The Tucker Carlson Show - BREAKING： U.S. Resumes Strikes on Iran. A Clean Exit Is Unlikely. Tucker and John Mearsheimer React.

00:00:00.000 U.S. Central Command announced just moments ago that the American and Israeli militaries

00:00:04.980 are commencing with strikes on Iran.

00:00:08.980 These strikes are reported to be planned to continue for the next several days.

00:00:15.460 In fact, this may well develop into another phase of a full-scale war, a hot war, kinetic

00:00:20.520 war, people dying, bombs dropping, missiles flying.

00:00:24.500 And on one level, it's not surprising if you haven't been checking in on the progress 0.55

00:00:28.640 of our war with Iran.

00:00:30.360 But if you have been sporadically reading headlines

00:00:33.220 about where we are and where this is likely to go,

00:00:35.120 you may be a little bit confused

00:00:36.320 because we were just told the other day

00:00:38.720 that a deal, the President of the United States

00:00:41.180 holds that a deal with Iran is imminent.

00:00:43.540 Any moment now, we've been hammering out the details.

00:00:46.340 Our crack diplomatic team has been traveling

00:00:48.020 back and forth to Pakistan.

00:00:49.160 And we're very, very close.

00:00:51.960 That turns out it's not true.

00:00:56.040 That is, and we counted, the 38th time the president of the United States has announced

00:01:01.360 since March 23rd, an imminent deal with Iran.

00:01:04.620 And like the other 37 times, this one turns out to be completely untrue for whatever reason. 0.88

00:01:10.360 And we are back to bombing Iran. 0.76

00:01:13.600 And Iran has pledged to respond, not by bombing the United States because they can't, but 0.77

00:01:18.520 by hitting our allies in the region, the six Gulf states who are our closest allies in

00:01:23.080 Middle East, and almost all of them have sustained tremendous damage, in some cases very severe

00:01:28.300 damage, to military and civilian infrastructure. And they'll continue to do that. So this is 1.00

00:01:33.840 escalating. The war is back on despite repeated promises that it was over, that we'd already won.

00:01:41.340 We could play you a lot of clips. No point really in doing that because it's depressing. We could

00:01:47.500 play you all 38 announcements of an imminent deal. Again, you get the point, but we can't

00:01:53.260 resist playing just one from about six weeks ago. This is the president of the United States saying

00:01:57.620 that victory is already ours and we're all really only hanging around to increase the magnitude of

00:02:04.880 the victory. Here's President Trump. We've already won, but I want to win by a bigger margin.

00:02:11.560 But we have. We have destroyed their Navy, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed all of their, if you look at their anti-aircraft equipment, their radar equipment, their leadership. Their leadership is destroyed. We've destroyed everything.

00:02:31.940 So it's hard to know which of those details is accurate or not, because there has been

00:02:36.580 really since February 28th when this began, a total news blackout on the details of this war.

00:02:42.000 We don't know how many Americans have been killed. We don't know how many have been injured. We don't

00:02:45.340 know how they were killed and injured. We really don't know anything beyond what we read on the

00:02:51.240 internet or in press releases. And in case after case, that has turned out to be untrue. So there

00:02:55.800 really has never been a war of this magnitude with this little factual coverage supplying

00:03:01.940 the public with usable information about how it's going.

00:03:04.780 So we don't really know.

00:03:06.520 We can take some of that at face value.

00:03:08.080 The United States military is formidable.

00:03:09.760 It's huge.

00:03:10.540 There's a budget of over a trillion dollars a year.

00:03:12.600 So we can bet that tons of Iranian assets have, in fact, been destroyed over the last

00:03:18.620 several months. 0.95

00:03:20.140 But fundamentally, we can conclude that Iran has not lost this war. 0.82

00:03:25.780 In fact, by the only measure that really matters, Iran is winning the war. 0.81

00:03:29.720 What's that measure? 0.83

00:03:30.320 Well, of course, it's the ability to control the Persian Gulf, the eastern aperture of

00:03:36.480 the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, now famous.

00:03:39.680 And as of right now, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz.

00:03:43.660 It did not when this war began. 0.87

00:03:45.760 Now it does.

00:03:47.840 And so what do we learn from this?

00:03:49.300 well, we learn that President Trump

00:03:52.880 is not a great diplomat.

00:03:55.480 He's overselling this.

00:03:57.240 Like it's an all-you-can-eat buffet in Atlantic City.

00:03:59.500 Oh, it's going to be the best.

00:04:01.640 And so it's tempting to kind of lay

00:04:03.920 all of the blame at Trump's feet.

00:04:06.580 And on one level, it is all his fault.

00:04:08.300 He decided to do this.

00:04:09.820 Whatever pressures he faced, it was his decision.

00:04:12.280 And he has oversold America's position in this.

00:04:16.640 and he is, in some very real way, not good at this.

00:04:21.880 But that would be to minimize the profound nature of this moment.

00:04:26.080 What we're really learning is not simply that Trump is a spotty commander-in-chief

00:04:29.920 and certainly no diplomat and obviously not a dealmaker.

00:04:33.540 If you announce a deal 38 times and it doesn't materialize, you're not a dealmaker.

00:04:39.160 What we're beginning to understand, unfortunately, for the rest of us,

00:04:43.440 not just the limits of Trump, but the limits of American power. That's what we're actually

00:04:48.520 learning, how limited the United States is in what it can do and how it can project its will

00:04:54.000 abroad. And a lot of Americans, particularly if you grew up, came of age over the last 30 years

00:05:01.340 when the United States had really unrivaled power globally, global hegemony, it was in charge,

00:05:07.260 it was the lone superpower up until maybe 10 years ago. And in the minds of many in Washington,

00:05:12.740 and it remains the lone superpower,

00:05:14.780 you imagine that the U.S. government

00:05:16.520 could just kind of affect outcomes

00:05:18.500 by articulating them.

00:05:19.640 Say it out loud and it becomes true

00:05:20.940 because it has the biggest

00:05:23.540 and famously best military

00:05:25.220 in global history.

00:05:27.680 But despite having that military,

00:05:31.380 despite aircraft carriers

00:05:32.640 that cost $120 billion

00:05:34.660 start to finish to put in the water,

00:05:38.460 the United States military

00:05:39.160 has not been able to open that straight

00:05:41.440 to shipping to the rest of the world,

00:05:43.580 to global commodities in months.

00:05:47.360 And there is no promise that we'll be able to.

00:05:50.360 So we have first and foremost learned

00:05:52.560 the limits of American military power.

00:05:55.620 There are some things we just can't do

00:05:57.100 and you would have thought we'd be able to do them. 0.99

00:05:59.640 Iran, fewer than 100 million people, 1.00

00:06:02.040 primitive, backward theocracy that everyone makes fun of, 0.97

00:06:05.960 globally reviled as a medieval state.

00:06:09.240 The U.S. military could not force Iran to do one thing, open up a narrow waterway.

00:06:16.480 So our military power has limits that a lot of us didn't appreciate until February 28th.

00:06:23.100 Our economic power has limits that a lot of people didn't fully understand.

00:06:28.400 It's a little confusing after hearing for decades that the United States as one of the world's largest oil reserves

00:06:34.460 and by far the most sophisticated oil extraction technology,

00:06:38.200 every oil-producing country in the world

00:06:39.500 uses American technology

00:06:40.620 to get the oil out of the ground and the gas.

00:06:43.800 It's a little confusing to learn,

00:06:46.000 but it's true, it turns out,

00:06:47.900 that despite having energy independence,

00:06:50.400 the United States is not at all energy independent.

00:06:52.980 And gas is now more expensive in your town

00:06:55.840 because of this war.

00:06:58.880 Does that make sense?

00:06:59.860 Well, yeah.

00:07:01.140 If you understand the true nature of the U.S. economy,

00:07:04.460 which is globalized.

00:07:06.280 The United States economy,

00:07:07.480 like every other economy on the globe,

00:07:09.120 is linked to the rest of the world

00:07:11.000 and dependent on the rest of the world.

00:07:13.300 And so while conceptually,

00:07:14.920 the U.S. may have enough oil and gas

00:07:16.560 to meet its own needs,

00:07:17.940 in real life,

00:07:19.880 the price of Brent crude set on the global market

00:07:22.700 determines the price of gasoline in your town.

00:07:26.120 Which is another way of saying, 0.94

00:07:28.060 Iran has massive power 0.92

00:07:30.500 over the United States economy. 0.98

00:07:32.220 Who knew that? 0.82

00:07:33.460 We spent decades hearing about how Iran was a military threat somehow. 1.00

00:07:38.640 This sanctioned backward country is going to nuke us for reasons that were never exactly clear because they hate our freedoms. 0.99

00:07:48.520 But we thought of Iran, most of us who listen to the media, thought of Iran purely in military terms. 1.00

00:07:55.380 Iran is crazy.

00:07:56.420 Iran is heavily armed. 1.00

00:07:58.100 Iran is a theocratic Shia group. 0.98

00:08:02.840 death cult, and they want to kill us, and we should worry about Iran's military power. 0.99

00:08:09.860 Well, here, according to the president, we've eliminated a lot of Iran's military power. 0.66

00:08:14.220 It's Air Force and Navy who knew they had those, but they're gone in any case, according to him. 0.87

00:08:19.460 And Iran is still exercising power over the United States, not just because it's slamming 0.85

00:08:23.520 our enemies with drones and missiles, but because it is affecting the price of energy 0.91

00:08:27.080 in our country thousands of miles away. And that illustrates a really important truth,

00:08:32.640 which is the United States is not independent on any level economically because the United States

00:08:39.280 is part of a global economic system that the United States promoted and benefited from in some ways

00:08:44.100 for many decades. So we are ensnared by globalization. There's kind of no way out

00:08:51.440 of it, at least in the short term. You may want to ignore what happens in Iran or the Persian Gulf

00:08:57.620 and say, well, we can meet our needs, but you actually can't. And not just with energy,

00:09:02.140 with every manufactured product,

00:09:03.680 starting with pharmaceuticals

00:09:04.740 and ending with automobiles.

00:09:07.140 All of it is dependent on free trade

00:09:11.100 between nations, on globalization,

00:09:13.440 which again, our country promoted

00:09:15.400 and has benefited from.

00:09:16.780 But now we find out

00:09:19.320 that we have a lot less economic power

00:09:21.460 than we thought we did

00:09:22.240 because we're not in control.

00:09:25.940 Control is actually in the hands

00:09:29.400 of international markets,

00:09:31.360 whatever those are, but it's not in our hands. And the third area in which American power has

00:09:38.360 been radically reduced, obviously, is its moral power, which conservatives spend a lot of time

00:09:44.940 making fun of. Moral power, what's that? We don't have to be loved, we have to be feared.

00:09:50.460 But it is also true that those very same people, in fact, acknowledge it when they say America is

00:09:57.200 exceptional. It is a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world. People look to the United States as

00:10:03.240 an example of what we'd like to be, and that's why the majority of global constitutions copy ours,

00:10:08.000 our system of government, liberal democracy. And all of that rested on the idea that the United

00:10:14.340 States, while flawed and capable of fomenting coups and assassinating people, kind of went out

00:10:20.540 of its way to pretend it didn't. Now, why did the United States pretend it didn't? Why did the U.S.

00:10:24.360 government do these things and then deny doing them? Well, because even while doing them,

00:10:31.280 the United States government acknowledged those things were wrong.

00:10:34.440 It is never allowed to kill the innocent. Assassination is not war. It's a crime.

00:10:41.280 Killing the families of people you don't like is not allowed. We have done that.

00:10:45.400 But we've never admitted that we're doing it. We've never done it openly. And when caught,

00:10:49.260 we either deny it or apologize for it and put the people who did it on trial.

00:10:54.360 Lieutenant Calley and the rest,

00:10:56.300 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 0.78

00:10:57.240 That's why we have war crimes trials 0.69

00:10:58.380 to make the statement

00:11:00.160 that we have standards

00:11:02.040 that are above savagery.

00:11:04.380 We're America.

00:11:05.160 We're better than you morally,

00:11:07.480 not just richer,

00:11:08.320 but better than you.

00:11:10.260 And that has power.

00:11:11.620 And we have, in fact,

00:11:12.660 used that moral power

00:11:13.960 to our great benefit

00:11:15.120 for a long time.

00:11:18.200 Suddenly, that is gone.

00:11:19.960 How do we know it's gone?

00:11:21.240 Because the United States government

00:11:22.440 is no longer pretending

00:11:23.820 that it is not doing certain things

00:11:26.180 that it has never done before,

00:11:27.080 like assassinate people openly,

00:11:29.220 beginning with General Soleimani

00:11:30.400 at the end of Trump's first term.

00:11:33.060 It is killing civilians.

00:11:35.780 It blew up a girls' school

00:11:37.800 attached to the IRGC naval base

00:11:39.520 in the opening hours of the war

00:11:41.220 and never apologized for it.

00:11:42.980 Not one time.

00:11:43.900 Did anyone from the U.S. government say,

00:11:45.820 well, that was awful?

00:11:47.420 Sorry.

00:11:49.000 Not one time.

00:11:50.780 That's just the cost of war, apparently.

00:11:53.820 And more specifically, and in some ways more shockingly, the United States government has threatened to target and then two days ago targeted civilian infrastructure.

00:12:07.240 Meaning the systems that keep people alive, keep civilians alive in Iran and any country.

00:12:14.680 Power, water, sewage, desal.

00:12:20.220 Necessary for life. 0.99

00:12:21.420 the lives of people who are not fighting in the war,

00:12:24.000 who do not make the decisions that led to the war,

00:12:26.240 who are innocent bystanders.

00:12:28.120 The kind of people you are not allowed to kill on purpose,

00:12:30.980 but when you destroy civilian infrastructure,

00:12:32.780 you are killing them on purpose.

00:12:35.400 And so while the U.S. government in war

00:12:37.440 has destroyed civilian infrastructure at scale,

00:12:39.820 by the way, during the Second World War,

00:12:41.700 this has happened before,

00:12:43.520 but it has never happened so openly and without apology

00:12:47.100 and never once has any American leader

00:12:50.360 threatened in public to kill civilians

00:12:53.660 unless the government of the country he opposes submits.

00:12:57.680 That's never happened because that's barbaric behavior.

00:13:00.800 That's not what civilized nations do.

00:13:03.080 And suddenly, not only is the U.S. government doing that,

00:13:05.660 but no one is saying anything about it.

00:13:07.680 Like, that's just fine.

00:13:09.680 And there's also, of course, because why wouldn't you at this point?

00:13:13.000 It's threatening nuclear strikes against entire populations,

00:13:17.020 or as the president himself said, civilizations.

00:13:20.360 Now, let's hope none of that happens and let's hope there aren't further strikes on civilian infrastructure that civilians aren't killed on purpose.

00:13:28.640 Not simply because we're bleeding heart liberals that think it's bad, but because it's not good for our country because, well, in the end, what you do will be done to you.

00:13:39.220 That's almost a physics principle.

00:13:40.720 That's just a fact.

00:13:41.680 That's not moralizing.

00:13:42.920 That's reality.

00:13:44.720 What you do will be done to you. 1.00

00:13:47.040 And the United States has a lot more civilian infrastructure than Iran does.

00:13:51.640 So if the global hegemon is announcing that it's okay to murder civilians in a country you don't like, whose policies you oppose, it stands to reason that we may be the victim of that kind of thinking.

00:14:10.700 In fact, it's dead certain that we will be the victim of that kind of thinking.

00:14:14.800 Americans will be the victims.

00:14:17.040 of that. So this is a huge moment and a huge loss for the United States, but maybe above all

00:14:25.440 the way in which American power has been reduced, and this is the saddest to say out loud, is that

00:14:32.320 it is suddenly obvious to everyone, both in this country and around the world, that the United

00:14:36.800 States does not have sovereignty, which is another way of saying American leaders aren't really in

00:14:43.380 charge of America. They can make some decisions. They can make noises and give speeches, but

00:14:49.620 big decisions, the ones that change the course of history, are not up to them. They're employees.

00:14:56.880 They're not the boss. Now, who is the boss? Well, that's an open debate.

00:15:01.160 But in this war, it has become very obvious, undeniable, and in fact, it's been admitted

00:15:06.880 by this administration that the President of the United States didn't decide the time and place

00:15:13.360 of this war, the prime minister of Israel decided the time and place of this war.

00:15:18.200 Benjamin Netanyahu was in charge.

00:15:23.040 Admitting that out loud, and of course it was known to everyone who was paying close

00:15:27.140 attention, is a sea change in the way not just the rest of the world thinks about the

00:15:32.640 United States, but the way Americans think about their own country.

00:15:35.660 Because the premise of our system is that the people who live here are in charge of

00:15:40.780 it and that they can control its outcomes by voting. We just had elections in a lot of the

00:15:44.920 country primaries yesterday and an ever diminishing number of people march off to the polls with the

00:15:51.040 notion in mind that I can change things with my vote. The war in Iran has taught us that actually

00:15:59.220 on the big questions, the people you elect aren't even in charge. Someone else is, in this case,

00:16:05.880 Benjamin Netanyahu. What are the long-term effects of a population understanding that

00:16:12.480 voting doesn't make any difference? Well, it's hard to know. We've never been here before

00:16:17.340 in 250 years. But it's easy to imagine that radicalism, extremism, violence would be the

00:16:27.300 outcome of that. Because if people cease believing that they have any power whatsoever to change a

00:16:34.440 system that is hurting them, there's no peaceful way to make the pain stop, they will use non-peaceful

00:16:42.800 means to get what they want. Democracy, famously, is a pressure relief valve. It keeps people calm.

00:16:48.900 You may not like what's happening right now, but just wait till the election and you can change it.

