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Yanis Varoufakis: U.S. Surrenders to Iran, Gulf States Must Adjust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9rB_AI08X4 https://t.co/gIjXsq25uA
Video Transcript AI Summary
Yannis Varoufakis (founder of DiEM25 and former finance minister of Greece) and Glenn discuss the implications of a signed U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding (MOU) framed as a “Versailles Treaty.” Varoufakis argues the name reflects a dialectical inversion: the U.S., which presents itself as the winner, is putting up up to $300 billion to reconstruct its victims. He says Congress would face obstacles in approving it and that the MOU is not a done deal; he describes it as light years away from Iranian bank accounts receiving dollars. Still, he says signing the MOU is symbolically crucial—an “unequivocal victory” for Iran at the diplomatic level and a temporary surrender by the Trump administration.
Varoufakis links the agreement to broader Middle East shifts. He claims the Abraham Accords’ original design is “dead in the water” because the Gulf Council states are effectively left on their own. He also says Europeans have been “spectacularly” left out and that the MOU may produce a rupture within U.S.-Israel relations: Netanyahu could wreck the deal, while Netanyahu’s actions are also creating a split between the Israeli establishment and the Republican Party. He maintains these developments are significant regardless of whether the MOU evolves into a treaty.
On U.S. motivations, Glenn suggests the Americans may be buying time to get oil back to markets, noting Trump’s comments about only having four weeks of oil left. Varoufakis replies that “theater” should not be underestimated, describing how the language used by J.D. Vance signals that an Israeli-skeptic faction within MAGA has the upper hand following the Trump administration’s MOU with Iran. He connects this to internal U.S. political pressures affecting Trump’s constituency and to Vance’s stance against Israel-driven policy in Washington.
When asked which of the MOU’s points is least likely to be implemented, Varoufakis identifies transferring monies to Iranian bank accounts as the hardest due to Congress’s control and opposition from Democrats and pro-Israeli Republicans. He argues the key obstacle is granting Iran access to frozen Iranian dollars. He says this would be difficult for Trump, predicting political backlash framed as Trump going back on his word and doing worse than what Trump accused Obama of doing in 2015. He says other items may be harder or easier, but the money transfer is the least likely.
Varoufakis adds that Lebanon is tied to a ceasefire and Israel ending its blockade involving south Lebanon and removal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon. He calls this part of the MOU a major diplomatic victory for Iran and Hezbollah, supported by an origin story that he attributes to Israel’s 1982 invasion of South Lebanon. He argues Congress cannot take away the Lebanon ceasefire component, though the money transfer could be delayed.
Discussing how the Gulf states might respond, Varoufakis describes the MOU as relief mixed with existential dread. He says the Gulf states recognize their strategic error in putting “all their eggs” in the U.S. security umbrella. He argues Iran can threaten Hormuz closure and is enabled to charge fees through “insurance cost” mechanisms, citing that about 30 vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz and were charged. He also claims Iranian cheap drones and missiles can be produced in large numbers, while Israeli/U.S. defenses are expensive and limited in scale.
Varoufakis distinguishes among Gulf states. He says Qatar and Oman lean toward de-escalation with Iran, while the UAE has a confrontational stance and is closely allied with Israel. He argues Saudi Arabia moved toward accommodation with Iran after 2019 attacks on Saudi petroleum facilities by Iran and its Houthi allies, using China as a go-between to establish a detente. He claims Saudi purchasing of American weaponry has waned recently, with deals being pursued with France and Canada, suggesting Gulf states may seek alternative arms sources.
On the “petrodollar” system, Varoufakis argues U.S. hegemony relies on recycling Gulf surpluses into the United States, and he claims the Gulf states function like vassals within a dollar empire. He says Washington signaled anxiety about reduced petrodollar recycling through U.S. Treasury swap lines to the Gulf states, interpreting this as a move to prop up U.S. money markets rather than a bailout for Gulf liquidity. He cites agreements he says totaled $3.5 trillion to $3.7 trillion flowing from the Gulf to the U.S. within 18 months, with parts directed to AI investments and weapons purchases, and he says this flow dried up when the Iran war began.
Varoufakis also argues Europe has been irrelevant during the Iran war and suggests U.S. military posture toward Europe may change following a review of U.S. military commitment to Europe by Pete Hegseth. He says the U.S. would relocate military spending from Europe toward West Asia or the Far East while using legally grounded bilateral basing agreements. He argues Europe lacks energy planning and a coherent energy union, and he frames Europe as dependent on expensive U.S. fossil fuels rather than Russia’s gas, while lacking discussion about decarbonization and electrification.
When asked about Ukraine, Varoufakis says he does not predict outcomes but rejects the idea that the U.S. can subcontract the war to Europeans. He argues Europeans cannot supply the intelligence and data he says the U.S. provides and cannot afford the cost. He claims European budgets are under strain and cites repayment burdens for the NextGenerationEU recovery fund and constraints on further borrowing for Ukraine. His “hunch” is that after Iran, Trump may propose a Russia-Ukraine peace deal “take it or leave it,” and if rejected he would switch off briefings and data sharing.
Finally, Glenn asks why France and Germany still oppose ending the Ukraine war despite the Iran defeat. Varoufakis gives two reasons: he says they lack a growth model (with the Green Deal spending failing to materialize and German Greens declining) and weaponry becomes the remaining growth channel; and he says a peace plan would be immediately vetoed by Baltic states and Finland (and possibly Poland and others), because they have learned to maintain tension between NATO and Russia and would humiliate any proposal. He concludes by saying he sees no learning from history within the German establishment.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined again by Yannis Varoufakis, a professor and former finance minister of Greece, also the founder of DiEM25, the democracy in Europe movement. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me, Glenn. It's great fun talking to you and sometimes quite useful for the audience, not necessarily for us.
Speaker 1: Well, I've been really looking forward to get your take on this memorandum of understanding. Again, I think for most people who looked at the war honestly and analyzed it accordingly, realized that the Americans were losing this war. And I guess that will be revealed in this memorandum of understanding. But these 14 points, even for me, they seem to go a bit beyond what I had expected. I can't imagine this being implemented because it's going to be too difficult given the extent of the defeat here. But I wanted to ask you, though, how do you interpret this? Because this is quite a shock to not just the US, but the world at large.
Speaker 2: Is it not interesting that they call it the Versailles Treaty? In a sense, it's a kind of dialectical inversion. of the original Versailles Treaty. It would even make somebody like Hegel blush that the self-declared winner, the United States, is putting up up to 300 billion to reconstruct its victims. As we said, I can't see Congress ever going along with that. There are so many obstacles. Let's not mistake this memorandum for a done deal. We are light years away from any Iranian bank account seeing a single dollar from the Americans. I think the Iranians know that. But it is symbolically hugely important that this memorandum of understanding has been signed. It is a declaration of an unequivocal victory for Iran and an unequivocal, I shouldn't say defeat, but temporary victory you know, sort of surrender, temporary surrender at the diplomatic level by the Trump administration. It's profoundly important for the general picture in the Middle East, in what we should be calling West Asia, because essentially the Gulf Council states are now out on their own. Abraham Accords that Donald Trump had initiated with great success during his first term. Now the whole logic of essentially copting Arab states into the American design where Israel plays the linchpin role within the Western Asian, Northern African realm, that's gone. That's gone. The Abraham Accords now are dead in the water. as far as the original design was concerned. The Europeans have been left out in a spectacular fashion. Never has Europe been so irrelevant in momentous developments around the world. And, you know, in the end, we have possibly the first serious rapture in the official official relationship between the United States and Israel. Netanyahu has the capacity to wreck this deal. But at the same time, this capacity and the fact that he's exercising this power is for the first time creating a rupture between the Israeli establishment and the Republican Party. So all these are quite momentous developments that I think are current. They are significant. And they are independent of whether this MOU, this memorandum of understanding, develops, evolves into a treaty, which, as you said before, I find it hard to believe that it will be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I also get the impression that the US, well, it's at least one of the benefits here for the Americans is they're buying some time to get some oil back to the markets. And indeed, when Trump was asked about this memorandum of understanding. He was making reference to them only having four weeks of oil left, so it had to be done. But that's not the same as suggesting you will implement it. For me, this reads as buying time. But still, it will have significant impact on the language now being used about Israel. Do you dismiss this as theater? Because even if it would be theater, This is quite powerful language. I mean, it will certainly reshape some of the discourse and politics of both Israel as well as the United States.
Speaker 2: Well, theater should not be underestimated. Theater is very important, has been important in human affairs right from the beginning, from 5,000 years ago. That particular theatrical act by, let's say, J.D. Vance, the language that he used was essentially a declaration that his side of the MAGA movement, remember there are two factions in the MAGA movement, the one that is dominated by Trump's own family that are in bed with the Israelis in every way, real estate, AI, all sorts of business deals, and the other side of the MAGA movement that are very skeptical of the manner in which Israel is dictating policy to Washington, D.C. J.D. Vance's language now, in the wake of this memorandum of understanding between Trump and the president of Iran, is a declaration that the Israeli skeptic part of the MAGA movement is now getting an upper hand. It's a I told you so moment that, you know, what did Vance and his faction of MAGA say to the administration, which now is being confirmed. Well, you know, if you are totally in the pocket of Benjamin Netanyahu, Netanyahu is going to drive you to a cul-de-sac. He's going to drive you to a dead end. And this is a dead end in which Trump found himself when he started bombarding Iran, when he started the war against Iran. And now he's trying to reverse out of it. And he had no other alternative because, you know, the MAGA movement generally is suffering really very badly. I mean, these are the blue collar workers, Glenn, that put him in power and they simply can't make ends meet because of the price of petrol at the gas stations in the United States. Some of his constituents benefited enormously, those who had invested in AI and those who live off the fracking oil and gas business in the Permian Basin in New Mexico and in Texas, but the vast majority of his voters whom he needs in November in the midterms in order to stay relevant and not to become a lame duck president, you know, their interests, their survival probability dictated to him that he sides with JT Vance against Rubio and against the CIA and against those who are completely in cahoots like his son-in-law with Israel. All that is hugely significant.
Speaker 1: Which do you think is the most difficult one to implement of all of these points? Because it had a lot. First of all, all hostilities had to be suspended, which included Lebanon. Very specific, not mentioning Lebanon. Uh, not Gaza, but you know, that's more complicated because of the whole, you know, board of peace, uh, approved that to UN. Uh, but you know, so you have the Lebanon issue, then you have, um, you know, which means you have to do this, tangle the Israelis ending the U S a blockade on Iran might be easier, of course, being $300 billion to essentially fix what America destroyed in Iran. This is a. a variety of reasons could be difficult, but removing all sanctions, not putting new sanctions on. And of course saying that, well, Iran can't charge a fee in the Strait of Hormuz for the first 60 days, you know, where no fee existed in the past. So not at all, but a fee. What do you think will be, what is possible or what is not possible on this list?
Speaker 2: I mean... Well, you asked me to pinpoint the one item, that catalog, that is the least likely to be implemented. And I think any transfer of monies from the United States to Iranian bank accounts, that will be the difficult one because Congress has a significant amount of control over that. And the Democrats together with the neocons amongst the Republicans, the pro-Israeli Republicans, they're going to block that. And it will be very hard for Trump to move along in that direction of actually transferring funds, of unblocking. It's not a question of the United States giving Iran its own money. To begin with, the number one item on the agenda regarding dollars, Iran's dollars, is granting Iran access to its own dollars that have been frozen now for decades. That will be very hard for Trump, especially given that in 2015, when Obama struck his deal with Iran, including the Europeans who were gung-ho in favor of that deal, you will recall, Donald Trump went haywire. He went absolutely ballistic. And the one thing that he was targeting was, you are going to give them their money back? How dare you? So, you know, I can imagine now, you know, campaign advertisements being prepared by the Democrats and also Trump's Republican opponents within his own party, exposing him as a fraud and as somebody who is going back on his word. And, you know, you are doing far, far worse, worse than what you were accusing Obama of doing vis-a-vis returning Iran's savings or assets to Iran. So I think that's the hardest. Regarding Lebanon, I think that Iran scored a magnificent diplomatic victory against the United States, particularly Israel, but also the opponents of Hezbollah within the Lebanese parliament by making it clear that a ceasefire in Lebanon Lebanon, the end of hostilities and the removal of Israel's troops from south Lebanon is part and parcel. It's a very significant, very substantial part of the first item of the memorandum of understanding. Essentially, Hezbollah, aided and abetted by Iran, has been given a major victory. Because let's face it, the Lebanese have been bombarded and invaded by Israel since time immemorial. And Hezbollah was the creation of one of those invasions in 1982. Hezbollah didn't exist before that. It was the ruthless, murderous invasion in 1982 of South Lebanon that created Hezbollah. And of course, Iran took advantage of that. Iran didn't create Hezbollah. It took advantage of the emergence of a resistance movement amongst the Shiite population of Lebanon and supported them and acquired without much effort a major ally in Lebanon. And now that ally, which was up until, what, a year, two years ago, it was supposed to have been wiped out by Israel, is now back. And not only is it back, but it is the guarantor of peace and of the end of the hostilities, courtesy of the Iranian intervention with the Americans, the guarantor of peace for the Lebanese. So that is a major success, both for Iran and Hezbollah. And that cannot be taken away by Congress. But the money transfer to Iranian bank accounts can be stopped. The question is, are the Iranians, is the Iranian government going to throw a spat when the money is delayed and doesn't arrive into their accounts? Or are they realistic enough to know that it was a symbolic victory that this commitment to transfer its own funds back to Iran was in the memorandum of understanding, gave them a lot of legitimacy in the region and within Iran and, you know, be very reluctant before they blow up this kind of agreement with Washington DC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's a good point because I do think that the American approach will be to string the Iranians along. That is, you know, we can't release these funds because of Congress. But if Iran gets something out of this, that is, for example, the US begins to distance itself from Israel or pushing it to cease some of its hostilities. What would be the interest of Iran to throw away everything as opposed to hold on to the little it gets? And then possibly over time, the Americans would incrementally cut a little bit more and more until there's nothing left. At least this is what they've usually done in the past. But it will be interesting to see how the Iranians respond. Because as you said, throwing it all away, it would be a waste as well. But for the region, you mentioned the Gulf States before. That is, the U.S. relationship with the Gulf States is quite important for the United States. This is a key region for transport. It's energy. It upholds the petrodollar system. I mean, how do you see the U.S. relations with the Gulf States being impacted by this? Because even if, as you said, the memorandum doesn't result in a deal, it's not implemented, Surely this signifies a new position for the US in the world. I mean, if you're sitting in the gold states, would you put all your eggs in the American basket if they're no longer the winning horse? I mean, again, it becomes some speculation because we haven't seen this before. So how might relations be impacted?
Speaker 2: Well, for the Gulf states, this Versailles deal is a relief tinged with existentialist dread and fear. They were caught in the crossfire of a war they did not want. Of course, in the context of that, they realized that having put all their eggs in the U.S. security umbrella basket and allowing their territory to be used by the United States was a strategic error. It's clear that they understand that now. And this memorandum actually does not resolve their predicament. it merely highlights the permanence of their troubles and their woes. The Revolutionary Guards of Iran remain emboldened. They are capable of threatening the state of Hormuz, closing it down at any point in time. Now they have effectively been enabled to charge fees. They will not call them fees. Already we know This is information I had last night that about 30 vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz and they have been charged an insurance cost. It's called an insurance cost by the Iranians. And that is within the confines of this memorandum of understanding. So, you know, the Gulf states can see that this is now permanent. And, you know, the use of missiles and drones that are very, very cheap to produce They can be produced by Iran in huge numbers, and they can only be shot down by American weaponry or Israeli weaponry that firstly is extremely expensive. They cost 100 times more per pound of flesh than the Iranian attacking drones and missiles, and they cannot be produced and supplied in similar numbers. So, you know, this is something that I have no doubt all six Gulf Council states will take very, very seriously. Now, the fact, however, is that, and I think that is really very important, Glenn, that we shouldn't lump these Gulf states altogether. There are very significant differences in their, you know, outlook. So you have Qatar and Oman that lean towards de-escalation with Iran. They've always tried to accommodate Iran, the Islamic Republic. Then you have the United Arab Emirates. They have a confrontational stance against Iran. They are gung-ho about their complicity with Israel, their alliance with Israel. And they are left out hanging to a very large extent because Saudi Arabia, which is of course the most significant state within the Gulf, has been since 2019. Remember when Iran with its Houthi allies launched a massive attack on petroleum refineries, petroleum facilities in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Saudi Arabia realized that they need to find some kind of accommodation with Iran. And using China as a go-between, they established a detente with Iran. Something very, very different to the stance of Abu Dhabi and Dubai or the United Arab Emirates. We already see that The commitment of the Saudis to purchasing American weaponry has waned in the last few weeks. Already, there are pacts being signed, negotiated with France and with Canada. It seems to me that these Gulf states are seeking alternative sources of weaponry from the United States. So though the United States will remain central to the Gulf states political economy because these countries are essentially hooked up to the petrodollar system which is an essential part of the mechanism that reproduces American hegemony around the world. What I mean by that is that, you know, I've always had the view that since the early 1970s, ever since the Bretton Woods system was blown up by Richard Nixon, the United States hegemony is based on its capacity to expand its twin deficits, its trade deficit on the one hand and its budget deficit, federal budget deficit on the other, by making other people's capitalists pay for them. And the Gulf states were essential in recycling their own surpluses into the United States, therefore covering and paying for the twin deficits of the United States. So, you know, the Gulf states are effectively vassals of the United States in that sense. And this is why they thought it was a good idea and it was a no-brainer that in the same way that they are part of a dollar empire, and they make a lot of money out of that dollar empire, but they are vassals within that dollar empire. What was wrong with becoming also vassals within an extended NATO that is the United States military presence in the region that offers them security? Well, what Iran has done now with the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and the demonstration of its capacity under intense bombardment, intense and furious and murderous bombardment from the United States and from Israel to keep attacking Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Bahrain, and to do so surgically and go for American assets, go for data centers. I remember a tropic was hit quite badly in Bahrain, in Saudi Arabia. They launched 3,000 missiles and drones only against Dubai. And they did this while being under the attack, something that no one else has ever managed to do. Even the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War did not have the capacity to retaliate when being bombarded by B-52s. Now, with this MOU that has been signed in Versailles and in Tehran, what can these Gulf states make of it? The only conclusion they could draw is that it was a huge mistake to rely on the American defense umbrella. Their business model has been substantially undermined, and the business model is not just fossil fuels. It is the process of decoupling from fossil fuels. So remember, you know, Dubai gets about 30% of its GDP from tourism. And that's gone. I mean, and now they realize that Tehran can press a button and kill it off. So it will be very interesting to see how this whole thing percolates. My view is that there's going to be a split. The United Arab Emirates will stick much closer to United States and Israel, but Oman, Qatar, Bahrain will join Saudi Arabia in a search using Beijing, using China for a rapprochement with Iran.
Speaker 1: Well, I think many of them are already moving a little bit in this direction. That is for the Saudis, they don't want to be a vassal. I think many there saw, for example, the rise of China, this new international distribution of power, allowing them to have a more balanced foreign policy that is to link up with more of the large powers. So they wouldn't be beholden to anyone or a vassal, as you say. But of course, these Gulf states, they do have an important role in, again, what you call the dollar empire, which is a very proper term for it. But what are the wider implications here? Because all of these petrodollars, they're being pumped into AI, which is important in the rivalry with the Chinese. And can the United States afford to see the Gulf states essentially turn away? I mean, how fragile is the petrodollar? Because one shouldn't assume that the whole thing will fall apart overnight just because But again, this is quite a significant event.
Speaker 2: It is indeed. And, you know, I've been saying now for a few weeks that the alarm bells regarding the fear in Washington, D.C., that the dollar empire is being threatened by the war that the Trump administration so idiotically embarked upon. Those alarm bells started ringing, at least in my head, when Scott Besant, the US Treasury Secretary, out of the blue announced that he's granting a swap line through his treasury to the Gulf Stakes. And that would have made absolutely no sense if you didn't have in mind, if I didn't have in mind, that understanding of how dollar hegemony is based on recycling other people's dollars. And the reason why it wouldn't make any sense is because Scott Besson, the American treasurer, is far more impecunious than the Gulf states are. He's got less access to dollars than these states do. These states between themselves have... some like six and a half, seven trillion American dollars of assets, cash, and so on. And why do they need a swap line of 20, 40 billion? They really don't need it. So why is he offering it? And my interpretation, Glenn, is that he was not offering a bailout to the Gulf states to tidy them up and over. during their hour of need when, you know, their revenues are drying up due to the closure of the states of Hormuz or to the closure of the airports, the closure of their hotels and so on. No. Scott Besson was signaling to the American money markets that he is there ready and willing to prop up the dollar empire. And I will conclude this little soliloquy of mine by saying that If you look at the agreements that the Trump administration had with the Gulf states over the last year and a half, ever since Trump was inaugurated for the second time, the agreements were for at least $3.5 trillion to flow from the Gulf states to the United States. That money would be at least $2 trillion for investments into AI in the United States, another $1.7 trillion of weapons that would be purchased, particularly by Saudi Arabia, but also UAE and other countries of the Gulf from the United States. Now, that money was supposed to have been transferred within 18 months. We're talking about $3.7 trillion that are essential to keep the American money markets going. and to keep them from having their bubble burst, the AI bubble burst. And that money, the moment the war started in Iran, the moment the bombs started raining down upon the people of Iran and Iran retaliating, that money dried up. There was no way that the Gulf states would send 3.7 trillion to the United States when their own revenues It's not that they lack the dollars. As I said, they have $6.57 trillion. So they didn't need to bail out. They didn't need a swap line from Scott Besant. So Scott Besant's statement regarding the issuing of a swap line or the offer of a swap line to the Gulf states was all about not bailing out the Gulf states. They didn't need it. But it was a declaration to the money markets. both bondholders in the United States and speculators on equities, that the Treasury was ready to pump up liquidity in the money markets in order to ameliorate for the fact that fewer petrol dollars would be flowing due to the war from the Gulf states to New York City.
Speaker 1: Well, how... Well, this, of course, will have not just an impact on the US, but you mentioned before that Europe showed how irrelevant it had become. And indeed, it was quite absent. And I thought it was a bit strange to see European leaders say they fully supported the US position in these negotiations and the memorandum, even though they didn't know what was in there. So it was a bit like the Saudis was a behavior, you know, proper other vessels, but how will they be affected by this war? Because again, they weren't directly participants, but are there any wider ramifications that will affect Europe?
Speaker 2: Well, Europe is already stagnating. The cost of living crisis is getting worse as a result of what's happening, but these are all effectively collateral damage. But there's more to it than that then. You heard Pete Hegseth, the Secretary for War of the United States, announcing that he's going to go through a review of America's military commitment to Europe. And essentially, sorry about that. That's my daughter calling. I'll say this again. Essentially, what he was saying is that the United States is going to formally withdraw from NATO or anything like that, nor shut down its bases, but it's going to relocate much of its military expenditure from Germany, from Brussels, from Britain, to West Asia, or more likely to the Far East. And, you know, this is the dialectical twist here. These... restrictions that he's going to impose upon Europeans will be legally grounded in bilateral basing agreements that grant that essentially what he's going to be saying is that unless you let us use our bases in Europe any way we want without any of the restrictions that we saw during the Gulf War because there were some restrictions at least theoretically placed upon the United States on their use of European bases. So there is this. Now, personally, I don't give a damn. I would like to see all the American bases in Europe go. But our establishment in Europe is not of the same opinion. They rely or they think they rely on the United States for the defense of Europe, but much more so they rely on the cash injections in their own economies, in the area around Rammstein in Germany, for instance, is totally dependent on the presence of the American military there. So the insecurity in the mind of Europe's leaders caused by the inability to understand that the United States and NATO have never defended Europe, they have been detrimental in the safety and security interests of the European Union and of Europe, this inability to grasp that, unwillingness to grasp that. In many cases, their salary depends on not grasping that, if you know what I mean. But nevertheless, the fact that they were totally out of the picture during the Iran war, the only time they were mentioned was when Donald Trump berated them for being cowards and not helping him out as if they could. In conjunction with Hegseth's review now of American military commitment to Europe, it's creating a great deal of consternation amongst them. But of course, it really doesn't matter from the perspective of the majority of Europeans. We are vassals to the United States. We have swapped one dependency for another. We used to be dependent on cheap Russian gas. Now we are dependent on hugely expensive natural gas from the Permian Basin, from New Mexico and from Texas. We have no energy plan. We have no energy union. We have no European answer to the question, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to become more embedded in the petrosphere around the world, you know, the part of the world that increasingly depends courtesy of Donald Trump's policies on fossil fuels, or are we going to become electrostates? Increasingly turning to solar power and renewables that produce electricity with the concomitant replacement of the internal combustion engine by electric engines. So there is no such discussion in Europe and the absence of that discussion together with the impotence of Europe in any of the major theatres of conflict whether it's Ukraine or whether it is Iran or whether it's Palestine and the inability of our leadership to exit the Atlanticist mindset which is simply not fit for purpose anymore not even from a right-wing conservative perspective, if you put all these together and what you end up with is Europe's image or site as a chicken that has lost its head and it's running around bleeding without knowing what is happening to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that picture summarized well at the state of Europe. I'm wondering though the humiliating defeat in Iran and This could have some bad implication for the Europeans, because I think Trump's going to be in desperate need of a win. That is much like the Venezuelan victory, well, if you can call it a victory, emboldened him to go into Iran. I feel the humiliating defeat in Iran will give him a need for another win. So be it seizing Cuba or Greenland, if it's the latter, this could be, again, problematic for the Europeans. I saw Marco Rubio not that long ago make the comment that, well, he was asked if he recognizes that the Greenland is a part of Denmark. And the answer was, well, for now, or something along those lines. But my last question, though, was there for the other Great War, one that worries me a bit more because it has that potential of escalating very quickly into potentially a nuclear war is the Ukraine war. How do you think the defeat in the Iran war will impact the Ukraine war because I see kind of two possible paths. One is if the Americans really want to end this war, this would free up a lot of their focus. They can try to get a win by ending that war. Alternatively, if it's more the objective is to outsource the war to the Europeans and have them essentially bleed themselves white in order to weaken Russia, then it could also escalate there. So I was just wondering How do you see the situation? Do you think this is going to get worse? Or in general, how will it affect the Ukraine war?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not into the prediction game, but what I can comment is that the second option that you mentioned, that is subcontracting, as they have already done, the Ukraine war to the Europeans, that is the Americans subcontracting, not so much the war itself. They can't subcontract the war because the Europeans have no intelligence whatsoever. capacities. They can't provide the Ukraine army with satellite data, with briefings from the CIA. They just can't do that. All they can do is they can buy American weapons and send them to Ukraine, which they have been doing. So I don't think that the Americans can subcontract the war to the Europeans, even if they want to, because the Europeans cannot carry that burden. They just don't have the capacity and they don't have the money. I mean, remember, they borrowed a bunch of billions from the markets recently. What was it, 90 billion? I think that money has already run out. And I don't think they have the capacity to borrow more. If you look at the European Union budget, it just can't afford it already. You know, they are haggling, as we speak now, they are haggling in Brussels over the next seven-year budget of the European Union. And they can't make a million's meat because now, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost. Remember the next generation EU, the recovery fund, as we all refer to it, of about 700, 800 billion that was borrowed in order to divvy it up amongst the oligarchs over the last couple of years, three years. Well, you know, that money now has to be repaid. So the Europeans will have to find that money every year to repay the loans that they took out for the recovery fund, while at the same time, Are they going to borrow more on behalf of Ukraine? I mean, the fantasy that Russia is going to be made to pay reparations surely, surely, surely must have sort of dissipated even in the minds of such irrational people as the European leadership. It can't be that irrational to think that they're going to make Putin pay. So I don't believe that this war can continue for long. with the Europeans running it. So the Americans will continue to run it as they are doing it, but not so much pay for it. My suspicion, this is not a prediction, Glenn. It's a suspicion. My suspicion is at some point, once he is finished with Iran, if he's finished with Iran, and in order to save some face, I remember what he was saying before he was inaugurated, that he can end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours or something, in one day. At some point, he's going to put on a table a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and say to the Europeans and to the Ukrainians, take it or leave it. And if you leave it, I'm leaving the whole thing. I'm going to switch off the briefings. I'm going to switch off the data that is being shared with Ukraine. That's my hunch, but it's no more than a hunch.
Speaker 1: Well, he could have done that a year and a half ago and he didn't. But again, in the words of Trump, if the Europeans want to buy American weapons to fight Russia, then America's okay with it. And that was kind of my, you know, I thought this was an honest approach at least. That is, the US makes some money, their allies become more dependent and carry the economic burden to weaken an American adversary. So Not from a moral perspective, but otherwise it makes sense, I guess, if the goal is to restore the empire.
Speaker 2: Except that the Europeans can't afford any more American weaponry on behalf of Ukraine. They've run out of money. They're running out of money very, very fast.
Speaker 1: Okay. So they split the report down now in political, that is the EU. It's apparently now deeply divided because many countries would like to open diplomacy with the Russians, but essentially the French and German, they are saying no. Even if there is any talks, it shouldn't be led by the EU itself. It should be led by the E3, that is France, Germany, and Britain. who happens to have the three most unpopular leaders in Europe, but put that aside. Why don't they want to put an end to this? They just saw this humiliating defeat now in Iran. They can see, I hope they can see where this is going in Ukraine. I mean, why still go on?
Speaker 2: Two reasons, in my estimation. Two reasons. Firstly, France and Germany don't have a growth model. In 2019, remember, the Green Deal was supposed to be Europe's engine of growth. Wolfgang von der Leyen, supported by Germany and by France, was going to spend 1,000 billion, that is 1 trillion, on the Green Deal. Of that 1,000, 29 billions were spent. That went out of the window. It just died. also with the demise of the German Greens from the German parliament and the rise of the right, the Green Deal died. So the only growth gain left to Germany and to France is weaponry. And the Ukrainian war is essential for convincing, given the fiscal stress of their governments, and given the fact that neither Germany nor France have powerful governments. I mean, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, can't even command respect within his own cabinet, let alone the rest of the country. Emmanuel Macron is a lame duck president. So they don't have political power within the countries. And the only thing they can do in order to maintain a semblance of investment, of money flowing into businesses, especially manufacturing, is weaponry. Rafale planes and Rheinmetall tanks and missiles and ammunition. But for that, they need to convince a very skeptical public that resources that are very scarce and often have to be shifted from social spending, from health and education and infrastructure, to Rheinmetall, to Dassault for weapons manufacturing, is essential because, you know, we're facing, we have a war in our backyard. So they need that war to continue. They need Russians and Ukrainians to be dying. They need, you know, energy prices to be sky high in order to maintain what is a really pathetic growth model. That's one reason. The second reason is, imagine that Mertz and Macron had an epiphany. They go together and they say, oh, come on, we'll have to end this awful war in Ukraine. And they were to put forward a plan, a peace plan that was going to be taken to Moscow. What would happen? I'll tell you what would happen. The Baltic states would veto it immediately. So would Finland, because this Finnish regime now has gone completely AY. They've become warmongers galore. And similarly, maybe Poland, maybe Tusk will veto it too. And, you know, they will veto it, these countries, for only one reason, because these governments, especially the Baltic states, they have learned over the last 20 years or so that the way to punch above their weight in the European Union is by maintaining a tension between NATO and Russia. So Macron and Merz, especially Macron, I happen to know him personally, I don't know Merz personally, he's smart enough, he's a smart tactician to know that You know, whatever proposal for a peace deal with Putin he puts on the table, he's going to be humiliated by the Baltic states and Finland, and maybe others, and Poland, maybe Sweden, who will say, nein, no, go away, we do. And then what is he going to have? Yet another proposal of his being shot down in flames.
Speaker 1: You would think that at least the Germans would have had some poor historical lessons with this military Keynesianism, though, as a growth model. But why? Yes. Well, I was going to say, you would think there would be more opposition.
Speaker 2: Do you have any evidence that the German establishment learns from history? Because I haven't seen any.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. I stand corrected there, so... Anyways, thank you very much for taking the time on a Saturday to speak. So have a great weekend.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: The Decline of the West & War Against Russia https://youtu.be/TXjSfNZ2xCI https://t.co/UXD48ApMct
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alex Cranor discusses how ongoing conflicts across the world are interconnected, arguing they reflect a clash between two systems of governance: a Western colonialist empire and everyone else that does not submit. He links the alleged themes behind the US–Iran memorandum of understanding, NATO actions involving Russian territory, and an “economic war against China” as part of the same broader struggle.
Cranor says the Western system’s internal and external components mirror each other. Internally, he points to “rape gangs,” organized crime, NGO influence, media dominance, and government infiltration/co-option. Externally, he describes colonial wars involving Iran, Russia/Ukraine, and other targets. He also argues the response patterns across multiple European countries are essentially identical: governments are accused of suppressing discussion by framing it as hate crime, punishing victims, being lenient toward perpetrators, and providing anonymity, while governments take the same positions across major issues such as genocide in Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon, responses to organized crime, and wars involving the US and Iran.
He claims that as legitimacy collapses, anger is redirected outward toward external enemies rather than addressed through internal reform. He connects this to an expected economic breakdown. He predicts an “economic collapse” driven by stagflationary recession with accelerating inflation, rising cost of living, and social uprisings. He argues ruling establishments will try to redirect public anger using patriotism and external conflicts.
Cranor describes recent events as examples of escalation: he alleges British SAS boarding of a Russian tanker in the English Channel as piracy and an illegal provocation, followed by a Russian confrontation involving a frigate and drone-like behavior. He also cites Moscow drone attacks, framing them as attempts to orchestrate war and divert grievances. He argues that escalating violence can be used to mobilize societies for foreign battlefields, reducing internal scrutiny and preventing legitimacy collapse from turning into revolution or civil war.
He cites author David Betts, saying Betts argues a civil war is inevitable across the UK and much of Western Europe and that conditions for civil war are explosively configured. Cranor says ruling elites face a choice between risking “guillotines” or provoking war to mobilize society.
On Russia’s potential restraint, Cranor contends that Western leaders want to make it difficult for Russia not to respond and are “desperate for Russia to respond” to trigger rally-around-the-flag effects. He argues earlier caution about deep strikes and nuclear-capable systems has shifted to a “kitchen sink” approach. He references a British 100-year partnership agreement with Ukraine signed by Keir Starmer in January 2025, and he says it included British support for drone warfare. He claims the UK announced supplying 150,000 drones to Ukraine with the intent of strikes against Russia, presenting this as direct complicity in escalation.
Cranor further argues the conflict will not stop with any single administration because continuity of the governance mechanism “transcends any one administration.” He characterizes efforts against Iran as long-running, including sabotage, assassinations, regime change wars, color revolutions, and sanctions, even if direct war is paused. He interprets the US acceptance of a “humiliating defeat” in the US–Iran memorandum of understanding as regrouping and delaying rather than ending pressure.
On Iran, he says the eventual battle will be decided in the economic sphere, citing the role of sanctions in crushing economies and making societies “porous” to foreign infiltration via money and corruption. He claims China and Russia will help Iran develop its economy to prevent the fall of the Iranian government to the Western colonialist empire. He says sanctions may continue even when some are suspended, and that oil exports would be constrained largely to China and other states accepting payment in yuan. He concludes that the conflict is generational and will depend on whether Iran achieves reasonable prosperity despite sanctions.
In discussion, Alex Cranor adds that Western political narratives dismiss or resist evidence that would connect events across wars, describing a “post-reality world” where reality facts have little impact on narratives. He frames this as an “empire of lies,” where people in government are paid or positioned to preserve the system and avoid acknowledging truths that would jeopardize their roles. He cites an example involving a NATO official discussing acknowledging Russia’s security concerns before Ukraine’s outbreak, claiming the official’s career ended immediately, reinforcing that key nodes in the decision-making system reward alignment with war.
He ends by arguing that pushing back publicly is necessary to preserve peace and prevent military-age men from being sent to war, while adding that preparations for confronting China are said to continue beyond any one leader.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alex Cranor, an author, market analyst, and also a former hedge fund manager to get some perspective on the political and economic changes in the world. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 0: Always a pleasure to join you, Glenn. Thank you for the invite.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking today, though, that it's quite easy to get consumed by all of these know day-to-day events as so much is happening in the world that uh yeah breakneck speed uh so we see the us iran memorandum of understanding which i would argue represents a humiliating defeat for the united states uh quite a change in u.s history i would say they haven't really seen this before which can transform not just the region but the world will also be impacted we see the nato participating increasingly directly in attacks on Russian territory, which will, in my opinion or expectation, in the not-too-distant future unleash a response which would have unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences. So overall, I think the shift in world order now is quite evident. That is, the former post-Cold War era or the US-led hegemonic era under the banner of liberal democracy is evidently gone. And we have all of these other conflicts. I was just wondering, how do you see the interconnectedness of this war against Iran, the war against Russia, the economic war against China? How do you piece these conflicts together? Of course, there are separate battlefields, but they're also largely connected. Sorry, a very big question.
Speaker 0: No, no, that's a great, very important question. And not to sound like a broken record, but I think that we always have to regard all of these different conflicts around the world as the clash between two systems of governance. This is, I think, clear, and this is what makes the war between the United States and Israel against Iran, and the war between Ukraine and Russia, and the internal strife in European countries, in the UK, in the United States, Canada, Australia, all parts of the same conflict. And the two systems of governance are basically the Western colonialist empire with its governing structures against everybody else. And I think that the farther this conflict goes, the more it becomes very clear that, in fact, the interconnections, as you mentioned, run very, very deep, much deeper than we knew. And so we've seen three days ago, Rupert Lowe publish his inquiry into the gang rapes in Great Britain and that's a story that has almost died even though it's been going on for decades because as it turns out practically the whole British governing establishment from the police on the street to social services to national health service to councils, to ministries, the media, all the way up to the prime minister's office and the royal household are all part of the conspiracy. And we can see that clearly now because what the report brought to light is probably the greatest crime ever committed in British history against the people of Britain. And the mainstream media said nothing about it. They're ignoring it. The royal household, it's been three days now. They said nothing about it. They are completely silent. I think that speaks more than anything that they could say by this time, because if you really are there to represent your people, let's say if you had a protective attitude towards your people, you would be out there outraged, but not a sound. And at the same time, the same King Charles only weeks ago was addressing the joint chamber of US Congress calling for World War III. And his government has committed to sending 150,000 drones to Ukraine without even bothering to hide much that they will be used for strikes against Russia. Of course, I shouldn't single out Great Britain, even though they have been, they are probably, if we're going to use the Lord of the Ring metaphor, they are the mortar of the whole Western colonialist empire. But all of these, the rot has afflicted much of the world, but particularly West, because if we just talk about the gang rapes, which may seem like it has nothing to do with the war in Iran and the MOU, but it's all interconnected. The same problems of the UK with these gang rapes also register in places like France and Belgium and Germany and Sweden and Norway and Iceland and Ireland. And the syndrome is practically identical. You have gangs of migrants committing rapes at industrial scale, and you have exactly the same response from the governments to these rapes, accusing anybody who says anything of hate crime. responding in more and more draconian ways to suppress this supposed hate crime, punishing victims, being extremely lenient to perpetrators, protecting them, providing them anonymity, and it goes on and on. And it's very, very strange that this is happening Not in one country, not under one government where you could say like, oh, well, okay, something went off the rails in the UK. It's the whole system of governance that is being copy pasted everywhere. And it has the same response. And basically on all the critical issues, all these governments take practically the identical positions. So when we had the pandemic, they were all they were all enforcing compliance. When war with Russia and the Ukraine broke out, same response, same side. Same tolerance for genocide in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, same exact position. Same response to organized crime at home. same response to war between United States and Iran. And now we are starting to see all this beginning to unravel a little bit. But the forces that are pushing the Western world, the Western system of governance in this direction, they are never, ever going to give up. They're never going to relent. They're going to continue trying to take control of the world, of Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, South American countries. And it's not about Trump. It's not even about any particular government. It's not Keir Starmer. The rape gangs has been going on since, as we found out, since the 1950s. The undying desire to destroy Russia goes back to, oh, it probably goes back centuries. The desire to destroy the United States goes back to practically the beginnings of the American Republic. And then all these conflicts have their internal manifestations and they have their external manifestations. And I think that the raid gangs and organized crime, together with NGOs, dominance over the media, infiltration and co-opting of the government structures and so forth, those are the internal elements of this conflict. Colonialist wars, they're the external element of the struggle, but the struggle is always the same and it's always two systems of governance. I didn't mention what the other system of governance is because it doesn't matter. It's anybody who doesn't submit, anybody who fails to obey. And the ultimate objective is to create a one world global order or whatever we call it, rules-based global order or Pax Judaica or Pax Americana or whatever it be. but everybody has to submit, everybody has to comply, everybody has to obey. And whoever doesn't gets canceled, character assassinated, physical assassinated, sanctioned, ostracized, demonized, or attacked militarily. And this, I think that the logic of this conflict today has reached a level where I don't think it's going to stop until the ultimate defeat of either one side or the other. Because they really are not going to relent. And you can see the example of Iran. Iran has been in the crosshairs for decades. They keep trying. There's no point at which they say like, Okay, well, I guess that didn't work, so let's just make peace and be nice to the Iranians. And if they want to take advantage of their $35 trillion of natural resources and direct the development of their economy and their societies according to the way they like, well, we should leave them to it. That never happens. Ronald Reagan was bombing Libya in 1987. Gaddafi survived, Gaddafi's government survived. Did they give up trying to destroy Libya? No, they didn't. Ultimately, they ended up destroying Libya. The al-Assad dynasty in Syria survived decades of attacks in various forms, by proxy, by sabotage, assassination attempt, infiltration, until eventually they were taken out. They were taken out. at the beginning of 2025. Same goes for Iran, same goes for Russia, same goes for any nation that won't submit to the Western colonialist empire. And then the Chinese are aware that ultimately they are on the target list as well. So the world has no choice but to take this fight all the way to the end. And so Trump himself may have had enough. In fact, he probably had enough. And I think that it will be difficult for them to push Trump to war against Iran once more, even though there's now information in the information universe that In fact, the reason why Trump accepted this humiliating defeat of an MOU is because they just want to delay it, like with the Minsk agreements, until the next hurrah. That's quite possible, but it's probably not going to be Trump. It's going to be somebody else, because the continuity of the system of governance transcends any one administration. So right now we have reasons for limited optimism, but the conflict is not going to end.
Speaker 1: Well, I agree this has been going on for quite some time, but it has to be said that in the 1990s and then onwards, the liberal hegemony, it seemed stable. That is, it had a stable concentration of power, which was uncontested. And also the liberal democratic, well, not values necessarily, but the slogans, they also weren't really disputed. They were seen as providing essential legitimacy for the hegemon. And essentially the idea would be the collective West was ruling the world, but for the benefit of all. And this was kind of accepted, not just in the West, but we also often outside the Western borders as well. But what we're seeing now, as you suggest, the internal strife, I think this is an equally important component to the foreign wars, because I'm just thinking how long this can go on, because as you said, this very basic ignoring of national interest, this is not sustainable. The economic crisis we see playing out, this isn't going to be a bump in the road. These are the economic fundamentals, which are We see the deindustrialization, the financial crisis, the coming failure of the dollar and other currencies. We see freedom of navigation having been replaced with the embrace of piracy without much problem, not disputed by the politicians or the media. We see a very fanatical foreign policy. Everything is good versus evil. We're always fighting a new Hitler. We accept this state of permanent war. We have no problem, it seems, of embracing ISIS in Syria. We can condemn or try to legitimize when these fanatics are slaughtering civilians. We can embrace fascists. We can have openly people making references favorable to Hitler, wearing fascist symbols, and their first instinct is to excuse it. you know, as you said, casually making calls for World War III from the British royalty of none other. There's no fear of nuclear war anymore. This is just dismissed as, well, this is moral to ignore that fear because it's nuclear blackmail. We can back a genocide, participate in genocide. No big deal. The trust in media is collapsing. The legitimacy of governments is are also collapsing. I mean, Mertz is down at 15% approval rating. He's being trailed by Macron and Starmer on this downward trajectory. And across Europe, things aren't looking much better either. As you said, the opposition is criminalized, especially in Germany, where they went after AFD, which is the largest party, but nonetheless now deemed to be an extremist organization. In Romania, at least, they just canceled the election results. Again, you can go on. The rule of law, they sanctioned their own citizens now. This dissident is crushed. This overwhelming, suffocating propaganda, which doesn't stop. It just seems that, long story short, it's not just the hegemony, but as the legitimacy collapses as well, something's happening within society. If you would assess the sustainability, again, you're Your background is also largely from economics as well. How do you see this? What do you think would crack first? Is it the economic sustainability, like the political aspect? I mean, this isn't going to work or will this just be resulting in a military defeat or outcome?
Speaker 0: The economic collapse is coming. It's a mathematical certainty. But it's not going to be like 1929 in the United States and the depression of 1930s. It's more going to be a collapse of a stagflationary recession with accelerating levels of inflation. So money is going to be becoming progressively more and more worthless. It's going to exacerbate the cost of living crisis throughout the Western world. No, throughout the world, period, probably. And that's going to lead to social uprisings. And we don't know what's going to happen because we've never been in this situation before. In the past, always, the ruling establishments had the monopoly on the media and they had it relatively easy to control the narratives. Right now, this is not the case anymore because we have the internet, we have the social media, we have these types of conversations, podcasts. There's so many people producing superb quality content, which is then galvanizing the public and then it's pushing other people to investigate every little aspect of the crisis we're in. And we can see that the people in power are desperate to redirect this anger towards an external enemy. So the day before Rupert Lowe's inquiry was published, We had British SAS commandos board a Russian tanker in the English Channel, which was completely illegal. There's no way that you could square this with the rule of any kind of international law, law of the seas, UN conventions. It was just flat outright act of piracy. They dragged the ship into the British territorial waters, and then they claimed jurisdiction over it. So that's a very clear provocation against the Russians. Then the Russians sent a frigate to the English Channel, and then they ran like a private speedboat that looked like it was going to crash with the frigate. And if you were a Russian sailor or commander on that boat, Your assumption would have to be that this is a drone boat that's going to crash us and explode. Fortunately, the Russians were able to avoid the greater incident by firing flares first and then firing warning shots. And then finally the boat diverted and there was no consequence. But the desire now, the burning desire of the British... you know, not British like Roger Waters or Jeremy Clarkson, I'm talking about the people in government, is to get a war going in earnest, to try to redirect people's grievances towards the external enemy, which obviously would be Russia. And so when nothing really happened in the English channels on the seas, Well, then they had the Ukrainians orchestrate the largest ever drone attack on Moscow. And Moscow woke up on the morning of, well, that was yesterday, two absolutely apocalyptic scenes. Moscow looked like it was subjected to Allied firebombings. And so there's clear attempts to orchestrate a war. because it's the best possible way to divert from an internal crisis. When the money collapses, when there's no food on the shelves, when there's no medicines in the pharmacies, when people cannot get a doctor's appointment and so on, well, you blame everything on Russia. And you bang the drums of patriotism to get all the young men, rather than staging a revolution at home, you orchestrate a large-scale slaughter of them on the Eastern Front. This was done in World War I. And my conviction is that this was deliberate. Because, you know, it's become a kind of a meme to mock the World War I generals for incompetence. You know, it's practically a cultural fact. You see it in sitcoms, in movies, in everywhere. Generals who were who didn't understand that the world has changed, that the enemy had machine guns and so forth, who were sending wave after wave after wave of men to a certain death for no discernible reason. But nobody asked themselves the question, was this deliberate? And if you examine the life and work of General Sir Douglas Haig, you realize that it was almost certainly deliberate. The man knew exactly what he was doing, but he himself was responsible for up to 2 million dead British soldiers. Military aged men. It's easier to get rid of them on a foreign battlefield than to get them home starting to ask questions. Hey, how come our daughters... and women are being raped and nobody's doing anything about it, how come the police are taking part in the fun, right? How come the newspapers are covering it up? How come the media, how come the royal family? You know, like when they start asking these questions, you have a collapse of the legitimacy of the system. And once the legitimacy of the system collapses, you're moving to almost inevitably to revolution or a civil war. And had the King's College professor, David Betts, who has written and spoken about this extensively, who said that a civil war is now inevitable, not just in the UK, but in much of Western Europe, and that all the conditions for a civil war, based on historical precedents, are not only satisfied, But he said that the continent was explosively configured for a breakout of a civil war. And about a year ago, he was saying that this would happen within five years. So that would mean that now it's within four years. That's very close. So for the people in power, it's do we risk guillotines or do we do nothing? anything that we can to provoke a war against Russia and then to mobilize the whole society so that all the men go and fight the Russians and hopefully never come back. So that's where we are. And the foundation of all this is the economic crisis because the inflation is going to continue galloping. People are going to have more and more difficulty making ends meet. The discontent is going to escalate and it's going to be spilling out into the streets. And with this inquiry that came out two days ago, Glenn, there's no more denying it that the ruling establishment is the enemy. You know, up until now, you could say, you know, they were maintaining this narrative that, oh, if you talk about grooming gangs, you're racist. Most rapes are done by white men. They were actually saying this for real. Right now, I think that dam has broken. That dam has broken. And I think that the people's anger is now being processed. And it's going to flood the UK like a tsunami. And not just the UK, because the same thing at maybe somewhat lesser scale is going on in Norway, in Sweden, in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in many countries. And so we're looking at a near future of deep, profound discontent.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, though, that throughout history you always see when there's a massive... legitimacy crisis in a political system, that it almost always results in the frustrations being redirected against an external enemy and thus starting a war. Yet when it happens in the present time, it's dismissed usually as a conspiracy theory that is some right-wing lunacy. But again, if you take a step back and look at what's happening in the wider historical context, As you said, I interviewed David Betts as well on this channel. He's following the history of civil wars, track what happens within society. And you can say, well, this is obviously happening here. And the first reaction is always, especially by the political media establishment, is, well, how dare you? Now you're inciting it. You're encouraging it. Because by saying that the authorities are illegitimate, you're spreading that idea. So it's... No, it's just wild that there is no room to actually discuss what is happening in the society. Because again, what you're saying, you can't deny this anymore. The economic crisis, the legitimacy crisis, the poor governance, the reckless foreign policies. I mean, the lies in terms of why they went to war with Iran, Russia, also probably China as well in the future. It's all exposed, yet there's no room for recognizing the criticism. And no, it's quite crazy. But how do you see, though, because what you mentioned about the bombing of Moscow, this is another thing which just I can't get over. That is, we have all these Western countries bragging, showing off every day how much of the drones they're producing. how they're assisting with the intelligence finding strikes they're encouraging deeper strikes in russia this is their goal they're going to have more long-range strikes they're going to mass produce these weapons to strike russia yet if you make the point that well where exactly is this heading how is this not making us a participant um you know how is how how will the russians not be able to retaliate against the west because you know this doesn't work there's nothing you will have usually some chance about how Russia deserves it or they should have thought about this you know get out of Ukraine but but no one will address the question that is how is this make not making us a participant and to what extent does it become impossible for Russia not to retaliate I just find it the survival instinct I mean it's we're getting close to zero here it seems there's no common sense just emotional sloganeering and you know everyone should unify around the hatred. I don't know.
Speaker 0: Yeah, but you see, I think that they're doing this deliberately because they want to make it as difficult as possible for the Russians to not respond. They want, they're desperate for Russia to respond because they're losing legitimacy at home. And if they could get a war against Russia going, it doesn't matter whether they would win it or not. They They know that they won't win it. But it will have the rallying around the flag effect, you know? Because right now, without a war, look what the British royalty is. They had three days to say something about the industrial-scale rape of English girls on British territory. And they said nothing at all. And imagine if now, suddenly... Russia strikes at the United Kingdom, then there will be a lot of people who would be like for king and country, and they will be ready to go to war. And so the ruling establishment is desperate to get this war going. And Vladimir Putin knows not to give them this gift because it would be the most beautiful Christmas gift that they could wish for. And so they no longer even bother to deny their involvement. Back in 2022 and 2023, everybody was really careful because, oh, we can't give them these weapons because then Ukrainians could strike deep into Russia and we would be seen as complicit and that would put us at risk of war against Russia and so forth. You know, there was a lot of hesitation, for example, to give them the F-16 fighter jets because they are nuclear capable. So, you know, they were very, very hesitant. There were many voices who were, you know, even though they supported Ukraine, they were very strongly against this. Now it's the kitchen sink moment, you know, everything out. It doesn't matter. They're practically advertising, it's us, it's us. Look, we are doing it. The Ukrainians are just pulling the triggers, but we're doing it. We're planning it. The United Kingdom, Keir Starmer went to Ukraine in January of 2025, just before Donald Trump was inaugurated. And he signed a 100-year partnership agreement with Ukraine. And... Part of the partnership agreement specified British support for Ukraine in developing drone warfare. So it's out there. And now they announced that they will, in fact, you tweeted it this morning or yesterday, that they're supplying 150,000 drones to Ukraine with obvious intent of Ukraine using it to strike at Russia. So, you know, if I'm shooting at somebody and you're bringing me the bullets and everything I need to kill them, you're completely complicit. So if you're a normal person, you're going to try to conceal this. But if you are desperate for war, if you're desperate for an escalation, you will not only not try to conceal it, you will practically advertise it. And this is where we're at. And so this is creating a problem because Vladimir Putin understands the game and he's not going to give them this gift. But at the same time, political pressures at home are building to the point where Vladimir Putin might not be able to hold this back, the avalanche that's coming, because there's a lot of people saying, we need to teach them a lesson. We're going to nuke Germany, you know, like Karaganov is suggesting. And this is what the West is desperately hoping for. And they might be able to force Putin's hand in this sense, because if these drone attacks like we saw yesterday are repeated again and again and again, Russia cannot do nothing about this. And so we are in a very, very dangerous situation. the war, the escalation to World War III is being instigated by our own leaders, the Mertzes and Macrons and the Starmers of this world and Mark Carney's, let's not leave him out either. And historical precedents would favor them because it's much easier to escalate than to maintain restraint. And I think that it's for us to push back the public, because if the public shows the leaders that we see where you're going, we see what you're doing, we see that you want to sacrifice our men, our children in a big war, And then what, you're going to leave our children and our women vulnerable to your immigrant, at the mercy of your immigrants? So military age men need to be aware of what's going on and they need to refuse the fight, which is very hard because Ukrainians didn't want to fight either. They were forced to. So I think it's really potentially revolutionary times ahead of us.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a good point. That is, you know, the population, while now it doesn't want to fight, for example, against Russia or China, Iran or anyone, this can shift as soon as the Russian retaliation come, I think. I mean, as you said, with Ukrainians, people often forget that, you know, from 91 all the way up to 2014, there was a very small minority of Ukrainians who ever wanted to be a part of NATO. In every poll they showed if they had an opportunity to choose security partnership, which would you choose? They would go with Russia, or ideally they wouldn't have to be part of any bloc, but it was leaning towards Russia. But of course, once one topples Yanukovych, puts these extremist elements into place, and then the Russians then respond. You can then build on this, build up the Ukrainian army, make sure you sabotage every single pathway to peace, arm them to the teeth. And then what was, I would say, unthinkable 20 years ago is now this massive war between them. So why wouldn't you be able to get Europeans as well, European men to line up to fight and die? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 0: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, but, um, yeah, I wanted to ask you one last question on the, not, not, not on Russia, but how, uh, well, not unrelated, but, uh, how do you see Iran playing into this? Uh, I, I'm, um, it's hard to believe that a permanent surrender has been, uh, accepted by the Americans. Do you see this simply as regrouping or do you think it's just that they have come to terms that you can't defeat Iran here? So. Are they accepting reality or how are you assessing this memorandum of understanding?
Speaker 0: I think there's no question that they will try to regroup, but it's not necessarily Trump. It's just that this will not stop. In the same way that they never gave up on destroying Syria, they never gave up on destroying Libya. Iraq and so forth. And even after they withdrew from Afghanistan, there's been a lot of commentary from the ruling establishment that we are going to have to go back to Afghanistan. And even Trump suggested earlier in this term that, oh, he wants the Bagram base back. And in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, there was Leon Panetta who went on television and said, you know, gave an interview to, I forget, 60 Minutes or somebody like that and said, like, at some point we're going to have to go back to Afghanistan. So there's no question that they're going to regroup. And, you know, maybe it's not going to happen on Trump's watch, but, you know, whatever the... the force in society, whatever the mechanism is that in the end co-opts the government and obliges it to work for the banking cartels, to mobilize society for colonial wars, that mechanism is still there. Okay, for example, specifically with respect to Iran, we saw that Iran has been in the crosshair for regime change since the 9-11 attacks, right? So Wesley Clark said in the aftermath of 9-11 attacks at the Pentagon, they were talking about taking down seven countries in five years. That was 2001, meaning they already planned to have Iran regime change by 2006. That didn't happen. They had a lot of difficulty with Libya. They had a little difficulty with Syria, but the juggernaut never stopped. It never relented. And now it took on Iran. First war lost. It doesn't mean that they're not going to start. Maybe for the time being, war is off the table, but they still have their sabotage, assassinations. regime change wars, color revolutions, sanctions, and none of this is going to go away. And I think that the Iranians are not naive. They know that this is coming their way. But ultimately, the battle will be decided in the economic sphere. Because the government of Bashar al-Assad survived the war between 2015 and 2019. They survived the war. They prevailed. They won with the help of the Russians. But the country was crushed by economic sanctions. The economy was destroyed. And so now the society becomes very vulnerable and porous to foreign interests who can infiltrate with bags of cash. Some judge or police chief or military general is taking home $50 a month and some MI6 guy turns up with stacks of $100 bills, that can make things go very far and they can subvert the government system and make it so weak that then, you know, A little bit of pressure breaks it down. And so this is, I think even the Uber hawk, Ghalibaf in Iran was saying, we have to turn our attention to issues of economy. Fortunately today, I think that the struggle is overt enough and critical enough that the Chinese and the Russians understand all this and that they will help Iran in every way they can to make sure that the Iranian economy breathes, that it develops, that people live okay in order to prevent the fall of the Iranian government into the hands of the Western colonialist empire. But the... you know, the stakeholders of this colonialist empire, their fight, this struggle is existential for them too. They don't know how to do anything else other than, you know, colonizing parts of the world, turning their wealth into financial flows towards their big giant banks on Wall Street and in the city of London and in Paris. And and manipulating the political systems of all the Western countries into fighting these wars. So that's not going to stop. I'm optimistic that Iran will prevail, that Iranian government is going to survive this, that most probably Trump administration has lost taste for war and they might What I see is that they're probably going to sabotage the implementation of any deal. They're going to say like, oh yes, the 300 billion fund for reconstruction and redevelopment of Iran. Well, there's all these snags and legal problems and we can't just suspend sanctions just like that. They're basically going to be stringing them along as much as possible. Meanwhile, the conflict between Iran and Israel is probably going to continue. The United States is going to continue to support Israel, if not overtly, then covertly. The British are going to continue to support Israel. But I think that in this interim period, the balance of forces are going to be in favor of Iran and against Israel. the ultimate outcome of the game is going to depend on questions of economics and they're going to depend on whether Iranians are going to be able to develop their economy and provide a reasonable degree of prosperity to their people in spite of the sanctions that are going to continue. They will lift some, but sometimes Western jurisdictions even suspend sanctions against certain countries, but the institutions that are tasked with implementing the sanctions, they continue to implement them. The Iranians are going to still find it very difficult to export oil anywhere other than China and countries that accept payment in yuan, Chinese yuan. That's going to continue. The outcome is largely going to depend on the ability of China, Russia, and other BRICS nations to trade with Iran and to allow Iranian economy to develop. As far as the Western jurisdictions are concerned, I think there's no question that they will continue with their aggressive colonialist approach to governing the world. And they will try to regroup, maybe build up courage and determination by taking on weaker targets like Cuba. So this is going to be a generational conflict, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Just as a final thought, what you said about Wesley Clark, I thought, yeah, that's a great point. I mean, he was a retired now four-star general in the US Army. He was NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. I mean, he was the main guy. He can sit on the stage and tell the audience that he had a document from the Pentagon that arguing that yes, the plan is to knock out seven countries in five years. That is, they were going to go after Iraq, which they did, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and finish off with Iran. And now we know the Americans went after all those countries. And yet, when you go to our political media establishment, what do they say? Well, All of these wars were separate. They had nothing in common. It was just all about humanitarian concerns. We have weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Oh, the humanitarian concerns we had in Libya because, you know, our political elites really just have bleeding hearts for the Libyans or the Syrians. I mean, or now, you know, poor girls in Iran who have to be liberated from the, you know, from the regime. I mean, it's just... It's all there, open, in your face, and yet it doesn't impact the narrative in no way. And I think it's the same with the Ukraine war. I mean, you can have the CIA director, William Burns, not just having this leaked cable, but also publishing it in his own book, how he warned exactly what would happen, happened. That is, he warned, if you try, that is, NATO tries to pull Ukraine into its orbit, the predictable thing will happen. First, there will be a civil war because most Ukrainians do not want to be in NATO, especially in the east. So you're going to have a civil war, which there was. And then he was making the point. At this point, the Russians will reluctantly intervene on the behalf of Donbass and the Ukrainians in the east. They do not want to, but they see no other possibility. Again, exactly what happened. Yet, you have that fact, and this is supported by a huge amount of political military intelligence leaders across the West. How does that affect the narrative? Nothing. It's everyone chants the same thing. This was completely unprovoked. Mr. Putin woke up one day, he just wanted to restore the Soviet Union. I mean, we really live in a post-reality world. There's reality facts, they literally have zero impact on narratives anymore. I mean, all of this is sold as this is in our interest. This is what we have to fight and die for. I mean, and of course, just the cherry on top is how this is all about helping Ukrainians who are screwed over by NATO every turn, ignored at every turn over the past, well, not just 12 years, but the past, I would say, 22 years. It's quite extraordinary. I mean, and yet making this point, it's pushed into the realm of, you know, oh, this is a Russian Kremlin or Kremlin talking points or conspiracy theory. It's just, it's, it's the propaganda I said before, it's suffocating. It's, it's incredible that this is where we are now. I mean, for liberal democratic open societies. Anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 0: Well, I, you know, you're absolutely right. And this is, this is maybe, maybe exactly the crux of the problem. I think that Vladimir Putin was very much right to call the West the empire of lies because it is an empire of lies because the cases you mentioned are exactly the cases of it being very hard to persuade somebody when their paycheck depends on them not understanding that something is And so we have the structures of government populated by people who are paid to not understand basic things. And so even if they understand it, they reject it because they would not be able to continue serving this system if they accepted the truth. So they have to embrace lies. And we have even very concrete examples of this. Just before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there was a There was a military, some kind of military exercises were organized in India and there were NATO officials there. And one of them was a German Admiral of the Navy, Admiral Kayakim Schombaum. And there's a video of this discussion at a large round table with other military brass. including Indians. And with regards to the crisis in Ukraine, which was just about to erupt into a war, he was saying the low cost solution to this crisis is to simply acknowledge and respect Russia's security concern to address them and to find a way to make an agreement with the Russians that addresses their own legitimate security concern. His career ended that very day. He was immediately fired. He tried to backtrack, you know, no, you're out. And so the person who is going to replace him is going to be somebody who's going to say yes to war, who's going to be a jingoist, who will perpetuate the lies, and who will understand that if he makes the mistake of acknowledging the truth and reality, that he's out. And so those types of decisions have been made thousands of times in every key decision-making node in our whole empire of lies. And so every key decision-making node is populated by these types of politicians, generals, judges, policemen, intelligence agents, and so forth. And so you end up having a president of European Union who is Ursula von der Leyen. You have foreign policy commissioner, Kaya Callas, whose I think only qualification in life is rabid, incurable Russophobia. And our whole system is like that. But I think that the encouraging part is that this is a very, very thin crust on top. That below the surface, people are waking up and people are understanding what is going on. And so it remains to be seen whether they will be able to do to European populations what they've done to Ukraine. You know, March... military aged men to war against their will. And that I think we have to push back against that with everything we have because it's the difference between peace and war, it's the difference between having your sons alive at home or having them under the flag of your country as so many hundreds of thousands of maybe more than a million Ukrainian parents now have. So that's what this conflict is about now directly for every person living in the West, including the United States, because maybe Americans will not be participating in a war against Ukraine. But the same preparations are being made by the same structures of power to confront China eventually. Trump doesn't want to do it. But, you know, after Trump, somebody else will be in power. Maybe some Antony Blinken or Jake Sullivan, somebody like that.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alastair Crooke: A New Middle East Is Born & NATO Attacks Moscow https://youtu.be/GkiCgI8QwiM https://t.co/gRcnEmvRZs
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alistair Crook and Alistair Crook discuss two linked crises: Iran and the US/Israel framework for a ceasefire, and a Europe-coordinated escalation against Russia after a major strike on Moscow.
Crook begins with Iran, referencing a memorandum of understanding that has allegedly already been signed but remains shrouded in secrecy. He asks whether the Americans will uphold it, how it will reshape the region, and how it affects US-Israeli dynamics. Crook notes that Netanyahu appears weaker and raises the possibility that his replacement could be more hawkish, questioning whether Arab-party support for Netanyahu has shifted. He suggests that regardless of whether the framework is implemented, it will have a major impact across the US, Israel, and the wider region.
Alistair Crook responds that the arrangement is a “framework” rather than a treaty or ceasefire: it is the “easiest part,” while the hardest element is constructing a protective zone and managing disruption. He describes visible elements already approaching within this “framework.” He then breaks down three areas Crook raised.
First, he says the agreement is controversial in the United States and also controversial in Iran. He describes tension rooted in Iran’s experience with the JCPOA not being upheld and Iran remaining constrained. He cites a statement by Iran’s Supreme Leader, saying the Supreme Leader opposed the framework but was persuaded by Tazashian and Kaleva that there would be no backsliding on the framework terms or Iranian interests, which predominantly center on Hormuz. He frames Hormuz as a pivot for Iran’s potential shift into a new geopolitical context. He adds that the Supreme Leader is putting on notice both Iran’s reformist wing and a skeptical public that Iran will not allow precedents that expand the meaning of the framework until it is emptied of its purpose.
Second, he highlights Lebanon as crucial. He says Iran has changed its position because it previously did not intervene directly against Israel in the axis-of-resistance way until the last period. He describes this as the first time Iran threatened heavy missile strikes on northern Israel if Israel flattened Beirut’s Dahir, arguing that this threatened the border-to-Galilee “path.” He says Trump then intervened and the attacks were stopped, but now the “thing” is being tested again. He links this to a breach question: he says Iran refuses to attend negotiating sessions and that Lebanon would be seen as a breach of the ceasefire from Iran’s perspective.
Third, he turns to Israel and US politics. He claims Israeli press coverage reflects “real turmoil,” portraying the situation as a huge defeat for the “victory narrative” involving American support to destroy Iran, destroy Hezbollah, and annex parts of Lebanon with proxy permission. He describes an incident near Bofor Castle where Hezbollah attacked with an anti-tank missile, resulting in four soldiers dead, including the commander of the 82nd Brigade. He says figures and polling pressure are intensifying for Netanyahu, arguing that if Netanyahu does nothing militarily in Lebanon, his election will be lost and that there is “wall-to-wall consensus” for action.
He adds that Trump’s language is shocking to Israelis: he reports Trump criticized Israel’s handling in Beirut and implied that an ex-ISIS leader could manage Lebanon more “sophisticatedly,” describing it as an unparalleled slap. He says Israelis interpret this as a Middle East that has changed: they believe there is no way to destroy Iran without the United States, and therefore that regime change is not achievable. He characterizes the result as a psychological defeat for the “Gratial Israel” concept and an acceptance that the US may impose penalties on Israel if it retaliates or breaches the framework, particularly in ways that could undermine Trump’s achievement of opening Hormuz.
He argues that the framework triggered a US shift, driven by Hormuz and an “economic cliff,” saying Trump said the US was “four weeks away from running out of oil,” with figures describing US strategic reserve levels down to about 20 million barrels. He describes the ensuing US domestic battle between pro-Israel Zionist groups and Trump supporters insisting on “America first.” He counters a simple prediction of Republican losses by suggesting the midterms are rotational, with about 20 Republican seats in contention, and that loyalty to Trump’s personality could reduce defection. He also suggests that if Netanyahu attacks Lebanon, the shift could frame it as “slapping America in the face,” potentially rebounding politically for Trump among some voters.
Crook then shifts topics to Russia, focusing on what he presents as an unprecedented Western escalation: a massive strike on Moscow, with NATO footprints being “advertised almost.” He asks how such escalation could be controlled and prevent nuclear escalation. He also complains that Western participation is now openly visible despite earlier efforts to conceal or downplay it.
Alistair Crook says the strike involved many drones and missiles into a refinery area in Moscow and was intended to put Russians “on edge.” He links it to coordination around EU and allied meetings, stating that Macron and Merz met in London beforehand and brought Zelensky to stage European ultimatums. He says the point was to change the narrative, with Europe trying to present that Ukraine is not on the back foot and to push for more defense resources. He describes Europe’s aim as a ceasefire framework and UK/France and other participation in peacekeeping, with Ukraine eventually aligned with Europe, and bringing America back into the process via stage-managed messaging.
He argues that Europe is escalating toward a war with Russia but lacks practical clarity on what such a war would look like, questioning whether it would be conventional, asymmetrical, air, or nuclear. He recounts arguments by Russian figures at the St. Petersburg Conference about stopping the “ratchet” of escalation and says the debate is growing over more procurement, missiles, drones, and co-production—reassembling shipped systems in Ukraine for use against Russia. He says Europe’s assumption that Russia would capitulate is a misunderstanding of Russia’s consciousness and history with Europe, similar to what he earlier described as a misunderstanding of Iran. He concludes that the strategy is dangerous because there is no clear escalation control if Russia perceives the threat, and he links this to Russia’s history of restraint before retaliation.
The discussion ends with Crook urging readers to consult Alistair Crook’s Substack, and Crook thanking him for his insights.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We have the great pleasure today of being joined by Alistair Crook, one of the great diplomats of Britain and Europe, who are sadly in short supply these days. That is the good diplomat. There's a lot I wanted to ask you about today, from what's happening in Iran to, of course, the massive strike on Moscow. The Western involvement is not very subtle, but to start off with Iran, it's a Again, we have this memorandum of understanding. From what I understand, it's been signed already, but we don't know. There's a lot of secrecy around this. This has many implications. Will it be upheld by the Americans? To what extent does it shape the region? We see the US-Israeli relationship is also impacted by this. Indeed, Netanyahu... appears to be in a much weaker position now, but if he's pushed out, you know, are they just rearranging the deck? I mean, most likely his replacement will be much more hawkish. Indeed, from what I understand, Netanyahu, at least he used to have some support by some of the Arab parties. Now, I don't know, it seems like this memorandum of understanding, irrespective of whether or not it will be actually implemented, it will nonetheless have a massive impact on the US, Israel, and the wider region. This is a huge, massive question, but again, the issue is huge as well. So I was wondering if you could address this.
Speaker 1: Well, it is a huge question, as you've just asked. So I'll explain two bits of it, perhaps, at least. First of all, I call it a framework. because it's not really something that is not a treaty. It's not even really a ceasefire. It's a framework for a ceasefire. And as I keep repeating to people, I've done five, I think, ceasefires with the Israelis and Palestinians and others, and the framework is actually often the easiest part. The hardest part is... thinking about how to construct a protective zone so that things can move forward, as they will be disrupted for sure. You know, a bomb in a bus was one of the things that disrupted one of them. But equally, you know, someone going out and saying, listen, we don't believe they're serious about this bomb. at Hudner at all. And as soon as they do anything, we're going to hit them hard. We already have some of these elements sort of visible approaching in this context of the framework now. But let us look at those three headings that you talked about. The first one is about the Aramean one. You underline the controversy of this agreement in the United States, but it's important to understand that it is controversial in Iran. There is a certain tension in Iran, understandably, because they've experienced and lived through the JCPOA experience when peace were not upheld and Iran was in many ways ordinary Iranian steel trapped into a stranglehold, which they are still in. And however, yesterday, I think yesterday evening, the Supreme Leader issued a statement in which he said that although he was opposed to the framework agreement, himself, he was opposed to it. He was persuaded by Tazashian, and I presume Kaleva, that he talked about the Honorable President, that there would be no backsliding on the terms of the framework or on Iranian interests. Iranian interests for the Supreme Leader predominantly center, I think, around Hormuz. I mean, he regards this as being the pivot to Iran possibly removing itself from the present situation and entering into a different geopolitical context. It's as wide as that, from his point of view.
Speaker 0: Not just, you know, tomorrow, the day after, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know, Hormuz is crucial. We can go into the reasons why It's sort of geopolitical, but he sees that in those terms. What I think he was doing was to sort of put on notice, not just, if you like, the reformist wing in Iran, but also a skeptical public. This is not going to go down the path of the JCPOA. that Iran is not simply going to allow precedents to be sort of established and then duly expanded and expanded and expanded until the whole meaning of the framework is gone. He's basically saying we're not going to allow them to sort of do some sort of precedent which will allow something to happen. The other element, of course, is Lebanon. And Lebanon is crucial. And Iran has substantially changed its position because Iran did not, in the past, in terms of the axis of resistance, intervene directly against Israel until this last period. This was the first time they've gone directly and threatened to bomb heavily northern Israel, if Israel went ahead with its threat, flattened Dahir, a suburb of Beirut, and he completely said, we will go in with our missiles and attack the northern, that's the path, right from the borders, right through to the Galilee. And that was, of course, Trump then waved in, and the attacks were stopped. So that is the other part. What we're seeing now is the thing being put under test already. And then we go on to America, if you agree, just in a second. But first of all, the Israeli press this morning, the Hebrew press, is again run riot with complaints and anger and I mean Israel is in real turmoil psychological turmoil emotional turmoil it's not something small little tunnel to get over it's in deep turmoil they see this as a huge defeat they see just that the whole great victory narrative or the government to which many Israelis bought into this narrative that there would be America flying, as they put it in their words, wingship to wingship with the Israeli brave airmen to destroy Iran completely. And that they were going to destroy Iran Hezbollah and annex and steal half of Lebanon with the permission of certain proxies in Beirut. And that is still going. And yesterday there was an attack on a ridge which is near Bofor Castle, I think. They started to try and take more territory in this region, East Hill, Israel. And Hezbollah attacked them with an anti-tank missile. And four soldiers died, including a left-hand colonel who was the commander of the 82nd Brigade. Turmoil, real sort of in Israel. Everyone is saying, you know, this can't be allowed. I mean, four dead in one day. I mean, this is outrageous. as Ben-Gavir said, Lebanon must burn with us. And others have been saying similar sort of extravagant things that we have to, Hezbollah has to suffer, we have to go in and we have to teach them a lesson. Lebanon must burn. I don't know what is going to happen, but the pressure, and as you rightly say, Lenin Yavuzov is under a huge pressure because the polls were showing, you know, the odds that he was going to win the election in March were, I think, at about 49 or 50 percent. I can't remember the exact figure. And they're about half of it, 34 today. So, I mean, it's half. If Trump has got problems with his polls standing, in America, Netanyahu has got more. And as you know, I mean, that could imply that he ends up going to prison because this election looks as if he is his calumns. But that's on the basis of him doing nothing. Because in fact, I mean, the politics of Israel at the moment is that if Netanyahu does nothing about Lebanon, i.e. doesn't go on to the offensive in Lebanon, his election will be lost and he will lose it. I mean, this is wall-to-wall consensus. This is the situation. So that is what is facing the United States. The Israelis also, because there is a lot of question and turmoil about what this whole thing means, Because even if it's not widely understood in the West, the Israelis see this as a huge turning point. You know, a glass ceiling has cracked and broken. That Trump actually took sides on prioritizing the engagement with Iran over supporting Iran. Israel's right to take half of Lebanon and occupy it and to continue with its policies throughout the region. And then Trump then said things that were, you know, had never been heard in Israel before in the press conference after the G7 meeting. I mean, things that he never said before and said, you know, you're just too heavy-handed in Beirut. I've seen the photographs. You want to kill someone, and so you knock down the whole building with people living in it. This is not acceptable. It's not acceptable. We all thought it was acceptable to come, mind you, a month ago, if you'd asked people. But now, apparently, it's not. He said, you're not handling it very well. And then he made the most sort of derogatory sort of statement.
Speaker 0: He said, maybe we should hand this over to Shara. He would be more sophisticated in managing things.
Speaker 1: Hezbollah and the Lebanon situation. In other words, he was saying, you know, maybe an ex-ISIS leader could do better than you, Netanyahu, and you, Israel, in Lebanon, which was, I mean, an unparalleled sort of slap to the Israelis. So they are shocked by this. But they also say, And this is in the Hebrew press today. It's in Murray. And you can see it on our sub-stack because it will be out later today, I think, the sort of comments. But it's also clear that the Israelis understand this is the Middle East that's changed. It's the new era. There is no way that they are going to destroy Iran. It's not going to have a regime change. There's no way that they can do it without the United States. The United States provides everything. They cannot attack Iran without U.S. facilitation. We're doing all of these things. Impossible. They understand that. They know that it's over. And it is a huge psychological defeat for the whole project. And equally, the stance that this Gratial Israel project, by which they are assuming they can bring about Gratial Israel by forced advance, irrespective of legal norms, everything, they will just do it. Whether it's legal or not do it, they will do it. This was a Huge change that was introduced after the 7th of October, this idea of permanence of security. I mean, but what it means is Israeli belief and have come to accept, you know, that what happened on the 7th of October was somehow a holocaust. It wasn't, but that's what they think now and feel, and that they now live, you know, on the threshold of future holocaust, and therefore... Hezbollah cannot exist. It must be eliminated completely. So they understand that actually Trump's words mean that the United States may be serious this time in imposing penalties, severe penalties on Israel if they go ahead and respond or retaliate. in Lebanon because this will be seen to be undermining Trump and his great achievement of getting Hormuz opened. That's why I underlined that point about Hormuz and the Supreme Leader in those opening comments when I said, you know, Hormuz was the most important to the Supreme Leader and to the leadership in Iran. And Lebanon was the second. Well, they're both connected, of course, because it's a moment we are moving towards Hormuz being over. But if the situation in Lebanon constitutes a breach of the ceasefire, and that's certainly the Iranian perspective, as evidenced by their refusal to go to the talks. On Friday, they're declining to attend the negotiating session on Friday. Then that part of it also comes into question. And how is Trump going to respond? Because he said it out loud. It was quite surprising. Trump said, you know, listen, you know, we have to do this deal because we're running out of the reserves. I saw figures yesterday saying that it's cushy. it is down to 20 million barrels in the Cauchy strategic holding. In other words, they're down to the sludge at the bottom, which is, you know, doesn't, it's got no particular use anyway. It has to be treated and everything before you can use the, you know, the bottom end of a reserve like that, especially one that's in natural resources. So then it moves on to That's really, I think, where we are with the framework. The framework, I think, more than many Iranians expected, more than I expected, has triggered this change in the United States, partly because of Hormuz and partly because the economic cliff is here. And Trump said it, you know, we have to do that because we were four weeks away from running out of oil. So it has produced this change and has produced now a contentious battle in the United States, a huge battle between the pro-Israel Zionist groups and and the Trump supporters, and who are insistent on what they describe as America first and not Israel first. How do they get to that point? And the midterms are coming up. Now, the question is the general consensus, the normal consensus is, you know, this is going to be so damaging for Trump. you know, he's going to lose, he's going to lose, and the Republicans are going to lose. I must say, I had thought that, but now I'm not so sure. Firstly, because I think you know that the election process for the Senate is rotational.
Speaker 0: It's not all at once.
Speaker 1: It's one part, and then another part goes up for election, like that. So actually, I mean, listen, figures may be not exactly right, but there are about 20 Republican seats that are in contention at the moment, the Republican seats. That is, you know, in the House. This is, I mean, yeah, this could swing the midterms for sure, but also it's not irretrievable, at least in the view, I think, of Trump and his team, you know, Twenty seats, not all of them will swish. And also, it's not clear. There does seem to be a sense in which the solid base of murder hasn't defected from Trump because of the personal loyalty more than anything else. Not because they like the war in Iran or anything else, but as a personal sense of loyalty to him. which has these emotional overtones that it's very hard to define exactly, but it does have a considerable hold over people. And in many respects, because of this debate, which prominent people are pointing out, that is America in control of its own foreign policy? Or have we, if you like, delegated our foreign policy to a foreign power, is gripping the MAGA base in the aftermath of what happened, the assassination earlier of the Christians spokesman in MAGA, and Joe Kent also, and others are raising this issue. So I think there's a feeling that it may not be as catastrophic. In fact, there will be some in the Republican component that actually may think that this is no bad thing and therefore be more supportive of Trump than we thought. But I hadn't realized that the number of seats is actually not huge that will I mean, it may be exaggerated or not enough or whatever. Of course, it'll be contention. But now, if Netanyahu goes in and attacks Lebanon, I think it will now shift to not just slapping Trump in the face, that it's slapping America in the face. That it will be seen by MAGA. Maybe not by, I mean, obviously not by the neocons and the ardent Zionists, but by many Americans who don't understand all the nuances of it, but see that there was a framework that was signed by Trump visibly at Versailles, and Netanyahu and Israel are blowing it up. I mean, you know, if you see it in those simple terms, it wouldn't be surprising if actually, you know, this rebounds to Trump's advantage politically. It may not. Too early to say it. And, you know, there's undoubtedly going to be major efforts to overturn us by those that are committed to Israel supremacy in the region and regional domination. And that, I mean, we don't know how that's going to turn out. Will they succeed? It'll be the first time that, you know, a president has gone up. But Netanyahu essentially, not Netanyahu personally, because this is coming from all of Israel, all of the leaders, whether it's the opposition leaders across the board, all are saying, you know, it's not just Ben-Gurion. They're saying, you know, they must pay. They've got to suffer. They've got to be for these poor people that were killed yesterday. So if that happens, it is going to further, I think, increase the distance between the United States and Israel. It's going to push it further away and could push it towards making some sort of measures. Perhaps they'd be tempted to begin with, but some sort of measures are imposed on Israel for attempting to blow up, particularly particularly if the Iranians respond to this by, if you're right, restricting, not completely, but restricting to a certain extent the Hormuz passageway. Who knows what they will do, but this would be one. I mean, very clearly they understand this is the thing that brought events to a head and brought about framework, and that's where they might well move.
Speaker 0: My first thought when I saw these remarkable statements by Trump was that they fell short of action, that it's just in the language. But on the other hand, this language matters. As you said, this is ringing through the media in Israel. This is putting shockwaves, but also in the United States. All the America firsters, well, the people who think like Tucker Carlson that they shouldn't put Israel first, but America first, they must surely feel vindicated. They have wind in their sails at the moment. So it does change.
Speaker 1: It changes so much in that way. I mean, it has... something has broken. It feels like a paradigm has been blown up. And it was just Kim's piece of paper, which, as you say, is not a commitment to anything particularly. It's just a framework for starting a different process. But that paradigm has been blown up because Trump visibly and said, and because of language. You know, it talks about the sovereignty and the rights of sovereignty of Iran and of, by implication of Lebanon too. I mean, it says respect for the sovereignty of state, da-di-da, you know. But I mean, Iran is being treated as a sovereign state and being engaged with as a sovereign state and not as a recalcitrant terrorist state. And that is a change. Yes, the language I'm sure Trump will say, and you'll have Ted Cruz coming out and saying, they're all terrorists, they're all horrible people, you know, we have to do everything against them. But the fact that, you know, this language was incorporated in it and then Trump at the G7 spoke in a very different way about Israel and said, you don't know what you're doing in Lebanon anyway, so it's best if you get out of it, is a shock, a psychological shock. The whole paradigm is broken, and Israelis don't know what to do about it. I mean, really, they don't know what to do about it, and people are saying, And serious Israelis are saying, as Chitrinowicz is saying, we will have to think about this in the aftermath because the original strategy of Israel is broken. And we have to think and understand that Trump is maneuvering towards a new sort of understanding between America And Iran, I don't know if it will end up in an agreement or all of the elements of it, but there is a new, if you like, atmosphere. Let's just call it that. There is a new atmosphere that is coming and that he's serious about. And he says, I don't think that this is damaging to Israeli security. Again, wow. I mean, this is... quite interesting thing to say that, you know, you can have a relationship that America can sort of get closer to Iran. And, you know, all of the strange comments that he was making earlier that he said about, you know, Iran could be part of the Abraham Accords and he's got sort of various other strange comments about, you know, Iran. I mean... seem to sort of imply, at least in Trump's, the obscure workings of Trump's brain, that he's sort of moving towards some sort of idea that there can be, you know, perfect peace, or whatever he calls it. This great peace can break up in the Middle East. And a key element of it could be played by de-escalation of a conflict with Iran. That de-escalating Iran could lead to something more secure in the region.
Speaker 0: And on that, he's probably right.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's, you know, if Trump is doing that, de-escalation in Iran is key to a more peaceful. The alternative that Israel presents of just going there and destroying a country and destroying all of those groups that are delighted simply destroying and killing and killing more people. It's not a solution to stability. It's not a path to stability. It's the opposite. And I think somehow maybe this message is percolating up in Washington amidst huge opposition with people infuriated. and on the brink of sort of almost of civil war about this. So you have all these tensions about this. This really fairly innocuous document comes up and, wow, you know, tensions in Iraq, tensions in Israel, massive tensions in Israel, and tensions in the United States. I would say equally, I mean, strategic tensions. because they're going to weigh on the forthcoming elections in the United States, are going to center about this question about who runs United States foreign policy and in whose interest is foreign policy formulated. I think that's going to be the issue. So this is going to be that. Well, building on what you said,
Speaker 0: I also thought his remarks about Iran's ballistic missiles were interesting because in the past there was consensus around the idea that these terrorists should not be allowed to have ballistic missiles, this ballistic missile program to threaten its neighbors. Again, this was a key component of the US demands as well. This had to be dismantled. I saw now a speech by Trump where he was making the point that, well, the Saudis have ballistic missiles, of course, well, the Iranians have to have as well. You know, as you said, it marks a shift. They're not terrorists who are illegitimate, who hold ballistic missiles. They are a state with basic national interest, and they will have to defend themselves like everyone else. I mean, treating them like a normal power, it is a huge step. It would be, you know, especially in this day and age when you have... The first objective is always to delegitimize the opponents. We delegitimize Putin, Xi. Whenever we're going to go to war, we make sure that we delegitimize them. I think the fact that now it's going the other way, it is quite remarkable. Again, it opens the door for so many in the United States to essentially come with common sense. They are a state. They have the right to basic national interest and protect themselves. You know, you can take it a step further. Actually, we should encourage their ballistic missiles because this gives them a conventional deterrence, less reliance on nuclear deterrence. I mean, common sense could break out. So, yeah, I think language is powerful. I did...
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the whole image. I mean, Iran is... essentially fighting for its sovereignty, its right to determine its own path ahead. And this is catching, you know, the imaginations of much of the world. It's not, you know, we're mainly going back to that post-war period, you know, when the Bandung Conference and all those things, independence and sovereignty, certainly, you know, countries of motives, you know, how did they do this? Well, they did this by defying the United States' attempt to put financial and tariff checkpoints on them. Well, Russia has checkpoints. China has checkpoints put on them. And Iran has at least partially succeeded by taking assertive, accurate action against these United States checkpoints. This is a precedent that is going to have larger tail.
Speaker 0: Well, I wanted to shift a bit. Well, focus not completely. It's still about Western wars, but as we saw yesterday with this bombing of Moscow, unprecedented. And another thing which was quite different is in the West, the Western countries, they don't seem to work very hard anymore to conceal their own participation. I remember at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you had people like Baerbock saying, listen, we shouldn't turn on each other. We are at war with Russia. And this was deeply problematic because we shouldn't say these things. But now we see all the weapons coming, the intelligence, I mean, the use of NATO territory. But now, of course, this massive strike on Well, last year, not just on Russia's nuclear deterrent, but now this massive bombing of Moscow. And, you know, it's... I mean, the NATO footprint here is very obvious. It's advertised almost. I mean, how are you seeing this? Because I guess of all things, this is what's keeping me up at night. What seems to be a march towards what would be a massive war with Russia, which I... I can't conceive the possibility of us having any escalation control, and it would spiral very quickly into a nuclear war. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but this is madness here.
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is very pertinent to everything. Yes, I do. Let me just say that I think... Or what happened, I don't know how many drones and missiles were fired, 156 or something into that refinery in parts of Moscow. I mean, just as the major step up, major step up, and it's intended to put Russians on edge, Russians, Muscovites on edge, and people in St. Petersburg on edge, feeling that they're less secure. I think it was also coordinated for, it was pre-coordinated at the EU3, Euro3, it's not EU, Euro3, France, Macron and Merz meeting, I think it was in London, just beforehand, where they put forward their, you know, ultimatums for Russia. And then again, You know, they brought in, deliberately, Macron brought in Zelensky to that meeting and to the European meeting. And I think what we're seeing, therefore, is a major effort by Europe to change the narrative. Macron has said, you know, at the beginning, and he believes that, you know, Trump thought that... Russia is a big state, would crush Ukraine easily, and that it would be done quickly. This is Macron saying Russia would crush Ukraine, and therefore there was not really much to do about it because it was going to happen. And then that task, and we see that Russia still hasn't crushed Ukraine, and Ukraine... And the point of these missiles and the point of pushing Zelensky to the sort of front of stage at these two meetings was to say to Trump, look, it's all changed. They're not on the back foot. They're on the front foot. They are winning. Now, it's not true. Of course we know it's not true. It was a huge effort to get together that amount of missiles. And, you know, over all these attacks on refineries, have done little strategic damage to Russia. The economy is not in any sort of free fall. In fact, the economy is growing and employment is increasing. So it's a false narrative, but they were intent on stage managing it with Zelensky and, you know, so the whole of that thing was about the G7 and about the EU summit that was going to take place, that has taken place in these last days, because the summit was going to look at EU budgets and financial resources. And there's a big division in Europe about whether to agree to this huge budget that has been proposed by the Commission, with some states objecting to it. So, I mean, the aim is to push for more defense resources going to Ukraine in the first place. Secondly, to lay down the framework that Europe wants, which is ceasefire, then Britain, France, and other states of the willing will take part in peacekeeping. So, nature will move into Ukraine. Ukraine will become part of nature. eventually an EU. And the main element of it is to bring America into this agreement and into this process, to bring America back to Europe by saying, look, we've taken down our park, we're doing it. Look, you see what's happening, you know, and Zelensky was showing photographs of the cathedral and how the Russians are destroyed this cathedral in Kiev. In fact, it was probably a Patriot missile that misfired, that did damage, but it doesn't matter. The public relations went that way. And so, yes, this is where we are moving, and we will have to see how he has to respond. He has to respond to it. And the question is, are we moving closer to them responding in the way that Sergei Karaganov and others, like Dmitry Trenin and others at the St. Petersburg Conference were saying, the only thing that will stop this ratchet, this escalation, every time, further and further. And one of the agreements that came out of that bilateral meeting More procuration, more missiles, more drones joined with what they call co-production, which means that they just ship over the arts for reassemble in Ukraine, and then Ukraine passes it to Russia. How do you put a stop to this? And this is the debate in Russia, and I think it's edging closer and closer to, you know, what I described to you, you know, Karaganov's argument The problem is that they don't believe that we will react, even we being Russian. We, you know, it's all said, oh, that's just Putin's bluff. I mean, don't take it seriously. It's not going to do anything because we're NATO. Article 5. And the Russians and Putin, I think, believes that Article 5 is the bluff. That, you know, that if there was an attack and... I think Aragona, from your program, argued quite falsely and indirectly that he really doubted that America would intervene, even if a tactical nuclear weapon was used against the European NATO state, that they would intervene. And Professor Mearsheimer, if I recall correctly, agreed with him. He thought that the United States would not necessarily intervene. directly become involved. But both agree also that this could lead to something much worse, that this could escalate and go up. And I think all we've seen in these last days is Europe trying to get to the position where they have, I think it was Macron or something, said they want to create Ukraine as the male fist at the front of European military and NATO military's architecture against Russia, that it is to be the front line putting pressure and attacking Russia behind it. Now, I'm hugely skeptical of these stories. you know, and I've said that in Moscow, I don't believe Europe has the ability to build a military architecture. You can't, you know, when I hear 1997 or 1930, it takes 20 years to do supply lines, to build a real military infrastructure that is being, I mean, let alone they don't even have the men. I mean, you can see, I mean, look at, The UK, it can't even provide a naval vessel at the moment. It can't provide. It's got something like 40 tanks that are serviceable. I mean, the European defense structures are in terrible state, really terrible state. You don't change that in three years. And anyway, much of this money is just one of these boondoggles. You know, the money is going to existing European defense contractors, and their share prices is going up, and a lot of people are going to make a lot of money sort of going in and out inside a trading on who's going to get, you know, the defense money. So it's rather like, you know, what's been happening in Washington, I think, with, you know, the oil futures, with, you know, just before Trump makes an announcement, then, you know, there's the big, you know, sale of, purchase of oil futures, and then He makes the announcement, ah, peace, and then I think there's an element of this taking place in the European context too. So I don't think it's so. What they really want is, if I can make a strange comparison, but I would say it's rather akin, if you think of Europe as being Israel. Israel is using Lebanon. as an attempt to pull in America on its side in a war against Iran. And Europe, in a similar way, is doing this, just as Israel is doing attacks inside Lebanon and taking towns and leveling them. Europe is using missiles into deep Russia. in order to say to America, look, we can win this. You know, we've set the framework for it. We can win this. All we need to do is pull you into this, stand by the condition that, you know, Russia has to capitulate and withdraw from all of the sovereign territory of it and pay compensation and put up its officials for war crimes. crimes, trials. I mean, Europe is moving very fast from the Organic Council to arrange all of the means for war crimes, trials, and reparations, assessing, keeping lists of damage so they can charge Russia with the cost of policing. I don't think this is going to fly at all. I mean, Putin clearly understands it. I read a a statement that Lavrov is going to put in Politico. I don't know if you've seen it, but a very strong account of the system. Politico refused to publish it, I think, in the end. But I mean...
Speaker 0: The foreign ministry published it in Russia.
Speaker 1: Oh, they have. Well, I mean, it's a very strong article, a very strong piece. I suggest people read it. because it's very clear, it's a very clear indication. So now we know very clearly where things are. The Europeans are pulling Trump, and they were very pleased with the G7 meeting, because they got him actually to sit with Zelensky, and they got him to sort of more or less agree with the European position, which is there must be immediate ceasefire, total sovereignty return to Ukraine, All of these maximalist demands of Europe, they are maximalist. Russia would never agree to any of these. So they got in Russia, trying to get this as the accepted consensus and to try and pull America in that consensus. And then if they can, pull America into Europe. supporting their war and going to war against Russia with Europe. That's been, you know, the German, the French, and British aim is to get a war against Russia in which, like in the Second World War, they pull in Roosevelt, not pull in Trump, you know, find the initiative to, then it was Pearl Harbor, whatever it was, to pull America into their war against Russia. It would be catastrophic. And this is the plan that is catastrophic. And people should understand how dangerous it is, how catastrophic it could be. It could end up because Russia will not tolerate it. I was very struck by what was said about Germany. on your program by Karadonov, who does know about the nuclear issues. I mean, he has been involved in this for years, decades. And he said, we will not tolerate Germany assuming having nuclear weapons. We would eliminate it first. It was a very tough tough comment. I mean, we are playing with fun, I think. So I agree with you. What's happened there, what happened at the G7, at the European meeting. And no one seems to sort of be aware of all the talk in Europe is how disgraceful it was that Costa's chief of staff actually spoke to someone in Moscow without telling von der Leyen. I mean, he is actually the president of the council, and in case the Europeans have forgotten, it is the member states that decide foreign policy, not the commission and not the foreign high representative. It's water off a duck's back to them. They just go on anyway.
Speaker 0: Yeah, but what you said before, though, I agree. I think this is the goal by the... Europeans, that is, to have Ukraine standing in front of them and the Americans standing behind. This is how they will seek to weaken Russia over the next years and decades.
Speaker 1: But still, I mean, I think, you know, maybe you'll get someone on the program who can answer this. I mean, you know, even in Israel now, people will say, you know, there was no discussion about an attack on Iran. There was no one from the Mossad or military, Amman, the military intelligence or anyone that came when all of this was being discussed and said, but what happens if Iran survives and emerges stronger? Nobody said anything. And if they did think it, they kept their mouths shut. And I think the same question should be asked of the Europeans. What do you conceive a war on Russia would look like? Would it be ground troops? Would it be simply a nuclear war? How would you run it? I mean, are you going to mass troops, and would it be a conventional war, or would it be an asymmetrical war, and it would be led by Ukraine in this way? And what would be the outcome? I mean, when you see that, you know, the NATO states are sort of practicing by building prisoner of war camps in parts of it, I mean, it's just nuts. But I have no sense of what, if Europe thinks about what it's trying to do beyond the big picture of, you know, putting pressure on Russia, pressure on Russia, bringing America back to Europe, getting Europe to give more money and more weapons to Russia, Ukraine. I mean, what would war with Russia mean in practical terms? Would it be an air war? Would it be a ground war? Would it just be a nuclear war? It's a question that never seems to be addressed, perhaps because no one wants to address it, because just like no one in Israel wanted to see other than, you know, We're part of the team. We're going to go and get wingtip to wingtip with the Americans and going to destroy Iran. Wingtip with wingtip with the Americans. We're going to go in and destroy Russia.
Speaker 0: Yeah, I think this is the problem. They often think that the war is simply going to be something... low intensity that they can control. I think they often miss out on why Russia hasn't retaliated against the European countries yet, or against NATO in general, because once they do, the Russians also understand that there is no escalation control anymore. It's going to be impossible, and most likely it would escalate into an all-out war where nuclear weapons could quickly be introduced. I mean... And still, the idea is that if you can just push the Russians a bit more, a bit more, and once a war breaks out, like the Dutch are building camps for Russian prisoners and all this. I mean, I often make this point. How exactly do you think this war is going to play out? Once it starts, it's not going to be able to be controlled. The idea that Russian soldiers would go into Europe, the Europeans would capture them, send them to Dutch camps. I mean... It's so obscene, but it's not even within propaganda. They actually believe this. Otherwise, why would they build these camps? They actually think this is how the war would be fought. It does beg the question, though, is anyone actually behind the wheel on this one? Because this is absurd.
Speaker 1: This is the question. It's now come out in Israel. No one was asking that sort of question. And the same thing I would say, The whole of the strategy based on the European conviction that Russia would and must capitulate. It would have no choice against the combined force of Europe, so many countries, such a big GDP, such a military strength of NATO, that it would have no choice. And just as what happened in Iran reflected a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Iranians. So, such a conviction that Russia was going to capitulate or would easily capitulate is a complete misunderstanding of Russia and Russia's consciousness of their history with Europe.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for sharing your insights on these very depressing topics. I, as always, recommend that people read your Substack Conflicts Forum and a link will be in the description. So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Pepe Escobar: Iranian Victory & Rise of Greater https://youtu.be/H1Z6urkJxCo https://t.co/kEVVOWMPFB
Video Transcript AI Summary
Pepe Escobar and Glenn discuss the secrecy and content of a U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) allegedly meant to be signed Friday. Escobar says Iran has provided some information while the U.S. “seems to be not showing their cards.” He claims that he and Larry Johnson have direct access to the negotiating table via Pakistani mediators for the past few weeks. According to Escobar, three weeks earlier they reported a crucial phone call by Pezeshkin to Prime Minister of Pakistan Shabazz Sharif as an ultimatum to the U.S. to “behave” and stop “overstepping” thresholds, warning of “no more nuclear ambiguity.” Three days later, they said an Islamabad Accord was about to be signed and that a similar Trump deal had been ready to be signed six times previously, with Trump backing off. Escobar says their channel was erased from YouTube by direct order of the U.S. government after reporting this.
Escobar says the MOU’s key development involved Abbas Arakchi being in Islamabad over the weekend to finalize points with Pakistanis and that the discussions occurred alongside events including an Israeli attack on Dahyeh (south of Beirut). He claims Arakchi told the Pakistanis to warn the Americans that if Israel continued, Iran’s “fingers on the trigger” would be against Israel. Escobar says the White House responded by effectively committing to sign the MOU and to urge Israelis to stop, with the announcement tied to June 14. He further claims that details were withheld even as U.S. officials suggested Trump and Vance had electronically signed the MOU, while no evidence had been shown.
On Iran’s side, Escobar describes a delegated decision process: Ayatollah Khamenei’s “green light” is delegated to a Supreme National Security Council with 13 members, requiring a solid majority; he says only two are “reformists,” including President Pesachkin. Escobar says this is why Tehran has not provided official confirmation that it has already signed and expects signing in Geneva Friday, possibly involving Galibaf.
He characterizes the MOU as starting a process rather than delivering immediate peace: an initial stage of about 30 days, followed by negotiations in a 60-day period that would extend into late July/early August and across August and September, with acrimonious discussions. Escobar argues Trump’s domestic narrative is built around “twisting narratives” and playing for time, claiming Trump is selling the return of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz to a “victory,” emphasizing stabilizing oil and bond markets. Escobar says Trump’s stated “victory plan” is effectively about time before rearming the U.S. and resuming war after midterms.
Escobar claims Iran’s position on Lebanon is integral to the MOU: “Lebanon is Hezbollah, everything is part of the MOU.” He says Iran told the U.S. that if Israel breaks this, Iran will deal with Israel directly and that if the U.S. intervenes, it would be seen as breaking the MOU, prompting bilateral escalation. He says the Iranian warning includes that continued bombardment of Dahyeh and an Israeli plan aiming at “Gaza 2.0” (permanent occupation of southern Lebanon and turning Dahyeh into a new Gaza) would be met with Iranian retaliation.
Glenn asks how Trump will control Israel given Israeli media dissatisfaction about walking back from Lebanon. Escobar replies that the Iranian message already defines the response: Iran says it will bomb Israel “really, really hard” if Dahyeh attacks continue, and that the mediators understand Israel “can break this thing anytime.”
The discussion then turns to Pakistan’s diplomatic role. Escobar says Pakistan “played it very well,” involving top-level government figures in mediation. He credits Pakistan’s relationships with Iran and China and says China and Russia supported Pakistan’s mediation, including directing Pakistan to work harder. He argues India could not mediate because India aligned with Israel, referencing close India-Netanyahu ties before February 28. Escobar links Pakistan’s leverage to geoeconomics and infrastructure: Pakistan’s position in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Iran’s role in the International North-South Transportation Corridor via Chabahar, and increasing interconnection such as sister-port links between Chabahar and Gwadar. He claims six border crossings between Iran and Pakistan were opened for trade 24/7, and points to a rail link across Central Asia funded by China.
Escobar says Pakistan’s mediation is also supported by Gulf communications and defense ties, describing possible Pakistani military presence at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. He claims Pakistan is working to provide GCC states with a new “protective umbrella” backed by China, after GCC doubts about U.S. guarantees. He suggests UAE stances may shift as “the wind” changes, and that Iran sees negotiating with GCC through Pakistan as a workable structure, with deterrence implied by Iran’s ability to strike.
In closing, Glenn and Escobar argue about U.S. adjustment and future war risk, with Escobar stating the situation reflects a strategic defeat and that the U.S. is being expelled from Eurasia. They conclude that the next step is whether there will be actual “solid negotiations” during the first 30-day phase, and whether the U.S. is serious about discussing the “14 points” or using the MOU as “a crude play for time.”
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined again by Pepe Escobar, a prolific author and a journalist to discuss the Memorandum of Understanding, which is supposed to be signed on Friday between the United States and Iran. So thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks again. And well, there's a lot to discuss here because, well, first of all, a good place to start would be all the secrecy. around this memorandum of understanding. That is, the Iranians have made some of the information available, while the Americans seem to be not showing their cards at this point. So why the secrecy? And what do we actually know about what's in this memorandum of understanding?
Speaker 2: Well, Glenn, okay, I broke this before, but now I'm breaking to you and your audience in your channel. Larry Johnson and I have direct access to the negotiating table via the Pakistani mediators. And this has been going on for a few weeks now. So a few weeks, three weeks ago, Larry and I, we broke two stories back to back. The first one was a crucial phone call by Pezeshkin to Shabazz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan. Basically, it was a sort of ultimatum to the Americas. Behave. And if you keep overstepping all the thresholds and some of them that you know very, very well, we're going to have to do a demonstration. And you can imagine what sort of demonstration would that be? No more nuclear ambiguity.
Speaker 1: Well, the Americans read that and they were very, very angry.
Speaker 2: Three days later, we broke another story about the Islamabad Accord. It was practically, I wouldn't say signed, sealed, delivered, reminding us of Stevie Wonder, but it was about to be signed. One of our American sources confirmed to us that Trump had a similar deal in front of him, ready to be signed six times. And he always backed off. This one, this breaking news, we were explaining how the memorandum was being articulated, and this came from the Pakistanis who were on the table, negotiators. Three days later, our channel was erased from YouTube by a direct order of the U.S. government, Glenn. It was the kind of phone call that goes straight to Google, yank these people off. So now we are back with a special... very, very small channel picking up what we managed to build in two or three weeks. It's called Transition Protocol. And the difference with the zillions of other channels on YouTube is that we have our intel directly from people who actually manipulating the intel or bridging gaps with the intel. So it's not only the Pakistani mediators between Iran and the U.S., but this can be confirmed with sources in the U.S. and also with sources in Iran, Russia, and eventually China, or at least in China, people who have access to privileged information in China. So what we knew this weekend was essential, and this is something that we're discussing earlier this week. Abbas Arakshi was in Islamabad throughout the weekend. So he flew from Tehran, especially to Islamabad, to discuss the finer points and also the final points of the MOU. Then there was the Israeli attack on Dahyeh, the Shiite suburb south of Beirut. So the Iranians, via the Pakistanis, and they were actually in Islamabad together discussing. Arakshi told the Pakistanis, look, send a warning to the Americans now. If Israel doesn't stop doing what they're doing against Dahye and against the rest of Lebanon, we have our fingers on the trigger literally now against Israel. So the response from the White House this time was practically immediate. Okay, that's it. And we're going to sign the MOU. And obviously the people who were there talking to, they were not talking to Trump directly, somebody from the inner circle. We're going to tell the Israelis to back off. So this is what was happening on Sunday night. That's why there was this announcement. On Trump's birthday, June 14th, the day of that absolutely ghastly series of cage matches in the White House lawn, which passes for a cultural exhibition in the minds of the Trumpists, right? That's why we had the announcement by the U.S. on June 14th about the MOU. And obviously, immediately afterwards, you can imagine, and you saw for yourself and your audience saw all for yourselves, the crossfire all across the Beltway, the despair by the Zionist International, by all the Neocon International, by the Industrial Military Complex, everybody, about the MOU. But, of course, no details. Even the fact... according to them, that Trump and Vance already electronically signed the MOU. We have not seen evidence about that anywhere. On the Iranian side, Glenn, it's a much more complex process and much more sophisticated. It's not Ayatollah Moshtaba Khamenei, the leader, who's giving the green light for the MOU. He delegated the final decision to the Supreme National Security Council, 13 members, two of them only so-called reformists, including President Pesachkin, and the other ones much more hardcore. So basically, Mostaba instruct them, if you reach a solid majority among yourselves, the 13, if you have, let's say, 9, 10, 11, etc., you are authorized to sign the MOU. And that's why we don't have so far, today is Wednesday, an official confirmation on Tehran that Tehran has already signed the MOU. So probably it's going to be left to the last minute in Geneva on Friday, and probably Galibaf himself signing in Geneva. So this is where we are at the moment. As you can see, the back and forth is absolutely frantic. But the Iranians are keeping their cool, like they did prior to these past two weeks, let's put it this way. They made it clear to the Americans that they are not in a hurry. They exasperated Trump to a point of he was, you know, completely out of himself. And when they saw that there was a possibility of signing, they were ready to sign, which was Sunday. There was the Israeli incident. And then once again, they sent the message. It's up to you because Lebanon is part of the MOU and you know it. We have been negotiating about it for weeks. If Israel interferes with it, we're going after Israel ourselves now. So this was, let's say, the last straw that convinced the barbarian camel to actually play the game. But Glenn, we all know, we don't know what this is going to lead. now on. This is nothing. This is just a promise to start talking.
Speaker 1: That's a great point. Often it's portrayed as a deal, as if it will bring in peace, but it will usher in two months of negotiations. I'm curious though, one of the main things that could derail this whole thing is it's very difficult in the US for Trump to sell to his to these people that is in, you know, even the start of the ceasefire was based on the premise that, or at least it would have this point of departure to start from the 10 point plan of the Iranians. But as soon as the ceasefire was in place, Trump just walked that one back because there was no way for him to essentially show this to his own people because it was a defeat. But how about this? I mean, the piece that Trump is speaking of, which sounds like a victory, is very different from reality. So at some point, you know, the, the actual text of this memorandum of understanding will have to come out and, and, uh, it's going to be very hard for Trump to, you know, be the strong man, the one who can still mock Obama for the, you know, for the JCPOA when this, you know, by every metric, this is a huge setback for the U S all it's good. None of his objectives have been achieved. And, um, And the Iranians will definitely come out on top here in a big way. So how can Trump go to his hawks, all of these people, and essentially said that the war was a massive failure, we bled out our inventory, we're in a much weaker position now than we were before, and the Iranians will be significantly strengthened. I mean, he's been describing this war as a big success ever since day one. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Well, he does that, Glenn, by twisting narratives, by inventing narratives, by forgetting previous narratives, by even forgetting what he said before he changed the narrative. That's his modus operandi. So there are three stages for him to declare this a victory. And this is where we are at the moment. He's basically saying that... the oil will start to flow again through the Strait of Hormuz this Friday, which was the situation three months before he started the war on February 28th. So he's selling this as a victory. Now we have no problems with the oil anymore. So the oil markets are satisfied. The bond markets are satisfied. Thanks to me. And he said that yesterday again in Evian, not far from where I am. I didn't even bother to go there because it's an absolute waste of time. He actually said that yesterday. I ended 10 wars. No, no, no, no. It's not a joke, Glenn. He actually said that in front of everybody, including the guests. It's absolutely fascinating that there are four bricks at the G7 as guests. India, Brazil, Egypt, and UAE. So the G7 are desperate. They need to invite the BRICS to their summit. Otherwise, to be a little less irrelevant than they already are. Anyway, he also said, I am the boss. And it was no irony. He entered the room. Everybody was in the room looking at him. And he said, I am the boss. And they laughed like this nervously because they know he is the boss. So what is the boss selling? Number one. I liberated the free flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, which is something that we all had before the war. Number two, the oil markets are going back to normal and the bond markets are going back to normal. So it's mission accomplished, even without going on top of an aircraft carrier like W.A. And number three, he's playing for time. That's the most important part. He's playing for time. Nobody knows Okay, for what? Essentially to rearm the U.S. because the war can be resumed any time after the midterms. There won't be a resumption of war before the midterms. He wants to basically do damage control of his political capital in the run-up towards the midterms. So he can sell these as a victory. And of course, the real nitty gritty is not now. The real nitty gritty will start in the second stage after the MOU. The first stage is this first 30 days. Then the negotiations start at the period that has been established as 60 days and maybe expanded. So this will be around August, late July, early August. Then we're going to have August, September. these discussions going all over the place. And it's going to be very acrimonious, of course. But he can always sell that, look, we want peace. And Iran doesn't want peace. They don't want to sign anything and all that. And he is absolutely convinced he can sell that to domestic public opinion as a victory. And then, you know, cut some of his losses in the midterms. This is what it is. But the big, big picture, Glenn, which is something that you and I and many others study, which is the big war in Eurasia or against Eurasia, it's not going to change. It's going to be slowed down a little bit. Because, obviously, this is a massive strategic defeat of the U.S. Israel against Iran. You cannot disguise that. You only sell this as a victory to absolute imbeciles. But he's going to try very, very hard. And a lot of people, even inside the US, won't be convinced. And especially the Zyokons and industrial military complex, they are already, you know, total fury against it. But playing for time in the next two, three, four months suits him very, very well. The Iranians have no illusions about it. And everybody from Ghalibaf to the IRGC commanders are saying, look, we're paying attention to every move. And if they try anything, we have our finger on the trigger, which is absolutely correct. They haven't changed their position. If in between, like in the first 30 days of the MOU and probably in the first part of the 60 days negotiation, they get some sanctions relief. They actually get the $12 billion, which is supposed to be paid in the next few days. of a total of $24 billion. They get some extra money from the UAE. They got already $2 billion from the UAE. That famous Emirati flight that landed in Tehran was carrying $2 billion in cash. And this was, once again, organized by the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis were the middlemen between Abu Dhabi and Tehran. If they can get these, and of course, the end of the American blockade of Hormuz, and they continue to sell, especially to their Asian clients. For Iran, in the short term, excellent. Much better than it was until today. But they have no illusions long term. And no illusions about the negotiations.
Speaker 1: So, well, this is a problem for the United States. Well, again, if it's buying for time, a strategic pause to... prepare itself back for war. The problem is that even after a pause, they can replenish and regroup. They still don't have a viable war plan, though, how to defeat the Iranians. Again, they couldn't do it the first time around. But I find it interesting that the Iranians demanded this buy-in. That is, if they can restart the war later, at least they have to first kick in this money now in the beginning to essentially buy themselves two months. But even this memorandum of understanding, these two months of peace, which might drag on, how would the Israelis respond to this though? Because as you said, the Iranians are very clear that they consider Lebanon to be part of this. That is, they're not going to have a peace deal which essentially allows Israel and the United States to finish off Lebanon and then return to a war with Iran later on. They don't like this idea. They know the sequencing they would ideally have. So how will Trump control the Israelis here? Because I'm following some of the Israeli media and neither the political or the leadership or the media seem very happy about the idea that they have to walk back from Lebanon. And some are suggesting, well, perhaps we'll bomb Beirut less, but under no circumstance will they... depart Lebanon, but how exactly is this going to work?
Speaker 2: Well, I love your diplomatic touch, Glenn. I prefer to go ACDC highway to hell, you know, really hardcore. Anyway, if you look at the message that the Iranians delivered to the Americans on Sunday, this is how they're going to react. Essentially, they're telling the Americans, look, Lebanon is Hezbollah, everything is part of the MOU. You know it. We know it. If Israel breaks it, and if you don't help Israel, which is you should not do because they are breaking something that you agreed about, which is Lebanon as an integral part of the MOU, we are going to deal with them directly. So the answer is inbuilt in this attitude. The Iranians know. And the mediators know. We heard this from the Pakistanis at the table. Not only the Pakistanis at the table, but also other players they were talking to, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The most important, apart from UAE. They know that Israel can break this thing anytime they see fit, which is always. And they're ready for it and they have no illusions. But Iran has already told the Americans how they're going to react. Okay. If they break it, we're going to bomb Israel really, really hard. And there's nothing you can do about it. And if you intervene, then this means you break the MOU. If you break the MOU, we will also break the MOU. So that's the basic difference between now and the recent past in U.S.-Iran relations. If... Commitments are broken. Now it's not unilateral anymore. It's bilateral. And the Iranians have been sending this message to the Americas virtually every day. Glenn, I don't know if anybody in that ultra-mediocre circle around Trump actually understands what that means. I don't think they understand it yet. So they're going to have to see it live. If the bombing of Dahye especially continues, And the Israeli plan from Dahye is Gaza 2.0. Make no mistake about it. They want to occupy southern Lebanon permanently and to turn Dahye into a new Gaza. If that continues, the Iranians already said no way. So how is the Trump administration going to react to that? Is Trump willing to bomb his own MOU, which he is selling as a victory plan? as we speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I did want to ask about another aspect of this whole war, which is the role of Pakistan. I remember I was interviewed by some Indian TV networks when Pakistan began to take on this role as mediator, because they were asking essentially, why not India? Well, variety of reasons, but putting that aside. How do you see this diplomatic role of Pakistan? Because this is, you know, it's given it's quite an important diplomatic status in the region. And given that it's also a key player in this region, which is undergoing so much change, how do you see this shifting the dynamics?
Speaker 2: They played it very well, Glenn. Very, very well. In fact, none of us were expecting that they would pull it off. And of course, many of us independent analysts, we have deep reservation vis-a-vis the current government in Pakistan. It's another story. But if you look at the real politic and if you look at the facts on the ground and the facts that they managed to establish as mediators, it's immensely impressive. We heard that the whole top level of the Pakistani government is involved in the mediation. Literally everybody that matters. So it's not only the prime minister, General Asim Mounir, and the foreign minister, Dar. Everybody. Why they managed to do that? For several reasons. Very good relations with Iran. Very good relations, even more important, with China. Because China was backing what Pakistan was doing all the way. Remember the first meeting of the four Sunnis in Islamabad. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. The next morning, Dar hopped on a plane and went to Beijing to talk to Wang Yi and explain what they did to Wang Yi. And Wang Yi gave new directives. Guys, you have to try harder. You're not going anywhere. So China was always behind them. Even further behind, but in concertation with China, was Russia. Because everybody, okay, let's work all of us together for a deal because none of us want this war here because we know that the war is against all of us. It's a war against Eurasia integration by definition and against one full BRICS and SCO member. So, this member has to be defended by other BRICS and SCO members. More than obvious. Why not India? Key question, which the people who interview, they could never formulate it because they know the answer. Two days before the February 28th decapitation attack against Ayatollah Khamenei and the leadership, Modi and Netanyahu were exchanging kisses. An unbreakable relationship. Mother and father and all that crap. So that's not good. From the beginning, India was aligned with Israel. So they could never be a mediator between Iran and... Even though they need Iran for their version of the New Silk Road. The International North-South Transportation Corridor, once again, three bricks. Russia, Iran, and India. And India needs it badly because this is their new Silk Road towards Afghanistan and Central Asia using the port of Shabahar. So they betrayed themselves once again, which the Indians are specialists in doing that, right? Meanwhile, with the back of China, with the full backing of China, Pakistan was very busy organizing this alignment. between Iran, Pakistan, and China. Not only geopolitical, diplomatic, but also geoeconomic. And that's where the New Silk Roads and Eurasia integration come into the picture once again. It's our favorite theme in your line of work and my line of work for almost two decades. The shortest way over land between Iran and China to trade is not via Central Asia. It's via Pakistan. Very, very simple. Pakistan is part of the New Silk Road, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Kashgar, Islamabad, across Balochistan, Gwadar Port. Iran is part of the International South Transportation Corridor, using Chabahar once again as the key port going to India. Chinese tankers, as I saw by myself last year when I went to Chabahar, they also go to, you know, they also do their trade stopping Chabahar, not only in Bandar Abbas. And now, which is something that none of us could even imagine three months ago, the port of Chabahar and the port of Gwadar now are sister ports. There's only 80 kilometers between them. So Chabahar in Balochistan, Gwadar in the Arabian Sea, in Pakistan and Balochistan. Iran is using, when the American blockade started, Iran was started to use Gwadar as an Iranian port, sister to Chabahar. And sooner or later, depending on how things evolve, the Chinese are already looking at Chabahar and said, ah, maybe we can get another Iranian port for us. And then the Indians will be once again sidelined. because they did not bet in the right horse once again. So when the Pakistanis announced a few weeks ago that there were six border crossings between Iran and Pakistan were free for trade anytime, 24-7, this was also a Chinese suggestion. Look, you have all these border trades with Iran. They are being more or less suffocated by the maritime blockade. So give them overland passes. That's exactly what happened. And also, of course, the very important railway from Xinjiang across Central Asia, crossing from Turkmenistan to Iran, which was, by the way, built and paid for by the Chinese. Another corridor of the New Silk Roads. So all... Everything is interconnected and everything explains why Pakistan, between Iran and China, would have to be the mediator from the Iranian side. Plus the very good relations between Pakistan and the GCC, especially with Qatar and in the case of Saudi Arabia, even more because they have a military pact. And, of course, the fact that you have a field marshal, Simonin, picking up the phone and Donald Trump on the other side immediately answers. Very few people can do that. So they had goodwill from all the players, all the major players. Okay, it's a very long story on... what they're going to do with their new geopolitical position, etc. Are they going to lean this way or that? That's another story. In terms of facilitating a measure of dialogue between Washington and Tehran, they managed to pull it off. And this is an outstanding achievement. But never forget, they could do this because they had China in the back overseeing everything.
Speaker 1: I remember a decade ago, I I wrote a book on this, Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for Greater Eurasia. I was pointing out how this dynamic was working because the Chinese connecting with not just with Pakistan, but also towards Iran. And also this was complemented by what the Russians were doing in that region as well. Even back then, I hadn't expected Pakistan to play such an active role. I thought it would be more shaped by its external environment rather than taking this more autonomous, independent role. So this surprised me as well.
Speaker 2: We were all stunned, Glenn. We were all absolutely stunned. So, okay, we have to give them credit for it. And of course, they have their own reasons. They want to sort of pacify Balochistan, which is very complicated with the Balochistan Liberation Movement, separatists and all that, border with Iran. They want more, they want energy from Iran. Very, very important. And this leads to a story that many of us were following 15 years ago, at least. The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, which the Americans never allowed to proceed. Now, The coast is clear to finally... The Iranian part of the pipeline is already built. The Iranians offered a few years ago to pay for the Pakistani stretch. So now this is inevitable. So we're going to have the IEP pipeline finally. Finally. This is one of those pipeline-stan soap operas that never end. This time we're going to have a happy ending. So they need Iran for... And of course, the geoeconomic integration of West Asia and South Asia favors Pakistan as well, with the backing of China and interlocking with the New Silk Roads.
Speaker 1: Well, if you take a step back, what does this mean for how the United States have to adjust to this? I mean, they're not going to like it. They probably will fight tooth and nail. Of course. But at some point, ignoring reality comes at a high cost. And we're currently seeing the U.S. draw down its forces in Europe and also, I guess, lesser extent in the Middle East now. Some of it forced, of course, by its bases being bombed out in the Gulf states, but also some of the fronts they were building up against Iran, they're seemingly drawing down now, which is some reason for optimism that this might hold, at least if the reports are correct. And do you see the United States, I guess... pulling back from Europe and the Middle East, I would have assumed that in the wider, in my ideal scenario for the United States, ideal being defined as how it would optimally adjust to new international distribution of power, it can't be everywhere. I would assume that the ideal for the US is to prioritize the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. This is where China is. I mean, when I say optimal, not in the normative sense, but in the... in the international distribution of power, where it wants to focus its power. In other words, it would have to draw down in the Middle East and Europe. It didn't seem like it wanted to do this first, but now it seems it's being forced to do so. Or do you read the situation a bit differently?
Speaker 2: They are being forced to do that because they are being slowly, and now not so slowly, but surely being expelled from Eurasia. Period. Period. This is the key point. It's a strategic defeat against Iran. So this is a huge step towards expelling the U.S. from Eurasia. And it's no wonder that the national security strategy privileges the Western Hemisphere. So we can expect a lot of trouble for Latin America from now on. That's out of the question. starting with the elections in Brazil later this year, which will be heavily interfered with. No question at all. Did you see that Trump didn't even shake hands with Lula at the G7? So it's very, very, the situation is very, very tense. And, of course, the strategic threat number one, according to the plutocracy that rules the U.S., is China. So it is East Asia. Absolutely. It is Taiwan and the South China Sea. No question. Everything. So obviously, compared to these two fronts, West Asia, it's not so essential. But how they are going to digest this massive strategic geopolitical defeat, that's another story. This is going to enrage the people at the top, the elites in the back. The plutocrats, all of them, of course. And there will be revenge. There will be blood. It's a revengeful nation. It's the logic of revenge always predominates. So maybe they will back off for a while, regroup, but they will go after Iran again. There's no question about that. Maybe not this year, but starting next year.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to avoid that. I just have a hard time imagining the US calling it a day. I mean, I remember all the talking heads in the United States, on all the TV networks, they had the same slogan when things started to go poorly in the war against Iran. They were all saying in unison, this is short-term pain for long-term gain. This was the talking point. But it's turning out to be a very short-term pain for... long-term strategic defeat. I mean, this is looking quite terrible, but again, no one wants to take political ownership of this and nobody wants to adjust to this new diminished role in the world, especially given, you know, with Israel there as well, it becomes very politically sensitive. So they can't accept this defeat, but on the other hand, there's not much they can do. So it does make the question what they're going to do, but But meanwhile, let's say they wait a whole year before they restart this war. The world will look like a very different place a year from now. I mean, by 20, not even a whole year, but even by 2027. Which kind of takes me to my last question, which is about the Gulf states. How are they going to look after this? Because if the Americans are telling them to sit idly by, we might try to do this over again in a year from now. I mean, they will have to adjust to realities if they want to survive. I mean, they don't have to like Iran. They can hate it by all their heart. But at some point, you have to bet on the winning horse. You have to adjust to the reality that Iran is now administrating the Strait of Hormuz, and the US probably won't be able to defeat them. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And that's where Pakistan comes in again because they are already working on it. Because they have very good channels of communication with all the GCC Petro-Monarchies. And because they are proving to them, look, we worked hard on your concerns, your recommendations, your suggestions. to get the MOU and to get the negotiations going. We were listening not only to Iran, but to all of you at the same time and all that. And obviously they understand that. Qatar understands this very well. MBS understands this very well. And the relationship MBS and Islamabad, very, very close. The military pact, etc. There are a lot of... Apparently there are already 8,000 Pakistani soldiers in Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia with lots of fighter jets. So Pakistan is working to convince, especially the Saudis, but some other GCC players, look, there's going to be a new protective umbrella here. And we offer our services to be your umbrella. And we're going to have a very, very special guest in the background supporting everything we're doing. China. Can you imagine the GCC saying no to this arrangement? Not going to happen. And obviously they saw, they experienced by themselves that their petrodollar alliance with the U.S. is worth nothing. When push came to shove, the U.S. was defending their aircraft carrier in West Asia, not the GCC petromonarchies. So they learned their lesson. At least we assume they learned their lesson. Some more than others, of course. The UAE is still... The Pakistani negotiators, they told Larry and I something about a month ago which stuck. They say, look, wait, wait a while. Wait like three months. The UAE, they will see which way the wind is blowing and they will want to have an accommodation with Iran as well. So I kept this in the back of my mind all the time because it's already happening, sort of. You know, they are not as antagonistic towards Iran as they were a month ago. And of course, they're going to have to live with Iran as the number one power in that part of West Asia. They cannot escape that. Otherwise, it's very simple. The Iranian center masses, look, we already destroyed the Dubai business model. For us to destroy the Abu Dhabi energy model is very, very easy. Just a few strikes. That's it. We can do it anytime we want. So negotiating table again, now between GCC and Iran with Pakistan in the middle. you know, as the go-betweens. Perfectly. And once again, coming back to what you were expressing, your concerns, will the U.S. admit that this is the new rules of the game regionally? They will never admit it, but what can they do? Can they seduce the GCC petromonarchies back? No, they cannot. Can they bribe them? No, they cannot. Can they promise that they're going to deal with Iran? They cannot. Can they promise that they're going to give them as much relevance as they give to Israel? They cannot. There you go. So the Pakistanis and the Chinese are, once again, looking long-term. So this protective umbrella will change, of course. And Iran is looking at it, and because China is involved... they can feel relatively comfortable with that because they can think that this will not turn against them in the long run. So the role of China in the back of it all is absolutely essential. But this is a very complicated case, Glenn. We as foreigners, we cannot have an in-depth conversation in China about these matters because they consider it a matter of national security of China. And they will never discuss this with foreigners. So I expect the next time I go there, I can talk to some of my, let's say, former military connections, for that matter. And they will have a few nuggets because they still know people inside the machinery of government, right? But this is going to take a little while. But once again, they are absolute masters of applying Sun Tzu, right? They don't have to raise a finger or have a shot at anything. And in the end, they get what they want with their connections and, of course, playing go. They were playing go in West Asia with the Americans. They were encircling the Americans in a way that the Americans didn't even see it coming.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, though, when they went to war against Iran, the Americans expecting this quick victory. I think not many people realized that they were also gambling on the entire Gulf States alliance because, well, not just their U.S. base being bombed out, but of course, the security guarantees seeming much less convincing. And if the Gulf State alliance begins to crumble, that means the petrodollar system begins to crumble. If this goes away, the AI bubble can't sustain itself. which means that the entire AI war and economic war with China takes a very dark turn for the Americans. I mean, there's a massive potential unraveling here that looks more and more likely. Again, I don't want to make any predictions because this is a horrible time for predictions. Too many things are happening too fast. I mean, with none of the variables remaining constant here, it's It's not a great time to make predictions, but you do see this coming apart at the seams. This isn't going to go very well, I think. Any final words?
Speaker 2: Well, we are all very curious to see if there are going to be actual solid negotiations, even in this first 30-day phase of the memorandum of understanding. So this is where we are at the moment. I think after a few days... All of us will have a clear idea if the Americans are serious about discussing all the 14 points, or this is just a crude play for time. I think this is, in terms of predictions, Glenn, this is as far as we can go at the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. Well, I kind of thought myself that I almost took for granted that this defeat would be too much for the Americans to swallow, that they would essentially seek some kind of a negotiation to buy for time and regroup and then have another go at it. But again, this isn't your average defeat. This is going to be very painful. So I think I could be wrong. It could be that Trump's willing to, you know, he recognized that they bid over more than they can chew and he just wants to get away from this. So I, yeah, I'm very cautious about making predictions these days.
Speaker 2: Absolutely correct. All of us. To be very Chinese about it, we just are watching at the margins the body float by the river. That's where we are at the moment.
Speaker 1: Well, Pepe, thank you so much for taking time.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 1: Let's catch up again soon.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 0: Cheers. Thank you. Bye-bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Richard Wolff: U.S. Defeat in Iran & End of the U.S Empire https://youtu.be/4-HvjYTUbZs https://t.co/o3uC04eaYL
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Richard Wolff discusses the US-Iran situation framed as a memorandum of understanding rather than a peace agreement, arguing that it represents a tactical retreat by Washington after misjudging its capabilities and overreaching. He says the underlying drive toward overreach will persist and that the Middle East/Western Asia remains an open arena—especially if Israeli leadership shifts in Lebanon or if Bennett’s approach to Turkey continues, with implications for Turkey’s ties to NATO, Russia, and the United States. Wolff also argues that American media and centrist Democrats would not reduce support for Israel or European stances on Ukraine if Democrats win in November, and that international alignments already reflect that pattern.
On economic consequences, Wolff argues Iran “won” regardless of what the memorandum says, while emphasizing uncertainty in oil and gas markets, strategic petroleum reserve depletion, and how long prices might remain lower even if they fall. He frames these outcomes as evidence of a declining American empire whose deterioration shapes where and when overreach happens, producing devastating consequences. He adds that many voices do not yet connect declining-empire dynamics to current events.
A major “momentous consequence,” Wolff says, is the Strait of Hormuz shifting from US authority to Iranian management via a fee rather than a toll, with the fee described as covering costs such as navigation assistance, safety infrastructure, safe and rescue, and environmental issues. He characterizes this as a validation of “declining empire” logic and a change of management from the United States as the authority in fact to Iran as the authority in fact, with Iranian oversight and missile deterrence described as extending throughout the strait. Wolff says US control can still be challenged through actions such as reimposing blockades or bombing again, and he notes that headlines about potential renewed bombing exist. He links the result to broader security turmoil for Israel, Gulf states, and Europe.
Wolff further argues that European Russophobia functions politically to deflect anxieties and justify political and economic adjustments, describing an internal European squeeze between the United States and China. He characterizes European political leadership as using Russia as a “usual suspect” while responding to urgent demands for government support from business, including energy-cost relief and shifts in welfare-state spending. He suggests the United States is “throwing up disasters” as it crashes downward in its historical trajectory, including misjudging Iran and distancing from allies.
In discussing global ramifications, Wolff shifts to an economic lens: he portrays China as a “bemused spectator” focused on growth, avoiding being bombed, building military capacity, and benefiting from BRICS alignment. He says Iran’s BRICS membership contributed to support from Russia and China and changes the balance between BRICS and the G7, predicting that Gulf and Asian states that hesitated about BRICS will hesitate less. He describes the event as another indication that countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia are already in BRICS, Turkey may join, and questions remain about Turkey’s relationship to NATO.
Wolff also argues that within the United States, support for Israel has shifted: he claims Israel lost the majority of American people, citing lobbying power and political alignment as weaker than during his lifetime. He gives an example from New York City, where a Muslim socialist mayoral candidate reportedly said he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if Netanyahu comes to New York, and where, Wolff says, the majority voted for him. He connects this to broader questioning of capitalism and the decline of the empire pulling down the economic system expressed through it.
When asked “where this is all going,” Wolff says China will likely be the major player deciding whether the next phase becomes a Chinese empire or some form of genuine multilateral order beyond empire logic. He compares the risk to how empires provoke revolutions against them, and he calls for domestic economic arrangements that can support multilateral working-out rather than war-driven national-state competition. He argues capitalism’s dynamics and internal wealth concentration drive great-power conflict outcomes, linking imperial overreach and decline to economic structure.
As a final thought, Wolff ties the empire question to democratic legitimacy and wealth concentration, citing Felix Frankfurter’s statement that great concentrations of wealth cannot coexist with democracy. He describes the United States as having extreme inequality and a government “bought and paid for,” and he uses Israel as an example: he claims US funding for Israel, Israel funding AIPAC, and AIPAC buying the government that funds Israel. He concludes that handling capitalism’s dynamic is central to how the world’s great-power trajectory—especially China’s—turns out, suggesting internal economic management will determine whether China avoids the “evolutionary dead end” he attributes to the United States.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Professor Richard Wolff to discuss the war on Iran, or more specifically, what is seemingly not a peace agreement, but a memorandum of understanding. So thank you for coming on. When we look at the war against Iran, it seems now with this deal that either the US is looking for de-escalation or peace. I guess why one can come with many explanation. It exhausted its military capabilities. It doesn't look good for the midterms. The global economy is being pushed off a cliff. So again, it's still unclear, I think, if this is a temporary pause or the US is actually accepting a new and much less favorable status quo. But from where we stand today, how do you read the situation in terms of the economic consequences of the Iran war?
Speaker 1: Okay, let me tell you how it appears to me. Number one, in response to what you just said, as an American—I was born here, I've lived and worked here in the United States all my life—I wish I could believe even a little bit that this is the end of the story, that a lesson has been learned, a deal has been more or less worked out, and that the United States is afraid of getting anywhere near any of this again. I wish that that were true. I don't believe it, not even a little bit. For the people who run this country, this is a tactical retreat beaten because they lost a war. They misjudged the situation. They misjudged their own capacity. They did a classic overreach of an empire going down. I don't think they learned what that means, which therefore translates into they will overreach again. And it's only a question of the specific situation as to how that happens, exactly when it happens, the form it takes. Could it be the Middle East again or Western Asia? Absolutely. Is that issue done? Not at all. If Mr. Netanyahu stays there and continues the business in Lebanon, that would be an opportunity. If Mr. Netanyahu loses his job and goes to jail and Mr. Bennett replaces him, he's already told us is going to deal with Turkey as if it were the new Iran, to quote him. And therefore, Lord knows where that's going to go in terms of Turkey, its relationship to NATO, its relationship to Russia, its relationship to the United States. This is as open an area of overreach as you could want. It screams for mistakes to be made. by a group of people in charge in Washington who have now demonstrated that the magnitude of the mistaken evaluations they can make are literally earth-shattering. And so what do you expect from Mr. Trump or Mr. Hegseth or any of the other—Vance, Rubio—look at them. They either initiate bad decisions or accommodate them. that's all. They do not prevent them. They haven't the interest. They haven't the capability. Meanwhile, the American media, even though they will offer some criticism, I wish I could tell you that the criticism is pointing in what you and I might hope for, but it isn't. If the Democrats defeat the Republicans in November, which is not that far away, and if the Democrats who win the official centrist party-dominating Democrats, they will do more, not less, to support Israel. They will do more, not less, to support the Europeans around the Ukraine. So what exactly is it that we should be looking forward to? Here's what, if you want my opinion, here's what is hopeful. The fact is that Iran won. No matter what this memorandum does or doesn't say, and no matter where it goes, that's clear. That is even clear here in the United States, where there is an effort to hide that that is impressive but not successful. And so you will have the left wing, the right wing, for different reasons and with different objectives, all agreeing to make it clear that this is not good, what has just happened here, not at all. And you can even see it in the ambiguity of the stock market. On the one hand, it wants to build up the notion that gasoline and oil will be cheaper than they have been. On the other hand, it's not so clear, it's not so sure, and it's not so clear how long it'll take for to get them down and how long they'll stay down even if you get them down and what role will be played by refilling the reservoirs of strategic reserve that were used up over the last two, three months because of all of this, which in the United States is nearly the entire reserve that was created. China also used up much of its reserve. How's that going to all be worked out? If you put all this together, it's not just that we don't know, but the lessons here are that we cannot imagine that we won't be victimized by an empire overreach because the empire that's declining and that just overreached doesn't understand what I just said, doesn't see it that way, doesn't want to see it that way, will not accept the notion of that. Even the most critical voices, people that I agree with and I learn from and that I appreciate and that appear among other places on your program, I don't think quite want to go there yet. That there's relatively few who understand the concept a declining empire with much care and even fewer who link that to what's going on, even though in my judgment that's the key issue. The deterioration of the empire will shape how much overreach happens where and when and with what kind of devastating consequences.
Speaker 0: How about the significance, though, of the Strait of Hormuz falling under, let's say, Iranian administration? Because from what I understand in the Memorandum of Understanding, again, we haven't seen the text yet, but the Iranians will not take a toll, which is defined as merely money for passing through, but they do take a fee. So apparently the difference between a toll and a fee is that the fee includes the operation of the strait, providing... navigation assistance for the different vessels, safety infrastructure, safe and rescue, environmental issues. So it's supposed to cover all of this. I guess it's not that strange in, well, it's not unprecedented, I think, because you see in the Bosphorus, for example, the Turks will take such a fee. But it didn't exist before. and it will exist now. It also suggests that this very key maritime transportation corridor is not going to be under US control. It's going to be at the mercy of Iran, if you will. What is the economic and security significance of this outcome? People can complain until they're blue in the face, but if the US could take it under their control, they would, but they can't. There has to be some recognition of this new reality, no matter how unjust one thinks it is.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't find it unjust myself, but let me respond to your question or your issue. I think you're absolutely right. I think that is one of the momentous consequences, and I would classify it as a staggering validation of the notion of a declining empire. There was a moment during the last few weeks when Trump was giving answers to reporters, and the issue that you just raised came up. And he waved his finger, as he likes to do, and says, well, the Strait will be open, and there'll be no fees or no charges, not at all. We'll be watching. And if anything, What is he saying? Before the United States owned and operated that passage and made the determination to let it be free, given the allies that depended on it, given the way directly and indirectly the United States depended on passage there, let it be. Who cares? It's a free passage. Now the Iranians have shown, no it isn't. we are going to take an interest in it, and we are going to supervise, and we are going to overshadow it with missiles that nobody can take from us. And if you don't behave in the way we have declared, we have shown you we will obliterate your military bases in the Gulf area. We will attack your allies. We will attack anybody you use as a base to interfere with us. I mean, that's it. An empire either runs the situation or it doesn't. What just happened was a change of management from the United States as the authority in fact to Iran as the authority in fact. And of course, if you can solve your diplomatic absurdity by changing the word toll to the word fee, and if this gives you a lot of satisfaction, go ahead. All the principles in the game know what we're doing here. I have worked in my life with countless corporations. I know how they keep the books. And they will move the the item, the expenditure, or the receipt from one category to another to manage their tax bill, to manage their public relations image, to manage their annual stock report. And they'll move them differently. And they'll get caught from time to time doing it. And that just means they have to be more careful about how they do it. When you calculate a fee for the costs you have, that include the missile batteries? That's a cost. You have to have a lot of missile batteries aimed such that you can get at a ship anywhere in that strait. They will do that, of course. All of those are costs that they can allocate to the running of this strait. The bottom line here is either the United States accepts that control of the Strait of Hormuz is now no longer the American prerogative. It belongs to Iran. Does that mean the United States cannot challenge it? Absolutely, it could. Mr. Trump can reimpose the blockade that he has now removed. If I understand the memorandum, it includes the removal of the blockades, etc., etc. But he could reimpose the blockade, setting aside how effective it was or wasn't. But he could. He could bomb again. In fact, this morning, the headlines in this country—I don't know what you have in Europe—but in this country, the headlines were he said he might bomb again. I quote you, if the Iranians don't behave, I will bomb them again. Okay. aside the crude language. We're used to it by now. But it is also correct. He's right. That's what we will do. And if the Democrats get in there, it's not at all clear that they won't do the same. It was Democratic Party operatives who did much of the work moving NATO closer and closer to the Soviet Union and then to Russia. It was Democrats who pushed all of that. It was Democrats who have embraced Israel's political objectives. It was Democrats who have been pursuing the pro-Palestinians, as they call them, who are really not pro-Palestinian in this country. They are anti-Israel genocide, but the Democrats are right in there doing what they think needs to be done and being very hostile to the progressive Democrats. We have some of those like Bernie Sanders and others who are trying to push in the other way, but they are very much secondary. So this is, you know, it's a little bit like hoping that Mr. Netanyahu leaves without understanding Israeli politics to indicate No, no, no, that's not going to solve the problem because you have in Israel the clear majority of which want to do what they are doing. So, bottom line, this is a momentous event. It is a step, a milestone in the decline of the American empire. No question about it. The damage to an American ally, in this case Israel, obvious. The turmoil in Israel as a result, fairly obvious. The self-confidence of the Iranians and the fact that the other Gulf countries are busily reorganizing their relationships to Iran because they understand that they're right in the firing line of this game. For them, the decline of the American empire is an existential threat That was their protection. And by the way, and I know you discussed this on your program, for me that's the same issue as Ukraine and Europe. The Europeans have had to learn that having made a decision for the last 75 years to completely rely on the United States left them open to what Mr. Trump is now doing. which is cutting them off. They bet on the wrong horse, and now the reality that that horse is limping has settled in, and a leadership in Europe, political leadership, hangs on to a desperate Russophobia because they don't know what else to do since they're going to otherwise be left with a population that says, you, the leaders, have been in bed with the Americans for the last 75 years, and look what it has done to us. We're deindustrializing. We're falling behind. The world is the oyster of the United States and China, and Europe is an afterthought, mainly interesting for tourism. This is not what we wanted. And you did it because you allied with the United States. How do you protect against that? Answer, you come up with a worse enemy. You can distract and deflect your people by focusing on an urgent danger that you have to hype all the time so that people like you and me and many others looking at this wondering, where does this hysteria come from? The hysteria, like any psychologist would tell you, is a clue that there's something important going on here. It doesn't have to be what they say, but something important. The answer is it's an existential threat to an entire political class that has made its bed in a place that turned out to be deeply insecure. By the way, it's even worse for the employer class because the European employer class, the capitalists, they are finding themselves squeezed between the United States and China. They're desperate and they're turning to their political leaders and they're saying, you have to help us. You have to subsidize us. You have to give us cheap money. You have to compensate for the energy costs that have gone crazy. And we know that you can't do that while you maintain welfare state that you have built up in the 20th century. That has to go. You have to kill that welfare state and give us the money in military Keynesianism etc. to get us through this bad period. And we don't care how you do it. You must do it. And the political class in Europe, how do they do it? Russophobia. You can justify—look at Germany—you can justify building up your defense establishment by making Russia the great bugaboo. Good for your politicians. You know, there's a joke in the American lexicon of Western movies, cowboy movies, and the joke—it's repeated endlessly in movies—goes like this. A group of robbers ride into town and they rob the local bank. and the population is outraged their bank has been robbed. And they start to be angry at the sheriff because it's the job of the sheriff to prevent that occurrence. And the sheriff, with a big grin on his face, orders his deputies go out there and round up the usual suspects. In other words, rather than deal with the criticism of his community that he has failed, comes up with someone they can vent their rage on, the usual suspects. Well, the usual suspect for you in European politics is Russia, is the Soviet Union, is the whole history basically since 1917, the Bolshevik menace, and on and on. So, with little imagination, they have gone to work pacifying both their political anxieties and the urgent demand for government support that the business community imposes on them. And for me, this is all grist of a mill. This is the United States who, for its own reasons, has to drop its European allies, drop Canada and Mexico, now misjudge Iran, drop Israel. Look at it. It's an empire in decline and it is throwing up disasters as it crashes downward in its historical trajectory.
Speaker 0: You mentioned a memorandum of understanding and Trump making threats of using force again. He did also say that the memorandum of understanding, if he doesn't like it, he will go back to bombing the Iranians. You know, he said something like smack them in the middle of their head. But it is interesting because in the memorandum of understanding, supposedly it says that during these times of negotiations, there should be no use of force or threat of use of force. So, you know, it's not, worth much because he's he doesn't he's not the planning to abide by it i think it's like over the past 30 plus years all international deals are meant to constrain the other side not uh not the hegemon so i think there's some getting used to this new world even after being defeated uh but you'd said something interesting though about the the the gulf states they have to recognize reality too that is they can't bet everything on a losing horse and uh Well, if you take a step back, the Strait of Malacca, Iran, you know, it has a very central role in the, not just the US economy, but the world economy. Again, from 91, when the US went off the gold standard, it kind of replaced it with the petrodollar in 73 by having the Gulf states sell their oil in US dollars. In modern terms, this does everything. It finances American artificial intelligence in the rivalry against China. So it What could be the ripple effects here or the ramifications? Because this goes well beyond the U.S.-Iranians dispute. This can, I guess, shake the entire global economy and the U.S. empire for that sake.
Speaker 1: Yes, it can. But let me be an economist for a moment with you. All of this, what we might call Sturm und Drang, the old German term, China, as far as I can see, is a bemused spectator. China is busy growing its economy, and in the long run that has brought China every benefit imaginable. It is not being bombed. It is not wasting resources. bombing anybody. It is building up its military. It would be crazy if it didn't and it has the resources to do so and it continues to grow. I want to remind people Iran is a member of the BRICS. Iran just won a war and war that was not just against Iran, as everybody knows, any more than Ukraine is just about Ukraine. It's a war between Russia and the West, and in many ways Iran is a struggle between the BRICS, that is China and its allies on one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. You even have it, if you didn't see it before, we have the fact that the G7 are meeting outside of Geneva, Switzerland, as we talk over the last few days, and are limping around trying to figure out which way to go. The countries announced their quote-unquote support for the United States. I find that stunning. You don't know what's in the document. and you are only going to support it. That's the behavior of somebody who is a servant. That's a servant mentality. They still believe that they should hold on to their old position of ally of the United States, no matter how the United States treats them. You're giving a lesson even to the Democrats here that there is no need to work something out with the Europeans. Very little has to be given to them. A good bit can be taken from them. If you understand the logic, one of the reasons you have Russophobia in the way we witness is because you can generate a kind of weird support in the United States for this sort of hostility, and that is what holds on to a little bit of support here in the United States because the United States is afraid not so much of Russia but of the Russia-China connection, and the Europeans are a little bit useful in deflecting some of that. But other than that, this is a display of BRICS emerging. I think you're going to see Gulf states, Asian states that had hesitated about linking up with the BRICS, they will now hesitate less. They will understand that you can say over and over again, as they do, that the BRICS is just an economic association. It's not a military. You can't draw those lines. Iran benefited not just from the obvious support it got from Russia and from China, but because it was part of the BRICS. There's all kinds of benefits, direct and indirect, that Iran was able to count on. Had it not been part of the BRICS, probably would have gotten less support that way. And who are we to say without knowing better how important all of that was? And it's a risk no government could take. You want that support, as much of it as you can possibly get. So yeah, I think it changes the balance between the BRICS as an alliance on the one hand and the G7 on the other. The G7 strikes me as weaker and weaker and weaker, and the BRICS are becoming stronger and stronger. This event with Iran is yet another indication. Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are now the big countries. Saudi Arabia and Iran are already in the BRICS. Turkey isn't yet, but my guess is will be soon. Will they stay in NATO? Will they quit NATO? The ambiguity of the Muslim Turkey in relationship to Christian Europe and all of that lurks in the background to make all of this even more complicated. And if the United States detaches from Israel, and let me make a point about that. I have lived, as I said, all my life in the United States and during that time the support for Israel was an enormously majoritarian support. It had to do with a long-standing problem of anti-Semitism inside the United States, which remains, and which has created, how shall I put it, a backlash over a century of people who feel it's important not to do that, not to go in that direction. Then there's empathy and sympathy for what happened in the Holocaust in Nazis and all of that. So you had a kind of a sense of Israel as a courageous effort of victims of a genocide recollecting themselves and phrases like a people without land finally get a land that has no people, blah, blah. Looking not too closely at that so you could believe it even though it was never true, but you could believe it. And I have watched to this day the majority opinion in the United States is now not in favor. Israel lost the majority of the American people. It really did. And that despite the closeness of the two countries politically, the closeness militarily, the fact that probably if not the largest and one of the five most important political financial lobbying powerhouses in this country, AIPAC, is involved in almost every election, not just at the federal level but often at the state level, trying to control the politics so that it remains friendly. All of that is weaker today than it has been in my lifetime. That means that the Israeli problem is not only the disaster of what happened with Iran, which is crucial, but it is happening at the same time that inside the United States the opinion is gone. Who knows? But I don't think that's coming back. I think the direction of change is not going to be reversed anytime soon. I'll give you one example. I'm talking to you from New York City, where I live and where I am right now, and we just elected last November a new mayor, a nice young man named Zoran Mamdani, who is a Muslim who is a socialist, self-definition, and who in answer to a reporter's question, what will you do if Benjamin Netanyahu comes to New York? His answer was, I will have him arrested. All right? This is the largest Jewish community in the United States, right here in New York City. The majority of them voted for him. That wasn't about him. That was about not wanting to be part of the old Republican and Democratic establishment. That is the reality of this country, and it would be a mistake. I tell this to my colleagues in the field of international relations, people I admire and respect, John Mearsheimer, people you know and that you deal with as well, that I understand the logic of great power politics, but it is a mistake not to always ask why the great powers do what they do. It isn't because of the uniqueness of the great power relationship. It's also, and often in the main, a reflection of what's underneath that has to be evaluated and taken to. Capitalism in this country is in trouble. The decline of this empire is also pulling down the economic system of which the empire, after all, was an expression. That shouldn't surprise anyone. And the questioning of capitalism is greater now than at any time in my lifetime. And it's a big difference already and becomes more so as the city of New York electing socialist who has to then be placated, for example, by Jamie Dimon, the head of our largest bank, the JPMorgan Chase Bank, who has to placate our new mayor because he's a little worried about where that might go, as he should be.
Speaker 0: Where do you think this is all going, Danes? I mean, is this unraveling of the empire, unraveling of the republic? Because a lot of things are impacted by this. We see, as you mentioned, the fragmentation of the transatlantic relationship. I mean, I know that the European leaders are willing to bend over backwards in order to appease or bow to Trump and to try to keep the partnership alive. But by ignoring their basic national interests, they're just building up a lot of resentment and a powerful opposition ready to reverse everything. So it's not sustainable. We see their relationship with Israel under tension. The Arab states, they will also have to adjust to new realities. In East Asia, they also have to make some conclusions based on the Well, the decline of the US within America, we see Trump will be humiliated. This is going to be very difficult for his government to survive. And whoever comes after Trump, every US president seems to run on the idea that we will restore greatness. But if being a successful president requires you to adjust to new realities, that is a multipolar world, it's going to be I mean, this will shake the foundation of the US as well. How does this play into the whole, I guess, political economic situation in the world? Because it's not just America standing alone. I mean, this is for the past 30 plus years, the entire world order has been organized around the US empire. What happens? I guess it's a very, very big question, but what happens next?
Speaker 1: All I can offer, I mean, you're right. It's a big question. It's the great question they ask. I think what we're going to see and that the major player in it, not the only player, but the major player in it will likely be China. They're going to have to decide, the Chinese, together with the rest of the world, whether the next phase of our history as a planet will be—and I'm going to be brutally brief here, but to get the idea across—are we going to move to a Chinese empire? Is that what's going to happen, that we're going to watch whatever forms the decline of the American empire is going to take? Who else is in a position to replace that? The answer is no European country. That's ridiculous. Who else? Russia can't do that. It's much too small economically. China is China. Or as an alternative to moving in which the Chinese empire step by step displaces and then replaces the Americans. If you want to see how that works, look at Asia, and look at Africa, look at Latin America. Country after country, whether it's the port, or the railroad system, or the school system, or the health system, in come the Chinese specialists who are doing those things, are building the ports, building the railroad. It's one after another, and it includes countries that are BRICS countries, friendly, but also countries that are not. They're going to Washington, and they're being given a deal, and then they go to Beijing, and they get a better deal, and they go with the better deal. This is not anywhere near as complicated as you might imagine. Or are the Chinese smart enough, having been an empire before, so it's kind of in their history, that this is not what they're strategy ought to be. That if you do that, you are setting yourself up to have happen to you what you are now doing to the last empire. It's as if the United States could have learned from being a part of the British Empire, do you really want to be in the role of the dominating country against which you just made a revolution? Is that really where you want to go? Americans never asked themselves that question. They just went and did it. Now, now they have to answer. The Chinese maybe, maybe will be a society in the position of creating, supporting, encouraging genuine multilateral, multinational. I mean, part of me I admit my utopian longings. Everybody has them. I have them too. After World War I, we tried the League of Nations. After World War II, we tried the United Nations. Okay, maybe we don't have to have World War III before we make another effort to try in a serious way to work something out other than the empire. Otherwise, we live in that world, the great power conflict, in which we're grateful for a great power, no matter how oppressive, because they keep a lid on everything. They make peace because they want it to control. And so, the minute they reach their end, we're back in the terrible time you and I are talking about, when it's in flux, and everybody's fighting. Maybe you can see all that, grasp its repetitiousness in our history, and go for something else. If you ask me, is that going to happen? Of course, I don't know. Will the Chinese see all this? I don't know. Is there a lot of evidence one way or the other? If there is, I don't see it. The Chinese say it. I'll give them that. Xi Jinping talks like that occasionally. But whether that is holiday rhetoric or whether that is serious, I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't. I think more and more people will be asking this question, the one you posed, the one I'm trying to deal with. We're going to have people weighing in on which way it looks to be going and which way would be better for it to go with that. utopian, if you like, image in their mind. We need to have domestic economic arrangements that support, facilitate that kind of working of things out. Otherwise, if we set it up in the way that capitalism did as a historical phase, competing nation-states, this This is a recipe. Each nation-state is capitalist. The capitalists have to reinvest their profits to grow. Their growth is a condition of their survival. They can't all grow at the same time. They have to work that out, and that means a mechanism to work things out, and that's often war. Then we're back to square one. whether that lesson will be learned and we will ask the question. Just think with me for a moment that we ought to interrogate the organization of our economic systems at home in terms of their proclivity towards a nation-state great power warfare resolution of their conflicts. whether there ought to be a wholly different way of organizing. You know, the discussion between capitalists and socialists, or capitalists and communists, or Marxists and non-Marxists could have been conducted on that basis, but usually hasn't been. As if somehow they could focus on macroeconomics within the nation-state and leave the rest to be
Speaker 0: what worked out well we're living through the working out of that and it's not it's not a successful arrangement i would just look at the well again when one looks at the decline of the us empire many people are struck with some concern and there should be some concern we don't know what comes next but but it could be full of opportunities as well in terms of the united states having a more sustainable role in the international system if it's one among many powers, that it's more balanced. And also, as Bigniew Brzezinski said, or wrote when he wrote the Bible for Unipolarity in the 1990s, was that it was going to be very difficult for the US to be an empire abroad and a democracy at home. So it would seem as if this time moving forward, it doesn't have to be one of problems. It could be One of the U.S. essentially restoring its economic and financial discipline and stabilizing, improving its domestic governance. And also, it seems to me that China can't really take over the position of the U.S. because the role the U.S. had, this global empire, this was a very unique period of history. That is, through history over the past centuries, you had fewer and fewer actors and then as of course throughout the cold war you have two major actors and then the soviet union ceased to be and you have one global superpower i think this is the last time we're going to see in the history of all in the foreseeable future at least only having one superpower wouldn't i mean even if china aspires now for global primacy even its closest allies be it russia would then begin to distance itself it would the Indians would then give up its autonomy to take a more fierce balancing approach. I think an equilibrium would restore itself if the Chinese went this way. So I just don't see... I don't think the Chinese are blind. I think they realize that a lot of the support they have in the world is because they're not pushing this hegemonic approach. But yeah, do you have any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Yes. I wish... I hope you're right. I wish that the Chinese would have learned or will learn or do learn the lesson that you just summarized nicely. But I know that here in the United States they haven't learned anything. They didn't learn anything from the British Empire and its collapse in which they played a role. They went on ahead and tried very hard to be the global hegemon And under Mr. Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, they literally went about doing that, administering that, and feeling very good and proud and not worrying about the future at all. Let me give you as a final thought how I understand this. And you know where I come from, so it won't surprise you. You made an interesting quotation, I forget from whom, you can't be an empire abroad and a democracy at home. Well, let me give you a parallel statement. I think it's from the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter a century ago. And he said, you can't have great concentrations of wealth and have a democracy. Those two things cannot coexist. he's a Supreme Court Justice, he writes this down, and I would guess that most of the people sitting in an audience where someone says that would nod in agreement. And the reality of America is it made absolutely no difference at all. It is a rhetorical flourish that has not grasped the roots of the people who have to believe it if it's ever going to come true. So what do we have? We have the greatest concentration of wealth in American history. It's worse now than it was in the 19th century. It's as if the entire 20th century, when inequality was reduced in the United States, above all by the Great Depression of the 1930s, which compressed it like an accordion, all of that has been undone. we have returned and surpassed the levels of inequality. Are they consistent with democracy? Of course not. This last week we celebrated, and I mean that word carefully, in this country, the arrival of Mr. Elon Musk as the world's first trillionaire. In other words, over the last few weeks, The man who was already the richest man in the world, credited with a personal wealth in the hundreds of billions of dollars, saw that grow so he's now a trillionaire. That's how capitalism works. It makes the rich richer. It always has until people have revolted or the system has convulsed, then we have a period decompression until that's overcome, and then we resume what the basic tendency is. Well, I'm afraid the same thing operates here. Yeah, you're right. It isn't compatible. Wealth corrupts our democracy, and we have as corrupt a democracy as you could imagine. Our government is bought and paid for. It's stunning. can't understand Israel without that. Israel figured that out and figured out how to use it. It gets to the point of absurdity. The United States government funds Israel. Israel funds AIPAC. AIPAC buys the government that funds Israel. You have to have a sense of humor, otherwise this will drive you crazy. So what's the conclusion? That's what I was hinting at before. You've got to deal with capitalism. Capitalism has its own dynamic. It's just as important as the great power conflicts that people like to talk about these days, which I understand. The great power is falling apart, and so everybody's focused on great power maneuvers and countermoves and all of that. I understand. Is there a logic to it? Yes. Is there a world in which these great powers? Yes, but it is not unique and separate from the world of capitalism, its growth impetus, and all that that implies. If you leave that structure intact, you're going to get the results. And one of them is the building of an empire, and another one is the decline of an empire. And then the next one is, what does the emerging economy, China, how is it going to be different? Well, my argument, I think it'll depend on how they manage their internal economic system. They are a very strange economy. half private capitalist, half state enterprise, with a government and a communist party coordinating all of this, offsetting the weaknesses of the one by using the other in a hybrid. Clever, unique, very successful, should be a lesson to everybody, isn't, but it still leaves to them, is that an adequate way to manage your accession to the dominant role you're going to have? Or will it plunge you into the same evolutionary dead end that happened with the United States?
Speaker 0: Well, it remains to be seen. At least it will be interesting times ahead. Well, thank you very much for taking time out of your morning.
Speaker 1: Let me take a moment because I'm not sure your other guests will do it. Your program is getting better and better. I look at it as often as I can get a moment to see it. Your questions are great. Your guests are great. Some of your recent shows on what's going on in Iran, the European catastrophe, have been wonderfully instructive. And it's a service you're performing that I want you to know many of us see it, appreciate it, and are telling everybody we know Go take a look at this. You will learn a lot.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's a, you know, coming from you. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
George Beebe: NATO Expansionism, War & Narrative Traps https://youtu.be/QKS2weSRdJw https://t.co/2AxiDbmfUK
Video Transcript AI Summary
George Beebe discusses how NATO expansion and Western narratives changed from the 1990s to the present, focusing on concerns within the U.S. and Europe about how enlargement would affect relations with Russia. He explains that after the Cold War ended—after the Berlin Wall fell, the Warsaw Pact broke up, and the Soviet Union dissolved—the West faced the question of what foreign policy should be. He says Western judgment was that the Western community was successful and should be extended: transforming former Warsaw Pact members, Russia, and even the Middle East through liberalization and “globaliz[ing] the Western system.” He argues this involved “social engineering” that the West was “really not capable of” and that it failed to account for Russia’s reactions.
Beebe says NATO enlargement was built on the idea that extending the NATO and EU “security umbrella” would foster Westernization and liberalization, while Russia viewed this as offering subordinate status rather than co-equal partnership. He describes Russian concerns as including the placement of NATO forces on Russia’s borders. He adds that many Russia experts in Washington and Europe—especially those with deep expertise from the Cold War—believed expansion would trigger increasingly intense reactions as NATO moved closer to Russian borders. He says that in the mid-1990s it was widely considered “crazy” to expand NATO, and that it was “unthinkable” to go beyond Warsaw Pact states and bring core elements of the former Soviet Union—specifically Ukraine—into NATO. In his view, what is now treated as conventional wisdom—that Ukraine can choose its military allies and host forces—is “almost a sacred principle” that is central to the root of the current conflict.
Beebe emphasizes that understanding these dynamics is critical to finding an exit from the war, stating that arguing the conflict was “completely unprovoked” ignores history and shaping dynamics. He also addresses how initial disagreement became a narrative that NATO enlargement had “nothing whatsoever to do with this” even after warnings. He mentions William Burns’ “Nyet Means Nyet” cable and its argument that no matter Russia’s political spectrum, Ukrainian NATO membership would be intolerable and would provoke reaction. Beebe says that after enlargement decisions were made, some opponents accepted the “new situation on the ground,” in part because power brokers in Washington would not publicly admit they were wrong and because a “new generation of Russia experts” emerged who were trained during a period expecting transformation of Russia into liberal democracies through internal-system-focused reasoning, with geography and balance of power treated as less important.
He argues the European Union’s post-Cold War evolution left it unable to act coherently as a geopolitical actor because it became a regulatory superpower focused on transmitting values and expanding a Western community. He says Russian objections force Europeans into an “existential question” about Europe’s purpose, which he links to difficulties settling the war.
Beebe then outlines how he believes Russia interpreted events in Ukraine as not starting in 2014 but rooting back to early NATO enlargement steps, especially the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary joining. He recounts Russia’s concern that NATO claimed to be defensive while intervening in Serbia without UN Security Council authorization, and how this led Russia to conclude that deterrence depended less on NATO’s stated nature than on Russia’s own ability to deter. He connects this to the 2008 Bucharest summit signaling Ukraine and Georgia could join NATO, describing Russia’s view that Ukraine was becoming “NATO-ized” through deepening military links. He says Russia believed a window was closing: Ukraine’s enmeshment would eventually remove Russia’s military option except war with NATO. He characterizes Putin’s action as “preemptive and illegally,” while also maintaining that there were causes beyond “Putin’s own imperialist desires.”
In discussing current escalation, Beebe describes NATO involvement as something Ukrainians would like to see directly, believing it mitigates Russia’s advantages. He says Russia understands it is being baited into an overreaction, but that provocations have intensified, including attacks he references on Russian territory and nuclear-relevant capabilities. He says Russia’s messaging aims to pressure Washington and Europe to restrain Ukrainians, including Foreign Intelligence Service warnings about Latvian involvement in drone strikes and threats against Latvian facilities. He portrays a scenario where Article 5 could trigger a painful U.S. choice between fighting Russia—potentially nuclear—or hollowing out NATO, arguing that U.S. interest lies in diplomacy to avoid that decision.
He also warns that Western fear of nuclear war has diminished, which he calls dangerous because nuclear deterrence relies on fear to bring sobriety. He cites Sergei Karganov’s view that fear of nuclear war must be restored and says restoring it could create a catastrophic escalatory spiral.
On the “narrative war,” Beebe calls claims that Ukraine is winning “propaganda,” describing it as designed to buy time and allow opponents of settlement to avoid compromise. He argues the “stay the course” line seeks to avoid any need to compromise and that it is a fantasy, asserting that a compromise would require Russia giving up important things and the West and Ukraine also doing so. He compares the logic to the war on Iran analogy raised by the host: Western unwillingness to accept Russia’s existential threat perception prevents understanding why Moscow cannot accept capitulation terms.
He closes by saying his optimism about compromise has fluctuated, becoming more hopeful after developments in the Israel-U.S.-Iran conflict that he connects to renewed prospects for negotiations in Ukraine. He adds that making Zelensky accept a settlement and getting Europeans to think about “the world as it is, not how they wish it was” would be complicated. He frames the struggle as between the Trump administration and a “deep state,” including links in Europe, and says the next weeks will show whether resistance can be overcome.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. Today is June 16th, 2026, and we have the great pleasure of being joined by George Beebe, the former CIA director for Russia analysis and currently the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute. So thank you for coming back on the program. Thanks for the invitation. So I wanted to discuss the, I guess, NATO expansion and the Western narratives, how they've developed over time and indeed the extent to which we've been trapped in them because We already know from the 1990s that many, many American leaders, as well as European political leaders and military leaders, they warned against expanding NATO. While there were benefits, they also recognized that this would be perceived by Russia as a threat. Yet what was common sense in the 90s has now become somewhat controversial and often dismissed. as Russian talking points. And well, I'm not sure if we do ourselves any favors by portraying reality in this way. But you, coming from such a high level position in the CIA, when you look back at the 90s, what did you see was the main concerns within the US intelligence community and indeed the European one as well regarding NATO enlargement and the potential impact on relations with Russia?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall fell, the Warsaw Pact broke up, and then ultimately the Soviet Union itself broke apart, there was a big question that arose in the West, both in Washington and in European capitals, which is, okay, what is our foreign policy about anymore? For and more than a generation during the Cold War, we had a very clear purpose. It was to contain the Soviet Union, to ensure that Europe would not be subject to yet another great power conflict, to make sure that the states in the Western Bloc did not fall prey to communist ideology and Soviet domination. We knew how to do that. We established deterrents militarily, and we put in place a series of rules and institutions that were designed to minimize the risks of direct warfare, which everybody knew would go nuclear and would be catastrophic for everybody involved and for the entire world. So we knew what we were doing, and we had worked out how to achieve the goals that we had during that period. Then suddenly there's no more Soviet Union. There's no more Warsaw Pact. And I think people in Washington and Europe said, okay, so what do we do now? And we came to a judgment. And the judgment essentially was, well, you know, the Western community that we had built during that Cold War period was very successful. It ensured prosperity for the people in that block. It worked out very well in providing for their security. And we had, we thought, proved the superiority of our ideology in the way the Cold War ended. So we thought, well, you know, let's extend that Western community and make it a world community. Let's globalize the Western system, which means we'll take those old Warsaw Pact members and And we'll transform them. We'll help liberalize them, reform them from within. And we'll do the same thing with Russia. We'll transform Russia. We can re-engineer it socially and politically to look like the West. And we even extended that to the Middle East, thinking that liberalization of states there would stabilize that region. end the chronic instability that the Middle East had suffered from for so many decades. And that didn't work out. We bit off far more than we could chew. We tried to do things that we really weren't capable of. And when you think about how hard it is to engage in social engineering in your own country, in a political culture that you know intimately, whose political system and players you know extremely well, social engineering inside countries seldom works out very well. Now, try to do that in foreign cultures that you really don't understand with histories and ways that you're not steeped in. So what happened was essentially this NATO enlargement was based on the idea that if we extend the security umbrella of the NATO alliance. We extend EU membership. That will foster the westernization and liberalization of these countries. The problem with that, in addition to being unachievable, was the Russians said, hey, wait, that's not what we were envisioning. We thought that when the Cold War ended, we would be accepted as a co-equal in the Western community. Instead, what you're offering is subordinate status, being some sort of junior partner, a rule taker rather than one of the rule makers alongside the United States and others. We don't see a role for us in this expanded European community that you're building. We have no say in how that operates. We're simply supposed to do what we're told. And on top of that, we're supposed to accept a NATO military presence on our borders. And that's not a deal that we're willing to accept. Those terms are not attractive for Russia. Now, the people in Washington and to, I think, a great degree in Europe, that had developed years and years of expertise in the Soviet Union, that understood that system, that were vital to containment and the rules of the game that we put in place so successfully during the Cold War. Almost all of them said, wait a minute, if you're going to start expanding NATO and bringing it closer and closer to Russian borders, there's going to be a reaction. the Russians are going to feel threatened. They're going to feel as if they're being surrounded and treated as the other rather than as a part of a broader Europe. And that reaction is going to be more and more intense the closer the NATO alliance gets to Russian borders. So in the mid 1990s, when this issue was under discussion in Washington, it was basically a case where most of the Russia experts at that time said, this is crazy to try to expand NATO. But what was regarded as completely unthinkable at that time, this is 1994, 1995, 1996. was the notion that you would go beyond some of the Warsaw Pact nations and bring core elements of the former Soviet Union into NATO, such as Ukraine. That was unthinkable among the people who were the Russia experts at that time. And it's remarkable now in retrospect for me to think back at the discussions that were taking place in Washington at that time and just how completely unimaginable it was then to think that we would be trying to bring NATO into Ukraine or Ukraine into NATO. And now this seems to be conventional wisdom. Of course, Ukraine has the right to choose its military allies. Of course, the host nation can choose what military forces it wants to host on its territory. This is almost a sacred principle that no one is questioning. And I think it's really at the root of the conflict that we've got right now. And understanding these dynamics are critical, not because they justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's not a justifiable invasion. It's illegal, shouldn't have happened. And there's no question that the Russians made the decision to invade and should be held accountable for that. But to argue that it was completely unprovoked, that Putin woke up one morning and said, yeah, I really would like to have Ukraine as part of my country, I think is ignoring the history and the dynamics that shaped this decision. And it If you don't understand those dynamics, you're not going to find a way out of the war that we're in right now. Your peacemaking efforts will be unsuccessful.
Speaker 2: What was strange, though, is in the 90s, when, as you said, there was this fierce disagreement about whether or not expanding NATO would be a good idea. And, of course, the chief critics were people like George Kennan or William Perry, James Baker, Jack Matlock, you know, all of these heavyweights. But it seemed that once the decision had been made, this very polarizing issue, suddenly, it seemed like they essentially accepted this is the new situation on the ground. This is, let's all just organize around the narrative that this was unproblematic. Well, to some extent, because by the time we reached 2008, when the issue of NATO going to Ukraine and Georgia, then you still had some very fierce opposition that is, well, less fierce perhaps from people like former CIA director Robert Gates. But you had those, what was the WikiLeaks from William Burns when he made the point that, well, if you try to pull Ukraine into NATO, we're gonna have a civil war and probably a Russian intervention, which the Russian do not want to do, but which they would feel compelled to do. So apparently there was already, Even up to 2008, there was a recognition that this would be quite mad. Merkel, back in those days, she referred to this, that the Russians would interpret this as a declaration of war. So 2008 is not that long ago, because from 2008 till now, we went to saying that, well, NATO has nothing to do with this. But I guess, what is it about Ukraine that's so special? Because now the argument is, about Sweden, Finland? Why isn't Russia invading there? So what is it about the Ukraine that makes, well, which in the language of, again, William Burns, this was the reddest of the red lines for the Russians.
Speaker 1: Right. And Bill Burns' cable was not just something that came out in WikiLeaks. He published it in his book. He actually got that cable declassified and it's out there in public for anyone to read. And the title of that cable was Nyet Means Nyet. And he essentially said, look, there is no one across the Russian political spectrum from the far left to the far right that believes that Ukrainian membership in NATO is something that Russia can tolerate. They will react. So and that proved absolutely accurate. Now, the question you're asking is, how did we get to the point where there was real recognition, at least among parts of the Western political community, that this was a problematic development, to convincing ourselves that NATO enlargement had nothing whatsoever to do about this. Well, I think part of it is that the authors of that enlargement became They became the power brokers in Washington. They reached levels of government where they were making key decisions about American foreign policy. And they're not about to stand up in public and say, yeah, we were wrong. We shouldn't have done that. Their position on this was, look, nothing that we did remotely caused or justified the Russian invasion. They're not going to take responsibility for that. That's the first part of this. Another part is that a new generation of Russia experts arose in the West. These are people who did not get their training and education in what I would call classic realpolitik, balance of power, foreign policies. These were people that went to graduate school during a period when we all thought we could transform these countries, we could hasten their transition from communist totalitarianism and authoritarianism to liberal market democracies. And a lot of the curriculum in major Russia studies programs focused on this transition. So you didn't have to know about geopolitics on all of this. The geopolitics take care of themselves. Russia will change. It will become like us. And democratic peace theory would then ensure that there would be harmony in the international system because liberal democracies don't go to war with one another. Problem solved. You don't have to worry about the kinds of things that actually resulted in conflict over Ukraine's geopolitical orientation. So there's a combination of not wanting to accept responsibility for what happened and the changing of the guard within the Russia expert community in the West, where you had a bunch of people come to the fore They didn't really understand the kinds of foreign policies that were vital to containment. These were people who were ideological, who believed that foreign policy flows almost exclusively from the nature of the internal system of the country that you're dealing with. Geography and balance of power had little to do with behavior. So they didn't get it, I think, is the short answer to all of this. And the old generation kind of faded away. People get old. Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and George Kennan pass on. And the baton has been handed to a community of experts that have a much different kind of expertise on Russia than in the past. And that's a part of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's interesting, though. More than three decades of... you know political class emerging which has essentially embraced this idea that relations with Russia should be seen in the framework of a you know teacher and a student that is to socialize or transform them I think in this climate the the social constructivist really taken over the and this is what I also noticed that if you make the point that well the Russians always perceived NATO expansion after the Cold War as a major threat because it redivided the continent. One can point to a sea of evidence, yet there's no interest in this. It's always the assumption that, well, if you recognize that this is a threat to Russia, that means you're giving legitimacy to the Russian position, and then it is considered to be pro-Russian. So then it has to be dismissed. It's very strange. I turn...
Speaker 1: Well, and also it attacks the raison d'etre, so to speak, of Europe post-Cold War. What did Europe become? It did not become a geopolitical actor. It can't be a geopolitical actor because it expanded its membership to the point where it's become paralyzed. Different members of the European Union have much different interests, particularly as they relate to Russia. So it's very hard for them to act as a coherent geopolitical actor. What Europe has become is a regulatory superpower bent on expanding its values, transmitting them, this notion that Europe ought to be about liberalizing countries outside of Europe and expanding that Western community has become a core purpose of the European Union. And so if Russia comes in and says, yeah, no, what you're doing actually threatens our vital interests and we're going to go to war to prevent the continuation of what you've been doing, that causes Europe to actually face an existential question. What's our purpose? What are we about? What's our role in the world? And the one that they thought they had settled on after the end of the Cold War is not viable. So what do you do under those circumstances? That's the dilemma that the Europeans are facing right now. It's part of the reason why they don't want to see this war settled, because a compromise end to the war in Ukraine will force them to address that question. It will force them to acknowledge that the vision that they have had for more than 30 years is bankrupt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. But it's also difficult for the Europeans, I think, to adjust because, again, if you recognize that the world is multipolar, then one can reach the conclusion that it's not in the interest of the US to devote that many resources to Europe anymore because it steals resources from more important regions and it pushes Russia towards China. But In this country, I saw even an article in the paper arguing that, well, we shouldn't say that the world is multipolar. Again, these are the social constructivists, because if we say it's multipolar, we recognize that Russia is a polar power, then we give legitimacy to Putin. We can't give legitimacy, so essentially we're compelled to walk around, pretend as if there's no multipolarity, because this is the right thing to do. So if you say it's not multipolar, then we act accordingly, and then it wouldn't be multipolar. It's a very... It's very difficult to navigate in such an intellectual environment, though. But what do you think are the main misunderstandings then, not just in Europe, but also across the West, about how Russia interpreted developments in Ukraine after 2014, that is, after Yanukovych was toppled?
Speaker 1: Well, I think Russia's view of events in Ukraine were didn't happen overnight. It wasn't a single event that sparked this. I think Russia's views had their roots at the very beginning, actually, of NATO enlargement, when we were bringing the Czech Republic and Poland and Hungary into the alliance. And we were telling the Russians, no need for concern here. NATO's a defensive alliance, number one, so it doesn't threaten you. Number two, all of these countries, when they come into NATO, they'll feel more secure, more confident, and they'll be able to deal with Russia with much less hostility because they won't feel fearful. They won't feel threatened by Russia. You'll have better relations with them. And I think the Russians looked at this and said, okay, now what happened within a few weeks after Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland joined the alliance. What happened was the Kosovo War, in which NATO actually was a player in this. NATO chose to intervene in Serbia against the Serbs. Why? Not because the Serbs had attacked NATO. They had not. And Serbia was out of area for NATO. It went beyond its borders to take action against another country that had not attacked NATO. For things that happened inside of Serbia, a minority Muslim separatist movement had come under attack by the central government. And NATO said this will not stand. But it didn't get UN Security Council authorization for this, and it wasn't attacked. So under international law, this was an illegal act. And the Russians came to us at the time and said, okay, you told us NATO was defensive. You told us we don't have to worry about NATO attacking Russia. What is the guarantee that NATO wouldn't do something like that inside Russia? For example, you know, in retaliation for things that Moscow is doing against Chechnya, you know, a Muslim separatist conflict. And the answer that we provided to the Russians at the time was, well, of course we wouldn't do that in Russia. Russia has nuclear weapons. Now, ironically enough, the Russians said, aha, right. It's not NATO that guarantees our security, the nature of NATO. NATO could, in fact, do this sort of thing. It's our own ability to fight back and deter Russia militarily that protects our security. So having drawn that lesson from Kosovo, the Russians then looked at what NATO did in 2008 at the Bucharest summit, announcing that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be part of the NATO alliance. At a time, by the way, when public opinion in Ukraine was not in favor of joining NATO, the majority of Ukrainians in 2008 did not favor joining the NATO alliance. Now, obviously, things have changed a lot since then. But at the time we said that Ukraine was going to join, the United States was actually pulling pretty hard to get Ukraine and Georgia to come into the alliance. And the Russians looked at that and said, wait a minute. You know, this is getting into the heart of Russia's geopolitically sensitive areas. Russia's been invaded many times from the West, going through where? Ukrainian territory. There's a painful history there. And there's an awful lot of intermixing between Ukrainian and Russian families. There are cultural, religious, linguistic ties, a lot of trade going on there, intermixing of economies. This is extremely sensitive territory. And the Russians reacted to this very strongly. Now, those that say, hey, you know, the Russians are overreacting, they're paranoid. There was no prospect that Ukraine was going to be a part of the NATO alliance anytime soon. The Russians didn't have to invade. This is a pretext. My reaction to that as well, there is certainly no doubt that Ukraine was not on the brink of formally joining the alliance, but Ukraine was being NATO-ized. The links between NATO militaries and Ukraine in training and equipment and standardization, operating procedures, intelligence cooperation, were all deepening. And I think the Russians, with some justification, looked at that process and said to themselves, if those trends continue five, 10 years from now, Ukraine will be so thoroughly enmeshed with NATO that Russia won't have a military option to prevent formal entry into the NATO alliance, unless Russia is willing to go to war, not just with Ukraine, but with NATO itself. So they saw a window closing there that meant either they had to live with Ukraine ultimately being part of the alliance, or they would have to go to war with NATO itself. And Putin didn't want to have to face that choice. So he acted preemptively. Preemptively and illegally. But this was certainly not the case that there was no cause for this. other than Putin's own imperialist desires. I think it's a far more complex situation than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I saw an interview you gave actually back in December of 2021. You were one of the people who actually said then that as NATO entrenched itself more and more in Ukraine, the Russians were essentially reaching this conclusion that it's essentially now or never take military actions and you know that should have been again a good two months before the russian invasion should have been a good warning based on solid evidence but i have to tell you though in europe among this uh you know the social constructivist people who see the world as you know the gold being transforming they they would have looked at this kind of warnings as uh as um essentially undermining what NATO is. That is, we don't talk about it being a threat because then we legitimize it being seen as a threat. So all of these cold warnings were essentially thrown away, I think, a bit.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, and I think NATO and Europe more broadly regarded the open door as critical. That was not just a technical issue. It's not just something that was in the Washington Treaty that allowed for the alliance to add new members. It was actually seen as vital to the survival of the NATO alliance itself. And back in the 90s, when this was first being debated, people explicitly used this analogy. that if NATO doesn't expand, it will die. It's sort of like a shark. If it's not swimming forward, it can't get air through its gill slits and it will literally die. And I think that belief that NATO had to be enlarging became seen as critical to NATO's purpose and its survival.
Speaker 2: And of course, if NATO doesn't survive, what keeps the US in Europe? You know, this is the... This is the entire world order built on this. But of course, it is a problematic recipe for stability. The assumption that recipe depends on the world's largest military bloc built against Russia, that it would incrementally go closer and closer to the Russian borders. and hoping that Russia would accept that this would produce stability. But anyways, we're now, you know, since 2022, when the Russians invaded, we've seen this escalation all along. That is, for me, one of the peaks were last year, not just the attacks on the early warning systems of a nuclear attack on Russia, but also the attack on its nuclear retaliatory capabilities, that is, you know, its bombers. But since then, we've seen At least the rhetoric I hear from Moscow is that the Kremlin is under greater pressure to retaliate as they see NATO going up that escalation ladder. Now, of course, the long-range missiles, the drones, but also the attacks coming from NATO territory. But what happens now, though, if the assumption is that Russia would not dare to attack, but this is happening at a time when the US seems to be drawing down its forces in Europe. And it begs the question whether or not the US would sacrifice New York for Tallinn. But what happens the day after if Russia now retaliates against some German manufacturing plants, logistics centers, or Latvia for that matter? Because I spoke recently with Professor Mearsheimer, who made the point that he seriously doubt the us would fight and die for the baltic states but but if they don't that's the end of nato isn't it i mean what what what are what's keeping you up at night i guess is what i'm asking well i think this is an extremely dangerous situation um because we we we're in circumstances where um
Speaker 1: The Ukrainians actually would like to see NATO drawn directly into this war against Russia. It's their best bet for being able to prevail in some form on the battlefield. One-on-one, Russia against Ukraine, Ukraine has enormous disadvantages. The more NATO is involved, the more those Russian advantages are mitigated. And the best scenario of all for Ukraine is if NATO forces are directly fighting against Russia. So they would love to provoke some sort of incident where NATO gets drawn into a confrontation militarily with Russia. The Russians know this, at least Putin understands very well the game that's being played here. He knows he's being baited into an overreaction. He understands the consequences of getting involved in a direct confrontation with NATO. He doesn't want to go there. I think he's tried to be very cautious. The problem is the provocations are getting more severe over time. And you mentioned going after one of the legs of the Russian nuclear triad. That's an extremely provocative thing. It strikes at the heart of Russia's nuclear retaliatory capability. Turning the other cheek is a very dangerous thing to do because it gives Europe and Ukraine and the United States the impression that Russia simply will not retaliate. We can do whatever we want and the Russians will simply grit their teeth and tolerate it. So Putin also understands that. And he's got a lot of people in Moscow who are saying to him, you can't simply continue to ignore this. And so I think what's happened is the Russians have grown increasingly vocal and increasingly demonstrative to send the message to Ukraine, to Europe, and to the United States that they're not simply going to continue to ignore these deep strikes into Russian territory, that they're going to have to retaliate. So that's why we got the messages about what the Ereshniks are capable of doing. Putin went into a fair amount of public detail saying, here's what they can do. We haven't really used their capabilities yet. We're developing those capabilities, but at some point we may well have to use them. That, I think, is why the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia issued such a stark warning about Latvian involvement in these drone strikes against Russia. and explicitly threatened to attack Latvian facilities that were involved in these attacks. I think what the Russians are trying to do is send a message first and foremost to Washington, which is put a leash on the Ukrainians and the Europeans. Make sure that they don't continue to do this. Because if they do, we will have to retaliate. We don't want to have to do that. For right now, I think the message has been received in Washington anyway. We're re-engaging in the peace process. I'm sure you noticed President Trump publicly specifically said, now that we're putting Iran in the rearview mirror, we want to focus more intently on the peace process in Ukraine. So we're re-energizing our involvement there. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are going to be going to Moscow, it was announced. So I think that's all good. It increases the likelihood that the United States can manage this kind of problem. But the last thing that you want to have to do if you're working on the NSC staff is send a memo up the chain saying, well, Mr. President, the Russians have struck NATO territory and Latvia or fill in the blank has invoked Article 5. So we're going to be faced with a choice. Do we, in fact, go to war with Russia over this and defend our NATO ally and demonstrate that Article 5 remains in effect? Or do we say to the Latvians or whomever, too bad you shouldn't have poked the bear. Good luck, but this is your problem, not ours. That's a very, very painful decision to make. You're choosing essentially between warfare with Russia, which could well turn nuclear, or hollowing out the NATO alliance itself. That's a very bad decision to have to make. So I think it's very much in the interest of the United States. to engage diplomatically, bring this war to an end, and avoid ever having to face that kind of decision. Because I don't know how it would turn out. And anybody that tells you they do is probably overconfident. That's a very painful decision.
