The Tucker Carlson Show - The Key Points of Trump’s Iran Peace Deal, Israel’s Nightmare Scenario and What to Expect Next

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00:00:27.280 Airlines. When you travel, travel well. Thanks for doing this. Thank you for having me.

00:00:37.080 Is this deal real? I think so. I think this is a significant achievement, but nothing is fully

00:00:44.040 real until they manage to get to the final agreement. And we all already have a precedent

00:00:49.500 in which we also see that when there was a final agreement, which there was in 2015 that Obama

00:00:54.700 struck. It didn't mean that it necessarily would last because Trump walked out of that deal. So

00:00:58.960 if this is something we want, we have to work at it. We have to work to keep it. These things are

00:01:04.400 not part of the background that you can keep without putting any effort into it. And right

00:01:08.740 now we're not even halfway to the distance, but this is an important development.

00:01:11.760 So what are the key deal points as they're emerging to the extent we know now?

00:01:15.820 First of all, we don't know enough because at the end of the day, there's been just so many

00:01:19.480 different versions that have been floating around. And some of them frankly do seem to be sabotage

00:01:24.520 efforts. There's some of the hardline media in Iran that has been sending out these versions of

00:01:28.760 the deal that I think deliberately were trying to raise people's expectations in order to make the

00:01:33.880 final deal look bad. And they're doing it because they're trying to sabotage the peidari faction in 0.99

00:01:39.900 Iran, super hardliners are dead set against it. In fact, there were protests that they organized,

00:01:45.140 not huge ones in any way, shape or form, particularly for a city of 10 million or plus

00:01:49.080 in Tehran, but they were protesting outside of the Iranian foreign ministry and calling for the

00:01:54.480 death of the foreign minister and the speaker of the parliament who've been negotiating this deal.

00:01:59.160 So we should not for a second forget that there's a faction in Iran that is really against this.

00:02:04.480 But based on what it seems likely to have included, there's going to be an opening of the

00:02:09.020 straits. It's going to take some time. You know, they have to do some demining, et cetera, to be

00:02:13.120 able to fully make it safe. The U.S. is going to lift its blockade of the blockade, which I think

00:02:18.080 ultimately complicated this matter much more so than helped the US. I think there will be some

00:02:24.160 release of funds, but it will be done in a manner in which Trump can say that he never released the

00:02:29.180 funds and Iranians can say they got some of their money back. And it's going to be something that

00:02:34.040 some of the GCC countries do in the middle to make sure that there's some money going to the

00:02:38.520 Iranians while they're waiting for the actual Iranian money to be released. And it's very

00:02:42.800 important to keep this in mind. This is Iran's own money. They had about 120 to 150 billion dollars 0.93

00:02:49.220 in various banks around the world. That's how you do international trade. You have the money there

00:02:54.220 and if you buy food or whatever from there, you use that money. These were frozen by U.S. sanctions

00:02:59.340 so the Iranians could not access it. For how long have they been frozen? Well, they were frozen first

00:03:04.420 under the Obama era until they struck a deal and then it was unfrozen. And then once Trump walked

00:03:09.860 out of the deal in 2018, it was refrozen.

00:03:13.280 So since 2018, almost 10 years,

00:03:16.120 a lot of Iran's money has been in these banks

00:03:18.000 and they've not been able to access it.

00:03:20.120 Out of that 120 to 150,

00:03:22.460 the Iranian demand has been that for the MOU,

00:03:25.420 they should get 12, roughly eight to 10% released

00:03:29.440 at the outset and another 12 released

00:03:32.200 by the time that the MOU is concluded.

00:03:34.640 And this is their money just to-

00:03:36.080 This is their money.

00:03:36.980 So this is different.

00:03:38.000 But you know, the story about how Obama released $1.7 billion

00:03:42.660 when he signed a JCPOA.

00:03:45.800 Yeah, he sent the pallets of cash.

00:03:48.180 That is true, but that was very different.

00:03:50.380 That was not frozen money.

