“Heading To WORLD WAR 3!” Israel & US 'Armageddon' in Iran | Feat. Jeffrey Sachs

21:41Jeffrey Sachs:You know, if they are watching us now, I'm telling them, Mardume, Iran, the people of Iran, be brave, be strong. Your time is coming very soon to go back to the streets and to lead this nation after 47 years of oppression. I think it will come. In the first few days, we focused on targeting the launchers to minimize the casualties in the area and in Israel. But I think in the next few days, we will continue to target the IRGC and the regime's assets. And hopefully, it will encourage the people to move to the next stage.

22:21Piers Morgan:Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the UN. I appreciate you coming back on our sense. Thank you very much.

22:26Jeffrey Sachs:Thank you very much.

22:29Piers Morgan:Well, I'm going to be joined now by my panel, Doran Spielman. He's the former IDF's international spokesman and author of When Stones Speak, Daniel Levy, the former Israeli negotiator and president of the US Middle East Peace Project, and Scott Horton, author of Provote. Welcome to all of you. Scott Horton, let me start with you. Clearly very different views of what is happening here from Jeffrey Sachs and Danny Danon. they had a very heated exchange in the UN, which says it all. I imagine that your agreement probably lies a lot more with Jeffrey Sachs than Danny Danon. But again, I'll put the same question to you about the possibility that this could eventually work in the sense that Israel believes, with good reason, that Iran has been the tentacle, the octopus with tentacles, for all the terrorism in the region that's been aimed at them through the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and so on, that it's run by an evil repressive regime, which has been that way for 47 years, repressing its own people, repressing everything else in the region it can repress.

23:37Piers Morgan:And they've had this coming. And by decapitating the regime, you may then lead to an uprising from the Iranian people, many of whom hate the regime. and that in 5, 10 years, we may look back in history, this is what I hear from many Israelis, and be grateful for what has happened. What would you say to that?

24:00Jeffrey Sachs:Well, I mean, it's built into the question, of course, that this is all Israel's interests at play here. The great revolutionary Shiite menace is their problem, not ours. Our problem is the Bin Ladenites, al-Qaeda and ISIS. the radical Salafi edge of Wahhabi Sunni Islam and their terrorist movement, mostly America and Britain and Saudi Arabia's pet terrorists, although they oftentimes turn on us and kill us too. But the Shiites are the Israelis' problem. And even though every time America runs an errand over there to try to spite them, we end up empowering them like we did in Iraq War II. And then inadvertently, when Obama built the caliphate to spite them, we ended up, that blew up too big.

24:43Jeffrey Sachs:So they had to take the Iranian side again in Iraq War III, which is, you know, that we have strikes going on against Shiite targets in Iraq right now, because that's the regime that we put in power. You quoted David Petraeus a minute ago about telling us how this ends. Well, Iraq War II ended with David Petraeus putting Iran's best friends in power there and training up their army, the Bada Brigade, to be the Iraqi army. And that's who we got a problem with as the war spreads right now. But then secondly, as far as will the war work? No. And as far as, well, it depends on who you ask what their goals are.

25:18Jeffrey Sachs:The Trump administration says they want stability. And they even told the Wall Street Journal, anonymous officials told the Wall Street Journal, they might be happy with the Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson. They don't like Khomeini's son. They want Khomeini's grandson instead. They have no capability, as Marco Rubio testified to the Senate, they have no one to put in power. They don't think for a minute they can parachute the monarchists in there. They don't think for a minute that the Mujahideen-e-cult, communist terrorist cult can take over. They don't think that the Kurdish communists, the PJAK, which are the Iranian Kurdish branch of the PKK in Turkey, they don't think that they can take over.

25:56Jeffrey Sachs:They don't think that the Baluki suicide bombers, Jandala, that America and Israel backed 10, 15 years ago, can take over the country. But as the Israelis told the Financial Times, that's fine. What they want to see is civil war. What they want to see is chaos and destruction and Iran taken off the board. They don't want to see a friendly new Iran, as Donald Trump said. They want chaos. They want Iran to look like Obama helped Israel turn Syria into back 15 and 10 years ago.

