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Douglas Macgregor: Disastrous NATO Summit - Renewed War on Iran & Russia https://youtu.be/opeymG_Imxc https://t.co/PfB1RXhfaY
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas McGregor discusses his takeaways from a NATO summit, linking the summit’s themes to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s claim that NATO’s involvement means a “war” rather than a “special military operation.” McGregor argues that the summit reflected Donald Trump’s lack of strategic coherence, describes Trump’s Greenland remarks as aimed at preventing Chinese and Russian threats via Greenland and Europe, and says Trump was treated with contempt by Giorgia Meloni while others were sycophantic.
McGregor argues Trump’s decisions—lifting sanctions and providing F-35s to Turkey—are not aimed at Israel but are meant to “bribe” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to stay on Trump’s side, distance from Moscow, reduce cooperation with the Iranians, and “be our friend.” He portrays Erdoğan as “innately Machiavellian,” saying Trump’s goal is what he wanted to achieve “for the moment,” and he adds that Trump seeks ceremony and celebration, which he believes Turkey provided.
McGregor claims European governments are emphasizing money and equipment for the Ukrainian regime to drag the United States into direct military confrontation with Russia, while also baiting President Vladimir Putin. He says Lithuania and other NATO states bordering Russia are openly providing bases and even potentially nuclear weapons on their soil for potential use against Russia, and he calls this “catastrophic.” He states that Trump should have “put his foot down” but instead listened to Rubio argue that helping Ukrainians strike deep into Russia would be important for negotiations, and then Trump allegedly called it an escalation while claiming it is the path to success.
McGregor compares current dynamics to World War II and claims the United States lacked strategy during that period. He contrasts earlier statements Trump reportedly made—wanting Europeans to deal with Ukraine and wanting to “get out”—with later actions that he says effectively take over. He also says certain European actors appear less committed: Hungarians, Croats, Slovaks, and especially Poles, who he argues are disinterested in losing additional Polish soldiers in a war with Russia. McGregor references events involving Zelensky returning to Poland an honor and describes celebrations of figures he says were “Nazi” supporters, arguing this fuels Polish dissatisfaction with Ukrainians. He warns that if Trump pursues a no-fly zone or similar steps, neighboring countries would face consequences, and he describes the prospect as “insane,” asking whether Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and other locations would respond by allowing routes for US sorties.
When Glenn asks about possible US policy shifts—such as talk of no-fly zones, licensing Patriot production for Ukraine, and Rubio’s comments endorsing strikes into Russia—McGregor says the danger is high and compares Trump’s approach to FDR’s unilateral “unconditional surrender” decision. He argues Russia takes these steps seriously because the West repeatedly “misjudged Moscow,” dismisses Russia militarily, and misunderstands the logic of “poking the cobra.” He also says American “bloviate,” promises, and bullying are not effective against Russia, Iran, or China, and he claims the US is losing support in Europe and the Gulf. He argues Trump is manipulated by the “wrong people” including Israelis and Europeans.
McGregor shifts to economic and political pressures, saying European economies face de-industrialization and trouble sustaining employment and that war drives inflation while interest rates rise. He discusses oil price dynamics, bond rates, and the potential inability to service debt if rates reach around 5%. He claims these pressures could lead to class conflict in Europe and the West. He adds that Donald Trump’s statements function as “bait” for Russia and argues Putin has avoided taking the bait. He says Russian troop movements are advancing slowly and attributes delays to handling “thousands of drones,” calling drones an “irritant” rather than a strategic game changer. He says Peskov’s remarks declaring the “SMO” over and the war as now could have prompted an immediate call to the White House to prevent “World War III,” because McGregor claims Russia is prepared while the US and Europe are not.
In response to whether Sergei Lavrov’s position about already being in World War III is agreed with, McGregor says that if he were in Lavrov’s position he might feel that way due to actions he believes contradict Russian national security, but he adds the US does not reassure Russia and behaves as though only it matters, attempting a parent-child relationship.
Glenn raises US remarks at the summit about Iran, including Trump declaring a memorandum of understanding dead, a ceasefire over, and Iranian diplomats being “scum,” and asks whether the US is heading into an all-out war against Iran. McGregor says the conflict is a “Jewish war waged against Iran,” involving Israeli leadership, the Jewish lobby, and “massive numbers of billionaires,” and he claims Netanyahu’s strategy is one of scorched-earth outcomes meant to destroy Iran’s state and society. He frames Trump as executing on behalf of Netanyahu. McGregor also says people believe Israel expects nuclear escalation if the US disengages, describing it as the end of Israel’s state if nuclear use occurs.
Discussing a potential US strike or seizure options after Karg Island—plus alternatives involving ports like Shabahar—McGregor argues the US has underestimated the Iranian regime and military systems, referencing an earlier attempt involving Isfahan and special operations that he says ended in disaster. He describes special operations as dependent on accurate intelligence and explains that failure can occur with a single RPG or similar event. He argues that if forces seize positions like an island, the defenders may become a “pincushion” for missiles and unmanned systems. He asserts he does not see options leading to anything “clean, decisive and effective.”
Finally, Glenn asks about Turkey becoming an increased concern for Israel relative to Saudi Arabia. McGregor says Turkey has the capacity to conquer, put “a million men” into the field rapidly, has modern weapons and its own industrial base, and can cooperate with Pakistan for nuclear capability. He argues that Turkey and Iran may prefer being “nuclear threshold states” without becoming nuclear powers, and he claims US behavior sends a signal that other states should build nuclear weapons. He references a French nuclear deterrent strategy analogy where only “one” nuclear weapon is needed because it imposes unacceptable damage, and he says Iran’s demonstrated ISR and strike capability suggests many middle-sized powers can now make deterrence costly enough to discourage aggression.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Colonel Douglas McGregor, a decorated combat veteran and author and former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense. So thank you for taking the time. I'm sure you have also followed the NATO summit, which is, yeah, been hoping to get your take on this. And this happened around the same time as Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov argued that due to NATO's involvement in this war, it's no longer a special military operation, but a war. I mean, all of this, um, yeah, it's deeply troubling, but, uh, yeah, I thought I would ask you first, uh, what your takeaway was from this NATO summit?
Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting question because I suppose, depending upon where you are and what you think, you're going to have a different takeaway. Mine, my takeaways are fairly straightforward. Uh, once again, I'm always stunned by the complete lack of any strategic coherence in anything that Donald Trump says or does. Uh, that makes him very entertaining. That's why he was successful as a reality TV star. But I think that creates havoc and uncertainty everywhere he goes, perhaps has something he likes and thinks he benefits from. So I was surprised that we went back to Greenland. and the criticality of occupying Greenland to keep all those Chinese and Russian ships from somehow or another threatening the United States via Greenland and Europe. So hopefully everybody was just as disinterested in that as I think Georgia Maloney was. I was impressed with her level of complete contempt with which she treated Trump. A very wise move. Unfortunately, others were horribly sycophantic and... far too interested in cultivating him. Other than that, I think it should be clear to people, even to the Israelis who I don't think completely grasp this, that his decision to lift sanctions and provide the F-35 to the Turks is not aimed at Israel. I know the Israelis who are justifiably, I would add, very concerned with the threat from Turkey because it's quite real. Not at the moment, but that That's something that they're going to have to live with if they survive this round. More important, I think Donald Trump is bribing Mr. Erdogan once again to stay on side, to leave the Israelis alone, to distance himself from Moscow, to reduce his cooperation with the Iranians and, quote unquote, be our friend, which really means do what we tell you to do. Now, the fact that he was able to turn these F-35s over to Erdogan may or may not guarantee any of that. Erdogan is innately Machiavellian. He'll move in whatever direction he thinks benefits him and his country. So be it. But I think for the moment, that's what Donald Trump wanted to achieve. And Donald Trump loves ceremony and loves to be celebrated. And I think the Turks did a marvelous job of providing him with all the trappings of power and glory that he could have ever wished for. Much better than anything he gets in the United States, incidentally. Now, beyond that, the Europeans, they were treated to the usual rhetoric because the man is a broken record in the sense that he just keeps repeating, you're not spending enough, you're not doing enough, and every time I deal with you, I'm frustrated, I feel I should withdraw, and so forth. This, in turn... feeds the European desire to find a way to drag the United States into direct military confrontation with Russia. And so all the emphasis on providing more money and more equipment and more nonsense to the Ukrainian regime, which admittedly is very much on its last legs, is part of this effort to drag us in. But it's not just a question of dragging us in. It's also a question of baiting President Putin. And this is something Europeans have tried now for, I would argue, for at least the last three years, but now it's gotten very serious. It is blatantly obvious that Lithuania, other countries that are in NATO, Finland, that border Russia, they're not only openly providing bases and even potentially nuclear weapons on their soil that may belong to us for potential use against Russia, They're effectively letting it be known that they're quite willing to cooperate with Ukraine in any way possible to facilitate harm to Russia. This is catastrophic. This is where President Trump, if he were genuinely interested in any sort of stability in Europe, would put his foot down immediately and say, that's out of the question. That's unacceptable. But he hasn't done that. In fact, what he did... after much cajoling and private hustling, is that he sat there and listened to Rubio, our Secretary of State, explain why it was so important at this phase, if we were going to make progress with negotiations to end the war, that we help the Ukrainians strike deep into Russian territory. If that wasn't enough, President Trump then had to intervene and say, yes, I think this is an escalation. But I think that's the path to success in negotiations and peace. I mean, incomprehensible. All of it reflects complete ignorance of the true situation in Europe and in Russia. But that's not really new. I mean, you have the most blatant amateurs that I think we've had certainly since FDR. I mean, everybody tried to tell FDR over and over and over and over again. They did Churchill as well. and said, look, you know, we're 100% for defeating the Nazis. We understand that. But there is no point in creating a situation that is beneficial to the Soviet menace. And they openly said, you can read this in the General Staff Notes from the Imperial General Staff of the British Army. Stalin's communist Russia represents a far greater and more permanent threat than Nazi Germany. People tried to tell him these things over and over and over again. And what did we get back from FDR?
Speaker 0: I have a hunch.
Speaker 2: Uncle Joe's a good man and we can work with him. After which, with all the information, the people around him, everyone from Harry Dexter White to Harry Hopkins and Felix Frankfurter and Henry Morgenthau, most of these are what we would call today Zionist globalists who are pro-communist. fed him a lot of nonsense, which he eagerly adjusted and repeated. So we had no strategy for the Second World War. And when it became clear that we were finally going to enter Central Europe, that's when, of course, Churchill shows up too late to the party with no real voice anymore because he's now a vassal state of greater America and says, you know, Ike, it would be good if we controlled Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. It would be useful if you took those right away. You know, it was too late and the rest is history. We all know the history and people celebrate, oh, World War II is great. No, it wasn't. It left us in a terrible state of conflict and hostility that lasted almost 50 years that we could have all done without. Then when it finally was, you know, overcome, we couldn't wait to double down on it once again in the hopes of destroying this Russian state that it recently liberated itself from communism. So what do we have with Donald Trump in Istanbul? The same kind of ignorance, the same foolishness, demonstrating once again that he is most influenced, not just by the people around him, but those who talk to him just before he opens his mouth. Because if you'd have asked Trump some of these questions two weeks ago, I think you would have probably gotten a different answer. On more than one occasion, he says, I don't want to send any more money to Ukraine. I want the Europeans to deal with this. I want out. Well, how do you get out when you essentially step in and effectively take over? Which is what he's done. This is, of course, music to the ears of the globalist cabal bouts, Macron. I don't know how he's doing right now, but certainly Starmer and Starmer's successor, who is another Starmer in different clothing. So, The whole thing, I think, was deeply disappointing. Now, there are others who were there who didn't say much. And they're the ones that we should look at very carefully. And I'm talking specifically about the Hungarians, the Croats. You know, they're singularly disinterested in this war against Russia. The Slovaks, even the Poles. And if you look at the Poles recently and the return of the Order of the White Eagle by Zelensky to Poland... because they're sick of Ukrainians for a whole range of reasons. They're also disinterested in losing another 10,000 Polish soldiers at a war with Russia, which is what they did earlier. So he said, here's your white chicken. Take it.
Speaker 0: This is what Zelensky said to the Poles.
Speaker 2: And then they celebrated this Nazi, Bandera and his friends, who were not satisfied just to kill Jews. They wanted to kill Poles and killed over 100,000 of them. And this was celebrated in Ukraine. Insane. Makes no sense. So I think they are going to be more and more influential because Slovakia and Poland, Hungary, they border Russia. They border Ukraine. In other words, they have an interest in what happens there. And at some point, they're going to step up. But as far as we're concerned, everybody wants us involved. But if you're going to try and fight Russia, or if you're going to try and establish, I think, Trump notion that he was thinking about a no-fly zone over Ukraine. I mean, if he tries to do this, what are the Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks going to do? What are the Romanians going to do? Are we going to start flying all of our sorties out of Sweden and Finland? Are we going to start flying them out of Denmark, Norway, England? I don't know if anybody's thinking about it, but that's insane. So I think the whole thing was a catastrophe, except for Donald personally. And he enjoyed himself immensely.
Speaker 0: Yes, seemingly so. But what do you make of the shift by the United States, though? That is, all this talk, as you mentioned, about a no-fly zone. Again, perhaps it shouldn't be exaggerated. It was more of a casual response. I don't think he thought this one through at all, but also now licensing the manufacturing of a Patriots to the Ukrainians or this again comments by Rubio that all these strikes into Russia are a good thing. I mean, does this signal in your mind a shift in the US or is it just, you know, throwing a bone to the Europeans? Because as you said, the main objective of the Europeans appears to be to pull the US into a war now with Russia. Well, it's already, I guess, in the war with Russia, but deepening its involvement. And I guess towards this end, Europeans are willing to swallow any insults coming their way, if it's about Spain or about Greenland or Meloni. As a journalist, I asked Mark Rutte, have you no self-respect? Because we didn't used to be this much of a satellite states before, but I guess, yeah, it is quite remarkable. I mean... Embarrassing, but remarkable. Anyways, my question was just, do you see a shift in US policy or is this just talk? Because it's hard to tell sometimes with Trump.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's a legitimate question. I said on one level, it's dangerous, very dangerous. You know, again, if you go back to Casablanca in January of 1943, this is where FDR suddenly announced his demand for unconditional surrender. And Churchill was shocked. I mean, you could see the film. He sort of turns around, what? We've never discussed that. Even Stalin, who is by no means a humanitarian, Stalin was smart enough to say, you know, we think we should negotiate with these people. And we have contacts. And the Germans may be willing to come to some sort of a negotiated end to this. Why are you doing this? Well, FDR decided that. He decided in isolation. He decided it looked and sounded good. And somebody said, well, where'd you get this? And there was some confusion. Somebody said, well, U.S. Grant during the American Civil War. True American. Unconditional surrender. Why am I bringing that up? Because that's Donald Trump. It's off the top of his head. Oh, I thought this was a good idea. Now, what do you do if you're a Russian?
Speaker 0: That's the question.
Speaker 2: And I think the Russians are taking all of this very seriously. And what have we continually done poorly? We have always missed judged Moscow. We have always dismissed them out of hand. We grossly underestimated them from day one. And even now, we continue to effectively dismiss them out of hand militarily. Now, how one could do that at this stage is incomprehensible. But Glenn, I'm sure you've seen it. I see it all the time here in Washington. Russians, they won't do anything. See, it's the idea that you poke the cobra and you poke the cobra. The cobra sits there but doesn't strike. See, he won't strike. And you poke the cobra. And eventually, what does the cobra do? He strikes. You die. That's what we don't get. That's where we're headed. That's what we're pushing for. The other thing I think is that there's a tendency on the American side to bloviate a great deal, to talk out of turn, to make promises we can't keep. And when all else fails, we bully people. You cannot bully the Russians. You cannot bully the Iranians. You cannot bully the Chinese. Forget it. It's over. It's done. So what do you hope to achieve? I think we're losing a lot of support in the Gulf as well as in Europe from a lot of people. It's not popularly appreciated or known here in the United States, but it's real. I think that's only going to get worse. So I'm afraid. I think it's very dangerous. But I don't think President Trump has any idea how dangerous his statements are and how foolish he looks in front of the world. how easily he's being manipulated by the wrong people, whether it's the Israelis or the Europeans, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I think this tendency to underestimate the Russians, it's probably from the hegemonic piece, because during the Cold War, we knew that we had to be cautious. But after the Cold War, when you have a hegemonic piece, by definition, if you're going to security depends on being so powerful, it doesn't matter what the Russians thinks. The whole logic is that it's safe to ignore the Russians. Once one admits you have to take into consideration their concerns, you essentially recognize that the hegemonic era is over. So I think this is a leftover of the unipolar moment. But the Europeans, though, how are you reading their intentions or strategy? Because they keep making the point that we need to have an immediate... know ceasefire peace as soon as this is in place we can put our troops in ukraine ukraine had kind of nato membership i mean is this i mean stupidity or belligerence are they seeking to prevent the peace or they bought into their own like war propaganda that this is uh you know an imperial war by russia has nothing to do with nato expansionism i mean how are you assessing the europeans there
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know what the average European who votes thinks. I have some inkling of it in Germany. My experience with most Germans is that they're very unhappy with the government in Berlin. They don't support all-out war against Russia. They're much more concerned about the wave of criminality that has come into the country since 2015, thanks to all of these non-Europeans they have. They would like to rid themselves of that problem. Beyond that, I can't You know, I can't say too much. We know that Germany and I would argue great Britain as well. We could say that to some extent about ourselves is de-industrialized. So they're on the verge of economic collapse. The financial system won't support them much longer. And people say, well, how can you say that? Well, all you have to do is look at the numbers of people that can't find work in Germany. Look at the numbers of people who are officially on the dole. who are dependent entirely on checks from the government. I include in that number vast numbers of these unwanted migrants. Same thing is true in Great Britain. What does war always breed? War breeds inflation. And right now, in order to cope, what are we doing? Well, we're raising interest rates. We have no choice. We really don't control them anymore. And if you look at the 10-year bond, in the United States, which is very, very important. Everybody, if you bring on anybody who's an expert in the bond market, whether it's somebody like Guntlach or Luke Grohman or any number of people, and look at oil inflation in the bond market for the interest rates, oil has already inched up to almost $80 a barrel now that the straits are shut down again. They're going to remain shut down for some period of time. I don't know how long that is. People think that we're going to be on a yo-yo. Pause this week, war next week. Pause the following week, war the next week, and so forth. The markets can't cope with that. And eventually, all of the efforts undertaken by the financial gurus that surround Trump, his friends and billionaires in New York City, to suppress the cost of oil by shorting oil repeatedly, exploiting all these public statements at the right point in time, That's going to fail. It's not going to work anymore. And when that does, if you look at the bond market today, the 10 year bond is up to something in the neighborhood of 4.5 or higher. Everyone I know tells me the same thing, and I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think you have to be to figure this out. When that 10 year bond rate, interest rate hits 5%, we're through. We cannot service the debt. We cannot borrow any longer. The destruction of credit, which is inevitable at that point, is going to bring everybody in the West down. And that's where we're headed right now. A lot of people, including me, I thought Trump understood the danger, which is why I thought he made an intelligent statement when he signed the MOU. Everybody knows that that MOU is anathema to Donald Trump and his administration and to everybody in Washington. It's essentially an admission that we are not the hegemonic power. That's your point. We've surrendered. Everybody says, well, it's a surrender document. Well, what we've said is we're not the hegemon anymore. And that's perfectly fine with me and most Americans because we don't want to spend the money on that nonsense. It's unnecessary. We don't have to be the hegemon. We have to defend ourselves and our true interests. But that's not the attitude in Washington. So I think we're going to hit that wall. We're going to hit that 5%. It's going to break, and then we're going to be in free fall. That's going to bring everything to a screeching halt. Now, when does that happen? I don't know. It could happen next month. It could happen at Christmas. It could happen in October. But I think we're headed there. I don't see how you stop it. The Europeans, I think, don't believe that. I think they believe that somehow or another, magically, we can rig the system. And carry on with the, this enormous debt load. I don't think so. I think the, the British, I used to, it would be the French beginning to think the British are the first to go under. You have to look at their guilt market. They have similar problems. They almost went under, under Liz trust. Everybody since Liz trust has essentially been putting band-aids on the economy and on the financial system. That's not gonna last much longer. Britain is very close to open warfare in the streets. I mean, you can only tolerate Pakistani rape gangs and other thuggish elements in your unwanted migrant population from hunting British citizens who are not armed until finally somebody says, enough's enough. So I think bad things are coming. The other thing is this overlaps with not just economic disappointment, but with a very serious class war. And I think that's true in much of Europe because the globalist elites are They're largely out of touch with the majority of people in the population. They don't care. You know, if you listen to people like David Betts, he'll tell you that the people in parliament don't understand the world just 20 kilometers away. They have no idea what's going on. I think that's more and more the case in Paris. You have this sort of bureaucratic parasitic class that sustains itself and thinks that life will go on regardless. And they don't care what happens to the population as long as They get to hold their position of authority and get their paycheck. In the United States, it's all the people that are invested in pension funds, which we're borrowing against at a very high rate. And those people are going to lose everything. That's my generation. These are the so-called boomers that have been paying into these things for years. All of this is going to happen. That is finally going to change everything. But in the meantime, the danger is the stupid remarks we're making about the things that we really cannot do, and if we try, we'll fail, are essentially a bait for the Russians. We're baiting them. Prove that you're serious. Prove that you can do this. And the one thing I would give President Putin great credit for is that he's avoided taking the bait. And he is progressing. I sat down the other day with someone who's experienced in these Russian matters and understands the military and the problems they have. All militaries have problems, by the way. The Russians have theirs. But along the forward line of troops, that continues to advance westward. There's no question about that. It's slow because if it were not for these thousands of drones that have to be dealt with, I think things would be over in a few days. But when you finally create a cauldron and you surround it, it takes two weeks to reduce it, to destroy the people that are in there, and then move in, and then you move forward. But they're getting closer and closer and closer to the edge. But the drone is an irritant. It is not the strategic game changer that people in the West think it is. It's a serious strategic irritant to Moscow. Their public is furious over it. The Russian people are sick of it. And so when Peskov comes out and says, effectively, the SMO is over, war is now, And this is not really new because we've been listening to many people, including Sergei Lavrov, say we're already in World War III. That would have been enough for me, had I been a secretary of state or something, to immediately go to the White House and say, look, we can't allow this. We've got to sit down and talk with these people. The last thing humanity needs is World War III. Well, the Russians are prepared to fight it. We are not. And neither is Europe, as you know. The little Lilliputian armies aren't going to be able to do anything. And when you look at the numbers of troops that we have on the ground, about 110,000, 113,000, maybe more, what are you going to do with that? And then you have to fuel it and sustain it and move it. You have to protect it against all these threats. We're not prepared for any of that. So what are we going to do? Rely on air power? Our air power is largely committed to the Persian Gulf and the war with Iran. I don't know what is really on the backs of these people's minds. I think most of the time it's a bluff, but I do think there's a certain amount of self-delusion that we are really the same power and in the same position as we were in 1991.
Speaker 0: Do you agree with that sentiment of Sergei Lavrov that we're already in World War III or are we heading there or how do you see it?
Speaker 2: I think if I were in his position, viewing the things that are being done that are fundamentally antithetical to Russian national security, I would feel that way. On the other hand, I would be very interested in disabusing him of that thinking, and I would take concrete steps to reassure him. We don't want to do that. We act as though we're the only people that count, and whatever they think is irrelevant. It's this parent-child relationship. that Trump attempts to establish everywhere he goes with everyone and the rest of the world. You know, well, I told them they have a chance and they want a deal. Well, if they want a deal, they'll have to do what I say. You know, really, Mr. President?
Speaker 0: You know, haven't you heard him talk about the, oh, the Iranians are desperate.
Speaker 2: They want a deal. Well, guess what? The Iranians are in a full war footing. Are we? No. And if you're going to fight them, in the region where they live on their doorstep. You better think long and hard about what that means because you're in for a long fight and a real war. And again, we're not prepared for that. I don't give a damn what he says publicly. We're not, you know, the Navy has now admitted that they have more launchers and more tubes for missiles than they have missiles to fire. It's out in the open.
Speaker 0: That's kind of extraordinary. What are you doing? About Trump, though, talking down to all these people, it's not just Trump, though. I think it's also, again, part of the hegemonic order after the Cold War, that his diplomacy was replaced with this teacher-student relationship. That is, we're no longer doing mutual understanding for compromise. Rather, it's the civilizational teacher telling the rest of the world how they should make unilateral concessions to be more like us. We continue to say these things, but the rest of the world isn't listening anymore. But I'm glad you mentioned Iran and all, because at this NATO summit, they didn't only go after Russia. Trump was quite vocal about Iran. That is... Yeah, he argued that the memorandum of understanding is dead. The ceasefire is over. He called the Iranian diplomats for scum. Is the U.S. now heading back into all-out war? Because as you said before, the assumption is often that we have this escalation control. We can do this yo-yo thing. We go to war, we do a pause. War, pause. But the Iranians, they have their internal politics too, it seems. That is, their hawks are... being proven right that the opponent wouldn't abide by these deals. And at some point, why would they want to end the fighting if this off and on fighting is always on their opponent's terms? I mean, at some point, they wouldn't grant this escalation control to the US. Again, that's why I'm a bit... I don't see the strategic value in going back to war against Iran. Not like this, at least.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, this is a Jewish war waged against Iran. I say Jewish because it's by no means exclusively Israeli. It involves the Jewish lobby here in the United States and the massive numbers of billionaires that constitute the backbone of it. They effectively own lock, stock, and barrel, not just Donald Trump, but the Hill. Mr. Netanyahu, when he embarked on this war, this was a war to the finish. He was talking effectively from the very beginning in scorched earth terms. You know, I mean, it's what I call the Mongolian way of war. You know, once the Mongols went to war with you, you were finished, and they would do everything in their power to utterly eradicate you. leaving only enough people alive to pay tribute and govern in your absence. I think that's kind of what Mr. Netanyahu has always wanted. And if you look at the strategy for Russia, it's the same strategy for Iran. We're going to destroy you. We're going to cause the disintegration of your state and society. You will be divided and fragmented. And we will determine who ultimately rules. That's the Netanyahu program, not just for Iran, but for the Middle East. And you can either submit to that or you can go down. And that was always the Mongolian answer. Join us or die. Submit or be destroyed. We are executing on behalf of Israel. Mr. Trump is executing on behalf of Mr. Netanyahu and the people that put him into office. That's where he is. Now, people say to me all the time, what's going on, Doug? Why would he do this? All I can tell you is I think the man's under duress. I don't know what it is. But this is not something that I remember him expressing much interest in. On the contrary, I remember him as being very disinclined to be involved in any of this in the Middle East. So it's not just a tremendous change in him personally. There's something else going on. And I think that we'll learn more when Mr. Netanyahu comes to Washington next week. And there will be closer coordination and more planning. Somebody said to me the other day, well, you know, the Israelis have privately made it clear that if for some reason we should disengage from the war, they will use nuclear weapons. Because that's their answer. Well, you know, I don't know what to say, except that... If they were to do that, that would be the end of the Israeli state once and for all. No chance whatsoever, in my judgment, for that state to survive. But I guess the answer is, okay, we understand and we don't want that to happen, so we'll do whatever you want us to do. Perhaps that's the answer that they've been getting. They certainly seem to get anything they want. They have access to anything they want, including intelligence, and now increasingly to our entire military potential. And no one on the Hill seems interested in obstructing In fact, most of them were eager to turn everything over to them. Then you have to look at the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over decades to buy up these politicians. They own them now. At some point, this can't go on. Now, I keep saying I think it's the financial system and the underlying economic fundamentals, which are so weak, that will bring this to an end. I hope that happens before something worse comes along. And of course, when you listen to President Trump and he is so capable of flip-flopping, I worry that he suddenly flip-flops in the wrong direction and says, well then, let's use a nuclear weapon. He said repeatedly he won't do that. He thinks that's insane. He's repeated that publicly. He's repeated it within the last couple of months. But then we've seen him say a lot of things, turn around and do a 180-degree turn, right?
Speaker 0: And that's what he's just done on the...
Speaker 2: mou but in fairness the mou was never acceptable to us because we were surrendering hegemony we don't want to do that and we're not going to prevail upon the israelis to do anything because they're the ones who seem to have control over us i mean i don't know how else to interpret it do you
Speaker 0: No, I didn't expect the US to implement MOU. I mean, this whole idea of paying all this money in reparations, unfreezing the assets, ending all sanctions. I mean, it wasn't in the cards. I think it was impossible to do as well. But I thought that the US would gradually just string the Iranians along, try to renegotiate, say, oh, we can't pay any reparations because of Congress. something just to, well, open up the Strait of Hormuz and put an end to this on more favorable terms. But for going back into war now, in which that would only harden the Iranian position, this, as I said, it doesn't make any sense, strategically at least, unless they have something up their sleeves I'm not aware of. But when it comes to Trump's new threats now, because he was making the point, we attacked Karg Island, but we might seize it as well. How do you make sense of this? Because again, there must be a reason why they didn't do it in the two last rounds. Why would it go to this extent now? Or is this again, just talk?
Speaker 2: Well, you remember the operation in Isfahan, where we tried to insert special operations forces with considerable air support and expertise from the CIA and so forth on the grounds that they were within range of plutonium that could be, I guess, acquired and then spirited out of the country. That ended in disaster. It was covered or concealed, if you will, by this supposed officer who had been shot down that had to be recovered. That was kind of a cover story. And what we discovered was that in a part of Iran where we thought they would be vulnerable. They didn't turn out to be vulnerable. And so once again, it was a question of have we underestimated the regime? Have we underestimated the military establishment, its various systems, human and remote? Well, I guess we did. And I think a number of people said, in fact, I know they did. They were grateful that this happened because it put an end to his fantasy that we could replicate what we did in Venezuela. Remember, Venezuela... worked because we'd bribed everybody in sight. But even so, as someone with a lot of experience in that area told me, he said, Doug, you know that all these operations are very fragile and failure is only one RPG away. All you have to do is hit one helicopter that's flying by with an RPG or a high powered, you know, machine gun, automatic cannon, something, and you have a disaster in your hands. That's what people don't understand. Special operations forces have remarkable capabilities, but they also have extraordinary limitations. They depend on a degree of accurate information and intelligence in a way that nobody else does. If you're in the regular fighting force before you go and execute a mission, you don't say, I'm sorry, I can't do that mission because I don't have perfect information. There are too many risks involved. will probably get killed because there are too many enemy out there and so forth. That doesn't exist. You get the mission, you go, end of discussion. But special operations forces know their own limitations very well, especially my experience with the Army special ops, very realistic people. And so I think a lot of them were relaxed after they saw this fail, but we avoided heavy casualties and got out. So I think that was taken to mean, look, you want us to go into an island? That's very dangerous. We could probably get there. I don't know if we'll get there without losses, but if we do, what do we do? You know, we're in the island. Do we dig giant holes and jump into them and wait for somebody to rescue us? Or we're just going to be a pincushion for every ballistic missile and unmanned system that's out there. You do have people who have talked about Shabahar seizing that port because it's outside of the Gulf in the theory that if you gained control of that, that would give you leverage over Iran. I haven't quite figured out what that leverage is strategically. I think the Iranians would probably take the Russian position. Well, if they're going to seize Shabahar, we'll defend it if we can. But if we can't, we'll make sure they seize nothing. So then are you going to use the ruins of Jabahar as your launch pad for penetrating Iranian airspace once again with helicopters and B-22s to take control of, say, Bandar Abbas? Excuse me. Or are you going to try and fly from the UAE right across the Gulf? And I think everybody's saying, wait a minute, this is just not... If you're looking for something clean... decisive and effective, this may not be a good option. But I don't know who's there. You've listened to General Kellogg and General Keene. I think they would probably support any of those options. I don't know. I assume so. They'll do whatever in order to widen this war in the hopes that by doing so, they can bring Iran to its knees. I don't see that happening.
Speaker 0: Yeah, I noticed Trump, he removed Syria from this list of state sponsors of terrorism. At least he said he would at the same summit. So yeah, I'm not sure if that is intended to widen the war. But I did want to just follow up on something you said earlier. This is that the Israelis now see Turkey as a growing threat. What is it about Turkey and Israel that doesn't make war unavoidable, but at least sets them on the path to more conflict?
Speaker 2: In 2013, I was invited to a conference in Israel that celebrated the anniversary of the 73 war. And it was a very good conference. I learned a great deal. And of course, I was writing a book at the time and I covered the Egyptian front. of the 73 war. And I got to meet some interesting people who were in it. And that's always best to talk to somebody who's actually in those things.
Speaker 1: But while I was there, I was asked to brief talk about the future. And I had a slide about Turkey.
Speaker 2: Now this is posted on the internet. If you want to Google my name, you can see the presentation, I guess. And at the time I told them, I said, don't misinterpret America's desire to disengage its forces from much of the region as evidence for a lack of support for Israel. We will help you defend yourselves. Absolutely. The problem is everybody's now realized we're not helping them defend themselves. We're helping them kill everybody that they don't like. There's a huge difference between defense and that sort of thing. But I put a slide up about Turkey and said, you know, Turkey has been through, and Turkey is the way they want you to say it now, through a rather profound but steady evolution away from the Ataturk model, which was fundamentally secular and rather Euro-oriented, European in its orientation insofar as modernization was concerned. That's over. The Turks have discovered their roots. Their roots are not in Europe. Their roots are in the Middle East and Central Asia. They are different in terms of religion, culture, language, and race. And they are now celebrating that as opposed to suppressing it because they perceive that Ataturk, who is still widely revered and for good reason, was a brilliant man, was seen as suppressing those things that cannot be suppressed. It's unnatural. You know, it would be like suggesting that all the Norwegians abandon their Norwegian citizenship and Swedes do the same, embrace each other and live in the giant Scandinavian state not likely to happen so i think the turks have come around to the point that we have other obligations we are a great power we are not weak and we should have a greater say in what goes on in this region and oh by the way for a very long time and i've had these discussions with turkish officers they said you know what are you doing in turkey you know you don't need to be here anymore You know, you don't need nuclear weapons here. We don't have bad relations with the Russians. We don't want bad relations with the Russians. I think there's a view that the region can do without us. And they frankly are looking at the Sunni Islamic countries and they're saying we should have better relations with them and we should be prepared to help and support them in the future. I think the Pakistanis and the arrangements that they've now made with the Saudis are just the beginning of that. I think you're going to see more integration and cooperation militarily aimed at defending the Islamic world against outsiders, not just Israelis, but anybody who wants to come in and rule. And that's why in that 14-point memo, it says, no more bases, U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. It's time for you to get out. You're finished here. And they make that point. I'm somebody who agrees with him. I think we ought to get out. But an awful lot of what we have and what we do, as we've discussed before, Glenn, is mortgage to vanity. You know, by the time the British Empire was liquidated, there were a lot of people saying, gee, we held onto that for a long time. We should have gone out earlier. Absolutely. You know, at some point, you've extracted all the benefits you're going to get. And I think we should go. That's not necessarily a criticism of us. It's in the nature of the world. But, you know, that I think is where we're headed. And the Turks fit in with that. And they also have interests that diverge sharply from NATO and sharply from the EU and sharply from us. It doesn't mean we have to have a war, but it means we have to respect it.
Speaker 0: But this puts... But why would the Turkey be more of a concern, say, than Saudi Arabia for the Israelis?
Speaker 2: The Saudis couldn't conquer anybody. Fair enough. The Turks can. And the Turks can put a million men into the field in 30 days. And they have modern weapons. They have their own industrial base. They can build their own weapons and equipment. And remember, you've heard Erdogan say this publicly. He wags his finger. Don't lecture us Netanyahu. Don't tell us what you have We know what you have and we're not afraid What's he talking about nuclear weapons? Because the Turks have always known for years that they could turn to Pakistan if they needed a nuclear weapon What we don't seem to get is both the Turks and the Iranians and others see value in being what I would call potentially a nuclear threshold state, but not being a nuclear state. You know, if you don't have to have a nuclear weapon, why do you want it? It's more trouble than it's worth. But you want to be in a position where if you need it, you can be a threshold state. We, unfortunately, by our behavior, the way we've approached things in Iran, I think we're making it increasingly likely that many, many states will now develop, build, and establish nuclear weapons. In other words, we're achieving the very opposite of what Donald Trump continues to harp on.
Speaker 0: They may never have a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 2: Okay, good luck with that, Donald, because everything we've done has sent an unambiguous signal. You're fools if you don't build one. But I don't think even now they really want it. I certainly wouldn't. I wish we had none of them on the planet, frankly.
Speaker 0: We'd be better off. Yeah, I think that's become the new or will become the new nuclear deterrence. That is, if you develop the nuclear weapons, you incentivize others to get them as well. But to be these nuclear threshold states, that is, if Israel attacks Iran with nuclear weapon, the Israelis know that the Iranians can build a few by the end of the week. I think this is essentially will be sufficient, a middle road, that is, to have the deterrence without their proliferation.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I can't remember the gentleman's name. I should, but it doesn't occur to me right now. Maybe you'll remember, but the Frenchman who developed and built the French nuclear deterrent force. And he was asked by a visiting U.S. Army officer, well, how many nuclear weapons do you think you really need? And he smiled and he said, one. He said, one? He said, of course. These things are so damaging. They're so destructive. One is enough. Well, there's a lot of truth and wisdom in his statement. You don't need very many. Now, the Russians, for various reasons, and this is back to where we began. Why is it so dangerous when someone like Sergei Lavrov, who's a very, I would call him one of the more balanced, thoughtful men in international relations today, You know, in the old 19th century, we would point to him as the sort of dean of the diplomatic community. You know, he would be viewed in those terms, as Bismarck was at one point. Gorshikov, you know, I'm trying to remember his name, but it... Oh, gosh, I can't remember. He was a German. Nesselrode, who was also the Tsar's representative. And before these people, you had... You had many others, but the point is these were professionals who had spent years, if not decades, in these communities. And when they spoke, everyone listened, whether it was meditation and so forth, because they had the reputation for integrity, accuracy, and seriousness. And they were educated men. So when I hear him, that really should get everyone's attention. It doesn't, because those things that I just mentioned are not respected. in Washington. If they were, most of the people sitting there wouldn't have a job.
Speaker 0: I think the French was the goal who made this comment that a nuclear weapon only needs to impose unacceptable damage. It's a bit like the Swiss strategy during the Second World War. They didn't need The turns by denial, all they needed to do was make sure that it would be too painful for the Germans to take Switzerland. So that kind of puts the limitations on how many nukes you need, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the nice thing is that this ISR strike capability, intelligence, defense, reconnaissance, matched to strike weapons, demonstrated by the Iranians, suggested most middle-sized and smaller powers can build that and impose exactly what you're talking about. The cost becomes suddenly so high. Let's forget it. That's not the way forward. Let's talk.
Speaker 0: We're learning this lesson the hard way. Well, that's historically been the source of peace, though. When the weapons favor defense as opposed to offense, then you usually have some period of stability. But anyways, thank you very much for taking time out every day to share your perspective. So thanks again.
Speaker 1: Sure. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Daniel Davis: Trump Says "the Ceasefire Is Over" With Iran & Escalates the War With Russia https://youtu.be/Mp1drUnqlig https://t.co/PrIvXt8w26
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centered on NATO summit claims about the US returning to a more direct war posture against Iran while also deepening involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, and how abrupt escalation could unfold.
On Iran, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis said President Trump is “trapped” in a position he “can’t get out of,” and that during an Air Force One interview he was asked whether the US was going back to full-scale war and answered “I don’t know,” then said that if it happened it would be “easy” and “blooder.” Davis argued that prior coercive and military approaches are “fizzling out” and that Trump lacks a clear idea of what military power is supposed to accomplish when it does not produce the expected compliance. Davis compared this to earlier performative or expectation-driven strikes, but said the current situation is not “following the script.”
Davis then described how the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and ceasefire ended, focusing on Point 5 regarding administration of the Strait of Hormuz. He said the wording left room for interpretation: it stated the Iranian side would determine “safe passage” and “not charge a fee” for 60 days, with a shift afterward in which “Iran and Oman would determine the future course,” while Iran maintained that on day 61 it would resume fees and govern administrative rules. Davis said the Iranian side interpreted the paragraph as granting Iran authority to set rules, including enforcement if ships did not comply with Iran’s prescribed course and paperwork procedures. He said the US, lacking authority in the MOU to determine how things happened in the strait, nevertheless attempted to set a southern corridor path “nearly in Omani waters,” after which Iran warned ships for about two days, then hit ships on the third day. Davis said CENTCOM’s ex post assessment on July 7 characterized the action as response to Iran violating the ceasefire and MOU, and that US strikes continued under that interpretation.
Davis argued the ambiguity and differing readings of the same paragraph created a friction point, and questioned the “20 to 1” rationale as large-scale strikes that did not change Iranian behavior and risked driving escalation. He said Iran responded by indicating possible withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty and changing nuclear doctrine, and by continuing to fire back. Davis also referenced Iran’s stated claim that it shot 10 missiles at an air base in Jordan, with Jordan claiming it shot everything down.
He said Trump has suggested further measures such as seizing Karg Island and targeting desalination plants and oil, and warned this could push the conflict toward action against Gulf states. Davis argued the Iranian approach is not likely to be submissive and that Iranian leadership has previously specified responses if the US targets certain sites. He also said US statements described potential strikes that might expand from military targets to Iranian cities, calling this a punitive raid against civilian populations and describing it as a war crime. He linked such escalation risks to a collapse of “guardrails,” including separation of powers and the War Powers Act, and said he expects retaliation against Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and further refusal to yield on nuclear proliferation constraints.
The conversation expanded to wider NATO dynamics. Davis argued that Western leaders have abandoned moral or rule-of-law “guardrails” and replaced them with “pure power politics,” using language to steer public perception and keep populations controlled. He specifically cited Mark Rutte’s comments portraying US actions against Iran as understandable because Iran was not following the ceasefire, while condemning Russian actions as “evil,” describing the contradiction as part of a power-based narrative.
On the Russia-Ukraine war, Davis said Trump’s position is unclear and that Trump, like with Iran, “doesn’t know” what to do because he faces no “rational way out” without political or strategic loss. Davis described a “least destructive” option as winding down support for Ukraine over time, giving time for a negotiated deal with Moscow to end the war and stop the killing, potentially requiring changes including acceptance of that outcome not including Volodymyr Zelensky. He argued Trump is unlikely to do this and instead may “kick the can down the road.”
Finally, Davis addressed Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that the “special military operation” has become a war because of NATO involvement. Davis said this language opens the door to a broader framework where Russia’s public and leadership begin preparing for wider consequences, including gradual escalation, since war changes what Russia can mobilize. The discussion concluded that public admissions about NATO involvement could pressure governments to respond and that the speakers feared the world is “sleepwalking” toward wider conflict.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. We are joined again by Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, a four times combat veteran and host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. And I will leave a link in the description to his excellent podcast. So thank you for coming on. We now see that the US seemingly is going back to war against Iran, but also deepening its involvement in the war against Russia, if we're to believe some of the statements being made now at this NATO summit. I thought a good place to start might be Iran. How exactly did this happen? From what I understand, Iran attacked civilian ships that did not follow Iran's administration of the Strait of Hormuz. Anyways, now we're told by Trump that the Iranians are scum, the MOU is dead, and he's going to hit the Iranians very hard. I'm also wondering if we can unpack... I guess none of us really believed that this would last, but nonetheless, this seems to be a very abrupt and violent end to this ceasefire.
Speaker 1: You know, Glenn, the bottom line here is that President Trump has no idea what he's doing, and he doesn't know. And I'm not using that as a pejorative. I'm using his own words and observing what's going on. He's trapped himself into a position he can't get out of and doesn't know how to get out of. All the levers he has previously used to be able to succeed and to bludgeon people and to coerce them and to threaten them or whatever has worked up until now. And he doesn't know how to act when all of a sudden, all of these things that have historically worked, not just for him, but also for previous presidents are now fizzling out. They're not succeeding. Even when we use a lot of military power. And this dynamic was caught on Air Force One last night. There was an interview he had where he was point blank asked, are we going back to full-scale war? Not just is the MOU dead, not just is the ceasefire dead, but are we going back to war? And his literal answer, the first word out of his mouth and the second phrase is, I don't know. I don't know. But if we did go back, it would be easy. It would be blooder. And then he goes on there. But his initial answer as the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, the guy that took us into this war, doesn't know what to do now. And when you when you have the guy who's calling the shots, it doesn't know. And he has, you know, here just this whole recent experience here, episode here of trying to use military power. And he bragged about hitting them 20 to one. And, you know, I'll do the same if they don't learn the lesson, although he never says what the lesson is supposed to be. He doesn't even have a clear idea what this power is supposed to accomplish here. And that by itself is a huge problem. But he just it's not working, whatever he may think that he wants them to do, which I think is just generally speaking to just bow the knee and to submit and to go to ground. Like what used to happen when whether it was I think even I don't remember if Obama did, but certainly Biden and Trump, they used to launch cruise missiles periodically into Syria. Bashar al-Assad would, you know, go to ground or he would take no reaction in response. And I think that's what they expected here, too, that that's what would happen. Look what happened in Venezuela. Trump keeps talking about that. We had one big splashy make for TV military operation where we killed a bunch of people, had some helicopters against the backdrop of some cool videos and fires in the background, all of which were performative, had nothing to do with the actual seizing of Maduro. That was coordinated from the inside and could have been done at a much lower level. But he wanted the for TV splashy stuff. And he got it and he got him and it worked in and out clean, no casualties, et cetera. That's what he think is supposed to be the case. And so this one is not following the script because it's not working. So what is he going to do now? He doesn't know. You ask about how we got to this point here. This really is another one of the examples of of why we're in such dire straits, both here and in the Russia-Ukraine war, because we don't want to do the hard work of diplomacy. When we got this memorandum of understanding, it took whatever it was, I think from April the 9th, 8th, or 10th, somewhere around there, until it was finally signed on, I think, June 17th. So just barely a month away to get a 14 point thing signed up, which by the way, was never a deal, which is the phrase President Trump kept using, but it was merely a signpost that started The negotiations to get to a deal that would have ended the war and that juxtaposition and confusing of terminology is, I think, more important than just wordsmithing, because he thinks that this is a deal and he wanted to short circuit it. He wanted to do it quickly, just get it done. So he finally agreed to something. And I think even you and I have talked about this in the past that there wasn't even going to be an agreement until both sides had a single agreement. group of points word for word that everybody agreed to and would sign off on. And up until just right before this thing was signed, you had these radically different claims from the two sides about what the points were. But then when it was signed, it nearly was all on what the Iranian side had been talking about. Well, here's the problem that we're facing right now. Point number five is the part about who's in control of the Strait of Hormuz. in that point, there is a lot of room for interpretation. And herein is your first problem, because we were going really quickly to get this done to where we could just at least get both sides to sign it. It was left ambiguous. And this is the first friction point. In it, it says that the Iranian side will determine the safe passage for the Strait of Hormuz, and they will not charge a fee for 60 days. And then it said that going forward, and it said 60 days only. So it was a very finite period of time. And then the remainder of that paragraph talked that Iran and Oman would determine the future course. And the Iranian side was unambiguous both before the thing was signed and afterwards that they would go back to charging a fee on day 61, and they never said anything different than that. Well, Iran interpreted that paragraph in number five that they would set for the administrative functions that they set rules out. And they said, okay, Here's our rules. You have to follow this course of action here. You have to get this authority and this approval and go through this paperwork or whatever. And then here's the path you can go. And if and then they added and this is not an MOU. And if you don't, there's going to be an enforcement. And here's what it's going to be. Well, when the southern passage, the U.S. tried to set up their own in violation of the MOU because we had no authority on the MOU. the MOU President Trump signed, did not give us any authorization to determine how anything happened in the strait. But we took it and we said, here's our path through the southern path, the southern corridor, nearly in Omani waters. And we said, this is where it's going to be. And so ships started going through it. And the Iranian side says, no, this is the rules we set. You're going to go on this one and you're going to go on according to what we say. And if you don't, then we're going to fire on you. And I wanna say it was like two days that they were given that warning and then on the third day, then they hit the ships and they hit those three ships and you know what happened after that. So we interpreted that and Central Command in its first ex post on the 7th of July said that this was in response to Iranian violating the ceasefire, violating the terms of the MOU and we're gonna continue hitting them until they come back into compliance or something to that effect here. But you had two very different interpretations of the same paragraph, which was left ambiguous. Now, here's the problem with us. That's not surprising. It's not shocking you have a disagreement. But our response, this 20 to 1, as Trump calls it, and there was some pretty big shots that came after that. Towards what end, Glenn? What are you trying to accomplish here? Where is the value in going 20 to 1? And CENTCOM released overnight because I think this is the second or third consecutive night that we've done something. All these targets... And they're showing that, you know, in these images and these the black and white pictures that come out and, you know, the thermal imageries and all that kind of stuff and all the stuff blowing up stuff on tarmacs, just buildings here and there, some what looks like something on some water or something near. What does that do? What is it? Are you just trying to be punitive and you're trying to harm them? So that they don't do what the MOU says they can, which is to determine how the I don't know what we're trying to accomplish, but it's having the exact opposite effect because the Iranian side has come out and said, oh, by the way, and this is through one of their official news agencies, as far as I believe it was. is they said, hey, we have a bill on the floor in the parliament that may withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty, the NPT, and we may change our nuclear doctrine. So if you keep going, we may take other measures. On top of, we're going to continue to fire back on anything that happened. And just before you and I came on the air here today, the Iran side said that they shot 10 missiles at an air base in Jordan. Jordan claims they shot everything down. We'll find out later on what's the truth of that, but they apparently did take them under fire. So they're not backing down from anything. Not on none of this, none of these. Therefore, where is President Trump going to go? And you have his answer. I don't know. So where can this war go? I don't know either, but it ain't good.
Speaker 2: Well, this is the weird part. The measure of success seemingly by Washington, which is just, oh, look how many people were killed or how much destruction we inflicted. Because Again, this could make sense if it's a war of attrition, you're bleeding out the adversary. But again, the whole point there for the Iranians is they demand to have security. And again, if you undermine your security to too great of an extent, you do need nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent. You do need stronger control over the Strait of Hormuz as a way of shaping a regional security architecture. It seems, as you said, very counterproductive. But again, as long as this isn't challenged, that, oh, look how many people were killed and stuff we blew up, that this is the measurement of success, it's, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. One really has to go back to the question you said. How does this actually help us put an end to this thing? But it seems, well, if the goal here is to bleed out the other side or exhaust, you know, it's not random stuff you have to kill. I guess it's, you know, this... the assets along the Strait of Hormuz. I'm not sure exactly how this would be achieved, but who is exhausting who at this point? And Trump also made the point that, oh, we might seize Karg Island. And, you know, this kind of random comments, it seems, you know, why didn't the US seize Karg Islands in the two previous rounds? It seems that it would be so reckless and be such a crazy escalation. But Are we past that now? We go straight from we ended the war to now all out. It could be total war because the Iranians would then possibly take actions against the Gulf states, which could cease their existence. That is, if they end all their energy infrastructure, their desalination plants, a lot of these countries will go back to being deserts. I mean, where do you think this is going? Are they actually going where Trump is suggesting?
Speaker 1: Listen, I mean, that's a very legitimate question you ask because President Trump broached it. He's the one that specifically said desalinization plants, that they could go after the oil on Kargalin. And I don't know, I might want to take it, says President Trump. I mean, just adding even more concern on the Iranian side that this isn't a literal existential fight and that we may have to fight this to the death. And listen, Tom is not on our side here. And I think whereas we're, President Trump doesn't know what he's doing, I think the Iranian side does. And I don't think that it was just any haphazard action that they were surprised turned into kinetic response when they were firing on those ships. I think they knew full well that it was likely we were going to do that. But I think that they also recognize that if President Trump does that and goes too far, that then that gives the Iranians all the justification that they would ever need to hit all of those targets in the GCC countries in Israel, which they have again specified they would do if we hit those kinds of targets. They've never changed any of that. And for President Trump to go back and say, well, yeah, we might do it as I don't know if he thinks he's going to scare them into submission. I don't know. But I mean, that's That should be long since in the dustbin of history. They're never going to submit to words. And they've shown that they will sit tight and suffer a lot because we can. I think I saw it was either President Trump or somebody from the Department of Defense yesterday leaked out that the United States is considering if these message strikes here haven't worked these first few rounds, the next one might be to Iranian cities. And listen, that's just a war crime. I mean, that's straight up. You cannot say, all right, we're going to now go on a punitive raid and we're going to start hitting Iranian cities. That has nothing to do with military capability, has nothing to do with control of the Strait of Hormuz. It's just harming the population and putting pain on the government by hitting their people. That is a literal war crime, point blank, black and white. And are we considering going down that path? And of course, I used to think, well, we wouldn't do that. They might find some Oh, well, you know, like that bridge that we hit in Tehran before the end of the 40 days, right at the end of that, which clearly had no military utility at all, had nothing to do with the conflict in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz. It was just a punitive thing. And Trump hit that. And now he's saying, I can take them all out, et cetera, which is, again, a war crime. And given what we have done on that bridge, given what we did in the Caribbean Ocean, given what we did in Venezuela, given what we're talking about doing in Cuba, what we might even doing for God's sake, Greenland, for crying out loud, how can you say that he might not do this too? Where are the constraints? Where are the balance of power within the U.S. government? Where are the guardrails? They're gone. It used to be the Constitution, separation of powers between the Article I, Article II, the executive branch, and the judicial legislative branch. That used to exist. That's gone. It used to be the 1973 War Powers Act. That's gone, too. It used to be morality. That's gone, too. So I can't put past that he would do that. And listen, tell me what you think. I can't even imagine a scenario where we expand this and just start a punitive raid against killing civilians in cities throughout Iran that have no relation to the war at all. and to think that they're not gonna do everything they can to likewise hit similar targets in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in UAE, et cetera, or that they wouldn't make good on that last threat and get rid of the NPT and go to race to a bomb somewhere. And from what I'm told from technical people I've talked to, if they made that decision, even with the damage from the Midnight Hammer, that's not the only place they can do business throughout their country. They could literally have a bomb within a month or so of a decision, and then we could just get a nuclear detonation somewhere in the middle of an Iranian desert and say, hey, the next one is going to be falling on one of your countries if you want to go down that path. That's where we're pushing them if we continue on with this immoral, unethical, and illegal path to just try and force them by death to do what we want.
Speaker 2: No, I agree. I think while the Iranians see this as an existential threat, so they will go all the way, I think, up that escalation ladder. And I think that's one of the things they communicated clearly in this war as well, that they weren't going to be like the Syrians or the Iraqis sitting by and being hit, hoping that, you know, if we don't respond, perhaps the US won't bomb us so hard. And I think this, again, they see this as an existential threat. And I think the restraint is simply that they don't want the US to go up the escalation ladder either. That is to start punitive bombing of city centers. But of course, if the US goes up the escalation ladder and does this, there's no reason for restraint on the Iranians either. And I think this is why it's very dangerous. But I think you're correct as well about that. the assumptions by Trump. I think for him, diplomacy means a little bit of sweet talk that is, oh, the Iranians are good people. We're actually friends. We get along. And then, well, he didn't use those words with Iranians, but that's usually what he says. And then actually delivering nothing. You know, it worked on the Russians in 2025 at least, but the Iranians, it seems they won't have any of it. But overall, this... This NATO summit, this is where all these comments were made. It was just a weird, very hawkish comments that were coming. Trump was going to remove Syria from the list of state sponsor of terrorism, which is a strange point in time now that the US installed Al-Qaeda leaders in Syria. This is apparently the time to make them removed from the sponsorship of terrorism. He called the Spanish terrible people. He wanted economic blockade of them. The Danes, of course, making threats, seizing their territory, continuous fighting with Maloney, essentially calling her a stalker, this squabble with Starmer. All these people, it seems so reckless and pointless. But I did want to ask about the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, because he essentially made the Europeans now complicit in the attacks on Iran, because he said, oh, the US efforts are, you know, bombing are completely understandable of Iran, because Iranians aren't following the ceasefire. So, of course, America should bomb them a little bit. Again, he also came out almost in the same breath, also telling the Russians that, you They're crazy because they attacked another country. He called this, this is a playbook of the 19th century, you know, and he doesn't do that. You know, the West doesn't do this because we are growing, we are grown, we are grown up democracies. Uh, how do you, how do you make, I mean, do these people not hear themselves talk?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they don't. Or they do. Uh, they don't care. They're, they... the European elite and really just say the Western elite, because I can't exclude our side from this conversation either. We have jettisoned any actual moral foundation. I mean, just cut to the chase. We no longer have a moral basis for what we do. We used to claim it and we never were fully applied it to ourselves, of course, but we kind of tried to and in large parts, sometimes more, sometimes less, we kind of held to these moral foundations and boundaries to our actions. We were limited in how far we would go in something. We would do a lot of stuff that was always dark and whatever, covertly and small scale. Now then, that facade has come off. And now then that, what we used to do behind the shadows and things on small scale, now that we do out in the open. And so there are no longer any moral guardrails. I'm not talking about any specific religion. I'm just talking about normal human morality of, you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you and just rule of law, standard rule of law. We have jettisoned all that, not just the United States, but Europe too. And so what we have put in its place is pure power politics. And we have also, because many of our majority, I would argue, of our populations in the West are still moral people, and they do use moral guardrails in their normal conduct of business. We do have rule of law. If you don't follow, you'll go to jail. So you have to, whether you want to or not. But by and large, less today than it has been because of what our leaders are doing, but still, by and large, we are still moral people. But these folks are now using us as tools. And so they're using language as tools to control us. They condescend on us. They mock us with stuff like what Mark Rutgers did. I shouldn't have been, but I was shocked when I first saw that clip, because on the one hand, he's saying everything that we did against Iran is perfectly just, even though it violated every kind of law you can imagine, even common sense. And then you turn around at the same time and point a finger over in Moscow and say, well, they can't. They're evil people for doing this. The Iranian people are evil. Everybody's evil except for us. And whatever we want to do is therefore right by definition. And whether there was a law or not, whether it was separation of powers or not, it doesn't matter. If we want to do this, we can. And I'm going to lie to you. And I'm going to try to convince you that we're actually right and that they are evil. Therefore, they deserve it. Whatever the laws may be, we're the one by our actions by definition are right. And there's by definition are wrong. Doesn't matter what it was or if they happen to contradict each other. Don't look under the curtain. Don't think about that. Just listen to the words coming out of my mouth. Believe it and act on it. Because Glenn, here's the thing. They are mocking us by saying, I have such low regard for you as a body. You're just a bunch of sheep. All I wanna do is keep you controlled. And so I'll tell you whatever I think you need to hear to make you happy. I'm gonna block information that I don't want you to have. And I'm gonna prevent some people from talking here. So the only thing you hear is my voice. Just pay attention to my voice. And then that way that they don't get people rising up, they don't get people voting them out of office, or at least that's the theory. And then they'll keep on doing whatever they want to. And I can't imagine that these intelligent, educated people are not fully aware of these contradictions and could care less about them. It's about power. And so they want to do what they want to do and they don't want the people to get in the way. So they're going to keep them in the dark and they're going to keep them like sheep, just fed a bunch of crap and then just ignore them and try to block them from being able to do anything. That is why what Mark Rutgers says is logical and because if you take the morality out of it, then words are just tools for me to control the population. We're not doing anything for the people. We're doing things in spite of the people, and we're trying to keep them in the dark as much as we can and keep them content or focused on something else so they're not focused on what we're trying to do. Here's the big problem with that, aside from just the surface of it itself by the immorality you're leading a population into historically, it just doesn't work. And you end up collapsing and causing tremendous harm to yourself. But the bigger issue at stake right now is that it's not going to work because the Iranians are are fed up with it, and now because they had about a 20-year preparation period, they can endure the military, and now they're no longer following instructions. And God help us, over in Russia, they were late coming to the recognition here. They still thought there was a chance for diplomacy and logic and ration to avoid the war in 2022, 2021, up until that point. And now I think they, too, even after four years of war, they still thought, as of 2025 in Anchorage, I think, They still thought, no, and actually throughout 25, they thought maybe we'll still make this work. And I think now finally they too have come to realize and adopted our view that only power is going to work here. And that is why it is catastrophically dangerous for all of us right now, because if Iran's holding on to here and they're not going to give in to any more of these strikes and they're going to issue their own. And yet the Russians for firmly go over to the side that says we're going to recognize now the new rules. It's no longer rule of law or the international rules-based orders that we used to kind of keep to. Now it's just power. Okay, that's the rules. Then we're going to play according to those rules. And that means we're going to start using power in ways that we never had before either. And that's how you get World War III.
Speaker 2: Well, Trump used to warn about this. I mean, when he met with Zelensky in the Oval Office, he told Zelensky exactly what you said. He said, you're playing with World War III. But now, Ford... the following year. We see now at the NATO summit, he's arguing that Ukraine can get a manufacturing license for the Patriot missiles. He casually threw out that, well, we could implement a no-fly zone. You had Marco Rubio making the point that, well, there's these deep strikes on Russia, deep into its territory, by the way, with NATO weapons based on targeting from NATO intelligence. This will help to facilitate peace. You have this constant comments about Article 5, because I think they know Russia will retaliate. And well, then they need this reassurance that Americans will come to the aid of the Europeans. And overall, Zelensky is every reason in the world to sell all this optimism, wishful thinking, delusion. But NATO seems so eager to buy it as well. So yes, of course, we're defeating the Russians, the world's largest nuclear power. which sees itself fighting an existential war, yes, we're defeating it. This is going to end perfectly, no problem. I mean, no real discussions, just sloganeering. Where is Trump headed here, though? Because I saw a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, argue that the special military operation is now a war. And we see Trump essentially making this war his own. I mean, he can't seriously say this is Biden's war anymore. This is Trump's war as well. So is the U.S. going back into war with Russia? Or it was already fighting, but deeper, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll give you an authoritative answer from no less an authority than the president of the United States. I don't know. He doesn't know what he's going to do in the Iran war. He doesn't know what he's going to do in the Russia war because there's no rational way out that doesn't see him being a loser. And that seems to animate him more than almost anything else. because he doesn't want to walk away from the rents, which has been my argument all the way through. And still to this day, even with all the stuff that's happened since, that's still the most, I won't say best, because that's not an accurate term. The least worst of all the options on the table right now is to just walk away and take the heat that's going to come with that. And then in the Russia situation, it's like the least worst there is just say, you know what? This can't be solved militarily. And for us to continue trying is going to potentially escalate this into Europe. And therefore, Article 5 or any, no matter what happens, even if it's a quasi-Article 5, then we could be in a continental conflict that we can't win there either. So the only thing that we can do is just bring this to an end. And I'm going to stop all my support for the Ukraine side. And I know this is, to many of the supporters, this is like heresy. But hear me out. because it's the rational, logical thing to do by saying, I'm gonna give you X amount of time, a month, three months, six months, whatever, you pick a number, And we're going to maintain our current level of support. And then at that point, it's going to go down to 40%. And then it's going to go down another 40%. And then a month later, it's going to be zero. So you're going to get wound off of it. But that gives you time with the current situation to make the best negotiated deal you can with Moscow. And it will be bad for you. It will definitely be on the plus side of Moscow because they have the leverage. But then the war will come to an end. The killing of your people will stop. You'll still maintain whatever you can negotiate in terms of control. from your side. And it may not include Volodymyr Zelensky. That may be part of the requirement. And then you have to be willing to accept that. But that's something that they've got to figure out. President Trump can say, we're out of this. And then, therefore, signaling also to Brussels and to Berlin and Paris and London, et cetera, that, hey, folks, this is undoable. And obviously, he'll be saying all this behind the scenes, too, before anything is set out public. And just say, listen, it doesn't make any difference what we want. It only matters what we can do and what we can't do. And what we can't do is is win on our terms. So let's don't get us into a war we can't win, and it could be catastrophic. It could be nuclear. We could lose millions of people, and everyone will lose. Whatever you think the cost would be for doing this kind of the European walkaway plan here, however bad it would be, and it would be, it would be a lot of bad things. It is nothing compared to ignoring all that and continue trying to go down this path, which will lead to potential catastrophic destruction for us all. That's logical. That's what he should do. But that's not what he's going to do because I don't think he has the capacity. Just like he's now just foundering here in Tehran, trying to figure out what to do and just throwing some missiles down to just buy some time to hope something else emerges that it can allow him to win without admitting defeat. I think he's doing the same thing over here because I think they still have this mentality that we'll just kick the can down the road and we'll just punt this until I'm out of office. I don't know, something like that. Because he doesn't recognize that the conditions are changed and that Iran and that Russia and everybody else is paying attention to this too. China is paying attention to it. Other adversaries are paying attention to it too. And they realize how limited our power is as we exposed it in Iran by itself in the first 40 days and what we couldn't make happen because of all of our air and naval power. that has exposed our weakness and our industrial capacity, et cetera. That's all been exposed, so there's no good way out of any of this, Glenn, none. We just have to find the least destructive way to escape and pray that we can live to fight and rebuild and retool ourselves for another day that can sustain us going into forward. If we don't, we're probably going to stumble into World War III.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the Europeans, they saw this as a success, that is to them. get Trump to become more hawkish on Russia, get deeper involved. It's very to what ends, a bit like you said with Iran. They haven't thought this one through exactly how this is going to end. I mean, which side wins? I think all of this will be kind of pointless by the time nuclear war would arrive. But as you said, we're kicking the can down the road while moving towards World War III. And I think that's a good point. The assumption is that we can just continue the current status quo. But I think what's evident with this conflict is they keep escalating. And also the messages which are sent, because now that Trump says the MOU with Iran is dead, that's what the Iranian hawks said. That's why they said, don't sign this, because the Americans will never implement it. well, they were proven right. Now they're going to have wind in their sails. The next time around, it's going to be very hard to get a similar deal in place. Same as Russia. I think they watched what happened in Iran. They've seen their own deals, well, continuously being violated. And of course, China's probably making the same conclusion. But on the Russian issue, just the last question since World War III, I think the most likely answer a place that will break out would be the war against Russia. What is the significance, you think, of Dmitry Peskov making this comment that the special military operation has now, because of the involvement of NATO, become a war?
Speaker 1: I've asked a number of Russian speakers and I've got a lot of different answers. My assessment from really paying a lot of attention to all the things that the Russians have been doing and saying for, I mean, actually for decades, but certainly during the four and a half years of this war. I perceive, because they made such a big issue of it earlier, and even as recently as a year ago, you may recall last year, I think it was late last year, President Putin himself said, hey, listen, y'all need to understand this is not a war. This is a special military operation, because if it's a war, he said, that's going to mean a bunch more things. He said that. And so now that Peskov has used that language and nobody in the Kremlin that I saw contradicted him, then I think that that is said, that door, we're now opening it. Not opened, but opening it. And I think that they're saying, all right, we're going to now explore where we're going and what we can do here. And we may be in the process of changing things. And I think that mentally for the Russian public, I think that they're saying, hey, we don't want to hit this from zero to 100 in one move. So I'm going to start... slowly get in the idea and that some things may be changing because you can't do mobilization, you can't bring, you know, mobilize the reserve, et cetera, until you have, you know, a war. You can't fully mobilize the economy unless you have a war, et cetera, because that's what Putin said is the difference between it. So I think that by saying that, they're now opening the doors that if something doesn't happen with diplomacy that we can live with, This is where we're going. So I think that we can see, look for more signs coming out, more statements, and then maybe some more action. And I think that that's where it's going to head if we don't do something different. And of course, I don't think we will. So I'm really worried about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another sign could be Maria Sakharova. She was making the point that the Estonians were essentially caught for being involved in the strikes on St. Petersburg. I find this to be very interesting. I mean, everyone knew this, but as soon as the Russians confirm it, that they know it, then that puts a lot of pressure on the government to actually do something about it. Why would you admit that tiny Estonia is attacking you? Why would you admit this if you're not prepared to do something about it? So the fact that they're now recognizing publicly the deep involvement of NATO in attacking Russia, destroying Russian territory, infrastructure killing russians that nato is involved in this now they have to do something so i think um yeah i think they also have to prepare their own public for the for the fact that we are going up that escalation ladder it's gone too far and i just wish some of this would be reflected in any of the western media or at least a comment by any politician but we have nothing as you said we have making the point that oh this is the russians attacking other countries how 19th century i mean It's sad that this is where we are. Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No, I got nothing to add to what you just said and what I ended with a minute ago. If it was said that the world sleptwalked into World War I, we are now more like zombie heading into World War III and somebody better damn wake up pretty quick from this malaise. Or we're all going to stumble right into it and it won't be anywhere near limited like it was in World War I. This could be catastrophic.
Speaker 2: Well, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, thank you so much for your time and let's hope for better days.
Speaker 1: Let's hope.
Speaker 0: Thanks very much, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Disastrous NATO Summit: Toward Nuclear War with Russia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ1WdcPWxFU https://t.co/ZVfVAKv2xx
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn (Speaker 2) discuss the NATO summit in Ankara, portraying it as marked by heightened militarism, hostility toward NATO’s “enemies,” internal tensions, and a lack of serious strategy. Sachs says the summit amounted to “Trump isms” and “two days of” behavior he describes as bizarre, with leaders treating escalation as normal and joking about serious realities. He cites examples including statements about Spain and Greenland, and argues that NATO is not functioning as a serious alliance.
They also discuss rhetoric and policy toward Russia and Iran. Sachs says European leaders call for deeper strikes into Russia using their own weapons and intelligence with the objective of forcing Russia to the negotiation table, while European leaders continue to boycott diplomacy. Glenn references statements including Marco Rubio arguing that attacking Russia helps advance peace, Trump’s casual reference to imposing a no-fly zone, and licensing Patriot missile manufacturing in Ukraine, raising the question of whether the United States is getting deeper into the war again. Sachs responds that Trump campaigned on ending “useless wars,” but that U.S. wars are driven by the military-industrial-digital complex, with big tech and platforms making profits and using wartime conditions to test systems and upgrade weapons. He argues Trump does not have the strategic capacity to change underlying dynamics, and that U.S. policy returns to sanctions, deadlines, and threats rather than a sustained diplomatic course.
Mark Rutte’s stance is also discussed. Glenn says Rutte “threw NATO’s weight” behind the U.S. war against Iran, sending a signal that NATO is focused on war rather than peace. Glenn asks Sachs how to interpret Russian statements, including Dmitry Peskov’s claim that the “special military operation” has become a war due to NATO involvement. Sachs says Russian leadership does not expect U.S. diplomacy to play a decisive role, does not give heed to U.S. diplomatic efforts, and has largely given up after earlier hopes. He attributes Russia’s position to the enduring influence of the U.S. security state and military-industrial-digital complex, and says Russia has largely moved toward a Eurasian future aligned with views he associates with China and Iran.
