00:05:12.500And the regime that we described as illegitimate, this crazed theocracy, these Stone Age people,
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00:05:19.400are going to, when this is all over, remain in control of Iran.
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00:05:25.160So again, those are losses, just objectively.
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00:05:28.420And yet, and here's the point, a ceasefire would still be a win for the United States because war, total war, is just that bad.
00:05:37.440It's so bad that even absorbing some humiliation and some measurable losses is still better than that.
00:05:47.980And most people understand that intuitively.
00:05:50.300You don't need to be ideological or interested in geopolitics to understand that Americans getting killed, the country going bankrupt, commodity prices wrecking the global economy.
00:06:03.420You don't know what the future holds, so you can't plan for it.
00:06:05.980All of this is much worse than what we'd be getting with an agreement that diminishes up to some extent because it's very obvious we could be still further diminished and further wounded by this.
00:06:17.260so that was the state of play at 632 the president announces what is objectively speaking not a win
00:06:26.620and yet most reasonable people accept it as a win because relatively speaking that's a win
00:06:35.400a ceasefire is a good thing and anyone who doesn't think it's a good thing has to explain
00:06:41.100why it would be in america's interest the tangible interest of the united states to continue this
00:06:45.640to what objective? What is the goal? No one has ever really explained what that is.
00:06:49.780Degrade Iran, change the regime. What does that mean? Open the Strait of Hormuz. How? Tell us
00:06:56.020how. There's not one person in the Pentagon who can figure out how to do it. These people wage
00:07:00.480war for a living. Not all of them are stupid. Some of them are pretty smart. They can't figure
00:07:06.060out how to do it by force, so they would have done it already. What's your plan? Well, there's
00:07:10.380no plan, of course. So anyone who opposes the ceasefire is not an ally of the United States,
00:07:16.400but an opponent of American interests, maybe even an enemy. So with that in mind, it's worth
00:07:22.560assessing what happened to the peacefire. Well, it seemed to last a very, very short time. Now,
00:07:28.400not in name, no one is saying there's no peacefire, ceasefire, but certainly in practice, because
00:07:34.400very shortly, within hours of the president announcing this, Israel, our unmentioned
00:07:43.780partner in this war, decided to bomb civilians in Beirut, Lebanon.
00:07:53.880Bomb civilians, apartment blocks. That's not anti-Israeli hyperbole. That's not blood libel.
00:08:02.120That is measurably true because there's video of it, a lot of it, because Beirut is one of the
00:08:11.660greatest and most civilized cities on the planet. It's not Yemen. Lots of people have been to Beirut.
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00:08:18.240Beirut is also, by the way, the capital of the only country in the Middle East whose president
00:08:22.740is a Christian. The president of Lebanon has always been a Christian since the founding
00:08:29.920of the country over 100 years. So in some basic sense, this is a Christian country,
00:08:38.560certainly a Christian-led country. And it's not a primitive country. It's probably one of the top
00:08:43.960three most beautiful places in the world. But it's also one of the most civilized places in
00:08:49.660the world. And for many years, the southern portions of the country have been controlled
00:08:57.460controlled or at least influenced by a Shiite militia group, which has become in effect the
00:09:05.500government of those parts of the country called Hezbollah. You've heard of Hezbollah. I think the
00:09:09.120U.S. Congress has declared it a terror organization. No one's defending Hezbollah. But Hezbollah's
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00:09:15.460main, the main thing to know about Hezbollah is that they are sworn opponents of Israel. And
00:09:20.060that's why you know their name. That's why it's not just a regional problem in the Levant for you.
00:09:24.640it is an ever-present slogan that people are shouting at you all the time, Hezbollah,
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00:09:28.820they're bad. Well, why are they bad? Well, they're against Israel. That's why.
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00:09:32.520But also the people, apparently, who perpetrated the 1983 barracks bombing
00:09:36.440against U.S. Marines and killed almost 300 American Marines. The United States was in
00:09:44.120Lebanon at the time. Why was the U.S. there? Well, because Israel had invaded Lebanon. And
00:09:47.800so the Reagan administration, in response to what Israel did, decided to get involved on behalf of
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00:09:53.520our closest ally, and almost 300 American Marines were murdered by Hezbollah.