26:27Piers Morgan:All right, Doran Spillman, there are many people who think that is exactly what Israel wants. They just want total chaos, a sort of rudderless Iran. That's why they're blowing up all the oil refineries. That's why their general view seems to be to cause as much mayhem as possible. What do you say to that?

26:49Jeffrey Sachs:You know, Pierce, you know, it's simply your vision is history. Listening to Jeffrey Sachs and, you know, Scott, it's ridiculous. It ignores the reality that over the last two and a half years and before, Israelis have been living in shelters, running in and out of shelters, attacked over our peaceful border with Gaza, received thousands of missiles from Hezbollah, thousands of missiles from the Houthis. We've been targeted in Israel and overseas. And it all leads back to Iran. It's as if Israel woke up one morning and said, we've got a great idea. Let's fly 2 ,000 kilometers and try to attack a country that has 95 million people, and we have 10 million people, that is 90 times bigger than Israel.

27:42Jeffrey Sachs:Put our soldiers at risk just out of the blue because Israel wants to take over the world. I mean, there's not a shred, a single shred of truth about this scenario. let's wake up everybody. At what point does a country have the right to defend its civilians against an enemy country that not only has said it wants to destroy you, but has launched 500 ballistic missiles in June, another series of ballistic missiles, including one that flew over my house and killed a worker in the middle of Tel Aviv today who will not go home to his family. At what point do we have the most basic, basic right to defend our country?

28:25Jeffrey Sachs:Should we just sit here and wait for them to keep firing and lay down and roll over? You know, there is such absolute hypocrisy. You know, I'm listening to Jeffrey Sachs. So you just pierce, you let him speak for half an hour. And it was, you know, so emotional. Israel's committing suicide. Well, let me ask Jeffrey Sachs and you, how do you suppose that Israel should respond to the Iranian terror threats from four different countries that have been attacking Israel. Should we not fight back? Should we just lay down? Is that not suicide? At the end of the day, Pierce, we are leaving. Thank you for proving my point.

29:04Jeffrey Sachs:That's exactly what I said. This is Israel's problem, not America's. Israel's not an ally of the United States. Scott, just one second. At the end of the day, this will go down in history the exact opposite of what Jeffrey Sacks said. You have Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, mark my words, they will go down in history like Churchill and Roosevelt, who were the first ones to confront the evil that spread throughout Germany and save the West. We are the very first ones, because there's an imminent threat against us, that are going to stop this threat before it hits American soil. It already hit Israeli soil.

29:42Jeffrey Sachs:They will go down in history. And everybody else that decries this war will be a minor footnote of those who said we should give in to the regime. We can't defeat the regime. If this was 1945, they would have just said, no, let's not finish off with Germany. Let's just let them reconstitute with Hitler's son, which is what Mujata is. He is Khamenei's son. For heaven's sake.

30:06Piers Morgan:Okay, let me bring in— Just real quick. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on, Scott. Okay. Well, very quickly, because Daniel's been waiting patiently. Just very quickly.

30:15Jeffrey Sachs:I said, this has nothing to do with America. This is Israel's problem. And he said, this is Israel's problem for five minutes. Yeah, that's what I said. Israel's not a state in the union. We have no treaty of alliance with Israel. I'd like to respond. I think that the United States wants a secure Middle East. I don't think anybody wants a destabilized Middle East when Israel, which is the United States' greatest ally, is under mortal threat. As we now see Saudi Arabia, Scott, who is the United States' supposed ally, is now also under threat. You've got the UAE, who is under threat. All of them are under threat by Iran.

30:54Jeffrey Sachs:Because you started a war. The United States has the courage, and this president has the courage, Scott, beyond just protecting the U.S. troops, thousands of which have died over Iran over the last few decades, to say, you know what, I'm going to support the friends of the United States and to do the very simple act, which seems like none of you can accept, of defeating evil. Good standing up against evil. It can be defeated and it must be defeated.