00:16:53.060 When people start to believe that's not possible, that it's all fake, that in the end, no matter 0.84

00:16:57.520 what you vote for or who you elect, Benjamin Netanyahu or some other foreigner is in charge 0.52

00:17:02.900 of your country, or the donors, why wouldn't they take extra legal means to express their 0.52

00:17:13.760 frustration? Well, they probably would. And you would get a violent, chaotic country like so many

00:17:20.920 countries around the world. So you don't want that. But unless someone restores not just the

00:17:28.120 fiction, but the reality of sovereignty to the United States, meaning you can elect

00:17:32.720 somebody and he can change the system if he wants, if he has a mandate from voters to

00:17:37.100 do it, he can change it in ways that Bill Ackman doesn't like.

00:17:43.120 Unless that is clearly true, then you're going to get a very radical population.

00:17:48.600 And if you mix that realization with an economic downturn, which is the obvious end result

00:17:56.140 of this war,

00:17:57.640 who knows what you could get?

00:18:00.800 So the costs of this war

00:18:03.480 to the United States

00:18:04.380 are profound

00:18:05.400 and they have nothing to do

00:18:06.620 with Iran's nuclear program

00:18:08.020 or its navy,

00:18:09.320 assuming it even had a navy.

00:18:10.500 Did Iran have a navy? 1.00

00:18:11.460 Who cares? 0.99

00:18:12.640 Who cares about its nuclear program? 1.00

00:18:14.720 Actually, Pakistan

00:18:16.080 has a nuclear program.

00:18:19.220 Lots of countries

00:18:20.340 you don't think

00:18:21.400 should have nuclear weapons,

00:18:22.200 including Israel and France,

00:18:24.600 have nuclear weapons.

00:18:26.140 what matters in the end

00:18:28.740 is whether the United States survives in recognizable form.

00:18:32.460 And this war makes it less likely that it will.

00:18:34.940 Not certain.

00:18:35.800 It's not lights out or anything.

00:18:37.960 But we are clearly on the road

00:18:40.280 to radical destructive change in the United States 0.63

00:18:43.280 accelerated by this war.

00:18:44.560 And that's bad.

00:18:46.760 And what about Iran?

00:18:48.780 What's going to happen to Iran after all this?

00:18:50.860 Well, of course, it's impossible to really know.

00:18:52.920 because this is so dynamic.

00:18:58.040 Again, the announcement was made

00:18:59.620 less than 20 minutes ago

00:19:01.780 that we're back at war

00:19:03.340 and who knows where that will wind up.

00:19:05.700 But if current trends continue,

00:19:07.800 it seems pretty clear 1.00

00:19:08.920 that Iran will emerge 0.58

00:19:09.880 from this war stronger, 0.98

00:19:11.160 battered, lots of dead people,

00:19:12.820 lots of destroyed infrastructure, 1.00

00:19:14.700 probably a refugee crisis,

00:19:16.480 not much of a standing army, maybe.

00:19:18.520 Who knows?

00:19:20.020 But it is very hard to believe 1.00

00:19:22.500 that Iran will emerge from this 0.91

00:19:24.240 without control. 0.98

00:19:25.480 Maybe shared control with Oman, 0.98

00:19:26.960 but still control

00:19:27.900 of the Strait of Hormuz.

00:19:29.860 And that makes,

00:19:30.700 that one fact alone

00:19:32.180 makes Iran a global player

00:19:35.060 in the globalized economy. 0.94

00:19:37.800 There is no getting around the fact

00:19:39.960 that if you want to get your commodities

00:19:41.940 out of the Gulf,

00:19:44.340 through which a fifth

00:19:45.900 of global commodities flow,

00:19:47.680 energy, petrochemicals, 0.99

00:19:49.820 you're going to have to deal with Iran. 0.92

00:19:52.500 So that means that after months of war with Iran, this rogue state, this Middle Eastern North Korea run by crazy people who are cannibals or throwing gays off buildings for fun, that country becomes almost inevitably a real country that other real countries deal with as a peer country. 0.79

00:20:13.340 It's also pretty easy to imagine an enhanced Iranian economy, because at some point, U.S. sanctions will either have to be dropped, reduced, or they will just become less meaningful because the U.S. dollar will not be dominant in the way that it is now. 0.57

00:20:30.860 And finally, and this is not a minor point either, Iran's image around the world will be enhanced.

00:20:37.460 And even in the region. 0.69

00:20:39.180 Now, how would that happen?

00:20:40.560 How would that work? 0.96

00:20:42.040 How could Iran, which is not Arab, it's Persian, 0.98

00:20:45.580 and the Persians and the Arabs

00:20:47.560 do have a long history of animosity toward each other,

00:20:50.220 but also intermarriage and complex relationship for sure,

00:20:53.740 but some animosity,

00:20:56.000 particularly the Persians and the Gulf Arabs.

00:20:58.180 And it's not just religious difference,

00:20:59.760 there are cultural differences

00:21:00.940 and attitudinal differences

00:21:02.460 that have caused friction between those groups

00:21:04.400 for a long time. 0.97

00:21:06.600 But already, Iran, which is bombing Arab countries 0.94

00:21:11.320 and destroying Arab countries is more popular in some Arab countries than it was at the beginning 0.87

00:21:17.600 of the war. Now, how could that be? Well, because Iran has taken a clear position on the murder of 0.51

00:21:26.860 Palestinian civilians, particularly in Lebanon, but not just Lebanon, in the West Bank and Gaza

00:21:32.220 also. Iran has tied its ceasefire negotiations to a ceasefire in Lebanon. Now, that's not something

00:21:41.220 that resonates with most Americans.

00:21:42.340 Like, who cares? 1.00

00:21:44.300 But in the Middle East 0.94

00:21:45.720 and in the entire rest of the world, really,

00:21:47.720 which is watching this, 0.57

00:21:48.700 watching Israel destroy Lebanon

00:21:50.860 for reasons that are not clear at all, 0.99

00:21:52.800 murder Christians, 0.98

00:21:53.860 wholesale in Lebanon, 1.00

00:21:55.040 destroy Christian villages, 0.99

00:21:56.620 bomb Beirut, 0.99

00:21:58.180 not a traditional Hezbollah stronghold.

00:22:00.660 Why are you bombing Beirut?

00:22:01.940 Unclear.

00:22:03.080 But it's happening

00:22:04.040 and the rest of the world

00:22:04.660 is watching carefully

00:22:05.500 because Lebanon is a country

00:22:06.760 a lot of people have been to.

00:22:08.040 Probably the most beautiful country

00:22:09.640 in the world.

00:22:11.220 with some of the most sophisticated people in the world.

00:22:13.660 It's not Yemen, it's Lebanon, it's on the Mediterranean.

00:22:17.960 And the rest of the world is watching this in horror

00:22:19.920 and no one's doing anything about it.

00:22:21.420 The United States is abetting it.

00:22:22.840 The United States is helping it happen,

00:22:24.080 despite what they tell you.

00:22:25.180 Those are American weapons and weapons systems 0.95

00:22:27.660 being used to murder Christians in Lebanon. 0.93

00:22:30.180 Who is doing something about it? 1.00

00:22:31.700 Iran. 1.00

00:22:32.960 Hate to say that, wish that weren't true. 0.99

00:22:36.220 Wish it didn't fall to Iran to do something about this,

00:22:38.980 but it has, and they are.

00:22:40.240 and they're doing more about this

00:22:41.800 than any other country

00:22:43.440 including ours

00:22:44.220 including any of the Gulf states

00:22:45.380 sorry

00:22:45.720 because they are tying

00:22:48.240 the reopening

00:22:49.500 of the strait

00:22:50.880 which the world wants

00:22:51.880 to

00:22:52.840 an end 0.99

00:22:54.440 to Israeli

00:22:55.320 bombing

00:22:56.260 and murder

00:22:57.000 in Lebanon

00:22:57.960 so in the eyes

00:23:00.020 of the region

00:23:00.940 whatever

00:23:01.580 people hate about Iran

00:23:03.440 and there's a lot

00:23:04.120 that the Arabs hate about Iran

00:23:05.520 they are uniquely

00:23:07.360 standing up

00:23:08.400 for the Palestinians 0.51

00:23:09.280 the mass murder in gaza the genocide in gaza and history will record it as that it is genocide 0.87

00:23:16.980 it is a state policy to eliminate a people and transfer them out of a land it is genocide by

00:23:23.160 any definition is the biggest thing that is happening at this point in history it is the

00:23:29.480 biggest thing it is the thing about which the most will be written going forward how did the

00:23:33.620 rest of the world watch this and do nothing how did the united states back this how did the united

00:23:38.740 States become the only country on the planet, other than Israel, to approve of this genocide?

00:23:44.420 These are questions normal people will ask fairly soon. They're asking them now.

00:23:50.120 And Iran, for all of its many faults, as an American, it's painful to admit this,

00:23:54.460 has tried to do something about it. So long term, that doesn't hurt Iran,

00:24:01.500 whatever their motive for doing that.

00:24:04.940 That does not hurt Iran.

00:24:06.540 That enhances Iran as a state.

00:24:11.480 So the whole thing, like so much of life, 0.97

00:24:14.260 has turned out to be exactly the opposite

00:24:16.500 of what you thought.

00:24:19.200 You initiate a regime change war against Iran. 0.99

00:24:22.700 You kill its elderly cleric head of state. 1.00

00:24:26.160 You blow up a girls' school. 1.00

00:24:28.700 You sink its ships. 0.99

00:24:30.140 you decapitate its air force, whatever that was. You unleash the full fury of the largest military

00:24:38.120 in human history on this country. And in the end, almost inevitably, that country becomes stronger

00:24:44.700 and the countries that attack it become weaker. Again, only in real life do ironies like this

00:24:50.960 exist, but they are everywhere. In fact, that is the story of life. The opposite happens.

00:24:54.980 who could have called this who could have seen this coming well certainly almost no one in

00:25:04.260 washington saw this coming because they've been talking about this war with iran and the need to

00:25:08.540 decapitate iran and do something about iran america's biggest problem is iran and their

00:25:14.740 proxies and the houthis and hezbollah and hamas and they've been yammering on about this at the

00:25:20.220 Brookings Institution and CNN and the Atlantic Council and every place where midwits with 0.51

00:25:26.980 overpriced degrees gather to talk about the world that they don't understand, whose languages

00:25:31.400 they don't speak. 0.92

00:25:32.880 But whenever they gather in Washington to talk about the world, Iran is at the top of 1.00

00:25:36.160 the list of problems we must solve. 0.94

00:25:38.920 And in almost none of these gatherings, has anyone piped up to say, well, wait a second,

00:25:42.540 if we do that, the opposite will happen. 0.91

00:25:44.840 Iran will become more powerful and will become less powerful.

00:25:48.440 Almost nobody said that in Washington.

00:25:50.220 literally almost nobody. And if there is somebody, who is that person? There wasn't one.

00:25:56.600 But there was at least one person outside of Washington who said this. His name is John

00:26:02.440 Mearsheimer. He's been a professor at the University of Chicago since 1982, over 40 years.

00:26:09.580 And he studies international relations, the way that countries get along with each other,

00:26:13.180 balances of power regionally and globally. And he's smart and he's erudite, but above all,

00:26:18.840 he is wise. He draws obvious conclusions from longitudinal data sets, as they say in academia.

00:26:26.720 He looks at what happens over time and tries to understand what this tells us about the way

00:26:31.640 nations behave and about the way people behave, about human nature, which is constant. It doesn't

00:26:35.340 change. And because he is one of the very few people in the field of international relations

00:26:43.480 who has this ability married to personal bravery.

00:26:48.220 He's willing to say things that are unpopular,

00:26:50.700 which is the rarest of all qualities in academia.

00:26:53.400 Because he has these two qualities,

00:26:55.720 he has been maybe the only guy

00:26:58.140 or one of the very few guys to call it right.

00:27:01.760 Back in 2007,

00:27:03.940 he and a friend of his from Harvard

00:27:05.100 called Stephen Walt wrote a book

00:27:06.500 on the so-called Jewish lobby,

00:27:09.140 APAC and a whole constellation of nonprofits

00:27:13.180 in Washington that seek to steer the U.S. Congress and the executive of the White House

00:27:17.560 to giving Israel more money and more military aid, to changing the inherent priorities of

00:27:25.500 American foreign policy, which are to protect and enhance the United States, to do things that are

00:27:30.780 good for the population of America, to change that priority to protect Israel, do what Israel 0.50

00:27:37.880 wants. And the two of them wrote this fairly famous book about it back in 2007 and were

00:27:43.940 immediately attacked, can you guess, as Nazis and anti-Semites. Well, turns out neither

00:27:49.340 of them was a Nazi or an anti-Semite, just the opposite. Kind of normal liberals. Not

00:27:57.660 racist in any sense. And the charge itself was ludicrous. You notice what AIPAC is doing?

00:28:05.580 you're an anti-Semite. Be like if you criticized Pfizer, you're against all science. I mean,

00:28:11.620 it doesn't make any sense. It's a slur. It's slander designed to make you be quiet.

00:28:16.260 And in most cases, it works, which is why they keep doing it. But in this one specific case,

00:28:20.140 it didn't work. John Mearsheimer, who had tenure at Chicago, did not lose his job. And not only

00:28:26.180 did he keep speaking, he upped the volume of his speaking and kept telling the world,

00:28:31.820 though most people didn't listen, what he had personally seen and how he interpreted that.

00:28:37.460 In other words, why does the United States military go to war? And Mearsheimer, through

00:28:44.360 Klob's observation, concluded, well, in the modern era, mostly it goes to war, big wars,

00:28:50.680 on behalf of Israel. Here is Professor John Mearsheimer in 2007 describing why the U.S.

00:28:58.820 went to war in Iraq.

00:29:01.980 It is manifestly clear to most Americans 0.86

00:29:04.880 that the Iraq war is one of the greatest strategic blunders in American history. 0.97

00:29:10.960 Our argument is that Israel, and especially the lobby, 0.78

00:29:14.860 were two of the main driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq. 0.81

00:29:19.900 It is hard to imagine that war happening in their absence. 0.87

00:29:25.280 To start with Israel,

00:29:26.500 It was the only country besides Kuwait where both the government and a majority of the population favored the war.

00:29:35.700 The Israeli government, to include Prime Minister Sharon, pushed the Bush administration hard to make sure that it did not lose its nerve in the months before the invasion.

00:29:47.680 Other influential Israelis, like former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, also implored the United States to take down Saddam.

00:30:01.060 In fact, Israel was pushing so hard for war that its allies in the United States warned Israeli officials to damp down their rhetoric, lest it be seen as a war for Israel.

00:30:14.780 I might also add that President Clinton said in 2006 that every Israeli politician I knew thought that Saddam was so great a threat that he should be removed even if he did not have WMD.

00:30:32.340 So you can see why Professor John Mearsheimer was considered threat number one by AIPAC,

00:30:38.140 and we'll just use the phrase, and it's Amen Chorus in the American media.

00:30:42.300 Not because he's a bigot or a Nazi, but precisely because he is not.

00:30:46.960 He's an eminently reasonable man who understands the facts and isn't afraid to say them.

00:30:53.240 He's not acting out of animus.

00:30:55.320 He's acting out of honesty and, in fact, decency.

00:30:59.180 So you can't have people like John Mearsheimer talking.

00:31:02.200 If people are going to criticize Israel, they should also be attacking Jews. 0.99

00:31:06.020 They should be full-blown crazy people. 1.00

00:31:08.240 People like that are helpful to the cause. 0.78

00:31:10.580 People like John Mearsheimer tend to provoke an open, rational debate on the topic that

00:31:17.180 AIPAC and the defenders of Israel's influence over the United States cannot possibly win

00:31:23.060 because it doesn't make any sense at all.

00:31:25.580 So they don't want to have the debate.

00:31:26.880 so Mearsheimer

00:31:29.700 was basically

00:31:32.580 written out of the world 0.69

00:31:34.620 he occupied though he is a full

00:31:36.600 tenure professor at the University of Chicago

00:31:38.180 one of the most prestigious universities in the world

00:31:40.300 suddenly he wasn't getting invited

00:31:42.520 to write a lot of New York Times op-eds

00:31:44.840 in fact for many years

00:31:46.460 very few non-experts heard from him

00:31:48.820 at all

00:31:49.420 but he kept saying the same thing

00:31:52.460 which is

00:31:53.360 the Israeli government

00:31:55.160 and its agents in the United States,

00:31:58.080 registered and unregistered,

00:32:00.040 are pushing the U.S. government

00:32:03.420 toward outcomes that will hurt the United States.

00:32:07.820 And now his ultimate vindication,

00:32:11.200 the war in Iran. 0.81

00:32:12.120 And not just the war in Iran,

00:32:13.680 but the war between Russia and Ukraine,

00:32:16.120 which is in fact a war

00:32:18.060 between the United States and Russia.

00:32:19.900 And we got into that war

00:32:21.660 because of pressure from exactly the same people.

00:32:26.520 The people who have pushed for war in Iran

00:32:28.300 have spent the last five years pushing the United States

00:32:31.020 to go to war with Russia.

00:32:32.540 And that war is still ongoing

00:32:33.880 because of pressure from those very same people.

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00:33:43.860 So where does this leave us now?

00:33:46.220 Is either one of those wars going to end anytime soon?

00:33:49.420 Is it possible that either one is resolved in a way that doesn't hurt the U.S.?

00:33:53.620 And what is the motive behind getting the U.S. military, American taxpayers, and service

00:34:00.180 members involved in wars in Ukraine and Iran that can't possibly benefit us?

00:34:07.000 Why would you want to do that?

00:34:08.600 And why is our political class allowed it to happen?

00:34:11.420 Those are some of the questions that we asked

00:34:12.960 Professor John Mearsheimer in an interview

00:34:15.440 that every person should listen to.

