Iran-Backed Houthis Seize Strategic Red Sea Territory as War Escalates (with Professor Mohammad Marandi)

0:00Ben Meiselas:Iran just did it as this graphic shows. They put the pincer maneuver on the Trump regime and Trump regime-backed allies in the Middle East like the Saudi monarchy and the Saudi monarchy-backed PLC in Yemen. Take a look at what went down. When I talk about the pincer maneuver here, you've got Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman on one side. On the other side, they got the Red Sea right now with the access of the U.S. resistance, their allies, the Houthis, who had that rapid advance on Western Yemen, and now they're moving east as well, continuing to cover massive ground.

0:42Ben Meiselas:And of course, now having full control over the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Take a look at this. This is what's just happened in the past 24 hours or so. Brett Erickson has a great summary. Everything that can go wrong for the Trump regime in the Iran war seems to be going wrong right now, right? In the last 24 to 48 hours, we've seen successful Iraqi hits on the Saudi East-West Pipeline pumping station, which carries five to seven million barrels of oil a day. The Houthis on Sir Allah taking effectively complete control over the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Iran striking two vessels crossing the Omani route, despite claims from the Trump regime that they wouldn't be able to do that for at least a month.

1:30Ben Meiselas:You have Somali groups, resurgence of them in the Gulf of Aden, the Somali basin. Diesel prices in the United States hit an all-time high at$6 a gallon. Gasoline in the US hit labor day highs. Brent and WTI crude trading above$100 a barrel. Iran striking anchored vessels off the ports of UAE and Iraq. Treasury bond yields breaking through the roof, record highs on 30-year and 10-year treasuries. And oh yeah, we haven't even seen Iran's October surprise yet. So there's that too. Take a look at this map right here. You can see the Houthi-controlled area and the Houthis are continuing now to move east after taking over all of Western Yemen, including, by the way, The lesser Hanish Islands over there, also over here, right by Murad, the Houthis were able to take control of Param Island right here.

2:32Ben Meiselas:So you take a look at the Strait of Hormuz, fully under the control of the Houthis, part of Iran's axis of resistance. The Saudi Energy Ministry put out a statement yesterday confirming the East-West pipeline, which carries 5 to 7 million barrels of oil today, which is even more important right now since the Strait of Hormuz is controlled by Iran. They put out a statement saying that they believe that it was the Iraqi resistance which destroyed major portions of the east-west pipeline and the east-west pipeline had to be shut down. And we saw the damage spreading because one area caught on fire and the fire spread throughout more areas of the east-west pipeline.

3:18Ben Meiselas:If that takes off at 5 to 7 million barrels of oil a day, that's further devastating. I mean, we could be talking$8,$9,$10 a gallon right now of gasoline if this continues down this path. And as Greg Karlstrom explains, once again, a Gulf leader, this time MBS, discovers that years of investing in Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and giving them money with these quid pro quos not only gets you nothing, it makes your life much worse. Also, sure, you're going to do airstrikes against the Houthis, but it's not going to fix the underlying issues. The Saudi-backed forces in Yemen are disorganized. They are retreating right now.

3:59Ben Meiselas:The Houthis are emboldened. They saw Iran defeat Donald Trump and his regime. You're seeing the Saudis and the UAE not just having a conflict in the region, but you're seeing even in Yemen right now, as the Saudi-backed PLC forces were retreating into Aden, you had UAE forces there and they were even fighting with each other during the retreat right now. Now, as the Trump regime is flailing, they're now blaming China. You know, although Donald Trump says Xi Jinping hasn't been giving Iran anything. They're saying, China, you gave all of these maps to Iran. It's your fault. It's your fault behind the scenes.

4:39Ben Meiselas:That's what you're doing in advance of Xi Jinping's visit. We'll see if that trip ends up actually going down. And while all of this is taking place, you have Iran getting a hero's welcome right now at the BRICS meeting that's taking place in New Delhi. Take a look right here. Iranian President Pazeskian arriving in New Delhi for the BRICS. That's the organization that was founded by Brazil and Russia and India and China and South Africa and other countries as well. Far from being isolated, Iran was welcomed as basically heroes at this BRICS meeting. and they were given a prime speaking spot already.

