BREAKING: Netanyahu’s Terror Attack on Lebanon Destroys Trump’s Ceasefire. Tucker Reacts.

27:31Most countries live with neighbors that don't like them, with whom they have testy relationships, but they make accommodations. because they have no choice. There's no country in the world that acts with total impunity because it knows a much larger country will backstop it no matter what it does. That just doesn't exist in the natural world because it's not natural. It's grotesque. And it's terrible for the United States. And now it's obvious. And by the way, unless our lawmakers, unless the U.S. Congress restrains this relationship and changes its nature, there's going to be political turmoil in this country.

28:03So no mas. it is really clear. Israel's pursuing what it thinks its own interests are, but those are not the same as our interests. Now, one of the problems with changing that relationship is, well, you're going to have to deal with Israel's agents and advocates in the United States. And there are many of those. There are many of those. And by the way, just to be completely clear, they're not all Jewish. In fact, most of them aren't. This is not about Judaism. It's about blind support for a nation state called Israel to the extent that it harms our interests. And you saw that on full display in the last 24 hours.

28:46The president excitedly announces a ceasefire, a pause in the fighting in a war that cannot result in American victory, but only in further American defeat and degradation and ultimately in bankruptcy and possibly a nuclear war. So this is a great thing. Immediately, advocates for Israel appear on Fox News telling you that this is not acceptable. This is a loss. This is cowardice. Here's 83-year-old former General Jack Keene on Fox telling you that this is disappointing, that the killing has paused just for a moment. Here he is. So there's a lot wrapped up in the deal. My preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage to make that deal.

29:31But we are where we are now. And I really do think if the deal blows up, it comes down to Carg Island and forcing either take control of Carg Island and take control of the distribution of oil or destroy it and force an economic collapse. I mean, what do you say to something like that? Most people watching him are like, oh, he was a general. He was a general. He knows what he's talking about. He's probably war-gamed this whole thing out. He knows what it is to take Karg Island. Talk to anyone who actually has been to Karg Island or understands the geography of the Persian Gulf. How do you take Karg Island?

30:13Is General Jack Keane of Fox News the first person ever to think, hey, we should take Karg Island. Then we control the commodity flow through the Persian Gulf. That would make us powerful. No, he's not the first person to think of this. Cargill Island has actually changed hands quite a few times through history. Various empires have controlled it because geographically, it's a critical piece of real estate. And it's extremely hard to control at this point. Or once again, we would already take control of the oil. Oh, really? Hadn't thought of that. How would we do that? And of course, no one ever asks a follow-up question.

30:45How exactly would you do that? What would it cost us to do that? How long could we hold it? How far from mainland Iran is Karg Island? Is it within, I don't know, artillery range? Have the Iranians thought this through too? Do they see Karg Island through which 90 % of their energy moves as a key piece of real estate? Have they taken extraordinary steps to defend it? What are those steps and how do we mitigate those? No, not a thought. Just take Karg Island, take control of the energy flows, collapse their economy. Well, collapse their economy and then what? Does that open the Straits of Ramos?

31:19Where does that leave us? Where does that leave the seven countries that face Iran? No, no thought to that at all. Just do it. And by the way, it's kind of cowardly not to do it. They're children. And not only they're children, we know they are because they have a decades-long track record of bad decisions. Not just bad, but disastrous. These are the very same people who've gotten the United States into every pointless conflict really since the Second World War. How many have we won? Zero. Just a fact. A fact that you admit with sadness if you love the United States, as most of us do. None of this has worked.

31:57And if it has, tell us how. Just explain what the United States got out of any of these conflicts. With accelerating absurdity, each one more absurd than the next, you can understand you don't want China to control South Korea. Okay. Let's do the Incheon landing. You could sort of understand why you wouldn't want Ho Chi Minh sweeping into Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. Can you really understand why we invaded Iraq? Not at all. And this war makes the least sense of all if you view it through the prism that most Americans would, which is, is this good for us? No, obviously not. And there's no way to achieve it.

32:37And you know, there's no way to achieve a military victory, meaning a return to the status quo of February 27th, because they never explain what those means might be. Because they have no idea because they're children. And so really, it's incumbent on the rest of us to increase our self-respect and stop giving airtime or any attention at all to people with a long proven track record of failure and absurdity and silliness. Listening to 83-year-old generals who couldn't find Carg Island on a map, pretending that they're experts on the subject because they're not. And again, they've gotten it wrong again and again and again.

33:15Would you take real estate advice from a homeless person? No, because they're not good at real estate. So they're homeless. Like this is nuts. And so for this government to function, people who've gotten it wrong again and again and again cannot be, persist in positions of leadership. Doesn't mean they have to be imprisoned. They'd like to imprison their enemies, but in a free country, you don't imprison people because of disagreement. They're saying out loud, anyone who disagrees with us should be in jail because they're authoritarians. But it means not allowing them in government. Why? Because they don't have the best interests of the country at heart.

33:56That's why. Obviously, or they wouldn't be calling for military action that is by definition fruitless in Sisyphean. It doesn't work. Who does that help? Not us helps Israel. That's the whole point of the program.

34:15So why do they still have positions of authority in the U.S. government? Well, that's a really interesting question. But we could start, the great sorting could begin by disqualifying anyone from government service who holds a second passport. That's really simple. Not just an Israeli passport, but a Belgian passport, a Sierra Leonean passport, any other passport. If you're a citizen of another country, obviously you shouldn't be running our country. Because you have, by definition, dual loyalty. You can just leave and go to your other nation. No normal country would allow that. Why would you allow that?

34:50It doesn't mean people with dual citizenship can't live here. Though there's an argument for that too. A strong argument for that. Pick a country. If you don't like it, leave. That's fair. You can't use this as a place to park your money, a place to hide out or hang out until you get in trouble and then flee to your other country. Like why would any nation allow that? Most don't. We do. We got to stop it. But you could begin with, no, you can't serve in government if you've got two passports. Sorry, period. At any level. DMV up to DOD. No. And if you've served in a foreign military, come on now.

35:26Especially when the US is at war, you can't serve in the u.s government if you've worn a foreign uniform of course not you can't hold elective office if you fought for somebody else's country because by definition you have fought for aims that are not the same as ours in fact they may be in opposition to ours you may have fought against what's good for the united states certainly if you serve in the idf you fought against what's good for the united states knowingly or not, you probably didn't mean to, but you did. You shouldn't go to jail for that, but you can't be allowed to work at, say, the Pentagon.

36:04But right now you can. And by the way, there are IDF officers working out of the Pentagon because they have an office within the Pentagon, as they do at CIA and Langley. A foreign government has offices in our critical executive branch headquarter buildings. That's just not healthy. That's crazy. and it cannot be allowed a single more day. Why would it? Oh, that's hateful. Of whom? Would Israel allow that? Would they allow Americans? I don't know, to open an office in the Demona complex? No, because they're not insane, but we are. So we should stop that immediately. But the main problem with neocons, of all religions, just to be totally clear, is that not only are they not on board with the interests of the majority of our country, they work in opposition to those interests.

37:09wars you don't need mass migration into this country and the west and that would include canada and new zealand and australia western europe and the united states that migration which i think even liberals would acknowledge has not been good for anybody the fact has destroyed these countries because a country a sovereign country has control over borders. Can't just change the population in a generation. Can't do that. That's all been abetted by the neocons, 100%. Now, why is that? Well, that's another question. But the whole thing is dark. The owner of OnlyFans is one of the biggest contributors to APAC?

37:49Tell me how that works. Don't know the answer, but it's not good. It's not healthy. It's not good for the United States. None of it's good. APAC's not good. OnlyFans is not good. So maybe It's not surprising there's some nexus there. But above all, what is degrading to our country, bad for our strategic objectives, and just rotten for the nation is the lying, the nonstop lying, the refusal to be straightforward about your aims. What are you actually arguing for? You never know. Because lying is totally acceptable among neocons, completely. You always cloak your real objective. You saw this in the 12-Day War.

