KINSELLACAST 367： Life in Wartime with Iran with Mark Berlin, Lilley, Mraz, Kheiriddin, Belanger - plus Dirty Epics, Grandma's House, Claire, Sea Lemon
00:27:22.880I mean, Iran is not a culture, not a polity, capable of apologizing, conceding, surrendering, negotiating.
00:27:30.440Apparently, they haven't in 30 years, and it doesn't seem like they're going to start now.
00:27:35.560And they're a regime that could be at the very end of their rope, so they have to show strength.
00:27:39.820But I'd love to believe that they now recognize the United States are deadly serious about stopping, pardon the pun,
00:27:49.400deadly serious about stopping them from having any kind of nuclear program, as are many countries in the world, including Israel, of course.
00:27:58.900One is, oh my God, I sounded like Donald Trump, but they have two choices here, big, big choices.
00:28:04.060And one of them is to believe Donald Trump when he says that that was going to be the only raid on their territory, that it's done now,
00:28:14.080and that we can move towards peace, and they could come to the negotiating table facilitated by Macron in France,
00:28:20.160or they are going to unleash hell on Israel.
00:28:24.260Now, as we spoke yesterday, and as I told you, I talked to a good friend of mine in Israel who's pretty high up in the political strata there,
00:28:33.440and their great concern in Israel is that they run out of defensive missiles, and that Iran then really pummels them.
00:29:06.800And even if Iran doesn't respond militarily in the region, and God knows it's got, you know, close to a million troops and reservists trained, ready to go in the region,
00:29:18.080it's got terrorist proxies all around the world, including places like Canada, doesn't it?
00:29:25.000I remember during the liberal leadership contest, I was introduced to a guy who was running for the liberals,
00:29:33.440and who had been accused, because he was Persian, because he was Iranian, of being cozied up to by IRGC agents here.
00:29:44.320And I don't believe that he had, but I do believe he was surrounded by them.
00:29:48.660And when I asked him, he suggested that there's all sorts of pro-Iranian agents living and operating in Canada.
00:29:57.480And we see those headlines in the paper every day here, but we don't seem to be doing anything about it.
00:30:02.340And so I said to you yesterday, as you go on your tour of synagogues talking about Israel, talking about the right to exist, talking about the war with Gaza and Iran,
00:30:12.580that everybody should be really cautious, because soft targets are going to be available.
00:30:17.540And if you look at Polymark, at this horrible, cynical betting site in the United States on all things political,
00:30:24.540they're betting on a large event in the United States, a terrorist event, within the next couple of weeks as a result of these actions.
00:30:32.820And I think, well, I mean, you know, as you know, I've been writing a book about what Iran and to a lesser extent Hamas and Hezbollah and others have been doing on the propaganda war front for many years
00:30:50.820and have been becoming more and more aggressive and doing since October 7th.
00:30:55.820And it just kind of baffles me that there are people who think that, you know, these networks don't exist and that Iran has, while it knows it's probably incapable of defeating the United States of America in a conventional war,
00:31:11.820war, it is really, really good at unconventional warfare, what the Chinese call hybrid warfare.
00:31:20.500They've achieved some success at that, have they not?
00:31:24.000Asymmetrical warfare is exactly what is allowing the Ukrainians, for instance, to fight a much larger force than the Russians.
00:31:32.160And it's allowed the folks like Hamas and Hezbollah to take on the Israeli military establishment, which are a much larger, more sophisticated, better financed and better trained organization than any of those paramilitary groups.
00:31:49.920I think, I mean, the very notion of terrorism, we forget that that core word terrorist is to keep us in a perpetual state of fear.
00:31:58.940And when you're in a perpetual state of fear, you make mistakes.
00:32:03.660I'm very much hoping that the Iranian people have the courage to stage a revolution and solve this problem themselves.
00:32:14.020But right now, and as I shared with you yesterday, I'm speaking on a daily basis to friends of mine who are in Tehran.
00:32:22.160There's no room for movement on the streets of Tehran.
00:32:38.840Every time that I see a claim online, I have to call the country, and 9 out of 10 times, it's total horseshit.
00:32:45.220None of the videos you see of explosions are the ones that are happening right now.
00:32:49.440None of the videos of bombers moving around are the ones that are happening right now.
00:32:55.640So I don't know what to believe, and I sort of do this for a living.
00:33:00.040It's very tough for ordinary people to know what's going on.