00:10:01.320Not blaming Israel for that. Apparently, they had advanced knowledge of it. That's pretty clear.
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00:10:06.840It's been documented. But Hezbollah did it. They did it, not Israel. But we were there because
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00:10:11.940of our alliance with Israel. Fact. So Hezbollah has, for many years, been active in the southern
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00:10:22.420parts of the country, south of the now famous Latani River, on the border of northern Israel.
00:10:28.160So it's a concern for Israel. But Beirut is a separate question. Beirut is a Mediterranean
00:10:32.360city that is not controlled by Hezbollah. In fact, it's filled with Christians. They define
00:10:38.120the life of Beirut. They may not be the majority, but they're in charge. And they certainly have
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00:10:44.960defined it culturally. And Israel is bombing apartment blocks in Beirut, Lebanon.
00:10:54.260You know what the name of the military operation was? Eternal darkness. Israel named this operation
00:11:03.800killing hundreds of civilians in Lebanon, mostly in Beirut, eternal darkness.
00:11:09.760because like why even pretend anymore eternal darkness by the way is mentioned
00:11:14.440extensively in the new testament it's a euphemism for hell and that's exactly
00:11:21.600what israel brought to christians in lebanon today here's a video of it
00:23:10.520now those of us who don't work there have no real idea what that means but someone who just worked
00:23:16.840there until the other day joe kent said i think that may be related to our inability to say no
00:23:24.940to israel now maybe joe kent's a total wacko in which case why was he head of the counterterrorism
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00:23:31.000center for the trump administration that's another question but let's just say he's a total wacko
00:23:34.880But what's the answer? The facts, the known facts, have never been explained. And at this point, watching Israel once again, not for the first time, hardly for the first time, short circuit American diplomacy, the expressed will of the American president elected by the rest of us to have some foreign country of 9 million people to say no, exercise veto power over our president.
00:24:01.540short-circuit our interest. This is bad for us. We're doing it anyway because Benjamin Netanyahu
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00:24:08.160wants to. You see that enough times. This is, again, not the first time we've seen this.
00:24:13.340It's not the 10th time we've seen this. We've seen it generationally. You have to ask,
00:24:18.000what is this? And you have to find out. And you have to air it publicly because it has to end.
00:24:25.180We cannot be a free and prosperous country until we are a sovereign country. What does that mean?
00:24:31.540Our leaders elected by us have to be able to make decisions in our interests.
00:24:36.860Not to the exclusion of everyone else, you don't have to end other people's civilizations in order for your own country to prosper if it doesn't work that way.
00:24:43.800But you have to put your people's best interests first, or it's not a legitimate system.
00:24:50.300And if there's another country in an arrangement with another country that's preventing you from doing that, you have to fix it.
00:24:57.240And then there are also moral questions.
00:24:58.920If that partner, your closest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East, is killing kids in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, and doing so without apology, if it's committing war crimes every single day for years with your money and your weapons, at some point you're implicated in those crimes.
00:25:23.880and so the united states has to and hopefully the first thing we do when and if this war is resolved
00:25:31.160is detach from israel not declare war on israel or treat israel as an enemy they may treat us as
00:25:37.860an enemy as they have before when they tried to sink the uss liberty an american naval vessel
00:25:44.000a surveillance vessel they treated us as an enemy we don't have to treat them as an enemy however
00:25:48.960And we shouldn't. But we should treat them like we treat every other country as an ally, but with restrictions and reservations and red lines.
00:26:00.060No, you can't act against our interest. And this distancing should begin with a total end of aid of any kind, military or economic, to Israel by the U.S. government.
00:26:12.820And people who love Israel, some of whom are pretty successful, can send all the money they want to Israel, and that's fine.
00:26:19.620But the U.S. government should send not one more dollar to Israel and not one more piece of military material to Israel,
00:26:29.700not one more fighter jet or bomb or missile defense system or small arm or ammunition of any kind.
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00:26:37.400Because Israel is aggressively acting against our interests.
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00:26:41.140And so to continue to arm and finance them, their generous welfare state, for example, or their military, defend their nation, is not only contrary to core American interests, it's just masochism.
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00:26:56.900Watch us hate ourselves as we fund a country that's killed more Americans than most other countries have.