Speaker 2: I agree. It just seems like the pathway to war now is charted very clearly. That is, well, for example, I assume that the Well, the drone attacks on Russia through Baltic territory, I assume that, well, for example, the Germans may have a hand in this. And now that we heard this stern warning that the Russians might retaliate against the Baltic states, we saw this statement from the head of the German armed forces that, well, if you strike the Baltic, well, you, if Russia strikes the Baltic states, then we're going to hit Kaliningrad or Moscow or something like this. If this is the case, if the Germans are bombing Kaliningrad with its million citizens, it's not hard to imagine how few steps that would be away from nuclear retaliation from Russia. Its legal documents would approve this in a second, I think.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, my understanding is that Kaliningrad has more tactical nuclear weapons stored on its territory than probably any other place on earth on a per square kilometer basis. If you attack Kaliningrad, you automatically cross into the nuclear threshold. You're now involved in a nuclear war. We are very, very close to that kind of situation right now. But the irony in all of this is that a lot of people in the West have lost their fear of nuclear war. And that's a problem. The fear of nuclear war has a deterrent effect on both sides. It brings sobriety to decisions that isn't there if you really think, well, that's just not possible. That was a threat during the Cold War, but we've been there. We've done that. We've turned the page. We're not going to get into a nuclear war now. We don't have to worry about that. The real fear should not be of nuclear war. The fear should be the fear of nuclear war. We can't allow ourselves to be scared into submission with the psychological climate that we're in right now than we were for almost the entire nuclear period, when everybody recognized, boy, we really don't want to go into nuclear war. That would not work out well for anybody.
Speaker 2: And in the West, we've largely lost that.
Speaker 1: And that's a problem because the Russians know it. And you have people like Sergei Karganov, whom you have talked to extensively, saying we have to restore the fear of nuclear war. That's extremely dangerous. Restoring the fear of nuclear war could easily cross into an escalatory spiral that would be catastrophic. So this is very dangerous territory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this idea that we shouldn't, well, nuclear deterrence for these people, the ideologues, it translates into nuclear blackmail, which we cannot accept. So essentially they're dismissing the whole principle of nuclear deterrence, which is puts the whole world on its head. But this is the thing. When they refer to how weakly positioned Kaliningrad is, that it's surrounded by NATO, and they say this with certain joy, I mean, that's not great. You don't want, as you said, the most nuclear-armed place on the planet to feel exposed and vulnerable. And it's the same as these media reports I see every day with the attacks now on the refinery in Moscow or deep in Russia. Like the newspaper headlines, as well as the politicians, they always frame it as, oh, look how humiliated Putin is. But again, why would this be a goal when you have Putin, who is pushing back on the hawks, which are saying, time to make the Western powers fear our nuclear weapons again. This is the time you want to humiliate Putin by striking deep in Russia. I mean, none of this makes any sense. And again, just as a last question, how do you make sense of now the the narrative? Because we're now going back to the narrative that Ukraine is winning, Ukraine is winning. I'm not sure if it's like this in the US now, but in Europe, this is now being accepted that, yes, Ukraine turned the tide and now it's winning. I mean, how are you reading, I guess, the narrative war? Well, it's exactly what it is. It's propaganda.
Speaker 1: It is an effort to... try to sustain the course of action toward Russia that has failed since the beginning of this invasion. The idea was we crank up so much pressure on Russia that eventually Russia says, uncle, and it says, you know, sorry, we made a mistake. We shouldn't have invaded. We're going to withdraw. We'll never do it again. Please forgive us. And that, you know, effort to turn the ruble into rubble, to turn Russian diplomats and politicians into international pariahs to bring so much pressure militarily on Russia, send so many Russians home in body bags that Putin has no choice but to succumb to the pressure and capitulate. It hasn't worked. And it's not going to work. But this propaganda line that the Ukrainians are now winning, stay the course. Don't lose heart. is designed to buy time the opponents of a settlement oppose a compromise they want russia to capitulate they don't want to quote unquote reward aggression in any way i think that's very dangerous to do so they think that we just have to continue to turn up the pressure on the russians and eventually they will succumb to that pressure We won't have to give up anything in a settlement. We won't have to compromise anything. And we can end this war on our terms. And it's a fantasy. It's been proved to be a fantasy. And Konstantinovka is about to fall. I think that's going to put the lie to this notion that the Ukrainians who've turn the tide in this war. And we're going to have to face the reality that if the war is going to end, it's going to have to end in a compromise in which the Russians give up some important things and the West and Ukraine do as well. There's no other way for this war to end unless it's going to escalate or result in Ukraine's essential collapse as a functional state.
Speaker 2: I see some comparison between the war on Iran and the war on Russia, that is, by failing to recognize that the opponent sees this as an existential threat. Well, we can't because it goes against the narrative of what the war is about. By failing to accept that they see this as an existential threat, well, for good reason, we can't recognize how much pain they're willing to absorb and why they're capitulation isn't possible. I hear these slogans here in Europe as well. Well, if Russia leaves Ukraine, then the war is over. Well, that's not how they see it in Moscow. If they leave Ukraine, NATO follows into Ukraine. And that's existential and it can't happen under any circumstance. But again, we can't discuss that because it goes against the narrative. So it's very strange situation. time of politics, I think, across the West. But anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Well, my optimism about whether we can get a compromise settlement has ebbed and flowed over time. After the conflict erupted between Israel, the US, and Iran, I grew very pessimistic because of the negative effects that that had on prospects for peace in Ukraine. The fact that the United States and Iran appear to be moving forward on this memorandum of understanding, we seem to have a basis for a compromise to end this conflict with Iran. That is a hopeful sign. It means that prospects for negotiations on Ukraine look a little brighter than they did a few weeks ago. So that's at least some cause for optimism right now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the diplomacy on the American side will be complicated though, because not only do they need to find an agreement with Russia, but they also have to make Zelensky accept something. And of course, make the Europeans at least think in the world as it is, not how they wish it was.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is really a battle between the Trump administration and the deep state. And that deep state is not just in Washington. It has strong links to the deep state, so to speak, in Europe. They don't want to see this compromise happen. So the question is, can he overcome that resistance? And we will see. I think the next few weeks are going to be... There's going to be a lot of movement on this issue and we'll get a better sense of how much progress can be made.
Speaker 2: Well, when that happens, I hope you will come back on. So thank you very much for taking time.
Speaker 0: Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: US-Iran Deal Reached - Peace or Tactical Pause? https://youtu.be/vkhJdxpbz_g https://t.co/7VWEFkMzKn
Video Transcript AI Summary
On Monday, June 15, the discussion centers on whether peace could break out in Iran following a Trump announcement that a deal has been reached, and how sustainable it is given the painful concessions involved and uncertainty about U.S. ability to implement such agreements—especially with Iran.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs says the parties have said an agreement has been signed by Iran, the United States, and Pakistan as mediator, but the details are unknown and the agreement comes in stages, making it potentially fragile and able to fall apart “quite easily.” He reports that all sides involved say there will be a ceasefire, described by Pakistan as a “permanent end to hostilities.” Israel is not included as a formal party, and he argues Israel would likely not accept at least one “crucial term” claimed about the agreement, including a cessation of fighting in Lebanon. Exactly what Lebanon terms are is unclear, but he says Israel may try to undermine the agreement by continuing bombing or by using claims such as Hezbollah shooting drones or missiles into Israel as a pretext, contributing to fragility.
Sachs describes the framework as two broad phases. The first phase is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and international oil and gas traffic. The second phase concerns nuclear issues over about 60 days, in which Iran would “in some sense irrevocably” refrain from producing or procuring a nuclear weapon, while U.S. and other international economic sanctions would be dropped. He says, based on announcements, the agreement does not include other demands the U.S. had previously put on the table regarding Iran’s missile systems or support for groups such as Hezbollah.
He highlights uncertainty about governance of the Strait. Iran claims it is not an “international waterway,” but a shared waterway with Oman with co-responsibility, and it is unclear whether this is inscribed in the agreement. Trump says no tolls will be charged, and Iran had claimed tolls of $1 a barrel; sources also suggest that tolls may be dropped. On assets, he says statements indicate the U.S. will unfreeze Iranian assets, with $25 billion mentioned, but which assets, why, and under what authority remains unclear. He adds that there appears to be an arrangement in which Iranian and Omani control over the Strait continues and tolls are not charged, while the U.S. unfreezes significant amounts of frozen assets.
Sachs then argues the broader war accomplished “absolutely nothing,” calling it useless and harmful, resulting in death and harm without substantive achievement. He says it weakened Israel diplomatically and that the U.S. lost “any aura of strength and invincibility,” while he characterizes the overall outcome as lose-lose for the U.S. and Israel, and “battered” for Iran. He notes rumors and public dispute over whether the ceasefire will hold, including claims it could fail quickly, while also stating that he would not conclude that fighting is inevitably a ruse.
In response to concerns about concessions, Sachs and the interviewer discuss how distinctions between tolls and fees matter operationally and legally, and how painful concessions could provoke opposition once details emerge. They also describe opposition from the Zionist lobby in the U.S. and criticism directed at what the U.S. did, including claims of a unilateral launch without public backing or congressional backing and with stated goals not achieved.
The conversation shifts to broader U.S. strategic limits and power dynamics. Sachs argues the U.S. executive branch lacks operative norms against war and portrays U.S. leadership as operating with “gangster mentality,” emphasizing action without legal or moral compunction beyond victory. He argues that military and economic pressures have not produced strategic leverage and that the U.S. economic blockade and “economic war” have hurt Iran, with Iran seeking asset releases as bargaining leverage.
On whether the Iran ceasefire could be a turning point, Sachs says the world is changing and that U.S. ability to impose military victory and enforce hegemonic control has reached limits across key theaters. He cites the U.S.-Iran-Middle East, Ukraine, and China as areas where he says the U.S. cannot impose its will militarily, and he argues this reflects a broader end to U.S. unipolar dominance. He discusses balancing dynamics, rejects the myth of enduring U.S. technological superiority, and argues that advanced technologies are widespread and that countries such as Iran and Russia can make sophisticated weaponry.
The interviewer agrees that adversaries moving closer to each other, combined with failure of unipolar assumptions, suggests policies must reflect reality. The discussion ends by emphasizing that these wars signal not only an end to the post-Cold War hegemonic era but also the broader shift in Western technological dominance.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. Today is Monday, June 15th, and we are joined today by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss if, well, peace could break out in Iran. So thank you for coming on. We see now that Trump announced that the deal has been reached. Again, one would like to be optimistic, but how do you see this deal? Well, how sustainable is it? Because it implies some painful concessions. I know many people in the US as well as possibly the majority in Israel do not want this. So if we add to the fact that the US does not have a great history in terms of implementing these kind of agreements, especially with Iran, how, I guess, how justify this optimism now?
Speaker 1: Well, of course we have to be extremely cautious because the details of what has ostensibly been signed and now All parties, Iran, the United States, and Pakistani mediators have said that an agreement has been signed. We don't know the details. And it comes in many stages. And from what we do know, and in any event, it could fall apart quite easily. So what do we know? We know that the three sides have said that there will be a ceasefire. And the three sides that have talked about this, I should say, two of the antagonists, the U.S. and Iran, and the third being the mediator, Pakistan, this does not include Israel. So Israel is not a formal party to this agreement as far as we know. The agreement seems to call for an end of hostilities, the phrase that Pakistani announcement used was a permanent end to hostilities. It ostensibly comes in phases, two broad phases. One is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the international oil and gas traffic. And the second phase is about the nuclear issues. It seems, according to the announcements, that the agreement does not include other kinds of demands that the United States had once upon a time put on the table about Iran's missile systems or its support for other groups in the region, such as Hezbollah. So it seems to be a two-stage agreement, one to open the Strait of Hormuz and second to then negotiate over a period of 60 days some kind of resolution on the nuclear issue in which Iran would in some sense irrevocably but not produce or procure through purchase or other way a nuclear weapon, and U.S. and other international sanctions economic sanctions would be dropped. So that's the basic framework. Within that, there are many statements, but not so much clarity. How will the Strait of Hormuz be governed going forward? It seems from the Iranian side that Iran says this is not an international waterway. It's a waterway shared by Iran and Oman. And we will have co-responsibility for that. Whether that is somehow inscribed in the agreement or not, we don't know. President Trump said that there would be no tolls charged. And this may be one of the terms of the agreement because Iran was claiming tolls of $1 a barrel of oil on the ships passing through. and maybe that has been dropped. On the other side, there are statements that the U.S. will unfreeze Iranian assets that are frozen, and a number that is mentioned is $25 billion. Which assets? Why? How? Who? Under what authority did the U.S. freeze these? What is really being counted here is not clear. but there seems to be some kind of arrangement where the physical traffic will open, some kind of nominal, or maybe even more substantial than that, Iranian and Omanian control over the Strait will continue. And if the rumors are correct, tolls will not be charged on trafficking, of oil and gas, but on the other side, the U.S. will unfreeze a significant, let's say, amount of assets that were frozen beforehand. Now, Israel is not part of this agreement, and certainly the Netanyahu government would not agree to one of the crucial terms that's claimed about this agreement, that it covers a cessation of fighting in Lebanon. Exactly what has been agreed regarding Lebanon is also unclear. But if the past is in any way predictive, and of course it should be, Israel may try to undermine or destroy the agreement by continuing the bombing. in Lebanon or finding a pretext or claiming that Hezbollah shot a drone or a missile into Israel and now the bombing of Beirut will continue. And all of this is to say that this is extremely fragile. It essentially, at the core from what we can gather, returns the situation more or less to the situation ex ante before the February 28th attack by Israel and the United States on Iran, with some significant changes perhaps on formal control of the Straits, perhaps with some unfreezing of Iranian assets, or perhaps not. Sorry to be so vague, but our main media don't even pretend tell us what's in the agreement we have some limited reports from the iranian media but other than that lots of details remain vague i i think there's one overriding truth that we can say even at this stage this war accomplished absolutely nothing it was useless it was stupid it was a mossad operation principally sold to the United States. It killed a lot of people. It created a lot of harm. It is the result of essentially irresponsible people being in charge in Israel and in the United States. Nothing good came out of this, not an iota of substantive achievement of any value for the U.S. It weakened Israel, to be sure, diplomatically. How many times now has Trump himself called Netanyahu crazy in expletive-filled terms, including, again, yesterday. Israel's image in the world, rightfully so, is in a catastrophic condition because Israel is truly a rogue state and a murder state incorporated. And it's a disgrace how it behaves. So Israel is the clear loser. The United States has certainly lost any aura of strength and invincibility in all of this. I wouldn't say Iran is the winner though it's battered. It has suffered thousands of deaths, tens of billions of dollars of damage. Wars can produce just losers. And this is what this war did. This was a lose-lose war, stupidly launched by Israel and the United States. It accomplished absolutely nothing. And whether it's over, of course, remains to be seen. This is hardly a new day in the Middle East breaking out, as Trump's sycophants have said. But maybe it is a fragile ceasefire that will hold. My inbox is already filled with people saying it will fall to pieces within 48 hours. It's a pretext. It's a ruse. I would not Myself go that far to make that conclusion both sides Iran and the United States have a good reason for the fighting to stop and so maybe the fighting will stop Israel never seems to stop fighting but Israel is in a state of Open collapse in terms of its the support that it has in the United States and the rest of the world so maybe This time, Israel won't defeat the peace because maybe what Trump is very visibly saying in public that you're a fucking crazy bastard to quote the president of the United States. Otherwise, I wouldn't use the language. I'm just quoting from the White House. Maybe that actually reflects the fact that with the American politics the way it is and with an upcoming election and with Trump's approval ratings in a steep descent, there isn't a mood for Israel to play its typical disastrous games.
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned this vagueness in terms of what the deal would entail. I think that's almost required now because there's a lot of painful concessions. For example, in the Strait of Hormuz, They say, yes, there won't be a toll, but a toll suggests it's mere cost for entry. But there will be a fee, which would suggest, I guess, operational support. I mean, legally, it's not a nothing. It entails the navigation assistance, rescue operations, environmental protection, different security issues. There is a legal distinction between a toll and a fee, but at the end of the day, the fee did not exist before this war and it will exist after. So for Trump, it will be a concession. It will be a loss. So it's just going to be hard. The way he talks about, has talked about this war and outcome over the past few months, he would think he will meet a lot of opposition once the details start to come out to the front. I mean, it would be a minefield.
Speaker 1: And two kinds of opposition, of course. We have the Zionist lobby, which will openly attack the deal as a concession to the evil regime. And there will be, of course, eventually, if our media ever get around to it, and if there are at least a few politicians that are not pathetic in our country, questioning what the hell just happened. Why did we do this? What kind of absurd war was this? Launched single-handedly by the president of the United States without any public backing, without any congressional backing, without any clear explanation, with the statements at the beginning that the goal was regime change and unconditional surrender and all of the claims that were made and none of those was achieved. So in this sense, of course, there deserves to be and will be criticism, but we certainly are not at the end of the Zionist lobby in the United States either.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think people always could learn into this wars because of the the way political discourse is now. I mean, you notice when they attacked Iran, essentially the logic was, well, if you support it, then you're pro-Israel. If you're not supporting it, then you're pro-Iran. This is how people talk. No one began with the point of departure being, what should we achieve and how can it be achieved? You know, an actual strategy. And we do the same with the war against Russia that is... The language on youth, if you support actions, that should signify whether you're for, against, or pro-Russian or pro-NATO. But at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything what your position is. If you can't achieve your objectives, and it's very hard to explain why this was a pro-American or pro-Israeli war to begin with. It didn't serve their interests.
Speaker 1: I think a couple more things I would add. First, there are no operative norms against war. in the U.S. executive branch and certainly not in Trump's mind. So the idea that you bomb places, kill people, assassinate people, this is a norm. There's no sense in which any single American official would say, oh, but the U.N. charter doesn't allow that. That statement doesn't exist. We are led by gangsters and with a gangster mentality. Do what you can, get away with what you can. Anyone else is a sucker. Don't be stupid. There's no international law. So first, there are no norms against this. There's no moral compunction, legal compunction need to justify other than victory itself. Then comes the very pragmatic question, well, will this succeed? And I think it's probably the case. that Trump was on a drunken high from a delusional high, let me say, from Venezuela, in which some kind of inside operation between the CIA and the Venezuelan government agreed to the removal forcibly of the president of the country. It left a regime intact, but it changed the government and it changed politics in a way because it was the cover for the US to remove sanctions that had been put on Venezuela beforehand and start shipping Venezuelan oil to the United States. And the Venezuelans were in a rather desperate need of cash. And so they went along with this as well. And I think The Iranian gambit was not aiming to be a war. It was aiming to be a one-day operation. And everything we know about it tells us that story, that there was a plan to install a leader. Trump said as much. Kill the leadership, decapitation, and everything will be all right the next day. So this is also the behavior of... very naive, very arrogant people. It does show, to my mind, a complete breakdown of politics in the United States. Our institutions don't work. We don't have institutional review. We don't have a functioning National Security Council, national security apparatus. We certainly don't have a republic in the sense of a constitutional order in which Congress would either declare war or have oversight over the actions of the executive branch or control through the budget. We have none of that. We have a small gangster mentality group running things right now. It didn't work for them. They face some constraints as a result of the failure of this one-day operation. This is essentially trying to find a way out, I think, It's not a surrender. It's not a victory. It shows how useless entirely all of this gangsterism was and how much it hurts everyone else, us, especially the Iranian people, the 160 schoolgirls killed on the first day of the strike in Minab. It's been a disaster for everybody. The one place where it's not been a disaster is in big tech, which has tried out its weapons, gotten expanded Pentagon contracts for AI systems, made a few mistakes like mass murder of schoolgirls. But that's all in the machine learning process and the systems learning process. Palantir has won. The Israeli stock market has won. So the warmongers, they came out ahead. The world suffered much, much larger losses from a military, strategic, and foreign policy point of view. This was not only useless, it was a loss. The United States lost any claim to protect countries in the Middle East or to have military dominance. or to have any kind of hegemonic control. One more point, Glenn, that I would add, just as in these early hours of trying to assess this, the Iranians were hurting badly economically. The blockade did hurt them. But more than that, the US has been on an economic war against Iran. And that war has been years underway. Our Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is also very much a gangster mentality and talked about how economic statecraft had crushed the Iranian economy. And I think I'm guessing that the Iranians wanted some kind of deal to release some of the assets, which is interesting because what was being released was assets illegally taken by the united states in the first place but the u.s was using that as bargaining leverage i do think that this shows that while the u.s military might does not have the strategic leverage neither in ukraine nor in uh in iran and certainly not in east asia that americans might pretend that it does the U.S. chokehold on international transactions remains not insignificant, I have to say. I think it's a real puzzle to me why the BRICS nations by this point have just not made a full workaround from the U.S. unilateral economic warfare, because it's illegal. and it can be circumvented. But so far, the US continues to deploy its economic warfare with some effect in Venezuela and in Iran.
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned before that your inbox was full of people who were warning or dismissive of this being a temporary de-escalation. And I think that's fair as well. What you said now, do you think this could be a turning point in the US, not just its Middle East strategy, but overall? Not because this is a moment of moral clarity, but the recognition that the distribution of power has shifted. That is, if you try to do everything and you end up being punished, then at some point you have to change course. I mean, same as I heard with the US-Israel deal. tensions as well. Some argue that it's a bit theater, but I have a hard time seeing that it's pure theater given how it's treated in the Israeli media, how it's fueling dissent in the U.S. Again, it could be extended to the war against Russia. That is, if it didn't... First of all, if a war isn't successful, at least one can lean back. Usually in Washington, I argue, well, at least we weakened our adversary. We destroyed a lot of things. We killed a lot of people. But But at the end of this, it looks strategically that not just Iran is, but the Russians will come out on top and then NATO, the US, they're all coming out on a very weaker position. This is not how the wars were supposed to work. Do you think it's a possibility that, well, especially in the Middle East, that this war could compel the US to fundamentally change its strategy? I mean, its bases have been harmed, its alliances have been harmed. At some point, they must adjust to reality, that is, what can actually be achieved to enhance your own security.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, at a fundamental level, the world is changing and the sense of US power is changing in a definitive way. The US remains a powerful country, but after 1991, it claimed... the mantle of global hegemon. It claimed that it was the unipolar power of the world. It claimed a writ over the entire world, basically. And it was spelled out most clearly by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997 in the Grand Chessboard. And the subtitle of the Grand Chessboard was essentially Preserving American Primacy. And the idea of that book, very influential and reflecting, even more importantly than its influence, reflecting the mindset in Washington was the United States needs control over Eurasia to ensure control over the world. And the way to keep control over Eurasia was essentially to weaken Russia, surround Russia with NATO, prevent any kind of alliance between Russia, China, and Iran, and play the different states off against each other. And by taking Ukraine, essentially, that would be the pivot, the geographic pivot for all of Eurasia, because Russia would be weakened. Russia would have no alternative but to turn to the US and the West. In that book, it's interesting. Brzezinski says, this is the way the world will go, the US will remain the hegemon because of its technological and economic dominance. And that fundamentally is over. The rise of China itself changed that. Geopolitically, Iran, China, and Russia are aligned in a way that Brzezinski said could never happen. Militarily, the US is at a stalemate. It cannot impose its will. militarily on Russia. It could not even impose its will militarily on Iran. That's one of the clear lessons of this. There's not a chance in the world it could impose its will militarily on China. I think maybe the United States has recognized that in all three theaters. In Ukraine, it's washing its hands of the Ukraine war. In China, Trump rather openly said vis-a-vis Taiwan, we don't want a war, we don't want you to declare independence, and we're holding our weapon sales to Taiwan in abeyance. This was basically what he said as he left Beijing from the summit last year, that we can't impose our will on China. So in a sense, I think what is being seen is the U.S., does not have any kind of hegemonic control over the vast realm of Eurasia, which is, I'm sorry, over Asia in particular and over the non-EU part of Eurasia, so I should be careful. It still has influence. It still has the ability to impose pain and sanctions, but it cannot impose military victory. And I think increasingly, its ability to impose even economic compulsion is fading away, though I would say it played some role in what we've seen now vis-a-vis Iran. So if I could put it in ancient terms, the Roman Empire was an expansionist empire. through Augustus and through the first century AD. And then it reached its limits. Of course, it reached its limits in Germania early on in the Battle of Teutonburg Forest. And when the Roman Empire decided, we won't conquer Germania, and that painful loss happened early on, I think it's in 9 AD, if I remember correctly. But after that, the Romans said, we're not going to really fight in Germania. We're going to hold a line. Then by the time Hadrian became the emperor, and I think it's 117 AD, he said, we've reached the limits of the empire. We'll live in peace, or maybe we'll battle on our borders a bit skirmishing, but we're not going to expand. If I could make a crude analogy, maybe in Washington they'll learn, stop. You cannot control, divide, weaken, or defeat Russia. You can't control the Middle East hegemonically, certainly not West Asia with Persia or today's Iran, and certainly not with China. This doesn't mean that games won't continue. Economic statecraft, as Besant, our Treasury Secretary, calls it, using ugly and illegal tools will continue. But I think, Glenn, you're You're right that essentially in the three main theaters that Brzezinski himself talked about, US and Russia, US and Iran, and US and China, the limits have been reached. People should view the experience of the Ukraine war, this stupid, useless war with Iran, and the failed trade war with China as all showing America's certainly not the unipolar power. It's certainly not the world hegemon. It does not have its rip over the world, maybe from 40 degrees east longitude to the Pacific, to China. And maybe it will learn some lessons. Stop being so gangsterish, because basically the US has used gangsterism to try to extend, prolong, enhance its power. But gangsterism wears very thin. There's no cooperation. There's no trust. There's no respect. There's no real power from it, only tactics and maneuver. And I think the US has been exposed in that way, again, The U.S. is still powerful and very nasty in our own hemisphere. Events today could be followed by an invasion of Cuba at any moment. We could see more terrible things. The U.S. has not turned into some kind of beneficent international law-abiding state. It remains an ornery, nasty, gangsterish empire in the Washington mentality. but limits are being understood more than before, even if they are not openly acknowledged and certainly they are very much disliked.
Speaker 2: Well, on the unipolar moment, I think what key criticism in the 1990s was that The unipolar moment would unavoidably be temporary because the US would exhaust itself and then it would incentivize adversaries to collectively balance the US. I think now the war against Russia pushed the Russians closer to China. The war against Iran pushed Iran even closer to Russia and China. So at some point, I think the lessons have to be made that the hegemonic peace does not reflect reality. And when policies do not reflect reality, that's very unfortunate.
Speaker 1: consequences. Exactly, Glenn. And I think there are two things that people should keep in mind about this. One is that you get balancing. So you push so hard on adversaries, they join forces together and you turn out not to be as powerful as you think. And the second is the myth of the US technological dominance. This is still a continuing myth. certainly in the U.S. stock market. But the idea that ultimately, and Brzezinski said it very clearly in 1997, and he was suffering from that myth, the U.S. ultimately will triumph because ultimately Western technology is superior and the other countries will have to face that fact, either on the battlefield or in the economy. And that is in truth a core reason for the failure of the unipolar moment. China absolutely competes and in many ways outcompetes the United States technologically on a very, very wide range of activities. But it's more than that. Look at Iran. This is a sophisticated country that can make sophisticated weaponry. And that was completely not understood or felt in Washington. Same with Russia. Technology has spread. Advanced weaponry, digital technologies, AI, these are not the preserve of Elon Musk himself or Palantir or Israel or the United States. These are worldwide technologies and they have spread to many power centers. And there are a lot of smart people in a lot of places. And so the idea that the ultimate control of the Western hegemon is its technological superiority needs to be put aside. And if it were put aside, there would not only be peace and mutual respect, but a lot more economic gain as well. Because one of the things that I completely reject, and I would laugh at, but I find it so tragic, is that the global economy has been taken over by the military strategists who now view trade and finance as strategic weapons rather than as the ways of mutual gain and economic progress. So I want the economists who believe in open trade, finance and mutual benefit to reclaim these tools from these economic warriors like our Treasury Secretary and others and our Commerce Secretary and our trade representatives who view everything about the economy in warfare terms.
Speaker 2: Thank you for taking the time. Actually, if I can just add one note, I think what you said about the technology is quite important because it shows that these wars don't just signify the end of the post-Cold War hegemonic era, but also centuries of Western technological dominance and, well, you can put it, well, at least international leadership the past 500 years since the western maritime power set out to reconnect the world so it's uh yeah interesting times so uh thank you very much again of course see you again very soon thanks a lot
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Israel's Attack on Beirut Will Delay or Derail the US-Iran Deal https://youtu.be/dD-FxfqKIwA https://t.co/A3fRSoKe5n
Video Transcript AI Summary
Saeed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team, discusses the status and prospects of a potential Iran–United States memorandum of understanding (MOU) and broader regional implications.
Marandi says optimism is warranted but argues the Israeli regime’s attack on Beirut will change calculations. He asserts the attack aimed “to prevent a deal from happening” and to ensure that Iran and the United States do not agree on an MOU. He characterizes Iranian reasoning as: if the United States is not serious, or cannot control events, or is “playing good cop, bad cop,” then Iran has no reason to negotiate. He claims there was “close to an agreement” previously, but that a final text had not been achieved, despite statements by Trump and mediators that it was finalized.
He describes a sequence of events: negotiations were close to a deal two or three weeks earlier, then Americans attempted to impose new conditions that stopped talks. He says Israelis attacked Beirut after that, Iran retaliated, and the United States began attacking Iran. He states that on Wednesday a Qatari delegation was sent to Iran to indicate the United States withdrew those conditions, leading negotiations to return to normal. Marandi then says a United States attack that Wednesday night is believed to have been intended to “hide the fact” that the conditions were withdrawn, so that any later agreement would appear to come from strength.
Marandi outlines terms he says are already “what you already know” from weeks of discussion: lifting/waiving sanctions on Iran’s energy exports; releasing Iranian assets through a particular mechanism; ending the Gaza conflict and forcing the Israeli regime to retreat; ending a siege; Iran promising not to develop nuclear weapons; and normalizing civilian trade through the Strait of Hormuz. He adds that Iran says it will continue to control the Strait, receive fees from shipping, and not allow ships belonging to Iran’s enemies to pass.
He emphasizes an internal Iranian debate on implementation assurances. Critics argue the United States cheated Iran under Obama in the JCPOA by failing to honor obligations after Iran implemented its side, creating concern that the same one-sided outcome could recur. He notes questions being raised: whether the United States will actually release Iranian assets; whether the Israeli regime will stop killing in Lebanon or continue occupying Lebanon; and whether assurances are adequate.
Marandi says the attack on Beirut has pushed that intense debate aside for now because Iranians are focusing on Lebanon. He argues Israeli actions increase unity within Iran by reinforcing sensitivity to Lebanon-related red lines. He also argues Netanyahu’s actions undermine Trump politically, making it appear the U.S. is subordinate to Israelis and angering ordinary Americans, while also worsening the economic and energy crisis.
On the Strait of Hormuz, Marandi says there is no final text and agreement is not imminent because of the Beirut attack and unresolved issues, especially assurances about stolen assets and whether U.S. forces will pull back. He describes competing positions: negotiators say Iran will control the Strait and impose fees while allowing ordinary shipping to pass normally; critics say the deal does not include adequate guarantees and that reopening the Strait would make it difficult to close later if one side violates commitments.
Asked about regional change, Marandi says implementation of a deal would be a turning point, including symbolically forcing the United States to accept defeat in cases where it is not Iranian “capitulation.” He adds that even without a deal, he believes the region is moving toward countries recognizing that the United States is not protecting them, and toward models like Iran–Oman and Iran–Iraq.
Marandi also links Western rhetoric and escalation to Iranian attitudes, citing Trump’s tweeted language about an “ultimate alternative” if Iran does not sign, which he reads as a nuclear threat. He expects a likely limited war, at least because Iran would probably respond to the Israeli regime regarding Beirut and because the “genocide” in Lebanon is too severe for Iran to ignore. He says he does not know the decisions “from the inside,” but argues the key question is who calls the shots—Trump or Netanyahu—and that each scenario delays negotiations and worsens prospects for an agreement. He concludes that the Beirut attack will have set back the U.S.–Iranian deal and could further derail it, at least for a while, as the economic crisis worsens.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by Saeed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and also a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So thank you for coming back on. I think most of the world now is looking at what is happening in this deal or what looks like a deal between Iran and the United States. Well, we're told from the American side, the Iranian side, as well as the Pakistani that memorandum of understanding would likely be signed today well with possible delays but I would like to be somewhat optimistic because from what I understand the deal will start with the US releasing some Iranian funds which is an important buy-in however this is still far away from an actual deal if I understand it correctly and also have a hard time envisioning that these deals will actually be signed and also followed by both sides. So how are you seeing this? Many people would like to be optimistic after these months of war.
Speaker 0: Well, we should always be optimistic, but I think that it's pretty clear that because of the Israeli regime attack on Beirut, things will change. The attack, obviously, was to prevent a deal from happening, to prevent the suicide, to agree upon a MOU. And I think that will have an effect because the Iranians are saying that either the Americans are not serious or that they are incapable of controlling the situation. If the Americans are incapable of controlling the situation, then there's no reason to negotiate with them. If they're not serious, then again, there's no reason to negotiate with them. If they're playing good cop, bad cop, again, there's no reason to negotiate with them. We were close to an agreement. We haven't achieved the final text, contrary to what Trump says or what the mediators are saying, the deal isn't, we haven't reached a final text, but the framework is pretty clear. And the differences have been under discussion. Although right now, I think that for now, the Iranians are not going to negotiate and they're going to focus on the Israeli regime after what it did in Dahia murdering at least three people today. in the capital, Lebanon, because that was a red line that they were not supposed to cross. And they carried out that attack just to say that they will not be abiding by any agreement. And if that's the case, and again, as I said earlier, there will be no agreement. And of course, this, I think, ultimately hurts the Israeli regime more than anyone else because the entire world is waiting for a deal. And the entire world is thirsty for energy supplies and all the other products that are stuck in the Persian Gulf or that are produced in Persian Gulf, countries in the Persian Gulf. But it seems that it will be, it's just like with the previous ceasefire that took place after the 39 days of battle. the Israelis back then carpet bombed Beirut to crash the deal. And that led to where we are now, where the Strait of Hormuz was partially closed and now fully closed ever since the U.S. assault a couple of days ago. So this is a repeat of that. In other words, just like the Israeli regime wrecked the ceasefire agreement after the 39 days of fighting, right now the objective is to wreck the agreement. The big question is, what did the Americans know, when did they know it, and what their position was on this. But in any case, for now, I think we're going to have to see a different course of action.
Speaker 1: Well, you say that the framework seems somewhat clear. What do we know about the framework? Because I've been told that the media should be careful about speculating. But of course, we do know some things. What is it that we know so far?
Speaker 0: Well, the general, what happened was that two, three weeks ago, we were close to a deal. And then the Americans tried to impose some new conditions. And that just stopped the negotiations. And then they tried to put pressure on Iran by the Israelis attacked Beirut back then. of course, where Iran retaliated. And then the Americans began to attack Iran. And then it was on, I think, Wednesday that they sent the Qatari delegation to Iran, basically saying that the U.S. withdrew those conditions. So the negotiations went back to normal. Of course, Wednesday night, the United States carried out that attack. And it's believed here that that attack was basically to hide the fact that the United States had withdrawn those conditions. In other words, they didn't want to be seen as weak, so they carried out that attack so that if there's an agreement in the following days, that it would look as if they were doing it from a position of strength. But in reality, the Americans retreated from their excessive demands. So in general, the terms of the agreement are what you already know, what has been discussed for weeks. Lifting waiving the sanctions for Iran's energy exports, releasing Iranian assets through a particular mechanism, ending the genocide in Gaza and forcing the Israeli regime to retreat, and, of course, ending the siege. And Iran would promise not to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran has been saying for decades. And also... Iran would normalize the civilian trade that goes through the Strait of Hormuz. But of course, Iran has said publicly that it will continue to control the Strait and it will receive fees from ships that transport, that go through the Strait, and it will not allow ships that belong to Iran's enemies to pass through. that's more or less where we are. There is a big difference. I don't know how big the debate is, but there is an ongoing debate in Iran, which became pretty harsh yesterday between supporters of the deal and opponents of the deal. But the arguments are basically about implementation. The critics of the deal say that there aren't adequate assurances. And to the United States in the JCPOA, the nuclear deal of 2015, they cheated Iran under Obama and harmed Iran and burnt Iran badly because Iran carried out its side of the bargain, implemented its obligations, and the United States didn't. And since it was a very one-sided deal as a result. And Now, the concern is among those who are opposed to the deal that we have a similar situation where, for example, what if the United States does not hand over the money, Iran, the stolen money? What if the United States, especially in Lebanon, what if the Israeli regime continues to kill and slaughter across Lebanon? What if it continues to occupy Lebanon? These are all key questions. that are being discussed. And there were even some protests last night against the deal. Personally, I think that both sides have a case. Both sides have some strong arguments, and both sides, I think, have some weaknesses in their arguments. But we don't have a final deal yet. And I think, in a sense, what the Israeli regime has done is it has created more unity among both sides, that we have to be more careful about Lebanon. And of course, all the other issues. So for now, I think that debate that was very intense last night has been pushed to the side because of Netanyahu. And Netanyahu, what he's basically doing, I think he's definitely damaging the Israeli regime badly because what he's done is undermining undermining Trump. Now, of course, some may say that Trump may be being deceptive and that he's bullying cooperation with Israelis. Of course, I have no way of knowing if that is true or not. But I do think, at least among ordinary Americans, it would be seen as if an American attempt to bring an end to the war or to bring at least a more normal economic situation has been deeply hampered or blocked by Netanyahu. and the Israelis. I think that this is not a good move by the Israeli machine bombing Beirut, which is a red line that they've crossed. Because Iran is going to have to punish the regime, but it is also going to set back any potential deal. And the Israelis will be seen by ordinary Americans as impeding U.S. government attempts to bring an end to this situation and thus worsening the the economic crisis or the energy crisis. So, you know, Trump either is opposed to what the Israeli regime is doing and that weakens him, it shows him as weak, or this is a good cop, bad cop game and still Iran is going to retaliate and it's going to be more skeptical of U.S. intentions and more sensitive about Lebanon. Or Trump has been persuaded to change his opinion And by the Israelis, and again, that destroys the belief in Tehran that the United States may be serious about carrying out its side of the bargain. But I think across the globe, this will be seen as a continuation of the Israeli regime and Zionists in their attempt to disrupt and wreck the global economy. because this war was carried out by the Israeli regime and Trump and Netanyahu. And the energy crisis began as a result. Then after the 39 days of fighting, when they had a ceasefire agreement, the Israelis carpet bombed Beirut, thus wrecking that agreement and causing the energy crisis to continue. And now that the two sides are close to an agreement, although there are differences, by carrying out this assault on Beirut and crossing that red line, the Israeli regime is extending this crisis even further. I think that people across the world will be increasingly angered that this regime that is genocidal is also wrecking the lives of people across the world. And I think that's something that's not going to be lost among ordinary Americans either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm watching footage now of... of the destruction in Beirut. This is an interesting time for the Israelis to strike the capital, Lebanon, on the same day as the US and Iran are supposed to sign this memorandum of understanding. But it always begs the question of who's influencing whom there. I often hear that the US is controlling Israel, others are pointing at Israel. has this excessive influence over the United States. But is it possible to get a deal through if there's so many actors who would like to see or who would like to sabotage this? Because from what I understand, there's significant hawks in, well, not just the US, but also in Iran. But I think Israel would be the definite most problematic one here because they all seem to be hawks. So do you think it's... too big of a minefield in order to navigate towards an actual agreement?
Speaker 0: I don't think we can compare Iran and Israel and the United States. In Iran, those who are critical of the deal are worried about implementation, not about the framework of the deal itself. If Iran's assets are released and the Israeli regime is forced to end the genocidal attacks on Lebanon and so on, everyone here would be satisfied, at least the main political factions and parties and the general public. The divide is whether this text has enough assurances built within it to make sure that the United States carries out its side of the bargain. In the case of the Israeli regime, I think what it wants to do is wreck the agreement. in any way possible. And in the United States, it's the Zionist lobby that accompanies them, that is aligned to them, and that they want to wreck the agreement. They don't want an agreement. They want war. They want crisis. And Netanyahu, for him, this is all about political survival. But as I said, I think this hurts the regime. I think it hurts Trump. It hurts the United States, the U.S. government, because it shows them to be subordinate to the Israelis. It makes ordinary Americans more angry. I don't think this does the regime any good. But in general, I think that the Israeli regime has been very foolish since October the 7th. They've been going down the road of self-destruction. They've destroyed their image. We know that it is the most despised entity in the world, according to global public opinion. And people across the world see them as responsible for the economic woes that we are seeing across the world. And we are inching towards the cliff. Accordingly, we've seen experts come on different programs say that the tipping point will be in late June, early July, late July. Sometimes sometime in this period. And the more this agreement is delayed, the worse the economic crisis will be, the deeper it will become, and the longer lasting it will become. So I don't see this as a smart move by the Israeli regime, but they've been very foolish alongside genocidal since October the 7th.
Speaker 1: But One of the parts of the deal will be, well, again, the Iranians will seemingly get a lot. That is, well, they will have some of the limitations, from what I understand, on the U.S. force of the region, that the U.S. at least wouldn't ramp up its forces. It would have to withdraw what it has there now. But it's argued that Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz. But this is a very vague term, because what exactly does that mean? There's no going back to the old status quo. I think this has been made very clear by the Iranian foreign minister. Yet at the same time, Iran is also making the point that it never actually closed the Strait of Hormuz. But of course, there are restrictions. So what is baked into this memorandum of understanding in terms of what's going to happen to the Strait of Hormuz? And I guess, are there ambiguities here? Because it's very hard for the U.S., I think, to... to sign any deals where it can't claim victory. So will all the texts be specific, especially on these issues like Hormuz?
Speaker 0: Well, again, there's no final text and things could change. And there may not be an agreement anytime soon because of the Israeli attack. And because the signing of the deal, I mean, the signing of the agreement would probably not have happened today anyway. Because there are a number of issues that the Iranians have, feel that need to be resolved. And as I said, that is one of the, these are the issues that are being debated in Iran right now. Issues regarding assurances. Will the United States truly release Iranian stolen assets? Will the United States pull back its forces? What, you know, What assurances are there in the deal to make sure that happens? Now, of course, the counter-argument is that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. But even that's open to debate, although I think that the negotiators on this particular aspect have a stronger argument. The negotiators are saying that we will control the Strait of Hormuz. The critics of the deal are saying that's not in the deal. But the negotiators are saying we don't need it to be in the deal. sovereign right and we will take we will impose fees and we will control the straight but allow ordinary shipping to go through normally which is what we we also want because we want we want to trade in business to to grow in the Persian Gulf region and for the region to thrive so the debate here is whether about control of the Strait of Hormuz. The critics are saying, what if the other side does not abide by its commitments? Once we've opened the Strait of Hormuz, it will be difficult to close it again. It will be politically problematic. What if the Israelis start bombing homes and killing people and provoking and slaughtering families? And then what does Iran do? Does it shut the Strait or does it keep it open? And if it doesn't, keeps it open then the Israelis will kill more and more families and slaughter more people and destroy more towns and villages that's the argument but the negotiators are saying we will whenever necessary we will be able to do what we need to do with regards to the strait because if the other side implements the deal then everything will move forward normally if it does not implement the deal then the strait that that then restrictions can be made again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I would imagine in Iran, there would be a lot of apprehensions after the JCPOA and other deals where Iran made these deals and implemented, well, its conditions, but then saw the United States essentially ignore it. And, well, if this had happened only one time, it will be something, but it seems to be a recurring theme. So... I guess that's why I'm a little bit optimistic if it's correct that the U.S. will release these Iranian funds essentially as a buy-in to show that if the deal falls apart, then at least it's the U.S. that will have made the mistake. So it's a reason for cautious optimism at least. But let's say it does move forward. That is, they agree on the final text and no one's able to sabotage the deal. What does this mean for the wider region? Because over the past 47 years, the whole region has been very much defined by the United States building up these alliance systems with the Gulf states, with Israel to contain Iran, ideally over time weaken it and collapse it. How is this going to, again, change this region? Because it looks as if this deal goes through, It's hard not to interpret it as an Iranian victory. What does this all mean?
Speaker 0: Well, assuming that, let's say, Iran retaliates, and then after a period of time, the two sides, meaning the United States and Iran, agree to a deal, and they start implementing it, let's say, in a week from now, two weeks from now, or whenever. I think that that will be a turning point in the region. But even without a deal, I still think this is a turning point. But I think that will be a symbolic turning point in itself, in that the United States will be formally having to accept defeat. Any deal with Iran that is not capitulation on the Iranian side is a defeat for the United States. I think it will be remembered as such. What the Iranians are trying to do right now is to see if they can change the relationship between itself and the countries in the Persian Gulf. They were obviously complicit in the war, and the Iranians are very angry. Many people died as a result. But the Iran-Oman model and the Iran-Iraq model is something that Iran wants to expand. And so Iran is in one-on-one negotiations. And I think these countries, some of them more so, some of them less so, are coming to the understanding that the United States is not protecting them. The United States has wrecked their countries in many ways over the past few months by using their territory. Of course, they were complicit. They were all for it. It was only when things went south and the Americans didn't protect them or couldn't protect them that they began to recognize that this is not the way forward. So what the Iranians want to do is to convince these countries to tilt away from the United States and to become more fearful of the greater Israel project. So I think that an agreement would contribute to that because the United States has shown that it's not able to sustain its hegemony over the region like before. This is a major turning point. But again, even if there is no deal, I think we're still going in that direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I've seen some news pops up on the feed here where they say, well, in American media, such as CNN, arguing that a deal will not be signed today after all, despite what Trump is saying. Again, I'm not using CNN as a as evidence of reality. But as you suggest, everything seems to be still up in the air. The final text is agreed. And early this morning, I saw Trump tweet something. I forgot what the last sentence of his tweet was. He promised the ultimate solution or answer if Iran doesn't sign the deal. So it sounded like nuclear threat, essentially. I'm not sure if he's
Speaker 0: he tweeted also yesterday I don't know if he tweeted something right now but yesterday he tweeted this he had a very long tweet and basically it was a nuclear threat which is now becoming normal and it just shows how abnormal the West has become because Trump has been saying on many occasions he's applied using nuclear weapons before he's talked about obliterating Iran sending it back to the Stone Age and wiping out the civilization he said it many times But you don't see any parliaments in Europe condemning this. You don't see any governments condemning it. You don't see the media condemning it. You don't see important journalists condemning it. You don't see American journalists, Canadian journalists, Australian journalists, New Zealanders. You don't see any condemnation, even though he's threatening to carry out the greatest, the biggest Holocaust in human history. And you don't see the European Parliament or the British Parliament saying anything. So that, for Iran... is a sign of where the West stands. And it intensifies. It's really wrecked the liberal narrative in Iran. Because as you know, you've been to Iran. There's always been this counter-narrative that existed among elites, many elites in Iran, and liberals in particular, about Iran's relationship with the West. and strengthening the relationship with the West and not prioritizing Russia and China and BRICS countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and so on over the West. But what we're seeing, both through Trump's actions, the war, the West's support for the war, two wars, last year's war, which started yesterday, last year, and how the West supported both wars and how they... He refused to condemn the attacks on Iran's nuclear, peaceful nuclear program. All of these things combined and the threats made by Trump where no one in the West, not the left, the right, the liberals in the mainstream, none of them will condemn him. All of that has convinced Iran that we should look away, look elsewhere. And the liberals, even though they were always a minority, but they were a substantial minority in Iran, an influential minority, a disproportionately influential minority in Iran because they are often from the more wealthy class as well. So they, many wealthy people in Iran support that idea, that particular mode of thought. But all of these events, And the language used and the lack of any outrage in the West among elites with regards to this language has really changed the way many people in Iran think about the West.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is it's beyond Iran as well. Again, during the June war, that's when the German chancellor came out and said that Israel is doing our dirty work here. for us again it's uh and yeah i see the tweet here by the way which trump sent out last night he wrote here hopefully this process referring to the the the negotiations will work out quickly easily and smoothly if it doesn't we have the ultimate alternative hopefully never to be used again i mean Yes, some plausible deniability, but I think it can't be read as anything else than a threat of a nuclear war on Iran for not essentially capitulating to U.S. demands. It's quite extraordinary. If you also see the kind of things that have been done during the Ukraine war as well, I think the political West has lost something. I'm not pretending it was a beacon of morality before this, but But it's too overt now. I mean, there was always this, everything was covered in a liberal veil. At least we pretended to be fighting leaders of countries, only going after Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein. They would never fight the countries anymore, just their leaders, apparently. And also under this allegedly higher goal of serving some goals in humanity, always some human rights or democracy, but Now, as you said, when there are talks about destroying entire civilizations, there's no pretense anymore. I'm not sure if I should be happy that the honesty, at least, is out there, or just be a bit fearful that the pretense has been given up. I mean, going kind of down a bit of a dark road. But yeah, that being said, just a final question. How do you see... What do you expect? I mean... You've been following Iranian politics, the United States, all of this for a very long time. You're there in Tehran as well. You seem to have the finger on the pulse. Where is this headed? Are you somewhat optimistic or do you think there will be a return to war?
Speaker 0: I think there will quite possibly be at least a limited war because... Iran will probably respond to the Israeli regime.
Speaker 1: And... You're referring to Beirut, isn't it?
Speaker 0: Yes, yes. And I think because the genocide is just too much. People are seeing families being massacred across Lebanon every day. And tens of people are being murdered every day by the Israelis. And the West is... They have no problem with it. Western media is looking away as usual. And so the Iranians are saying that we can't just let this go on. So I think there will be a response by Iran. Again, I don't have any idea. I haven't spoken to anyone. I'm not in the know. And I think that there won't be an agreement in the coming days. And as you pointed out, apparently something has come out to show, to indicate that that's going to be the case. And so, I don't know. I'm not a pessimistic or pessimist. I'm not a pessimistic person by, I think, nature. I think. But it's, you know, this is the real question is who calls the shots? Is it Trump or Netanyahu? And of course, Netanyahu, the individual, is not that important. It is the the people behind Netanyahu that allows him to make these decisions. And again, if Trump is against it, then he seems powerless. If he supports it, then he's being dishonest. If he's shifting his position, again, he's useless. So none of this is going to do any good for a deal. It's going to delay it, and it's going to make the situation more difficult. And if I was an Iranian negotiator, I would be making new demands with regards to the tax to ensure that the Israeli regime can't just continue doing this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But in short, do you think the Israel attack on Beirut can have derailed the entire U.S.-Iranian deal for now?
Speaker 0: I think it will. I think it has already set it back. And I think it could be set back further depending on the events in the coming hours and days. And it could be totally derailed. I'm not ruling that out. But at least for now, what I can say is that it will be delayed, in my opinion, for a while. And which is a big thing, actually, because with the economic crisis growing, I think each
Speaker 1: day and literally each hour counts but that's what i think well you're probably right well i guess we'll find out by the end of the day so anyways uh thank you for yeah accommodating my schedule on a sunday afternoon i appreciate it so that's my pleasure thank you for having me
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Trita Parsi: Iran War Ends Today? Threats of Deporting Trita Parsi https://youtu.be/JuWnqnN3lpk https://t.co/4gYv0xcEZJ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an award-winning author, discussed developments around the Iran war and the prospect of a near-term diplomatic breakthrough.
Parsi addressed whether the Trump administration is attempting to expel him personally after his criticisms. He said it is not simply “the Trump administration,” but that there are elements inside and outside the government attempting to escalate pressure toward deportation. He referenced pro-Israeli social media influencers pushing for it, including an AI video depicting his deportation. He said a recent investigation claim in the Free Press was denied within hours by the State Department, which he described as unusual. Parsi argued this is part of a long-term pattern: for 25 years he said neocons and warmongers in Washington have tried to cancel, silence, discredit, and accuse him of being an Iranian agent, but that this is the first moment he has seen a more public push toward deportation. He also said other elements inside the administration pushed back, making the situation more complicated than a single unified effort.
He then discussed how discourse around wars has deteriorated, not only in the United States but also internationally, describing it as driven by team-slogan logic rather than explanation and context. Parsi argued that wars of choice require eliminating nuance and context, which he said leads to attacks on those who explain alternative perspectives. He emphasized that moralism can become counterproductive by preventing discussion of opponents’ security concerns and undermining compromise and peace.
Parsi connected this to earlier U.S. policy toward Iran, saying decision-makers misread Iran’s behavior by assuming Iran is weaker and fears war more than surrender. He said he tried to communicate that Iran would not surrender, that it fears surrender more than war, and that it likely would absorb pain if it viewed the threat as existential. He argued the fundamentals of the approach were erroneous and that the resulting negotiation dynamics differ from the terms originally imagined. He also described how intelligence and evidence can be ignored when groupthink and only listening to certain voices, such as Israelis, leads to miscalculation—especially regarding options like closing or disrupting the Strait of Hormuz and striking Gulf Cooperation Council states.
On strategy and propaganda, Parsi contrasted earlier public rational debate with more coercive moral framing. He cited examples from Afghanistan and broader great-power practice of selling war as peace, including using women’s rights narratives and prominent collaborations between political and celebrity figures. He said this moral framing functions to block strategic discussion and prevents evaluation of whether interventions serve stated objectives.
In shifting to the current Iran talks, Parsi responded to the claim that a peace deal could be signed within 24 hours. He said he believes it is “different,” describing it as the “39th time,” but closer than ever based on conversations with “folks on both sides.” He said the proposal is back in Iran’s court and that delays stem from the internal need for buy-in across Iran’s dispersed power structure, particularly under a new Supreme Leader whose authority is not fully established. He said hardline elements that would never agree are part of the challenge, but that signals suggest the majority has already agreed in substance.
Parsi said the Iranian foreign minister, U.S. President Donald Trump’s retweet of the Iranian foreign minister, and Pakistan’s prime minister’s messaging all point to momentum—while emphasizing the process is still a memorandum of understanding and a “pit stop” toward a final deal, not an end to the war. He warned sabotage could occur, including through attacks elsewhere such as Lebanon, which he said could destabilize the diplomatic process even without direct action against either party.
Regarding what is in the MOU, Parsi said Iran’s position is that it needs U.S. buy-in through an exchange affecting leverage. He said Iran views opening the Strait of Hormuz—described as major leverage, more than a 60% enriched uranium stockpile—as part of what is being given up, and it argues the U.S. blockade (he called it counterproductive to the U.S.) is being removed. He said Iran is asking for 12 billion upfront, with an additional 12 billion at the end tied to the MOU. He also said some funds were previously supposed to be released in connection with a prisoner exchange in August 2022, but that the deal was reneged after the Mahsa Amini protests began, meaning Iran does not want to renegotiate those promised first amounts. He said the U.S. side has avoided direct release for reasons including avoiding comparison to Obama-era actions, so others proposed a workaround where a third party provides equivalent funds initially, followed by accounting later. Parsi said Iran appears to be moving toward accepting an approach that ensures it receives the money even if it is not unfreezing directly by the U.S. He added that ambiguity about key terms—like “open” regarding the Strait of Hormuz—could allow both sides to interpret commitments domestically, but that too much vagueness could make the agreement like “Swiss cheese.”
On the Strait of Hormuz, Parsi distinguished between the idea of reopening while it is not closed—potentially involving fees/tolls or administrative management rather than full restoration of prior arrangements—and he said legal disputes about whether it is international waters or Iranian/Omani waters shape how the language can be framed. He said he does not expect Iran to give up control entirely and instead expects a change from the pre-existing status quo.
Finally, Parsi discussed regional security after Iran’s direct attack on Israel following Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, which he described as an attempt to establish extended deterrence, or “the new equation,” backed by large-scale Iranian capability rather than limited attacks attributed to the Houthis. He said Israel’s subsequent actions—striking Iran and later Southern Lebanon rather than Beirut—do not prove the equation is fully established, though it could increase the perceived cost of further escalation. He said that if an MOU is agreed, it is unlikely Iran would do so without a region-wide ceasefire, especially because restarting war in Lebanon could spill over into Iran. He argued Iran’s priorities include shrinking U.S. military presence in the region, diversified security arrangements for GCC states, and deeper economic and security rehabilitation for Iran—moving away from a decades-long U.S. organizing principle of containment and isolation.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined again by Trita Parsi. Sorry. You're sorry. Executive vice president. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. I'll start over and I'll cut. Welcome back. We are joined today by Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He's also an award-winning author who the Washington, sorry, Washingtonian magazine for five years named one of the top influential voices on foreign policy in Washington, D.C. Actually six.
Speaker 2: I haven't updated my bio yet, but it's six years in a row.
Speaker 1: Six years in a row. Well done. So again, I would advise everyone to look at the sub stack and the link is in the description. So I really wanted to ask you today about the developments in the Iran war, because today, that is on Saturday, the 13th of June, The Pakistani prime minister has argued that a peace deal will be signed within the next 24 hours. I'm not sure if it's, well, I'm hoping it's basing it on something, but I'm guessing something is bound to happen this weekend. But first, I must ask, is the Trump administration currently attempting to expel you personally for having criticized the US approach or engagement in this war?
Speaker 2: Glenn, great to be with you again, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about this. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the Trump administration. There are certain elements within it who I believe, as I don't have full evidence, who have tried to do this. I mean, you have some of these pro-Israeli social media influencers who for weeks have been pushing for this. They even created an AI video of me getting deported. which was the first time I've seen AI recreate my image. So I actually was kind of amused by that. But nevertheless, so there's been this effort from the outside, from some of those elements. And I think there's certain elements inside the government that also have been sympathetic to this and may have tried to push it. But that hit piece that was published against me two or three nights ago in the free press, Barry Weiss's free press, seemed to... It claimed that there was an investigation, but the State Department came out within hours and denied that there was an investigation, which is very unusual. And my own theory as what to happen, and it's partly based on conversations we've had, is that there were some elements inside who thought that by getting some external pressure, additional external pressure. This would help move along the bureaucratic effort to actually get an investigation that would lead to a deportation. But the State Department has come out and said that that is not taking place. I don't know if that may change in the future. I don't think these people will give up for a second. But I think what we can say, though, is that this is a long-term trend. For 25 years, I've been fighting the neocons and warmongers in Washington. They've always tried to cancel me, silence me. discredit me, slander me, accuse me of being an Iranian agent and all of these different kinds of lies. This is the first moment I see though, however, they are very publicly trying to escalate it towards a deportation operation. I don't think this round worked out that well for them because there was this massive amount of public support, which was completely organic at the Quincy Institute. We were still trying to figure out exactly Where will this story go? What's going on? We're making phone calls. But it came out of itself that I was quite hardened by it, I have to admit, of course. And I think this frankly backfired because it was also elements inside the administration that pushed back against this. So it's a little bit more complicated than to say that the Trump administration tried it. There's certain elements there that clearly are trying to do it, but others were not in favor.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, though, how the discourse around the wars and conflicts have... have changed. I mean, I, I often, I, I miss, uh, the more objective approach by, you know, former, the likes of Henry Kissinger, whenever he would write something, he would take himself out of the analysis and just explain out of the situation, just explain what is happening. And, uh, but these days, you know, one, one, one uses only these labels. One says, you know, One is pro, well, especially with the Iran war now, the assumption is that if you're pro-Israeli, then you will praise the war. If you're a critic of the attack on Iran, well, then you're pro-Iranian. But, you know, it doesn't really make much sense. I mean, it doesn't really matter if you think, you know, who you're pro or not, or what you think about Iran. You know, you need a, if you like Iran or hate Iran, you need an honest analysis of of the war, because this war was a disaster for US strategic interests. So this idea that if you support the US, then for the war, it doesn't really make much sense if you do an analysis of how this war would likely work out. And the conclusion is that, yeah, it will be disastrous. But do you get the impression that the discourse has kind of, the quality has dropped significantly?
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't go one step further. It has qualitatively deteriorated remarkably, but it has done so outside of the US as well. And I think that is one of the big differences. I was here in 2003, and it was very clear. I mean, the Bush administration at the time, Karl Rove was essentially saying that if you're against the war, you're unpatriotic. So it was very much at this level, perhaps not as low as it has become now. but you didn't have that on the European side. You still could have a rational conversation on the European side about the causes of the war, about the context, about trying to understand Saddam Hussein's motivations and calculations. Understanding is not to sympathize. Explaining is not to defend. It's just to try to better understand so that you yourself can calculate your best options and calibrate your best way forward. by having a realistic understanding of what the actual lay of the land is. I've seen that on the European side, particularly after 2022, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has just completely deteriorated, not just on the issue of Ukraine and Russia, but almost all of the other major conflicts. I see that on Gaza, and I clearly have seen that on the Iran side as well, in which, again, News is not about explaining. It's not about facts. It's about essentially sloganeering for your team. And part of the reason why individuals like myself, you and many of the people that you have on your show end up becoming a problem is that if you want to have a war of choice, you have to get rid of all nuance. You have to get rid of all context. You just have to reduce everything to black and white, good versus evil, and have no one ask any questions. And people who do ask questions, who try to explain the context, who try to explain what the other sides may perceive their situation to be, become obstacles to these wars of choice. And as a result, you have to go after them. You have to chase them out. You have to cancel them, discredit them, accuse them of being sympathetic to... to Ayatollah, to Putin, or to Saddam, simply by trying to explain, okay, this is how we think they're seeing the situation. And again, this was seen before in the US, and the US is so often in war, so it's not unusual that that type of a war atmosphere brings the discourse down. But now I'm seeing it in Europe in a way that is frankly terrifying, even on conflicts that they're not directly involved in.
Speaker 1: I often make the point that the that moralism can be deeply immoral. Because I'm always asked, do you condemn Hamas for what they did on that day? Yeah, sure. Or do you condemn Russia for invading? And all the arguments, they're always anchored in condemning someone or this moralism. But again, what makes it moral if... If one is forced into a language where one side is all good, the other one is all pure evil, and now that makes it impossible to actually discuss the security concerns of your opponents, undermines the ability to find compromise and peace, then the moralism can become deeply immoral because you no longer have the ability to enhance your own security interests. And this is, yes, as I mentioned, the Ukraine war. I've noticed this as well, because when I criticized the toppling of Yanukovych in 2014, I was told, ah, that's a pro-Russian argument. And the failure to implement the Minsk Agreement, ah, well, if you criticize this, it's also pro-Russian. Or if you are against sending weapons or in favor of diplomacy, then, well, that's pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian. And that's kind of where the discourse shuts down. But no one actually explains, how did any of this benefit Ukraine or NATO? I mean... Imagine if you could go back to 2014 now, not toppling Yanukovych. The Ukrainians would have all their territory, including Crimea. All their men would still be alive or not having fled the country. The infrastructure would be intact. There could be a formidable bridge between east and west, a buffer. How was this good for us? Now NATO is disintegrating. But we don't take this point of departure. What is good for us? And then you discuss the different approaches. It's always... Going back to this pro-this or anti-that and the concept of being pro-Iranian or pro-Russian. It's just a concept which nobody likes and then they fill it up with any content they want. It's manipulative.
Speaker 2: And ultimately terribly, terribly counterproductive. Just look at how Europe is faring right now. Look at how the United States is faring right now. I had conversations with the administration before the war. I argued ferociously that they are completely misreading Iran. They're thinking that Iran is much weaker than it is. Um, and beyond that, they think that the Iranians fear war more than they fear surrender. And as a result, Trump's approach was to just amass more military towards the region and think that eventually the Iranians would, um, surrender and as a result he would never actually have to actualize his bluff of attacking and i was trying to make it clear to them that you don't understand they will never surrender they fear surrender far more than they fear war they think they can survive war perhaps even come out looking good from a war but they can never survive a surrender And as a result, the entire fundamentals of your approach is erroneous. And I think that was proven right, that the Iranians did not flinch. They, in fact, seem to have thought that some level of war was necessary to correct Trump's perception of Iran's weakness, false perception of Iran's weakness, and then go to the negotiating table from a position in which Trump had understood that that they're not as weak as he thought. In fact, they're quite strong. And as a result, he's going to have to agree to a compromise rather than to Iran just essentially accepting America's terms for surrender, which is exactly where we are right now. If there is an MOU, whether it is more beneficial to Iran or the U.S., there's going to be a long debate about it. But we're no longer talking about in any way, shape or form the terms of surrender that Trump had in mind on February 28th, all of them. are out the window. And it is because of this miscalculation. It is because of this misperception. And because at the end of the day, the debate has never really been allowed for the last decades to be nuanced on Iran. Iran is similar to the case of Israel-Palestine. It's been going on for so long. And this has been a deeply felt issue in the United States going back to the hostage crisis. It's always been extremely difficult to have a nuanced conversation about Iran in the United States much much more so than it ever has been in Europe but ultimately it has been clearly to the detriment of the U.S. itself because when you have incomplete information or wishful thinking you will make wrong policy decisions and those wrong policy decisions will end up costing you far more than the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's written in Machiavelli's work that is well Men see the world as they wish it was and then they die or then they're destroyed essentially. But they're seeing the world as you wish it was. And I think this is a key problem in Europe though. Everything in this part of the world is very normative. Every argument is normative. So if you're saying that the Russians are winning, oh, well, then you're supporting the Russians. Because if you're saying they're winning, then you might... This reduced public support for financing a war. So everything is, nothing is a reflection of reality. It's just a normative.
Speaker 2: Can I add one thing to that? If you actually had a war that was seen deeply as justified by the population, you would not need to do any of these things. It is precisely when it is either a war of choice or in the case of Ukraine, uh, an option not to actually have a real, uh, negotiation because that's from the outset, we've seen that there's just been this rejection and negotiation and effort to think that, um, uh, the war can set back the Russians 10, 15, 20 years. And that will give Europe another generation of peace as one European official called me, uh, essentially arguing very ferociously that this is an opportunity to set back the Russians. And as a result, diplomacy is not needed. When you have situations like this, that's when you really need to clamp down on the debate. Because if there was a strong level of support, for instance, if the United States had been invaded by another country, I don't think there would be any need for a clamp down of the debate because it would have been a genuine desire to expel the invaders and support what would be a defensive war. These type of things only come in when you're going in the direction of some variation of the war of choice. Uh, and this is also why there's such a low self-confidence in the government in being able to have just a reasonable conversation about this. If they had this, the deep support of the population, which they would have, if it was a defensive ward fully, then, um, there would be no need for them to have this lack of confidence.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, before the attack on Iran in February, I was making the point that Iran is quite powerful, but this was considered to be a pro-Iran argument. I said that they have a significant support among their own population, that is the government. This is also considered to be a statement of support. And also I made the point that this is an existential threat for Iran, which is also dismissed because they said, oh, we just want to help protesters. But if you could accept this, what I consider to be realities, you could predict how the Iranians will behave. That is, if it's an existential threat, they will absorb a lot of pain and they will be able to fight. And again, they are quite powerful. And once you kill a leader, it's not as if the people will rush to the street and topple the government. All of this was very flawed. And also if they would have recognized this was an existential threat to Iran, it would have been predictable that they would have gone up that escalation ladder Unlike in June, they would have done it in February. That is to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, strike all the US bases in the region. All of this could have been predicted if reality wouldn't be considered treasonous. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I was in several different meetings with folks with government or outside of government prior to this, in which there was discussions about what the Iranians would do and, you know, options that existed and things, uh, pathways that could been pursued. And I do have to say, I do think that there were elements in the intelligence community that was trying to get the right intelligence to the president. And he was dismissive of it and was choosing to listen to the Israelis. But I can tell you that at least from what I saw, there was plenty of people in the US government that was completely dismissive of the idea that the Iranians would close the straits of Hormuz or that they would be attacking the other GCC countries. And I had to really emphasize all of these options. Yes, it is true. They have not exercised them before. And in the past, they were very polite in their attacks and their responses because they wanted to deescalate. But this time around, they will see it as escalatory. So you have to take into account the striking possibility that they will do this. And it was dismissed or it was viewed with significant skepticism. So I think we should not belittle how much the drinking of Kool-Aid and groupthink, how quickly that can set in when you're not allowing not just one or two voices, but a critical mass of critical voices to always be present in conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I couldn't agree more. And yeah, on this, I remember on this podcast in the weeks and months before the attack, I had often a common guest would be Professor Marandi, who, you know, from Tehran, who's, you know, got a good finger on the pulse in terms of what the government is thinking. And he was just stating as, you know, common sense. Well, of course, if, you know, in the past, we didn't want to escalate because that might draw the Americans in. But if the Americans are going to join, they're going to attack. And then the purpose will be regime change. And there is no government in the rear to take over. That means we're going to be a new Syria, a new Libya. It's going to be destruction of a key central power, which the US would have seen as an obstruction. so of course on the first day we're going to have to shut down the Strait of Hormuz you know go after all the bases essentially outlining the whole logic makes a lot of sense but still I heard Trump give a speech no one could have predicted this you know like why would they take the bases it's just you know it's quite remarkable but yeah well and it's similar to the Iraq war you know who knew that there was Sunnis and Shias in Iraq who knew that there would be an insurgency I mean it's
Speaker 2: absolutely stunning to see the level of miscalculation that can happen in extremely sophisticated governments and bureaucracies. Now, not necessarily currently in the United States, but at least under the Bush administration, a lot of the policy processes were still very, very functional. But it's just amazing how quickly they can be reduced to something far less sophisticated. if you do not allow for a plethora of evidence and opinions to be included in the process.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also then, when everyone goes into war, it's always also the discussion about the morality of it. That's usually how they shame people away. Somehow it's always the people who are cheering for war who has the moral argument. There's always, oh, what about the... girls in Iran, we want to liberate them. Or what about girls going to school in Afghanistan? And it's always this moral arguments. And first of all, I think they're very deceptive. But even if all of this would be genuine, one also has to look at strategy. How do you think you're going to achieve what you set out to achieve? Because if you look at our track records over the past 30 years now, it hasn't been great. I mean, 20 years in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. all this money and lives wasted in Iraq only to essentially make it into closer to an Iranian ally. You know, the attack on Libya, which essentially brought back slavery and attack on Syria, which has now made us allied with ISIS through Jalani. I mean, this is not a great track record. It's just, yeah, I wish there would be more Yeah. Substantial arguments or discussions in terms of strategy, what exactly do we want to achieve and how can this be achieved? And, um, yeah, we don't seem to do that. Um, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, your, your comment about the immoral aspect of moralism is really well taken as far reason. I'm always been more attracted to realism because it takes that dimension out of it. It's assumes that. All actors at the end of the day are pursuing some definition of their own self-interest. And by trying to understand how they define their self-interest, you have a better way of predicting what their next steps will be. And if you can do that, you will have a better way of dealing with them, defeating them if you need to. But you need to understand how they see the world in order to be able to do so. And moralism... only makes that all the more difficult because you are confusing yourself from how they actually see the world because you think that there's some sort of single moral truth that guides these things rather than the actions of decision makers based on flaws, perhaps, but nevertheless, their calculation of what their self-interest is. And if you can understand that, you can predict them. Moralism gives you almost no predictive value at all.
Speaker 1: It's also in great power politics where states usually sell, you know, you want to sell war as peace. You want to, you know, this is, it's not a new phenomenon. This is a core political propaganda. And, you know, when it came to the Afghanistan war, we learned from, what was it, WikiLeaks. They leaked these documents from the CIA, which showed that, well, the Europeans were losing a little bit of support for the occupation of Afghanistan. So they essentially... concluded that the Europeans cared a lot about women's rights. So let's frame the war as, you know, we're occupying Afghanistan for, you know, these 20 years to help little girls go to school. I mean, it's quite absurd that, you know, we think this is why great powers... to war. I mean, this is not about America, it's any country. It's a little bit childish. I mean, it's absurd that the US suddenly became Amnesty International with nuclear weapons. But after this point, though, you had articles coming out. I think it was in The Guardian, you had NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Angelina Jolie co-authoring an article together. A little bit of NATO, a bit of Hollywood, about why NATO is now the leading provider of women's rights. It's just, it's extraordinary. And people, they eat it up. And then if you oppose the wars, then, well, I guess you don't care about little girls. I mean, this is where the moralism comes in. And at the end, we fool ourselves because we can't, you know, we can't discuss the motivation for war. We can't discuss the strategic aspects of it. It's...
Speaker 2: If I could go on a small tangent here, it is relative to the attacks that I've been enduring from the neocons. And I think I did mention that part of this, at least on the Substack post this morning, when we started the National Iranian American Council, this is like 25 years ago. At first, it was not even supposed to be involved in politics. We were just trying to get the Iranian American community to become involved a little bit more sophisticated understanding and participating in the American democracy. And this was done because the first community that was targeted after 9-11 was the Iranian American community. The Enhanced Border Security Act was passed immediately after 9-11, and it restricted visas to Iranians. It did nothing about Saudis and Egyptians and others who actually were part of the 9-11 attacks. And it was a very clear manifestation that if you don't have any political representation, you end up getting, um, the shorter end of the stick all the time. And even if this had nothing to do with Iranians or the Iranian government. Um, but over time, because the conversation in Washington was increasingly going the direction that they would, you know, should we attack Iran? Should we not attack Iran? We had pressure from our own membership to start taking positions on these matters. And we eventually did. And we realized that we were a very small organization, a relatively small community. But we thought there's one thing we may be able to achieve. And that is to make sure that unlike in the Iraq war, in which the neocons paraded their favorite Iraqi Americans on TV, left and right, begging for the United States to bomb their ancestral home, that at a minimum, we can make sure that if there is a war, at least the American public will know it was not because of the Iranian American community. That our voice would be clear on this issue. We may not be able to prevent the war, but we will be able to prevent exactly the argument that you said, that this is some sort of a moral favor. to the people inside of Iran. And by having Iranian Americans oppose the war, we would take that argument away from the neocons. And that was part of the reason why the neocons came after us and many different things that we did that were countering their agenda. And I have to say for 20 or so years, we were very successful. It was very clear that the Iranian American community, the majority of its favored diplomacy and overwhelming majority favored the JCPOA, strongly opposed the Iranian government and its repression, but nevertheless wanted to pursue a peaceful path between the US and Iran, lifting sanctions, et cetera. But it's not until just in the last year that the neocons managed to pull off Something that I have to say, frankly, I was surprised by, which was to, in a variety of ways, over the course of time, they had worked very hard and they had cultivated alliances with the monarchist Iranians to really get them to become extremely pro-Israel and then ultimately pro-war. And in some ways, at least in the early phases of this, become the face of that war, with some of them dancing and singing in the streets, celebrating the start of the war. That was a key thing that we had frankly managed to prevent for 20 years. And plenty of studies need to be made on better understanding exactly how was that flipped. I have some theories, I've written some pieces about it, but it's still much more that needs to be done to fully understand because it is a remarkable shift of psychology of not a majority, they were never a majority, but nevertheless, a very significant minority Uh, that went to that side. A lot of it has to do of course, with that, the repression in Iran became worse and worse, but a lot of it has all to do with the fact that these elements also were trying to eliminate all other voices and all other pathways reform was wrong. Lifting sanctions was wrong. Dialogue was wrong. And essentially saying all of those things have failed. The only thing that is left is. war and foreign military intervention, which meant they had to do exactly the type of cancel culture that we just talked about earlier. They had to discredit everyone who favored diplomacy, everyone who favored lifting of sanctions, opposed war in order to be able to create an atmosphere and a landscape in which they were seen as the only remaining option. That's how they sell the war. Everything else has failed. So war is the only option. Now, of course, the war has gone disastrously. I don't see them singing and dancing in the streets in the same way any longer. But it was ultimately, I have to say, a failure for the Iranian-American community as a whole that a minority of them could have been recruited and pushed in this direction, ending up becoming, in my view, a very repulsive base of this war by singing and dancing in the streets as their own countrymen and women were being bombed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well... To some extent, you see this in the Ukraine war as well. I mean, you see every poll, such as from Gallup and others, that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want immediate negotiations. They don't want four more years of boycotting diplomacy. Yet, you will never see a single one of this majority of Ukrainians on TV. Never. You will only have the ones who will chant that weapons are the path to peace and the know the diplomacy's appeasement so you will never find them on tv because there's a goal where they're selling a war and uh and to yeah to sell the war they have to yeah push this message that well we stand with the ukrainians irrespective of uh any statistics it's just remarkable that uh yeah this is a key uh key component i think of the propaganda but uh yeah I did want to shift towards what's happening now in Iran. Well, as I started off saying, the Pakistani prime minister now, Sharifi, was making the point that a deal will be signed within the next 24 hours. How are you reading the situation? First, when I heard Trump say, this peace deal is coming, I thought, yeah, well, I heard this about 100 times before. But this is different, though. Or is it the memorandum of understanding only leading to a peace deal? Or can you unpack what, what is going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think it's not the hundredth time. I think this 39th time. Oh, we're getting there.
Speaker 1: We're getting there. We're getting there. Exactly.
Speaker 2: I do think it is different conversations I've had with folks on both sides, um, made it very clear. Uh, there is something on the table. It is back in the Iranian court. Uh, the delays as have been the delays in the last couple of weeks is a challenge on their side to get the full buy-in of their system. And this is very important to understand again, really makes the one very different from any of the other countries in the region. Um, power is dispersed throughout the Iranian system. And you have now a new Supreme leader who is not yet fully, um, grown into his role. So his authority has not been fully established. He's also suffering from several different problems, physical, given the attack that he was enduring. So he may not have had the full ability to even try to assert his authority. His father ended up taking several years to be able to grow into that position. But also this is one of the most important decisions Ivan has made in the last couple of decades. Having to do that in your first couple of weeks is clearly not going to be easy, which I think is part of the reason why It appears, and I want to be careful because you hear a lot of different things. And even if I believe I have pretty decent sources in Iran, one has to be very careful knowing that we still don't know exactly what's happening. But what I'm hearing, though, is that part of the issue is that he wants to make sure that there is as close of a full consensus within their system as possible. That is extremely difficult to achieve because you do have certain very hardline elements that will never agree to any type of agreement. deal with the United States. And I think right now there is an effort to try at a minimum, minimize those, whether that can be done within 24 hours remains to be seen. But the signals I've gotten makes it very clear that at least the majority have already essentially agreed to this. Um, and, uh, their answer is forthcoming. The fact that the Iranian foreign minister. JD Vance and the Pakistani premier all issued more same similar tweets within a very short time span in which they were criticizing media speculation about what's in the deal. I think is also noteworthy because they recognize that there is an effort in some media to try to put forward exaggerated contents of this deal in order to make the final deal look very bad. to make it look as if expectations were not met. And from all three sides, they started to push back against this. And then you had a very unusual, I think, unprecedented event of having Donald Trump retweet the Iranian foreign minister. So I do think that we are closer than ever before. I think that's even the language that the Iranian foreign minister used. we have also been closer than ever before and still not seeing anything happen so it could still go wrong and even if it goes right i think we have to be very very clear this is a memorandum it is a pit stop towards a final deal a final deal is actually harder to get than the pit stop and the pit stop has proven to be extremely difficult to get taking much longer than it should have so We're still not in any way, shape or form at a position which we can say that the war will really end or that there will really be a peace. And then you, of course, have these ladies who have remarkable capability of sabotaging this whole thing. They don't even have to do anything against Iran or against the US. They just need to restock the war in Lebanon. And that can be sufficient to actually cause the collapse of the entire deal or the diplomatic process.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, critics would say it's, A compromise is incredibly difficult given how far apart the two different sides are. But also, of course, due to the existence of saboteurs on all sides. I mean, in the U.S. they have the Lindsey Graham's and in Israel, well, I would know enough, but I assume that the majority would like to see this deal be canceled and they have the tools to do so. But as you said, Iran also have their hawks who... would now see you know probably riding high from the successes and would like to go for a full win but uh yeah so I can see why that there would be a reason to constrain one's uh enthusiasm or optimism but nonetheless what do we know though about what's inside this deal because I heard again this warnings about uh misinformation around what was in the deal And even they argued that journalists should not speculate too much. But I heard some stories that the first step would be to release some of the seized funds, the Iranian funds, which have been seized. I thought this could make a lot of sense because the Iranians do not trust the Americans. But if the US has to release some of the funds, they already bought into this process. would make less sense to walk away. I thought, you know, good way to get the ball rolling. Yet again, do we know anything about what's in this deal?
Speaker 2: We know that that has been the Iranian position, that they want to make sure that they have that buy-in from the United States. From their view, they're giving up, they're opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which is a major leverage, probably the main leverage they currently have. It is more of a leverage than the stockpile of 60% in rich uranium. And the U S only gives up the blockade of the blockade that in many ways also have been counterproductive to the U S. So the Iranians believe that that exchange is imbalanced in favor of the United States. And that as a result, there should also be some release of their frozen funds at the outset of this memorandum in order to really show balance things out, but also really show the U S commitment to this. They're asking for 12 billion upfront. And then 12 billion at the end of the M MOU sticks out of the 12 billion. And incidentally was already supposed to have been released by the Biden administration who made a deal with the audience in September or actually in August, 2022. That was part of the prisoner exchange. What's the September, 2022 part of the prisoner exchange, but that prisoner exchange, uh, or that release of the funds never actually ended up happening. Because the Malasa Amini protests started in Iran and the Biden administration decided to renege on that deal, having already secured the release of several Americans from Iranian prisons. So the Iranians believe that those first 6 billion have already been promised. So they're not going to renegotiate over that. Now, there's been efforts by others to say, look, let me also explain why the U.S. has been very critical of this. The US side doesn't want to do that because they don't want to be compared to the Obama administration. They don't want to sound as if they've given up something at the very beginning of the process. And given the fact that the Republicans heavily criticize Obama for having released some of funds, but those were actually not these funds. That was a lawsuit that was settled between the United States and Iran. But because they don't want to see any comparison to that, they've rejected this. So others have come forward with ideas that essentially would mean that those funds will not be released, but some other country will give equivalent funds to Iran at the outset of the process. And then later on, they can settle, do the accounting afterwards. But at a minimum, that allows the Iranians to say, we got the funds, and it allows the United States to say, we never released any funds. This was not those funds. But at first, the Iranians were very negative to this, precisely because of what you said. They wanted to see the commitment from the United States. And if it is not the us releasing the funds, it is not sufficient of a commitment. It appears to me, however, just listening to what some of the Iranians have been saying for the last 48 hours, that the Iranians have essentially accepted that there will not be a formal release of the money, but it will be some sort of other accounting issue that will ensure that they get the money, but it won't be so that, um, uh, it is the us itself that is actually unfreezing it because at the end of the day, money is money. And it's better to do it this way. It seems like this is the position they move to. And that's part of the reason why this issue is about to get resolved, because that was one of the main sticking points. You have other issues on the Strait of Hormuz, and I'm not entirely clear how they're exactly going to resolve that. But there you have the same issue in which the language may be made sufficiently vague so that both sides can interpret it in their own ways and sell it to their own home publics. in their own ways, uh, because the vagueness allows for several different interpretations. That is not unusual in deals like this, but it is highly problematic. If it becomes, if there's too many of these vagaries in this MOU, it will turn into a Swiss cheese of a MOU just as much as the ceasefire ended up becoming very much a Swiss cheese.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, but I think that ambiguity is good though, because, uh, Trump, otherwise there can't be any deal. They really need to keep him away from the media because every time he talks, we're not going to give a dollar to the Iranians. They're going to give up everything with peace through strength. So he kind of committed himself rhetorically to this strongman position. So if he has to make any compromises, especially one, as you said, is comparable to anything Obama has done, then he's going to make it to it. close to impossible. I just had a question about the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. I heard from the Iranian side that, well, we never closed the Strait of Hormuz. We're just managing the traffic. They took some tolls. I'd actually said that also the Strait of Hormuz, it's not international waters. It's Iranian and Omanian. In other words, this is our water and We'll keep it open, but not in the same framework as it was before. So when the Iranians say that they will accept opening up the Strait of Hormuz, what would that actually entail? Because you made some distinctions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is about the ambiguity of the word open, which the Iranians can say that it's open because they haven't closed it. They're just charging. fees or tolls. I think they moved away from the language of tolls because it's very difficult to justify a toll in international law. Of course there's a dispute as to whether this is international water or whether it is Iran and Oman's waters. The Iranis have never signed on to the treaty that manages these type of issues, neither have the US incidentally. Exactly, UNCLOS. So it's very interesting to see the US refer to that, mindful of the fact that the U.S. itself has not ratified it. The U.S. does so as well when it comes to the South China Sea. The Chinese have signed on to it. The Americans have not. But nevertheless, Trump can say that it's open. The Iranians can say that it's open. That in and of itself does not clarify if there's an administrative theater that is being charged. It doesn't say anything about who is controlling it. So sometimes that's ambiguity, as you said, is absolutely needed in order to make sure that both sides can say that while it's open, uh, and Trump can go out and say, no, I've opened the Strait of Hormuz and not go into the details of who's controlling and whether there's fees, et cetera. Um, I don't find it likely at all that the Iranians will give up the Strait of Hormuz altogether. I think they have been very clear that they will try to make sure that whatever comes afterwards. is different from what the pre-existing status of the strait was. But that does not necessarily mean that there's only one type of an alternative scenario in the strait. There can still be several different ones. There could be one in which the straits and the administrative fee, the environmental fee would be managed and charged by all of the GCC countries or a larger number of them rather than just Iran and Oman. There are different ways of doing this. I don't know if that is what has been resolved and the MOU or if that is going to be left for the agreement afterwards. And that at this moment, they just settle on the fact that it's open in terms of making sure that traffic can flow.
Speaker 1: I know the Iranians seemingly wanted a more collective approach to this, which is why I think they were working on something with Oman to do together. But Trump essentially countered this by threatening to blow up Oman. Again, that's not the most diplomatic language, but yeah, or blow up Oman if they would do this. So yeah, it is interesting to see how this will develop. But there was some different things I wanted to ask you about, which is the change in the region now, because I noticed something that you had commented on as well, which is the extraordinary development that Iran, attacked Israel, that is without Israel first striking Iran. Now this is essentially in response to Israel bombing Lebanon. So what does this mean for regional security? It's essentially Lebanon now under an extended deterrence of Iran. I mean, how does this change the region?
Speaker 2: So this is what I think the Iranians are trying to establish, an extended deterrence. This is what the Israelis call the new equation. And it is not clear whether it has been successful or not. It's very clear that it's been attempted, which is, again, the very unusual situation in which Iran would attack Israel in a severe way. I'm not trying to belittle the Houthis' attacks against Israel, but those attacks are not really comparable. I mean, they're shooting one or two missiles. The Iranians can shoot two to 300 missiles at Israel combined with drones and other things and really inflict significant damage on the Israelis. This is the first time in a very long time that you have a regional power that is willing to back up its warnings to Israel against the third country with hard power. We've not seen that for a very long time. And that's part of the reason why the Israelis have been able to continue to expand settlements, annex territory, just have this unlimited, completely unrestrained maneuverability in the region. This would be a constraint on their maneuverability. This is something that the Israelis find completely unacceptable. And as a result, we've seen that they're going to do everything they can to prevent this new equation from being established. It's important to understand that one Exchange of fire does not establish that equation. It is a potential step in that direction. It's not clear whether it's been established or not. What has happened is that the Israelis struck Beirut despite us warnings and Iranian warnings. The Iranians struck Israel relatively hard. The Israelis struck Iran. The Iranians struck Israel again. The Israelis did not respond probably because of pressure from the United States. but instead they struck Southern Lebanon, not Beirut. And since we've not seen strikes by the Israelis against Beirut, particularly not against the neighborhood in Southern Beirut, even this is not sufficient to be able to say that there has been a new equation. And even if a new equation is established, it does not mean that the Israelis will never do it. It means only that if they think of doing it, they have to now take into account that there is a certain cost associated with it, a cost that did not exist before. And that may cause them to think twice and may cause them to not do it nine times out of 10, and sometimes they still do it. But again, we don't know yet if that has been established or not. If there is an MOU, however, I find it completely unlikely that the Iranians will, I mean, I don't see any scenario in which the Iranians actually would sign the MOU unless a region-wide ceasefire is part of that MOU. And that is partly because if the Israelis are allowed to just restart the war, what's the point of the MOU? Because if they can restart the war in Lebanon, that has a spillover capacity to spill over into Iran. We've already seen that happen twice. But also, I think it's starting to become clear the Iranians are not going back to having some form of forward defense, meaning that Lebanon is part of their first line of defense against Israel. It's a deterrent, but it's also a retaliatory capability. It did function as that in 2006 because the Israelis did not manage to defeat Hezbollah. They never managed to expand the war into Iran, which was the plan at the time. That forward defense has taken a huge hit because of the fall of the Assad regime and the setbacks that Hezbollah has suffered. But now you have statements from Iranian leaders saying very clearly they're not going to go back to having their deterrence be on their own soil. their deterrence is going to be outside of Iran. And that is, I think, a very clear reference that they're going to rebuild their forward defense. And the first and most important element of that is Lebanon. So I find it extremely unlikely that they will agree to anything that allows the Israelis to continue to occupy Lebanese territory, at least in the medium term, or that they will go back into attacking Lebanon in the short term.
Speaker 1: My last question though is, what do you think the wider objectives of Iran is in this war? As I said, I know they didn't start it, but that being said, they're not happy with the war ending on the terms of going back to the old status quo. I guess this is relevant in terms of what we can expect to see from Iranian demands in this memorandum of understanding. That is, What do you think is the wider goal of the Iranians? I mean, one can, of course, dream up a big, great objective, that is, U.S. packs up all its military bases, go home, all sanctions are lifted. I mean, you can kind of see the direction, but it's, of course, it's what you want and what you can achieve. So what do you think is the priorities for Iran in this war?
Speaker 2: I think actually a lot of those different things. I think they do see it as quite likely that an outcome of this war, perhaps not in the immediate term, is that the US's military presence in the region is going to dramatically shrink. One outcome of this war is that a lot of these different GCC countries are not going to rely on American bases for their security. They're going to rely on American weaponry and all kinds of other agreements, but not just with the US, but with plenty of other states. So security... from the GCC perspective, is going to start to be diversified rather than just being in the American basket. All of these different things I think the Iranians will see as positive. I think you're also going to see, and I think they are going to be aiming for, a new type of relationship, not necessarily between the GCC and Iran, because I'm not really sure that the GCC really is a functional entity in any meaningful sense of the word at this point, but rather new relationships between Iran and key states on the southern part of the Persian Gulf. Some of them are going to have a much more intertwined approach with Iran. Not to say that they're not angry with Iran, not to say that they don't see Iran as a threat and a challenge, but they're going to recognize what the Europeans used to recognize and have given up on, which is that economic independence is a critical element of your security. And that in the past, The balance between containment of Iran and integration with Iran was too far in the direction of containment, and it led to this disastrous war that revealed the utter vulnerability of these GCC states. And they're going to shift away from that. So I think the Iranians are going to see this as a pathway towards their political, economic, and security rehabilitation in the region within a United States that is no longer going to be in a position to constantly push for Iran's containment may not even want to do so because of its own deal with Iran. And this is going to be a massive opening for the one is that doesn't mean that everything will be fine. Doesn't mean that everything will be, um, uh, friction free or that there won't be other types of problems that can emerge and certainly will emerge, but it will more or less, I think from their standpoint, be an end of the 47 year era. in which the US's organizing principle for the Middle East was the containment and isolation of Iran. And this is the nightmare of the Israelis, by the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, in all insecurity, in the security competition, one always has to manage the security dilemma by balancing deterrence with reassurance. That is to make sure one doesn't provoke while still deterring. I think during the Cold War, because of the concentration of power This balance was disrupted. We went all the way. There was no need for reassurance. We went all into deterrence and containment. And I think now there's a readjustment required. And so, yeah, I think not just with Iran, the wider world, there's going to have to be some changes, adjustment to the new distribution of power. Anyways, thank you very much for your time. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Appreciate the insights and I hope you don't, get deported, but if you do, we'll be very happy to have you back in Scandinavia. So thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: End of War? U.S. & Iran Close to a Deal? https://youtu.be/v7tyJIc7U3A https://t.co/0DVIIJ6fqh
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn Deason hosts former CIA analyst Larry Johnson to discuss current developments in the war against Iran, noting that earlier Trump-era bombing cycles were followed by claims that the sides were close to a deal, only for renewed war talk to follow. Johnson says the current situation appears different: Iran and the U.S. are moving toward a “shared understanding” and a stepped memorandum of understanding (MOU), shepherded by Pakistan, with Qatar also involved. Johnson describes the MOU as based on “14-point documents” Iran introduced on April 8, alongside a memorandum of understanding on how the process will work. He says the arrangement does not mean agreement on every issue yet, but that “an act of good faith” has occurred through reported asset releases by the United Arab Emirates, including reportedly $3 billion first and later a report of $20 billion total.
Johnson lists Iran’s red line demands: unfreeze assets; lifting sanctions; recognition of Iran’s control or sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz; lifting the U.S. blockade; and a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, including calls for Israeli troops to withdraw from Lebanon and Gaza. He adds that Iran has not backed off those demands, leaving the question of timing.
Deason says Iranian officials have indicated the MOU would be published in steps, with “first” step action tied to signing: once signed, all Iranian assets would be released and not frozen again, allowing movement to subsequent steps. He characterizes the asset release and sanctions unfreezing as a significant first move, which would also impose political and practical costs on the U.S. if it backtracks. Deason asks what else must be included.
Johnson says sanctions lifting must include more than oil, with early gestures including lifting sanctions on oil. He argues the main stumbling block is Israel: Israel must leave Lebanon and Gaza. Johnson says Trump would have leverage through cutting off aid, but he doubts Trump would apply pressure as hard as possible. He says nuclear issues are “down the road,” and Israel’s complaints about ballistic missiles likely create friction because Iran is unlikely to allow ballistic missiles to be put on the agenda, treating them as a key strategic “ace in the hole” alongside Strait of Hormuz leverage. Johnson also discusses Hormuz operations, including a claim attributed to Iranian statements that charging for “services” is reserved because the Strait is treated as partly within national waters rather than international waters.
The discussion then turns to ceasefire risks. Deason worries that Israel could disrupt any peace negotiation, citing the idea that Lebanon and Gaza could be used to veto terms at any time through massacres or provocations. Johnson says he has seen evidence suggesting Iran’s upgraded air defense system during recent U.S. strikes, including reports of Tomahawk missiles being taken down and Iranian systems engaging an aircraft. He adds that Iran’s retaliation reportedly focused on Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and that upgraded capabilities reflect assistance via China and Russia. Johnson also says he is not seeing “signature activities” suggesting additional U.S. airstrikes, and interprets that as consistent with genuine negotiations.
Johnson argues negotiations appear linked to diplomacy and regional calculations. He characterizes the UAE as an “obnoxious relative” and says its participation likely reflects economic incentives and business needs, including reopening and returning some frozen assets. He adds that Qatar stayed engaged during attacks and helped align with Pakistan on a document, while Pakistan is also negotiating with Qatar and Saudi Arabia to reduce U.S. military entanglement and separate them from hosting U.S. personnel. He says the 14-point Iranian document includes a point about U.S. military withdrawal from around Iran. He notes Saudi and Qatar reluctance to allow U.S. bases and specifically not allowing Israel to overfly their territory, limiting Israel’s options. He frames the broader effort as part of constructing a post-Western-pressure economic and security order connected to BRICS and a new international economic order.
On secrecy and potential sabotage, Deason asks whether secrecy is meant to prevent wrong expectations and sabotage from “all sides,” including U.S. actors, Israelis, and Iranian hawks. Johnson says on the U.S. side there is an effort to prevent a further firestorm, including social media attacks on Trump, calls from prominent U.S. figures, and warnings from oil executives about imminent fuel disruption and economic chaos.
As to what might break first, Johnson says Israel would refuse to leave Lebanon while Trump would refuse to use leverage to force withdrawal, citing historical precedents where U.S. pressure led Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. He says Hezbollah would likely end attacks as part of the broader peace arrangement supporting Iran, but warns there are “pitfalls” and “booby traps” that could derail the process quickly.
Johnson closes by arguing that U.S. military power has faced clear limits across other conflicts, and that weapons inventories and supply chains impose constraints. He says if the MOU process proceeds, it could boost prestige and reduce immediate risk in the Strait of Hormuz because opening it militarily would require Iran to guarantee no shooting while user fees continue, which would affect insurance and commercial confidence. He also warns that domestic and foreign Zionist pressures could push Trump to back out and return to war.
Deason ends with “cautiously optimistic” framing, hopes that releasing Iranian funds could become sunk cost supporting continued compliance, and discusses possible impacts on China and Russia, with Johnson suggesting China would seek recovery given its BRICS exposure to Strait of Hormuz closure. The conversation concludes with Johnson’s final remark comparing “third time is the charm” to Trump’s repeated predicted “successes,” followed by off-topic remarks about “Russia Day” and the host’s continued commentary.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst, to discuss what is happening now in the war against Iran. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 2: I get that light shining in the corner. I just checked into a hotel on the road.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm not sure where to start here because there's so many times... We've heard Trump, you know, after every bomb raid, he essentially comes out and say, well, this time we're very close to a deal. We heard this story many, many times, only to see him beat the drums of war again the next day. But this appears to be something different, though. We hear from the Iranians as well that there is big movements. Not a deal, but... Uh, but at least, uh, an, an agreement on, uh, on a shared understanding and a plan to move forward, uh, given how far apart the sides are, this is quite remarkable. So I was wondering what, yeah, what is going on? How, what does this mean?
Speaker 2: Um, I'm fully, listen, I'm fully. Empathetic with how you're feeling. I got, I was on a Garland Nixon's podcast yesterday. I put on a neck brace. You know, the things that people, when they have whiplash from a car accident, I put one of those on because it was symbolic of what we're going through. One moment, Trump says he's going to, quote, bomb the shit out of Iran. And then the next moment, he's like, hey, all we're saying is give peace a chance. You know, he goes from being Dr. Strangelove to becoming John Lennon. And this process has been shepherded by Pakistan. They've been at the center of it. And the information that Pepe and Ike were given, it's turning the track to prove to be true. The Pakistanis the other day were talking about walking away, but they didn't. Qatar got involved. So it looks like what they have produced is based on those 14-point documents, that Iran introduced back on April 8th, that they've come up with a memorandum of understanding, so how they're going to work this. It doesn't mean that they've actually got agreements on each of the issues, but apparently one of the key sort of acts of good faith has been carried out by the United Arab Emirates, who turned over reportedly $3 billion the other day. You know, when I heard first of that report, I was skeptical. But there's another report out now saying they're going to turn over like a total of $20 billion. And this $3 billion was the first of that tranche. So Iran is starting to see some money because one of their red line demands was you've got to have unfreeze the assets. The... The other four more fundamental demands that they absolutely insist on, the lifting of the sanctions, the recognition of Iran's control or sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, lift the blockade by the United States, and a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon. Get the Israeli troops out and actually withdraw... the Israeli forces from Gaza as well. So there's no sign that Iran's backed off of that. It's just now a question of at what point in the process does that come to the forefront?
Speaker 0: Yeah, well, I saw from the Iranian side that is the Aragji, he came out as well and was making the point that the memorandum of understanding will be put this out in different in different steps that is first yeah first step we'll do this once it has been achieved we'll move to the next step but yeah so the first step apparently would be yeah they signed this memorandum of understanding and once it's signed all of Iran's assets will be released and they will not be frozen again this is kind of the deal and once this is done they can move on to the next step So this is quite significant. It's releasing the sanctions. It's not the most difficult thing to do compared to the other tasks. But it is a show of goodwill, though, because it's been so many nonsense negotiations. And also, once you get this out of the way, it's going to essentially be a cost for the US as well to go back on what is promised. So it's a It's a good first move. But what are the other things that have to be included into this deal though?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, again, lifting all the sanctions, not just oil. So part of what one of the initial gestures will be lifting sanctions on oil. That benefits Trump as well. You know, helps get some more oil out in the market. but ultimately get all of the sanctions lifted, lift the U.S. blockade. And then I think the real stumbling block is going to be Israel. Israel is going to have to leave Lebanon and leave Gaza. Now, if left up to them, they are not going to do it. But Trump has the leverage. in terms of saying, okay, we're going to cut off all aid to you, and you're going to be on your own, that will motivate Israel to come around. But I don't, I candidly don't think Trump's willing to play that hard with them. I think Trump is, you know, will lose his fine. But hey, I'm prepared to be surprised and very much mistaken on that. So the other issues that with respect to the nuclear side, that's for down the road. Now, Israel's complaining that this doesn't begin to address the ballistic missiles. And candidly, I don't think Iran's going to allow ballistic missiles to even be put on the agenda, because apart from controlling the Strait of Hormuz, that's their other ace in the hole, or their other trump card, so to speak.
Speaker 0: Yeah, I was going to say, well, on the Strait of Hormuz, I saw Arakci make the point that, you know, while Iran may not put, well, he said living tolls would not be acceptable, but he said we reserve the right to charge for services, given that it's not international waters. It's all the Strait of Hormuz falls within either Iran or Oman's national waters. Correct. On the nuclear deal, though, I mean, Once Trump begins to make the point that, you know, we'll get a deal so Iran can have a nuclear weapon, this introduces some optimism for me because if it starts to frame the conflict as preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, then, you know, a deal can be made because Iran's made it clear it doesn't need a nuclear weapon. So, you know, at least in that area, there's some flexibility. So if Trump wants to claim victory, this is essentially... what he wants to gamble on. Because if he sets the goal of opening, you know, having the Strait of Hormuz act as treated as if it's international waters, then he can't have a victory. My concern is what you hinted towards there, though, which is the ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza that has to be included into the ceasefire. Well, I'm assuming that Israel will do anything or everything in its power to to disrupt this peace negotiation.
Speaker 2: Glenn, are you a cynic?
Speaker 0: Likely so, yeah. But this isn't for the Israelis. I mean, Lebanon, Gaza, by having this in the deal, they can essentially veto it any time they want by massacring people there.
Speaker 2: Or don't forget false flags. So Israel would carry out something to make it look like Iran violated the agreement, that Iran attacked one of its neighbors. It's been fascinating this week watching Iranian restraint. Yet, I don't know if you've picked this up, but I think it was on the Tuesday or Wednesday strikes by the United States that we saw the first evidence of Iran's upgraded air defense system. As a reporter, they took down five Tomahawk missiles during the strike on Bandar Abbas. They hadn't done that before. And they also engaged an F, I think it was an F-16. Again, with the ground, the air defense system lit it up. F-16 knew it was going to be engaged and it bailed out real quick. So, That's FLIR assistance from China and Russia that have upgraded them on that. Then the targeting, their retaliatory strikes, they were not massive, but they were incredibly precise. And I know, and I have some information with respect to one of those, that it was extremely damaging to U.S., I'll call it U.S. strategic capabilities.
Speaker 1: In other words,
Speaker 2: the US ability to, you know, if they were launching intercontinental ballistic missiles, that my understanding is this, whatever was taken out in Bahrain was a critical, uber expensive component. And the feeling I know on the US side was the only way that could have been targeted was with Chinese and Russian assistance. Similarly, on this very last strike, they hit another radar that was in bought rain and, uh, took it out. So, uh, then they were hitting precise targets at the Mawatha al-Salti al-Salti air base in Jordan and reportedly damaged F-35s, F-15s and F-16s, as well as maybe an E-8 Prowler. So, you know, I, Ron's gotta be feeling a little more confident from a military standpoint that they were not just getting beat up with no response. And what I'm seeing right now, we're not seeing any of the signature activities you would expect to see from the United States militarily if they were planning additional airstrikes. So, you know, right now we're at, let's see, it's going to be five o'clock here. So that's, you know, so it's about one o'clock in the morning, 1.30 in the morning over in Iran. And usually this is the time when U.S. military strikes are lighting it off, and we're not seeing anything. So that says that, in fact, these talks, they are real, and the negotiations are genuine. They're not just a facade. Whether they can hold up, that's a whole other issue.
Speaker 0: Yeah, well, I know skeptics, and I would put myself in that category. Me too, me too. Well, my skepticism is on the idea that Trump wants an end to the war. I mean, I think the deception in the past is because they want to defeat the Iranians. They don't want to have a peace agreement and live side by side. But they must be sinking in that they can't achieve their objectives. They can't defeat the Iranians. And the longer they have this thing dragging on, the more pain Iran's going to bring to them. So why wait until the bitter end? It looks as if, well, again, it could be that this is this realization that they have to throw in the towel. But what do you make of the strikes they had, though? Because when the Iranians had the retaliatory strikes, they appeared to focus on Bahrain, on Jordan and Kuwait. I kind of had assumed that any retaliatory strike would prioritize the United Arab Emirates for destruction. But you think this is linked up to the deal, given that they just handed over a few billions? I mean, is this one of the steps the Iranians are showing that they will cease all hostilities if they show some reciprocity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean... UAE is like, you know, they're like the most obnoxious relative at the table. You want to punch him in the face. They have been consistently siding with Israel until recently. And they were quick to come out and condemn Iran for retaliating for having been attacked. However, Monday, that delegation from the UAE went to Tehran. And I think for the UAE, it's an economic calculation. They've really taken a beating in the course of this war. Now 105 days old, 106 days old. They've suffered significant economic damage and are looking to get back into business. They've got that free trade zone, Jebel Ali, that has just been shut down dead for the entire duration of this war. So reportedly, they're playing a critical role in returning some of the frozen assets. The day after, so they went Monday. The next day, Tuesday, the Qatari delegation shows up, and they stay. And many thought that they would leave Tuesday afternoon, as soon as they left, then the United States would start up the attack again. But apparently they stuck around. They stayed overnight. So they were there during one of the attacks. It didn't really hit Tehran, but it was close. And so Qatar apparently played a role with the Pakistanis in working out a document that they could all agree to. The other thing that's going on behind the scenes that, you know, Pepe and I, Escobar and I have been told, and I believe it's true, is that Pakistan is also negotiating with Qatar and Saudi Arabia and helping them plan their escape from being under the control of the United States or separating themselves from being a host for U.S. military personnel. And that is An interesting, in the 14 point document that Iran presented to the United States, one of the points was that the United States withdraw its military personnel from around Iran. Whether they'll get that or not remains to be seen, but we have seen reluctance, let's call it, no enthusiasm on the part of the Saudis or Qataris to allow their bases to be used. by the United States, but specifically, they're not allowing Israel to overfly their territory at all. So that's put some, I guess, brakes on what the Israelis could do in terms of engaging militarily. So this is a pretty complex diplomatic effort, and Pakistan's not doing this on its own. Pakistan is doing it with the full support, encouragement. China is the principal, but Russia is the secondary. So this actually comes down to broader constructing a BRICS order, a new international economic order that's going to be free of Western pressure and sanctions. Like Scott Bessie can threaten, oh, we're going to seize your dollars. And all Ron's going to say is, well, we're selling our oil in yuan, so screw your dollars.
Speaker 0: I was going to say, well, what will the region look like after this war? Again, we're delving into speculation. We don't know what exactly is in this memorandum of understanding. We don't know the different steps, if they will be followed. But we do know what is important for the Iranians. I mean, if they are... willing to not see the Strait of Hormuz but if they're willing to show some flexibility it then for me it indicates that at least then perhaps the Gulf states have made some commitments to perhaps limit the presence of US troops because the whole purpose for the Iranians is to holding on to Strait of Hormuz is an instrument to decouple the US a bit from the region so this objective will stand but
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, what areas do you think they might be flexible on?
Speaker 0: The toll, how much you would charge on ships going through. I think all of this, I think it's a means to an end. And the end would be to have a tool to encourage the countries of the region to remove sanctions and to expel U.S. bases as a favorable term. terms for access if if they go along with this um hello oh you're back yeah i see you moving okay you froze up there momentarily yeah i don't know if it's you or me it could be at my end yeah yeah so anyway you were saying no yes i will say well i was saying uh i i assume that uh if if they're willing to be less strict on what the charge going through the Strait of Hormuz, how they're going to run it, essentially, it's because they're getting other guarantees that the U.S. will reduce their presence. I'm just thinking, how do you see the region forming, though, after this war? Because a lot of things have changed. Iran extended its security guarantees to, or it's extended deterrence to, uh to lebanon uh we see you know the the us would be out of its mind to try to attack iran again this has been a very painful experience but uh how much do you think iran's position in the region will change as a result of this well actually i think iran would be a bit of a moderating influence okay i mean let's be candid about the gulf arabs they're they're they're like a bunch of nasty high school girls you know the there's that movie the mean girls
Speaker 2: So, okay, seven years ago, you got Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They're mad at Qatar. Oh, and they tried to cut, you know, impose an embargo. Why? Because Qatar was having relations with Turkey and was supporting Hamas. Okay, then let's jump two years ago. Now, all of a sudden, it's the Saudis mad at the Emiratis and threatening to go to war. And then you got... So, it's just... They've had these so-called Gulf Arabs are not united at all. I mean, they've been getting pissed off at each other over just some of the most ridiculous things. And the irony was when the Saudis and Emiratis were going after Qatar, who was the one country that came to the aid of Qatar? Iran. And Iran has been careful on its diplomatic side. efforts and I think with strong encouragement from both Russia and Russia and China so it was now two years ago maybe three that Saudi Arabia and Tehran basically they repaired I mean they had been at odds they'd been fighting a proxy war in Yemen with you know Iran backing the Houthis and Saudis backing the government the regular government and But anyway, they bridged that gap. So they settled that difference. And what Pakistan is also doing with, again, with the encouragement of China, we can't ignore, China's the hidden, I don't want to call them the puppet master here, but they're talking to Egypt, Turkey, the Saudis, Iran, and with Pakistan forming a new military, if you will, a NATO-style organization for that region. And this becomes, it's gotten especially interesting this week with Israel's verbal attacks and threats on Turkey and getting in, you know, just getting in a proverbial pissing match with Erdogan. And, you know, the only one who's got as big an ego as Donald Trump is Erdogan. And so, you know, he didn't take kindly to that. And I've seen her trying to figure out, what are these Israelis thinking? This guy controls a major source of their oil. He could cut it off in a heartbeat, and instead they're threatening him that we're going to attack you and destroy you? Color me surprised. So that's where I think that this proposal from China through Pakistan that these countries come together to form a defensive alliance against Israel is something that's starting to resonate. So I think we could see that. And Israel's position will be, at least from the standpoint of public support in the United States, will be much more vulnerable. They're not going to have the reflexive support. And even if they succeed in getting themselves completely insinuated into the National Defense Authorization Act, the Section 224 and Section 622. They're trying to basically like a tech or a parasite embed themselves in the host so that they'll never be subject to any kind of political controversy coming down the line. So I see the military effort increase among those countries as well as levels of economic cooperation. I mean, frankly, Qatar's got some years of rebuilding to do ahead of itself because of the damage it suffered early on in this war. I'm not sure how much physical damage Saudis have took or encompassed. Bahrain will probably become part of Iran again. And Kuwait, you can see it get folded back into Iraq. So, yeah, there'll be some changes, I think.
Speaker 0: Yeah, I've been looking at Coheat as well. It's continued independence is highly questionable. Well, one of the reasons we don't know too much about this memorandum of understanding and the possible deal that will follow is there's been encouragement, well, to keep the media quiet. And I was wondering, how do you read this? Is this for people... not to oversell the story in order to essentially create the wrong expectations to sabotage it. I mean, it looks like the concern for sabotage is on all sides, to be honest, because one often looks at the American side, it's many who do not want this deal. The Israelis are obviously also eager to sabotage, but also within Iran, you have the hawks. many hawks who also say, well, for good reason, they are in a strong position now. This is the time to, well, put an end to their enemies, not to accept a deal. And of course you can understand why they would be hesitant to make any deals after everything that's happened. But anyways, my point is that all sides, you find some saboteurs. Is this why there's so much secrecy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think, I think the, the, particularly on the Trump side of the house, they are trying to prevent a further firestorm. You know, there was all the social media influencers that are paid for by the Israeli government. They went on, starting Sunday, boy, they went on a blistering attack on Trump.
Speaker 0: And he was getting phone calls from, you know, people like Lindsey Graham and
Speaker 2: Sheldon Adelson's widow and you know he succumbs to that pressure but I think right now he's also another element I meant to mention this earlier is the oil company executives reportedly went in to brief Trump and they said oh my god this is going to be terrible the headline was they're desperately trying to warn the White House about major fuel disruption that is imminent. And this official, again, refused to be named out of fear of retaliation. But this is the potential for real economic chaos in the United States is scaring Trump as well. And so he's caught between, okay, if he gets this, gets this war, gets at least some sort of peace in place with Iran, and can take credit for saying, hey, Iran's promised they're not going to have a nuke, which that's been Iran's position all along, then he can take a victory lap with that without people pointing out, you've got something that's weaker than JCPOA, but okay, you've got to take it as a victory. So he can then try to get the world... It's not just oil. It's liquid natural gas, urea and sulfur and helium. Get all of that back into some sort of order, hoping they can restore it. And it's going to take minimum of three months and maybe much longer if they actually get an agreement within the next three or four days. That endures. But you're correct, Glenn. I've already seen headlines about Republican senators or Democrats criticizing Trump for, you know, what they're reading is the nature of the agreement. And they're going to be calling the White House and say, what the hell are you thinking? What are you trying to do? So this is, it may need to be seen if Trump can put up with this kind of pressure. That's why I think ultimately, I think the deal is going to collapse because I don't see Trump having the stamina or the strength to resist the,
Speaker 0: the intense domestic pressure that's going to come from the zionist lobby well the iranian foreign minister arachi was making the point that the media the media should not speculate what's in this deal because the that's essentially could be a pathway towards derailing it he could have added but i'm glad he didn't that keep trump away from the media as well because every time he's in the media he has to sell the strongman image so She has to go through the same talking points. That is, Iran is begging for a deal. We're dictating the terms. They're going to get no, not a dollar of the frozen assets. They will give up all nuclear material. The Strait of Hormuz will be open. Our ships are going. Once you start locking yourself into this maximalist position, it's very difficult to essentially commit to a memorandum of understanding Which, compared to the previous statements of Trump, this would be reality catching up. This would seem like a capitulation. So I think, yeah, keep Trump away from the media and at least get the ball rolling. If they can get into that one step of releasing the Iranian funds, then it would be very painful for the US to step back and then lose what is already put into this deal. But, yeah, I had the same thought as you. I don't have a – well, I assume that it will fall apart at some point. But I really hope I'm mistaken, though. But what do you think is going to crack first?
Speaker 2: I think it's going to crack on Israel. Israel will refuse to leave Lebanon. And Trump will refuse to use the leverage he has to force him out. You know, we had the experience with Ronald Reagan back in 1982. And Sharon was the general. You know, he was rampaging in southern Lebanon. And I think Netanyahu was probably—I may be mistaken on that, but whoever the Israeli prime minister was at the time, Reagan— Called him up and said, basically, get the hell out or else we're cutting you off. And they left. So there is precedent for this. And, well, Eisenhower did it to the Brits and the Israelis back during the Suez crisis. Was that 53? 54? So there is precedent for it. It's just a matter of, well, is Trump willing to do that? Now, he... According to Robert Barnes, they had a session a week ago, a week and a half ago at the White House with a pollster, Rich Barris, who is an outstanding pollster. And he basically told Trump, he said, look, the majority of the American public is looking at you like you are Bibi Netanyahu's prison paramour, that you're basically his bitch. was how he put it. And, you know, Trump recoiled at that. Nobody's going, I'm not going to be anybody's bitch. Okay, so prove it now. And the orders that will be given to Israel is pull out now. Get back inside your borders. Now, the opposite side of that is the Hezbollah then has to end its attacks. But I think that they will do so because as part of this broader peace deal and in support of Iran. So, you know, this thing, it's not impossible, but boy, there are a lot of, you know, pitfalls in the way and booby traps that could derail this very quickly.
Speaker 0: Well, it's just overall the Trump presidency, it looks like it's in a difficult spot, though, because, again, he was elected on making America great again in terms of putting an end to some of the mistakes of the past decades, these forever wars. Then he walked away from the no wars by essentially saying that the strongman would essentially, with great strength, restore the dominant position of the United States, so pump up the military budgets, defeat its enemies. Then, of course, he lost a lot of his supporters. But now, I mean, for him, who's now positioned himself as the strongman who would defeat America's enemies, now he has to make very painful concessions. And I think this is what the U.S. does need now, though, because it's not easy to climb down from that position, though, of the only world superpower and now having to accept essentially a defeat to countries like Iran and accept a diminished position in the world. It must be difficult. I just can't see it going through, though.
Speaker 2: Well, look, the problem, Glenn, is the United States has been in denial now for, let's call it, four years. So let's go back to the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. So from the outset, that was a proxy war with Russia using Ukraine as the stand-in. And the United States brought intelligence. It brought, you know, weapons. You know, it started with HIMARS and ATAKOMs and F-16s and, you know, trying to resupply 152 or 155-millimeter artillery shells. And what happened? The United States failed to move the needle against Russia. Russia steadily beat down Ukraine. Then we come to Operation Prosperity Guardian. And again, this is not just on Trump. Remember, Operation Prosperity Guardian started in December of 2023 under Joe Biden, that they were going to open up and establish freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. And, you know, for... I guess 12, 13, about 15 months, they failed. And so Donald Trump enters, it comes into the picture in month 13 or 14. And so January, February, start of March, they announced, by God, we're going to show those Houthis now whose boss, we're not going to be a bunch of wimps like the Biden administration. And so they put two carriers, they ultimately had two aircraft carriers in the Red Sea. Then we're actively bombing Houthi positions. And whereas in the previous 13 months, the Houthis were shooting down an average of one MQ-9 Reaper drone, they now started shooting down one of those a week. So from once a month to one a week. And just the base price of the airframe of that is $35 million. When you attach the optical pod, you know, the pods for, you know, recording video and firing Hellfire missiles and other things to it, that pushes the cost of it up to a minimum of like $60 million a piece. So what did the Houthis do? They destroyed 25 of those seven of them in the seven weeks that Trump hung in there, which is, you know, that's, what, almost $2.4 billion? You know, so it's a lot of money. And Trump ended up declaring, oh, they've capitulated, we're out. So it's not just, and now here with this war with Iran, we're seeing a consistent theme. that there are clear limits to U.S. military power. It is not this behemoth, this Goliath that cannot be defeated. It's a Goliath with feet of clay, among other things. And it's not just on the effectiveness of the weaponry. I mean, we've seen with the Patriot missiles, and it's supposed to defeat all of these ballistic missiles. And instead, the United States has only produced 6,000, roughly now 6,500, assuming they've been able to maintain the production through the first five months of this year. Well, when you realize that you have to fire two of those to take down one ballistic missile, that means if you got 6,500 or let's say 6,400 to make it easy, that means you can shoot down 3,200 missiles. Well, for heaven's sakes, Russia had fired, in the course of the war with Ukraine, has fired over 14,000 missiles. And the number that Iran has fired against Israel is probably up well in the range of 3,000. So right there, the United States, if they had actually employed all of those assets against that, they would have exhausted it. And then to top it off, when it comes time to make it, they're extremely expensive. The Patriot, the PAC-3, goes between $4 and $6 million. And then, to add to the difficulties, the supply chain for it comes out of China. The Tomahawk cruise missile, for example, requires 18 different rare earth minerals, plus it comes out of China, plus tungsten. And so... The United States has this offensive weapon that's basically dependent upon supply chains from China and Russia. So you put all that together and you're going, you know what? Maybe the United States is not as super a superpower as we thought.
Speaker 0: No, I think it's hard to argue that the U.S. didn't overextend itself. But this is my point. I think it would be the best thing for the U.S. to also scale back a bit. prioritize what he wants to do because at the moment attempting to do everything is just uh yeah terrible uh terrible plan but uh let me just ask a last question how do you see if we're moving if let's say this memorandum of understanding goes through with the Iranians or if it doesn't we'll then looking towards we're looking to our um Iranian victory probably anyways. How does this change the wider world, do you think? I mean, how would the position of China or Russia be impacted by this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, well, A, it'll boost the prestige. B, it's going to, for China, you know, China still has probably, it's taken the biggest hit of the BRICS countries from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in part because it had actually invested in in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. So it's going to want to recover some of that money. But this will be, you know, it's going to be, I think, touch and go for, you know, at least two weeks because we haven't got the details of this process, but it's going to hinge on continued meetings, continued diplomacy. And as you recall, the... JPCOA, that took, what, 18 months, almost two years to negotiate? So we could actually find ourselves in this whole negotiation process. And the good news there is they're going to not be shooting at each other. And I think right now that will reduce the risk in the Strait of Hormuz. Because the only way you can fully open the Strait of Hormuz is for Iran to say, okay, it's open. We're not going to be shooting at any ships. They do have to pay the toll or the user's fee, but we're not going to be shooting. And at that point, then the insurance companies would say, okay, good. We can go back in there. We don't have to worry about getting hit. But there's no way it can be open militarily. That was the lesson that's been demonstrated over the last two weeks with all these different air attacks by the United States. So if they get into the negotiation track, but as you've noted, and I agree with you, the potential for the Zionist lobby in particular, both from Israel's standpoint and then within the United States, from both the Christian Zionists, the Jewish Zionists, will put enormous pressure on Trump to back out of this deal and then go back to war.
Speaker 0: Yeah, well, that's what I'm hoping the first step of releasing that Iranian funds will essentially be the sunk cost, something that incentivizes them to actually stick with this. But I don't know. Well, to summarize, cautiously optimistic. I mean, this is the best sign I've seen since February, I think. that it actually could come to an end. But yeah, not convinced just yet. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 2: You know, there's the old saying about third time is the charm, except Donald Trump has predicted this 39 times. So we'll have to adjust that saying. 39 times is the charm.
Speaker 0: To be honest, when you first mentioned it, I didn't think twice. I just assumed it was more nonsense. But when the Iranians confirmed on their side, then yeah. Well, again, at some point it would have to be the real deal. So let's hope this is it. And yeah, thank you very much for taking the time. And where are you, by the way?
Speaker 2: New York City celebrating. It's Russia. It's Russia's day.
Speaker 0: That's right. We spoke earlier about that.
Speaker 2: I was invited up to attend and go to their UN mission here in a bit.
Speaker 0: I just read in the Ukrainian media that Marco Rubio wished a happy Russia Day to the Russian people. This shouldn't be newsworthy, but these days it is.
Speaker 2: Step in the right direction anyway. But keep doing your good work, Glenn. You've got to keep people informed, and they watch you. Just tell everybody, you ought to start actually selling Glenn Deason neck braces. If you're going to follow these politics, you've got to have this neck brace to support yourself so you don't get whiplash.
Speaker 0: Well, thanks again, Larry.
Speaker 1: All right, my friend. Take care. Bye-bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Warwick Powell: U.S. Wars on Iran & Russia Leave China Stronger https://youtu.be/8pZiRkZjGDM https://t.co/mhZRm6CUGM
Video Transcript AI Summary
Warwick Powell says the Iran war is affecting East Asia in longer-term, structural ways. The immediate impact is through reduced oil and liquid fuel flows, which exposes Southeast Asian economies and Australia because they depend on Middle East crude and on fuels refined from it. He notes countries have adjusted by reaching out to other suppliers: Russia and Indonesia (Malaysia has done so), and Japan has sought to secure its position with the Sakhalin II project. He adds that Russian “European Urals” oil is chemically similar to Middle East oil and suits diesel manufacturing, while Singapore has refused Russian oil and therefore had to find other workarounds. He also highlights pressure on fertilizers and petrochemicals, with Japanese naphtha-market constraints already affecting related industries and pushing some firms to seek alternative supply options in China.
Powell argues energy shocks do not end abruptly and that the downstream implications are likely to be manifold. He cites a consumer-level shift toward electrified transportation, especially Chinese EVs exported into Southeast Asia and Australia, which he says has increased dramatically over the last hundred days. He also says countries are increasing interest in energy technologies that support “energy sovereignty,” with Chinese clean-energy technologies positioned as central. He further emphasizes a defense and security dimension: the United States’ global power-projection base network is no longer defendable. He connects damaged or destroyed Persian Gulf bases with American pullbacks and says this has created shockwaves across Southeast Asia and Eastern North Asia. Powell argues Asia’s U.S. deterrence posture has relied on American bases across the First Island Chain (from Japan to the Philippines), so if those bases become unsustainable, the regional security architecture is forced to change while China expands its military posture over decades of modernization.
Glenn links this to a broader post–Cold War U.S. hegemonic strategy and argues that in a multipolar world the U.S. cannot be everywhere. Powell responds by describing the effects of U.S. weapons and attention being diverted across multiple theaters, which he says reflects a failure to prioritize and contributes to European and Gulf states feeling betrayed or exposed, especially those portrayed as frontline states. He says that in East Asia, frontline states risk becoming targets for America’s adversaries while the U.S. cannot protect them as intended.
Powell outlines differing regional responses. He says Japan has been remilitarizing for about a decade for domestic political reasons and for concerns about the U.S. security “blanket,” with similar pressures in South Korea, including public distrust about the American nuclear umbrella and growing demands for nuclearization. He also says this aligns with an American strategy of outsourcing funding, material responsibility, and frontline risk to allied states. He adds that U.S. basing in Japan and South Korea still helps keep them under U.S. influence, while he describes Philippine efforts to move closer to Washington and the economic pressures that have accompanied it. Powell claims oil-flow disruptions have caused significant economic problems in the Philippines, and that the Philippines reached out to China for support in fuel supply; he says Marcos indicated in late March that the Philippines was interested in re-engaging Beijing on joint exploration and development in the South China Sea.
He notes public opposition building in multiple countries, including Australia’s renewed AUKUS debate at the Shangri-La Dialogues. Powell describes a public inquiry into AUKUS initiated by former federal labor minister Peter Garrett, arguing Parliament has not investigated the merits, handling, or process. He presents Pete Hegseth’s Shangri-La keynote as a “capstone” point, saying Hegseth described the U.S. role in Asia as ensuring no single power becomes a regional hegemon, and Powell contrasts this with the U.S. insistence in Powell’s memory that it was the sole hegemon in Asia.
Powell then turns to whether Japan’s rearmament increases autonomy or becomes an instrument for U.S. frontline strategy. He says the outcome is double-edged, tied to whether U.S. bases remain defensible given shortages and Chinese capabilities, and he references U.S. force shifts such as relocating some forces away from Okinawa. He argues U.S. capability limitations suggest bases and stored airplanes might not last through the first week of serious conflict, and he says Japan will continue rearming, but autonomy depends on U.S. ability to keep Japan “under control.” He says Southeast Asia has lingering memories of Japanese militarization in the 1930s and 1940s and that this could make Asia tense. Powell also claims the Chinese economy’s scale limits the feasibility of balancing China militarily, stating he sees the real issue as how to live with China as the major power.
On China’s ability to withstand attempts to disrupt its energy, Powell says China’s energy structure is less dependent on oil than 25 years ago, citing a diesel peak about two years ago and declining diesel consumption, plus a two-decade diversification through electrification, storage, renewables, and major expansion of coal and nuclear generation. He adds terrestrial transport across Eurasia improved, with Russia and Central Asia supplying oil and gas to China in ways that are harder to interdict than maritime choke points. He also says global energy markets are more fragmented than U.S. “energy monopoly” assumptions imply, and he argues that alternatives and new technologies make containment via energy choke points increasingly hard to execute. He concludes China should be “reasonably unscathed,” citing preparedness, growing global demand for Chinese clean-energy technologies, increased Chinese foreign direct investment, and deeper integration with Southeast Asia—especially through energy, commodities, finished products, and payment-system expansion that reduces reliance on American infrastructure and institutions like the dollar and SWIFT.
When asked about India, Powell says India’s non-alignment tradition means it can appear to “waiver,” but that India faces challenges tied to economic development and elite relationships with the U.S., along with anxieties and unavoidable realities due to the land border and tensions with China. He says India’s key long-term problem is becoming a more autonomous economic actor with less exposure to U.S.-linked risk, including fertilizer and energy access problems and domestic infrastructure and industrialization gaps. He calls for a more cordial India-China relationship and says leadership is needed to transcend anxieties toward China. He also argues against bloc politics and describes the ASEAN-led approach as quietly successful in keeping a diverse region cohesive around economic development and prosperity, including RCEP and related expansions. He highlights payments infrastructure that can settle trade in national currencies and argues ASEAN—especially Indonesia—could be pivotal in maintaining a multipolar, “indivisible security” region. Powell says the Shanghai Cooperation Organization offers an institutional model that could be extended toward North Asia and Southeast Asia to support multipolar security, counter bloc politics, and reduce the risk of miscalculation and conflict.
Powell closes by saying Asia-Pacific security could also benefit from engaging Russia, since Russia is a Pacific power, and he frames block politics as a path to suspicion, arms races, and eventual conflict. He ends by suggesting further discussion on Indonesia next time and directs readers to his Substack (warwickpaul.substack.com) and his book *Thermo Economics in the Time of Monsters*.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined again by Warwick Powell, an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology and also a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute in China. So, thank you for coming back on the program. I've been looking forward to speak to you about what is happening in East Asia these days, because the war in Iran appears to be heating up yet again, and most of the focus tends to be on how it reshapes the Middle East and also how- How it impacts the West but how, how do you see this influencing East Asia? Well, it's certainly influencing East Asia in ways that I think are, in a sense, longer term and more structural. Obviously, the the impacts on the flow of oil is having an immediate effect, particularly on the economies of Southeast Asia, as well as places like Australia, which are increasingly or incredibly dependent upon the the crude flow Those from the Middle East and the distilled fuels that are manufactured from that the the regional economies, and we could even walk through them almost one by one, but by and large, I think it's fair to say that they are Or have been significantly exposed to the the curtailment of oil flows and have had to adjust. They've adjusted in a couple of ways. One is of course, reaching out to Russia and Indonesia, Malaysia has done so, and indeed Japan has too in relation to securing their ongoing position with the Sakhalin II project. And the, the, the benefit of doing that, of course, is that the oil from the European Urals is of a similar chemical composition and type to the oil that comes from the Middle East, which is particularly suited for the manufacture of things like diesel, which underpins most modern industrial economies. Singapore has officially refused to take oil from Russia, so it has had to find some other workaround. So, firstly, I think we are seeing some effects on regional oil and liquid fuel markets. The second thing, of course, is the impact on the- The fertilizers and petrochemicals markets, which are already disrupting various industries in the region, the Japanese naphtha market and the industries dependent upon that, are already experiencing considerable constraints, and they are now industries are now compelled to reach out to suppliers in China for alternative supply options. I think one of the longer term issues, Glenn, is that these energy shocks ultimately don't just sort of end one day and then you- You go back to the status quo ante, the likely implications are, I think, manifold. Firstly, we've already seen at a consumer level Increased interest and demand for electrified transportation, EVs from China, to not to put too fine a point on it, and Chinese EV exports into Southeast Asia and indeed into Australia itself has increased dramatically in the course of the last hundred days. We're also seeing an increased interest in the capacity of A, a broad range of energy technologies that can assist countries to become less exposed to these kinds of risks going forward, and that really goes to the heart of energy sovereignty, and Chinese clean energy technologies are central to that story. So I think that those energy, petrochemical, and fertilizer issues, of course, are having a dramatic impact both short term and long term. The other dimension, Glenn, is the, I guess you'd call it the- Military or the defense or the narrowly defined security dimension, and it's quite obvious now that the United States forward projection structure, the architecture of its power projection globally, as it is based on a network of bases in allied countries, is actually no longer defendable. So We've seen the destruction of many bases or sufficient damage to the bases in in the Persian Gulf to warrant the Americans pulling back, and whether or not they go back in to repair those or indeed are welcomed back in is going to be, I think, another issue that we'll need to come back to when the dust at some point hopefully settles sooner rather than later, of course. The inability of the United States to defend those bases has actually sent shockwaves throughout South East Asia Eastern, Eastern North Asia, because the entire United States architecture, the so-called deterrence posture in Asia or American preponderance or American hegemony in Asia, has been premised on a network of American military bases dotting the so-called First Island Chain, so from Japan through to the Philippines, and if those bases aren't defendable or it's no longer viable to sustain the defense of those bases, then the entire security architecture- Of the region, coupled with China's expanded military posture and and capabilities on the back of forty odd years of modernization, is really sending some shockwaves across the region and strategic thinkers, defense analysts, and others are really having to, to rethink just about everything that they were taught at school, so to speak. Well, it's interesting what you mentioned about these bases in, in the Gulf states, because I would link it to a wider phenomenon that is, after the Cold War, as we know, the United States pursued a very hegemonic approach to international security, again, built into its security strategy, that is, the US would dominate essentially every corner of the planet, and this would be the source of peace and security, that is, you know, there's no great power rivalry if there's only the US having the final say everywhere. Well, you know, this, this worked to some extent in the nineties when the US dominated, but, but my- The whole point is, as the world now we see becomes more multipolar, obviously the rise of China spearheading this development the US has to adjust to reality. You can't just pretend as if the world isn't multipolar, that the US is still a hegemon, because what happens if the US tries to be everywhere at the same time? Well, if, if it tries to prioritize everything, it's not prioritizing anything, anything at all. And I think for this reason it would then begin to suffer the consequences. And I think the war To some extent has demonstrated this, because first the United States was just pumping all its weapons to fight Russia and then it's it went on to, well, it has to fight this all had to happen while it's trying to pivot to the east, to Asia, and then of course it's gonna fight Iran then it discovers it doesn't really have all the weapons it needs anymore, especially the interceptor missiles, because, well, it all went to Ukraine, so they begin to divert missiles from, to Europe, to Ukraine, all these weapons To the Middle East. When I say Middle East, they obviously prioritize Israel, and but this wasn't enough, they also had to get weapons out of places like South Korea again, they intercepted missiles especially, and And as a result of this, the failure to prioritize, trying to be everywhere at the same time, the result, as I said, is, it's not prioritizing anything. That means the Europeans now feel betrayed because America's trying to, well, essentially outsource the whole war to the Europeans. in, in the Middle East, you see the Gulf States aren't very happy because the, the US essentially painted a target on them and is now unable to protect them sufficiently. And and lastly, of course We see now in East Asia, where the US was supposed to pivot to the East, that meant for frontline states, they risk becoming a frontline against countries like China. However, in return, they're supposed to have guaranteed protection from the United States. This is the benefit of being a frontline state. But what happens now that these countries put a target on themselves by, as we saw in the G-in-the-Gulf, they, they can be used as instruments against American rivals. In other words- They become a legitimate target for America's adversaries, and at the same time, the US can't protect them. how, how is this impacting the regional security arrangements or the, at least the discussions about security? Because I would think that the, yeah, the, the wider lesson of the world here is you know, perhaps we should be careful before before hitching, well, hitching our, hitching our entire security towards a declining hegemon who's willing to use you As a tool. I mean, essentially making Ukrainians and Gulf states out of all of us. Look, I think that there's a few dimensions to how regional nation states are responding, and the responses, of course, are a little bit varied. Japan, as we've discussed before, has been undergoing a period of re-militarization, and this has been going on for, you know, really a decade or so, and it has been doing that for both domestic political reasons, but also, I think- I think from Japan's perspective, re- reasons related to its own concerns about the ability of the United States to offer that security blanket. Same for South Korea. We know that in South Korea, the general population has been quite distrustful of the United States' ability to, or willingness even to deliver protection under the American nuclear umbrella, and there have been growing demands in South Korea for the government to- Progress down the path of nuclearization. Same in Japan, of course. So in North Asia, we're starting to see, I think, a fairly active, muscular reaction, if you will. Now, this of course, dovetails quite nicely into a wider American strategy, which is to outsource funding and material responsibility, as well as frontline human bodies responsibility and risk to so-called allied states. There are difficulties, of course, for the US when this happens, because as these other states become progressively more powerful in and of their own right, the United States will come under increasing pressure in terms of its own ability to hold the position. So it's a bit of a balancing act, act at the moment. Naturally, having tens of thousands of American soldiers based in Japan and in South Korea certainly helps the United States keep those two countries under the thumb, so to speak. Similarly, I think we've seen in the Philippines, the current administration seeking to move quite, quite a lot closer to Washington again, and they've done so for a number of years. So again, it's a difficult situation for them because at the same time, the problems of oil flow from the Gulf War or from this version of the war in the Persian Gulf has really caused significant economic problems in the Singapore, in, in Phillip- with inflation and the Philippines has actually reached out to China, and China has acceded to Philippines' requests for support in terms of supply of oils and, and other fuels. So to a point where in fact Marcos indicated back in middle to late March this year that the Philippines were interested in re-engaging Beijing with around the idea of joint exploration and development development of oil resources in the South China Sea, so the region is in quite a lot of flux. The domestic opposition in the Philippines, just as there is domestic opposition in Japan to the re-militarization, I think is building up something of a head of steam because there are growing concerns that not only is the United States, in a sense, throwing many countries increasingly under the proverbial bus, but that it's actually no longer in national interest because- The Americans aren't able to do exactly as you suggested, which is to offer protection so long as these countries carry some burden. And it's interesting to see how these debates are unfolding. Australia has, of course, also seen the re- re-ignition of a public debate around the question of AUKUS at the Sing- at the Singapore Shangri-La Dialogues a week or so ago. The Australia- Minister and Pete Hekseth announced some changes to the AUKUS deal structure which has catalyzed really a very cynical response from the Australian public who are increasingly less inclined to buy the entire proposition. To a point, Glenn and I know you've spent some time in Australia, you'll appreciate that it takes a fair bit for these sorts of things to happen in this country, that a people's commission of inquiry into AUKUS, which I think is It's actually a first ever, has been initiated by a group spearheaded by former federal labor minister Peter Garrett, together with some other notable Australians, specifically to investigate the merits and the handling and the process of this entire Ulkastiel, on the basis that the Parliament itself has failed singularly to do so. So the debates are starting to unfold, the regional security architecture is in flux, and I think we- We are going to have to sort of hold on tight and put the seatbelts on as as the United States seeks to indirectly, through its proxies and allies, maintain a position in Asia whilst these allies are thinking through how they can begin to hedge more effectively. The last thing I'll note, and this is really, I think the capstone, if you will, on the changing context of the thinking, is Pete Hex's comments at the Shangri-La Dialogues, where in the keynote speech, he Talked about the United States seeing itself as playing a role in Asia so as to ensure that no single power can be a regional hegemon, and that's remarkable because in my living memory, the United States has always insisted that it is the sole hegemon in Asia and that no one else will be. so Pete Hegseth is following on behind Donald Trump's broader posture, I think, is acknowledging that the world has changed and that the United States is no longer position to act unilaterally or singularly within the region. You can imagine how much discomfort that brings to those who've built an entire architecture, policy strategy, and institutional livelihoods around the idea that the Americans would be the dominant player forever, while they're not, and and the world is as a result changing. I don't know how this will unfold. I've got some views as to what would be, I think, in my view, better, but I think that there's a long way to go yet before The dust settles in, in Asia. This is just the beginning of a major reconfiguration. Yeah, well, it's this reconfiguration, I mean, it's not unique to East Asia, that is, when, you know, under the unipolar moment being a frontline state was was often quite attractive. One got a lot of resources your security would be absolute but, but this my point, when you shift into a multipolar system, you, it can go both ways. On one hand, if one seeks to balance Off a bit and not not become a frontline state, then one can prosper if you're able to hedge be-between the great powers that is to diversify ties. But of course, there's always the risk that the declining hegemon would essentially use its partners to throw them at in as proxies against the rivals. And yes, as you said, yeah, I, I did live in Australia for, yeah, about 14 years, and I remember even speaking with the former Prime Minister, John Howard You know, making this point that as China will continue to rise Australia shouldn't have to choose between China and the US. Essentially for me, this meant, yeah, avoid being a frontline state, diversify your ties don't be forced to pick any side. I mean, I was a few days ago in Georgia, they, they essentially are trying to do the same thing. We don't have to choose, we can get along with the Russians and the Europeans. Don't make us into frontline states. This is what essentially Henry Kissinger wrote back in two thousand and fourteen. For God's sake, don't make Ukraine into a frontline state, don't make it choose 'cause it will be destroyed. So I think a lot of countries are going down this path, and but I, how, how do you see, 'cause you mentioned Japan, how, how do you see them being able to do this? Because one condition of having more autonomy means, of course, you have to militarize. So when, well, not militarize, but But being less dependent on an external actor, be it for economy or security, you can again do this through diversification. But if, if Japan is again rearming itself, it, it can go two ways. One, it can use this as a tool for autonomy, that is it doesn't anymore have to do whatever the US wants, which is probably good for its security, because a declining destructive hegemon you know, you don't wanna outsource your foreign policy to them. On the other hand, it could also mean that Japan is arming itself to the teeth as it could be used as, as a frontline state. And I see the same in Europe essentially, that is I would usually be welcoming that the Europeans are building their own military capability so they don't have to outsource their security to the US, which has very different interests than the Europeans. But instead, you get the impression that Europeans are simply now preparing for war with Russia to, yeah, essentially destroy themselves So it's yeah, that's what's happening with Japan. What direction do you think they're going? Is this to assert autonomy as a source of peace, or do you think they're, they, they will become a militarized hub as an instrument of the United States? Well, it could go either way. I mean, I, I think that you know, this is partly the, the sort of double-edged sword, if you will, of where Japan's been going now for the best part of the last decade. You know, on the one hand, of course, that it's occupied by the Americans and has been a, a critical ally for the US, but once your military bases or America's military bases in Japan are no longer viably defensible, it does raise the medium As to whether in fact the architecture itself is going to serve its purposes. Now, I think one of the interesting things that we'll need to keep a very close eye on is whether or not the Americans slowly reconfigure their frontline exposure themselves. They have very quietly slipped some forces out of Okinawa and this was before the the war broke out this, earlier this year in Iran, where they moved some forces from Okinawa into the Persian Gulf last year from memory, or it might have been the year before. Now, the some troops were taken out of Okinawa and, and, and relocated to Guam, but but I think, you know, the hard power question in the end is going to be whether or not the bases are defendable and recent modeling on the defendability of these bases, given the shortages of the American arsenal, given the nature of the the, the, the Chinese capabilities, and given what we've learned from the war against Iran would suggest That that these bases and most of the airplanes, you know, a good proportion of them that are stored there won't last to the end of the first week of any serious conflict. Now, I think anyone who is serious in this space understands that. And and, and it is doubtful that the Americans will want to expose that capability and infrastructure to the sorts of risks that we're talking about. Certainly, I don't think that that the military planners anticipated the debacle that has been the the war against Iran and the fact that it's totally exposed the Americans and their limitations. It's, you know, it's the last thing a hegemon would ever want to do. you know, partly to be a bully, partly is to never have to You know, act as a bully. You just need to make sure that people are fearful that you could but but, but the recent events suggest that the United States' capabilities aren't far less robust and, and deep as I think many people had originally expected. And in fact, I think you'll see in even American commentary and, and public debate amongst its it, it, the the, the, the policymakers and strategic thinkers that that some of these realities He's a dawning on the Americans inside the Beltway as well that that maybe they really have reached some limits and and they really need to rethink just about everything. you know, pulling out quickly, if you know, is, i-i-is just, i-i-it's a terrible thing for an American president have to do, so there's nothing gonna happen in the short term on that front. But look, Japan is going to continue its rearming, whether it is for its own greater autonomy will depend a little bit On the extent to which the United States can keep them under control, but if the United States is seeking to push the Japanese more to the front line, then the Japanese will reach a point where they will be, notwithstanding American bases in Japan a more an, an American ally that has a, a little bit more room to move. That's a concern across the region you know, and not everybody views the Japanese remilitarization favorably. Obviously, Beijing has ex- Expressed its concerns but there are many people across Southeast Asia who continue to have lingering memories of what happened last time Japan re-armed and and the militarization that wreaked havoc across Southeast Asia in the, in the thirties and forties. So you know, that this is, this is gonna make for a very, I think, potentially a very tense period in, in Asia as a result of all of this You know, in as you, as you know, you know as much as I think Beijing at a certain level would, would be favorable to pushing the Americans out of Asia, they're also sensible enough to understand that the historic role that the Americans have played in Asia is that they've kept Japan under some control, and And, and if that disappears over, over time, then the question will come, well, how do you, how do you keep Japan sort of contained? The upside in all of this, if we're sort of talking, you know, in, in sort of brutal terms, is that the Chinese economy and its industrial power Far outweighs anything that the region could muster, whether it's Japan or whether it's Australia or whoever, and it is ludicrous for any of those countries to think that they are in a position to to even mount a balancing act, which is why of course they're desperate to try and keep the Americans in as well. But but, you know, you just, just put it into some context. The Chinese economy represents sixty percent of the GDP of the region, meaning the ten ASEAN states plus Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, sixty percent. China is the only industrial superpower in the world. Over thirty percent of manufacturing value added comes from China, and by twenty thirty-five that's gonna be close to forty percent. this, the idea that that other countries can somehow pose- A serious military challenge to China is is foolhardy and it's dangerous, and you know, I'd encourage people across the region to actually just realize that, you know, the, the real issue isn't whether you can muscle up to China, the real issue is, is how do you live with China being the major power in the region? Yeah, no well, there's some parallels again, again to Europe because, you know, after World War II, the one of the achievements, if you will, of the United States was 'cause you had three key economic regions of the world, you had East Asia, you had Europe and North America, and the US was able to well, essentially through its heavy military presence in Germany and Japan well, use this as a node in a larger American empire and the, the, yes, you said When the US starts to pull, pull down, pull away, would be, you know, what happens to these countries to these countries then? Again, one should also be careful what one wishes for, because if the US now leaves Japan to their own, where will they begin to re-militarize? Will they seek a nuclear weapons for security? And you see something similar now in Europe. I mean, the United States, no no one's really sure where it's gonna be tomorrow in terms of capabilities or intentions, and as a result, you now have the German Under the, well, gristly unpopular rule of Chancellor Mertz, arguing that Germany should become the largest military force in Europe. And it's not-- and similar with the Japanese, not everyone in this part of the world remembers this with the great fondness of yeah, this German military power, but of course they also put themselves now in the crosshairs of the Russians. And if you look- Towards Asia as you said, not everyone remembers with fondness Japanese military might and also the Chinese will of course take get look at them with a lot more suspicion. So my point is one One, whenever there's a rapid change to the regional order, you will see often a security competition begin to emerge, so the Japanese will be worried about China, China will then become more worried about Japan, and and yeah, conflict will begin to build. But but as you said, what is different in Asia though is, or East Asia would be the, the, the power of China. I mean, there seems to be And very strong imbalance there. So in other words, they can't really, the Japanese can't do anything to knock out the Chinese but how soon do you see this sustaining itself for the long run? Because many people are pointing out that for good reason, well, the Americans are also pointing out that part of their objective in Iran is to weaken China, that is cut its its off energy. And how, how do you see the Chinese economy sustaining itself though, relatively, I guess compared to its The US would like to use to balance it. Yeah, look, I know that the Americans have for many years talked about different ways in which they could choke China's energy sources, particularly maritime oil transportation, and and I think if you sort of argued this twenty-five years ago, you'd say that that would have a significant impact on China's economy and its fundamental energy foundations, but the world's changed actually quite a lot since the the, the, the energy structure of the Chinese economy is firstly far less dependent on, on oil, generally speaking, compared to what it once was. China had peak diesel about two years ago, and the aggregate amount of diesel consumed by the Chinese economy has fallen since. so that's your first point. The second point is, is that China has for twenty odd years been embarking on a major- And quite radical transformation of its energy structure through diversifying its energy generating capabilities and ultimately leading through the breakthroughs in electrification and electricity storage, you know, the battery systems and renewable energy. China, of course, is building more coal fired power stations and nuclear power stations than anybody else in the world combined. so in that sense, I think it's the, the world's just different and China is No longer as dependent upon Middle Eastern oil as it was twenty years ago. The other thing to recall, of course, is that in that time, the the terrestrial transportation networks across Eurasia have improved significantly, and Russia and the Central Asian states are also now suppliers of oil and gas to China to the extent that China is importing those natural resources and and those terrestrial transport- Transportation networks will be far harder to interdict than choke points such as in Eurasia. Of course, that's not to say that Americans or others might not seek to disrupt those flows, whether it's through sabotage or other forms of terror. But, you know, there's, there's more than one way in which oil and gas flows to China today than twenty-five years ago. And of course, global warming has seen the Arctic becoming increasingly viable for more months of the year than ever as The transportation route, and I think we are going to see that continue to expand as well. The other thing to remember, and people often talk about, you know, the American, you know, grand strategy of, you know, this is all about America becoming the global oil or energy monopoly, right? You've just got to look at the numbers. The global energy market is actually far more fragmented than that implies, and and because there are many ways in which energy gets moved and that there are many new energy technologies, it's almost impossible for any single state to actually fulfill that ambition, even if they had that ambition. The area in which the United States actually has the greatest say, in terms of the global energy markets is LNG. But let's not forget that the, that LNG plays a relatively small part. In global energy, it's an important part in certain things, but in the scheme of things, it's comparatively small as a proportion of total energy, whether it's coal, renewable, or, or oil. so so I think it's whilst there are strategic discussions around choking these the, these choke points, the the, the actual nature of global energy, the distribution of its resources and And and the capacity of countries to have alternatives today compared to twenty-five years ago just means that even if you had these ambitions, it's almost impossible to, to carry them out then so so in that sense, I, I, I, I think that horse is bolted. The Chinese economy from an energy point of view is is really incredibly well prepared for these kinds of events, and as the decades unfold, say over the next five and ten years The extent to which China's economy will be dependent upon crude oil from from external sources such as the Middle East will diminish even more. Of course, China's got massive reserves, and it keeps massive reserves, reserves to a point where it's, people observers are conceding that in fact, known reserves may actually understate the extent of, of China's, of reserves at all. So China has reduced its demand on on global crude over the course of the last hundred days. And yet economically it hasn't missed a beat which tells you, I think, the ability of the economic system to adapt and also the depth of the reserves that it actually has. So yeah, look, I, I think that horse has bolted and it's largely fanciful now that that people, you know, think that there's actually a serious capacity of the Americans to execute this kind of a containment strategy. I'm not saying that the Americans don't have this idea in mind, I'm simply saying- That that the ability to execute this is i-i-is, is countered by reality basically. So I guess in short, then, do you think China will come out strengthened as a result of the war, not just against Iran, but against Russia as well? Yeah, look, I think China will come out You know, reasonably unscathed, and it will do that for a number of reasons. One is obviously its own preparedness for these energy crises. The second one is that global demand for for Chinese clean energy technologies is growing and we're going to see not only Chinese exports of these technologies and final products like EVs, but, but I think we are going to see an era of increased Chinese foreign direct investment as these know-hows and- Capabilities in fixed capital begin to expand globally and deliver factories in particularly the global south, you know, enabling the global south to manufacture much of its own renewable energy capabilities over time and to assemble motor vehicles and eventually also build many of these parts. So you know, China's going to be able to consolidate its supply chains and in, in many respects, consolidate its position in the region itself. So in Asia, you know, the other dimension Of all of these geopolitical insecurities actually is increasing concentration and integration of the Southeast Asian economies and the Chinese economy, and that kind of intertwining becomes very, very difficult to unwind, whether it's at an energetic level, whether it's in the flow of raw commodities, finished products, and of course now we're starting to see the expansion of the payment systems right across Southeast Asia with integration Trading with, with Chinese payment systems as well as, as Iran's own payment capabilities, all of which reduces exposure and dependency on American infrastructure and and, and American institutions, whether they be the dollar or SWIFT, and and it will provide, I think, regions with the ability ultimately to have a greater say in their own futures with less need to be as mindful and as wary of the Americans as they- Historically have been. And again, the caveat here is, is that you know, the Americans do have significant resources to cause many disruptions. They still control a lot of the technical infrastructure in the world, and if there's one resource that the Americans have built and sustained over the course of the last eighty years, it is a very, very wide network of very, very well skilled and trained NGOs and and intelligence systems across many countries which enables them to activate interference actions at, at a minimum all the way through to instigating all sorts of dirty you know, quasi-kinetic a-activities. How do you see India falling in place here? Because my impression from India is that they, they're always leaning a little bit. That is, on one hand, one hand it's the desire to continue essentially its Cold War tradition of non-alignment. That is you know, if it wedges itself too closely to one side, it's gonna be, it's gonna develop excessive dependence. Again, this was the logic of developing nuclear weapon as well, avoiding this, you know, becoming another Japan essentially. Subordinated to the US. So on one hand, it wants to take this position, and in a multipolar world, this means it's, you know, part of BRICS, it needs to link itself close with China, Russia, as well as the United States and, and other large powers. so on one hand, it seems to be tilting there, on the other hand they're also anxious about China and yeah, often will outright hostility. So there, it's always this vulnerability that they- Could lean too heavily into this, you know, Indo-Pacific partnership where they you know, essentially join a de facto bloc of the United States and thus get captured. How do you see them adjusting here? Because it's, well, it's hard to read Indians at times, to be honest. Well, I think that's by intent to some extent and it's sort of built into the institutional habits of, of Indian foreign policy. as you say, it has a long tradition of being non-aligned, and partly being non-aligned means that from one perspective, it looks like that it wavers from one side to another but that's partly what non-alignment does. I think India, of course, does face some of its own challenges, and in large part, those challenges relate to the state Its own economic development and the extent to which it is dependent on engagement with the United States economy for some of that. There is a, a section of the Indian economic elite that maintains very, very close connections with the US, and let's not forget that countries aren't unitary actors, you know, we, we also have different vested interests within countries that often have divergent interests and divergent- Perspectives on on how they need to pursue their, their, you know, foreign policy interests. And the Indian economic elite does tilt very heavily towards Washington. There's a lot of historical reasons for that but the Indian political elite, I think in a sense caught in a bind. it, it has a lot of anxieties about China, and there's a whole bunch of history around that. But at the same time you know, China's not going Anyway, and they share a land border, and so there are some realities that are unavoidable, and the real question in the end, I think, for India is how does it become actually a more autonomous economic actor that is less exposed to the risks of of, of essentially being, having its livelihood being interfered with by, you know, one of the great states, particularly the United States, we've seen during this this last hundred- Days that India does have huge problems when it comes to fertilizer and, and access to energy, and, and it needs to overcome much of that. It's got significant domestic infrastructure challenges that need to be overcome. It hasn't really successfully industrialized. In some respects, the economic growth in India is underpinned by the expansion of a services economy, much of which is also tied to the the growth of American IT Which has outsourced a lot of the support infrastructure and industries to India. So, you know, I think that that some of the ambitions articulated by the Modi government from its very early days around Indian industrialization have yet to deliver fruit, and until India can actually establish some kind of an, a, a serious industrial base of its own it's always going to be, I think caught between a rock and a hard place. Again, I'm not here to tell the Indians what, that, what they should or shouldn't do, but it seems to me That India if you think very, very long term would be wise to to figure out how it can establish a more cordial relationship with China, and China of course has a role to play in that, and understand that being good neighbors is actually in each other's, you know, own interests as well as the interests of some of the key sections of their societies, and that's going to require a political leadership domestically in India that can overcome some of those anxieties and feelings that Indians have towards China, particularly after the the, the war, which by the way is you know, six decades ago now, but, you know, I understand that people have memories and they have feelings about these things, but leadership is needed to, in a sense, transcend some of these to create a new platform That will enable India to fulfill much of the promise. You'll remember forty years ago, many people talked about India really as the next shining light after the the Asian Tigers, and well, in fact, it wasn't the next shining light at all. Forty years on, even though the GDPs were back in nineteen eighty-five or so roughly the same, China is the one that has expanded and has reached a point where its GDP is five to six times larger. Than India is, so India's got a lot of work to do and you know, it, it, it does need to actually enable itself to be, if it wants to be a genuine a non-aligned player within the region, it actually needs to become, I think, a little bit tougher when it comes to particularly the Americans, and that's a real challenge still for India. Well, in-- there's always gonna be some security competition, so the Indians will always have some legitimate reasons to be concerned. The problem is of China there is, but the problem is once the solution becomes embracing this bloc politics, it only intensifies from there on, and again, the subservience to the US would grow, the Indians couldn't be seen as For good reasons as a pawn against the Chinese, which would then undermine India even further. So it can often be very attractive and appealing to lean into this kind of bloc politics, but as your former prime minister Keating once said, you know East Asia needs a NATO security architecture like it needs cancer. It's it it really has the possibility and opportunity to pursue something inclusive, which seeks security With each other against security against each other, but in such a scenario, because I don't like to pick on the Americans, but if, if you are pursuing hegemon, you'd-- This, this depends on alliance systems to make your advers-- your allies obedient and your adversaries weakened. So this, you know, this divide and rule isn't new. So this is a very dangerous time, I think. Yeah. Look, look, you're right, and, and this issue of bloc politics as a, as an attractive short-term reaction is something that needs to be resisted because there is an opportunity actually for the Asia Pacific, and including also heading into South Asia, so I'm talking about India and Pakistan to actually create something by themselves for themselves. And we've got, I think, some elements- That could be worked on towards that end. ASEAN, as you know, is the principal vehicle for regional diplomacy for Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia comprises many relatively small nations, and ASEAN has been a really important way by which they can cohere a perspective and achieve a consensus view on a broad range of issues. And whilst many bloc political perspectives would criticize the way- Asyan goes about doing its thing. In fact, I think if you just took half a minute to take half a step back and then reflect on Asyan's conduct and behavior, you'll actually think that Asyan has been quietly incredibly successful. It has been able to hold together an incredibly diverse region and whilst at times it is slow, you know, consensus often is it has been able to keep a region you know, at relative peace and, and focus very much on the things that the region itself has common interests around, namely economic development and prosperity. It brokered the, the world's largest free trade agreement. At the time, which is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which was signed about four years ago, and India was actually part of those discussions right up until the moment for signatures. So India, I think has an opportunity to rethink its economic relationships to the trading arrangements that exist across the region. And really whilst I, I understand the sort of the, the history of protectionism in India, the- The opportunity to open up trade flows does ultimately create really major opportunities across the entire region, and it's something that it would look, I would encourage, of course, ASEAN and India and all of the members of RCEP to reach out to India and engage with them to work through what the issues are that held India back from coming on board. We also have extensions out of the RCEP dealing with digital trade. I mean, we've got Latin American countries expressing interest in joining RCEP, right? So reaching right across the Pacific to build the economic architecture that enables multi-regional and multilateral collaboration. the payments architecture, as I mentioned earlier, is actually well-developed and it enables countries within the region to settle trade in national currencies, which is of tremendous benefit. It's cheaper, it's quicker, and it's safer. Right? With less exposure to foreign exchange risks, less exposure to risks of liquidity crisis, which happened in the Asian financial crisis period, and ultimately can deliver to the region an architecture that emphasizes economic development as a common objective, and it's also one that can bring Japan and Korea to the table, right? Now, this requires ASEAN to, in many ways, step up, and this means that Indonesia, in many ways- Will be the key player, even more so in my view than Singapore. Indonesia is the one state within ASEAN that has the capacity to emerge over the next half century as The second major state within the region not a great state like China for obvious reasons, but certainly rivaling, I think, Japan in terms of the heft that it brings to the region, and, and that could actually be an important ballast underpinning a multipolar region, and if countries actually could imagine And a, a, a region built on indivisible security, with ASEAN playing really the pivotal role, and where the sort of pressure is brought to bear on countries like China and India and Japan to actually- See themselves as part of a, a great region, and I think that there's good prospects of that. I think that China would find that proposition actually quite appealing in a broad sense. And interestingly, I think, and this really touches on this broader Eurasian question, is that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization offers a model that can easily be extended into Southeast Asia and North Asia, delivering the kind of multilateral or you know, multipolar- Security that the region, you know, could really benefit from. And, you know, the, the last point really in all of this, we, we sort of think Asia in a very narrow sense, of course, but I often remind my friends that Russia is also a Pacific power, and it would be it would be remiss to not engage the Russians in You know, in Asia Pacific security as well, you know, and a-and again, the SCO offers many learnings, I think institutionally and from an ethos and behavioral point of view that can do that. And it's a way then of actually countering bloc politics, right? Because bloc politics, as you say, is, is a cancer that leads to security competition that then leads to security dilemmas, arms races, and And ultimately intensifies suspicions, and as suspicions intensify, at some point there's a miscalculation somewhere or another, and you know, the region is plunged into conflict. It is avoidable. I look across at Europe, and I think to myself, the lessons of non-peace Warfare in Europe really are the ones that Asia should absorb and absorb quickly, and the principal lesson is don't fall into the trap of bloc politics. Yeah, well, in Europe indivisible security used to be considered a goal. It was common sense. It's what would allow us to transcend bloc politics. Today it's become something controversial. It's seen with suspicions as part, possibly, some Russian ploy. So I want you to, yeah, be a little bit careful with, for taking the lessons of Europe in the recent years. On Indonesia though, this is possibly the most underestimated country in all of East Asia, but we can get to that next time I guess. So so to wrap it up we, we, we- I spent a little bit of time in Indonesia, actually. Yeah. Not so long ago in discussions with folk in the finance industry, and and I think Indonesia, as you say, is an underestimated and, and, and an, and a poorly understood country in terms of the region and its role globally, and it's one that you know, behoves all of us, I think, to better understand. where, where can people find you? People can find me at my Substack, warwickpaul.substack.com, and people can also buy my latest book Thermo Economics in the Time of Monsters, on Amazon. Excellent, I'll leave a link to both in the description, so thank you very much. Thank you, Glenn. Great to talk to you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Dimitri Lascaris: Inside the US-Israeli War Against Iran & Lebanon https://youtu.be/qQGegZhft9o https://t.co/t7yFOfm5GJ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Dimitri Lascares, a lawyer turned journalist, describes his reporting trips in Lebanon and the surrounding region, including repeated visits to southern areas. He says that while he has been physically present in Beirut over the past five days, he has not witnessed an attack there, adding that the only attack he is aware of during his presence was an Israeli strike in Dakhia, a southern Beirut suburb, which killed numerous civilians. He describes multiple incidents in the south and Bekaa Valley, including airstrikes that he says had no conceivable military justification because they occurred in evacuated villages with no military activity observed, and attacks that he says targeted areas near Jabal Amel Hospital in Sur by destroying the hospital parking lot, putting parts of the hospital out of action, and causing civilian casualties. Overall, he characterizes what he has seen outside Beirut as a campaign of terror in the south, while saying Israel has shown “uncharacteristic restraint” in Beirut, which he attributes to threats of Iranian retaliation.
Lascares argues that Iranian deterrence is being extended to Lebanon, including through Iran striking Israel despite Israel not directly hitting Iran, framing Lebanon as part of a ceasefire and retaliating on Lebanon’s behalf. He then discusses Lebanon’s political complexity, saying the Lebanese government is engaged in talks and a ceasefire with Israel while Hezbollah is the group fighting. On Hezbollah’s role, he describes Hezbollah as a resistance movement formed in response to Israeli occupation and aggression, stating it has remained fundamentally a resistance movement and that it has not occupied land recognized as Israel under international law. He claims Hezbollah is restrained and says it has significant support among the Lebanese population, with overwhelming Shia support and also meaningful Sunni and Christian support, though less than among Shias.
He criticizes what he says are ceasefire terms that, according to him, include disarmament of Hezbollah without disarmament of Israel and do not require Israeli troop withdrawal or stopping destruction of civilian infrastructure in temporarily occupied areas. He links this to a broader argument that any call to disarm resistance groups should begin with disarming Israel, including weapons of mass destruction, and he notes Israel is the only state in the region not in the NNPT.
On the sustainability of Israel’s campaign, Lascares says he follows resistance commentary and that Hezbollah’s documentation of attacks includes regular video reports and daily accounts of military operations. He claims these reports—he says some corroborated by Israeli media—describe Hezbollah disabling more than twenty-five Israeli Iron Dome launchers, destroying hundreds of armored vehicles (mostly Merkava tanks), and inflicting severe casualties including senior commanders and elite brigades. He says Israeli leadership has discussed potential collapse and that he cites claims of large numbers of reservists refusing duty, alongside what he describes as PTSD and a suicide crisis, arguing the Israeli force was not built for wars of attrition and is conducting a multi-front war beyond its intended scope.
Asked about Western support and media coverage, Lascares says Western elites show less concern for Lebanon’s destruction than the humanitarian narrative, while he asserts public polling shows Israel is deeply disliked across many Western countries and that negative sentiment is growing. He argues the disparity between what “the people want” and what media and political elites want is increasing and could lead to a political legitimacy crisis and instability in the West.
Discussing Israel, the United States, and Iran, Lascares rejects a narrative of US-Israeli tension, arguing instead that the US uses Israel as a proxy to impose hegemony over a region he describes as strategically valuable, continuing to arm and support Israel while portraying restraint rhetorically. He says Israel and the US have aligned incentives: he claims US public opposition to a war on Iran and Israeli public support for it fit a posture strategy, with Trump portrayed as restraining Netanyahu while Netanyahu is portrayed as determined to continue the war.
Regarding Iranian strategy, Lascares says Iran initially pursued commensurate retaliation but shifted to disproportionate retaliation after commensurate approaches did not work. He describes Iran striking multiple US military bases in the Persian Gulf, then intensifying attacks on Israel with wave after wave of missiles and drones. He says the IDF Defense Minister Katz has reiterated that if Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel will attack Beirut, and he argues this escalation logic would be untenable because it would leave Israel free to attack the rest of Lebanon and continue destroying infrastructure.
Lascares says Iran’s toll arrangement for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is difficult to assess externally due to Iran’s secrecy, but he says his discussions with Iranian officials and experts indicate some kind of fee is being extracted from ships transiting with Iranian consent. He argues there is “absolutely no military solution” to the toll problem, saying Iran can increase the risk of catastrophic damage without blocking shipping by using drones, ship-to-ship or land-to-ship missiles, mines, or fast attack boats. He frames the Strait of Hormuz as leverage and “their nuclear weapon,” and says the United States will eventually have to “pay the piper,” implying control would have to be ceded to Iran.
On a potential diplomatic settlement, Lascares states that he sees “zero” hope of Iran giving up its nuclear program, and says Iran would accept JCPOA-type enrichment limits only with full sanctions relief and unfreezing of assets, while he says Iran would not hand over 60% enriched uranium to the US. He says Iran may be willing to dilute enrichment to about 20% for research purposes, but that any arrangement would require lifting sanctions and unfreezing assets. He argues US and Israeli concerns include the risk that sanctions relief would allow Iran to become the most powerful state in the region, and he expects escalation to continue with “catastrophic consequences for the global economy.”
In closing, he says his on-the-ground experience in Iran contradicts foreign portrayals of Iranian leadership and people as extremely aggressive, irrational, or fanatical. He says he found Iranian people to be peace-loving, prepared to be reasonable and compromising, and expecting to be treated with respect as a sovereign nation.
He promotes his own work by directing viewers to his YouTube channel, “Reason to Resist,” and to his X account under the handle @dimitri_laskaris.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined today by Dimitri Lascares, a lawyer turned journalist and one of the few Western journalists to actually report from the ground in Iran, including on the Strait of Hormuz. But now you are in Beirut, in Lebanon, where the humanitarian situation is only getting worse, but also a place where we see quite interesting geopolitics playing out. So thank you for coming on the program. Program I, I thought perhaps, yeah, a good place to start would be, w-what are you seeing on the ground in Lebanon? Because, again, I, I hear a lot, read a lot of articles from journalists, but they are usually, you know, in a neighboring country or, you know, even further away. So what is it that you're observing over there? Well, first of all, let me thank you for having me on your program, Glenn. I watch your program frequently, and you do outstanding work and I learn a great deal from watching you and your guests discuss these issues. Thank you for inviting me. what I've seen on the ground depends on where you are in the country. so during the time I've been here on this trip, I've been here six times during the genocide in Gaza seven times in total. I've always gone To the south on every one of those trips. on this trip I have, although I've been based in Beirut I've been to the South Beqaa Valley, I was there yesterday. I've been to Sour which is about twenty kilometers from the border of occupied Palestine, on the coast of the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon. I was in Saida twice and several other places. And during the time that I have actually been physically- Present in Beirut, I have not seen or witnessed or learned of a single attack. The only time in my presence here where there was an attack was when we were out in the field yesterday in the South Beqaa Valley, and that is when Israel struck in Dakhia, the southern Beirut suburb, which the corporate media loves to describe as a Hezbollah stronghold, and killed numerous civilians. And that is the one strike of which I'm aware, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been any strike today at all in in Beirut To the country, I've seen carnage and terrorism, and that's the only way one can describe it. So, for example yesterday I witnessed an attack on Lebanese village called Sakhmor just in the very southern tip of the Bekaa Valley and we- were present for about an hour before that airstrike occurred, and we had a clear view of Sakhmur, we're about a few kilometers away, and there was absolutely no military activity in the village which has been evacuated. So what, as far as we could tell, there was no military justification for the airstrike. I was in a village called Saksakia several hours, this was two or three days ago, several hours after the Israelis murdered a grandmother and her daughter and injured four. Members of the family, including two grandchildren, also killed in a separate airstrike in the same village, three Syrian workers. That, too, there was no conceivable military justification. I visited a hospital, the Jabal Amel Hospital in Sur, where the Israelis destroyed the parking lot right across the street from the hospital, killing at least four civilians and injuring over a hundred. And putting large segments of the hospital out of action, and I could go on and on. so what I'm seeing here outside of Beirut during the-- I'm just talking, Glenn, about the time that I've actually been physically present over the past five days is a campaign of terror in the south, and in Beirut itself, the Israelis have shown uncharacteristic restraint I think because of the threats of an of an Iranian retaliation. Yeah, this is something I found to be quite extraordinary, that is, Iran essentially extending its deterrence to Lebanon, not just in rhetoric, but the fact that they actually struck Israel now despite Israel not hitting Iran directly, but again is arguing that Lebanon is part of ceasefire and essentially retaliating on their behalf. but the, the political situation within Lebanon is well, let's say complicated at least, that is, that the- The actual government is, is actually engaged in these talks and ceasefire with the Israelis, while it's Hezbollah that is actually fighting. How, how do you see then the, the, or understand Hezbollah's place within Lebanese society as well as politics? 'Cause I think this is a lot of confusion around. Usually, you know, in the media, they're just dismissed as a terrorist organization and well, that's the end of it. Well, Hezbollah was born as a, as a reaction in the 1980s to Israeli occupation and aggression, and it has remained fundamentally a resistance movement. It has not occupied illegally or even legally any land recognized as being part of Israel under international law. it's the civilian casualties it has inflicted on Israel are a tiny fraction of those that Israel- Has inflicted upon Lebanon during the time of Hezbollah's existence. As far as I can tell, Hezbollah is very restrained, it has very significant support amongst the Lebanese population. It's hard to gauge the degree to which it has support in the Christian and Sunni communities. I think it's fair to say that the overwhelming majority of the Shia support it. And based on, based on my interactions with Lebanese, I would say a quite a significant proportion of the Sunni and Christian communities also. Support Hezbollah, although there's less support in those communities. And what the Lebanese government did over the past forty-eight hours, I think, has really made a mockery of the sovereignty of the country. They entered into a so-called ceasefire agreement with Israel, a third ceasefire agreement with Israel since the genocide began in Gaza that is supposed to cover Lebanon, and that ceasefire agreement didn't require Israel's troops to withdraw from Lebanon. That ceasefire agreement didn't require Israel's troops to stop destroying civilian infrastructure in the parts of the south that they temporary, temporarily occupy. it actually called for the disarmament of Hezbollah without calling for the disarmament of Israel, which frankly I regard as the greatest obscenity of all. How can you say, whether you're talking about Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, any resistance group in this region, how can you- Can any reasonable person with a sense of fairness and decency say that these groups must be disarmed, divested of their light weapons, while Israel, which is carrying out these monstrosities, can remain armed to the teeth, including with nuclear weapons? While it isn't a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the only state in the region that isn't a member of the NNPT, this is an absurdity. And if people want to talk about disarming resistance groups, whether it be Hezbollah or any other group in the region, first they must ensure that Israel has been divested of its weapons, and particularly its weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, well, how, how sustainable is this fight for the Israelis? Because on one hand, there's this we keep seeing these news stories which are supposed to build confidence in the IDF. On the other hand, we hear like the heads of IDF itself arguing that Israeli army is extremely overstretched and the issue of technology seems to come in as well, that is the introduction of drones into the battlefield is something that the Israelis have a hard Hard time adjusting to, again, for anyone who's following these Telegram videos, it's all channels, there's a lot of reports coming out which are confirmed also, even in Israeli media, about all the difficulties they're having with this but how, how, how do you see this campaign going? Because, you know, don't get me wrong, Israel obviously has much more firepower, but it's not going as expected, one gets the impression at least. Well, I, I follow assiduously the commentary of the resistance groups in this region, and Hezbollah is quite methodical in documenting its attacks on Israel. it provides regular video reports telling you exactly where the attack occurred when it occurred, by what means it was effected. it gives a daily report of its military operations, providing all of those, all of those- pieces of information with respect to each of its military operations, and just sort of at a high level, a number of the important things that have emerged from these reports, some of which are corroborated, by the way, by the Israeli mi-media, is that Is-uh, the Hezbollah has taken out quite a few of the Israeli Iron Dome launchers. potentially in excess of twenty-five of them. you-- and again, these have been documented, many of these strikes with video evidence. It has taken out hundreds of armored vehicles, most of which are Merkava tanks. Again, much of this documented with video evidence. it has inflicted very severe casualties, including on senior commanders within the Israeli military and commandos of its most elite brigades which A lot of those casualties have been acknowledged by the Israeli media. The Israeli military leadership is talking about a collapse, a potential collapse of the Israeli military, about up to eighty to ninety thousand reservists refusing to show up for duty. There is a PTSD and a suicide crisis in the Israeli military as I'm sure you know, Glenn, this military was not constructed for wars of attrition. It was constructed for short, very short term, intense conflicts, and we are now well beyond the- Boundaries of what this military force was constructed to do, and it has been conducting throughout this period a multi-front war. So I think the Israeli military is in very serious trouble, and the one thing that I've learned I've been to Palestine five times, including in twenty twenty-four so I've had a lot of opportunity to interact with both Israelis and with you know, people who are opposed to Israel in the broader region, and I don't think that the Israelis have nearly the Tolerance for casualties and suffering that the indigenous peoples of this region have. and it's really quite remarkable. So even though, and I don't dispute this for a second, Israel's casualties are substantially less than those of the resistance groups that they oppose. I think that they are reaching the limit of their tolerance for casualties in Israeli society and in the military, and we're seeing the impacts of that on the battlefield. Yeah, no, I've heard that same that same comment that is yeah, that their, their losses are lower, but the, the ability to absorb those losses are a lot la- lower as well. but how, how do you assess the, the Western support here? Because Well, one should almost be careful to say Western support, because one doesn't really hear much at all that is there's a lot of gruesome attacks now usually the media which would be otherwise quite emotional and well, whip up the humanitarian narrative when it's conducive there don't seem to be much interest at all in the, in the massive destruction taking place in Lebanon, and as, as you said before, a lot of the attacks were- Where you have been in Lebanon without clear military goals, well, they kind of set a clear objective that is to drive a lot of the population up north to clear these regions, and, you know, so there's massive use of military force against the civilian population for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. You would think that this Would allow at least some principles to, to stand, to, you know, to organize the press around, but how, how do you see this though, the, I guess, lack of interest in the media? Well, I want to distinguish between the lack of interest amongst the median political elites and the general sentiment in the West. The polling shows, I think beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel is deeply despised now abroad a-a-across the world, in the vast majority of countries, and in the West itself, we see that the majority of of citizens in Germany, France, Canada the United States even have a, an unfavorable view of Israel. And the negative sentiment towards Israel is growing, and it will grow even more rapidly if this insane war on Iran results in the kind of economic carnage that many people are-- experts in the field of economics and oil are predicting. but we continue to suffer from a grotesque disparity in the West between what peoples want And what our media and political elites want. I, for one, am not I'm, I'm not an ad- I, I'm not an adherent of what I would call the Meir Sharmar, Walt school of thinking when it comes to the United States government's relationship to Israel. I don't think Israel controls the United States government. I think the United States government controls Israel, and that Israel does precisely what it wants it to do, and what we have in- In the West I, I go back all the way to the the dire warning that Eisenhower issued to the American people in nineteen sixty-one, when he said that the military-industrial complex is subverting American democracy. and that is exactly what has happened, and the war machine has taken over the governments of the West, and they love this genocidal rampage, they love the wars that Israel is conducting. and there is this huge divide between what the political and media, media elites want and what the people want, and that divide is growing and it's going to result, I think, especially if this this war in Iran results in the kind of economic carnage that we're anticipating in- And potentially huge levels of political instability in the West. We are at a breaking point, as you've covered so well, you know, in your coverage of the Ukraine war. You know, even there, we're starting to see the limits of the, the patience of the people being tested, particularly in Germany. so we are at a breaking point of political stability in the West, in my view and and this this, this, what is happening here in the region where I'm currently situated may be the final straw in you know, Western the Western elite's control of the narrative. Yeah, no, I made a lot of comments about this. I think it's not just about Starmer, Macron, Mertz being- Very, very unpopular. I think Starmer's last approval rating came in at fifteen percent, so, you know, this is horrible. But it's not just that one leader, because people also getting the sentiment that once this removed, they're gonna put a new frontman in and another one, so a bit of a facelift but it's not gonna actually change policies to change the people in power. So I think that this is quite dangerous. We're moving a bit towards a political legitimacy crisis as the- Yeah, the political media elites are, as you said, distancing themselves more and more from the public, and yeah, it's quite dangerous. but on, on the declining popularity of Israel, which I guess, yeah, saying it's in freefall wouldn't be an overstatement at this point. we, we, we did see some splits though between the Americans and the Israelis that is Iran extended its deterrent to Lebanon the Israelis ignored it and- Iran struck Israel with many ballistic missiles. Then Trump essentially, well, he went out and said you know, he would talk to Netanyahu, there would be no retaliation against Iran, and well, the Netanyahu government said, well, they would do it anyways which makes, you know, Trump look either- Very weak or dishonest, whatever, you know, could be both ways, but but Israelis appear to be in a difficult spot because either they can alienate the Americans even more and we do see, see something historical though in America, that is how much opposition there is to Israel now. I haven't seen this in my lifetime, and so at the one point they could risk alienating the Americans, which feed them the money and the weapons. Or he, that Netanyahu can walk back this war, but then, you know, that would be the end of Netanyahu and his thirty-year-long dream of war with Iran. So, how, how, how are you reading this at least in the media, it looks like a tense situation between Israelis and Americans. you know, consistently with the comments I just made about the relationship between the United States government and Israel's government, I don't buy this. Narrative which has been largely promoted by Barak Ravid at Axios, that there's tension between Trump and Netanyahu. you know, somebody I follow closely, I admire her work, Caitlin Johnstone in Australia, helpfully compiled a list of the articles that Barak Ravid authored about the relationship between Joe Biden and Netanyahu when Biden was in office and the genocide was ongoing in Gaza, and he repeatedly- Reported citing unnamed officials that, you know, Biden was very unhappy with Netanyahu and occasionally swore at him. We've been hearing this scam, this, this, this whole shtick, you know, for many years. It wasn't just under Biden. I, I documented some of this myself going back to prior administrations. What the United States government does is it uses Israel in order to impose its hegemony on this extraordinarily important region and then tries to distance itself from the crimes of Israel by- Purporting to be upset, purporting to be trying to restrain the Israeli government, but all the while it continues to arm Israel, it continues to provide economic aid to Israel, it continues to provide legal protection to Israel, rhetorical support for Israel's crimes. And why? Because as American military planners recognized after the Second World War, this is a region of stupendous strategic value. That's what they called it. They also called it the greatest material prize in human history because not only of its oil resources and its gas resources, but other, other key commodities and its strategically important trade routes. The Americans want to dominate this region, and they want that more than ever because of the rise of non-Western powers It's principally China and Russia, and they use Israel as a proxy, a means to do that, and then they seek to distance themselves from Israel's crimes by saying Israel's a sovereign state, we can't tell them what to do, we're not happy sometimes with the way they act, but at the end of the day, we have an obligation historically to defend the Jewish people. This is the story we've been fed. I don't buy it. I think Trump is, is completely on board with what Netanyahu is doing. And I see no evidence as of yet that the Trump administration is prepared to use the leverage it has over Israel in order to put an end to this barbarism. When he begins to threaten openly to deprive Israel of the aid that it requires in order to carry out these crimes and get away with it, then perhaps I'll take seriously these reports of, you know, dissent between the White House and Tel Aviv. But there's absolutely no evidence, no credible evidence, that the United States government is threatening to withdraw the support upon which Israel relies in order to carry out these crimes. So I, I, I, I go back always to the polling data. The polling data in the US shows that a majority of the population is opposed to the war in Iran. The polling data in Israel shows that a majority of the population wants the war in Iran to continue. So it suits both Netanyahu and Trump politically to posture in the way that they're posturing. Trump postures as the person who's trying to restrain Netanyahu, and Netanyahu postures as the person who's determined to pursue this war even if it means alienating Donald Trump. At the end of the day, their actions are what matter, and their actions are completely consistent with the thesis that they want to dominate this region are prepared to commit virtually any crime in order to achieve that goal. Yeah, well, often one does get the impression there is some good cop, bad cop play by the United States. you could draw some parallels to Europe, though. I mean, the, the US keeps saying, you know, we'll put pressure on Zelensky and the Europeans to essentially accept what was agreed in Anchorage, but you know, what exactly is the pressure? This is the war is being fought with American weapons. It is the American war planners sitting in Germany. It's the- American intelligence agencies on the ground still in Ukraine directing attacks, picking the targets, assisting the direction of drones through NATO territories to strike Russia, and it's kinda convenient that once the war's going on and well, u-Ukrainians and increasingly Europeans put themselves on the front line, the, the Americans get to play the mediator, even though they are the main actor for the past well, twelve years now in In this war, it's, it's quite extraordinary, but Glenn, I'm sorry to, I, I, I have to just interrupt to say I think you're completely right. You're absolutely right. This is nothing but a kabuki theater we've seen in, in, in the Ukraine war. Absolutely, it's, it's a total fraud. The United States wants that war to continue, and all of these claims that Trump made that he was trying to bring an end to the Ukraine war was nothing but political posturing for domestic consumption. I, I think you're absolutely right. Well, we, we saw something earlier as well with Iran and Israel, when Israel hit the southern part's gas fields and Trump kind of stepped back and said, "Well, no, no, no, this we haven't agreed to, you should stop this." You know, it, it seems like it's a good way of managing the escalation ladder. If you say, "Well, they did this, we don't approve of it, so long as Iran doesn't retaliate, then we will you know, restrain Extension, the Russians as well have this idea that, well, we have to retaliate, but I guess if we do, then we'll pull America into this. It's better to keep America outside. But meanwhile, of course, they are fully wedded to the idea of destroying Iran and Russia for that sake. But but how, how, how do you make sense of the Iranian position here though? Because the, everyone keeps being surprised that the Iranians are prepared to strike back, retaliate disproportionately. That is, if anyone attacks them, they will- You know, and they don't necessarily have to do in parity, they will then hit back very hard. Again, Trump once made the point that no one could imagine that they would close down the Strait of Hormuz and strike all the US army bases in the Gulf States. but yeah, that's how-- I hope that was false, otherwise we should be really worried. but, but how do you make sense of the, the, the Iranian retaliation and the overall strategy in terms of fighting both the US and Israel? Are they happy with doing this low-intensity war, or do they see this benefiting the Americans, or how do you see this? Well, I think up until the strikes that Iran launched a few days ago on multiple US military bases in the Persian Gulf, the, the Iranians were pursuing a strategy of commensurate retaliation, which is to say that their retaliation would be essentially as severe and as damaging as that to which they were responding, but they realized that that wasn't working. I think they came to that conclusion within the past week, and so first they they tested An approach of disproportionate retaliation by striking multiple US military bases when the US attacked Qeshm Island, and I think they might have attacked some other military site in the, in the Strait of Hormuz and they went, the Iranians attacked very hard Kuwait, Bahrain. I saw a report also from Tudeh Parsi that there were attacks on other Persian Gulf military bases, although I haven't been able to confirm that myself. And then what happened with In the past twenty-four hours, I think is again an example of the Iranians saying, "Well, it's no longer sufficient for us to engage in commensurate retaliation, we have to pursue disproportionate retaliation, because what happened last night you know, there was wave after wave of Iranians Iranian attacks on Israel. as far as I can tell from the reports, they didn't launch four or five missiles and drones, they launched tens of them in four to five waves, and they struck You know, multiple targets across the north of occupied Palestine. And I think at this stage they're probably going to continue down that course of action. Going forward, they won't content themselves with a commensurate retaliation. They will respond disproportionately. And so far, I'm not sure where this is all gonna go. The Israeli Defense Minister Katz just put out a statement reiterating the position that if Hezbollah attacks Israel, then Israel will attack Beirut. So he's sticking to the line that they were advancing before the retaliatory strikes of the last twenty-four hours by Iran. but this is a completely untenable position because that basically, if, if, if Hezbollah and Iran were to accede to this framework, that if you don't attack I- Israel, we won't attack Beirut, that would leave Israel free to attack the rest of Lebanon. This, it's absolutely inconceivable that Hezbollah and Iran are going to agree to this. not only would they be free to attack the rest of Lebanon, they would be free to continue to destroy civilian infrastructure in the parts of the country that they control, and there would be no obligation on them to withdraw their forces. So this isn't- if, if the Israelis are serious about this. If they're serious about attacking Beirut in the case of Hezbollah attacking Israel, we are going to continue up the escalation ladder, and we're gonna get up there really fast. Now, I don't know whether they're serious, we'll have to see about this. You know, within the past few hours, I think there has been a report of Hezbollah striking in the north of, of Israel. so we'll have to see but I don't think at this stage that either the Iranians or Hezbollah are gonna tolerate any attacks whether they be on Beirut, Beirut or the south of the country. I think that their patience has been exhausted. Yeah, I think this is also an effort by, by the Israelis to control the escalation ladder, assisted by the Americans of course, where they kind of make the point, "Well, we're not gonna strike Beirut, but then we're gonna take, but the, but south of Lebanon, this is, you know, this is outside, this is acceptable." I mean, there's I, I don't see the Iranians accepting them picking, you know, the targets like this. Also, it wouldn't be cemented, written in stone, because it would be, I, So the, again, the parallel to the Ukraine war, they, they began first with some weapons, they put some self-limits on it, constraints, that is, okay, here's some weapons, but you're not allowed to use them against the Russians out, outside of Ukraine's territory, and then, okay, we're gonna give some more weapons, but here's some more restraints, and gradually, you know, remove those restraints, and, you know, it was a little step-by-step, and eventually you change the rules of the game, Same conclusion but on on Iran though, I, I wanted to ask something else before I forget, which is the, the toll which the Iranians have set up in Strasbourg, because Well, I saw a video of you, because you were actually on the water there, in the Strait of Hormuz. And how, how, how do you see this? Is, is the toll now functioning as it should? I mean, is it up and running or how, how is this impacting traffic or against- Where, where are we standing on the Strait of Hormuz because things are developing? It's very hard to say, Glenn, the, the, the Iranians are playing their cards very close to their chest, and I think a big part of the reason for that is any, any state or shipping line that is revealed to be paying a toll, they could call it, I guess, an environmental fee, whatever you call it, to paying any kind of a fee to Iran is going to be subject to some kind of retaliatory action by the United States. So Iran doesn't have really any interest in revealing exactly what is going on, and they've been Secretive about this but my sense from speaking to officials in Iran and experts within Iran, I've spent a lot of time, not just on the ground reporting on this, but interacting with them on my own program is that they are almost certainly exacting some kind of a fee certainly perhaps not from their closest allies, maybe they're giving them a free pass but everybody else- Who's going through the Strait of Hormuz with Iranian consent is paying some kind of a fee, and and they will continue to insist upon that because this is the greatest leverage that they have, and it's the greatest prospect that they have for actually recovering some form of compensation for the immense destruction that the United States has inflicted upon Iran, not just during the hot war, but through the sanctions and the freezing of Iranian assets. it's going to be extremely difficult, I think, the Iran- Understand that to, you know, compel the Americans to pay any kind of reparations to them, so they're going to extract compensation by some other means, and the best way to do that is to impose fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. There is absolutely no military solution to that problem. None. If you've been there and you've seen the Strait of Hormuz you, you, you would come to that conclusion very quickly. the Iranians don't need to send massive naval forces into the Strait of Hormuz. And set up some kind of a military wall to impede you know, the passage of commercial shipping through the Strait. All they have to do is increase materially the risk of commercial ships suffering catastrophic damage if they attempt to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without the consent of the Iranian military, and they can do that in a variety of ways. They can do it with drones, they can do it with ship-to-ship missiles, they can do it with land-to-ship missiles, they can do it with mines so They can do it with their Iranian fast attack boats. there's absolutely no military solution to this, and they are going to hold on to that control for dear life. It is the, it is their nuclear weapon. and at some point or another, as I've said many times, I think that the United States government is gonna have to pay the piper, and that means they're going to have to cede control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. Yeah, I think this is what's missed on many people that there's very little that can be done. Well, first of all, the I think a lot of people fail to recognize that this is an existential threat to Iran, which is why they're willing to absorb this pain, but also how important it is. I mean, with the Strait of Hormuz, they can put these incentives to have neighboring countries remove sanctions, to scale back or even remove the US military bases. there's a lot of, you know, can get reparations, a lot of things are Nuclear weapon, I don't think that's an overstatement at all. This is a very powerful weapon to hold onto the Strait of Hormuz, and given also that they can't really be deprived of it in terms of material capabilities. I mean, Trump always makes this point that, "Oh, we destroyed their navy, their air force, their army," but even if that was true, you don't need a very sophisticated navy to shut down that strait. As you said, if you got some drones which are relatively cheap to make Centralize, it's they, they, they can't do anything about this. So it's I mean, it must be a difficult spot for the Americans, 'cause they lose a lot by having the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, but but if there's nothing they can do, I mean At some point there, as you said, there, it's time to pay the piper. This is just the way it is. but what, what is a realistic diplomatic settlement though between Iran, Israel, and United States? Because, I mean, I, I always get the feeling that the Americans have something that Iran wants, and that, that would be sanctions relief. I mean, even if Iran wins to hold onto the Strait of Hormuz, the Americans have to pack up and go home. America can still make life very miserable for Iranians but if there would be realistically sanctions relief, I mean, could the Americans extract something from the Iranians not giving up Hormuz of course, but do you see any possibility of a diplomatic settlement where both sides recognize some kind of agreement is better than just staying essentially in a de facto war? Well, when I was in Iran last year, we were given the opportunity to meet with the spokesperson of the Atomic Energy Agency in Iran, and we also were given a tour of the research reactor in Tehran and spoke to some of their nuclear experts there. And without getting into the details of it, because that's a whole other conversation, I don't think there's any hope at all, zero, of Iran giving up its nuclear program. That will not happen under any circumstances. As long as this government is intact and Iran is a functioning state, so would Iran be prepared to accept, you know, the JCPOA type restrictions on enrichment for some period of time? Sure, they would accept that if they were given full blown sanctions relief. and if their assets were unfrozen but are they going to hand over to Donald Trump the enriched uranium the sixty percent enriched uranium? That's not happening. I, I think they're not even prepared at this point to give it to the Chinese or the Russians to hold in custody for usage by Iran. What they may be willing to do, and they've signaled this, is they may be willing to dilute that enriched uranium, not all the way down to three point six percent. but perhaps down to the level of twenty percent. And by the way to use you know, enriched uranium for research purposes, it has to be enriched well beyond the level, as I understand it, I'm not an expert in this field, Glenn, but based on my discussions with the people in the at- the atomic energy program of Iran, it has to be enriched well above the level for enrichment required for civilian energy reactors, somewhere in the range of fifteen, twenty percent. So I Put up indefinitely with the JCPOA limit of three point six percent because that would preclude them from using enriched uranium for research purposes, but for some period of time they would deal with, they would put up with that. and there would have to be, you know, a quid pro quo. There would have to be a lifting of sanctions and a lifting of or unfreezing of assets. The problem here, this is the big quandary for the United States, is that if they lift those sanctions and they unfreeze Iranian assets Iran is going to emerge as the most powerful state in the region. The only thing that has really held it back until now is the economic war that has been waged upon Iran. And both the United States and Israel would have to accept that Iran would be the most powerful re-state in that region. Iran is an extraordinarily well endowed country. as you know, it's as large as Western Europe. It has tremendous resources. it has a, a very large population, very well educated population, a high degree of technological sophistication, a topography that is very challenging from a military perspective. it has- You know, a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz because of its position geographically. So if you take away the economic warfare being waged upon Iran, then you can toss down, you know, flush down the toilet Israeli dreams of being the regional hegemon, but that's gone. And I just don't see at this stage any indication that the United States and Israel are ready to accept that reality. Which means I'm sad to say that I believe this is going to continue to escalate this war. This is going to have catastrophic con-consequences for the global economy. And at some point the United States government, whether it's Trump or his successor, are going to have to accept that in order to bring an end to the economic carnage, they are going to have to effectively, in some manner, recognize Iran's status in the region and allow it to assume its rightful place in the world. I think we're a long way from that point yet. Sad, I hope I'm wrong, but I think that's probably where we're heading, and the consequences for people all around the world are going to be quite negative. Well, on your visit to the nuclear facilities in Iran, I was there with you actually. We oh, yes, you were. Yeah, we were both there. It was May, May last year before the bombing began. the difference though is I, I left before the bombing you actually stayed during the war and reported on this which is yeah, again, it's, it's quite important, which is why I also very much would recommend for people to follow your work because this is Through the media, it's a very distorted picture of Iran. I mean, this was one of my thoughts as well last time now, when I-- well, last year when I was in Tehran, that is essentially what I'd expected to see based on your average media report in Europe would be, you know, a Shia version of the Taliban almost running a country. So it's it was very different than what I had expected, you know, like, again, in, in Europe, there's a lot of focus on You know, I didn't expect, you know, a large part of women walking around with, without veils and t-shirts and jeans. It's it's a different picture, but just, just as a last question, I guess, what, what aspects of Iranian society do you think the foreign audience will rarely get to see as someone who's there on the ground? You know, I, I guess if, if I, I could pinpoint one thing that stood out for me more than anything else, it's that these- The image that we have been given of the Iranian people, and particularly their leadership, is that they're extremely aggressive and they're irrational and they're fanatical. My experience of them both when-- my apologies for forgetting about that trip, it seems like an eternity ago in May of last year you know, but especially during the most recent visit when we went to seven Iranian cities in eleven days is that they're a peace-loving people. They really, really want to- in peace with their neighbors. They aren't aggressive at all they aren't violent, they're not prone to violence and they're quite prepared to be reasonable and compromising, but at the same time, this is an ancient civilization of which the Iranian people have much to be proud, and they expect to be treated with respect and you know, and and for their contribution to the betterment of humanity to be recognized. so this is, you know, very similar to what the people in Russia and the people in China feel. they deserve a seat at the table and to be treated as sovereign nations and worthy of our respect. If we give them that I have no doubt that the state of Iran and the people of Iran will, can become fully integrated and be productive members of the community, the global community and of West Asia. Okay finally, the where can people find your work? what's a good place to to follow? so pri-my primary activity is Reason to Resist it's my YouTube channel where we publish reports on almost a daily basis our focus is on, as we put it, the crime scenes of Western governments. and I also spend probably more time than is good for my health on X. And there my my handle is at dimitri laskaris. Excellent, I'll make sure to leave a link in the description so everyone please follow. And thank you so much for the great work you're doing. Thank you, you too, Glenn, pleasure. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: New World - Israel Dying, NATO Dead & U.S. Defeated by Iran https://youtu.be/wZ-lE4hSM80 https://t.co/4AGblrKCml
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel Bet Everything on War With Iran-and Lost https://youtu.be/a2nQnLcTNuo https://t.co/7KiYsxUXhk
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson discusses the escalation involving Israel, Iran, and the United States, describing it as getting worse “with every minute.” He says Iran has “essentially extended its deterrence to Lebanon,” attacking Israel because it attacked Lebanon, and he argues Israel “appears to refuse to accept this extended deterrence,” even though it cannot stop the course of events. He cites former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “Neither military pressure nor flattening southern Lebanon can topple Hezbollah,” and says Barak is “caught” in a political bind for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: opposition accuses Netanyahu of not being tough enough on Israel’s national security and of yielding to President Trump, while Trump’s stance is portrayed as pressuring Netanyahu to slow down or refrain from some actions, including bombing in Dariya and southern Beirut. Wilkerson frames the situation as both a domestic and personal political issue for Netanyahu as well as a security issue for US and Iran.