00:03:51.780 That was because there was a lawsuit

00:03:53.680 between the United States and Iran

00:03:55.700 since the beginning of the revolution,

00:03:58.520 because during the time of the Shah,

00:04:00.180 we're talking about 1977,

00:04:02.680 the Shah had ordered American weaponry.

00:04:05.260 I don't remember if it was airplanes or tanks or whatever,

00:04:07.300 but he was the biggest purchaser of American weaponry back in the 1970s.

00:04:11.520 But between him paying for it, and they're supposed to be delivered,

00:04:15.700 the Iranians had a revolution.

00:04:17.060 They took 52 American diplomats hostage.

00:04:19.520 So the U.S. clearly and understandably never delivered the weapons,

00:04:23.420 but also never returned the money.

00:04:25.560 So the Iranians took the U.S. to court in The Hague, 0.74

00:04:28.380 International Court of Arbitration,

00:04:30.340 and the U.S. was about to lose that fight.

00:04:33.300 So the Obama administration chose to settle it as part of the JCPOA. It was only supposed to be

00:04:39.320 400 million, but because of interest, it added up to 1.7. Here was the problem. How do you transfer

00:04:45.600 the money to the Iranians when you have sanctioned every Iranian bank? Because of U.S. sanctions,

00:04:51.120 they actually had to put it on an airplane as cash and fly it to Switzerland, where another plane was

00:04:57.320 on the tarmac, taking the money into that plane. Had there not been for the U.S. sanctions,

00:05:02.080 as they could have just been a wire transfer.

00:05:03.540 But that was also Iranian money.

00:05:05.160 That was, well, it is Iranian money plus the interest

00:05:08.000 because the U.S. had kept it for so long.

00:05:10.380 There's no deal in which the U.S. will pay Iran

00:05:12.900 any American money.

00:05:14.680 There wasn't in the JCPOA,

00:05:15.940 and I don't believe that that would be the case

00:05:18.200 with the Trump deal either.

00:05:19.960 So Strait gets reopened.

00:05:22.820 That takes, well, how long do you think

00:05:24.680 if both sides decide they want it?

00:05:27.280 I, you know, it will be gradual,

00:05:29.320 but I think you will start seeing ships

00:05:30.920 going through the Straits in larger and larger numbers

00:05:33.620 already from five days from now.

00:05:35.280 But you have to remember there's a large number of ships

00:05:38.360 that are stuck in the Straits.

00:05:40.120 And they're not in great shape by now

00:05:41.780 because they've been standing still

00:05:43.160 in extremely warm water right now.

00:05:45.420 So as soon as they get out of the Straits

00:05:48.180 and get to their home, wherever they're supposed to go,

00:05:50.460 they have to go in for a significant cleaning.

00:05:52.320 And that's gonna create another problem 0.94

00:05:55.120 when it comes to the flow of oil,

00:05:56.820 because there's just not gonna be enough tankers

00:05:58.420 on the seas.

00:05:59.620 Hmm. Straits open, some of Iran's cash gets unfrozen. What else in the deal?

00:06:07.740 And then of course, after that, the real stuff begins in terms of the negotiations over the

00:06:12.960 nuclear issue. But one other thing that will happen before that is what the Iranians have

00:06:17.680 insisted on. And I think the administration correctly agreed to, which is that there has 1.00

00:06:22.420 to be a regional ceasefire. For this to be an end to the war, it cannot allow for other wars to

00:06:28.940 continue in the region that can drag the US and Iran back into it. And this is where also the 0.87

00:06:34.240 biggest weakness or vulnerability of this deal is, because it means that the United States has 0.80

00:06:39.180 to constrain Israel and the Iranians are going to have to constrain Hezbollah. And we saw just 0.84

00:06:43.720 hours before the announcement of the deal that the Israelis did everything they could to sabotage

00:06:48.540 the deal by attacking Southern Beirut, which they knew was a red line for the US and a red line for

00:06:53.360 the Iranians. Tell us about those attacks. So there had been exchanges of fire between Hezbollah

00:07:00.460 and Israel prior to that, but the Israelis were striking Southern Lebanon. The Hezbollah was