Sachs claims Western governments’ strategy leads to escalation rather than resolution, emphasizing that the war kills vast numbers of Ukrainians, solves nothing, and that Russia will not surrender to strikes into deep Russia—escalating toward nuclear war if pushed. He argues public opinion in the U.S. and Europe does not want escalation: a Gallup poll he cites says Ukrainians want the war to end even with concessions. He suggests the political class is out of step with its publics and lays out three possible outcomes: Russia achieves its military objectives; escalation to nuclear war; or war-mongering leaders are thrown out by publics. He also highlights political dissatisfaction, citing low approval for Merz and Macron, and says U.S. electoral outcomes could provide a check on the “political class.”
Glenn adds that worsening war conditions may lead leaders to rely on militarism for economic and technological aims and to suppress dissent by labeling opposition as pro-Kremlin. Sachs agrees but says public resistance could become more decisive through political defeat driven by outside parties tapping into public opinion, citing examples he mentions in France, Russia, and the United States. Glenn then asks about objectives of Americans versus Europeans toward Russia and whether the logic is to pull the U.S. deeper into the war. Sachs argues the long-running intention since 1945 and especially since 1991 has been to weaken Russia through sanctions, NATO enlargement, unrest tools, and support for insurgencies on Russia’s periphery, and he says these motivations remain rooted in agencies and contractors that do not “count lives” and seek to sell goods.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. We have the great pleasure of being joined today by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. So thank you very much for joining in.
Speaker 1: Of course, always great to be with you, Glenn. Thank you.
Speaker 2: So the NATO summit in Ankara is over now. And, well, it's been, let's say, interesting. That is, the militarism and also the hostility against NATO's enemies was seemingly dialed up. And even within NATO, there were great tensions. Trump, which is also known as the as Mark Rutte's daddy turned out to be quite a deadbeat dad. He's very abusive against his so-called allies in Europe. Again, quite incredible to watch. I want to get your take, though. What did you take away from this NATO summit?
Speaker 1: I think basically the NATO alliance, as it were, is mostly in disarray. This is... not as a serious group, uh, not seriously strategizing. Uh, it was two days of, uh, Trump isms. Uh, he's, uh, absolutely, uh, mentally, uh, unstable. It's we can normalize it. We can laugh about it. We can, uh, say that it's a tactic. He's a, he's really, uh, something, uh, awful. And everyone plays along with it, so you watch two days that are quite bizarre. He says that Spain is awful, we should cut off all trade with Spain. Spain's response is, we have very nice relations with the United States, all is well. We had a charming chat. The United States president says, basically, Greenland needs to be ours. OK, that's fine. No, it won't be. This is not really an alliance right now, and these are not meetings of serious people, I'm sorry to say. Of course, a lot of the talk was about military spending, and it's a club to encourage everybody to spend more, especially on U.S. weaponry, and to talk about war. But there used to be a time when... Great issues were discussed in a serious way, and that time is long over. The United States is basically without leadership. It flails around. Trump, as I said, is obviously the emperor without clothes, and I would say that it This is just bizarre life. Every day is something bizarre, and that's maybe Trump's survival tactic. Every day crowds out the day before, and now we're onto the renewed fighting with Iran, and the NATO meeting will soon be forgotten. That's my basic take. But it's not harmless. It's a whole Western world that is pretty much adrift without a strategy, quite nasty, engaged in a lot of deadly war without anyone seemingly aware of the real risks of all of this. These people distinguish themselves by and large as being fools.
Speaker 2: For the U.S. president to refer to the Iranian negotiators as scum, it's quite extraordinary that this has become the new normal, if you will. But also the rhetoric against... Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say that the fact that this is normalized, that we shrug and, well, that's just Trump, is not an adequate response to this situation. We are in hot wars. They're extremely dangerous. People are being killed in large numbers. Life is not a joke, but it's treated as a shrug or a joke and it is not. So it's on the one side quite serious, but the serious point is that nothing serious is actually discussed by these people. Nothing honest, nothing serious. And that is shocking in a world at war.
Speaker 2: And well, the European leaders, they continue to call for deeper strikes into Russia with their own weapons based on their own intelligence and targeting. And the objective is apparently to force the Russians to the negotiation table. But this is by European leaders who still, after four and a half years, still boycott diplomacy. So it is It's quite strange and no one seemingly can call them out because nobody wants to be seen as being pro-Russian by referring to objective reality. But now we see the American side as well. Marco Rubio argued that attacking Russia will help to advance peace. Trump made a casual reference to imposing a no-fly zone. And also, of course, they will now... allow the licensing of Patriot missiles to be manufactured in Ukraine. Is the US now getting into this war again or deeper into this war? Because this is very different than the rhetoric we saw from Trump after his taking over power the second time.
Speaker 1: Trump campaigned on the basis of the end of these useless wars. But the American wars are driven by the military-industrial-digital complex. I think it's important to add digital now because big tech is absolutely a party and a profit center of these wars. And when Trump would take any kind of move to find a diplomatic solution, most of the U.S. political class, most of Washington in both houses of Congress and throughout the Pentagon, maybe not the generals so much, but a lot of former generals who are now in the military contracting companies, they strongly objected. And then Trump would change course because he's a weak and foolish man to begin with. And he does not have a strategy and he does not understand the job that he has almost at all. So I would say, Glenn, that you could say that there was a change of rhetoric because Trump thought it's just fine that the war is escalating. Yes, Trump said whether it's meaningful or not, that Ukraine will be able to produce Patriot missile systems and so forth. But the truth is that rhetoric never went away in Washington. Trump seemed to be trying to chart a slightly different course, but it was always ineffectual. It was always bouncing around back to sanctions and deadlines and threats to Russia. So this latest round is not some kind of decisive turn of U.S. policy. Basically, the U.S. government and I would say the governments of the major countries are driven by a profit center war machine. This is the dominant part of US politics. It would take a strong president with a clear vision and a capacity to talk to the American people, other than in idiotic posts on True Social, to be able to make a change because the president would have to talk over this powerful lobby. Trump can't do that. He doesn't have much interest in doing it. Silicon Valley, especially led by the likes of Palantir, but almost all of big tech right now, is making a lot of money putting its new models to work in these wars. They like these wars because they also get to test their weapon systems. They get to upgrade the systems. They get big military contracts and so forth. So what happened in the last couple of days is, I would say, par for the course. And the fact that Trump failed to end the war as he promised he would, the war in Ukraine with the phone call and within 24 hours, is a sign of... the underlying dynamics of U.S. politics on the one side and the sheer incompetence, ignorance and foolishness of this man on the other side. He can't really do anything that reaches a level of strategy as opposed to hourly tactics. Tactics he can do hour to hour, though not consistently, but strategy he's unable to do.
Speaker 2: Well, Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, he seemingly threw NATO's weight behind the US war in Iran by arguing that America's decision to go back to war against Iran was totally justified and essentially giving his full support. However, it also sends a very direct signal to the Russians that NATO is not talking about peace anymore, only war. And we saw now that the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was arguing that, well, before this summit as well, that the special military operation, it has now become a war because of NATO's involvement. There doesn't seem to be much effort anymore to prevent this march towards World War III. But I did want to ask you, how do you see this statement by the Russians? How will this change? Are they simply, have they given up on the US diplomacy? Do they see it as a fraud like in Iran or how do you make sense of this new developments?
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone in the Russian leadership gives any heed whatsoever to the US or to US diplomacy. I think that they try not to antagonize Trump unnecessarily, but Nobody in the Russian leadership is expecting Trump in any way to play a decisive or even an active role in stopping this war. That's over. I think they had some hope early on, but I think what's happened proves Putin's famous adage from a 2017 interview when he famously said that he had by then worked with several presidents. They come into office with ideas, but then men in dark suits and blue ties and briefcases come and explain how the world really is to these presidents. And you never hear of those ideas again. So Putin had a lot of experience. And I've spoken to Russian leaders over the years. They have a lot of experience knowing that presidents come and go, but the U.S. security state, the military-industrial-digital complex, is the deeper part of American policy. So I don't think that they ever absolutely were betting on the US to resolve this conflict, but I think they were hoping that maybe Trump would do something. And I think that they put some effort into that the first year, but by already the end of 2025, I think they had really given up on this. And the statements that they're making now are basically again, not to go out of their way to antagonize Trump, but on the other hand are very clear to say, We're basically at war. We don't think diplomacy is going to solve anything. We're going to win this war. And I think Russia has largely already for years, but certainly now given up on the West so-called, meaning the European Union, Britain, and the United States and Canada, and it views its future basically as a Eurasian future and a future with other parts of the developing world as well. And my view is that that's essentially China's view. It's essentially Iran's view. It's essentially the view of most of Eurasia outside of Europe. And this is, I think, where we're heading, which is a A Western world, which is dug in to try to protect ancient and disappearing prerogatives and advantages that they don't have anymore. And the rest of the world saying, we don't expect anything from you except maybe war and we'll meet that if necessary. Of course, the disaster in all of this is that the war kills vast numbers of Ukrainians. It solves absolutely nothing. And there is no way possible for Russia to be defeated other than bringing us to nuclear war, because Russia is not going to surrender to strikes of Western support into deep Russia, it's going to escalate. And if pushed hard enough and if those strikes were costly enough, it will escalate to nuclear war. And so the whole idea of these Western governments is a kind of profound ignorance and gratuitousness and recklessness that is astounding. Now, One thing that should give us some perspective and pause is that all of these governments, Trump, Macron, Mertz, all of them are unpopular. The publics in the United States and Europe don't want these wars. They don't want the military escalation. The latest Gallup poll showed the Ukrainians want this war to end, even if it means the kinds of concessions that would end the war. This is very clear. So what we have is a class of political leaders that operate in an anachronistic way, believing in Western dominance and Western power, not understanding the changes of the world, and not following or understanding their own public opinion. So there are, I suppose, three ways that all of this can break in the end. One is that Russia can outright achieve its military objectives. This is certainly quite possible. Some would say quite probable. The other is that this escalates to a nuclear war. I think that this is absolutely possible because we are led by the most incompetent people imaginable right now from Trump and Mertz and Macron and many others. And the third is that finally these warmongering governments and warmongering lobbies are thrown out by publics that are completely disgusted. Biden. So Merz's approval rating is at an all-time low for German chancellors. The same with President Macron. Trump's approval rating somehow still is above 35%, but it's under 40%. And his disapproval rating is around 60%. And we have an election coming up that if it's actually run fairly and counted fairly is still with all of the shenanigans going on, and there are many of them in all of the Supreme Court rulings in Trump's favor, still likely to put the opposition into a majority in at least one of the houses of Congress. So maybe, just maybe, our very weak and seemingly failing democratic institutions could end up being a check on this quite miserable political class that we have, and that would be the peaceful way out in the end.
Speaker 2: I would like to see that, but it appears that the worse the war goes, the more they rely on the war. That is, when the economies of Europe gets weaker, they look towards more militarism for economic and technological development. When our leaders lose support from the public because of the war, They then used the war to crush dissent by essentially dismissing all opposition as being, you know, some pro-Kremlin conspiracy. And also when we see the West fragmenting, we hear that, you know, we essentially get the message that fighting Russia is the new unifying idea. So it's, I don't see the course correction just yet, but hopefully.
Speaker 1: Glenn, I think all of that is exactly right, of course, except that the public is not being pulled along. In France, with Marine Le Pen now contesting the presidency next year, that will become France's major political drama, not Ukraine. In Russia, with the IFTA surging in the polls and saying that Germany needs a completely different approach based on diplomacy vis-à-vis Russia. That is a potential break. And in the United States, the overwhelming opposition of the public to Israel and what happened, the genocide in Gaza and now to the war in Iran is also potentially a change of direction in American politics. I grant you, none of this is simple because the deep military war machine is extremely powerful in the US and Europe. And these politicians are basically operating mouthpieces for a much deeper set of narrow interests, but quite powerful narrow interests. But I think that it is encouraging that the public does not accept this. And that means that even with all of the absolutely clear resistance of the political class, and you're completely right on it, there's nothing that's changing the dynamics within this group of politicians. But what might change it is political defeat by outside parties that are tapping into the true public opinion.
Speaker 2: I know you have to run, so let me just ask a very quick, brief question. That is, the absence of strategy, as you said, is quite evident. But what do you think are the objectives now of the Americans versus the Europeans in terms of, well, their main rival, as we saw at the summit, which is Russia? What is it that they actually want to achieve here? Is it simpler to bring the Americans deeper into the war? Or how are you reading this? Because it doesn't seem rational to push this hard for a war with the world's largest nuclear power.
Speaker 1: We should, of course, start from the proposition that since 1945, and certainly since 1991 at the supposed end of the Cold War, the deep state or military-industrial complex intention has been to weaken Russia in any opportunistic way possible, to support whatever insurgencies on Russia's periphery, to surround Russia in the Black Sea with NATO enlargement, to try to create unrest by so-called economic tools, the unilateral sanctions the confiscation of Russia's money and so forth. And I don't think those goals have changed in, again, the basic driver of foreign policy in the United States, the CIA and the military contractors, and now the Palantirs and others of the world. They don't count lives. They don't count money. They are out to sell their goods. And if the U.S. goes broke in the process, that's just fine. We've created a class of warmongering billionaires that speak publicly about how important these wars by the Western world are. So this is really our ongoing project. situation and it is the basic motivation that is either going to drive us to complete disaster which is brewing right now or to some kind of break in the politics because the public can finally is able to use the tools of democracy to make their views heard admittedly that hasn't happened And the United States, for decades, policed Western European politics to make sure that no anti-American politics could survive. And that kind of policing continues until today. But I would say most of our Western countries are in political crisis right now because of the divergence of the dominant interests class interests of this militarized state and the broader public opinion, which understands that this is a disaster. So I think we will continue to flounder. Don't expect anything from Trump, anything sensible, any direction that is sustained. He becomes... more and more incoherent and less and less relevant, actually, except that he loves to dominate the media and the media love to pay attention to every idiotic utterance of this man.
Speaker 2: Well, Jeff, thank you so much for taking your time. And yes, I know you have a busy day there in Uzbekistan. So thanks again.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Einar Tangen: China's Digital Currency & De-Dollarization https://youtu.be/aKL8Zp0CKDk https://t.co/YfbFPWl0Iu
Video Transcript AI Summary
Einar Tangen discusses how he interprets global change as a shift from a unipolar system to multipolarity, arguing that China is not trying to replace the United States’ hegemonic role in finance. Instead, China is building alternatives that help manage trade and finance across multiple centers of power, alongside a broader political and military approach that emphasizes security, development, sovereignty, and settling disputes without “tanks.”
On the political side, Tangen says China has invested $1.4 billion in the Belt and Road Initiative and presents itself as acting differently from the United States. He argues Washington struggles to imagine other countries acting unlike Washington, which he frames as part of the difficulty in dealing with China.
On the financial side, Tangen explains China’s goal as enabling more trade without replicating the US dollar-centered system. He says the US dollar’s hegemonic status made borrowing cheap and made American goods more expensive internationally, “hollowed out the US economy,” and created hot money flows. In response, China has expanded trade-supporting mechanisms: increasing trade volume by allowing more bonds to be sold, and creating systems that allow borrowing short-term against bonds held from trading with China, so counterparties do not have to sell bonds to meet payment needs. He emphasizes that China has not opened its internal “capital account,” meaning the yuan is not freely convertible from inside China to outside. He also cites concerns about “dirty money” flowing out, alongside strict capital controls inside China.
Tangen then argues that China is moving toward an electronic currency and “doing away with cash.” He describes how a digital system would make transactions traceable for the government, enabling tax collection “at the point of the transaction,” faster reporting and analysis, reduced reliance on accountants, and a mechanism for yuan convertibility in certain circumstances. He links this to preventing illicit money flows and requiring individuals to explain where money came from when money moves into electronic systems. He adds that this kind of system change is not only China’s, saying every country would do similar things for efficiency, tax collection, and potentially reducing corruption. He also mentions efficiency gains such as lowering transaction costs between one-third and 50% through a system introduced in Hong Kong, and says similar efficiencies drive China’s competitiveness in manufacturing and logistics.
In response to questions about “de-dollarization,” Tangen says China is not trying to replace the US dollar and “does not want that place,” viewing it as dangerous. He argues China’s motivation is primarily risk reduction in trade: he claims that of 195 countries registered in the world, about 140 are ones where China and that country are the number one trade partners, implying a need to reduce risk between those trading relationships. He portrays the US dollar’s weakness as coming from the US’s debt situation—he cites roughly $40 trillion in growing debt—and from existing financial arrangements that protect major institutions earning fees.
Tangen states that multiple digital payment systems are coming, not only from China, and that businesses will choose the cheaper option if secure and safe. He argues other countries cannot be forced into adopting a particular system through threats and tariffs, because legal and illegal alternatives exist when they are cheaper.
When asked what the US might do to counter China, Tangen says the US is pursuing containment policies, including blacklisting and efforts to disrupt China’s bottlenecks. He emphasizes that China’s key bottleneck is technology rather than simply raw materials, noting that while other countries had rare-earths resources, the refining process for high purity was costly and difficult, leading them to abandon it. He says Chinese refining processes represent a 10–15 year technological advance and lower costs, giving China an edge. He also claims China has become the largest supplier in many intermediate and input areas, including elements used in manufacturing and defense-related components.
Regarding disruption tactics, Tangen argues that efforts to cut off energy flows have not worked as intended because China has “demand destruction” and shifts to alternatives, while much oil and gas goes into non-engine products (chemicals, plastics, clothing, hydrogen carbons) that remain useful. He contrasts this with China’s ability to route trade around choke points through initiatives like Belt and Road land corridors toward Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and he references a northern corridor through Russian-controlled waters.
To explain how the US could “get out” of its predicament, Tangen argues the US should rely on its strengths in attracting global talent, but he claims anti-immigrant dynamics and suspicions of foreigners—especially people who look Asian—push people away. He says some Nobel Prize winners and esteemed university academics have left and many are going to China or Europe. He argues the US must welcome them to develop science and convert it into globally valuable goods and services that add productivity and support higher wages. He also argues automation and artificial intelligence are attacking middle-class white-collar work and that societies need retraining; he cites Finland’s law providing retraining every nine years.
On Europe, Tangen describes three-way dynamics among the US, Europe, and China and claims Europe has inherited and replicated US and European empire logic historically, while now facing consequences. He argues Europe is struggling due to lost cheap energy tied to its involvement in the Ukraine war, internal division, and its dependence on the US via NATO. He says Europe buys a large portion of its military hardware and ammunition from the US, develops only a smaller portion of its own technology, and lacks rare-earth supply alternatives that China would not provide if they could be used against China. He argues Europe’s defense-industrial capacity takes 10–15 years to develop and requires large investments, while political turnover makes long-term industrial investments risky.
He proposes that Europe should spend more on people and productivity rather than arms, and should invest in specialized small and medium-sized enterprises using digital tools. He highlights smart contracts and smart agents that could clarify responsibilities, automate checks (such as whether materials and timing for production are met), and reduce legal and banking friction. He argues these tools and digital efficiencies make it easier to find niche specialized suppliers and connect them to global markets.
In closing, Tangen agrees with the idea that militarism can be used to prop up political legitimacy and distract from economic weaknesses, but he emphasizes that producing bombs and producing cars are not economically equivalent because bombs do not improve productivity while cars enable productive work and an upward path for those producing components.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. We are joined today by Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, who also runs a substack, by the way, Asia Narratives, which I highly recommend and left a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on, Einar. It's good to see you.
Speaker 0: It is a pleasure, Glenn, always to be with you. I apologize. I was a little late today. much watching World Cup.
Speaker 2: No, I've been watching it myself. Sorry about Norway. Well, today I wanted to ask you about the concerns in the US and I guess among its allies. That is, it tends to be that China seeks to replace the position of the US as the hegemon However, it doesn't seem like we're going from one hegemon to another global hegemon. Rather, the world is shifting from a unipolar system that is with one center of power, previously the US, to a multipolar system with many centers of power. Now, from what I understand, you're arguing now that in the financial world, how to interpret China's actions is not that it's seeking to take over the role held by the United States. a hegemonic financial role, but rather to create alternatives to have, I guess, manage this several center of financial powers. I was wondering if you could unpack what the Chinese are doing, especially in terms of their goal now of seeking to internationalize the yuan.
Speaker 0: Okay. So let's put this in context. When we start talking about hegemony, yes, there's the financial side, and I'll get to that in a second. Politically, China is, you know, they invested $1.4 billion in the Belt and Road Initiative. They've talked about coloring in. They've talked about having security, development, sovereignty, and a means of... settling matters without going to tanks. So China on all fronts is very different from the United States. But Washington cannot leave the idea that other countries would act the exact same way that Washington does. And this is part of the problem. It's very difficult to deal with Washington because they always assume they understand exactly what you're going to do. And what is that? exactly what they have done or intend to do in the same circumstances. So they're trying to wrap their head around this idea that there could be a powerful nation that does not want to take over the world, does not see it as economically or politically or militarily feasible. So that's where we are. So when we start talking about the financial side, please remember that the political and military side is there as well. So financially, what is China doing? They have said that they want to do more trade. Obviously, their investments in the Belt and Road Initiative are part of that, and it has been very successful. You look at countries in the Belt and Road Initiative, and they are, in fact, above the world median in terms of growth. When you look at the developed nations in terms of actual percentage growth, they're below the median. For those countries, it makes a lot of sense, and so does the political and the military side, stressing defensive, keeping regimes intact, no meddling in the affairs of other country. This resonates very much with the global south. Now, financially, China has no interest in replicating the US model. Why? Looking at a country that is divided economically, where the economic disparities are huge, where it has this massive debt that was accumulated. Why? Because having the US dollar as the hegemonic currency made it cheap in terms of borrowing. It also had the unwanted effect of making American goods more expensive and therefore less competitive internationally. This hollowed out the US economy and it creates a lot of hot money flows that are coming in and out of the United States. So from China's perspective, having a hegemonic currency is not good, not desirable at all. The issue is how do you do trade? So China has put together a system which, like the U.S., encourages trade, and they've now extended it so that it's easier to do trade. They've increased the volume of trade that can be done by allowing more bonds to be sold. You sell more bonds, there's more liquidity in the market. They've also allowed... created systems and products that allow you to borrow on a short-term basis against the bonds that you are holding. Why are you holding the bonds? Because you were trading with China. So that means you don't have to sell your bonds. It makes it a lot easier to figure out how to manage your trade responsibilities in terms of somebody wants to get paid in renminbi, you have to give them renminbi. How do you do that? Well, this is the system that allows you to do that. So China has created these, increased the liquidity. It obviously has created more opportunities and tools to do so, but it has not opened up its internal account, what they call the capital account. That means that the yuan is not freely convertible from inside China to outside. If you have Yuan outside, obviously you can go to a bank and they will exchange the currency. But if you're inside with China, there are strict capital controls. They do not want money flowing around freely. And there are concerns about dirty money being pushed out of China because the people here in China cannot explain where that money came from. The country has no interest in helping them upfade their taxes and responsibilities. So there are still very much controls on that. Now, where is this all going, a lot of people ask. Well, eventually China is going to have a digital currency, and I mean literally. So basically, I haven't used cash in many, many years. The only times I've done it is when I go to birthday parties or to weddings, and I slip crisp 100 yuan notes into a red packet and therefore give them out. So where is this all heading towards? A lot of people ask that question, and I point out that China has been working slowly but steadily towards an electronic currency. In essence, doing away with cash. Now, this would have huge repercussions in terms of the way that people do business because cash would not be acceptable. There would be a means of turning an electronic yuan into a US dollar or whatever. That would not change. Internally, though, within China, imagine a world where you know where everything comes from or goes to. If there is, in fact, a transaction, you as the government, and there are taxes to be paid, you can, in essence, tax at the point of the transaction. That makes it a lot easier. You don't need auditing anymore. Everything is, in essence, recorded, and it's there, and you can look on your dashboard, and you can make analysis and figure out what's going on, but you don't need to have an accountant. Obviously, it's not good news for most of the accountants. Then, It also, in terms of tax collection, but it also tells you exactly where your economy is. You're not waiting two, three, four, six months to figure out what people are doing on any given moment in time. You have a big dashboard which tells you exactly how the economy is running. Reports can be put out much more quickly and the markets can react much more quickly as well. So that will change the way that people do business. they're investing and how they measure the markets. But it also helps in terms of internationally, because then the yuan can be convertible in certain circumstances. There will be no fear that illicit money is flowing out of the United States, at least through electronic means, and any money that's flowing back to individuals will be, obviously, they'll have to explain where it came from. And if they're putting into electronic system, It's going to be very, very difficult. So the world is going to change. And this is not just China. every country is going to do, in essence, the same thing. And why? For the reasons I just stated. You can run your economy better, you can collect more taxes, and you can avoid a lot of the dark money that goes unnoticed in so many economies. It could help with corruption. Obviously, it makes things a lot cheaper and a lot faster. For instance, the system that China has put out in the announced second part in Hong Kong yesterday, was in essence saying that we can cut the cost of transactions between a third and 50%. Well, it's not a lot, but if you start adding that up on a global basis, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. So these types of efficiencies which are driving China are... unsurprisingly, the same kinds of things they're doing with their manufacturing. They're trying to make things less easy, create less friction during the process, whether it's logistics, manufacturing, or finance. And this combination is continuing to help China remain competitive. It can produce goods cheaply. It can get them to you cheaply. And it makes payment, receiving payment or making payment cheaper and faster. So this is what China is trying to do. We'll have to see how it works out. But if it's successful, as I said, be prepared. It's going to be a different world.
Speaker 2: What this implies, though, is by having this digital one, which is internationalized, what we're talking about then is also de-dollarization as a side effect, at least. That is, the US dollar will be less appealing, I guess, in international trade. But as we said before, it's not as if everyone's going to shift to the Chinese currency. But how do you see this working? Will they work side by side? Or do you think that... that once the American dollar begins to be used less, bubble will burst. And I mean, how do you see the, I guess, the money markets working like this?
Speaker 0: Okay. So a nice way of just saying, hey, Einar, what's going to happen when everything falls down? Yeah. Okay. So let's put it this way. China is not, as I said earlier, trying to replace the US dollar. It doesn't want that place. It thinks it's dangerous. So obviously they're going in a different direction. Okay. So what is happening there? Well, China has about 140 out of 195 countries that are registered in the world. 140 of those, about 70% are in fact, China and that country are the number one trade partners. So obviously there's a need to cut the risk between trades between these countries. So that is what really China is doing. The US dollar is used in international transactions. It's used in a lot of financialization. This is the kind of making bets, turning the world into a giant casino, not betting on putting money into companies, but betting on what will happen in the future. So China is just simply... trying to make things more efficient. So therefore, it is a competitor in the sense that it's an alternative to the US dollar, but it does not wish to supplant it. So where is the dollar's true weakness? The dollar's true weakness has nothing to do with China. It has to do with the fact that it has this massive $40 trillion in growing debt, which it has no intention or ability to repay or even a plan to repay it. The fact that the digital systems that are coming up, and China won't be the only one. There will be others as well. Europe has their ideas. Obviously, the Middle East could do something. You could have different continents trying to create digital markets for trade. Why? It's cheaper. This is about the market. If I'm a business and it's going to take me $100 to make a transaction versus $20, guess what? I'm going to go for the $20 solution as long as it's secure and safe. And this is really where the dollar is very weak. The existing systems protect a lot of, you know, enfranchised players in terms of the banks, credit cards, rating agencies. They're all kind of, they want to hang on to the system as long as possible. Why? Because they collect fees from it. And those fees power their businesses and their bonuses and things like this. And coincidentally, they have a lot of clout in Washington. But this is an international issue. And no matter what they do with the U.S. dollar, they cannot make other countries adopted as their trade system. Donald Trump has made all sorts of threats. If you do anything this way, 100%, 10,000%, whatever, I'm exaggerating, tariffs, he's going to make you adhere to the American system. But we all know that that doesn't work. And that's why smuggling began. Even if you make it illegal, people will find other ways, especially if it's a lot cheaper. But in this particular case, they can choose legal means to settle their trade. And China is a big part of that trade internationally with alternatives. And China, as I said, is just going to be one of them. And so Right now, it would be nice if the US Treasury, instead of trying to protect Donald Trump, would be laying plans for its own digital currency, and then also how the US deficit can be dealt with. Not only the deficit, but the huge debt pile as well, because right now the US is sailing around. along basically on about $2 trillion a year of yearly deficit. That means every year the US borrows about $2 trillion, sometimes it's going to be a little bit poor, in order just to pay its bills. So that money is piled on top of the debt pile. And as I said, you have to deal with the deficit and you also have to deal with the the debt pile while still growing the economy. And yet I hear very little about this other than we're going to make America great again, which is a slogan, not a plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on that though, because you are correct. It is a slogan. But I think many people were attracted to that slogan because they recognize that the US is becoming less and less competitive vis-a-vis China. They have, of course, the domestic problems building up as well. But what is it, if the Americans would translate this slogan into economic policies, what do you think they would look like? I guess you can go two paths. One would be seek to revive the American economy, but what would be required in a strategy to reverse the decline we're seeing? Because they're now $39.5 trillion in debt and yes, it's going to passing to 40 trillions, which is quite dramatic. Servicing those debts are very difficult. How can the US turn this around, given the lack of economic competitiveness? And the second would be, what can we expect from the US in terms of how it would counter China? Not in the market, but I expect some containment policies, that is more attacks on the Chinese tech, several maybe blockade some transportation corridors as it did with Iranian oil going to China? Can it block any financial aspects of the Chinese economy that is access to banks or currencies? How do you see how the Americans will essentially play this? Okay. Lots of questions there. I went for a big question there.
Speaker 0: Okay. You want me to answer the first question or the second question first? I will leave that to you. Okay. All right. So I'm going to start with the second question. What is the United States doing right now? It is doing all the things you just said. It has a containment policy, which it's pursuing, it believes. And this isn't me saying this. If you get on, J.D. Vance has been crying this, talking about the red threat to communism taking over the world, things like this. It just sounds a little silly since communism is engaged in capitalism. And so how can they really be communists? And the fact is that they're outdoing the United States. So the U.S. is going to continue despite this kind of trade war. I shouldn't say it's not even a truce, it's just an arrangement. There's a recognition that the economies are intertwined, especially in very sensitive areas like defense, the rare earths. China has about 70% of all the critical elements that are doing, but the real bottleneck in terms of their production, the real bottleneck that China controls is based on technology. For many, many years, other countries did not want to mine and refine rare earths. It was very dirty business, very expensive. And they basically abandoned it because China was developing a market. And as with most things that China does, their bet was we will take lower margin in terms of our profits, but we will try to have a larger presence in the market. And they achieved this. And where they've achieved it is not so much just having all the rare earths, there's actually quite a few, quite a bit all around the world. The issue is the refining. In order to make these gallium and all the rest of these rare earths usable, they have to be of very high purity. In order to get to that purity, you need to have processes. So it involves not only how you extract them, chemical processes, then obviously you have environmental ones. So this all is combined, represents a 10 to 15 year advance on current technology from other places in the world and a huge advance in terms of the cost. For instance, Chinese made rare earth elements in certain categories will be 20 times less expensive than something made in Japan. So let that sink in. Even if you can make it, you are going to expend huge amounts in order to do that. So cost is a factor. But this isn't the only area. I mean, there are so many areas where China has become the largest supplier and the manufacturer of so many elements, whether you're talking about vitamin C or the elements of gunpowder and propellants and things like this, to this intermediate goods. You need certain types of screws that are made of certain type of materials. Guess where it comes from? It comes from China. they, as I will keep repeating, the Chinese model is about going into mature areas where there is, maybe there's a 5% return on value on your capital. And what they do is they say, we'll take 3.5%. And so they are able to capture the market, but their plan is to capture 3.5% of a very large market, which makes it doable. So this is what China has done, and this is what the U.S. confronts now. Now the question is, what can the U.S. do? Yes, they've done the blacklisting. They have indicated, and we talked about this before in terms of the gentleman at the War Department who says that the plan is to interrupt China's energy flows, Venezuela, Nigeria. Iran, what do they have in common? They all sell oil to China. And in terms of interfering with them, the idea is you've cut off energy to China, somehow you'll starve it. Well, that hasn't quite worked out as planned. China is actually still sitting on the vast majority of its... reserves, the prices of energy have gone up a very, very small amount in China, and it still is the low-cost provider of electricity across the board. So it hasn't affected China in that way, because China has done what they call a lot of demand destruction. And that means that they have shifted to alternates instead of using oil and gas. Now, there are certain areas, as As I said before, 40% of all the oil and gas that is produced in the world does not go into any kind of engine. What it does is it goes into products, whether it's chemicals or perfumes, plastics, clothing, long-form hydrogen carbons. Carbohydrates are very useful, especially in certain types of chemistry and certain types of products, and that will continue. So there is also moves to do away with that, finding substitutes for oil and gas in that area. But it's going to take time. Time is not what everyone has. And this is my main point here, is that The US is trying all these things, but it doesn't have a lot of time. China is reacting faster than the US has expected. The second weapon of choice is, of course, interfering with China's goods. Obviously, China imports a lot of raw materials, they add value to them, and then they sell those value-added products around the world. You've heard Eldridge Colby, who was referring to earlier, saying that the U.S. needs control. The choke points where that trade goes through. Obviously, why would you need to control choke points unless you intend to use them? And this idea is that you can prevent resources from coming into China and you can prevent value-added goods from leaving China. And therefore, that would hurt China. And that is true. China is non-sedentary. They developed the Belt and Road Initiative, which includes land-based bridges that allow them to get to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, et cetera, to avoid these choke points. There's also the possibility of a northern corridor that would go basically through Russian-controlled waters through the northern end, which would allow them to get into the Atlantic. So China can do... There's this kind of cat and mouse or checkers versus go that is being played between the U.S. and China. Washington seeks to contain China. China seeks to maintain its ability to rise. The difference is the U.S. says that China is somehow evil because it is rising. China says, look, we can all work together. That gets me to the first question that you asked, how does the US get out of this? Because unless there's a path for the US, it could turn into a situation where the Pentagon wins and they start throwing bombs around. And of course, it's not good for anybody, but desperation can lead to strange situations. My take on that is that the US should work on its natural strengths. Its natural strengths are not its wages, which are very high and make it very prohibitively difficult to manufacture in the US. It certainly isn't regulations, despite many regulations being taken away, some that I think ill-considered in terms of their protection of individuals, consumers, et cetera. It's still very difficult because you have local state and zoning laws and national standards and things like this. So that's more expensive. The U.S. does have resources, but because of the preceding things, items, high wages and regulation, it is also sometimes expensive to extract them. But what does the U.S. actually have? It has great resources. used to have the ability to attract great minds from all over the world. And they would come to the US seeking opportunity. This is the land of freedom. This is where they could, with hard work, rise to whatever level they were capable of. But that has changed. The anti-immigrant situation together with suspicions of anybody foreign, especially anybody who's Asian looking. They do not have to be Chinese because frankly, Americans cannot tell the difference. And I know that very well. I'm half Korean, but I've been called Chinese all my life. It's not a slur, it's just simply there's ignorance. We had people from Southeast Asia, Hmong, they don't look at all Chinese to me, but they were all described as Chinese. So there's a certain amount of going back to the Chinese exclusion law, this idea that anybody who looks a little Asiatic is somehow suspicious or uncivilized, et cetera. So racism is alive and well. This pushes out people who otherwise might be attracted two living in the United States trying to pursue the American dream. And they have been leaving almost on a weekly basis. One or two people who've won Nobel Prizes or are esteemed in their field at prominent universities are leaving. And many of them are coming to China. Others are going to Europe. This does not help the U.S. The U.S. needs to turn that around. They need to stop pushing people out and start welcoming them in. With these assembled minds, what you do is you try to develop the science and then apply that science to goods and services that can be used across the world. If you are in the top echelon and you're creating solutions first, that is where you have the most opportunity to earn. because what you're offering is a unique value that adds productivity. That's why people will buy these goods and services. It adds productivity. And as a result, they can pay more. So that means you're earning higher margins. Those higher margins can therefore pay the higher amounts needed to retain people who are very specialized. It's a little bit difficult for perhaps the rest of the United States who isn't who are not in demand facing competition from artificial intelligence in some cases, especially white collar workers in the law and accounting and those areas where you're creating, gathering and collating and summarizing large amounts of information that can obviously be done by an AI much more quickly, efficiently, and probably more accurately. It doesn't give you accurate judgments, and there are dangers in that, but the fact is many of those people will lose jobs, and this is the first time in our history that you have had a concerted trend which is attacking the middle class, the white-collar worker, before it was always blue-collar. Ironically, the blue-collar is doing well. If you study plumbing instead of sociology, you're in demand, you're able to get work, and there's a steady supply of money that is well above what a social worker would earn. It doesn't mean that we have to shift that way. My point is that societies change their dynamic. And the component pieces of it change. And this is one of the things that people and countries have to learn, that as countries change, as the dynamics of the markets change, you need to re-educate. You have places like Finland, which has a law that says every nine years you're entitled to retrain yourself to get additional education. I think this is actually quite smart because people are not, you know, basically you don't have any skills. What are you going to do? You want government assistance. And that is not a good road. People who are on government assistance for long periods of time, there are a lot of problems with drug use, all sorts of social issues and families and things like this. It is not good. People want to work. If they are in fact working, they have pride. They have the pride and they have suitable wages and a good living. They're more invested in society than somebody who has none of that. So it's very, very important to the US to acknowledge that it's on the front end of the economy and to continue developing that so it can pay higher wages, the higher costs of bureaucracy, et cetera, et cetera, because that stuff isn't going to go away despite Donald Trump saying it. It'll be backed by the next generation of leaders who will bring it back for various reasons. So at this point, the US is kind of trapped in a bubble of its own making. It wants to maintain hegemony, but it wants to do it by going back to the old days. Well, you can never really swim in the same river twice. The river moves on. And in this particular case, the idea that Donald Trump had of re-industrializing America has so many problems and quite frankly, hasn't worked. No one is rushing into that area because, quite frankly, there is no money to be made. If you add industrial capacity in the U.S., that means that you're going to be in competition with existing industrial capacity elsewhere. You're probably going to have to invest more money. You're going to have to pay more wages. You're going to have to hire costs of compliance. The logistics are not as good. How are you going to compete? Well, you're not. And that's the conundrum. It's a nice fantasy to say we'll go back to the old days, but the reality is you can't.
Speaker 2: How about your comments on, well, Colby's comments about the need to have these choke points to strangle the Chinese economy. It's, well, throughout history, we see that, well, maritime powers, they have historically had stronger incentives to pursue hegemonic international order because they The seas, they function as the global commons, but also you have those strategic bottlenecks. So the world oceans are therefore less accommodating of multipolarity. That is, if you control the Panama Canal, you control the Suez Canal, then essentially this allows a hegemonic position to be established. Any country who then wants to be able to prosper through trade or move troops around, they all have to, to some extent... adjust to this status quo that there is a hegemon and they have to follow the rules so this probably is something to this especially from the British to the Americans that they kind of follow the same impulses and I think that is different now if you see China and the Eurasian continent that is that you have this land corridors you refer to which allows countries to diversify more I did want to ask about Europe though that is China and Europe? To what extent do you see development of ties there? Because it's quite a difficult relationship. As we know, the Europeans have locked themselves in under US leadership for the past 80 years. It's starting to look a bit like a Stockholm syndrome. But the US now is in relative decline. And as a result, they're deprioritizing Europe and also becoming more aggressive as a declining power. They're also cannibalizing European industries. So it's not the Cold War relationship or even the post-Cold War relationship, which the Europeans remember quite fondly. Given that you have this reduced or decline of the US, which will now focus more on the Western Hemisphere and Asia, and it's going to be a bit more hostile or at least strong-armed Europeans, the Europeans seem to have to possible pathways that is one option one is try to restore the political West that is win over the loyalty of our friendship of the United States this seems to be translated in terms of policies into well complete and total subordination that is blindly follow all U.S policies except any horrible trade deals the Americans put in front of the Europeans but it also entails following the U.S position on China that is one about the China threat de-risk or decouple. So that's the one pathway. The second pathway for the Europeans is recognizing that the US hegemon is gone. It's not a benign hegemon either. And the solution is to adjust to new realities, that is to diversify economic ties. Why put all your eggs in the American basket if they are in decline and becoming more hostile? And if you follow this logic, you should link yourself closer to China. The problem, I think, for the Europeans, they never chose yet. Well, they haven't chosen. They attempt to sit on both chairs.
Speaker 0: Okay. So the three-corner game between the US, Europe, and China. I think we have to acknowledge that there was a period of empire. that lasted for, you can say, a thousand years since the start of the Crusades, where you had a very aggressive Europe, then followed by the US, which had this model that if you want something, if you want to go forward, if you want your economy to do well, you just simply go and take it from somebody else. Now, this is not new. There have been periods of empire in the world since recorded history began. The difference today is that China brings what it says, it's a civilization model. And that means that they've studied and they've gone through empire periods. They studied the current empire period and they think, well, this doesn't work well. It's not a way of a sustainable situation, especially given the way that the world has developed. So from their perspective, It's much better to say, look, we don't need to tell everybody what to do. What we need to do is have mutual respect. Countries need to be secure. They need to have a path to development. They need, as I said, their sovereignty not to be interfered with. And there has to be some mechanism for solving the frictions that inevitably come up when you have different countries. So they're saying we don't need hegemony. We don't need an empire period. What we need is a collective world where it's multipolar, multilateral, where trade is something that lifts the world, doesn't restrict it. Now, this, of course, is antithetical. It's the exact opposite of what the US believes, that it's a zero-sum game. And the trick to being in the world, it's a horrible, as I say, it's a horrible world And in order to get ahead in a horrible world, you have to be more horrible than everybody else. Now, this is a mindset, something that I always attributed to Dick Cheney. When I watched him, he passed himself off as a realist. But really, he was trapped in this own kind of negative belief that you have to take things from others. You cannot grow things together. China believes you can. So at the same time that we're going through, you know, all sorts of threats with global warming and stuff like that. And in the digital revolution, we're also going through what could be the end of this kind of empire period. And the US is having a difficult time, as I've described, and we've talked about adjusting to that. Well, where is Europe? Well, Europe was the original progenitor of the US. It taught the US everything it knows about going in and taking things from other people to build wealth and power. Now they're stuck in the situation where they have a lot of regrets or they're supposed to have a lot of regrets about the terrible things that they did, you know, cutting off people's hands and sending them to European countries so they can be displayed in a museum. Not because the people did anything wrong, just simply because wouldn't it be cool to have a collection of hands, right hands or left hands? It doesn't really matter which, I guess. If you're into collecting them, I just don't know why they needed so many or why they didn't think of the people who were missing their hands because of this brutal practice. So you have Europe in a situation where they want to be moral, but they have gained their money immorally. And they're trying to say that they have values and that the US and Europe stand for values. It's hard to see those values right now, but it's trapped. And increasingly, there's a large division between the people who simply want their governments to find them opportunities to keep them employed, to keep their standard of living as high as possible, to solve the economic issues. And in the capitals, you have politicians who have no idea of how to actually help their people. So they turn to international issues and start blaming other people for all the problems that they cannot solve. So, this has been going on for quite some time, but we're starting to run to the end of the string. Europe has serious problems. It's lost its cheap energy when it fell asleep, walked into this war involving Ukraine and Russia, and now they're facing the consequences. They don't know where to turn. They're divided. They're easily picked off by larger powers who come in and say, hey, be our friend. I'm talking about the US, not China. China has tried to be friendly, but they realized that dealing with a particular government is not useful. They learned this through the Belt and Road Initiative because when you side with a government, as soon as that government is out of power, you're going to be blamed by the new government for being colluding with the old government and there'll be allegations of corruption, et cetera, and there'll be no thanks involved no matter whether the project you did was good or bad. They've now switched to a system where they just approach it like a bank. Is this project feasible? Can we get the money back? If so, we'll invest. And that means that it's independent of any kind of politics. And this is probably going to be the way that China continues to offer its aid. So where does that leave Europe? They don't. They seem ideologically wedded to a hypocrisy about values that they didn't use when they were gathering that money, clinging to the U.S. on this theory that they need the U.S. to protect them. Protect them from what? That is always a question. It was the question that was germane when the Berlin Wall made NATO useless. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. Why do you need something that was created to answer the Warsaw Pact? If the Warsaw Pact is gone, why do you need that? Well, people ask the question, but inertia is a powerful thing. All the people at NATO certainly didn't want to go out and find new jobs. Might not be jobs for them. So they said, oh, yes, no, no, we have a use. And they found it in the United States. And states decided that they did not want Russia and Europe coming together because of Russian resources and European manufacturing. And at the time of the fall of the wall, Europe was America's greatest competitor. Therefore, we did not want it to rise. We did not want it to have cheap resources. And it seems that whether it was directed or whether it was the result, the fact is today, Russia and Europe are completely divided and will be for quite some time. So we've accomplished our things. We like to make sure that we have no competitor. That's part of our hegemonic strategy. So when Japan was threatening to be a more powerful nation, even though it was not possible, given the size of their markets and what they produced and everything like this. We, in essence, forced them into signing the Plaza Accords. And since that time, their economy is less worth today than it was when they signed the Plaza Accords, meaning that they have gone completely sideways since that period of time, in essence, making sure that they're subservient to us. But here's the problem. If Europe continues this as they are, you know, the NATO meeting was just a recent NATO meeting was a complete example of this. You know, Europe buys 60% of its military hardware and ammunition from the United States. That's its total purchasing. They only develop 20% of their own technology and buying, only 20% comes from within Europe. That's just not going to work well. How do you do that? Then you have the issue of rare earths. Where are you going to get the rare earths? China is not going to sell Europe rare earths that can be used to make weapons, that can be used to threaten China. They're very logical in this way. I think most countries would be if the shoe was reversed. I think it would be the same thing that the US and of course Europe would do. So they have this thing where they want to buy weapons from the US. The US cannot provide them. To give you a perfect good example of that, the US is now supplying F-35s to India. The only problem is they don't have any radar. Well, in a supersonic jet that is supposed to be able to see all threats, having radar is, let's say, a big issue. Indians are not happy. They have purchased the world's most expensive and supposedly advanced jet to find out that it doesn't have headlights. And they're kind of, why did they pay the money? Why buy this thing in the first place if it's not going to actually work? Plus the fact that they're now saying only 20% of their F-35s are actually combat ready at any given time. That's a very low number for a very expensive piece of equipment. They're also not happy at the very, very expensive routine maintenance and operational costs that are associated with these pieces of high tech. So the US, in its essence, pricing itself out of the market, but the Europeans feel that there is no else for them to go. Problem is, it will take conservatively between 10 and 15 years for Europe to develop its own armoured industries. These are not things that you snap up, put up a cardboard box and start producing propellant for rockets. These things take a lot of time. They take a lot of money. And you're adding additional capacity. So you get back to this kind of industrialization model where you're building something that's going to cost more to build. It will cost more to produce than somebody else who's using what is currently available. Why is this important? Well, as we have learned in Russia, Ukraine, in Iran, and in many other places, the nature of warfare has changed. A $5,000 drone has to be shot down with a $2 to $6 million missile. You can figure out the math. They've also discovered that production and logistics are just as important as technology. Having all the technology in the world does not produce a rocket. It produces the capability to build the rocket, but then you have to actually build it. Europe lacks much of that ability. The US is crippled in that because their actual production capabilities are antiquated. Our family was involved in the submarines, but we got out of making submarines after World War II. Why? Because there was no more demand for it. We had to listen to the market. So we went into other things. But this is the point. In order to set up one of these industries, you're going to have to find somebody who's willing to put the time and effort to invest into it. And given the political situations in both Europe and America where things can change based on the votes of the people, it's very hard to take the political risk that you're going to make a multi-billion dollar investment based on policies of one administration, which will not, may not, in fact, be, you know, in effect, three, four, five years down the line. So these are the problems that Europe faces. I always like to say, well, what can Europe do about it? Well, my advice to Europe is to stop spending money on arms and start spending it on their people. I know this might sound strange, but I think your people are more important than their ability to destroy other people. I think a country is strongest when its people are behind it. when they will fight for its existence because its existence is seen as good, as moral, as an entity that is protecting its people, and therefore the people will protect its government. Somebody called me irrational for saying that, that I had some sort of... idealistic notion, but I can definitely say that Chinese people aren't always happy with specifics of what the Chinese government does. But if you ask them, well over almost 90% say they support the government as it is. Why? Because it's been able to reduce the changes that have been positive in their life. Strange how that works, isn't it? That somehow governments need to justify their existence to their people by actually delivering what the people need. So I think Europe should be taking a page out of China, not ideologically and not saying, get rid of elections. We become communists or whatever. Europe is already a socialist. They're all socialist nations. It's just a question of how they're going to organize themselves and put aside their petty differences and start concentrating on what is real and necessary, which is the viability of their people. Like the United States, Europe has tremendous academic institutions, people like yourself to enlighten them. The question is, how are you using those assets? Have you retooled them so that they're preparing people for the world? And I don't mean just in terms of technology. I'm a firm believer in the liberal arts, understanding history, philosophy, understanding your culture so you can understand other cultures. Why? Because if I want to trade with another culture, I need to know more than the language. I need to know what they want. The only way I'm going to know that is if I understand them. And I mean understand their history and how their politics and structure of their government, even what is popular in terms of songs and tastes and food and things like this. This is a great opportunity. And I think Europe doesn't have the big... Well, it has some, but it doesn't have the big... companies that, in essence, control markets. They do control markets just generally with the acquiescence of the government, like Deutsche Telekom, which has been delivering the worst internet speeds consistently for many, many years, despite being this kind of German technological powerhouse. Why? Because they have a monopoly. And they said, well, we'll just skip this generation of, you know, 5G because, wow, who needs it? I think it was 4G, actually, they skipped. Anyways, the long and short of it is that Europe has a great opportunity now. They have extremely good, small, medium-sized enterprises that are very specialized, had to be key to survive. But with the digital tools that are taking away jobs are also offering opportunities. It is now much easier to market using the internet to find those entities that would be interested in your products or services. Also, with logistics, it's much easier whether you're having to send somebody. There's lots of airplanes around and plenty of airports. Or if you're sending goods, there are ships, trains, and planes that can get them there. Um, so, and the last part of course is payment and they're now, uh, you're, you're seeing the beginnings of, uh, what I call smart contracts. They've been around for awhile, but in essence, what they do is they make two parties answer all of the questions necessary to make a full agreement. And they can agree that it's my responsibility or it's your responsibility, or we agree that we're going to pay somebody else to take the responsibility and assuming there's somebody willing to do that. All right. You have a complete contract. What does that do? First off, it simplifies everything because everything is known. Say there's going to be an inspection at certain point and it's the responsibility of party A or party B. They take the responsibility. And based on that finding, a finding of fact, that payment can be arranged or not arranged. There are smart agents now. I mean, You know, people talk about, you know, I can have somebody, I can have a smart agent control my calendar, set up meetings for me, remind me to call my grandmother or something like this on her birthday. Well, they can also do things like make sure that a contract is, in fact, going along that the person who said that they're going to make me 10,000 widgets, that they've actually purchased the materials that will allow them to make those 10,000 widgets in a time period where their throughput would allow them to do that. And it'll tell me that that's happening or not happening. And if it's not happening, I can say to the guy, say, hey, listen, you're not making it. I'm going to take my business elsewhere. Or you're going to have to make arrangements. And by the way, you're going to have to pay the extra amount because I'm not going to lose the benefit of our bargain. Well, if I know that this is going to happen, probably I don't let it happen. And I make sure that I do buy things on time and that I have enough time to make it. And on the other side, if I'm the one making it, I want to make sure I get paid. And I want to get paid on time. Wouldn't that be nice? What a novel idea. So I can have my agent checking to make sure that there is money in the accounts and that there's enough there so that when I deliver, the money can be paid to me. This makes things greatly simplified. I have less banking fees. I don't have to set up letters of credit. I don't have to engage expensive lawyers or have accountants go over the deal. And I don't get into as many squabbles because it's much more clear exactly what has happened or happened and who was at fault. These are areas with these types of digital tools and the fact that Europe has so many specialized entities, they should be understanding the world, learning about the world, learning what the world needs. Maybe they have to adjust their service or their product, but there are always smaller entities like themselves who are in need of what they can produce. The question is, how do you get to them? And now we have those tools. So I think that the next great thing in the world in terms of economics going forward, the kind of new blue ocean, is in fact small and medium-sized business entities. They are, after all, where all large entities come from in the beginning. And they're the ones that are most nimble They can respond to markets. They can fill niches very, very quickly. There's a lot of competition to keep them honest and keep the prices lower. They're not like these big behemoths that can fail many, many times simply because they own the market. So this is an area where I think that Europe could do very well. And in addition to, you know, sciences where they're understanding and creating things, whether it's new materials, whether it's AI. They have to make up the deficits there. They can't leave it to others. There's no reason why European institutes shouldn't be producing world-leading technology and IP that can be used in products and services. So despite all the things that I say, I think a lot of it is just how you approach the issues today. Whether you see it as zero-sum, in which case you're locking yourself into a world where you're probably going to have conflict, or you see it as we can make a pie bigger, which invariably locks you into this idea that you want to have more peace. Why? Because making it bigger does not involve war. If you have war, you make the pie smaller. So different attitudes. At some point, let's hope that the politicians and their various capitals will realize that it's a lot about attitude and the kind of world you believe in, not the kind of world you think you're trapped in.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been a bit hopeful. Perhaps not a lot of hope, but that some more stronger economic ties between Europe and China could assist the Europeans in developing an economic model to find a new place in the new world. Because at the moment, it seems like the European leaders, at least, they see militarism now as being the solution to all. That is, they have weak economies. Well, militarism and economic... Well, the militarism can support both economic and technological development by, you know, let's do military Keynesianism. Let's just build a lot of weapons instead of cars, as the Germans say. Also, it resolves the political legitimacy crisis. That is, as our leaders ignore basic national and economic interest, their popularity drops. Well, a lot of dissent can be crushed if you just dismiss them as, you know, siding with the enemies. You know, everyone these days is a Chinese puppet or a Kremlin puppet. And of course, the fragmentation of the West as well, that is, they made fighting the Russians a unifying idea. So all the answers always become militarism now, but that only bleeds further money, which makes the situation worse. And it creates also security problems, which makes the Europeans more dependent on the US, which the Americans are very good to convert into political and economic obedience. So the Europeans are then forced to subordinate their political interest, their economic interest, and you continue this downward spiral and things get just worse and worse. Anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we finish?
Speaker 0: I like your point. I completely agree with it. I just want people to think that if they think that making a bomb and making a car are the same thing, I want them to think about this. In a car, I can get to work. That makes me productive. right and the people who produce it will produce parts and things like that and uh there can be other cars and you know there can be an upward journey not only for myself but all those people involved if you make a bomb it does not improve productivity uh all you're going to do is destroy people and you know things um and so it's the reverse So anybody who thinks that it doesn't matter whether I produce a bomb or a car is economically diluted.
Speaker 2: I very much agree to that. So thank you very much for taking time and I hope to see you soon.
Speaker 1: You too. All the best.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Strikes Ships as the U.S. Tests Iran's Control Over the Strait of Hormuz https://youtu.be/Igw1v4acO3s https://t.co/ogQYsF5CD1
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Saeed Mohammed Marandi, a Tehran University professor and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, discusses developments in Lebanon, the nuclear memorandum of understanding (MOU), and regional relations after the war.
Marandi says the ceasefire in Lebanon is still in place but Israel has been violating agreements “on different fronts,” including bombing areas and killing civilians. He claims Israel “hasn’t been able to murder any members of Hezbollah,” citing the killing of a woman school principal, her husband, and a maid, and he also references daily killings in Gaza despite a supposed ceasefire. He argues the situation in Lebanon is central to what Iran calls phase two of the MOU and says Iran will not negotiate the nuclear program “until the issue in Lebanon is resolved.” He describes tankers being struck in the Strait of Hormuz and argues Iran will keep pressure on the United States, including on Trump, until Lebanon is resolved.
Marandi presents three “means of immense leverage” for Iran: (1) the nuclear program, (2) the Strait of Hormuz, and (3) Iran’s pressure through the MOU and ceasefire process. He says the number of ships passing through the Strait has been down from several months earlier, and asserts Iran is supposed to normalize ship numbers only if the U.S. abides by its commitments. He also claims Iran used the MOU to prepare militarily, pointing to movements of Iranian tankers and increased ship activity to Iranian ports. He says Iran is more prepared for war now than at the beginning, citing manufacturing of more advanced missiles and drones, expanding underground networks of missile/drone cities and command-and-control centers, and incorporating new technologies into armed forces.
He links popular legitimacy to Iran’s leverage, citing a large funeral attendance in Qom, which he says reached “well over 10 million people” (and “a couple of million” in Qom that day). He argues this demonstrates broad support despite decades of economic siege and infrastructure damage from wars and port sieges.
Marandi says Iran’s strategy would include using pressure on the Strait of Hormuz rather than direct missile exchanges, though he asserts that if Israel “intensifies” attacks that strike Beirut or commit atrocities, Iran will ultimately strike. He claims Iran can make the Strait more difficult for ships and use direct and indirect means to pressure Netanyahu through Trump.
When asked about U.S. proposals to partially ease sanctions in return for Iran not imposing tolls or fees in the Strait of Hormuz, Marandi says Iranians “will not accept any renegotiations at all” and points to statements attributed to Ayatollah Khamenei and Seyed Moushab Khamenei insisting the agreement should be stronger for Iran and that Iran will not be flexible. He argues Iran will not give up control or security over the Strait, and says costs for supplying Americans by air have increased substantially compared to shipping. He also argues the U.S. corridor through the Strait violates the MOU because Iran is said to be in control during the MOU period, and says the U.S. has not released “stolen Iranian assets” it is obliged to return. He predicts ship numbers could be kept down and that lower energy flows affect petrochemicals and other products reaching global and American markets.
On regional relations, Marandi argues incentives could increase for Iran to improve ties with Turkey and some Persian Gulf states, but the outcome is “complicated.” He says Turkey needs Iraq and faces threats from Israel, and that Turkey’s energy routes and trade connections keep it tied to both sides; he frames increased need for Iran as a reason relations could improve. He says three Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar) have mended relations “to a degree” with Iran, including a claim that Iran’s retaliation during specific American ceasefire violations did not target these three. However, he claims Saudi Arabia harassed an Iranian civilian airliner traveling to Sana’a, and he says tensions between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are rising. He argues Persian Gulf ruling elites recognize the U.S. “won’t protect them,” and he forecasts probable military strikes and counter-strikes between Iran and the U.S. over the Strait.
Regarding Israel, Marandi says Iran is doing “one-on-one negotiations” with five Persian Gulf countries and cites historical precedent: those countries supported Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran and then shifted after Kuwait was invaded. He says Netanyahu is experiencing political asphyxia, claims internal polls show Israelis think they lost the war (with “roughly 90%” belief), and states Iran is preparing militarily while bringing additional pressure against Netanyahu through Lebanon and Gaza. He asserts Iran will not be quiet about Gaza and says scenarios cannot be excluded, including the possibility of Israeli escalation.
Marandi says broader war would likely deepen global economic downturn risks, including energy shortages and shortages of other products. He also rejects the notion that relations can simply revert to the prior status quo, arguing U.S. actions and Iran’s preparation make that difficult.
Finally, he discusses Iran’s relations with China and Russia. He says Iran will improve these relationships and cites the Strait of Hormuz as a tool that helps break sanctions by requiring payment for passage and thereby disrupting sanction enforcement. He claims Russia and Iran need each other, and China’s relationship with both is also strong. He adds that Iran’s chief negotiator and Speaker of Parliament, Dr. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is planning to go to China soon, personally in charge of the Iran-China file, signaling intensified negotiations focused on the relationship. He forecasts that if plans proceed, economic ties—especially via the north-south transport corridor and increased investment in energy sectors—will be significantly greater within four to five years, including a larger presence of Chinese and Russian companies in Iran.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today we are joined by Professor Saeed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being on your show.
Speaker 0: So I've been wanting to ask you how the relations between Iran, the Arab countries and Turkey could change after this war. However, I first wanted to ask about Lebanon because we see that the killing still continues in Lebanon in violation of the memorandum of understanding. It's unclear to me if this is a sequencing strategy that is to knock out Hezbollah while the US is in talk with Iran. I was wondering, how do you see the development in Lebanon and how long do you think Iran will sit on the sideline? Yeah, what could trigger Iran's direct involvement in this conflict?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, as far as I know, the Israeli regime hasn't been able to murder any members of Hezbollah. Yesterday, they murdered a family, a woman who was the principal of the school and her husband and a maid, which is part of the Israeli tradition of just killing families. ordinary people all the time. And as we all see, every day they're murdering Palestinians in Gaza. Yesterday, they murdered a large number of people, even though there's a supposed ceasefire. No one in the West, in Western mainstream legacy media or among diplomats and the elite seems to care. So on the whole, the ceasefire in Lebanon is still in place.
Speaker 0: So murdering three people is a big deal.
Speaker 1: But on the different fronts, it's been somewhat quiet. But they've been violating the agreement, not just by murdering these three innocent people, but also by bombing different areas. But still, it's a lot less than what we saw before. Iran is going to continue to put pressure on the United States. And Iran will not negotiate the nuclear program at all, which is a part of the second phase of the MOU. until the issue in Lebanon is resolved. And we saw last night two tankers struck in the Strait of Hormuz. That is a part of Iran's, although Iran hasn't accepted responsibility, but of course we know it was Iran. But the Iranians are going to put pressure on the United States, continue to put pressure on Trump, until the issue in Lebanon is resolved. So Iran has three means of immense leverage. One is the nuclear program. Trump wants a deal. There won't be a deal unless Lebanon is resolved. And of course, the other issues as well, but Lebanon first and foremost, like Iran's assets that were stolen and were supposed to be handed over. The second is the Strait of Hormuz. The number of ships that pass through are much smaller than what we saw four or five months ago. And Iran is supposed to normalize the number of ships that pass through the Strait for the second month of the MOU. If the United States doesn't abide by its commitments, there's no reason why Iran should do that. Now, there's a disproportionate number of hankers that go through the Strait compared to other ships, but still, the number of ships that go through are roughly two-fifths to one-third of what they were or five months ago. Iran has that leverage too, the nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran has been using the ceasefire and the MOU to prepare itself for war. There were lots of tankers in the Persian Gulf which were trapped, Iranian tankers. And then as soon as the MOU was signed, all these tankers left for their markets in Asia. And Chips have been moving, going to Iranian ports. So Iran has been pairing itself militarily and Iranian society for further confrontation. Not that we want confrontation, but it's Trump and it's Netanyahu. So Iran has to be prepared for war. So Iran is more prepared for war today, militarily speaking, than it was at the beginning of the war. It's manufacturing new missiles with more advanced missiles, more advanced drones, expanding its underground network of missile and drone cities, command and control centers, and so on, incorporating new technologies into the armed forces. And then, of course, we have today the ongoing funeral, which we saw yesterday, too, that Well over 10 million people attended yesterday, the largest funeral in human history, which is ongoing today in the city of Qom. You have a couple of million people there. It shows the high degree of popular legitimacy of the Islamic Republic. No one can deny it anymore. For the first time, this crowd, for the first time, is being somewhat acknowledged in the West for what it really is and what it means. So I would claim that Iran has much more popular legitimacy than Western regimes do. And these are the evidences in front of us. In the heat of summer, at a time when the country has been under economic siege for decades, it has just gone through two wars of aggression, its infrastructure damaged, and a siege on Iranian ports. It's hurt the economy significantly. Yet you see these numbers come to these people, come to the streets. And the depth of that popular legitimacy is another issue as well. Coming out in the heat of the summer, it took me three hours, almost three hours to get there. And we had to walk hours in the sun. And then it took me a couple of hours to get home. So I was exhausted. I had to go to sleep. So it just shows the strength of Iran. It has the support of the public. Armed forces are capable. All of this is leverage. All of this is leverage. And so ultimately, if the United States refrains from forcing the Israeli regime out of Lebanon, things are not going to get any better for Trump. The economic problems will persist at a time when the U.S. economy is in deep trouble. And he will not get a nuclear deal at all, despite the fact that he promised to get a much better deal than Obama did.
Speaker 0: So Iran's tactics will likely be to focus its pressure on the Strait of Hormuz as opposed to engage the Israelis in some kind of a direct exchange of missiles.
Speaker 1: Well, if the Israeli regime starts, let's say, I can't say what the Iranian government military strategy is. But no doubt if the Israeli regime, for example, intensifies and the slaughter in Lebanon strikes Beirut or carries out other atrocities, that the Iranians will ultimately strike the Israeli regime. I mean, we were Iran was on the verge of firing missiles at the regime when after Netanyahu bombed Beirut, when Trump then immediately gave the concessions that Iran demanded to get the MOU. And one of those concessions was on Lebanon. It was the first article or the first part of the MOU. When you read MOU, as I'm sure you've had, you've read it carefully, the first part is about Lebanon and about the region, which includes Gaza. But Lebanon was named because of this genocidal war that was going on. So I think that the Iranian military... will definitely be used if the regime pushes too far. But if the regime pushes, Iran can also increasingly make the Strait of Hormuz more difficult for ships to use. So Iran has, it can use its military, it can use its presence in the Strait of Hormuz. It has different means to put pressure on Netanyahu, both directly and indirectly through Trump.
Speaker 0: Well, I saw the Americans made a proposal that they would do some partial sanctions relief on Iran in return for Iran not imposing any toll or fee on the Strait of Hormuz. Again, from the memorandum of understanding, the Americans were supposed to drop the sanctions altogether. And, uh, but, uh, so they're already seem to be attempting to renegotiate some of the terms in the memorandum of understanding. Now, I guess this was kind of predictable. They weren't just going to implement everything they agreed to, but you know, rather do this gradual renegotiation. Did you, do you see any scope for renegotiation or finding a new status quo or what was this proposal? Just yeah. Way over the top.
Speaker 1: Iranians will not accept any renegotiations at all. They won't be flexible at all. I think that Ayatollah Khamenei in his statement, Ayatollah Seyed Moushab Khamenei in his statement with regards to the agreement has made that clear, that he felt that, my understanding is that he wanted the agreement to be, let's say, stronger for Iran. And that sends a clear message to the United States that whatever we have now, the MOU, we're not going to be flexible about it. We've been flexible enough, more than enough. That's my interpretation of what he meant in his letter. And second, the funerals, I think, give the Iranian negotiators and the state, the armed forces, a clear mandate that the people behind them, people support them. And so Iran will definitely be very tough. Now, The Iranians are not going to give up the Strait of Hormuz and control over the Strait of Hormuz, whether it's fees or control. I mean, it's not just about fees. Those are important. But it's also about security. Iran will no longer tolerate the Israeli regime using the Strait or U.S. military vessels using the Strait. And in fact, now that the Americans can't use the Strait of Hormuz for its naval vessels, all the planes, they have to use more planes to bring in supplies. And that costs, I've heard, that costs like four times more than when they use ships. So Iran has already made it more costly for the Americans to maintain their presence. So control of the Strait of Hormuz is not just a financial issue. It's a security issue. After all, we suffered as a result of a war that was launched against Iran primarily from the Persian Gulf region. I mean, The Israeli regime's capabilities are infinitely less than that of the United States. Even the Israeli regime's capabilities are dependent on the United States. Israeli aircraft that would strike Iran use American fuel. They're refueled in the air by American planes. So the Persian Gulf is the center, has been the center of the aggression against Iran, and Iran's not going to accept that anymore.
Speaker 0: What is the state of the Strait of Hormuz? Because when Trump initially agreed to the MOU, he explained it as them only having four weeks left of oil. I thought that was brutally honest, but again, he was under great pressure to explain why he would sign such a document, which obviously should be interpreted as an Iranian victory. But given that the situation was so critical, How much is opened up since then? Because J.D. Vance also explained that one of the purposes of the MOU was to get the oil flowing and, well, how I interpret it, at least buy America some time. But how much has the situation actually improved?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the thing is that the United States is being very foolish. By opening their own corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, they're violating the deal. because according to the MOU, Iran is in control of the Strait of Hormuz during the duration of the MOU. And by the second month of the deal, the number of ships that pass through the Strait should go back to normal, meaning commercial ships. But since the United States is violating the deal, Iran has no incentive of doing that. And I would advise the Iranian government not to allow to pass through the Strait of Hormuz during the second month. Because when the Americans are not abiding by their side of the deal, why should Iran do so? The number of ships that pass through have increased, and disproportionately they are oil tankers. But we saw two of those tankers, two very large tankers, I think super tankers, struck last night. And so it's not surprising Nothing is for certain. There's a lot of uncertainty. So there is more fuel coming out. There is more energy coming out. And if you include the Red Sea and the Bojera, then it's not as high as it was before the war, but it is much higher. But it can go down very swiftly. A lot of the oil, by the way, was Iranian oil. Because as I said, there were lots of Iranian tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf. And they were able to leave after the ceasefire was after the MOU was agreed upon. So Iran disproportionately was able to take advantage of this opportunity. But again, I don't know what's going on now after the two tankers were struck, but Iran can easily decrease the amount of fuel that goes through. And the number of ships are still down. And that means all sorts of products, petrochemicals that are produced in this region and other products that are produced in this region because of the low cost of energy, that they're not reaching global markets and the American market either. So, you know, this is all up to the United States. If they had carried out their obligations in Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz by repeatedly attacking and threatening Iranian leaders, Trump and the United States are violating the deal. And that's not allowed according to the MOU. The Americans have not released a stolen Iranian asset, which they are obliged to do so in accordance with the deal. So the Americans are pushing Iran to, let's say, limit the amount of cooperation or the degree to which it implements its side of the bargain. If the Americans had... committed itself to the deal in full, the Strait of Hormuz by now would have had, I think, more than 100 ships passing through a day.
Speaker 0: Yeah, I think the frustration for the U.S. is that given that the war failed, they hoped that the plan B would be simply to go back to the old status quo. But as we see from Iran's actions, it's not possible. And it's very hard for the U.S. to adjust to these new realities. But Another area, though, where the previous status quo or the former realities are changing would be between the regional actors. That is, the divisions we see between the Arab states, Turkey, Iran. Well, some of this, obviously, is due to the US-led alliance system. Some is caused by conflicts unrelated to the United States. How may, and I stress may, relations change after the war? We do not have a crystal ball. It's a lot of different variables at play. But how do you see the relations possibly improving between Iran, Turkey, the Arab states? Or do you think they will remain more or less the same? Because this war, you know, it's been an earthquake for the entire region, it seems.