Wilkerson says much discussion misses “the real point in this entire struggle”: “The struggle is about a Palestinian state,” arguing that Israel’s occupation and regulations governing Palestinians have long been ignored, not only since October 7/8. He describes Palestinians dying “at the rate of about thirty to thirty-five a day,” with deaths attributed to bullets, bombs, and “brutality,” but also to a humanitarian situation he says Israel supports. He gives examples such as eggs costing “two hundred and fifty dollars” per dozen and states black-market conditions make many Egyptians rich, while he also claims a large segment of Egypt supports the system. He argues attention is being diverted to Hezbollah, Daraa, and Beirut while the core issue—Palestinian statehood—is neglected.
He links this framing to Iran’s approach, quoting a Haaretz headline he used: “All Iran has to do to win is not lose. All the United States and Israel have to do, and this includes… Who’s Bibi Netanyahu’s future… wins spectacularly.” Wilkerson then emphasizes the idea of multiple “nuclear weapon” components described in a separate account: the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s relationships with Russia and China, and a third nuclear weapon being built or already made (with possible Pakistani involvement depending on the rumor version). He also references President Trump’s claim that he was the president who “wouldn’t start a war,” and portrays the US situation as further pressured by domestic political conditions ahead of midterms.
Wilkerson claims that US domestic politics and legislative moves are “gluing us to Israel” in a way that will give Israel most of the advantage, referencing Tom Cotton in the Senate and Speaker Johnson in the House and “Section two two four” in the “twenty twenty seven NDAA.” He says this would embed Israel legally within the US security apparatus by codifying long-term arrangements without the prior oversight structure, eliminating congressionally visible oversight and restricting the ability to ensure compliance such as prohibitions on using equipment to kill civilians. He argues that intelligence, technology, and other security sharing would be locked in, benefiting Israel “on a twenty-four seven basis,” and he says US defense contractors would also be locked at the hip with Israel, including Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and other contractors. He claims Israeli systems often rely on US-made equipment or US-funded contracts, so the arrangement “changes everything,” and he adds that a US congressman helped introduce the section at Bibi Netanyahu’s direction, based on a taped telephone call. He concludes that without oversight, the American public cannot know what is occurring in real time.
On Ukraine, Wilkerson and the other participant agree that Ukraine is being under-covered compared to the Levant. Wilkerson says Ukraine is “getting increasingly dangerous” and argues that Europe’s actions could eventually lead to consequences involving NATO responses, warning of “sleepwalking into a massive disaster.” He describes Putin as holding restraint “in the dam” and argues that the West is misreading restraint as opposition, while also predicting eventual dangerous outcomes.
Wilkerson returns to the Iran-Israel conflict, saying the escalation ladder is being set and that Yemen has reportedly announced Israel will also be banning access to the Red Sea. He argues the US faces limited options because contesting militarily could lead to those restrictions applying to the US as well. He says Iran’s allies are not merely proxies but “allies,” and he reiterates that the conflict cannot be properly handled without correctly characterizing the struggle around Palestinian statehood.
In response to a question about whether Iran may attack US ships directly, Wilkerson says he thinks it would be “smart,” and he points to Iran’s capability to hit US vessels using various means, describing videos of hits that strike combat-critical areas without necessarily sinking ships. He says Iran might choose a lower-damage approach to avoid triggering a wider US response.
On Israel’s next moves, Wilkerson says Israel is in a difficult spot internally and internationally, and he cites a poll implication: “sixty-seven percent” of people across “thirty-six countries” believe Israel is wrong “for the first time,” reflecting a major change in global sentiment. He also expresses concern that US domestic politics could affect US policy, particularly if midterms turn against Trump and Republicans, while describing legislative leadership as likely to acquiesce to Trump’s approach. He concludes that the overall future direction is uncertain amid rapid global shifts, describing transportation and strategic corridors as changing and warning about multipolar dynamics.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined again by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to the US Secretary of State. So thank you for coming back on. I wanted to ask you today about what's happening now with Israel, Iran, and the United States. We've seen something quite remarkable, I think, that is the Iran has essentially extended its deterrence to Lebanon. It attacked Israel because it, it had attacked Lebanon. I mean, this is, I guess, on some level, quite extraordinary that Is- Israel didn't have to attack Iran directly, and Israel appears to refuse to accept this extended deterrence, but again, it doesn't seem to get a vote, so it can only go forward. How, how are you assessing the situation now? Getting worse with every minute. Just, just to Ehud Barak, whom you know, former Prime Minister of Israel, quote, "Neither military pressure nor flattening southern Lebanon can topple Hezbollah. " End of quote. "You're right, " former Prime Minister. "But he's caught, he's caught, Bibi's caught between a rock and a hard place, the one side being the hard place, if you will, being Trump. " And the rock being those people who are campaigning against him are campaigning on the very issue that he's not tough enough on Israel's national security, and oh by the way, bows to President Trump. So he can't win for losing, and I think he's gonna lose. I, I think he's looking at his first dramatic loss in his long lived political career. So it's become, as my students used to say, as much if not more a domestic issue for Israel and a political issue for Netanyahu, personal political issue for Netanyahu, as it is an issue of either the US or Israel's, or for that matter, Iran's security. And in all of this I was just, I was just on another podcast and this came up, and so I, I, I belabored it for a while. All of this misses the real point in this entire struggle, in this particular aspect of it. The struggle is about a Palestinian state. And about what Israel has done in the interim to the Palestinians, and I don't just refer to what started on October seventh or October the eighth, but the whole history of the Nakba and the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, increasingly one of Occupied and occupier, which has, as you know, a very distinct set of rules and regulations that goes along with it, which Israel is absolutely ignoring and has ignored for the entire time this situation has existed. So if we can't get to that issue, and we don't seem to want to get to that issue, in fact, what's happening right now is the Palestinians are dying at, at the rate of about thirty to thirty-five a day still, and they're dying of all manner of- Reasons they're dying from bullets and bombs and, and brutality, but they're also dying because Israel's got a humanitarian situation that it is supporting that is everything from mafia-like and costing the Palestinians two hundred and fifty dollars for a dozen eggs, for example and making lots of people, including many Egyptians, rich in the process. And all this is just over there on the sidelines. We're looking at Hezbollah, we're looking at Daraa, we're looking at Beirut, we're looking at what Israel's doing in Lebanon, which is unconscionable, of course, it always is when Israel does it, especially to Lebanon or the Palestinians, and we're being distracted from what is, I think, the real issue here, which is summed up in that Haaretz headline I used to like to quote, "All Iran has to do to win is not lose. All the United States and Israel have to do, and this includes- Who's Bibi Netanyahu's future, I think, in jail or a hero, wins spectacularly. And we're not gonna do that. We've already lost, really, in, in effect, we've already lost. No matter how much Bradley Cooper disputes it, no matter how many new reverse-engineered drones he buys for attacking Iran with them, no matter how many bombs he calculates dropping, we've lost. There's another piece out in the Jerusalem- Which belabors the McInder, McInder theory, if you will, but nonetheless makes some points. It says, "Iran doesn't have one nuclear weapon, it has three. The first nuclear weapon it has is the Strait of Hormuz, and we've demonstrated conclusively we don't know how to handle that weapon. The second weapon it has is its relationship, McInder-like, with the heartland power, Russia and China, on top of that, talk about the heartland. And then the third nuclear weapon is the nuclear weapon it probably is making right now or has already made and could test at any moment, or that Pakistan may have given it, depending on whose version of the rumor you believe. So where are we in all of this? We're at the point where President Trump makes a statement that he never said he was the president who wouldn't start a war. Are you kidding me? I mean, your lies are many and, and, and replete with every issue you speak about, but this one, it's just baffling, and I don't think we have-- At the same time, I gotta mention the domestic situation here in this country. We're headed for disaster, I think, with regard to the midterms, and I have no idea what he's gonna do for that disaster. At the same time, that Tom Cotton in the Senate and others in the House, but principally Johnson, the Speaker, are working on gluing us to Israel in a way that the cement, once dry, will never break, and Israel will get most of the advantage of it. You can't make this stuff up. It's, it's incredible what we're doing. And, and today, right before I went on with you, I said, "I think I'll review my YouTube menu, 'cause I have this thing I've set up, and I'm looking at it, and I'm going down all the interviews of the last twenty-four hours with people like yourself, Doug McGregor. John Mearsheimer Peter Jeffrey Sachs, a host of others that I have listed in, in Lookout. Not a single one on Ukraine. Not a single one on Ukraine. Not identifiable in the titles anyway. Maybe they mentioned it in the podcast, in the body of the podcast. So, where's Ukraine right now? Where's it gone? It hasn't gone nowhere. In fact, it's getting increasingly dangerous, and I wouldn't ex- I wouldn't expect Putin to use a nuclear weapon tomorrow morning, but I might expect him to use one eventually if we keep on this path with these idiots in Europe. brief summary. Well, on the Ukraine issue, I very much agree. I get well, a-after this meeting now at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum you know, Putin yet again had this very- yeah, very low-key non-confrontational tone, but I get the impression he's more and more standing alone on this. I mean, the, his National Security Council isn't with him, and all the people around him appears to be arguing that enough is enough. you know, the Europeans are openly- Expressing the intent of continuing to attack attack us. We know they're using the territory of other countries to attack us. We know it's their weapons, we know there's, they're doing the targeting. It's you know, why, why, why, why, why do we not do anything? Essentially, inaction is becoming much more dangerous than action the way they see it. But so I'm not sure how long Putin will hold this back, and I think for many in the West, this is something difficult to appreciate because they- They've been taught that Putin is evil himself, but he's, he's essentially the one holding the Russian restraint, which is now becoming very damaging to Russia to the extent it's being abandoned soon. So, no, I think we're sleepwalking into a massive disaster. And oh, it's, yeah, I think I'm not sure you use the idiots in Europe, but that would be a very appropriate term, I guess for, yeah, the political leadership and their, yeah, their The media. But I look, look at Starmer, I bet you couldn't walk out of a building in London or anywhere in England, maybe even in Great Britain, you could walk out of a building and say, "Are you for care, are you for care, Starmer? " And find someone who would say, "Yes, " and yet he's still the leader. And you could say similar things about Macron, and as what's her, Alice, Elizabeth, Vialle, I guess AFD leader in Germany, as she gains more strength and I'm very interested in where she is finally gonna wind up. You wonder about Germany, the most significant country in Europe, in my view and your wonderment is punctuated with what you just described, very well. The fact that they don't seem to care, they don't seem to understand what they're setting up, they don't seem to understand, for example, that they could cause something to happen like maybe Putin hits a target that is clearly associated, and I have no doubt his intelligence can tell him this easily, with attacks on Russia or support of attacks on Russia in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, you name the country really. And Attack it directly. And then what's gonna happen is they're gonna meet in Brussels and beat, beat their chests, and they're gonna say, "Okay, Article Five, Article Five." And the United States is gonna look at them and say, "Get your sm— I'm not joining you in Article Five. I mean, after all, he hit something that was a danger to him, even if it was us he hit, it could well be us or us and the British and..." Whoever else. like you said, this is, I borrow Barbara Tuchman's term, it's a march to folly, it's wouldn't it in this, but it's entirely different in terms of the consequences and the circumstances, even looking back on the disaster World War One was, and even more, World War Two. Still, this has nuclear consequences, tied to it with a red ribbon and perfume spray. You can't discount that. And I, I like what you said about Putin because that's my appreciation of him, too. He's holding back the water in the dam right now. It's not like people are saying in this country that he's, he's got major opposition to what he's doing, they want the war over, blah, blah, yeah, maybe they want the war over, but they want it over on strictly Russian terms. And, and they're holding him back in terms of his prudence, his circumspection, and his not, his willingness to do whatever he can short of going directly to war with NATO. Even though I think in his mind, sometimes he says things and Sergey Lavrov says things that make me think they've had meetings and they've said, "Well, you know, eventually we're gonna have to go to war with NATO." And I've no doubt in my mind that the Russian general staff is beavering away with plans for that from one end to the other, probably starting in Kaliningrad. But this is a very dangerous situation, and we just don't seem to be cognizant of it. You look at our media here, Glenn, and you would think that Ukraine was a sideshow that one reports on maybe once a week or so and tells what a bastard Putin is, and that what's going on in the Levant, although it has some huge ramifications, because it looks like Trump's losing, but a lot of people in this country, I'd say probably fifty to sixty percent of people in this country Who are sentient don't mind that. That's hard to say, but I, I really believe that they're not very much in favor of this war. Certainly the youth aren't. The youth that have just registered their views with this new system we're putting in place for selective service and for conscription, and most of the polls and, and the results of the polls were pretty, I mean, even shocking to me that eighteen to twenty-four year olds They don't always say no, they say, "Yeah, I'll be Mexico to Canada. I'm, I'm not going in for this." And, and you can't hardly blame them under the circumstances. And you watch veterans come out, as I did this morning. And veterans, this particular individual was a veteran of, of Afghanistan, a couple of times, in Iraq once, and he's saying, "This is what we did, this is what we did for corporate America, this is what we did for Lockheed Martin, this is what we did for a president who didn't know what he was doing, for presidents plural that didn't know what they were doing. This is what we were doing for the war machine, this is what we're doing for the military industrial complex. We know that, and these eighteen to twenty-four year olds who are about to be drafted may not In a way that they can articulate it, but they damn sure aren't gonna go to war for Donald Trump. So why are we even talking about this? And why are we looking at As I'm told, Admiral Bradley Cooper is, a reverse-engineered Iranian drone that we think is gonna be a game changer in Iran, ain't nothing gonna change the game in Iran, no drone, no, no anything like that, no accoutrement of war is gonna change that, because this McInder theory I think is right. One nuclear weapon is the Strait of Hormuz, the second nuclear weapon is the relationship with Russia and China, and the third nuclear weapon is the one they're building, we're gonna be given Pakistan. So that's what you're up against now. Maybe you know that because you seem of late to be looking for ways out solidly and carefully and constantly looking for ways out without tarnishing your reputation as being the greatest president that free world has ever seen. Nonetheless, I think he wants out, but they're caught. Bibi and he are caught. Bibi's caught in the political context that says to him, from his opposition who are likely to beat him if he falls back a second, they're saying you're not being hard enough in Lebanon, you're sacrificing Israeli security to Donald Trump, you're not doing what you should be doing in Gaza, you're not finishing them off, you're killing them, but you're not killing them at fast enough rate, and you're not killing them. Lamass and Trump's telling him to slow down, even not to do this, not to do that, especially bombing in Dariya, the southern part of Beirut. So what does he do? He does the one, he probably loses the election and goes to jail and lives in ignominy for whatever portion of his life he has left. If he does the other, Barack says you're not gonna accomplish anything, and I think Barack's right, he's not. Hezbollah has the advantage on him, I think, now. And this morning. One of the people I was talking with was saying, "Proxies, proxies, they're proxies. The Houthis, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, they're, they're, they're proxies." And I said, "They're not proxies, they're allies. They're allies, just like we have allies, and they're not terrorists either. I can make you a good legal case under the international regime and even domestic, I can make you a good legal case for occupying power and occupier occupying power and occupier." And, and make a, a, an excuse for Hamas isn't really an excuse. They're freedom fighters in Ronald Reagan's view. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, I think he said. and I can make the same case for Hezbollah, and I can make the same case for anyone fighting on Iran's side. They're allies of Iran, and they're allied ultimately, and this is a point we keep missing. This media in this country will not talk about it in a, a lucid, meaningful way. We're missing what mbs, for other reasons than benevolence. doesn't miss and others like him, the Palestinians. This is, this is, this is all about the Palestinians and a viable state and a way to get to that state for them. It's been about that for so long. It all boils down to that, and Iran is now the premier defender of the Palestinians, and so are its allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Characterize the conflict properly so you can deal with it properly is a, is a fundamental principle of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, you name it, but we refuse to characterize this conflict properly, and therefore we make mistake after mistake after mistake. There's my lecture. Since you mentioned that, I think, yeah, yeah, so resolving the Palestinian issue, I think that is obviously at the core, and if Israel would do a fundamental shift in its foreign policy, that is abandon this clean break A strategy of simply dominating its neighborhood I think we would have to-- Even Kagan has abandoned it, apparently. I know. Well, I think at that point it does have to find a way of getting along with Iran, but to do this, it has to try to resolve the, the, the, the Palestinian issue, because I can understand to some extent why the Israelis have done what they've done the past thirty years, if you have the all-powerful global hegemon US standing behind it, telling it you don't really need to make any Why would you make any compromise, but when you see that the, the hegemon is in decline and you will be in a weaker position tomorrow than you are today, surely this is the time to strike the deal But but this is some- Yeah, sure. They're shoring it up. They're shoring it up with Tom Cotton in the Senate and Johnson in the House, Section two two four of the twenty twenty seven NDAA, and gluing Israel and the United States in an embrace that can't be broken. So, you're right, you're right But these people are fighting a rear, rear guard action that's gonna disrupt this country majorly, I think. Yeah, that's what I want to ask because we see now the Iranians extending their deterrent to Lebanon, but I also saw today a report by the political spokesperson of Hamas Hassan Kassam. We made the point that Iranians contacted him and let them know that any ceasefire will now include Gaza as well, that is, Israel can no longer have a ceasefire with Iran and continue the slaughter in Gaza. So this is essentially, yeah but putting, but putting real pressure. That's truly, and I, I was reading up on it last night as much as I could, that truly is a hideous situation still. there are so many pe- you know, a dozen eggs can cost as much as two hundred dollars. a pint of fuel can cost seventy-five, eighty dollars US equivalents. it's because the Egyptians, the Israelis Yes, many Israelis, of course, are involved with it particularly those running various aspects of the so-called "quote humanitarian operation, " unquote. They're making a fortune off this, a fortune off the plight of the Palestinians, just to drink a little clean water, just to have a little electricity, just to have some food, and, and the prices are just extraordinary and the black market is extraordinary and Israel's supporting it all. And as far as I can- I can tell there's a, there's a huge segment of Egypt that's supporting it too. It reminds me of what we had to do to get that woman out. Back up just a little bit, we had a family in Rafa that was the family that Rachel Corrie, whom you may, you may recall, I certainly do, is chief of staff of the State Department, trying to get Israel to admit they'd murdered her. I knew they'd murdered her, I saw the evidence, they had murdered her, I saw the video. The bulldozer. but they never would fess up, they never would do an investigation that mattered to anybody, they wouldn't even answer Secretary Powell. they answered him with a pro forma answer, "We do these investigations, et cetera." But we were trying to-- This was the same family that Rachel was protecting that day when she was killed by the Israeli bulldozer. We were trying to get them now increased somewhat and a woman with them that was pregnant out into Rafa, and the price of getting them out with the Egyptians being the principal intermediaries just kept climbing. By the time we got through, it was over a hundred grand. You know, everyone is taking advantage of this now in a sordid sort of way to make money, and Israel is one of the biggest money makers in it in perpetrating The whole thing really making it possible. So I, I applaud Iran, good on you, Iran. Bring it back to the real issue. But on that real issue, that is on yeah, restraining Israel a bit. We, we see that one of the things that had, well, it's restrained in many ways, is being balanced by the Iranians. They are also struggling in their fight with Hezbollah, they're not being successful against the Palestinians, but I think a key- Possibly the most important issue where it's in decline will be its international standing, and most importantly, in the United States, because it is the US that supplies the money. And the weapons to do these things, and the intelligence for that matter. But but now we see as the support for Israel is declining there's an effort now to essentially embed Israel legally within the US military industrial complex and this is with this new Section two two four. I was wondering if you can unpack what this actually means. I mean, what is it at stake with this? It's very dangerous, I think. The first thing it does, and let me back up just a little bit and take you back to Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, when Donald Rumsfeld made a similar effort in a very narrow way to gain State Department authorities that Congress had for years handed out to State and not to Defense, although Defense was the spender of the revenue, State determined For what purpose and to what country, if countries were involved, the revenue went. And when Rosso went to Congress, with Powell having pre-briefed our committees in the Congress, the Congress said, "Go home, go back to the Pentagon, we're not gonna do that. " And I, I give you that little rehearsal because what it meant for the Congress was they would then lack visibility over the spending of that money, because they knew if state were- The arbitrator, so to speak, and dod just the dispenser, state would at least do a reasonable job. Its political-military affairs section, for example, which Josh Paul resigned from recently, you may recall, because of Biden and Blinken and Sullivan's violations of this oversight, state would at least let Congress have visibility over what was going on through its various committees and so forth. Well, what they're trying- Trying to do with section two two four and even worse, though I haven't read it yet, the section that Tom Cotton is pushing in the Senate, which will complement this when the bill comes to conference and goes together for passing, is even worse. It means essentially that everything that was done before by a ten year or some length of time memorandum of understanding, which would have in this case been agreed to for twenty twenty seven, and would say in essence that three point eight billion per year or four billion, Dachnau wanted to go up to five billion, would be codified for ten years, but it would be under this procedure. Every penny of it, so to speak. Would have to be met by the laws that we have. You can't use this equipment to kill civilians, men, women, and children, and so forth. Now, yes, Biden, Blinken, and Sondland became very, very illegal. They broke the law in terms of that dispensation and oversight at the, at the beginning of this conflict. But at least it was there. Now it won't be there at all. There won't be no oversight of this expenditure of money, and there won't be no real guarantee that the money won't rise precipitously inside this arrangement. And the sharing that's gonna take, take place of intelligence, of technology, of everything involved with the security complex in both countries, and I give you one guess on who will get the most out of They always do, the Israelis, on a twenty four seven basis. And if that's not bad enough, the d o w d o d, whatever you wanna call it, d o d and the other security apparatus in America through d o d, will be locked at the hip with Israel, so will Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, Grumman, and the other defense contractors of note, to include their tech- Technology, their laboratories and so forth. Now, people will say, "Well, so will Israel. " Well, I've got news for you. Despite the boasting of Israel's mighty vaunted security complex, they haven't made anything really worthy of "squat" in a long, long time. Look at most of the things they use and use relentlessly, they're made in the United States, or they're made in Israel under contract with the United States. So this change- Changes everything, and they know it. Bibi actually used a u s congressman. We have a tape of the telephone call. He actually used a US congressman to write this section two two four to introduce it and to do his dirty work for him in the US Congress. And in the conversation that took place, BB thanked this guy for what he was doing for Israel, because what this guy did was essentially put something in motion that he knew would get the, you know, the attention of all his, all of his Israel-based colleagues, Israel-biased colleagues. And he did it, and Tom Cotton is doing the same thing in the Senate. Now I don't know if Tom got a call from Bibi Netanyahu either or two, but I do know that he was probably prompted to it by contacts that he has in Israel. he's almost a, a defense contractor for Israel in many respects. So you plug in all of these things and you take away all the oversight and the relationship is, it's even more- Dramatic than it would be, say, with the United States in California or the United States in Texas. Israel isn't just the fifty-first state for all security purposes and intelligence, you can bet on that, it is inside the White House, twenty-four seven. Inside the legislature, twenty four seven. This is insidious, perfidious, and deadly, especially for the United States. And it also, last point, it goes against which is why it's happening. It goes against at least fifty-seven to sixty percent of the American citizenry who are vouchsafing their views on this, and on the war, and on the relationship in general, the same thing Charlie Kirk was assassinated for. it's, it's a terrible development, but it's understandable from Bibi Netanyahu's point of view because he was losing it otherwise. Remember, he started prepping the ground for this by saying, "We don't need the MOU anymore, we don't need the United States anymore, we've got our own complex, we can do whatever we need to do." This was his jargon. Well, he knew what he was doing underneath the covers. He knew this was gonna be changed from an MOU renewable every ten years and subject to oversight To something that was going on all the time with very little, if any, oversight. It's quite extraordinary that it is. The US is prepared to-- I doubt there's ever been a relationship in a modern state group. I mean, NATO. one, one critic, not, not necessarily a critic of Israel, but he was, he told me the other day, a army general, he said, "We don't even have this with NATO." Bingo, we don't, we don't have it with anybody else in the world. But everything will have a reaction then, I mean, if, if the US is trapped legally in such a arrangement with the Israelis where they have this kind of access and no oversight, it's it, it might, you know, do the exact opposite. It would further fuel the resentment that is, that is a growing faction it seems within the US now who would like to have a little bit of this At least some sunlight between the US and Israel, especially among the American thirsters. I, well, I was just wondering But it, it, it, Glenn, it won't build, it won't-- I don't dispute you in the long term, but we may not have a long term. It won't build rapidly enough because just what I said, there's no oversight. The American people have no way of knowing what's going on. Now, at least they got to watch J- Josh Paul resigned and to resign under protest and from political military affairs of state which had the responsibility for this oversight. They got to see that, they got to understand him when he came out and protested and became a speaker and formed a PAC that is really an anti-APAC PAC. and it's doing, it's doing business right now. It's gathering people in, it's backing candidates, it's won with several of its candidates, so it, it's a slow accretion of anti-APAC power, if you will. I should say anti-FDD power too, because FDD is just as bad as, as APAC. but it'll take time, and this is all gonna be in the dark, so the American people won't see any effects of this in real time. Well, what do you see as being the wider future now of Israel, though, because you know, this is giving it a lease on life, it seems, this Section two four four, sorry, yeah, two two four, but but, but given the, the problems it has now, the, the, especially now the Iranians are extending the deterrence to Lebanon, Gaza or Palestine in general, w-where is this headed? Because they're also now- This Greater Israel initiative, they're el- they're alienating Turkey and Saudis, I mean, they're not really doing anything significant just yet, but with all of these variables all at the same time, how do you see, yeah, the future of Israel looking across it? I, I, I think, you know, I've, I've said for some time. I gave a talk at the National Press Club in 2016, I think it was, and I titled the talk, "Is Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability?" And I came down hard on the latter. I even resurrected the Joint Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff report for George Marshall on the situation in '48, and of course, the recommendation to Harry Truman was, "Don't do this. Don't recognize Israel when they stand up, and if you can, and you go back a little bit further, don't go for the petition. This is the British trying to lure us into taking over their responsibilities. And thereby restoring their imperial interest through us. It was a very good report, and almost everything predicted in that report has come true. It's very difficult anymore, with the Cold War having ended and not needing an unsinkable aircraft carrier, as it were, at the end of the Mediterranean. Very difficult to even justify why Israel and the United States have a relationship. Extremely difficult when you divorce the Holocaust from the considerations. And I don't know anyone with any logic Sentient nature that could say that a duplication of the Holocaust isn't now created in Gaza and environs by the people who went through the original one. I mean, that's just a reality, I think. And yet, we can't seem to back away from that. Now As I was doing my research for the is Israel a strategic or liability or asset, I had to go through and look closely at the Cold War years. And maybe come up with an idea, you know, based on strategic realities, that as long as we thought the Soviet Union was the danger that they were, as long as we thought Nasser was a danger, for example, with his United Arab Republic, as long as we thought Egypt was freezed or not a, a, a problem maybe Israel was somewhat of a strategic asset. I even had my doubts then, though, because of what the Joint Staff reports said. About basically four hundred million Arabs and whatever number of Jews that were at that time, it doesn't compute. It really showed a hangover British Hatred, disgust, whatever you wanna call it, for the Arabs, that's what it showed. a-and the fact that, as Moshe Dayan said after the sixty-seven war, apocryphal or not, it was like Moshe Dayan, when someone asked him, "How did you win that war so fast?" he said, "Well, it helps to be fighting Arabs." That kind of disdain has been there and is still there. So if you look at it really closely now, though- And you think about what the United States ought to be doing in this time of post Cold War upheaval and a shift of power from the West to the East that's dramatic. It's very difficult to justify us even being in Southwest Asia, in my view, very difficult to justify. As Iran has shown with its control over the Strait of Hormuz and our inability to really contest that control, that's the real arbiter of that strait that Jimmy Carter in nineteen seventy-eight said was absolutely essential to US national security. Open for instance, he really meant to Japan's and others, because even at that time it wasn't really essential to our security, but it was certainly essential to some of our allies' security. But that said. That's no longer the case, and Iran has put a period to that being no longer the case. Why can't you get along with Iran ultimately? Why can't you negotiate an end to this war? Why can't you come to some kind of conclusion that would deal with what is the real problem here, Palestine? Well, you can't because of that liability. I mean, that's what we're doing, that's what we're proving. so the first thing you need to do is change that liability to either neutral or an asset. Anybody think Donald Trump has the finesse and the capabilities and the diplomatic skills and all the rest that goes along with it to do that? No. So we're stuck. We're stuck, and we're stuck at a time when our domestic situation is looking fraught and deadly as well. So, I have to conclude that this shift of power, as it were, in the world is gonna go a lot more speedily and rapidly than I thought, and that maybe even Ukraine will wind up contributing greatly to it, and will wind up with a freaking global conflict that puts sort of a coda to this shift, at the end of which, of course, we will be a shadow of our former self, we being the United States of A- Our physical situation right now seems to offer an exclamation point for that. Well, the Strait of Hormuz obviously has been a, a key, well, as you said, a nuclear weapon such against both the US and Israel, but we learned something else today though, that is after the attacks by Israel against Iran we heard from Yemen that they announced from now on, Israel would also will have all its access to the Red Sea banned. That is in the narrow strait, they're gonna essentially cut it off. And the Americans are seemingly put in a difficult spot because if they would go into a contest this with military force, they would end up on that list too. So you can already see how the escalation ladder has been set up and and they, it makes the question, how, how do you see this playing out? how will this affect, I guess, the, the, the deeper problems for, not just for Israel, but the US commitment to defend Israel no matter what, because We are, well, there's, there's no good pathway here. And I, I think what Trump has been trying to do is to essentially control the escalation ladder. Tell the Iranians, "Okay, we have a ceasefire, then you begin to cut out certain spaces. We can do a blockade on you. We can, you know, continue killing people in Gaza. The ceasefire still holds in Lebanon. We, we pretend." But this is when the Iranians go up the escalation ladder, the-- it is often disproportionate and it's it's Yeah, there's a problem that they can continue to go up there with the United States. So where does the US go from here? Because this is a interesting card to play at this point in time. It is an interesting situation apart from what I think is a building colossal disaster. It's an interesting situation, especially for someone like me who taught this at the Naval War College and the Marine Corps War College, and to a certain extent in two civilian universities such as one can teach military matters to eighteen- and nineteen-year-old civilians. What we're looking at, in many respects, and that's why I say this is curiously interesting, is a reversal of thirty years of that teaching, at least in certain aspects. We were always worried, and I actually wrote a paper on this, all the key straits in the world. All the key narrow passageways in the world. and I included in that a couple of fjords, like included in that the Sea of Okhotsk, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb, of course, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and others. And as I was doing this, I let a couple of papers come off for military consumption and postulated as to how these waterways, such as they were, were going to be used one day to teach the world a lesson. And predominantly what was taken out of that for wargaming and other things was that we could get into the Straits of Malacca, where at that time sixty-five percent, I think, of the traffic flowed through the Strait of Malacca in order to get to China or points east. And we did some computations on how much it would cost to go around and found out they weren't all that expensive trips, and that maybe the Strait of Malacca wasn't quite as essential as it seemed, it was just very convenient, it shaved a little money off and such. But some of the others were dramatic, and we postulated how we were gonna put, I know you won't believe this, Marine Corps actually has adapted some of this. Adopted, some of it, adapted and adopted. We were gonna put small units on these critical landmasses, and those units would, because of technology and increased ability to, from a very small unit and a small space, control a vast area, especially of sea, control them, and thus choke off all our enemies whenever we went to war necessarily. All to say that what has come out of this is really interesting to a person Like me who was involved in that to the de-degree of detail I was, and how it's been used against us, and how in the future certain of these waterways might again be used against us and cut us off to the point where we are in the Caribbean and a Pacific coastline and an Atlantic coastline, the rest is verboten to us or highly dangerous to travel in. Could easily happen, and it certainly could happen if we start space basing weapons and things like that, which is part of the golden dome deal. people aren't realizing what we're doing with this golden dome thing. All the money we're putting in it isn't gonna be wasted in terms of the people who want to militarize space, and you'll be able to control a lot of these points as you were on the shoulders of the water, so to speak, in my theory. You'll be able to control them from space, and you'll basically be able to control maritime traffic. All to say, look at what's happening in response to these kinds of prospects, what's happening, and it's not congealed yet in a real way, except perhaps with China and perhaps with Russia in a regional way. Everybody's going to pipelines and highways and rail. They're going back to the past in a certain respect, pipelines. No, but yeah, even there in a certain respect. Hell, I was painting Texas gas and oil pipelines when I was sixteen years old. so we're going back to north-south, east-west pipelines, and we're getting away from the maritime environment because of all these things I just so inexpertly described, but also because space-based weapons are gonna make it difficult. And you say, "Well, space-based weapons can hit pipes, pipelines, too." Well, that's fine, you repair the pipeline. Pretty hard to get your ocean liner back out of the bottom of Davy Jones' locker or get the oil off the ocean surface, but these pipelines are going up everywhere. They're going up with a rapidity I never thought I would see, and yet I, I went with Powell to ExxonMobil's headquarters and looked at the pipelines, pipelines pumping, pipelines contemplated, and pipelines under construction, and I said, and Powell agreed. Future the world, right there, future the world on ExxonMobil's map. and now that map is probably ten times as dense with pipelines. and look at what MBS has just done, supposedly with his sovereign wealth fund investment in the pipeline that was gonna run out of northern Saudi Arabia to Haifa, on to Caen, and on to Europe, and relieve some of the problems with Russian oil and so forth. that was the original plan. Plan, it isn't going through Haifa anymore because of what Israel has done. He's changed the plans it's going through northern Syria. So that, that's a, a, just a tactical move, if you will, but it could become strategic. This is the future, this is the future, and what Russia and China are doing, in my view, Central Asia in particular, is recognizing that future and Making their plans based on it. We're not, we're not. We are still, we're still stuck to the old regime. But this is the old MacIndoe goal of establishing physical transportation corridors by land to deprive the maritime powers of their dominance. And well, on, it can draw again parallels to what's happening in Europe only today or yesterday, the EU announced that its naval missions in the Mediterranean would now be expanded to also allow them to board what they call the Russian shadow fleet tankers. You know, but at some point they're gonna realize, I mean, it's- It's very strange to do this as the world becomes multipolar, because the Russians and others can now begin to retaliate. They, they can also put sanctions on Western ships, they can also begin to board them. So, undermining the freedom of navigation now seems a bit destructive, especially as the Eurasian powers have land corridors while the Westerns don't. So, I think this is a very- Yeah, for, for a foolish development. It's very foolish. And, and all it takes for that to evolve into, say the slave trade across the Atlantic and what that bred in terms of piracy that's all it takes. We'll have rogue fleets out there, flying the high seas, picking off whatever targets they can pick off because there'll be no one to stop them. It's gonna be very difficult to- Put together everything that's being broken at the moment. I think, yeah, this is one of the flaws. As you intimated, it'll be a huge change in the pathways of global commerce. 'Cause people won't wanna ship globally, they won't wanna do things globally, they'll wanna do things internal to their landmass or whatever, or more safely and cheaper. Usually the, the arbiter, at least the way I read what's his name's Frankopan's book about the new Silk Road it's always cheaper to do it overland. I mean, you can say that as a maxim, and it might not be correct here, there, wherever, but basically it's always cheaper to do it overnight. But it's also 'cause the great powers will always have some power from interrupting international trade. This is something the Germans always learned, that is, towards the end of any war, the British would come and put a blockade on their ports, and they could starve to death. But but also twenty-two years ago, when they had the Rose Revolution, no, sorry, the Orange Revolution you know, very much NATO backed in two thousand and four well, what worried the Russians was that the, the vast majority of gas going from Russia to Europe would transit through Ukraine, which meant that if the US and its partners could well, essentially hijack Ukraine, then then they would be able to unify the energy consumers with the transit states against the energy supplier, which is Russia. But now, of course, you see when you look at the, the re- Required land corridors for, for stability. The Russians are looking towards China, I mean, the massive border, and there's no countries in between. Yeah, you have a Mongolia on the side, but you can circumvent this one. And also, it's not easy to hijack Mongolia. But essentially, this is part of the, I think the calculation which is pushing now China and Russia together, that they can't stand back to back. There's no way of disrupting this partnership. And no, I just think a lot of what, what we have been doing Goes very much against our own interest. But if you look, yeah, if you look at Frankopan's book in a, a sort of global way, I guess I would say and, and you look at the maps he has in that book and other maps that are now available, finally someone has discovered the railroads and started making maps. you look at, I think, almost an autonomous System, and certainly with enough money and enough energy resources to be autonomous, and if they wanted to, they don't want to right now. China in particular doesn't want to say goodbye to South America, with whom I think it has sixty percent of the economic trade now. but if they wanted to, they could say, "Okay draw a line down the center of the Atlantic and the GIUK gap all the way down to Antarctica, and say, "G- Go away. We're gonna live over here, 'cause we have sixty, sixty-five percent of the world's population, about that percentage of its GDP, and it's mostly generated, and can be made to totally be generated in our area. Our area is pretty vast when you look at it. No, I agree. Looking at that railroad coming into Iran, the one that comes in directly into Tehran, and I'm looking at the map, I got my map spread out here, it, it needs a twenty by thirty room to be spread out, and it still doesn't have the level of detail I would like. But I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, holy mackerel, look at all the capitals that that railroad connects. And listen to- History in terms of those capitals, they're replete with history, and now they're back. They're back. In many cases, they have hotels, for example. And Franckopan points this out, having just been there himself. They have hotels that rival anything in Paris, anything in Berlin, anything in New York, anything in Los Angeles or San Francisco, rival and surpass them, both in terms of luxury and in terms of how much a room costs you. And yet they have people there, they're packed. It is the new Silk Road, it is the new world, a morning. Well, then it's the wider idea that it's you know, along these transportation corridors, this is where civilizations grew, power accrued, and then of course, when the ancient Silk Road was disrupted, this is was the rise of the Western maritime powers five hundred years ago, connecting the world, and with this, of course, we- this was the source of our five hundred years of dominance, well, speaking of- On behalf of the political West. And also put together the economic structure, at least fifty percent of it, that saved Britain's possession, but they lost it, the slave trade. Yeah, but now with the reconnection or redeveloping the ancient Silk Road with this not, not, not just with the fiscal corridors by, you know, railroad ports, but also, you know, have the digital Silk Road connecting with this industrial cooperation, tech- Technological hubs trading through banks payment systems, national currencies, it's really, it's, it's, it's- It's all that's all fun and rupee. Yeah. The Indian currency. What's the Russian currency? I just lost it in my head. Rubles? Rubles. Yeah. Rubles, rupees, and yuan. RMB. Keep it all ours, make it illiterate. Rupees, rubles, and RMB. Well let me just ask a last question before I forget, because the, the Iranians push back and again not ceding the waters to the United States which is a huge development one, one could add. do you see the Iranians More prepared now to also attack the u s ships directly because so far it appears they're going more heavily after Israel and the Gulf states. Do you see any shifts to that regard? I think that's smart. I, I think that's smart. We still have a capacity to bring a lot of P, in a military term, on Iran with just siren bombs, even if they're dumb, with a JDAM kit hung on them or whatever to make 'em precise. and, and Iran doesn't need to suffer that if she can prevent it. And so why do that? if she has to, I think she will. You know, I've seen video that I believe is real of hit Hits on Abraham Lincoln, of hits on destroyers and cruisers. These aren't hits that are sinking hits, but they are hits that hit the CIC, the Combat Information Center, and they are hits that have hit crucial areas of certain ships. And look what Cincom's doing, they're not telling the American people any of that. We don't hear any casualties, we don't hear any casualties In terms of humans and maybe there weren't any, but I doubt it very seriously. And, and they haven't used their most powerful missiles. It's almost as if they're saying, "See what we can do if we want to. We can hit you. We can get through your magnificent array of surface, subsurface, and air defenses, and we can hit you. If they were to fire one of those hypervelocity missiles or several of them, I would suspect it would be several of them at a major target like an aircraft carrier and sink her. It would be a whole new dimension to the struggle, I think, because Trump then might could turn to the American people and say, "See, you got five thousand Americans dead. I don't know, I don't know how that, I, I can't read that well. I don't know if the American people would be appalled by it and then demand that he get out of this stupid war. Or if it would raise their dander up, the MAGA people, it certainly would, and demand that he drop a nuclear weapon on them, or something like that. So I wouldn't take the chance where I run if I could, you know, do it with other things at a lesser damage level. So sorry, I will squeeze in one last question there. What, what do you think Israel's gonna do now? because it is in a difficult spot, and for people in Israel to say that this could turn into an existential threat, you know, it's not really that exaggerated they are, you know? They're struggling internally with political divisions. They are you know, losing key allies. They are, you know, egging on some large powers, as, as so in the Financial Times today, even the Financial Times wrote that you know, Netanyahu bet thirty years, after thirty years of trying to get a war with Iran, they bet everything on this and lost. And this is, you know, I thought that summarized it nicely. So what, what is it that Israel can do now? I think you're right. I, I was looking at this Pew Research Center poll of adults across thirty-six countries. I didn't read the whole thing, but I read enough of it to think that it might be right. Sixty-seven percent of the people essentially believe Israel's wrong for the first time in this kind of polling. Wrong in basically everything it's doing. a-and I think that reflects probably if it's accurate, that's thirty-six countries, two-thirds of the people. That's a, that's a real change, I think. and I don't, I, I don't know if it's happening fast enough in America to do things that would really shift the relationship. It's not gonna act fast enough to do anything about two two four and whatever its equivalent is in the Senate. But I don't know. I'm worried more about Our own situation domestically and what Trump's gonna do if in fact the midterms turn out to be uproariously against him and against the Republican Party. And I, I'm sad to say, I wonder what the legislative leadership is gonna do, because I don't put Trump's behavior and his more Authoritarian nature beyond Thune and Johnson either, the two leaders. I don't. Senator Thune may be less so than Johnson because Johnson is convinced that Armageddon is upon us and the rapture is gonna happen. That taints his belief system, I think, majorly. But I don't see a lot of opposition to many of the things that Trump is doing. In fact, I see a- Giddy acquiescence to it behind the scenes amongst my formerly Republican counterparts, which is as alarming to me as Trump is. So I, I, the domestic situation in this country is a toss up. Well, thank you for sharing your insights and we'll wrap it up there. So thanks again and have a great day. Thank you for ringing me into the heart of Europe. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran-Israel Strikes, Trump Humiliated & Yemen Restricts Red Sea Access https://youtu.be/kcjU0rN6a2k https://t.co/ai2IYf5Ek8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn welcomes Seyyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, to discuss the fast-escalating conflict involving Israel, Iran, Lebanon, and the region. Marandi says that while in Tehran—busy interviewing Ph.D. candidates—he did not hear airstrikes, though he understands several missile strikes occurred.
Marandi frames the situation as unfavorable for the “Americans” and says Iranian missile strikes have been effective. He describes Iran’s retaliation as occurring after Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Israel’s subsequent attacks on Iran, and claims Iran fired “five waves of missiles” and then large numbers afterward, with the total approaching “a hundred.” He also says Trump posted on Truth Social calling for action “to end this immediately,” while Marandi argues the United States had no intention of bringing about a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Marandi contends that Lebanese leadership—including the president and prime minister—concluded negotiations against Lebanese law and received “death” in return, citing an Israeli bombing of a Lebanese military convoy soon after a CNN interview by Lebanon’s president attacking Iran. He adds that Lebanese authorities allegedly prevent refugees from moving within Lebanon, “corner” Shia-majority refugees, and try to make the situation sectarian, with Western NGOs and embassies encouraging restrictions in neighborhoods. He further alleges that proxies in Syria and Lebanon are working with Israel to keep borders closed and block assistance coming from Iran or Iraq, while claiming people nevertheless gather aid in Iran and Iraq that cannot be sent into Lebanon.
He argues Iran and Hezbollah have continued striking effectively even during escalation, and suggests Iranian actions are tied to preventing Israeli plans to level areas of Beirut, describing a shift in Iran’s deterrence posture. Marandi says Iran warned that if Israel bombed Beirut, Iran would strike the Israeli regime, and that Israel refrained from striking Beirut for several days before resuming after the Pakistani interior minister delivered a message (Pakistan as mediator). He says the pattern mirrors earlier instances where U.S. attacks were met by larger Iranian counterstrikes.
Discussing U.S. strategy, Marandi says the U.S. and allies appear to seek “low intensity” escalation to weaken and intimidate Iran while avoiding a “hot war,” but he claims Iran’s responses have instead sent signals that Iran is prepared to restart a more explosive war. He highlights that Iran has allegedly shut down the Strait of Hormuz and that, following Yemen’s announced disruption of Israel’s Red Sea access, Marandi says escalation stakes increase further.
When asked about potential negotiations, Marandi says what matters to Iran is not Trump’s statements but what his regime does. He lists Iran’s stated terms: end to the war in Lebanon, regime retreat, end to the slaughter in Gaza, lifting siege, waiving sanctions on Iran’s oil/energy exports for the duration, and returning “stolen assets.” He argues Iran will not provide concessions that go beyond those conditions.
On U.S.-Israel relations, Marandi addresses Axios reporting about differences between Trump and Netanyahu and says the publication itself matters because it portrays Netanyahu as despised and “crazy,” which he says damaged Netanyahu politically in Israel and also in the United States. He suggests a possible objective of weakening Netanyahu and emphasizes that Trump’s public disavowal (“I told him not to attack”) is undermining.
Marandi then turns to what Iran may do next as escalation rises. He says Iran has changed the “rules of the game” by signaling that strikes on Lebanon trigger retaliation. He claims Iran will retaliate not only for attacks on itself but for attacks on Lebanon and, in further statements, for attacks on petrochemical and Persian Gulf energy-related installations affiliated with the United States or Israel. He asserts Iran threatens to strike Persian Gulf infrastructure and “the Americans too,” and says this extends Iran’s deterrence beyond Israel.
He also says Hezbollah’s drones and ambush-style strikes harm the regime, while Iran’s deterrence against touching Beirut hampers offensive capability. Marandi concludes that he does not foresee a favorable outcome for the United States or Israel, and says the global economy remains close to a worsening point as the conflict intensifies. As a “footnote,” he says Iran carried out an operation on the Pakistan border against Wahhabi/Salafi militants, killing some and capturing others, portraying multiple extremist groups as attacking the same enemies rather than Israel.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We have the great privilege of being joined today by Seyyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and also a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So, thank you very much for taking the time to come on today. As I understand, it's been a bit of a chaotic day. We've seen over the last few days that, well, Israel escalated its attacks on Lebanon, which were supposed to be in a ceasefire, Iran seemingly Retaliate by striking Israel. Trump then promised that well that he would talk to Netanyahu, asking him not to retaliate against Iran. Israel has appeared to ignore this, if it was true to begin with, as Israel has now attacked Iran and as a result, we also see now that Yemen has announced it will shut down Israel's access to the Red Sea. again, this appears to be spiraling very quickly back to what could be an all-out war. Except it could be much worse or much greater this time than the thirty-nine, thirty-nine day war, given that well, the access to the Red Sea and other arenas of escalation could happen. So again you are there in Tehran, I'm not, I was wondering, yeah, can, can you, I guess, unpack what, what is going on because this appears to be quite dramatic. Just so that you get a notion of what the mood is like in Tehran, Glenn. And thank you very much for inviting me. this morning I've been busy with my colleagues in my department interviewing prospective Ph.D. students. And the city is huge, and I didn't hear any any of the airstrikes that took place. There were, I think, two or three airstrikes that have taken place in Tehran maybe three or four, I don't know, but but I didn't hear any of it. And we were just busy- Doing our interviews, which finished about an hour ago, and I'm, so now I'm not really up to speed on the news on my way here. I read a bit, but my understanding from my, my discussions with friends who are better informed than I, Iran has the upper hand and the Israeli regime isn't doing well. And the Iranian missile strikes have been very effective. And last night of course, Iran fired I think five waves of missiles, and since then, they've been firing large numbers of missiles. I, I think it's probably approaching a hundred by now, two thirty in the afternoon, Tehran time. so The, the situation I think is, is not going well for the Americans, and I think even, and this is right the regime, and that's, I think, pretty made pretty clear by Trump's tweet or his post on Truth Social to end this immediately because his, his, his allies aren't doing well. But this I think wasn't important. Event since the United States obviously in its negotiations with the Israeli regime and the, its proxies in the Lebanese government, it clearly had no intention of bringing about a ceasefire in Lebanon. And it just wanted to dismantle the resistance and allow the Israeli regime to maintain its its presence in the country. And the Lebanese president, the Lebanese prime minister, were both unpopular figures in the last parliamentary elections, which were, where the Hezbollah allies did the best. The president his people did, I think, got one third of the votes of, of the Hezbollah coalition. It doesn't have a popular mandate and the negotiations with the Israeli regime, which are illegal according to Lebanese law they-- the, the only fruit that they bore was the bitter fruit of death. Because hours after the meeting shortly after the meeting, and after just hours just hours after an interview that the president of Lebanon made on CNN attacking Iran, Israelis bombed a convoy of, of the Lebanese military, killing, murdering a a lieutenant general and his companions. So it just shows that appeasing the regime doesn't do good, even when you do what they want, you give the con-ce- concessions that they want, the very, the very fact that the, the Lebanese regime, the Lebanese government, the, the installed president, prime minister, the very fact that they carried out these negotiations against Lebanese law was a concession to the Israelis, but they got nothing in return except for the death of their soldiers. And of course, the Israelis have no intention of, of, of, of walking away. So in that interview where he attacked Iran, it was ironic because the only country that is supporting Lebanon in the face of this these violations of the ceasefire and this mass slaughter in Lebanon is Iran. What the Lebanese government is doing in Lebanon is basically preventing the refugees from traveling around the country. They, they, they, they won't let them go to different parts of their own country. They're cornering them. And they're trying to make this sectarian. So Western NGOs in Lebanon, Western embassies are encouraging their people not to allow the Refugees are predominantly Shia, but the supporters of the resistance are from all religious backgrounds and from all walks of life, but they're, they're telling them not to allow them into your neighborhoods. And the Qataris and the Saudis through their proxies are doing the same. So they're trying to prevent the supporters of the resistance from, who, who, who lost their homes, from, from finding refuge. And as a result, some people have died because they were forced to go back to their villages in the south and then they were bombed and killed. So the Lebanese president and the prime minister have a lot of blood on their heads. And so the, the Tahriris, the al Qaeda government in Damascus, they are working with Israelis to keep the the border closed so that the resistance can't get assistance. The installed regime in Beirut is trying to corner them, and it's preventing any aid from coming from Iran or Iraq. So people in Iran and Iraq, they're gathering food, canned food blankets, tents money, but they're not allowed to send them to, because what the government of Lebanon wants to do is to crush the resistance. They want to, they want to humiliate their supporters. They want to humiliate Really the, the, the majority of the Lebanese people. Why? Because they're proxies of the United States, because that's what they were installed to do in the first place. But despite that, Hezbollah has been striking back, and we've seen how effective they've been in such an environment, which I think is-- which is, I think, is very extraordinary. And so the Iranians saw that when the Israelis wanted to start bombing Dahiya, that was the last place where these refugees could go. The people in southern Beirut of course, in large numbers, they're, they're large in number, and then all sorts of refugees from across the south went to Beirut, and what the Israeli won-- the regime was planning to do was to level the city. And, you know, it's, it's quite stunning. We live in a, a day and age where, since I was a kid, I remember, you know, how Western governments always pretended to support human rights. The last two and a half, three years, of course, has been, every day has been an eye-opener, but Western media, Western governments say nothing about the Israelis wanting to carpet-bomb Beirut and to level the city, as they would say themselves. So the Iranians saw that the West supported this, and that the Lebanese government was supporting this, and that the Al Qaeda government in Syria was supporting this, they said, "No, we can't let this happen. " And so they said that if the Israelis bomb Beirut, we will strike the Israeli regime. And the interesting thing is that for, for, for three, four days, I guess, I don't know the exact timing, the exact amount of time, but the Israelis refrained from striking Beirut. But as soon as the Pakistani Minister of Interior came to Iran with a message, and of course, Pakistan is the, is the mediator, the Israelis struck Beirut. So it's clear that the Israelis don't want to see any progress at the negotiating table between Iran and the United States. But in, but in any case, in response, the Iranians felt that they had to retaliate, that they had to strike the Russians. And I'm surprised that some people inside the regime thought that Iran wouldn't retaliate, that Iran wouldn't strike. And again, it just shows how ignorant they are, how, how the Mossad doesn't really have a grasp of of reality and of the, of the doesn't have an understanding of how the political leadership in Iran thinks and works. because it's evident, just like, you know, I've been saying for years that Iran will shut down the Strait of Hormuz, it will cut off oil, I've said it on your show many times. I don't, you know, what I say is, I, I thought it was quite hot evident that Iran would do that. They, they didn't see it. And and now they, they thought Iran would strike and- and then when Iran struck, Iran struck in a, in a very big way. Far, the Iranian strike far outweighed the Israeli regime strike, and this is now sort of a pattern. Because during the last week or so, two weeks, during the last two times the United States violated the cease-fire and attacked Iran, Iran did the same thing then too. Iran's counterstrikes were disproportionate, they were much more severe in magnitude. So. On the three last occasions, the Iranian responses to, against the United States, US aggression, and this against the bombing of of Beirut, the the Iranian response has been far larger than the the original strike. So I, I think there's, there's a lot that can be read into that. Well, it seems that, yeah, this is well, a well-thought-out Iranian strategy because it appears that the US position seems to be that they would like to avoid the high-intensity war because it's well, they don't have the resources for this. also, yeah, they would like to maintain some escalation control. But during all these peace talks well, one gets often the impression that the key objective isn't necessarily to put an end to this, but to bring it down Down to a lower level that is yep, can get the fighting to end and then gradually go a little bit up the escalation ladder on favorable terms. So, you know, put a little bit of blockade on Iran, maybe strike a port here and there, and and yeah, all, all the while trying to minimize the opponents, well, which would be Iran re-retaliation. but but again, with the closure now of of Aba- Al Hamd ala, that is a strait leading into the Red Sea. How, how do you see, did you see Iran essentially countering these efforts to, to do a low-intensity war, gradually bleeding out Iranians to responding to this with the threat essentially of a high-intensity war, which the Americans can't afford? Yes, I think that the Iranians have basically done what you've said. They've, the Americans think that through the siege that they can starve Iranians and bring them to their knees, but that obviously is a double-edged sword because they're starving the whole global economy and doing immense damage and The stock, the stock markets that have gone sharply down since Friday I think that the, the, the energy crisis and the shortages that we see, the lack of helium. And the shortage of fertilizers and, and all other petrochemical goods, this is going to this, this situation with the booming stock mar-market suddenly not doing so well, and the global, and the real economy in serious pro-difficulty, is going to, is going to get make the, the challenges much greater for the United States in the, the weeks ahead, so and, and its allies. So this double-edged sword is not necessarily going to bear the sort of fruit that Trump wants it to bear. And on the other hand, as you rightly point out, they, they've been trying to carry out low intensity strikes for, for host of purposes to, to discover Iran's capabilities, to weaken Iran, to to, to intimidate Iran. But I think Iran has Iran's responses in the last two, three weeks have been to to intimidate the other side, to intimidate the Trump regime and the Netanyahu regime. And I think the Iranians have made it clear that they're fully prepared to restart the hard war, the hot war, and this time around it's going to be far more explosive. The Red Sea, as you rightly pointed out, is partially closed now, but this is sending a sing-a-a signal that if you push harder, then the Red Sea will be fully closed. The, the, the Persian Gulf is now closed, because as you know, every day the Iranians would allow roughly twenty-five to thirty ships to pass through, and for the last two, three days now no ships are going through. This intensifies the, the, the ongoing crisis and it creates greater pressure on the United States, and of course, Iran's military actions, as I said send a very strong message. So I think this is just A series of miscalculations by the United States and its, and its allies, and they still can't come to the, this recognition that they just can't defeat Iran. Yeah, well, about the stock market, I see that Trump took to Twitter and reassures everyone that he's mediating an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran. it's almost a parallel to the Ukraine war, where the US is trying to mediate now between the Ukrainians and the, and the Russians. Again, it's been the main actor, it's the one who initiated the wars, and now of course, it's seeking to, to mediate. I'm just wondering if this is just a good cop, bad cop or- Which are playing vis-a-vis Netanyahu, if this is real divisions emerging because again, the, the direction's taken now against Lebanon again, a lot of destruction we see, it's making it impossible for the US, even if it doesn't want peace just to lower the tensions, it makes it very difficult for the US to try to control the escalation ladder if the Israelis are going all out in well, seeking to destroy not just Lebanon But even going after the capital, Beirut. do, how, how do you see this relationship now between the US and Israel? Is it just theater or do you think there's something substantial happening here? You know, Glenn, I think maybe I mentioned this last time, that, maybe I haven't, but tr-what Axios which is- Completely unreliable. When Axios put out the, the comments made by, attributed to Trump about when he spoke with Netanyahu and effectively saying, "The world hates Israel, the world hates you, and, and all that, are you crazy or are you f crazy and all that. " Whether it was theater or not, I think it was sending a message, because unlike- we are nearing the anniversary of the 12-day war. And right before that war, we also had another Axios account of Trump and Netanyahu having differences, and Trump wanting to pursue the a peaceful a negotiated settlement, and then immediately afterwards they struck Iran. So obviously it was a lie. So nothing that Axios says should be taken at face value. But it, either he did say it or he didn't. It's really, to me, it's not really important. What is important is that this was published, and this was not a publication of not, not an announcement of some sort of, like, split between Netanyahu and, and Trump about what to do. This was a statement saying Netanyahu is despised, and because of him, Israel is despised. And that he's crazy. And Netanyahu took a big hit in Israel because of that. His opponents attacked him, his political allies attacked him, and I think he was damaged in, in the United States and elsewhere too, because everyone, many people saw the Axios report. I think that, that this is, in a sense- an attempt to weaken Netanyahu. Not Israel, I don't see any space between the Trump regime and the Israeli regime. But I do think that since the elections are approaching, maybe some Zionists in the United States, the Epstein class, the Zionists, the Israeli firsters, I think maybe many, some people among them want to get rid of Netanyahu because they see that the image of Israel, the Israel is being destroyed, they see that Israel is being, is being de-legitimized in the eyes of- of the, the world, and that they need a facelift, and perhaps if a, someone comes and takes over, and he loses, and Netanyahu loses the election, they can give the, this, I mean, the po- Netanyahu's opponents are just as genocidal, it's a genocidal Country, according to their own polls. But, you know, if someone else comes, they can give a facelift, and all the media outlets could blame Netanyahu for all the ills and wrongs. They won't say genocide, but whatever. And then they could put this, and then they could try to create a new image for a new leader. I, that's what I was thinking. I mean, I think the only Useful thing for the political regime and, and, and the United States and Israel, and in Israel, to come out of such a report, especially since apparently multiple sources gave this information to Daxias. The only useful thing that can, can come out of this, from my understanding, is that sort of agenda. Now, here again We're seeing that Trump is saying, "I'm telling him not to attack, he's wrecking the peace, the peace agreement. Why would he do that? " Netanyahu strikes, maybe Trump is fine with that, if he strikes. maybe he's, and, and the US is supporting him as we speak. I mean, US Tankers are refueling Israeli regime jets, the United States is helping, trying to stop Iranian missiles US radar installations in Turkey AWACS jets in Turkey and in Jordan and in they're, they're attempting, and in the Persian Gulf, what remains of them, are attempting to help the Israeli regime. They're helping. But why would he say that Netanyahu's wrecking a peace agreement? I think again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, that- Maybe they want to say that Netanyahu is a part of the problem and that we need to remove the problem for a solution. I'm, again, this is just spe-speculation, I've said it elsewhere and- No one else has said it, so maybe I'm just talking nonsense, and I'm not, I'm, I don't believe, I don't consider myself to be an expert on these issues, but it doesn't-- I can't figure out any other meaningful explanation for Trump to say, "I'm going to tell Netanyahu not to attack," "I was about--" and then he says, "I was about to have a peace agreement," and then this happens. What, what does anyone conclude? But the fa- but that Netanyahu is wrecking the peace, so the global crisis that we're experiencing is his fault. And I think the purpose is to ultimately get rid of Netanyahu. Maybe. Well, as we now seemingly know- But, but, sorry, but just one thing. But it still weakens Trump, because it just shows that Trump is ineffective. Because for Trump to come out and say "I told him not to do this, " and like, and then he does, even though all the funding comes from the United States, and now they want to merge the US armed forces with the Israelis, it doesn't look good for Trump, for him to say "I told him not to do it, he can't do anything without my permission, " and he does, it just makes Trump look like a, a nobody. Yeah, that's the thing when he announces, "I told Netanyahu not to attack," I mean, either he's deceitful or he is weak, and well, it's and/or, I guess it could be both, but but you're right, none of this makes him look good in any way. but- And when I say that there is an attempt to weaken Netanyahu, I'm not saying that necessarily he is the one behind it. But the people who publish the information on, on Axios, whoever they may be, I think they, that is something they may be seeking. But what do you see Iran possibly doing now? Because Iran and Israel are now going back up the escalation ladder. We see some strikes today on some Iranian airports as well, and it's but then of course a message has come out in which yeah, Israel, well, al-allegedly Israel and United States sent a message to Iran that there won't be any more attacks on Iran if Iran doesn't launch another attack on Israel. But again, then, n-none of this- This this new ceasefire, which, you know, been quite a few by now is, is premised kind of on the conditions then of the US and Israel, that is, it does mention that Iranians won't continue their onslaught in Lebanon, and also the US insists they will step up the blockade on, on Iran. Again, this is a targeting of Iranian ships. So are they essentially reshaping now what, what the ceasefire should look like because the-- again, that's what I get from this. Communications, okay, we're not gonna bomb Iran, un-unless, you know, you don't bomb Israel, but all these other variables which we added on top, that is the destruction of Lebanon, the blockade, all of this will of course be in place, but to what extent would this be acceptable to Iran, because it looks as if this is an effort to, again, have escalation control. They escalate the tensions and they're allowed to set the conditions for whether how, or, or how the tensions should be lowered again. Well, Iran has changed the rules of the game by saying that you aren't permitted to strike Lebanon. From now on, the Israeli regime knows that Iran is dead serious. And if the Iranians say tomorrow, "Uh, first of all, I'm sure that if the regime attacks Beirut again that Iran will, will, will strike Israel hard," I, I've no doubt about that. Whether there's a ceasefire now or not, that's another thing altogether. If the Israeli regime doesn't, they know what will happen now. And it won't be like one or two, like they, they fired two or three rockets into Beirut, Iran fired twenty missiles, and they fired heavy missiles, and almost all of them hit their targets. And they, I think they fired mostly Hooram Shah four missiles, and almost, almost every one of them hit their targets. So it must have been a devastating night last night, isn't it? But so the Iranians are going to definitely change the way in which the Israeli regime functions in Lebanon, and that makes it much more difficult because they're not doing well on the battlefield, as you know. With regards to the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has shut down all trade now, and that is going to increase the pace of the global crisis. It's you know, we're, we're moving forward towards the cliff, the world is, the world economy, and now it's just going to be faster than what the Yemen has done in the Red Sea, raises the stakes, as they say, in the West. So I mean, Trump, he's not a Trump, you know, it doesn't matter to Iran what Trump says what, what matters to Iran is what Trump, the, and his regime do. And for Iran, the, the agreement that, that we were very close to us implementing with, with the United States a couple of weeks ago. Won't change. Iran won't give any concessions. There has to be an end to the war in Lebanon, the regime has to retreat, there has to be an end to the slaughter in Gaza, and the siege has to be lifted. Iran's sanctions on Iran's oil energy exports has to be waived for the duration of the agreement, and the United States has to give up its The stolen assets of, of Iran that it has. And Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz and allow traffic to return to the numbers that we saw before the war, that was what was agreed upon, and that is what Iran will accept, so Trump can say all he wants that, "Uh, I won't I won't lift the siege until whenever," and there's no agreement, or if he says, "I will," You know, I, I, until Iran, I won't remove the sanctions until, if then Iran will say, "Okay, then we'll just, we'll continue with the, the current status quo, whether it's with violence or without, " but Iran believes it will outlast the United States, no matter how difficult it becomes. Well, again, now I think the whole world is looking whether or not this new rapid escalation will again, freeze or if it will continue to spiral out of control. But essentially what the, the message at Iran, as you say, as done now is essentially to extend its deterrence to Lebanon, and I think this surprised many because Israel responded not simply-- no, sorry, Iran responded not simply to attack on itself, but an attack on Lebanon. And if you follow now the Israeli commentators in the media They're essentially s-making the point that all this is unacceptable for Israel, that to have a new situation where Iran's deterrence is essentially s-extended to, to Lebanon. so, so they see this as a necessity to essentially categorically rejected by continuing to, well, destroy Lebanon. So given this, plus the, that Netanyahu essentially undermining the authority now of Trump Where do you think this is gonna go now? Because if the US decides, well, we're gonna just enter the fight, the, on Israel's side now the whole Yemen blockade of the Red Sea could be then of course dramatically expanded, not simply Israel, but now go over to US and possibly even Europe. I see that the, you Europeans now are pushing, when I say Europeans, I mean the EU, is pushing sanctions on Iran and also the French are in talks with Cyprus to set up some security arrangement there. So again, it appears that they want to play a bigger role without possibly considering where this war might be going. Well, I don't think Iran takes anything that the French does seriously, but the Israelis now know that the, the rules of the game have changed, and Iran won't allow Lebanon to fall under any circumstances. So The longer this war lasts in Lebanon, the worse it is going to be for the regime, because Hezbollah is it kept using ambushes and it's using drones to, to severely hurt the regime, and the regime wants to slaughter people and to destroy cities and towns, and now they want to slaughter the, the biggest the, to destroy the biggest prize of all, and that's Beirut, and Iran says, "No, you can't touch Beirut." So that hampers the regime's offensive capabilities, because on the battlefield, they, they don't know how to deal with the resistance, and the only thing they know is to, is to, to slaughter ordinary people, and now they, the Iran has Has blocked that, at least in the case of Beirut. And not only has Iran responded, but Ira-Iranians have responded in a very, very heavy-handed way, as I said in the beginning. I mean, the, the, the Israeli regime struck one building, and they, apparently they only killed, they, they, they just killed two ordinary people on the streets, they didn't murder anyone from Hezbollah. But the Iranians fired twenty heavy missiles Four AMShahar missiles, or twenty, twenty-four, twenty, I'm not quite sure of the number, last night. Now, as I said, it's, the number of missiles fired is approaching a hundred. But so it's not just like they fired a couple of, and then Iran fire fires a couple, Iran hit them much harder, so that sends a message, and that I think will make the Israeli regime wary about the future of its operations across Lebanon for that very same reason, because Iran has shown that it is more than willing to get itself involved, and that in this exchange, it has the upper hand from my understanding, until we- Our, our discussion, just like until a bit before our discussion, Iran has the upper hand in these exchanges, and the Israelis haven't been able to do much, and the Iranians have been pretty effective in their strikes. So, and then the Iranians have also been more insistent on Gaza ever since the regime decided to attack Beirut a few days ago. So Iran is becoming more assertive, and they've changed the rules of the game, and Yemen has entered the battlefield, and for now it hasn't escalated too far or very far to be more precise, but what they've done clearly indicates that they have the ability or, you know, the will to go further. So I don't see, I don't see a good turnout, I don't see a, a good ending for this, for the United States or for the Israeli regime. And I think the stock-- We'll have to see about the stock markets. I'm not an economist, and I should I should be wary maybe you'll see a rally in New York today, I have no idea, but I, I have a feeling that things are going to go downhill for the United States, increasingly in the days and weeks ahead. And what Netanyahu has done is that he, I- I think, I think we've already reached the end of Trump's presidency. What Netanyahu has done not just through the war, but even through, over the last twenty-four hours, is that by humiliating Trump and showing him to be a nobody and is, is that he's helped destroy what is very, what very little left i- is what very little that is left of Trump's credibility. Well, what I was gonna say before was that Iran has allegedly made the, a point that they're not gonna strike Israel now that they, they, they finished unless of course Israel continues h-hitting Lebanon, then Iran will continue. And again, this is yeah, this is where the, this is the problem because as the Lebanese prime minister says, Israel has bombed Lebanon about three thousand five hundred times during the ceasefire, which kind of dilutes the whole- Concept of a ceasefire, but but given that Israel doesn't it, it will push hard against the idea of accepting an extended deterrence over over over Lebanon by Israel, sorry, by Iran, it's it, it just isn't clear how, how, how this could be the end of it. It just seems like it's gonna spiral out of control. But at least this is one area where Iran- Iran has now put down a powerful deterrent, but I was wondering also, do you see this being extended to the blockade? Because if Iran would push back against this, it would be more-- it wouldn't be merely Israel, it would be more an Iran-US fight. But so far, I-Iran has seemed more- well, let's say tolerant or ac-accepting essentially the, the US blockade as a, as a reality. Do you think this will be contested or Iran will essentially push back against this as well? That's, that's a very important question. let me put it this way, the rules of the game in Lebanon have changed. And In order for, for there to be a ceasefire, the Israeli regime has to end the fighting and it has to retreat back to where it was before the war. And Lebanon and Hezbollah aren't ever going, again going to accept the ceasefire that we had before the war, where between ceasefires I mean, during that ceasefire period, after the first ceasefire last year, when was it, a year and a half ago or so every day the Israelis would assassinate people and murder people in Lebanon. That's- Over. That's not going to happen. From now on, whenever there-- if there is a ceasefire, if the Israeli regime goes back to the borders, if they strike Lebanon, Hezbollah will strike back from there. So that era, which which ended three months ago, where the Israelis would just every day kill one or two people, that's finished. So as I said, Hezbollah and Iran both together have changed the rules of the game. And then another thing happened today, the this morning, the Iranians said that I-Iran threatened the Israeli regime and its helpers. And then later in another statement, the Iranians said, "Because the Israelis struck an Iranian petrochemical plant, and then the Iranians said, and then Iran hit back and hit an Israeli plant, but then the Iranians said that if the regime continues, Iran is going to strike all of those energy or those, you know, installations in the Persian Gulf that are in any way or form affiliated to the United States or the Israeli regime. So that means that Iran will go further than just striking Tel Aviv or any other area inside, inside Palestine, that the Iranians can go and strike the Persian Gulf, and that means that the Iranians can go and strike the Americans too. So the, the, the threats that the Iranians are making now go far beyond Israeli regime. And they're saying we're, we're prepared to fully destroy all the critical infrastructure in the region if this continues. So it doesn't matter if it's not the United States, if the Israeli regime does it, because these regimes are affiliated to the United States, which is assisting this Israeli regime, they're fair game. And that includes, and they say, and the Iranians have been saying anything that belongs to the United States, the siege, those ships, they're US ships. So now, therefore, everything is the ass- the old, the previous assumptions have to be thrown out the window. And there's no doubt that Iran is going to be much more assertive. And at the same time the global economy continues as every time you and I speak, it's, you know, just that much closer to the cliff. Yeah, that was well, well, lack of a better word, it's interesting how this yeah, war is developing. That is The, yeah, the efforts to control, to control the escalation where or not the, the deterrence is extended to because this, yeah, each side seems to have a lot to lose and a lot to gain, so it's no, it's, it's it, it looks as if though the, the US is is not being able to assert this escalation dominance. I think they did this quite well against the Russians, that is any Russian response is quite predictable, they're able to- Escalate just enough without getting a proper retaliation and but against Iranians it appears to become, yeah, quite difficult, as you said, the, the willingness of Iran to retaliate disproportionately is of course something that puts the US in a very difficult position if it just wants to, you know, put this war on, yeah, the low burner as opposed to escalating and going back to all-out war. So, yeah, we can wrap up the video there, unless you have any final thoughts. Well, just one small footnote, I think, was is interesting, that Iran carried out an operation on the border with Pakistan. And they killed like five Wahhabi, these Tehrik, these Wahhabi Salafi terrorists. They were and captured, I think, nineteen others. They were planning to carry out suicide attacks and other attacks inside Iran during this period. And it just again shows that ISIS and Al Qaeda and these Tehrik groups, whether in Syria or Iraq or in Pakistan or Iran, they never strike Israel, and they strike Israel Those enemies. And, and, you know, and so I, I this news just came out a couple of hours ago, so I just find all this fascinating, that the, the Kurdish terrorists in northern Iraq and the Wahhabi terrorists in, on the border with Pakistan and the, the, the armed uprising, the people who tried to carry out an armed uprising in earlier this year, in, on January the eighth and ninth in Iran, all of them with all their very different Different backgrounds, Kurdish secular separatist, Wahhabi, Salafi, Takiyyi terrorists, and then liberal armed liberal terrorists who behead police officers and kill them in the, you know, hundreds of them. All of them are attacking simultaneously, and all of them are linked to the same source. The same source is funds and supports a plurality of terrorist organizations with a plurality of ideologies. Yeah, I remember when making the claim that the US was using different, yeah, Al Qaeda, ISIS as proxies with Israelis, that this was dismissed as oh, a conspiracy theory. But I guess now that their politicians are, you know, shaking hands with Jolani and well Frank, yeah, think all of this is now very well established. anyways, I hope yeah, stay safe. And let's hope things get a little bit under control. So, thanks again. Thank you for having me, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
It was not China that outsourced American industrial jobs to build an oligarchy. Americans do not need to confront China, they should hold their government accountability. https://t.co/gd8MAlAEw0
Video Transcript AI Summary
A young Chinese influencer on TikTok who speaks English posted a minute-and-a-half clip directed at Americans. The clip argues that “they rub you blind, and you thank them for it,” calling it a tragedy and a scam, and says Americans “don’t need a tariff” but “need a revolution.”
It claims Americans’ garment and auto industries shipped jobs to China “not for diplomacy, not for peace,” but to exploit cheap labor. It says this hollowed out the middle class, crashed the working class, and pressured people to be proud while their future was sold “for profit.” It contrasts China’s outcomes with the United States: it states China made money but used it to build roads, lift millions out of poverty, fund healthcare, and raise living standards, adding that “we reinvest in our people,” including the influencer’s own family benefiting. It then asserts that Americans’ “oligarchs” bought yachts, private jets, mansions with golf course driveways, manipulated markets, dodged taxes, and poured billions into endless wars. The clip contrasts this with Americans facing “stagnant wages, crippling healthcare costs, cheap dopamine, debt,” and “flaked away public money in China while they pick your pocket.”
The clip concludes that for forty years both China and the United States benefited from trade and manufacturing, but only one side used that wealth to build. It states, “This isn’t China’s fault. This is yours. You let this happen,” blaming Americans for accepting lies and then letting those responsible blame China for the resulting problems. It calls for Americans to “wake up” and “take your country back,” repeating that a revolution is needed.
In the discussion afterward, the host notes a correction: “we haven’t spent billions on useless wars, we’ve spent trillions on useless wars.” Professor Mearsheimer responds that if the influencer were a student in his class giving that statement, he would “basically agree,” saying the influencer is correct. He adds that the message is in large part something Trump made as a candidate before the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections, and that it helped get him elected in two of those three cases. He concludes that many people in the country feel exactly the way the Chinese gentleman feels about what has happened.
Full Transcript
A young Chinese influencer on TikTok who speaks English has made a fascinating clip directed at the American people. And the first time I saw it, I said to Chris, "We gotta pay to play this for Professor Mearsheimer. We gotta have his comments on it." So it's a minute and a half long, but it's in English, and it's fascinating. and I wanna discuss it with you after we watch it together. Chris, cut number twenty. They rub you blind, and you thank them for it. That's a tragedy. That's a scam. That's why I'm saying this right now, Americans. You don't need a tariff. You need a revolution. For decades, your garment and auto guys who ship your job to China, not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to exploit cheap labor. And in the process, they hollowed out your middle class, crashed your working class, and told you to be proud while they sold your future for profit. And yes, China made money, but we used it to build roads, lift millions out of poverty, fund healthcare, raise living standard, we reinvest in our people. My family also benefited from it. What did your oligarchs do? They bought yachts, private jets, mansions with golf course driveways. They manipulated markets, dodged taxes, and poured billions into endless wars. And you? You get stagnant wages, crippling healthcare costs, cheap dopamine, debt, and flaked away public money in China while they pick your pocket. For forty years, both China and the United States benefit from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us use that wealth to build. This isn't China's fault. This is yours. You let this happen. You let all the guys feed you lies while they made you fat, poor, and addicted. Now they blame China for mess they made. I don't think so. I don't think you need another tariff. You need to wake up. You need to take your country back. I think you need a revolution. The one correction I would make, I realize a lot of this is ideological, is we haven't spent billions on useless wars, we've spent trillions on useless wars. But take it from there, Professor Mearsheimer. Well, if you let that young man were your student in your class and he stood up and gave that minute and a half statement, how would you respond? I would tell him I basically agree with him. I think he's correct. And, and I think, by the way, that this is a message in large part that Trump made as a candidate before the two thousand and sixteen, two thousand and twenty, and the two thousand and twenty-four election, and it's what helped get him elected in two of those three cases. I think there are a huge number of People in this country who feel exactly the way that Chinese gentleman feels about what has happened.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing https://youtu.be/HuhJinByAEg https://t.co/GonhTcYmVY
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Hormuz Toll, Strike On Kuwait, Israel Decline & Iranian Nuclear Bomb? https://youtu.be/CtNtxF4LPKo https://t.co/ZbHCrZ1Rvq
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Marta Havryshko: Zelensky Pays Tribute to Nazi Leaders https://youtu.be/roX0CcS3bGk https://t.co/cys2Vz2QXz
Video Transcript AI Summary
Marta Havrisko, a Ukrainian historian and Holocaust studies scholar working in the United States, says Zelensky’s state honors for Andriy Melnyk and the repatriation and reburial of Melnyk’s remains in Ukraine marks a “turning point” in Ukraine’s politics of memory. She argues Melnyk was a leader within the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), part of the cult of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement originating in Western Ukraine and later becoming more visible on the national level after the Maidan Revolution. She says Melnyk’s background includes Nazi collaboration: she describes his people and subordinates collaborating with Nazis in auxiliary police units, hunting Jews, guarding ghettos, convoying Jews to killing sites, and participating in shootings. She also says Melnyk supported creating a Waffen SS Division Galicia and that its members pay tribute to Hitler; she further claims they were involved in anti-Nazi partisan suppression in Slovakia and former Yugoslavia.
Havrisko says she was shocked that this event occurred under Zelensky rather than earlier presidents with nationalistic agendas, and she frames her reaction as shame and anger, claiming the discussion was not accompanied by a public debate about whether a “Nazi collaborator” should be honored in democratic Ukraine. She adds that Zelensky’s career involved mocking Ukrainian nationalism, particularly its antisemitism and chauvinism, and she criticizes what she describes as Zelensky adopting a false familiarity with the complex history of the nationalist movement and its “crimes against humanity.”
She links the broader memory shift to laws on memory adopted about ten years earlier under Poroshenko, including decommunization laws recognizing OUN and related groups (including the UPA and DP A as she mentions them) as fighters for Ukrainian independence. Havrisko says two unresolved questions remain: what kind of state the groups desired (she characterizes it as a territorial, ethnic state) and the tools used (she describes brutal ethnic violence against Jews, Russians, and Poles, including elderly people, children, and women). She argues that while Ukraine presents itself as moving toward Europe’s family of nations, it is simultaneously celebrating Nazi collaborators, shifting from a Soviet “myth” to a nationalist “myth” to mobilize society for war against Russia.
She claims that seven million Ukrainians fought against Nazis, but that fallen Nazi collaborators are now marked as national heroes while others are described as Soviet collaborators or occupiers. She says a large share of Ukrainians voted against this approach in 2019 and that public discussion was not organized because the Office of the President informed the public rather than holding debate.
Havrisko also points to the military dimension. She says Ukraine’s army is approximately one million people and 120 brigades, and highlights the Third Assault Brigade as rooted in the Nazi Azov movement. She describes problematic figures linked to this brigade (including an individual she names with references to Nazi symbols and a frontman associated with Holocaust denial), and says these figures were present at the state funeral with top military and state officials. She adds that the same brigade allegedly celebrated the creation anniversary of the Waffen SS Division Galicia but remained silent on May 8, when Ukraine marked the end of World War II and mourned Nazism’s victims. She describes this as a symptom of memory politics turning into World War II revisionism, Holocaust distortion, and Nazi apology.
She further argues that Germany has sponsored many monuments and memory sites in Ukraine but remained silent, with mainstream German media and officials not issuing criticism. She questions why Germany appears to recognize threats in other contexts while not criticizing Ukraine’s alleged glorification of neo-Nazis and collaboration.
In discussing reactions from abroad, Havrisko describes Polish outrage after Melnyk-related honors, including protests by Polish officials. She says Ukraine and Poland disagree about apologies and that in Ukraine some “liberal people” adopted a far-right formula such as “Our land, our heroes.” She criticizes European politicians and Western media, saying they elevate Ukrainians with a “messiah complex,” fund state initiatives honoring nationalist collaborators, and avoid questioning this memory framework.
She expands her critique to broader war politics. She says the normalization of nationalist and militarized ideology in society is directed toward mobilization, censorship, and hate, and argues it harms social cohesion and alienates partners. She claims Ukrainian men are being forced into service in ways she describes as brutal, and she describes mass vulnerability and coercion. She also says Western leaders frame the war as short-term and manageable for Ukraine, while other reporting suggests a longer horizon; she describes a narrative she sees as “fairy tales” and says Ukrainian losses are treated as mere numbers.
Towards the end, Havrisko frames the debate in Europe as binary—pro-Ukraine versus pro-Russia—and says criticism of Ukrainian nationalist commemoration or concern about Ukrainian suffering is treated as siding with Russia. She contrasts this with her view that alternative proposals, such as a security arrangement with Russia and reduced NATO expansion, would be labeled “pro-Russian.” She recounts that, in her view, even statements by Western figures arguing Ukrainians should be used to weaken Russia are treated as “pro-Ukrainian” because they serve the weakening of Russia.
She concludes by saying she hopes the war ends due to “too much suffering,” and hopes that programs and discourse like the one discussed will undermine mainstream hawkish narratives in the West that keep feeding the war.
Full Transcript
Welcome back to the program. We are joined again by Marta Havrisko, a Ukrainian historian and scholar of Holocaust studies and Ukrainian nationalism, currently working in the United States. So, thank you for coming back on the program. Happy to be here. Thank you. So recently we saw the Ukrainian state were led by Zelensky giving full state honors to Andrei Milnik and his remains were then, well, were repatriated and reburied, and in Ukraine. you have come out and criticized this very fiercely. I was wondering if you can give some context to what, what is actually happening with the-- because this isn't the first incident. instance of I guess not, well, yeah, let's call it whitewashing and paying tribute to quite dubious historical figures. Yes, but this event is really turning point in national politics of memory in Ukraine. Why? For several reasons. First Melech belongs to Ukraine Nationalist Movement, and the cult of Ukraine Nationalist Movement belonged, first of all, to Western Ukraine, where, where it was originated, and when Ukraine obtained independence in nineteen ninety-one, these Glorious cult of freedom fighters, mem-members of Ukrainian Nationalist Underground and Ukrainian insurgent army, UPA, flourished and monuments appeared and the members of this Ukrainian Nationalist Underground, Bandera, Melnyk and Zhukhrevich, were celebrated as freedom fighters, but after Maidan Revolution, this cult steadily Became more obvious in central Ukraine, let's say. But now, thanks to Zelensky, this cult became more and more obvious on the nation state level. So it was, I was surprised actually, that the remains of Andriy Melnyk, the leader of one of the faction of OUN, was brought to Ukraine not by Yushchenko, President Yushchenko, who actually awarded the fascist leader Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine, not by Poroshenko, who- Actually had this very nationalistic agenda as well and was instrumentalized in this history of nationalist movement for his political aims. But the Jewish president, president with Jewish origin, president who paid tribute to, to his grandfather, Simion, Zelensky, decorated war veteran who fought Nazis in the ranks of the Red Army, the president whose relatives were killed by Nazi collaborators, and now he's bringing Andrei Melnik, who was himself a Nazi collaborator Whose people, subordinates, collaborated with Nazis in the ranks of auxiliary police. It means that they were hunting Jews as policemen, they guarded ghettos, then co-- they convoyed Jews to the killing sites, and they participated in shootings of the Jews. And also Andrei Melnik was The proponent of creating a Waffen SS Division Galicia, the members of Waffen SS Division Galicia pay tribute to Hitler. They participated in anti-Nazi, in, in suppression of anti-Nazi partisan struggle in Slovakia and former Yugoslavia. So why the hell President with such a background, with such an ideology and worldview will bring this Nazi collaborator to Ukraine? And when I, Holocaust scholar, the scholar of Ukrainian nationalist movement, a Jewess myself, a granddaughter of Polish woman, saw the President kneeling in front of the grave of Nazi- As a collaborator, I was ashamed. I was, I was furious. I couldn't understand why the discussion even happened. It wasn't organized even public discussion. Do we need in democratic Ukraine such a national hero? Whose people participated in the killing of their Jewish neighbors. So I was really surprised why now and why it was happen-- why it happened under Zelensky president. And the second reason, Zelensky is a comedian, in his nineteenth vortal His entire career was built on making fun of Ukrainian nationalism. When you see their sketches about Lviv and, you know, Ukrainian nationalists and their antisemitism and their chauvinism, they often made fun of all this, and now Zelensky is standing there with this, you know- Face and, you know, pretend that he knows the history of Ukrainian nationalist movement, very complex history, and all these war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the members of Ukrainian national underground movement. Oh, give me a break! And I was so, so frustrated. But also what is very, very important, the silence of Ukrainian historians and the silence of Ukrainian intelligentsia. The silence started to be constructed back then ten years ago, when memories, memory laws were adopted under Proshenko. According to one of these memory law So-called decommunization law. Members of OUN and DPA were recognized as fighters for Ukraine independence, and they really were the fighters for Ukraine independence. But two critical questions are still on the table: what kind of Ukraine state they desired, and it was a territorial state, ethnic state. That's why they perpetrated ethnic violence against Jews, against Russians, and against Poles. And the second question is, with what tools? And these tools were this brutal ethnic violence against civilian neighbors, elderly people, civi-civilian kids. against women, and this brutality took lives, dozens of their neighbors. So what we are glorifying today, we are claiming that we are protecting freedom and democracy. Ukraine government is claiming that Ukraine is moving toward the family of nation, Europe family of nation, where human rights and human life and human dignity is the most important. So why now you are celebrating Nazi collaborators? Why now? After decades of, of, you know, existing of Ukraine independent state, why now? And we, we understand why now, because Ukraine instead of the Soviet myth, is creating nationalist myth in order to mobilize society on the war against Russia. And we understand that seven million Ukrainians Fought against Nazis, Nazis nowadays are fallen heroes, they are marked, sometimes even as Soviet collaborators, as occupiers, and those Nazi collaborators, three hundred thousand of the thousands of them, and only one hundred thousand were in Ukraine nationalists underground now are perceived as national heroes. What is that? 73% of Ukrainians voted against this in 2019, and now they are afraid even to raise their voices against this, and nobody is asking them about their opinion, because public discussion wasn't organized. The office of the president just told Ukrainians, you know, we will- Bring this guy to Ukraine. It was just, you know, information, just public was just informed. No public discussion, no, no critical, you know, thinking about this. Do we need this Nazi hero on Ukraine soil? Soil? Do we need such hero? What does it mean for our future? What does it mean to present Ukraine? And another issue, which was very striking, Ukraine army nowadays is approx- approximately one million people and one hundred twenty brigades. Why only one brigade? The third assault brigade, which is rooted in Nazi Azov movement, was present there, and among those guys were There are people with problematic worldview, for example, the guy with the nickname MacGregor, who posts with World Sanger, Nazi symbol, the guy who is a frontman of the band Sokurapura, which has the song "Six Million Words". Of lie, which is about Holocaust deny-denial, and all those guys were present in this high i-i-in this state funeral with these top military and state officials. And what is very interesting, the same brigade recently celebrated the anniversary of creation of Waffen SS Division Galicia, but they remained silent on 8 May, when Ukraine on the national level marked the end of the Second World War and and mourned the victims of the Nazism and Ukraine lost approximately ten million people in the Second World War. Not even a word from this brigade, and this brigade formed a third army corps, approximately fifty thousand people. They remained silent. But instead, they celebrated Nazi collaborators, Waffen SS Division Galicia, and they were invited by the Office of the President to participate in the state funeral and the state tribute to Nazi collaborator. So it's not just some funeral, it's not just some event. It's a very problematic sign and symptom of memory politics in Ukraine that turn into World War II revisionism, Holocaust distortion, and Nazi apology. And what, and I was very struck by the fact that Germany, which is the guardian of the memory of Nazi atrocities in the Soviet Union, and particularly in Ukraine, Germany sponsored so many monuments in Ukraine, memory sites in Ukraine, remain silent. Not a statement, not a word. Mainstream German media aren't critical even about this. German officials aren't critical. Chancellor Mertz is silent. Why they see IDF as this far right neo-Nazi movement, but don't see that Ukraine government is celebrating neo-Nazis and invite them to celebrate Nazi collaborator, to glorify Nazi collaborator openly? What is going on? We should all ask this question, what is going on in Ukraine and where Ukraine is heading with this kind of memory politics? Yeah, well, I can, I can understand kind of how the, 'cause the, you know, the fascist groups in Ukraine, they've always been small, marginal. I mean, it wasn't as if the Ukrainians majority wanted them but I think they can be used in, used in a very instrumental way because well, the whole idea that the fascists are liberators, I think it's, it's, it's an interesting development because I, I often make the point that the, the historical closeness of the Ukrainians and the Russians after living in the same state for centuries. I think it was I might be mistaken, but it could have been Solzhenitsyn who referred to it as a double-edged sword, because on one hand, in the east, you find many Ukrainians who essentially say, "Well, we're brotherly people," many argue, "You know, why do we even have two separate states? Essentially, we're one people, we're all descendants of Kievan Rus." but then in the western parts, there's many, and I would add, quite Is if, if we're all the same, why do we have our own state so they can see this this history as being a, a threat to sovereignty? So any anti-Russian narrative essentially that presents the Russians as being the you know, the inheritors of of the Mongols, for example, the Golden Horde the Asiatics, while the Ukrainians represent the real, you know, Aryan Europeans, that, that, that's a good way of solidifying I guess a distinctive identity. So I can see the pragmatism of this I'm not condoning fascist ideology, just to make it clear, but I, I think also if you look at why Germany would be quiet, 'cause you pointed out Germany, I think it's important that, you know, when, when the Germans defeated the, the Russians in the First World War, you had the, you know, it was Andreev with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, it was, it was again represented as Germany liberating the Ukrainians, but in reality, That this was, you know simply taking Ukrainians from being part of the Russian Empire to being vassal of the Germans. And then of course, afterwards, the Germans were defeated, and then we have Second World War, and we see the Germans yet again they see all this nationalists and they think in Ukraine who wants to have a greater distance from Russia, they see, you know, a tool essentially they can use, so they begin to you co-cooperate with many, you see then a lot Among the Ukrainian nationalists, many beginning to become integrated into the fascist ideology. and now I would argue a third time, we see again after the Cold War that is our goal in you know, was to create collective hegemony. We're gonna unify all of Europe eventually under EU and NATO, either as member or de facto members, except for Russia. So creating a Russia without sorry, creating a Europe without Russia. You know, this means de Russifying the continent and- Suddenly, I think the fascists groups in Ukraine, they become our natural partners because they wanna de-russify Ukraine, we want to de-russify Europe. When I say we, I mean our political leaders. So so it kinda goes without saying that this you know, there's a common interest. I'm not saying that the Western leaders have subscribed to Nazi ideology. It's, it's a bit like White-washing Jolani in Syria, we can be friends with jihadists, we can be friends with fascists you know, as long as they serve a goal. So again, it's, I think it's instr-instrumental. But what was your take away of the, the way the Western media has addressed this cause? In Poland, there's outrage because of all the Poles that were killed by Ukrainian fascists during World War II, but I'm looking at the Western European media especially, and there's, you know, crickets, there's, there's nothing there. I read some, yeah, I think it was New York Times one, they said, "Oh A divisive historical figure about Adrien Milne, which is a weird way, you know, they can call Hitler divisive as well if they want, but, you know, this is what's your take on it? Yeah, controversial. Yeah, yeah, controversial. They also I, I saw some controversial they can say, you know? what I can say, so we had this bureau of my leg, and the next day, Zelensky awarded one military unit this title, Heroes of UPA, yeah, Ukraine's regent, our army. And then Poland was very offended, and we had a series of, of protests from Polish officials, especially President Tymrotsky Polish President Tymrotsky, he said that he will strip Zelensky of this high state honor The owl, also the, the white eagle. Then, then we, we have the statement from Prime Minister Tusk. He said that this decision harms the memory of victims of UPA because according to Polish this Institute of National Institute of National Memory, there were at least one hundred thousand And Polish civilians killed by Ukraine Insurgent Army, UPA, in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia during the Second World War. And today we saw that Lublin City Council, they removed Ukraine flag from their building. And today another Polish official said that Zelensky should make a call to Nawrotzki and make And bring his apologies. So we still have this, you know, outrage from Polish side because for Polish people, it's a very sensitive topic. And Ukraine side don't want to apologize and what I notice that many people in Ukraine even very liberal people, started to adopt this far right formula, "Our land, our heroes." This was formularm that we hear it on Svoboda party, this far right, neo-Nazi marches that celebrated Vanda birthday, you know. But now it's a mainstream slogan, you know? For the past four years, since twenty twenty-two, Ukraine's constantly were feeding this narrative. "You protect Europe, you protect all of us." And basically European politicians and Euro and Western media, they raise this messiah complex in Ukrainians, and they really believe that they can have these, you know, fascist and Nazi heroes, and it's no one's business, and everyone must just give them money, and they can spend this money For, you know, state bureaus of Nazi collaborators and building these, you know, fancy fancy cemeteries for them and fancy monuments for them. No, it's not Ukrainians must understand that European values actually and means that they adopt this World War II memory formula about never again. Okay, we can discuss what never again basically means nowadays, yeah? Looking at Gaza, you know, West Bank, and all this stuff, and never again for, for, for whom? And so on, so forth, yeah? So we can discuss all this, but you can celebrate neo-nazis, you can arm neo-nazis basically, yeah? You can celebrate ethnic violence and Ukraine's Ukraine officials now really, really can't understand that it's not only their, their business, you know? 10 million, 10.5 million Ukrainian pensioners are completely dependent on the West. Ukrainian teachers, Ukrainian doctors, Ukrainian children. Everyone in Ukraine is depend on the West. And nowadays, when Ukraine completely Depend on the mercy, I would say, of its Western partners, Zelensky is doing this. I can't understand this. We, we saw this, you know we saw the, the, this an, an, a new statements from Hungary, yeah, about protection of Hungarian minority. So now we have problem, problems with Hungary, serious problems with Hungary, yeah. And Zelensky created more problems now with Poland, and why is problematic? Because Poland is the second country with the biggest number of Ukraine refugees. So the ordinary people may suffer the consequences. I mean, hate crimes, for example. Yeah. So local people, who have-- Ordinary people, ordinary Ukrainians, who have- Nothing to do with Zelensky politics, you know, and his hoodspa will suffer the consequences in their daily life, may suffer consequences, because we already see the rise of hate crimes in Poland against Ukrainians. We see this, yeah, many people say in Poland, we are fed up with Ukrainians, no more help, no more this, you know. Hospitality, no more. So I believe it was very, it was very stupid move from Zelensky and you know, when you put Heroes of Ukraine, yeah, on the title, on any title, yeah, you need a school and so on, so forth, you just close the discussion. Yeah, it's a way to celebrate, glorify, to make them, you know, only heroes. It's not about debate, it's not about their complicity in ethnic violence. It's basically the road to punish everyone who criticizes them. That's why, for example, I, when I was put on this "merotvoretskiy" list, one of the evidence against me was my academic article about gender-based violence against women perpetrated by the members of "Ounen Dupan" - rape. And other shame-based punishment of women, for example, cutting their hair off for romantic relations with the Red Army officers, for example. They were Ukrainians, those guys were Ukrainians from Eastern Ukraine, but they were bad Ukrainians because they were Soviets, yeah? So they were Russian-speaking and they believed in Soviet Ukraine, so Ukraine, so they were perceived as enemy men and local women. Local girls were punished by them, by members of Hunan Dupa, by cutting their hair off. And back then, eighty years ago, it, this kind of punishment undermined social standing of those women and their families. They became non-marriageable after that. So it became tragedy for those women, especially in rural areas, in their villages, and this article, and they killed Polish women, for example, or raped them. They, they killed those women from Eastern Ukraine who were sent to, to Western Ukraine. And when I published this article, this article, I was punished basically for the, for this article. So every single historian now who is trying- To preserve critical thinking about own and oppa has no prospect of academic career in Ukraine. It will be stigmatized, it will be stripped of its job. And it will be basically removed from stripped of any, any prospects in, in Ukraine, in this kind of Ukraine. Yeah. So I believe it's very, very problematic. This kind of developments in Ukraine is very problematic. And it's not about, you know, some, some specific field of research of, or some specific academics and historians. It's about the state of society. Where, where war criminals and those who perpetrated war crimes against innocent children, women, elderly are celebrated as heroes, as national heroes. It's very problematic. Yeah, well, well, this is the thing well, before I said there could be some strategic advantage in leaning into the nationalist narratives, you know, as, as a wartime strategy and also to, I guess, reorient u-Ukraine away from Russia, but, you know, if I was advising the Ukrainian government, I would say it would also lead to some predictable strategic problems. One, when you dehumanize millions of Ukrainians themselves this has you know, you can't really have a cohesive- Society, and even with the war fighting, it impacts because now there's, you know, all these people who are, you know, either millions who fled to Ukraine or people are in hiding in Ukraine who don't, you know, s-- well, they don't see necessarily the incentive in fighting you know, for a government that views them as second-rate citizens and essentially called their own language, you know, their mother tongue to be, you know, make them criminals and traitors. So it's you know, Aras Tovitch who He actually made this point, I know he, he has shifted his position more than once but I thought this was a sound one. It's, well, the argument on itself, irrespective who came with it it is quite reasonable that is, this was a key mistake. They could have had millions of patriots wanting to defend the homeland but when the homeland's defined in this extreme nationalist terms you know, millions of people were, were essentially turned their back on it. This isn't a strategic move, but also of course the second- And was alienating im-important partners. Now, I know a lot of Western governments have done their very best to look the other way, but there's still some people who are asking questions, so what are we doing here? Why, you know, yeah, yeah, you know, we, we're keeping told in the West that, no, no, well, you know, Zelensky is Jewish, this is all Russian propaganda, but then we get the media reports, you know, we, we see the fascist symbols adopted by the army, we see why Express outrage about these fascist symbols and yeah, reviving the fascist memories just it's hard to, it's it's hard to explain this, you know, the narrative starts to crack. But but how, how do you think this how, how can this go on for, to such an extent, you think, and still be ignored? Because in Europe, I mean, you know, Zelensky can beat everything, he can be caught red-handed in corruption, it doesn't matter He can purge the political opposition, the media, the Orthodox Church, and still he's hailed as a democratic hero, you know? Let's give him the peace prize, huh? How do you make sense of this though? You know, I'm in twenty twenty-two actually, when the war started, I, I imposed a certain shape. And I didn't criticize him. I started criticizing in twenty twenty three when I I was struck by this, you know, when Nazi when Azov, that Azov Brigade organized this exhibition where they recreated photos of the Valdai Defense Division Galicia. And basically they compared themselves with members of Armed Forces Division Galicia. So it wasn't Kremlin propaganda, yeah, but themselves compare it. They themselves compare it their fighters to those who fought for Nazis, yeah, answered Nazi cause. And when I pointed to this fact I understood that, you know, nobody actually from my colle-colleagues is willing to support me. Nobody, even those who study Holocaust, even those who had Jewish origin, even those in the West, those in the Western academia, and it was very interesting phenomenon for me. I, they explained to me that it's not the right time to criticize Ukraine government because all these important, yeah, those talks are very important, but these problems are minor in compared to Russian aggression and they must be postponed, postponed until Ukraine's victory. And I told them That you will be terrified by the society that you will build by your silence. You will be terrified by the society. And now a couple years you know, later, what we see, we are terrified by the society because Zelensky concentrated more and more power. Ukraine became more authoritarian. Now, Ukraine army became army of the slaves. Ninety percent of men went up up in the army, are caught in the streets by the draft officers. Those who don't comply are severely beaten. And, you know. And many people still in the West, they are making reference to some legality, and I explained to them that racial laws were in, in Germany in 1935 were also legal, and racial segregation in US was legal, and lynching was legal. So it's a bad, very bad idea to justify forced mobilization by the law. And today we see that Azov started from, you know, one thousand plus people. Now at the moment, have two army corps. You know, I was laughing when I was watching this Black Sea Security Forum in Odessa that was last week, and you know the chair of one of the session was introducing guests, and he said, "And now we invite the member of elite brigade," and I was I was laughing because I was sure that it will be a Zouk rooted third assault brigade, and I was right. They, you know, they changed the discourse about a zouk and now in, in this in this public opinion, it's an elite brigade. The Third Assault Brigade, the all commanders are from this old Azov. They are radicals with white supremacist views. Now they advocate against, with very racist and chauvinistic slogans against labor, migrants. They are misogynists, they are very racist, they are anti-Semitic, and they still call them elite brigade. So now- Now we have two corps formed from Azov movements. And, you know, I, I'm really, I really believe that those Western countries, and especially Ukraine neighbors like Poland, like Hungary, like Romania, like Czech Republic They must be worried of those developments, because Azov has the concept of greater Ukraine, and I encourage all those people who still believe that Azov is really innocent. To look at their concept of greater Ukraine and to the map of the greater Ukraine that includes all the neighboring pa-part of the neighboring states, Azov has the imperialist concepts, concept, and Ukraine has the most hardened army in the Europe. And I believe that in the future, it, it, it's really it's really the great probability that Western countries, NATO, NATO countries, will have the problem with Ukraine, not with Russia, but with Ukraine. And with these very radical, but very active and ideologically motivated guys who will try, because, you know, just last week Azov commanders talked about going to Transnistria, to Pridnestrovya, and help Moldova. Zelensky talked about helping Romania, yeah, and we don't know what does it mean, yeah, and Moldova and Romania are talking about joining i-into one state. And you know, they, they are threatening Belarus, for example. also we are hearing talks about locating some brigades in Baltic states to protect, you know, Ukraine, in order to protect Ukraine. We are hearing these talks now from high level, top Ukraine commanders. Just listen to them. Just listen what they are talking about, you know? And they are really, really they, they have really great military experience, combat experience, and they have have a great NATO weapon, yeah? And in comparison to, to Polish army and to, to, to army of other NATO countries, they have great Military combat experience, war experience. So I'm not optimistic. I'm not optimistic about the future of Ukraine. And the main ideology in Ukraine is ethnonationalism. It's a very, very dangerous ideology, very dangerous ideology. Pushed by, by Azov and and now it works in turbo, turbo mode and supported by Zelensky because for the, Zelensky regime relies on Azov. That's why we see that all neo-nazis in Ukraine, all far-right groups, they support Zelensky, they constantly advocate Zelensky, they constantly write for Zelensky, all corruption scandals they- Go to different shows and say, "But you know, Zelensky didn't know. He's innocent. He didn't know. It's unbelievable. It's un- I couldn't believe that I will witness such an alliance between Zelensky office and his inner circle and neo-nazis and far right in Ukraine. But this is fact now. We see a lot of strange grouping comes up. I saw you mentioned the, the security forum now in Odessa, and I saw also on the guest list there was Reza Pahlavi, who, you know, is the monarchist from Iran, that is the ones who want to bring essentially the Shah rule back. It's, it's a very strange mix of people, you know, I was waiting only for to see Jelani pop, pop on the list as well but but, but I agree, I think, you know, the And use them as an instrument to achieve some strategic objective, it's very dangerous and as you said, it can, you know, can corrupt the entire collective consciousness of of Ukraine. I mean, if you want to save Ukraine, I don't think putting these people, the banderas, to essentially define the Ukrainian soul, if you will, that this is, you know, you, you would, you might end up killing it. So it's a, you know, and also, you know, if you look at Germany The Russian Empire, because they hoped that the, you know, if you have a communist revolution, this will take them out of World War One. Well, now you have Bolsheviks ruling Russia for the next few decades you know, same as supporting Bin Laden to fight the Soviets, then later on then you have the jihadists you know, global terror. So it's, you know, it, you can see It was sowing problems for the future here, but it's very difficult to even say criticize Nazis anymore, even in Western Europe, 'cause every- in political propaganda, you wanna often divide everything into two simple binaries. That is, you either, you're supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the horrors it has caused, or you're supporting Ukraine by not criticizing and by not criticizing it. So if you criticize the celebration of fascist groups, then, well, then you're, you're undermining the sta- of Ukraine, which means then you're taking Russia's side. If you're, if you're showing some empathy towards or even reporting on on the, on the Ukrainians which are dragged out of their homes, you know, the busification, sent to the front to die, well, then you're also taking Russia's side. If you point to the fact that majority of Ukrainians want negotiations, indeed, that in 2019 as well, the majority voted for peace, well, then you're also taking Russia's side because this is taking credibility away Away from the government. So, you know, what's considered pro-Ukrainian now in Europe is, it's essentially, you know, to ignore the w-will, the will of the Ukrainians and just, you know, don't boycott the diplomacy, just send more weapons in and fight to the last Ukrainian. It's kind of a Gruesome thing and you know, even in this country, like I'm, I'm in Norway and, you know, our this politician is the head of the committee on foreign and defense affairs in parliament, he, you know, he goes to Ukraine, he takes picture with Biletsky, you know, and then posts it on his you know. This is the guy who was, you know, be-before the Russian invasion, you had British media, all, all media reporting quotes from him that he, you know, he said the mission of Ukraine is to lead the white race against the Jews and the Unterminch, you know, like there's no way you can whitewash these comments they've done their best but also, yeah, when also then greeting of course, ASO members with, you know, the, you know, with all their logos, symbols on in, And this is considered to be pro-Ukrainian. I mean, I think it's shameful for Norway and shameful for Ukraine. These people don't represent us in any way. But but you know, Boris Johnson did the same, waving the big ass flag in the British Parliament. I mean, our forefathers must be spinning in their graves. This is just it's, yeah. And also, it doesn't, I mean, if, if it did something at least to help Ukraine, that would be one thing, but- You know, imagine if you're sitting in Moscow now and you see this, you're essentially now thinking, "Well, you know, all this historical Russian territory, all the millions of Russians who, who now, you know, live in Ukraine the social contract has been broken, they're not allowed to represent them anymore, we'll take all the territory back." I mean, at least when the war began, it was a more modest rhetoric from Moscow. These days, they refer to, you know, Ukraine as, you know, country four o four, so-called Ukraine, is Quite aggressive, failing to even recognize not just the government, but the legitimacy of Ukraine as a country. this is this is yeah, a disaster which it should be toned down. Instead, we're just encouraging the worst instincts, which will get the worst possible reactions. Yeah, it's hard to understand where this is going. but I guess yeah, that's my last question how, how sustainable do you think this is? because you know, I, I can understand a lot of Ukrainians get caught up, you know, they're invaded, they lost a lot of men territories lost, infrastructure being destroyed. I guess I can understand the logic that, you know, with the war being the main priority, all these other things we, we, we push it aside, we'll deal with it later Sentiment, I think, among the Western political class. But how, how, how durable do you think this is? Do you see any cracks? You know Western media, so nowadays Zelensky recently- Told Ukrainian media that probably we can expect that until the end of this year the war will end. But in reality Western media Published information based on their sources that Zelensky is preparing for two and three more years of war. Why is-- So basically, this narrative about half a year of war is for Ukraine audience. only for Ukraine audience. It's about, "Please wait a couple more months, everything will be okay, everything will be okay, we will deal with..." With this, we will get money, we will reform draft office centers, they will be more polite, they will ask your husband politely to go to this van, you know, and to go to the infan-infantry, you know, but it, it all sounds like, you know, like fairy tales and more- And more people in Ukraine, they are losing hope. I'm talking to all my relatives in Ukraine, and it, it, it's like a never, never-ending nightmare. And what we see, what, what we see that those, those people who now are trying to escape from Ukraine are mostly men. Not even, not even women, but men, because nowadays the main, main objective for, for people is to survive, and for men to survive this war is getting, you know, the task on it, it just, you know, you can't do this, because those hunters are everywhere, in the bus stops, in the street, in gyms, in hospitals, everywhere. You go, you know, to, to, to, to grocery stores and you are kidnapped. You go to your dentist and you are kidnapped. You aren't safe anywhere. And Ukrainian men are most vulnerable. You know, we have this feminist mantra that women and children are more vulnerable in the war, but nowadays we, we observe how men are vulnerable. Their bodily- Integrity is completely violated when we see this harsh scene, how they are beaten, how they are, how they are brutalized. It's, it's just unbelievable, and nobody asks them, "Do you want to die for this corrupt state? " That's why I, I have no hope Ukraine is turning into private military company of the West and return to this Black Sea, Black Sea security forum. When I listened to Senator Kelly and Blumenthal, they want to fight. They still feeding Ukrainians with these, you know, fairy tales about, you know, you are close to the victory. Just keep going, and I listen to Kellogg, and he's talking about this enormous, you know, sufferings of Russia and losses of Russia, and nothing, nothing about Ukraine losses, nothing about, you know, and I'm tracing losses of my city and Lviv region every single day, and every single day five names, six. Name, up to eight names every single day, and nobody count them. They are just numbers. And for Kellogg, Kelly, Blumenthal, and others neocons who advocate the interests of merchants of death and arms sellers, arm producers, those people don't exist. They are just numbers, and they even don't dare to To name these numbers, they don't even talk about these numbers. They never mentioned even these numbers because those numbers are also terrifying, the losses of Ukraine. They never talk about deserters, even official numbers, three hundred thousand of deserters and those who went a-a wall. This is huge numbers. Nobody's talking about the, the them on these security forums. Nobody's talking about the price. Nobody's talking that Ukraine, that Zelensky can protect civilians from drones attacks and from bombs attacks. Nobody is talking about that, that. And nobody's talking that Ukraine is also targeting civilians like it was in Starobilsk, and those students were Ukrainians, born in Ukraine and raised in Ukraine. And now in Ukraine, military discourse, media discourse, they are called collaborators, just collaborators, who aren't Deserving our pity. They are just collateral damage. And Merodvorsk Heat website even put teachers of the Starobilsk Starobilsk college, several teachers on their website, accusing them of collaboration with with Russia. So basically, Ukraine, Ukrainian people are- Raised in this hatred even towards their own people. So when I hear this, you know the, these words from Zelensky, "We will not leave our people, we will not leave Donbass because they are our people." No, it has nothing to do with Donbass and it has nothing to do with, with the people. He just don't want to war, war to stop, because stopping war for him Him means losing, losing the power and losing the, the source of profit for him and his his inner circle. So I'm not optimistic about Ukraine and I'm very concerned about this society that Ukraine is building. This highly militarized society, ethn- Nationalistic society, very chauvinistic society, full of hate and full of censorship. I don't want, you know, this kind of future for Ukrainian children. That's why I took my child, and every single day I'm happy that I I saved my child from from this. Because when I see this, this, this, all these developments, I'm just, you know, when I see Azog guys use Azogus Centaurian. In Ukraine public schools, and they are allowed to all these schools and other these far right organizations you know, performing lessons of courage in Ukraine public schools with all these, you know, hate symbols. I'm just terrified. What are you doing, guys? It just... And all this so normalized in Ukraine nowadays. I feel very sorry. I feel very sorry. It's like, it's like hell nowadays. Yeah. The problem is when the war is over, well, because of this new identity they're trying to create many, as, as yourself, will probably not come back, and it's gonna be very hard to rebuild if, if the people don't actually come back. So it, what, what kind of country one is gonna create? It's not you know, we'll, we'll deal with this later. I think it's a big- Problem, but but for, for me always the main frustration is again, as I mentioned before, this simple binary, you know, you're pro-Ukrainian or the, or you're pro-Russian, that, that, that's all. And, and this essentially makes any discussion, you know, or any, anyone is immune to criticism because you're not allowed to be pro-Russian, and you know, apparently if you, if you're worried about you know, Ukrainians being sent to their deaths, that means you're, So I'm, I'm thinking back, you know, for example, in in March of twenty fourteen Henry Kissinger, you know, he wrote an article saying that you know, we should give up this, this right after Russia took Crimea, you know, right, we should give up this idea of you know, making Ukraine, no, sorry, making Crimea, no, sorry, making Ukraine a front line either of the Ukraine, of the West against Russia or Russia against the West. the only way Ukraine can, you know This today would be considered anti-Ukrainian same as if you-- But if you argue, you know what, best way to end this war is to agree to-- for the NATO countries to agree a security arrangement with Russia in which we stop, for example, NATO expansion essentially remove Ukraine from the front lines of a divided Europe, and this way we can save that nation, this would also be considered now to be pro-Russian. And even people like, you mentioned Keith Kellogg before, you know, he had this- General Keith Kellogg, who was, again, became this envoy he was making, he was giving this speech, you've probably seen it, where he argued that, you know, this is just the top of professionalism. What we're doing now is, you know, we're, we're having Ukrainians to fight Russia, then we can weaken Russia, and then we can focus our resources on, on on on, on confronting China. So, you know, the Ukrainians are, you know, meat we can throw at the Russians. Me back saying, "Well, this is, you know, SANSU stuff," so you, which is very weird. But, anyways, my point is, he's considered pro-Ukrainian. Why? He, he openly said, "We can use the Ukrainians to knock out Russia from the ranks of great powers, which will allow us to focus on, on on Russia." Why is this pro-Ukrainian? The only logic is that it weakens Russia. So if bad for Russia, it's good for Ukraine. And you know, I, I This article from two thousand twenty-three, because this was, it's in the Washington Post. It was after this disastrous counteroffensive by, by Ukraine. Again, they got slaughtered when they went down in Saporizhia, just a lot of men yeah, perished. And yeah, this is a direct quote from Washington Post. It said, again, after the hor- horrible counteroffensive it says, "Yeah, the West's most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the addition of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself off a dependence from Russian energy and in many ways rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headline, but overall it's been a triumphal summer for the alliance. And it goes on saying that this has been, this has, the last eighteen months have been a windfall. It's been a great success. Success, except of course for all the dead Ukrainians, the destruction of the country, and but again, this is how pro, pro-Ukrainian rhetoric is these days. And if you criticize this saying, "They, they can't win, why are we continuing to do this?" well, that's a Russian, pro-Russian argument, and you're a traitor. It's, it's- Yeah. I have never seen political propaganda like this in my lifetime. It's quite extraordinary, but Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up? I just hope that, that this war will, will end, because too much suffering, you know? And I hope that, you know, show like yours and other will undermine this mainstream discourse, hawkish discourse. in the West that keep the, keep feeding this war and present this as "real Ukraine," actually, yeah? Because I'm, I'm, and many, many people in Ukraine are tired of this. Yeah. Let's hope for the better, yeah? I agree. I guess a last example which could have been made was when the head of German intelligence made a point that we should keep this war going for another five years so we can prepare ourselves for conflict with Russia. So this is yet another pro-Ukrainian statement. we need them to go to the front lines another five years so we can prepare ourselves. it's yeah, no, it's horrible, horrible. This is yeah, I can't believe, yeah, it's gone this far and probably will go even further if it continues to go on, but, yeah, like you, I hope this war comes to a quick end and, yeah, too much suffering already. Anyways, on this very sad topic nonetheless thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Glenn. Thank you so much.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Sean Foo: Chip War Escalates, China Sells U.S. Treasuries & the AI Bubble Begins to Crack https://youtu.be/K6sOEhWL0W4 https://t.co/BXMa8AJFPr
Video Transcript AI Summary
Sean Fu, a market analyst focused on China, says China is “done with US Treasuries,” citing that in the last month China “dumped around forty billion or forty-one billion,” and arguing China sees “no point in coupling their economies too tightly with the United States” going forward. He frames recent geopolitical events—including wars not only involving Russia but also Iran—as part of an effort that, in his view, helps contain China’s economy. He points to compromised oil flows from Hormuz to China, noting that China buys a lot of Iranian oil, while arguing it is less exposed because “ninety to ninety-five percent of” power generation is not from oil and gas, and many supply chains China controls itself.
Fu also describes the Trump-Xi summit as failing to produce pressure on China, describing an intimidation attempt around Iran and Venezuela that “didn’t happen at all.” He claims the Trump administration did not push the Chinese on anything and accepted Chinese phrasing that they would “look into rare earths,” implying China would keep “their hands on the tap.” He reiterates that China will not “recouple” with the US, including by buying more Treasuries.
Turning to the American side, Fu argues that higher US energy prices raise revenues for oil companies, but because oil is a global market, prices also rise for “everyday Americans.” He links rising energy prices to worsening inflation, saying inflation moved from “two point four percent” to “two point eight percent,” and is “around three point eight percent,” and argues that higher gas costs (said to be “between five hundred to maybe a thousand dollars more a year”) will eventually reduce consumption, with Americans cutting discretionary spending. He adds that bond yields are likely to stay high and contends that attempts to sustain an “AI economy” via financing and data-center buildouts are constrained by finite money and high interest rates. He characterizes US conditions as being driven by confusion around market-moving statements about war being “on” or “off,” and says the US cannot isolate itself.
Fu then emphasizes the “chip wars,” arguing the strategy of cutting China off from American chips has backfired. He cites Huawei’s claim of a breakthrough and says that by “twenty thirty-one” Huawei chips could compete with Nvidia and TSMC, arguing that pushing China into a corner forces innovation. He describes Chinese workarounds, including creating lower-end versions and “string[ing] a bunch of chips together,” such as using “a thousand Huawei chips” instead of “a hundred Nvidia chips,” and he connects the feasibility of brute-force approaches to China’s lower energy costs, stating energy prices are “a quarter” of the US (and “at least fifty percent cheaper”). He says Nvidia leadership has indicated China is unlikely to import lower-end chips and that China may “leapfrog” the technology instead of inviting Nvidia market entry. Fu also asserts that during Trump’s visit to Beijing, an RTX Nvidia gaming chip was banned that some companies use for AI, and describes “ring fencing” of the market.
He adds that Gulf investment behavior may be influenced by the Middle East war and points to Scott Bessent announcements about confiscating Iranian assets, including “around one billion dollars worth of illegal crypto.” Fu says this undermines the assumed anonymity of cryptocurrencies by asserting the US can trace funds on public blockchains, freeze them, and seize them. He argues Gulf states will respond with uncertainty, potentially diversifying into gold, and potentially “adversary economies of the US,” including China, to spread risk away from US assets.
Fu links economic and military dynamics, saying the US has used up weapons in Ukraine and diverted systems from Europe and East Asia toward the Gulf, with Israel prioritized there, which he says signals that the US cannot protect everyone. He argues this will push allies toward rearmament financed by borrowing, predicting “money printing” and rising debt, and describing a “dangerous age” where currencies lose more value to fund weapon buildouts.
Regarding financial stability, Fu says “true market financial stability is now More or less officially gone,” with low interest rates finished and rates “sticky” and rising. He argues the US is trapped: issuing more bonds raises yields and the national debt, while cutting rates increases inflation and leads to higher rates later. He says the Fed may need to buy bonds to flood the market with liquidity, describing scenarios including AI or semiconductor “bubble” implosions or confidence collapsing if the Iran war drags on.
On solutions and China’s path forward, Fu says China and Russia are consolidating closer together and that China is slowly decoupling its financial economy from the US. He cites capital controls on mainland Chinese savings leaving for Hong Kong and then to other Western economies, describing ring-fencing of capital flows and concentrating investments toward allies, BRICS, Belt and Road partners, and more focus within Asia. He also says capital outflows from the Gulf may be shifting toward East Asia.
In Europe, Fu says China may reduce its position if the EU ramps up a trade war with China, but he argues China does not want to decouple from the EU entirely because Europe remains an important tech/consumer market. Finally, Fu advises diversification due to widespread bubbles across US stocks, tech, and semiconductors, arguing that oil-market disruptions from Hormuz can worsen energy shortages later (said to show up in July and August), pushing oil prices up and potentially popping bubbles through reduced consumption. He says cash bonds lose value via inflation, while gold remains a long-term purchase, and he recommends holding a mix including gold, international stocks, and exposure to China/RMB. He concludes that the “variables” in ongoing conflicts make predictions difficult.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined today by Sean Fu, a market analyst and expert on China. So, thank you very much for coming back on the program. A lot has happened since the last time we spoke. Sure, of course, glad to be here. Well, besides the actual wars not just being fought against Russia, but also in Iran we forget that there's also, of course, the ongoing economic war between the United States and China. I, I wanted to start off by asking how you view this economic war going, especially with focus on the US treasuries. Are, is China still looking at further investment, or do you think they're gonna essentially begin to reduce their position in this? I think more or less China is done with US Treasuries. I mean, in the last month, they dumped around forty billion or forty-one billion, and going forward, I think China doesn't really see a point in coupling their economies too tightly with the United States. if we look at the entire debacle over the last sixty to ninety days, especially we talk about the Iran War, the War in Iran Well, at the grand scheme of things, it is in a way to contain the Chinese economy. Now, if we look at the flows of oil from Hormuz all the way to China, China does buy a lot of Iranian oil, and right now their flows have been compromised, right? Now, obviously that isn't really a big problem for China because ninety to ninety-five percent of, of their power generation is not from oil and gas, it's from renewables, it's from coal, and most of these supply chains China controls themselves. It does show a concerted effort on Washington to really use the US military and other sanctions geopolitical schemes to really corner China's economy. Now, if we look at what happened during the recent Trump Xi summit, you know, when Trump brought his delegation, including his family to China, to Beijing to talk with President Xi The grand idea was basically to, you know, throw the heads of Iran, throw the heads of Venezuela on the floor like like, like a conquering hero in order to intimidate the Chinese, saying that, "Hey, we managed to do X, Y, and Z, we managed to pressure the Iranians, so it's time for you to comply." But that didn't happen at all, and we could see a lot of Supplication from the Trump administration side, they really didn't push the Chinese on anything, and they even accepted phrases from the Chinese saying that, "Yeah, we'll look into rare earths, but chances are they won't, right? They'll just keep their hands on the tap." And I, I don't think China's going to really recouple themselves with, with the United States going forward, least of all buying more treasuries. Yeah, well, in, in the United States, there's many who thinks that the increasing energy prices will essentially benefit the United States as it's considered self-sufficient, at least in some areas and also an exporter. So the money, the price will go up, they will, may have greater income. Also, countries will then will also be forced to spend more on energy in US dollars. And as you said, many are hoping Hoping that this will also slow down the Chinese economy. Well, you, you mentioned the Chinese side of this, but how do you assess the American side? Do, do you think this would actually work? That this would end up benefiting the United States, because, you know, the US is part of the world. I, I know they, they seem like they're trying to build up well, insulate themselves, build up some Western Hemisphere or- Or, or exclusive region of security to insulate themselves from the rest of the world, but but to what extent do you think this is possible? Well, don't think it's very possible at all, right? Let's just take a look at an example that you just gave. Now, it's true that because of the constricted oil flows from Hormuz, a lot of countries are being forced to buy more American oil. Now, that is true. And because oil is a global market, the price of oil goes up for American crude as well. So So if you look at all the stock prices of the big companies from Chevron to Exxon, they're paying exploding higher and higher over the last ninety days, right? Now obviously, but the big problem with that is oil is a global market, so prices for everyday Americans also go up. Now if we look at the inflation numbers over the last two Two months, it has been absolutely disgusting, right? You know, inflation has gone from two point four percent it has gone up two months ago to two point eight percent, and now it's around three point eight percent. So there is a trend of inflation going up. Now, no doubt that a lot of the big oil companies, they're gonna rake it in, but other parts of the real economy is gonna suffer, right? Americans, they're now paying between five hundred to maybe a thousand dollars more a year for Just their gas bills. So sooner or later, consumption is gonna crack, something has to give. They aren't gonna spend, perhaps in restaurants, they're gonna buy less from Walmart, they're gonna slash their discretionary spending. So a lot of cracks are already being formed in the US economy, and because of higher energy prices, inflation goes up. Bond yields are gonna stay high as well. So if we look at the other side of the equation, where Trump is trying desperately to tout the new AI economy, he's trying to keep the bubble afloat, they're trying to build fields of data centers, well, you can only keep doing that to a certain degree. Money is finite, and if interest rates still continue to go up Or at least they stumbly high, well, it's gonna backfire on the US economy sooner or later. Right now, we are looking at the stock market at bubblish valuations. You know, Trump keeps telling us that the war is on, the war is off. You know, they're gonna discuss something we run or no, now we want them to give up their nuclear weapons and sign it on paper. So everyone is really in a big state of confusion, and I don't think the US can isolate themselves. In fact, they're just stacking, stacking more cards on this Yeah, Trump has become the boy who cried wolf. I mean, every day it's either Iran will be bombed again or we're so close to a deal. I mean, it's a bit strange that the markets still respond to his statements because they seem, you know, not very credible and then very evidently aimed towards managing the markets or influencing them. But while the financial markets- Markets are, you know, you can say are all in a very difficult position. A key aspect of this economic war though, is still the, the, the tech fight or the chip wars, if we can call it this. And if we go back, we remember that initially the goal was, or the assumption was, if they would cut off China from American chips, then somehow all the major tech giants would then begin to stumble in- Whether they would stagnate or begin to decline, obviously this didn't play out, but w-w-where do we stand today in this chip war? Most recently, Huawei, they revealed a breakthrough and innovation, right? They are now beginning to make chips, at least by twenty thirty-one, to the scale that they can compete with Nvidia, they can compete with TSMC. And this is what happens when you push the Chinese to a corner, you force them to innovate And they have no choice, either they innovate or they lose the AI race. Now, over the last one to two years, we have seen the Chinese economy, Chinese engineers come up with very interesting solutions to the tech race. Now, if Nvidia and Trump deny the most powerful AI chips to China, well, the first solution was basically to create a lower end version of theirs and just string a bunch of chips together, right? Instead of using maybe a hundred Nvidia chips. Use a thousand Huawei chips, and considering the energy build out in China, energy prices is a quarter debt of the United States, at least fifty percent cheaper. And if we look at the entire AI race, right? The base layer is always energy, as long as you have sufficient and you have cheap enough energy, everything else will follow, right? Your manufacturing gets more ex- gets cheaper, you can make more mistakes, you can undergo more trial and errors and- Eventually, you can just gear up to better innovation through brute force. And this is why I think the chip race is starting to backfire. You know, when, and when Jason Huang of Nvidia went all the way to China, I think he basically gave up. He wanted the administration to just allow China to buy the high-end chips because China isn't even importing much of the lower-end chips, right? China already understands that, hey, we are gonna leapfrog this tech. Technology sooner or later. Why do we want to invite Nvidia to really get a foothold into the market? And because of that, fifty percent of the global market is now effectively shut away from the United States. You know, even on the visit itself China, Beijing, they banned, if I'm not wrong, an RTX Nvidia gaming chip that some companies use for AI as well, and that was during the same trip where Trump went to visit So you can already tell a bit of the ring fencing going on in plain sight. I think the AI war, I won't say the US has lost it completely, but they're gonna have to find a way to desperately make up the shortfall when you lose fifty percent of the market. And maybe that's why over the last week, Jensen Huang came out onto the convention holding two laptops, telling the whole world that now Nvidia is gonna go into the personal laptop business, because where else can you find a revenue? From when half of the market is gone from you. It's kind of strange if you look back, remember also the United States that decided to a large extent to cut itself from, off from the Chinese market. It's you know, if you wanna lead innovation, you do need some revenue stream, and if there's no money coming in, how can they continue to, to fuel this? and I guess this is where there's been a lot of focus on the argument that the AI market in- The United States is in a bubble that yeah, the financing, especially, isn't also not sustainable. It appears that this has taken a further hit though by the Middle East because a lot of the Gulf states, who, you know, they can't sell all their energy and they used to pump a lot of money into, not just US treasuries, but the AI in America as well. Do you see this having an effect or do you think this is exaggerated? Well, I think it does have a bit of effect, and it really depends on how Trump ends the war, right? Does he end the war where the Gulf allies understand that they're not gonna get powered by Iran forever, and where the Gulf allies realize that, alright, at least the United States isn't treating us completely like trash? Because if the United States continues this, where the war continues on indefinitely, we're gonna see more So-called revolt in the alliances. So far, we have already seen the UAE, the Emirates, break away from OPEC, and that really shows you that you know, once the war ends, they need a lot of revenue to rebuild their shattered economy. Tourism is down, a lot of the oil facilities has been hit, and if I'm not wrong airport in Kuwait has been hammered yesterday or a few days ago. Saudi Arabia, they're desperately shifting their oil flows from Khoroms all the way to the Red Sea. And the Al Mandeb Strait is always under the constant threat of the Houthis, if I'm not wrong. So because of that, I think it really depends on how Trump manages to settle the war, right? Can he come together to make some kind of accord that pleases both the Iranians and the Gulf allies? I think that's gonna be hard. And going forward, I don't think the Gulf allies, you know, they're going to place all their eggs in the same US basket as well. I think we're talking about how flows from the Gulf goes into US stocks and bonds. Now, I think that is gonna be compromised as well. Over the last three days, we have seen quite a few announcements from Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, about how Iranian assets has been confiscated. Now, it's not much He bragged about confiscating around one billion dollars worth of illegal crypto. Now, this is something that is quite alarming because a lot of us, we all come with the concept that money if you buy Bitcoin, if you buy cryptocurrencies, it's somewhere out in the ether, it's supposed to be anonymous, no one can see it, you can transfer it from country A to country B. But it has been shown that the US manages to trace it on the public blockchain, they can go to the exchanges and they can just freeze it. Or take it away. So right now, there's a lot of uncertainty going on on where the Gulf airlines are going to put their money to. Now obviously, one good option, the traditional option, would be to buy gold, just ship the gold to your country and store in a vault. There are other options where you can invest into so-called adversary economies of the US, obviously China is one, where you'll be at least protected within the Chinese sphere of influence. So it's about spreading your eggs across Of the basket, and I don't think that'll be good for US assets in general. Oh, well, this is what happens in economic wars. There's diminishing trust, people have to diversify. It's quite extraordinary if you think how short period of time it took us to get here, where the United States first well, starts to seize and, well, steal sovereign assets of countries they steal gold, as we've seen from countries hijack ships and of course Now they're getting into the cryptos able to, to seize this as well. so no, this obviously countries have to react to this, but but the Gulf states, so it's not that this lesson that the, the US security arrangements are linked to, to the economic links with the United States. So this isn't a new thing. That is, for the Gulf states, the fact that they will have been protected by the US is a large reason why, again, they sell their oil in dollars as opposed to, well, for example, gold or the Chinese yuan, but but it's also a reason why they invest a lot of this money in the United States. However, what we're seeing in the round war though is first, the, well, the Americans used a lot of their weapons up in Ukraine, so they didn't have enough for to fight Iran. And for this reason, they had to begin to divert weapons that were supposed to go to Europe to fight Russia, then they also had to divert weapons out of East Asia, especially South Korea, and then send it down to the Gulf states, and even there they prioritized Israel. So this military overstretch, it must be sending some signals to- Europeans, the Gulf States, East Asia, that the Americans can't really protect the everyone anymore. But how do you see, you know, again, in all these regions, how does that translate into economics? Because does it mean that the South Koreans will begin to decouple a bit from the American economy and Europeans, or, or are we not quite there yet? I think we're not quite there yet. There's still a lot of partnerships going on between the Japanese, the Koreans, and the United States. as we can see, there's now a lot of concerted effort by the US and all these economies to invest between each other. And most recently, we can also see Nvidia investing more money into TSMC or at least to Taiwan, so that in a form is a kind of technological shield, right? using money to shield their economies. At least from the perceived threat of China. I think going forward, we are gonna see a lot of money printing, a lot of debt going on when it comes to rearmaments. You know, at the end of the day, all these economies, whether it be the Koreans, whether it be the Japanese, they really can see in real time they can't rely solely on the American security umbrella. A-as you just pointed out, a lot of missiles, a lot of weapon systems, they have been shifted to other fronts that is active, right? Whether that be Ukraine, whether that be- Be the Iranian front. So all those countries, they already know in the speculation that they will have to step up, they will have to borrow more, more money in order to bu- build all those weapons. So I think they are gonna enter a very dangerous age of money printing where currencies they lose even more value in order to build out the weapons. And even today, there's still the perceived threat that China is gonna invade any country anytime in the- Indo-Pacific, right, or Asia-Pacific. So this constant fearmongering, I think it's gonna push the, the US and their allies to just rearm even faster. Well, I, no, I, I get the same impression that especially the Europeans now and yeah, everyone wants to arm themselves to the teeth the Americans I'm not sure if they're yet past it yet, to spend one and a half trillion on the military, it's, again, it, it's a lot of weapons and it can fuel many industries during this kind of military buildup there's often technological innovation, but No one in the West or, you know, in the East as well, countries like Japan, they're not really suited yet for it financially, it seems. I mean, they're all ridden with debt and inflation's already high. And the United States, where they're taking now towards a forty trillion dollar yeah, debt, that's a big hole. I mean, to, to what extent do you think this can continue? Because if, if an economic crisis would begin to unfold you know, banks would be threatened, what, what weapons do they have now though to essentially restore their markets or stabilize it? Because You know, if they increase the interest rates, you know, they can't service forty trillion dollar debt. If they reduce interest, they, you know, they will further destroy their currency. more countries might de-dollarize. So what, what exactly, you know, can we expect in terms of, I guess, financial stability moving forward? Well, I think true market financial stability is now More or less officially gone, right? We are now in a new world where low interest rates are more or less finished, interest rates have been staying sticky, they have been going higher, and as you said, the forty trillion dollar debt is just gonna balloon even worse. Now, a lot of us, we were all hoping, or a lot of market participants, they were hoping for rate cuts by the end of this year, but if we look at what's happening with the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, there's very good chance they'll actually- Hike in twenty twenty seven, so that's gonna make the debt situation even worse. Now the United States, they are already trapped in a, in a quandary, right? If they decide to Issue more bonds in order to pay off for the deficits, interest rates, yields are gonna go even higher and that will push the national debt off a cliff. However, if they decide to cut rates in order to ease the debt burden, inflation will go up and the markets will punish them with even higher rates down the road. So everything just leads down to the central bank saving the entire system. Now, as you said they can't-- the US economy can't afford Or freeze on the money supply where everything suddenly slows down right no one is spending, the banks aren't lending, the entire economy as we know it will grind to halt. And this points to the Fed either silently or outwardly buying bonds to flood the market with cash, flood the market with liquidity. So we are gonna move towards a period where either a systemic crisis happens, for example, let's say the AI bubble bursts or the semiconductor bubble implodes. Or somehow everyone loses faith because Trump's war on Iran has taken too long and then basically confidence collapses, so the Fed will come in and they'll tell the whole, "Hey, we are printing three trillion, "or if that doesn't happen, it'll be a slow print where hundreds of billions of dollars a year will be suddenly pumped into the situation. And if we look over the last all the way traced back to December, six or seven months, the Fed has been printing money into the system already. Yeah. I often think back at the global financial crisis in 2008 and '09 when well, essentially there weren't no alternatives to the United States. It was argued, you know, same as the dollar, it was the cleanest shirt in the hamper. Essentially, it's and there wasn't much that could be done to, to diversify. But as you know, after this this is when China began to develop, you know, its own transportation corridors. It attempted to replace much of the US supply Chains develop its own development banks and using more national currencies. And I, I know that in this meeting you mentioned before between Xi and Trump, the hope was, I think by many, that they would reach some grand bargain. That wasn't achieved. however, after this meeting with Trump President Putin came to Beijing as well, and they, they had this common declaration on the establishment of a multipolar world And I was thinking, you know, only three years ago, Putin and she was caught on mic, making the, on open mic caught saying that, you know, the world will change more than it has in a hundred years now. So what do you think will be essentially the, the solution? When when the US markets begin to melt down, its you know, its tech war won't, won't prevail the dollar will begin to struggle. what do you think? China is planning to do, or how, how will it, will essentially get out of this "splashed zone" and adjust to this new re-new, new realities, because it doesn't look like they will, will, will behave the same way as they did back in the first global financial-not first, but in the two thousand and eight global financial crisis. Sure. I think we can see that China and Russia, they are both consolidating even closer together. I think we all remember back in 2022, 2023 you know, there was a Joke and a meme that the US was pushing Russia closer to China because of the, because of all the sanctions and how the G7 hammered Russia, which is true, and Trump is doing the exact same mistake, right? He's pushing Russia closer to China as well, especially when it comes to oil flows and energy flows. Now, what China has been doing over the last three months, just recently, over the last three weeks, is slowly decouple their entire financial economy from the US. Now, over the last- Last two weeks, China imposed even more capital controls on people's savings that's leaving China, going to Hong Kong, and then from Hong Kong, leaving to other Western economies. So China has had enough of that, so they're clamping it down, they're telling the brokers, "Alright, you're not gonna allow mainland Chinese to send their money to you and then disperse to the rest of the world." So you can see China really starting to ring fence the entire capital flows, how much money They have the savings of their people, which is enormous, is around over fifty trillion dollars. And what China is doing is basically concentrating all their investments into either their allies, they're trying to make some headway into Europe if possible, but mainly they're cons- consolidating around the BRICS allies, that includes Brazil and countries along, along the Belt Road. Now China, I believe they've seen the devastation done in the Middle East. We aren't saying they're gonna pull out all their investments there, but I think they're gonna concentrate more in the Asian region, which is exactly where they should be in, right? So we can expect more cooperation with Russia, we can expect more cooperation with the Central Asian states China definitely will work more together with India as well and Southeast Asia. I think at this point, China understands that they have to decouple From the US in quite a big way. I think a big consequence of the, the, the war in the Gulf is also that many countries are worried that the Gulf might, Gulf states might actually go under if, if this war escalates. But even if it doesn't, it will take a long time for these countries to essentially go back to where they used to be if that can even be achieved. So there seems to be a lot, a huge capital flow that is out of the Gulf states heading towards East Asia to places Yeah, where you are, Singapore and and other areas. but on on China trying to decouple from the US, do you see it also limiting its position in Europe because the Europeans began to large extent to repeat the American talking points, that is, they, they were very worried about what they call Chinese overcapacity. Again, it's a fantastic concept, it's, no one's talking about America's digital overcapacity or the- French wine overcapacity, the Italian fashion overcapacity, but anyways this is a way of saying, you know, let's reduce try to diminish the Chinese market. Sounds, yeah, very defensive. but but, but, but how do you think China will, will respond to this? Because the European markets are already in a very difficult position. They, well, by cutting themselves off from first, Russian energy And now they're being forced to have, or less contact with the Gulf States, the energy prices go through the roof, they are beginning to deindustrialize in a big way, and what does that mean for China? Because even if you put politics aside, only look at the economics of it, to what extent, you know, is Europe still an attractive market here? Or does that fall within the decoupling? If you say China's shifting to the BRIC states for investments, does that also- Retail reducing its position in Europe. Well, I think it does entail China reducing their position in Europe sooner or later if the EU decides to ramp up the trade war with China. China won't have no choice but to enter other markets, whether that's in BRICS, Southeast Asia, or even Africa. Now, as you mentioned, I think Europe is really lost They're lost in the twilight zone, right? They've lost cheap Russian energy, they've lost flows from the Middle East, and, and I don't see any way for them to really revive their economy and make their own manufacturing attractive unless they do a radical shift of their energy policies. You know, a, a very simple one could be just to, I don't know, dismantle some of the green policies or start reviving some of their nuclear plants. It's as simple as that. They only have a few options, and most of it they find distasteful, you know, running back to Putin for natural gas, you know, von der Leyen herself has said it's distasteful asking the Chinese You know, for solar panels, well, you have tariffed them so you have just raised the cost of production for yourself. So the Europeans are left with very few options. Now, for the Chinese, I don't think they really want to decouple with the EU, 'cause Europe has always been seen as one of the other big tech kingdoms around, right? Apart from the US and China itself. And I think they do see that there could be eventual hope for the EU, but how long? It will take is a very, very big question. So I think China, the guys going around hedging their bets, I don't think China really wants to decouple from the EU. There's still quite a bit of consumer base there. you know, yeah, there's some definitely some EU countries are still relatively rich, so I don't think the Chinese they want to just cut Europe off forever. Yeah, well, it's not too late to change course, I guess. I'm waiting as well for the European leaders to stop doubling down on failed policies and pursue some kind of course correction. we're not quite there yet, but perhaps when the pain begins to ramp up, they will change course. Well, I guess that, yeah, takes me to my, to my last question though. Where, where do you think the good money's going these days? Because we're seeing such such massive disruptions in international markets, we see yeah, the geo-economic center power shifting further to the east. where do people invest? I know you're very big on gold and, well, silver and metals, but w- where, where else do people essentially put their money these days in order to, I guess, preserve their wealth and, well, ideally- Grow as well. So I think now is one of the most difficult eras to really invest. Everything looks like a, everything looks like it's in a big bubble, right? Whether that is the US stock market, whether that is in tech stocks, we see a lot of semic- semiconductor names like Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung all going up. So I think now should be a time where people should really consider the idea of diversification, right? I, I can't sit here and tell you that gold is gonna go up in a straight line. I can't sit here and tell you that the S&P or even Chinese stocks is going up in a straight line, 'cause there's a lot of big risks coming down in the next two to four months. We just need to look at the oil crisis from Hormuz. everyone thinks that the crisis is done, but there's a very big backlog of oil shortages coming in that's gonna register in July, register in August, and if there's such a- Low volume of oil, that means prices are gonna go up, and the only way for that to recollapse for people to consume less, and the price of oil will come down because people are consuming less, and that itself could really pop the bubble. But at the same time, if you buy bonds, if you leave your money cash, you're gonna get inflated away. So I think this is really a time to spread your eggs across the basket, you know, having some gold isn't bad having some international stocks isn't, isn't a- Idea as well, you know, investing to China, the RMB has been strong, that is also a great avenue. So I, I don't think I can really give anyone a clear answer right now. personally, I am still buying gold every month, every quarter because I see the long-term trajectory, but to put all your eggs in one single basket at this point of time, I think is extremely risky. Well, this is the problem. Every, everything, all the markets are very integrated, and once something goes wrong, such as said the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, not only would it be energy, but it would also be the fertilizers and, you know, with the energy crisis, food crisis, you can expect the, the triggering of more s-conflicts in the world as well. This will impact the markets again. So, I, with this many variables in play with this conflict Conflicts now between, well, where most of the great powers are, so not all of them are involved, it's very difficult to make any predictions at all. Let me ask you, where, where, where can people find you? Because I, well, I, I enjoy your the YouTube channel you run, so people wanna follow you. Where, where can they find you? Sure, you can just find me at YouTube itself youtube.com/ShaunFugool, ShaunFugool. basically, I cover economics, a bit of geopolitics as well, investments, the bond market, and of course, gold and silver. Well, thanks for taking the time. I always enjoy talking to you, and I hope you can come back soon. Sure thanks Glenn
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Stanislav Krapivnik: Kiev Attacked, Frontlines Fall & Belarus Enters War? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5xtnwhdIp_k https://t.co/DadkT60nOW
Video Transcript AI Summary
Stanislav Kravtynik discusses the war in and around Donbass and describes how Russian strikes and Kremlin attitudes have become more militant. He says civilians are being killed “between five to ten” per day and argues this is part of a wider shift in Moscow/Kremlin mood, describing Kremlin expectations that “Kiev should be a crater” and that certain European cities should also be targeted. He also claims Ukrainian drone warfare is effectively “gamified,” describing an incentive program for Ukrainian drone operators that awards points for destroying military equipment and personnel, then for targeting civilian engineering or telecommunications equipment, then civilian trucking, civilian cars, and ultimately individuals such as “a grandma walking a baby in a pram.” He says points decrease as targets fall into “lower” categories, but that operators continue to kill as long as they can, and he claims only “about fifteen, twenty percent” of drones result in kills, with many stopped or lost.
Kravtynik connects the escalation to events and media coverage, describing how a strike in Lugansk became framed in Western and European media primarily as Putin’s accusations, while he cites Ukrainian “death lists” for schools and staff. He argues Russia’s restraints are being shed in a limited way, and claims Russia is using conventional means to send messages. He asserts that targeting “decision-making centers” rather than specific leaders is preferable because, in his view, killing a single person does not end conflict when succession continues. He also argues Ukraine’s political leadership and incentives mean many elites profit rather than plan to fight to the end, and he predicts the government would collapse when elites perceive personal danger.
Kravtynik claims NATO countries are now direct participants if they allow their airspace or territory to be used and do not shoot down drones passing through. He highlights Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, and claims Russian intelligence says Latvia is allowing five bases to launch Ukrainian drones. He calls for NATO to be made an “example,” including disabling “life critical infrastructure,” and suggests messaging through strikes on cities in NATO territory rather than through further escalation against Ukraine alone.
On front-line developments, he describes the Zaporizhzhia region as shaped by multiple Ukrainian counteroffensives. He says Western Zaporizhzhia saw Ukrainian forces roll back Russian forces, but that they are now being encircled, with bridges destroyed behind them and Russian forces closing in from east and west. He claims Ukrainian ability to break through faster than Russians is driven by willingness to accept losses, including sending “suicide infantry” as a substitute for storm troops that are trained and equipped but suffer casualties. He describes an example from Kharkiv near Volchansk, where Ukrainian forces allegedly advanced across open fields, with artillery destroying successive waves, and where he says storm infantry could not be employed effectively due to artillery effectiveness against the suicide waves.
He portrays Ariokhov in Zaporizhzhia as a “last fortress” area, with Russian forces around nine kilometers away from multiple sides, and describes drone-controlled parallel roads and collapsing Ukrainian defenses. He then turns to the Donetsk Republic, describing fighting around Kostiantynivka, where he says Russian forces have split the city with destroyed bridges and ridges, encircling a large pocket and reducing the remainder of Ukrainian positions. He describes Russian approaches toward Kramatorsk and Slaviansk, citing fortifications that act as the last major defensive lines before open fields.
For Kharkiv Oblast, he says Russian forces are steadily moving toward Kharkiv from Volchansk and that forests are used to protect movements from drones. He adds that Russian forces are about seven to eight kilometers from Sumi and that forest infiltration aims to reach the city edges, with fighting also described around Serebrianka and a pocket east of Kharkiv. He claims Kupiansk is in Russian hands and describes logistics pressure and probing attacks in areas like Krasnaya Mlyn.
Discussing Kiev/Nikopol and other fortified cities, Kravtynik argues fortifications are intended to control civilian movement and effectively create “ghettos” that prevent civilians from leaving easily, using obstacles like barbed wire, anti-tank trenches, “dragon’s teeth,” and minefields. He links this to mass mobilization and ongoing pressure on the population, extending his claims to women being pressed into fighting roles and psychological campaigns to push participation.
On Belarus, he says Ukraine has stated it has “five hundred targets” ready for strikes and that Ukrainian drone incursions create conditions for escalation. He presents Belarus entry into the fight as an escalation that could be seen as easing European involvement by targeting Belarus rather than Russia directly, while also associating European involvement with prolonging the conflict.
In broader politics, Kravtynik argues EU and Western leadership is being driven by incentives and a constrained “decision matrix,” describing how staff can weight options so only one path appears acceptable. He claims European leaders have bought into or are manipulated by propaganda, and he argues Orbán previously slowed the war trajectory but that current EU leadership is still moving forward. He closes by tying escalation and decision-making to behind-the-scenes interests and influence networks, and he thanks the host for the conversation.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. Today is June 2nd, 2026, and we have the great privilege of being joined by Stanislav Kravtynik, a former US Army officer who since returned to his nato native, Donbass. So, thank you for coming back on the program. Thank you. And it's always a pleasure to be on. Well, I've returned to Donbass a bunch of times, but I'm living up in Moscow now. Moscow now is. Yeah. So. But yeah, we, we travel quite a fe- Yeah, I, I just had a couple friends they're, they're former military, so they, they're a little more, you know, stable in, in these situations than civilians. They had a they did a run down to Zaporozhye and on their way back up the, up and down the highway the, that the Ukrainians are trying to turn into a highway of death, and they're saying that they're hitting this is the goes on to Kherson, which, when you know, kinda isn't quite been liberated yet or Kherson Oblast and then branches off into Crimea. And the Ukrainians are talking about, you know, they're, they're using drones to hit fuel trucks. Well, really what they're doing is and they, and they have hit a few, few fuel trucks, military ones, but the majority of what they're hitting is civilian trucking killing civilians. But what they've started doing is using drones to drop mines in the middle of the night and leave, and as they were coming back a civilian car ahead of them so this is, this is the situation, it's basically it's just more terror bombing dropping mines all over the roads and the vast, vast, vast majority of traffic is civilian traffic so they're out to, to kill more civilians, nothing new. Yeah, I wanted to, yeah, get to that, yeah, let's on the, the, the front lines because you know, there's different developments on different parts of the fronts, but, but yeah, I, I want to first ask though about how you see Russia going up this escalation ladder now, because when I woke up this morning, we saw again another massive strike on Kiev, and in the past, we knew that well, there was limited strikes at least on Kiev, and you know, Catch the train in and out as they, as they pleased. But something appears to have changed in Moscow in terms of the decision making. Now we see that Kiev, I guess it's no longer off limits, it's being hit much harder, and also the rhetoric against, well especially the European countries, is also intensifying. What is your sense of what has shifted in mood in Moscow? Well, if, well, the mood in Moscow, I guess it's better to say the mood in the Kremlin, because the mood in Moscow is Kiev should be a crater Estonia should be a crater and maybe a few European cities, well, non, non-Russian, non-Ukrainian European cities should be a crater. the mood in Moscow is extremely militant with the vast majority, and, and, and the, and the vast majority of Russia. as I was saying, you know, the civilians being killed. This is nothing new the Ukrainians are murdering between five to ten civilians every single day. have we talked about the gamification of of drone warfare? No. Okay, I will talk to you about that. Okay, so gamification of drone warfare, why are civilians, why are Ukrainians at, as a last resort, killing civilians? Okay, so these guys and by the way, this is also a reason why drone operators, Ukrainian drone operators, don't ever seem to make it to becoming POWs if you get my point. The Ukrainians have an incentive program. So if they blow up military, expensive military equipment, they get a certain amount of points. they take out military personnel, they get a certain other amount of points. if that's not part of the target area or targets in the area they'll go after civilian engineering equipment or telecommunications equipment. If that's not in the area, they go after civilian trucking. If that's not in the area, they go after civilian cars. If that's not in the area, they'll go after a grandma walking a baby in a pram. They have to kill something to get some amount of points, and the points go down as the target as you go down the target categories. So they will always, if, if their batteries are starting to run out as they're waiting or trying to find something to kill, oh, look, there's a, a kid in a, in a playground. Well, target's, it's still a kid in a playground. I gotta kill Russians. so Be it a a section, a platoon a company, they collect these points at the end of the month, and they use them to buy equipment. To get better equipment, to get better pay, get better provisions, swag you know, what have you. So this is the gamification of warfare, another NATO creation handed over to the Ukrainian lab dog. so, yeah, that, that takes the incentive the, the KPI There is to kill something so that takes whatever little humanity is left in these bastards and deletes it per permanently. So they have to kill something otherwise if they're just they lose the drones, they don't do anything, they get penalized. And when you consider the vast majority of drones don't kill anything, I mean, all the kills you're seeing with the drones is about only about fifteen, twenty percent of the drones. The, the rest drones are stopped, shot down, catch on trees, a This is the reality of it. So yeah, sure they'll mine a road, a highway, they'll drop, they'll, they'll hit a gas station with civilians fueling up they'll go after individual cars, and when need to, they'll go after some grandmother in her garden, 'cause it's, it's still something. this is the reality we're dealing with. And they will definitely go after a school kill twenty one. And, and by the way, the, the West is now, oh, there was just a missile went off course, what missile? There were sixteen drones, and they're reconing that school in Starobiesc for half a day with recon drones. So no, that's th-this is very, very specific targeting of civilians as, you know, the backup plan for not finding something military. Yeah, no, I, well, I was also, yeah, wondering why, what is changing the calcu-the calculus in in Moscow, because on one hand, one heard a lot about of course, the NATO allowing its territory to be used to strike Russia, we heard about well, the Europeans obviously make a big noise in terms of not just expressing their intention to develop more capabilities, that is the long-range missiles, but also the intent, that is this should be used to strike deep inside Russia. Russia. So we, we have this going up the escalation ladder, but of course, the dormitory appears to have have is being struck in Lugansk appears to have yeah, also made it very difficult to have any more restraint. And I, I agree with how it was being covered, 'cause once this was covered, the dormitory across BBC and other European media, especially the, the headlines was, the only coverage was Putin accuses, you know, Russia Ukraine of targeting this. And then you have some stories that, you know, it could have been used by drone operators, even though you have this yeah, some of these Ukrainian websites you know, setting up these death lists putting essentially the teachers and the, and the, and the staff on this list so they didn't pretend as if they were drone operators. Anyways, it's it's quite a, yeah, a dramatic development. But do you, do you see the dormitor having more emotional value or this, Issues coming together to explain why Russia might be shedding its restraints now. All those issues, and, and it's still a limited re-shedding in my opinion, unfortunately, it's a very limited shedding. I don't, I don't quite go into the let, let's use nukes. portion, but I think we have the conventional means to get the message across and not to, not through hitting Ukraine. the, the problem is, fir-first of all, by the way, that murder, death, kill list, the Mueller report, it's, you know where to register that? You know what servers are at? Yeah, next to the Pentagon, CIA, CIA, sorry, yeah, Maryland, Virginia. That's right. Oh my God, oh my God. By the way, just for the Americans listening, just so you The proxy servers right next to the CIA headquarters, and on that list is a whole lot of American citizens. Your government, be it Biden or Trump, has no problems with your proxy targeting and murdering Americans, your citizens, your fellow citizens, for exercising their free speech. Just let that sink in. I'm not even gonna talk about places like England that arrest fifteen thousand people in a year for, for thought crimes. so, you know, that, that, that's just reality. The you, you know Andrei Kartapolov, who is a former general, he's a member of parliament, he's on the Armed Forces, he's head of the Armed Forces Committee, he came out and said, you know. Yeah, we're, we're gonna target decision-making centers, but we're, we're not going after Verado or Zelensky or the politicians. We're only the decision-making centers we're fighting with the military. It's like, well, you know what? I disagree with that because the military is just a tool. You're fighting with the government, and the government of Ukraine is a psychop-- Well, you know, the thing about targeting the government of Ukraine, if you- If you fight Russia, you fight Iran, you fight China, you're fighting civilization states. you kill one guy, the next guy steps up, you kill next guy, he's, the next guy steps up. You don't have that in Ukraine. It's a klepto- it's a kleptocracy. the people around Zelensky are there because they're stealing everything dry. and they will continue this war because sending Ukrainian people sending little boys and girls Rolls off the war makes them money, but they're not in it to die for Ukraine. They're not going to, they're not, none of them are planning on dying of old age in Ukraine. They're there to feed off the trough like a bunch of pigs, and what they're feeding off of is, is the meat and bones of their own people. So the moment they start getting killed, liquidated brought having brought to justice, having their come to Jesus moment, the rest will run because they have nothing in this they're not here They're here to, to feed. They're gonna think, okay, so now it's gotten dangerous enough of, of me getting killed, how much money have I stolen? That's enough. I'm getting the hell out. That's what's gonna happen with the Zelensky government. It's gonna collapse. You don't have to go after Zelensky himself. You have to just take out enough of 'em. Budanov might be one of the only ones that'll stick around because he is a he, he's a, a In every direction just like some of them already scattered you know, Julia Mendel, prime example. she was in the government how long? So you're telling me she didn't know about all the corruption, or did she not get her portion, so she decided to jump ship? you know, somebody that's been that close to Zelensky for that long suddenly leaves, a fifth year in in the conflict the seventh year in with Zelensky, of course she knew what- What's going on? You have to be absolutely blind, deaf, and dumb not to see the corruption. It's absolutely blatant. so people like that they get upset, they'll run if their lives are in danger, they'll run. 'cause that, that's, they're living for themselves and their pocketbook. now from the Russian side, like I said, un-unfortunately Zelensky's inner circle isn't on the target list. It should be. But I'll tell you, the problem with NATO is NATO is very comfortable. The EU is very comfortable. No matter what they do, it's the dumb Ukrainians that are gonna get smacked. They're just biomaterial, anyways, who cares? And that's the problem. NATO has to be made a, an example of. An example has to be made in NATO, and not in Kiev, not in Lviv. Maybe Tallinn, maybe Riga. that should be the example. Here, here, here's what's gonna happen to the rest of NATO. You don't, you forgot what war is? You're start feeling a little bit of war on your own skin. or maybe Helsinki. these cities should be made to suffer. Switch 'em off, take out their life critical infrastructure, your water contai- your water sanitation systems. By the way, what the Americans do constantly. The Americans would have exterminated Europe by now if the Europeans were doing this. And Hell, are we not doing the same? Look, the Iranians blew up thirteen American bases. Is there a nuclear war? No. The Israelis go in and murder the leadership of a different country. Is there a nuclear war? And that's quite literally the examples that are being used used on the Russian government. Well, first of all, the Russian government, that's also not correct to say. the Kremlin isn't a uniform entity. Just like any major government isn't a uniform entity. it has factions. and one of the bigger fa- Actions are now coming to fore is start beating the crap out of NATO, make an example, take out NATO bases, I mean, take them out. That's the, that's the message NATO needs. It's the the more the militant wing that's now rising up. you've got, of course, you got a liberal wing that wants to bring everything back to two thousand twelve. unrealistically, yes, but, you know, they- that's what they believe in. you've got different other wings with different I Major government. You have multiple factions that you don't necessarily see the the bickering or the maneuvering that's, it's just well hidden. And in American government, you see that it's all on display because they all like to you know, wanna pump themselves up. in other governments it's under the covers. Russia happens to be under the covers. But you see for example Shagou the generals to, to a smaller degree the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lavrov, they want a hard response. there's there, there's Medvedev, you know, he's, he's in that category too. Other play, other people like Dmitrov they wanna make a deal. so, you know, you'll, you'll have, and You, you, you have different factions within the government, and the faction that, that the hardline faction especially with these outrages that the Ukrainians at NATO is producing you know, with Italian-made drones Shay Bose was showing the drone pieces and other journalists down there, I was supposed to go down there, but I had a foot injury old military injury, and my foot was swollen up, so I was on crutches, couldn't go go Couldn't go down there. but yeah, so I mean, th-this is, this has just raised the public anger that much higher and they're backing the heart attacks, and what Cuba's getting is not the heart attacks the, the majority want, it's, it's a pla- it's a It's enough to calm the, the, the anger down a little but the majority of people want Kiev to be a very big hole in the ground right now. We can rebuild it later. That, that's the the attitude now. This is, the Ukrainians have done something that only the Germans were able to do in '41. they taught Russians how to hate again, and the hatred is, is growing exponentially with, with all the crimes, with all the crimes against civilians. I mean, that's the reality right now, and I think that until NATO countries are hit take one or two, make an example of it, and give, make a, a very direct message. Today it's Riga, tomorrow it's Warsaw, the day after it's Paris or London. We don't have to blow up the civilians. Nobody needs to deal with nuclear weapons. The Russian technology is unstoppable, it's, it's big enough, it's hard enough that you can switch the city off, destroy the internal communications. When those arsenics hit in For example, in Nipetrovsk, that side of Nipetrovsk hit all the pipe, all the pipes sewage pipes, water pipes, they all burst because it's a four point six earthquake on the edge of the city close to ground zero, it's about five, five, five and a half on the Richter scale earthquake. And those, those pipings, they're not made for being earthquake proof. that's how much kinetic energy is being dumped. So, yeah, Can do a lot of damage and, and make the people very, very uncomfortable in their lives as, as the final note, and, and then after this, it gets very serious. But until NATO feels this themselves they're not gonna stop. They're, they're-- First of all, when they're using their-- They're allowing their airspace to be used. Let's understand what that means. They are now a direct participant of this war. It's not they allowed their, their airspace to be used, but allowing their airspace or ground space anything to be used without trying to shoot down these drones as they're passing through their territory, they are no longer a neutral, they're no longer a proxy or working as a proxy, they are direct combatant. N- and NATO countries are direct combatants, and if you listen to the, the, at a minimum, that's Lithuania, that's Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, and if you listen to What the, the Russian intelligence services have put out is Latvia has gone the next step. It's allowing it's the process of allowing five of its bases to be used as launching platforms for Ukrainian drones. I mean, they are a direct participant in war. They are a party, a direct party. They can't even say they're just supporting and defending Ukraine. They are direct combatant. At which point, they should be destroyed as a direct combatant. that's, that's it. You've made the decision, you are now a direct combatant in this war. Now the question is, are the Germans ready to start receiving presents? Are the British ready to start receiving presents? How far are we gonna go with this? Yeah, I think this is something that's missed in the West, that is what is happening in, in Russia. Every time they see a missile striking deep inside Russia, which European leaders more or less, you know, they, you know, not just celebrate, but also take credit for in terms of how they are producing these missiles and everyone knows the directing them I think it gets lost in, in all of this, the what's happening on the other side, that is, as you said, the anger which is growing now in Russia. And while you use the word hatred as well, in Moscow, which is which wants a powerful retaliation. And, you know, even if you put that, you know, the, the emotional aspect aside, you can see the pragmatic argument for also why Russia is probably shifting now to a much more hardline position because yes, as I often make the point, over the past four years, you had this growing slow incrementalism where longer range weapons, more powerful weapons are being sent in, in the beginning You know, was controversial. I remember Berbick said, "Oh, this is, you know, we're in war with Russia, this was controversial thing." Now they're all saying it essentially. So so the language has shifted, the direct involvement become more obvious, and at every step, the, the Russians kind of had this dilemma, do you either retaliate but then risk a wider war with NATO or look the other way but then, then essentially sending the signal that well that, that they won't that they Just make the point this anyone reading, you know, Western newspapers now you can't help but to, you can't disagree with this, that NATO countries aren't emboldened because every day you see articles about, "Well, we can do what we want, the Russians can't do anything, they're gonna be afraid of war." So, but you know, deterrence works if, you know, say Russia attacks NATO, but if it's deterrence means, "Oh, Russia can't retaliate against NATO," and then we escalate and escalate, This is my sentiment as well, that is we kind of crossed that line now and the, the delusion of escalation control is gonna be, well, our undoing essentially. But I, I, I did wanna get, as said before, to the, to the front lines though, 'cause there's a lot of, you know Bag of mixed nuts there in the, the Zaporizhzhia region, as you said well, the, the Ukrainians have taken territories, especially along the Dnipro while also, of course, targeting the the, the, the roads leading well, towards Kherson. But while Constantin Constantinevo, we see that the city appears to be falling. Again, I don't wanna put a timeline, it could be from days To possibly hold on for, for a few weeks, while the Russians are also opening up a much wider front line across Kharkov and Sumy, where a lot of different front lines appear to be merging as they're expanding as well. how, how, you know, how, how do you, do you see how, how do you interpret the wider developments here? Because a lot of things appear to be changing, that is not just the escalation of the missile and drone strikes, but also the The, the front lines are, appears to be going through some changes as well. You know I, I'll start from Zaporizhzhia and work my way in, in the semicircle. Zap-- Western Zaporizhzhia, the Ukrainians have thrown in everything in the kitchen sink, and they have taken, they have rolled the Russian forces back to a degree. they've done it this is their third counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region since Some of the Ukrainians with the two previous ones, one was an attempted counteroffensive near Gulyai Polia, which was stopped almost instantly and, and crushed and rolled back. well, there wasn't even much to roll back, 'cause they hadn't made any progress. The other one was northeast or mostly east of Dnipro Polia, Zaporozhye that is now basically being encircled. So they, they were able to push through the front First lines, they got up to the second lines, they were stopped, and now they are being encircled from the east and the west, and to their back is a river with all the bridges blown. so they're, they're very large pocket of Ukrainians surrounded. What-- The Ukrainians, the reason the Ukrainians are able to break through faster than Russians' forces is they don't give a damn about losses. There, there's the key point. they, they don't give a damn about how many losses they take. they will throw in suicide infantry. just understand how this works. When these guys, you see these guys getting pressed gang off the streets. so they, they get separated into two categories. thirty-five and under and healthy, and thirty-five and older or not healthy. so what, what happens is the younger guys, they get- Get picked up by these assault infantry brigades where they'll actually get training and they'll get decent equipment 'cause they're used as storm infantry. and then everybody else goes to the suicide squad. They're good for one or raw, you know, one charge. or they put them out to, to hold some sector that that, that storm infantry can't hold. The storm infantry are used to doing assault but they also take a lot of casualties in the process when then they pull out 'cause The second great infantry, but before the third great infantry. but before they do an assault Kharkiv is a prime example. I, a friend of mine, I'm, I'm not sure if I told you this before the show, a friend of mine was telling me, you know, they, they crossed the Kharkiv border over in Volchansk they took some high ground, they dug in, he said, "In front of our fighting positions are two kilometers of open fields." So what the, the Ukrainians would do is when they can, they, they'll launch three or four waves of suicide infantry to try to soften up the Russian positions before they move in with the assault infantry that, that, that's actually trained. They said, "You know, a-a-and we were talking we're talking about how they were moving, the infantry was moving, it's like, it was obvious that these guys had zero training." They were basically told, shown which end of the the right of the rifle was the business end and sent off. And he said, "You know, we, we hardly ever fired on 'em. Two kilometers of fields, the artillery chewed them up halfway through. None of them survived. They'll bring the next wave, and the next wave, and the next wave, and they had such a position with two kilometers of open fields in front of them that, you know, there was no point in bringing the storm infantry because the, the, they couldn't get softened up, 'cause every time they brought in these suicide squads suicide platoons, they just get wiped out by artillery halfway through. Two kilometers is a long, long distance to run across, especially if you're Of open field against artillery is a suicide mission. You normally you, you try to. The job of any infantryman is to initiate combat within a fifty meter range. That, that's the, the average firefight in since World War two was initiated at fifty meters or closer. That's why infantry crawls, climbs, or just tries to charge across in vehicles to get as close as possible before you initiate direct kinetic engagement. Anything else just means you're gonna get killed. between long-range artillery, medium-range artillery, mortars especially aviation and everything else, if I see you at, at, at two, three hundred meters or five hundred meters, you'll never make it to fifty meters if I'm in a prepared position and I have- Have enough resources behind me. It's just, it's impossible. So these guys are just being thrown away. they make, they, they make these movements forward, they grab something they put up a bunch of photos, it's PR again, but they can't hold because they lose so much of their resources to grab that, and then they get rolled back. So I'm not exactly worried on, on the Western Zaporojie. At best, you call it a spoiling attack to to try to delay the Russian offensive there Point along the Nepper. Then you have Ariokhov. the Ariokhov runs along two parallel highways. It's, it's a long settlement, it's a long thin settlement and it's got satellite settlements to the south of it. Ariokhov is the last fortress in this area, and it's a, it's a hastily built-up fortress because it wasn't like the Donbass, they built up for eight years. Ariok The southwestern two settlements from Ariokhav, neighboring settlements, have been invested. There's close combat that's been going on for a while. There's some movement on Ariokhav from the west, so there's Russian forces are about nine kilometers away. And on the east Gulyaypory, Russian forces are breaking through and are about nine kilometers away. They were over twenty kilometers away at the beginning of the year. so they're closing in, and they're starting to close in relatively quickly, The Ukrainian defenses in those areas have collapsed, and it's just mostly open areas. So, Ryukov is about to be taken from three directions and the northwestern two roads, parallel roads are under Under drone control, so getting getting resources in is, is pretty difficult. Once that's done, there are no defensive positions in Zaporozhye up to the estuaries that come in into into Dnieper that Russia just got rolled back from that it'll roll back again. That's the situation there. in the in the, the Donetsk Republic, it's pretty much so quiet. On the southern portion of the Donetsk Republic, there's been a breakthrough around or a break in, I won't say breakthrough, it's a break into the enemy lines in the Dnipro-Polya-Dnepr-Dnietz direction. The names of some of these cities get repeated. but everything in that area has been concentrated, first and foremost, on Kostiantynivka. and Kostiantynivka is about seventy percent in Russian hands. There's a big pocket of Ukrainians that have been surrounded in the south-central portion of the city. The city itself is split along the river. The bridges have been blown, the ridges from the north have been blown, so they can't support each other. and the Russian forces just went around, started going around the city And they've come together, and they've cut the pinchers come together and cut off about seventy percent of the city, either directly in Russian hands or in a pocket with Ukrainians trapped in it. So what's left in Kostyantynivka looks like it's about to fall, and the Russians forces are moving closer they're within about six, seven kilometers of the edges of Kramatorsk from the east. The Konstantinovka, oh, she had a map up. Konstantinovka, it, it would be right here. then Kramatorsk and Slaviansk right here, so it makes like a, a, a, a, a, a, a s, a C or a, or a an inverted L or a G for, for, in Russian in Cyrillic. type four. And really, it's what's left is Konstantinovka Slavitsa, and there's one other small town to the south of Krom- I mean, Konstantinovka, I'm sorry, Kromatorsk and Slavitsa, and there's one other small town south of Kromatorsk, I can't remember its name at the moment. That just is this wall, right? And that, that's it. That, those are your final big Fortifications, they usually draw them in like yellow lines. You see this cluster of fortifications up and down those areas, and there's almost nothing past those areas, it's open fields. And in the north, toward the Slavians direction in the north, it's continued siege of Krasnaya Mlyn. Russian forces surrounded, they've cut off logistics, they're not very anxious to go in for house-to-house fighting, they're, they're start-- they're doing constant probing attacks to wear the Ukrainians out. And the Ukrainians are out of food and, and running out of ammo, so just a matter of time till you, you break morale or you just, they just run out of ammo and you just clean up. But that opens the way up into Slidinsky from the north. Kupiansk is in Russian hands. It's a cleanup operation on the edges of Kupiansk and reorganization, and in that pocket up to the Serebrianka River, there's a big water reserve east of Kharkiv. The Russian forces up north have been cutting the logistic lines, they've been moving into that pocket all up and down the borders, and whenever they decide to launch the offensive out of Kupiansk towards the Serebrianka, that'll cut off that pocket totally. That's about a fourth of Kharkiv Oblast that's gonna get cut off. it's basically already logistically cut off. logistics are very difficult in that pocket. So, and a couple thousand more, maybe five, ten thousand more Ukrainian soldiers in that area. and, and Russia's steadily moving toward Kharkiv out of Volchansk. they've finished off the Ukrainian forces. They're using the forests to move down because the forest give a lot of the, the, everything's green, so it gives you a lot of protection against drones. so they're moving In Sumi. While we're at it the Russian forces are about seven kilometers, eight kilometers away from Sumi in the north, which is a, a, a light day w- a day's walk, a very light day's walk they're also using the forest to infiltrate through and to get around the drones, to get to the edge of the city. And, and there's movement in eastern Sumi but that's still about thirty kilometers outside of the, the city of Sumi, as opposed Pressure up and down the line and Zelensky keeps talking about Kiev the Russian forces might be moving out of out of Belarus what have you. But we're doing like a hundred and sixty overflights of Belarus by Ukrainian drones, which at this point is a cost-benefit for Belarus to actually get into this war. But there's an interesting point that's starting. And I brought this up, I was on Soloveyev Evening with Soloveyev last week, and people started talking about the Ukrainians started fortifying the cities of Kiev Nikopol on Nikolaev, Nikopol Odessa all these other cities, by, you know, barbed wire, anti-tank trenches, dragon's teeth, minefields. Like, they, they must, you know, they, they must be ready because we're, we're about to break through. Like, no, this isn't the reason, gentlemen. You're, you're missing the point here. Ukraine is a big concentration camp let's begin with that. The, the borders are, are barbed wire, the guards shoot to kill anybody trying to get out of Ukraine. But Ukraine is still a Now, you the Zelensky regime need, has started mass mobilization or as we call it morganization of the population in of the male population in Kiev. Here's the problem, they could still run away in the middle of the night, out of the city. So what do you do? We fortify the city. Guess what? Not only does it work to keep Russian forces out, but it's not, it doesn't work too well because unless you're unless you have oversight of, Of the mined dragon teeth and barbed wire area, those obstacles can be removed relatively quickly with heavy equipment p- particularly tanks. You throw a chain around that dragon tooth, tank starts backing up and just drags out of the way. You're talking about a, a temporary a, a temporary halt to movement, but it's a very temporary. The, the reason you put up obstacles like that in a battlefield is you have to over-saw watch them with artillery, with direct fire weapon systems, so when To get through them, you're shooting up the enemy, 'cause they're not in maneuver warfare. But other than that, it's just a temporary handicap. It works great for civilians. You can't get civilian cars across a field anymore, even if it's dry, because, oh, there's concertina wire, there's dragon teeth, there's minefields. Civilians running across the field to get the hell out of Kharkov or get the hell out of Odessa, run for the hills, yeah, or some small villages out there that they can hide in, yeah, there's that bar Going in and out with bunkers and, and overwatch. So now you control what comes into that city and what comes out of the city. So in other words, Kiev is a big ghetto. Like the Warsaw Ghetto, it's a big ghetto. Odessa is a big ghetto, all these cities, and they become big ghettos. Now you can start i-i-it's a sheep pen, if, if you wanna look at it that way, a sheep pen for hu-- for humanity. And now you can start harvesting them a lot easier, they're not gonna run anywhere, they can't run anywhere, or it makes it much more difficult for them to run anywhere. That's the reality of Ukraine, it's a concentration camp with many concentration camps Press-ganging women, 'cause there, there aren't men. and these are, but they were all Russian areas. Now they've started press-ganging women. all over Ukraine, you've got billboards, they're not press-ganging women in the rest of Ukraine, but they're doing everything psychological to get them to go fight. they've got billboards all over the place, "You're a woman in Ukraine, your duty is to fight on the battlefield. " This is to the last Ukrainian. Just for, for the Western audience to understand, all the meat must be gone to the grinder. That's it. When the last Ukrainian baby has a grenade trapped to its hand with a pin pulled and told "go run toward the Russian soldiers, " is when Zelensky and the rest of the parasites get off the dead corpse and leave for Israel, for the US, for the UK, and the majority will leave for Israel because they're all mostly Israeli citizens, dual citizenship, if we're gonna be honest about it. Zelensky's parents live in a seven million dollar mansion in Tel Aviv, I'm sorry Tel Aviv Colony, just to be honest about this, you know. sort of beating around the bush, everyone wants to avoid that, that the Israelis are absolutely neck deep in all of this too, and all this mass murder. And by the way, there's Israeli colonies that are now popping up in southwestern Ukraine, have been for the last year and a half, and they have their own armed security, off limits to the to the Unterminch that actually live in those areas. So that's the reality of it. I'm glad you mentioned Belarus, 'cause that's another area where it appears well, it would be a possibility for an escalation indeed. Ukraine has made, or Zelensky especially has made the point that Belarus could enter the fight at any time, either Russia through Belarus or Belarus, yeah, joining the fight, and they say that they've picked five hundred targets already in Belarus. Ready to strike, you have a lot of Ukrainian drone overflight into or incursions into Belarus. So again, this is the claims by Zelensky are either real or false. If they are real, that is that Belarus will enter the fight, that would be again, a big escalation for on the Russian side, possibly to you know, part of a knockout blow against Ukraine. I, I'm not sure if it's false, then it could signal Ukrainian escalation. That is I'm not sure why is it to, to, I guess another front line now would be a disaster, possibly would be easier for the European countries to enter the war more directly if they were attacking Belarus because, as opposed to Russia directly. I'm, I'm not quite sure what the calculation would be, but how are you seeing this? Or is this just I guess something to keep you know, Ukraine in the Ukraine war in the media, 'cause this is something that Zelensky has been worried about in the past, that is that you know, whenever the cameras are pointing to the Middle East, the weapons are drying up, the money is drying up. So you know, I was made the point you know, in, in defense of Zelensky, if you will, people often argue that, you know, he's fighting a lot Foreign governments who need, you know, the, their public to have a certain interest in order to continue to pump the weapons in. So again, I'm not sure how, how are you assessing? I, I know you, you know, we, we don't quite know, but how, how are you assessing these reports now about the war expanding into Belarus? You know, Zelensky's only hope for long-term survival and continuing to feed like a parasite that he is is to involve the European Union fully in this war. I don't even gotta say NATO, it's the European Union. Like, the Americans aren't gonna fight for the Europeans, they're gonna make money off the European they're gonna make money off the European meat that they're gonna help send to the front, but they're not gonna fight. Why would they? Europe is more Europe, non-Russian Europe, is more than happy to exterminate its own peasant population for American profits, a-and their own profits. and, and most of the European leadership if they don't have dual citizenship they definitely have landing strips in somewhere in the US or such to get the hell out when, when their term is done and when the civilians are ready to go lynch them. and we've seen this obviously over and over again. The people across- Screaming loudest for war like the Balkans the Baltics they all have dual citizenship, most of them with America or England. So, yeah, they're not gonna stick around. The peasants can go die off. We'll, we'll, when, when it gets too hot, we'll get the hell out, our family. A lot of them their families are already out. so that's the reality of it and these people aren't, aren't gonna die for their nations, gonna get rich off their nations. so the, the, the point of Zelensky has always been to drag the Europeans the rest of the Europeans into this war as his modus operandi for survival. And up until about a year ago, the European Union has more or less been good at dodging that bullet. but something in their mentality changed, and not only they're not dodging that bullet, they're getting out of their trenches, standing up full str- full height, and going, "Yes, shoot us, get us into this They want to die in mass, and the European population for the most part does too, and I'll tell you why. Because they vote for these people, they continue to contribute to these people, they continue to buy their bullshit. They don't listen to our shows the majority of them. They listen to what makes them feel, "Come on, we're gonna win, we're the winners. "Oh, you mean my son has to now go? Oh, I have to go because something that, but that all those Europeans need to understand. It's called the Ukrainization of Your leadership is paying very close attention how to put you into the grave. They are taking the Ukrainian model, they're experimenting in Ukraine, that's gonna be in Germany, that's gonna be in France, that's gonna be in every one of these idiot nations that really, really wants to go to war. And if you vote for anybody but the parties that go against that, you want to die in a war. That, that's- you may not understand that, but that's exactly what you're voting for. I mean, look, Germany is a prime example, it's got a bunch of different parties It's only got two parties. It's got the a d a f d alternative deutschland and it's got the uniparty, because the entire uniparty, all the other parties are voting for the exact same thing. Escalation, escalation, escalation. They may have some differences in internal affairs, and even that's not that big of a difference, but they all vote for exactly the same thing, so it's basically a uniparty. The entire German elite is a uniparty, except for the a f d. So, a-and it's the same thing in most of these countries. England, you have reform that people still have hope for, maybe i-is gonna be an alternative, and then everybody else is the same. The Greens are, are more rabid than Labor and than the Tories, but they're basically all the same thing. they're the Uniparty. Every single European country has a Uniparty. they make you think you have a choice, you have no choice, you have a controlled choice. That's the, that's the epitome of controlling the peasants. Give them the illusion of a choice, in reality you have no choice. You vote for any of these parties, you're gonna get the same result. Maybe the, the, the The bowtie will have a little different design on it, but in the end you get the same present, and the present is the men are gonna get to go die, and your elites are gonna get rich, and all those migrants they brought in are gonna be taking care of your women, they'll breed you a new race of people more docile, so rootless, they can be controlled more easily. But you gotta get the men, men out of the way, and, and that's, this is the, the meat grinder to get the men out of the way. And Noam Chomsky once, well, he wrote that the, you know, the way often you control discussions is in, in liberal democratic societies that is, you just narrow the scope of acceptable discourse, and then you encourage vibrant debate within that. So but but that's, you know, so if you- Can have a society where you can discuss whether or not you know, is Putin more like Hitler or Stalin, and you know, then we can have a debate, but, or maybe he's Genghis Khan. He's-- Oh, he's-- Here's the outlying concept, he's Genghis Khan. Or Genghis Khan. Yes, indeed. Yeah. So, I've heard you know, so for example- You know, we would have in many countries here, you know, we can have a debate to what extent, you know, this should help, help Ukraine, because on one hand one should avoid nuclear war, perhaps, on the other hand, we shouldn't embolden the Russians to allow them to use you know, threats the, the, the nuclear blackmail. But, but, but the premise which narrows the debate is the fact that this was helping Ukraine, that is, you know, we, we toppled their government without And then of course sabotaged the Minsk Agreement, sabotaged the two thousand and nineteen, or essentially reversed the result of that entire election and then of course yeah, undermined the Istanbul Agreement and boycotted diplomacy for four years and just you know, pumping weapons to the elites who and bri-bribe them to make sure that they continue the war in that, and all of this goes under the great banner of helping Ukraine, and, and no one ever goes back to ask Well, you know, imagine what the country would look like today if we hadn't done this, if we had allowed the country to be a bridge instead of a bastion against the Russians, they, you know, they would have had all their territory, including Crimea, all the men would still be there, the territory, I mean, the future would be intact. But So no one questions whether or not this has anything to do with helping. So we narrow it like this, and this is what we can discuss. This is the premise of, of you know, civilized discourse. If you challenge somehow the virtue and the altruism of NATO, then you fall outside. So it has to be based on the premise that Our leaders are doing what they think is right. you know, we are good, the Russians are evil. As long as you agree to this, you know, then, then we can have a debate. That's why when before there's discussion about, you know about Iran or, or or what's happening in Palestine, the first, the opening question will be, you know, do you condemn Hamas? Okay, we have to first establish this also. Do you condemn Putin? And once you have a reassured that everyone condemns, everyone has identified the And vigourous as well, and then people was feel like, "Yeah, this is an open democratic society." but, you know, I, I look at my own country and I see Every single member of parliament is for sending weapons, not a single member of parliament are saying, "Perhaps we should talk to Russia? No. Diplomacy is controversial, and none, none of the media suggests have, you know, you know, all the newspapers in the world, but they all write exact same thing. You know, this doesn't happen by accident. And again, I, I think Chomsky has done a lot of good work on this. anyways do you have any final thoughts? Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you this in, in the corporate and in the military world, this is called a decision matrix, a decision-making matrix. So the commander goes, okay, what's my courses of action? and the staff goes off to create a list of course of actions. Okay, so what you're doing is, especially if you're staff with an agenda, so you want a particular course of action. So you take that course of action that you want that to get the commander or the the CEO or the vice president You add a couple other courses of action that aren't that far or very, very bad. Any other course of action may be good, but against your will, you just drop off and don't add it in there as, yeah, as others. You know, so you, you get your five or six courses of actions, you have your weighted averages on what each action will do or what needs to be done, and you just weight in favor of your option, and you present that, "Here's six different options, sir, of what we could do. There's only one good option, Right? That, that we want him to go, okay, that's the good option. We've already weighted everything to make sure that's the option that gets chosen, and we have the solution for the leadership. It works the same way for, as it works for the peasant, it works for the king. You, you give the king that options, he, he, he, it feels like he has options, he has maneuver, but really he has no maneuver. You've already weighted that field, you've gotten rid of the more radical options, or they're maybe not radical, they may be the Or you made him look so bad that it's suicide, and you've given him a an illusion of choice. Here's your five or six options, your courses of actions that we can take. There's only one right course of action, but even if he doesn't take that one, he takes the second best one, it's pretty close to the first one, so we're still going in that direction, and we'll modify it for the next one, the next one to get you back on course that we wanted. This is how governments are also run, especially when you have Anything that are just morons, which describes a very large chunk of the western leadership also. The special interests that are behind them, they give them an illusion of choice. "Sir, you're the one in charge. Absolutely, you're the prime minister. Of course you're in charge, sir. Yes, you're the big guy. Can we perform some more fellatio on you as you choose the option we want you to choose? " And he feels like, "Come on, that, yes, it was a horrible choice, but we made the right choice because, you know, I, I, I knew the choices we had to make, and we had to make this choice." And he's now convinced that that's the right choice, that he's always been pushed toward and to get on the right, on the road that his backers or the the, the Grey Cardinals want. And that's the illusion of choice. It works just as well for the leadership. And believe you me, most of those leaders are getting manipulated, Democratic society is when the leadership starts to believe their own BS. They start believing their own propaganda. That's when it really gets dangerous. And for the European Union, we're in that dangerous you know, this, this is it. The, the last big The last big break on Europe going to die was Orbán, and Orbán's been removed. neither Fidzio nor was Vášáček in, in Czechoslovakia in Czech, I'm sorry, it's not Czechoslovakia anymore. and Vášáček or The, the new the, the new prime minister. I, I'm, I'm butchering his name, but anyways, neither of those two are heavy enough weights to, to really put a break on this runaway train. Orbán was doing a good job of it I mean, not because he was pro-Russian, because he was pro-Hungarian, but as it should be. Everybody should be taking care of their own country and their own country's interests. That's how you can negotiate with people, 'cause you figure out what their country's You can't find common ground with ideologues unless you submit to them. That's the problem. And Russia's not about to submit to a hamster, a cage full of hamsters. Sorry, but that's what the European Union is for the most part. Very vicious hamsters biting each other as often as trying to bite somebody else. So, this is the reality of it, and these people have bought into their own BS. they, they believe their own propaganda, they've been manipulated, some of them been manipulated, some of them very well knew the direction they were supposed to be going from the very beginning. So, but either way, this is how you control the leadership, just as well as you control the peasant, you can control the king. all depends who's standing in the, in the background. That's what you really need to look at, who's behind these people. you know, BlackRock is behind Mertz, we know that, the Americans are also. BlackRock has lost a lot of investment in Ukraine. they're not very happy, a lot of these other companies aren't very happy. you know, you just start looking at the, at the bigger interest standing behind any of these figureheads. That's the logic behind the NGO industry, as well, I guess. But no, I agree. I think people like Fitzo and Bobby, they're, they're able to pull the countries back a little bit, but they're not able to stop the EU from rolling forward towards war. So, yeah. Anyways thank you very much for taking time so early on a Tuesday morning. I appreciate it, and yeah, have a great day. You too, you too, thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Iran Abandons Talks & Threatens to Retaliate Against Israel https://youtu.be/e03waQsmDkY https://t.co/uFymDp4rbm
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and writer for Sonar21, discusses rapidly escalating tensions involving Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and U.S.-Iran talks, arguing that a move toward large-scale warfare is increasingly likely.