00:07:07.220 striking both at Israel itself, as well as Israeli forces inside of Lebanon, because the Israelis are 0.90

00:07:12.220 inside of Lebanon, right? Yeah, they invaded it. Yeah, they invaded it. But it was not at a level 0.92

00:07:18.720 that justified an escalation from the Israeli side

00:07:22.620 to strike at Beirut itself,

00:07:24.480 particularly after what happened about 10 or so days ago,

00:07:28.460 in which they did strike Beirut,

00:07:30.160 knowing very well that there had been a warning, 0.91

00:07:32.480 both from Trump and by the Iranians. 1.00

00:07:35.060 And this time around, 0.55

00:07:36.120 the Iranians did strike back at the Israelis, 1.00

00:07:38.160 which is a very important development 1.00

00:07:39.800 because for the first time, 1.00

00:07:42.100 the Iranians were striking at Israel

00:07:45.280 for Israel striking Lebanon,

00:07:46.840 not because Israel had struck Tehran which was an attempt by the Iranians to essentially after

00:07:53.400 having established their own deterrence or re-established their own deterrence they were

00:07:58.280 now going to extend that deterrence to Lebanon. They do so for a variety of reasons. One of them 0.83

00:08:04.440 is of course that if the Israelis are allowed to just continue to bomb Lebanon and Gaza etc

00:08:09.580 that war that fighting will spill over into an Israeli-Iranian war at some point and that will

00:08:15.380 likely drag the U.S. into it again. That's exactly what already has happened twice since October 7th.

00:08:21.680 So if you want to have a deal with the U.S. and U.S. wants to have a deal with Iran that ends this war 0.81

00:08:27.740 in a durable fashion, then you cannot allow the Israelis to continue to be able to restart that 0.73

00:08:33.840 war. So on the one hand, the Iranians wanted to establish that deterrence in order to make sure

00:08:39.040 that the Israelis didn't do this. On the other hand, it is also a longer guarantee for the

00:08:43.500 what they call their forward defense,

00:08:47.240 meaning that they wanna have this presence

00:08:49.460 or the support in Lebanon as deterrent

00:08:52.160 against the Israelis attacking Iran, period.

00:08:55.700 Because this is what they had before Assad fell, 0.67

00:08:59.600 before Hezbollah was really weakened by the Pager attacks.

00:09:04.920 Let me give you a quick story.

00:09:07.060 In 2006, as you recall, you were there

00:09:10.260 when Israel and Hezbollah went at each other.

00:09:13.440 In the midst of that, I ran into Efraim Sneh,

00:09:16.460 who was at the time the Deputy Defense Minister of Israel.

00:09:19.440 I had interviewed him several occasions before.

00:09:22.140 And he told me very explicitly 0.98

00:09:24.320 that Lebanon and Hezbollah is just a pit stop. 0.99

00:09:29.800 The war with Iran is inevitable, 1.00

00:09:32.440 but they have to essentially finish off Hezbollah first 0.99

00:09:36.400 before they take the war to Iran. 0.62

00:09:38.900 But precisely because the Israelis 0.52

00:09:40.820 never managed to defeat Hezbollah,

00:09:42.480 in fact, the Israelis were defeated in that war,

00:09:45.320 the war with Iran didn't start in 2006.

00:09:49.040 This was a manifestation of the efficiency

00:09:52.160 of Iran's forward defense. 1.00

00:09:53.960 By being able to have Hezbollah there, 0.99

00:09:56.080 they stopped Israelis from taking the war 0.98

00:09:57.820 to Iranian territory. 0.56

00:09:59.080 And the Iranians are not trying to reestablish that, 0.91

00:10:01.540 which of course the Israelis are gonna fight tooth 0.95

00:10:03.240 and nail against, so that the Israelis will not be able 0.84

00:10:06.660 to attack Iran again without knowing that they will have 0.99

00:10:09.180 a very, very tough time with the Lebanese 0.58

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00:12:52.540 So why would Donald Trump...

00:12:57.540 I mean, this does not sound like a win for the United States

00:13:00.040 relative to where we were in mid-February.