00:27:03.540That's just a fact, and not just on the liberty.
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00:27:05.720every war that Israel has pushed us to join has resulted in dead Americans.
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00:27:14.260And the fault lies ultimately with our leaders who are going along with this.
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00:27:27.480And it's time not to end it, not to set up an adversarial relationship,
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00:27:31.200but to set up a healthy conventional relationship where Israel can pay its own bills and fund its
00:27:39.200own military and act within the constraints imposed on it by its own economy and population.
00:27:43.660That's what normal countries do. Most countries live with neighbors that don't like them with
00:27:49.240whom they have testy relationships, but they make accommodations because they have no choice.
00:27:53.500There's no country in the world that acts with total impunity because it knows
00:27:57.480a much larger country will backstop it no matter what it does. That just doesn't exist in the
00:28:02.600natural world because it's not natural. It's grotesque. And it's terrible for the United
00:28:07.600States. And now it's obvious. And by the way, unless our lawmakers, unless the U.S. Congress
00:28:12.100restrains this relationship and changes its nature, there's going to be political turmoil
00:28:16.480in this country. So no mas, it is really clear. Israel's pursuing what it thinks its own interests
00:28:23.980are, but those are not the same as our interests. Now, one of the problems with changing that
00:28:31.240relationship is, well, you're going to have to deal with Israel's agents and advocates in the
00:28:38.460United States. And there are many of those. There are many of those. And by the way, just to be
00:28:43.360completely clear, they're not all Jewish. In fact, most of them aren't. This is not about Judaism.
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00:28:48.700It's about blind support for a nation state called Israel to the extent that it harms our interests.
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00:28:58.240And you saw that on full display in the last 24 hours.
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00:29:01.220The president excitedly announces a ceasefire, a pause in the fighting in a war that cannot result in American victory,
00:29:10.260but only in further American defeat and degradation and ultimately in bankruptcy and possibly a nuclear war.
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00:29:15.920So 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.
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00:29:39.740So there's a lot wrapped up in the deal.
00:29:42.880My preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage to make that deal.
00:29:48.780And 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.
00:30:06.320I mean, what do you say to something like that?
00:30:10.520Most people watching him are like, oh, he was a general.
00:40:15.260Donald Trump can do exactly the same thing somehow, someway.
00:40:19.840Those people need to be able to get armed and need to take their future into their own hands.
00:40:26.600It's like they can't even hear themselves.
00:40:29.240I mean, the other problem is, and one of the reasons you have to laugh at all the conspiracy talk about the neocons is a lot of them are not super bright.
00:50:32.700And the answer that we all received from members of Congress, Republicans in the Senate and Democrats was it's a great deal.
00:50:39.920Actually, it turns out this is like congressional accounting.
00:50:43.160Actually, 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.
00:50:54.420And 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.
00:51:08.380and there may be some truth in that by the way it's not a totally i mean you can assess whether
00:51:14.260that's like a the kind of country you want to live in where the only real manufacturing base is
00:51:18.560weapons probably not but that's where we are and it's not a crazy argument to make
00:51:25.020on a practical level i mean there are military contractors in every congressional district or
00:51:33.300always were. And so it does produce American jobs. But it also sets up an incentive for those
00:51:41.860companies and the lawmakers who fund them to maintain the status quo. And the status quo is,
00:51:49.160of course, always going to favor larger, more expensive weapon systems because those are the
00:51:54.680most profitable. A system like that will never invest meaningfully in, say, drone technology
00:52:01.520because there's not enough money in it.
01:00:38.980But certainly one of the most knowledgeable governments for most of its existence.
01:00:43.720I mean, they managed the world and they sent people out into the world who really understood how things worked at a granular level,
01:00:49.560not 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.
01:00:56.640So 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.
01:01:08.140And so we asked him, where do you think this is going?
01:01:48.980There is some dispute as to whether Lebanon was supposed to be a part of the ceasefire or separate to it.
01:01:57.880Initially, it was definitely a part of it.
01:02:01.280Now, 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.
01:02:11.260But the Iranian reaction to that is that they have an equation.
01:02:17.420Either there's a ceasefire for all, or there's a ceasefire for nobody.