38:30Oh, no, no, we're just going to get rid of their nuclear program because it's an imminent threat to the West. Okay, it's an imminent threat. And some people piped up and said, I don't know, this looks like the opening salvos in a regime change war. Oh, shut up, racist. Of course, it turned out to be. But nobody ever apologized. Well, actually, you're right. You caught us the first time. And now we know because we're in a regime change war or an attempted regime change war. No, just keep lying. Just say whatever it takes, whatever's expedient to get to whatever the goal is, but you never know what the goal is because they'll never tell you.

39:04It drives people crazy. It makes people conspiratorial. That's the other problem with it. So many conspiracy theories. Well, there happen to be quite a few conspiracies. What's a conspiracy? Well, it's a group effort to achieve something whose goal is never stated in public. That's what a conspiracy is. And there's obviously a lot of that. Here's one example. This is from Fox News yesterday. on one of its top shows. Here are two neocons talking about what they think the U.S. we should do next in Iran. Hopefully, if we can get arms in the hands of the people, they'll take over. I'll give you the last word.

39:38We have about 30 seconds. That to me is very key. I've been talking about that in multiple appearances here and on radio. We have to arm the people because if we're not going to do regime change, they need to have the ability to do it. Reagan did it in Afghanistan. He did it in Nicaragua. He did it in Honduras. He did it in Angola. Donald Trump can do exactly the same thing somehow, someway. Those people need to be able to get armed and need to take their future into their own hands. It's like they can't even hear themselves. I mean, the other problem is, and one of the reasons that you have to laugh at all the conspiracy talk about the neocons is a lot of them are not super bright.

40:22They don't really know very much. So here you have that guy just said, Reagan did it in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. So what happened? Well, let's see. When Reagan did it in Afghanistan, he sent weapons to a group of freedom fighters called the Mahajidine, Islamic warriors. This was back in the 80s when we were on the side of Islamic extremism against the Soviets. And now you fast forward 40 years and who's in charge of Afghanistan? and well, Islamic extremists, the Taliban. Nicaragua, 40 years ago, we sent arms to the Contras. A lot of people supported it, including me, by the way, to be clear, because the Soviets were making inroads in Nicaragua.

41:04They're a funding group called the Sandinistas led by a man called Daniel Ortega. And we were going to regime change Daniel Ortega. So 40 years later, who runs Nicaragua? Anyone got Wikipedia? Oh, Daniel Ortega. So whether you support it or not, it didn't work. It didn't work. You're pointing those successes, really? Countries that 40 years later are run by the Taliban and Daniel Ortega, and that's the argument for sending arms to the opposition? But what's so revealing about that clip is how the actual point, the object of the strategy is never stated. In fact, it's hidden. And it's hidden in the most sinister way in the language of idealism and ideology.

41:52We have to end Islamism. We have to stop the threat of the terrorists. We have to bring freedom to the poor, benighted people of Iran. When, of course, the actual aim is Israel's aim, which is chaos. The whole point of this from an Israeli perspective is not an attack on Israel, by the way. I mean, it makes a kind of evil sense. If you want to eliminate a threat, you can't kill everybody, even with nuclear weapons. but what you can do is set them at war with each other. And this has been the way that Israel has conducted asymmetrical warfare since its founding. You sow chaos among your opponents.

42:29You get them to fight each other. And that's the goal for Iran, which is just a little bit over 50 % Persian. Not everyone who planned the war seemed to know that or advocated for the war seemed to know that, but the Israelis know it. And they know that the goal is to stoke ethnic conflict and to some extent religious conflict in Iran. Most Americans have no idea that there are up to 5 million Christians in Iran. They have no clue. But of course the Israelis know that. There are lots of Jews in Iran. The Israelis bombed one of their synagogues yesterday. Why? Unclear. Maybe just the love of bombing things.

43:08But it is a multi-ethnic country with religious minorities. And countries like that are ripe for internal division. So the point of the exercise is not to get weapons in the hands of freedom fighters. Who would those be? How do we identify an Iranian freedom fighter? No, the point is to stoke an endless civil war, which once ignited are famously hard to end. That's the point. How does that serve our interest? Well, of course it doesn't. Israel, which seems to have an interest in destroying Europe, certainly a desire to destroy Europe. Prime Minister said it himself. Rome is our real enemy. Still angry.

43:47about 70 AD, 2 ,000 years later. His words, not mine. So clearly Israel wants to harm Europe. They've said so. They've helped do it. That would definitely harm Europe and the West. How does it help the United States? Well, not at all. But here you have two prominent analysts on Fox News telling you that for the sake of the Iranian people, we need to do this. Really, the same people who are being bombed, whose infrastructure, civilian infrastructure is being destroyed, The same people who will starve to death if this keeps up? We're really doing this for them? How is starving me to death in my interest?

44:24Are you really trying to help me? No, of course not. How much better it would be? How much more Christian would it be just to say what you're trying to do out loud to tell the truth for once? And then the rest of us could assess it. We could argue against it on good faith terms. We could probably even accept it, even if we disagreed with it, if we knew what it was. But you never know what it is with liars, with people who are committed to saying whatever it takes to get their goal achieved without explaining what the goal is. So that mode of communication, of operation, that whole worldview is totally corrosive to our country.

45:05It is totally immoral. Lying is bad. And because lying is now the currency of government, thanks to people like the people you just saw on the screen, some of us have lost track of this. So you can't accept anything the government says at face value to parse every statement. Well, maybe this means that or it's a bank shot intended to achieve this. You have no clue. That is so bad for your society. Living in a hall of mirrors gives you vertigo after a while.

45:36Those kind of people should have no role in any decision the U.S. government makes going forward, period. And if they support arming the freedom fighters of Iran, let them do it themselves. If they support overthrowing the regime, let them fly there themselves and attempt to do that, if it's that important. But for not one more day should people like that have access to the levers of power in this country, and they should absolutely not be allowed to write our legislation. This country needs to free itself from the influence of a foreign power and restore freedom to its own citizens. the freedom to criticize a foreign country, to boycott it if they so choose, to speak their conscience without the fear of being arrested or accused of a thought crime.

46:22People like that have made this country increasingly authoritarian, where people who are born here no longer feel free to say what they really think. The last election was supposed to end that. Instead, it accelerated it. How did that happen? It's not even clear, but it did happen. And so the first thing we need to fix when this is all over is the system that produced this disaster in the first place. Not just a change of presidents. That won't be enough. We've just proven it's not enough. You need to change the system that acts on not just this president, but every president to produce results that are terrible for the United States.

46:56That's the first thing we need to do. The second thing we need to do is figure out how exactly Iran was able to do this. How did that happen? it'd be fun to go back and look at the tape from cable news in the months preceding this war and just clip the portions where they describe what iran is like all experts on iran not a farsi speaker among them but know a lot about iran this is before anyone had heard of karg island didn't know the population of the knew nothing about the country except that it was a primitive country and so when the president said we're going to bomb them back to the Stone Age, most Americans must have thought, well, I thought they were already in the Stone Age.

47:35Well, who knows what age they were in, Stone Age or Medieval? Who knows what their caliphate was really like? It turns out that their military power and their economic power, we vastly underrated. Vastly. They've done, and this is noted with real sadness, much better than anyone expected. including the Israelis, apparently. No one saw this coming. So how did this happen? How did this primitive country that shoots protesters in the street and beats up women because they're women or whatever they were telling you on TV, how did that country chase away U.S. aircraft carriers that aren't anywhere near the coast?

48:21How did that country shoot down some of our most advanced aircraft, warthog, blackhawks, et cetera? How'd they do that? We have gotten as a society into a very bad and self-destructive habit of not allowing questions like that, honest questions about our own failures. And the reason that's bad is because unless you understand what you did wrong and repent of it, promise not to do it again, you tend to keep doing it. And yet in this country, for some reason, the reasons are pretty obvious, we have allowed the people who make those mistakes to browbeat the rest of us into silence. and whenever someone pipes up and says, well, wait a second, we're spending a trillion dollars a year on this military and we can't get our aircraft carriers within striking distance of the coast of Iran because why?