00:13:03.580 Explain the pressures on both Trump and the Iranians

00:13:07.360 that got them to this point.

00:13:09.260 What's motivating Trump?

00:13:10.360 What's motivating them?

00:13:11.260 Yeah, look, I think this war was a mistake from the outset.

00:13:14.600 Yeah, you think?

00:13:15.220 I told the administration at the time,

00:13:17.080 this should not have been done.

00:13:18.220 It was the craziest thing any president's ever done.

00:13:20.180 Craziest thing, and I specifically told them

00:13:21.920 that you are misreading Iran.

00:13:24.460 You think that the Iranians are much weaker than they are.

00:13:27.380 I'm not saying that they were strong. 1.00

00:13:28.520 In fact, I didn't think that they're going to be as successful as they frankly ended up being,

00:13:32.440 but they were never as weak as the administration thought they were

00:13:35.320 or as the Israelis were telling the administration.

00:13:37.980 But also there was another major mistake, I think, in the administration's outlook on Iran.

00:13:42.620 They thought that the Iranians feared war more than they feared capitulation and surrender.

00:13:50.760 And Trump thought that by just taking one third of the U.S.'s Navy there,

00:13:54.140 where all of this mobilization, 0.75

00:13:55.880 the Iranians would realize that war was real.

00:13:57.940 And as a result, they would surrender.

00:13:59.700 It was a complete misread.

00:14:01.040 The Iranians feared surrender far more than they feared war.

00:14:05.760 They believed that they could survive war,

00:14:07.340 perhaps even come out on top in that war,

00:14:09.160 which I think they have in some ways. 0.94

00:14:11.120 Surrender would be the end of the Islamic Republic. 0.98

00:14:14.800 They would never surrender. 1.00

00:14:16.060 Their system is incapable of surrendering.

00:14:18.260 Their system-

00:14:19.100 Who would ever surrender?

00:14:20.620 Who would ever proffer an unconditional surrender?

00:14:23.900 Well, from Trump's perspective,

00:14:25.900 having just gone through Venezuela,

00:14:28.120 he probably thought that the Iranians would be no different, 0.98

00:14:30.780 but they were very, very different.

00:14:32.140 It's very important to understand right now,

00:14:34.280 the difficulty they have had in getting their system

00:14:37.160 to agree to this deal.

00:14:38.440 And as I mentioned,

00:14:39.480 some of the ultra hardliners are dead set against this.

00:14:42.520 A surrender would require a full consensus.

00:14:45.880 And there's no way they could ever get that in that system,

00:14:49.420 particularly if you don't have a strong Supreme leader

00:14:51.360 that can actually push it through.

00:14:52.960 And the new Supreme leader is just weeks into his job

00:14:56.720 and was not really necessarily expecting to get that job,

00:14:59.400 particularly not in this manner.

00:15:01.160 So surrender was never in the cards.

00:15:03.160 And I try to make the case to them

00:15:04.340 that this is gonna lead to you,

00:15:06.420 if you think you're bluffing,

00:15:07.900 but they are gonna fall for your bluff,

00:15:09.620 you're gonna actually actualize this bluff

00:15:11.560 and it's not gonna work out the way you thought at all.

00:15:14.540 So I do think that obviously we're worse off.

00:15:17.180 So you gave that advice.

00:15:18.540 I think you said that in public as well.

00:15:20.460 I did, yeah.

00:15:21.240 What kind of response did you get?

00:15:22.960 very little.

00:15:24.640 I mean, they were taking note,

00:15:25.920 but nevertheless never got a real response.

00:15:28.240 And it seemed to me, of course,

00:15:29.720 I didn't have access to Trump himself,

00:15:31.600 that his mind was set and that it was really difficult

00:15:34.540 for anyone on the inside to be able to change his mind.

00:15:37.900 Why he had reached that position-

00:15:39.340 That's clearly true.

00:15:40.660 Why he had reached that position, I have less insight into.