31:17Piers Morgan:The point I would make to that, Doran, is that you're very optimistic that the regime is going to be defeated. And I think that the problem at the moment is there is no immediate sign of that happening. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. It's been nine days.

31:34Jeffrey Sachs:This is not a fairy tale. OK, but we were told it would be an enemy.

31:39Piers Morgan:Yeah, but we were told a year ago, actually not even a year ago, that the attack on the nuclear installations was incredibly successful and had neutralized the threat of Iran and its nuclear capability. And yet here we are, less than a year later, launching a massive war in Iran because apparently they were imminently about to acquire the ability for a nuclear weapon. And those two positions seem to be completely incompatible. Either it was neutralised last June... Shall I force my way in?

32:09Jeffrey Sachs:OK, but it's stretching... Shall I force my way in?

32:14Piers Morgan:Yeah, Daniel, let me bring in Daniel. Daniel, you've been very patient. Thank you. Over to you.

32:22Jeffrey Sachs:First, I'm struggling right now over this definition of evil. I saw a country lay waste to Gaza. I've seen a country that occupied Palestinians. October 7th was a crime. But what about the decades in which Palestinians lived under a brutal occupation, a regime of structural apartheid? And then I look at what was done subsequently. And I'm shaking because when I hear these glib comparisons to the Holocaust and to the Nazi regime, I feel it's a form of cheapening, almost of Holocaust revisionism. You know, I'm quite confident that the Jewish population in Germany was not keeping the Germans under a brutal occupation for decades.

33:14Jeffrey Sachs:What a horrible analogy to draw to call this some kind of Holocaust. Now, first of all, if one's talking about evil, what we have witnessed in Gaza should be painful and shameful to anyone who has grown up in a tradition which respects and values Jewish life and which considers never again to not be a parochial call, but a universal global call. Now let's come on to the subject at hand, which is what is going on with Iran. Iran didn't attack Iran hasn't attacked Israel. I wish I could say that Israel hadn't attacked Iran, but as in, your expressions of astonishment are wonderful, but they lie.

33:56Jeffrey Sachs:I mean, I just let this fly over my head. I can't tell the Iran. The attack in June. Landed near you Daniel, in Tel Aviv. The attack in June was initiated by Israel. The attack earlier this month, earlier this year, was initiated by Israel. And my question is twofold. first of all is this extreme ambition extremism this maximalism likely to play out well for Israel and what do we think is going to happen as this plays out as Mr. Horton just suggested with the US because I would argue that you have an Iran that has a strategy and you have an Israel that has a strategy. It seems very clear, very transparent that the Israeli strategy is not some fairy tale of a happy new regime coming into place.

34:45It is precisely regime collapse, state

34:50Jeffrey Sachs:implosion, dismantlement and chaos. Why? Because Israel has been very clear that it has an agenda of regional domination here. Why does it need an agenda of regional domination? Because that's not about security. We can come back and talk about that. But that is central to the notion of a zero-sum endgame versus the Palestinians. I think the Iranians have come into this with strategic coherence. This time around, they've changed their national security posture and said, if this is going to be done against us, if this kind of a war is going to be launched against us, we will make it costly. We will establish a deterrence, and we will challenge the notion that America can stay cost-free in the West Asia region.

35:35Jeffrey Sachs:The worry I have, amongst others, is that the party Israel is relying on, I don't think has a strategy whatsoever. America used to go to war, wars that were often problematic for the world, for those who suffered, for America itself, with some degree of competence and coherence, some degree of a multi-layered interagency process. Today, I think you have rank, incompetence and incoherence. And on any given day, the question is, what is this about? You can make a geopolitical case. You could say this is about oil. Daniel, let me ask you this. If I can finish just this one thought, it appears I'd be appreciative.