49:11Shut up, Islamist. Were you siding with Iran? Well, no, I'm siding with the United States, but what's the answer? We pay for this military. We were told we had total dominance of the skies, but then they shoot down our aircraft. Apparently a lot of them, we can't know because everyone lies about everything, but apparently a lot of them. But one is shocking. How did they do that? Is it worth having an aircraft carrier in 2026? I don't know. But the people who build aircraft carriers certainly have an interest in telling us we need them. During the Ukraine war, at the point maybe a year or two in when the public was starting to ask like, wait a second, our airports are filthy.

49:56Our schools don't work. I have to work two jobs just to pay my bills, and I still can't afford a house. Started to add those people, which is most people, started to ask the question, why are we sending all this money to Ukraine? And by the way, where is Ukraine? And Putin, bad, okay, Zelensky's Jesus, got it, but like, what has this got to do with us? And why is it good for us? And the answer that we all received from members of Congress, Republicans in the Senate, and Democrats was, it's a great deal. So actually, it turns out, this is like congressional accounting, actually, that money, which seems like it's going to a foreign country, actually comes back to us because it goes to American defense companies, Raytheon and the rest, Lockheed.

50:40And so what we're really doing is funding American jobs. This is an industrial policy, really. And so it's a kind of sleight of hand where we seem like we're being generous, but actually we're benefiting. And there may be some truth in that, by the way. It's not a totally, I mean, you can assess whether that's like the kind of country you want to live in where the only real manufacturing base is weapons. Probably not, but that's where we are. And it's not a crazy argument to make on a practical level. I mean, there are military contractors in every congressional district, or always were. And so it does produce American jobs.

51:21but it also sets up an incentive for those companies and the lawmakers who fund them to maintain the status quo. And the status quo is, of course, always going to favor larger, more expensive weapon systems because those are the most profitable. A system like that will never invest meaningfully in, say, drone technology because there's not enough money in it. But you watch the war in Ukraine and you watch the 40 odd days of the war with Iran and you realize, well, wait a second, maybe we should have invested more in drone technology or taken a big picture look at what the United States would need to project military power beyond its shores.

52:06And maybe aircraft carriers and the whole suite of weapon systems, the most expensive in the world, aren't really the way to project military power because it doesn't work. and they can be defeated or at least constrained at a thousandth the cost by less technologically advanced countries like Iran. But that would be a very obvious conclusion. In fact, that was the conclusion of any smart, non-aligned person for the last five years. Is it really worth having an aircraft carrier if you have to open the Straits of Vermouth? Maybe not. Well, apparently not. But we have been unable to have that conversation because the vested players in the whole economic chain coming from the United States Congress through the Pentagon and out to, well, the entire economy of Northern Virginia has discouraged it.

52:58So we've continued to do the same thing the same way, except at a higher volume for a very long time. And now we are seeing the results, which are embarrassing. and we actually can tell ourselves we're the strongest military in the world and you want to be the strongest military in the world because that's great. But if you are the strongest military in the world, why can't you force Iran to open the bottleneck at the end of the Persian Gulf and let vitally needed commodities out to the rest of the world, including you? Like if you're so powerful, why can't you get it done? And so what we've learned is we're really not as powerful as we said we were and probably as we thought we were, and that's bad for us, but it's also dangerous because it invites aggression.

53:43We need to fix that by being honest about what just happened. No more lying. We should learn something from what is happening right now. And that process will require the people who made bad decisions to be punished for them, not imprisoned or killed, but certainly humiliated because they deserve it. When was the last time a public official was ever really humiliated? Even the ones who get fired, get fired with like a statement like, we thank you for your service. You're so great. You're doing something more important. How about you committed dereliction? You did a terrible job. You don't have to kill yourself or anything, but you can't work here again.

54:19And we're not going to endorse you. We're not going to pass you on to the next employer with like a fake letter of recommendation. Oh, you did such a good job. No, you were terrible. That's why you fired you. Only in a system like that, a true meritocracy, can you have excellence. But that's the opposite of what we have. No one is ever punished. No one is ever criticized. No one ever takes the fall. No leader is ever humiliated. Only the people beneath him who carried out his orders. That's the definition of a perverse system that produces, not surprisingly, perverse results like the ones we're experiencing now.

54:51So that's the next thing we need to do. Be honest about how Iran, this primitive country, just humiliated us. That's not anti-American. That's pro-American. We love our country enough to want to know. And we need to know. And the final thing we need to learn from this particularly ugly experience is that you have to have leaders who care about you. Because that really is the basis of good governance. It's not brilliance or superior planning. Those are important sometimes. But what really matters is intent. is the will to protect and serve the people you've been elected to protect and serve, to put at the very center of your agenda, the people who put you there, the people in your country, a love of those people gets you a lot farther than the best funded government program ever made.

55:49It's a lot like parenthood. You don't have to know a lot, but you have to be totally committed. And the commitment has to derive from the love that you have for your children. And if that is the case, you'll be a pretty good parent, good enough for sure. And if you don't have that, it doesn't matter how much money you have, your kids are going to be screwed up because you'll do a bad job. So it's about intent. How do you define intent? How do you know what a person wants? Well, by the way he behaves, you judge the tree by the fruit. And so any leader whose focus is outward rather than on his own country is going to be a bad leader.

56:26And this is the core problem with maintaining a global empire. You are never going to find a leader. You will never find an American president who is more interested in governing America than he is in governing the world. And honestly, would you be? What job would you rather have? King of the world? The world. King of the world. Colossus. astride. Here I am. I'm king of the world. I'm making all the decisions. I'm going to eliminate your civilization for breakfast. I'm going to overturn your economy for lunch. And tonight, we may have Operation Eternal Darkness. I mean, there's an appeal to the megalomaniac, to all of them.

57:05It's not just this one. It's all of them. That is irresistible to leaders. I run the world. Now, running America, by contrast, is hard and messy. And you know a lot of the people. You're going to make them mad. You go to war with the Houthis, people don't know what a Houthi is. They're never going to meet a Houthi. There's no cost to you whatsoever in the short term. But let's say you just ran America. How'd you like to fix Baltimore? Be responsible for Gary, Indiana or Detroit or Los Angeles or New York? These are hard problems. How do you fix American schools? They're totally useless. No one's even trying.

57:41And the reason they're not trying is because they're totally distracted. Well, because it's hard. Of course, the solutions are not obvious, but they're not even being attempted anymore. And this is a generational thing. 30 years ago, people still talked about our schools. We got to think of a way to make our schools better. School choice. Sound like a good idea. Did it work? I don't know. No one ever mentioned it again. Nobody cares. Our leaders don't care. They don't care. And that's why the country is withering. Because people who don't care are inattentive. Sometimes they're actually a little bit hostile.

58:18Sometimes they're very hostile. But no matter what their disposition, they're never going to save you because they don't care enough to save you. No leader who really loved his country, no matter what they tell you, would have embarked on this disaster. They kind of nod to caring. We're going to save you from the nuclear threat of Iran. Was there a nuclear threat from Iran? Shut up, hater. Was there a nuclear threat? Shut up. Okay, okay. There's no even real attempt to tie what they do outside our borders with most of our money to any benefit to you whatsoever, because that's how little they care.

59:06And that actually has to change. And it's not just a matter of the looming debt crisis, which is real. The fact we spent hundreds of billions on a fruitless war that diminished us. It's not even about that. It's bigger than that. coming out of this, we have to demand, regardless of party or even ideology, leaders who have a gut level love and concern for the American people. That is the test. That's the acid test for holding office in the United States. You have to care. We can probably devise ways to measure whether you care. But if you don't care, you're going to have to join the neocons in doing something else.

59:43So that's what we've learned so far for where we're going and whether this ceasefire, assuming it even is a ceasefire, will hold, we want to talk to someone called Alastair Crooks, who is not famous in American media, by and large, but is outside the United States, I think, regarded as one of the most experienced and wisest observers, mostly non-aligned observers, of what's happening in the world, particularly in the Middle East. He spent most of his career as a British diplomat, intelligence officer. It's not an endorsement of British intelligence, which has been much discredited in the last 25 or 30 years, but certainly one of the most knowledgeable governments for most of its existence.