00:15:44.060 But I think over time,

00:15:46.360 that perception he had of Iranian weakness

00:15:49.060 had been reconfirmed over and over again, 0.97

00:15:51.840 because the Iranians did not respond

00:15:53.960 as harshly as they could have

00:15:55.620 against the attack on Fordow, for instance.

00:15:58.300 I mean, the Pentagon called it a polite response.

00:16:00.720 They gave a heads up, all of these different things.

00:16:02.880 Yeah, they took the Americans off the air base in Qatar.

00:16:06.640 All of this just reinforced the idea 1.00

00:16:08.840 that the Iranians don't have what it takes

00:16:10.460 to actually face the United States.

00:16:12.580 And I think it created this overconfidence.

00:16:15.080 There was another thing in my view as well

00:16:16.780 that reinforced this in Trump's mind.

00:16:18.780 And this is speculative on my end,

00:16:21.300 but I do think there's some truth in it. 1.00

00:16:24.180 The Iranians committed a huge mistake before this war, 1.00

00:16:27.900 which is they never agreed to talk directly

00:16:30.380 to Trump himself.

00:16:32.640 And from their standpoint,

00:16:33.820 they thought that by refusing this,

00:16:36.440 which they did for a variety of reasons,

00:16:38.100 but nevertheless, by refusing this, they showed strength.

00:16:42.260 They show that they're willing to say no

00:16:44.720 to the super power of the world.

00:16:47.520 But I think from Trump's perspective,

00:16:49.840 It was the opposite because Trump came in as president

00:16:52.120 and said, I'll talk to anyone.

00:16:53.580 I'll talk to Kim Jong-un, 0.79

00:16:55.440 I'll hang out with the former founder of Al Qaeda in Syria.

00:17:00.220 I'm capable of talking to everyone because I am strong,

00:17:04.260 because I am stronger than all previous presidents.

00:17:06.940 Yeah, he had Tim Cook from Apple to the White House.

00:17:09.060 Exactly.

00:17:10.540 But in the inverse of that, of course,

00:17:12.400 is that if someone else is not talking to you

00:17:15.100 and are unwilling to talk directly to you,

00:17:17.540 that's not a sign of their strength.

00:17:18.960 that's a sign of their weakness,

00:17:20.840 because Trump again believes that talking to other people

00:17:23.580 is a show of strength. 0.96

00:17:24.920 So inadvertently, I think the Iranians actually reinforced

00:17:28.340 Trump's own view of them as being weak

00:17:30.640 by refusing to talk to him.

00:17:32.100 And then obviously there's no guarantee

00:17:34.240 that the war could have been avoided had they done so.

00:17:36.700 But I think that if there was anyone

00:17:38.540 who could have actually convinced them,

00:17:40.680 convinced Trump, this is gonna be a war.

00:17:43.960 They're not gonna capitulate.

00:17:45.680 You might wanna rethink this.

00:17:47.460 And you might want to rethink the entire idea

00:17:49.180 that you're going to get them to surrender

00:17:51.080 at the negotiating table or anywhere else.

00:17:54.220 The only ones that ultimately could have done this 0.98

00:17:56.060 would be the Iranians themselves. 0.73

00:17:57.980 And they stood up that opportunity.

00:17:59.960 They had plenty of opportunities.

00:18:01.760 And I think that, again, it reinforced Trump's view

00:18:04.120 that they're weak.

00:18:04.960 And as a result, he thought that he could have

00:18:06.860 this war over with.

00:18:07.920 Well, one of the problems is Iran is not a dictatorship.

00:18:10.880 I mean, there's a very complex series

00:18:13.360 of power sharing agreements going on inside the country.

00:18:15.540 Like who runs the country?

00:18:17.460 To outsiders, me anyway,

00:18:19.180 I made a good faith effort to figure it out.

00:18:21.020 I couldn't.

00:18:22.400 It's deliberately opaque back in the-

00:18:26.240 That's on purpose.

00:18:27.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:27.920 Back in the 2000s, 1.00

00:18:29.720 the Iranians had a deliberate policy 1.00

00:18:31.240 that they called simulated irrationality. 0.83

00:18:36.200 Simulated irrationality?