01:02:22.080I know that what's happening in the Majas at the moment in the parliament in Tehran is that the security committee there are saying, OK, if Hezbollah is a target and is being targeted and being killed at the moment and it is not part of the C-SPAR,
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01:02:42.580Well, maybe we'll consider that the whole of Israel is not part of the ceasefire and will continue to target there.
01:05:46.520Well, it's not the sort of physical cage of Gaza where there are fences and drones lying over.
01:05:53.280But nonetheless, it's been 74, 75 years of caging by, if you look at a map, you'll see all around Iran, every side, it is hemmed in by military bases, all around.
01:06:10.240It is hemmed in by sanctions, by tariffs, by economic siege on the country, by political, even cultural isolation.
01:06:24.300And 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, we'll go back, there'll be a ceasefire, then it'll end, and then there'll be another round of military.
01:06:43.220they want an end to war they want this to bring about an end to the war and they believe they're
01:06:52.880on a strong position in fact i know this will be seem counterintuitive to to many of the audience
01:06:59.840but actually iran has emerged stronger from this month of war than it did at the end of the 12 day
01:07:22.020first month of this war, they have earned
01:07:25.260more revenue from their oil sales, from
01:07:29.940tankers passing from Karg Island through the Hormuz
01:07:33.940and being sold. In this one month, they have
01:07:37.660and double what they've ever earned in previous years in one month and just to take as an example
01:07:47.260for example on sunday um they loaded five tankers in karg island at the terminal there
01:07:55.900that was 7.7 million barrels of oil and they earned 850 million dollars in one day from that
01:08:06.860So the revenue from, if you like, potential revenue from hormones will be enormous.
01:08:14.900It would be probably in a year just under a trillion dollars on the basis that they're charging at the moment.
01:08:22.740They'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.
01:08:34.280Not 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.
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01:08:55.380And they are then escorted by the Iranians through the elements of the other.
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01:09:02.080But 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.
01:12:21.520That was the lesson that the Iranians learned from the attack on Baghdad in 2003.
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01:12:30.720They 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.
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01:12:49.480So they implemented this asymmetric role where the leadership is completely dispersed across the country, again, autonomous, if you like, commands.
01:13:05.600They have their own missiles. The commander has the initiative to fire those, to use troops, and they are completely immune from any cut-off of communications or an assault or a decapitation strike because they have preset plans, sealed plans.
01:13:26.960Each commander has these sealed plans of what to do if the Supreme Leader is killed.
01:13:33.940And they tell him what the next proposals are.
01:13:38.620So it's like a sort of huge retributed machine that snaps into action the second the command is lost.
01:13:49.440And we'll continue the war. We'll continue with preset plans.
01:13:53.000And we saw that happen on that Saturday when the Supreme Leader was killed within the hour.
01:13:59.420Those plans were unfurled and attacks were starting on Gulf states and military, U.S. military bases in the area.
01:14:08.220So all in all, what I'm saying to you is that, you know, and people I think are being quite surprised at the resilience that Iran has shown in this.
01:14:23.140And now they're trying to, if you like, leverage this resilience to bring about a major change in the situation.
01:14:35.760and the iranians have you know some equations that it's best to understand if you want to
01:14:46.120understand what their position is it's like the one i mentioned about the ceasefire
01:14:52.280but it is security for all or security for no one prosperity for all in the region
01:19:26.600Then you've seen a big European bank, Deutsche Bank, now stopping, if you like, the issuance, so much of their debts in dollars and are issuing underbots.
01:19:39.700That is, a bond based in either the digital remember or the ordinary remember, and was a huge success.
01:19:49.780People have been, it's been oversubscribed, people coming back and taking this.
01:19:56.880So what they're doing is actually, if you like, in a small way, but they're trying to capitalize an economic shift
01:20:06.040away from the very leveraged financialized economic world which incidentally has been
01:20:18.400so damaging to America and Europe too because it's prioritized the financialized world at the
01:20:27.180expense of the real economy and real jobs and it's all about trading and making money by trading or
01:20:35.460something else but it isn't from making goods no one does that no not enough money in it you can
01:20:42.300make more money in an hour on the stock markets trading across futures markets and other things
01:20:49.780so it's also part of if you like that greater project that the Chinese and Russians are
01:20:59.840engaged in of going back to much more self-sufficient economies
01:21:04.300that are not just based on financialized products and dealings,
01:21:11.580but actually produce things for people, produce things for people
01:21:15.340and therefore contain salaries to people.