00:34:18.600 Every American should watch this.

00:34:20.040 So without further delay, here's Professor John Mearsheimer.

00:34:23.340 Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much.

00:34:25.080 The most vindicated man in America.

00:34:26.580 I think of you all the time.

00:34:27.600 By the way, your piece on the Israeli lobby

00:34:30.120 came out in 2006.

00:34:31.920 I just checked.

00:34:33.480 The book came out in 2007, so 20 years ago,

00:34:36.920 and it was widely derided, universally derided in the media

00:34:42.840 as a conspiracy theory, there was no such thing.

00:34:45.520 If that book came out today, how do you think it would sell?

00:34:49.240 Oh, I think it would sell lots of copies.

00:34:52.360 There's no question about that.

00:34:53.700 It sold lots of copies then.

00:34:54.800 Oh, I know.

00:34:55.860 Although the lobby went to enormous lengths to suppress it.

00:35:01.800 Do you know Abe Foxman, the former head of the ADL,

00:35:05.140 wrote a book attacking our book before our book came out that was due to come out the same day

00:35:13.760 our book was supposed to come out. Actually? Actually, yeah. He wrote a book, Abe Foxman,

00:35:20.780 that was a direct attack on our book before our book was published, and he didn't have the page

00:35:26.360 proofs or anything. He was basing his attack on what we had said in the article written the year

00:35:31.960 before. And it was scheduled to come out on exactly the same day that our book came out.

00:35:39.660 And then, of course, the lobby went to enormous lengths to make sure that we got as little

00:35:44.700 attention as possible. They ended up getting us canceled at Google. We were supposed to give a

00:35:50.120 big talk at Google and the lobby moved in and got that talk canceled. We were supposed to give a

00:35:55.880 big talk at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, which the lobby then got canceled.

00:36:01.680 because the lobby doesn't exist it's just a conspiracy theory and if you disagree the lobby

00:36:06.000 will cancel you yeah yeah well i'm just grateful that you lived long enough to see yourself

00:36:12.320 vindicated completely vindicated and not just on that question but on many others so so now this

00:36:17.760 has got to be as someone who assesses the world for a living one of the most interesting moments

00:36:22.640 of your life because the world is i don't well where are we let's just start there you you look

00:36:27.760 Look out, and what do you see?

00:36:30.800 Nothing but trouble everywhere, and that makes it incredibly interesting and depressing at the same time.

00:36:40.220 I do wake up sometimes in the morning depressed at the thought that I'm now going to have to go read all the newspapers and all the websites and get the bad news.

00:36:47.260 But it is a fascinating world, and trying to make sense of it is a very interesting business.

00:36:53.900 So, you know, the idea of coming here to talk to you is very enticing because we get to sort of feel our way around and try and figure out what's going on.

00:37:02.340 That's just incredible.

00:37:03.060 And I don't know the answer.

00:37:05.140 That's why I'm grateful you're here.

00:37:06.300 But I sense that this is a change that history will record as profound.

00:37:13.120 Like this is not just a bump in the road.

00:37:14.840 This is a detour.

00:37:16.620 I think with regard to both the Ukraine war and the war against Iran, profound change is going to result from both. 0.88

00:37:26.340 I think that Putin is going to win in Ukraine. 0.93

00:37:29.560 Ukraine is going to end up as a dysfunctional rump state. 0.99

00:37:33.220 I think in the process of this war, NATO has been wrecked. 0.95

00:37:38.560 The U.S.-European transatlantic relationship has been badly damaged.

00:37:46.620 And if you go to the Middle East, I think the Iranians are going to come out of this war in much better shape than they went into the war on February 28th.

00:37:57.280 And I think that America's position in the Middle East and certainly Israel's position is going to be badly damaged as a result of this war.

00:38:07.900 Those are my instincts as well. 0.55

00:38:09.640 So along the way to that outcome, which, I mean, nothing's guaranteed, but I strongly agree with your assessment.

00:38:16.720 I think that's very likely to happen in both places, but all kinds of other things could happen.

00:38:22.000 So as bad things, very destructive things.

00:38:25.220 So as you look at both conflicts, which gives you more concern?

00:38:28.900 I find it hard to answer that question because I'm so concerned about both conflicts.

00:38:34.080 Yes.

00:38:34.640 Let's start with Ukraine.

00:38:35.440 Yeah. And I would just say as a general point, I think that the worst outcome in both cases, and I can expound on each, is the possibility of nuclear weapons being used. 0.53

00:38:46.540 And let's start with Ukraine, as you say. The Ukrainians, with strong support from mainly the Europeans but also the United States, have ramped up their drone war and missile war against the territory of Russia.

00:39:05.900 In other words, they're striking deep into Russia, and they're doing significant damage inside of Russia. 0.83

00:39:13.540 And the Russians believe that this has to stop, especially since the Europeans and the Americans are talking about increasing the volume and quality of the attacks in the future.

00:39:26.820 The Trump administration.

00:39:28.180 The Trump administration, yeah.

00:39:29.640 I don't think President Trump himself, but I think the deep state is committed to the Ukraine war still.

00:39:37.340 I mean, Trump has pulled away in a lot of respects, but I think the deep state remains committed, and certainly the Europeans remain deeply committed to helping Ukraine inflict punishment on the civilian population and on infrastructure deep inside of Russia. 0.54

00:39:56.320 And the Russians are having the devil of a time stopping that.

00:40:01.000 And the end result is that there is increasing talk inside of Russia that the only solution to this problem is for Russia to attack with conventional weaponry to start with European countries or NATO countries.

00:40:18.560 In other words, Russia has to stop limiting its attacks to Ukraine, and it has to start thinking about attacking inside of Europe, but with conventional weapons.

00:40:30.680 And the view of many inside of Russia is that if that doesn't work, if the conventional weaponry doesn't stop the attacks on Mother Russia, then what Russia should do is use limited nuclear attacks against NATO countries to send a very clear signal to the Europeans and to the United States that they better stop or this will escalate out of control.

00:40:58.840 So I think there is a serious possibility.

00:41:01.560 I don't think it's a likely possibility, but I think there's a serious possibility that nuclear weapons will be used in the Ukraine war.

00:41:11.840 There's been very little coverage in the American press of Ukrainian-European-American attacks on the Russian homeland.

00:41:20.780 To what extent have they caused damage and casualties and they're serious attacks?

00:41:25.420 Well, they've caused serious damage to the energy infrastructure, and they occasionally kill a good number of Russian citizens.

00:41:36.440 This is nothing like the bombing attacks in World War II or even the American bombing campaign in Vietnam.

00:41:44.220 It's not on that scale.

00:41:45.600 But from a Russian perspective, any serious attacks on Mother Russia are unacceptable.

00:41:54.020 And the problem that Putin faces is that there has long been widespread criticism inside Russia that he has not waged the war against Ukraine vigorously enough.

00:42:06.960 The fact is that Putin and the Russian military, of course, have gone to great lengths to minimize the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed.

00:42:16.460 It's very important to understand.

00:42:17.800 You'd never know this from reading the mainstream media in the West. 0.87

00:42:20.780 No, because he's Hitler.

00:42:22.520 Yes. 0.70

00:42:23.120 that the Russians have actually not waged a serious punishment campaign against the civilian population inside of Ukraine,

00:42:33.180 with the possible exception of destroying the electrical grid.

00:42:37.340 But even there, the end result was that not many civilians were killed.

00:42:42.480 But what's happening here is that pressure is beginning to build on Putin to up the ante,

00:42:48.760 to escalate because of these attacks on Russian infrastructure and on the Russian civilian

00:42:55.200 population. And the pressure is really building. And you see this in the writings of Sergei

00:43:01.260 Karaganov, who is the principal proponent of the view that I just described. Sergei Karaganov says

00:43:07.440 that when he first proposed this view, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, this is back

00:43:12.820 in February of 2022. Most people viewed him as an outlier. They didn't take his argument seriously.

00:43:19.880 He says now that the overwhelming majority of people that he talks to inside the Russian elite

00:43:26.840 and even inside the broader population agree with his view that it's time for the Russians to take

00:43:32.920 the gloves off and to begin to attack into Eastern Europe with conventional weapons to start with,

00:43:38.980 of course. But then if that doesn't work, use nuclear weapons. It's time to send a clear 0.76

00:43:44.100 message to the West that their attacks on the Russian homeland, their attacks deep into

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00:45:10.320 I don't want to be, well, before I get to my theories about it, what would be the motive

00:45:15.200 of the United States and Western European countries to accelerate and to fund drone

00:45:24.640 and missile attacks into Russia?

00:45:26.160 Like what do they hope to achieve by doing that?

00:45:28.200 Well, the Karaganov argument, which I think is correct, is that the Russians believe that they don't think that this is a red line. 0.72

00:45:37.020 People in the West, especially in Europe, think they can continue to up the ante and increase the number of attacks and the quality of the attacks or the lethality of the attacks. 0.65

00:45:47.640 But to achieve what end?

00:45:48.840 Well, there's a belief that this will bring Putin to the negotiating table and that Ukraine will be able to get a favorable deal.

00:45:58.200 In other words, if we increase the scope and scale of these attacks, Putin will surrender.

00:46:06.040 Beatings will continue until morale improves kind of thing?

00:46:08.780 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:10.240 And so that's the idea.

00:46:12.260 And the argument that people like Karaganov make is that the only way that we can reverse this situation is make it clear to the West that there is a red line here.

00:46:21.620 They don't understand that, but we're going to make it clear.

00:46:24.040 And the way we're going to do it is we're going to attack NATO countries.

00:46:27.220 And we're going to dare them to counterattack. 0.53

00:46:31.300 And the bet is that the Europeans and the Americans will back off and tell the Ukrainians no more of those attacks. 0.93

00:46:38.840 We won't assist you. 0.72

00:46:40.060 We won't provide you with the drones and the intelligence to attack Mother Russia anymore. 0.93

00:46:45.700 And that this will work. 0.79

00:46:47.300 And the Karaganov view is if it doesn't work, what we'll then do is use nuclear weapons.

00:46:52.560 And that will surely send a clear message that there is a red line here.

00:46:58.240 I understand the reasoning.

00:47:00.840 I disagree. 0.56

00:47:01.660 I think that the European leaders and American leaders would be thrilled if Russia bombed the Baltics, Eastern Europe, even Western Europe.

00:47:11.360 And I think they'd be more thrilled if they used nuclear weapons because it would give Western leaders a justification for waging an all-out direct war on Russia, which is what they want. 0.53

00:47:22.560 I don't think the United States once in all direct war on Russia.

00:47:26.600 If it was a nuclear war, that would mean that a large number of people would be incinerated.

00:47:33.660 It does seem like, though, there's this pattern, and I think you see it in this current war,

00:47:38.280 where the West provokes Russia to action so it can cast Russia as Nazi Germany and justify aggression against Russia.

00:47:46.620 There's no question about that.

00:47:48.060 But here we're talking about NATO getting involved in a war.

00:47:52.560 And NATO's in no position to win a war against the Russians, number one.

00:47:59.080 Number two, the last thing the United States wants, given that we're up to our eyeballs and alligators in the Middle East, plus we have to worry about containing China and East Asia, is a war in Ukraine against Russia.

00:48:12.380 And then most important of all, once you talk about the United States and Russia actually fighting each other, the threat of nuclear escalation goes up greatly.

00:48:23.320 And the last thing we want is a nuclear war over Ukraine, because Ukraine is just not that important.

00:48:28.640 It is to some people in the U.S. government.

00:48:32.120 I mean, their ancestors are from there.

00:48:33.640 They identify with it.

00:48:34.820 They really care about it.

00:48:36.660 I mean, of course, I agree with everything you're saying.

00:48:38.140 But I just, then people are not thinking clearly.

00:48:42.100 They really think that by killing civilians

00:48:45.060 or destroying infrastructure in Russia,

00:48:47.120 they can get Putin to,

00:48:48.440 who's under pressure from his right flank,

00:48:49.900 as you just said, to say, okay, you're right.

00:48:53.520 Well, Karajanov's point is,

00:48:55.960 you're absolutely right that people in the West

00:48:58.580 are not thinking clearly.

00:49:00.240 Yes.

00:49:00.640 So what we have to do is we have to focus the mind.

00:49:03.740 And there's no better way to focus the mind 0.73

00:49:06.400 than to pop off a couple of nuclear weapons in Europe.

00:49:10.420 That will focus their mind.

00:49:12.060 They will get the message.

00:49:13.600 They will understand that we are then

00:49:15.680 out on the slippery slope to oblivion

00:49:17.920 and they will back off.

00:49:19.500 But that's the only way you can get them to back off.

00:49:22.740 Do you think the people in Russia saying this mean it?

00:49:25.960 Yes.

00:49:27.500 The thing you want to remember,

00:49:29.440 and I think it's very hard for Americans in general

00:49:31.600 to understand this,

00:49:32.700 is that Russia views what's happening in Ukraine as an existential threat.

00:49:40.100 Ukraine is their backyard.

00:49:42.560 Think back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. 0.98

00:49:44.520 The idea of the Soviet Union placing nuclear warheads on missiles inside of Cuba

00:49:51.880 was categorically unacceptable to the United States.

00:49:56.060 Just unacceptable.

00:49:57.680 It was viewed as a threat to our survival.

00:50:00.100 It was a mortal threat.

00:50:02.400 Whether that was right or not is another issue, but that was the view.

00:50:06.440 The Russians have made it clear since 2008, when we said that NATO would expand to the

00:50:13.460 point where it included Ukraine, that this was an existential threat.

00:50:18.860 It would not be allowed to happen.

00:50:21.840 The war broke out in February 2022.

00:50:24.340 And since that war broke out, we have a situation where Ukraine, which was backed by the United States, invaded Mother Russia.

00:50:34.140 Just want to think about that.

00:50:35.840 Ukraine, an ally of the United States, a country we're supporting, invaded Mother Russia.

00:50:42.140 Then, that was in August of 2024. Then in February of 2025, Ukraine attacked one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of Russia. It went after its nuclear bomber force. It was supported, again, Ukraine is supported by the United States. It gets intelligence from the United States.

00:51:05.420 These kind of actions were unthinkable during the Cold War.

00:51:10.660 So here you have a situation today where we are right on Russia's doorstep, and we are supporting Ukraine, which invaded Mother Russia and is launching attacks on its strategic nuclear triad.

00:51:24.660 The Russians think that this is categorically unacceptable, and they're going to go to enormous lengths to prevent this from continuing. 0.61

00:51:33.720 They're going to win the war. They're determined to win the war. And they're determined to make sure that NATO does not continue working with the Ukrainians to hit targets deep inside Russia. They feel like their survival is threatened. They feel like they've been backed into a corner. And when great powers feel like they've been backed into a corner, you never want to underestimate the risk that they're willing to take.

00:51:58.820 And that's why people should take Karaganov's warnings so seriously.

00:52:04.660 Oh, I do.

00:52:06.780 But the administration doesn't seem to.

00:52:10.540 And I'm confused by why, as a candidate, Donald Trump bragged about, and I think he meant it.

00:52:17.800 I know he meant it.

00:52:19.840 Shutting down, bringing a peace between Russia and Ukraine immediately. 0.67

00:52:24.860 I can do it in one day.

00:52:25.680 He said he did seem motivated to do that.

00:52:28.820 He talked about it for years and then didn't do it.

00:52:35.000 Why?

00:52:36.440 Well, let me just start by reminding you that in his first term, when he came into office, he had two goals, two major foreign policy goals.

00:52:45.000 One was to end engagement with China and move to a policy of containment. 0.86

00:52:51.360 And he was very successful at that. 0.84

00:52:53.120 But he also wanted to improve relations with Russia, with Putin in particular, and do everything he could to peel the Chinese and the Russians away from each other and get the Russians on our side of the ledger. 0.92

00:53:07.860 That was his goal. 0.82

00:53:09.200 But he was undermined by Russiagate.

00:53:13.080 It's very important to understand that.

00:53:14.520 So when Trump leaves office in 2021, relations between Russia and the United States have hardly improved at all.

00:53:23.120 Now, when he comes into office in January of 2025, at that point in time, his goal is to do in the second term with regard to Russia what he did in the first term, okay?

00:53:36.840 So he starts out on the right foot.

00:53:39.700 And lots of people, me included, believe he has all the right instincts and that he's in a position where he can significantly improve relations with Russia, which would certainly be in our interest.

00:53:52.500 and maybe even end the Ukraine war, which would be in everybody's interest, including Ukraine's

00:53:57.920 interest. But the problem that he runs into is twofold. First of all, he's ham-fisted when it

00:54:05.700 comes to diplomacy. He's just not good at the art of the deal, at least at the diplomatic level.

00:54:12.360 At all.

00:54:13.000 Yeah, at all. There's just no question about that at this point in time. So he fails to shut down

00:54:18.340 the war. And of course, he's facing huge resistance from inside the deep state because there are lots

00:54:26.200 of people inside the deep state who don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians. And

00:54:32.360 there are lots of people on the outside as well in the general foreign policy establishment who

00:54:37.060 don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians. So that's point number one. But point

00:54:42.340 number two is he then gets deeply involved in the Middle East, especially with the Iran war.

00:54:48.340 And in a very important way, he's now so consumed with Iran that he has hardly any time to pay attention to what's going on in Ukraine.

00:54:57.440 And that allows all of these people in the deep state and in the foreign policy establishment who want to continue to have good relations with the Europeans and Ukrainians and antagonistic relations towards the Russians to dominate the diplomacy in Europe.

00:55:15.720 So for that reason, we're basically back to square one with regard to Ukraine.

00:55:22.320 And we have less influence in Europe than we have had in our lifetimes, I would say now. 0.58

00:55:28.320 It's harder to restrain the Europeans.