5:19Ben Meiselas:President of Iran, President Pazeshkin, addressing the BRICS summit, talking about perhaps even moving toward a shared currency. Remember when Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said, economic isolation is part of economic D-Day, Operation Economic Outcast. The only economic outcast right now is the United States that has outcasted itself. You take a look at Prime Minister Modi greeting President Pazeskian of Iran. Remember when Donald Trump attacked Prime Minister Modi? Yeah, Prime Minister Modi remembers right there. Take a look at the so-called family photo at the BRICS summit right there. Iran's President Pazeskian was presented with a shawl of affection from India's religious communities during a meeting with Indian religious leaders, elites, and businessmen over there.

6:11Ben Meiselas:you can see while that was going on, there were gatherings of people in southern Tehran in support of Iran against its foreign enemies. There were massive celebrations also taking place in Sanaa, the Houthis capital in Yemen, fireworks, and we saw tens of thousands of people out as well. You have the Houthis chanting in celebration on the captured Bab el-Mondab coast. Many take a break to cool off with a dip right here. You can see the Houthis celebrating over there. And then you had Iranian President Masood Pazeskian addressing Indian religious leaders. And here's what he said. Today, Iran has been able to successfully stand against Israel and the United States at the same time.

6:58Ben Meiselas:They want to bully us and we don't want to be bullied. We never kneel down before them. If they push us, we push back. They claim that they are advocates of human rights. In truth, they are the devils who are the true terrorists because they killed 168 school children in one instant thanks to their modern technologies. You call us terrorists? What about you who kill human beings, bomb scientists, and attack schools and hospitals? If you are man enough, just fight with the soldiers, the military people. Why do you target infrastructure and people's livelihoods? The people of Iran will not surrender.

7:32Ben Meiselas:We believe in human values and we believe that all who live, all humanity enjoy equal rights. That was right before he then spoke in front of the BRICS summit. You see photos of him and Prime Minister Modi, Putin, President Ramaphosa of South Africa right there all together. By the way, while all of this is going on on a somewhat unrelated note, but also related, you have Kim Jong-un just for the hell of it, launching ballistic missiles and bragging about all of his nuclear weapons just to extra give the middle finger to Donald Trump. Oh boy, here we go, as one person noted. Now, I want to bring in Professor Morandi from University of Tehran to get his perspective.

8:16Ben Meiselas:Professor Morandi frequently speaks with the top government officials of Iran. He's in Tehran right now. He was with the negotiating team that negotiated the MOU, which the Trump regime immediately breached. So to have Professor Morandi's perspective right here, given that he's in Tehran and he speaks with the leadership there, I think is a valuable perspective to share right now with you. Let me bring in the interview I did with Tehran University professor, Professor Morandi, and let me ask him what he's hearing from the top government officials in Iran as we speak. Now I want to bring in Professor Mirandi of University of Tehran.

8:59Ben Meiselas:Professor Mirandi, great to have you back on the show. I want to talk about this week's developments. Earlier in this week, the United States struck five civilian oil tankers and then CENTCOM bragged about it like that was some major accomplishment to shoot civilian oil tankers. Iran responded and we saw those strikes. I mean, there were multiple salvos of ballistic missiles attacking the Muwafik-Salty U.S. military base and other bases there. The Jordanian government said, we intercepted everything. Donald Trump said, no damage at all. We're beginning to hear about F-15s being damaged and A-10s being damaged and more damage to that military base.

9:40Ben Meiselas:But I think it really projected that Iran still has a lot of weapons, contrary to what we're hearing in the United States. I mean, you're there in Iran. You speak with the leadership there frequently. You know what's going on. You're in the know. What's the strategic assessment of what's taking place in terms of the U.S. and Netanyahu invasion of Iran? Well, we always have to remind ourselves that this is a foolish war that Trump started and that Netanyahu imposed, and Netanyahu and his people imposed on the american people and uh iranians and americans or at least iranians uh iranians know the united states pretty well and uh u.s american movies are watched here american music is known here and the iranians do follow uh events in the united states there's a very good book on Iran written by two former White House officials called Going to Tehran, Flint and Hillary Leverett, which I think if your viewers read, it'll help them get a, have a better understanding of the reality of Iran.