01:21:19.260And they think this is what they need to move towards
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01:21:23.980and they want to change the Gulf in that direction by persuading them
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01:21:29.840to deal with iran that they have no choice but they need to deal with iran and they should give
01:21:36.000up if you like all these big data centers um by amazon and ai centers and should change to a much
01:21:45.280more simple economy so it's i think it's been clear um from an american perspective since the
01:21:52.640first days of the war between russia and ukraine that the us dollar as the global reserve currency
01:21:58.000was in retreat and it was obviously going to change at some point it always was and maybe
01:22:03.080that could be managed in some way you're describing a very abrupt change i mean if
01:22:08.660a fifth of the world's energy is settled in chinese currency um that seems like just the end
01:22:15.060of the dollar is the global reserve currency or maybe i'm overstating it i mean i don't think
01:22:21.820I 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.
01:22:35.560And because it's not just oil and gas are things through hormones, it is also the precursors for equipment, helium and sulfuric acid and all these things that we need for our supply lines.
01:22:52.400So it's, you know, 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.
01:23:00.860When 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.
01:23:18.140And that was achieved by China by using that leverage to bring about a change in the trading system there.
01:23:28.180And in a sense, Homo's straits gives the opportunity, particularly if the Red Sea is included, where so much of the world's commodities pass.
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01:23:38.660And, of course, Ansar and the Houthis are quite capable of controlling that in a similar sort of way.
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01:23:46.860So yes, it is a change in that direction, but China, I believe, is very careful.
01:23:56.300I was in China at the end of last year, and I was very much aware that they are cautious
01:24:03.820because the way they've applied AI in China is not in the way we do it in the West.
01:24:11.280I was talking to some of the factory owners
01:24:14.780and he said, look, you know, Alistair,
01:24:38.060that we applied soft AI for productivity to get our costs done.
01:24:45.140And our costs are falling, manufactured costs are falling by 2%.
01:24:49.240And I turned to him and I said, that's terrible.
01:24:54.560Because, you know, we can never compete with that.
01:25:00.060You must be aware that's quite dangerous because you are entering a Thucydides point.
01:25:06.560And because we have caused inflation and you have caused deflation, this is not going to be a very easy thing.
01:25:15.440So you have to manage your, you know, your thucidity and point with great terror.
01:25:22.020Otherwise, you end up in a worse conflict with the West.
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01:25:28.460But the Chinese don't want to push themselves to the forefront, displace the United States and, you know, the special currency, but they could do it.
01:25:38.800You're right. You could do it tomorrow.
01:25:40.640For example, when I use WeChat there in China, you know, it has 1.4 billion users on that one platform, 1.4 billion.
01:25:54.060and you can pay, you can take insurance,
01:25:57.580you can get a loan, everything you want on that.
01:27:45.860You mentioned that Iran, between the end of the 12-day war in June and the start of this war at the end of February, had received quite a few decoys from China.
01:27:59.640Is that the extent of the military aid that the Iranian government has received from the Xi government?
01:28:15.260No, 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.
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01:28:36.320The 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.
01:28:56.540They have a complete satellite system, as you know, over the earth, and we've seen some of the pictures from them, that they're very good.
01:29:07.780And 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.
01:29:25.080So 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.
01:29:51.620And during the first stages of this, they also put one of their intelligence ships,
01:29:57.740called Ocean One, off the coast, the Persian coast, which was able to intercept communications.
01:30:08.860In other words, they could map any Israeli or United States submarines that were operating.
01:30:15.620All 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.
01:30:31.880It was used by the Pakistanis in a rather simpler form in their war against India, which the Pakistani pilot didn't have to see its target on the radar because it could see the whole situation, the whole map.
01:30:53.360We call this in the West the IRS, Intelligence, Reconnaissance, Surveillance.
01:31:00.120This 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.
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01:31:24.360So what I'm saying is, and there's no confirmation from the Chinese or anyone they keep quiet,
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01:31:31.060but this time the shoe is on the other foot.
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01:31:36.700It's the Iranians that have the IRS, the intelligence reconnaissance system available.