He says Iran ended talks with the United States because the initial ceasefire terms required Israel not to attack Lebanon and to stop attacks on Palestinians. Johnson describes Iran’s response as including shutting down major maritime routes: Iran announced it would close the Strait of Hormuz completely and also close the Strait of Bab el-Mandab, giving the U.S. about 24 hours to return to the original agreement. He notes U.S. President Trump then called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu within an hour, and Johnson describes a discrepancy: Trump portrays the call as preventing Israel from bombing Beirut, while Johnson says Iran’s stated demand is broader—stop bombing Lebanon and stop killing Palestinians—something Israel is not willing to do. Johnson also says Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has continued, with the apparent intention of striking Beirut.
Johnson highlights an IRGC spokesman warning residents of northern Israel/occupied northern territories to evacuate, and says the expectation within 24 hours is that Iran will re-engage Israel using ballistic missiles and drones targeting northern Israel.
On the U.S. military posture, Johnson says there is no visible “spinning up” on the air-tasking side so far, emphasizing that air missions require verifying and updating targets and plans rather than relying on outdated programming. He references prior trouble involving the use of preplanned dated information and claims this led to updated verification requirements for new air tasking orders.
He argues Israel’s escalation is driven by a combination of factors: confidence that Hezbollah can be beaten and a push to “flatten” Lebanese areas, alongside Hezbollah tactical adaptations including first-person-view drones with fiber-optic characteristics that he says are immune to electronic countermeasures and allow operators to operate without exposing themselves. Johnson asserts that Hezbollah can operate from underground bunkers and that Israel’s reported losses include significant numbers of tanks, implying personnel strain. He concludes that Hezbollah will not stop until Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon and returns to northern Israel.
Johnson discusses negotiation dynamics, comparing the Iran talks to U.S. behavior in negotiations over Ukraine and stating that Iran’s core positions have stayed consistent from early plans, while the United States kept changing what would be discussed or required. He links the breakdown to frustration over U.S. shifts and to Israel’s continued Lebanon operations he calls untenable, saying that close to four thousand people have been killed over roughly four weeks.
He also describes a behind-the-scenes effort toward reducing U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf through a new regional security architecture involving West Asian partners, with a “NATO Lite” analogy and participation by countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and potentially Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman—aiming for shared security responsibilities without U.S. presence.
On why Iran walked away, Johnson argues it reflects a “clear break” after reaching a point where the United States was not serious enough to keep ties to the process. He recounts information received from Pepe Escobar being investigated about Pakistan’s foreign minister conveying to Marco Rubio that if the dispute is not resolved, Iran would withdraw from the talks (already described as having happened), withdraw from the NPT, and set a date for detonating a nuclear device—while Johnson says details are still being verified, including whether Iran has its own device or received one from another country.
He then connects escalation risk to broader deterrence and retaliation patterns, stating that the most likely path is Iran launching missiles toward Israel, forcing the United States to decide whether to re-enter and potentially expand the conflict into all-out war. Johnson adds that global economic shocks—particularly energy and industrial supply disruptions—could intensify pressures alongside the military trajectory. He further rejects the idea that energy shortages would benefit the U.S. by pointing to a reported shift toward purchases of gold/silver, reduced U.S. Treasury buying, and oil transactions increasingly priced in yuan rather than dollars. He claims Iran’s and Russia’s related movements contribute to dollar pressure.
Finally, Johnson argues Israel’s leadership is proceeding from an “arrogance” mindset, underestimating the enemy and failing to think through consequences multiple steps ahead, which he illustrates with an anecdote about Israeli training methods. He ends by saying IRGC announcements about targeting a U.S.-Israeli ship with a cruise missile make it more likely that escalation cannot be stopped.
Full Transcript
Welcome back to the program. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who also worked at the US State Department's Office of Counterterrorism and who's also a prolific writer on the website Sonar21, and I will leave a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on, Larry. There's a lot of things to go through here. There appears that the Iran war is escalating quickly now, and well, it seems very likely we're gonna go back to Large scale warfare. That is well, over the past few days, we already seen that the US have struck Iran, and and Iran has retaliated. So we see that Israel's bombing of Lebanon has intensified, and this now yeah, they will start bombing Beirut, it seems, or Lebanon seems, and the, the US apparently have given, given a green light to do so. Iran then has responded by by arguing that all fronts are linked to the ceasefire, in other words, you can't attack Lebanon, then we'll attack you. Iran has then withdrawn from the talks with the US and, you know, in the media there's rumors, anything, such as well, a lot of things that could be done, for example, Iran could shut down the Red Sea it's hard to follow, this is all happening very, very fast, so happening, if you could give a nice overview over what we're looking at here. Yeah. So it started off about ten o'clock this morning Eastern, East Coast time, so I guess that's like three PM your time, your five Different from me. six six. Okay, so that's four o'clock your time which means you're up past your bedtime. Thanks for doing this. and Iran said, "Okay we're not-- we're done talking to the United States because the initial ceasefire, the agreement was that Israel wouldn't attack Lebanon." Not just Beirut, not attack Lebanon, it would stop its attacks on the Palestinians, and instead they're continuing. So we're out. We're not, we're not gonna, we're not gonna have any more talks. We're closing the Strait of Hormuz. Now up to this point, Iran has allowed a number of ships to go through, and they said, "We're gonna shut it down completely again, complete shutdown, and we're gonna close the Strait of Bab el-Mandab." That's gonna be shut down. They haven't shut it down yet I think they were giving the United States basically twenty-four hours to see if they would go back to the original agreement that was signed. this got Trump's attention because within an hour of that announcement, Trump's on the phone with Bibi Netanyahu. Now, here's where it gets confusing. Trump's version is he had a great call and Bibi's gonna, nope, they're not gonna bomb Beirut. But that's not, that's not what Iran's asking for. It's not just don't bomb Beirut, stop bombing Lebanon and stop killing Palestinians, stop. Well, Israel's not willing to stop. And since that phone call, Trump's given one version and Bibi Netanyahu is given a completely different version. And then you've got people like Smotrich weighing in, and Israel Katz, the defense minister, weighing in, and Bendikavir weighing in. So, and it looks like Israel hasn't stopped. And, and so then, here's a concerning point. one of the s- a spokesman for the IRGC in Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said, issued the warning, "If you live in northern Israel, they refer to it as the occupied, northern occupied territories, if you're in northern Israel, you wanna get out, 'cause we're gonna hit ya. So, the, the, unambiguous. So, I, I think within, within the next twenty-four hours, you're gonna see Iran re-engage Israel with ballistic missiles and drones that will be targeting northern Israel. So this, this looks like it's heating up. Now, what's the United States doing? So far, with, on the military side of the house they're not spinning up. They, and what, what do I mean by spinning up? Where, you know, basically the air tasking orders go out, where you tell this squadron, "Okay, these are your targets, this is where you're going to hit, this is when you're gonna launch." Now, a lot of that's pre-programmed, but before you don't just, because these were planned maybe six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, so you don't just grab and say, "Okay, yeah, it was good eight weeks ago, let's launch." No, you gotta go through and check them. You know, that's how they got into trouble with killing those girls at the school at Al Minab in, in on February 28th. They used some existing plans that had been planned before with dated information. They hadn't updated it, they hadn't checked it. So now you know, I think one of the consequences of that for new air tasking orders, they go in and have to verify and double-check. So It was instructive that Trump didn't waste any time getting on the phone with Netanyahu. Now Netanyahu's telling the exact opposite, that he's not listening to Trump, Trump claiming that maybe Netanyahu listened to him. So we'll, we'll see. we'll know whether or not if the attacks continue in Beirut and in southern Lebanon, then I think we're gonna see Iran strike Israel within the next twenty-four hours. Well, this should have been the, the key lesson from the war though, that the Iranians are able to deter by going up the escalation ladder with the United States. So this whole idea that the US and Israel can simply say, "Well, let's do a limited ceasefire, we won't strike Beirut if you don't hit Israel," but again, it's open season on the southern parts of Lebanon. The idea that they would be able to- will decide how the war should be fought. there's no indications that Iran would go along with this, so again, this seems very, very predictable. But what do you think is the calculation now in Tel Aviv? I mean, are the Israelis, their, their bombing of Lebanon is it deliberately to prevent Trump from making any extended ceasefire or peace deal with the Iranians or is this just You know, while they're just going along with their usual business. Yeah, no, I think it's a combination of the two. I don't think it's an either or. They've they're convinced that they can beat Hezbollah, or they think they can, and that's why they want to bomb, blow up, destroy that suburb, you know, as Katz Ben-Gvir was saying, "flatten it, flatten it, flatten it, you know, give it the Gaza treatment. But, you know, the thing we're seeing now with the tactics that Hezbollah have employed with the first, you know, the first-person point of view drones, that, that are fiber optic, number one, they are they are immune to electronic warfare countermeasures. Number two, the drone operators, they don't have to expose themselves You know, it's not, it's not like in two thousand and six when they were shooting an RPG, you know, shoulder-fired, you had to get out and sort of, you know, be visible. If you could see the tank, the tank could see you. and so they, they lost some personnel that way. This, this reduces Hezbollah's casualties, and they usu- usually get to do it from underground bunkers. So that, and then the volume I don't know what percentage of you know, actual casualties, you know, killed in action versus wounded. some of the public sources suggest, show that it's well over a thousand wounded. the official death toll was like twenty four, I, I think that's, I think that's not true, that's entirely too low. but an estimated four hundred Merkava tanks have been destroyed. That's a lot of tanks. I mean, Israel's got thousands, you know, I think a couple of thousand, but this is still a significant loss of tanks. And if you're losing tanks, that means you're losing personnel. Now whether they're being killed or wounded, you know, that's a whole nother thing. So Hezbollah isn't gonna stop this until Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon, goes back into northern Israel. Now, and that brings back Iran's threat. Tell them, "Get the hell out of northern Israel, 'cause we're gonna, we're going to hit you." That was the message. you-- 'cause you don't tell people to vacate that area just because, you, you know, you're trying to you know, create business for a moving company. Now, they're, they're gonna hit it. Yeah, well, I saw that the Israeli National Security Minister Ben Gurion, he was making the point that they should well, at any opportunity they should say yes when it's possible to the United States and no when necessary. And the, the, his, his argument was when it comes to attacking Lebanon it's time to say no to the Americans that or the American president, that this is something that Israel will do irrespective. Of what Trump says which, which kind of can be seen as another way now of pulling the United States back into, to war, because if they begin now to intensify the attacks on Lebanon Iran will then retaliate. Do you think it's any chance that the Americans will sit on the sideline or is that-- Or, yeah, I think, I, I think initially, yes. Because America doesn't have any good military options. These are all Trump according to Robert Barnes, and I, I think Barnes has good enough contacts still despite being seen as a critic now of Trump, he was Trump's lawyer. But he, he, he said that, you know, Trump was terrified of getting back into a Jimmy Carter situation where you got American hostages being held in Iran, because, you know, day one, day two, day three, the, you know, the news media starts keeping track of how long they're being held hostage, which becomes a measure of your own incompetence. So this is Trump's not eager to get back into that, and you know, when you look at the, the, Iran has become pretty adept at shooting down drones. So if you can shoot down a drone, you can potentially also take down a, an F-16 or an F-18 or an F-35 or an F-22 or an A-10. Those are like the four major categories, five major categories of aircraft that are in theater. Well, Trump, you know, he took to social media as well, he was making the point that because of you know, his call, as you said, to Netanyahu, that they're not gonna march on Beirut. So essentially he took care of business. But yeah, I mean, where did that come from? Who was talking about marching on Beirut? Yeah, that was I mean, Is-Israel did it, what last time they did that was like 1982, I believe, 44 years ago or That'd be forty four years ago. So, yeah, they'd done it before, and then they draw, they go up, and then they get picked off and killed and wounded, and then they retreat and go back to Israel. What is the negotiation tactic here though, because it looks like Trump is sabotaging himself at, at times, because you know, they're trying to move along the negotiations with the Iranians, and then suddenly Trump decides to elevate the, the demands of the United States when the initial demands weren't acceptable anyways to the Iranians. So You know, it's, it's, it's not as if the Israelis are alone in sabotaging this talks, he seems to be doing this quite well on his own. Well, in fact, the, the, the, the eerie parallels with the negotiations with the Russians over Ukraine, because the Iranian position has been unchanged since the outset of the war, when they laid out, you know, the ten point, then the fourteen point plan. And that was always immediate sanction relief, return the frozen assets, recognize we control the Strait of Hormuz delay comments on the nuclear program, you know, they haven't, they haven't deviated from that. It's the United States that keeps, you know, trying to change what, what we're gonna talk about or what the position is, and Iran keeps, you know, they thought that they actually had some agreement on that. So and then the United States Trump backed away again. So that's why, that, that was, I think it, the frustration with Trump. Coupled with the actions of Israel in Lebanon that are just, you know, become untenable. They've killed close to four thousand people now, just in the last two weeks or last, let's see, last four weeks. So this, this cease-fire started really went into effect like April fifteenth, and so it's lasted from April fifteenth through, well, you know, forty-five days. So, you know, close to seven weeks a little over seven weeks now, or coming on seven weeks, but you know, now Iran's been with the United States trying to get s-slip ships through the Strait of Hormuz, that has led to these new confrontations, and then led to Iran hitting the base in Kuwait. Now, notice, it doesn't appear that any of these flights are originating out of Saudi Arabia in particular. Star is to, to as well. if they were, then I-Iran would be targeting those bases in those countries. So far, the only b-country it's targeting is Kuwait. So and this has been I'm told one of the issues that's been worked behind the scenes with the Pakistanis and the And the Saudis and, and the Qataris that they're negotiating to get the US out. The US is gonna be out of the Persian Gulf, you get this new security architecture, you get sort of a, a new ruling let's call it NATO Lite, sort of NATO for West Asia, which will include Turkey. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, you know, sort of the big four which you know, could, could be interesting, and then, you know, Iraq could join in as well. But, but the goal would be to bring in Iraq, bring in Kuwait, Bahrain Qatar, as well as United Arab Emirates and Oman, make them all a joint responsibility for security with no US presence. Well then, the NATO analogy might not be ideal because in you know, in, in security arrangement, one usually divides because NATO is a military bloc where, you know, country A and C, A, sorry, A and B seeks security against. Country C, which is Russia here, right, right, but like in these other security arrangements, they might-- well, they might be discussing now in the Middle East, it's not security against the non-member, but security with the other members, because I don't think anyone would suspect that Iran and Saudi Arabia would somehow ally up against the United States, so, you know, that's not gonna happen. So it is but, but no, but I, I agree, I think this is it's very significant, and I think it's in the interest of Of this whole thing. so what, what do you think is the significance of Iran walking away from these talks? Because I sometimes think think about the way Trump was negotiating with tariffs, that is, first he'll come say, "Oh, I'll put fifty percent tariff on you," and then he'll scale it back to fifteen, and then the counterpart should be, hey, walking away, being happy, even though there was nothing there before. and it seems a little bit like that's what he tried to do with Lebanon as well From the southern suburbs of Beirut. So now Iran should be happy, but, you know, at least, you know, this is what we'll give you, and, you know, you should meet us halfway. You should let us bomb the hell out of southern Lebanon, at least but the Iranians walking away, they, you know, this is interesting 'cause they, so far, for a variety of reasons, probably kept talks open all the time. They were willing to, to talk to the Americans. Why? Do you think this is just a pressure? Tactic or have they given up on the ability to make, you know, have any diplomacy? No, I think, I, I think they've reached sort of a, a, a moment of, of, of a clear break. the, the, you know, if the United States isn't gonna be serious, they're not gonna stay tied to this. So Pepe Escobar and I, we received some information the other day, but we haven't-- it, it, and Pepe's in the process of confirming it. We'll find out. I'm supposed to hook up with him in about an hour, at five thirty. we're, we're gonna be on a a channel hosted by Zulfikar Ali. It's called Power Shift. But what we heard was last Friday Now, and, and we, we, we, we're, we're confident in the reliability of the information, but you'll understand why I'm a little hesitant with some of the final details. The foreign minister of Pakistan spoke to Marco Rubio and told him in, in no uncertain terms, he said, "Here is, this is where Iran is right now." Yeah, Roy, if this if, if, if this doesn't get resolved Iran is going to withdraw from the talks, which has now happened. It's going to withdraw from the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it's going to set a date for a detonation of a nuclear device. Yeah. Now, so when I, when I heard that, I said, "Okay, are you saying, and this is what Pepe's busy trying to confirm, are you saying that Iran has its own nuclear device now, or have they been given it by another country like Pakistan or like North Korea?" And our source says, "I asked, I asked my source that." He's gonna get back to me. So, I don't, that's, that's one thing we're trying to verify. But so far, what we were told Friday about they're going to withdraw, they've now withdrawn. So that turned out to be true. We'll see if this NPT thing is true. And if those two things aren't being true, then I'm gonna say They may not be bullshitting about the other. I don't, you know, like I said, I can't confirm that yet, we're trying to get it confirmed, but it shows that the, the, the, the frustration level with Iran is real, and they are acting, not on their own, because they've had the full backing up to this point of China, Russia And the, the the Chinese are working primarily through Pakistan. And so Pakistan has played a lead role. Now this, this has got, you know, this has created some of the confusion in the West, 'cause people say, "Well, Pakistan is so closely aligned with the United States." Yeah, but it is that has been true. You know, and, and the history of it goes way back to, you know, the fifties with the CIA. the and then the role that Pakistan played in supporting CIA operations against the Soviets when they were in Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties. And then all the Pakistani contractors who made millions of dollars off of the United States government who was needing to get supplies trucked- In from ports, you know, Karachi into Afghanistan to support the twenty year presence of the United States in Afghanistan. But that said There's also been a close relationship between Pakistan and Iran as they fought against the, the Baluchis. so the, the Baluchi population but, you know, the Baluchistan movement has been a thorn in the side of both Pakistan and Iran, and so they've actually cooperated on that. then Pakistan's relationships with the Saudi, with the Saudis, where they've actually signed in the last, you know, two or three weeks, a, a, a security deal with the Saudis. So this is wh-wh-what's happening is the United States, the ineffectiveness of the US military attack on Iran, I think, has awakened a lot of doubts. About the reliability of the United States anymore. And then so that's, that's having a rippling effect as it affects a variety of these different relationships. this other, this source also told us though, or was writing to us, that the Saudis and Qataris have made a decision as, as well as Oman, to Get, you know, distance themselves from the United States, and Qatar's talking about closing Al Udeid Air Force Base. That would be huge if that takes place, because that is the largest US base and has been for, good lord, thirty years in the, in that region. So, the, the, this, this thing's in flux, but the fact that Iran, you know, I said we were told in that document on Friday they were gonna withdraw from the process, they did that today. So I've gotta, you know, so the source got that information right. I don't know, I can't tell you about the other two. I truly hope they're not gonna use a nuclear device, that would be Well, very disruptive and, well, it would alienate their partners you know, also they've been scoring a lot of points in the, in the way, in the terms of how people view Iran. Like I've never seen this kind of support for Iran, this was unthinkable. I remember twenty twenty-three years ago during the invasion of Iraq, if anyone would have said, "Uh, there would be this much sympathy for Iran," it would be hard to, right? to, to believe, but but again, I can understand why Because, you know, saying enough is enough on these talks because it's worth, yeah, again, remembering that if you go back, the, the US agreed to, to use the ten point plan of Iran as a point of departure and then walked it all back and, and now slowly introducing more and more violence, a little bit like in Gaza, that is, yeah, here's a ceasefire, but we'll still kill Palestinians every day, and now essentially it's the same thing, this, or these attacks on Lebanon that they continued also. The hostility against Iran, I mean, there isn't a real ceasefire. So what, what they're demanding from the Iranians is, you know, you live by your commitments, we'll walk away. it just but how, I, I think, and let me emphasize, they weren't talking about using it against somebody, but it was to demonstrate, "We got it, so leave us alone," as a way to do it as a deterrent. For a future attack. I think that was, that was how I understood was the intent. Again but we don't know, is it their own? Is it is it been, they've been provided? You know, we know that North Korea, for example, has been providing some missiles as well. And I, I got into the discussion, I forget with who, but initially they said, "Oh, well, you know, Iran, Iran can't hit the United States." I said, "Well, if the latest missile that North Korea has, if they provided that to Iran from Tehran, that missile covers the distance to San Francisco." So they absolutely could hit New York or Washington, D. C. So, yeah, this-- and, and I mean, and we're getting into some, you know sounds like crazy territory, but again, put yourself in-- well, we, we know how America reacts when, when we get attacked on nine eleven. And how we, you know, we perceived that we've been attacked by this, by this foreign threat, we've, man, we go around the world to track down and kill the people responsible ostensibly. so wh-why did we think, why did we think that they won't that Iran won't do the same thing? Sorry, my dog. Hey, quiet down. Sorry. Down there, sir. But what do you think is likely to happen now? Because again, just to, you know, Iran has said they're gonna, they're walking away from the talks and they're more or less warned that they are prepared now to retaliate against Israel. So what do you expect to see now? Because I, I don't see any way to get back on the diplomatic track now. Again, I hope I'm wrong, but but it's the most likely scenario now that Iran begins to launch missiles towards Israel, the US will then have to decide whether or not it gets pulled back into this and then we're back into full all-out war. Yeah. Yeah, well maybe that may be very well where we're headed. And only, only this time, the growing economic pressures on the global economy will become more and more important. Let's note that, you know, Trump is he's been playing games with the oil, insur-asserting that, "Ah, we're, you know, we're America, we're energy independent." Well, we're not. Yeah, yes, with light crude. Yeah, we're, we're energy independent with that crude, but that's, that's used to make gasoline and maybe aviation fuel, but, you know, that price is going up 'cause there's a shortage of-- there's a twenty percent shortage around the world. But diesel comes from heavy crude. And the United States is a net importer of that. It imports it, it doesn't produce enough, it has to import it from Mexico, from Canada. Canada's been the number one source, now Venezuela, used to get it from the Saudis. we could have got it from the Russians, but we stopped trading with the Russians on that account, and Russia's, you know, sending more of it to China. So the, that's one of the reasons here in the States, I don't know what the situation is for you in Norway, the discrepancy between your, if you will, your gasoline, your petrol price and your diesel price, but here in the United States, it's about a two dollar difference, buck fifty to two dollars difference, because the diesel has to be processed in a different way and it comes from a different source. So, th-th-that price is gonna continue to go up. Yeah, and so this, this is where we get into the, the impact of the global economy, if because you, you've got price of computer chips going through the, through the roof now. Why? Because the helium, forty-four percent of it came out of Qatar, it's not coming out, and that helium is used to make computer chips, and so without the helium, you don't make computer chips. So that, I think this whole economic cloud that's hanging over the world will be another factor in here. I mean, we're, we're in, we're in unprecedented territory. We don't have any historical example to point to. I, you know, I don't think any-- There's never, at least in modern history, can you point to a period, "Yeah, this is where we lost twenty-five percent of the, the liquid natural gas supply and twenty percent of the oil and thirty-five percent of the--" Percent of the urea and sulfur used to make fertilizer and forty-four percent of the helium that-- and these go to different sectors of the economy. Never have we had that kind of shock that I can, that I can recall. And I'll leave the, the history judgments to you, you're, you're far more qualified on that. But then how does that impact against the backdrop of this war? That now Iran is basically it looks like they're, they're prepared now to reengage is- if Israel, if for no other reason, to stop Israel from attacking Hezbollah and stop it from attacking the Lebanese. Yeah, now after all these years of making more efficient economies, decades of good globalization to have it all unravelled in such a rapid pace, it's very destabilizing. But but often, you know, you hear about Iran in the context of these other energy wars for example, going after Venezuela. I, I keep hearing the argument that the United States, as an energy exporter, will Make a lot of money from these energy shortages it will I guess restore some of the strength of the petrodollar given that people will have to pay. The US and US dollars they, they they refer to the ability to cut off China of course from Iran in energy. So it'll be energy-wise, it'll be good for America, bad for China as its peer competitor. Do you see, do you see any credibility to this or is this just a oversimplification? Yeah, it's a Western fantasy because, you know, look at what both Russia and China China have done in the last week, they've continued to increase their purchase of gold, increased their purchase of silver, and just the two days ago, China sold off forty one billion dollars worth of u s treasury bonds. So, a significant number. And this comes against time when you're having the, the Japanese are gonna actually have to sell, 'cause their, their, their debt situation's going so much worse, so they, they, they've got to raise some cash, they sell those bonds. So the, the, and the purchases of oil are increasingly being made with yuan. Not with the petrodollar, but with the yuan. So the yuan's almost, almost becoming the petro-yuan. And the, you know, what supply that Iran is getting out of the Persian Gulf is going, it's, it's going into the yuan. Russia as well is selling, they're selling yuan, not dollars. So the dollar is starting to come under real pressure, and you're, you're not looking at a global economic situation that's stable and healthy. the, you know, the Trump people you know, I, I think I've mentioned it on some other broadcasts, but Danny Davis did a, an interview with a, with a geologist who's an oil expert named Art Berman. And he did that last Friday, and that is an outstanding, I mean, Berman really knows his stuff, and he, he, he's not political, he's not emotional, he's just the facts guy, but when he lays these facts out, it makes you sit there and go, "Ho, I didn't know that." And so it's you know, he thinks we're in for some real trouble, and it's been you know, he was, he was commenting on like Kevin Hassett, who's a, a White House advisor on the economy, and he made some claim about, "Oh, you know, the oil's gonna be back down, we're gonna be back to normal prices in four weeks or five weeks." And, and, and Bourbon said, "He's lying. This isn't just not true." So This now, this, this added factor of instead of, you know, we're on the cusp of peace, we're going back to war. That, that is What the signals say, and unless we get a complete reversal in position, but we got the IRGC spokesman saying, and, and he's, you know, n-n-no, he wasn't being vague at all. He's just telling, "Hey, you people in northern Israel, get out for your own safety. I, I would take that seriously. Yeah, that doesn't seem like a bluff when it could be, you know, it, it wouldn't make any sense but my, my last question though is just about Israel. That is, why, why this enthusiasm to restart the war with Iran though? Because as I understand it from, you know, even statements from the IDF, they are very overextended, and they also know that the United States Irrespective of any will to support Israel they don't actually have the capabilities that is the forty-year war drained the US to a large extent. If, if the US can't achieve its objectives in terms of defeating Iran, the Israelis are already overextended. Why, why go into this? I mean, there's a lot to lose here at what appears to be quite predictably you know, a losing bet. Okay, so, so your problem is you are a rational, logical person. you don't think with emotion. I'm not saying you're unemotional, but you know, you know the difference between your brain and your heart. Israel doesn't. and I just, from my own personal experience with having worked with them, done some training, I did some training, you know, twenty years ago for Israeli police. there is an arrogance factor where they, they just assume that they know more than you, that they're smarter than you, and that they know what they're doing. And even though you could objectively sit down and show them that they're wrong, they won't listen to that. The-the, and they don't neces- they don't think it through two or three steps ahead. And, I, I mean, it's something as simple, and let me just illustrate with a semi-automatic pistol. Anybody that's familiar with that knows it has a, a magazine that holds ammunition. You put that into the magazine well, you grab the back of the slide, you pull it back, and then release it like a slingshot, and it chambers around. The Israeli army trains, it's all, trains everybody not to do that. They walk around with an unloaded gun, and they wait until, they say, "Wait until you've got a threat where you pull it out and then quickly cycle it to chamber a round. " Well, the reason they do that is their training is so lousy. That in the past people would still shoot themselves 'cause they'd put their finger on the trigger when they weren't supposed to. So instead of properly training them, they came up with this as a method. And so even though I can go show them with a stopwatch. That doing that adds at least a half second to the time from when you draw to have to engage a target, and plus, if that target is close, you know, with an arm's length of you, when you're up there trying to cycle your gun, they can grab it. That's just an illustration, but that is like, that same mentality is what transfers over here. Then, oh yeah, we could, we're gonna go in and we're gonna kill Hezbollah, we'll stop 'em. And then you go, but, you know, now they're they, they've fort- they've, they've got more fortifications underground after the experience of two thousand and six, and now they're using FPV drones with, with fiber optic cable. You're gonna, you're gonna face a tougher, a tougher fight. No, no, no, we're not. They're, they're no good. You know, they underestimate the enemy always. So, I don't know if that helps explain it, but that's, that's been my experience with them. Yeah. Well, I see up on my screen here that Iran's IRGC announced it targeted US-Israeli MSC Srisca ship with a cruise missile, so Yeah here we go, here we go. It appears so, here we go. So well, it seems at least more likely than not that this escalation cannot be stopped now. again, I hope I'm wrong. But thanks again. I know you have a lot of commitments today, so I'll let you go. Thanks again for your time. Hey my friend, I always appreciate the invitation, Glenn. Thank you so much.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jiang Xueqin: U.S. Trapped In Iran, Europe's War Against Russia & a Grand Bargain With China https://youtu.be/Pk15Ov0v98U https://t.co/LLxLQIynuw
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jiang Shuichin argues that rapid shifts in international power generally become highly disruptive and destabilizing, often coinciding with major world-order changes after major wars or state collapses. He says the Iran war could have wider ramifications beyond the Strait of Hormuz and the region, potentially dragging the broader world into escalating conflict.
He explains that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has long been a major driver of the global economy by selling oil cheaply in US dollars and recycling revenue into the US economy. If GCC states were removed from the global economy, he says it would have “tremendous consequences.” He claims that within “a month or two” the world could run out of strategic fuel reserves, grounding airplanes. He also links the conflict to global food supply, stating that the Tigray War provides one third of the world’s fertilizer, and that during the global growing season widespread famine could occur within “five months” or “six months,” especially in Africa.
On the Middle East’s reorientation, he argues that Iran can control the Strait of Hormuz de facto, collect tolls, and de facto use it to reconstruct its economy, industrialize, and build stronger trade relations with China and Russia. He says the US imposed a naval blockade to embargo Iranian oil exports to China, but that enforcement is difficult due to the Indian Ocean’s scale and US resource limitations. He asserts that the UAE is “most desperate for war” after losing control of trade through the region’s shipping and finance hub. He adds that Saudi Arabia faces long-term threat dynamics because Iranian influence and proxies affect both Hormuz/Straight security and the Red Sea.
He claims Israel wants the war to continue to advance the “Greater Israel” project and warns it has discussed attacking Turkey and Egypt next. He frames the region as a “powder keg,” arguing it is hard for the status quo to persist and predicting possible future breakout regional hostilities, including possible US airstrikes against Tehran and possible Israeli false-flag escalation modeled on the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He suggests the status quo could last “the next three to five months,” arguing Trump would avoid being seen as a loser and might pursue a tentative agreement before shifting attention elsewhere.
He presents Cuba as a potential “next global flash point,” arguing the US embargo blocks Cuba from accessing fuel, food, and water, and that Raúl Castro could be indicted, recalling a prior pattern involving Maduro and special forces. He says Russia is heavily invested in Cuba and that both Russia and China are trying to support it. He predicts the Middle East conflict could expand to other flashpoints worldwide, including the possibility of tensions involving North Korea and South Korea, and he claims the war in Europe will also escalate.
In discussing Russia’s Ukraine war trajectory, he references an attack on a student dormitory in Luhansk that reportedly killed at least six students and says Putin promised swift retaliation, framing this as potential movement from a “special military operation” toward declaring war and switching to “total war.” He then argues that European elites are trapped in a self-reinforcing fantasy that Ukraine is winning, describing domestic and institutional dynamics that prevent acknowledgment of losses and sustain continued war support.
Regarding China’s and Russia’s roles, he says Iranian Foreign Minister Araki visited both Russia and China and claims Putin told him Russia is supportive of the Iranian people and views the US and Israel as aggressors. He says if Iran faces difficulties, Russia would reinforce Iran through the Caspian Sea and describes Russia’s response to GCC complaints about Iran. He contrasts China’s approach as neutral and mediation-focused, arguing China seeks peace and ceasefire so the world can return to global trade and that China refuses a clear stance. He also claims China might sign an agreement with the US to buy more LNG to compensate for lost Middle East LNG, especially Qatar.
He describes negotiations between the US and Iran as having “three sticking points.” The uranium issue, he says, could allow compromise through allowing international inspectors while keeping uranium. The Strait of Hormuz control, he says, is core to Iranian security and not something Iran would give up. The third sticking point is Lebanon and the requirement that any peace treaty with the US also applies to Lebanon, including Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. He argues that Israel’s offensive in Lebanon makes lasting peace unlikely and suggests any settlement with Iran would be tentative and could resume within “at most six months.”
He argues the US cannot retreat from the Iran war because US financing needs depend on the world continuing to buy US Treasuries and because continuous bombardment is limited by depleted munitions stocks after earlier sustained airstrikes. He states that to “fight this war effectively” the US would need ground troops, which he says would require a national draft and also a chain of events to justify the invasion, including a need for “justification” to rally Americans and create broader economic chaos that would make the invasion acceptable.
On Israel’s “Greater Israel” project, he argues that Lebanon is part of the project and that even if the US and Iran reach tentative terms, Israel’s long-term objective would continue, preventing permanent peace. He also claims the Zionist lobby has significant political sway in the US and cites campaign spending aimed at defeating a Republican congressman to warn others.
He further argues that conflict models in Europe and Asia are tied to a broader US grand strategy: shifting global conflict to sustain debt and delay economic constraints. He says the US would aim to retreat geographically while still financing and arming partners to prolong wars. For East Asia, he claims the US might allow Japan and South Korea to handle more while American forces and allied structures support containment dynamics.
Finally, he argues that Taiwan’s status quo is not sustainable and points to a “grand bargain” after Trump’s China visit. He says Western reporting frames the visit as unproductive, while Chinese media and experts view it as a breakthrough that could end the trade war. He claims the bargain could involve US access to China’s financial market and China opposing Taiwan independence, with the US pausing or blocking a weapons shipment to Taiwan and considering onshoring semiconductors. He states he expects Taiwan to be a future flashpoint only near-term at minimum and argues the next major flashpoint could be North Korea rather than Taiwan. He closes by describing a Western “legitimacy crisis,” attributing it to demographic crisis, financialization, and moral decay, and arguing it will lead to a decline of Western society. He also argues immigration debates are framed as purely pro-immigrant versus racist, while culture and cultural cohesion are not addressed.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We have the pleasure of being joined today again by Jiang Shuichin, who has taken the internet by storm with this excellent analysis, so thank you very much for coming back on the program. Thanks, Brian. So We see that the rapid shifts in the international distribution of power tend to be extremely disruptive and destabilizing, and usually this is also when world order changes, that is after major wars or collapse of states, so for example, World War II fundamentally changed the international system, the collapse of the Soviet Union also transformed the world order from a bipolar to a unipolar a world order, but. but the war in Iran, it appears to be changing more than just you know, the Strait of Hormuz and the region, it has the potential of of having wider ramifications. I wouldn't necessarily put it in the category of World War II or the collapse of the Soviet Union, but how, how do you see The possible defeat of the United States or in Iran, or I would define defeat as anything that allows Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz. How would this affect the wider world, you think? Yeah, so for the longest time, the GCC was the main driver of the global economy. It basically sold oil really cheaply for US dollars and recycled it back into the US economy. So if the GCC were to be, to be removed from the global economy, this would, would have tremendous consequences for everyone. So they say that in a month or two, the world will run out of strategic fuel reserves. And this is gonna ground a lot of airplanes. the bigger issue is that the Tigray War provides the world with one third of its fertilizer, and right now it's growing season around the world, so it's very possible that in five months, six months time, we see widespread, widespread famine around the world, especially in Africa. So the geopolitical consequences of what's happening in the Tigray War, it can't be underst- it can't be at all overstated. And unfortunately, the world isn't at all prepared for the radical economic geopolitical consequences of what's happening right now. But how, how do you think it could reorient the Middle East though, this war, because, well, the Middle East seems, I guess, inherently unstable as it's well, a key hub for energy and, as you said it's also a key transportation hub for economic activities, be it energy or fertilizer. You know, a-any, a cargo trade at all going through that part of the world, and as long as the region all has weak actors it will be dominated from abroad. We assume there will be more extractive relationships if we end up in a situation where, you know, either Iran is defeated or Iran comes out on top. what do you think this would mean for regional stability? Is it, I mean, would, would a more powerful Iran stabilize the region or will it destabilize the region? Or how do you see all effects of the Middle East being impacted by this? Because as you said, the Gulf countries have kind of, is, is what has had a key role in the international economy, and they have more or less been run by Washington. So, you know, what does this mean? Right, so let's just look at where we are currently. So right now, Iran has exerted control and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. It's collecting tolls de facto, and apparently there's reporting that Iran has already made half a billion dollars just collecting tolls off the Strait of Hormuz. And no matter what, they won't give it up because they can use the Strait of Hormuz to reconstruct their economy, industrialize it, and to build stronger trade relations with China and Russia. So if the Sadaqah- Strasbourg stands, then Iran has a lot to benefit. The United States has imposed naval blockade so basically trying to embargo Iranian ships trying to export oil to China. But as, as what we've seen, as from what we've seen, it's actually very hard to enforce this blockade because Indian Ocean is so vast, and right now the American Navy doesn't have the resources to enfor-enforce a full blockade. Right now, it's the UAE that Is most desperate for war because they've lost control over trade. Du-Dubai is a very important hub of for trade and for finance in the Middle East, and its reputation has been shattered. And the only way for the UAE to regain its reputation as a safe harbor for transnational, for transnational capital and for trade is by extinguishing the Iranian threat once and for all. Saudi Arabia is in a very precarious position because the Iranians control the Strait of Hamas, but they also through the proxies control the Red Sea, so from the perspective, perspective of Saudi Arabia, Iran will always maintain a long term threat. So, and then Israel wants to see this war continue because Israel has the ambition for Greater Israel, and no matter what happens in this war Israel will see that it's much further along in achieving the Greater Israel project. So Israel has already, has already discussed Or warn that they will attack Turkey, Turkey, and Egypt next, and this is all part of the Greater Israel project. So I think that the situation in Middle East is a powder keg, and it's very, very hard for the status quo to maintain itself, and eventually we will see a breakout of regional hostilities again, possibly with, with American airstrikes against Tehran, possibly with the Israelis creating a false flag incident in the sort of who moves very much The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which, which is what accelerated the Vietnam War. And so I don't really see things as staying as they are, but I wouldn't be surprised if the status quo were to maintain itself for the next three to five months. The reason why is that Trump doesn't want to be seen as a loser, he needs something to distract people's attention, and it's very possible that they come to a tentative agreement that isn't at all sustainable, and then Trump switches his attention to Cuba. right now, the Americans have- Have imposed an embargo on Cuba, they can't, the Cuba's can't access fuel and food and water. And the Americans have also indicted Raúl Castro, who is nine two years old he's no longer in the government, but they want to try him. And this could be a replay of Maduro, where they indicted Maduro for weapons trafficking, and then they sent in special forces to to kidnap him basically. So it's- Very possible that we will see Cuba as next global flash point. And as you know, Russia is heavily invested in Cuba, and both the Chinese and, and the Russians are, are trying to support Cuba in this very difficult circumstance. So what I see happening is is pa-- is, you know, a greater conflict arising in the Middle East, and then other flashpoints arising as well throughout the world. So Cuba will be next flash point But it's entirely possible that North Korea, South Korea could also be, become another flashpoint. This war in Europe is, is only gonna escalate. as you know, there was an attack on a, on a student dormitory in Luhansk Russia, which killed at least, at least six students, and Putin was very upset. he was visibly upset when he talked about the incident, and he promised swift and decisive retaliation. So it seems like all gloves are off. Putin did promise a very important- Announcement in the Saint Petersburg conference, and it's possible that he might declare war against Ukraine. Right now, it's a, a special military operation but if Putin declares war, then, then, then the then Russia would, would, would switch to total war. so I see this conflict in the Middle East basically dragging the entire world into World War three, and, and right now we're just waiting for the storm to break. Yeah, I think the, well, the, the successes of the United States in Venezuela, I think this helped to create some overconfidence and belief, at least with Trump, that they could I guess reproduce the success in Iran I never really understood why, because it's a very different theater of war. But I, I agree with you, I think that Cuba will probably have to pay the price for the US failures in Iran in order to-- Well, they desperately need a win, at least Trump does now, but but, but do you think the Chinese and the Russians would interfere or intervene to a significant extent? I, I get the impression that when they're in the Western Hemisphere, they, they wanna, you know, be too close to American borders, they will essentially do what great powers usually do, which is not to interfere excessively as opposed to what they, how they would react if something happened in Korea or in Iran or, yeah? in Japan, anywhere it flows by. but do you think they could play a larger role in the Middle East? Because as you said, the world is different, they do have interest in that part of the world. Well last month Foreign Minister, Iranian Foreign Minister Araki visited both Russia and China, and when he went to Russia, he was received by Putin, and Putin was very clear in that Russia is very supportive of the Iranian people and that Russia will stand behind the Iranian people and that the Russians see the Americans and Israelis as the, as the aggressors here. Okay? So I think that from Putin's perspective, he- Iran is crucial to Russia's strategic interests, and we can see, what we'll see is that if Iran were to come into, into difficulties, then Russia would reinforce Iran through the Caspian Sea. So I think that the alliance between Russia and Iran are solid. you know, the GCC nations have said to Putin and to La- Lavrov and complain about how Iran has closed off its rapprochement And it's really damaging their economies. And Putin and Lavrov's response has been emphatic. What they said is, "Why don't you guys, why don't you guys ever talk about the fact that Americans have killed twenty schoolgirls in Iran, innocent schoolgirls that had nothing to do with the war and which were in which you could say was even deliberate?" So I think the attitude of the Russians is very, very clear. The Chinese are different. So when Foreign Minister Ratchi visited Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese It was not met by a senior, a senior vice premier, it was met by the foreign minister, who is his counterpart, Wang Yi. And Wang Yi's attitude was that China seeks a seeks peace and ceasefire in the Middle East so that the world can return to global trade. So the attitude of the Chinese is neutral, it isn't taking sides, it's, it's China is trying to be an a mediator in the affair. China is trying to- To seek a peaceful conclusion to the, the war as soon as possible. But the reality is that the Americans and the Israelis are the aggressors they are the ones who broke international law, they are the ones who have committed these war crimes in Iran by targeting innocent civilians and critical civilian infrastructure they are the ones who are blockading trade right now in the, the Middle East. So unfortunately, China refuses to take a Clear stance on this matter, and so the attitude of these two different nations are different. And what I think is gonna happen is that China may even sign an agreement with the United States to buy more LNG from America in order to compensate for the loss of Middle East LNG, especially Qatar. So these two, two nations see this, see, see the world differently. Yeah, well, I can understand it though. I mean, if you would be sitting in China, you would-- Actually, this has been a common theme, I think, since the end of the Cold War, that is, for the Chinese, they see a rapid economic rise and also they have a more or less stable status quo which they can operate within. So essentially, if they don't rock the boat too much, keep a low profile, they will be much stronger tomorrow than they are today. So it's good to-- if there would be any conflict, it would be better to delay The Russians have been the, the exact opposite. They, they never had a new stable status quo after the Cold War, that is, NATO continues to push up on their borders, and for this reason, I think they always well, to the opposite of China, instead of keeping a low pro-profile, they punched above their own weight and so so I guess, you know, that could make sense in this regard as well, if if if China thinks it's better to delay any confrontations, even if it's over, you know, Taiwan, whatever it would be, while Russia probably sees the Iran war similar as the war against Russia, that is, it's a regime change war. I think the British and Americans made that very clear already in twenty twenty-two that having Putin out of the Kremlin was the principal objective. Also, of course, the dormitory you mentioned in Lugansk, it, it has some parallels to the killing of all those schoolgirls in, in Iran, as in the only coverage in the Western media appears to be Putin accuses Ukraine of hitting the dormitory, so very, you know, sowing all doubts which they could. but I, I wanted to, yeah, touch upon something you mentioned before. You said that, that Israel, under the Greater Isr- Greater Israel project could go after countries Like Turkey or even Saudi Arabia, again, that's where the territory territorial claim at least are. So how do you, how do you think the Greater Israel project would be affected by this, by a defeat in Iran? again, we don't know it's a defeat yet, but if, if the US would have to- You know, go home without the Strait of Hormuz, Iran comes out on top 'cause the Israelis seems like they're already overstretched. do you think this could be essentially the collapse of the Greater Israel project, or, or would they just escalate? The reality is that it's impossible for Americans to walk away, because right now the Americans and the Iranians are negotiating, they've been negotiating for the past two months, and there are three sticking points. The first sticking point is the uranium issue, and here I think the Americans can compromise, where the Iranians agree to keep the uranium, but allow international inspectors to come in and ensure they're using it for civilian purposes, okay? So the first sticking issue is the uranium. The second sticking issue is the- Of Homs so the Iranians obviously want control over the city of Homs in order to extract reparations for this war that has devastated their nation and the Americans here would be willing to make a compromise. But the third sticking issue is Lebanon and the-- and here the Iranians are emphatic and say that whatever peace t- peace treaty that we sign with the Americans also applies to Lebanon, mean-meaning that the Israelis have to withdraw from Lebanon. And here Even Americans were to agree to such a deal, there's no way they can enforce it because Israel will just expand this war. In fact, what's been happening these past few days is that Israel has gone on the offensive in Lebanon. So, you know, Israel is this pit bull that the Americans can't put back on, on, on, on, on a leash, and there's absolutely no way for peace to to, to be negotiated now without, without settling this Lebanon issue, and the Israelis have shown that they are completely Committed to conquering all of Lebanon. Right now, I think they have like twenty percent of the territory, but they are but you know, Lebanon is an important part of the Greater Israel project. They have to conquer all of Lebanon, as well as Jordan and Syria, in order to achieve the Greater Israel project. So there's really no way for a permanent peace to to, to, to arrive in Iran. Whatever peace that they negotiate on will just be tentative. It might be at most six months before the ru- the war, war resumes. And again, Sticking, sticking issue is Lebanon and Hezbollah and, and so there are so many ways for Israel to continually, to force America to, in, into conflict in the Middle East. Unfortunately, as we've, as we saw from the Thomas, from the Thomas Massie election in Kentucky, the Zionist lobby has tremendous political sway in America. They put, they invested thirty million dollars just to defeat one Republican congressman who- Who didn't have much of an impact in Congress anyway, who was just one person and but they made a point of defeating him to send a strong message to all other politicians that if you defy the Israel lobby, then they'll come after you. And and, and so given the tremendous political sway of the Zionist lobby over American politics, given the fact that Israel is intent on starting as many wars as possible in order to achieve the Greater Israel project I think that this war in the Middle East can Only escalate. And when I mean escalate, I mean that eventually America will have to send in ground troops. And the reason why is that America has just run out of weapon systems. It's just too much too expensive to keep on bombarding Iran with bombs. If you wanna fight this war, you wanna fight it effectively, you have to send in ground troops. and, and so I see this happening within a, within a year. Yeah, well, it, it does seem like at, at each of these issues, each side have some room to maneuver, I think. On the, yeah, the nuclear issue, as you said, I think the Iranians would be willing to give something if they had sanction relief in return. The Strait of Hormuz, I think this is not that the Iranians, this is core to their security, so they're not gonna give this up, I think. But but the real breaking point, yeah, it could be Ending the war against Iran's allies as well, so Lebanon, Palestine. but if the US isn't able to come to any agreement, which, you know, which will be too humiliating, is it possible that it essentially the war just, it never stops, but the shooting comes to an end? That is because whenever the US now attacks something in Iran, Iran strikes back immediately, which would be an incentive for the US to- Do not do this. And again is it possible that just both sides stop firing upon each other, the US blockade comes to a, you know, quiet cancellation, and they start pulling a bit back, and they're just technically at war, but no one's firing it at each other? Could that be a possible solution? Yeah, I mean, that's what a lot of people assume will happen, but we have to remember that America is running against running against a clock. America has a bomb in its head, on its head, and it's called the national debt. Right now, America has thirty-nine trillion dollars in debt, and so America spends about two trillion dollars annually on interest payments alone. and so the only way to maintain, to sustain its debt is for America is for America to force people to continue buying US treasuries, and right now what, what we're seeing is a sharp increase In US Treasury yields. So right now, I think it's about five to six percent, so it's going up. And, and so America can't afford to wait because if you just wait you, no one's, no, everyone's gonna dump their US treasuries. Right now, Japan and China are dumping their US treasuries. the G7 is also dumping their US treasuries in order to buy gold in order to finance their economies now that they can't sell oil. So America has a very short timeframe to conclude This war in the Middle East, it can't afford to wait because if it waits too long, then its entire economy could collapse. It could blow up we, we don't know the, the specifics, but we, we do know that it's a ticking time bomb. How about well, as you said, if- If there would be a possibility for a peace I assume that the Palestinian issue would have to be resolved, because, I mean, this applies for the Israelis as well. If they would want to find some kind of a way of coexisting with the Iranians, I don't see this is possible without resolving the Palestinian issues. That is you know, if this was solved It would be much easier for, for Israel to, to make its peace with you know, they won't care for it, but to have you know, such a share of the region with Iran. But do you think there's any appetite in Israel to, to find like a g-grand compromise or grand bargain, or is this you know, pie in the sky wishful thinking? So from Trump's perspective, he's already solved the Palestine issue, right? So from his perspective, what's gonna happen is that Jared Kushner and Steve Wexler are gonna go in to Gaza and redevelop it as this Mediterranean resort, and it's gonna, it's gonna give jobs to Palestinians, and it's gonna make everyone wealthy. So from Trump's pers-perspective, Palestine is, isn't no longer an issue, but we know that's not true because we know that there's continual flare-ups in Gaza. We know that the Israelis aren't respecting the ceasefire. we know that there's been a lot of war crimes committed by the Israelis in Gaza. The other issue is that you have elements within the Israeli state who are Mezhednik. Who are eschatological, and so they want to achieve the Greater Israel project, and they want to cleanse Greater Israel of all Amalek and so that includes the Palestinians and so there's a religious fever for genocide right now, and I don't see these two sides being able to find a compromise. You know, you have one side that is geopolitical that wants big money and the other- Have another side that is eschatological that wants to see the world rise up against Israel. But again, if we take a step back, how, how do you see the, if there is no possibility for the US to make peace with Iran, does it have the capabilities though to, to defeat Iranians? Because what, what you suggest is, you know, they would need ground troops to go into Iran, but even this would be very challenging. I mean, if it, even if it was limited to control The coast along the Strait of Hormuz, this is a very long coastline, and the, and with the new weapons technologies, that is, the, the, they could you know, push them back with the, with drones. The way the country is structured, with, you know, the part of the coastline, you have mountainous regions, the ability to supply and support any US occupation force. I mean, it would be very different than what they did in Iraq. They wouldn't have clear entry points either. I, I guess they wouldn't come in from the sea. How do you see, how do you see this war ending though, because? I think initially the US, you know, they still think they might be able to strangle the Iranian economy, disrupt energy exports to China, so again, it's a, it's a win. But But, but for the US the, the Iranians can now essentially not just destroy their bases, they can incentivize the Gulf states not to rebuild and re-rehost them. By controlling the Strait of Hormuz, they can dismantle the petrodollar, they can essentially put sanctions on anyone who sanctions Iran in terms of having access through the Strait of Hormuz. So they have a lot of tools here. So you know, would you say Iran is winning or, or is it difficult to put that label on? Yeah, so it's impossible for America to retreat from this war, and the reason why is the national debt, three and a half trillion dollars. America needs the world to continue to buy US Treasuries in order to finance this debt. And if America were to retreat from Iran, it would signal to the world that America is a paper tiger. It, it can, it can no longer enforce the dollar as a global reserve currency. Everyone would dump US Treasuries. And they'll be forced to dump US Treasuries in order to finance their economies, especially the GCC. So we treat this as not an option. It's also not an option to continue the, the war as it is, where America can- where America bombards Iran continuously. And the reason why is that over those six weeks, when America was bombarding Iran continuously, they spent about four years. Of mi- of munitions, so their stockpile is depleted, right? So they can't continue this air war, it-it doesn't get you anywhere, and so the only option that they have is to ins- is to eventually insert ground troops to use a ground invasion, but for that to happen, you would need a national draft, you'd have to call up, you know, about, I would say, at least half a million soldiers and send them off to Iran, and in that instance, you might have a possibility of winning. And in order for America to justify a national draft, you need a series of events to happen, okay? You need a false flag incident, you, you, you, you need some, you need justification to rally the American people, but you also need to create enough economic chaos within America and outside the world so that people will accept a ground invasion of Iran. so I think what's happening is that the Trump administration, they are intent on continuing this war, but they're just waiting for the economic pain to spread across the world so that the entire world begs the America to, to end the Iran issue once and for all. And the world knows that there's no way that America surrenders, so your only option is to support America in its invasion, and already we're seeing NATO con- considering sending forces to the Chechnya moves. Yeah, well, I think that's always been the assumption that is, especially in Europe, that the only constraints of America would be its intent and willingness to do something, because there's always this assumption in Europe that Americans have infinite capabilities, so the only thing that's restraining a victory is whether or not they will commit to it. That's kind of the logic, not just against Iran, but also, of course, against Russia. They think that if only the US commits to defeating the Russians, then we'll get it you know, even though- Biden tried to do this for several years but, but, but on that topic though, what do you see? Because the, I, I can see why the Iranian war can't be put to an end, why this, again, is becoming another forever war, it can't be won, there's no pulling back. But what is it that keeps the Ukraine war going? And And also, how, how do you see the US position changing? Because now I see Heg-Hegseth making the point that, "Well we have to continue to help Ukraine." I'm not sure if this is just re- re- rhetoric or, you know, if, if the US hasn't well, I don't necessarily want to put an end to the war, they rather just transfer responsibility to the Europeans. well, again, short question, then would be, how do you-- Well, what is it that keeps the war going? I think it's, I think it's a self-delusion. I think from the perspective of the European elite, they are winning the war in Ukraine. so there's talk, there's reporting that the Ukrainians have pushed back the Russian offensive and now the Ukrainians are gaining more territory. and quite honestly, right now, the Europeans live in their own elitist bubble, and they, and you're only allowed into this bubble if you support the war completely. So If you're at the center, if you're trying to point out facts on the ground, for example, Ukraine has lost over a million men, and Ukraine doesn't have the resources to sustain this war, you're pushed out, you're considered a traitor, you're considered a pessimist, and then you're pushed out. So the people in Brussels just live in their own little fantasy world, and they're absolutely convinced that, first of all, first of all, Ukraine is winning this war, second of all, Russia is on the brink of economic collapse any day now. Russia will collapse economically. Now, third, and third of all, Putin is on life support. The elite, the Russian elite, are so angry about this war that they're ready to rise up against him. So if we just wait one more day, either the elite, the Russian elite, will overthrow Putin or the Ukrainians will break into Crimea or the Russian economy will collapse if you just wait one more day. And quite honestly, once the elite, the European elite, fall into, into, into the- Into the solution isn't possible to convince them otherwise, and that's why this war continues to this, to this day. Yeah, I noticed as well that after having to listen to the European elites and their, you know, stenographers in the media saying Ukraine's winning, winning for all these years, when it was obviously that they were being destroyed you know, it seemed like they were finally sh-shifting towards, you know, reality was catching up. They were saying, "Well, they're in a difficult spot, we might have to help them more, They seem to have returned back into, you know, hence why Ukraine is winning. I, it's I, I don't know, I consider the European elites to be Essentially, a social constructivist view it as, you know, if you say that Ukraine is winning, then the public will pull, throw the full support behind, 'cause they wanna bet on the winning horse. And if, and if they support it, then we can send the weapons, and then somehow we can win after all. If you accept reality as it is, that we're losing, then the public will withdraw its support, will try to mitigate the catastrophe of this loss, and then the money dries up, and then we lose. So I think Like to construct their own reality. The problem is you know, you can only do that for so long before you run into a wall. I just found a comment in this country, a newspaper wrote about me that when when Dean says the world is multipolar, it's, it's a way, it gives Putin legitimacy because it suggests that Russia is a po- as a pole of power in a multipolar world, as opposed to just being China and the US. And so we shouldn't call it multipolar because this gives legitimacy to Russia. So we have to- We're forced essentially to live in a fake world, world of delusion. Otherwise, if you recognize the world as it is, you can, you know, legitimize our enemies and you know, as you said, you're kicked out of polite society. But it's So, sorry, but, but another point that's very important is that in order to maintain their fantasy, they will sacrifice everything. So basically the Europeans are gearing up, gearing up for total war. You know, the Germans have, are, are planning a, a conscription. so you know, they, they will fight this war till the last Ukrainian, until the last European. they won't give up their fantasy. This is where I was wondering where Sid is going though, because my, my concern, what I've been saying for at least the past twelve, thirteen years, is we shouldn't not go down this path towards a war with Russia. That is, you know, very basic. If you try to push NATO into Ukraine, my argument was always, you know, it would be like the Russians were establishing themselves in Mexico. It's there's only, you know, the only outcome possible here is war, and eventually Ukraine will be destroyed. Then the escalation would compel Russia to retaliate. Again, if Russia sees this as an existential threat, there's no way it's gonna back down, so either we go to nuclear war or we're defeated. But. But how, how do you see then this yeah, w-w-where this war will be going? Because I think the Russians now, their calculations, at least what I hear from Moscow is that the, the mood has shifted dramatically. That is after the Europeans, especially, expressing the intent and now the, also the ambition to develop the capabilities to fight Russia, and they couldn't be more clear in this language. you know, there's no more point to pretend as if, you know, be afraid of having a direct war because at the At the moment, the Europeans are striking Russia, and Russia's not striking back. So the war is already here. So what is there to be deterred about it? The Russians should restore their deterrence. At least that's what I'm hearing. so how do you see it? Where, where is this gonna go? Yeah, so I see that there's a larger American grand strategy behind all this, right? So for the longest time, in a unipolar world, America guaranteed peace and safety for everyone, and that's what allowed for global trade, and that's what allowed for a period of tremendous peace and prosperity. And now that America has- 4.39 trillion dollars in debt, and now that the American economy has basically been hollowed out by-- because they've, you know, financialized their economy and they shifted their manufacturing to China, now America can't afford to guarantee peace and safety for the world. And so what America wants to do is shift the world into one of continuous conflict. So the grand vision is that America retreats back into the Western Hemisphere, it's something called the Monroe Doctrine, whereas complete control Over all the nations of the Western Hemisphere, including Venezuela Cuba, but after Cuba, then you, you can, we can imagine the Americans will target Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Colombia, it's all part of this Greater North America project, right? So you, so you create a fortress North America, and then you plunge the world into war by causing conflicts throughout the world. So in Europe there'll be a war between the Russians versus Ukrainians, backed by the Germans, the French, and the- The British, and that'll be continuous war that could go on for decades, and while this war is raging, America will provide financing, armaments, and resources to Europeans to ensure that they will fight this war to the last European, right? And by doing this, the Americans can sustain their national debt and grow their economy. In Asia-Pacific, we're seeing the same thing played out where- you know, the Shangri-La forum just including Singapore and China didn't really go. I mean, China did send a representative, but China, China wasn't there. Peter Hexe there, was there the Japanese were there, the Filipino, the Filipinos were there, and I think what's gonna happen is that the Americans retreat from the Asia Pacific and let Japan and South Korea do more of the he-he-heavy lifting and they'll be backed up by American allies in the First Island Chain, specifically the- Philippines, and the goal is to force these nations to come to conflict with each other so that they're now again forced to buy American armaments and resources. And so that's the world that America wants to create, a world of continuous conflict, which is very similar to World War II. Remember, World War II was the greatest thing for America. Now, Trump talks about how to make America great again. Well, World War II is what made America great, because the Europeans exhausted themselves on the battlefield and then the Japanese- Chinese exhausted themselves on the battlefield in China, and then towards the end, the Americans came up and cleaned house and conquered the world and established Pax Americana. So I won't, I won't, I won't be surprised if American strategists were were not playing the same thing, where they wanna plunge the world back into World War III, and then America will be left alone, and America can rebuild its manufacturing base, and eventually when the time is right, America will then conquer the world again and establish Pax Americana again. That I think is the larger grand, grand strategy here. Well, yeah, I, I got the same impression. I think the European leaders, they saw the Ukraine war as essentially, you know, they, the European leaders sitting at the table moving the Ukrainian pieces around against the, the Russians. I don't think they realized yet that the political West doesn't exist in its former form. That is, the Europeans, they've become pieces of the table now. That well, the fight to the last Ukrainian will essentially soon be the fight to the last European. So, I- They, I, I think they also don't realize that they're proxies of America. They think they're allies with completely overlapping interests, but but the, the problem I think is that they have very wrong expectations 'cause they look the last four years very, you know, they have proper escalation control, they're able to org- to manage the battlefield well, and the assumption I think is that if yeah, that it will essentially just be con- be a continuation of this slow- War in the trenches of Donbass where they essentially tilted in the favor of the Europeans and the Ukrainians. I don't think the Russians would fight a war with Europeans in any way similar to what we've seen the past four years. The, I think the brutality would be much, much more vicious and it would be fought more on European territory. But well, essentially my question, sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I, I, I want my point to make about Europe, which is like right now, Europe, Europe is controlled by bureaucrats. These These aren't visionaries. These aren't people who are responsible to the people. They're just bureaucrats, meaning that they live in, in their own fantasy world, meaning they refuse to take responsibility for their actions, and meaning that they turn a blind eye to to reality. So what, what, what they're really trying to do is not take blame for the defeat of Project Ukraine. They're just, they're just trying to pass the buck. They're trying to, they're trying to prolong this war as long as possible so that they can retire Into their nice pensions and, and then leave the problems to the successors. these, these aren't competent leaders, these are just lazy bureaucrats. I might have used the word "leader" a bit generously there, so no, I don't disagree with that label, calling them bureaucrats. But what I want to ask was the war with Iran, it appears to have changed some things, though. That is, when the Americans were gonna fight and knock out the Iranians, they realized that they already sent too many weapons to Ukraine, so they had to pull weapons out of East Asia and even, you know, the little weapons they-- well, the insufficient weapons they had in the Middle East, they prioritized Israeli, so essentially end up in this situation now where the, many of the Gulf states are discussing to what extent it's a good idea to be frontline states for the US empire. The Europeans are certainly having similar discussions now. That is well, the Americans won't come to our aid necessarily so they transferred with, you know, in twenty twenty-two, they convinced the Europeans to join in on this war, and then they-- now they're outsourcing it to the Europeans and then essentially pulling back from the whole NATO cooperation. So- I think they also learned this lesson, and in East Asia as well, I think the, especially the South Koreans are having these discussions. That is, you know, why, why would we make an enemy out of China, and then if something goes wrong, we're gonna have you know, to what extent will the Americans actually be able to protect us? it just seems like the alliance system of the United States it, it could falter. I mean, the, the idea that you can replay the World War II in this way of well And burning down the rest, I don't see this necessarily as being feasible. So I guess, yeah, that was my question, do you see this as being feasible or just a recipe for a very messy suicide? I think in the short term it's very feasible. So let's, let's, let's just focus on Japan, right? So Japan received most of its, most of its oil from the Strait of Hormuz and Japan has no, has very little resources, and Japan is losing a lot of its strategic reserve. And so if you run out of oil, you're in a lot of trouble, right? So what's, what, what are, what are Japan's options? Well, you can either buy LNG and fuel from Russia or from America. And this- For instance, America I mean, the fact of the matter is, America has fifty thousand forces in Japan. and America right now is helping Japan build its own CIA, it's helping Japan remilitarize. And, and I mean, like if you're Japan, you have absolutely no option in this matter but to become a vassal, a proxy for America, right? because if you don't agree to this, then America will just blockade you. You-- I mean, you're, you're already losing all From the Strait of Hormuz, and if America refuses to finance you, America refuses to provide you resources, then your economy is completely screwed. So unfortunately Japan has absolutely no choice but to be a proxy for America and to do America's bidding. That's point one. Point two is that- China has always been hostile towards Japan, so if America were to, were to retreat from the region, then it's entirely possible that China starts to blockade Japan because China has tremendous shipbuilding capacity. So there are all these historical, geopolitical, economic factors within a region that America can exploit to its advantage. And so I don't see how Japan and China Can avoid a conflict. I live in China, I can tell you that the rhetoric has ramped up tremendously these past six months, especially after Prime Minister Takiyachi said that Taiwan is core to Japan's strategic interest. So, you know, last year there were millions of, of Chinese tourists going to Japan, now there's very little. And China's even discussed the possibility of closing its airspace to Japanese airlines. So this would, would mark a major- Escalation. So again, unfortunately, even though America is a bully, most of the world is too much mired in its own regional conflicts to really care that much. Well, that was my initial comment about the rapid shifts in international distribution of power. There is, if these shifts happened over a longer period of time it would be more time for countries to adjust to new realities, but I think it's very difficult for, yeah, countries like Japan to reorient themselves away from the US, much like the Europeans after having essentially outsourced their foreign policy and had this excessive security dependence for eighty plus years. But yeah, well, that's a great point renewed conflicts between China and Japan. But what do you see, given that the main, if not only, peer rival of the United States is China, and Americans keep referring to China also as as a motivation in the Iran War, that is, if you can cut off oil exports to the Chinese, then That in itself is a win. how, how do you see the yeah, the, the sustainability of Taiwan the Taiwan status in its current form? Because, you know, as I said before, China, I think, has an interest, you know, if, if there has to be a military conflict, it's better to do tomorrow given that China will be in a better position. The US has the opposite, that is, if it's thirty-nine trillion dollar in the hole and China's strengthening day by day, it's better to have Or at least start chipping away at the sovereignty of Taiwan, no sorry, not sovereignty, at the sovereignty of China and the whole one China policy. So in other words, the status quo doesn't seem very sustainable anymore. And Taiwan had this key role both in the bipolar and unipolar era in terms of containing China, but how, how do you see it, it developing from here on? Will this be a flashpoint, you think, over the next few years? Yeah, so Trump visited China in mid-May for a couple days, and I understand that Western reporting i-is that the visit was lackluster, that Trump just came and sucked up to President Xi. But in China, the attitude is very different. if you look at Chinese media reporting, if you talk to Chinese experts they believe this is a, this was a breakthrough in US-China relations. This is a radical turning point meaning that the trade war will eventually come to an end, possibly as soon as this year. So I think that a grand bargain is afoot. They're still discussing specifics, but let me go over what the grand bargain might look like, right? So what America is most interested in is access to the Chinese financial market, and the reason why is that Chinese save forty percent of their income. So China has the highest savings rate in the world, and what American companies like Visa, you know, BlackRock Blackstone, what they wanna do is financialize the, these household savings, basically force Chinese into American debt in order, in order to sustain the American Ponzi scheme. And this was actually a precondition for China's WTO, WTO entry twenty-five years ago. so I think the Chinese will agree eventually to open Up its financial market, but, but not maybe, not liberalize its currency, maybe allow Chinese to buy stable coins, which, which is basically a backdoor into US Treasuries. in return, what I think the United States will do is declare that they oppose Taiwan independence, and this, this is something that, that Chinese want, have, have been asking for politically for the longest time. You know, so Trump after the visit, said that, you know, Taiwan isn't really a big deal, he doesn't really care. He's, he's also blocked or paused a fourteen billion dollar weapons shipment to Taiwan, which is a very big deal. there's talk of Trump wanting the Taiwanese to onshore its semiconductor industry to America. So TSMC, the largest Taiwanese semiconductor company, they've opened a factory in Arizona. so America is perfectly willing to sacrifice Taiwan if it means that it's a-- it's, it's able to access China's financial market. so President Xi has said that he will visit Amer-- America? In September, and there's, there are rumors that at that time, China will announce a trillion dollar investment in American manufacturing, meaning some of China's leading EV manufacturers will move to America and open factories. So I think a grand bargain is afoot, and I think a condition of this grand bargain is to settle the Taiwan issue. Look, if you just talk to Taiwanese in Taiwan, they're not interested in independence. Like most people in the world, they want to live a decent, good, safe life, and if it means reunifying with China, they don't care. Okay? So I think that both the United States and China would want a peaceful resolution to this Taiwan issue. But there's a problem, and the problem is Japan, because if Taiwan were to reunify with China, China wouldn't have access to Pacific Ocean, the first island chain would be- Destroyed and China now can have a blue water navy. This is a direct threat to Japan's interest because Japan is primarily a naval power. It is primarily dependent on the outside world for imports and resources. And if China were to establish a very strong blue water navy, it could blockade Japan. So there's absolutely no way that Japan would countenance reunified Taiwan, China. Okay? That's and, and, and so- The possibility of this happening is almost zero. So by declaring or by opposing independence, what Trump is really doing is basically transferring the Taiwan issue from, from America to Japan. And I, and I think from, from American perspective, that's a very good and very strategic thing to do. So, so I think Taiwan, it's not a flashpoint. I think the real flashpoint is North Korea. So North Korea given the current geopolitical chaos, what North Korea could easily do is threaten Japan and South Korea. Most people don't know this, but Seoul is within the range of North Korean artillery. So all North Korea has to do is line up its artillery on the border and threaten Seoul, and within about a day, it could flatten Seoul, and that's where the majority of the Korean population lives. And so I think the next flashpoint will be North Korea and not Taiwan. That's interesting. Well, I would I was gonna say with a grand bargain, if it's simply returning to the status quo, then I think it will be, then I, I don't think the Chinese would go with it because it simply look as, looks as if the US would postpone a conflict until we can sort out other things. But of course, if there's if it's actually about reunification. That is ending ending this, well, the former status quo, then it's a very different thing, then I think the Chinese will probably be willing to make quite a compromise in order to remove this, well, possible or most likely source of war off the table. So that's yeah, that would be interesting if, if that could actually be achieved. And I think many people in the US, well, wallet marts might seem outrageous to many people after, you know, living through thirty plus years of a hegemonic era, I think many people in the US begins to question to what extent they're actually able to protect Taiwan if conflict would break out. my, my last question though was just, how do you assess the development of the The, I guess, the possible legitimacy crisis in the West. You already mentioned that many of the European leaders act more like bureaucrats, but it was-- it seems this is, again, not only limited to the, to Europe, but also the wider political West, that is there's a rise of these de-nationalized political elites acting like bureaucrats, they're not really looking after national interests. There's diplomats, our key diplomats no longer believe in democracy, or sorry, in diplomacy, especially with Russia. We have, for example, the foreign policy chief of the EU arguing that she doesn't think it's necessary to talk to Russia. We have media, in the media, we have journalists who act more as information warriors, and as you said, they're back at spinning narratives, Ukraine is winning, Iran is defeated, and anyone who challenges their narrative tend to be smeared, censored, canceled. I mean, this, this kind of failure of institutions, it can, it can work for a while, but over time- It destroys all trust and begins to degrade itself. how, how do you explain this or how, how do you see where, where this is going? Because there would have to be a correction at some point, otherwise you know, they could go off a cliff and you see every year the trust in government, if you look at the, the polling in the America, across Europe, in politicians, it's at the bottom. the trust in media is all but gone. you know, this, this, it can't continue like this. we Then how do you think it's moving towards a correction or just going off that cliff? I, I think it's going off the cliff. I'm sure to say this but I think what, what, what, what, what, what we will witness in our lifetime is a fall of the West. And if you just read some history, you know Oswald Spengler, but even, even if you read the great religious traditions and their eschatologies, whether it's Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Orthodox, doesn't really matter, but they all talk about how when a society declines, there are certain signs. That is in decline. The West right now has all these signs, okay? So one major sign is demographic crisis, where the population is aging drastically, and young people refuse to have children. So what do they do? They bring in immigrants. What do these immigrants do? They clash culturally with the local population. This is exactly what we're seeing in the West right now, where you have these baby boomers who refuse to die, and they have absorbed all the resources, they have all the political power. and young people refuse to engage in economy they refuse to have children, and they bring in like these millions of immigrants, both legally through the HB1 system and illegally but it's causing tremendous social rife throughout society. And unfortunately, this is just a sign of a society in decline, that's, that's sign of more on dem-demographic, demographic crisis. Second, second is financialization, meaning that the society no longer- produces anything, it just gambles, it speculates, and young people just fall into crushing debt. So think of all these young people in America right now that have, you know, student loans that they can never ever get rid of like, you can't declare bankruptcy on student loans. If you think about credit card debt fifty percent of Americans don't have access to five, five hundred dollars for an emergency, but that, that so financialization That's sign number two. Sign number three is moral decay, where there's really no sense of right and wrong anymore in Western society. It's all about profit, it's all about- Following the rules. It's, it's, it's like people aren't allowed to exercise their common sense anymore. You have this massive dictatorship going on. You know, I, I just read today that there were two Americans Czech Yuger, Hasan Pica, I'm sure you know who they are, but they were denied entry to Britain because they were a threat to the public peace. What does that mean really, a threat to the public peace? But you're not, you're not even allowed to speak your mind anymore. And- And it's all part of this moral decay when people aren't even allowed to have an honest conversation. so and then you have another sign which is just evil triumphs in the world. So the more evil you are, the more powerful you become. So, so just think about how this incompetent individual, speaker like Peter Thiel Jeff Bezos just by co-opting the system, there is- People to just have billions and billions of dollars. I think just the idea of billionaires is outrageous and never before in history have, have we had so many billionaires. basically, you know, in America, ten billionaires have as much money as the bottom fifty percent of population. That's just astonishing to think about. You know, one hedge fund manager in America makes more in a year than all kindergarten teachers combined in America. So I think that the situation really is hopeless. I mean, like, like, like, I, I don't, I, I mean, like, like, like, I don't know how to explain this to people, but historically, you know, if you look at humanity, the hu-hi-human history for thousands of years, this is a very, very, very, very, this is a very typical cycle. societies do decline over time, and we're, we're seeing these radical symptoms of that and there's really nothing people can do about it right now. Yeah, what is strange is to see, well, as you said, with the, the concentration of wealth and the financialization of the markets, it's oh, sorry, financial-financialization of the economy, it's you know, it should be common sense that you can't structure a human society like this when you have this amount of concentration of wealth. The irony is that often when people are when, when people bring this up, the, the defense of the direction we're heading now, and it's not even stable, it just concentrates more and more of To liberal economists, but, you know, Adam Smith and David Ricardo and Mills and others, and the, the, the, the problem is that they said the opposite, you know, if you go through the works of them, they were, they were, especially Ricardo, he recognized that with technological innovations, you know, there would be more concentration of capital in the, in the hands of capital owners, it would go away from labor over time, this could be disruptive. So this isn't Karl Marx, this is, you know, the, this was common People understood they understood the problem of rent-seeking, which is why John Stuart Mill or Smith or Ricardo didn't celebrate you know, rent-seeking by, you know, financial elites. But we, we see essentially their names now being used to legitimize what they essentially warned against. So it, there's a lot of, you know, decadence all over the place and right. Yeah. But, but remember that for most of human history, most societies outlaw usury Right? There's a reason why they did that. Yeah. Well, just a last point on that immigration issue, I think this is also something very mature, I think in not just in Europe, but the US. Essentially, the debate is just between, you know, those who are for immigrants, more immigration, and those who are racist. Either you're pro-racist or anti-racist. This is how the debate is framed. But, you know, the outlook is a bit like the shift in international distribution of power, that is rapid shifts in the population. If it, if there's no possibility to adjust, no one addresses what happens to the culture, and, you know, they use culture as this slang almost, but, you know, which doesn't have any meaning, but culture is, you know, what keeps society, it's a glue that keeps society together, you know, it's like what we all have in common, what links us to the generation before us, what links us to those coming after us, essentially what's worth passing down from generation to generation is part of the collective consciousness, and if you do have a massive shift in culture, you It has a function in human society, but, but we-- it isn't discussed at all. It's either you hate immigrants or you, or, or you like them. This is essentially the extent of our debate. It's quite, and stupid, yeah. And look, and look, like what people don't discuss is that a lot of legal immigration is human trafficking. So if you look at the America's HB1 visa program, what they do is they bring in lots and lots of, of Indians, and these Indians often pay a huge bribe to enter the program. and then when they come in the program, they're slaves to the system, right? Because if the company doesn't like you, they can force you back to, to India. So it's human trafficking, what, I mean, like, like that's, that's what it literally is. Yeah. Well, anyways, we ran out of time already, so I just want to thank you as always for taking the time and for all the listeners as well. where, where can people find you? Yeah, so I'm on YouTube Predictive History is, is my channel. I also have a Substack where I go into detail a-a-a-about my geopolitical analysis. It's PredictiveHistory dot substa-d-o-dot-substack dot com. Excellent. Well, I'll leave a link in the description and thanks again.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Germany Is Leading Europe Toward World War III https://youtu.be/WgOJXWqk0io https://t.co/AIB7iDKAsx
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses a second open letter to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, republished in German media, explaining that he wrote it because the situation in Ukraine is worse than six months earlier. He contrasts the letter he wrote previously (December 2025), when he described war mongering and escalation and urged Germany to act diplomatically due to its power and historical responsibilities, with a period in January 2026 when he saw “glimmers of hope” after Merz publicly said Russia is part of Europe and that Europe must speak with Russia. He says that European leaders then began publicly considering a new envoy or diplomatic mediator, but that no process produced results, and he highlights that he views the proposed chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, as unacceptable to both sides for what he describes as anti-Russian hostility.
In recent weeks, Sachs says escalation has come through increased rhetoric and specific events. He points to the Ukrainian attack on a girls’ school in Starobilsk with many student deaths and claims Europe responded with denial or silence, rather than apology or explanation. He also describes Russia, through Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, warning in a call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Russia would attack Kyiv, targeting control centers and operational areas, and advising Western diplomats to take safety measures and evacuate. Sachs says the attack had not yet occurred at the time he spoke but that it was expected.
He adds that he sees other contested and unexplained incidents—such as drones in Baltic airspace and a drone hitting near the Ukraine border in Romania—as raising tension. He also cites Baltic-state rhetoric about possibly attacking Kaliningrad or using it as a base for drone operations into northwest Russia and characterizes all of this as irresponsible behavior in a nuclear age. He says he places principal responsibility on Europe, arguing Europe shows minimal interest in diplomacy and only “whines” when the U.S. and Russia speak, while a union of 450 million should be able to find someone to talk to Russia.
Sachs argues diplomacy is correct but emphasizes Germany’s particular responsibility tied to specific commitments from 1990 onward. He states that German reunification terms—approved by the Soviet Union and other occupying powers—required that Germany not take advantage of reunification by moving military forces eastward into Central and Eastern Europe, and he says Germany and the United States violated those commitments by moving NATO forces east, including toward Ukraine and Georgia. He claims this long-standing duplicity underlies rising tensions over more than 30 years, and he says his letter cites six episodes of Germany not following through honestly.
He further urges Europe to express condolences or apologize for the Starobilsk girls’ school attack and calls for civility, honesty, humanity, and discussion rather than further war-mongering and hate speech. He says NATO countries have key responsibility in resolving the conflict because he links the security competition to NATO decisions and earlier actions affecting Ukraine’s neutrality. He references the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, describing NATO’s commitment to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia as reckless and as a declaration of war in how Russia would see it. He also recounts a 2021 proposal involving a draft security arrangement between Russia and the U.S., and he says that in his call with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, he pushed for the U.S. to commit to no further NATO enlargement, while he describes Sullivan’s response as saying it would not lead to war and would be handled diplomatically.
Sachs then recounts events in 2014 and 2015: he says an agreement involving Germany, France, and Poland to prevent a coup was followed by a violent coup; he says Germany went along with the post-coup direction. He also says that in 2015, during the Minsk II process, Germany and France negotiated an autonomy-based arrangement for ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, Germany presented itself as a guarantor, but later reneged. He claims that the West did not want Ukraine’s unitary structure weakened and that the Minsk II endorsement by the UN Security Council was later ignored. He argues that Merz has a responsibility to know these histories and act by contacting President Putin before Europe is embroiled in another war.
In response, Glenn emphasizes Germany as a guarantor in 2014 then walking back, says Minsk efforts were sabotaged for years, and claims multiple diplomatic paths were blocked, including possibilities for negotiation after 2021. Glenn says Russia now escalates directly against Europe given increased rhetoric and potential direct attacks. Sachs concludes that governments appear to avoid open discussion, diplomacy, and communication, and he says leadership and institutions are “hunkered down,” leaving falsehoods unresolved. He hopes to discuss positive developments in the future.
Full Transcript
Welcome back to the program. Today, we are joined again by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss an open letter to the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. You wrote a letter six months ago urging the Chancellor to do some diplomacy, or restart diplomacy, after merely four years now of having minimal contact with Russia, and now you wrote yet another open letter to the German Chancellor, which has been republished. in the German media. I wanted first to ask why you wrote a second letter, how, what you feel has changed in the proxy war in Ukraine? Or to put it simply, things are worse now than they were six months ago, so that was the reason for the letter. the first time I wrote the open letter, which was December twenty twenty-five the situation was rather grim. there was war mongering and escalation, and I wrote that Germany had a special responsibility in this context as the most powerful country Of Europe, the most populous country of Europe the country that has lots of historical responsibilities regarding the issues that we're facing right now. And in January twenty twenty-six, just a couple of weeks after that letter was published, I saw glimmers of hope. Chancellor Mertz made a couple of speeches where he, somewhat surprisingly said in a, in an open way, "Well, Russia's part of Europe, and we're going to have to live together with Russia after this war. we, we need to speak with Russia," and he, and President- Macron and some other leaders in Europe started to opine in January about the need for some kind of new diplomacy, and Europe in a rather clumsy way, started publicly to look for who it might be that could serve as a diplomat, a diplomatic envoy from Europe. By the way, it's rather sad and strange that the- Person designated for that job Kaya Kallas is deemed by both sides to be inadequate for this because she's an open rusephobe and every day hate speech comes out of her mouth anti-Russian speech making it not really possible for her to fulfill her job which is to be Europe's chief diplomat Well, after January and despite this rather bizarre public opining who could serve as our emissary, should it be former Chancellor Merkel, should it be former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, should it be former Chancellor Schroeder, it was a rather bizarre process, I have to say. Say nothing has come of it, but what has occurred in the last few weeks, and really in the last couple of weeks to a startling degree is an escalation of rhetoric and the Ukrainian attack on the girls' school in Starobilsk with many deaths of young students, and Europe not only not Apologizing for that or explaining why a missile went in the wrong direction, actually in denial or silence about this horrible event. And in response Russia has said through Foreign Minister Lavrov in a call to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Russia's going to attack the capital Kiev, it's going to attack control centers and areas of, of operations control in the capital, and Minister Lavrov advised the Western diplomats to take care and be safe and clear out. that attack hasn't come yet despite the warnings, but I think we can expect- Expect that it will. So these are alarming days, and the response in Europe has been escalatory in rhetoric and non-apologetic for disasters that have clearly occurred. There are many Mysterious events of drones in Baltic airspace and a, a drone hitting in Romania near the border with Ukraine that are contested, unexplained but also raising tensions and a sense of escalation. the rhetoric out of the Baltic states about perhaps attacking Kaliningrad or being- Ready to be a base for drone operations into north west Russia are all shocking. none of this Is the kind of behavior that we need in a nuclear age. All of it is incredibly irresponsible incredibly neglectful of your and my life and those of all the rest of us on the planet. It's truly Shocking. I, I put the principal responsibility on Europe. it has not shown the slightest interest the slightest capacity to engage in any kind of diplomacy except to whine when the US and Russia speak. Why aren't we there? As if a, a union of four hundred fifty million people can't get its Act together to find someone to speak with the counterpart in Russia. So, Glenn, I wrote the letter because the situation is alarming now, not because I have any special hopes that what I say will be heeded, but because the situation is completely alarming, and just to underscore the point of the letter. The point I'm making in the letter is not only that diplomacy is correct, but that Germany has a particular responsibility. And before people jump to conclusions, I'm talking about responsibility from nineteen ninety onward, so I want to be clear, I'm talking about specifics of the events that are taking place in Ukraine, and I happen to know first- And in many other ways, Germany has cheated on German reunification in a fundamental way, because the terms of German reunification. In nineteen ninety, which required the approval of the Soviet Union and the other occupying powers of Germany after World War two, was that Germany and the West more generally would not take advantage of German reunification by moving the military forces eastward into Central and Eastern Europe, much less to Ukraine and the South Caucasus, Georgia, another aim of the This absolutely irresponsible alliance called NATO, and they cheated, and so Germany has a responsibility, given that solemn commitments were made to Germany's advantage, promises made in february nineteen ninety. That in the context of German reunification to end World War two, believe it or not, because there had been no treaty after nineteen forty five until the two plus four agreement in nineteen ninety, that Germany would not take advantage of German reunification by moving its military and the NATO alliance eastward, and Germany and the United States cheated. And this, to my mind, is the underlying reason why tensions rose for more than thirty years, and we saw them happening, and we saw repeated duplicity, because I mentioned six episodes in this letter where Germany didn't follow through honestly in a Geopolitical context that was completely harrowing. And so it's not just general historical responsibility, it's not only that Germany is a big and powerful country, the biggest and most powerful in Europe, it is that Germany gained advantages vis-a-vis Russia, starting in nineteen ninety with unification premised on The neutrality of the countries to the east, not extending NATO, and then time and again, Germany violated not only that promise, but many other specific commitments that it undertook, so as a chancellor of Germany, Mertz has a responsibility to know this. And to act upon it before Europe is embroiled in another war. And all this chest thumping of Europe about how saintly Europe is and how evil Russia is, and this one sided narrative that is unending, "We're pure, they're evil, everything they do is unprovoked." This is what is going to get us to complete and total disaster. And Europe should- Should start, first of all, by apologizing or expressing condolences for the attack on Starobylsk and for trying to understand what happened. That's the first. When you kill young girls, whether it's the United States doing it brutally because of this crazy AI targeting of sites in Iran that killed more than a hundred sixty schoolgirls, or what's happened reportedly in Lugansk in the Starobilsk girl school. We need civility, honesty, humanity, decency, discussion, not further war mongering and hate speech. Yeah, I, I tend to not just blame NATO, but also see that they have a key role in resolving this because where we're sitting now is, I, I accept that Russia faces an existential threat, or at least sees it this way, with NATO's incursion into Ukraine, but also recognize that, as a result of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainians also face an existential threat. So I understand the motivation of both sides to fight to the, I guess, bitter end and be willing to absorb such horrible costs. But but the, the ones that can solve this are the NATO countries, because we're the one who triggered the security competition. If you go back to two thousand and fourteen when we toppled the government in Ukraine, only a minority of Ukrainians wanted to be a part of NATO, and more importantly, we knew it would trigger a war. I mean, this is well documented among Europeans, among the Americans, and we decided to do it nonetheless. So this is My concern, I guess, that we, we continue to push ahead here. We, we know, and it's so interesting and ironic given what former Chancellor Merkel has just said in the last few days again how much we knew about the provocations that NATO was making, because this goes back to twenty fourteen when the US- Really gave a big nudge to a coup in support of a coup that turned Ukraine from a neutral country to a, a very dramatically pro-NATO expansionist country. but before that coup six years before, came the decisive The decisive event that even triggered what happened in twenty fourteen, and that was the commitment that NATO made that it would enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia made at the Bucharest NATO summit in two thousand eight. And at that summit George W. Bush, Junior, was pushing, and especially this was because of his neoconservative gang around him led by his vice president, Cheney that NATO would enlarge, and the Europeans then knew How dangerous and reckless this was, and in fact, I've been told by one of Europe's leaders today, whom I won't name so as not to embarrass, but I was told very explicitly that the European leadership was promised just before the Bucharest summit that the United States would pull no such stunt of trying to demand an enlargement of NATO to Ukraine. But when they- Got to the Bucharest summit, the US was out in full force, George Bush said, "We will commit, " and Chancellor Merkel has written about this in detail, and she says that she knew that committing to a timeline for NATO enlargement to Ukraine was tantamount to a declaration of war on Russia, that that's how the Russians would see it. And she resisted this commitment the first day of the summit, but then the Americans wore her down. And on the second day, while the NATO summit didn't commit to a specific timeline, a so-called map which would lay out precisely the timeline, it committed in no uncertain terms to the enlargement to NATO. And she wrote in her memoirs that she knew that such a commitment was reckless. The reason I say that this is ironic is that just in recent days she said that she hopes that the war in Ukraine stops sometime within the next ten years. What? Are we so incapable? Of human beings that we accept a timeline of ten more years of war, why not ten days or ten hours understanding all of the mistakes that have been made and come up with a formula to end this? That has to be based, by the way, on what was, is, and remains the core issue of this war, which is Ukraine's neutrality. The West should understand this, absolutely must or will have a war if it doesn't understand this, will have a war in Europe, I mean. By the way, I think we've talked about it, but I'd like to discuss it in this context because the war mongering and irrationality and danger and recklessness and shallowness and immaturity of the people who lead us is something to behold. In December nineteen twenty twenty-one, when President Putin In a final attempt to press the new Biden administration to recognize the commitment of no NATO enlargement that had been made thirty years earlier, and to stop this war that was already seven years underway in Ukraine, to press the United States to say NATO won't enlarge. And President Putin put a draft security arrangement between Russia and the United States on the table in mid-December, I think it's December seventeenth if I remember correctly, twenty twenty-one. And, well, there were things that I don't think NATO would ever have accepted, or the US would have accepted, about rolling back some of the existing placements. What absolutely struck me as core and correct was that the United States at that point should say, "Yes, you know, NATO's not going to enlarge any farther into Ukraine, much less into the South Caucasus region, which, by the way, is still in play by the CIA and the United States even as we speak right now. They're playing games in Armenia, they're playing games in the South Caucasus." But let me not Digress, I called the White House and I spoke to the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, and I had the most realistic conversation imaginable. I think we may have talked about it, but we spoke for an hour. We spoke in detail, and I said, "Jake, take the deal. " Say NATO's not going to enlarge. It's a terrible idea. It's not in America's interest, it's not in Ukraine's interest. Take the deal. And he said to me, "Jeff, NATO's not going to enlarge to Ukraine. " I said, "Jake, what? NATO's not going to enlarge? " I said, "Fine, say it. " No, no, we can't say it. It's our open door policy. I said, "I said, Jake, you're gonna have a war over something that isn't gonna happen? " He said, "Jeff, Jeff, there's not gonna be a war. We're gonna handle this diplomatically. Don't worry, there's not gonna be a war. " What can one make of this? Almost five years later. First, the incompetence is shocking. The brazenness is shocking. The naivete is shocking. It's so distressing to have conversations like that. Not one word of it made sense. Yet, I think that actually was American policy. NATO's not going to enlarge, but we're not going to say it, but we're not going to have a war. Like everything, every premise of it made no sense and was quickly disproved. And here we are with an ongoing war that's now since I mean, the war has since twenty fourteen, let's be clear but this escalation is since February twenty twenty-two, so more than four years And now we have here Chancellor Merkel, who I always liked, I have to say. She's saying, "Well, she hopes it won't be ten more years. What is it? Is something so wrong in the European mentality that war is so normalized? You can believe it. Europe has been at war essentially. Since maybe three hundred AD since the Germanic tribes made their incursions into the Roman Empire, and since four seventy-six, when Western Europe splintered with the end of the Roman Empire, it's never been really at peace for as, as it should be. It, it's had stretches that were much better. But what kind of mentality? Rather than saying, "Oh my God, this could go on for another ten weeks, that's horrible, we have to do something. " I hope that it won't go on for another ten years. I may be misunderstanding the quote. I tried to get the exact meaning of it, but whatever it is, it was a rather plaintive, complacent. In not complacent, but plaintive view that, "Oh, we're just stuck by these forces of opposition and it's just a, a long hard slog. " Well, try sitting down diplomatically, understand all of the lies that we're told, and just to say some of the others that I mentioned that are of relevance in the context of the coup in Maidan. On february twenty first, twenty fourteen, the German foreign minister and his French and Polish counterparts negotiated with President Yanukovych that there wouldn't be a coup, that President Yanukovych would remain in power under the constitutional order, and that there would be elections late in twenty fourteen. The next day, a violent coup came. You might think that the United States and Germany and Poland and France would say, "No, we don't accept a violent coup. Ukraine is a constitutional democracy, and President Yanukovych remains president. " Of course they didn't say that. The US was rubbing its hands together, "We got 'em. Now we're gonna go for NATO enlargement immediately. " The Post coup regime said, "Well, maybe Russia shouldn't stay in Sevastopol, Crimea. Maybe it's time to unwind that lease for their naval base and so forth. " You saw the plot straight out. What did Germany do in that context? Nothing except go along. So that was another cheat. And then a year later, in february twenty fifteen, when the war had already- Already started when people were dying in the Donbas, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande personally negotiated an arrangement to end the war called the Minsk two agreement and. It happened to be based on an idea of autonomy for the ethnic Russian population of eastern Ukraine, and I happen to know also interestingly that Chancellor Merkel. Viewed that as quite a good alternative because she knew about the German enclave in South Tyrol in northern Italy, which is another case of an autonomous region in Europe at peace, but given autonomy because it's an ethnically autonomous part of Italy. Italy had taken some territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War One, a German-speaking part. near Bolzano or around Bolzano, and they now have autonomy and everything works out well. So Chancellor Merkel said, "This is how to end the crisis in the Donbass, give autonomy. " Well, Germany negotiated it, Germany presented itself as the guarantor together with France in the so-called Normandy process. And Germany reneged on its guarantor role. I happen to know the United States didn't like it. Ukraine should be a unitary state. We don't want this autonomy. Don't weaken Ukraine. In other words, don't follow through on exactly what you've just signed and what has just been unanimously ratified by the UN Security Council, because the Minsk II agreement isn't only an agreement inside Ukraine. Ukraine, but it was an agreement endorsed by the UN Security Council and then blown off. Years later, Chancellor Merkel said, "Well, yes, we didn't really expect it to work and was gonna give time for Ukraine to build up its strength. " I actually don't believe that that was her motivation back in February twenty fifteen. I think that's a, it's a strange kind of ex post rationalization of events. But whatever it is, there was duplicity. In the end, well, all of this Glenn is to say, I don't know whether Chancellor Mertz knows any of this. I don't know whether he does his homework, I don't know whether he's aware of history, but he is the Chancellor of Germany and he has a responsibility to all of us actually, to behave like a responsible Chancellor of Germany, and that means knowing these events, understanding that there's no purity of the Europeans. side that there's plenty to talk about for true mutual security in Europe, and that as chancellor, he has a responsibility not to be a war monger, he has a responsibility to pick up the phone or dial his Zoom and connect with his counterpart, President Putin. Yeah, the, the lack of diplomacy has been shocking to me though. That is, as you said, the, the, the fact that the Germans were guarantors to this unity government in 2014, which they then walked back. The, the fact that the Minsk p-peace agreement was sabotaged for seven years. Also, the 2019 election, when the Ukrainians were actually allowed to vote for a no-war platform and to make up with Donbass and Russia, and essentially our government-funded NGOs made Made sure that Trump, now that the Zelensky had reversed this, of course, also with the backing of our financed and trained right wing forces, and then ignoring all of this the possibilities of finding an out in twenty twenty-one, then sabotaging the Istanbul PISA negotiations, and then of course, boycotting diplomacy for four years. I mean, it is something unique that the, this is very deliberate, the, the, the lack of willingness to- Find a solution. I'm just, again, you said you recently spoke to European leader and you often engage with them. I, I'm just curious what they actually think because because I'm, I know for a fact that something has changed now in Moscow, that this incremental escalation over the past four years, it has now crossed a line, that is, the Europeans speaking openly about war with Russia, the goal of destroying its energy striking military installation deep inside Russia, the backing this up by mass production Using the weapons openly, saying the intent, developing the capabilities, using their territory for attacks. I mean, I spoke with the Meersheimer, a common friend of ours, and he, he was making the point, this isn't a proxy war anymore, like we are now at war. We, we attacked Russia, and the Russians know this. So I, I know that they, they, they're not, they're gonna change their posture now to a huge extent, attacking Kiev in a very brutal way is one way, but I don't think we have the luxury anymore of just putting Ukraine in front of us and let them die for us, because I think they can also increasingly possibly deter the European more directly as well. So it's, I just, anyways, if you see the path we're going on for years, it's hard to ignore that we're heading towards a war and that we're still not doing diplomacy. Like twelve years of this nonsense sabotaging every diplomatic path, and we're still gonna do it even now that we're at fight the world's largest nuclear power, it's beyond insane. It is, and and one wonders how can this happen in a world of open communication our discussion or the ability thank goodness, that I can still publish an open letter in a, in an important German outlet, the, the Berliner Zeitung. But what I can tell you, what we know is our governments are in a bunker already. They don't talk to the public, they don't engage in any discussion of what we're discussing right now. They won't answer. Of course, Chancellor Mertz isn't gonna answer me, that goes without saying, but in general, they simply have hunkered down and operate Without responsibility. It's hard to imagine because we have all the trappings of democracy we have the, the trappings of accountability but- I know because I experience it daily, you do as well. There simply is no response. If I call a senior official in the European Commission, I don't get an answer, I don't get a callback. they know who I am. I've been dealing with the European Commission for forty years, in one way or another. I've been dealing at a personal level with many of these people. They simply will- Not speak anymore. Leaders that I know will not speak. They are hunkered down. They can't defend their position. They can't rationalize it. All they can do is propagandize in one direction. And call the rest of us whatever names they want or use sanctions or whatever they do, which they do occasionally as well against certain people. But what we don't have even within our own countries right now is open discussion. And this, I think Is not it's, it's just a an explanation of how we go day by day with falsehoods hanging in the air unresolved, because they don't try to resolve them. there's no independent look or commissions or responses or answers to parliament. there's no inquiries into anything. It's a very- Very dangerous situation because the normal processes of truth-telling or analysis or what diplomats are especially important for understanding how the other side thinks and explaining that straightforwardly and if there is something wrong with how the other side thinks, discussing it together with the other side to try to at least- To clarify, none of these processes happens right now. So I was at a again, I'm, this is anecdotal and it's years ago but For me, it's what we see every moment. I was invited by the G7 foreign ministers to speak to them, while I was invited by the host country at the time, which was Indonesia, to speak to sorry, to the G20 foreign ministers, and this was after the invasion, they wouldn't speak with Foreign Minister Lavrov. So here are foreign ministers, it's their job, that's why they're there, and they wouldn't even speak to the Russian foreign minister. This is the idea, you don't engage in actual communication, much less diplomacy and negotiation. I don't really understand what the motivations are. People have various explanations. We can say the publics are disgusted by this, broadly speaking. Mertz's popularity is you know, essentially in complete collapse. Macron's popularity is essentially in complete collapse. Starmer's popularity is essentially in complete collapse. It's not as if these people are expressing the will Of their publics, absolutely the opposite. And so then it raises all sorts of questions. Some people say, "Well, Mertz, he's, he's BlackRock. I don't know if that's the explanation or not. He's the German military industry. Who knows? Seems doubtful to me. These explanations so simplistic, but frankly, I don't have a, a better one. " Because the behavior is so bizarre at this point so counterproductive and so dangerous, and we have to keep the core message to the Europeans. You said you were going to talk, you said you were gonna find an intermediary. For heaven's sake, four hundred fifty million people in the European Union, find someone and get started. No, it's incredible. Again, we have diplomats who don't believe in diplomacy, leaders who ignore their basic national interest and seemingly have some contempt for their own public, and journalists who think it's their job to defend narratives. I think at the end of this, we also risk a legitimacy crisis when, as you said, they're not actually doing their jobs. Anyways, I hope we'll have an opportunity to discuss some positive development in the future. But thank you very much, and I really enjoyed your- Open letter and I will leave a link to it in description and I would encourage everyone to read it, so thanks again, Glenn, thank you so much, see you soon.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alastair Crooke: Iran War Resets the Geopolitics of the World https://youtu.be/tOfXe6ry5UE https://t.co/VDJqUz2zJK
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alistair Crook argues that the “Iran war” is not only a regional crisis but an inflection point reshaping multiple geopolitical centers, beginning with Israel. He describes a crisis inside Israel tied to Netanyahu: Israeli reporting suggests Netanyahu is “in despair” about a potential agreement opposed to him, while pending corruption cases and the lack of the promised erasure/pardon contribute to growing tensions. Crook says Israeli speculation increasingly favors Netanyahu resigning before elections, which are expected in September rather than October, partly to distance from the resonance of October 7. He also notes internal pressure about conscription and Orthodox groups, and says growing criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza is broad enough that the government could implode. If Netanyahu is gone, Crook poses uncertainty over who could carry forward the long-standing Likud/Nanyahu agenda and whether the broader political structure built over roughly two decades could fragment into internal faction fighting. He frames Iran’s outcome in Israel as an “internalized” shift from expectations of U.S. destruction of Iran to the belief that “Iran has won the war,” leaving Israel trapped in “unwinnable wars” without sufficient troops, and without a clear way out.
Crook then links Iran’s impact to Russia and China. He cites Russian strategist Sergey Karaganov arguing Russia should “take the lessons” from Iran, specifically how Iran used conventional missile weapons to hit vulnerable Western targets and how the West “backed off and withdrew.” Crook says this moves Russian thinking toward conventional weapons alongside a return to nuclear deterrence, emphasizing fear as necessary for deterrence. He describes a changing European mood: European ratcheting of support for Ukraine through missiles and drones, including claims that NATO space could protect against Russian retribution, is portrayed as potentially mistaken. Crook says Russia instead indicates it will attack decision-making centers, which he claims are in Britain, France, and Germany rather than Latvia, and that this is “changing rapidly,” including after the summit in Beijing between Putin and Xi.
On China, Crook says Beijing is pushing back mainly through economic measures: restricting purchases of Chinese holdings or access via U.S. stock markets, opposing elements of U.S. efforts to expand dollar/digital-currency influence, and strengthening the role of China-linked assets as collateral in bond markets—alongside European issuers issuing yuan-denominated bonds. He argues this reflects a broader move into a “hard-nosed” posture toward the West and that Chinese pushback is intensifying through measures rather than noise.
In the discussion, Crook emphasizes a shift in Russia’s and Europe’s psychology. He contrasts the Western “luxury” of past decades—where wars were fought elsewhere with escalation control—with the current Russian desire for restraint and fear-based deterrence. He says Western actions that target Russian capabilities risk forcing Russia toward retaliation, including nuclear escalation at some point. A central theme is that fear and psychological awareness matter for deterrence, and that complacency in Europe is a threat.
Crook expands to Israel and Iran’s strategic constraints and the possibility of a “third strategy” beyond all-or-nothing defeat. He argues Israel could eventually change relations with Iran and recalls that after the Iranian Revolution Israel had a period of better relations with Tehran. He attributes Israel’s later shift to internal Israeli political changes: the Labor Party’s attempt to invert the earlier equation (periphery allies vs. Arab states enemy) and the subsequent need to maintain an Iran “enemy” narrative within U.S. domestic support structures. He also proposes that changing the regional equation could lead to renewed dialogue with Iran. He links this to Gulf security developments: Crook describes Gulf states moving toward a Gulf-led security architecture without American participation, driven by fear of future attacks on Iran and their consequences, and says Iran has made clear it could accept Gulf security arrangements that do not leave Gulf states under Iranian dominance.
Crook argues Iran’s leverage is not only military but also economic and logistical: controlling the Strait of Hormuz reduces dependence on crippling sanctions and enables toll-based incentives and pressure, including dismantling petrodollar-linked arrangements. He claims this would affect Gulf financial systems and the Gulf’s petrodollar/financialized Western architecture and also complicate AI/data-center investments tied to Western and U.S. security assumptions, because Gulf reliance on U.S. protection is weakened and ties to Iran must adjust. He adds that many states are already attempting to open relations with Iran—he cites “about thirty” states—and predicts that these changes will become more open and fixed, altering the region’s complexion.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined again by Alistair Crook, a former British diplomat and negotiator with decades of experience on conflicts in the Middle East. Alistair Crook is also the founder and director of the Conflict Forum, so to make sure you read this insightful substack, and I have left a link in the description. So thank you very much for coming back on the program. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. So you recently wrote an article also published on your Substack on the geopolitics of the world being reset by the Iran war. I, I was wondering if you could unpack some of this. Why, why is it that Iran isn't just I guess a strategic defeat for the US, a regional crisis, but also, again, the, the world of geopolitics also being impacted by this? I, I think there are a number of reasons. first of all, there are three countries that are being directly impacted by that. First of all, is Israel. There is a crisis in Israel. I was just reading this morning the reporting from Israel that Netanyahu is in despair at the possibility of an agreement completely opposed to it, in complete despair. And concerned about his future, because as you know, there are cases pending against him, which could end up with him having to go to jail. Corruption cases, long standing ones, but are still ongoing, and which legal authorities suggest, you know, if they do go to conclusion, he might be convicted. And the other aspect of this is The elections and the pardon that Trump has been trying to produce for him and so far it hasn't produced a pardon. In fact, what many of us are asking for is the complete erasure of the case against him, all of those cases that this was part of, that they should be just taken off the charge sheet and put in the garbage. And so far that hasn't happened either. And so- There is thought, and again I emphasize, you know, this is with this is Israeli speculation in Israel, that it may be preferable for Netanyahu to resign and to leave the government early. The Luth raised the threat in an election in say September or October. It seems it's likely the election will be in September, not October, because October will resonate not well with many Israelis for the seventh of October, and therefore he wants to distance himself from that. But it's looking as if he's desperate because the pardon isn't coming through. A deal isn't coming through, said Wood. Alaim, even if he gets a pardon, he's refusing it as it stands because he's not going to admit guilt, and that is required under Israeli law. And the tensions are growing enormously because there's now Israelis having been hugely enthusiastic. At the outset, that America was going to come in and, you know, the greatest power in the world was going to join with Israel and effectively destroy Iran. That's what they want, the destruction of Iran. And now it's being internalized in Israel that this isn't gonna be the outcome. In fact, Iran has won the war, and therefore has won the war. For Israel, in the sense that Israel has lost the war, as well as America lost the war, but Israel even more, it has lost the war and the war and is calling into question, you know, deep, deep issues. People have said, "This, you know, is the collapse of the whole, you know, great Israel project because, you know, Israel is now stuck with- How many is it? Five, six unwinnable wars, and everywhere they're not going particularly well. Gaza, West Bank, or Lebanon particularly is going bad, but all of these aren't going very, very, very well. And as the chief of staff said, "You know, if we were to manage this, we'd need six more IDF's than the IDF we have. So, you know, they're stuck in unwinnable war with not enough troops and no particular way out of it. You know, Iran was supposed to be the magic bullet which would take Israel out of this deepening, deepening crisis into a different period. So some people, and I'm not pretending that this is a majority or a large, but you're starting to see quite Various high level people in Israel sort of saying, "You know, at the end of this, we have to go back to what Ben Gurion originally said, you know, that Israel is a small country, territorial, few resources, small public, small population. We have to stay within our borders. And he also endorsed the Clausewitzian formula that war is an extension of politics, rather than politics an extension of war. And so Bengorean's view was that, yeah, Israel can't afford a big army. It could have a small army, professional army, and it had to rely on reservists. And so people are going back and saying, "You know, well, we've gone quite wrong in this. Now we're overextended everywhere on this huge project to turn Israel into the hegemon of the Middle East, and it's all going wrong, and now we're trapped in all of these wars we've started. And so there's people saying- Well, you know, we need to go back to the Bengarian model. We need to stay within our borders. And there are other people saying, "Well, you know, look this way of dealing with the Iranian problem isn't working. It's not gonna produce a, a solution. this attempt to get United States to destroy Iran isn't gonna work. And so we need a solution, and perhaps we need to rethink the whole the whole of, of- Of the Zionist project and look at it from a different perspective. Now, it's only, you know, these are things that are, these are currents that are, are surfacing, and they haven't reached fullness, I think, partly because Of the huge uncertainty about what Trump is going to do and what's gonna happen in America and what's gonna happen to the well, the economy. So we have-- They, they're not there, but this is a really important inflection point for, for Israel, because the polls show that Netanyahu is likely to lose for the first time. I've always been one who said, "You know, he's Mr. Teflon Man. He will always escape," and people predicting he's about to- Disappear, I've usually been wrong, and I've always said, you know, he, he slithers around and he gets out of these political problems. I'm not so sure. You know, the whole, the government with the problems over conscription and the Orthodox groups in Israel, I, I'm not sure he's going to get out of this this time. And I think the opposition is growing and it's growing the criticism of this war in Iraq. Is getting really very strong and very broad. so, you know, the government might implode. And think about that, if Nenmeyang was gone, who would you think of who could sort of carry, you know, the wide government, you know, agenda on his shoulders from Benguevere to all of the Likud, who, who's, who would carry that on their shoulders? And, and maybe the whole project, the whole structure, political structure that Netanyahu's built up over these twenty years or so Could implode and everything would, you know, disappear into inter-factions and internal faction fighting. I don't know, but I'm just saying there's a big question mark in there. And you asked me about why I said other things are changing too. I think it's very clear Russia is changing. I think we've seen an inflection point in Russia, and a very senior Russian figure. Been in the sort of shadows of power for twenty years or more, Sergey Karaganov has said explicitly in a paper which he wrote, pointing to Russia needing to take the lessons from Iran, and particularly what he was pointing to explicitly was how Iran had used conventional missile weapons. to hit vulnerable American Western targets, and when he, when Iran did that, the West backed off and withdrew. And he said, "We need to learn from the Iran, we need to take the Iran lessons into our backyard." Originally, it was It came out and has become the center of his attention. And so this has moved his ideas, and he was saying, "You know, we have to go back to nuclear deterrence, too. We, you know, people don't believe in our deterrence anymore. We had it in the fifties, nuclear deterrence, and it worked. But then the Soviet Union imploded. The West became, you know, euphoric, and, you know, now if you mention that Russia is a nuclear power, the neocons have a refrain which they parrot all the time, "Oh, I still think it's just bluff, that would be--" You know, Putin would never dare, you, you know, NATO, and now we have the whole hull of NATO and its GDP and its military against Russia, that changes the whole, the whole question No, it doesn't. And so Karganov has said, you know fear and the sense that there is you know, that behind the conventional weapons, it needs clear, you know, the first line is conventional weapons, and he urges Russia to really press on with developing conventional weapons. But ultimately said, at the last resort, when your survival isn't par- error, you need people to fear the nuclear weapon. And actually, I agree that That will be a European interest when Europeans are, you know, thruffing at the mat with, you know, war, war, war with Russia all the time in a sort of increasing frenzy of, of talking about, you know Russia and Europeans saying, you know and actually digging in even further and saying, you know, well, we can't talk, and what's more, anyone, we're gonna put sanctions on anyone that- Uses Russian oil or gas, even if it's bought from third parties from India or roundabout ways, we're gonna stop all of that. I mean, in a sort of suicidal you know, run to at the cliff to the for the Europeans to sort of follow each other over like sheep over the cliff into an economic decline as they find that Energy from America is much more expensive than the energy they used to have. And so I think it's not just at the public level, but at the top level, there's a change of mood, and you've probably seen it, dear, where you know, the, the Anchorage understandings over LaRocca made that clear, and said, "Europeans are partly to blame. And quite clearly they are understanding this cannot go on, this ratcheting by Europe of more and more support for Ukraine in terms of missiles and drones. The UK in April announced it was going to send a hundred and twenty thousand more drones and long- Distance missiles to Ukraine, and they're using NATO space as base in land in the Baltic Republic, the fatherland of Saint Petersburg, and other places, assuming that because it's NATO space, then Article five of the NATO treaty would give them protection against any retribution from Russia, well, they may be mistaken. Maybe things are going to change, but I think what Russia said was slightly different. They said now we will attack the decision making center, and I think what they mean by that is the decision making center is not in Latvia. They know exactly where it is, it's in Britain, it's in France, and in Germany. That's where the war plan of sort of gradual escalation is hatched, not in Latvia. That here is just a, a tool in, in this process. So I think that, that is changing rapidly, and I think probably in the wake of the of the summit in Beijing, where Putin and Xi met. I think what we see is, you know, China does it not openly, not with missiles and not with a great deal of noise, but they're really pushing back against United States in economic terms, forbidding that Chinese or citizens can buy from in the US stock market, stopping If you like, the other sort of ways through digital currencies that America is trying to expand the dollar market, and they are doing the opposite, and with now the Eurotia saying that the bonds from China are effectively good collateral, good collateral in this case means equivalent cash. it becomes part of the deep bond market of China. So they're pushing back with the attempts by the United States to squeeze China in its CapEx, its capital expenditure, its availability of capital, it's just increased the bond market, Chinese bond market, even European stakes now issuing bonds denominated in yuan. And so it's pushing back on, on various- It's not a lot of news, it's not making a lot of noise, but just as Russia has moved, I think, into a new sphere, China has moved into quad but very forceful measures to limit American expansion. I mean, look what's happened to Nvidia and it's the Chinese have just taken all of the Chinese market back again. For themselves. So those are sort of various, so everything is sort of heating up, seems to me and is much more hard-nosed towards the West as a whole, Russia particularly against your, I mean, very, very, very angrily with Europe, not without cause. And then there is a sort of, I think a Chinese rally pushback coming on these sort of rather slight economic measures that are being imposed against China. So they've just, you know, they said, "Okay, bring it on, no more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Z, you know, we will push back economically." Not a great deal of, you know, not a fanfare or anything, but that's, I think, what's happened. Yeah, no, it's a great point though, how the Iran War has also changed Russia now and China as well. I had a, yeah, comment and a question, and my, my, well, my comment was, yeah, I was interviewing Professor Karaganov on this issue as well, and again, I get the impression in Moscow, it's not just him, the, what he's saying, It reflects well how the mood has changed fundamentally now in Moscow. And I think it's often necessary to reflect a bit in the West, because in the past three plus decades under the hegemonic era you know, we've had this luxury, if you will of what, what war meant. We can attack, we can invade small weaker countries, and essentially then war becomes something that happens on other people's territory, we have full escalation control, we decide when it starts, how it should be fought. Fought when to finish it, and our adversaries always have this understanding that, you know we can also use a bloody nose tactic where, you know, we'll, we'll bomb you a little bit if you don't fight back, then it will be a little bit, but if you fight back, then we'll punch back hard. And I think this is to some extent what the Russians want to have some restraint as well. They didn't want it to escalate into a direct conflict, so they tried to, well, tried to wrap things up in Ukraine while they But as you said in your conversations with these neocons, that any restraint on the Russian side is seen as weakness. they've-- it's not just the neocons, it's the all-- overall the Western media, the politicians. So I think they also reached a point now where they say it's not possible anymore with this level of Western involvement, the audacity of striking from NATO territory speaking openly about mass producing weapons to hit our and destroy the Russian energy infrastructure. Can't continue. So I, I, I, I, people keep telling me, "Well, they're not gonna do anything, then they risk World War III." But they also risk World War III through inaction, because if they do nothing and the West now will give-- continue this escalation of attacks on Russia this becomes existential, and at some point the Russians would have to res-- respond with nuclear weapons. So I, you know, it seems very rational, sadly, but it seems very rational to begin to hit back against NATO countries, and that's a very dangerous thing to recognize. I, sorry, my, my question, sorry if you had- I just like to say that, you, you know, the crucial thing, I, and, you know, I've spoken with Professor Karaganda, with directly about, about it, is, you know, it's about what he's trying to do and what they are trying to do is change the psychology in, in, in Europe, you know, that psychology of complacency Is a threat that could lead to the third world war. That's what they have to get at. That's why fear, it may seem sort of contradictory, but that's why fear is important to deterrence. If you don't have fear, if you think it's all a bluff, you can make bad mistakes. and I think you know, they don't intend to be, you know, a Boyle thrall in, in this, you know, the metaphor you put a frog in cold water and- And you'll eat the water, and eventually it dies unless it chooses to jump out of the pan. And I think what you're doing is jumping out of the pan and doesn't intend it to be boiled. So I, I, I, I my, my main concern is the word you use, "recognize. " And I don't think it's recognized, it's not even noticed anymore. They're so, I mean, oblivious to what is happening, to what is going on. And they, if they do, if they're not oblivious, they think it's good news. Oh, this is good news, you know this attack on Russia and, you know, the u-Ukrainians have fought, and well, you know, they threatened to do this, they threatened to do this on the 9th of May, the, the- Remembrance Day in Moscow, the Ukrainians, and they were restrained by the White House. But now the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum is coming up this month, I think, later this month. Are you going? You're probably going to it, so beware, because I think it's you know Who knows, I have no inside information, but who knows after that first attempt, and there regularly attacks in Petersburg now with it, and with all these. British, French-made, German-made, let's not, maybe they're disassembled and then reassembled in Ukraine, but it's the same difference, and then they are used to kill Russians in Russia, and the West thinks this is fine, and why should there be any retribution from Moscow? Well, because the mood is changing there. I think both at the leadership level And also certainly at the popular level, people were really angry in the result of that attack on the dormitory that killed twenty-one people. Yeah, well, I, I saw the same in the media, well across the West that is, now that they're saying, "Well, the attacks on the Russian energy infrastructure is beginning to be felt on the Russian economy," and there's a big celebration towards this end, but they don't seem to appreciate that the, when there were small pinpricks, the Russians could afford to essentially absorb the Western attacks masquerading as Ukrainian attacks, but once they reached a, a significant- Punching power you know, why, why are we celebrating? This means the Russians can no longer look the other way, now they're gonna have to find a way of retaliating against Europe, so and of course, stepping up the attacks on Ukraine. So now, I would expect more hitting against Kiev, more brutality, and also Europe will have a big target on its back. So it's just, this doesn't seem to be any appreciation that actions will have consequences. But but again, as you said- They, they, they celebrate. so it's, it's very strange to, yeah, to see this the, the lack of any strategic thinking in terms of what we wanna achieve, how exactly can this be achieved? 'Cause they can hate Russia all they want, they can hate the, the Iran all they want and destroy it, but but if, if there's no pathway, what exactly, you know, are, are we doing? It's, I, I, I don't understand politics anymore because I don't think it makes, yeah, Recently quite a while ago. but yeah, the, the, when you ask that particular question, I don't under- you know what they're trying to do. I, I don't know, but my, my spin Is that, you know, they have really, you know, pinned everything on Ukraine. It is the, you know, raison d'être of Brussels in, in an extreme way now. Everything is about Ukraine, Ukraine, for, for, for, for, for, for then. Now, we can't go to war. I mean, Europe isn't having the money, it hasn't the munitions to go to war with Russia. So what is it all about apart from? Preparing it, I think it's all about still the hope and breathels is that somehow Trump will soon be off the scene and that then there will be a new administration coming in whenever that happens, and then, you know, we go back to the Second World War era, which people have never forgotten, sort of persuading Roosevelt to join Europe in a war against Russia. and so the, I think ultimately they I, I don't think it'll happen, and I think it's the fantasy of Europeans, but I think they fantasize, you know, just as Iran fantasized, I mean, Israel fantasized about bringing the United States into war against Iran Europeans fantasize about how they're going to, we can, we can show America that Russia is So that we can bring it in to join, and you remember Charles, King Charles said precisely this at the, at the congress when he went there, he said, "You know, now America must prepare with Europe for war with Russia. I don't know how it didn't- I mean, the extraordinary thing is there, why should this be in the European interest? But bizarrely, nonetheless, he said it. Obviously, his speech get partly written by the government, but nonetheless, he said it. It was a really extraordinary thing to call for, for American European war on Russia. What are they thinking on? I think, you know So much it just, just couldn't be. Yeah, well, all of this would have been unthinkable. Imagine during the Cold War, you would have Charles Stander saying, "Oh, let's prepare, we, well, we have to go to war against the Soviets. I mean, this is, this is lunacy, but it's become normalized. But this also reflects, I think, a commonality between Russia and Iran, that is when you're in a when you're in a strategic situation where the everything is on the line and the outcome will be the all or nothing, countries are willing to take incredible risks and do very foolish things. but again, that's why, you know, the objective- Should be to look for some, you know, some, some, some solution which isn't all or nothing, especially when defeating the opponent isn't an option. And as you said, with I, you know, I often with reference to Russia, should make the point, be careful what we hope for. I mean, if Russia's losing, if you have the world's largest nuclear power in a war, it believes it is losing, and this is an existential threat, you don't want to win this war. This is this is how you end up in a Apply to Israel and Iran though, because they can't really, they can't defeat Iranians anymore, and as they realize even in loss, even if the war doesn't end, as long as the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian control, it changes not just the region, but whole global geopolitics as well. But is there a third strategy? Because I don't like to see Israel in all or nothing situation, because you know, if, if there's this high risk, they might go all in with a nuclear weapon, but On the other hand, is there a possibility with a third option, that is to transform relations? 'Cause I remember when the Chinese were trying to manage or negotiate improved relations between the Saudis and Iranians, then the former head of Mossad Efraim Halevi, he came out and he said, "Maybe we should do the same. there's no reason why we can't have fundamentally different relations with the Iranians." And indeed, I know, you know, you also mentioned in the past when we spoke, that, you know, this kind extreme war, it's, it's, you know, straining the ethos, the soul, or, or the future of Israel itself. So is there a path where the Israelis can do, you know, like if, well, the Europeans could pursue a pan-European security architecture with the Russians, that seems simple, but would it be something similar that the Israelis can do to, well, as Hallevi suggested, to fundamentally transform relations because it seems the Palestinian issue, everything is You know, plugged into the same problem here, though. Yes, indeed. And I think it is possible, it's not ready yet, Ethne, this isn't the moment. but recall after the Iranian Revolution the Israel had good relations with Tehran for quite a, a period of time. I mean, partly they were selling weapons for the I-Iran-Iraq war. but then there was a change in Israel because the Labor Party came in to power in Israel, and the Labor Party of Israel wanted to change the equation because the equation at that time was that it was the periphery that were the allies of Israel and the near- Arab world was the enemy, and he wanted to invert it and make peace with Arab states. And so at that time. Everything inverted and the periphery became the enemy and the Arab states became where we see them now sort of trying to be herded into the Iran accord, but I mean, this was there at that time. And of course, suddenly Iran, from having had, you know, not seen as an existential threat in the way that Nehru's cast it throughout his life, but at that point Then to keep the flow of money and to keep everything ticking over in the United States with that pro-Israeli first lobby, they needed an enemy. And so from that date on, really Iran began. Iran's always, you know, it's a week away from a nuclear bomb. How many times have we heard that? We've heard it from twenty years from Netanyahu from this period on, you know, "Um, Iran is the enemy, Iran is going to have a nuclear weapon, he's gonna use it against Israel." I mean, and that was done explicitly to facilitate the switch in- To the Nearer Abroad to make peace with the Nearer Abroad at the expense of the Arethru and as a consequence Iran was demonized and demonized and has been demonized ever since, so theoretically at least. Israel could choose to switch back, and to switch, not to making the Arab states enemy, but simply to switch back and understand, you know, if you ask me the, the very, you know, the, the, the question at the bottom, the, how, and I- I think this will happen sometime, but how does Israel get out of this situation? well, the one thing they could do would be to talk to Iran. It's quite, it wouldn't be that. In fact, someone suggested that from in Israel. He was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission. He said, "You see, first of all, you know, Iran, Israel will start it, the Americans will come next, and the Europeans will come on to it at the very last. " but of course, you know, if you want to have a settlement There's only one, I mean, address that could change the whole situation in the region. I know this is completely heresy to even suggest it, but you know, when people get into existential difficulties, like Israel seems to be getting into existential difficulties and I remember, you know, at that time they saying, "Well, you know..." To get a solution on the Palestinian front, we need to talk to Iran. Well, if you get a solution on the regional level, you, you would lead to talk to Iran, and this is happening in a sort of roundabout way, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, not perhaps Abu Dhabi, but other, other parts are looking to a security, new security Architecture for the Gulf, Gulf led security, not American led, not including Americans, but a new security architecture. It's been in the works for a little while, it's not that new. But it suddenly got a great impetus now because Gulf states are frightened, you know, about the future and what's going to happen, you know, is this another attack on Iran and what will be the consequences of that. So it's moving in that way. And Iran has at, at times made it clear that if a Gulf security without the Americans Gulf led security is to take place. Israel could be part of it, why not? Well, this whole Golda as we've seen, that is aligning with Gulf Arabs in the near abroad against Iran, it, it looks as if, if that this might not be sustainable anymore after this war is over, so it looks, you know, force, well, change could be forced upon the Israelis 'cause it doesn't seem like The, it's, no sorry, the, yeah, the Iranians actually do need, they don't need necessarily a, a political deal with the Americans because if they hold the Strait of Hormuz, I think well, if I was an advisor to the Iranian government, I would say what they already know, which is if you control the Strait of Hormuz you don't, you don't have to return to crippling sanctions and all this an-endless threat from bases around you, you can, but just put tolls on the countries that, the higher Incentives for them to drop it, put a higher toll on those who threaten you by hosting US bases, put toll on those countries on who uses the, the dollar for energy sales, so essentially dismantle the petrodollar connection to the region, and, you know, after all these bases have now been largely destroyed as well, the American bases in the Gulf states at some point, you know, maybe many of the Arab states would then think whether or not it's a good idea to even have it rebuilt. I mean, they- They have to adjust to new realities if they saw that the US presence brought them more instead of security, and essentially they're not going back to the old status quo. Indeed, you saw now with Oman, they're in discussions with the Iranians to participate in this toll. I think that's a good idea if the Iranians to facilitate a Gulf a Gulf cooperation or security architecture to collectively deal with this as opposed to living under, you know, Iranian dominance. But okay, Trump responded by saying that if Oman does this, he will blow them up. But at some point, you know, you can't keep this whole show together with threats alone. so you follow you and your wife, you follow both Israeli media, especially the Hebrew media, very closely in your substack. Do, do you s- do you see any of, any reaction to, you know, to the sustainability of the regional security architecture and And whether or not they could, yeah, have any, well, fundamental change to the architecture, such as, you know, outlined by HaLevy. I, I think that the architecture is gonna change. Anyway, the financial and economic architecture, because if the Iranians continue and they insist on to control Hormuz and to receive payments in line with the Bosphorus, you know, if you have vessels transiting the Bosphorus, you have to pay environmental fees to Turkey and other fees which are fixed on the pound of the vessel. And so if they do this, I think it will be the end of that sort of petrodollar economic architecture that Gulf has always been based on seventy-three, on a sort of financialized Western architecture, and more lately, on an AI based architecture with these huge data centers being built in places like UAE, and the Iranians said, "Well, you can't- Go on having that sort of data center. If you want to be in the region, you've got to mesh in with the region. You can't just be, you know, serving as a basis for, for data centers which you're probably meant for intelligence purposes anyway against Iran and others. So I think if, if the petrodollar goes and the petro- I mean, this was the- The original intent of the, you know, Gulf States was to be, you know, to take advantage of the high price of oil, keep it high, and then to send the proceeds in terms of their savings back to Wall Street. And that that would, and that money has been basically devoted the leverage, was the leverage of the great financialization that took place in the, in, in the West, particularly after two thousand and eight, and with the sort of, you know, the rich Elite becoming, I mean, a huge transfer of wealth to the elite minority at the expense of the real economy in, in, in the West. So to sustain that, it is, you know and, and I think Iran is taking aim at that whole, you know financialized, Wall Street financialized economy in, in the Gulf. It's not at the top of the agenda, but it's, it's, it's there, and therefore most is taken, there will have to be an economic shift, because if they want to export their oil and gas, then they have to have relations with Iran, and then Iran will also question their economic postures. some states will actually act badly to that, but many will not, and we see that already. The number of states that are trying to open relations with Iran, I think it's about thirty, I don't know, I've seen about thirty or something like that. I mean, tentatively under the, you know, under the table relations with Iran, but, you know, that will become more open and, and fixed. And I think That will change and could change the whole complexion of this region. Well, with this massive distribution of power shifting, it, you know, it should be common sense that the, the former status quo can't work anymore. Even the US, I think, it must surely prioritize as well, because it seems that the, the Trump administration is still very wedded to this idea of global primacy, but again, it's, it's very it's very, it introduces a lot of self-harm when it doesn't reflect the actual distribution of power anymore, because we saw now this with all its wars. First, it sent all its weapons to Ukraine to fight the Russians, and then when it was time to fight the Iranians, it didn't have enough weapons to defend the Gulf States, so it began to pull the weapons from South Korea, divert weapons to go into Ukraine to send it to the Gulf and to fight the Iranians, and at the They, they haven't defeated the Russians, they didn't defeat the Iranians, they haven't defeated, they won't, they can't defeat the Chinese in the future. Meanwhile, its allies, the Europeans, the Gulf States, the East Asians, they're all now worried that the Americans can't defend them when it comes down to it. So, you know, you can't be everywhere at the same time. They, they're gonna have to also learn how to prioritize and Again, maybe introduce some strategic thinking again. however, I'm a bit hopeful that the US can adjust. My, my greatest pessimism is at the moment, Europe, though. I, I, I just, I, I don't see anything. I mean I don't understand why, why, why we could a few years ago recognize that the NATO expansion, or as Angela Merkel said, that this would be interpreted by the Russians as a declaration of war and now suddenly we're in a place where we can't imagine any European security architecture that's not based on the dominance of the West, even as the Americans announce they want to go, even as we know we can't defeat the Russians, you know, even as- All the sanctions fail, still there's no, no political imagination for anything besides going back to some Cold War bloc. It's it's extraordinary. anyway, so do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up? Well, only just one to say that we also have to see how closely intertwined the AI, and I may I call it a bubble because that's what I think it is in the US is with the Gulf. I mean, the Gulf has been for the Koreans into And billions into sort of AI projects in the US and as host the, you know, the hibernal sort of of these centers in the UA, in U-UAE, and I think that, you know, inevitably the architecture because the United States walk away from the city during The Gulf States from sporting militarily during the war, so they've already at least, and the Gulf States understand that they've been banned by the US. So that puts into question this whole nexus between the tech brothers and the Gulf brothers on AI and that whole sphere, which, and without American protection, who's going to go on putting in trillions and trillions into projects, whether it is in UAE or, or, or in Gulf? Without a stable relationship between those people and Iran. Well, thank you as always for taking the time and sharing some of your insights and for, yeah, the listeners yet again, I would very much recommend to visit the Conflicts Forum Substack as yeah, it's yeah, full of great insights, so thanks again. My pleasure, thanks. Bye for now.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: Russia Attacks Romania? Ukrainian False Flag or Russian Warning Shot? https://youtu.be/Oo2hAdtEmso https://t.co/Vqf2tJgJr1
Video Transcript AI Summary
Over the past four years, Alex Craner says NATO has incrementally escalated and undermined the credibility of Russian deterrence, while “Russian restraint and caution” is interpreted as weakness. He argues that despite this, Russia’s patience may be over and pressure to retaliate may be increasing. He points to recent attacks involving Kiev, including a warning to Europeans and Americans to empty out and pull diplomats out of Kiev, Ukrainian drones reportedly falling over Latvia, and news that a Russian drone smashed into an apartment building in Romania.
When asked how to assess this Romania incident, Craner says the event could signal rapid escalation, but he argues it is unlikely to have been carried out by Russia. He cites a recent Zelensky letter to Trump that he characterizes as desperate, saying Zelensky asked for Patriot PAC-3 air defense missiles due to anticipated attacks, which he interprets as evidence that Ukraine is panicked and lacks defenses. Craner also says he would be surprised if Russia would “slam a drone into an apartment building in Romania,” because it would “serve a lot of good purposes for the Ukrainians,” particularly by potentially creating a pretext to invoke Article five and unite NATO. He argues Russia has been extremely careful to avoid giving NATO a reason to invoke Article five.
Craner describes what he believes Russia’s approach to striking NATO members would likely look like, suggesting attacks would target military bases or armaments-related facilities rather than an apartment building and likely use a heavier ordnance. He also argues that if the Romania drone report came from CNN, “then you’re better off believing the opposite,” and that the drones and scenarios fit a pattern he associates with earlier “false flag” attempts. He references prior incidents in which he says missiles were launched from Ukraine but were reported as Russian, and he mentions recuperated Russian decoy drones allegedly designed to resemble Shahid drones used to draw anti-air defenses and then redirect them. He concludes that a Romania drone incident would be expected to be another attempt to trigger NATO unity rather than an action that would benefit Russia.
Craner contrasts this with statements by Dmitry Medvedev, whom he says is addressing EU citizens with warnings that their authorities have unilaterally entered into a war with Russia and they should be vigilant. Craner links this rhetoric to European moves that he says have shifted from earlier “holds” on providing certain weapons (like F-16s due to nuclear escalation concerns) to more direct support aimed at striking into Russia. He uses an analogy that providing “bullets” to someone attacking a neighbor makes the provider an accomplice and a legitimate target.
Discussing escalation mechanics, Craner distinguishes “smart warning shots” that would hit something delicate and important without massive damage or casualties from what he calls a “particularly dumb kind of shot” involving a drone impact on an apartment building. He says Russian warfare has shown restraint and that previous Kiev strikes he describes reportedly involved between zero and two civilian casualties, which he presents as evidence of careful targeting rather than random destruction. He adds that Putin’s first comment about the drone was dismissive, asking who said it was a Russian drone, and he says the Russian denial and precedent should be considered.
On Belarus and Kiev’s comments about potentially striking first, Craner says reports indicate Russian troops are based in Belarus for an eventual assault on Kiev, which he says drives Ukrainian concern. He argues Ukrainians may be panicking, and he doubts attacking Belarus would make sense because it would broaden the conflict by bringing Belarus into the war. He suggests it would place Ukraine against two enemies rather than focusing on defense around Kiev.
Regarding the Baltic region, Craner says it is being “rigged as the next front” and cites reports that Ukrainian drones are attacking through Baltic states. He also ties this to the Baltic Sea’s importance for Russian energy exports and statements that reducing Russia’s energy revenues is a key war strategy. He claims the UK has created the Joint Expeditionary Force uniting navies of ten North European states under British command, with a 2029–2030 timeframe to synchronize systems, coordinate operations, and become more viable for conflict. Craner says he believes this preparation aims to provoke Russia, including by blocking trade routes, but he argues it would be premature to provoke conflict in the Baltic states before the alliance is ready.
Craner also argues that Europe’s energy and industrial competitiveness has been damaged significantly by severing economic ties with Russia, citing Germany’s industrial output decline and frequent layoffs. He asserts there is no reversal in sight and argues that European leaders are unwilling to reverse energy policies because doing so would be an admission of failure.
He concludes by saying he sees no off-ramp, claiming diplomacy has been dismantled quickly and that long-running hostility and war planning cannot be resolved through near-term compromise. He traces the origins of hostility to banking and international finance, describing a system he says creates incentives for war, seeks to weaken Russia, and aims to loot Russian resources while later targeting other countries if Russia is removed as an obstacle. He says even setbacks would not stop preparations for future wars and that national-populist movements coming to power would complicate but not end these efforts. He ends by saying the conflict path does not appear to lead soon to a peace agreement.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined again by the great Alex Craner, a market analyst, author, and a former hedge fund manager. So thank you for coming back on the program. Thank you for the invite, Glenn. Always good to join you. And greetings to everyone listening and watching. So over the past four years we've seen NATO incrementally escalating and again, incrementally undermining the credibility of Russian deterrence, and we see that Russian restraint and caution tends to be interpreted as weakness. I mean, this is what all the newspaper headlines are saying, that you know, Russia doesn't have any red lines, it doesn't dare to retaliate, essentially. yet it appears that Russia's patience- Might be over and the pressure to retaliate seems to become very overwhelming. Again, it's very hard to cut through propaganda and the information war, but we see now that the Russians are hitting Kiev pretty hard. the Russians have warned the Europeans and Americans to empty out well, to pull their diplomats out of Kiev. we see some Ukrainian drones have been coming down over Latvia and more Most recently, it's the news reporting that a Russian drone has smashed into an apartment building in Romania. Again, one can't be sure exactly what happened. I mean, was this a Russian warning shot or was this, you know, a false flag from the Ukrainian side? I, I wouldn't know. It could be both. But I was wondering, how are you assessing this event? Are we seeing a rapid escalation? Oh, well, you know, we had I think yesterday or day before, we had Vladimir Zelensky send a letter to Trump, which sounded pretty desperate begging him to send To send the Patriot PAC-3 air defense missiles because of these anticipated attacks on, on Kiev, which suggests that the Ukrainians are quite desperate, that they, they have no defenses, and that they understand that the Russian attack is going to wreak a great deal of damage to the Ukrainian government and to their, their The administration of their, of their society. And the, I would be very surprised if, given the circumstances, Russians thought that it would be a great idea to slam a drone into an apartment building in Romania. What purpose would that serve? That wouldn't serve any good purpose for the Russians. it would serve a lot of good purposes for the Ukrainians because they are, you know, I, I, I see Zelensky a little bit panicked, like he is seeing the writing on the wall and that it's very close to game over for him, and if right now Russia struck at At a NATO member country, then that could be the grounds to invoke Article five to unite the NATO and to start a great big war and bail Ukraine out, or, you know, bail Zelensky's regime out. So if I were doing the investigation of this incident, my first sus-suspect would be the Zelensky regime, not the Russians. the Russians have been extremely careful. Not to give any NATO member country any pretext, any reason to invoke Article five, because first, the Russians don't want that war, they don't want a war against NATO United. Second of all, if they, if they strike at any, at any NATO member country, and I think that the first one on the list would have to be, be Great Britain, and then Germany. and then if they really decided to strike at Britain or Germany, they would probably be striking at military bases, they would be striking at armaments manufacturing company, they might be striking at things like MI6 headquarters not at an apartment building and not with a drone, it would be probably with, with something heavy like a Roshenik. So I, I would presume that this will prove to be a, a false flag attack. It wouldn't be the first one by the Ukrainians, you know? First they had supposedly two Russian missiles f-uh, fired at a farm in Poland. I forget when that was. It may have been two thousand and twenty-two or two thousand and twenty-three, which turned out to be a false flag attack because the missiles were launched from Ukraine. then we had also- these, you know, Russian drones launched at, I think Poland again which turned out to be the recuperated Russian decoy drones, the, the styrofoam drones that are, that are built to resemble Shahid drones to attract The anti-air defense missile fire from Ukraine, and they were scotched with the duct tape and then launched at Ukraine, another attempt to, you know, maybe trigger Article five. And so a drone launched at, at an apartment building in Romania, I would expect. Is another attempt to achieve the same goal. It, it would be very handy for Ukrainians to get the whole of NATO united on their, on their side in this war, you know, sending the cavalry. but it would serve no purpose for the Russians. And then also, you know, attacking attacking any country, the effect will be that the, you know, political spectrum condenses. And people, if they feel that they're attacked, they close ranks behind their leaders, and they are much more willing to go to war. And this is what Russians would certainly want to avoid because they see that the European political class is disintegrating. That the parties that are in power now are losing support, and they're continue to be losing it, so why would you give them this catalyzing event that would then reverse all this, and that would make people more willing to go to war against Russia? So it, you know, the whole event makes zero sense to me that it would be from Russia. And then, you know, if it was CNN that reported that it was a Russian drone, then you're better off believing the opposite because it's, it's very unlikely to be true. Yeah, well, I was also thinking if if the Russians would kind of send some- Do a warning shot send out a warning, and through some way it could have plausible deniability, one would nonetheless perhaps expect that the target would be like Latvia or Estonia Romania does stand out a bit, so I think some, yeah, healthy skepticism is probably a good idea on, on this one. but I also again a few hours ago, we saw Dmitry Medvedev The former president of Russia, he also made a comment where he, again speaks to the citizens of the EU, and he, yeah, he wrote here. Citizens of EU countries, you should realize your authorities have unilaterally entered into a war with Russia, so be vigilant and don't be surprised by anything. The peaceful sleep is over, but you know who to ask why. So again, he tends to play the. You know, the bad cop to Putin's good cop. But but, but the comment though on the, the, the, the EU leaders have started a war with Russia. It's, it, I'm assuming this is to a large extent about how the European leaders are speaking openly about the goal of striking deep into Russia. They're talking about mass producing these weapons and and of course, the, the use of the Baltic territories to, well, to attack. Russia allegedly with Ukrainian drones, that this is all essentially now led to at least rhetoric that the EU has gone to war or attacked Russia directly. do you- I guess, well, from the Kremlin's perspective, or, or what, what do you think the Kremlin's perspective is? I mean, do you s- how, what actions by the European governments do you think cross the line from, you know, indirect involvement to, to, to use Medvedev's you know, language they have entered into war with Russia, so suggesting a direct war? well If, if we, if we rewind the clock about four years or three years even we'll remember that there were, there were careful deliberations about providing weapons to Ukraine, and there came a time when they were talking about providing them with F-16s. And then the discussion was, "Well, no, we can't provide them with F-16s because F-16s can carry a nuclear warhead. And so if they carry a nuclear warhead and we provide them F-16s, then that's a nuclear, potentially a nuclear escalations, escalation, and the Russians would be in their right to respond against us, so we shouldn't be doing this. right now it seems that all those holds have been removed and now they're openly providing weapons to Ukrainians to strike into Russia. Without it, I mean, the British are bragging about it practically. They're bragging about providing Storm Shadow missiles to Ukrainians to strike into Russia. It's, it's well understood that you can't just provide those missiles, you have to also provide personnel that's going to manage these strikes. And so this is, I think you know, Medvedev's statement can be interpreted in more than one way, but if So, you know, just to, just to, just to make it more intuitive, if, if you were shooting at your neighbor's house to kill your neighbor and destroy their house, and if I was bringing you bullets I would, I would be rightly perceived as a co-conspirator, as a, as, as an accomplice. And then that makes me a legitimate target in your def- in, in neighbor's defense and retaliation, and nobody could say that I'm an innocent bystander here. So this is, this is the position that European Union has assumed and NATO vis-a-vis the conflict in Russia. Now, when it, when it comes to warning shots, a, a warning shot would have to be- A very smart kind of shot, for example, as the u- as the Iranians did a few days ago by striking a, a generator on a UAE nuclear power station, because the warning was, "Look what we can do! " We didn't want to damage your nuclear power station, we didn't want to cause an environmental disaster and, and destroy your power station, but we want to show you that we can strike you, that we can strike you very accurately, and that we can strike you at will. So a smart warning shot would be this kind of a shot that hits something delicate, something important. But doesn't cause massive damage and doesn't cause any casualties. Slamming a drone into an apartment building strikes me as a, a, as, as a particularly dumb kind of a shot, and then. Super dumb if it's, if it's intended as a warning shot. And if we look at the history of, of Russian warfare, we, we see that they've been extremely judicious and extremely cautious about choosing their targets, about what they strike when. they've been exercising a great deal of restraint to not worse, make, make the situation worse than it was when they struck When they struck Kiev a few days ago, I, I think there was, there was, the reports varied, but there was between zero and two civilian casualties. So, you know, that's not a just let's randomly strike Kiev and then, you know, whatever gla- gets blown up gets blown up. This was obviously very carefully targeted. So I would, I would, I would expect that this was a, a, a Ukrainian attempt at creating a false flag scenario, probably out of some sort of panic, because, you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted a well-planned false flag scenario, it would have to be something that doesn't- that doesn't elicit doubts, instead it elicits like a strong emotional reaction. So there would have to be a strong emotional reaction in Romania and in the rest of Europe, so it would have to be, you know, like nine eleven, three thousand Americans get killed as a result. That's, that's a proper false flag. This isn't a proper false flag, this is a maybe even a mistake. Well it should be noted that President Putin was asked about the drone, and, well, his first comment was said, "Well, who said that this was Russian drone?" And so essentially dismissing it. So you know, so again, one can't take anything for on face values, but nonetheless, it's, it's still worth noting that the Russians are saying it wasn't them, and there's, as you said, there's been some precedent, so one shouldn't jump to conclusions. Another issue though, in terms of within the realm of a possible escalation, has been the, the comments coming out of Kiev that Belarus might be planning to join the war, and for this reason, the Ukrainians have been making comments that they might strike first. last I saw, there were some comments that they already picked hundreds of targets in Belarus which are already, you know decided on if, you know, if someone would go forth with this. How are you assessing this though? I mean is this I mean, if it happens, this would be a very dangerous area of escalation because if, if the Ukrainians would attack Belarus or if what Zelensky said might be true that the Belarusians would get involved, I find that doubtful at this point, though, but it could be true. it sounds like a very crazy escalation because the Europeans would probably get even more directly involved in an attack on Belarus then. even though it has a nuclear deterrent there by Russia. So I don't know, how, how, how did you assess these comments from from Ukraine? Well I did see some reports that said that their, their troops grouping in Belarus to the north of Ukraine for an eventual assault on Kiev. But these are not Belarus troops, these are Russian troops in Belarus, and I think that the, the Ukrainians are very concerned that the Russians are Preparing to deliver a final assault to finish this war, and that the, that the danger is that there is going to be an assault from the north, like at the very beginning of the special military operation, and that they will go straight for Kiev. So I think they're, they're not worried for nothing, but I, my understanding is that this isn't Belarus' own army, that this is the Russian troops that are based inside Belarus. Ukrainians might be panicking a little bit and I, I don't know what purpose even from their own point of view what purpose it would serve to attack targets in Belarus, because then that brings Belarus into the war. Now you're fighting two enemies on two fronts instead of just staging a defense of, of, of, of Kiev. But I think that maybe this is just a result of, a result of them them panicking a little bit. I, I, I really don't see what purpose it would serve other than just lashing out, just lashing out and blowing things up. And how, how about the Baltic region though? Do, do you think, to what extent do you think this could become a flashpoint? Because there's two things that were- Well, that worries me. I think the first will be all these reports now which are verified that Ukrainian drones are, are attacking through the Baltic states, but the second is that the Baltic Sea is quite important for Russian energy exports, and the EU has, you know, made several comments that reducing or targeting the, the, the Russian energy exports would be a, a key strategy or something that could well, as they say Say we can well, reduce the money that Russia has to spend for war. do, do you see any flashpoint there? Do you think the Russians send some signals that EU is pulling a bit back or where do you see this going? I, I think that there's no doubt about the fact that The Baltic region is being rigged as the, as the next front in the war against Russia, because we have to keep in mind, this isn't just a war between Russia and Ukraine for their local disputes. This war has been orchestrated by Western powers in order to weaken and destabilize and regime change Russia. There was, I think there was full expectation that Russia would be defeated, that it would collapse, not just for military conflict, you know, the ideas like drawing the Soviet Union into, into a war in Afghanistan, but also because then they, in So the war started in February two thousand twenty-two, but then in March two thousand twenty-two, the West had all these in advance prepared sanctions that were the biggest package of sanctions that was ever imposed upon any nation in history, and they fully expected that the Russian economy would collapse. And that this would lead to maybe a social uprising in Russia, and that the, the people would protest the war and the economic conditions, and that, that could take down Vladimir Putin's government. But that didn't happen. And so they're losing the war, and it's very clear that they have no way of reversing that defeat. So we know that they've, they've already been trying to rig the Balkans as the second front, but that kind of fell apart since Donald Trump came into the White House. And so I think that the next second front would be the North, the North Sea the Baltic Sea, the Baltic States, but not only the Baltic States, because the United Kingdom has Created this new alliance called Joint Expeditionary Force, uniting the navies of ten North European states, including countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Baltic States, the UK itself, and the whole, the whole alliance functions from a London based headquarters under British command. And then if you read, if you read their their declarations and the documents that, that were signed, it's clearly done with the view of confronting Russia. Now, the, the timeframe they set is two thousand twenty-nine, two thousand thirty, because they need to, you know, the big job is to, to synchronize their systems, because every navy has Every, every navy in this, in this, in this group has different systems, different ammunitions, different weaponry, and so the big work is to put it all to the same standard so that they can all use the same systems, that they can coordinate and cooperate, and use the same ammunition and the same spare parts and so forth, so that they're a more viable fighting force. But that can't be done overnight. So I think that the idea is to provoke Russia into a conflict by maybe blocking its trade to the, towards the Atlantic Ocean restricting the, the flow of Russian, Russian ships and so forth. but I think that that can't be done right now, so I think that if they- If they provoked Russia into a, into a conflict in the Baltic states, it would be premature for them, and then maybe that would, that would even destroy their alliance. I mean, you know, like if Russia marched into the Baltic states and took down Estonia, Latvia Lithuania I think that the Finnish people would have second thoughts about going to war against Russia. I see that they are preparing this, but I don't think that they will be ready in the near term. And if you do start a war before you're ready to fight it, then, you know, all the pieces you're putting in place might end up wasted. So I think that it's not, it's not in the near term this, this conflict. But who knows, I, I, I could be wrong. I think that, I think that this, this overarching panic that is spreading among NATO members could, you know, I'm sure that there are voices in there who are saying like, "No, no, let's just, let's just get it started, let's just get it started, we'll, you know, we'll make things up as, as, as we go along." Well, you mentioned the, the sanctions which were supposed to bring down Russia, and I remember I always made the point from the first day that this would be deeply problematic because Well, the Russians had the ability to diversify its exports, the Europeans didn't have the ability to diversify their imports, so for this reason, yeah, the, the Russian would do well and the Europeans wouldn't. Actually, on that, I, I find the whole scenario so absurd because I keep hearing the European politicians talk about, "Well, now we have energy security because we cut ourselves off from Russia completely. " I mean, energy security is usually defined as affordable and reliable. reliable supply of energy. And usually then you want many suppliers so it becomes a buyer's market, you drive the price down, and if anyone tries to put pressure for political conditionality, any of the sort you can then just pivot to another supplier. But the European leaders, they seem to believe that cutting yourself off from your main supplier this is energy security. And as a result, yeah, you would have The Europeans would deindustrialize, become weaker, would fuel socioeconomic problems at home, it would have political legitimacy crisis as the political leadership would lose all their support, then the emergence of untested populist alternatives, again all this fueling instability. Meanwhile, the Russian gas would then be sent to the east, then it would fuel the Chinese economy and other economies in the east, vis-a-vis the Europeans, Europeans companies would have to follow the cheap- Russian gas by relocating to China if they wanna stay competitive. I mean, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, the foolishness of this seems to be quite profound, but again, you're the Market analyst guy. So to what extent, or do you see, does this yeah, severing of Europe severing its economic ties with Russia, to what extent has it fueled or reduced industrial competitiveness? Oh, to a massive extent, to an absolutely massive extent. I mean, if you look at the, if you look at the trend of industrial output of Germany, it has just turned around. The, the curve went like this, and then after two thousand and twenty-two, it started going like this. And you have month after month, quarter after quarter of declining European, I mean, German industrial output. And companies are announcing layoffs practically every month, and I think that this month, I think the, the layoff announcements were close to half a million, half a million jobs. It's absolutely catastrophic for Germany. And it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem that there's any intent, desire, willingness to try to reverse this, to say, "We made a mistake, we need to reverse this, we need to go and speak with Russians, and we need to restart Nord Stream two pipelines, whatever is left of them, one, one out of four tubes." the Russians have said, "One of the, one of the four tubes is still intact say the word and the gas will flow." But to them now they, they, that, that, that would be a defeat, that would be an, an admission of failure. So they will rather sacrifice more hundreds of thousands of jobs in Germany and elsewhere in Europe than to admi-admit that they made a mistake. And the whole rest of the continent is, is hostage to, to, to these people. and it's not just the quantities of, of, of energy that are available, it's, it's also obviously the price which makes European manufacturing completely uncompetitive. the trend is intact, the trend is, is entrenched, it's-- there's no reversal in sight, and I think that it will continue. But I- Also suspect that this might partly be by design, or not partly, this might be by design completely because you can't really get a population to fight a war if they're affluent, if people see a bright future, if they have good career prospects. You need to, you need to emasculate people, you need to create very high levels of youth unemployment, and then you offer young men. A military career. And you say, "Hey, join the army, and you'll be fine. You'll get a job, a pension, health insurance, all these perks. But you're gonna have to go kill the Russians for us. " And you know, when people are desperate, then a military career might make sense. No, it's I often think that the- That the, the massive corruption in Ukraine, that this isn't necessarily something the European leaders would get rid of because if you didn't have this massive corruption, you know, all this money which is being pumped in, it, it does help to steer the government in a direction it would otherwise not have taken. It's hard to believe that the Ukrainian authorities would have continued this war to this extent without engaging in serious diplomacy with the Russians earlier. I mean, four and a half years into this and still nothing? Well, almost four and a half. Half years. But if, if the Europeans don't enter this war against Russia and it doesn't escalate into a nuclear exchange, how, how prepared do you see the Europeans being though for a long confrontation without US support? I, they're not prepared at all. They have nothing. They have, they have pitifully small armies. That can't fight a ground war. without the, without the Americans, they don't have the critical logistical facilities that they, that would be, that would be required for such a war. you know, questionable access to satellite intelligence information, and then, you know, when it comes to air defenses. they have, they have largely disarmed themselves. They, they have something, but not nearly enough to counter Russia because it's not, it's not anymore question of intercepting some big expensive ballistic missiles. It's now hundreds, if not thousands Of cheap drones that are extremely effective and extremely destructive, and then many more thousands of even cheaper decoys, you know, drones that look like the real thing, that fly like the real thing, and sound like the real thing, but they're just styrofoam mock-ups. And, and you have to, you have to use a, like, a one to four million dollar missile to, to shoot at that. Russians can send wave after wave after wave of this until there's zero air defenses left. So Europe isn't prepared at all, but it's not the European people who desire this war, it's people sitting on, in, in, on, in Wall Street banks and City of London banks and, you know, elsewhere in Sweden, in, in, in France, Germany, who want this war, and it is, it is urgent enough for them that they will happily sacrifice Europe. And many more million men for this war, then just give up and decide to explore a different business model. Remember, they don't need to defeat Russia, they-- that's not the idea. It's enough to bleed Russia, to weaken her, to destabilize the current government. And to try to bring in a Juan Guaidó, you know, a Volodymyr Zelensky, Boris Yeltsin, like their own puppet president who will then open the gates of Troy wide, wide. Two, Western banks and Western corporations, so that they can take advantage of Russian wealth, of Russian resources and of Russian labor force. That's always, that's always the driving motivation behind all these wars. And so Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural resources And hundred and forty four hundred and fifty million labor power, that is the, the most highly educated population in the world, according to OECD. And so, you know, that's the, that's the big glittering prize for them, but they won't ever give up on it. So they will continue trying to invent wars, because for as long as these wars are continuing, there's a chance that somehow you'll be able to overthrow Vladimir Putin, install your own puppet in there, and then loot Russia to the bone. Well, in this well, war against Russia, though, it's you know, some of the usual suspects would have been quite predictable. That is as you often point out, the the British, they always seem to be on the f- on the front lines in any campaign against Russia. And of course, the Baltic states and Poland, one can argue, you know, from historical grievances, they also they also tend to will be beating the war War drums extra hard. The Baltic states appear a great deal more irrational than Poland, I would have to add. But the one that has surprised me to a large extent has been Germany. They really seem to have gone all the way on this, and it does surprise me because that Germany would go down this path yet again. How do you make sense of this though, the, the German component? Because this is I mean, I, I still think- I think about all those German generals appeared on TV, gloating when they saw German tanks entering Kursk, you know, invading Mother Russia herself, and they were making references to World War II that, you know, "Ah, this was gonna be humiliating because this is where, you know, they defeated the Germans last time, and now the German tanks are back." I mean, this is kind of remarkable stuff how do you explain the German position, this goal of becoming the largest military in Europe, they wanna lead the campaign against Russia? I mean- I feel like I've seen this movie before, you know, more than once, and it's kinda strange to see the Germans wanting to take on this role again. I think that we're primarily talking about the German quote unquote, elites, you know not the ordinary German people. W-we have to keep in mind that Germany has been an occupied country since World War II, and it's been occupied by the United States, Britain NATO in general. And one of the, one of the things that happens to occupied countries, that their police, their secret police, their intelligence apparatus is all very, very tightly controlled. And so Germany is perhaps of all European country under, under most rigid censorship regime. And I know that their secret police and their intelligence agencies deal extremely harshly with dissidents. And as a result, German people are generally afraid to speak. You know, I, I live in, in Monaco, it's in the south of France, you can always get a good conversation out of, out of a French per-person. You can have a good conversation out of an Italian person, a Croatian, and so forth. But I was you know, when I'm in Germany, I'm, I'm struck by how very afraid people are to talk, and then when they do talk, it doesn't matter where you are. They immediately go into whispering, you know, if they have anything half controversial to say, they, they practically whisper and look around. And so I think that among Ger- German people, there's generally fear of the authorities. And so they're, they're very, very silent while the, you know, the governing circles, the, the pro-war side of the German society, they're very loud, they're very boisterous, so they give the impression that Germany wants to be, you know, go back to 1930s. But I don't think that's really true, except, you know, if, if the, if the people are quiet, if the people don't push back Then they risk becoming Ukraine, you know, and they risk really having to sacrifice their, their youth to this war machine, as has already happened. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. I mean, that is Germany. Well, in Germany, Mertz is now probably the most unpopular leader in the world. So to assign- This these ideas to all Germans is probably not reasonable. So yeah, that's probably fair enough. well, I, I just wanna last ask a last question though. Do you see any possible off-ramp at this point or any diplomatic breakthrough? Because the whole EU strategy of, you know, restarting diplomacy, that appears to, you know, be going nowhere. That is, first they would have to agree to talk to Russia, then they would have to find, agree on who should represent the EU, and then of course they would have to- Agree on what conditions will be. And so far, you know, what we heard from people like Kaya Kallas is you know, with who in the past have argued for Russia to be broken into smaller countries, you know, she says no point to talk to Russia because she doesn't talk to dictators. And yeah, so she, she has outlined that she, you know, she would like to see Russia not just pulling back from all territories, but also accepting that Russia, that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO if they want, and also, yeah, of course, Russia should pay reparations and they should reduce the size of their army. I mean, it, it sounds as if You know, the terms of unilateral capitulation on the side of Russia, that's what she's looking for, which is a strange thing to demand when you're losing a war, that is the EU losing the war. So, given that the, the, the ability to do diplomacy is, is so damaged, do you see an offer? Because I feel we're going up an escalation ladder here, which could, you know, be very dangerous. Unfortunately, Glenn, I don't see an off ramp because, you know, this, this wasn't like some kind of a great misunderstanding. This is, this, this was the war in Ukraine. Was the result of an agenda that has been afoot for many, many decades and, you know, if you, if you go back to World War II, before the World War II ended, the British already produced this thing called Operation Unthinkable, where, when they realized that Germany lost, Germany, which they had incubated and built up, militarized and nazi-fied to become the bludgeon To wield against the Soviet Union when they realized that the war was lost, then they proposed to fdr to I'm thinking whether it was FDR or if it was Truman already, but basically this happened before World War II ended, in April of nineteen ninety nineteen forty-five. Operation Unthinkable was proposed, and the idea was to use the rest of the German troops, American and British troops, and Polish troops to mount a surprise attack against Soviet Union. And then, you know, if you read the document, they knew that this was a bit of a long shot, that it wasn't likely. But then, if they couldn't subjugate and, and destroy the Soviet Union by a, by a very rapid surprise attack by, by all-- an array of all these forces. Then the alternative would be a very, very long term process that preparing for the next assault on Russia would take. They don't specify the time, but the gist is kind of in terms of decades. So, you know, immediately this, you know, a year later, nineteen forty-six after the Allies beat the Nazi Germany, right? Soviet Union, United States, France Britain, and they should have been They were allies, right? In nineteen forty six, Winston Churchill declares the Soviet Union as the enemy of the West. Nineteen forty eight starts the formation of NATO, and then it keeps expanding, and then after the end of Cold War, it expands but all towards east, all in the direction of Russia, and they move NATO more than a thousand kilometers towards Russia. Not only do they move the borders of NATO towards Russia, they also concentrate the troops Troops and the arsenals of NATO in the east, in the vicinity of Russia, and then they almost immediately after, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety-one, NATO goes into Ukraine and into Georgia, and Ukraine already signs a, a, a, a, a, a treaty on- It's not a treaty, it's a, it's a- Declaration of a distinctive partnership between NATO and Ukraine was signed, it was signed in, in Madrid in nineteen ninety seven, and from then on starts the gradual process of, of NATO slowly militarizing, weaponizing Ukraine in the same way they've done with Germany nineteen thirties, so. I think we shouldn't be looking for answers among our elected leaders among our diplomats. we shouldn't expect them to show any reason. We need to trace the, the whatever incentives is, is guiding this ceaseless, relentless Hostility towards Russia to where it actually originates, and you already know I'm gonna say it, it originates with the, with the international banking cartel, because what they see in Russia is collateral, collateral on the basis of which they can Generate a massive credit impulse and create all these assets that directly enrich them, that directly suck wealth from wherever it's produced to their own banking systems. And then, you know, they buy media, they, they, they pay the think tanks, they, they, they buy the politicians, they co-opt the military generals and so forth. So you have this great big machinery that is buzzing nonstop creating this psychosis of war that we have to go to war, we have to go defeat Russia, we have to dismember Russia, balkanize it into five different parts or twenty-seven different parts, depending on who you ask. And so it's- It's not down to who we elect or whether our, you know, foreign diplomats are complete morons or intelligent people. It's down to these, to these incentives that are driving the whole system forward. You know, in, in, in the case of the US admin-- the Trump administration in the United States, you saw that it kind of started off In a promising way, and you had Tulsi Gabbard there, and you had Joe Kent there, and you had a whole number of people who were genuinely MAGA and wanted to change the course of US policy. But when push come-came to shove, these banking money interests prevailed. And they shook out all these let's call it, patriotic MAGA members of the, of the cabinet. And so what happens? Joe Kent leaves because he disagrees with war on Iran. Who takes his place? It's Sebastian Gorka. Sebastian Gorka, who's like a certifiable British agent and an arch Zionist. So there's been a purge of, there's been a purge of the, let's call it, nationalistic, patriotic element in the government, replaced with anglo-syrianist globalists. And so we have to assume that that can happen to any democracy, in, in Europe particularly. Even if they get defeated in, in Ukraine, they won't stop preparing the next war, and it's always going to be to try to destroy Russia. And you also, you know, we, we also have to keep in mind that if they remove Russia from the, from the map, then their next target is China, and then they will very likely use Russia, its, its weaponry, its troops, its, its, its very powerful military. To to destroy China for them, in the same way as they used Ukraine's military as they built it up to try to destroy Russia. This juggernaut will, will never stop until it's completely destroyed. Now, if parties like the AfD in Germany, Rassemblement National in, in France, other patriotic movements in, in different nations come to, come to power. That's going to complicate things very badly for them, but they won't stop trying. And then again, you know, like their, their their main asset in Europe is Germany, so they will fight for, they will fight for political control of Germany the hardest. Germany alone won't be able to go to war against Russia, then you'll have to be creating alliances again, you know, which will be complicated because Germany isn't in good relations with Poland, nor with France, nor with its northern neighbors. So it's all politically gonna be extremely comp- complicated, so they are, the pressure is to keep Ukraine fighting, to keep NATO and the European Union intact somehow, in order to then try to prepare the next stage of the war by the end of this decade. We'll see if they succeed. To me, it looks like Things are disintegrating faster than they can scotch them back up together. But they won't give up, you know, that, that's my answer. It, it's not going to be an off-ramp where somebody is gonna be reasonable and say, "Well, it looks like we lost here, so maybe we need to have a, have a peace agreement with Russia, an armistice turn a new page, cooperate, be friendly neighbors, and, and, and do business too. Mutual benefit. I, I don't think that's, that's coming so soon. No, I think the way the whole path to peace or that peace platform was dismantled in such a, a great speed, I think it's it's w-wor-wor-worried a lot of people. as you said the fact that they got Tulsi Gabbard and Joe Kent you know, both now off, out of the Trump administration which is you know, The Iranians, and also how quickly Trump went from being able, you know, pushing to end the war, you know, the lecture he gave, the landscape in the Oval Office, to where he's now is essentially, you know, almost identical to Biden. It's yeah, it's it's it shouldn't be shocking but yeah, to some extent it is. anyways, Alex, thank you so much as always for taking time. Thank you for having me, Glenn, and until the next time, have a good weekend.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Michael Hudson: Energy Wars Strategy as the U.S. Economy Is No Longer Competitive https://youtu.be/M34VVvRB0uY https://t.co/TODcIXDw2a
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centers on how an Iran war would affect global economies, and why energy-price dynamics may not be a sustainable path to stability. The professor says that even without a war, energy prices are expected to remain very high through the rest of the year due to existing delays. He argues the situation would worsen because a war is “breaking out very soon,” possibly by Sunday or Monday, with “no real negotiations” so any negotiation could not affect the military or peace situation.
He describes conditions for preconditions to negotiations as impossible to meet. He says one requirement is that Iran be given back confiscated Iranian funds, including “many billions of dollars” intervened by the United States and references stablecoin. He states the United States cannot return any money because Congress has set positions including “Not one penny for Iran,” characterizing Iran as a terrorist country. He also says the United States has repeatedly reneged on prior commitments, giving an example that Trump annulled an Obama administration atomic weapons contract, so Iran would not concede without return in advance.
According to the professor, market expectations are being driven by announcements and the belief that a peaceful negotiation might be reached, citing stocks and bonds rising and a perceived chance to profit when markets open Monday or Tuesday. He claims the announcements are aimed at creating that expectation rather than producing a durable settlement. He describes alleged U.S. messaging to Netanyahu about allowing attacks, and says the war secretary Hegseth spoke with Oman and Qatar. He states that if Oman did not agree not to join Iran in imposing tariffs (presented as Iran’s effort to obtain reparations for illegal attacks), the U.S. would “let Netanyahu kill you,” and that this reportedly ended negotiations.
He predicts Iran is not ready and that the peak of the war will come as the build-up since Trump took office. He argues the conflict would create shortages of oil, fertilizer, sulfur, chemicals, and helium, plunging the world into a depression “worse than the nineteen thirties.” He cites ExxonMobil’s estimates of pushing oil prices to “over the hundred fifty, hundred sixty dollar a barrel range,” causing chemical industry shutdowns throughout Asia and the global South and Europe, blocking fertilizer exports, and reducing agricultural yields amid extreme-weather conditions. He says fertilizer blockades and agricultural disruption would drive food price increases and industry closures.
He then describes an economic mechanism: chemical-industry closures reduce demand for oil, so oil prices might fall to “maybe a hundred twenty, a hundred thirty dollars a barrel,” but he expects “large scale defaults and bankruptcy.” He says debt leverage across economies would turn an industrial depression into a financial crisis because companies depend on lending and credit, and that collateralized debt obligations have created patterns resembling the 2008 bank crisis. He states central banks cannot “simply create more credit” because banks would avoid lending to prevent turning economies into a “Ponzi scheme.”
He also argues U.S. negotiation demands are designed to prevent serious talks, describing Trump’s stated premise that nothing will happen until Iran transfers all atomic weapons as a “red herring” and likening it to a deal-breaker. He says sanctions aimed to starve Iran have not worked since they were first put in place in 1979, and that the U.S. intends to provoke Iran into a defensive response.
The professor expands from economics to international law and institutions. He claims U.S. attacks would treat civilian activity as military, referencing alleged attacks on fishermen in other regions and arguing similar logic would apply in the Strait of Hormuz. He says the UN is a “casualty” because it has been unable to enforce its charter, blocked through U.S. veto power, and says the alternative would require “a new United Nations” independent of the United States, with China, Russia, and Iran as leading members.
He proposes a broader strategy focused on control of the global oil trade, stating the U.S. aims to prevent other countries from using alternative supplies by destroying oil facilities and weaponizing the oil trade. He links this to actions involving Nord Stream, sanctions, and scenarios involving Venezuela and grain trade. He states Venezuela oil revenue is paid into a Florida bank account under Donald Trump’s direction and says the same approach is sought for Iran. He further claims the U.S. would aim to restrict alternative energy (wind and solar), portray it as rival to oil, and maintain dependence on U.S. LNG and oil exports.
He concludes that chaos is used to lock in foreign dependency and that a U.S.-centered outcome would involve closed European industry, subsidies or market opening demands, and client political alignments. He predicts Europe would relocate industry outside Europe but not necessarily to the U.S., while still facing political revulsion and seeking an alternative system as the depression deepens. He also says future wars would be air wars with missiles, bombs, and drones rather than invasions.