10:54It deals with a lot of the myths and misconceptions and the anti-Iranian propaganda. And these two people who were in the White House, they were mainstream people, they were basically sidelined because of this book. The book ultimately said that if we do not move towards rapprochement with Iran, it's going to ultimately lead to conflict. And they turned out to be right. And no one listened to them. And if they had, we wouldn't be where we are today. So this whole tragedy that is unfolding, which is ruining the entire global economy, could have been prevented and could be stopped now. But the Iranians, they were preparing for this war for a very long time, for decades.

11:43That's why they built all those underground missile cities. They knew that ultimately the Israeli regime, the Zionist lobby, would push the United States to war. And the most useful idiot of all was Trump himself. And so when the war started, Americans couldn't destroy the missile bases or the drone bases, and they couldn't destroy the factories, the bulk of the factories that produced them, because they too were taken underground. And so basically, all of Iran's key assets are deep underground, and that's why the missiles and drones don't finish. Meanwhile, the United States, in this war of aggression, all of its assets are out in the open, all those bases that the Iranians have been striking in the Persian Gulf where they've destroyed them all, or now the new bases that they're stationed in Jordan, they're all on the ground.

12:44When missiles strike, they destroy helicopters and planes and other key assets of the United States. So the Americans are fighting a 20th century war. The Iranians are fighting effectively a 21st century war. But where the Americans are more advanced than the Iranians is in anti-missile missiles, which are very expensive, and firing them sometimes costs more than if they just let the missile go through and strike a target. Sometimes that's how expensive it is just to fire these missiles. So everything about the U.S. military, or at least many things about the U.S. military are just, are inadequate for this war.

13:36But Trump keeps doubling down instead of walking away and, you know, declaring victory and just walking away because I think his MAGA cult will, to a large degree, accept that as victory. He doubles down. Now, whether it's because he's compromised or whether it's because of money that comes from the Zionist lobby or whether it's because, of his anger or his arrogance or a combination of all these things, he fails to take the off round. But the Iranians are prepared to go and continue fighting this war until the end of Trump's presidency. And again, not a single missile base, not a single drone base has been destroyed in this war because they're all deep underground.

14:22And Iran is a mountainous country. So when it's under a mountain, it's even more difficult to damage or destroy them, if not almost impossible.

14:36Ben Meiselas:What do the Iranian people and the top Iranian officials that you speak to regularly think about Donald Trump's behavior? For example, we saw at this midterm convention, they were calling it this past week, Trump saying, I'm calling it the Trump straight and him continuing to say, I control it. And then just the barrage of social media posts with the weird AI memes of blowing up Karg Island. I mean, obviously the issues, and I'm putting that very lightly, that existed, frankly, predate Donald Trump and go back a long time. And you and I have had and can have important historical discussions, but Donald Trump's behavior is, and the erratic nature of it appears to be a little bit different.

15:33Ben Meiselas:And I'm saying that as an understatement on the little bit there. How is that behavior being perceived there versus, you know, just how is it being perceived there right now? Just this constant memeing and AI and just weird stuff. The longer the war lasts, the less people pay attention to what Trump says. And the same is true with me as well. I don't follow Trump unless something is sent to me or I see it in some news agency, a clip of Trump speaking about Iran. I don't really follow him. And when he says something, it usually doesn't impact Iranian society anymore. Early on, it would. But he said so many contradictory things.

16:19One day he says, you know, we're going to destroy Iran. The next day he says we're on the verge of peace. One day he says I'm going to impose my own leader on the country. The next day he's talking about how chaotic it is. And there's no leadership. One day he says that we've won the war. Then recently he said we're going to win the war. He said so many different things, and he's threatened Iran so many times with annihilation, sending Iran back to the Stone Age, wiping out a civilization, that people are now, I can't say completely indifferent to what he says, but a lot of people, if not most people, are indifferent.