00:18:37.660 It's essentially their version of madman theory

00:18:39.920 in which they, on the one hand,

00:18:42.540 wanted to make sure

00:18:43.440 that they were seen as somewhat irrational.

00:18:46.100 Because if you're irrational,

00:18:47.460 the other side has a greater difficulty calculating

00:18:50.260 what your next move is.

00:18:51.640 This is again what Nixon did,

00:18:53.220 but they called it simulated irrationality.

00:18:55.560 At the core of it, they're extremely calculating

00:18:58.000 and extremely rational.

00:18:59.600 But there was also another problem.

00:19:01.000 Their experience in the 1800s,

00:19:02.820 particularly with the British interference in Iran,

00:19:07.940 is that the British never really had to spend much money

00:19:11.220 collecting intelligence in Iran.

00:19:12.920 The Iranians were just volunteering it all the time. 0.84

00:19:15.480 And it enabled the Brits to really manipulate the system and manipulate Iran. 0.95

00:19:20.080 They didn't even have to colonize the country. 0.80

00:19:22.300 They got exactly what they wanted from Iran without formally colonizing it. 0.92

00:19:27.260 A counter to that, a reaction to that has been for them to try to create as opaque of 0.55

00:19:32.660 a system as possible, because that opacity makes it much more difficult for outside countries

00:19:37.920 to be able to interfere, manipulate, or use factions within the Iranian system.

00:19:44.520 But it's also a negative for them at the end of the day,

00:19:48.060 because the more opaque you are,

00:19:49.560 the more untrustworthy you will be

00:19:51.380 in the eyes of other countries.

00:19:53.380 You can't really trust a country 0.91

00:19:54.820 whose system you don't understand, whose processes. 0.74

00:19:58.100 So whereas it may give them a degree of security

00:20:00.520 in a very bad situation, in the long run,

00:20:02.920 it doesn't provide you with peace and security

00:20:05.040 if everyone around you believe that you're untrustworthy

00:20:08.100 because they don't understand your system. 1.00

00:20:10.220 So the Iranians at some point, 1.00

00:20:11.600 hopefully will transition away from that.

00:20:13.200 But I don't think they will, as long as this enmity between the United States and Iran is as intense as existential as it has been in the last couple of years.

00:20:23.680 So, again, what do you think drove both sides to this?

00:20:28.980 I think at the end of the day, both of them absolutely need this deal.

00:20:33.560 I understand, I think, why Trump needs it, because the economy is going to fall apart if it's not resolved quickly. 0.99

00:20:42.140 Why do the Iranians need it? 0.83

00:20:43.860 Look, the Iranians ultimately both need it

00:20:47.000 because of sanctions relief.

00:20:48.560 Their economy was in a terrible shape before this war.

00:20:52.220 That's before $300 billion of damage was inflicted on them

00:20:56.920 as a result of this war, beyond the loss of human life.

00:21:00.580 But you're also talking about infrastructure,

00:21:03.000 their steel industry, the petrochemical industry

00:21:05.220 have taken huge hits.

00:21:07.280 So this is gonna be very difficult for them.

00:21:09.560 So they need sanctions relief. 1.00

00:21:11.060 Look, the Israelis pushed the United States

00:21:14.080 to sanction Iran already in the early 1990s

00:21:17.440 because they saw Iran emerging as a rival to Israel

00:21:21.020 in the region.

00:21:22.520 Prior to that, they had actually had a long history

00:21:24.380 of collaborating with Iranians

00:21:25.700 and having a tacit partnership and alliance. 0.92

00:21:28.820 But if you wanna destroy and weaken a country,

00:21:32.140 you can do so by bombing them, which is what we saw here.

00:21:35.440 And you can also do so by having decades of sanctions

00:21:38.620 on them that slowly but surely suffocate them, destroy their industries, et cetera. And this

00:21:44.300 is what we saw in Iraq. This is what we're seeing in Cuba right now. So that type of a sanction,

00:21:49.960 even though the Iranians have managed to resist it, even as the Russians currently are resisting

00:21:54.380 a lot of these different sanctions, over time, it destroys this fabric of society. In Iraq,

00:22:01.220 there was actually a study by the State Department, I think from 2004,

00:22:04.440 as the U.S. discovered how difficult it is

00:22:08.100 to govern that country.