Speaker 1: it's complicated and it's difficult to, uh, really see the, uh, the situation in the months ahead. Turkey increasingly needs Iraq because it is vulnerable to the Israeli regime and the regime is making more threats against Turkey. And, uh, even though Turkey continues to cooperate with the regime, I mean, most of its oil, or at least roughly half of its oil, I think, goes from, um, Baku through Turkey and to Tel Aviv or to Israeli regime. And so Erdogan is doing Netanyahu has been doing him a great favor during the last two and a half, three years of genocide. And during the crisis in the Persian Gulf region, that energy continued to flow. But still tensions are increasing and he needs Iran. And so I think that is a strong incentive for relations between Iran and Turkey to improve. On the other hand, the five countries in the Persian Gulf that assisted the United States in the war, I think they are following somewhat different trajectories so far. The Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Qatar. They've mended their relationship with Iran to a degree. That's why during the last few ceasefire violations by the Americans where they attacked Iran in positions and Iran hit back hard, they hit Kuwait and the U.S. assets in Kuwait and Bahrain and in Jordan, but not in these three countries. I think there's a reason for that. But at the same time, Iran has just recently broke the siege on Yemen. and the international airport in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. And they sent a commercial airliner there, but the Saudis harassed it, from what I've read, and tried to prevent it from landing. And Yemeni air defenses apparently forced them to leave, but the fact that they would harass an Iranian civilian airliner is not a good sign. And the tensions between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are also on the rise. So, What does that mean for the future? It's unclear. What is clear is that these countries in the Persian Gulf, these family regimes, they recognize that the United States won't protect them, can't protect them. And that when they hopped on the bandwagon to attack Iran, it didn't go well for them at all. It went very poorly, and it continues to go poorly. Because the situation in the Strait of Hormuz hasn't normalized. And probably we're going to have some military conflict between Iran and the United States pretty soon over the Strait of Hormuz. Like, not massive, but probably there will be strikes and counter-strikes. The Americans will probably attack Iran and Iran will strike. And if ships again fail to abide by Iran's rules, according to the MOU, then they will be... So this is not good for those countries in the Persian Gulf. So they have an incentive to evolve their relationship with Iran, to have better ties with Iran, to tilt away from the United States. But all of them are very closely bound to the United States. Their elites study the United States. Their ruling families spend a lot of time in the United States. They spend their summer vacations there. They have palaces and mansions and apartment blocks and investments in the West and the United States, huge amounts. And I'm sure many of them are deeply compromised. Epstein, we've seen Epstein files where major figures, especially in the Emirates, are named. So it's difficult to envisage what will happen But there is an incentive for them to tilt away from the United States as the United States declines. So I think relations with Pakistan will improve slowly. Pakistan has very bad relations with Afghanistan, and of course there's India. I think that Turkey will need Iran more now than before because of the threats being made by Israel, despite the fact, as I said, that Turkey hasn't done anything really against it. And I mean, Trump just today, I think he said that Turkey is very faithful. It's more faithful than other countries that he expected to be faithful. Read into that, whatever. For me, that's not something to be proud of, but anyway. And with these countries in the Persian Gulf, I think it's a mixed bag, but Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Emirates are more important than the other two, meaning the ruling families. So we'll have to see how this plays out. I don't have an answer to your question at all. I'm just sort of thinking out loud. But at the end of the day, if there's another conflict between Iran and the United States, these countries will not be able to pretend that they're not involved or that they're neutral. Because If the Israelis attack the Iran, their jets have to be refueled by the Americans. And those jet American planes will be flying over these countries. If the United States attacks again, the United States has a military presence in all of these countries. So if they really want to improve relations with Iran, there's a lot that they have to do.
Speaker 0: How about Israel though? How do you see their role and I guess options in the region is affected now. I mean, I get the fact that this conflict is not over. We're not quite sure yet where the pieces have landed, but given that objective was to knock out Iran as the main adversary of Israel and essentially reshape the region around Israel backed by the United States, a lot of this has had a significant setback and also As you said, even if a lot of these Gulf states aren't that interested necessarily to improve relations with Iran, at some level they have to adjust to new realities. How does this affect, do you think, the strategic thinking in Tel Aviv? I know you don't have a window to inside their heads, but how do you see their options being shaped by this?
Speaker 1: Well, I should add that Iran... is carrying out one-on-one negotiations with these five countries in the Persian Gulf. And there has been some progress. And if we go back to the 1980s, these countries assisted Saddam Hussein immensely in his war against Iran, his war of aggression, which the Americans encouraged. They gave him hundreds of billions of dollars, I think well over $200 billion. Back then, a dollar was worth much more than it is now. So, They helped him create his war machine and to kill Iranians. But after Saddam went and invaded one of them, meaning Kuwait, these countries moved to fix their relationship with Iran. And Iran accepted. And even though they are heavily indebted to Iran for what they've done. And I think that is a model that can be again used now. could look back to the past and there is a possibility to have much better relations with these countries, especially since the United States is much weaker than it was before. So there is a possibility for improved relations and for normalizing or the normalization of relations. That's possible. But we'll have to see. With regards to the Israeli regime, I think that Netanyahu has been the greatest asphyxia that Zionism has ever experienced. He has destroyed the regime, its image across the world. It's seen by anyone who has any degree of knowledge about the region. It is seen as a genocidal regime. It is seen as the reason for this war that has caused a global economic downturn. And this is not over by any means. He needs perpetual war to stay in power. And all of this is causing huge tensions inside the regime from what I've read, from my understanding. And of course, as we all know, the polls inside show that overwhelmingly, like roughly 90% believe that the Israelis lost the war. And of course, Iran is much stronger today. Iran is preparing itself militarily, but the general's are an extraordinary show for us. And across the world, people are seeing how powerful Iran is as a result. In a different way than what they've seen in the past few months. So I don't think any of this is a good sign. I think people in Tel Aviv are monitoring the situation in Iran and seeing all of this as bad news. If the regime intensifies its aggression in Lebanon, Iran will punish it, and it will punish the Americans. If it retreats from Lebanon, there will be greater humiliation. And then there's the issue of Gaza. The Iranians are not going to be quiet about Gaza. Gaza is very much on the table for Iran. So Iran has many... means to put pressure on Netanyahu. But Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, and he's fighting to stay out of jail too. And this is, I think, the reason why all these wars have taken place, because he needs them to stay in power, he and his wife. So we can't exclude any scenarios. If he wants, he may wage war against Iran. That's possible. It would be very difficult for him. It would end very poorly because he needs the U.S. to refuel his jets. But even during the 12-day war, he lost the war. It didn't even last 12 days. And with the United States, they failed too. So he doesn't have any good options. And yet he does need... He needs war and death and destruction to help him stay in power. That's perhaps one reason why now they're talking about taking more of Gaza and all of Gaza, 70% of Gaza, and then taking the whole of, and then what's going on in the West Bank, where the West is quiet and they allow them to do it. It's probably to compensate for his defeat against Iran. But at the same time, what it does is that it makes the Israeli regime more despised across the world because people are seeing the daily killings and the disgusting sadistic behavior of their soldiers in the West Bank and so on so I don't see Israel as having any good options but a desperate regime can carry out desperate acts and that could change the situation across the region but Glenn if there is war I think that a global economic depression would be really inevitable. Because things are bad now. And there's no way that the global economy is going to normalize anytime soon. Even if the production and export of oil in our region goes back to normal. The shortages are extraordinary. And then it's not just oil. It's the other products that continue to that those shortages continue to grow. And so if something happens in the next few weeks or the next couple of months, the global economy will go downhill very fast.
Speaker 0: And, you know, I've seen, I watch your show and I've seen you speak with experts on the economy.
Speaker 1: The U.S. economy, the global economy is already in very, very, bad shape not just because of the Persian Gulf the situation in the Persian Gulf but because of a host of different issues so I don't think that any sane person in Washington would want a war but Netanyahu is not sane and he's desperate to stay in power and Trump is Trump is Trump so you can't rule out anything no matter how outrageous it may sound.
Speaker 0: What are the possibilities of a fundamental shift in relations between the Israelis and the Iranians? Because one can imagine, well, it's not very hard that Netanyahu will be forced to go away. I recognize that most likely he will be replaced with someone even more hawkish. But there seems to be a massive shift in the international system that is The unipolar era is over. And as we've seen since 1990s, the Israelis essentially decided, well, now we can just dominate. We don't have to make any compromises because, well, the Americans are behind us. But if they start to recognize the new realities, that is, they're a relatively small country, small population, small piece of land, limited means, they recognize the military defeats they suffered, the diplomatic, they're standing in the world falling apart. If they would seek to essentially embrace a completely new foreign policy, do you see any possibilities of essentially this conflict coming, not coming to an end, but being mitigated? Because I remember three years ago in 2023, the former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevi, he was making the point that as the Gulf states were trying to improve relations with the Iranians, he said, oh, maybe we should too. There's no reason, you know, they don't have a border with the Iranians. Is it possible that, well, they're not going to become allies, obviously, that some of the problems could be resolved and to some extent put an end to this conflict? I know this seems like fantasy at this time, but again, it's either that or, you know, a fight till the end. Do you see any diplomatic pathway or what would be required from Iran's perspective?
Speaker 1: You know, Desmond Tutu, after apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu, he traveled to Palestine. And I think when he left, or maybe he was still there, He said that the situation in Palestine is far worse than anything that I'd ever seen in South Africa. And he was, of course, South African for your younger viewers. He was South African and he suffered under apartheid. And he was one of the major public figures alongside Nelson Mandela and others who were leading the struggle against apartheid. He said that the situation in Palestine is far worse. And this was many years before the current genocide. So this regime is really intolerable. And it is ethno-supremacist. And thus for Iran, it has no moral legitimacy. And as Shia Muslims, I've said this before in the show, and sorry for being repetitive, supporting the oppressed, the disenfranchised, is key. I mean, look at the funeral ceremony of Ayatollah Khamenei. Who are those millions of people? Many of them are struggling because of the wars and the sanctions. But Ayatollah Khamenei, as a very, very high-ranking religious figure, is duty and responsibility has always been to support the disenfranchised press at home and abroad. Different administrations came to power in Iran with very differing views. The electorate has differing views at different times. And he's always stressed and always pushed to make sure that the disenfranchised, the oppressed, those who are vulnerable, that they be supported. That's why they came to the streets. Of course, The educated came to the streets. Some people from all walks of life came. But there's a reason why the Islamic Republic has this legitimacy, despite all the problems that it has. It's not a utopia. And of course, it's under enormous pressure. So there are certain ideals that exist in Iraq. And those ideals are very important for the Islamic Republic. And one of those is the Palestinian cause. It's not just Palestine. Iran supported the resistance in South Africa. Ayatollah Khamenei, when he was president, he traveled to the frontline countries in Southern Africa to help them. His support for all countries in Latin America. Communist Cuba. Iran helped Communist Cuba. Iran helped Catholic Venezuela. Iran, of course, helped Bosnia. Iran saved Bosnia. Iran, in Afghanistan, Iran helped the Taliban expel the United States. Some people would say that, well, in Syria, it wasn't. Those who were supporting the U.S. Empire and proxies of the U.S. Empire, allies of the U.S. Empire, were saying that Iran is supporting the Syrian government for sectarian reasons. It had nothing to do with that. It was because The empire was trying to undermine Syria, and that's why Iran was standing against it. It doesn't matter who the president of Syria was for Iran. And the evidence of this is that Iran did the opposite in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, many of the Tajiks, who are Persian speakers, and the Hazaras, who are all Shia, and the Uzbeks, and even Paschuns, who are against the Taliban, they became angry with Iran because Iran helped the Taliban expel the United States. Without Iran, the Taliban couldn't have done it. Of course, the Taliban now is different from the Taliban that first took over Afghanistan. They were truly genocidal. But after the collapse of their government and the US occupation and new leaders coming to power, Iran began to engage with them. They began to evolve in a limited way. I mean, we have big differences over women's education and other issues, but it's still different. So the Iranians helped them. So the Shias in Afghanistan, some of them, And the Persian speakers and the Uzbeks are angry with Iran. They say they're supporting the Taliban. But Iran is consistent in its policy. It's anti-empire and anti-Zionist. And so Iran can never normalize with the Israeli regime. It's just not possible. And Iran is not anti-Jewish. I think everyone knows that by now. In fact, the Israelis bombed a synagogue in Tehran during this war and destroyed it. And when the head of the synagogue, when he asked the Iranian government not to use cranes to help rebuild and to take away the rubble because they have old Jewish texts that they found from hundreds or years ago or whatever, he said that Contrary to his expectations, the Iranians agreed, and they began to remove everything by hand. So that's the degree to which Iran respects its Jewish community. They have a Jewish MP. If you go to a synagogue in Tehran, if you walk by, and mutual friends of ours have been to synagogues, Max Womenthal, George Galloway. They've been to Tehran. If you walk by a synagogue in Tehran, you would never know that there's a synagogue there. Because there's no guard standing in front of it. Because there's no need for any guards. Because they're safe and secure, just like any mosque or any church in Tehran. So for Iran, Judaism is not a problem at all. But Zionism is. And Zionism has no moral legitimacy. Now the world is beginning, is understanding what Iran was saying all along. And to the massive credit of young Jews in the United States, and older Jews, I'm sure, you saw in the Democratic Party's primaries in New York, where you have the largest Jewish population outside of Palestine. And most of them are Democrat. Traditionally, they supported the Democratic Party. They voted against the Zionists. And that says a lot because America is the most propagandized country in the world. And Jews in the United States get double propaganda, both from within the Jewish Zionist community and the general propaganda. But they see right through this. So I think a lot of people across the world are being persuaded that what Iran says, has been saying all along, is correct. That ethno-supremacism is wrong. Unacceptable. But at the same time, Zionism, the relationship between Zionism and Judaism is the same as Zionism with Christianity and is the same as ISIS and Al-Qaeda is with Islam. They are not the same. Christian Zionists do not represent Christianity. They claim that Christ supports genocide. Jewish Zionists believe in genocide. ISIS and Al-Qaeda believe in genocide, but Christians, Muslims, and Jews all ideologically oppose genocide. So I think Iran's point of view is gaining traction, and the Iranians believe that ultimately the Israeli regime has to be dismantled. And we saw that happen in South Africa. When I was young, I was an activist for both Palestine and apartheid South Africa. Although I wasn't an expert, I was at school and I would, in the evenings, do part-time work in high school for translation work. No one that I knew of, this was before the internet era, no one believed that apartheid South Africa would collapse the way it did. Everyone thought that this would be going on for many years to come. So I'm optimistic about the future. I think we're going to have very difficult days and months and perhaps years ahead. But I think that Iran will stick to its ideals where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have to live side by side equally in Palestine.
Speaker 0: Well, let me just, yeah, one final question. After this war, though, how do you see the impact on Iran's relations with China and Russia? Because I'm assuming the sanctions won't go away completely if Iran gets an elevated role in the Middle East. Both the Chinese and the Russians are, I guess, developing their own, let's call it a parallel international economic architecture with their own tech bases, industrial bases, their own supply chains, their own physical transportation corridors, their own development banks, using national currencies, their own payment systems, et cetera, insurances. Well, you can go down the whole list. How do you see Iran... adjusting to this, I guess, Eurasian powers.
Speaker 1: Well, one reason actually why Iran will not give up the Strait of Hormuz is that it helps Iran break the sanctions regime. Imagine all these different ships that pass through. Some of them are Chinese. They do business with Iran. Some of them are Russian. But many of them are affiliated to countries that obey U.S. sanctions. If they want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, they have to pay. And that is it. that violates the sanctions regime. So I think that's significant, very significant. But Iran is definitely going to improve its relations with Russia and China and Asian countries in particular. There's no doubt about that. The relationship with Russia is quite good and the relationship with China is quite good as well. Probably with Russia in some ways it's more developed and with the Chinese it's more developed in certain other ways.
Speaker 0: But...
Speaker 1: the chief Iranian negotiator, the Speaker of Parliament, Dr. Ghalibaf, is planning to go to China soon. And he is president, on behalf of the state, both the leader and President Pazishkian, so on behalf of Ayatollah Seyed Mushtaba Khamenei and President Pazishkian, he is in charge of the Iran-China file. And so that means there's going to be special negotiations focus on the Iranian-China relationship because the Speaker of Parliament will be personally in charge of helping to develop that. And I think that sends a very powerful signal. So I don't know exactly when he's going to go, but I think he will be in China in the not-so-distant future. That, I think, says it all. So Iran will continue to improve its relationship with Russia. The Russians need Iran. Iran needs Russia. And China needs Russia and Iran. There's, you know, Iran and Russia need China. So the United States has helped improve this relationship. And I think that with intensification of the war in Ukraine, which is imminent or somewhat imminent, it's already intensified, but it could, you know, you know this as well as I, much better than I, if not much, much better than I, but the war is going to grow more intense. So Russia needs Iran. And, uh, as I said, Iran needs Russia. This cooperation will continue to grow. Uh, I, I think that, uh, in the, let's say four or five years, in four or five years from now, uh, if things go as planned, uh, the, uh, The economic relationship between Iran and Russia will be significantly greater than now. The north-south transport corridor, as it evolves, it's going to bring about a great deal of trade and exchanges. And the economic relationship with China and investment by China and Iran in the oil and the energy sector and Russia and the energy sector, because the Russians are being expelled from by the americans from other places iran will welcome them to invest in its energy sector so i think in five years time if things go as planned we'll see a much larger presence of chinese companies in iran as well as russian companies well thank you for taking the time i wish you more peaceful times there in iran and uh
Speaker 0: Yeah, I hope to see you again soon in Tehran in the not too distant future. So thank you.
Speaker 1: I very much hope so, Glenn. Have a very good day and thank you very much for having me.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Richard Wolff: Europe Does Not Matter for a Declining United States https://youtu.be/YS0u_R5eH5c https://t.co/n08OGcmB7N
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centers on the economic component of what the guests describe as a proxy war between NATO and Russia, with Professor Richard Wolff arguing that Western efforts to collapse Russia’s economy through unprecedented sanctions have not achieved their intended effects. The host notes claims that Russia is “a gas station masquerading as a country,” yet Russia has adapted, diversified, and grown even as European counterparts face serious economic trouble.
Wolff frames the issue through class analysis rather than only inter-state chess maneuvers, asking why great powers do what they do and how domestic constraints and social pressures shape government strategy. He argues that Europe—not only Russia—has been a central driver, rooted in Europe’s history of capitalism and imperial expansion. He describes European colonial capitalism as sustaining capitalist growth until, by 1914, European powers had run out of territory, exemplified by the 1884 Berlin Conference carving up Africa. He then characterizes the period leading to World War I and the mutual destruction of colonizing empires (except the United States) as the outcome of this exhaustion.
According to Wolff, the United States emerged as hegemon after World War II, not through colonial control like the Europeans, but by creating economic chains tied to political and military arrangements. He describes a division of labor in which Europe was told to focus on domestic repression of communist and socialist movements while the U.S. provided a defense umbrella, allowing Europeans to spend on social welfare. Wolff says this arrangement later became a crisis for Europe when the U.S. reduced the umbrella, forcing Europeans to pay for defense at the expense of welfare or by borrowing, deepening subordinate dependence.
He further argues that Europe “never recovered” from the loss of empires and became tied to the U.S. to manage internal political and external risks. Wolff claims that Europe’s main hope to restore its historical position is an outcome resembling Zbigniew Brzezinski’s concept from the 1990s: a grand strategy to “destroy Russia” and dismember it into smaller states. In Wolff’s portrayal, this is not about communism’s presence but about dismantling Russia to enable an imperial-like recapture that Europe believes it cannot pursue otherwise against the U.S. or China.
Wolff describes European escalation as “desperate,” tied to leaders’ need to sustain domestic support after perceived U.S. disrespect. He claims demonization of Russia and escalation function as a strategy to keep capitalists supported and to preserve a new imperial project. The host agrees that Europe has incentives to make itself relevant to the U.S., citing NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s claims about military “Keynesianism,” arms procurement benefits, and buying U.S. energy to demonstrate loyalty.
Wolff extends the argument by emphasizing Europe’s economic vulnerability: he says Europe lacks the domestic economic foundation and industrial capacity to compete technologically and militarily with the U.S. and China. He points to layoffs and industrial restructuring, including Volkswagen layoffs, and argues that deindustrialization is underway. He adds examples from European daily life (such as BYD taxis in Paris) to illustrate how competitors’ products displace traditional European manufacturing.
On military feasibility, Wolff states that before Russia’s invasion there was a major Ukrainian military buildup, but he argues it was insufficient against Russia. He claims China’s manufacturing base and Iran’s ability to obtain capabilities via routes involving Russia and China increase the challenge of any attempt by Europe to reverse the balance. He also cites spending asymmetries, stating that Europe cannot match U.S. military budgets (including the projected rise in the U.S. budget to $1.5 trillion by 2027), and that even borrowing would not close the gap.
Regarding Russian economic resilience, Wolff argues Russia has accepted it will be a junior partner of China, describing the Chinese economy as four to five times larger. He claims Russia and China will work toward developing and “colonizing” Russian Asia to access resources, cities, forests, and land, emphasizing that Russia has the geographic “horizontal” expansion unlike the constraints of places like New York. He contrasts this with Europe’s perceived inability to recover and suggests Russia’s partnership structure supports growth under sanctions.
The exchange concludes with the host asking whether Europe’s attempts to become relevant to a declining U.S. indicate an unfavorable future, and Wolff responding that he fears European “hysteria” reflects a lack of alternatives and an unwillingness to change society to adapt to a multipolar reality. He argues the absence of an inclusive security architecture and the maintenance of sovereign inequality keep Europe locked into escalation rather than compromise.
In closing, Wolff adds a Marxist question about enterprise organization, arguing that capitalism’s profit-maximizing structure benefits a small number while democratic alternatives would prioritize wages and salaries. He presents this as potentially offering a way out of an economic and political dead end.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Professor Richard Wolff joins us today to discuss the economic component of the proxy war between NATO and Russia. So thank you for coming back on the program. The efforts to exhaust the other side is, as we know, not only seen in the military sphere of this conflict, which by the way has been building up for decades, but it also has a very strong economic component. That is, the NATO countries have not shied away from their objective of collapsing the russian economy and as we know russia today is the most sanctioned country in the world and the west has done everything i would say that is cut russia's access to its markets banks even stolen russian sovereign funds yet it doesn't seem to work i was wondering how do you explain this because after all we were told by our rulers that russia is merely Well, a gas station masquerading as a country. So how do you see Russia having adjusted to these sanctions? Because I think very few people in the West expected the Russians to adapt so well and indeed grow, even as its European counterparts are in very big, big or deep trouble.
Speaker 0: Well, I would like to... give you an answer based exactly on what you just said at the very end of your opening here. The way I see this, I look at it through the lens of a class analysis. As I mentioned to you earlier, I admire and have learned a great deal from listening to your guest, John Mearsheimer, on many occasions, but on your program particularly. I appreciate what he has to say. He analyzes the struggle among great powers in a very honest, direct, careful, analytical way. It is exemplary in the way he does that. But for me, it begs one huge question, which is why do the particular global powers do what they do when they do it. To answer that question as if it's all a chess maneuver among the players leaves out all of the social pressures that operate on any government, on each government, pushing it and pulling it in this way or that way. They are not free to engage in any strategy against other great powers because some of those strategies are blocked off by their own domestic constraints and others are not. So a proper analysis has to ask the question, why is this happening? Why is one power threatening another? And to answer that only by relationship what the others are doing leaves open the basic question, why are all of them doing what they are doing? And I would like to answer that question by focusing on Europe, because it is my judgment, looking at the history of capitalism in Europe, that the active player here is above all Europe, secondarily also Russia. But secondarily, I am very mindful that Russia has been repeatedly invaded. Napoleon tried that. World War I tried that. Hitler and Operation Barbarossa tried it. They all tried it. They all were defeated by a Russia which reacted to the invasion by pushing back, basically, once attacked. So, I would like to argue the following. I think, from everything I can tell, that the major European countries, and by that I mean France, Britain, Germany, Italy, maybe a couple of more, but basically those, were all in the 18th century, some even earlier, and all in the 19th century, huge colonial powers. These were fundamentally small units of national capitalism built up in their own way in the 17th, 18th, early 19th century, varying with each country. And then they became colonial powers at one point or another, with populations overseas much larger than what they had at home. I mean, compare the Netherlands with Indonesia or compare the British Isles with the British Empire and on and on and on. The colonialism is what sustained their capitalist growth. They developed a massive hinterland. Once they had run out of as much as they could take from their own hinterland, France, Germany, Italy, they then went afield as capitalism makes its profits, plows it back in as part of its competition. Long story short, by 1914, they had run out of territory. For those who know their history, 1884, the Conference of Berlin, they literally sit around the table and carve up Africa. Who gets what? But there was no more place to go. And over the years, between the Berlin Conference, 1884, and the outbreak of World War I, they built up a level of conflict and clashes and little mini-wars that we all now can see were the prelude to the Great World War. I'm going to now lump together the first and the second because they only happened a few years apart and they were the workings out of what? The mutual destruction of all the colonizing countries with one exception, the United States. All the rest, Japan now included, blew each other out of the water, bombed each other to smithereens. destroyed their economy, killed huge numbers of their people, Russia included, and on and on and on. Only the United States, because of its distance, because of its airfare and air war not yet being developed in the way it is now, was able to emerge. As people, in case they don't know you, Russia loses 25 million people in World War II and the United States loses 400,000. You could not have a starker rendition. The war is now over. Here comes the argument. The war is over and the United States stands. It has not only seen its economy decline, not at all, it's the opposite. The war brought the United States out of the Great Depression the way nothing else had. The United States was in better shape at the end of the war economically than it had been ever since 1929 when it crashed totally, the worst it's ever seen. And so the United States emerges, as we all now know, as the hegemon, the inheritor of the empires, not running them the way the Europeans did by actual colonies, but let them all be independent. We knew how to do that. We've been doing it with Latin America for many, many years. Let them be independent. We will create economic chains as powerful or stronger than the political control that the Europeans had once been able to operate. So the United States moves in, takes over, the dollar replaces the pound, the American military cut that famous deal with Europe saying to them, here's a division of labor. You're going to take care of fighting your own communist and socialist movements, which were dangerous after World War II because they had been the heroes of the resistance and had a popularity that Nothing like that happened in the United States, a very important difference. So you Europeans are going to fight there. You're going to be our allies as a bulwark against the evil Soviet Union, and we're going to be your defense umbrella. You don't have to spend money. You can let your army and navy go to pot, which they did. I will take care of you. Fine with us because it allows us. to perpetrate a Keynesian, a military Keynesianism at home we could not have gotten away with absent the great global crusade against the evil empire. Very nice division of labor. Europe is subordinated. Europe is told You can now spend money on social welfare. That's how you're going to defeat the Communists and the Socialists. You can have your social welfare program. We will fund it because we'll take the defense expenditure away from you. That's now a crisis for Europe because the reverse has happened. Trump has pulled away the military umbrella. You're going to have to spend European money. And where is it going to come from? You're going to have to take it from social welfare. maybe borrow some money. That will make you even more subordinate. That's very dangerous. So now, here comes the biggest punch of all. I would argue, and here I take a clue from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a person from whom I could not be further removed in my analysis. Here's what I think happened. The Europeans have never recovered from the loss of their empires and they know it. They hooked themselves up to the United States because otherwise between their own socialists and communists and Russia next door and the Americans with a who-knows-what mentality were too risky. So they went with the United States, the lesser evil for them. But that didn't solve their problem. It postponed it for a while. They could focus on recovery the first 10 or 20 years. Then when the Soviet Union collapsed, they could focus on, here we go now, the recapture of an empire a little bit by absorbing Eastern Europe, by moving investments into Poland and Romania. But they're doing all of that. But the great hope, and I would argue the only hope, the Europeans ever had to recapture their place in history, the dominant place they had for the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, even the 20th century. The only way. They weren't going to compete with China. That's over. They weren't going to compete with the United States too hard. One outlet. They could recapture a great European empire if they could destroy and dismember Russia, carve it up into half a dozen or a dozen little countries, make it all lots of Latvias and Estonias and all of that, and then divide them up. The French can get these four, and the Germans can get those six, and the Japanese in the Far East could get maybe a little bit too. And these players, effectively marginalized as the world becomes U.S. versus China and Europe becomes an ever more distant third Me Too subordinate junior partner, the only hope to evade all that that implies for Europe is this war with Russia. And it is a war Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote this in the 1990s, the grand strategy would be, and has to be, destroy Russia. Not because it's communist, it had nothing to do with it. Communism was just a convenience made possible by the Soviet Revolution of 1917. As soon as it's gone, We're closer to war now than we arguably ever were during the Cold War. Why? Because this is the issue that's at play here. The Europeans are desperate. Their demonization of Russia, which is quasi-hysterical. I mean, I'm an American. I sit here on the other side of the ocean. But as you know, my roots are European. And I see just a kind of craziness in the Western European and a much more measured Mr. Putin. I have nothing for him. I don't support him or anything like that. But it's pretty obvious who's overshooting the mark, who's going up the escalation ladder, to quote John Mearsheimer, and the Russians then retaliate. It's a little bit like the Chinese with the American tariffs and so on. But I think that that's what we're watching. We are watching the desperate, and I want to underscore that word, the desperate effort of the European leaders, the Starmer, or Burnham, Mertz, Macron, the others. This is their only way, not just to salvage their personal careers. They're really in trouble there. They hooked their wagon personally to the United States, and Mr. Trump has thrown them under the bus. So they have to turn to their people and say, we're the great leaders who came up with the United States, which has now disrespected you on 27 levels. They can't do that. They have to come up with something else to hold on to the support. They have to support their capitalists because they're not going to get the support they used to get. They can do it by a defense program and the demonization of Russia with its utopian goal of recreating the empire they lost in the 20th century and have found no substitute for since.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting perspective. Obviously, Europe destroyed itself in these two world wars, but what happened after World War II is kind of interesting. That is, It got an extension of life through the partnership with the United States because, well, in all fairness, by the United States, essentially providing for the security of the Europeans, also offering quite generous trade deals to make sure the capitalist, well, frontline states would be more prosperous than the communist ones. The Western Europeans did, well, surprisingly well, given what had happened in two world wars. know afterwards we created all these narratives that well we discovered peace and cooperation that's better than war but you know this didn't come out of nowhere um but then after the cold war uh yes something obviously began to change because after world war ii the main argument in the west was that the european project was about seeking security with each other and not against non-members well it didn't really fit within the cold war format but anyways after the cold war One began to, again, look at who would we seek security against. Furthermore, this whole idea that Eastern Europe would gravitate towards Western Europe, it was also quite interesting. Even in the military aspect, I know Soros, he wrote this article, George Soros, in the 90s, was making the point that we can begin to fight again and, well, We saw what NATO became, and he was arguing that NATO could be successful if it partnered with some Eastern European countries because the Eastern Europeans could absorb a lot of deaths, and the Western Europeans cared less for high casualties and a lot of their men coming home in body bags. So this was essentially what they were looking for, find some Eastern European country which can provide the meat. I thought that was quite fitting to where we are today. Anyways, my point was, there's no more economic model though, with the, as you said, the US pulling the rug beneath the feet of the Europeans. Well, what are they supposed to do? I know Kaya Callas, the EU foreign policy chief, she made a comment similar to what you did. That is, you know, how much better and easier would it be if Russia was just divided into many smaller states? How much easier would it be to manage? and of course she didn't mention how resource rich this weaker regions would be but do you think this is part of the problem why the europeans are so you know desperate now to break russia because you know ukraine is now completely captured by the us and the europeans i mean they give all this aid to zelensky but that just means that his corrupt government can stay in power And that he will continue to send the men to death. But the project Ukraine, it hasn't really paid off a return on investment yet. That return on investment implies that the first defeat Russia. But you see, this is the main problem then for the Europeans. That is the lack of an economic model besides, well, they don't have the technology. They don't have the industries.
Speaker 0: It's, is this the main, is this at the heart of the problem? I think so. Let me tell you what I pick up because I went to all the elite universities in this country, so I know a good number of the people that—I mean, I disagree with them. I come from the left wing, as I'm sure you know, but I know about what the policies are and who's doing them. There is a deep perception in the United States And the Europeans, I'm sure, know this. It's not just Mr. Trump. The Europeans have to understand there has been almost no basic disagreement with Mr. Trump's rejection of the Europeans. Yes, there might be a few voices here that wouldn't go quite so far, and they wouldn't say the things he says. He's out of control. His mouth runs anyway. but there's no support here to go back to the way things were. There's a very clear understanding here that the United States is itself a declining empire and that it has to spend all of its time, energy, and focus on holding back its decline. My guess is, if you ask me, that the most powerful lesson on that score is having been defeated by the Iranians, the humiliation of that. I mean, the first war had to end after 12 days because of the miscalculations, and then these two clowns did it again. That's why there's a falling out between the United States and Israel right now that no one knows quite how that's going to work out. that's a falling out among the two who completely messed everything up in terms of both long and short-term strategies for the Middle East. The perception here is that Europe is done. I can't tell you how often I hear that. We should not worry about it. It doesn't matter. When Trump says You know, I'm not sure what we'll do if the Russians attack you. They mean that literally. I think the Europeans have convinced themselves that they don't really mean that. Oh, yes, they do. Yes, they do. For them, their number one priority is to fix this declining, slow the decline, reverse it if possible. Number two priority, reverse or slow China. Number three, if that doesn't work, number two, sit down with China and work something out. Europe isn't in the conversation. Europe is irrelevant. Europe is out of the picture. Europe is a divided mess and they will go their own way and If, on the other hand, if the Europeans could have a big war and destroy Russia, then the United States would be interested. So would China. What is now that? It's almost as though that would reverse Putin and Russia would no longer be shifting to be an Asian country, but now would bring all of that Asia into a European focus. But you know what that is? That's the recapturing of the lost empire. Only it's not in Asia, Africa, Latin America. It's in Eastern Europe and the landmass into Asia. That, which the Americans do not think the Europeans are capable of, not at all. But if that were by some magic to happen, then Europe, and I think somewhere the European leaders are aware of that. Here's a disagreement with Mr. Mearsheimer, with Professor Mearsheimer. I think these class issues, how does a capitalism in Western Europe, where modern capitalism was born, after all, in Holland and England and all that, how do the capitalists there recover their ability to make the kind of profits that they can then use to do the research and development to catch up to the Americans and the Chinese who get further and further ahead of them literally every day. And where are they going to get those profits from? I mean, what we're watching are headlines about Volkswagen laying off 100,000 workers Varoufakis and his friends teach us correctly that the German economy is an automobile-focused phenomenon. Varoufakis says their industry is not just shrinking. He says the auto industry will disappear. I understand the argument because here in the United States it's disappearing. Our auto industry now is a shadow. Our auto industry used to be Detroit. 1970-80, Detroit had 2 million people. Today, it has 600,000. I mean, for a modern city in a capitalist country, what you're seeing there is a level of collapse that is very stark and very profound. It's tearing this country apart politically, and it's doing that in Europe, too. All of those things are kind of not in... Professor Mearsheimer's story. He's got the great powers maneuvering, and he handles that beautifully. We learn a lot from him. This is not in any way disrespectful of the scholarship and the intellect he brings, but there's an absence of a conversation about how the domestic economic realities shape what these strategies are that the different powers try to presume as they then bump up against each other. But you've got to explain that. Otherwise, the bumping becomes a chess game rather than the urgent economic survival struggle that it actually is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's fascinating. That is, well, because in the political realism, states are perceived to behave more or less the same. It all depends on the international distribution. It creates systemic incentives how states should act. But of course, how they behave pursue their power is interesting because as you said Europe has always had a bit of a colonial model and even after World War II and after the Cold War this kind of continues you you see this with the you know whatever benign rhetoric there is the human rights arguments you know whenever they have the new institutions coming up like the ICC it's always you know one side being the the civilizational teacher, the rest of the world being the student. And this always translates into this sovereign inequality where sovereignty for us, but not for you. We don't say that countries aren't civilized anymore, that you're not civilized, so you don't qualify for sovereignty, but you don't have the liberal democratic credential. And that's why you don't qualify for sovereignty. But I want to get back to what you said, though, about the the Europeans' relevance to the United States, because I agree. And I heard many comments from European leaders where they almost, well, they sometimes say that we have to make ourselves relevant to the United States. And of course, I think it was a Polish president who made the point that if Russia wins, then the US will prefer to work with the Russians instead of us. But again, if they could defeat the Russians, that would be very different. However, if there's a failure to do so, if there's a failure to defeat the Russians, what is the utility of Europe for a declining US? Will it just cannibalize the industries? Will it try to set it off aside as an exclusive economic zone that is, you know, cut yourself off from the Chinese and our rivals? Or will they just demand the Europeans militarize and use them as a, I guess, as another Ukraine or... What is the purpose of Europe in the future now?
Speaker 0: Well, my guess is that they're going to... I think the presumption here is, maybe wrong, but the presumption of the leadership here is that the Europeans cannot defeat the Russians, that that's not available unless we're talking 10 or 20 years from now after an immense military buildup across Europe and paid for by an austerity politics. And even as they start talking, they are fully aware that between the right-wing opposition to that kind of thing and the left-wing opposition, this is unlikely to be achieved in any reasonable time frame. And that their suspicion is that we're going to see what is for them dangerous. We're going to see either a right-wing emergence, new governments of the far right, Le Pen or the Auschwitz-Deutschland or whatever, or a left-wing version. Everyone here knows who Jean-Luc Mélenchon is, and they know that the left is the dominant faction in the Assemblée Nationale in France. Things could get very bad in that country. My family's French. The blame of the French family for the Macron government having not prepared them for the heat wave, it's very serious, very serious stuff. And it wouldn't be if you had a normal situation, but you don't. You have the country splitting more and more. Macron has no support at all. I mean, nobody likes Mr. Macron. I mean, how he's going to survive is a mystery to me. Maybe he'll do it, but it's a mystery to me. My answer to your question is the presumption is that all Europe can do is help the United States navigate and, if possible, offset, slow, or reverse its own decline. Look, when von der Leyen agreed with Trump that in exchange for lower tariffs there would be a purchase of six or seven hundred billion dollars worth of liquefied natural gas plus an investment of an equal amount of money of European money in the United States over the next ten years, granted it's just words, but what are you saying? you are becoming a tributary. Your job is to deliver value to the United States. It will continue maybe to provide you with some military support. Okay, whatever exactly that means. It will berate you for not providing them with the support. Look what they're using that now in terms of what didn't happen in the Gulf, I don't think they have much planned for you. I think they assume Europe is going to fade away. And if I were to be in a mean mood, I would say to you there are even fairly strong rumors that Europe might be the way that the United States and China could learn to live with a carved-up world. United States gets the Western Hemisphere, and China gets Europe. I know that this is frightening to Europeans, at least a few that I've told it to. But if you want to know where people's thoughts are going, the assumption is that Europe is over. And those who know, and I know how you do it on your program, I know you know, but for those who follow, yes, it is wonderful for the Ukrainians that they can shoot missiles and drones into the heart of Russia. I get it. It's wonderful public relations. It allows the narrative that was in deep trouble. But they just took another couple of Donbas cities. There aren't many left. We all kind of really know what's happening there. And if the Europeans keep escalating, then the Russians will escalate. And then where will we be? Mr. Trump cannot go to war against Russia. He can't do it. I don't think so. I think he knows it. They all know it. They can't do it. So, if the Europeans push it and the Russians respond, Even if it's not nuclear, I understand that, conventional, but they go after the places in the Baltics or in Germany or wherever else they are that are providing the material to Ukraine. Ukraine is over. There won't be much of Ukraine left. That's a whole other issue. The initial plan, which was just to take the four oblasts on the eastern end, Those are now ancient history. They keep moving. They need what the Europeans used to call a cordon sanitaire, and it keeps moving west. So I think there's not much of a role for Europe, which somewhere the Europeans, I think, have a glimmer. They get it, and that's why they're desperate. If Russia wins, the war in Ukraine comes to an end, and Russia takes... a quarter of it, or whatever the amount there is, and Ukraine is rendered much poorer, much weaker, in debt forever. This is a terrible outcome. Not only have they not gotten their great new colonial territory, but what they had is diminished, and now you're going to see in the rest of Eastern Europe a rethinking of their allies are the way you're seeing it in the Gulf states who are realizing that an American military base is not a protection. It makes you a target and a target of an Iran that can hit you. Look at Saudi Arabia. I mean, it's amazing the shifting that's going on.
Speaker 1: This is a fascinating thing in Europe, though, that is that they're doubling down on this gamble. I see Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General, he keeps telling the Americans that, listen, in efforts of elevating the relevance of Europe to the Americans, he's making the point that, oh, we're doing this military Keynesianism. That is, we're becoming a force amplifier, a valuable partner. And also, We're buying your weapons, so it's good for your economy. We employ Americans in order to be a militaristic partner for the US. But this only digs a deeper grave for the European economies. And then, of course, they all say, listen, we cut ourselves off from Russian energy. We're going to show our loyalty to the US. We're buying American energy, which is many times more expensive. And they hope that this will also win the affection of the United States to show that they are an important partner. As you said before, the EU's Wunderland, she signs these trade deals with the Americans, which everyone says openly is a horrible deal. But again, it shows that, well, as you said, we're paying tribute to the United States. Why would you leave a continent that is willing to sacrifice its own economic interest to please the U.S.? But again, all of these things, all these tributes to the US, it only makes the Europeans weaker and weaker. And it's not sustainable, I think. And I think it also draws some contempt, to be honest, not just from Trump, but in Washington in general. This kind of subservience, it's not going to be sustainable.
Speaker 0: Let me go even, take it a little bit further. It's well understood here that over the last eight or nine years before the Russians invaded, there was a tremendous program to build up the Ukrainian military. So at the time that the Russians invade, the Ukrainians have a bigger army than most of the countries of Europe had, and they can't do it against the Russians. So now add the Europeans, and you don't add very much, and it's not enough. It's just not enough. And Americans are very aware now of In a way, they weren't as little as five years ago. Behind Russia is China now, and China has a bigger manufacturing base to produce missiles and drones than the rest of Europe combined. The Iranians, thanks to the Caspian Sea, can get everything they need from the Russians who, because they have a long border with China, can get everything they need from the Chinese. What are you undertaking if you challenge what they have now produced? Are you aware—I only learned about it a few weeks ago—that the Volkswagen management had meetings in Washington earlier this year discussing with the Trump administration moving the headquarters of Volkswagen to the United States? What greater You know, that's not just a statement to the Americans, but that's a statement to all of Europe. And now they follow up. That deal fell through. That's not going to happen, at least for the moment. Instead, they're going to lay off 100,000. I mean, this is the deindustrialization. You're going to make Europe a tourist mecca that produces wine and cheese, and that's fine. But everything else will come from somewhere else. I was in Paris the last time a few months ago. I stepped into a taxi cab and I noticed BYD. So I speak French so I talked with the cab driver and he told me why he's driving a BYD. Because it's the cheapest, best car. That's why. It wasn't complicated. He would have preferred to get a Peugeot, but a BYD is what he has to do. He told me all the other cabs, they're putting pressure on the Macron government to let in more of the BYDs because they want to buy fleets of them. It's over. It's over. And the only reason—we don't have BYD here. So, if you come to New York, you can have a cab, but it can't be BYD. because there's 100% tariff against BYD. And by the way, the tariff was originally put by Biden and then raised by Trump. But if the Democrats win the elections in November, none of this that we're discussing will change.
Speaker 1: Let me ask a last question on the Russian economy. How do you see this being different than the the other Europeans, because it's holding up against all of these sanctions. It's even growing. It's diversifying. What is it? Do you see it? I mean, the Russians also had their empire. Did you see the Russians being less dependent on empire than the Europeans? Or what is it about the Russian economy that makes it, well, that is capable of thriving even today? As the Europeans are seemingly dying off, all their economies are dying off.
Speaker 0: I think the Russians have come to terms with the fact that they are going to be, and the truth of it is, junior partners of the Chinese. Remember, the Chinese economy is four to five times larger than the Russians. These are not equals. They aren't, and they haven't been, and they become less so with each passing year because the rate of growth of Russia, which is impressive, especially during a war, is nonetheless significantly less than the Chinese. So the reality is I think that Russians are going to work out a deal with the Chinese to colonize Russian Asia. Maybe a little bit they'll continue in the know, the Asian republics that were below, you know, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, all of that. They'll keep working to try to make those allies. But they're going to do what the Europeans covet. They want to develop the immensity of Asian Russia, its resources, its cities, its forests, its land. I mean, they don't have… Here in the United States, we have this as follows. A place like New York is a problem because Manhattan is an island, and you can't grow, so you have to grow up. Well, the Russians can grow this way. They can grow horizontally. They have an outlet for their need to grow. They have some of the same pressures that the Western Europeans do, but they also have a partner who is very eager to be in good shape with them because they have the military that China needs still some years to catch up with. And one last point that you made. If I understand the German deal, they're going to spend $800 billion over the next 10 years on the military. Well, the American budget, just to give people a sense of the size, is currently $900 billion per year, and it is scheduled in next year, 2027, to go from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion. Europe cannot catch up. You can't do that. Those are numbers that are so disproportional that unless Europe comes up with some mammoth new source of funding across all the countries, even then they can't keep up. But at the current point, and if a good part of that is borrowing from America, well, then it's just a joke. They'll never catch up.
Speaker 1: So in short, the Europeans' efforts of making themselves relevant to the US and thus having a place in this multipolar world is, well, not looking good.
Speaker 0: I tell you, Glenn, it frightens me because it suggests to me that the hysteria, the demonization of Russia and Putin and all this childish stuff is driven by a historically accumulated sense of having no other option. They're not prepared to talk about changing their society to come to terms with it. I live in the United States. where people like me—we're not very many—are trying to get the country to realize the empire we have is declining and we'd be better off working out deals with China and so on than this aggressive, slow you down, punish you. It's no longer working. It's bouncing back here. You know the strongest voice for opening up relations with China in this country now are the leading American technology companies that have to sell to China. Otherwise, the Chinese will win. In other words, they'll win unless we open up, which will help them win. But if we don't help them win, then they'll win. And this gets people very depressed as they figure out that's what it means if your empire is declining. And that's what it means for them that theirs isn't. And that makes a very dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting view because I always make the point that Europeans could have a future if they changed the model completely. That is, if we wouldn't have a divided continent, if we would recognize that the largest country in Europe, that is Russia, is also part of the continent, we could have a, you know, They become less dependent on external security providers who have more prosperity. Europe could have a pretty good future, but it's not even on the menu. They can't live next to Russia as an equal. This is the problem. That is no inclusive security architecture, no deals. It's either sovereign inequality or they will go down with the ship, it seems.
Speaker 0: Boy, are they going down. Terrible, terrible mistake. Terrible mistake. They also ought to ask the old, if you allow me, the old Marxist question. What about the organization of your enterprises, the capitalist and the worker, the employer, the employee? That's a driver. To maximize profit is to maximize the revenue stream of a very small number of people. Maybe you ought to think of running an enterprise not to maximize the profit—that's for a small number of people—but to maximize the wages and salaries because that's the majority. A democratic enterprise cannot run the way capitalism is organized, and you wouldn't have the profit drive that leads to so much of this trouble. I don't say that as an ideologue. I say that. Because Marx's insight here is becoming urgent because it might offer a way out of the dead end that otherwise confronts us.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, as always. Very much appreciated this. And yeah, it's worth looking into what kind of or type of actor it is as well, besides just looking at the distribution of power, I guess. So thanks again.
Speaker 0: My pleasure, Glenn. And thanks for your programs, which I learned from and appreciate very much.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Steve Jermy: Warning! NATO Can't Win a War with Russia https://youtu.be/13THGGoO5N8 https://t.co/0qr4Z4pa7o
Video Transcript AI Summary
Retired Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jeremy discussed his article, “The Coming War with Russia,” arguing that European leaders are preparing for war without fully accounting for the costs and consequences. He said Europeans assume Russia will “sit quietly” until a future readiness point, while Europe continues to develop and provide missiles, cruise missiles, and drones to attack into Russia without Russian reaction. Jeremy contrasted this with Russian statements and intent, including comments attributed to Putin that Russia would prepare as well if Europeans were preparing for war.
Jeremy argued that, for Russia, the conflict would be a defensive war linked to protecting itself from NATO expansion and military infrastructure moving closer to Russian borders—an issue he said Russia has raised for years. He said Europeans appear to interpret Russian actions as colonial ambition, rather than as defensive posture. He also suggested that Russia would respond early, including a suspicion that the 2022 move into the Donbas was influenced by the idea that waiting would become more damaging, because Russia would face greater forces later.
Jeremy’s scenario began with Russia striking European production facilities in Germany, France, and Britain where drones and cruise missiles are developed for use against Russia. He then suggested that European governments could invoke NATO’s Article 5, but that Article 5 does not guarantee collective action—leading some nations, he said, to provide “warm words” but no monetary support. He further suggested the United States might stand back, predicting that Europeans could find themselves “on their own,” because he believed American concerns would include the risk of a land war on the European continent and reluctance to send American soldiers to fight and die in Europe against Russia.
He next predicted that the E3 (Germany, Britain, and France) might respond with air attacks against Russia, but that they would face effective air defenses and heavy aircraft losses, drawing on the S-400 and S-500 systems. He said Russia would then target Europe’s energy infrastructure similarly to approaches used in Ukraine, and that sanctions and reduced Russian oil and gas supplies could quickly produce an energy crisis, then an economic crisis. He argued that, at that stage, “the only thing” left might be to sue for peace because offensive options would not work. He described the scenario as a scenario rather than a forecast, intended to show potential costs that he said Europeans have not thought through publicly.
In response, Glenn questioned assumptions about escalation control and war being fought elsewhere. He compared past eras where NATO had “complete and total escalation control,” to what he argued would be a new situation without such control once missiles began entering Russia and retaliation began. He also asked how the war would be fought, emphasizing what he saw as a Russian preference for systematic, gradual frontline fighting and “bleeding out” an adversary.
Jeremy replied that the key error is believing the war can be contained in Ukraine. He used Clausewitz, arguing the nature of war must be understood, and said Russia views the conflict as existential. He described a likely Russian approach as defensive: securing Ukraine positions while defending behind lines, then conducting destruction of attacks similar to what he said happened in the first year of the war after a strategic withdrawal. He asserted Russia would focus on defense and deterrence rather than offensive tank advances into Western direction. He also emphasized European vulnerability: he said Europe has limited defense against ballistic missiles and “no defense whatsoever” against hypersonic missiles, describing Europe as “naked.”
Jeremy extended his scenario by suggesting Russia could escalate by threatening or conducting energy strikes in a more graduated or tailored way, potentially including a blockade. He claimed Europe lacks anti-submarine warfare forces to defend against Russian submarines, and that threats alone could turn off shipping and insurance, rapidly disrupting fuel delivery and leading to broad economic harm. He suggested the most consequential open question would be what Britain and France do regarding nuclear deterrence, framing it as a binary choice.
Both speakers repeatedly returned to the need for strategy and public debate rather than closed narratives, discussing how public discourse can label alternative assessments as supportive of Russia or Ukraine depending on which side is described as “winning.” Jeremy argued that diplomacy is possible and should be pursued, calling for a public debate about risks of escalation and “a plan B” involving talks and alternative European strategic architecture. He proposed that alternative media contributes by reopening discussion on risks and diplomacy. The conversation ended with both speakers expressing agreement that boycotts of diplomacy and pressure on the public to avoid discussion are contributing factors, and that clear strategic thinking and public debate are needed to avoid a war they said Europeans did not ask for.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by retired Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jeremy, who commanded warships in the 5th Destroyer Squadron and Britain's Fleet Air Arm. Also held many positions such as strategy director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan. And also recently opened his own sub stack and I have left a link in the description. So make sure to follow it and read. So thank you. It's been a few months since you were on the program.
Speaker 2: Good to be back, Glenn. But also good for us to meet in person in Tbilisi last month with so many colleagues from the alternative media. Great fun to meet in person.
Speaker 1: I was saying before we started recording, one gets used to all these digital conferences and interviews. It's very different to meet in person. As I said, great to see you again. I did want to talk to you today, though, about this article you recently published, which I'll also put in the description, which is about NATO heading towards war with Russia, or the title is The Coming War with Russia. So yes, the premise essentially is that what we're seeing now, the European leaders are making a lot of comments about preparing for war with Russia, even setting dates, so stating the intent. They're also developing the capabilities. And again, if you're sitting in Moscow, you're doing a threat assessment, you look at the intentions and capabilities, and a clear threat begins to emerge. And So I was wondering if you can unpack your argument, because it doesn't really seem as if the Europeans are ready for a war with Russia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't think they are, Glenn. I think the reason that I wrote the article, because I don't think they have really thought through the potential costs and consequences of such a war. I think what they're essentially thinking is that Russia will sit quietly as they prepare for war, and then in 2030, they'll be ready to go. But before that, that they can fire as many or they can provide as many missiles and cruise missiles and drones to attack into Russia with no reaction from Russia. And both of those things go completely against what's being said and heard in Russia. And indeed, even Putin recently said to a, I think it was to new graduates on police and armed forces and things like that, that the Europeans were preparing for a war and that they Russia would to prepare as well. I think what the Europeans fundamentally don't seem to understand, or I should say our European elites, Glenn, the leaders, don't seem to be understand is that as far as Russia is concerned, this is defensive war. They are in a defensive posture and everything that they are doing is to protect themselves from what they see as a NATO expansion. and getting closer and closer to the borders, about which they've argued for years and years and years. So it shouldn't be a surprise to us, but the Europeans seem to see it as something of colonial ambition. I mean, I can't think why Russia would want to take over Europe. But more fundamentally, what the European leaders also haven't done is to actually think through what that war would be like. And as I say in the article, The first thing is that there's no guarantee, indeed quite the opposite, that the Russians would wait until 2030. I think it's much more likely that they would respond early. Indeed, I have a strong suspicion, although I can't prove it, that one of the reasons that the Russians went into the Donbas in 2022 was that the general staff had argued that actually the longer they left it, then the more damaging they would because the more greater forces that they would have to face. So I suspect that was part of Putin's calculation. And I think the same calculation would transpire now. The thing that's most striking, of course, is that the E3, that's Germany, Britain and France, are speaking loudly about the provision of weapons to strike deep into Russia. And the idea that the Russians are going to sit back and just let that happen it's clearly a guess that Russian won't respond. And yet the Russians have said explicitly that actually they have not taken off the table, which means that it's on the table, responses that actually targets certain European facilities. And the premise that I had in the article was that actually this war starts sooner than the Europeans planned. because the Russians decide that in the face of European bellicosity, they need to act now to deter future attacks against them. And so the way that I started the article, Glenn, was to suggest that actually Russia does indeed strike and decides to strike the production facilities in Europe, in particular in Germany, in France and in Britain, of the places where the drones and the cruise missiles are being developed to actually then send to Ukraine to attack Russia. And my next guess, and it is only a guess, Glenn, I should say it's a scenario, it's not a forecast, but the next guess is that the Europeans invoke Article 5. They then realise that Article 5 doesn't commit people to collective action. It commits them to do whatever they think is best. And I suspect that some nations will not want to go to war with Russia. So they will provide us with lots of warm words, but no monetary support. And I think that's particularly likely to be the case, I suspect, for the United States. not least for because actually they're now you know just suffering from a defeat in Iran and with depleted stocks so I suspect that although they may have pivoted at the G7 towards supporting effects against Russia that they'll now look at this and say you know I'm not so sure this is a good idea I'm not so sure that extending Russia is a good idea Because it now clearly carries the risk of a land war on the European continent. And the last thing that Americans will want to do is to send American soldiers to fight and die in Europe against Russia. So I suspect that they too will stand back and suddenly the E3 will find that they're on their own. But my next guess, and it is a guess, is that the E3 then decide to respond nevertheless with air attacks against Russia. and find that they suffer from exactly the same problems that the Americans have found in their attacks against Iran, which is that there are effective, very effective air defense systems in place, which are well-practiced, the S-400 and S-500, and that as well as actually taking down most of the offensive missiles, they also extract a heavy toll on our aircraft. And then in parallel, because the Russians see that we're attacking them, they then decide to actually take the gloves off and go after our energy infrastructure in exactly the same way that they did in Ukraine. And quick as a flash, on the straight, on the back end of our consequences of self-defeating sanctions on Russia, which have closed off our oil and gas supplies from Russia, and now under the pressure of the straits for most reductions in supplies, we suddenly find that Europe is in an energy crisis, which quickly becomes an economic crisis. And so I suspect that the only thing we'll be able to do at that stage is sue for peace, because there are no other offensive options which would work. So that's the nub of the argument, Glenn. And as I say, it is a scenario rather than a forecast. But the purpose of the scenario is to make people realize what the costs and consequences of war could be with Russia. Because I think that there's lots of talk in the West, but particularly in the European capitals, in London, in Berlin, and in Paris, about being ready for war. But very few people have thought it through. And had this been thought through and broadcast to the European people, I think people will be much more worried than they currently are. But again, I'd be curious about your view, Glenn, on whether or not European people would be ready for a war with Russia along the lines that I've sketched out.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a good question. I'm glad you compared it to Iran because I think part of the problem we had now in the unipolar moment, that is the liberal hegemon, over the past 30 years is war took on a very different meaning. That is, wars are something fought in other places. It's not on our own soil. It's something you see on the TV screens and you can complain about perhaps some collateral damage, but it's not the war that the generations before us experienced. I think also the wars over the past 30 years, NATO had complete and total escalation control. That is, we can decide when the war begins. For example, the war against Iraq, the US can position all its troops surrounding Iraq, essentially shape the battlefield exactly the way they want it, because they know Iraq wouldn't dare to attack them before they choose to start the war. So the Americans decide when to start the war. They decide essentially which parts should be part of this war. They isolate the targets, so make sure not for the war to spread uncontrolled. You can also see that if they want to end it, they decide when it ends as well. I think, like you compared it to Iran, this is going to show that we're entering a very new era. When the war began, especially in February, the Americans were saying, well, they're not supposed to strike our bases of the region. That wasn't part of the rules. Also, you can't attack the allied states or punish them by striking airports or energy facilities. Also, you can't strike or close down the Strait of Hormuz. And it's assumed now that the war is over, you have to reopen it, as if they get to decide. And... Again, I think this is the problem, this illusion of escalation control. I've said it many times. I think this is what's going to put us into war because the assumption that one can control the situation. And this is another thing. I think once those missiles from the European states begin to enter into Russia and Russia actually decides to retaliate with conventional weapons at first, at least, At that point, no one will have any escalation control anymore. It's going to spin out of control immediately. But that's also why I want to ask you, how do you see this war being fought? Because it seems as if the Russians have been fairly restrained. They've been very systematic. They have this gradual fighting along the front lines where they try to bleed out the adversary. I often get the impression that this is the assumption the European leaders had when they joined a war for Russia. We will send our troops and our fighters into Ukraine, and this will be our battlefield. So the war will still be in Ukraine and in Russia. But again, we were not going to have war on our territory. This is kind of the assumption. I just don't think people understand what this war would actually look like. Again, I think the Russians would treat the Ukrainians much better than they would, especially the Western Europeans, if we get more involved in this war. But how do you see the war being fought, I guess?
Speaker 2: I think it's a really good question. I mean, I think you're right. I think there's a general assumption that the war could be contained in Ukraine. And I think that's a very dangerous assumption because I don't believe it. I think that I introduced the article by talking about a scholar, a general whose work you and I both know very well indeed, General Carl von Clausewitz, who is war's greatest philosopher. And what he says is that the most important judgment that a statesman and a military man must make is the nature of the war. And I think that the Europeans have, and indeed the Americans, have completely misunderstood I'm sure some do, but it's our leaders and that's who matter, who misunderstood the nature of this war. They don't understand that for Russia, this is viewed as existential. I mean, it's only recently that Kaikala said that we must seek to break up Russia. So what are the Russians to think if the European foreign policy chief says that we must break up Russia? So as far as Russia is concerned, this is existential, which means that Russia is fighting as far as it's concerned for its survival. And, you know, this probably extends back as far as the Rand article, Glenn, in 2018, I think, you know, extending Russia, which talked about a war or certainly this sort of process. But the way the war would be fought, I think, would be that the Russians would not seek any offensive operations other than those that they're committing in or undertaking in Ukraine. I think they would sort of continue to seek to actually secure those parts of Ukraine. But otherwise, they would sit back behind their lines, knowing that all they have to do, pretty much like the Iranians, Dren, is to defeat any attacks. And if you think about it, that's pretty much what they did in the first year of the war when they... did a strategic withdrawal in what I think is phase two of their strategy. They went and then were sitting behind the Sarovacan line whilst they developed and industrialized or mobilized, I should say, because they realized that they had to conduct a war. And behind that line, they then conducted what I call the traditional defense, which is that actually whatever the Ukrainians threw at them, they destroyed. And they did destroy it. They destroyed not one, but two army groups So I suspect that this will not be a question of Russian tanks rolling westward because there's no desire for them to do so. Rather, it's a question of the Russians seeking to defend themselves. I'm sure that there will be a reinforced Suravec and Lion, which runs from the Black Sea all the way up to the border with Norway and Finland. So again, it's a defensive war. And the way that they would prosecute, which is the same way that the Iranians have prosecuted their war against the US and Israel. And I think what we would quickly find is the same thing that the Americans have found, which is that land bases are vulnerable. And we know that the Americans have actually withdrawn from the Gulf, largely speaking, because they can't defend their land bases. We in Europe in particular have very, very limited defense against ballistic missiles and no defense whatsoever against hypersonic missiles. So we are essentially naked. And the war can be prosecuted, if you like, in that respect, in the way that Russia chooses to do so. Although I talked in the article about how to sort of ramping up, I suspect that the Russians might be a little bit more, they might escalate in a way which suits them. So they may not go to destroy all of our energy infrastructure as a response to attacks on offensive air attacks by the West, but rather actually do it in an escalated way. And all the time saying to us that if you keep going, this is what we will do, and we can take out the whole of your energy infrastructure. And I can tell you, having worked in the energy industry for the last 15 years, Europe won't survive that. Europe won't survive a destruction of its energy infrastructure, because no industrial nation can. We're already seeing it in small scale in Germany, but the consequences would be profound. I talked in the article as well about the possibility of the Russians announcing a blockade, which is quite we're quite capable of doing because we don't have the anti-submarine warfare forces to defend against, at the moment, against Russian submarines. So even the threat of a bouquet would probably turn the shipping companies off and the insurance companies off from delivering fuels to oil and refined products to our nations. I mean, the only two countries which would be not sort of immune from this but more immune than others is your country and mine yours in particular because Norway is independent for oil and gas and to a lesser extent the UK because we get about 47 or 48 percent of our oil and gas from the North Sea but other than that you know imagine what it's like when the lorries stop running when the tractors which rely critically on diesel stop farming when the fishing vessels which rely critically on diesel stop stop fishing. You know, you can see and see it doesn't take long for us to get into a perilous economic situation. And at that stage, I would expect us to see for peace. I would expect as well the Americans to be doing the very best they can to talk to both sides and bring this to a peace. But even after the peace is declared, Glenn, if the war plays out in this way, then I think that the consequences for Europe will be profound. Again, it depends how long it goes on. I mean, the only open question, Glenn, and it's a really, really important open question, is what the British and the French do, both with nuclear deterrence. And that's a sort of binary decision, isn't it? Because actually either... The British and the French, one or other or both, can use those deterrents, but that's suicidal. That's the end of Britain and it's the end of France and probably the end of a lot of Europe. So is Prime Minister Burnham or President Macron going to take suicidal action? It's not beyond comprehension, Clem, because we've seen such irrational actions from the Europeans so far. But it's a very, very scary thing. More likely, though, I would think is that they will sue for peace, but still then have to pick up the consequences of the war after that peace happens. Now, those consequences could well play out over years, Glenn. So it's a long answer to your question, but I think the war, I would guess, if it doesn't escalate to a nuclear situation, would be fairly quick because the Europeans are unable to defend themselves against attacks on their military facilities on the European mainland. And that's where I would expect Russia's focus to be, the military facilities, industrial facilities that support the military and the energy facilities, Glenn.
Speaker 1: I think it's important what you said, though, that earlier you made the point that for the Russians, this is a defensive war. They've been warning since the 90s. You can't simply redivide the continent and then gradually remove those dividing lines and the NATO military infrastructure closer and closer to our borders. The problem is within the acceptable analysis we have in Europe, you're not allowed to say this, that the Russians see this as a defensive war, because then it's justifying all this nonsense. But I think this is the problem, because in Europe, when we all had to commit to the narrative, oh, this was unprovoked, it came out of nowhere. Well, then you have to argue, well, why did the Russians decide to go to war? And the only answer then is, you know, imperialism. They just want territory. And I think this also shapes what we expect from a war with Russia. Because if we believe that this is just Russia waking up one day, wanting new territory, then a war with russia means this will be the objective the russians for some reason really wants to rule over poland or germany you know yeah and not nonsense but but this is essentially what the europeans will then imagine a war being which is why you know the dutch they you know they did exercises for how how they could set up pow camps for russian soldiers they would capture in europe and i was a bit amazed because why would the russians enter europe i mean why why would they this is not a imperial war for territory what the russians want is to restore their deterrence that is for the europeans to back off stop launching drones and missiles into russia stop you know doing it through ukraine it doesn't matter that you know this is the war so the purpose of the russian war then would be It needs to restore its deterrence, and also it would strike Europe before Europe is ready to strike Russia. But none of this requires any Russian boots on the ground in any EU country. All it means is bombing out all the critical infrastructure across the European continent, create as much pain as possible, and of course, the military industrial facilities, and that's it. But this should be obvious. But it's only obvious if you recognize that the Russians sees this as an existential threat. So, you know, we can't even plan for a proper war because we don't actually allow the analysis. Sorry, you were going to say something.
Speaker 2: No, and I completely agree, Glenn. I think this is why I come back to the quote of the class switch, which I'll read in a bit, Glenn. But I think that it's understanding the nature of the war is the class that said it's the most supreme judgment that a statesman and a military man can make. And I think what it also points to is a failure of strategic thinking. I will often quote general Andre Beaufort, a French general who wrote a book in 1956 called, I can't remember, it's about strategy anyway, and I can send the details to you Glenn, but he said in war, the loser deserved, I'll paraphrase, in war the loser deserved to lose because his defeat will be a consequences of failures of thinking either before or during the war. And, you know, we've got a very good track record in the West in particular, and Europe especially, of failures of thinking. We've got Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, now Ukraine and Iran. You know, all, I would say, defeats because of failures of thinking before the war. I mean, if we had done the thinking properly, I think it's likely that with one possible exception, we would have entered none of those wars. because we'd have realized that they were unwinnable. But I think at the moment, though, you have, and I've said this before as well, Glenn, that you have the Europeans in particular are fighting or supporting Ukraine according to a political narrative that they've constructed for themselves, whereas the Russians are fighting the war according to a military strategy. And surprise, surprise, the Russians are winning. And I think at the moment, the military, the political narrative is that actually these strikes into Russia are working. Russia is now weak. The Russian economy is failing. There's no evidence for that, but that's what the political narrative is. And so you get into this circular cult thinking, and I can best describe it the way they seem to be operating, but the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, the EU, and NATO are To a lesser extent, I think the White House. I think Trump can go either way. And I suspect Vance will be thinking along the lines of you and I and Hegseth and Rubio along the lines of let's reinforce Europe and support this war. But actually, those who are thinking strategically, and I mean properly strategically, will surely come to the same conclusions as us, because they're obvious. They're strategically obvious. I think that the open question is how it now plays out. And I think it will play out according to three timelines. I think the first timeline is how quickly will the E3 weapons be provided to Ukraine, because these weapons are not insignificant. And I'm talking about British weapons with... with warheads of 250 kilograms. And that's a significant warhead. And that's the sort of warhead which I suspect the Russians will be prepared to actually take action to prevent it being fired into Russia. I think the second question is how long is it before the White House realizes that, notwithstanding what Trump's been told in the G7, that actually the Russians aren't losing. and that the Russian economy isn't failing, and that any effort that he puts into supporting this war is likely to lead to another defeat. I suspect that that will want him to step back, especially as he's running into the midterms on the back of a first defeat. And the last thing I think will be for Putin, and Putin will be asking the question. He conceded, no doubt, because of the... economic consequences of the self-defeating sanctions that the EU has placed on Russia and now the accelerating problems in our energy networks because of the straits for Moes. How long is it before the Europeans tip into a significant strategic, a significant severe recession? And at that stage, how long is it before they actually say we can't afford this war? So, you know, we better find a way out of this. That's an open question. But I think those, somewhere within those three timelines, we'll find there is the answer to how the war will play out strategically, Glenn. Not sure if I've answered your question, but be curious about what you think also about the timelines and how much it could play out.