1:00:28I mean, they managed the world and they sent people out into the world who really understood how things worked at a granular level, not just a 40 ,000 foot level, but understood the languages and the cultures and the geography of the nations that they were trying to influence. So he has spent his entire life outside his own country and has actually personally negotiated ceasefires in the Middle East and knows it very, very well, lived for years in Beirut. And so we asked him, where do you think this is going? Here's the conversation. Mr. Druck, thank you very much for joining us. Do you believe that the ceasefire that the president of the United States announced last night can hold?

1:01:09it's very tenuous at the moment it's very tenuous it's already eroding somewhat um and i'm not sure that the contradictions in um the tensions the underlying tensions within the ceasefire uh can hold um it may be that it's already eroding the being israel has been attacking in Lebanon. There is some dispute as to whether Lebanon was supposed to be a part of the ceasefire or separate to it. Initially, it was definitely a part of it. Now, Mr. Netanyahu is saying it is not, and it seems to be that that has been confirmed by the press secretary at the White House. But the Iranian reaction to that is that they have an equation.

1:02:02Either there's a ceasefire for all or there's a ceasefire for nobody. I know that what's happening in the Majlis at the moment in the parliament in Tehran is that the security committee there are saying, okay, if Hezbollah is a target and is being targeted and being killed at the moment, and it is not part of the CISPA, well, then maybe we'll consider that the whole of Israel is not part of the CISPA and we'll continue to target there. So it is quite tenuous. And I understand that in the last period, the Iranian authorities have refused to allow ships to pass through homeboards. They've stopped at the moment.

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1:04:21What are they? Well, I would explain it not in terms of just sort of literal what is in and what is not in. I would say from the Iranian perspective, the purpose of what's happened, or at least the attack that took place on Saturday last until the Supreme Leader, that has given an opportunity to change the situation, to break the paradigm. They want to get out of the cage. What do I mean by the cage? Well, it's not the sort of physical cage of Gaza where there are fences and drones flying over. But nonetheless, it's been 74, 75 years of caging. If you look at a map, you'll see all around Iran, every side, it is hemmed in by military bases.

1:05:24All around, it is hemmed in by sanctions, by tariffs. by siege, economic siege on the country, by political, even cultural isolation. And they see this, therefore, not as an attempt to, not as a process that will lead, if you like, to new deterrence, a new form of, as we go back, there'll be a ceasefire, then it'll end, and then there'll be another round of military. They want an end to war. They want this to bring about an end to the war. And they believe they're on a strong position. In fact, I know this will seem counterintuitive to many of the audience, but actually Iran has emerged stronger from this month of war than it did at the end of the 12-day war last June, in many ways.

1:06:28firstly because in economic terms they are benefiting for example in the last first month of this war they have earned more revenue from their oil sales from tankers passing from Karg Island from the Hormuz and being sold in this one month they have earned double what they've ever earned in previous years in one month And just to take as an example, for example, on Sunday, they loaded five tankers in Carg Island at the terminal there. That was 7.7 million barrels of oil. And they earned$850 million in one day from that. So the revenue from, if you like, potential revenue from hormones will be enormous.

1:07:29It would be probably in a year just under a trillion dollars on the basis that they're charging at the moment. They're not only charging that, but they're also demanding it in one, which is part of the bigger, if you like, plan they have, which is to break the sanctions. not only to break the hormones, but by insisting that carcass have to be charged in yuan, the Chinese currency, and not in dollars, to get permission to pass through Bar Qasem Island and Jarad Island. And they are then escorted by the Iranians through the elements of the other. But in the other aspects, which will be seen strike probably listeners as even more surprising, is that their casualties are probably less than in the 12-day war.

1:08:28Why? Well, because what they learned from the 12-day war is evacuate all public buildings that you possibly can. Upstreeting hospitals, but everything else empty. state buildings, security buildings, educational buildings, all are empty. And so the attacks, which are focused very much on those, have caused far fewer casualties. You know, there may be a caretaker or someone who unfortunately is killed in these. And of course, civilians are being killed. I mean, many civilians are being killed where residential areas have been attacked. But on the whole, they have had few casualties. And the second thing is that their military is in better shape than it was at the end of the war.

1:09:25First of all, the reason for that is, again, a rather strange one. And the Iranians bought a lot of these decoys, huge numbers of decoys from the Chinese that imitated airplanes and missiles and so on. But the Chinese gave them a twist, which was interesting. And I didn't know this before, but they have a heat source. So when they're picked up by radar or by sensors, it looks real because, you know, it not only looks apart, But it actually emits the heat of a real missile or an airplane. And so largely the Israelis and the United States have been bombing decoys. They've also been trying to bomb the main missile cities.

1:10:18But if you take a main one like Yaz, it is buried in a granite mountain, 800 meters deep. really deep and they're sort of concrete. And there's a whole railway system underneath those tunnels and railway systems under this mountain. And they deliver the missiles on railway trucks. And the railway takes it right up to the entrance. An airtight door opens. It moves to the entrance and the missile is fired. The airtight door comes down and the train withdraws. Well, the Israelis have been bombing and bombing this, and the mountain is getting blacker and blacker, but it's not affecting their missiles.

1:11:07And these missiles, and I've made this point many times, what they haven't understood about the mosaic system that the Iranians started planning for this asymmetric war 20 years ago, is that they are dispersed across the extent of Iran, which is a huge country with mountains and forests the size of Western Europe, effectively. And they are buried deep, deep. That was the lesson that the Iranians learned from the attack on Baghdad in 2003. They saw how air power could come in and could destroy the command center and the military capabilities of Saddam Hussein at that time. And they decided we have to manage a way that we will not suffer a decapitation strike.

1:12:04So they implemented this asymmetric role where the leadership is completely dispersed across the country. Again, autonomous, if you like, commands. They have their own missiles. The commander has the initiative to fire those, to use troops. And they are completely immune from any cutoff of communications or an assault or a decapitation strike because they have preset plans, sealed plans. each commander has these sealed plans of what to do if the supreme leader is killed and they tell him what the next proposals are so it's like a sort of huge retributive machine that snaps into action the second the command is lost and will continue the war will continue with preset plans And we saw that happen on that Saturday when the Supreme Leader was killed within the hour.

1:13:14Those plans were unfurled and attacks were starting on Gulf states and military, U.S. military bases in the area. So all in all, what I'm saying to you is that, and people I think are being quite surprised at the resilience that Iran has shown in this. And now they're trying to, if you like, leverage this resilience to bring about a major change in the situation. and the Iranians have, you know, some equations that it's best to understand. If you want to understand what their position is, it's like the one I mentioned about the CISPA, but it is security for all or security for no one. Prosperity for all in the region or prosperity for no one.

1:14:19If we are attacked, we will move up the escalation ladder accordingly. But the aim is to try and bring about a complete change, as I say, to change the region through the control over the hormones, to change the region away from being a petrodollar region, away from it being, if you like, part of the economic sphere of Wall Street, and to try and to move to a different economy in the Gulf area. And also, by insisting on Juan, it is trying, if you like, to change the whole basis and the whole geopolitical siting of Iran and for it to come back as a major geopolitical part in the region. That's it, essentially.

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1:16:38There's nothing we recommend more strongly than this. If Iran, from what you've described, if Iran were to achieve those goals or even the majority of those goals, it would be a major global power, not just a regional power, it seems to me. Yes, exactly. And this is why, I mean, you know, what is happening in Iran and with Hormuz portends a big hit in the global path, because already we see, you know, signs of this taking place. Their demand that every ship passed has got to confirm that its cargo is paid for in Taiwan. And we're seeing, consequentially, Russia has already announced that in the future, any sales, any purchases of Russian oil or gas or products by Europe will have to be in one from now on.