00:55:32.340 Things around the world are moving so fast right now, it's impossible to keep up with all of the changes. 0.96

00:55:38.000 But we do know that when those changes happen, markets change too.

00:55:42.940 And nothing changes faster than the price of precious metals, gold and silver.

00:55:47.740 It just shifts in an instant because it is a reaction to and against what's happening in the world.

00:55:53.680 So timing is essential.

00:55:55.020 If you're thinking about adding precious metals, and you definitely should, we do.

00:55:59.640 You need to know when prices are going to move and why they're moving.

00:56:03.400 And Battalion Metals makes that all really simple.

00:56:05.420 You can buy the dip when it happens.

00:56:07.620 So if you want real-time alerts sent directly to your inbox when gold and silver prices move, go to BattalionMetals.com slash alerts.

00:56:17.180 Markets move fast to stay ahead of them.

00:56:19.620 So it's BattalionMetals.com slash alerts.

00:56:28.200 It does seem like a kind of nihilism, though, to keep lobbing missiles and drones into mainland Russia.

00:56:36.400 because like no normal person thinks

00:56:39.760 that that's going to achieve the stated effect.

00:56:41.500 It can only result in something horrible happening.

00:56:45.600 Like I.

00:56:46.760 Let me make two points.

00:56:48.540 Yes.

00:56:49.360 One is if you think about the Russian bombing campaign

00:56:54.300 against Ukraine.

00:56:56.360 Yes.

00:56:57.260 Although the Russians have not killed many Ukrainians,

00:57:00.720 as I said before, it was not a punishment campaign. 0.64

00:57:02.960 They have done a huge amount of damage to infrastructure inside of Ukraine.

00:57:09.880 The Russian bombing campaign against Ukraine has been much more extensive than the Ukrainian bombing campaign against Russia.

00:57:19.760 But we have seen no evidence that the Ukrainians are willing to throw their hands up and surrender. 0.93

00:57:27.740 Smart. 0.94

00:57:28.220 Therefore, why would you expect the Russians to throw their hands up and surrender? 0.73

00:57:34.320 And in fact, given our previous discussion five minutes ago, what the Russians are talking about doing now in response is attacking into Eastern Europe.

00:57:43.760 It just seems like there is this misperception, and you see this in a lot of other theaters and countries, of the leadership of Russia.

00:57:51.980 So we tell ourselves that Putin is an absolute dictator, Chairman Mao style dictator who can do whatever he wants, who's got total autonomy, sovereignty in his own country, that there are no competing political forces.

00:58:03.400 He's not under pressure from anyone domestically.

00:58:06.140 He just like wakes up and decides what to do.

00:58:08.700 That's completely false. 0.64

00:58:10.580 And then two, that he's like the most scary Russian nationalist who's ever lived. 0.94

00:58:17.360 He hates the West.

00:58:18.400 He wants to rebuild the Soviet empire.

00:58:20.300 Like that's not true either.

00:58:21.220 He's pretty moderate by modern Russian standards, no?

00:58:24.960 He's very moderate.

00:58:26.120 Yeah, I know.

00:58:27.280 People who argue that we should get rid of him and we'll get, you know, a real peacenik in his place are living in a dream world.

00:58:36.140 As I said before, he's being criticized far and wide inside of Russia for not having waged the war vigorously enough.

00:58:44.540 In fact, going back to when the war started in 2022, I've argued on a number of occasions that if I were playing his hand, I would have mobilized the Russian military much more quickly than he did.

00:58:57.500 And I would have played hardball in ways that he has not played.

00:59:00.760 So he has been, I don't want to say he's been a pussycat, but the idea that he's been this ruthless leader on the same scale as someone like Adolf Hitler is a laughable argument. 0.70

00:59:11.740 But what's happened in the West is that we've created this caricature of him, and we've created this Russian threat that bears no resemblance to reality. 0.51

00:59:24.780 I mean, you see this when people talk about the danger of Russia conquering Eastern Europe.

00:59:32.220 In other words, a lot of people are saying we've got to stand up to the Russians now because they're on the verge of conquering all of Ukraine. 0.86

00:59:39.740 And once they're done with Ukraine, they're going to move into Eastern Europe.

00:59:42.920 And Putin's ultimate goal is to recreate the Soviet empire.

00:59:46.260 And, of course, he has the wherewithal to do that.

00:59:48.480 That's one set of arguments that you hear. 0.83

00:59:50.560 But then you hear the argument that the Ukrainians now have the Russians on the ropes.

00:59:55.540 The Russians are in deep trouble.

00:59:57.500 The Russian military is suffering enormous casualties. 0.99

01:00:00.600 They're being pushed back to Ukrainians by the Ukrainians.

01:00:03.980 These are two completely different sets of arguments that are at odds with each other. 0.99

01:00:08.680 And the question is, which one is true? And the argument that the Russians are on their back feet is wrong. The Russians are moving forward. They're steadily, but slowly, winning the war. But the idea that they're going to conquer all of Ukraine, not going to happen. The idea that they're going to conquer territory in Eastern Europe, not going to happen.

01:00:29.140 But people in the West make that argument. This is especially true in Europe because they want to create a Russian boogeyman so that the Ukrainians stay in the fight. We continue to support the Ukrainians and we go to great lengths to continue to wreck Russia.

01:00:46.340 There are lots of people, it's important to understand this, who want to wreck Russia. 1.00

01:00:51.920 They want to continue to do everything they can to wreck the Russian economy, more and more sanctions.

01:00:58.040 That's what we have to do. 0.98

01:01:00.520 And support the Ukrainians on the battlefield so that they can turn the tide. 0.86

01:01:06.680 And then support the attacks with drones and missiles against Mother Russia, 0.67

01:01:11.040 because that will affect the civilian population in ways that caused the population to rise up

01:01:17.600 against Putin. There's lots of people who still believe this, despite the fact that after four

01:01:22.540 plus years, it hasn't worked. And if anything, the Russians are going to win the war. 0.75

01:01:29.340 I still, after watching this all these years, I still don't fully understand the motive. Here 0.61

01:01:34.140 you have one of the most beautiful countries and cultures in the world with flaws, but compared to

01:01:40.000 what i mean russia is a beautiful place the beautiful culture a sense of itself and it's

01:01:44.440 a civilization not just a country why would you want to destroy it what what drives people i

01:01:51.120 understand why you'd be mad that putin moved into eastern ukraine fine but destroy russia

01:01:56.640 where does that come from well the united states during the unipolar moment uh and unipolar moment

01:02:04.880 runs from about 1992, immediately after the Soviet Union collapses, up until about 2017,

01:02:12.920 is by definition the only great power in the world. And we don't like the idea of being

01:02:19.480 challenged when we are the unipol. We think that it's our way or the highway. And you want to

01:02:25.700 remember that in 2000, this is in the middle of the unipolar moment, Putin takes over in Russia.

01:02:33.160 And Putin, over the course of the time from 2000 up to 2026, has stood up to the Americans.

01:02:42.100 He gave a famous speech at Munich in 2007, where he made it very clear to the West that

01:02:47.980 he was sick and tired of how the West was treating Russia.

01:02:53.120 And the fact is, the United States does not like anybody standing up to it, right?

01:02:57.800 You have to do it our way, right?

01:02:59.960 You have to be subservient, and Putin was not subservient.

01:03:03.980 Contrast him, Putin, with Boris Yeltsin, who ran Russia during the 1990s.

01:03:11.580 Yeltsin basically did what we told him to do.

01:03:14.920 We had him in our hip pocket.

01:03:16.780 That was not true with Putin.

01:03:18.140 So for that reason, we got increasingly angry with Putin as the unipolar moment wore on.

01:03:26.580 And then once Russia becomes a great power in roughly 2017, the United States is interested in knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, right? 0.79

01:03:40.240 We understand that they've become a great power, but we'd like to knock them out of the ranks. 0.89

01:03:45.400 And of course, you want to understand that the Russians, after 2017, when they're a great power, are resisting our efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO.

01:03:55.940 And this is just unacceptable to us. 0.75

01:03:58.860 So we begin to think of ways to undermine Russia, to knock Russia out of the ranks of 0.76

01:04:05.720 the great powers.

01:04:06.800 And if you fast forward to late 2021, early 2022, remember the war in Ukraine starts on

01:04:16.000 February 24th, 2022.

01:04:18.740 If you go back, let's say, to December 27, 2021, December 2021, and ramp forward to when the war actually starts, what you see, if you look carefully, is that Putin is going to great lengths to try to avoid a war.

01:04:35.460 He does not want a war.

01:04:36.740 Oh, I remember well, yes. 0.83

01:04:38.400 The United States makes no effort to work with the Russians to avoid a war. 0.88

01:04:45.860 It's really quite remarkable. 0.86

01:04:47.680 Well, and not just that, but provokes Russia by sending Kamala Harris to the Munich Security Conference and saying in public to Zelensky, we want you to join NATO on camera. 0.52

01:04:56.800 Absolutely. 0.78

01:04:57.460 This is right before.

01:04:58.680 Yes.

01:04:59.020 This is right before in February.

01:05:00.800 That's exactly right.

01:05:02.520 And then just think about this.

01:05:04.040 The war starts February 24th.

01:05:07.120 Shortly thereafter, I mean, a day or two later, Putin sends a message to Zelensky and says, let's start negotiating.

01:05:14.460 they first start negotiating in belarus and then they go to istanbul these are the famous istanbul

01:05:20.900 negotiations okay this is in march early april of 2022 almost immediately after the war starts

01:05:28.440 and it looks like the ukrainians and the russians may be able to cut a deal they did not cut the

01:05:36.000 deal but they're getting closer and closer things are working out very well what happens boris

01:05:41.940 Johnson, with support from the United States, of course, comes in and he tells the Ukrainians

01:05:48.220 to walk away from the negotiations. Now, the question you want to ask yourself is why did

01:05:54.200 this happen? Yes, I wanted to ask him that, but he won't talk to me. The reason it happened is

01:06:00.560 that we thought that economic sanctions would bring the Russians to their knees and that the

01:06:08.620 Ukrainians who we had armed and trained, we meaning the West, had armed and trained between

01:06:15.840 2014, when the crisis first broke out, and 2022, when the war broke out, the actual war. In that

01:06:24.340 eight-year period, we had armed, we meaning the West, had armed and trained the Ukrainians,

01:06:29.580 and they were a quite formidable fighting force, as the Russians found out over the course of 2022.

01:06:35.160 We believed that the Ukrainian army on the battlefield, coupled with economic sanctions, would do the Russians in.

01:06:43.420 And that's why we told Zelensky to walk away from the negotiations in Istanbul.

01:06:49.540 And you want to also remember that late in the fall of that year, 2022, General Milley, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, understood that the Ukrainians by that point in time had reached the high water mark.

01:07:06.420 Remember, the Ukrainians had launched two successful offensives against the Russians in 2022, one in Kharkiv, one in Kherson. And Milley said, this is wonderful, but it's time to cut a deal now, because as time goes by, the balance of power will shift against Ukraine and in favor of the Russians.

01:07:29.700 because at that point, Putin was beginning to mobilize the Russian army in a serious way.

01:07:35.800 I think he called up 300,000 troops in September of 2022. But anyway, what happened was that Milley

01:07:44.400 was told to cease and desist from making that argument. They put Milley in the back closet,

01:07:49.860 said, no more talk about cutting a deal now because we think we've got the Russians on the

01:07:57.060 And you remember, it's in early June, I think it was June 4th of 2023. Remember, 2022 is when the war starts. In June of 2023, that's when the Ukrainians launched that massive offensive where they think they're going to affect the blitzkrieg and bring the Russian military to its knees. 0.85

01:08:17.960 This just shows you that we thought the success that the Ukrainians were having on the battlefield, coupled with the sanctions, would allow us to defeat Russia and knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers and put an end to having to deal with Vladimir Putin, who wouldn't dance to our tune.

01:08:38.660 i mean i kind of get it conceptually and i have no question that you're describing the thinking

01:08:46.860 of the people who made these decisions but i think if you just ponder like the potential

01:08:51.620 consequences of their plan so you knock russia out of the ranks the great powers you displace

01:08:58.060 putin somehow what happens then this is the biggest country on earth it's diverse it's got

01:09:06.280 all kinds of ethnic groups and who get along sort of, but like it could break apart and it's got

01:09:10.720 the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Destabilizing Russia could be really dangerous 0.75

01:09:16.140 for everybody. Did that occur to them? No. How stupid are they? Incredibly.

01:09:24.060 Look, as I said to you before, you know, I've studied a lot of international relations over

01:09:29.360 time. And when you corner great powers, when you threaten their survival, you do not want to

01:09:34.980 underestimate how risky the policies will be that they are willing to pursue. Okay. And I think if

01:09:43.900 our policy had actually worked, if it looked like the Russians were going to be knocked out of the 0.74

01:09:51.060 ranks of the great powers, they would have then used nuclear weapons. Yes. Or if it did, if the 0.89

01:09:56.920 government collapsed, whatever that meant, and we succeeded in killing Putin, which I know we've

01:10:01.880 been trying to do on and off for a long time like what then what if there was a civil war

01:10:07.700 ethnic breakup of russia like how is that good for ever for the rest of the world it's terrible

01:10:14.320 for russia but what about the rest of us it's not good for us either chaos is not good is it 0.87

01:10:18.780 absolutely you're correct i mean we could have easily lived with the russians yes putin wanted

01:10:24.920 to have good relations with us.

01:10:26.260 He wanted to join NATO.

01:10:27.740 Yeah.

01:10:28.980 The idea that Putin was missing the Soviet Union

01:10:34.040 to the point that he wanted to recreate

01:10:36.880 the Soviet Union and the Soviet Empire in East Europe

01:10:41.620 bears no resemblance to what is in the historical record.

01:10:46.680 No, it's a child's explanation of it.

01:10:48.740 It's just crazy.

01:10:50.720 And by the way, just to go back to Trump,

01:10:52.480 I think Trump's instincts on both China and Russia, starting with his first term, and even in his second term, in the beginning, his instincts were correct in both cases. 0.87

01:11:03.560 It was time to abandon engagement, contain China. 0.92

01:11:06.640 And with regard to Russia, it was time to have good relations with Russia, to end the war in Ukraine. 0.74

01:11:12.320 This is in his second term because the war didn't take place in his first term.

01:11:15.720 So I think Trump's instincts were good.

01:11:17.520 But again, Trump's problem is that when it comes to diplomacy, he has the Midas touch in reverse.

01:11:25.820 And the end result is that he's made a hash of things with the Russians.

01:11:30.420 So what's the motive of European leaders, of Macron and Starmer and Mertz in Western Europe and then the various Eastern European leaders?

01:11:39.900 Like, why are they monomaniacally focused on Putin?

01:11:44.060 I don't know for sure.

01:11:46.120 It just seems to me that they have convinced themselves that Putin is the second coming of Adolf Hitler.

01:11:56.280 You know, you make these arguments enough times, you come to believe them yourself sometimes.

01:12:03.780 I don't know what they're thinking.

01:12:06.160 I mean, there's just no evidence to support this argument in terms of what Putin has said over time or what he's written over time.

01:12:14.000 Or if you just look at the power that's built into the Russian army, this army's had a difficult time capturing the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.

01:12:24.740 The idea that it's going to conquer all of Ukraine and roll into eastern Europe is not a serious argument.

01:12:31.360 And again, he's never said that he was interested in doing that.

01:12:35.020 This is not the second coming of the Wehrmacht.

01:12:37.240 But for some reason, the European elites have convinced themselves that this is the case, and it seems that they won't listen to common sense on this issue.

01:12:49.340 So the idea is that the largest country in the world by landmass with the most resources on earth wants to capture overcrowded, collapsing welfare states and do what with them?

01:13:03.580 It's so nuts.

01:13:05.100 What would the motive be? 0.90

01:13:06.220 Why would the Russians want any of these? 0.90

01:13:09.100 Maybe Poland, but even Poland. 0.87

01:13:11.160 Why would they want that?

01:13:11.920 Well, let me offer an alternative view as to why they wouldn't want it to the one that you just described.

01:13:20.660 First of all, the Russians controlled all of those countries in Eastern and Central Europe during the entire Cold War.

01:13:28.180 And it did not work out very well.

01:13:29.860 I know.

01:13:30.020 Right?

01:13:30.620 And they didn't enjoy it, actually.

01:13:32.380 Yeah.

01:13:32.720 The most powerful political ideology on the planet is nationalism.

01:13:37.260 Yes.

01:13:37.660 And nationalism is all about sovereignty and self-determination.

01:13:41.920 And whether you're Polish, Czech, Hungarian, German, you want to control your own destiny.

01:13:50.060 And the last thing you want is another country like the Soviet Union or now Russia invading your country.

01:13:56.740 And if you're Russia and you invade that country, what you're going to find is a significant amount of resistance. 0.53

01:14:04.640 And just think about the Soviet Union.

01:14:06.300 They had to put down a major insurrection in East Germany in 53.

01:14:10.080 They had to invade Hungary in 53.

01:14:12.700 They had to invade Czechoslovakia in 68.

01:14:15.500 Exactly.

01:14:15.720 They almost had to invade Poland three separate times.

01:14:19.060 Exactly. 0.95

01:14:19.220 Then they had to deal with the Albanians, the Yugoslavs, and the Romanians. 0.96

01:14:23.280 Totally. 1.00

01:14:24.040 Right?

01:14:24.920 Been there, done that, did not work out very well.

01:14:26.800 So you fought in the, you went to West Point, you served as an army officer in the Cold War.

01:14:31.020 Do you think, having studied it, that Russia got a lot out of its empire? 0.57

01:14:38.560 Like, was it worth it for them, the Soviet Empire, the Warsaw Pact, the Eastern Bloc, 0.87

01:14:44.100 was that worth having? 0.90

01:14:45.320 Great question.