Speaker 1: Well, It's hard to imagine how this will play out. Again, on many areas you can look at the different variables and try to make some predictions, but with how this war would work, it would be very difficult because it would spiral out of control so quickly, I think. But no, if you look at the capabilities, then I don't think the Europeans would do very well at all. I'm also suspecting that the Russians, while they do not have the same rhetoric of threatening dates of war with Russia, announcing this in advance, I assume that they're making preparations now. The Oreshnik, for example, I assume that this is already into mass production, and this isn't necessarily aimed for primarily the Ukrainians. I think that is for the possibility of a war with NATO. And they've seen this over the past four plus years. This is gradual incrementalism, escalation from NATO, where they just do longer range missiles, more powerful. And at some point, they know what's going to happen. So I think they're already preparing for this. So no, I don't think we're ready for war at all. But I was curious, though, about what the US involvement would be. That is... I think many assume that if there's a fight, then the Americans would rush back in and we'll go back to the glory days of the Cold War. We would be joined by the hips again. But I suspect that the Europeans, we're no longer the center of the world. And as I say, if you don't have a seat at the table, you might be on the menu. And I think this might be the case. If a war breaks out, what would the Americans do? I keep thinking that perhaps they would treat the Europeans like we've treated the Ukrainians. That is, yes, you go fight the Russians. Good boys. They continue to do it. We'll send you the weapons. That's how we stand by you and support you. And you will have essentially your proxies bleeding themselves white, weakening an adversary. And I think the Europeans will become the new Ukrainians. Yeah, but this time, of course, the Americans might even be more apprehensive because this can very quickly spiral into nuclear exchange. I mean, just to add, I think this is one of the most dangerous things of all is we're talking about a war with Russia, you know, usually would have a strategy then. Okay, what does victory look like? How is it achieved? We have none of this. At least the first question, what does victory look like? you're fighting the world's largest nuclear power which consider itself to be in a fight for its existence uh what does defeating it entail what exactly do you you know do you what do you want to achieve here i mean it's uh it's quite wild that this is not even a topic for discussion it's just this emotional sloganeering yeah no i think the i mean this is a strategy the subject
Speaker 2: close to my heart you know i'm sort of getting my second edition of strategy for action sort of prepared but actually as you say there is no evidence anywhere of any strategic thinking you know what are the objectives and the moment i would think that the the implicit objectives although they're not stated of the actions that the um the europeans are taking with sort of um escalation through more weapons in Ukraine and supported by the United States. Implicit objectives are to bring the Russians back to the negotiating table. But actually, the Russians have already now made clear now that Alaska has failed and that all the other peace initiatives from which they were excluded were dead on arrival. I think the Russians have concluded that they can only achieve their objectives in Ukraine, which is what they would continue to go on and do militarily. I thought it was interesting that Putin has actually talked about Novorossiya as well, which doesn't surprise me. It's something I've been speculating for about a year, that it might be the Russians' ultimate objective. But I think the objectives, with unclear objectives and no obvious... route to achieve them, which stops us getting into some escalatory situation. I can't think of a single strategy or any sort of plausible strategy that would allow us to achieve our objectives, whatever they are. Militarily, the Europeans don't have the power to achieve what they're seeking to achieve. I think coming back to the United States and what the United States would do, I think the United States, although initially there will be those who will be saying, let's support the Europeans, they will be very worried, I would think, of the risks of nuclear escalation. And they would be right to be worried as well. I mean, I don't think the Russians would not be the first people to pull the trigger, I don't think. The worry would be that France or Britain, one or other, actually decides to do so. I think that's unlikely. Nevertheless, the consequences were to happen would be profound. So I think that the American situation might be initially to sort of say, yes, we'll please now be the new Ukrainian, so we want you to fight Russia. But after a bit, when they see the destruction that's being wrought on the European economy and the breakdown of European society, I think they would have rapted second thoughts. I think a lot of people in the United States, possibly apart from the ECON, would be horrified at seeing what was happening to Europe. So I would like to think that the Americans stand fast, the neocons would be pretty reluctant after a bit. I think one of the things that also strikes me, Glenn, is that when you think about scenarios like this, people will often say, well, of course, the Russians wouldn't do this because we passed all their red lines and they've just ignored them. I simply don't agree with that. I mean, they had two critical red lines. which have been said repeatedly to us for the past 20 years, which is that if NATO expands into Georgia and or Ukraine, then we will respond. And in both times, when there's been the threat of NATO expanding into first Georgia, the Russians responded, and then Ukraine, the Russians have responded. So actually, I think, you know, on these red lines, don't for one moment think that the Russians wouldn't respond a third time, because I think they would. So I think we need to be cognizant of that. And it does, to me, bring up the alternative pathway, which is the issue of diplomacy. I mean, it's clear to me that in NATO, which I've said before, is not the... omnipotent force even with america on board that so many people think i mean again as i've said before if nato couldn't defeat the taliban why do we think it could defeat russia so to me the the the bit of the jigsaw that's missing is diplomacy can we not get back to diplomacy and i'm not saying it's going to be an easy diplomacy but surely in the light of these plausible risks to europe And to Europeans, ought the Europeans not to be the ones who are actually starting to think about talking to Russia as opposed to the United States? Is this not something that the E3 could do? Is this not something that the European Union could do, difficult though it would be? I mean, there's no sense of this at the moment, but there should be a sense. And I think one of the key things that we should be doing is we should be, we the people, because it's we the people who will be asked to fight this war and to bear its consequences. We should be having a national debate about this. It's your point is that any debate is closed off because it's seen as sort of supporting Russia or being a Putin supporter. Or as I see it as having a critical debate about something which is strategically and has the potential to be strategic existential to Europeans. And we don't want to destroy European society. So why can we not think of at least talk about a plan B where we can start to talk about to the Russians about what they want and start to talk about the possibility of an alternative strategic architecture in Europe. Again, it's not easy at the moment, but surely we should be having these conversations, Glenn. And surely we should be inviting or at least asking our leaders to actually talk about why it is that they won't have discussions with Russia and why that we, the people, are not being asked for our views on whether we are happy to go to war with Russia. Because I suspect the vast majority of the people in Europe won't be happy. But over to you, Glenn, I don't know what you think from your part of Europe.
Speaker 1: I find this shocking as well, that they are taking us to war with Russia now. And again, no discussion, no debate, anything. And I think, yeah, this is... But let me just go back to what you said before about the escalation on the Russian side, that they don't uphold the red lines. I think perhaps Russia escalates in a different way than NATO. As I said before, NATO does these slow salami tactics, these incrementalisms. That is, okay, we're only going to do short-range... missiles only defensive okay we're going to do long range but we're going to have limitations you can't strike into Russian territory and then okay we're going to slowly remove those restraints and then you've seen this over the four years just gradually you know we went from f-16s our world war three on you know until advertising hey let's uh figure out how to take out the Russian air bases and attacking their nuclear deterrent I mean This is how we escalate. And I think the Russians, some indications they do differently. You mentioned Georgia in 2008. Yeah, they warned against this. But in 2014, when the Russians annexed Crimea as a response to the coup, in Putin's speech, he made an analogy that you can only push a spring so far back before it just jumps forward. And I think this is essentially... how their escalation would be because they did the same from 2014 to 2022 that's eight years when they were essentially saying you know implement the Minsk agreement let's put an end to this let's normalize relations and they saw the Minsk agreement being sabotaged and instead the NATO countries just buying time and building up a large Ukrainian proxy army and yeah so then by 2022 they they went in war and then of course they tried to negotiate from the first day Zelensky said that the Russians contacted him to start to renegotiate restoring Ukraine's neutrality and then of course once they figured out that the US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul agreement and instead began to pump weapons into Ukraine and put a boycott on diplomacy then they realized what this was and then they annexed four territories four oblasts I mean, how is this not responding? And of course, now with the new involvement, Putin is now talking about getting all of Novorossiya, which would include Nikolaev and Odessa, which would make Ukraine into a landlocked Trump state. How is this not responding to escalation? And also in that interview you referred to, he also brought up Operation Barbarossa, which is interesting because know why why would russia sit back and wait for the europeans to get all their pieces in place and then strike russia when it's favorable to them in as putin has said you know it's if you know you're going to be in a fight just make sure you throw the first punch and i think that's a danger you know with all this war talk against the russians but um no i i just i just find it fascinating that you say that there's no strategic thinking There's no strategic context. I mean, we have all the data in the world. We know in the 1990s, you have American ambassadors, intelligence chiefs, military leaders, all in warning. Well, actually, expanding NATO would re-divide the continent. It would be a betrayal. I mean, you had Clinton's own Secretary of Defense considering to quit because this was a stab in the back of the Russians, as also George Kennan said. Then you go to 2008, you have The CIA director warning, oh, this is going to trigger a civil war. And the Russians will reluctantly intervene. You have Angela Merkel calling it a declaration of war if we offer NATO membership to Ukraine. And then we come to 2014, topple the government to pull it in to NATO. And suddenly, it's all unprovoked. It comes out of nowhere. Russia's just imperialist. I mean, it's very dishonest. And I think this is a weakness we have in NATO, though, that if you're going to get all these countries together, how are you going to get consensus around fighting Russia? I think you have to capture people, the politicians, the journalists in these narratives. That is, everyone has to repeat these slogans, otherwise you're pro-Russian or you're justifying the invasion. Anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we finish off the video?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that... I think that we in the alternative media are starting to make a difference. And, you know, I routinely, and I'm sure you're the same, see comments which I would say 90% of the comments are, thank goodness for the alternative media. It's the only place we get our good information from. I do think, though, that the risks that I've talked about are real. And I think they're the ones we need to be able to talk about, Glenn. I do think, though, that diplomacy is also possible now. You've got to be brave, but it's possible. I mean, we in Britain brought our war with the IRA and the Irish Republican Army to a close after 38 years through talking to each other and diplomacy. And to me, that's the most important, the way out of it. But I think that the sooner that we can actually, the word that can be spread, and let's hope that listeners to this podcast can do it, that actually the risks of escalation, especially in Europe, where we are escalating against an enemy or what would be an enemy against who we cannot defend ourselves against attacks, seems to me to be mindless. So let's hope we can get this debate out there, Glenn, and have a proper public debate in Europe about the risks which our leaders are taking us towards. a proper public debate about whether we can actually get back on the road to diplomacy, because diplomacy is surely the answer to this.
Speaker 1: I agree. It's not just our diplomats and politicians which have boycotted diplomacy. They're essentially pressuring the public to do the same. I noticed academics as well, if you travel to Russia as an academic, they essentially try to impose their ridiculous band on contact with the Russians by arguing, well, is it appropriate to go? I mean, as if they are the ones who have done something insane, that is to refuse to talk to the other side and then pushing it on others. And also the discourse I noticed, whether it's the war on Russia or war against Iran, I noticed a very strange development early on that it was, if I say, You know, the Russians are winning or the Ukrainian counteroffensive is failing. You know, invading Kursk is a horrible idea. They're going to take mass casualties. It doesn't matter. If you say that Ukraine is not winning, then it's pro-Russian. That means you're cheering for Russia. If you argue that Ukraine is winning, then you're cheering for Ukraine. So same with the Iran war. I said, well, this isn't going to work because I look at Ukraine. It's nothing the Americans can do to prevent the Iranians from striking its bases and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. So the Iranians are going to win this. Well, that's pro-Iranian. So apparently the only way you can be patriotic these days is to embrace delusion and pretend you're winning, even if you're not. I mean, I mentioned before on this podcast, but it's worth saying again. I even saw an article referring to me in the newspaper here that well, that I have said that the world is multipolar, but that's what Putin wants people to think because then, you know, Russia is a key center of power in the world. So we shouldn't give this gift to Russia. So we should stop saying the world is multipolar. I mean, this is the European mindset for me. This is, you know, we don't need to address reality. We'll socially construct our own reality. And somehow, yeah, we were surprised when, You don't deal with the world as it is, but how you wish it was, and somehow there is no strategic thinking, and eventually it's defeat. It should be predictable, but no.
Speaker 2: I'm not arguing for or against Russia. I'm arguing, and I'm sure you are as well, I'm arguing for clear strategic thinking, pre-speech and public debate about the issues that matter, and I thought that's what European values were about in the first place, so That's what I'm arguing for. And I think if we can have clear strategic thinking, we're going to have a chance of getting through this. But if we can't and they keep taking us on the pathway to war, then I think we might get the war that we didn't ask for sooner than we thought because they couldn't be bothered to actually look at the nature of the war into which they were leading us. Anyway, Glenn, let's keep doing our best. And thanks for all you do. Looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for hopping on and yeah, see you next time.
Speaker 2: Okay. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Bait & Switch - U.S. Efforts to Renegotiate the MoU with Iran https://youtu.be/4CT5xcSrkss https://t.co/WtiyGAYZOO
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department Office of Counterterrorism official, discusses Iran, the energy crisis, and U.S. policy amid the 4th of July and developments following a U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Johnson says Trump’s stated motivation for the MOU was that the U.S. had “four weeks left of oil,” specifically concerning supply of high sulfur “sour crude” (heavy crude) from the Persian Gulf, which supplies 20% of the world’s supply. He argues the February 28 cut-off did not immediately disrupt oil because large crude carriers were already at sea, with the last ships reaching destinations around April 7–10, about 40 days later. Johnson links this timing to Trump pushing for a ceasefire with Iran and Iran agreeing, attributing the driver to the oil situation.
Johnson explains that most U.S. refineries are configured for heavy crude with high sulfur content and are not set up for “sweet” light crude like West Texas Intermediate. He compares this to coffee-making differences (French press versus Keurig), emphasizing that the oil-processing pathway matters. He says the key output is “mid-distillate,” from which diesel and aviation fuel are produced, noting a barrel is not uniform and about 30% is removed to create mid-distillate. He claims that diesel/aviation-capable oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) stood at about 120 days. Around March 11 or March 18, he says Secretary of Energy Wright announced drawing down the SPR at 1.4 million barrels per day, and that the 120-day window ends around July 11, aligning with Trump’s “four weeks” statement.
Johnson argues that, after the oil supply disruption began on February 28, by about April 8 total supply of diesel fuel fell by 20%, removing that amount from availability. He says drawing from the SPR temporarily masked the shortfall, but a real deficit would emerge next week and cannot be replaced until restored Persian Gulf heavy crude arrives on U.S. shores, describing a tanker trip of about 42 days. He adds that markets have not yet captured the situation, expecting an impact to feel like a surprise.
On whether oil is flowing now, Johnson says roughly 20% of the Gulf’s normal daily capacity is coming out, but “overwhelmingly” goes to Asia—China, India, Japan, and South Korea—rather than the United States or Europe. He argues the core shortage is not oil in general but heavy crude needed for diesel and aviation fuel. He says refiners cannot simply divert diesel versus aviation fuel “half and half,” suggesting “it’s going to get pretty dicey.” He presents potential emergency triggers: renewed U.S. combat operations against Iran (needing more aviation fuel) or a hurricane damaging refineries in the Gulf of America/Gulf of Mexico, forcing choices between diesel for trucks transporting food and aviation fuel.
The discussion turns to criticism of the MOU and arguments made to defend it. Johnson says the U.S. appears to violate parts of the MOU in specific areas. He cites U.S. actions involving Lebanon, referencing Joseph Aoun as minority president and Israeli troops remaining in Lebanon, which he says violates Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also focuses on paragraph five regarding the Strait of Hormuz, stating the MOU requires Iran, using its best efforts, to arrange safe passage of commercial vessels with “no charge for 60 days” only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and he says only Iran is named as responsible. He asserts the MOU allows Iran to charge tolls after 60 days, and that it specifies Iran’s responsibility for safe passage arrangements.
Johnson says the U.S. did comply with a section he says is in the U.S. interest by removing sanctions on oil and bank processing for Iranian oil sales. He says Iran has been selling about 1.6 million barrels per day at a 20% premium versus futures reference points. He also claims that when ships attempted to transit without permission, Iran turned them back and warned of sinking if ships tried to pass without consent.
On U.S. military strategy, Johnson says the U.S. is pulling out, describing the withdrawal of forces deployed to the Persian Gulf for Operation Epic Fury and shifts of B-52s and F-15s movements involving the UK. He argues the U.S. continues to “talk tough” while drawing down physical assets and reducing Crisis Action Team operations from 24/7 to Monday–Friday after the MOU. He claims the U.S. effectively stood down after major attacks on June 9–10, when Johnson says Iran struck air bases in Kuwait and Bahrain and the U.S. did not retaliate.
Asked about regional consequences, Johnson says the U.S. has a weaker position than on February 28, citing closure of key capability in Bahrain (including destruction of radars and satellite communications tied to that base). He describes the loss of full capability in Bahrain and reduced substance at other major U.S. bases. He also argues Israel can no longer sustain attacks against Iran in the way it previously threatened, claiming Iran could destroy airfields and aviation/fuel capabilities, and referencing claims that Israel’s ballistic missile defense effectiveness was under 10% in the referenced timeframe.
The conversation shifts briefly to reporting about Russia striking Poland to test NATO response. Johnson says he considers the situation “sounds fishy” while also acknowledging possible dynamics. He argues Poland–Ukraine tensions have widened, citing Polish involvement as foreign fighters in Ukraine and the dispute over honoring “fascist Nazis” responsible for the Volhyn massacre, arguing that Russia doesn’t need to “test NATO” because NATO escalation and deterrence rhetoric have been ongoing, and he discusses Baltic states and alleged facilitation of drone attacks.
Johnson closes by urging attention to diesel and aviation fuel conditions over the next couple of weeks, saying fuel shortages could limit U.S. military options in the short term. He concludes that once into September, he does not see Trump restarting attacks on Iran before midterms, emphasizing the fuel situation as a limiting factor.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Larry Johnson joins us today, a former CIA analyst who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. How have you been, Larry?
Speaker 0: Pretty busy. You know, we're celebrating the 4th today, but I always make time for you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. And happy 250th, I guess, for the United States. It's... Yeah, it's... Well... The shirt is very appropriate, though.
Speaker 0: I have. My ancestors were involved. I had 28 ancestors that fought in the American Revolution. So I'm a revolutionary at heart, genetically.
Speaker 1: Very good. My focus today was going to be on Iran and the energy crisis, especially. That is Trump. When he signed the Memorandum of Understanding, which, well, I would say was humiliating for the United States. It reads as a declaration of surrender. And it kind of begs the question, why would Trump sign this? And, well, his main answer was, we only had four weeks left of oil, which is, well, quite an astonishing admission. But yet again, at least that's what he said. This was the motivation. And, well, it begs the question now, though, why? How is the situation with the oil now? I mean, are things loosening up? Are they improving or how? Again, it's hard to simply, you know, switch, what's a good expression here? Yes. So switch the dial and suddenly turn everything back on.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So I like to take credit that I was always this smart and I knew all this all along, but I didn't. I've frequently referenced a civil war soldier by the name of Ambrose Bierce, who went on to become an author. And he was attributed with saying, it's not proven, but that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. And now we could add to that war has been God's way of teaching Larry Johnson about the oil industry. So when Trump made that claim, he wasn't talking about all oil across the board. What he was talking about is the supply of high sulfur oil, or it's known as sour crude or heavy crude. And the Persian Gulf, it supplied 20% of that to the world. On February 28th, when that was cut off, it wasn't an immediate disruption in supply because there were very large crewed carriers still out on the ocean full of oil that were sailing to their final destination. The last of those ships carrying crude reached their destinations roughly around April 7th, April 10th, so about 40 days after the start of the war. And I think it's no coincidence that that it was at that point that Trump basically pressed for a ceasefire with Iran, and Iran agreed to it. It was the oil situation. Now, what happens with this heavy crude, the majority of the oil refineries in the United States are set up to handle the heavy crude with the high sulfur content. They're not set up to deal with like West Texas Intermediate. It's sweet, called sweet oil, sweet crude. It doesn't have that high sulfur content in it, and it can be refined in a much easier fashion. But, you know, let's think of it of like coffee makers. If you have a conventional, like a Keurig, you know, you put... put the coffee in a cup, press the button, boom, you get coffee. What about a French press? Well, with a French press, you've got to boil the water. Then you boil the water, you have the coffee in the bottom, you have to pour it in, you have to let it sit, then you have to press it down. So just because you're making coffee doesn't mean it's made in the same way. So French press coffee is made in a different way from Keurig. Similar with the oil. So the refineries are set up in a way that they can process this heavy crude and what they produce out of that. It's called the mid-distillate. So a full barrel of oil is not consistent from top to bottom. And so about 30% of it is removed to make what are called the mid-distillate. That's what's processed in these refineries to produce diesel and aviation fuel. That was what Trump was talking about. The amount of diesel or the oil capable of producing diesel and aviation fuel in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that stood at about 120 days. It was either March 11th or March 18th when Secretary of Energy Wright announced that they were going to start drawing down the strategic oil reserve at 1.4 million barrels per day. And there was basically, you had 174 million barrels that you could draw, work out the math, 120 days. Well, that 120-day period ends on July 11th next week. And so when you go back and look at when Trump made this statement, it's about four weeks out. So he knows that the United States needed to get the Persian Gulf back open and get that oil flowing out, also to America. Because most of the oil that's come out since the signing of the MOU is going to Asia, going to China, India, Japan, South Korea. So that really hasn't fixed it for the United States. So we come back to the problem that When February 28th war started, let's jump ahead 40 days, on April 8th, the total supply of oil, you know, diesel fuel fell down 20%. That was no longer available to the world. Therefore, the way to cope with that was to start drawing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That allowed you to pretend that it got back up to where it was. But now, sometime next week, we're going to actually be at a real deficit. And there's no way to replace that deficit until such time as the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf is restored back to the original volume and it's arriving on shore in the United States. So even, let's just say that an oil tanker comes out tomorrow, leaves the Persian Gulf, heading to the United States. That's a 42-day sailing trip. So the point is there is no immediate solution to that. And the economic markets, as far as I understand, they've not captured or caught up to this. It's going to sort of hit them by surprise.
Speaker 1: Well, is the oil flowing, though? Because, you know, the shooting has, well, not really returned. But, you know, Trump took credit for hitting the Iranians hard a few times, so... Again, it's important, I guess, to keep up the strongman image. But to what extent is oil actually flowing now?
Speaker 0: Well, it looks like about 20% of the normal daily capacity that came out of the Gulf prior to the 28th of February is coming out now, about 20%. But it's overwhelmingly going to Asia. So it's not coming to the United States. It's certainly not going to Europe. So this is where the West has a problem now. And as you noted in sort of your opening remarks, there's no immediate fix. This isn't like you flip on the light switch and boom, hey, everything's back on and we're running. This is, and I didn't, you know, I guarantee you, I didn't understand this until I had two different people with familiarity in the oil industry. And then I listened to Chris Martinson Chris is very smart on it. The one point Chris has not made in his analysis is drawing the distinction or helping people understand that the shortage is not oil in general. The shortage in particular is in the heavy crude that's used to make diesel and aviation fuel. And understand that if a refinery is going to make aviation fuel, it's got to be set up in one way. If it's going to do diesel, it sets up in a different way. So it's not just a matter of it comes in and they say, you know, they're diverting it. They say, okay, half is going to go to aviation, half is going to go to diesel. So this is going to get pretty dicey. And all of this assumes that there's not an emergency. What could create an emergency? Well, if the United States decided to go back into combat operations against Iran, it's going to need a lot more aviation fuel. Or If there's a hurricane that comes in, we're in hurricane season now, and if it comes in the Gulf, you know, Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico, take your pick, and wipes out one of those refineries, then you're really, really in a serious situation where you're going to have to make a choice. Are we going to have diesel for trucks, tractors to carry food to grocery stores, or are we going to have aviation fuel to fly aircraft around the country. I think if it comes down to that, they're going to be most likely to choose the diesel over the aviation fuel. But again, that's sort of a simplistic approach because aviation plays a critical role in the transport of a lot of goods as well.
Speaker 1: Well, Vance was trying to defend the MOU because it has obviously attracted a lot of criticism. And his main argument seemed to be that, well, we had to do this in order to get the oil flowing again. That's the point. Well, if that's the goal, that's not the same as saying we're going to... and put our hostilities with Iran, you know, leave it in the past and create completely new relations. Indeed, it could indicate that, you know, this could be quite deceptive. That is, buy some time to open up, refill the world markets. But on the other hand, we also see that the U.S. appears to be, well, as soon as the MOU was signed, the U.S. appeared to begin to renegotiate it already. Yeah, well... In a specific case, an offer was made to the Iranians that, you know, we'll release some of your frozen assets, something they're supposed to do anyways, according to MOU, but conditioning on it that there won't be any toll or fee on transiting the Strait of Hormuz. How do you make sense of this?
Speaker 0: Well, actually, the 14 different sections, you... You can make the argument that Iran was very sloppy with its language with respect to full sanction relief and the unfreezing of assets. They left it very vague, giving the United States lots of room to play games with them. The two areas, though, that were very specific and that the United States can't really weasel out of, or it's weaseling out of, but it's violating the MOU, is one, respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon. Instead of doing that, the United States intervened with Lebanese and Israelis, got the Joseph Aoun, who's a minority president. He represents only some of the Christians in Lebanon. Two-thirds of the country is Muslim. And he claimed to reach an agreement with Israel that allowed Israeli troops to stay in and to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. So that was the first problem. And Iran could still, you know, call, throw the penalty flag on that and say, you're not fulfilling your part of the MOU, so we're out of here. The second is paragraph five. Now, that deals with the Strait of Hormuz. And the language there is very, very specific with respect to... Let me read it. It says, immediately upon signing this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from in and out of the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman. Notice, no other country is specified as having the responsibility for making arrangements for the safe passage of commercial vessels. Only the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Oman, not Qatar, not Saudi Arabia, certainly not the United States. So in that regard, that paragraph five of the MOU gives Iran full control over the Strait of Hormuz. No matter what the United States says, the language is what the language is right there, very clearly. the Islamic Republic of Iran, and only the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements. Now, they only have to do that for 60 days. Then they can start charging tolls. There's nothing in the MOU that says Iran cannot charge tolls. The United States is saying that, that they don't like it, etc., but there's nothing in there preventing Iran from charging tolls, which they are going to do. The United States did abide to one section of the MOU, which is in the U.S. interest. They removed all sanctions on oil and banks processing payments from oil sales by Iran. So Iran can freely sell its oil, which it has been doing, putting out roughly 1.6 million barrels per day that are being sold at a 20% premium off of the, you know, the The futures prices, ignore those. Those really have no relevance. What you're looking at is the actual price that's being paid for a barrel of oil when it gets to port. So Iran has not wavered on this point. Today, there were six ships that attempted to go through the Omani side of the corridor without securing permission from Iran under the what they call the Persian Gulf Strait Authority Protocols, and Iran turned it back. And they're warning them, if you try to go through here without our permission, we're going to set you on fire and sink you.
Speaker 1: Well, that's essentially what they did, though. They attacked one of the vessels attempting to transit, and this is what sparked the U.S. strikes on Iran, which Trump, you know, took great pride in that the Iranians stepped out of line and he dealt with it essentially. That was the spin.
Speaker 0: But Glenn, understand, there is not one word in the MOU that says that if Iran tries to prevent a commercial vessel from leaving the Strait of Hormuz without the permission of Iran, that the United States can attack it and punish Iran for doing that. Not one word in there. That was a violation of the MOU. The MOU first paragraph says, neither side will attack the other. The United States said, well, we're not going to allow that. Well, too damn bad. You didn't put it in the MOU. You didn't stipulate that Iran couldn't do that. In fact, you stipulated that Iran was the one who had to use its best efforts for safe passage of commercial vessels, that it's Iran's responsibility, not yours. So that was the first point where the United States violated the MOU.
Speaker 1: But now that some of the shooting resumed, of course, it's died down again. What does this mean? How are you assessing the, not the front lines, but the potential battlefield? I know Iran is obviously preparing itself for a possible new American attack. But what is the United States doing? Is it building up its troops in the region? Is it pulling back? Is it meddling in neighboring countries? How do you assess the American strategy now, given that the MOU is obviously not a done deal? They want to renegotiate it. They're not happy with this deal. So what is the U.S. doing at this point in time?
Speaker 0: Well, the U.S. is pulling out. You saw... Eight days ago, eight, nine days ago now, Pete Hegseth signed an order to start the withdrawal of U.S. forces that had been deployed to the Persian Gulf for Operation Epic Fury. There was a report out of the U.K. yesterday from Farnsworth, I think that's the name of the base, where B-52s had been established. They were based there in the U.K. for action against Iran. They withdrew from the UK yesterday within the last 24 hours. At the same time, six to 12 F-15 jets that had been based in Jordan flew from Jordan to the UK, are now on the ground in the UK. And so the United States is starting to withdraw. In order to cover the fact that they're withdrawing, They're putting out some very strange disinformation. For example, this week they announced, oh, the U.S. Marines and the USS Boxer have arrived on scene and are ready to engage Iran. They left San Diego on the 18th of March. They arrived off the coast of Iran or in the Arabian Sea back around April, 30th. So they've been there for two damn months. And just now the Department of War is claiming, is starting to hype and highlight their presence. Makes absolutely no sense. So the United States continues to talk tough, but across the board, it's not just this withdrawal of these physical assets. Then before the war started, the United States, you know, some, I think the earliest was a week before the 28th, so on the 21st, and then in the ensuing days, the military, CENTCOM, the Pentagon, and other commands that were peripherally involved with supporting Central Command, they established what are called CATs, Crisis Action Teams. These CATs were set up to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The soldiers, sailors, Marines who would staff that, and then Air Force officers and personnel who would staff it, they would come in like at 6 a.m. in the morning, work to 6 p.m. at night, go home, get some food, get some rest, come back the next day. That was repeated. That went on for like three, four months. It was only now about three weeks ago. Well, coincided with the signing of the MOU, the cats stopped operating on 24-7 hours. There are still groups, individuals tasked with monitoring what's going on in the Persian Gulf and with Iran, but they're working Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Big difference. So, Until that cat is put back on a 24-7 rotation, the United States is not going to engage in these kinds of attacks that they were doing back on June 9th and June 10th. And, you know, here we are on July 4th already. So the last big attacks were, you know, June 9th and June 10th. And remember, it was Iran that struck last. at the air bases in Kuwait, Al-Islam, and at the air base in Bahrain, Al-Issa. And the United States didn't retaliate. So the U.S. actually has effectively stood down in terms of its military effort.
Speaker 1: If what you say is correct, that the United States have decided to essentially stand down, that means that the Iranians will now come out on top uh what does this mean uh how will that transform the region because Iran was you know it was severely weakened it was supposed to be knocked out and now it looks as if it can become a key regional power do you do you see any possibilities again we don't need Crystal balls because there's a lot of things that could happen but how could the region change because As Iran grows now stronger in a more powerful position, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf states would have to adjust. Also, the Israelis seem to be turning a lot of their anger towards Turkey now for a variety of reasons. Do you see a possibility here of if the US position is weakened in the region, some hostilities directed to other parts?
Speaker 0: Uh, that you could have some, uh, improved ties between Turkey, the Gulf States, Iran, or do you think this is, uh, they still have their own internal issues irrespective of, uh, yeah, the U S well, we objectively, it's an objective fact that the U S is in a weaker position now than it was on the 28th of February, simply because on the 28th of February, you had. the U.S. Naval Headquarters, Fifth Fleet Headquarters there in Bahrain. You had an admiral, complete staff. They had different sections operating. They had intelligence and logistics and plans. They had the whole shooting match. And they were there to receive and provide support for ships. That's now closed. It exists in name only. But it is effectively closed. There are no command operations going on there of any significance. And in addition, the radars, there were several radar and satellite communication systems that were tied into that base. They were destroyed. So essentially, so right now, the United States has lost full capability in Bahrain. Similarly in Al Udeid. Al Udeid was the largest Air Force base until you got to, say, somewhere like Incirlik. And, you know, it was a big, when the war was going hot and heavy in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Udeid was a major transit point for U.S. troops coming in, going out. In fact, I flew through there. In May of 2006, I was headed to Balad in Iraq, but I had to go through Al Udeid and saw the lash up. Well, since then, once the United States basically drew down in Iraq, its military effort, and then started scaling back in Afghanistan, Al Udeid became the center for what's called the Combined Air Operations Center, the CAOC. And the CAOC had, again, a billion-dollar radar there at Qatar. And they could literally see to India, to the middle of the Mediterranean, north to the Black Sea coast of Russia, and then south to Diego Garcia. So they had this huge area. They could cover, monitor all flights. I know that when the U.S. was conducting air operations and ground operations in Syria, a friend of mine who was stationed there at the time, this was back in 2016, 2017, he told me about how every day the Air Force general who was in charge of that operation was on the phone every day with his Russian counterpart, deconflicting so that the Russian planes and the U.S. planes wouldn't run into each other. Similarly, that's where when Trump made a decision to strike Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons, it was that general in the Kayak that called up his Russian counterpart and said, hey, we're going to hit this base X, Y, and Z at such and such time with this many Tomahawk cruise missiles. So you may, if you've got any personnel there, you may want to get them out. So it was all, I mean, it was all political theater. It was staged. It wasn't a genuine strike to take out capabilities. That's gone now. The CAOC is now based over in, I think it's Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. So the reality is, although the United States is still in the Gulf, the two main bases that had the majority of the personnel, they're closed. They are effectively closed. And then we get to these other sub-bases that are more smaller. They too have been damaged. So the U.S. has a presence there in name only right now. It's not really anything of substance that can carry out and sustain operations.
Speaker 1: Well, so the U.S. lost its bases. It would like to draw down. It has all these incentives in place. Uh, the Israelis though, they don't seem to be on the same page as the United States. It is interesting. And they did some polling, uh, one of the Israeli media outlets. I forgot which one. And I think it was about 90% of Iranians believe that the, sorry, of the Israelis believe that Iran had won. Uh, and, uh, yeah, of course the Israeli politicians are quite critical. of the US efforts to pull away from this war. But they're also making the point that they will not feel restrained by US demands. And at one point now, you even had this comment, well, it's a news report alleging that the US warned Iran that Israel might kill their negotiators. I mean, they look like they would be A key disruptor. Again, I'm not sure if the U.S. and Israelis are on the same page or just playing good cop, bad cop, or if this is a real split. But what do you see the Israeli interest being now, and how would they actually play those out?
Speaker 0: Well, there's a difference between what they want to do and what they can do. So Israel is no longer in a position to be able to carry out sustained attacks against Iran. They talk a big game about, oh, yeah, we're going to hit them. And apparently, I was puzzled by this story. It came out, was it yesterday or the day before, about that the United States told the Iranians about the plot to kill Arachi and Ghalibaf. Well, that is ancient news. I mean, that's old, old news. That comes from two months ago. Pepe Escobar and I both reported on it at the time. And in fact, the Iranians, you know, Professor Morandi himself, he was interviewed earlier today by NEMA. And, you know, he discussed that. He goes, you know, they didn't get a single warning from the United States. It was delivered by the Pakistanis, ISI, the intelligence service. And the Iranians took precautions in returning to Iran. So now, at present, Iran would like to, you know, I don't think they've relented in their desire to kill the new Ayatollah as if that's going to accomplish anything. Because without the presence of the United States and its fleet of KC-135 tankers, not to mention having a dedicated supply of aviation fuel, which is, again, going to come in short supply here. Israel, they can launch an attack, maybe two, and then they're going to be crushed. They will be crushed by the Iranian response. As Ted Postle decisively demonstrated a week ago in an interview he did with Danny Davis, he showed the video footage and proved beyond any doubt that Israel even with U.S., with the Patriot missile and the THAAD missile systems, which reportedly carried out two-thirds of the response to ballistic missile attacks fired by Iran during the war from 28 February through April 15th, that less than 10% of them were effective. So in other words, Israel does not have any kind of effective air defense against these ballistic missiles. And if Iran decides to reengage, Iran's going to be in a position to destroy the airfields, to destroy the aviation and fuel capabilities of Israel. And, you know, Israel, they've already had two bites at the apple. And each time they've had to beg Israel. Get us out. Bring an end to this. Let's get us to this fire because of the damage they were suffering. So Iran holds a lot of cards in this right now.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, before you go, let me ask you about something with the Ukraine war here. That is, there's now reports in the Telegraph and some other newspapers saying suggesting, or not suggesting, stating quite openly that they have intelligence that Russia is planning to strike Poland to check NATO response. Again, at one level, I thought, yeah, possibly the Russians do need to restore their deterrence, and they're quite outraged at the moment. On the other hand, why Poland? I mean... Poland exactly at this point in time when you have this huge split between Poland and Ukraine. If it was Estonia after the revelations, now that they were involved in the attacks on St. Petersburg or Germany because, well, they seem to have lost their minds, it would seem more plausible. But Poland also, the goal isn't to restore deterrence, it's just to check how NATO would retaliate. I mean, it's...
Speaker 0: yeah it's sounds fishy while at the same time you know it could be possible but yeah I'm not buying it that was how are you looking at this though no you're you're you put your finger on it um look over the last two weeks the split between Poland and Ukraine has widened uh you know it's I think the average person listening and to you or watching this doesn't realize that During the first three years of this war, of Ukraine's fight with Russia, the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Ukrainian ranks were Poles. So they were the largest representatives, and I think well over 10,000 Polish soldiers or volunteers have died in the course of this war. But in the last three weeks, the... Now, Navrotsky, the Polish, I guess, the current Polish president, and even Donald Tusk, they started taking note of the fact that the Ukrainians were honoring these, Stefan Bandera and these other, you know, fascist Nazis. I mean, there's no other way. They were actual Nazis who were responsible for the Volhyn massacre. where over 130,000 Polish civilians were murdered by these Ukrainian monsters during World War II. And, you know, Poland basically has come out and said, there's no way in hell Ukraine's getting into the East until they repudiate all of that. Absolutely not. So that's now where they stood. And I think this story was leaked as part of an information operation to try to generate more sympathy in Poland for the Ukrainians to try to, oh, forget about that Volod massacre stuff. You've got to worry about the Russians. They're coming to get you. But I think the Poles are saying, no, we're not forgetting the Volod massacre. These people that Ukraine is honoring... and elevating to hero status, they were mass murderers. And they killed civilians. They're guilty of war crimes. And Russia doesn't need to, quote, let's test NATO's response, see what they might do. No, they've been making it very clear that NATO's going to get a response, but it's not a test. And, you know, you're... your friend and my friend, Sergei Karaganov, you know, this is what he was speaking to, that over the last two months in particular, the rhetoric coming out of Europe, Germany in particular, UK in particular, has been very bellicose, extremely threatening, and that's been accompanied by actions as well. In fact, they Volvan and Alexis, I don't know if you know the boys. I do. They are incredible talents. Well, they managed to get the Estonian, I think it was the foreign minister on the phone, or defense minister, one of those two.
Speaker 1: And he thought he was talking to... Yeah, advisor to the president it was.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And so he thought he was talking to one of Zelensky's leading guys. And He admitted that, yeah, we've been facilitating your drone attacks on Russia. Screw them. Well, so now Russia's got, knowing that the Baltic states are actively involved in collaborating with Ukraine in these drone attacks. Then two days ago, one of the Russian oil tankers was exiting the Baltic, and a German patrol boat came up and tried to intercept it. and it was being accompanied by a Russian warship. And the Russian warship, man, made a beeline for the Germans, and the Germans said, Ach du Liebe, and retreated. So, you know, the tensions are ratcheting up between NATO and Russia, and Russia's made it clear they are going to exact war a price from Europe if they continue to escalate in this fashion. And that's where Karaganov comes in that, you know, initially it was probably going to be in a Rushnik missile, but at some point it may take a tactical nuke to reestablish deterrence with Europe, where Europe will no longer try to threaten. And then add to that, Finland and Lithuania are now saying, we're going to base nukes here on the border with Russia. And Russia's saying, no. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: What I thought was interesting across the newspapers around the West is that they present this dispute now between Poland and Ukraine as simply being a little dispute about history. That's how they kind of whitewash the whole thing. Celebrating fascist collaborators who murder 100,000 of your civilians. It's an interesting way of spinning it. But what is interesting is why the Poles suddenly now took notice. I mean, it's 2026. I remember on the day of the coup in Ukraine in 2014, none other than the BBC had this big story where they said that, oh, the Ukrainians have a Nazi problem. They have all these people dressed up with fascist symbols on. They noticed that in City Hall, after the coup, it was full of banners attributing OUN, the nationalist Bandera, all these people who are considered to be, as you said, war criminals in Poland. So now, 12 years later, now they notice. It's a bit strange. I'm wondering if it's domestic purposes, if they... see what's coming. They would like to distance themselves from this. Again, I would just have to speculate, but it does seem a bit strange that one would only notice it at this point in time. After calling it Russian propaganda for 12 years, now suddenly they discovered it. But yeah, my question was about what you said, that the Russians might launch a strike, even a tactical nuclear weapon. When would that come, you think, or under what conditions? Because the Europeans are now saying, oh, we're not ready for war with Russia, but we'll get ready by 2030. We'll build up the weapons and then we will be ready. If I was sitting in the Kremlin, why would I want to wait for the Europeans to get ready? They're going to arm themselves to the teeth now. They're declaring their intent. At some point, the Russians must think, you know, if the Europeans are planning to hit us, why not hit them first? And why wait until they're actually ready? We have a huge stockpile of Oreshniks now. I mean, do you think a preemptive strike by the Russians are a possibility?
Speaker 0: Yeah, no, I do. I think the Russians, just as they did with respect to warning the foreign delegations to get out of Kiev because it was going to be struck, and then the strike they made on, I guess, now Wednesday of this week, It was widespread, and it went after a couple of hotels where Westerners are known to stay. And, you know, reports from the Russian side claim that there were deaths of NATO and European officials. We've not seen any independent confirmation of that, but it was a clear sign that, you know, Russia's going to make good on that threat, and the next threat would be against Russia factories in the UK and in Germany. I think those would be the two priority targets that if Russia continues to get hit with long-range missiles or intermediate-range missiles and long-range drones that are being produced in the West, that it will take action against them and hit them. And then follow up with a warning that if this is continued, it will be followed with tactical nukes. We are not playing around anymore. We're not going to let you sit here and launch attacks on us that you think there's no consequence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I remember in November of 2021 when the U.S. and Ukraine signed this agreement strategic partnership, something along those lines, which would elevate the US military contributions to Ukraine. At that point, the advisor to the former French president made the point that this was when the Russians believed that it was either attack or be attacked. And merely three months later, they attacked, wanting to be first. So there are some indications that from the Russian perspective, they saw this attack as being preemptive, a war that was coming, and they would do it on their own terms instead of waiting for the other side. So it's not that unrealistic, I guess. Anyways, yeah, before we go, do you have any final thoughts?
Speaker 0: Well, yeah, I'd pay attention to what happens with the fuel situation with diesel and aviation fuel over the next couple of weeks. Again, maybe those who passed me this information missed something, but I thought they made a pretty credible explanation about how the price on the market for futures is not actually capturing accurately what's going on. So we'll have to see what, at a minimum, I think the fuel shortage, it will limit what the United States can do militarily. at least for the short term. But once we're into September, the odds of Trump trying to restart attacks on Iran and risk U.S. casualties and U.S. losses before the midterm, I don't see that happening at all.
Speaker 1: Well, Larry, as always, thank you and happy Independence Day.
Speaker 0: Hey, thanks so much, Glenn. Appreciate it, man.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
The former Director of Russia Analysis at the CIA, George Beebe, argues that the claim 'Ukraine is winning' is NATO war propaganda aimed at prolonging the war. * Full interview: https://youtu.be/QKS2weSRdJw https://t.co/eo68ExhOiV
Video Transcript AI Summary
In Europe, it has become accepted that “Ukraine is winning” and that Ukraine turned the tide. Speaker 0 says this narrative is “exactly what it is” and characterizes it as propaganda.
Speaker 1 explains that the broader propaganda effort is aimed at sustaining a course of action toward Russia that has failed since the beginning of the invasion. Speaker 1 describes the original idea as increasing pressure on Russia so that Russia would respond by withdrawing, admitting it made a mistake, and never invading again.
Speaker 1 lists elements of the pressure campaign: turning the ruble into rubble, turning Russian diplomats and politicians into international pariahs, applying heavy military pressure, and sending many Russians home in body bags. Speaker 1 then states that Putin has no choice but to capitulate—adding that this effort has not worked and is not going to work.
According to Speaker 1, the specific propaganda line that Ukrainians are winning, that they should “stay the course” and “don’t lose heart,” is designed to buy time. Speaker 1 says opponents of a settlement oppose compromise and want Russia to capitulate rather than reach a negotiated outcome. Speaker 1 also says they do not want to “reward aggression” in any way.
Speaker 1 describes the belief held by those opponents: continue turning up pressure on Russia and eventually Russia will succumb, without the need to give up anything in a settlement or compromise. Speaker 1 concludes that this approach is “a fantasy” and says it has been proved to be a fantasy.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: 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, 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 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 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 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.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Stanislav Krapivnik: Will Russia Strike First as NATO Prepares for War? https://youtu.be/_lHnFN2pQEM https://t.co/fXsPcoY0yJ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Stanislav Krapivnik said the war is changing, with a growing focus on logistics and infrastructure—bridges, energy sites, and even petrol stations—though he described sharp local variation in how fuel access is affected in Russia. He reported difficulty getting fuel outside major cities due to fewer logistics and partial shortages, with lines ranging from about 10 minutes to up to an hour depending on location. He said hoarding occurs by both individuals and companies, including an incident where two 20–21-year-old men were busted for allegedly buying 900 liters of E95 under the table to resell. He also described price spikes at some small “mom-and-pop” stations, and said the government’s response is unclear. He said Sberbank has a program to find fuel nearby, and that different areas use different methods such as volume caps, quotas, or queue systems, with restrictions on filling containers in some places.
On military decisions and targeting, Krapivnik described intensified drone use and said he had observed that detectors only show distance and drone count, not friendly versus hostile. He described “Palantir drones” and a targeting logic where “the AI” selects military-type targets for the first 80% of the charge and then looks for anything moving for the last 20%. He said Russia adapted quickly by mounting machine guns on modified civilian vehicles (“Mad Max” cars) to escort trucks, often one per escort (sometimes two), to shoot down drones; he said civilians generally drive without such escort, creating different risk.
Krapivnik claimed that drone attacks have killed civilians in places like the area between Gorlovka and Senovata, and he said open-air markets and buses have been hit, including alleged attacks on Belarusian buses. He argued Ukrainian attacks on gas stations are often targeting the refueling cars and people rather than the station itself, occurring “almost on a daily basis,” while Russia’s response includes dismantling gas stations in frontier territories and attacking gas stations at night. He described drones and fuel logistics in terms of Ukrainian portable drone launch sites: trucks carrying drone launchers that deploy near the line of contact, and Russia targeting fueling points where those launchers use regular gas stations. He described Russian attacks on such fueling points as occurring after closing stations overnight, accompanied by additional explosions and casualties.
Regarding the situation in Kyiv, Krapivnik said the “party of war” is winning out, with hardliners gaining influence over those pushing for negotiations. He listed specific industrial and logistics targets struck in Kyiv, including companies producing cruise missile control components, drone-related products, sighting systems for armored vehicles, camera equipment, and logistics centers. He said defensive belts around major Ukrainian cities have expanded—barbed wire, dragon’s teeth, anti-tank ditches, minefields, and roads under block post control—and argued these defenses slow advances by drones, giving cities time to build defenses and creating delays for clearing obstacles under fire.
He also addressed escalation concerns about Europe. He referenced Medvedev’s claim that Finland is on a nuclear targeting list after changing laws, and said Maria Zakharova claimed “Russian pranksters” exposed Estonian involvement in attacks on St. Petersburg, framing this as creating pressure for a harsher line. He asserted that the war could move toward either conventional or nuclear conflict, arguing there is “no in-between,” and compared Russia’s concerns to historical episodes such as Operation Barbarossa. He described reasons a defender might “absorb an attack” if capable of reversing it, and discussed legal arguments involving “Article 51” in relation to genocide-prevention claims he tied to Russia’s actions.
Krapivnik argued Russia is unlikely to strike Poland, and he connected his view to what he said are threats and dynamics involving Ukrainian nationalists, Azov, and MiG-29 transfers, claiming Poland would have incentives to avoid escalation. He suggested that if Russia wanted to make an example in Europe, it might target manufacturing facilities involved in drone production, and he discussed Estonia as a possible focal point due to Russian-speaking populations and historical territorial framing.
In the final segment, he shifted to technology, saying Russia launched its first photonic chip factory and that China launched one earlier. He claimed photonic chips use light rather than traditional etched silicon electronics, produce less heat, and offer greater capabilities. He said China plans to produce 12,000 photonic chips by the end of the year and that Russia’s efforts could yield chips “a thousand times faster” than NVIDIA (or “10 times faster” even if the claim is exaggerated), concluding this represents a major disruption to current AI-related expectations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Stanislav Krapivnik, Russian born, former U.S. Army officer. So thank you for coming back on the program. I wanted to ask you about what is changing in this war. One gets the impression that something is definitely changing. That is this targeting of, well, I guess more specific logistics. We see that there is both sides targeting bridges, more the energy infrastructure, obviously still. But even the petrol stations now, I'm curious how effective that is. And furthermore, just to expand on the question, we see Kiev was attacked in a huge way, according to Kiev's mayor, Klitschko. This was the most powerful attack on Kiev during the whole war. I was just wondering if you could speak to some of these military decisions, the way you see them being currently made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for Klitschko, I've got one thing to say. Hold my beer. It's about to get worse. It's only going to get worse. Look, I just got back myself on Tuesday from the Don Bosco. I traveled about 2,500 kilometers around trip. Is there a more difficult position than getting fuel? Yes, there is. Is there no fuel in Russia? No, there is. That's not true. There is fuel. You will probably wind up having to stay in the line to get it. But then it also depends. On average, you say anywhere from 10 minutes to maybe an hour. Some places you just pop right in. It's hard to tell. Let's hit or miss. Some of this is people hoarding. Some of this is companies hoarding and then trying to resell. Two guys got busted, 20 and 21-year-old. Driving around in a van, they had about 900 liters of E95 fuel that apparently they bought under the table and were planning on selling off somewhere. They got busted on that. But there's, you know, we came back. It's obviously more difficult when you're outside the cities than in the cities, because the cities... You get much more logistics. Outside the cities, there's a lot less logistics. So there's more, particularly the mom-and-pop stores, they don't have fuel because they buy from the big guys like Gazprom or Rosneft or Luke Oil, but they get what's left after those guys deliver to all of their own stores. And out in the countryside on the interstates, it's harder to fill up because it's further away from the big cities.
Speaker 0: Excuse me.
Speaker 1: I haven't recovered quite totally from Tuesday. I've been running nonstop since I landed. It's a long drive, obviously. Now, you know, you get down to Voronezh, there are no lines in Voronezh. There's enough fuel everywhere. So it's very different areas. Lugansk also didn't have a line. They have one car ahead of me. I won't call that a line. Panietsk is in a hard way. It's the fuel there. Next door, over, but the fuel there is low quality, sucking out from the bottom with all the sediment. It varies very, very much from place to place. Like I said, there is fuel. Uh, there's some fuel, there's some price gouging too. Uh, some particularly small, uh, mom and pop stores, some are spiking their prices a lot. Uh, I'm not quite sure what the government's going to do about it because there's normally laws against something like that in a, in an emergency situation. But we'll see. Uh, Sberbank apparently, I just found out from one of my kids, Sberbank apparently now has a program to, uh, to find fuel, uh, in your area. So you have to go driving around looking for one station or another. What happens is, you know, some of these gas stations, they get topped off, and then everybody rushes in there. They buy up. And, yes, there's also panic buying. You know, people... Right now, I think a lot of places have put a hold to that. You can't fill up containers, which is a problem because I need to go fill up a couple liters in a container so I can... for lawnmower. But... But, uh, other places are released on like, uh, uh, volumes, like 20 or 30 liters at a time. Uh, some places, uh, have a, uh, quota system. And then, you know, get a line and not a quota system, but a queue, uh, get a line to take a number and come back when it's your turn. So it's, it's different things in different areas. There's no one unified plan. But to say Russia is collapsing, uh, people are marching on the streets and and all the other silliness that we're used to from the Western media world. It's more than the same. It's the Vladimir Putin that is dying from 150 diseases, but yet has invested $20 billion into living forever is now immortal. And all in the same sentence. So that's the reality of it. The other reality of it is drones, particularly the Palantir drones that have come out. And what that programming on these drones, these are relatively short range drones for airplane type drones. They're not that big. And they're made to take out cars, military trucks, buses, grandma in her little car driving to the market. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. As long as they're killing somebody. These programs, These Palantir drones, I mean, Theo is a war criminal. Let's just begin with this. He's a terrorist and a war criminal. The logic they're using is first 80% of the charge, the AI is looking for military-type targets. After that, the last 20, it's looking for anything that's moving. We were driving at night because there was a lot fewer drones. But the drone detector, you can still tell there are four drones in the air, three to four drones constantly. Ours or theirs, you can't tell. A drone detector doesn't tell. It just tells you the distance and how many drones in the area. So that's the reality. The Russian military adapted very quickly to it. They went Mad Max. So all these old Bukhankas, they cut out the back end, then they took a bunch of other cars, but shoot the hatchbacks, took the hatchbacks out, mounted a weapons point on there and put machine guns. And these Mad Max machine gun cars are now escorting all the trucks. Usually one truck per Mad Max car, maybe sometimes two trucks, but mostly one truck. So they're good at shooting down those drones. those Palantir drones. He had to say the same thing for the civilians. There's not enough trucks to escort civilians. Civilians drive on their own, so that becomes a whole different issue. The areas I used to drive in that, well, you had some chance of getting hit by artillery, but for the most part, they're pretty good roads. They're closed now. We've got some relatives living in Gorlovka, some relatives living in You couldn't go down the Debaltsev Road. It's closed. They had, just between Gorlovka and Senovata, they had six civilian cars and occupants killed in less than a week from the American drones. That's the reality. You know, I mean, terror, the Ukrainians are losing, so they've gone into full terror. In fact, my wife sent me Uh, let me see where this was, this happened. It's a massacre in, uh, from Zaporozhye, Takmak. Um, Ukrainian slash American, uh, British, uh, drones hit, um, hit a market, an open air market and just shredded, uh, people. There's, uh, five dead so far, 18 wounded. Diesel's going to be... This was today. This would just happen. Before that, we've had several buses hit. They particularly got a hard-on for targeting Belarusian buses. I don't know if Lukashenko is going to send him another harshly worded letter like he did last time. Obviously, the harshly worded letter of protest did not have the harshly worded effect on the narco goblin and his crew. They've hit two more buses. They wounded two drivers on one of those buses. So they're going off. They're really trying to expand this war. I think more than likely the Americans had to talk with them not to start a full war with Belarus, which would mean another full war with Russia, which may actually would mean Russia having to declare war finally. And if that happened, that means the military would have all restraints released. And then it could really... show Kiev what it means to be at war because these degenerates don't seem to understand that in the Kievan government and those that support them. First of all, why is Ukraine going after Russian gas stations? For the most part, they're not. Those are targets of opportunity to kill civilians. The drone operators will strike At gas stations, they're not striking the gas station itself so much. They're just striking a car that's refueling, refueling up, trying to kill the civilians. And they do it almost on daily, by daily basis. Again, they're not really damaging the gas station, but they are killing civilians because that's their goal. Why is Russia targeting Ukrainian gas stations? Well, the Ukrainians switched to portable drone launch sites. Basically, they took all these light trucks, diesel and gasoline trucks, gazelles, box trucks, and in the box they've put two launchers for two drones. So they drive up toward the border or the line of contact, pop two drones out, and they're off. These are the big drones that can go deep, that can get up to Moscow. I mean, definitely into the places like Voronezh. And they'll do dozens of these trucks launching these drones. Well, Russia started hitting any possible parking spaces for these trucks. But if they're in any of the cities, they'll be hiding in somebody's underground parking lot. It's pretty hard to find them or in some garage. What's not hard to find is their fueling points because they're using the regular gas stations. And Russia's... systematically for the last week and a half, has been dismantling all of their gas stations in these brief frontal territories. To a decent depth. Yesterday, there were some hits on Western Sumi. Took out three gas stations on one road. And these, they're not aiming for the civilians. They're aiming for the gas station. That's where they often do it in the middle of the night. So gas stations are closed for the night and they get a visit from Mr. Iskandar. Usually it becomes a very hot party after Mr. Iskandar visits. So there was one video where I guess some guy in the middle of the night decided he wanted to go fuel up and one gas station blows up to his right as he's driving and he's cussing and he's screaming and as he's driving for like another kilometer and a half and the next one blows up on his left. So he got lucky at least he didn't pull into any. They look pretty closed anyways. So that's a situation between the two. Kyiv, there has been changes. You know, I think the party of war is winning out, the hardliners. By war, I mean not just to prolong the war, but to actually get hard, take the gloves, take the velvet gloves on, put on the spike gauntlets. The party... the faction that wanted to go back to 2012, and we can then go back to, let's make a deal, any deal, just like I make a deal, so I can go back to shopping in Paris, and my wife can go back to, you know, to Monaco. That team, and this is, I would say that was mostly the financial economics team, faction, different representatives, central bank, other people like that. They, from what I can see right now, from my less than the most advantageous point, they seem to have lost. They've lost the local power struggle for now, at least. And they've been put in the backseat. And things are expanding. And they're going to continue expanding. Now, I'll give you an example of the things that were hit in Kiev this last time around. LCC Radionics. This is a company that produces cruise missile control components for a Flamingo. Athlon Avia LLC. Scientific products company. Drone manufacturer. Antonov Serial Production. So they produce airplanes, which they're not exactly producing much of. Oh, and drones. T-Radio Plant LLC. Tryme in Ukraine. They produce sighting systems for armored vehicles, so lenses. Lenses, periscopes, things like that. And thus, they produce the camera equipment, camera lenses for drones. GIF-25, which is both a software house and they produce storage hardware for Lima Electronics warfare units. MLP Chica, it's a logistics center. that was destroyed at one of the biggest logistics centers. This is just a short list of targets that were hit. I mean, Kyiv is a big city, 2.5 million people is the normal population. And the population has swollen because men have ran to Kyiv as Kyiv was a nature reserve for the male species in Ukraine that's now being harvested. And one of the things you notice This came out about a month, a little over a month ago. Kiev, Odessa, Nikolaev, other cities suddenly got surrounded by belts of defensive lines. I'm not sure if we discussed this before or not. I don't remember if we did. So barbed wire, dragon's teeth, anti-tank ditches, minefields, all the roads under block post control. And, you know, I was on an evening with Solovyov, and he was like, yeah, see, they know the Russian army is going to break through. Well, the Russian army is breaking through, but the point is, is no matter what, the rate of advance because of drones is slow. Even if you break through, you're talking less than 10 kilometers a day at best on movement, which gives any of these cities more enough time to put up defenses. Second of all, these defenses without... oversight are pointless. Well, maybe not pointless, but they're just a pain in the arse for any enemy approaching because the reason you put obstacles like this up is because you have them overwatched by indirect and direct fire. So while they're trying to clear the minefield and they're trying to fill in the hole and move the dragon's teeth out of the way, they're being shot at. Now, Ukraine doesn't have that kind of manpower. So what that means is a series of obstacles like that for the Russian military may be a one and a half, two hour delay. One time. And then you got a corridor for everybody else to go in behind you or make a couple of these kinds of corridors. So why would they do that? Well, like I said, Kiev, these cities are nature preserves for the male species, for the male of the species. And now they're being harvested. So what you should, Kiev, I mean, Ukraine is one big open air concentration camp. But it's a big open-air concentration camp with plenty of places to hide. The Ukrainian meat machine has run out of men in the small towns, medium towns, villages. They're pretty much depopulated, the male population. Most of them are in the grave. So what do you do now? You start looking around. And where do you have the big reserves? You have Kiev, you have Odessa, you have cities like that. Well, the problem is... Ukraine is a concentration camp, open air concentration camp, but it's big. And the men started running out of the city. So these aren't defensive lines. These are concentration camps. Ghettos inside the big concentration camp. You know, try driving across a field when you have landmines somewhere out there, plus Constantino wire, plus dragon teeth. Try getting across there on foot when, again, you have Constantino wire, then you have to get across a minefield. That limits your mobility. You can't drive out the roads because everything is under guard post. They're going to be going, pay for us, please. Or better yet, stacks of cash you want out. You know, that's the reality of it. So what Ukraine has done, the Ukrainian government, is it's basically closed the pen around the nature reserves, and now they're harvesting. So that's the situation we have right now. I know I went slightly off.
Speaker 0: Well, again, as you see, Ukraine is being hit much harder. And as in most of this war, whenever there's escalation, including on NATO's side, it's usually the retaliation comes against Ukraine. But now that the pressure is also mounting on hitting something in Europe, what do you think Russia might consider? Because we saw this article now, I forgot where it was. It might have been Washington Post. They wrote this article that, or maybe it was the British media, that the Russians were planning an attack on Poland. But it was apparently around Kaliningrad, which wouldn't make that much sense. But that being said, there obviously are those in Russia who are now pushing for restoring its deterrent by hitting a European NATO country but how how essentially what would be the logic here that is trying to hit and the adversary hard enough to back away from the Ukraine war but not so much that one triggers a nuclear war and uh and even this is the case if if this can't be controlled uh and it ends up in a like all-out direct war what you see is such a war looking like? Sorry, that's a double question, but. No, no problem.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, um, the Chinese, and I've got a lot of hope for this equipment, uh, the Chinese, uh, demonstrated in their last big military parade, three, uh, drone suppression units. Uh, these were, these were, uh, microwave based EMP devices, uh, big antennas, big rayars. Uh, to track down, uh, and the antenna is just one big block. Like the old radar systems used to be in World War II, just miniaturized to one truck. A decently sized truck, about two and a half ton truck. Um, running off 15 kilowatts, up to five kilometers, uh, in distance. And it's an area suppression weapon. Right. Uh, there's lots of stuff that kills drones. Uh, some of the best is lasers. Sure, you can half a second and melt right through that plastic piece of crap that's flying five kilometers away. Great. Problem is, once they figure out where that laser just came from, because unlike in space, in the air, if it's a high enough intensity laser, you can actually see the damn thing. Once they figure out where it's coming from, there'll be 40, 30, 40 drones flying at it, and they'll be on a very wide frontage. height and width. So here's the problem. Drone laser systems only service one target at a time. Even if it takes half a second or a second to kill that target, another second or two to reorient to the next target and power it up for another, you know, one or two, three seconds to get enough energy back up off the generator to do another impulse. So even if you're hitting a possible rate of one drone, say every 10 seconds, you have 30, 40 drones closing in at 140 kilometers or 220 kilometers per hour from a few kilometers away, you're done. It's just that simple. And again, you're back to the $5,000 drone just killed the $10 million or $3 million piece of equipment. So again, that... Every system we have right now is first and foremost a single target servicing system. You need an area suppression piece of equipment, and that's what the Chinese have demonstrated and field tested. Have they combat tested? Of course not. We haven't seen that yet on the Russian battlefield. Where else are they going to combat test it? That's a lot of hope because if you put enough of these units together, especially when you have artillery – overmatch like Russia does to the EU in whole, and Ukraine in particular, what you're going to have is you could bring back, at least limitedly, you can bring back maneuver warfare. There is these possibilities. So that's a very big, how would this war look like? If this equipment comes in, say, by the end of summer, this war could look radically different. Uh, obviously because now you've opened up at least on some frontage, uh, uh, fast moving maneuver warfare, which makes, by the way, drone operators very, very, uh, problematic because they operate, uh, they're, they're best operating when the front is more or less stable. Uh, even if there's a small Russian breakthrough, uh, or Ukrainian breakthrough, uh, drone operators can handle it because they're not, it's infantry and they're not moving that fast. Now, what the strike? Again, I can't talk for Vladimir Vladimirovich because I haven't been invited to any of his sessions. And if I was, I still wouldn't be able to say just out of military censorship. But from my own opinion, what have I done? You know, the 16 drones that took out the entire block because you saw my video from Starobelsk. It's not just those two buildings. They took out everything around them. They took out an arts high school or junior school arts center across the street. They took out a private house across the street. They took out a restaurant that was next door. They missed a few. You know, one of the shell holes from one of these drones was four meters wide, two meters deep. We climbed, one of the guys climbed down there, measured. Those drones were all made in Italy. Made in Italy stickers. You'd think the Italians would be at least a little smarter, at least take their names off of it. Plausible deniability. This is one of those moments where you take that to the UN, you show that, and gentlemen, on the screen is Ari Reshnik that's now arriving at the manufacture facility that manufactured these terror weapons. Please watch. That's one way to do it. I would do that. Obviously, right now, that moment has passed because that's something you would have to have used relatively quickly. Other place... Sorry. Go ahead. The other place that would make a lot of logical sense are two other places. You can hit the British, for example, in Cyprus because you're not hitting NATO territory, per se, and it's not in Britain... on the main islands. Otherwise, me personally, I would take out a tanker, a Russian flag tanker, and have it break down somewhere to the northwest of the UK with a full contingent of Marines with man-pad anti-aircraft systems, at least one heavy machine gun. And somewhere trailing behind that would be an attack submarine. And when the British come running over to try to land and pirate the oil ship, give them one warning, and then open fire. Take out the helicopter, take out the crew, and if those boats, the cutters start firing on the tanker, the submarine sinks them both. You've just created a major casualty event for the British in neutral waters. You've taken prisoners as pirates. Now, shall we tribunal and execute them, or are you going to talk about it? Because, by the way, they're pirates. They're grabbing in neutral waters, they're grabbing a foreign ship under a foreign flag. That's piracy. Or do you prefer declaration of war now? And then we can just start bombarding London into Gaza. That's the position you put the British in. And until something like that happens, they're not smart enough people to take this war seriously. It's a game to them.
Speaker 0: Well, it looks like... We could be heading somewhere around that direction because the rhetoric seems to have shifted now. I saw this interview with Putin where he not only referred to getting very close to finishing off Donbass, but then he also included Novorossiya, which would then include Nikolaev and Odessa. I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that too.
Speaker 0: Fair enough. But then we see also Medvedev, he's making this point that Finland is now on the nuclear targeting list after they changed their law and can host the nuclear weapons. That seems kind of predictable. But also Maria Sakharova, who made this comment that these Russian pranksters, they've essentially exposed that Estonia was involved in the attacks on St. Petersburg. The reason this is interesting is once you put that out there, yes, on one hand, one creates the case for why it would be legitimate, for example, to strike Estonia. But once you put it out there, it also puts a lot of pressure on the government. That is, if you recognize that Estonians have attacked Russia, it's very hard not to go up that escalation ladder. Just, well, they attacked us, you admit it, and then do nothing. I mean, that is... then it would be better to pretend as if he weren't attacked and that there was no evidence. So all of this is, you know, of course I don't want to read too much into it, but it, it just, when one gets the impression that something is shifting, that, uh, uh, yeah, the, that they're prepared to take a harder line now against the, at least Europeans. I was wondering if you see some of the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Um, Because this can't go on the way it goes on. Look, I've said on your show before and on different other shows, we're heading into either a conventional war or a nuclear war. There is no in-between. The question with the conventional war is how much of Europe is planning on dying off at a slow rate. If we go to a nuclear war, well, all of Europe is going to be dying off at a very fast rate. So that becomes a question. Norway, I mean, I'm sorry, not Norway. Finland is not on the nuclear list yet because American nuclear bombs, they're literally bombs, gravity bombs, haven't been sent there yet. They will be. And the second world economy collapsing to the armpit of Europe again, Finland... is well on its way to becoming also a nuclear strike target for first strike or any other retaliatory strike. I guess the Finns, they don't want to just be the armpit of Europe again, which they're very rapidly becoming, which they were before the Russian Empire took them over. And under Russian Empire, Finns were taught, were given schooling. Helsinki was built from a stinking fishing village. And Finns for the first time were actually running Finland in maybe a thousand years. And part of the Russian upper classes. This was the armpit of Europe. Probably competing only with maybe what I know, Albania. Those types of areas. Finland was absolutely the armpit of Europe. And Finland grew up, got rich. Particularly rich during the Cold War by staying neutral. It tied its economy to the Russian economy, particularly after the Cold War. And they decided to commit economic suicide, which they've successfully done. They're slowly hanging off a rope and slowly strangling to death. They prefer to do it slowly, more painful, I guess. They're masochistic that way. But now they've just decided, hey, that's not enough. Let's become nuclear targets. Okay, you know, you can't fix stupid. Well, stupid sometimes fixes itself. It gets itself killed. But apparently you can't fix stupid. People have tried rationally speaking to the Finns, but they're dead set on it. They want to die, and they want to die spectacularly. Well, okay. I mean, these are the same people that are trying to put American bases right across the border from the Russian border. These are the same people who... were allowed Ukrainian drones to fly through. And I guarantee you, if Vova and Lexus called up Stubby and got to talk to him, he probably spilled the beans the same way that, oh yeah, yeah, we're arming and we're launching those drones for the Ukrainians. I would not be surprised to hear that from these guys. They're that stupid. They're quite literally the knuckle-dragging, inbred, I mean, Stubbs looks like he's inbred. Knuckle-dragging inbred mouth breathers of European aristocracy. Way too much pure blood. And this is the people you get running Europe now. Okay. I mean, if the people aren't overthrowing them, they must be liking it. Otherwise they would overthrow them.
Speaker 0: Well, let me ask a last question here though, because, well, the way you frame it now, it sounds as if, you know, the you see war almost being unavoidable, either nuclear or conventional. But it also seems that Russia now believes that the Europeans are preparing for war, largely because that's exactly what the European leaders are saying and also doing in terms of arming themselves. But how do you see the possibility of Russia actually striking first? If you think war is unavoidable, why wait until until you get punched first. I saw during this interview with Putin, I think he referred to the Operation Barbarossa and that's an interesting comparison to the current situation. I was just wondering, do you see this as a possibility that Russia becomes convinced that the war is coming and it will essentially then take ownership and decide when it starts and how it will be fought?
Speaker 1: You know, Barbarossa and Barbarossa Stalin had a very big misconception. He believed that war could be avoided. He believed that the British were trying to instigate the war, and to a degree they were. But war was never avoided, avoidable. Hitler was dead set on it. So at this point, Stalin, for example, refused his generals, so came to him six days prior, said, let us mobilize, at least partially mobilize, said no movements because that would be used by the British to instigate conflict with the Germans. Yeah, not the smartest move, obviously. When the night before the 22nd of 4 a.m., 22nd of June, the 4 a.m. when Barbarossa kicked off, about 12 hours earlier, you had a Polish communist swim across the Vistula. and go up and say, you know, the Germans are about to attack. And he got pulled in by some military intelligence types, and four in the morning, they were still questioning him. So, you know, what he's telling you, they're about to attack. Well, they've attacked. You know, this is a slightly different situation. Two, why would you absorb an attack? Well, you know, or let the enemy strike first. There are reasons for to do this. One, if you're very convinced you can absorb that attack and come back, there could be two things that happen. One, the enemy is in for a shock when they give their best blow and you go, yeah, okay. That's what we saw with Iran. The Americans struck with everything they had. When the dust clears, the Iranians are just shooting back and they're going, is that all you've got? Seriously. And the Americans at which point are looking at their warehouse and going, damn, that is all we've got. We've got pretty much nothing left. Oh, and we can't manufacture anything because, you know, our economy is basically going to manufacture as a second world power at best with components that come from other countries. So, yeah, that would be a reason to wait and let the enemy strike because you know you can take the blow and you can reverse it because that also generates sympathy. Particularly if those countries, they were sympathetic, would then... be more easily persuaded or it would be easier for them to come to your assistance on a moral high ground, which the Iranians did quite a bit. Russia had a strike when it struck because the Ukrainians were getting ready to start genociding Donetsk and Lugansk. And they were sitting right outside of, a little bit out of the way out of Donetsk, I mean, after Lugansk, but they were sitting inside Donetsk the western edges of Donetsk. There would have been a massive genocide. That's why Russia invoked Article 51, the right to protect. And by the way, for the Germans, if you don't understand, and the Italians, and the Hungarians, and the Finns, just so you understand, there is a separate article in the UN Charter that allows the UN permanent members to come wipe your nations out if there is any Nazism, a rebirth of Nazism in your countries.
Speaker 0: Go read the charter. You'd be surprised what goes into that.