00:33:02.620And, you know, I echo what you say because I've spent a lot of time digging into Iran's capabilities with respect to propaganda and manipulating the truth.
00:33:14.840You know, and going back to July of last year, Avril Haines, who was then the director of national intelligence for the United States of America, you know, came out with this unprecedented statement saying, look, boys and girls.
00:33:28.780Yes, they are funding protesters like those ones are going to be gathering at the U.S. consulate here in Toronto today to protest on behalf of Iran.
00:33:38.780And they're paying protesters and they're paying organizers and they're infiltrating organizations.
00:33:46.860But getting back to the point you made about the regime, we've been hearing the words regime change an awful lot in recent days.
00:33:58.360What do you think now, now that these bombing raids have taken place by the United States, what do you think the chances are of regime change in Iran?
00:34:07.700Well, what I think is immaterial, because I'm not sitting in Tehran, but what my friends whom I spoke with yesterday in Tehran think is while there is an appetite amongst educated Iranians for regime change, there is also still a solid core of loyalists who really like things the way they are in Iran.
00:34:28.340And there are young cadre of men who like the fact they don't have to compete with women in business, who like the fact that women cannot own property, who like the fact that women cannot get the education, that they're subjugated by the hijab, that they are controlled by the morality police, because it makes them the masters of slaves.
00:34:50.560And Iran, which was once the jewel of the Middle East and the region, certainly the Gulf, especially when it came to their levels of education, has been falling behind.
00:35:02.260And so there are a bunch of misogynist, violent, patriarchal, military, theotocratic thugs who really like the way things are in Iran.
00:35:59.460But I think that they can shut down petroleum shipping, one-third of the petroleum shipping in the world.
00:36:05.860Let's remember Iran has the second largest oil reserves in the world.
00:36:09.740And while they're not supposed to be selling it to anybody, everybody's buying it.
00:36:13.580I think that Israel will need to be restocked with weapons from the United States to keep their Iron Dome working, even if it's only working at 90 percent.
00:40:46.980As we speak right now, I see the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth, is giving an update on strikes that the U.S. did overnight on Iran.
00:40:54.640So let's start there as we wait to kind of parse that update a little bit.
00:40:58.240The U.S. officially entering the war between Israel and Iran last night, striking three Iranian nuclear sites.
00:41:04.840Israel welcoming the strike, but of course reaction around the world is much concerned about escalation and what kind of happens from here.
00:41:14.620You know, we've been waiting for this in kind of a strange reality TV show way from the U.S. president to see if they would kind of get involved here.
00:41:21.520Were you surprised that they actually went ahead and did this?
00:41:26.200I was speaking at a synagogue in Montreal on Thursday night and the people there were very disappointed that Trump had said, you know, I need two weeks to think about it.
00:41:37.120It was a little bit of a deception to permit his B-2 bombers to make their way to the Middle East, carrying ordinance of, you know, these 30,000 pound bunker busters, as they're called.
00:41:49.680So I suspect that this was the plan all along.
00:41:54.440This is something you're not going to hear me say very often, but I think Donald Trump was right.
00:42:01.920You know, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran was, in fact, moving towards enriching uranium for their nuclear weapons program.
00:42:13.100And Israel had to act and now the United States.
00:42:16.000The question is, what does the rest of the world do and what is Iran going to do?
00:42:19.640Iran has said, as you might expect, that they're going to retaliate.
00:42:47.220And I've been writing a book about this for the past year and a half.
00:42:50.440I think they carry out acts of terror against soft targets around the world, you know, up to and including shooting down the Ukrainian international airline where they killed 70 Canadians, up to and including hiring Canadian hell's angels to terrorize and attempt to murder people in Canada and the United States.
00:43:18.420And they've got networks around the planet.
00:43:20.320So I think that's where this is going to go next.
00:43:22.700And the response, everyone's kind of holding their breath, wondering what that response is going to be.
00:43:27.500Carl, I'll ask you, were you surprised that they actually went ahead with it?
00:43:30.320This is a president, a U.S. president, right, that has not just campaigned, but also kind of made it part of his identity, not getting involved in these Middle East wars as well.
00:43:39.720So were you surprised that they were actually following through with this?
00:43:44.100Yeah, I was a little surprised because of what he said last week.
00:43:47.600But then again, should we ever take what Donald Trump says for granted?
00:44:53.380Nobody can predict what's going to happen next.