01:14:46.220 Bill, let me just say, I was actually an Air Force officer.

01:14:49.120 I was an enlisted man in the Army before I went to West Point, but then I was an Air

01:14:53.720 Force officer.

01:14:54.200 Really?

01:14:54.700 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:56.040 But when you went to—

01:14:57.040 I went to West Point.

01:14:59.300 You want to remember that before 1947, that was when the National Security Act created

01:15:06.300 created the Air Force Academy and created an independent Air Force, that the Air Force was

01:15:14.460 actually the Army Air Corps. So West Point provided officers to the Army and to the Air Force. And

01:15:21.140 when I graduated from West Point in 1970, there were a set of limited conditions under which you

01:15:25.860 could go into the Air Force. And I qualified, so I was in the Air Force rather than the Army.

01:15:31.100 The vast majority of my classmates went into the Army, but I went into the Air Force.

01:15:36.600 But I had been in the Army as an enlisted man before I went to West Point.

01:15:41.240 So I actually, including my West Point time, spent 10 years in the military.

01:15:46.560 But to go back to your excellent question about the Soviet Union and its experience in Eastern Europe,

01:15:53.340 The reason that the Soviet Union ended up in Eastern Europe is because on June 22nd, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa for the express purpose of destroying the Soviet Union. 0.69

01:16:11.720 Thankfully, the Soviets won the war. 0.55

01:16:14.000 But to win the war, they had to drive across Eastern and Central Europe into Germany. 0.92

01:16:22.800 You remember, it was the Red Army that went into Berlin.

01:16:27.320 April of 45.

01:16:28.480 Exactly. 0.77

01:16:29.600 And that's when Hitler, of course, committed suicide.

01:16:31.940 And that war ended on May 8th, 1945. 0.79

01:16:35.800 And the Soviets ended up, needless to say, occupying virtually all of Eastern Europe.

01:16:45.080 But what happens after that is that the Cold War breaks out. 0.61

01:16:49.800 And you have the United States on the other side of what we came to call the Iron Curtain, called the intra-German border, and the Soviet Union on the other side. 0.65

01:17:03.360 And I think that there were two reasons that the Soviets had a vested interest and we had a vested interest in keeping that status quo. 0.77

01:17:13.180 One is we didn't trust each other and we were afraid if we got out, the Soviets would conquer more territory. 0.68

01:17:19.080 And they were afraid that if they got out, we would move eastward. 0.76

01:17:23.060 That was one reason. 0.88

01:17:24.480 But the other reason that we both stayed was the German problem.

01:17:28.020 You want to remember that World War I and World War II were both all about Germany.

01:17:34.900 Very important to understand that.

01:17:36.660 We forgot that in the Cold War because the Soviets defeated Germany.

01:17:40.760 Nevertheless, what happens after 1945 is that Germany is cut in half.

01:17:47.540 The Soviets take one side and we take the other side. 0.76

01:17:51.600 And most people don't talk about this in polite company, but we solved the German problem. 0.92

01:17:57.400 We cut the country into two parts. 0.94

01:18:00.380 They occupied the Soviets one half. 0.99

01:18:02.380 We occupied the other half. 0.60

01:18:04.480 And although the Cold War was somewhat dangerous,

01:18:08.080 it was altogether pretty peaceful as these things go.

01:18:12.660 I mean, we did have the Cuban Missile Crisis

01:18:14.260 and a handful of crises over Berlin.

01:18:16.360 So I don't want to overstate the case.

01:18:18.380 But we never came close to having a serious war

01:18:21.200 in the heart of Europe. 0.90

01:18:22.540 And we solved the German problem. 0.92

01:18:24.440 But that's why the Soviets stayed. But what eventually happens is two things. And this leads to the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. Number one, the Soviet economy begins to run aground. 0.72

01:18:42.380 It really starts in the mid-1960s, and it accelerates in the early 1980s.

01:18:49.580 And, of course, Gorbachev comes along, and the rest is history.

01:18:53.740 But it's fundamental flaws in the Soviet economy that eventually brings the Soviet Union down.

01:19:01.100 But the second thing that happens, getting back to what we were talking about before,

01:19:04.980 is that the Soviets understand that occupying Eastern Europe and Central Europe is incredibly expensive.

01:19:11.920 Yes.

01:19:12.280 Right.

01:19:12.740 And the people don't want us there.

01:19:14.540 Right.

01:19:15.060 And it's time to go home.

01:19:17.240 And once you go home, a good idea would be to stay out.

01:19:21.060 Yes.

01:19:21.520 So it wasn't a net benefit.

01:19:22.980 It's not like they stripped it of its resources and got rich doing it.

01:19:26.260 Well, they did strip a lot of resources out of Germany early in the coal war.

01:19:30.360 For sure.

01:19:31.040 But afterwards, no, it was not.

01:19:33.100 Industrial resources.

01:19:34.060 But I mean, they weren't there for the coal.

01:19:36.580 No, no, no.

01:19:37.480 It was not economically a net benefit.

01:19:39.460 That's what I'm saying, right?

01:19:40.520 It's not a win.

01:19:41.540 Yeah, yeah. By the way, if you just think about the collapse of the great empires, you know, we read about the great empires like the British Empire, the Belgian Empire, the French Empire, the Dutch Empire, and so forth and so on. They've all gone away, okay? And the question you want to ask yourself is why did they all go away?

01:19:59.680 Yes.

01:20:00.260 There are two reasons that are directly related to what we're talking about.

01:20:04.300 Number one is nationalism.

01:20:07.100 These people in places like India and the Congo, you name it.

01:20:11.760 Yes. 0.75

01:20:12.060 And this was true of the United States back in the day.

01:20:15.000 Of course.

01:20:15.240 Right?

01:20:16.380 1776.

01:20:17.480 Did not want the British or the French or the Portuguese telling them how their politics should be run.

01:20:26.560 They wanted to be independent nation states.

01:20:30.860 What I'm telling you is that nationalism, this incredibly powerful force, was the number one reason for bringing down these empires.

01:20:41.200 The second reason was that the economic benefits, once the Industrial Revolution comes, melt away, right?

01:20:50.320 Before the Industrial Revolution, we're in a world where commerce is of great importance.

01:20:55.780 You can exploit these colonies and they make a lot of sense economically.

01:21:00.880 But by the 20th century, by the time the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, these empires are basically an albatross around your neck.

01:21:11.480 India is an albatross around Britain's neck, in my opinion.

01:21:15.660 And you'll notice, just going to who the powerful countries are in the 20th century, Germany, the United States, and Russia slash the Soviet Union, the only one that has an empire is Germany. 0.91

01:21:30.680 And it's a tiny empire that it acquires in Africa in the late 1800s.

01:21:36.480 Yeah, tiny, tiny. Namibia. 0.82

01:21:38.440 Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're not a major imperial power.

01:21:41.420 So the three behemoths on the planet, Soviet Union, United States, and Germany, do not have empires.

01:21:49.180 Britain, France, Belgium, they have empires.

01:21:53.960 And what good are those empires?

01:21:56.820 The economic benefits are small.

01:22:00.620 No, it's really the aesthetic benefits that they were after.

01:22:03.300 Like they just fall in love.

01:22:04.360 They're sentimental about their empires.

01:22:06.040 Absolutely.

01:22:07.160 But they're not justified by the math.

01:22:08.840 Yeah, they're not justified by the math.

01:22:10.780 And then go back to the nationalism part of the story, right?

01:22:14.680 You know, when you occupy these places, you run into resistance.

01:22:19.160 Yeah.

01:22:19.500 Vietnam, French experience in Vietnam, American experience in Vietnam.

01:22:23.880 Algeria.

01:22:24.380 Afghanistan, Algeria. 0.89

01:22:26.340 Right. 1.00

01:22:26.780 That's exactly what you run into.

01:22:29.060 You know, I've, in 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, everybody said, this is the end of the world.

01:22:37.760 The Soviets are on the march.

01:22:39.480 We're in deep trouble. 0.86

01:22:40.780 uh, and, uh, we have to do something to counter the Soviets. I said at the time that this is 0.94

01:22:47.840 dead wrong. This is wonderful news for us. If you're arms racing with the Soviets, if you're

01:22:53.420 engaged in a security competition with the Soviets, what you want them to do is jump into a place like 0.94

01:22:59.020 Afghanistan, just like they should have been happy that we went into Vietnam, right? You're jumping 0.95

01:23:04.700 into a quagmire. You said that out loud in 79? I said it out loud, but there was no, uh,

01:23:10.340 internet at the time there was no tucker so you have a long history of countercultural

01:23:15.980 pronouncements huh well how did people respond when you said because i mean even i remember i

01:23:20.120 was 10 years old i remember that vividly it was just it was hysteria over the invasion of afghanistan

01:23:26.000 yeah yeah no you should be in fact you want to know something just to go to putin if you really

01:23:33.120 want to do putin in you should welcome in him into the western part of ukraine totally where

01:23:39.780 there are all those ethnic Ukrainians who will put up a huge amount of resistance, 1.00

01:23:45.200 cause the Russians untold trouble, right? 1.00

01:23:48.300 Let's completely agree. 0.96

01:23:49.580 You know, I often say the two principal obstacles to aggression today are, number one, nuclear 0.79

01:24:00.460 weapons, and number two, nationalism.

01:24:04.240 Yes.

01:24:04.560 If you really think about it, invading other countries and trying to, you know, do social engineering, it's going to get you into a lot of trouble.

01:24:13.480 I know. 0.87

01:24:14.180 And for all the hate, much of it so well-deserved toward Israel now, part of me always feels sorry for Israel because I don't think they're brilliant at all. 0.78

01:24:24.000 I don't think they're even very clever because they're ignoring the lessons that you're just describing now, which don't ever change. 0.54

01:24:29.940 which is over hubris leads to destruction overreach territorial overreach always weakens you 0.94

01:24:36.560 you can hold gaza for 65 years or whatever it's not even not even 60 years actually

01:24:42.260 and uh the west bank and all that stuff but like in the end lebanon israel is 0.99

01:24:49.580 kind of ensuring its own destruction by its behavior right now and i feel sorry for them 0.51

01:24:54.660 they don't seem to know that. Well, they have, let me make two points on this. The Israelis have

01:25:02.100 no sense of the limits of power. Yes, exactly. And we have a lot of that. Oh, I know we do. 0.99

01:25:07.840 You know, right? But the Israelis have no sense of the limits of military power. They think you

01:25:15.720 can just pound people into submission. And you can do that sometimes, but most of the time you

01:25:20.700 can't. The second point I would make to you is, if you think about the whole Zionist enterprise, 0.85

01:25:27.420 you go back to 1900 and ramp forward to the present, it's an amazing accomplishment 0.89

01:25:36.020 that small numbers of European Jews coming out of Europe could go to the Middle East 0.85

01:25:47.200 and could carve out a state, a Jewish state, in a sea of Arabs or Palestinians. 0.97

01:25:58.000 It's really quite remarkable. 0.99

01:25:59.320 Reviving a dead language along the way.

01:26:01.320 The whole thing is amazing.

01:26:02.340 I totally agree.

01:26:03.200 Yeah. But in the early years, certainly up until 1967, the Israelis have a really powerful sense of the limits of what they could accomplish.

01:26:19.440 And they are very careful, right?

01:26:23.140 They don't have the United States as a great power ally at the time.

01:26:28.020 There's no Israel lobby of any consequence, certainly before 1948.

01:26:34.260 And they're in a sea of hostile neighbors.

01:26:38.900 So they have to be very cautious.

01:26:42.320 They have to be tactically and strategically smart.

01:26:45.880 But what happens to Israel over time is not only do the guardrails come off, or maybe put it in slightly different language, not only do the checks come off, but they develop this incredibly powerful military, right, because of help from the United States.

01:27:08.880 And, of course, this is where the Israel lobby comes in, right? 0.69

01:27:12.400 But they become a Goliath. 0.91

01:27:15.460 They look like a David to begin with, if you think about it.

01:27:19.900 But over time, that David turns into Goliath.

01:27:25.060 And there are no guardrails, right?

01:27:28.160 The United States will not only sanction anything they do,

01:27:34.160 It will support what they do with material resources and protect them diplomatically.

01:27:41.680 Just think about the genocide in Gaza.

01:27:44.120 I mean, here we have a people that was a victim of one of the greatest genocides in recorded history not long ago, committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

01:27:57.840 And the United States is complicitous in this genocide, both under the Biden administration

01:28:03.680 and under the Trump administration.

01:28:05.760 This is truly remarkable.

01:28:08.240 And it just goes to show you that Israel can do almost anything, and we protect them, and

01:28:14.620 we provide them with huge amounts of weaponry. 0.79

01:28:19.240 And this has not worked to Israel's advantage.

01:28:24.120 And in a very important way, the lobby, which is so essential for making this relationship work the way it does, is undermining Israel. 0.91

01:28:36.760 All these people like Bill Ackman, who think that they're doing wonderful things for Israel, that they're protecting Israel, are living in a fool's paradise.

01:28:45.620 The best thing that could happen to Israel is if Donald Trump could actually get tough with them, read them the riot act. 0.82

01:28:52.220 And that was true of many previous presidents.

01:28:55.760 People like Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, these people were not anti-Semites.

01:29:00.960 They actually were philo-Semites of the first order, and they cared about Israel's security. 0.69

01:29:06.560 They just thought that Israel was going about providing for its own security in the most foolish ways, and they wanted to crack down on the Israelis. 0.56

01:29:15.140 But they couldn't do that because the lobby made it impossible to do.

01:29:19.620 And the end result is that Israel is in a deep hole.

01:29:24.420 And what is it doing? 0.76

01:29:25.520 Digging deeper.

01:29:27.020 Why?

01:29:27.540 Because it can get away with it and because it believes that there's got to be some magic military formula that we can find to win against Hezbollah, to win against Hamas, to win against Iran, and to have absolute security.

01:29:44.140 None of these people are parents?

01:29:45.500 because a parent would know

01:29:47.440 like buying your children vodka,

01:29:49.320 probably not a good long-term strategy

01:29:52.380 for their health and happiness.

01:29:55.360 That's basically what we've done for Israel 0.63

01:29:57.060 just to bed at all their worst impulses, 0.79

01:29:59.080 backstop them when they get into trouble,

01:30:00.760 made excuses when they get arrested

01:30:03.100 or hauled into the principal's office, 0.98

01:30:04.720 just acted like a hysterical single mom. 0.54

01:30:06.780 My baby didn't do it. 0.98

01:30:08.080 You know what I mean?

01:30:09.280 And like the kid just becomes increasingly unruly

01:30:11.760 and self-destructive.

01:30:12.680 Like that's exactly what we're watching, I think.

01:30:15.500 I think, Tucker, what we're saying here, and this gets back to our conversation about how European leaders think about Putin as Hitler and they think about this great Russian threat.

01:30:25.900 And when we talk now about the Israelis, there are just a lot of people who are not thinking straight these days. 0.51

01:30:33.380 It's really quite remarkable. 1.00

01:30:34.940 What is that? I agree with you. What is that?

01:30:37.480 I don't know. I mean, it's a...

01:30:39.920 Have you seen anything like it in all the years you've been...

01:30:42.160 No, not at all. Not at all.

01:30:44.340 I mean, first of all, in the mainstream media during the Cold War, we had a much more vibrant and open-ended debate about foreign policy than we do now.

01:30:57.040 We have a big debate now, but it's sort of the alternative media platforms.

01:31:01.260 Yes.

01:31:01.880 Like your show, Judge Napolitano and all these other shows, on one side and the mainstream media on the other side.

01:31:09.740 But inside the mainstream media, it's truly amazing the extent to which people parrot this conventional wisdom and prevent voices that get heard on the alternative media from intruding into the mainstream.

01:31:23.900 It's such a narrow band.

01:31:25.200 It's not even a debate, really.

01:31:26.560 Yeah. And the thing is that most people in the United States, and I believe around the world for sure, understand that what they're hearing from the mainstream media and what they're hearing from their leaders makes no sense.

01:31:42.640 And this, of course, is why someone like Trump gets elected, right?

01:31:46.800 Because Trump says things that are counter to the conventional wisdom.

01:31:51.680 Forget what he actually does when he's in office.

01:31:53.580 He ran on a platform that there's something fundamentally wrong and the elites are bankrupt and people voted for him.

01:32:03.180 And of course, people who think that the establishment,

01:32:08.120 whether you're talking about, you know,

01:32:09.640 the foreign policymakers, people at think tanks,

01:32:12.640 or in the mainstream media,

01:32:14.760 if you think that they're bankrupt

01:32:16.460 in terms of how they're thinking about world politics,

01:32:19.340 you're correct.

01:32:21.100 But it's not even like a disagree.

01:32:23.380 I listen to some of the stuff,

01:32:24.380 and it's not even that I disagree.

01:32:25.740 It's that I'm just confused by how anyone could think that.

01:32:28.840 Just like basic observations about life

01:32:31.140 that no rational person would deny.

01:32:33.240 Don't push your enemies too far.

01:32:34.600 Don't corner people

01:32:35.480 because you cause them to have no option

01:32:38.460 but to do something crazy.

01:32:40.440 Give your opponent some wiggle room.

01:32:42.940 Try to reach a nonviolent accommodation

01:32:45.200 if possible.

01:32:47.760 If you love someone,

01:32:49.420 don't help them destroy themselves.

01:32:51.020 These are just obvious life lessons

01:32:53.720 that everyone knows.

01:32:55.600 And yet the people who run these countries

01:32:57.740 seem determined to ignore them.

01:32:59.480 So what is that?

01:33:01.700 I don't know. 0.94

01:33:02.740 And they're not all dumb. 0.98

01:33:03.800 I know some of them. 0.98

01:33:04.640 They're not dumb. 0.94

01:33:05.580 They're not low IQ. 0.99

01:33:07.760 It's like they're under a spell or delusion or I don't know.

