edition. Well, let me tell you, Jake Sullivan was part of that, and these guys should not be allowed to get away with what they did.
The Biden people are just as responsible for this disaster we're now facing. Anyways, sorry about my I'll get off my stool now. Okay. So let me show you what a targeteer might do. And now I'm speaking from some significant experience here.
I was involved in monitoring, US nuclear planning. I I studied the plans. I was working I I had oversight responsibilities while I was working for the chief of naval operations as an adviser. So I knew how we were using our nuclear. It wasn't some some briefing that Jake Sullivan gets where he sees all these little pictures and how we do this and we do that.
This isn't this is, you know, response three. Know where the ground zeros go unlike these idiots who claim to be experts. I know how you place the ground zeros. I saw the way we did it. Anyway, let me, show you what an informed, well informed, studied Iranian targeteer could do.
First of all, you would wanna do maximum damage since since the Israelis would have certainly killed a very large number of Iranian civilians. You are now totally justified in attacking Israeli civilians as well. They started it. They set the standard. You are retaliating.
So that's my assumption here. I don't see any other assumption that you can have because you know? Anyway, what I've done is shown the fireballs of these nuclear detonations. They're only only they're hundreds of meters in in diameter. This is a couple of kilometers, one and a half or two kilometers in in radius.
So these are a few hundreds meters in diameter. And inside this fireball, when the nuclear weapon detonates, within one these are low yield weapons. They're not thermonuclear weapons. They're simple, you know, simple weapons, you know, so to speak. So within a second within a a second within the hundredth millionth of a second, an enormous amount of energy is released in a very small interval of time.
And this little ball of uranium that has been assembled will just become a hot massive material and it'll be low confined. It'll be a few meters in size for a few hundreds of millions of seconds, and and it'll be it'll be tens of millions of degrees in temperature. Not hundreds of millions of degrees. If it's a thermonuclear weapon, it would be hotter. But tens of millions degrees is hot enough.
And what's gonna happen is it's gonna emit X rays, which get absorbed by the surrounding air, and the surrounding air becomes superheated to maybe a million degrees. So it's cools rapidly from 10,000,000 degrees to a million degrees, and it's maybe 30 or 40 or 50 or a 100 feet in diameter. So because it's propagating out at the speed of light initially. Now that you have this superheated mass of air that violently starts to expand because its its density is is that of the normal air, but its temperature is a million degrees. So this thing is gonna violently expand outward, and it's gonna act like a fast moving piston on the surrounding air, which has no chance to move.
So it gets piled up so the air gets piled up as a shockwave at the edge of this fireball. So when the fireball reaches its maximum size at one second, its average temperature has dropped to about 8,000 degrees Kelvin. So it's about 2,000 degrees Kelvin hotter than the surface of the sun. But this is not a 150,000,000 kilometers away. This is kilometers away, fractions of kilometers away.
So the light and heat radiated by this ball of light is tremendous. And because of that, it sets fires. And what this little yellow lines show is roughly the range at which fires will be set. So notice there are areas in between that I have intentionally allowed where where, the the fire zone is not initiated because I'm gonna depend on the fires to do extreme damage and and killing because my objective here is to maximize death and destruction with these three weapons. Remember, I have eight others I could be using elsewhere in Israel.
So here is what happens when the nuclear weapon detonates. This this is a this is the cloud from Nagasaki, and what you see is a rising cloud. This is white because this is condensing water vapor from the lower altitude. So you had a fireball created at lower altitude. It buoyantly rises.
As it rises, it it it expands and cools. When it expands and cools, droplets of water are generated. And so it becomes like a cloud. Of course, it's very radioactive. It's tremendously radioactive.
And look below here. You see the column of buoyantly rising hot air. This this is just buoyancy. This is just Archimedes' principle. Sets up an airflow, and you can see that burn violently burning area below, which is creating soot, is following up this stem.
There are fiercely burning fires below on the ground. The same is true. This is the Hiroshima bomb. Same thing. You see it.
This is not unique. This idea that firestorms are unique to Nagasaki or Hiroshima, that's nonsense. That's that's for the bulletin of the atomic scientists to talk about with their nonexpert people. The reality is these create firestorms. So what happens?
Well, let's look at a kilometer or so distance, maybe a little bit over a kilometer, kilometer and a quarter or something. Within tenth of a second, if you have a structure, this is a wood frame structure. Different structures respond differently. You would see the bright light of the fireball growing. That's point one second because the fireball is very hot, but it hasn't grown to its maximum size when it's brightest.
It's brightest one second after it's the detonate is, of course, generated. The shock wave breaks away and but the shock wave is not yet reaching out to a kilometer or so range or so. And, so, what what happens is the front of this building is burning off. And, of course, through the windows, ignitions are occurring. You know, the interior of the building is also being set on fire.
About, ten or eleven seconds later, the shockwave reaches the building, and you can see the top of the building being crushed. Most people focus on the shockwave. This is what the shockwave envelops the building, crushes it, and causes tremendous damage. Now the shockwave, of course, does extraordinary levels of damage, but it's wrong to focus on the shockwave in terms of the greatest danger in terms of the killing from this nuclear detonation. It's wrong.
It's the fire that kills people, and the fire is generated from combusting material. So here's a fire, generated in Hamburg. This is 1943, and this fire is burning, probably this picture was taken probably about forty or fifty forty or forty five minutes into the attack. This these fires were generated by incendiary weapons, not a nuclear weapon, but it didn't doesn't matter. The fire I'll be talking about hereafter is initiated by the nuclear weapon, but the fire burns like any other vast area fire.
But a vast area fire is different in character from the small fires you're used to seeing. Although the so the phenomenology is is the same but on a different scale. So the way this place was set on fire is they dropped munitions unlike what people mistakenly believe this was intentionally done. This was not a mass fire. The the they were elaborate studies done on how many, what density of incendiaries you were gonna drop, how how many you because you wanted the incendiaries to to drop between natural firebreaks.
It would be natural firebreaks that would occur in terms of initiating initializing the fires. So the allies did statistical studies. This this was not an accident. And by And, also, they were not simply incendiary, incendiary, munitions dropped. They were booby some of them were booby trapped.
It's because if the incendiary came through your roof, which they were designed to do, they were designed to penetrate through the roofs to start fires in the interiors where they would burn and spread more rapidly. They were sometimes little bombs on them, so someone in a room tried to pick up the incendiary and throw it out on the street, it would detonate and kill them. So so this was very deeply and carefully thought out. Just like this nuclear attack I'm talking about is deeply and carefully thought out. Spread the detonations out large enough so that not every part of the area is sent on set on fire initially.
This is death by careful analysis. So what happens then is the fires are most intense near nearest where the fireball was illuminated. And the fires are much less intense at the periphery, but they're initiated. They're you know, fires your curtains are on fire. Everything in your apartment is not on fire, but the curtains are on fire.
Maybe parts of the rugs are on fire. If there are books or or particularly, if you have a desktop with paper on it, the paper's on fire. You're not involved in look trying to knock out those fires. There's a blast wave that just came through that caused enough interior damage, shattering windows, knocking interior walls down. It may not have knocked exterior walls down.
That you're badly shaken up. Family members are pro are possibly injured or probably possibly injured. Some are burnt because the, fireball is bright enough to burn their skin. You're not worried about putting out those fire. You're worried about trying to get out into the street away from this horrifying, level of damage inside, your home.
So this is a general area of uncountably large like, someone went around lighting matches and throwing lighting matches all over the place and just dropping them. The fires are not tremendously intense, but they're numerous locations, and nobody's dealing with them. So very quickly, the fires in the interior start causing air to buoyantly rise from the earth because hot air buoyantly rises. And this buoyant, rising of air leaves a a low pressure area behind it. The air rises.
It sucks. It's it has a sucking action, so air comes in from below. And since since you have symmetry in in the rising air, you you have competition for the air in the center. So the net result is the air flow tends to to flow inward. And the net result is that, you get a fire burning over the entire area because the the buoyantly rising air sets everything on fire.
So if you wanna get a sense of the area that burns out, even though I had areas which I didn't which were not initially set on fire, I set them on fire. Now the benefit you know, I'm I'm talking now in a ferocious, murderous sense. The benefit of this attack is I can set a significantly larger area on fire with the with the three weapons properly placed than I can do with individual weapons. So there's a great benefit to setting the fight you know, setting the weapons apart. I have the precision to to deliver them that way.
Now in the case of these lower yield weapons, the radiation the nuclear radiation from the fireball is intense out to about it's it's significant enough just from the you know, the nuclear radiation occurs in the hundreds of millions of a second while this tremendous amount of energy is being released that eventually within one second creates a fireball. Well, then neutrons and gamma rays radiating out from that very, small volume of air. Now with bigger weapons, the neutron and radiation doses increase. If I have a much higher yield weapon, the the range at which lethal neutron and gamma radiation, goes out increases, but it's only slowly relative to blast and fire. So if it were a higher yield weapon, you wouldn't even bother talking about, talking about the lethal radiation from the prompt, what's called the prompt radiation, because you would be dead from the blast and the fire you know, the intense light and heat.
It's but with the lower yield weapons, you're not necessarily immediately dead from these, from the prompt radiation. So there'd be large numbers of people who are also exposed to the prompt radiation who would receive lethal doses at these ranges shown here, but sublethal doses at much longer ranges that would kill them within weeks if they didn't get killed in the fire. The chances are very good they would die in the fire. They would not escape. But if for some reason they happen to escape the fire zone, they're gonna die weeks later from radiation exposure.
And to make matters even worse, this shows you Hiroshima, and the the scale here is kilometers. And this shows you an area of intense rain that that occurred, rainfall, which was radioactive. Because what happens is you have smoke created by incomplete combustion of of burning materials. And that incomplete combustion creates nucleation points for water to condense on. When the water condenses on it, other things are condensing on it.
Hydrogen sulfide, which is another byproduct of fire. Nitrous oxides is another these are poisonous materials. Cyanide, you know, carbon monoxide, all of these really nasty things and this dust, not dust, but these carbonaceous particles can get into your lungs, and it can be very efficiently deliver radioactive materials as well as toxic materials to your biological system. So if we, if we look at where this radioactive rain fell, it it could fall I won't get it. Here's a region, I'm assuming a wind direction, where the radioactive rain from one detonation could fall.
This would depend on weather. So it would it would depend on, you know, if the air if the wind happens to be blowing on into the Mediterranean, the radioactive rain would blow there. But if the rain if if the wind is blowing inland, it could be worse. You could if if you know the weather patterns well enough, you know, land winds and and sea winds are predictable, you could you could time your attack to make sure that the sea winds carry the radioactive rain inland. I mean, you know, if you're in the if you're in the business of spreading pest and destruction because your people have been killed, You know?
I wouldn't put a past again, if I were in the mindset to be as murderous as I possibly can be, I would wait for a good, sea wind. You know? It's just a time of day, matter of time of day. And, of course, I haven't had a chance to the next time I give this lecture, I'll be able to show, because it's so confusing. You could see that very large areas of Tel Aviv in this case, downwind would be subjected to radioactive rain following the nuclear attack.
Many, many injuries would occur from exposure to that. Here is an just a the horrifying image of a man who is dying from radiation exposure. What you're seeing here, this is this is probably weeks after he was exposed. So he was exposed to a lethal but not immediately lethal dose of radiation. And what happens is your blood, the, the cells in your blood that are responsible for, for coagulation of the blood, disappear.
So your blood doesn't coagulate. So you become a hemophiliac in essence. And and what you also lose are your are the blood components of the blood that are responsible for fighting infection. So what happens is you die of massive infection and internal bleeding. So it's obviously not, not a, a pleasant way to go.
So, so the net result is that a retaliation would be possible even if Iran does not now have nuclear weapons. And, it's perfectly reasonable to expect this. So the message I think is important for people to get, and I'm talking about the Israeli political leadership, and perhaps more importantly, not just the Israeli political leadership, but more importantly, the Israeli people who are not as crazy as this leadership is, they should understand that a nuclear attack on Iran would be answered with a nuclear, response that Iran is capable of responding even though they have not necessarily yet built nuclear weapons. They have the means to do it. And getting destroyed two or three weeks later is no different in the end from an immediate response.
So don't do it. Don't use nuclear weapons against Iran because there will be death and destruction on the scale of millions of people on all sides, and, it will just be horrendous. And just to give you a sense of the ferocity of these fires, let me just go on one more, a few just a few more minutes to give you a say this is not a fire like the kinds of normal fires that you're used to. If you think of a fire from your experience, with a, just a fireplace, you know, Norway's a cold place. It's nice to have fires.
You sit around the fire. There's usually a nice cool draft coming into the fireplace. Warm air is coming up the chimney, and everybody is nice and toasty. Well, if you have an area on ground on fire, and this area would be tens of square kilometers on the ground burning, so the buildings are burned. So this is a thin wafer.
It's actually a thin wafer of combusting material. This is oversized in this diagram. But that thin wafer is very hot. In fact, the average air temperature in this thin wafer will reach above the boiling point of water. So you'll have air above the boiling point of water, to heights several times the height of the high of the highest buildings because that's combustion is occurring at the high at the building heights.
The air the air velocities will be hurricane force because this area that's rising this area this volume of air that's rising is is incredibly large volumes of air. For example, if I double the size of this area, if I double the size of this radius, the area I that that is being heated, goes up by a factor of the square, four. Three times the radius goes up by a factor of nine or 10. So since the radius since the circumference is only going up linearly, the air has to go faster and faster and faster to keep feeding the so it's limited by the buoyantly by the rate at which air can buoyantly rise and the scale of the area that's on fire. So you can you know, so this is like being inside.
Imagine you have a a big area that you have set on fire, you know, just with just with fires like fireplace fires, but it extends for a 100 meters around you and you're in the middle of it. And the air is just coming in and buoyantly rising and the flames are around you. That's the environment you're in. And so you get these incredible, drafts, macroscopic winds over over kilometers, enormously high speed, you know, hundreds of kilometers per hour, causing the fire to this is a this is a this is a fire over, I think, several tens of centimeters. This is actually an example.
A set. Here's over, you know, fractions of a kilometer, a real fire. You can see the same behavior. We know how this happens. Here's an example of a of an experiment done with candles on a board.
You can see how the fire was initially set as a ring. The ring there was no fire in the beginning, but the the the there was no place for the air to go, in the interior, so the air just developed an inward, direction, and you and and the whole set of candles get set on fire. This is an example of the kind of violent wind, and you get tornadoes that are generated from ground wind. The tornadoes are not generated from turbulence in the sky. They are generated from differential heating on the ground.
So you have some area of ground that's burning more intensely than some other area. So it's rising more violently, and it's expanding more violently. So so you get a rotating it's like what's called a dust devil, but unbelievably high winds. Again, hundred, two hundred kilometers per hour winds. Temperatures, of course, are at, know, you know, boiling above the boiling point of water.
And so what happens is when people try to run away and they're in the streets, you have effect phenomena like this. They just get burnt alive by the high temperature winds. And, if they're in shelters, what happens is the shelters get extremely hot. So you're in a shelter. You're in Tel Aviv.
You've gone down into the shelter. You may you you to a very significant fraction of the people, if the shelters are strong enough, are not killed by blast, but there's a raging fire above them. This raging fire is gonna go on for five, six, seven, eight hours. Everything combustible is gonna burn. Everything combustible is burning intensely because just like you take a bellows and and you and you heat coal with with the bellows and it burns more violently, that's what's happening from these incoming winds.
And everything,
Speaker 0: all of
Speaker 1: the concrete, all the bricks get heated to very high temperatures. And what happens is the is the shelters get converted into ovens. And this is what you saw in places like Hamburg and Dresden, in World War two. So this this will be like nothing, you could ever imagine, that people would ever imagine. And if you wanna get a sense of what the streets look like, well, you might have many standing buildings.
In Tel Aviv, if you, a lot of buildings are high rise buildings. Many of them will not be knocked down by the blast wave. These are low yield nuclear weapons. They'll be in they'll blow all the interiors of these buildings out. They'll set fires to everything inside them, but they may not knock down buildings that are a little bit further out from the actual detonation point.
So you'll have scenes like this. And, here, this is a scene from Hamburg. These were fire trucks that were abandoned. The streets were so hot, the asphalt melt melted. These firefighters escaped because they were at the edge of the fire zone, and they escaped by lying down next to the curbs on the street because the winds were so strong and pulling themselves out of the fire zone because the when the winds began, they realized they had to escape, and and the hot air had not yet developed because fires were not yet burning everywhere.
Otherwise, they would have been killed, incinerated in the fire. This is an example of what streets you can see that these streets were covered with debris because the buildings were collapsing. So so the fact that they were not knocked down, nevertheless, led to a tremendous, damage. So here's, Nagasaki prior to the atomic bombing. Note the distances here are small.
This is, like, one kilometer from here to here, less than a kilometer. What's good about this photo, though, is it gives you enough detail. The faraway photo wouldn't give you the detail. So here's what it looks like after. But this is you know, this would be, maybe two or three square kilometers that you're looking out out of 25 or 30 square kilometers, all of which would look the same.
So this is the level of damage you would see in a modern city. So, so if you if anyone who thinks any Israeli political leader or or or member of of of the, military. I want the military leaders to see this too and be aware of it because I want the guy who gets told by Netanyahu to launch nuclear weapons against Iran to say, no, sir. I am not gonna do something that leads to the destruction of Israel. That's what I want the Mossad members, the members of the Israeli air force, the members of the Israeli ground troops to know.
I want them to know this. I want everyone in Israel to understand that this is what would happen if you attack Iran because they will be able to put together nuclear weapons and respond. You will not get away with it, and the result will be the death of millions of people more than are already dead from your attack. So that's the message I wanna send in this discussion.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's quite of a grim possibility, but it is also scary that we're actually heading in that direction. If you I think people need to
Speaker 1: know this. Glenn, people need to know this. It can't be abstract. I put this together because I did not want it to be abstract. Oh, a few million people dead.
That's an abstraction. I want them to see what a body on the street looks like of someone who's tried to escape, what the desiccated corpse of a person who's inside a shelter looks like. I want them to see this because that's the only way it becomes real. And I think the only way you're going to to decrease the chances of something catastrophic like this happening is if people have an intestinal understanding, a real understanding of what hap what would happen. And that's why I put together this talk.
And anybody else who wants to hear it, let me know. I'll be giving it anywhere.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you very much for putting together the material, and I couldn't agree more with you. The, you know, the casualness of the whole thing of how we're sleepwalking into such a disaster, it's quite shocking after all this years of carefully avoiding nuclear war, and this is where we're heading. So
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Well, I think, the situation is serious. I think, the war from the point of view of the Israelis and the Americans has already been lost. And, that doesn't mean that Israel has to cease as a state. Israel can survive as a state, but it has to adopt a different attitude toward Iran. Israelis have to say we have to live and let live.
We don't have to agree with the Iranian system of government. We don't have to like them. We don't have to love them, but we need to respect their right to exist as a great nation. And unless we reach that understanding and we let them them understand that we mean it, We're not gonna turn we're not gonna try another sneak attack. We're not gonna make believe we're negotiating and attack them like we did to Hezbollah in Qatar or like we, you know, we did, on on February 28.
We cannot continue this way. We need to establish credibility as a negotiating state who acts according to the diplomatic rules that have been stab established since Ivan the Terrible was eventually, you know, overtaken by civilization and diplomacy. You cannot continue operating this way. You are not the chosen people that you think you are. You are a people who have a great culture.
You have great accomplishments. You have every reason to be proud of those accomplishments, but you have no right to be murderous in this way, and you have no right to disrespect the rights of other countries who also want to survive on their own. And you need to accept that, and you need to transmit that to the world and in particular to Iranians because right now, if I were Iranian, I would not have believed I would not believe a thing you're saying diplomatically. And if I don't believe it, I'm gonna stay at the wheel, and I'm gonna continue these attacks. And it will eventually result in terrible damage to Israel beyond the terrible damage that has already occurred.
And anyone who thinks that terrible damage has not occurred to Israel is has been smoking banana peels. It's just not understanding what this reality is. The, the economy of Israel is a shambles. And incidentally, I should say, as an American and let me, I don't think of myself as an American Jew, but I do come from a Jewish background. I think of myself as an American, not as an American Jew.
But I can tell you as an American, Americans are fed up with Israel. Israel does not have this relationship with the American population that it used to have. I talk to Americans all the time who say, I'm not going to war to defend those Israelis, and I'm not gonna be sucked into a war to defend those Israelis. So Israelis who think that they're gonna be on the on the gravy train after this thing happens better think twice because the American population is rethinking, and I mean the population. And I'm not only talking about Americans who are non Jews.
I'm talking Americans who are Jews. And like I say, I do not think of myself as an American Jew. I think of my my wife as a Catholic. I think I don't think of myself in these terms. But I can tell you that I know a lot of American Jews, and they are I'm not alone in the view that these guys in Israel have taken advantage of The United States, and I'm finished with them and a lot of other Americans are.
And they better think about that because they have an an economy that they have to rebuild. And the amount of help that they may be expecting to get is very unlikely to be what they've been getting in the past. That's my expectation.
reSee.it AI Summary
Glenn: victory only when the Strait of Hormuz is open; it would have been open if Iran wasn’t attacked. DietHeartNews: Axios says the president and Sec. of War are weighing a final blow against Iran—72-hour bombing and a ground invasion with 10,000 Marines and Rangers. Col. MacGregor warns landing on Kharg Island or coast would be a suicide mission; Iran’s coastline and mountains give it the edge. Trump’s threats risk turning Iran War into a larger disaster.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
The US cannot claim victory before the Strait of Hormuz is open, which is now the main objective. Of course, it would have been open if they had not attacked Iran. https://t.co/NFjYG2vXP5
@DietHeartNews - Alan Watson
Axios is reporting that the Vietnam War draft-dodging president and his psychotic Secretary of War are drafting options for a “final blow” against Iran - including a 72-hour nonstop bombing campaign plus a ground invasion with 10,000 Marines (82nd Airborne) and Army Rangers. Col. Douglas MacGregor (US Army, retired) warns that any US troops trying to land on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf or on the coast of the Strait will face catastrophic losses. “It’s a suicide mission,” says MacGregor, "Iran has formidable firepower in place." Also, the geography favors Iran: 2,000 km coastline and steep mountains overlooking the coast and islands. Macgregor says a successful U.S. assault is highly unlikely: "How will they get troops to the landing areas? How will they be resupplied under withering artillery and drone attacks from Iran?" As Trump flails about, thrashing around for a victory over Iran, he is threatening to take on a risky military operation he has no experience or understanding of. Ironically, if he proceeds, as MacGregor warns, he is about to turn the #IranWar into an even bigger military and political disaster.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Yemen Joins the War - Red Sea Could Be Blocked Next https://youtu.be/VxZbxiv600I https://t.co/2QSvU9eccZ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Seyyed Muhammad Marandi and Glenn discussed the widening of the war and what Yemen’s entry means for the escalation, as well as how Iran interprets attacks on it and its own targeting.
- Yemen’s entry into the war is described as very important. Marandi notes the United States previously waged war on Yemen last year and withdrew, which he says demonstrates Yemen’s significance. With the US engaged against Iran, its ability to focus on Yemen is reduced, giving Yemen more room to maneuver. Iraq’s resistance has been striking US targets and could go further; Yemen’s capabilities have likely grown, and its current targets are limited but could expand to striking Saudi oil facilities or entering the Arabian Peninsula, including potentially closing the Red Sea or striking Israeli and US assets.
- He recalls past dynamics of the Yemen conflict, including the seven-yearSaudi-led campaign backed by much of the world, the blockade on Yemen that blocked medicine and food, and Yemen’s eventual leverage via strikes on Saudi oil and gas installations that contributed to a ceasefire. Today, Yemen could “easily take out Saudi oil installations and cut Saudi imports from the Red Sea completely,” and could blockade the Red Sea or strike Israelis or US assets in the Indian Ocean. He asserts Yemen has been developing capabilities swiftly, similar to Iran and Hezbollah, and argues the West consistently underestimates such actors.
- The escalation ladder remains high, and if the US or Israel escalates, Iran’s side will escalate too. Global energy, fertilizer, and petrochemical shortages are increasing, intensifying international pressure on Trump and anger toward Israel and Netanyahu. Marandi believes Iran’s escalation dominance is present, although they have not yet demonstrated their maximum capabilities.
- He references a book, Going to Tehran, as a contrast to US policy: if the US had chosen a different route a decade ago, the current critical situation might be different. Instead, he says policymakers listened to Zionist influence and a small oligarchy, leading to the current climate of possible catastrophe from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, Iraq, and Iran.
- On the US-Israel coordination, Marandi suggests joint operation is likely, pointing to an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas installation as a test that led to Iranian retaliation, and argues President Trump’s stated deadlines to strike Iranian infrastructure were used to manage markets, notably oil prices. He asserts the pattern shows the US delaying or intensifying threats for market control, while Iran retaliates when threatened.
- Ground forces and potential deployments: UAE signals strongest engagement among Gulf states, with islands claimed by the UAE that Iran took in 1971. Marandi argues that no Persian Gulf Arab regime is capable of fighting effectively; their role is to provide bases, airspace, and territorial access for the US. Iran, however, has prepared for potential ground operations for decades and believes it could counter any invasion with underground bases and a wide range of weapon systems that go beyond missiles and drones. He posits scenarios where Iraqi forces and Yemen could strike into Kuwait or Northern Saudi Arabia, complicating US options.
- Regarding resilience, Marandi emphasizes Yemen’s and Iran’s enduring capacity to resist: Yemen “won the seven-year genocidal war” against the US-backed coalition and is now more prepared; Iran’s resilience is linked to its Islamic and Shia identity, symbols like martyrdom, and a population that remains mobilized despite leadership assassinations and external pressure. He cites public demonstrations in Tehran and widespread civilian backing, as well as ongoing strikes and bombings against Iranian targets, which he says continue to provoke Iranian retaliation rather than deter it.
- In terms of outcomes and negotiations, Marandi says Iranian demands will have to be met, though the method is negotiable: reparations could be pursued from regional actors like the Emirates and Saudis rather than the US. Iran would require benefits for its regional allies (Hezbollah, Yemen, Palestinians, Iraqis). He warns that without concessions, further invasion remains a risk, implying that time is not on the side of the West because energy and petrochemical shortages will escalate. He also emphasizes that the real core issue is control over oil, LNG, petrochemicals, and fertilizer, and that the US would face severe economic and social disruption if those supplies are cut off.
- The conversation ends with a note of hope that, despite the grim prospects, there is optimism for a better future, even if the days ahead look darker.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Seyyed Muhammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being with you.
Speaker 0: Well, the last time we spoke, I asked you about what the likely steps would be that is up the escalation ladder, what we can expect to see as this war continues to spiral out of control. And you made the point that it was near certainty that Yemen would, at some point, also join the war and, at some point, also likely begin to shut down the strait that gives access to the Red Sea. Now well, the the latter hasn't happened yet, but Yemen has just entered the war. So far, seems that it's been limited to launching ballistic missiles at Israel. However, its participation in terms of who it targets, the objectives can, of course, increase as well.
So I I thought a good place to start would be, you know, to ask you, about how you assess the significance of Yemen joining the war. I've heard from some American commentators that this could be the the most important escalation in the war. But how important is it? And what other things could they actually do as the war continues again to spiral out of control?
Speaker 1: It's definitely very important. The United States waged war against Yemen, last year, and, it failed and they've had to withdraw. Trump had to, you know, declare victory and walk away. So, that itself shows how significant Yemen is. And in addition to that, now that The US is is engaged in aggression against Iran, they will not be able to focus on Yemen the way they did last year.
So that gives Yemen much more room for maneuver. And then you also have the resistance in Iraq that it is striking at US targets inside Iraq, but also increasingly beyond the borders. And we are still not very much, up the escalation ladder. Yemen has joined, but its targets are so far limited. Iraq has been involved for weeks now, but, again, it can go much further.
There's talk that, for example, the Iraqis may take Kuwait. They could enter the Arabian Peninsula. Excuse me. Yemen too could enter Saudi Arabia and, of course, close the Red Sea or strike Saudi oil facilities. Remember I mean, I'm sure you remember, but, when after the during the seven years of genocidal war against Yemen, the Saudis, with the support of literally the entire world, or at least the West, was bombing Yemen day and night, slaughtering people.
All the Americans were patrolling the Red Sea, creating a food and medical medicine blockade. And, actually, a former, someone who was with the American forces once told me, at a conference that, he saw US forces, they take they stop these small boats, and they'd like, they checked them, and they saw that they had medicine, like, were importing medicine into, Yemen. They would take that medicine and dump it into the sea. That's that's how you know, that's the sort of strangulation that they were facing. And, even Qatar and Turkey were supporting this genocidal war until the Saudis and the Emiratis raided the blockade against Yemen, and then they tilted away.
So with all that support, the Saudis failed after seven years. And, ultimately, what caused what brought about the ceasefire was Yemen's, powerful strikes on the Saudi oil and gas oil oil installations. So today, Yemen is far stronger, and it could easily take out Saudi, oil installations and cut Saudi imports from the Red Sea completely. So it can it can blockade the Red Sea. It can strike Israelis.
It can strike US assets in the Indian Ocean, We don't know what what weapon they now have. Obviously, during this past year, they've been developing their capabilities swiftly just like Iran did, just like Hezbollah did. And the West always underestimates. You and I already had this discussion, multiple times how everyone was saying Hezbollah was defeated, Hezbollah was no longer a major force, but now we're seeing that Hezbollah is striking Israeli regime hard and with great effect. So, and just like Iran too, the, you know, the war was supposed to end in a day, the first twelve day war.
Now during this Ramadan war, the current war, they thought it would end in a day or two. And then when that didn't happen, they thought they take out the missile and drone capabilities. In a few days, they kept saying, either they are decreasing the number of attacks by Iran. Now we're seeing after a month Iran's missile and drone strikes are increasing ineffectiveness than any than before, especially during the last ten days or so. So this underestimation, this this, this strong tendency for the West to underestimate is something that we're seeing all across the board.
They underestimated Yemen. They underestimated Hezbollah. They underestimated Iran, and, of course, Iraq. So we don't know what potential Yemen has, but I'm sure it's a much greater than what it had before. And, therefore, this is not good news for The United States.
But the escalation ladder still we we have a long way to go. If The US escalates, if the Zionist regime escalates, this side will escalate too. It's not a war that the Americans can win. It's not a war that the Israeli regime can win. And as we speak, Glenn, the shortage of energy, the shortage of fertilizer, the short of shortage of petrochemicals increases literally by the minute across the world.
So the pressure from the international community on Trump and the and and the anger towards the Israeli regime and Zionism in Netanyahu builds. So and, of course, the pressures inside The United States, I would imagine, would be building too. So the Iranians know exactly what they're doing. Their allies know what they're doing. And, they're but they haven't yet shown their maximum capabilities.
Far from it. They're just trying to manage the escalation, but I think it's it's there's no doubt that they have escalation dominance. And, you know, Glenn, one thing that I I was thinking about just yesterday I I've been thinking about it a number of times during the past week. The United States could have taken a completely different route. About a decade ago, there was a book written called, going to Tehran.
I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's, cowritten by Flint Leveritt and Hillary Leveritt. They were White House, they worked in the White House. Flint was the head of the Middle East and the National Security Council, and Hillary was the head of the Persian Gulf. That's where they met actually and married.
Hillary is a Jew. Flint is Catholic. You know, they different religions, different backgrounds in the center of power. And then when they left the White House, they wrote a book on Iran, which is actually a very good book. And it's about, why The United States has to come to terms with Iran, the Islamic Republic Of Iran.
And I would advise everyone to read that book, actually. But, if The United States had taken that route, we wouldn't be in this critical, situation today. We would be in a very different world. But, of course, instead of policymakers reading this book and listening to them, they did the exact opposite. They listened to the Zionists, the oligarchy, the Epstein class, and we are in this critical mode.
So it's not just Iran. It is the axis. And now we're seeing the axis actually show its capabilities from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, Iraq, Iran. It is the potential is there to create catastrophe for a catastrophe for The United States. Already, we're seeing Iraq expelling NATO forces, US forces leave leaving.
A form of liberation is already taking place there. So Yemen's entry into this war, even though it's still not, actively participating except for, missile strikes on the Israeli regime, its potential is enormous. And if you shut down the Strait Of Hormuz and shut down the Red Sea simultaneously, then I think the catastrophe, for the West, is, I don't I don't think it can be fully calculated.
Speaker 0: Yeah. What you said about underestimating Iran, I often make the point that this is a common theme against all, essentially, our adversaries or opponents. That is we always underestimate Iran. We underestimate Russia. We underestimate China.
The idea that they can be broken in economic wars or actual wars is is it's an interesting phenomenon because it's almost used as a loyalty test that you have to proclaim that they are extremely weak and also exaggerate their threats. And if you fail to do so, then, you know, that is to say that they're all very weak, so obligatory underestimation and also a huge threat, then if you fail to fall in line, then essentially then that is indication that you're taking the other side. So it makes you a traitor. So it's a it's a very dangerous thing because, you know, even if the goal should be to defeat the Iranians and Russians and Chinese, you you don't wanna underestimate your opponent. This is a very foolish thing to do.
But I I did wanna ask you a bit about what, how you see the Iranian interpretation of attacks on it, but also Iran's own targeting. Because we spoke before about when when The US said it wouldn't attack Iranian energy and then infrastructure, and then the the Israelis allegedly attacked the South powers all by itself. Well, we saw something similar now. That is Trump proclaiming, you we're gonna give it a forty eight hour, you know, deadline until we start attacking. He delayed it to extended it to five, then extended it to ten days, and suddenly, then Israel began attacking, the beginning of this period, the critical in in industries, the steel industries, for example, of Iran.
And that argument was, well, it's only the Israelis. How do you see this, though? This is this just another, you know, diplomatic ruse, or, you know, are they joined at the hip? I mean, how how do you assess these constant efforts to argue that, you know, we're just we we want a de escalation while at the same time escalating?
Speaker 1: Well, I am obviously don't have access to what goes on behind closed doors in The United States or among the military staff here. But in general here, the belief is that they are joint at the head and that, it's impossible, and and military analysts in Iran, like retired, officers who come on television or write articles online in in Iran, they say it's impossible for, the Israelis to carry out strikes without full coordination with Americans, and that this is this is a joint operation. So, the strike on the South of Parr's gas installation was a test. And since and Americans were, and the Israeli regime, obviously, were hoping that Iran would not retaliate even though it promised that it was much harder if struck. They they they tested Iran, and Iran did retaliate in the way in which it threatened to do, and that's what made Trump back off.
And then, of course, Trump, as you rightly pointed out, said, he's going to destroy Iranian critical infrastructure in two days, which is a crime against humanity, and no one in the West seems to care, meaning among elites in in the mainstream media. Just like with, Cuba, a a sad tale in itself that's also being ignored, the starvation of the Cuban people to in order to bring it to their knees so they can take Cuba for themselves. But, first, he gave forty eight hours. Then, I think it's clear that he was he was afraid that, that Iran would actually carry out heavy retaliation. He did it for the markets, but, and he, of course, extended it for another five days, which was, again, to control the market, which was pretty effective that week.
It brought the price of oil down considerably. And then ten days again to he threatened the threat to bomb Iranian critical infrastructure and the Iranian, electricity, power plants, and that was, again, extended for ten days. And, that, I think, is basically for two reasons, possibly. One is obviously to control the markets because Iran's retaliation would be devastating for oil and gas and the capability for the, Saudis and the Emiratis and the Kuwaitis and the Qataris to export in future. So because right now, if there is a deal, let's say at some point, the Americans meet Iran's demands and it comes to an end and they open the Strait Of Hormoz, energy can gradually be exported, and it'll take some time, but a lot of the problems will decrease over the a year or so perhaps.
I don't know the the details or I'm not an expert. But if the fighting intensifies, obviously, these installations will be destroyed. And therefore, opening the Strait Of Hormoz at some point would be meaningless. So I think he he backed off again. But, I think he's also waiting to see waiting for the extra troops to come in, and then he wants to carry out an assault.
It was believed that it's possible that he would he's he may carry out the attack during these nights or that he may wait till the other forces come in. And then prob possibly, he would strike critical infrastructure as he launches, attacks to capture Iranian territory. So there are many different scenarios that that are being discussed in Iran, but, I think that it's clear that if there's escalation on behalf of the Americans, the Iranians are going to de escalate. And so just a couple a couple of days ago when they struck, the Iranian factories, the Iranians have been retaliated. They destroyed the aluminum, complex.
Well, badly damaged it in The Emirates, in Bahrain, and it will continue. Or, for example, they've begun to bomb Iranian universities, and they bombed an important university in Tehran. And so now the Iranians are saying we're going to bomb American universities in the region, American and Israeli universities. So the Iranians, every time they strike, they strike back. So that is a a deterrence.
But, again, we don't know where this is going to go because Trump is constantly changing his opinion. And right after he said, we're going to wait for ten days, he didn't strike. He hasn't struck the electrical infrastructure, the electricity power plants, but he but they are attacking key, factories and, key infrastructure in Iran. So there is no you know? And this further strengthens the argument among Iranians that we just can't do a deal with Trump.
It's not possible. Because he'll say one thing today, he'll do something else tomorrow. Just like the JCPOA, a US commitment, he tore it up just like the twelve day war. We were negotiating, but he was secretly plotting against the country. This war, the same.
We're negotiating. There was progress. He plot with but he was not serious. Now he says, you know, we're not going to strike, and then the Israelis strike. And even if we conclude that The United States is not in control, that's even worse.
That means that, if they're not in control, then what's the point of having negotiations? Because if the United States is not talking on behalf of the Israelis, if the Israelis are the ones who are in charge, then, what's the point in negotiating? So no matter how you look at it, the reinforces the argument in Iran that now is not the time to stop the fighting. The facts on the ground have to change in order for us to feel secure in the future because The United States is obviously either unwilling to abide by its commitments or it's incapable of doing so.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's an interesting point, the extent to which The US is in control because, you know, you can have two competing hypotheses that is either, Israel is in the driving seat. That is, it's pushing for the escalation and pulling The US deeper into the war. Or The US is just using Israel as a frontman. That is it allows The US to play the good cup to Israel as the bad cup.
So it's hard to know, but I I take your point. At the end of the day, that doesn't matter if if you can't trust the one you're negotiating with. Higgseth, though, he made this argument that a big strike would soon come, and it seems likely that this will be coordinated by the use of, well, ground forces to occupy something, whether it's Yemen Islands, Iranian islands in the Strait Of Hormuz or the actual Iranian Mainland. We don't really know. They could go for Karg Island.
It's really unclear at this point. But but at the same time, we see that of all the Gulf states, it's The United Arab Emirates which seems to signal the strongest that they will join in on the fight against Iran. I thought this was interesting because The UAE claims these three islands of Iran, which Iran took in 1971, and these islands could be critical in the future for The US to control the Strait Of Hormuz. So the Americans are saying, we have to control the Strait Of Hormuz. The UAE has the islands or claims to islands, which, which would allow The US to do so.
Now you see The US talking about ground troops and The UAE seeming seemingly very enthusiastic about joining in in the war. So I don't know. I'm speculating, but still, it seems as if there's reasons to believe that going after these islands would be an objective. On the other hand, is it hard to see how they could actually I I think they could take them, but I don't understand how they can hold them. You know, they would be like sitting ducks, it seems.
So I was just wondering how how do you assess the situation? What is the ground troops are coming. How how can the Americans use them against Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, I think, The Emirates really isn't important. None of the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf are important. They're not capable of fighting. The Emirates has a the the the citizens of The United Arab Emirates are a bit over a million people. That's nothing.
Or Qatar or Kuwait or Bahrain. And Saudi Arabia, we've already seen that it could not fight against Yemen. And now situation being as it is, they cannot fight against Yemen at all nor Iraq, Iraqi resistance or Iran. So it's basically The US. What the Arab regimes do is they give The United States the ability to attack Iran.
They allow them to use their territory, not just the bases. The Americans are all over the place. And they use their airspace. They they use their air air airfields, their mill air bases. So that's basically the role that they play.
But, Iran has said that if The United States assaults the Iran's mainland or carries out operations deep inside Iran because that is also something that Iranians are preparing for. In fact, some believe that that this talk about this island or that island may be an attempt to divert Iranian attention and then Americans use something else. So Iran is preparing itself has been preparing itself for, you know, for two and a half decades at least. Happened. They've been preparing themselves for today.
And, and, of course, you know, the Americans miscalculated with the missiles and the drones, so I think they will probably soon find out that they've miscalculated about, taking islands and taking Iranian territory, or carrying out commando operations or whatever special operations deep sign in deep inside Iran, but time and time will tell. But, the problem for The United States is that, even if they do take territory, maintaining it will be the problem. But more importantly, what are they going to do about the oil and gas? All those Sorry. I
Speaker 0: Sorry to interrupt. You were saying, what will they do about oil and gas, and then you went away?
Speaker 1: I can let me do that again.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'll I'll I'll clip it away. Okay.
Speaker 1: But what will they do about oil and gas and fertilizer and petrochemicals? If Iran doesn't control the Strait Of Hormuz, first of all, from the shores of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf Of Oman, They those the missile bases and drone bases are hundreds of kilometers, deep inside Iranian territory, and there are many of them. And the Americans have already failed to destroy them. There's no reason to believe that they can take out all these bases. And then if the Americans escalate, the Iranians will destroy the tankers, and they'll just destroy, the oil and gas installations and the assets and the, and the other key assets in the Persian Gulf region that belong to these Arab family dictatorships who are complicit.