17:09Perhaps people, I mean, people like myself pay a bit more attention to what he says, but even I don't pay the sort of attention that I used to. I will take note of, for example, what a military official in the United States says or someone else, but not Trump in his immediate circle. So they don't have any credibility among Iranians. And that is very bad for the United States because let's say Trump really does finally decide that I can't continue with this war. And it's wrecking the U.S. economy. So he wants to solve the problem. No one in Tehran is going to believe him. I mean, he negotiated with Iran before the 12-day war, and then he launched a sudden attack, bloating that this was all a facade.

17:56Okay. Then at the beginning of this war, he negotiated with Iran again. Oman was mediating. That turned out to be just a fake facade. Okay. Then after the 40 days of fighting, there was a ceasefire, and Lebanon was a part of that ceasefire. Netanyahu carpet bombed the country, killing hundreds of people in literally minutes. And then Trump sided with Netanyahu and said, no, no, Israel is not a part of the ceasefire. So he wrecked that ceasefire. Then he signed the MOU after two and a half months later, He signed it himself. He undermined it within hours. So who is Iran going to negotiate with?

18:41What can Trump possibly say which would make Iranian leaders say, okay, we can sort this out with this person?

18:51Ben Meiselas:Nothing. Talk to us about how significant these developments in Yemen have been. We've been following it closely here on the network. The Houthi advances in a very rapid period of time through Western Yemen, taking over Mocha, then going further south, now controlling Bab el-Mandab, the Hamish Islands. And what I was trying to explain to the audience also is that in Yemen, it's very tribal too. And there's the fact that you're seeing even a lot of Sunni support as well from some Sunni tribes, you know, which is an interesting thing as they're shunning the Saudi monarchy. And so there's what's happening, which is an extraordinary development to observe.

19:36Ben Meiselas:But there are deeper issues, too, that are kind of the next in order, which is the weakness of the Saudi monarchy, what we're seeing the weakness of a lot of these monarchies, the Jordanian monarchy, seeing lots of people in metropolitan areas celebrating, it appeared, some of the Iranian strikes on the bases. You can see that was happening. The royal family in the UAE is all kind of watching this. So that to me is obviously what's happening is significant, but there's some even bigger issues if that's, you know, that I think it's happening. What are you seeing from the ground and from all you know about the region?

20:11Well, we all know that the money is not with the Houthis, as they call them in the West, or Ansarullah, or the Yemeni army, the Yemeni armed forces because they're the ones who control the capital and 80 of the population of Yemen 75 to 80 percent live in territories that will have been controlled by the Houthis or Ansarullah and now it's of course expanded because they went all the way down to the Bab al-Mandam as you rightly pointed out so they're basically in control of the government but the in the west they like to call them the rebels. I mean, they've been running the government in the capital for well over a decade, yet Western media still calls them rebels.

20:54They don't, they pretend that they're not the government. And in fact, the government is, makes a mixture of different tribes and different religious sects. So it is actually a very, it has a broad base in the country. But one thing that, and so while the money is with the Saudis and the Americans and the West have been supporting the Saudis and the slaughter and basically genocide, they've been killing, they've been doing to Yemen what the Israelis were doing to Gaza for many years. And everyone supported them. These regional Arab regimes were supporting them. Everyone was on board, but they still failed against Assad, against the Houthis.

21:41But what has changed now is that since Ansarullah or the Houthis were alongside Hezbollah and the axis of resistance the only people who would defend the people of Gaza during this ongoing genocide they blocked the Israeli regime shipping from the strait even though and from the Red Sea even though the Americans bombed them the Israelis bombed them and of course the Arab regimes assisted the United States in bombing them Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, all of them allowed the United States to use those air bases to bomb Yemen. And they provided the jet fuel and they facilitated the bombing of Yemen.

22:26So everyone saw, despite all the media being against them, because the media is owned by the despots, the Arab family regimes in the Persian Gulf and other despots across the region, despite the anti-Hothi, anti-Yemini propaganda, they became very popular because they were seen as heroic in standing up against the genocide. They were talking about implementing the Genocide Convention, and they were getting killed as a result, like Hezbollah. And so their stature grew across the Arab world and beyond. And then in this particular war, which the Saudis started ironically, I mean, Mohammed bin Salman is like Trump.