Full Transcript
Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by Professor Michael Hudson to discuss how the Iran war is affecting the global economies. I heard from, from some people that while the energy prices are high, that the US could actually benefit from this because then they would have to pay more money for American energy. this would also mean that they would have to pay in dollars, so it would just strengthen the petrodollar. On the other hand, I can't help but to think that this doesn't sound very sustainable. That is with war, energy shortages, it's, you know, it would trigger more of a global depression. So I just wanted to get, I guess, your overall view on this, how you see the Iran war affecting the economy. I'm glad you asked the question in the broad sense, because no matter what, even if there were no war at all, the energy prices are going to be very, very high at least through the rest of this year and this is if there's no war Because there's already a, a long delay. the real problem is, of course, that there's going to be a war breaking out very soon, probably by Monday, maybe Sa-- by Sunday. There have been no real negotiations at all. The in, in fact, it is impossible for any of these negotiations to have any effect on the military situation or the peace situation. The, one of the absolute requirements for a precondition is that Iran says that the United States has to begin releasing some of the bank funds and the money that it's confiscated. most recently, the stablecoin many billions of dollars that the United States has intervened and grabbed, which- Essentially, makes stablecoin a very unsafe investment for any country whose government may pursue policies that the United States government can believes is too much self-sufficiency, too much autonomy to to tolerate. The, the United States can't possibly agree to return any money at all to Iran because Congress has already said through South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and also Texas Senator Cruz, saying, "Not one penny for Iran," claiming that Iran is a terrorist country for responding to the Israeli terrorism by defending itself. The defenders are called terrorists, just like when Ukraine attacks Russia ever so- Since two thousand twenty-two, the Russians are called terrorists for defending themselves just as the Palestinians are called terrorists for defending themselves against the Israeli genocide, just as Hamas is called terrorist and Hezbollah are called terrorists for pre-preventing Israel from bulldozing and destroying the whole south of Lebanon, which was largely- Shia religion, not Sunni, and not the Christian Falange leadership. So there's given the absolute right wing, neocon, anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, anti-Iranian feeling of the Congress, any agreement that Trump's negotiators might negotiate achieve with Iran could never be- Put into practice anyway, and Iran has been lied to so many times by the United States or the United States simply going back on its word, like how Trump annulled the Obama administration's atomic weapons contract, that it's not going to make any concession at all until such time as it gets something in return in advance. It's sort of like an author going to a publisher. The advance that you get for a publisher is all the money you really are ever gonna get in practice. Well, that's what Iran says. They, they don't expect the United States to live up to any deal, but if Trump somehow can give them some satisfactory negotiated portion of the hundred billion dollar plus that it's grabbed illegally from Iran, then it will make some concessions. But the concession Bonds are nothing at all, like what Trump has announced. The, the announcements by Trump and Hegseth have only one purpose, to achieve what they've achieved this morning in the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks are up, bonds are up prices are up. It, there's a belief that somehow there's going to be a peaceful negotiation here. There's a fortune to be made when the markets open Monday Or Tuesday, or whenever the the response is with the US telling Netanyahu, "All right, it's okay to attack now." in the last day or two the war secretary Hegseth had, is talked to the heads of Oman and Qatar, you know, and said, "Well, if you, Oman, don't agree not to join Iran in" Imposing the tariffs, which is Iran's means of at least beginning to obtain some reparations for the illegal attacks that are done. Well, then we're going to let Netanyahu kill you. And the apparently the Omani negotiator simply hung up the phone and made a complaint to Trump that when you're negotiating and said, and said either you agree with us or we'll kill you. this stops all negotiation, and that essentially is exactly what the United States has told Iran. If you don't negotiate, as President Trump has said again and again in recent days, we're going to destroy you like no country has ever been destroyed before. So Iran isn't ready for this. There it is going to destroy all of the military bases in the Middle East by the United States, including the largest military base in Israel. and you can expect that this is going to this is going to be the peak of the war that has been building up ever since Trump took office an hour a year and a half ago. And of course what this is going to do is create such a shortage of oil, of fertilizer, of sulfur, of chemicals, of helium that the, the world is going to be plunged into To a depression that is worse than the nineteen thirties. This is going to the initial effect according to ExxonMobil the old Standard Oil monopolies is, is going to push the oil prices up to over the hundred fifty, hundred sixty dollar a barrel range. This is going to force the closing down of Much chemical industry throughout Asia and the global South and Europe, by the way, and it'll the block the fertilizer export. So this is going to reduce agricultural yields on top of the fact that there-- this summer looks like it's going to be one of extreme weather, so you can expect food prices to soar, industries to close down. Well, one- One effect of the manufacturing industries, the chemical industries closing down, is going to be that the demand for oil will decrease. It's called demand reduction, and the price of oil may fall back to maybe a hundred twenty, a hundred thirty dollars a barrel, but there's going to be large scale defaults and bankruptcy, and that's going to turn the what is a technological and a- direct industrial depression into a financial crisis because the economies throughout the world, from the United States to Britain to continental Europe, are so heavily debt leveraged that the-- it takes only a small amount of declining revenue to prevent the companies that have been taken over by private capital and other highly debt- bridged industrial companies to default on their bank loans. There has been a rising market in collateralized debt obligations. These are the, the gambles, the the casino gambles that essentially caused the bank crisis and the failures in of, of insurance companies and other players back in the end of two thousand and eight. We're in a replay of all of that, but this time there's no way of getting out of the financial depression that is caused from Europe to the United States by the-- having their central banks simply create more credit because the, the there's already so much credit given to these companies that the economies are loaned up. Banks aren't willing to continue to lend Their industrial customers, their private capital customers, their financial customers, their real estate customers, and agricultural customers, the money to pay the interest, that would be to turn the US and European economies into a Ponzi scheme. you keep lending money and you hope that this money you're leading, le- lending to creditors is going to keep the real estate market, the stock and bond markets afloat so that banks- Banks don't have to show negative equity on their balance sheets as they were doing at the beginning of two thousand and nine, so you can look at this as a replay. Well, it's amazing that the markets haven't seen this. You could see it from the very beginning because when Trump said, "Uh, nothing will happen until Iran agrees to turn over the all of its atomic weapons," this is the same premise That led George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction. the national security agencies of the US have said Iran has made no move to a-achieve an atom bomb for the last two decades. So when Trump says w-w-we're, all of this is to protect Europe and to protect the world from Iran's atom bomb This is this means we are purposely putting in a red herring that can't be solved because we might as well ask Iran to turn over the flying saucers that it allegedly has. you it, it, it's just bizarre. It's a, a deal breaker from the very beginning and the intention is to be a deal, a deal breaker. There's no way it, it, it's not, or I, I shouldn't say it's not a deal breaker because there's no deal. It's a deal Preventer. From the beginning, the United States apparently thought that time was on its side and and that the sanctions that it had imposed on other countries to block them from trading with Iran would somehow starve Iran into submission. Well, that policy hasn't worked since nineteen seventy-nine, when it was first put in place by the Carter administration, and it's not going to now. The whole purpose of, of, of This red herring is just to prevent any kind of serious negotiation, but America for some reason wanted the illusion that it was trying to negotiate peace and then it's trying to now provoke Iran into making a de-- some kind of a defensive response against a US probe that is going to be con- Drew, this whole America's only reacting to Iran's terrorist attack, a, a terrorist attack by our own bombers or the Israeli bombers or whatever the United States has up its sleeves for this Sunday, Monday or sometime next week. The, what's so surprising from a military point of view is, in a way, this is the same kind of Stalin that- You had with the Minsk Accords between NATO and Europe, when the Minsk Accords asked for cessation of hostilities, just as Trump is asking for a month or so cessation of hostilities. Well, in the Minsk Accord, the whole idea was to enable NATO to rearm Ukraine to fight to fight Russia. So the stalling was on the side of the United States and its NATO satellite, but this time time is not on the US side because the US has its whole navy all there. It has its refueling air-airplanes apparently in the Emirates all ready to take off and to fuel the air attacks that are planned to come in there. Well, it's obvious that the- The Iranians have their plans about this, they're ready to retaliate. They have used this time to actually r-r-range their diplomatic ties with Russia, with China, and to prepare their military while the United States Navy and Air Force are baking in the heat of the- Middle East. and so time is on Iran's side as it has been for the last a few decades. The United States can't achieve by sanctions anything that it hasn't already because Iran has got used to living with them. So you're, you're going to have essentially the A, a no deal. The final demand that the US is saying is claiming that Iran's attempt to impose fees for transportation fees on ships going through the Strait of Hormuz is against international law. But the big picture for everything we're discussing, Glenn, is there is no international law. You've seen already last year the United States A law there's no international law of the sea specifically. Last year, you saw American planes bombing Venezuelan fishermen and Colombian fishermen on the west coast of Latin America, saying that, "Well, for all we know, they're carrying drugs." That's again it's international law. There's zero evidence that they were carrying drugs because the, they were, the boats were attacked without- Morning, without any attempt to say stop, let us board you, let us look to see whether they're drugs, and in fact, it turned out they were indeed fishermen. Well, this week, America began to attack Arab and other fishermen in the Strait of Hormuz. It, for many centuries, it was a fishing center, it was a pearl fishing center it was a, a- At the thriving maritime center, there's apparently there are photographs showing that indeed these were fishermen with with fish in their boats. The United States said, "Well, for all we know, they're really laying mines. Maybe these fish were mines that made up to look like fish. But the, the claim is that what any civilian is doing might be military, just like Netanyahu has said. Any, any Palestinian civilian person may be an enemy because of what we've done to them. We've made them so angry at us that of course, we've made every Palestinian an enemy. Therefore, we are permitted to kill all Palestinians in self-defense because they're defending themselves against what we've done to them. this, this is the, the fiction that is framing the whole- All US side of the discussion, and it's been repeated in much of the European press, and the the ultimate basis for all of this in international law is the United Nations Charter. But the United Nations is one casualty of the w-war with Iran and the, the NATO's war against Russia at the same time. The NATO The, the United Nations has been unable to impose any of the laws of charter in its charter. it's been unable to have any army of its own, and in fact, it's been taken over or blocked rather by the United States with its veto power through the Security Council and its European satellites. So the what can the rest of the world do? The The I'm surprised that just as the stock markets throughout the world don't realize that there's an absolute break, the politicians of other countries throughout the world haven't seen that, well, if we're going to have a road to peace we have to create a new United Nations, not a new charter, but a new organization independent of the United States. Well, the only kind of organization that- That can have a prototype for this would be one that has the leading members, China, Russia, and Iran. But I wanna point out that the United Nations Charter warned that if if Nazism were to reemerge in Japan and Germany as for instance, then the other countries were permitted to take all necessary measures to stop it, and I assume That any treaty that Iran would sign would have to specify the consequences of Israel attacking one of its neighbors or Iran again. It has to stop ethnic and racist genocide. This is The, the same kind of Nazism that you find supported by Germany and Britain now in the war against Russia, the the, the racist claim that Slavic speakers are subhuman and cockroaches. This is word for word Netanyahu's claim that the Palestinians and the Arabs are cockroaches. This is the same claim that the Sunni The headchoppers in Syria under Jalani are claiming, under the Wahhabi system, we have to kill all of the non non-Sunni people. You have this US-backed resurgence of everything that at the end of the World War II was looked at as the essence of Nazism, the essence of an attack on the principles of civilization. Itself is if all human beings, all races, no matter what language they speak, are human beings. Not that if you speak a different language, you're a subhuman, and therefore international law only applies to human beings, not to people that are under US attacks. And the US, Germany the European Union, Britain, have said any country that is under attack is basically Immune from protection under international law, and they have this this same fanaticism that you had by the Germans in World War II, and these German, the, the Nazis were very or if you wanna say What would happen under this scenario? Look at what happened to all of the Nazis that were hired by the United States in nineteen forty-five, given protection, sent to Latin America, and essentially steered many of the American client oligarchies and client militaries into the dictatorships that have retarded Latin American development for the last eighty years. this is essentially what i- It's as if the world is now fighting World War II all over again, once again the the, the European attack on Russia, that now this time not only by Germany, but pulling along the whole European Union and Britain, and also the US backing of Japan to have new nuclear weapons to re-attack China as it did in the nineteen thirties. All of this is i-this, if you look at the alignment, this is a replay of World War II as if they, as if the United States and Europe are saying, "We've decided that the wrong side won World War II we're going to sta-start it over again, and in order to a-achieve this victory o-over other countries what you're seeing in Iran is part of the US policy that has been based for a century. Century, as you and I've discussed on earlier shows, of controlling the whole world's oil trade. Because if you can control the world's oil, then you have the power to turn off the the electricity, the lighting, the gas, the home heating, the chemicals of other countries that don't trade with you. Well, the fight-- the US fight in Iran from the very beginning, fifty years- Years ago, when I, I was sitting in discussions about all of this when I was working with the Hudson Institute with the, the Pentagon and other US agencies, they, they all, what, they all had plans for exactly what is happening today in Iran. They had plans to break Iran into five different statelets starting with Baluchistan. This happening today, the US tried to do it through the Kurds, that didn't work, so there's s-some effort to create a crisis in Baluchistan, it didn't work. So I wanted to put the answer to your question isn't simply micro what is happening this weekend, it's what, what the big strategy is, and when you realize that this strategy has been adopted by the governments of Europe, the governments of the- United States and its allies in other countries then you realize that it doesn't matter what the voters say anymore. the voters in Europe, according to the public opinion polls, they're against the war with Russia, they're against the genocide against the Palestinians, they're against the Israeli attacks, and yet Germany and Britain have rules that if you if you criticize- Criticize Ukraine, if you, especially if you criticize Israel and defend the Palestinians against this genocidal attack, that you can be you can be sent to jail. It's, it's a crime. They've criminalized the, the support of the international law as defined by the United Nations reporter in, in her Accusations against Israel, they've we-- they've isolated her personally, they've isolated the judges of the International Court of Justice that have brought a sense of crimes against Israel. We're seeing what's happening now is not simply an interruption of the oil trade, it's an interruption of the whole international arrangement of diplomacy that you had put in place eighty years ago. The whole world is b- it has achieved a breaking point a splitting between the US and Europe on the one hand, and it Iran that has been driven into an alliance with China and Russia is taking the lead on other countries and the choices what are other countries, the American satellites that have joined these sanctions against Iran and Russia and China, going to do? What will the European satellites- The lights do. What will the Asian and the global South countries do? That's what is all going to be have to require a new form of organization, and this seems to be such a high task that there's a cognitive dissonance about dealing with it. It's just like it's too big a problem to deal with, just as looking at the effect of the high energy prices To get back to your original question, is too structurally disruptive to deal with. Almost all of the economic discussion you're seeing in the European and American presses, this is going to be marginal and temporary. It's as if you can go back to normal after a few months, and Trump has said in a few months, oil prices are going to come down. What is happening is irreversible. Not only is What is happening irreversible, but it set in motion a whole at least half year, probably a multi year transformation that is going to be irreversible because it's going to change the whole economic and trade and financial and military context of the whole international economy. Before you mentioned that time is on the side of Iran, and the US had assumed that time would be on its side, that is, it could well, essentially now go from this high-intensity war, which became too resource-demanding, and bring it down to low-intensity and drag it out, but. The gold states appear to be going from bad to worse from day to day, and we heard now about these swap lines being set up. I was wondering, how, how do you see this? Well, how would you explain what is a swap line and why is it so significant? Well, you're in Europe, and as I understand it the, the Europe economy is being squeezed just as the US economy is being squeezed. the the already the rise in oil prices is forcing many families, many wage earners many employers in, in many industries into debt, and the government is, has been trying to cope with this by giving some subsidies for homeowners and renters and just the population at large to be able to live with this. there's been a wholesale drop of sale of the US and of petroleum reserves and the petroleum reserves of other countries, saying, "Well, maybe we can just run down these reserves for a rainy day. This is a rainy day." They don't realize is this is a rainy year, or this is a rainy two years, that it's not a day after which the oil reserves can be filled up. they, it's, it's, the Europe and the United States are following a, a form of desperation to deal with this. Well, how long can the reserves last? The, the estimates are thirty to forty-five days, and then they run out, and then there's no way of continuing Continuing the subsidy of budgets of people who drive cars, who use electricity, of trucks, who use diesel fuel, of airlines, who use air fuel all of this is going to run out. So time is on the side both of Iran and Russia and China in this. They can simply-- The, the Western economies are self-destructing, especially in Europe with Germany Where you, you have the German leaders and the European leaders in general say, "Uh, we have to be part of this new war, the last war that we have to win World War II for the the the German European side. It's the last time we have to fight Russia because we're getting weaker and weaker, and it's never going to be as less bad a time as it is right now." And so we have to use our national budgets to subsidize a war industry, not our regular commercial industries, not our consumers and wage earners, and I don't this is going to create the same Revulsion among voters that it's created in Britain, which I think it seems to be the most desperate economy right now, where you have Britain turned to the to the essentially libertarian policies, the, the anti-war policies just as Germany is trying to ban the the Alternative for Deutschland party. essentially they say any party that is against the war is against civilization. This war to destroy our countries that America says are enemies is a war of civilization. We can ban Any, any country that is, any political party that is against the war, this is, this is a military dictatorship or an oligarchy, whatever it is, it's not democracy, and yet nobody's really spelling out what this means. How did this takeover occur? How did Europe come and other countries, Latin America, how did they come to have president? And an army and what's called the deep state independently in control of government that the voters seem to have no Impact on no ability to say, "Can't there be a plebiscite on whether to have war or not?" Well, the the laws of almost every modern democracy say, "No, no pleb-plebiscite. You can only vote for individuals as head of the party, and these individuals may all have a similar political view about the war and peace." so there's and the, the economy favoring the financial sector as opposed to the industrial sector, it's-- there, there's the democracy itself has been closed off as a result of this war. Well my, my last question was just about again, I wanted to return to the energy aspect because, well, if again, if we take a step back and not just looking at Iran, there seems to be a common thread in a lot of the Americas wars lately you know, for example, Venezuela, this, they're, they're quite, when before they went into Venezuela, they were quite open that it's not just about the objective, that it was not only about Venezuela having to be open for the United States, but also to Itself off to countries like China. we then saw the same logic when the US helped to cut off Europe from Russia. Again, the Europeans have some agency, they have done a lot of this to themselves, but the destruction of Nord Stream, for example, appears to have been the work of the United States. And we see the same discourse around Iran, that is many US senators and think tanks are making the point that, yes, well while the- Might be a double blockade. Now US still gets its energy, but this is reducing supplies to China yet again. So there seems to be a common thread here again about I guess restoring dominance over energy markets. Do you see any cohesive strategy though, which, which could succeed, or is it, or like, where, where are the holes in this strategy? Yes, I spelled out that strategy in articles that are on my website quite a few times, and the United States spelled it out I think two weeks into Trump's administration. he said our foreign policy is based on control of oil. and the oil if we can't control the oil of other countries, we will destroy their oil facilities so that other countries aren't to have- Any alternative but to depend on our weaponization of the international oil trade so that we can turn off their gas, their oil, their agriculture, and their chemical industry if they don't join the allied side of, of us against Russia, China, and any of their supporters such as Iran. So the United States said, "All right, if- To prevent other countries of being alternative sources to oil that would break America's ability to weaponize the oil trade and turn off the the spigots for the whole rest of the world, you had, as you just pointed out, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline and the the sanctions against trade with Russia. so you've had the same problem now With Venezuela, all right, they first s-imposed sanctions on Venezuela and then finally they attacked it and con- conquered Venezuela and now all of Venezuela's Revenue from the oil trade is paid into a bank account in Florida under the personal direction of Donald Trump and his appointees and that's what United States wants to do in Iran. Well, without Russia, Venezuela, and Iran providing independent supplies of oil, the United States will be able to weaponize the oil trade just as it weaponized The grain trade in agriculture, by imposing sanctions on exports to China after Mao's revolution in the nineteen fifties Canada broke that that a-attempted cut off by selling grain to China. The United States no longer is able to achieve foreign dominance by being an industrial power like it was before or being a financial- Power, the only way that the United States can control other countries is by, by dis-creating chaos by saying, "We will create chaos in your foreign trade and therefore, by your industry, just as we did when Trump imposed his tariff policies," and we can agree to. Soften this chaos we're causing by you look great to join our axis of country our fight against Russia, China, and any country that is growing and in a way that uses its economic surplus and its financial surplus to promote its own prosperity instead of transferring this surplus to the United States. this is essentially the The United States is the new robber baron in the world economy. That, and that is the explicit strategy of the US foreign policy. It was s- all spelled out last December in America's National Security Strategy, a report to follow up on Trump's announcement a year and a half ago about energy is going to be the key to our foreign policy. It's all there in black and white and- And other countries somehow have lived in the short run. They've thought-- They've Europe in particular, as you know, as we've discussed, has just surrendered to United States demands. And this is crazy it's, it, it, it when a country surrenders to the US demands for oil or for anything else, the US just ups the ante. And the the, you had mentioned earlier- The Trump has said, "Well, you know, the United States can end up as the big winner from this cessation of oil trade. The rest of the world will now be in a depression, but we in America are self-sufficient in oil, and we have Venezuela's oil now. we we have Canada's oil. we, we can block the trade with through for Russian oil through the Arctic by invading Greenland." So that countries can't get to the Arctic from the the North Atlantic, you had last week, Iceland saying, "Well, you know, we've been independent for for centuries. Maybe we should join the European Union and the European Union will defend us against America's attempt to not only take over Greenland, but take over Iceland so that it can- Control the North Atlantic access to the Arctic through Iceland vicinity. And y-y-you have the whole world aligning itself for this military conflict all around oil. And what's happened is that the to keep prices down, the, the United States has been using the short term A palliative of selling the oil reserve. The oil reserve hasn't really kept down the oil price in the United States because almost every barrel of oil that the US Petroleum Reserve is sold into the US market or sold directly to Asian countries allies at a discount has been matched by US exports Of natural gas and of oil, L-N the LNG exports. So the United States oil companies have made a bonanza by producing low-priced US gas, US natural gas and oil at US costs and prices and selling them abroad the- That's basically what Trump meant in his policy of trying to maintain this oil lever of control over other countries is required not only blocking other countries' use of alternative sources of oil, but alternative sources of energy, wind power and solar power. So you have Trump has not, has canceled Al-almost all of the US investment programs in wind windmill power because that is a rival to oil in the United States, and he represents the oil industry, and he points out, well, the windmill blades are mainly created in China, and China's the beneficiary of wind power, can't have that. Same thing for solar panels, China is the main manufacturer of- solar power, so panels and so America has essentially fought against the climate change efforts by the Paris Group and by other group. It's trying to de-defer Europe from pursuing solar energy wind energy it's trying to lock Europe into dependency on US LNG and oil exports. So That it won't have any alternative at all. Well, of course, China itself has made huge, huge investments in solar energy, especially in its western, northwestern provinces including Xinjiang. and so the United States is trying to do its usual mischief in China by trying to promote a separatist movement in, among the the Uyghurs and- The Financial Times today has a, a long, big read all, all about how the United States is trying to do that by, by claiming that this is a fight against Islam. they're trying to play the the race card and the religious card if we can just divide and conquer, if we can divide populations into different ethnic groups, different religious groups, different political groups, then other countries can Not get their act together and have a coherent response to create an alternative to the US national security strategy, which isn't security at all, is to prevent any other country from having the security and self-sufficiency and independent autonomy from the United States. Other countries must remain dependent on the United States for their oil, for their computer technology, for their- Their internet technology, for their arms including Europe, all of the European arms, largely from the United States, are re-re subject to the US re-repairs, US control, US ability to stop the airplane with all of the control switches that they have. Europe is completely militarily as well as independently and energy dependent. on the United States and the, the any attempt to make Europe either independent or following a, an ability to have free trade with China and Asia, Russia, Iran or other countries that aren't in the US orbit has been opposed by all of the political parties in power. It's interesting to see now that the United States can't really compete in the same way it did in the past, that is, compete economically, we see all this weaponization of dependence, because obviously the, the energy war strategy being developed is one thing, but there's also this efforts to weaponize and limit access of technologies which is used against China, of course limiting and weaponizing transportation corridors as part- Irris is now becoming a common phenomenon limiting the access to banks the use of the dollar. It's yeah, it's even if it'll be successful, it's, it's breaking down the entire international economic system, so it's hard to see how the world isn't gonna Well, plummet into a, a crisis as a result of this. do, do you have any final thoughts in terms of where this will, will probably go? I mean, will the US be able to es-essentially enhance its relative power vis-a-vis the other great powers, or will the chaos it's unleashing es-s-essentially consume the US as well? The United States looks at chaos as an opportunity to lock in foreign dependency. The if the chaos takes the form of a close down of European and other industries, then the other countries are going to be dependent on the US to somehow rescue them, either by opening the US market to them, by subsidies, or by just imposing their own client oligarchies and client political Parties. You can look at the Christian Democrats of under Mercks as a client party of the United States. you can look at France under Macron as a US client. You can see certainly Britain under Starmer as a US client. the United States isn't averse to seeing this as the end of Europe, Western Europe, as any possible industrial competitor for the United States. And essentially it's It's as if the United States is saying, "If our industry isn't competitive and we're shut down, we're gonna make sure that our trading partners also are also non-competitive in order to prevent them from turning to the- Economies that are still growing with their own self-sufficiency, the trinity of Russia, China, and Iran that's emerging. So the result is going to be other countries in in the US orbit are going to have to choose, are we going to be part of the declining US axis or are we going to try to turn to the part of the world that isn't financialized, not under US control, not obliged? To turn its economic surplus into US arms purchases for air, airplanes and missiles that don't work, as we've seen in the fighting against Iran, and keep-keeping all of their savings in the form of loans to the US Treasury through their Treasury security investments, and America's demand that Germany, Japan, Korea, and other countries relocate their indus- their heavy industry manufacturing and- Chemicals and computers to the United States is Europe going to relocate its industry to the United States or it seems to so far have been relocating it into China? Well, the important thing is all of this is being relocated outside of Europe. Europe is in effect committing economic suicide as a result of all this. this is to America, not chaos. This means that Europe is reduced To the same kind of dependency that Latin American countries have been reduced to ever since World War II and the US support of military dictatorships throughout Latin America the, that essentially ruled by client oligarchies that I'm not sure other, for other, for Europe, this requires a political revolution. The result isn't going to be simply a rise in oil prices. closing down industry. This close down, this depression is going to have the same effect that depressions have, a political revulsion by saying the current system doesn't work, there must be an alternative. Well in the past, you could say the Great Depression was pulled out by World War II, but World War II was a fight of armies, of soldiers and future- Wars aren't gonna be a war of armies. They're gonna be air wars. They're gonna be fights settled by missiles, bombs, and drones, not by invaders. No country can has the armed forces that can ever invade another country again. Invasions don't work. you're seeing the problems even that Russia is having in Ukraine for all this. Invasions don't work. All you can do is destroy other countries Countries purely destructive war, not invading to create their own new government along Western lines, which are now the old Nazi lines basically, it turns out. Well, thanks again for your insights, and I, I left a link to your own site in the description, and I would advise everyone to read your articles, as I would do with increased frequency. So, thanks again. Thank you very much for having me, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: Crisis in Israel & Iranian Nuclear Weapons https://youtu.be/RVbHiMHukCc https://t.co/brQCk5m6pY
Video Transcript AI Summary
Ambassador Chas Freeman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense and former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, discusses tensions in the Middle East, focusing on the Israel–U.S. relationship, a potential U.S.-Iran framework, and broader regional and global implications.
Freeman says there is “a great deal of tension” between Netanyahu and Trump, asserting that Netanyahu “basically talked Trump into this war,” which “gone very badly” and appears to end without achieving stated objectives. He describes a potential Trump exit strategy: allowing Congress to vote to end the war and portraying it as a betrayal by Democrats and “apostate” Republicans. Freeman argues that any exit would leave Israel “high and dry” and would “invalidate the US partnership with Israel against Iran,” since “no future president is going to do what Donald Trump did.”
He characterizes the current status as a “memorandum of understanding” that is “an agreement to negotiate,” not peace or an agreement itself. Freeman contrasts Trump’s earlier approach—going to war “with no negotiations” and using diplomacy as a cover—with current claims that diplomatic means must be exhausted first. He says figures including Mr. Widokoff and Mr. Kushner have been removed and that mediation is now being run by “professional diplomats and leaders from Pakistan and Qatar.”
Freeman describes immediate Israeli reaction as subdued due to an election environment, while Israel’s critics in the U.S.—including Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz—push for returning to war. He portrays Trump as politically cornered: pressured by Netanyahu and Israeli donors, facing rebellion from parts of the Republican base, and dealing with military concerns that there is “no real military option,” with the possibility that the military has sought written orders to avoid blame.
On the alleged framework’s key issues, Freeman claims its essence is that the Strait of Hormuz will be open. He disputes that any deal would mean “no tolls,” saying Iran would not accept that and is demanding sanctions relief and release of frozen funds in the “tens of billions of dollars.” He argues Iran will not do anything without receiving something first due to a lack of confidence in the U.S., including the U.S. leaving the JCPOA and repudiating commitments in subsequent negotiations.
Freeman argues Iran’s position implies “zugzwang,” where any U.S. actions lead to defeat, stating Iran will not release enriched uranium to third parties, not relinquish control of the Strait of Hormuz, and will not make compromises to appease the U.S. He adds that any deal would face sabotage risk: “If there actually is a deal, Israel is in a perfect position to sabotage it, and will do so,” including insistence on “a real, as opposed to a phony ceasefire in Lebanon.”
Freeman broadens the discussion to Lebanon and Israel’s domestic and international standing. He says Israel’s aim in Lebanon remains “an effective annexation,” describing a buffer zone as turning southern Lebanon into “the equivalent of a Gaza.” He also says Hezbollah is using optical fiber-guided drones and that Israel is losing soldiers and equipment, while Lebanese government negotiations are a “sideshow” because Hezbollah has denounced them.
He cites Israel’s overstretched forces, declining economy, fatigued reservists, internal divisions, and election pressures on Netanyahu. He also discusses reputational decline abroad, including claims about U.S. political views and European reaction to incidents involving a flotilla. Freeman states that Israel is “essentially a pariah internationally,” while the U.S. continues to back it. He says Israel has “never put forward a single peace proposal” in 78 years and claims this record of belligerence is “unmatched in human history.” He concludes that if the U.S. continues “write blank checks” with no conditions, Israel will not make strategic choices and the state will collapse as foreign support fades.
On China, Freeman describes China’s approach as “masterly inactivity” and says China backs Pakistan’s mediation efforts while seeking peace and stability in the Persian Gulf for energy and for restoring UN Charter and international law principles. He claims China has not modified export controls to Iran and that China may be providing technical assistance affecting air defenses. Freeman states it is “ridiculous” to expect China to endorse American aggression against Iran.
Freeman argues the war has shifted the strategic environment: Iran is not disarmed, may move toward nuclear capability, and may hold the Strait of Hormuz, improving its leverage. He says the GCC is split, citing Oman’s cooperation with Iran and participation by other Gulf states in discussions about post-war order. He also mentions Hajj as a factor reducing arguments for military action.
Finally, Freeman discusses possible U.S. outcomes, comparing the current period to Vietnam but saying Vietnam’s context was different due to Cold War bipolarity. He argues foreign wars are unpopular in the U.S. and predicts reduced alliance strength, discredited international law, and a trend toward arms races and requests for reduced U.S. presence. He describes a turbulent transition toward new polycentric regional orders, with Europe facing questions about viability and international institutions needing replacement.
He ends by saying there are “many, many questions, no answers,” and emphasizes that major historical change has been occurring, implying the present is not permanent.
Full Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined today by Ambassador Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, to discuss, well, primarily what's going on in the Middle East. So it's good to see you again, Ambassador. Always a pleasure. Great to see you, Glenn. I hope you're gonna explain what's going on in the Middle East. Well, that's why I have you here. Again, well, you are the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, so this is your, your part of the world. And I, I, I wanted to ask, you know, what, what do you make of this new-- Well, we hear some splits now between Trump and Netanyahu. I'm not sure what's just-- what is real or not anymore. That's one of the disadvantages of Demonstration, I guess. but again, Israel is undergoing a lot of change as it's pursuing this very aggressive foreign policy. What, what do you see happening here with Israel and its relationship with the United States? Well, I think there is a great deal of tension between Netanyahu and Trump. Netanyahu basically talked Trump into this war. It's gone very badly. It now looks as though it will end in a number of possible ways, none of which is good for our, our Netanyahu, none of which achieve the objectives. He has. so the ways in which the war could end you know, the, in many ways, the politically cleverest way for Trump to get out of this would be to allow the Congress to vote, vote an end to the war and to say, "Well, you know, I was on the road to victory, but they stabbed me in the back." And I was betrayed by the Democrats and apostate Republicans and "rhinos" Republicans in name only, and so forth and so on. I could see him doing that. That is one way of getting out of this. It doesn't, that leaves Israel high and dry, and indeed any exit from the war. invalidates the US partnership with Israel against Iran. that is to say, no, no future president is going to do what Donald Trump did. but at the moment, what we have is a memorandum of understanding, apparently a one page document which isn't a peace, not a, not a, an agreement, but it's an agreement to negotiate. And we have the ironic statement from Donald Trump who went to war with no negotiations and used diplomacy as a cover for a surprise attack, that, you know, well, we have to exhaust diplomatic means before we resort to force. I guess he learned something from the first. Brown where he didn't apply diplomacy at all. it looks like Mr. Widokoff and Mr. Kushner have been removed from the process, which is now being run by professional diplomats and leaders from Pakistan and Qatar who are attempting to mediate this. the immediate reaction to Donald Trump's statement that we're close to an agreement. Which seems to be a characteristic overstatement on his part. Now there's been some progress evidently made along in some areas but the immediate reaction from Israel was, "Oh no! " great headlines, you know, about Trump selling out Israel and so forth and so on. the Israelis are in an election mode so that they're a bit subdued in their criticism of Trump because of course he could turn around and do to them what he's done to every, every one who's crossed him in the United States and/or in Europe or elsewhere Mainly try to trash their reputation. People who are running for office don't like that, so they've held their fire a bit. that is, I think they've been quite tough. Netanyahu has been quite forthright in private on telephone conversations with Donald Trump, but he's not publicly that basic yet. On the other hand Israel's faithful stooges in the United States people like Lindsey Graham and so on, Ted Cruz and others have have pulled out all the stops this is a sellout we need to, you know, go back to war, finish the job, and so forth and so on. the problem for Donald Trump is he's basically cornered. on the one hand, he has Netanyahu putting pressure on him his Jewish donors. Israeli donors. Miriam Hadelson isn't Israeli two hundred fifty million dollar donation isn't trivial they're both ganging up on him part of his own Republican base is in rebellion and his military are telling him, you know, you can't-- there's no real military option. you can't, we can't hope to succeed, and and they may even have asked him to give them an order in writing, which is what the military do when they're being asked to do something they know is infeasible and want to be able to levy blame on whoever it was that issued the order. I want that order in writing. is is a characteristic response in those circumstances. the other possibility, of course, is that this thing just sort of peters out and it goes on and so, and so on. But the elements of the, of the alleged deal, which isn't a deal, but a a framework for negotiating deals. On the key issues the essence of it is, is essentially that the Strait of Hormuz will be open. Of course, it is open if you do a deal with Iran so I'm not quite sure what that means it's claimed that there would be no tolls levied I don't believe that for a minute that Iran has agreed to that. it's very clear that Iran is demanding sanctions release, of the sanctions relief and release of the frozen funds that number in the tens of billions of dollars that it, it has been deprived of. it's also very clear that Iran isn't going to do anything unless it gets something first. Iran has no confidence at all in the United States, having walked away from the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal, in Trump's first term, having watched the United States reneg on various commitments in negotiations with Widgoff and Kushner, having seen the United States repudiate treaties with others, and of course So you know, I think Iran will demand payment upfront before it does anything and that's gonna be very hard. so this is as I said once before on your program, this is zugzwang. This is a, a mobilization. anything Trump does causes him defeat and the United States defeat. This is a ridiculous situation to have gotten into. so basically Iran isn't going to release the enriched uranium to any third party, certainly not the United States, by order of the new supreme leader, Mousavi. it is not gonna give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. It isn't going to make compromises to appease the United States. It has achieved escalation dominance, in effect with the Israelis and it's demanding that any deal include a real, as opposed to a phony ceasefire in Lebanon, which brings me to the final point. If there actually is a deal, Israel is in a perfect position to sabotage it, and will do so. So you know, as usual Glenn, when we talk about these subjects, it's all gloom and doom that comes to mind. There's no happy, there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow that I can see. Yeah, well, as you said, there's no good options left, and I think this is The problem for Trump, that is, if he goes back to fighting Iran, then this limits for how long he can fight. It's unclear if he'll be able to get a ceasefire once he's out of ammunition and So also can't, can't win on the battlefield. But if you pursue peace, then the Iranians don't want to go back to the old status quo, so they will make sure that they hold on to the Strait of Hormuz to, and make sure, well, create incentives for countries not to host bases or put sanctions, but you can't do one, can't do the other, but also just waiting is also not ideal because the global economy is tanking, so one has to, one has to, and- The current well, not, not, not ceasefire, yep. Let me, let me make a point here, and that is that Trump and his administration are paying a price in domestic politics for having misdescribed reality. And that is to say, they have been claiming levels of victory over Iran which are utterly implausible. And which don't hold up to scrutiny. And for example you know, on the question of going back to war, the United States is basically deferring or canceling contracts to supply all sorts of equipment to allies and protected states the d- the fourteen billion dollar deal with Taiwan, which Trump- As yet formally to decide can't happen because there's no equipment to be provided. Some of the Baltic states have been informed that they won't get the weapons they paid for on the schedule they imagined. The same is true, obviously, of others. Equipment has been moved out of Japan and South Korea. there's, anyway, you know, so, so the administration's been bravely putting on a a, a show claiming that there was no depletion of weaponry or defensive capability as a result of this ridiculous war but the fact that they're behaving entirely in, in, in conformity with the fact that it did, ha- did happen. So, you know, you can listen to them or you can watch what they're doing, and I think it's more instructive to watch what they're doing. they're in a box and the drive-- the summer driving season is upon us in the United States. This is the time when people take vacations and move around and the price of gasoline- is, well, four dollars and fifty-five cents or so nationally now the price of oil just went down again oil traders, it turns out, are terminally stupid and keep falling for the same absurd tricks of market manipulation. so Brent went down substantially. and But that won't hold, and so, and it certainly won't be benefit if if kinetic action against Iran has, is stepped up. And there's another point here, and that is militarily, it's not just that we've depleted our capabilities and we're causing a great deal of operational wear and tear on our forces but Iran has used the six weeks of the, of the effective truce to reconstitute its armed forces, and the intelligence community has totally contradicted the administration's claims of the levels of damage done to Iran's inventory of missiles. Iran is back producing drones in high volume it may even be getting some drones from the Russians. Although the Russians are using their own drones against Ukraine pretty forcefully, so you know, there's just nothing here that that justifies any optimism, really. No no, sadly. I wish there was some more reason for optimism. but you mentioned before that Israel would likely seek to sabotage if Trump will go down the path of peace, that is, to find an agreement with Iran. But how, how far can the Israelis themselves take this though? Because there seems to be a growing crisis of the ethos of Israel. Well, you know, what, what is the country? What does it stand for? And So this is usually a problem on seas with empires as well, that is, violence abroad it tends to change the society at home. You see power always replacing principles citizens might become too disconnected from the world, the freedoms at home decline. So how, how do you see? How sustainable is this for Israel? Because they do have not just the economic problem and overstretched military, but you hear also more about very deep divisions at home to the point where even some journalists in Israel are talking about the prospect of a civil war. I don't think they're quite there yet, but things aren't going well. Well, I think of course, the key to everything is the American Logistical support for Israel and political backing of Israel, which allows Israel to behave not just with impunity, but with wild abandon, really. it creates moral hazard for Israel and Israel has fallen into that trap. but the, you know, the Israeli aim in Lebanon Remains an effective annexation. they're talking about a buffer zone, but really what they're talking about is turning southern Lebanon into the equivalent of a Gaza. and they can do that as long as the United States continues to supply them with weapons. and Trump has apparently assured them that we will. So how that fits into the proposed understanding with Iran is most unclear. Iran isn't going to abandon Lebanon, it also has a sense of honor which is at stake So there's that. and as if this weren't enough you know, actually, Is-Isreal is being badly hurt in Lebanon. Hezbollah apparently has optical fiber guided drones, which are very effective, and and it's actually losing a fair number of soldiers and a lot of equipment. but and it's been beaten by Hezbollah before. the talks with the Lebanese government are a sideshow. The Lebanese government has no authority to end the war on for Hezbollah. Hezbollah has denounced the negotiations. and, and so this is a sideshow, a farce, staged for performative effect but- As if this weren't enough, and all the problems you mentioned you know, declining economy reservists who are fatigued and affected with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a military that isn't doing well in Lebanon chief of the armed forces who says that the Israeli Defense Forces are in danger of falling apart. the imminence of elections in a context where Netanyahu is very unpopular among many Israelis. As if this weren't enough, you have Ben-Gvir dramatizing the sadism of the Israeli populace, his own sadism, and Israel's sadism with the flotilla that, and the people seized from the flotilla. that has cost Israel a huge amount, and not just in the United States where only six percent of Democrats now have a positive view of Israel, and, and nobody below the age of fifty has a positive view of Israel now in the United States, and you know, there's The only people who do are so called Boomer Republicans. That is, Republicans born right after World War two, in the baby boom. And they're dying. Well, I'm actually not a boomer, I'm older than they are. I'm not dead yet, but but it, it's coming, you know? So fifteen years from now, they're not gonna be around to support Israel. So maybe even shorter. But, but Europeans are finally beginning to react to the rape and humiliation. The beating of their own citizens in this flotilla some of the accounts are really quite hair-raising, and so Ben Gurion isn't an aberration he is a representation of Israeli behavior today, however much Israelis may choose to to ignore it or deny it. And so Israel is rapidly losing Its, its support base abroad. it is essentially a pariah internationally, and you know, the United States still backs it, and we've just seen the United States force Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative at the United Nations, to withdraw from his campaign to become the deputy Leader of the General Assembly, and he's withdrawn under our pressure on behalf of Israel but diminishing returns are setting in for Israel, and you know, in the end to go back to the irony of Donald Trump extolling the virtues of diplomacy when he hasn't shown any aptitude for it or even any inclination to use it Israel has to make a strategic choice. is it prepared to have everyone in the region and the world against it? does it think it can survive when it's ostracized in the region it, it inhabits and not welcome elsewhere? or is it prepared to try diplomacy for a change? You know, the fact is that in seventy eight years, Israel has never put forward a single peace proposal, the, the proposal for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians or anyone else. this is a record of belligerence that is unmatched in human history. And it So Israelis have to make a choice, and they don't seem to be inclined to do so. And I think as long as the United States continues to write blank checks to Israel and back it without any conditions, the Israelis won't make a choice and the State of Israel won't survive the conditions it's creating for itself. It will, like the two Christian crusader kingdoms In the Middle Ages the late Middle Ages it will lose its foreign support and it will collapse. So, you know, I think anybody, I find it very, very difficult to understand how anyone who cares about Israel could support the course of action that Israel and the United States have adopted, because I think it's ultimately fatal to the State of Israel. Well, I think you're right on the, well, I can understand Israel's approach to their lack of well, diplomacy or willing to make any compromise, 'cause when, when for so long you have the United States standing behind you, why, why would you have to make any compromises if you're essentially allowed to do what you want? But but on the other hand, on, on, on the other hand, you would think that Israel would begin to readjust to new realities realities, because as you said, the, the, the mood in the US towards Israel is changing. In other words, the, the intentions are no longer in the future to support Israel probably to the same extent, but also the capabilities, as we see, I mean, the US will always be a powerful state, but the era of global dominance appears to be over. The US would be in relative decline as you have other powers like China and Russia India soon probably Iran as well, emerging. So if you see the US have less capabilities and probably a less positive view towards you, then you would think that this would be the time to begin to change instead of doing this maximalist approach, to instead start seeking some settlement with the neighbors. but I, I, I wanted to ask you about China as well because this is Again you're, well, you also have a plenty of experience from China, you're a Chinese speaker, but but Trump recently met with Xi Jinping in Beijing. Apparently, he puts he wanted to pressure the Chinese to put pressure on Iran. but what do you see being the Chinese strategy in all of this? Basically, it's masterly inactivity the Daoist philosophy that if you do nothing, everything will happen for the good, you know a little bit more than that, but fact, the Chinese have backed Pakistan's mediation efforts they do want peace and stability in the Persian Gulf. For very concrete reasons, they depend on it in part for energy supplies, so it's an important market for them. But also, they are the defenders of the former world order that the United States and Israel have pulled down. And they want to reestablish the principles of the UN Charter and international law because that it creates an environment that is favorable to them, as well as to others. so they are, I believe you know, they have not modified their their lack of export controls to Iran. they are exporting at least dual-use equipment I saw an article the other day that the Russians had supplied the HQ9 to Iran, but the HQ9 is a Chinese system, an air defense system, so I'm not quite sure whether that has been supplied. Donald Trump's military has told him that the Iranians have greatly upgraded their air defenses and that renewed aerial assault would produce a lot of casualties on the part of the attacking forces. That may reflect Chinese technical assistance to the Iranians. they'd be fully justified in doing that. They're a non-belligerent. Iran is defending itself. It didn't attack anybody until it was attacked. So I think that's sad, and the idea that you could somehow get the Chinese to endorse the American aggression against Iran by putting pressure on Iran is ridiculous and it was never gonna go anywhere and we have the, the, the sharp contrast between the Trump visit, which was a a feast for the eyes You know, very lavish pageantry, personal attention from Xi Jinping, walking around Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in the Forbidden City, and so on and so forth. You have the contrast with Vladimir Putin, who comes and, you know, signs forty agreements, has forty different programs for co-operation, including military co-operation. But many others apparently they didn't quite complete the power of Siberia gas supply agreement, although they brought it closer to closure, I guess. probably still an issue of pricing of the gas so you know, but basically the Chinese and the Russians demonstrated a model relationship of cooperation and the Trump visit demonstrated a sort of cordial cordial hostility, I guess is the way I would put it and so the China relationship is is not stabilized. both sides basically agreed they would like to stabilize it. we'll see what happens now. you know, in talking to Chinese friends about this, I've cautioned them that, you know, the Trump administration has essentially trashed the ability of the United States to implement agreements. The civil service, the foreign service have been made basically irrelevant or incompetent and, and the-- there's no policy process that that coordinates government action effectively in this administration and so- you know, I've said to my Chinese friends, "Look, I know you, you've spent the last four thousand years perfecting passivity, but it's time for you to actually take the initiative. If you want anything to happen, you're gonna have to come up with the ideas and the, and the proposals, because you're not probably gonna get them from the American side. And here again, we come back to the discussions with Iran. What I'm hearing from a lot of commentators is that the United States has demonstrated that it is, quote, "agreement incapable. " It cannot reach agreements, let alone implement them, because it lacks the mechanisms, now the professional staff, to do that. And I don't, you know- I'm, I'm not sure how the Pakistani and Gujari mediation is working but it's significant that it's not being run by Americans. You know, it's being run by in the case of Pakistan a Chinese protected state Good relationship with China, China's not risking its own reputation, it's allowing the Pakistanis to do that. And and Qatar of course has a huge incentive to restore peace with Iran. I think Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are all in intensive conversations with the Iranians about post-war order, which would not include an American military. Presence. And this brings me back to Israel, because Israel's lost the deterrence capabilities provided by the United States against Iran. Iran isn't intimidated. Iran is prepared to go to war again. Iran is prepared to take more damage and suffering in the interest of national honor, if you will, and the United States has demonstrated to the world the limits of its, its military capabilities. As you said, we are very powerful militarily, we-- but it turns out that there are lots of things that can't be accomplished through the use of force against a determined enemy that's well prepared. And the Iranians were well prepared. They evidently, not only did they have a succession process in place to guard against the consequences of the murder of the supreme leader, which they implemented, basically as I understand it, when the ayatollah Khomeini was, was assassinated, every Iranian official was then backstopped by three or four layers of successors. they also decentralized their military command so that each of the thirty provinces in Iran had autonomy of action. and and of course the result of the war before the war the Strait of Hormuz was open, so there was no issue. No, there is an issue. Before the war, Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program. Now it probably does. The only thing holding it back from nuclear weapons production is the realization on the part of the Iranians who aren't stupid, that if they go nuclear, joining Israel in that. Then the Saudis, the Turks, the Egyptians, and others will go nuclear, and the net result will be diminished security for Iran rather than enhanced security. So a rational calculation would be that, you know, nuclear latency is still the right position. but I don't know, we nobody knows what's in the minds. Of the Iranian revolution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran and they are in charge. and we know, we have reason to believe that Mousavi, the supreme leader, unlike his father sees a necessity for a nuclear deterrent. So that may, this war may have produced a nuclear proliferation. it also has of course done huge damage to energy production in the region and to Israel, as well as to Iran. And any fondness that the Iranian people previously had for the United States is pretty much erased. so the American military presence in the Persian Gulf is now in jeopardy. and I think at this point, you know, as I said at the outset I, I, I would like to echo Mao Zedong, he said, "There is great confusion under the heavens, and the situation is excellent, "meaning that confusion provides opportunities for maneuver. but I don't really see the maneuver here on our side, or indeed on any side. Iran is also trapped. it can't forego the gains it's made in this war. And so you can't, you can never gain at the negotiating table what you lost on the battlefield. That's a basic principle of, unfortunately, of human behavior, and so here we are. You mentioned that many of the Gulf states are probably looking to adjust to take a new or a different position towards Iran after this war is done. And well, if you think, if you're sitting in the Gulf states, you think the US position will be weakened after this war and the Iranian will be strengthened for example, by holding the Strait of Hormuz you know, you can be as angry or, you know, uncomfortable With this reality, as you will, but to enhance your own security, you do have to recognize and adjust to this reality. So if this is the direction things are going, how do you-- And the US can't win this war, and in any outcome, the Iranian will essentially sit on the Strait of Hormuz. That means they can put a higher toll on countries who do put sanctions on them, who do host the US bases. Sure. How, how do you- Sorry. They can, they can retaliate, yes, in a very effective way to any actions taken against them. This is an improvement in their position that is fundamental. And you're absolutely right, in the end everybody in the region is going to have to adjust to new realities that have been created by this war, and they're very unfavorable to both Israel and the United States. I know that the Gulf Cooperation Council, which of course has six members, one of them, Oman, is now an apparent partner with Iran in the management of the Strait of Hormuz and sharing the revenues from the Strait of Hormuz. I should note that Iran, Oman Unlike the other five members of the GCC isn't terribly well endowed with energy sources, and its citizens actually have to work for a living and they do, and they are the backbone of, of many of the other, other countries in the Gulf's economies. but UAE has held out Officially it participated in the attack on Iran, we now know it took independent action. It has stuck close to Israel. Israel actually came to its aid with the installation of the Iron Dome system, and presumably with other assistance. And so If you look at the Gulf Cooperation Council you have two countries, the UAE and Bahrain, which are part of the Abrahamic cords four that are not. Oman is cooperating with Iran apparently. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar want the United States to stand down UAE remains vengeful, but even it has apparently joined its fellow members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in demanding that the war, in asking Donald Trump to end the war. you have the complication of the Hajj, which is going on two million or so people in Mecca that will end at the end of this week, and at that point one of the arguments against military action. will be reduced. so but it's pretty clear that the Gulf Cooperation Council is split, which is another result of this war. it's aggravated the tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates so very, as I said, there's a great deal of confusion. No one knows how it will settle out in the end but it's, whatever happens, Iran isn't gonna be disarmed. It's likely going to be nuclear or maybe it will be like the Israelis, it will be you know not officially nuclear, but actually nuclear some sort of plausible deniability kept in there The, the the, the new security architecture in the Gulf will have the backing of China and Russia, not the United States. and so this is a geopolitical earthquake that's been unleashed, and it's not just the damage to the international economy. but geopolitically, this is very profound in its effects. And finally, I would note that, you know, Israel is obviously squirming, which is why Donald Trump has now demanded that Saudi Arabia, the Turks, Turkey, and others sign the Abraham Accords. Well Qatar too, and but why should they? You know this is an Israeli effort obviously to, to snatch some sort of victory from the jaws of defeat. I don't think it will work because Israeli behavior doesn't endear Israel to anyone at present. Just to yeah, last question, given how Significant this defeat is. I mean, if you go back to wars such as Vietnam, it had a profound impact on the US psychologically in terms of the willingness to engage in similar follies, and, you know, it gave it a few decades at least. But, but what, what will the world look like for the United States after this? I mean, what, what are the options of the US, the possible, I mean, futures depending on paths it take? Well, Vietnam is a very different Situation and outcome for the simple reason that Vietnam occurred in the, in the context of a bipolar world order at the Cold War. and while the United States was humiliated by Vietnam and as you said, it had profound effects within the United States other countries faced with the choice between the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc Versus the West and the United States, didn't see that choice as anything that they you know, and as a real choice. They, they, they stuck with the United States and the West. and this isn't the situation now. So I don't know, I mean, it's pretty clear that this war, foreign wars generally, forever wars in particular, are deeply unpopular in the United States. Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending them, instead he's initiated them. and I don't think the American public in future is going to be Willing to support any sort of further adventures of this kind. So the and I note that one of the consequences. Of the Iran war has been the dissolution of NATO. Not completely, not formally, but you have members of NATO now denying the United States the use of their airspace or their bases. you have publics that are very turned off by both the United States and by Israel. You have the revelation that the bases in Europe, for the most part, are there not To defend Europeans against a mythical Russian threat, but to to provide, quote, "lily pads," unquote, from which the United States can project power into West Asia and it's projecting power into West Asia to do things that almost nobody in Europe approves. I mean, so withhold criticism for various reasons. Fears of being charged with antisemitism, maybe residual guilt from the European Holocaust and, and, and the collusion of not just the Germans, but many others in in rounding up minorities and killing them so the United States will emerge from this With alliances that are greatly weakened if they continue to exist at all, and with hedging by the major allies, Germany and Japan being the most notable examples of that, with the fabric of international law discredited. and since international law will no longer provide any inhibition against aggression, every country will be engaged in an arms race trying to arm themselves for self-reliant defense. I think there will be countries that ask the United States to, not just in the Gulf, but elsewhere, remove its physical presence from their territory. and you know, there will be exceptions, and Poland, for example, seems to like having American forces on its territory, and, and Germans are becoming more skeptical about the value of that as are Japanese. So I think you know, the world is changing rapidly. But you opened all this with questions about, you know, the viability of the State of Israel and- this is a situation like like that question, which unfolds only with time. There's nothing instant about it, very likely, so it will be like Hemingway's famous description of bankruptcy, which happened gradually then suddenly. and that, that is- We're in a transformational period, but we don't know what we're being transformed toward, and we don't know what the pace of the transformation will be. It should have been predictable things wouldn't stay the same if you have a hegemonic world order after the Cold War and this now comes to an end and replaced by many centers of power, it would be, I guess yeah, naive to assume that the old alliance systems the old loyalties and interests that they would all somehow remain the same. So. Yeah, turbulent time, yeah, appears to be coming. have any final thoughts before we wrap up? No, I think the, I think the turbulence and the transition were indeed not just predictable, but predicted. you know, some of us saw that the world was changing. so you know, if you, as you know, I don't like the word multi-polar, multi-polar, but you can say polycentric if you want. that comes closer to the, to the truth, I think. new regional orders are emerging, new international order will emerge. the United Nations has been so deeply discredited and that we will have to come up with some replacement for it what the nature of that will be, I don't know. I would say the European Union isn't prospered in this environment either and some question about the viability of that. We talked about the Gulf Cooperation Council. It seems to me that the countries of Pacific Asia are all making their peace with China and that it's not a sphere of influence in a classic sense, but there will be deference to China. Maybe a bit like the traditional deference of countries in South America to the United States, even though we didn't, as we did in the Caribbean and Central America, intervene directly or issue orders to them. Basically, people will be more respectful of China, which is what the Chinese want, they don't want. they don't want Lebensraum, they don't want control, they just want more more deference, more respect. and I think it's uncertain to me how India will evolve because India has been hegemonic in its region and remains so in many respects, this generates animosity toward it. Central Asia looks to me as though it's slowly drifting eastward but obviously some of the countries like Kazakhstan are looking for openings to other parts of the world, and we're seeing other countries like Turkey reemerge as independent actors with some influence I don't know what happens in- Europe, we've talked about that a good deal, then there has to be some kind of meeting of the minds between Moscow and Brussels or the main capitals of Western Europe if there's to be peace and prosperity. many, many questions, no answers is my summary. Well, it's a constant, though, I think, in human experiences, the assumption that Present the present is permanent. That is, through all of history, we have massive changes all the time, but somehow we always think that the, the way things are now, that's how they will remain. Keeping in mind, it was only been thirty-five years since the Soviet Union collapsed, it's you know, which was a very different world, so the idea that this was the end station yeah. No, history has not ended. No. Even Fukuyama agrees with this now. So, anyways, Ambassador, always such a great pleasure and always very educational to speak with you, so thank you. Well, I enjoy speaking with you and I hope together we make a little bit of sense about a very confusing situation, but I confess to being perplexed. Yeah like most of us. Thanks again.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Einar Tangen: China's Strategy for Managing U.S. Decline https://youtu.be/-V8u-iEESO8 https://t.co/fskUG64VW8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Einar Tangen, senior fellow at the TAIHE Institute and CIGI, discusses China’s shifting international diplomacy, including recent high-profile meetings involving Xi Jinping. He argues Beijing has studied Donald Trump closely after Trump’s first election, finding that his behavior is transactional and that China needs a “formula” for handling him. He says China has decided to be “somewhat firm” because attempts to be nice to Trump can lead to mocking and personal affronts, citing examples such as Zelensky. He also emphasizes that China must manage not only Trump but also the rest of the world’s repeated question—“What is China going to do?”—and he argues China is not seeking a toe-to-toe military confrontation with the United States because it would risk war, including nuclear war, and would drain resources from society.
Tangen describes how China frames the issue through “red lines” and a claim that there is a path to dealing with Trump, alongside messaging such as security for all countries not dependent on others’ insecurity, each country’s right to development, and respect for sovereignty. He further argues China believes an appropriate endpoint for dealing with the current global system is outlasting it and leading by example through action rather than relying on messaging.
He then turns to the question of how the United States arrived at Trump, arguing Trump is a symptom of a system dedicated to “anti-democratic democracy,” rather than an instigator that changed everything by himself. He traces what he calls structural changes back to the Powell Doctrine of the 1970s, which he says outlined that the American public cannot be trusted and that businesses should become aggressive in taking control of media and courts, fighting consumer protection, labor laws, and universities. He connects these developments to corporate influence in politics, arguing it increased money in elections and allowed corporations to back candidates with “as much money as they want.” He then links this to foreign policy shifts, including a “Clean Break Doctrine” associated with Richard Pearl, which he says emphasizes that Israel should dominate or decimate rather than pursue diplomacy.
Tangen adds a third element through what he describes as Eldridge Colby’s 2021 strategy, “Strategy for Denial,” claiming it proposes denying China access to trade routes by controlling choke points (such as major canals and straits) and denying access to energy by intercepting or preventing distribution of what China produces. He presents these as a “blueprint” connecting domestic political control, exported logic into foreign policy, and foreign plus economic policy together.
He also argues that changes in corporate leadership—from longstanding business families to “hired help” professionals—removed local community ties and oriented companies around profit-and-loss spreadsheets focused on maximizing shareholder value and bonuses, which he says helped shift aims and objectives. He describes this broader environment as producing a “world where there’s no empathy,” where civilian and prisoner killings are justified by cause, and where he claims “no heroes” exist because the approach relies on dehumanization and absence of empathy.
To illustrate China’s approach and the global South perspective, he cites Belt and Road Initiative investment exceeding $1.3 trillion since around 2015, and discusses what he calls “dead trap diplomacy” claims about Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port. He says Hambantota port expanded cargo handling by 175%, requiring tens of millions of dollars in further expansion due to insufficient capacity, and argues there is typically a ramp-up period before profitability in ports. He connects this to his view that China expects skepticism but responds through continued performance rather than persuasion, noting that China “has given up” on quickly convincing critics and instead tries to convince “by action.”
Tangen also argues that addressing U.S.-Israel-Iran escalation cannot be handled by China alone and requires overwhelming international coordination. He proposes that if countries do not trade with parties pursuing escalation, “all three of your economies will literally collapse,” describing this as peer pressure in an interconnected world. He further says the United Nations is “useless” due to veto power and argues a broader governance initiative may be needed.
He describes the current global environment as containing “more than 80 conflicts,” with a crisis affecting a large share of energy and food through downstream impacts. He argues maximalist positions persist because there is no trust and parties feel the other side will not concede. He says that without an endgame, leaders rely on hate and refusal to talk, which he says increases the likelihood of war.
In discussing media and political dynamics in the West, Tangen and the other speaker argue that rationality is being condemned and that opponents are treated as inherently evil—casting diplomacy as appeasement and making it difficult to restart negotiations. They also discuss censorship, harassment, intimidation, cancellations, and sanctions directed at academics and media figures who argue for adjustment to new realities. He describes discourse as shifting toward personalized accusations and lists examples of delegitimization through claims such as “apologist,” “propaganda,” or extremist labels.
Tangen emphasizes that security competition shapes the debate: recognizing an opponent’s security concerns is treated as taking their side, which he argues prevents resolution. He says historical patterns—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya—are associated with narratives that conflict would end rapidly with prosperity, concluding instead with “a trail of tears.” He argues there is no endgame when parties refuse to talk on moral grounds, and he hopes economics and trade can help reopen pathways toward negotiation, referencing the idea that after long periods of war, states often shift when they become economically constrained.
The conversation ends with Tangen and Einar Tangen agreeing to stop there, with Tangen thanking him and expressing hope for continued rational debate about where the world is heading.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the TAIHE Institute and also senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, the CIGI. So thank you very much for coming back on the program. I've been looking forward to speaking with you.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for having me. I'll try to do what I can, but I find your shows more interesting than my own.
Speaker 0: Well, I've been looking forward to some of your thoughts on the on the recent meetings of Xi Jinping because for many years, Beijing appeared to keep a low profile, than especially in the 2000s, essentially attempting not to draw too much attention to itself, it seems, that is to be allowed to grow in peace. But again, the distribution of power has shifted. And I guess the whole idea of covering up the might of China is now gone. So we have all these world leaders lining up essentially to go to Beijing and meet with Xi Jinping. And of course, the two main ones would be Trump and Putin.
What what did you what do you make of this shift, by the way, of of Beijing taking a more greater stand in international diplomacy? I mean, is it just a reflection of power, is it refilling a vacuum, or how are you seeing its new role in the world?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah. I I think well, first off, I think they've been studying Donald Trump very, very, very carefully. They were surprised the first time he was elected. They thought he's a businessman. He'll just do what's good for business, and since you have an intertwined world, logistics, everything like that, it just didn't make sense.
So they thought it was a campaign issue to be tough on China. And like many other presidents before him, as soon as they get in office, they they realize the realities, but that's not what happened. He really wanted to carry it forward, and and that you know, there is there's no going back, as they say. So China has understand that he's transactional, that he is going to be here for the next two and a half years, and that they have to have some way of handling him. And they've seen quite clearly that if you try to be nice to Donald Trump or you agree, you will get the back of his hand, literally.
He he will start mocking you and saying you're losers and all these types of things. Might even take personal this, you know, what would you call it, affronts as we've seen with Zelensky and and other people like that. So they decided they had to be somewhat firm, and there's two problems to this. First off, they need to do it with Trump. It's very transactional.
And if you, you know, have been following what's been happening, it's very clear they've made promises to Trump. But we will do a I mean, we will do b if you do a. Okay? Next thing, if you do c, we will do d. And that's exactly what is happening.
I've never seen Donald Trump's messaging being so tight as when he got on the plane and came back to The United States. Generally, his people are all over the place. Besson's over here. Heck, Seth is over there. Rubio's somewhere else.
Or they say things which are slightly different. There, they had very, very strong messaging. So they need to deal with Donald Trump. They think they have the formula in terms of transactionalism. But the second part is, how do you deal with the rest of the world?
I mean, I appear on a lot of stations internationally, especially in the global South, and the refrain is always, What is China going to do? Right? I always say, Look, China is not The United States. It doesn't have 800 military bases. Has no interest in getting into a toe to toe battle with The US, which could lead to a nuclear war.
Even if it didn't lead to a nuclear war, you would still have war. This would drain everything away from society. No one in the world would be helped if China and The US go to war. People should think about that. But they're always saying, well, China should do something because they're a big, powerful country.
Well, China's response to that has been to stand up and say, Look, we're going to draw some red lines here. We're going to deal with this guy. We're going to show you that there is a path to dealing with him. Lynn, But, if I may, I just wanted to add something in here. It's a fairly long conversation, but I want to start it out of how did we get here?
I mean, we tend to look at Donald Trump as somebody who just kind of, well, you know, how probable that some guy with bankruptcies and, you know, all sorts of sexual misconduct allegations, you know, fraud, lying, I mean, criminal. I mean, it just doesn't seem possible that somebody like that could rise to the top of the system. So then you have to kind of wonder why. What's behind this? Why is America this way?
And is Donald Trump simply a symptom or is he, you know, some sort of instigator or something who has changed everything? And I I would argue that he's really a symptom. Because what I would do is I go back to 1964. And this was Johnson is running against the Republican side and gets creamed. You know, Johnson wins in a landslide.
And what happens is, on the Republican side, there is a real crisis because the families who controlled businesses in The United States, and back then it was families, whether it was Getty or Rockefeller or Ford or everything, they all controlled their business. They were still, as I said, 1964. So they believe that America is on the precipice of communism, that, you know, you have a socialist president, Lyndon Johnson, and that it is time to draw the line. So if I fast forward a few years to '19 I think it's 1960. No, '64 and in the nineteen seventies, you have the Powell doctor.
This is Jeremy Powell. He goes on to become the Supreme Court justice. But six months before he becomes justice, he writes a secret memo. In that memo, he outlines that the American public cannot be trusted. It's time to put democracy aside, and it is time for businesses to be aggressive, to take control of media, to take control of the courts, to fight against any kind of consumer protection, against labor laws, against universities, intellectuals.
This is all outlined, and if people are interested, they should just look up the Powell Doctrine. Not Powell, the Secretary of Defense, who was waving that little white vial around saying, This is why we're going to war. This was Jeremy Powell. He went on to the Supreme Court, and it was hishe wrote in the affirmative to make corporations people. And then, by extension, people have freedom of speech.
And by extending that, therefore, corporations can back whoever they want with as much money as they want. And this changed politics. I mean, companies can unlimited amount of money. They can, you know, basically control elections. Iran elections.
You need money to run elections. But they can also hobble the parties because each party is making deals with special interests. Well, if you're a business, you have the special interests. Of course, labor was then making deals with the Democratic side, but the big and most amount of money was on the Republican side. So he outlines his plan to take over America to I mean, It's a very thorough plan.
You have to read the document in order to get a complete idea of it. And then we fast forward a little bit to this clean break doctrine, which we've talked about before. That was by Richard Pearl. And in this document, in '90 I think it was '94. They're they no.
'96. They they say this is written to Netanyahu, and the essence of it is Israel should forget about any kind of diplomacy in terms of settling its issues there. It should not seek to live with other countries. It needs to either dominate or decimate. Alright?
If the country acquiesces to Israel's greater goals, that's fine. If they don't, you knock them down. This, in essence, becomes the, you know, the mantra, blueprint for Israel's actions even as we come through today. Well, what did they do? The first Well, let me go to the last one.
The last one was done by the current Secretary of War for policy, Eldridge Colby. He's important. Also was supposed to come to China, and China has delayed his visit. He is completely anti China, and I don't mean in a small way. In 2021, he he wrote a book, trying to how was it?
The Strategy for Denial. In this, he talks about the way to get at China is to take control, to deny it access to trade routes, basically by controlling these choke point areas, whether it's Panama Canal or the Straits Of Hormuz or the Straits Of Malacca, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and also as part of that, to deny China access to energy. The thinking being that if we don't allow them to have energy, they have to import a lot, therefore they can't produce a lot. And even what they produce, we can intercept it and prevent them from distributed worldwide. So this is really kind of I mean, he just lays it out there.
I mean, this is a book he wrote. He's not going to deny it or anything, and he is now, as I said there. He's not a very likable fellow. During his confirmation, he got all sorts of out of step with so many people in the in in the congress, even people who wanted to kind of support him. But he he was able to get through.
Okay. So you have these three documents. Alright? And then you have one other thing that people should pay attention to, and that is 1964. As I keep stressing, it was the families that controlled businesses that were, you know, basically directing things, like the Bradley Foundation.
I've lived in Milwaukee, alright, and the Bradley Foundation was founded there. I knew the people who were on the board. Not too well, but I knew them. Small, small area. Small city, so everybody kind of knows each other.
Those families went away, and what they did is they had hired help. Who were the hired help? Well, they were professionals. People with business degrees, accountants, consultants. These were the people, investment banking houses, things like that.
These were the people who started controlling and running corporations. What was their goal? Their goal was notthey had no affinity towards any local place. It didn't matter. Every single factory was just a profit and loss center.
If I move production away from there to somewhere else, whether it's another country, another town, it's just all I care about is the numbers. I look at the spreadsheet because that's what they're trained to do. The families, despite all of their vagaries, things like that, they did live in their towns. They lived in the towns where they had factories. You know, Ford lived in Michigan.
He lived in Detroit. Right? He was there. His executives were around them. They were part of the community.
When you start bringing in hired help, there is no community. They're there from somewhere else. They're there to maximize shareholder values and, in the process, maximize their bonuses. So you have these three papers and then this massive change in control and the aims and objectives. So this became the kind of blueprint.
The first document in terms of the outline by Powell structured domestic political control. The second exported the logic into foreign policy. Okay. We're going to control everything. And the third said, it's not only foreign policy, it's foreign policy plus economic policy, all pushed together.
So this is how when somebody asked me, how do you explain where we are today? This is how I explain it to them. He says there were shifts and movements and thoroughly, you know, anti democratic. I mean, you can point to one other area. This is this dark enlightenment area.
We've talked about it before. These people are just thoroughly out there. There's no secret memo. They publish in books democracy is dead. We need to bankrupt the government to allow private industry to take over the functions of government, and then we would control the world.
It would be beneficial for everybody if they were serfs. This is just literally going back up to square one where you have fiefdoms run by tech titans. The only comfort I get from that is tech titans, just like the oil barons and the steel barons and railway barons back in the roaring eighties, the eighteen eighties, they're so busy fighting with each other over who should be the prima donna that they can't possibly agree as a group which would be required to do that. You have to look no further than OpenAI and Elon Musk and all his lawsuits against everybody and lawsuits against him and things like that. This is not a stable class, so it probably won't happen, but it doesn't mean they aren't having effect.
Palantir is gobbling up all sorts of resources from governments around the world, telling them that we can isolate We know where all your enemies are, and if you need to give them, we can direct your firepower towards them. Now, it doesn't always work out like schools in Iran full of young ladies who all die because, yeah, they were mis targeted. But, you know, these people say, Well, it's all worth it. It's kind of like Aldrich when she said, Well, you know, how many children have died? He says, Well, yeah, it's probably worth it.
It's a world where there's no empathy. You can't have empathy if you're going to do these big things, you're going to justify killing women and children, civilians, prisoners. That goes also to terrorists. There's no empathy. They think they have empathy for their own cause and people, but they're willing to go walk into a crowd and kill innocent people.
So there are no heroes in any of this. It's just the kind of way it is. So here's the world that is the way I explain it in China to people that I run into, and also essays and things like that. So China is looking at this and deciding where is the logical endpoint to any of this, or not endpoint, let us say. How do you get along with a power that has been shaped in this direction?
And I think the only thing they can come up with is you kind of outlast it. You lead by example. You talk about keep your talk points to, we want security for all countries that isn't dependent on, you know, insecurity of another country. We want Every country has the right to development path. Every country has the right to be respected and sovereignty.
And lastly, there has to be a mechanism so that when there is inevitably friction that you can sit down and talk rather than throwing tanks at one another. It's not something that they're just talking about. They've done it. Over $1,300,000,000,000 invested in the Belt and Road Initiative, which really only started putting money in 2015. So we're talking eleven years later.
You start looking at the global South, the growth patterns there, it's undeniable. I remember back in 2018, there was Chelani, Professor Chelani from India. He invented this word, dead trap diplomacy. Do you remember that?
Speaker 0: Yeah. No, they still refer to this, by the way.
Speaker 1: Well, okay. Well, yeah, but I mean it's let's talk a little about debt to debt diplomacy. So, Cialani says, and he uses the hamban pota, Srilankan pork. He says, Ah, they don't need it. They have Columbo.
What is this? It's a white elephant. It was politically motivated. This is a perfect example of how China is subverting Sri Lanka into dead trap diplomacy. Well, guess what?
Last year, Hemp And Pota Port expanded by 175% in terms of their handling of cargo. They are now having to expand to put tens of millions of dollars into expansion because they do not have enough capacity. So, those people who said, you know, back then it was sexy. It was easy. You know, when you talk about a big project like this, freight does not come in the day you open the port.
Right? It takes quite a while to set up all of the receiving. You have to have people who are there. There has to be loading and unloading. People have to get used to the idea, but once it starts, it starts rolling.
Hammond is very, very successful, and you you still hear these echoes of it, but I love getting in debates with these people because they say, Okay, well let's talk about it. What were your expectations? It would be profitable the day after they cut the ribbon? Is that the way ports work? If you look historically at ports, rails, everything like that, it takesthere's a breaking in period that always happens.
If it's strategic, you locate it. See, the reason Hampambuta Port was put there in relation to Sri Lanka is it's only about 10 miles from the regular marine routes. So, you don't have to go off as far as Colombo, and that's also fairly busy as well. So, now they have this situation where we offer them to, and they're specializing. They don't do the same kind of business that you want.
They have a put up. It's newer. They can do roll on, roll off type things. Columbus is a little bit older. It's still fairly well mechanized, but they do more different kinds of container loading, unloading, things like this.
So, this is a perfect example of how people will always react to anything that China's doing. So, China has to look at this stuff and they say, Okay. We can't The United States has a million watt stereo system with the media, which you can blast out, and you know that well. They're always nice to you, Glenn. China has like a squeaky toy.
Yeah, they're trying hard. They have a CGT, and they're trying earnestly to put the message out, but it's very hard to get coverage. So they've given up on this idea that they can, out of the box, convince people. What they're doing is convincing people by action. Lead by example.
And that's not only true in terms of externally, but also internally. Corruption, not tolerated, and you're never safe. If you're corrupt, there is no place for you to hide if they can find you. They've been pretty good at doing that. So China, at the end of the day, the best way for China to handle The US was understand where it was coming from, what this guy wanted, where it was possibly leading.
Okay? Not an endgame, but just kind of, we dominate, we dominate, we dominate, we're king of the hill. Okay, well, you can be king of the hill, but we can still trade. This doesn't mean just because you're not top of the hill doesn't mean you don't need $4,300,000,000,000 worth of imports, which is what The US imported last year. Without the 4.3, the economy literally would collapse.
So, there is the things. Now, you take that to the next level. We start talking about an area like the Straits Of Promos and Iran. And I've said before, the solution is for the rest of the world to come together, because the rest of the world is getting hurt, and say to The US, Israel, and Iran, knock it off. Right?
Stop. If you don't stop, we're not going to go to war with you. We're just going not trade with you, and all three of your economies will literally collapse. Right? That is the ultimate pressure.
It's peer pressure. It's not a gun. It's just the realities of an interconnected world. All of these countries need things that they don't have, and they cannot make them themselves. So that's where I see the when I would start talking about bringing countries together to do that, and this is exactly what China is trying to do.
They're trying to get other countries to step forward, not just one. China cannot settle this by itself. What is it going to do? They go to Iran, dictate their foreign policy? Not going to happen.
It certainly can't do it to Israel, The United States. So it takes an overwhelming majority of the countries coming together, and maybe this is the beginning of something like the global governance initiative. Because right now, unfortunately, the truth is the United Nations is useless. As long as you have five countries that have veto power, you can't get anything done. It would be nice if they would give them up, but are the chances of that?
Not great. So this is where we are today. We have 80, more than 80 conflicts going on around the world. We have a crisis that's affecting somewhere between 1320% of our energy, energy that is going to impact food. We have maximalist positions because there's no trust.
No one's willing to give an inch because they feel the other side will take a mile. So they said they go back and forth, but nothing's happening. That's why I'm saying the last element is all the rest of the country is coming together because they have no choice. It's that war. Take a roll of the dice, whether it's a recession or a depression.
So hopefully, there will be some leadership in the world. I think China is trying to encourage it. As I said, he can't do it alone. So this is China's approach, and you could see it quite clearly laid out during these two visits. Trump, transactional, Putin, it was a great visit from this perspective.
They didn't agree. They didn't get the power of Siberia pipeline agreement. Now, will it happen? Yes. But they're arguing about price.
But they didn't you know, Donald Trump admits this, If you don't give me the price I want, I'm going to tariff you to death. Okay? You didn't see that. You saw Xi and Putin very comfortable with each other, right, talking, right, very, very clearly communication was free and easy. They didn't have a they did have issues that they haven't resolved yet, but it did not change the tone, tenor, or direction of the negotiations.
They signed 40 MOUs, 40 deals, and this is about the same amount that they sign almost every year. So, the cooperation is continuing to deepen. As The US thrashes and tries to maintain things, it's actually scoring its own goals. Now you have an example, and the rest of the world is watching about how China is not is leading not from the front, but from the side. Trying to get people to understand that if we have a common direction, we are unstoppable.
If one person tries to dictate it, it's just gonna lead to more wars and friction.
Speaker 0: What you described to a large extent is about China attempting to manage America's decline. I don't mean to push for the decline, but to manage it because you often see a diminished rationality in a declining hegemon, a strategic desperation, if you will, because the expectations, the competence, the psychology, it it still belongs all remains to the commitment of dominance. But at the same time, the the material advantages are going away. So you have this again, I think this is a source of the irrationality, this split. They want to pursue a hegemonic policy even after the hegemony is gone.
So you often see a declining hegemon will have commitments that will be exceeding its resources. When it faces challenges, it feels existential because every challenge threatens to, well, push them off the hegemonic throne. You will have internal fragmentations, also obsession with symbolic dominance. So this is all something you see in Trump, but I wouldn't I think a mistake is only to assign it to Trump. I mean, this is something you see wider, not just in The United States, but the political West.
And, yeah, this part of the, I think, the internal splits as well is because rationality, which is required to maximize your own security and prosperity, it demands that you accept the new realities and adjust to them. But what I see across the political West now is rationality is almost condemned because if you recognize the limited power, it's seen as a surrender or even, you know, cheering on the other side. How how how dare you? I I was actually, it was the funniest thing. I was criticized in the media, as you mentioned it, recently because I had called said that the world is turning multipolar, and they made the point, well, would he say this?
Well, because it it's a gift to Putin because if it's it's only The US and China. If we say the world is multipolar, that's what the Russians want us to think because if we treat them as a polar power, they get this respect. So essentially, we all have to walk around pretending, living in an imaginary world where where pretend, no, they're not a real power. They're just a gas station, you know, with nuclear weapons. Like, this is what we have to do now.
It we have to all live in a fantasy world because otherwise, we give them respect or legitimacy. So so I think this is, you know, irrationality. It should have been predictable that this comes with a declining hedge fund, which is why it's so difficult to readjust to new distribution of power. And I I bring it up because I I noticed that Xi Jinping mentioned this during the meeting of Trump that is, you know, we have this tusidious moment that is or trap where, you know, we either have a declining hegemon, a new one rising, not a new hegemon, but a new power rising. This is usually what you expect to seek to see conflicts.
You know, we have to manage this carefully. But, yeah, we're not this should be the core of all discussions being had, you know, in in these meetings. But I'm but if you look at the media here, there's nothing of the sort. Again, it's there's no rationality anymore. It's only, well, how are these, you know, mullahs in Iran or these commies in Beijing or the imperialists in Russia?
How how can we manage or defeat them? This is this is the this is it. I mean, there's no discussion about, well, actually, instead of, you know, living in the old world, how about we recognize current realities and carve out as good position as possible? I see no such thing, though.
Speaker 1: No. I I agree, and and that goes to this issue that Trump is a symptom. He might be outrageous. Has certainly lots of faults, but he's a symptom of a system that is dedicated to antiironically, anti democratic democracy. I mean, he's running around trying to make sure that no one can vote who won't vote for him.
I think he's going to find that that backfires all these two forms of identification. Well, what? Wealthy people, upper middle class people, yeah, they do have passports. They do have birth certificates. They have multiple forms of ID that would satisfy this.
But a lot of the people that he works with who work in blue collar jobs, they don't have passports. All right? They're not gonna have a handy, you know, their their birth certificate on them when they go to the polls, and they're gonna be turned away. And as I said, this is not if I was advising them on this, this is not the strategy I I would take. But getting to this rationality, I mean, it's not only they I I think your Wikipedia page now accuses you of being connected to neo Nazis.
Speaker 0: No. Really? Yes. Well, it tends to be either far left or far right. Either a communist or fascist.
I'm not quite sure what they're going with this.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think you represent all ills. I think you're you're all bad things wrapped in one package. And the fact is you're a historian, and you're simply trying to point out to people that we've been down these roads before. As said, empires come and go. We should study them.
We should understand them. They become irrational towards the end, right, because they're trying to protect something that is unprotectable. It's laws. They can't come irrationally, but look at Albanese, the lady who's supposed to be looking out after Gaza. She was disappointed by the UN.
She had to fight to be you know, she had been depersonalized. She couldn't get to her accounts. She couldn't travel, all of these things, because The US decided, well, we're going to attack her. We not only dislike these countries, but we're going to personalize it. We're going to attack anybody whose voice threatens us.
And, you know, I was having the discussion with my son, Auret. He was the one who said, Oh, yeah. They're really going after Glenn. They are now accusing him of being a neo Nazi. I just can't even I don't even know where you begin with that.
And, you know, and he said, Well, I'm worried about him being depersonalized. And and we were discussing, and I said, the the reason you represent a threat is because you're rational. So when you when you go out and you start talking about irrational appoints you know, it's this is 1984. You you you have to do the doublespeak. You know, quack quack, whatever.
Whatever they tell you. And here's the irony. We're the ones who are running around the world saying that we're against 1984, that we're against, you know, fascism and totalitarianism and all of these things, and we are the worst offender, which goes to this issue that we have become such a hypocritical nation. We do everything we tell everyone else not to do. We start wars.
We take things from people. We break international treaties and laws. We blow up people because they're on a part of the ocean that we don't own, but we suspect they might be drug dealers or drug carriers. So, I think we're now up to close to 200 people who they don't know. They're in a boat and they blow them up.
And they don't only blow them up once. They use this double tap syndrome. So they blow them up and make sure that they're all dead, so there aren't any witnesses and no one can testify as to what they were doing out there fishing, going for a sail, whatever. They make sure that they're all dead. And I think that's pretty much deliberate.
Why would you spend two very expensive missiles on a speedboat, right? Then, you know, one is enough. You've sunk it. They're gone. They're probably going to drown.
But you send in another one just to make sure why. Why is that worth a couple $100,000? And I think it is comes down to this fear that we will be caught in this particular lie, we won't be able to get out of it. I mean, we did so many of these things, Vietnam War, in Korea, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, the litany goes on, the things that we did in in South America, toppling democratic governments.
Why? Because they were against the business interests of our companies. Mean, Banana Republic became was a phrase that was developed around Honduras because Dole had huge plantations down there, and every time the government would be elected and said, well, well, we need to have fair wages, Dole would scream to Washington, they're communists, and we'd send down troops or we'd kill a bunch of people and the government would change. So in theory, this is what we're trying to protect the rest of the world from, and in reality, it's exactly what we do. America is not evil.
I I was in a symposium and somebody said America is evil. I said, no, isn't. Don't fall into the trap of demonizing whole groups of people. America is full of very concerned people. Right?
It's full of ordinary people who would, you know, if they saw you in need of help, they would stop and help you. They're not bad people. You do have, as I was alluding to before, interests that have absolutely no empathy, who live by profit motive alone, who are amassing wealth at an even faster pace under Donald Trump than they have before, and they're happy. I don't know always ask I know some people, and I say, aren't you worried that you're gonna basically undercut the markets that support your fortunes? Because if people can't buy what you sell, eventually it all you know, you you know, you'll have a lot of money, but you you won't have a business or it'll be severely compacted.
I mean, today in America, 10% of the people represent 50% of all the sales. I mean, that that should be frightening to people because that means 90% of the people are only taking 50% of the sales. If they're doing that, by definition, it's mostly about necessities. America is overwhelmingly tertiary economy. We rely on services and things like that, but you can't afford services if you don't have wages.
So, you know, there should be some real concern. My great grandfather, who was an industrious, he always said, never pay your people less than is necessary for them to buy your products. Now, he he built ships and things like that, so it wasn't like he was selling ships off the street corner. But, you know, he was clear. He said, you have to keep an eye on the economy.
Our our growth is dependent on a large middle class who is able which is able to, you know, have needs and desires that are expanding, and that creates more business and more business opportunities. And he understood that. He wasn't an economist. He was an engineer. But he understood that.
Today, you go into a boardroom, no one talks like that. No one. Their only talk I'm I'm I'm on a public board, and the only talk is how do we maximize shareholder value. And it's almost a legal requirement. If you're not going to do that, you have to say, Look, we can maximize next term or next year, but the cost will be that the company will suffer.
They can always do things short term, and it looks great, and some companies do that. But what is your long term position? Are you going to increase your business next year? So there has to be obviously some sort of trade off between the idea of being getting instant gratification and delayed gratification. Unfortunately, that seems to be getting very, very thin out there.
But going to this point, I I worry that voices like yours are going to be intimidated, that they'll come after you and try to say you're either a protolytarian or you're a fascist or you're a communist or something like this. You're a bad guy. You're a neo Nazi or something like this, when you're simply trying to get people to think about these things. If you look on the people that you have on your show, I mean, it's very, very broad based. We were discussing this before you started recording about how these people who dedicated themselves to helping their countries, who believed in principles, are now turning against, particularly in The United States, but you also have it in Europe.
You have Tucker Carlson. Mean, was, gosh, true Trump blue or red, I should say. Remember? Even when they showed that he Well, he was saying that Donald Trump There's something fishy about the elections, that Donald Trump won it, that there was all this stuff. His private emails show quite clearly he didn't believe any of it.
These guys were fools and morons, this wasn't true, and all this kind of stuff. It's all out there. It was in a lawsuit that was brought by the company that they defamed, who said that their election machines had been hacked, and that they had basically swung the election in favor of Donald Trump. Never proven. The only thing that was proven is that they were defamed, and Tucker Carlson's emails were the basis of that.
Now, left Fox shortly after that. He's been very successful. He now is coming out very strongly against Israel because he believes that they are manipulating. They're the tail that is wagging the American dog. But this is not something new, This is where I have a problem.
He's saying, Oh, look what they're doing. I said, Well, my mind is, When weren't they doing this? All right? You go back to, I said, '96, clean break, defense of the realm. It's right there.
Everybody sees the report, and they say what they're going to do, and they want our backing. We're giving them back then I think it was around 4 or 5,000,000,000. Now it's about 3,500,000,000 in regular aid and then additional ones from war and things like this. Yeah. I mean, but it didn't start when Tucker Carlson left Fox News, right?
It just happened. It was happening all along, but he just discovers it at that point. So this is my point. I do think Tucker has some feeling about America. He thinks they're probably going in the wrong direction.
Wars are not good, all this stuff. But he's also a media personality, and I sometimes wonder if there's some compromise that people make to do that. I have never had any sense. I watch your shows religiously, although there's a lot of them. I have to listen at 2x speed to get through them all, But I never have any sense that you're like, oh, well, let me pander to somebody here.
Just strictly, let's look at the facts. Let's look at the history. Let's try to learn from them. Let's bring people on who can provide perspectives. And I I really appreciate it.
But the this idea of people trying to shut you down, depersonalize you, everything like that, scary. That's real totalitarianism. That's 1984. Everything we've feared.
Speaker 0: I'm worried when we see governments and media attempting to teach us to hate entire nations, even if it's The United States with 330,000,000 people, you know, red flags should go up. This is kind of absurd, but no. But I I also it's interesting if you listen to a lot of this American, you know, the whole the military the held previously held top military positions in government, and you hear them speak now about how they feel all their ideals were essentially betrayed and weaponized for very different goals. It's, you know, they for them, it's kind of interesting because after decades of serving their country, it's it's painful for them, and then they express this as well. But, yeah, yeah, you often feel there's yeah, because if anyone reads my Wikipedia page, you know, it's yeah, it's a very strange reading, but it's the same group of people who who write this kind of stuff.
And, again, my my position, I thought, was should have been fairly uncontroversial. I I mainly argued that, you know, towards the Cold War and the end of the Cold War, had key goals, that is we were gonna overcome block politics. We were gonna pursue a new European security architecture, which pursued security with each other instead of against each other. And this was, again, this was the objective. This is why we had the Helsinki Accords.
This is why we signed the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990. This is why we set up an inclusive security institution, the OSCE in 1994. So this was this was the goal and but it didn't didn't happen. So I just argue, well, what happened? Well, you hear top officials from the Clinton administration, others, they they tell us exactly what happened, such as, you know, William Perry, the defense minister of Clinton.
He said, well, NATO well, we we instead decided to go for hegemonic peace. We saw that Russia was weak, and so we didn't really have to include them in a security arrangement. This coincided with the Wolf Wolfowitz doctrine that is let's pursue security based on hegemony. We'll be so powerful, no one can challenge us. And essentially, what did this mean for Europe is instead of having this new such a common European home, which Gorbachev had spoken about, we replaced it.
Instead, we went with NATO expansion. So instead of indivisible security, NATO would expand and push essentially Russia out of Europe and essentially reviving the logic of the Cold War. So many people had good intentions behind this, I think, at least how it was solved because they said, well, if we have a hegemonic peace, a dominant West, you know, developed through NATO expansion, we're gonna there won't be any more security competition in the international system because there is only one central power, and that central power prioritizes liberal democratic values so we can develop a more benign world. And the problem was no. Of course, it doesn't work out because it it would be temporary.
You would have to hold down the rising power. But this is this
Speaker 1: How do you pose peace? I don't even understand this concept. I know you don't want it, but I'm gonna pose on you, and you're gonna like it. Right? These these these are nations.
They're supposed to be sovereign. I I I never understood the premise that we were going to basically, you know, the the Francis Fukuyama thing, you know, end of history. I mean, he's been walking it back. I think you did you have him on your show? Yeah.
Speaker 0: No. I should try to get him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Should. And and and just, you know, because he's been walking it back ever since. Unfortunately, the people seized on it. The neocons and all the rest of them are saying, okay. This is our mantra.
We're doing peace. We're gonna kill you, but in the end, it'll all be very, good for everybody. You know, the greater good.
Speaker 0: But they made an ideology out of it almost. They or the entire political class we have in Europe now, they build they were raised on Fukuyama, and they're essentially trying to organize Europe around these ideas. But in practice, this means that Europe remains divided, which means we can't have proper economic prosperity, we can't have proper security. And now that the distribution of power is shifting, The US, of course, will deprioritize Europe. So Europe sits there as increasingly becoming more and more of a vassal, that is it will become the exclusive economic sphere of The US.
It will be completely divided, full of conflict as our security is premised on the perpetual march towards Russian borders. And and my argument essentially, we have to adjust to this new distribution of power. The hegemonic moment is over. Why would we still why wouldn't we adjust to current realities? That is whatever great dreams they had in the nineteen nineties, it's it's not gonna work anymore.
The Russians have put their foot down, no more expanding NATO to our borders. The Americans have realized, okay, we have to prioritize some regions over others. Europe is, you know, no longer a priority. You know? But but you can't say this.
If you if you say it, then you're essentially betraying the Fukuyama ideology as you suggest. So I I thought this was an uncontroversial argument. You adjust to current realities cause that's good for us. You maximize your own security, your own prosperity. But in this country, we have government finance, you know, nongovernmental organizations.
They will write articles about you to go on social media campaigns. I can't even speak anywhere because they call and demand that they cancel my invitations. They send letters to university. Of these NGOs post they didn't post a picture of my house on social media. They're you know, and if it's it's quite insane.
And, you know, the former foreign minister, she even said that Putin wants to destroy Ukraine and put Europe under perpetual threat, and that's what I'm working for. That's the foreign minister and the defense minister, since I said that NATO had helped to provoke the war in Ukraine, which is a necessity to recognize if we're gonna solve it, essentially, encouraged media not to talk to me because he said I was spreading Russian propaganda. That's the current defense minister telling telling media what academics they can speak to. It's it's it's very wild here. I mean It's
Speaker 1: yeah. But it yeah. It's it sounds to me like I I don't know what the laws are in terms of slander in Norway. I imagine they follow international standards, and if she wants to say that, she's gonna have to prove that you're doing that. This is the only way sometimes to get these people to realize because they're bullies.
They say to themselves, oh, know, what is it going to do about me? I'm a former defense minister, I have the weight of all these people and things like that. But I'm sorry. Sometimes the courts are the last refuge of rights. As I said, I don't know what the laws are there, but if she's saying this thing, that sounds very slanderous to me.
Unless she has some sort of proof, that would be an interesting case. I wonder if there would be somebody in Norway who would say, look, I'd like to take that case. Because it's not just you, Glenn. They're saying this about they have a list of people they don't want to speak. You're dangerous because you're not some raven loony guy shouting and screaming.
You're very Look at you. You don't look like a radical. You don't have long hair. You're clean shaven. You always use rational arguments.
You cite historical facts. You talk about, Well, there are points when things change and you have to adjust. How is this communist fascist totalitarianism? But it it really it's it's beginning to be more so so personalized. Having a debate with anybody now is almost impossible.
In China, it is, but I mean, if I go abroad, you know, it's either you're with us or you're against us. It's it's a shame.
Speaker 0: Well, it's just I think Europe's become one big circus of ad hominem attacks. That is there's no discussion. It's only person. I mean, even this is I was reading the German media as well yesterday. This this German brigadier general, he was a former adviser to Angela Merkel, and he was making the point that, you know, we reached a point in the war in Ukraine where to escalate, and it's very dangerous for Germany to go down this path where essentially throwing away our own national security.
And we we should do do a rethink here. And and, essentially, he outlined this argument, and then below it said, oh, he's been accused of being an apologist for Putin. Yeah. So but but again
Speaker 1: They put that in the article?
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What what does that mean? Like, anyone can say anything, and then suddenly this is something that's obligatory to Yeah.
But to such making
Speaker 1: this who's you the the question to ask is, who's making these decisions? I don't think the editorial board of of German magazines and newspapers are independently saying, oh, well, he's an apologist. Do some research. There is pressure being put mostly by the government, And, you know, they fan out. They do their talk points, and they tell people, well, you know, this is very sensitive.
This is, you know, you have to be with us or against us. You know, you have your licenses. I mean, this is what Donald Trump is doing openly in The United States. He's trying to get late night comedians fired because they make fun of him. Why they make fun of him?
Because he's a clown. All right? And he invites satire by, you know in the morning, it's I'm going to bomb them to oblivion, and in the afternoon, negotiations are going great. I mean, you
Speaker 0: it just happened once, Subi.
Speaker 1: It didn't happen just once. So, I mean, he invites this stuff and then he wants to use all the powers at his disposal, like this $1,670,000,000 slush fund that he's given himself. I mean, I'd love to sue theI'd love to be the president, sue myself, and give myself a lot of money because I'm going to settle with myself. That's very fair, right? I mean, even his Republicans who are cowed by him after he's beaten people who opposed him in the primaries, they can't even stomach this.
1,700,000,000 tax dollars to give to people who are beating police by a group that says they stand behind the police? The only way they're standing behind these police is with a billy club and beating them right now. I mean, all the people who are hurt on the police side have protested. The idea that these criminals were in fact pardoned, 1,600 of them. A fair percentage now have gone back in to the criminal justice system for everything from murder, rape, and quite a few of them for pedophiles, are pedophiles, including some of his closest advisors.
His religious advisor spent six months for diddling a 12 year old. I mean, what can you say? I mean, these are the people who were screaming that the Democrats were pedophiles who killed the children and drank their blood and all this kind of nonsense. And it's all towards demonizing it, but it doesn't go anywhere. I mean, at some point, things have to fall off.
This is what I've I've been hoping for with Donald Trump, and I say, you know, he he hopefully will be hit the bottom. Because in America, we always do the right thing when we have no other choice. Yeah. And believe that will end.
Speaker 0: The problem is if you would simply be replaced by whom? I mean, this is often my point that in 2016 when Trump was saying, you know, we have to get out of the JCPOA with the Iranians. We have to sanctions the Chinese. All this I mean, it was it was a lot of opposition to it. But now this is it didn't matter that Biden took power.
They just continued the policy. So I don't think it matters that much who's on the throne. That being said, I do agree that Trump is much less stable than anyone I've well, anyone before him. I just yeah. I have thought of about the I think the source of a lot of the censorship we we see in harassment, intimidation, you know, cancellations, even sanctions in Europe against its own citizens is is the fact that there is no the reason why you can't counter government narratives is because in international security, the point of departure is always the security competition.
You know? Every state is, you know, seeking security. America develops missiles, it's insecurity for China. So so usually, when you want to have peace, you first step, you always have to put yourself in the shoes of the other guy, recognize their security concerns. However, we we stopped doing it.
And if if you try to recognize, well, what are the Russians worried about? Well, then you're Putin apologist. You're pro Russian. You're, you know, Kremlin talking points because that's what Russia says. Yes.
That is Russia's expressing their security concerns. Usually, we would listen to this, and then we would try to mitigate the mutual security threats, and and we'll reduce this. But but this is not just a Russian thing. It's China. It's Iran.
If you try to explain, well, these countries, they are big nations. They have real interests. Their policies are not you know, it doesn't come out of a vacuum due to their evil nature. They're actually responding to their own security concerns, economic concerns. You know, then you're a panda hugger.
You're a mullah apologist and a Putinist. I mean, there's this is the this is the level of sophistication in the discourse because and it's not oversimplification. I mean, across I don't see any politicians, any journalists, anyone ever discussing the security concerns of your opponent because they would be out of a job. That's what that's called, you know, apologist.
Speaker 1: But if you don't do that, you're never going to solve the situation. If it's just I I win and I'm gonna destroy you, historically, that hasn't worked.
Speaker 0: Well, that's what said. There's no
Speaker 1: that's why well, there's no endgame. I'm not gonna talk to you. Why? Because you're evil. Alright?
And all your people are evil, and I get to kill you without remorse because you're evil. But, you know, what you talked the reason I mentioned clean break instead of the the Wolfowitz doctrine is to me that they're in parallel. Earlier when I was talking about these changes, it's just this idea that total dominance is the only way to go. It's like we're gonna get rid of democracy. Okay?
We're gonna get rid of all competing countries, whether it's Japan, Germany, Russia and Germany together, China. Whatever it takes, we will book no rivals. And then last, okay, we're taking this beyond military. We're gonna ramp this into economic. But, you know, The United States isn't in a position to do that.
No. If we imported only half $1,000,000,000,000 worth of goods, oh my goodness, we could, you know, we could go our own course. But when you're at 4,300,000,000,000 a year, oh, you need other countries. This this this is what I don't understand. Rationally, say, okay, but where where are those things gonna come from?
They don't even know what they are half the time, you know, what it is that we're importing. I said, Well, are a lot of essential goods to your standard of life. If you want to go without them, you could. I think you'd find yourself quickly going down about two or three levels in terms of your your lifetime. And people I I don't know what it is.
I think there is a desire. I mean, you go back to the Japanese when they were preparing for war. They would bring people in and dehumanize them for a year, beat them, you know, long hours, horrible dehumanizing humiliation, and then combined with beatings, it causes psychic break. And then by the time they came back for the second year, they were just intent on doing what had been done to them to the first years, and they continued. And what you do is you create a group of people who thought anyone who was in Japanese was less than human.
Okay to kill them. That resulted in, what, thirty five million deaths between famine and then murders, and they also put there's no actual proof, but they would drop poison grain and also gobules on cities, and immediately thereafter, there would be epidemics, and many hundreds of thousands of people died in these cities. So this was a mass atrocity, which they never came to. But my point is, there could be no debate in Japan because if you debated, you were against our boys. Alright?
You're against You're not a patriot. You're a traitor. Same thing in Germany and England. As soon as they're ramping up for war, the propaganda goes into full tilt, and everyone else is evil. That's why I always object when somebody says America's evil.
I said, you you don't know what you're talking about. America isn't evil. That we have evil people. You have evil people, and they do evil things. But people are just people.
They're just trying to get by. Question is, who's trying to manipulate them? And with social media these days, the opportunities are great, and, you know, people don't know what to believe. I mean, somebody actually said to me, they said, well, you think you're so smart. You went to school and everything like that, but you don't have any common sense.
I said, excuse me? This is why I graduated high school and I have common sense, as if common sense is something you get by not going to school. Completely anti intellectual. And I'm not saying intellectuals have all the answers. They get it wrong just as much as anyone else does.
But to actually say I'm ignorant and incapable of thinking, and therefore I'm superior or equal to you, just goes to show how far we've gone. I mean, and it's an attitude which is hurting countries who adopt it because they basically say education's useless. I don't need education. I just, you know, read a book, the Bible, or the Koran, or whatever. I'll I'll take it all from there.
Speaker 0: But, Elif, one wouldn't care about China or Iran or Russians or anything, it's it's not a charity to recognize the concerns of the opponents. It's a necessity to improve your own security because and this is what should be obvious if as also with Iran, like, I noticed when the Americans started bombing Iran, it was compulsory to just explain that, you know, they're crazy mullahs who killed their own people and, you know, the evil regime. Everyone will take to the streets and celebrate once this regime falls apart. This is the only thing you can can say. But the problem is if you don't recognize that this is a that the reality is, first of all, you you will end up in a situation we're in now.
The US gets defeated, and it didn't understand it it's taken by surprise what Iran actually did on the battlefield, how resilient they were, their ability to rebuild the support they got in the international system, and also, well, what what are the consequences now? Where where where are the Iranians willing to make compromise? Where aren't they? None of these things can be achieved if you live in your fantasy world where they are just, you know, these evil savages who wants to destroy civilization. It's it's the self delusion is so harmful, and people think it's think it's patriotism.
We do the same with Russia. We do the same with increasingly with China, I think.
Speaker 1: But it's it's not out of memory that we've done it before. We did this in Vietnam. Oh, they're just waiting for the communists to fall. Okay? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya.
You know, it was always the boys will show up and, you know, people will be throwing roses at them as they stride into the capital, and freedom will break out everywhere, prosperity will soon follow. Well, look where we've been. All it has has been a trail of tears. Death without development. More problems, not less.
Economics, nothing. So I keep you know, I I have friends who have very different views from me, and I always say, well, is it possible, as you were saying, is it is it possible to consider that there's a middle ground that things have changed? Life is dynamic after all. We want it not to change, but the fact is it's like saying, you know, telling the tide not to come in. It's just not possible.
So this is this is my real problem. This is there's no endgame to any of this stuff. They're hyping up people to hate each other. And at the end of the day, this this this is what really leads to war. This is how you do it.
Once the other side is evil, well, I I'm not gonna talk to you because you're evil. Right? And they think I'm evil, so they won't talk to me exactly what you're describing. And so how how do you how do you unwind from that? And I'm I'm just hoping that the economics might be the answer because I don't think, politically, we have the maturity of of leaders except other than a few who could handle this situation.
So it has to be by some force, and the force cannot be kinetic because it doesn't work. We've seen that. So I'm hoping that people will realize that trade is necessary to all, and it's time that we use that. I mean, know, look at the Treaty of Westphalia. We've discussed it many times.
You're an expert in that. You get to a point where you're you're you get tired of killing and you're bankrupt, and all of sudden, you have to realize that, okay. What you do is your business. What I do is my business, but we can trade. We'll respect each other.
It's all going be.
Speaker 0: The problem is that the piece of Asfala came after thirty years of war, which this this made the entire European population. Now if you are and this is, you know, from 1618 to '48. So if you add now this industrial, military, and nuclear weapons, we can't afford to do it anymore. But kind of my key key proof, I guess, in the lack of irrationality now is look at the European leaders for after more than four years of boycotting diplomacy, not talking to the other side as we're fighting a proxy war against the world's largest nuclear power, criminalize diplomacy. And the huge challenge now is it's too difficult and controversial to restart diplomacy, to talk to Russia.
I mean, this is where you if this is where we are, we should really take a step back and say, how do you end up in a situation like this where you can't talk to the we can't talk to the other side, you know, pursue diplomacy while political leaders walking around pretending it's moral virtue to sit on the sideline watching hundreds of thousands die saying that diplomacy is appeasement and weapons are the path to peace? Certainly, something has gone wrong here, but we can't address it because that's only what, you know, Putin apologies should do. It's insane. It's it's built.
Speaker 1: I know. Anyway, I mean alright. We should leave it there.
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you for having me. But, really, it's always very insightful to talk to you, and I I hope your voice continues. A voice of rationality questioning, where are we going?
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And I'm yeah. Hope to see you again soon.
Speaker 1: Alright. My pleasure. All the best. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Brian Berletic: The New Great Game - War Against Iran, Russia & China https://youtu.be/0Z7Ud5P9pNo https://t.co/Y4mVX6MXPe
Video Transcript AI Summary
Brian Berletic discusses connections between the US “economic war against China” and wars/proxy conflicts involving Russia and Iran, arguing that the US seeks primacy rather than balance of power and uses diplomacy to build pretexts for additional war and to shape geopolitics. He says US policymakers do not expect China to pressure Iran or to pressure Russia, because China has reasons to avoid helping isolate itself, and he frames US actions as deliberate attempts to keep adversaries from becoming independent centers of power.
He argues the US aims to weaken Russia, Iran, and China by creating wedges and subordination through client regimes and proxies. He claims Europe, Israel, Persian Gulf states, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are treated as extensions of US foreign policy rather than independent balancing powers. He also contrasts what he describes as US strategic framing—portraying America as reasonable while treating opponents as “evil”—with the claimed reality of proxy war, including in Europe and Iran.
When asked about the goal of restoring primacy, Berletic says the US tries to pursue multiple forms of dominance—military, financial, trade-route control, and technological dominance—while acknowledging it is becoming less realistic as China surpasses the US plus its proxies. He says US strategy, as he describes it, shifts to wrecking multiple theaters and trade systems rather than direct head-to-head conflict, including efforts to disrupt energy exports and contested waterways. He cites US-created crises in the Middle East and describes US pressure on Indonesia near the Strait of Malacca, attempts to gain military access to that chokepoint, and blockading tactics affecting Russian energy exports and other routes.
He claims the US has reorganized the Marine Corps into an anti-shipping force “specifically” for interdicting shipping, with preparation starting before the Trump administration. He argues that these actions aim to increase leverage over Asian states through energy dependence on US LNG exports, and to coerce regional countries away from balancing China. He compares this to how he says the US subordinated Europe via energy dependence, including by disrupting Russia–Europe energy flows over years.
Addressing the US strategy’s “double blockade” concept and chokepoints, Berletic argues it is not about shutting everything down instantly. He claims the US does not need to seize every ship; he says ships often turn back and/or are disabled or seized, and he points to examples of US warplanes disabling ships. He argues this creates deterrence and manages economic damage rather than causing total collapse at once, with the goal of controlled destabilization and increased dependency that can be used to disrupt what China is doing in the region.
On the Russia–China dynamic, he says Russia is a large energy producer and shares a direct border with China, leaving fewer “middle countries” through which disruption can be mediated compared with routes like Russia–Europe gas via Ukraine. He argues that because Russia and China together can attract other states into a broader gravitational pull, the US strategy carries risks but fits a longstanding pattern of maritime corridor control and chokepoint strategies.
Berletic expands on what he describes as long-running pressure against Belt and Road corridors: he claims US-backed militants attack Belt and Road infrastructure in Myanmar and that the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor is attacked by US-backed terrorists. He also describes attacks in Afghanistan against the Afghan government and Chinese investments, framing this as a long-term “global dirty war” against China and its partners.
When discussing Iran and Russia, he says Iran and Russia could strike deals with the US but are instead aiming to prevent a return to the prior status quo of sanctions/perpetual threats and NATO’s incremental expansion. He frames their posture as insisting adversaries must be included in the security architecture.
He then compares the current era to a “new great game,” arguing it extends beyond Eurasia and now involves technology and rapid integration of advanced capabilities into deterrence for states such as Iran. He characterizes US behavior as either dividing adversaries or weakening them to prevent coordination. He says the US does not want friends among Iran or Russia because it wants them to be subordinated or weakened; otherwise, he claims they would work together with China.
Finally, regarding Taiwan, he says the US “keeps” the one-China policy rhetorically but undermines it in practice through laws, troop presence, and military cooperation with Taiwan alongside regional partners, framing US support as preventing any meaningful back-off. He says US diplomacy functions as cover, including in relation to Russia/Ukraine and Iran, and describes US strategy as a multi-domain approach that already functions as economic and proxy war against China while escalating across Russia, Iran, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific military integration.
He concludes by warning that US policy will likely continue escalating and that China’s ability to build faster than the US can disrupt and destroy is central to whether open conflict can be deterred.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Brian Berletic, a former US marine, author, and host of the new Atlas to discuss, yeah, the what what brings the economic war against China and the wars against Russia and Iran. What are the commonalities? What brings them all together? So thank you.
It's good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 0: So Trump recently had this meeting with Xi, and they it seemed like one of the key objective was for Trump to get China's support to put pressure on Iran to essentially put an end to the war on terms favorable to The United States. It did remind me to some extent about how The United States also wanted China to put pressure on Russia to essentially capitulate. I guess the problem there would be if China is next on the chopping block, then it would be great self harm. So how are you seeing this? Because you have argued that China would be the ultimate target in all of these theaters of war.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And the US administration admits this. There are senators and and representatives in congress who constantly, almost on a daily basis, admit this. And I don't think that the I don't think The United States and I don't think president Trump as policymakers went to China thinking that China was going to put pressure on Iran just like China would never put pressure on Russia, because why would China help the United States eliminate one of their own allies and isolate themselves even further? And so people have to to kinda understand what the US uses diplomacy for.
They don't use diplomacy to solve issues peacefully. They use diplomacy to create more pretext for for additional war and to shape geopolitics ahead of those wars. This is what they've done up up to the lead up to the overthrowing of Ukraine in 2014, provoking the war with Russia in 2022, and the the last two years of war of aggression against Iran. And this is exactly what they're doing to to China itself using diplomacy. So when you understand that that's why they're doing that, that's how they're using diplomacy, then it makes much more sense.
And and the way they try to frame it in the minds of Americans, people have to remember, they have many different target audiences when when they do these different things and say these these different things. They're they're trying to put it into the mind of Americans that America is such a reasonable country. No matter how evil China is, America wants to talk with them. This is the same game they just played with Iran up until The US launched its war of aggression against Iran. This is the same game they've been playing with Russia for years in regards to to Ukraine.
We're the neutral mediator when it's their proxy war from the from the beginning and and run by The US top to bottom, all the way up until and including today.
Speaker 0: But it seems to some extent to be self defeating, though, because if one looks at the international system, that peace would created would be created through a balance of power, which all the major powers would be constrained. It you would think that having more independent and, well, stronger Iran or Russia that this would in in create some balance of power on the Eurasian Continent. But is is is the only reason for The United States to essentially seek to weaken all the centers of power be to and to us to have a asserting a hegemonic path to security, or is there any other objectives? Why? Because, you know, if I was in The United States, I would see being in rapid relative decline, you're having the the Chinese rising very, very strong and powerfully, I would want to have again, I want to restore a balance of power.
This is traditionally what The United States did with its offshore balancing. It would come late into wars when all the major powers had exhausted their blood and treasury, and the main goal was to assert or restore a balance of power where the major powers would balance each other, and then pull out before others they would begin to, you know, collectively balance The United States. But now, attempting to weaken Iran, weaken Russia, it seems like it's just, you know, there won't be any check on on its main adversary. Indeed, for the Russians to survive now or the Iranians to survive, they really have to put even more trust and more dependence on China. It just doesn't seem like this is what would be rational behavior for a for a country would which would want to balance its opponents.
Speaker 1: The The United States only pretends to seek a a balance of power between nations. It ultimately wants primacy, and this is this is stated US foreign policy objective since during the Cold War, after the Cold War, and from the very end of the Cold War all the way up until now, every official US government strategy paper, every think tank policy paper. This is what they're obsessed with. This is their ultimate objective is primacy. They wanted to try to put wedges between Russia and Iran, Russia and Iran and China.
They they tried to play these games for decades and decades, decades, all during the Cold War and ever since the Cold War. But this is at a very late stage of the game where everyone knows what's going on. They know there's this window of opportunity that is closing for The US to assert primacy over the entire planet. They understand this. They know their only way of surviving is to work together.
I I guess that there probably are still circles of political interests around the world who don't get that, who actually think they can cut a deal with The United States. I hope that's a very small number. We can never tell for sure, but I'm almost certain, especially in Moscow and Beijing, they understand this fully. And there's there's nothing The US can do to, you know, trick them. They basically have to trick them into working against each other because they're there are actually natural allies.
They're they're natural economic partners. The vast majority of their history sharing a border for centuries and centuries has been in peace and prosperity, not conflict. The Sino Soviet split was a historical anomaly, was not the norm. And so that's that's where they are at this point. This is why the US cannot cannot and isn't trying to create, you know, if they could, they could topple Iran or topple Russia and install a client regime in its in in place and control them that way.
That's what that's what they ultimately would want to do. That's what they have tried to do and have so far failed to do. But that's the only way they could create, say wouldn't be it wouldn't be an independent center of power, though. It would be just another US proxy. And that's ultimately what they're trying to do.
That's what they've always done. This is what they've transformed Europe into. It is it's not a independent power balancing between The US and Russia, Iran, and China. It is just an extension of US foreign policy. So is Israel and the Persian Gulf states in the Middle East.
So is Japan, South Korea, The Philippines here in the Asia Pacific region. That's how they are doing their business right now. That's that's what their objective is. They could say that they want, independence, power to try to create some sort of balance, but they want primacy, only privacy. And when you understand that, again, everything that they're doing makes so much more sense, that they're weakening even their own so so called allies to subordinate them further, to extract more use out of them as proxies against countries that that are still resisting US primacy, especially Russia, especially Iran, and especially China.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I think yeah. That's a great point because I I was even thinking back in 2012 when Hillary Clinton, she was making this point that the Russians were trying to resovietize the region. And she was referring to the Eurasian Economic Union, which is a geoeconomic grouping that is, yes, seeking to organize more or a trade block.
And and, well, her whole argument was we should seek to slow this down or reverse it or just, you know, break up the Eurasian Economic Union altogether or what was becoming the Eurasian Economic Union. And I thought to myself then that doesn't that would that would be foolish because if The US is really worried about the rise of China, wouldn't this geoeconomic club arrange some kind of a balancing with the Chinese? But, of course, this would only make sense if you're after a actual balance of power. If the goal is to knock out the not just the Russians, but the Chinese as well, then suddenly it makes more sense. When you talk about restoring primacy though, how how would you assess this, or what do you expect to see?
Are we talking about the global military primacy, financial dominance, control over trade routes, technological dominance? What what is it? Or how how are you reading the the situation?
Speaker 1: Well, The United States seeks to do all of these things. How realistic? Now that's another that's another question entirely, realistic, and a lot of it is becoming less and less realistic as time goes by. What they're trying to do is not really they they realize that China is surpassing the not just The US, but The US plus all of its proxies, And there really is nothing they can do about that. And so they're they're thinking, if we cannot fight with China head to head, what what can we do?
We can just wreck everything, drag everyone down, create a mess out of absolutely everything, and then possibly we will emerge on the other side of this stronger. This is this is their thinking. This is what they're basically saying openly now. They almost admittedly say that they they've gone after Iran. They've not just disrupted energy exports from Iran to China, but from the entire Middle East to not just China, but to all of Asia.
At the same time, they had these LNG export projects from The US to Asia that made no business sense at all. They were working on these for years, And you you can even find old presentations online where they're presenting it to the public and be like, no. If you really think about it, it makes perfect sense. And they were talking about contested waterways, and people are like, what contested waterways? And then I guess in the back of their mind, they're like, well, just wait.
You'll see. And here we are. Now there's contested waterways. Who created them? US created them, knowingly created them.
They created this crisis in The Middle East. They are interdicting ships from the Middle East all the way to the Indian Ocean and beyond. They're putting pressure on Indonesia. Whether they succeed or not, that's another story, but they want access, military access, to the Strait Of Malacca, or I I should say more military access to the Strait Of Malacca, because they have already been placing what is essentially a global blockade on Russian energy exports. They've included Venezuelan energy exports until The US just outright captured Venezuela.
They're blockading Cuba. They've targeted ships traveling to China. And so when you when you really think about it and zoom out and look at the big picture, they're going after trade routes all around the globe. They've been preparing for this for years. They've reorganized the entire US Marine Corps into an anti shipping force specifically for this, and this isn't a Trump administration policy.
This was something that was being prepared since probably under the Obama administration and carried over each subsequent administration, and now it is ready. And now they're actually using the US Marine Corps to interdict shipping in The Middle East, and they're going to use it for that from everywhere from The Middle East all the way to the Asia Pacific. And so that's that's what they're doing. They're using their remaining military power. They understand they're not going to catch up with Russia or China, but they're using their remaining military power to create as much damage, destruction, instability as possible, trying to target Russia, Iran, and China as much as possible, but also Asia.
There are countries in Asia now that are now signing deals with The United States for those LNG exports from The US, which, again, made no sense until just now that the The Middle East has been turned into a war zone. And what does this grant The US? It grants them not complete control over these countries, but but more leverage over them to coerce them further into making an enemy out of China rather than this balancing act so many countries in the region have been performing. And this is what they did to Russia. We we we all remember before 2014 how much business was going on between Europe and Russia and how how well that was going and how optimistic things were.
I was very optimistic about Europe's future with Russia and even with China. And then The US incrementally step by step and through a series of wars and proxy wars, they managed to shut all of that down. They literally blew up pipelines to cut Europe off from from Russia, and now they're doing the same thing to Asia. And they're using energy dependence they used energy dependence for for subordinating Europe, and now they're going to do the same for Asia. I think they'll have less success and at a much slower pace than they have with with Europe for many different reasons, but I would not underestimate that.
And that that is their goal. So their their goal isn't to use somehow come up with more power to overwhelm Russia, Iran, and China, but to use the remaining power to create as big of a mess as possible to derail peace, prosperity, and cooperation as much as possible, and then hope out of the ashes. They they're the ones that come out strongest, that this is what they're doing. This is why I would warn people, don't underestimate what they're willing to do. The amount of damage they're willing to to create this disaster they've created in The Middle East, This fits perfectly into this strategy.
This is not something they want to undo. This is something they want to make worse, which is why they have not made any serious, deal with Iran. They easily could have many times over. They could have saved face at any at any point along the way. They're deliberately moving forward with escalation and further conflict.
They want the conflict to continue. They want to implode things, but not all at once overnight. They wanna manage it just like they managed cutting Europe off from Russian energy. That wasn't overnight. That was over years.
It's still taking place actually right now. And now they've started this process, cutting off Middle Eastern energy to Asia, and now they're going to repeat the whole process for Asia that they're already well underway in in Europe. And and, again, if you zoom out, you see they're targeting Russia, Iran, and China in the process.
Speaker 0: The massive flow in this strategy, though, is that you have Russia as the largest energy producer, and they're having and they have the massive border direct border with with China, which is the largest consumer. And unlike the relationship between the Russians and the Germans, for example, there's no middle country where you can disrupt. So for example, before the Orange Revolution in in Ukraine, you had about 80% of gas from Europe going to, sorry, from Russia going to Europe went through Ukraine. So if you just disrupt Ukraine, then you can disrupt this this this gas supply. But you don't have this with China and Russia.
So you're putting these two massive Eurasian giants together, and together, they can have a gravitational pull, though, to bring in countries like Iran as well as others. So it looks as if it's not a it has a lot of flaws to it, the that this strategy or at least risks. But but the great powers have always sought control over international waterways. This was, you know, recognized by Alfred Mahn at the turn of the century when moved into the twentieth century. This was a source of British dominance, then American dominance.
What what kind of surprised me is, as you said, that there's always been very openness about this among politicians and also in academia. That is after World War two, The US set up this dual island chains outside China, obviously, to shut it down. They if if you go through the literature all the way to the nineties and February, they were also regular right. You know, if the Chinese ever get confrontational or tries to challenge US leadership, we can shut down the Strait Of Malacca. Again, a key choke point.
You have also people like Brzezinski was writing that if the Russians after the cold war, whatever, begin to try to balance us or challenge our authority, you know, they should be made clear to them that their key maritime corridors would be shut down. The most important one would be the Baltic Sea, which we're seeing now happening. And, yeah, as you said, the Nord Stream pipelines, they discussed destroying them years before they actually did, and still, it almost in the Western media, it almost starts to fall into the realm of a conspiracy theory that, no. The Americans would never shut down energy trade or transportation corridors. It just it's antihistory, and it it goes against all the evidence.
But sorry. That was I was getting to my question, which is how do you see this effect or how effective do you think this US double blockade, if you will, on the Strait Of Hormuz how is this? How effective do you think this is? Because we see a lot of the Iranian ships going through. Some of it's being also enhanced by the increased energy prices.
So, essentially, the Iranians are doing well, but how are you assessing it?
Speaker 1: Yeah. If if The US is trying to replicate its success in cutting Europe off from from Russia, they're trying to replicate that. They're not going to shut everything down overnight. And what The US has actually demonstrated is that they don't need to seize all of these ships. They don't need helicopters to land on every single one of them.
A lot of the ships are just turning back. If you look at the statistics, people are citing of I think it's the Financial Times put out an article about ships running the blockade, but almost an equal number of ships have been turned back or seized by The US, and that seems to be pretty much what's going on. So they didn't cut shut it down completely. So claims by The US that it has, that that's just outright a lie. But cutting back half of the shipping, that that is significant.
That's not that's not a nonissue. And at any time of America's choosing, they could just start firing on these ships. And as a matter of fact, over the course of three days, US warplanes fired on three ships, disabled three ships. And what they're basically saying is we we could do this to all of the ships if we wanted to. And what they're probably trying to achieve we don't know.
We're not in the room when these decisions are being made. They're probably trying to create a a greater deterrence to force more of these ships to turn back than to run through the blockade. But at at any time of their choosing, they could just start disabling these ships or even just outright sinking them. They have the firepower to do this. The reason they're not is the same reason you see president Trump playing games on social media, talking about peace one minute, war the next, manipulating the prices, the the markets.
It's because they are creating a an economic disaster, but they're trying to manage it. They don't want to collapse all all at once. They really don't want it to collapse completely. They want it to be in a very controlled way to get what they want ultimately at the end, which is, I I would say, most of Asia placed under increased dependency on US energy exports. Not not complete dependency, but at least increased dependency on US energy exports, and they'll use that leverage, to disrupt what China is trying to do in the region.
If you've been in this region for as long as I have almost my entire adult life, you can see the transition from a US dominated region. Asia had had been dominated by The US for decades and decades. And the rise of China and the way the rest of the region rised with it and the way it hadn't been rising under US domination because The US doesn't want anyone to rise. The whole point of having being a a small percentage of the global population and maintaining primacy over everyone else is keeping everyone else down. If you're helping lift everybody else up, they're going to have the the power and the ability to say no to you, and this is the last thing The US wants.
And so this is why The US and the British Empire before that, they weren't lifting poor people up out of poverty in into, peace and prosperity. They were they were keeping these people down. They maintained leverage over them, using lethal force when and if necessary. And that's that's what The US is still doing, and that's the design of their their future, ambitions for primacy over the globe. Of course, Russia, China, Iran, they have a say in all of this, and they are.
They're exercising, their own options to resist this, and we just have to wait and see. Who who has the ability, does does the multipolar world led by Russia, China, Iran, do they have the ability to build faster than The US can disrupt and destroy? That's the question. China has a tremendous ability to to build and expand and lift up. Can The US continue to push back down with equal or greater force?
That's that's what we have to wait to find out. And I all I'm warning is for people not to underestimate how far The US is willing to go to ensure that China doesn't permanently surpass The US and US doesn't irreversibly decline into a into a regional power or or even something less than that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The problem again, though, would be if The US disrupts too much of global markets, The US doesn't stand on their solid ground itself. That is it's $39,000,000,000,000 in the whole. It's a massive debt. They're now with their bond markets.
They if again, if a financial crisis would set in now, it's unclear how they would manage this. I mean, would they how would they defend the dollar? Would they increase the interest and make the payments unmanageable? Will they reduce it and see the dollar fall apart? So it's very hard to, yeah, to imagine what they will what they would do if a financial crisis will kick in now.
So, again, it it seems like a foolish strategy there, especially betting the whole republic on preserving the empire. But you mentioned that Chinese have to build faster than the Americans destroy. And while the part of the goal during, well, during the past years when The US was engaged in this forever wars around the world, the Chinese were pumping trillions into this Belt and Road initiative. To what extent do you see this being, I guess, a significant buffer or allowing China to diversify away from US controlled maritime corridors?
Speaker 1: It's it's it's kinda hard to tell. They have they have pipelines. They have transportation corridors that are in operation that they're already using to bypass the different conflicts and crises The US has created for them. But The United States, as soon as China began working on these corridors, The US began building up armed proxies to attack them and to to disrupt them. So I for years, I've been covering US backed militants attacking Belt And Road Initiative infrastructure in Myanmar here in Southeast Asia, Thailand's neighbor, to the West.
Also in Pakistan, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is constantly under attack by by US backed terrorists, and ISIS in Afghanistan is attacking the Afghan government and, Chinese investments in Afghanistan to disrupt China's attempts to to build Afghanistan up into a a exporter of raw materials and then using the wealth that they get from that to build up their country, which has been impoverished by decades and decades of US war of aggression, occupation, and proxy war, because they had a proxy war against The Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the eighties. US from 2001 to 2020, I I believe it was was was or 2021 was literally occupying Afghanistan, and now they're waging another proxy war against the Afghan government and and their Chinese allies to disrupt that. So this is a a constant process, and it is almost, you could say, a global dirty war The US is waging. We know that they're waging a dirty war against Russia through Ukraine against Iran openly, a war of aggression, but they've been waging this dirty war against China for for decades and decades, essentially. And it has mixed results.
And at any time, they they can escalate, but they know at any time China can escalate also. So it's it's always a balance. If we just like you said, if if we disrupt too much, yes, it could it could destabilize the The US economically. I think they're less worried about that than the type of escalation Russia, China, Iran could resort to if if they were pushed. All of these countries, and this is how it has been all throughout history, empire has expanded, and it pushes picks on and pushes countries they know really don't want war, would prefer to avoid war.
An empire thrives on aggressively pursuing war that it knows everyone else wants to avoid. They're worried the Americans are worried that if they push too hard, they might find themselves in a situation where all of these targeted nations are very willing to to wage war to you know, basically for self preservation.
Speaker 0: Well, we kinda reached this point. That is the the Iranians are even going all out. Again, they can strike a deal with The US today if they wanted to, but today, they want to make sure there's no going back to the old status quo of crippling sanctions and perpetual threats. Same as the Russians, they could also possibly strike a deal this week if they wanted, but that would then also imply a return to the old status quo of which isn't the status quo, which is NATO's incremental expansion towards Russian borders. And so the and they all essentially, well, laid down the gauntlet and made the point there's no more going back to this hegemonic approach to security that from now on, there are the adversaries of The United States have to be included in the security architecture.
But a lot of this reminds me a bit about the I mean, is this a new great game? Because in the nineteenth century, you saw similar the the British Empire and the Russian Empire essentially competing well, then in Central Asia, but essentially, the British were dominating from the sea controlling all maritime corridors, while the Russian Empire was seeking to connect through well, land corridors. And, well, this is the Mackinder great game or Eurasian heartland as well, which is again, if you go through American strategic documents, they they keep referring to it. The idea that you have to keep the massive Eurasian continent or what spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, keep it divided because once the great all these powers come together, be it the Russians and the Germans or the Indians and the Chinese, the Chinese and the Russians, then then suddenly the the maritime power or hegemon at the periphery will no longer be able to dominate. Do you do you I guess, conceptually, do you think this could fit in the same category as a new great game?
Speaker 1: I I think that's very much the thinking, and it kinda answers the question as to why doesn't The US just make friends with Iran or with Russia is because they they don't want any of these countries to be strong. They need to either subordinate them or weaken them. If they refuse to be subordinated, then weaken them because otherwise, just as you explained, they will all start working together, and they are all working together. The United States has done everything within its power. And, again, if you go back to the Rand Corporation paper extending Russia, all of these conflicts, including the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, what they've done in the Caucus Region in Central Asia, in the Balt Baltics, this is all to create all kinds of dilemmas for Russia to weaken Russia.
They have a similar strategy they're using against Iran and, again, a similar strategy that they've been using against China. So it is all to keep them weakened. If you if you cannot divide them against one another, just weaken them and create division between them and all of their immediate neighbors. And that's that is exactly what they're doing. So I'd say it's a it's a continuation.
It's a very it's the most advanced version of this great game. I would say probably stretches out far beyond Eurasia at this point, and then it spills into the realm of technology, and and technology playing a role now that really wasn't an issue back then. To today, you could have a country like Iran where it's able to rapidly adopt, integrate high technology, and use it to not just augment its economic activity, but its its military deterrence. And that is what they've been doing, of course, with with help from their allies, but in ways you wouldn't have seen during the, say, the British Empire's days. The the way technology is rapidly advancing now is something that I think a lot of these policies that we see The US pursuing, which have been set in motion decades ago, they they really didn't take account for how exponentially quickly this technology would be advancing and how it would disseminate into all of these nations, big and small.
And so maybe the you know, you you keep saying that it's it's not rational or it's it's not sustainable. I completely agree. It's completely irrational. It's unsustainable. The whole concept of global empire in and of itself, I I think, is irrational and unsustainable.
The the just the question is, how much damage are they going to cause? Because we we know all empires rise and fall. We know this empire is going to almost certainly fall. How much damage is it going to do in the process? And I think that's why we should have heightened caution and not underestimate what The US can do, what it's willing to do, not in the sense that they'll be successful, but the amount of damage that they will create in in the vain hope that they will be successful, that they themselves think they will be successful.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I remember in the in the nineties and February, the the theories of Kindleberger on the benign hegemon, The US being a benign hegemon, would was very popular because at that time, all power was well, The US was so powerful. So much power was concentrated in The US, and the whole idea was because of this, The US has the ability to essentially, well, mitigate the international anarchy that is to there's no great power rivalry anymore, so The US would be able to deliver stability to the world. This would would would make it benign, that is, it would offer the world open access to technologies, trade. They would have open transportation corridors by sea and freedom of navigation.
Everyone can participate in international finance. So this was the source of the benign hegemon. But but again, it's I I remember back then that all the enthusiasm for how benign it was, it it was assumed that there was something special or uniquely benign about The United States. But the whole, it doesn't seem sustainable because if one allows this open economic system that allows powers to rise, and the Chinese did rise spectacularly since the eighties at least, then it would pose a dilemma for The US because once you have all these rising powers, if you allow them to rise and become very powerful, then the hegemonic era is over. That is, they can't be a benign hegemon if there is no hegemony.
Again, now the Chinese are outgrowing The US. So that that puts them into benign hegemon. And the alternative option is, well, essentially, all the administrative control over the economic architecture to prevent the rise of rivals. That is either shut down their access to technologies, shut down the maritime corridors, shut down access to the dollar banks, or even use military force to to, yeah, to prevent the rise. But then they wouldn't be benign anymore.
So, again, the benign hedge bond was always a very unsustainable concept, but my god, how popular it was back then. But, of course, it's a good way of legitimizing the empire. But how how do
Speaker 1: you see
Speaker 0: now the the the approach to The US? Because going back to the meeting between Trump and Xi, it looked as if Trump was backing off a bit with the pressure or with Taiwan, which is what the Chinese were very much insistent on. So how how do you make sense of this? Do you think the well, you think The US is willing to let go of Taiwan? What I mean is this incremental chipping away of the and undermining the one China policy by doing ever more military political cooperation, putting pushing for a secession, or do you think this is just a distraction by now?
Speaker 1: Just a distraction. This is what The United States has done since agreeing to a one China policy in the first place. On one side of their mouth, they say, we agree. Taiwan is part of China. There's only one legitimate government of of China.
That's the People's Republic Of China. That is the the ones one China policy that almost every country on Earth upholds, including The United States. And at the same time, even as soon as they were saying that, they were making unilateral declarations inside Washington, the, Taiwan Relations Act and, the assurances. And what that basically meant was, yes. Yes.
We said one China to Beijing, but we didn't mean it, and we're going to constantly undermine it just as we have been all the way up until now. There's US troops on Taiwan right now, even though it's internationally recognized as Chinese territory. And I didn't hear president Trump announce anything about the status of those troops, let alone claiming he will pull them out, and they're going to. And everything that they have been doing, are doing, and will continue to do all feeds into using Taiwan alongside The Philippines, alongside Japan and South Korea as a Ukraine style battering ram, a regional battering ram to use against China. They're not going to back down from that.
If we look back to the Biden administration, every time US president Joe Biden met with president Xi Jinping or there was some sort of meeting somewhere, between high ranking officials, US Chinese officials, The US would say something like this. They would rhetorically back away from Taiwan, but in practice, they just continued undermining Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. And it's just it's just such an absurd point of contention to begin with. The fact that The US wouldn't back off of that just shows you what bad faith actor the fact that it's a point of contention in the first place shows what bad faith actors, The United States is. And for people out there who say Taiwan is independent, it isn't.
It's a 100% dependent politically, militarily on The US and economically on the rest of China. Wouldn't wouldn't exist economically and as as any sort of functional place where human beings lived without without the rest of China supporting it economically. So this is important for people to understand. It's not it's not independent. It is part of China, but The US has used China's weakness after World War two to basically capture it and hold on to it in the same way the British Empire was holding on to Hong Kong.
That was always Chinese territory. And the British Empire took it from China, and when China was strong enough, they took it back. And when China is strong enough, they will take Taiwan back. And The United States will never voluntarily give it up, and they will never even back down, from their their stance regarding it. They will just say it, just like president Trump says he's gonna make a deal with Iran.
He's no and there's no this is zero. If there could be a negative percent chance of a of a deal with Iran, it would be a negative percent chance. The same goes for any sort of US, Russia, Ukraine deal. It's it's never going to happen. They just use diplomacy as cover to continue, and that's the unfortunate part.
And we all want to see all of these conflicts, and we we want to see a multipolar world. You were talking about the benign what what is it? The benevolent hegemony.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Benign hegemon. That was Kindleberger.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the the the problem is The United States has always been profit driven. It is continuously pursuing profit and power. It's interesting how China is the closest thing to that theory, only they don't want to be a hegemon. They want a multipolar world, a balance of power between nations.
They don't want to be the nation controlling everyone else. They want to have a balance of power between nations and cooperation. And the way China is actually building its own military demonstrates that that desire. That's not just words. It is also actions.
Their their military is physically incapable of if The US collapsed today, it could just take its place tomorrow. It couldn't. It physically couldn't because it's not building that that type of military. And that is kind of the future everyone says they agree to, but they just don't want it to be Chinese people. And they have to ask themselves purse you know, being the the the leaders who bring that about, and people have to ask themselves personally why they're so uncomfortable with that.
Myself, personally, I'm not uncomfortable with that at all. I'm quite happy if China can do it, then let them do it. The United States obviously couldn't. The British Empire had no intention of doing that. The US had no intention of doing that.
Let let China do it. You can see their rise this twenty first century, they've done that without invading a single country. They've who has China gone to war with this twenty first century? Who has The US gone to war? I bet you couldn't name all of the countries US has waged war against, without missing at least one of them.
I bet you couldn't because that's they've been at war constantly. And so this is it's just so strange how in people's minds, even people who are skeptical, how, yes, they know there's something wrong with The US, but they're they they are still resisting an alternate system, multipolarism, because China, and they can't really explain rationally why it's China because, again, it's it's irrational. This this fear of China is irrational, and The US, of course, invested a lot in in creating irrational fear in many people all around the world of China, specifically because they don't want it to threaten their unipolar system. They don't want multipolars, and they don't want a balance of power between nations because that will be the end of their primacy.
Speaker 0: Yes. You make a great point, though, with this the using diplomacy as a distraction strategically because this was also largely the experience with with the Russians after the Cold War. That is when we essentially signed or developed a common inclusive European security institution, the OSCE 94, which was supposed to be based on be based on indivisible security in which we would have security with the Russians, not against them. In other words, not NATO. The The US was already planning NATO expansion.
And indeed, Chas Freeman, the former US assistant secretary of defense, he was making this point as well that the the Clinton administration was, you know, talking out both sides of their mouth. On one hand, they were telling the Russians, no. We're not gonna expand NATO. We're gonna have a common security architecture. We're done with block politics.
We're gonna, you know, have an inclusive Europe. And then, of course, they went to the the former Warsaw Pact countries saying, oh, no. No. NATO's coming. This is you know, we're just trying to calm down the Russians while we essentially, yeah, stabbed them in the back.
And even after the decision had been made, we're gonna expand NATO. When when the new when this NATO Russia Founding Act was established in '97, the whole idea was that, yeah, it we the The US would commit not to put its troops into the former allies of of Russia, so not move the NATO military infrastructure to the East. And this is a great quote by Clinton, which appears in the book of Zarate, where where he essentially says, okay. How binding is this agreement? And he says, oh, let me get this straight.
This is just an assurance that we're not gonna put our military equipment into the territory, former allies of Russia, unless I one day wake up and decide we do it anyways and we changed our minds. This is, like, a actual quote. So there just there's never been any pretense that, you know, they were never gonna actually live by any of these deals. It's just let's find a way of calming down the opponents while we just continue to steam ahead. Well, my my last question, though, is just how do you what do you see the eventual well, the ultimate US objective towards China's rise?
Is it simply to destabilize it, gradually grind it down, or do you think an actual military confrontation either by the US army or through proxies, is planned?
Speaker 1: They're they're working on a a multi domain strategy. They're working on it from every single conceivable angle. So what they're doing to Russia and Iran play into it, obviously. I mean, they're they're we were talking about Russia and China sharing a border and Russia providing energy to China, but the The US, and this is according to the New York Times, The US through the CIA and the US military are overseeing these drone strikes into Russia, striking at Russian energy production. And right now, you you we could say we could debate about what impact it's having on Russian energy production, but they're only going to continue doing that until they're forced to stop.
And I I don't see when that when that is going to happen. As a matter of fact, I can only see that it's going to continuously incrementally escalate. I don't know how far it could escalate toward, but I I see them just continuing that policy. So they're striking at Russia, its energy production, to hurt China. They're striking at Iran and then disrupting the entire Middle East to hurt China.
They're constantly putting pressure on every single country here in Asia. Political subversion through the National Endowment for Democracy, that that's still a thing that they're still doing. They've been putting the pressure on Indonesia right near the Strait Of Malacca, which we we've discussed earlier, and US military still has a massive footprint here in the Asia Pacific region. They are right now integrating, South Korea, Japan, and The Philippines into what is essentially a de facto joint NATO style military alliance where everything is interoperable. They're all working together with the same systems using the same intelligence, basically, all subordinated under The US.
The the the South Koreans want to change the law so that in a time of war, the south south government of South Korea has control over South Korean troops. Because right now, The United States would be in control of all South Korean forces during a time of war. I don't know if people know that, but that that's actually a debate that they're having in South Korea that The United States is not tolerating and will not allow them to to change that law. And so that's the trajectory. Everything is going on right now.
This is what they are constantly working on. If you if you look at the mechanics, the inner mechanics of The US empire, that's what it's doing day to day, whether or not president Trump has a throwaway comment about, you know, maybe backing off Taiwan a a a little bit here. In words, that's what he's saying today. Tomorrow could be a different story. In action, they've haven't they haven't even slowed down of this march to war with China.
So it's gonna be war. It's going to be economic, proxy war. Essentially, the The US is waging a proxy war against China already. I mean, they they have terrorists attacking Chinese investments in Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan. In Pakistan, there was an attempt to kill a Chinese ambassador to Pakistan.
So, I mean, it's it's a very, very serious dirty war that has already been ongoing, and it will just continue to escalate. But to what point, I don't know. And, again, that goes back to the the question that that I think we all have. Can can China rise and build faster than The US can destabilize and destroy? And if the answer is yes, then maybe there won't be a war because China will ultimately be able to deter it.
But, again, don't underestimate how far The US will go because if you understand the mindset of the people who believe in Western primacy and even Western supremacy, these are people who cannot imagine living in a in a universe where the the white West is dominating over everybody else. It's just been such a matter of fact for them for so many centuries that they they just can't think about it any other way. And so we can't underestimate what they will what they will do to try to achieve this. I mean, we've all heard people in in Europe, and even in The United States talking about using nuclear weapons against Russia, against China, against Iran, the president of of The United States. I don't know if he's joking or trying to warm the public up to it, but he he has talked or or or referenced the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran.
So, I mean, we're we're in a very dark, dangerous place right now. We all have to be very well aware of that, and we have to try to put as much pressure on on the West to make the right decision, and we have to do what we can to support everybody else in this fight against what the West is doing and its resistance to to living among all other nations rather than forcing itself upon all other nations.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now the the speech by Trump, I mean, it's it's interesting because it normalizes, yeah, the crazy stuff. Because if he says it a few times, so I'll assume we're gonna annihilate an entire civilization, and this has become okay. This is apparently what a president say says. I mean, you had the you had the same in in Europe.
And was it in 2022 or '23, you had a German foreign minister who and she she was just making the point that, ah, we should fight amongst each other. We're at war with Russia. And this was oh, they they they pushed back immediately. Well, we're not really at war with Russia. This is a Ukrainian Russian war.
But these days, all the European leaders can say that. Oh, we're essentially war with Russia unless Russia wants to retaliate. Then, of course, this is ridiculous. We're not at war with Russia. So it's a no.
It's an interesting development that at one point, you see the Americans alienating a lot of their allies, but still, they're all kind of falling in line as well. In this part of the world, I see the Scandinavians doing the same. They're all horrified by Trump, how awful he is, so we might need an alternative to NATO. But at the same time, the Scandinavian countries, you know, they can't act fast enough to open up American bases across their territory and hand over their sovereignty to to The US even after even as they, you know, they describe Trump as a fascist and all this stuff. It's quite remarkable.
There there is no cohesion. So why if you think the American president is a fascist, why are we why are we transferring sovereignty to him? Why are, you know, like the South Koreans? Why are we handing over control of our military? But those questions are not asked.
Anyways, Brian, thank you so much for taking the time. I always look forward to talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: The Baltic States Are Now the “Most Dangerous Place” in the World https://youtu.be/3EfEitDQPj4 https://t.co/UXOMMlFmaj
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion focuses on escalating security tensions in Europe and concerns about a potential NATO–Russia war, particularly after drone attacks allegedly originating from beyond Baltic States’ territory. The host says the attacks were first denied by NATO, then acknowledged with claims tied to Ukraine’s use of territory; Russia’s retaliation is described as increasingly likely due to continued escalation over four years.
Jeffrey Sachs argues that there is no effective diplomacy between Europe and Russia, and that Europeans are “talking past each other.” He says leadership influence is concentrated among Baltic States and Poland, which he describes as highly Russophobic, and he criticizes the European Union’s external relations structure by saying that the voice of the EU community has been effectively handed to Baltic officials involved in defense policy. Sachs also claims that Germany and France have not “put on the brakes,” and he identifies chancellor Mertz as particularly irresponsible, describing him as an openly pro-militarization leader who has shown no interest in diplomacy such as contacting President Putin or holding meetings between German and Russian foreign ministers.
Sachs emphasizes Germany’s responsibility, stating that Germany promised the Soviet Union in unambiguous terms that NATO would not enlarge, and that Germany was the guarantor of the Minsk II agreement, which he says failed as intended. He also claims that Germany has repeatedly “cheated” on commitments and that Mertz’s stance conflicts with the four-plus-two treaty governing German unification, which he says includes no remilitarization provisions. He criticizes France and the UK as well, arguing that “strategic autonomy” in Europe is being implemented in a hostile way toward Russia.
Turning to Ukraine, Sachs describes its government as radical, corrupt, and extremist, asserting that a small group runs the state under martial law. He claims Ukraine is attempting to provoke Europe into an expanded war because Ukraine cannot fight Russia directly, and he points to alleged drone operations through Baltic airspace. He also claims Ukraine has attacked Russia’s nuclear triad by bombing aircraft on tarmacs as part of nuclear arms control surveillance mechanisms, and that Ukraine has taken other provocative steps. Sachs argues that the combination of Baltic-front escalation, European policy being driven by Baltic states, and Germany’s remilitarization rhetoric creates an extremely dangerous hotspot, possibly even more dangerous than the Ukraine contact line.
The host responds that it is unclear whether Russia is directly responsible for drone incursions into the Baltic States or whether Russia is countering Ukrainian drones, calling it speculation. The host then notes mutual rhetoric and says there is a need to either prevent an entry into war or restore diplomacy. He points to Angela Merkel arguing it is time to speak to Russia and says Europe has spent four years boycotting diplomacy while treating the lack of dialogue as virtuous. He also describes internal EU coordination problems, arguing that common positions tend toward the lowest common denominator, potentially aggressive demands such as Russian capitulation. He asks whether Sachs is optimistic that efforts to restore diplomacy will work.
Sachs compares the dynamic to Israel–Palestine, arguing that hatred can “boil over” into genocide. He frames the Ukraine war as great-power politics stemming from NATO enlargement and Russia’s resistance, and he claims it originated from the February 2014 coup under a Russian view that the United States was a major actor. Sachs then argues that European narratives have become dominated by “Russian evil,” while key historical elements are excluded from discussion, including Germany’s and the United States’ roles in reunification commitments, NATO decisions, Minsk II, arms control, and the U.S. abandonment of an anti-ballistic missile treaty.
Sachs highlights Bucharest NATO Summit 2008 as a turning point, saying Merkel warned that NATO enlargement could lead to war and that Germany ultimately gave in, allowing an unequivocal NATO enlargement commitment to Ukraine and Georgia. He further describes Germany’s 2014 involvement in negotiating with Viktor Yanukovych to prevent a coup, followed by U.S. recognition of the new government and Germany’s acceptance. He says Minsk II created a new constitutional order granting autonomy in Donbas and that Germany and France were guarantors, while he claims the U.S. and Ukraine privately did not intend to implement it and Germany did not enforce it, later quoting Merkel as saying in 2022 they “never really meant it” to buy time.
Finally, Sachs argues that face-to-face discussion is necessary and that responsible diplomacy could force Europeans to remember history and prevent destructive escalation. He says Lavrov would be a good counterpart due to extensive historical knowledge. He closes by repeating that Europe should talk to Russia, emphasizing historical accountability and urging Germany to review its recent diplomatic history before engaging in talks.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss a situation a security situation in Europe, which appears to be coming more and more dangerous. So thank you very much for coming back on the program. I've been looking with great concern at the possibility of a NATO Russia war breaking out because we've always, over the past four years, had this incremental escalation, and it now appears to have reached a point where it seems almost impossible for Russia not to retaliate. That is, drones are attacking Russia, out of the territory of the Baltic States.
First, it was denied by NATO, and now they recognize that it's happening, but they claim that Ukraine doesn't have the right to use their territory. But the fact that they're doing this is Russia's fault anyways. So it's yeah. It's quite incredible stuff, and now they're condemning Russia for threatening to retaliate. So how do you make sense of this situation?
Speaker 1: Of course, as has been the case for many years, there is no diplomacy taking place between Europe and Russia. Both sides, therefore, are talking past each other. The Europeans are strident. The European voices in the lead are from the Baltic States and from Poland, which are the most Russophobic parts of Europe. Strangely, Europe gave the voice for the European community, which is 450,000,000 people over to the Baltic States in in the person of their external relations, vice president Kayakalas, also the commissioner for defense who is from Latvia or Lithuania.
Excuse me. It's very strange. Much of Europe is not of this strident, Russophobic view. The Baltics, for lots of reasons, psychological and geographical are, and they are driving European policy right now to a shocking extent. And unfortunately, the major powers in Europe, especially Germany and France, don't put on the brakes.
We have in the person of chancellor Mertz, the most irresponsible leader of Germany in decades, actually. He is an outright warmonger. He has not shown one scintilla of interest in diplomacy, even contacting his counterpart, president Putin, even having foreign ministers of Germany and Russia meet to discuss the situation. Mertz seemed to to have determined in his mind that he would base his government's policy on remilitarizing Germany, a not very pleasant prospect, I have to say. And so one of the things that has gone wrong in addition to the voice of Europe being the voice of three Baltic states with the combined population of 6,000,000 people and the most extreme of all Russophobia is Germany, which I think plays an extraordinarily dangerous and irresponsible role in all of this.
Because Germany has the most responsibility as not only the largest country of Europe, but also the country that explicitly promised the Soviet Union in 1990 in unambiguous terms that NATO would not enlarge. It was the country that was supposed to be the guarantor of the end of the Ukraine war in 2015 with the Minsk two agreement. It failed on that as well. So Germany has a special burden of responsibility. Of course, history is another matter, but not even going to the history of World War II, but just going to the history of German reunification.
And afterwards, Germany has, cheated repeatedly and chancellor Mertz acts, as if there is no responsibility at all. Then we move to France, which is just bizarre in its foreign policy, I have to say. Maybe Macron's idea, which is not all wrong, but is absolutely peculiar in how it is being carried out, is Europe's strategic autonomy. I have no problem with Europe's strategic autonomy from The United States. But to implement it through, warmongering with Russia is quite a dangerous game, completely unnecessary.
One could argue for Europe's strategic autonomy on the simple fact that we're eighty years after the end of World War two and it's time that Europe get on with it. It doesn't need The United States to either be its defender or the determinant of its foreign policy.
Speaker 0: But
Speaker 1: Macron seems to think that in order to carry out his idea of strategic autonomy, he has to be a hostile, Russophobic leader as well. Adding Britain to this mix, which is also an always Russophobic and has been since 1840 at least, we have quite a brew, which is no diplomacy, only talk of escalation. Now the actual events of escalation taking place from Ukraine, and let's understand the Ukrainian situation. This is a radical government. It has not anything to do with democracy, obviously.
It is a small group that runs the state under martial law that is extraordinarily corrupt as everybody knows. Either you see it in the villas owned by Ukrainians all over Western Europe or you see it in the reports of Naboo and many, many other accounts, but you have a dictatorship, corrupt, and extremist. And so this is what is happening right now. And Ukraine is trying to provoke, Europe into an expanded war. Just like Israel always tries to provoke The United States into joining Israel in an expanded war in The Middle East, Ukraine will do whatever it can to provoke an expanded war.
This is Ukraine's tactic because Ukraine can't fight Russia, but maybe Europe will fight Russia. Maybe if Europe fights Russia, then The United States, they think, will have to fight alongside Europe. I don't know what goes through their minds, but sending drones through Baltic airspace, If that's what they're doing and it seems like it is the case, then this is par for the course. They have bombed Russia's nuclear triad, bombing the the airplanes sitting on the tarmac as part of the surveillance mechanisms of nuclear arms control. They have taken whatever provocative steps they can.
They want a wider war because they think that that's their best chance to win. You combine all of this Baltic state Russophobia, Europe giving over its foreign policy to the Baltic states. A German leadership, which for the first time since World War II, I would say, is openly calling for remilitarization, which incidentally runs against the four plus two treaty that was negotiated for German unification, which says precisely that Germany will not remilitarize in the context of a reunified Germany. And the aberrant leadership of France and The UK. And we have a perfect colossal disaster which makes now the Baltic front line probably the world's most dangerous hotspot even more than the contact line of the war in Ukraine.
The Baltic States are probably the most dangerous place on the whole planet right now. That's saying a lot because we have the war in Iran. We have the the war in Palestine. We have the war inside Ukraine. We have the the tensions in Taiwan.
But I would say the Baltic States are are now on the front line because they are screaming for war, for vengeance, for hatred of Russia, and counting on Europe to follow through through an active engagement in war.
Speaker 0: Well, there's some indications that, well, either Russia there's there were some drones entering the Baltic States from Russia now in what appears well, it could be a retaliation. Some arguing that the Russians simply, you know, scrambled Ukrainian drones, they went in by accident. Others are saying that the Russians brought down and then essentially attacked the Baltics with the both with their with Ukrainian drones. It's hard to say. You know, it's only the speculation.
But, anyways, it does appear that, yeah, the the situation escalating. And, of course, all of this is also fueled by mutual rhetoric now of war. And it's, yeah. It's very it's very concerning because in such a war they're talking about, there will be no winners. There will be only mass deaths, and and it it doesn't seem to make much sense.
So we're now moving to a place, it seems, who are either gonna actually enter war with Russia, you know, whatever consequences would come from this, or there's time to put an end to this thing. And we're seeing some discussions now in Europe at very slow slow speed, but nonetheless about restoring possibly diplomacy with Russia. And indeed, of all people, Angela Merkel, she argued that it's time to speak to Russia, and it it was has been a mistake by the EU not to do this. I mean, it's a bit strange coming after more than four years of fighting. And but still, it's it's quite significant, it seems, because for more than four years, the Europeans have been sitting on the sidelines, boycotting all diplomacy, and presenting at some kind of virtue that, oh, we don't speak to the Russians as if, you know, this is a sign of how how good they are.
Did did you see any potential here? Because so far, they're talking about whether they should talk to Russia, and if they can agree, then who should represent them. And if they can agree agree, then they, of course, they have to come to agreement what they should actually speak with a common voice. And whenever the 27 EU countries will speak with a common voice, it tends to be the lowest common denominator being aggressive as possible. So probably they will end up asking for Russia's capitulation, or I'm not sure where they're going.
But it at this point, it seems better if any European lou leader would just pick up the phone and at least just talk. It's no. It's it's I don't know. Are you optimistic about at least the efforts to decriminalize diplomacy? I mean, I haven't heard anyone talk about speaking with the other side in a long time.
They're not doing it yet, but at least they're discussing the possibility of it.
Speaker 1: I think, what has happened is that the rhetoric and the warmongering is spinning out of control. And I think there is an analogy with what's happening with Israel, and, Palestine. For a long time, Israel was engaged in a strategy to conquer and control all of Palestine including, of course, that means the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, and even to expand into neighboring countries in Lebanon and Syria. But this was mainly, I would say, strategic security policy. It has spiraled, especially after the October 7 attack by Hamas, but more generally in the changing milieu into the most radical ethno hatred, dehumanization, massacres, and in the end genocide against the the Palestinian people.
The the reason I mentioned this is that the war in Ukraine has been a war of great power politics. It's a war that emerged from NATO enlargement and Russia's resistance to it, that emerged from a a coup in February 2014 where, the Russian view, which I agree with, is that The United States was a major actor and proponent of the coup, and that it was directed against Russia in order to bring Ukraine into NATO. The idea was to overthrow a government that was neutral and wanted to remain outside of NATO. And one could say that this was unpleasant, dangerous, great power politics, a great game, over Ukraine of the kind that, Svyniew Brzezinski described in the nineteen nineties. But in the context of events, it has spiraled into a deep ethno hatred, especially we see it in Poland and the Baltic States, places where I have worked and supported thirty years ago when a new era of peace looked to be taking hold.
And I worked with Poland to help them to cancel their debts and to stabilize their currency and to open their trade and to join Europe, all of which proved to. And I helped Estonia to introduce a currency and worked with Kayakalas' father, who was then governor of the Central Bank of Estonia. But the idea at the time for me and the idea as expressed by Germany and The United States and president Gorbachev and president Yeltsin was that this was in the interest of a new peace, and a common European home. And the, four plus two treaty, enabled German reunification, speaks of a a treaty following the Helsinki final act in which it said that security in Europe is indivisible and that no security could be at the expense of another country and that there would not be remilitarization and so on. But what has happened now is rampant, radicalized ethno hatred.
These countries have their historical memories, I think, grossly distorted in my own view about Russia, but stoked by the war in Ukraine and by the unrestrained rhetoric and the tragedy of war itself. There's no appreciation at all, not even for a moment, a a nanosecond, that what is at stake in the Ukraine war has a lot to do with Russia's security vis a vis The United States. That isn't admitted or understood or acknowledged at all. Everything became interpreted as Russian evil, as Russian aggression, as unprovoked war and massacre by the Russians, all of it false in its pseudo history, all in its deliberate denial of basic facts about German reunification, about NATO, about Minsk two, and many many other things, arms control, The US abandonment of the anti ballistic missile treaty, The US participation in the Maidan coup, all of the history that, you and I and many others have talked about for years, none of this is mentioned for a moment in Germany or in Estonia, or in Latvia, or in Lithuania, or in Poland, or by the European Commission in any way. So what we have instead is just the emergence of hatred.
Hatred can boil over. This is what makes this so dangerous. In the Israel context, I mentioned, hatred boiled over to open genocide. The Israelis have no self control anymore. They don't even know how they're viewed by the rest of the world.
They don't understand because they are in the grip of hatred. And I would say that this is what is happening on the front in Europe right now in the Baltic States and in Poland. And in Russia's response, what are you doing? Do you really want a war in Europe? And then that echoes back and we heard from Berlin, yeah, we have to get ready for a war in Europe maybe by 2029.
And we hear about the need to prepare for war, the nuclear umbrella. Now, this debate, should we actively support drones attacking Russia? The celebration when Ukraine attacks Moscow and so forth with the a drone attack. Now the only thing I can say, Glenn, is that, not only is this about to boil over, but maybe, just maybe, it's giving some responsible people in Europe the idea that this has reached the point where there's no self control on the European side. And it could completely explode and explode in a way that would be devastating for all of Europe.
And so maybe this is the genesis of the idea, four years late, that somebody should be discussing this with the Russian counterparts. And I've been saying this for years. You've been saying this and many others talk to the other side because there's actually real things that the Russians have to say to help jog the memory, of, the Europeans about how we got into this colossal disaster. And with chancellor Merkel, it's very interesting and very poignant. I like chancellor Merkel.
I respect her as a level headed, decent, honest, hardworking leader, and as someone who wanted peace in Europe. But she herself has described what went wrong. And the poignant moment is between the first day and the second day of the Bucharest NATO summit in 2008 when The United States was pushing for NATO enlargement and chancellor Merkel knew and said so this could be the path to war with Russia. Very sensible. And The United States was pushing for a fixed date, what they called a map, which was a plan for NATO enlargement to Ukraine and incidentally to Georgia in the South Caucasus region, which is not only not the North Atlantic, but isn't even in Europe, it's part of Asia.
But not to digress, Chancellor Merkel knew and wrote that the commitment to expand NATO was likely to lead to war. And she resisted the first day of the NATO summit and then gave in the second day and gave in in a way which she thought she was still holding some ground. There won't be a specific plan or date, but the conference would close with the unequivocal declaration that NATO will enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia. That was the end of Germany's voice for restraint. And then, unfortunately, fast forward to the events of February 21, specifically, 2014 when the coup was nearly undertaken in Kyiv, and the Germans, together with colleagues, negotiated with the then president of Ukraine, president Viktor Yanukovych, that there would be no coup and that president Yanukovych's term would extend till late in 2014, at which point there would be new elections held.
And Germany agreed to that, and The United States did. And there were conversations with president Putin that evening about this agreement. And then the next day, the, coup leaders stormed the government buildings in Kyiv or Kyiv, whichever you prefer. And then The US immediately recognized the new government rather than saying, wait a minute. We had an agreement.
This is extra constitutional. President Yanukovych is still the president. The United States played its card and immediately recognized the new government. It didn't formally recognize it. It said that, it would work with the new government.
Didn't call for constitutional order, and Germany went along. So this was the next step. And then one year after that came the Minsk two agreement. It was actually February 2015, And Germany was to be the guarantor of the Minsk two agreement. And people may not recall the Minsk two agreement, but it was an agreement to end the fighting in the Donbas by creating a new constitutional order in which the Donbas, the two oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk, would be granted autonomy for essentially self rule within Ukraine, and Ukraine agreed with this.
The agreement was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council. Germany and France were to be the guarantors of Minsk two, And then The United States and Ukraine privately said, now we're not gonna implement this. And Germany did not stand up and say, wait a minute. We have an agreement. It's backed by the UN Security Council.
We are responsible for enforcement. It will be implemented. Germany remained silent. So much so that in 2022, I believe it was, chancellor Merkel rather strangely said, well, we never really meant it. It was to buy time for Ukraine.
I actually don't believe that was her view in 2015, but it was her excuse in 2022 when she was under attack for having signed such an agreement, under attack within Germany for having been too obliging to the Russians. And so all of this is to say, we've come to a point of hatred and we've come to a complete amnesia about actual events. And we've come to a point where this could easily boil over into open war in the Baltics or other parts of Europe. In other words, the potential for complete disaster. And so maybe, maybe, maybe this is why chancellor Merkel among others I mean, it's surely why chancellor Merkel is saying we need to talk.
But maybe it's why some others are also perhaps agreeing that Europe needs to talk. It's quite notable, by the way, in this discussion of search for the individual that would be the counterpart where chancellor Merkel herself is named as a potential European representative or Mario Draghi is mentioned as a possible European representative. It's taken for granted that their own real external affairs chief, Kayakalis, could not be that person because her Russophobia is so blatant, so basic that she cannot serve the role of diplomat. They know that. That by itself is very, very sad.
It's like saying we need diplomacy, but in The US context, it can't be the secretary of state. He's no diplomat. That's what it would be like saying. But Europe is implicitly acknowledging that fact.
Speaker 0: Well, the EU picked Kalas as the foreign policy chief when the EU was following the line that they were boycotting diplomacy and weapons were the path to peace. So if you don't want any diplomacy at all, then I guess she could be a good choice. I I often think about what you just mentioned as well, though. How could you go from Angela Merkel, who once stated that offering a membership action plan for NATO to Ukraine would be interpreted by Moscow as a declaration of war to where we are now, where it's impossible to even discuss our side having provoked anything. I I sometimes think that part of the the way the the narrative has been manipulated or the discussion has been suppressed is they often tend to present any issue as being only two sides, either it's our narrative or the Russian narrative, and essentially you have to pick one.
And I think of in this country, actually, Norway, we used to, because of our geography, have a key point in the American led missile defense, which is now a NATO missile defense, strategic missile defense, which threatened to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent. And the Norwegians Norwegians used to be quite concerned about this. And then WikiLeaks taught us that the ambassador, American ambassador to Norway, he was making the point that, well, we can, you know, flip the Norwegians. All we have to do is make this an issue of alliance solidarity. That is either the Norwegians are repeating what the Russians are saying or they or they prioritize NATO solidarity.
And he argued if we frame it like this, there's no way they can anymore talk about, you know, security. And also making the point that we'll engage with NGOs, think tanks, journalists, politicians. And later on, you saw another WikiLeaks cable being released where they where essentially confirmed that, oh, no. They're all falling in line now. So it's it's not more it's not more complicated than that.
Either you repeat the Kremlin talking point or you have solidarity. And I noticed in this war as well, that's what they're saying as well. If you're saying, well, NATO provoked this, well, that's a Kremlin talking point. We NATO helped to topple the government, the Kremlin talking point. There's no discussion.
It's just pick one camp and somehow, you know, arguing for war, pretending this unprovoked. That's the pro Western and pro, you know, Ukrainian. You know, if you mention perhaps, you know, kidnapping all these young Ukrainian men and sending them to their death is not pro Ukrainian. Well, that's a pro Kremlin talking point as well. If you're pro Ukraine, you're pro, you know, bus vacations, sending all these men to die.
It's a it's yeah. It's I think it
Speaker 1: would be very interesting in the Norwegian context to ask the leadership today what was Norway's position at the Bucharest NATO summit in its actual position. I happen to have some information about that. And I believe that NATO that Norway's position was to be aghast at what George Bush was promoting and to ask how is it that Bush who promised that he wouldn't go down that path went down that path. I I'd like to know what Norway's leadership says about that. Is there any remembrance of events in 2008, of attitudes in 2008, of the sense that chancellor Merkel expressed and wrote down at least honestly in her recent book, her diary in effect or her memoirs that yes, she knew that this was tantamount to war or would be seen that way from the Russian side.
I'd like to know what the Norwegians would remember about that, the Norwegian leadership, because there is historical memory. And that reflection should be helpful. Okay. There is a lot of American bullying. We we know that.
There's a lot of arm twisting. You step out a line, Americans will say you're corrupt. They'll try to bring down your government. They'll do one thing or another. But this is actually what has brought Europe to this disaster.
You know, I I view Europe's situation today as tragic and as mistaken. I view the Russophobia as a terrible self harm of Europe. By being so Russophobic, Europe has hurt itself many many times in history. It's a long and fascinating subject that I'm writing about and studying myself right now. It's very harmful for Europe to take these extreme positions.
Doesn't unify Europe, it just brings Europe closer to disastrous conflict by absolutely deliberately evading history and not attempting any honest assessment. But people do know. At least there are people who should remember and can recall. And again, I put primary responsibility for all of this on chancellor Mertz because Germany has the most responsibility here and the most accountability here. Not only World War two, but I'll put that in.
And not only the terms of German reunification, but the explicit promises of no NATO enlargement, the terms of the four plus two treaty, the events around Maidan, the events around Minsk too. If Mertz would just spend an honest day, one day, reviewing German recent history and diplomacy, and how many times Germany lied to the Soviet Union and to Russia since 1990. And by the way, I'll add one more incidental fact, which is also puzzling but true. Germany took the lead in saying no NATO enlargement. The United States and Germany expressed this absolutely explicitly to Gorbachev and to Yeltsin.
And then around 1992, The US started to reconsider. And Germany, interestingly, especially the business community, started to lobby for NATO enlargement as early as 1993. So while I tend to put a lot of blame on US foreign policy of manipulation and reneging on commitments, Germany actually has a direct independent responsibility, not just falling into line with The United States, which it did often enough, but rather independently blowing off the terms of German reunification within a three year period and starting to lobby for NATO enlargement. And I know that, some scholars are studying this right now. The German businesses, I think, believed that they were going to invest in Eastern Europe, and they wanted the security of these countries being within the NATO umbrella.
But they gave short shrift or no shrift, I should say, to the fact that Germany had explicitly promised in the four plus two agreement not to move troops into even East Germany and that this was in the context of absolute clarity, not ambiguity as our narrative says now, but absolute clarity that that commitment included not just not moving troops in the East Eastern Germany, which is what's in the four plus two treaty, but more generally into Central And Eastern Europe, much less to the Baltic States and to Ukraine and to Georgia, which became the the ploy and the plot soon after those commitments were made. So I would, above everything, like the German chancellor to review the history and from the position of honesty say it's time to talk to our counterpart.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But, again, when we meet, it's I wonder what can actually be achieved now. I saw the Finland's foreign minister make the statement that NATO is not a threat, but Russia is a threat to world peace. So in other words, this is how you see the world now. That is more NATO is more peace, less Russia is more peace.
Essentially, world is good guys and bad guys. If the good guys have more guns, the bad guys are weakened, then we'll have peace. This is I mean, this is the the thinking. So there's no
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I Glenn, I just, I believe, I hope, without proof, but I hope that a face to face discussions where, frankly, the Europeans are forced to remember some recent history would be helpful. There is a lot of experience, both the actual events and experimental data, which shows that face to face discussions can make some difference. That it's very hard to keep a false narrative directly in the face of the counterpart on a prolonged basis. I happen to know well, foreign minister Lavrov.
I respect him enormously. He is a walking encyclopedia of the last thirty six years of history. I think he would be a very excellent counterpart for discussions of these issues. And I believe since I've seen a lot of them with my own eyes, I think that the Europeans would have a lot to remember and that that would be beneficial for Europe's own security.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I agree. Well, when diplomacy becomes sitting in a room with people you agree with only, then, it's easy to have this bubble mentality where crazy narratives begin to move forward and dominate. Anyways, I've already taken too much of your time, so thank you very much, and to be with you. Enjoy your day in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. See you soon. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Closes Its Airspace as Negotiations Fail and the U.S. Prepares to Strike https://youtu.be/igXSXxqMRfc https://t.co/WCmIMi3urL
Video Transcript AI Summary
Syed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, discussed diplomacy and “information warfare” surrounding US-Iran negotiations during ongoing conflict. He said the Iranian version of events is “usually… much more accurate,” noting that in his view the West misses the truth in mainstream media, while Iran often does not “lie” but instead “won’t talk about” matters it does not want to address. He said his conversations with participants in diplomacy indicate “a wide gap” between the Iranian side and the Americans, with the Americans showing “a much greater sense of urgency” than Iran.
Marandi argued that Iran believes the situation will be “tough” and that either US strikes or US “flexible” behavior could follow. He emphasized that Iran’s “working assumption… is that there will be war,” and that suspicion is reinforced by past US behavior, including Iran’s account that the US “betrayed” Iran during previous dialogues and agreements. He said no side should put faith in messages transmitted through mediators such as Pakistan.
On Iranian “demands” and possible red lines, Marandi said Iran’s position is hardened while still allowing flexibility in certain areas. He said Iran’s demands are “much more reasonable than the American demands” and do not include demands that the US give up sovereignty or US military presence in the Persian Gulf. He argued that Iran’s strongest leverage is the Strait of Hormuz, describing it as central to the defensive and offensive military engagement during the war, including efforts to control and keep control of the strait. He said Iran “never closed the Strait Of Hormuz,” maintaining that it only restricted it to countries “with The US in its assault on Iran,” while friendly states’ ships continued to pass.
Marandi also described a scenario where Iran and the Americans might agree to “open the Strait Of Hormuz” under conditions, with Iran still controlling it and receiving a fee from passage under reasons such as “global warming, environmental protection or security cost.” He said Iran would no longer allow the US to turn the Persian Gulf into a military zone, even if some aspects appear on paper and others do not. He linked Iran’s negotiating strength to perceived victimhood, ideological motivation, public resilience amid economic pressure, and confidence that Iran can outlast the waiting game.
When asked about nuclear red lines and maneuvering, Marandi said he was “very careful” about requesting details and framed his remarks as understanding rather than direct knowledge. He asserted Iran is in a “much stronger position now than before” and that Iran’s need for flexibility is “much less.”
He also addressed sanctions, saying the US has “stolen a significant amount of Iranian assets” worth “many billions of dollars,” which he said limits leverage from that source. He said leverage “is mostly the sanctions,” while the threat of war is not what he said the Iranians fear. He claimed Iran’s military capability is “significantly stronger than it was three months ago,” and that if war restarts it would be “worse for the Americans,” with Yemen expected to be “much more active” than in the earlier phase. He stated that at the negotiating table Iran’s main offer would be passage through the Strait of Hormuz and that US miscalculations include misunderstanding Iran and underestimating the value of imposing a siege early in the war.
Marandi discussed regional actors as mostly message-passing rather than decision-makers. He said Qatar sent a delegation but had “not much input,” and that Pakistan mainly passes messages “back and forth,” with Iran preferring written communications to avoid “loopholes.” He said regional narratives about differences between Trump and Netanyahu or about opposition to war are not taken seriously because similar claims were used as disinformation before the previous conflict.
He argued that the UAE aligns with the Israeli regime and suggested this stance justifies Iran’s position and increases regional support for Iran during retaliation. He said Turkey is constrained as a NATO member and has not taken actions against the US, though he described Turkey as indirectly affected. He concluded that the regional situation is “not really” decisive compared with the confrontation between Iran, the US, and the Israeli regime.
On timing and high alert, Marandi said Iran has been on high alert “for at least three weeks,” with repeated reports that an attack “could be tonight” or “tomorrow,” while he said it is difficult to determine if an assault will occur. He described the weekend timing as potentially relevant and stated that, in his view, Iranians are “not panicked” and are confident due to experience and capabilities displayed during the conflict.
The conversation ended with discussion that US messaging about being optimistic or “getting close to peace” is a concern, and that disputes between Trump and Netanyahu are viewed as potentially preceding an attack. Marandi responded by hoping for peace “for everyone” and expressing hope that “after the hardship” things will “get better.”
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We have a great privilege today to be joined by Syed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Hi, Glenn. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's always a great pleasure being on your show.
Speaker 0: Well, I wanted to speak with you today about the the peace process or the diplomacy going on because we get a lot of conflicting messages. That is The US keeps signaling that, The US and Iran is getting closer to a deal, and, you know, the gaps are being bridged while Iran is essentially pushing back to some extent, at least arguing that, there doesn't seem to be a peace, that the the two sides are still very far apart. What is that's actually happening on the diplomatic front? Do you I mean, what is information warfare, and what's actually happening?
Speaker 1: You know, I always say, and I believe, and I continue to believe that usually the Iranian side of the story is, much more accurate. In general, Glenn, the West lies. On the other hand, the Iranians don't lie, But when they don't want to say something, they won't say it. So they they use the Iranians, I don't see them lie often. But if they don't want you to if they don't wanna talk about it, they'll just ignore it.
So they won't lie about it, but they won't talk about it. So often when you look at some things in the Iranian media, you have to sort of read between the lines and figure out what's missing. Where in the West, the the truth is usually missing in the mainstream media at least. I think the Iranian version is is quite accurate. And from my conversations with people who are involved, the Iranians see a wide gap between the Iranian side and the Americans.
And the Americans also have a much greater sense of urgency. The Iranians don't have that sense of urgency, not because the Iranians are not under pressure. The the war has damaged the economy, the strikes on Iranian infrastructure, the siege. Obviously, it has an effect on inflation, on jobs, on the market. But the Iranians do recognize that the situation for the global economy is much worse and that it's on the verge of something very bad.
So the Iranians are basically telling the Americans that we have demands. Those demands have to be met. We have not carried out aggression. We did not start this war. We even had a ceasefire after the war.
You did not abide by your commitments. If you had done so, the global economy wouldn't be where it is today. So, it is what it is. And the expectation in Iran is that this will be tough and that it could either lead to US strikes, another wave of attacks, or it could lead to The United States becoming more flexible in the coming days. Either either root is quite possible, but I think or possible.
But I think that the working assumption in Iran is that there will be war and that Iran is preparing for war. That's the working assumption. They're not going to be lulled into thinking that we're on the course or the routes to peace because we've had terrible experiences with The United States in the past, and it's not just with Trump. I was on a TV program with a former Obama official, and she was talking about the differences between Trump and Obama. Obama lied to Iran.
He cheated, with the JCPOA. There are many flaws in that deal, and they use it to its The US use it to its advantage. But also before Obama and, since the beginning of the revolution, every time The United States and Iran had some sort of dialogue, had some sort of agreement, it was the Americans that betrayed Iran, were dishonest. And so there is great suspicion here. And it could be that as the negotiations are taking place, we'll be attacked.
No one is going to put any faith in in some message sent through to Iran, through the Pakistani mediators or through some other third party. That's that's basically how it is right now, and I'm pretty sure this is a an accurate assessment.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I find it interesting that, Trump could, make comments that, oh, we were planning on striking Iran on Friday, but we decided, not to because, either the Gulf States or his son's wedding, all of these comments. The fact that just makes these casual comments that, yeah, we're planning again to strike yet again during negotiations. It's, yeah, it does reduce some of the trust if that's not completely absent by now. But you mentioned that Iran has set its demands.
And, again, whenever there's negotiations, one usually starts with, yeah, well, a set of demands on each side, but one gives some room for maneuver to meet in the middle. But on the Iranian position, what do you think are the red lines? Because giving up the Strait Of Hormuz, that seems to be well, keeping the Strait Of Hormuz, that seems to be written in stone. Also, I can't imagine Iran willing to abandon or reduce its conventional deterrence, be it ballistic missile drones or its relationship to its allies. And indeed, I often make the point, I don't think it's in America's interest to do this either because then Iran will be more reliant on a nuclear deterrent.
So I say, you know, not allow, except that Iranians have a powerful conventional deterrent, so to the extent they feel safe. But how about the nuclear program? Because Iran previously agreed to, you know, the JCPOA. So where do you think Iran's position is hardened? Again, I know you're talk speak, for the government.
Where do you think Iran's government is well, that they they won't move an inch, and where do you think there might be some, leeway?
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I'm very careful of doing, Glenn, is that I I don't ask about details because since I am on media, I don't want to know certain things even if they tell me. And, of course, there are things that, obviously, I won't be told anyway even if I ask. So a lot of what I what I what I'm going to say now is basically my understanding, but it's not based on knowledge. The Iranians are not going to the Iranians are in a much stronger position now than before. I think that's a general assessment even when, you know, when when Robert Kagan admits this, then I don't think anyone could call this a fringe assessment or a, you know, an exaggeration.
So the Iranians are being in a much stronger position. They feel that the need for flexibility on the Iranian side is much less. On the other hand, Iran's demands are much more reasonable than the American demands. So that's another reason why the Iranians will feel that flexibility, it can only be can can only go too far. Why?
Because Iran did not demand The United States give up is not demanding The United States to give up its sovereignty. It's not demanding that The United States give up its military presence in the Gulf Of Mexico. It's it's not doing anything like that. It's it's not demanding anything like that. So the Iranian demands are reasonable.
The Iranians are in a stronger position. And also, Iran has a a a very, very powerful tool, and that is the Strait Of Hormuz. At the end of the day, the whole defensive and offensive military engagement with The United States during the war more or less evolved around the Strait Of Hormuz, how to take and control and keep control of the Strait Of Hormuz. So US bases in the region were destroyed, escalation when when the the Zionist regime carried out escalation. Of course, the Zionist were regularly targeted day and night.
But when there was escalation, the Iranians were respond with escalation against the Israeli regime, but also against US proxies in the Persian Gulf that were a part of the war. But all of this, at the end of the day, the big prize was control of the Strait Of Hormuz. And that is something that the Iranians that is a a major that is a that is the most important one of the most important tools in the Iranian toolbox, and it's if Iran wants to give anything on that front, then they can they they're going to be demanding a great deal in return. And, also, the very fact that Iran didn't start this war gives the Iranians not only the the moral high ground. They didn't shut the Strait Of Hormuz.
They didn't create this global crisis. It it creates a strong sense of Iranian victimhood, and Iranians being Shia Muslims already have a strong sense of very powerful sense of standing up to oppression, supporting the oppressed. So you're a victim of war. You you have that ideology of supporting the the the oppress. Yourself are being threatened, so you stand up against the aggressor.
All of that combined makes the Iranian position at the negotiating table much stronger because the the the government knows that the economy is is facing major difficulties, but the Iranian people are resilient too. We could have trouble ahead. Some people may come to the streets saying we need jobs, we have difficulties, but it'll be manageable. Whereas on the other side, it's not going to be manageable. So all these together make it make the Iranians adamant that they're going to get have have to have a better deal than before, Whether it's on the nuclear issue, whether it's with with regards to the Strait Of Hormuz, whether it's with regards to Iranian sovereignty, things will be very, different than before.
Iran can be flexible. For example and this again is just me. But let's say, the Iranians and Americans, Iran opens up the Strait Of Hormuz, right, which which Iran never closed. I always have to stress this. Iran never closed the Strait Of Hormuz.
It only closed it to those countries who were with The US in its assault on Iran. But friendly countries, their ships were passing through this whole time. Like these five regimes in the Persian Gulf, for them, it was shut. But for Iraq, for Oman, it was never closed. So let's say and, hypothetically speaking, the Americans in Iran ultimately agrees under certain conditions, different conditions, to open the Strait Of Hormuz.
Iran will still be in control. Iran may not openly, on the peace of agreement with the Americans, get a fee, but Iran will get a fee. So it doesn't have to be something written down with the Americans that, yes, we will agree to to have a fee or not to have a fee. But in reality, those ships that that go through will have to pay a fee for whatever reasons. Global warming, environmental protection or security cost, whatever it is.
But the Iranians will get a fee in. And also, the Iranians will no longer allow The United States to turn the Persian Gulf into a military zone. So so it there will be some there will there can be some things on paper, but other things that won't be on paper.
Speaker 0: Well, it's interesting what you said about Kagan because I've it's the information space in Europe is very restricted. I and I often made the point that, well, Iran is, is winning. You can't defeat Iran for for a variety of reasons. First of all, yeah, the weapons you know, Trump makes the point we destroy the navy, the air force, but at the end of the day, even if all of that was true, the weapons Iran required to shut down the Strait Of Moose is you know, it doesn't require in the sale what Trump is referring to. But but when I said that the Iran was winning from the beginning, I was told this is, you know, repeating Iranian propaganda.
But as you said, now we have the king of the neo cons, Kagan, coming out, essentially writing articles with the title checkmate today. You know, the Iranian has won. But also, I made a point that the Iranians, not only have protected a lot of their weaponry, below ground, but also that they have a very powerful industrial potential, autonomous as well, in which they could ramp up production to replenish their stocks, even they wanted what has been fired or what has been destroyed. And now we see well, this was also a toll. I was just spreading Iranian propaganda, but now we see The US intelligence community coming out and, arguing that the Iranians are rebuilding and replenishing much, much faster than they had expected.
So I guess the lesson here is that, any reality which doesn't people don't like is propaganda. But I I wanted to ask though about the meaning of the sanctions sanction relief because I would if I was advising the Americans, I would say that this would be, you know, an an area where they have something to offer. Because even if The US is defeated, Iranian comes out on top, America has to go home, then it wouldn't be any reasons for them to give up on the sanctions. And, of course, Iran could benefit if all the sanctions are removed, not gradually, because I think gradually means it's not gonna be removed. But if it would if it's all removed, then, you know, this would be a situation where the Iranians would be willing to show some leniency on in other areas.
Not but, yeah, again, it's how important are the sanctions? Do the do the Americans hold any other cards in terms of, well, essentially, yeah, offering something to Iran instead of just threatening and pressuring, you know, peace through strength as NATO likes to call it?
Speaker 1: Well, the Americans have stolen a significant amount of Iranian assets that's worth I don't know the real numbers, but, obviously, it's in the many billions of dollars. But since Iran doesn't have control over those assets, it's like they don't exist. So it's not it's not there's not a lot of leverage that in in that sense. The leverage, of course, is mostly the sanctions. The threat of war is not really something that the Iranians are fearful of be for the reasons that you had just explained.
Everything that we were saying earlier has been now acknowledged by the New York Times and the Washington Post even though they're no friends of Iran. And I would, and I would say with a a great deal of confidence with I'm I'm very confident about this that Iran's military today is more prepared for war than it was at the beginning of the war. In other words, Iran is, militarily speaking, it is significantly stronger than it was three months ago. And so if there is another war, it's going to be worse for the Americans. And Yemen is much more prepared than Iraq.
Last time around, though, it was active, the resistance there. But this time around, it's going to be much more it's going to be they're going to be much more active. So the there's going to escalate there will be rapid escalation, and the capabilities on the Iranian side and its allies are are are greater than before. And, of course, Iran's allies really didn't participate that much because that was not the plan. They wanted to manage escalation.
But this time around, it will be different. So if there is war, it will end very badly for The United States. So the Iranians are confident about going back to a military confrontation. It's not that they want it. The Iranians didn't start the war.
They don't want war. But Iran knows that it has the upper hand if war restarts, and it would be it would turn out even worse for the Americans than the thirty nine and the Israeli regime than the thirty nine days of fighting that we had before. But, again, at the negotiating table, the what Iran has to offer is passage through the Strait Of Hormuz. And, the Americans have made a number of major miscalculations. But the biggest, I think, of all well, one of them is in the biggest which goes back to that book I said before, going to Tehran by Flint and Hillary Van Leberit, which I think everyone should read.
The biggest miscalculation is their misunderstanding of Iran. And, of course, you've been to Iran, so you know what I'm speaking about. That book, I think, explains it very well. And, also, they predicted what would happen if The United States didn't change course. So that is the biggest mistake.
The the second biggest mistake, I think, because through misunderstanding Iran, the whole notion of decapitation or, regime change is just ridiculous. And and the New York Times article about Ahmadinejad, it sounds more like a joke here in Iran than anything else. And it just shows that if it were if it was serious, that these people have no idea what they're doing. And if it's not serious, it just shows how unserious The New York Times is and it's and and how it thinks that its audience how it thinks that its audience would believe something so that is, in reality, so ridiculous. And that means that their comprehension of Iran and the narrative on Iran is so strange and abnormal and warped and detached from reality that, they cannot make objective assessments.
And that's why when they carry out operations, when they implement policy, they hit a brick wall because they're they're not dealing with reality. They're dealing with this their something that they created in in their through their imagination. The second is, of course, the the second biggest mistake that they made was with regards to Iran's military capabilities and its ability to to defeat The United States and and the straight of hormones and and and to hold back and to to take control of of the the flow of oil and energy and and so on. But, I think, beyond that, tactically speaking, the Americans, their biggest mistake in the war was that they didn't impose the siege on day one. And, the Iranians were expecting that to happen.
They were expecting the United States to impose a siege on Iranian ports at the very beginning, and they had contingency plans. But it would have been very difficult. But the Americans did did not do this, and they even removed sanctions on Iranian oil, which helped the Iranians sell all their oil at a higher price, because the Americans thought this this would be a quick win, and they didn't want to disturb the markets. So they wanted to keep the price of oil down so that when they defeated Iran, you know, everything would move on, and and it was a catastrophic miscalculation. So only after the war, the the hot war, and a week or so after the ceasefire, I think, did the Americans impose started imposing the siege.
That strength I mean, even if the Americans had done that on day one, Iran would still have the upper hand at the negotiating table. But since they delayed this, the pressure on Iran began begins later and and grows more slowly than the pressure, the economic pressure on The United States. So while let's say, I'm just this is just pure speculation. If Iran can wait it out I mean, I think a month ago, the Americans American intelligence said Iran can last four months or whatever. I mean, let's just let's say that's the case.
We we now we know so let's say it's three months now, let's say. I'm I don't I'm not saying it's a correct assessment, but I'm just saying that, you know, let's let's assume it's correct. Then if we from what we're seeing and and on on your show and other shows, The US economy, the global economy cannot wait three months. That's that's definitely out of the question. So The United so let's say The United States had started the siege earlier.
The three let's say, the three months would have been two months now, and, we would have still been closer. You I I don't know if I'm if I'm making my point, in a meaningful way, if it makes sense. So the Iranians have the upper hand at the negotiating table, not just because they have control of the Strait Of Hormuz, not just because they they were effective military, not just because they showed that their state institutions and their public popular legitimacy is much higher than anything the Western media would like to admit, again, going back to the book Going to Tehran. But also another book that's good to read is is our mutual friend, Alas Akroek's Resistance. It's, the the essence of the Islamic Republic or Islamic Revolution or something like that.
That's a good read too. But in any case, and so in addition to that, the Iranians can outlast the Americans in the waiting game. So whether it's we go back to war, the Iranians have the upper hand. Whether it's wait and see what happens, the Iranians, have the upper hand. At the negotiating table, the Americans have a sense of urgency that I know, and the Iranians do not have that sense of urgency.
The Americans want an immediate answer. The Iranians are saying, well, let's think about it. Let's think this through. So this is a you know, there's no good solution for Trump. It is not going to end well for Trump, and it's not going to end well for The United States, thanks to Trump, and thanks to the Israeli regime, and thanks to the Zionist lobby.
But, again, my response to your question doesn't provide you with any answer whether we're going to have military conflicts tonight or tomorrow night or the day after tomorrow in the morning or whenever or have some sort of agreement. It's to me, it's completely unclear.
Speaker 0: Well, I I do see that Iran has been put on high alert. That is well, there's reports that Iran has shut down its airspace, at least over the weekend now. What what prompted this now? Is there any reports of an imminent attack?
Speaker 1: Well, Iran has been high on high alert for at least three weeks now, And I've been told on multiple occasions during this period that it could be tonight, it could be tomorrow. It I've heard that on multiple occasions. But this is a three day weekend. We are also approaching a critical point in the global economic crisis. The bond markets are are wobbly, And and, of course, Trump I'm I'm guessing this is just me saying that he's not going to go to his son's wedding and and and that sort of thing.
I think and in the sense of urgency by The United States or all of that, I think, makes the Iranians and the fact that this is a three day weekend. This is a three day weekend. And we know that Trump or at least you know, it seems that Trump likes to start wars, and The United States in general likes to start wars on weekends or so that the markets would not be terribly affected, and they don't go into shock, and they can sort of, hopefully, from their perspective, contain the situation by the time the weekend comes to an end. Maybe these would be calculations. So, I think that right now, we've we're on it's Saturday, so we still have two more days.
So it's still like a normal weekend ahead of us. But that's that doesn't mean there's going to be an assault. It think I think we it's just impossible to say. At least for me, it's impossible to say. But, you know, Glenn, Iranians are confident.
They're not panicked at all. The war had the twelve day war made Iranians a lot more confident about themselves. But this war, about their capabilities and about the resistance and about their ideological, I I don't know, strength, but, this war went far beyond the twelve day war. And so so you have some Iranians who whose expectations are also very high, and that is something that the government and the state and the negotiators have to to have to deal with too. Are some people that many people, their expectations are extremely high.
So, the Iranians are confident about their position. I mean, the economic situation is difficult, it will get more difficult, but the Iranians are confident.
Speaker 0: It's such a, well, dangerous and difficult situation because for for The United States, they can't win the war. They can't get a peace which Trump can bring home and claim as a victory. And, they can't really maintain the ceasefire either because, well, time isn't on America's side on this one as the Gulf States apparently keep warning Trump about. But to to what extent do you think the other regional actors, be it Israel or Saudi Arabia, Turkey, The Gulf States, what what influence do they have in terms of, well, constraining or assisting the negotiation process, or are they all spectators here?
Speaker 1: Well, Qatar sent a delegation to Iran, but I don't think any of them really have much input. Even Pakistan, what it does is it it is that it passes messages back and forth, which is something that Iran prefers. Iran prefers things to be written, because Iran wants to think things through. They don't trust Americans. They want to make sure that there are no loo loo loopholes in anything that goes back and forth.
And in the past, Americans have set promise with things very often, and they never would and they they never carry them. And and, also, the Pakistani mediation could also have its own difficulties. The Pakistani mediators couldn't interpret something in a particular way, and then the Americans which has happened. Then the Americans would say that that's not what we meant. So the Iran that so I think, basically, it's it's the messages that go back and forth that are important.
Countries in the region, they you know, then there's there's been a lot of deception from the very beginning. Last year, you recall that before the war, and we're approaching the anniversary of the the previous war, the Twelfth Day War, we heard right before the war that there was a, you know, big differences between Trump and Netanyahu about waging war against Iran, and it turned out to be fake. So now, right you know, just a few days ago, Trump and Netanyahu apparently, allegedly, had another a big they're diff they had a a difference of opinion over Iran again. Do should I believe that? I don't think anyone here really takes that seriously.
It may be true. It may not be true. But no one is going to take it seriously because we've already seen this this narrative right before a previous war being used as disinformation. Or, for example, the the five countries in the Persian Gulf that before the war, they're they're they were claiming that they were against war. But gradually, it emerged that, no, none of them really were against the war.
In fact, they were they were supporting the war because they thought that it would be a quick win by The United States. So they assisted the Americans, and they continue to assist Americans in every way or form. Now now today, they are much more concerned because they see how bad Iran can hurt them and and and retaliate because of the crimes that they are, that they were involved in. So they say they're against the war, but again, we don't know. I don't think anyone really knows.
Some people may believe that they are, others don't, that they're serious about a change of heart. The Emirates, of course, is is a different case. The Emirates is showing itself to be a full ally of the Israeli regime, which is a foolish move because it only justifies Iran's position to the entire region and the the public public opinion. When during the war, when Iran was retaliating against these regimes, across the Arab world, people were cheering for Iran except for the Wahhabis and the Salafis who are funded by these regimes and and other people on the payroll, people on the streets were cheering. Why?
Because they they know that none of these regimes have have done them any good, that they've done anything good for Arabs in different countries or let alone the Palestinians. I think Qatar pretends to do with some things like giving scholarships to some Palestinians or building a couple of hospitals in Gaza before the war or, you know, Al Jazeera showing, the crimes of the Israeli regime. But in reality, Qatar doesn't do anything, substantial, just like Erdogan in Turkey who continues to give Netanyahu fast forward cheap oil from Baku to Netanyahu. None of them do it. So whether the you know, none of so that so I mean, by taking this stance, The Emirates is making Iran even strong.
It's it's enhancing Iran's soft power capabilities because everyone hates the Israeli regime. So we don't know where these countries stand. I don't know at least. I hear some people say that the Qataris have a change of heart, but it's not because there's really a change of heart. If there is a change in position, it's because they know that their their gas facilities can be destroyed for good, and that will happen if Iran's critical infrastructure is attacked, and so on.