So let's say, hypothetically, The US takes violence or some territory or carry or carries out some operations against a missile base or a drone base or with success or failure. Doesn't matter. That's not going to open the Strait Of Hormoz, and that's not going to prevent Iran from destroying and retaliating simultaneously. So let's say they are open. They're able to open the Straight Of Hormoz somehow, which I don't see happening when there's no when there's no LNG tankers, what's the point?
So the price of oil will go up to $200 a barrel, and then we'll see economic collapse. And this is something that we've envisaged already. We've before, this war. I I was I was saying that all this would happen. And can So upon it, that's quadrupled.
That that will bring down the economy. Again, these analysts, though, these mainstream Western analysts, they downplay everything. And by downplaying everything, you can't make it go away. You just miscalculate. Just like with regards to Iran's military strength, just like with regards to Hezbollah or Russia, as you pointed out, or China or Yemen and Ansaran law, the Iraqi resistance.
So any US attack on the mainland or on the islands isn't is going to lead to greater disaster because you have further destruction, much greater destruction, and that means that the oil crisis and the energy crisis and the, petrochemical crisis and the fertilizer crisis will be permanent?
Speaker 0: Well, it seems besides the economic pressure, I very much agree. It it would only grow from here on, and it can be intensified as well. But it's often also pointed out that over time, the military benefit will also shift increasingly in Iran's favor. That is well, simply because Iran can launch very cheap and effective drones, and it has the ability to, you know, up the production of them. It's you know, the production isn't that centralized, apparently.
It's it's very difficult to do anything about it. So Iran will have continue to have massive access to these cheap drones, but the Americans are forced to use very expensive million dollar interceptor missiles, which they have few of, they're expensive. And even if they have money to throw at it, they don't actually have their production potential. So it seems in terms of weaponry, it will go to the disadvantage of The US over time. And, well, we already seen something over the past twenty four or forty eight hours, which is Trump well, Trump made the speech, about the aircraft carrier.
He think he said he was attacked from 17 different directions, which makes me wanna question some of the official story that they had a, I guess, fire in the kitchen. That's why it had to be taken out of operation. I mean, this is not what the Trump was communicating. But we also saw over the past, again, twenty four, forty eight hours, the the destruction of the e three century AWACS That is the, you know, the flying radars of The United States, which are, you know, indispensable on the battlefield, and they don't have that many of them, at least no one to lose. So one of these were destroyed at The US base in Saudi Arabia.
Also, a few more of those KC one thirty five aerial tankers, which are also important to refuel, well, any fighter planes or bombers because they have to keep a safe distance to Iran. So how do you see how do you interpret this, though, on the battlefield? Do you see the The US becoming more vulnerable? And and what what expect to see in the weeks to come because this, you know, especially the Century AWACS, this is a very painful loss for The United States.
Speaker 1: Oh, indeed, especially since they've lost all their radar systems on the ground. They are complete they're much more reliant on radar systems from the air. I think, really, the key issue here, Glenn, is that Americans and the West, they've miscalculated Iran's missile and drone capabilities, obviously, very badly. But if they enter the battlefield on on the ground, they don't seem to recognize that Iran's defenses will be defenses will be deployed using weapons that have nothing to do with these missiles and drones that are being used. In other words, in addition to those missile missiles and drones that will be focusing on targeting Americans, there will be a host of other weapon systems and military units that will be targeting The United States with all sorts of, other missiles that will target their helicopters, that will target their commandos, that will on the battlefield.
And Iran has all sorts of underground bases, across the region and in these mountain ranges and near the mountain ranges and near the shore that the Americans know nothing about. A lot of the underground bases that fire missiles, the long range missiles and medium range missiles, they still haven't even been used. They still haven't started operation. Most of Iran's strikes on the Israeli regime and American and Americans in the Persian Gulf are from a certain group of underground bases. So just as the the these missiles and drones that are being used exist in many other places that have yet to be, let's say, brought into the yet to become operational, the Iranians have planned an they have an elaborate plan for dealing with the ground offensive.
And this is not something that they've been thinking about for the last few months. This is something that they've been planning for the last twenty five years. So when they come in, who knows what sort of weapons the Iranians have to target the invaders. And, of course, you are going to only mobilize Iranians, against the invaders. And then, Glenn and I again, this is just hypothetical, but I think it's a serious argument.
What if Iraqi forces while the Americans are trying to invade Iranian territory, Iraqi forces and Iranian forces go into Kuwait and Northern Saudi Arabia? What if Yemen enters Saudi Arabia from the Southwest? Then what do the Americans do? So are the Americans going to be able to block Iran? They can also be surrounded by Iran.
Because if Iran moves into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, that will destabilize the these family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region, very swiftly. And then, who's going to where where are the Americans going to retreat to? I mean, it's just a a crazy, project. Even if the Americans bring in tens of thousands of, military to to invade Iran. When they invaded Iraq, they had, I think, a second time when they took the country.
Iraq was broken. The regime was unpopular, and, the Americans had to I what was it, like, 200,000 troops, 160, seventy, eighty thousand troops, And they they brought in, you know, heavy tanks and also every they brought in everything in into the region, and they were using Saudi Arabia and Albany. Actually, the only country in the region that actively opposed The US intervention in Iraq, the invasion of Iraq, was Iran. Hezbollah, the chief of Hezbollah spoke in Arabic multiple times against the war because they said we want freedom from this guy, from Saddam. But he was saying that The US, whatever Saddam may be, The US has no legitimate right to invade.
So these countries were all assisting US in invading Iraq back then. Iran is much larger than Iraq. Iran has shown how capable it is, and Iran's, territory is mountainous. Iraq was flatland. There's just no comparison.
So The United States with a few 10,000 forces will not be able to do anything, but, again, the Iranians could out they can outflank them. They can the Iranians and the Iraqis and the Yemenis can enter the Arabian Peninsula. So if if things get really bad, if escalation goes up, you can envisage all sorts of things that people never thought about before. But I think they're all quite possible. Now.
Speaker 0: Well, how do you assess the, I guess, the resilience on the Iranian side? That is, you know, many American commentators especially say that Iran's resilience will diminish as they killed a lot of their leaders. They hit a lot of the economic targets. They bombed the civilians to have social problems. What what would you say to them?
And, also, if if this ground troops are used against the Yemen, yeah, they they're in a more exposed situation, it seems, geographically than the Iranians. But but still, know, on the map, they look very tiny and small, but their population would be about 34,000,000. I think in Saudi Arabia, they only have about 24. So while it looks very big, it's a lot of desert. And, you know, I think, like, 35, 40% of its population are expats.
So it's how do you how how well, what would be your response to them suggesting that Yemen will be a vulnerable target and Iran wouldn't have the same resilience anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, Yemen obviously won its war against The United States. It won the seven year genocidal war. Now it's much more prepared, and The United States can't focus on Yemen because it has Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran to deal with simultaneously. And Saudi Arabia, they don't fight their own wars. They, basically have others do it for them.
And now they just don't have the sort of capability that they had before. And Yemen could strike while their oil installations and create chaos in the country and then move in. I they're much tougher than the Saudis, and they've shown their resilience. In the case of Iran, Glenn and and one thing that's true about Yemen, Iran, and Iraq, and that is goes back to Islam and Shia Islam in particular. General Soleimani had a very famous speech where he said, we're the nation of martyrdom.
We're the when he was threat he was threatening Trump. He was saying don't he was saying don't threaten us. In the speech, he told Trump not to threaten us. We are the nation of martyrdom. We're the nation of Imam Hussein.
This is, you know, the you know, the and Imam Hussain is the grandson of, the holy prophet. It's the resilience in Iran. It has a lot to do with Iran's Islamic and Shia identity in particular. This resilience, this resistance comes from there, and that's and that is true about Hezbollah. That's true about Yemen.
Just a while back, a Brazilian leftist friend of mine. He was speaking to me, and a journalist. And he was saying that a very famous Brazilian communist was saying, if Iran wins this war, I'm going to become a Shia. So but, you know, whether he does or not is irrelevant. But the point is that it just shows that how people across the world are in awe at the resilience of the Iranian people.
They would they were supposed to fold a long time ago. I mean, you you the leader I you know, Ayatollah Khomeini was martyred. And for a week, we didn't have a leader. For a full week I mean, the country was being run-in accordance with the constitution where the the president and the head of the judiciary and the representative from the, guarding council were were leading, but that's, you know, that's not, ordinary. So we, during that week, it was basically the people that were holding the country together.
They were on the streets every night in the millions. Things were calm, and the armed forces were striking back. Things were working sort of like a watch on its own on, and now we we have a leader. We have a a new a new head of the, chair of the Supreme National Security Council. Everything is in place like in the past, and they've largely failed in their assassinations.
But even if they do murder people, they'll be replaced. So every as we even it's been a month and still people are out on the streets every night. Actually, last night, I had to go to a a studio very far away from where I live and a a very far away studio, not not like where I am now. And I I literally crossed Tehran, and I went past four or five of these huge gatherings in different parts of Tehran to get to that to that studio. The point is that people are resilient, and they're they're we had heavy bombing last night, carpet bombing, and early this morning.
And people were out. When I came back from the studio, it was, like, 01:30AM. People on the streets waving flags and and, chanting slogans and listening to, like, revolutionary music and and and, singing with it or, you know, that sort of thing. No. They it's not going to have, the Iranians are prepared.
They understand that this is a war for survival. This is an existential war. They see that we're the victim. They saw that, you know, they saw that Ayatollah Khamenei was rioting all after all these years, that The United States is just simply untrustworthy. They saw how the collective West antagonizes Iran, even those who are opposed to Trump.
So they will they they'll demonize Iran and antagonize Iran, whether it's CNN or The Guardian or whether it's, you know, sort of semi alternative media people like, Mehdi Hassan and others that they're they're extremely hostile towards Iran, but they'll criticize the US government. They see that the the, you know, this Epstein class, the the oligarchy, the, you know, the the dominant narrative is is is is is basically the narrative that the Zionists want. And so the only way is to have self reliance and to not to put any hopes on the Democrats or the, I don't know, the the labor party in The UK or the green somewhere or doesn't make a difference. So they're going to people here recognize that. And what, again, the West fails to understand because they believe their own propaganda.
And you've been to Iran, so you know this. Iranians know exactly what's going on. They watch Western media. And remember, some are fluent in foreign languages. They can watch satellite TV and see what the West is saying.
But those who are not fluent, they watch the hundreds of Persian language media channels that are funded by Western governments beamed into Iran and, are all full of hate and dis disinformation. So they know what the other side is saying. It's not as if they are it's a closed society. But despite that, they're on the streets. Despite that, when we had when we didn't have a leader for a full week, everything was calm.
You can walk on the streets of Tehran right now at a woman alone at 12PM, at 1AM, and feel pretty secure. I'm not saying there's no chance of, I don't know, robbery, but you can feel pretty secure. So I you know, that that analysis is, based upon misin their own propaganda model, information that come from their propaganda model, from their, narratives, just like Iran's military capabilities, just like, you know, Hezbollah. I mean, Hezbollah is an is the best example of all. We were told that after the fall of Syria and US control of Syria, we have US soldiers in Damascus and in in Damascus hotels as we speak, you and I right now.
Although, currently, they are emptying those hotels because Iran went to strike those hotels, the four seasons and Mario, I think. But the year after The United States controlled Syria and through its takfiri proxies And after the ceasefire in Lebanon and the Lebanese, government under US pressure working against the resistance, every everyone in the West and many people in our region were were saying that Hezbollah is finished. But now Hezbollah is performing even better than it was before the ceasefire. So these are, you know, these are things that the West simply cannot learn, and they're going to have to, again, deal with it. I I have no doubt that when they strike when they invade Iran, there's going to be propaganda from CNN, from a they they they'll be saying we're winning.
We took this. We took that. They we destroyed this place, and we destroyed that, and they'll put out footage that most of the footage that they put out, these are, decoys. Right now, most of the planes, that they were supposedly bomb, these are decoys that Iran has purchased from China. During the last, eight, nine months before the war, Iran purchased hundreds of, thousands of decoys from China, or I don't know if it's hundreds or a huge number of decoys from launchers.
And the decoys are very, very good. They even get heat, and they, you know, they so the Americans have no idea what they're dealing with. The Western media for two or three days will say how successful they are. But I think after a week or so, just like the war itself, it'll become clear that, this was all a miscalculation.
Speaker 0: I guess this, yeah, goes back to my initial point that, this is a key problem when this tendency to not just exaggerate the threat, but also exaggerate the weakness of adversaries because one often ends up then with the conclusion that, well, something has to be done because they're an overwhelming threat. But there's also weak if we just have the will to push a bit, then the whole house of cards will fall apart. And the the problem is when it doesn't happen, then the you end up in, yeah, chaos. And I just to draw the parallel with the Chinese, when, you know, the semiconductor industry didn't collapse after, well sorry. When the tech industries didn't collapse after removing the access to semiconductors, once Russia didn't collapse, once, by sending weapons and putting the sanctions on or Iran.
One is left in this strategic vacuum because this was essentially the only card to play. That is show enough power and the adversaries will fall apart. So and always, always, that goes with all the small to medium sized countries bombed over the past thirty years as well when there's no exit strategy. You know? It's it's, yeah, it's shocking that one keeps doing the same thing over and over again.
But, again, absorbing this mistake that is the attack on Iran, this is something I don't see how one can recover from this because this is this is a closure or moves. I just don't see an end to this war. I guess I said, do you see any other possibilities than a than the The US obeying, I guess, Iranian demands, or is there a, you know, meeting point somewhere halfway?
Speaker 1: Iranian demands will have to be met. How they're met, like, how they would be negotiated, that's a a different issue. Some things The US could walk away from and say, we did had nothing to do with this. For example, Iran will demand reparations, and, The US will say, I'll never give them reparations while Iran can take it from Emirates and the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Fatadis. So that won't be a US problem.
The United States Iran will not allow, you know, the Iran will not allow The United States to be able to use the Persian Gulf region as a platform to invade Iran or or to strike Iran. The United States could say, well, we won't accept. But in reality, Iran can force those countries in the Persian Gulf not to allow the United States to have the access that it had before. So the United States could say, no. I I'm I'm still there, and I'm going to remain there.
I mean, Iran doesn't have a problem with these countries having political relations or business relations with The United States. The issue is being a platform for murdering Iranians and destroying Iranian assets and infrastructure. So there are things that can be solved without, you know, The United States having to be humiliated. But, but there are things that, there are red lines. There are things that Iran has to do.
For example, Iran's allies in the region will be a part of the deal. There's no doubt that and then Iran has declared that. Hezbollah will have to benefit from it. Yemen will have to benefit from it. The Palestinians will have to benefit from it.
The Iraqis will have to benefit from it. So, you know, there certain things that will happen, but Americans like it or not because if they don't, Iran is basically inviting another invasion six months or a year or year and a half down the road. That has to end, so we have no option. But I think this war, what the the real issue is not how many children they slaughtered. Last night, they killed a lot of people in Tehran, and they just bombed houses.
I mean, it last night was the last two, three nights, they've been particularly vicious. And last night, not just in Tehran and elsewhere, they're just bomb bombing homes and killing people, like in Lebanon and Gaza. It's it's a I don't know. It's a type of they're trying to create fear, I guess. And they they are frustrated that they can't defeat Iran.
But last night, for example, they murdered an Afghan family of six in in Rey to the, to the Southeast of Tehran. They're just slaughtering people. But, but all of this is, you know, at the moment, is costly, and it's putting a strain on the military and and their resources. But that, think, is the the sideshow. And Iran can destroy US, assets, But the real issue is the oil, the LNG, and, the petrochemicals and the fertilizer.
That is where The United States is in serious trouble. And so if the price prices go through the roof and the situate and and if if Yemen also strikes Saudi installations, then I don't think war is sustainable anymore. The United States will have to because there will be an economic depression, and I think there will be severe unrest in The United States. And, and I also think The United States won't have the money to sustain war. But the Iranians recognize that, and that is what their objective, to increase the pressure to a point where the Americans say, okay.
Let's find a solution that is satisfactory to the Iranians. And, again, it can be negotiated in a way, where the Americans would accept, in my in my opinion. And, again, this again, this reminds me of the book going to Tehran, which I advise your to your viewers to read by Flint and Hillary LeBron. The Americans could have had a very different type of relationship with Iran. I mean, they explain Iran's history, and they deal with many of the myths about Iran, the demonization of Europe.
It could have been completely different. But now The United States is in a in a situation that it's only going to get worse for everyone. And arming Iran in the hope that people in Iran will submit, it hasn't worked before, and it's not going to work now. And time is not this is what the Iranians understand very well. Time is not on their side.
Time is on the side of the Iranians because every minute, the shortage of energy and petrochemicals and fertilizers grows. It's you know, every day, it's going to get next week, the markets, I would assume, will begin to reflect this. And then the week after and I think after different people say different things. But within three weeks from now, they say the situation is going to be very critical. And, even in a week from now, they say it's going to get pretty bad.
And we have to keep in mind that the ships that take oil and fertilizer and energy, and petrochemicals, the you know, a lot of them take weeks to to get to their, destination, and then for the those, the the for everything to be, taken to the market, it takes a further couple of weeks. It's it's just now going to people are talking about some shortages here and there and the prices rising. But pretty soon, it's going to get very bad, and the Iranians know that. Iranians don't want this. They didn't start the war.
But the only way to stop the Americans is to the pressure to increase the pressure so that they can back down. And I think pretty soon that pressure is going to be felt in a in a very big way.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time to speak with us, and, yeah, stay safe.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. It's always a pleasure being with you, and I hope and pray for better days for everyone. And, I know people across the world are so many people contact me, and, they say they're praying for the Iranians. I I know communist I have communist friends who say they're praying. So, the world is indeed changing, and views are evolving.
And although, again, as I've said many times before, I am very optimistic about the future even though I may not live to see that day and and while the days ahead may be darker and darker. But I think that ultimately I'm I'm confident that ultimately, it will be better than
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel May Cease to Exist & Launch Nuclear Strike https://youtu.be/XelyhraVOD8 https://t.co/Fpzql4UiEK
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins the program with host Glenn to discuss the escalating tensions around Iran, the U.S. leadership, and the broader geopolitical and economic implications. The conversation centers on what is driving recent White House actions, the potential paths forward, and the risks of cascading consequences.
Key points and insights:
- Trump’s countdown to strike Iran: Wilkerson interprets Trump’s 48-hour, then 5-, then 10-day countdowns on Iran’s energy facilities as an attempt to buy time rather than a clear plan for escalation. He suggests Trump is trying to stall and manage narratives while lacking a credible path out of the crisis.
- Reasons Trump is escalating: Wilkerson argues Trump is “buying time to be buying time,” unable to articulate a feasible exit strategy. He posits that the main driver of the escalation is a realization by Trump that he’s deeply entangled, with Bibi Netanyahu as the principal ally who would abandon him in a crisis.
- Global force posture and limits: The administration is assembling various special operations forces (e.g., 1st SOG, rangers from multiple locations) and delivery/ extraction capabilities, but Wilkerson believes a full invasion is not feasible and would risk impeachment. He notes the use of dispersed forces and high-end delivery systems akin to operations in Venezuela, stressing the operational and strategic implausibility of a large-scale invasion of Iran.
- Iranian diplomacy and leadership: Wilkerson cites Iranian diplomacy as sidelined by U.S. actions. He highlights a UN emergency meeting where Iraqi officials criticized the U.S. and Israel for “two bullying nuclear weapons regimes” and condemned the “torpedoing of diplomacy,” pointing to the broader frustration with the international handling of the Palestinian-Israeli situation. He criticizes Witkoff and Kushner as ineffective in negotiating with Iran and notes a strong Iranian stance emphasizing an end to what they view as aggression.
- Domestic political dynamics: Wilkerson criticizes both U.S. parties for their current leadership, accusing figures like Keane, Hagel, and Trump of mismanaging the crisis. He rails against the influence of evangelical and political figures who advocate Old Testament-style rhetoric in modern policy, arguing it contributes to destructive escalation.
- Economic and global ripple effects: The war threatens the global economy, with consequences such as disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz impacting helium, urea, and broader trade. Wilkerson warns that the world could experience a global recession, potentially spiraling into a depression, due to shipping bottlenecks and energy-price shocks.
- Strait of Hormuz and strategic chokepoints: A recurring theme is the vulnerability created by critical chokepoints. Wilkerson references his naval analysis of global straits and identifies Hormuz as a significant vulnerability, though not necessarily the most critical, with Bab el-Mandeb potentially more serious.
- Israel’s situation and nuclear considerations: Discussion turns to Israel’s military situation in Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu’s political decisions, and the potential for Israel to face internal collapse or drastic shifts. Wilkerson raises the hypothetical that Iran could seek a nuclear deterrent if faced with existential threats and notes concerns about how the U.S. and Israel might respond to an Iranian nuclear capability.
- Possible exit routes and diplomacy: When pressed for a pathway out, Wilkerson suggests a drastic but unlikely option: declare victory and leave, lifting sanctions and pressuring allies to do the same, including pressuring Europe to support rebuilding Iran. He emphasizes this as a potentially politically expedient exit for Trump, though he doubts it will happen.
- Nuclear entanglements and further escalation: The conversation turns to the risk of nuclear exchange if Iran develops a deterrent and if Israel or the U.S. decide to escalate further. Wilkerson outlines a scenario in which limited U.S. forces strike Gulf targets, provoking Iranian retaliation that could escalate into a broader regional conflict with nuclear implications, given multiple nuclear powers’ capabilities.
- Long-term outlook: Wilkerson references the broader implications for the global order, noting the dangers of imperial hubris post-Cold War, and warns that multiple dimensions—military, economic, and diplomatic—are converging toward a dangerous crossroads. He asserts that the current trajectory could threaten global stability and the viability of traditional alliance structures.
In sum, Wilkerson presents a troubling synthesis: Trump’s incremental escalation appears aimed at time-buying without a credible exit; Iran’s leadership responds with strategic diplomacy and potential deterrence considerations; Israel faces internal and regional pressures; and the global economy and critical chokepoints amplify the risk that the conflict could spiral into a larger, harder-to-control crisis. He emphasizes the dangerous mix of leadership missteps, strategic miscalculations, and existential stakes that could reshuffle the regional and global order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to the US secretary of state, and who also spent long time in his military career and at the White House. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Good to be with you, Glenn. I hope it's, I hope it's getting a little bit better in Europe, but I'm told by other people. One Norwegian friend this morning said, nope. It's getting worse.
Speaker 0: Well, the weather is looking good otherwise. Politically, everything else, no. It seems to be going quite poorly as most places in the world. But, yeah, a lot of these problems appears to have gotten worse, of course. Things were already bad, but it's getting a lot worse due to the war war in against Iran.
And, well, the most recent statements we got from Trump, first, he gave this forty eight hour countdown for the destruction of Iran's energy facilities, then he extended it to five days, then he extended it to ten days. And, again, I wanted to know what you think will happen at the end of this countdown. I mean, can Trump really afford to go up the escalation ladder now? And, also, it's unclear what what this countdown is for. Does he actually believe he can get this from Iran?
Is it public diplomacy to manage narratives? Or or do you see something to hold the government together? I I'm just wondering how you interpret these recent events coming out of the White House.
Speaker 1: If I were to be absolutely honest with you, and I will be, I think it's Trump trying to buy back time that he knows is running out. And he doesn't know any other way to do it. And he's got a sycophantic enough cabinet where they go along with it. I don't think he has any idea how he's gonna get out of this. He's in it.
He's in it deeply. He's finally, I think, come to the realization that he's in it and in it deeply, and he has not the tools to extricate himself, that the main person who got him in it to this depth is Bibi Natanyahu, and that Bibi has absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever, and in fact, would take him with him in a heartbeat if it were to hell and back. So he's really, probably, finally realizing even through his megalomania, which is intensifying every day. I think Jeff Pace is right about that. He he can't finish not only sentences.
Sometimes he can't finish individual words coherently. And he's stuck, and he's trying to buy time right now with all these different, you know, five days, ten days, thirteen days, whatever it might be. But he's also very frighteningly marshaling lots of force across the globe, Not significant military force in terms of an invasion of Iran because we simply could not do that. And if you were to attempt it, I think we would probably be looking at impeachment joined in by his own party. What he's doing is assembling all manner of special operating forces and auxiliaries there too, like the one sixtieth SOAR, Special Operations Aviation Regiment, like the rangers from Washington, like the rangers from other places in this country, all manner of special operators whom he is going to try to use in some esoteric way, think Cargo Island or some of the other islands in the Gulf I heard mentioned this morning, or other places like he did in Venezuela with this kind of instant precision afforded by the delivery vehicles and the extraction vehicles and such.
And it's impossible. You're you're not gonna do that in this scenario like you did in Venezuela, and you're certainly not gonna do it with all these disparate forces bring being brought in from different points on the globe. Aircraft from ram Ramstein, aircraft from Italy, aircraft from Japan. I just don't know what he's thinking other than I'm gonna pull off a really quick one like I did in Venezuela, and it's gonna be so and I'll have done so much damage, for example, to Gargoyle in Iran's principal port, that I will get some some movement in the talks, which aren't being conducted. Those were total lies by Witkoff yesterday.
I'm told by very reputable authority that he has not seen a single Iranian. He's been dealing with Pakistanis or Omanis or other people offering their good offices. Thank God. But he hasn't talked to a single Iranian. And in that vein, let me tell you what the most important Iranian in my mind just said.
This is a Raqi. At the UN meeting, especially convened emergency meeting because of the the UN is pretending that it wants to look at now the bombing of the school in Iran where many schoolchildren were killed. And Iraqi had this to say. And, these are just quintessential Iraqi type statements, but they sum up the situation really well. Two bullying nuclear weapons this is him telling giving his statement to the UN emergency meeting.
Two bullying nuclear weapons regimes have attacked my country. This is the second time that they have torpedoed diplomacy. He was kind there. He didn't say that they have, in the middle of diplomacy conducted in all good spirits, bombed the hell out of me. Normalization of crimes against humanity is not sufficient to describe this.
The attack on the school was just the latest chapter. This all began with Palestine. It all began with Gaza. Now we have twenty seven days of illegal war against my country. We have established you, America, you, Israel, you, the United Nations, have established there is no regard for humanitarian law.
600 schools in my country have been bombed. Hospitals have been bombed. Nursery homes have been bombed. Nursing homes have been bombed. Ambulances, both stationary and mobile, have been bombed.
Water sources have been bombed. Food sources have been bombed. These are all war crimes, all a product of the world ignoring Palestine. Brought it right back to that, the original crime, if you will. Then he ended up, but we have resolve, and I have no doubt they do.
That's whom he should be negotiating with. Witkoff is scared to death of Vavraki. He wouldn't dare go into the same room with him because he is a superb democrat diplomat, and Whitkoff hasn't a clue. He him and him and Kushner are just making money on their diplomatic envoy tours. So that's where we are.
We're at a point of utter confusion in the empire, and that cabinet meeting was a personification, if that's the right term, of it. I don't know where it goes from here, but I know it isn't good.
Speaker 0: Well, you mentioned buying time. What what is there to buy time for, though? I mean,
Speaker 1: who can buying time to be buying time.
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's it. He's buying time to be buying time, and he's moving all these forces around as if he's some kind of magician with military force when in fact, people like General Cain ought to be telling him, this is costing billions And to no end other than what, mister president, what is it that you attempt you are attempting to achieve? I listened to Keane this morning, you know, general Keane, that asshole. All he does is proselytize for the the the people he's making money off of. He's talking about how everything is gonna come down to we're gonna attack them, and we're gonna attack them with these forces that are currently being marshaled.
The muse, the two muse, the one from Okinawa, and I think the other one's coming from somewhere in Conus, and the eighty second airborne element, and these people who are special operators. We're gonna attack them. Where are we gonna attack them? Where are we gonna attack them on various islands? We've had islands offered by The UAE.
Oh, well, you mean that island out there you've been contesting with Iran now for about, what, fifty years, little Sparta? What are you gonna do from that island? It's not even near the Strait. What are you gonna do from that island? Just sit there and preach?
I'm sorry, general Keane. You have made the absolute error that if I were on a game floor with a major or lieutenant colonel participating in that game who turned around and told me what you just told me, that we are accomplishing all of our objectives, I would have thrown him off the game floor. Listen, son. You're not here to accomplish your objectives. You're here to accomplish your mission.
Your objectives being accomplished are supposed to lead to accomplishment of the mission. What's your mission? And you would have been unable to tell me. You would have been categorically unable to tell me what your mission was. That's where we are.
That's where we are. In military terms, this is the worst performance I've ever seen by a leadership sell from The United States. It's terrible. It's utterly terrible, and I blame them all from Kean to Hagsa to the president.
Speaker 0: How do you make sense, though, of this new leadership? Because a lot of people were worried about this because what's happening now was very much predictable. For once, the Iranians were quite open what they were gonna do despite Trump's claim that no one could have predicted they would attack all these bases, and that they would shut down the Strait Of Hormuz. Yes. Well, reasonably, I I I guess the the how quickly they shut down the Strait Of Hormuz came as a surprise to many, but but the overall direction, I think, should have been predictable.
But what is it with the administration? Why it it seems to be different, not just in his demeanor and the the vulgar language, but we also see these other components, like all these strange prayer meetings, and, you know, I'm I'm a Christian. I don't mind prayer, and I should have a greater role in the culture perhaps. But in politics and in the war rhetoric, it doesn't it seems, it doesn't belong there. If if anything, it's it's it's quite absurd.
Speaker 1: It's a complete bastardization of Jesus Christ. No question about it. It's an adoption of the Old Testament that Jesus Christ repudiated. His whole time on this Earth, his whole thirty three years or so of life was spent repudiating the Old Testament. He even said it again and again and again.
And now we have these people from Franklin Graham to Pete Eggseth that wanna resurrect the Old Testament, Ted Cruz included, and a host of other people, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house. They wanna resurrect this Old Testament god and use it as a cudgel to beat their enemies with. And their enemies are everyone from Democrats to the Iranians, and they like what Trump is doing. I can't believe that the leadership of both parties, though, is gonna continue this progress towards destruction because the cost of it, not just in dollars for a country that's already $40,000,000,000,000 in aggregate debt, but the cost for the world. This morning, we were looking at shipping.
We were looking at commerce in general. We were looking at key products in that commerce. One of them was helium, for example. You can't make computer chips in many regards, the more sophisticated ones anyway, without helium. Well, a large portion of the helium, we didn't even know this when we were looking at commodities and so forth, it comes through the Strait Of Hormuz.
It's like the urea. I I didn't know that much urea came through the Strait Of Hormuz. We are disturbing the world economy in such significant and profound ways right now that it might not recover for years. We are already in recession. If you just look at two quarters in a row, we are already in recession.
There is a really good chance we'll go into depression. And all because not all because, because a lot of this was, you know, foretold by our profligate fiscal policy, but this has sped it up and deepened it and made it instantaneous almost. And I don't think Scott Besson or Donald Trump have a clue that they're doing this, nor did anyone we were talking with this morning, that they know what they're doing to the global economy. If they do, they should all be taken out and shot tomorrow morning at dawn because this isn't just the empire. This is a lot of people.
This is seven, eight billion people that are gonna be impacted seriously and significantly by what we're doing if we don't stop very shortly. And I don't even know if it'll stop if we stop because we've started it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was gonna say even if we stop, I think even if the war would end tomorrow or today, a lot of the problems are already now, you know Yeah. Like in in place.
Speaker 1: Like 100 ships now off the straight that have no place to go, all loaded with crews. Granted, the crews are only 10 to 12 people, but, I mean, that's all it takes to run with these big ships today. But they're standing off the straight with nowhere to go. Yeah. Or this is thousand mariners, almost 4,000 ships.
Speaker 0: Well, this is the vulnerability, though, after, you know, decades of this globalization, interdependence, everyone making themselves reliant on the whole machinery working smoothly, and then suddenly won a taxi run. I mean, this is, yeah, truly disastrous. But I
Speaker 1: actually when I was at the Naval War College, I have wrote a paper on and actually studied, among other things, all the straits in the world that were critical. And I use as my guide for criticality the buildup at that time that was going on to produce the law of sea treaty. And I looked at what those straits might be given the law of sea treaty's regime. You know, the straits are either international or they're parsed, So they're partially here in this territorial sea, here in this territorial sea, and then the center where the sheeps ships pass actually pass is internationalized. I'm I'm not making an accurate trail of it, but they did a good job of showing where all the critical choke points were, critical seas, inland seas, for example, like the Sea Of Okhotsk, which was a big interest to us with the Pacific war with the Soviet Union at the time.
And I came away from that realizing that there were about six or seven in the world, that if you got control of them, and control meant you had to have all the paraphernalia of that control, air sea and subsea, maybe space, you can bring the world to its knees, and it's coming true. It's coming true in a most desultory and disgusting way. It's coming true. And the Strait Of Hormuz was not actually the most serious in the top five identified, but it it was one of the top five where you could really do the Bab El Mandeb was much more serious than the Red Sea. We're doing it.
We're doing it to ourselves. And as you pointed out, it's partially became because we let ourselves become so globalized, but it was pretty good. It worked pretty well as long as everything function. But then you throw something like this into it, and that's what I did in my scenarios. I threw things in there, and I saw a very, very badly disrupted world when I did.
And you know we weren't as globalized then. This is twenty five years ago. We weren't as globalized then as we are now.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems that Trump is a bit of a, you know, a one trick pony. He his approach to most adversaries is this, you know, massive threats, you know, show overwhelming strength, and then comes in the dealmaker to get, you know, an all or nothing deal. And the problem, though, seems to be that if Iran holds all the cards in terms of going up the escalation ladder, and also, it's the kind of deals that Trump wants, they're not really possible for Iran because they see this as an existential threat. They're not gonna give up anything. They they don't even wanna go back to the status quo because it was getting intolerable.
And also, even if there was a deal, which seems reasonable, there's no trust anymore. It's very likely they would be hit by missiles while they're there at the signing of the deal. So it's
Speaker 1: Israel's never gonna let it go anyway. The the the to the last Israeli, they're gonna keep it up. They're gonna keep it going. And by the way, I think we are getting close to the point where we might be thinking about the last Israeli. It's getting really dire for Israel.
Speaker 0: What do we know, though, about the situation in Israel? Because we don't get much footage out of Israel at the not at the moment at all, I think.
Speaker 1: The very fact that in Hebrew, Netanyahu announced last night in a moment of peak or a moment of just imbecility or just hysteria that he was gonna call up another 400,000. The battle in Lebanon is not going well for them. Hezbollah has shown a remarkable ability to stop tank columns and actually kill the lead tank, kill the rear tank, and then begin to pick off the tanks in between. You've got Israeli tankers unlimbering their tanks and running up the hills beside the columns, trying to get away from the fire. They have taken out seven or eight Merkavahs already in a single column.
They're not having a good time of it, in other words. I do now understand why he said he was gonna call up another 400,000, but then the question in my mind arose immediately. You just called up 300,000, 30% of whom didn't show up. What do you where are you gonna find these other 400,000? And even more to the point, where are you gonna find those that will show up?
Are these 65 year olds? Are these 18 year olds? What are these people that you're calling up? You do not have that big a nation. And you've probably seen the scenes.
One IDF general pulling his hair out and actually crying on the camera, a couple of mayors doing the same sort of thing. It's becoming extremely dangerous to be in Israel in any capacity other than in a bombshell. Nothing is going up virtually, and everything is coming down. There is no air defense left in Israel, and Iran has not run out of missiles. And in fact, now can use cheap drones to do major damage in Israel because they have nothing even to shoot the cheap drones down with.
But Lebanon and the real task they're they're they're confronting now in Lebanon in into that mix and then put what is still going on with regard to Gaza into that mix, and you have Na'Tali Bennett making these egregious statements. And the reason Bennett is making these statements is because he doesn't think Netanyahu has finished Hamas in Gaza. And he's right. He hasn't. This vaunted, massively successful, hugely, hugely prideful military, the IDF, in its ground component, is still not defeated Hamas in Gaza.
And Ben is angry at Netanyahu for taking his eye off the ball for letting the UN and Trump create this, you know, Trump city or whatever. So Israel is in turmoil right now. I I hate to say this, and I've been predicting it for a long time, but I I I don't feel any joy in having it coming true. Israel's gonna disappear. As a Jewish state in Levant, Israel is going to disappear.
And Netanyahu is gonna be the presider over that disappearance.
Speaker 0: Well, I saw the well, in the times of Israel, it was written or reported that IDF chief of staff, lieutenant general Samir, he warned that the IDF again, this is the chief of staff of the IDF arguing that IDF will collapse on itself due to the manpower shortage. This is quite a warning. Argued, you know, if you put up a red flag, I would put up all 10 red flags. This is a you know, it would seem this is the time not to double down, but to find an off ramp.
Speaker 1: You bet.
Speaker 0: You you say there is no off ramp, and Israel could cease to exist.
Speaker 1: So The off ramp requires Netanyahu to face the music, though, I think. And I think that's a big impediment for him finding an off ramp because if he faces the music, he's probably going to jail.
Speaker 0: But I I just have a hard time also, if you look at the Israel's no. Sorry. Iran's demand for The United States, that is to leave the region. If it doesn't do so voluntarily, it will essentially pressure the Gulf States to do so through, you know, conditioning access to the Strait Of Hormuz and also to bomb out all The US bases. So but it doesn't look like both The United States and Israel, two countries which, you know, have linked their security to global primacy and regional primacy or militarized that they were and also with leaders as they have now that they're willing to essentially argue, well, you know, we did a miscalculation.
We'll give Iranians what they want and walk back from this war, which many people have been pushing for for decades. So do you think there's a possibility instead of Israel ceasing to exist that they will instead reach for their nuclear weapons?
Speaker 1: In that regard, I have some very disquieting news from Ted Postal, the America's professor at MIT who's been advising a lot of us on nuclear issues. He called me at William and Mary while I was down there Tuesday night, and we talked at length. And I think he convinced me. I should say, I think what he's saying is at least 75, maybe 80% a possibility. I don't know what percentage he would put on it.
That the Iranians have sufficient enriched uranium now and a facility deeply underground that they could build a bomb, put the warhead on a Karamshah or similar type mach three, mach four missile, and deliver it. And maybe even more than one. And as Ted was talking to me, I went back to Kang Seok Ju and Yigun and Jim Kelly, our assistant secretary for The Pacific, going to Pyongyang and taking an economic package that was fairly robust. It had taken a lot to get it through George Bush, even more to get it through Dick Cheney, as a compensation for their giving up their pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And or, I can't remember which one, look at Jim, and in Korean translated immediately, said we already have the bomb.
And that ended the diplomatic mission. It was over. The chairman came home. I think we're looking at that sort of talent capability intent, if you will, deep underground in Iran. And if they have made a decision to do what Ted Postal said he thinks they have made a decision to do, and certainly they have the capacity and material to do and the expertise, then we're in a new ballgame.
Very shortly, we're in a very new ballgame because Iran will have not one or two, but three or four or five, as the Koreans said, they had six to 12 nuclear weapons. What where do we go from there if that is the case, and how does Iran demonstrate that? That's a huge question in my mind now after talking with Ted. It also brings us back to Netanyahu because I think still that Netanyahu is the most apt person to use not one, but multiple nuclear weapons when he gets in a real bind and is aware fully of that bind, which might be produced by these sort of a dumb rated elections that they're coming that are coming up. Will he do it?
Will he let the genie out of the bottle and use nuclear weapons? I take you back to our chief statement first bullet, and it was I'm being attacked. We're being attacked. Iran's being attacked. We're a non nuclear state, and we're being attacked by two nuclear weapon states, one admitted and one not admitted.
Maybe it's gonna be three here very shortly. And then you have to go over to Riyadh and ask yourself a question about what's the deal that Mohammed bin Salman has with Pakistan, and will Pakistan live up to it. So we're entering an entirely new dimension, which is why Ted called me to talk with me, of this conflict, a dimension that in addition to what's happening to the global economy, which won't go away and may indeed produce within the next six months depression, global depression, we're looking at the possibility of a nuclear exchange and a serious one. We also have Putin having talked with Xi, and both of them agreed, at least this is good intelligence, I think, that they are going to do what they can to help the strait stay open. And I assume that that means per Iran's conditions, that is to say, any state supporting Israel or supporting us in this war is not gonna be allowed to transit, and everyone else can transit.
How they're gonna affect that on the water as it were, I don't know. But we're bringing this to a head in a way that does not look good when you survey it and you say, what are the potential what are the potentialities in this set of circumstances? There are so many bad ones. And then you look at who's leading the empire, the baboon, the idiot that's leading the US empire, and the orangutans assembled around him. I can't be any more graphic and be accurate.
You really have deep, profound concern.
Speaker 0: That seems like this is going wrong on so many levels. On the battlefield, obviously, going terribly wrong, which, of course, could escalate into a nuclear exchange. As you said, Iran could already have a nuclear deterrent in case Israel goes down this path. We have the economy, a global economy melting down. You see the Trump administration, which, you know, seem to have his day in the sun after the attack on Venezuela, now sees, you know, its administration could fall apart.
It just seems this has a lot of dimensions to it, and all of them are pretty much terrible. Did you see any other wider ripple effects of this war? I mean, for example, simply having lack of access to gas, you know, this impacts key economic centers, be it to Taiwan with its semiconductor industries. What how do you see this possibly spreading or getting, I guess, wider ramifications?