1:17:40That's it. Then you've seen a big European bank, Deutsche Bank, now stopping, if you like, the issuance of so much of their debts in dollars and are issuing kind of bonds. That is, a bond based in either the digital remember or the ordinary remember, and was a huge success. People have been, it's been oversubscribed, people coming back and taking this. So what they're doing is actually, if you like, in a small way, but they're trying to capitalize an economic shift away from the very leveraged, financialized economic world, which incidentally has been so damaging to America and Europe too, because it's prioritized the financialized world at the expense of the real economy and real jobs.

1:18:45And it's all about trading and making money by trading or something else, but it isn't from making goods. No one does that now. Not enough money in it. You can make more money in an hour on the stock markets trading across futures markets and other things. So it's also part of, if you like, that greater project that the Chinese and Russians are engaged in of going back to much more self-sufficient economies that are not just based on financialized products and dealings, but actually produce things for people, produce things for people, and therefore can take salaries to people. And they think this is what they need to move towards, and they want to change the Gulf in that direction by persuading them to deal with Iran, that they have no choice, but they need to deal with Iran and they should give up, if you like, all these big data centers by Amazon and AI centers and should change to a much more simple economy.

1:20:03It's been clear from an American perspective since the first days of the war between Russia and Ukraine that the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency was in retreat and it was obviously going to change at some point. It always was. And maybe that could be managed in some way. You're describing a very abrupt change. I mean, if a fifth of the world's energy is settled in Chinese currency, that seems like just the end of the dollar is the global reserve currency. Or maybe I'm overstating it. I mean, I don't think I don't think that is the aim. I think the aim at this point is to construct enough pay to get leverage over the West to get them to understand, because it's not just oil and gas.

1:20:54It is also the precursors for equipment, helium and sulfuric acid and all these things that we need for our supply lines. So if there's a parallel, I would say that the sort of second part of it is a parallel to what we've seen in China. When Mr. Trump imposed those tariffs, high tariffs, 155%, China started saying, well, I'm sorry, we're going to impose restrictions on rare earths and important minerals also until you bring down the tariffs. And that was achieved by China by using that leverage to bring about a change in the trading system there. And in a sense, Hormuz's trade gives the opportunity, particularly if the Red Sea is included, where so much of the world's commodities pass.

1:21:53And, of course, Ansar and the Hussies are quite capable of controlling that in a similar sort of way. So yes, it is a change in that direction. But China, I believe, is very careful. I was in China at the end of last year, and I was very much aware that they are cautious because the way they've applied AI in China is not in the way we do it in the West. I was talking to some of the factory owners and he said, look, you know, Alistair, at the beginning of this year, I take a typical factory I employed, it's now 200, one year later. And he said, all of that is because we apply soft AI, you can call it robotics or automation or automatics or whatever, that we applied soft AI for productivity to get our costs done.

1:23:00And our costs are falling, manufactured costs are falling by 2%. And I turned to him and I said, that's terrible. Because, you know, we can never compete with that. You must be aware that's quite dangerous because you are entering a Thucydides point. And because we have caused inflation and you have caused deflation, this is not going to be a very easy thing. So you have to manage your, you know, your thucidity and point with great terror. Otherwise, you end up in a worse conflict with the West. But the Chinese don't want to push themselves to the forefront, displace the United States and the special currency, but they could do it.

1:23:53You're right. You could do it tomorrow. For example, when I use WeChat in China, it has 1.4 billion users on that one platform, 1.4 billion. and you can pay, you can take insurance, you can get a loan, everything you want on that. They could rule that out so easily. I mean, you know, the scale is already there. They could roll it out across Asia tomorrow. But I don't think they want to do that. They're not trying to create a crisis that will affect the whole of the trading system of the world because China depends, you know, on trade. And it doesn't want to break the system, but it wants to gently remove the system in a different direction.

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1:26:14Is that the extent of the military aid that the Iranian government has received from the Xi government? No. But, you know, people say, well, I don't see anything. We don't see it in Iran. No, because you wouldn't see it. Because what they have provided is that the Iranians used to use GPS, and the West found it quite easy to disrupt GPS signals when they wanted to, or to spoof them into thinking it was a different location. The Iranians had gone on to the Russian system, first of all, But now, at the beginning of this period after the June War, they moved into Beidou, the Chinese digital system, which is linked to their satellite.

1:27:11They have a complete satellite system. As you know, over the Earth, and we've seen some of the pictures from them, they're very good. And they also, in the agreement, in the cooperation agreement between Iran and China, agreed that they might have access to the highest grade military quality digital communication system of Beidou. So the satellite system, there are Earth receivers in Iran. The satellite system is linked to that. And the radars are linked through Beidou to a single command post or to each single, if you like, missile city to provide the targeting and the data. and during the first stages of this they also put one of their intelligence ships called Ocean One off the coast, the Persian coast, which was able to intercept communications.

1:28:19It was also able to map undersea. In other words, they could map any Israeli or United States submarines that were operating. All of this was linked, and it's linked in a sort of huge digital map that is available, which gives the targets, and it gives the way in which those targets can be attacked, what type of missile can be used. It was used by the Pakistanis in a rather simpler form in their war against India, which the pilot, the Pakistani pilot, didn't have to see its target on the radar because it could see the whole situation, the whole map. We call this in the West the IRS, Intelligence, Reconnaissance, Surveillance.

1:29:15This was the big asset that the United States gave to the Ukrainians, the ability to have an integrated type of targeting and data all in one, all presented even down onto a laptop if necessary, but onto a cockpit or into a missile center. So what I'm saying is, and there's no confirmation from the Chinese or anyone they keep quite but, but this time the issue is on the other foot. is the Iranians that have the IRS, the intelligence reconnaissance system available. It's quite clear. I mean, you know, I don't have to prove it because, you know, when a B-1 takes off from Fairford Airport, RAF, in England, the Iranians pick it up within a second that it's taken off and know when they can plot where it's going and what to do about it.

1:30:19So they obviously had much more sophisticated, if you like, targeting and data management than in the past. I think the Russians helped, but in a different way, more with drones. You know, the Iranians helped with their drones, the Sharan drones. I mean, the Russians asked for them for use in Ukraine, and they took them, and then they upgraded them. And now some of that upgrading is coming back to Iran. That's the, I think, of Russia. How difficult would it be for the United States to defeat militarily the Iranian regime at this point? Oh, as such, I don't think it's possible. Not in that sense, if you mean to destroy their ability to continue a military conflict with Israel and the United States' bases in the region.

1:31:26I don't think they can. The Iranians have even buried their construction plans for missiles. They're not on the surface. And these missiles, they come up, if they're not in a mountain coming out on the train, they come up from silos, you know, 200 meters deep, and they just come straight up out of the silo. And then a new rocket, a new missile is automatically, there's a rotating, if you like, I don't know, crumb, and it moves the next missile directly. It doesn't get exposed. It's not out in the open. It's 200 meters underground. And then the airtight door shuts as soon as the missile has left.

1:32:15I think it would be very, very difficult to defeat Iran in that sense to destroy its military capabilities. And it would be even less possible to take control of HOMOs now from Iran. You have to look at the geography. I mean, and the brain of homers to understand why this would just really be a non-starter. Well, you probably heard a lot about the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi, on this show and elsewhere. He's the guy who's always at the White House working to suck the United States into some war of conquest on behalf of his country. But what you may not know is that the charges against Netanyahu are real.

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1:33:56So if Iranian oil sales, as you described them, are potentially going to bring a trillion dollars U.S. to the Iranian government over the next year, that would, I think, from an American perspective, increase the incentive to blow up Karg, where I think the overwhelming majority of Iranian energy is loaded onto ships. and you're hearing people talk about that. Well, let's just eliminate Karg Island. Would that work? Is that possible? No, it wouldn't work. And, you know, this is, first of all, Karg, first of all, Karg, as you know, lies at the far end of the foremose. On the other shore, there are cliffs, and then behind that it's barren, very, very barren, with no vegetation, the hills and mountains, the small range of mountains goes right down to the straits.