36:13Jeffrey Sachs:You could say this is about a chokehold, like they see Greenland in geopolitical, geoeconomic terms about oil. But you can also hear them talking about capitulation. You can hear them suggesting this could be a Venezuela 2.0. You can perhaps hear people saying - Who's the they? I'm sorry. Who's the they, Daniel? The spokespeople of the administration that is carrying out - Which administration? ... this illegal war, Mr. Spillman. Which administration? I would suggest that this could end in a couple of days, or it could go on indefinitely. What you have here is Iran has not tried to say, we will escalate toe-to-toe with Israel and the US.

36:55Jeffrey Sachs:They have said, we will go vertical. We will expand the theatre of war and make this a question, not of military capacity, where the balance of power is clear, but of political endurance. And if you go into war, not like Afghanistan, if you're America, with 90 % public support, not like Iran, Iraq, with 70 % public support, but with barely 30 % public support, bipartisan, criticism inside MAGA, your economy taking the stress, Then the question of political endurance, which I think will decide this, I don't think looks good from an American and by extension... Well, OK, let me jump in.

37:34Piers Morgan:OK, let me jump in. I mean, I would say the political stroke economic part of this cannot be understated because the economy is getting shredded globally. Oil and gas prices are absolutely rocketing. No one can get through the Strait of Hormuz pretty much without Iran saying so. So this is a very perilous moment for the global economy, I would say. notwithstanding the military part of this, where the strategy of Iran has been just to scattergun attack its neighbouring Gulf states, because they know that by effectively doing that, and the way that they've been doing by targeting hotels and airports and so on, they are acting as a massive deterrent to people who are not naturally born in those states to want to go back to wherever they came from.

38:15Piers Morgan:You see lots of Brits go back to Britain, for example, because they suddenly think that this safe oasis is not as safe as they thought. But let me just ask you one question, Daniel, before I go to the others for their response to what you said. And it says, when you said that Iran has not attacked Israel, and the two examples you cite were indeed retaliatory, but surely that ignores the reality, which is for decades, the Iranian regime, which has publicly talked about being wedded to the annihilation of Israel, and hear the chance of death to America at the same time, and has killed lots of Americans and Israelis.

38:56Piers Morgan:But the part you're missing, which I'm really curious about your response to, is that surely you would accept that by propping up and supporting with arms and lots of cash, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, they have been attacking Israel relentlessly for decades, but doing it through their proxies. And that is, to me, that is the same thing. Whether they're doing it directly or whether they're doing it through proxies, they have been attacking Israel. Now, you might have concerns about the way Israel has responded, and I would share many of those concerns. I've expressed them. But no one can persuade me that Israel isn't fundamentally justified in trying to defend itself from the tentacled attacks by the Iranian regime through its proxies for many, many years.

39:47Jeffrey Sachs:So I'm not going to carry the brief for the Iranian governing structure and what it has set out to do. What troubles me is - What does that mean? I'm sorry. Daniel, what's your answer to Pierce? What does that mean? Just answer the simple question. Do you consider the fact that Iran has funded and trained Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to kill Israelis an offense? Are they actually attacking Israel or are they some parallel vertical regime? What's your answer? Here's my response. Here's my response. I would consider it highly problematic if the response to Israel's genocide against the Palestinians, if the response to Israel being led by a war criminal with an international criminal court arrest warrant against his name, if the response to that would be an attempt to wipe the Israeli Jewish community off the map.

40:41Jeffrey Sachs:Israel is a nuclear, Israel is a nuclear, Israel is a nuclear. Is there any point at which you think Israel is justified in carrying out military intervention at all? I'm sure you'd be a fabulous stand-in to Piers Morgan, but I believe that Piers asked me a question, Mr. Spielberg. You see, when you can't, if you can't listen to a response to your argument, are we just going to shout over each other? No, I'm trying to ask you a real question because I don't understand your answer. Can you shut up and I'll answer Piers' question? Daniel, take it easy. Take it easy now. We don't have to get overly upset.

41:14Jeffrey Sachs:Well, I think this is... Okay, Daniel, let's let Daniel

41:17Piers Morgan:answer the question. Let Daniel answer the question.