Speaker 1: Well, we we did a little stubby pencil work now on campus, and we tried to look at how many countries, particularly on somebody's hit list like Taiwan, how many countries had how much days of supply before they began to fall apart, especially industrially, technologically, whatever, Taiwan again came to mind. But we were looking at other countries too, those that are involved in conflict or are looking at conflict like Pakistan and Afghanistan. And we came to the conclusion that there are so many hot points on the globe right now that are lit brighter, if you will, by this crisis in Southwest Asia that you could make a real good case for having what would very much look like a global war very shortly accompanied by, as we said, global depression and countries actually engaging in it, to solve their depression related problems. Not not to put too fine a point on it, but you just look at what's gonna happen in this country. I think when you get prices like now are occurring in South South Carolina Southern California for a gallon of gasoline back here in the East and in other states where it's still it's not low, but it's not 8 or $9 a gallon.
Someone told me yesterday that in Florida, went up to $3.59 or something like that. So that's unusual. Let that ripple across the country and let the other impacts that we're going to feel unquestionably going to feel if this really turns into not just a recession, which it already is. As was pointed out this morning, it already is a recession by the definition of recession. If we've had two quarters in a row, it's a recession.
Now it now it has to head down a little bit further in order to be a depression. And then once it becomes a depression, we're we're in a position that historically is very difficult to get out of. And if we're complicating it even further in in terms of extrication therefrom by this business of putting, you know, almost 4,000 ships off the Strait Of Hormuz with nowhere to go and other things like that because what we're doing is backing up things all across the globe, then we're just augmenting it and deepening it. It's almost as if, Glenn, there are some people who want a global conflict. I mean, I I hate to say something like that, but it almost looks like some of the financiers, you know, the Rothschilds, the JP Morgans, the Medicis, those types in the world today are are are fomenting for global conflict and won't be satisfied until they get it.
I I think they're gonna have very, very, heavy and deep recriminations if they do because this is not gonna be this is not gonna be fun for anyone. You're not gonna be able to go into the market and ride out and ride in and ride out and make fortunes off of this because you're looking at well, you're looking at it at its most profound and deepest concern level. You're looking at a nuclear exchange, and then you're looking at a large nuclear exchange. And as Ronald Reagan even came to realize in the latter part of his second term, We don't wanna do this because it's the end of the human race. Bingo.
That's we're we're we're walking down a very dangerous road right now, and we're the thing that troubles me so much is we're walking down in my country, in the empire. We're walking down it with fools, with absolute fools. And I don't just mean one or two. I mean a whole horde of them, from Hagstad and his Christianity and Trump and his grifting to Gabbard and her lack of courage to Bessent and his absolute disdain for children dying. You name it.
Secretary of energy who yesterday made a absolute ass of himself. Why you know, you I asked the question of my students. Why do you think we made the secretary of energy the latest statutory member of the National Security Council? Why did it take so long, and why do we make him? Well, the answer was because he's looks over nuclear weapons.
Bingo. That's national security to the ultimate. And yet what a fool we have as the secretary of energy. And I was thinking back to the one I can't remember his name now, but he was a nuclear physicist, and he helped Obama mightily with the JCPOA. And one of the reasons he was able to offer such extraordinary expertise to those negotiations was because he was a nuclear physicist.
Yes. He was secretary of energy, but he was a nuclear physicist. Probably the only one we've ever had who was qualified to be that. And now look who we have, a baboon in one of the most dangerous departments of all, a baboon. So we're in trouble, Glyn.
We're in deep trouble.
Speaker 0: Well, if Ted Postal is correct, the Iranians have, if not crossed the line yet, that they can cross it. And indeed, if the if they face an existential threat, and they think The US and Israel in desperation could reach for nuclear weapons, they have the material and the know how. It seems not improbable that they would develop a nuclear deterrent. I was just wondering how you see The US and Israel reacting to this, though, because it's not as if it would be you know, if you see Russia or China having a nuclear deterrent, then the first reaction is, okay. We have to be a bit more restrained.
But it looks as if the rhetoric around Iran that they bought into this, that is that they're all, you know, irrational, crazy mullahs. They wanna just destroy Israel and the West. And as Pete Teixeath might think, you know, that this is there for, you know, a war for God, you know, the good versus the evil, all of this nonsense. How would how would The US and Israel then react to Iranian nuclear deterrent? Because they probably wouldn't see it as a deterrent.
They would see it as a doomsday device or something.
Speaker 1: Well, let's look at another aspect before I get to that for you. This morning and I wasn't completely aware of this. I knew there was a target list as it were, but I didn't know how extensive and how specific it was. I saw some of it this morning. Iran has a target list for the region.
Read Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, they've already pretty much destroyed. They have a target list that is all the main truly decisive points in the region for all these countries. An interim step for them let's just let's postulate for a moment that we do put troops on the ground somewhere, limited troops because we don't have enough troops, but a lot of them there. The the rumors right now are the Meuse, which is about total about 4,500, the eighty second group that's coming in. All all of these other troops are basically special operating forces like we used against Venezuela.
So you got the rangers. You got the special operations aviation regiment, SOAR, out of Fort Campbell. You got all these people assembling around in places now, Ramshan and so forth, where they can descend on a rock. Let's say they do that, and they land on one or two of those islands in the Gulf, including possibly Karg, and they do a little damage here, a little damage there, and so forth. And Iran says to itself, well, now it's time for the interim step, and they attack all these targets.
That's gonna bring every single Gulf state to its knees because these targets are the critical ones. They are things like the output facility for Saudi Arabia, which is around 12,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Some of it goes on the pipeline and goes over near Jeddah and out through the Red Sea. By that time, the Houthis will probably eat be interdicting that too again. Some of it goes through the Strait Of Hormuz, the preponderance that way.
So we're talking about bringing all of the states in the region to their knees before they do anything else. What will we do then? Good question, Larry. What will we do then? Because we will have we've already lost our allies, I think, for all practical purposes, but we will have totally lost them in.
And not just lost them as in they don't want our protection anymore, but lost them because they will be basket cases. One has to ask the question, what will their own people do at that time when the ruling parties are pretty much wiping themselves out? So that's the interim step. Then you get to the answer to your question about nukes. Do I think Donald Trump would even consider that Iran was a target that he shouldn't use a nuclear weapon on?
Not for a minute. Do I consider that Bibi Netanyahu would feel that way? Not for a minute. So what do we have then? We have the empire and its vassal state in the Mediterranean, Israel, using nuclear weapons on a ostensibly non nuclear weapon state to destroy it.
Well, the only way you're gonna do that is if you use a lot of nuclear weapons. I do mean a lot. I mean a US ballistic missile submarine in the North Arabian Sea unloading its Tridents. What do you think is gonna happen when that happens? I'd I hesitate to even consider because there are other people on the other side who have the same arsenal.
In fact, there are two countries on the other side that have the same arsenal. Russia, even bigger than ours. China, slightly smaller than ours, but getting larger and certainly capable of wreaking havoc. So we're talking about the three predominant nuclear powers in the world then facing one another with the proposition of The US just used massive nuclear weapons on Iran. I don't wanna go there.
I don't wanna go there. I I I prefer maybe the grave before I go there.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, one would think that The US wouldn't go down that path given the risk of pulling in the other nuclear powers.
Speaker 1: And Trump has said Trump said to his credit, he said he won't. He has said he won't, but how many things is he said he won't, but he then subsequently did.
Speaker 0: I I was gonna say, it's you know, that this would make sense given how how predictably disastrous it would have been, but attacking Iran to begin with was predictably a disaster, so it doesn't fill me with optimism. Let me just ask you a last question, though. The what do you think what are the possible ways out of this then? Because as you said, the Iranians can go up the escalation ladder. They can go, you know, tit for tat.
They can cancel out all those, Gulf States if they want to. The US can't really do much in terms of penetrating the Iranian fortress besides using nuclear weapons. So unless we're going up that escalation ladder with all those, yeah, consequences, we definitely don't wanna risk. What is the possible out here? You know?
Because Trump if it was Yemen, he could declare victory and go home, but he can't go home because, it's not a possibility. So what are we looking at? What is a possible diplomatic pathway out of this, keeping in mind that the last two negotiations were used to launch surprise attacks?
Speaker 1: I think you just said it. I I don't think it's very likely, but I think you just said it. And you said when you said it, and because it's not very likely, you see the predicament we're in. But what you said was declare victory and leave, and that means leaving Israel too to its own end, and it will be an end. That's the best thing to do, declare victory and leave.
And let Iran on its own by itself without a single US sanction upon it because we would lift those sanctions. We would goad the Europeans into lifting their stew and say to Iran, rebuild your state. I would even offer some reparations were I there. I would never have created this situation in the first place, but were I suddenly lifted into it, I would offer offer some reparations. And I would tell I would tell that little quizzling state of Israel, do as you can, but stop the killing.
And I'd rebat I'd back myself up on the Gaza situation too. It's not gonna happen, so I you know, I'm pipe dreaming. It's not gonna happen. But declaring victory and leaving Mike, that kind of thing probably would appeal to Trump because he thinks he can spin anything with his people, and he only cares about his people. He can spin anything into their believing it.
And he's probably right with a significant core of his MAGA group still that he could spin this into a victory if he tried hard enough. Then come the midterms. He's gonna lose, and he's gonna be impeached. So are we gonna have the midterms? That's the next huge question for us.
Even if we get through this by some miracle like I just described, he's still gotta win the midterms, and all the polls show he's gonna lose, his party's gonna lose disastrously. And he knows impeachment is around the corner from that because I think even his own party will jump on it at that point. I remember Dick Nixon, and I remember how the Republicans agonized over joining in the impeachment proceedings. And then in the end, they went over to the White House, and they showed him the impeachment documents. And Dick said to himself, I think I'll resign instead of being the first president successfully removed from office by impeachment because they were so powerful.
The articles were so powerful. That's what needs to happen to Trump.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I have a feeling he's not gonna go down without yeah. That was what would done.
Speaker 1: Probably in a straight jacket. That's the way he'll leave the White House, in a straight jacket. I mean, I'm laughing, but I'm crying. That's probably the way he should leave the White House.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's sort of tragic how we ended up here. I thought I yeah. As I spoke recently with John Mershom, I was making the point that it was reason for so much optimism initially that you know, because in the first term, he didn't start any new war. He was the pretty much the first president not to do it.
It was all premised on the idea that, you know, The US had to adjust to this new international distribution of power, that it has it has to end the forever wars in The Middle East. It has to pull out of the and put an end to the Ukraine war. You know, not that the objectives were altruistic, but just if, you know, we have to focus on China and the Western Hemisphere. And then here we are, one year into it, still in Ukraine and now launching the worst war in The Middle East.
Speaker 1: It's If I read John, I'm right. I I've been I I watch him pretty frequently, and I know him a little bit. We start we started Quincy together, the Quincy Institute. He thinks it's all Israel's fault, ultimately. I mean, our fault for letting Israel do it, but nonetheless, Israel's fault.
I think it's bigger than that. I think it's more profound than that. Yeah. I I give you that Israel owns the congress, and they own lots of other aspects of our life. So many aspects now that I think Americans are actually revolted as they're finding out how much they own, and that's healthy.
But I don't think it's all that. I think it's imperial hubris too. And I think I saw that hubris up close and personal when the Cold War ended and h w Bush got beaten and driven out of the White House by a huge coalition back and funded by Israel. But nonetheless, we've just been off our rocker since that time. It's almost as if the victory in the Cold War made us demented.
And and that's so strange because it wasn't a victory. Gorbachev gave us the Soviet Union. We didn't take it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's the argument of Jack Matlock as well. He make because, you know, he well, you know, he was there negotiating into the Cold War, and he also warns that when the Cold War was the end of the Cold War was rewritten, that is instead of ending by negotiations in '89 to being a victory in 1991, the it changed well, at least impacted the the DNA then of the political leadership that the peace is not created through mutual understanding and diplomacy, but by staring down the opponent and defeating them. And this, yeah, in this, of course, in victory, one has his can plant the seeds of one's own of one's own destruction. So
Speaker 1: That was certainly Richard Chaney's philosophy. Fear, he said, more than once, I heard him. Fear is far better than love.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, thank you for taking the time on this very depressing topic. As always, I really hope you're mistaken about this possibility, but I yeah. Fair.
Speaker 1: I'll be more than willing to go into the streets in sackcloth and the ashes and wail and gnash my teeth. I'm wrong. I'm wrong.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: "Iran Holds All the Cards" - The Strategic Defeat of the U.S. https://youtu.be/DBOVT0UdHXg https://t.co/uJtuYW6Z4a
Video Transcript AI Summary
John Mearsheimer and Glenn discuss the trajectory of the United States’ foreign policy under Donald Trump, focusing on the shift from an anticipated pivot to Asia and a reduction of “forever wars” to the current Iran confrontation and its global implications.
- Initial optimism about Trump: Glenn notes a widespread belief that Trump could break with established narratives, recognize the post–Cold War power distribution, pivot to the Western Hemisphere and East Asia, end the “forever wars,” and move away from Europe and the Middle East. Mearsheimer agrees there was early optimism on Judging Freedom that Trump would reduce militarized policy and possibly shut down the Ukraine–Russia war, unlike other presidents.
- Drift into Iran and the current quagmire: The conversation then centers on how Trump’s approach to Iran evolved. Mearsheimer argues Trump often vacillates between claims of victory and deep desperation, and he characterizes Trump’s current stance as demanding “unconditional surrender” from Iran, with a 15-point plan that looks like capitulation. He describes Trump as sometimes declaring a “great victory” and other times recognizing the need for an exit strategy but being unable to find one.
- The escalation ladder and strategic danger: A core point is that the United States and its allies initially sought a quick, decisive victory using shock and awe to topple the regime, but the effort has become a protracted war in which Iran holds many cards. Iran can threaten the global economy and Gulf state stability, undermine oil infrastructure, and harm Israel. The lack of a credible exit ramp for Trump, combined with the risk of escalation, creates catastrophic potential for the world economy and energy security.
- Economic and strategic leverage for Iran: The discussion emphasizes that Iran can disrupt global markets via the Strait of Hormuz, potentially shut down the Red Sea with Houthis participation, and target Gulf desalination and energy infrastructure. The U.S. should maintain oil flow to avoid devastating economic consequences; sanctions on Iran and Russia were strategically relaxed to keep oil moving. The longer the war drags on, the more leverage Iran gains, especially as Trump’s options to harm Iran’s energy sector shrink due to the global economy’s needs.
- Exit possibilities and the limits of escalation: Glenn asks how Trump might avoid the iceberg of economic catastrophe. Mearsheimer contends that a deal on Iran’s terms would entail acknowledging Iranian victory and a humiliating US defeat, which is politically challenging—especially given Israeli opposition and the lobby. The Iranians have incentive to string out negotiations, knowing they could extract concessions as time passes and as U.S. desperation grows.
- Ground forces and military options: The possibility of a U.S. ground invasion is deemed impractical. Mearsheimer highlights that Desert Storm and the 2003 invasion involved hundreds of thousands of troops; proposed plans for “a few thousand” light infantry would be unable to secure strategic objectives or prevent Iranian counterattacks across the Gulf, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf, with Iran capable of inflicting significant damage on bases and ships. The discussion stresses that even small-scale operations could provoke heavy Iranian defense and strategic backlash.
- European and NATO dynamics: The Europeans are portrayed as reluctant to sign onto a risky campaign in support of U.S. objectives, and the episode warns that a broader economic crisis could alter European alignment. The potential breaching of NATO unity and the risk of diminished transatlantic trust are underscored, with Trump’s stance framed as blaming Europeans for strategic failures.
- Israel and the lobby: The influence of the Israel lobby and its potential consequences if the war deteriorates are discussed. Mearsheimer notes the danger of rising antisemitism if the war goes catastrophically wrong and Israel’s role in pressuring continued conflict. He also observes that a future shift in U.S. strategy could, in extreme circumstances, diverge from traditional Israeli priorities if the global economy is at stake.
- Deep state and decision-making: The final exchange centers on the role of expertise and institutions. Mearsheimer argues that Trump’s distrust of the deep state and reliance on a small circle (Kushner, Whitkoff, Lindsey Graham, media figures) deprived him of necessary strategic deliberation. He contends that a robust deep-state apparatus provides essential expertise for complex wars, offering a counterpoint to Trump’s preferred approach. He contends the deep state was not fully consulted, and that reliance on a limited network contributed to the strategic miscalculations.
- Concluding tone: Both acknowledge the grave, uncertain state of affairs and the high risk of escalation and miscalculation. They express a desire for an optimistic resolution but emphasize that the current trajectory is precarious, with signs pointing toward a dangerous escalation that could have wide-ranging geopolitical and economic consequences. They close with a note of concern about the potential for rash actions and the importance of considering responsible exits and credible diplomatic channels.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor John Mersheimer. So thank you very much for coming on the program. I I was hoping today we can, yeah, maybe first take a step back and look at the wider strategy of The United States under Trump because I was quite optimistic about his reelection. That is, he seemed to be capable of breaking from, you know, narratives and ideologies, which I think the political West followed blindly over the past decades.
And this seemed to be a requirement to navigate or adjust at least to the new realities of the world, which was that the unipolar distribution of power was gone. So he recognized The US couldn't be everywhere, so it's more or less suggested, you know, we have to go to the Western Hemisphere and East Asia, which means we have to pivot out of the Middle East and Europe, and that meant ending the war with Russia. This trapped US resource in Europe, and it pushed the Russians towards China. And also in the Middle East, he was quite consistent on ending the forever war. So overall, what I'm trying to say is although, you know, he's, you know, a man who was not very civilized in his demeanor, what he said was a lot more rational than what I heard from other politicians.
So that's why I wanted to hear from you. What do you make of his direct his direction now? What's gonna happen to the pivot to Asia and this wider strategy which we saw outlined in the national security strategy of December 25?
Speaker 1: I think, Glenn, the best evidence of what you're talking about regarding how people like us thought about Trump, initially in terms of foreign policy, and what people think now is, reflected in the lineup of people, on Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano's show. And, of course, both you and I are regulars on the judges' show. I think if you go back to the first maybe six, seven months after president Trump was elected, virtually everybody who appeared on that show was quite optimistic that Trump would represent positive movement in terms of American foreign policy, that there would be no more forever wars. He wouldn't start any new wars, period. And there would be much less emphasis on a militarized foreign policy.
And I think most importantly at the time, think we all thought that there was a reasonable chance he would shut down the Ukraine Russia war. So there was a lot of optimism about him. And of course, lot of the people on the show, the Americans, didn't vote for Trump. Some did. But everybody, I think, was generally pretty enthusiastic about the direction that he was gonna take The United States.
I think now if you watch Judging Freedom, almost everybody on that show is, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, very critical of president Trump, that, he is seen to have blown it, to missed a terrific opportunity to change the direction that American foreign policy was going in. And if anything, he's on the old path. I think the key issue today is the Iran war and all I can say is it's truly remarkable that he allowed himself to fall into this trap. This is much worse than Afghanistan, much worse than Iraq. I mean if you think about the Iraq war in 2003, at least in the initial stages, George W Bush could land on the aircraft carrier and effectively declare mission accomplished, which is another way of saying we won.
Trump can't do that. It's been clear almost from the beginning that this is the lost cause. But more importantly, the potential for really serious damage here is enormous. And here we're talking mainly about the international economy, but not only the international economy. So he's entered a war that he can't win and could haveand one could argue was likely to have catastrophic consequences for the world, not just for him and his presidency.
So it's really quite remarkable when you think about it, where he has ended up in a quite short period of time. You know, he was put in office 01/20/2025 and the war started against Iran on 02/28/2026. That's effectively thirteen months after he's in office. So he starts off looking like he has a winning strategy, but thirteen months later he's jumped into a huge quagmire that he can't get out of. Truly amazing.
Speaker 0: Well, regarding optimism, though, it's I wouldn't say that it was rooted in being naive because if you look, he did have a first term. And unlike all his predecessors, you know, going back to World War two, he didn't start any new wars, so he seemed to follow through on his rhetoric. So that that's why this has come as a bit of a surprise how many, you know, his his foreign policy in the second time around, why he went down this path. But how how do you make sense of the demands he's making now? Because you said he can't really get out of this.
But if you listen to his language, he suggests that the Iranians are now begging for a deal. They're offering him all these ships full of oil if they just, you know, he will be so kind to give them a deal. And Iranians are simply saying they're not even talking to The US at the moment. So how how do you make sense of it? Because the demands he put for the Iranians, it was essentially full capitulation.
It was no nuclear enrichment. It's no ballistic missiles. No partnership with regional allies. It's yeah. Capitulation, I think, would be a good description.
Speaker 1: Well, think the words that he used that always stick in my head, Glenn, are unconditional surrender. Right? And by the way, if you look at the 15 plan that he's now putting forward to the Iranians as the basis for working out a deal, it looks like unconditional surrender. And when I first saw the 15 plan, I thought it was a joke. I thought that this was disinformation that the Iranians or the Israelis had put out.
I couldn't believe this was a serious plan. But as you know, some days president Trump thinks that we've won a great victory, that the war is over with and we just have to sign the documents of surrender. Other days, you can tell he's quite desperate and he understands that he has made a huge mistake and that he's got to find an exit strategy and he really can't. So he goes back and forth. His rhetoric just changes all the time.
It's quite remarkable. But the fact is, Glenn, he is and we are in profound trouble. Now what's going on here? We started this war thinking that we would win a quick and decisive victory. When I say we, I'm talking about the Trump administration because people like us, of course, understood that this was a cockamamie strategy from the get go.
But the West, The United States, and Israel started this war thinking that they could employ a shock and awe strategy built around decapitation. We'd decapitate the regime, we'd shock and awe the Iranians, and people would rise up in the streets, they'd overthrow the regime, and we would live happily ever after. This was the basic strategy. We had to win a quick and decisive victory for this to work. And it failed.
By the way, anybody who has a basic understanding of international relations should have understood that this would fail from the get go. It was just not going to work. And it didn't work. But then, we found ourselves in a protracted war. Here we are.
And I don't think most people fully realize it, but the Iranians hold almost all the cards in a protracted war. First of there's no real good exit strategy for Trump and if he goes up the escalation ladder, which is the other alternative, the Iranians beat him at almost every step of the ladder. I think it's very hard for most Americans to understand this, especially people who watch Fox News and are loyal supporters of the president. They think that we're winning. They listen to him say that, you know, we've already won.
Why haven't the Iranians signed the surrender papers? But if you look carefully at what's going on here and you have a basic understanding of military history and military strategy, you see very quickly that we are in terrible shape as you go up the escalation ladder. So again, the point I'm making to you is he has no exit strategy. He can't find the exit ramp now. And if he thinks about going up the escalation ladder, he gets stymied on every rung.
Now, why do I say that? First of all, Iran can wreck the international economy. It can wreck the international economy. And one could argue that we're sort of heading in that direction. I like to say there's an iceberg out there in the water and we're heading towards that iceberg.
We are the Titanic. And I think President Trump basically understands that and I think his advisors understand that and they're trying to turn the ship so that we don't hit the iceberg. But anyway, my point is, my first point is, that Iran can wreck the international economy. Furthermore, it can destroy, literally destroy, most of the Gulf States because those states depend on desalination plants and they depend on oil infrastructure. And those targets are easy for the Iranians to hit.
And if the Iranians decided that they were going to go after a country like Saudi Arabia and take out all their desalination plants and take out their oil or energy infrastructure, they'd basically wreck Saudi Arabia as a functioning society. Then there's the whole question of the Israelis. The Israelis are running out of defensive missiles. The Iranians obviously have lots of missiles. They can do enormous damage to Israel.
I don't think they can do to Israel what they could do to countries like Saudi Arabia or The UAE, but there's no question that they can do enormous damage to Israel. Then there's the whole question of ground forces. We should talk more about this. We don't have any serious ground forces option. This is a joke.
Right? There's just no ground forces option there. And in fact, if we go down that road, we're just gonna make a bad situation even worse. Then, to take it a step further, what we have to do, what President Trump has to do to avoid a catastrophe in the international economy is he's gotta make sure there's a lot of oil out there in the global market. It's got to be a lot of oil.
This is why he took economic sanctions off of the Russians. Just think about that. We have taken sanctions off the Russians so that their oil can get out into the market. More importantly for what we're talking about here, we've taken sanctions off the Iranians and we're allowing just think about this. We're allowing Iranian ships to go through the Strait Of Hormuz because we want that Iranian oil out there in the market, the global market.
So what's happening here is although we are bombing Iranians and doing significant damage to their country and murdering innocent people. At the same time, the Iranians are not suffering economically. So what this tells you is that President Trump has to be extremely careful that he doesn't go up the escalation ladder because if he goes up the escalation ladder, the end result is that the Iranians will win and we will lose in a truly serious way. So we're in deep, deep trouble.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's a good point with the escalation ladder because, like, the Iranians have a lot of cards to play here that is not just to shut down the Strait Of Hormuz, but if they use Yemen to shut down the Red Sea, as you mentioned, with Saudi Arabia, now they're cut off from all access if you destroy their desalination plants. Easy. No water hit their energy fields, no energy. And in places like Qatar, where 85 to 90% of the population are foreigners, they would begin to leave, and it would only be a desert lift, which is how they found it.
So it is it's probably one of the most vulnerable countries of the world, this this state. So it is but you would have thought they would have considered this before going into this war because the Iranians were quite open about what they could do and what they would likely do. I know Trump said, you know, who would have ever ever thought that they would strike US bases around the region? You know, they they kept saying though, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna shut down the Strait Of Hormuz.
We're gonna attack your bases. And even now in Iraq, I'm not sure if there's Americans left, but the Europeans are pretty much all out. So it's after twenty three years. So they they they seem to be able to, at least so far, achieve some of the objectives they set out. But you often made the point that in Ukraine, a political settlement is unlikely because the different sides there, you know, they're too far apart.
There's nothing to agree on. But in this instance, though, you know, even if this would only be Trump's opening position, you know, demanding full unconditional surrender, the Iranians also have their own conditions, which makes it very difficult even for, you know, Trump to declare victory and go home. So how how do you see this playing out then? Is is there any solution to this war at all? I mean, can Trump go home?
Speaker 1: Here's the problem, I think, Glenn. It's twofold. First of all, as you noted, the two sides are miles apart on in terms of their demands. Right? There's no bargaining space here.
And, of course, you and I have made this same argument regarding the Ukrainians and the West on one side and the Russians on the other side. There's just no bargaining space. The demands of each side are so in so at odds with the demands of the other side. You just kinda can't see how you get a deal. That's point number one.
The second point I'd make is that if you're playing Iran's hand, you have no interest in cutting a deal now. You have huge leverage now for the reasons I described before and the longer the war goes on, the more leverage you have. The longer the war goes on, the more desperate President Trump is gonna get. He has to you know, the Titanic is heading toward the iceberg and you have got to start changing course now. Otherwise, you're gonna hit the iceberg.
That's where we are. All you have to look at is the yields on ten year treasury bonds in The United States, which many people view as being in a danger zone and in a situation where it's only gonna get worse. Right? This is really potentially disastrous. Right?
We have to do something to fix this problem. This is why President Trump said on Monday that he was not going to attack Iran that evening. Remember, he had promised that he was gonna attack Monday evening, I think that was the twenty third, March twenty thirdand the day of March 23, in the morning, he called it off. And he said, I'll give them five days. And he just said, Now I'll give them ten days.
What's going on here? It would be suicidal for President Trump to launch an all out attack on Iranian energy infrastructure. This would be nuts. Again, as I said before, we have a deep seated interest in making sure there's as much Iranian oil out in global markets as possible. By the way, just parenthetically, you know, there's all this talk about us conquering Cargilland people say, You want to understand that 90% of Iranian oil goes through Cargilland and we can conquer it?
I don't think we can conquer it, but let's assume we conquer it. What are we going to do? Conquer Cargill and cut off the flow of oil into global markets? We're not going to do that. You remember when President Trump said that we bombed Cargill and he emphasized very clearly that he only hit military targets.
Why did he do that? Because he understands again that you have to get that Iranian oil and you have to get that Russian oil. You have to get all the oil you can out into global markets because if you look at what's happening in the Strait remember, about 20% of the world's oil comes through the Strait. I would argue that today it's been reduced. What comes through the Strait has been reduced to about 5% of what it was before February 28.
Just think about that. 20% of the world's oil comes through the strait. And we're not even talking about fertilizers here, which is another huge problem, but just oil. 20% comes through the strait and at this point in time only 5% of what was going through the strait on February 27 is now going through the strait. This is a huge problem.
So this tells you that we cannot go after Iranian oil and wreck their energy infrastructure. And that means the Iranians have huge leverage over us. And the longer this goes on, when you think about the consequences for the world's food supply of all these fertilizers not making it through the strait, and then you think about the consequences of only 5% of the prewar flow of tankers through the strait is now taking place, you see that the potential for disaster is huge. And the Iranians have a vested interest in stringing this out because the more they string it out, the more desperate president Trump gets. And the more desperate president Trump gets, the more leverage they have.
What's really gonna cause president Trump to cave in a major way is when he comes to understand that if he doesn't shift course, the Titanic is going to hit the iceberg. And the pressure is already there. Again, that is why I believe he did not attack this past Monday, gave them five more days, and has now given them ten more days. And what happens at the end of ten days if the Iranians don't cave to his preposterous 15 plan. Is he going to bomb Iran?
Is he going to bomb their energy infrastructure? I don't think so. He has no option here. You know, just getting back to your original point about five minutes ago to how we got into this situation, how we could have allowed ourselves to be put in such a vulnerable position, the fact is, again, Glenn, they thought they were going to win a quick and decisive victory. I've studied a lot of military history, you see this in so many cases.
Countries go to war and they go to war because they're optimistic about their chances. It makes perfect sense. You don't go to war if you think you're going to lose. President Trump didn't go to war thinking he was going to end up in the situation that he is in now. He went to war thinking he was going to do another Venezuela operation: float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, bring the Iranians down, be able to proclaim victory, have a parade in New York or something like that.
That's what he thought. But once that doesn't happen and you're in a war of attrition, oh, you are in deep trouble. And you are especially in deep trouble in this case because the Iranians hold so many of the cards. And again, the point I'm making to you is we want a deal now. Trump wants a deal But he wants a deal on his terms, but he can't get a deal on his terms.
And in fact, again, just to repeat myself because I think it's such an important point, the Iranians have a vested interest in just letting this one go. And at some point down the road, when they have much more leverage then than they do now, then trying to work out a deal that's favorable to them.
Speaker 0: I think that's an important point, which important that people also understand that the idea that time is on the Iranian side. Because if you look at the military component, the Iranians can continue to just pump out these very cheap drones. You know, they can it is is easy to manufacture. They're cheap. The industrial potential can remain, and and these, you know, $5,000 drones are sent, and The US has to use this million dollar interceptive missile.
So they they kinda continue to pump them drones while The US diminishes its potential. So, again, time is on their side. And also, as you suggest no. So as I just said, in the economic era, they they're actually making more money now that the prices are going up. So while The US is, you know, going somewhere very dark and dangerous.
So it it does I can see, you know, if you were advising the Iranians, you know, you would say, you know, you're not in a rush to to wrap this one up, especially when these are the deals or the terms they're putting on the table. But but I was wondering, when he started this countdown, first forty eight hours, then five days, then ten days, it reminded me a little bit about what he did with the Russians. He was also putting, I think, fifty days, then he went down to twelve days. You know, when the countdown was over, they were Russia was gonna be hit by the toughest sanctions ever. And when the clock finally ran out, instead, you know, he's called Putin, they agreed to meet in Alaska.
So, you know, it just pushed the whole thing aside. But is this something similar that can happen here? Because I guess the difference is that the Russians really wanted a deal, but for the Iranians, it's unclear what Trump can actually deliver. Because if they hold on to Hormuz, they can they can, you know, essentially put up a toll booth. They can get reparations from The Gulf States for this attack.
They can demand that they expel The US bases, which have already been many of them blown up, and they can even compel them to ditch the dollar in their energy trade. So which links The US financially to the region. So they they can get everything they want with military means, which means Trump really has to have something else to offer if he wants to get them to the table. I'm just wondering what is it? I if, again, if Trump calls you, how do he, you know, avoid the iceberg?
How do we get out of here? What can he do at this point in time?
Speaker 1: The truth is he is gonna have to make major concessions to the Iranians, and it will be clear when he makes those major concessions that the Iranians won a clear victory. It will be a humiliating defeat for The United States. If he wants to end this, given what you and I have been saying about what happens is you go up the escalation ladder and the fact that there is no easy, exit strategy here. He really has no choice in the final analysis, but to cave in to most of Iran's demands and accept a humiliating defeat. And that will be extremely hard to do.
And it'll be extremely hard to do in part because of Israel. The Israelis will not want us to make any concessions. The Israelis will want us to continue the war. But I think this will be a case where we will be so desperate to avoid a global catastrophe that Trump will ignore the Israelis and do what he has to do. Now, he may not do that.
Right? He may feel that he just can't make the necessary concessions that the Iranian demands are just too outrageous. And those Iranian demands would be hard for anyone to swallow, anybody in the White House, whether it's President Trump, President George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, the demands that the Iranians are making are really quite amazing. So even if you accept only, you know, 75% of them or even 50% of them, that would be very difficult to do. And this is the enormous problem that he faces. And one can easily imagine let me take away the word easily one can imagine him not accepting a deal and just thinking that he can stick it out and the end result is we'll basically go off a cliff economically. I think a lot of people don't see that as a serious possibility at this point in time.
But I think if you look at newspapers like the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal carefully, you look at the business section, the articles that are written about the economy and about fertilizers and food and so forth and so on, you see that we could very easily go off a cliff here. We're talking about a serious situation and it's not clear what President Trump will do. As I like to say, Glenn, I think that when you study international history, there are these handful of cases that stand out where policymakers get into desperate situations and when policymakers get into desperate situations, they sometimes roll the dice, they do things that lead to catastrophe, and my favorite example here is the Japanese decision making process that led to Pearl Harbor. The United States was squeezing Japan economically between, actually between the 1940 and Pearl Harbor, which was 12/07/1941. And we really began to squeeze starting 07/25/1941.
This is shortly after Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union and we were really putting pressure on Japan after that. And the Japanese were desperate because they were heavily dependent on The United States. They were remarkably dependent on The United States for oil, scrap iron, and scrap steel. And we had basically made it impossible for them to import those things from The United States. We had frozen their assets, their economic assets, and they were just desperate.
And they understood full well that attacking The United States at Pearl Harbor was likely to end in catastrophe. It's very important to understand this. The Japanese understood that they were attacking Godzilla and that it was likely to end in disaster. But they did it anyway because they were desperate. And when the level of desperation reaches a certain point, states, countries, leaders sometimes do remarkably foolish things that end up with catastrophic consequences.
And this, of course, is what happened with the Japanese. So the question you have to ask yourself is what is President Trump going to do as his level of desperation increases? And by the way, you catch glimpses of how desperate he is on occasion when you sort of watch his body language and you watch what he's saying about the war against Iran. He understands full well that he's in deep trouble. And I'm sure his advisors are telling him that if we don't shut this one down, we could go off a cliff.
His advisors, especially his economic advisors, are not fools. They understand what's going on here. And they're looking for an exit ramp and they can't find one. And they understand full well that the Iranians are playing hardball with them. And I'm sure they understand full well that the Iranians have powerful cards to play.
And what's happening, I'm sure, behind closed doors I'm sure that behind closed doors the level of desperation is increasing every day. And they're searching, you know, they're looking for a solution here. But as you and I were saying before, where is the solution? Where is the exit strategy? You know, a number of my friends who I talk to about this say, What President Trump should do is declare victory and get out.
He can't do that. Who's going to believe that he achieved a victory? Furthermore, the other side gets a vote in this one and the other side's not gonna quit, right? They're gonna continue to put pressure on The United States and they're gonna continue to put pressure on Israel even if we say we won. They want us completely out of the Middle East.
This is truly remarkable. One of their demands is they just want us to go home. Is President Trump going to declare victory and go home? I don't think so. He may declare victory, but he's going to stay there militarily, maybe not employ military force against Iran, but we'll be there and the Iranians will continue to attack us.
So declaring victory and getting out, so to speak, where does that leave you? Nowhere. So he's got to figure out a way to shut this one down, and that means reaching some sort of modus vivendi with Iran. How does that happen? Again, goes back to our earlier discussion of that 15 plan that Trump put forward and then the various demands that the Iranians are putting forward.
You know, how do you find some bargaining space there? And again, I don't see how you do it. It you know, the Iranians have no incentive.
Speaker 0: Oh, the well, Iranian demands, they seem excessive. However, they they're also achievable, it appears, because not only can they strike the bases, but as I mentioned, as long as they control the Strait Of Hormuz, they can squeeze the Gulf States to decouple in terms of either, you know, not rebuilding the bases or hosting the troops. They can, you know, decouple from the petrodollar. There's a lot of things they can do, which, you they can continue to do even if Trump goes home and declares victory. So it is a difficult position.
But in terms of the pressure, though, I think this is also a problem with all the pressure which has been put on Iran because not only do they have a lot of cards to play if they decide to go up the escalation ladder, But also, they they can't really afford though to go back to the status quo either. I mean, they've been living decades under these crippling sanctions. They had two surprise attacks on their country only a few months in between. They don't want another one. And also, if even if they get an agreement saying, oh, we promise not to attack you, you know, there was just these surprise attacks happened during negotiations.
There's no trust anymore. So so I think they are in a position where not they only have a lot of cards to play, but they're willing to absorb an immense amount of pain in order to to to put a final end to this, which, as as you said, would be to expel the US bases. And, again, it sounds excessive, but they're already pulling out of Iraq, and this is after twenty three years. So it's not inconceivable. Again, they as we as you said, they can shut down the Gulf States as well if they don't fall in line.
So it's just hard to see except, you know, if he's reaching for a nuclear weapon, what else he can possibly do to to push this one back. But sorry. You were
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just wanna I wanna make two points Just to piggyback on what you said, one thing we haven't talked about, which is enormously important, is the Houthis and the Saudis I mean, the Houthis and the Iranians together can shut down the Red Sea. And about 20% of the world's oil and gas comes through the Persian Gulf and through the Strait Of Hormuz, but another 12% comes through the Red Sea. And if the Houthis join in with the Iranians, which is a serious possibility, and they shut down the Red Sea as well, that will further exacerbate the situation. So we don't want to lose sight of that.
But also, Glenn, just building on what you said a minute ago, and of course I agree completely with what you said, it is important to emphasize that Iran is dealing with an existential threat here. The Israelis especially, but also the Americans, want to wreck their state. They talk about regime change but the Israelis are interested in more than regime change. They want to destroy Iran. They want to do to Iran what happened to Syria.
They want to break it into pieces. They want to make Iran a number of states or one single state that is remarkably weak. This is an existential threat. And when you face an existential threat, and as you pointed out, they've faced this existential threat for a long period of time, they know they can't trust the Americans and the Israelis, given that dimension of the equation, they have a deep seated interest in continuing this war and pushing the Americans and the Israelis to make huge concessions to them. So if you look at their incentives and you marry that to their capabilities going up the escalation ladder, which we've talked about and which you were just talking about, again, you just say to yourself, How do you end this one quickly?
Just doesn't make sense from an Iranian point of view. And given that they get a vote, you can't get a deal.
Speaker 0: Well, this is why it's so dangerous when a strategic situation boils down to all or nothing. This is when countries are willing to do a lot of crazy things. But it is if if there was a possibility, though, for example, if The US realized it can't dislodge Iran from Hormuz, if it realizes the difficult position, if there was a situation where, you know, Trump could offer the Iranians, you know, you can co manage the Strait Of Hormuz with the Gulf States in return. We remove the sanctions. You know, Trump can say, we are this you know, are bringing our home troops our troops home from the Middle East according to our grand strategy.
You know, the the Iranians now have peace with the Gulf States. You know, he solved the Shi'a Sunnah problem. I mean, it it it could come as a victory, but it seems hard to achieve now that he keeps doubling down on this very dangerous rhetoric that you know, I even watch Sean Hannity on Fox News arguing that the Iranians should also pay for the war, you know, for all the bombs that we had to drop on them. It is it's just I think his rhetoric's becoming a a key problem, though, by overselling this victory he proclaimed. I Well, if I
Speaker 1: can just say something very quickly here, Glenn. I think what happens in situations like this is that when the war goes south, the people who got you into the war don't wanna retreat. They don't wanna say, we were wrong, let's pull back. That's not their response almost always. The response is instead, let's double down.
So the Wall Street Journal, Sean Hannity, Lindsey Graham, General Jack Keane, that whole crowd that helped produce this disaster fully understand what's happened. And they don't want to retreat now and concede defeat. What they want to do is double down. And they are putting pressure on President Trump to up the ante, and they are making arguments that we can win, we have cards to play, we can go up the escalation ladder. So the problem that Trump faces is that he and his advisors surely understand that there is a great deal of truth in what people like you, Glenn Deeson, me, John Mearsheimer, think.
They understand that. But at the same time, they have all these people on the other side and these are their close supporters. These are their compadres who helped get them into this mess who were telling them that we can get out of it. And they're of course spinning all sorts of stories about how we do it. And this will go this means that the war will probably go on for, you know, a couple more weeks before we're on the verge of falling off a cliff.
And at that point it may just be too late. So this is why we shouldn't be too optimistic about President Trump figuring out that he's in a desperate situation, and in that case, what he ought to do is back off and try to work out a deal.
Speaker 0: Well, an important component of this war, though, is, of course, Israel. They're the ones who launched the first strike here. And you you often make the point that, you know, if US and Israeli interests and security was, you know, completely aligned, then there wouldn't be a need for the lobby. But, again, there is a lobby which suggests that these differences have to be, you know, ironed out. How do you see this being impacted by when The US has to get out of this war?