At Turkey, it's NATO, and they're the one he will never do anything against The United States. He didn't do it in Gaza. He didn't do it in Lebanon. He's not going Even though the Israeli regime is more of a threat to Turkey, as as we all know, Greater Israel actually doesn't directly affect Iran, nor Yemen to members of the axis of resistance. It mostly affects Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, but, those countries don't simp don't have the ability to do much about it.
Of course, it would affect Iran indirectly because if it expands, it would its sphere of influence would expand with it. But in any case, no. These countries don't have a a leadership that would stand up to the to The United States. So the region is not really that important. This is between Iran and The United States and the Israeli regime.
But also inside Israel, there's there are lots of problems. And those who follow, the, the Hebrew media, they know that, there's there's crisis inside the regime. And, Alasir Crook and his wife, Ashlyn, they they do a lot, especially his wife. She does a lot of work on the Hebrew media. So I think people, if they want to know more about that, they should follow Conflicts
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. His sub Conflicts Forum is quite excellent. Make sure to read it as well just to also catch up on what's happening in the Hebrew media. But, no.
Whenever we see anything in any messaging coming out of out of the White House, I I get a bit worried because they say they're optimistic. We're getting close to peace. This is usually a red flag that they might attack. Trump said that the Gulf States had convinced him not to attack, which sounds like he's gonna try to give some protection for them as he plans to attack. And, of course, this new talk of a split between Netanyahu and Trump is also something you would wanna hear before an attack.
So so, hopefully, yeah, this weekend will be peaceful. And, yeah, good luck. And as always, thank you so much for being so generous with your time.
Speaker 1: Not at all. It's it's always a great pleasure, Glenn. And, I I hope it's peaceful for everyone, people of Cuba, the people of Lebanon, the people of Gaza, and across the world. Hopefully hopefully, we'll see better days. I'm I'm sure no one believes that we're going to see better days anytime soon, but I think, ultimately, after the hardship, we'll be things will get better.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Defeat in the Iran War Will End the U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/b9gN6iguB1M https://t.co/YCauovqm2b
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department counterterrorism official, discusses the ceasefire and the possibility of renewed war between the United States and Iran, arguing that U.S. military options are constrained while Iran’s readiness and ability to disrupt regional logistics have increased.
Johnson says the United States has been prepared to launch strikes for about six weeks since the ceasefire declaration around April 15, but that its remaining operational flexibility is limited by Gulf state access. He emphasizes that Saudi Arabia has not allowed U.S. air operations from Saudi territory. He describes an episode in which, after Trump announced “project freedom” to open the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi leadership shut down the ability to conduct air operations from its territory, even after Trump spoke with Mohammed bin Salman. With Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait affected, Johnson leaves Bahrain out due to its size and says it has been “decimated” by Iranian airstrikes. He also links timing to major religious and diplomatic periods, saying that with the Hajj beginning on Sunday and Eid occurring about next Wednesday or Thursday, Saudi Arabia does not want to be positioned as a target during those activities.
He argues that Iran has rearmed faster than U.S. intelligence expected and that Iran can use multilayered air defense and missile capabilities to threaten any entering ships. Johnson highlights a U.S. constraint: U.S. air refueling operations have been largely confined to Iraq airspace, which he says creates additional risk and also forces attacks through narrower routes rather than across wider fronts. He suggests this narrowed channel makes it easier for Iran’s air defense to concentrate. He also cites testimony by Admiral Daryl Caudle, who said the U.S. lacks the capability to open the Strait of Hormuz due to cost and risk, and says Iran’s arsenal can be brought to bear against ships that enter the strait. He further claims the CIA briefings to Congress align more closely with Iran’s increased capabilities since the ceasefire than with Trump administration claims.
Johnson connects this situation to negotiations. He says reported negotiations are taking place in Tehran and Islamabad and that Pakistan has stepped up with backing from China and Russia. He suggests a possible deal may not necessarily involve the United States if Gulf states and Iran agree, potentially including Turkey and possibly Egypt, in a broader security arrangement. He argues that if Gulf states shut down U.S. operations on their territory, the United States would have limited options, including for sustained air campaigns. Johnson also proposes a possible window before the World Cup begins, saying he does not see renewed action before the first two weeks of June, with international pressure expected once the World Cup starts.
On the substance of talks, Johnson portrays Iran’s negotiating positions as: sanctions relief “up front,” return of frozen assets, and continuing to charge ships entering or leaving the Persian Gulf to comply with rules implemented by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA). He says nuclear issues are being framed by Iran as a “red herring,” and he cites a claim attributed to Moshe Saba Khamenei (the new Ayatollah) that nuclear material is not even on the table. Johnson also asserts Iran has signed the NPT and allowed IAEA inspections, and he describes Iran as having faced persistent attacks including the “murdering of nuclear scientists,” using this to explain why Iran would assert sovereignty rather than comply with demands he says are being made.
In response to a question about how war could happen if the Strait of Hormuz cannot be opened, Johnson reiterates U.S. capability concerns and says Iran’s ability to disrupt logistics remains a central factor. He also argues that markets are reacting in a way he describes as abnormal: over day 84 since the war began and day 22 of a “complete cutoff,” he lists reductions affecting “20% of the world’s oil,” “10% of the world’s access to liquid natural gas,” “35% of the world’s urea,” “30% of the world’s sulfur,” and “44% of the world’s helium.” He claims the U.S. is emptying its strategic reserves and selling them overseas, calling it a “charade,” and says economic effects are likely delayed and could translate into recession or depression, with shortages becoming more apparent later.
Johnson argues that Russia and China are pushing an inclusive Persian Gulf security architecture rather than an alliance system aimed at containing Iran, and he says Iran could be pragmatic and flexible on concessions with Gulf states for ship passage in exchange for broader security guarantees. He suggests the most likely outcome is ongoing negotiations producing partial progress rather than an abrupt halt, especially if Saudi refusal to allow unfettered U.S. air operations continues to limit U.S. sustainment.
Finally, Johnson ties the likelihood of further U.S. strikes to economic constraints, saying he cannot conceive of strikes strengthening the world economy or the U.S. financial position, and that further escalation would have the opposite effect. He also predicts that by around the end of June the United States will suffer greater economic consequences. He ends by saying the economic situation will ultimately determine whether military strikes continue, and that there are real obstacles preventing a straightforward transition back to major attacks, while pressures for renewed action remain.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who, also worked at the US State Department's, office of counterterrorism. And, by the way, who is also an author at Sonar twenty one, and I'm leaving a link in the description. So it's great to see you again, Larry.
Speaker 1: Hey. Thanks, my friend. I I keep watching you too. You know? You're you're you're everywhere.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Good to know. Yeah. I I wanted to ask, about, where because I keep hearing that, Iran and The US will likely go back to war now. And during this ceasefire, which The US really wanted to, I guess, rearm regroup, make itself ready for a potential well, another round of warfare.
But we also learned that from US intelligence services that Iran has rearmed much quicker than they had expected. Mhmm. How how are you assessing this? How how ready are each side now for war?
Speaker 1: Well, The United States has been prepared to launch strikes for, you know, six you know, since since the declaration of the ceasefire. Good lord. Was that back on April 15? So now we're towards the end of, end of May. The problem The United States now has is basically Saudi Arabia and tending to that Qatar and Kuwait.
Leave Bahrain out of it because a, they're so small. B, they've been basically decimated by Iranian airstrikes, and they're not much of a player in terms of oil or gas or anything. They're But the the we saw the Saudi flex its muscles now three weeks ago when after Trump had announced project freedom to open the the Strait Of Hormuz. The Saudis basically said, you're not gonna conduct any air operations from our our territory. Shut them down.
And that was real. Trump got on the phone with Mohammed bin Salman trying to talk him out of it, trying to cajole him, and then the MBS said no. He was firm. So that shut down that military operation. So here's Trump already to go again, and yet it appears the Saudis have not backed away from that prohibition.
And now with, the Hajj starting on Sunday, and then you've got this, you know, influx of two to 3,000,000 Muslims from around the world, the last thing the Saudis want to do is put themselves in a position where they're going to be attacked by Iran. And and the only way they'd be attacked by Iran is if they allowed Saudi territory to be used to launch strikes against Iranian infrastructure and Iranian civilian targets. Because Iran is valid. If that happens, you, you know, Saudi Arabia, you Qatar, you Kuwait, if any of you are involved with facilitating these attacks on us, you're gonna get hit. The UAE, same goes for UAE.
And I I think Iran Saudis have reached a point where they don't wanna go down that path. So with Eid in the way, and then so you got the Hajj on Sunday, Eid is like next Wednesday or Thursday, but you have a number of this entire journey to Mecca. You know, it's an obligation of every Muslim to do that once in their lifetime. And it is, you know, they go through a variety of rituals and activities to commemorate, to sort of re reenact the lives of the prophet Ibrahim and the prophet Muhammad. So, you know, this is it's very important.
And the last thing Saudi's wanna do is get in the middle of a shooting match with Iran, during during this activity. So, you know, that's why I see see this is whatever Trump wants to do. He's now constrained. I I I have heard that The US air refueling operations have been largely are confined to Iraq airspace, which, you know, that creates some additional risk. But without with The United States not able to transit both Saudi Arabia, Essentially, if they can't transit through Saudi Arabia, it really hampers US military capability as well as Israel's.
Basically have to go up through Iraq. And what you know, once you force them into, if you will, a more narrow channel, yeah, it makes it easier for air defense operations. They don't have to be focusing over a 2,000 mile front. They get to focus over a a 200 mile front. Big difference.
So, you've got that underway. There are reported negotiations taking place in both in Tehran and in Islamabad. The Pakistanis have stepped up. They've got a they have sort of a the back full backing of China and Russia to play a lead role in trying to bring about a peace agreement. If nothing else, it may not necessarily involve The United States.
If they get agreement with the Gulf Arabs and Iran, and then Turkiye is also involved, and possibly Egypt, then all of a sudden The United States is irrelevant. If The Gulf Air shut down US military operations in their countries, The United States doesn't have a lot of good options. Certainly doesn't have the air power from aircraft carriers to sustain any kind of campaign to speak of. So this is this is in flux that I I I could make a case that despite the threats, oh, we're gonna restart, we're going to attack. I don't see anything happening until, you know, the one window would maybe be the first two weeks of June before the start of the World Cup.
Because I think once the World Cup is underway, there's gonna be tremendous international pressure against The United States to stop attacking Iran.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I can imagine a lot of the Gulf States being a bit cautious now about joining in on the war against Iran because if, as it appears now to happen, that Iran is coming out victorious, that it is Right. Coming out on top, controlling the Strait Of Hormuz, and The US might be pushed out of the region, it's not a great idea to, yeah, to be on the losing side. So I can imagine a lot of the countries would want to begin to strike a bit of a different well, balance between The US and Iran, essentially adjust to the new realities which are coming. Yeah.
But if we are if if negotiations still, you know, have a chance of succeeding, what's, Like, where where did this stand at the moment? Because the it's it's hard to get good information coming out. I think Trump referred to the Iranian's last proposals or one of the last proposals as garbage. And but but is this about mainly the the where the stock is Iran's right to enrich uranium, and, of course, what should happen to the Strait Of Hormuz? Because, again, on these issues, it doesn't seem like The US have a lot of negotiation power.
But what I was thinking is even if the Iran becomes out, you know, victorious, it still has an interest in The US removing sanctions. So this is kind of the the the great card that The US holds on its hands. Of course, any deal with gradual removal of sanctions, probably, that's all nonsense. That's not gonna happen. So Right.
But but how do you see this? What can be actually achieved in these talks?
Speaker 1: Well, the the the Iranians have not consulted with me about negotiating strategies, but I put myself in their shoes. The the it's no longer acceptable to say, well, with the as you pointed out, gradual relief on sanctions. No. We tried that before with JCPOA. It didn't happen.
We've had repeated broken promises by the West. So going forward, the sanctions come off now up front. That's number one. The frozen assets, those are returned to Iran. That's number two.
And the other non negotiable point is Iran is going to continue to charge ships that want to enter the Persian Gulf or leave the Persian Gulf. They're gonna have to abide by the new rules that the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the PGSA, is now implementing. And in fact, yesterday, 36 ships went through despite despite Trump's claim, oh, we got a blockade. It's ironclad. Nobody's nobody's coming through.
The the fact of the matter is otherwise that the the ships are starting to move. So we're we're this will provide some relief on the international economic front. Not not much is still still two thirds of the ships that normally went through are not going through. So this is you've got only one third of the activity of normal. But the the whole nuclear issue, maintain it's a red herring.
It is The United States has now tried to make that its central claim. Yeah. Well, that's really our concern. That's what we got to get rid of. It is if if if Iran didn't have a nuclear program and if they had never enriched one ounce of uranium, The United States is still be trying to destroy Iran.
That's the point. And it has nothing to do with whether Iran is in, quote, a quest for a nuclear weapon. I I watched, the this organization in Canada, the Monk Society. They did though. They host debate.
So they did a debate on Wednesday feature that pitted John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt against Victoria Nuland and Mon Mike Pompeo. And, I mean, what is what caught my attention was this narrative, the neocon narrative that is built up that, you know, like Saddam Hussein was a monster because he had chemical weapons without any acknowledgment whatsoever from Pompeo and Newland that we, The United States, were the ones who provided, who facilitated those chemical weapons by providing the precursors. And not only that, we provided biological agents as well, bioweapons. So there there is as The United States approaches these negotiations, there is no historical memory. I mean, from from Iran's perspective, it's like they're negotiating with an Alzheimer's patient.
The United States can't remember what the hell it did two years ago. You know? They barely know where they are now. So this this claim that, oh, yeah. We've it's it's a deal stopper unless Iran gives up its enriched material.
Now reportedly yesterday, Moshe Saba Khamenei, the new Ayatollah, said, no. Are nuclear material. It's not even on the table. And, you know, frankly, Iran's standpoint as a sovereign nation, why should they give it up? They've they've signed the NPT.
They've allowed IAEA inspections. They they but but they've been they have been the victim of persistent constant attacks, terrorist attacks, murdering of nuclear scientists, not only what took place last June, but what took place before. So I I can see Iran just asserting its sovereignty and saying, no. The the West is not going to dictate to us what we do. We we are a sovereign country and have every right to do this.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's a great point. But I I also hear that, well, that The US intelligence are not just making, you know, the point that the Iranians are rearming, but they're also apparently telling Trump now that the Strait Of Hormuz is, well, it's it can't be opened, that it's yeah. It can't be done.
So I'm not sure who else has been whispering in his ears, probably Netanyahu, that they should have another go nonetheless. But if you can't open up the Strait Of Hormuz, if you can't defeat the Iranians, what is the point of going back to war? Because it appears that this is becoming a very real possibility. Or, again, I'm not sure how likely you think The United States will attack Iran again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The well, just to reinforce the point, it's not just The US intelligence community. Admiral Daryl Caudle, c a u d l e, testifying for congress yesterday who said, hey, we we we don't have the military capability to open the Strait Of Hormuz. That was his message. It would be too costly, too risky to try to send ships in there to attack Iranian positions because Iran has such an arsenal, multilayered arsenal that can be brought to bear on any ship entering the strait that The United States isn't capable of destroying those.
So the an honest assessment of US military capability, and there are some in the military that have pushed this forward, but it appears that admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM, the boy the boy lacks a spine. Yeah. And I'm calling him a boy because he's, you know, he's about 20 younger than me. And, god, what a what a cowardly bureaucrat this cat is. You know, he was being questioned by before Congress the other day by Congressman Seth Moulton.
Seth was a marine, served in the marine corps. Left Harvard to go serve in the marine corps, so not your typical marine. And Seth was asking just to define the difference between degraded and obliterated. And, you know, he he played word games. He wouldn't oh, I can't I can't talk about the nuclear program.
And Malden goes, I'm not asking about the nuclear program. I'm simply asking about your word usage. What's the difference between degraded and obliterated? And he he wouldn't answer the question. So when you when you've got a military commander playing those kinds of games, and being more of a politician than a military leader because what you need is a military officer that doesn't give a damn about the politics.
And frankly, could care less whether he gets promoted, whether he gets fired, doesn't care that he's gonna come in and tell it exactly as he sees it. And then to say the reality, know, Congressman Moulton is we have not abraded Iran's military capabilities. As the CIA, the CIA I was pleased to see has been briefing Congress at least, something that it appears to be much more closer to the truth than anything that the Trump administration is saying, noting that not only have we not destroyed the majority of Iran's ballistic missile capability and air defense systems and their their ability to construct new ballistic missiles and launch them. But they they appear to have enhanced their capabilities in the since the ceasefire was declared. Now, what is it?
Eight weeks ago? So The United States is caught between Trump's rhetoric and between what The United States actually can do. The only thing we can do going forward would be to launch some some new set of airstrikes. And if we're prevented from using Saudi Arabian airspace, then we have to go through Iraq, which then creates a new security vulnerabilities for the attacking force. Because Iran's no longer Iran with the support of Russia and China, they're gonna know exactly where to focus all their intelligence assets to collect.
They'll know what's coming, where it's coming from, and we'll be able to mount some defenses accordingly. Plus, they can deploy groups with shoulder fired surface to air missiles into theater. All they've gotta do they don't have to take out an f 35. They got all they have to do is take out the tankers like they did before, you know, five you know, three or four weeks into the the start of the war.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems though that as well, we've seen that Russia and China, they've been pushing for a different format for a peace agreement instead of just having a ceasefire and, you know, wait for war to break out again or end up in a situation where either The US will dominate or Iran will dominate, they seem to favor the development of a new inclusive security act architecture in the Persian Gulf that is Right. In which the countries and the regions seek security with each other instead of this alliance system where they seek security against each other. Now such a system which would include not just Iran, but also the other regional actors, be it, yeah, Turkey or the Saudis, to to what extent do you think this could succeed? Because on one hand, yes, it would be an inclusive one. It would mitigate security competition.
On the other hand, it also then puts an end to US influence in the region. So it wouldn't necessarily be anti American, but it would definitely dismantle the well, let's call it here, the US empire.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I this is where I see the I I I think there's this it's a viable solution. It's one that's actually being seriously entertained by all the relevant actors in the region. Russia and China are pushing hard for it. And Iran appears to, you know, even though the rhetoric in the West tries to portray Iran now as this fanatical Muslim state of these ultimate hard line radicals that have no ability to compromise.
No. No. No. No. No.
That's they couldn't be further from the truth. The fact is the Iranians are pretty they're they're they are very pragmatic, and they're actually operating now from with with more confidence from a position of strength. They demonstrated we could take every blow that The United States wants to throw at us along with Israel, and we we stood up to them. You know, none of those other Gulf states can say that. And so Iran, the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia started two years ago as a result of Chinese intercession.
And so the Chinese are still working that angle, and they're using Pakistan. You know, I I had forgotten this. Colonel Wilkerson mentioned this during my conversation with Nima a little bit ago, that when they had one of the uprisings in Mecca, you know, several years back, the Pakistani troops were actually used to help quell that uprising. So there is a good relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and so the that's why the packs are playing sort of the leading role in this. So I I I could very much see Iran willing to make some concessions with the Saudis and Qataris and Kuwaitis for passage of ships through the Strait Of Hormuz in order to secure their cooperation in a new security arrangement.
I don't see them being so hard line to say, know, I don't care what you do. I don't care what you're how much and how sorry you are, you're gonna pay the damn fee regardless. You know, I think they've got some flexibility on that. And so I'm hoping the most likely outcome is that these negotiations behind the scenes are gonna bear some fruit and the continued refusal of the Saudis to allow The United States unfettered air operations against Iran will prevent The United States. The United States may absolutely want to attack, but the the the, you know, the general in charge of the aviation forces is gonna say, look, if if we can't use Saudi territory, ability to actually sustain these attacks is very limited and it's going to create a greater risk.
So this thing could actually be sort of it's not going to come to a halt because, oh, hey, got an agreement. Both sides have sat down pieces at hand. Instead, it's just sort of gonna sputter out like a dying dying fire.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, you have a good point with the Iran is often criticized in the West for taking a hard line position. But the hard line position in terms of holding up to the straddle or moves, setting up the toll, there is the reason they're they're not compromising on this is because this is the the source for security if they Right. Put tolls on countries that either sanction them or put host American bases that threatens them. So it's a it's a way of making sure that they're not going back to the old status quo of, yeah, economic coercion and military threats.
But, again, if proposals such as put forth by the Chinese and the Russians of an inclusive security architecture, something that could provide security, I mean, that would that would be the ultimate goal of the Iranians, then they they they might soften the stance on needing to, I guess, control the Strait Of Hormuz all all on their own, because I don't think that will be the ultimate objective in itself. But but this kinda goes against the hegemonic security model, the divide and rule, because as long as you have the Gulf States in a conflict with the Iranians, then, you know, The US has an ability to weaken the Iranians and also make sure that the Gulf states remain dependent, thus obedient. It's a bit like the system we have in Europe. After the Cold War, we actually had agreements for an inclusive pan European security architecture, and, yeah, they recognized that's not the same architecture that would have brought The US into Europe, which, to a large extent, is correct. So instead went with NATO expansion.
So, again, we revived the Cold War logic. Russia's marginalized. The Europeans remain obedient. And but at but at some point, of course, if the hedge fund is declining, it's an interest of the frontline states to also seek an alternative. So I'm I I I think it could be a good solution, but, again, they will be very difficult to hammer it through after especially right after war.
However, how long if they don't come to peace, how long can this continue? This because now there's no war. Well, there's a little little bit, but there's no peace either. But the markets, surely, this is this is unsustainable. I think this is what the consensus is as well that this can't continue.
Speaker 1: Well, that's that is the other very curious and disturbing aspect of this. The markets are not acting normally. I'm sure in your as an undergrad, you had to take like introduction to economics, something like that. And I don't know if you took any economics courses. I did.
And, you know, you learn the simple concept of supply and demand. That if if you've got a supply of something that people need, you know, it's called a inelastic good that no matter what the price is, you still need to buy it, you need it. So if the price, if the supply of that goes down, boy, the price is gonna go up because the the the demand is there if for the same amount and there's less of it to go around. You know, that this is I'm simplifying, but you know, that's how it works. Well, here we've witnessed now, we are on so today is day 22.
So 83, we're day 84 since the war started. And in those eighty four days, that's almost three months, there has been a complete cutoff not only of 20% of the world's oil, 10% of the world's access to liquid natural gas, 35% of the world's urea, 30% of the world's sulfur, 44% of the world's helium. So those are not just, you know, nice things to have. Those are essential commodities for industrial production and of a whole variety of applications. That's gone.
So you would think the markets would be going, oh heavens, God Almighty, we particularly with oil. You've got, Assuming that demand has not fallen off the charts, that demand remains stable, if not slightly increased, you've got a decreased supply. Inevitably, the price has got to go up. But what we've seen is both a suppression of oil and as oil suppressed, stock market in The United States keeps going up like, hey, things are great. Things are not great, but the markets are pretending that it is.
And we saw during during COVID when the price of oil went up to a $150 a barrel, we didn't have any actual shortage. There was it was not like the supply got they stopped pumping oil and they stopped running filling tankers and the tankers stopped selling on the seas like has happened now. But yet the price of oil went up to 150 for what? Now when we have an actual shortage, they're pretending, oh, no big deal. We got this under control.
One of the ways they've been mitigating the rise in oil is The United States has been emptying its strategic reserve and selling that reportedly selling that strategic reserve so it's going overseas. So it's all it's all a charade. At some point, that parade's gonna come to a halt. The the actual economic impact will arrive. The shortages will become readily apparent.
The price rise will no longer be managed. And this this will translate into not just economic recession, but probably an economic depression. And then it'll be at that point that The United States will finally have to be honest with itself about negotiating an end to this. So I can see that Iran is in a position to continue to limit the flow of goods out of the Persian Gulf, continue to disrupt the global economy. And yet the irony of this is if you go back and start asking the questions on who are the alternatives to the Persian Gulf, the two two countries most commonly that come up are Russia and China.
So Russia and China actually benefit from this. The United States to a lesser extent because The United States is a major supplier of liquid natural gas. And but but beyond that, The United States is not a major supplier of oil. Certainly not a supplier of helium, sulfur, and urea. And, you know, the the entire shortage of fertilizer, the global impact on that.
Again, we're six months from seeing the full impact of that start to be apparent, where it's gonna be translated into fewer crops have been produced, shortage of food, etcetera. So this I I see this thing able this this can drag on for quite a while. I don't I don't see the Iranians ready to just say, okay. Yeah. Let's open everything up and never mind.
We don't mind having been attacked. They no. They're look Iran is looking Iran's objective in this is to get a firm security guarantee that this is never going to happen again. And I think China and Russia are willing to provide that. And a key to that is enlisting Turkiye, Saudis, Egypt, and getting on board with that kind of broad agreement where, if you will, they come up with the equivalent of a West Asian NATO without Western involvement.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems that the well, the war against Iran and also the war in Ukraine, it it seems to be two you know, it appears to be the same war, and it would also have the same solution. This is hegemonic system which has broken down, and it requires some multipolar solution. In other words, it can't be one side dictating the terms that is peace through strength as NATO loves to say. But but, again, a way in which we also have to accommodate the security concerns of the opponent. That's not something we've done over the past thirty years.
That is to discuss what are the security concerns of the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, and what how can they be respected in a security arrangement? Again, it's very different from the block politics we've been pushing, which kinda makes the question of if if The US can't defeat Iranians in war and they have to find a settlement, what will the world look like after such a defeat?
Speaker 1: Well, it would be better off. Here's the problem. The the the Western approach, not only to Iran, but to China and Russia. It was it was on display with this it's called the monk debate. It took place Wednesday between John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt on one hand, Victoria Newland, Mike Pompeo on the other.
And the question, the way it was framed by this is a Canadian group and hopefully they'll have it up available online for people to see on YouTube. Right now, it's you gotta pay to see it. The the attitude of Victoria the underlying question of the debate is goes back to John Adams saying that The United States should not be going out looking for monsters to destroy overseas. And the entire premise of the well, we gotta deal with these monsters. Well, let's start with what's the definition of a monster, and a monster is an imaginary creation.
It's not a real thing. It's it's, it's, you know, Frankenstein, a monster. Shelley, you know, that wrote the book Mary Shelley was it that wrote the book. It was it was a fictional creation. So we got these fictional creations, but they describe as Iran is a monster.
Russia is a monster. China's a monster, we gotta stop the monsters. That mentality, unfortunately, is I would say dominates still in The United States. That anybody that comes out to try to argue that this is completely ridiculous. And and let me just give you one data point.
Here's Mike Pompeo, the former head of the CIA and the former Secretary of State. He's a moron, an imbecile, a cretin. Let me find some other demeaning words to suggest his lack of intelligence because he talked about the thousands of Israelis that have been killed by Hezbollah. And I thought, really? So anybody that's out there watching, go use Grock or use Claude.
Go in and type in how many Israelis have been killed by Hezbollah since 1982. The number that Claude came back with was 872. Oh, you know, forty four years, 800 and 72. But, gee, how many how many Palestinians have the Israelis killed? Well, that number would be in excess of a 100,000.
You know, right now, Claude came back and said, like, 92,000, but that that's being very, very, very generous with assuming that, all these bodies buried buried beneath the rubble in Gaza. But my point is, here are the actual facts. The country that's been the country or entity that's been killing the most of another is the is the Israelis, not the Palestinians, not Hezbollah, not Hamas, and the country that's been killing the most foreigners in the world over the last sixty six years is The United States. It's not China. It's not Russia.
But yet we we we want to see the monster's exterior. We're the goddamn monster, and we fail to accept it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I I often make the point that whenever we look at these international security issues, I I'm, like you, quite critical of what we're doing. And I'm often well, the accusation often thrown against me would be then, well, why are taking the side of the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians? But this is not about taking one side or the other. It's about recognizing that the hegemonic system we set up, it's it's not working, and it's not great for us either.
I mean, we've been in perpetual war now for decades. Yeah. It's weakened our security. It's weakened our economy, our political culture. Indeed, it's draining the soul, I would say, out of our nation.
So and there's no going back to the nineties, especially that's what the European politicians keep draining of. But in the nineties, the political West was all powerful. It's also had political stability, economic, social stability. The main foreign policy of countries like Russia and China was to get along with the West as much as possible. Countries like Russia in the nineties even ignored all their traditional partners in the East because they had this dream of integrating into a common Europe, and they didn't want, you know, rushing to the West that they would leave behind the that they would be held back by countries in the East.
So and same with Iran after the September eleven attacks. They were open to using this as an opportunity to get closer with The United States. They were you know, solve some of the historical problems. All of this this this was a perfect condition, and and we couldn't pull it off. We instead went into perpetual war.
Exactly how is this still gonna work? I mean, we exhausted ourselves. Look at the debt, political climate, all of this, and rising powers are balancing us. This is this is why America had a offshore balancer strategy. Don't don't remain in Europe after the war is gone because then the powers will balance The US pull back.
They will instead balance each other. I mean, it's it's hard for me. It is just people, I think, they they confuse the continuation of empire and the global dominance with, yeah, with taking the side of their own as if the only future of the West is to dominate others. This was was frustrating with Marco Rubio when he came at the back in February to the Munich Security Conference where he said, listen, Europe. You used to be great until World War two.
You lost your empires, and, you know, and we can still dominate the world. Is this really all there is to the political West? You know, it became a bit offensive. Anyways, I'm getting a bit off the point. I my my I guess where I was going is, how do you see this kind of settlement which you are describing with The US pulling a bit out of the Middle East?
How would that impact the broader world order, though, you think?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I I think it's gonna it's it's gonna be accompanied by war. The no no hegemonic system surrenders its control without a fight. But the the the challenge that The United States confronts and refuses to recognize is we do not control our destiny anymore. That what used to be an economically powerful country, because we had this robust industrial base, we were largely resource independent. We didn't need to go out and conquer other countries in order to get resources like rare earth minerals.
We do now. We could be self sufficient with energy. We're certainly not self sufficient with fertilizer, a critical component for our agricultural industry. And increasingly, the very technology that's driving modern society, it's being produced in China, not here in The United States. So it's going to be it will be the you will, the economic collapse.
It's gonna be the final wake up call for, the folks in Washington DC. They they can't continue with this fraud that they have been perpetuating. And, you know, because, you know, in in Donald Trump's you know, we are see, we had twelve months in 2025. We're now into the fifth month. So let's call it sixteen months that Donald Trump's been in office.
The the national debt has grown $2,000,000,000,000. So he's added he's added more to the national debt into sixteen months and was added in by Joe Biden in say three years. And so this debt accumulation is increasing. It's not decreasing because The US obligations, spending obligations are going off the charts because of the war against Iran. And we've got all these forward deployed assets, etcetera.
At the same time, you step back and look and say, what's happening on the global front? Are more countries lining up to buy US Treasury bills or are more countries getting rid of US Treasury bills? The answer is the latter. And just this week, we've seen Turkey do a sell off, Japan sold off a number, China's continued to sold off like $41,000,000,000. So the nations, particularly in the global south, they're not rolling around saying, how can we buy more US treasury?
How can we lend The United States more money so it continue its hegemonic activities around the world? That's not happening. Well, at least the petrodollar is still intact, sort of, except again, more countries are making purchases in oil and like these shipments coming out of the Persian Gulf or going into the Persian Gulf through the Strait Of Hormuz, the Iranians are saying, hey, you're gonna pay in real, you're gonna pay in our currency and or you're gonna pay with Chinese Yuan. Dollars forget about it. Russia itself made a statement about three weeks ago that it was gonna start accepting payments in yuan as opposed to the dollar.
So again, you got to shift away from the dollar. So those those two pillars that for The United States have been critical for, you know, its capital flows to to maintain its economic dominance. They're crumbling. The petrodollar is crumbling. The the US Treasury bill is crumbling.
Now is it it's not it's not gonna come to a crashing end here in the next few weeks. And this this may perpetuate for another, for some time to come. But it's certainly, it's not The United States building strength, it's just the opposite. It's getting, it's bleeding out maybe a little bit at a time, but nonetheless, you keep bleeding out, eventually at some point you run out of blood.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, something has to give, though, because I understand the pressure that Trump is under. And from what I'm being told, the Gulf States have now well, like, explained to The United States that they believe that time is on Iran's side. So and I get it. There's a lot at stake.
It's not just how to end the Iran war. Indeed, as you said, the entire world order is more or less at stake here. So I can understand, on one hand, the pressure to have another go at attacking Iran. On the other hand, if you can't win militarily, what what what's the point of this? And from what I understand, the Iranians have plenty of other ways to escalate if The US decides to restart the war.
But my my last question was we heard we heard about this spat now between Trump and Netanyahu. I'm not sure the credibility of it, but Yeah. Apparently, Trump was considering putting an end to the war, accepting some something of a defeat, which, well, would not be good for for Israel, which made Netanyahu quite angry. Again, I'm not sure how much we should believe the news these days, but I want to ask you, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, just the simple fact that you have to say it that way tells you tells you everything you need to know. That you can no longer the news you always have to look at the news as it's being presented with a a a point of view or or it's I call it intelligence with a purpose.
It's designed to elicit a particular reaction or to manipulate. It is very much manipulative. Go ahead. Sorry to
Speaker 0: No. No. No. I haven't. So if if I read The Guardian, I I it's to know what the Guardian wants me to think.
It's not because you believe that you're getting a reality there. I think, especially over the past few years now with the war, the focus on elevating the war narratives is always, yeah, pushed to the forefront, you know, prioritized above reality. Yeah. I think one should be a bit cautious, but but if it is true, do you do you think Israel would be in a position to essentially deny Trump or influence Trump to reject the peace? Because I always thought if the core US security interests is at stake at some point, he would have to distance himself a bit from, the pressure coming out of Tel Aviv.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. I I I think they yes. They can influence Trump to try to make decisions that will be inimical to The US interest. But even though they may get Trump convinced that he needs to do this, the reality is The United States may face constraints on what it can do.
In other words, you know, okay, yeah, we're gonna re relaunch the attacks on Iran, but we're going to have to go through Iraq. We can no longer go through Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Because, you know, what the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Qataris are particularly concerned about. UAE is not concerned about it, but they they would end up taking the biggest blow is that if they get back into facilitating these attacks, they are gonna suffer some devastation beyond what they have experienced already.
And the Iranians have taken the position that, you know, they recognize that we can handle a first strike. It'll be our retaliatory follow-up that's gonna be devastating. So I don't discount that Trump can still be talked into renewing the attacks, but he's also gonna come up against the practical realities of what what can the United States Air Force now do with the constraints if if, again, if Saudi Arabia continues to say no, you're not gonna use our aerospace, then that limits US options.
Speaker 0: So given this reality then, also, if The US attacks, how much worse it can get if the Red Sea is shut down, if some Internet cables are shut off Yeah. The Gulf States have ceased to exist if their desalination plants or energy infrastructure gets blown up. With all of this different consideration also weighing up with the interest of Israel, how likely do you think it is that The US will now attack again? Because when I look at the force buildup, I keep I keep feeling that, you know, if you're gonna build up that much forces, you can't bring them home again in this that they're built up for war. But, again, I'm not a military man.
Speaker 1: So Well, no. I I I you're just you're you're you're you're plagued with logic and rational thought. So yeah. No, you're absolutely right that we have not seen the order come down to say, let's start withdrawing, let's start drawing down. For that that simple reason alone, I would say, yes.
The United States is going to renew the attacks on Iran. But the ability of The United States to sustain that will be extremely limited. And the damage that will be inflicted on US forces in the area as well as Israel. Israel is the one that really I think is grossly miscalculating the kind of damage that is that Iran can inflict on it. And so, you know, this is I'm hopeful that this, you know, this thing continues.
Let's call it the non combat portion of this continues to drag out. Because of the Hajj, well, okay, no attack now. And then the Hajj ends and, okay, we're now at the World Cup. So let's get through the World Cup. That takes us another month.
So that that can give, you know, a couple of months of negotiation. That would be a better outcome. But I think Trump is gonna come under enormous pressure to attack. And so I I can just say that it's not gonna surprise me if the attack comes again. I'm not considering predict all it's gonna happen next week or I I don't know that.
I mean, I don't have privy to access to that information. All I do know is Trump's under pressure to do it, but
Speaker 0: he also faces some real world obstacles that prevent it. Now how those two get bridged, I don't know. Well, as the months will come and go, if there's no war and no peace, the markets will nonetheless suffocate. So the the clock is ticking nonetheless. So I yeah.
I don't see a good outcome out of this. Well, for for The United States, I think for Iran, they they can come out very strong, I guess, if they finally shake off twenty seven no. Sorry. Forty seven years of crippling sanctions and perpetual military threats. If they can get something new, it can be great.
But for for The US, though, it's there's no going back really, which is yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the way you phrased it and I think you bring excellent insight to this, is that the economic situation will ultimately determine if The United States will go forward with military strikes. And I cannot conceive of a scenario in which US military strikes against Iran are going to strengthen the world economy, strengthen The US financial position in the world, increase desire to purchase dollars, make the petrodollar more universal. In fact, I would argue that any further military escalation by The United States will have the exact opposite effect. And once there is that realization I think that argues against, you know, we shouldn't do this because the economies are too fragile. And you know, we're starting to see the full effect is to happen in Indonesia but it's gonna be hitting Europe with greater intensity.
And ultimately, you know, probably by the end of June, The United States is really gonna be suffering the economic consequences.
Speaker 0: Well, Larry, as always, I appreciate your insights. So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 1: Hey, Glenn. Always a pleasure, my friend. Keep up the good work.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: NATO Attacked Russia; U.S. Being Pushed Out of the Middle East https://youtu.be/UPvsjgQ73YM https://t.co/lkbwG4zBIb
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas MacGregor discussed escalating conflicts involving Iran and Europe, arguing that renewed fighting is likely and that current ceasefire dynamics favor increased damage on both sides. He said the United States is “loaded to the gills” with air and naval munitions and aircraft and that there appears to be a similar amount of ammunition in reserve, which would allow an intense campaign to last “five to seven days” rather than a shorter, first-wave bombardment. He argued targeting would be an attempt to determine which air and naval target sets could compel Iran to collapse or surrender, while noting CIA-linked reporting that Iran emerged from the last round with “virtually 90%” intact, implying further Iranian readiness.
MacGregor said both sides also appear to have added capabilities: claims included Russian additional radars and Chinese additional missiles, including a new cruise missile designed to sink ships at sea out to 300 kilometers, with some Russian and Chinese technicians allegedly operating systems on the ground. He stated he expected major damage this time, especially that Iran would “finish off the oil infrastructure on the West Side Of The Persian Gulf,” and that Iran might also attack desalination plants critical to Saudi Arabia, arguing that destroying the Al Shaba’il facility could force Riyadh to evacuate the capital due to lack of drinking water. He described the moment as one reflecting “a certain level of desperation” tied to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, and said “every conceivable form of attack” would be used with far more intensity, short of a nuclear weapon.
On reported differences between Trump and Netanyahu, MacGregor said he believes there is likely a split but also portrayed Trump as constrained with “no easy exit.” He compared Trump to “Hotel California,” asserting he wants to check out but cannot. He said Trump’s obligations to Israeli interests and donors, plus the lack of maneuver room, create pressure to restart war if pause outcomes don’t lead to a favorable path. He also outlined potential constraints on any prolonged campaign, including low strategic petroleum reserve levels by “the end of June, the beginning of July,” limits on crude exports needed to support U.S. refining, issues with exporting shale oil due to refinery mismatch, and broader financial stress if long-term bond yields rise toward “the 5% ceiling.” He argued gold replacing the dollar and “battle between bricks and The US dominated Western financial system” could undermine the ability to sustain war, framing this as a squeeze on Trump if the conflict continues.
MacGregor then shifted to Ukraine and long-range drone strikes. He said flight paths and targeting for long-range Ukrainian drone strikes have been provided by American military capability and that U.S. surveillance aircraft and satellites have mapped refineries, oil derricks, airfields, and other strategic installations in Russia. He argued Russia has limited options besides “revenge strikes” because Ukrainians lack ground offensive capability and described Russian patience running out as public pressure grows to “crush this or declare war or both.” He tied Western escalation risk to European political and social dynamics, saying Europe’s policies have become economically and culturally destructive and that Germany is “on the edge of exploding,” which could drive a shift in European stance.
He also argued the Baltic states facilitate or tolerate drone-strike operations and that European decisions aiding long-range drone construction are dangerous, with potential escalation if Russia believes it must strike directly. When asked whether the U.S. would come to the rescue if Article 5 were invoked, he said the United States would not use nuclear weapons and that missile inventories could be largely depleted, arguing attrition would likely favor Russia and China because they can produce more.
In concluding, MacGregor returned to the Persian Gulf and U.S. posture, saying Americans are “finished in the Middle East” if the U.S. cannot break Iran’s grip on the Persian Gulf and force a return. He reiterated his long-held view that forward military presence is obsolete because bases are target arrays vulnerable to ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and he argued defense is superior to offense under current conditions. He compared the danger of renewed conflict to needing to choose between Persian Gulf realities and financial-system pressures, ending with the question of “which one is gonna break first.”
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is 05/21/2026, and we have the great privilege of being joined by colonel Douglas MacGregor, the former adviser to the US secretary of defense, a decorated combat veteran, and author. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Sure. Happy to be here, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So I've been, yeah, looking forward to getting your take on what's happening now in Iran. It appears that both sides are rejecting each other's proposals for peace, and it's doesn't seem to be a clear meeting point anywhere. Do you do you think it's likely we'll be going back to war?
Speaker 1: Well, I do. On the other hand, I have not been keeping up with the variety of responses that we are eliciting from Washington. I you know, president Trump said something about a negotiation, and there seemed to have been some willingness on the American side to be more flexible. The idea of let's set aside the nuclear issue and other things and and sort things out for the for the straight. So I if if you're telling me that everyone has now firmly rejected everyone else's proposal, I believe it.
But, I haven't seen anything final from Donald Trump. And, of course, you never know what you're going to get out of Donald Trump. He seems to negotiate against himself a lot. There's not much evidence that he's really talking to anybody else. So who knows what's real and what isn't?
But I think what's most important right now is the idea that mister Netanyahu is coming to Washington, and that's the latest rumor. I haven't seen it officially announced yet anywhere, but I have it on fairly good authority that he's flying to Washington. The last time he did that, of course, you had the war breakout. He visited. He spoke.
Everyone was sort of in the kissy face, huggy bod mode, and then suddenly he flew back, the war began, and Trump said, oh gosh, we need to join the war, and off we went. So I don't know what's gonna happen now, but the fact that he's coming to visits tells me that he wants to make sure that Trump is not losing his grip, that Trump is not weakening, that Trump is not trying to cut a separate deal. All of those things may or may not be true. I have no idea. So at this point, I would expect it to start up.
I just don't know when. The interesting thing is this overlaps, as you know, with the Hajj in Saudi Arabia that begins on the twenty fourth, and that's usually a ten or eleven day event. So that would mean that we would be going to war in the middle of the so called pilgrimage. Whether or not that's significant, I I have no idea. The other thing is that I'm still unclear on whether or not the Saudis and the Qataris are going to authorize our use of their airspace or for that matter any basis.
I I don't know what the outcome there is. I mean, there's so much I don't wanna say disinformation, but contradictory information floating around inside the Beltway. It's very hard to know what is real or is it. But to go back to your original question, do I think they'll go back to fighting? Yes.
I do.
Speaker 0: Well, what has changed, though, during this ceasefire, the pause? To what extent has each side been able to replenish their arms, regroup, and, I guess, prepare for war again? And, also, what what would you expect to see different this time around? Would the would The US go faster up the escalation ladder? I assume Iran would respond in kind.
I mean, given that Trump wanted the ceasefire, what what do you think is gonna be done different this time around?
Speaker 1: I think that the opening will be a sledgehammer by The United States, frankly. My impression is that we have brought not only Let's back up a minute. We talk in military terms in the army about basic loads of ammunition. Usually, you think in terms of three basic loads. There's the first one that is supposed to get you through the first week or so of combat.
Then there's the second that is supposed to come in and assure that you can stay there for another week or two weeks. Then there's a third that keeps you in the fight for a month. I think we have something like that happening right now with our air and naval forces. We are absolutely loaded to the gills with munitions and aircraft and missiles. No question about it.
Everything is ready to go. But in addition to that, this time around, I think we have almost the same amount of ammunition in reserve, which means that instead of getting a three or four year intensive bombardment, or three or four day intensive bombardment, you could conceivably keep it going for five to seven days. So I expect that this will be much more intense, much more severe, inflict much more damage. Now the question is, what does that mean to targeting? You know, and I don't have access to the target tier, but if you are limited to air and naval power and you don't have any ground forces that you can use to exploit strikes, then it becomes an exercise in trying to determine which target set is going to be the most useful to you in terms of com compelling the enemy to collapse or disintegrate or surrender.
I I don't know. I'm sure we'll hit all of the targets we hit previously because we now know, thanks to the CIA link to the New York Times, that, the Iranians emerged from the last round with virtually 90% of everything intact. Well, if 90% was intact the last time around, that means we're now facing, with almost complete certainty 100% readiness because I think that level of replenishment has occurred on the Iranian side. In addition to that, there are several sources claiming that additional Russian radars for air and missile defense and some for purely targeting at great distance, and the Chinese have brought in some additional missiles, some of the same ones that have been fired in the past, but a new class of missile, a a very well known but not used thus far cruise missile designed to sink ships at sea out to 300 kilometer ranges. So that means what, a 180 miles.
That would probably hold everyone quite a distance from the opening to the Persian Gulf. Now the other thing is that there's evidence that Russian and Chinese technicians are also on the ground helping to operate these systems. Now none of that should surprise us because we've been doing that in Ukraine for the Ukrainians against the Russians now for years. But nevertheless, you have people in Washington who say, well, this is outrageous. We can't have what are these Russians and Chinese doing?
Well, what do you think they're doing? They're doing to us what we've been doing to them. So I think this is this is a very serious moment. I think we're gonna see far more damage this time done by both sides to each other, and I think that we can bet with virtually a 100% certainty that Iran will finish off the oil infrastructure on the West Side Of The Persian Gulf, and I imagine they may well go after the desalination plants that have an enormous impact on Saudi Arabia, not just The Emirates, to the point where if they destroy the one that's in Al Shaba'il, then that means Riyadh runs out of drinking water almost instantly, in which case they have to evacuate the capital because they have no other way to provide drinking water. This so this is a very serious moment, and I think it reflects particularly on Donald Trump's side and with mister Netanyahu a certain level of desperation.
They've got to win this in their minds. Do whatever it takes short of the use of a nuclear weapon. Now, some people think that the Israelis could actually break that taboo and use a nuclear weapon. I I don't know. I certainly hope not because that would open up Pandora's box and then anything becomes possible.
But assuming that doesn't happen, I think every conceivable form of attack is going to be employed this time around with far more intensity than we saw the first time.
Speaker 0: Well, about this reported split between Trump and Netanyahu. So allegedly, Trump wants to make a peace, with Iranians or at least get a longer pause, and Netanyahu wants to continue to degrade the Iranian military, ideally knock out the government. It's do you think this is, there's a lot of substance to this, or is it meant to make the Iranians lower their guard? Or or how are you how are you reading the situation? Because, you know, it it could be possible.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the Persian Gulf has turned out to be, for Donald Trump, the Hotel California. You check-in, but you can never check out. He'd like to check out. There's no doubt in my mind that that's the case. But he also has obligations to his Israeli lobby, not just mister Netanyahu personally in the Israeli state, but to his donors who funded his election.
And I think they want the complete and utter annihilation of Iran. And I think he's probably saying, well, I understand that, but what if we can't do that? Then their answer is go back and find another way to do it. In other words, there's no easy, exit for mister Trump from this mess. So I think the best that he could hope for is what you just described, some sort of pause.
And whenever you get a pause, think he spends a great deal of time trying to figure out, well, how do I exploit this pause to either win or escape one of the two? And I don't think it's working out very well for him because I don't think there's an easy answer. So I think, yes, there's probably a split along those lines. But on the other hand, how much maneuver room has president Trump really left himself? Now we know from the past that he's a very very much inclined to exaggerate, and he frequently lies about the the level of discourse between Iran and United States, between Iran and Pakistan, between Iran and The Emirates or The Emirates and Pakistan.
So it's very hard to gauge what's real and what isn't. So I've I've really gotten to the point now where I just I don't bother trying to figure out what's real and what is. It's a waste of time. So I think he's in the Hotel California. He wants to check out.
He can't. That means he's gotta restart the war. Now what happens if he restarts the war and after another three weeks, we're a zero, nowhere. We're in the same position we were before. Well, then he's humiliated.
Then he has to make an ignominious withdrawal. He has to admit failure. Will he do that? I don't know. He may say, well, there's nothing left now.
It'll be another midnight hammer exercise. We've destroyed everything. There's no reason to keep this up. Iran no longer represents a threat to anybody. Iran is impotent.
Its neighbors are no afraid. Of course, most of its neighbors no longer exist because they've been bombed out of existence in the Persian Gulf region. But he may say that and then say, I'm going home and I plan to attend the World Cup. Who knows? Anything is possible.
But what will people at home feel? What will they think? And we're we can't be certain of that right now because the real effects of the disaster in The Gulf haven't been felt here yet. I think by the end of June, the beginning of July, our strategic petroleum reserve is going to be getting very low to the point where it's in danger of going dry. That puts us in a difficult position.
It's already clear that we can't afford to export all of the crude that people are asking us to export because we need that as the foundation for our refining industry. We also have a problem with the oil that we extract from shale. That has to be exported because we don't have the refineries to deal with it because of the difference between the shale oil and normal oil or normal crude. So he's got to deal with these things. Then in addition to that, we have the financial crisis.
And I've been watching the bond market for years, and that's simply because everyone I respect, whether it's Alastair MacLeod or Ray Dalio or Luke Gromen, any number, you know, Grundlach, a brilliant financial analyst, they've always said, look at the ten year bond. Once the ten year bond breaks the 5% ceiling in terms of its yield rising, we can't service the debt. Everything begins to collapse. So we're inching up toward the 5%. So what does that mean if that happens during this next round?
I think it means that we pull out because we can't afford to stay. And we're already watching as gold replaces the the dollar as the world's reserve currency. And that's not something that was planned on last year or six months ago or or two years ago, but it's happening. It's real. And the Chinese, we know, have accumulated enormous quantities of gold.
Nobody knows how much they've got. Now to create some liquidity with foreign reserves, the Russians have actually sold some gold. They've got plenty of gold. India has plenty of gold. All of this gold is going to end up backing bricks, and this is a battle between bricks and The US dominated Western financial system.
So if The US Western dominated financial system suddenly collapses in crisis because of what's happening in the bond markets, not just in The United States but around the world, We're watching everyone who can offload our debt. How do you sustain the war? And I don't think we can. Now perhaps mister Besant has some new magic up his sleeve. I have no idea.
So I think president Trump is really squeezed at this point. If he doesn't go back in, it looks as though he's been defeated and is giving up. In other words, regardless of how prudent it may be to do, he can't just sail away, fly away, and forget it. He refuses to say what I've been urging him to say, which is for humanitarian reasons, we've got to get out because this is no longer just about The United States and Iran or just a few other nations in the region or states in the region. This is about the world, and the entire world is suffering.
And if we don't stop this, if we go through with this next round, it may be a decade before the global energy complex really recovers. We're going to have famine. You know, he's effectively reversing the green revolution, you know, because the fertilizer doesn't exist. People in The United States, they don't even know what green revolution means, most of them. They don't understand how that's changed because in the sixties, we had a little more than 4,000,000,000 people living on the planet.
Today, we've got more than 8,000,000,000. That's not accidental. That's because of the Green Revolution. We've been able to feed all these people. What happens when we can't?
Now, we'll have problems inside The United States. Everybody knows that, but they're not as severe as they are, say, in the global South. And I don't know what happens in Europe. Europe is gonna be in a very serious trouble when it comes to these things. And look look what the Europeans have done to the Dutch.
Look what the Dutch globalists have done to themselves. And the Dutch are the most productive agricultural state in the world. And because of the Ukraine war, we've lost access to vast tracts of farmland that used to produce enormous quantities of food. The whole thing is a disaster, but politicians in The United States and Washington are not thinking in terms of the rest of the world. They're thinking in terms of themselves.
And there's also remembering how much money they have been able to line their pockets with as a result of the Israel lobby and the Israel lobby supporters and all the other lobbyists that are out there that have no interest whatsoever in anything that happens anywhere but in The United States. So it's a bad situation. There's no easy solution.
Speaker 0: Well, my assumption, though, with Trump was, you know, that I that he thought probably the best scenario would be he's able to regime change and, well, destroy Iran. Worst case, that he has to pull back. You know, he can declare victory, point to how many people have been killed and the navy destroyed, all of this, a bit like Yemen and just declare victory and go home. But the the problem, of course, is if the Iranians hold the Strait Of Hormuz, then they can put a higher toll on countries that threaten Iran's with, you know, economy with sanctions, threaten Iran by hosting US bases. They can put extra toll on countries that trade in the US dollar.
So that's why I was wondering how how how does the world look like if The US is effectively defeated in Iran, if defined as The US having to pull back with the Strait Of Hormuz then solid under UN sorry, under Iranian control and being able to essentially use this the tolls to create this incentive system to have its own economic and military security, well, short up.
Speaker 1: Whatever happens next, whether we attack or we do not attack, whether we try to leave and say we were successful or not, I think we Americans are finished in the Middle East. And I think that's the greatest concern that mister Netanyahu has right now. If we cannot break Iran's grip on the Persian Gulf, if we cannot force our way back into the Persian Gulf, and I think it's pretty clear that we cannot, That means that we are finished in the region. We will not come back into these bases. There will be nothing to rebuild.
It will be a decade before the countries that existed there even recover, if some of them ever recover at all. Because frankly, in that part of the world, there just isn't enough water to support much development. So I think that's the greatest single problem, not so much for us. Let's be frank. I would argue that we should have withdrawn from most of the overseas bases a long time ago, and I've been giving briefings to war college classes, to Army audiences, to any audience that would listen for the last fifteen plus years, that the whole notion of forward military presence is finished.
And everybody looks at me, Well, you're crazy. And I kept trying to tell everyone, we have new capabilities today. Whatever you put forward in a forward presence mode that means in bases like the ones in The UAE, bases in Germany, bases in Korea, bases in Thailand, bases in The Philippines. It doesn't matter where you go. You are now a target array waiting to be destroyed.
You could be easily identified, easily targeted, and enough theater or tactical ballistic missiles or cruise missiles could be launched to wipe out your forward presence at the beginning of any conflict or crisis. So I've urged that we abandon this forward presence nonsense. Remember that forward presence was justified in the aftermath of World War II, not just by the Cold War, but by the assumption that by being there, we were gonna prevent other conflicts from breaking out. Well, that hasn't worked, has it? It hasn't worked largely because we're the ones causing many of the conflicts.
But the bottom line is those days are over. So in in one sense, this is a blessing in so far as it's going to compel us to pull our forces back and come home. At least we can protect them inside the Continental United States if if defense becomes the primary focus because our whole force posture, our military thinking since the end of the Second World War has been offensive. The best defense is the offense. That was always the argument.
If we're forward, can attack quickly. We can nip this problem in the bud. In other words, we can solve this problem before it gets out of control. Those days are over. Technology has changed.
You cannot do that anymore. And if you try, you'll just lose your forces. That means we've gotta come back to the Continental United States and figure out how are we going to defend ourselves because the strategic defense is now superior to any strategic offense. The only thing that is left that we cannot stop are hypersonic missiles in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which means that we live permanently, and the Russians and the Chinese and others who have ICBMs, permanently under the threat of total destruction if any of those are used. So other than that, which is unchanging, the world is a very, very different place.
We can't operate in the world of the past. It's gone. This is a new world. So what are we going to do? I don't think Americans have thought that through.
I don't think anyone in Washington has thought it through. And they're all very reactionary. Oh, we can never leave Korea. Oh, we can never leave Japan. Well, wait a minute.
We don't live in Korea. We don't live in Japan. They're not part of The United States. What do you mean you say we can't leave? And now we have governments like the one in South Korea that's effectively telling us, listen, we really think you ought to get out.
Now they don't say that publicly, but they do behind doors, closed doors, and they're very polite about it. But it's getting to the point where at some point in time, there will be no more politeness, and they would just say, come on, you gotta go. Now, why would they want us to go? For the same reason that I don't think anyone's going to invite us back into The Gulf, because we are seen as a catalyst for conflict. We are not indigenous to the region.
We're not organic to the international system in that area. Wherever we are foreign, a foreign entity, and we have the potential to drag countries with us into conflicts that they would otherwise never fight, we are unwanted. And we have now gone to war with Iran largely as a result of Israel's interests, not our own. And that's the problem. No one wants to be dragged into anything unless it involves them.
And the one state in the among the Emirates that was most interested in the same thing Israel was was The United Arab Emirates. They were effectively aligned with Israel, so they were interested in the destruction of Iran. That has not worked. That's been a disaster for The UAE.
Speaker 0: Well, to pivot to another horrific war where also there's some allies who are reorienting themselves, it appears that as The US is pulling a bit away from the Ukraine war, at least outsourcing it to the Europeans, the Europeans are seemingly escalating a bit. At least the Russians are now accusing the Baltic states of either facilitating or just tolerating Ukrainian drone strikes through their territory, if not even launched from their territory. How are you seeing this situation? Because I'm getting messages from Moscow that this like, this is it. Accepting this would be way too it would be much more dangerous than responding in some way.
Do you do you yeah. How are you assessing this?
Speaker 1: Well, what I'm going to say is something that I'm sure the Russians already know, so I don't think I'm giving anything away. But people need to understand that the flight paths and the targeting for these long range drone strikes have all been provided by American military capability. You can't fly from where they were launched in Ukraine across the Baltic States and then strike targets just outside of Saint Petersburg without US help and assistance. Our surveillance aircraft, our satellites have mapped every refinery, every oil derrick, every airfield, every installation of strategic or operational military importance inside Russia. That information has been gold to the Ukrainians who have no military capability today other than drones.
That's all they've got. They can't launch an offensive on the ground. They'll lose everyone that they have in the space of a few hours. They can't move and conquer new territory for any length of time. There's nothing they can do except launch these drones in a series of what I would call revenge strikes.
But these strikes have reached the point where the Russians have had it. Their patience is gone. They're angry. And the Russian population, as much as it supports president, Putin, is effectively saying this has got to stop. We all understand this is a special military operation, but either crush this or declare war or both.
Get it done. End this. I think we're very close to that. However, something has always been working in mister Putin's favor, and that has been the globalist regimes themselves in Western Europe and the policies that they've pursued. Their policies have been economically, socially, culturally destructive.
We now have millions of people living inside Europe that would, under normal circumstances, never be there because globalist leaders going back to Merkel have opened the borders and allowed millions of people into those countries who are now living at great expense to the economies in those countries. People who are so fundamentally different that they can never be assimilated and don't want to be assimilated. If anything, large numbers of them have decided that they're going to turn Europe into what they want it to be, not what it is. So things are finally beginning to change, and the place that's of greatest importance because it's the most powerful state in Europe is Germany. And Germany is on the edge of exploding like a volcano.
They have an opportunity to break the stranglehold that the globalist leadership has had on that country for years. That may happen, and it's probably going to happen. The question is when? Will it happen next week, next month, later in the year? I don't know, but I think it's coming because there is a growing readiness to admit that this is all gone too far.
Germany is being turned into what the famous Morgantau plan tried to do to it, de industrialize it, destroy its scientific industrial might and power, undermine, erode its morale, destroy its sense itself, its national identity. All of this is ending because Alisa Vidal has turned out to be a person of extraordinary ability. She is somebody that we refer to as a or in German. In other words, she's the granite in the fire. She has withstood everything that could be thrown at her, and she is telling the truth.
And people, even in the Bundestag, even in the Bundestag and the Tzedeiu, Tzedeiu, they're beginning to say she is right. Now, if she takes over, what do we expect to see? Well, the first thing that's going to happen is that I imagine she or her new foreign minister will fly to Moscow and say, look, this is it. We want nothing to do with the policies of the past. We didn't like it.
We didn't support it. We opposed it. We wanted to do business. And what is President Putin going to do? Is he going to say, well, we don't like you anymore.
Of course not. He's going to do business and the cheap energy will flow. For every civilization, cheap energy is vital. It used to be like cheap labor. Cheap labor is still good.
Cheap energy though is a vital necessity. And without it, you don't have cheap credit. If you don't have cheap credit, which is what we've been operating on in this country for decades now, everything stops. Right now, these KKR, BlackRock, all these multi billion dollar private credit firms, they're in trouble. They have no liquidity.
They're trying to borrow against the assets they have under management to survive. They're going to go under. So my point is that that's where Alisa Weidl will take Germany. And all this business about we're going to build the biggest army or the biggest air force or whatever, that's impractical. And more important, it's not even necessary.
And that's what Vital understands, and I think increasingly, the German electorate understands it. You know, we had this movie years ago. It was a comedy. It was a great film, and it was about a Russian submarine that has problems and runs the ground off the coast of Maine. And so the Russian crew, the captain goes ashore looking for support and eventually, the local townspeople help the submarine and they get the submarine back out to sea before the coast guard and the navy and everybody else has a heart attack.
And it's called the Russians are coming, and this this has been the mantra for years in in Western Europe. We used to joke during the Cold War in the nineteen seventies, oh, the Russians are coming. The Russians, they're they're on I 95 headed from New York to Philadelphia. News at seven. Yeah.
It was ridiculous. Okay. They weren't coming. They're not coming now. No one in their right mind wants to do this.
So I think once Germany stands up and says no more and puts an end to this, it's gonna be very hard for everybody else. Now, the reason I brought up all of this mapping of installations and navigating courses for these drones is because it's all being done through the Baltic States, or it's been done down through Romania and out to the Black Sea where they've been striking targets all the way out to the Caucasus. This is very dangerous, and the Russians really are very frustrated and angry. And again, it's unnecessary. But you've got unbalanced, unreasonable, dangerous people like this, callous who is the EU foreign minister.
Now why in the name of God would you pick an Estonian politician to be the foreign minister for the European Union? Or, you know, come on. It's absurd. Makes no sense. You know, we have more people in New York City, LA, the top 15 or 20 cities in The United States that exist in these little countries.
Now do these little countries have a right to exist? Absolutely. Are they in danger of being overwhelmed and destroyed by the Russians? No. But if this nonsense doesn't stop and they don't get out of the business of aiding in the construction of these long range drones and the rest of the Europeans continue to ship these components where they could be assembled in Ukraine because Ukraine's don't need help with the FPV, the the first person drones.
Those things, they can build until the cows come home. But the long range drones, no. That's a different matter entirely. And if this doesn't stop, then, you know, at some point, the Russians may lose patience. So I think it's kind of a race.
Does Germany offload this terrible government which has done so much damage to the country, and Mertz, who is gonna get most of the credit for it, is not the first. You've got to go all the way back to Merkel's arrival, and ever since she took over, this is Germany has been on the path to hell. That has to stop. If that stops and Germany gets new leadership, then I think the Russians will pull back and wait for the visit from Berlin to Moscow. But if that doesn't happen soon, then I guess the possibility of strikes by the Russians on the manufacturing facilities or the military facilities in the West that are playing a role in this could very definitely happen.
I think that would be unfortunate because I think Russia is on the verge of winning the peace.
Speaker 0: So Germany either do a regime change or we might go to war. What would you say?
Speaker 1: What would you go to war with if you're a European? Who are you kidding? You're not gonna That's get nonsense.
Speaker 0: Matters of Sorry.
Speaker 1: That's the issue. But go to war to do what? What have you got? There's nothing there. Who are we kidding?
I mean, this is the joke. Oh, you gotta load up all your tanks and artory pieces and troops on the trains and then run the trains all the way to Poland to the border and disembark and get ready for the big offensive? No. They'll all die on the trains. Everything will be destroyed.
Precision guided weapons will wipe it out before it ever gets there.
Speaker 0: Stupid. So so what is the what are the Europeans doing? Because while while they're doing these things that are striking through the Baltic States, also with The US assistance, as you say, They're also putting this new UK led naval block being built against the Russians. We I'm not sure if they are putting pressure on Russia or if they're actually preparing for war, which they can't fight. But if they do pick out a direct fight or the Russians now decide that they have to strike Latvia or Estonia, either, you know, giving them some plausible deniability by using Ukrainian drones, which they have downed or just doing direct missile strikes on Latvia.
Do you think The United States, though, would come to the rescue?
Speaker 1: Well, The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons. The notion that if this so called article five is invoked, let's say by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, that The United States will launch nuclear weapons at Russia is absurd. That won't happen. So then the question is, if we're not going to do that, what can we do? Well, right now, we've gone through about two thirds plus of our missile arsenal.
I don't know what the exact numbers are. If we launch very very next in the next two days and we go into another phase, I think we'll go from two thirds having been expended down to perhaps less than a fifth on hand. At which point in time, what can we do? Very little. Because if we're going to get into an attrition conflict involving missiles, we're gonna lose it because the Russians can produce more, the Chinese can produce more.
And the Chinese are certainly not gonna stand by and watch us brutalize or try to destroy Russia. I, you know, I I guess the issue is this, Donald Trump was elected to do many things, and people mistook him for being this strong influential leader who would represent their interests. Well, first of he's not representing anybody's interest in The United States any more than Starmer's representing the interests of people in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Forget it. He's not.
That's increasingly obvious. Macron, you know, I'll let others debate that, but I think he's on very fragile territory as well. Maloney has tried to back off, but she hasn't taken decisive steps that she needs to take for Italy. So what do we expect Donald Trump to do? I wouldn't expect him to do much because we can't fight two wars at once, not if the wars involve vast numbers of missile exchanges Because most of those are being expended down in CENTCOM's, US Central Command in The Middle East.
We have limited numbers. Now, one of the things that Donald Trump said when he returned from his trip to China, which I thought was very good, is that he essentially put an end to the nonsense about going to war to defend Taiwan. He said we can't do it. So effectively what he said, he's right. He said Taiwan's a 100 miles from China, but we have to travel six to 7,000 miles to reach the place.
Somebody talked since to him. I don't know who it was. Whoever it was deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because the dumbest thing I could imagine is The United States try to precipitate a war against China. China is the largest fortress in the world. You know, there's this old expression, ship's a fool to fight a fort, which means fleets don't take fortifications ashore.
They can't stand up to the fortifications ashore. You can always fire more missiles from your magazine ashore than you can from your magazine aboard ship. So he said, no, that's not going to happen. Thank you, President Trump. God bless you.
That's vital and essential. Let's get rid of the stupid nonsense about China and going to war. Now other than that, he was embarrassed because President Xi simply said, well, I'm happy to welcome the leader of a declining power to my country. And as the leader of a rising power, it is a great pleasure to see you. What a great statement.
You know, is he wrong? Not entirely. Is he right? No, not entirely, but he's not a fool. He was sending a message.
China is the largest manufacturing base in the world. You know, they they can turn out for every one rocket engine or missile engine we turn out, they can probably turn out 500 to a thousand. It's a simple fact. This is go back to World War two and when you ask the Germans how they lost the war, they'll they'll say, lend lease right away because the Soviet army wouldn't have gotten 50 miles beyond Stalingrad without all the trucks and all the jeeps and all the steel and all the trains and all the metal and all the I mean, just go down the list. Impossible.
Well, that's what we we are facing today with China. China has replaced us as the leading manufacturing power in the world. So that thank God for that. Now, otherwise, everything that was reported after that trip was irrelevant nonsense. We didn't close any big deals that are going to make us rich, and we didn't take advantage of any Chinese weakness or anything else.
That's all nonsense. So he's now back in Washington and he's still stuck in the Hotel California and it's obvious to him that it's in China's interest that we sit in the Hotel California called the Persian Gulf. Chinese aren't going to help us get out. The Russians have tried to help us get out, but we don't listen to them. We're not going to change our posture for the reasons we've already cited.
But at least we have offloaded this stupid idea of war with China. That's wonderful. The question is now what? And that brings us back to where we were before, and I think you've got a collision coming. On the one hand, the reality in the Persian Gulf.
We don't have the capability or the right force mix to change that equation. They've got it, they're holding it, it's very tough to change that. Then on the other side, we have this thing called the American economy and financial system. Which one is gonna break first? That's the question.
I don't have the answer.
Speaker 0: Yeah. If you can only pull the plug on the Iran war and the war in Ukraine as well, then perhaps, yeah, we could start the process of rebuilding and stabilizing instead. Anyways, thank you very much for taking the time. It's, yeah, as always, very fascinating.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Max Otte: Germany's Decline & the Civilizational Crisis of the West https://youtu.be/BqHa-dqG5dE https://t.co/VUZ4yKcdCo
Video Transcript AI Summary
Max Otte says he is not an active politician, though he ran for president and received the second-most votes. He argues Germany has been on a downward, “self-destructive” path since 2015/2011, tied to the shift to green energy and repeated policies by successive German administrations (Merkel, Scholz, and now Mertz). He claims international forces largely determine German outcomes, including strong pressures to diminish German industry and relocate it, particularly toward the US.
He says CDU performed around 28–30% in the last election because people still hoped Mertz (“Mr. Small Business/Mittelstand”) would turn things around, but he claims Mertz did not change energy policy, migration policy, or foreign policy. Otte says Mertz’s only major change is placing more burdens on pensioners and the working population, including lowering pension levels to 48% of the average wage. He describes Mertz as a longtime servant and lobbyist for large companies, citing his prior role involving BlackRock for Germany, which he portrays as facilitating the sale of German industry rather than making decisions. He also links Mertz’s background to Nazi involvement in the region of his hometown.
On Germany’s foreign policy and the transatlantic relationship, Otte responds to a discussion of the US “pivot” away from Europe and a recent partial troop withdrawal from Germany. He says this does not change the underlying structure much because key logistical and planning hubs like Ramstein Airbase would continue and the US troop presence would persist at lower levels. He argues the US is shifting burdens to allies, integrating Europe more fully into the US sphere, and continuing a war he says harms Europe “in immeasurable ways.” He portrays Europe as increasingly used economically and politically, including as a “data colony,” and says European leaders are positioned as continuing a war with Russia and moving closer to strike zones inside Europe.
The conversation then shifts to escalation and end-states. Otte characterizes the war as a long-term struggle over “manpower” and “production power,” comparing it to a stage shift seen in World War II, where quantity becomes a key factor. He says the danger of strikes on German and European territory has increased exponentially, noting that Ramstein is a logistical base while planning is linked to Stuttgart, and that nuclear bomber bases are geographically close to where he lives in the Eiffel region. He says flight activity over western Germany increased markedly in the past two to three years and expresses hope for resolution without making predictions.
In discussing the origins of the current security competition, Otte argues the Cold War dynamic was missing in contemporary Europe. He also claims Germany and Europe have effectively absorbed a US role due to deep societal conditioning. He cites US influence in the German press, US licensing requirements, and reeducation after 1945/1948, including what he says Germans learned in school. He frames this as “brainwashing” that he says becomes especially salient during periods of chaos when people seek simple truths and identify enemies, naming Russia and the AfD as targets.
Otte says AfD positions include calls for sovereign Germany and peace in Europe, with reconciliation, while he claims “quite a few” within AfD campaign for war and sharp confrontation with Russia. He describes his own history as nonpartisan after leaving CDU, and says CDU expelled him after he ran for president.
Turning to Spengler, Otte says Spengler argues civilizations have lifespans and that democracy is tied to the “rule of money.” He says democracy represents a late phase where press informs voters and public opinion becomes the battlefield. He suggests democracy is undermined in the US through lobbying and examples of high spending against dissenters, and he links declining democratic processes to wars and crises. He proposes a future model he associates with “COVID dictatorship” and a war-like psychological framework, expecting democracy to be further displaced by government decree and authoritarian control due to indebtedness and required sacrifices.
On culture versus civilization, Otte says Spengler distinguishes culture as organic, internally evolving, and civilization as the outward-oriented final stage with mechanization and standardization. He says a major indicator of decline is “the will to live” dying—no more children, population collapse—describing it as a global phenomenon across continents. He argues China shows continuity through language and writing systems, while applying Western techniques, though he does not frame it as a cultural revival.
Finally, on populist movements in Europe and the United States, Otte argues the AfD is the only party he sees “enriching the democratic debate,” while other parties function as machines with long-established career politician paths. He says the international system points toward war and cites political examples of partial divergence: Meloni positioning differently in Italy, Sanchez criticizing actions in Gaza and Lebanon, and US domestic polarization over an Iran war. He emphasizes dissatisfaction in Germany and claims 60–80% of the German population does not want the war, while AfD is described as having around 28% and CDU around 22%. He calls this an ongoing battle, expresses pessimism about the global picture, but says faint hope remains due to possible developments that could change outcomes.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we're joined by an excellent guest, Max Otte, an economist, former professor, best selling author, investment manager and a politician who also came in second in the twenty twenty two German presidential election. So thank you. We haven't spoken for a few months. It's good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good to see you again, professor Diesen. I want to correct one thing. I'm not a politician. I'm a political activist at best.
So I ran for president. I got second most votes, but that was my share. I'm not an active politician, and I will not be.
Speaker 0: Fair enough. No. I I I can understand the sentiment. I also, at one point, attempted to flirt a bit with politics, but for many reasons, yeah, that's not happening again. So I the reason I really wanted to speak with you today is, well, many things.
I actually want to discuss Spengler a little bit with you as well. But first, I wanted to discuss what is going on in Germany because we see that the alternative for Deutschland, IFD, a political party only established in 2013, so very young, is now the most popular political party in the polls. And Mertz seemingly has become the most unpopular leader in Europe. So what is that's actually happening in Germany? How how can we understand this development?
Speaker 1: Actually, Mertz seems to be the most unpopular leader in the world, in the whole world. That's how I read some of the surveys. Basically, Germany is continuing on its downward self destructive path as it has been since 2015 or 2011 really, when we started to go green full scale and dismantle our own energy. So, the cabinets, Merkel, and then Scholz, and now Mertz are basically doing all the same. And it so you can see, and you're an IR theorist, that the international system really determines a lot of the outcomes of policy in Germany because the international factors are so strong.
There's very strong forces that want German industry dismantled or diminished, relocate them to The US, and so on and so forth. What happened with Mertz is that the CDU got a solid, I think around 28, 30% in the last election because people were still having hope that Mertz who coined himself Mr. Small Business or Mr. Mittelstand for most of his career would actually turn things around. I never had any of such hope.
I had very low expectations, which he managed to be downward by a large amount. So my very low expectations were severely underbidden, But quite a few people thought, well, if get a conservative chancellor, then things will turn around. But of course, they didn't. He didn't do a thing about a change in energy policy, he didn't do a chain a thing about a change in migration, and he didn't change foreign policy. We can cover that a little more deeply in a second.
The only thing he is trying to change is put more burdens on pensioners and the working population. The pension level is being lowered to 48% of the last average wage, so that's what he's I mean, you see who he is. He's been a servant and a lobbyist all his life. I mean, he made very good money representing big companies. Of course, for a lengthy period also, he was the chairman of BlackRock for for Germany, which is basically a representative in the sales position.
I mean, can go in and say I'm the chairman of BlackRock and help in the sale of German industry. He's not making any decisions there. And if you follow his career, he's been a lobbyist. His grandfather was involved with the Nazis in his hometown. We come from the same same region, by the way.
So I followed him for a long time, and for a while he was my chairman in the Atlantic Bricker, a German US friendship organization. So he's basically continuing everything that red green, and red black and black green before did. So you can see that there's no change, that there's only one alternative in Germany. That's the alternative for Germany after the alliance dismantled through a lot of tactical and strategic mistakes. There's only the alternative and all other parties, and that's why the alternative is gaining.
Speaker 0: And we we saw in the in the foreign policy realm a huge development now. That is we already know that well, already, if you go back to 2016, Obama said that The US would pivot to Asia. That means if you pivot to somewhere, you have to pivot away from somewhere. And everyone kind of understood this will be Europe. Well, we're a decade into this, and now we see The US has changed its national security strategy, clearly deprioritizing Europe down to a, you know, distant third.
And now we have the troop well, partial troop withdrawal from Germany. I think Germany has about 35,000 American troops. 5,000 of those are being pulled out. What what what does this mean, you think, for for Germany and the wider its position in this transatlantic partnership?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, nothing much in the in the underlying structure. I mean, we did have about 200,000 troops during the Cold War, 200,000 US troops. Now it's 40, then 35, maybe 30. But the main operational logistical hubs like the Ramstein Airbase, which are without which the war in Iran would not really be possible, maybe some Italian bases. So those bases, of course, will continue, and The US presence will continue.
So if The US says we deemphasize Europe, it's basically putting the burden of the Empire on the the allies. This is what I predicted to some extent in my 2019 book, Weltsus Temkrecht, where I predicted a new Cold War with two blocks, basically, the Chinese block and an American block, and some semi sovereign centers like Turkey or Iran. Russia is sovereign, but not a world power, and by every measure, by some measures, but by no means by all measures. So basically, we see the total integration of Europe into The US sphere. We see a shifting of burdens on Europe to continue a war that will harm Europe and is harming Europe in immeasurable ways.
So, basically, it's a smart move if you are a Mandarin of the Empire, and because Europe, if you think about Markkostam and Mertz, they are bent on continuing this war with Russia. And so Europe is moving closer to the target zone and to to strikes within Europe from Russia by Russia because we're now striking deep inside Russia. So pivoting away from Europe means Europe is still being exploited economically immensely, be it the tech the tech companies, be it weapons that are being produced in in The US and being bought by Europeans, being in a manner many other spheres. Europe is basically, yeah, an economic colony, a data colony. Mean, and among all things, the three key European leaders tried to position Europe as independent by continuing a US war and continuing the division of Europe, which is crazy, but it's very smart imperial strategy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, that's another way The US has to adjust to this new distribution of power, that it it doesn't have this well, it doesn't occupy this hegemonic position anymore. And one gets the impression it's working hard to outsource its war, so the Ukrainians and increasingly now the Europeans will fight and come and will weaken Russia. In The Middle East, one gets the impression that it's it's being attempted to be outsourced partially at least to the Gulf States, and you can see a similar arrangement appearing in East Asia. But with the war on Russia, though, as this this is, you know, this is where the Europeans are now playing a frontline position, it seems like we're moving into a very dangerous area that is Germany as well as other European countries, including well, many of them, they are they're now very openly setting their objective of mass producing these long range drones and missiles.
At the same time, as you said, there are a lot of the war planners are in Ramstein Base. The the intelligence for what to to target, how to circumvent the air defenses in Russia, all of this comes out of the Western countries. So this has become very much our war. I was I was referring to this as a proxy war in a discussion with professor Mersheimer, and he was correcting me. No.
No. We we passed that line a long time ago. We are now fighting the Russians directly. So but given that we already announced to the Russians how we're gonna escalate the war against them, where where does this end? Because I can't I can't imagine any other outcome now than the Russians feeling compelled to restore their deterrent in some kind of way.
Speaker 1: Of course, Russia started this war with a few mistakes, mistakenly thinking that Ukraine would be a piece of cake, which it would have been in 2014, but we armed Ukraine since at least 2015, and even the first Trump administration did. So but then after and you're much deeper into this than I am, but after changing strategy, Russia went in it for the long run. But I guess what surprised all of us is that how long it actually takes and how terrible this grinding ground operation is. I I think, and I'm not a military expert, I come from economics, that Russia is fighting this war to preserve manpower. Ukraine is not necessarily, but Ukraine also learned there's a few counteroffensives.
And so, we're in a war of production power, as was the Second World War from from a certain stage on, where military strategy was the smaller part, and sheer volume and production power was the other part. Think it was Stalin who said quantity is a quality by itself. And so we're now in a race of quantity, and I can only hope this this war gets resolved before, but I read your posts, I follow you on on this channel, and I completely concur that the danger of strikes on German and European territory has increased exponentially. I mean, Ramstein is a logistical base, the planning base is actually Stuttgart. And where I live in the mountains in the Eiffel, I have Nurnig with nuclear bombers 50 kilometers to the north, Buchel with the nuclear bombs 100 kilometers to the south, and then also Spangdalem 50 kilometers to the south.
I can hope that weapons are pretty pretty much on target and I'm elevated, so and the winds are favorable, so I can hope to get away. But it's not a good feeling. It's it's that feeling I grew up with as a kid during the Cold War when nuclear was was a reality, and when when starfighters were thundering through the skies, and now it's not starfighters so much, but flight activity over the Eiffel, which is one of the westernmost parts of Germany where my country house is, flight activity has increased very markedly in the past two or three years. So I can only hope that we find a resolution to this war. It's amazing.
I mean, indeed, if you think about it, Ukrainians are very brave and Russians are very brave. These these are two armies that fight to the death, which we in the West would probably not do. I mean, I've I've seen all these terrible movies of forced recruitments of young Ukrainian men to the front, but still, I mean, you have to respect the staying power if if it is for a corrupt and nationalist and almost fascist regime. But I don't dare making any predictions. I'm not a military expert.
I'm an economist.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Oh, it's the I I can I often, yeah, lay the blame at at the at the NATO, and I know there's more than one party here? Of course, there's conflict, but the reason is because I often feel the I can understand the Ukrainian and the Russian position. The the Russians had made it very clear they considered NATO's incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat. So the way they see it, they fight for their survival.
The Ukrainians, of course, under very heavy Russian attack, not just losing its manpower, infrastructure, and territory, but, indeed, they also face an existential threat. So I can understand where the the fighting spirit comes from as well. But for for NATO, I don't this was very unnecessary because this security competition now that exist it didn't exist before 2014. At that time, nobody wanted in Ukraine. The overwhelming majority was against NATO membership, and they they overwhelming majority of Ukrainians didn't see Russia as a threat.
The Russians didn't see Ukraine as a threat. Essentially, security competition was introduced with with with this toppling of the government in in Kyiv for the purpose of pulling them to the orbit. So the way I see it, this is what caused it. This is what's necessary to reverse in order to reduce the security competition. But but you mentioned the Cold War.
We we've gone through something similar before, but how do you explain the Cold War? Because then we had discussions. There were debates that people said, well, we we have to deter, but we also shouldn't provoke. There's seemingly nothing of this in Europe today, though. It's quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It still baffles me. It still blows my mind that Europeans are so strong. Let's get back for a second. I wrote my dissertation on three case studies of changing German foreign policy in the the nineties. One is military missions abroad, one is EU deepening, and the third one is actually NATO enlargement versus the OAC.
And even then I had the fear, I mean, the first round of NATO enlargement had happened, I had the fear that this might happen, and I analyzed where Germany was positioned. And I my conclusion was in the sense that Germany did not increase as much in power as some international observers ascribed to it and the tasks upon Germany increased immensely, so that Germany would still try to mediate and but in in doubt would lean towards The US position. And we see that extremely now that we are basically taking over The US position. It's a very smart move on the side of The US because Europe by now is totally independent of totally dependent on The United States. So in in the Gulf Region, see some hopes that Iran has a very smart diplomacy, that that coalition of war might break, it might even break between Japan and The US, who knows?
There's some fishes there. But in Europe, basically, Europeans have taken on The US role and loving it. So I guess the brainwashing, the influencing is on a very granular societal level. It started with the so called reeducation after 1945, 1948 in Germany. Many of the German press outlets were US owned or had a US all of them had to have a US license, so you could say they're US friendly.
Springer, which runs Germany's largest tabloid, has in its employment contract the friendship to The US and Israel. So that's one thing. Then a lot of NGOs, and there was re education in the schools. I learned about Abraham Lincoln in school and George Washington. I didn't learn much about Frederick the Great or Bismarck.
I had to do that myself. So this is conditioning and shaping, and in one of my books I have the an example of the Inca Empire, where it took three generations to basically assimilate another people, and you started just with a few bases and put up your own guards and had friendly relations. And stage two and in stage three, you integrated the the other people's or the other people completely. So in that sense, we're very, very brainwashed. And in times like this, and this is my psychological explanation, times like this when things really are chaotic, there's an immense amount of insecurity, the world is changing rapidly, people need simple truths, people need enemies to identify.
And so, Russia is the enemy. Propaganda, unfortunately, has taken hold. Also, propaganda, the AFD is the enemy. And I'm quite close to the AFD and their leaders. I'm nonpartisan.
I used to be a CDU member. The CDU expelled me when I ran for president, an office that is supposed to be above the party, so it's a nonpartisan office, but they expelled me nonetheless. So, even in the AFD, the leaders are clear on course. We want sovereign Germany or want, want peace in Europe. We want reconciliation, but quite a few people, even parliamentarians in the party, are openly campaigning for war, for sharp confrontation with Russia.
So even this one hope we still have left is so far is holding, but it's not assured that we will have even a single voice of sanity in in the parliament forever.
Speaker 0: Well, the the situation in Germany, again, a lot of indicators are kinda grim. The the industrialization, the economic stagnation, the lack of energy security. Well, that's then that's just the economic aspect. But a lot of this isn't uniquely German, though. That is having leaders almost exclusively focused on foreign policy, warmongering, and essentially plummeting in the polls while trying to criminalize the opposition.
Do you how do you see this as a wider or a broader European trend?
Speaker 1: It's not only European trend. Think about The US. MAGA imploded. I mean, the original idea, no more foreign wars, focus on the domestic economy, focus on the American people has completely imploded. I mean, Trump has gone full out on war and enriching himself and his family and his friends.
And so indeed, I mean, this looks like a lot like polarization of societies like World War three, which we're in. And I guess you would agree, I mean, it's not an all out war by the law, but it's it's it's not the opening moves anymore. It's already at the end of the opening moves of of of this process, and I don't know how it will be stopped, but the hysteria seems to just increase. Leaders don't know what to do, they cry war, they cry control of the opposition, and unfortunately, unfortunately, this is a cyclical phenomenon. I mean, we in the social sciences, or at least most of our colleagues, don't don't believe in cyclical views of society because they say the future is free, we can determine it by ourselves.
Yes and no. I mean, there's patterns to human behavior. As Mark Twain said, risk history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. There's patterns, and one can recognize those patterns. I remember a very smart but depressing tweet by or post by Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
We know that much. But then he added, Those who do know history are doomed to watch while others repeat it. And that is pretty depressing, but it's it seems to me like a bit of this is the case. So, there's a great book by Strauss and Howe written in 1996 called The Fourth Turning, where they predict, and they have a generational theory of society and policy, and it's very US centered, but still they predict a huge they have a four generation cycle of twenty years each, and they predict a total upheaval of the world system or society between 2005 and 2025. Well, started in 2001, and it probably will be at the endpoint of that.
And the new regime, as a derogatory term, but as a political science term, the new regime will be quite authoritarian. I mean, think about the new consensus after 1945 in The US, or what Roosevelt built, and we're probably going to see something in the West and all over the world.
Speaker 0: I like that, yeah, quote by Musk. I often feel frustrated as well because, you know, it I can see where this is going. I remember I gave a speech at my university back in 2013 in in at the end of the year warning that, you know, if we're moving towards trying to topple Yanukovych, it's gonna be a disaster. And then but essentially, it always pushed back saying, well, you know, that's a that some sounds like something Russia would say, or the assumption that toppling the government would be beneficial for us, beneficial for the Ukrainians. And, you know, and you can just point that the basic security competition that, you know, the other side will respond when their security is undermined.
And, you know, all this well, essentially, the past decade, well, thirteen years now, it just you know, you see where this is going. You see the escalation. You know that we're going to war if this continues down this path, but there's there's nothing you can do seemingly. But about Trump, though, I actually this is one of the reasons I was optimistic about him during his election campaign because I thought the main problem for The United States was that his empire had been overextended. It had exhausted itself, and many of the other large powers were collectively balancing it.
I thought it would be a good idea for The US to essentially pull back. That is essentially save the republic by scaling back the empire and let the other Eurasian powers balance each other. This is what the offshore balancing strategy of The US traditionally was based around, and I thought once the hegemonic moment is over, they have to find a way of making this shift. But so I thought that was, you know, good for America, good for the world. Nobody, you know, benefits from going down the path we're doing now, but I don't know how it derailed.
But well, my my next question, it builds on the patterns you said. You can see the patterns in history. And, yeah, this is why I also wanted to ask you about, yeah, the the thinker, Oswald Spengler, because he he also identified much like other scholars on the rise and fall of civilizations. He focused on this common patterns we can see. So while not just pulling, you know, the German experience to the world, but also as as civilizations, what what kind of historical patterns are you looking at at the moment?
Speaker 1: Well, Spingler is of limited help here, but I mean, he's the philosopher that has really inspired me when I was a teenager even. He says that civilizations have a lifespan. He has an organic view, like they have an early stage with knighthood, and feudal times, and the cities are rising. And Spingler actually ascribes democracy to the rule of money. So for him, is a phase of about two hundred years, and that would have been, well, something from 1815, maybe to 2015, something like this, where the press where the press basically tells voters what to say, and voters then vote accordingly, and it's a battle about public opinion, and that's what he calls democracy, and it's already the very late stage of a civilization.
We could see something else in the Roman Republic, and after that comes a new religiousness, a new cesarean times where raw power starts to dominate the commercial world, and we do see that. I mean, we do see the return of The US to being a pirate state. There's a fantastic video on YouTube by a UN accredited journalist called The Rise of the Pirate State. And if you see Venezuela, Greenland, the attempt, Canada, Cuba, The US is basically using raw power. Trump is doing it unabashedly, is proud of it.
I mean, The US has been using raw power for a long time, but often concealed it, cloaked it in under terms of spreading democracy. This is not so much the case anymore. So we might see the final stage of the West, which can last for a long time if it stabilizes like Rome lasted for a long time. But we see that democracy is crumbling, and I one of my Spangler quotes, he said, decent citizens even in Caesar's times, these decent citizens wouldn't go to vote because politics had become a business, had become totally corrupt. You bought your votes, and we can see that we can see that in the US congressional races where Thomas Massie, one of the sole dissenting voices in the Congress, a true MAGA champion, Make America Great, America First, No Forever Was, and he's running I think for his third or fourth term, and he had always been voted in with a large majority, and now the lobby, mostly the Israel lobby, but also others are spending 30,000,000 so far, even more on this one single race, which is the highest sum ever spent because even one dissenter in congress within the Republican Party is is too much for them.
So we'll see, but I see democracy indeed highly undermined. We saw it in COVID. We see it in the Ukraine war. We see it in Ukraine itself, of course, which is right now a military dictatorship. And I think we in the West try to emulate that military dictatorship, so we don't have those, let's say, inconvenient elections anymore for the next for the next years.
Because, of course, the West is over indebted and huge sacrifices, huge changes, huge cancelling of debts have to be made, and those won't be made simply and exclusively by market forces. They will be made by government decree to some extent. So I think the the model of a military dictatorship or a COVID dictatorship, which was somewhat of a military dictatorship, as COVID was a war. I mean, psychologically, was a war against the virus, with curfews, with everything. So I don't have too many hopes for democracy right now.
That's, I guess, my conclusion from my reading of Spengler. I
Speaker 0: share your pessimistic view on this, unfortunately. What what I find interesting, though, is often when you look at the the scholars throughout the the the ages studying the rise and fall of civilizations, they tend to make a distinction between culture and civilization. So civilization often being like the plant and the culture being the roots. And I know the word culture is often thrown around a lot, but people like Max Weber, I think, did interesting work on culture because he also predicted cultural decline and the the consequences because the way he sees it, what is culture would be the glue that essentially binds us all together. The you know, what what we all have in common, and not just what ties to each other, but tie us to the generation that came before us and the one that will come after.
And so, essentially, what, yeah, what what we create, which is worth passing on to to the next generation, he I guess, Weber's perspective, he argued that the the excessiveness of, well, of the of reasoning individualism, it often demystified culture, which would corrupt it. But, you know, from a more Spengler perspective, how how do you see this? Because what is the main relationship then between culture and civilization if you would assess the the future of our civilization?
Speaker 1: Okay. You make that distinction. I think Spengler actually was the first one to make it. I'm not sure, but he certainly was very big on distinguishing culture and civilization. Many people wouldn't do that.
I mean, they would use the term synonymously, but for Spengler, culture was something organic that grew and evolved and from early feudal times, from very early times through the rise of the first cities, through later times in about four seasons. I mean, those were all, of course, metaphors or pictures he painted. And civilization is basically the final stage which can last forever or for a long time. You just don't see any internal development. So civilization is basically fully outward oriented, there's no more internal development, the internal battles and thoughts have been fought, there is maybe a second religiousness which people adopt, and there is, let's say, a mechanization and standardization of life, as you could see it in Roman civilization.
He said the Greeks had a culture, Rome, let's say starting February, started to develop into a civilization. I mean, was surely in a civilization in the West, which, I mean, culture or art is dominated by fashions and fans and by commerce. It's not a coherent, consistent thing. It's, as you said, a lot of individualism. And one very important thing is the wish to live.
The will to live dies. We don't have children anymore, we don't reproduce, population collapses. And we saw that in late Rome, we see it throughout the West, throughout the world actually now, which is a unique situation. I mean, every continent is collapsing basically with the exception of Black Africa, even South America, even most of the Asian countries, even India. I mean, they're all going through rapid population declines, Persia of course a lot so.
So, that is new. This is a global phenomenon, so Western culture civilization might have been so overbearing that that penetrates and pervades other cultures. Of course, Russian thinkers and Spingler said that himself there might be Eurasian Russian culture blooming, which is about a thousand years behind us. But that culture, of course, has been overlaid by Western patterns to such an extent that is probably very much covered. So we see what happens there, but then again Russia is not that big, what, a 120, 130,000,000 people.
So we're in a late stage, decadence, no more children, big cities. That is where the West is currently at. And actually, we're going to award the next Spengler Prize to David Goldman. He is in the US state department. He is, of course, an ardent supporter of of Israel, but he is I happen to disagree there, but that shouldn't that shouldn't distract from scholarly recognition, because he wrote a lot about civilizations and cultures, and I think we need that perspective, that broader perspective also when looking at the West.
That's why he's going to get that prize.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This idea of a cultural revival, it's quite important to sustain civilizations then because if if there's no revival or continuation of the of the culture, well, essentially, every new generation becomes, you know, just a cheaper copy of the one before. And the people often I remember, especially in the February, there was so much focus on the soft power of The US that it had a lot of popular culture. But for a lot of American conservatives, they were kind of drawing a distinction between what popular culture is and traditional cultures because popular culture is here and now. But if it becomes overwhelming, too successful, it kind of drowns out the traditional call traditional culture where you actually have handing down from generation to generation.
It's something that you can actually will tie society and the world civilization together as well. But, you know, you can only make so many remakes of Spider Man before you have to ask whether or not there's an actual, you know, cultural sustainability here. But on on that topic, do you do you see civilizations having an an ability to reverse its decline? Because this is kinda where a lot of civilizational scholars disagree. Some argue they can go into the excessive materialist.
Some believe you can come back again, while others see it as essentially being a, well, a set cycle. That is you will you know, you'll have the spring, you'll have summer, and then your autumn and winter in which she dies, and then, of course, can be reborn. But do you do you see a possibility for a civilizational revival?
Speaker 1: Well, human history is open. That's for sure, but I haven't seen it yet. So I'm I'm tending towards the civilizational the pattern view that civilizations run their course. We've seen, of course, that China has had a strong comeback, but China is not sure that a lot of the civilization has come back, but China has kept its its language and its its writing system, which is a very important part of the identity. So that's one thing that binds it together, but there's not many, let's say, organizations on the level of civil society in China.
It's the state, it's the family of the individual, because there's also a huge surveillance apparatus now. So China has has lasted for of three, four thousand years and is doing remarkably well. So not sure it's a cultural revival, but the old civilization has picked up Western techniques and is doing pretty well. So we will see. What Penguin would predict is a second religiousness.
So let's see, in in the West we have two contending themes here. We have the evangelical Christians who believe in the Third Temple and who are always Israel. Most of them I'm not. I would call myself also an evangelical Christian, but more often Mennonite, which is different, is the origin, actually, of evangelical Christians. But most of my brethren in faith would go on an all out support for Israel, and those families are still functioning, and they have children, and that's one thing.
And the other one is, I think, welcome research in Catholicism with Pope Leo being the positive surprise of of the last past few years, openly criticizing war and openly spreading the gospel. So I think people get tired of thinking and thinking about problems. That's also a very Spenglerian saying, very Spenglerian thought I'm uttering right now. People get tired of all these intellectual debates and want back to their roots and want back their faith. So that could be the next phase of Western civilization.
In that sense, Spengler said Islam is a thousand years ahead of us because they've gone all through this this intellectual phase and they're back to to a blind faith or stage. But these are very deep things, of course. I didn't expect us to discuss them, but I I think they bear some additional perspective on all of this.
Speaker 0: Well, there's a lot of the civilizational scholars who could discuss, of course. I like toying be as well, but but but the general theme seems to be if civilization outgrows its own roots, then it begins to die just like a plant can't survive without its roots. But this seems to be a key challenge in the areas of these periods of globalization as well. One get often this civilizational all ex exhaustion. But, yeah, well, my I guess my last question is just how do you do you see the populist movements going across Europe and The United States?
When I used the word populist, I you know, it's it's often demeaned to a large extent, but populism simply means that, you know, you have a political el elite which has distanced itself from the public, and the populist kinda builds on this rhetoric. I remember even Obama and Bernie Sanders referred to themselves as populist in their days, but, anyways, now it has very negative connotation. But I guess my point back to my question. Do you see the populist movements, yeah, in the Europe and The US, do they have a possibility, or do they reflect the democratic revival? Because, I guess, I tended to see it that way.
And then, of course, we had people like Trump and Maloney, and I'm starting to become a bit more pessimistic? Or, you know, is it just symptoms of a civilizational fatigue? Well,
Speaker 1: I would go as far as saying that the FDA right now is the only party enriching the democratic debate. They are democratically organized, the other parties are mostly machines with long term career politicians starting at young ages and very low levels having served their way up. The AFD had a lot of people coming in from all of the people coming in from normal jobs, basically. Now they of course already have their first wave of career politicians. So I think the system is leaning towards autocracy, towards what kind take authoritarianism, whatever you might call it.
The international system is pointing towards war. We saw that with Trump. But one shouldn't give up hopes. Mean, Meloni in in Italy and Mertz in Germany, we still voted to ship more weapons to Israel and so on. And by Meloni sometimes positioned herself differently to the public opinion, but what she did was another thing again.
So there is widespread dissatisfaction in The US, in Germany. We have to look at these cases bit by bit. In Spain, we have a prime minister Pedro Sanchez who is very outspokenly critical of of of the actions in Gaza and Lebanon. In The US, we have a highly unstable domestic situation because most of the Democrats are against the Iran war, most of the Republicans are. There's still the rally around the flag effect, but only within the Republican camp, which is new in The US before people rallied around the president whenever there was war from whichever side.
This is not happening, so The US might have huge domestic ruptures ahead. And in Germany, we only have this one party, AFD. There was a BSV, an alliance, I know her fairly well, and have done quite a few things with her who was on the left and also was arguing for peace with Russia. Unfortunately, they did pretty much every strategic and tactical and organizational mistake you could do, otherwise they would be in in parliament, but they're not. So there's only the AFD.
And they gained a solid foundation. They have 28% of the vote. Now, by far the biggest party, the CDU, has 22%, and most the German population doesn't want this war, sixty, seventy, 80%. I don't have the latest figures. But so and the leaders, the two co leaders position themselves for diplomacy and so on and so forth, but you could also see a few politicians, parliamentarians, activists campaigning very actively for war.
So it's an ongoing battle. I'm pessimistic as you regarding the global picture and the picture in Europe, but there's always developments that might change it. So it's not all is lost, but we can we can keep some faint hope or some small hope that some of those developments will turn out to be positive surprises.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's yeah. I haven't given up quite yet, but but there are some, yeah, some good news coming out every now and then, so there is, yeah, still hope. But it is concerning that it doesn't seem to matter who sits on the throne if the policies simply remain the same.
And I I couldn't help but to notice the same pushback against Massey, the idea that you're the one one peacemonger, which would be then too much for him to handle. It's, yeah, it's very depressing. But, well, I know you're a busy man, so I want to thank you very much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Professor Diesen.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Scott Ritter: Europe Attacked Russia - Retaliation Is Now Unavoidable https://youtu.be/tZQIeeR17Hk https://t.co/xnqKp6M5ta
Video Transcript AI Summary
The conversation centers on accelerating attacks involving drones and long-range strike rhetoric, and what this implies for Western involvement, escalation dynamics, and potential nuclear red lines.
Scott Ritter argues that Western involvement is direct and that the attacks would not be taking place without it. He claims the technologies used are developed by the West for Ukraine, intelligence is provided exclusively by the West for Ukraine, and manufacturing is conducted outside Ukraine to avoid Russian interdiction. He frames the attacks as “collective West escalating against Russia,” and links this to NATO nations being engaged in combat operations aimed at Russia’s “existential threat.”
Ritter also argues that Western leaders have crossed any prior threshold of caution long ago, citing public statements by Germany, France, Great Britain, and others about engaging Russia in open armed conflict by the end of the decade (2029–2030). He says Germany’s defense minister, Pistorius, is openly asserting that Russia is an enemy and needs preparation for war, including preparations for long-range strike missions inside Russia. Ritter states that Russia has managed escalation through repeated “red line” crossings and resets, which he portrays as designed to draw Russian overreaction and mobilize Western support for Ukraine, while Russia’s battlefield advantage continues. He references a recently published report by the special inspector general of operation Atlantic Resolve, saying it concludes Russia maintains operational and strategic dominance “across the spectrum” of the conflict.
A major focus is Sergei Karaganov’s role and influence. Ritter describes Karaganov as advising Russian presidents from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin and says that in 2023 Karaganov articulated the need for a decisive counter to the West, including favoring preemptive nuclear use against strategies calling for the strategic defeat of Russia. Ritter says Karaganov’s calculation was that no American leader would trade “Boston for Poznan,” and he claims this logic appears in Russian nuclear posture. He says Putin publicly disagreed with Karaganov, but that in 2024 Karaganov was appointed to head review processes for the Kremlin’s strategic nuclear posture review, and in 2025 Russia published a new strategic nuclear posture aligned with what Ritter calls the “Karagunov doctrine.” Ritter claims this doctrine empowers Russia to treat conventional strikes into Russia’s strategic depth as a nuclear attack when nuclear powers provide conventional capability to non-nuclear powers that strike Russia’s strategic infrastructure.
On current drone activity, Ritter claims drones have expanded through Baltic routes, with attacks near or involving Moscow and Saint Petersburg-area airspace impacts and closures affecting flights out of Polkava. He discusses Russian statements that Ukraine is preparing strikes from Latvian territory and says such claims shift from possibility to probability or certainty. Ritter argues Russia is beyond “managed escalation” and that damage equations have changed, making long-term consequences unavoidable for Russia’s infrastructure and reserves if threats continue. He reports an interview in Moscow with someone affiliated with a Russian Duma committee on protecting energy infrastructure from drone attacks, stating the person said damage had been minimal in the past and mitigated through repair, but Ritter argues the situation has now changed.
Ritter estimates that 10–20% of Russia’s export production capacity has been damaged beyond what it was in November, that repairs will take months, and that reserves carrying Russia through this process may be depleted if Russia does not “nip this in the bud now.” He connects this to a sense of Russian decision-making urgency, citing the atmosphere around May 9 and describing Russian messaging about “unconditional surrender,” including references to RT and statements by Dmitry Medvedev.
The transcript also addresses NATO member-state escalation risks. Ritter argues Kaliningrad may be treated as a flashpoint and describes prior warnings against attacking Kaliningrad by saying Russia would “instantly kill” attackers and their command staff. He claims the rationale is that attacking Kaliningrad would force outcomes that could “eradicate” the Baltic states and questions what NATO would do afterward. He criticizes rhetoric and describes it as provoking Russia into action, arguing that patience and pragmatism are misunderstood as weakness.
On diplomatic possibilities, Ritter says he sees “no hope” in the EU in the short term for meaningful diplomacy while militaries discuss war. He argues China offers the best diplomatic pathway, saying China could contact Trump and communicate that this is not a bluff, potentially forcing European reconsideration. He says the United States lacks an effective one-on-one channel with Putin and argues that the United States should pressure Europe and tell Ukraine the war is finished.
In concluding remarks, Ritter emphasizes escalation control and warns that once escalation management is diluted, it becomes difficult to restore status quo. He frames the situation as moving toward direct confrontation and says peace requires prompt action, while continuing to discuss these issues through independent media.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, a US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a prolific author. So thank you very much for coming on the program. We appear to be entering very dangerous times. That is the attacks on Russia are now intensifying.
We saw massive drone attacks on Moscow over the weekend. And before we logged on now, I saw that drones were also entering the space around Saint Petersburg, very far away from Ukraine, I would add, to the extent they had to shut down many of the flights going out of Polkava. How to what extent is the West involved in this these attacks?
Speaker 1: Let's make it absolutely clear. If it wasn't war for western involvement, these attacks would not be taking place. The technologies being used are developed by the West for Ukraine. The intelligence information is provided exclusively by the West for Ukraine. The manufacturing is done outside of Ukraine to avoid Russian interdiction.
Yeah. Again, this is not an example of Ukraine escalating against Russia. This is the collective West escalating against Russia. This is, you know, a reflection of the reality that, you know, NATO is actively engaged or NATO nations are actively engaged in combat operations against Russia that is basically, you know, achieving, you know, an existential threat to the, you know, survival of Russia.
Speaker 0: Well, let's see in Europe. There's a lot of talk about the need to bring the war to Russia. There's a lot of talk about mass producing long range weapons to strike Russia. I guess, when did they cross the point when for Russia to do nothing is more dangerous than hitting back, I guess? Because we seem to be crossing this well, if we haven't already, we would cross it fairly soon, it seems.
Speaker 1: No. It's been crossed a long time ago. You have major Western nations, Germany, France, Great Britain, and others openly articulating the necessity to engage Russia in open armed conflict by the end of this decade, twenty twenty nine, twenty thirty. We now have Pistorius, the defense minister of Germany, openly saying that Russia is our enemy and we need to prepare to go to war. And now they're preparing the weapons of war, specifically to conduct long range strike missions inside Russia.
So, I mean, again, I'm not a Russian leader, there's a good reason why I'm not. A, I'm American, and b, you wouldn't want me to be your leader because we'd be at war with Europe right now. I'd be launching preemptive strikes. I'd be taking out production facilities. I'd be destroying decision making centers, and I'd be implementing in full effect the kerrigan of doctrine.
Well, yeah,
Speaker 0: appears though that yeah. No. It's it's very strange if you listen to the rhetoric four years ago, the the the caution and something that sounded like rational arguments and concern about being participants in the war where where the rhetoric now is is is very far apart. But a lot of these attacks on Russia now appears not appears. They, evidently so, has gone through the Baltic States than we've seen, especially Estonia and Latvia.
Of course, they have to transit through Lithuania as well if this is gonna work. But we also heard that the some statements from the Russian foreign intelligence services arguing that Ukraine is preparing strikes on Russia from Latvian territory. I mean, once the Russians make these statements, aren't they committing to something? Because if they say we know it's happening from Latvia, but we're not gonna do anything, it seems that this will become an impossibility.
Speaker 1: Well, yes. It's I I think it's gone beyond the concept of a possibility to a probability and maybe even an absolute certainty. I think laughing is being marked for death. I I don't believe Russia again, I I I don't pretend to know anything about the I do know Sergei Karagunov. You know Sergei Karagunov, and you know that he's a serious man.
He's a rational actor. He's not an irrational actor, and he's somebody whose voice has influence. And, you know, Sergei Khardiganov and others like him who advise or whose opinions are are heeded by the Ministry of Defense and the Russian leadership, you know, have articulated a very sound, rational case for Russian military intervention. Decisive. I don't believe these people who speak of Russian military intervention are playing the game of managed escalation.
I think we're beyond that. The reason why we're where we're at, and I don't blame Vladimir Putin, he was a genius and still is a genius. You know, he has been managing the escalation ladder in perfect form because never once prior to, you know, this most recent era in this war did Ukraine pose an existential threat to the security of Russia. It was always the potential, but we know that the west has been articulating in favor of the strategic defeat of Russia since the beginning of the special military operation. We know this, and we know that they have been pushing Russia, pushing Russia, pushing Russia.
Russia sets a red line. It gets it gets crossed. Russia resets the red line. It gets crossed. Now Russia, you know, resets it for a reason because the crossing of the red line, you know, was designed, you know, was was done by design to get a Russian overreaction, so that the West could mobilize support and and solidify support on behalf of Ukraine.
It was Russia's goal and objective to keep the West, you know, from being able to do that. You don't overreact. You allow the red lines to be crossed because at the end of the day, it didn't change the, you know, the ultimate calculation. Russia still prevailed on the battlefield. Well, Russia is still prevailing on the battlefield today.
The special inspector general of operation Atlantic Resolve has published a report recently that says Russia is dominating across the battlefield. So all those, you know, pro Ukrainian social media platforms just stick it in your ear. You know, the special United States has spoken. And even that report, you know, is is very conservative in terms of, you know, giving a lot of credit to Ukraine and NATO that simply isn't reflected by reality. But their conclusions are Russia maintains operational strategic dominance across the spectrum of this conflict.
And that's what Russia has been seeking to do, to wear not just Ukraine down but the collective West down through a war of attrition. And they're still succeeding, but what's happened is because Russia has allowed the collective West to cross red lines, they've crossed the ultimate red line. Because in the past, always as you said, the West always went, we want to avoid being able to be categorized as an active participant in the conflict. We always wanted to create that air of ambiguity. Oh, there's no more ambiguity.
They're just straight up doing it, straight up saying it. And now we again, we come to Sergei Karagunov. We probably should do a good job of introducing him to a Western audience. This is a one of the, you know, one of the premier political military analysts in Russia, a man who has advised Russian presidents from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin. In 2023, he articulated in writing and spoken word the need for the West to be decisively countered by Russia.
He was in favor of the preemptive use of nuclear weapons that when the West articulates a strategy calling for the strategic defeat of Russia, Russia has a duty and responsibility to respond and nip this in the bud before it manifests itself in something that does real harm to Russia. And he famously said that his calculation is that no American leader will trade Boston for Poznan. Meaning Russia could just take out a Polish city with a nuclear weapon and Europe will do nothing. It'll intimidate Europe, The United States will do nothing because they don't wanna trade Boston for Poznan. You know, Vladimir Putin came out immediately and said, I don't agree with Sergey Kyrgyz Karagawa.
That's not who we are. That's not what we do. In 2024, as the West continued to push, he appointed Sergei Karagano to be the head of the review process for the Kremlin strategic nuclear posture review. In 2025, the Russians published a new strategic nuclear posture that basically was the Karygodo doctrine. Basically saying that if nuclear powers provide conventional military capability to a non nuclear power and use that to strike into the strategic depth of Russia that threatens Russia's you know, strategic infrastructure, that Russia is therefore empowered to use nuclear weapons in response.
They can treat this as a nuclear attack. That's exactly what's happening. People need to understand that this doctrine was published last year. It was covered. We talked about it.
Everybody talked about it. Everybody knew this. And yet the west is doing something now that is in just flagrantly crosses that red line because they believe Russia is bluffing. And so now they've crossed the red line, and Ukraine is is doubling down because Ukraine smells blood. Ukraine is dying.
And for the first time, Ukraine's going, wait a minute. We're doing real harm here. Let's keep doing it. Let's keep doing it because they want NATO to become engaged. That's their goal.
That's their salvation. And so Ukraine is just doubling down, doubling down, doubling down, throwing caution to the wind. You know, in in a week and a half time, the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum opens up. This is, like, the premier, you know, thing. It's bigger than Davos.
Everybody in the West knows Davos. Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum swamps it. It's bigger, more participants, more money, more everything. You think the Russians are gonna let Ukrainian drones come out of the Baltics and threaten this? You think that's going to happen?
You think they're gonna let this happen? No. Not at all. I I see nothing but bad things, bad tidings. I think the West has gone too far.
I think there will be hell to pay. I don't know if Russia limits it to Latvia. If I were the Russians, I wouldn't. I would take out the production facilities in England, in in Germany, in Denmark, all identified production facilities associated with the f p five and other drones. I would take out German companies involved in guidance and control, and I would even take out Ramstein.
Maybe not. Maybe that's an American base, but I would threaten to take out Ramstein to follow on attack where the intelligence is is gathered and disseminated. But the West has to be struck a blow, and I would eliminate Kyiv once and for all. I think it's time to find out what a dozen Arashniks can do to downtown Kyiv. And I think it's time to show the the Ukrainians that that's the fate of all of your cities if you wanna continue this war.
Russia, Vladimir Putin said on May 9 that he wants this war to wrap up. A lot of people went, oh, that's a sign of Russian weakness. Russia's willing. No. It's a sign of Russian recognition of their strength, and it's time to flex their muscles.
The day of restraint, believe, is over. I believe we're moving to a very dangerous period because now we get to answer the question of what will The United States do when Russia strikes a NATO country. How will article five be treated? Yeah.
Speaker 0: I spoke to Kaganov last week, and he well, on this program, and he was making the point that in the past, he was representing a small minority who said it's time to retaliate directly against the Europeans, but now he says he represents the overwhelming majority. So you already had all this pressure building up on the Kremlin that, you know, they had to choose a different path, this dilemma. Do they retaliate against NATO and risk going up the escalation ladder, or do they, you know, look the other way and, you know, emboldening NATO? That they always went with the second option, but now the pressure was mounting so much. And just at this point when all this pressure is mounting on Putin to take a harder line, we see these massive drone attacks and just uncontrolled celebrations in in Europe.
And this is what's, yeah, so concerning. It's it's as if they don't see what's coming next. I mean, you know, they use all these terms, like, because bad for Russia, they think it's good for us. Before you use this term that, you know, the people online, the pro Ukrainian bloggers or social media activists is not even pro Ukrainian. These are the p if if if Ukraine had implemented the Minsk agreement on anything like this, which they always opposed, Ukraine will be intact now.
This is the these people are destroying Ukraine. It's quite insane. But my my concern is what the Europeans are celebrating now, which is that they're having they has their attacks on Russia is having a growing impact on Russian security. This seems to they seem to be making a significant dent in the Russian energy. Again, I'm not sure how much, but at least it it seems to be enough to create problems for the Russians.
And if this is the case, that means the Russians can't afford to look the other way anymore. I don't know. How are you assessing the attacks on the Russian energy security or energy? Because, I mean, this is the irony. We we should be happy that we weren't making a dent.
Once we start making a dent, the calculations seem they have to change, don't they, on the Russian side?
Speaker 1: Look. Last November, I was in Moscow and I interviewed somebody affiliate the with the Russian Duma, state Duma, involved in the the committee on, you know, the protection of energy infrastructure from drone attacks. I'm sure it had a a more Russian name than that. But, you know, he was on it, and I was surprised by the frankness of his conversation. I actually published it on the Russia house.
Think many people ignored it at the time because, you know, it's people don't like to dig deep into fact based reality. They like to live in their little fantasy worlds. I'm gonna republish it and ask people to listen to it because it's important what he said at the time. He said that these attacks were taking place but that the real damage done was minimal, that Russia was able to mitigate the damage and then repair the facilities and bring them back into order. So, you know, the strategic impact was not which is why, again, it's not that Karagunov's arguments became again, I don't believe Vladimir Putin responds to pressure from Sergei Karagunov or anybody else.
That's not how the game plays, and I don't think Sergei Karagunov is is is promoting himself as a man who has intimidated Putin into changing his mind. Sergei Karagunov has taken a stance, and Vladimir Putin has said, no. We, the damage being done doesn't rate our an overreaction. But now the damage equation has changed. It's not that Sergey Karagunov's arguments, you know, that Putin's been pressured.
Putin's a pragmatic guy and he's looking at it. The damage being done now to Ukrainian energy infrastructure is real, It's not easily mitigated. It's not easily repaired. Meaning that when you do this damage, it's long term, and Russia can't afford long term damage. You know, the again, there's things that happen in Russia that we're not aware of, and, you know, I I believe Russia you know, the idea that Russia operates on the margins is absurd.
I believe Russia probably has strategic reserves just like everybody else, and I believe that they're able to ride this out because you see a lot of people talking about Russia's, export volumes having dropped significantly. But the potential for the production of refined products for export is being impacted. At some point in time, the reserves run out and if you haven't brought this potential back up, you're going to have that you're gonna have a gap, it's gonna be meaningful. It's not Vladimir Putin's job to allow Russia to get to the point where you have meaningful impact. His job is to prevent that from happening.
So, you know, this is my way of answering your question. I believe that between 1020% of Russia's export production capacity has been damaged to an extent beyond that, which it was being impacted in November. That this damage will take months to repair. And that if Russia doesn't nip this in the bud now, by the time they repair it and bring it back online, the reserves that are currently carrying them through this pro this process will be depleted, and then you're going to have a real and significant impact. And that's why Russia needs to act now.
And I also think that the Ukrainians become more and more emboldened. You don't want. We know what the consequences in of an attack on the Kremlin will be fatal for everybody. But if you're a Russian, you don't want the Kremlin attacked. You don't wanna wait for that to happen.
You see the Ukrainians moving in that direction. This is the direction they are heading. It's inevitable. You see the West backing up. You see the rhetoric, and the damage is being done.
This is the moment of decision right now. If you wait, you allow the Ukrainians to do significant meaningful harm of an existential nature. Right now, Russia has the capacity to absorb, repair, and move on if the threat could be terminated. So now is the moment of decisive action. And I I you know, again, I can't I don't wanna speak on behalf of anybody.
It's just assessments. And as we all know, assessments could be wrong. But I I have to say on May 9, you know, the the whole sin the whole scene around victory day was look. You're you're a specialist. You lived in in Russia.
You know the Russians. This was a different May 9 than I've seen in the last four years since the special military operation began. This was a May 9 of deathly seriousness. At the embassy, the ambassador spoke incessantly about unconditional surrender, unconditional surrender, unconditional surrender, linking Nazi Germany and the Ukrainian government in a way that had never been done before. They spoke of Germany as a permanent enemy, not as a former enemy that we Germany is the enemy today, is the enemy.
This was the language. Dmitry Medvedev, who has always been sort of the bad crazy cop to Putin's good sane cop, you know, wrote an article in RT. What's the importance of RT? RT English. It's an article written for the West to read.
It you know, it's designed for Western consumption, but it's it's an article that, you know, speaks with the force of the Russian government. This is Russian state media. This isn't Medvedev putting a social media post out on X. This is RT, Russian state media, publishing a major article written by a man who used to be the president of Russia, used to be the prime minister of Russia, and currently he's the number two on the national security, Council. And article is devastating for Europe.
It pretty much endorses the Karagunov diet. Karagunov, the day before, had another interview that basically hammered home the same points. The sense I get in having watched Russia, monitored Russia, etcetera, is that Russia has reached the point of decision. And unless something fundamentally changes such as the unconditional surrender of Ukraine today, I think we're going to see decisive action before the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum begins to preempt any potential attack. I'd be curious to be a fly on the wall, although that's an insult to the Chinese.
I'm sure their sanitation is such that there are no flies on the wall. But there should be a fly on the wall in the conversations between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping about this because China was extraordinarily tough on Trump about Taiwan. And the Chinese know that Ukraine is as important to Russia as Taiwan is to China. And so, you know, the Financial Times playing their m I six stupid mind games, you know, putting out this stuff about how, you know, Xi Jinping told Trump that Putin overstep. Hey.
Just the the the simplistic stupidity of this. You know, Andrey Olnitsky, former lieutenant general adviser to Shoigu when he was minister of defense and the author of the concept of mental warfare. You know, this isn't mental warfare. Mental warfare is actually carefully crafted, designed to get in there, latch in and rip. What the British did here was just crude and stupid and you could immediately see all the corrupted social media outlets that immediately jump on and say, mean, it's just brain dead people.
No. That's not the case at all, but I do believe that this is a very important meeting and that, you know look. Russia needs China. There's no doubt about that. Russia needs China, and China needs Russia.
And there's no doubt in my mind that this this meeting may go down in history as sort of the modern day version or the present day version of the 02/04/2022 meeting where Vladimir Putin flew to China, to Beijing, met with Xi Jinping on the eve of the initiation of the special military operation. I have a feeling that there will be conversations had that at least allow the Chinese to be positioned for about what's the for for what is about to happen.
Speaker 0: That's what I was thinking as well because, well, Trump just left and Putin has arrived in Beijing, and I'm I'm assuming if the Russians are now planning to, well, dramatically change their posture in this war, that they would tell the well, discuss this at length with the Chinese first. So I'm assuming as well that this is something they're discussing because, again, there there is no status quo which they can hold on to. The the it's not just where they are today, the drone attacks, but the the Russians can see exactly what direction this is going. The Chinese can see this. So it's I mean, it's so I think the the hatred of Russia in Europe has blinded them completely to to to what will come next.
I mean, this is so predictable, the the war we're walking into, and yet nothing. No debate, no discussion, no dissent, Not a squeak. I mean, it's it's extraordinary. I mean, this is must be most ridiculous world war we're walking into here. But I I did wanna get your thought on something, though.
That is the defense minister in Latvia resigned after some I think the Ukrainian drones were scrambled, and they hit some targets within Latvia. What do you make of this situation?
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's it's hard to know unless you have, you know, access to the totality of think what happened is there's embarrassment. There could be no doubt that I mean, you know, there's there's stupid games played all the time. And plausible deniability is the coin of the realm when it comes to, you know, the official face of governance. But militaries and intelligence services often time engage in covert relationships that are deniable or are supposed to be deniable.
I think they got caught with their pants down and it's an embarrassing situation. And so he he paid the price. He he he was relieved of his position, but the policy is not changing. And, we don't know the the details. I mean, you know, they're they're saying that these are drones that are redirected by the Russians using electronic warfare.
The Russians are saying that these drones were in the the airspace. I think people have been tracking the drones, and they see there's a definite Baltic corridor. So that's not an invention. That's not imagination. Whether the Russians were clever enough to take control of drones and target, you know, Baltic oil production is is another thing.
But, again, if the Ukrainians weren't using a a Baltic corridor, then the Russians wouldn't have to do this. But I I think what we're seeing here is that, you know, there are political ramifications for being caught in failed covert policy.
Speaker 0: Well, when the Russian Baltic Coast was struck, the the main argument was, well, it's they didn't use the the Baltic airspace. This is Russian propaganda. But but now we cannot turn the page on this because now they're saying, well, yes. Well, they admitted that the Ukrainian drones over Estonia, Ukrainian drones over the over Latvia, and, again, unavoidably so, then also Russian drones over Lithuania. So they're recognizing now that they are using this corridor, but it appears that the new narrative is that, oh, we we haven't permitted it, and we we oppose it.
But, again, this it's it doesn't make any sense to me. I just wanna point
Speaker 1: out that, you know, just as was the case when the CIA helped the the Ukrainians try to attack Vladimir Putin in December 2025 during his famous phone call with Donald Trump. You know, drones are brought down intact, and the guidance packages recovered intact. And Russian intelligence is able to extract data that proves everything about the targeting. And, know, when the Ukraine's launched the amount of drones, yes, the Russians are shooting down a lot of drones, but we know that electronic warfare for instance, let's take if the Russians can take a drone and redirect it to a target, they can take a drone and land it. And there's no doubt in my mind that the Russians have recovered intact a number of these drones and have reverse engineered the guidance and they understand exactly the path flown by the drones.
And they also, by evaluating the data, can tell where the data came from, you know, what intelligence sources were used, etcetera. So I believe the Russians have a very, very full picture of what's going on, which is why when Narishkin publishes, you know, very pointed intelligence, I I think we have to respect the fact that it's probably fact based, not just rumors, speculation, or disinformation.
Speaker 0: Well, just as, you know, they couldn't get more reckless. So we see that out of Lithuania, they're making the comments that we should now put more pressure on the fortress Kaliningrad. And this is, again, the Kaliningrad, you know, the the enclave, it has it's, yeah, stuck here and severed from the rest of of the Russian Federation. But this still hosts a million Russian civilians. They also host nuclear weapons.
But we earlier on, we had the well, it's been a while now about The US general, Donahue, making the point that, oh, we can take Kaliningrad. All of this rhetoric is essentially about attacking Russia. I mean, how do you make sense of this? Because this is happening at the same time as the British now are trying to lead this naval group to confront the Russians, and I think it's quite predictable that they want to, if not put a full blockade, at least harass Russian ships in the Baltic Sea. So we see the escalation at every at every level.
Do do you do you see Kaliningrad possibly being a flashpoint? Or I mean, there's so many possible flashpoints now, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, could be because we're we're talking about insanity. You know, I publicly cautioned general Donahue not that he would listen to me, but I said the quickest way to ensure that you end up being marked with a stone at Arlington, your body won't be recovered, but there'll be a stone at Arlington is to attack Kaliningrad because the Russians will instantly kill you, your command staff, and everybody affiliated with this attack. You know, it's just stupid. The the Estonians making similar things, you know, Latvians threatening. I tell you, the quickest way to make Kaliningrad not an enclave is to attack Kaliningrad because we're going to see the Baltics become Russian again, and they'll become Russian overnight.
You know, that's just the reality of it. If that's the game they wanna play, Russia doesn't want to do this, but, you know, Russia's not going to yield on this point. And if it does become a flashpoint, it's a flashpoint that marks the total eradication of the Baltic States, which will be interesting because then what will NATO do? Nothing. They can do nothing.
The Baltics have always been this exposed appendage that, you know, is Sweden now going to commit suicide, come in and save the Baltics? The Finns are going to make an attack on the Kola Peninsula in Vibor to save the Baltics? No. Because that would be the end of Finland, and that would be end of Sweden. I mean, these nations joined a failing military alliance that has no political viability and zero military capacity to meaningfully project power.
I just don't understand, you know, where is the commander of, you know, NATO forces telling the military council to tell the yappy Baltic poodles to or chihuahuas to shut up? I mean, because the the the rhetoric is is fatal to, NATO. If you want to have NATO totally collapse, show that article five is absolutely meaningless. And the best way to show that Article five is absolutely meaningless is to provoke the Russians. What does the British fleet think they're going to do besides sink?
I mean, it's stunning. They all believe Russia's bluffing. They all believe Russia's bluffing. I mean, they misunderstand patience and pragmatism for weakness.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I also heard the talks that, you know, Medvedev is putting on the show, same as Karagunov that is just putting on a show. They really respect the you know, they're really deterred by NATO. But, you know, I don't think this is all for show as well.
I've I've been in Karagunov's office just one on one before 2022, and he made the point as well that he doesn't believe that, as you said before, that The US would risk New York for Tullen or something. So it's not gonna happen. So I I yeah. I think this overconfidence that the Russians can be deterred, that they wouldn't dare, I I think that they were cautious because it would be a reckless thing to attack a NATO country, but they've kind of put the Russians in a position where it's even more reckless not to do anything. And, you know, the the idea you mentioned now is that the Russians could take the Baltic States.
I'm thinking a little bit about George Kennan. He gave this interview with the New York Times back in '98 when he he made the point that, you know, all the nay push people pushing for NATO expansionism, at at some point, the the Russians are gonna have to push back, and he made the prediction. At that point, the NATO expanders will essentially say, ah, look. The Russians are always been imperialist. That's just how they are, and he was making the point that it's flawed.
They will respond to what we're doing now. That was his main argument. I feel now it's the same thing. That is the the Baltic States, you know, for the past four years, been saying, oh, the Russians might march on, you know, Paris or, know, after done with Ukraine, they'll invade Latvia. You know, I I always made a point that that's ridiculous.
No no one in Russia wants to go into Latvia, but it's now it doesn't so look so ridiculous anymore. I I don't think they want to annex that territory. It sounds like a mess. But I do think that they will strike it probably. I mean, I think we crossed that boundary as well.
There's there's just no coming back from this. Even if we stopped here and pulled back a bit, you know, but but we we're gonna continue to path forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I I agree. I mean, you know, which which one of the republic? Is it Estonia that has the large Russian population or Latvia? I think it's
Speaker 0: They both have about well, a significant, I think, percent or yeah. Is the those countries, but they also have a they also had the strictest strictest laws where the ethnic Russians or Russian speakers, they can't hold the government office. They don't get the voting rights, so they're kind of second rate citizens. And the whole argument when they were joining the joining NATO and the EU in 2004 was, so Russia should be happy because, you know, the EU NATO stands for human rights. So now the Russians should be reassured that the Russian minority will get rights.
But, again, we're now twenty two years later, there's there's no nothing has been done. They don't yeah. So yeah. No. I think well, there's a higher concentration, I think, in in a specific region in Estonia.
So if they would at Narva, but yeah.
Speaker 1: I I just think that, you know, they should study the history of the special military operation and understand the difference between Roci and Rosayn, between Slavic Russian people and the Russian nation, and understand that in Estonia, it's both Rozia and Rosyin, and you're playing with fire. I mean, it's it it it you're giving the Russians the excuse to do something that otherwise they wouldn't do. Yeah. I I'm again, I'm I'm nervous. I don't know about you.
I'm a little nervous. I I don't wanna test Karagunov's thesis. I don't want to test it because I know the outcome. I believe Karagunov's right that The United States will not sacrifice Boston or New York for Poznan or another city. But The United States can't allow Russia to create a new paradigm of nuclear deterrence where you have one power not only possessing nuclear weapons, but having demonstrated the capacity to use nuclear weapons.
The other power can't sit there passively and and to be the same way. They must use nuclear weapons too. And then The United States now has carte blanche to use nuclear weapons against Iran, and we will, because the precedent's been set by Russia. And once we begin these exchanges, it doesn't stop until there's a general exchange and we're all dead. This is the flaw.
I call it the fallacy, the Kereganov fallacy. I don't wanna test it. I mean, you know, he Sergei Kereganov is a man I respect. I'm sure you respect him as well. His intellectual capacity is prodigious and somewhat intimidating sometimes.
So, you know, I I I don't wanna claim that I'm smarter than he is, but on the issue of nuclear war, nuclear weapons, I am experienced. And my gut feeling in as a experienced analyst, you sort of go with your gut feeling on on occasion, is that there's no containing nuclear weapons once they're used. Once they're used, whether it takes months, years, a decade, eventually, we're going to have a general nuclear exchange that takes out all of humanity, and I'd prefer that not to happen. Which means I, you know, I'd prefer no Russian conventional strikes. I'd prefer peace.
I'd prefer sanity, rational. But the West is far you know, is is basically punted on that one. So here we are.
Speaker 0: And I always make that point as well. What's gonna kill us all is the dilution of escalation control once we've been well, do what we're doing now. The the belief that, well, we can just escalate a little bit more, little bit more. If the Russians don't care for it, maybe we'll take a little step back and then push forward again. It's I think this is the dangerous solution.
We're gonna lose very quickly control over over this, and that should be the lesson of Iran as well, by the way, that you you can't you can't go back to status quo, essentially.
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio needs to learn that lesson. But because he said, I wish we could go back to this. Barbara Tuchman's book, was it March of Folly that she wrote or August I think March of Folly, about basically the the the 1914. Nobody believed that. They all believed it was containable, that it wasn't that you just had a little conflict with Serbia.
It wasn't gonna be a big deal. Don't worry about it. Next thing you know, you have a World War just got out of control. And I think that's where we're at right now. I mean, Trump's in desperate you know, one of the problems we have here is that Trump is not a rational actor, and he's already been humiliated by Iran.
Can he really withstand another humiliation? You know, again, these these are theses I don't want tested. I don't wanna test these. So but, unfortunately, I think we're gonna test them.
Speaker 0: Well, so you assume you assume it's very likely, if not guaranteed now, that the Russians will retaliate. How do you see them going up this escalation ladder? Do do will they go with incrementalism or go in very going hard essentially? Because, you know, they could do something from plausible deniability that is sending in Ukrainian drones. They're essentially down before they can do a conventional strike.
I mean, they can do a tactic I don't think a tactical nuke is you know, that would be far, far up the escalation ladder. But how do you see them retaliating, or what would you expect? I mean, there's no there's no Russian playbook as people say, so this is not necessarily one thing that's true. But what do you think might be possible escalation strategies?
Speaker 1: I believe that it's I have to take off my military hat because my military hat says, you know, when if you're gonna do this, do it decisively. I do believe that Putin will allow for escalation management, but the initial blows will be dismissed. I I think that Kyiv will be eliminated and Bankova. And I believe that a Baltic state will be struck decisively. You hear the rhetoric.
The decision making centers have already been identified. So I believe that there will an example will be set of a Baltic state, a decisive example. And then I think there will be, you know, very little wiggle room, meaning that zero tolerance for Western retaliation. Any effort Western retaliation will bring the full weight of Russian military response. But I do believe that, you know, I don't believe German factories are gonna be hit in the first wave.
I don't believe, you know, UK factories. I I think that that will be left for, you know, follow on wave if necessary. But I do think that Russia will have to put a marker down and that it won't be just one or two attacks. I think if they hit a Baltic state, they will eliminate the Baltic state because you have to send a signal. You have to stay there before the grace of god go you.
This is the future of Germany. And I do think that it's time for Arashnik to be unveiled in all of its awful horrific reality. No single attacks anymore. Concentrated arsenic attacks the way the weapon was designed to create nuclear type devastation in the urban area, and the West needs to see this.
Speaker 0: This is so incredibly depressing. Do you think there's any possibility now that we're kinda reaching or reached a point where we're going, likely going into a direct war with Russia, or Russia will at least retaliate in a big way, do you think there's any possibility for a diplomatic path? I mean, what what do you what do make of what the EU is doing now? Because, you know, they're discussing, you know, should we talk to the Russians? Who should talk to the Russians?
Who you know, what should we talk about? What what do you make of this? I
Speaker 1: I don't see any hope in the EU in the short term maturing to the low to the degree necessary for diplomatic intervention to be meaningful at this stage. Because at the same time, they're speaking of diplomatic and intervention. Their militaries are talking about war. You you need to shut down the war. I do believe that China provides a very important diplomatic possibility that China after Putin leaves China, will be able to contact Trump because there is connectivity there.
And China will be able to contact the European Union and put them on notice that this isn't a bluff. This is the real deal. You have no choice but to change the way you're going or else the consequences will be devastated. So I I do think there's still a window of opportunity, but The United States needs something to jump kick it. And, you know, right now, we don't have effective one on one with Putin.
I I think if China intervenes, then Trump may call Putin. Putin may call Trump, and and pressure could be placed on Europe. And I'm hoping that that's the case. I'm hoping The United States puts Europe on notice that if they continue down this path, The United States will not be there for them, that this is their problem, and they need to stop this right now. And The United States also needs to basically tell Ukraine, it's over.
It's finished. You're done. Whether Trump could do that, like I said, if if if he had won Iran, maybe he'd have some, you know, political capital to spend, but he's a very weakened man. I don't I don't see him being able to to take two defeats at once, but the smart thing to do would be to stop this path towards war because that's what we're on. We're literally on a path towards the kind of war that, you know, I trained to fight as a as a young marine.
I mean, is this is the war I trained to fight. And so I'm fully aware of what this kind of war means and what the consequences are if we ever cross that line of departure. Nobody in the military today, you know, unfortunately, they've all aged out. My generation is done. You know?
But we we don't have if there's any, we don't have any real cold warriors left. So they don't know what the cold war was. They don't know what the Soviet Union was. They don't know what it was like to be prepared to, you know, fight large scale ground combat in Europe that involved nuclear weapons. We're getting ready to experience that today, and I just wish people would listen.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's kinda sad that, seemingly, the only thing that can stop a war now is, Trump calling the Europeans and telling them, you know, if you decide to continue this escalate the war in Russia, you're on your own. It that they will hit back, and we're not gonna help you. And I mean, if the future of the world is in the hands of Trump, we might all be, yeah, bro, let's screw it already. This is I wish we had some more responsible people.
And that goes for the Europeans as well. He mentioned the the crazy Baltic states. I mean, this was the main idea, I think, in 2022 that is once they decided, okay. We will essentially boycott diplomacy. We will make weapons.
We'll be the path to peace. That's when the EU thought it was a great idea to hand over the car keys to the most radical elements that is, you know, Kayakalas, for example, out of Estonia. I mean, this is it's very hard to walk this back and suddenly demand common sense out of her. So no. I think I don't know.
I'm not very optimistic anymore. But, yeah, I haven't packed my bags yet, but it seems like we're getting pretty close now. So it's no. It's it's very yeah. Again, so depressing we ended up here, and you don't get the impression or did you do you get the impression there's someone in in Europe, though, who's understanding the severity of this situation?
Because all I see is applause in the media. Oh, look. Look how much how bad they hit the the Russians. Yay. We're winning.
Ukraine is winning. And nobody ever defined what exactly does winning mean in a war against the world's largest nuclear power. Who considers this to be an existential threat? No one. There's no discussions.
Just this ridiculous tribalism, the idea that, oh, if they're losing, that means we're winning. This is the extent of their logic. It would be like a goal of defeating America with a drone warfare out of Mexico. Like, you don't wanna win this war. You don't wanna bring too much pain.
It's it's suicide. But, yeah, here we are. Anyways, any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: No. I mean, you know, I'm not religious, but pray for peace. Pray for something. Hope something happens. But also keep doing what you're doing, Glenn, because you are you know, you're the the interviews you have have a meaningful impact.
I I take a look at you're interviewing the right people. You're asking the right questions. You're getting the right conversations, and and and it's resonating across the the the intellectual aspect of the World Wide Web. You know? We we know that independent media that's Internet based oftentimes has zero quality control, and it it brings out the worst in us.
But you bring out the best in terms of intellectual development of complex ideas. Just keep doing what you're doing because, you know, you and I can't solve all the world's problems. We don't have the capacity to, you know, to make decisions. But I can guarantee you that, you know, what you say and maybe what I say sometimes and and what you get other people to say resonates in certain circles that do have the ability to advise on policy. So, yeah, don't just pray because praying's passive.
Keep doing what you're doing. And for all your supporters out there, keep supporting Glitter because this you're you're one of the more important voices out there.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And, yeah, I hope it does make a difference. So thanks again for taking the time now.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks. Have a good day.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: Toward All-Out War With Both Russia & Iran https://youtu.be/Dx7osj5gCmo https://t.co/gDfEpyd5tM
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn discusses growing fears that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is approaching a “third world war,” citing weekend attacks on Moscow, claims of Western assistance to Ukraine, and attacks “coming from NATO territory” without permission from Baltic states and Finland. He notes Europe mass-producing or intending to mass-produce long-range strike weapons to strike deep inside Russia, and asks Professor John Mearsheimer how events may develop, what options Russia has, and what futures lie ahead.
Mearsheimer says Ukrainians are escalating against the Russian homeland. Earlier in the war they relied mainly on missiles under limits from Europeans and Americans; now they have turned to drones and developed a significant drone force capable of striking into Russia. He argues drone damage is not enough to affect the war’s outcome meaningfully, but warns the danger is continued escalation: drone attacks rising over time, and later missiles being added, resulting in combined missile-and-drone attacks on Russia. He says the key question is what Russia will do in response.
He reports that Sergei Karaganov argues Russia should strike European targets to send a signal that actions are unacceptable, starting with conventional weapons and then—if necessary—nuclear weapons. Mearsheimer says Karaganov claims that while the idea was previously a minority view, now most Russians Mearsheimer speaks to agree, arguing Russia is “fed up” and that escalating attacks on the Russian homeland are unacceptable.
Glenn suggests further escalation may occur beyond retaliation, including more brutal attacks on Ukraine and conventional attacks against countries such as Germany or Estonia, and raises discussions about Ukraine possibly “liberating Moldova” from Transnistria, where thousands of Russian troops are present, as another escalation pathway. Mearsheimer frames the conflicts as lacking bargaining space—comparing them to the Iran conflict between Iran and the United States/Israel. He says both sides see the other as an existential threat, leaving no room for negotiation, and that desperation drives risky behavior.
Regarding diplomacy, Glenn questions how diplomacy can fail repeatedly. Mearsheimer says there is “zero bargaining space” because Russia sees Ukraine and European positions as existential threats, while Europe and Ukraine increasingly view Russia’s success in Ukraine as an existential threat. He adds that the United States does not view Russia as an existential threat, implying Trump is willing to bargain, but Europeans and Ukrainians do not want to negotiate the deal Trump proposes. He says Trump may have “washed his hands” of a diplomatic settlement and believes the war must be settled on the battlefield.
Glenn then asks whether the United States would join if Russia struck Estonia. Mearsheimer says Karaganov’s framework involves attacking NATO countries with conventional weapons, which in the past would almost guarantee U.S. involvement. He says it is unclear what Trump would do, but emphasizes that once escalation begins, nuclear weapons are in the background. He describes the escalation ladder as being “felt in the dark,” where nuclear use is a rung that everyone wants to avoid, giving nuclear threats “huge deterrent value.”
Glenn returns to deterrence and escalation dynamics, suggesting NATO is overly confident Russia is deterred, while Russia waits and then takes bigger steps. Mearsheimer says even limited conventional missile strikes into NATO countries—killing hardly anyone—would be a huge step because they would strike NATO members. He also argues Russia is winning the war and that drones have slowed Russian territory gains, making progress incremental. He concludes that slow battlefield progress, no bargaining space, and rising homeland attacks make serious escalation likely, and that Russia may only need a major conventional step to trigger a “gigantic leap forward.”
He further argues narrative incentives increase the risk: if the West believes Russians are losing momentum, Europeans and Ukrainians may increase attacks on Russian homeland. He says rebranding in the West could also shape decisions, including how people describe the Iran war’s objectives.
Glenn pivots to Iran, saying it may be “hours away” or within 20–48 hours, and asks how it may develop. Mearsheimer says Iranian and American settlement proposals are “light years apart,” with no public evidence of behind-closed-doors concessions. He describes the sequence as a 40-day bombing campaign failing, followed by a ceasefire and a blockade strategy that also is not working; he says time is something Trump does not have because of economic consequences. He argues Trump’s choices appear to be restart bombing or cut a deal on Iran’s terms, and that returning to bombing would not cause Iranian surrender, while increasing incentives for Iran to escalate attacks across the Gulf, including threats to shut down the Red Sea and damage key infrastructure.
When Glenn asks about strengthening the blockade by moving it (e.g., toward the Strait of Malacca), Mearsheimer says the location does not matter much; the blockade is not inflicting sufficient punishment to get Iran to surrender, and if the Strait of Hormuz is closed, economic damage worsens over time. He says Iran and Gulf countries are working on ways to beat the blockade, complicating any attempt to inflict punishment strong enough to force surrender.
Glenn asks about the broader U.S. strategy amid multipolarity claims and the sense that diplomacy is failing. Mearsheimer says the U.S. is shifting the burden of Ukraine onto Europeans, is working to prevent crises or war in East Asia involving the U.S., and is deeply involved in fighting in the Middle East—specifically the Iran war.
He concludes that the U.S. is unlikely to accept defeat in a war once involved, tying it to lessons from Vietnam: entering wars is easier than getting out, and the U.S. searches for ways to win even when defeat is recognized. He says there is reason to believe Trump may return to a massive bombing campaign driven by desperation, but that it still would not work. He adds that a “meltdown” may be overstated, drawing on historical comparison between Johnson in Vietnam and Trump’s potential political fate, while arguing Trump has “no good option.”
Glenn asks about additional “cards” the U.S. could play through regional actors or proxies. Mearsheimer says no comparable proxy force exists to match what Ukraine represented, and argues that if the U.S. and Israel together could not defeat Iran, then other actors like the UAE by themselves are not positioned to take on Iran.
In closing, Glenn notes fears of more escalation in both Ukraine and Iran and says the situation ahead may be “very troubling.” Mearsheimer agrees and calls the escalation ladder framing “very depressing,” ending with the theme that once conflicts begin, escalation and difficulty exiting are persistent.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor John Mearsheimer to discuss, the events of the world. Thank you as always for coming back on.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Glenn. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 0: So it's starting to feel like we're already in a third world war Third World War here because, as you saw, the weekend attacks on Moscow, they were quite extensive. And I at least go with the assumption that this had some form of Western assistance simply because well, The Ukraine's been using NATO weapons. NATO's been involved in the war planning, the intelligence, the target selection, and they even have contractors operating some of the weapons and also assist to evade Russian air defenses. But then we saw attacks coming from NATO territory. We heard the Baltic States and Finland argue that, well, they didn't give permission for this, and, you know, they they they said that they did not approve, but it still happens yet again.
But now we see the the sorry, the Europeans, they're mass producing this or at least they're stating their intent to mass produce long range strike weapons for this explicit purpose of striking deep inside Russia. They make the case why the war has to be brought to Russia. And now, of course, we have this massive attack on the capital of Russia. And I was wondering how how do you see this situation developing now? What options do Russia have now, and what possible futures are there in front of us?
Speaker 1: Well, it's clear that the Ukrainians are going up the escalation ladder here. They're doing more and more to strike at the Russian homeland. And it's quite clear that in the early years of the war they relied mainly on missiles and they had a limited number of missiles and the Europeans and the Americans tended to put significant limits on their use of those western missiles against mother Russia. But what's happened now is that the Ukrainians have turned to drones and they've developed a significant drone force that has the ability to strike into Russia. I think at this point in time, the amount of damage that those drones can do is not that great and it's certainly not gonna affect the outcome of the war in any meaningful way.
That's not gonna happen. But I think the great danger moving forward here is that the Ukrainians working with the Europeans who remain determined to defeat Russia will increase the number of strikes and the kind of strikes on Russia. I would imagine that the number of drone attacks will go up over time. And at some point, the Ukrainians, with help from the Europeans, will add missiles to the mix. And it'll be missile and drone attacks on Russia.
And then the question you have to ask yourself is what will the Russians do? And you've had Sergei Karagunov on your show. And Sergei Karagunov has said very clearly that he thinks that what should be done is that The United excuse me, is that Russia should strike at European targets to send a very clear signal to the Europeans that this is just unacceptable and this has to stop. And his view is that you start with conventional weapons and if that doesn't work you turn to nuclear weapons. Now he points out, and I think this is very important, that when he first started broaching this idea of his in the early days of the war, he was in a distinct minority.
Very few people agreed with him. But he argues now, and I take him at his word because he is an honest person, that the overwhelming majority of people that he talks to, agree with him. The Russians in a sense are fed up, and they're tired of the war in general. And the idea that Ukraine is now escalating by hitting the homeland, the Russian homeland, more and more is just unacceptable, so something has to be done. So I think there's no question, Glenn, that if the war goes on and if Ukraine working with the Europeans continues continues to up the ante in terms of striking at Russia, striking at cities like Moscow, the Russians will retaliate along the lines that Karagunov is talking about.
Speaker 0: I'm getting the impression that, well, the retaliation will will come now anyways because it's the the pressure was mounting so much already, and this, again, appears to be more than they can accept or absorb. But you can also make that there will be before that, possibly another step on the escalation ladder, that is to do more brutal attacks on Ukraine. And if that doesn't deter the Europeans, go with conventional weapons against a country like, you know, Germany or Estonia. But we also see other pathways to escalation, though. That is, there's talks yet again about how Ukraine could fairly easily, in their words, liberate Moldova from from the the government in Transnistria, which is this breakaway region.
However, it happens to have thousands of Russian troops, so this would be, again, a huge escalation, and one can assume this will be greenlighted by NATO. So did you see any other pathways here? Because it looks like we're getting very close to a disaster.
Speaker 1: Well, when I think about the situation between Russia on one side and Ukraine and the Europeans on the other, It's not altogether unlike the war in Iran, the war between Iran on one side and The United States and the Israelis on the other side. Both sides in both conflicts are unwilling to make any meaningful concessions and they just want to continue the fight. And you get to the point where some of the participants become desperate and they'll do what ever they think they can get away with to win the war. This is why we're worried about Trump attacking Iran this week, a subject I'm sure we'll get to in due course. We all understand that Trump is desperate and when you're desperate you sometimes roll the dice.
Even when you think you're not gonna win, you think there may be a sliver of a chance but it's worth taking a risk. And if you look at the situation between the Ukrainians and the Europeans on one side and the Russians on the other side, there's just no room for negotiation here. There's no way that this war could be shut down diplomatically. So both sides are going to continue to fight. And the Russians are reaching a point where they're saying to themselves that this has to stop.
And the idea that we're going to allow the Ukrainians and the Europeans to take us up the escalation ladder and launch massive attacks against Moscow with drones and missiles is just unacceptable. And we have to stop it. And if that means we have to pursue a really risky strategy, so be it. So I think you see that logic at play very clearly with regard to the Russian Ukrainian war. And of course the same logic applies on the UkraineEuropean side of the equation.
The Ukrainians are desperate to rescue the situation. They're desperate to keep the Europeans involved in the fight and therefore they want to convince the Europeans that they can do things to the Russians that will turn the tide one way or another. So the Ukrainians have very powerful incentives to up the ante and the Russians now have very powerful incentives to up the ante. The Europeans have powerful incentives to up the ante. And there's no bargaining space here.
So this just tells you we're gonna go up the escalation ladder. And as you and I both know, this is not going to have a happy ending. And if we go back to Iran, which I don't want to get into in any detail at this point in time, you can tell a similar story. So we're in deep trouble both in The Middle East and in Ukraine.
Speaker 0: Well, like I said, another commonality, though, between the Iran war and the Ukraine war is the the absence of diplomacy, I think. Well, if you look in in Europe, they they're still discussing whether or not they should talk to Russia, if they should talk to Russia, who should represent the Europeans. You have people you have a I saw pub Politico publishing that Kayakalas should not, according to some EU diplomats, given that, well, she's highly problematic. She's not gonna be able to get anywhere with the Russians. And, you know, if if you decide to talk to the Russians, decide on who should represent the Europeans, then they also have to agree on a common position.
And, again, we we seem to be very, very far away from even sitting down and talking to the Russians. Meanwhile, while this is so difficult to make diplomacy work, going up the escalation ladder seemed to happen without any debate or a second thought at all. It's it's quite hard to believe this is actually real, but how do you make sense of this, though, the the breakdown in diplomacy overall? Because it's a it's a common theme we've seen around the world that is it's it's not work we're not able to negotiate anything with the significant with the Chinese, at least that's how I saw it, with the Russians, the Iranians. Is it simply too many changes happening at once, or how how do you make sense of the consistent failure of diplomacy?
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you look at the Ukraine conflict, the key to understanding why there's zero bargaining space is that from Russia's point of view, the Ukrainian and European positions represent an existential threat. And obviously from Ukraine's point of view, and I think increasingly from Europe's point of view, Russia's position, Russia's success in Ukraine represents an existential threat. So you have two sides here, the Europeans and the Ukrainians on one side and the Russians on the other side, who see this as a war between two sides that are determined to fight to the finish. And there's no room for bargaining here with an existential threat. And the end result is there's no bargaining space.
Now, if you factor in The United States, in part because of geography but also just because The United States is so powerful The United States also has incentives to have good relations with the Russians. We don't view we meaning the Americans don't view the Russians as an existential threat. And that of course is why Trump is willing to bargain with the Russians. He's not adept at diplomacy. Don't misunderstand me.
He's, you know, hamfisted extreme when it comes to doing diplomacy. But nevertheless, he's made it clear that he's willing to cut a deal with Putin. But the problem is Trump can't get to first base because the Europeans and the Ukrainians don't want to negotiate a deal along the lines that Trump is proposing with Russia. So there's just hardly any hope for diplomacy there. And of course, I think Trump in some ways has washed his hands of the Russia Ukraine war because he understands that he can't get a deal, that this one has to be settled on the battlefield.
So I think that's why you don't have any diplomatic space here.
Speaker 0: Well, I guess the million dollar question though is would The US enter a war with Russia? Because let's say the the the Russians launch a conventional strike on Estonia for allowing Ukraine to send its drones through its territory that is attacking the Baltic Coast of Russia. How likely do you think it would be for The United States to join in or, well, do something significant if the Russians would do such a limited strike, not for conquering anything, but for essentially retaliating and restoring its deterrent?
Speaker 1: That's very hard to say. I mean, if we go back to what Karagunov is talking about, he is talking about attacking NATO countries. Of course, at first it's with conventional weapons. But if you attack a NATO country, at least in the past, that would almost guarantee that The United States would come in. It's not clear what Trump would do at this point in time given all the trouble that we face in The Middle East.
And here we're talking of course about the Iran war. But also if you get into a tit for tat with the Russians, and again this is what Karagunov is proposing, for tat. Karagunov understands that once you start attacking into Western Europe or Eastern Europe that it's likely that you'll go up the escalation ladder at least somewhat. So the question is what does The United States think it can gain by playing tit for tat? And the answer is probably not much.
And of course this is why Karagunov is pushing this idea and why so many people buy into it. So it's not clear the Americans will respond, especially if the attack into Eastern Europe or Western Europe is limited. But who can say for sure? But you know what's happening here, Glenn? I think the Russians long ago concluded that the West, and the Ukrainians, but especially the West, just does not respect red lines.
The West seems to have forgotten that we're dealing with great powers that have nuclear weapons. As you and I have talked about before, it's truly amazing that The United States and Britain aided Ukraine when it invaded the Russian homeland in the 2024. This is the Kursk offensive. And of course, we then aided Ukraine when it attacked one leg of Russia's strategic nuclear triad. As you've heard me say before, this was unthinkable during the Cold War.
The idea that we would help an ally invade the Soviet Union, that would never happen. Or that we would help an ally or we ourselves would attack one leg of the strategic nuclear triad. This is just unthinkable. It was just so dangerous. But this is what's happened in the Russia Ukraine war.
And as we've also talked about, you know, there's lots of evidence that Ukraine, with help from The United States and the British, was trying to take out Putin. And all this makes it clear that the West and the Ukrainians, of course, are willing to behave in what I would describe as reckless ways. And the problem that the Russians face is that they did not respond in any meaningful way in the past when the West did those things. This is one of the reasons I think that Karagunov's argument now gets more traction. I think a lot of Russians understand that they would have been smarter to respond much more forcefully to these provocations that I just described early on.
And by not responding, they have allowed the West and the Ukrainians to think that they can get away with striking at the Russian homeland. And of course this is where we started. You were remarking about these large scale attacks on Moscow. It's quite clear that the West and the Ukrainians are not deterred. And if anything, as you pointed out, it looks like we're going to go up the escalation ladder.
So if you're playing Russia's hand, whether you like the Russians or not, but if you're playing their hand and you see what's happened in the past, you see what's happened over the weekend, and you listen to the Europeans talk, you listen to the Ukrainians talk, and you think about where this is headed, it's pretty obvious to me and I'm sure to you that the logical conclusion is that you're going to have to put your foot down, as my mother used to say, and you're going to have to send a very clear signal that this is just unacceptable. If the West and the Ukrainians want to go up the escalation ladder, you'll go up the escalation ladder with them and you'll make them pay a god awful price in the end. So this is basically what's going on here from an escalation point of view. At the same time, you have no bargaining space. And as you know better than I do, this is a remarkably dangerous situation.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I think the problem is I think in NATO, they become overly confident that Russia is deterred because the the the thinking seems to be, well, Russia would never dare to retaliate because, well, I think the the problem is twofold. On one hand, they don't see it as a retaliation because many have convinced themselves that they're not participant in this war. They're just giving weapons to Ukraine like this this you know, that that that's it. But the second would be, yeah, this overconfidence that the Russians are deterred.
That is we can bomb the Russians, attack them, kill them, but they wouldn't dare to respond because then we would bring out the big guns, and they wouldn't so they would be too afraid. Now once you become too confident in the adversary being deterred, you can do some very crazy things. And I'm just wondering if you see a different deterrence on each side or how how this might go up the escalation ladder, because often I get the impression NATO is does more incremental, the turn no. Sorry. Incremental steps up the escalation ladder a bit up and down, while the Russian team seems to wait and then take bigger steps.
So for example, seizing Crimea in 2014 when the West began to send weapons, they suddenly annexed these four oblasts in 2022. Do you think there's something there that the Russians do not do these small steps and rather do huge steps up the escalation ladder, or or in general? How do you see this moving forward?
Speaker 1: Well, is what Kariganov is talking about is a huge step. I mean, even if you launched three missiles into Romania and three missiles into Poland and you killed hardly anyone, and here we're talking about conventional missiles, that would be a huge step because it would be a Russian strike on two members of NATO. So the Russians don't have to do much to really ratchet things up. And I think that invariably that's what they're talking about. Now, let me just come at this from a slightly different angle.
I did not think we would be at this point because I thought that the Russians would win on the battlefield and that the war would be pretty much settled by now on the battlefield. In my opinion, there's no question that the Russians are winning the war. And even if the war was stopped right now, the Russians have won. They have conquered roughly 20% of Eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainians are not gonna recover that territory. And furthermore, if you look at what's happening on the battlefield, the Ukrainians are losing.
The Russians are moving forward. But they're doing so at an incremental pace and it's because of drones. Mean drones, which were not manifestly apparent at the beginning of the war, are now manifestly apparent on the battlefield. And it makes it very difficult for the Russians to capture territory quickly and to an effect finish off the Ukrainians. I don't think the Ukrainians have enough troops to cover the front lines absent drones.
If there were no drones, the front lines would be porous enough that the Russians could rather easily pour through. But given that we have lots of drones in the sky, the Ukrainians with small numbers of troops can hold the front lines and make it very difficult for the Russians to make progress. So I think there's no question the Russians have won the war and the only interesting question at this point is how much additional territory they'll end up taking. But the fact is it's taking time. The Russians cannot count on winning a quick and decisive victory at this moment.
And the end result is that there is pressure on the Russians to do something with regard to the ongoing air war that we started talking about. So I think given the slow progress the Russians are making on the battle field and given the fact that there is no bargaining space and given the fact that the Europeans and the Ukrainians seem determined to increase the number and quality of the attacks on the Russian homeland, I think it's inevitable that you're gonna get serious escalation. And as I said, it doesn't take a major step by the Russians in terms of number of missiles launched into into NATO territory to represent a gigantic leap forward.
Speaker 0: I'm still wondering if that message would be, I guess, received as intended in Europe because it sounds more likely that when Russia finally retaliates, that the Europeans would essentially conclude, oh, look. We always told you that after Ukraine, Russia would also attack NATO. This is why we're helping Ukraine. So they they wouldn't see it as a deterrent. They would just see it as Moscow's march towards Paris, essentially, something along those lines.
I might be mistaken, of course, but
Speaker 1: If I could just jump in, Glenn. I think what you're missing is that in the background is the nuclear threat. We're not just talking about starting World War one or World War two, which would be absolutely horrible in its own sense, but we're talking about the fact that the Russians have nuclear weapons and that Karagunov and others are talking about using those nuclear weapons. It's very important to understand that. So once you begin to go up the escalation ladder, everybody understands that at some point up there, it's hard to figure out exactly where that point is.
Your eyes are closed and you're feeling your way up the escalation ladder, right? But somewhere up that ladder is nuclear use. On one of the rungs is the use of nuclear weapons. And everybody or almost everybody is going to want to avoid that. This is what Karriganov understands.
The mere threat of nuclear weapons will have huge deterrent value. And I think he's correct in that regard because we don't want to get incinerated. And what Karagunov is talking about and others are talking about is getting out on the slippery slope. And once you're out on the slippery slope, who knows how far you're going to slip, right? Again, we're on the escalation ladder, you can't see for sure where you're going.
Your eyes are closed, right? You're feeling your way around in the dark and nuclear weapons may be used. So the argument here is that once you start up the escalation ladder, the incentives for everybody to put an end to it very quickly are very great.
Speaker 0: Yes. So that's why I see the logic in the strike against the NATO country, not because this is low risk, but doing nothing now. It seems like this is even greater risk because Europeans already told us where where they're gonna take this. We want to bring the war to Russia. We're gonna mass produce long range missiles and drones to strike deep inside Russia.
This is essentially what we're gonna do, and they're shown now with this attack on Moscow that this is what they're planning to do. So not doing anything. Now it seems almost more reckless than striking NATO, which shows how, well, horrific situation we got ourselves into. That being said, I I did wanna pivot a bit towards another horrible war, which seems to be get out of control, which is Iran. It from what I understand, after China, there was no meaningful changes.
The the the Iranians don't accept American proposals. The Americans don't accept Iranian proposals. And there's many now warning that a war could be mere hours away or, you know, twenty four or forty eight hours. How do you see this situation developing? My my the only source of relief or calm now seems to be that it doesn't make any sense, that it's unclear to me what can be achieved, which they didn't achieve in those forty days.
So what are what are we looking at here?
Speaker 1: Well, if you look at the proposals that the Iranians and the Americans are making on how to settle this conflict, you see that they're light years apart. There's no bargaining space here, in this conflict as there is no just as there's no bargaining space in the Ukraine slash Europe Russia conflict. And therefore, you're not gonna get a deal unless they're making concessions behind closed doors that we just don't know about. But there does not appear to be any evidence of that. Everything you see in the public record tells you there's just no agreement on any of the key issues between the two sides.
And Trump is getting desperate. There's just no question about that. We started with a bombing campaign that lasted forty days. That didn't work. So on April 8 we moved to a ceasefire and then our coercive leverage was supposed to come from the blockade.
The blockade was the new formula for getting Iran to surrender. The original formula was the forty day bombing campaign. That didn't work. Well, it's quite clear that the blockade is not working either. And that if it ever is gonna work, it's gonna take a long time.
And time is something that Trump doesn't have. He's gotta deal with this quickly. He's gotta get a settlement because of the economic consequences of this war. And that means he has really two choices. He can go back to bombing or he can basically cut a deal on Iran's terms.
And he finds it almost impossible to cut a deal on Iran's terms. I think that he hoped that when he went to Beijing, he could talk to the Chinese and the Chinese would be willing to put pressure on Iran and the Iranians would end up making some significant concessions that would allow Trump to declare victory even though he would have to make concessions himself. But at least the at least the Iranians would make major concessions too. But there was no evidence the Chinese were willing there is no evidence the Chinese were willing to do that. So China's not helping.
So he's back to square one here. And the question is, what does he do? And, I think one gets a sense that he might very well, roll the dice and, go back to bombing Iran. There's no question that the Israelis and the neoconservatives in The United States are pushing him in that direction. But the problem he faces is that using or launching another bombing campaign is not going to fix the problem.
It's not going to cause the Iranians to surrender. Almost everybody understands that. You can inflict massive punishment on Iran as we did in the first forty days of the war and they won't surrender. If anything, they'll become more committed than ever to hanging in there. And then the other problem that Trump faces is that the Iranians have a second strike capability.
And if you think about restarting the bombing campaign, Glenn, it seems clear to me if it didn't work the first time, you're going to have to even go harder at them the second time. In other words, you're going to have to make the bombing campaign this time around even more intense. It makes common sense. The bombing campaign didn't work the first time and you expect it to work the second time, it has to be because it's going to be a much more massive bombing campaign than the forty day campaign we started the war with. But if you do that, that gives the Iranians a greater incentive to just wreck the entire Gulf, to go after almost every country in the Gulf and do everything possible to destroy those countries, shut down the Red Sea, and so forth and so on.
And the end result is that even greater damage will be done to the international economy and the Iranians will still be in the fight. So I don't see why from a strategic point of view, Trump wouldn't just accept the fact that we've lost and cut a deal. Is it a good alternative? No. But it's the least bad alternative.
You know, going back to bombing and launching a more massive bombing campaign than we did last time, not gonna solve the problem. Just gonna make it worse as I said. But anyway, you don't have the sense at least from what we can see on the outside that Trump is willing to make any meaningful concessions to the Iranians and let them walk away with a victory. So it appears that he may very well roll the dice.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's what I'm thinking. If it does go back into this war, it's gonna have to be much higher intensity despite being fewer military targets they have left. But that means, yeah, the Iranians have very little reason to have any restraint.
As you said, they can shut down this Red Sea. They can essentially destroy a lot of the Gulf States. They can cut Internet cables. They can make a significant territorial conquests against Kuwait through the well, you have the Iraqis do it. I mean, there's so much that can be done.
I'm it's it's yeah. This is why it's hard to imagine then going down this path. But let's say instead of escalating going back into the war, Trump decides to instead strengthen the the the blockade. So one of the problems now is to have to have too far distance from the Iranian coast. But what if they moved it, for example, to the Strait Of Malacca or something to cut off the Iranian ships there?
Do you do you also, of course, bringing the war to some extent to China. Do you think this is, you know, something like this is possible where, you know, the they essentially begin to draw in more actors?
Speaker 1: Well, the problem here is not where the blockade is located. The problem here is that the blockade does not inflict sufficient punishment on Iran to get it to surrender. And as long as Iran doesn't surrender and the Strait Of Hormuz is closed, this has huge consequences for the international economy. And as time goes by, the situation just worsens. If you look at what's happening to inflation inside The United States and around the world and you start thinking about the problems that various countries are having servicing their debt or their debts and how this is likely to become a more acute problem over time, what you see is that the incentives for President Trump to shut this war down sooner rather than later are very great.
But again, how does he do that? And I think where the blockade is located just doesn't matter very much. That's why I think that continuing the blockade is not a viable alternative. I think the Trump administration recognizes that. That's why we're talking about going back to bombing.
We're talking about going back to bombing because the blockade doesn't work. And you want to remember that just as the countries in The Gulf outside of Iran are looking for ways to beat the blockade, the Iranians themselves are looking for ways to beat the blockade. And all of the players have some options here. So the Iranians are hard at work trying to figure out different ways to get around the blockade and they have some cards to play here. And that's what makes it very difficult to inflict the kind of punishment on Iran that might, and I underline the word might, might get the Iranians to surrender.
Speaker 0: Well, I just have a hard time seeing the overall strategy or direction of The US here, though. Where where exactly are they going? Because we were told in the national security strategy of '25 that The US was likely heading in a more multipolar well, adjusting to a multiple multipolar, sorry, distribution of power. Now we see a lot of these wars that seem to have, you know, objective of restoring primacy for for no good reason. A lot of the relationships have been spoiled, for example, with Europeans, the East Asians, well, the Gulf States are probably accidentally so, but international law is falling apart.
No one's trusting diplomacy anymore. This is a key problem for the, you know, the Iranian and the Russian side is they wouldn't actually trust anything, not just at The US side, but the Europeans as well. So how do you where where if if you take a step back looking at all these conflicts at the same time, how do you think The US will adjust to this? Because, you know, at at one point, I thought that this The US could flip this to an opportunity. It could just argue, well, whenever we wanted to get out of the Middle East anyways, we're gonna pivot out.
The Europeans, they didn't help us. We'll go away from Europe too, and they can, you know, they could essentially make adjustment to multipolarity, but it doesn't seem this is the pathway. So where is The US going here, though?
Speaker 1: Well, with regard to Europe, what The United States is doing is shifting the burden of dealing with the Ukraine conflict onto the shoulders of the Europeans. And The United States is doing everything it can to wean itself off that conflict. Let the Europeans handle it. With regard to East Asia, it's quite clear from Trump's recent trip to Beijing that what he's doing is going to great lengths to make sure that there's no crisis in East Asia and certainly no war in East Asia involving The United States. That would be a total disaster for The United States, certainly at this point in time.
And that brings us to The Middle East. This is where we are deeply involved in fighting a war. Again, we're not fighting the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are fighting the war and we've been helping them for sure, but we're not doing the actual fighting. And certainly we're not doing any fighting in East Asia, thankfully.
But the place where we are doing the fighting is in The Middle East. This is the Iran war. And the question is what can we do to get out of that? And, you know, it's funny, but I I often sort of think about the Vietnam War, when I think about the Iran War. And, you wanna remember in 1968, after president Johnson says that he's not gonna run again because he's effectively been destroyed by the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon runs against Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon wins the election in November '68 and he takes over in January '69.
And Nixon made it clear when he was campaigning that he had a secret plan to end the war and he was gonna end the war quickly. Well, if you look at what happened after Nixon comes into office, he was not interested in ending the war. He wanted to stay in the fight. He did not wanna concede defeat. And we actually thought, you know, by 1972 that by using American air power and Vietnamese ground forces that combination would allow us would allow us to hold off the North Vietnamese and forestall defeat.
The Nixon administration did not want to lose in Vietnam. They were constantly searching for a clever strategy to make sure that we could win the war or at least not lose the war. And of course what happened in the end is that Congress forced Nixon's hand. Congress told the Nixon administration you cannot use air power to rescue the situation. May '2 when we stopped the North Vietnamese offensive with tactical air power was the last gasp.
And after that Congress made it impossible for the Nix administration to prop up the government in Saigon with air power. And of course what happened is that Saigon fell the North Vietnamese one. But Nixon and of course Henry Kissinger, who was his national security adviser and then his secretary of state, they did not want to lose. It's not the American way. And just to go to Afghanistan, as you well know we were there for twenty years fighting the Taliban.
We did not want to lose that war. So what this tells you is when The United States gets into a war, even when it's losing, it is very difficult to accept defeat. Very difficult. The United States is a very powerful country and it's constantly looking for a way to win. And this is I think the basic logic that you see it play in the case of Iran.
You know, you and I can point out to them that this war is lost and in a certain sense they recognize that but they just won't accept it. And the belief is there's just got to be a magic formula out there. After all, this is The United States Of America, the greatest country in the world, the most powerful country in the world. How can you tell me? How can you tell us that we can't defeat a small country like Iran?
This is just this can't be the case. It's that kind of logic that kicks in. And so what you see is Trump thrashing around and his advisors thrashing around looking for a solution. And there's very little evidence, at least in the public record, that anybody on the inside is saying this one's over. We lost, let's recognize that, cut a deal and minimize our losses.
Which is what they should do because the fact is that we lost this war and there's no way we can rescue the situation. But anyway, all of this is a long winded way of saying, Glenn, it's going to be very hard to get The United States to accept the fact that it has been defeated by the Iranians. And we will do everything we can to figure out a way to win the war.
Speaker 0: Well, I can see it's always been difficult for The US to accept the defeat, but the situation now looks even worse because The US is now well represented by the Trump administration, and he kinda built his whole persona or image on on being the strong, you know, great leader, making America great again. And then to be stopped in Iran. It it's something that's very difficult to swallow. I mean, if you would be defeated by the Chinese or Russians, you know, that will be one thing. But by Iran, as you said, this is something very difficult to to accept.
And furthermore, Trump bet everything on this war, it seems. That is you know, he he was gonna be a peace president, and then he went all in on this Iran war, assuming that it will be, you know, peace through strength by but now all of this is gone. So do you worry about, like, I don't know, personal meltdown or the willingness to take desperate actions to, yeah, again, reverse the situation?
Speaker 1: Well, I do worry about him taking desperate steps. This is why I think there is a reasonable chance that he will go back to a massive bombing campaign and that will be a massive bombing campaign. We will end up destroying a huge amount of infrastructure in Iran and killing many people. And this is what happens when countries become desperate. But my point to you is that it won't work.
With regard to a meltdown, I think that may be overstating it. That may happen, but I think it's again, I hate to keep going back to the Vietnam analogy, but I watched what happened to president Johnson. I was young at the time and but nevertheless remember very well, you know, when we entered the war full bore in March 1965 and then what happened to president Johnson over the next, let's say, three years. By March 1968, it was all over for him. He said he was not going to run for another term.
He was a defeated man. The war had worn him down. You could see it in his face. You could hear it in his voice. It was a devastating personal defeat for him as well as a defeat for the country.
And one can imagine a similar situation with regard to President Trump. He's not going to win this war. It's turned out to be the kind of war that he promised us he would never enter into. And of course when he entered the war he didn't think this was going to happen. And by the way, this is one of the big differences between Vietnam and this war.
In the Vietnam War, Johnson understood full well that he was in effect entering a war where we had no formula for winning that war. He thought it was essential that we enter the war anyway and try and figure out how we could win it as we moved along. But he was very pessimistic from the get go. This is different. Trump was optimistic.
This one is like the Iraq War in 2003, you remember that, where the Bush administration was wildly optimistic about how, the invasion of Iraq was gonna turned out was gonna turn out. And then of course President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and declared that mission been accomplished. Of course it all went to hell in a handbasket shortly after that. But in the case of Iraq, 2003, just like the case here in Iran on February 28, we thought we were gonna win a quick and decisive victory and live happily ever after. Very different than the Vietnam War.
Johnson and his advisors did not have any illusions but it, in this case, didn't work out very well. And the question is what does Trump do now? And as you and I have said on a number of occasions in this show, he has no good option.
Speaker 0: Well, at least in Iraq, The United States did, well, win in terms of winning the war, but it couldn't consolidate that victory. That is, the insurgency came and well, it yeah. It could it could be defined for a short period of time in in Bush's defense. But but with Iran, there was never a victory at all, though, which makes it very difficult or or sorry, different. But there seems I guess the the new branding now of the wars, it it gives me a reason to be pessimistic that is that the wars are gonna be escalated.
For example, if you look in the European media now, they have reversed back to that Ukraine has turned the tide. Ukraine is winning again. This is the propaganda has dialed up to a 100 again, so now suddenly, yeah, victory is gonna we we're gonna defeat the Russians again. They're going back to all of this nonsense. And on The US side, I thought also a very interesting rebranding.
That is you see more and more references to well, the Iran war is essentially over, which you know, the war which The United States started with a surprise attack. This is over. But now there's a new conflict, which is that Iran is blocking the Strait Of Hormuz, and America has to liberate this international waterway. I'm not sure if this is, again, to resell the war as, you know, this time, we didn't attack. You know, we're gonna open it or, you know, liberate it.
Or if this is just to sell it to Congress that this is a completely different war than the previous. I'm not sure how how are you seeing this, because it's very there's so much focus on the information war, the war of narratives these days that it's Yeah. But it's still it's how the actors are seeking to shape the narrative. It is a good indication of where they're gonna go with this, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Just to start with Ukraine. There's no question that if you look at the narrative in the West at this point in time, it's that the Ukrainians are winning. They've turned the tide, the Russians are on their back feet and so forth and so on. The great danger there, Glenn, is that that gives the Europeans and the Ukrainians an incentive to increase the attacks on the Russian homeland.
The argument that people are making is that we finally have the Russians on the run, that these attacks are devastatingly effective and let's just ramp up the number and quality of the attacks and we'll do even better on the battlefield. If you believe that rhetoric, as we discussed before, you're asking for really big trouble. To go to the case of Iran, I think there is some rebranding. I don't think it matters very much. The question is what is The United States going to do to defeat Iran and to get our way?
Is it gonna involve opening the straits? I don't think anybody really believes that we can do that and achieve victory. I think that's why they're talking about the bombing campaign. Really seems to me that you're now at a point with regard to the Iran conflict or the Iran war where you have two choices. You can well maybe you have three choices.
One is to continue the status quo. Two is to accept a fee, cut a deal. And number three is to restart the bombing campaign. Those are the options. But I don't think there's much serious talk about taking the strait.
And if they even took the strait, that wouldn't be the end of it because the Iranians have all sorts of counters that they can turn to. So I think, you know, we are where we are with the Iran war.
Speaker 0: And just my last question, there any other card The US can play here? I mean, do this do you see any regional actors, Kurds, Azerbaijanis. I mean, anyone that could use Pakistan, anyone who can essentially take the role of the, I guess, Ukrainians of the Middle East, someone they can or the Europeans, for that sake, someone they can outsource the war to. I I it's it's just hard to see. I don't see anyone with the capabilities that is the same as in Europe.
I think Ukraine was kinda the last chance to defeat the the Russians, but there's no other large proxy army you can build in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: No. I mean, if The United States and Israel together could not defeat Iran, I mean, who else could? I mean it looks like The UAE, The United Arab Emirates are spoiling for a fight with Iran. And in fact it appears that The UAE participated with The United States and Israel during the forty day bombing campaign. But The UAE by itself is no match for Iran and in fact if The UAE were to get into a fight with Iran, I think the Iranians would destroy The UAE as a country.
They'd go after the desalination plants, they'd go after their energy infrastructure. It would be a total disaster for The UAE. In fact, I don't understand why The UAE is not trying to work out some sort of modus vivendi with the Iranians, but of course they're not. But they're not in a position to take on the Iranians. No.
I mean, this is I think very simple. If we can't do it militarily, we meaning The United States can't do it militarily with the Israelis, that means it can't be done and we've failed. And therefore we have to cut a deal and that deal is going to reflect the fact that we lost and Iran won. And that is at this point in time unacceptable to The United States. And as you can imagine, Glenn, that is categorically unacceptable to the Israelis because the Israelis view Iran as an existential threat, rightly or wrongly.
And so if Trump were to be inclined to cut a deal that reflected the fact that we lost, the Israelis and their supporters in The United States would fight that mightily. And that of course makes you wonder where is this train headed, right? Maybe what I'm saying here is that even if Trump is inclined to cut a deal, the pressure on him not to cut that deal from Israel and its supporters in The United States, who are enormously influential, could prevent him from sitting down with the Iranians. And then you say to yourself, where does this all lead?
Speaker 0: Well, the media suggests we again, we could be only a day or so away from returning to war with Iran, and I'm hearing that the Russians gonna gonna unveil some new weapons on in Ukraine. So it looks like it's gonna be a very troubling week ahead. So let's check back again later. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No, I agree with you. I think we could title this talk up the escalation ladder. Just very depressing to think where we are, and it's also very depressing to think that two individuals like us who have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues really can't come up with stories to tell about either one of these two conflicts that have even a quasi happy ending. It's just, it's just very
Speaker 0: depressing. I I I keep wondering if there's a there's a feels like there's a wider problem we have now as across the West that is the inability to, like, objectively look at a situation. For for years, at least between 2015 and 2022, I was always warning that, you know, we should do everything we can to implement the Minsk agreement with you know, we should be happy we have this. Know, this can prevent a major war. If we ignore this, we're gonna invite a major war.
And it was impossible to even have that discussion. I every time I I tried to make this point, the argument more or less was, well, that that's not that's pro Russian. If you're pro Western or pro Ukrainian, then you you won't implement this because this will be a capitulation. So so as everything's dumbed down to pro this or pro that, and no one ever explained how they imagined this playing out. If you ignore this peace deal, you build up the Ukrainian army to the point where the Russians sees, okay.
Now we can't accept this extensional threat. I mean, even now, we will know what has happened by by ignoring this peace, by escalating at every turn. This was not good for Ukraine. It's being destroyed. This is not good for the West.
We're being weakened, being fragmented. No one can explain a convincing story how this was gonna play out, and even after it all becomes a mess, they use it as an evidence for, well, look, we always told you that Russia was bad, but there's no serious discussion. And it's it's just, you know, if you have to be pro this, and if you are, then you have to repeat these slogans. If you contest it, well, then you're with the enemy, essentially. It's I I miss common sense.
I miss I miss actual discussions and debates. We definitely don't have it in this country, and it's a big problem across Europe. So anyways. Yep.
Speaker 1: Hard to disagree with you. You know, just one final point, Glenn, just going back to Vietnam. One thing I learned in those days, and it's been proven true over time, is that it's very easy for The United States to get involved in wars, but it's very difficult to get out. You get into these conflicts thinking you're gonna win a quick and decisive victory or you pursue a policy that looks like there's gonna be big trouble ahead but you say to yourself, I can deal with it. I can fix the problem as I move forward.
But that is invariably not the case. You rarely win quick and decisive victories when you go to war. Sometimes you do. But and you know, when The United States picks a fight with a country like Iran, I say to myself when it starts that this one is gonna be very difficult to get out of. Same thing is true when we invade Iran I mean, when we invade Afghanistan and when we invade Iraq.
I mean, we go into Iraq in 2003, we finally get out in 2011, then we have to go back in in 2014. We still have troops on the ground in Iraq. We're still interfering in the politics of Iraq. It's really quite amazing. It took us twenty years to get out of Afghanistan and the Vietnam War was another disaster.
But anyway, know, getting into these conflicts is much easier than getting out of them. That's one lesson I learned a long time ago and I think these conflicts prove that to be true.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, definitely. Yeah. That's been a lesson over the past thirty years as well, this forever wars. Easy to start, hard to finish.
And that will definitely be the lesson of the Iran war as well as the Strait Of Hormuz now seems to be lost. Anyways, thank you so much for taking the time, and I hope to see you again soon.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Ben.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Trita Parsi: Iran War Marks the End of American Primacy https://youtu.be/7QUx7GjIOBo https://t.co/0VB4hRSi9y
Video Transcript AI Summary
The Quincy Institute’s executive vice president Trita Parsi discusses the risk that the U.S. goes to war with Iran again and how the dynamics of the last round may shape a new one. He says the risk of war has significantly gone up, though it is unclear whether it is above 50%. He argues the Beijing meeting between Trump and Xi delivered very little to the American side, noting that the Chinese statement about wanting the Strait open is described as “vanilla” and not meaningful because it depends on definitions of “open” and Iran’s control versus traffic flow. Parsi contrasts U.S. desires to “regionalize” the mechanism with China’s arrangement to get its ships out.
He links recent increases in hostile rhetoric to a pattern of failures: the blockade of the blockade failing after the blockade itself and war threats failing, suggesting the Trump administration is being pushed toward another escalatory move. He also says Iran is “almost counting on an attack” while negotiations remain far apart on key issues, and he describes U.S. inflexibility in meeting “maximum demands.”
On nuclear and related Chinese positions, Parsi says China’s stance aligns with the NPT and that China and other P5 states seek to preserve privileged status as nuclear weapon states. He contrasts China never saying Iran should not enrich with a hypothetical supportive signal that would have been made by calling for no enrichment.
Discussing what could differ in a second round, Parsi critiques how Trump handled Iran’s “10 plan”: Trump publicly claimed the ceasefire would be based on Iran’s 10 proposal, but once negotiations started, he pursued a different approach. He then outlines U.S. hawks’ pushes for attacking Iran’s power grids and oil installations and even potentially destroying the state. He says assassinations and limited actions have not led to regime collapse, and that what has not been done is going in with ground troops, taking an island, or going after energy infrastructure.
Parsi argues that targeting energy assets would prompt Iranian counter-escalation against GCC oil infrastructure, shifting the crisis from a bottleneck to a production problem that would drive oil prices above $180–$200 for a long time and throw the global economy into recession or depression. He says Trump has threatened these actions but did not carry them out. He adds that Iran expects retaliation at a higher level than before, including targeting the UAE for its role during the war and its increasing strategic partnership with Israel. He claims Iranian targeting could include companies and industries connected to Trump, such as AI and data centers used by Palantir, potentially harming the UAE’s investment as an AI hub.
He also says Iran may close the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, and explore targeting undersea fiber optic cables that handle 99% of internet traffic in GCC states. He compares potential impact to a “second” Strait of Hormuz, noting Iran’s existing reliance on internal networks due to Iran’s internet being cut off.
When asked about Iraq, Parsi says he has not followed it as closely but notes revelations that Israelis may have set up air bases in Iraq with U.S. pressure, and that GCC states and Iraq territories were used in attacks against Iran, whether voluntarily, without full knowledge, or under coercion. He argues this fits a broader view of Iraq becoming weak and unable to resist U.S. demands. He says it is plausible that Iran could use Iraq as a theater for horizontal escalation, though he does not know if it is likely in the first or second round. He says the U.S. underestimated Iranian horizontal escalation and attributes part of the miscalculation to Israeli efforts to depict Iran as weaker than it is.
Parsi further explains Trump’s worldview: he says Iran’s refusal to talk directly with Trump reinforced an American belief that Iran was weak and would not escalate. He argues that Trump expected the war not to last more than four days, though he was mistaken.
On U.S. primacy and multipolarity, Parsi argues that the U.S. did not achieve a military or political win in Iran: the U.S. “lost it,” with Iran establishing escalation dominance and the U.S. begging for a ceasefire. He says global repercussions include fuel shortages and energy crises across Australia and countries in South Asia and East Asia dependent on Persian Gulf oil. He adds that if the U.S. cannot establish escalation dominance in the Persian Gulf and is not willing to pay the price to open the Strait of Hormuz, this undermines questions about U.S. ability to sustain primacy and hegemony.
In diplomacy, he emphasizes that military options are limited and costly, because defending islands and taking control of the straits would require actions and troop presence the U.S. is not willing to sustain. He claims diplomatic options are more promising, arguing Trump may be in a better position than previous presidents because he is willing to put all sanctions on the table and lift primary sanctions, which he says are executive-order based and do not require Congress, unlike secondary sanctions imposed by Congress.
Parsi says sanctions relief beyond the JCPOA matters, and notes that in Iran’s last proposal Iran became open to a “moratorium” framing of not enriching for 12 years, a “remarkable shift.” He says the talks are currently deadlocked over Iran’s 60% stockpile but that both sides have shown some flexibility on other points. He also says Iran needs sanctions relief even more after the war, citing $300,000,000,000 in damages.
Addressing Iran’s trust and the Strait of Hormuz, Parsi says Iran is unlikely to give up control, arguing it can reopen and reclose the strait due to assets along its coastline. He discusses a GCC proposal for an “environmental management fee” that he describes as functioning as a toll. He says any such payment would not compare to the scale of investments Iran could attract if sanctions were lifted.
Finally, Parsi argues that peace depends on shifting rhetoric from zero-sum, hegemonic messaging toward diplomacy-based expectations of mutual concessions. He says Trump’s counterproductive social media rhetoric can disrupt breakthroughs and raises Iranian questions about his discipline and trustworthiness, while also claiming Trump is uniquely capable of making statements that break political taboos, including saying he wants Iran to flourish.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who is an, yeah, award winning author and the wash Washingtonian magazine for five years in a row, named him as one of the top 25 influential voices on foreign policy in Washington DC. So make sure to follow his substack, and I will leave a link in the description. So thank you very much for coming on. It's a great honor to have you on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Glenn. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 0: Well, I I wanted to ask you about the war in Iran because this is something you follow quite closely. And I was well, I guess a good place to start is how likely is it that we're going back to war now? Because from what I what I understood, nothing was really resolved or achieved that with the meeting in Beijing between Trump and Xi. So is this essentially a return to war?