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01:31:44.320I mean, you know, I don't have to prove it because, you know,
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01:31:47.740So 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.
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01:32:04.300So they obviously have much more sophisticated, if you like, targeting and data management than in the past.
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01:32:14.900I think the Russians helped, but in a different way, more with drones.
01:32:21.060You know, the Iranians helped with their drones, the shotgun drones.
01:32:27.000I mean, the Russians asked for them for use in Ukraine, and they took them, and then they upgraded them.
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01:32:33.880And now some of that upgrading is coming back to Iran.
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01:32:40.060how how difficult would it be for the united states to defeat militarily the iranian regime at this
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01:32:51.180point oh i i as such i don't think it's possible not in that sense if you mean to destroy their
01:33:00.620ability to continue a military conflict with Israel and the United States bases in the region.
01:33:11.760I don't think they can. The Iranians have even buried their construction plans for missiles.
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01:33:19.700They're not on the surface. And these missiles, they come up, if they're not in a mountain coming
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01:33:26.820out on the train they come up from silos you know 200 meters deep and they just come straight up
01:33:34.020out of the silo and then a new rocket a new missile is automatically there's a rotating
01:33:41.940um if you like um i don't know crumb and it moves the next missile directly it doesn't get exposed
01:33:50.580It's not out in the open, it's 200 meters underground, and then the airtight door shuts as soon as the missile has left.
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01:34:00.580I think it would be very, very difficult to defeat Iran in that sense, to destroy its military capabilities,
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01:34:10.100and it would be even less possible to take control of almost now from Iran.
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01:34:19.740You have to look at the geography, I mean, and the array of homers to understand why this would just really be a non-starter.
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01:34:30.500Well, you probably heard a lot about the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi, on this show and elsewhere.
01:34:38.260He'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.
01:34:44.540But what you may not know is that the charges against Netanyahu are real.
01:34:49.280Corruption charges. They tell you a lot about him.
01:34:51.660What exactly do you know about this man who's apparently in charge of the United States?
01:34:55.920Well, we are now streaming The BB Files.
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01:35:28.540and the man whose decisions have once again drawn our country into another war, a big war.
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01:36:11.280So 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,
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01:36:25.120that would i i think from an american perspective increase the incentive to blow up karg to love
01:36:33.680karg where i think the overwhelming majority of iranian energy uh is loaded onto ships and you're
01:36:40.440hearing people talk about that let's just eliminate karg island is that um would that work is that
01:36:48.400possible no it wouldn't work and um you know this is a first of all card
01:36:56.240first of all card as you know license far and almost um on the other shoulder of cliffs and
01:37:07.280then behind that it's barren very very barren very with no vegetation um the hills and mountains
01:37:16.460A small range of mountains goes right down to the straits.
01:37:21.560So, first of all, is how would you get troops to car?
01:37:26.200I mean, you can't sail them up the Hormuz.
01:37:28.900In fact, what I understand is that what they call, I think,
01:39:42.740and the B'zish are near another million.
01:39:47.080They would, I think, not find it difficult
01:39:51.220to deal with a substantial landing of troops
01:39:57.200It is terrible. The mountains, 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.
01:40:20.300And in any case, you can't get into, that wouldn't give you, if you had Park Island, you wouldn't have control of Hormuz because the Iranians have, as I say, anti-ship missiles, but they also have, which we haven't seen used so far, submersible drones.
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01:40:37.940These are small drones that are in tunnels under the water.
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01:40:44.820They are submerged tunnels, and they can exit under the water from those tunnels.
01:40:51.000They have lithium batteries, which can last about four days.
01:40:56.840They have the capacity to loiter, and they use artificial intelligence to select the target and to attack the target.
01:41:05.540Then they have surface drones, about 600 fast-ship surface drones.
01:41:17.300And they have finally, which is not much, but they have about 25 to 30 mini submarines.
01:41:26.940And the draft that HOMOS is relatively shallow.
01:41:32.200But these submarines are mini submarines, very small, and they can fly up and down for mows, 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.
01:41:54.860So they would be very vulnerable trying to go in there, and certainly even more vulnerable.
01:42:00.480We've seen what happened over the weekend, where the U.S. lost many aircraft, partly because of an attempt to rescue two crew from the F-15,
01:42:13.060but also the subsequent operation, which was probably an operation to try and take the enriched uranium from Issa.