Because, you know, the the Israelis have been lobbying for this war now for, what, thirty plus years for an attack on Iran. They finally got it. If The US leaves now, Iran's gonna probably end up in a much, much more favorable position. So do you see a break or further break at least in US Israeli relations as a consequence of this war? I know it's not over yet, and, you know, it can still some unknown directions this war can take.
But what are the risks you think of The US and Israel, I guess, parting ways to some extent?
Speaker 1: Well, as you know, I think that in almost all cases, certainly in the past, when Israel's interest and America's interest pointed in opposite directions, The United States always did what was in Israel's interest in large part because of the power of the lobby. And I've argued or I should say Steve Walt and I have argued for long, for a long time, that this is not in America's national interest obviously. But it's also not in Israel's interest either. But this could be a very different case because if we're in a situation where it looks like the global economy is going to crash, I think that would lead President Trump to just tell the Israelis and to tell the lobby he doesn't care what they think. He's gonna do everything he can to avoid going off the cliff, this sort of thing.
So this could be a different case. This could be a case that in a sense, contradicts the basic argument that Steve Walt and I lay out in our work on the lobby. There's another dimension to this that bears mentioning. It's a very sensitive subject, but almost everybody I know believes that Israel and the lobby led us into this war. And if it's a catastrophe, there is a great danger that people will say that the Jews are responsible for causing this war, which is simply not true because huge numbers of Jews oppose this war.
And the Israel lobby is comprised of Christian Zionists as well as Jews, and by no means do all Jews belong to the lobby. So it is very important to understand that. But nevertheless there is a real danger here that if this war goes south in a serious waywe go off a cliff, we hit the iceberg, whatever phrase you want to use, and people see it as a war that Israel and the lobby is principally responsible for, that would cause a wave of anti Semitism, not just in The United States but outside The United States as well. And I actually think that a lot of people inside of the lobby and a lot of Israelis and certainly a lot of American Jews understand this danger here. So I think if it looks like we're going off a cliff, I think the lobby would not put much pressure on Trump to cut a deal with the Iranians because of the potential threat of a massive increase in antisemitism as a result of a lost war, a catastrophic war that's blamed on Israel and the lobby.
Speaker 0: I think you're probably correct in this. And but it also has to be said that a lot of the leading critics within The US Of Israel are American Jews, though. It's so it's it's not as if and, you know, a lot of the hardcore Zionists are actually Christians. So to to just say, you know, everything Israel's do is to to compare to to Judaism, I think, would be a you know, the wrong direction to take. And but, of course, the racist are rarely, you know, purely rational, of course, in their rhetoric.
So but, no, I I see that danger as well. How do you see, though, the the Europeans in this? Because they played a very strange role. They, you know, they initially they well, they weren't invited, and then they suggested that they would send weapons. Trump didn't want their weapons because he already won.
Now he wants them to open up the Strait Of Hormuz. They don't want to because, you know, it's too late. It's, you know, it's all I think he says he used the iceberg and the Titanic metaphor. I think it was a French general who said that, you know, the Titanic already hit the iceberg, now Trump invites us to join. You know, like he says, he should have invited us before at least.
This is more or less the argument. How do you explain the European position on this? And how, I guess, to widen it further, do you think this would affect NATO? Because Trump already, on more than one occasion, argued, you know, NATO now is a paper tiger. Mark my words because you'll remember this in a few months' time.
We will remember you betrayed us. You know, you didn't come to help us. We do everything for NATO. Marco Rubio said, you know, Ukraine is not America's war. It's a European Europe's war, and we helped you, and you don't help us.
So it looks like they're building up a case against the Europeans and against NATO. I was just wondering how how do you see this dimension of the war because it is an important you know, it would have further ripple effects is my point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There are a lot of points to be made here. One thing that gets lost in the discourse today because the focus is laser like on Iran is the Ukraine war. And if the Ukraine war were to go south this summer, the Ukrainian military were to start losing in a serious way on the battlefield, this would have disastrous consequences for Trump, for NATO, and for transatlantic relations. So we wanna keep in the back of our mind that there is this other, I would say, impending disaster out there that could make a bad situation worse.
But just focusing on the Iran situation, you know, here we are again with the Americans doing something, not consulting the Europeans, getting into trouble, and then asking the Europeans for help. And the Europeans, of course, understand full well that this is a lost cause and they don't want to get involved. I mean, the idea that European countries should send their navies to join the American Navy as they try and push through the Strait Of Hormuz with naval power alone, This is, you know, crazy. The American Navy, the most powerful navy in the world, won't even go near the Strait Of Hormuz, right, for fear that Iranian cruise missiles will sink those American naval vessels. The idea that the French Navy or the British Navy is gonna be this huge force multiplier that allows our Navy plus their navies to forge through the strait is kinda crazy.
Who believes that? You know, we're talking about 1915 all over again when the British Navy tried to push its way through the Dardanelles and ran into mines and had to turn around. I mean, it's just not gonna happen. And, you know, there's all this talk about maybe using ground forces. This is not a serious argument.
Ground forces. And the European ground forces, few in number. You really think the European armies are ready to invade Iran or conquer Karg Island or any other island? I mean, this is just not in the cards. And of course, what's happening here is Trump is desperate and now he's blaming the Europeans.
Understands that he's gonna lose and he's got to blame somebody else. It can't be him. After all, he's a genius. Right? He's one of the great strategists of all time.
So this disaster can't be his fault. So whose fault is it? Well, has to be the Europeans' fault. All we needed was for them to come into the fight and we would have won. But they didn't come into the fight because they're useless, they're just free riders, and that's why we lost.
It wasn't my fault. So that's what's going on here. And the Europeans play right into his hands because the Europeans hardly ever stand up to him. And as the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Chinese, and the Russians have demonstrated, there's only one way you deal with President Trump, and that is you stand up to him. If you behave like Marc Ruta, he's gonna walk all over you.
He's a classic bully. Everybody should have figured that out by now. If you show weakness, as the Europeans consistently do, with the exception of the Spanish Prime Minister, If you show weakness, if you behave like Marc Ruta, President Trump is just gonna slap you around and continue to slap you around because, again, he's a bully.
Speaker 0: So I guess, yeah, The US will blame Europeans for Iran. The the Europeans seemingly are planning to plan to blame The US for Ukraine. So, you know, there will be a big blame game going around, but it is it's an interesting dynamic because as you suggest, there's, you know, if the Iran war, which can't be contained, is spreading everywhere, if that was the only thing, it would be one thing. But there's so many other variables at play, which won't stay constant. At any point, we could have an unraveling global economy.
The Ukraine war can go spiraling into a collapse. So it's very difficult to, I guess, to bet on a wider strategic stability as things in Iran goes terribly wrong. But at this point, though, do you see any final you know, if Trump decides to go up the escalation ladder, is is there any possible final solution he can go to? You you you were dismissive of the ground the ground operations, sending in, you know, boots on the ground. Because this appears to be, you know, man no matter how foolish it is.
And leaders often double down on, you know, foolishness, but but the troops are on their way, thousands of US soldiers. It's unclear how they're gonna use them. I thought the way they would the most what will make most sense, I guess, would be to invade Yemen or something to make sure that their Red Sea wouldn't be closed off. But anything else, and that as well, by the way, sounds like a disaster. I'm not sure.
What do you see the possibility of using these troops for?
Speaker 1: I would just point out to you that when we did Desert Storm back in 1991, remember we invaded or we attacked with ground forces on 02/24/1991, the attacking forces comprised about 700,000 troops. And of that 700,000 troops, 540,000 were American. 540,000. And a lot of those forces were mechanized infantry divisions, armored divisions. Then in 2003 when we invaded Iraq, the total force was about 300,000.
I would estimate about 190,000 were US troops and probably about 45,000 or so were British troops. And again, many of those units that went into Iraq in 2003, like in 1991, were mechanized infantry and armored divisions. And as you know, is a much smaller country than Iran geographically, and it has a much smaller population. What
Speaker 0: are
Speaker 1: we talking about here? We're talking about sending a couple thousand troops, maybe 10,000 at the most. I don't think the number is 10,000. I think, you know, all total at this point, we're more or less committed to sending probably about five or 6,000. When you look at, you know, what we're actually doing and just don't listen to the rhetoric.
But even if it's 10,000, they're light infantry, 10,000. Just think about those numbers that I was giving you for Desert Storm in '91 and for the second Gulf War in 2003. What are you going to do with light infantry? Then the question is where are gonna put them? You know, we have about 13 bases in The Middle East.
Almost all those bases have been evacuated because the Iranians have slammed those bases. They've done great destruction to American military bases in the region. This tells you that our bases are vulnerable. So where are we going to put these troops so that they don't get hit like the bases got hit? What bases are we going to put them on?
And what kind of equipment are they going to use to go into places like Karg Island or the Iranian Mainland or what have you? And what's going to happen when they get there? Are the Iranians just going to say, this is a fait accompli, there's nothing we can do about it, or do you think the Iranians are going to fight back? I mean, we know the Iranians are gonna fight back. So what are you gonna do with a handful of troops?
And they talk about taking these small islands in the Strait Of Hormuz. There are three of them. One is bigger than the other two. I don't think that that's gonna work out very well. The Iranians will go to Great Lakes to defend those islands and if we take the islands they'll pummel the troops on the islands.
And furthermore, they've told The UAE that if that happens and they cooperate with the Americans and The UAE is bent on cooperating with the Americans, they're going to basically wreck the UAE. So what are we going to gain by taking those small islands? Well, might say we can open the Strait Of Hormuz. I don't think that's true at all. First of all, if you're on the verge, you the Americans are on the verge of opening the strait, they'll mine the strait.
And mines are deadly effective ways of preventing ships from coming through the strait. But let's assume that I'm wrong and the ships come into the Persian Gulf. They can make their way into the Persian Gulf. It'll be like a shooting gallery, right? Those ships will be in a narrow body of water.
The Iranians will be on one side of the Gulf facing this target rich environment. They have huge numbers of cruise missiles. They have all these fast boats. They have additional mines they can lay in the Persian Gulf. They can wreak havoc.
But let's assume I'm wrong. Then we go to Karg Island, right? We have an amphibious assault on Karg Island. To put it in Lindsey Graham's terms, we have Iwo Jima two. What are we going to do then?
As I said before, are we going to cut off the flow of oil at a Karg Island? No, we're not. Not if we're smart because we're letting all of this Iranian oil out on the market now because we need it. So invading Karg Island and cutting off 90 percent of the flow of Iranian oil into global markets makes no sense at all. And furthermore, once you take Karg Island, let's say you take it, do you think the Iranians are gonna sit there and just leave you alone?
They're not going to do that. They're going to bomb the island. They're going to bomb your troops with ballistic missiles, with drones, and make life miserable for you. And furthermore, what's the story as to how taking Karg Island or taking those three islands in the strait actually produces, a lasting settlement here? Again, the Iranians, you don't want to forget, are facing an existential threat.
And when you're facing an existential threat, you have to fight to the death. You have to fight to the death. That's the way this works. You're dealing with an existential threat. And they have lots of cards to play.
Again, we were prepared to win a quick and decisive victory. We had this concomamy strategy that didn't work out. We ended up in a war of attrition. And once you're in a war of attrition, they hold, I would argue, almost all the cards. And if you don't think they hold almost all the cards, they hold many cards.
They have the ability to cause enormous trouble, as we've talked about on the show here. So, you know, the ground force is an option. I don't know what people are talking about. And by the way, Glenn, just to beat a dead horse here, you remember how long we prepared the troops for Desert Storm? When did Saddam invade Iraq?
I think it was 08/02/1990. 08/02/1990. And when did we launch those ground troops against the Iraqi army? It was 02/24/1991. So you went from August, early August of 'ninety, to 1991.
That was the time it took to build up the force, train the force, and then launch the offensive. That's a long time. And as I said before, it was a huge army, 540,000 troops. And the same thing is true with the two thousand and three offensive. We just didn't do that overnight.
President Trump made no preparations for a ground war before February 28. This is something that he and his advisers have recently invented as a way to deal with this problem. They just sort of pulled it out of their back pocket. Oh, we'll do ground forces. Let's see what we can do to invade Iranian held territory.
So that's what they're talking about doing now. There was no planning for this. There's no strategy there. We're basically screwed.
Speaker 0: And as I said, Iran is about four times as large as Iraq. It's mountainous. It's facing down on the other Gulf states, which are essentially flat deserts. There's they have the whole coastline. I mean, it's a fortress and populated by more than 90,000,000 people, and they've been preparing for this ever since Bush called them.
They put them in the axis of evil. So it is and yeah. So you're right. To put together a few thousand troops and, you know, ship them down there with you know, make up the plan as you sail down there. It it does sound very cartoonish.
Not the way one one fights a war. So, yeah, it's it's not reassuring, though, when you have this kind of desperation, this much at stake. And, yeah, it seems like someone's gonna do something very rash when things start to go very wrong. I don't know. I'm just very yeah.
Pray that no one's reaching for the nuclear weapons for a quick fix. But Oh. Yeah. But that's another chapter we can look at a different time. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Just one final thought. You know, people like us are frequently critical of the deep state and people on both sides of the political spectrum are critical of the deep state. But the reason that you have a powerful state, the reason you have powerful institutions like the CIA and the Pentagon and analogous institutions in Russia, China and so forth and so on, is because you need a lot of expertise. You need a lot of people who can help you staff problems. In other words, if you decide that you're going to invade Iraq in 2003, you just can't do it by yourself if you're the president and with a handful of advisors.
You have to have lots of experts. You have to have lots of help thinking about how to deal with the problem and how to execute the right strategy and so forth and so on. And the problem with President Trump is he doesn't have any respect whatsoever for institutions and certainly for the deep state, which he views as a mortal enemy because he thinks the deep state opposed him in all sorts of ways during his first term. So you have this actually very interesting situation where he does not rely on experts at all. He relies on Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Lindsey Graham.
These people are not serious strategists. These are not people who are capable of thinking through how to deal with major foreign policy issues or questions of war and peace. They can't do that. And again, the reason that you have a deep state is because inside that deep state is all sorts of expertise. I don't want to paint two poles rosy a picture of the deep state here, but there is an upside to having a deep state.
And Glenn, it is very important to understand that all of the evidence that's in the public record now says that the deep state was at least very doubtful as to whether this would work, this war, and maybe was even opposed to it. If you listen to what General Kane, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was saying before the war and what he's been saying since the war started and you listen to what the Pentagon was saying, absent Pete Hegseth of course, and you look at what the intelligence community was saying, especially the National Intelligence Council, it's quite clear that the deep state was highly skeptical of this operation. And for good reason because as you and I know, anybody who understands basic military history knows that the idea that you're going to get regime change with air power alone is a delusional perspective. So the deep state in this case was not consulted, did not provide any expertise, right? And instead what President Trump did was he relied on himself because of course he thinks he's a genius and he, to the extent he relied on anybody, he relied on people like Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff and Lindsey Graham and Rupert Murdoch who was calling him all the time and so forth and so on.
And you know, people on Fox News and you name it. But you don't go to war relying on people like that. You need experts. Have to really think these things through. As we know very well, you and I, when you go to war, the potential for disaster is great.
It is the realm of unintended consequences. This is one of the central messages in For anybody who's read Klausmitz, you understand very quickly. Going to war is in many ways a giant crapshoot and you want to do everything you can to maximize the chances that you'll be successful. And the way you do that is you rely on smart people. You tell smart people to turn their critical faculties on and to think about what's the best strategy for pursuing a particular goal.
And ask people at the same time, is this goal worthwhile pursuing? You know, can we come up with a strategy that will allow us to achieve the goal? And so forth and so on. But he just had none of that with President Trump in his decision making that led up to the war that's now ongoing. And on top of all that, not to get too carried away here, but he relied on the Israelis who were selling him a bill of goods.
Really quite remarkable. He was bamboozled by Prime Minister Netanyahu. So here we are. And again, I just want to say it one more time: what happened here was foreseeable. It was foreseeable.
You did not have to be a strategic genius to understand what was going to happen. And again, the deep state, I believe, understood this.
Speaker 0: I understand why Trump would have been distrustful, though, of the intelligence agencies and the permanent bureaucracy due to the whole Russia gate of fear in his first presidential term. But, again, I couldn't agree with you more. That being said, you still need those guys, and the fact that the idea that you can replace them with a crew of people you trust, which consists of your friends from the real estate business, your family members, some people from the media, from Fox News, that this will be the replacement. I mean, that sets up a whole new category of problems. So no.
I it's a yeah. No. It's a real mess. Anyways, it's whenever we talk about the Ukraine war ends on a very dark note, I don't think well, it's any positive spin one can put on this war. It's gonna be a real mess.
So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Glenn. All I will say is I hope that before I die, you and I have a conversation where we can have an optimistic conclusion to what we say over the course of the show. It does seem like we're a long way up from that point, however.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I look forward to that. Hopefully, that opportunity. So thanks.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
George Beebe: Iran War Weakens Ukraine & Europe Remains Irrational https://youtu.be/SPDzRzRvdps https://t.co/FqgbgvePN3
Video Transcript AI Summary
George Peavy (former CIA Director for Russia Analysis, Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute) discusses how the war in Iran intertwines with the Ukraine conflict and its broader strategic implications for Russia, NATO, and Europe.
Key effects of the Iran war on Ukraine and the strategic balance
- U.S. weapon availability for Ukraine is strained. The U.S. has supplied weapons to Ukraine via Europe, with Europeans purchasing American systems for transfer, but shortages persist, especially in air defense, which was already stressed by Russian missile, drone, and glide bomb attacks.
- The Iran war exacerbates Ukraine’s air defense crisis, raising the risk of a longer battlefield disadvantage for Ukraine if the conflict continues, potentially pushing Ukraine toward seeking a negotiated settlement sooner.
- The Iran war disrupts the strategy of squeezing Russia’s energy earnings to pressure Moscow into compromise. The international energy market faces a crisis, making it harder to keep Russian energy off the market. This undermines the leverage of Western sanctions and incentives meant to push Russia toward a favorable end to the war.
- Short-term Russian economic strength is bolstered by higher oil prices due to the Iran conflict, enabling Moscow to sustain the war longer in the near term.
- There is anticipation that European leaders, facing an energy crisis, are hoping for a political shift in the U.S. and a change in leadership (e.g., Trump’s political fortunes) to alter the peace process, potentially delaying hard compromises with Russia.
European rationality and behavior
- The European stance is described as largely irrational by Peavy, driven by wishful thinking and a fear that compromising on big geopolitical issues could undermine NATO enlargement, EU unity, and European security arrangements. The EU’s cohesion is seen as benefiting from a persistent threat perception of Russia, which keeps the U.S. presence in Europe and NATO intact.
- Europeans are viewed as hoping to endure the next few months, believing U.S. political dynamics (especially Trump’s prospects) could shift in their favor, though this is described as a risky bet.
Russia’s possible responses and strategic calculations
- Moscow faces internal pressure to escalate, with some arguing the United States cannot be trusted and that a window of opportunity exists to seize gains while Washington and Europe are preoccupied with Iran and Ukraine.
- Putin’s leadership is viewed as not yet fully committed to abandoning the possibility of detente with the U.S. and pursuing negotiations over European security. A normalization of U.S.-Russian relations would give Russia more strategic room, including balancing China.
- A potential shift in Russia’s approach could occur if it believes an improved U.S.-Russian relationship is unlikely to happen, whether due to Trump’s weakness or misperceptions about U.S. willingness to normalize. In that case, Russia might push for a decisive military victory in Ukraine.
NATO and transatlantic alliance dynamics
- The Iran conflict has intensified strains within NATO, with the U.S. pressing allies to help secure chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, while European allies push back, highlighting diverging national interests and energy concerns.
- Trump’s public framing suggests NATO may face pressure or re-evaluation; Europeans view Washington’s Iran policy as jeopardizing European security and energy stability, potentially undermining confidence in long-standing alliance arrangements.
Window for peace
- Peavy believes a diplomatic window remains but is closing, likely not extending beyond this summer. Ukraine’s battlefield incentives push toward securing gains now, while Russia seeks a deal that could coincide with a more favorable U.S. posture. The durability of a negotiated settlement depends on perceptions of U.S. commitment and the willingness of both sides to compromise as the political calendars shift.
Impact of alleged Russian support to Iran
- If Russia aided Iran with intelligence, it could complicate U.S. discussions about a Ukraine ceasefire, though Moscow would argue reciprocity given Western activity since 2022. The strategic impact depends on how opposition to a compromise in Washington and Europe frames and utilizes this issue to shape diplomacy.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by George Peavy, a former CIA Director for Russia Analysis and currently the Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. I will make sure to leave a link in the description. And, yeah, as always,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming back on. It's my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 0: I wanted to ask you, as we now see the war in Ukraine and the war in in Iran, it's becoming more and more interlinked, it seems, especially if you look at the reports today from, I think it was Wall Street Journal, writing that that because of the weapons shortage, there has to be some difficult decisions whether or not to divert American weapons away from Ukraine and towards the war in The Middle East. But, again, the the, I guess, the consequence of the Iran war on the Ukraine war and also for Russia, it's it goes far beyond this. I was wondering how do you see this, the to what extent the war with Iran impacts the strategic balance between Russia and NATO in Ukraine?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it has a number of effects. First of all, it it definitely has an effect on how many weapons we have available to provide to Ukraine. Now, of course, The United States made a change under the Trump administration where we have been providing military aid to the Ukrainians through Europe. So the Europeans are actually purchasing the American weapons and then in turn transferring those to the Ukrainians. But we simply don't have enough of some key weapons systems to provide for Ukraine's needs.
And I think the the most acute problem, it comes in air defense. That was a problem even prior to the Iran war. I think the the Russians via their missile drone and glide bomb attacks were putting extreme strains on Ukraine's air defense capabilities and drawing down the reserves of of air defense missiles that we could provide to the Ukrainians to defend themselves. But I think with the the operation in Iran, the longer this goes on, I think the the result is gonna be an absolute emergency situation for Ukraine's air defense capabilities. And that I think bodes very ill for Ukraine's battlefield prospects for for very long should this war continue.
So that gives Ukraine, I think, battlefield reason to seek a an end at the negotiating table sooner rather than later. The other thing that this war does is I think it really interferes with the strategy that The United States and Europe and Ukraine have long had to try to squeeze Russia's energy earnings internationally, and in so doing incentivize Russia to compromise and agree to end this war on terms that are at least perceived as equitable and reasonable rather than a capitulation of Ukraine to Russia's terms. And because the international energy situation is approaching a crisis point as a result of the war with Iran. That strategy of trying to keep Russian energy off the international market is just not viable And we're already seeing this. The Trump administration first indicated to India that we would not object to Indian purchases as we did several months ago.
The Trump administration has provided at least a short term relaxation of sanctions against Russian energy sales more generally. I think it's almost inevitable that that one month relaxation is going to move on to two months and three months and probably become permanent simply because of the pressure on international oil markets is so great and The United States economic situation looks so precarious that we can't afford to continue that old strategy of trying to squeeze Russia's energy earnings under these circumstances. And that also I think is another reason for Ukraine to seek a compromise sooner rather than later. So the other thing this does is because the increased oil prices, Russia is benefiting from a short term windfall of energy earnings. And that in turn means that their ability to sustain this war economically is that much greater, at least over the short term, as a result of the war in Iran.
So the Russians aren't under any particular economic pressure right now to cut this war short. And it's very likely that they're not going to be for some time to come.
Speaker 0: Well, I thought, yeah, for this reason, it could be, well, a silver silver lining or something positive to come from this war. That is if we're losing a war, it's always the way it's solved is usually to shift focus to something else. Often, we, you know, seem to only focus on one thing. We had Russia gate, then it seemed to come to an end with COVID, and then COVID ended when, you know, Russia invaded Ukraine. So, you know, it seemed like this you know, there there could be an opportunity to to put an end to this war.
But even as we see this massive crisis now, the with the shortage of energy, fertilizers, You would think this would create a massive pressure not just on Ukraine and The US, but also on the Europeans to put an end to this war. Mhmm. Yet we see now that the Europeans appear to be advising Zelenskyy not to take the deal presented by the Americans that is that they pull out of Donbas and accept neutrality. Mhmm. Indeed, we even seen attacks during the night on this on the Russian oil facilities on the Baltic Sea, which which appears to have the drones either transiting or originating from the Baltic States.
Now, again, there's a lot of uncertainty about exactly this. I wouldn't wanna say anything, you know, too sure. But at least the Europeans advised to Zelenskyy not to not to put an end to the war. How how do you explain this? Because it looks like the Europeans are the one who will get hammered much, much more than the Americans in this energy crisis coming up.
Speaker 1: I agree. I think to a great degree the Europeans are the big losers in this war in Iran because of the disproportionate impact on their energy situation that this is having, and they don't have good alternatives. A rational actor in Europe would look at this situation and say, you know what, we're going to have to buy Russian energy. There really is no other way out of the circumstances that we find ourselves in right now. But I think what's actually going on is the Europeans are looking at the situation saying, well, if we can hold on, if Ukraine can hold on, if we can manage to get through the next several months, the political situation in The United States is likely to change.
I mean, think their calculation is that all of this could greatly undermine President Trump's political circumstances and, you know, lead toward growing unpopularity, a defeat in the midterm elections in November. And my guess is that what the Europeans are saying is rather than make what they regard as very unwelcome compromise to end the war in Ukraine, They're hoping they can just hold on through the next several months, and then the political circumstances they hope will change. And Trump will not have the ability politically to drive this peace process, see it through to its end. And then who knows what could happen? The future is very unpredictable.
So I think it's an unwise bet on their part, but I think that's what's going on.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, often when the Europeans look towards The US and it's well, at the extent to which it engages in this war against Russia, it's always this assumption that The US have, you know, all all the capabilities it needs. The only thing missing is the will, and which is why they might go for waiting out Trump yet again. But, you used the word rational. If you would, you know, be rational, you would seek to negotiate an end to this war.
Do do you see the European leaders being irrational here, though? Or and if so, why? Why why are they no. But are they you know, is it ideology? Is it lack of political imagination?
Are they simply, you know, they don't have any other solutions? Well, how how how do you explain this? Because I often I often make the point. I can understand all the different actors. I understand why The US initially went very hot in hard into this war.
I understand why they now wanna distance themselves. I think I understand why the Russian sees this as existential threat. I understand why the Ukrainian sees this as an existential threat, but I can't ever really make proper sense of the European position, though.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I do think this is largely irrational. It's driven in part by wishful thinking. You tend to see what you want to believe. And I think in part it's a lack of imagination and a fear that if they do compromise with Russia on big geopolitical issues, on the future of NATO enlargement, that that might undermine the entire enterprise and bring the European Union into disarray and lead to disunity in Europe in a in a profound way. To some degree, Russia has been a unifying factor within Europe.
When you face a common enemy, can that common sense of threat can bridge a lot of differences that might otherwise be more significant. And I I think to some degree, the Europeans don't want to let go of that threat. They have a political interest in continuing to to to see a Russian threat. And rather than trying to manage and mitigate the threat, I think they'd like it to continue because it's politically useful for them in a lot of ways. And also, I think from their point of view, keeps The United States in Europe, keeps The United States in NATO.
Now I think a lot of this is inaccurate perception, a lot of this is seeing what you want to believe. So there is an element of self delusion, I think, in all of this. And I think it's going to backfire, frankly. So I think it's an unwise approach. But it's never easy to explain things that appear irrational.
That's always a challenge.
Speaker 0: Well, how do you see then possibility of how Russia might respond to all of this? Because you hear pressure in you hear stories about pressure mounting in Moscow that they should essentially do what Iranians have done, that is to assert their deterrence because, you know, they let their own deterrence slip over the past four years to the extent, you know, in the West, we can launch missiles into Russian cities, and there's there seem to be any consequences. Again, you you wrote an no. You gave an interview, I remember, in back in December 2021. I think it was for Radio Free Europe when you warned that a war could come if the Russians see inaction as becoming more dangerous than action in terms of the West, you know, cementing its position within Ukraine that they this would be their last chance to dislodge NATO.
How do you see the calculations in Russia now? Because on one hand, the Americans are tied up in in The Middle East. The the Europeans appear to be willing to escalate. And, again, it appears, and you have all this pressure on the Kremlin that they should start to take a tougher line. Do you think they could, I guess, escalate in a much greater way?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it is possible. And I think there are those in Moscow that are making that argument that The United States is not actually agreement capable, that Trump Trump can't be trusted. I think they look at the the the performance of Trump's envoys with Iran who are the same envoys that the Russians are dealing with on the Ukraine settlement process, and what look at what appears to them to be bad faith negotiations on the part of those negotiators with Iran. And they wonder, you know, can we trust Trump and his envoys to negotiate in good faith with us? So that's that's one of those elements of doubt that opponents of a compromise in Russia, people that are saying, look, we should just go all out and win this war and reestablish deterrence.
I think that's part of what they're arguing right now. And I think they are also saying we've got a window of opportunity. The United States is distracted. It doesn't have capacity to both wage the war in Iran and supply Ukraine with its needs. Europe doesn't have the economic wherewithal to support the Ukrainians under these circumstances.
And let's seize this window of opportunity. Now, although there is that view, I think, in Moscow, that is I don't believe the unanimous opinion. As far as I can tell Putin is not yet there at that point. And I think the reason is I don't think he wants to give up the possibility of detente with The United States, of normalizing the relationship with The United States, of entering into negotiations over European security, over strategic stability. These are all very important goals for Russia.
It advances Russia's position in the world to have a normalized relationship with The United States. It allows Russia a lot more geopolitical room for maneuver vis a vis China. Helps ensure that China is not simply going to become the dominant partner of Russia and Russia left as a subordinate junior. And a lot of those big European security issues for Russia can't be resolved just by, you know, taking the rest of the Donbas or even seizing Odessa and turning Ukraine into a landlocked rump state. So I don't think Putin wants to give up on the possibility of a deal to end the war in Ukraine and all of the improvements in The US Russian relationship that he expects would flow from that.
Now what would change his mind, I think, would be a belief that an improved US Russian relationship is simply not going to happen regardless that Trump is so weakened or that Trump really is not intent on a real normalization of the bilateral relationship. In that circumstance, then I could see the Russians saying, well, we're only giving up something that isn't going to happen anyway. So let's win this war and really use the military capabilities that we have but have been reluctant to bring to bear in this war because we didn't want to close the door on a normalization with The United States. And I don't think Putin is there yet, but could he get there? Sure.
I could see that happening. And I think we're gonna find out the answer to that in the next few months.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I don't think there's necessarily any pressure to pick one path or the other just yet because even if Trump is a bad faith negotiator, it doesn't as long as Russia doesn't let the diplomacy influence its strategy on the battlefield, it, you know, it could still pursue the diplomatic path even if it continues to, yeah, to make advancements on the battlefield. But another way, though, that seems that this war in Iran could affect the war in Europe would be that, NATO itself is coming under great pressure. You probably saw the, the press conference that, Trump was giving, or at least he was answering questions in which he was making the point, more or less, that NATO will regret not not joining in on the campaign against Iran. And it almost sounded like a announcement of a divorce coming in the future, because he was, just wait.
In a few months, You will see you know, remember this. You know? What do you think? You think this could be used as a way to untangle The US from NATO, or is that not really in his interest? It's more just to put the pressure.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there is there already was in the Transatlantic relationship growing distrust and and tension between, you know, Washington and its European allies to varying degrees. But I think the Iran war has has really exacerbated these preexisting tensions. And I think we're in a situation where Trump turned to the NATO allies and said, we need your help. You benefit disproportionately from oil that is shipped through the Strait Of Hormuz. You should come help us open the Strait.
And the answer that he got from our allies was, you know, no. Not our problem. And so I think the perception in the White House is what good are these allies? Why are we providing all this security support to them which has underwritten their security for so many decades? And in our time of need, they're not coming to our assistance.
This is a one way relationship and we're not benefiting. Now I think from the European perspective, I think they look at this situation and come to almost the opposite conclusion. They look at what the president has done vis a vis Iran as putting Europe in peril. They believe that Trump has to to a large degree created a crisis over the state of Hormuz of a lack of foresight, a lack of adequate planning, a lack of envisioning things that were obvious to a lot of experts for a long time as potential consequences. And having created the crisis then turns to Europe and says, you know, help bail us out of this situation.
Put your ships and your soldiers in peril in so doing. And by the way you've created an extraordinary energy crisis, an economic crisis for Europe. So what good is America's protection in all of this if you're not actually enhancing European security, you're undermining it? So to me this has the makings of some very, very serious strains in the alliance that aren't gonna go away.
Speaker 0: I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: Probably will get worse over time.
Speaker 0: I'm wondering if Trump would have asked well, would have informed the Europeans before the attack whether or not they would join in, that they would have got more commitment. Because you saw in the early days of the bombing that the Europeans were, you know, lining up to support, especially people like chancellor Mertz, you know, when they thought it would be more successful than it was. But by not getting their commitment early on, they could wait and see until it began to run into problems. And then then asking, once it's seemed like a, well, dangerous proposition, then, you know, they they would decline. It's yeah, I think this could have been a mistake if he if he would have, yeah, consulted them early on and get their commitments then before this all went south.
I think he would have been able, especially with Mertz, to get him on board. But what what does this mean, you think, for the possibility of peace now, not just in Middle East, but with Ukraine? Because last time we spoke, you said there's still a window opportunity to end this at the negotiating table, but this window's closing. Overall, is it closing still, or or it's opening up?
Speaker 1: I no. I think the window of opportunity is still there, but I do think it is closing. I I don't think it's gonna extend much beyond this summer, quite honestly, because at that point, the political calendar changes things. And sure that the the window for compromise is gonna be open much beyond, you know, early fall of this year. I still think the sides have incentives.
You know, the Ukrainians have a very strong battlefield incentive to get what they can right now before the situation gets much worse. I think the Russians have an incentive to try to get a deal while Trump is still agreement capable. I think Trump needs a win. The Iran operation has been very bad news for him politically and in his foreign policy more generally. In this kind of situation, it makes a lot of sense to try to get a win by by bringing the Ukraine negotiations to a successful close.
And my guess is that the Trump administration is likely to tell the Ukrainians just that. You know, now is the time. You're you've gotten everything you needed. You're not gonna get more. This is as good a deal as you're gonna get.
Take it now because the alternatives are gonna be much worse.
Speaker 0: But why does it have to close then? What are the main reasons why you think the window opportunity for a diplomatic settlement would be over after summer?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the Russians will will will become disillusioned with the Trump administration's ability to bring this across the finish line. And I think they're going to have growing doubts about whether The United States actually is serious about a normalized relationship and whether the Trump administration is even capable of normalizing the relationship with Russia going forward. I think the longer this war goes on unresolved and the longer the war in Iran goes on, the more doubts the Russians are gonna have about those things. So that's a part of this. And then the other part of this is, you know, patience on Trump's part.
I think, you know, we could reach a point where he becomes disillusioned and thinks, you know, we're just not going to get the sides to come together. So when, you know, if or when he reaches that point, I don't know. Nobody can predict that sort of thing. But I don't think the patience in Moscow and Washington will be infinite. And then on the Ukrainian side, the dilemma that they have is whether they want to play a waiting game and hope that the circumstances in Washington will be more favorable for them six months from now.
And that also is the issue with the Europeans. Europeans.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This is a last question. There's been some media reports that the Russians are aiding the Iranians, and, well, I I just assume that's the case. It it would make sense. But it's also something that Zelenskyy has been pushing very hard to, I guess, direct Trump's fury towards Mhmm.
Russia as opposed to spending using all these weapons only against Iran. To to what extent do you think this could impact relations? Because so far, Trump has seen a bit dismissive. He probably knows it's correct, but he doesn't wanna disrupt the possibility of, well, the diplomatic process. Do do you see this possibly escalating out of control or that the Russians would start to send more heavy weapons?
You know? I'm I'm not sure what what possible cards the the Russians could play, I guess, to return the favor after all the the past four years, especially against probably not so much the Americans anymore, but more against the Europeans, the Germans, and the British especially.
Speaker 1: Well, it'd be very difficult for The United States to argue that what Russian intelligence provided to Iran that might be used to kill Americans and target our forces is wrong in principle. As the Russians would quite quickly say, this is exactly what you've been doing to us since early twenty twenty two. And I think Trump understands that. The real question is, do the opponents of a compromise deal in Washington and in Europe ease on this question and hype it in ways that create big political problems, big obstacles to a deal, and create an environment in which Trump has much less room for maneuver vis a vis Russia and vis a vis the end game of a Ukrainian peace deal. And that's possible.
I think it's already clear that there's an awful lot of media attention to this issue. And I don't think that's accidental. I think the people that are trying to focus attention on this are doing so because they see this as a means of making a deal, a compromise in Ukraine less likely and putting obstacles in the path of a normalization of The US Russian bilateral relationship.
Speaker 0: Well, there's a lot of pessimism these days, so I'm very happy to at least hear some optimism from your side in terms of the possibilities, lingering possibility to have some diplomatic path still forward. So thank you very much for taking the time, and, yes, enjoy your days in Geneva.
Speaker 1: Great. Thank you very much.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Stanislav Krapivnik: Baltic States Attack Russia & Gulf States Collapse https://youtu.be/qirByIpJTMM https://t.co/fTMA0XSdOR
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn and Stanislav Krapivnik discuss a string of escalating security and geopolitical crises with a focus on drone incidents, NATO-Russia tensions, and the broader international energy and security implications.
- Baltic drone incidents: Glenn asks about an attack on a key Russian port in the Baltic Sea, noting drones entered from NATO territory through the Baltic States and may have circumvented Belarus. Stanislav explains that two drones hit targets in the Baltics—one at an Estonian power-plant chimney and another at a separate object in Latvia—and suggests dozens of drones may have flown through airspace, possibly from Ukraine via Poland and the Baltics or launched from the pre-Baltics. He argues this is not a one-off event and raises two possibilities: either NATO member states have incompetent security, or they are directly engaged, with the more likely conclusion that the pre-Baltic states are direct participants in the war.
- Deterrence and red lines: The conversation notes that NATO has aimed to pressure Russia economically (targeting energy, shipping, and oil). Glenn asks how these actions affect sentiment and Kremlin incentives. Stanislav counters that Tallinn and other Baltic leadership have crossed red lines, citing past incidents (Estonia drone attack on Skowabur Air Base) and suggesting Estonian actions are part of a broader pattern of Russophobia. He argues that Estonia’s leadership and policies threaten deterrence calculations and calls for accountability, positing that deterrence must be reset against Estonia given the perceived egregious escalations.
- Interconnected conflicts and the Iran-Russia axis: The speakers discuss Sergei Lavrov’s remarks about a potential third world war linked to Iran and Russia. Stanislav asserts that conflicts are becoming highly interconnected, with the West having fomented them through proxies and direct actions. He asserts that Western leaders, whom he characterizes as pursuing broad war aims, are willing to sacrifice lives for geopolitical objectives, and he highlights ongoing cross-border terrorism and sanctions on supply chains. He emphasizes that Russia has long been involved in Iran’s military upgrades and drones, noting that Russian components power Iranian drones. He also points to the potential for China to align with expanding conflict dynamics, suggesting that Russia has already embedded itself in supporting Iran and that a fall of Iran would threaten Russia’s regional borders, especially along the Kazakhstani frontier.
- Energy, fertilizer, and economic shocks: Stanislav draws on his supply-chain experience to describe the cascading effects of war on energy and fertilizer. He explains the logistical challenges of large-scale industrial repair after missile strikes, including the long lead times for steel, valves, and large refinery components, and argues that Europe’s gas and steel supply are constrained. He notes Russia’s restriction on diesel exports and Qatar’s role in fertilizer, highlighting how Europe has become dependent on Russian and Qatari supplies and is now left vulnerable by policy choices. He foresees a multi-year disruption of energy, fertilizer, and food supplies, warning of price spikes and potential starvation in parts of Europe and beyond as planting seasons approach. He highlights that fertilizer production relies on natural gas and that gas-rich regions are facing supply limitations, which would prolong and intensify food insecurity and economic disruption.
- Gulf energy states and strategic calculations: The discussion turns to the Gulf, describing Gulf states as corporate-like entities run by wealthy families. Stanislav speculates on the strategic calculations of states like Qatar and the UAE, including the possibility that political and economic incentives could shape decisions about involvement in broader regional conflict, arms supplies, or island and maritime control. He argues that damage to energy infrastructure, maritime chokepoints, and desalination plants could have devastating regional consequences, potentially forcing costly rebuilding campaigns over several years.
- Military capability and future risks: Stanislav critiques U.S. military capability for large-scale ground campaigns, arguing that the U.S. is not a traditional land-power and that a sustained invasion of Iran would face enormous logistical and manpower challenges. He emphasizes the scale and difficulty of mobilizing, training, and sustaining a large force in conflict terrain, particularly in Iran’s mountainous, fortified landscape. He also discusses the domestic constraints of U.S. recruitment, obesity rates, and the challenges of sustaining a 21st-century volunteer force in a major war.
- Final reflections on leadership and narrative: The conversation closes with a discussion of Trump-era war briefs, characterizing them as short, sensational videos focused on explosions rather than reality, and a broader critique of political leadership and messaging in wartime decision-making. Glenn and Stanislav note the risk that political leaders may oversell battlefield successes and struggle to withdraw from costly, escalating commitments.