00:44:55.240Yeah, and tough in both ways, to predict what's going on in the Middle East and also to predict what's coming out of the Trump White House.
00:45:35.660And that just goes to show in the larger picture beyond this that you can't really trust to believe anything Donald Trump says because you don't know what's really going on.
00:45:43.920And my first reaction was to exactly that, to look at what other countries were saying about this, because that's where this goes next.
00:45:51.700And Russia is the most concerning because Dmitry Medvedev, who is the deputy head of Putin's Security Council, said several countries are prepared to supply Tehran with nuclear weapons.
00:46:03.140So they don't even have to make them themselves.
00:46:04.920I always wondered about this, that, yes, they were enriching uranium and, yes, they had a goal of building a bomb, but could they get it somewhere else?
00:46:11.920And so the fact that you mentioned the Iranian official going to Russia is very, very concerning.
00:46:19.920And they urged to have a ceasefire and wanted to say China is going to contribute to the work to restoring peace and stability, et cetera, et cetera.
00:46:29.700But you also have other countries like Saudi Arabia, which expressed concern but didn't condemn the airstrikes.
00:46:36.320So this is the whole point of this situation is how wars start this way, is that my allies stand with me.
00:47:07.680And we'll have to stand with our allies, too, whatever does happen, which is a very frightening possibility.
00:47:13.500And I wanted to pick up on that possibility.
00:47:15.620And I guess it is kind of difficult to see the reaction or what could happen.
00:47:20.980But we do know just over the course of the past 30, 40 years that we do have a pretty good insight into terms of how these things play out.
00:47:27.540And it's not well in terms of how people kind of react to things.
00:47:30.780But, Tasha, you mentioned kind of our own response here.
00:47:33.160Canada has been somewhat kind of riding the fence here, of course, right, trying to get Israel to kind of rein in some of its attacks on Gaza as well, but also speaking out against Iran and its regime, too.
00:47:44.420Do you anticipate that we are going to be fully supportive of such airstrikes or that we would put towards any kind of military equipment of our own into this situation?
00:47:56.420Well, that is going to be Carney's big test.
00:47:58.680I haven't seen an official reaction from Canada.
00:48:00.840Carney's on his way to meet with the European Union to sign a deal, a defense pact with them.
00:48:06.040So, I mean, he, you know, after after the G7, it's it's clear we want to get a deal with the U.S. on trade.
00:48:15.720We want to make sure they don't make us a 51st state.
00:48:19.120We have a lot of interest in protecting that relationship.
00:48:53.680That seek the destruction of the West.
00:48:56.000So, you know, I think we need to stand with our allies on this.
00:49:00.740I don't know if Carney will go that far, though, as to as to endorse what Trump has done.
00:49:05.100And he certainly I don't think will condemn it.
00:49:07.440I think he'll take perhaps a middle ground, like I said, like like Saudi Arabia did, expressing concern, but not condemning the strike.
00:49:13.300And in warm, we don't have to go too far back here to say you remember Jean Chrétien, obviously famously being against the Iraq war and kind of keeping Canada out of that war as well.
00:49:23.960Entirely different circumstances as well.
00:49:25.840But it kind of lends to that credence of should Canada get involved or will Canada get involved?
00:49:30.380Do you think we'll be a little bit more or do you think we'll be, I guess, historically the same, but kind of tepid in this area of being unwilling to kind of get into combat in some kind of way, shape or form?
00:49:41.360Well, I went looking for some kind of response by the prime minister this morning on his website and social media.
00:49:52.560You know, the characteristic of our foreign policy on issues like this in the Trudeau era was kind of mealy mouthed, you know, on the one hand and on the other hand stuff, which ends up pleasing no one.
00:50:05.140And it's trying to appease everybody, but it pleases no one.
00:50:11.740So I'm hopeful that he'll not do that.
00:50:14.300He was quite clear a few days ago on the necessity of acting against an Iranian nuclear threat.
00:50:21.920I have no doubt in my mind that had Iran perfected their uranium enrichment program and they had a ballistic missile topped by a nuke,
00:50:33.780they would have used it last night and nobody should be under any illusion about that.
00:50:40.340You know, as you point out, the history of the Iranian regime going back to the very beginnings of it when the Ayatollahs toppled the Shah is they have defied Western that defied the West and defied successive presidents.
00:50:56.260And it's amazing to me that the one president who's finally taking concrete action against them is Donald Trump of all people.