Speaker 1: So yes, there's that moment too. If Merz really wants to go ahead and get his gray uniform on, then we can go ahead and start demolishing Germany. Quite legally, quite legally. To the very charter, by the way, Germany also is now signed as a member of the U.N., So there's that point, why you would absorb a blow. In the case of Europe, I would say a strike on Italy, for example, or an ambush on the open seas of the British pirates would be a very good escalation with some amount of control still available. As for Russia's strike in Poland... Yeah, that's as likely as Russia going to the moon in the next two days. Why would we want to? We've got everything we need right now. Or better yet, it's as likely as Russia annexing Western Europe. Why? Why would we ever want to do that? Poland, you know, getting in the way of the narco goblin destroying relations with his backers and neighbors is just too rich. Why would we ever want to get in the way of it? Look... Who suggests this? The very people that are afraid that Poland is now gone off course. It's off the sheet of music. It's on a new sheet of music. And it's a nationalist sheet of music. And we don't like that new sheet of music because all of a sudden Poland has said, Melnyk is one Nazi too far. I'm not sure why Bandera-Szyhiewicz weren't one Nazi too far, but apparently Melnyk was finally that Nazi too far. That old bastard that died of old age in Luxembourg, mass murdering psychopath. but was allowed to live the rest of his life in comfort. So he gets reburied, and the Ukrainians start naming their units after Nazi formations and Nazis. Oh, except they were doing that anyways. So the Poles, maybe it was, you know, maybe it was Novorossiysk was just waiting for an excuse. That's also possible. And the Ukrainians gave him their shoes. Well, it's not only Zelensky's told him to bugger the hell off, we'll name our heroes anywhere we want in our units, but it's his runaway commanders that have now started threatening to start murdering Poles. They're now directly threatening to invade Poland and start hitting Poland with drones. And if you look at Azov, the core now, it's no longer battalion or brigade, it's now core. Azov published their black flag, and on it in red is an outline of super-Ukraine, which also happens to include one-third of Poland. If you think the Poles didn't notice that one, you know, you're kidding yourself. So, of course, the Poles have noticed that. The relations have gone to hell. And the ready-bearing fruits, Novoreskoe said. Those MiGs aren't coming. Don't hold your breath. So that's a wing of MiG-29s that Poland was getting ready to hand over to Ukraine. They're no longer going to be heading over there. So again, why get rid of somebody like Zelensky? Why attack Poland? You know, this is the perfect situation. Any move from the Russian side like that would be just plain silly. When it comes to Places like Italy, if you want to make an example of one of these countries, taking out the manufacturing facility that created the drones that murdered Russian children is a very good basis for the reason you've done this. And Italy may find it very hard to try to go to war on such a footing. Maloney is not as popular as most people think. She's also totally betrayed the conservative movement. And, by the way, flooded Italy over the last two years with migrants, mass flooding of migrants. Her days may be numbered, finally. So if you do an exemplary attack on that manufacturing facility that created those drones, that's not possibly going to avoid going to war and may get you the political results you want. Estonia, you know, Estonia also has this problem that almost half its populations are Russians on Russian historical land. Narva, that region, has been Russian since the 9th century. The communists started, the Bolsheviks started drawing nice little new lines and included Russian lands to Estonia. Just get them bigger, get them another big city. Who cares? We still rule from Moscow. Well, that's the same mentality that created the problem with Crimea. So Estonia, I mean, the Russians there, they're not even second-class citizens. They're not citizens at all. On their own homeland that they've occupied for the last 1,100 years, they're not citizens. They're basically semi-literate... legal, uh, residents with a gray passport. So Estonia is not only a, uh, again, these, by the way, the, the three Baltic countries, most people don't understand this, especially they're in the EU. Uh, they all have, uh, SS parades once a year, about summerish in the summertime that are government sponsored, paid for with government officials coming to talk to, uh, the veterans of the SS. The very people that, the defenders of Estonia, the very people that gave their oath to Adolf, first and foremost. Estonia may be an extremely, extremely good example. One, because there's a lot of Russians there that need to be returned home and territories that need to be returned home. They were artificially separated by the Bolsheviks. And two, because, yeah, they want to fight. Apparently they want to fight. Let them taste what fighting means.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you very much for coming on. And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, like I said, uh, something is definitely changing now. So, uh, I see the same now with, um, yeah, the, the Russians, uh, guiding or assist. What's a good word for it? Uh, well, um, escorting their. their vessels with uh yeah military warships we see guns mounted on civilian ships uh to prevent this piracy so um yeah the rhetoric shifting the heavy attacks so across the board something appears to have shifted and uh yeah let's see how this plays out so uh thank you very much for taking the time thank you Glenn always a pleasure
Speaker 1: And maybe we'll have some good, uh, good news, like positive things, rainbows, butterflies, apples, and berries to discuss one day.
Speaker 0: You know, my, my, this, uh, I started this podcast cause I thought, uh, uh, my, my main research focuses on greater Eurasia and, uh, how the Russians are reorienting their economy to the east. I mean, at least 10 of my books have been focused on this issue and, uh, you know, that's what I was teaching all this, but, uh, Oh, God, this is so depressing. The past year, only war. I'm looking forward to also academia becoming slightly more boring. That would be delightful.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the problem is a lot of academia is very boring. They're just ignoring everything you're talking about, other people are talking about, I'm talking about. They just ignore it. They have a very narrow bandwidth that they're responding to. Uh, and unfortunately it's a group formation. Uh, so, you know, all the details are boring to them. It's just that Russians are evil and, you know, and that's it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now I remember that when I first started working on it, cause I thought it was fascinating. The Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, all of them are creating this new tech centers. They're creating their own supply chains. They're developing their own physical transportation corridors, their own development banks. They're de-dollarizing. old new payment system, and then when you turn to the media and academia, it's like, oh, it's just a sideshow. It doesn't mean that much, but here we are. Anyways, any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Any final thoughts? Russia just launched its first photonic chip factory. The Chinese launched one a couple of months ago. Photonic chips, you want to talk about crashing the AI bubble, particularly the AI construction bubble that America is built on these days. Atomic chips, because they're not etchings in silicon. They're not electronics. They use photons, light. They don't build up nearly as much heat. The capabilities are much greater. And, well, the Chinese ones, you know, they're planning on producing 12,000 of these chips by the end of the year. I'm not sure how big. The Russian chip manufacturing is going to be on the photonic side. But they're talking about a thousand times faster than the best NVIDIA chip. That may be a big bit of an exaggeration, but even if it's 10 times faster, that's a massive breakthrough. Russia and China are now going to go into photonic chips, and the U.S. is nowhere near that, having invested heavily, heavily into current technology instead of more advanced technologies. That's a, that's a huge bubble burst.
Speaker 0: Definitely. Well, thanks again. We'll have to cover that next time.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Professor John Mearsheimer on how NATO lies about casualties to sell a long war to its public. Watch the full interview here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YGL1RBBUrSU&t=3934s&pp=2AHeHpACAcoFDGdsZW5uIGRpZXNlbg%3D%3D https://t.co/xqy81r8Vqh
Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0 argues that many narratives about the Russia–Ukraine war lack internal logic. They say that claims Ukraine is “winning” are supported by evidence such as Russians taking massive casualties and Ukrainians recapturing territory. However, they point to reported exchanges of dead soldiers (including reparation of remains and prisoner-related dead exchanges) where the ratio is often described as around 1 to 20 or even 1 to 40, which they say implies far more dead Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers and “doesn't really make any sense.” They also argue that if casualties were higher overall, the ratios would be reversed. Speaker 0 adds that advocates using these claims “get away with it.”
Speaker 1 responds by focusing on casualty figures. They reference a New York Times piece that presented relative casualty numbers—killed in action plus wounded—and also separate killed-in-action counts for both sides. Speaker 1 says the New York Times article was based on a CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) study in Washington, D.C., which estimated roughly 450,000 Russians dead and between 125,000 and 150,000 Ukrainians dead. Speaker 1 uses the Ukrainians’ high-end figure of 150,000 against 450,000 for Russians, producing a “three to one ratio” (three Russians dead for every Ukrainian), and says this cannot be the case. They argue that the main battlefield killer is artillery and that estimates suggest Russians held an advantage in artillery throughout most of the war, ranging from 5 to 1 to 7 to 1 or 10 to 1. They also point to Russian smart bomb inventories as a reason Russians have been able to strike Ukrainian forces more heavily, while saying Ukrainians have virtually no smart bombs deployed against Russians.
Speaker 1 further disputes the idea that differences in casualty totals can be explained by posture. They say Ukrainians have been on the offensive for much of the war, citing the Kursk offensive and a June 4, 2023 offensive described as aiming for a blitzkrieg that would reach the Sea of Azov and cut Russian front lines in half. Speaker 1 also cites major Ukrainian offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv in 2022 after noting Russian defeats. They argue that because Ukrainians have frequently conducted offensive operations—and because offense generally produces higher casualties than defense—those numbers do not align with how casualties should look.
Speaker 1 says they expect that Ukrainians likely lost around a million men killed in action rather than 150,000, and that the lower figure is “ludicrous.” They add that these casualty narratives are reported and then used by various people to decide what should be done “moving forward,” including arguments for escalating support to “clobber the Russians” and end them as a great power. Speaker 1 concludes by saying elites have told themselves a story they believe and continue “march[ing] forward based on these false narratives.”
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Yeah, this lack of logic. I keep seeing it everywhere. For one, the main argument now is that Ukraine is winning. And when they show towards the evidence, it's because the Russians are taking massive casualties and the Ukrainians are recapturing territory. But when you look at the reparation of remains or, well, exchange of dead soldiers, you see often the ratio being like 1 to 20, even 1 to 40. It's just a huge amount of... dead Ukrainian soldiers vis-a-vis relatively low numbers of Russian. And it doesn't really make any sense. I mean, if there were higher casualties, you would assume that they would be reversed. And you can make the argument that, well, if the Russians are moving forward, they're the one picking up the dead bodies. But again, they're also saying that Ukraine is capturing territory. But it doesn't make much sense, but they get away with it.
Speaker 1: Well, let's just talk a little bit about the casualty number or numbers. You know, the New York Times had this piece on the relative balance of casualties. Casualties meaning killed in action plus wounded. And then they also had numbers of soldiers killed on both sides. And apparently the New York Times article was based on a study that had been done by a think tank in Washington, D.C., the CSIS. And the argument was that roughly around 450,000 Russians had died, and somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 Ukrainians had died. So let's take the high-end number for the Ukrainians, which is 150,000. And again, the Russian number is 450,000. That's a three to one ratio. That means that three Russians have died for every Ukrainian. This is simply unbelievable. This cannot be the case. I don't understand where these numbers come from. First of all, the main killer on the battlefield is artillery. And throughout most of the war, The estimates are that the Russians have had at least a 5 to 1, if not a 7 to 1 or 10 to 1 advantage in artillery. If you look at these bombs, these smart bombs that are dropped from the air, the Russians have a huge inventory of smart bombs that they've been dropping on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have virtually no smart bombs that they've been dropping on the Russians. You might say to yourself, well, it's the Russians who have mainly been on the offensive. Well, there's two problems there. One is that the Ukrainians have launched a large number of offensives. Remember the Kursk offensive? Remember the famous June 4th, 2023 offensive, the one that was going to result in a blitzkrieg that took the Ukrainians to the Sea of Azov and cut the Russian front lines in half? In 2022, the first year of the war, the Russians suffered two defeats because the Ukrainians launched major offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv. And then we hear about all these Ukrainian counterattacks these days. Those are offensive operations. So the Ukrainians have been on the offensive for a good part of the war, and therefore— You can't make the argument that they've been on the defensive, and because the defense suffers less casualties than the offense does in almost all cases, we should not be surprised by that number that the New York Times uses. So you can't justify those numbers that way. It just makes no sense at all. And I think, if anything, that we're going to find out that the Ukrainians lost probably around, or have lost, probably, and here when I say lost, I mean killed in action, around a million men. I think the argument that they've lost 150,000 is ludicrous. It just makes no sense at all. And nevertheless, this is reported as fact, and it is a set of facts that What I'm describing is a set of facts that all sorts of people use to assess what the situation is between Russia and Ukraine and what we should do moving forward. And if you believe these numbers, which, again, I think are ridiculous, you can justify upping the ante and trying to help Ukraine really clobber the Russians and knock the Russians off as a great power. Finish them off. has a great power. And lots of people talk that way. And you just sort of say to yourself, are they making all of this up? Are they making these numbers up? Do you think the New York Times is making these numbers up? I don't think they're making them up. I think they really believe them. Again, there may be all sorts of motivated biases at play here that they are not aware of. But Putting that aside, the fact is the elites have told themselves a story that they believe, and they continue to march forward based on these false narratives.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: The End of Russian Restraint & New U.S. Grand Strategy https://youtu.be/YGL1RBBUrSU https://t.co/SyVS2Uvw2O
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn and Professor John Mearsheimer discuss recent strikes in Ukraine, Western involvement, NATO’s role, and broader US grand strategy amid escalating pressures involving Russia, Ukraine, and Iran.
On the bombing of Kyiv, including claims by Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko that it was the worst bombing of Kyiv in the entire war, Mearsheimer says that the prevailing explanation for the massive attack is that it was a reprisal for Ukrainian drone attacks into Russia. He argues that while it could be interpreted as a “classic punishment campaign,” it actually targeted military-industrial or strategic targets rather than civilians. He notes that Kyiv Independent reported 20 Ukrainians killed and says the number is “not a large number” and does not indicate a punishment campaign designed to kill civilians. He adds that Russia has conducted massive strikes against military-industrial targets before and that he does not see the attack as fitting a direct response to Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia’s “heartland,” though he suggests Russia may frame it that way for domestic public relations purposes.
Glenn raises questions about NATO involvement, noting disputes about NATO participation and reporting about “two Russian pranksters” contacting an Estonian presidential advisor and obtaining coordinates relating to attacks on St. Petersburg. Mearsheimer responds by stressing that NATO is deeply involved and cites the G7 declaration issued after a June 17 meeting in France. He says the G7 countries stated they would accelerate support for Ukraine’s long-range bombing campaign into Russia and would ramp up economic pressure on Russia. He also says Western intelligence, drones, and drone development support have been provided to Ukraine, and that Western support likely includes helping plan drone offensives. He points out that Ukrainian drones have flown over the Baltic states without Russian reaction, but that Russia has said it will attack drone launch sites if drones are launched from Baltic territory—so he says Baltic states do not allow Ukraine to launch drones from their territory, though he believes Russia would retaliate if that changed.
Mearsheimer discusses proposals attributed to Sergei Karaganov about attacking Europe with conventional weapons first and then, if necessary, turning to nuclear weapons. Mearsheimer argues Russia is unlikely to take that “Karaganov road” right away because it believes it can parry drone attacks effectively in the short term and because battlefield conditions matter. He says Russia is moving slowly but steadily toward conquering all of Donbass, leaving little to conquer, and argues that these incentives reduce pressure to escalate into Europe or consider nuclear options immediately. He adds that if Western rhetoric were true that Russia is losing and suffering massive casualties, the Karaganov approach might seem more plausible, but he says that is not what is happening on the battlefield.
Glenn argues that Western leaders talk about bringing war to Russia and increasing “pain,” but that restraint has existed because Russia can absorb limited punishment without major impact. He warns that if the capacity to absorb punishment disappears, Russia may strike NATO states, raising the risk of major escalation. He then asks why Western elites are becoming more open about deep strikes inside Russia, including mentions such as a NATO-linked strategy reward for targeting Russian airfields, and whether this openness serves to normalize attacks, reduce fear of retaliation, or shift political incentives.
Mearsheimer replies that Western elites have convinced themselves that Putin is a “congenital aggressor,” and that Russia’s ambitions and inevitability of conflict narratives have become entrenched. He says these stories can fit elite motivations such as supporting defense spending and keeping Americans involved, but argues the belief may be driven more by unconscious self-persuasion than coordinated strategy. He describes a security dilemma spiral: if Europeans and Russians believe war is inevitable, each side prepares for the same war, and each side’s defensive actions look offensive to the other. He says he sees no way out of the spiral at present.
They then debate Western claims that Ukraine is winning. Glenn points to battlefield reports suggesting extreme casualty ratios—like 1 to 20 or 1 to 40 in Ukrainian-to-Russian dead—while also seeing Ukraine recapture territory. He says these accounts do not “add up,” citing perceived contradictions about rationality, deterrence assumptions, and political narratives. Mearsheimer focuses on casualty numbers and discusses a New York Times piece, saying it cited a CSIS study and reported around 450,000 Russians dead and between 125,000 and 150,000 Ukrainians dead, resulting in a “three to one” ratio. He says that ratio is “simply unbelievable” because the main battlefield killer is artillery, and that Russian artillery advantage is estimated at 5 to 1, 7 to 1, or even 10 to 1 across much of the war. He argues Ukraine has launched many offensives—citing Kursk and the June 4, 2023 offensive, plus earlier offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv—so the claim that Ukraine has mainly been defensive does not fit. He adds that he thinks Ukrainian losses are likely much higher, possibly around a million men killed in action, and says the New York Times numbers underpin decisions about escalating support for Ukraine.
Mearsheimer expands to explain “truth as first casualty,” saying propaganda turns casualty measurement into a success indicator. He compares to Vietnam, where body counts were treated as an indicator of winning despite internal knowledge of deep trouble, and says the process created a fantasy world. He argues that today’s Ukraine narrative is similarly sustained and that Western elites increasingly believe they are doing well, reinforced by perceived Russian setbacks and slow Russian progress. He says the only likely way to dispel the narrative is a Russian battlefield victory: if Russia rolls up Donbass, Zaporizhia, and Kherson and then moves further, it becomes harder to sustain the existing story.
Turning to Iran, Glenn asks how US success should be measured in a conflict without a ground war comparable to Ukraine or Vietnam. Mearsheimer says the US is not going to win the war but that two goals must be achieved. He defines goal one as opening the strait so oil flows, including Iranian oil, with payment in dollars and flooding the market. He defines goal two as achieving a nuclear deal, “some variant of the JCPOA,” because the nuclear issue is central while there will be no agreement on missiles or on supporting proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis, and no immediate regime change. He emphasizes that the Memorandum of Understanding structured negotiations so that first the Strait would be opened and shooting would end, and that bombing ended by April 8th after which the conflict shifted to blockade. He argues that while opening the strait is largely achieved, the nuclear issue remains unresolved alongside major economic issues advantageous to Iran: reparations (including a $300 billion fund), frozen assets (over $100 billion), lifting sanctions, and the “toll booth” issue. He says powerful incentives exist for the West to reach a nuclear deal because Iran has the capability to build a bomb and lack of a revised nuclear framework would increase the risk of Israeli nuclear use. He adds that the Iranians wanted the nuclear issue at the end of negotiations because keeping leverage for later mattered after the strait had opened, leaving leverage with the nuclear issue.
Finally, Glenn asks Mearsheimer to define US grand strategy now. Mearsheimer says earlier grand strategy during the Cold War focused on Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf as three key strategic regions outside the Western Hemisphere. He says in the multipolar world the principal threat is China, driving a pivot to Asia. He argues that under Trump, the Western Hemisphere is given high priority through social engineering and military engagement, despite no serious threats there at present. He says the US is also deeply involved in the Persian Gulf, with a major conflict with Iran, and reengaging in Ukraine as well as maintaining East Asia as a “pacing threat.” He concludes that the United States is not prioritizing and that this “militarized state” across multiple regions is not workable long term. He closes by adding two points: the debt problem and the weakness of the American manufacturing base. He argues the Ukraine war shows that in any prolonged war the US needs a large industrial base and depleted stocks can take a long time to replenish; therefore, planning for long wars—like a potential conflict in Asia—requires prioritization.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We're joined again by Professor John Mearsheimer to discuss what's happening in Ukraine, Iran, and of course, US grand strategy in an increasingly confusing time. So thank you for coming back on, John. It's great to see you again.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, Glenn. I'm glad to be back.
Speaker 1: So I initially had intended a different topic, but as we see the bombing of Ukraine, Kiev last night, which according to the mayor Klitschko, he argued this was the worst bombing of Kiev in the entire war. It begs the question, what does this mean? And also I've seen in other parts of the country, airfields being bombed, military airfields, which again begs the question, why wait four and a half years to go after these airfields? How are you assessing what the Russians are doing now?
Speaker 2: If you listen to a lot of the chatter surrounding this massive attack last night, it's seen as a reprisal for all of these drone attacks, these Ukrainian drone attacks into Russia. And the argument is that the Russians are getting tough now. When you hear that and before you read about what the attacks looked like, you might think that what the Russians were going to do is go out and pound the civilian population, launch what might be called a classic punishment campaign. But it seems quite clear that that's not the case, that the Russians went after military industrial targets, and they did not purposely attack civilians. According to the Kyiv Independent, 20 Ukrainians were killed. This is surely regrettable, but it's not a large number, and it does not represent a punishment campaign, a campaign designed to kill civilians. And what the Russians did was they launched a massive attack against, let's call them strategic targets. And they've done this in the past. There's not really that much new here. Yes, it was a massive attack against But as we know, there have been numerous occasions in the past where you've had massive attacks against military industrial targets. So I don't see how this could possibly represent a response to the drone attacks by the Ukrainians against the Russian heartland. It doesn't sort of add up to me. I think the Russians are probably going to spin it that way for public relations purposes to convince their Russian leaders will want to convince the domestic audience that they're responding to these drone attacks. But in reality, this is just what you would expect from the Russians and what we've seen from the Russians in terms of bombing campaigns. So that'd be my basic assessment of what's going on here.
Speaker 1: I know the media reports point to the larger killing of civilians but as you said in the past you would have like hundreds of drones and missiles and you may have one or two deaths this time it was more relatively many more but that being said as you said if you launch 500 missiles and drones if the intention is to kill civilians doing a very poor job. It doesn't appear, as you said, this was aimed to target civilians. Again, it doesn't mean that 20 deaths isn't horrible, but again, I think the context is important. Many assume that when a retaliation comes from Russia, that it might not be restricted to Ukraine. Again, the Russians keep pointing to European production facilities as legitimate targets or any logistics centers. But it does beg the question, how involved is NATO here actually? Because this is something that's very much often disputed. Although I'm not sure if you saw the news today, you had these two Russian pranksters. They had called the advisor to the Estonian president and essentially had him go on about how they have been offering coordinates in the attacks on St. Petersburg. This is quite significant. It would indicate or make it very clear that NATO countries are involved in the attacks on Russia. Indeed, Maria Sakharova said this, that this is evidence of Estonian participation in terrorist attacks on Russia. So again, how do you see this? Because this is widely contested. depending on where you get your news. But how involved do you see NATO being in these attacks?
Speaker 2: Well, there's no question that NATO is deeply involved. And I'll talk about that in a second. But I would note, if you look at the declaration that came out after the G7 meeting in France, this was on June 17th when the declaration came out after the meetings were concluded, the G7 countries said that they were going to accelerate their support for the long-range bombing campaign by Ukraine into Russia. This is really quite remarkable. They said they were going to accelerate it. And then furthermore, they said in the statement that was issued after the G7 meeting that they were going to ramp up the economic pressure on Russia. So if anybody in the Kremlin had any doubts about what the goals of the Europeans and the Americans are, they should have been dispelled as a result of what happened in France at this meeting. And by the way, it seems quite clear from what happened at this meeting, that Trump was convinced that what the Ukrainians are doing is really quite impressive. And if anything, they should act more boldly. This has been widely reported in the Ukrainian press to be what Trump told Zelensky. So it looks like the United States is getting more involved these days than it has been over the past few months. In putting military pressure on Ukraine Excuse me military pressure on Russia by the Ukrainians now There's no question that we in the West have been providing all sorts of intelligence to the Ukrainians and Furthermore supporting them by giving them drones and helping them develop their own drones. And I would imagine even helping them plan a number of the drone offensives that have taken place. And furthermore, as we well know, there have been all sorts of instances where Ukrainian drones flew over the Baltic states. And the Russians have not reacted to any of that. But they have made it clear that if any drones are launched from territory in the Baltic states, they will attack those launch sites. So that is, I think, at the moment, the most likely scenario for where you get situation where Russia actually attacks a European, or to put it in more specific terms, a NATO member state. And I think for that reason, none of the Baltic states are willing to allow Ukraine to actually launch drones from their territory. But if that happens, I believe the Russians would axiomatically respond. They would be foolish not to. But let's assume that that's not going to happen. Then the question is, are the Russians going to retaliate at some point against Europe, given Europe's and America's assistance to the Ukrainians? Is it time for Russia to sort of throw down the gauntlet and actually attack targets in Eastern Europe. And this, of course, is the Sergei Karaganov argument, that the time has come to do that. And what we have to do, we meaning the Russians here, is we have to attack with conventional weapons first. And if that doesn't get the Europeans and the Americans to stop helping with this drone war, then we have to turn to the nuclear weapons. My view on this, Glenn, and I'd be curious what you think, is that the Russians won't do that right away. And I think there are sort of two reasons for that. One is I think they believe that they can parry those drone attacks quite well. Now, that's not to say they'll be able to do that over the long term because, again, the G7 countries said they were going to accelerate their efforts to help Ukraine with this drone campaign. So it may reach the point where the Russians have no choice but to retaliate. But at this point, it looks like the Russians are doing a reasonably good job of powering the attacks. And as long as that's the case, I think the incentives for the Russians to attack into Europe are reduced significantly. The other thing that I think really matters here is what happens on the battlefield. If you believe this rhetoric in the West that the Russians are stymied on the battlefield, and if anything, they're losing on the battlefield and they're suffering massive casualties, then you can spin out a story where it might make really good sense to pursue the Karaganov policy. But the fact is that's not what's happening on the battlefield. the Russians are actually doing quite well. They're not winning a quick victory. There's no question about that. This is a steamroller that's moving quite slowly. But nevertheless, the Russians are moving toward conquering all of Donbass. They don't have much left to conquer before they control all of that real estate. So given that the Russians are doing quite well, on the battlefield. And given the fact that the Russians seem adept at parrying these drone attacks quite effectively, not perfectly, but quite effectively for the moment, I think the incentives for the Russians to go down the Karaganov Road are not that great at the moment. But who knows how this is going to play itself out in the months ahead. So that's kind of how I see it. And I'd be curious to know what you think of my analysis.
Speaker 1: No, I think that probably sounds correct. I mean, that's why I also have been a bit cautious about the way or worried about the way many Western leaders talk about the need to bring war to Russia or increase the pain on Russia. Because I think the main reason why Russia has been able to be restrained by not retaliating directly against any NATO country is exactly because Russia the pain has been within the limit of being able to be absorbed and without having significant impact. So essentially being these pinpricks. So then they essentially say, well, instead of going after the puppet masters within NATO, we'll just take and we'll destroy and defeat their proxy. And I think this has been the main approach by the Kremlin. The problem, which is why I'm, very worried when the European leaders, now seemingly the Americans as well, are setting the objective of increasing the pain on Russia is that luxury of simply absorbing the pain goes away. And then there's more pressure of doing some direct strikes and risking a major war with the West. And again, it's speculation, but this would make sense because what else can Russia do then? If it's no longer sustainable... the attacks assisted by the West, what are they going to do? Are they going to stop the war, accept a ceasefire where the West begins to rearm Ukraine in preparation of another war? I mean, are they going to leave Ukraine and have NATO march in thereafter? This is all capitulation, which would be an existential threat. So if there is no peace and the Western escalations aren't sustainable anymore, that is, they can't absorb the pain. then I think they will, from their perspective, they would have to strike Germany or the Baltic states, essentially putting the world at a new Cuban missile crisis. That is, either we go all out in war or you guys back off. And I think this is often what would be required, because often you see in human history, we do go all the way to the edge. And then once we face disaster, that's when this... state leaders begin to change their minds. Again, I could be wrong, but one thing I did want to ask you though, when you say at the G7, they come with these comments like we have to accelerate the drone and missile attacks deep inside Russia. We saw NATO announce some $250,000 reward for strategies for targeting Russian airfields. Why Why are they so open now? I mean, they're less and less covert about this. Is this to normalize it? Attacks on Russia so the public won't be fearful of retaliation? Do they want a war? Is it to keep the US inside Europe by proving to the Americans there's nothing to fear? I mean, we could bomb the Kremlin tomorrow and the Russians would be too intimidated. It's just the openness of the whole thing. It's very strange for me to see.
Speaker 2: I think, Glenn, the Western elites, and we're talking here mainly about the European elites, have convinced themselves that Putin is the devil incarnate, that Russia has grandiose ambitions, and that we in the West are destined to fight against a war with Russia at some point. Hard to say where. But for the time being, we're in an intense security competition with the Russians. This is why we have to keep Ukraine intact. It's the battering ram. It's our principal weapon against the Russians while we're in the process of rearming for World War III. But you want to understand that that war is coming. It's just inevitable because Putin is this he's this congenital aggressor, and he runs a country that has a rich history of aggression. So we really have no choice. Now, you and I both believe this argument is ludicrous, and I think ludicrous is an accurate word here. I don't understand where this story comes from, but that doesn't matter. They have been telling this story for so long now that I think they believe it. And I think that they have... motivated, all sorts of motivated biases at play here that you were talking about. If you want to convince your public to support increased defense spending, this story fits perfectly. If you want to keep the Americans in, this story fits perfectly. So it's not, I think, like these people are saying, what can we do to get the Americans in? What can we do or to keep the Americans in? What can we do to keep or increased public support for our policies, and then they come up with this particular strategy. I don't think that's what's going on. I think it's much more unconscious. And I think it all revolves around the fact that if you tell yourself these stories long enough, you really come to believe them. I think you see this in the United States with regard to Iran. People have been talking about Iran as this incredibly dangerous threat for so long. even though it's not a threat to the United States in any meaningful way, that nevertheless, the elites believe and most Americans believe. So you and I have talked about this before. One of the downsides that we face of living in a world where facts and logic don't matter very much is that you end up in situations like the one that we face in Europe, where the Europeans, not the Russians, are talking about the inevitability of World War III. And the Russians are put in a position where they have come to conclude, well, if the Europeans think that war is inevitable and they're preparing for war against us, we have no choice but to prepare for that same war. And of course, once they do that, That provides ammunition for people in the West to say, oh, look at the Russians. They're the ones who are preparing for World War III. This is the classic security dilemma. Whatever the Russians do for defensive purposes looks offensive to people in the West and vice versa. So we're in this spiral situation, which I don't see any way out of at this point in time. I mean, people like us try to talk sense in this situation. discourse, but we're small voices compared to the mainstream media. That's the problem. So we have this situation where Western elites have convinced themselves that the Russians are truly dangerous and that we're heading for a major conflict down the road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this lack of logic. I keep seeing it everywhere. The main argument now is that Ukraine is winning. And when they show towards the evidence, it's because the Russians are taking massive casualties and the Ukrainians are recapturing territory. But when you look at the reparation of remains or exchange of dead soldiers, you see often the ratio being like 1 to 20, even 1 to 40. It's a just huge amount of dead Ukrainian soldiers vis-a-vis relatively low numbers of Russian. And it doesn't really make any sense. I mean, if there were higher casualties, you would assume that they would be reversed. And you can make the argument that, well, if the Russians are moving forward, they're the one picking up the dead bodies. But again, they're also saying that Ukraine is capturing territory. But it doesn't make much sense, but they get away with it. And you also see that Putin is deeply rational, yet at the same time, we feel comfortable participating in strikes against Russia, knowing that he will be restrained and You know, we know that Ukraine has to join NATO because otherwise, you know, then Russia would never dare to attack it. But we're also saying that after Russia's done with Ukraine, it will attack NATO. You know, none of these things adds up. And yeah, I even seen the German, I think it was Merz or von der Leyen made the point that, yeah, it was von der Leyen that Russia cut off Germany from gas, you know, and all the record is there that it was the other way around. It's just, you know, it's like saying we have to continue the war to force Russia to negotiate. At the same time, it's the Europeans that refuse to pick up the phone and talk to the Russians for more than four years. It's very confusing to follow this kind of logic. That's what I meant when you said the Europeans seem to believe this as well as the Americans. But is this deliberate to push a long war? I'm just wondering how much is ideological indoctrination and how much is deliberate strategy here?
Speaker 2: Let's just talk a little bit about the casualty number or numbers. The New York Times had this piece on the relative balance of casualties. Casualties meaning killed in action plus wounded. And then they also had numbers of soldiers killed on both sides. And apparently, the New York Times article was based on a study that had been done by a think tank in Washington, DC, the CSIS. And the argument was that roughly around 450,000 Russians had died. And somewhere between 125 and 150,000 Ukrainians had died. So let's take the high end number for the Ukrainians, which is 150,000. And again, the Russian number is 450,000. That's a three to one ratio. That means that three Russians have died for every Ukrainian. This is simply unbelievable. This cannot be the case. I don't understand where these numbers come from. First of all, the main killer on the battlefield is artillery. And throughout most of the war, the estimates are that the Russians have had at least a 5 to 1, if not a 7 to 1 or 10 to 1 advantage in artillery. If you look at these... bombs, these smart bombs that are dropped from the air. The Russians have a huge inventory of smart bombs that they've been dropping on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have virtually no smart bombs that they've been dropping on the Russians. You might say to yourself, well, it's the Russians who have mainly been on the offensive. Well, there's two problems there. One is that the Ukrainians have launched a large number of offensives. Remember the Kursk offensive? Remember the famous June 4th, 2023 offensive, the one that was going to result in a blitzkrieg that took the Ukrainians to the Sea of Azov and cut the Russian front lines in half? In 2022, the first year of the war, the Russians suffered two defeats because the Ukrainians launched major offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv. And then we hear about all these Ukrainian counterattacks these days. Those are offensive operations. So the Ukrainians have been on the offensive for a good part of the war, and therefore You can't make the argument that they've been on the defensive. And because the defense suffers less casualties than the offense does in almost all cases, we should not be surprised by that number that the New York Times uses. So you can't justify those numbers that way. It just makes no sense at all. And I think, if anything, that we're going to find out that the Ukrainians lost probably around, or have lost, probably, and here when I say lost, I mean killed in action, around a million men. I think the argument that they've lost 150,000 is ludicrous. It just makes no sense at all. And nevertheless, this is reported as fact, and it is a set of facts that What I'm describing is a set of facts that all sorts of people use to assess what the situation is between Russia and Ukraine and what we should do moving forward. And if you believe these numbers, which again, I think are ridiculous, you can justify upping the ante and trying to help Ukraine really clobber the Russians and knock the Russians off as a great power. Finish them off. has a great power. And lots of people talk that way. And you just sort of say to yourself, are they making all of this up? Are they making these numbers up? Do you think the New York Times is making these numbers up? I don't think they're making them up. I think they really believe them. Again, there may be all sorts of motivated biases at play here that they are not aware of. Putting that aside, the fact is the elites have told themselves a story that they believe and they continue to march forward based on these false narratives.
Speaker 1: I don't understand the political debates anymore in the West because, well, building on what you said, If you go, for example, back to the 2023 counteroffensive of the Ukrainians, it was evident from pretty much the first day that this was going to end in disaster. And, you know, because the Russians had pulled back from Kherson and Kharkov, they had to tighten up the defensive lines. And it looked as if the Ukrainians were going to run into a brick wall. But I noticed as soon as we made, well, at least I made the point that this was going to end in disaster. This was kind of condemned as, well, why would you take wind out of the sail of Ukraine? That's a pro-Russian thing to say. Of course, it's going to be a success. You saw the same with Kursk. I mean, I think most people knew this was going to be a horrible disaster. Why would you leave your defensive position, go out in the open within hostile territory? And they were slaughtered in horrible, horrible numbers. Yet everyone had to fall in line and pretend as if this was a good idea. And yeah, you could say the same with the Nord Stream. Everyone had to go around pretending that this was Russian. And now we see that everyone has to go and pretend that the Ukrainians are winning. We have to look away from all the available facts. It's just very strange that this is where we are, where objective reality doesn't have any value of its own. Everything seems to be only assessed by the extent to which You're applauding the right team. And if you're applauding the Ukrainians, then you have to pretend everything is a brilliant success and look away from the horrific defeats and horrible casualties. And otherwise, you're supporting the Russians. I mean, it's like we're watching a football game. This is pretty much where we are. Have you seen this before? Because there's a lot of commonality between many wars. And I know you shouldn't... Well, it's the same with the sanctions. If you say the sanctions aren't going to work... I noticed that from the first day as well, that was seen as being a pro-Russian statement because you undermine support in the sanctions. But are these social constructivists who want to just elevate or make people support the wars? Or is there something else to this? Because it's very hard to assess why reality means so little and why there's this obligated adherence to narratives.
Speaker 2: Well, a couple of points. You know, there's a very famous book entitled Truth is the First Casualty. And the argument is when a war breaks out because the propaganda machines on both sides immediately go to war, the end result is that truth gets washed out of the picture and propaganda becomes of enormous importance. The case I know best where you saw this was during the Vietnam War. And some of it revolved around casualty counts or what were then called body counts. And there was tremendous pressure put on the American military to inflate body counts because you really needed an indicator of success. The American public was saying, what kind of progress are we making here? What are the indicators that we're actually making progress? And of course, President Johnson and his lieutenants as well put pressure on the American military to indicate that we were, or give indicators that we were making great progress against the Viet Cong and the NVA. So body counts became the principal instrument for convincing the upper echelons of the Johnson administration and the public that we were winning the war. And you created this fantasy world where huge numbers of Vietnamese were dying. And therefore, the story was or the storyline was that we were winning the war. And in fact, everybody who was involved in the process fully understood that we were acting in extremely dishonest ways for the purpose of satisfying the commanders who wanted to be able to make the case that we were winning. And if you look at a lot of the battles that took place during the war, We suffered enormous casualties. And in many of those cases, you could argue we won, but if we won, we barely won. But nevertheless, we described those battles as great victories. We went to great lengths to make it look like we were winning when we weren't winning. And this is why we lost the war. We were not making progress. If you actually look at what people like Johnson and others actually knew, and this even includes Westmoreland, what they actually knew about what was going on on the battlefield from 65 on. Remember, we go in March 65 in a big way. They understood that we were in deep trouble. And despite the fact that they kept spinning these stories and that we were doing well, that the body counts proved that. They understood at the same time that we were not doing well. And they were constantly searching for the magic formula, which they could never find and never did find, and therefore we lost the war. But you just don't want to underestimate the extent to which a national security establishment, when it goes to war... will pursue propaganda in really extreme ways. Now, I think there are two big differences between the Vietnam situation and the present situation. One is that we've just gotten much more sophisticated at it. It's really quite amazing how good we are across the West. It's spinning out these stories that are really false narratives. We were not quite so good in the Vietnam War, right? We've gotten much better at it. The elites have really become quite skillful at propagandizing. And the second big difference is I think that during the Vietnam War, and this was evident in the comments I made a few minutes ago, while people were spinning positive stories about And this included people like Wes Moreland and the military chiefs. And it included, of course, LBJ and his lieutenants. Well, they were spinning positive stories at the same time they knew that we were in deep trouble. They were aware of the fact that they were distorting the truth to keep support for the war in place. I think today, and this gets back to our earlier conversation, I think today most Western elites believe that we are actually doing very well in Ukraine and that the Ukrainians themselves are performing well on the battlefield, that the Russians have been at least stymied, and maybe even the tide has turned. And furthermore, when you look at these Russian casualties, you look at the disastrous state of the Russian economy, you look at the fact that so many people are interested in overthrowing Putin, really all we have to do is just keep pushing and we're going to win a victory. It's going to happen. And people believe that. You and I think, again, that this is ludicrous, but we're a minority voice here. All sorts of people believe this in the West. And all of this tells you, by the way, Glenn, that the only thing that's going to dispel all these foolish beliefs notions about what's going on is a Russian victory on the battlefield. If the Russians roll up the Donbass, or once the Russians roll up the Donbass, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, and then they begin to move on to other oblasts, assuming they do that, then it'll be impossible to maintain this narrative. What enables people in the West to to sustain this narrative is the slow progress of the Russian army. The fact is the Russians have moved very slowly to roll up the Ukrainians. And by the way, to go back to the previous subject, we were talking about casualties. One of the reasons I believe these Russian casualty numbers are simply wrong is that the Russians pursue their offensives in a very cautious way. because they are interested in minimizing casualties. If you look carefully at Russian tactics on the battlefield and Russian strategy more generally, they go to enormous lengths to minimize the number of casualties. So this is a case where huge numbers of Russians are not dying in mindless frontal attacks that fail, as many in the West would like you to believe. The Russians are very cautious. They're suffering casualties for sure, especially because there were all those Ukrainian drones up in the sky. But the casualty numbers are not that high. And this, of course, is why that New York Times story is laughable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think this is a key thing, what you said about Vietnam. But that is that they lie to—well, essentially, they lie about the war. to buy time in order to find that magic formula you referred to. And I think that's also what happened in Afghanistan. If you look at the Afghanistan papers, the new things weren't going well and they did cover it up. And again, why would you fight a losing war? And I do think that the assumption is if you can just keep it going, something, hope, you cling onto hope, something might turn up, the economy could collapse, the fronts could collapse. Or worst case, gradually drain the enemy so they will end up weaker thereafter. I mean, I'm assuming we had other ideal outcomes for Libya, Syria, all of these countries, but worst case, one drains the destabilized enemy. But it's also interesting what you said about how to measure success, because if you look at Ukraine... The best way or favorite way by the Western political media establishment has been to measure progress based on territorial shifts. But as you and I know, that doesn't make much sense when you're fighting a war of attrition because you don't spend all your forces fighting, well, storming well-fortified lines. You drain and weaken the adversary. And once the front line collapsed, then you take the territories. I mean, once the front lines now collapsed, the Russians can move faster and faster. without the defensive lines as well. So measuring territory in the war of attrition doesn't really make sense, but that's what I find interesting because in the Iran war, they always appear to measure deaths, but that's not, but that doesn't really make much sense. That is, Trump always point to, well, look at the Navy, the Air Force, everything's gone, but measuring death and destruction as success doesn't really make much sense if the Iranians can hold on to the Strait of Hormuz with very cheap simple drones and also they're willing to absorb all this pain because you know doesn't matter how many of them you kill they're still going to be willing to fight and they're still going to be willing to produce the capabilities required to keep that straight close. So as you said the KPIs or the indicators of success is very strange or perhaps deliberately so strange how they measure success. Can I just jump in here Glenn?
Speaker 2: You know, we were just talking about casualty numbers in the Ukraine war and what The New York Times has been reporting. This is the same as body counts. This is a body count argument. This is just like Vietnam. Very important to understand that. You pointed out quite correctly, of course, that in the West, we often talk about the failure of the Russians to capture territory. And you say that that's not a good indicator when you were in a war of attrition. And that of course is true. And in a war of attrition, what matters is the casualty exchange ratio. And the casualty exchange ratio is effectively the same as body counts. So what you see going on here with this New York Times piece is very similar to what you saw with body counts in Vietnam. And the body count process in Vietnam was fundamentally dishonest. Very important to understand that. And the body count process in Ukraine, as we discussed about the New York Times article, is fundamentally dishonest. And it's exactly what you would expect. I want to make another point. Very important to understand that the Vietnam War and the Ukraine War were ground wars or are ground wars today. or is a ground war in the Ukraine case and was a ground war in the Vietnam case. I have to get my tenses right here. There were ground wars where armies were crashing into each other and huge numbers of people were dying. So body counts or casualty exchange ratios mattered. In the Gulf, in the Iran war today, there's no ground war. Remember that the initial part of the war from February 28th to April 8th, was fought in the air. That was the air war from February 28th to April 8th. Then the air war ended. The bombing effectively ended, except for two minor blips later on we could talk about. But the air war basically ended, and we segued to a blockade. It was April 13th when we moved to a blockade. And the blockade ended when we signed the Memorandum of Understanding. That was June 17th. So we went from a bombing campaign to a blockade, and we never launched a ground offensive. And so there's no body count argument at play in the Iran war. It's a very different kind of conflict. And to be more honest, specific about the Iran case is everybody said, if you really wanted to achieve the goals that the Israelis and the Americans set out for themselves on February 28th, you would need boots on the ground. There's the ground option. And we were unwilling on February 28th and at any point since then to put boots on the ground, at least in any meaningful way. So we've never gone near that ground option because when you go to the ground option, that's when you really suffer serious casualties. And when you suffer really serious casualties, it becomes much more difficult to justify the war. And that's why the body counts, the casualty exchange ratios attract so much attention.
Speaker 1: So, no, I agree. But also, yeah, with Iran, you would have thought the U.S. would have greater... success though, that it did stay away from the ground war because as a naval power such as the United States, well, history suggests it should stay out of ground wars, be it Vietnam, Iraq, that this is not playing to America's strength. But in Iran, you had naval power, air power. So it should, I guess, have assumed a greater success on the American side. On the other hand, you can't really win a war with air power alone either. But how do you measure success in the war against Iran on behalf of the Americans, that is? How would you measure progress? Because it's a very unique kind of war. Is it the destruction of ballistic missiles, offensive capabilities, defensive capabilities? Is it removing proxies or allies, be it Lebanon, Iraq, or Yemen? How would you know that? if the United States would be winning the war against Iran? A couple of points.
Speaker 2: One is we're not going to win the war. We're going to lose the war. But in the process of losing the war, we have two goals that we need to achieve. And if we come out of this in reasonably good shape, we will have achieved those two goals. But it is very important to understand that Iran has won this war. Iran is going to emerge from this war much more powerful relative to its neighbors than it was on February 27th. And America's position in the Gulf is going to be greatly weakened as a result of this war. But I want to get to your specific question because it is terribly important. We have two goals here. Putting aside the question whether we win or lose, we have two goals. Number one is to open the strait because we got to get oil flowing. And that can include, that will include Iranian oil, which we're allowing to come out of the strait. And we're allowing the Iranians to get paid in dollars for that oil. We're giving them a good deal because we want to flood the market with oil so that the international economy doesn't go off a cliff. So goal number one was to open the strait, get the oil flowing. Goal number two is to get a nuclear deal. We have to get a nuclear deal. It's obviously going to be some variant of the JCPOA, but there has to be some sort of deal that limits what Iran could do in terms of developing nuclear weapons moving forward. You mentioned missiles. There's going to be no agreement on missiles. Some people might say, well, what about supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis? There's going to be no agreement there, right? Regime change, that was another one of our goals. There's not going to be regime change. not as a result, immediate result of this war, maybe in two or three or four years, who knows, but not now. The key issue is the nuclear issue. Now, it's very important to understand how the Memorandum of Understanding was structured. It was structured so that the shooting between, or the bombing between Iran and the United States would be shut down Once the memorandum was signed, and number two, the Strait would be opened and oil would flow out into world markets. Now, with regard to the bombing, the bombing campaign stopped on April 8th. There was really nothing to stop. The bombing campaign ended and we went to a blockade. And we can't go back to a bombing campaign for a whole slew of different reasons, right? So, That really didn't matter that much, except maybe in Lebanon. But let's leave Lebanon aside. The key issue to start with that we cared about was opening the Strait. And the Strait is now opened for all intents and purposes. Not fully opened, but it appears that it may be fully opened. And if it isn't, we're in real trouble. But that was the least difficult goal to achieve. Because the Iranians have a vested interest in selling their oil. Okay. The big number two goal that's sitting out there is the nuclear issue. And that is yet to be resolved. What you want to understand here is we now have to deal with the nuclear issue side by side with four big economic issues. that would all be advantage Iran. One is reparations. Two is the frozen assets. Three is lifting the sanctions. And four is the question of the toll booth in the Strait. In other words, these issues have not been resolved. Just think about it. That $300 billion fund for reparations, not settled yet. Lifting all the sanctions not settled yet Releasing all the frozen assets. I guess they're probably over a hundred billion dollars in frozen assets Unfreezing all of them and then the tollbooth issue Okay, they have to be resolved those issues and the nuclear issue has to be resolved, right? So we have solved the problem of opening the Straits for the most part in the beginning And now we have all those other big issues staring us in the face. And I would just say to you, if we don't get a deal, we mean in the West, and here we're talking mainly about the United States, we don't get a deal on the nuclear issue, we're going to be in real trouble. Because as you well know, the Iranians have the capability to quite easily build a bomb. And if we don't have something like a revised version of the JCPOA, what's going to stop them from building a bomb. So there's going to be very powerful incentives on us to get that deal, which means that we're likely to have to make major concessions to the Iranians on those four big economic issues that the Iranians care about. So there's a lot of negotiation to be done. And it just seems to me if we're going to be successful We've got to keep the Strait open, number one. And number two, we've got to get a nuclear deal.
Speaker 1: Well, it's still the only two objectives, that it's a nuclear deal and get the oil flowing. It would be achievable because, well, the Iranians weren't pursuing nuclear weapons before this war, and oil was flowing before the war as well. But as you said, there's new objectives now. Well, the MOU makes it very clear there's no going back to the old status quo. So the Iranians, you know, I think they're worried as well because on one hand, it's hard to imagine the US implementing all the things it signed under with the MOU that is ending all sanctions, getting Congress on board, giving $300 billion in reparations, accepting the toll booth or fee or whatever one wants to refer to it. It's very hard to see this being acceptable. At the same time, there's no good military option unless... Israel might be able to instigate a civil war in Lebanon, or the US could pressure Iraqi government to shut down some Iranian militant groups. One could go after allies, but it doesn't look like that's a viable strategy for military success. What do you think the strategy is here? Will Will they take a horrible peace deal or will they take a non-existent military option? Or how are you assessing what's likely based on American strategy here or how you see the strategy at least?
Speaker 2: This is a great question. Let's just talk this through. First of all, there's no military option, as you and I know. And one reason there's no military option is that if you go back to bombing, the Strait will be closed again. We can't do anything that allows the Strait to be closed again. We just got it open, and we want to keep it open. And for all these people who are talking about, let's go back and finish the job, what are they talking about? We had a 40-day bombing campaign. It didn't work. That's why we ended it on April 8th. And furthermore, we were running out of munitions. And furthermore, the Iranians have a second strike capability. And furthermore, they can really crash the economic, the world economy. So what are people talking about? We don't have a military option. We got the Strait open. And now the question is, Or are we going to deal with the nuclear issue? You're saying, Glenn, I think quite correctly, I'm not disagreeing with you, that it's hard to imagine the Americans making those concessions that I described on what I called the four big economic issues. OK? Again, the whole question of the toll booth, releasing all those frozen assets, almost complete sanctions relief, and the $300 billion reparations fund. Can you really see the United States conceding on all those issues? I mean, the end result would be that Iran would be in excellent shape moving forward. This is a country with 93 million people. You get its economy back on its feet. It's in a position where it dominates the Persian Gulf. It controls the straight or moves. Iran would be really quite powerful. Is America going to let this happen? That's the question you're asking. Okay. The counter to that, Glenn, is what about the nuclear issue? The Iranians are going to play hardball with us. We know that. They're going to say, if you don't dance to our tune on the economic issues, no nuclear deal. What are we going to do then? No nuclear deal? I don't know about that. We got to get a nuclear deal, I think. But if we don't get a nuclear deal, we're going to be in real trouble because there is a really good chance that they'll get nuclear weapons or they'll move in that direction. And this will cause the Israelis to think about using their nuclear weapons Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran. So the potential for disaster here. So we have a very powerful incentive to get a nuclear deal. Trump has a very powerful incentive to put this behind us. Just to come at this from a slightly different angle, you understand that the Iranians wanted to deal with the nuclear issue up front. Remember, I described the memorandum of understanding as dealing first with opening the Strait, ending the shooting, that's one, and then later dealing with the nuclear issue and those big economic issues. The Iranians were smart. They put the nuclear issue at the rear end of the negotiations because they knew it would give them huge leverage down the road. If they negotiated the nuclear deal and the Strait deal now, and then later they moved to the economic issues, they'd have no leverage. The only thing that gives them leverage, they no longer have leverage because they control the strait, because they've opened the strait. Their leverage now rests with the nuclear issue. They were smart to keep the nuclear issue until the end. So they have a lot of leverage over us, and we have a vested interest in caving to them, fulfilling the various demands agreements that make up the memorandum of understanding. But maybe that won't happen. But the end result is we won't get a nuclear deal.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just ask one final question, though. If we take a few steps backwards to see a larger picture, how would you define the American grand strategy now at this point in history? That is, during the Cold War, The grand strategy with one rival, one other center of power with one competing ideology. It was the grand strategy of containment and all the other components. It set a clear goal, which kind of brought more or less the whole political class together. All other strategies kind of had to be subordinated to this wider grand strategy. What is it today? How is the United States dealing with...
Speaker 2: the the massive changes in the world and its own role in this world that's a large question for yeah but um well i think when uh me and my friends or my friends and i thought about grand strategy over the decades we always used to argue that Obviously, the Western Hemisphere is the most important area of the world for the United States, but given that the United States is a regional hegemon, there's no serious threats in the Western Hemisphere. The question is, what are the areas outside of the United States that matter the most from a strategic point of view? Where are our vital interests at play around the world? And I think most people in my circle agreed that the three areas that mattered the most were Europe, East Asia, because there were great powers in Europe and East Asia, and the Persian Gulf because oil was there. Those were the three key areas of the world outside of the Western Hemisphere. During the Cold War, we focused mainly on Europe because the Soviet threat was centered in Europe, but the Soviet Union was and Russia is physically located in East Asia, as we both know. So we cared about containing the Soviets not just in Europe, but in East Asia as well. And the Persian Gulf was the area where we had to do the least amount of work. The British did the heavy lifting in the Gulf up until 1968. And then after 1968 up to 1979, we depended on the Iranians. This is under the Shah, the Saudis, and we didn't have any great threat. After 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and there was the revolution in Iran and Iran was no longer an ally, we built the Rapid Deployment Force, which was an over-the-horizon capability. In other words, we were not physically located with military forces or we didn't have many military forces physically located in the Gulf. We had this rapid deployment force, which again was over the horizon. So you see that during the Cold War, we cared about Europe, we cared about East Asia, and we cared about the Gulf. Then comes the multipolar world that we're now in. And China is... the principal threat to the United States and therefore we pivoted to Asia. And there was a lot of talk about pivoting away from Europe and minimizing our commitment to the Gulf because we didn't see any great problem in the Gulf. We thought we had things under control. And with regard to the Western Hemisphere, you know, things were pretty good in the Western Hemisphere. No serious threats to the United States. Well, when it comes to Trump administration, back into the White House, January 2025, what you see is that President Trump decides to make the Western Hemisphere a high priority, and we're deeply involved in social engineering and military engagement in the Western Hemisphere. If you look at what's happening in Venezuela, if you look at what's happening with regard to Cuba, if you look at President Trump's rhetoric about the Panama Canal, about Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, the United States is paying a lot of attention to the Western Hemisphere, which kind of befuddles me because I don't think we face any serious threats at this point in time in the Western Hemisphere. But nevertheless, we are deeply involved in doing social engineering. and even maybe acquiring territory in the Western Hemisphere. You want to remember that President Trump said at the time when we captured President Maduro of Venezuela that the United States now, or he, he now runs Venezuela. And he basically viewed Venezuelan oil as American oil. It's really quite remarkable. So you can see that we're on the march in certain ways in the Western Hemisphere. With regard to the Gulf, we're now involved in a major conflict with Iran. It's really quite amazing. One can make the argument, Glenn, that we will eventually leave the Gulf. that we can no longer maintain military bases there, our alliance structure is in tatters. That may happen. But for the time being, if you look at American grand strategy, we are up to our eyeballs in alligators in the Persian Gulf. And as I said, we're deeply involved in the Western Hemisphere. With regard to Ukraine and Europe, as we talked about earlier in the show, It appears that President Trump is more or less reengaging in Ukraine, getting more deeply involved. And one could argue, Glenn, as the tide turns against Ukraine, which you and I know is happening as we speak, that the Russians will feel, excuse me, the Americans will feel compelled to move in and do everything possible to rescue Ukraine so as not to suffer a humiliating defeat. And then there's East Asia. That is what the Pentagon calls the pacing threat. So we're not leaving East Asia. And if you look at what the Chinese are likely to do over time and what the Americans are likely to do over time, that's a dangerous area of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now or even five years from now, when you and I are talking about all the problems in the world, that China is not at the top of the list. So all of this is to say that the United States, under President Trump, has a remarkably ambitious grand strategy. Think about what I said about the Western Hemisphere. Think about where we are in the Gulf. Think about where we are vis-a-vis Ukraine. And think about the pacing threat, China. We don't seem to believe in the word prioritizing. The United States still labors under the illusion that it can be everywhere and do everything all the time. uh and uh i think that's where american grand strategy is at the moment uh i think we could have a long conversation and we should do this the next time we talk or maybe do it the next time we talk about where american grand strategy is headed you know once uh these various conflicts are behind us or they sort themselves out and here we're talking about ukraine uh and uh and Iran, and also, to some extent, places like Cuba and Greenland, then we can maybe get a clearer picture of American grand strategy. But I do think, Glenn, we, the United States, are going to have to learn to prioritize. I think this idea that we can maintain this militarized state that's involved in really deep-seated ways in all four of these regions
Speaker 1: is not uh is not workable over the long term no that's what i thought was the main challenge to the united states at this time in history though that is as transition from unipolarity where essentially has a final say in every corner of the world to multipolarity the grand strategy would have to include priorities and that is uh you can't be everywhere then what what comes first and this uh you know i don't want to belittle the politicians i think this is a difficult thing to adjust to once you had a political culture over decades of being everywhere at the same time and embracing an ideology which makes it almost treasonous and you know uncaring not to be everywhere because all our wars is of course sold as being about you know helping the and helping the disenfranchised and advancing liberal democracy so it's very difficult to make this shift but i thought that the that was the lesson from the iran war though that is if you can't have I mean, when all the weapons had been spent in Ukraine and then suddenly, you know, how are we going to fight the Iranians then have to take the weapons from the Europeans, from the Ukrainians, from the East Asians and send it all, not just to the Middle East, but Israel, because even the Gulf states were robbed of some of their air defenses. So I thought this was the main lesson. If you prioritize everything, you're not prioritizing anything at all. But again, it could be, you know, huge shifts in the international distribution of power. It's hugely destabilizing because... Politicians, they do need time to adjust to new realities, I think. Anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we end the video? Yeah, let me make two quick points.
Speaker 2: One is the debt problem.
Speaker 1: Sorry to interrupt, but I always look at the debtclock.org. I'm not even American. It's still depressing to me. It's a horrific number. Sorry, go on.
Speaker 2: No, no, yeah.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 2: You sort of think the chickens are going to come home to roost on that problem at some point in time. The Satan thing is, Glenn, if you look at the Ukraine war and you think about fighting a war against China or you think about fighting a war anywhere, what's very clear is that you need a large industrial base And you need the capability to produce huge numbers of weapons. I mean, again, just to go back to the Iran war, we had to quit after 40 days because we were basically running out of weaponry. It's truly amazing the extent to which we have run down our inventories of like Tomahawk missiles, Patriot missiles, THAAD missiles. air-to-ground smart bombs and so forth and so on. Really quite amazing. And it's also quite amazing how long it's going to take us to rebuild those inventories which have been whittled down. And what this tells you is that we are going to have to prioritize. If you're going to plan for a war in Asia, And you're thinking about how you deal with the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or the South China Sea, a war that's going to go on for many months. Now, let's hope this never happens. I'm not saying this is likely or it's going to happen, but the Americans are going to have to prepare for a long war. This is what the Ukraine war has taught us. And we don't have the manufacturing base. When you look at how long it's going to take us to replenish our depleted stocks from the Iran war, it's really genuinely frightening from a security point of view. Really. It's quite amazing. So I think when you look at the debt problem and you look at the weakness of the American manufacturing base and the need to build a large-scale inventory of weapons and to have the ability to produce weapons once the conflict starts. We have a lot of work cut out for us, and that's going to involve prioritizing. So I think that the events that are now taking place, let me put it slightly differently, the events that have taken place since the Ukraine war started in 2022 up to the present day, this five-year period is a period in which we have or maybe it's a four-year period, is a period in which we have learned a lot. And what we have learned should leave us deeply worried about our future.
Speaker 1: When I say our, I'm talking here about the U.S. Well, until next time, I hope to be able to discuss some more grand strategy with you because the U.S. has a fascinating history there. So Thank you so much for your time. And yeah, have a good one. My pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 0: Best to you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: Putin's New War Objective - Capturing All of Novorossiya https://youtu.be/PcKytIg98E4 https://t.co/2VZ6VZaCVW
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas McGregor, a decorated combat veteran and former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, discussed what he sees as a new expanded stage of the war after President Putin’s recent interview. He said Putin has repeatedly claimed Kharkov and Odessa are historically Russian-speaking cities, and that many Russians believed from the beginning that if Kharkov and Odessa were pursued, they would have to end up in Russian hands. McGregor argued Putin is also reacting to the perceived need for a security zone larger than originally planned because Ukraine has become “a much more dangerous irritant,” with a “facade” government supported by “hardcore supporters,” thousands of mercenaries and foreigners, and periodic missile and drone attacks meant to sustain the appearance of power and influence.
McGregor linked Putin’s rhetoric about Novorossiya to a broader security logic, saying Novorossiya “was always” in the back of peoples’ minds and is going to become a reality. He also addressed the reference to buffer zones in Sumy, Kharkov, and related developments around Kursk, saying it is not necessarily “a punishment,” but a realistic appraisal that Russia cannot be secure without controlling the territory.
On NATO and European involvement, McGregor said Putin recognizes a point where actions can no longer be taken “in stride,” particularly as strikes have reached areas near Moscow and St. Petersburg and have killed Russian civilians and damaged civilian infrastructure. He described a possible military approach focused on Odessa, including targeting drone assembly and materials pipelines connected to Europe, and asserted Russia has a large stockpile of Oreshniks. He then argued that if Odessa falls and Ukraine becomes landlocked, Russia could “reach out” to the Russian population in Moldova, and he said Europeans are “not capable of doing much” compared to Russia. He further argued European leaders’ remarks about Germany building into a “giant military power” and other statements about defeating Russia could lead Russians to conclude that “it’s 1941 again” and that Europeans plan another invasion, which he described as eliciting a dangerous response from Russia.
McGregor discussed questions about whether Putin would escalate by striking European countries or focus on defeating Ukraine, saying he thinks Odessa is going to be seized and that additional steps may include reaching Kiev. He outlined three potential moves: seizing Odessa, crossing to Kiev from the north (including from Byelorussia), and another down-from-Byelorussia movement toward Kiev. He claimed Russia has tens of thousands of troops in Byelorussia, including “something between 20 and 30,000 North Koreans” not yet committed, and he said forces in Sumy and central “fortress cities” were about to fall, allowing Russia to reorganize and reconcentrate.
On Zelensky and possible further attacks, McGregor said Zelensky is “the captain of a sinking ship,” and argued Ukraine would not pursue peace. He described Western Ukraine as a “disaster” and said many Ukrainians are “sick to death of this war,” while likening Ukraine’s behavior to Israel’s strategy when failing, including digging in, building strong points, and “strike back with whatever you’ve got left.” He said Zelensky suggesting attacks on Belarus would change the war’s dynamic and could be part of a survival effort.
Regarding diplomacy, McGregor argued there is no end state or coherent strategy, making diplomacy difficult. He claimed Europeans are “crying wolf,” warning that Russia will strike back, and said optics dominate decision-making. He said that if foreign forces are at Russia’s gates, negotiation may follow, but that “boy who cried wolf” dynamics and the lack of a clear diplomatic goal prevent real resolution. He also stated that if the process does not change, the likely outcome is violent and decisive Russian strikes.
When asked about Europe’s ability to sustain the war, McGregor argued economic constraints will eventually shift priorities. He cited US treasury rollover costs and interest burden, asserted the US is “absolutely broke,” and claimed low levels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could create risk. He said European governments are similarly constrained, suggesting unrest could occur if pension or governmental payments are disrupted.
On nuclear weapons in Finland, McGregor called it reckless and said Finland had benefited from decades of cross-border trade with Russia, then shut it down. He argued Russia would respond by stationing nuclear-capable forces nearby to neutralize Finland. He connected this to broader claims about European “globalists” and described Western governance as losing democratic control over the people who govern.
For how the war ends, McGregor said it ends when the United States “pack[s] up” and “go[es] home,” “butt[s] out,” leaving Europe to handle security through its own capabilities and alliances. He claimed the CIA has influenced elections in Europe and said compromised leaders in NATO must be removed. He argued military action could come soon to force Europe into talks, and he said Putin likely understands that disengagement by the US is central to ending the conflict.
Full Transcript
Speaker 2: Welcome back. We are joined today by Colonel Douglas McGregor, a decorated combat veteran and author and a former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense. So thank you for coming back on. It's great to see you. I want to talk to you about this recent interview by President Putin. That is, he outlined what appears to be now expanded objectives, we can call it. That is, he called for taking all of Novorossiya under Russian control, which would then include everything up to Odessa. He talked about these buffer zones being lost in Kharkov, Sumy, essentially as punishment for Kursk, as well as having obvious strategic objectives. And this is happening also as many of the front lines are cracking. I was wondering, do you see this as a new stage of the war, or how are you assessing this, I guess, new rhetoric coming from the Russian president?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I think that President Putin has said more than once since the beginning of this war that Kharkov and Odessa are historically Russian-speaking cities. So I'm I hesitate to say that it was always the objective, but I think most Russians believed from the beginning that if they were going to do this, those two cities would have to end up in Russian hands. Secondly, I think he's looking at the reality that the security zone for Russia's interests and safety has to be much larger than originally planned or anticipated. Let's face it, Ukraine has become... a much more dangerous irritant over time than I think he expected it to. Ukraine itself is a nation, I would describe it as close to dead. But we have this facade of a government in Ukraine with an infrastructure of supporters, not much from the population, but hardcore supporters, thousands of mercenaries and foreigners, And they are able to launch periodically missiles and drones to create the illusion that there is some real power or influence there in the hopes of attracting more money. And I think you know that Zelensky wants $90 billion from Donald Trump. And Trump actually sat with him and talked to him, to my surprise. And to my horror, I'm told he's considering it. I hope not. But, you know, anything is possible these days. So I think that's a signal that there are plans afoot now, military plans, to make those things a reality. I don't think the Sumy exercise is necessarily a punishment. I think it's just a realistic appraisal that says, if we don't control this territory, we have no security in Russia. Russia cannot be secure. So Novorossiya, which was always, I think, in the back of everybody's mind, is going to become a reality. And I would certainly do that if I were in his position. No question about it.
Speaker 2: Well, he also said that the objective of NATO in this war was the strategic defeat of Russia. Indeed, only two or three days ago, Mike Pompeo even tweeted this, that that's the only acceptable outcome, the strategic defeat of Russia. Now, I assume that Putin isn't going to allow this, but at the same time, he's seeing the Europeans increase their direct involvement in this war. How do you see him managing this, though? Do you think, as many argue, that he might decide that it's necessary to strike a European country, or do you think he will only look to essentially defeat Ukraine?
Speaker 1: I think he's been asked privately inside his inner circle, Mr. President, how bad must it get before we strike back? Now we've watched the strikes periodically reach the outskirts of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov and so forth. They've hit some refineries, they struck a missile manufacturing facility, but they've also killed Russian civilians and destroyed Russian civilian infrastructure. I don't want to say that he's decided that he's had enough, but I think he is at the point now where he recognizes this can no longer be not necessarily ignored, but taken in stride. In other words, it's time for some form of action. So that's number one. Number two, militarily, he is in a position to do any number of different things. He can take Odessa very suddenly and very quickly. He has the forces on hand, concentrated to do it. He'll have to do some more work with regard to the destruction of some of the drone assembly points, you know, where the materials come in from Europe and the drones and the missiles are then assembled as components of a larger system and then launched at him or launched at Russia. He'll have to target those and administer some serious destruction, but that's not difficult to do. I don't think he has an inexhaustible quantity of Oreshniks, but he's got a lot. There is no question about it. He's had plenty of time to build up that surplus. So that much would happen. Odessa has to fall. Once Ukraine is landlocked and he is in a position to reach out to the Russian population in Moldova, which I'm sure he will, then the question is, what are the Europeans really going to do? And the truth is, They're not capable of doing much. You and I know that. But the Russians have been told otherwise. Now, what do I mean? From the very beginning, when you saw these fools in Ukraine run around with Nazi symbols on their uniforms, that was the red flag for the Russians. And that was something that anybody in Russia could point to as evidence for something that was wrong and had to be destroyed. Now it's gotten worse, and I would argue it's worse because you have European leaders like this man, Mats, who makes extremely dangerous, incautious remarks, along with his defense minister, von der Leyen, and others, about how Germany is going to build up into some giant military power with the obvious purpose of threatening Russia. You have similar statements coming out of other European countries and leaders, I don't know what the new Starmer light will be like. I'm sure we'll get another version of Starmer, only less impressive, if that's possible. Macron is still with us. These people are all saying ridiculous things about Europe's potential to defeat and destroy Russia. If you're sitting in Russia and you're listening to this, and this material is, you know, this material is being transmitted through the Russian media to the Russian people. It's not being censored. It's not being modified. It's being transmitted. What does the average Russian conclude? It's 1941 again. Here we go again. Another European invasion of Russia. Now, you and I know that's absurd. You could take the entire British army, French army, whatever passes for a German army, throw in the Danes, the Norwegians. What are they going to do? Where are they going to go? They couldn't even defend the Baltic littoral. They couldn't defend Western Ukraine. Who are we kidding? So what are you talking about? It's nonsense, but it's dangerous. And it's eliciting a very dangerous response from Russia. People don't seem to understand that President Putin doesn't have to create a boogeyman for the Russians to fear. We've done that for him. And we continue to do it. So it's very easy for him to announce that New measures, expansion of reserves. They've already got a Russian army today that's well over a billion. It's brilliantly organized, well-equipped, well-trained. I think it's well-led. I think many of the weak links in the chain of the officer corps and the senior ranks have been eliminated. If you were going to pick a time and a place to fight the Russians, this is a bad one. Don't do it. You're stupid to even consider it. So I think Putin knows all of these things. I think he's still going to move very methodically because that's his nature. But I think Odessa is going to come under attack and it's going to be seized. Now, can he do more than that? Yes, he probably can. Will he? I don't know. I have listened to voices in Russia say this will not end until we are in Kiev and we absolutely eliminate this regime. I think a lot of people have reached that conclusion. And they don't understand why we have not done more. The thing that's most tragic about the entire picture, Glenn, is that in Russia, at any rate, people genuinely like Americans. And they think that Americans and they are alike. Now, that's not really true. We would make good strategic partners for different reasons. But we are as different from the Russians as the Chinese are. That doesn't mean we can't get along. But I think they have developed this view that we have a lot more in common than we do. And at the same time, they have this very positive picture of Trump. They think Trump is really a good person. That he really wants the best. They don't understand what they're dealing with. The reality TV star who migrates in the direction of whatever promises to make him look good. That's not what they're accustomed to. All you have to do to contrast Trump with President Putin. Look at Putin on the stage, the way he behaves, the way he holds himself, how he dresses, how he speaks, the audience. Look at the people that are in the audience. How do they dress? How do they look? How do they comport themselves? Then look at what we've got in the United States for a president. It's totally different, completely unrelated. Putin is as close to a czar as you're going to get in the modern world. And he does have one foot in the Tsarist world. He's got another foot in the Soviet world. He knows both. And he has moved Russia down, I think, a very good path to unity and prosperity because he understands that those are critical. With unity and prosperity, you also get security. No one in the United States thinks like that. Trump doesn't even consider those things. But for better or worse... They think we're friends. They think Trump is a good guy.