41:20Jeffrey Sachs:So, I think the fact that Israel has maintained control of the sovereign skies of Lebanon, violated Lebanese sovereignty for decades, the fact that Israel has maintained a vicious violent occupation against the Palestinians does not mean that the solution is a military solution. I think we should eschew and avoid war. And war in this instance was avoidable. Iran was manageable, not through kinetic military means. I don't think this is going to make the Jewish population of Israel or anywhere else even safer. I think quite the opposite. It will be more dangerous. Israel is going to have to step back from its illegal criminal activity.

42:03Jeffrey Sachs:Iran should step back from its illegal criminal activity. And I would suggest that the way to do that is not by bombing schools, whether they're in Gaza, in Israel, or in Iran. I would suggest the way you do that is you pursue other options. And if anyone told me that Israel as a nuclear power, which has attacked Iran, not been attacked by Iran, where Iran's so-called proxies were more of a deterrence than an offense, that Israel is more than capable of handling itself militarily, but apparently absolutely incapable of handling itself politically and of having a diplomatic game. It sounds like you're defending Iran and persecuting Israel.

42:47Jeffrey Sachs:Sorry, I'm not defending Iran, but it sounds a heck of a lot like you're defending Israeli genocide. So my question to you, Mr. Smeon, is, Is there a single moment? Are you ashamed and are you against the Israeli genocide of Palestinian people? I'm trying to ask a question. Can I just ask one question? Sorry, I didn't realize that was your job. I promise I'll be quiet. Daniel, is there a single moment at which Israel, you think Israel is justified in carrying a military intervention against one of the enemies that are facing it? Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran? Is there a single instance? Yes, but I do not think that Israel is going to succeed militarily.

43:21Jeffrey Sachs:But what is it? The premise of its position is we will continue to manage a permanent illegal occupation against the Palestinians. If you can't... I understand, but we were not crying guys off. Sorry, sorry, because you are, you are therefore in a belligerent state in the region. Israel has bombed several countries in the region. We were attacked on October 7th. Israel hasn't tried the other path. What should we have done after October 7th, Daniel? Let me bring in, let me bring in... You should have done before October 7th, Mr. Gentleman. Gentlemen, I'm just going to call a timeout.

43:55Piers Morgan:Let me call a timeout because Scott has been waiting very patiently. Scott, look, you know, there are passionate arguments on all sides of this. Of course there are. Do you have any sympathy with Israel's clear? Look, there's a massive majority support for this in Israel, for what's happening in Iran, because the Israeli people have reached a general consensus that they believe Iran has been responsible for most of their problems in the last few decades with these proxy terror groups just constantly trying to attack them. And that has caused this massive security crisis as they see it, which has to be somehow brought to an end.

44:35Piers Morgan:Do you have any sympathy with the way the average Israeli feels about this and why they're supporting this?

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45:54Jeffrey Sachs:And this goes back to a falsehood that Danny Danon said earlier in your show, where he was claiming that ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran has been at war with Israel this way. That's not true. Israel stayed friends with Iran all through the 1980s. is everyone knows when Ronald Reagan switched sides in the Iran-Iraq war for a minute and sold weapons to the Ayatollah, he used the Israelis as the cutout because they had the ongoing operation. And I highly suggest everyone, especially you, Pierce, read this fantastic book by Trita Parsi called Treacherous Alliance about the real history of America, Israel, and Iran's relationship throughout that period.

46:33Jeffrey Sachs:And where he shows that it was in 1993 when And Yitzhak Rabin simply changed his strategy and Israel turned on Iran. And Iran started funding Hamas after that. And now after Rabin was killed, the Likud basically took up the same policy of demonizing Iran. But instead of using it as an excuse for dealing with the Palestinians, they used it as an excuse to distract from the fact that they were going to never deal with the Palestinians in good faith. But it was the Israelis who turned on the Iranians first. And that wasn't until 1993. and Parsi even has Clinton administration officials laughing because the Israelis are demanding that America be hard on Iran when one week ago they were taking Iran's side in the very same type arguments and all that.