23:18He simply has no wisdom at all. But in this war, what happened was that while the Saudi-backed forces were much better funded and had much better equipment, they had very little incentive to fight. Because they were fighting against the force that was standing up against the Israeli regime, that was supporting the Palestinian people. And they were being backed by the Saudis, who were an ally of Trump. So the motivation to fight didn't exist. The morale of the soldiers was almost non-existent. And many of the tribes did not want to be a part of this anymore. because Ansarullah had achieved a moral victory during the past few years.

24:19And that's why the collapse of the Saudi-backed forces was so sudden and so spectacular. They just didn't fight. Even though, as I said, they had far better equipment, Their wages were far better, and they had air support, but they wouldn't fight.

24:42Ben Meiselas:And Professor, I have to also imagine there is a relationship as well between the U.S. losing the war and the catastrophic invasion of Iran, seeing across the region, U.S. backs Saudi and Saudi backs PLC and U.S. loses to Iran, that perception of the U.S. as the superpower, as having all of these weapons and having a commander in chief who would actually be able to do the things they said they were going to do and not post memes and derange photos, you know, all day. I have to imagine that there's a level of that, too, in the region that says there's a new order. There's a broader order taking place.

25:28Ben Meiselas:And we've been analyzing, you know, the trip of Xi Jinping to Egypt and military exercises there, talking about a new multipolar order where Arab nations should take their own power back. Nations in the region, Arab or not, should take their own power back. And China's stepping in, not in the same form, but in a different format. But I have to imagine this is all still related to, like this doesn't happen necessarily in a vacuum without US losing the war. And then the dominoes are falling and maybe more dominoes still fall. You're absolutely correct. A number of things have happened. One is that this genocide in Gaza has wrecked the moral stature and moral status of the West.

26:18I mean, people like myself have always been highly critical. I never believed that Western governments were moral. I mean, I survived two chemical attacks during Saddam Hussein's war. The West gave Saddam Hussein those chemical bodies. But that aside, many people, especially among the liberal elites, still had some sort of attachment to the West, more or less. Many of them would get their information in Tehran, in Iran, and elsewhere across the world, from CNN, or The New York Times, or at least partially. But the genocide in Gaza had a very significant impact on that. But then the two wars against Iran, that cemented that in a way in which we, I have not seen before.

27:09And I guess since the beginning of the revolution, I haven't seen this sort of revolutionary fervor so powerful in Iran. I'm not saying everyone is a part of it. You'll find people who dislike the Islamic Republic or who just want this to end or who believe Iran is the problem or whatever. You'll always find these. And we have these discussions all the time on campus. Well, campus now is closed for summer, but in public and here and there. But overwhelmingly, the public sees the United States as an aggressor and supported by the Israeli regime, which is carrying out genocide. So all of these are sort of mixed together.

27:55And then the dislike, therefore, for the United States, and even the liberal media, because the liberal media, they did not condemn it. The Democrats did not condemn it. European parliamentarians didn't condemn the U.S. assault. Everyone was quiet and indifferent. They saw what happened to Venezuela. So the mood towards the West, perceptions of the West have grown more negative. it's always been critical for the moon. But you did have a significant segment of Iranian society which was some, you know, let's say a liberal segment. I can't say the percentage because it would change. A lot of polls are done.

28:37It grows sometimes, lessens sometimes. But this narrative that is sympathetic to the West has collapsed. That's evident. It's not that it's not existent, but it has collapsed. and on the other hand Iranians have traditionally been skeptical of Russia because we have a bad history with Russia the wars have passed and no need to go into history but you do see perceptions of Russia changing even among those liberal states and the same is true with China because we are we have been western oriented since more than a couple of hundred years, or at least a couple of hundred years. Second language in our school, English.

29:28At university, English. Most academics who do not get their PhDs in Iran, they study abroad, let's say, for their PhD. Or if we go on sabbatical, it's usually to Western countries. And Iranians who do immigrate, it's usually to Western countries. so we are we've always been deeply influenced by western media even if we're critical of it because we're bombarded so our understanding of china our understanding of russia our understanding of ricks or the shanghai cooperation organization nations is influenced has been influenced by the west that is falling apart i don't know the numbers but you can it's obvious that the mood towards China today has changed.