1:35:06So first of all is how would you get troops to carve? I mean, you can't sail them up the Hormuz. In fact, what I understand is that what they call, I think, MEU, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, HMS something or USS, something rather incontrument with its proper name, did arrive with 2 ,000 Marines on board. And Iran fired a couple of missiles across its bows, and it is now removed to about 1 ,000 kilometers off the Persian coast, because it doesn't want to risk moving any closer, which is what happened to the carriers. They had to move further and further back so that they couldn't actually use the fighter to strike aircraft on their deck because it was too far.

1:36:08They'd have to start refueling them even over the target, and that is an unacceptable risk for them. So I don't think you would get troops there. Could you land them on the borders? Well, Cog Island is in the artillery range of the Iranian side of the home runs. And it's certainly within ballistic missiles. So your troops would be there and they would have both missiles and they would have artillery fire all the time. How would you resupply them? How would you deal with them? Would you create a sort of an air base by the back? Well, actually, the Iranians would allow them because in the Iran-Iraq war, they were specialists in opening corridors and luring the Iraqis to go in their corridors because they thought they were unprotected.

1:37:12and then they closed the corridor and then they killed the troops in it. The Iraqi has a big military. It is a million men under arms and the Bazeesh are near another million. They would, I think, not find it difficult to deal with a substantial landing of troops It is terrible. The mountains, you know, there are the cliffs are full of anti-ship missiles and the mountains also are full of caves and tunnels where artillery is in position. Digging artillery out of mountains is a terrible, expensive job. and in any case you can't get into that wouldn't give you if you had Targ Island you wouldn't have control of Homo's because the Iranians have as I say anti-ship missiles but they also have which we haven't seen used so far submersible drones these are small drones that are in tunnels under the water they are submersed tunnels and they can exit under the water from those tunnels.

1:38:35They have lithium batteries which can last about four days. They have the capacity to loiter and then use artificial intelligence to select the target and to attack the target. Then they have surface drums among about 600 fast ship surface drums. Most of those are concealed also. And they have finally which is not much but they have about 25 to 30 mini submarines and the draft that HOMOS is relatively shallow but these submarines are mini submarines very small and they can fly up and down HOMOS and they can fire anti-ship missiles from the first submerged under the waters or attack it with other forms of drones by these small submarines.

1:39:40So they would be very vulnerable trying to go in there and certainly even more vulnerable. We've seen what happened over the weekend where the US lost many aircraft, partly because of an attempt to rescue two crew from the F-15, but also the subsequent operation, which was probably an operation to try and take the enriched uranium from Issa nuclear facility. That went wrong, and there was an ambush, and many planes and helicopters were destroyed in that process, and it failed. I think that was what Trump was very much comfortable, that they could do a Maduro, do a Venezuela. The special forces would go in one night along Easter weekend when the markets were closed.

1:40:38They would go to where Grossi, the head of the IEA, say, you know, there's half of the enriched uranium sitting in a tunnel in this Baham, and take it and then come back. And before the market opens, we've won. It's a great success. But it went badly wrong. My guess is, you know, that's over. You can't repeat that exercise. Now, not because the Iranians know of it. They knew all along. I mean, you know, they're not stupid. They knew that the main aim of Trump would be to try and seize the uranium and then sort of put it out as a trophy. We destroyed their nuclear capabilities. Now we have more than half.

1:41:27whilst he said it was 60 to 70 percent of the total 430 kilos of 60 percent enriched uranium when the president threatened yesterday to eliminate the civilization um and to destroy the country what weapons do you think he was thinking about using i really don't know it It sounded very ominous to me. I mean, that he could take out, you know, this is a big country. I mean, a huge country, 95 million people, you know, infrastructure and industry. I mean, the size of the whole of Western Europe across it. I mean, how could he, how would you do this by any conventional means? I don't understand. And maybe he was deliberately hinting at some sort of nuclear device, but I can't tell.

1:42:27But that's, I suppose, one possibility of what he meant by this would be the death of a civilization and it would not return again in the future. It would be over. Well, how would you do that in such a big escape? I don't know. or maybe he was just talking and didn't really mean what he was saying. It was bluster. We just don't know. This makes it very difficult for not just the Iranians, but everyone to sort of negotiate in this time because they're finding it very difficult to understand what is now Trump's ambition. It seems to me that he wants to get out of this war to which he was invited by Netanyahu and enthusiastically accepted.

1:43:25He wants to get out because he has this timeline. The midterm elections are coming up. He's always said, you know, we've got to get this Iranian thing settled in four to six weeks so that I can concentrate on trying to save the midterm results. But now, after the failure to try and extract the uranium from Isfahan, I think the only thing that was facing him was a long war or massive escalation. And that wasn't going to work well for the midterms or his situation in the country. So I think he was hoping for a way out. Is it going to work? Can it work? Well, that's what I mean about the contradiction.

1:44:21Iran doesn't want a ceasefire. It wants an end to the wars, an end to its siege. It wants to be able to get out and play a role in the region. And of course, that is not the interest, not only of Trump, but particularly of Israel. Israel has been pressing. I read the Hebrew press regularly. We do sort of summaries of it. And they've given up on the idea of what they call a regime change in Iran. They realized it's not going to happen. It's not going to work. Maybe it never was going to work. I mean, they say this, you know, in the Hebrew press, they're much greater than in the English language.

1:45:10And they say this very clearly, it wasn't going to work. Then came Netanyahu said, they must take Carg Island. This has got to be done. Boats on the ground. Carg Island is the key thing that they have to do. Well, they have now come to the conclusion. I mean, the Israeli military experts who know the region, like the military defense agency, have said, you know, what are you going to do? Please sit on Kalk Island. You'll just be a city target. You will have huge casualties. And so even the Israelis understand that. So that's why we now have the switch that is taking place, which is over. OK, now we have to destroy that infrastructure, electricity, water supplies, railways.

1:46:03In those last days, the entire railway system of Iran has been attacked by Israel. Across the entire country, they've been destroying the railway system. I mean, it is civilian infrastructure. It is a criminal thing to do this to the civilian population. But that's what they're pressing on Trump to do, to try and push him further down. They want it really so that Iran is not functional as a going state, that it is too broken. And then they want to see it divided up into sort of ethno-sectarian statelets, rather like Syria. This happened to Syria so that it is weak and easily dominated.

1:47:03what would it take to do that is that even i'm leaving aside whether or not it's evil and of course it is evil but if that were your goal do you have a realistic chance of achieving it and if so how um it will be difficult but you could do some of it uh the iranian electrical system is notably decentralized. This is all part of the rethinking of asymmetrical warfare from the 2003 period. So there are about, I think it's 150, 160 different, you know, electrical plants that are all interconnected. And so they have a huge number of small plants that are decentralized across Iran rather than, you know, a few big partners.

1:47:59And Bushair is probably the biggest one that they have, but that's a joint project with Russia. But David, Iran has attacked that twice. And I think this was a message. And you asked me what was happening. But first of all, Israel attacked Nantaz, which is another nuclear site facility. Nantaz is still damaged from when Trump bombed it. But then they landed a missile quite near to Boucher, which is a functioning nuclear power plant jointly run by the Russians. and it's under full IEA supervision because the Russians want it like that. And then they landed a missile quite close to Boucher and then now they've landed in the recent days a missile that has damaged it, not heavily, just but hit it.

1:49:02And of course, the IEA were very concerned about this and the Russians have now withdrawn all their staff from it. But in my view, this was a message not to Iran, but to the United States. And the message was to say, you know, well, if you don't do it, we have the capability to eliminate these nuclear, to go down the road of attacking the nuclear issue. In other words, to use technical nuclear weapons. So I think this was a pressure point that was put on to the White House to say, look, either you do what we say and destroy their capabilities, their infrastructure, or maybe Israel will be forced to move to a different level of attack.