47:15Jeffrey Sachs:The book is called Treacherous Alliance. It's absolutely fantastic and it shows all that. And then this is also crucially the basis for the argument in the clean break strategy by David Wormser and Richard Perle in 1996 when Benjamin Netanyahu was first coming to office the first time. These are American neoconservatives who wrote this policy that says the clean break is with Oslo, said we're never going to deal with the Palestinians. We're going to take what they have. But in order to be able to get away with that, we need a whole new position of dominance in the region. And in order to do that, our first priority is we have to break the arch of power between Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.

47:56Jeffrey Sachs:And they said the way we want to do that is by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, which sounds insane, and it is. He was the Sunni roadblock in this Shiite arc of power here. But they thought that Turkey and Jordan would be dominant in the new Iraq. And then they would get the Iraqi Shiites to tell Hezbollah to stop being friends with Iran and start making nice with Israel. It's called the Clean Break, a new strategy for securing the realm. And the partner companion piece is called Coping with Crumbling States. And this is the naive pipe dream of the neoconservatives and the Likud. And this was the policy behind Iraq War II, which Netanyahu, of course, championed and his neoconservative fifth column in America championed and which backfired and only resulted in America fighting an eight year war to install Iran's best friends from Dawah and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in power there and to build their militias into the Iraqi army.

48:51Jeffrey Sachs:And as I said, Iraq War III against the caliphate also was literally for Iran and their friends on the ground. When the Iranian Quds Force liberated Tikrit from ISIS, they had American airplanes flying overhead. And all this just goes to show the vast divergence of interests between Israel and the United States. And one more point here, and I'll be quiet and you guys can keep arguing for the rest of the show. But we already on the first day had a blowback terrorist attack from Israel's war in my hometown of Austin, Texas. And three innocent people were murdered by a Muslim immigrant who went down to the bar.

49:31Jeffrey Sachs:Yeah, you wipe that smile off your face real quick there, Mr. Israeli spokesman. Murdered three of my hometown, Austinites. I think it's horrible. Stop. Why would I not, why would I smile when you got a Muslim that's killing a bunch of Americans? And there was, shut up, shut your damn mouth while I'm talking. And there was also an attempted bombing attack at the American Embassy in Norway last night. And Americans are already dying and suffering blowback terrorism from another war on behalf of Israel, just like Omar Mateen's slaughter in Orlando, just like San Bernardino's blowback from Israel's foreign policy.

50:06Piers Morgan:OK, I just want to end very quickly with you, Doron Ferme. I'm looking at the prediction markets, polymarket. They asked what price will crude oil hit by the end of March. A lot of money coming in here with options ranging from$40, so a lot less than it is now, to$200. I don't think it's too big a stretch to say that politically, I saw Netanyahu is calling for potential election in Israel in the summer. Donald Trump is facing the midterms in America in November. should oil reach$200 a barrel, then it is, I would argue, never mind militarily, never mind all the reasons you put forward for why this is a good idea, never mind anything else, that purely economically stroke politically, that one fact alone could bring down both the Netanyahu government and the Trump presidency in terms of its effectiveness to govern past the midterms?

51:07Piers Morgan:What would you say?

51:07Jeffrey Sachs:I'm glad you asked me, Pierce. I think that it really lays bare the question, are we going to allow Iran to blackmail the entire world by saying, we are either going to close the streets of Hormuz and drive up oil prices, or you're going to allow us, the Iranian regime, to survive, to create a nuclear program, which they threaten out loud and say death to America and death to Israel, a ballistic missile program, which will reach 8 ,000 ballistic missiles by 2027, multiply 8 ,000 by the 10 people that died in Beit Shemesh, that's 80 ,000 Israelis alone. Are we going to allow the largest terror cancer in the world to survive because of oil prices?

51:49Jeffrey Sachs:I think, Pierce, the answer is that we need to have steel nerves. I think that we have to not lose faith in the American people, the Israeli people, most of which understand, maybe not the two guests that I'm on the show with, that you have to have courage to defeat evil. If you think that we're going to leave the Iranian regime alone and it is just going to become a peaceful regime, that is a pipe dream. They are going to develop a nuclear weapon. And had we not struck them in June, the same ballistic missile that landed near Daniel today would have had a nuclear warhead on it. Every time we ask anyone on this panel, It is U.S.