Speaker 1: I think, unfortunately, the risk of war has significantly gone up. I'm not so sure yet whether it is above 50% or not. There is still a bit of a time to be able to find an exit and it's also not clear to me whether some of this rhetoric is part of the theatrics that Trump is putting on in order to pressure the other side and just kinda sharpen the choices. But if we break it down a little bit, you mentioned the Beijing Meeting. I think indeed the Beijing Meeting delivered very little to the American side on this issue.
You may have noticed that they made a big deal out of the fact that the Chinese said that they would also like to see the Strait open, which is a very vanilla statement. It is actually a rather meaningless statement. Every country in the world would like to see the strait open. The question is what are you gonna do about it and what is your definition of open? And the Chinese idea of open is not necessarily that the Iranians do not control it.
It's just that the traffic flows. The Chinese themselves have made an arrangement with the Iranians in which they are getting their ships out, so from their standpoint, it is open. But from The US standpoint, there's been a desire to not necessarily end the mechanism that the Iran is putting in place, but actually regionalize it. So their definitions of open are very different. But the larger point I'm trying to make is that if that is the best they got out of the Chinese, that tells you how little they got out of the Chinese at that meeting.
So now you're in a situation in which for the last forty eight hours, there's been a significant tick up of very hostile language that in and of itself, let's assume that war actually is in the cards, is an indication that the blockade of the blockade was a failure. And the blockade of the blockade was an indication that the war was a failure. And the war was an indication that the threats of war back were a failure. So what you have is a series of escalatory moves that all have proven to be failures and that are only leading the Trump administration towards the next escalatory move. I do think the Iranians are more or less almost counting on an attack taking place because in the negotiations, even though they have moved closer to each other on several different issues, they're still very far apart on a couple of key issues.
And, Trump has shown very little flexibility and seems to be very adamant about certain things that he needs to get his maximum demands on. Now the Iranians are quite ready for that war based on the conversations I've had with them. Happy to go into detail of things that they're planning to do in such an escalation and why the second round of this war would be quite different in some aspects than the first round.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That was actually what I want to ask you about as well. But, yeah, regarding this vanilla statement, as you said, from the from the Chinese, I thought this was quite interesting because the open straight, it can mean a lot, and it can mean nothing, as you said. The idea that this signals support for The US military activity, I would say, will be, on the contrary, not because they if The US was able to defeat Iran, destroy it or conquer it, break it up or whatever the victory would look like, it does mean that open access would be a given.
I mean, there's no open access to Venezuela, Cuba. So the the idea that this would be a statement of support for The US, I think, again, people would read into that statement what they would want. It seems a bit the same with nuclear weapons, though, wasn't it as well? Because China said Iran shouldn't get nuclear weapons, but that's what Iran says as well. So it doesn't sound like an anti
Speaker 1: Iranian statement. Not at all. Exactly. And this has been the Chinese position for a very long time and it's the position of every p five states. They're all signatories to the NPT.
They wanna keep their privileged status as nuclear weapon states within a treaty that prevents the others from getting it, so there's no meaning in that at all. If the Chinese had come out and said Iran should not have enrichment, that would be a very different statement, a statement that would be in support of the American position. But the Chinese have never said that. I don't find it likely that they will ever say that. That is simply and I think it's important to understand, the Chinese are looking at Trump and his decisions, and they're recognizing that at least one element of Trump's calculation was that he wanted to go to the Beijing meeting, having taken control over Venezuela's oil, check, and now also taking control of Iran's oil, not checked.
And that in that effort, he has created a massive mess in the region with repercussions for the global economy as a whole, and he has still not managed to get control of that situation, and he has no plan on how to win or how to actually just get out of this. There is no incentives for the Chinese to step in from an instrument of what they see as Trump's failing strategy. So why would they come in at this point and in support of The United States? It makes absolutely zero sense for them. Now if The US had put a reasonable proposal on the table that was based on a genuine compromise that the Chinese believe is viable, and they believe that the Iranians should accept it in order to get out of this situation because the Chinese would like to get stability, of course.
In that scenario, I can see the Chinese coming in and nudging the Iranians towards an agreement, but they're not gonna do it if the proposal on the table is a nonstarter, and then by that, make themselves part of America's failed strategy.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I I want to, yeah, get back to your your former answer. That is what might be different in the cards this time? Because if if The US goes back to war now, surely they they can't do more of the same because Trump seemed quite desperate to get the ceasefire last time. You know, he said the Iranians begged him, but given that The US accepted the Iranian 10 plan as a point of departure for negotiations, it it sounds more credible, the the they had the position from Tehran, that it was the Americans who are desperate for this.
But what is each side planning to do different this time you think? Will The US just go let the dogs out sorry, loose and they go all out, or how will they run this differently? Will they be less restrained this time?
Speaker 1: Before I go into that, let me just say something about the 10 plan. So, yeah, on Twitter, Trump came out and essentially said that the the ceasefire would be based on Iran's 10 proposal, which he said is workable or we can work with it. Once the negotiations started, Trump pursued a very different approach, however. So he kind of signaled acceptance of Iran's 10 points in order to get the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire, and then it just completely went in a different direction in the negotiations themselves. Now what will happen in the next round?
So from The US side, you're absolutely correct. There's few things that one can imagine that they could do differently that would really break the situation. What you have the hawks in Washington and in Israel push for is attacking Iran's power grids and oil installations and just try to destroy the state altogether. They recognize that the assassination of leaders, even though that's a very significant amount, a 135, has not led to the collapse of the regime or the implosion of the regime, nor is it likely to do so. The one thing they haven't really done is to go in with ground troops, take an island, or go after the energy grid.
Now if they had done that, of course, if we take the energy grid to begin with, this would have led to an Iranian counter escalation that would be even more dangerous for The United States because the Iranians would go after the energy and oil infrastructure of the GCC states. What they've done so far is very limited. What we have at the core of it when it comes to the oil crisis right now is a bottleneck problem. There is tons of oil sitting on tankers in the Persian Gulf waiting to get out. And oil can still be pumped out because the installations themselves are not destroyed.
If, however, The US were to go after Iran's power grid and oil installations and the Iranians were to retaliate against GCC oil installations, then you have a production problem. That means that oil prices are gonna shoot above 180, $200, and they're gonna stay high for a very long time because you have a production problem. It's not just a bottleneck problem. This means that the global economy will be thrown into a recession, perhaps even a depression. And I mean, it will be just simply devastating.
And this is part of the reason why Trump kept on threatening it, but never did it. But for completely insane people like Lindsey Graham, warmongers, you know, I don't know if there's good enough adjectives to describe them, they're pushing for this. They're willing to risk everything, the entire global economy, knowing very well of course that they're gonna destroy Trump's presidency, but they're still pushing for this. Now the Iranians do expect that whatever this may be, whether it's taking an island, going in with some grand troops, or whether it is just a massive bombardment campaign on the same scale or larger than it was before, they themselves will also try to retaliate at a higher level than they did before. This means, in particular, that they will go after The UAE because of the role that The UAE has played during the war in terms of pushing Trump to restart the war, but also because of its increasingly open association and and strategic partnership with Israel.
Within The UAE, the Iranians are likely going to target companies and and industries that are connected to Trump himself, such as AI, data centers that are used by Palantir and all of these different companies that the Iranians involved in the war anyways because of their support for the Pentagon. This could then also lead to a scenario in which UAE's investment as an AI hub actually gets destroyed, which would and this is outside of my field of expertise, have some implication for The US's AI rivalry with China. But it would also mean that they're actually deliberately going after things that are of value to Trump's businesses because of a perception that he doesn't care that much about US interests being compromised, but if his business interests, his business empire's interests are being compromised, that will be more painful for him. And they're looking for targets that would impose that type of a cost. But beyond that, it seems like this time around, they will be closing the Strait Of The Gulf Of Aden and the Red Sea.
And moreover, they're also looking at these undersea fiber optic cables that are handling 99% of all Internet traffic in the GCC states, including billions of dollars of daily transactions. And see that, or they're exploring to see if that could end up becoming like a second straight of hormones for the Iranians, mindful of the fact that the Iran's internet is already cut off and they're relying on an internal intranet that they created several different years ago. So we're talking about massive escalation on both sides. And whatever the implications have been so far for the global economy is likely going to be very little compared to what what is is about to come. Yeah.
Speaker 0: I think that's was one of the most interesting parts of the of the war was how Iran was essentially mirroring the escalation ladder, how they were willing and also capable of going up up the ladder, but that also suggests if the as you said, if The US decides to destroy its energy infrastructure, there's no reason anymore for the Iranians to hold back. So yes. I've heard a lot of signals come out, everything from shutting down the Red Sea, essentially, yeah, destroying some of the Gulf states, not just the energy facility, but desalination plants. They could cut off their Internet. But with the comments that Iraq could play a greater role as well, seizing Kuwait, for example, or just kicking out what remains of Western troops, Do you see this as a likely scenario?
Speaker 1: On the Iraqi side, I I have to say I haven't followed it as closely. And as you know, we have a new government, but there's also these very, very embarrassing revelations of how the Israelis set up one potentially two air bases in Iraq under the guidance of The United States and with The US pressuring the Iraqis to accept it, although the the New York Times story suggests that the Iraqis did not understand that these were Israeli bases. But bottom line is it's there's more and more evidence that most of the GCC states as well as Iraq, their territories were used airspaces were used for these attacks against Iran. Now whether that was to a very large extent something that they did voluntarily, whether that is something that was being done without their full knowledge, or whether they were just simply coerced into it. I mean, one thing we have to remember is that from the standpoint of someone like John Bolton, this is evidence that the Iraq war was a success.
Because it was never about democracy, it was never about human rights, obviously. It was about eliminating Iraq as a geopolitical player on the chessboard and turn it into such a weak state that The United States could force it to agree to all kinds of things such as opening up two bases for the Israelis to use for attacks against Iran. So Iraq has essentially become so weak that he has no ability to push back against these type of things. Now whether the Iraqis would, in the midst of all of this, go after Kuwait, again, I've I've not heard any of that with any credibility, but the fact that Iraq itself could become one of the theaters of the war in a horizontal escalation by the Iranians is a very very plausible scenario. I don't know if it's likely in this first in the second round, but it's definitely plausible.
Because we saw how the Iranians used horizontal escalation to really throw off The United States. The US side did not expect that the Iranians would target all of the GCC states. They really were surprised by that. They were also surprised by the taking of the Strait Of Hormuz even though US Intelligence had already predicted most of these different things. It's just that Trump has now become into a habit of not listening to US intelligence, but instead listening to the Israelis.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was surprised by Trump's how surprised Trump was, to be honest, because, in the weeks before the war as well, I had done, my podcast interviewed quite a few times, professor Marandi, is quite influential also in the media. He was always making the same point. If if or when The US attacks, the first day we're gonna shut down the Strait Of Moose and attack all their bases. And at least it should have been considered as a I mean, it seemed quite reasonable that they wouldn't allow the opponent to to dictate the the conditions of how this war should be fought.
Speaker 1: Just to explain a little bit why The US side, as well as the Pentagon, really underestimated Iranians is that there was this massive campaign by the Israelis to depict Iran as much weaker than it was. The Israelis recognized that if he need if he wanted to convince Trump to go to war, something that he's unlikely to agree to because he's he doesn't take huge foreign policy risks usually. The only way you could convince him was to by convincing him that it was easy because he's very much in favor of doing easy things. Things that are easy, low risk is his forte. So they really went at trying to depict Iranians as very weak, incapable of doing something, afraid of having a direct confrontation with The US.
Iran's own behavior had also reinforced that. Everything from strategic patience for the last couple of years in which they were taking hit after hit after hit from the Israelis and never really struck back hard until the June twelfth war. Every time they struck back, it was kind of polite, it was kind of aimed at showing that they could, but without escalating. It was actually a deescalatory move in some ways. All of this just reinforced a very strongly held view within the American system that the Iranians simply do not have the guts to face The United States.
Then there's another element that comes to Trump's own psychology. It's it's one of the biggest mistakes in my view that the Iranians committed prior to all of this, which is that they refused to talk to Trump directly. There are numerous opportunities that they could have just engaged with Trump directly, and I personally believe that had they done so, this war could have been averted altogether. And part of the reason why this reinforced Trump's view of Iran as weak is precisely because of Trump's own belief that he is willing to talk to everyone. You saw him coming in as president and said, I'll talk to anyone.
I'll talk to Kim Jong un. I'll talk to the founder of Al Qaeda in Syria, I'll invite him to the White House. And you know, I do all of this because I'm strong. Because I'm strong, I'm willing to talk to everyone. And this is a very significant shift in the American political culture because for years, the very idea of talking to various leaders was taboo.
Trump is a key reason as to why a lot of that has been broken, it was also broken to a certain extent by the Obama administration. But in Trump's world, he is capable of doing this because he is strong. So when the Iranians refuse to speak to him, and they think they're doing it and showing strength, they're refusing to talk to this to this superpower of the world, that's not how Trump sees it. Trump interprets that as weakness because he is talking to everyone because he's strong, if someone else is not willing to talk to Hill, it's because they are weak. So Iran's own conduct also reinforced the American view that Iran is weak, it's incapable, it will never dare to escalate in this horizontal way, it actually doesn't even dare to have a direct confrontation with The US.
That's part of the reason why Trump thought that this war was not gonna last more than four days. Of course, he was completely mistaken, but I think it's important to understand that some of Iran's own behavior had reinforced that view in Trump's mind.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I referred to Trump before as, yeah, the president of low hanging fruit because he does like the easy, low risk, in and out Yeah. Ideally, one day operations. That is, for example, the threats against Panama that and they and then they folded, and then gave him something for nothing, and that was a one day achievement. And same with Venezuela, in and out, some price to show off.
And and if something goes wrong like Yemen, I thought his strength was that he could just say, well, oops, that didn't work, and claim victory and go home nonetheless. It appears the problem with Iran, though, is there is there is no going back to the status quo. There is no claiming victory and going home because as long as Iran has the Strait Of Hormuz, that changes The US position, not just in the region, but, yeah, possibly in the entire world. So and, well, I guess this is something you have argued as well, that is that Iran essentially threatens the, well, as already undermined, the global primacy of The United States. I was wondering if you could, I guess, unpack that argument.
Speaker 1: Sure. So I think when we take a look at some of these important events in the world that have kinda moved us closer and closer into a more accepted and internalized multipolarity, oftentimes, we're looking at the impact and the strategic folly of the Iraq war as a very important inflection point that really moved the world faster towards multipolarity because the manner that it dramatically weakened The United States, destabilized the region, all of these repercussions from the creation of ISIS, etcetera. But when you would take a look at that war and what The US has now done in Iran, I think it's quite striking that, nevertheless, in the Iraq war, The United States was militarily tremendously successful. The entire country was taken in three weeks, and even the political objective of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was achieved. Now, of course, every all the other problems came afterwards because The United States could not stabilize the country, could not control the insurgency, it ended up becoming a ten year occupation, and then of course, you also had a twenty year occupation of Afghanistan.
But in Iran, The United States cannot even point to these things. It did not win this war militarily, in fact, it lost it. It's been a strategic defeat. The Iranians escalated horizontally, established escalation dominance, the United States had to essentially beg for a ceasefire. It got out of the ceasefire, then committed a major mistake, was to impose the blockade of the blockade.
Had it not done so, The US would actually be in a stronger position now, because the ceasefire disproportionately favored The United States. But that favor, the manner in which oil prices were lowering and that gave Trump a rep a reprieve was erased by his own blockade of the blockade, and we see now that we have higher oil prices during the ceasefire than we did during the war. And the ten year yield is now at 4.6% or so, so bond markets are now in a very bad shape as well. All of this during the ceasefire because he nevertheless escalated and made a very contentious one. Had he not, he would have been in a good position because he had achieved the key thing he wanted to do is just get out of this war, whereas the diviners had still not achieved their key objective, which was to get sanctions relief.
But nevertheless, in the Iran situation, you have a situation in which the The US lost the war militarily. It did not achieve its political objective. The repercussions are not just regional, they're global. We're seeing how in Australia you have fuel shortages, how there's energy crisis in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Philippines, how countries like South Korea and Japan are in a very dire straits right because so much of their energy is coming from the Persian Gulf and they're not getting any oil right now. So the global economic repercussions are far far greater as well.
But it also then points to another thing which is, if The United States cannot establish escalation dominance in the Persian Gulf, and it cannot actually assert its military domination there because, yes, it could technically open the Strait Of Hormuz, but it's not willing to pay the price for it. Because what we're talking about is the occupation of all of Southern Iran in order to be able to open the Strait Of Hormuz. And that will require more than 500,000 troops, it would take more than a year to amass it, etcetera. And the entire premise of America's military organizing principle has been that it's able to fight two wars in two continents at the same time. But right now, it cannot even win one fight in one continent.
All of this is now putting under question the ability of The United States to assert primacy and hegemony in various corners of the world. And in the past twenty years or so, you've had a scenario in which the American public has turned against American primacy to a very large extent, and you have pressure from the American public against these endless wars, no longer a strong belief that global hegemony provides security to The United States, it's just not cost feasible any longer. But now you may also have a scenario coming from the very states that used to lobby for this global primacy, who benefited from America's security umbrella because this security umbrella has proven itself to neither be reliable nor effective. So if the public is turning against it and the external benefactors of it are also abandoning it, that in and of itself I think will put a new type of a pressure on America's grand strategy of liberal hegemony that we have not seen yet. And it's all coming down to the fact that if you cannot win that war militarily against Iran, then again, really, what is the basis of American primacy?
What is how is The United States going to be able to conduct itself in the South China Sea vis a vis China in case of an invasion of Taiwan or whatever? Bottom line is this is putting a tremendous amount of question marks about the capability of The United States to sustain privacy.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems though at some point, it would make sense for The US to reconsider this strategy altogether because a lot of the conflicts it has now seemingly could be resolved by walking back the objective of global primacy. Well, essentially, because if you look at a lot of the conflicts The US is in at the moment, a lot of it seems unnecessary or could be challenged. So, again, if The US wants to face its threats, they can look at both capabilities and intentions, but the intentions of many of its adversaries have shifted. That is, if you go back to the nineties, the main objective of the Chinese and the Russians were to be as close as to The US possible. Even the Iranians were seeking to improve relations.
But if you look shift to the aspect of capabilities, if they're growing more powerful, this is a threat to global primacy, so they would have to be balanced. But it just seems like The US hasn't been able to take yes as an answer because if they they they could have had very different relations with all these countries, but all of it is premised on the idea that The US would then have to accept them to to, I guess, be peers or, you know, to to to to reside in a multipolar world. But is is this
Speaker 1: And and and I have to say something something very interesting. Again, you know, during the Biden administration, you could not talk about multipolarity in Washington. It had become a dirty word. It had become a Putin talking point, which was bizarre, mindful of the fact that in 2010, Hillary Clinton as secretary of state already cleared that the world was becoming multipolar, but ten years later apparently became a Putin talking point. But one of the first things that secretary of state Marco Rubio said when he came in in February is that he not only said that the world is multipolar, he also said that unipolarity was an aberration, and it was a historical accident.
And this is a very important statement if this is truly what the administration believes. First of all, if it's an aberration, it tends to then suggest that restoring unipolarity should not be an option because you're not gonna try to. It's just not worth the cost of reestablishing an aberration. But also it means that The United States then absolutely needs to get on get serious about adjusting itself to that multipolarity and see what is it that The United States needs to do and its conduct has to change. One of the question marks that was never really addressed is in a multipolar world, how should The United States relationship with the UN and its attitude towards multilateralism perhaps be revised because it may have a far greater need for those type of instruments than it did during its unipolar moment.
None of those things happened. The only thing we saw was that an NSS came out that suggested that The United States should not give up hegemony, it should just give up hegemony globally. It should redefine the parameters of hegemony and just focus on the hemisphere. And that was in and of itself a shift, that document was the strongest language I've ever seen in any American government document denouncing global hegemony. But nevertheless, it seems to have had absolute zero impact on American strategy because he also said that The United States should deprioritize the Middle East or some of the strongest language as to why The US should no longer be that active in the Middle East.
And three months later, The United States starts a war with Iran. So clearly, that document was not instructive in any way, shape, or form for the actual decisions that the president was gonna make.
Speaker 0: Well, that's why I thought that this could be a victory if they go back to this document because the national security strategy of December 2025, it essentially put the Western Hemisphere and East Asia as, well, the the focus. So and then, essentially, then what they would have to deprioritize Europe and the Middle East. Now I'm thinking if The US would then more or less come to an agreement where Iran does hold on to the Strait Of Hormuz, where they essentially recognize that it's an important regional actor, The US could do many things. It could distance itself from the Middle East. It could blame the Europeans for things going south and pull out of Europe as well.
This could be a major motivation to actually do what that security strategy suggested, but but it seems to be quite strong, this impulse just tried to revive revive the empire, which begs the question how serious it was to begin with. But besides leaving the Iranians the Strait Of Hormuz, what what are the other options for The United States diplomatically at this point or militarily for that matter?
Speaker 1: The military options, I I just cannot see them being any good ones. Again, The US could try to take one or two islands. It would come at a huge cost not because it's difficult for The US to take the islands per se, but because at the end of the day, defending the islands is going to cost The US a lot because then suddenly you would have a lot of US troops on those islands and those islands are static and the Iranians would just rain down missiles and drones on them and get a lot of American casualties, something that they have not been able to do on a large scale precisely because of the fact that most US bases were emptied. And most of the US Navy has been keeping itself 3,000 kilometers away from the Iranian shores in order to avoid being struck by any of the missiles. All of that would change.
So you may take an island, you're gonna lose a lot of American soldiers, and eventually you will have to give up that island and you achieve nothing. So again, this is part of the reason why The US never did these things despite the fact that they were threatened, and Trump seems to have seriously considered them. And again, if you want us to open up the Strait Of Hormuz militarily, it's not about just demining the place and taking one or two islands. The entire control of the Straits is coming because of the manner in which the Iranians have put so many assets, military assets throughout its entire coast, 1,500 kilometers, and you would have to essentially invade the country and take control of of the entire Southern Coast of Iran in order to be able to truly open the Strait Of Ramos, and The US is not gonna do that. So military options, I see very limited.
Diplomatic options, there are actually plenty of them. And in many ways, Trump is in a better position to actually strike a deal than previous president, not because he's trustworthy, he clearly is not from the perspective of the audience, not because he knows how to negotiate, that's another point it seems like he's not really achieving because he's dictating more than he is negotiating, but because he actually is willing to put all sanctions on the table as part of a deal and really lift sanctions, particularly primary sanctions. It's important to keep in mind, in the JCPOA, no primary sanctions were lifted. Those are the sanctions that prevent American companies from going into the Iranian market. The sanctions that were lifted, or were not even lifted, they were waived, were secondary sanctions.
These are the sanctions that target European, Russian, Chinese, Indian companies going into the Iranian market. And that was also part of the reason why it was easy for Trump to walk out of the JCPOA afterwards. There were no business interests in The United States that had any stake in the survival of the JCPOA, with the exception of Boeing that was bought that was written into the deal. But Boeing was bought out because the Emiratis made an order of I forgot how many $42,000,000,000 or something like that of airplanes from Boeing as a way of just replacing the Iranian contract. But other than that, there was no pressure.
There was no real cost of pulling out of the JCPOA. If Trump puts primary sanctions on the table or if there's a deal in which that becomes part of it. First of it's important to understand primary sanctions on Iran are primarily through executive orders, which means Trump can lift them himself. He does not need to have to go to Congress to get those sanctions lifted. It's the secondary sanctions that are imposed by congress, which is the flip of the Cuba embargo in which the embargo itself, the primary sanctions there are through congress.
So Trump can do this with the stroke of a pen, and that would have a profound impact on the Iranian economy. It would be much much more effective than the secondary sanctions relief. In fact, in many ways, sanctions will start withering away once the primary sanctions are lifted. So he's willing to put all of these things on the table, but he wants much more on the nuclear front. And the Iranians have offered much more on the nuclear front.
The fact that they are now open to they won't call it a moratorium, that's the American language, of not enriching at all for twelve years is a remarkable shift in the Iranian position. They never agreed to that since 2005, not even for a week of actually stopping enrichment. And part of the reason is precisely what happened between 2003 and 2005. In 2003, the e three negotiated with Iran. They were terrified that George W Bush was gonna start a war with Iran, and they were they knew that as long as Iran was enriching, that risk was there.
They managed to get the Iranians to agree to voluntarily suspend enrichment. And that voluntary suspension was connected to continuation of negotiations for a final deal. But once the Iranians suspended, the Europeans had no incentive of actually concluding a final deal because they had already achieved their main objective, which was to make sure that the Iranians were not suspending. So the Europeans dragged down on the negotiations. And this is then part of the reason why by August 2005, the Iranians announced that they're gonna restart enrichment because they feel that they had been fooled, that this was a trap.
By January, they restart enrichment. By February their file is sent to the UN Security Council, and eventually several UN sanctions are imposed on Iran. So there was a very high cost in their view of agreeing to that suspension because once you broke the suspension, you were heavily punished, perhaps heavier than you would have been had you never suspended enrichment. This is part of the reason why they've been so adamant about not agreeing to this in previous negotiations. But now they have agreed to, at least in their last proposal, for a twelve year moratorium.
They're the way they're framing it is very different. I can't go into the details of that. But that is a significant concession from the Ivanian side. And it's all aimed at being able to get to a deal. So both sides actually have shown some flexibility, but they're also very maximalist in some other variables.
And right now, both sides are very maximalist on the issue of Iran's 60% stockpile. And as long as that is the case, these talks are currently deadlocked over that issue, and we're now even seeing this murmur of a potential return to war. But in many aspects, they've actually made significant progress, and if real sanctions relief is put on the table that goes beyond the JCPA, in many ways, it will be tremendously valuable to the Iranians. They absolutely need sanctions relief. They needed it before the war, But after this war, with $300,000,000,000 in damages, they needed even more.
Speaker 0: But I I was in Iran in May and before the bombing, and I also went to one of the nuclear facilities there, and they were they were they were making the point. I forgot who who we're speaking to, and he was making a point that the the nuclear deal, it had included very intrusive inspections by the IEA, and they essentially didn't trust them because they were handing over information to the Israelis and Americans. At least that's what they claimed, all this appeared to have been correct. But also there was some frustration that, as you suggested, that the American side didn't deliver on the JCPOA. So if they come to an agreement, sanctions relief, one could expect that it would be simply replaced by other sanctions later on.
In contrast, if they can hold on to the Strait Of Hormuz, they would be able to extract by force almost a lot of the things they want. So but but, of course, the sanctions are an important deal. So
Speaker 1: yeah. No. I I think what what you're what you're pointing to is very important because there is a very significant lack of trust. Everyone's seen how easy it is for The US to impose more sanctions. I mean, this is what congress does better than anything else.
And there is a very legitimate concern that, you know, once these sanctions are lifted, they're just replaced by new sanctions that are imposed at a later stage. But I think it's also important to understand, the control of the Strait Of Hormuz, I don't think the Iranians are gonna give that up at all. It's just gonna be what type of an arrangement will there be, and how regionalized will it be. Even if the Iranians open up the strait altogether, they've already proven their ability to reclose it and take control of it again. They're not losing that as part of a deal.
Because again, the reason why they have that control is because of the way that they're using their entire coastline. So it's no longer mining the strait as it was twenty years ago, it's the combination of mining, using drones, using missiles, etcetera. So they're not they're not really losing that ability whatsoever. But also it's important to understand that if there is a mechanism that ensures some sort of a payment system, there is one proposal from one of the GCC states that says that it would not be a toll, but rather it would be an environmental management fee. A fee that is paid to whatever countries are part of the mechanism because of the amount of resources they have to put into managing the environment of the Persian Gulf and the Strait Of Hormuz, given the fact that there is this ridiculous traffic of oil tankers going through it all the time.
At the end of the day, it is a toll. It's a fee, but it's just a different way of framing it that also then prevents it being replicated elsewhere in a manner that could have very problematic implications for other straits. But even if that were to take place in that manner, that money is not going to be able to compete with the amount of investments Iran can attract if sanctions are lifted. Yes. The fees coming in from the state of Ormuz may not be negligible.
It may be in the billions of dollars. It's not unimportant. But the billions and billions of dollars of investments it can get over a course of a long period of time if sanctions are lifted or just simply there there there's no comparison there. So in my view, it would be quite a significant mistake for the Iranians to have managed to get so many chips through this war, but then failing to cash that in by securing a new order in the region, a new uncontested order in the region in which their position exist is accepted, but also sanctions are fully lifted on them. That would be the true victory in my view, to be able to translate that military victory into a new peace that is beneficial to them.
Speaker 0: Oh, that's a good great point. No. I often, I don't hear much optimism about possibility of a peace, but this of course, it it makes a lot of sense. Our concern though is the rhetoric, think, because when I hear from the Trump administration, this insistence that, you know, they're destroyed, they're weak, we kill their leaders, their military, you know, they will they they're desperate for a deal. Whatever we give them, they will take.
If if there's also a possibility to walk this back a little bit and and shift a little bit to because this is a this is a hegemonic rhetoric. That is we the piece is what what we dictate. If we can shift this to a multipolar rhetoric in which we recognize that while the other side have some security concerns, we will meet some of theirs. In the return, they will give some concessions to us, and we'll meet halfway. You know, diplomacy as we used to have before the post Cold War era, yeah, it might be achievable.
So do you have
Speaker 1: to And and if I could just say something on that. I mean, some of the rhetoric that Trump uses is just so counterproductive. And it there's been key moments in the war in which there were actually breakthroughs that were being worked out in the background, and then he comes out with a tweet and he just completely ruins it. So I think in many ways, his social media handle has been his worst enemy during this war, and his lack of discipline of controlling, this has also been noted on the Iranian side that they're looking at his inability of controlling himself on social media, particularly with some of these angry four AM tweets that he has, and they're asking himself if he can't control his own social media, how can he control and be trusted to live up to an agreement? They're just not seeing the type of a discipline.
At the same time, it's also very fascinating that the spectrum of Trump is just complete. He just covers the entire three sixty because he can be absolutely terrible on social media and counterproductive, but he's also a president that doesn't have any inhibitions and can go out and say, I want Iran to be a completely and an amazingly successful country. I want them to flourish. No other American president would ever say something like this. It's very important to remember that.
The idea that you would say, I want Iran to be successful, was a complete political taboo. Even if you wanted to get a deal, even if you wanted to have a win win deal, you would never say something like that because it would seem as being too costly politically in The United States. Trump doesn't seem to have an understanding of the concept of political cost and just says these things. So he is someone who actually could shift towards a narrative or a rhetoric that could be win win and that could pave the way for this. But when he is losing, that's when you see him become as win lose as possible, as zero sum as possible, which ultimately, in my view, was counterproductive to his own objectives.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I I thought that was all his always his strength. That is a breaker of narratives almost. That is Mhmm.
Only him could meet with the North Koreans. Only him would be able to break this boycott of diplomacy and talk to the Russians. You know, this is important, the fact that he doesn't Yeah. He doesn't have to conform to to narratives. I remember he was speaking with, I forgot, Sean Hannity on on Fox News, and he was saying, oh, how can you talk to Putin?
He's a bad man. So, hey. We've done some bad stuff too. I mean, no one else could say this, and and and that's important because you do have to It is. Once you demonize your opponent for so long that you're fighting evil, it's very hard to walk this back and
Speaker 1: then Exactly.
Speaker 0: Return to diplomacy. So I think this is his strength. He's, as you say, 4AM tweets, that's probably not his strength. So Yeah. Anyways, thank you so much for, yeah, sharing thoughts.
I I love your articles, and, of course, the responsible statecraft also excellent. So, yes, everyone, please make sure to check out Substack as I do. So thanks again.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Theodore Postol: Iran Can Now Build 10-20 Nuclear Weapons - U.S. Must Negotiate https://youtu.be/1q_sp-FY6ZM https://t.co/3lV2ljvhls
Video Transcript AI Summary
Theodor Postal, a professor at MIT and former adviser to the Pentagon, discusses Iran’s nuclear capabilities and what sort of nuclear deal would be necessary. He argues that the war against Iran has created incentives for Iran to develop nuclear weapons as an “ultimate deterrent,” especially because the United States and Israel might attempt further efforts after any failure, with no clear government ready to replace the current one. He emphasizes that Iran possesses know-how and enriched uranium, making the challenge “real.”
Postal argues that a diplomatic solution is possible and that a military solution is not. He says Iranian leaders do not want to build nuclear weapons; instead, they want to deter enemies—particularly Israel—from striking them with nuclear weapons, which he characterizes as an existential or genocidal threat. He describes Iranian diplomacy and discipline during the outbreak of war as evidence of rationality. He adds that Iran understands that building nuclear weapons would likely cause Saudi Arabia to pursue nuclear weapons, potentially rapidly, and that Saudi Arabia has indicated it will not tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons without obtaining them itself. He also points to Turkey and Egypt as potential future nuclear-armed actors under similar conditions. Postal frames Iran as a rational actor who would negotiate to avoid being surrounded by hostile nuclear weapon states.
He contrasts this with a scenario in which “irrational” Western behavior drives Iran into a corner where it reaches the conclusion that it has no choice but to have nuclear weapons. He notes internal Iranian debates: besides highly rational leadership, there are people who would like to build nuclear weapons immediately, and domestic politics could decide when and whether they prevail.
Postal’s key technical points include that Iran could produce between 10 and 20 atomic weapons quickly, rather than the commonly cited rapid production of about 10. He says that widely used estimates assume each bomb would require 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, but he argues weapons can be built with 14 or 15 kilograms depending on design. He describes a conceptual approach for rapid weapons: a hollow sphere of uranium-238 surrounding a 15-kilogram weapons-grade core. He claims the uranium-238 reflector provides two benefits: reflecting neutrons back into the core to allow a smaller critical mass, and delaying weapon expansion during supercriticality to increase yield before weapons-grade uranium disassembles. He says the resulting weapon weight and dimensions would be compatible with delivery by an existing tested long-range ballistic missile used for conventional attacks on Israel, and he characterizes Israel’s ballistic missile defenses as near useless. He also argues that centrifuge efficiency may be 2–3 times higher than generally assumed based on analysis of International Atomic Energy Agency information.
Postal also discusses centrifuge production and enrichment capacity, focusing on IR-6 centrifuge cascades. He claims Iran can couple cascades—for example, a combined 348-centrifuge cascade—based on IAEA reporting. He presents calculations using a reported production outcome: in an experiment under IAEA observation involving a double cascade feeding 20% into one end and producing 60% at the other end, the IAEA reported the production of 34 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride per month at 60%. Postal uses this to infer that centrifuges could produce roughly 12.75 separative work units per centrifuge per month and, extrapolated annually, that a 348-centrifuge cascade could produce about 4,437 separative work units per year. He then argues that the required work units to produce enriched uranium for multiple bombs imply production of approximately 10 or 11 bombs in a very short timeframe (weeks, possibly months depending on equipment integration).
He further argues that estimates minimizing weapon feasibility—attributed in his comments to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—are “complete nonsense,” and he frames this as dangerous misinformation affecting decision-making. His conclusion is that Iran has the technology and expertise to build between ten and twenty atomic bombs quickly, not years.
Postal ties the technical assessment to policy: he argues that Iran doesn’t want to become a weapons state because it would undermine national security, but that any continued military pressure increases incentives and could lead Iran to proceed. He says the appropriate response is negotiation, arguing that if Iran eventually decides to build nuclear weapons it would create a security nightmare across multiple regional states and Israel and the United States. He rejects the premise that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, saying Iranian leaders understand nuclear retaliation and would see using a nuclear weapon on Israel as ending Iran.
In discussion, Postal emphasizes differences in nuclear capacity (one vs. two vs. 10 vs. 20) and argues that regional stability worsens as arsenals grow. He supports military force only as a last resort but states that in this scenario he believes diplomacy is necessary and “no option” remains other than negotiation.
Toward the end, Postal says he will give another talk in Warsaw about the Patriots’ performance and claims his data show limited interception capability. He adds that replenishing depleted Patriot interceptors with billions of dollars would still not stop ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons in the future, and he urges taxpayers and Israelis to consider this.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Theodor Postal, a professor of science and technology and national security policy at MIT, an expert in nuclear weapons delivery systems, missiles, and missile defense, who's also advised the Pentagon. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Well, it's my it's my great pleasure to be here.
Speaker 0: So I yeah. Today, I want to discuss the the nuclear capabilities of Iran as as as something that is quite important to assess in order to all figure out what kind of a nuclear deal would have to be made because the war against Iran, it's been quite disastrous in in many ways. But one of the ways it's been a disaster is that, essentially, it does post existential threat to Iran. The US and Israel might push for regime change, but given that there's no government waiting in the rear to replace the current one, the likely outcome would be the Balkanization and indeed destruction of Iran, something along the line of Syria or Libya. So, again, I think this would be, good enough for Israel and possibly The US to remove our key regional power from the board.
But if you're sitting in Tehran now, you would assume that Israel and The US will not give up. They will have another go and try to defeat and destroy Iran. So the problem behind this is that Iran now has every reason in the world to develop a nuclear weapon, which is often referred to as the ultimate deterrent. I certainly hope they don't develop a nuclear weapon, but I think it's also important to be honest about how the war has created huge incentives for this. And and, you know, I've spoken as well in the past about what kind of capabilities the Iranians have because they do have a lot of know how.
They do have the enriched uranium, the material. So so the challenge is real. So, you know, in this regard, you, you know, you have prepared some some of your research and arguments behind this.
Speaker 1: Yes. I've looked a little bit at the situation. I had done so earlier as you know, but I've gone back and revisited it. And I've come to a number of conclusions which I think are relevant. I I don't know if they'll be if if there's anybody listening for reason.
We all know that problem but but I think the reason behind the findings, I'll explain shortly, are solid and and I think they argue very strongly that a diplomatic solution is possible and and and a military solution is not. And and so this has to be recognized by people in positions of authority or we are going to look at, probably an explosion of nuclear proliferation in Southwest Asia. First of all, I think it's important to recognize that the, the Iranians, do not want to build nuclear weapons. What they want is, they they want to deter enemies, in particular Israel, from striking them with nuclear weapons. And Israel has, has shown by its actions that it is an existential threat to Iran and and probably it's fair to even say genocidal threat to Iran.
Maybe you can't execute it, but, it certainly is, doing so elsewhere, in particular in, of course, Gaza and in Lebanon. Southern Lebanon is really pretty outrageous situation, and in some ways, similar to what has been going on in Gaza, just essentially trying to practice ethnic cleansing against people in Lebanon to even take more territory under the guise of so called defense. So from the point of view of Iranian leaders, they are facing two adversaries who pose in some sense a genocidal threat and and they still want to negotiate. And the reason they want to negotiate is they are really very rational in their thinking. If you look at the rationality of not only their attempts to do at diplomacy, but also the the way they've conducted the war when it broke out.
They have shown tremendous discipline and thought in the in how they've conducted themselves. It's just impressive in in this regard. But basically, Iran the Iranian leadership understands that if it builds nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will almost certainly become a nuclear weapon state in response and and can potentially be very rapidly, a nuclear weapon state since Saudi Arabia, was funding, the effort to build atomic bombs in Pakistan. And there was an understanding that if Saudi Arabia would need nuclear weapons at some future time that Pakistan would give it to them. So and and that seems to be a generally accepted situation and and Saudi Arabia has made it made it very clear that it will not tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons without getting them, itself.
And that and the Iranians understand that that would, have a major, negative impact on Iran's national security. Of course, there's Turkey, which could readily move forward to build nuclear weapons if, certainly if Iran and Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons and, Egypt. And we don't yet know what some of these, Persian Gulf states might be capable of because partly because their industrial bases are more limited, but, but they do have substantial amounts of money and we don't know how that could play out. So so we have a a situation where we're dealing with a rational actor, which seems to be rare these days, and and who wants to negotiate something. Now on the other side of the the coin is what happens if the irrational behavior of The United States in particular and the West in general drives the Iranians into a corner where they, reach a conclusion that they have no choice but to have nuclear weapons.
Now it could be more complex than that. You of course, someone like you would be, much better at spinning out scenarios. But certainly we know for sure that there are highly rational people in the leadership in Iran and we also know that there are people who disagree with that leadership, who would like to who believe it's a good idea to build nuclear weapons immediately. And in the domestic, internal domestic debates are complicated, totally unpredictable, and it's hard to know when and if the, people who would like to proceed to build nuclear weapons will prevail in the internal debate. Could happen anytime, so we just don't know.
But the point of importance is that, is to ask ourselves what the alternative world would look like if we don't, take the effort to to reach a negotiated understanding with the Iranians, who I wanna underscore again, want to do this. So for for the the first point I I'd like to make is just just to point out a few I just Can you see that slide? Yes. It's up now. Slide is up now.
Okay. There are a couple of basic points that I've already, touched on but are worth emphasizing. And the first is that Iran can produce really 10 or 20 atomic weapons. This is a a different statement than is commonly said. Today, the general wisdom is Iran can produce rapidly.
We're talking about rapidly from the 440 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride that is 60% enriched. The common wisdom is 10 nuclear weapons, but there's an underlying assumption in those estimates that, the, atomic weapons that Iran would produce would take 25 kilograms of highly enriched weapons grade uranium, But they don't need 25 kilograms of highly enriched weapons grade uranium to build an atomic bomb. They only need 14 or 15. It has to do with the design of the weapon. And that's because, it's possible.
In fact, when you look at the situation from a technical point of view, it seems almost certain that if you were Iranian and con contemplating rapidly producing nuclear weapons, you would not produce a weapon of the kind that's being, talked about. You would produce a weapon with a surrounding sphere, hollow sphere of of uranium two thirty eight surrounding the 15 kilogram core of weapons grade uranium. And the reason you would do this is this external sphere of uranium two thirty eight has two beneficiary effects from the point of view of of a weapon. First of all, it reflects neutrons back into the core of the weapon, allows you to use a smaller amount of uranium two thirty five to build a weapon. So you only need a smaller critical mass.
And if you have a smaller critical mass, that means you have more uranium two thirty five to build weapons with. So that's point one. The other point is that the uranium reflector is very massive. It's quite heavy. And because it's so massive, when when an atomic bomb, built in this way, is undergoing rapid development, rapid energy release as it goes supercritical, If if you can delay the the expansion of the weapon by several hundreds of millions of seconds, in other words, slow up the expansion, by a very small amount of time, you can get a considerably higher yield because more of the, critical mass, will undergo fission before the, uranium, weapons grade uranium disassembles.
So you get two benefits. The cost is a higher weight, but as I'll show, the higher weight is is allows you is is such that you could easily build, fly this the weapon that you would build would have dimensions and a weight that could easily be flown on an existing tested, long range missile that has typically been used to deliver conventional explosives to Israel. So you not only have the the the weapon if you choose to move forward, but you have a delivery system that could deliver this this warhead by ballistic missile. Now the only thing you would have is the question of reliability of the ballistic missiles, and they seem highly reliable because the ballistic missile defense in Israel is near useless. I I should probably, I won't be presumptuous, but, there's another talk I should be giving, perhaps in a week or two that shows that the Patriot system has been absolutely unable to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles, just near zero capability.
So it's a very reliable delivery system in terms of a ballistic missile attack. And, and I can show that I have data to show this. I wanna underscore this data I've collected. So, in addition, it turns out that information released by the International Atomic Energy Agency when analyzed properly leads to the conclusion that the efficiency of the IR six, centrifuge is two or three times higher than what people have been generally assuming, including me. Because I I have not analyzed the it's a very complex job analyzing exactly how much, one of these centrifuges can produce in the way of enrichment.
But, it's a very important conclusion, this conclusion, because it means, for example, that Iran could potentially could actually quite easily produce one or two atomic bombs or more per year from natural uranium after they weaponize to, let's say, seventeen, eighteen, or 19 weapons rapidly with the 60% enriched uranium. So we're looking at a major major nuclear weapon state if if if something cannot be done to to encourage them to not do this. Now, if if you want to this this situation should not be alarming because if you're reasonable, you will understand for as I've already explained, that the Iranians want to, to negotiate. They they don't want to put themselves in a position where they're surrounded by potentially hostile nuclear armed weapon states. It's not only Israel that's their concern.
So you have a situation where they're extremely interested in negotiate. They've demonstrated by joining the joint comprehensive plan of action in 2015 that they will take very severe restrictions on their enrichment program and and and work within them. So we have all of the ingredients for a solution here. And basically, my policy point is very simple. You have no choice but to negotiate.
I mean, if you don't negotiate, you're gonna have a very powerful nuclear weapon state at some point. That's your choice. Try anything more military or keep up the military pressure. You're eventually gonna drive the Iranians to a point where they make a decision to build nuclear weapons, and they have the capacity to build a boatload of these things and and continue to increase their arsenal. So this is not a difficult choice in my view if you're being if you're being in any way rational.
So what what has changed in my assessment? Why why am I even more negative than the last time I I I gave this negative, a negative assessment? Well, the fact is that the gas centrifuges, that are key to the technology that Iran needs to building atomic weapons are more are likely to be more numerous and, more capable than, people have been, believing. So for example, here is a table from the sorry here. Here's a table from the the Institute for Science and International Security, and they have outlined the number of centrifuges produced over a few months at a time periods up until the June twenty two midnight hammer attack, which did so much damage to the to the Iranian program.
Not not fatal damage, but did did significant damage. Up until that time, the Iranians were producing 450 centrifuges per month at that now a 174 centrifuge cascade is the baseline that the Iranians are using. They can I'll show you. They can couple a couple of these centrifuges together and and build a combined centrifuge of 348 centrifuges, and they have demonstrated the capability to do this as I'll show you. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported this.
I discovered this quite by accident when I was reviewing one of their reports. Perhaps if I knew if I were smarter, would have seen it earlier. But the point here is that this is not speculation. This is a capability that is clearly demonstrated by the production that is reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and I'll explain that shortly. So so the amount of uranium you need to build a bomb is, typically, you can see I I you can see the cursor.
Right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Good.
The the amount of uranium to build a bomb might be as much as 55 kilograms. That's if if you just have nuclear material and you just put together a a ball of uranium metal that's 90% enriched, you you you you would need a a bare sphere of of of uranium metal, you would need about 55 kilograms of this metal to to build a weapon. Incidentally, if you had 83.7% enriched, I'll I'll explain what that means, you would you would maybe need 60 kilograms or 65 kilograms. So 83.6 is is the number that traces of uranium two thirty five enrichments to to 83.6% or 7%, were found in the, in the, Fordow facility. So there were traces, a very small traces, but it it certainly indicates that the, the a demonstrated capacity to to to come very close to weapons grade without having demonstrated 90%.
People assume 90% usually. Now if you go down to what's called a 10 centimeter reflector of uranium, you're down to maybe, 20 kilograms. So it's my actually, should say I made a mistake here. It's really 20 kilograms as I'm talking about. You can do better with a beryllium a 10 centimeter beryllium, sphere, but, you have to be able to work with beryllium.
There's good evidence that the Iranians do know how to work with beryllium and that they have beryllium, but, I'll focus on these two possibilities. 20.5 kilograms of 90% enriched or 14.1%, 14.1 kilograms. So if, if we just look at how you would go about doing this, well you you would take these materials and, you would put together a bomb. In this case, is a diagram from the Encyclopedia Americana. And you're not trying to compress this material.
If you can if you if you have a spherical explosion to compress the material, you you could you could use less uranium metal to to build a bomb. But the implosion mechanism is complex, and even with all the modern technology that's available, you would want to test this weapon. In the case of using a weapon design that uses more uranium, but you still have enough to do to use it, and just you you what's called gun assemble. In this case, you have explosive you you have a uranium sphere, it's got a a borehole in it and you have these two sections of cores of your of uranium, weapons grade uranium, and you just explosively put them together, this would be a working weapon. And assembling it would not be a complicated task.
Would not be a complicated task. The the timing of the explosives is not demanding unlike the case with the spherical explosion. And, none of the technologies you wouldn't have already in hand if you're Iranian. I mean, this is straightforward as you get. And, you know, if you're under threat, all these arguments that people make about implosion weapons, things of that type, this is silly.
You're under threat. You have this resource. Best is the enemy of good enough. What you're gonna build is a simple weapon. You know?
And some of these, statements from the like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is the big organization for misinformation on this. You know, they may just put out a little thing saying, oh, they can't build a weapon. I don't know where they got this from. You know, it's it's hard to believe how this organization continues to publish misinformation the way it does. It is it is a club.
It is a social club. They have really almost no expertise in this organization, and they don't they don't do anything about it. I I won't get it. I had a long discussion with the CEO and president, and, she showed no interest in understanding what what I was talking about. None at all.
It was really quite amazing. Anyway, let me just give you a sense of what the dimensions and weights of you know, these are obviously conceptual drawings. But if you wanted to build a uranium, here's the 55 kilogram core. It's, maybe, I don't know, I've you know, maybe 25 or or 30 centimeters in diameter. I I should have put the numbers in there.
And and if the the core gets somewhat smaller, it it goes down to 20 and a half kilograms rather than 55. And and the surrounding uranium two thirty eight weighs quite a bit. It's like 350 kilograms if it's a 10 centimeter reflector. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing because the overall weight of components is under 350 kilograms. So if you needed another 100 kilograms of equipment, you know, fusing devices, electronics, packages to hold things in place, You could easily build a weapon that weighed 450 kilograms, which is well within the range of any of your long range missiles to to carry.
This has the advantage. If you know how to work with uranium metal, which you have to be able to do already if you're making uranium cores, then you know how to work with uranium two thirty eight. You know, you feel 38 is the same thing as u 30 u two thirty five from the point of view of the mechanical properties and dealing with it. So you have all of the technology in hand. There's nothing exotic about these technologies.
If you want instead to go to a lighter weapon with a 10 centimeter or more beryllium reflector, you could do that. But you have to work with beryllium, which incidentally does not mean it's not in it's not a capability that the Iranians don't already have. They could well have this capability. The advantage would be you would have a much lighter weapon because the the reflector is not this fantastically heavy material. It's very light material beryllium.
But why do you need all this lightweight? You know, if you're if you're gonna put it on a ballistic missile and you and you can carry it, why not go the way of uranium? At least this is my speculation. Because the uranium is a massive material that delays the expansion of the critical mass when it goes supercritical, and you'll get more yield on the on the weapon. So anyway, this is just my guess.
But if you wanna see an example of a nuclear weapon, it's useful to see, I found this diagram. I should say that it is almost certainly secret restricted data according to The US Atomic Energy Act. Somebody stole this show copied this classified design. I don't know who they were but it's out in the open. And this is the w 33 artillery shell which has a yield between one and forty kilotons depending on what you choose for the yield.
Now how does it work? Well, first of all, it has a little gas bottle in it. So this is not something the Iranians could do at this time because the gas bottle would contain deuterium and tritium gas mixture. And obtaining the, tritium is a big is a big industrial effort, and the quantities needed are are are almost certainly not available to, to Iran. I could be wrong on that.
If that's the case, then you're we're in worse trouble. But, what you do is you control the the burst of neutrons that go into the assembled critical mass by putting different amounts of deuterium and tritium gas into this bottle. So if I want a low yield, don't put I don't put any deuterium and tritium gas in there. If I if I want a very high yield, I put in a lot. And what happens is when the artillery shell is fired, there's a ring of uranium metal, weapons grade metal, and there's a slug, an annular slug of weapons grade material that by the deceleration this is remember this is an artillery shell.
It undergoes a very large acceleration initially, and then as it flies it undergoes a very large deceleration from the aerodynamic drag. And so what happens is these, this annular metal ring falls into place creating a critical mass that's just short of what's needed to get a nuclear yield. But then you have this slug that you when when when the time is right, you're gonna have an you're gonna have an explosive charge that drives it into this cavity here. And as it goes into the cavity, it's gonna crush up this container of deuterium and tritium gas. The temperature is gonna rise very rapidly as the critical mass neutrons are given off.
Eventually, the temperature reaches a temperature of tens of millions of degrees Kelvin. The deuterium plus tritium gas ignites in the thermonuclear reaction, and deuterium and tritium, fuse into helium four. And when they fuse into helium four, they give off neutrons, and the neutrons are very energetic. These are not the typical neutron given off from a uranium, nucleus is maybe a million electron volts. These neutrons are 14,000,000 electron volts.
And so when these enter the critical mass of uranium around them, they just smash, uranium atoms. They don't just undergo they just get splated. They get splashed, and you get a tremendous growth in the in the in the number of neutrons, in the growth of neutrons. And that, of course, tremendously increases the yield. And it looks like this design is capable of 40 kilotons, which is quite a quite a good yield.
So if you just wanna see, the dimensions of the weapon that, I just showed you, the uranium weapon, you can see it's, you know, it's 30 centimeters. This is not a it's not a unmanageably large device. It's not hard to see how you could put this onto a a ballistic missile. So anyone who's telling you that the Iranians can't do this and who knows anything about the technology they've already demonstrated is is smoke smoking banana peels. I I I don't know where they get this idea from.
I mean, it's these this country has the ability to build nuclear weapons, and those nuclear weapons would be very reliable and they don't necessarily need to test them. This is what you ought to be thinking about when you're talking about driving them into a mindset where they feel they have no choice but to proceed. Where where even though they recognize it's in their best interest to not build nuclear weapons, they decide that you are posing such a threat that the balance of of, bad decisions moves them in favor of deciding to build nuclear weapons. That's that's the big problem. Just to give you a little bit more sense of size, this is the nuclear package that would go into the shell here.
And what I've done is, through the magic of, graphics, I've just pulled out that thing and, pulled out that package, and I showed you how neatly it fits into the artillery shell. So, none of this is magic from the point to I mean, it's magic if you wanna do this in your garage. That's true. But if you're a nation state with a tremendous capability that, Iran has, this is straightforward. That's that's the point.
Now the gas centrifuge is the other critical technology here. And, we know they have gas centrifuges. And what the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in an extremely interesting report let me just show you the report. This this report is from 2025. Looks like it's August 2025, and, it's the verification and monitoring of of the Islamic State, and released in 03/20/2025.
Now if we go up, here's what they're talking about. This is a 174, cascade, of centrifuges that the Iranians, would be, you you know, have demonstrated. They've been working with them at the Fordo plant. Now, a simple rule is that each of the separative work units produced by each of these centrifuges adds linearly with the number of centrifuges. It just happens that's one of the reasons why separative work unit is used because it's such a an elegant way to characterize the, enrichment capability.
So if you have a 174 of these and the centrifuges have one, one separative work unit per centrifuge, then you have a hun the cascade, assuming the efficiency is well put together, and that's a big complicated task, Has to be done through experimentation and, and adjustments, so but if it all works well at the theoretical limit, you should be able to get a 174 separate of work units, per centrifuge. If you can get 10, separate of work units per centrifuge, then you should get 1,740. Five, of course, you get half of that. What the Iranians were experimenting with was using two of these. They take one of these units, and they take the enriched uranium, and they put it into the feed of another centrifuge, and then they come out with with a product.
And the experiment they were doing was feeding 20% in in in one end and producing 60% in the other end. Fair enough, I mean. And they were doing this. The International Atomic Energy Agency was watching them. Incidentally, they also demonstrated three cascades together.
So that's so what what does this mean? Well, here is what they reported that when they use the so this is what they they're reporting the Iranian production. This is not theoretical now. This is not a guess. The guess that is currently circulating including the guess that I was using was that the current Iranian IR six centrifuges are producing between three and a half and seven separated work units per centrifuge.
And, you know, there's a lot of play in there because people have been trying to analyze this mechanical device without real experiments. You you know, you don't have the experimental data. So here's what the what the Iranians showed the International Atomic Energy Agency. They took 20 into these this double cascade, and they produced six they produced 34 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride per month at 60%. 34.
Well, what does that mean? Well, we know that, it it takes I won't go through the arithmetic here. Basically, if we look at the number of centrifuges, which is like four hundred hundred I'm sorry. If you take a 112 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, you need 400 separative work units to get, 37 kilograms of 60% enriched. So so you you you need, you know, quite you know, not not enormous amount, but, 400 or so.
Just to put it in perspective, if you start with natural uranium, you need 5,500 separative work units. So that's so there's a lot of work that's already been done. So you need about 400 separated work units to take a 112 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium and produce 37 kilograms of 60% enriched. So let me since that's the number that comes out of some arithmetic I did, so we divide 34 by 37 because we're really, talk talking about 369 separated work units to produce 34 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. Well, there are 348, centrifuges.
So if we adjust this monthly amount, this since we're working on a month basis, we multiply by twelve months, that tells us what these two cascades together can produce in separated work units. 4,440 separated work unit, that's a lot. That's almost a nuclear weapon. And, and so, we're we're talking about the centrifuges are producing 12.75 separated work units per per centrifuge. That is much bigger than what people were thinking.
That's almost four times, three and a half, four times the capacity of the lowest estimates. So we're talking about a a a tremendous capacity, on the part of of the Iranians to produce nuclear weapons if they choose to. So so, the bottom line is that, if we just, let me just jump through some slides. I just wanna see here. We have we have time, and it's good.
So if we if we, jump through the slides, we have a cascade of 348 centrifuges that can produce 4,437 kilogram SWUs per year. And as as as I noted, let me just remind the audience that the process is the enrichment process is accelerating. So for example, the example I used, in my earlier discussion was, sugar mixed in water. And the and I said, well, a separate let's assume it turns out it's not a bad parallel. It's not exactly correct, but it's close.
Assume that I'm able to boil off 10 units of water during every cycle. You know, it's just this is an arbitrary choice, but just and I have 10% sugar in a sugar water solution. So each unit of each separate of work unit of effort brings me to higher and higher enrichment of sugar. And you see as I get down to higher enrichments, I'm just taking off you know, I have a much more concentrated solution, and I'm still being able to remove about the same per per separative work unit. So when I get down to 50%, the last effort is very small.
So when I'm talking about 60% enriched uranium, I'm talking about a fairly small amount of effort. So if I have a 348, cascade of I r six centrifuges and 4,437 SWUs per year produced, and and I only need a 120 SWUs to to to get 25 kilograms of enriched uranium, that's one point four weeks. That's a short time. If I only if I'm going down to 25, if I'm oh, I'm sorry. So so that gives me 38 kilograms per bomb, which so so I need 38 kilograms per bomb.
I have 40 four forty kilograms of enriched this is uranium hexafluoride, so I have 11 bombs, 10 or 11 bombs. If I instead start with 68 kilograms to produce 14 kilograms, this is just a range, then I need five or six days. So if I need to produce 20 kilograms, maybe it's seven or eight days. So I can produce between 19 or fifteen and nineteen bombs depending on which design I choose. So you're talking about a very, very substantial weapons capacity relative to what people are have been talking about.
So the final conclusion is is very simple. Even a top level American policymaker should be able to understand this. Iran has the technology and expertise to build between ten and twenty atomic bombs quickly. I'm talking quickly. You know, weeks, maybe it takes months because some of the equipment has to be brought together.
We don't know. But we're not talking years by any means. This statement out of the bulletin of atomic scientists is complete nonsense, and it's reckless of them to suggest that this is a nonproblem. I want the reason I'm underscoring this, just to be clear with you, Glenn, is if I tell you something if you're a decision maker and I tell you this is not a problem, I'm your technical adviser, then you say, okay. I I don't have to worry about this.
This is not something I need to be contemplating. So this is not a minor error on the part of the bulletin. This is major. And they go around telling people they're experts, and they go around propagating false information. If I be since I'm not feeling polite today, nonsense.
They propagate nonsense. And they and they misrepresent themselves as experts. They don't do any work, and they don't and they irresponsibly present an incorrect picture to the public and to many people in Washington who make the mistake of thinking these guys know what they're talking about. So this is a problem. So so you do not the upside is that the Iranians don't want to become a weapon state.
They know it would undermine their national security. So you got two things that are important points that lead to the same conclusion. One is they have the technology. Two is they don't want to use the technology if you give them a a way out. Simple enough.
You you can you can take a kindergarten child and and and show them how, you know, and go through the choices together, and they will always make the right choice. So what's wrong with these geniuses in Washington? What is wrong? So so you need to use diplomacy to to help help the Iranians to do what is in everyone's common interest. It's in everyone's interest.
If they are eventually if they eventually decide to go ahead and build nuclear weapons, this will be a a security nightmare for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, The Gulf States, Israel, and The United States. So what what are we talking about here? Is and these arguments that the Iranians are likely to use nuclear weapons against Israel is also ridiculous because the Iranians understand we and we see they're rational. You have to you know, we have no reason at all. All of the evidence, every piece of evidence we have shows that they are extremely rational and deeply thought through on these issues.
They understand that they use a nuclear weapon on Israel. It's the end of Iran. They understand that they would take there would be a nuclear retaliation. So they're not gonna do it. So let them stay a nascent nuclear weapon state.
It's not the best outcome, but it's it's actually, it might be the best outcome because the the Israelis have a government that's totally crazy. I don't know what this Israeli government's willing or able or capable of doing. I mean, they part of the reason I've given these talks showing what Iran could do to Tel Aviv if they attack Tel Aviv is because I want Israelis to understand that you don't get away free if you do that. You know, it's gonna be the end of Israel too. So let's everybody calm down, start thinking rationally, and step away from the precipice here because this is a really bad situation.
And so, you know, that's pretty much the the points I wanna make. So I haven't convinced you?
Speaker 0: No. Okay. Can you bring down the slide?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll bring down the slide. Sure.
Speaker 0: Okay. No. You have convinced me. This is Yeah. No.
I don't know.
Speaker 1: And this But I think I think the scale of their capacity is is considerably higher. I mean, one nuclear weapon is enough. I mean, if you have one nuclear weapon, I'm gonna be very careful dealing with you. If you have two, I'm gonna be much more careful. The argument that Colin Powell made with the North Koreans, it doesn't matter one or two.
That's not correct from my point of view. Two is a big difference from one because these things are unbelievably devastating. But when you're talking about 20 versus 10, I mean this is and and the potential capacity as this standoff goes on to produce a couple more every year while the standoff is going you know, if you make the decision to move ahead, that's what you're potentially looking at. So you're looking at an extremely well armed state surrounded by states that are gonna be well armed too. And for what?
Who is better off in the end? What what kind of environment, if you're Israeli or Saudi Arabian or Iranian, is this for the future security of that region? It's it's like a no brainer. You know? You have to be devoid of intellect to not see that this is the only solution.
This is the solution. I mean, it's it's not like you, you know, you can't you know, if if you show me a military solution, and then we can talk about it. I mean, I I you know, I'm I'm not one of these people who's opposed to military solutions when there's no other choice. I'm, you know, I'm against you know, military should be the last thing you do. But if you need a military intervention, I'm not one of these people who's gonna say no if I really think it's serious enough.
You know, know, Saint Augustine convinced me, you know, there are situations where, you know, things could be bad enough that the immorality of war, is justified because what is happening is so immoral that, you know, the the problem with the Saint August well, it's not a problem with the argument. The problem with the Saint Augustine criteria is that you don't know that the intervention, the military intervention you're gonna try to stop this greater evil will not get out of control and cause yet a greater evil in the end. You know you're hoping that you can stop an evil with a lesser evil and you can't predict, you know that's very difficult to do in war. But, but I'm not fundamentally, I'm not philosophically opposed or fundamentally opposed to military force. You know, I I think it should be only the last resort.
Only the last resort. But here, it's no option. It's not an option. It's just that simple. Find a military officer who knows what they're talking about.
You you can get this guy, wants to betray you. He'll tell you anything. You know, he's a but you talk to a responsible military officer, you know, they're they're gonna tell you, you know? You know, like, if someone says, let's do it, you know, I think we can do it. Get one of these guys like Kellogg maybe or show me.
You know? Show me. It's like when people, you know, I was involved in doing nuclear war planning. I I know where the ground zeros were. I mean, you know, I was there.
I mean, I was in the computer programs where we laid the these weapons down. Okay? So I'm not some high policy guy who just saw the chart with a big red sign, you know, a great red color, major attack option. You know, I saw what was going on in detail. Alright?
Now when somebody tells me, oh, we should have more nuclear weapons, my first question is, how are we gonna use them? Show me how we're gonna use them. I know how to use them. I've I've been there. I've I've been in the planning.
Show me where we're gonna lay these weapons, how it is gonna increase our military capability in a way that could in any way meaningfully increase our national security. If you can show me that, I'm interested. You know, I'm I'm not of you know, I I don't think it's a good thing to have nuclear weapons. I generally think that we'd be all better off without them, but alright. They exist.
But but these people, they make these arguments and they don't know anything. They haven't thought about it. So so general Kellogg, explain it to me. I'm just a poor guy. I'm just a silly guy who was an adviser to the chief of naval operations and knew where the ground zeros were, so explain it to me.
You know? So so that's my approach to these things.
Speaker 0: I just think that's a great point because even if we're all on board for some reason that, yes, it's let's you know, it it's reasonable to attack Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Let's say, you know, the the intelligence did show they're trying to get nuclear weapons, which is not. And let's say they're quite irrational with the weapons, which also no indication that they are. But let's just say this is the objective. I would, as you say, I would like to see the plan exactly how is this gonna work because the Iranians have the know how, and they have the material.
So the only way you can prevent them from developing nuclear weapons does seem to be the complete destruction of Iran. And if that's not on the table, that's not likely or, you know, achievable, then what any attack on Iran will only increase their need to develop a nuclear weapon, which is why I think now the diplomacy is even more important than before the war because now The US and Israel created even greater incentive for Iran to develop this nuclear deterrent. And, you know, this should be the key lesson from Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just kindergarten child, if you played laid out the choice in this way to them, would always make the right choice. I mean, it's just that simple. You you don't have the ability to do it this way. You do have the ability to do it that way. Which do you choose?
Speaker 0: I mean, you know But but every time they go to war
Speaker 1: You get a piece of candy when
Speaker 0: moral argument for why why the other side is bad, and they go into a description of the character of the government, for example. But but, again, what is feasible? Because I saw now, you know, twenty years in Afghanistan to replace Taliban with Taliban. We saw them knocking out Iraq, which only aligned the country towards Iran instead of balancing it. We saw destruction of Libya, which is now a horrible mess and security problem for Europe, which is Syria, which used to have, you know, some stability.
Now we have an ISIS leader we are aligned with. I mean, none of these things, you know, have been successful. So I I would like to know, given the retake No. I country which has nuclear which can develop nuclear weapons, I I would I would wanna see a certain plan exactly how this is gonna work, not like boganeering.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I'm not a social scientist, but, so feel free to pull me up short. But, this has always it has always struck me that American nuclear, debate, not well, a lot of American, debate over nuclear weapons and their potential use has an underlying racist character. Because there was a a a a I don't know if you remember, Les Aspen was the secretary of defense in the or when we had this disaster in, in Africa, you know, the, Black Hawk Down incident and and, and he started this outrageously racist debate that was carried on in the American Congress for years. And the debate was about, are other countries rational enough to be deterred?
Are they rational like we are? What are you talking about? You mean the people who are brown and yellow or or they somehow don't understand? I mean, you know, you you have a female cow with a calf and you go near that calf, you'll understand what the turns is and and that's a cow. You know, it's not a bull, it's a female cow, you know.
So, how how stupid can you be? How how how much of a a a a a narrow ethnically centric, ethnocentric perspective can you have to think that other people are not rational? Maybe you're not the one that's rational that you think that, you know, you're so ignorant of the intellect of human beings in other countries and their cultures and their ability to understand what's important That you think that they they they don't understand what's in their national interest, that that that that it's not in their interest to attack The United States with nuclear weapons. All this discussion, that that is currently Trump is saying, well, the Iranians could attack us with nuclear weapons. What?
They won't attack the Israelis with nuclear weapons, I can assure you, because they understand the consequences. Attack The United States with nuclear weapons? Boy, you're talking about bringing hell to Earth. You know? Is he talking about?
This country is not a nuclear threat to The United States. People say, well, maybe they'll smuggle sing some something on another ship. Right. And and when the forensics shows it came from Iran, you see a green, green glass parking lot where Iran used to stand. You know, it's just so ridiculous, this debate that is supposed to be among people who claim to be experts in national security policy.
It's ridiculous. You you know, if your adversary is truly suicidal, there's nothing you can do. And there's no reason to believe that if your adversary is white and European or black and African or whatever, that they're irrational. The most irrational, serious irrational leader that I'm aware of who could have destroyed his country is Hitler. If he had nuclear weapons at that time and we had nuclear weapons, he probably would have used them.
He was you know, when when Germany lost the war, he he he told Albert Speer, go out and destroy the country. Germans should no lo- not survive. They failed their test as the as the super race and they deserved to die in the culture and everything should go. And he just didn't do it. He didn't follow the furious, order.
But, you know, maybe, you know, the guy was totally deranged and it seems to me, Stalin would have never used nuclear weapons. Stalin was a brutal, murderous guy. Mao Zedong? No. So so what are we talking about here?
The big problem is mistake. That is the big problem. And the more nuclear weapon states you have and the more sti weapons they have, the more chance something happens in some godawl unpredictable way that leads to nuclear weapons being used, potentially at a very small level, but leading to the kindling of a massive exchange very quickly. That's the real problem. That's why I was wasting my time talking to the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist because they published an article that basically talked about a false alert that occurred in 1995 in Russia.
And they got everything wrong. Everything. There was not I mean, it was incomprehensible and everything wrong. And this woman calls me up when I wrote her about it, and I had sent her materials. And she didn't hadn't read any of the materials, and she starts asking me to explain.
And I went ballistic. I I'm I'm not gonna you know, I I can be an unpleasant person. You might be surprised to know. But but I really told her, say, I said to her, you call me up and you don't take the trouble to read even the five minute summary I sent you along with the hours of materials? And you and you want me to treat you like you you deserve to be respected?
And she says to me, well, you know, I'm busy. I'm glad you're busy, you know? You're running this journal and you're promulgating false information that is critical for decision making that could lead to an accidental nuclear war. And you don't think it's important enough. It was pretty amazing.
It was a pretty amazing discussion. At one point, I said to her, you realize that this isn't this exposed an instability, a particular problem with the Russian early warning system. This exposed an instability that is still there today and could, if things got, you know, if the right circumstance the wrong circumstances came together, lead to a a catastrophic nuclear exchange. So it's an instability. So she says to me, this is this is real.
I'm I'm quoting she says, well, I'm concerned about any instability. So I said, well, are you concerned about this instability? She says, well, I'm concerned about any instability. I said, can you tell me that you're concerned about this instability? And she just repeated herself a third time.
This is the level of curiosity and professionalism of the CEO and president of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. If anybody here is from the board of the Bulletin, call me because I have a lot to say about this organization because I think it's an organization that can do good things. But right now, it's doing damage. That's my view.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for yeah. Outline you this. No. I no. But it is, Well, that's a different discussion, but it is frustrating to see some of the expert class, yeah, drifting a bit off.
But no. But I think this is a very, very important issue. The whole dealing with the whole nuclear proliferation. Because on the rationality issue, this think this is one of the most dangerous things. Yeah.
The assumption that the Iranians are this irrational, crazy people, indeed. That's built into our language as well. We can't even refer to Iran. We're talking about mullahs and, you know, but, you know, all these efforts to just make them sound as irrational as as as possible and also yeah. The whole calculation that is if if we do know now that they have an incentive to acquire nuclear weapons, they don't want to develop nuclear weapons.
Yes. They know that this will then spread across the region, diminish their security. You know, there's a good place for a deal here. And then still, the goal is, well, let's try bomb them a third time. Maybe this time we'll get lucky.
I mean, yeah, you can't make it up, but, there we are. You know? Enough with any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Yes. Well, I'm I'm gonna be, in Warsaw giving a talk on the Patriots performance up until now from the Gulf War of nineteen ninety one to now, and it's not gonna be positive. It's and I have data to back up the findings. And I think people ought to be thinking about this, the substance of this talk and I'd like to give it again on your show at some point because we're now talking about replenishing the depleted supply of patriot interceptors so that the Israelis can defend themselves against the missiles that these interceptors can't engage. And so so we're talking about an outlay of billions of dollars to replenish supplies that, with missiles that really can't perform against, against the ballistic missiles that could be used to attack them.
So that's something that the American taxpayer ought to be aware of. And certainly, the Israelis should be aware of it because if one of those weapons if one of those missiles coming coming in carrying a nuclear weapon sometime in the future, they can't stop it. They will not be able to intercept it. So anyway, that's something another food. I I seem to be the bearer of bad news, but
Speaker 0: anyway. Someone has to. Well, thanks again.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Ready With Overwhelming Retaliation https://youtu.be/0yA6_tWLp2w https://t.co/Hry2TdyAau
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Syed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, discussed the aftermath of Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing, arguing that the trip and US requests to pressure Iran achieved nothing. He said Trump and his team were “detached from reality,” pointing to Trump having “expelled so many” Iran, Chinese, and Russian experts from national security structures, and claiming they entered negotiations “blinded.” Marandi referenced monitoring Iranian and Chinese signals during the Iranian foreign minister’s trip to China, suggesting US efforts should have been understood in advance as unlikely to produce results.
Marandi predicted that after returning to the United States, the Trump regime would move toward renewed violence against Iran. He said the United States lacked the political will to implement a ceasefire, end the siege on Iranian ports, and bring about ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza so ships associated with five countries could pass through the Strait of Hormuz. He attributed the absence of political will to the “Zionist lobby” and the Israeli regime, stating they would not accept a ceasefire or end hostilities due to Netanyahu’s personal agenda, elections ahead, his court case, and coalition partners. He also claimed war could be “quite soon,” involving Iran’s readiness for “a very, heavy assault” by Netanyahu and Trump regimes, and the mobilization of remnants of January armed insurrection fighters, Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq (about 5,000), and “Taqfiri, the Wahhabi Salafi” groups along the Pakistan border in “no man’s land” regions of Pakistan.
He said Iran is preparing for this scenario and that Iranian armed forces are on “full alert.” Responding to media reporting that diplomacy has failed and Iran has rebuilt most missile bases, Marandi stated Iran’s response would be “very harsh,” “more decisive than even the thirty nine day war,” describing an environment he said is hostile for an American assault due to “hot season” conditions in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. He argued that if the United States strikes Iran’s critical infrastructure, Iran would destroy the critical infrastructure of countries he listed as involved in the war against Iran: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and “all of these” that participate. He asserted that the most harmed would be the Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, and claimed that if electricity and water supplies were struck, populations would have to empty or evacuate. He connected this to a likely deep, long-lasting economic depression.
Marandi said Iran would not initiate retaliatory escalations only once, asserting that when Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, Iran responded by heavily hitting Qatar’s and Emirati oil and gas installations. He further stated Trump posted dismissive claims during the war, and that Iran’s retaliation “won’t be pulling any punches.”
On diplomacy, Marandi said the United States’ proposal depends on the American side, asserting that the ceasefire was a US defeat and that Iran would not change its stance. He said the US was under the illusion it could pressure Iran into accepting a watered-down version of US demands, and he argued the US and world were not “winning” siege warfare. He emphasized a route for the United States to accept agreed ceasefire conditions the US “failed to fulfill,” arguing that otherwise slaughter in Lebanon and Gaza and the inability of ships to pass would continue.
Marandi said the decision for war is “not Trump’s” but “Netanyahu’s,” and said the Zionist lobby and Israeli regime control it. He described an Iranian goal as applying pressure so Washington’s political elites would conclude they must impose peace by telling Israel to “sit this one out,” claiming this had not yet happened. He also cited Tucker Carlson’s account of his discussion with Trump and Joe Kent’s resignation and interviews as supporting the idea of decision-making power behind continued war.
When asked how fighting would differ, Marandi said Iran’s handling of proxies on the Pakistan border (Wahhabi and Salafi groups) would be “dealt with rather easily,” while Kurdish and accompanying terrorists would be more complicated due to their larger numbers. He claimed the Iraqi resistance would escalate “all out,” that Yemen is prepared for war, and that the Red Sea would be shut down, ending oil and other exports through the Red Sea. He said Israel would be “hammered very hard” and that the war would be more intense and quick to unfold.
Regarding allies and outsourcing war-fighting, he said the Gulf states’ capacity to fight Iran was limited, describing the Emirates as lacking effective fighting forces and emphasizing that he expected Arab streets to respond differently than regime media during the prior war.
On China and Russia, Marandi said Iran’s relations with China and Russia are “very good,” pointing to the Iranian foreign minister’s meetings with President Putin and in Beijing. He asserted that ultimately Iran “won the war based on its own capabilities,” while friends assisted. He claimed Iran’s missile and drone capabilities are more powerful now and that Iran has prepared underground missile and drone bases for decades, as well as plans for ground invasion readiness.
He argued the US would be “foolish” to conduct a ground assault and said Iran would likely allow incursions and island-taking, then ambush and counterattack to wear forces out over months. He referenced communications during the earlier war, stating Iranians initially did not respond to messages to prolong fighting, and that after days they allowed communications and forced acceptance of an Iranian framework. He said Iran wants the war to last as long as possible now to deter future aggression.
In reassessment of Iranian influence narratives, Marandi referenced Leon Panetta stating Iran holds a gun to the head of the United States, and Robert Kagan writing “checkmate” in The Atlantic, claiming “reality eventually catches up.” He said Robert Kagan was “on the payroll” and maintained that war would end poorly for Trump, the Israeli regime, and Zionism, while predicting a global economic depression if critical infrastructure is struck. He closed by repeating that Iran would fight decisively and not back down until the conflict ends.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Syed Mohammed 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 1: Thank you very much for inviting me. It's always a great pleasure being on your show.
Speaker 0: Well, we now see that Trump has finished off his meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing. And while, of course, they focused on the most important issue, probably Taiwan, we also know that Iran was a key focus. That is The United States evidently tried to push China to put pressure on Iran. And I was just wondering, what is your takeaway from this this meeting between Trump and Xi?
Speaker 1: I think that, Trump and his team are really detached from reality. And it was quite clear from before their trip how this would end. And it really surprises me that they went through with the trip and made the sort of request that they did without recognizing that it was clear from beforehand what sort of responses they would get. And I think it all goes back, or at least probably much of it goes goes back to the fact that Trump has, expelled so many Iran experts, Chinese experts, all the Iran experts and Chinese experts and Russian experts as far as I know, from the national security apparatus. And, therefore, when they travel abroad to China, they seem to be blind and, going blind into negotiations and leaving the negotiations blinded if they'd only monitor the Iranian foreign minister's trip to China few days before the summit.
And they've seen the body language, the statements made by the Iranians and the Chinese, as well as Chinese media reactions and social media reactions to that visit, I think they would have, by through that alone, recognized that, their requests were not going to achieve any results. But but in any case, I I think it's probably been, worse than I had anticipated, not on the Iran front, but, in general, the Trump the trip achieved nothing. The only positive note, I think, for Trump was that he was able to stay in China for a couple of days without, insulting the host. That was, I think, him, quite an achievement. But, beyond that, I I don't see any excess.
It was a wasted trip. And, I think now that he's returned to The United States, probably, what we're going to see is, a move towards renewed violence with Iran. The United States does not have the political will to implement the ceasefire, to end the siege on Iranian ports, and to bring about a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza so that, ships can more ships, the ships from the five linked to the five countries that assisted them against Iran could pass through the Strait Of Hormuz. They they don't have the political will to do so. Probably or I guess, it's pretty clear that the reason behind it is the Zionist lobby in the Israeli regime.
They will not accept a, a ceasefire. They will not accept an end to the hostilities for a host of reasons. Netanyahu has his own, personal agenda. There are the elections ahead, his court case. There there's his coalition partners.
But we do see that, even we do see splits even though we are moving, I think, towards war. I think war could be quite soon, in fact. Between Iran, which may actually be a very, heavy assault from the Netanyahu and Trump regimes, but also using the remnants of the terror groups that carried out the, armed uprising, the armed insurrection on January, as well as Kurdish terrorists in Northern Iraq, about 5,000 or so of them, and, also the Taqfiri, the Wahhabi Salafi groups in on in Pakistan on the Sisan and Balochistan border, in inside the sort of no man's land in Pakistan, which is not well governed by the Pakistani government. All of these may be mobilized. If let's say if if they if they want to carry out a full scale assault, they will deploy them, assault Iran, attack its infrastructure, and perhaps try to occupy islands and parts of the Iranian Mainland and maybe even carry out operations deep inside Iran to, to to take away the dust as Trump likes to call it.
That is what Iran is preparing itself for. It doesn't mean that this is exactly how it will play out, but Iran is taking this scenario as the scenario that they have to be prepared for. And, the Iranian armed forces are on, full alert.
Speaker 0: Well, if we look at the media, they we get similar reports that is, given that, there's no more, well, diplomacy more or less has failed, and, they they argue that Iran has rebuilt all the overwhelming majority of its, missile bases. And, furthermore, given that, yeah, the the meeting with China is over, that, they're looking now to return to all out war. That is United States and Israel, they're considering starting bombing by and also seizing some islands, including Carg Island, which, you know, have a lot of questions how they're gonna pull it off and but also more efforts to essentially, yeah, retrieve or move the nuclear material from Iran. So, you know, a a lot of talk. I'm not sure which of these objectives, like the nuclear material, if that's, if that's just to shape the narrative that this is about nuclear weapons.
I'm I'm not quite sure exactly what what the key objectives are. This again, the information war is, kinda thick at the moment. But, how how do you expect the the Iranians to to respond, if The US and Israel decides to go back to war, yet again?
Speaker 1: I think, the Iranians have made it pretty clear that, their response will be very harsh. It will be more decisive than even the thirty nine day war or the thirty nine day hot war, the first phase of this current war, because we the war is ongoing. We have siege warfare, of course, that Trump has also initiated and is carrying out. So, the Iranians will will hit very hard. And, you know, Glenn, right now, the Persian Gulf is has begun has entered the hot season, and, it is very hot and humid in the Arabian Peninsula.
It is not a good time to be an American soldier who wants to carry out an assault on the Iranian people. But if, there is an assault and The United States makes the foolish mistake of and the Trump regime makes the foolish mistake of, striking at Iran in critical infrastructure, Iran will not hesitate to destroy the critical infrastructure of the Israeli regime, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and, all the all these countries that, The UAE, all these countries that, are involved in the war against Iran, their critical infrastructure will be destroyed. And, the country those entities that will be harmed the most will be The Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia because of the weather in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. If their electricity goes out, if their water supplies are struck, then people will not be able to live there. They will have to empty these tiny countries, or in the case of Saudi Arabia, not a kind tiny country, but they'll have to evacuate them.
And this is something that even Turkan faces out in his article that I'm sure you read a few days ago, acknowledged that Saudi Arabia is deeply vulnerable if Iran does carry out these strikes. But since these countries are complicit in war against Iran, they've, especially The United Arab Emirates. They have a special place in the hearts of Iranians right now, but, all of them are complicit. So if there is war, then I think that will be, perhaps the end of these countries. And that would mean that the current, economic crisis will definitely end up as a deep economic depression, deep and long lasting economic depression.
That will that will change the face of the world. There's no doubt about it. People across the world will be heavily influenced by the catastrophe, but Iran will have no option. Recall sure you recall that when the the Israeli regime struck Iran's South Parr's, gas field, Iran did not does not initiate. One, it does not initiate once if the other side does Iran, well, said that it will hit harder, and it did.
It it hit Qatar's, and and Emirati oil gas, sorry, gas installations very hard, so hard that Trump put out a two social posts in the middle of the war saying, I did I had nothing to do with this. Netanyahu will not not do it again. Why? Because he recognized the devastation that Iran can cause. This time around, Iran won't be pulling any punches.
The retaliation, the response of Iran will be severe. And from my understanding, it will be overwhelming, and it will be far worse than last time around. So I consider it to be a start of a new conflict, catastrophic for the world, but Iran will not lose the war. They can pound Iran's critical infrastructure. We will rebuild them.
But to The US allies in the region, there will be nothing left for them to go back to. These these countries will have to be emptied for months. And after a few months, who knows what will happen?
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, this is, you know, often what people are speculating about to how fast this will go up the escalation ladder. But this is, I guess, also why many people cling to the hope that there won't be a return to hostilities given that it will be so incredibly destructive. But from your perspective, though, is there any more diplomacy going? Because the Americans put forward this proposal to Iran.
Iran said this was a nonstarter. The Iran has put a proposal to the Americans, and they more or less, say the same. So is this the end of the line?
Speaker 1: Well, it depends on Americans. Trump That's why we accepted the ceasefire. It was, of course, a defeat for The United States. No doubt. Trump initially called for unconditional surrender just like at the beginning of the twelve day war, and he ended up after thirty nine days accepting Iran's demands.
Iran is not going to change that. The United States apparently seems to be under this illusion that if it puts pressure on Iran, that this was just some sort of, start starting proposal that would be revised and watered down. And after a period of time, the Iranians would accept, something similar to what the Americans are demanding. The Americans lost the war. They are not winning the siege warfare.
The world is losing. The world is suffering as a result of Trump and Netanyahu and Zionism. And Iran, of course, is suffering too, but Iran will manage. And Iran will outlast The United States, and I think they know that quite well. That's why they initiated that two day or thirty six hour operation which which failed.
It could single out of the Strait Of Hormoz. So they know that this is not going to work, the time is not on their side. And every day that goes by, the crisis work worsens. There is a solution, at least for this phase, and that is for The United States to accept the ceasefire conditions, the conditions that they accepted from day one, which they failed to fulfill. Those those, the ceasefire conditions that we, both sides agreed upon after thirty nine days.
The United States consig if it had fulfilled those, conditions, we would not have slaughter in Lebanon. We would not have slaughter in Gaza, and the ships would be extra ships because the strait has never been close to Russia, China, or any country that's not hostile towards Iran. But these five countries that participated in the war, many of their ships could have passed through this trade, and the global crisis would have been much more manageable today. And if The United States today chooses to take the smart and sane route, it is it is available for them. But, I think the decision is not Trump's.
The decision is Netanyahu's. It is the Zionist lobby. They are very much in control. Probably Trump wants an off ramp. He wants to end this, but he does not have that authority.
I think we can also come to this conclusion through what Tucker Carlson has told us or his audience about his visit to see Trump and the the what he told Trump and Trump's response with regards to war. And on the other hand, Joe Kent's resignation letter as well as his subsequent interviews all indicate that the real power behind the decision for war and continued war is the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. And I don't think that in the last seventy, seventy five days, their authority has melted away. Although, I would say, Glenn, and this is my interpretation of Iranian position. It's not anything that I've heard from an Iranian official, But I I sort of see it that Iran hopes to do is to put pressure, on The United States in such a way that the political elites in Washington would conclude that they will have to part ways with the Israeli regime on this issue, and that they will have to impose peace.
They would have to impose a ceasefire, for the sake of internal US stability and for the sake of rescuing The US economy. They would basically tell the Israelis to sit to sit this one out. But, so far, I don't think we're anywhere near there.
Speaker 0: Well, given that there's a good possibility now that war is imminent, and as you said, Iran would respond, in an overwhelming manner, How do you see this being fought differently than the previous you know, the thirty nine day war? Well, essentially, what cards does each side have to play here? You mentioned, of course, The United States possibly activating some of its proxies. But but beyond this, why would you what cards do you have to do the Americans and Iranians have to play now? Or will it be something similar to last time?
Speaker 1: Well, the I the Al the Wahhabi and Salafi proxies, on the border with Pakistan, they will be dealt with rather easily. And the Kurdish terrorists and other terrorists that will be accompanying them In the case of an assault, they they will be dealt with, although that will be more complicated because they're larger in number. But, but that would also, ultimately, the war ends, lead Iran and the Iraqi central government to put an end to the British regional government in Adelby. If they do allow this to happen, then they will be a part of the war. And in future, Iran will not tolerate them.
That will be the end of of of that regional government. And so it's it's for them to choose whether they want to go for suicide or to, continue with their current status. With regards to The United States, I think Iran will escalate very quickly, and it won't be like last time. It will be very swift. But also, Glenn, this time around, the Iraqi resistance will go all out.
What the Iraqi resistance did last time was to harass Americans and to, give them a lot of difficulty as well as, in some cases, Kuwait as well. But I think that, this time around, it will be a very different story. Yemen is, is now fully ready and prepared for war, and, so I think that the Red Sea will be shut down. And so the, oil exports and other exports from the Red Sea, that will come to an end. The Iranians have allowed the Saudis to continue with those exports because Iran wants an off ramp for the Saudis.
But but, you know, as long as the Americans, have a presence in these countries, the military has a presence in these countries, they are partners in war. And so the Iranian response will be to will be on all fronts. So I and, of course, Israel will be hammered very hard. So I I think that this is going to be a very, a more intense war, and, I think lots of things will happen very quick. Love also seen that speculating.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I've also seen that, Israel, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are now coordinating their military operations. I was wondering to what extent it would be possible for the for The United States to outsource part of the war fighting to its allies. Because, again, ideally, when The US goes to war, you know, we'll use, you know, Ukrainians to fight the Russians. You would ideally use, you know, Taiwanese or Japanese to fight the Chinese, and you would use the Arabs to fight the Iranians.
But how do you do do they have enough fighting power on you know, collectively to actually carry part of this burden? Or I mean, Israel is you know, quite has quite a formidable army, but these Gulf states, The UAE and Saudi Arabia, to what extent can they make a difference?
Speaker 1: Well, I think, Yemen, the the real Arabs in of the Arabian Peninsula, they will, themself by themselves be able to deal with Saudi Arabia. And, The Emirates is none none of these countries have fighting forces. They are not capable of even defending themselves. They are corrupt family regimes. They have not have never created an incentive for the population to to fight for them or the country.
The United States, with all of its firepower, lost the war against Iran. So what what is is The Emirates with a population of 1,000,000 1,100,000 people going to do? And I'm sure that if you look at public opinion in in The Emirates, even though it's a police state and so is Saudi, all these five countries are police states, Qatar and Bahrain. You can't you know, the West likes to call Iran like a dictatorship, but, in Iran, you can say anything you want in a you know, in in public over there. You cannot say anything serious and private.
But, I think, you know, if if The Emirates were to launch war against Iran, some people who who want Israel, I don't think so. I and, I during the thirty nine day war, the Arab streets were cheering for Iran even though the the media the the media of these oil and gas regimes were day and night antagonizing Iran, but people just see right through them. They know that all of them have, relations open and secret with the Israeli regime. They know that what, you know, Qatar sort of relationship Qatar has with Israel. They know, of course, what, you know, Emirates the Emirates has has taken this further than anyone else.
None of these regimes have a, you know, great deal of public legitimacy. They have had they've they have a lot of money. But now after what happened in this war, that aura has, has collapsed. And I I then they're in no position to fight. The smart thing for them to do would be for them to coordinate with one another and to tell the Americans, no.
We're not going to allow you to use our land, sea, or air. And that would go a long way to change the equation, but they do not have that sort of sovereignty.
Speaker 0: Well, my last question was just based on the meeting just between Trump and Xi. How do you see the the Chinese and the Russian support, well, being different this time around when the next US attack comes along?
Speaker 1: Well, Iran Chinese relations, Iran Russian relations are very good. And the meeting between, the Iranian foreign minister and president Putin and Saint Petersburg as well as, the meetings in Beijing all went very well. And that is, of course, to be expected, I think, under the the the circumstances that we're living in today. It's quite clear how these countries have been converging over the years and how that is going to continue to be the case. But, ultimately, Glenn, Iran won the war based on its own capabilities.
True. Its friends assisted them, just like Iran assisted Russia, or China assisted Russia. But, you know, Russia on the battlefield is fighting its own war. The Iranians are fighting, their war based on their indigenous capabilities, on, a military strategy that they have been working on for, three decades, more than three decades, if you know, in in some respects. These underground missile bases, we we now now they're beginning to acknowledge what we were saying all along, that they can't destroy those bases.
I had been saying this, so have others, for many years. But, of course, they will never take it seriously until years after we see it, The New York Times or someone else says it. But, the p p 52 bombers were bombing them day and night to no avail. And, I think we've discussed this before most probably. Iran has a large number of bases that it has not used yet.
It has not even opened them up for business because they just don't see any need to do so. Why why let the Americans know where those bases are, where their different gates are when the current bases that are being used are functioning quite well. So the Americans have been bombing them day and night with heavy bombers. The Iranian missile capabilities today, Glenn, are more powerful than they were before the war. Iranian drone capabilities are more powerful than they were before the war.
Iranian economy is not in, the place it was before the war. It is more difficult now. In that respect, that is that is a minus. Iran will persevere because Iranians are resilient. There it is a civilizational state, as I said, as Muslims, especially Shia Muslims who have a very, very powerful religious and cultural affinity towards supporting the oppressed and standing up against oppressors.
This this enhances Iran's capability to resist and be resilient. So the Iranians will definitely outlast the Americans. But when it comes to its military capabilities, the necessary ones, Iran is more powerful today, whereas the Americans have wasted a lot of ammunition. And on the other hand, on the ground, I think what the the Iranians have just as they've been preparing those underground missile bases and drone bases for decades, the Iranians have been preparing for a ground invasion for decades. They've been preparing for a much larger ground of invasion for decades.
So I think the Americans are will be very foolish to conduct an assault on the ground. The Iranians will probably again, I'm I'm speculating completely, but I think the Iranians will allow them in. They'll allow them to take islands. They'll allow them to take parts of the mainland. They'll allow them to carry out an operation deep inside Iran, and then they'll ambush them, and then they'll counterattack.
And they'll hound them for week for weeks after, you know, for months until they just wear them out and defeat them. If you recall, and I'm sure you do, at the very beginning of the war, we discussed, the Iranian the Iranian plan. And I I said that Iran wants the war to last as long as possible. During the thirty nine days of fighting, after it became clear to the Americans, after a few days that this was going nowhere, they began sending messages to Iran. The Iranians did not respond to any of those message because they didn't want to.
They wanted the fighting to go on. And so it was only after thirty, I don't know, four, five, six days that the Iranians began to, allow for those communications to take place, and ultimately, Trump had to accept the Iranian framework. And he was as you recall, he he was humiliated. Everyone spoke of women the bin, and we'd never even looked at it. But it was a humiliation.
So the Iranians are prepared. The think the longer the war is lasts, even though Iran does not want war at all. But, now that we have war, the longer it lasts, the better because the Iranians want to make sure that the Americans never again think about aggression against Iran. So, there will have to be a price for us to pay, but, the Americans will have to pay a price that's so heavy economically and militarily and politically that, they will never they will leave and never look back.
Speaker 0: In in terms of reassessment, how the war is going, you know, know many people in America has accused you of, of spreading Iranian propaganda, but, we now see that Leon Panetta, the former CIA boss, he's come out and say that Iran holds a gun to the head of of of The United States. And you had no other than the king of the neocons, Robert Kagan, writing an article in The Atlantic saying it's checkmate. The Iranians defeated us. So, yeah, I guess, yeah, reality eventually catches up with the best war narrative. So
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, Robert has always been on the payroll. We've been paying him I I've been paying him for years now. Yeah. That's, you know, that's the fact.
And they can say, I mean, I'm a mouthpiece. This is propaganda. For me, it was clear as day for many years that, that this would, I I always thought we would ultimately reach this phase. I didn't think that the Americans would, be able to come to terms with Iran. You know, from from years for years, we've been I've been saying that, The United States, if it engages in war with Iran, that, the results will, not end well for them.
The Iranian war plan has been, magnificent, and, the the, doctrine has worked very well for Iran. And just as after the twelve day war, the Iranians went and, rethought and regrouped and, planned, and and and for the future, after this ceasefire, they've done the same thing once again. So it won't end well for The United States. War is a horrible thing. I don't want war.
But, I have no doubt that it will end in failure for Trump and the Trump regime and the Israeli regime. It will end very poorly for Zionism because the world will blame the Zionists for the miseries that we're all going to experience. If the war restarts, I have I'm I'm sure that we're going to enter a global economic depression, a major depression if it's a if it's a severe war which strikes, in critical infrastructure. But we are where we are, and Iran will fight decisively. They will not they will not back down until this is over.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you very much for taking time on a Saturday night, so I appreciate it. And, yeah, stay safe.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being with you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alexander Mercouris: The Political Legitimacy Crisis Across Europe https://youtu.be/Wjb4vFK37t0 https://t.co/dYMXoSnPBq
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alexander McCurryst interviews Alexander McCurryst podcast host Alexander McCurryst (“the Duran” host Glenn) about European and British political crises. Alexander McCurryst argues that across Europe there is a “denationalized political elite” that concentrates on foreign policy—especially Russia and the conflict in Ukraine—while losing attention to accumulating domestic problems. He connects this disengagement to declining approval ratings, weakening of opposition, and rising political volatility.
On Britain specifically, he says the crisis stems from Prime Minister Kirst Palmer and the broader leadership being narrowly focused on “foreign policy” framed euphemistically, largely centered on Russia, Ukraine, and wider European integration rather than basic British concerns. He characterizes Palmer as constantly traveling abroad and “never hear kir,” implying disengagement from British problems. He argues that the established political elite is unlikely to change course even if Palmer’s time as prime minister ends, because successors would be expected to continue the same approach while only trying to become more popular.
Regarding Nigel Farage and Reform, Alexander McCurryst says Farage comes from outside the elite and has previously suggested changes to British foreign policy, including writing that the Ukraine war was provoked by actions taken by the West. However, he argues that as Farage gets closer to power he talks more like the elite does—especially on relations with Russia and Europe—and he does not believe Farage would have the political authority or skills to carry out the major sea change required. He adds that Farage’s priorities include attracting defections from Conservative Party elites and that the link between foreign policy and the domestic policy crisis is not understood.
Alexander McCurryst then describes Britain’s economic stagnation as particularly severe. He points to over-investment in the financial system in the 1980s, deindustrialization, reliance on North Sea oil, and exposure after the 2008 period as a “one-dimensional economy” lacking strategic depth. He lists long-running outcomes since 2008: flat or falling living standards, flat output, rising debt as government costs increase, rising taxes, and widening budget and trade deficits. He also claims Britain is more boxed in to the foreign-policy consensus than other European countries, lacking examples of strong domestic challengers akin to parties like National Rally, left-wing forces such as Melenchon, or Italy’s Salvini.
He argues that this combination creates rising public anger and exasperation and could lead to sudden, sharper political shifts that are not moderated by consensus, likening Britain to a pressure cooker approaching an “almost pre revolutionary situation.” He suggests legitimacy crises are expanding across Europe and sees administrative and repressive measures as signs of insecurity and inability to adapt.
The discussion turns to Germany as a comparative case. Glenn highlights the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as Germany’s most popular party, described as relatively new, and claims Chancellor Blackrock Mertz is less popular than Palmer. Glenn argues Germany is changing in ways that contradict post–World War II lessons and mentions targeting the opposition, including describing AfD as an extremist organization by intelligence services. Alexander McCurryst responds that in both Britain and Germany these legitimacy crises show the political system cannot adapt and tries to manage instability through repressive tools. He contrasts Germany and Britain’s historical orientation toward Russia: Germany is described as moving against the grain of policies aiming for stability with Russia, including “Ostpolitik” approaches associated with earlier decades, while Britain is described as having an “almost surfeit of policy” anchored in founding myths.
Glenn then asks about France and other smaller states, mentioning attempts to cancel election results in Romania, a new election in Bulgaria, celebration of a possible end to Orban in Hungary that did not produce profound change, and Slovakia “holding the line.” Alexander McCurryst says smaller countries show more political agency and vitality partly because they have fewer security-state constraints and are easier for people to organize, but argues big countries still determine European direction. He lists Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Britain as decisive, while smaller states influence dialogue but cannot change overall direction alone.
On diplomacy with Russia, Glenn notes a shift in rhetoric after years of arguing “weapons are the path to peace” and boycotting diplomacy, and asks whether it will go anywhere. Alexander McCurryst says events are pressing the elites but that they are not acting with conviction. He claims that by May they are still not agreed on who will lead negotiations with Russians and have not defined realistic objectives. He cites an episode where Macron sent two people to Moscow and says the Russians responded that it was not negotiation but a one-way dialogue. He argues that without deciding what to talk about and who represents Europe, talks cannot advance.
Glenn adds that Europeans want a “seat at the table” but refuse to talk to Russia, citing Kaya Kallas’s statements about not talking to Putin and Russia being broken up into smaller countries. Alexander McCurryst agrees that the mindset driving domestic crisis also affects foreign-policy decision-making: elites insist their values must prevail and retreat into values language that blocks real solutions. He claims Western media narratives increasingly depict Ukraine as winning and portrays recurring stories about Putin being sick or dying and corruption in Ukraine as proof democracy is working, describing this as a “hope strategy.”
Finally, Alexander McCurryst connects the crisis to Europe losing its place in the world and becoming less coherent with the United States. He argues Britain’s belief it remains a great power despite decline amplifies the struggle with Russia. He warns that without understanding with Russia Europe risks becoming a “backwater.” He says Europe still has time to change but that goodwill in Russia has been lost and that Russia controls the “gateway” to Eurasia. He concludes that despair should be avoided, claiming Europe is near a “tipping point,” with Britain and Germany already in crises and elections in France potentially bringing faster change, but that Europe must adapt to a post-American world; otherwise it risks remaining a small region left behind.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alexander McCurryst, the host of the very popular The Duran and also, the host of the Alexander McCurryst podcast, and I will leave a link to both of them in the description. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Delighted to be here, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So I'm always impressed by your detailed knowledge and focus on European politics, and I wanted to ask you about what's happening in British politics because it seems to be yeah, quite unprecedented what we're observing. But first, I thought a good place to start might be the common thread across European politics because it does seem like we're watching a denationalized political elite, which tends to ignore very basic national interest, you can say an excessive focus on foreign policy or war, and this, you know, might be fueling economic political problems. We see low approval ratings, undermining of political opposition. What is it that you're seeing across Europe at the moment?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you've described the situation exactly correct, and the crisis in Britain is related precisely to this. One of the reasons why we have a political crisis in Britain is because there is a perception that the political leadership in Britain and the current Prime Minister, Kirst Palmer, are narrowly focused on what is euphemistically called 'foreign policy', except it's not even properly speaking 'foreign policy', not in the classical sense of the word. What they're really focused on is Russia, the conflict in Ukraine and the wider process of European integration. And, the elites in Europe, and Britain is no exception, as a consequence, have been losing interest and ability to understand the actual accumulating problems within their own countries, and it is this that is creating increasing political volatility. If we're talking about Kirstjarma, I mean, of the terms that he's referred by here is 'never hear kir' because he's constantly travelling around the world, mostly worrying about Ukraine and I think that basically says it all.
There's a white sense that he's fundamentally disengaged and uninterested in the problems of the British people and in the problems that face Britain, the very big growing intractable problems that face Britain overall.
Speaker 0: But is the days of Starmer coming to an end, how do you see the next election changing British politics? Because now we're looking at possibly, you know, mister Brexit, Nigel Farage himself taking, well, the the role of prime minister.
Speaker 1: Well, this is again, it goes back to your original point about a Europe wide elite that continues to be focused very much on these things, that Starmig himself is not an exception to the rule. He is the rule. He is absolutely typical of all the others. I mean, you can see this with Friedrich Mautz in Germany who's mostly focused on rearmament to fight Russia and supporting Ukraine and all of these things. You see this with one politician after another, you saw this with Fredriksen in Denmark, you see this with the various leaders that we've had in countries like Netherlands and Poland and wherever they're overwhelmingly focused on these issues.
And if we're talking about Starmer, yes, probably we are gradually moving towards the end of the time when he will remain prime minister. But for the moment, the established political elite remains in place and what they're trying to do is they're trying to get rid of Starman and find someone who will be exactly the same as Starman, but only somehow will be a little bit more popular than Starman himself has been, which is why this crisis is becoming so complicated and so intractable because there isn't anybody basically who could take over and continue to do the things that is doing and who can become popular in a way that Starmer is not. Now, as for Farage and reform, well, Farage comes from outside the elite that we've just been talking about. He has in the past suggested changes to British foreign policy. He wrote pieces, for example, in which he suggested that the war in Ukraine had indeed been provoked by actions taken by the West.
But the closer he gets to power itself, the less he talks in this way and the more he starts to talk like the elite does about foreign policy, about relations with Russia, about the overall situation in Europe. And one gets the sense that in the end, he is not going to be the person who has the political authority or the political skill to carry out that major sea change in British policy that is needed. For one thing, he's far too interested in attracting support from members of the elite, from members of the former of the of the Conservative Party who are defecting to him, and he doesn't want to scare them away by seeming too radical about foreign policy. The link between foreign policy and the crisis in domestic policy is not, I think, one that he understands.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, this has been a common theme, though, in United States and Europe, it seems. That is you can vote for whomever you want. You can put someone else on the throne, but eventually, you can't change the policies. And not just with Trump, but I think Maloney as well became a good example of this.
The Italians always speak about the Maloney, which was during the election, and of course, the one who who took power thereafter, which are very different people. But, of course, this very unpopular leaderships, I mean, reason why they're all plummeting in the polls across Europe is because there is a crisis that is they're not actually pursuing the basic national interest, it seems. And this isn't going away, even if Farage takes over. So where where do you see Britain going here? Because at some point, the economic problems will have to well, this reality will have to impact its foreign policy as well.
Speaker 1: We are in a particularly difficult situation because in some respects, our problems are particularly intractable. Britain, in the nineteen eighties, perhaps over invested in its financial system. It it it was the first European country to basically de industrialize its economy or to move away from, you know, manufacturing as the core of a western economy. It went heavily into financial services. It also depended heavily on oil from the North Sea to cover costs.
And the result was that in the '2 when the February came, Britain was exposed as a one dimensional economy that lacked the necessary strategic depth to basically blow out the program problem out. So what we have had since 2008, as a result, is a very long period of economic stagnation. Living standards have been flat or falling, output has been basically flat, debt levels have been rising as costs that governments have to pay continue to grow but the economy doesn't grow at the rate same pace, taxes are rising and the current account, the budget deficit and the trade deficit constantly widen. So we have this major problem in Britain which is greater, more severe than what you will find elsewhere in Europe. At the same time, for historic reasons, we have become even more boxed in to this foreign policy consensus than perhaps is true in other European countries.
So there is no equivalent, for example, to the IFDAC in Britain where you do see people engaging in particular alternative ideas and programs. We have no nothing like Le Pen and the national rally or Melenchon and his left wing forces which also challenge these ideas. There's no one like Salvini, who is there in Italy, who is a deputy prime minister and carries some authority and argues against these things. So we have a particularly intractable set of problems which require a solution and a lot of attention, and we have a political class which is perhaps even more close to these realities than you find elsewhere in Europe. So this is creating growing tensions and growing exasperation on the part of the British public.
Many people are saying that for the first time, they sense an atmosphere of anger within wider British society. If you go to the British media, you find that word anger all over the place, and this is the cause of it. And the the the danger is that because the political system here is proving so unresponsive, it's like a pressure cooker with this anger increasing all the time, and we might eventually see the pressure cooker explode, and that could throw up political movements and political forces, which we can't yet see, but which could be much more radical than anything we have seen up to now, and with with levels of political change happening happening in Britain very suddenly and very sharply which are not going to be moderated by consensus and which might be in the long term extremely destabilizing. So I've spoken about this as being almost a pre revolutionary situation. This is basically the reason why.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, it's we're not quite in 1848 yet, but still, it does feel that the political legitimacy is undergoing crisis to the extent it can't hold on anymore at some point, as you said, where the pressure cooker, you know, can only go so far. But I'm glad you mentioned Germany because they they do have other alternatives. Well Yeah.
The alternative for Germany, which is now the most popular part in the polls in Germany, which is quite remarkable given that it was only established, what, 02/2013. So it's a relative, you know, new party. But but in this regard, we do see that the German chancellor, Blackrock Mertz, he's even less popular than Starmer. So, of course, it's always what's happened to Germany is quite remarkable because, as we know, after the second world war, Germany kind of rebuilt its whole image. It was it learned from history.
It was becoming, you know, less engaged in wars, it would be the economy driving Europe forward, all of these things. You had, you know, German leaders meeting the Russians, essentially, you know, putting overcoming history, all of these things which kind of defined Germany, which kind of rubbed off over to what Europe was supposed to represent. We're seeing a very different Germany today. It's it's de industrializing, it's massive economic problem, as I said, a political legitimacy crisis. And as this is happening, we're also seeing the the targeting of the opposition, that is they're using the intelligence services now after AFD by referring to it as an extremist organization.
And, of course, Mertz himself is you know, this learning from history, not not so much, it seems. Again, him, like his predecessor, were, you know, was supporting the genocide in Gaza. Mertz said that Israel was doing the dirty work for us when they attacked Iran, and of course, now they're working on doing this mass producing drones and missiles so they can attack Russia. This is a very different Germany than we saw, especially in the nineties and even thereafter. So how sustainable is this, though, if we, you know, revert back to your your pressure cooker analogy?
Because this seems to be only intensifying. It is
Speaker 1: intensifying and it's important to stress that all of these things that we're talking about, the talk about banning the IFTA, the restrictions on speech assembly and all of these things. In Britain, incredibly,
Speaker 0: and
Speaker 1: it's received far too little attention, a lawyer who successfully defended his clients in court, who came from a protest group that supported protested against some of the events that are taking place in Gaza. That lawyer, after successfully defending his clients, was prosecuted on a charge of contempt of court on the basis of the defense speech that he made in court, and it then became, for a time, contempt of court, which is a criminal offense that can carry a sentence of five years to report the fact that this trial was taking place. I mean, it seems incredible but, you know, we are in these kinds of situations. The barrister, by the way, I should say, was acquitted so he won the case. But the point is all of these things are manifestations of increasing insecurity and nervousness on the part of the political system, talking about banning the eye of death, having it investigated by the security services, all of that sort of thing are a sign of a political system that can't can't bring itself to change its policies, won't adapt to the coming change, and which is pushing back in the only way that it feels it still can by using these repressive and administrative tools.
Now, again, I have to say this, when we get into any kind of situation of that kind, you are looking at a potential crisis. I mean, it's it's clearly an indication indicator of a major legitimacy crisis when you're talking about banning your most popular party and investigated in this kind of way. And a legitimacy crisis for which we have no real compass to take us through. Now, you're absolutely right and this is about Germany by the way and this is a fundamental difference between Germany and Britain because in Germany, they're going against the grain of their recent history, which is to seek a peaceful, stable Europe, a stable relationship with Russia, close economic contacts with Russia, auspolitik and all of this policies that go back to the 1960s. In Britain, it is the other way round.
It is almost a surfeit of policy because here, always the founding myth of British foreign policy is Churchill in 1940 and that's always what people talk about and misunderstand profoundly, by the way, and want to revert to. But the effect is the same, and you have a legitimacy crisis in Britain, you have a legitimacy crisis in Germany, it's going to gradually expand across Europe. To be absolutely clear, it's not something I want to see or feel comfortable about at all. I don't want to see disorderly, chaotic change. I want to see an orderly change of policies as the system adapts to circumstances and is, you know, sensitive to movements in opinion, which is the kind of political system that I grew up with.
There's a reflection of the very brittle system that we have today, which has become very, inflexible and very incapable of adapting and which is now in this crisis. And I don't myself know exactly how things are going to play out, but I will say this, in Germany, as in Britain, it is unsustainable.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I also prefer slower incremental changes, but that's the problem when one holds back no longer able to reform, and also when that legitimacy drops and the opposition emerges and they're held back or or even attacked, the the problems aren't solved. It's just the pressure builds up, and you're gonna ensure that once the changes come, they will be more disorderly and, yeah, disruptive. But, of course, when when you speak of Germany and Britain, you could possibly you could put France in the same categories.
You know, Macron will hold on to power almost irrespective of how people vote, well, to a certain extent, and and he also used, of course, lawfare against opposition, Le Pen. But what do you see happening in the more medium to small sized European countries, though? Because we did see now the that they they were able to essentially cancel the election results in Romania, but this seems to be falling apart. They had a new election in Bulgaria. Hungary was perhaps getting rid of Orban was celebrated a bit too prematurely because it doesn't look like the changes will be that profound.
And, of course, Slovakia is still holding the line, so, it's not as if it's just the the larger countries in the EU.
Speaker 1: Yes. The smaller countries are still showing more political agency and vitality probably because as they're relatively small, they don't have the elaborate security states that the bigger countries do and they are less invested in the system than the bigger states are. And in a smaller country, it's easier for people to organize because there's less it's less challenging to organize in a small country than in a big one where you need to organize on a much, much bigger scale. The problem is that the small countries can only do so much in order for there to be a change in overall direction. The bigger countries in Europe have to be involved.
Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Britain, they are the countries that ultimately decide the direction of European policy, not Slovakia or Bolsa or Croatia or Slovenia or Hungary or Bulgaria, all those sorts of places. So the small countries are important because they do provide a counter and they provide scope for dialogue and activism. But we have to look for change in the big countries before change will happen.
Speaker 0: Well, as you said, a lot of the foreign policy obsession is, of course, with Russia, and this further creates problems for the economies of Europe. Mhmm. But there seems to be some some change in rhetoric, not not something that's gained significant momentum. But after four years now, more than four years of essentially arguing that, you know, weapons are the path to peace and boycotting diplomacy, which seems to be part of this wider strategy of fighting to the last Ukrainian, we now see that there's some talk about perhaps there's a need to, you know, be radical in the EU and controversial, but to speak to the other side, diplomacy. And, again, for given that they all more or less agreed not to do any diplomacy and criminalized it, it it's a very it's perhaps a bit difficult to walk all of this back.
But the Finnish president, Stab, he made this point that it's time to talk to Russia, at least that's what's reported in the Washington Post. I'm not sure if that's suggesting that he should be the one leading the talks with the EU, but but do you see this going anywhere, or is this discussing who's gonna talk, what can we talk about, you know, who should represent us?
Speaker 1: You see, this is this is where it becomes so particularly frustrating because, yes, events are now beginning to press on them. I mean, they are aware of a deteriorating economic situation in their societies, they are aware that their people are becoming restive, they are nervous and insecure about their own control. I sometimes do wonder how much they really understand about the situation in Ukraine and about the direction of the war. I sometimes get the sense that they are completely detached from reality about it, but maybe some of them have some glimmers of understanding that the war isn't going well and that the much longed for and desired victory over Russia isn't going to happen. But the problem is, even when events force them towards the logical conclusion that diplomacy with the Russians is essential, you get the sense that their heart isn't in it and they don't really have enormous amount of conviction behind it because they've been talking about this now for several months It really got underway in December, around the time when there was the arguments over the loan to Ukraine.
But we're now in May, They haven't yet agreed even on the person who's going to lead the negotiations with the Russians. I mean, they they are no further advanced on that at all. They've not really come up with proposals that they can talk with the Russians about or even go to Moscow and share ideas. I mean, a point that you make many times in many of your writings, they're not they show no real interest in listening to what the Russians have to say. We had this disastrous episode when Macron sent two of his people to Moscow, and the Russians found that, you know, they were being lectured all over again and were hearing the same talking points that they always hear and the Russians said, well, what's the point of all of this?
You know, this isn't a negotiation, it's just a one way dial it's a dialogue of the death basically. So they don't seem to be able, even if they've intellectually understood or some of them have understood the inevitability of talking to the Russians. They're not yet doing the things that they need to do in order to move forward with that, with any prospect of success. They've not even defined realistically what their objective in this conflict is at all anymore. Is it to defeat Russia?
How? How do you defeat Russia now? Is it to fight the Russians to a standstill? What does that even mean? Is it to try to adapt to the possibility of a Russian victory?
Whatever that is. But again, they've not had a discussion about that. So given that there is really fundamental agreement about nothing, it's very difficult to see these negotiations, these proposed negotiations moving forward at all. Yes, it is a sign of reality breaking through that they talk about talking to the Russians. But before anything actually concrete happens, they have to accept that just talking to the Russians by itself isn't enough.
They have to decide what they're going to talk about and who is going to represent.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's, it's it's a bit strange to watch because, it's well, it's the same logic the the Europeans arguing that they need a seat at the table. It's not fair that this is being discussed by the Americans and the Russians over the heads of the Europeans. So they want a seat at the table, but nobody wants to talk to Russia.
And the the ones who say, well, perhaps, you know, people like Kaya Kallas, you know, she should lead the talks, but that seems like the effort is simply to make sure it doesn't move forward. I mean, this is the same Kaya Kallas who said it's no point to talk to Putin, and, of course, Russia should be broken up into many smaller countries because they're also easier to manage. So I I don't see the the genuine diplomacy coming forth. And even Mertz, he seems to go on Twitter daily now, at least quite often. Every time there's a strike by by Russia against Ukraine, the the argument not just him, but their EU leaders as well as well.
Look what the Russians did. They attacked Ukraine in a big attack. That proves they're not interested in a negotiated settlement. But but these are the same people who refuse to even pick up the phone and talk to the other side. So when they say negotiations, they they seem to believe it's capitulation.
That is
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: If Russia wants peace, it should stop all attacks and essentially give up its leverage. And but but this doesn't make any sense when the Europeans only want a ceasefire to to, I guess, well, to regroup and replenish Ukrainian arms. But, no, it's it's very I sometimes I think about 2022 because when this big consensus came that we should all boycott diplomacy, Macron was among the last ones to fall in line. He tried for a bit afterwards to keep the dialogue with the Russians, and I remember they reported in the news then as well that Macron made the statement that why it might be important to talk to Russia, that the future of Europe should not be decided in Washington or Moscow, so we have to be engaged. And I I thought that made a lot of sense.
But, of course, he fell in line like everyone else, and now he doesn't want to talk to the Russians either. It's it's incredible to watch, but
Speaker 1: It it is incredible to watch, and it is it is I mean, we we come back to what you would we were talking about with the domestic crisis. The the the domestic crisis, these legitimacy crisis that we see across Europe are, to a great extent, a product of this kind of mindset. You you don't adapt to realities. You don't adapt to the economic realities, the foreign policy realities, the social changes that are taking place within your society. You are right, you insist that your values must prevail, and they always talk about values and retreat into that language, which again precludes any real way out of, you know, the sort of trap they've put themselves into.
And, well, they, you know, they comfort themselves from time to time. They say, the war isn't going so well for the Russians. Things are a bit slower now. That means that they're at the standstill. They hide behind this wishful thinking because they can't bring themselves to break with the line that they all chose to take, including Macron eventually, in 2022.
2022 is going to be look, when people look back on it, it's going to be seen as an extraordinary year. It's going to be seen as a year when the first step towards disaster was taken. I mean, we we, in the West, could have adapted to the changes, the results of what happened in the war and the economic changes, but our refusal to do so has, well, basically doomed us to a major crisis which is inevitably coming, and the Americans for their part are becoming exasperated and frustrated and are now showing signs of walking away, and the Russians look like they've been increasingly antagonized.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I see the media now across Europe being filled with similar headlines. They're going back to the idea that Ukraine is winning, suggesting that he turned the tide already and, you know, Putin is, you know, shivering in his boots. And, of course, Putin is sick again and dying, this kind of news which come up every now and then when there's need to ensure the public that, you know, we we we can actually win. All the corruption problems in Ukraine is being spun in parts of Europe now as well, look.
It means that people are held accountable. Democracy is working, which is, again, a hope a hope strategy in terms of if you can just, you know, socially construct the world as you wish it was, then perhaps, just perhaps, it will come true. But a lot of this desperation and the mass hysteria in Europe, though, it does appear to derive a bit from where Europe has well, lost its place in the world. It's no longer, you know, the junior partner of The US. They don't collectively the political West anymore have the same cohesion that formed the unipolar or liberal hegemony.
And indeed, you have this economic decline, which also fuels the desperation. So so so if front well, looks at this, how do you see this long term stagnation, though? What are the main, I guess, structural causes behind it?
Speaker 1: And and can I just say all that you say is not only true, but it is particularly true of Britain? Because, of course, Britain exited the second world war as still a global power, a great power, as an important ally of The United States, a country with very, very powerful armed forces, the world's third biggest industrial base, and the entire operative assumption in Britain is that we are in great power still despite the fact that we've fallen back from all of these positions. So there is and this is this is private, of course, widely understood. So there is this idea that, you know, we are losing our position, we are now in extreme descent, and so I thought that must mean that we must cling even more tightly to that element of our position as a great power which we still have, which is somehow the the struggle with Russia. Where does this leave Europe in a very big, very difficult, very bad situation overall?
Europe has become very accustomed, not just in the twentieth century and the nineteenth century, but basically for hundreds of years, as being the cockpit of humanity, the major place where human progress takes place, where living standards are highest, where economic change is most dynamic, where science and technology are promoted most vigorously, where philosophical thought and culture and art are at their most vital, and now what we are facing is the real possibility that we might become a backwater, and that is something that is very, very alarming and very disturbing, not just for European elites, but I suspect deep down for many much of the wider European population, which is probably starting to sense this, which also explains some of this legitimacy issue. Now, it doesn't have to be that way. One of the reasons why Europe became so important in the first place was precisely because it was flexible, precisely because it did diplomacy, precisely because it had objective or if not objective, at least pragmatic approaches to economic policy. It's the fact that all of that has fallen away, the mindset that we've just been talking about, which is threatening Europe with marginalization. Whether we have the will and the imagination and the vitality left in Europe to turn it round is going to be a very, very big question.
But in order to turn it round, we have to understand one absolutely vital truth, which is that in order to turn it round, we have to come to some kind of understanding with the Russians. I mean, the Russians are part of Europe, they're a major part of Europe, they made a major contribution to European culture, but even putting that aside, we simply cannot afford the drain of an unending confrontation with them. It's sapping our energy and it is destabilizing our societies. Now, that given how some people in Europe feel about Russia, is going to be a very difficult thing for them to understand.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This is the problem though, there doesn't seem to be any imagination or or willingness to to essentially try to overcome this conflict. The the this obsession with having to defeat the Russians, it's it's quite extreme because I I've asked people as well, well, what exactly does this mean? How do you defeat the world's largest nuclear power that consider itself to be in a fight for its existence? This is a very dangerous thing to do.
But it's what is the possible way, though, for Europe to to break out of this? I I you you know, you you said that the British might fear that they will be go from being, you know, the this yeah. The the center of the world, if you will, in economic activity to suddenly becoming a backwater. And this is an interesting German strategy paper that came out in 2010. It it warned essentially, you know, we we have to do something to make sure that we won't simply become, you know, the Western Peninsula of of the Eurasian Continent.
And I actually thought that was a nice framing. I actually stole it, that that phrase and made a title out of it in my book where I called it Europe as the Western Peninsula Of Greater Eurasia. But I was kinda making the point that this would be a solution for the Europeans, because if you have a multipolar world emerging, the The US is not the only power left, Europe is no longer the center, it could thrive if it would diversify its economic ties that is work with everyone, but also made the the the the recognize the opposite choice for the Europeans, which is they can also, when they use their clients, bet everything, put all their eggs in the American basket even though they don't want to be in Europe anymore, and hope that this, you know, they can revive unipolarity and America will regain an interest in Europe, but that would just ensure their destruction. It just feels to me that we come with the second option here. But do you think there's any is it too late?
Just my last question. Is it too late for Europe to make some fundamental changes to because it's been decades of ignoring technological sovereignty, their political autonomy. You know, we wasted thirty five years after the Cold War, which we could have made peace with the Russians instead of building the new bloc politics. I mean, so many years have been wasted here. So do you see any, I guess, possibility of reversing this, or are we all doomed?
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing to say is that I must read your book because it sounds extremely prescient, if I may say so. Describes exactly the fork in the road when we took the wrong fork, we took the wrong road. So we do still have time. We remain a very rich continent. We are overall very educated, we have all of the enormous legacy of cultural and intellectual wealth, but we are living on borrowed time and it would be much better if we'd made the right decisions fifteen years ago.
And it is tragic and in some way baffling that we didn't. I think this is actually one of the great questions that need to be asked. Why exactly did we decide to go down what was already the wrong direction? You know, possible to see that it would be the wrong direction because as you absolutely correctly say, becoming the Western end of Eurasia is not actually a bad outcome at all. I mean, Eurasia is we're not going to have a situation where Russia is going to remain indefinitely poor and, you know, whatever, or that China is going to remain indefinitely a third what used to be called a third world country.
I mean, these are dynamic places. Other parts of Eurasia are dynamic as well. Involving ourselves in these things and coming to them with what we have is a way not just of energizing them, but energizing us and shaping the future, if you like, in our own interests. But of course, we haven't done that and finding a way back is going to be much more difficult now than it was fifteen years ago because we've lost so much goodwill in Russia. Putin and I gave a press conference on Saturday after the victory parade, and I pointed out how bitter about Europe he seems to feel.
Putin was almost the most Europeanist figure within the Kremlin basically. I mean, the others are already now looking beyond Europe. They're thinking more about China, they're thinking more about India, they're thinking more about those things. And the entire conversation in Russia has been changing too. And for Europe, getting it sorted out with Russia is essential because it is Russia that is the entry point for Europe into Eurasia.
It's the Russians who control the gate, the gateway. It's they can open the door or they can shut the door. So we absolutely do need to sort things out with the Russians. If we do sort these things out with the Russians, then things can start to turn round and things can begin to change and over time change would become sustained and we would notice visibly the difference. But the longer we leave it, the more difficult it becomes, and though I don't think we are at that point yet, there will come a point when it is the point of no return and we become so impoverished, so marginalized that it simply becomes uninteresting for others to involve themselves with us anymore.
Speaker 0: No. Just this reluctance to adjust to reality. I think this is what's so, yeah, so exhausting to watch, so suffocating. The the slogan of always more Europe, everyone has to fall in line. For me, the most remarkable display of this recently was when the Slovakian prime minister went to to Moscow for the ninth of May parade, and afterwards, the German chancellor, you know, threatened that he should be punished because he went to Moscow to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Another German chancellor who will punish him. And and I thought it is extraordinary because they don't have any solutions how to fix relations with Russia, but they did the same to Orban when he went to Moscow for diplomacy. They decided to punish him, and I always think that what some you mentioned before the vitality of we have to regain. Some of the things often isn't a decentralization, though. I mean, the Greek city states, they competed with different economic system, forms of governance, and they experimented and copied what worked.
You can say the same was done with The US state system. Europe, with all its different states also, to a large extent Yeah. You know, advanced like this. And but but now this this mass conformity, even around ridiculous narratives and ideas, is quite destructive. Mhmm.
Well, let's see if we can break out of it.
Speaker 1: Make out
Speaker 0: of it. Anyways, any final thoughts
Speaker 1: Well, mean, think we shouldn't give way to despair about this. I mean, there is time and I do feel that we are actually close to a tipping point. I mean, we have a crisis in Britain, we have a crisis in Germany. There are going to be new elections in France next year, so it may be that, you know, change is going to happen and happen faster than we expect, but it must nonetheless be said that we are now on borrowed time. We don't have a huge amount of time to maneuver unless we adapt to basically a post American world, then it won't just be a post American world, it will be a post Western world and one in which we are just a small region that has been left behind and is no longer the great driver that we are so all of us so accustomed that, you know, we must be.
Speaker 0: Well, that cautious optimism is usually better than how I usually end this podcast. So I will take it, and thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Richard Wolff: Collapse - Iran Is the Graveyard of the U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/XTM0CxB0Mus https://t.co/HSTPsGYM4A
Video Transcript AI Summary
Richard Wolff and Glenn discuss the implications of the Trump–Xi meeting in Beijing for the US economy, the global economy, and the political economy underlying the encounter. Wolff frames it as part of a broader transition in human history: the decline of American “empire” dominance that has existed since at least World War II, and the rise of China. He argues the US is pulled downward by the end of its dominance and that China has outperformed the West in economic growth over the past thirty to forty years, citing China’s GDP growth about three times the US average (about two to two and a half percent annually for the US).
Wolff claims Trump and Xi’s meeting reveals asymmetrical timing. He says one side wants free trade, multilateralism, and open cooperation, while the other side tries to “smash the Chinese down every chance they get,” without success. He also argues China’s approach is distinct: a developmental hybrid combining roughly half of the economy as private capitalist enterprises and the other half as state-owned and state-operated enterprises, all managed by a powerful government supervised by the Communist Party of China. Wolff presents this as “sui generis,” neither the US/Western model nor the Soviet model.
He describes a decades-long contest among “private capitalism,” “state capitalism” (including the Soviet system), and China’s hybrid system, saying the Soviet socialism collapsed, leaving Scandinavian/Western European socialism and a Chinese form of socialism. Wolff asserts China “won” at least at this point because China achieved rapid development from extreme poverty to a highly developed standard of living and strong economic dynamism, in spite of receiving little direct external development help compared with other countries. He says China supervised and regulated the process even as private capitalists played an important role in later decades.
Wolff then argues the strategic logic of the meeting centers on avoiding war. He says China benefits from time on its side and wants to avoid “rocking the boat,” while the US leadership seeks freedom to resuscitate an imperial order and expects Chinese cooperation. He presents Iran as a “microcosm” of this clash: US aims include removing the Iranian regime, replacing it with a US client, and subdividing Iran, while Wolff says China wants Iran left in place so it can manage the Strait of Hormuz as before and remain aligned with Russia and China. He states China is not driven by oil urgency, citing large Chinese oil reserves, and says the US project fails and has cascading consequences.
Wolff extends the argument to propose that the US attempts to revive dominance through energy control (he mentions attacks related to Russia’s energy, Venezuela, Iran, and other oil-related efforts) reflect “empire fantasy.” He argues these actions reveal a broader phenomenon: a decline in US control rather than an ability to impose outcomes. He adds that American public opinion is largely opposed to war, noting that unlike earlier conflicts where patriotic support faded over time with costs and casualties, he says there is already no appetite now, and that domestic economic concerns matter more than grandiose foreign projects. He also references the controversy around a White House “ballroom” as an example of political symbolism amid economic priorities.
In response, Glenn asks about how shifting power should change ideological assumptions about development and about what each side wants from the other. Wolff says China’s position is to resolve problems and prevent explosive issues, potentially including disputes such as Taiwan, while the US cannot hear or accept China’s appeal to avoid warfare and instead wants room to restore the empire. He concludes that major issues are at stake even if reported discussion points seem limited, and he expects further efforts by a “declining empire” to preserve its sense of remaining time.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor Richard Wolff to discuss the developments in The US economy, the global economy, and also we how we can make sense of the meeting that has just taken place between she and Trump. So thank you. It's great to see you again.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Glenn. I'm very glad to be here.
Speaker 0: So I was wondering what what your main takeaway was from this, yeah, from this meeting in Beijing between the American president and the Chinese because, I I think, of course, Trump wanted to come there from position of strength, but instead, it it does reveal that The US is in a weaker position now. And, again, it's not stable either, not for The US or the world. What do you ex yeah. Again, what what did you see from this from this meeting, and what what what can we expect to come from it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think everything now is coming together, in my mind anyway, to underscore that we are watching a transition moment in human history. It's a transition from the dominance of the American empire, which has been pretty much the case since at least the second World War. That's now over. The American empire is in decline. I would argue that the American economy is being pulled down by that fact also, but whether or not you agree with with that, and that the Chinese are riding the upswing rather like The United States rose, the upswing of its capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century.
And it it it became the dominant one with World War one because all of its potential competitors, including the British, destroyed each other. It is a cautionary tale that if you allow a system to develop the way Western capitalism did, you culminate in a destruction of all by all, a kind of Hobbesian horrible moment, in global history. The United States escaped it because it had the protection of the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Absent that reality, they would have been caught up as fully in World Wars one and two as all of their potential competitors were in fact destroyed by that. So that empire now, which should have been clearly advertising its temporariness when it happened, in other words, Americans and others should have understood this can't last.
The United States standing and everybody else is is prostrate on the ground. The United States should have known. It didn't. The second half of the twentieth century will go down historically, I think, as a moment of an almost hysterical pro Americanism in which The United States led the way for many around the world to begin to believe that hooking yourself up to The United States was betting on a horse you knew would be the one that won the race, when you should have known that this horse was doing very well, but pretty soon the other horses would catch up. You didn't see it, and you're gonna pay a heavy price for that.
And now the next winner of this game, the Chinese, are showing you that for the last thirty years, or forty maybe, they have outperformed in terms of economic growth the West by a lot, two to three times. The American average rate of growth of GDP, about two, two and a half percent annual, and the Chinese, three times that annual. Okay. I mean, that's then only a matter of time. And if the meeting of Trump and Xi showed anything, it showed that one side knows that it has time on its side and the other one doesn't.
One one side now wants free trade, multilateralism, open everything, nice guy, let's work it out, And the other side is trying to smash the Chinese down every chance they get and is undeterred in that project by the failure of every effort to slow or stop the Chinese. So, I mean, it is glaring. That's one level. Here's the second one. And stop me, Glenn, if I'm talking too long.
Here's the second level. China is a and here I put on my hat as an economics professor. Okay? China is a unique developmental program. That has to be understood.
Whatever the phrase socialism with Chinese characteristics means, and it means different things to different people, it has meant for me watching the following: that they are not capitalist in the way that we normally define The United States, Britain, Western Europe, and all of that. Why? Because the private enterprise is not the nearly universal form of producing and distributing goods and services. On the other hand, China is not the Soviet Union. It is not the government owns and operates all industry and much of agriculture.
No, it is not that. It is determinately neither the one nor the other. Well, then what is it? The answer is it is a hybrid. It is a hybrid because roughly half of its economy is private capitalist enterprises, both Chinese and non Chinese.
And the other half is state owned and operated enterprise, China. And the whole thing is managed by a very powerful government, which in turn is supervised by the Communist Party of China. That is a remarkable structure, not like the Soviet Union, not like The United States or Western Europe. It is sui genera. It's its own thing.
Just like Scandinavia could call itself socialist because of the government programs and so forth, for decades, that's one kind of socialism, The Soviet Union had every right to call itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics because of what they did, and the Chinese have every right to define a socialism in yet another form. Why is this important? Because what we have seen, without it being called that, is a contest over the last seventy years between private capitalism, state capitalism, if you allow me, the Soviet Union, and then this bizarre hybrid, or if you like the Soviet Union, another kind of socialism. Nobody has the right to that name. There's no central bureau that decides whether you qualify or not.
So Scandinavian socialism, Soviet socialism, Chinese socialism, and yet others. But what we have seen, whether we want to face it or not, is that they're in a struggle, each of them. In that struggle, in that race, in that competition, the Soviet socialism collapsed. Alright? It left Scandinavian socialism, if you like, or Western European socialism, if you like, or the socialism of Bernie Sanders and folks like that if you like, and Xi Jinping, that kind of socialism in China.
And they have been competing. And now I have to say what my economics teaches me. The Chinese won. At least at this point, they have proved proved that the economic development out of a condition of extreme poverty to a condition of extraordinarily, well developed standard of living and incredible economic dynamism that the Chinese have done it. And I want to remind people, and here's a personal note, when I was getting my PhD here in The United States in economics, the most popular subfield of economics that graduate students like me were attracted to was called economic development.
And it was all about how poor countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and so on could find their way up. And we had the extraordinarily arrogant approach without being aware of it. Our teachers should have been, but we were the students, that we had the monopoly of knowledge on how to do that. And we would be trained, and we would then go off and be UN consultants or development specialists. Many of my colleagues in the graduate school went on to do that, you know, and they became experts in it, which we thought we were.
And The United States helped a lot of countries this way in Asia, Africa, Latin America. As you know, you know, people from Norway and other ones did that also. We didn't go to China because China was communist, So there was no Marshall Plan for China. There was no economic development missions sent by my university or or a governmental none of it. The Chinese got no help, and they did it better than all the countries who did get help.
Wow. What are we saying? We're saying that China won despite being basically on their own. Even the early help they got from the Soviet Union kind of petered out when they came to disagree in the in the nineteen sixties, the the Chinese and the Russians. So the Chinese really did most of this organizing, planning, structuring on their own.
And however you understand the role played by the private capitalists who come, you know, in the last thirty years and who play an important role and have much credit for the growth, two, you can't take away from the Chinese that they supervised the whole thing. They controlled and regulated the whole thing. And so the bottom line is mister Trump goes to China and is confronted by the defeat of the American model and its replacement by the Chinese. If I were an activist economist in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or for that matter Eastern Europe, it's the Chinese model I wanna look at, borrow from, adjust for our circumstances, but they're the they're the great example, not The United States. And that is changing the whole even if there weren't a BRICS alliance, and there is.
And it's interesting that it gets very little attention in India today while the big meeting in China gets all the attention. But in the long run, those bricks are bringing the Chinese everything to the rest of the world. And probably in the long run, that is their historic function. So I think enormous issues are at stake in this meeting, even if the actual things they discussed given what's been reported so far are relatively much less important.
Speaker 0: What's interesting what you point out, though, essentially, well, political economy, I think, has became an ideology. It's conceptually, it can either be more like us or more like them. I think this was cemented in the Cold War as well. That is one side is capitalist, one is communist, one is democratic, the other is authoritarian, and it kind of cemented itself in terms of identities. But, you know, there were some some some conditions around this.
That is, you know, after World War two, The US was a massive economic power. The US was militaristic. I mean, this is just the way it was, but but these are not permanent states because I'm thinking, you know, Alexander Hamilton, he once made the point that if Britain had been a land power in Europe, it would be as authoritarian as the Germans or the Russians. And, you know, for some, they would say the reason makes sense. Well, that it makes sense because, you know, if you're a land power with huge borders, a lot of neighboring countries, you have to have a huge standing army during during peacetime.
And if you have a huge standing army during peacetime, that that army can also be used against your own public. So there's not that much need for having not that much push for reforms that benefits the public, but the whole thing was premised on on The US and Britain, essentially, as de facto island states were more has stronger proclivity towards liberal democracy and freedom of the people. However, what happens if they would militarize? Then, you know, there's not no reason why they should still remain the same. So so over the past decades, when you see the heavy militarization of The United States as well, it I think it will be predictable that some of the freedoms would then begin to melt away.
You can't have this massive military industrial military industrial complex and still assume that the voters will be able to dictate the future of the country. So I guess my my my my point is it seems more now like the the roles have been switched a bit. That is, of course, you that China has its own problems with authoritarianism and all, but but still that, you know, they they essentially pushed a a policy of peace not to disrupt their development. Well, it's The US that has militarized too much, and even the economic model. The the Chinese economic economic model now seems more like the American one in the nineteenth century as opposed to what what America looks like today.
So, again, one doesn't wanna overstate this, but, how do you see you see the the shift in power now between The US and China breaking up some of these ideological assumptions about, you know, what you define more or less as a the assumption of a universal path to development that for China to develop, they have to become more like us when it seems that, you know, they have essentially found a good formula?
Speaker 1: I I I am persuaded at this point given what I've experienced and what I'm looking at with as you are looking at it, I think the Chinese have demonstrated this hybrid state private, enterprise governed by a socialistically self defined governmental and political party apparatus is a very unique construction, but it has delivered the goods. You know? And that is going to be very is already very persuasive around the world as well it should be. We are all groping in the end, how to do things, how to fix problems, how to move into the future. And the Chinese are saying, with all the confidence now that goes with it, we've figured it out.
Maybe there's a better way, but if so, nobody's offering it. What alternative to our development is there out there that can boast what we have achieved? The president of The United States goes home, and in his crazy way, writes in his his little, you know, account there, social, that he wants a ballroom as big in the White House as the lovely, room in which he was entertained by Xi Jinping. It's like a script written by a not so good playwright to have that. It's I would like to have what he has.
Okay. The whole world would like to have the economic growth that China has shown in the last thirty years. Not a single other country can do that. Even India, which wants to be that again, has to show that. It hasn't done that yet.
It's made some progress, but it's China that sits there, and they can be very comfortable. I wanna hammer home also that China achieved this under the umbrella of the American empire. One of the reasons it is in no rush, does not wanna provoke The United States to do anything catastrophic, is because what's the hurry? We we Chinese are doing spectacularly in a world in which the US dollar is the universal currency, in which The United States has 700 military bases around the world. And we have one in Djibouti, you know, it's silly.
They they have no reason to agitate the global situation because they are doing very well within it. You know, if BRICS doesn't develop its own currency, and I I don't mean to be critical of China, but it's because there's no great pressure from China who dominates the BRICS economically speaking. What's the rush? We're all doing pretty well. And if The United States were to decide to opt out and not be an empire, it's not so clear we would have the same smooth sailing.
My guess is in the in in the decision making halls of the Chinese, they are very aware, but I have certainly spoken to enough Chinese intellectuals in my life to know that they understand what I just said. I got it from them. I had to be shaken into an awareness that it's precisely their experience that teaches them, take it easy. Oh, let's work out so we don't get caught in the Thucydides trap here. Let's not replicate that story.
You know, Britain had to fight two wars. I know I've mentioned this to you before, Glenn. Britain had to defy the War of Independence and then the War of eighteen twelve, trying to squash the independence of The United States. They failed to their own surprise. They had a big British army and navy.
The United States didn't have anything or hardly anything, and they lost the British. After two wars, they no more. For the next century and plus, no war, they escaped the Thucydides trap, took them two defeats in two wars. And the Chinese, what is their hope? To be able to achieve the same thing minus the two wars because we can't afford the wars now.
And in The United States, war against China is an assumption of our political leaders here. They simply assume it. It is sort of automatic. Otherwise, they would have to admit that the time and the history and the economics are meaning that the American empire is now over, and that maybe the real issue that we as Americans should engage is the discussion, is the next phase of human history another empire, in this case, the Chinese? Or will we finally be able to have the multinational, multilateral global regime that you saw foreshadowed in the League of Nations after the horror of World War one or the United Nations after the horror of World War two?
Will those horrors help us this time go in a new direction? I noticed the Chinese have discussions about that. We don't have any discussions about that here because the notion that those are our options is so difficult for Americans that they still wanna hold on to denial, to imagining that the American empire is still alive and kicking. So that if you wanted to know why does the leader of this country act the way he acts, I know it's popular to ascribe to him narcissism and mental deficiencies of one kind or another. I don't believe any of that.
I mean, may be true. I don't think it matters. He is playing a role that we are at. If it weren't him doing it, the other one would have done it. By the other one, by the way, could be mister Biden, could be Kamala Harris, or any of the others.
We're gonna take Greenland. We're gonna take Panama. We're gonna make Canada a a fifty first state. We're gonna this is the be the gestural dynamic of someone whose ship is sinking and who has to flail around with imaginary, conquests and expansions because the real ones are not available. The best he can do is snatch mister Maduro and his wife out of their bed at night and put them in a jail here in New York City.
I mean, it is it is a pathetic effort of desperation.
Speaker 0: That's an interesting way of framing it. But well, given that the two sides have this different interest, is China sees that, you know, time is on its side, the long The US holds on to this, you know, exorbitant privilege that is to to rule the international system. The you know, the more it will weaken on its own. So the so China sees, you know, all it has to do is manage essentially the two cities trap. That is, you have The US as this declining, at least relative declining hegemon while China's rising as the challenger.
You know, mother time will essentially take care of this, that the world will shift into multiplarity. So their main objective should be let's not rock the boat. Let's not make sure make sure this doesn't result in any warfare. Again, it's a delicate time in history to manage. While on The US side, you see more the objective being to to restore the empire that is to but I'm not sure if that's I'm wondering if yeah.
No. Probably, they do think that this can still be achieved. But but given that you have these these different views about where the world is heading, how how do you see this essentially producing specific demands in this in this talks? Because well, if you're looking at this meeting between Xi and Trump, what would each side object like, specifically want from the other?
Speaker 1: Well, I think what the my guess is and and I see the logic of your question. My guess is what the Chinese want is what you just said. No rock the boat. Let's try to put a damper. Let's try to resolve our problems.
We if we can agree that it would be better to have the Strait Of Hormuz open than closed, Let's agree. That's what our goals are. You work on your side to try to get us closer to that. We work on our side. What's out of order, and I think the Chinese said that perhaps in relationship to Taiwan, but it covers many more issues, we don't want warfare.
We don't want an issue that is explosive in either because you wanna reconstitute your empire or on our side that we are gonna hasten history in the sense that we're not satisfied with our rate of growth now, we want a bigger one. You know, the kind of logic that lies behind Lebensraum, if you're a, you know, if you remember the German argument, we need a larger space to live, so we need or or the Israeli version of Lebensraum. You know, we're taking Southern Lebanon and that kind of thing. For The United States, I'm afraid, looking at our leadership now and the way they talk, taking them at their word, they cannot hear that message, and they cannot hear that appeal from China. They do not want to work at that level.
What they want is the freedom to try to resuscitate the empire, and they want the Chinese to help them do that, and the Chinese won't. The Chinese will not provoke them. The Chinese will not attack them, but it will not allow them. And let me give you as an example, Iran. What's the issue with Iran?
Well, in the fantasy life of the American leadership, Iran is a problem because, a, we don't control who they sell their oil to. Number two, we don't control who they ally with. And so they ally with, the Houthis and they ally with Hezbollah and they ally with Hamas, and that's a problem for our ally Israel. We don't want them to do that. Then we would like them not to be the ally of Russia and China, which they are.
And so here's what we would like: we would like to get rid of the regime that's doing all these things, replace it with a client of The United States, and subdivide Iran into three or four other countries. If you know your history, you'll know that Iran was much bigger than it is even today once upon a time, and that there are quite a few countries in that part of the world which if you look at their history, they were once part of Greater Persia. So The United States wants to take what it already did with Britain, get rid of parts of Persia and make them the Gulf States and so on, but they wanna go further. So they want to do all of that, and they thought they could. And so they went ahead and they did.
And the Chinese are looking there saying, we can't we can't allow this. And it's not just because of the oil. That's a mistake. China has oil in reserve ever since 2018. They have the largest reserves strategic reserves of oil in the world, significantly more than The United States, which has reserves too, although they're about half used up now or more.
So Russia I mean, China is not in an urgency about the oil, but they don't want a long term disruption. But they don't want any of what this United States wants in Iran. They want Iran to stay there, run the the Strait Of Hormuz the way they did before, be a good ally of Russia and China, blah blah. They they just want leave it alone. That's what they want.
And The United States has its I think that's a microcosm of where we're at. And so the question becomes, where else in the world, once this Iran thing is put to bed and notice, we kind of all know what's gonna happen even if we can't predict the details. The United States cannot move forward on that project. That's over. They don't have the military means.
They don't have the economic, the political, nothing necessary to win the fantasy that they had. So they're gonna have to go find their fantasy somewhere else. For example, in Cuba, they may make a nice theater of erasing the legacy of Fidel Castro and redesigning Cuba so it's the offshore gambling paradise that it was before 1959. Okay. I don't know what China will do then.
China has already hinted it might protect Cuba. That's the big decision. And it's not just about Cuba. It's wherever else The United States decides to make its effort. But the one it just tried in Iran, that didn't work.
That was a mistake. They misunderstood. I don't think they'll learn the lesson. I don't think I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I see in The United States the awareness of what happened even with the defeat, which, by the way, almost all political perspectives other than mister Trump's hard base of support, even the neocon conservatives in the this country led by mister Kagan, for example, have said it's a defeat. I mean, they they get that they blew it.
They will make a scapegoat out of Israel if they have to. They will make a scapegoat out of mister Trump if they have to. But have they learned the lesson, the larger lesson I'm trying to draw here in which China and Iran are important moments? I don't think so. So I expect there will be more efforts of a declining empire to do things that will allow it to believe that it's got a few more years.
Speaker 0: But, in this effort, though, to revive the empire, what would be the strategy? Or how how can this be achieved? Even if it's not achievable, there has to be some battle plan going on. So for example, one gets the impression that well, just looking at some of the activities over the past two years that controlling energy is seen as being a important source. I mean, you see this from the attacks on the Russian energy.
You see it from the, yeah, the the the attack on Venezuela, the attack on Iran. And even now, there seems to be some recognition of some among some European politicians that gas exports might reopen again from Russia to Europe after The United States gets control over that energy infrastructure because, again, this is, you know, this is are the ones who destroyed Nord Stream, and now they want to essentially take over that infrastructure, and and then gas can begin to flow again. But is is this besides the energy aspect, how how else could The United States revive the empire?
Speaker 1: I don't see it any I don't see the energy either. It seems to me the mistake overreaching trying to control Iranian oil has had the utterly unexpected consequence of putting Gulf State oil into question. I I wanna make sure everybody knows. During the height of the war, Benjamin Netanyahu went to The United Arab Emirates during the war trying desperately, and I have this, you know, from The Wall Street Journal and and and, you know, not left wing sources or anything like that, went to The UAE to line up The UAE to join Israel in pursuing the war against Iran. And then the Israelis tried to line up the rest of the Gulf states to join.
And the rest of the Gulf states said, no, absolutely not. We will not do that. Okay. That means that the rest of the Gulf states have discovered, a, that having an American base on your soil is not a protection, but in fact makes you a target of destruction. You can't you can't continue with that.
You can't rely on The United States with that. You can't. And they also see what what China is. They're already selling oil to China, these countries, in many cases. So the the if The United States even understands it not only did not get Iranian oil, it lost the influence it had or a good bit of it on the Gulf States.
They're gonna end up having, you know, The United Arab Emirates. It's not even clear they'll hold on to Saudi Arabia, which you can see is putting its fingers in the air, trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing and and diversifying its partners in the world because it is adjusting to what you and I have been talking about here. If I'm right and if, you know, it's Thucydides' trap, then the whole world, every country, has to rethink how it relates to The United States on the one hand. So that I would argue that this this Iran misadventure is a crucial moment because it is that effort of The United States which not only didn't work but comes at a moment in which the results will cascade. Let me put it another way.
The war in Vietnam, The United States pursued, and then the war in Afghanistan were both lost by The United States, cold stone loss. Right? The war in Vietnam was fought against the Communist Party of North Vietnam under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. And who runs Vietnam today? That political party.
The enemy of The United States is in charge. That means they won, and we in The United States lost. The war in Afghanistan, the other side, was the Taliban. Who rules Afghanistan today is the Taliban. They won, we lost.
But because the world history hadn't evolved in the way it is now at the time of, nineteen seventies for the Vietnam War and and then much later in Afghanistan, those defeats could not play the role of shaking the consciousness of the world the way this defeat does. It's not that this defeat is larger or smaller. Those those adjectives really don't apply. It's the context that makes the text speak the way it does. So it's the context, which was more on display in the visit of Trump to Xi Jinping.
It's that context that gives us the meaning of the defeat in Iran, and that will survive no matter what mister Trump says that he has a victory because of the regime change, which he tries to use as a euphemism for the assassination of one Ayatollah who is then replaced by another one with the same policy. This is gonna be called the regime change. It's a joke, and it's a joke that doesn't work. And that's the worst joke. The worst joke is the one where the the person telling it expects laughter, and everyone looks at that person because no one got the funny that's involved here.
Speaker 0: I remember on the when the in the early phase of this war against Iran, Lindsey Graham came on the you know, was on the news. He was part of the, you know, the crowd was doing the same talking point. That is going be a short term pain for long term gain, you know, everyone saw those, you know, those talking points being repeated every day. But he was making the point, are we going to make so much money once we're in control of Iran's oil? And the the assumptions they seem to have had in terms of how this war was gonna end up, collapse of Iran, all the all all the oil ending up in the hands of The United States.
I mean, it was it's quite remarkable. I'm not sure how one ends up with those assumption, but but overall, what it achieved instead, as you said, it burnt down the Middle East as a region, including The United States' own allies. And this is being seen by the Europeans, the East Asians, all now questioning to what extent is a good good strategy to make oneself frontline states. But but but this seems to undermine a wider strategy for The United States, a way it could have positioned itself after the rise of China. Because I assumed The United States would try after globalization as a process, you know, of Americanizing the world that as China rose, if they can't defeat the Chinese, then split into, you know, this exclusive geoeconomic block.
So tell the Europeans, you know, you're not trading with China anymore. You're buying our technology and essentially trying to divide the world along these lines. But but but now that seems to be failing as well if, as you said, if this is really the lesson that comes from the war in Iran that the Arab states should not have bet everything on The United States.
Speaker 1: Yes. They shouldn't have, and the Europeans shouldn't have done it either. But that's always the wisdom, you know, of hindsight. That's the wisdom that's imposed on you by what has happened. Let me go back, though, a little bit on that oil.
Lindsey Graham is a is a good person to turn to. He really doesn't know or care or understand much about international affairs, but he's a good spokesperson for the most aggressive we are the empire, the most aggressive nothing has happened to our empire. We are the dominant and becoming more so. And it's important because he's he speaks for, as mister Trump does, a very significant, excuse me, portion of the employer class here in The United States. So, yes, their expressions may be over the top.
They may, exaggerate, but what they're saying is what is believed by an awful lot of people. So it's not an accident that you had the seizure of the oil rich Venezuelan government, then the attempted seizure of the Iranian oil rich Iranian government. And I wanna remind people that there was this bizarre bombing of a little corner of Nigeria between those two events. Nigeria is an oil. What you're seeing there is what you said a moment ago, Glenn, this energy for we can we can become the corner of the world's oil.
That's a kind of empire fantasy. We are gonna become able to control the world, in this case, by controlling its energy, and in the particular case, the oil, because look, we could do this and we can do that. You know, Canada, that's another chunk of oil. Doing stuff in the Arctic Circle, that's another attack on oil. And then maybe our allies, the Europeans, can have a war with Russia, and we can dismember Russia and control its oil.
Then we've got enough to these kinds of fantasies are crazy, but they're crazy in the way you wouldn't be surprised if it's actually the obverse that's happening. It's a decline of their control that is the actual phenomena we're living through, and it has to be offset. You know, in psychology, it's reaction formation. It's it's an attempt in the world of fantasy to compensate, to offset what is actually happening, and then to have your brain focused so you can have a bombing in the middle of Nigeria at a time when that makes to most of the world no sense. You can't tell the world what you're doing, obviously.
So you have to say we're intervening to protect Christians. You know? What? Yes. Christians in Nigeria.
Because anything is is crucial if it can be used to sustain the implant. So for me, and for many like me in The United States, our worry is what The United States will do and what the, quote unquote, allies of The United States will do. I think, for example, that if there is much more European warmongering against Russia, you will you may be surprised, you Europeans, that mister Trump will be backing away from you and be hostile to you more and more, but he doesn't want that. He that's not anymore a priority. When they thought that they could win in Ukraine and it would be the way to break Russia up, that fantasy, that play the game.
But when it became clear to the Americans, this is not gonna happen, And I think they'll do that in Iran too. They don't have a stomach for war, and that's not because of their lack of the fantasy I just described. That that is unfortunately very strong. But they have this problem. The mass of the American people are not in it.
I cannot overemphasize that, Glenn. People should understand, particularly Europeans. This is the first time that from the first day of this war, the majority opinion in The United States was against it. It didn't take months or even years. It did in Vietnam.
It did in Afghanistan. It did in Iraq. But in the early weeks and months and even the early years of those wars, American public opinion did its patriotic song and dance. Only over time when it cost too much money, when too many young men and women came back dead or hurt or wounded, then you began they they understood. This time, there's no stomach for it.
The demand of the American people is that the government help them economically, and they don't see it. So they have no patience now for grandiose. The president is in trouble about the ballroom, the ballroom in the White House. That's a that's a question of a few $100,000,000, which in The United States today is nothing. It's like a coin in your pocket.
If the coin falls out on the ground and and you don't bother to pick it up, it will not change the experience of that day for you. Why are Americans? Because it symbolizes that the money they would like to have spent on their problems is going to something what? So they don't want that. And for sure, if they don't want a a $500,000,000 ballroom, they certainly don't want a $2,000,000 a day war in Iran.
I wanna remind you, most American, my students here in New York City where I still teach, if you give them a map they can't find in Iran, most of my students. It's not part of their universe. They're not interested. No one has ever interested them. It's too far away.
It's it's a murky, very murky. They don't want government money spent on that. They don't. And and that if anything loses the midterm elections to mister Trump and the Republicans in November, that will be the issue.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I think this will go down as, well, not to plagiarize, Robert Kagan, but one of the, the greatest strategic defeat for The United States. There's so much going down the drain with this one, though. But again, I tend to look at The US standing in the world, its economy, the empire, but of course, domestically as well.
There's a lot at stake, which is never a good thing though, when this much is at stake. Politicians tend to do desperate things. Anyways, well, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your thoughts on this. It's yeah, it's hard sometimes to follow. The world is spinning very fast now, so thank you for putting some perspective on it.
Speaker 1: And, Glenn, it's my pleasure. And I know I speak for many people, including many of my students who watch your programs, learn a lot from them. It's a very important service, and I I on behalf of all of us, thank you.
Speaker 0: Oh, thanks. Appreciate it.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: Trump-Xi Meeting After U.S. Defeat in Iran https://youtu.be/HO-Z7dmhHPM https://t.co/bXyTUVl2a5
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson discusses the US summit with China under Donald Trump, arguing that China “owned the summit” through choreography and by ensuring Taiwan was addressed as a first priority in every meeting. He describes Xi Jinping as standing firmly and approaching Trump with gestures and gestures alone, saying Trump “lost” because the real issues were not substantively addressed. Wilkerson links the meeting’s outcomes to economic and strategic signaling: China would resume buying US soybeans and make other gestures, and it might restrict exports of chemicals used in fertilizers; he also raises that farmers are facing fertilizer shortages and could face a disastrous season.
On Iran, Wilkerson says the summit amounted to Trump and Xi making points while both were lying, and he focuses on the failure to engage the core issues. He claims the US did not accomplish much beyond expressing interest in opening the Strait of Hormuz, and he connects the Iran situation to broader strategic challenges, including Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and related military considerations. He also argues that US efforts to pressure Iran were tied to US-China relations but that US statements about not seeking China’s help were performative and aimed at projecting hegemonic power.
Wilkerson emphasizes that China’s position on Iran is conditional on issues like lifting the siege, permanent cessation of war, compensation for damages, removal of all illegal sanctions (primary and secondary), and respect for Iran’s sovereignty and rights. He says these points would still not satisfy Benjamin Netanyahu, who he portrays as accepting only a scenario that eliminates the current Iranian leadership and results in instability across the region. Wilkerson notes that the nuclear program was not treated as a key discussion point publicly, implying that any progress would likely require back-channel arrangements rather than open diplomacy.
The conversation includes Wilkerson’s view that China is circumspect about an arms race involving nuclear weapons, especially given the lack of treaties and the increase in the number of nuclear-capable states. He also argues that US intelligence and the intelligence community do not believe Trump when Trump says China is not providing arms to Iran, and he describes a domestic escalation in response to alleged leaks, including efforts by Kash Patel to target whistleblowers and journalists. Wilkerson says US diplomats were minimal and that the trip functioned like a business trip, with Donald Trump himself as the lead figure.
Speaker 0 questions whether the US overstated what China agreed to about Iran’s nuclear constraints. Wilkerson responds by broadening the analysis to global power shifts and the developing view in the West that recognizes China’s rise. He contrasts China’s framing—sustainability, development, innovation, cooperation—with what he describes as the US stance—sanctions and war, including “maniacally” by Iran. He claims the world sees the US as losing its way and turning toward a technocratic, global project that would use Chinese technology and rare earths, likening it to the kind of system associated with Elon Musk, and he warns of an “insidious” trajectory driven by elite technocrats rather than true diplomacy.
He then discusses a wider domestic and geopolitical risk of breakdown, citing limits to removing Trump from office, describing impeachment as having failed historically, and portraying a worsening situation. Wilkerson alleges that mainstream media exposure of information is alarming Trump, and he cites the sending of Kash Patel as an example of escalating hostility toward journalists and whistleblowers. He argues this could leave the country vulnerable to outcomes including JD Vance or Marco Rubio, or even civil conflict.
Wilkerson compares current potential US breakdown to the Roman Republic’s fall and Julius Caesar’s assassination, describing how civil wars followed until Octavius emerged and established stability (the Pax Augustus). He says the analogy suggests civil conflict is not impossible under present circumstances, without identifying any specific “Octavius” figure. He argues that sweeping international power changes and domestic polarization can lead societies to think in all-or-nothing terms, paralleling conditions that preceded historical upheavals like the Russian Revolution.
The episode concludes with the idea that unsustainable paths will force some pullback or escalation, with Wilkerson expressing hope it does not become catastrophic.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to The US secretary of state, to discuss what has been going on in both, yeah, China and Iran. It's good to see you again. I I thought of yeah. My first question I really want to ask you is what do you see having been achieved in China by by Trump?
I guess, what is there of substance, and what do you think were more theatrics?
Speaker 1: I don't watch many of the videos associated with Donald Trump. A few, I'll admit. But I watched these, such as they were and available, with some assiduousness, best way to put it. And I was struck because ever since I went to China in 1984 the first time and then back repeatedly with the regard to the policy planning staff and later as chief of staff at the state department, I've taken a real interest in China. I'm probably one of the very few who actually received an invitation to visit the central party school.
That was when Hu Jintao was more or less in charge before he became premier, but it was a very flattering thing to receive, and it resulted in the fact that Richard Aus and I and others who had been over there speaking incidentally with who was then an up and coming guy in the about their HIV aid problem. And we actually brought some from Harvard and elsewhere over with us, and we help them. And they solve their HIV aid AIDS problem pretty pretty swiftly as they're want to do when they learn where the problem exist and why. So I watched it very closely, and I was struck immediately by what I thought I would see, but I didn't know how I would see it. Xi standing rock hard, rock solid on the flat of his feet, if you will, not on the toes, not on the heels, standing there waiting for the leader of the free world as we often style our president.
Very questionable styling these days, but to come forward to him and to approach him and to extend his hand. And I said, woah, man. The Chinese have choreographed this to the last word, the last gesture. And sure enough, they had, and they lived up to what Richard Haas and I discovered was absolutely their first talking point no matter why you were waiting meeting Taiwan and being insisted upon it. And from that point on, I think the Chinese own the summit.
I really do. And I of course, I haven't been privy to everything that happened there, but I think they owned it, whether it's Cargill and resuming soybeans. I I sent an email this morning, Glenn, to a friend of mine whom I met in Iowa, Republican. I met him during the time I was working out there on climate on the climate crisis, and I found him. Now Iowa is our most powerful agricultural state, not California, not some other state in the South, Iowa.
That's our most powerful agricultural state. It has the most influence with the congress. So I wanted to make a friend of this guy, Republican, a Trumper at first. I don't think he is anymore. But I quickly understood that he understood the climate crisis, particularly as it impacted farmers and his rural community.
And he was doing things that I was applauding because he understood what was happening with his terracing, with his erosion resistance in the soil and such, which was incredibly successful in increasing yield, but the rains were destroyed. And he looked at me and said, do you know how much rain we are getting now? It is unbelievable. And I've been a farmer in Iowa for thirty years. And then he talked about other aspects of it, like increased yields and increased growing season because of the heat.
He got it, in other words. So I'm asking him a question this morning. I can't wait to hear his reply to my email. Okay. So China's gonna buy our soybeans again.
Are you and the community at large gonna be able to grow them? Because I'm hearing from farmers right now, including my son-in-law, who's a farmer up in Maryland, that they can't get the fertilizer. And so they are looking at a disastrous farming season because they can't get the fertilizer, and they don't see it coming anytime soon. So this was a disaster in terms, I think, of the real issues that we needed to talk about, not least of which was a more substantive discussion of the Iran war, which I think boiled down to Trump made his points, Xi made his points, both were lying, and they went on from there. So I'm not sure how to characterize the summit yet except in gestures gestures and choreography where the Chinese are geniuses at.
Trump lost.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It looks a lot of it was superficial. It's it seemed that that is you know, China can do a lot of things to because they would like to have, you know, good cordial relations with The United States, and I think they're willing to go to a certain extent to to to make sure. As Xi Jinping said, you know, we want we want to make sure that, you know, the so called the the declining hegemon is met with a challenger, that this usually results in war, so we we have to manage this very critical time in human history very carefully. So towards this end, I think they're gonna be willing to do a lot of things, but I think those things would be, for example, curbing the or restricting some exports of chemicals that are used in fatten fattenil fattenil.
Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Not pronouncing that well at all. Also, you know, buying some energy agriculture from The United States, you know, making some good gestures.
But the one area where it appears there's no willingness to to give an inch, it will be on the issue of Taiwan. And I got the impression that they are well, especially now that The US suffered this defeat in Iran, that they're willing to send a very strong message that, you know, not not well, what you're doing now is unacceptable, that is trying to chip away, I guess, at the one China policy. Or or do do you think this is something that Trump would be willing to walk a little bit back from, or is it just gonna return to status quo?
Speaker 1: As his straits become more and more dire, and I don't expect them to become anything but, I think there might be some flexibility there. But at the same time, I have to add, I don't believe China thinks that there's any possibility really of the Americans coming to Taiwan's defense, first of all, at all, and second, and probably as important in their calculus effectively. So it it's it's an issue because it has been an issue, as Richard Haas says, as he was briefing the team going to China in 2001, I guess it was, before 09:11 for our first meetings with them, policy planning meetings, I I just sat there and listened. I knew what he was gonna say. The first point they'll bring up is Taiwan.
I guarantee you. Every meeting, they hit that was the first point they brought up. So it's almost like a a rubric with them. It's almost like I've got to bring this is to discuss other things of note and consequence. I've got to get this one out of the way.
Cool. Get it out of the way. And it's a little bit more than that this time. A little bit more than that. And I think it's partly because, as you and I have briefly discussed in the past, China is well aware that it's winning.
It wishes to do nothing at all to disturb that process. And it sees, as Ricardo said to me one time in Cuba, even a dying elephant can thrash a lot of grass. Well, I think Xi sees that too. He does not want us to stop our suicide, but he would like to see it, and this is an aside. He would like to see us stop it before it impacts China adversely.
And so he's willing to help up to a point that keeps us afloat, perhaps is the best way to say it, but doesn't increase our power and, in fact, slowly and gradually diminishes it even more to the point where he doesn't really have to be concerned about us anymore other than one component. And this is the difference in all of human history, this component. It's nuclear weapons. He's got to be concerned about nuclear weapons. And I'm doing a piece for Eisenhower Media Network right now and along with the Kansas University professor.
And together, we are stunned at what we are planning to do with our stockpile. We damn well know he's as almost this is as old as I. He'll he'll he'll hate me for saying that. We damn well know that this is a nuclear arms race to match and perhaps even exceed the one that occurred during the Cold War. And, basically, you only had two powers there.
Now you've got nine states, eight in addition to us, and two or three aspirant states. So this is a very serious issue, and it's gonna get more serious as we go along. It's gonna be very serious with Xi is I I think one of the reasons he axed some of his politburo aspirant military members recently was that very thing. He's not too happy with this nuclear arms race, and he certainly doesn't wanna be one who makes it worse. He'll do it, but he doesn't wanna make it worse.
And that's a that that's all the way back to Mao Tse Tse Tse Tse Tse we don't need any more nuclear weapons than to deter people because we got a billion people. They drop them on us. They'll kill a couple 100,000,000. We'll drop them on Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Michigan. You know, we'll wipe them out.
So that was kind of the philosophy they had just enough for deterrence. Now they're building out, and they are gonna build out as vigorously as we do, I suspect. So this is a hell of a dangerous thing to happen, this nuclear arms race, with no treaties. No treaties whatsoever. So Xi is very circumspect about that, I think.
The rest of it, I think, was, you know, it was a show. No way in the world does Donald Trump or our intelligence community believes he when he says he's not helping Iran. I mean, you know, our own New York Times is now it's gonna have Kash Patel sicced on it by Trump to go after these people who from the DNI's office or wherever within our 18 intelligence communities, leaked to the New York Times that China's providing arms to Iran. They're also going after the New York Times, I'm told, and already in place to do it for this business of saying Iran is not depleted the way Trump's saying it is. They're putting something like 70 to 80% on ballistic missiles remaining and launchers remaining and all manner of other things, particularly in the area of the Persian Gulf.
So he's going after the New York Times now the way, you know, Dan Ellsberg was gone after after the Pentagon Papers, but with a more viciousness and a lot more power to do damage to these literary giants. I'm surprised the New York Times is doing this other than there is so much Israeli influence on the Times editorial board and others within the complex that maybe they're doing it so that Netanyahu's screaming at Trump to keep the war going is effective. That could very well be why they're doing it because they're saying, you haven't done much yet, Donald. You need to do more in essence. And that's okay with Netanyahu and the other supporters of Israel in America.
I don't know. But it's not good that he's doing these things against journalists. I mean, this is a whole newspaper he's going over. And, apparently, what Patel is gonna do is ferret out the whistleblowers. So it's absolutely damaging to anybody that wants to live up to the, you know, the whistleblower laws that we passed to protect whistleblowers, which we almost destroyed now, and we'll probably finally destroy completely with the supine congress and these moves by Trump to go after these people.
Not a good development at all in terms of the domestic situation. And then you look at the other aspects of what Trump was doing there, and you look at how insignificant the diplomats were, the few that were there. And one of the diplomats that I found to be very helpful when I was at state was the secretary of the treasury. And in essence, I have to tell the truth and say it was Ken Dam, the deputy secretary of the treasury, who was Asia expert and who often saved us from making errors in what we were doing diplomatically because they didn't make sense in terms of his knowledge of the economy and Asian economies. And so we welcome and Kim Kim spoke most of the languages out there too.
So he was a real addition to our diplomatic team. And we see Scott Bessent there, but I don't think he added very much to it at all. I don't think he's capable of adding very much to it at all. The Chinese are leagues ahead of him in terms of economic matters. So we didn't have anybody there but business.
I mean, in essence, that's what it was. It was a business trip. And the lead honcho businessman was Donald Trump himself, however much he lied or equivocated. So what did we accomplish other than things like I was talking about? Okay.
They resume soybean buy buy from The United States. Well, what if we can't raise the soybeans? The this is not a a, you know, issue here, issue here, issue here. They're all connected. And the Strait Of Hormuz and its closure is connected to the mall.
And I didn't really see anything come out of this that said anything about other than expressed interest in its being open. It being open. So what did we accomplish? I mean, I'm waiting I'm waiting to hear more about it and see if we did accomplish something. But I don't think we accomplished much except we illustrated very well who's the number one economy in the world and who's not.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I I saw Marco Rubio afterwards make a big point out of the fact that well, not the fact, but arguing that The United States never didn't ask China for any help on Iran or anything because we don't need any help. We are, you know, we're we're all powerful. I thought, yeah, that was a bit disappointing though because, well, first of all, it's it's obviously a lie, and everyone knows that The United States wants China put to put pressure on Iran, so we know that they ask them for help. But but also what it signifies, because the whole purpose why they have to, you know, play pretend that they don't ask Iran is because they want they want to present themselves as all powerful, but this is, again, show off a hegemonic potential.
I was hoping that a meeting like this between the two great powers, at least the two largest powers now, are you know, it would it would be a good way of, I guess, recalibrating relations that is transition a bit into this new multipolar reality wherein that is, in other words, under a hegemon. The hegemon doesn't have to get help from anyone else, but I would like to see The United States, Russia, China come to a come into a place where they recognize that the the stability of the world depends on their ability to work together and coordinate. You know, if they can't harmonize interest, at least manage the competition, do something. But instead, it's still holding on to this charade, this this idea that they're still, you know, all powerful and and don't need need assistance from the Chinese. It just I don't know.
I would have liked to see something like a great power compromise. But but on this, though, it seems that one of the areas where the The US over not overplayed, but overstated the the agreement was with the nuclear issue. That is they they argue that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon. The the Chinese agreed. Indeed, the Iranians seem to agree.
They also said they they won't get a nuclear weapon, but The US sold it as something more than this, it seems, that they weren't even gonna have any enriched uranium, which I can't imagine the Chinese would support at all. So how how do you see these issues? Why well, if if The US overstating the the the the Chinese agreement to these statements, why is it so important?
Speaker 1: Let's unpack a lot of that.
Speaker 0: Sorry. That was a long, long question. No.
Speaker 1: It it it was a great dialogue. I think we're looking at, as I've said many times before, this shift of power in the world being a being more and more recognized and more and more recognized not just in Asia and the, what, 60% of the GDP and people that live there or work there or both, but also by a wider array of people in the West. So that's the first thing I think we have to think about when we talk about someone like Marco Rubio who probably doesn't understand that at all. And so is flying in the face of not only world opinion, global opinion as it is developing, but also Western opinion and opinion even in America. I like to think that people like you and I are having, some impact on that.
And Marco Rubio too is running for president. So you have to really parse his words now in that regard because he's running for president as a MAGA guy, Maybe even as a more intensely MAGA guy than Donald Trump himself, who often is his vicissitudes are such that you wonder what he means when he talks about MAGA issues. So Rubio is kind of out of the equation right now as an identifier of diplomacy, as he should be, or of even where America might go in the future if he were to be the heir apparent and become the heir. I don't think that's gonna happen, but he does. So everything he says now has to be interpreted in light of the fact that he's running for president of The United States.
The the second thing I would comment on in what you outlined there is what I've been saying also pretty persistently, and that is that if China has an attitude that is best reflected, for example, in the BRICS summit that's coming up in September in India and in its title, which is all about sustainability, development, innovation, cooperation. I underlined that in the title. I even made sure that the translation was correct. And we're about all the opposites of those key terms, and that's what we are. Let let's just envision something for a moment if you could put it up in klieg lights across the globe, hang it out in space, you know, and say, okay.
This is what the empire stands for, the American empire. It stands for sanctions on 2,200,000,000 people and more if we can get it and war as exemplified by the last twenty five years, surely, but certainly now maniacally by Iran. What does the rest of the world stand for led by China And to a certain extent, the Shanghai Corporation Organization and BRICS. What does this stand for? Innovation, development, technology, cooperation, resilience, all these terms in their title.
That is a stark contrast, I think, not only to the world, the global community, certainly the global South who suddenly have some hope maybe, But certainly to the Cognizanti and most of that rest of the world, including the West, it looks like we've lost our way completely. It looks like we are walking into hell with full awareness that the flames are all around us, and there's nothing we can do. We can't even turn around and walk back. We're just gonna go right on in and burn up. That's a hard place to be if you're citizen and you're trying to figure out how to return to the republic, get out of this empire, or at least diminish its impact, and at the same time, deal with a very different world.
And I think a lot of people are having trouble with that across the gamut, whether it be academics, it be business people, or whatever. The ones who seem to not have any trouble with that, Trump took with him. And that's a very alarming development, I think. He took those people with him who build, let's face it, dangerous airplanes. Thank you very much, Boeing, who, would rate the world for a few pennies in terms of agriculture, who are interested in a technocracy that puts them in charge.
And I wouldn't be I wouldn't put it past some of these people to essentially work their Chinese contacts in who might be empathetic and sympathetic with them, to help them do this and ultimately establish a technocracy that not only is in The United States Of America and triumphant, but also is spreading its feelers all around the world to include the dominant power in the world, China. So what are we talking about doing with this council of business people rather than true diplomats? I think it's pretty apparent what we're doing. We're trying to build what Elon Musk wants to build. We're trying to build it as fast as possible.
We'll take the Chinese technology and rare earth metals and everything else that we need to do this along with us. And if you wanna accompany us, certain members of your regime, and be a part of this eventually global technocracy, feel free to do so, and we'll build it so we can watch it from outer space. And Elon will provide the rockets. I know this sounds like nonsense, but I'm increasingly of a mind that it isn't nonsense and that we have a a a a group of people in the world led by The United States who are so interested in this technocratic approach to the future. And for some reason, there's no question about it, AI, the least of all, which they all are heavily invested in directly or indirectly, But there is an insidious aspect to it that troubles me greatly.
It trouble it would trouble George Orwell greatly too, I'm sure, where he's still around. So that that's a long rambling answer, but I think we're in trouble.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I get that impression as
Speaker 1: who those of us who still believe in poetry, those of us who still believe in Shakespeare, those of us who still believe in the cultural things in the world that make life worth living, those of us who believe in families, intact families, and children, and healthy environments to raise those children, and education, and help for the poor, and all those things, we're in trouble.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now I'll I think the the emergence of this, I guess, the nationalized elite combined with the technological changes, the change in distribution of power, it's it's very difficult to to manage all of these changes. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: write that I'm gonna write that down. Had a denationalized elite. That's a great phrase.
Speaker 0: It's a different word than globalists, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, a more direct a more direct insidious term.
Speaker 0: Well, Samuel Huntington, he he he wrote this article in 2004 called Dead Souls Yeah. When he he argued essentially well, that that we're heading where we're going now. That is into an elite, which isn't any more that connected with the nation. And I think you can argue that this happened well, he he he made a point in in the economy, but also culturally, but you can say technologically as well, there's less than the the less less the links that leads to where they are. But no.
It's a it's it's a it's a fueling many levels of of problems. But I I was also wanting to ask you about the the Strait Of Hormuz, because initially, this is one of the things that really surprised me. That is the that the Chinese were arguing that they they also wanted that they didn't want a toll, and they wanted straight or almost open. But then, you know, when I looked into it more, the statements, it they they weren't actually condemning Iran or anything. They they were more or less just stating we want an open strait, open waterways.
And that's kind of a shared sentiment by the Iranians as well, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The way to get that is to let the Iranians control it, know, with Chinese backup maybe, but that's the way to get it. That was the implication I took from it too.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So I think this kind of vague statements people read what they want into it. So, again, I might be wrong, but but so you don't think the the the the Chinese are willing to put any pressure on Iran at the behest of The United States?
Speaker 1: Well, they might be willing to talk about the 10 or now 13 or 14 who whosoever list you read points. I I think I saw yesterday, and I asked one of my Iranian colleagues to confirm it if he would. I said, is lifting of the siege, the permanent cessation of war, compensation for damages, removal of all illegal sanctions, that to them is all sanctions, primary, secondary, and so forth, and ultimately respect for Iran's sovereignty and its rights as a nation in the world, would that be a a condensation you would accept? And he said, absolutely. So that's boiling the 10 down into five or six, but they're still, most of them, not acceptable to Bibi Netanyahu.
The only thing acceptable to Bibi Netanyahu, I think, is a Bantou stand like Iran. It's, know, a lot of lot of people running around Azeris, Kurds, Persians, everything else, and no stability and no soundness and civil war, whatever, all over the place. That's the only thing that will take other than a completely eradicated run with blowing deserts. So I don't know how you get there. I really don't.
But Trump should be focused on key points in that. Notice that there was nothing there he said about the nuclear program. Nuclear program for for him at least, and he said he's reflecting the deputy foreign minister, I think. Yeah. I don't know exactly how to say this.
I had not run into him before. Deputy foreign minister to Iraqi. I don't know how you get there. If Trump's major issue is the nuclear program, they don't even wanna put it down as a point to discuss unless maybe by back channel they've arrived at some kind of solution that both find temporarily, at least, suitable to the nuclear problem. And now they're just working on these other issues.
I don't know. I still hold my view that I don't think diplomacy is anything but a subterfuge. Ceasefires are nothing but a subterfuge. And in a few days, we're going back to all out war. And when Brad Cooper, that admiral in charge of central command, I always said, I told Powell, Powell agreed with me, don't ever put a navy or an air force guy in charge of a unified command.
He wasn't so worried about the navy as he was the air force. But Cooper's lying to the congress through his teeth. He's flying to the congress when he says we have not killed any civilians except those you. And the only reason he said this was because it was on video. Those you saw in the school with the opening of the conflict, we are you kidding me?
Read the New York Times and the Washington Post. They even report that you've killed more civilians than that. What does he consider an innocent civilian? I mean, he and and this is the four star leading the effort in central command. So I don't know where we are, but I think we're going back to war, bottom line.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It appears so. I don't see any we're gonna I don't see path to military victory, but I don't see any diplomatic settlement either moving forward. But the the Iran issue, though, it had a very key I think it's quite important also for The US Chinese relations because it seemed that when Trump, you know, agreed to this initial meeting before postponing it with Xi Jinping, the that he wanted to defeat Iranians before they met, so he had that to show off.
But instead, we're in this situation where The US is in very deep, deep trouble, and I thought it was fascinating as you probably read the article now by Robert Kagan, the checkmate in in Iran. This for me, this is quite extraordinary to have one of the top neocons recognizing defeat. I mean, forever wars, are there
Speaker 1: One of the top. He's the king. He's the prince. Take your term.
Speaker 0: So what do you read into this? Because this is quite significant. I mean, in, you know, mood in Europe, the limit of free speech that is would be, you know, if you if you recognize that we're losing, that means you're taking the side of the opponent. So we always have to make, you know, play play pretend that that is, you know, the, you know, the Russians unprovoked war, the Ukrainians are winning, everyone has to repeat these things, which you know isn't true, but the same goes with Iran. That is, you know, the the the attack was to, you know, say, liberate the country from the mullahs, and, you know, the Americans are overwhelming, the Iranians are defeated.
So one kind of has to repeat this nonsense to to prove your loyalty. But but but again, for me, it's quite absurd because all you're doing is ignoring reality and thus making everything much, much worse. But but still, for a guy like Kagan to come out, as you said, the king of the neocons, and say, okay, we lost. This is it. I mean, this is essentially the end of the, you know, arguing that this will be the graveyard of the American empire.
This is we didn't use those words. But still, for someone who cofounded the project for a new American century, this is quite extraordinary. So, yeah, wondering what you read into all of this.
Speaker 1: I think he's angry, and I think he's trying to stoke people into action by telling them drier things, drastic things about their current failings as he sees them. And and I can't interpret it any other way than that, really, because I've followed him for too long. You get some of these people into a corner where they think the things they've devoted their wives to, and they associate that with the life of the republic too, such as it is. You get them into a corner, and they will put all manner of information out telling you what the results are going to be, and they're usually truly dire results if you don't back up and reconsider and do what they told you to do in the first place. I think that's the real motivation for him doing this.
And I can imagine that his wife wasn't in the closet saying, keep writing. Keep writing. Victoria Noodland. It's a sign of, I think, the ultimate and I had a kind of an argument or discussion with a friend about this the other day who feels basically the way I do about the neocons, but knows their history really well. I mean, he's made a study of their history.
I I would go to him if I had a question about this or that esoteric aspect of neocon language or whatever, whether it was Bill Crystal or Kagan or whomever. And he knew where they came from, how they got generated in the Democrats originally, how they adopted to Richard Pearl in the Reagan administration and other things like that. And Jim says to me, they're losing, and they really do not like losing after so many years of painstaking work to drive America into the hell that they wanted to drive it into. Now they didn't think it was hell. They thought it was joyous and triumphant, and we would be empire forever.
But they realize they're losing, and they're striking back in the only way that they know how. And they're not losing necessarily because we didn't carry out their strategy. We're losing because we carried out their strategy, but we did it imperfectly with, say, Kagan.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I've seen many arguing that, you know, the empire is being thrown away and all of this, but I think it was always unsustainable. I I often refer to the a lot of the academic literature in the nineties, I was quite critical of this concept of the unipolar moment, which always made the point that that some to in order to maintain a global empire, it's gonna be very ex expensive. So one's gonna waste a lot of lives and waste a lot of money, but also waste the the standing in the world, the reputation.
And while the an empire will always overextend itself, it will be dependent on keeping rising powers down, which would then incentivize the rest of the international system to come together a bit like bricks and and balance then the aspiring hegemon. So I think it's yeah, no, I think that this was always doomed to doomed to fail at some point, but the idea that the whole that global primacy could be permanent, I think, was very wrong. Indeed, the one who coined this term, unipolar moment I always forget his name. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, so my my my point is even his his article, he wrote that, know, this is the current phenomenon. It's gonna change in the future, but this is what we have today. But, no. I I I did wanna have my my last question about Trump. How
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You you really got me thinking there. I was trying to figure Brzezinski wrote something like that, but it wasn't quite that
Speaker 0: No. It was something with k. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't put my finger on it either. I I I would say another thing, though, just demonstrate how badly the warp and woof of I think even the Bill Crystals, Richard Perles, and others has gone astray. This came out of the New York Times yesterday. From 02/2025 to the present time, roughly nine months, The United States Of America has conducted 55 legal, lethal, lethal military strikes on boats in The Caribbean and The Pacific.
No warning shot, no boarding, no arrest, no trial, just death. A 194 people by our count. No accounting to congress or the people. The US government is not publicly ID'd identified any of them at all. The Department of Justice document that they say contains the legal justification for what they're doing is classified secret.
Does that take me back to my administration? And then the last thing, the drugs keep coming. What a comment. I mean, what a comment on the present state of the empire. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, by the way, Charles Krauthammer, he's the one with you in the polling moment. Came to me now. Yeah. Anyways, I I want
Speaker 1: to touch. He used to bug the hell out of me all the time. You didn't wanna say too much because Charles knew he was in a certain physical position where he had sympathy and empathy maybe. But at times, I wanted to pick up my phone on my desk at the state department and hurl it at him.
Speaker 0: Well, I made the point before, though. When I read his article, I thought that the main flaw was because he described as well, there's a unipolar distribution of power now. We should take advantage to have a hegemonic period, and in the future, this distribution of power will change, and then we'll shift. We'll go to multipolarity. But I think the main flaw in that thinking was the human nature part of it, because that's that's not how human beings work.
You have now, you know, thirty plus years, a whole generation of politicians growing up under the idea that we have a under liberal hegemon, that our dominance is requirements to spread the liberal democratic values and have peace. So the idea that we would simply see, oh, I guess the Chinese and Russians have risen now. Let's just shift to multipolarity. That's not how human beings work. Right.
And I I think it should have been predicted that once this happened, we would still fight it tooth and nail. But that kinda takes, yeah, me to my last question. Sorry.
Speaker 1: All those all those missionaries you put into the world, like Victoria Newland and so forth, really screwed it up.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But they're not going anywhere. They they as you said, they they genuinely believe in this, higher emission. But is is this, this self deception? That that's what I want to ask about this, if this is a Trump meltdown or self deception, because when I heard him talk about China, he made all these comments that the Chinese agreed the Iranians wouldn't enrich any uranium.
The, you know, the Chinese wants the Strait Of Hormuz open. It's does he believe everything he's saying you think, or is this just, again, trying to manage the narrative?
Speaker 1: I was looking for a comment because you were keying me to it. Doctor, doctor John Gartner from Johns Hopkins, who is a psychotherapist and taught for thirty years or so at Johns Hopkins. He's the one that is on every now and then podcast here, podcast there, talking about the deranged nature of Donald Trump and how intense it is getting and how it fits every profile that you would wanna draw it up if you were someone like him, an expert in this. And he predicted that not only is he worse, he's gonna get even worse. That's scary when you think about it.