1:50:05To a nuclear level. That would not be the first time the Israelis have threatened that. They threatened that in 1973. So it's been over 50 years of the same threat. Do you believe that that's a real threat? Do you think Israel would use nuclear weapons in Iran? at the last resort possibly but not before no I don't think so I think it would be very much a last resort but you know Israel is becoming less I've been writing for some years to say that you know it's no longer possible to see and understand a large segment of the Israeli population through secular rationalist lenses, which we tend to do.

1:50:54We have to look at it through eschatological ideas and see what they are looking to. And there you see, I mean, you take somebody, someone, a minister like Smotrich. I remember six, seven years ago, he was saying, you know, this is the plan. We're going to get rid of all of the Palestinians, all of the Arabs out of the territories. But we require one thing. this was seven years ago, six, seven years ago, and he said, we're missing one thing. We need a big crisis or a major war to finish off this project. In other words, there is a large segment that are not frightened of Armageddon, but actually are looking forward because this is the path to redemption in this stew.

1:51:47So there's no point saying to them, you know, as we in Europe do, well, it doesn't make any sense to provoke a big war. It makes absolute sense if you're an eschatological, messianic believer to do these things. So, you know, we have to try and understand it in these terms too, I think. And there is a danger, the sort of eschatological, the messianic theme that is present, has been predicted that it would be present, and has gripped probably more than half of the Israelis, the sense of Amalek, that they are fighting the War of Amalek, and this is going to lead to, eventually, to Armageddon and redemption.

1:52:40given that how do you understand the pressure from israel on the united states to continue fighting russia it's very clear now it's always been clear but it's rarely spoken in public in the u.s that israel and its advocates in the u.s have been the prime drivers of the ukraine war pushing the United States to fund Ukraine in a fight against Russia and Putin. Why? What is the thinking there? What's the strategy behind that, do you think? I think it's the same people and it's the same supremacist thinking. The idea of control and there is, I think, in the case of Russia, great ancient resentments.

1:53:35I mean, dating back, first of all, to the failed attempt of the Bolsheviks to institute a society that ended all reliance on family, community, religious, to create people as just units. units in a society, in a sort of technocratic society. That failed and then Stalin was instrumental in, as they believed, in killing many of those people who largely were originally, many of them came from the US and were prosecutors. And I remember watching a video of Putin addressing some of the the Pacific members in Moscow, and he was saying to them, you know, and he was warning them, and he said, you know that I think the figure he gave was 83 % of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, and most of them didn't speak Russian, based on the edit.

1:54:49So the Russians are very aware of this history. And then they were made aware of it again in the 90s, when the oligarchs, the period of the oligarchs, or Putin and Dan on that. Of the oligarchs, there were seven oligarchs, normally. than normally, or six were Jewish and tied to financial institutions in the West, whether in America or in Europe. And the consequences of that period with the shock treatment, the shock economic treatment that was visited on Russia, I mean, were terrible, the consequences on their society. So I think Putin has always tried to carefully maneuver and manage, if you like, what he understands is a sort of power system, which is higher and larger than the power system in Europe and the United States in a conventional way, based much of it on finance and banking going back to the 19th century.

1:56:13and the Infosys people, the Yakov Franks and so on. And that has given them a very cautious act to their relations. And we've seen that caution sort of obvious in Syria at times, but also in Infosys relations with Israel. I don't mean it in any denigatory way. I'm just saying that I think he's a cautious person, a lawyer by training, and he understands the power, the global power and its ability to mobilize and its ability to use proxies to damage and maybe even defeat. country. And so, you know, this is, I mean, it's interesting because this is exactly the parallel that we're dealing with now with Iran in the sense that I think the United States would like and Iran would be content to find a security solution a permanent security solution, not just a ceasefire, which would involve, of course, things like sanctions, removal of sanctions, very similar to what Russia is looking for.

1:57:54But just as in the Ukrainian situation, the European determination to continue the war on Russia using the Ukrainian proxies has really stopped the ability to find a political solution, a political object, because what Russia wants is quite clear. I think Russia wants to set the boundaries, very clear, what are the boundaries of the sphere of interest of nature and what are Russia and China and Asia's sphere of interest? Where does the boundary between this lie and what does that mean? That's what I think he means when he talks about security architecture. And this is what Iran is effectively saying.

1:58:45You know, you have to curb something about stopping Israel because otherwise Israel will not allow you to come to any, you know, any serious, meaningful agreement with Iran. And if you don't, and then Iran will do it its own way, which is going to be, and you said what happens about homeless, but they only have to keep homeless tightly closed for three weeks. And the pain across financial markets in the West, around supply lines and around food and all these issues will become very, very severe. So, you know, they're saying, you know, these are our equations. It's either security for all or security for no one.

1:59:40Prosperity for all or prosperity for no one. And we are intent on it. And, you know, the Iranians have a huge resilience. They're unusual people, remarkable in many sense, because their reading of the revelation of the Prophet is that you are mandated as a human being to oppose the oppression of others. You are mandated similarly to look after and to take care of the dispossessed. I mean, these are the fundamental things. You go back to Kerbala, you see that is the principles. These were the principles that the imam induced. And the third principle was the need to have active minds. I want the people to have active minds, to think for themselves and to think well.

2:00:45And for that reason, made it compulsory that if you went to university, you wanted to study Islamic philosophy, you also had to study Western philosophy. The two run together in Iranian universities. So this gives them a very strong, and it explains why Iran is viewed as an enemy by people who are oppressing other people with enforcing special rights on some people and not on others in the region. And that is where it is. And I think that eventually we're going to get to the point because the tensions in Israel, a huge amount, enormous tensions that are there. The Kishka staff went to the cabinet the other day and said, listen, the IDF, the military force, is collapsing.

2:01:50We're totally overextending. It is collapsing. And there's nothing we can do about it unless you want to produce another 400 ,000 keeps. We can't do it. We're overextended. We need to get out of Lebanon. We are failing. We have failed with Gaza. We have failed in Lebanon. We thought we defeated Hezbollah, and now it is inflicting huge costs on us, huge damage on us. You have failed. They are saying that to Netanyahu. It's in the Hebrew press more than it's in the English language press. but it's a real crisis. And why it's such a big crisis is, in Israel, the army has always been the spinal cord of the state.

2:02:41You know, left, right, religious, secular, all did their service in the army. It was the thing that kept it together. And the chief of staff is saying, it's broken, it's completely bust. and the political leadership says, no, you're just being defeated. We are on our way to a great victory and we're going to establish greater Israel across the Middle East. And within Israel, people are saying, you're wrong. It's not going to do that. Actually, you're going from one defeat to another to a bigger defeat. And that we have to take stock and think again, of where where we go Why, given the fragile state of the IDF, would the IDF be bombing residential apartment buildings in Beirut, not in southern Lebanon, but in Beirut, a country with a Christian president?

2:03:46Why would they be killing civilians in Beirut right now? Well, what some of the military people in Israel are saying, this is clearly a last gasp by the government there to present, if you like, a victory before they have to concede that they will join the ceasefire in due course. that this was a show of force, even though it was a completely ineffective show of force. This was just simply destroying residential power blocks, many of them, many of them. And it was of no purpose other than for the political grandees to say, oh, look what we've done. We've got freedom of action in Lebanon. and we can go where we want and destroy what we want.

2:04:49Well, maybe we will agree to join the ceasefire if Trump pushes us hard enough to do that. But it has served no purpose. And the idea, no, it is actually... They are going to, I think, completely withdraw. Except that they say, and this is what the Defence Minister is insisting, They have to demolish all the houses for a depth of seven kilometers into Lebanon. They have to be like Gaza. I mean, they don't hesitate to say it's got to be like Gaza, and that's going to be a buffer. And the military say, what is the point of that? The IDF saying to their leaders say, what is the point of that? because actually the Hezbollah's missiles, most of them are north of the Litani.

2:05:41The Litani is the river that divides Lebanon. It's about, I can't remember how many kilometers, but it's about the third of the way up in Lebanon. And he says they can still fire from north of Litani into northern Israel, and they're causing huge damage and huge losses. In one day, the idea of nearly 800 Merkurva tanks, main battle tanks. Now, they did an ambush, and they've done it on other days. On other days, they've lost 80, maybe 50 in another day. It's like 2006 in Lebanon when I was there, and they did the same thing for Merkurva there. And, you know, of course, I mean, actually, I think a few of the lead tanks, the crew get out.