01:43:41.560And Ross, he said it was 60 to 70 percent of the total 430 kilos of 60 percent enriched uranium.
01:43:52.300When the president threatened yesterday to eliminate the civilization and to destroy the country, what weapons do you think he was thinking about using?
01:44:04.100I really don't know. It sounded very ominous to me.
01:44:08.180I 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.
01:44:26.620I mean, how could he, how would you do this by any conventional means?
01:44:34.860Maybe he was deliberately hinting at some sort of nuclear device, but I can't tell.
01:44:42.280But 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.
01:45:40.640He wants to get out because he has this timeline.
01:45:45.580The midterm elections are coming up.
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01:45:48.720He's always said, you know, I've got to, 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.
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01:46:03.840But now, after the failure to try and extract the uranium from Isfahan,
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01:46:12.460I think the only thing that was facing him was a long war or massive escalation.
01:46:20.480And that wasn't going to work well for the midterms or his situation in the country.
01:46:27.240So I think he was hoping for a way out.
01:47:56.360please sit on Kork Island. You'll just be sitting target. You will have huge casualties.
01:48:02.200And so even the Israelis understand that. So that's why we now have the switch that is taking
01:48:08.400place, which is over, okay, now we have to destroy that infrastructure. Electricity, water supplies,
01:48:17.540railways. In those last days, the entire railway system of Iran has been attacked by Israel.
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01:48:26.360Across the entire country, they've been destroying the railway system.
01:48:31.000I mean, it is civilian infrastructure.
01:48:34.140It is a criminal thing to do this to the civilian population.
01:48:41.100But that's what they're pressing on Trump to do, to try and push him further down.
01:48:48.960They want it really so that Iran is not functional as a going state, that it is too broken.
01:49:00.320And then they want to see it divided up into sort of ethno-sectarian statelets, rather like Syria.
01:49:08.980This happened to Syria so that it is weak and easily dominated.
01:49:18.960What would it take to do that? Is that even 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?
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01:49:32.020um it will be difficult but you could do some of it uh the iranian electrical system
01:49:42.700is notably decentralized this is all part of the rethinking of asymmetrical warfare from
01:49:51.300the 2003 period so there are about i think it's 150 160 different you know electrical plants that
01:51:18.520And of course, the IEA were very concerned about this
01:51:22.460and the Russians have now withdrawn all their staff from it.
01:51:26.680But in my view, this was a message not to Iran, but to the United States.
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01:51:34.740And the message was to say, you know, well, if you don't do it, we have the capability to eliminate these nuclear,
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01:51:47.480to go down the road of, it's like attacking the nuclear issue.
01:51:54.220In other words, to use technical nuclear weapons.
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01:51:58.740So 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.
01:52:46.920I think it would be very much a last resort.
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01:52:50.800But, 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.
01:53:10.460We have to look at it through eschatological ideas
01:53:39.880We need a big crisis or a major war to finish off this project.
01:53:47.360In other words, there is a large segment that are not frightened of Armageddon,
01:53:54.560but actually are looking forward because this is the path to redemption in this stew.
01:54:02.860So there's no point saying to them, you know, as we in Europe do said,
01:54:07.800Well, it doesn't make any sense to provoke a big war.
01:54:11.480It makes absolute sense if you're an eschatological, messianic believer to do these things.
01:54:20.320So, you know, we have to try and understand it in these terms, too, I think.
01:54:27.180And there is a danger, the sort of eschatological, the messianic theme that is present,
01:54:34.780has been predicted that it would be present.
01:54:37.800And it's gripped probably more than half of the Israelis, the sense of Amalek, that they are fighting the war of Amalek.
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01:54:48.660And this is going to lead to eventually to Armageddon and redemption.
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01:54:56.120Given that, how do you understand the pressure from Israel on the United States to continue fighting Russia?