00:51:05.160But nobody should be under any illusion that this is over.
00:51:08.760I had Jewish friends say to me last night, oh, it's over.
00:51:16.660This is just getting started and it's going to start, it's going to start perhaps happening in neighborhoods where you live.
00:51:24.580So everybody needs to be more careful and more vigilant.
00:51:28.580The Iranian regime measures out history in a thousand year chunks and they are going to respond and they're going to respond, I think, in a way that all of us notice.
00:51:38.380Yeah, I think we can all agree there's zero quick wars in the Middle East just throughout history.
00:51:44.020I do see a tweet here from Mark Carney that I want to read.
00:51:46.500So this is just before we came on air, responding for the first time to this attack overnight.
00:51:50.840So it says here, I will quote this, Iran's nuclear program is a grave threat to international security and Canada has been consistently clear that Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
00:52:01.260While U.S. military action taken last night was designed to alleviate that threat, the situation in the Middle East remains highly volatile.
00:52:08.540Stability in the region is a priority.
00:52:10.640Canada calls on parties to return immediately to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis.
00:52:16.840As G7 leaders agreed in Kananaskis, the resolution of the Iranian crisis should lead to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza.
00:52:27.000So, Carl, that's the kind of latest from Mark Carney there.
00:52:29.700And again, kind of staying in the middle ground here, kind of pushing diplomacy and not really reacting in many ways to the U.S. military strike.
00:52:38.480Yeah, I mean, if you read between the lines, you can see that the prime minister is not happy about what happened, but he won't call his ally on it for many reasons.
00:52:47.740Obviously, we have our current problems with the American administration and the Trump administration, so he won't take him to task.
00:52:56.660But clearly, Canada wouldn't have preferred if this had not happened.
00:53:01.440Now, it has, and Canada will be amongst the target.
00:53:05.160But I think Warren is right that, you know, and we've seen other countries involved here before, and Iran has been certainly active.
00:53:14.780So, de-escalation, diplomatic solution, I mean, we've said this for a long time, but the truth is Canada is not really a player in the region anymore.
00:53:27.680It's been a long time since it was, and it will give some ammunition, maybe not the right word, but ammunition to his will to increase military spending because the world is now more volatile, and that is absolutely correct.
00:53:47.100And Warren, just back on, just because we were just talking about this, and with the prime minister's reaction here, is that mealy-mouth for you?
00:53:53.900It's kind of, we are kind of walking a very delicate balance here, and of course, we should be here, but do you think that that should be Canada's stance here, to push for a diplomatic solution as well, but also not taking a military action from other allies off the table, I suppose?
00:54:09.060No, it's not mealy-mouthed, but mealy-mouthedism is a characteristic of the Trudeau era.
00:54:13.980So, Carney has been pretty good on this stuff, and I thought that statement is fine.
00:54:20.000You know, the calls for de-escalation, you know, it's like those talking about a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
00:54:27.400I think, you know, it's on drugs, it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
00:54:31.840Like, it started last night. It didn't end last night.
00:54:35.400I understand the desire of everybody to have a diplomatic solution and sit down at the negotiating table and so on,
00:54:41.560but if you're the Ayatollahs in Tehran, literally facing an existential threat, the end of your regime,
00:54:48.580because they've associated their nuclear program with, you know, the future of the country, the very existence of Iran,
00:54:55.700they're not going to stop. They're not going to give up.
00:54:58.500Not when they've built up a multi-billion dollar terrorist network around the planet, including in countries like Canada.
00:55:05.720They are going to activate that, and they're going to make use of it.
00:55:10.160And they've done so very effectively in countries around Europe, around North America, in Central America, Southern America, Asia, you name it.
00:55:19.880They even have, they've been able to activate people within Israel itself.
00:55:24.580So their, their reach of doing this so-called hybrid warfare, if the Chinese call it, is formidable.
00:55:33.040And, you know, as I say, we're, we're, we're being foolhardy if we underestimate their capability.
00:55:39.800And Tasha, did you want to add anything to the, well, first off, the, the prime minister's statement here this morning,
00:55:44.620and to any kind of broader concerns about a wider conflict kind of escalating in the region?
00:55:50.880Yeah, I mean, like I said, I, I, I figured he was not going to condemn and he was not going to, to, to endorse.
00:56:01.160And what he's saying here is it was designed, the action was designed to alleviate that threat, but the situation remains volatile.