01:33:10.760 I'm sincerely confused.

01:33:13.120 And it seems global or Western anyway.

01:33:15.680 It's Western.

01:33:17.100 No, there's no question about it.

01:33:18.480 It's Western.

01:33:19.320 It's Europe.

01:33:20.460 Yeah.

01:33:20.880 And it's the United States. 0.98

01:33:21.980 I don't believe it's true in East Asia. 0.88

01:33:23.680 I think if you go talk to the Japanese and the South Koreans.

01:33:27.200 Right. 0.95

01:33:27.740 They think basically like we do.

01:33:30.340 they won't say that. In the Middle East, same thing. Oh, sure, sure, sure. I simply don't

01:33:38.400 have a good explanation. But just to add to your point, we also just have a lot of evidence over

01:33:44.560 the past decade or so that thinking the way the elite has been thinking does not lead to a good

01:33:52.740 ending. It's not like we've had great successes. It's not like the Israelis have had great successes.

01:33:59.780 Exactly. You know what I mean? I kind of don't get it. 1.00

01:34:05.500 So, okay. So, just back to Ukraine. Sorry, I have too many questions. How do you think that, what's the most likely resolution to that and when, if you had to guess?

01:34:17.820 I think you're going to get a frozen conflict. And what's going to happen here is that the Russians are almost certainly going to end up conquering the four oblasts that they have now annexed. They fully control one of those oblasts, Luhansk. 0.79

01:34:35.640 The one that gets the most attention in the media today, Dohansk, they control 85% of that, Donetsk, and they control about 75% of Zaporozhia and about 75% of Kherson. 0.88

01:34:55.520 I think they will continue the war until they fully control all the territory in those four oblasts, which, again, they've annexed along with Crimea. 0.88

01:35:05.960 I would not be surprised if they actually end up taking more territory. 0.94

01:35:11.660 I wouldn't be surprised if they take Odessa and Kharkiv as well.

01:35:16.600 But that remains to be seen.

01:35:18.500 I think it's quite clear that their progress on the battlefield has been relatively slow, and it's in large part not because the Ukrainian ground forces are formidable troops, but because of drones.

01:35:34.640 I think drones have made it very difficult for either side to move.

01:35:37.980 But I think the Russians will end up conquering a huge slice of eastern Ukraine, and at some point, the Ukrainians and the Russians will stop firing at each other. 0.51

01:35:50.160 There will be an armistice.

01:35:51.500 This will be the frozen conflict. 0.89

01:35:54.100 Ukraine will be a dysfunctional rump state, which it already is, and it will not join NATO. 0.72

01:36:01.960 So the Russians will have achieved their major objective of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.

01:36:09.980 But the problem is, Tucker, that you end up with a frozen conflict.

01:36:14.380 And the Ukrainians will never accept the fact that Russia has annexed this territory.

01:36:20.640 They will not see it as Russian territory.

01:36:23.880 They will believe that this is sacred Ukrainian territory that has been illegally taken away from them.

01:36:31.040 and that they need to get back.

01:36:33.780 So what this tells you is you will have poisonous relations

01:36:37.880 between Russia on one hand and Ukraine on the other. 0.87

01:36:43.060 And given that the Ukrainians are joined at the hip with the Europeans, 0.73

01:36:47.120 this will mean that you are likely to have poisonous relations 0.71

01:36:50.740 between Russia and Ukraine and the Europeans for the foreseeable future.

01:36:57.560 this is a disastrous situation because it's easy to imagine how that frozen conflict turns into a

01:37:06.960 hot conflict once again i'm not saying that's likely but there's one other very important

01:37:12.860 dimension to this that we don't want to lose sight of and that is that superimposed on the

01:37:18.480 Ukraine-Russia conflict are six other potential flashpoints. One is Belarus.

01:37:27.980 Two is Kaliningrad. Three is the Baltic Sea. Four is the melting Arctic. Five is Moldova.

01:37:37.020 And six is the Black Sea. These are all potential flashpoints where you could get conflict

01:37:44.260 between Russia on one side

01:37:46.980 and the Europeans on the other side

01:37:50.080 or the Ukrainians on the other side. 0.78

01:37:53.300 So Eastern Europe 1.00

01:37:55.240 is going to be a very dangerous place

01:37:58.500 for the foreseeable future.

01:38:01.740 The amount of armaments moved in to that region

01:38:04.680 by the rest of the world

01:38:05.720 is just beyond comprehension too.

01:38:08.300 So it's incredibly well armed. 0.99

01:38:10.980 People are still using Albania,

01:38:12.640 you know, Enver Hoxha's weapons stockpiles to fight wars around the world.

01:38:16.200 So, like, when you move a lot of weapons into a region,

01:38:19.760 the tail on that is very long.

01:38:22.660 Absolutely. 1.00

01:38:23.600 And the Ukrainians will go to great lengths over time 0.89

01:38:26.820 to get more and more weaponry.

01:38:28.600 I mean, you have to understand that from Ukraine's point of view, 0.66

01:38:34.180 Russia is an existential threat.

01:38:36.100 You and I have paid a lot of attention in the previous conversation 0.92

01:38:39.000 to the fact that from Russia's point of view, 0.73

01:38:41.380 what's happening in Ukraine is an existential threat, which it certainly is. But if you're a 0.65

01:38:46.920 Ukrainian leader and you see what's just happened and the Russians are closer than ever to you and 0.96

01:38:52.020 they've taken territory of yours that you want back, you're going to see the Russians as an 0.64

01:38:57.340 existential threat. And the Ukrainians will therefore go to great lengths to do everything 0.99

01:39:01.840 they can to work with the Europeans and hopefully from their point of view with the United States

01:39:07.060 to solidify their position,

01:39:09.300 to get armaments to protect themselves,

01:39:11.800 which you can just marry

01:39:12.720 to the point you were making.

01:39:14.580 No, that's right.

01:39:15.380 And in all of Eastern Europe,

01:39:17.100 if you're the Romanians,

01:39:19.040 the Hungarians, the Poles, 1.00

01:39:21.360 I mean, they're all completely

01:39:22.320 afraid of the Russians,

01:39:23.120 and I get it. 1.00

01:39:24.240 Take this a step further.

01:39:25.540 What about nuclear weapons, right?

01:39:28.360 As we were saying before,

01:39:29.980 this conflict has done

01:39:31.600 enormous damage to NATO.

01:39:34.220 And the American military footprint

01:39:36.780 in Europe is shrinking, and one could argue that we're going to have remarkably few

01:39:43.000 troops in Europe in the foreseeable future, okay? Who knows for sure how that will play out,

01:39:50.000 but the importance of pivoting to Asia, the problems that we have in the Middle East, 0.97

01:39:54.100 Europe is really number three on the list, and getting out of there will be a high priority,

01:39:59.960 or getting large numbers of troops out of there will be a high priority,

01:40:02.660 shifting the burden to the Europeans.

01:40:05.860 But the problem is the Germans don't have nuclear weapons.

01:40:09.720 The Poles don't have nuclear weapons.

01:40:12.180 And if you believe the Russians are 10 feet tall,

01:40:15.320 and of course the Poles, you know, 1.00

01:40:18.160 it's in their mother's milk to believe

01:40:21.480 that the Russians are 10 feet tall. 0.86

01:40:23.260 And they're excitable.

01:40:24.680 Yes. 0.97

01:40:25.920 And the incentives for Poland to get nuclear weapons 0.86

01:40:29.160 are very great. 0.91

01:40:29.940 Oh, for sure.

01:40:30.680 Oh, they'll get nuclear weapons, don't you think?

01:40:32.980 I don't know. 1.00

01:40:34.020 If Pakistan has some Poland, Poland's going to get them. 0.99

01:40:37.000 Poland, the industrial power of Europe now? 1.00

01:40:38.840 Yeah, they're going to have nuclear weapons, I would think. 1.00

01:40:40.940 And the Germans, right? 0.99

01:40:42.220 Yeah. 0.97

01:40:42.500 They're going to have an incentive to get nuclear weapons, right? 0.59

01:40:46.400 And then the question you have to ask yourself is if you're the Russians and you're watching the Germans.

01:40:51.460 Remember, these are the Germans, World War I, World War II.

01:40:55.900 You're watching the Germans get nuclear weapons.

01:40:59.100 How do you think about that? 0.85

01:41:00.480 And if you see the Poles getting nuclear weapons, how do you think about that, right? 0.95

01:41:06.740 So the potential for danger here is just not to be underestimated. 0.80

01:41:12.200 I mean, we were talking before about the Sergei Karaganov scenario where the Russians use nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe because the Ukrainians are attacking Mother Russia with drones and missiles. 0.71

01:41:25.700 Here we're talking about a situation where Poland and Germany might go down the nuclear road 0.65

01:41:32.060 and asking ourselves the question, what would be the Russian reaction?

01:41:39.060 Before I ask you about what's happening in Iran, a mystery that I'd love to hear explained.

01:41:45.840 Why is it that the very same people who pushed Donald Trump to war, regime change war against Iran,

01:41:52.120 are literally the same people who pushed him

01:41:54.600 to continue the regime change war against Russia,

01:41:57.960 the war against Putin?

01:41:59.520 Well, I think there are two reasons. 0.91

01:42:01.620 Number one is that the influence of Israel

01:42:07.940 on the American foreign policy establishment 0.90

01:42:10.160 cannot be underestimated,

01:42:12.840 in large part because of the lobby.

01:42:15.880 And Israel and the lobby have a deep-seated interest

01:42:19.980 in making sure that the United States

01:42:22.640 is militarily involved all over the world

01:42:26.980 because they want an American military

01:42:31.640 that's at the ready if Israel gets into trouble.

01:42:38.240 So whenever you talk about restraint,

01:42:40.740 like the Quincy Institute in Washington

01:42:42.680 talks about restraint,

01:42:44.480 this raises the hackles of the lobby.

01:42:48.460 You notice there was this big... 0.66

01:42:49.640 I think is America's on the verge of being invaded, which it's not, but because Israel might need the fire department to show up in an emergency and we've got to pay for that? 0.72

01:42:59.280 Yes, you want a big fire department that is fighting wars and is honed to win those wars. 0.97

01:43:08.100 And this is in Israel's interest. 0.75

01:43:11.520 I'll show you a good piece of evidence that supports this point. 0.82

01:43:15.100 There's a recent article in the New York Times about Israeli intelligence going into overdrive

01:43:22.640 and tracking the activities of particular individuals.

01:43:27.940 And in the New York Times article—

01:43:29.140 In the United States.

01:43:29.740 In the United States, yes.

01:43:31.280 And in the New York Times article, it was pointed out that the two people who apparently

01:43:36.480 have attracted the most attention are Steve Witkoff, because they want to know what he's

01:43:41.180 up to, and Elbridge Colby.

01:43:43.380 And since Elbridge Colby works mainly on China issues, the Times speculated on why Israel would be so interested in keeping a careful eye on Elbridge Colby.

01:43:57.140 And the Times actually said at the end of the piece, it's probably because he's a restrainer, right?

01:44:05.100 He's interested in a restrained foreign policy.

01:44:08.660 Colby does not want to be fighting wars everywhere.

01:44:12.280 He once told me that he was opposed to the Iraq war back in 2003.

01:44:16.660 He wants to concentrate on containing China, but he's not interested in fighting in Ukraine. 0.85

01:44:21.940 He's a restrainer.

01:44:23.560 And, of course, the Israelis do not like restrainers.

01:44:27.140 They do not like the Quincy Institute, right? 0.76

01:44:29.960 So they're allowed to just spy on American citizens, but then continue to receive our tax dollars in order to fund spying on us?

01:44:36.440 Well, the answer is yes to that, or at least it's been yes to that in the past.

01:44:40.760 But in answer to your question, the first reason here that our engagement in Ukraine is pushed by the same people who are pushing the Iran war is because of Israel and the Israel lobby and the influence that the lobby and Israel have and seeing the United States involved in places like Ukraine. 0.89

01:45:07.500 The second reason is you have lots of Americans, Jews and non-Jews, who have roots in Ukraine, and those people believe strongly that Ukraine should be a sovereign state and that the Russians are the bad guys, and they believe that we should support the Ukrainians' hook, line, and sinker.

01:45:31.180 And the journalist, Steve Kinzer, has written a book on this that I believe is coming out later this year that explains this phenomenon in great detail.

01:45:42.120 Steve, in his new book, shows how many Americans inside of the foreign policy establishment who have roots, family roots, in Eastern Europe or in Ukraine or in Russia are deeply committed to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, which they see as the bad guy.

01:46:07.260 yeah it was right around 1905 that there were quite a few loud voices in america saying let's

01:46:13.140 not have mass immigration from eastern europe because it's going to cause us massive problems

01:46:16.320 down the line when they were dismissed as crazy just want to say that out loud um well anytime

01:46:21.760 you have immigration you run into the problem i was recently in miami florida and uh it's quite

01:46:28.340 clear that one of the principal reasons that we now have our gun sites on cuba which i think is 0.84

01:46:33.020 ridiculous insane is he's because of the cuban-american community which wields significant

01:46:40.000 influence inside the united states much like the israel lobby yeah i mean i i wouldn't i've spent 0.86

01:46:47.320 a lot of time i mean i lived in washington most of my life spent a lot of time at the white house

01:46:50.720 and in congress i never once lobbied for swedish interests it just never occurred to me though my

01:46:54.840 name is carlson i have blue eyes but uh yeah i didn't i just i felt like that would be wrong 0.78

01:47:01.040 do you know what i mean it's disgusting come here and then lobby on behalf of a foreign country

01:47:06.640 whatever that country is it's disgusting i agree completely uh i'm i'm against dual citizenship 0.73

01:47:12.800 of course i think if you come to the united states you become an american you should have

01:47:17.620 american last name have you ever lobbied on behalf of germany no i i don't consider myself german

01:47:23.660 american or irish american because i'm also partly irish american i consider myself american i do

01:47:29.160 too yeah i think when you come to the united states there's and you become a citizen there's

01:47:33.740 a social contract involved and that social contract involves becoming an american and uh becoming an

01:47:41.100 american first year by definition uh otherwise don't come to the united states or you know get

01:47:47.860 a temporary visa which is fine but if you become an american i believe that uh you should not be

01:47:54.140 Lobbying on the part of other countries, whether it's for Cuba or China or India or Israel.

01:48:06.180 Yeah.

01:48:07.060 And I think it's within bounds to say that.

01:48:09.640 As an American, I think I have a right to say that.

01:48:11.560 And I say that, by the way, as somebody who's been a big proponent of immigration over time.

01:48:17.120 I'm glad they let all those Russian Jews into the United States or East European Jews into the United States.

01:48:22.740 I think immigration is what made the United States great. If you go back and read about what happened in this country, you know, after we got our independence in 1783, and certainly in the 19th and early 20th century, all the immigration is what turned us into the superpower that we are today.

01:48:46.180 Yeah, I don't doubt it. 0.74

01:48:47.180 Immigration is a good thing, but it has to be done in a very careful way. 1.00

01:48:50.060 Well, sex is a good thing. Eating is a good thing. But, you know, you keep them within certain boundaries so they remain good things. And if you're going to have immigration, particularly at scale, you have to have rules. And the number one rule has to be transfer your allegiance from the country of origin to the country you live in now. That's just got to be rule one. And if you can't hold to that rule, you can't have immigration, it seems to me. Right? 1.00

01:49:13.740 I think that illegal immigration is an absolutely terrible thing, and I think it's damaged many Americans' views towards immigration in general. 1.00

01:49:23.800 Yeah, I agree. Me too. 1.00

01:49:24.900 Number one. And number two, although I'm in favor of immigration, I do think if you come to the United States, you become an American, and only an American. 0.99

01:49:33.340 You give up, you know, your German citizenship or your Russian citizenship or whatever.

01:49:39.960 What about working as a guard at a prison camp in Israel on a volunteer basis like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic did as an American?

01:49:47.600 Is it okay if you're a leading American foreign policy thinker to volunteer as a prison camp guard in a foreign country?

01:49:58.240 Or is that there's something kind of maybe disloyal about that?

01:50:01.000 Well, this is a particularly egregious situation.

01:50:04.180 Sir, I can't help bring that up. 0.78

01:50:05.980 Here's a guy who is fully in favor of using the American military to fight wars on Israel's behalf.

01:50:14.160 But when it came time for him to serve in the military, he served in the Israeli military, not the American military.

01:50:22.120 As a prison camp guard.

01:50:24.400 Something deeply wrong about him. 0.92

01:50:26.360 It's sick. 0.56

01:50:27.120 Yeah. 0.99

01:50:27.300 And, of course, he is the editor of one of the most influential magazines in the United States, where he's in a position where he can control the content of that magazine in ways that support Israel.

01:50:41.120 And you can rest assured that anybody who criticizes Israel in a meaningful way is not going to appear on the pages of The Atlantic.

01:50:49.440 How have you been treated in The Atlantic?

01:50:51.280 well there is the period before uh jeffrey goldberg and since jeffrey goldberg i certainly

01:51:02.400 have not appeared in the pages of the atlantic since jeffrey goldberg but uh beforehand you

01:51:08.260 want to remember as i think you do that uh our lobby piece the piece that steve walton i wrote

01:51:14.100 on the israel lobby which appeared in 2006 in the london review of books was originally supposed

01:51:19.560 to appear in the Atlantic Monthly,

01:51:22.320 but it did not

01:51:23.340 because the Atlantic got cold feet

01:51:26.160 and refused to publish it.

01:51:29.220 But they did run a very nice piece on me

01:51:31.880 by Bob Kaplan after that experience.

01:51:35.880 So I can't say that I've always been treated badly by the law.