01:55:04.440it's very clear now it's always been clear but it's rarely spoken in public in the u.s that
01:55:11.540israel and its advocates in the u.s have been the prime drivers of the ukraine war pushing
01:55:17.700united states to fund ukraine in a fight against russia and putin why what is this thinking there
01:55:24.860what's the strategy behind that do you think i think it's it's the same people and it's the same
01:55:34.420supremacist thinking, the idea of control, and there is, I think, in the case of Russia,
01:55:47.480great ancient resentments, I mean, dating back, first of all, to the failed attempt
01:55:55.880of the Bolsheviks to institute a society that ended all reliance
01:56:04.500on family, community, religious, to create people as just units,
01:56:11.080units in a society, in a sort of technocratic society.
01:56:16.040That failed, and then Stalin was instrumental in, as they believe,
01:56:23.700in killing many of those people who largely were originally,
01:56:29.640many of them came from the U.S. and were prosecuted.
01:56:33.120And I remember watching a video of Putin addressing some of the Pacific members in Moscow,
01:56:41.420and he was saying to them, you know, and he was warning them,
01:56:47.800and he said, you know that I think the figure he gave was 83% of the Bolsheviks were Jewish,
01:56:59.420and most of them didn't speak Russian, based on Yiddish.
01:57:05.080So the Russians were very aware of this history,
01:57:09.060and then they were made aware of it again in the 90s,
01:57:13.180When the oligarchs, the period of the oligarchs, or Putin and Dan on that, of the oligarchs, there were seven oligarchs, normally, or six were Jewish and tied to financial institutions in the West, whether in America or in Europe.
01:57:41.560And 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 the society.
01:57:58.220So I think Putin has always tried to carefully manoeuvre 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 the conventional way, based much of it on finance and banking going back to the 19th century.
01:58:28.220and the influence of people, the act of Franks, and so on.
01:58:32.760And that has given them a very cautious attitude to their relations.
01:58:42.780And we've seen that caution sort of obvious in Syria at times,
01:58:47.540but also in Putin's relations with Israel.
01:58:54.120I 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.
01:59:24.120And 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.
01:59:54.120permanent security solution not just a ceasefire um to which would involve um of course things
02:00:03.240like sanctions removal of sanctions very similar to what russia was looking for but just as in the
02:00:12.120ukrainian situation the european determination to continue the war on russia using the ukrainian
02:00:22.040proxies has really stopped the ability to to find a political solution um a political architecture
02:00:31.560because what russia wants is quite clear i see russia wants to set the boundaries very clear
02:00:40.760what is the boundaries of the sphere of interest of nature and what are russia and china and asia's
02:00:48.200sphere of interest what where does the boundary between this lie and what does that mean that's
02:00:54.120what i think he means when he talks about security architecture and this is what iran is effectively
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02:01:00.360saying you know you have to curb do something about stopping israel because otherwise israel
02:01:06.760will not allow you to come to any, you know, any serious, meaningful agreement with Iran.
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02:01:17.380And if you don't, and then Iran will do it its own way, which is going to be,
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02:01:24.440and you said what happens about homos, but, you know,
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02:01:28.180they only have to keep homos tightly closed for three weeks.
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02:01:32.320and the pain across financial markets in the West
02:02:00.940You 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.
02:02:25.680You are mandated similarly to look after and to take care of the dispossessed.
02:02:34.580I mean, these are the fundamental things.
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02:02:36.520You go back to Kerbala, you'll see that is the principles.
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02:02:40.340These were the principles that the imam induced.
02:02:48.460And the third principle was the need to have active minds.
02:02:53.340I want the people to have active minds, to think for themselves and to think well.
02:03:01.260And for that reason, it made it compulsory that if you went to university,
02:03:05.720if you wanted to study Islamic philosophy, you also had to study Western philosophy.
02:03:11.560The two run together in Iranian universities.
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02:03:16.040So this gives them a very strong, and it explains why Iran is viewed as an enemy
02:03:21.640by people who, you know, are oppressing other people
02:03:28.020with who are enforcing special rights on some people
02:13:11.220Where does this war leave the Gulf states, the GCC?
02:13:13.800It leads them badly damaged. Many of the people leaving, particularly Dubai and UAE, it leads them needing to rethink how they can, if you like, manage a relationship with Iran,
02:13:42.000which allows them to export their goods,
02:13:45.500even though it will mean disengagement from the Western financialized world.
02:19:15.460I was going to say, but nonetheless, I think that's not a bad thing, not a disaster.
02:19:22.220Because 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 catharsis.
02:19:34.860We'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.
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