In sum, the discussion centers on cross-border drone activity and its implications for NATO-Russia dynamics, the widening economic and energy-security consequences of contemporary conflicts, the deepening Iran-Russia alignment, and the daunting logistical and strategic challenges of any potential military escalation in the Middle East, including Iran.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Stanislav Krapivnik, a former US army officer born in Donbas and who has since returned. Thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure, Glenn. Always a pleasure. I wanna talk to you about explosions today. Our our piece. Well,
Speaker 0: I appreciate you coming on. I know you had quite a few meetings and interviews today. But I I wanted to, yes, speak with you about US boots on the ground in Iran. But before we get to that, it's worth addressing this attack on this key Russian port on the Baltic Sea, more than thousand kilometers away for a drone to fly from Ukraine even further if it avoids Belarus, which it did. So and yet it appears to have entered from NATO territory through the Baltic States.
How do you make sense of, what has happened? And, well, what do we actually know?
Speaker 1: Well, it didn't appear they did. In fact, two of those drones, one hit a power plant, a chimney of a power plant in, Estonia, and one hit, some other object, in, Latvia. So maybe they flew around from, Ukraine through Poland and the Baltics, or maybe they lifted off from the ball the pre Baltics. I don't know. I'm betting closer they probably lifted off.
Either way, even if they flew through, I mean, this isn't one or two drones. There's about thirty, forty drones that flew through. And this is not the first time. So either a, the Poles and the the Poles and the pre Baltics are absolutely incompetent governments with incompetent security systems that anything could fly through their airspace and they don't give a damn or cannot control it, or b, more likely, they're in on it. They are direct military engagement with Russia at this point.
On unavoidable to come to that conclusion, especially the pre Baltics, but they are they're direct participants in this war.
Speaker 0: Well, we see that over the past few weeks or months, NATO's, well, more or less identified the objective of putting pressure on Russia. In order to do this, they're also very explicit that that is to go after the Russian economy, energy specifically. They're discussing seizing ships, confiscating oil is the new one. But attack from NATO territory, though, how is this affecting the, I guess, the, you know, the sentiments or the the pressure in the against the Kremlin to, I guess, change tactics? Because there seems to be some concern that more and more of well, if it's not red lines, this, you know, this overstepping more and more lines at least of what what what we're not supposed to do.
I mean, there's informal rules in any proxy war of what each side should be doing, and it appears that all rules are essentially tossed overboard.
Speaker 1: Well, this isn't the first time this has happened. Let's be honest about it. Five months ago, in the middle of Estonia, a drone came down, blew up, and Estonians tried to keep it quiet. The inner Internet was still filled with photos that got leaked out of the of the shell crater where the drone hit, and I was carrying a large enough amount of explosives and the remains of that drone. The attack on Skowv Air Base did not come from Ukraine.
It came from 47 kilometers away out of Estonia. I was on evening with Vladimir Soloviov, which is one of the big shows talk shows, political talk shows. And Vladimir himself who is is is big in this is one of the top people in this industry, is out there saying, you know, we need to just we we need to crack the heads of the Estonians just as an example. I say the same thing. There needs to be an example made.
And Estonia has is is to to call it anti Russian or Russophobic, is is, well, that that doesn't even describe half of the psychopathic hatred that drives these people. They are corrupted through and through. Considering Russians are about 50% of their country's population, considering Narva, which is a a 95% Russian city back from the December, if not earlier, is so you can't say these are people that a Soviet Union this is their excuse normally. Oh, these are immigrants from a Soviet Union forced upon us. Well, no.
Actually, you're holding Russian land. Get the hell off of Russian land in that case. As you know, the pre Baltics, if we're gonna go begin with this, there are three absolutely artificial countries that did not exist until 1917. In any form, did they ever exist as nation states. They are an artificial entities created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, first and foremost.
Oh, I'm sorry. The collapse of the Russian empire, first and foremost, and then re created by the collapse of Soviet Union. These if we're gonna be honest about it, the land was purchased from the Swedes after we go after we beat Charles the great in in Poltava. Peter the great destroyed his armies, defeated Sweden, but to make it a little easier to swallow the defeat, he paid for the land that Russia conquered from the Swedes. And that bill, by the way, there's no mention about population, but the land was transferred as a as a piece of real estate in those areas to Russia.
So if we're gonna go down that road, you can live here if you want or you can leave, but the land belongs to Russia by purchase from Sweden if we're gonna go down that route. But Narva as a as a city, is absolutely Russian. It's, from the early Middle Ages. It was founded and created, by Russians so that the that almost 50% of the population of Estonia is treated as best third class noncitizens because they're not allowed to be citizens of any sort, not even a of a second class citizens. They're they carry a great passport.
And now you have the same Nazi entity that has yearly parades for the SS, government sponsor with government administrators coming out and talking about it. The one that arrests anybody that doesn't follow the party line, this police state Nazi entity that is now launching or allowing, to be used as airspace for direct drone attacks, not only on military, but on civilian infrastructure, I think it's time that, the leadership in that country paid the price that they are more than that they have more than earned to pay. And look. And deterrence needs to be set. So I think a country like Estonia is the prime target for deterrence being reset.
Because, you know, what what they're hoping for is no matter what they do, Russia will just hit the Ukrainians. And it's not us. It's some meat down there. They'll just kill off some meat down there, and we'll just be able to do what we want. But sooner or later, that comes home, and I think we're at that point.
And out in the open when the major when the major television or talk show figures and these aren't these aren't lightweight people. These are very serious. One of two major political talk shows. Like I said, I was just on there filming, literally two hours ago. And if, Solagia was flat out saying we we should, you know, paint the walls with Estonia, This is major pressures that's starting to build up to respond and respond.
And I hope Estonians are listening to this because you've gone over every single red line there is. There there is no more red lines. Estonia has earned whatever fate it gets. And the people support that government well, the people that are citizens that are less than half the population of Estonia because most of the young in Estonia have left, and they don't live in Estonia. They haven't lived within Estonia for years.
But the people that are still there are supporting these government entities that are going to bring Estonia to destruction, at least Estonia outside of Narva to destruction. You know, each country chooses its path.
Speaker 0: Yeah. When over the past four years when or even longer when people have made the argument that, well, once Russia's done with Ukraine, it will move on to the Baltic states, I pretty much called it out as paranoia. But given these escalations, it's, you know, it it's almost bound to spread now, this conflict. But, of course, into NATO territory, it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be a lot of unknown variables in terms of how the escalations goes from there on, which kinda takes me to a comment which Lavrov made, but he was, of course, looking towards Iran where he suggested that, you know, many experts believe that we're already within a third world war given the links between Iran and Russia. I was wondering what what you make of these comments.
Do you did did how how how intrinsically linked are these conflicts to begin with?
Speaker 1: I think they're gonna become very linked, especially if China kicks off in one way or the other. Look. You know, again, do these conflicts need to be linked? Should these conflicts even exist? No.
The West has done absolutely everything it can to foment these conflicts, has flat out started these conflicts, either indirectly through proxies in Ukraine or directly with an illegal attack and mass murder of civilians in first Iran, now also in Iraq. And before that, I mean, we could just say in Yemen, but that that we could count that as a separate conflict. But that's these conflicts are gonna spread. The West is dead set on war. The politicians, except for a few politicians, Austro Hungarian Empire, formerly.
Maybe in the future, again, some kind of Austro Hungarian confederation that could see that happening. But outside of those countries, the majority of the western leaders are psychopaths. They are the Epstein elites. They are dead set, and they don't really give a damn how many of their people die. The only way that they will give a damn is if they are the targets themselves, but they're not counting on that.
They're counting on the little people dying because the little people don't matter. Just less carbon in the world as they they seem to indicate, but they're dead set on it. They have done everything they can to make sure these conflicts spread, to make sure these conflicts grow. Again, you know, going back to, the preboltics, Russia tolerated a lot out of these people. You you know how many terrorists plots have gone through Estonia trying to smuggle in explosives and icons.
Just recently through Poland, came a truck with with boot insoles with 1.5 grams of explosives in each tied. These are electric boot insoles to warm feet, to go to, both the military and refugees that are in cold areas. I mean, it's just constant constant terrorism that's going across the borders, constant terrorism that that's been sponsored by these people. You know, sooner or later, the patience runs out no matter how patient Moscow has been. And I think the patience in Moscow is act spurred these people on to do more insane, probably sooner now than later because it's been going the the spring's been compressed so hard.
The response is gonna be extremely vicious. The response is gonna be extremely bloody. There's a reason they say, you know there's there's two thing two sayings about Russians. You know, Ivan is slow to get on his feet, when he gets on his feet, blood flows. That's one.
Well, Are you there? Okay. Yes. Sorry. You froze up.
Speaker 0: You froze there for bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other one is yeah. Yeah. And and the other one is, you know, Russians are slow to get in the saddle, but once they're in on the saddle, they gallop very fast. And this is what we're getting to right now.
I don't you they mistake unwillingness on on a part of Russia to expand the war as weakness. And sooner or later, that unwillingness finally just goes away, and then they suffer. And then they whine. Oh, why is us? Why, oh, why us?
They seem to ignore everything that they do before that. The same thing you hear from the Israelis when they get hit. How why are we getting hit from the Ukrainians who, for eight years, murdered Russians and have continued to murder Russians in a Donbas, and not only the why us? Well, you know, it's it's crybullying. It's a it's a new good term is crybullying.
They bully around until they get smacked and they cry victim. But that that's what we're seeing. Fortunately, that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 0: Yeah. You know, I spoke about that earlier. There seems to be a different approach to escalation on each side that this the NATO likes to do this very small salami tactic, gradual escalations while Russia tends to hold on and just go for massive responses, which often, yeah, on the NATO side results in miscalculation of a of a or even delusion about this escalation dominance, the extent to which they're able to bring up or down the tensions. However, with the in the as the Ukraine war, though, it resulted also in this in the West cutting itself off increasingly from Russian energy. This has put a quite a shock into the international energy markets and the economy, but it seems to be nothing compared to what is coming now given the war in The Middle East.
How are you seeing this? Because even if the war would end today, which it wouldn't, it seems like, the repercussions of old energy, disruptions and, all the disruptions to fertilizers is something that's gonna stick with us for quite some time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm I'm not just a pretty war face. I've actually done supply chain management as a director of supply chain management. I was in Cameron and Halliburton. Halliburton, I was a regional director supply chain manager for Eurasia, and that's wellheads.
That's infrastructure is drilling. It's above ground infrastructure for the two. And then I was also director of supply chain on construction projects for Technomont where we were expanding a new portion of the Moscow refinery to make, you know, e 95, Petro and building one of three phases of, a €15,000,000,000 project, on the gas on the LNG plant in Amur. I think this is Luke Oil's biggest I'm sorry. Gazprom Nift's biggest LNG project or plant anywhere.
So I know the time that it takes to order metal constructions for the girders and different, design. The vessels, you know, just for, expanding the, the process in the refinery. It's a very big refinery to make the e 95 gas or or not gasoline gasoline or petrol. They're at about a 120 vessels. Now most of those vessels were one to three meters long, but we had a couple that were 78 meters long.
Now these are giant construction. We use 78 meter long vessel. Just getting there, the logistics is a pain. We literally have to lift a couple buildings, with big cranes to get the truck. By the way, it it's a ballroom because there's truck added to it to, to get these, these construction moving, and it's all by hand.
And you can see how long it takes just to get that in place. And by the way, they're not only just after the design. They're the they're these giant pipes that have the the different phalange phalanges added onto them and different other sections added onto them. It's all done by hand. Then it has to be tested, which means you put it under pressure with water, then it has to be dried, then it has to be delivered, then it has to be tested again with water and again dried, then eventually lifted up into place.
I mean, 78 meters long. You can understand how big this is. It's almost a, football pitch, in length when you especially when you add the trucks onto it. These this is our operation that took, about seven months, eight months to make. Now why am I saying this?
Because I'm looking at the pictures of the damage from the missiles and the missile strikes just on the Qatari refinery. And I guarantee you, not only but it it not only do you have to clear out the the damaged sections, which are, you know, the only thing you can do. Once one of these, vessels are, punctured, you can't just you you can't just weld them shut. They're no longer gonna hold that pressure. So they go to scrap metal.
You clean it, and you've taken a scrap metal. You have to make new ones. Again, to order. Each one is made to order. They're not mass produced.
Valves can be mass produced to a degree. They are mass produced both for projects and on shelf for sales, but nobody ever figures, you know, on on scope of production that, oh, we're gonna have to rebuild a dozen refineries all at once, rebuild all this other stuff. No. Nobody makes that many kind of valves. That's something else that just obviously is not gonna be in any kind of stock to be able to handle.
So you have to produce just to get steel. Just to understand, just to get steel out of a steel mill on order is usually at about a month and a half or a month or a month and a half process of waiting to get steel out of a that's been either in in forged into big steel ingots that are then gonna be cut up and used for production. Get especially especially if you're doing specialty alloy steels. It'll take even longer because they run-in smaller batches. Right?
This is everything that you should consider. And when you consider on top of that, who's gonna be able to produce this type of equipment? There's only three nations that can produce it in volume. That's Russia, China, and The US. To a smaller volume and sometimes a much smaller volume, you'll have India and Brazil and miniscule amounts and and some other countries.
Europe is out of this picture totally. And I'll tell you why. Because, a, Europe cannot produce steel cheaply. And and right now, Europe can't produce steel, period, because it takes gas. Europe has no more gas.
Here's the here's the quick point. They've lost there's no matter what you pay, there's literally 20% less 25% less natural gas on the market, period. And when people think, you know, what what Trump says or something like drill, baby, drill, yeah, you're right. You should drill more. But here's the the kicker.
To bring a an oil field or a gas field to economic exploitation takes three to five years from the day you start drilling your first wildcat well to figure out where exactly the deposit is to the point where you have enough piping and everything done that you can actually export the product, on a consistent basis is three to five years, also depending where the fields are located and and other issues like that. But, yeah, on average, the the crisis is here, and the crisis is not coming. The crisis here the next the second wave of the tidal wave is coming. That's starvation. That's collapse of society through starvation.
That's coming. That's coming right down by around midsummer when prices for food are gonna skyrocket, if not earlier. Right now, it's fuel. But, I mean but but look what we're looking at. You know?
Just begin with the fuel side. It's planting season right now in Southern Europe. In two weeks, it'll be planting season in Northern Europe. Maybe three weeks if it's suddenly a cold front. But either way, it's it's April's right here.
You know? This is April already coming. What do you need for planting season besides fertilizer? I'm not even going on fertilizer. You need lots of diesel.
When you've got a 100 acres, you're not gonna take your cow or your bull, and you're not gonna go plow a 100 acres. That's a huge amount of land. Small family farms could plow land, a couple a dozen acres, so that you've got hundreds of acres. So the bigger farm, you physically can't do it. You need tractors.
That's how we've got the modern agriculture. You don't have enough people on the farms. Don't have enough farm animals. You don't have enough plows, those types of plows, if you can find those kinds of plows still. So what do you need?
You need diesel. You need relatively cheap diesel in large abundant, which is why Russia, by the way, has a ban on exporting diesel until the end of the planting season somewhere around May, mid May. And it probably lasts longer than that considering the circumstances of the world. So right off the bat, you can't plant as much as you want if you don't have diesel. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
And then we get to the fact of the fertilizer. Russia produces 40% of the world's chemical fertilizer. Qatar produced 30% of the world's chemical fertilizer. Guess what Europe doesn't produce on that a single ounce of because gas is too expensive. Potash is too expensive.
Europe no longer produces fertilizer. In fact, America produce enough fertilizer. America last year bought half $1,000,000,000, about $560,000,000 worth of Russian fertilizer. This year, probably closer to 1,000,000,000, all things considered, because the market's much tighter. Europe's not gonna be getting that.
One, because Europe lost Qatar, and two, because Europe, cut itself off from Russia, and three, because Russia, by the way, is not that interested in Europe and doing biz any business with Europe to begin with. The very countries that are pumping, equipment and money and, and psycho mercenaries into Ukraine to kill Russia, the very people whose, politicians nonstop talk about, Russia's evil and we have to destroy Russia. Well, Russia hears that, except now you're looking at an absolute crisis. Food you know, a friend of mine, he's a political professor of politics in Northern Italy. And, you know, four months ago, I was talking to him, and he's telling me the lower class families in Italy, they can't afford to feed themselves on week four.
The money's run out. They don't know. They do they struggle to feed themselves and their families by week four. Now what happens when the food prices skyrocket? You get you get class starvation.
And maybe not a whole nation starving, but the lower classes, the lower middle classes start to starve, literally starve, not just skip meals. But this is a point where, you know, literal starvation. And on top of that, behind that, it's gonna be the third wave, and that's called winter. And there's a good Russian saying, Winter is not beyond the mountains. You know, winter is always a crop.
You know, winter is always on your mind. Spring comes in there. You're getting ready for winter. And when that winter comes and there's no gas, because this is gonna be something that's gonna last a year and a half to two years, in my opinion, just to get the Qatari gas fields up. Oh, and that by the way, I'm sorry.
I've got this tirade I'm I'm I'm pouring out. When I was talking infrastructure plus steel constructions to hang all this on, that's not even talking about wellheads. If the wellheads are damaged now you have the wellhead above the the Christmas or the fountain, depending where you're at, how it's called. That can still be replaced, but that's still the valves are produced and the subcomponents are produced, oftentimes in more massive quantities, but it's individually designed for that. But, okay, you could replace those.
But if the well itself is damaged, you know, if there's pipe that's been broken or pieces have gone down down the the well, they have to be fished out usually using magnets or you burr into them and grab them and pull them out, then you have to put new pipe in. You have to cement that pipe in. That all takes time. If the wellhead is if the well is seriously damaged, you cap the well, and you have to drill a new well. And now we're talking additional months upon months to get all of this done depending on how widespread the damage is.
So quite literally, because I only have the the satellite photos and the high altitude drone photos to go off and on the videos of the the fires, in my opinion, that's a one and a half to two year delay before anything goes up. And then there's question of how much damage has been done to the fertilizer production out of that because a lot of times, by way, they take ammonia out of the gas that comes up with the, the natural gas. But there's another step to this. That's the human step. You have to get workers in.
You have to get high, high quality skilled workers, engineers. A lot of those people aren't gonna come back, because they they don't wanna go back in the possible war zone. Then there's the problem. If the desalination plants are destroyed, they physically aren't gonna come back because you can't they can't survive in that environment without water. And that whole area lives off of those desalination plants.
Qatar and Bahrain, almost a 100% of their drinking water comes from desalination plants. You you start to see that this process, it's got a lot of moving parts, and all of them are now out of whack. So this could be a very long term issue that could last into multiple years, if not, you know, a five, six year problem. And then there's another point to consider, and I I don't know. We'll we'll live and see how this goes.
You gotta consider that a lot of these artificial Gulf Southern Gulf countries, Arabic Gulf countries, they're more akin to a corporation run by one single family than to actual nations of any kind. So the question now becomes for these sheikhs, they've got their trillions out of this, but now they're gonna need those trillions to build rebuild everything. I mean, we're talking massive investments of money, clearing up, rebuilding, depending on how much damage, of course. It's gonna be three, four, five years of investment with no money coming in because there's no gas or there's no oil going out. Are they gonna do this, or are they gonna cut bait and run and sit when whatever country they're in right now with their trillions or billions that they've pulled out of these holdings that they have and just forget about those countries pseudo countries.
So, you know, there's a lot of factors at play. And the fact that the damage is not over, you know, we don't know where this conflict is gonna go next. If the Americans this weekend or, begin next week strike the infrastructure, the energy infrastructure in Iran the way Trump was threatening, it could be about a decade before, anything gets rebuilt, fully rebuilt and up and running. I mean, these are oil fields and gas fields and infrastructure that took thirty, forty years to get to the point where it's at right now, sometimes longer. It could all be destroyed in in a very short period of time.
Yeah. Well, when you refer to the Gulf States you.
Speaker 0: No. Well, when you refer to the Gulf States as, you know, corporations masquerading as nations, it's it's not an exaggeration. If you look at the countries like Qatar, I think it's only 10 to 15% of the population are Qataris. The last 85 to 90% are just foreigners. So it's just oil in a desert and the buildup real estate around it, the buildup at the energy markets.
And the problem is if things start to go south because the people themselves would leave, it makes everything very difficult. And so it's not even the just the technical issues which you referred to, but if the goal now of Iran is to expel the American bases and if the Gulf states are unwilling to decouple from The US, then they will essentially go after the survivability of these states. As you said, there's many ways. If you attack a desalination plant and there's no more water, again, it's a desert. If the workers begin to flee, then then the whole country shuts down.
It just seems that how much of the global economy depends on these, you know, corporate states. It's it's quite incredible. So, but it kind of begs the question as well, though, how how do you see NATO or sorry, Russia linking itself into Iran here? Because I guess the question on many people's mind would be after, you know, having spent the past, years of, well, NATO being using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia, it seems as if Russia could end up in a similar position, that is if it hands over some missiles. I'm not sure if Iran needs it or targeting data.
Did you see the possibility of moving this direction, or does it depend on the extent to which the Europeans get involved in the Iran war?
Speaker 1: Look. Russia's already there. I mean, let's talk let's talk realistically. This isn't a question of whether Russia would give targeting information. It is giving targeting information.
So is China giving target information? And China is now becoming what what you just said doesn't apply to Russia because Russia was already there from day one. The Chinese now are starting to look at the Chinese, they're. I mean, they always were. They're not a military culture.
They never were. They're more of a trader trader culture. They like to trade. They they're not big on military conqueror. They've been conquered many times, and they just assimilated those people and continued business as usual.
But now they're looking and going, they I think the Iranians are gonna win, and success breeds success. And now they're going, well, you know, we could invest. Maybe we could push this forward. Russia's been there from day one. I mean, there was complaints coming in from the second day on Iranian drones where they opened them up, and it's Russian chips powering the the computers on these drones with Cyrillic written in there, the name of the companies, everything.
Russia, the Russian I mean, okay. I'm not gonna say this straight out one way or the other, but it takes a year, a year and a half to train a a MiG 29 or a SU 35 fighter pilot, not four months, not five months. It takes a year to train up an officer to be able to control and command the s 400 control command block. Not, you know, not three, four months. So right off the bat, you you can make your own focus on these things that are being operated.
You know? Everybody is smart enough. I think they can make the conclusions that they need to make. There's Russia supplied Iran with a lot of upgrades in equipment over these six months that made their systems much more lethal. Avionics, propulsion, targeting, heads up displays for legacy aircraft.
They put in jamming systems, modern jamming systems. We've seen and and these are all field tested variants. I mean, Russian missiles have heat flares on them. If you ever look at it, Russian ballistic and cruise missiles have heat flares like on an airplane. So whenever the Ukrainians are trying to shoot them down, they just start shooting off heat flares as they're flying.
So that interesting little sight to see. The first stump, I saw them. Oh, that's an interesting advance. The Guran threes are basically are you know, Zelensky is complaining. Apparently, Russia's production is big enough that they can afford to, you know, ship them to, Iran.
Israel hit, the Caspian Sea where Russia gave it a very stern warning not to try to get in there. Otherwise, there'll be bad consequences for the Israelis because now they're messing with the Russian, Iranian trade, and a good chunk of that trade goes without transponder signals. You you can make you know, you can put two and two together to figure that one out. So Russia's already there. Yes.
Of course, Russia's gonna proxy The US. The prox The US has been proxying Russia for four years and admitted to it. Even though Trump then comes out, oh, it's not our war. Yeah. It is your war.
It is now your war, mister Trump, because you have not you have not divorced yourself from Biden's war for the last year and a half, so it is your reward. Where it goes from here, I don't know. But Russia and Iran I mean, for Russia, the fall of Iran is a existential crisis just a bit less than Ukraine. Because if Iran falls, it opens up absolutely opens up Central Asia and the Caucasus to to import of of NATO and US destabilization, Islamic jihadists, and so on and so on. And then that threatens directly Russia's borders and Russia's integrity, especially along the Kazakhstani border, which is 3,000 kilometers long.
And there's no way in hell Russia's gonna tolerate that. Sorry. We'll fight to the last, you know, Iranian and Russian while we're at it, and The US is not going to win In fact, everybody's waiting for The US now to put ground forces in for the massacre to begin. I mean, the Iranians are flat out said. There was a interview with I I can never remember the guy's name.
The foreign minister of Iran. I don't know if you remember his name. I always forget his name. Yeah. I forgot.
Oh, it's Yeah.
Speaker 0: I I
Speaker 1: I see his face, but, yeah, I'm horrible with names. So no no offense to anybody in Iran. Any and then they said, aren't you worried about how the Americans are coming? They're gonna do ground forces. Like, we're waiting for them.
I mean, this is quite literally that we're waiting for them. Please come to that so we can start destroying you with our hands. You know, this well, not quite literally with their hands or maybe with their hands, but, I mean, they're prepared. They're waiting. It's a fortress.
Iran is a a gigantic it's the biggest fortress in the world. And just look at the map. I would look at relief map of it. If you don't understand that this is a massive fortress, that the US military is absolutely incapable of taking maybe a few islands and then being plugged by drones and missiles non nonstop day and night while casualties mount, sure, they could do that. But anything significant?
Oh, we're gonna march to Tekran. Really? Right. You have you looked at a map where Tekran is located, how many kilometers of mountains you're gonna plan on marching through? Good luck there.
You know, this isn't a Hollywood movie. This is real life. And then I guess just the point. First of all, the logistics strain of the extreme, and The US just physically does not have the capability of doing it. It is not a land power.
It is a sea and air power. It is not a land power. The US army plus marines is about 550,000 men, but that's not combat troops. There's maybe about a 120,000 combat troops, and that's counting the National Guard pulling the reserve. The rest is what we call ash and trash.
It's combat it's it's combat support, which would be intelligence and engineers and military police, and combat service support, which is everything else that a hundred years ago or a hundred and twenty years ago wasn't considered part of the army, but is now. The teamsters, the mechanics, the cooks, the finance guys, the medics. You know? If you look at history books, what changed was if you look at history books and it said, you know, so and so brought an army of a 100,000 men, you figured these are all either pikemen or spearmen or swordsman, whatever, infantry of some kind or or musketeers, cavalry, and artillery or catapults, whatever. It depends on the decade you're or the the century you're looking at, but they were all combat soldiers.
But now what we're calling as an army is not all combat soldiers because each one of these armies came with a long train of civilians, what they were called civilians or contracted civilians. Those were the people bringing in the supplies, fixing the damaged armor, or fixing the damaged musket or a rifle, what have you, because the armies always traveled this big train. By the way, the prostitutes came in there, and their wives came in there to wash their clothes. I mean, the this this whole human train that came Napoleon came with the same thing into into Moscow. Behind his army came a giant train of humanity that did all of the jobs that needed to keep that army in the field.
Now it's all considered it's all called part of the military. It's military jobs. But, again, they're not they're soldiers, but they're not combat soldiers. They they're they have a minimal, if any, training to to do any combat. They go to range once or twice, maybe once or twice practice bayonet tactics, once or twice practice some basic infantry skills.
They don't remember it. They're not good at it. They're not made for that. But this is all part of the US army. So when they say, oh, we have five we have a half a million men, then you don't.
You've got a 100, a 120,000 you can throw into this meat grinder. There's over a million and a half of Iranians waiting for revenge on home turf, and these are actual combat soldiers. Yeah. The rest of society is right behind their back to do all the other jobs that need to be done. I mean, you're out number 10 to one.
They're on defensive, and they're in mountains in prepared defensive positions. I mean, that's a suicide. And for The US to start for The US to start recruitment for it's called good lord. What is it? What was it called?
Just flew out of my head. It's called well, okay. It's it it it's every every man at 18 has to sign up selective service. That's it. For select service, I mean, I I had to sign selective service and register with it.
And what I've been told by people in the know is it's in such bad condition. It's gonna take four or five months just to get it all organized. It's it's computerized, organized, and then start calling people in, and then, you you know, you have to prepare these people. You start getting people in. You have to prepare.
But then you get to the fact that forty percent of Americans are obese. Thirty percent of Americans are fat, but not not morbidly obese. And the thirty percent that slept doesn't mean that they're all physically fit. It's just that their weight category isn't going into fat. You can deal with some of the fat and and, run it off, but that, by the way, takes more time.
The US army last year in 2025, had an obesity or the US military, I won't just say the army, US military, had an obesity rate of somewhere around twenty two, twenty three percent. When I served, I left in 2000 2004, in February 2004, to be more more exact. There wasn't a one percent obesity rate. It wasn't tolerated. But now when your recruitment is down so much as it is because you've sent people six, seven rotations for six, seven years into Iraq, into Afghanistan, and the place on that, you've used your human material up, and that human material went home and said, don't join the military.
It's not worth it. You can't give enough people, so you start dropping the standards. And they drop and drop and drop, and now you have an obesity an obesity rate of twenty three percent, twenty two, twenty three percent. It's insane. So every fourth soldier, if he runs 10, 10 meters, he may collab from a heart attack.
I mean, you look at some of these people. I mean, when they when Trump called up the national guard out of, Texas, it became amply probed because they were all fat. And these were infantrymen, and they were coming out. They were like this big. And you're looking at us, what what the hell is he gonna do?
It's up suck up bullets if something goes sour. He he is a big target. He's not kick combat capable. You look at these guys. Seriously?
Only thing they're combat capable of is taking out a an all you can eat food part. Yeah. Yeah. I may be I may have say mean things, but this is the reality of combat. Combat is mean.
It's it's doesn't mean a thing as a human being could do to another human being is to open up their guts or blast their head all open. But that's what it is. And it is quite literally, if you're not fit, you don't survive. You you may not survive even if you're fit. If there's a massive amount of chance whether that piece of shrapnel comes flying through your head or takes out your buddy's head or just misses you both.
But if you're not fit enough to be able to sustain that kind of pressure, just die off. I mean, that's what it is. That's the reality of it. And this is in the US military at this point. I mean, just to be absolutely brutally honest with it.
And this is the military that Trump, by the way, and not a single general says anything counter because they all want their career afterwards. None of them will ever be held irresponsible. They they want their million dollar careers after their generalships are done when they retire. And these are the people that Trump wants to throw into com into combat against people that want revenge for their dead women and children are fighting in their turf and are a civilization that's lasted five thousand years. Well, you know, I think
Speaker 0: when you call it a suggested. When you call Iran a fortress, I think it's a that's a very good description because people often forget that the country is almost four times the size of Iraq. It's pure mountains and, again, populated by 90,000,000 people, and then you have the sea on the outside just, you know, to make it more difficult to storm the walls. So it's yeah. I think that's why the foreign minister Arakci was making this point that, yes, please do send your troops.
You know, the closer they come, the easier it will be to take them out. But but as The US is sending, you know, a few thousand troops, it begs therefore the question, what exactly are they good for? And Cargilland, it seems, yeah, too problematic, too difficult unless they're sent over from Saudi Arabia. But even then, they're sitting ducks. But but I was thinking that if Trump really wants to open up the Strait or Moose and gamble a lot on this, you also have these islands, especially three islands in near the Strait Of Hormuz.
It's Abu, Musa, and then you have the Greater And Lesser Toum Islands. It's interesting because they've been they're claimed by United Arab United Arab Emirates ever since Iran took them in 1971. So and suddenly now we see The UAE saying, oh, we might step up in the fight against Iran. Given that they're so yeah. I know with with what army, but but where where does this enthusiasm come from?
It just it seems that this might be a trade off if the Americans are promising them these islands back. You know, The US gets control over the Strait Of Hormuzo, more control at least, while UAE gets its old islands back. Again, speculation, but what what do you see otherwise? What what can a few thousand boots on the ground achieve here?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I think it would they will go after these small islands, but here's the problem. Or or the coastline in northern, the northern coastline in Iran, which in a lot of places is relatively flat, but it runs into mountains not too far up. The problem is whether you're on the islands or the coastline, what's the width of the entire, I'm sorry. What at the at the narrowest point, what's the width?
36 kilometers. You know what goes 50 kilometers? Especially if you have a retranslator drone sitting up there? The FPV drone. You can take a FPV drone with a big battery pack that can carry up to 20 kilograms of explosives.
In other words, a couple RPG rounds strapped to it, and you can go hunting Americans or UAE soldiers on those islands. And you can do this day in and day out, and especially those islands aren't 36 kilometers wide. You could take out any ships going through. First of all, because around the tip, the dredged canal because these waters are not deep. These supertankers cannot go through these water at beaching themselves.
This the dredged canal, which, by the way, has to be maintained and has to be dredged. I'm not quite sure how often they do it, but I gotta consider that. But that dredged canal is 2,700 meters wide, right down the middle. So about 18 kilometers, in right down the at the nearest point. Yeah.
And believe you me, a supertanker is a gigantic target. You put one or two of those out of commission, in the middle of that, they got to be dredged out of there because nothing else is gonna pass. I'm not sure whether an American destroyer can pass into the shallower waters or not. I'm not quite sure how just how shallows were, but the supertankers can't. So right off the bat, you can easily close the gate those gates that way.
But those islands in the North, they're all within fifteen, sixteen kilometers of the mainland or less. They're all within FPV drone range. You could set up, you know, two, three hundred teenagers who've lost their families or lost their brother and sisters and want revenge. Here's VR goggles. You know?
Do a quick course on how to learn the power and control. Half of them probably already know how to control these drones. And here's here's a pair of VR goggles and a dozen drones. Go play hunt the Americans or hunt The UAE. And it becomes one big game, and they could be under every tree under rock, you know, trying to find these guys.
They're all separate separated out, maybe teams of two. Usually, they run-in teams of two. But, like, that's the point is, I mean, you're you're talking, what, an investment of four, five hundred people, and you could have three, four thousand drones flying down or a couple drones for every marine that landed on there. How's how do you get the the wounded off? How do you supply them?
And here's the other thing, m I six, because, you know, it wasn't the Ukrainians. I'll call it what it is. M I six attacked a Russian well, a shadow fleet, if you wanna I don't consider them shadow fleet. In Lloyds of London insured ship off the coast of one of the Aegean Islands using what? And this was, what, about three or four months ago, and they did it using what?
They used FPV drones with RPG rounds attached to them, and they swarmed in there, and they hit, and they damaged, and they set it on fire. Yeah. That could be used on any ship. No American ship will survive a 100 drones flying in in a wave. It's done.
They will get through. At least they you don't need that many to get through, especially with that much explosive power behind every single drone. And once it's damaged enough and burning, what do you do when that Aegis destroyer is on fire with a crew of 350 people. You you know, this is something that could cascade very quickly. So wouldn't they get used?
Probably, that's where they will get used. Will it be a suicide mission? It'll be just as much of a cluster as if they went after and card, maybe even worse. And the Iranians are gonna be with an easy shooting range with everything they have to just keep lobbing into those islands. It's even easier to shoot those islands than Card Island because they're much close to the mountains and the mainland.
So there is no good solution for Trump on land. There's only massive failure and casualties and and a cluster and less massive. And the best thing is not to do it at all. More than likely, he's gonna do it. That's where my opinion now is.
I was hoping not, but he seems dead set on it because he doesn't know how to get out, and his only theory on how to get out of this is to double down and triple down and quadruple down and do stupid down. You know, mister Win Bigley because he wins Bigley. That's what his own words. He wins so big, he wins Bigley. Mister Owen Bigley, is is gonna make, gonna send a lot of men to their deaths.
Gonna leave a lot of, orphan children and widows behind and parents without, their sons and daughters because the moron cannot break and just take the punishment that he's got for doing something stupid like starting this war. Instead, he's gonna just expand it. Unfortunately, I I would like things to be differently, yeah, to go differently. Yeah. But that that's all I think we're facing, unfortunately.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's the problem with him trying now to fix the narrative by overselling the successes in this war. There's no it makes so much more difficult to walk this one back and, you know, accept, you know, something less than a victory. So
Speaker 1: Well, go Glenn, there was a story that came out, from an inside source just recently came out that said Trump's war briefings. I I pardon my French. I shit you not when I say this. It's a crude it's a it's a crude saying, but it's I think it's very effective for this. First, a little bit of a background.
I remember Tulsi Gabbard was talking about, you know, well, we had to reform these daily security brief for Trump from having no. The standard is here's five, six pages of information. Please read it, mister president. Trump doesn't like to read. So they had to reform the secure the the the national security or the the international security brief down to something that looked like a Fox news break, you know, just little pieces instead of so Trump doesn't have to read something that covers, like, fifteen minutes of watching.
Well, having said that and this is Tulsi admitted to this back about a year ago. Well, what the insider is saying is Trump's war briefs are about three minutes long, and it's strike videos. US army or navy or air force blowing stuff up. Nothing negative. No reality.
I mean, what are you what are you gonna take out of an entire day worth of war in a in a flexible environment in three minutes? We're dealing with a very shallow human being who is not well educated no matter if he finished Ivy League schools. My god. His own mother, there was a there was an interview with her when he was young, obviously. And what she said was, I know my son is an idiot, and he's awkward socially, but he's my son, and god help me.
I love him. And please and and it'll if he goes into politics, it'll be a total disaster. That's quote from his mother in an interview in the New York Times back, what, about forty years ago or so. But, you know, his mother knew him best, obviously. And I've heard this from other people that have known Trump closely, very closely, including being in his entourage in the nineties when they were doing party drugs every couple days and, staying up all night and, doing these wild parties, Atlantic City in New York.
I've talked to these people. I'm friends with one of them. That was a former, navy seal who was in Trump's underage. So, you know, and they all say the same thing. He's not a a deep person.
He's a great marketing person, which is what this is the fall this is why all republics die. Democracy well, democracy is marbled, but republics all die for the same one of the same reasons. Is the it's it's marketing. It's a feel good popularity contest on elections. You don't get the best people.
It's human nature. You get the guy that sells himself better than the other guy. That he may not be he may be as dense as a brick while the other guy's a genius that'll save you. Nah. But he's not as popular.
It's a popularity contest. And then Trump won the popularity contest. He is a marketing guru. It doesn't go much deeper than that, though. And once you get into the White House or into the Kremlin or wherever you're in, whatever place you're in, now you have to start working.
And if all that person has, in this case, Trump and a lot of the EU leaders would see the same thing, is they can campaign well, they can sell themselves well, but there's nothing behind them, no knowledge base, no, sternness, no concept of where they wanna go. You get the message you get.
Speaker 0: Well, his briefing consists of videos showing explosions. It kind of it could explain his confidence. So why things are going better than it is. Anyways, thank you so much for taking the time.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Iran is the Graveyard of American Hegemony https://youtu.be/OcqIEJEk4MY https://t.co/iiQYDh2K9F
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Gilbert Doctorow: Russia & China Reconsider U.S. Relations Over Iran War https://youtu.be/TJE1OqaKEv8 https://t.co/dLoIKdbNWC
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gilbert Doktorov is asked how the Iran war is reshaping dynamics in the East, especially for Russia and China, and what the broader implications are for global order.
- On Russia’s stance and reaction: Doktorov notes a gap between the Kremlin’s official positions and what “chattering classes” discuss. He observes astonishingly limited reaction from President Putin and his close foreign-policy circle to dramatic developments that could redefine regional and global orders. He contrasts Putin’s cautious, “slow-war” approach with sharper criticisms from other Russian voices (e.g., Salaviyev and Alexander Dugin) who urge moving beyond a gradual strategy. There is a sense within some Russian circles that a more assertive stance may be required, yet official channels show restraint.
- On Iran’s strategic position and alliances: He points out that Iran has withstood intense pressure and maintained the ability to threaten Gulf energy infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz, thereby sustaining global leverage despite severe attacks. Iran has managed to survive and press the global energy market, calling into question how meaningful Iran’s inclusion in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is in practice. He notes scant evidence of meaningful Russian or Chinese military or intelligence support to Iran in public accounts, and cites Israeli claims of Russian arms shipments being denied by Moscow.
- On the West’s behavior and international law: The discussion highlights what is described as the United States’ “might makes right” posture and the dismissiveness toward traditional international-law norms, including UN Charter commitments. The panelists contrast American rhetoric about legality with its real-world actions, and discuss how Russia’s and China’s responses have been cautious or critical rather than conciliatory or confrontational.
- On potential military cooperation and bloc dynamics: The conversation explores whether a deeper Russia-China-North Korea alignment could emerge in reaction to US and Israeli actions against Iran. Doktorov mentions that North Korea is viewed as a, “will and determination to act,” supplying munitions such as underwater drones and missiles to Iran, whereas Russia and China are characterized as more talk than action. He argues Moscow benefits from maintaining broad, non-aligned diplomacy, but acknowledges a shift in Russian thinking after recent events toward more decisive posture.
- On Europe and the US-European split: The panel discusses the European Union’s fragility and its leaders’ inconsistent responses to the Iran crisis and to US pressure. They consider European solidarity rhetoric as a cover for avoiding hard choices, with examples including Belgian leadership suggesting normalization with Russia post-conflict. The discussion reflects concern that EU leaders may be forced to confront realignments as Gulf energy supplies and US LNG leverage reshape Europe’s energy security and political calculus.
- On diplomacy and pathways forward: The speakers debate the prospects for diplomacy, including possible three-way or broader security arrangements, and whether Alaska or other meeting points could offer reprieve. They note a public split within Moscow’s foreign-policy establishment about how to proceed, with internal figures pushing for diplomacy and others advocating a stronger balance of power. There is explicit skepticism about the utility of negotiations with Donald Trump and the idea that the war could end on the battlefield rather than through diplomacy.