Because as I said to another person yesterday, basically, founders left us no methodology for removing such a person from the Oval Office, period. Oh, the twenty fifth amendment. I said, that's a joke. That's a joke. And I sent him the video on the twenty fifth amendment, which is very persuasive that it will never work and that it was intended by its crafters to never work.
So how do you get rid of a megalomaniac? That's what this doctor was saying, actually. It's gonna get worse, he said. It's not gonna get better. It's gonna get worse.
Where do we find a point in the next two years that we prevent perhaps a civil war for which Pete Hegseth is building a military component that will be supportive? Brad Cooper may be a perfect example of that, the commander of central command, and others too. And I, you know, I don't know what to say about it other than, yeah, you're right. We don't have any way to get rid of this guy. We do not.
Impeachment is a joke. We've proven it a joke over two centuries.
Speaker 0: Well, I can to something well, he's obviously a huge narcissist, but I can kind of understand how he how his mental state could have gotten a lot worse here. Because if you look at, you know, how he thought things were going for him and how it actually went, it's it's quite a shock that is, you know, he sees The US relative decline in the world as being caused by these weak leaders, and he's very convinced, and it seems that he's the solution because he's the strong leader. He's a smart leader. So he's essentially America's revival rests on his shoulders. And then, you know, the first his first administration, you saw that the intelligence services attempted to take him down with this Russia gate hoax, and, you know, he he overcame it, and then but nonetheless, he was he lost the presidential election, which he says was stolen, and then but he was able to come back against all odds and regain the presidency, and again, it becomes this underdog story, which he becomes his own hero, and and then the people tell him, listen, how about you take out Venezuela?
You know, kidnapped, take take their leader, and then he does it in in one day like a, you know, great like a great warrior, and he's able to essentially restore the dominance of The US in his own backyard. And then they say, hey, about you can also take Cuba. How about Iran? No other American leaders have ever ever been able to do this, but that's because they were weak. Their weakness is why we're in decline.
You know, you're the strong one, and and suddenly, he goes from, you know, just going higher and higher, more and more success in his own mind, and then suddenly everything falls apart, especially now in Iran. It must be for a narcissist, this must be very devastating, though. I can imagine, you know, if I was him retreating into my own reality, but, I'm not again, I'm not a psychologist, but it just seems like yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And I think part of the reason for it is that things are seeping through now. It's it's impossible for them not to seep through with all the deluge that's now started, including some of the mainstream media. This has really, really alarmed him, I think. And to send Kash Patel to do what he's been sent to do is a perfect illustration of how much it's alarmed him.
This is Julian Assange and and the Pentagon Papers and all kinds of things writ large. But with the president, you could say that against Dan Ellsberg, maybe the same kind of opposition existed. But at least you had Catherine Graham at the Washington Post and others like her who were willing to stand up for what they believed and what they thought was true journalism and and triumphed. I don't think you're gonna triumph today. I think he's gonna wreck a lot of what vestige of the republic has left, including the free press, before he leaves.
And what does that leave us with? I mean, if it leaves us with a JD Vance or a Marco Rubio or indeed civil war somewhere in there roughly around the midterms or afterwards, god only knows what it leaves us, but it's certainly not gonna leave us better off.
Speaker 0: You think there's a real possibility, the civil war in The United States?
Speaker 1: I keep going back to that period in the in the empire or the republic, I should say, that most impressed our founding fathers if they had such an impression, and quite a few of them, including Jefferson, probably Madison, probably Washington. Maybe Franklin was more skeptical. But there's a reason they talked about things like the Roman Empire, the Western Roman Empire, and adopted terms like senate and so forth. And I there is a rough analogy here with Caesar coming into the senate. The republic is still in existence.
He defies all the portents, and apparently, there were one or two right on the steps of the senate and goes in and he's assassinated, and then the civil wars break out. And it wouldn't have taken a military genius to oversee that after about, oh, six weeks or so and say who was gonna triumph, probably. And Octavius did. And Octavius, of course, became Augustus and established the pax Augustus in years and years of peace in an empire, which would thereafter always be an empire and always have a single ruler passed on. There is so much similarity even with two thousand years of history having intervened that it it it hurts to think about it.
Is that where we're headed? But without, in many respects, at this point, at least, an identified Octavius, Would he come from the military? Would he come from government? Would he come from places we don't know now? I doubt it because you have to be in position to do what you're going to do, and Octavius was.
And Octavius had a very, very good relationship with the power structure. And so you would have stood there probably a week or two into that regardless of Shakespeare and Mark Anthony's comments. Cry Havoc. Let's slip the dogs of war. Well, the dogs of war slipped, and it was inevitable really looking at it who was gonna triumph, who had the loyalty, the forces, and so forth, and who had the genius.
No question about it. Who is that person today were I to be proven correct in this rough analogy? But it isn't impossible is what I'm trying to tell people.
Speaker 0: Oh, it's, well, it's a it seems that this fits in with the wider politics of the day when you have these huge shifts in the power international distribution of power. That is governments well, states among each other, they see begin to see everything now in all or nothing terms as there's too big changes. And within The US as well.
Speaker 1: Think about some of the surrounding reasons that the Russian revolution took place and took place in the way that it did and was usurped by Stalin. I mean, these things happen. We like to think, oh, not here. Standby.
Speaker 0: Well, on that pessimistic note, thank you as always for coming on.
Speaker 1: You our beings have to get together and save us from our own wrath.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I'm not sure how anymore. It's
Speaker 1: Nor am I.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems to be reaching a point where either there are gonna have to be someone pulling back or we're gonna go over the edge, but the current path isn't sustainable anymore, it seems. So something's, yeah, probably gonna give soon.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I I just hope it isn't catastrophic.
Speaker 0: Well, thanks again. I ruined my day, but, yes, I appreciate
Speaker 1: your patience. Wilkerson.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
George Beebe: Europe-Russia War as the U.S. Pulls Back? https://youtu.be/TS6TY75l2Pw https://t.co/yfzy6OLQyM
Video Transcript AI Summary
George Bebe discusses the US need to adjust to a multipolar distribution of power by retrenching from Europe to prioritize other regions, particularly the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. He argues Europe is no longer the first priority and predicts US pivoting away from Europe will likely continue even after Trump. He also raises concern that abrupt US troop reductions from Germany and related policy changes can undermine long-term prospects for reduced US involvement and a more balanced Transatlantic relationship.
Bebe says the Trump administration’s sudden drawdown from Europe does not enhance retrenchment; it increases the chances of instability in Europe. He highlights that a key element of the announcement was reversing the Biden administration’s decision to place intermediate-range missiles on German territory, which appears to signal retrenchment but could instead contribute to greater instability and a more difficult Transatlantic relationship. He adds that unstable regions tend to pull the United States back in, making disentanglement harder.
He argues this environment increases the likelihood of escalation toward direct conflict. Bebe explains that Russia has held back from using much of its air power in Ukraine partly to avoid direct conflict with NATO and partly to keep open the possibility of a compromised settlement and normalization with the United States. He says Putin may decide normalization is unlikely if Trump is unable to normalize relations in a Washington still hostile to Russia, which would raise incentives for Russia to “teach the Ukrainians a lesson” and restore deterrence amid growing domestic pressure in Russia to do something. He links this pressure to domestic dynamics, including a crackdown on the Internet related to preventing Ukrainian drone targeting.
Bebe describes an escalation ladder. He predicts Russia’s first step would be more destructive military action against Ukrainians, using air power to destroy fortress cities in the Donbas that Russia claims to be liberating, allowing ground forces to occupy with relatively low casualties. He says Russia would then face decisions about whether to go after other annexed regions it does not fully control or impose a unilateral ceasefire while ensuring the rest of Ukraine could not be reconstructed absent Russian demands. He argues that further escalation depends largely on European responses, particularly whether Europeans decide to punish Russia with larger deep-strike campaigns using drones from Ukraine. If that occurs, he anticipates massive bombing and missile strikes on Kyiv and potentially other Ukrainian population centers.
Bebe says Ukraine’s air defense is not capable of preventing more massive Russian airstrikes and is unlikely to receive effective systems from the United States or Europe soon. He describes a “window” for months in which Ukrainian air defense will be essentially nonexistent. If Europeans respond by escalating further, he suggests Russia could attack supply chains and factories in Europe (including facilities not located in Ukraine) that provide capabilities to Ukrainians, creating a crisis inside the transatlantic alliance. He notes that allies could then seek to invoke Article five of the Washington Treaty, forcing the Trump administration to decide whether to confront Russia directly—under circumstances he says are likely to be difficult given perceptions in Washington that Europeans are not trying to bring peace and are instead seeking Russian capitulation through increased pressure.
Turning to Europe’s mindset, Bebe argues European thinking has a “mindset problem,” resembling “mass hypnosis,” where the only way to deal with Russia is “more pressure, more deterrence,” and diplomatic engagement to mitigate threats is treated as unacceptable. He says this deterrence-only approach risks an escalatory spiral that could get out of hand, and argues a mix of deterrence and diplomacy is necessary, requiring pragmatism and cool-headed engagement without destabilizing Europe.
In discussing narratives, Bebe agrees with the idea that mobilization for war often relies on good-versus-evil framing, which undermines compromise when it becomes time for peace. He adds that big European players (France, Germany, Italy) have not allowed engagements with other great powers to be held hostage by consensus of smaller states in the past, but in the current situation there is little momentum for engagement—at an early stage at most—driven not by Estonia or Poland but by major European powers. He emphasizes that the UK is outside EU foreign policy consensus constraints and is among the staunchest opponents of engaging diplomatically with Russia.
On US interests, Bebe strongly argues the United States should orchestrate a compromise settlement in Ukraine. He says outsourcing the conflict to Europe or reducing US involvement would increase chances of escalation into an extraordinarily destructive Europe-Russia conflict and would only encourage Russia to align more closely with China. He argues a more autonomous Russia with relations to both China and the United States would simplify US challenges posed by China. He also says ongoing Europe-Russia conflict distracts US leaders from higher priorities and stresses that NATO’s purpose should shift toward facilitating high-technology cooperation with Europe (critical minerals, chips, supply chains, space, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence). He concludes that US action to end the Ukraine war would better enable these cooperation goals and improve Europe’s prospects for growth.
In response to claims that Russia’s earlier restraint, including the May 9 posture, reflected weakness and that Putin is dying, Bebe says it is “a case of believing your own propaganda,” which he describes as dangerous.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We have the great pleasure of being joined today by George Bebe, the former CIA director for Russia analysis and currently the the director of grand strategy at the Queen's Institute for responsible statecraft. So, yeah, let me first say thank you for coming back on the program. Thanks for the invitation. So you and I have spoken before about how The US has to adjust to a multipolar distribution of power.
That is, it can't be everywhere anymore, and it must prioritize, you know, some regions, and The US, I guess, logically prioritizes the Western Hemisphere and East Asia where its peer competitor is located. So for the first time, Europe is not the first priority. Indeed, it's a distant third, it appears, and this requires The US to pivot out of Europe as, you know, irrespective of who's the president. I think this is a trend which we can expect to continue even after Trump. But you recently wrote an article about how pulling the troops out of Germany makes sense.
However, it's it can have some, well, unforeseen consequences or some predictable consequences as well. What do you how do you assess the situation? Because this came a bit all of a sudden, way The US is pulling, well, some of its troops out of Germany.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, my point is that in order to retrench, to reduce its involvement in Europe, which I think strategically is necessary, The United States needs to prepare the ground for doing that. It needs to do so in a managed and orderly way, not in a way that leaves Europe in disrepair and unstable and conflict prone, as it is right now. So when the Trump administration decides rather abruptly and suddenly to draw down militarily from Europe, I don't think that actually enhances the long term prospects of a reduced US presence and a rebalanced Transatlantic relationship. It probably increases the chances of instability in Europe.
And unfortunately, the reality is unstable regions tend to draw The United States in and make it very difficult to disentangle itself. So I think on the surface, the announcement that The United States is withdrawing a couple of battalions from Germany, and I think the more important part of this announcement was the decision to reverse the Biden administration's decision to put intermediate range missiles on German territory. That looks on the surface as if it's a step toward retrenchment and reduced involvement in Europe. I'm afraid that it is going to end up being a step toward greater instability and thus a much more difficult situation for both sides of the Transatlantic relationship.
Speaker 0: Well, on the growing instability, it appears that one of the consequences of The US pulling back given that the the Europeans aren't ready to give up on the Ukraine war is that the Europeans appear to be escalating. That is they're very proudly announcing how they're doing mass production of drones to strike deep inside Russia. So there's no pretense anymore that it's not you know, they won't supply weapons. They won't help pick the targets. So it's starting to look very much like a direct war against Russia.
So as the Europeans respond in this way by escalating, the Russians, of course, come under even greater pressure to restore its deterrence by retaliating, and as The United States is also pulling back, and it it it looks wanna be careful in my choice of war, but it looks like an opportune moment to retaliate and restore Russian deterrent. Indeed, the failure to have done so over the past four years is seen as having all its restraint has been interpreted as weakness and seen as emboldening its adversaries. So it looks as if unintentionally possibly or likely, but nonetheless that we could head into a direct war as a result of this.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's exactly right. I wish I could disagree with your analysis, but I think your logic is difficult for me to argue with, which means we're headed toward a very unstable and crisis prone period. Just to elaborate a little bit on your logic, I think one of the reasons why the Russians have really held back from employing a lot of their military firepower in Ukraine, and I know that that characterization strikes a lot of people as odd, but I think it's nonetheless true. The Russians have an awful lot of air power that they could employ against the Ukrainians. They have not done so, at least not to the extent that they could, in part because they don't want to get into a direct conflict with NATO.
And in part because they want to keep the door open to a compromised settlement and a normalization of the relationship with The United States, which I think is important to Putin for a variety of reasons, largely geopolitical. But if we're headed into a situation where Putin judges that normalization of the relationship with The United States is just not going to happen, it's not in the cards, the Trump administration is not capable of normalizing relations. Now, I don't think he's quite there yet. I think he still has not given up hope that there can be a normalization of relationship. But should he conclude that Trump is just too weak, that he is domestically hurt by both the war in Iran and the domestic situation, which are interrelated, he may well conclude that Trump is just simply not strong enough to orchestrate a normalization of relations in a Washington DC that is still very hostile to Russia overall.
And in that kind of situation, then the incentives for him to teach the Ukrainians a lesson, to restore deterrence, you put it, go up. And I think Putin is under a lot of pressure domestically to do something. An awful lot of people in Russia want this war over, but not at any cost. You know, either they want a reasonable compromise settlement of the war or they wanna see Putin really take it to the Ukrainians and drive them out of Russian claimed territory. And it's quite clear that that pressure is growing domestically on Putin.
And part of this is a reaction to the crackdown on the Internet, which in turn was related to not wanting to allow the Ukrainians to exploit those channels for drone targeting. So part of this also is if Trump is pulling back from Europe and signaling to the Europeans that we're not going to be there if they provoke a conflict with the Russians. That also, I think, increases Putin's incentives to do something quite decisive, perhaps even against Europeans themselves. Although I don't think he would start out that way. I think he would start out with doing something quite severe against the Ukrainians themselves in the hope that this didn't escalate into a broader European conflict.
But I do think that we're headed into a very dangerous situation. And unless The United States can, I think, use its remaining influence to steer the Ukraine conflict toward a compromise very soon, I think by the fall, we're we're probably headed into a danger zone where the Russians will will feel both a lot of pressure to do something and less concern that they would wind up in a direct conflict with The United States?
Speaker 0: Well, was hoping you would disagree with my pessimistic outlook, but, yeah, it does appear there is, yeah, the move towards war, which, well, essentially nobody would want. But I I had an interview recently now with Sergei Karaganov. He's as you know, he's advised Putin and Yeltsin Gorbachev and others, and he was also key in terms of influencing the Kremlin to change its nuclear doctrine. And his his argument essentially was that the spirit of Alaska well, not only is it dead in terms of the the diplomatic path forward. Of course, he doesn't represent the Kremlin, but but nonetheless, he made a point that his view that there's a need to to essentially strike the Europeans because he considers this to be a a war which the West fights against Russia using Ukrainians.
And and for this reason, initially, first, do something like an Oreshnik strike against Germany or something, but otherwise, also not rule out the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against Germany just to well, essentially punish the Europeans, which he will again, his his point was that he used to be a small represent a small minority voice only two years ago when he was pushing through the changing the nuclear doctrine. But now, he says that the overwhelming majority is on his side, and the pressure is essentially mounting on Putin to not to fall in line, but it but it begin to take a more hard line as you indicated. But how do you see the escalation ladder going here, though? Because you said you would expect Russia to first escalate against Ukrainians. And last night, I couldn't help but to notice, the Russians use about 100 drones and missiles, which is by far a new record in this war.
But but how would they go after the Europeans? Would they do strikes which can be, you know, a strategic ambiguity? They can deny it, or would they go direct and claim? I mean, how how do you see them going forward?
Speaker 1: Well, I think step one would be something much more destructive against the Ukrainians. And one of the things that I think Putin has wanted to claim is that what the Russian military is doing in the Donbas is liberating regions from the so called fascist neo Nazi rule that the Russians claim is being imposed by Kyiv. But when you're talking about liberation, what that also means is you don't want to leave in your aftermath complete destruction. They don't want to turn the fortress cities that the Ukrainians now control in Donetsk into rubble. You can't do that and also maintain that you're liberating the populations that are living there.
But as pressure goes up on Putin to do something decisive and to retake this Ukrainian occupied territory, I think the first step that Putin would take would be to use air power in a much more destructive way and turn those fortress cities into rubble. Now, at that point, the Russian ground forces could occupy them with relatively low casualties. And the Russians could say, Okay, we now have got military control of the territory that we claim the Donbas. At that point, the Russians would have to make a decision. Do we go after the two other regions that we have annexed but don't control fully?
Or do we at that point say, you know, we're imposing a unilateral ceasefire, we're digging in, and not actually settle the war with a full peace deal with the Ukrainians, but ensure at that point that the rest of Ukraine could not be reconstructed absent concessions to Russian demands. Now, whether the war escalated from that point into a more general Russian European conflict would depend largely on what the Europeans do. Do they, at that point, decide they want to punish the Russians by, you know, employing drone attacks, for example, from Ukraine for for a much bigger campaign of deep strikes into Russian territory. If that is the response, then I think the Russians would escalate even further. And I think the next step would probably be massive bombing and missile strikes of Kyiv itself, perhaps other population centers in Ukraine, which the Russians really have not done on a scale that they're capable of doing.
And so we have a very, I think, dangerous situation in that the Ukrainians don't have an air defense system that's really capable of preventing that kind of more massive airstrikes from the Russians. And they have very little prospect of acquiring one from The United States or Europe anytime soon. So there's going to be a window for probably many months to come where the Ukrainian air defense system will will essentially be nonexistent, and the Russians could inflict a lot of damage on Ukrainian territory. Now if the Europeans respond by trying to escalate even further, then I think the Russians would consider attacking supply chains and and factories that are in Europe itself on NATO territory, so to speak, that have been providing this capability to the Ukrainians. And not all of the drones that are being produced by the Ukrainians are being produced on Ukrainian territory.
There are other things that are going into this from Europe that the Russians don't want to have to strike because this would be escalatory. But in that kind of scenario, I could see the Russians going after those sorts of facilities. That would, of course, create a crisis within the transatlantic alliance. At that point, you would have allies turning to Washington saying, look, the Russians have now attacked us. We want to invoke Article five of the Washington Treaty.
And that will be a very interesting situation should that arise. Because then I think the Trump administration would have a fundamental choice to make. Do we want to get into a direct military confrontation with the Russians? And I don't know how that's going to turn out. That would be a very, very difficult decision, I think, under the circumstances.
Particularly because there's a perception in Washington, and I think the perception is justified, that the Europeans have not been working to bring peace to Ukraine. They're not in favor of a compromise with the Russians. They seem to be very staunchly in favor of increased pressure, military, economic, and diplomatic on the Russians simply to capitulate. And given that perception, I'm not sure there's going to be a lot of sympathy in the Trump administration for getting involved in conflict with the Russians.
Speaker 0: We more or less just summarized the the key headlines across Europe these days, which is now is the time to mount more pressure on Russia, which is well, it sounds like a suicidal and crazy thing to do, but that was, I guess, a good to also shift focus and look at the European part of this because, I mean, when you look at the future of Europe, it doesn't necessarily look very bright, but you can measure many things of a of a declining region in terms of economy, military, but also when you see countries in decline, you often see political instability and a very changing mindset. And I get the impression our leaders in Europe becoming much more radical. That is, this obsession with taking war to Russian territory without recognizing that the Russian could respond in kind. Indeed, the idea of seeing these German leaders arguing for how we have to not we. They have to mass produce long range missiles to bring pain to Russia.
I mean, I don't think they appreciate how the blood is boiling over in Moscow at the moment. I I I I'm just wondering how how do you see what's happening in Europe? Because I I often made the point here in Europe that with these escalations, we're inviting war, but, you know, this this is considered to be a, you know, pro Russian argument because it undermines support for the war. So it's a it's it's a very black and white thinking. There's no the the all caution has been thrown out, it seems.
Is it that's happening here? Because Europe Europe used to be the cautious one. They used to look at Americans as being the reckless, aggressive. But now, especially, you know, the way Bush pushed for membership for Ukraine in 2008, this was seen as being way too reckless. But But now the Europeans, they seem to be much, much more radical, though.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's right. And I'm not sure I can offer you a very logical explanation for what's going on in European thinking. There seems to me to be some sort of mindset problem. It's almost like a mass hypnosis where people simply believe that the only way they can deal with Russia is through more pressure, more deterrence. And the notion that you would engage at all diplomatically with Russia to try to mitigate threats and reduce the likelihood of conflict and crisis is simply anathema, I think, to the bulk of Europeans right now.
And I think it's a major mistake. I think it's a very dangerous mindset to approach this situation with. It increases the chances of escalation and conflict. I'm not going to argue that some element of deterrence isn't necessary. I think it is.
That's got to be a part of the equation. But if you approach this problem solely through the prism of deterrence, I think you end up exacerbating an escalatory spiral that could easily get out of hand. And it's an extremely dangerous way to approach this. So I think there has to be a mix of deterrence and diplomacy. And right now I'm not sure the Europeans are thinking clearly enough to engage in that sort of an approach.
It requires pragmatism. It requires some cool headed approaches and some self confidence that you can engage with the Russians productively. And doing so won't undermine unity and stability in Europe itself. And I see a lot of fear in Europe that if they even, you know, agree to talk with the Russians that that very active engagement will somehow be destabilizing inside Europe. And I think that's a dangerous mindset to approach things with.
Speaker 0: It might it might be true as well, though, that it's destabilizing because when you have 27 countries in the EU, you know, it's very difficult how how are they all gonna agree on one foreign policy. It's it it doesn't make much sense because the the Irish, the Greek, the Latvians, they have very different interests and security concerns. So it seems like the way we gain consensus in the EU was simply just portray the situation as black and white. This is good and evil. You have an evil Russian empire, you know, the the new Hitler coming, and, you know, this is descent essentially is now immoral.
So by by presenting as a good versus evil, they got everything in everyone in in line. But once they begin to open up diplomacy, discussing the Russian security concerns, the whole unity might fall apart. Not that I think this is a great idea, but it does make me think sometimes of Walter Lippmann because he he wrote about this. He argued that when when states want to mobilize the public for war, it's common to portray everything as good versus evil. But when it's time to make peace, the same propaganda fails, then it a workable peace no longer is possible because you can't compromise with evil.
And I'm wondering if that's where we are because we built a lot of our narratives around the idea that this was an unprovoked war, unprovoked invasion, which means we can't you know, in anything we give the Russians is now appeasement and emboldening them. But also, we put people like Kayakalas in place, which meant someone who would, you know, talking about openly about breaking Russia into several pieces. We can't talk to the Russians. We got some of the most extreme people to lead the EU, and then, yeah, now that it's time to make peace, what's possible to do now? I mean, how do you see the narratives, I guess, trapping us here?
Speaker 1: Well, I think your Lipman reference is exactly right. That is part of the problem here. I think that's a bigger part of the problem than trying to maintain unity within the EU itself. The reason why I say that is what has traditionally happened with Europe has been the big players, the French, the Germans, the Italians, they have been leaders in all of this. And they've not allowed the fundamental engagements with other great powers to be held hostage to the consensus of smaller powers.
They're not doing that in this case. In fact, if you look at Germany, France, they are not really pushing very hard to engage with Russia. I think you're just beginning to see talk about talking. Perhaps maybe we ought to engage with the Russians. But this is at a very early stage.
And there's not a lot of momentum behind this right now. And if that momentum is going to come, it's not going to come from the Estonians or the Poles. It's going to come from the big heavyweights in Europe. And right now there's not a lot of oomph behind those calls. And I also think if you look at The UK, they're not a part of the European Union.
They're not held to that requirement for consensus in the common foreign and security policy of the EU. So the notion that they have to be careful about maintaining consensus within Europe doesn't apply. And you don't see the British really pushing for engagement with the Russians. Just the opposite, I think. The British are among the most staunchly opposed to engaging diplomatically with Russia over all of this.
That leads me to think that this is much more of a mindset problem than it is an EU rules and consensus problem.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. That's a great point. Of course, the British aren't part of it. So no.
I often get the impression they're overcompensating a bit as well to find a new role in Europe after Brexit. So I guess the military role, the one confronting the Russians, this, yeah, replaying Churchill, I think that that's yeah. Could actually make things worse. But how do you see the American interest here, though? Because I was thinking if I would be advising Washington, what, you know, what what would be the ideal here?
Would it be to to to put an end to the war in Ukraine because this is preventing The US from pivoting to Asia, the Western Hemisphere, or or would it be better to just outsource it to the European at a lower level? Because now it's a bit too high intensity and why the war can break out.
Speaker 1: Well, I strongly believe it's in America's interest to orchestrate a compromise settlement of the war in Ukraine. If we don't do that and we essentially outsource this conflict to Europe and reduce America's involvement, I think the chances of escalation into an extraordinarily destructive conflict between Europe and Russia go up immensely. And I don't think that's in America's interest at all. I think the continuation of a broader Europe Russia conflict, even if it doesn't escalate dangerously, only encourages the Russians to align themselves more closely with China. I don't think that's in America's interest.
I think it's in our interest to have a more autonomous, more independent Russia that has relations both with China and with The United States and West. That makes dealing with the challenges that China poses a lot simpler for The United States than if Russia and China are closely strategically aligned against The United States in the West. And I think just from the point of view of prioritization, if Europe is conflict prone and weak, that makes The United States much less able to focus on other higher priorities in the world. Much less able to focus on the Indo Pacific from a military point of view and strictly from a time management point of view. Our White House, our leaders, cabinet officials only have so much time and attention they can devote to things.
And any crisis in the world that in some way touches on American interests certainly distracts from their ability to focus on what I think should be higher priorities. Then the last thing I would say is the nature of the Transatlantic relationship, the purpose of NATO, needs to change. And it needs to focus much more, I think, on facilitating high technology cooperation between The United States and Europe. I think the nature of the geopolitical challenges that we're going to be facing in the next several decades have a lot to do with things like critical minerals and chips and supply chains and space, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, China has some advantages of scale that it is bringing to bear in this competition. The United States working with European allies together can help to mitigate some of those advantages of scale that the Chinese have.
And I think lift all of our boats in the West technologically. I think it could bring greater prosperity to Europe, more economic growth that I think Europe desperately needs right now. So if Europe is essentially in perpetual conflict, that kind of cooperation becomes much less possible over time. So I'm strongly of the opinion that The United States needs to bring this conflict in Ukraine to a compromise settlement to facilitate all of these things that I think are strategically vital.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No, I would like to see some kind of re reconceptualization of The US Europe relationship because it seems to be always all or nothing. And to be honest, that also very much in the is very much in the European mentality as well that is either they can't imagine, you know, not living without The US and everything has to be subordinated or they become viciously anti American. So it doesn't seem it looks like the goal should be to have a, redefining the relationship for a multipolar era. That is where The US can't be there to the same extent, but still seeking some benefits from, yeah, the partnership that's lasted all this time.
Meanwhile, I'm pessimistic at the moment about Europe and Russia because, again, the headlines in Europe now is that, you know, the tide has turned. Ukraine is winning again, so we're going back to this apparently. The the reason why the Russians didn't have any heavy weaponry in the May 9 was not to avoid inviting an attack on the parade, but rather its weakness that they didn't have any. And, of course, Putin is dying again apparently from some disease. So all of these are, you know, narratives to build up support for war, it seems.
Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I I think that's a case of believing your own propaganda. That's a dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 0: Very much so. Anyways, as always, thank you so much for taking your time.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Xu Qinduo: Trump-Xi Meeting - Economic War, Taiwan & Iran https://youtu.be/Ggkhc0FKo5E https://t.co/rsJDRBCaZ8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Xu Qinhua, host of Dialogue at CGTN, joined Glenn to discuss Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing on 05/14/2026, including the atmosphere, objectives, and key issues shaping China–U.S. relations.
Xu Qinhua said the day’s atmosphere was “very positive.” Trump was impressed by the welcoming ceremony, reviewing the ceremonial guards with Xi Jinping, visits to the Temple of Heaven, and a state banquet. The leaders spent the morning in discussions with their teams, then met at the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon. In the evening, they attended a state banquet hosted by the presidency. Xi Jinping’s speech emphasized that China–U.S. should be “partners rather than rivals,” while Trump’s warm response highlighted shared values between Chinese and Americans and referenced long engagement between the peoples over about 250 years. Trump cited early U.S. contact with China in 1784, including the arrival of a U.S. ship, Chinese terms for newcomers, Chinese workers helping link the Pacific and Atlantic through a continental railroad, the establishment of Tsinghua University, U.S.-China allied cooperation during World War II, and Confucius being respected in the U.S. Xu Qinhua said both sides agreed on a vision described as “strategic constructive… strategic stability” to guide the relationship for the next three years or even beyond.
Glenn raised the broader concern that Trump’s administrations, and more broadly U.S. views that China is the main peer rival, often place China in the spotlight. He referenced Xi Jinping’s idea of overcoming the “Thucydides’ trap” and asked about prospects for easing the economic war shaped by trade, technology, and tariffs. Xu Qinhua said Xi Jinping meant overcoming the trap and setting a new model for major-power relationships. Xu described China and the U.S. as peers in terms of economy, high-tech development, innovation, and military capabilities, arguing that how they handle the relationship affects not only both countries but global stability. He said trade used to serve as a “ballast” stabilizer because of investment and exports, but the relationship is now again at a challenging time involving trade war, tech war, and tariffs. Xu said both sides were discussing the possibility of a “new model” of coexistence, emphasizing “cooperation” and limiting “zero sum” thinking.
Glenn asked what specific issues must be resolved, including whether the focus is tariffs, chip export limitations, or China’s willingness to export rare earths, and noted U.S. interest in Chinese purchases of U.S. energy and agriculture. Xu Qinhua responded that they were discussing building a “border for trade” and a “board of investment” to institutionalize dialogues and communications to address individual issues regularly rather than in isolated cases. Xu said from China’s perspective the trade war has brought suffering to both sides; China’s exports continued to grow even as U.S. tariff efforts did not stop Chinese exports. Xu said the Chinese side was pragmatic about expanding trade in areas that are not sensitive, such as advanced chips, and that U.S. companies could be willing to sell items like oil, agriculture products (including soybeans and beef), and Boeing airplanes if trade targets fall outside high-tech and national-security sensitivities. He said China’s theme is cooperation-focused “strategic stability,” with limited competition, and communication across multiple areas including military and trade. Xu argued trade itself is mutually beneficial and that trade imbalance is not the real issue, tying underlying concerns to the U.S. role as the supplier of the major reserve currency.
On energy security, Glenn described U.S. efforts to reduce exports from key energy exporters and replace them with U.S. supplies, including claims about Europe after Nord Stream and a push for U.S. centrality in energy infrastructure and sales. Xu Qinhua said China has concern about over-reliance on U.S. oil and LNG and forming reliance on the U.S. market amid negative U.S. media coverage and low trust. He said China has diversified exports to ASEAN, Southeast Asia, African countries, Latin America, and European markets, and diversified energy sources so reliance on a single source is usually not over 20%, with oil and gas coming from Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Ghana, among others. Xu said China is rapidly developing renewable energy (EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines), investing in nuclear power plants under construction, and also has coal resources and technology to transform coal into gas so that coal can provide electricity in worst-case scenarios. He linked this to energy security being both about sufficient supply and access to energy resources globally.
Glenn raised Taiwan as a central security issue and asked how central it was in talks and whether a reduced-tension common meeting point existed. Xu Qinhua said Xi Jinping raised Taiwan as expected in discussions with Trump, calling it the most important issue between China and the U.S. and warning that mishandling it could put the overall relationship in jeopardy. Xu said the Chinese side increased the volume and severity of its messaging, warning that Taiwan separatist activity threatens regional peace and stability; Xu said arms sales to Taiwan embolden secessionists and create security risks. Xu said the U.S. “one China” principle has been hollowed out, citing that while a 1982 communiqué foundation includes that the U.S. would reduce arms sales until zero, Xu claimed the U.S. has increased arms sales to Taiwan. Xu argued that if Washington truly cared about peace, it would make clear to separatists that it opposes Taiwan independence and support peaceful reunification efforts, which Xu said would remove a persistent irritant and allow cooperation on issues such as AI governance and crises including the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine. Xu added that even with U.S. intervention, Taiwan purchases of arms would not match Mainland capabilities, and he said U.S. support for separatists would fail to slow China’s modernization.
Glenn asked about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz as an issue discussed between Xi and Trump. Xu Qinhua said the leaders’ discussions covered the Iranian crisis. Xu said some U.S. media coverage claimed Trump should pressure China to pressure the Iranians, but Xu said the “wrong approach” would be pressure from Washington; Xu said Beijing has nothing to do with the crisis and that the crisis is tied to a war launched by Washington and the Israelis without UN authorization, without proper explanation, and without legitimacy. Xu said China and the U.S. share some common interest in opening the Strait of Hormuz because Gulf nations’ exports rely on it and because China purchases about 50–40% of its energy from the region. Xu said Washington would need to restrain demands, respect the fact that it launched the war and failed to achieve its goals, and accept reality, while the Chinese side would help seek a long-term deal and stable relationship between the U.S. and Iran. Xu said the U.S. side had not been seen as earnest or faithful in resolving the problem.
When Glenn asked how this aligns with a common stance that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, Xu Qinhua said he did not see tensions upcoming between China and Iran. Xu said multiple oil tankers were navigating the Strait of Hormuz with limited disruption, and that about 90% of Iranian oil exports go to China, meaning there is no point for China to ask for tolls on tankers destined for China. Xu said if Iranian control or tolls occur, China would not oppose, especially if the U.S. refuses compromise, refuses to lift sanctions, and does not allow normal business with other countries. Xu described the key issue as how long the U.S. will tolerate inflationary pressure and how the U.S. continues its approach against what he characterized as an Iranian blockade against the U.S. blockade.
In closing, Glenn asked whether the meeting would produce a “grand bargain” or only minor tweaks to resolve disputes. Xu Qinhua said the encounter was significant, not only between the leaders but also because top executives mingled and talked, which Xu said could increase understanding and opportunities for engagement that had been absent for nine years or longer. Xu said 2026 could be a milestone year for China–U.S. relations due to frequent future meeting opportunities: Trump’s invitation for Xi to visit the U.S. in late September, plus further opportunities on the sidelines of APEC in Shenzhen and the G20 summit in the U.S. Xu said they had found the “right approach” of constructive strategic stability with cooperation-focused limited competition, moving away from zero-sum mentality, which Xu said could benefit both sides and the world.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is 05/14/2026, and we are joined by Xu Qinhua, who is the host of Dialogue at CGTN to discuss what is happening now at the meeting in Beijing. As we know, Donald Trump is currently meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing. So thank you very much for coming on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So, again, I think most of the world now is looking at at this meeting. Often, there's a lot of superficial theatrics often when we deal with Trump. But at the same time, there's a lot of issues which has to be solved by these two giants, one of two largest powers in the world, US and China. So what do we know so far about how this meeting has gone? And, well, what are essentially the main objectives of each side?
And is there any Mhmm. Common meeting points?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can share with you what happened today. I would say, in general, the atmosphere has been very positive. Mister Trump obviously is impressed with the welcoming ceremony, for example, and the reviewing of the ceremonial guards together with president Xi Jinping, the visits to the temple of heaven and then the state banquet. So the two leaders, they spend the morning talking to each other with their own teams and then the two of them were in the temple of heaven and then that's in the afternoon.
And then in the evening, I think they are still ongoing. They have a state banquet, you know, hosted by a presidency. He gave a speech, very warm. He talked about China US should be partners rather than rivals. And president Trump also responded in his speech brief speech, but very warm.
It talked about, you know, both Chinese people and Americans, you know, take care of their families, you know, working hard. They share a lot of in common in terms of their values. It talked about over the past hundreds of you know, two hundred and fifty years almost, engagement of the people between the two countries. He mentioned about the first, I think, US ship arriving in China in 1784. At that time, Chinese people called them new people from a new country.
And and then he talked about the Chinese workers helping build the real link between, you know, Pacific And Atlantic Ocean across its the the the continental railroad. I talked about the establishment of Tsinghua University, one of the top universities in China. I also talked about in the China US were allies during the second World War. You know, there's also Confucius was also well respected in U. S.
Etcetera. So the both sides agreed upon a vision which is called like strategic constructive strategic stability that will guide the bilateral relationship for the, you know, next three years or the year even beyond that. So that's very impressive, I would say.
Speaker 0: Well, yeah, no. Those are some, well, good signs. However, ever since Trump's first administration, we we we know that China was often in the well, tends to have the spotlight in his administration, but also more generally within The US now given that that China is seen as the mere the main peer rival. And indeed, I saw Xi Jinping even make a reference to the need to essentially overcome what is often referred to as the tedious trap. That is that they've, you know, that we had a one hegemon before, and now it's if not being replaced, at least it's no longer enjoys a hegemonic position.
And often this results in conflicts between the two great powers. So given that there will be, I guess, yeah, at least there will be a need to harmonize relations or manage the competition, How do you see the prospect of overcoming this economic war? Because that's something that really shaped US China relations over the past decade.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, Glenn. You know, you mentioned about Thucydides' trap. President Xi also mentioned this this phrase, but what he meant is, like, we should overcome this idea of Thucydides' trap, you know, which to overcome this trap, and then we should set a new model probably for major power to power relationship. I think they refer he's he referred to China US, you know, both basically, they are peers in a sense in terms of economy, in terms of high-tech development, innovation, or military capabilities. So right now, that's they they are at, like, a critical juncture, you know, how they handle each other, how they handle their relationship is not only of consequence for the two peoples of the two countries, but also for the stability of the entire world.
I think, you know, president Xi mentioned that that, you know, this is something beyond this bilateral relationship. So, of course, when it comes to the relationship itself, you mentioned about the trade, for example, That's a very important part of this relationship, and it used to be the ballast that we call it, which is a stabilizer of this relationship because there's so much investment from The US and China, so much export from China to The US. Somehow, it bring the two people, the two nation together and, you know, add to the peak time, I would say, every 15 minutes, there is a plane taking off or basically, you know, all all all coming down in either China or The United States. So the two countries used to be, you know, very closely connected, but, of course, we know what happened later on. And right now, again, it is at another, you know, challenging time, like, looking ahead, what kind of relationship we wanna have after this the fight, the trade war, the tech war, you know, tariff war.
Do we want to continue? Is that in our interests? Either and, you know, maybe you know, is there any possibility of a new model of living together of coexist peacefully for the benefit phase of the two countries? So that's why at the very beginning, I mentioned, you know, you know, Xi Jinping mentioned, like, oh, okay. We should help each other succeed to overcome this mentality.
We call it, like, a zero sum mentality. I think be on his way to China, US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, remember he talked about, you know, China is rising. China is continued to to grow, but the Chinese something like that rising cannot be achieved at the expense of The US. So it's a bit unclear, like, how to handle that, what is the expense of The US. But, obviously, as you said, I think there are still this mentality.
There's still this questioning or this unclear state of what we are going to do to achieve that kind of ideal state that may be in the both states help each other succeed. And it's quite ideal, but probably the right way to do the right way to go.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's what I want to ask. What what specific issues have to be resolved? Because I know initially the objective was to roll back the technological development of China and will stop its economic rise. But as we saw when The US put all these tariffs on China, China was able to push back, essentially, with the threats against the rare earths and others.
So, essentially, The US had to back back down and not well, not not go after China. But if if this is not just a temporary pause and there's a genuine interest in resolving the economic war with China, what is it that actually has to be fixed? Is it the tariffs? Is it the the the limitations on on exports of chips to China? Is it China's openness to export rare earths?
I mean, what what is it that each side wants from the other? And, yeah, because I've seen The US, for example, wants the Chinese to buy more US energy and agriculture. This seems to fit that pattern around the world, actually, to reorganize the the energy trade. So what what what do you think has to be resolved in terms of specifics?
Speaker 1: Mhmm. I think right now, you you mentioned a couple of them, you know, for they are talking about this, you know, building a border for trade and also a board of investment between the two countries. So this is the kind of, like, institutionalize the dialogues, the communications between the two sides to deal with probably individual issues. But at the same time, of course, you can say it is good for them to talk to each other on a regular terms rather than, you know, having dialogue, you know, that's kind of being isolated for an isolated case. So that's helpful.
But at the same time, I think for the from the Chinese point of view, that is like, you know, we have going through we have gone through this trade war, and The US suffers. And The US is not really winning. The Chinese side, of course, suffers because, you know, we used to export a lot to The US, but now we have to do ex export to other places of the world. But the the China is not losing its export. Chinese export continues to grow.
That means The US effort through tariff to stop, you know, the Chinese export is not working or has failed. And, also, you know, they are trying to be pragmatic. I think they are talking about, you know, having this board of trade, meaning that we can do more trade as long as they are not sensitive. You know, if it's not high-tech, for example, advanced chips. So, you know, like a Chinese purchase of US oil, Chinese purchase of US agriculture products, soybeans, beef, or Boeing airplanes, the Americans would be more than happy to sell them to the Chinese side.
So I think for the Chinese side, they are also kind of warming to certain idea. Yes. We can do more where we can trade. We can talk more where we think it's sensitive technology, it's sensitive area, it's probably related to our national security. At the same time, the idea of, you know, constructive or strategic stability, you know, the the the Chinese idea is like it should focus on cooperation.
The theme should be cooperation and competition should be limited. And then, you know, we we we should also communicate with each other in different areas, you know, military areas, trade, attack, etcetera, is not limited to only to trade, for example. So I think that might work out. If that work out, then it means, like, gradually, they would they would build this kind of confidence and also see The US would have a reliance on the Chinese market because they sell a lot to the Chinese market. Similarly, the Chinese side would rely on The US, you know, import export of agricultural products or airplanes.
So my idea is like, you know, trade itself is a mutually beneficial. Trade itself is not not anything wrong. If you trade, nobody suffers from doing trade. It's like between us, Glenn. You know, I buy something from you.
Yes. I suffer from deficit, but I bought something. Right? And there's no self at all. So imbalance itself is kind of not the real issue.
It's by the long term challenge of the economic structure. All The US position being the supplier of the major reserve currency of US dollar. So that's why you can print US dollars, of course. Usually, you are having a deficit in terms of trade. But gradually, hopefully, I mean, more and more people will come to this understanding.
And then we can continue to do trade at the same time gradually, you know, focusing on expand expanding the trade into different areas between the two countries. And then we can build on that momentum to increase our understanding. And then we become less sensitive in terms of, you know, what do they call, like, quote, unquote China threat or or threat to national security. That's, you know, many of that to a high degree, a lot of that comes from this, you know, ideological idea or this kind of lack of lack of trust, I would say.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's the spectacular rise of China has put the world in a very unique situation that is to have suddenly China come almost out of nowhere in forty years and become the leading economy. It's well, it it does put a shock to the system, and I guess that can, yeah, stir up some unhealthy stereotypes and and, yeah, demonization, vilification of of China. But in in international trade, though, we often see that great powers, they're not only looking for positive sum gain where both sides gain. They're also often concerned about the balance of dependence that is great powers would like others to be dependent on them, but they want to reduce dependence on others.
And it's this asymmetrical interdependence where they often see they get, yeah, both economic and power and political influence. But if we focus on specifics of energy, it looks like The US The United States has a very specific energy plan that it's at least it seems there's been some objectives to reduce the export of key energy exporters, so Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and often they seem to try to replace this with US supplies. So if you look at the case in Europe, the after the destruction of Nord Stream, likely the Americans, then we see that The US now apparently is pushing for The US to take over the the energy infrastructure, that is they should manage the gas exports, the transit from Russia to Europe, but also in trade. They want to buy cheap energy from Russia, and they want to sell their own expensive energy to Europe. So so it looks like The US is trying to set up a new may make itself more central in the energy trade.
How do you see this with China, though? Is this vulnerability if China makes itself too dependent on US energy, or or is has China already diversified sufficiently to avoid, you know, any vulnerability in terms of excessive dependence?
Speaker 1: Mhmm. Well, I think, yes, there is concern from on the Chinese side about over relying on The US for oil export, for example, you know, LMP, liquefied natural gas, for example, from The US. If you buy too much from The US and gradually you form this kind of reliance on The US market, and then as you said, you know, point out, you know, big powers, they have this sense of insecurity, especially if there's a lack of trust, especially in this situation if you, you know, watch The US media, read The US media, it's a wall to wall coverage, negative coverage about China. This whole public sentiment, you know, is a strong against China. And, of course, you have this worry that whether that's sustainable relies on The US.
And that's why I think China overall has diversified away from US to a large extent in terms of export, And they have successfully been successful in doing so, increasing their volume of export to this ASEAN countries, Southeast Asia, African countries, Latin American countries, Europeans very successfully. And secondly, I would say Chinese diversification in terms of energy. China, I think, is being very cautious in avoiding reliance on the single source. If you look at their source of their imports of oil and gas, it's it's you know, the reliance on a single source usually is not over 20%. They have oil, you know, import oil from Russia, gas from Russia, from Iran, from Saudi Arabia, from Brazil, from Ghana.
So it's multiple sources, I would say. At the same time, China is rapidly developing this renewable energy. We know China is in the leading position in terms of EV, solar panels, and wind turbines, etcetera. China is also investing heavily in nuclear power power plants. The projects, I think, is under construction.
The total number of that is is almost the the the the combined number of the rest of the world. And also China is rich in coal, and so China has that technology to transform coal into gas rather material technology. So in the crisis, in the worst scenario, China can rely on coal to provide electricity, for example. Yes. There's a climate concern, but, you know, we are talking about a survival problem.
So that's the worst scenario. So in that sense, I would say China has been fully aware of its energy security issue. It's not only about, you know, whether you have enough supply because China is you know, used to be called the factory of the world. It consumes a lot of power. At the same time, it's about security, whether you have enough access to the resources of energy around the world.
So I I I think, you know, for for the Chinese point of view, yes, The US control of Venezuela, for example, their energy resources, probably The US some people would say that's a US attempt to control Iran, to control their oil and gas. Of course, is not a successful attempt. And they're, you know, warming up to to to Russia, for example, has also their own consideration. So so far, I think, you know, China, indeed, what we are seeing is is like a revolutionary transformation is about EVs, including the trucks. They are having these electrical trucks, which in terms of which is cost effective compared with diesel based trucks.
So that's, you know, the strong incentive there is for the consumers, I mean, to go electric right now. So, hopefully, as time goes on, I mean, China does not see China will not see a threat from The US control, a growing control of energies around the world.
Speaker 0: Well, obviously, if we well, if we shift towards security, though, we we know that a a key issue is, of course, Taiwan. That is Taiwan is considered by The US to be important part of this dual island chain to contain China. And, of course, the since The US and China restored relations in the seventies, it was founded on all the one China policy in which The US recognized that Taiwan would be that it is a part of China. However, we've seen over the decades now that The US has been, you know, pursuing this incrementalism, chipping a little bit away at China's sovereignty, and I often remind remind people that president Carter in his days defined the one China policy as limiting US ties to Taiwan as being organized around cultural ties and economic ties, so no political or military. But as we've seen, something I think has been intensifying over the years is, of course, moving into political and military ties as well and also not so subtly backing secessionist movements.
So how how central do you think the Taiwan issue has been in these talks? And I guess the second question, do you think there's a possibility for a common meeting point, something at least reduced attentions, or or do you think each side is, you know, locked in its own positions?
Speaker 1: In his discussion with the president Xi president Trump, you know, Xi Jinping mentioned the the Taiwan question as expected. He said this is the most important issue between China and The US. He talked about, you know, if mishandled, the entire China US relationship could be put in jeopardy. So in my impression, this is probably the strongest rhetoric used by the Chinese top leader in exchange with his counterpart from The US. I think that this is the warning.
The Chinese side is basically increasing the volume and the severity to help the Americans understand that, you know, this is what we call used to say this is the reddest of the red line of the Chinese side on the Chinese side. He mentioned about this separatist activity is the danger to peace and stability in the region. So Americans should be aware of that. Their arms sale will embolden those secessionists, especially those in power, and that that will create this, you know, security risk or danger to peace and stability in the region. The US, you know, in in in in the the past years, in particular, in the past, like, eight or nine years, you know, the one China principle has been hollowed out in a sense by the American administration.
You mentioned about, you know, no more ties beyond economic and trade and cultural relationship, but we are seeing is there there are even a small group of Americans based American soldiers based in Taiwan. They proposing this largest cell largest package of weapon sale to Taiwan. You know, they're increasing arm sale to Taiwan. If you look at one of the three communicates which serves as a foundation of China US relationship, the one signed in 1982, it says, basically, The US will reduce arms sale to Taiwan until it becomes zero. Instead, they are not keeping their promise.
They are increasing arms to Taiwan. How can you say sending more weapons to a certain region is a gesture of peace, is a gesture of a contribution to peace? No. If Washington really cares about peace and stability in this region, they would make clear to the separatists in Taiwan that they oppose this Taiwan independence, and they can go further and express such as, you know, we support the Chinese efforts of a peaceful reunification of Taiwan. That would be even better.
I think by doing that, they will be able to ring in the separatist activities in Taiwan, which is a source of threat to stability in this region. So that will also help the bilateral relationship to a great deal because, you know, basically, you are taking out this this irritant constant irritant between the bilateral relations in the bilateral relationship so they can focus on whether they can cooperate with each other. They can focus on their common interests beyond its bilateral relationship such as AI governance or crisis in the street of Hormuz or in Ukraine. So that that is the general idea. But, you know, I can you know, probably, I I wanna add more to that.
And then if you look at this change of, let's say, military or defense capability between the Mainland and Taiwan, obviously, the the the Mainland side, the way ahead of Taiwan. You know, however, whatever amount of arms purchase by the Taiwan authorities, there will not be a match of the Chinese Mainland. So that's that's basically pointless for the purchase of arms from The US. Of course, for those separatists, they want to ex base that's a way of being loyal to Washington. So the military industrial complex in in in Washington can benefit, can profit from this kind of situation.
And, also, if you look at it, you know, some military experts have, you know, have this kind of a board game. And the the conclusion is even with The US participation intervention in a worst scenario, The US will not win the war against China. So I think that's the reality increasing increasingly true reality. And also, if you look at The US, if they are not able to defeat Iran, what makes them believe they can defeat China in a place, in a region where China enjoys home advantage? So I think if they are realistic, they should give up this idea of supporting the separatists in Taiwan by arming them to tease somehow that will slow down the Chinese growth.
Somehow, it will sabotage the Chinese modernization drive. No. That will only bring about a disaster. You know, nobody likes to see in particular countries in this region.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Often that well, sometimes wonder if The US in its relationship with China is you know, the if the conflict over Taiwan is emerging as The US is a status quo power or revisionist, because I think both could be true. That is if The US is a status quo power, you can argue that China and The US are trying to deter two different things. That is The US is trying to deter China from from taking back Taiwan by force, so this is why they send weapons, while China wants to deter The US from backing secessionism. And as you as you suggested, the you you can't one could argue that a status quo conflict might emerge because if The US hands weapons to the Taiwanese authorities to deter taking aback by military force, it can embolden them to push towards secessionism, which then would actually trigger the the the use of force on the side of the mainland.
So so that would be the status quo scenario. But if The US is a revisionist, then, you know, sending all these weapons has a explicit purpose, that is to to actually push for a secession. That that is the goal simply because time is not on America's side. As you said, every every day that passes, China grows stronger, the relative power, not just vis a vis the tie Taiwan, but also with The United States. In other words, if you want to weaken China, break apart Taiwan from from the mainland, then it's better to do today than wait ten years.
So so they they essentially have this incentive to escalate now, I think, which is why I'm curious where where do you think The US is going? Especially, you know, as I listen to these warm words by president Trump in Beijing, I can't help but to think about well, wonder if it's genuine diplomacy or not because what we saw with Iran was they were saying the same things like, oh, we're getting along well with Iranians. We're close to a deal. And they said this twice while launching a surprise attack. And even now that they're negotiating, they they initially agreed on this 10 plan of the Iranians, and now they just abandoned it altogether.
So often, one is not sure how genuine it is, and one can also extend the same to Russia. That is, they had the spirit of Alaska. They had some agreements. Nothing has happened. It's the Russians more or less reached a conclusion that they're negotiating in good faith.
They're still sending money, sending weapons. CIA's still there picking targets. They're killing Russians every day, and there's there's nothing moving forward. So so I was wondering how do you see this, the, I guess, the intentions of The United States? Are they are they revisionist hostile power, or is this a status quo power which is, you know, simply locked in an unfavorable mutual deterrent?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a you know, I I think from, like, some of the conservative institutes in in Washington, like Hatterson Institute, you know, there are scholars calling for the Iran war as it's all about China. So it's simply, you know, Iran is one of the goalpost to the final to the final realization of defeating China by Washington. That could be true. I think for the Chinese side, there was not much discussion about that. But I think, you know you know, for decision makers, probably, you need to prepare for the worst.
Right? What if that's true? That's Washington's true face that is to defeat China, to slow down China. Well, that's that's already public statement by the previous secretary of commerce. We know that.
And the Biden administration to slow down the Chinese innovation, you know, in in in a public remarks. She talked about Europeans needed to work with The US against the Chinese innovation. But, you know so but I think China in the is is in a position that will, if forced, to retaliate, to resort to comp measures that can also do harm to Washington if they don't play fair just like what happened to the 100 of, you know, 45% of tariffs on the Chinese side. China resort to rare earth against the Americans. I know inside Washington, there's a debate, like, whether Washington will be capable will be able to produce manufacture their own rare earth, like, within one year or two year so they can get rid of the reliance on the Chinese rare earths so they can be more self reliant, so they can somehow impose probably more restrictions or more tariffs on the Chinese side.
I think the Chinese side is fully aware of that, and I think they are, you know, they know better about the processing of rare earth from exploration to the processing to the manufacture of the product, the whole process. It takes probably more than one year or even more than two years. And, also, I would say China has this position, kind of you can call that a position of strength. China's manufacturing capability, for example, is probably the largest in the world. It is even larger much larger than The US.
It amounts to the combined manufacturing output of that of The US, Japan, and and Germany. If you look at the history in the warring situation, you don't fight a manufacturing giant. They can produce weaponry ammunition endlessly. And in that situation, if you challenge such a country, usually, you are in a weaker position, and you will be on the losing end. So I think for the Chinese side, they are really focusing on the defense.
They are not trying to offend the Americans, attack the Americans because for the Chinese, there's no idea of replacing The US to be the prime power or to be the global hegemony to achieve global dominance. No. This is not the Chinese strategic goal. If you look at the Chinese strategic goal, it's very clear. It's a five year plan, it's a long term plan.
It's about the re revitalization of the Chinese nation. Basically, they want to build a nation which is better than yesterday or better, you know, in tomorrow than than today. That's the Chinese goal. So they are focusing on defense. If you have a strong defense and you have the resources, you have the power to defeat the attacker, defeat the party which initiate the war, and probably you will be in a safer position.
I think, generally, that's the philosophy I would I would use to describe the Chinese idea in terms of this geopolitical situation with The US.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, you mentioned Iran, and, again, I've heard the same from many Americans that a a key target in this blockade on Iranian ports is China as it is, well, overwhelmingly so, the main export destination for Iranian oil. And Scott Bessent also made a comment to well, towards this end, arguing that China shouldn't have, you know, buy the Iranian oil. But this must have also been a key focus of discussions that is between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump that, you know, this massive war now going on in The Middle East. And one of the one of the, I guess, key focuses on on trying to resolve the Iran war is the the Strait Of Hormuz.
Of course, it didn't go as it was expected for the Americans. I think when the meeting initially was set up with Xi Jinping, the idea was that Donald Trump would show up in Beijing, and he would have just defeated Iran, and he would have, you know, come from a position of strength and, you know, be able to well, not dictate terms, but at least have some benefit in negotiations. But instead, we see The US is more or less trapped. There's no pathway to victory, and also it can't leave because the Strait Of Hormuz, you know, The U the Iranians can will decouple The US from the region if they hold on to it. So how how central has this issue, though, been in the discussions between between the two leaders?
Speaker 1: The their discussion certainly covers the topic of the Iranian crisis, let's say. You know, I think, you know, before the trip takes place, you know, there's media coverage in Washington claiming that, you know, Trump should apply pressure on the Chinese side so they can pressure the Iranians to give up their demand, to give up their efforts to close the Strait Of Hormuz. You know, personally, would say that's the wrong approach. You know, some people would say, you should come to China to ask for help if you are sincere in addressing this crisis. Because China has nothing to do with this crisis first place.
It's a war launched by Washington and by the Israelis without UN authorization, without a proper explanation, without legitimacy. It's an illegal war. It's a war it's an unprovoked war against Iran. So in that sense, I would just say the Chinese side probably, you know, would ask the Americans or urge the Americans to finish their business as soon as possible because the crisis the energy shortage is causing big troubles for for countries, in particular in Asia, and also threatens the global economic growth. So that's The US mass.
The mass created by The US, they should solve that problem as soon as possible. Instead of receiving pressure from Washington, Beijing should put apply more pressure on Washington. With that said, I would say China and The US, they do share some common interest in this situation, basically, the opening of the Street Of Hormuz because it's not it's it's not a matter simply between Iran and Washington, obviously. For example, Gulf nations, their exports of oil and gas and other products, they rely on this waterway heavily. China, you know, purchase impulse, like, I think 50 4050% of its energy from this region also relies heavily on this international waterway.
So I think the Iranians said, of course, I understand this. So Washington probably will have to restrain their demands, you know, and and also respect some of you know, the fact that it's them that launched the war and they are failing to achieve their goal, any goal at all. So they have to accept this this reality. And they, you know, the Chinese side should help them probably have a to have a bad understanding of the situation and be ready to restrain their demands, be ready to make compromise with the Iranians, and so we can have a proper deal that will be implemented faithfully, and that will provide long term solution, long term stability for this region, and long term stable relationship probably between US and Iran. But so far, we haven't seen the the The US side, you know, being earnest, not to mention being faithful in resolving that problem.
Some US media said that, you know, Trump himself said, I don't need the help from presidency. But they did talk about this topic so far. We have no don't have enough details about, like, you know, what how they manage this topic. But I I guess, you know, we are aware of where they are in terms of their position, in terms of the differences in how to approach this topic.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I saw a a common statement that both China and The United States agreed. For example, Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons, and this seems somewhat, yeah, uncontroversial because the Iranians also say they're not gonna get nuclear weapons. Exactly. Where where it could be tension, so is that, again, the the the common stance on the Strait Of Hormuz, that is that the Iranians should not have, essentially, this tollbooth.
I was wondering how that fits in with if that puts, you know, China in the clash with the Iranians because from the Iranian perspective, they they they can't go back to the old status quo where they live under perpetual crippling sanctions and perpetual threats from The US and Israel. So, you know, from the Iranian perspective, given that there's no, I guess, diplomatic path, there's no deal the Americans will follow from their view, which, essentially removes this threat. They they they see it as controlling the Strait. Removes this kind of the ticket that is they get the reparations from from the attack. Also, can organize the the toll, if you will, or fee based on, you know, who who is threatening Iran.
If if they put sanctions on Iran, it's higher fee. If they're threatening Iran by, for example, hosting US bases, there can be a fee. If they trade their their oil in US dollars, there can be a fee. So they have all these ways they can essentially, I guess, shore up their own security and create incentives for putting an end to all these sanctions and and the military threats. I was wondering how how do you see any tensions there coming between China and Iran due to the stance?
Speaker 1: No. I don't see, you know, tensions upcoming between China and Iran. I think, you know, for China, for example, there are at least three oil tankers already navigating through this street for Hormuz without without much disruption, I would say. Given this stable, consistent, and a strong relationship between Beijing and Tehran, Obviously, you know, for example, 90% of the Iranian export of oil goes to China. So there's no point probably of asking for toll for any oil tankers if the destination is is is China.
So they can also if they are sophisticated enough, they can say, oh, the Chinese oil tankers are exempt from paying a fee, and that will reduce any source of tensions between China and Tehran or potential tensions anyway. So the Chinese side, you know, yes, the Chinese side would love to see reopening of the street of a most or return to the previous status quo, but I think people are also realistic. I know people understand why Iran is doing this because they have been under crippling sanctions for decades under the need development, the need of breathing room. And this is, you know, what they can do to protect themselves, to defend themselves. I think the Chinese side fully understand that.
So if we end up in some form of control by the Iranian side, I wouldn't be surprised. And the Chinese side wouldn't oppose to that kind of situation too because, you know, if The US refused to make a compromise, refused to lift the sanctions, for example, refused to allow basically Iran to conduct a normal business with other countries. I mean, probably that's the right up response approach from the Iranians against Washington, And Washington has to understand that, you know, you cannot somehow impose your will on other countries. In particular, countries like Iran and China, they have a long history. They are civilization.
And to somehow accept your unilateral sanctions, your unilateral moves, I don't think that it will go far if The US continues to follow that kind of practice. So it's really about the acceptance for the rest of the world to some form of Iranian control, even some form of of of collecting tolls when crossing this Strait Of Hormuz. I I you you you know, what we are seeing is that, you know, many of oil tankers, they don't see a problem. It's like paying probably more insurance fees going through this street of Hormuz. Now I think it's really about The US.
They have to find out a face saving approach to solve this this this dilemma, this problem. So they have they are imposing their own blockade against the Iranian blockade. Now the stalemate will continue. It's about how long The US will tolerate. In particular, The US consumers will tolerate the inflationary pressure, which is rising.
If you look at the latest figures, when people go to the pump station, you know, they they will not be happy with that.
Speaker 0: Well, just my last question, I guess, is, well, what are your thoughts around how well, the overall outcome? Again, we don't know it yet, but do we do you assume there will be it will be a, yeah, a great grand bargain in terms of China and US essentially resetting relations? Or do you think there's gonna be minor tweaks to attempting to resolve, for example, trade disputes? Or, I mean, how how significant do you think this is in terms of, yeah, is the this kind of international diplomatic meetings?
Speaker 1: Well, I I think so far, we would say it's it's it's it's a significant encounter between the two sides, not only between the two leaders. If you look at at the pictures or the the video clips of the two sides, for example, their top executives mingling with each other, talking to each other, I think that will increase the understanding of each other, creates probably cooperation or or opportunities for them to have more engagement. This kind of engagement has been absent for, like, nine years or even longer. So we do need probably this kind of a close engagement, face to face engagement, you know, that that will help broaden the mindset, you know, to have to be more open minded, to have a better understanding of each other or each other's concerns, to build trust, you know, based on individuals, individual top executives, individual officials. You know, for some of The US officials, they are here for the first time, Marco Rubio, right, Pete Hextas, know, Stephen Miller.
I think this is the first time for them to be in China to see a different culture, different peoples, different system, you know, equally working, you know, a a country, equally innovative, industrious, you know, increasing on par with The US comprehensively. So people I think we do need this kind of engagement. And if you look at the '26, this is the first such a large scale engagement with each other. Trump has issued his invitation to president Xi Jinping to visit The US in September late September, and then they have two other opportunities for them to meet each other on the sidelines of APEC summit in Shenzhen and the g twenty summit in The US. So, you know, if you take these kind of intense frequent engagement with each other in mind into consideration, I would call 2026 probably would be like a milestone year for China US relationship after so many years of clueless confrontation or conflicts.
And now probably after trying all the wrong approach, they have found that this right approach that is, you know, to be to have a constructive strategic stability with a focus on cooperation with limited competition, for example. They will do something that will basically, you know, help or benefit both sides instead of this zero sum mentality. You know? You know, as time goes on, maybe that's a new beginning for this type of major power relationship. If that's the case, that would be a bless for the two clinicians.
Also, it would be a bless probably for the for the entire world.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I I agree that sometimes diplomacy in itself is quite an achievement, and especially from where I'm sitting in Europe where this diplomacy has been, to a large extent, vilified and even criminalized as I'm thinking of, you know, European leaders boycotting diplomacy with the Russians for years now. But so I'm I think that in itself can be seen as a big plus to have the leader of China and The United States actually meeting there in Beijing. And, you know, it's a it's a it's required step to at least manage the competition and ideally, yeah, push peace forward.
So, yeah, overall, good signs, I guess, from that perspective alone. So, anyways, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. Know I'm, you know, I've been on your program many times in China, so I appreciate you coming online. It's
Speaker 1: good to have this, you know, rather frigid of ideas to share, you know,
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Mattias Desmet: The West's Descent Toward Totalitarianism https://youtu.be/KheFO5-7tiY https://t.co/nLMSMaettI
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: Trump Goes to Beijing After Historic Defeat in Iran https://youtu.be/YKvzjkOfyWQ https://t.co/i3ffVBZ5CR
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn opened by noting the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing and recalling Nixon’s 1972 visit as a historic opening, asking Chas Freeman for an assessment of why Trump is going, what’s on the agenda, and what to expect.
Chas Freeman replied that Trump’s trip seems driven more by ego and the desire to feel honored in public pomp, rather than any clear strategic preparation. He contrasted the current visit with Nixon’s, which occurred amid a perceived Soviet expansion threat that made China a “protected state.” Nixon’s approach aimed to bind China to the West against a common threat, leveraging China’s sovereignty to counter Japanese expansion and Soviet influence. Freeman said the current moment lacks evidence of serious preparation or sherpa-style groundwork; there is a hurried, last-minute negotiation underway in South Korea between China’s trade negotiator and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s administration. He suggested Trump is accompanied by senior American business figures seeking deals—likely Boeing sales, soybean trade, AI topics—and noted the China-U.S. contrast in AI strategies: the U.S. pursues general intelligence with heavy investment, while China applies AI to practical projects with open software.
Freeman argued that beyond trade and tech issues, the broader context is muddled, with no obvious shared interests that would compel China to act concretely to help the U.S. in the Gulf or Hormuz, despite China’s interest in free trade and openness. He projected the question of how this meeting might affect West Asia: the war’s outcome signals a post-Iraq-Iran era emerging not favorable to the West, and he anticipated China’s strategic calculus would be to avoid being drawn into U.S. missteps while advancing its own interests in energy corridors and regional stability.
Glenn speculated about wanting a grand power compromise (with Putin included) and suggested more is needed on Iran. He referenced Robert Kagan’s “The Jungle Grows Back,” noting that the West’s disregard for international law now clashes with a rising Sino-Russian-Iran axis. Freeman agreed with Kagan’s assessment of the war as a strategic debacle for the U.S., arguing that Iran’s retention of the Strait of Hormuz is likely and that international law is endangered in sea-navigational terms. He described a broader shift: Gulf Arabs may diversify away from the U.S., leaning toward Sino-Russian partnerships, and sea-power norms could be devalued. He emphasized that the conflict reduces the likelihood of a favorable new status quo and could push proliferation in the region; Iran may have or soon develop a nuclear capability, while others might follow. The war’s main strategic consequence, Freeman asserted, is a move toward a Sino-Russian axis and a transformed balance of power in the Middle East, with diversification away from U.S. security guarantees.
Glenn added that the Nixon move was strategic, while Trump’s engagement seems tactical, and Freeman underscored the broader transformation in West Asia. They discussed the rule-of-law crisis in the West, the difference between “rule of law” and “rule by law,” and how domestic and international norms influence each other. Freeman argued that China has become a defender of the UN Charter and international law, in contrast to perceived Western unilateralism, and that the “jungle” is reconstituting a new order under Westphalian principles with many middle powers maneuvering.
They debated whether China would want Iran to succeed to push the U.S. out of the region, and Freeman reiterated that the Chinese aim aligns with Westphalian sovereignty and peaceful coexistence, not ideological missionary diplomacy. They concluded that the Trump-Xi meeting could yield either a cautious pause or a dangerous misstep, given Trump’s temperament and Xi’s steadiness, and Freeman voiced cautious relief that nothing catastrophic occurs, while Glenn expressed a wish for a constructive outcome that could open space for rethinking Western hegemonic strategies.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today is Tuesday, May 12, 2026, and we have the great pleasure of being joined by ambassador Chas Freeman, the former US assistant, secretary of defense. And, well, it's good to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Glenn.
Speaker 0: Well, you are a Chinese speaker. Indeed, you were the translator of Richard Nixon when he visited China for all the purpose of opening up relations. And, while we now see that on Thursday, it's Trump's turn to go to Beijing, where he will meet with Xi Jinping. And I was wondering how are you assessing this meeting in terms of, well, why is he going, and what's on the agenda, and what can we expect?
Speaker 1: You know, it's not clear why he's going except for the gratification of his ego, which is not small and requires constant feeding, because the Chinese are superb at pomp and circumstance for visitors, and he will have a chance to feel honored by the public events. But the circumstances of this visit, since you mentioned the Nixon visit in which I participated, are very different from that time. That visit was in the context of an apparent Soviet inclination to invade and conquer China, eliminate or subjugate it to the Soviet Union. And the common concern about Soviet expansionism, the concern on the part of The United States that the removal of China from the geopolitical chessboard would so much alter the geopolitical geometry to the detriment of The United States that we had to reach out to China. For their part, the Chinese felt threatened by the Soviet Union.
They'd had skirmishes on their borders with the Soviets in both the Far East and in Central Asia. And they felt they needed protection. And indeed, Nixon created what I call a protected state. This this is a term which applies also to World War two. The United States valued China's continued independence, sovereignty, and existence because of the fact that it tied down an enormous part of the Japanese army.
We didn't really expect Chiang Kai shek to be able to do anything terribly positive, but his primarily surviving, he served our geopolitical interests. Nixon applied that same concept of a protected state to China in the nineteen seventies. So that was a meeting with great import. President Nixon tritely but correctly said it was the week that changed the world. This week will not be the week that changes the world, I I I don't think.
And and in fact, as seems to be fairly typical of the Trump administration, there's really no evidence of serious preparation for this trip. And normally when you go to the summit, have so called sherpas who go before you and pave the way, reaching agreements or bringing agreements close enough so that the leaders can put them over the top. That does not seem to have happened here. And in fact, we have a hurried meeting today, I believe, in South Korea between the Chinese chief negotiator on trade matters and Treasury Secretary Bessent. This has all the earmarks of the last minute effort to Pat to create something that should have been created over months previously.
And so it's very unclear what will happen in this meeting. The president president Trump has a group of senior American business executives, primarily, from the electronics cybernetic sector with him. I'm sure he wants to sell Boeing aircraft to China. He would like to see the recovery of the soybean market that American unreliability has caused. No doubt there are issues to be discussed about artificial intelligence, where the Chinese now are neck and neck with The United States in the race for that.
The Chinese approach is, by the way, quite different from that of The States. The Americans are putting huge amounts of money into an effort to create general intelligence. The Chinese are applying AI to practical projects and doing so remarkably with open software rather than the closed software that Silicon Valley develops. So I the there are issues to be discussed. President Trump has contrived a zugzhong, if you will, a situation like the one in chess where any movie you make is gonna cause you to lose in the West Asian Persian Gulf region.
I'm sure he would like help from the Chinese to extricate himself from the mess that he's created. I don't think that help is going to be forthcoming despite the fact that the Chinese share an interest with The United States in opening the Strait Of Hormuz. China is, after all, the world's largest trading nation and its principal advocate of free trade. So that interest is shared. But beyond that, I don't see shared interests that would impel the Chinese to do anything concrete.
And in fact, I think, Glenn, we are now beginning to see the outlines of the post Iraq Iran war future emerge, and they are not favorable to to the West. So I think the Chinese probably take the general attitude of, you know, don't interrupt your when he's making a mistake.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I would have liked to see Trump being joined by president Putin and meeting with Xi Jinping and have some kind of a great power compromise, some way of solving. Because there's been too many changes, and often diplomats and politicians, they only seek to make minor changes, but there's a need to put all these huge conflicts which are brewing to rest. But yeah, so just shifting a little bit on trade, I think more is required now. That being said, though, it's I'm assuming that the talk on Iran will have a yeah, as you suggest, to have a key focus.
But for the Chinese, certainly, they must feel that The US campaign against Iran has a bit of a Chinese target on it. That is the efforts to take, well, Venezuela, Iran, all of these energy suppliers offline essentially for China that yeah. Well, it is their main target as the main peer competitor to The United States. And all I thought was interesting what you said, the war in Iran, there's no more or good options anymore for The US. And I'm sure you saw the article by Robert Kagan, essentially reaching the same conclusion.
If for those who are not familiar with him, he's one of the ultimate leading neo cons. He co founder co founded a project for New American Century in the nineties. He's the husband of Victorian Nulen, who had a key role in the regime change, the the coup in Kyiv in 2014. And all he also recognizes that not only is this war being lost, but unlike, you know, Iraq, Yemen, any other Libya, Syria, there's no pulling back or or ending up in a favorable or acceptable new status quo. This appears to be a massive setback.
So what what exactly can Trump, I guess, in such a situation, what what exactly can he hope to get from the Chinese?
Speaker 1: I don't think he can get very much because I think well, first of all, I'd agree that Robert Kagan has demonstrated that he's a realist beneath the ideologue that he is famous for being. He's a little off, in my view, on the facts of the war in West Asia, too influenced by Israeli optimism about things. There is quite a faction, a Zionist faction in The United States, which parrots the Israeli desire and The United Arab Emirates desire to resume the kinetic warfare on the basis, I think, of misperceptions of what the consequences of that would be. Anyway, but still, he describes this debacle as the worst defeat of The United States in American history, and I think he's right. And with regard to the Chinese, I think they're less concerned about how this war may relate directly to them than they are about the destruction of the world order that it entails.
I mean, this is The United States is now engaged in serial violations of the basic principles of international law, including the launching of aggressive wars with no justification, not even an explanation. The murder of fishermen on the high seas, the abduction of a sitting president of a sovereign country, whatever you may think of him, and showed that the rules which the Biden administration claimed to support but didn't are are of no value and need not be aided. And I think that is deeply disturbing to the Chinese, so perhaps to the Russians. But the one result of this war is clearly going to be the cementing of a Sino Russian relationship with Iran. And here, let me just, if I may, say why I do think Kagan is onto something.
I believe the results of this war with Iran are going to be, among others, Iran's retention of the Strait Of Hormuz. It will not be dislodged. Others, like the Indonesians, are now beginning to discuss creating tollbooths in the Straits Of Malacca or the other straits that two other straits that go through Indonesia. I think international law on free navigation through straits, which is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, is now very much in jeopardy. And that is not good news for anybody really except Iran, which now has the ability, if Israel threatens it, to take action in the strait and energize the entire world against Israel.
Second, I don't think Israel will have The United States at its back if it again attacks Iran. I think Israel's been chastened, now defeated, but the United States certainly is not going to repeat this error in partnership with Israel in future. Third, I believe the Gulf Arabs are quietly discussing with Iran the postwar situation, a postwar situation in which there will be no American military presence in the Persian Gulf. Because far from constituting a shield, American bases on their territory have constituted a target. And they understand that The United States had neither the will nor the ability to defend them against Iran.
They understand that Iran is not going away. They understand that Iran's arsenal is intact, largely intact. They understand that Iran is not going to cease improving that arsenal, and therefore they have to make a peace with Iran. And the terms of that peace are that they cease to post forces hostile to Iran. The holdout is The UAE, which has actually dug deeper into its relationship with Israel and become dependent on Israeli forces for its defense.
But that cannot last. And then I think, however, the major impact of all this, aside from devaluing sea power, which is a very important result, the fact that as we've discussed before, the three mile limit, the 12 mile limit have now been replaced by a 2,000 kilometer or 1,500 mile limit in terms of how close you can get to the enemy you're attempting to subdue is very important. But I think the most important result is that Iran has now been deprived of every argument it made against the development of nuclear weapons. And I take it from everything I hear that if Iran has not already built a nuclear bomb somewhere underground, it is almost certain to do so. Whether it then follows the Israeli example of denying that it's done what everyone knows it's done, or declares itself a nuclear weapons state as North Korea did and for the same reasons is an open question.
But this war which has now come down to an Israeli American objective of doing what the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, did diplomatically through the use of force, now has backfired, and we have agreed to proliferation, which will not stop with Iran. It will other countries in the region. One other lasting result of this war, I believe, is that the Gulf Arabs will accelerate their effort to diversify their international relations away from dependence on The United States. And you can see this with the quadratured, the Egyptian, Saudi, Turkish, Pakistani partnership, which we've discussed before, which has both military industrial consequences and actual defense elements to it, including perhaps extended deterrence by Pakistan of attacks on Saudi Arabia. So this is a I think going back to your original question, President Trump in Beijing is an engagement in tactics, not strategy.
The Nixon move was strategic, not tactical. This is the opposite. And what is really happening of a strategically transformative nature is happening in West Asia.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm I'm thinking in terms of this being the worst defeat in US history, what yeah. What what how I guess, why the consequences will be. Because we well, we discussed Robert Kagan, and you he know, he has an interesting book out. It's called it came out a while ago. It's called The Jungle Grows Back.
And Yeah. This is the main idea that you have a civilized people who live in a garden with rules and, yeah, civilized societies, and the rest of the world, they are the barbarians, the jungle. I mean, in nineteenth century, this kind of represented this garden jungle analogy represented those who have those who can have sovereignty and those who are too barbaric to have it. And anyways, his whole idea was that The US built orderly civilized system by controlling the jungle, but now the jungle is growing back. And, you know, often when people extend on this analogy, they point out that when once you go out in the jungle, you don't have to follow the same rules as you do in the civilized garden.
And you do see some of the same ideas now that, you know, we don't have to follow international law, like piracy. All of this is now acceptable because that's what we have to do when we operate in the jungle among the savages, essentially. And sorry. Not my language, but but anyways, I I think it's still interesting, because my my my point is it's not doesn't walk around with sympathies for Iran or anything. I mean, I think, as you said, he's a realist.
That is, you know, despite all hegemonic aspirations, contempt for Iran, at least it seems that he has the common sense to understand that all this doesn't really matter, that you do have to operate within the boundaries of reality, and reality is there is there won't be any victory here. And in defeat, there's no going back to the former status quo as well. So what what what do you think will sorry for the long question. What what what do you think will be the the wider consequences for the international system here? Because it looks like controlling the Strait Of Hormuz, the the Iranians can really transform the region and will expel The US in many ways from military to the petrodollar.
I mean, what do you see in the future here?
Speaker 1: As I indicated, at least in the maritime domain, overturn the world order. But I see several ironies here, because I have been involved with China. I remember China very well when it was an outlaw. It was a rogue state. It called for revolution everywhere.
It actually aided revolutionary movements, most of them not very effective, frankly. But it had purpose, for example, aiding the Puerto Rican independence movement, the American Indian movement, the Black Panthers, and others in The United States who sought the overthrow of the American constitutional order. It wasn't very effective, but symbolically that's where China was. And ironically, of course, that was China as part of the jungle, if you will. But China is now the principal defender of the UN Charter and international law.
And you cannot find many instances of China. China cuts a corner or two perhaps on the law of the sea, But it is remarkably defensive of the order that The United States sponsored after World War II in which China came to wealth and power. It recognizes the benefits of that. And here's what I would say, that the jungle has adopted the civilized rules, and the civilized garden has abandoned them. And so we now hear, as you might expect, a defense of international law from the Global South because the purpose of law is to protect the weak from the strong and to prevent predation.
And we are now a predatory superpower. And the West does not distinguish itself by complicity in actions like genocide in West Asia and so on and so forth. And it has very little sympathy in terms NATO enlargement having provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and much, I should say, to Russia's distresses as well as to the misery of of Ukraine. So we've had a switch, and and the enemy we now have is who we used to be. You know?
And so this is very ironic. I have an anecdote, indirect. I don't know Robert Kagan, but we have a mutual friend. And I recall during the NATO US effort to dismember Serbia and in favor of Kosovo, that I had an argument with my friend in which I said this was contrary to international law, and it would set a precedent which we would regret, which indeed it did in the Crimea. But I also added that I thought it was a violation of the entire purpose of American diplomacy in the twentieth century, which was to build some sort of reasonable facsimile of the rule of law internationally.
And so we had the Kellogg Briand Pact, farcical as it was. We had the United Nations. We had all of the Geneva Conventions and other international conventions in which The United States played a leading role. And he went to Robert Cate and asked him what he thought about the thesis that the American foreign policy had been devoted to building something like the rule of law. And Kagan said, oh, no.
It's all about power. Even then, this is quite a while ago, he was contemptuous of the rules that he extols when he talks about the civilized garden. He didn't believe they bound us, those rules. And indeed, they have not bound us, and that is a great deal of the cause of the mess that we're in now. There is a reason that all the great religious and philosophical thinkers, Confucius, Jesus, Rabbi Hillel in Baghdad earlier, the Buddha, they've all come up with some version of the golden rule.
You should not do to others what you do not want them to do to you is the negative formation formulation for it by Confucius and Rabbi Hillel. Jesus was more ambitious. You should do for others what you hope they will do for you. But this is the basis of ethics, and we have tossed it out. We are back to emulating Athens in the Melian dialogue.
That, by the way, did in Athens eventually. So Athens set aside its democracy, its respect for diversity of opinion and for the weak, and it found itself on the losing end of the Peloponnesian War. So we're making the same mistake. And my guess is it's gonna take us quite a while to recover from this.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I I always been a bit critical of what's referred to as this rules based international order after the Cold War, and I tend to trace it back since you mentioned the Kosovo war in '99. Yeah. Actually, actually remembered while I was in the army then in '99, and I remember the invasion of Yugoslavia. They the UN concluded somewhere along the line that it was it was not legal, but it was legitimate.
And for me, I think but this this set the rule, the the the tone for the hegemonic world order, because what it meant was we have international law in terms of legality, but we can also decouple legitimacy from legality by pointing to liberal democratic values. And it was the political West that kind of monopolized on this claim that it's China, Russia can't claim to act in, you know, liberal democratic values to sideline international law. So it became like a clause of exception only for us the prerogative of the West. And I can and I remember after Iraq, the in the you have a lot of political leaders arguing that, well, we kinda need to formalize something like what what we did in '99 with Yugoslavia, that we have the opportunity to point to some kind of rules that, well, we can look away from international law when countries like China or Russia put down a veto because they don't appreciate these values like we do. So they started to talk about how about a concert of democracy or a league of democracies, something out of animal farm almost of Orwell that, you know, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
For me, this became the rules based international order. That is international law for all, this exception you can claim by, you know, again, if the West wants to refer to liberal democratic values. It just seems that this this was premised only on, unipolar distribution of power. So if you have people like Kagan who have a sensible, you know, head on their shoulder, they would understand that claiming this kind of, ideological exceptionalism. It doesn't work anymore if it's no longer supported by hegemonic distribution of power.
But I'm assuming that Trump and Xi won't go into these kind of issues.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a very interesting connection between disdain for the rules abroad and disdain for due process at home because the basic premise is the same. The purpose of due process is the assertion that outcomes are justified by whether they conform to the rules or not, whether the procedure by which they've been reached is fair. If it is fair, then, for example, if a court finds a something in a law case, whether the decision is, in your opinion, just or not, if it is fairly arrived at, you must accept the quelling of the controversy. This is the outcome, and it is legitimate. Now you may and it is lawful and legitimate.
But now, as you said, we distinguish this. So we no longer judge the fairness of elections by whether they were fairly conducted, but whether whether they have the right outcome from our point of view. And we suspend the Bill of Rights and constitutional protections of individual freedom or against collective punishment when we see the justification for another approach. So you cannot separate the domestic from the international in this regard. And that does indeed raise serious questions, for example, about the Chinese performance internationally.
Because can you have a country that believes not in the rule of law but rule by law, if it believes in rule by law domestically, meaning the sovereign is not subject to the law, but the sovereign can make rules that bind everyone else and change them at will, however expediency dictates, is such a country with a domestic order like that capable of, in fact, respecting international law abroad? So far, yes. But this also is an expediency since China has been weak and with the weak cling to the law to protect themselves. I wonder where we're headed now. We've destroyed the legitimacy of law, basically, to paraphrase your your analysis.
And where does that lead us? You know, I think you can relate a lot of the malaise in the West to the collapse of respect for the rule of law and due process, and as you say, the decision to legitimize the unlawful.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, that's a yeah. Not just the American problem. I see this across Europe as well. That is they already have an outcome they want, and the law kind of is applied accordingly where it, you know, suits their objectives.
So, again, the rule by law, as you said. But I was wondering how does again, this is something that puts a dilemma for the Chinese because on one hand, what was called, you know, this UN based system of international law, it benefited China to a great extent. That is since the nineteen eighties. I mean, this is a spectacular rise, so they would like for this to continue, but they don't want to live under US rule. That is so I'm not sure if it's neo revisionist is appropriate or how.
They wanna have the existing system, but not not The US hegemonic part. So how do you think they they are they are trying to get out of this? Because I I don't see a hegemonic intent or capability on the Chinese side. They have too many large powers around them, and, yeah, for this reason, it's probably why they haven't expressed an intent. But where do you think they wanna go in terms of the relationship with the Americans, though?
Because, again, I'm I'm not suggesting the Chinese are always benign in their intention, but but I don't see it it's it's like arguing that Russia wants to dominate the Eurasian continent. It there's no evidence, and and there's no capability. Usually, you assess a threat, you wanna look at intentions and capabilities. I see neither on the Chinese side either. So what do the Chinese want from this?
What what do they want from the relationship with the Americans?
Speaker 1: Well, basically, the Chinese have emerged as the great defenders of the Westphalian peace And the concept that there is a sovereign equality of states, large and small, that every state is entitled to be immune from foreign intervention in its internal affairs. Regime change operations are the most dramatic violation of this order that you could come up with. And the Chinese have a remarkable capacity. It's not really racist, but it's civilizational. If you're Chinese, you're civilized.
If you're not Chinese, you're something else, not necessarily savage. But Really, the Chinese don't give a fig how you govern yourself. They're just as spectacle of democracies as they are totalitarian regimes. It's not their business. They don't want to engage themselves in that.
So this is the is the curb on Chinese ambition. Let the foreigners do what they want. A very old tradition, by the way. There's an interesting connection which most people don't seem to be aware of between the the ancient trading patterns in the Mediterranean, the wool trade in in the English Channel later, and and the Canton trade fair system. The Arabs invented something called the Fundach, which means hotel now, which meant a foreign enclave that it was self governing within another society.
So there were fanatic, it's the plural. There were these hotels, if you will, in major port cities in which foreigners governed themselves. This was the basis later for extraterritorial treaty ports. And I mean, it's all connected. It's a legal evolution of some interest.
The Chinese were very comfortable with that, as were the Arabs. They didn't care if a bunch of Christian wool merchants wanted to make their own rules for commerce. That was fine. Go ahead. And so there are are reasons to hope that the Chinese, in fact, will not replicate the American, or I should say Western, interpretation of the treaty of the tribute system.
The tribute system was in many ways just a form of state trade, a kind of potlatch trip. Each side provided goods in return for the receipt of goods and tried to outdo each other in their munificence. We interpreted in the feudal context that if go to Beijing and deliver copper from mines in Korea, that means you're subordinating yourself to Beijing. No, not necessarily. So we're entering a new order and it's not going to be based on Western precedents because we've basically trashed our own contributions to the garden, if you will.
It'll be based on something else. And there is an odd thing going on. It's not just the West that is repudiating its own civilizational heritage. We're seeing it repudiated in great countries like India, which is more and more resembling a one party state, a religious party. Israel has made that transition.
It's not a democracy in many ways, even for Jews, and certainly not for anyone else. And so we're seeing this is interpreted as authoritarianism as though that were some unique concept. There's no club of authoritarians. I don't think one authoritarian feels he or she has much in common with another authoritarian. Now this is the category imposed on them by people who pretend to be democratic.
But I'm not sure how democratic we really are these days. My own country seems to be a plutocracy. You know, we have 900 billionaires who are and some of them are multibillionaires who are dominating, guiding our politics. There's a very interesting senate candidate in Maine. I think he may be of Norwegian origin, Plattner, Graham Plattner, whom who's conducting town halls, and I urge you to, if you have some time, to listen to one of them.
He perfectly voices the disgruntlement of the masses with an indifferent elite that is basically plundering the society for its own benefit and neglect the welfare of the common man. And I think this is the major thesis now in Western societies everywhere. It's why you have Alternatiffer Deutschland in Germany and and while you have a fascist movement running Italy and so on and so forth. It explains a lot about Donald Trump, not his mental condition, which is a different issue. No.
Speaker 0: That's a good point. I know. I have to look into this one now because that feels like it's got its a good description of where we are now. I like what you said about China being a Westphalian country, though. I I even my my last book also ref I wrote about Eurasian Westphalianism essentially, because in the Westphalian system, the whole point then was to focus on the distinctiveness of each culture, of each state, which would support the concept of a sovereign equality.
It's essentially the opposite of a hegemonic though, because in a hegemonic system, would assume that the hegemon would push universalism, the idea that they can represent other people, such as after the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, or indeed, I would say after the Cold War with with us as well. However, it it does seem, going back to China and Trump, that the Chinese would have a interest in seeing Iran succeed here, though, I mean, to push The US out of the
Speaker 1: region. So
Speaker 0: which You know? How do you see each side playing their cards? I mean, given we kinda know what the Chinese want. We know what the The US wants. So how do you think each side is in a position to push their agenda vis a vis the other side?
Speaker 1: I don't think there's going to be any meeting of the minds at all. The Israeli objective, which The United States has embraced, is the destruction of the Iranian state. The Chinese objective is the bolstering of the Iranian state. You're quite correct. The Westphalian tradition lives on.
The five principles of peaceful coexistence are a brilliant summary of it. Read them. You'll find all of the essence of the results of Westphalia, which I don't think those who created the order quite understood where it was going to lead. But all of these elements are in that five principles of peaceful coexistence statement, which very much guides Ajana. And, you know, if I suppose everyone in the world has a opportunity to become Chinese, in which case they might care what we do with each other.
But if we don't become Chinese, they really could care couldn't care less what we you know, how how the inmates in foreign countries treat each other. So this is this is not this is the opposite of the messianic traditions of Western ideology. It's there's no. There's no religious missionary element. The Chinese are not trying to convert anyone to their way of life.
They, in fact, say that their ideology, such as it is, is sui generis and cannot be applied elsewhere. They leave it up to others to find lessons from their achievements. They don't insist that, as The United States does, that you conform to our values if you want to have a good relationship with us. So they have a great relationship with all sorts of countries that have virtually nothing in common with them except, of course, a desire to make money. Now this is the one point on which Donald Trump and the Chinese appear to agree.
In the West Asian War, the Iran War, he may have impoverished the Defense Department and depleted its weaponry, but he's made a lot of money for himself and his family. So if there's any winner in this war, in addition to the Russian Federation, which collects another billion another $100,000,000 a month for every $10 rise in the price of oil, and is making a billion dollars now on a monthly basis. Therefore, then it's Donald Trump and the Trump family. Because one has to suspect that the remarkably well timed oil trading futures activity that accompanies or proceeds by twenty minutes the announcement of some false premise about where the situation in West Asia is going is not an accident, and that the principal beneficiaries of it are the people making the statements, false statements about where things are going. So, you know, one of the things that if Donald Trump lives to the end of his term, which it is looking less and less likely he will, then one of the consequences is going to be yet another travesty.
We've gotten into the habit in many societies. I think of South Korea as an example. And Donald Trump obviously agrees with his practice that once someone's out of office, they're prosecuted. Know, Peanut Chet is accepted while he's in office. And he gets out, and then you take him to court and lock him up, if you can, before he dies.
And the president of South Korea is jailed, and the president of the prime minister of Thailand is and so forth and so on. And now Donald Trump would like to accuse President Obama of treason and lock him up. And last night, he said that Hillary Clinton should be sent to Haiti, which is not a place that many people want to go to these days.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Fair enough. But I always I wonder, though, if it's it is possible that China will change over time if one assume that the distribution of power essentially shapes intentions because the the how Chinese speak today, that's it has a great resemblance to the way The United States spoke as well because The US was also, you know, limited. It was, you know, non interventionist. It's some would call it isolationist.
He wanted to be an example to be emulated, and some would argue that it was perhaps Woodrow Wilson who first took that step by arguing, you know, to make the world safe for democracy. It shifted from a more passive position to more active missionary who go out and essentially slay dragons. But but but, yeah, it's yeah. It will be interesting to see if if the Chinese rhetoric will will change as its power grows.
Speaker 1: Well, they seem they seem less hypocritical than we at the very moment we were proclaiming our intention not to follow the example of the British in building an empire. We were building an empire. We were we had a slave population. We were conducting genocide against the indigenous inhabitants of North America. We overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy.
And by the way, Robert Kagan's jungle versus garden dichotomy is very racist. And we've had European leaders, I will not name them, you know who they are, who have used the same analogy in a very racist fashion. The Chinese are unique only in that they're more tactful about their view of foreigners. So, anyway, I'm I I think the world we're getting into is going to reaffirm a kind of anarchic version of the Peace of Westphalia with many middle ranking powers maneuvering at will. It'll be a more complex geometry than the balance of power in Europe in the nineteenth century, which did maintain a measure of stability and keep wars under control for a century.
I don't know that you can do that if you have the number of actors in the world that we're acquiring. So if you look at the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, for example, I think the Saudis and the Iranians are going to be dealing with each other on a nominal basis of equality. But neither of them really regards the other as an equal. And the only thing they will have in common in the Persian Gulf of the future is that they will look to Russia and China more than perhaps India as well more than they do to The United States to maintain peace and stability and foster development.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Those well, in Europe, we had the the EU foreign policy chief, former one, Youssef Barel. He made that comment four years ago that, well, essentially, jungle is growing back, and Yeah. And it's not enough to build tall walls to protect our beautiful civilized gardens from, you know, the savages outside
Speaker 1: Right. Exactly.
Speaker 0: The gates there. It's also necessary for the Europeans to go out and trim the jungle and civilize it and make it more like us. And so, yeah, it's it's an interesting analogy with, of course, the nineteenth century, very heavy racist undertones. There's
Speaker 1: a bit of pride in Western civilization. My ancestor John Winthrop came up with the notion of the shining city on the hill. And but it isn't shining very much these days. And the savages in jungle take a very dim view of of what's going on inside this allegedly civilized garden. You know, I think I think sometimes I've heard people denigrate eunuchs.
But, you know, eunuchs run empires very effectively. They kept the Byzantine Empire going for about for hundreds of years beyond where it should have. But the problem with the eunuchs is that they're very self centered. They sit within the walls of the city or the empire, the Forbidden City in China, and they play games with each other and they don't really they're not really concerned about what's going on outside. And I think the world as a whole now looks at the West basically in the same way that common people regarded the eunuchs in these earlier imperial apparatuses.
So we're not highly regarded. We have a moral taint about us. We are regarded as hypocrites with double standards, and there is something to that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's yeah. Hard to dispute that these days. Anyways, I'll be keeping my eyes on this meeting between Trump and Xi. Hopefully, yeah, something good can come out of it because
Speaker 1: Something bad could come out of it too. That's a bit apprehensive because we have a very temperamental mister Trump meeting a very stolid, self controlled mister c. And Donald Trump takes offense, and he blows his top. So he's not the epitome of cool. So we shall see.
I will heave a sigh of relief if nothing bad happened. I would very much like something good to happen.
Speaker 0: Low expectations might be the ticket here. Yeah. But but I I do know that Trump ideally would have gone to Beijing and have defeated Iran, essentially, on which it could show off to to China, pointing out we took out Venezuela. We took out Iran. Now, Yeah.
They may time to fall in line, but I guess he will come with
Speaker 1: yeah. He's a supplicant. He's not he's not arriving as a victor. He's arriving as a supplicant from a country that has exhausted itself in war and which is mired in debt and which is domestically unstable, divided, polarized, where his own legitimacy measured by polling data, is sinking and not rising. So he's not in a strong position.
I hope he enjoys the military parades and other things that will be staged for him.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm thinking always something good can come from this, though. That is if if this kind of puts if Iran becomes the final gravestone of the the hegemonic aspirations, and and also Trump can lower the ambitions to be that The US can pull a bit back, you know, build up, restore the republic, be one of many centers of power, then with within that format, it would be much easier to find common ground with China, Russia, Iran as well, if it doesn't if we can move beyond the, yeah, the hegemonic system, and we'll join in on the Hvestfalian world order that our counterparts in the East are pushing. It would be suddenly open up a huge diplomatic space, I think, for making peace if
Speaker 1: It may come because the the American people have not suffered any significant pain during this debacle. But this summer, prices of gas at the pump, inflation, shortages of this, that, and the other are all going to make life quite difficult for many people. And we have the example of the surge of opposition to bad government that we've seen in Hungary. And something like that could happen in The United States. In which case, the way would be paved for reconsideration of the kinds of ill considered behavior that you're describing in another administration, not this one.
So anyway, I think clearly we're at some sort of site inventor, some sort of sea change in history and or turning point. And we're not sure where this is going to lead us. But at the moment, it's pretty alarming.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Very much so. Well, thank you very much for your analysis, and I always look forward to getting your perspective. So thank you again.
Speaker 1: Have a pleasant evening, and thank you for what you do.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: New European Military Bloc for War Against Russia https://youtu.be/D8WeTG3rAFs https://t.co/x8XXOdgkxh
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn unpack how European security architecture evolved and why current moves toward a Europe-centered NATO, possibly including Ukraine and excluding Russia, look so perilous.
- Sachs recounts a historic 1990 opportunity offered by Mikhail Gorbachev: a “common European home” stretching from Rotterdam to Vladivostok, with internal Soviet reforms, demilitarization, and, crucially, an end to NATO expansion. The promise by Germany and the United States in pursuit of German reunification was that “NATO would not move one inch eastward.” This indivisible-security concept echoed the Helsinki final act: no country would join an alliance threatening others. Yet NATO expanded, despite that explicit commitment, and that expansion contributed to the current Ukraine conflict.
- Two motives behind NATO enlargement are highlighted. First, to keep the United States in Europe as a security defender, especially for Central and Eastern European states emerging from Soviet domination, which wanted continued U.S. protection despite no evident external threat. Second, the United States used NATO enlargement as a tool for projecting American power in a unipolar world after the Soviet collapse, turning NATO into the military branch of U.S. overseas power and serving a broader hegemonic aim.
- Brzezinski’s influence is emphasized: in The Grand Chessboard (1997), he argued Eurasia centered on Ukraine; “he who controls Ukraine controls Eurasia.” Brzezinski advocated expanding Europe and NATO to diminish Russia, envisioning a weakened or divided Russia. This framed Ukraine as a geopolitical prize, with Ukraine’s joining NATO seen as a strategy to prevent a revived Russian power.
- The expansion waves are traced: 1999 brought Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic; 2004 added seven states including the Baltic states and Romania; 2008 and the Bucharest summit sparked a pledge that Ukraine and Georgia would join NATO, a timetable Merkel later resisted but ultimately yielded to U.S. pressure. The 2004 expansion followed the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, further destabilizing the nuclear balance and fueling Russian resentment.
- The Maidan coup of 2014 in Ukraine, aided by Western support, brought to power a government that favored NATO alignment, intensifying Russian pushback and making Europe’s pro-NATO stance more central to policy, even as Russia resisted. The aim was to bring Ukraine into NATO, which Sachs argues was not defense-driven but an assertion of American hegemony.
- Sachs contrasts two mindsets: Eastern Europe’s Russophobia, rooted in decades of Soviet domination, especially among the Baltic states and Poland, driving a hardline stance; and a German role that has shifted from a historic commitment to make peace with Russia (Austrian-style realpolitik) to endorsing NATO expansion for commercial investments, a shift he finds dangerous. He criticizes Merkel for acquiescing to U.S. pressure on enlargement and labels Scholz and Merkel’s posture as failures to maintain a balanced European peace. British Russophobia also colors policy, he adds, underscoring a transatlantic appetite for confrontation.
- The broader risk is a security dilemma: Europe’s defensive steps may provoke offensive reactions, potentially leading toward war, especially if a “European NATO” is formed to deter or strike at Russia without credible allied protection. Sachs argues the current direction shows a lack of political and security imagination in Europe, with a remilitarization path that could be a march to war.
- In closing, Sachs notes the paradox: European leaders recognize risk but still pursue a path that could escalate conflict with a nuclear power, while the debate continues about deterrence, defense, and the future of European security architecture.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss the European security architecture or, well, the changes to it. So thank you for, yeah, taking the time.
Speaker 1: Oh, great to be with you as always. Thanks.
Speaker 0: Well, we saw that after the Cold War we had essentially two options for a European security architecture. We could either have an inclusive European security architecture, which included Russia, in which we pursued security with other members instead of security against nonmembers like a military alliance. But we instead returned to block politics with NATO expansion. I think it was primarily to keep The US in Europe, but either way, it predictably revived this Cold War logic. Anyways, now we see that European leaders are recognizing that NATO is fragmenting, and solution is instead of going back to those agreements we had in the early nineties, the Europeans appear determined to develop a new NATO that is a European NATO, which should include NATO Sorry.
Should include the Ukraine and not Russia. So but this time without The US protection. So this is starting to feel like almost a determination to go to war with Russia. I was wondering, how do you make sense of this?
Speaker 1: Well, in 1990, as you say, there was an option on the table that was extraordinary, absolutely historic. It was put on the table by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. And he meant it. I know. I watched.
I was there. I was close-up. His proposition was common European home. A common European home that actually he said stretched right across Asia in fact from Rotterdam to Vladivostok as it was put. The idea was that the divisions between Europe and the Soviet Union should be ended.
The Cold War should be over. There would be internal reforms in the Soviet Union, democratization, and demilitarization. And there would be a fundamental change of the security architecture, the disbanding of the Soviet military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, and at most, an end to NATO as a a any kind of expansionist or offensive operation. Indeed, the promise absolutely explicit made by Germany and The United States in February 1990 in quest of German reunification, a formal end to World War two, and a response to Gorbachev's offer is that NATO would not move one inch eastward. And the commitment was undoubtedly made no matter what is claimed today by those who defend NATO enlargement.
What was on the table was the concept enshrined actually fifteen years earlier in the Helsinki final act as indivisible security, that there would not be block security. No country would join an alliance that would threaten a neighbor. And in particular, no country would join, for example, NATO in an expanding NATO that would threaten those outside of NATO. This was clear, it was on the table, and it was rejected. So this is quite an interesting point.
What happened instead, despite the commitment made very clearly by Germany and The United States in 1990 was that NATO expanded. And ultimately, this led to the ongoing war in Ukraine. So why did that happen? And I think you mentioned one reason. I think that there are two reasons.
And those two reasons go back to even the origin of NATO. One reason was to keep The United States in Europe as a security defender of Europe, but against who? The Soviet Union wasn't an enemy. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in December 1991, dissolved into 15 former republics of the Soviet Union and now 15 independent nation states, there was no threat. But some parts of Europe, particularly the countries of Central And Eastern Europe that had just come out of the domination by the Soviet Union said, well, now we want The United States to stay in to protect us against any kind of Soviet or Russian revanchism.
So especially these demands were heard in Central Europe and Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia at the time and the Czech Republic in Poland, in Hungary. We want Europe to be protected still by The United States even though there was no evident or any real threat at the time. There could be no more Soviet invasion. There was no Soviet Union. Russia was absolutely looking inward at internal restructuring and reform.
It was dismantling the military industrial complex. I know that. I was there. I saw that. That wasn't a gimmick.
That was a reality. It was begging for simple cooperation, for peaceful investment, for turning what had been a military industrial industry into a civilian industry. That option was turned down, and interestingly, Germany played a major role in pressing for NATO enlargement for that reason. German companies wanted to invest next door in Poland or in Hungary or in The Czech Republic or or in Slovakia, Slovenia and so forth. And they said, we'll feel safer about our investments if these are also NATO countries.
So Germany reneged on the clear, firm, unequivocal commitments that it had made to achieve reunification, to win Soviet support for unification. It immediately started to call for NATO enlargement, probably to protect new commercial investments that were being made in neighboring countries. But there was a second idea. This was not the only reason for NATO enlargement. The United States chose NATO enlargement also as a policy tool.
For what? For hegemony. The idea was now that NATO is essentially not a defensive alliance against a now nonexistent Soviet Union, but it becomes the military branch of The US overseas power. And so NATO enlargement became part of the new unipolar world that American strategists decided that they would create with the fall of the Soviet Union. In other words, The United States also made a choice.
Should it make peace with Russia and see a recovery of Russia to, let's say, a great power status, not a belligerent country, but a powerful country, a country of 17,000,000 square kilometers, roughly twice the size of The United States and the next largest countries, or would The United States attempt to keep Russia down, maybe to divide it, but at a minimum to ensure that it could never rise again as any kind of threat even though it wasn't threatening anybody. Well, The United States chose that approach. While European countries, especially Germany, and the countries of Central Europe said, we want more NATO, The United States also decided, yes, that's a good idea, not to protect those countries, but to project American power. And the chief proponent of this idea, the chief ideologue, I would say, in the nineteen nineties was big was Bigniew Brushinsky. And he was a very smart man, a very interesting man.
But he he didn't like Russia. And he did not want Russia to have a strong even if peaceful standing. Perhaps as a Polish American, he reflected Poland's long history of anti Russian sentiments dating back to the eighteenth century partition of Poland and even wars that went back to earlier centuries between the Poland Lithuanian empire and and the Russians. So Brzezinski definitely had no sympathy for Russia. He wanted to see it weak.
He wanted to see it divided, and he saw NATO enlargement as a core strategy for that. And in his very interesting, provocative, and absolutely wrong and dangerous book in 1997, The Grand Chessboard, he played out The US geopolitical game of NATO enlargement. He said that Eurasia is at the center of the world and Ukraine is the geographic pivot of Eurasia. He who controls Ukraine controls Eurasia. By the way, China was seen as a secondary power not of any real interest to The United States at the time, often the periphery.
The question was Russia and what to do about it. And in this book, The Grand Chessboard, and in accompanying article written for Foreign Affairs called Eurasian grand strategy or something to that effect, I'm paraphrasing, Brzezinski said we should aim for a weak Russia. We should aim for basically the expansion of Europe and NATO. So both the economic and the military side to Ukraine. And Russia without Ukraine can never be an empire.
That was Brzezinski's basic formula. So Ukraine became a prize, a geopolitical prize. If we take Ukraine, then we also banish forever any Russian pretensions to great power status. Brzezinski in his musings went on to the idea that, well, maybe Russia would just end up dividing. Maybe it would be, as he put it, a loose confederation of three component parts, a European Russia, a Siberian Russia, and a Far Eastern Russia.
Oh, these were delightful musings for mister Brushinsky. Russia basically disappearing as a strong state, being a client state, maybe one where American companies could gain access to Russian resources, but certainly one where Russia would never pose a threat. So these were the two lines of thought. For Europe, keep The United States in. It gives us security.
For Germany, in particular, expand NATO. It helps us to invest in the neighboring countries because they'll have a clear military security as well as eventual membership in the European Union. And for The United States, pieces on the global chessboard to ensure what was the new and clear policy after 1991, but in a sense always the policy of The United States since 1945. And that was global hegemony. But between 1945 and 1991, the Cold War intervened.
There was a superpower rival. But after 1991, with no superpower rival on the scene, global hegemony came into clear view. The end of history had arrived, and NATO would be a very convenient instrument for the expansion of US power into Eurasia. I like to refer people to a fascinating debate that was shown on American television. It took place on American television, I should say, in 1994 in what was called McNeil News Hour with a very fine newsman, Robert McNeil, who interviewed two people in 1994 about NATO enlargement.
One was the last US ambassador to The Soviet Union as the Soviet Union was ending, Jack Matlock, and the second was Henry Kissinger. And Matlock said, don't expand NATO. This could poison relations with Russia. This could undo the goodwill that is clearly here. And Matlock said, if things go sour later on, we'll have plenty of time to regroup, to reinforce security, to build our defenses, but don't antagonize Russia.
Russia's trying to be cooperative, friendly. It's a bit down on its knees right now because of economic crisis. Don't don't shake up a fragile but positive path to peace. Kissinger says, no. NATO must enlarge.
And he's asked by McNeil, why? Mister Kissinger, is Russia a threat? And he says, no. No. Russia's not a threat.
Well, is is Russia threatening any of its neighbors? Oh, no. Russia's too weak. It's not threatening any of its neighbors. Well, mister Kissinger, would NATO enlargement antagonize Russia?
Ah, yes. Yes. It would. Well, mister Kissinger, if Russia's not a threat and it would antagonize Russia, why would you do it? And Kissinger gives the classic imperial answer.
He says, well, if you can't antagonize them when they're weak, what are you gonna do when they're strong? So it's anticipatory antagonism. In other words, we have to get in there when we're strong and they're weak. We have to provoke. We have to take the territory we can.
We have to take the grounds that we can. And this is what exactly went down. Kissinger later on started to say NATO enlargement Ukraine is not a good idea. Even Przyzynski later on said that, I believe. But at the time in the nineteen nineties, they were just gung ho for American power.
And I I can add one more thing, Glenn, which is that the Russians were really peeved as NATO started to enlarge, But it came in three waves, which we should understand. When the first wave of NATO enlargement came in 1999 with Hungary, Poland, and The Czech Republic, and really pushed by those three countries as well by Vaclav Havel and others who also wanted the NATO protection. The Russians swallowed hard. They were in a weak position. This was still a long way from their borders.
They were unhappy. They thought they had been cheated, which they had been. But they went along with the NATO enlargement in this first wave. And when president Putin became president, he was not antagonistic to Europe or to The United States. And famously, he explored Russia actually joining NATO and then found that, no, no, you don't understand NATO's against you.
This only became apparent later on. The second wave of NATO enlargement brought NATO to Russia's borders in the North Sea in the Baltic States. So the wave in 2004 was seven states, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the Baltic Region, Slovenia and Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This was also now real national security. The Black Sea, was being, now, taken by NATO.
The Baltic States were being taken by NATO. And this 2004 expansion came in the wake of America's withdrawal from the anti ballistic missile treaty in 2002, which I think really shook the ground. Because now the nuclear balance was being undone by The United States as The US unilaterally walked away from the anti ballistic missile treaty. So 2004 was really a a a very, very bad expansion and it put Russian backs up tremendously. And that's when they said, don't you dare come further.
That's when president Putin said at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, enough. You've cheated. You've reneged, but don't come further. And, of course, The United States being The United States and Europe, at that point being Europe, not unhappy too much about all this expansion, committed at the Bucharest NATO summit that Ukraine and Georgia and Georgia, an Asian state in the South Caucuses that is in the belly of the South Caucuses, a real security concern for Russia, would also join a North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was not defending against anything. It was just expanding.
And the two thousand eight NATO summit was the break point. And you can even trace it hour by hour in Angela Merkel's memoirs because she knows she knows that the NATO commitment to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia was a causes belli. It could lead to war. She knew it. She resisted a specific timetable because she was afraid, but she gave in to the American pressures.
That was when Europe lost it all, in my view. When the cautious leaders of Europe said, okay, okay, NATO's gonna enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia. That wasn't about defense. It wasn't even about investment security. It was just about American hegemony.
It was an American project. It was pushed on Europe. Europe went along. When Angela Merkel folded her hand at the end of the first day of the NATO summit in 2008, that's when Europe lost it. And, that's where we are today.
It took a US backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the Maidan coup, to bring to power a government that even wanted NATO because the vast majority of Ukrainians sensed, we don't even want this. We're neutral. But The US backed a coup led by Western Ukrainian far right paramilitaries, in fact, that took over the government. And then The United States and Ukraine from then on were intent on NATO enlargement. By the time The United States lost interest in this project, by the way, because Russia stood up to it and fought back and said, no, NATO is not going to enlarge Ukraine, the Europeans now take this as their grand project.
And this comes back to your opening remark that Europeans are talking about a military alliance that includes Ukraine. Well, if they do so, they're just meaning war with Russia. It's nuts. Look at a map. Ukraine should be neutral, period.
This is the way to peace, and the the Europeans are rejecting that for god knows what mindset reason, but it's crazy.
Speaker 0: Well, as I said, the the Europeans back then, at least, they were cautious and they knew that taking these steps, expanding NATO, especially to Ukraine, would create a war. And, also, after all this time at the end of the Cold War trying to replace block politics with indivisible security, they actually had it, but they wouldn't take yes for an answer.
Speaker 1: And Exactly.
Speaker 0: They they knew the risk of reviving block politics. They knew that the Europe without Russia would inevitably be inevitably become a Europe against Russia, and this is why it's so hard to understand what's going through their minds because this new military block, it can't create hegemony. It is definitely not gonna create anything that looks like security because European military block will instigate conflict but without the American protection. It's gonna beg sort of purposes, and if you see this together with other initiatives such as all these European countries, including Germany, pushing this drone prod drone programs, this mass production of long range drones for the explicit purpose of striking deep into Russia. They keep talking about deterrence and helping Ukraine, but the Europeans have gone to war now against Russia.
It's it's just difficult to understand what the purpose is. Yes.
Speaker 1: Let let me try to give you my explanation. First, let me say it's madness. It's suicidal. It's a path of war. So what I'm about to say as explanation is not a justification.
It's trying to understand what is going on because this is crazy, what Europe is doing right now, thinking that it's girding for war with a nuclear superpower. Crazy. So what is going on? Well, part of it is really the mindset of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe was under Soviet domination for forty five years, basically.
And they have this visceral hatred, fear of Russia. And so a lot of this is driven by the Baltic States. It's driven by Poland, certainly, much less so by the Czech Republic or Slovakia, which actually resists all of this, or by Hungary, has been resisting this, or by Bulgaria and Romania. But the Baltic States and Poland are Russophobic to the core. That's part of their long history.
It's part of their Cold War history. It's a tremendous lack of understanding of history and an unwillingness, a radical unwillingness to understand anything from the Russian perspective. It's very, very sad. Even the Cold War, maybe we can discuss on another time, had its roots in terrible misunderstandings and security dilemmas. Russia was looking for protective space.
Again, just like now, The United States and Britain were not interested in giving protective space to the Soviet Union then. They wanted a remilitarized Germany. So lots of mistakes were made that led to the division of Europe back in the Cold War period. But from the mindset of the Eastern Europeans, that's what's driving them now. That Russophobia born of their history from 1945 to nineteen eighty nine, ninety one.
And I think it's a huge mistake, a huge failure of understanding history, a huge misreading of everything going on right now. So this, I fear, is one major part. And then in Brussels, the European project depends on keeping these new entrants happy also. They don't want a politically divided Europe. So who is their chief foreign policy spokesman?
An Estonian of complete Russophobia. This is crazy for the European continent to go with the most Russophobic ideas as the guidelines. But that's what they're doing in part for their internal cohesion in Europe. But there's a second matter, Glenn, that I think is really, really important. Germany is failing its historic role right now of making a European peace because what has happened was that for decades, German chancellors understood, make peace with Russia, make peace with the Soviet Union.
This goes back to Aust Politik with Willy Brandt. It continued with Helmut Schmidt. It continued with Helmut Kohl in 1990. It continued with Schroeder. But failed in part when German industry said, expand NATO so we can invest.
That was the beginning. But then it failed with, unfortunately, Merkel's lack of will. Because the will to resist NATO enlargement, she knew. She she knew intellectually this was dangerous, but she went along with The United States. And and this is this is rather regrettable, and it it's but then it got worse and worse.
Schultz became nothing but a factotum of the Biden administration, not a peep of any thinking of how dangerous this situation is. And Mertz, even worse. Mertz, almost an open warmonger. Shocking for a German chancellor, actually. Completely shocking.
And so in addition to the Eastern European fears, understandable but wrongheaded in my view, is Germany's lack of self understanding, historical awareness, understanding that Germany broke its own commitment to the Soviet Union and then to Russia, that Germany is key to indivisible security in Europe, you have Mertz now just openly saying we need to prepare for war. Why? It's shocking. I can't quite say why. It's such a bad misunderstanding of Germany's real needs and real place in the world.
It's actually terrifying in a way. And maybe Mertz also sees an economic dimension to this, the retooling of industry for war making. God forbid. Military Keynesianism? Is this really what Germany is about right now?
Germany is losing its industrial base, but what Mertz is doing is going to possibly provoke a disastrous war, but leave Germany even farther behind economically. It's completely the wrong track. So all of this is to say that I see two strands at work right now. Most of Western Europe, not so much in this agenda. Eastern Europe, absolutely, or much of Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Poland in particular, pushing this anti Russophobic line.
Germany, absurdly, tragically unaware, self unaware, now even championing this idea. And then always in the background, one has to add British Russophobia because Britain to my mind is madness. It is imperial nostalgia to this moment. Even as the Starmer goes down the drain, they put Ukraine as a great national project because they've hated Russia since 1840. So just to add one coda to this.
All of this is to say, Glenn, that at at the best we have the classic security dilemma that Europe is taking defensive steps that are gonna lead to war because they are really offensive in what they're doing. But what we see is a complete lack of political and security imagination in Europe. What started as a misguided project for Central Europe and for American hegemony has turned into absolutely profoundly dangerous European project for remilitarization that would be the march to war.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's incredible that that they took all the steps and how they're also defining deterrence these days. If all your security is about deterrence, that's horrible enough, but what what they put under that category today is has clearly nothing to do with deterrence. But Exactly. Here we are.
Anyways, thank you very much for your analysis, and have a great flight.
Speaker 1: Great. Okay. Talk to you talk to you soon. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jiang Xueqin: "We Are Already in World War 3" https://youtu.be/RWTvTzWYG0o https://t.co/vH2Rv2NtQv
Video Transcript AI Summary
Zhang Shueqin is discussed as a predictor known for predicting Trump’s reelection, Vance as VP pick, and a US–Iran war. The conversation centers on why he predicted a US attack on Iran and how it might unfold.
Key reasoning about Iran war
- The strongest evidence, according to Zhang, is the January 2020 US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, who led Iranian proxies. He argues that killing an Iranian envoy to the region amounted to a declaration of war, and that if Trump had won reelection in 2020, he would have most certainly declared war on Iran.
- In the war’s first month, the US focus was decapitation of Iranian leadership, aiming to force surrender and regime change. Iran proved resilient and creative, leading the US to shift to a phase of attrition, attempting to cripple Iran’s war-financing capacity and oil exports to China, and to control Hormuz. This included a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
- The war is expected to be slow and world-news-muted, with efforts to pressure Iran economically and diplomatically to force a settlement. There is no off-ramp seen for the US because consequences are vast for regional players.
Actors and interests in the region
- Regional players: UAE, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Kuwait, viewed as wanting Iran defeated and the war prolonged. Iran’s leadership wants relief from sanctions and to retain Hormuz as leverage.
- The United States: aims to sustain the petrodollar system; fears that if Gulf states decouple from the dollar or shift currencies, the American economy could suffer. The US would prefer to press sanctions and blockade to compel cooperation and debt-financing from global actors.
- Israel: sees the conflict as an opportunity for its Greater Israel project, hoping regional chaos would redraw borders after the conflict.
- China: wants an end to the conflict to protect global trade and its energy interests, and to preserve balance in its relations with Iran, the GCC, and other players. China’s leverage includes pressure on Iran and economic guarantees that encourage a ceasefire, while seeking to minimize direct conflict with GCC states.
- Russia and others: Russia is discussed as arming and supporting Iran in a broader economic/military contest with the US; geopolitics involve maritime skirmishes and energy strikes in a wider economic war.
World War III framework and economic warfare
- Zhang argues we are already in World War III, but the war is economic and strategic rather than traditional kinetic warfare. The main combatants are the US and Russia in the maritime and energy sphere, with China central to US debt-financing and global trade stability.
- Economic warfare includes targeting oil refineries, shipping lanes, and export capabilities; the purpose is to force political settlements and shift global economic order.
- The US strategy is described as creating global chaos while maintaining North American focus, exporting conflict to Europe and East Asia to defend empire interests, and using debt and weapons sales to manage global markets.
China, the US, and future diplomacy
- A Trump visit to Beijing is framed as potentially signaling a rapprochement, followed by cooperation in three areas: trade (China buying more Western Hemisphere LNG and resources), Taiwan status (reaffirming one China policy), and AI collaboration. The larger aim is described as turning China into an economic vassal to the US empire.
- Europe is described as already largely vassalized by US policy, with the war in Ukraine illustrating this subordination; popular discontent is rising (e.g., in Germany with the AfD), but European leadership remains aligned with Washington’s agenda.
Iranian and European responses
- Iran, facing economic pressures and geopolitical isolation, initially led the war, but China’s mediation and pressure contributed to a ceasefire. There is a rift between Iran’s political leadership and its military leadership over how to proceed with the war.
- Europeans could escalate involvement in a broader conflict, but the US strategy appears to rely on Europe fighting longer against Russia while the US profits through arms sales and financial mechanisms. European leadership, according to the discussion, remains cautious and influenced by external powers.
Israel’s position and the broader arc
- Israel is depicted as pursuing a death-cult, eschatological strategy that could unify Jews globally but increase regional instability. The greater aim is for Israel to benefit from regional chaos, while risking broader conflict.
Future trajectories and civilizational decline
- The discussion suggests that, in the short term, the US may appear to win economically, especially through debt-financed global demand for US energy and weapons, but in the mid- to long-term, imperial decline could lead to civil conflict within the US, driven by factional struggles between Wall Street financiers and tech oligarchs backing AI surveillance/state power.
- The potential for a third Trump term is linked to deeper internal conflicts and the acceleration of violence or civil unrest, with religion offered by some as a potential stabilizing force in American society.
- Three symptoms of imperial decline are privatization, financialization, and individualization; yet the speaker believes a Christian-nationalist revival could renew the republic.
Closing stance
- Across the discussion, the US empire is portrayed as pursuing an expansive, conflict-driven strategy to sustain power, while global players seek various economic and strategic outcomes. The overall forecast emphasizes ongoing, multi-front tensions with no easy peace, and a complex interplay among US, European, Middle Eastern, Russian, and Chinese interests.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Zhang Shueqin, who is very renowned for making accurate predictions. Some of them have been the reelection of Trump, Vance as his pick for vice president, and very relevant for today, also predicting that The US would go to war with Iran. Now, the war with Iran, I thought, was a very interesting prediction of yours because on so many levels, it doesn't make a lot of sense that The US would do this because it seems to be such a huge mess. It's very difficult to defeat Iranians militarily, and there's no good way for them to, you know, declare victory and go home.
So I thought a good place to start would be, yeah, ask you why. How how did how did you see or why did you correctly predict that The United States would attack Iran?
Speaker 1: Right. So I believe that the best evidence that The United States would eventually attack Iran is that in January 2020, Trump ordered the assassination of Qassan Soleimani, who was the Iranian envoy to the Middle East. He was basically the Iranian ambassador to the proxies. Right? Hezbollah, the Shia militias in Iraq, the the Houthis.
So killing an ambassador is basically a declaration of war. So I felt that if Trump had won reelection in 2020, then he would have most then he would have most certainly went to war against Iran. And I I I didn't know why he wanted to go to war against Iran. I I I had many hypotheses, but I was fairly certain that if he had won reelection, then he would have declared war against Iran.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And how do you how do you see this war now developing, though? Because, you know, there's a you know, if you would assess it, one of the things that makes it complicated is that it's so many actors involved with the different interests. Of course, at the heart of it, one can say it's a US Iranian war, which is often referred to. But, of course, Israel is a key participant.
The Iranians have several close regional allies. And, of course, you have the great powers of Russia and China. So how do you see this war playing out?
Speaker 1: Right. So I think in the first month of this war, United States was focused on decapitation. Basically, trying to kill as much of the Iranian leadership as possible, hoping that that would force global settlement, where the Iranians would surrender and the Americans can basically enforce regime change. The Iranians have proven to be much more resilient, much more creative, much more resourceful than Americans gave them credit for. And so now the Americans have moved to a to a phase two of the war, which is essentially a war of attrition, a a a mixed regulation where they're trying to destroy Iran's capacity to finance this war, mainly by destroying Iran's capacity to export oil to China as well as to control the history of Hormuz.
That's why Trump has declared a naval blockade against the Strait Of Hormuz. And so I think that this is where the war is gonna go. It's gonna be a slow war that's gonna be out of the headlines. Very much like what happened in Gaza, really, where maybe for the first few weeks, the entire world was disgusted by what the Israelis were doing, but they declared a ceasefire, and then slowly, the attention of the world shifted elsewhere. And that's what Trump's, I think, intends to do, with Iran, where he's going to try to apply as much military, diplomatic, political, and economic pressures as possible to force global settlement and trying to divert people attention away from the war.
Quite honestly, I don't think there is an off ramp for Trump because, the consequences, of this war are just so vast. So, for example, if you look at the GCC nations, The UAE has suffered a great deal in in this war. They cannot afford for Iran to emerge the victor in in this war and to control the sort of Houmou's. So The UAE is essentially all in in defeating Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran have a rivalry going back decades, where both are vying for the supremacy in the Islamic world.
So Saudi Arabia sees Iran as a long term threat as well. So so even though Saudi Arabia has been trying to promote a diplomatic solution, their best interest is to also see a defeated Iran. Iran is right now under a lot of threat because most of the population is Shia Muslim, and their leadership is Sunni. And the leadership leadership is not very popular there, and Iranians are very much intent on promoting revolutions across the Islamic world. So these three nations, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Buran, possibly also Kuwait as well, they want to see this war fought to the end.
The Iranians don't want to go back to the status quo where they were sanctioned. They now have control of the Strait Of Hormuz. They want economic relief. They see the Strait Of Hormuz as their main leverage point against the Americans. So they also wanna see this war fought to to to to the end.
The Americans are stuck because of the petrodollar, where if they leave, basically, these DCC nations would start trading in multiple currencies, including Chinese yuan, including in gold. And so this would collapse the American economy because they're so dependent on investment from the GCC nations. The GCC has in has trillions invested in in America, and they're forced to repatriate these trillions back into the GCC in order to pay reparations to the Iranians, then this would spell catastrophe for the American economy, especially the AI sector. Israel is intent on the Greater Israel project, and they see this as opportunity to redraw the map of the Middle East in order to achieve the Greater Israel project. Israel wants this war to continue for as long as possible because they believe that the Arabs and Iranians would destroy each other in a process.
And when the smoke clears, then they they would have achieved the Greater Israel project. So, essentially, in the Middle East, there are too many powerful individuals who wanna see this war fought to the end, and no one can really covenant a defeat.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I I agree. It doesn't appear to be any any pathway to, well, to a political settlement where which will be acceptable to to both sides. But but in terms of the interest of The US to reduce the in tensed of this war, as you said, just to max pressure on, you know, blockading its ports, trying to suffocate its economy.
It's not clear to me why the Iranians would accept playing this game, though, to allow the Americans to fight this war on on their premises, on well, on their conditions. So wouldn't the Iranians have an interest to essentially put a you know, put underfoot and open up this blockade by by hitting back hard at The US bases of the region, shutting down the Red Sea, or whatever else they can do in order to prevent The US from, yeah, well, going to the slow suffocation of Iran and calling it peace.
Speaker 1: Right. So I completely agree with with your analysis. I think that the Iranians for the first month were winning this war. They were proactive. They had the initiative.
They were basically controlling the temple of the war. With the cease fire, this dynamic has completely changed. Now the Americans actually are more proactive. I would say the Americans are now dominant actually in that region. And I think that why a ceasefire was negotiated was that China applied a lot of pressure on Iran to for the ceasefire.
The GCC nation states trade a lot with China, and in mid April, the UAE leader, MBZ, visited China on a state visit and basically told the Chinese, listen, we're in a lot of trouble. And the reality is that China trades with everyone. So, yes, they get a lot of oil from Iran, but they actually get more LNG from Qatar. So the the Chinese statecraft is is trying to focus on win win global peace. And so China doesn't really care how this war started.
It doesn't really care who started this war. It just wants this war to end. And China right now is very focused on opening short of Hormuz. So I think the Chinese applied a lot to to to put, like, pressure through Pakistan. Pakistan was a front man, but China was work working behind the scenes.
And so I think it was only because of Chinese involvement and Chinese security guarantees that the Iranians agreed to a ceasefire. But this ceasefire, and this is really important for people to understand is it's caused actually a rift between the political leadership and the military leadership. The political leadership in Tehran wants to see a negotiated political settlement as soon as possible because they're really afraid that if this war goes on for too long, the Iranian economy would collapse, Iran will be isolated diplomatically, and the population may revolt against the government. The military leadership on the the under the ROTC, they wanna see this thing fought to the better end because the Americans killed their leader, Kassam Husamani, and they killed their spiritual leader, the the Ayatollah Khanani. So now this is this rift in between the political and the military leaderships, and I think this could have tremendous consequences as this war continues.
Speaker 0: Well, how do you do you see a likely pathway here to a world war? Or I I talk to people who argue that we might already be in this world war given all the, you know, the great powers being involved in this kind of military hostilities. But, well, for example, for The United States, it's not able to put an effective blockade on the Iranian ports given that it's too far from the coastline, too wide the region has to cover with too few assets, not enough supply and support. But, you know, for example, at some point, the Americans would get the idea, given that most of the Iranian energy tankers, they're heading towards China, why not just cut them all off at the Strait Of Malacca or one of these choke points which The US has, well, traditionally looked at to to destroy the the Chinese economy. So do you and also, of course, you see now Russia, at least reportedly, providing more and more support for Iran, not just intelligence, but weaponry.
Again, it's hard to know exactly what's being done due to the fog of war here, but but do you see a pathway into a world war now?
Speaker 1: I think we're already in World War three. It's just like the way we understand war is different in the twenty first century than than in in in twentieth century. So nineteenth century war was essentially about armies clashing on the battlefield, like World War one, which is trans warfare. It was easy to see as war because these armies were just killing each other on on on the trenches. World War two was was about destroying the state's capacity to fight the war, so basically targeting civilian populations.
So, for example, the firebombings of Germany and Japan were what allowed the allies to win the war in the end. It's something that's not that's not really discussed, but, the firebombings were really destructive, killed a lot of civilians, basically can destroy the state's capacity to manufacture the weapons necessary to fight a war. That's how the allies won. So that's a 20 century warfare. Twenty first century warfare is different and that it's it's ultimately about economic strangulation and forcing your your opponent to submit and causing domestic unrest.
And I think World War three, the the two main combatants are America and Russia. And already we're seeing this massive war in the oceans where American ships are trying to target and and board, basically, seize Russian shuttle fleet tankers. These these are just acts of piracy, and Americans have already, I I believe, seized two Russian oil tankers. And so I I believe that in the future, what's gonna happen is that the Russians are gonna arm and militarize the shuttle fleet, and so we should see a massive war in the oceans in the next few few years. This war is part part primarily economically between Russia and America.
Another aspect of this war is sabotage. Right? So we're seeing these Ukrainian drone striking at Russian oil refineries. We're seeing oil refineries being destroyed all around the world. So so, basically, it's economic warfare.
It's it's economic circulation. Now China is key to this because the the American strategy, v v China is different from the American strategy v v Russia. So Russia so America just wants to destroy Russia economically. But, actually, China is very important for America to maintain its debt financing. So right now, America has about $39,000,000,000,000 in debt, and it needs China to continue to buy US treasuries.
So China so America's trying to create a situation in which China is forced to buy US treasuries and allow America to maintain the Ponzi scheme. And and so it doesn't wanna destroy China economically because if you destroy China economically, then China is just going to choose a nuclear option and offload all all its users US treasuries causing a panic in in in the global economy. So what America wants to do is basically try to pressure China into an economic settlement. And so if you look look at what happened in Venezuela. Right?
So on on during third, America kidnapped Maduro. And even the argument, like, the entire point of that was a signal to China that America controls the Western Hemisphere. This is something called the Don Roe doctrine or the Trump corollary to the Monroe doctrine. And, you know, China has invested trillions of trillions of dollars into South American infrastructure, ports, refineries, railways because China needs the food, resources, and energy from South America. So what Trump is trying to say to China is that if you wanna buy anything from in North America, you have to go for us.
We we will collect a tax, and the tax is for you to open up your financial market, and for for us be able to sell stablecoins to your population. Okay. So stablecoins are just digital currency backed by US treasuries. So the entire strategy is institutions buy US treasuries, and then individuals can buy US Stablecoins. And and and so The United States is invested in having the Chinese economy do well and enforcing the Chinese to buy more US treasuries and more US dollars in order to sustain The US economy.
And and that's a strategy for the Americans going into in in into next five years. And that's why Trump is actually visiting Beijing in a couple of days. It's a three day visit, and I and I think that they're gonna prepare prepare the groundwork for a grand bargain between China and United States. And there'll be three areas to look out for, I I think, in these negotiations. And these negotiations will will take over the course of the next year.
Okay? The first is trade. And, again, I think what's gonna happen is that China will agree to buy more resources from the Western Hemisphere, specifically LNG from America in order to sustain its manufacturing sector. Okay? That's that's the first thing, the trade.
Second is that second issue is Taiwan, where in order to better facilitate trade between United States and China, Trump is going to declare that Trump Trump Trump is gonna declare that Taiwan and China are the same political entity. He's he's he's going to refute Taiwanese independence. So that's the second thing. And the third thing is that I think you'll see massive cooperation in AI where both nations agree that AI is the future and they will agree to share technology incorporation in developing AI that is safe and effective for the for the entire human race. So so so think that when Trump visits Beijing, the signal will be given that there'll be a rapportement between United States and China.
And and, again, the entire goal of The United States, and I can't state say this clearly enough, entire goal of The United States is to turn China into into an economic vassal of the American empire.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But surely China must see, you know, the the the the path they're on that The US isn't really seeking peaceful coexistence, but instead that is as two equals in a multipolar system that it's seeking to to, I guess, essentially, restore its dominance. But how do you make sense of what what what how do fit into this? Because at the moment, it looks as if they're preparing themselves for buying energy from Americas, and then America can essentially sell its energy to the Europeans while importing cheaper energy, for example, from Russia. I mean, is this is this also essentially setting up the Europeans as vassals?
Because economically, it appears to be going in that direction.
Speaker 1: Well, unfortunately, the European leadership has already been vassalized. Right? So you go back to 2022 when the war between Ukraine and Russia first started. The Europeans froze $20,000,000,000 of Russian assets at the at the bequest of the Americans. This destroyed legitimacy, credibility of the European banking system.
The Europeans refused stopped stopped buying Russian energy, and this destroyed the European economy. The North Stream pipeline was destroyed, and the Europeans knew who did it. Everyone knows who who did it, but they insisted it was the Russians who did it. So in many respects, the Europeans have already been vassalized, and now the Europeans are already discussing drafting men to go fight in Ukraine. If the Europeans did not provide the financing and and the political support to Ukrainians, this war would have been over two years ago.
So so, unfortunately, the European leader leadership has already been vassalized. This is gonna create a lot of discontent within the European population. Are and we're already seeing that with the with the rise of the AFD in Germany.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's I think the public is slowly awakening that their leaders are not serving, them anymore. You you you made some other predictions, though. You argued that The US would likely send in ground troops, against Iran.
I've heard this from many others as well, but it it also is one of those things that appear to defy logic because Iran seems to be built up like a fortress with its mountainous regions. It's, you know, blocked by international waterways and and, yeah, of course, a very powerful, yeah, large population. They're all powerful in terms of having good high industrial capacity producing cheap weaponry, which can, you know, be decentralized and not easy to be reduced. Also, yeah. So I'm I'm wondering how how do you see the logic of ground troops here?
Speaker 1: Right. So the reason why you use ground troops is that it's not sustainable to use airframes in a war of attrition. They cost too much. They're too easy to shoot down, and eventually, you will have wear and tear. Okay?
And we're already seeing that where there is an alchemy fire, there are a lot of accidents, and a lot of American planes are being shot down. These are these are $90,000,000 planes, 100,000,000 planes. You can't afford to fight a a war of attrition in the air for too long. So you what you do is you send in ground troops because they're cheaper and they're more cost effective. And what you do, you have two goals.
The first goal is to secure the Iranian coastline. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to deny Iran's capacity to collect tolls and to exert control of the strivably moves. And and so you use ground troops in order to basically hunt down Iranian artillery, Iranian underground missile bases. And the second reason why you use ground troops is you wanna set up four operating bases within, I think, enclaves in Iran, primarily the Southwest sorry, the Southeast Of Iran by the Pakistani border. These are the Bauliks.
And then you and then the Northwest of Iran, and this is where the Kurds are based. What you're trying to do is you're trying to stir up ethnic tensions in Iran and force the ROGC to confront these ethnic groups on the ground. And and and so they'll be exposed to air power. And so you're forced to use ground troops if you wanna continue this war. It's not sustainable otherwise.
Speaker 0: And, well, it it seems that one of the reasons why the Iranians can absorb a lot of pain is because they reasonably see this as an existential threat. It's a bit like the reason why the Russians and Ukrainians are willing to, you know, accept so many sacrifices because they both consider this, again, for good reasons to be an existential threat. But for The United States, you would think that they have more limited appetite for casualties. So how how do you see the The US essentially being in a position to to to, yeah, push this to continue this war? And because the ground troops would mean lot of pain.
Speaker 1: Right. So what what what we don't appreciate is in is that The United States is in a lot of financial trouble. So right now, The United States has $39,000,000,000,000 in debt. And so they're forced to spend 1 or $2,000,000,000,000 in financing this debt, paying interest to this debt. And there are no good options here.
If you default, what happens is that you cause private banks that are financing the US government right now, the Federal Reserve basically, to collapse, in which case, you know, all all all these savings that these Americans have have put into the banks are wiped out. So default is not an option. So your only option is war. And and the idea of war is to force other parties to pay and absorb The US debt. Right?
So when you go into Iran, what you're trying to do is you're trying to cause economic strangulation throughout the world. The Europeans are very dependent on Middle East oil. If the Europeans cannot pay for Middle East oil, they're now forced to pay more for American oil. Right? So American LNG costs 50 times more than Russian energy.
And and and and so what America wants to do is force the entire world to buy US energy and resources from the Western Hemisphere, and The US will finance this, meaning that The United States will lend the world the money to to buy US weapons and US resources. This is very similar to the early twentieth century when because Europe was in World War two and World War one, America was able to sell its resources around the world and make a lot of money for itself. And so what America's trying to do is it's trying to force the world to absorb the $39,000,000,000,000 in in debt. And you're right in that the Iranians are fighting very hard because it's their home and they don't wanna lose their families. But the Americans are also forced to fight very hard as well because the alternative is economic collapse, civil war, and possibly the collapse of the American state.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's you you argue that we're already in World War three, and but it's it's fought differently than the first two World Wars. However, one of the big risks here is that the the current conflicts now between the great powers can continue along the existing trajectory. I mean, the delusion of escalation control, that's something that, yeah, worries me a lot. That is that some the Europeans think, for example, they can continue to to attack Russian cities, and the Russians won't retaliate.
They can, you know, take block Russian ships. They won't do anything. Well, you know, might be able to put a to to cut off China's access to to energy, and, you know, they necessarily won't do anything. And, of course, The US can have an economic crisis tomorrow and begin you know, things can easily spiral out of control. It just seems to me that, yeah, the path we're currently on, it it seems very temporary.
Did you did you see, I guess, a clear, I guess, yeah, path forward in terms of the great powers beginning to escalate against each other because it doesn't seem sustainable in any way what's happening now?
Speaker 1: Right. So I think the calculus is this. The calculus is that if you do nothing, you might have a situation like the eighteen forty eight revolutions when all the monarchies in Europe in 1848 were at the precipice of being were thrown by popular rebellions. K? And if you do something, you might end up in World War one where millions of people just died in the trenches and it seemed as though the world was about to end.
So if you're the elite in Europe and America, you would much prefer the World War I option as opposed to the 1848 option. And and and that's and that's a stark choice facing the global elite right now. You either do nothing and then your populations revolt against you because you're incompetent, you're greedy, you're corrupt, or you send them to die off in the trenches of Ukraine to to send them to die in the mountains of Iranian in order to reduce the political intense pension at home. And and I I know this is very blunt, and I know this is very stark, but at the end of the day, the elite have they have dug themselves a huge hole.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, a key a key actor here, though, is Israel. They we we see, again, the the ambition has been quite clear. But at the same time, there's they they seem to have a lot of profound problems. They have very deep divisions in society, something that seems to border to well, close to a civil war.
You have this greater Israel initiative, which puts them at odds with their, well, all of their neighbors almost. Their main protector is The United States, which is in relative decline. You have the emergence of new great powers in the region, which are less empathetic to the to Israel. And even The United States is losing, you see, again, quite a fascinating trend, which is that the the standing of Israel, how Americans perceive it, it's in free fall. I haven't seen this in my lifetime at least, the way the Americans are now turning a bit on Israel, at least the population.
The as you said, the the elites or political establishment, they still, you know, continue as not nothing has happened. But where where do you see Israel ending up here?
Speaker 1: So, unfortunately, Israel has become a death cult. It's very eschatological. It's and it's only minority people. Right? You have these religious extremists who are taking control over the Israel government, And they believe that what's happened in The Middle East will lead to the coming of Messiah.
So as long as they stick together and as long as they push history forward, they wanna accelerate the process, then god will save them. So on the calculus, it's very diabolical. It's very cynical. But what they believe is this, the world is headed towards collapse. The world is headed towards decline, and so there's been chaos throughout the world.
And if Israel is able to accelerate this chaos, push this chaos forward, then what's gonna happen is that, first of all, Israel is is gonna be better positioned than everyone else to take advantage of this chaos because Israel has initiative. But, also, it's gonna force all Jews around the world to unite behind the idea of Israel because the world will rightfully see Israel as a chaos agent. But that's good for Israel because if the Jewish people are united, if of the nation of Israel is united behind a common cause, then God will send behind Israel and defeat the entire world. And, unfortunately, that is very much a calculus of these religious fanatics in Israel today.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I am actually, I wanted to ask I forgot. I wanted to ask another question about Europe as well because one of the things that looks very concerning at the moment is the possibility of a direct Russia Europe war, which would be, I guess, a significant component of a of a world war simply because the Europeans, I think, they bet everything on on this war, that is to use the Ukrainians to defeat Russia. But now they kind of yeah. This incrementalism, they got pulled in deeper and deeper.
And now the situation they're in is now that Ukraine is faltering, they they have to escalate, essentially, have to get more involved, send more long range missiles. They have to do more, you know, intercept Russian ships, talking about putting a naval blockade on the Russians, all of these things to compensate for things going, well, poorly on the battlefield. And this is happening at the same time that Americans are signaling that, you know, this is for you to fight. So again, if you wanna fight the Russians, you fight with Ukrainians and Europeans. If you wanna fight Iranians, use the Arabs.
If you wanna fight the Chinese, you know, use some of the frontline states in East Asia. But but you have the Europeans escalating, the Americans seemingly walking away and not being prepared to defend the Europeans. And while this is all happening, the Russians, the main pressure they're under is they have to restore their deterrence because they let the Europeans and, well, NATO overall, just walk all over them and give in every time. So if if I would make a prediction, it looks as if the Russians are preparing to strike back, to retaliate a bit like the Iranians, restore their deterrence, and the Americans very likely will then leave this to the Europeans. But but the Europeans doesn't really have do not have that much fighting power, it seems.
So where where do you see this going?
Speaker 1: Right. So you look at the National Defense Strategy of The United States, which was published in January. It lays out a vision for the the world. And right now, the Americans are actually implementing this vision. The vision is this.
America retreats into fortress North America, good in North America. Right? And and that's why Trump has been aggressive towards Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba. Right? Because it's all part of Greater North North North America.
And then what's gonna happen is that the American economy is gonna focus more on manufacturing and resource extraction. Okay? So so the Pentagon has reached out to Ford and General Motors in Detroit and said that they would like these companies to manufacture more munitions and drones. And these companies are probably happy to do that because it's it's more profitable to make weapons than it is to make cars. Okay?
So so that that that's a vision for Greater North America. And in order to create markets for American weapons, what you do is you create divide and rule throughout the world. Right? So imagine a situation where Russia is fighting Europe in Europe, in in Europe. Japan is fighting China in East Asia.
Iran is fighting the GCC in Israel in The Middle East. Well, now the entire world now depends on American resources and American weapons in order to sustain the these wars. And this would be of tremendous benefit to America. So America right now is trying to create conditions where the world is in complete chaos and America can just sit back in North America and profit. Right?
And that's why I think that when Trump goes to China in two days, it's gonna be extremely conciliatory where, you know, he makes a lot of generous offers to China and China reciprocates. And so now and so it seems as though there's now peace between China and United States. But then what happens that Trump goes immediately to Japan and encourages Japan to militarize against the Chinese threat. Right? So he's so so what's what's happened is that before the conflict was between United States and Russia in Europe, and then the The United States basically subcontract this conflict to the Europeans.
Right? And now be before, the conflict was between China and United States and East Asia, what the Americans are gonna do is subcontract this conflict to the Japanese and the South Koreans against China. So it's all part of this, you know, diabolical cynical strategy on Americans to maintain their empire.
Speaker 0: But a lot of this is premised on the ability to keep the the wars, essentially on the slow burner, not not not to get too intense. And I think that's one of the again, it goes back to this delusion I mentioned about the escalation control because the war with Russia, I guess, the the the benefit is that the the native countries, to a large extent, allow them to manage the pace of this. That is this is slow, grinding war, and I think often the assumption in in Europe is, you know, if if the Europeans will enter this war directly, it's well, first, they send a few soldiers to the rear, you know, somewhere along, you know, western parts of Ukraine to do other tasks, which would free up Ukrainians to go die on the front. But if this is not enough, you know, they could always have some special forces somewhere close to the front managing weapons more, And then, you know, they could have a little bit on the front line just to tip the balance, you know, just to make sure the front lines begin to freeze and do not move significantly. But the thing is I can't imagine the way the Russians have been fighting Ukrainians that they would treat the Europeans the same way.
The idea that, you know, in Europe, they would simply be able to restrict the war to Ukrainian and Russian territory. It just seems as if this would escalate in a huge way very, very quickly.
Speaker 1: I I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you. Like like, this plan of Americans, is cynical, and it's also gonna end up, being counter effective. It's gonna destroy their allies, and it may turn may make an entire world against America. But, the reality is that America is desperate to maintain its empire, and it's gonna and it's willing to burn down the entire world in order to maintain its empire.
So that's the situation we we are in. I also point out that if you look at the battle battle lines in Ukraine, I believe European special forces are already in the battle. So last year, it seemed as though the the Russian had a major breakthrough, and it seemed as though the Ukrainian front lines have been were exhausted. They basically broke down. And now there's a certain, like like, new energy to the Ukraine front lines, and they're winning back territory.
So I I I have to believe that European special forces are already on the ground in some capacity in Ukraine. And because of mission creep, we we we should expect an escalation. Look. Look. And also, the Ukrainians are are striking at Russian oil refineries, and this is gonna compel the Russians to hit the Ukrainians much harder.
The Russians have been extremely methodical in their attacks against Ukrainians. They've not targeted Ukrainian power plants. They've not targeted critical civil infrastructure, and now they will because they they appreciate that that this war will now be will now be between Europe and Russia. They'll be fight to the better end.
Speaker 0: So when well, the Europeans become the new Ukrainians, that is to fight to the last European. Do do you see The United States sitting this one out, or do you or or would they
Speaker 1: The entire the entire US strategy is to is for Europe to fight the Russians to to last European as you say, and they'll set this out because they have actually no interest. All they wanna do is cause as much conflict as in the world as possible and then continue to sell weapons and resources to Europe and they will finance it and and thus force the world to absorb US debt. It's very clear what's happening. Even the Europeans know what's happening, but but unfortunately, the entire European leadership has been bachelized by the Americans and the European leadership is very much afraid of their own population. These are bureaucrats who just wanna maintain power.
So, it's gonna basically take a popular revolt for policy to change in Europe.
Speaker 0: Just the last question on this topic, though, is given that the Russians and Iranians now I think they now so Russians and Chinese, they they they kinda see that the the The US push for peace in Ukraine, it seems a bit deceptive now. It's it wasn't a push for peace. It was outsourcing the war to the Europeans, and that a key target in Iran seems to be the Chinese. How do you think to what extent do you think they will come in now and make sure that the Iranians are able to essentially push back against the Americans, that is to absorb the pain and, yeah, strike back?
Speaker 1: Right. So, unfortunately, the Chinese tend to have a very short term, utilitarian approach to geopolitics. And so what what we what we need to what we need to recognize is that the Chinese have strong economic relations with everyone in the Middle East, including Israel, including the GCC, including Iran. So they don't wanna be put in a situation where they decide it would be Iran, and then they are forced in a conflict with the GCC. The the Chinese don't do things like that.
Believe very much in balance and harmony. And, so, the Chinese have been applying a lot of pressure on Iranians to reopen the Strait Of Hormuz and to basically end this war as much as possible. Now, it's gonna be unfair because it's Americans and it's really sort of aggressor, but unfortunately, you can't reason with bullies, you can't reason with thugs, so the Chinese are stuck trying to reason with the Iranians. And so the Chinese basically want this war end as soon as possible and for global trade to resume as peacefully as possible. And, unfortunately, Chinese are not taking a long term geopolitical approach to the situation in the Middle East.
They don't really acknowledge the fact that Americans are hell bent on maintaining their empire. And in the long term, it's not really in the benefit of trying to decide with Americans. But in the short term, really only the Chinese care about the short term, the Chinese are stuck working with Americans.
Speaker 0: What is happening within The United States then? I I've I've heard you argue that it's a possible quite a strong possibility that Trump may seize a third term, that The US might impose the draft again to get enough manpower into the army. How how do you see the this future for The United States? Because, again, the I think a key issue for the Americans is they they they often have this grand strategy in place, but they often lose sight of the societal component. That is, you know, for example, in the beginning of the nineties, there is all these new trade agreements which would give the Americans will extend the intellectual property rights, would give the Americans competitiveness in tech, in finance, and essentially, yeah, the areas where there's high revenue and high dependence, while they, in return, outsourced their industries.
So a bit like a modern version of repatriating or sort of repealing the cornholes, you know, just to divide the international division of labor. But again, the impact on The United States was quite disastrous. Again, the whole idea that we will that is the Americans, will, you know, develop the iPhone and the Chinese can put it together, it it didn't make much sense because what happened was the manufacturing base of The US, as this left, there was you know, you have massive social problems, which is what has caused a lot of this political, economic, and social instability. And at the same time, you know, the Chinese essentially learned how to make that iPhone themselves, so now they don't have the lower parts of the global of the supply chains. They can't produce anything, and, also, they they're they're not dominating the top tiers anymore of these global value chains.
But it seems that they're not yet against neglect that all these wars. I mean, if if you're gonna shut down energies, competition around the world, the Russians, the Venezuelans, the Iranians, you know, you can go on. Yes. It can make greater dependence on The US, but it's gonna create shock waves though through American society, which will destabilize to a great a great extent. Sorry.
It's a very long way of asking. How how do you see the the the possibility of a Trump third term and, yeah, draft other ways of managing, I guess, population, which is also, to some extent, in a pre revolutionary era.
Speaker 1: Look. At the end of the day, the American empire is able to control Trump. And Trump is a chaos agent, but he is doing the bidding of American empire. Right? So everyone's attention is focused on Trump and thinks it's all Trump's stupidity that is leading to all this chaos around the world.
But if you actually read the national security strategy, you just think about game theory and how the Americans benefit from all that's going on. I think Trump is doing makes sense. The the issue of Trump, why Trump is important is Trump is willing to do these things. Biden was supposed to do these things, but he didn't do these things because he was afraid of looking like an complete idiot, and he didn't want wanna be another Hitler. Right?
He he didn't wanna be the bad guy. And so it's actually very hard to find someone like Trump who's willing to be the bad guy, who's willing to be the scapegoat, and who's willing to act rashly without thought. So remember back 2003 during the during the war against Iraq, everyone knew knew it was about oil. Everyone knew it it it was about about the American empire. And they were you had, you know, protests around the world against this act of aggression against Iraq.
But now in this blatant act of aggression against Iran, you don't have you don't have protests around the world. Everyone's, you know, focused on Trump and thinking that, you know, if if Trump will be gone in two years time, and then the world will return back to normal. So Trump is extremely useful for the purposes of American empire. That's why I think that they'll stick around because the American empire needs certain things to happen, including national draft. So the reality is that for the past few years, America has been trying to onshore manufacturing back from China, and it doesn't work.
And And there's a really good reason why it doesn't work because the American population has become complacent. It's become lazy and corrupt. Think about all these, like, American young people who are trying to make their fortunes trading cryptocurrency or gambling online and spend all their time on OnlyFans. I mean I mean, the empire has made American extremely corrupt and lazy place where young people don't aren't able to contribute effectively to the economy. The problem isn't the lack of manufacturing jobs.
There are lots of manufacturing jobs in America. The problem is you don't have young people in America who wanna work these blue collar jobs. They don't wanna work for like $10 an hour. They much rather, you know, gamble and try to make a million dollars in a year. So you you need a national draft not to fight wars, but to discipline your population, to train your population to be much more compliant, to be much more desperate, and and and to have, like, real skills.
That's the reason why you need a national draft.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's a bit benefit of democracy, I guess. That is you can reduce violent opposition if people think they can change things at the ballot box. That is they always assume in The United States that, well, once the opposition comes into power, they want because they're always speaking of peace, then, you know, then things will go back to normal. But you had this since Clinton, you know, with all this interventionisms, and then Bush would come George Bush, people forget this now, but during the debates, he was criticizing nation building.
We don't do nation building. We're America. And then, of course, he had Afghanistan, Iraq, you know, he took it to the extreme. Then you have Obama. He was gonna introduce change.
And again, more more of the same. This was no difference. And Trump was peace president. Biden was gonna let the grown ups take over again, and he provoked a war with Russia. I mean, you can't really make this up.
Whoever comes after Trump, there won't be any difference, I think, though.
Speaker 1: That's right. And and don't forget this, but Clinton, in 1992, when he's running for the for for the presidency, he was a Bernie Sanders Democrat. He was populist. He was anti free trade. He was anti NAFTA.
And then when he came to power, he became a neoliberal. He was more conservative, more pro business than even the Republicans. So it doesn't really matter who you elect. The empire is still gonna be in charge.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's a good point. But how does this all end then? Because the the US empire, he can't really go on if it loses in Iran. And I don't as you said as well, there's no good pathway to a victory in Iran.
Not that the American military isn't all all powerful, and then, you know, it's well, it's powerful, and it's not as if the Trump has too many restraints on himself. He can, you know, knock out nuclear reactors if he wants. Doesn't seem to be in the limits. But, again, the the Iranian's ability to fight, it doesn't really require them to have an an army that is as powerful as the Americans. They have the cheap missiles, cheap drones.
They have the favorable geography. So what what are we well, how how do you see this thing playing out?
Speaker 1: I think for the for the next year, it will seem as though the Americans are winning. Trump's gonna go to China, and, eventually, China and United States will come to agreement that's gonna look very good for America. And and and Chinese are gonna agree to buy up more US debt. And this war in Iran, even though in the long term, America's gonna lose this war, in a short term, the Americans are are gonna are gonna be able to inflict tremendous damage on the Iranians, especially economically. So in a short term, it will look as though the American empire is winning.
But in the mid to long term, we know exactly what happens in these situations, which is the empire breaks out into civil war. Just look at any history. Empires in decline have many characteristics. Corruption, decadence, low fertility rates, mass immigration, and then two very common symptoms of an empire decline are one, wars overseas, and two, civil wars. Right?
So if Trump seeks a third term, and I have very good reason to believe that he will seek a third term, he will get a third term, this this is gonna ignite a civil war in America between two major factions. You have the Wall Street financiers have been in control of America since the since the Clinton years, basically. And then you have the the tech oligarchs, people like Larry Ellison, Saint Altman, Peter O'Thiel, who are trying to displace the financiers and control Washington DC in order to create an AI surveillance state that that that would benefit them. And Trump is very much their agent, their champion in this cause. And so how civil war would start is that these two two different factions would finance different opposition groups, and these opposition groups would have militias on the ground, creating as much civil cause civil chaos as as possible.
And so if Trump were to get a third term, you can expect that there will be a lot of violence, political violence throughout America in his third term.
Speaker 0: And one of the reasons I was, well, initially optimistic when Trump was running was, first of all, was talking about ending wars, but again, what he says doesn't necessarily mean that much. But but overall issue I thought, you know, which was genuine was the idea that he, well, genuinely believed that in order to save the American Republic, they would have to start to wind down the American Empire. That is, the American Empire had exhausted itself. It's exhausted its resources, it's being balanced internationally. If you're gonna double down on Empire now, it would kill possibly the republic.
And I I thought that generally this is and this is I thought this was good for the world in order to scale back the empire, save the American Republic as an important, you know, pole of power in a multipolar world. I thought all of this made sense, but he seems to go all in now on on on restoring the empire. But how do you see then the this imperial decline? Because it's not the first time in history you we had imperial decline. You you you talked about mass immigration.
You talked about the the economic inequality, the social disruption, the political system beginning to to fail, and it is concerning to see the American institutions no longer working as they were supposed to. So why what is it that you see in the American imperial decline?
Speaker 1: Right. So the main characteristic of American American imperial decline is hubris. Right? Where Washington DC has become a bubble, and it's impossible to reason with anyone in this bubble. They are you know, it is very much an insular, incestuous community of people who think alike.
So remember back back in Trump's first term. And I think in in Trump's first term, he's very much MAGA. He very much wanted to end these wars overseas. He was very he was very naive, and he wanted to build a wall in Mexico to stop immigration. He actually wanted to fulfill his his campaign promises, which is rare in American politics.
And in this first term, what happened? What happened was the entire American media started to attack him. His own cabinet leaked, unflattering, information about Trump. Generals, American generals refused to follow Trump's orders. Trump ordered a withdrawal from Syria.
They ignored him. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, called the Chinese and told the Chinese, ignore this guy. He's not in charge. That's treason. There was the Russiagate hoax where they insisted that this guy was a Putin of was an agent of of Putin, and they had this huge investigation.
A former FBI director Robert Mueller was forced to ex exonerate Trump. So the first term, it was all Washington DC was trying to destroy Trump. And in Trump's mind, that twenty twenty election was stolen from him. And even today, he insists that it was stolen from him during his sixth scene as a deep case deep state conspiracy to impeach him, to make sure he can never run for president again. So that's what happens in Washington DC.
If you try to defy the empire, they will find every way to destroy you. Once Trump left office, they raided his house at Mar A Lago because apparently, he had some confidential files. Everything in Washington DC is confidential. Everyone in Washington DC has confidential files at home. Why did they target him?
They they they they conducted lawfare against him. They tried to bankrupt him. They tried everything they could to destroy him. So that's what happens when you when you try to defy the consensus in Washington, D D D D C.
Speaker 0: Well, again, it's I think it's important to, yeah, to, again, draw distinction between the US Republic and empire. Because if you think that the the republic itself is falling apart, you would expect to see massive well, lack of social cohesion. You would see cultural and moral collapse, growing economic inequality. I don't know how and we see a lot of these things. Are there other variables you're looking at when you're assessing the health of the, I guess, of the patient, that is the the American Republic during these efforts to restore the empire?
Speaker 1: Look. I think that the American Republic is one of the most resilient systems in the world. They have 50 states, and all 50 states are different. And, so going back to COVID. Right?
So you go in Canada or Europe, where you have to take take take the the vaccines because the bureaucracy can enforce its will on you. But in America, if you didn't like the bureaucracy, you move to another state, and you could avoid the vaccines. So that's a great thing about, America, and that's why what what what makes America so resilient. So I understand the American empire is in decline, and it's gonna collapse eventually, but I would not bet against the American Republic. There are certain areas in America that continue to be very dynamic, for example, Texas and Florida.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I I often make the comparison between The US and Europe because in Europe, they they often think of themselves as being, you know, more stable. The governance is more responsible, but it's even they look at the The US has said as a big echo chamber, but at least in The US, you do have different views. You have different pockets in in Europe now.
It's it's not it's it's really one big echo chamber. It's one position you can have on key pro form policy issues. Everything is framed in normative language, where essentially if you don't agree with your government, it's because, well, you have bad intentions. You are, you know, treasonous. I mean, at least in The United States, they do have conversations.
In in Europe, it's dying off very quickly. But, yeah, my my last question was, how do you see typically from watching, you know, civilizational decline and all, how do you see the the the US empire going here and the the wider political West? Do you expect a continuing gradual decline as we've seen over the past years or just, you know, a quick collapse?
Speaker 1: Yes. I think there are three major symptoms of an empire in decline. They are privatization. You have this huge imperial bureaucracy in Washington DC that's that's no longer accountable to the people. You have financialization where Wall Street is in in control.
You have individualization, which is like everyone sees themselves as an island. You you you lose social cohesion. You lose the capacity to stand together. But at same time, I see in America a growing movement of people who want to restore the American Republic, and these people are what we we call Christian nationalists. You know, and Tucker Carlson definitely falls into a camp who believes that America is a republic, and it should be a Christian republic.
And I think that that really is a solution to imperial decline where if America were to embrace Christianity, then I think that would save the republic.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. All this wider idea that religion helps to keep, you know, a state or a civilization together, it's a and also to keep its morality and vigor. This is ideas of Tocqueville, though. He argued that the American liberalism, the focus on individualism, the what make made US liberalism sustainable in terms of not just succumbing to, well, complete hedonism, a little bit like the direction it's taken over the last few decades, was because the spirit of religion will always balance the spirit of liberty, that you would have this balance.
The liberty wouldn't begin begin to degrade itself into this, you know, horrible hiddenism. But he also warned, though, that over time, the liberal ideals, individual focus will begin to seek to liberate themselves from any restraint, which is which includes religion. So it just seems very difficult for the Christianity, essentially, to restore some common identity in America today, though, in order to, I guess, revive the idea of a, you know, collective consciousness, a common cause, something along these lines.
Speaker 1: Right. I completely agree with the sentiment. You know, America was founded on two pillars. The first pillar, of course, is enlightenment, secularism, and the second pillar was Puritanism, like, positivism. And so I can agree with you in that, you know, America has shifted too extreme into the enlightenment.
It's embraced secular liberal democracy, and it needs to restore balance by returning to its Christian roots. But, you know, I I still think that America has so many advantages. It's still a very prosperous place where people are hardworking, where you still have a lot of freedom, where people still take the constitution very seriously. And and once they start to fully embrace their Christian heritage, and I I think that a lot of the great advantages of America can be restored.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, no matter how, yeah, this new world war pans out, at least the world will look very different when this begins to come to an end, which I don't see coming for many years to come. But nonetheless, thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Sergey Karaganov: How Russia Will Win the New World War https://youtu.be/2Gd5jdl36cg https://t.co/bFmlOA3K1b
Video Transcript AI Summary
In a wide-ranging interview, Professor Sergei Karaganov, a prominent Russian foreign policy scholar, provides his perspective on the current security crisis, Russia’s strategic posture, and possible futures for Europe and the world.
On the trajectory of the conflict and world order
- Karaganov argues that the conflict signifies a broader systemic shift, describing it as a “fourth world war” that began in Ukraine with American efforts to undermine Russia and European participation, spreading now to the Middle East and South Asia.
- He frames the wider struggle as a gradual replacement of a unipolar Western order with multipolar dynamics, warning that diplomacy has been insufficient and that the European elites are leading their states toward a major war.
- He emphasizes the need to prevent horizontal escalation and to stop the war in Europe, extending concerns to destabilization across a vast swath of the globe.
On NATO, Ukraine, and escalation
- He notes unprecedented Western support for actions on Russian soil, including missile attacks and political backing for operations on territory Russia considers vital, including aspects of its nuclear triad and early warning systems.
- He criticizes Western decision-makers for misjudging the scope of the conflict, arguing that the war is not only about Ukraine but about a broader confrontation with the Old West.
Russia’s strategic aims and deterrence
- A central theme is the need to “win” this war to halt the bloodletting in Ukraine and to prevent further escalation and casualties on both sides.
- He calls for escalating to deter and punish Western elites, arguing for a reevaluation and expansion of Russia’s nuclear doctrine to threaten European elites and bunkers with limited, targeted nuclear strikes if necessary.
- He advocates shifting from a doctrine that assumes no victories in nuclear war to one in which “there will be victories” and where Russia would reserve the right to use nuclear weapons against European adversaries if deterrence fails.
- He also suggests delegating some command authority for European theater to a dedicated commander who could authorize such actions, including nuclear use, if necessary.
On arms control, diplomacy, and prospects for peace
- Karaganov argues for moving away from arms-control constraints as part of a broader strategic realignment and emphasizes the need to deter and potentially punish adversaries with credible force.
- He dismisses the “Spirit of Alaska” as a trap and warns that peace would only be possible if European elites are removed or replaced, implying that diplomacy would be possible only after such changes.
- He maintains that a truce could be possible, but not a peace, unless European elites are replaced by more restrained governance and a rethink of Western strategic posture.
- He asserts that Minsk was a mistake and criticizes attempts to extend deterrence to European allies, labeling such proposals as disastrous for Russia and European stability.
On Europe, modernization, and Russia’s future
- He contends that Europe has historically been a source of conflict and that Europe must be kept at a distance; Europe should not determine Russia’s future course.
- He rejects European integration as Russia’s path, arguing that Europe remains valuable culturally but cannot dictate Russia’s strategic choices.
- He positions Russia as inherently Eurasian, with external cultural roots in the Byzantine, Muslim, and Buddhist worlds, and deems Europe as a historical phase that should be left behind for Russia’s future development.
On diplomacy and concrete steps
- He notes that diplomacy could still have a chance, but the endgame would involve the elimination of the Kyiv regime, restoration of Russian-controlled lands in the south and east of Ukraine, and breaking the will of European elites to pursue aggression.
- He reiterates a preference for avoiding a direct European invasion and expresses a desire to avoid a full-scale nuclear exchange, while insisting that Russia must be prepared to act decisively if Western adversaries continue their aggression.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Sergei Karagnov, the head of the council for foreign and defense policy, also one of the more or most influential Russian scholars on Russian foreign policy. Professor Karagno has written speeches for Brezhnev, advised Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and, of course, president Putin, and was also a leading advocate for changing Russia's nuclear doctrine. From where from what I understand, president push Putin pushed back before eventually adopting a lot of these suggestions. So thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's a great pleasure. And I have been following your podcasts for quite some time. And, also, of course, remember our conversations when in Moscow and elsewhere. It is a pleasure.
Speaker 0: Thank you. I I would I wanted to ask you about, yeah, how this conflict has evolved and changed. Because over the past four years, we've seen some incredible developments, though, which were unthinkable during the Cold War. So for example, we've seen NATO countries participating in missile attacks on Russia. We see NATO countries backing the invasion of Kursk, again, Russian territory, and seemingly assisted also in the attack on Russia's nuclear triad as well as the early warning system.
Again, all of this is well, used to be unthinkable, at least during the Cold War. So I was really looking forward to, yeah, Russian perspective on what you see going on and where we're all heading because, unfortunately, in the West at the moment, we don't really discuss security concerns much of opponents anymore, and there's not really that much discussion about the direction and the risks that are being taken by going down this path. So how how are these developments assessed now in the Kremlin?
Speaker 1: Well, we have been procrastinating for too long then. I have been criticizing my fouls in the government and for tolerating Western aggression for too long, hoping that we could find a solution. The solution is nowhere to be found at the junction. So I'm returning back to what I have been proposing since twenty three to twenty four. And this time, I hope my suggestions will come true, though, not in full.
Now we have to escalate and to punish our this time, European enemies for conducting an all out war against Russia. It is this there are different calculations. I believe that it is the fourth world war if you take the Napoleon Napoleonic war with the 25 nations joining Napoleon invading Russia as the first. Then it was the first and the second. Now we have the third.
The problem is not exactly on the beetle of fields of Ukraine. The problem is that, overall, the systematic change of the world system brings about something like a second World War. Actually, it has started. Now it has started at first in in Ukraine when Americans are willing to undermine Russia, unleashed it, and then Europeans greed greedingly went into the abbess. But now it is also Middle East and Southeast a South Asia.
And we see that that is a Third World War. I have I have decided to write about that already in the open, and you've got probably one of my first articles. And then also, the serials will follow.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Noel, I always argue that this is a very dangerous time because whenever you see a massive shift in world order, it usually leads to a lot of instability. So as the world navigates from this unipolar moment for the collective West towards a multipolar system, you would hope that, yeah, a lot of countries would be very careful in navigating and avoiding war and conflict. And this is why the absence of diplomacy has been, yeah, concerning to say the least. But I I did read your article, though, the how how to win a world war.
And I was wondering if you could possibly, yeah, flesh out the argument. And, again, I hear this argument quite often as well that we are likely in another world war now. So how do you see Russia's position in this world war? And, well, how how can Russia win this?
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is that we have to win, and we have to win for two reasons. One is to stop this bloodletting war in Ukraine, which goes nowhere.
Speaker 0: But Okay.
Speaker 1: But towards more and more victims on our side and 10 times more, five times more, three times more on Ukrainian side, etcetera, etcetera. And it is endless. And but, sooner, like, it would end or should escalate. But the second element of this war. Now is the prevention of the horizontal escalation, which has started already.
Because as I have started, I have said, I mean, a few a couple of months ago, our American partners, whomever they are, according to, I mean, following all predictions, started to destabilize South Eurasia, and that is the Middle East. It is not about Iranian nuclear weapons. It is it is about destabilization of the huge area starting from Maghreb and going down from Southeast Asia. And that they have started to do. And we have to think how to stop that.
On the Ukrainian front, it is relatively clear for me, But it is a much more deep and profound task as to the Internet the whole international system.
Speaker 0: Throughout this conflict or at least over the past four years, there's similarly been always a dilemma in Russia that is as NATO side escalates again, and the NATO side did recognize they escalated. I always point out that Joe Biden once argued that sending f sixteens would mean World War three. So but kinda we kinda crossed all these lines. And but for the Russians, I guess, they always have to choose. They want to keep things stable or, you know, either risk world war by by retaliating or not retaliating, but then essentially emboldening the other side and then see further escalation.
So how you've argued for the need to actually use nuclear weapons, though, in order to essentially restore its deterrent. Is it correct?
Speaker 1: This war has brought a lot of benefits to Russia. It had repuperated from its idols. We have restored our soul and our honor. We have started to value those people in our society, which are truly valuable meritocratic elites, scholars, doctors, officers. So I and the country is becoming more healthy.
But for that, we are paying for too many bodies. So my advice to my government at this juncture is that we should stop this war at least in in Europe by going up the ladder of escalation first attacking by commercial weapons certain symbolic or logistical points on the European soil. We do not need an inch of Europe as you might understand. And then if they do not succumb we should follow with nuclear strikes relatively a mess with, of course, offering some kind of ultimatum. If they do not succumb, well, some of the countries of Europe should perish.
That is my suggestion, though I pray god and I'm a believer that that wouldn't happen. But I believe that these people have lost their minds, lost sense of history. These elites, they are totally responsible, and they should be punished. So that's why in addition to many other things, I propose that our military nuclear doctrine should concentrate not only on deterring attacks against Russia proper, but it just turns a trade against punishing European elites, including with the special munitions, which would do away and with their bunkers. And the first waves should go there.
The European elites, which are senseless, which are responsible, should suffer first, not the European peoples. But we are debating this issue, and as soon later this debate will come to the physician.
Speaker 0: Well, I remember you made these arguments a while back already, but do you do you get a feeling that the mood in the Kremlin is shifting now more towards your arguments, or or has this not moved that much?
Speaker 1: I am not here to talk about the mood in Camelin. When I started three years ago to put the idea on the table, I was the proud voice of a minority. Now I am a voice of overwhelming majority both in the military, in the political circles, and in the society. But, again, I am not calling for massive nuclear strikes that they know that they would take away. And now but the problem is that we have to stop this war, at least in Europe.
All the more, as as I've said, the war, is already expanding, and, it is, engulfing South Asia Southwestern Asia. And then it will spread spread because the attack against Iraq Iran was a predictable brought about not only curtailment of all transactions or but also curtailment of the flow of fertilizers and many other things. And it was it was absolutely predictable. And that means that we will have a new wave of instability also in the 3rd Wall so called 3rd Wall. I must say that from my point of view, what is happening is that the historic quest, has been losing its historic predominance in culture, politics, economics, which allowed it to rob the world for five hundred years, is on.
And the Europeans not quite understand what they're doing. But Americans, I think, do. And while mister Trump, you know, with all of his jobs and jerks, is looks to be a funny person, he leads his country as he had been told to exactly in the direction of a of the historic reforms. We will not allow it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I wanted to ask about this as well because it seemed for a while that The United States was looking to as the the Ukraine war wasn't going their way, that they were looking to unload it or at least outsource it to the Europeans and attempt to improve their bilateral ties with Russia. But but but this hasn't really moved much forward. And, also, the need the negotiations over Ukraine hasn't really moved forward either. What do you make of the negotiations now and, you know, what they refer to as the spirit of Alaska?
Is this On
Speaker 1: the The spirit of Alaska is a is a joke. Of course, at some point of the course of the continuation of this war, we could agree to a truce, some kind of truce, but it will not be peace. The peace could be achieved only when and if at least European elites are thrown away by their peoples and by their deep states because they are mad, and they are leading their countries towards a big war.
Speaker 0: I was wondering what, well, what I initially said about the invasion of Kursk. And we're we're very surprised by the, well, very open support it got in at least rhetorically, but as we know, also in terms of weapons and in intelligence to to support this. And as I said, this would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. I yeah. I I I was wondering how how do you see this this development?
Speaker 1: And this was my criticism on my my own government and my own political class. We did not understand what kind of a conflict we are in. I would hope that it it was superficial. It was about Ukraine, etcetera, etcetera. It is a it is a world war, and it is about an attempt of a a of the Old West towards I mean, it will be futile because Old West will be destroyed if it continues or the world will be destroyed.
Hopefully not. But we were thinking about how to avoid, how to agree, how to find peace and peace solutions. We played with Minsk purposes for three years, which was a nociating mistake. Now we have we are talking about this spirit of Alaska. I am smiling.
And spirit of Alaska is about nothing Because if if and when we agree with something which is close to what president Trump proposed in Alaska, then that would mean that in a year or so, their their war would be resurrected and in full scale and, of course, with nuclear events. So the spirit of Alaska is a trap on one side or a mistake on the last side. I do not trust the spirit of Alaska, though I hope that eventually Americans and Russians would agree on some rules of behavior towards each other. But Europeans would not be a part of that game.
Speaker 0: No. I well, at least that's something the The US and the Russia trying at least to improve relations, although I have also limited optimism for how far this can go. I I was speaking two days ago with professor John Mearsheimer, and he told me I should ask you, I think, something he had been wondering about, which was the the attack on the early warning radar system of Russia, the ones that were, you know, essentially used to detect a nuclear strike, something that would give Russia some time before a retaliatory strike, This is seems like it's in everyone's interest for each side to have some warning time, unless you're planning a first strike, of course. But then also in June, the attack on Russia's nuclear deterrent, which I heard from FSB was had assistance from the British MI six. I was just wondering, how are you how are you reading this?
Because it's for me, it's a very concerning development.
Speaker 1: They are they are pushing they are pushing to the limits. Russian government waited to avoid a no war confrontation, and I think we made a mistake. We should start to punish our enemies full scale, hopefully, without unleashing a no law nuclear war. But first, of course, I mean, these crimes which you would have they have committed, which have been unheard even in the worst days of the Cold War should be punished. And there are many ways, and we are planning them.
First, of course, attacking, I mean, serious targets on the territory of Europe proper. But let me remind you that we don't need an inch of Europe. We have to be as away from this Europe as we could be. And but before that, of course, probably we have to crush the the this regime in Kyiv. And without climbing the ladder of nuclear escalation, that looks to be impossible or too expensive in terms of spending our human material, our best man.
So my advice to my compatriots and fully supported is to escalate first by striking with conventional weapons symbolic and also important targets like logistical centers or military bases. And then if they do not stop, we should go nuclear with a a series of limited strikes. Before that, we have to change our doctrine, which is outdated by forty or fifty years. Now let me remind you that our nuclear doctrine believes that there will be no victories in the nuclear war. That's stupidity.
There will be victories could be victories, and there will be victories in a nuclear war. I I I beg almighty that it will happen, especially in Europe. I think that eventually, we could even use an old tomato to some European neighbors, especially in North Western part of Europe so that they will succumb or surrender. But before that, we could probably look for possibilities for limiting the limited casualties on the on the European side. But we are tired of spending our best man on this junk, which I'm sorry.
You are European, and I'm European too. This junk, which is called Europe.
Speaker 0: In your article, though, on, yeah, how to win a world war, you did advocate for many policy changes for Russia to essentially begin to, yeah, change course and begin to restore the deterrent, which kind of slipped gradually over the past four years. One of them was walk away from arms control as well. I was wondering how how does that fit into the wider argument?
Speaker 1: Well, now we have to change our policies on many directions. One is, which I have not yet mentioned, is, of course, we have to change our doctrine of using nuclear weapons. And and for that. And now we should put there a dignum that if we we are attacked by global countries which have a preponderance over us in economic and technological and demographic potential, we are not only have a right or have an obligation to use nuclear weapons. The second proposal which I have pushed forward is that the commander in chief should delegate some of his power to the commander in chief for European Theater, a general who would be supported with a general with the officers or general with field experience and that he would be responsible for a possibility when necessity to use all needs, including nuclear weapons against certain European countries, which are which has unleashed and continuing to unleash an aggressive war against Russia.
I don't want Europe to be eliminated because I'm culturally a European, but I am reminding my own compatriots that unlike many of our dreams, Europe is the source of all evil, of all wars, of all genocides, of all everything worse in human history. We it is returning back to its normal situation, and I hope that we will be able to prevent that for the sake of Europe, for the sake of us, and for the sake of Europeans people. But European Europeans have to understand that they are their their countries are leading or the leaders of their countries are leading them towards a.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's one of the things I usually difficult to to understand is it seems like this escalation of we follow a clear track over the four past four years. It's leading us very predictably into an, you know, all out conflict with Russia, which would likely involve nuclear weapons. Yet there doesn't seem to be much discussion or or efforts to have any course correction. Indeed, it's demand around consensus around one policy, and everything else is dismissed essentially as taking the side of Russia, which if if one calls for some restraint or recognizing the security concerns of the other side.
But I a colleague of mine, Jeffrey Sachs, he often puts a lot of the blame on the Ukraine war on Germany and The United Kingdom, in addition to The US, of course. You you also tend to focus more on both Germany and The UK as being the leading, I guess, aggressors against Russia. I was wondering if you can elaborate how you see this.
Speaker 1: Well, this war or Russia Yeah. Has been unleashed by The United States. It has been unleashed you you will read series of my articles since 02/2004, then it escalated. Then Europeans jumped into this game. Now Germans the Brits, of course, are playing their usual game, and that is under that is rare that is igniting war in Europe to weaken the the continental the continental ignite their continental neighbors and weaken them.
That has been their bad habit for several centuries. And, unfortunately, we in Russia have not yet understood that we are turning back to the worst worst times in our history. Now and as to the Germany, when, as I've said, German councilor calls for the strongest army in Europe, that means that he calls for elimination of Europe of Germany totally. I mean, evaporation and that German burgers and, you know, would have common German friends. They should understand that.
Speaker 0: Well, you mentioned, though, that the the spirit of Alaska is a joke and is dead. But do you see any other possible pathways to a diplomatic solution? Because, well, a year ago when the Trump administration returned, there was some talk about from The United States that we had to find a peace. They recognized that expanding NATO up to Russia's border had been a mistake. They argued then for a neutral Ukraine.
They argued for make accepting territorial concessions. But, again, this seems to have gone nowhere. Indeed, it appears to, to some extent, walk this back. But is there still any pathway to a diplomatic peace instead of this war?
Speaker 1: Of course, let diplomacy have a chance. But from my point of view, the endgame should be elimination of the Kievan regime. First. Second, the restoration of our lands in South and East of Ukraine, we don't want to take and we should not want to take all over Ukraine because it's just a bread breadbasket. But the main thing now, in addition to what had been proposed, is to break the will of European elites for aggression.
They have started an aggression. They're conducting an aggression, and they should be punished for that or eliminated by their deep states, hopefully, or by their people. When chance when when a president of France calls for extending deterrence, foreign deterrence to other countries. He's not only a blatant stupid liar. He should be treated by the French as a traitor because that means that he was to sacrifice or is ready to sacrifice Paris or Leon for for for the sake of, say, Berlin or Poznan, these idiots who which have lost the sense of history, the hands are I mean, simply level of sense should be either punished or eliminated better That should be done not by Russian missiles, not troops.
We will not invade Europe under no circumstances because there is nothing we need there. But by European people who have also lost the sense of self preservation. They are led by by mad dogs. Hopefully, Europeans will be able to throw them away. But I'm not trying to intrude into internal affairs of European countries.
It's up to you to decide.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems to me that one possible avenue for escalation into a massive direct war would be possibly unleashed in the Baltic Sea. That is over well, the past months now, we've seen blockades on Venezuela, Cuba, hijacking of Iranian tankers. And, of course, first, it began with referring to Russia's civilian fleet as a shadow fleet, and and then, yeah, these efforts aborting them. And now we see talks of naval alliance that is The UK plus nine others. Essentially, task is to confront what they have now labeled Russia's shadow fleet.
Do you see this as a possibility?
Speaker 1: In our internal discussion, I'm precisely in my government for being so soft on the acts of pirates. And if and if and when the Dutch channels are or could be closed, then it would should simply be meant there'll be no Denmark anymore. But I love Denmark. It is a nice country. And this is close to your country and also to Sweden.
We should be serious about returning these idiots back to census.
Speaker 0: Well, yeah, again, I'm hoping there will be a way of restoring deterrence again, you said, god forbid, without any nuclear exchange. But if
Speaker 1: Well, nuclear exchange limited nuclear exchange if it happens. And if if it brings these man dogs to senses could be a savior of humanity. Because overall, we are living in the multiple crisis world where there are many underlying notions of our life are crumbling. Modern capitalism have exhausted or has been exhausted its life. Now we see that this one capitalism plus information revolution is undermining the sense of the human, dehumanizing the human, but it is very deep.
Now we are going to the geopolitical level. On the geopolitical level, that is being reflected by this remarks for the West, which tries to restore its previously pro position in the world, which allowed it to rob the world, but it will never happen. Hopefully, we could, somewhere along the road, arrange at a world of multipolarity of mutual respect and a world which is much more peaceful, but we are in for twenty years of wars.
Speaker 0: Just my last question, though, is how do you see Russia's future after this war? Because, you know, since Peter the Great, the past three hundred years, Russia modernized by looking West, and indeed, Gorbachev had this greater European home idea as well. But as you said, with the rise now of the East, they're just the head to the modernization is no longer monopolized by the West, and Russia has all these partners in the East as well. How do you see Russia's future after
Speaker 1: this? First of all, I'm I'm, of course, a historian of Russia too. Russia has never been a European country. Originally, it had been a a Eurasian country from the beginning. We took our external cultural roots not from Europe.
We took them from Palestine, from the brilliant Byzantine, from the Muslim world, and from the Buddhist world. And their political an external political core course of our society and of our culture came from the great Mongol Empire. Now the Western the European journey by Peter was useful because at that juncture, for the time being, we were a lagging technological progress and technological knowledge. And our army was not that well organized because Europeans were much, much better organized. But the European journey from Peter the Great had to be stopped about at the end of the twentieth century nineteenth century.
By that time, we took everything positive which we could have taken from Europe, both military organization. Although in terms of artillery and military taxes, we became the first company in Europe by the end of the century. Now we we engulfed a great European culture. Without Europe, we wouldn't have had Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Musovsky, Tchaikovsky, etcetera. But we should have stopped the journey at the end of the nineteenth century.
After the end of nineteenth century, we continued, unfortunately, with the journey and got two world wars and communist from there. We have to finish our European journey, but Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare are our writers and our composers, and they are very deep in our souls. But Europe should be thrown away from our history, but kept as a very interesting and useful element. Yes.
Speaker 0: You mentioned Dostoevsky there. I was thinking you sounded a like Fyodor Dostoevsky because in the second half of the nineteenth century, he was making a similar point that the Russians had, for too long, attempted to mold themselves into being like Europe, Iran, Europeans, and they only gained the contempt of the Europeans. So he essentially said the same. The Russians should march east.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm going further than Dostoevsky. And now that he's my favorite famous most favorite writer in Russia. Though, of course, I love Tolstoy. I'm saying that Europhiles and in Russia now after what has happened.
I only either in intellectually impotent or and morally corrupt. This is an idiocy. You have to be an a moral idiot in Russia to follow the European way.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate your views. And
Speaker 1: Absolutely. However
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 1: My professor, know that I have a lot of friends in Europe, and I cherish our friendships. And I do not want to totally cut our ties with Europe. Now with Europe of decent people, there are some still. They were they are they are brainwashed. And hope that some of the markets could be restored.
But Europe for Russia is per se. It's something we should be either, I mean, kept away when we don't need an inch on Europe. The farther we get away from Europe now, the better it is for Russia for its future development.