01:51:39.020 Bob Kaplan was a very reasonable guy

01:51:40.480 at one point, actually, I thought.

01:51:43.020 Of course, the previous editor,

01:51:46.460 Michael Kelly,

01:51:47.580 who I have no question would have run that piece

01:51:49.440 because he was brave and honest, was killed covering the Iraq war.

01:51:53.820 Yes, I remember. 0.96

01:51:54.880 Waged on behalf of Israel.

01:51:56.040 So it all kind of comes together.

01:51:57.900 But Jeff Goldberg is another one of those people who thinks he's doing good for Israel.

01:52:02.020 Yeah.

01:52:02.280 He thinks that behaving the way he does in terms of supporting Israel at every turn

01:52:08.060 and suppressing criticism of Israel as best he can is in Israel's interest.

01:52:12.820 I just want to make it clear.

01:52:13.740 I think he's fundamentally wrong.

01:52:15.180 And I think it's people like him and the Bill Ackmans of the world who are doing enormous damage to Israel.

01:52:20.760 Again, you're a parent.

01:52:22.200 If you treated your children, whom you love, as much as Jeffrey Goldberg loves Israel, you love your kids.

01:52:27.780 If you treated them like he treats Israel, your kids would all be in rehab.

01:52:31.680 Correct? 1.00

01:52:32.920 I agree.

01:52:33.540 Excuse every fault, attack anyone who points out their shortcomings, you would wreck those kids. 0.63

01:52:40.980 Where does the Iran war go?

01:52:42.360 i think at this point in time where we are is that president trump is desperate to get a settlement

01:52:53.180 he understands the economic consequences of this war going on for a few more months

01:52:59.760 with the straits closed would be disastrous he's got to get a deal and not just simply for economic

01:53:07.640 reasons, but for political reasons as well. The midterm elections are coming up, and he runs the

01:53:13.500 great danger that if the economy is tanked by November, that both the House and the Senates

01:53:19.820 will be run by the Democrats, and he will get impeached and found to be guilty. So he wants

01:53:26.860 to avoid that, and of course he wants to avoid crashing the international economy for obvious

01:53:32.200 reasons. So he's desperate. You can see it in his face. You can see it in his actions.

01:53:37.820 The problem that he faces is that he can't get the Iranians to accept what is from an American

01:53:48.000 and an Israeli point of view a favorable deal. The Iranians are now in the driver's seat. 0.93

01:53:55.400 The Iranians started this war on February 28th of this year in a much weaker position than they are in now. 0.91

01:54:05.000 They've actually done quite well in the war, as we saw when they attacked Israel a few days ago.

01:54:13.460 Here you have a situation where Israel did not attack Iran. 0.70

01:54:16.960 Iran felt that it was free to attack Israel. 0.60

01:54:20.340 And Iran has made it clear it's more than willing to go up the escalation ladder with us and with Israel. 0.74

01:54:26.460 They feel like they're in the driver's seat. 0.94

01:54:28.920 So the Iranians won't cut President Trump any slack. 0.98

01:54:32.920 They won't give him a deal that will allow him to walk away from this. 0.72

01:54:37.920 And again, he's under ever-present pressure on the economic front to shut this one down.

01:54:44.020 At the same time, the Israelis will not cooperate with him either.

01:54:51.220 What Trump really wants to do is cut a deal that basically accepts the fact that Iran won.

01:54:57.520 He can't change Iran's position. 0.66

01:55:01.020 And he's got to accept the fact that Iran has won and cut a sweetheart deal for Iran. 0.65

01:55:07.000 But the Israelis, under no circumstances, want him to do this. 0.61

01:55:10.900 And Bibi is resisting.

01:55:14.020 So what's happening here is Trump is being pushed from one side by Bibi, and he's being pushed on the other side by the inexorable forces of the international economy as it reacts to the shutdown straits, okay? 0.76

01:55:28.860 So what's happening is that desperate Donald Trump is beginning to put pressure on the Israelis, because he can't put pressure on the Iranians. 0.63

01:55:37.520 He's putting pressure on the Israelis in ways that he's never done before.

01:55:41.720 So he had this conversation where he said really terrible things about Prime Minister Netanyahu last Monday.

01:55:51.160 This was on June 1st, right?

01:55:53.420 And he's been really playing hardball with the Israelis in ways that we've not seen before.

01:56:01.080 And you can tell that Bibi Netanyahu understands this.

01:56:04.640 He understands that Trump is desperate and that Trump is putting real pressure on him.

01:56:10.160 Now, Netanyahu has resisted to a large extent, not completely, but to a large extent up to now.

01:56:17.600 But I would maintain that what's likely to happen as we move forward is that that international economy is going to continue to put pressure on Trump.

01:56:27.060 And because he can't put pressure on the Iranians who are in the driver's seat, he's going to put pressure on the Israelis in ways that he has never done before.

01:56:36.280 So the question you have to ask yourself is, what is this growing conflict between the United States, and in particular Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu going to look like moving forward?

01:56:49.260 You saw yesterday Mark Levin, who's a longtime Trump hater, then became Trump's closest political ally, start to attack Trump for wavering on the question of backing Israel.

01:57:04.460 The second Trump criticized Bibi, Mark Levin attacks Trump.

01:57:10.980 Can Trump realistically, do you think, fight a battle, a rhetorical battle against Netanyahu and win,

01:57:19.880 given that his support now in the United States politically is only Zionists,

01:57:24.440 kind of the only people who still support Trump? 0.71

01:57:26.800 Let me ask you a question. What's the alternative?

01:57:29.300 take this to a really really crazy place you know where all of a sudden the war comes home i mean

01:57:41.040 there's some attack on the homeland and all of a sudden you have to you know you go full post 9 11

01:57:47.820 where the whole country is like you know mobilized against iran i mean that seems more likely to me

01:57:54.360 But, you know.

01:57:55.960 But even there, what are you going to do? 0.94

01:57:58.660 Let's just assume that there's some incident somewhere that incentivizes us to really crush Iran. 0.94

01:58:06.820 How do we do that? 0.99

01:58:08.180 You want to understand that we cannot do it with boots on the ground.

01:58:11.420 Right.

01:58:12.660 That's out, number one.

01:58:14.540 Number two, in terms of restarting the air war, been there, tried that, did not work out very well.

01:58:20.200 Right.

01:58:20.320 Furthermore, we used up huge amounts of our precious weaponry, right?

01:58:25.220 That's another one of the reasons Trump doesn't want to go back to the air war, right?

01:58:30.120 So what are we going to do?

01:58:31.940 Use nuclear weapons against Iran?

01:58:34.240 I don't think so, right?

01:58:37.820 Trump has no option.

01:58:40.180 That's the point here.

01:58:41.440 This is what I'm saying to you. 1.00

01:58:42.300 If you think about the situation he's in, he's been unable to coerce the Iranians. 1.00

01:58:48.380 And the Iranians are feeling their oats. 0.81

01:58:50.840 They're feeling powerful. 1.00

01:58:52.160 And they're not willing to compromise.

01:58:54.760 And they understand that the longer this war goes on, the more leverage they have.

01:59:01.140 So they're tough to coerce. 0.66

01:59:04.360 And the Israelis, Trump just has to do something with them as he's crushed by these international economic considerations. 0.68

01:59:14.040 And if he doesn't, we're all going to go off a cliff economically.

01:59:17.500 economically. The economic and political consequences are going to be disastrous.

01:59:23.020 There's just all sorts of evidence of that. And if the Israelis really have an in-your-face 1.00

01:59:29.400 attitude towards Trump and they start to bomb Iran, what are the Iranians going to do? They'll

01:59:35.800 shut down the Red Sea. They'll go after the UAE. They'll go after Saudi Arabia. They'll play hard 1.00

01:59:41.680 ball, and that'll just make the economic situation even worse. So what can Trump do? I think,

01:59:51.420 you know, who knows for sure, but my surmise is looking at this is that Trump has really no choice

01:59:59.020 but to play hardball with Netanyahu in ways that he has never done and in ways that no American

02:00:05.600 president has ever done with an Israeli prime minister. Trump's devotion to Israel is so

02:00:10.420 slavish that it's just it's just hard to imagine it's hard to picture that i mean i pray for that

02:00:14.620 i pray for sovereignty we should have a country whose leaders make decisions based on what's best

02:00:20.300 for america i just can't picture that i can't picture trump actually threatening to defund

02:00:26.680 israel which is what it would take you'd have to say that we're not no more money for you if you

02:00:31.100 if you keep hitting beirut i mean what are you doing yeah he would have to play hardball in ways

02:00:39.220 that you're just saying you find unimaginable and which I find in a certain sense unimaginable

02:00:46.140 as well. But what you want to understand, and you understood this before February 28th,

02:00:52.700 and you told Trump that he would be remarkably foolish to start a war against Iran. He didn't 0.83

02:00:59.520 listen to you. He didn't listen to his advisors. He didn't listen to a lot of people.

02:01:03.240 His advisors didn't tell him that.

02:01:04.640 Okay. 1.00

02:01:04.920 They're cowards. But yeah. 0.99

02:01:06.380 But anyway, he started this war.

02:01:08.560 He knew. Yeah. And he is in deep, deep trouble, as is Bibi Netanyahu, by the way. He's in deep, deep trouble, too, just like Trump is. He's in a no-win situation. If he bucks Trump, he's in real trouble. And if he doesn't buck Trump, he's going to be clobbered inside Israel because his critics, the opposition, is going after him for being a pussycat, for not being willing to say no to Trump.

02:01:36.580 So if he doesn't say no to Trump, right, he'll get clobbered. 0.95

02:01:42.140 Who are the Israelis who are like the most flagrant welfare case in world history? 0.97

02:01:49.720 I mean, way more dependent on our government than any like welfare queen in Detroit has ever been. 1.00

02:01:57.840 Like without us, they're done, literally done.

02:02:01.260 What world are they living in where they're like, well, don't take that from Trump?

02:02:05.580 Well, you don't have a job, son.

02:02:08.680 Look, the argument you can make, just building on what you said, is that the Israeli body politic, and you were talking mainly about the Israeli elites, will understand what you just said, which is they can't survive in a meaningful way without American support.

02:02:27.400 and that they are running the risk of losing American support if they don't cooperate with

02:02:34.960 Trump. If they don't cooperate with Trump, they run the risk. And the threat of losing American

02:02:42.360 support will be sufficient to convince the Israelis to play ball with Trump. So the argument 0.51

02:02:50.120 there is that Trump can play hardball with the Israelis in ways that no other president, 0.88

02:02:55.620 including Trump himself, have ever played hardball with the Israelis and that it'll work because of

02:03:00.600 the logic that you just spun out. I talked to someone in Israel yesterday who's smart and very 0.57

02:03:06.560 smart who said there's no sense of that at all. Israel, the average Israeli support for the war

02:03:12.880 was over 90% in Israel, it was 93%. And the average Israeli thinks that they're running the 0.77

02:03:19.880 world, that they have total control and that they need nobody. And that if the U.S. pulls, you know,

02:03:24.880 we don't need the U.S. actually, there are too many strings attached. In fact, there are no

02:03:28.440 strings attached, but they're just so high on their own supply that they don't see at all

02:03:34.000 their vulnerabilities. They're really at peak hubris, as this person told me.

02:03:39.460 Well, there is some of that for sure. And there's good reason for them to think that they own us

02:03:44.960 because they have owned us. But I do think we are at a very special point in history here.

02:03:53.320 I think, again, you cannot underestimate what a colossal blunder President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu made on February 28th.

02:04:04.160 And the chickens are coming home to roost now.

02:04:07.040 And I believe that Netanyahu, who's had a handful of conversations with Trump, fully understands the pressure that Trump is under.

02:04:16.040 Right. And I believe other people in the administration are talking to the Israelis and telling them that. And it's easy for the opposition to Netanyahu or on the outside and who would like to run Netanyahu out of office so they can move into his seat to criticize Netanyahu.

02:04:36.980 But I think even with regard to them, they will eventually get the message.

02:04:42.480 And if they don't, Trump then has two choices.

02:04:46.240 He can basically cut off aid to Israel and distance ourselves, distance the United States from Israel in ways that was unimaginable, you know, a month ago.

02:04:57.840 Yes.

02:04:58.520 Or we can go off the cliff economically.

02:05:01.480 That's the choice here.

02:05:02.500 But either way, we're going to emerge from this with the government of Iran controlling the flow of commodities out of the Persian Gulf.

02:05:14.480 Yeah.

02:05:14.940 I mean, that's crazy.

02:05:17.120 That was not true on February 27th, but it's going to be true going forward, period.

02:05:22.000 Yeah. First of all, we had four demands regarding Iran's missiles, support for Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, regard to their nuclear program, and with regard to regime change. Those were the four goals that we started with. None of them have been achieved. That's the first point. 0.96

02:05:48.380 Second point is your point that they now control the Strait of Hormuz, right?

02:05:54.640 Third point I would make to you is they're going to come out of this in better economic shape, in part because they control the Strait of Hormuz, but also because a lot of sanctions are going to be lifted off them, right?

02:06:08.160 And that's good news for them.

02:06:11.160 So, economically, they're going to be in a superior position after February 28th than before February 28th.

02:06:19.500 Finally, you want to remember that on February 27th, we had a basing structure in the Gulf, and we had an alliance structure in the Gulf that looked quite formidable.

02:06:29.800 All those bases have either been destroyed or badly damaged, and that alliance structure that we had with the six Gulf states has been wrecked in very important ways.

02:06:41.140 And it's not clear that we can stay in the Gulf.

02:06:44.760 So if you think about it.

02:06:45.680 I told Trump this going in.

02:06:47.160 This is going to result in us leaving the Middle East.

02:06:49.380 We're going to have less influence in the Middle East by the end. 0.60

02:06:52.820 It was so obvious.

02:06:55.100 You and I agree on that, that so many of these things are so obvious, but yet so many really smart people.

02:07:02.720 You know, people who went to fancy universities, have fancy degrees, worked for fancy law firms or what have you, were successful in business.

02:07:10.520 you name it, don't see obvious things that people like us see in the foreign policy realm.

02:07:18.220 Again, getting back to your question before, I can't explain it.

02:07:23.340 Not to get sidetracked, but since you've seen more of it than I have, do you think

02:07:27.720 that, well, I know the answer, to what extent has the caliber of public policy,

02:07:34.780 public intellectual declined over the past 50 years?

02:07:37.520 Oh, drastically. There's just no question about that. If you think about the discourse, right, we live in a world.

02:07:50.980 I'm sorry to interrupt

02:07:53.100 this is from the president

02:07:55.520 from the White House

02:07:56.180 I've just been informed

02:07:56.980 by our great military

02:07:57.860 that last night 1.00

02:07:58.560 the Iranians shot down 1.00

02:07:59.540 one of our highly sophisticated

02:08:00.640 Apache helicopters

02:08:01.660 while patrolling

02:08:02.320 the Strait of Hormuz

02:08:03.200 there were two pilots involved

02:08:04.660 both are safe and uninjured

02:08:05.800 nevertheless

02:08:06.120 the United States must

02:08:07.140 of necessity

02:08:07.800 respond to this attack

02:08:08.940 I'm sure that

02:08:12.380 he's going to respond

02:08:14.100 and I would bet

02:08:15.640 a lot of money 1.00

02:08:16.340 that the Iranians 1.00

02:08:17.440 will respond 0.99

02:08:18.180 the Iranians 0.96

02:08:19.200 have made it clear

02:08:20.160 that every time either Israel or the United States

02:08:24.020 or a country like the UAE attacks Iran,

02:08:28.580 Iran will not just simply retaliate in kind,

02:08:33.300 but it will retaliate more forcefully

02:08:36.560 than the attacker did when it hit Iran to start with.

02:08:42.260 As a graduate of West Point and a former Air Force officer,

02:08:45.640 Or what is your assessment of the U.S. military's capabilities, you know, four months into this war with Iran?

02:08:55.140 Well, the United States military is an incredibly formidable fighting force, but that doesn't mean that it can win a war against Iran. 0.63

02:09:07.520 We certainly can't decisively defeat Iran. 0.89

02:09:10.140 And in terms of going up the escalation ladder, which is what we're talking about here, the United States cannot trump Iran as we go up the escalation ladder. 0.93

02:09:23.020 Iran has a huge inventory of missiles and drones. 0.88

02:09:27.060 It operates in a target-rich environment. 0.90

02:09:30.440 And if we go after targets inside of Iran, you can rest assured that the Iranians will find targets to go after inside of, you know, American-controlled areas. 0.91

02:09:44.940 And we don't end up coming out on top.

02:09:48.040 I mean, let's watch what happens with President Trump.

02:09:50.440 Is this going to improve our situation?

02:09:53.020 No, not at all.

02:09:55.140 I don't understand how four years into the Ukraine war,

02:09:58.300 the United States could be this far behind in drone technology

02:10:01.400 and why we'd have all these aircraft carriers under construction

02:10:03.900 when it's obvious that aircraft carriers cannot be the main means

02:10:10.220 by which we project force in the world.

02:10:12.040 I mean, we can't even use them in this conflict meaningfully.

02:10:14.860 So why does it seem impossible for our military

02:10:19.700 to respond to technological changes in a quick way.

02:10:26.220 I think you want to remember that the Iran war,

02:10:30.540 excuse me, that the Ukraine war started in 2022.

02:10:34.240 And really for the first two years,

02:10:36.920 it was not clear that drones mattered too much.

02:10:40.420 So that takes you up to, let's say, 2024.

02:10:43.320 Fair.

02:10:44.140 And I remember, I argued that the key weapon

02:10:47.340 on the battlefield was artillery.

02:10:49.700 It was the king of battle, and what really mattered was, in Ukraine this is, was the balance of artillery on the two sides, and I paid hardly any attention to drones.