52:27Jeffrey Sachs:interests. It is Israel interests. And if we do not defeat Iran now and give those Iranian people, which is where this began a month and a half ago when Trump said help is on its way, 32 ,000 people were massacred in the streets. If we do not continue to deplete this regime and allow those people to bring in a leader, then we will be back in the same spot with a nuclear regime. And then I ask one question. What will be the price of oil when Iran has a nuclear regime and it strangles Hormuz and it says you're going to give me whatever I want? Otherwise, I'm going to drop a nuclear bomb on you. That is not far away.

53:03Jeffrey Sachs:Piers, I.

53:04Piers Morgan:OK, guys, I'm sorry. We've run. May I come in with one point, Piers? As long as it's very, very brief.

53:12Jeffrey Sachs:It will be very brief, because I think what we've heard here. and this is important, is a very glib, unfact-based, fantastical position from an Israeli spokesperson of nuclear power. And we've heard something from Mr. Haunton, which I think should really have Israelis thinking long and hard. This is America. Israel is dependent on America. What are you doing to an Israeli image in America which has already tanked during the relentless assault on Gaza? Americans are going to blame Israel for this, and they'll have a reason. This is seen as Israel first. And I think Israel is playing with fire in ways that could be spectacularly a blowback.

53:54Piers Morgan:Well, I think I think my my overview would be I think it was I think it was it was Doran who said earlier that history will look back on this and judge accordingly. I completely concur. I just have no confidence that it will look back in quite the way you think it might. but it may be that history will look back and say this was the moment when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu conspired to destroy their legacies. Or it will end up being their legacy in the way they see it. But I do think the stakes are incredibly high, and I do think anyone who says with any confidence they know how this is going to play out is living in cloud cuckoo land.

54:33Piers Morgan:I've got to leave it there. Very interesting debate. Thank you all very much, because joining me now, live from Tehran is Dr. Fouad Izzadi, Professor at Tehran University. Dr. Izzadi, thank you for joining me on Uncensored. What is it like to be in Tehran at the moment?

54:48Jeffrey Sachs:We had a bombardment just a couple of hours ago. We have lost over 1 ,400 civilians, including 165 little girls. We are dealing with the Epstein class. They are bombing and killing little Iranian girls and raping little American girls.

55:09Piers Morgan:The Americans and the Israelis believe that ultimately this is the beginning of the end of the Iranian regime, which has been obviously in power since 1979. What do you say to them?

55:24Jeffrey Sachs:You know, Netanyahu asked the Iranians on the first day of war to come to the streets in millions, and they are every night shouting against him and Trump. He has managed to unify Iranians. We have this rally around the flag effect. Trump single-handedly has unified Iranians more than any Iranian politician could ever do. It's a pipe dream. It's not going to happen. We have, the Iranians have elected a new leader The country is resilient There is this culture of resistance And you cannot bomb people and expect them to like you People are not going to be foot soldiers of Trump and Netanyahu They know these guys They just finished conducting a genocide in Palestine Why would you want to work for them?

56:21Piers Morgan:But if that is your position, then why would you think you could bomb all your neighbouring Gulf states and not expect the same reaction from them? I mean, we've seen the Prime Minister of Qatar overnight in an interview for Sky News, expressing his outrage at what Iran has done in attacking Qatar. And we've seen Iran attacking Saudi Arabia, the UAE, other Gulf states, Bahrain. I mean, why is Iran doing that? It seems to me that of all the things that you could do, which would be the most self-defeating, attacking your own neighbouring Gulf states and alienating all of them in the way that you're doing, is the last thing you should be doing.