- On the Ukraine war’s interconnection: The discussion emphasizes that the Iran crisis has global ramifications that feed back into Ukraine, noting that Russia’s current posture and Western responses influence the Ukraine conflict. Doktorov highlights that the depletion of US air defenses observed in the Israel-Iran context affects Ukraine, underscoring the interrelatedness of the two wars and their combined impact on global power dynamics.
- Final takeaway: The dialogue reiterates that the Iran war has a global dimension with the two wars being intimately connected; the Iran conflict reshapes alliances, energy security, and strategic calculations across Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, while signaling a potential reconfiguration of Western alliances and multipolar governance.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Gilbert Doktorov, a historian and international affairs analyst, to discuss how the Iran war is affecting the East and, primarily Russia. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Hi. Very good to be with you.
Speaker 0: So we see that this Iran war, it has many dimensions to it, which I assume would would have to be interpreted by the Russians in different ways. So everything from this deceptive diplomacy to the lawlessness of the thing, the brutality of the war in terms of the willingness to escalate, killing government leaders, attacks on critical infrastructure, nuclear power power plants. It could be the goal of weakening Russia and China, but, you know, we also see some US miscalculation, Iranian resilience likely, and, yeah, the possible destruction of the Gulf States if their desalination plants go, and we see a split in the relationship between Americans and Europeans. So, again, much of these are indications that the ramification of this war will not merely be regional, but indeed global. So how do you see this whole, yeah, disaster unfolding in The Middle East impacting and being interpreted by the East and, again, Russia and China primarily?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the first thing I'd like to do was delay a little bit here. Because when we speak about Russia, we speak about president Putin and his and his administration, about his foreign minister, what they're saying. And then there are what the chattering classes are saying. People oh, I mean, the the Moscow establishment is saying as exhibited on their on the talk shows and not only in the talk shows. They are very, very different.
The if you look strictly at at president Putin and his immediate assistance or, luckily, minister of foreign affairs, you see very little reaction, astonishing little reaction from the Kremlin to these dramatic, shocking developments which bear upon the whole of the relate possible relationship with Donald Trump and with the world order in general. Trump's behavior is obscene. It's obnoxious. I don't want to to search for other derogatory words. I think he's reserved for himself a secure place in hell.
But that's my personal opinion. I'm not speaking as an analyst. Speaking as an analyst, what he has done is utterly shocking, utterly disrupts anything resembling the world order, respect for the UN Charter, respect for international law. He has spoken of his being held in check only by his own moral limits, his own take on morality, and not by international or other law. And he's acting according.
The problem is that his morality is bestiality. His behavior, ordinarily, ordinary human standards, is the most awful thing we've seen in a very, very long time. Let me distinguish between what is said and what is dumb. American presidents and their assistants have done some horrible things going back to Nixon and to Kissinger, but they never spoke about it so openly. In your face, if they can do anything and and you'll have to settle with with what we do, This is utterly shocking.
That distinction comes up, of course, in all the talk shows. They make a great deal about it. But we've never witnessed this type of directness, transparency for America's might makes right policy. But at the level of the the Kremlin, it's almost total silence. Of course, they don't dare say anything about mister Trump's showing his his true nature.
They don't say they're going to continue negotiations. They don't say they're gonna take them off. They only note that they are in suspense and that the Americans have requested that. As regards to Iran, we all, many of us in the alternative media had assumed that Iran was bracketed in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS by these two major powers, which provided it with stability, some sense of security, and with good reason to behave in an orderly way and not to be a sponsor of terrorism. Now we see that these two brackets are virtually meaningless.
Both Russia and China, to our knowledge, and I'm very cautious about this because how much our knowledge is valid is difficult to say since all of these things are kept in the dark. But considering the lack of accusations against Russia and China for giving meaningful support to Iran, we can assume that there is no meaningful support to Iran. We heard, oh yes, America was shot, Washington was shot, the Russians could possibly be supplying our military intelligence to Iran. How horrible. That's as much as we saw.
The Israelis said that they yesterday, they blasted out of the water ships that were carrying Russian arms to Iran. Russia was denied that they were carrying any any any weapons or that these even were Russian ships. But aside from that, we don't hear a word about Russian arms being supplied. So what is the meaning of the alliance or the cooperation agreements? What is the meaning of Iran being in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or BRICS?
I would say at this point, zero. Now, I don't mean to be too harsh here because what we all have learned, including the Russians and the Chinese, is that, and of course, what Mr. Trump and his close associates of that, is Iran is pretty capable of looking after its own interests more than anyone suit, without taking into account the 4,000 kilometer two stage missile that was fired at Diego Garcia. Are just within the limits of short and medium range missiles. They have shown a capability of maintaining prioritization of firing, timing of firing, all of the things that come from command and control, which supposedly was utterly destroyed by American and Israeli attacks.
So the Iranians have hold have held on very, very well. Of course, their backup is the Straits Of Hormuz and their ability to cause economic damage to the Middle East and to everyone who was supplied by the Middle East, meaning primarily the Far East and to a lesser extent Europe. This was not to be anticipated. The fair organization could survive such dramatic horrific attacks as they had experienced. But they did.
And therefore, you have to go back and ask the first question. Maybe the Iranians were perfectly justified in not concluding a lot military defensive alliances with Russia or China and keeping their options open. Perhaps I won't I just mentioned it as in passing. But the power of Yuma to survive all of this has been stunning. Their ability to maintain the pressure on the globe and to destroy at will almost all of the production of hydrocarbons in the Middle East, which makes almost irrelevant their power over the Straits Of Hormuz.
If there's no production, then there's nothing for tankers to take through the Straits Of Hormuz. So, either which way you look at it, they are in a commanding position. That was not to be expected. Certainly, the Russians, officially Russians, never expected that Iran could be more powerful by its asymmetric defense in The United States with its direct barbarous attacks on on Iran.
Speaker 0: And given that we see that all the rules are essentially gone, thrown away, and US is so blatant about it as well, that is especially Pete Hegseth, and now this whole rhetoric that, well, following international law, the rules of engagement, this is, you know, political correctness. We will do whatever it takes. Yeah. Essentially, I am dismissing international law. How does this work on the military calculations of the Russians and the Chinese?
Because the US seems very determined to defeat its opponents, and, again, any point to the idea that knocking out the Iranians would also have the purpose of weakening China. So how does this affect the military cooperation? What is the potential of well, is there any talk now of deepening military cooperation between Russia, China, North Korea, or others?
Speaker 1: Alright. Perfectly go back to the very start of this. As I mentioned in in recent interviews and my writings, the American attack, the Israeli attack on Iran shocked the Russian foreign policy establishment out of the skin. They were shocked to the point where they began to realize that the method that the Putin government has been using, the slowly, slowly war of attrition, is not appropriate to the present security environment. And they started speaking openly about it.
This is done on one program of Salaviov to a shocking degree. They all but denounced Putin in every way except his name. The next day, Salaviov hate his words, and we're speaking about our wonderful commander in chief who works tirelessly and free in the morning to look after our welfare. But then there are others who have kept up the pressure. Alexander Dugin, a court philosopher, as he was considered to be, of Putin's Kremlin, came out with at least as harsh a critique of the war management as that one show of did.
And, of course, Dugan is untouchable. After the the brutal murder and assassination of his daughter, he was made a hero and you cannot say a word about him. There he is, on open space on his own website. He has denounced the go slow approach. So there was a change in mentality.
The question is where and when this pressure is applied to the president and with what effect. As to the question that you posed, this was directly discussed, again, on the same program, the same talk show. Miss missus Soloveyov, after this this shocking attack and then recanting his words, he disappeared from television for a week. I thought, my goodness. Looks like press freedom has just evaporated.
No, no, I was quite mistaken. He disappeared from television because he joined a parliamentary delegation from the Douma to their counterparts in Beijing. This is periodical and it was very timely. And the mission, one of the members of that delegation, one of the chairman of the Douma Committee who spoke again on Salerio program, explained that they were keen to engage the Chinese on this very question you've posed. Shouldn't there now be a forged three way defense alliance between Russia, China, and North Korea.
And, of course, the question arises, why North Korea? How can we equate North Korea's power situation with these two these two superpowers, Russia and China. And of course, the really interesting contribution of North Korea is the will and determination to act as opposed to speak. And there is reason to believe even that they are supplying North Koreans are supplying munitions to Iran, namely to name the the item. It is underwater drones, missiles that can destroy aircraft carriers.
This has been supplied by North Korea. Now, if you look at it, we can ask the question, why aren't they supplying them a nuclear box? Or maybe they are. We just we don't know about it. But the point is the North Koreans are not talkers, they doers.
The Chinese and the Russians are just talkers. And that comes out from yesterday's or today's addressed by by by Lavrov commenting on the latest situation in The Middle East. It's just whining. Just whining. Oh, look what's going on.
I'm sorry. This is This is the second most powerful, militarily powerful country in the world, and all they can say is, my goodness, how sad this is. This is a pitiful verbal response to the American running amok in The Middle East. Not to mention, where is the physical response to America's running amok in The Middle East? Just to say, as Dmitry has been saying to everyone who gives him the microphone, boy, this is gonna really upset the world economy.
A brilliant observation, which none of us, of course, could have have made on our own without his intervention. Russia has been holding back and saying nothing. And let let me address why. Don't again, I don't wanna be critical. I want to just be analytical here.
The reason, to my understanding, very plain. Russia has made a strength out of being in talking relations with everybody. When you have a situation as critical as the one present, which could easily advance to World War three and which could easily lead to a global, not recession, but a global depression, it is not a virtue to be talking to everybody, your friend holding hands with everybody. You've got to do something and take some stand, and Russia's not doing that. On the contrary, on Sunday evening.
He was reading. It was so clear. It was a teleprompter. He was reading lines which must have made him very embarrassed, but which were coming from the Kremlin. And the lines were, oh, how sad that that The Gulf States are being are being harmed in this in this conflict.
Well, that is because mister Putin wants to hold everybody's hand and advertise how Russia is vey or his intermediary because it's peaking to all sides. I don't believe that is the proper response to the present dire situation. The notion that Russia sheds tears, which I think are crocodile tears, over the harm done to its competitors, The Gulf States are after all its competitors in supplying hydrocarbons to the world. It's shabby looking. The fact comes out, emerges.
Many other observers have made this point. I didn't weigh in on it, but now I had no choice but to weigh in on it. Putin is leans towards Israel. There's no question about it. And his justification for it is does not stand up to reason.
The justification was, oh, there's 2,000,000 Russian speakers are for our passport holders who live in Israel, and we can't see harm done to them. Well, friends, those are no friends that the Israeli residents, the Israeli passport holders who are dual nationals and have Russian passports also are no friends of Moscow, and anybody who says otherwise is not being serious, including the president of Russia. They are enemies. And just as mister Trubayas was an enemy, just as Naina, Yeltsin is an enemy, and they all get coddled by the president of Russia. I won't say more.
He has every possibility of of changing direction, and I hope he does. But as it is now, Russia's great power status is utterly wasted on resolving a global crisis in The Middle East.
Speaker 0: I was thinking you you mentioned that, of course, the Gulf States are competitors to Russia, especially in the energy markets. But how do you see the other I guess, what benefits could come to Russia? Because this the media often points out that Russia is the big winner in this war. I guess it makes sense to some extent that is energy prices are going up. A lot of its energy competitors are going off the grid.
And the fact that The US had to drop some sanctions on Russia. Once this, you know, solidarity around the sanctions fall apart, it might be difficult to build up. You have weapons being redirected, which would otherwise been used to kill Russians. But I thought the more specific thing, also affects the Chinese, would be the faltering of the alliance systems that is in The Middle East. We see some Gulf states, know, rethinking how wise it is to host all these US bases.
In East Asia, like in South Korea, some must be rethinking, well, how how certain are the security guarantees as The US pulls out all these THAAD and Patriot missiles. And indeed, also in Europe, you see a deepening split between The US and the EU. So do you do you see this being well, to what extent do you see this being benefits, or or or do you see it the same way that these things are happening that is weakening of the alliance systems? Because that seems to be a key component of the hegemonic position. That is if you can divide all the regions of the world into, you know, obedient, independent allies and weakened adversaries.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll that question, which is very important. But first, I wanna turn it around on the alliances that that we in the alternative media had deemed so important in ushering in a new global governance that would be polycentric, multipolar, has been shot to hell. Listening to Russian tele they were speaking now about bricks in terms which none of us could have expected. Listening to their discussion, following what's happened in the last two weeks, they were more or less acknowledging that bricks is worth zero. Zero.
And I'd say that to all of our colleagues. If Russians are saying that, why are they saying that? Saw before that. They saw that The United States had upended BRICS by imposing these 50% sanctions on countries trading Russian oil. And it worked.
India dropped all of its purchases of Russian oil. Well, that was the past. Now that they are saying simply BRICS you know, by the way, BRICS was never intended to be anti American. This is Russian speaking on state television. BRICS was supposed to build an alternative framework that would eventually succeed for the faltering IMF and World Trade Organization, all these other structures dating from the post World War II period, and we'd be a new order.
Now the Russians are not saying that anymore. This explains why a year, I think it was the last meeting of BRICS, maybe it's two years ago, when we all When was the meeting in Kazan? Was October, was it? No. Yeah.
Okay. When we discovered that there wasn't gonna be no alternative to the existing exchanges, currency exchanges. There'd be no BRICS currency. And and this seemed peculiar, but nobody particularly highlighted it. And now it's perfectly clear why, because the Russians understood back then but never said it aloud that BRICS is virtually virtuous.
That has come out of this. And I'd say that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization hasn't come out much better. Although, in its last meeting, it was clear that the Russians and the Chinese were looking to invest more in that as main vector for moving forward new world governance than BRICS, which was falling away in importance. So when we say that the Western organizations, whether it's NATO, the EU, whatever, are being shattered or are opening up hidden fissures and which have great importance for their for their future evolution. I say what we thought were the organizations uniting the East have turned out to be shattered also.
So that creates a still more chaotic situation than any of us could have imagined. Yes, of course, here in Europe, the shattering of the EU is only in the first stage. I cannot imagine how Ursula von der Leyen will survive her statements in the last week that we will not import one gram of Russian gas under the present situation of shortage and spiked prices and high inflation. How can she survive this? Much as they are not pragmatists, all of the leaders of Western Europe are faced with the politically hazardous inflation that is coming.
Speaker 0: How do you make sense of the Europeans here, though? Because this is quite a shock to them. The you know, they just cut themselves off and, you know, celebrated having no more purchases of Russian oil or gas. And then now, of course, they're being cut off from the Middle East as well. And we saw The United States, obviously, seeing now that they are completely dependent on American LNG, which allows Trump to essentially say telling the EU, you will pass this trade deal, this horrible trade deal, which nobody in the EU wanted.
Otherwise, you will not anymore have favorable access to our LNG. So, you know, who could have foreseen this? You cut yourself off from all other suppliers, and then the one supplier you'd now depend completely on has has political leverage. I mean, it's quite, predictable, but still shocking in in some way. But what is happening within the EU?
As you mentioned, the statements from Wunderlying, they they go so far against the national interest of of the member states. How how do you see this playing out? There are exceptions, would say. The Belgian prime minister, especially, I think, is quite impressive in these days of unbearable conformity where everyone falls in line. They always use this expression European solidarity, which is just a poor excuse for rejecting common sense, because one obviously is going down the wrong path, and one is using the slogans of European solidarity as a way of suggesting that all dissent is something negative.
But the Belgian prime minister suggested, you know, minor things, like after this war, we should normalize relations with Russia, which is then criticized for. So how how do you see Europe adjusting to this Iran war? Because that, of course, will also affect its position on the Ukraine war.
Speaker 1: Well, it hasn't adjusted fully. It hasn't even adjusted partially. When you look at the odious behavior and odious statements coming out of Trump, they're in such violation of European values. But the question is how much longer can this hypocrisy hold that this man and this country are the closest allies of Europe? It's in such violation of all their ideals that sooner or later, this has to break.
The question is when and who will lead the way. Now coming back to Bart de Weyrich, I'm very glad that you mentioned him. I've got a personal take on this. I think he's campaigning to become the president of the European Commission. He is in front of the microphone every day.
His NVA is putting up on YouTube his speeches and his answers to questions. He comes to a meeting, as he did a week ago, of the European heads of heads of government, and he passes this, like, 200 journalists who are lined up with their microphones. And he stops here, he stops there, and he stops in the fourth place. He is campaigning to take charge. Now, I don't take with as face value any of his conformist statements.
I think they only he is running the same race as Fizo and Obon, but in a very shrewd way, to upset people, not to guarding his flanks, and avoiding saying anything that will allow his enemies to stick in a dagger and move remove him from from where he wants to go. Therefore, he says that he supports Ukraine a 100%. Therefore, he tells you about his parents and how they took in Ukrainian refugees. Therefore, he says that, yes, we will have normal relations with Russia only after a peace treaty is signed and a peace treaty that is acceptable both to us in Europe and to Ukrainians. From my understanding, that's all hot air.
It is simply defensive, protective while he's going at the things that count. He, after all, did say normalization of relation with Russia. And he, after all, did say he explained himself that if you have a peace treaty, it is a peace treaty, not a scrap of paper. And the peace treaty means that you have resolved all outstanding issues. And after that, you normalize relations, as he said we did after World War II.
We said we start trading normally and everything else. That is a direct contradiction, but we're hearing from all the Russia haters in the EU. They want a peace treaty that is only a truce, and it sets the stage for round two or three, and and that when they will, like, drive Russia out of Europe or be sure that it stays outside of Europe. So he is going in a very different direction, and I'm sure it is it is a campaign he's waging to take over the direction of the EU.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's a good point. And, again, this falls within the whole idea of the Europeans. They they don't even want to enter the war, it seems.
They just want to cease fire, and and nobody really wants to try to find a way of restoring relations as to war. And and as you correctly say, you hear this in the rhetoric over and over again, that is once this is over, we can find some different avenue where we can compete with or fight the Russians on more favorable terms. Even the Ukraine war can't really be put to an end. It's they even say quite openly they need a, you know, a break to breathe, to regroup, to rebuild, but but the fight isn't over. So it's it's I'm I'm missing this from the the discourse, this willingness to take a step back and discuss basic things, like what what actually are the source of peace there?
How do we envision stable, prosperous Europe in the future? Is that one where the largest country in Europe by territory, population, military, economy will be under, you know, constant containment and attempted to be, well, severed from the rest of the continent. Is this a source of stability? Is it gonna be the the Western countries just dominating so much that you Russia has to adjust, or will it be some way of everyone sitting around the same table? There is no discussion of this.
I just hear politics being reduced to cheap slogans of, you know, our values and and Russian aggression. There's And at the end of the day, for all their crocodile tears over Ukraine, if they really wanted to save Ukraine, their first priority they should have is remove it from these front lines of this new geopolitical game. This you can't seriously convince any person that this has benefited Ukraine in any way. But in terms of putting an end to the war, though, how has the Iran war affected the possibility of diplomacy? I would think that the Russians are not very after the deceptive diplomacy with Iran that is first JCPOA, then these two surprise attacks when negotiations were going well.
How does this affect the I mean, do they still talk about Alaska now in Moscow? And what are they talking about in China? Because Xi Jinping was gonna meet Trump next month, but this meeting was postponed.
Speaker 1: Well, I've criticized the the way that that Vladimir Putin has been managing the world. And I have to criticize still more sternly the the position of the Chinese who look like absolute winks. The their stand on Iran is of other incomprehensible given, as I said, their sponsorship of Iran in these two key organizations where China and Russia are both leaders, I mean, both BRICS and in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, it is incomprehensible that they have done nothing of substance to assist Iran. And MFA have been so cautious in their words about Iran. But that's so much for for the Chinese.
I don't know how where this is headed, but it is clear that Europe is gonna change. It is clear that what the position of several people is unsustainable. And it will take a lot of change in the leadership across the continent. But the good start will be cleaning house here in the here in Brussels in the European institutions. I do not see how, as I said, the lady can survive what she has done with her own two hands.
And that will be a good start to cleaning house. But there's a lot more has to change. We'll see whether or not Mr. Orban survives his vote in coming up in the it's got two, three weeks from now since he has been so important in resisting the the machine in Brussels. But I'm sorry.
I think I'm I'm straining from your question. Could you just rephrase it?
Speaker 0: The the possible pathways now for diplomacy.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0: Because the Russians were looking towards Alaska as a way to go, and the the Chinese, I think, were hoping that some relations could be improved with this meeting, which was supposed to take place next month. Because for them, of course, you know, this could be an opportunity if The US is now struggling. Perhaps this they would like to put a pause to this economic war against the Chinese?
Speaker 1: Well, the present situation, of course, is very embarrassing for for president Putin. Going back a little bit more than a month, there was an open public break between his position and the position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The opposition within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs started with Sergei Lapkov, who said famously that the initiative, the impulse from Anchorage is gone, that there is no further room for diplomacy. This will be resolved from a field of battle. He was immediately reprimanded.
But then within two, three weeks, we find that his his boss, Sergei Lavrov, is saying the second. All this time, Pieskov, speaking on behalf of of Putin, is saying the opposite. And they appointed Dmitryev, made him very important. And let me let me not mince words. Dmitryev, by my understanding, is an American plant.
He is part of the liberals whom Putin has always coddled in a traditional power play of you tilt to the right, and then you tilt to the left, then tilt back to the right. That is how Gorbachev maintained his power until he fell. And I think there that present head of head of state is playing the same game, which could lead to the same result. The there's a point where you have to stand on one side or the other, and you can't keep on shifting back and forth. And it is time since president Putin invested so much of his political capital in these negotiations.
And if you look at them, you have to be met to believe that anything can be achieved with Donald Trump in negotiations for all the reasons you just gave. Nobody is speaking about it so directly, but it's pretty obvious that this war will end on the battlefield and that mister mister Trump's role is is less is less than nothing. So there you have a big divide in in in Russia, and it remains to be seen when or whether the president will adjust to the new conditions. So far, he hasn't. So far, they're they're quite pleased that that Trump has pulled back and is not pressing new talks with Whitquefan.
But that day will come, and and Putin will have to decide whether or not he's going to continue this farce or not. At the same time, we are well aware what what mister Zerensky said a day ago, that the Russians are preparing or starting a big summer offensive right now is correct. They are. The only thing that was false in mister Zelensky's statement was that it's very costly to the Russians of losing a thousand man a day. As we know, as I've seen for the last four years, every time that Ukrainians open their mouths about Russian losses, they are projecting unto the Russians their own losses.
That the Ukrainians are losing a thousand men a day is entirely believable. The Russians are is not. Nonetheless, the Russians, of course, had losses. But what was insignificant about Zelensky's remarks, which otherwise are not reflected in what Russian state television said telling their audience, is that he was speaking about the use of tanks and of heavy equipment coming back into play. Now, partly, this is seasonal because they have more cover now that the leaves or the trees are coming out.
Spring is underway. But I don't think that explains the whole thing. I think the Russians are simply much more confident that they are able to keep the, what, the Ukrainian drones at bay or counter them one way or another, and they're massing heavy heavy equipment, which they haven't done for close to a year. So that is in preparation of a big a big drive on Komik Torsk and Slovansk, which are now just 18 kilometers an artillery range from from Russian standpoint, after which you've got a clean sweep at the same time looking for the map. As you and I do do, it is shocking that four years of war again, in fifth year in a war that's going on almost as long as World War two, that Russia has only captured, in the last few months, additional 5% of Donetsk Province or 8%.
It's gone from 17% to 25 per sorry. From 25% that was held by Ukrainians down to 18% other than Donetsk, almost. There's until now, their moves, for understandable reasons, have been extremely modest. We will see very soon whether they can make the end run and reach the in in a matter of of weeks and not years. So that that is all in front of us.
Speaker 0: Well, how about just the last question. We've seen on the war development some successes of the Ukrainian offensive, especially down south in the Saporizhzhia region. How how do you make sense of this given that they have lost a lot of access to money and weapons now over the past weeks?
Speaker 1: Because it's 1,200 kilometer long on the front. And if they found a weak spot, whichever the city did, then they're exploiting it. But I wouldn't say that any isolated successes they have and surprises that they make are going to overturn the big picture, which is Russian advance, as I described, against the last two major well, medium importance outposts and highlands of Slavyansk and Kronovatorsk. The the thing that the the Ukrainian success would be surprising only to those among us who have spoken day after day, week after week about Russians having shattered the Ukrainian lines of a their excess efforts and recruitment had been utterly unsuccessful and so forth. We have, as you know, among our our colleagues and among the platforms of of on YouTube, there are many that issue daily the most lurid, the most sensationalist accounts of the war coming to an end with Russian victory, Ukrainian capitulation as if it's a pushover.
It has never been a pushover. The Ukrainians, despite everything, have fought with great valor, which the Russian state television speaks about, but almost none of my colleagues speak about. And I say shame on them because the fact remains that there is fighting spirit in Ukraine. There is the problem that you've highlighted. They are very short on equipment.
And of course, their numbers of soldiers have been significantly depleted. That is undeniable. And it's why, as I say, they can concentrate force in one or two locations. But on the whole 1,200 kilometer line, the Russians have have by far the strategic advantage.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. I appreciate it. And, no, I think this is well, it seems like indications that this is taking the shape of a world war when you see that the one conflict is impacting another. I don't think we're quite there yet, but given how large and the global ramifications they are and how these wars from in conflicts from the one in Ukraine to Iran, also impacting The US Chinese rivalry, it does appear to, yeah, take on this global dimensions. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. I think I agree completely with your summing up words. It has a global dimension. The two are intimately related. And of course, the depletion of American air defenses in the war of Israel against Iran is a major setback for Ukraine.
So just in that very simple terms of equipment available, the two wars are directly interrelated to the disadvantage of Ukraine.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Pepe Escobar: Iran's Strategy of Attrition Warfare https://youtu.be/Bzy0p_FeW30 https://t.co/ST7jDlH8wH
Video Transcript AI Summary
Pepe Escobar and Glenn discuss the Iran situation amid escalating US-Israeli pressure and Iran’s response. Key points:
- Iran as “the holy grail” in US policy: Iran has long been seen as the ultimate target within a broader project that includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran, with the goal of reshaping West Asia and advancing a Greater Israel concept. The project dates back to at least the nineties, with frameworks like the Project for the New American Century and Clean Break cited as influencing DC thinking.
- War planning and messaging: The war was described as planned for decades, with Iran identified as the likely target when other measures failed. The Trump administration reportedly pressed forward, and the “barbarian baboon in the White House” metaphor is used to underscore perceived Zionist influence and financial beneficiaries around the war.
- Domestic US-financial dynamics: The war’s perceived profitability for insiders is highlighted, naming Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Steve Lutnick, and others as profiting from related moves. The discussion emphasizes that financial markets (bond yields, gold, oil) influence US decisions, with high bond yields constraining US action.
- Iranian strategic posture: Iran’s leaders reportedly signaled that there are no conversations with the US at the moment, and that a deal is impossible given the lists of demands from both sides. The Iranians have shifted from defense to offense, with missiles and drones increasingly employed.
- Iranian deterrence and capabilities: The talk notes Iran’s use of missiles such as the Khorramshahr 4 and Fateh-2, with added emphasis on underground missile cities in the Sistan Baluchistan region and near the Afghan border. Iran’s deterrence is described as decentralized and mosaic, enabling precise targeting and escalation control. The Iranian approach includes limiting attacks to dual-use civilian infrastructure in Israel while avoiding civilianTargeted attacks in Iran, and threatening Dimona if Natanz is bombed.
- Israeli and Iranian targeting: Iran has begun to attack civilian dual-use infrastructure in Israel and is targeting Haifa refineries and military installations near Ben Gurion Airport, while Israel continues to strike near Natanz and other Iranian sites. The balance of escalation is framed as a deterrence dynamic, with both sides escalating in different ways.
- International alignment and support: Russia and China are described as backing Iran diplomatically and with intelligence support, including satellite intel and the movement of Iranian Shahids between Russia and Iran. The three BRICS actors—Russia, China, and Iran—are cited as central to a multipolar Eurasian integration project, with BRICS described as currently comatose or nonfunctional due to internal divisions and external pressures (e.g., UAE and India’s actions).
- BRICS and SCO status: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization released a weak statement; BRICS is portrayed as having internal problems, with India’s actions, especially in relation to Iran, criticized as betrayals from many countries. Russia and China are positioned as active backers of Iran, while BRICS’s future is uncertain.
- Iran’s regional strategy and neighbors: The discussion covers Azerbaijan, Turkey, and India’s roles. Azerbaijan could be drawn into potential conflicts, with Iran warning that involvement could bring severe consequences. Turkey is described as hedging and pursuing its own strategy; Erdogan’s stance is viewed as unreliable. India’s involvement is criticized for inviting Iran to participate in naval exercises and later backing away from condemning US actions against Iran, while still seeking to preserve a Middle East corridor aligned with energy and transport routes.
- Long-term outlook: Iran is portrayed as fighting for the global South with Russia and China, challenging Western-dominated orders. The potential for a postwar settlement remains remote, given the Iranians’ demands (no more US bases in West Asia, reparations, no sanctions). Mediation is considered unlikely unless Russia intervenes as a mediator. The conversation concludes with the view that Iran’s resistance, continuity through leadership like the IRGC, and soft-power appeal have changed global perceptions, while the broader Eurasian integration project remains dependent on Iran, Russia, and China.
- Closing note: The participants reflect on the costs and uncertainty of the conflict, noting that ending the crisis will require navigating deep geopolitical fault lines, including Azerbaijan and the broader energy architecture of Eurasia.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Pepe Escobar, a political analyst and author focusing on the greater Eurasian continent. Thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So I I wanted to ask about Iran, obviously, as the world is looking at, you know, shock and horror of what's happening. And I often think about US general Wesley Clark. You know, he made this comment regarding what happened after the September eleven attack, arguing that they had a plan to take out seven countries. They were gonna take out Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, of course, the grand finale was Iran. And even Bush, you know, thereafter put, you know, Iran on this axis of evil.
And why why is this so important to the Americans? Because this is a very different target than they had over the past thirty years. Everyone all The US presidents, it seemed more or less wanted to go after Iran. They all shared the same rhetoric of Trump, but they they knew that it would be too much, too too big, you know, to to try to take. But still, Trump went all the way.
What what do you see as being the strategic significance here besides, you know, liberating girls and all, this helping protesters, this nonsense?
Speaker 1: No. This Glenn, this is way more complicated. Iran is the holy grail. Well, I am one of the last old school foreign correspondents on the planet. I I was in Afghanistan before, during, and after, including 09/11, and I was in Iraq before, during, and after.
And I was going to Iran during the February many times, including at the time when Rumsfeld, the the Cheney regime was talking about bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran. That was John McCain's refrain every week, in fact. So we all knew Iran was the big price. It always was according to the project for the new American century, according to Clean Break, according to the Zionist influence in DC already in the nineties everywhere. So, of course, they couldn't do it before.
And what the famous Wesley Clark quote, in fact, they got everybody. And, of course, the only missing piece was Iran. So this war was planned. We can say that this war was planned since the late nineties, in fact, not only the past twenty years or twenty five years, even more than that, the previous millennium. And, of course, now they found the perfect messenger.
What some of my Chinese friends, scholars call the baboon in the White House, I love it. The barbarian baboon in the White House, totally controlled by Zionists, totally controlled not only by Netanyahu, but the circle around Netanyahu, the International Zionist Alliance, especially financial, and, of course, his inner circle, the people who he actually listens to, there are not many, they're making a lot of money out of this war. And that includes everybody, starting with the ghastly Jared Kushner. This should be an investigation in itself, but obviously, because there's no more investigative journalism in The US. Only you see this only infringes sub stack accounts, for instance.
But how Kushner is profiting, even starting when he left the White House after Trump one point zero when he got the first $2,000,000,000 for his affinity partners from MBS directly. Basically, MBS wrote a check for for Kushner. And now the price is even high as 5,000,000,000. He's getting $5,000,000,000 from the Saudis for pushing, of course, the the father of Ivanka. Let's put it this way.
And the real brains in that couple is not Jared Kushner. It's actually Ivanka. He is absolutely ghastly, low life, cheap, real estate entrepreneur, but, of course, Trump's listened to him. That's very, very dangerous. So he was the main seller of this of this war face to face to Trump or ear to ear to Trump.
And everybody is profiting. Lutnick, Chris Wright, secretary of energy, all these it's absolutely there's all these people, percent, all of them. So for them is also a free free ride financially. The big big picture, of course, is Eretz Israel, Greater Israel. And that's according to them is advancing fast if they can eliminate the only regional superpower, which is Iran and the only competitor to Israel to be the number one power all across West Asia.
So there was never any planning about that. And they thought it would be a decapitation strike, and the whole thing would be over over the weekend. And on Monday, we would have mission accomplished, you know, the Wall Street, you know, going through the roof and all that. So that was the planning. When Sinks started to be derailed half an hour after the decapitation strike on February 28 against Ayatollah Khamenei and a great deal of the leadership, they had no plan b, and they still don't.
And what just happened a few minutes before we start talking, which is something absolutely extraordinary, when we were all expecting the beginning of the real highway to hell of bombing the electricity grid of Iran, there was taco. Trump always check us out all over again. And why? Because he looked at the numbers. He looked at the markets.
He looked at gold. He looked at the bond market, and obviously panic set in. So he had to back off. And by some time, for the moment, it's five days. We don't know how this is gonna play.
But the most interesting thing is that a few minutes later, the Iranians went online and basically told the whole planet that the president of The United States is a liar. There are no conversations going on at the moment. And this is something that we hear from Arakashi, the foreign minister, from Khalibaf, the the head of the parliament, from other source political sources across Iran. He made that up. And the main reason, and this is simply when you talk to financial analysts, they tell you, the main reason is the bond market.
When Trump saw that the bond bond market was going totally out of control, like, you know, the the yields for ten year treasuries is getting to 5%, actually went to over 5%, came back to four four point five, and now I think it's 4.4 or something, and it may go up again. The United States simply cannot survive with the bond yields so high. Simple as that. And they cannot finance anything. It collapses financially.
You have, like, mortgage rates in The US going to 7% or 8%. This is suicidal. So much more than the oil market, the threat to the oil market by the Strait Of Hormuz being closed but not closed, which is fantastic. That in fact, actually in fact, it's not closed. There is a toll booth.
You have to pay the toll to get in. If you pay the toll, no problem. You navigate in Iranian territorial waters. And first of all, your cargo must have been settled in Petro U 1. These are the three imperatives.
If you follow these three, no problem. You can cross. Anybody can cross, including the Japanese which are saying, should I should I stay or should I go? You know? But the most important thing, much much more important than oil is the bond market.
So it's all about follow the money. It's all about money. And, obviously, the people who are making money out of those who are inside The US, they are absolutely terrified because it's getting out of control. So that would be the number one rationale for some sort of deal. But, Glenn, we know that a deal is impossible when you look at the list of demands on the Iranian side and the list of demands on the American side.
It's absolutely impossible to find a common ground. And that's why it's still so dangerous. So, like, you know, the inferno machine, which is an escalation machine for the past three weeks, which today we thought would be okay. And now it goes totally out of control. It's just postponed for the next five days.
But the escalation machine is still there, and there's no way out, and there's no off ramp for Trump if he chooses an off ramp. That is, in practice, the end of the American empire. And even people with an IQ of 10 can understand that in The US. And at the same time, he cannot fulfill the demands by the Iranians, and some of them are really, really hardcore. No more US bases in West Asia anywhere.
Payment of reparations. Some figures are floating around at $500,000,000,000. And, of course, we continue with our nuclear program, our missile program the way we want. All of those are from the point of view of The US are, you know, out of the question. So it's still a cliffhanger.
The cliffhanger was supposed to be today. Now I have to wait for another five days.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm glad, yeah, the torture was postponed a bit, but it is interesting that what as you framed it, that what Iranians are after essentially is the capitulation of The US in that region. But what The US is asking of Iran is their capitulation. That is, you know, give up its regional allies, its ballistic missiles, you know, its conventional deterrence, keep components of its economy. So given that this is the the the case, the only way this can be achieved is through victory. So we seem to be locked in this war of attrition where the goal is to exhaust the other side.
Now Trump says that he has, you know, unlimited weapons, which, of course, is nonsense. Otherwise, they wouldn't be pulling their missile defense out of Asia. It doesn't make any sense. But we have a general, you know, somewhat idea of what The United States has and also its ability to produce new weapons. But Iran's Iran's weapon, we know a lot less.
That is, you know, the Iranians said they have a lot of weapons stored into their tunnels
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 0: Tens of thousands. Again, but it's very difficult to get this verified, not just the quantity, but also the quality. So what is it that we actually know about the weapons of Iran, especially the quality? The quantity is a bit more difficult, I guess.
Speaker 1: The quality has been already proven by the way they employ some of their best missiles, like the Khorramshahr four and the Fatah two. They only started to use them only in the past year. Let's say, during the past week. And very parsimonious, you know, not not yet in huge quantities. And we don't know, nobody knows what is in store in the underground missile cities, which are in the Eastern part of Iran.
In the Southeast, Sistan Baluchistan Province, in the Far East near the Afghan border, and none of these areas has been touched by the Americans so far. The Americans don't even know where these underground cities are. So every time that they have, let's say, a technological leap on the kind of missiles that they are using, it's always very, very impressive. And now that there's no protective shield over Israel for all practical purposes, David's sling, arrow three, TED, this is most of it, it's all gone. They can bomb Israel the way they wanted, and this is part of their new strategy.
They they keep tweaking their decentralized mosaic strategy, I would say week after week. And now they are seeing openly. Now we have an offensive strategy. So far was defensive, and now it's offensive. Why?
Because they know that they have exhausted the response capacity of American and Israeli air defense. So now they can choose their targets precisely. And for instance, when they they didn't attack the Demona Nuclear reactor. They attacked a building around 10 kilometers away from Demona housing scientists. So this was a message.
Basically, they're saying, look. If we we can bomb Dimona anytime we want it, but we won't do it now. If you bomb Natanz, we're gonna bomb Dimona. That's part of the message as well. And the Israelis bombed the vicinity of Natanz already, and the Russians were absolutely furious about it.
There are still a lot of Russian technicians over there. So the Iranians, their their deterrence is incremental, and they always come up with new weapons that we never saw being employed in the battlefield. So we can say that they have not it's true. They have not shown everything they they they have for obvious reasons because they are planning for a long war. And when they say that we can we can last until for the next six months, yes, they can.
First of all, because we we don't know where most of these missiles and drones are. Second, every week they come up with new weapons that we never seen before. Third, we have not even seen what they have to actually defend the Strait Of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, assuming the Americans get nearby. Let's put it this way. So that's what this is what deterrence means, and this is how you have a decentralized mosaic strategy that it can be fine tuned on purpose, progressively, methodically, meticulously, and it is extremely impressive.
And on the other side, we see what? The only thing that they do, bomb indiscriminately, bomb a civilian targets, bomb residential neighborhoods in Tehran. But that's the logic of, in fact, a terror the syndrome of the the terror regimes intertwined. These are two terror regimes that are walking side by side and bombing side by side with no regard to civilian lives. They never had.
And the Iranians still because everything we can talk about Shiite theology and their ethics of resistance and their respect for human life, they are not attacking civilian targets. They are starting to attack, civilian dual use infrastructure in, Israel. That's another story. Because now they want to concentrate on basically smashing all the key nodes that make the state of Israel function. That's what they call the great constriction.
That's their own terminology for it. And this has started in this past three or four days, and it will continue this week a lot. And you can count that they will continue to bomb Haifa refineries, military installations. Military installations are next to the Ben Ben Gurion Airport. There's no question about that.
So, obviously, the Israelis can even while the enormous censorship in Israel, they cannot admit that. But now that some images are floating around everywhere, anybody can see that they are being hammered again just like during the twelve day war. But because for them, they simply cannot pick up the phone and call Trump again and send get us a ceasefire, first of all, because nobody wants a ceasefire as it stands, it's the logic of escalation on both sides, on three sides if a country's rail is one side. They will continue to get hammered.
Speaker 0: Well, I also picked up on, yeah, the Iranians making this argument that they are shifting from defense to offense, and I am well, I expected, yes, something similar after The US had and Israel had, you know, spent a lot of its munition and its air defenses for the Iranians to escalate. But what do we know yet about about Iran's strategy in the war? Not the ambitions, but also how they expect to achieve this. Because as you mentioned, the the wish list of the Iranians in terms of a postwar settlement, it's quite high. I can't see the Americans agreeing to essentially any of it.
But but how how do you see them moving forward with this? What what are the yeah.
Speaker 1: The number the number one demand is, of course, no more US military bases all across West Asia. Well, they are already on it because from 70 to 80% of these bases are already completely destroyed and with only three weeks of war. If we have three more weeks, they will destroy all of them, period. And yesterday, something beyond extraordinary happened, which nobody's talking about it, but the significance is stratospheric. Twenty three years after shock and awe in Iraq, The United States and NATO have been expelled from Iraq, period.
They are not there anymore. That's it. It's over. They only have a base in Erbil, but it doesn't count. Iraqi Kurdistan is basically a bunch of gangsters.
It doesn't count. It's not it's not even in Baghdad, they look at Kurdistan. Ah, those gangsters. But Iraq itself, there's no more US and NATO troops. It took twenty three years.
And because in the end, they had to do a ceasefire because they were being bombed relentlessly by the different strands of the Iraqi resistance, Hashd al Shaabi, Qatayb Hezbollah, and many other different groups and militias. So it it's possible long term, relentless, you know, clarity of vision, spiritual strengths. You can you can put it you know, there's many declinations of how resistance works. And in the case of Iran, being they are have been they have been preparing for this war not for forty seven years. They have been preparing for this war since 2005, 2006.