Speaker 2: Well, Trump, he did, well, it seemed like he was going for a diplomatic path. It seemed that he thought it was better for the U.S. to get along with Russia and essentially bring them over to our side of the ledger. But since those days, he now appears to have embraced his inner Biden. That is, he's made this... his war as well. I mean, part of this is also linked up, I think, with this new narrative, which is just coming out of every media outlet across the West now, which is that Ukraine is winning again. What do you think the calculations by Trump is? I mean, you mentioned he might start sending billions in aid again to Ukraine. So what is the strategy here? Will the U.S., go back deeper into the war against Russia?
Speaker 1: First and foremost, you must understand that there is no strategy. There never has been. We had something resembling a strategy as a result of George Kennan, his Mr. X article, and what then subsequently became a containment. Since then, our strategy has been to retain control of the 750 bases in 80 countries to continue to exert influence in our pursuit of financial hegemony and see what underpins financial hegemony in the American mind has been military hegemony. So the American thinks, well, if I spend a trillion dollars on defense, I get all these benefits, including financial hegemony around the world. It's all nonsense, but that's the way people think. Americans think of defense as you go to the supermarket, you buy something off the shelf, a loaf of bread, butter, roast beef, whatever it is. And that's defense. Well, we buy this, we buy this, we've got defense. No understanding of how you build military power or anything else. So this is what confronts President Putin. This is what confronts the Iranians. The same thing. There is no strategy. And whatever President Trump wakes up in the morning and decides to do is what we do. And he is not planning the systematic demise or destruction of Russia. Absolutely not. Wouldn't know how to begin. So what's he trying to do? Well, he's trying to do whatever he thinks is going to benefit him and his presidency. And a little down the line, well, it may be helpful to America. How he defines that is beyond me. I have no idea. I see no benefit to us from involvement in Ukraine in any way. I see no benefit to us strategically from attacking Iran. So he says, well, what are those benefits? I haven't got an answer because it sounds stupid to me. But the problem is that's where we are. That's all that you've got at this point. So I understand that there was supposedly a recent meeting involving President Trump and his inner circle and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and maybe some other military leaders to talk about what do we do if we resume bombing with the goal of quote unquote, finishing the job. That's about as crazy as here's $90 billion. Now go win your war in Ukraine. It's absurd. We know that everything that goes to Ukraine, what about 50% of it just disappears into corruption, the black hole of corruption. What happens to the rest of it? Well, a lot of it is sold off. I mean, Ukrainians have been furnishing Colombia and Venezuela and Mexico cartels with all sorts of interesting equipment and capabilities that were given to them by Europeans and by us. You would think President Trump is aware of that. I don't know if anybody ever tells him that. I don't know if he was, if he were told that, that he'd believe it. Who knows? But there's no, there is no strategic framework. There is no end state. It's all about how do we stay on top? In other words, how do we remain the world's financial hegemon and military hegemon? Well, we've just discovered that we are not the world's military hegemon. We've been defeated unambiguously. Instead of recognizing that and saying, oh, it's time to step back and reconsider what we're doing, he's talking about doubling down again. It's worse than insane. So when you see all these globalists that come out of the woodwork, I listened to Neil Ferguson the other day. Oh, Ukraine is now in a position where it could strike back and win. You know, I don't know of anyone who is sane, who has visited Ukraine, who thinks Ukraine has a snowball's chance in hell of winning a war against Russia. What is much more likely now is that the Russians are finally, that Putin finally says that's enough. no more. And remember, he's in a tough position. When I speak about Russia, I've always had people say, well, McGregor, sure, you say this, the Russians can do this. You say the Russians are doing that. Well, if they can do all those things, why haven't they already won? Why haven't they crossed the river? Why haven't they entered Kiev? Why haven't they just marched west? In other words, nobody believes you until it's done. The burden of proof is on Russia right now to prove that it can do what it can. There's no thinking that says, listen, let's sit down. Let's bring this to an end quickly. This has gone on long enough. This is not in the interest of Europe, not in the interest of Ukraine, certainly not in the interest of Russia or the United States. So how do we end this? That should be the question. No one is talking like that.
Speaker 2: That's the tragedy. Well I think it's I think most of the public as well as political class of course the other Hawks but a lot are just trapped I think by the narratives if you argue that well we should negotiate a new security architecture for Europe that also accommodates Russian security concerns and thereby removing Ukraine from the front line of a divided Europe then the yeah the the pushback will be, well, that's a pro-Russian thing to do. And instead claiming that Ukraine is winning in a war it can't win, which is destroying the country and possibly taking us to direct war with Russia. This is somehow the pro-Ukrainian position. So there's no discourse around it. No one has unpacked their arguments. It's just, it's sloganeering, very emotional sloganeering and doing a lot of harm at the same time. But I agree though, well, If Putin now decides this is enough and they decide to escalate in a big way to put an end to this war, what would that escalation look like? Well, I tried to describe it for you.
Speaker 1: I think first and foremost, they would move to seize Odessa and transform Ukraine into a landlocked country. Ukraine, historically, and you know the maps, I don't know if you've ever shown those Most Europeans that live in the West or live in Central East Europe, they don't understand Eastern Europe either. And so if you look at the maps historically, Ukraine is really not what Ukraine is today. It's a northern portion that reaches across to almost to Kursk. In other words, there's this sort of open area. It's an area, not a nation, you know, in the strict sense of the word. So stripping Odessa from it is inevitable. It was never Ukrainian, never part of Ukraine. It was founded by czarist armies that conquered the area and threw out the Mongols and the Tartars and the Turks. So the question now is, what do you do at that point if you're in the West? You're going to try and counterattack? You're going to try to throw the Russians out? Good luck. That's not going to happen. But I think the Russians can do that very, very quickly and very decisive. When I say quickly, the Russians are methodical, so they'll take months to do these things. They could also very rapidly enter Kiev. They could come down from the north, from Byelorussia. I'm told they have tens of thousands of troops there, including something between 20 and 30,000 North Koreans that have not been committed to action, along with the force that is now in Sumy, And dealing with the three fortress cities in the center, those are about to fall, which means that you can reorganize and reconcentrate all of these forces in Ukraine and move them wherever you want. So I kind of see three potential moves. One is Odessa, one is across to Kiev, and another is down from Byelorussia towards Kiev. That can be done. how they will do it, when they will do it, those are questions I couldn't possibly answer.
Speaker 2: So you think taking Kiev could be a key objective then? I mean, this is the mother of all the Russian citizens say, well, it can't be ruled out.
Speaker 1: If you're sitting in Moscow right now and you're looking at the mess you've got on your hands, and the West, if the West has to deal with a government in exile that sits in Lwów. We don't have a map again, but if you go to Lwów, that area used to be part of Poland, Galician Poland. Then it became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, initially Austrian, then Austro-Hungarian. That's one problem. And the good news is that the Poles have recently discovered Ukrainians are back up to their old tricks and it's gotten ugly between Warsaw and Kiev, and rightly so. I mean, how many times do you have to sit there and watch these Ukrainians celebrate people that murdered 100,000 Poles before you finally wake up and smell the coffee? And from the very beginning, you know, I talked to Russians and they all said the same thing. Why don't they just turn Western Ukraine over to the Poles, let them deal with it? And everybody would laugh, say, because they know the ukrainians hate us they hate the polls more than they hate us and it you know it's going to be somebody else's problem but let's get it off our plates i think you could probably sit down at the table with all the all the states that border russia and bielorussia right now in in europe and come up with some sort of solution everybody could live with but you have to have rational people putin is rational warsaw is becoming more rational finally uh lithuania latvia estonia i don't know those people are worrisome because you know i remember the germans used to talk about them in the 1870s and 80s because they they were expressing all their opposition to the czars and how much they hated alexander iii and so forth the truth was they weren't badly treated under the czar they'd actually had better living standards and Many aspects of their society were much better off than Russia's. And finally, it took Modka for Modka and Bismarck to get together and say, shut up. You know, we're not coming. Get along with your neighbor. The czar is not the bad person you say he is, and you need to talk to the czar. We're at this point where we should be saying similar things. Get along with your damn neighbors and shut up and leave us out. But, you know, you have a president like Trump who is flattered by by the thought that he is a great man who can meddle and make decisions and move the chess pieces. Bad business.
Speaker 2: Well, as we see, there's an energy crisis, of course, in Ukraine. There's a manpower crisis. We see some fracture along the front lines, especially Saporizhia is becoming a key problem now for Ukraine. And at the midst of this, Lavrov says, Zelenskyy suggested that they might attack Belarus as well. How do you make sense of this? Is this just bluster to create some headlines in NATO to show that Ukraine is winning again? Or do you think they could actually go this way? Because I would think that the Russian response would be quite fierce. Well, it would definitely change the dynamic of the war.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. I mean, Zelensky is the captain of a sinking ship. The waves are lapping over the decks. He's going under. So what can he do to survive? The last thing he's going to do is make peace. The last thing he's going to do is suggest any sort of arrangement which would marginalize him and his government. In fact, if you look at Israel right now, Israel's kind of in a similar position, although people in the West don't know it. Situation inside Israel is terrible. It's terrible inside Ukraine. There are millions of Ukrainians who are sick to death of this war. They would love to get rid of Zelensky. You're closer to it than I am, so you get to talk to journalists that go over there frequently. I get to talk to a few Germans from time to time who are willing to share their impressions. But my impression based on what they report is that Western Ukraine is a disaster, and the people there are sick to death of this whole thing, want nothing to do with it. So what do you do? You do what Netanyahu is doing. Netanyahu says, we will never leave Lebanon. He tells the army to dig in, set up checkpoints, build strong points. When you're failing badly, you don't admit that you're failing badly. That's not what you do. You strike back with whatever you've got left. until finally you go under completely. And I think that's where Ukraine has said it, unfortunately. And I think that's where the Israelis are headed too.
Speaker 2: So do you see any diplomatic pathway then? I mean, by comparing with Israel, I think many Russians were looking towards what happened well with the war against Iran. And many of them, I think, concluded that the all the negotiations were tricks by the Trump administration and even the MOU seems to be an initiative to buy time perhaps because it seems very unlikely that these points will be implemented. But I feel like the Russians has reached the same conclusion as well that there is no diplomacy, there is no spirit of anchorage that it's essentially all gone but If this is correct, that will only leave war then wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think what happens is, uh, the boy who cried wolf, he, you know, you're familiar with the story. Most of your viewers are. And, uh, that's what the Europeans are doing. They're crying wolf. The wolf is coming. If this nonsense doesn't stop, they'll get what they don't want. The Russians will strike back. There's no doubt about it. It should not be excluded as a possibility. They should not bet on the perpetual goodwill of President Putin. President Putin wants to do business with Europe. He wants to get along with Europe. But under the circumstances, if he can't, he'll do what he has to to protect Russia. So I think we're headed on that road now. How far will it go? How long will it last? I don't know. Sometimes, you know, when the foreign army is at your gates, then people finally wise up and then want to negotiate. And that may be what happens. You'll end up with Russian forces that strike back violently and decisively. I hope not. But how else do you end this thing? Because if there's no strategy, how can there be diplomacy? What do you tell the diplomat? You know, we want you to go meet with the Russians in Poltava. Sit down there. See if you can work out a solution. The diplomat says, well, what do you want to achieve? What's the goal? What's the end state? Nobody knows. Well, we want to make sure that we look victorious and the enemy looks feeble. That's what it's all about. It's optics. With Trump, it's optics. That's it. That's all there is. There's nothing else. So what are the Europeans going to do? They're trying to exploit the optics, the desire for optics, by creating the myth that Ukraine is the phoenix rising from the ashes, thanks to drones, and that the world will change. So please give us more money so that we can go out and wage more war and save you in the West from the inevitable invasion that is coming from Moscow. It's all crap. Let's be frank. I hate to be so coarse at this point. But you and I and a lot of others have been talking about this for a long time. People don't listen to us. They listen to the damn leaders that they've got in power who are selling them out every day. And until they wake up and conclude that they've got the wrong people in power, not much is going to change.
Speaker 2: When you look at the economic situation, how long do you think this can go on? Because the main leaders in Europe now, they're quite unpopular, but the economies are also quite shaky. Yet they want to send more and more weapons, more and more money to Kiev. But now even the Germans have begun to express some concern about the budgets. That is, well, things are not looking well. If the economy tanks, a lot of things can go wrong. possibility like how do you see the possibility of continuing to drag on with this war because Europeans are still making the point that it's too early too premature to talk about any diplomacy with the Russians I mean this is four and a half years of boycotting diplomacy so well I know that in the next 12 months we have roughly 18 trillion dollars in treasuries that have to be rolled over that's a
Speaker 1: That's an average coupon of 3.3%. The one-year treasury now in the United States is roughly 4%. So you roll that at $8 trillion today at the current level, you're looking at $49 billion in annual interest costs. And that's before you factor in the interest burden on the ongoing $2 trillion annual deficit. Glenn, I know we're broke. Let's be frank about it. We're absolutely broke. When it comes to the oil situation, you get different interpretations. But I'm told that within the next two or three weeks, we're looking at very, very perilously low levels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The military privately thinks that we need at least 240 million gallons in order to Be prepared to do much of anything. Or excuse me, barrels, 240 million barrels. I don't know where we are now, but I know we're getting close. I imagine the situation in Europe is as bad, if not worse. The guilts in London, which is the English word for treasury, they're in a lot of trouble. I don't think the economy there is going to hold up much longer. In France... I think everything depends upon the same thing as it does in Germany. If you're in Germany or France, you're waiting for your check to arrive from the government. Where's my pension check? And so that I can go on vacation or I can do X, Y, and Z. When that stops, when that's disrupted, when that's interrupted, then all hell will break loose. That's much more important to people in Europe, as you know, than what happens in Russia.
Speaker 2: No, when the economy goes, the priorities obviously begin to shift quite quickly. But until that happens, there's a contradiction. Because on one hand, we keep saying that Ukraine is winning, it turned the tide. On the other hand, we see the need to escalate in a big way with these strikes, often from NATO territories with weapons, our weapons targeted by our intelligence. or our, I would put US in that category, obviously, as I think they do much more on the intelligence part than the Europeans, just because of capabilities, I would assume. But now another new development is that Finland has now made it, well, changed their laws. So now they can store nuclear weapons on their territory and not their own, but Do you think this could be part of Trump's pivot back into the Ukraine war that is actually stationed nuclear weapons in Finland? Because, you know, it would be hard to predict what kind of consequences this would have.
Speaker 1: Well, it's very reckless, obviously. And here the Finns have done a land office business with Russia for decades, benefited enormously from cross-border trade with the Russians. They shut it all down and shot themselves in the foot, much like the Germans. Why they would feel the need to have a nuclear weapon on their soil when the Russians have not threatened them nor expressed any interest in doing so. Now, the Russians, on the other hand, are going to look at this and feel that they then are going to have to station forces, including nuclear-capable forces nearby, so that they can neutralize Finland.
Speaker 2: What a disaster.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just insane. But if you are buying the globalist argument, remember the globalist argument is very simple. Russia is evil and bad because it has national character, national identity, national culture, borders that it protects, and it refuses to submit to all of the trends and wishes that we've been listening to from the European globalists. Somebody said, well, what does Russia have to do to be welcomed in the globalist committee in Europe. And I said, well, I guess they have to learn to speak some new language. They all have to become transgender persons and advocate for boys and girls sports or something. I mean, it's just this sort of lunacy. It's kind of 1919, 1920 Bolshevism on steroids. That's not gonna happen, obviously. And the people that are running Europe right now are globalists. They're all part of the same ruling elite class. They're globalists sitting in Washington, D.C., here in the United States, you know, an hour plus from where I live. And they are very much of the same mind frame. Now, do most Americans that vote support these things?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Do most Americans want them? No. It doesn't matter. In other words, democracy itself in the Western sense has become a meaningless facade. We have no control over the people that actually govern us anymore. So the only way out of this, I think, in the short run, not just long run, but short run, is bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: And that's where the West is heading, well, most of it.
Speaker 1: I think President Putin wisely has waited for this to happen. It just hasn't come about yet, and he's disappointed. and was hoping that it would come sooner rather than later. All you have to do is go back to Aliza Vidal. She gave a wonderful speech a couple of weeks ago in the Bundestag. She enumerated all of these problems. And then she said, what's the first thing that we're going to do? Well, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to Moscow. We're going to renegotiate our arrangements with Moscow, our relationship with that country. She absolutely rejects the globalist threat picture. And she's right to do so. Then we've got to get control of our own country, of who's in it and the rule of law. You know, Germany used to be a wonderful place where you could walk across any major city in that country 20 years ago, 25 years ago at three o'clock in the morning and fear nothing. Not anymore. And that's what the AFD is about. And they're not the only ones. These elements are all over Europe. But the governments remain in power. They have to be removed. And the only way that I see that occurring right now is as described. The checks do not show up in the mail.
Speaker 2: Well, the former advisor of Zelensky, Alexei Arstovich, he made a similar comment. That is, if he would run for president of Ukraine, he said the first thing he would do if he won would be to go to Moscow and promise that Ukraine would never again be used as a frontline by NATO against Russia. And he would also accept this painful territorial concessions. Again, for me, it seems at least someone's talking about doing something about removing the threat to Russia. It's kind of strange now, especially in Europe now, where the assumption is, well, Russia's imperialists or any... will attempt to even talk to it, will just appease and reward Putin. But you can't challenge this. There is no debate at all. But that kind of took me to my last question, which is how do you see this war? How does it end? And how does Europe look like after this war? That is, I can't see a possible end to the war because even if everything east of the Dnieper River falls to Russia, Why would the Europeans or the US as well want to give up a proxy where they can just, as long as you call it a resistance in Ukraine, can launch drones, missiles into Russia and continue to try to weaken it. So how does this war actually come to an end?
Speaker 1: Well, Glenn, you know that we Americans have this unfortunate habit utilizing the Central Intelligence Agency to influence elections. And we have influenced recent elections in Europe. I think the leadership in Romania, in Moldova, would certainly be different from what you see right now, had we not meddled in those countries. I think there are several leaders at the top of NATO who are compromised, who are effectively agents for U.S. interests. They are tools of central intelligence. This is not new. This is not a revelation, although some people will be surprised to hear this. The point is that has to end. How do you get rid of these people? Well, you have to wake up the populations, get them to recognize the criticality of their interests. You're beginning to see that in Germany. For the first time, gee, since the 1970s, when we went through this debate about the theater or intermediate range nuclear force, The INF you'll remember that before we got to the treaty and Helmut Schmidt came in, he took over the government and steered Germany in support of it, which at the time was the right thing to do. It was necessary, but there were people then saying, you know, it's time for us to become neutral. Well, it wasn't a good time for that would have been right after the second world war or certainly in the early fifties, but that opportunity was missed maybe in the future. I think I see the Germans now moving back in that direction, recognizing that they do have core national interests, and those have to be respected. So when you say, how does this end? I think it ends when we pack up our things and go home. Number one, we leave. We butt out. Somebody said to me, when does this war with Iran end? If the MOU is not worth the paper it's written on, how does it end? It ends when we sail away, we fly away. Because remember, we don't live there. This is what Europeans need to remember. We don't live there. Charles de Gaulle kept trying to tell them that Americans do not live in Europe. Okay. He's right. So we pack up our things and we say, that's enough. We can't afford to stay. We're leaving by the way. That's something that privately president Trump wanted to do back, uh, four, five, six years ago when he was in office, didn't know how to do it, but he wanted to disengage. Not commercially. We continue to do business. We want to be partners. But we want to get out of this business of garrisoning other people's countries, right? Dismantle it. It's an anachronism. It's being demonstrated that it is an anachronism in the Persian Gulf. All the forces that we put on the ground in Europe today that should be there to protect Europeans from an imminent Russian invasion. That's the theory. they would all be eliminated in the opening minutes of any war by precision guided missiles and unmanned systems. Hello, that's the way it is. Warfare has changed. It doesn't work anymore. It needs to get out. It doesn't mean that Europe is defenseless because what Iran has done, every European country can do. And the European alliances that want to exist, that will work with each other, that are culturally comfortable with each other, and I think that's very important in Europe, where they share certain interests, They can build the kind of capability that Iran has built that defeated us. So this can all be done. But as long as we're there, as long as we have our fingers in this, and as long as we're putting up money, it's going to be very difficult to get around that. So I always say we've got to go. And I don't say that meaning I want my country to fail. No, that has nothing to do with it. We've got to get out. And when we do, it will end. And I think that's what President Putin understands. And that's why I think you're going to see some military action coming in the near future. I think you will. I don't know how decisive it will be. I hope it's enough to persuade the Europeans it's time to sit down and put an end to this and have some serious talks. You know, it's funny. I remember you in particular years ago when we started talking about this stuff, who said, you know, the longer you wait for talks, the longer you wait to negotiate negotiations, the worse outcome you're going to get. I mean, people didn't seem to listen. And we act as though we won against Iran. We keep talking about Iran has to meet these requirements. Really? They won. We didn't. That's what Vice President Vance is telling everybody. Now, what are you going to do? Tell Putin that he has to fulfill these obligations or we're not going to talk to him? He's winning. Now, if people don't believe he's winning, then he needs to demonstrate pretty conclusively that he is. I think that's where we're headed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it could be in the very near future as well. Anyways, we already ran out of time. So thank you as always for sharing your insights, Colonel. Much appreciated. All right, Glenn.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Nice to see you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alexander Mercouris: A New Putin? From Diplomacy to War https://youtu.be/3o4muQ-mexI https://t.co/HoEHz3wcAH
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alexander McCurse and Glenn discuss whether Vladimir Putin has changed his approach in the war. McCurse says the new posture is a “new Putin” marked by an end to diplomacy-focused messaging and a shift to victory-oriented rhetoric, including talk of “liberating Donbass and Novorossiya.” He describes Putin as also calling for a long buffer zone as punishment for Ukraine’s actions in Kursk, with Russian forces getting close to Kharkov and Sumy and potentially tempting moves toward Ukraine’s second-largest city.
McCurse links the shift to a key moment in December, when there was a drone attack on Putin’s residence in Valdai. He says many in Russia, possibly including Putin, believed it was an assassination attempt, reinforced by a Zelensky comment before the attack. He argues that a subsequent weeks-long period of Putin speaking less about Ukraine reflected internal debate in Russia about what to do. He then says Western escalation—more drone and missile attacks and a narrative that the initiative shifted to Ukraine—contributed to that debate ending. McCurse claims Putin emerged from it with a harder line focused on victory and internal stabilization, and says the “mood” across Russian society has darkened with no further interest in diplomacy.
Glenn asks how European rhetoric and Trump’s stance factor in. McCurse says he attended a conference in Pskov and met people in Moscow, including factory workers, and found an overwhelming consensus about the war as a Russia-versus-West conflict. He says European talk about being on the brink of war communicated to Russia and influenced Putin. McCurse points to Putin’s claim that Europeans (and thus the West) are preparing for war, while Russia must prepare to defend itself, arguing that Russian drone attacks make this feel like “they are attacking it already.”
Glenn questions whether restraint from Moscow is about avoiding nuclear war or about buying time. McCurse agrees it could be both, but emphasizes that Russians increasingly perceive they face a West that has lost fear of war and discusses war constantly. He adds that he believes Russians have concluded war may be coming and time should be used to prepare, and he cites Professor Karaganov’s argument that fear of war must be restored in the West. McCurse says he now sees more of this view being taken seriously by elites and advisers.
McCurse adds specific claims about Putin’s latest interview: he dismisses diplomatic initiatives from the West as “tricks,” and for the first time says there was no actual deal or agreement reached in Anchorage with the Americans. McCurse argues that if Anchorage produced no real agreement, then concessions made there do not apply anymore, reinforcing his view of a strongly hardened posture.
The discussion then turns to whether Russia can end the war or whether it could become permanent. Glenn argues that NATO and European support for Ukraine mean Russia may not be able to end the conflict simply by achieving territorial goals, referencing European actions around 2014, Minsk, and the idea that NATO built a large Ukrainian proxy force. McCurse responds that the Moscow debate has shifted from whether negotiation is possible to whether deterrence with the West can be restored through victory in Ukraine versus needing actions beyond victory to restore fear in the West. He says Russians are close to achieving initial territorial objectives in Donbass and possibly other regions, but that doubts in Moscow about reaching a negotiated settlement could lead Russia to push further west.
On “dirty war,” McCurse says he is uncomfortable with the prospect but claims Russian admission of assassinating a Ukrainian military intelligence official. He argues that if tit-for-tat killings begin, it could extend beyond intelligence officials to political-system figures and potentially spread to Europe, given Russia’s resources and capabilities.
Glenn describes how European narratives avoid confronting inconsistencies, including claims about battlefield movement and casualty ratios. McCurse replies that people become angry when factual contradictions are raised and states that, in his view, the Russians are advancing toward places like Kramatorsk and Slavyansk and threatening Sumy and Kharkiv. He describes recurring optimism narratives as wishful thinking and says the “war of attrition” is heading toward outcomes more disastrous for Ukraine.
Glenn also raises the impact of attacks on Russia’s infrastructure, particularly in Crimea, and whether this increases pressure for extreme responses. McCurse says Crimea is a significant problem but that Russia has the resources and ingenuity to overcome challenges. He argues the key issue is not inflicting pain but whether it can achieve Russia abandoning objectives, adding that constant poking of a nuclear power is dangerous and that assuming Russian restraint indefinitely is not affordable.
Finally, they discuss Europe’s political environment and debate suppression. McCurse says internal debate is closed down, and when escalation concerns are raised they are treated as “Putin talking points.” He claims European opposition is constrained because challenging policy is labeled pro-Russian. He adds that in the UK, leadership rotation continues with the same Russia policy, and argues policy change is unlikely. He also asserts that at least one prime minister who came into government saying the Russia policy was unsustainable would not remain prime minister long if trying to change it.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Today we have the great privilege of being joined by Alexander McCurse, the very popular host of the Duran, so it's good to see you again.
Speaker 0: It's delightful to see you again, Glenn, and very happy to be on this program.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk to you today about whether or not we're seeing a new Putin in this war. That is, Putin just gave a speech, he also gave an interview, and he has recognized now seemingly that The West is behind attacks on Russia. I think this was common knowledge. But with this admission, it also implies that there's pressure on him to do something. And he's also no longer talking that much about diplomacy as he did last year. Instead, there's more talk about war, victory. There's talk now, again, the interview he just gave, he talked about liberating Donbass and Novorossiya, which... you know, historical Novorossiya would then include Odessa. Again, he wasn't specific, but he also wants this long buffer zone in punishment for what Ukraine did in Kursk. This means not just a buffer long Kharkov, Sumy, possibly Chernigov, but indeed the Russian army is getting fairly close to both Kharkov and Sumy. So there might be the temptation of actually seizing then Ukraine's second largest city. So I was just wondering, What is happening? Again, is this a new Putin?
Speaker 0: It is a new Putin. Now, I have been talking about this for some time. I think that there was a key moment for the Russians, which happened actually in December, when there was a drone attack on Putin's residence in Valdai. Now, I think a lot of people in Russia, maybe Putin himself, believe that this was an assassination attempt and an extraordinary statement that Zelensky made just before the attack perhaps reinforced that belief. So I think that what then happened was that Putin went through a lengthy period which lasted several weeks of basically not talking very much about Ukraine. And that always made me think that there was some kind of internal debate going on in russia within the leadership about what to do and then of course what then happened is that the west escalated it escalated with these drone attacks which clearly they are heavily involved in these drone attacks against russia more missile attacks too against russian facilities and a general narrative that the initiative in the war has passed to the ukrainian side And I think that probably contributed to this debate that was already happening in Russia. And that debate has now clearly ended. And Putin has come out the other end. And he is a Putin who no longer is talking diplomacy. He's no longer talking about negotiations. He's focused exclusively on victory. And at the same time, he's keen on stabilizing the internal situation. within Russia itself. So this is a much harder Putin than the one we saw last year.
Speaker 1: But a part of the reason I think why he's chosen to change his posture a bit is obviously the rhetoric from the Europeans. It does appear that the European leaders are preparing for war. I would say Trump seems to be making a pivot back towards the Ukraine, but He seems less eager on a direct war as opposed to the European leaders. How are you assessing that side of the equation of the Europeans and Trump's renewed interest in Ukraine?
Speaker 0: Well, I recently was in Russia. I attended a conference in Pskov and I met with some people in Moscow. The overwhelming consensus that I encountered was was that, and people, I'm not just talking about people, you know, in government and connected to the government, but, you know, people that, you know, you speak to who work in factories and for the first time met people who work in factories. They see this war very much in terms of Russia West terms. And I think that the rhetoric coming out of Europe about Europe being... in effect, on the brink of a war with Russia, has communicated itself to Russia too and to Putin himself. A couple of days ago, he actually said that the Europeans, in fact, I think he actually spoke about the West, it clearly means more the Europeans, are preparing for war with Russia and Russia must prepare for war against Europe or the West. He was careful to say that Russia is not looking for a war. It is not being aggressive, but that it will defend itself and that it has adequate means to defend itself. And of course, all of this happening in conjunction with the drone attacks on Russia, all of that has been, I think, more than enough to convince most people in Russia is Russia. that when people in Europe talk about war with Russia, Russia really does need to prepare for it because in a sense they're attacking it already.
Speaker 1: Whenever I see the restraint though from Moscow, I'm not sure how much of this would be a concern about ending up in a world war, possibly nuclear war with NATO countries and how much more is buying time for preparations because If you think that, well, don't think, the Europeans are very openly stating, setting dates for when the war with Russia will start. If I was advising Moscow, I would tell them to ramp up the Oreshnik arsenal and prepare a lot of ammunition to make sure that this war will not be fought on the enemy's terms. And essentially, yeah, hit out heavy, come out heavy, and then offer quickly... for the Europeans to back off some kind of a peace. But again, I'm not sure which it is. It could be both, of course.
Speaker 0: Well, it could very well be both. But I think basically you are correct. I think that increasingly the Russians are now seeing that they are dealing with the West that has lost its fear of war with them and is talking about war all the time. I live in Britain, and the amount of rhetoric there is about war here is absolutely extraordinary. And the lack of popular opposition to the idea of war with Russia is also, frankly, dismaying. I mean, once upon a time, there would have been a lot of opposition, but there is very little, actually. And I think the Russians have drawn their own conclusions that war may very well be coming and that it is time to prepare for it. And, of course, we have other people in Russia, people like Professor Karaganov, whom, of course, you know and have interviewed several times, who have been talking about the need to restore in the West that sense of fear of war, which currently no longer exists. Now, I think that, say, a year ago, he was still an outlier. I think that he was basically talking mostly for himself. I get the sense that more and more people in Russia are now listening to him. And when I talk about people in Russia, I mean people either in the leadership, the Kremlin, the Security Council, the general staff, or people who have access and are advising people. in the government and in the Kremlin and all of these things. So we have had a very significant darkening of the mood and really no further interest in diplomacy at all. In this interview that Putin gave, the one that you just mentioned, he spoke about the various diplomatic initiatives that he's just received from the West. And he completely dismissed them. He said, these are of no value. They're just tricks. They're not really intended to move us forward to a proper negotiated resolution. And he also said for the first time that there was no actual deal or agreement reached with the Americans in Anchorage. And of course, the significance of that is that if there was no deal reached in Anchorage, then that means that whatever the Russians agreed to in Anchorage in order to get that agreement no longer applies anymore. They're no longer bound by it anymore. They can walk away from whatever concessions they made because ultimately the Anchorage process failed. So very, very strong darkening of the mood. And I think it's reflected right across Russian society.
Speaker 1: Well, usually, I guess the discussion would be, though, how to restore the deterrent and also how to win the war, because Russia can go two ways. That is, it can either knock out Ukraine and then the Europeans will be without their proxy. But of course, the Europeans could still to war with russia once they've been exhausted a bit uh alternatively russia goes after the puppet master that is after the nato countries but it makes kind of sense for focusing on ukraine but on the other hand is it possible though i mean it looks as if you know defeating ukraine it wouldn't end the permanent war i'm saying this because it's hard to imagine nato giving up on on this powerful proxy building keep in mind that there's been a lot of possibilities for peace. Initially, the European countries agreed to this unity government back in 2014 when Yanukovych was destabilized. They ignored it and toppled them instead. Then we had Minsk. The Europeans and Americans had a chance to make peace. They didn't want to make peace. They continued to develop Ukraine as a proxy. In 21, we had people like Kurt Volker, who was the former NATO ambassador of the United States, who was making the point, you know, We don't need a peace deal with the Russians. Let's just, you know, what was this phrase? A conflict is success, something along those lines. Yeah, so essentially arguing that, you know, peace is not in our interest. And of course, 2022, when the Russians invaded, they immediately contacted the Ukrainians to set up Istanbul talks. And again, in retrospect, why would NATO... except for the Istanbul agreement to go through. They spent all these years building a powerful Ukrainian proxy army of hundreds of thousands of men. Why wouldn't you use this to weaken a strategic rival? Peace doesn't really make sense. If there's peace, then this army is of no use anymore. Why not bleed the Russians a bit, as the Turks said, as Naftali Bennett said, as the former head of the German army said? I mean, this was kind of the consensus. And I'm saying that even if Ukraine loses all of Donbas, all of Novorossiya, even Kiev, why would the Europeans want to end this? Why not keep the Western Ukrainian resistance alive? Because as long as they hold the part of Ukraine and control the population, they can continue raining missiles into Russia, trying to knock it out, weaken it. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like Russia and Ukraine necessarily get to decide when this war is over. I mean, NATO... largely started this war in 2014. And it looks as if they could decide how this ends. So how can Russia avoid a permanent war?
Speaker 0: I think you have summed up the situation very well. And I think you've also touched on the continuing internal debate that is taking place in Moscow. Now, I think that the debate is no longer about can we negotiate a resolution to this crisis? It is whether we're going to achieve deterrence with the West through victory in Ukraine. In other words, whether merely achieving victory in Ukraine by itself will be sufficient to restore deterrence in relations with the West, I think that is still Putin's position. Or, alternatively, a more hard-line position, which is starting to emerge, which is that, in fact, in order to restore deterrence, you have to go further. You have to go beyond victory with Ukraine. You have to start doing other things which will, going back to Professor Karaganov's words, finally restore fear in the West, because only through that means can you restore deterrence. And I think that debate is going on. And I think there is something else which takes us directly to the point that you've just been making, which is that it's probably going to change the ideas the Russians have about what victory in Ukraine means. They're very, very close now to achieving their initial objectives, at least their initial territorial objectives. I don't think anybody who retains any connection with reality any longer doubts that they're going to capture Donbass very soon. I mean, it's probably going to take a few months, but we are closing in on that Probably the same is going to eventually prove to be true about the other four regions, Zaporozhye, Kherson and wherever. The Ukrainian military looking increasingly exhausted, the Russian advance looking increasingly irresistible. But the question then becomes, what do you do when those objectives are achieved? Do you try and return to negotiations? trying to see whether there's some kind of deal that can be done at that point, trying to get the West and Ukraine to accept these realities and to agree to Ukrainian neutral status. I think there are increasing doubts in Moscow that that is possible, in which case the Russians, very much, I think, against their initial wishes, might decide that they have no real option but to push further west. And I think that is something that in the West we have not understood. I think there's an assumption that because the Russians have taken so long to get to this point, that they're not going to have any appetite to go beyond it, and they're not going to have the means to go beyond it. I think they may not have the appetite, but I think they may feel that they have the obligation, to go beyond it. And I think that by the time Donbass, Zavarozhye, Kherson and all the rest are captured, the Ukrainian military itself, Ukrainian economy will be so shattered that I don't think the rest of the war is going to take as long as some people assume. But in effect, by taking this extreme line I mean, what we are very close to doing is sealing the fate of Ukraine, dooming it, dooming its future as an independent state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep seeing that argument as well. How can Russia possibly take Odessa? Look how far it took them to get Donbass. But as you said, this is a war of attrition. if you look at the decline in manpower the weaponry the equipment the economy uh the social stability political stability I mean all of this this um yeah the fortifications you can measure it along many lines but all of them indicate that it's heading towards an end the one that ends comes it's not as if they can Ukrainians can hold the line as they did in the former four years so yeah I think this is uh some of that um sweet talk people tell themselves in the West to hold on to this Ukraine is winning narrative, which is apparently back in fashion. But I did see the president of Finland or Stubb come out and say that our conditions are still that the Ukraine should be part of NATO, which is a very European way of pretending to be for Ukraine, but really saying there will be no peace. is what you're saying if you demand NATO. You did say though that the war escalation will take other forms. We've also seen what you've talked about, the rise of more dirty war as well. The Russians are now playing a greater role. How is this developing?
Speaker 0: Well, I have to say dirty war is something that makes me very, very uncomfortable. But for the first time that I can remember, in this conflict, the Russians have admitted carrying out the assassination in some place and in some way that they don't tell us about, the assassination of a Ukrainian military intelligence official. So if the Russians have done this once, there's no reason why they won't do it again. And if we get into this situation of tit-for-tat killings of intelligence officials, there's every reason to fear that it will start to expand beyond intelligence officials, that it will start to extend to people within the political system as well. Now, the Ukrainians have never shown any hesitation or inhibitions here. Up to now, the Russians have, I suspect, because the Russians, in part, have always hoped that ultimately they will achieve a negotiated end to the conflict and they need to keep the people that they're going to negotiate with in the end alive. But of course, if that calculus changes, then of course, we could start to see that also shift. And of course, the Russians have far more resources and far more capabilities of this area than the Ukrainians do. And nobody should be in any doubt about that. And of course, if we start to see a dirty war like that, a war of assassinations, then and extrajudicial killings begin, then there's no reason to think it will be limited to Ukraine. It could start to spread to Europe where there will be a lot of these people probably there and a lot of this will start to play out and in all sorts of other places as well. And this is going to be very, very uncomfortable for us indeed. I can remember how Europe became the location of a dirty war in the 1970s between the Palestinians and the Israelis with bomb attacks and assassinations and killings and all of that going on. And it was very uncomfortable for the European governments that had to see all of this play out on their own territory. I mean, there was a massive disruption, as I'm sure you remember, of the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, just for example. But the players who would be playing this game are going to be measurably more powerful. We're talking not about Israelis and Palestinians. We're talking about Russians and a superpower, or at least a sort of great power on the one side. And ultimately, if the Americans get involved too, well, you can imagine how deeply unpleasant and dangerous that can easily become.
Speaker 1: Of course there's different technologies in play as well with drones. I mean I keep wondering as well when you see all this drone warfare how this is going to change terrorism for example. Drone terrorism is going to be so easy to do any attacks from now on. It's kind of frightening. Well like the killing that is the intelligence leader in Ukraine Yeah, I was noticing that you haven't seen this much from the Russian side. But on the development of the war though, I mean, you and I are both Europeans. We know that it's obligatory in Europe to pretend that Ukraine is winning. This is what we have to chant now to show our loyalty to our countries. If you recognize realities on the ground that in fact they're not winning, then that's considered to be a pro-Russian talking point. One is smeared for it as well. But nonetheless, when we look at the casualty rates, even, you know, it can be measured to some extent by the exchange of dead soldiers. We tend to see that exchanges are about, you know, for every thousand Ukrainian, there's about 50 Russian. So something's not right there. And also one could argue that, yes, the It's the people who are advancing on the battlefield, which are picking up the bodies. But again, we're told that the Ukrainians are retaking their territory. So it's very hard. I mean, I try to ask people this question, how does this make sense? But there's some cognitive dissonance and usually people get angry and reassures me that that's a Russian talking point, even though no one's disputing the numbers or this fact. So it's very difficult to have any sensible talks or conversations anymore in Europe, but But I guess my question is then, how do you see the front lines moving in this war of attrition?
Speaker 0: Well, first of all, can I just say your point, your frustration that you pointed out these logical inconsistencies, these factual contradictions to people and all that you get is sullen anger. And sometimes more than just sullen anger becomes open anger. You're absolutely right. People simply do not want to address these realities. And if we're talking about the situation on the front lines, well, anybody who observes what is happening objectively can see it for themselves. The Russians are now at the gates of Kramatorsk. Slavyansk, all of these places, the last defense line left in Donbas. Beyond that, apparently, it's mainly open step until you get to one or two, just a few big towns, and then the Dnieper itself. In Zaporozhye region, where there's been a lot of movement on the front lines, but nonetheless, the movement is clearly in favor of the Russians. and in northeastern Ukraine, in Sumy, Kharkiv. Well, indeed, as you also pointed out, these two cities, Sumy and Kharkiv, are now also threatened too. So, this narrative that Ukraine is winning, that the Russians are losing, that the Ukrainians are getting the initiative, that the drones are somehow the miracle weapon that's going to restore the initiative to the Ukrainians. But all we need to do is to go on doing the same thing again and again and again. And this time it's going to turn out right because there's been a 0.5% uptick in the inflation rate or because growth has been slightly lost, lot less strong in the Russian economy than it has been. These narratives... that we hear, these illusions that we hear all the time. I mean, they are simply wishful thinking, rationalizations put out there by people who simply want to continue the war. And what they are doing is that they are merely ensuring that the defeat when it comes will be more complete and more disastrous for us than it might otherwise be. And of course, going back to your point about Ukraine, more disastrous first and foremost for Ukraine, which is the nation which we are supposed to be defending.
Speaker 1: No, it's quite incredible, which is why this concept of a pro-Ukraine or standing with Ukraine or supporting Ukraine, they never really unpack it. They just come up with this concept. Everyone has empathy for what Ukraine has gone through. But somehow if they monopolize on the content of what this concept should entail, that is, you know, if you want to be pro-Ukrainian, for example, you have to look the other way when there's this brutal recruitment of the men, because this can undermine support for the war. You also have to support the boycott of diplomacy, ignore that most Ukrainians actually want immediate negotiations. That's also pro-Ukrainian because otherwise, yeah, you undermined support for the war. So it's very strange narratives they built up. But while there's a lot of fake news and narrative developments about Ukraine winning, it has to be said that NATO and Ukraine are causing some real pain for Russia then, especially in Crimea. That is, there's a fuel crisis, there's an attack on infrastructure. This is becoming a huge problem. Of course, whenever the European leaders and media celebrate these attacks, they don't seem to appreciate that this is making it very difficult for Russia to restrain itself, essentially forcing its hand to do something extreme. I mean, how are you seeing this component of the war? Because I always make the point, we should be, you know, how much success do you want against Russia? a nuclear superpower, the largest nuclear power in the world, was fearing for its existence by this perpetual goal of humiliating Putin. I mean, no one really discusses the logic of this, whether or not this is something that either Ukraine or NATO would benefit from.
Speaker 0: I think, again, you're making absolutely the correct point. Firstly, this is a problem. I mean, Crimea in particular is a very big problem for the Russians, but it is a problem that they will overcome. I say that based on what has consistently happened in the war up till now. We've created problems for the Russians in all sorts of areas, in the situation within their domestic economy, on the battlefields with the Ukrainian offensives of 2022, 2023, with all sorts of other things that we've done at various times. And the one iron lesson that we get from this war is that the Russians have the resources and the ingenuity always, and the will, always to come up with solutions. So this is a problem for them in Crimea. but they will overcome it in some way. The question is not whether we are inflicting pain on the Russians. Obviously we are. Is it enough to get the Russians to give up on the war and to give up on their objectives? Or is it going to do something completely different which is make the Russians more angry and more determined to see the war through and to achieve an outcome in that war which might be less beneficial or good for us. I would say emphatically the second. We could hurt the Russians, but we can't knock them out. Again, that's another iron lesson that we've learnt from the war. So what we are doing by these attacks is that, yes, we're making life more difficult for them, but ultimately we're going to make life worse for us and a lot worse for the Ukrainians. Now, there is a further point which you did make, and it is an important one, which is that, of course, constantly poking a nuclear power is never a good idea. Once upon a time, during the Cold War, this was fully understood. We both lived through the Cold War. I remember it vividly. I never remember a single situation where these kind of attacks were carried out by one of the two superpowers against the other. Now we do this all the time. And we've got into this situation where we think we can hit the Russian superpower and continuously and never provoke a response. And what, again, I think we are overlooking is that it is taking all of President Putin's determination and authority to maintain that sense of discipline and restraint on the Russian side. And that is not something that we can afford to assume. will remain the case forever.
Speaker 1: I'm firmly convinced that if it had been for Putin, if there had been some other leader representing Russia, it would most likely be much, much more hawkish and Europe would be a much more dangerous place today. So it confuses me a bit why there's such an eagerness to try to humiliate Putin, to push him aside whenever there's an argument that Putin is losing support. Uh, still, you know, enjoy support to know other European leaders enjoy, but nonetheless, what exactly do they think is going to replace Putin? Uh, the idea that, uh, well, his slow war that's going to be somehow replaced with capitulation or is his slow war going to be replaced with a massive retaliation also against European countries betting on the, well, on the United States not coming to the raid. I just find it to be foolish, but. It is a question about Europe. How do you make sense of the leaders these days? Because if you go back a few years and you would have told me like a decade ago that, you know, we're going to be launching missiles directly into Russia from our territory, our weapons. We're going to have our war planners openly bragging about our participation. We're going to have our contractors, intelligence officers. We're going to have politicians bragging about how we're going to bring the war to Russia. You're going to have people like... president of Finland telling people how the only way to win the war is to kill more Russians. I mean, this is so far beyond anything. Forget about the Cold War. Even a decade ago, any of this would have been unthinkable. Five years ago, this was unthinkable. Now you have the Germans wanting to take the lead in the campaign against Russia. They want to be the largest military power in Europe. I mean, this happened fairly quickly. And They only talk about war. Again, that has to be made the point. Europeans are still not talking to Russia. I mean, how do you explain what is happening in Europe? Because, you know, I don't recognize my own society anymore. This is a very, it's become a very ugly place, I would say.
Speaker 0: I'd say exactly the same about Britain. It's become very, very difficult to talk about these things. And one of the reasons why we have this constant pattern of escalation is because the internal debates that ought to be taking place never are, because all debate is closed down. If anybody comes forward and says, well, look, is this really a good idea to be conducting missile strikes into the territory of the world's most powerful nuclear power? Well, again, what you find is that the moment you say that, you're told that there's a Putin talking point, you're accused of defeatism, or worse still, of being actually on the Russian side, the momentum, the advantage, the rhetorical advantage is always with those who advocate escalation. The political advantage is always with those who advocate escalation. And this is a very, very dangerous situation. And it's one that we have created amongst ourselves. Because never mind that we can't talk to the Russians, we can't talk intelligently any longer amongst ourselves. And that's the real problem.
Speaker 1: No, that's one of the biggest shock for me. I always assumed that if we come into a conflict like this, At least we're going to have a rational discussion. We're going to make rational choices. But I think this, again, I think there's a bit of the flaw as well about how the post-Cold War era was going to end. That is the era of collective hegemony or liberal hegemony. I remember Charles Krauthammer wrote this article in 1990, I think, about the unipolar moment. And the argument was, well, we'll dominate the world as long as the distribution of power permits it. Once the distribution of power shifts, we have a multipolar world, then we'll embrace it. I don't think people recognize we would have this, a whole 30 year long rise of a new political class. You're completely immersed in this ideology that our dominance is the only source of peace and we'd rather have war than accept a new distribution of power. The rationality is something that took me a bit by surprise, how quickly this went away.
Speaker 0: I think you're absolutely correct about this. By the way, you've charted a lot of this in your various books that you've written, just to say, and which would be very useful reading for many people. I remember reading one of your books in which you showed the extraordinary arrogance with which Western officials, European as well as American, dealt with their Russian on opposite numbers, consistently refusing to accept that the Russians had any legitimate security concerns at all, and applying what you described as salami tactics against the Russians all the time. So yes, we have got ourselves, we've worked ourselves into that situation, And it's very difficult to see how short of a major crisis and a real defeat in some form we're ever going to be shaken out of it. The one thing I would say is that despite the fact that opposition to war in Europe is not very well organized and not very articulate, it is there nonetheless. Germany is finding it all but impossible to find people willing to join the army to fight Russia at the moment. I read that something like 200,000 people, young people, were contacted, invited to enlist, and only 500 said they would. You get that. In Britain, I hear the same story, that in fact recruitment rates for the army are actually down rather than up. So there is no huge enthusiasm amongst the European populations for this great, you know, duel and war with the Russians. But of course, the political leadership, they've closed down dialogue and debate with each other. And you were talking previously about trying to explain to people the factual inconsistencies and illogicalities that they're coming up with. One of the reasons those survive, people are able to talk about the Russians being enormously powerful and threatening, even as they're supposed to be losing the war in Ukraine, both at the same time. It's precisely because we don't have debates in the West, in Europe at least, anymore. In the United States, it's a little different. I think the Americans do have some greater sense that this isn't really rational anymore. And I do get the sense that in spite of the fact that Trump has probably, to some extent, pivoted somewhat back to Ukraine recently. If you read the American media, you do get the feeling that some of the passion has gone out of this war as far as the Americans are concerned. They've seen that it was attempted, that it has failed. They're now thinking about other things.
Speaker 1: Let me ask the last question there. Because it's often assumed by many that the war could come to an end once all European leaders have been championing this war. begin to be voted out. And indeed, that's one problem we have now in Europe. Well, not a problem, it could be a solution. That is the severe unpopularity, unpopular governments we have across the continent. You know, I always make the point, at least the British, the French and the Germans, they have a big opposition. In Scandinavia, everyone's more or less just marching in line after the tune of the government. So But in those big three European countries of the UK, France and Germany, the leaders are extremely unpopular and there's a huge opposition growing. But again, it's all premised on the idea that I guess it matters who sits on the throne. Because, well, from your case, sitting in Britain, Starmor has now resigned. But does it matter, I guess, who replaces him by now? Yeah.
Speaker 0: No, I mean, at the moment, there's no sign at all that we're going to see any change in policy from the new prime minister, who's almost certainly going to be Andy Burnham. I mean, people talk about the fact that we've had this constant rotation of prime ministers. They talk about the fact that we've had six prime ministers in the last 10 years. They hardly ever say that four of those prime ministers have been forced to leave since 2022. In other words, that the rotation has actually accelerated because of the conflict in Ukraine and the enormous economic costs that Britain is experiencing as a result of this conflict. Nobody talks about that. And the result is that we just have one prime minister replacing another prime minister carrying on exactly the same policy with respect to the situation with Russia. And the result is that the economic situation continues to deteriorate. The prime minister becomes unpopular. But all that happens is that the political system coughs up someone else who does exactly the same. And the rotation just continues and gets worse. And I'm afraid this is the trouble right across Europe. Yes. there is opposition. There's parties in Germany, in Italy, in France, which consistently show that they want to change course. But the problem they always run into is that not only is the political establishment very wedded to its existing policy, but because it regards anybody who challenges that policy as being pro-Russian and ultimately treasonous, their inhibitions about doing things to stop those who advocate alternatives seem to fall away. So we've had elections cancelled in Romania, extraordinary things happened in elections in Moldova, And in Armenia, we've had very strange things happen in Austria too. Sooner or later, they get to start happening in the big European states also. I know this is something that people find very difficult to accept, but the iron lesson is if you export these kinds of practices, eventually they start to get imported back And we're going to see them in Europe too, in the big countries in Europe too. I personally am less confident that we're going to see a big change from these opposition parties, certainly in the relatively short term. And we are in the midst of a crisis that is playing out in the relatively short term. In five years, in 10 years, it may be different, but what we do, what we need is a change now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I often look towards the American example of how Trump, you know, run on the ticket against the establishment, no more wars, you know, I'm going to put an end to the war in Ukraine. And here it is. I mean, it doesn't seem like it matters who sat in the White House. Much of the policies remain.
Speaker 0: Can I just finish? Very last point. Again, I have to be very careful what I say now because I'm talking about something that I was told in confidence by somebody who has worked at the very, very highest level of the British government. But one of these four prime ministers, I'm not going to say which one, it's not actually that difficult to guess, who lost his position over the course of the four years since 2022, came into government, apparently became prime minister, saying that this policy with Russia is unsustainable and needs to be changed. And apparently, very quickly, this person discovered that if they really did try to change the policy, they would not be prime minister for very long.
Speaker 1: In Italy, they call it, they refer to Melunias, you know, before and after election, how everyone has to fall in line essentially.
Speaker 0: Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyways, thank you so much. And it's always a great pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: U.S. & Iran Resume War; Israel Attempts to Instigate Civil War in Lebanon https://youtu.be/HowLQM4LUGw https://t.co/ENWataEa0n
Video Transcript AI Summary
Ambassador Chas Freeman says the “memorandum of understanding” should be called a “memorandum of misunderstanding,” because its terms are being violated and renegotiated. He argues the MOU’s premises—that the war in Lebanon ends, Israelis withdraw, and a ceasefire holds—have not been met, and that key elements regarding Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz have also been undermined. Freeman claims the MOU allows ships to exit the Strait under arrangements managed by Iran and that Iran would not charge tolls for 60 days until August 21, but he says U.S. actions and Israeli actions have violated the agreement’s basis.
He describes an escalating tit-for-tat cycle: Iran attacks ships associated with a claim that the U.S. and British Navy can control the Strait, leading to U.S. retaliatory strikes (first described as symbolic, later more savage), followed by Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. He says censorship and Western press behavior have kept the facts obscure. He concludes the MOU’s “survival is in doubt” and frames Israel as successfully defying the American agreement with Iran. Freeman also criticizes the Lebanese government’s role, saying it has acknowledged Israel’s right to be in southern Lebanon, agreed Israel will withdraw gradually according to Israel’s judgments, and agreed Israel and the Lebanese army will cooperate in smashing Hezbollah—described as effective resistance to Israel. He claims this arrangement is intended to produce ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon and likens the government’s approach to “Marshal Pétain.”
Freeman expands beyond Iran and Lebanon, asserting that chaos is returning across West Asia, including Israeli bombing in Syria and continued “genocidal squeeze” in Gaza, while he describes pogroms, expulsions, and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. He argues Israel’s expansionism and lack of agreed borders create further disorder.
On why attacks between the U.S. and Iran resumed, Freeman says wars do not always end and that West Asia has long been characterized by intermittent warfare forming “one great war.” He portrays the conflict as attrition and a competition of stamina, arguing the U.S. cannot sustain agreement-like outcomes and lacks a strategy for war termination. He cites Afghanistan as an example of a “forever war” without clear objectives, benchmarks, or an explainable rationale beyond initial actions. He then argues U.S.- and Israeli-structured forces are designed for short, victorious wars rather than wars of attrition, while noting that Russia and Iran appear able to sustain relevant weapon production.
Freeman says war dynamics are being shaped by changing supply chains and drone warfare, including Ukraine’s use of Chinese components and Iranian components for Russian forces, and potential North Korean involvement. He says Ukraine is becoming skilled in drone warfare and forming support relationships with Gulf countries, substituting for reliance on American technology that he claims struggles against hypersonic missiles and drones. He also states that Marco Rubio’s Gulf visit to “redefine the MOU” does not stop Gulf-Arab and Iranian discussions about the post-American blockade future of the Strait of Hormuz, which he says will remain under Iranian control.
He also ties these conflicts to domestic pressures and oil supply: he says the U.S. is running out of stored oil and the world is running out of stored oil, and that oil price increases and crop production collapse due to fertilizer shortages are expected to follow quickly, including before U.S. midterms. He adds that the Trump administration is under pressure from multiple directions including Iran, Gulf Arab states, Israel, Russians and Ukrainians, donors, and his base.
Turning to Israel and Syria/Turkey, Freeman says Israel’s new enemy appears to be Turkey after Iran’s reduced role in Syria. He describes shifting conditions across Syria, Kurdish dynamics, and the strategic geography of Syria as a transit point, including overland oil export routes that he links to Iraq’s need to replace lost Strait of Hormuz revenue. He argues Israel intends to keep occupied Syrian and Lebanese territory and that a Lebanon arrangement aims to trigger civil war by making the Lebanese government illegitimate in the eyes of much of the population, aligning Lebanon against Hezbollah and Shia interests. He also claims a break—an “open break”—between the United States and Israel has emerged regarding Lebanon, with the U.S. saying Israel no longer has a “blank check” and Israel disputing that the U.S. will control actions.
Freeman argues Washington lacks a policy process and sets priorities, with everything driven by the president’s instincts rather than considered judgment, creating unpredictability. He says there is no strategic pathway to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire” and that forever wars reinforce failure through escalation and doing more of the same. He also claims the exclusive use of military means is counterproductive, reiterates the nuclear aspect of the MOU’s 60-day non-detonation arrangement, and says Ukraine’s deep strikes validate Russian arguments about threats to the Russian state.
He concludes pessimistically that he sees no “ray of hope” for resolution and says forever-war escalation clauses are already active.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We have the great privilege of being joined today by Ambassador Chas Freeman, one of the great American diplomats who also served as the US Assistant Secretary of Defense. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Great to see you, Glenn.
Speaker 0: Likewise. We know that, well, the US and Iran are now striking each other again. Trump is yet again threatening to eliminate Iran. We see that Israel and the government in Lebanon signed an agreement, which at least the Israeli media are celebrating as essentially setting the stage for a civil war within Lebanon. This happened all very quickly after the memorandum of understanding who we were told was going to put an end to this war and bring peace to the Middle East. So what is it that has gone wrong and where do you see this heading?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it should be called the memorandum of misunderstanding because it's very clear that there is no understanding underneath it. And Donald Trump either has forgotten what's in it, I mean, he did sign it, or he didn't understand it to begin with, or he's simply doing what he usually does, which is renegotiating what he has apparently agreed to. So we see all sorts of new terms being added by the United States And the United States basically continuing to contest the outcome of the war which is the establishment of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. The Memorandum of Understanding says that ships will be permitted out of the Strait under arrangements managed by Iran. And Iran will not charge tolls for 60 days until August 21. That's in the agreement along with right up front this agreement depends on the elimination of the war in Lebanon and the withdrawal of the Israelis and a ceasefire. So every single element of this, the basic premises on which the Iranians were to open the Strait has been violated by either Israel or the United States or both. So what we've seen in the Strait of Hormuz is an effort to pretend that the United States and the British Navy can control it by bringing tankers out without regard to the procedures that Iran has established, which the MOU appeared to acknowledge. And Iran has naturally then enforced its control of the Strait by attacking these ships. That has led to retaliatory strikes by the United States first on a basically symbolic level, and then more recently, a more savage level. And that, in turn, has led to Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, which appear to have been quite serious in the amount of damage they've done, although, as usual, censorship and the servile nature of the Western press have kept the facts obscure. So, we're basically seeing an illustration that this so-called memorandum of understanding, which is basically an agreement to seek agreement, not itself an agreement of any sort, is not in effect. Tit-for-tat retaliatory process is in progress. The survival of the MOU is in doubt. Israel has successfully defied the American agreement with Iran. The Lebanese government, this Lebanese government, which has now acknowledged Israel's right to be in southern Lebanon and agreed that Israel will withdraw in accordance with Israel's own judgments on a gradual basis, and that Israel and Lebanese government, Lebanese army will cooperate in smashing Hezbollah, which is the only effective resistance to Israel. Now this government is going to be remembered with all the affection that the French bestow on Marshal Pétain. So I think what we're seeing is, I'm not sure you can call it unraveling because I'm not sure there was anything knitted together in the beginning. But certainly what is happening is a return to chaos rather than order in the whole of West Asia. I haven't even talked about Syria, which Israel has also been bombing. And Gaza, of course, continues to be subjected to genocidal squeeze, and the West Bank is in the grip of pogroms and expulsion orders, ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is going on in southern Lebanon. Basically, the Lebanese government, which is hostile to the Shia population majority in Lebanon, is cooperating in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon. We're seeing everywhere the denouement of 78 years of Israeli dedication to the Greater Israel Project and expansionism to borders beyond whatever de facto borders exist. Israel has no agreed borders or frontiers. So this is quite a mess. And I should add that the reason that Donald Trump fantasizes about the MOU containing provisions, which it doesn't, or tries to have them, is served by Secretary of State Rubio, who basically went to the Gulf to affirm Donald Trump's fantasies about the Strait of Hormuz with a mostly cooperative GCC, not entirely, mainly with Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE, although I gather that there were representatives of Saudi Arabia and Qatar present. for the meetings, I don't think there was an Omani presence. Basically, this is a classic effort to renegotiate what has been established on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, and it's not working. Iran is not going to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. There's a The legal department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry famously declared that international law advances through violations, that violations of law establish new bases of legal norms. And Iran has established such a norm potentially in the Strait of Hormuz. And this is not a good thing because it means that other straits, whether they are the Bab al-Mandeb Lombok, the Strait of Malacca, Sundan, the Strait of Taiwan, and so forth and so on, all potentially face control by littoral states who will then charge administrative fees for transit. So the freedom of navigation, which is enshrined, by the way, in early Islamic law, as well as by Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch legal scholar who wrote Mari Librum, The Freedom of the Seas, when it's 1619 or so. You know, all this is collapsing. So, quite a mess.
Speaker 0: Yeah, now that's a good way of defining it. But I think most people realize that the MOU wouldn't be necessarily followed. That is, Trump expressed his need for to get the oil out. And he agreed to terms which seemed very unlikely he was going to fulfill. Indeed, he was contesting these points even as it was put down on paper. And so I guess ignoring the rest was predictable. But so how do you understand then the resumption of attacks on each other? Would this be the United States trying to as you said, renegotiate, that is to punish Iran if it tries to, well, follow the parts of the MOU which it wants and hope that they won't retaliate? Or do you just think this is now, they're not going to be able to put an end to the war? Is there a path back to the ceasefire? It's just very hard to get in this.
Speaker 1: You know, we have an assumption that all wars must end, but sometimes they don't. Basically, if you look at West Asia, Israel has been at war with everybody on an intermittent basis, but still, it's all one great war, really, since before its establishment. The earliest Zionist settlers had a plan for ethnic cleansing, which they carried out in 1947-48. and which they've repeated on other occasions, including after the 1967 war when some 300,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes. So this area has basically been at war, I would say, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the European carve-up of it in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. There's been basically conflict, and the only question is, What is the intensity of the conflict? So we may be going back to that situation that is more of the same, that in fact there will be no agreement to end the war. This is a contest of stamina, a war of attrition. How long can the United States continue to blockade the blockade? And wear and tear on ships and personnel is very considerable, the wear and tear. on the American global reputation is very considerable. Basically, what unites everyone who is at war with the United States, whether it's Hamas, Hezbollah, the Russians, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, the Cubans, what unites them all is the conclusion that the United States is agreement incapable. It is not able to do a deal. Well, deal is the wrong word because a deal is inherently transactional. And as you know, in diplomacy, in foreign relations, every negotiation is not just negotiating a transaction, but negotiating a relationship. The United States apparently doesn't understand that and therefore imagines that It can approach foreign relations in the same way that real estate developers approach property owners or buildings in New York. And so if you want to redevelop a property, you evict the tenants.
Speaker 0: You know, that's ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1: In effect, you want to do a deal, you read the art of the deal written by Donald Trump, not the one that Andy Borowitz has attributed to Mujtaba Khanane, I don't know if you saw that, but Andy Borowitz, who is a comic genius in the United States, happens to also live in New Hampshire, although I've never met him, said that, tongue in cheek, that Mujtaba Khanane had won a major literary prize for a new work called The Art of the Deal, the main premise of which was that in order to win in a negotiation, You must always negotiate with a moron. And maybe that is exactly what is happening. Maybe it's no more profound than that. Because there is no constancy. The American word doesn't count for anything. The signature of Donald Trump, ornate as it is, with a Sharpie pen, heavy duty ink, might as well be invisible ink. So this is, for me as an American, I find this deeply disturbing. And we have succeeded with the Israelis in trashing international law, in destroying the basic trust in our diplomacy that is essential to advance our interests. We have destabilized situations everywhere. And in the middle of this, Donald Trump having been frustrated in his pursuit of a notable victory in West Asia, seems to be pivoting back to Ukraine. And I think that issue is becoming very, very dangerous with European countries now deprived of American supplies of weaponry, developing their own means of assisting Ukraine to conduct long-range strikes into Russia. on the assumption, which I think is going to be proven wrong, that they have immunity from retaliation. I think particularly the British have been boasting about their development of new weaponry for Ukraine that does not have American components and therefore is independent of Donald Trump in the United States, but will enable Ukraine to strike again deeper into Russia. I think they're going to have a mafia moment You know, nice factory you have here. Too bad if something happened to it. I suspect sabotage is the first step. I don't think we'll see a Russian missile strike on that factory. But who knows? I think at this point, NATO is in sufficient disarray that Article 5 is not a very credible deterrent. So I'm very concerned about the dynamic that has been set up. In the meantime, the Europeans continue to debate Actually, they are beginning to discuss, that's positive, the idea of actually talking to Russia. Well, I mean, obviously talking to Russia, according to some Europeans, is a sellout. You shouldn't do that. Why should you talk to the devil? Well, the answer is that if you don't talk to the devil, the devil may do devilish things to you. And you have no influence whatsoever over what the devil does. So, we're seeing an escalation and counter escalation cycle reach a higher level in the case of Ukraine. And that is very dangerous.
Speaker 0: I also thought, well, it's becoming impossible for Russia now not to respond. And I always thought that the retaliation would either come against the Baltic states or Germany. The UK obviously is on top of that list as well. And if you look at last year, the attacks on Russia's nuclear deterrent, the FSB, well, they confirmed that the MI6 had been involved in it. So it wouldn't be impossible for Russia to do something like this with plausible deniability, something similar, drones within the UK, which would strike critical infrastructure, military targets, but most likely, production facilities, the mafia method. But overall, though, the comparison between Russia and Iran is that they're both being set up by the West now for what seems to be a forever war. That is, this low intensity, well, not so low in Russia, but they want to lower it to the extent where time is on NATO's side, that is, the ability to gradually degrade, not just Russia, but also the Iranian economy. That is, in any war or war of attrition, you measure how much pain each side is taking. But here I'm thinking, how much is Iran willing to cede this kind of control to the United States? Because I think they know what they want to do. Indeed, the hawks in Tehran, the reason why they opposed this memorandum of understanding was because they quite sensibly, I would say, predicted that it wouldn't be implemented on the US side. And indeed, you don't really need a crystal ball or phone call to Nostradamus if you're still around. But Trump was already contesting the idea that there would be any money transferred to Iran, even as the memorandum was being signed. So why would they trust this?
Speaker 1: Well, there is no trust in any of these dynamics. Let me make a few comments, if I may. First, I don't think forever wars are a strategy. I think they are an inadvertent result of the lack of strategy. That is, there are no clear objectives. Those objectives that are stated are not feasible. They are fantasy objectives. The objectives are in... contained in the kaleidoscope, which shifts with every moment that it turns. So there's no priority set in them. Therefore, the goalposts are moved during the war. You can always find an excuse for continuing the war. There's no war termination strategy because there are no clear objectives and no benchmarks for measuring progress.
Speaker 0: And so you've got a forever war and it goes on and on and on and it doesn't end.
Speaker 1: And so you have the classic recent example. It's, of course, Afghanistan, where no one could ever explain why we were there after the initial punitive raid on the Taliban as the hosts of Al-Qaeda. So forget, you know, we've all forgotten that. We went to war for women's education or something. No, it wasn't clear. A noble cause, no doubt, whatever it was. But it went on for two decades and produced nothing except the return of the Taliban to control in Afghanistan. So this is a forever war. I mean, I think it requires a definition, and I think I've just provided one. And it is indeed what it seems to be happening with both Ukraine and Iran, which brings me to my second point. The United States Armed Forces and those of Israel, and perhaps NATO as well, meaning the combination of European forces with American forces, these armed forces are all structured for short, victorious wars, not for wars of attrition. And we've seen the consequences of the debilitation of the military industrial base everywhere, except Russia and Iran, which seem to have figured out how to sustain production of relevant weaponry. And the war, of course, has produced some interesting new twists. As the global order, the world order falls into disarray, we see things like Ukraine, which has developed with Chinese components, an extremely effective drone production industry. They get their components from the Chinese, just like the Russians. Russians also get the Iranian components. Maybe North Korean now as well, I don't know. Anyway, the Ukrainians have become masters of drone warfare, which turns out to be the sort of warfare that the day requires. And so they are now developing military relationships, support relationships with countries like Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. which means that they're becoming part of a substitution for these countries' previous reliance on American technology, which turns out to be unable to cope with hypersonic missiles and drones and the combination of the two, as shown by Iran. So that is an interesting twist here. And of course, Marco Rubio's visit to the Gulf, notwithstanding, basically in an effort to redefine the MOU, to conform to Donald Trump's fantasies about it. This does not halt the ongoing discussion between the Gulf Arabs and Iran about the post-American blockade future of the Strait of Hormuz, which is going to remain under Iranian control. There's no way to dislodge it. One other thing about forever wars is that they turn out to be pointless, and that's pretty much the case here.
Speaker 0: All of these wars are very much entangled with each other, so it's very hard to discuss one without touching on the other. I did want to switch a bit, though, to the Israeli component here. As you said before, they're also very heavily involved in Syria. And I thought this is an interesting development. That is, before Iran was a key backer of Syria, which, you know, that shaped obviously Israel's foreign policy. Now that Iran is out of Syria to a large extent, the new enemy of Israel appears to be Turkey. And the rhetoric there is also becoming increasingly aggressive towards Turkey. I think Naftali Bennett, well, he spearheaded some of the more hawkish or most hawkish rhetoric. How do you see this developing? Because again, that's a different dynamic now. At least with Iran, the US and Israel both consider Iran to be one of their main enemies. But now switching, Israel is switching their main enemy to Turkey. Now you have a NATO state. It complicates things a bit.