57:06Jeffrey Sachs:You know, we have US bases there. After the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general, the Iranians' response to that assassination was minimal. After the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian leader, minimal. And after the assassination of Hassan Nasrullah in Lebanon, minimal. After the 12-day war, Iranians announced they're going to hit one U.S. base. They announced the timing. They announced the number of missiles that they're going to use. And the base was empty. No American soldier was killed in all these attacks on Iran. In the 12-day war, we lost over 1 ,200 civilians. The people who were exercising restraint are no longer with us.

58:06Jeffrey Sachs:They were all killed by the Americans and Israelis. The new leaders in Iran realize that unless the United States and Israel pay a price, these type of attacks will continue every few months. You cannot run a country when two nuclear regimes attack you every few months. So the decision is to attack U.S. bases, not these countries. The only problem is that U.S. bases are in these countries. So Iran is attacking U.S. bases. Iran is attacking hotels when they are full of American soldiers. What they have done is that they have evacuated the bases. They have put the soldiers in hotels. That becomes a legitimate military target.

58:52Jeffrey Sachs:CIA offices, headquarters in office areas in these cities, legitimate military targets. CIA is providing the data for these attacks on Iran. And then you have Iranian missiles. Some of the missiles that are shut down, they create debris, and Iran cannot control where the debris falls. I was watching CNN. We had this oil facility in UAE in fire because of the debris. And then we had Tucker Carlson, the American journalist, reporting that in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, they have arrested Mossad agents trying to blow up things so they can blame it on Iran. I think Netanyahu has done a good job using American soldiers to fight his war against Iran.

59:42Jeffrey Sachs:I think he wants to use Saudi soldiers, Qatari soldiers to do the same. I think the leaders of this country realize that's not a good idea.

59:52Piers Morgan:OK, but I would counter, let me counter to you, which is that the leader of your country, both the assassinated leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and now his son, but also the previous supreme leader as well, have waged a systematic policy as a country of funding and sponsoring terrorism through proxies like the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas against Israel with a specific aim of killing Israelis and trying to extinguish Israel as an entity, as a country. Why shouldn't Israel seek to properly defend itself in that eventuality?

1:00:36Jeffrey Sachs:Last time I was on your show, we went through this. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization. They were formed after Lebanon was occupied by Israel. Defending your territory, pushing out occupation is allowed under international law, and you can use force to do that. And so these are freedom fighters, and Iran wanted to make sure that Israelis would not do to Iran what they are doing today. Iran created deterrence in these countries like Lebanon, like Yemen. so Israelis would think that the cost of attacking Iran would be too much. And now that these organizations are weakened, you see what happened.

1:01:20Jeffrey Sachs:They're killing Iranian leaders. This is a war of choice. They're not worried about Iran's nuclear program. I encourage your readers to read the U.S. intelligence community's assessment. It came out a couple of months before the 12-day war. It's available at dni.gov. It says three things about Iran's nuclear program. The first thing, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. The second thing, this is the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community. It says that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon program. And the third thing, it says that Iranian leaders have not decided to have a nuclear weapon program.

1:01:59Jeffrey Sachs:When they asked Trump about this report, he dismissed it. He chose to accept Netanyahu's version, and he dismissed his own intelligence community. So if you want to make sure that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, you can go back to the 2015 agreement. I don't know if you saw the interview of the Omani foreign minister. He went to Washington about 10 days ago, asking the Trump administration to accept an agreement with Iran. He said that the agreement was available in 24 hours, his words. It's available in YouTube, CBS News. He basically begged the Trump administration not to attack Iran. He said that Iran was willing to provide concessions that Iran was not able to do in 2015.

1:02:51Jeffrey Sachs:And Trump attacked Iran. And it's understandable. If you want to change a country's government, you don't enter a diplomatic agreement with the government that you want to change. But they are not going to be able to change Iran's government. So it's a huge policy mistake. and unfortunately we are seeing a lot of people get killed. The responsibilities of Trump and Netanyahu.

1:03:15Piers Morgan:Professor Azadi, professor at the University of Tehran, I appreciate you joining me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Piers Morgan, our censored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, you can ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan, our censored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical. And we couldn't do it without you.

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