00:22:09.960 And they did a study to try to better understand

00:22:12.240 where the roots of the problems were.

00:22:14.480 And one of the chapters dealt with the years of sanctions

00:22:17.580 that had been imposed on Iraq.

00:22:19.820 And it pointed out that Iraq's economy

00:22:21.860 under Saddam Hussein and the sanctions

00:22:23.500 had shrunk to no more than $16 billion.

00:22:27.120 Total?

00:22:27.960 Total.

00:22:28.700 And as a result, you had a situation

00:22:31.140 in which the incentive structure

00:22:33.020 for ordinary people to even send girls to schools 1.00

00:22:36.180 was no longer there. 0.98

00:22:37.280 What was the point of educating the children

00:22:39.000 when there is no economy? 0.94

00:22:40.940 So you had a plummeting of literacy in Iraq, 0.88

00:22:46.280 particularly amongst the female population.

00:22:48.660 So you tell me, 0.50

00:22:49.400 how can you actually transition a country towards democracy

00:22:52.040 when you have rising illiteracy?

00:22:54.500 And this is Iraq, 0.89

00:22:55.400 a country that historically has been the center

00:22:58.340 of education and literacy in the Arab world.

00:23:01.260 50% of all books in Arabic used to be printed in Iraq.

00:23:06.400 It's a long, long history

00:23:07.400 that even precedes the arrival of Islam in Iraq.

00:23:10.840 So sanctions slowly but surely destroys these countries.

00:23:13.360 Why did the U.S. remind us?

00:23:15.920 What were the pressures that pushed the U.S. Congress

00:23:18.580 to impose sanctions on Iraq?

00:23:21.580 On Iraq?

00:23:22.400 Yeah, on Iraq. 0.63

00:23:23.180 Well, this is because of Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait

00:23:25.900 and then later on the suspicions

00:23:27.720 of his nuclear weapons program.

00:23:30.660 And so you had UN sanctions,

00:23:32.100 you had the food for oil program.

00:23:33.520 I was working at the UN at the time in the security council.

00:23:36.120 Iraq was part of my portfolio.

00:23:37.880 This is when I was working

00:23:38.820 for the Swedish foreign ministry.

00:23:40.820 And I remember those meetings, you know,

00:23:42.520 where I remember the Brits objected to toilet paper

00:23:45.520 and lipstick as a dual technology.

00:23:49.860 Dual use.

00:23:50.700 Dual use, could not send it into Iraq. 1.00

00:23:53.200 I mean, it was, it is the suffocation of a country 1.00

00:23:57.160 and the Iranians need sanctions lifted. 1.00

00:24:00.120 And from their standpoint, their best moment

00:24:03.720 for the last couple of decades

00:24:05.980 to actually have a real negotiation with the United States

00:24:08.640 in which they do have leverage

00:24:09.920 as a result of this mistaken war,

00:24:12.520 to be able to get a deal

00:24:14.240 that actually really lifts the sanctions,

00:24:16.420 not the way it did in the JCPOA,

00:24:18.300 but actually it also takes away primary sanctions.

00:24:20.880 They've never been in a better position to do so.

00:24:23.380 Now, they may not entirely see it that way.

00:24:25.200 Certainly some of the hardliners are opposed to it.

00:24:27.540 They think the U.S. is gonna betray the deal, et cetera.

00:24:31.100 But nevertheless, it is a strong position

00:24:33.340 for them to have that negotiation.

00:24:34.860 So I certainly think that they should.

00:24:36.920 And I think they also recognize

00:24:38.280 that at the end of the day,

00:24:39.880 they cannot sustain the situation,

00:24:41.700 the closure of the strait, et cetera,

00:24:43.400 for a very long time without creating problems

00:24:45.440 with other countries such as Russia and China

00:24:47.260 and others who do matter to the Iranians.