Let's put it this way, twenty years. You remember in the mid two thousands when there were active plans to really bomb Iran coordinated by Rumsfeld at the time. And but they said the Americans were thinking that we don't have enough because at the time, they were thinking in terms of also a ground invasion. Everything that was gained in Washington was a total disaster, so they abandoned it. So they said, no.
We need to undermine the regime, the mullahs, all that crap that they that they talk about all the time for a few more years. And then when the time is right, which the way they see it, it's now, So it's not only hardcore Zionists, but old school neocons. The people from the project of the new American century, the the remnants of the project of the new American century. Now is the right time after they try to undermine it through the so called protests, which there were legitimate protests, they were weaponized by foreign forces. The time is now.
And they are in for a very rude awakening because especially after the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei. Very few people in Washington know that Moor Staban was for years, for at least fifteen, sixteen years, he was working very, very close with the IRGC leadership. So when I was we were together in Iran last year. When I at that time, I was asking practically everybody that I could, what was the relationship between Moerstaba and IRGC? And everybody said, yes.
It's very close. He's the kind of bridge between his dad, which is has so many dossiers to take care of and the IRGC. He knows exactly how the IRGC works. He's totally respected by the IRGC. And I remember that in May, they were telling me, yes.
He's one of the top candidates to to be the next supreme leader. There were three or others, but he was very well positioned, especially because of relationship with the RGC. So the fact that he was elected by the the council of experts to be the new supreme leader, even if he's not a top Ayatollah, they are betting on the idea, on the symbology, on the fact that he is continuing the work of his father. And this is so powerful that even if he doesn't appear in public, his aura and his reach is tremendous, and he's universally respected from day one. So that that in itself is extraordinary.
He doesn't need to come out, you know, give fantastic speeches. No. That's not the point. So this implies a continuity of government, a continuity of an idea of resistance with the difference that now the people who are completely in charge now are the IRGC. There's no question about that.
They are running Iran at the moment. So, obviously, there's the survival of the Iranian state is their survival. It's the next building. So they're going all the way. And, of course, don't they never you should never forget.
They have the Shiite spirit of martyrdom fully incarnated. They if they are martyred, they are dying for the cause. So you you cannot break people like that. It's out of the question. Especially when on the other side, you see people who can barely read.
They can barely string two sentences together, not to mention read a book by Kant written by Ali Ladigiani, also assassinated. So the the imbalance between the spirit of barbaria on one side and the spirit of Persian culture on the other is brutal. And they learned something that they didn't know before, the art of PR. Their PR is working very, very well all across the global South. Now they they became hits in in terms of public opinion.
Support for Iran all across the global South is practically unanimous now. They're making making those little funny videos with Lego characters and and all that works a miracle in terms of PR, showing that they have a little bit of leeway. You have one of their spokesmen saying, Donald Trump, you're fired.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So
Speaker 1: What's up? Absolutely true. They turned the whole thing up upside down. So this, with young people in The US, across the West, in China, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, wow. This is absolutely priceless.
So the Yapstin syndicate, they already lost the battle for public opinion on a global level. That's for sure. And married to the Iranians who learn how to play the soft power game as well. So when you put this all together, they have military cards, soft power cards, and pressure cards on their hands that nobody saw that they would have three, four weeks ago, nobody would bet that they would resist, first of all, that they would resist so long and counter punch fiercely like they're doing. Of course, once again they were underestimated and that's one of the traits of empire.
The empire underestimates everybody. Everybody is by definition inferior, Not to mention that death cult in Tel Aviv, the whole planet for them, the whole planet is inferior. So it's it's part of my personal thesis that Iran is fighting for the whole global South in this war. It's much more than a war against three BRICS, and we could talk a lot about the implosion of BRICS at the moment. BRICS now is in in a coma.
Pains me to say that. I dedicated a lot of work this past few years just to follow bricks, and at the moment, it's in deep coma. And we don't know if he's going to be resurrected. But, basically, this is a war. Iran is leading this war with the back with the backup of Russia and China.
And it yes. It's three BRICS trying to defend the whole global South from the cancer, essentially.
Speaker 0: Like, I also found it fascinating, the the image of Iran. I you know, if you would have gone back twenty years, it would have been unthinkable to have this kind of sympathies for Iran around the world. Of course, two surprise attacks and this kind of savage destruction of Iran, you know, tends to whip up sympathies. But, of course, I think it's more to more to it. But what you said about continuity, I think that's also a very good point because this is a problem when you demonize your opponent to to assume that they're all weak, you know, just one evil leader holding the whole house of cards together.
The continuity, I think, was underestimated. I've seen politicians and journalists make the argument after Khamenei was killed that, oh, well, now the Iranians finally have an opportunity for peace and, you know, freedom. So, first of all, I'm not sure he took away that I don't even know where to begin. It's just it's very strange. They thought, you know, you you killed this one guy, and now tomorrow, it's it's a new country.
I mean, it was very I don't understand it. I usually, you know, think it's ignorance or malice, but I think I underestimate ignorance at times, what what they actually thought would happen after killing Kavanee. But regarding Brickstow, I thought this was an interesting point because this is given that it's a war of attrition, it's largely a war of all or nothing. That is The US hopes, of course, if you can knock out the Iranian government, then they can, you know, may maybe replace it with a pro US government. Otherwise, just destroy Iran, you know, balkanize it, whatever it would be.
This would also then weaken Russia, China. On the other hand, if the United States fails, you're gonna see a much more strengthened Iran locked in closer with Russia and China. So, essentially, this greater Eurasian project will be much more powerful than it was before. But why is it then that you you see BRICS being in a coma and also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? What do you see you know, Iran is now a member of both.
How do you see the future of them?
Speaker 1: Well, they didn't say anything. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they released a statement of pitiful statement for that matter when we see one of their full members being directly attacked. BRICS is even worse because this is something, of course, that we had been discussing for years, the internal problems of BRICS. This is something that we discussed with the Russians a lot. And the Russians are always the agglutinators inside Bricks.
Now they are always bridging differences. But how can you bridge differences now when you have The UAE prodding directly the abstinence syndicate to go all out against Iran, full member of BRICS. When you have what India did to Iran, like a series of betrayals, everything, including the absolutely ghastly episode with the ship that was invited for that show and when he left Iranian Indian territory water, sorry, was torpedoed by by the Americans. And nobody knows for sure. It's still being endlessly debated if the Indians passed the coordinates to the Americans or not.
There's a huge debate about that in including a lot of very well informed and prepared people in India. And some of these analysts and scholars in India, they are absolutely appalled, embarrassed, and they said, look. We have no words to express to our friends all across the global South how Indian foreign policy is betraying Indian values. This is we are not that thing in government right now, but there's not much they they can do. So this the internal splits of bricks are terrible.
Brazil is a joke. I prefer not not even to talk about it. And South Africa is irrelevant. So, you know, we still depend on Russia and China. For the moment, two different strategies, but very effective.
We all know how Russia and China are defending Iran diplomatically, including in the UN Security Council. There was a phone call between Lavrov and Arakshi yesterday. Very, very important. The the what was leaked from that phone call was the usual blah blah blah, but I'm sure they talked about very, very important bilateral issues, including this backup, short and and long term. And China is also helping, Iran diplomatically and, of course, with intel, both Russia and China.
I wrote about this in some of my previous columns in detail, how Russia and China are helping Iran in terms of twenty four seven intel, satellite intel. In the case of Russia, even better, those, Shahids which went to Russia, transformed into Geraniums, and then went back to Iran, and now they are in the battlefield. Much enhanced compared to the original, Shahids. Not to mention the the famous Astrakhan at Tehran shuttle where we have no idea what was inside those Ilushin cargo planes coming from Russia to Iran in terms of hardware and software as well. So they got Iran's back.
There's no question about that. But they are looking at the bigger picture long term, And they know that the only way to constitute the project that we all of us independent analysts, you, included, have been talking about and writing about for many, many years. Eurasia integration depends on these three actors players, which happen to be Bricks and SEO, the three of them, Russia, China, and Iran. So they cannot possibly allow Iran to fail or to be dismembered or to be decomposed or to be blown up. So that's the number one thing.
So this this is what guides their strategic considerations in Moscow and in Beijing. On the nitty gritty on a day to day basis, it's fascinating because, for instance, the Russians say, look, the Iranians are not asking for anything, as they did not ask in the past, in the recent past. If they do, we will be there. And, of course, the Persians, as we all know, they are very, very proud. They would only ask if they are really against the wall, and they are not at the moment.
They are controlling the narrative. They have practically all the cards in their hands apart from indiscriminate bombing. All the other important cards, the Iranians have it. And the Chinese, of course, they are looking at a strategic partner, one of their sources of energy, one of the key nodes of the Belt and Road, the new Silk Roads. And, of course, they do it the Chinese way in ways that none of us see, but it it's there, you know.
So this will be the the future of the multipolar Eurasia integration world depending on these three actors. And at the moment, we can say that BRICS is a nonentity. Completely. I hope it changes. I hope the Russians could tell the Indians a few things in a run up towards the BRICS summit in Delhi later this year.
That's a horrible year to have India as share of BRICS this year because there's no trust on India from many of the BRICS nations. But it's gonna be hard to come up from the dead. It's gonna be very, very hard, very different. I assume you you have the same point of view. So let me ask you, Glenn.
Do you agree with this mini analysis at the moment, or are you more auspicious, or is it realistic? Well, I was also, yeah, a
Speaker 0: bit shocked by the the behavior of the Indians that is the way they invited Iran to participate and then in this naval exercise, and then see the Americans destroy the Iranian worship on its way home, and then not even being able to condemn it in any way. I thought this is quite shocking. But then on the other hand, you see now Iran giving access to India to pass, you know, in the Strait Of Hormuz. So it's I'm not I'm not I am not sure if some of these things are able to be fixed. Also, the international North South transportation corridor, the one running from Russia, Iran to India, at some point, this is just in the strategic interest of India to preserve.
So if if if they don't develop this with Iranians, then they're not gonna be able to connect properly with the Russians, which means that the Russians would then be leaning even more into China. And I think it's the Indians' ambitions or interest to create a more of a balance of dependence in Eurasia, to make sure there's many centers of power that, you know, does China, it has become too heavy. And the only way you can do that is to diversify. So you need Iran. If you don't have Iran, Eurasia will be Exactly.
Very, very China centric. And this is why it's not in India's interest. It's not in US interest. So I don't understand this obsession with trying to disconnect this corridor. It seems very foolish.
But, yeah, my my my last question for you was about Azerbaijan, though, because I spoke to a well, a common friend of ours, professor Marandi, and he was making the point that it's very likely that at some point in this war, Azerbaijan will be pulled in given that it's in the past at least been, yeah, more than indirectly involved in the attacks on Iran. How how do you see this? Do you see or Iran being Azerbaijan being pulled in, but also what would be the wider consequences? Because if you look at the energy architecture of Eurasia, you know, Azerbaijan has this little energy corridor between Iran and Russia. This is essentially what the Europeans look to for for diversification.
Even now, they don't have Iran. They don't have Russia. They don't have the Gulf States. I mean, they they can't live without us and Russia, and so it's it's becoming more sensitive now than it was in the past.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And, of course, there is the BTC BTS angle. No? 30 it's it it the numbers vary. It's between 30 something to 49% or so that of Israel's oil that comes from the BTC, the Baku Tiblitzi Chehun pipeline, which is a story that I followed from the beginning when Brzezinski went to Baku in 1995 to sell the idea to the Aliyev clan.
That's a very, very long story. And at the time, it was already the same story. We need to bypass Russia and Iran. So why not build a pipeline that's gonna cost almost $4,000,000,000? So that's what it is.
But the problem is, Aliyev and Erdogan, they didn't do anything to cut off, supplying Baku oil to Israel. It's it's part of their shady, dodgy deals, Erdogan and Aliyev. One Aliyev is a pure gangster, and Erdogan is a hedger. He's always hedging. Very, very, very complicated alliance.
And from an Iranian point of view, they have to pay in they do pay enormous attention to everything that they do in Minusia. They know that they cannot antagonize Turkey and vice versa. Erdogan cannot antagonize Iran. First of all, energy links as well, neighbors, and, of course, Turkey still has in the back of Erdogan's mind maybe to be a key Eurasia player. For the moment, they are not.
They are not part of important and they have their own strategy, which is something that it's when I was in Istanbul, I went there, talked to them. They couldn't explain what they want. The famous, what's the name of the thing? Sorry sorry, Glenn. It escapes me now.
The, Foundation of Turkish States, Organization of Turkish States. I'm I'm I'm sorry. Headquartered in in Istanbul. Basically, it's a real state scheme of under of Erdogan's friends to build to have a real state contracts all across Central Asia. That's that's that's essentially it.
So there it's not power projection. And in geopolitical terms, when you put Turkey competing with China and Russia in Central Asia, it's a joke. They don't even register. Right? But the ambition is there.
And, of course, the relationship between Turkey and Israel, which is still extremely shady. Our friend, professor Marandi, in fact, he talks about it all the time. His position is very his position is aligned, I would say, with, let's say, the ruling classes in Tehran, including military analysts. You cannot trust anything about Erdogan, and he's always playing a double game. It's true.
He plays a double game with everybody. But Azerbaijan is very complicated. If they would be dragged eventually, assuming this war goes on, if they are dragged to do something and allow, for instance, attacks against Iran coming from Azerbaijan territory, they're gonna pay a huge price Because this is what happened during the twelve day war, and Iran didn't do anything about it. And Iran had full evidence that drones were coming from Azerbaijan territory to attack Iran. If that happens again, Aliyev is gonna be in deep, deep, deep trouble, to say the least.
For the moment, it's a wait and see thing because they consider themselves, well, this war has nothing to do with us. And in the end, depending on how it goes, they may even profit from it. But nothing is is is secure yet. But, well, I got an an invitation to go to one of these forums in Baku. I'm gonna take it because I would love to have this place these questions to these people on the spot, assuming they don't throw me in jail.
Speaker 0: No. It's well, it's just too many I always make the point with this war on Iran. The I think the reason why
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: So many American presidents avoided this because there's so many uncertain uncertain unknown and uncontrollable variables, like what's gonna happen to Azerbaijan, you know, if it gets pulled in. This is huge. This is it's gonna change, you know, part of not just the Eurasian, but the European landscape. So it just it seems so reckless to have gone down this path. But I think for for the Iranians, though, and, you know, this is the main miscalculation for The US, that Iran is not simply trying to, you know, get out of this war, get a ceasefire, so it can go back to normal.
The idea that Iran this is time to clean up, like, after all these decades of sanctions, threats, attacks, proxy wars. It it wants to settle some scores and do it on its own terms. So, yeah, this is was an easy war to start, but it's gonna be very, very difficult to to finish because when it's over, something well, the world will look very different, I think. So
Speaker 1: Completely. And you you see, Glenn, a part of their, I would say, most the categorical imperatives of their list of demands. No more sanctions, meaning no more sanctions period, which is absolutely impossible because these sanctions will have to be abolished by the US Congress, and we know this will never happen. Payment of reparations, this will never happen. Can you imagine the empire paying reparations to Iran?
And for the Iranians this is a matter of faith. It's part of their three or four top points alongside no more US military bases in West Asia. So The Gulf literally, metaphorically and otherwise, between both sides is unbridgeable, unbridgeable. And there's nobody who could possibly mediate. The only possible mediator could be Russia.
And this is something that what it was this according to if if if you look at what Ushakov did not say about Trump to Putin phone call, of course, they they touched upon the subject. And Putin might have said to Trump, yes. I can be the mediator. All the players over there, they respect us. The problem is, do the Iranians want mediation?
And for the moment, this is what we hear day after day from the Iranian leadership, including Ayatollah Mostafa Khamenei. No. No ceasefire. No mediation. We're going all the way.
And that's what makes it so volatile. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Now the only thing The US can do, it seems, is offer, you know, a way out, a ceasefire, and to put pressure this direction just escalate. But once they notice now that Iran can match their escalation, it's I I don't see where this is gonna go. It's, again, a foolish foolish war to have begun to start off with. So, anyways, Pepe, it's always good to see you, and I hope to see you again soon in person Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. All the best.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: Trump Back Down - Armageddon Postponed? https://youtu.be/CxwzzS5K2o0 https://t.co/1GEWiEoGio
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn and Chas Freeman discuss the rapidly evolving Iran-Israel-Gulf crisis sparked by Donald Trump’s 48-hour threat to “open the Strait of Hormuz” and destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure, and the apparent push-and-pull over whether talks are actually taking place.
- Trump’s maneuvering: Freeman notes Trump appears to be trying to walk back the threat, arguing there were “two days of good productive discussions,” while Iranian Foreign Minister says there have been no talks. Freeman emphasizes that diplomacy remains indispensable, even as Trump’s posture leans toward coercive tactics.
- The wider pattern: Freeman argues the region’s dynamics have driven Israel and Iran toward force, with diplomacy sidelined. He contends Washington’s challenge now is the price of energy (gas at the pump) and domestic political concerns rather than allied welfare. The Strait of Hormuz currently operates as a toll booth: many countries can pass if they have the license and pay.
- Escalation and responses: There is a recurring cycle of Israeli and American escalation met by Iranian counter-escalation (e.g., Iranian missiles fired near Dimona in response to Natanz, and Iran listing targets including Ras Al Khair desalination plant in Saudi Arabia). Iran’s stated willingness to devastate Gulf desalination capacity signals a readiness to impose extreme costs.
- International diplomacy and actors: Freeman highlights quiet diplomacy behind the scenes with China, India, Japan, Turkey, and behind-the-scenes talks by Italy and France with Iran. He notes European leaders’ unease and questions whether Europe will push more assertively, with Spain showing some potential for distancing from US and a possible NATO rethink. He argues the Atlantic alliance’s conceptual basis has eroded, risking a shift from a defensive to an offensive posture in Europe, and suggests the Gulf states may gradually distance from the United States while privately leveraging Israel’s tech and security advantages.
- The Gulf Arab position: Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states remain publicly tied to the United States but fear becoming casualties in a miscalculated conflict. Freeman posits that long-term strategists in Saudi Arabia recognize the need to reduce threat through diplomacy with Iran and diversify defense dependencies (including growing Chinese weapons collaboration) as U.S. security guarantees wane.
- The question of a negotiated settlement: Freeman suggests two ingredients for any settlement: a regional security architecture and a credible path for a phased American withdrawal from the Gulf. He cites Iran’s proposals (e.g., postwar regional management, toll-sharing for Hormuz) and Iran’s openness to multilateral diplomacy through bodies like the OIC, coupled with Gulf-Arab cooperation. He acknowledges Washington’s current lack of credible diplomacy and worries about whether negotiators on both sides can imagine a stable framework that preserves balance without American military primacy.
- Iran’s strategic posture: Freeman argues Iran is not deterred by American or Israeli pressure and may pursue a broader missile and nuclear-capable capability build, particularly after leadership changes. He notes Iranian restraint has lessened since the late supreme leader’s era, and Iran continues missile and drone activity despite escalation. He also references possible false-flag concerns and Israel’s assassination campaigns against potential Iranian interlocutors as obstacles to diplomacy.
- U.S. strategy and domestic politics: Freeman observes Trump’s incentives are mixed—gas prices at home influence his political prospects, and MAGA backers are increasingly unhappy with the war. He suggests Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” approach is counterproductive: power without purpose, and tactics without a coherent strategy. He implies a negotiated solution is preferable to ongoing low-intensity conflict, but notes it would require both sides to accept a recalibrated security arrangement rather than total capitulation.
- Saudi perspective and future: Freeman notes Saudi Arabia’s desire to link more closely with the United States in the short term while also seeking greater strategic autonomy—building domestic military production and reducing sole dependence on U.S. security guarantees. He warns that public alignment with Israel in any confrontation is politically untenable for Gulf publics.
- Outlook: Freeman closes by acknowledging the difficulty of predicting Trump’s behavior, the credibility issues around interlocutors like Stephen Witkoff, and the urgent need for diplomacy. He emphasizes the indispensability of diplomacy and suggests that a pathway toward a new regional security architecture, with reduced U.S. troop presence and coordinated Hormuz governance, would be a constructive turn if pursued by capable diplomats.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Chas Freeman, one of America's great diplomats who was the former US assistant secretary of defense and also The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia among other positions. So thank you very much for, yeah, taking the time.
Speaker 1: Good to be with you, Ben.
Speaker 0: So we saw two days ago Donald Trump gave his sorry, his two forty eight hour deadline to the Iranians. That is open the Strait Of Hormuz. Otherwise, The US will destroy all of Iran's energy infrastructure beginning with its largest ones. Again, this is the Iranians responded by arguing, if you do this, you know, we're gonna have our own list of, you know, targets to destroy. So energy facilities, desalination plants across The Gulf States, and well, those forty eight hours are almost over, and it looks as if Trump is making some efforts to walk this back.
So he's arguing since this announcement, they now had two days of good productive discussions with Iran. However, the Iranian foreign minister just came out saying there has been no talks held at all. So, again, I'm not sure which side is telling the truth, but, again, the alternative to walking this back would have been a war without, yeah, any any control. So I was wondering how how are you reading this situation? Well, it's, you know, it's well, I know we can't say anything with complete certainty, but what do you see happening here?
Speaker 1: Well, I think Trump is trying to walk this back, and I don't believe there are talks going on. What there appear to be go what appears to be happening is text messages between Stephen Witkoff and, foreign minister Iraqi. So, you can draw several conclusions from this. The major one I draw is that, the circumstances in West Asia were such that they convinced both Israel and Iran that the only answer to their conflict was the use of force and that diplomacy should not be employed. Ironically, Donald Trump agrees with that, but he's now learning that diplomacy is irreplaceable.
In fact, the biggest issue here probably from Trump's point of view is the price of energy. Well, in particular, gasoline at the pump in The United States. I don't think he cares much about the impact on allies or partners, even the producers who are being battered in the war. But he does care about the impact on his election prospects from gas prices. And the biggest threat here that Iran made was they would totally close the Strait Of Hormuz.
At the moment, it is not closed. It is being operated like a toll booth on a highway. If you have the right license plate and are prepared to pay cash, you can get through. So we have quite a list of countries that have employed diplomacy to solve the basic problem, illustrating that diplomacy is not entirely a waste of time. So these countries include China, India, Japan, Turkey.
And we know that the Italians and French have been talking behind the scenes also with Iran to try to work out a deal. So that was the first thing. The second thing is that there is a number of pattern, a clear pattern in this war in which escalation by Israel and The United States is met with counter escalation, tit for tat, by the Iranians. The most recent and frightening most frightening examples of this include an apparent American strike at Tantz. Israelis disclaim responsibility for it.
But this war and any air war of this complexity has to be jointly choreographed. So the the denial that this was coordinated with Israel falls flat. It's clearly untrue. Anyway, the attack on the Natanz uranium enrichment facility was answered by an Iranian missile striking just away from the research reactor in Israel at Dimona and hitting apparently apartment block where many of the people at Dimona worked, thus answering previous Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists with the murder of or the maiming, at least, of Israeli nuclear scientists. And I think, as you mentioned, Iran came out with its own list of specific targets.
One of those was the Ras Al Khair desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, which is the basically, the sole water supply for the city of Riyadh, a city of some millions of people, which in other words, Iran has demonstrated that it would be prepared in the end to utterly destroy the Gulf Arab societies. I believe Kuwait is 90% dependent on desalinated water, Saudi Arabia about 70%. I don't know the figure for Qatar, but it must also be very large. And I believe it's about 40% for The United Arab Emirates. So Iran has just indicated that it is prepared ultimately to just destroy these countries completely, depopulate them.
One can guess that behind the scene, or I think one can be fairly sure that behind the scene, these countries remonstrated with mister Trump arguing as they have from the beginning of this whole crisis that there should not be a war, that there should be diplomacy, that there should be dialogue. But the problem is that neither Israel nor Iran, both of which feel an existential threat from the other, each of which feels an existential threat from the other, neither of them is prepared to enter a diplomatic dialogue or stop short of the annihilation of the power of the other. In the case of Israel, there are apparently behind the scenes, Israel has not reacted publicly, as far as I know, to the Trump suspension for five days of his proposed attack on Iranian power plants. But behind the scenes, it is evidently very queasy. It doubts it sees this as an evidence of weakness and inconstancy on the part of President Trump.
One wonders why it ever imagined he would be constant since he's famous for his inconstancy. But it sees this as a strategic setback that and of course, to the extent that the bombing campaign is reduced over these five days, that is directly contrary to the Israeli war plan. But in the end, and the same thing I think in the case of Iran, it's clear that Iran does not see its objectives fully achieved. It wants to do much further damage to Israel. It apparently has the capability to do that.
It is undoubtedly behind the scenes talking to the Gulf Arabs about a plan for the future which would not have American bases present in the Persian Gulf. Here, if I may, it appears that the embassy, the Iranian embassy in Riyadh and the one in Doha, Qatar, are both functionally closed. That is, have no personnel of consequence left. At least that's the appearance. But, of course, I don't know whether the Saudi embassy in Tehran or the Qatari embassy in Tehran have been closed.
I suppose they probably have been. But there are many other locales for a dialogue, a confidential dialogue that must be going on. Iran is not going to stop the war while its objective of removing American bases. The threat from the Persian Gulf is unmet. It is not going to stop the war when it has not taught Israel a lesson that is sufficient to deter future Israeli attack.
And it is not going to demonstrate weakness to its own public by publicly acknowledging an exchange of views with the Trump administration. So there we are. We're left with a war that as has been said by others, in which there's no there are only tactics, no strategy. There's power and no purpose. There is violence without any vision.
And there is a the absence of any credible scenario for ending the conflict. So this is a war that is a justification in which is this its own justification. I mean, the basic premises on which it was started are all entirely and demonstrably false. It appears to have put the final nail in the coffin of the Atlantic alliance. So those of us who felt at the outset that this was a potentially momentous strategic error, I think, are being proven right.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'm a bit surprised well, not surprised by the the responses from the the Europeans. I thought that after Greenland, they would, yeah, be be a bit more assertive, but listening to Marc Rutte, it appears that, you know, they're still playing the same song. I was wondering
Speaker 1: Well, if I may interrupt you. He is. He's still talking to his daddy in the White House. Other Europeans are not. There is a serious move now in Spain to depart NATO and ban American bases.
In your neighboring country of Sweden, there have been large demonstrations even though Sweden is a new member of NATO. I think we're beginning to see the unraveling, but we haven't seen it go its full course. And I think Marc Ruta is not faithfully reflecting the emerging attitudes of the members of NATO.
Speaker 0: Well, the the thinking, though, in in well, the situation of the Europeans, it does appear to have some similarity with the Gulf Arabs that is if you wanna find a a possible solution to this, because it seems as if, you know, they they know that tying their security entirely 100% to declining empire is not a good strategy. The I mean, the Gulf States are recognizing this. The Europeans are, you know, coming to terms with this as well. And, you know, it's not as if if The US was only in decline and but it still want to hold on is one thing. But The US has signaled very clearly with the new security strategy that if it is a multi polar world, if we can't be everywhere, then we have to make priorities, and the priorities should be the Western Hemisphere and East Asia.
So we want to get out of Europe. So if if it's a declining hegemon, clearly stating you are no longer a priority, you know, we can have JD Vans telling the Europeans to their face that we don't need vessels, we need partners, you know, they're not a force amplifier. At some point, would think the the strategy would have to be developed. It just seems that much like The Gulf States, it is the same in Europe. There's no strategy.
There's no political imagination really for anything else. So they're just kinda reacting a bit, but I'm not seeing any, you know, grand strategy in terms of how the relationship with The US should be readjusted to adjust to this new world because, you know, the Europeans, they're a bit either one or the other way. Otherwise, they're subordinated to The US, or they begin to embrace this anti Americanism. But there's nothing in between, like, where we just, you know, find a different relationship. I I wish it would be more of this because it's either love or hate.
It's nothing normal. And I'm wondering if The Gulf States can move in a different direction as well because, you know, The US doesn't wanna be tied down in the Middle East either if it wants to pivot to other places.
Speaker 1: Well, several comments about that. First, obviously, there are completely different concepts of what the Atlantic alliance means in Washington and in European capitals. Europeans believe it's to defend them. And Americans believe it's to incorporate Europeans as auxiliaries in expeditions elsewhere. You know, beginning with the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and then continuing the intervention in Afghanistan by NATO, which is, you know, it's either a defensive alliance or it's not.
And one of the great issues for European security architecture is the Russian conclusion that it is not a defensive alliance, but an offensive one. So that's the first problem. The conceptual basis that used to unite two sides of the Atlantic is no longer there. Second, yes, I agree. The Gulf States have no way out of this dilemma other than diplomacy, which means some accommodation of Iran, which means some further distancing from The United States.
And then the question is, since that seems to be what the most likely outcome is, of course for the time being the Gulf States cleave to The United States because they have no other alternative. But they can't publicly identify with an Israeli American attack on Iran because Israel is totally unacceptable as a partner in any public way. Privately, they may benefit from access to the police state technology that Israel has developed to oppress the Palestinians. Privately, they may despise the Palestinians. Publicly, they can't afford to be aligned in any way with Israel, even against Iran, their hereditary enemy.
Publicly, they can't afford to abandon the Palestinian cause. So they are really between Iraq and a hard place, or between Iran and a hard place. And I think the Europeans are in a similar position, but much slower to realize it for the simple reason that so far they are not being battered by missiles from an enemy. Now, of course, some of them are working on providing the justification to the Russians for reaching beyond the Ukraine and and challenging the the the unity of the of the of NATO. But the Russians have so far played a very cautious game in in those terms.
So but the Europeans are facing not only a dilemma that The United States is weakening, but The United States from the European point of view, and I must say from my own point of view, is behaving insanely. It is doing things that can't possibly yield any benefit to it, which are utterly irrational, unpredictable, erratic, and counterproductive. And so it's not just the weakening of The United States, but the policy chaos in Washington that threatens Europe. And I think it will, in time, Europeans will awaken to this. I don't know what to make of the French elections which took place.
I gather the right did very well except in Paris where someone on the left was elected. But European politics remain confused and confusing, and there's no consensus emerging that I can see at present. So all those things are true. And in the middle of all this, if Trump has finally discovered the merits of maintaining a dialogue with Tehran, even if it's under the table and not acknowledged by Tehran, even if it's conducted by Stephen Witkoff, whom the Iranians have every reason to distrust, even if conducted by Trump, who everyone distrusts now. The Europeans are still arguing about whether to talk to Russia or not, which is quite remarkable.
So I think all sorts of interesting things are happening here, but for me as a retired diplomat I find it interesting to see the indispensability of diplomacy once again illustrated in the ways that it is being illustrated. I haven't talked about the global implications of this, but we've talked about that before. I mean, we're looking for a global economic recession, clearly. The Trump administration has just advised Israel that the war is, quote, going to go on longer than planned, unquote, and may extend till September, which means that whatever remaining munitions we have to expand will be expanded, which means that we will be incapable of doing things on a global scale as we once were, even if transit through West Asia, which is essential for The United States to remain a global power. I mean, we have to have the ability to travel through that corridor in order to get from Asia to Europe, even if the arrival of the US Marines near the Strait Of Hormuz toward the end of this week is not a forecast of reenactment of Gallipoli on the northern shore of the Strait Of Hormuz, but is instead directed at less formidable and more reasonable political targets.
For example, Abu Musa and the Lesser Tomb Islands, which are the focus of a territorial dispute between Iran and The United Arab Emirates. It seemed to me to be a more intelligent target for the Marines than Khark Island, which is way up the Persian Gulf requiring American forces to run a gauntlet to reach it unless Saudi Arabia provided a staging area, which I don't think it will. You know, when Trump threatens to destroy the power plants in Iran, as he has, if not today, then five days from now, I think and is met with a counter threat to do the same to Israel and the Gulf Arabs, plus taking out desalination plants that are essential for the survival of these countries, I think he undercuts any possibility of actual cooperation from them. Finally, on the subject of the retreat to the Western Hemisphere, you know, there's a Chinese expression, listen to what he says, but watch what he does. What Trump says is one thing.
What he does is entirely a different There's no way starting a war with Iran can be made compatible with either a focus on Western Hemisphere or a focus on China, which are the two visions that remain competing in the schizophrenic American political mind. So I think there's no clarity. Five days will go by, perhaps Witkoff's texting to Horagh Ji will meet with something other than a reiteration of Iranian terms, which are essentially reparations, compensation for the damage, no American military presence in the Persian Gulf, assurances, credible assurances that Israel will not again either attack Iran itself or connive an arranging American attack and so forth. There is a further element here, and that is a requirement for a security architecture in the Persian Gulf. Iran has put forward proposals, so have the Chinese and the Russians.
I imagine that an organization like the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to which some 57 Muslim countries belong, including some with real political prestige like Indonesia and Malaysia that are not in the region, but involving Turkey which is a very important potential player in arranging some kind of peace here. I could see the OIC organizing a conference among the regional parties, minus Israel, to compose a proposal for peace with an invitation, I would hope, to Israel, whatever remains of Israel, to participate in mutual peace building and economic development projects. But that may be too idealistic in a region which is famed, justly famed for its cynicism.
Speaker 0: Well, it appears that part of Trump's calculation, though, was assets in all all conflicts, which is maximum pressure. We saw this what happened with the South Parris that is this world's largest gas field. That is, yeah, The US well, Israel, but I assume with the full support of The United States, struck these gas fields, and then Trump came back more or less it was saying it wasn't us, but don't you dare to retaliate. So the the idea was that the Iranians would essentially bow, you know, and, you know, without us going up the escalation ladder with The US. But that's not what happened.
We saw this devastating retaliation by the Iranians against the Gulf Arab states. So what do you think happens, though, if the if Trump decides to go through on his initial threats? That is well, not well, either in terms of attacking Iran's energy infrastructure or if these ground troops he's preparing would actually be put into play to occupy Iranian territory. Because we heard from Iranians, you know, they can go after the energy infrastructure, the desalination plants, which you referred to. But this is all this is you know, this will break the backs of the Arab state or sorry, the Gulf States, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. But, you know, here again, maximum pressure policies are basically power without purpose, tactics without strategy. They're the definition of this war which can't succeed. We have the example of North Korea, And that should have been a predictor of what Iranian reaction would be.
Iran is a proud civilizational state with influence far beyond its borders. And it may be a multi ethnic state, but it is a coherent state. And its reaction to basically bluster, blackmail, and bombing is predictable, rather like North Korea. The only result of the policy toward North Korea was that North Korea developed a nuclear weapon with a ICBM to just deliver it, multiple nuclear weapon multiple nuclear warheads on The United States. Iran is headed in the same direction.
We don't know. Iran denies that it fired a missile at Diego Garcia and claims that this is this was an Israeli false flag attack on Diego Garcia, probably intended to keep the British in the war on the side of The United States since Diego Garcia is their property, they think. The United Nations and the international community believe it's part of Mauritius. Anyway, whatever that one certainly Israel has been conducting a lot of false flag operations intended to embroil others in the war against Iran, so far without success. There have been no actual movements other than diplomatic by the Gulf Arab states in reaction.
But, you know, what this illustrates, whether it was a false flag up firing of an IRBM at Diego Garcia or not, is that the murder of Ali Khamenei, the late supreme leader, and his replacement by his son has removed the the ban on various weapons developments that the late leader insisted on. He was the main opponent of the development of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Let's not forget that there are biological and chemical weapons in that category too. He was the main opponent of extending the range of Iranian missiles beyond 2,000, 2,500 kilometers. These constraints are now gone.
Iran is not ceasing to produce missiles even in the middle of the war apparently. And there is no indication that contrary to the assertions of Israel and The United States, its war making capacity has been taken out. In fact, missiles continue to land in Israel. Drones continue to attack the Gulf Arabs, who are very vulnerable to those. The attacks on Israel often include combined ballistic missile and drone movements.
Clearly Iran can get through the three layered Israeli ballistic missile or rocket defense, which is starts with the the arrow at at extra atmospheric levels and then David's thing in the high atmosphere and finally an iron dome for slower objects closer to the ground. But it's not effective even if at this point I mean, look at the attack on Dimunah. That is the most heavily defended part of Israel, most heavily defended side in Israel. And yet Iran was able to hit it with, I believe, two missiles. So this is if this is a war of attrition, it is not working out to the advantage of Israel and The United States.
And I, you know, when we talked some time ago, I think I described Iran's strategy as resembling that of Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring. You know, rope a dope. Allow your opponent to exhaust itself by firing everything it can at you and waiting for the right moment to retaliate in a decisive manner. That moment of decisive retaliation may be coming, but Iran has not yet reached it in its own judgment. Let me just add one other point here, which gets back to the necessity of the diplomatic resolution of this issue and the very unlikely prospects for that at present.
Israel has had a very clear policy, exemplified by its assassination of Ali Larijani, of eliminating anyone who would be a moderate potential diplomatic interlocutor on the Iranian side. Israel does not want negotiations, which is one of the reasons that it is so nervous when Trump claims there are negotiations. I think incorrectly, but it is fairly typical of Trump to exaggerate and misfortray things that are going on in such a way as to manipulate public opinion, and in this case, markets. Because the market has shown itself incredibly vulnerable. I'm talking about capital markets, Wall Street in particular, or the FTSE in London.
These markets have have taken Trump's assurances that this would be a short victorious war seriously despite all the evidence to the contrary. So the the price of shares on these markets goes up and down in response to various, frankly, delusional or at least imaginative, perhaps hallucinatory claims by the Trump administration. There's no evidence. This war is anywhere near an end. Or that Iran has achieved the conditions it regards as essential to agree to end it.
So what is the prospect? I think there are two prospects. One is that eventually there will be a negotiation of some sort, in which case Israel will have to eat crow. It will not be able to sustain the narrative it has portrayed it has purveyed for decades of a menacing Iran and itself as victim. Israel has been an actual threat to Iran in multiple ways.
Over this entire period, Iran has been at most a potential threat to Israel, very much on the defensive. Maybe Israel will have to acknowledge that if there are negotiations. Perhaps The United States and Israel will part company on the issue of Iran. That is not easy politically for Donald Trump given his dependence on the Zionist lobby and Zionist plutocratic campaign donations. The only possibility is that we subside to a level of lower intensity continuing conflict.
In effect, that would be a return to the status quo ante because there was a low intensity conflict going on between Iran and Israel, and to some extent, and The United States, exemplified by the murder of General Soleimani in the first Trump term and by the several Israeli attacks on Iran in the second Trump administration, including the June war last year. So perhaps we'll go back to a situation where Israel is in constant danger of, as Iran has been, of being attacked by its enemy. You know, missiles coming out of nowhere, assassinations. Iran so far has not reciprocated Israel's policy of assassination. Will that will that refusal to do that remain intact?
We don't know. So of the two alternatives, seems to me a negotiated solution is far preferable than to low intensity conflict, probably accompanied by continued terrorism by both sides.
Speaker 0: Well, the low intensity, though, this essentially would, yeah, put on the slow burner, allow it to stretch out over a longer period of time. It just seems that if it lowers in intensity, this would give advantage to Iran because it, of course, can keep keeping the Strait Of Our Moose closed, which means that the the pain for The United States will keep growing.
Speaker 1: I think that would be a short term. The the the a relatively short term closure, but then a return to the tollbooth operation. You know, toll highway. You know, do a deal, reach an understanding, hand me your ticket along with some cash and you can get through. That's basically what's been going on.
All this business about mining the Strait Of Hormuz has no real evidence behind it. And it is a real question why Iran would want to mine the Strait Of Hormuz when it basically sees it as the ability to open it to selected parties as a point of diplomatic opportunity and leverage. So I'm not convinced that there has been mining. Or if there has been mining, it's probably on the shore closest to The UAE, leaving the shore closest to Iran, unmined. Anyway, we don't know.
The only people in the world, by the way, with an adequate force of mine keep minesweepers to deal with this are the Japanese who were not interested in going into a combat zone. They did come in at the end of the nineteen ninety ninety one Gulf War. Once the combat had ended, they provided the capability to remove the multiple mines that the Iraqi side had released in the Persian Gulf. The United States very foolishly, US Navy, I believe in January, actually got rid of four monsweepers, which is in terms of force planning, is amazingly stupid. If so
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, the Iranians take their selective opening. It's a it's an interesting strategy because now, of course, they can get the reparations from the Gulf States for the attack. They can by by taxing them, essentially. Yes.
Exactly. They can sell they can demand the Gulf States for access to decouple or, know, expel The US bases. They can demand selling it in a different currency. So the it does open up a lot of opportunities, and if the Iranians themselves claim they didn't mind anything, but that they will they might do this if The US sends in ground troops, then out of necessity. But at the moment, it doesn't make any sense.
You do in terms of the negotiated settlement, I was just wondering where do you see the common meeting point? Because so far, The US more or less demands Iran's capitulation, while Iran has wants a US basis out of the region. And I'm just thinking there would be a you know, The US, if it wants to pivot out of the region anyways, it could be an opportunity, but they don't wanna hand over leadership to Iran, obviously, and that seems fair enough. But what are we what could a could a middle ground look like? A new security architecture which allows The US to reduce its troops and that reduced the threat to Iran, but still, you know, doesn't make Iran a regional hegemon or anything like this.
Because if you look at what's happening in Iraq, it looks as if some places, the Western troops are being pushed out anyways. So so how how how do you see if there is a negotiated settlement? What is there to negotiate?