Speaker 1: Quite a bit. Well, Syria is a country in multiple transitions. Under al-Sharaa, the former al-Jilani, and who's now the self-declared leader of Syria, He is accommodating the Turkish demand that Syrian Kurds be integrated into a national army on terms that avoid a challenge to Turkey from those Kurds. Meanwhile, of course, in Turkey itself, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, has made his peace with the authorities and the Kurds are relatively quiet. The Kurds in northern Iraq are very much under Israeli influence and played a role apparently in the attack on Iran. Anyway, or at least the region did. But Syria's great asset is its geographical location. It is between the Mediterranean and the interior of West Asia, Central Asia. and not too far from the Black Sea. And it's a transit point. And historically, the Chinese Silk Road debouched at Aleppo and on the Syrian coast. And this is returning. And so a very interesting thing is you have an Iraqi government, which is very closely aligned in many ways with Iran, Shiite-dominated, which is making its peace with the with the Syrians. Why? Because the Strait of Hormuz closure deprived Iraq of 90% of its revenue, which depended 90% on oil exports, and those oil exports stopped. So now, how does Iraq export its oil? It does it overland through Syria. And eventually, there will be a pipeline of some sort that, as there was in the past, enables a much higher volume of the Iraqi oil to exit that way. Of course, Iraq is also exporting through Turkey. And in the meantime, you have, as you indicated, an ongoing rivalry, strategic geopolitical rivalry between the Israelis and the Turks playing out in Syria and not so much in Lebanon. So this is all in ferment, and nobody can tell you at the moment where it's going to end up. But it's clear that Israel intends to keep the Syrian territory that it has occupied, just as it intends to keep the Lebanese territory that it has occupied. And you mentioned quite correctly that this Israeli calculation in Lebanon is that what they've just signed with the Lebanese government government will produce a civil war because it basically makes the Lebanese government illegitimate in the eyes of a very large part of the Lebanese population. They have sold out Lebanese sovereignty to Israel. They proposed to cooperate in the ethnic cleansing of Lebanese Shia. They have agreed to join Israel and the United States in open enmity to Hezbollah. Of course, Hezbollah is part of that government. represented in the Lebanese parliament. And this is indeed a very clever Israeli formula for starting a civil war, which will, of course, aid Israel's consolidation of its position in Lebanon and bring even more misery to the Lebanese. It also, by the way, may very well cause a resumption of refugee inflows to Europe, which have dispopulated Europe in the case of Syria, but now we may see Lebanon producing much the same result. So this is all very bad incentive developments. And on top of it, we have not quite a rupture, but an open break in some respects between the United States and Israel. This is the first time that has happened since the George H.W. Bush administration pulled the plug on subsidies for Israel over the issue of its settlement activity in the West Bank. But this is much more serious. It's not clear exactly what the United States has withheld from Israel. But at least in principle, the Trump administration has declared that Israel no longer has a blank check in Lebanon, is no longer free to do whatever it wants, that the United States intends to control this. Israel, for its part, has retorted that the United States will not control this. Israel will do what it pleases. I think we have here an Israeli assumption that the basis of Zionist support in the United States will be sufficient to prevent Donald Trump from actually carrying out his threats to rein in Israel. We'll see what happens there. One other point, which is very relevant, is not only is the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, but there was supposed to be a negotiating meeting in Switzerland today between the Americans and the Iranians.
Speaker 0: I don't think that happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether you have other news, but I think the Iranians may be back to saying American violations of the MOU mean that there can be no discussions based on the MOU. And if that's the case, then we're seeing the compounding of a problem that's going to exist anyway, even if there are negotiations and the MOU is somehow, its sanctity is somehow restored. And that is the United States is running out of stored oil and the world is running out of stored oil. And there is a gap between the emergence of supplies from the Strait of Hormuz under the most optimistic assumptions and the supply of oil and refineries and throughout the world with the result that all of the dire predictions about major price increases for oil, the collapse of crop production due to fertilizer shortages and other consequences of the cutoff of the Strait of Hormuz traffic are all about to hit us pretty quickly. And this before the midterms in the United States, which Donald Trump is fixated on. He's making a big effort to use his oversight of the U.S. Postal Service to deprive American voters of the right to use mail-in ballots, having created a myth that there's some sort of major fraud associated with mail-in ballots, for which there's no evidence. But that is a matter of faith now for many of the followers of Donald Trump in the MAGA movement. So he's under huge pressure from his donors, from his base, from international society, from the Russians and Ukrainians and their interaction, and from Iran, and from the Gulf Arabs, and from Israel. And one cannot envy his position at all. On the other hand, he put himself in that position. No one else did.
Speaker 0: You would think that with all the domestic problems, the Middle East on fire, the resumption of war with Iran, that perhaps this would not be the best time for the US to deepen its involvement in the proxy war against Russia. But yeah, apparently, yeah, that's a decision also being taken. About Israel, though, and I agree with your assessment. I think what they did in Lebanon was quite clever. That's not a normative statement, but... only in terms of essentially outsourcing the destruction of Lebanon. Why put this at the shoulders of the Israeli army? Why not instigate a civil war? Indeed, part of this deal between the Lebanese government and Israel essentially meant that the Lebanese government and the soldiers then began to pull away from the south. And as the protests began to erupt in Lebanon, those soldiers, instead of protecting their own country from Israel, are used now to silence their own citizens. Again, it's not guaranteed yet, but you can see that this is one possible, if not a very likely scenario. But while this is, I guess, a victory for Israel, you also have other problems. As you said, you have the US-Israel split, which is quite significant. Israelis are still exhausted by the wars. They have their own economic problems. There's some political instability. It looks like Netanyahu might be forced out, but again, he's not really the most hawkish person in Israeli politics who would likely be replaced with someone like Naftali Bennett, which again, we might end up missing Netanyahu. So where is Israel heading here, though? I mean, What is the strategic thinking? How does it get out of this victoriously?
Speaker 1: Israel is now engaged in a multi-front war of attrition. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not stupid, he may be evil, but he is not stupid, has declared that Israel's fighting on seven or eight fronts, and he's quite correct. How does a state survive under these circumstances when it has alienated its foreign support and still has the United States as an unreliable patron, but a patron, but it has lost its support largely in Europe and is alienated from everyone in the region, various Israeli achievements, whether they are, for example, the Camp David Accords, which were actually an American diplomatic achievement forced on Israel, but they've produced a cold peace with Egypt. Egypt is now actively engaged in a cooperative military relationship with Turkey, the very same Turkey that Naftali Bennett says is the enemy. And in fact, Egypt and Turkey are involved with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in a four-party coalition, which aspires to be the core of a new security architecture in West Asia, and also to produce a military industrial base which would wean the region from its dependence on imported weaponry. Israel's weapons, two-thirds, or more come from the United States. The vaunted Israeli missile interception systems, Iron Dome, David Sling, Arrow, are all co-developed by the United States and paid for by the American taxpayer. I know because I used to authorize, David, the Iron Dome payments when I was at the Defense Department. So Israel cannot easily wean itself from its dependents. It doesn't have the weight of the four-party coalition I referred to in terms of developing an independent military industrial base. I don't think the Russians, who are an alternative source of supply, or the Chinese are going to step in and replace the United States for Israel. Europe itself is much less than the sum of the parts. Even the Germans are beginning to wobble in their support for Israel. There is widespread emigration. We don't know how much from Israel. You're in Crete at the moment, I gather, and you may hear a lot of Hebrew being spoken if you put your ear to the window. And so what is the future of this apartheid state, which has now picked a fight with absolutely everyone, not just in its region, but in the world, and which is an international pariah? not welcome in polite company anywhere. Are trends toward greater support for Israel, either within Israel or abroad? I don't think so. On the other hand, I just want to make a point going back to your very correct observation that replacing Netanyahu doesn't necessarily accomplish anything quite the opposite. 75% of Israelis support the genocide and the aggression. This makes them very different. Even in Nazi Germany, most Germans were willfully unaware or maybe genuinely unaware of what their government was doing in terms of the Holocaust and the slaughter of Slavs in the East and so on. And the Israelis are winning accomplices in this, supporters of it. And that so thoroughly discredits the Israeli state that you have to assume that eventually there will be a day of reckoning for Israel on this. And I note in that regard that the Mujtaba Khamenei, identified now as Sayyid Khamenei, meaning Khamenei a genetic descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, that he is now calling for legal warfare, you know, lawfare, if you will, on Israel and the United States for violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law. And so we're seeing, you know, we may actually see a funny thing happen, and that is the world unite around the World Court and the International Criminal Court against those who have sanctioned these bodies, threatened its judges and their families, and otherwise engaged in really despicable acts of contempt of court. So, you know, where does Israel go from here? At the moment, if you were asked to write a life insurance policy on the place, you wouldn't do it because all the indications are that it's in the process of doing itself in. Suicide is not being done in by others. It's being done in by its own malicious, sadistic actions.
Speaker 0: I'm worried about the escalation of the chaos here because I keep making the point that it's the illusion of escalation control that we can somehow manage this chaos this conflict with the Russians with the Iranians that this is we can we can keep the peace we can escalate at will and we can de-escalate if necessary I think this is what's gonna invite disaster because it's going to be proven wrong and I saw in the New York Post They cited the Iranian media linked to the IRGC. I didn't check up with the original media, but it mentioned that those Iranian media outlets were arguing that we do need a nuclear weapon now. The Americans are not going to accept any peace. All of this diplomacy.
Speaker 1: That is an obvious consequence of this war, and we've discussed it before. The United States and Israel murdered the leaders who were most opposed to weapons of mass destruction, leaving in place leaders who are in favor of them because they see their necessity, just as North Korea did in response to a maximum pressure on it. That's part of this, but I want to make a more fundamental point, agreeing with you that the prospects for pulling the chestnuts out of the fire this case are not good. And that is, there is no policy process in Washington. Washington has been the global hegemon which held everything together, which stabilized the world. Many would argue that the United States did that in highly objectionable ways, but it was astride the world like a colossus. And that colossus has now suffered a frontal lobotomy, you know? There's no brain there. There's no policy process that renders considered judgments about how to deal with all these issues. There's no setting of priorities. Everything is determined by the gut of the president, rather large gut these days, actually. And it's all very unpredictable and chaotic and destabilizing. So the prospect that wise or clever policy, even clever in the sense that the Israelis are clever in Lebanon, devious policy, that something like that will rectify the mess is not good at all. And that should be a grave concern to all of us. And I suspect that it will have a major impact in the midterm elections in the United States. But The idea that elections can curb Donald Trump's whimsies has yet to be proven. We shall see.
Speaker 0: It seems that all the conflicts we're heading into now, they're so predictable. We all learned in school how we sleepwalked into World War I, but it seems like the path is charted quite clearly. Again, those Iranian media outlets, the hawks in Iran were just saying, There is no diplomacy to be made with the West. They haven't made the argument, been able to transition from the argument to the policy, but you obviously see that they have wind in their sail. They're the one being proven right. I also get the impression the same from Russia, where you see some Kremlin hawks arguing that, why are we even talking to the Americans? This is pointless. Why are we talking? We're trying to talk to the Europeans. They're essentially saying, let's kill Zelensky, let's carpet bomb the government district of Kyiv, let's use a tactical nuclear weapon or two against some of the Europeans. I mean, again, they haven't won it over yet. They haven't won Putin over in terms of turning this into action. But I'm not sure anymore what Putin's restraint is. I think that this is, is it a concern or are they building up an stockpile to, you know, preparation of a conflict, which seems unavoidable. I, I'm no, I, it's, it's just, is, is there anything, I guess, last question, something that gives you a source of optimism that there, there might be some course correction, because I don't see any of these main issues being discussed in the media at all. It's just how good we are, how bad everyone else is. And, uh, you know, we just have to defeat everyone. That's all or nothing. That's essentially the solution.
Speaker 1: No, I think a rational examination of the record would demonstrate that the exclusive use of force, military means to achieve objectives, is counterproductive. And with specific reference to the nuclear issue, basically Iran agreed that for 60 days it would not detonate a device. I mean, that's the way I read that. part of the MOU. It didn't say anything about what happens after 60 days. The notion that somehow or other Iranians are going to conclude that the United States will keep its distance from Iran and not threaten Iran is daily violated by our president and his assistants. Which brings me to a final point. You know, very ironically, every time Ukraine strikes deeply into Russia, it validates the Russian argument that a hostile presence in Ukraine is a major threat to the Russian state. The Russian Federation cannot safely tolerate a foreign force under NATO or under any other rubric in Ukraine, that this is, in fact, an intolerable threat. And that is what started this war, that Russian perception, which was fed by West. And of course, I remind people that historically, the Russians have a reason to worry about attacks from their neighbors. Both the French and Germans have invaded Russia, in each case with terrible results for Russians. And in the end, terrible results, at least for the Germans. The Mongols did that earlier. Russia seems to have made its peace with the Mongols and with the Chinese who were part of the Mongol Empire at the time. But to claim that history demonstrates a Russian desire to invade Western Europe, as opposed to pursue retreating armies into Europe, is really quite remarkable. And that seems to be the functioning myth in European diplomacy at the moment. Oh, foreign policy, they don't have any diplomacy. So no, I don't see any ray of hope for a satisfactory resolution of the various instances of chaos we have unleashed? No, I do not.
Speaker 0: Yeah, that's an important distinction here, what you pointed out, that most of the Russian military incursions into Western Europe has been following retreating armies as opposed to having instigated these conflicts. That's quite important, I think especially today, because when I was teaching security strategy, I always made the point that the point of departure is the security competition from the international anarchy. This is why more weapons isn't always more security. But if you see what we have achieved now, I mean, we took Iran, we didn't want it to get nuclear weapons. It didn't want to have nuclear weapons. Now it does. We talk about Russia wanting to attack NATO. It's absurd. It never had that goal. Indeed, it's gone through great lengths over the past four and a half years to avoid widening the war to NATO. Well, now they might because of the the NATO's direct involvement in attacks on Russia. It's just the absence of strategic thinking. I think this is what shocks me the most. Any call for restraint is seen as a Russian conspiracy. Somehow, this is the patriotic thing to do, just go after adversaries as hard as possible. It doesn't matter if it failed spectacularly in Iran, how it's going to fail. bring disaster in Russia. But yeah, this is the only path, it seems.
Speaker 1: Part of every forever war is an effort to reinforce failure. That is to double down on the failure, do more of the same, pour more money at it, as though somehow doing more of the same is going to produce a different result. And so forever wars have a built-in escalation clause. And we're seeing that.
Speaker 0: Yeah, definitely. That's been the experience in the post-cold war era. Anyways, Ambassador, as always, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Crete.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Gilbert Doctorow: Kremlin Hawks Demand Escalation Against Ukraine & Retaliation Against Europe https://youtu.be/qy5RCnEOIA8 https://t.co/GJTOEji08G
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gilbert Doktorov says Russia appears to be “painted itself into a corner” because NATO attacks have shifted from “small pinpricks” to long-range drones and missiles directed with Western targeting and satellite support, and because NATO countries are no longer deterred—striking Russia with what he describes as impunity. He argues this forces Russia toward escalation, since otherwise attacks would intensify and NATO would be more convinced Russia will not respond, leading Europeans to talk openly about war.
Doktorov describes spending a month in Petersburg and meeting people across society, including a leading notary and the successor to Century 21 in Russia’s real estate brokerage sector, as well as a working-class moving company head. He says they expressed the same core view: people are thinking “why is Putin dragging it out?” and that polls are skewed because they ask the wrong question. He claims sentiment would change if the question were “do you approve of the conduct of the war,” predicting about 20% in favor and 80% against. He adds that dissatisfaction is widespread but people are not demonstrating in the streets.
He also emphasizes hardships from the war near border provinces and in Crimea, saying life has become miserable due to drone risks and transport problems. He recounts friends with a small hillside home in Feodosia-area Crimea who have limited supplies, unreliable access, communication cutoffs, and effects from disruptions such as closures of the Crimean Bridge. He contrasts this with an observation of busy restaurant life in central Petersburg during a warm day, saying the war feels distant in daily scenes but awareness becomes unavoidable after events such as drone attacks on a fuel storage/refinery near Vasilievsky Island that produced black plumes. He also states war weariness is omnipresent and cites encountering double amputees being assisted in a bank.
When discussing options for the Kremlin, Doktorov argues that Western and Zelensky strategies to “bait” Russians into revolt do not fit Russia as a pre-revolutionary situation; he characterizes a possible outcome as a “palace coup” where people close to the Kremlin overthrow President Putin, describing this as one outcome rather than a public uprising. He says the people he spoke with did not directly call for violent escalation or bomb “the hell out of” anyone, and he suggests the only way to end the war “tomorrow without capitulating” could be major escalation. He also suggests Putin might come around to changing policy.
Doktorov critiques what he portrays as the repetitive cult-of-personality nature of Putin’s speeches, saying that “nothing comes out” of them and that his view now focuses on actions. He warns that by the end of the year Western-supplied missiles and drones will be ready in serial production for Kyiv.
On Zelensky’s threats against Belarus, Doktorov says major Western media largely did not pay attention, but that La Libre Belgique ran extensive coverage. He reports that the threatened measures against Lukashenko were framed as imposed during Zelensky’s G7 meeting, and that Zelensky’s ultimatum included deactivating Belarusian border devices enabling Russian targeting or facing Belarusian deactivation by force and attacks on “500 sites” in Belarus. Doktorov says Lukashenko delayed response, then met with emissaries, and afterward indicated a change in the war’s nature, interpreting this as a signal of extreme retaliation.
Regarding possible strategy, Doktorov argues Russia should focus on the “proxy”—Ukraine—rather than attacking European countries producing munitions, calling it more counterproductive and risky to strike European producers. He argues removing the proxy would force European war preparations to stop because European populations and politics would resist sending troops. He also claims Russia is trying to eliminate military coordination and intelligence centers and that continued attacks on Russian refineries are materially affecting Russia’s economy, including record demand for gas canisters.
In closing, Doktorov points to political concerns ahead of Duma elections on September 20, including a scandal in the Duma where a United Russia member distorted Zyuganov’s speech about the banking system and then issued an official apology. He interprets this as alarm inside United Russia about losing the elections, saying it could be “political death” for the communists.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined again by Gilbert Doktorov, a historian, political analyst, and author of the war diaries volumes. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 2: Well, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: So it appears that Russia has painted itself into a bit of a corner that is over the past four plus years, NATO gradually increased its direct role in the attacks on Russia. Now, initially they were minored and growing, and Russia seemed to make the decision that it was better to absorb the pain and rather focus on just defeating the Ukrainian proxy through this war of attrition. And I think, well, the reason I say it painted itself in the corner is two things appear to have happened. One is that the NATO attacks are no longer small pinpricks, that is the long range drones and missiles that are supplied by the West and also targeted, picked by the West and of course, Western satellites directing the attacks. The second is that NATO countries, as a result of this, are no longer deterred. That is, there seems to be a very firm belief that they can strike Russia with impunity. Anyone who disagrees are seen as someone who's coming to Russia's defense and has to be, well, purged from polite discourse. So this creates a very dangerous position for Russia. That is, it must escalate in a big way. Otherwise, the attacks will only increase in intensity and NATO will become even more convinced that Russia would never dare to respond. Hence, the Europeans can talk openly about going to war with Russia without any consequences. I was wondering, how do you see the situation? You spent quite a bit of time in Russia. What is happening in Russia at the moment?
Speaker 2: Well, I spent a month in Petersburg, and I met with people in all walks of life. I don't mean taxi drivers and hairdressers. I mean all walks of life. I was there on business as well as my journalistic activity and fact-finding activity. And I met with one of Petersburg's leading notaries. I met with an outstanding member of the real estate brokerage company that is the successor to Century 21 in Russia. These are people who have their fingers on the pulse of the middle classes, people who are buying and selling apartments, not as speculators, but for their own use, and who are following mortgage rates and all kinds of things. So they listened to people. And what they had to say was exactly the same thing that I heard from a moving company head of team. This is a really working class by definition who I spent 12 hours with. This is not a cursory because he was moving things out of our apartment which we had just sold. And so we talked. And he, this fellow, was saying, Why is Putin dragging it out? That's to say he's thinking the same way as academics and professional geopoliticians. It is everywhere. It's everywhere except in the Russian polls because they're asking the wrong question. Do you like Putin? Yeah, people like Putin. People like their increase in their pensions and so on. That's not the question to be asked. The question is do you approve of the conduct of the war? And I think if that question were asked today, you'd get like 20% in favor of what Putin's doing and 80% against it. Now, I heard, as I said, from everyone, more or less the same thing. This doesn't mean that anyone is going out in the streets to demonstrate. Nothing of the sort. But they talk among themselves. And you have the experience of real hardship being imposed on the border provinces that are not being supplied necessarily by Russian drones, but by Ukrainian manufactured drones in vast quantities, and are making life quite miserable for people in the oblasts that are just adjacent to Ukraine, not to mention in Crimea, which has been particularly targeted. I've spoken in the past about having friends who have a tiny house that they bought for $100, in 1995, 96, when it was still Ukrainian. And they go back every summer, and there were 25 summers in a row they've gone there. Now they have very few neighbors who came because of the risks, the fears of drones, which are omnipresent, and the problems of transport. Getting there, and what you do once you're inside there. Getting there, yeah, they shut down the the Crimean Bridge for times. Today's news from Russia says there are a thousand cars waiting to pass the bridge. And on the Crimean, our friends are in a hill. You don't get for $100 an apartment in Feodosia. They got a little shack on the hill. And a hill is a hill. It's a long climb. They don't climb. They're senior or so. And so they had a, for years they've had a tatar Crimean Tatar driver, not a personal driver, he does taxi services for people in the area. Who took them up and took them down? He doesn't have any gasoline. And so they are stuck up there with limited provisions and with no ability to enjoy the beach, which is down below. And they're cut off from communications because that also is rather come and go. Telephone was what's up and the rest of it. So they're not having a good time. And this is widely known in Russia. That's not to say that all life is miserable. I took a photograph when I was in Petersburg, of which I am titled War in Russia, question mark. It was in the very center of Petersburg, a street that runs down to the Church on the Blood, just off Nyatsky Prospekt. And it's a pedestrian street along the canal. the canal which leads to the church, because that's where Alexander II was blown up, along next to the canal.
Speaker 1: And it's all restaurants.
Speaker 2: And it was a lovely day. It was a temperature in the mid-twenties of centigrade. And street life, the restaurants were busy, the waiters were attentive, the food is excellent. And you can imagine there's no war whatsoever. Except that if you knew it of the week before, when the the International Economic Forum opened, the Ukrainians had drone attacked a fuel storage and refinery at the end of Vasilitsky Island, which is a part of central Petersburg, and sending black plumes up into the sky, which were unmistakable. They had reached Petersburg with their drones. So the awareness of the war has come home. War weariness is omnipresent. I don't speak about the increasing numbers of amputees and other people mutilated by the war whom you see. I was in a bank branch and twice, I was there twice doing some transactions and twice there was in the reception a double amputee who was being handled, whose affairs were being handled by the bank. The war is there. The Russians are tired and they don't like what they see in terms of the present handling of the war by the administration of Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: Well, that seems to be the objective, though. As the Finnish prime minister said, he made the point that that the only way for this war to end is when the people turn on this government. So for this to be achieved, they have to kill more Russians. They have to also bring the war to Russia, make it being felt by Russians. So the purpose of this, they're quite open about it. But where does that leave the options now for the Kremlin? Because it does appear that the former Kremlin, strategy of restraint as you said it's not working it's only emboldening its adversaries so but on one hand they do know that on one hand they know that Zelensky is trying to bait them into a direct war with NATO on the other hand they do know if they don't do it then their deterrence is essentially useless so again where does that leave Russia I saw Zelensky make a speech by the way that You know, he will do a major strike on Crimea. He just first have to consult with the G7 countries just to make it very clear that the NATO countries are all in on this attacks on Russia. But so again, this dilemma being recognized to being baited by Zelensky to pull NATO into the war versus simply making European NATO countries a safe zone for industrial production and the logistics, while the Europeans are now very openly striking Russia. I mean, this is a very dangerous situation. So where are the discussions going? Because I see there's a lot of uproar among, well, we can call them the hawks in the Kremlin. who want Zelensky to be killed. They want the government districts of Kiev to be bombed. If the Europeans get involved, use of tactical nuclear weapons. There seems to have been, maybe not with Putin yet, but among the hawks, they're growing in numbers and the rhetoric is becoming more fierce. Do you see any shifts though?
Speaker 2: I see the big shifts. But let's come back to the strategy of Zelensky and Western backers to bait the Russians, to bring home the war to Russians, and the belief that that will make them revolt against Putin bringing down his government and so forth. The chance of Russia is not in a pre-revolutionary situation. Even Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader who should know something about revolutions, when he spoke... three months ago about the dangers facing the government from its policy. He was speaking about economic policy, which is a safe thing to talk about in the Duma. Whereas if he had touched upon the real issue that's creating a political crisis in Russia, a war, that would have been less well-received among his peers in the Duma. But what he's describing was a pre-February 1917 situation which I believe is the case. That is a palace coup situation where it is the people in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin who overthrow President Putin. That is one possible outcome. The main point I want to make is that in getting the public excited and putting pressure on President Putin, the consequence within Russia is exactly the opposite of what these grand strategists in sort of advising Zelensky, or pressuring Zelensky, and leading the European Union towards a war with Russia. It's exactly the opposite of what they anticipate. The Russians who expressed their dissatisfaction with the slow, imperceptible movement towards a conclusion of the war, they're not defeatists. They would expect Russia to win. But they don't want it to go on for 10 years more. They want Russia to win very much. No, we didn't go into this question that you just raised of the advice from the hawks. That I didn't hear from anyone, frankly speaking. That we should bomb the hell out of... I was saying that. The people I talked to were silent on the point. So I don't know how keen they are to end the war by a violent escalation. That question never really came up directly in our conversations. But my surmise is, where else can you go if you say you want to end the war tomorrow without capitulating? It can be by a major escalation. I don't know whether there will be a palace coup. It's not unthinkable. People say, oh, yes, President Putin has the full support of the military and this and that. Well, I think Gorbachev wasn't exactly walking on eggs when he was... restrained, retained on his vacation in Crimea, was more or less moved out of power. That was, by a classic definition, a palace coup. Now, whether it failed is another issue. But that there's a possibility in a place like Russia with the stability, the calm of the people, and the best of it, for there to be a palace coup, of course there is. So that is one possibility. The other possibility, of course, is that President Putin, as an accomplished politician, will come around to changing his policy. Now, I've been asked about what he said recently in his address to the cadets that were graduating, that a war with Europe is coming and sounded like he's getting tougher. Frankly, Glenn, I had been for more than 10 years, more than 15 years, I have closely followed speeches by President Putin, I analyzed them. I tried to make sense out of them. I listened closely to his remarks at his annual direct line conversations with the public and to his speeches at Valdive. And I was very admiring of him for his intellectual capacity, his fantastic memory, command of the facts. And I gave him all due credit for that, as well as, of course, for reviving the Russian economy and the Russian military. At a certain point, I lost my enthusiasm for that type of exercise. And frankly speaking, I'm hard to listen to any of his speeches now. He has gone into the late Gorbachev phase of speechifying constantly. He has gone into the late Gorbachev phase of, let's call it by proper name, cult of personality. Every news program has to begin with 10 or 15 minutes of speeches from Putin. Every talk show has to begin with 10 or 15 This is ridiculous. And the worst of it is nothing comes out of his speeches. If there were, I follow his action. Just as I stopped listening to Trump, I only see what he does. So it is with my view of President Putin. I only look at what he does. And what he does has been utterly inadequate to the challenges that Russia's national security is facing today. And still worse is to the threats that Russian national security has at the end of this year, when still more damaging missiles and drones will be ready in serial production to be supplied by the West to Kyiv.
Speaker 1: It might be a bit too early to assess though, because this is a similar situation as Russia was in towards the end of 2021. That is, NATO was essentially putting Russia posing a dilemma on it by building up Ukraine and preparing it to retake Crimea, essentially, you know, capitulate or choose war and essentially chose war. It just seems that the situation this dilemma is faced with, it's not stable. There's no holding onto a status quo because that is disappearing. And I just feel that it's going to go. the other way at some point, or this whole strategy of NATO, that is Russia's to capitulate or go to war. I see that Putin doesn't want to go with the war option, given that this means this will be outside Russia's escalation control. This can quickly escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. But that being said, I haven't read a history book where the Russians are capitulating either. So it just seems like this is where we're headed. But I wanted to ask about another issue that was the Zelensky's threats against Belarus. That is, he threatened he would go to war against Belarus. I thought either it's just pressure or destroy some more relevant for the NATO members, or it could be a way of pulling NATO into the war. Again, I'm not sure, but Either way, he seems to have been walking this back now. Do you think this is the end of it or is Belarus being pulled into this war as well?
Speaker 2: Well, most of major Western media, to my knowledge, did not pay much attention to this issue. To my surprise, La Libre Belgique, the second most important French-speaking daily newspaper in Belgium, gave two full pages to this very issue about three days ago. Still more curiously, they were putting in, as their own analysis, analysis of the situation that I had made with Russians. They were, without credit, taking up talking points from the Russians on this very issue. The most important relevant item here is that the Russians were saying, and Liber Belgique repeated, that the threats that Zelensky made were imposed on him when he was in the meeting with the G7. The European members of the G7 told him, this is what you're going to do next. And if you don't do it, we can't guarantee your personal security. That's a pretty clear message. And so he did it. Now, what did he do? He threatened that if within one week, Lukashenko, president of Gelbz, doesn't deactivate the electronic devices at the Belarus-Ukrainian border, which, according to Zelensky, are enabling Russian drones and missiles to properly target objectives in western Ukraine as they fly past. If he doesn't deactivate them, then Belarus would deactivate them by force. and also attack 500 sites that he said in Belarus are labeled as targets for Ukrainian forces. For several days, there was no response from President Lukashenko. We know that Diego, he went for consultations with Vladimir Putin, but that he went to them after he did make a statement. He apparently met with two emissaries from Zelensky. I guess so. It must have been on Thursday. And he told them that if you start a war with us or if you do what you've said under the threats, then the whole nature of this war will change. All right. Let me decode those three dots. That means he's going to attack Kiev. He will do what Putin is not ready to do. Lukashenko is not Putin. Lukashenko, four years ago, five years, sorry, six years ago, stood up to violent demonstrators in the streets who were supporting Tikhanovskaya, who was the failed presidential candidate, as was backed by Lithuanian Poland. And he went out to the streets with a machine gun and with his son also holding a machine gun. Well, I don't picture Vladimir Putin doing that. Nor did the Ukrainian president do that. Well, he was challenged, and my God. So I think it is entirely credible that the three dots in the subtle threat of Lukashenko meant we will decapitate you, even if our brethren in Moscow aren't up to doing it. That was the end of that. I don't believe that Zelensky will dare attack the Belarus.
Speaker 1: So this is the absurd situation now that if someone doesn't respect your deterrence, that is what the NATO countries are doing against Russia, they probably wouldn't dare to do against Belarus or a country like North Korea, tiny country, exactly because the response will be unpredictable. Russia made itself very predictable by being I mean, as a European living in Europe, I'm kind of happy about the caution. But on the other hand, I also see the danger in great power not having its deterrents respected anymore. It's not sustainable. And at some point, Russia will have to do something very drastic. I think the things it could have done in 2022, when the first HIMARS and all of these weapons were sent, it could have done something minor and restored its deterrent. Now, essentially, the Europeans and as well as the Americans already set up a narrative, though, that is, oh, the Russians are considering striking Europe in a hybrid war. So all of this will be unprovoked. This is essentially how they've set up the narrative already, that this is a continuation of the war against Ukraine. Essentially, the prophecy is true that the Ukraine was just the beginning. So the... This is very dangerous as well, but my point is the fact that they are deterred by Belarus and other minor states, but not the world's largest nuclear power. It shows that some decisions have been not made correctly, I think, in the Kremlin. But on the American participation in all of this, though, I think one of the reasons for Putin's restraints, at least in 2025, was the believed that it would be possible to make a deal with the Americans. That is the spirit of Anchorage. That appears to be dead in the water. Was this diplomacy all nonsense or are the diplomatic paths essentially now absent?
Speaker 2: Well, the reasons why that policy was put in place, let's be frank about it. Vladimir Putin always wants some accommodation with the West. How did he come to power? How did he enter politics? He was Anatoly Sobchak's man for bringing Western investment, particularly German investment, because he was a fluent German speaker and invited many high guests from Germany, it's abuseable. So he was, from the very start of his career, deeply involved and interested in accommodation with the West and Western investment. And that never went away. His government team has always been balanced between some hardliners, and a very significant minority of powerful liberals, with a capital L, that is coming out of the Yeltsin period. That remains to today, with Silvanov, the finance minister, being in that category, with Nabulinat, who is the head of the state, the central bank of Russia, in that category, of holding a lot of power, and running in absolutely the opposite direction of the geopolitical ministers within the cabinet. Well, where do we go from here? A lot of my colleagues are in the belief that when Russia reaches the Dnieper, which is entirely possible at the end of the summer, early autumn, although the progress has been vastly slowed down. Progress of Russians in Donbas has been slowed down by the fierce drone attacks on the field of battle. Nonetheless, let's assume that they find a solution and Russia does take Konstantinovka, does take Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, and reaches it in April. Well, that doesn't mean the capitulation of Ukraine. Not at all. Even if they take Odessa, it doesn't mean the capitulation of Ukraine. This is a fiction that my colleagues seem to maintain for reasons that I don't understand. Ukraine is receiving $95 billion in aid. It will receive still more aid from the EU, military and financial aid. It has no reason to capitulate. And it will be exactly what Putin didn't want to have and what prompted him to initiate the special military operation. that Ukrainian territory is used as a base for attacking Russia. Russia now is not just what Russia was in 2014. Russia is now what it is after 2022. It is the Donbass, which is now also Russia. And there are people whose lives are being made miserable and untenable in Crimea and in this now Russian-controlled part of former Ukraine. who will be under constant attack as they were before 2022. And NATO military installations and supplies will be running in full steam. Is that what Russia has achieved by five years of war? I think I would call that a Pyrrhic victory. That is not a victory. The only thing that could prevent a full-scale NATO installation in Ukraine would be if Russia finally declared war on Ukraine and made a claim that anything coming in from outside will be subject to devastation. That could happen, but this is not an end of war. The likes of Colonel McGregor or other colleagues have been describing on programs like this. It is an ongoing... draining of Russian resources and infrastructure destruction in a period that allows Europe to rearm and to prepare for a real war on Russia in 2030 or 2029. That is a very miserable legacy for President Putin to leave behind.
Speaker 1: Just as a final question, what do you think are the main options now by by Russia or what are the hawks in the Kremlin demanding? Because do you hit the puppets or the proxy here, which is Ukraine? Because without Ukraine, the Europeans can't continue and it's a good way of avoiding a direct war with NATO, which could lead to nuclear war. Or is it the time do they see to go after the Europeans? I can't imagine retaliating against American territory, not at this point at least. But where are they pushing the hardest? Because it seems like it can go both ways. And at every round of escalation, it's the Ukrainians which are getting the punishment. But again, this doesn't mean anything to the NATO states. I mean, they're not counting Ukrainian losses. If anything, they're continuing to block every pathway to peace. So what are we looking at here?
Speaker 2: Well, I support the first scenario that you described. I see no reason for Russia to attack any of the European countries that are producing these munitions, although it has a logic to it and although it would be permitted under international law. I think it would be counterproductive and it would be entirely violating the prudence and risk-versity of the Russian side. So I think it's improbable that scenario would play out. Although, let me be frank about it, colleagues, more passionate colleagues in the alternative media, are saying that it's a nice cover-up for anybody who might suspect weakness or timidity, or shall we say cowardice, on the Russian side. I don't know, the Russians are preparing to brutally attack Germany and so forth. That's their latest talking point on these podcasts. I don't agree. I think the Russians would be following the first course that you described, that is concentrating their efforts on the proxy for the very reason that you gave. You eliminate the proxy and Western Europe will have to stop all of its preparations for war because their boys aren't going to be going against the Russians. They want, just as Biden was very happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, that's exactly what the Europeans have taken over. They don't have the boys to send in. And if they did, they'll have a revolution on the streets in Paris, finally over politics, of geopolitics, if Macron or his successor would dare to put in a draft and send people off to fight against the Russians. They want a war that the Ukrainians are fighting. And if Russia, by devastating all of the military centers, coordination centers, the military intelligence centers, if they reduce them to ashes, end of game. People will say, oh yes, and the Ukrainians will fight on a guerrilla war. So what? Russia is not afraid of a guerrilla war on the other side of Dnieper. It has very reason to fear military installation, military supplies coming from the West, which enable and guide Ukrainian attacks on Russian critical infrastructure ad infinitum. The former 10-year-long Minister of Energy in Russia, presently of a higher title as Deputy Prime Minister, Novak, said it through Decibel, the situation with fuel in Russia, there's fuel for cars and agricultural equipment, is under serious threat but manageable. When this man says that there's a serious problem, there is a serious problem. Today's news on the Russian ticker tape, which I just read this morning, says that there's a record demand for gas canisters in Russia today. People are running out to the streets to buy gas canisters across Russia, not just in Crimea. That tells you that the effect of these attacks on Russian refineries is real. Not just a pinprick. If this is just the beginning. If this type of war goes on, Russia's economy will suffer greater. And Europeans will be preparing nicely for a war in Russia in 2029. That has to be stopped by removing the proxy now.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that... that there's not more discussions about this, though, in Europe. There seems to be always this celebration. Oh, look, now the Russians are on their back foot. Oh, look how much the pain we can bring to their economy. Oh, let's try to increase the amount of dead Russian soldiers to put pressure on Moscow. But the idea that they can control what's coming, I mean, if this goes out of control, I mean, Putin, yes, there's a lot of power concentrated in the president, but it just seems like it's not going to be very sustainable anymore. I mean, the only reason I think there's been so much restraint, as I said, the opening year was because they were minor pinpricks. But as you say, if this will now bring serious pain on the economy, I think restraint isn't a luxury anymore. But it's just limited options, I think. That is either accept, go very hard against Ukraine. That means... yeah, really doing heavy bombing of cities, which does really count collateral damage, or attacking European NATO countries. If not, it's capitulation. And again, that's the destruction of Russia. That is an existential threat. I just can't imagine any great power capitulating at the end of the day. But no, the longer this goes on, I think the more radical the response will be. I don't know. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up? Yes.
Speaker 2: Moscow is worried. The United Russia province will. I say there haven't been any polls. There will be a poll.
Speaker 1: On September 20th, there is the Duma elections.
Speaker 2: And I think it was worthy of note that nobody's noted it, that there was a scandal this week in the Duma. when a speech by Zyuganov, the Communist Party head, was distorted by a Duma member of the United Russia Party. And they put words in his mouth saying that Zyuganov had just declared the banking system is terrible, it's making enormous profits, we have to, there are two years worth of Russian budget, volume of Russian budget, sitting in the the time deposit accounts of Russian citizens and businesses. We have to confiscate them. These words were put into Zyuganov's mouth. Well, I tell you, that is political death for the communists. It is the most alarming thing you could put into the mouth of the head of the Communist Party. Zyuganov threatened to sue, to take to court the Duma member for defamation. A day later, there was an apology, an official apology issued by the United Russia deputy that they had distorted his words. So they're really reaching for anything to save themselves. And that they would do something as vile as that indicates that they are deeply worried about losing the elections.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for taking time out of your weekend. And I always appreciate your perspective. So thank you.
Speaker 0: Very kind.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Putin Warns the West - Russia is Ready for War https://youtu.be/kcxI6XcdY4U https://t.co/givmEqAh4J
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centers on Larry Johnson’s article about Russia and NATO, arguing that Europe is preparing for a more direct war with Russia and that NATO’s use of Ukraine has escalated over time. Johnson ties NATO actions to blocking peace efforts while framing weapons as the path to peace, citing the 2014 NATO-backed coup as enabling the creation of a Ukrainian proxy force and sabotaging the Minsk peace agreement. He describes a further escalation since 2022, including claims that NATO intelligence, targeting, guided weapons, and NATO satellites are involved, with contractors allegedly “pulling the trigger,” and claims that attacks using NATO-linked routes or territory indicate NATO involvement “at least using their territory.”
Johnson says there has been “a hope” for a diplomatic exit during what he calls the “Anchorage period” (Putin meeting with Trump), but he claims it is “dead,” pointing to statements by Sergei Lavrov and Yuriy Ushakov. He attributes an alleged shift to Karaganov’s view that the West has lost its fear of Russia, and he lays out a scenario of “graduated escalation”: Russia begins by striking sites and factories to signal that line-crossing will trigger retaliation, followed by warning that surveillance aircraft collecting intelligence in international airspace will be targeted and shot down. He says continued escalation could lead to tactical nuclear weapons.
Johnson argues that Western media portrays Russia as “on its back foot,” while he claims Russia is advancing more aggressively than before—moving through multiple major battles rather than focusing resources on a single one (Bakhmut and Avdiivka mentioned, followed by Pokrovsk). He also describes a pattern of earlier claims that Russia was losing—such as running out of missiles, “blowing up” Nord Stream, and shifting tides after events like the invasion of Kursk—arguing the narrative changes with each NATO escalation.
When asked about Putin’s reference to Operation Barbarossa, Johnson says Putin’s message to cadets and graduates was that the West is openly preparing attacks within two to three years, and that Russia “has been there before” and is prepared to repel it. Johnson interprets this as a warning that if the West enters a “hot zone,” Russia will take steps to defend itself rather than wait.
The conversation further argues that escalation logic on the European side is irrational and politically constrained. Johnson claims European leaders and media rely on slogans and suppress dissent, emphasizing that caution about retaliation is treated as siding with Russia. He describes Europe’s economic sacrifices as deliberate—cutting ties with Russia’s energy while relying on more expensive alternatives—and contrasts Europe’s claimed military capacity with what he portrays as Russian strength, concluding that Europe is a “hollowed-out shell” living off legacy.
Johnson also claims Europe faces near-term economic shocks from Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, listing inputs he says will be affected (oil, liquid natural gas, sulfur, urea for fertilizer, and helium for computer chips). He asserts the shortage timeline is “weeks,” potentially shifting the world “by July 15,” and connects this to aviation fuel and diesel availability.
On Marco Rubio and the Anchorage discussion, Johnson says Rubio is incompetent and argues that Russia did not care about the formats discussed. He broadens the topic to what he calls a new international military and economic order involving Russia and China, including references to BRICS growth, alternative payment systems to SWIFT (SIPS/CIPS), and Chinese technological and military support. He argues Europe is becoming increasingly irrelevant in global markets and that European efforts cannot match Chinese inroads.
Finally, the interview turns to retaliation logic: if Russia strikes Europe to restore deterrence, Johnson argues the United States cannot respond credibly with existing assets, citing limits on naval and ground forces and claiming that aviation fuel constraints would prevent sustained operations. He says Russian counterstrike capabilities would change the risk calculus. The conversation closes with claims by “hawks” in Moscow calling for full mobilization, attacks in Kyiv, targeting European weapon-related facilities, and turning to tactical nukes if needed, and Johnson claims Putin is restraining them. Johnson adds unrelated “breaking news” that U.S. Central Command through the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an order for U.S. forces deployed in the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and Israel to “come home,” reducing the likelihood of U.S. reengaging Iran militarily.
Full Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome back. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst who writes on Sonar 21, and I've left a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on, Larry. It's great to see you as always.
Speaker 0: I always enjoy the invitation and the chance just to chat with you. Very good.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about an article you recently penned because, well, that is on Russia. now recognizing that the Europeans are essentially preparing for more than indirect war, a very direct war with Russia. Again, I think this has been a long time coming for more than 12 years now. We see NATO using Ukraine as an instrument to weaken Russia as a strategic rival. Again, we've heard enough comments from top American officials to verify this. We know that in 2014, of course, the NATO backed coup was framed as a democratic revolution. But what they really did was build a huge Ukrainian proxy army while sabotaging the Minsk peace agreement. And since 2022, I think all of this has continued. All paths to peace have been blocked by NATO countries, while at the same time announcing that weapons are the path to peace. So incrementally as well, NATO's involvement has escalated, especially when things are going bad for Ukraine. And now we see NATO weapons being used, the NATO intelligence, NATO targeting, the weapons are guided, long range at least, by NATO satellites and even NATO contractors pulling the trigger. So, and well, we can say furthermore, you know, unless we are to believe that the drones that attacked St. Petersburg from the Baltic Sea did not transit through airspace or even originate in NATO territory, then Then we can say that all these attacks are now also coming from NATO, at least using their territory. So something appears to be changing in Moscow. Perhaps it's the European leaders speaking ever openly about the need to break Russia, mass produce long range weapons to strike deeper and deeper inside Russia. I mean, there's no more pretend anymore. Something, as I said, has to have changed in Moscow. And Putin's speech, I think, was also an indication of where things are heading. I was wondering, what is your take, though, on this speech?
Speaker 0: Yeah, I've learned to pay attention to Sergei Karaganov. I know he's a mentor. I think it's correct to describe him as a former mentor. At least you worked with him at one point. And, you know, Sergei has always been Um, you know, he gets dismissed by some, oh, he's just a political scientist, but he's a very thoughtful guy and he's very good at seeing trends. Um, and so let, let me pose sort of the opposite case that will reinforce where Sergei's coming from. If the Sinaloa cartel was being supplied with, uh, drones and missiles by China and Russia, and as well as the intelligence. for hitting coordinates inside the United States, and they were able to launch attacks all along the southern border of the United States and going deep into Texas and into Arizona, New Mexico. The United States would view that as an act of war and would retaliate accordingly. They wouldn't sit there and pretend that it was just some minor border dust-up. Well, that's exactly now what's happening with Russia. And I think that we can see that, let's call it the Anchorage period, where Putin met with Trump and there was some hope that the United States, it was now the United States is engaging Russia, and that there was going to be perhaps a diplomatic exit, or at least something other than force. That's dead. Absolutely dead. And that has been announced as well by Sergei Lavrov, among others. And Ushakov, Yuriy Ushakov, who's a close advisor of Putin. They've all made it clear that that process is dead. And this goes back to Sergei Karaganov's position. The West has lost its fear of Russia. They assume that we can do whatever the hell we want. We can bomb them. We can kill them. We can destroy schools. And Russia's not going to do anything in return. And so I think Karaganov, he's talking a graduated escalation, but nonetheless an escalation. Step one, you start hitting these sites, hitting the factories, military sites in those countries to let them know, no, you've now crossed the line. You've hit us, we're hitting you back. I think, and frankly, that ought to be followed up by putting NATO on notice that any surveillance aircraft that are even in international airspace, that are collecting information on Russia, will be targeted and will be shot down. That the West has got to know that they cannot continue this kind of provocation. Because as Sergei has pointed out, if this continues, the next step is the use of tactical nuclear weapons. And that pushes the world into a whole new direction. But I hope there is nobody left in Russia that harbors the illusion that Russia Somehow the West is seeking a peaceful negotiated outcome? No, absolutely not. The West wants to destroy Russia. They're intent on that. The rhetoric has become more intense. And what's really bizarre is how the media coverage now is really portraying Russia is on its back foot. Russia is suffering. Russia is losing. Oh, my God. And meanwhile, what's actually happening on the battlefield is is Russia is moving forward in a way that has not moved forward in the previous four years. In 2003, they were focused on Bakhmut. In 2024, Avdiivka. I may have them reversed, but it was first Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, or Avdiivka, and then Bakhmut, and then 2025, Pokrovsk. So there was always like one battle that was getting all the attention and all the resources. Not now. There are multiple battles along the line that are taking place and will collapse the Ukrainian line at some point. So the war has changed in tone. That is for certain.
Speaker 1: There's been so many fictions all along. I mean, I remember... When Russia first went in, the main talking point was not just unprovoked, but this full-scale invasion, even though the Russians were talking to Zelensky about finding a peaceful solution on the first day of the attack. Already in March of 2022, the first articles came out that, well, Russia's already losing. It's running out of missiles within the next two to five days or something. Then we had the Nord Stream issue. Oh, yes, they blew up their own pipeline. Then we had... The invasion of Kursk, which was, oh, this is definitely turning the tide now. Russia is losing. Every time NATO escalates with a new weapon, it's a game changer. I mean, we listened to this for more than four years now, that the war, that now the Ukrainians are winning, now they're winning. It's getting more and more absurd every time. But again, the goal is always the same. It's to prolong the war. keep it going and you know officially the language is well we we just want the Ukraine to negotiate from a position of peace we want to force put into the negotiation table even though it's the Europeans who are not who refuse to talk to the Russians it's quite absurd I mean anyone paying attention would know that this is absurd but you know it's um yeah the propaganda is really dialed up and they think that I'm following this talking points is somehow very patriotic, even though, as you said, we're heading now towards not just war, but such a war could very easily escalate into a war with use of tactical nuclear weapons. I did notice in Putin's speech, he did refer to Operation Barbarossa, the 1949, sorry, 1941. Why do you think this historical comparison is so important?
Speaker 0: The point Putin was making, and so he did, this was an address on Tuesday the 23rd, the day after the, I guess, the 84th anniversary or 85th anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Russia. And he was addressing the cadets, graduates of military and intelligence and police institutions. And in making that, he was saying, you know, he was noting that right now Russia is, the West is making no attempts to hide its intent to go to war with Russia. They're not, I mean, they're openly talking about that within two to three years we're going to attack Russia. And Putin's point was just very simple. We've been there before. We, the Russian people, have been there before. We know what it means to face this kind of threat. And while the Soviet Union was not prepared to repel that invasion in 1941, the message I took from Putin was, we're more than prepared. We know what's coming, and we're going to deal with it. So that was really, I think he put out a red flag that the West should see that you're getting ready to enter a hot zone. And if you follow this, the result will be the same as what happened to Germany and its European allies that attacked the Soviets, and were ultimately defeated. But this time, Russia is not going to sit back and wait to be attacked. Once it becomes clear that the West is intent on following through on this threat, Russia is going to take steps to defend itself. That was the clear message I took away from that speech.
Speaker 1: This is an important part of that. If Russia thinks it's going to be attacked, it will not wait for the opponent to attack. I think something like this was mentioned in one of the biographies of Putin as well. He learned early on, if you know a fight is unavoidable, make sure you throw the first punch. I would argue that this is one of the reasons as well. Well, not one of them, but the main reason why they invaded in February of 2022. Indeed. Exactly. Exactly. I agree. Because in November of 2021, the US and Ukraine, they signed this charter on strategic partnership. And at that point, one of the top advisors to the former French president made the point that this signing of this charter made it convince the Russians that they would either have to attack or be attacked. So this is really the straw that broke the camel's back. And why would they wait for an attack on Crimea or Donbas? They went in. Is this what the Europeans are waiting for then? When they talk about, we have to prepare for a future war with Russia. Is that the Russian retaliation they're talking about? Because if they really think that Russia is going to attack Europe, they would need at least to outline what the objective would be. What exactly would be the purpose of attacking Europe? I can only say one purpose. I mean, unless you believe in these fairy tales of restoring the Soviet Union, but the only purpose would be to restore its deterrent. But is then the goal to go to war?
Speaker 0: Well, I don't know if you saw, Putin issued a response to the Germans the other day that was just scathing and sarcasm. Like the bottom line message was, Why would we want to invade you and then have to be responsible for a group of transvestite, transgender, blue-haired weirdos? What do we gain from that? Sorry, we don't need that. We don't want that. You can have it. That was his basic message to him. And it was, you know, it went on. It was like, I recall, like eight or nine points. I thought it was... It was actually brilliant of him how he presented it because it was entertaining, but it was also to the point. But Russia has to step back and look at these attacks that Ukraine are carrying out are not being carried out because Ukraine's got the expertise to do it. And the concern is you've had Ukrainian officials just of late talk about building a nuclear facility And there is a report out of a YouTuber by the name of Borzykman. You know, sometimes his reporting has been quite accurate, sometimes, you know, questionable. But he claims that a ship, a recent arrival of a British ship in Odessa carried these yellow barrels that looked to be containing radioactive material. I'm sure Russia is now all over that. But, you know, you can't put it past the Brits of trying to do something that absolute crazy that they would run that risk. This is, you know, they are poking the bear. It's like they think that they can throw a punch at Russia and Russia is not going to react. And I maintain that is a dangerous, dangerous assumption. Russia has been slow to anger, but once their dander is up, they are most formidable.
Speaker 1: Well, one can understand why, well, especially the British, because they appear to be with the Germans among the most aggressive one in this war. But one can understand though, because they essentially designed a proxy war almost in a dream scenario. during the Cold War, that is to have the Ukrainians and Russians kill each other en masse and the West would stand on the sideline. And that's essentially what's been created here though. It's a war where the Europeans have said, well, we have to bring this war to Russian territory, which they now have, but Europe is a safe zone. So all the industrial production, all the missiles and drones, which they advertise that they're producing to attack Russia with, All of this is within European or EU territories and British territory. So this can't be touched by the Russians. And essentially, the Russians accepted this rule of the game. That is, the NATO countries can now launch long-range missiles and drones deep into Russia, and Russia is allowed to touch NATO territory. I mean, this isn't sustainable, especially now that it's becoming so much more open and larger scale. And also, as you said, the clear... indication of intent that is to to fight the war once russia has been weakened um but uh i was wondering how do you see putin's changed over time because last year he was all about diplomacy i encourage all of this now we don't hear much about diplomacy anymore the main speeches they're about war that is uh you know we will achieve our objectives we have the military power Yes, they have kept their arms open or door open for diplomacy, but they quite obviously do not believe that we'll go anywhere.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah, no, he's, I think he's been, I don't want to say forced as if it's against his will, but he, you know, he is cognizant of what the political pressures are and whatever his personal desires for trying to avoid conflict, trying to avoid escalation. I think he's recognized it's reached a point now where the demands of the Russian public are such that they want stronger action. They want decisive strikes against Kiev, up to and including killing Zelensky, killing Sersky, killing the top leaderships. I mean, the reality is senior Russian officials and generals have been assassinated all along. And there's sort of this attitude, it's time for payback. But not just payback. You've got to cut the guts out of this thing and make it so that the Europeans also pay a cost. So that's why I say, you know, when you listen to people like Medvedev, you know, he's, you know, I think his views are more in line with the majority of Russia's than that of Putin. And so Putin, in a way, is paying a little bit of ketchup. Now, I don't deny that the military strategy is not being set by Putin. It's being set by Gerasimov. But again, it's up to, you know, the Russians have not asked me how to fight this war, and I'm not sure my advice would be all that salient. But I think we've now reached a stage where the Europeans are going to be, well, must fight pay a price for enabling this violence. Otherwise, they will continue to escalate it to a point that it will lead to a nuclear strike. And that's the danger that, you know, in an effort to avoid it, Russia is taking the very actions that will actually make it more possible.
Speaker 1: Well, one can understand, though, the restraint of Putin because if they now begin to hit back against the NATO country, As, uh, you know, Mark Rutte, not to take him too seriously, but, uh, would argue then, you know, the response will be absolutely fierce, but you know, these people seem to think this is a computer game of some sort, uh, or at least that there's proper escalation control that they can do this. And if the Russians retaliate, then they will be able to manage this. I, I just don't, I don't think anyone's going to be able to control the escalation once the Russians finally retaliate. But, uh, yeah. The whole idea is the Russians do not dare until they do dare, as they did in 2022. And then it's completely unprovoked. And this is the time to stand up against the new Hitler. We know what the script will look like after the Russian retaliation, which is why it's quite dangerous. But what do you see being the thinking here on the European side, though? Because let's be honest, Europeans, yes, they are declaring the intent, but they hardly have the capabilities. So Well, not yet. If the Russians wait much longer, then they might have more capabilities.
Speaker 0: Yeah, you used the word there. Thinking, implying that the Europeans are thinking, engaged in a rational thought process. I, for the life of me, don't know what they are thinking because it's so illogical. You step back and say, okay, whether I'm Germany or Poland or France or the United Kingdom, Do I need to pay more for oil and natural gas, or do I need to pay less? Is it better for my country if I pay less? Well, in the world of logic, it's better if you pay less. But the choice, in particular with the Germans, is, no, no, no, we're going to cut off all ties with Russia, who supplies cheap oil and gas. We will stand by and do nothing while the United States blows up the Nord Stream pipeline, compelling us as Europeans that we now must buy more expensive liquid natural gas from the United States. And in fact, we're going to ban any kind of economic interaction with Russia, which is going to weaken our economies, cause recessions, cause inflation, cause higher unemployment. And you're doing this consciously. They're doing this. They're choosing to do this. And then on top of it, say, oh yeah, we're going to take on Russia and we're going to fight it and defeat it. And you're going, let me see if I got this straight. You, like the UK, you can't even fill a football stadium with your army. It's so small. Your once leading edge prowess in the world of maritime operations, that's gone. That's history. Germany with these factories that once churned out, you know, some of the most leading edge military equipment are shuttered. And many of your factory jobs are now going overseas to the United States or other places. So here is Europe. You know, they remind me of, you know, think back to when you were in high school or whatever you called the education before you go to college. And there are the sports teams. And then the guy who was the star soccer player, football player on that team, you know, when they're 18, 17, 18, strong, virile, quite athletic. Well, now he's 60 years old. He weighs twice what he did back then. Can barely run, but in his mind still thinks he's that 17, 18-year-old football player. That's Europe. They still think that there's this military power that dominated the 19th century, and they're not. They're a hollowed-out shell of a continent where the military power has been, you know, is really inconsequential. They're in the, you know, if you're going to take them to a dog show, they're in the Chihuahua class, and yet they're wanting to take on germany who's in the rottweiler class sorry russia i mean yeah russia not germany my mistake but russia russia's in i was saying rottweiler germany but now russia is the rottweiler class i mean they're this big dog europe a bunch of yappy little dogs that you know they they have no significant economic resources They've lost their industrial edge. They're not doing anything that's on the leading edge of science and technology. They're not leading in space. I mean, there's not a single sector you can point to where Europe goes, yeah, the future could lie with them. You know, they're living on a legacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I've been trying to make sense of the European position as well, because I always make the point that I think that, yeah, the Russians are fighting an existential war in And Ukrainians as well, I think, to a large extent. They can also end Ukraine. So they also have a reason to fear an existential threat. So they both make sense. The Americans, you know, they wanted to, well, they started this to knock out a key rival. It didn't work. They handed it over to the outsourcer, to the Europeans. Also makes sense. But the Europeans really, really don't make much sense. And, you know, one could try to engage people in this political leadership in Ukraine. in discussions to dig out, to find out what exactly is the logic here? What do you want to achieve? How do you intend to achieve it based on your resources? But if you look across all the countries in the EU, the politicians, the media, they only communicate in cliches, these emotional slogans, anything that deviates from it is censored. I mean, there's a massive cost for anyone breaking with the narrative of the group, one gets the impression there's a mass psychosis forming. And if one would argue, well, if our territories are used to strike against Russia, wouldn't that push the Russians to retaliate, possibly resulting in nuclear war? Ah, that's Putinist, you know, because in any case, Any word of caution sounds like one wants to restrain the attacks on Russia, and that means you're with the Russians. And no one can dissent. I mean, the idea that we have freedom of speech, dialogue, discussion, it's nonsense. There's none of the sort in Europe now. It's a loony bin. And there's no other objectives now than defeating Russia. All of this talk about, you know, they put forward some plans about... opening diplomacy with Russia, but the set conditions, which essentially is for Russia to capitulate first. But beyond the hatred of Russia, though, do you think you hinted towards the inability or its lack of place in the world? It doesn't have the role it did in the past anymore. It doesn't really have a clear economic future. The partnership with the US is going away. Is this just desperation you think that, well, reflecting a wider problem?
Speaker 0: Well, there's actually a reality that's going to descend on Europe within the next two to three weeks. And this is the fallout from the shutdown of the Persian Gulf and Iran closing off the Strait of Hormuz. So there has been a dramatic loss of five significant I'll call them commodities, but they are inputs into the global economy. At least 20% of the oil, 25% of the liquid natural gas, 25 to 30% of the sulfur and urea, which go for fertilizer, and over 40% of the helium, which is used for making computer chips, among other things. Well, right now on the oil front, the United States... is within two weeks will essentially have run out of having a reserve supply of diesel and aviation fuel. So they won't have enough oil, the heavy or sour crude that's required to make diesel and aviation fuel. It'll be sort of week to week depending upon what they can receive because the United States is already a net importer of that. Well, the same The same for Europe. Europe is a net importer of all classes of oil. And the shortages that are going to come will affect the economies dramatically. They're already sort of barely bumping along, staying maybe slightly above zero. But we're talking now that it'll be recession, if not depression territory. And oddly enough, Donald Trump talked about this two weeks ago at the G7. And I think that helped explain why he signed the MOU because he recognized in four weeks, you know, we could be running on zero as far as the kind of crude oil that's needed to produce diesel and aviation fuel. So Europe is in a worse situation. than the United States because the United States at least has some independent, is independent, produces enough of the light oil that is used to produce gasoline. And it's actually been shipping some of that to Europe as well. But Europe doesn't have that. And it's on the issue of the heavy crude, the middle distillates part of the oil from which you get diesel and aviation fuel. And that is a critical, that's going to be a critical shortage here. And we're not talking months, we're talking weeks. So, you know, we're going to have a dramatic, differently looking world probably by July 15.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another great time for Europe to engage in a direct war with the world's largest nuclear power it's seen. who also has ample supplies of oil and gas. Well, that's the big irony here. The assumption by the Europeans that if they just cut all the ties with Russia, then the Russian economy would collapse relatively shortly. I still make the point. As soon as they announced initially these sanctions, I was making the point that this is going to fail because I worked in Moscow, I worked on a program or initiative or a department that worked on this whole shift of Russia's economy from the West to the East. That's what I mostly work on as well. And I knew that the Russians had made essentially their economy bulletproof. They were shifting their economy quickly to the East and any sanctions would only be used as an opportunity to intensify this process. So I knew that the Russians could diversify away from Europe, but Europe couldn't diversify away from Russia. But whenever I made this point, I was told, well, that undermines trust in the public support in the sanctions. So that's a pro-Russian comment. And that makes you a Putinist. So this is the level of debate we have in Europe. And it is beyond ridiculous. But anyways, my point is, yeah, all of this... cheap Russian gas and oil, which used to go to Europe, now goes to Asia. And as the Germans have begun to experience, their companies are following the Russian gas. When that gas goes to China, the German company packs up and go there as well. So it's stupid on a lot of levels. I do want to ask about Marco Rubio in Anchorage, though. He made the point now that, well, what happened in Anchorage wasn't really a deal. It was more... you know, discussing formats, something that the Kremlin did not care much for.
Speaker 0: No, well, it's just, you know, Rubio is an incompetent. You know, his job as Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, at least to use the last one to really occupy that role, was Henry Kissinger. And while Henry Kissinger may have been a war criminal, there's no denying the man had intellect, and thought in terms, in strategic terms. Sometimes he was a devious, evil bastard. There's no doubt about that. But, you know, he reckoned, you know, his telling Nixon, okay, we're going to go to China. We're going to reestablish relationships with communist China, something you Nixon, if you fought against communism your entire, you made your career on that. And we're doing that because we want to weaken the Soviet Union. And we want to make sure that we split China off from that branch of communism and help the Chinese develop, if you will, a dependence upon us in the West. So there was clear strategic thinking behind this. Well, here's Rubio, just like, you know, well, you know, he views Russia, does not recognize the critical role that Russia is now playing in the creation of a new international economic, political, and military order. This is coming into fruition. The war, just as Russia's decision to attack Ukraine because of the impending attack from the West, to preempt that, just as that accelerated the The growth of BRICS is an economic power. The U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, Iran's subsequent, if you will, defeat of the U.S. and Israeli attack, in part because of support received from both Russia and China, significant support that ranged from not just financial aid, weapons systems, ammunition, intelligence. And we saw a recent report that the backseater, the colonel who was flying in the backseat of the F-15 that got shot down south of Isfahan back in April, that he reported seeing these drones, this drone pack. And I don't recall if he said it was attacking his ship or whatever, but it was moving as one. It looked like a jellyfish, but it was moving in a coordinated fashion. Well, that came from China. There's no other country in the world that does that like China does. The Chinese also provided missiles. Pepe Escobar and I learned from our Pakistani source that during some of the retaliatory strikes against China, israel and the united states and the use of chinese missiles that there were pakistani technicians military technicians trained by the chinese sitting with the iranians helping them launch and use these weapon systems which destroyed critical infrastructure for the united states in both bahrain and kuwait and at al-salti moafik assault the air base in jordan so So what you're seeing now emerge is this new international military. It's going to be a security organization. It's going to be an economic organization. And it's literally an alternative to this U.S.-dominated post-World War II hegemonic enterprise. And that's what the United States and Europe, I'm not sure they fully comprehend what's happening. But it's happening. And no matter how much they complain about it or say that it's not real or say that it's weak, they can say all that they want. The fact of the matter is it is happening. And you look at the growth rate for China, you know, they set up this alternative to SWIFT. It's called SIPS, Cross Border Interbank Payment System, C-I-P-S. You know, SWIFT is an, you know, it's an analog. It's like using a buggy whip because it's email. You know, it's like I'm, I'm bank A and you're bank B. And I said, dear Glenn, I'm sending you this wire transfer. Please affect it and credit it to this account. And so I sent it to you, but it goes into your spam folder and you don't find it for three days. Okay. But eventually it would get through. That was SIPs. It's digital immediately. Transfer here, assets move. Number of banks signing up for that have increased. I think the number is like 26 in the last month. So, The point of all this is Europe is becoming increasingly irrelevant. They're not a huge market in terms of the rest of the world. They have been considered a potentially profitable one, although I will note the Chinese are making tremendous inroads in Europe with their electric vehicles. They're cheaper than Tesla. They're better in many aspects. They have better features. And the Europeans don't have an answer to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they don't like it, but they don't know what to do. They keep referring to China as a threat because of it, which makes it very difficult because they can't defend their position. I mean, if you want to argue that China's a threat, a country that hasn't been in a war in more than four decades, and somehow the threat defined as a military threat derives from It's electric vehicles being exported to Europe. It's quite extraordinary. It was interesting what you mentioned about Kissinger though, because as you said, he's one who should take credit for breaking the Chinese off the Soviet Union in the late 70s, but not in the 70s. But in 2014, Kissinger, he wrote some interesting articles. He was making the point that neither this is after the NATO countries toppled the government in Kiev, that neither NATO or the Russians should use Ukraine as a front against the other. It should be a bridge. And he also was quite critical of how the Western countries' rhetoric was essentially about defeating Russia instead of finding a formula for having a common security structure, for example. Anyways, I think this is important because he had discussions with Trump in 2016 before Trump took the presidency. And I'm sure he was kind of communicating his own ideas about what to do this time, which is, you know, you see this huge Eurasian giant forming of Russia and China in an economic terms, Russia is now the junior partner. So, you know, reach out to the smaller one, play on its insecurities and try to bring them over to our side of the ledger. which makes a lot of sense. But, you know, what happened? Well, you had the Russiagate hoax.
Speaker 0: Trump was a Russian agent.
Speaker 1: This was kind of the logic, because you can't say that it's a good idea to get along with Russia. I mean, this is how still the Europeans talk, though. Not just the ridiculous people on social media, but it's the politicians, the journalists. This is still the thinking. So it doesn't bode well in terms of, yeah... the wider strategic thinking, which we now need. But my last question was, Russia strikes Europe in retaliation to restore its deterrence. What does the United States do?
Speaker 0: The United States may want to jump into it, but they won't be able to. What the war with Iran has exposed are the limitations of U.S. military power. Because you have to step back and say, okay, what What are we going to do? Is our naval force, do we have a naval force that we can send our aircraft carriers up into the Baltic Sea, for example, or into the Black Sea? No, we can't. So you have to, the aircraft carriers really are of no use in a military assault on Russia. So that leaves ground troops. We don't have ground troops. We got 470,000. to, quote, invade Russia. So we cannot pose a credible ground threat to Russia. Or if we did, if we were proposing doing that, just the time that would be required to assemble that force in Poland or in Romania and locations where they could go across the border. The Russians, in the era of drones, short-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, would target and destroy those encampments. So that leaves air power. And, you know, again, what we're running up against now is the, until the Strait of Hormuz is open and the oil, the 20% of oil that disappeared from the market is back on the market. And that's going to be months, maybe a year or so. Then, There's not going to be enough aviation fuel to sustain the kind of combat operation that would be required against Russia. And at the same time, the United States calculation that it could engage in attacks on Russia and that its own continental locations would be free? No, no, no, no. As Russia's deployed the Bureveshnik atomic cruise missile, Russia will this time would not hesitate to strike sites in the United States. I mean, this is an absolute worst-case scenario, nightmare scenario. The reality is the United States has limited military assets. They're very expensive, but we don't have depth, strategic depth with any of them. And what they've discovered, again, with Iran, that, you know, Iran does not have the kind of missile defense systems that Russia does. And Iran survived what the United States unleashed on it. And I would say that Russia carries more potential counterweight, that they're able to respond in greater levels of violence to the United States or the Europeans than Iran could to Israel or the United States in the recent war. So no, it'd be a recipe for...
Speaker 1: for suicide in my view well it does appear that's yeah we're moving towards suicide in europe at least that is if you hear the hawks now in moscow and their voices grow louder every day and they get more and more people on their side their argument is essentially go for full mobilization you know kill zalensky destroy the entire government district in kiev And while they're at it, go after all the European plants that build weapons that are used to attack Russia. And if something goes wrong, reach for the tactical nukes. And again, what's holding all of these hawks back is Putin. And this is the man which the European leaders most of all want to get rid of.
Speaker 0: Because he is Hitler. I mean, you couldn't make this up.
Speaker 1: It's so bizarre, but there is no logic anymore. It's just, yeah.
Speaker 0: It's pure insanity. Pure insanity. But, you know, they may get what they want, and they won't like what they get. So, hey, let me leave you. I got unrelated to this, but we'll call it breaking news. I have confirmed that... The United States, the Central Command through the Joint Chiefs of Staff have issued the order for U.S. All those, remember all those U.S. military forces that were being deployed into the bases in the Persian Gulf and in Jordan and in Israel. The order is now, they've been issued the order, come home. So you're going to start seeing all of that combat aircraft withdrawn, all the personnel withdrawn. 82nd Airborne, they're going to be withdrawn. It took more than a month to deploy them, and it's going to take more than a month to redeploy them. But the point is, now that this order to redeploy has been issued, the chances of the United States reengaging Iran militarily have been reduced significantly.
Speaker 1: Well, on those good notes or good news, and there's not much of that recently, you know, We can wrap it up. Hopefully, you know, why not pack up the military bases in Europe as well, send them home and perhaps then the Europeans become a little bit less cocky and we discover diplomacy, but yeah, that's for the future at least.
Speaker 0: From your mouth to God's ears. Well, thanks again, Larry. It's always great to speak with you. All right, Glenn, take care. Bye-bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: The Greater Israel Project is Collapsing https://youtu.be/9nKTHLrFKS0 https://t.co/3xhIoIJXet
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses how the “Greater Israel Project” is defined as the desire to keep all territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and to resist any Palestinian state, with control including Gaza, the West Bank (Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River), and East Jerusalem. He traces the ideology to early Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, arguing it has long sought to maintain sovereignty over what became British Mandatory Palestine.
Sachs contrasts Israel’s original internationally recognized statehood with the post-1967 expansion of control, noting that the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt after an Israel-Egypt agreement, while Israel retained control over three areas with large Palestinian Arab populations. He characterizes the practical and legal moral problems of the ideology in terms of demographic rule, stating that there are “8 million Palestinian Arabs” and “approximately 8 million Israeli Jews,” and describing the doctrine as requiring ruling over, expelling, ethnically cleansing, or killing Palestinian Arabs. He links the current government’s approach to this broader doctrine, describing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as particularly radical and closely aligned with Greater Israel.
He explains two strands of Greater Israel thought: (1) a security argument that Israel can only be safe with control extending beyond its pre-1967 borders, including places like the Golan Heights and parts of Lebanon; and (2) a religious argument that God promised land beyond the British Mandate—from “the great river in Egypt” to the Euphrates. Sachs references US ambassador Mike Huckabee, saying Huckabee espoused the idea that Israel can take land from Egypt to the Euphrates based on Genesis, and notes theologians were scandalized by Huckabee’s remarks.