2:06:33But most of them, they don't get out. So there are big casualties taking place. I mean, the thing is a mess, a disaster. And this is why I think that ultimately the demand for a real ceasefire is mostly going to come not from Trump and those associates around him that are close to Israel, but may come from Israel itself because they've experienced huge damage. And, you know, what is the point of this? I mean, they cannot make political gain from the system. They've created mayhem across the region, and nothing is working to their favor. There's not going to be a sort of love-in with the Gulf states, Abraham, of course, or anything, after what has happened in this period.

2:07:35So they have to rethink where they're going. And I think that probably will happen. Maybe not yet. It's not right yet. But I think they will. I think in the United States, doesn't the U.S. have to think about how to disengage from Israel, given that the cost of the relationship is very obvious to the American public now? We would not be in a war with Russia were it not for pressure from Israel and its advocates. We would not be in a war with Iran were it not for our relationship with Israel. So can the United States disentangle from Israel without getting hurt in the process, do you think? Well, there are those in Israel who advocate it.

2:08:22I know that's surprising. But on the right wing, there are those who say it. And even Netanyahu said it's time for us to disengage and be less reliant on the United States. I think he reads the writing on the wall. and frankly he sees the writing on the wall so let's anticipate it but how they're going to do that i mean is is is a different question as i was saying earlier you know the whole um it's not just the geopolitics of the region is shifting in because of homos and the way the warriors, but I'm saying that the mainstay of Israel has been the technical industries of the Gulf and the Gulf states and the money of the Gulf states, which have supported it.

2:09:14And I think that is probably going to change and change quite dramatically. I'm not sure it depends to the degree with which the Gulf states can also read the writing on the wall and realize some of them, I think, have begun to do that. They're thinking about how to deal with Iraq, that they need to come to terms and to come to an arrangement so they can export their energy and whatever else they want. But that is going to mean, and the Iranians say that, you know, you can't do that and also be beholden to Microsoft and Amazon and have all of their data centers. and because we understand what data centers are.

2:10:03They are for security. They are for surveillance, for monitoring every telephone call and every structure that takes moves in the Middle East so that you can assassinate them if you want them. We are not going to accept this type of technology in the region. And that's why they've attacked them. And I think they've attacked that big Amazon center in the UAE. I think it costs 30 billion to set up. It's the biggest. You won't find it on Google Maps because it's hidden. But it's a huge AI center there. So I think, yes, I think that is the way. So what is the business model for Israel for the next 10 years?

2:10:52That is going to be a question. Where does this war leave the Gulf states, the GCC? It leaves them badly damaged. Many of the people leaving, particularly Dubai and UAE, it leaves them needing to rethink how they can, if you like, manage a relationship with Iran which allows them to export their goods, even though it will mean disengagement from the Western financialized world. But they will need to do that. I think they will find they have little choice ultimately. At the moment, they're full of indignation and anger that they've been attacked and blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, you know, if they want to move their products, either through the Red Sea, by the way, the Saudi pipeline to the Red Sea has just been attacked.

2:12:03I don't know if it's completely destroyed, but it's just been attacked. That was their alternative to supplying oil. They could supply 5 million pounds a day off the coast of the Red Sea. But that has been attacked now. So the pressure is on the Gulf states to come to terms, and some of them will, I believe. Some of them will more easily, and others may not. and and finally how do you think most likely this is resolved and over what time period

2:12:46uh i think that this is going to be resolved in the way uh that i indicated i think that um Initially, we will see the negotiations that the Americans, although they've said, the White House has said that the 10-point plan is the base for discussion about the political setting. This is the base. This is the anchor, if you like, the 10-point plan that Iran has produced. It's a real initiative. It's been signed off by the Supreme Leader, the young Supreme Leader, and by the Security Council. It's not one of these plans that have come in from Pakistan by talking to sort of ephemeral people. This has come out of the security structures and with the support of the IRGC.

2:13:49and the Supreme Leader read it, asked for some amendments to it and gave it its imprimatur. So it is a serious doctrine. I think that inevitably in the negotiations, whoever is negotiating, if it is Vance or Whitcock or whoever, they will then revert or try and say, yes, but we have to go back to these other issues. You may not enrich uranium in Iran. And one of the principles that the Iranians have said is we have the right to enrich in Iran our Iran as a source of energy. They will then say, well, you cannot have such missiles. You're going to have to dismantle your missile systems. And you will need to put limits on them and we will have to inspect them and we will have to monitor them.

2:14:45And Iran will say, no way is that going to happen. And they will say, you'll have to give up the Hormuz completely. You'll have to give up the Hormuz. And they will say, no, we are in control of it and we don't intend to give it up. And then the negotiators on the American side will probably say, well, if you do what we set out in our 15-point plan or whatever it is, then slowly sanctions will be lifted on you according to how you behave. And Iran will say, listen, you forget our basic equation, prosperity for all or prosperity for none. If you do that, you're going to have an economic crisis.

2:15:35And I think probably that is where we're going to go. There will be eventually financial, economic crisis, certainly in Europe, but in America too. The debt market will tank, the market, the stock market will go. It will be a crisis and people will eventually, you know, unfortunately, pain is the greatest instigator of pain. I mean, I think when the pain becomes sufficient, then there will be a decision in the White House that they have to rethink how they approach this. And maybe the 10-point plan was something that they could actually work with. And that they understand that those were preconditions to a ceasefire.

2:16:27Not the discussion points during a ceasefire, but the preconditions. and they include the lifting of sanctions. And it's first primary sanctions and secondary sanctions that affect Iran. I mean, you've heard these same stories from Russia. I mean, this is the same sort of thing. And either people will face up to that or it's going to be a long and painful period in coming ahead for us, unfortunately. But I think it's important. I was going to say. But nonetheless, I think that's not a bad thing, not a disaster, because I do think, I mean, maybe I'm speaking, you know, I'm going too contrarian, but I think we in the West need a process of capacity.

2:17:19We've sunk into nihilism and we've sunk into a sort of negative as modernism and an economic structure that damage the majority of our peoples. The minority get chiefly rich by doing very little, but many people are suffering today. I mean, it's hard. Jobs are getting scatter, it's hard. And I think that we do need sort of what I call creative destruction a little bit to help us rethink for a start. What sort of economic structure do we need to address the problems we have? because the economic structure we've had in this period has brought about this bipolar world. There is the world of the billionaires and the world of the rest, which is getting progressively horrible.

2:18:26And our people, our only people wherever it is in Europe and other states think, well, you know, protest doesn't work because we protest, nothing happens. Voting doesn't work. We can vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledee. It doesn't change the economic system and bring about a change. And that's what we want to see. And I think the whole of this period, partly stimulated by what the Iranians are doing and even by their sort of thoughts about it, is going to provoke people to think more deeply in Europe about how do we actually not just produce a cosmetic market relations type of paint, but how do we actually find a solution that would provide a decent living for our people?

2:19:29I think that's the most hopeful thing I've heard in a long time, and I'm grateful for your analysis. Alistair Crook, thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you. So if you've made it to the end of this episode, one recommendation. Go back, rewind the last three minutes of what Alistair Crook just said about what this crisis could lead to. that the shoots of renewal are poking up from the soil. They are there. If you look carefully, you can see them. What we're doing is not working and hasn't worked for a long time. It's not even worth apportioning blame for that. It's enough to just observe it, acknowledge it, and know that it's true because it is true.

2:20:11The majority of the American population is not being served by the current system. And yet, some sort of horrible revolution is the last thing we want. It is possible, and if we're wise, we could make it true, that what we're going through now leads to something better, a better future for our country, the United States, and for the West, and maybe for the world. This doesn't have to end in total destruction. It could end in renewal. And no one has ever put it better than Alistair Crooks just did. So watch it again if you have the time. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next Wednesday.