Speaker 1: Well, that's a very good question, of course. But before I address it, let me just mention that, Iran has another card to play potentially, by activating, its relationship with the Houthis in Yemen to close the other sea corridor through which Saudi Arabia is exporting Israel, the Bab Al Mandip, so it can shut down the only remaining oil that is basically coming out of the Arabian Peninsula, which is Saudi oil going out through Yanbuah in on the on the Red Sea. As far as a reasonable as a settlement is concerned, I think, you know, I have no idea what's in the mind of the Iranian leadership. It's a new leadership, it's not the old one. Arak Shi is there.
He's obviously very capable as a diplomat. It is but it's not clear to me. It seems to me that you need to have a conjunction of two things. One, you have to have the kind of addressing of regional security architecture by people in the region that I suggested the organization of the Islamic Cooperation OIC might be able to convene. In other words, a plan for postwar order even if it can't be implemented immediately.
That plan might include a progressive withdrawal of US forces, not an immediate one that is designed to not humiliate The United States, but to remove the threat to Iran. It could include, you know, joint patrols between the Iranians and the Gulf Arabs. It might include, and Iran has actually proposed this, a regional management system for collecting the tolls in the Strait Of Hormuz. That is, that there would be a common commitment among countries in the region to open the Strait Of Hormuz in return for benefits that would be shared. Iran seems to be thinking about the postwar order in fairly constructive terms if you are only looking at the interests of the Gulf Arabs.
It none of this would be a delight to The United States or to Israel. On the other hand, as you suggested, if in fact The United States is serious about pivoting away from the Middle East, away from West Asia, toward East Asia and the Western Hemisphere, this would facilitate that. So you ask what's in it for what's in in it for everyone to have peace, I think clever diplomats could figure out some ways of achieving it. But that requires clever diplomats. There is no evidence of any such in our arsenal of diplomacy, the American arsenal.
There is plenty of evidence of strategic thinking in Israel and in Iran. I'm not sure how much there is in the Gulf Arabs. And the Gulf Arabs, as I mentioned earlier, are obviously quite justifiably furious with Iran for the beating that they're taking, and very fearful, and also very dismissive now of The United States as a protector. Because clearly, The United States no longer has the ability, does not have the will, doesn't set priority on protecting them. It seeks to protect Israel, and it can't even do that apparently.
And then, you know, I think I should be close by saying that, you know, there's as usual, the physical war is accompanied by an information war. Israeli military censorship, with few exceptions, is very effective and with few exceptions, to their discredit, respected by Western journalists. So we have a lot of information about physical damage in Iran. We have a lot of information about physical damage in Lebanon. We have some information about the ferocity of the ethnic cleansing campaign unfolding in the West Bank.
But we have almost no information about the physical and human damage of Iranian attacks on Israel. Israel obviously is concerned about more than its physical protection about the morale of its people who remain, polling data suggests, ardently supportive of the war, probably in part because they don't understand actually what's happening in it. I note that Ben Gurion Airport, the international airport in Israel, has now had a severe flight reduction imposed on it by the Israeli Minister of Transportation. In order to safeguard lives, the minister says. But this also cuts off immigration from Israel.
If there can be no more than 50 passengers per plane, which is apparent and the number of flights is limited, this bottles up a lot of Israelis. And again, you know, I think the Iranian calculus is that a settler colony will have a a bolt hole for most of the settlers. And the settlers may be thinking about using their Spanish or Portuguese passports or German passports to get out and not come back. Because if coming back means that you're going to face low intensity conflict, more of the same, why would you want to come back? And of course, we don't know what the level of emigration is during this war because that too is off limits for reporters.
And so we're missing a key element here in evaluating the battle damage of the the war. What we have are, however, are clear indications of intent. And to go back to how the war might end, Donald Trump has offered an entire word salad, a smorgasbord of purposes for this war. Why not choose the pickled airing instead of the pickled radishes, you know, and or the or the locks, the salmon. And so I gather by the way that that's the oldest surviving Lox is the oldest surviving word in the Indo European language family.
So Norway is at the center of the world in that sense. Anyway, my point is that Trump is in a position to pick and choose. You know, he obviously failed in a number of things. No regime change, no state collapse, that's the Israeli objective, not the American one, no end to nuclear programs. In fact, their acceleration, a much wider danger of proliferation As Iran goes nuclear, one might expect others, Saudi Arabia, Egypt in the region and others farther afield like Japan and South Korea to go nuclear.
So the danger of nuclear war is likely to go up. The efficacy of the American nuclear deterrent is likely devalued, to and that's even if the Germans don't go nuclear, which some in Germany are talking about. So I think he can choose another objective, physical damage. We have knocked Iran for a loop. We have we have done basic damage to the Iranian economy.
Here, of course, however, and I'll conclude with this thought, the great irony is that Iran's objective, one of them, was relief from sanctions. And the Treasury Secretary has just lifted the sanctions on Iranian oil exports. Bingo for Iran. You know, he got their number. So I think anyway, Trump is very inventive when it comes to finding ways to chicken out of situations that he's created.
Speaker 0: You were The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. How how do you see them the the thinking there at the moment? Because you get some impression they might be going both ways. On one hand, this whole experience convinces them they have to link themselves closer to The US. On the other hand, they also recognize that they have to decouple not decouple, but at least reduce dependence to as the relationship with Iran has to change as well.
So how do you see or what is going on in Saudi Arabia?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not there, and I would suspect that there are two reactions. One, very short term, which is, you know, let's let's cooperate with Pakistan and and exact retribution. Let's get even with Iran. And so they they must be in a very vengeful mood in the short term. More thoughtful Saudis, and there are such people who think long term, probably are concluding that they must compose their differences with Iran on the diplomatic level in order to eliminate the threat.
You know, I mean, they instinctively know what Abraham Lincoln said, that when you befriend an enemy, you gain a friend and lose an enemy. And that is the appropriate answer. Threat reduction is a primary task of diplomacy. And they had begun to try this. They have abandoned it now for the short term, clearly.
I think they'll return to it. But you know, they face a difficulty which they recognize. And that is, know, I think about twenty some years ago, I gave a talk called The Arabs Take a Chinese Wife, in which I pointed out that while they were kind of tired of The United States, they were too big and fat to throw out of the bed, but that Muslims could take more than one wife. And that this was what was going to happen. And I think this is very likely the future, and it means I'm not speaking solely about the Chinese.
It means finding other friends and doing something very important that is the focus of the Saudi Pakistani Defense Pact, which is build your own military industries so you don't have to buy weapons from The United States or another demonstrably unreliable partner. You can buy weapons from China, but they don't come with a security guarantee attached. And if you buy them from The United States, that claim that they come with a security guarantee has been a major factor in making them attractive. That is now gone. So I suspect this is not good for US arms sales in any sense.
Not only have the defensive mechanisms, the interception capabilities, proven inadequate and much less than is claimed, but the security guarantee that made him attractive is not there anymore. So I think the answer is, in the short term, vengeance. You know, there's an Arab proverb, kiss the hand you cannot bite. And but I think in the long run, they will kiss the hand that bit them. At the instance of The United States.
I mean, let us remember that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arabs, including The UAE apparently, were were trying very, very hard to persuade The United States not to exceed the Israeli pressure to start this war. They knew, even if Donald Trump did, what the likely result of the war would be in terms of disruption of their political economies and pressure on them and physical damage to them. And I think I saw an interview with the former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Turkiye Ofaisal, the other day in which, Christine Aminpur asked him whether he was surprised by the Iranian attacks on the Gulf Arabs. And he said, no. They said they would do that.
We're only surprised that The United States took the action it did that produced this result. So the more thoughtful people in Saudi Arabia clearly are thinking strategically, not just tactically, about how to deal with the new circumstances in The Gulf. Long answer to your simple question. I apologize. I appreciate it.
And, well, let's hope, even though
Speaker 0: it seems unlikely, that there will be some negotiations so far. The Trump's claim that they are reaching in a negotiation, it seems to be not true, but at least we should take some reassurance that this is effort to walk this back. So no. Because this is really spiraling very quickly out of control. So
Speaker 1: Well, the hopeful note is that Donald Trump may be in the process of discovering the utility of diplomacy rather than the use of force. But then one is never sure where his mind is and I do not think that Stephen Witkoff is a credible interlocutor at this point given his past involvement in deception and his inability to deliver Donald Trump into the agreements that he apparently hinted at or perhaps even reached at the negotiating table with his Iranian counterparts.
Speaker 0: That's my concern, though. That is once Trump discovers the value of diplomacy, it's gonna be difficult after, you know, what was done to the JCPOA and then two surprise attacks. You know, there will be some trust issues. But, yeah
Speaker 1: That's why I don't think the Iranians are going to stop until they feel that they have The United States basically where they want us to be. And I don't think, you know, it's clear that Donald Trump, even if he never recognizes mistakes that he makes, understands this is not going well on multiple levels. And is concerned probably primarily about the domestic political impact. As I talked a little bit about, the price of gasoline at the pump. But there's also the fact that the MAGA movement has split on this.
His own backers are now splintering increasingly. There are polls that show that the vast majority of voters for Donald Trump, something like 70% of them favor an immediate end of the war. They don't approve of this war. So I go back to the point that it was foolish to start a war that was authorized by Benjamin Netanyahu, not the United States Congress as the Constitution demands. It was foolish to start a war with no clear objectives and no war termination strategy, and here we are in the midst of this foolishness.
And the man who got us into it, Donald Trump, has gotta now have to find a way out for himself, for our country, for the world, for the participants in the region. Whether he's up to it or not, we shall see.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time. And as always, I really appreciate your insights.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Total War - Attacking Nuclear Plants, Desalination & Infrastructure https://youtu.be/Fxt8JjPz_Rw https://t.co/dsr0D62hoy
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi joins the program to discuss a fast-escalating confrontation involving Iran, Israel, and the United States, with warnings of a potential global crisis. He emphasizes, repeatedly, that Iran is retaliating rather than initiating, and that Western media has downplayed the start of hostilities.
Key points and claims as presented:
- Recent strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities and energy-related sites. Israel attacked the Bosher (Bushehr) and Natanz facilities; Iran reportedly retaliated against Dimona in Israel, with attacks occurring near the Israeli nuclear site rather than the plant itself.
- Trump has issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to strike Iran’s energy fields if Iran does not capitulate. Iran’s military leadership warned that if the United States proceeds with threats, they would strike energy facilities and desalination plants across the Gulf states, with the claim that such actions could spell “the end of this state.”
- Marandi asserts the war began earlier, with U.S.-Israel aggression about eight to nine months ago, and Iran has been retaliating in response to Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure. He cites Iran’s responses to the South Pars gas field strikes and subsequent retaliations against Qatari and Emirati energy facilities as signals that Tehran will respond to escalation.
- He contends that Iran’s leadership believes escalation will place greater costs on the other side, given Iran’s access to assets across the Persian Gulf and the potential to destroy Western targets. He warns that a strike on Iran’s vital infrastructure could trigger a global economic catastrophe, with cascading consequences such as mass displacement and industrial collapse.
- Marandi criticizes Western media, the UN Security Council, and regional regimes allied with the U.S. and Israel for condemning Iran’s retaliation while not addressing the Israeli-U.S. aggression. He describes Western media as “Epstein class controlled” and calls for deterrence that remains credible.
- He argues Iran possesses escalation dominance: confronting greater Western military capabilities with more robust regional assets and allied groups (including the axis of resistance). He asserts that if the United States expands the conflict to attack Iranian territory or regional infrastructure, Iran would respond by destroying assets on the other side of the Persian Gulf, potentially leading to the fall of allied regimes.
- The discussion touches on potential consequences if Iran escalates to the destruction of Gulf energy infrastructure or desalination plants: global energy shortages, food insecurity due to fertilizer and agricultural disruptions, and a broader collapse of the world economy.
- The role of regional proxies and geopolitics is explored. Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime, Iraqi factions, Yemeni resistance, and Gulf regimes are discussed as vulnerable to Iranian retaliation or as complicit in the broader conflict. Marandi suggests that any move by the U.S. to invade Iranian territory would provoke severe retaliation across multiple fronts, including in the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea.
- The possibility of broader geopolitical chain reactions is considered: Europe’s energy dependence, Russia’s position, and potential shifts in North Africa and the Middle East. He states that Europe is losing influence, and Russia could gain strategic advantages as the conflict deepens.
- The refugee and humanitarian dimension is acknowledged. Iran hosts many refugees, complicating regional dynamics if conflicts worsen.
- On leadership and probability, Marandi casts Trump as unpredictable, with statements and threats oscillating; he predicts a grim trajectory unless deterrence is credibly maintained, and he suggests that even a withdrawal or ceasefire would not be straightforward, given the on-the-ground realities and Iran’s demands.
- He concludes with a broad warning: a global catastrophe is possible if escalation continues, and while Iran seeks to deter and respond proportionally, the path to de-escalation remains uncertain, with the possibility that the world could be drawn into a larger—and potentially third-world-war—conflict.
Overall, the conversation frames Iran as retaliatory and strategically calculating, asserting that escalation could become uncontrollable and produce widespread economic, political, and humanitarian devastation unless restraint and credible deterrence prevail.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor Seyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and also a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you as always for coming on the program. We we see that this is quite, yeah, troubling times. Israel has attacked the nuclear power plants at Bosher and Natanz, and Iran has retaliated against the city of Dimona where the Israelis have their own nuclear plants.
This was not an attack on the nuclear plant apparently, but nearby in terms of hitting the city. So it it does seem that we could be moving to a de facto nuclear war if, if this is the new trend that is attacking nuclear facilities with the possibility of a nuclear fallout. And making matters worse, we see that Trump gave Iran this ultimatum of forty eight hours to open the Strait Of Hormuz, essentially capitulate. Otherwise, they they will start hitting Iran's largest energy fields. And we see that Iranian military headquarters, if I get this right, warned that if The US would carry through on these threats, then they would knock out the energy facilities, and desalination plants across The Gulf States would essentially be the end of this, well, this state.
So we're looking almost towards total war here. I was wondering if you can give me your assessment what is happening because this seems like uncontrolled escalation at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a pleasure being on your show. Yes. It but we have to keep in mind, of course, and I know your audience knows this, but Western media, for some reason, pretends as if this were not the case. The war began with US Israeli aggression, like, eight, nine months ago, and every attack was met with a response.
In other words, the Iranians are retaliating. They're not initiating anything. So the attack last night on the Israeli regime and on buildings linked to their nuclear program was in response to their strike on Iranian nuclear And Iran's response to escalation, has already been, seen by all of us when the Israeli regime with US coordination, there's no doubt about that, When they struck Iran's vital gas installation in the South, the South Parris gas field, the Iranians swiftly responded and destroyed significant parts of Qatar's gas field gas facilities and its LNG facilities in particular, and so the Emirati energy facilities. And the reason why Iran did that was to make sure that The United States didn't go further. And then we saw Trump, post on social media that the Israeli regime won't won't do this again.
Of course, he then made threats against Iran, but that was to cover basically this retreat, this, this, the fact that he wanted to back down. But, of course, Trump is Trump, and, he says one thing now, and then literally an hour later, he'll say something very different. So his promises that the Israeli regime will not strike again don't mean anything to the Iranians. They will always, when it comes to The United States, plan for the worst, and especially when it's Trump. You recall before the war, we had this discussion about whether there will be a war.
I always said that Iran is planning for the worst. It doesn't care what Trump says. The same is true now. So now Trump is making another threat, and that is that he will destroy Iran's vital infrastructure and target its electrical power plants. He already made that threat before, and doctor Larijani tweeted that if that happens, as you pointed out earlier, there will be massive retaliation, and nothing happened back then.
After Iran's response to the attack on the South Parr's gas field, it's clear what Iran is going to do if The United States does carry out this threat. And that would mean that, the world will head towards a global economic catastrophe. Something that I've been saying for many years before corona, I actually had a a a an interview on press TV that, went viral back then. I said exactly, what is now what we're now seeing. If Iran's vital infrastructure is destroyed, Iran will destroy everything on the other side of the Persian Gulf because these regimes are all engaged in warfare against Iran.
They've allowed The United States to use the airspace. They've allowed The United States to use bases. They've allowed The United States to to use their land outside the bases. They not only allow jets to fly over to bomb Iran, but they allow tankers to refuel those jets. They do everything necessary to kill Iranians.
So they are fully complicit. And a strike targeting Iran's key or vital infrastructure is a is a strike to target the Iranian nation. And, of course, a major crime against humanity, which in the West doesn't mean anything because after Trump's, threat last night, we didn't see any Western media say that this is outrageous or that this is a threat against 90 over 90,000,000 people. No. Because Western media, collectively, they are Epstein class controlled, so it doesn't matter if it's Guardian or Breitbart.
They're all the same when it comes to empire. So, this means if he carries out this attack, that the energy crisis will be permanent and that, the global economy will collapse, And that will have implications that are beyond my imagination. I can think of horrible things. Hundreds of millions of people on the move, you know, starvation, the collapse of industry. I can think of many, many things, but it it will be, because of Trump.
And if Iran is forced to destroy those, that key infrastructure, then it doesn't matter if there's a an an end to the hostilities and, Iran allows the Strait Of Hormuz to be open because there will be no oil or gas to go through it and no tankers to take that energy or petrochemicals or or anything else. So we are where we are, but I just want to stress that Iran didn't push us here. Iran's threats are being made so that The United States doesn't do anything stupid. I mean, this whole war is stupid. It is barbaric.
It is inhumane, and it is fully supported by the West and its regional proxies as we saw, Erdogan and Sisi and Abdullah and Jordan and these regimes in the Persian Gulf condemned Iran for retaliation against US US assets in the Persian Gulf, and they didn't even mention, the Israeli and, American war, of aggression on Iran because they're in the American camp. The UN Security Council too, condemned Iran and refused to even acknowledge, this assault on the country. So Iran is on its own. It has to make it will has to carry out its threats of retaliation. Otherwise, The United States will bomb Iran and destroy asset after asset.
Vital infrastructure throughout the country will be destroyed. The only way to stop it is to have deterrence and for that deterrence to be used after, credible warnings are given. And that is where we are right now.
Speaker 0: I also saw the g seven came out with a statement, condemning Iran for retaliating. And as you said, no mention of the second surprise attack, the the destruction of Iran's energy, civilian infrastructure, or, you know, any reference to international law. He was just condemning Iran for retaliating. And I yeah. I I saw you also made made a comment that it would have been, you know, if the situation was reversed, how absurd it would be.
That is if, you know, China was, you know, putting its missiles in Canada, launching them at The United States, and somehow then Canada declares neutrality thereafter. I mean, it doesn't really make much sense at all, and I think, but but nonetheless, you know, Iran can't strike the mainland in US, and, you know, the rules appears to be that Iran isn't allowed, you know, according to its rules to attack the the ones who are actually attacking Iran. So it is an interesting efforts to dictate the rules of this war. But as you suggest, it's not actually working. But is this an accidental escalation which is out of control, or do you see this being deliberate on Trump's side that he's saying essentially, listen, Iran, either you capitulate or, you know, which is essentially a ceasefire or you accept, or we're gonna go up the escalation ladder.
Because the whole assumption is premised on the notion that The US has escalation dominance. That means The US can bring it up to a certain amount of pain in which Iran would have to be the one who folds first. But how where do you see this going? Because we're not at the end stop, obviously. We're rushing up quite quickly.
And nuclear power plants, I found this to be just extraordinary because what what would happen if if Israel and The US would then, you know, destroy a nuclear plant, a reactor, and there would be some nuclear fallout like Chernobyl? How do you see the war well, how is this essentially the top of the escalation ladder, or how would Iran, I guess, do a tit for tat if this would happen?
Speaker 1: The Iranians believe that if there's escalation, they will be the ones who have control because there are far more assets on the other side of the Persian Gulf, Iran, to destroy. And the implications for the West would be far greater than what they can do to Iran. Iran has been sanctioned for decades, and he will slowly rebuild the vital infrastructure that is destroyed. But when the global economy collapses and The US economy collapses, I think that will be an unprecedented situation for the American people. And I think that will destabilize United States and bring Trump's presidency to an end.
But in any case, that's all you know, that's a hypothetical right now. What I think is probably going to happen is that, well, the Iranians, as as we've discussed, have no faith in international bodies. We also saw that during the twelve day war where Iran was condemned by the West when it was attacked, and the UN Security Council refused to take any action. But let's say that the Israeli regime strikes the nuclear power plant in Boucher alongside the Persian Gulf. That radioactivity would contaminate, the Persian Gulf, and thus it would contaminate oil and gas.
And so the Israeli regime itself will be, or the Americans would be destroying the global economy with that single move. And as I said, if the global economy collapses, that's the end of the US empire, and the world will blame The United States and and Zionism, first and foremost, for this catastrophe. The Israeli regime will not benefit in the long term either. It will it will it will also be devastated by the collapse of the global economy, but more importantly, by the collapse of their sponsor. The regime that enables the Israeli regime to behave in this manner would, be severely damaged.
And already across the West and in The United States in particular particular, animosity towards the Israeli regime is rising. We see the resignation of Joe Kent and, his subsequent interviews. We see the polling and the rising anger towards the Israeli regime. And if, of course, this war continues and the rise the energy costs continue to rise, anger towards Trump, Netanyahu, and the Israeli regime will rise with it because Americans will know who to blame. They started the war.
It was unprovoked, especially since Trump campaigned on, ending the forever wars. Of course, he campaigned on a lot about the things too, and he didn't carry out, any of them almost, the Epstein files and and so on. So I I I don't see a situation where The United States can have escalation dominance. I think the Iranians have that escalation dominance. And more importantly, if we have escalation and Iran destroys the assets on the on the other side of the Persian Gulf, those regimes will fall.
That'll be the end of these regimes. And and we still haven't seen the axis of resistance escalate either. We see Hezbollah fighting very effectively in Southern Lebanon and hitting the Israeli regime very hard. But the resistance in Iraq is still striking at US assets, but it still is not showing its hand. And, of course, in Yemen, they said they're going to enter, but they haven't yet.
And Iranians, they have much more up their sleeves than, than what they've shown so far. And I think the the very fact that all US, S estimates being wrong about the number of missiles and drones that Iran has and so on, I think that that shows that, they really have no idea what Iran can do. And simultaneously, we have to keep in in into account the fact that the Iranian people are fully supportive of the war. Every night, huge crowds gather across the country. These people don't get tired.
They go out every single night on the streets, during the day, on the streets, during Eid prayers, under airstrikes, missile strikes, under rain and snow. They they've, they've shown how steadfast they are. This is not a a country that The United States can defeat, and the the the circumstances where the world's energy markets are fully dependent on energy coming from the Persian Gulf and the Caucasus. Because if the war expands, have no doubt that, oil and gas assets in the Republic Of Azerbaijan will be destroyed too. Have zero doubt.
They will be finished because the regime in Azerbaijan, another family dictatorship, is allied to the Israeli regime in The United States. So it is antagonistic towards the Iranian people. You'll have to we'll have to add that to everything else. This is not a winnable war for The United States. So will Trump escalate, will he back down?
I don't think anyone knows. I mean, I don't think he's predictable. I don't I don't think even Trump knows. I don't think anyone around him knows. He can go either way, and then either way that he goes, again, he could do a u-turn, but the damage will be done.
So if he strikes, let's say, an Iranian electrical power plant, Iran will probably do much greater damage to the other side because it has to make sure that the message is received. Then he may back down, or maybe he won't even attack, or then maybe he will further escalate. Who knows what he will do? But regardless what happens, I think things are going to get worse. And then we have the added issue of The US preparing itself for, invading Iranian territory.
And I think that will be also equally disastrous because if The United States takes Iranian territory, that would be an escalation, and that would be damage to Iran's vital infrastructure. And thus, Iran will also have to retaliate against those Arab dictatorships and US assets there and other assets because those regimes are complicit in the war. So the own any for you know, as we move forward, all I can see is escalation unless the unless the Trump regime declares victory and walks away like with Yemen. But even then, Glenn, even then, a lot of damage has already been done. And each day that goes by, there will be further damage.
But even if Trump walks away, Iran is not going to accept the ceasefire. The facts on the ground will have to change. Iran will ensure it will make sure that regional neighboring countries will no longer be a threat to Iran. It'll make sure it will it will get compensation either through by using this trade of hormones, or it will directly force these regimes to to to pay for all the damage that they've done to the Iranian people and all the deaths that they've caused, through their complicity. I have no doubt that walking away will not be that will not be simple a simple solution either.
It's not as if The United States declares a ceasefire and Iran will then immediately open the ceasefire open the Strait Of Hormuz. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 0: Well, in Trump going back and forth, one example would be the Strait Of Hormuz because he did indicate that, well, it's not our problem. We'll walk away. You know, it's countries of the region that should take care of this. We're already done. And then, of course, the following day, he now makes this threat of what is essentially total war that is either open it forty eight hours or we destroy everything.
I mean, this is yeah. As you say, it's a bit all over the place. This happens within a few hours in between. Those are completely different positions. But when he came with that first tweet, I thought again, it's very strange.
This is how wars are declared now by tweets. But I thought that this was, an off ramp. That is, as you suggest, if The US wants to get out of this, it has to it can simply declare victory and go home as it did in Yemen. But the problem is, of course, is the straight of our moves because well, as you said, this won't be opened. They you know, this will take on a very different format.
And so I thought when Trump tweeted that, well, this is not our problem. You know, the countries of the region should worry about it. It it doesn't really work that way either because, as you suggest now, that Iran can, well, it's already setting up, it seems, like selective access or essentially nationalizing the street that is conditioning who who can trans transit. And as you suggest, it could have different functions. Countries, it could be a way of compelling The Gulf States to pay reparation for the damage they have done to Iran in this attack.
It can be, you know, compelling them to expel The US bases, so this, again, won't happen again. Some have suggested as well that it could demand countries stop trading their oil in the US dollar, which would then dismantle the petrodollar system that links US military to the region. So there's a lot Iran can do, but, this is all requiring Iran to have this selective access to the Strait Of Hormuz to end, you know, this, decades long campaign against Iran. So it it just it it doesn't seem clear to me where where The US will will will actually go from here. But one of the things they will do, it appears, is this, well, sending troops to the region.
We see now this well, the eighty second airborne apparently being on the way with seeing this b 52 bombers with the bunker busters on their way. So is is what what is it that you expect now over the next two days?
Speaker 1: Well, The United States has been using bunker busters regularly, and it's been bombing Iran for twenty two days now. And there's nothing more that they can really do. And as I said earlier, Iran has escalation dominance. Iran still hasn't shown its hand nor has the axis of resistance collectively shown their hand, the its members. The United States can attempt to take territory, but Iran will destroy assets on the other side of the Persian Gulf.
But more importantly, when the armed forces in the resistance in Yemen, in Iraq, and, of course, in Iran, they're far much far greater in number and far more competent than the military forces in The US camp. I mean, Qatar doesn't have a real standing army, nor does Bahrain, nor does The Emirates, nor does Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia has already shown its incompetence. So what if, ground forces if The United States uses ground forces, then, what about ground forces entering Kuwait and moving into Saudi Arabia from the North and from Yemen to the Southwest towards the North and towards the East? Who's going to stop them? And then simultaneously, you'll have Iranians striking, all those key oil and gas installations and, the vital infrastructure, in retaliation.
How is The United States ever going to win that? It's not it's it's an impossible scenario for The United States, and it will be a colossal defeat. What we're seeing right now is a president in The United States that has completely discredited the country, because he has lied so many times, and he's been deceptive so many times, and he's contradicted himself so many times. Nothing that he says means anything anymore to anyone. Not that The United States was an honest, entity before Trump.
I mean, we signed a nuclear deal with Obama, and he violated the deal from day one. And it was systematic, And, aggressively, the violations grew until Trump became president and ultimately tore up the deal. But Trump is in a class of his own. And so even if Trump signs a piece of paper saying, okay. We're finished, and we'll go.
We'll walk away. The war's over. That will mean nothing to Iran. The facts on the ground will have to change before Iran, moves in a different direction because Trump has zero credibility.
Speaker 0: Well, regarding what you said, we don't know yet the cards that Iran has to play. There's a lot of uncertain. Again, this is why many countries or many people, irrespective of their feeling towards, Iran, warned against this war. It's too many unknown variables. You know, it's not like previous wars of America.
They can't control that, yeah, the all of these variables. But one of them, of course, will be the missile range. We don't know much about the missile range of Iran. This could be, you know, in problematic for if the Europeans deepen their involvement in this war. As you said, this axis of resistance, we don't know if Yemen will, you know, come online and and shut down this, Red Sea.
We see that, Iraq is being now well, the European troops are are withdrawing from Iraq, which is interesting because Iraq Iraq parliament has previously voted for the for foreign troops to leave. Well, they they they wouldn't leave, but but so it begs the question whether or not that they would actually be allowed to return after this whole thing is over. You know, I'm I'm doubtful. But, also, if Iran hits the desalination plants in in the Gulf States, as been suggested, What are the consequences of especially the desalination plants, but or if this ends up with nuclear targets, is is there any other cards? Because you you mentioned Azerbaijan.
I hadn't to be honest, that that hadn't really entered my mind yet that that this this could also start. Well, I I know that the relations are antagonistic. I know they're an important energy hub for especially for the Europeans to skirt both the Iranians and the Russians. But but what are other cards do you think Iran may may play as we continue up this escalation ladder?
Speaker 1: Well, as, the the Aliyev regime in Baku is sandwiched between Iran and Russia, and he doesn't have many friends in Moscow or in Tehran. So, of course, that is not good news. In Iraq, the, Iraqi resistance will if I'm I'm miss I mean, guessing that we move towards escalation. They will take Northern Iraq and end the the the Kurdish local government there permanently because they've been so closely associated with Mossad and the CIA for all these years. And the the Iraqi resistance can easily move into the Arabian Peninsula.
Iran would be able to destroy the vital infrastructure in retaliation to any escalation due to their role in this. And then there's Yemen that they can shut the Red Sea. They can permanently end the remaining Saudi oil experts exports, and they can they can also move towards towards the Persian Gulf region. Iran can destroy these regimes as they as they advance. So you will no longer see any of these ruling families in any of these countries.
And I think that that would be coin that would coincide with the global economic collapse like no other. It will be far worse than 1929. And if Europeans and the if right wing Europeans and and MAGA people in The United States are unhappy about immigration, then I think they should be aware that the number of people that will be coming moving in their direction from Africa, Latin America, and Asia will probably be twenty, thirty fold. And at a time when their own economies will be collapsing, the only reason why people will be moving in that direction will be because that's the traditional direction that they've been moving towards all these years because of all these wars and all the crimes that have been committing across these different continents. So it's it it looks very dark.
No doubt about it. There's no way to to make this look, noncatastrophic even if Trump is reigned in, even if he is removed from power before he takes the final step of targeting Iranian vital infrastructure. The damage already that has been inflicted on the world is very significant, and it will play out even if it ends today, which it won't. Iran will not accept a ceasefire. And as I said, the facts on the ground will have to change.
But even if, hypothetically, miraculously, Trump had a heart attack now and the vice president took over and said, okay. We're ending this. A lot of damage has been done. Iran's demands will have to be met. The global economy will suffer.
And every day that the war continues, even at the current current level, the catastrophe for the global economy is growing. And, of course, any escalation will swiss make it far worse. So it's nothing there's there's no good news on any front. And since Trump is a lunatic, he's abnormal, he's unstable, as long as he's president, no one can predict tomorrow.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I always regarding the refugee issue, I always hear the argument that, you know, why don't, Muslim countries accept Muslim refugees? Why do none of them do so? Why do they always only go to Western countries? I I think it lost on many people that the country in the world that takes the most refugees is Iran.
That's right. It it is is not. I but I hear this so often. It it kind of blows my mind that I think Turkey is on the second place. But but still, it this is almost presented as, you know, like an inconvenient fact, but it it's so yeah.
It's very strange. Yeah. I don't know where the perceptions come from, but but, yeah, of course, if if this if the solar region blows up, then, of course, Iran is not a position to host the the refugees from this. If anything, you might have Iranian refugees as well. So it's very no.
It's all it's just that you you can see the the problems piling up, and the the same people who always warn against more refugees are the ones who always caused them. So it's very strange that, you know, they cheered on the destruction of Libya and Syria, and then they, you know, cry out when all these refugees come into Europe. But but I guess my my my last question is about the an another arena for or area that the Americans could escalate, which is to bring in their proxies. That is they pushed very hard. We see now some reports that Saudi Arabia is considering joining more directly, but, of course, they've been pressured very heavily.
You've seen Lindsey Graham more or less threatening Saudi Arabia. If they don't fall in line and join in, then then this will have consequences for them. We saw the Kurdish, proxy thing fall apart. The Azerbaijanis have didn't join. But, in this latest tweet, Trump sends a lot of them, he warned, though, that they're Europeans that, you know, you know, why aren't you sending your soldiers and your ships and then essentially, yeah, indirectly threatening NATO saying, well, this is just a paper tiger then.
Then he comes with, also his next threat, which is a very, very direct ultimatum where he essentially writes, either you send your troops to fight Iran or we will take Greenland. This is, you know, the alliance of a of a of a values, you know, but, it is, it is interesting. But how do you see this? What what would be do you see it likely, the Europeans, for example, joining in or the Saudis? Or how how do you see this playing out?
Speaker 1: Well, before that, I should also point out the petrochemical and fertilizer crisis that is looming. That is no less significant than oil or LNG, if if not more, especially if there's a global economic collapse and agriculture becomes even more much more important than even now for the survival of so many billion billions of people, literally. You know, it so I as you were explaining the recent writings of Trump, I was thinking about the last days of Hitler and his rantings and his, you know, raving. And it's it's not all that dissimilar. I no.
I I think, basically, what what we're seeing is an empire collapsing. And there's really no room for maneuver for Iran, that we cannot show the the flexibility that we showed in the past. And we we were very flexible. When the Israeli regime bombed our embassy, our response was not that severe, and yet the Europeans and the West condemned us or supported the Israelis for bombing our embassy. When general Soleimani was murdered in Iraq as he was going to meet the prime minister of Iraq at a with an official invitation.
The Iranian response was there was a response, but it was not it was not equal to what The United States did and or what the the Qataris did because those drones came from Doha. And, you know, and during the twelve day war, which was a victory for Iran, Iran accepted a halt in hostilities. Some thought that Iran should have continued. I personally think that Iran did the right thing because immediately, as we discussed earlier, Iran prepared for a bigger war. They knew something bigger was happening, and they wanted to swiftly change or anything is inset.
And that's why, incidentally well, not incidentally, but that's why and I can I can say this to you? I don't think it's a problem. Iran the number of, launchers that Iran has lost in the last twenty two days is far, far less than what it lost during the twelve days. And it has been a it has been a huge achievement. That's just one change.
I mean, a lot of the strikes on Iran, they basically hit empty buildings because Iran was prepared. There are lots of changes were made. So I think that Iran did the right thing. But in any case, Iran, in all those previous instances, the murder of, miss Marcher Ismail Haniyeh and the other atrocities carried out in Lebanon and Iran and by the Israeli regime. The Iranian response has always been, I think, mild and to prevent escalation.
But now there's no room for maneuver anymore. The Iranians will go all the way. This is a fight for survival. We've been flexible as much as possible, but here, there's no more room for flexibility. So we will go toe to toe with the Americans.
And as the escalation as we go up the escalation ladder, I think there's no doubt that the Americans will that the Trump regime will fail to to keep up, to to and it and with the collapse, I think Trump's presidency will will end. So I don't believe that the Americans can use Kurds if they try that at the Kurdish terrorists. Iranian Kurds don't support The United States, Mossad, and the Israeli regime, and, the Iraqi resistance in Iran will take that area. If they could, they would have done it already, these terrorists. Or Azerbaijan, if if they, if they get pushed too hard I mean, if you look at the the rallies and the demonstrations across Tabriz and in in Azeri cities, Tehran is an is is a half Azeri city.
They will just walk right over Aliyev's regime. They'll just take it. So I don't see The US really having any options that, there are none that will work well for The United States. And, ultimately, Glenn, Iran is very happy with its current borders. But if The United States tries to change the borders, I'm quite confident that Iran will grow larger in size, and it will take new territory.
And that's how the war will end. So it would be smart for The United States not to move in that direction either. And all while all this is happening The United States is calling on the Europeans, you know, they've obliterated Iran, but they're threatening the Europeans and the world and Iran about the Strait Of Hormuz. But Europe is already losing the war in Ukraine. And as the situation in our region grows more dangerous, and as the riot energy energy the the price of energy rises, Russia is more empowered.
Europe is weaker. So the Russians will be able to push more swiftly into the territories and probably take Odessa as well and dictate the terms so that Europeans are not in a position to do much about the Israeli regime and Trump's demands. At the end of the day, Trump is willing to sacrifice everything, the world for Zionism and for the Israeli regime now? Is it because he's done bad horrible things to little girls? Is it because of, the hold that the the Adolesons have over him?
Is it because of a host of different issues? Is it because, his son-in-law and his daughter? Or maybe he's been convinced that he has some sort of, you know, being that with a person who has no morality near the end of his life as he's growing very old and increasingly erratic. Maybe he's he believes that he has been given some mission in life. Who knows what this somewhat insane person wants to do?
But Iran is, as I said earlier, Iran is prepared preparing itself for worst case scenarios.
Speaker 0: It does appear, though, that we are in the early stages now of a third world war because this can well, this has to spread somehow if if these escalations, which now seem impossible to avoid, are forthcoming. That is you see now the the desperation is setting in Europe. The Zelensky has announced that he's discussing with Europeans now about confiscating Russian oils on oil on ships. So see not just seizing the ships, but then taking the oil because, you know, this is used for war, which is yeah. Well, you know, one does not have get into this, but but this is how this kind of insecurity and escalation is happening at a time when when Russia itself is reconsidering everything.
That is there's an immense pressure in Moscow now after the attack on Iran where they're saying, you know, why why aren't we behaving more like Iran? We should have, you know, the British, don't think twice about launching storm shadow missiles into Russian cities. You know, they would never dare this if it took a page out of Iran's book that is to actually, have a proper deterrence, that is, to make countries fear attacking Russia again. So it appears at the at the same time as the Europeans planning for another round of escalation, there's so much pressure on Russia to say, no. This is where we have to now draw the line and push back in a in a big way.
I don't think Putin, you know, no matter how popular he would be, has any has that much ability to push back against the pressure building up. So, you know, you can see things getting really out of hand here in Europe as well. And as we mentioned, we talk a lot about, you know, desalination plants. That is the water, the energy fields, which is, of course, energy is everything. But but the fertilizers because the Europeans, they they, you they block the fertilizers from Russia and Belarus to hit world markets.
And now, of course, with the entire Middle Eastern region shutting down, this is gonna be a huge food crisis. I mean, if you would if you would predict how conflicts would spread and be cautious about these unknown variables, there's no way anymore to predict where this is gonna go because this will impact every corner of the planet when energy is short, when food is short. Every sensitive region of the world would then could then be, you know, descend into chaos. This is it's so irresponsible. And yet, when you look at the media, they still hold on to the narrative, though, that, well, we're there to, you know, liberate Iranians.
You know, no one questions why the Epstein class, as you call them, why why they are endowed with this mission to, liberate little girls. It is insane, but, I don't know. Do do where do you look to us, the main concern of where this can really just, you know, spiral out of control on a global scale, I mean?
Speaker 1: I don't think West the West really recognizes nor does western media recognize how discredited they are and how widespread support for Iran is across the region and across the world. In Arab countries, they're they're cheering Iran on as Iran bombs these Arab family dictatorships. As it bombs US bases or US assets, people across the region are cheering. And across the world, people are supporting Iran. The West has has has lost its influence.
It's only able to, maintain control, mind control over its own parts parts of its own population, mostly older people. But it's difficult. I mean, it's impossible to say because each of these variables are are very big. They have huge consequences, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's natural gas, whether it is, know, Russian oil, whether it each of each of these elements can create their own global catastrophe. And now we have a combination of all these, and we have a someone a insane and highly unpredictable person in the White House.
The only thing that I think I mean, the thing that can lead us to disaster, the world towards disaster, is the arrogance of the West. And that how at still, even though the fear is beginning to to show, that euro that Eurocentric, that American exceptionalist, very similar to Zionism that, you know, we are above and above above we see what was it that Madeline Albright was once said, we stand taller and look far further than anyone else, something like that. That, that arrogance prevents them from still contemplating the fact that they are on the verge of collapse and that everything is on the verge of coming to an end, everything as we knew it. But if that realization kicks in, perhaps, the worst can be prevented from happening. But it's not something I'm not a betting man, but it's not something that I'd bet on if I were.
Speaker 0: Well, I guess over the next few days, two, three days probably, it looks as if much of the future of global stability will be decided. So I also yeah. Not too optimistic. I wish we had leaders who had a bit of common sense and ideally also a spine and some moral compass before they take us down this path. But, no, it's yeah.
Unfortunately, I share your pessimism. But thank you as always for taking the time, and, yes, stay safe.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Although I should add that I am, optimistic about the future, but, these are very dark days, and they can become much darker. But in order to end this evil empire and this ethnosupremacism, there has to be resistance. And, I think, ultimately, it will bear fruit. Who knows if I will live live to see that they are others will.
I mean, I already have a bounty on my head, as you know, on x, and they refused to remove remove it. And what is extraordinary about it is that it there's hate, what do you call it, participation or something like that. But, I'm optimistic. I I think that at the end of this dark tunnel, there is there is light, and all evil empires all empires all empires are evil. All empires are evil.
No doubt. And this evil empire, when it falls, it will create hope for the future. But sadly, since empires are brutal and lash out and they fail to accept their their their decline, it will be painful for people across the world and across our region and across the West.