Sachs states that Netanyahu came to power in 1996 and has promoted Greater Israel for about 30 years, initially tied to Likud’s security framing while Likud’s founding charter in 1977 asserted sovereignty from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He argues that a religious impulse grew especially after 1967 as hundreds of thousands of settlers moved into Palestinian occupied lands, contributing to what he describes as a Jewish supremacist ideology in government.
He further describes Netanyahu and US neoconservative advisors as adopting a strategy for handling Palestinian resistance: not defeating militant groups directly, but “overturning the governments of those who support the militants.” He references the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestinians’ self-determination and their right to armed struggle, as well as the idea that the terminology differs depending on perspective.
Sachs connects this approach to multiple regional conflicts, including claims that US and Israeli actions—such as the 2003 Iraq war and Operation Timber Sycamore targeting Bashar al-Assad—were shaped by the goal of removing governments seen as supporting Palestinian rights. He describes Iran as a central target of Greater Israel proponents and recounts that, on February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States attacked Iran and that Netanyahu framed it as a dream lasting 40 years.
Turning to consequences, Sachs says he hopes Greater Israel is finished. He argues solutions must not involve apartheid rule, continued “reckless murder,” or ethnic cleansing, and says for many people a one-state democratic/binational solution or a two-state solution could exist. He asserts that opposition may be growing because Israel cannot impose its solution on the region and because the US can no longer be the full backstop it once was, especially given shifting American public opinion after the war in Gaza and widespread negative views of the war in Iran.
Sachs describes political changes in the United States as “anti-Greater Israel” sentiment increasing, including examples from New York City where he says Jewish voters chose candidates he describes as opposing Israel’s extremism. He concludes that Israel’s extremism is losing its only support in the US, and states that politicians “are going to have to rethink what Israel is.”
In response to a question about Naftali Bennett’s claim that Turkey is next, Sachs argues that Greater Israel advocates create opposition because their underlying project is unjust, and says they will lose support—particularly the US backstop—if they turn against it. He ends by calling for an end to “this delusion” in order to reach peace.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss the Greater Israel Project. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Well, great to be with you, Glenn, always.
Speaker 0: Well, you recently published an article about the future of the Greater Israel Project. And I thought a good place to start is perhaps how this concept is defined and also how it has shaped the wider region.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Israel is a state. It was established with certain borders in 1948 when Israel declared independence following a partition plan that had been voted by the UN in its early days in 1947. Israel's declaration of independence generated a war because the Arab states rejected the partition plan, which was non-binding. It was an advisory plan. Israel used that as the basis for a unilateral declaration of independence in 1948. Israel won the war, took more territory. And then in 1967, the so-called Six-Day War occurred, again, with some debates about how and who provoked it. But the fact is that Israel captured in that war the rest of what had been British mandatory Palestine. In other words, Israel now had 100% of the territory under control after the 1967 war. Then after Israel and Egypt reached an agreement, What had been the Sinai Peninsula, also taken in 1967, was returned to Egypt in a peace agreement. But Israel, in effect, kept control over three main places with large Palestinian Arab populations. Gaza, the West Bank, meaning the Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River and East Jerusalem, which is a concentrated Palestinian Arab population. The Greater Israel Project is a term that's used to signify the desire to keep all of that territory that was captured in the Six-Day War and to resist any kind of Palestinian state. And this is a project under various names that goes back to the beginning of even the first Jewish homeland, to call it that, under the Balfour Declaration when this area was under the British mandate. And it has been an ideology, though not by any means the only ideology of the Zionist cause, which means the political ideology of a Jewish state in this area. It's been an ideology all along since 1917, since the Balfour Declaration opened up a Jewish homeland in what had been Ottoman Palestine. but now was British Mandatory Palestine until Britain gave up its claim in the interest of finding some post-British solution in some kind of partition. So the Greater Israel Project says this is ours and it's going to stay ours. The problem with the Greater Israel ideology in a practical and a legal and a moral sense is that there are 8 million Palestinian Arabs, and there are approximately 8 million Israeli Jews in this place, which was British Palestine. And it's the 8 million Israeli Jews, according to the ideology of Greater Israel, that will rule over the 8 million Palestinian Arabs or expel them. or ethnically cleanse the region or kill them, which is also happening in shocking numbers in Israel's war in Gaza. So the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is the most radical extremist government that Israel has ever had. I would, and it is ardently a greater Israel project. I can add that in the more expansive versions of greater Israel, the ambition goes beyond even the borders of the British mandate because of two reasons. One, that it is held by advocates of Greater Israel that it's necessary for Israel to control territory in Syria, such as the Golan Heights, or territory in Lebanon, for example, south of the Latani River, in order for Israel to be secure. So there's a security argument that says Greater Israel extends beyond Israel's border. There's also a theological argument by the religious holders of this ideology which say that according to the Jewish Bible the Old Testament for Christians and the Jewish Torah for Jews that God promised land beyond what was the British Mandate from the great river in Egypt which is in the biblical text is not the Nile necessarily, but sometimes is interpreted as the Nile, to the great river of Mesopotamia, which is the Euphrates River. And so some religious ideologues believe that it's God's promise to the Jewish people, a land that goes well beyond the British mandate And the US ambassador to Israel today, Mike Huckabee, who is an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, espouses the idea that Israel can take land from Egypt to the Euphrates because that's God's promise. And in a notorious interview with Tucker Carlson, A few months ago, Huckabee unabashedly said, yes, what Israel can take, it's Israel's, because that's God's promise in the book of Genesis. It's rather shocking for a hundred reasons, by the way. Practical, legal, moral, ethical, and theological, I'll add, because other theologians were or theologians, let me say, not other theologians, but theologians were completely scandalized by what Huckabee said, both Jewish and non-Jewish theologians. But in any event, it is to say that for some, greater Israel is impunity within the broader region. Now, all of this matters because Israel has been pursuing this doctrine under Netanyahu For 30 years, Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996. He's been prime minister off and on for much of the period of the last 30 years. He comes from a political movement, Likud, still the party that he leads, which holds this greater Israel view ostensibly on security grounds. So Netanyahu was never religious, never arguing from biblical texts until fairly recently. And the Likud in its founding charter in 1977 said that all of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would be Israeli sovereignty. So this goes back 50 years, basically, and in the mind, in ideology, even before the founding charter of the Likud. So it's been Netanyahu's mission to keep Israeli sovereignty over all of mandatory Palestine. But in the current coalition, and this is a trajectory that Israel has been on since that 1997 coup, 1977 founding charter of Likud, the religious impulse has become also more and more important. These are religious zealots or extremists. They espouse a truly, it's ugly to say, but they espouse a Jewish supremacy that as an American Jew, I find completely repulsive and disgusting, and contrary to 2,000 years of Jewish teachings under rabbinic Judaism. These are not people that reflect the history of Judaism. And as a Jew, I can say that the views of people like Smoltrich and Ben-Gavir are fascistic, disgusting, and completely extremist in my view. They have nothing to do with rabbinic Judaism, which taught something completely different, but they are a supremacist idea and based in some sense on this interpretation that God promised this to his chosen people. And therefore it is their right to conquer this land, killing as many people as would be necessary to do so. And it's also an extremely, what should I say, extremely tribal view that the lives that matter are Jewish lives and that non-Jewish lives don't matter. Smotrich and Ben-Gavir sometimes put it quite literally that for every one Jewish life that is taken in this conflict, a hundred or a thousand Arab lives should be taken. It's a vulgarity. But, and here's my point, it is the prevailing doctrine of the current government of Israel. So this is not some fringe ideology. This is the doctrine of the government of Israel. Now, just to conclude on what is greater Israel, Netanyahu has espoused this for 30 years. As I say, there are two strands. One, a kind of security argument that Israel can only be safe as greater Israel. And the second, a religious argument that this is God's purpose. And this is therefore redeeming God's purpose by the Jewish people. And both of these now sit together in Israeli politics. I should quickly add that the religious view rose after 1967, in particular, with hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers from Israel into the Palestinian occupied lands. Illegal settlements because you're not allowed to settle occupied territory that needs to be returned. to the rightful political entity, not Israel, but to a Palestinian entity. And yet hundreds of thousands of settlers came in, some because they wanted swimming pools and more land, but many others for religious purposes that form this Jewish supremacist idea now that is in government. So this has developed over decades. Final point, sorry to go on, but the final point is that when Netanyahu came in, he had strong American backing and strong American advisors. And the idea was the following. Greater Israel would lead to militant resistance. After all, it's a denial of the political right of self-determination of the Palestinian Arab people. And the UN General Assembly has said that not only do the Palestinians have the right of self-determination, but they have the right of armed struggle for self-determination. That idea is not outside of international law. The right of armed struggle for self-determination has been recognized repeatedly by the UN General Assembly, in fact. So Netanyahu and his American advisors said, well, we are going to stand for greater Israel, we know this will be trouble. There will be resistance. What they call terrorism, what others call the struggle for self-determination, it's all in the rhetoric and the eye of the beholder. But what Netanyahu said was very pertinent, and he was backed by the US neoconservatives. He said that you don't root out what they call the terrorism, and others would call those for armed struggle for self-determination. You don't root them out by fighting those militants. You root them out by overturning the governments of those who support the militants. So you don't defeat Hamas per se or Hezbollah per se. You have to fight the governments that support those militant groups. That's their ideology. Again, I find it repulsive because the way to fight an armed insurgency is to sit down and negotiate a political solution in which there is the rights of political self-determination of the Palestinian people. And that's what ideas like the two-state solution have proposed since 1997 and actually back to 1947. But for Netanyahu, this is armed struggle and armed struggle that has to be crushed. And the way to crush what he calls the terrorism is to overturn other governments. Now he captured American politics. It's true. Israel under Netanyahu successfully mobilized American politics for the cause of greater Israel. This is rather shocking. It's also a very complicated story of American politics. And it's not a simple story. Of course, there were American Jews that were part of that lobby. There was the direct engagement of Israel in American politics relentlessly. But there's also another complicated piece of Americana, which is the Christian evangelicals like Huckabee, who constitute tens of millions of voters heavily concentrated in the Republican Party and in Trump's voter base. So they also, by biblical terms, say, well, that's Israel's. By the way, they don't say it because they love the Jews or they love Israel. They say it because they read the Bible that the condition for the second coming of Jesus Christ is Israel's control over this land. So they read it as prophecy. not as somehow a gift to the Jewish people. In fact, they think in their biblical interpretation coming from the Book of Revelation, the Jews are gonna die in the final struggle, or they're gonna be converted, or they're gonna be condemned in the final judgment. It's all very, very weird. But from 1996 onward, the American government has basically backed the Greater Israel Project, and it has gone to war constantly to fight Israel's claim to overturn governments that were supporting Palestinian rights. And Iraq is a classic case. The 2003 US war on Saddam Hussein to overthrow the Iraqi government was completely pretextual. It was based on absolutely deliberate propaganda. that the US had to invade Iraq after 9-11 to prevent Iraq from getting, or to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction, which then were shown not to exist at all. And they said, oh, so sorry, we thought they existed. No, they knew they didn't exist. This was a Netanyahu neoconservative plan to overthrow a government that was supporting the Palestinian cause. on a pretext, on a lie, a war on utter lies. And this has gone on now for 30 years. And just about all the wars in the region in one way or another include the CIA and Mossad and greater Israel as a motivation. So overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria which was a CIA operation called Operation Timber Sycamore, signed by Obama in 2012, 2013, tasking the CIA to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, was also at the behest of Greater Israel. Why? Because Assad had links with Iran, and Iran was seen as the supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, and hence, this axis of resistance, so-called, needed to be defeated by overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. That turned out to be a 15-year bloody war caused by the United States, prolonged by the United States, denied by the United States because they called it the Syrian civil war. There was nothing civil about it. This was a war by the CIA and Mossad to create a government that would not back the Palestinian people. Well, the long and the short of it is that since 1996, Iran has been the prime target for greater Israel proponents. And when the war, this current war started on February 28th, 2026, when Israel and the United States attacked iran in a completely unprovoked war of aggression completely illegal completely fatuous and a failure when they did that netanyahu tweeted this is my dream of 40 years and i read that and i was taken aback because i had always said it was his dream of 30 years because I didn't know what his dream was for the 10 years before he became prime minister. But this is his dream of 40 years. Well, my point has been Netanyahu, go home, take your own dream away from the United States. And to the United States, greater Israel is not an American project. It's not in America's interest. It's not according to morality. It is not according to theology. It is not according to international law. It's disgusting. It's perpetual war. And why the United States backs this is a disgrace. It's because of lobbying and people who are not thinking straight and big money in campaigns and tens of millions of Protestant evangelical voters looking for the end of times, and many odd things. I live in a kind of crazy country that is able to do this. But this has been a 30-year perpetual war for something that has no justification whatsoever. So that's what greater Israel is.
Speaker 0: I was going to say, in the 1990s, though, this Greater Israel project, it had a good fighting chance. That is, it was backed by the only superpower in the world, which gave its unconditional support for this project. But since then, we've seen a multipolar world emerge. And I guess the Iran war was supposed to reverse this, restore US hegemony, but also Israeli supremacy in the region. But given... the defeat there now, which doesn't only change the distribution of power, but also the United States, we see more distancing itself from Israel. Not by everyone, of course, but groups which didn't utter this in the open in the past. I was just wondering as a brief question, what will be this impact then on the greater Israel project? I mean, what are Israel's strategic options now?
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope the idea of greater Israel is finished, period. That's my own hope. It's a disgusting idea. There are 8 million Palestinian Arabs and there is absolutely no cause for genocide or ethnic cleansing or apartheid rule. And there needs to be a solution. And for many people, and it's quite plausible and natural, there should be one state democratic and binational. And there are many examples of that. I could take Belgium as an example of the Walloons and the Flemish. They haven't always gotten along. There are deep cultural and sectarian and historical differences, but they make two states, by the way. They actually have five parliaments in Belgium to handle all of the different complexities of the multi-ethnicities. So Israel could become one state, a binational state, or what has been the international law and the intention of the UN General Assembly for, I would say, all the periods since 1947, and then especially after 1967 again, two states, a Palestinian state and a state living side by side. Many people say that's now passe. I don't know what's passe. Either solution is possible. What is not possible in my view is an apartheid state or continued reckless murder by Israel, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank. And the violence in the West Bank every day is shocking. Israeli settlers dragging Palestinians out, killing them, expropriating their land, burning houses. It's just got to stop. This absolutely inhuman behavior and this intergroup hatred and this Jewish power, which is actually the name of one of the political parties that is governing Israel right now, that kind of supremacist idea. It's just got to stop. There are two basic reasons why it may be coming to an end right now. and you emphasized one of them, very important, the United States and Israel cannot impose this solution on the region. They thought, well, Israel's invaded Lebanon in the past, it's weakened Hezbollah, Syria has been overthrown, the Iranian reach has been brought down, Hamas has been weakened, if not defeated, by the Gaza war and the Gaza genocide. So one view says that, okay, we're close. All we have to do is overthrow the Iranian regime. Turned out this was delusional. By the way, if they had asked you or they had asked me on February 28th, we would have told them that it was delusional. But they went ahead thinking this would be a one-day war. And it proved not only not a one-day war, but Iran is a sophisticated country, a large country of more than 90 million people. It's got hypersonic missiles. It's got space technology. It's got advanced drone technology. And it has the capacity to destroy a lot of the neighborhood. So it has a deterrent capacity, which it demonstrated, which is why there is this fragile, nascent agreement, because Iran closed the straits, demonstrated military deterrence. The U.S. had no military option that would have been able to avoid a destruction of the Gulf region and the world economy. So in the end, Trump said, OK, we stop this. And that's what this agreement is about. And I agree with Trump on this. Of course, I disagree with him on having started this war, which is fatuous. But I agree with him on ending the war because what are you gonna do? Nothing else. This really is a stalemate. So that's one reason why this Greater Israel Project, I hope, is on its last legs. But the other is internal to the United States. And that is that the US has been essentially the backstop of the Greater Israel Project Europe, for many reasons, does Israel's bidding to an extent, but there's much, much less backing. And the U.S. has backed it because the power of the Zionist lobby has been great. And it's been a kind of dual lobby. One is the American Jews and their relations with Israeli Jews and promoting this cause. And the second has been the Christian lobby. Zionists like Huckabee. And that's been a formidable lobby in the United States for 30 years. But what's happened, Glenn, is that with the genocide in Gaza, people watching this every day, people coming to understand, what is this about? And why isn't there a state of Palestine alongside a state of Israel? Why isn't there some solution to this? And hearing that the have peace and normal relations if there's a state of Palestine. They're a peace initiative. Americans have come to understand something is really wrong with this picture. And so in just three years, American public opinion has swung from support of Israel to support of the Palestinian people. And the view of Israel is hugely negative. And the attitude towards the war in Iran is devastatingly negative. Americans hated the war. They hated the war because it was useless, it was expensive, and it raised their gasoline prices. And it was cruel, killing 160 schoolgirls on the first day because Palantir couldn't get its targeting right. Come on. So the American people were completely disgusted by this. And Trump is also looking at this, and he's facing an election in early November. And what happened, Glenn, in my city, in New York City, a couple of days ago is absolutely amazing. New York City is the greatest concentration of Jews, American Jews. It's a very Jewish, it's not a Jewish city, but it's got a very strong Jewish population. And the voters of New York voted for the anti-Greater Israel candidates. We had one congressional primary election, two Jews running against each other. One was his current congressman, who supported the normal, we love Israel, we support what Israel does. And the other, a city councilman, who said, I'm running against Israel's extremism, and I'm running against my candidate who is for it. Anybody that says this has to do with anti-Semitism or something else knows nothing. This was two Jews running against each other. And the anti-Israel candidate won in a landslide. Landslide. And then there were two other congressional races, basically, that weren't two Jews running against each other, but not even Jewish candidates. But in fact, the candidates that said, we stand with the Palestinian people, one decisive victories that's new york city this is happening across the united states i keep telling i've said it from the first days of israel's war in gaza and i've said it to the israeli ambassador to the un and i've said it as many times as possible israel is losing its only support because of its extremism americans would support israel but they do not support greater Israel.
Speaker 0: Yeah, that's an important distinction. Well, I want to thank you for taking the time. I know you have a big day there in Turkey. If we had more time, I would have loved to ask about Naftali Bennett's comments about Turkey being the next new main threat to Israel.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just say, if I can, let me just add one word about that, which is that if you're based on a a completely unacceptable, immoral, illegal project like greater Israel, there will be opposition. And the opposition won't go away because your proposition that you're putting forward is fundamentally false. And so what happens with the greater Israel advocates, because they are pursuing a goal that is fundamentally unjust, they find enemies. everywhere. And so what Naftali Bennett says, Turkey is next. Well, who isn't next? They are actually saying these greater Israel, they're turning on the United States. Yawn, fine. The U.S. is the only backer of Israel in all of this. So they can turn on the United States all they want, but they will lose their only support. The fact of the matter is these Politicians are going to have to rethink what Israel is. If it's a rogue state like it has been, they will find no support anywhere. Israel will be fundamentally endangered in its survival, not because of the rest of the world, but because of its own rogue behavior. So Naftali Bennett boasting, you know, a would-be prime minister again, of a country of 10 million people, that they're going to take on Turkey, a country of 90 million people. Come on. It's getting, and that's what they did with Iran, another country of 90 million people. It's getting tragic, absurd, and this whole delusion needs to stop so that we can go to peace.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you, Jeff. And yeah, have a great day over there.
Speaker 2: Great. We'll talk soon. Thanks a lot.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Max Blumenthal: Panic in Israel After Iran's Victory https://youtu.be/2llCTE7Nf6w https://t.co/VjuiQDlwhT
Video Transcript AI Summary
The conversation centers on a US-Israeli relationship and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) tied to the US posture toward Iran, framed as a major political defeat and a source of domestic backlash inside the United States.
Max Blumenthal asks about US domestic politics and how Americans are reacting to what he characterizes as a “defeat,” and whether US decision-makers can accept the MOU’s terms. The response argues that the MOU is a major political defeat for Donald Trump and that Trump is trying to sell a different version of the outcome to his base and the American public than the one Iran understands. It claims Trump is declaring that IAEA inspectors will head to Iran to inspect nuclear sites, which Iran has rejected so far, and links this to assassinations of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and other Iranian scientists, stating Israel obtained names of scientists through hacked access to Rafael Grossi’s private accounts and previous inspections.
The response says the US has suffered the “worst, strategic defeat” in history in military and economic terms, with damage not contained even if conflict ends, and claims oil markets are preparing for continued high prices. It also describes shifts within US political support: JD Vance is described as being positioned as the salesman for the MOU, with Marco Rubio “nowhere to be seen,” and Trump backing Vance publicly. It claims neocon-oriented Republicans and Israel First Republicans are up in arms about the MOU, while the Zionist movement that supported Trump is also portrayed as turning on him. The response then argues that Democrats are attempting to “turn the screws” on Trump because the MOU is unpopular with the American public, and that opposition is driven by Trump’s unpopularity rather than opposition to peace with Iran.
It further claims that cable news attention is framed around a separate political spectacle—renovation of the reflecting pool on the National Mall that allegedly became green with algae, cracked sealant, and National Guard presence—serving as a conduit for contempt that spills into opposition to the MOU. Behind the spectacle, it lists pro-Israel operatives and alleges they are “honeycombed” through the Trump administration, potentially trying to unravel the MOU or prevent a deal, while describing them as buying time through “strategic sequencing.”
Blumenthal presses on Israel’s position, noting Israel’s decade-long push for war with Iran and asking about Israel’s panic and plan B. The response states that Israel reportedly proposed destroying all of Iran’s infrastructure in 48 hours to the US, and that the US rejected it, describing it as a ploy to drag the US into a war it can’t win. It cites Dan Kaine opposing the war before it began and later allegedly leaking information about munitions shortages and the inability to destroy Iran’s navy or open the Strait of Hormuz. It argues that the US lacked a path to military objectives without massive air power losses and concludes that Iran’s doctrine is “survival”-based, leaving Israel exposed.
The response then connects Israel’s vulnerability to rising polarization in the United States, describing opposition to aid to Israel as surging in polling and framing Israel lobby messaging as unable to adjust. It claims Israeli intelligence will continue destabilization activities but lacks firepower to confront Iran alone, and discusses outgoing Mossad director David Barnea allegedly leaking details of regime-change efforts while predicting regime change by the end of the year.
The core claim about how the MOU will unravel is that the key lever is Lebanon: it asserts Israel must stay escalatory in Lebanon to sabotage the MOU. It describes interviews with people in southern Lebanon returning to rubble, alleged new massacres, and specific incidents around the “Ali al-Tahrir Hill.” It also claims Israel’s coalition rhetoric is being exposed, including references to Itamar Ben-Gvir, and asserts that US and Israeli lobbying attempts to frame Israeli incursions as victimhood face online backlash. It further claims JD Vance told an Arab reporter that “no one is doing more” than the US to tamp down violence in Lebanon, and argues that if the MOU is enforced, Israel will be restricted in Lebanon.
The discussion expands to possible US political realignment, including Tucker Carlson’s alleged break from the Republican Party and the idea of a third party combining Carlson-aligned figures with others, potentially pushing JD Vance toward a harder line against Israel. Finally, Blumenthal asks what Israel could do “in desperation,” including whether use of a nuclear weapon could be considered; the response does not speculate about specific actions but describes Israel as capable of “anything” and claims Israel is using anti-Semitism hoaxes and overseas attacks (including gun-for-hire claims) to elicit sympathy. It proposes “United Against a Nuclear Israel” as an idea to educate the public about what it calls an “apocalyptic threat” and links this to dismantling apartheid as central to global crises.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Max Blumenthal, the editor-in-chief at The Gray Zone, to discuss the MOU and what is happening to the US-Israeli relationship. So thank you for coming back on. Great to see you, Glenn. So I guess my first question was very specific. That is the Memorandum of Understanding, which I assume the US had to sign quite reluctantly given that it reads as a declaration of surrender almost. But again, I understand why it had to be signed. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine the US being able to accept the terms of this. Again, the US has its own complicated political system, even though Trump recognizes that it's necessary to put an end to this. You know, he doesn't necessarily have the final say or the only say in this matter. So I was wondering if you could speak to some of the domestic politics, how people in the United States are reacting to, well, what I would define as a defeat at least.
Speaker 1: Well, this was also a major political defeat for Donald Trump and he's heading toward catastrophe. And that's why Donald Trump is trying to sell a different There actually is no deal, but a different MOU to his base and to the American public than the one that Iran understands was agreed upon. Today, Donald Trump is declaring that there will be IAEA inspectors heading to Iran to inspect the nuclear sites. And that's something that Iran has rejected so far. And why would they accept that? given the assassinations of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Oppenheimer of Iran, on down to lesser-known quantum physicists and scientists who were assassinated during the 12-day war. And afterwards, how did Israel get these names and put them in its target bank? Well, we know Israel hacked into the private accounts of Rafael Grossi. the general secretary of the IAEA. And it got these names through previous inspections that Iran had to hand over the names of scientists. So it doesn't seem like Donald Trump is putting forward the actual MOU to his own base that he has to sign because the U.S. was dealt the worst, I think, strategic defeat possibly in its history, military defeat. Many ways a worse defeat than Vietnam because the economic damage has not been contained and won't be contained even if the conflict ends right now. The situation going through the summer looks bleak and I'm being told by people who are investors that oil is a really good bet right now because the prices will not stay down. So Donald Trump has to has to do this. And in some ways he has won back some of the support of his base. He's put JD Vance out as the salesman for the MOU. Vance was always sold to the public as one of the restrainers on Iran. He wasn't able to obviously do anything. when Benjamin Netanyahu came to town and told Donald Trump, basically gave Donald Trump his marching orders in February. But now J.D. Vance is kind of having a little bit of a comeback. He's earning a little bit of his credibility back. Marco Rubio is nowhere to be seen. Donald Trump is backing up J.D. Vance publicly. And Donald Trump is facing a rift within the Republican Party elite The kind of George W. Bush, neocon-oriented Republicans are up in arms about the MOU. The Israel First Republicans like Ted Cruz, Roger Wicker on the Foreign Relations Committee, they're obviously up in arms. And then you have the Zionist movement that supported Trump attacking him, including in Miriam Adelson's paper in Israel. Israel Hayom, the pro-Netanyahu propaganda sheet, which we can talk about next, is now going after Donald Trump. Donald Trump's unpopular in Israel suddenly. They're just so entitled that they would turn on him in a second. But I think one of the most cynical, insidious elements in American politics that is now attempting to turn the screws on Trump for signing this MOU is and doing so in Versailles, the symbolism of signing basically a declaration of surrender in Versailles, are the Democrats. And the Democrats are doing so because the MOU is actually unpopular among the American public, not because they don't want peace with Iran. It's because they don't want Donald Trump to sign it, because Donald Trump is unpopular. Donald Trump is a widely hated figure, so anything associated with Trump is doomed to fail. This is like a new, I think it's a CNN poll, 64% of Americans don't like the MOU. That's almost the same number of Americans that didn't like the Iran war. So why wouldn't they want there to be peace? Why wouldn't they want there to be an MOU? Because it's Trump doing it. Everything in the news right now is not even, like the top story in the US, if you watch cable news, is not the MOU. It's not the dynamics of the deal or whether Iran will actually give up its nuclear dust or submit to inspectors. It's about the reflecting pool on the National Mall and the fact that a former Olympian was arrested for dipping his hand into the reflecting pool because Trump has just overseen this absurd Mar-a-Lago style renovation of the reflecting pool that costs like $30 million. He gave the contract in an a no-bid contract to a crony. And now the pool is filled with algae blooms. It's turned green. The blue sealant has cracked off. And National Guard are guarding the reflecting pool. And anyone who approaches can be arrested. And Trump is blaming vandals for the failure of this glitzy renovation project. And that's what everyone is focused on right now. Just it's become sort of a microcosm or a conduit for all of the public's contempt of Donald Trump. And that's flowing into opposition to the MOU simply because Trump is doing it. And that's a real problem. And then just, you know, behind all of this, the political spectacle are figures like Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, all of these pro-Israel operatives whose careers have been fueled and instrumentalized by the Israel lobby or are just simply adherents of the Zionist movement. Jared Kushner actually brought Nick Stewart from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is the main Israeli cutout that devised this war in Washington. He brought him to Switzerland for the negotiations. So these figures are still honeycombed throughout the Trump administration and are poised to unravel any MOU or prevent a deal. But I think what they're doing right now is just buying time. And they see this as a form of strategic sequencing. So there are many factors working against the success of the MOU, even though the American public is just solidly against going back to war.
Speaker 0: Yeah, well, what he said about Trump, speaking of a different MOU, I think it's quite evident, not just how he's, well, arguing that the IAEA has to come in, but he's arguing the US doesn't have to pay 10 cents. You know, the MOU is quite specific. He's threatened Hezbollah to stop, well, what he called disruptive behavior, I think. But it's the... But it's the Israelis who are still occupying Lebanon. So all of these points in the MOU, and of course, threatening Iran during the negotiation, this is also prohibited. So he doesn't appear to want to live up to it. Indeed, it does seem that he might be buying time, though, just to get some oil through stabilized markets. But it's hard to see this actually implemented in full. How do you see Israel, though? It seems to be in a difficult spot now. That is, it's been pushing for this war with Iran for decades. It finally got its man in the White House. Trump did it, and then obviously did not go as planned. Iran has come out on top, despite all the death and destruction. But where does that place Israel at this point? I mean, how bad is the panic, and what's plan B, essentially?
Speaker 1: Israel... reportedly proposed to destroy all of Iran's infrastructure in 48 hours to the U.S., and the U.S. rejected that because it's just simply something they can't do. I think even the Trump administration, as buffoonish as they are, recognized that this was just another ploy to drag the U.S. back into a war that it can't win, in which it achieved zero military objectives stated from the outset. And it was none other than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Kaine, who opposed the war before it even began and began leaking to the Washington Post and the New York Times that the U.S. would experience a munitions shortage, which it did. Dan Kaine then testified for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I think in an exchange with Senator Dick Durbin, that Iran's Navy had not been destroyed. and that the U.S. could not militarily open the Strait of Hormuz. This was as Donald Trump was, he's even stating today, their military was decimated, the Navy's destroyed. It could be that that's what Donald Trump's being told in his echo chamber, but I think that's just the case Donald Trump wants to make to his base so he can continue to sell the MOU following this defeat. So the U.S. can't go, can't, there's no clear way for the U.S. to achieve military objectives that it did not before, unless it's willing to commit massive amounts of air power and lose scores of planes, possibly pilots, get pilots taken hostage in order to destroy Iran's missile cities and deterrence. And it wasn't willing to do that. The war was fought with standoff munitions. Obviously, after losing F-15s and F-35 nearly being downed, the U.S. was unwilling to send in a lot of the air power that would have been necessary. And Iran has a very wise military doctrine that is based around... I was actually watching... Iran's World Cup performance versus Belgium. And there was a clear analog, a clear parallel between Iran's strategy in that match and Iran's military doctrine, which is just based around survival. And that was such a wise doctrine against a US empire that just doesn't have the political will to be able to even erode Iran's deterrence. There isn't the political will at home. There weren't adequate munitions. And so this leaves Israel alone. And now Israel has left it more exposed than it has been probably at any point since the Suez Crisis in the 1956 war. And that means the Zionist movement is also exposed. And everything they say comes crashing against the hard rocks of the reality that the 99% experiences in the United States and around the world of economic calamity brought on by their war. And more and more people are waking up to the fact that this was essentially a Zionist war. Zionists don't understand this, though. They don't understand why everyone's mad at them. They actually see this as a form of persecution, as anti-Semitism. And they're not sharpening or honing their messaging. They're not able to... cope with a popular mayor in New York City like Mahmoud Mamdani actually campaigning openly against AIPAC. More and more candidates in the US are campaigning against AIPAC. The level of opposition to Israel in Pew and Gallup polls is surging right now to record levels. It's like, I think, over 80% of registered Democrats oppose sending aid to Israel at this point. The American public wants to cut Israel off. and Israel's lobbying tentacles and the Zionist movement as a whole is not able to adjust its messaging or to cope with this reality. Within Israeli intelligence, Israeli military intelligence apparatus, for sure they are attempting to absorb some of the lessons of this war, but they won't have the firepower to confront Iran alone. And so the outgoing Mossad director, David Barnea, leaked details of what his Iran unit had been doing to generate regime change, and actually predicted that the Mossad would continue to escalate its destabilization activities inside Iran and its subterfuge, fawning to spawn regime change riots and that they will actually achieve regime change by the end of the year. Again, I think this is another false prediction to justify, absurd prediction, to justify their bureaucratic priorities and get their budget and also to keep the U.S. mesmerized by the aura of Israeli intelligence. But again, they don't have a clear strategy there. I think Israel will press ahead, though, with destabilization activities. They may try to launch another war, perhaps after the World Cup, and assume that the U.S. will join them, as they did during the 12-day war, to rescue them. This war would increase the pressure on Donald Trump to do something. It's unclear if he will rescue them this time, or as Nixon did in the 1973 war. But one thing that they have no strategy for and that they're not prepared for and which they cannot stomach at all is the loss of support of the American public and growing elements within the US political establishment. It's gotten so desperate that Israel's Channel 14, the pro-Netanyahu propaganda channel, hosted the Israeli magician and mentalist and fraudster Uri Geller, who declared that Donald Trump's brain had been hacked by a sophisticated electronic transmission by Iran, and that's why he signed the MOU. That really gives you a window into the thinking in Israel right now. And I don't even know if we can call it thinking.
Speaker 0: I haven't seen that story. That's... Yeah, quite extraordinary. But again, we're within the United States. What is fascinating though with the Israel issue, there always seems to be a consensus there. A Republican, Democrat, they will always fight for Israel till the end. But now, as you say, you have all these, I guess, pro-Israeli groups up in arms because of the MOU being seen as this massive decoupling. But on the other side, you see the people, well... Yeah, you can put J.D. Vance in the box, but essentially the Tucker Carlsons of America, those who argue for putting America first instead of Israel. So you see this massive... Israel has become a polarized issue, it seems. But how does that work into the survival, though, of the MOU? Because there's, of course, many who would like to sabotage it within the U.S. I guess Israel would like to do the same. And I think the Iranians kind of caught up. While they know... I think what Washington's planning to do, which is just drag them along and slowly water it down and fail to implement. This looks like what's going to happen, but they, you know, they show that they were willing to walk away as soon as Trump began to threaten them. So they, they, they seem to be preparing against this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think this is just a historic inflection, historical inflection point more than an actual signal of any Concrete deal and that a process of The process of Israel's dissolution Or the at least the dissolution of Israeli exceptionalism in American life is accelerating rapidly that's all we can say but I agree with you the MOU will be eventually watered down and the key lever for Israel to unravel is The MOU is in Lebanon, which is why they're consistently escalating in Lebanon. Our correspondent at the Gray Zone, Wyatt Reed, was in the South interviewing people who are attempting to return to the rubble of their homes or their homes. And many of them had to turn back because Israel continued to escalate and was enacting new massacres, killing scores of people a day. The action around the Ali al-Tahrir Hill where it's said that hezbollah has a base and israel's been unable to reach it with its tank columns there's a tank that reportedly is still stuck at the base of the hill with a commander inside and three other soldiers has been extremely demoralizing for israel it prompted the The Twitter ex-tirade by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, calling for making thousands of Lebanese mothers weep for every one Israeli mother who weeps and declaring that all of Lebanon must burn. This really exposed the hideous face of Israel's governing coalition to everyone. Even the arch-Zionist CNN anchor Jake Tapper felt compelled to condemn this. This is what's being brought out of Israel's demented soul through its failures in Lebanon. But it has to stay in Lebanon in order now to sabotage the MOU. AIPAC, the main arm of the Israel lobby in the U.S., attempted to portray those four invading Israeli soldiers who were attempting to attack Hezbollah inside Lebanese territory as as victims of a Kristallnacht-like pogrom, declaring that Hezbollah just killed four Jews because it enjoys killing Jews. They're actually trying to elicit sympathy for invading Israeli soldiers. And every time they do so on X, those posts get ratioed with thousands of comments, essentially mocking and taunting them. There is no sympathy for what Israel is doing there. J.D. Vance was asked in Switzerland by an Arab reporter about Israel's genocidal rampage in Lebanon, actually using the term genocide. In the past, you would have seen Joe Biden or Barack Obama or whoever their underlings denounced that reporter for using the term genocide, but JD Vance simply shrugged and said, no one is doing more than us to try to tamp down on the violence in Lebanon. And if the MOU is to be enforced, Israel is going to be restricted in Lebanon. And that will be a military failure unlike, that could actually be a more devastating military failure for Israel than Iran was. Iran was a more catastrophic failure for the United States. But at this point, it looks like that's where they're heading and that Lebanon will be the main lever for unraveling the MOU. And to the extent that Hezbollah is going to continue to inflict losses with FPV drones, with cornet missiles and other anti-tank weapons on the Israelis, the MOU survives. And just another quick point. because you brought up Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson declared, I think yesterday in an interview with a podcast, that he was done with the Republican Party. Tucker Carlson comes out of the real center of the Republican Party, the mainstream of the Republican Party. He was actually not considered an extremist or a far-right person or a populist until just a few years ago. His father was a major Republican figure who served as an ambassador in Republican administrations, was close to the Reagan administration. This is like Republican Party elite. And he's declaring that he can't be part of the Republican Party anymore because it doesn't serve the United States. It essentially serves Israel. Tucker Carlson could potentially form a third party that would include figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Matt Gaetz and Thomas Massey, many of the figures who've been pushed out by the Israel lobby, who have a lot of cachet within the conservative grassroots and also have a lot of respect on what I would call the populist left, which Representative Ro Khanna of California is attempting to lead right now. And he'll probably run for, I think he'll run in the Democratic primary. So let's just say they do that. they're going to kneecap the Republican candidate in 2028. Unless that candidate is J.D. Vance, who Tucker Carlson has been close to. Tucker Carlson's son worked under J.D. Vance until he was forced out by the Israel lobby. But having that contingent, the Tucker contingent, you could call it, will... force J.D. Vance to take a harder line against Israel. It's something that I wished would take place with the Democrats, but you only have the Green Party, which the Democrats have successfully kept off ballots nationally and in state races, most recently in the California governor race, to prevent there being any lever of restraint on the Democratic Party's pro-Israel insanity. It's shaping up to be a fascinating 2028 primary in both parties because the base is dropped out on pro-Israel support and the only thing left is legalized bribery.
Speaker 0: I think the third party would do much good, actually, because when you have this polarized two-party system, one would always... Well, it's very hard for one side to drop off to the other one, but if there's a third party... It doesn't even have to win. It's enough that it forces the other parties to moderate themselves if they want to hold on to this electoral base. Just a last quick question, though. Given that so much is at stake for Israel, they might lose their unconditional American backing, the whole policy of peace through strength, if you will, that is based on this clean break policy. approach greater Israel. I mean, all of this seems to be being risked at the moment. What do you think Israel could do in desperation? Do you think an actual use of a nuclear weapon to show its determination would be out of the question? Or I just have a hard time. I don't see them backing down or adjusting to new realities, which then begs the question, what remains for Israel?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. And that's the question on everyone's mind right now, because Anyone who's paying close attention to this who still has their critical faculties understands that Israel is an anachronistic state. It's a high-tech, nuclearized, colonial state that exists out of place in history and outside the reality of normal international relations and wants to unravel international law as a matter of its own survival, has no borders, refuses to set borders. is perpetually occupying millions of people who actually comprise a majority between the river and the sea. And so this lunatic rogue state, in order to maintain its ethno-supremacist character, is prone to some dastardly acts and is capable of anything. I don't think we've seen the worst of what Israel's capable of. It's boasted of its ability to infiltrate common household communications equipment like pagers or cell phones and turn them into explosives. So what will it do when its back is against the wall? Will it engage in assassinations of leadership who are not members of non-state resistance groups like Hezbollah or Hamas? Has it already done so? Will it begin to get violent against members of the media? What is it capable of? I don't want to speculate. I just know that's where so many people's minds are going right now as Israel grows increasingly desperate. And we see, for example, a former IDF Persian language spokesman declare that America needs a new Pearl Harbor to understand what the stakes are, that we should worry about what they're capable of. But what they're doing right now is attempting to elicit sympathy through the conjuring of bogus anti-Semitism hoaxes to the point where prominent Canadian Zionists have been hoping for the past 24 hours or so and wishing that that this Montreal shooter who is said to be sort of, I mean, it's a crude way of putting it, but like an incel who hated women or resented that men weren't able to, you know, that women weren't available to men like him, that he were actually an anti-Semite who was out there shooting Jews. And they're doing everything they can against all evidence to convince the public that this shooter wanted to kill Jews. Just as AIPAC, was attempting to portray IDF invading soldiers in Lebanon as Kristallnacht victims who were killed just because they're Jewish. And then you have this whole global phenomenon from Australia to the UK. I mean, it's mainly in the Commonwealth states, Australia, the UK, and now Canada, where there are these gun-for-hire anti-Semitism attacks in which mostly youth who are from horror backgrounds, like mostly like lumpen proletariat types, are being paid in crypto through anonymous online foreign actors to carry out low-level property damage attacks outside Jewish communal sites, as well as like the U.S. consulate in Toronto. And strange telegram channels are claiming credit for them for these attacks under the name of something called Ashab Yamin al-Islamiyya, or like the right hand of Islam and claiming that they're part of the Iran sponsored resistance. And it all looks very shady to me. It all looks very shady when we consider that in 2016 and 2017, in 2016, a wave of thousands of anti-Semitic robocalls to Australian Jewish centers actually originated from Israel and an Israeli teen was arrested after Australian intelligence fingered the culprit. But Iran is blamed for all of it. Iran's ambassador had been removed from Australia after being blamed for these strange pay-for-play anti-Semitism attacks. Iran was blamed by Keir Starmer for a stabbing in London. by a mentally ill man who had stabbed two Jews after stabbing a Muslim flatmate. Iran's being blamed, but Iran doesn't gain anything from this. Iran gains nothing. There's only one state which gains from these strange pay-for-play anti-Semitism attacks, and it's the one with a long history of false flag attacks, for example, bombing synagogues in Iraq to compel the Iraqi Jewish community to move to Israel in the early 1950s. Crimes that were documented and confirmed by the Israeli revisionist historian, Abish Lime, or the Levant affair in Egypt, which actually collapsed Egypt's Jewish community and set the stage for the 1956 war. It's Israel. And so we really have to be asking what they're capable of with their backs increasingly against the wall. And we have to be documenting it and pushing our leadership to do something to restrain this psychotic state. And I think one idea that I had that I put forward in an interview I did earlier this week or last week, I'm losing track is, um, United Against a Nuclear Israel campaign. It was throughout the United States. United Against a Nuclear Iran run by Israeli cutouts like Jason Brodsky. And there were big billboards in Times Square. But Iran didn't even have an active nuclear program. Israel has a secret nuclear program. It's Samson Option, in which it could use that nuclear program as blackmail against the West. Has been well-documented. And it's time to educate the public about the threat Israel poses. It's an apocalyptic threat. As we also explain how necessary it is to dismantle its apartheid system, which really is at the core of the global economic crisis that's afflicting almost everyone on the planet right now.
Speaker 0: Well, Max, thanks so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule. And I will leave a link to the Gray Zone in the description. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got a new piece up about these gun for hire attacks at the Gray Zone. So thegrayzone.com is where you'll find it.
Speaker 0: I'll leave a link to that as well. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Trump Lost the Iran War - Must Sell It as a Victory https://youtu.be/NbP11DAFkZw https://t.co/3R1M08k5gx
Video Transcript AI Summary
Saeed Mohammed Marandi, professor at Tehran University and former advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, discussed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) and its broader implications. He described the earlier “10-point plan” accepted by the Americans as a framework for negotiations as an “achievement in itself,” noting the Americans did not accept the plan initially and that, after 39 days, they accepted the 10-point plan as the framework.
Marandi argued that the ceasefire failed after Israeli actions, saying Netanyahu “wrecked” it by carpet bombing Lebanon, which led to the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed “for those countries that helped the United States in the war” while remaining closed for those including Saudi Arabia, the Emiratis, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. He said this drove up energy, LNG, and petrochemical prices. He further linked worsened conditions to a U.S. siege on Iranian ports and described the American approach as trying to “strangle Iran” and “starve the Iranian people,” followed by economic measures and discussion of strategic oil reserves that he said helped maintain consumption and accelerated a crisis. He said Iran remained “steadfast,” and that the U.S. “folded,” leading to negotiations over the MOU.
On the MOU itself, Marandi said it was “pretty good,” while acknowledging controversy within Iran. He said the leader was not fully satisfied with elements and how the MOU was formulated, but agreed for Iran’s Supreme National Security Council to approve it. He characterized the public criticism of elements as a message to Americans that Iran’s negotiators would not be flexible and that Iran had already conceded as much as would be conceded, requiring fulfillment of the MOU at the negotiating table.
He said progress included the lifting of the U.S. siege and sanctions on Iran’s oil and energy sector for exports, and the start of the “mechanism to free riding assets,” while stating the claim that Iran must buy U.S. agricultural goods “is not true.” He also said Israeli actions in Lebanon were curtailed in some way, despite killings he referenced. He stated Iran did not agree to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors coming with any new mandate, while monitors still visited sites such as Bushehr and the Tehran experimental reactor, but not the sites Iran said were bombed. He argued that what Trump and Vance were saying was for “internal consumption” amid U.S. criticisms.
Marandi described shipping and the Strait of Hormuz in the days after the siege was lifted, saying traffic was not great overall but that some increase occurred for two days, with much of the oil described as “Iranian oil.” He said Iran disproportionately exported oil and that many tankers positioned to depart left the region as soon as the siege was lifted. He added that Iran told ships to pass through a certain route, resulting in fewer ships than before. He said ongoing tensions, including Trump threats to Iran and negotiators, undermined confidence for insurance companies and tanker owners.
He addressed disputes mentioned by the interviewer: he said threats do not conform with the MOU, and he referenced language he described as promising reconstruction economic development funds for Iran. He stated Trump and Vance’s claims about IAEA access and other elements were disputed within Iran.
Asked whether the U.S. was walking back or making noise for domestic audiences, Marandi said the U.S. was “definitely trying to walk back,” but that Iran would not let it, insisting on full implementation. He said Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter functioned as a message that Iran would not be flexible and that fulfillment of the agreement or “nothing” was the only option.
Marandi predicted that the MOU’s fragility implied by its name (“MOU”) meant he was “not terribly optimistic” and did not expect it to last long, while also arguing that if it ended, energy shortages would worsen and conflict would risk a global economic depression worse than the 1930s. He said Netanyahu “wants crisis” and war, while Trump “needs peace” to prevent economic collapse, and suggested that pragmatic supporters might avoid worsening outcomes for Israel if U.S. economic collapse affected it as well.
On Israeli-Zionist dynamics, Marandi said hostility toward the Israeli regime and Zionism was increasing worldwide, including in the U.S., referencing changing rhetoric and criticism. He argued that genocide-related actions were driving anger among younger people and that demographic decline among older Republican base supporters would deepen hostility. He also said elites in Washington remained influenced by a “Zionist” elite and oligarchy, and he framed this as complicating how events would unfold.
In discussing U.S.-Israel relations, he said openness to criticizing Israel had increased, but maintained that Zionist power still remained strong and could “wreck this agreement at any moment.” He concluded that if the U.S. pushed confrontation with Iran, it would worsen outcomes for Zionists, because Iran held leverage and Americans and Israelis were “stuck” between abiding by the deal or wrecking it, which he said would also be bad for Israel’s interests.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Saeed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So, yeah, thank you for coming back on the program. I want to ask you about the development of the memorandum of understanding, because when the United States asked for the initial ceasefire a while ago, They agreed to this 10-point plan to stop the hostilities, but as we saw, they didn't abide by it. Indeed, it appeared that the day after, they began to water it down and were ignoring what was supposed to be the point of departure for these discussions. I was wondering, how do you see the memorandum of understanding this time? Is the US strategy yet again to string the Iranians along, water it down, because there appears to be some pushback not just from Trump, but well, the White House in general.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. Always very glad to be on your show and to have the opportunity to speak to your audience. I think the 10-point plan was an achievement in itself. The very fact that the Americans accepted it as a framework for negotiation. They didn't accept the 10-point plan. But it was a huge achievement because the Americans started with unconditional surrender and after 39 days ended with, okay, we'll accept your 10-point plan as the framework for discussions. And of course, it was obvious that they would... Once at the negotiating table, they would... refrain from accepting the plan. But the Americans made a bigger mistake in my opinion after the war. The war itself was a catastrophic mistake and a major victory for Iran, a key victory, a turning point in the world that we live in today. But what became even more, I think, devastating for the United States was what happened after the war. We were supposed to have a ceasefire. And if Netanyahu was smart, he wouldn't have wrecked it. He carpet bombed Lebanon in order to wreck the ceasefire. This was more than two months ago. And I know you remember, but just in case some of your viewers have forgotten. So because of Netanyahu, the ceasefire plan crashed and the Strait of Hormuz continued to remain closed. closed for those countries that helped the United States in the war. It was never closed for everyone. The Iranians closed it to the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, and the Qataris for their role in the war. And that caused the price of energy and LNG and all the other petrochemical products to rise. But after the failure of the ceasefire, and then the U.S. siege on Iranian ports, the situation for the entire world got a lot worse. So if the Americans had been smart, if Netanyahu had not wrecked the ceasefire agreement, right now the United States would not be in this position. Netanyahu single-handedly and then Trump through the siege on Iranian ports really made things a lot worse for them. Because losing the war was one thing, but crashing the economy is something else. So ultimately, the Americans backed down. They thought that they'll strangle Iran, starve the Iranian people, bring them to their knees, and then they were swiftly using strategic oil reserves and talking down the markets, ironically. keeping consumption high and pushing us faster and faster towards the crisis. But in any case, they were hoping that they would defeat Iran and ordinary Americans would not experience very high oil prices and energy prices and it would be over. But it didn't happen. Iran didn't fold. Iran remained very steadfast and Americans, they folded. So we had the negotiations for the MOU. And ultimately, it was becoming clear that the Americans needed an urgent agreement. But they were still dragging their feet. And until Netanyahu struck Beirut, southern Beirut, and the Iranians were going to retaliate, and Trump said, okay, we'll give you these concessions, put MOU, and there was an agreement. The MOU is pretty good. Of course, there's a big controversy in Iran about the MOU. Some people are against it, some for it. The leader, he was, it turned out, we didn't know, but in the negotiations, it turned out that he was not in agreement with everything in the MOU or the way they chose to, let's say, formulate the MOU. There are some elements of it which are still unclear. Well, for people, it's unclear exactly what it is that he was opposed to, but he agreed to the MOU ultimately, even though he wasn't completely happy with it, but he agreed to allow the Supreme National Security Council to approve of the MOU. So there is a controversy in Iran. Some say we should have taken a harder stance. Some say that, well, this was approved, so we should just be tough at the negotiating table. Personally, I think the reason why the leader let it be known that he was critical of some elements of the MOU was because he was sending a message to Americans that his negotiators are not going to be flexible, that they've already conceded what as much as is going to be conceded, if you get what I'm trying to say here. In other words, the MOU was agreed upon. He said, I'm not completely satisfied with it. And so that's sending a message both to the negotiators, but more importantly to the Americans that don't try to get any concessions from the Iranians at the negotiating table. This is it. This is the MOU. You have to fulfill it. At the negotiating table, even though Vance and Trump said a lot of nonsense, But it does seem to be clear that the Iranians continue to have the upper hand. So the MOU is pretty good. And so far, the Americans have lifted the siege. They've lifted the sanctions on Iran's oil and energy sector for exports. The mechanism to free riding assets has begun. Although the Americans say that Iran has to buy U.S. agricultural goods, but that's not true. And also, the Israeli regime has been forced to end its genocide in Lebanon. Although they did murder two people yesterday, but so far it's pretty clear that the Iranians are not going to be flexible at all. And I think it's clear that they won't be in future. So there is progress. The Iranians did not agree for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to come to Iran with any new mandate. I mean, they do come to see the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was never bombed or anything, and the Tehran experimental reactor, which I think you may have visited or you had an invitation to visit, but you couldn't go. You have some other... UN, okay. So monitors or inspectors still go there. But the sites that were bombed, Iran has not agreed. So what Trump and Vance are saying are basically for internal consumption because of the criticisms that you alluded to in the United States. So, so far, it seems to be moving well. What I can also say is that The Strait of Hormuz during the last few days has been open. The number of ships in general over the, I don't know how many days it's been since it's open, but the number of ships that have passed through have not been that great except for two days they were higher, especially the tankers. But a lot of that oil is Iranian oil. So the Iranians have been disproportionately exporting oil. They had a lot of tankers full of oil. that were ready to go. And as soon as the siege was lifted, those many tankers began to leave the region. Many of them were inside the Strait. Some of them were outside. But in any case, Iran has been able to export a lot of oil. So this is where we are. But the Strait is still... The traffic is not great anymore. Not lots of tankers are coming in. The Iranians have told all the ships that they have to pass through a certain route. So the passage is not that – there are not that many ships going through. But of course the tensions when Trump keeps threatening Iran, threatening to kill the negotiators, to murder the negotiators, to destroy Iran – that's obviously not going to create confidence for insurance companies and the owners of tankers that are thinking about sending their ships to the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 0: That's what I meant. The threats being made against Iran, this does not conform with the MOU. But also Trump made some comments, that is, that Iran wouldn't get 10 cents, but the memorandum, speaks of 300 billion for the reconstruction economic development of Iran. So essentially for the U.S. and its partners to fix what they broke. Also, yeah, in one tweet, Trump, that is, he blamed Hezbollah for the problems in Lebanon. But I think, again, here the MOU is quite clear that this is sovereign Lebanese territory. And yeah, essentially the Israelis have to go. And as I said, with the The claims they also made about the IAEA being allowed in, which Iran considers to have essentially spied for the Israelis and Americans. The agricultural deal, which doesn't seem to exist. There's a lot of these things. And essentially, well, in my mind, I'm left with two possible hypotheses. That is either Trump is trying to water this down, walk it back. Or second is it's simply noise. That is... it's a very unpopular deal back in America he promised unconditional surrender of Iran he was going to destroy them he reassured everyone we're winning or winning and suddenly you know this looks like a you know a deal for of surrender almost that is uh they didn't get anything they wanted and it reflects realities on the battlefield so you know I'm not gonna criticize the Americans for assigning this when I assume this is the best deal they could get but again for domestic politics, it is possible that they're only making noise while they're gradually accepting the new realities. I was wondering, how do you see this? Is this walking back or just making noise for the domestic audience?
Speaker 1: I think they're definitely trying to walk back, but the Iranians won't let them. They're very tough at the negotiating table. and they want the full implementation of the MOU. And Ayatollah Khamenei's letter was, as I said, a message to the Americans that we're not going to be flexible. This was agreed upon, and this is the only option, either a fulfillment of the agreement or nothing. And so far, I mean, there's a long way to go, especially with regards to Lebanon, because Netanyahu will do anything possible to wreck the agreement. And the murder of two young Lebanese men yesterday who were just trying to fix a road that was destroyed was intentional. They killed these men in order to undermine the agreement. It was no accident. So the Israeli regime is... And as we speak, they've been intensifying the slaughter in Gaza and the crimes in the West Bank, I guess, to... fulfill the bloodlust of Israelis who are unhappy about the forced silence of the guns in Lebanon. So the fact that the siege has been lifted, the fact that the U.S. has officially waived the sanctions, and the fact that there was an agreement signed between Iran and Qatar on the sidelines of the agreement I think shows that things are moving forward. And the fact that the Israelis can no longer bomb cities and villages and flatten neighborhoods in Lebanon is a sign that progress is being made. Actually, I've heard, I haven't seen this, but I've heard that 67% of Americans, ordinary Americans, they support this agreement. So the animosity, the anger and the hatred and the criticism largely, I would assume, I haven't seen the details, come from the political class. And that's clear. I mean, the reason is clear because both class, both parties are captured by the Zionist lobby. So the Democrats, even though the base hates the Israeli regime in Congress and in the Senate, And in think tanks, they're overwhelmingly pro-Israel and pro-genocide. So for the time being, you're going to see criticism, which is, of course, valid in the sense that Trump promised victory and came back with defeat. But that criticism is valid. But I think that the American population being anti-war and anti...
Speaker 0: anti a lot of things nowadays that used to be uh taken for granted that is that are acceptable um they they don't want they want this deal because they don't want war well the i i also well you see this from the polling though that the american public are again they don't want this war overwhelmingly so but often you see always the americans tend to vote for people who promise, you know, return to normalcy and enter this world, but they always get the opposite. But that being said, though, because the political system in the US is so polarized, the fact that Trump got a bad deal, many see this as an opportunity to, well, knock him over the head with it. So this also puts the deal, I guess, in a weaker position. Well, I know it's not a deal, it's a memorandum of understanding, a deal to make a deal, but nonetheless, this polarization within the U.S., I think this could become a big problem as well. Even people who recognize they have to sign the deal is still too appealing opportunity, too attractive to use against Trump, given that it has been such a failure. But it almost sounds, you're a little bit optimistic, it sounds though, to this memorandum of understanding that is that the U.S., is grudgingly so, recognizing these new realities. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 1: Until now, for the time being. But no, I think that this is a... I mean, the very name of it is called an MOU, which indicates the fragility of the process. And so I'm not terribly optimistic about... because of the nature of the U.S. government and the Trump regime and the influence of the Zionist lobby and Netanyahu. So in that regard, I'm not optimistic at all. I don't think based on that, the deal should last very long. But on the other hand, if you look at the situation logically, the shortage of energy, which Trump admitted in public the approaching energy crisis. He said, we have only four more weeks of reserves left. Some say four, I mean, it's four to six weeks. But in any case, the fact that he admitted this, which I found very surprising, and I'm sure many of his advisors were unhappy that he said that aloud, because, of course, it helps Iran. But I think that if one looks at it logically, therefore, the deal should last because if it does not last, that means that the energy crisis is going to get much worse, much, much worse. And if conflict is renewed, I think that a global, I mean, we've discussed this before. I think a global economic depression worse than the 1930s is assured. So I don't know because the irrationality and the bloodlust of Zionism And the Zionists is a powerful force. On the other hand, the needs of the global economy, the U.S. economy, should far outweigh that. But I also think that it's not just Trump whose interests are against Netanyahu's. Netanyahu wants crisis. He wants war. Trump needs peace so that the economy doesn't collapse. But I think probably many people around Netanyahu and probably many Zionists in the United States, Israeli firsters in the United States, are pragmatic enough to recognize that if the U.S. economy collapses, it would be catastrophic for the Israeli regime, too. So it's not as if all I'm just guessing, of course, I have no insider knowledge, but I'm just I'm assuming that many of these Zionists who are supportive of the genocide and the and what's going on in Gaza and Lebanon and the West Bank and the wars and all that, that they too must recognize that this dire economic situation is catastrophic for Israel because the Israelis are now despised universally. And even in the United States, I think 60% of Americans at least have disapproval of the regime. Add the crisis to... The fact that people are living with inflation today is one thing, but if the crisis hits like it's expected to do, if the shortages continue, then lives will be ruined and lifestyles of people, billions of people across the world will change. And people are going to say it was Netanyahu and Israelis who were behind it. So I think probably... pragmatic Zionists in the United States are probably also pushing to prevent the situation from getting worse. So I, I, I can't say where this is going to go. I'm not particularly optimistic about the future, but I think until now, until this moment that you and I are speaking, that it has, that progress has been made.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I was also a bit surprised that Trump could say out loud that, uh, they have four weeks left of fuel because that's admitting a quite a desperate situation for the united states on the other hand this isn't almost required if you're going to sign this deal to show you have to explain why so you'd have to have to show that it's quite desperate so it's probably not accidental that he will blur this out but this also gave me some suspicion though that if this is the reasoning that there's they're almost running out of fuel then uh could also be an indication that this is a temporary solution that is the memorandum of understanding to relieve some pressure by some time and if they can replenish a bit then start again from a more advantageous position my last question though was just about them about what you said about netanyahu you said that everything he had done had made the situation much worse for the united states and This is obviously something many people in the US have noticed. They're commenting on it. Well, I guess the main example would be people like Tucker Carlson. But how do you see this developing? Because even if this would be a temporary ploy just to buy time, this kind of new rhetoric you've seen in the US, the open criticism of Israel, the way they're legitimizing Iran nowadays by saying, well, Iran needs ballistic missiles because its neighbor has. So it's no longer this terrorist hub masquerading as a country. It's now a legitimate country with a legitimate interest and has legitimate rights to defend itself. I haven't seen this before in my lifetime rhetoric about Iran. It's refreshing. It's one step towards normalcy, but But what does this mean, though, you think, for Israel and the greater Israel project? That is, they do have, you know, they're put in a very desperate, difficult situation. And, you know, one should always be cautious when one's opponent as well is put in a situation where they see a few ways out. They can act in a very irrational way if panic sets in. So I was just wondering, how do you see this U.S.-Israeli relationship and what Israel can do next? I mean, a lot of its options have fallen away. Keep in mind, knocking out Iran was supposed to usher in glory days for Israel.
Speaker 1: Well, first, I'd like to just add one. Well, first of all, not only did Trump talk about Iranian missiles, but he also said Iran needs missiles. nuclear energy for electricity too. So that's quite extraordinary stuff. Just one thing that I'd like to add is that the Iranians are quite aware that the Americans need their energy supplies. And one of the interesting things about the MOU, and I don't know how it was negotiated, I don't know the behind the scenes developments, but the first the normalization of the strait for business and traffic is in the second month. The first month is I think that there's like a month, Iran is given a month's time to normalize the strait. And that, even though I can't say for certain, but I think that the Iranians will probably use that to make sure that the traffic in the first month doesn't exceed expectations. So I would imagine that the Iranians are going to make sure that the U.S. shortages remain in place for the time for the foreseeable future and that its leverage remains intact while allowing flow, but I'm pretty sure that the first month Iranians are going to have the opportunity to increase pressure. And I think that's the leverage that they have at the negotiating table right now. That's what makes Americans free Iranian assets, lift the sanctions. Otherwise, they'd never do this. We saw in the JCPOA, the nuclear deal of 2015, that when the Iranians carried out their obligations under Trump, the United States refrained from doing so. This time around, the Iranians are making sure that their leverage is intact. So I don't think the Iranians are all that excited about letting as many ships flow through the Strait of Hormuz as possible. And Trump is actually helping by threatening Iran, by saying he'll destroy the country, by saying he'll murder the president or the negotiators. He is also causing concern for, as I said earlier, shipping companies and insurance companies. So I'm not sure if the Iranians are too upset, even though these are all violations of the deal. He cannot make threats. The United States is not allowed to threaten Iran at all during this period. But in a sense, this is hurting the United States more than anything else, because they desperately need ships and shipping companies and insurance companies to feel assured about the future of the Strait of Hormuz. The very nature of this two-month MOU does not give great assurances. And then to have Trump ranting and raving during this period is going to make things much worse. So I think that leverage is going to remain there for the time being. With regards to the Israeli regime, we've seen this throughout the last, since October the 7th, we've seen this growing increase hostility towards the regime and towards Zionism across the world. And surprising in some places, it's quite surprising how even in, for example, India, the dislike is rising towards the Israeli regime. And the same is true in the United States. And what you said about Tucker Carlson is very important in a second way as well. And that is that as you see, as you watch Tucker Carlson, you see that a few months ago he began to become very openly critical of the regime. But now it's increasingly becoming hostile. And I think that this is reflective of the growing hostility. So, you know, you disapprove and then you go further and it And it becomes entrenched. And this is the foolishness of the Israeli regime by continuing the genocide in Gaza. Every day they're murdering kids. They're bombing tents. They're bombing teenage girls going to give exams. I mean, the slaughter is endless. And people are seeing this across the world. They're seeing what's happening in Lebanon. Young kids who are just now entering politics are entering with these scenes every day on TV. social media, despite the algorithms, the pro-Israeli algorithms. It's so bad and so many people are angered that young people are seeing it. And on the other hand, the older Republican Americans, which are the base of the Israeli regime, they're old and they're bound to decrease in number as time goes by. So you see the percentage of people growing hostile towards the regime growing. You see the entrenchment of that anger, so the degree of hostility is growing. This does not bode well at all for the regime. I can't say at all that whether this is going to lead to some huge fracture in the near future, because at the end of the day, the political elites in the United States, the bubble in Washington, they are deeply influenced by the oligarchy, the Zionist billionaire, the billionaires, the billionaire class, the Epstein class, whatever one would like to call it. So you have the super wealthy, the powerful Zionist elite on the one hand, but you have a very angry, often and dissatisfied population that is increasingly moving us out. Where that takes the United States is difficult to say, but I think that if this shift had not taken place, it would have been more difficult for Trump to push back on Netanyahu. In other words, if this war had happened without the two and a half years to three years of genocide, and Trump was in this difficult position with this energy crisis, I think it would have been much more difficult for him to push back. But now knowing, now when the political class sees how hated this regime is, It makes this pushback easier, if I'm making my point clear. So none of this is good for the Israeli regime. Remember, every time in the past when they would put something out about differences between Biden and Netanyahu over the genocide, it turned out to be a lie. or Trump and Netanyahu over the Iran war last year, around now, a few days ago last year, they were saying that Trump didn't want war, he wanted negotiations, Netanyahu wanted war, and then they carried out this Blitzkrieg attack. That turned out to be a lie. And then initially when these outbursts by Trump began to leak, the first one saying that everyone hates Israel, everyone hates you, and he used the F word, There was a debate about whether this was just good cop, bad cop, how real this was. But then it just, it became, you know, we had more, more instances. And then even Vance made some comments about Israel, the Israeli regime that obviously do not look good for the regime. So while I don't want to say at all that Zionism is dead, that's obviously not the case. They are extraordinarily powerful. And they can wreck this agreement at any moment, it's possible. And I wouldn't put a false flag operation. I mean, I would not ignore the possibility of a false flag operation in the United States in order to mobilize the American public against Iran to pursue pro-Israeli policies. But I think that in any case, Zionism has been badly weakened in the United States. in the West and across the world. And I think that is going to have implications in the months and years ahead. And if the genocidal actions of the Israeli regime continue, I think it's going to act as a catalyst to quicken the pace of this shift at the bottom, at the base, and it's going to have implications at the top, ultimately, in one form or another. And of course, the economic hardship that we're all going to experience soon, based upon what we're being told, due to the shortages of fuel that will hit, whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or not, if it's closed, it's just going to hit harder and it's going to be longer. But I think in the months ahead, as life gets more difficult for many people, it's also going to be bad news for the Israeli regime. So the road ahead does not look good for Zionism. The road ahead does not look good for the Israeli regime. And I think ultimately this regime cannot sustain itself in the distant future. But we cannot undermine, we cannot underestimate the oligarchy that owns the major AI companies, that owns social media and the mainstream media. They are owned and controlled by Zionists so it's going to be very complicated but I am not optimistic about the deal but I am optimistic about the future I think there will be dark days and months ahead as I've always believed and perhaps years but I see the collapse of the empire taking place unfolding in front of our eyes And the collapse of the empire basically means the collapse of the power of the Zionist regime because it needs Western public support, which it doesn't have. And it needs Western wealth and power to sustain itself, which is increasingly scarce. And thus, I think the internal strife in the Israeli regime is justified and the deep concerns are justified too. And these are not good signs for their future.
Speaker 0: Well, I was one of the people who suspected that what was happening between the US and Israel could be another game of good cop, bad cop, political theater. But again, which has become evident, even if this was the case, and I'm not so sure that it was anymore, all this language, it does matter that all that has been said about Israel is it kind of opened the door to other criticism. That is, I've spoken to some very important voices in the United States, and some of them in the past had the impression that they were more apprehensive about criticizing Israel too fiercely in public because it would come with a big social cost, if not a cost for their reputation, their profession. But now this appears to be gone because Some people opened the door, now Vance and others, and now it's essentially permitted to say what many people were thinking, essentially the normalized criticism of Israel. Now, once this is out of the box, it's very hard to put it back in. So I think, yeah, it's going to be some difficult times ahead for Israel as well as the United States. And indeed, the whole concept of what should be considered pro-Israel or pro-American, because we've often used these concepts before. as if it has a fixed understanding. But it's very hard for me to see how this is in Israel's benefit to continue this. You would think that at some point the United States and Israel would cut its losses and adjust to new realities instead of doubling down and always making bad even worse. So anyways, we'll wait and see. And hopefully then you'll come back on the program. So thanks for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Well, it's always a pleasure, and I'm always happy to be on your show. The only thing I would add is that we've seen Epstein files, and I'm sure there are many more Epsteins out there, big and small. And with the technology that exists today, there are easier ways to monitor people and get dirt on them than the old traditional ways used by Epstein. So I would never... underestimate the power of Zionism and how it can capture people and force them to do their bidding. I mean, there's always speculation about Trump and why is it that he is so extraordinarily influenced by the Israeli regime. And if it is true that he is compromised, I would imagine as I was saying earlier, the reason why Trump probably, if he is captured, if he is compromised, the only thing that would allow Trump to stand up to the Israeli regime is if there are many others among the Israeli firsters and Zionists in the United States who see the danger ahead and believe that the Israeli regime has to back down. But the point is, that the link, the bond between the elites in the United States, the powerful, and Zionism is still very much in place. I'm not naive about that. But you do see changes taking place, as you pointed out, criticisms of the Israeli regime, which before were among the elites, impossible to see. I mean... I don't remember Reagan calling what the Israeli regime was doing in Lebanon a Holocaust. But I mean, I don't remember back then. There was no internet back then. But since more recently, people have been reminding us of what he said back then. Now it doesn't surprise us. But back then... That was a, you know, he could say that. But after Reagan, no one would say that anymore. No one would say even, you know, small criticism. So since the 1990s, the hold over the American elites and American society has been extraordinary. So this criticism that we're now seeing openly, and you see elites, as you were saying, openly criticizing the regime is a big deal. But again, as I said, the power of the Zionist lobby and the Zionist class is still very great. So we'll have to see how it plays out. But if the United States pushes for confrontation with Iran, then it gets worse for the Zionists. This, I think, is what the Iranians understand very well, that they hold the cards. If the United States wants to wreck the deal, or if they allow the Israelis to force them to wreck the deal, then I think many Zionists will understand that this will only make things in the long run worse for them. So they're stuck. They don't know what to do. On the one hand, if they abide by the deal, it's Bad news for Israel. If they wreck the deal, it's very bad news for the Israeli machine, too.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
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.
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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.