00:56:06.780So it's sort of as I assumed he would go.
00:56:11.120I think that we're going to probably face a starker choice in the near future,
00:56:15.320because I do think attacks will start happening on our soil.
00:56:18.520Our attacks will start happening against the West broadly.
00:56:20.880You know, I think what this demands is not just an increase in our military capability, which he's committed to do, but domestic security.
00:56:30.960You know, I'm thinking ahead to every single festival that's happening this summer.
00:56:35.200You know, every single possibility for someone to drive a truck, to kill people, to drive a car, to kill people.
00:56:42.160I mean, we've seen this all over the world.
00:56:44.180And this is one of the modus operandi that these terrorists use.
00:56:50.780We have to start thinking that way, unfortunately, because now the war is escalating.
00:56:55.680And it's not going to be, you know, troops landing here.
00:56:59.620It's going to be the kind of things Warren described.
00:57:01.520It's going to be terrorist attacks designed to destabilize, designed to strike fear.
00:57:07.280And that is, you know, that is Iran's immediate, probably, response.
00:57:12.600So I think we have to, as a country and not just the federal government, because they're not tasked with, you know, municipal security,
00:57:18.860but all levels of government have to sort of be on alert for this in terms of ensuring the safety of our people here.
00:57:25.160And also in cyber, because that's another place that the Iranians are very strong, collecting data, striking, you know, destabilizing, ransom, all that ransomware, all that stuff.
00:57:36.600That is also one of the big things that we need to spend money and time on as a society to protect ourselves.
00:57:42.240Yes, cyber attacks, a huge issue and a huge point of concern in terms of how Iran could retaliate against the West as well.
00:57:48.860I just wanted to stick in one more domestic issue here as we're wrapping up Parliament this week,
00:57:54.320back on what we've been talking about, the Iran war in Israel this morning, because that has been the breaking news.
00:57:59.360But just wanted to sneak in one more thing.
00:58:08.460Was this a successful session of Parliament for Mark Carney and his liberal minority government, or is there some work to do here?
00:58:14.060Well, it was successful in as much as they got everything they wanted through, basically, in a very timely fashion.
00:58:21.740Perhaps not from the allies they were looking for, but I think that's actually helpful for them to have the Conservatives agree broadly with their agenda.
00:58:31.760So, yes, I think it was successful for them.
00:58:35.020Now, I have major concerns about the way this all happened, about what's in those bills.
00:58:40.900C-5, I mean, it's basically a paragraph.
00:58:44.560It's a paragraph which I believe is a recipe for unrest.
00:58:51.620It's a recipe for confrontations, depending on how they use this law,
00:58:56.760which is designed to circumvent other laws that were adopted in much more time, in much more studies than C-5.
00:59:05.980So, we'll have to see where that leaves us.
00:59:08.440But in terms of getting things through and getting things adopted and being able to push through a message that they were elected to get things done,
00:59:48.800I represent, full disclosure, different First Nations across the country.
00:59:53.680And I can tell you guys, they are really, really, really pissed off about what successive different provincial and federal governments are doing with respect to development of our resource capability.
01:00:07.760And they're trampling upon their rights, their constitutional rights in Section 35 of the Constitution.
01:00:46.300And C-5 is part of the Canada-U.S. trade deal negotiations.
01:00:50.760It paves the way for Canada to control supply chains on very key things, including critical minerals, which the U.S. wants, specifically for military capability.
01:00:59.460China has ceased to export multiple types of critical minerals, including germanium.
01:01:06.280And those are needed for night vision goggles.
01:01:08.460Canada has a source, I think, one of the other largest sources in the world here.
01:01:16.220And this is one of the reasons that this stuff has gone through, because he wants to get that trade deal.
01:01:20.500He wants to show that we are in a position to deliver on this stuff and also control it and control the supply of it, because that is key to negotiation.
01:01:28.920It's not that we're letting the Americans in, is to say, hey, we have this now.
01:01:33.120So you better be nice to us, because if we're nice, we'll sell it to you.
01:01:36.740So I see all this as a piece of a bigger puzzle.
01:01:41.100And yes, I understand completely First Nations are called in many ways, because many of them don't agree with the economic pursuit here at the cost of environmental or cultural change.
01:01:52.600But at the same time, there are other First Nations who are on board with economic reconciliation.
01:01:58.440So I think the government is going to try and get them as their allies as much in this fight.