02:11:01.100 If I were writing about the balance of power between Ukraine and Russia now, artillery would get second place on the list of important weapons, and I think drones would be the most important weapon affecting events on the battlefield.

02:11:18.000 And so that's 2024. Here we are in 2026. So it's only recently that we've become aware that drones matter as much as they do. And I would imagine that the U.S. military is now scrambling like crazy to deal with the drone issue.

02:11:36.920 You would think so.

02:11:37.660 Yeah, so I think that it's explainable in rational legal terms why we did not pay that much attention to drones up until about 2024.

02:11:49.360 But I think we are now paying attention, as is everybody else, because we understand that this really matters.

02:11:58.480 How do you think this conflict is resolved, and how quickly?

02:12:02.280 i think that basically you'll end up with something like a frozen conflict um i think

02:12:09.600 that uh you want to understand what president trump is trying to do here is he's trying to

02:12:15.020 get a ceasefire right and the idea is that if you can get a ceasefire for 30 or 60 days the number

02:12:21.580 changes that after you get this ceasefire in place you can then move to negotiations

02:12:28.540 on things like the nuclear issue, reparations,

02:12:33.860 the future of the overall package of sanctions,

02:12:38.540 and so forth and so on.

02:12:40.040 You want to understand here that we're not talking about

02:12:42.940 settling the nuclear issue in these initial negotiations.

02:12:46.980 The initial negotiations that are going on now

02:12:49.960 are designed to set up a real ceasefire.

02:12:53.320 In other words, we want to stop the shooting completely.

02:12:58.540 and this includes in Lebanon, right?

02:13:01.000 Stop the shooting completely. 0.90

02:13:02.780 We want to open the strait and the American blockade 0.98

02:13:06.820 and the Iranian blockade. 0.96

02:13:09.640 Open the strait. 0.79

02:13:11.280 The Iranians want $24 billion in frozen assets 1.00

02:13:16.380 given back to them. 0.99

02:13:18.380 Their money.

02:13:18.880 Their money.

02:13:19.640 That's three.

02:13:20.400 That's number three. 0.92

02:13:21.460 And number four is the Iranians want sanctions taken off

02:13:25.400 their sale of their oil on global markets, okay? So those are the four things that have to happen

02:13:33.540 to get a real ceasefire. But you notice in those four elements, you see no evidence of the nuclear

02:13:39.840 issue or the question of overall sanctions or reparations or control of the strait moving

02:13:45.940 forward. All these issues will be settled in the second round. Now, my view is that you're probably

02:13:56.140 going to get a real ceasefire at some point because that will open the straits. And opening

02:14:02.400 the straits matters immensely to President Trump because of what the consequences are for the

02:14:09.240 international economy. Now, when it comes to violating that ceasefire, the country that will

02:14:17.840 violate it is Israel. But if Israel violates the ceasefire and the Iranians react by shutting down 0.78

02:14:27.700 the Straits again, oh my God, we're back to the economic threat resurrecting itself.

02:14:33.360 So I don't think Trump will allow the Israelis to wreck the ceasefire.

02:14:40.860 They may try anyway, but I don't think so.

02:14:43.940 Then the $64,000 question is, what will happen in the negotiations over the nuclear issue,

02:14:51.280 control of the strait, reparations, overall sanctions package, and so forth and so on?

02:14:57.820 And there I find it hard to believe that you're going to get a meaningful deal.

02:15:02.580 Trump likes to say that, remember, this is Trump speaking,

02:15:06.020 it took many years to negotiate the JCPOA.

02:15:10.140 That was the original nuclear deal.

02:15:12.160 The one he ran against and hated?

02:15:14.100 Yeah.

02:15:14.660 And by the way, the one he walked away from.

02:15:16.980 I know.

02:15:17.340 In 2018.

02:15:19.220 And he now says, you know, when people say,

02:15:21.360 why don't you have a nuclear deal now?

02:15:23.260 He says, you have to understand it takes many years to negotiate a nuclear deal.

02:15:27.400 Of course, he's correct.

02:15:28.700 But what you want to ask yourself is what does that— 0.72

02:15:31.020 Wait, that's Futspa. 0.95

02:15:31.920 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

02:15:34.120 So, and by the way, this is a nightmare for the Israelis.

02:15:38.920 I mean, if you want to think about what this war means for the Israelis, right? 0.63

02:15:42.740 They were so much better off with the JCPOA.

02:15:46.300 They were so much better off with the deal that they would have gotten on February 27th.

02:15:51.140 Now they're in a situation where I don't think they're going to get a nuclear deal.

02:15:56.560 I may be wrong.

02:15:57.660 I don't think they're going to get a nuclear deal.

02:15:59.760 And the Iranians, as we both know, have a lot of highly enriched uranium, up to 60%. They can easily turn into weapons-grade material and build the bomb. And the Israelis have just demonstrated that they don't have the capability, and we have just demonstrated that we don't have the capability to go in there and get that weapons-grade material and shut down their nuclear enrichment capability forever. 0.97

02:16:26.360 So it is possible that the Iranians may get a bomb. 0.59

02:16:31.240 Well, they're certainly going to get a more robust economy,

02:16:33.040 and they certainly have cemented their place as like a legit regional power,

02:16:36.960 which they sort of weren't fully before.

02:16:40.960 I also think this changes their relationship with the GCC.

02:16:43.500 I think some of the Gulf states at least were kind of shocked by the unwillingness

02:16:49.000 or inability of the United States to protect them from Iranian attacks.

02:16:53.260 actually act as a magnet for Iranian attacks.

02:16:57.480 Totally. 0.98

02:16:58.180 And the whole deal was like,

02:16:59.720 we'll send trillions to the United States

02:17:01.700 in foreign direct investment,

02:17:02.920 but like, you got to protect us.

02:17:04.080 Yeah.

02:17:04.920 We'll align with Israel. 0.99

02:17:05.880 We'll sign the Abraham Accords. 0.93

02:17:07.360 We'll do whatever you want, 0.98

02:17:08.480 but you got to protect us.

02:17:09.320 And we didn't.

02:17:10.760 And so you can imagine a world

02:17:12.140 where some of those six countries in any way

02:17:14.540 become closer to Iran,

02:17:16.760 like in 20 years than they were before. 0.78

02:17:20.460 But certainly the world sees Iran 0.93

02:17:22.460 is like a real country now and they control the aperture at the end of the persian gulf so like 0.92

02:17:27.940 how are they not way more powerful than they have been in our lifetimes yeah well as you know we like 0.82

02:17:35.660 to portray other countries as irrational and crazy second coming of adolf hitler completely 0.76

02:17:41.500 and craze theocracy where they throw gays off buildings or something it's like but the truth 0.52

02:17:48.500 is if you look at iran today and you look at the united states and israel today which of those

02:17:56.780 three countries looks like the responsible stakeholder in the international system yeah

02:18:01.580 of those three countries which you know which seems the least unreasonable which 0.54

02:18:09.180 this country seems like it has more blasphemy laws than iran sometimes i mean it's crazy the

02:18:14.960 number of things you can't say in the United States because you can't. Certain words are

02:18:18.240 literally verboten. Certain interpretations of history are crimes. Those aren't blasphemy laws.

02:18:23.460 Yes, they are. I mean, this is true. But there's much truth in that. But the point is, if you're 1.00

02:18:32.120 another country on the planet and you're looking at those three countries, Israel, the most hated

02:18:38.220 country in the world, by the way, according to recent polls, and the United States, which is

02:18:43.480 not far from the bottom. And Iran, which country, right, looks like it is the most responsible in 1.00

02:18:53.660 terms of its foreign policy, right? And it's the Iranians, right? And it's the Americans and the 0.99

02:19:00.820 Israelis who both basically look like they're rogue states, just running around the world, 1.00

02:19:06.860 invading countries, causing genocide, and so forth and so on. 0.99

02:19:13.660 The damage that has been done to Israel's reputation is just off the charts.

02:19:18.440 It's very hard for me to believe how much damage Israel has done to itself,

02:19:23.240 with help from the lobby, as I've emphasized in our conversation here, 0.87

02:19:27.800 but also the United States, the damage that we've done to ourselves.

02:19:32.060 And a lot of people will say this is due to Trump.

02:19:34.620 Trump has contributed to this for sure, but look at the Biden administration.

02:19:39.640 It was the Biden administration that supported the genocide in Gaza from the get-go.

02:19:46.080 It was the Biden administration that's principally responsible for what's happened in Ukraine.

02:19:51.540 The Biden administration could have prevented the war in Ukraine.

02:19:54.840 Of course they wanted it.

02:19:55.120 And in fact, it wanted it, exactly.

02:19:58.080 So the Biden administration, one could argue, is almost as bad, if not worse, than the Trump administration.

02:20:03.920 May I ask you, so over the past six years, there have been a bunch of different moments where the United States has been accused of using negotiations as a ruse in order to lure its opponents into vulnerability and then assassinate them.

02:20:19.560 and i've been hesitant to believe that that could be true because i'm american and i love this

02:20:26.100 country and that's so dishonorable that you would never want to live in a country that would do

02:20:29.340 something like that that that's truly out of bounds starting with the killing the assassination

02:20:34.760 of general soleimani about six years ago in iraq he flew in commercial for negotiations he was

02:20:41.580 killed which was shocking to me but everyone else loved it and then a bunch of times in the past

02:20:47.480 several months the the bombing of doha by the israelis on september 9th of last year

02:20:55.800 again and again and again it seems like the united states has been party to or aware of

02:21:01.000 traps in which diplomacy was used as the lure is that real do you think we actually did that

02:21:09.560 well there's no question that our closest ally in the world who we support at every turn which 0.74

02:21:17.460 as the israelis is obsessed with assassination they're constantly murdering and i think murdering

02:21:25.600 is the right word right uh leaders in countries and in organizations all over the middle east

02:21:34.600 there's no question about that and there's also no question as the soleimani case makes clear

02:21:41.340 that we've moved in that same direction.

02:21:46.000 We're not as bad as them,

02:21:47.220 although we do support what they do.

02:21:49.260 We never criticize them,

02:21:51.060 but we are deeply involved.

02:21:52.520 But to pretend that you want to have a negotiation with someone, 0.98

02:21:55.800 get them to drop their guard and then kill them,

02:21:59.060 that's like something Western countries have never done. 0.93

02:22:02.700 That's totally out of bounds. 1.00

02:22:03.920 That's what we used to criticize the American Indians for doing, right? 1.00

02:22:06.700 Or the Japanese or some other primitive Eastern culture, right?

02:22:10.020 We don't do that. 0.95

02:22:11.340 Well, if you remember, we attacked Iran last June. 0.76

02:22:18.280 Yes.

02:22:18.620 This is the 12-day war, June 13th to June 25th.

02:22:22.180 And that attack, which was initiated by the Israelis, came out of the blue.

02:22:27.900 And it's when the Iranians were in the middle of negotiations with the Iranians.

02:22:32.680 Oh, I remember.

02:22:33.680 Yeah.

02:22:34.440 But I remember thinking this can't be really happening.

02:22:37.160 We couldn't have known.

02:22:38.000 We would never sign off on that.

02:22:39.300 that's the level we've sunk to i mean there's just no getting around this and you see this

02:22:46.380 i think with the general sulaimani case i think that was a colossal mistake on our part

02:22:50.740 but this is where we're at and by the way you know i think this whole business of assassination is

02:22:57.120 very important because i think it has a blowback effect into the united states i don't think you

02:23:02.800 want to be sending a signal to people in the united states certainly president trump should

02:23:08.300 not want to be doing this, given that he was the victim of an assassination attempt.

02:23:14.260 I agree with that.

02:23:14.940 Not be sending the message that assassination is a legitimate way of doing business.

02:23:20.180 Yes, I agree with that.

02:23:21.220 You just don't want to do this. It's not only morally wrong, it just doesn't make any sense

02:23:28.360 for how we conduct politics inside the United States or around the world. Assassination should

02:23:37.320 just be for very exceptional circumstances. If you could have assassinated Adolf Hitler, 0.97

02:23:43.480 of course, you would have done that. But these are, you know, the extreme cases. Otherwise, 0.91

02:23:49.020 we should be out of the business of assassination and actually condemning it when it happens.

02:23:57.080 Last question. Do you ever get calls from people who say,

02:24:03.040 20 years ago, I attacked you as a crank and a bigot, but now I got to admit you were a hundred

02:24:09.100 percent right about everything. Yes. Really? Yes. Well, I don't get, I don't get phone calls

02:24:14.840 because we don't do phone calls anymore. Do you ever get texts? I get text messages and I get

02:24:20.540 lots of emails because my email is available. So lots of people send me very nice emails and a

02:24:30.100 good number of those people say that they once thought that I was out to lunch, that I was

02:24:36.500 all wrong. Really? They admit it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's only in the elite that people never admit

02:24:44.760 they're wrong and never change their views. I think in the broader public. And by the way,

02:24:50.460 lots of people write to me who disagree with me on different issues, but agree with me on other

02:24:56.740 issues. I actually find that my discourse with the greater public is quite variegated. There are

02:25:07.740 some people who agree completely with me on the Middle East and on Israel in particular and agree

02:25:15.280 with me completely on Ukraine who are deeply offended by my views on China because I believe 0.97

02:25:21.100 that we should contain China, right? 0.97

02:25:24.300 And there are other people who write

02:25:27.080 who like my views on the Middle East and on Israel,

02:25:31.380 but dislike my views on Ukraine.

02:25:34.440 So, you know, when you engage the public,

02:25:37.500 and when I talk about the public here,

02:25:39.100 I engage with people all over the planet.

02:25:41.180 I get huge numbers of emails from the global South,

02:25:44.760 from Europe, from Russia.

02:25:46.820 But when you engage with people,

02:25:48.560 what you discover is that no group of people have the same views on every issue.

02:25:57.240 That's right.

02:25:57.440 That people tend to disagree.

02:25:59.620 And I actually think that's a wonderful thing.

02:26:02.580 And this gets back to our whole discussion of the media, the mainstream media,

02:26:06.280 and the fact that we have so few views that challenge the conventional wisdom represented in the mainstream media.

02:26:15.680 This is not a healthy phenomenon.

02:26:18.140 What you want is you want lots of people with different views to contend with each other and for them to fight it out.

02:26:25.560 And I don't mean fight it out in a nasty way.

02:26:27.940 Fight it out in a professional way, for lack of a better phrase.

02:26:32.120 But anyway, I find that, you know, when I go talk to groups or when my podcasts appear on the Internet, that I get lots and lots of people who applaud me.

02:26:45.340 And nevertheless, at the same time, we'll, I won't say often, but we'll sometimes criticize my views on particular issues at the same time they're applauding me.

02:26:57.900 And I do not feel bad about that at all.

02:27:00.860 I think that's the way the business should work.

02:27:03.380 I'm not a proselytizer.

02:27:05.120 you know, I'm not going on your show or going on any other show to tell people the truth and tell

02:27:13.400 them that they should accept the truth from John Mearsheimer. What I'm trying to do is talk in a

02:27:18.840 very intelligent way, as you are, about how we think about particular issues. And of course,

02:27:25.620 people are sometimes going to agree with us and sometimes disagree with us. That's wonderful.

02:27:29.920 And what's happening here is that in the vast majority of cases, I think people take their bearing from what we have to say.

02:27:38.020 If they listen to Tucker Carlson talk about issue X and they're trying to figure out what they think on issue X, they'll use your framework.

02:27:46.920 They'll use your answers to help inform how they think.

02:27:50.840 And hopefully you'll have a positive influence.

02:27:53.320 Hopefully I'll have a positive influence.

02:27:55.120 but i think this may sound idealistic but i do think this is the way it should work

02:28:01.240 and this is why you this is why you want to have an open discourse of course

02:28:05.940 i think now is like i said this is the outset i really believe it though i don't

02:28:14.660 fully understand i think this is like a pivot point in history and it it's important to

02:28:20.360 understand at least some of what's going on i think it's impossible to understand all of it

02:28:23.960 and how it interconnects and what it will mean down the road.

02:28:27.220 But I don't think that we should just see these

02:28:30.640 as like isolated bubbling up of turmoil

02:28:34.160 in this or that region.

02:28:35.200 Like I think the whole world is changing

02:28:36.900 and it's important to try to know what is happening.

02:28:42.540 I would say, Tucker, in the best of times,

02:28:46.180 the world is incredibly complicated.

02:28:49.920 Yes.

02:28:50.500 Right?

02:28:51.260 And I sometimes like to say, we live in a world of radical uncertainty, right?

02:28:57.360 That's in the best of times.

02:28:59.080 Today, oh my God, it's so hard to figure out what's going on, right?

02:29:03.960 We're all, in a very important way, kind of flying blind.

02:29:07.400 And what we're trying to do is make sense of the world.

02:29:09.960 And what we try to do in exchanges like this is go further down that road.

02:29:14.880 and both of us trying to refine our thinking

02:29:17.440 about these important issues

02:29:19.020 and inform lots of people in the process

02:29:21.080 so that everybody is less blind moving forward.

02:29:26.300 Yeah, and really the only sin from my perspective is lying

02:29:28.900 and anyone who's trying his hardest to tell the truth,

02:29:33.120 right or wrong, is an ally of mine.

02:29:35.400 That's how I feel about it.

02:29:37.280 Amen.

02:29:37.960 Amen.

02:29:38.360 John Muir Sharper, professor, thank you very much.

02:29:40.340 Thank you for having me.

02:29:41.460 Oh my gosh, such a joy every time.

02:29:43.900 Thank you.

02:29:44.880 Bye.

The Tucker Carlson Show - June 11, 2026

BREAKING： U.S. Resumes Strikes on Iran. A Clean Exit Is Unlikely. Tucker and John Mearsheimer React.

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