00:24:49.940 Yeah, and all of Asia.

00:24:51.580 I mean, South Korea and the world needs it open.

00:24:54.700 Cost of living is already making it hard to live here,

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00:26:12.240 So what are the chances this actually works and what could derail it? 0.97

00:26:16.560 The biggest risk of derailment, of course, is from the Israelis. 0.99

00:26:20.060 I mean, Netanyahu has been pushing the United States 0.69

00:26:23.140 to go to war with Iran for more than 25 years.

00:26:26.660 He finally got his wish, 0.56

00:26:28.420 but it just didn't end up the way he thought it would.

00:26:31.140 But he's not gonna give up.

00:26:33.020 And there's plenty of opportunities 1.00

00:26:34.980 for the Israelis to derail this,

00:26:36.380 particularly by restarting a war with Lebanon. 0.71

00:26:41.300 At the end of the day, you just need 0.93

00:26:42.460 a couple of successful attacks,

00:26:43.980 and the whole thing can fall apart.

00:26:47.740 So if Trump wants to keep this,

00:26:50.160 and I hope he does,

00:26:51.040 and I do think that he's serious

00:26:52.340 because as you pointed out,

00:26:53.320 he needs to get out of this as well.

00:26:55.580 It is not sufficient to just have an angry phone call

00:26:58.960 with Netanyahu every once in a while,

00:27:01.020 or to do so in reaction to Netanyahu

00:27:04.820 actually violating some of the US's red lines. 0.85

00:27:09.340 There needs to be consistent pressure on the Israelis

00:27:12.560 to make sure that they don't do this. 0.90

00:27:15.000 And I would go one step further. 1.00

00:27:16.760 Part of the reason why the Israelis would do this 0.55

00:27:18.920 is because they believe that if they restart the war,

00:27:21.660 the U.S. has no choice to reenter the war on Israel's side.

00:27:26.200 If the United States makes it very clear to the Israelis

00:27:28.720 that that equation is over, 0.64

00:27:32.020 if the Israelis start a war against not only a deal

00:27:35.400 that Trump has struck, 0.76

00:27:36.400 but what I think he hopes becomes part of his legacy,

00:27:39.800 then the U.S. is out. 0.97

00:27:41.880 And the Israelis are gonna have to deal 0.99

00:27:43.120 with the Iranians on their own, 1.00

00:27:44.080 which I don't think they can do.

00:27:46.200 without all of the support of the U.S.,

00:27:48.000 particularly the defensive support

00:27:49.980 in terms of shooting down Iranian missiles

00:27:51.820 that are heading towards Israel,

00:27:53.120 the Israelis cannot tolerate a war with Iran for very long. 0.55

00:27:56.440 So if they know that they cannot drag the U.S. in,

00:27:59.540 their incentives for sabotaging the deal will also diminish

00:28:02.880 because the outcome that they're looking for

00:28:04.800 is no longer secured in any way, shape or form.

00:28:07.280 So I think Trump has that ability

00:28:08.760 and I think proactively he should make it very clear.

00:28:11.660 If Israel restarts another war with Iran,

00:28:13.620 regardless of how it starts, the U.S. is out.

00:28:17.360 What do you think the chances are the United States

00:28:19.580 would allow Israel to lose a war against Iran?

00:28:23.520 I'm just going to say zero. 0.73

00:28:26.080 All depends.

00:28:26.940 I mean, I think you're absolutely right.

00:28:28.120 We've seen it so far that the U.S.,

00:28:30.100 you know, there will be a tremendous amount

00:28:31.380 of pressure domestically to support it.

00:28:33.300 But I think also things are changing.

00:28:35.300 I mean, right now, the standing of Israel

00:28:38.280 has plummeted amongst the American public

00:28:41.100 in almost every demographic,

00:28:42.500 except for boomer Republicans.

00:28:44.700 Genocide hurts your reputation. 0.68

00:28:46.200 It does.

00:28:46.720 Well, who would have thought, right?

00:28:48.560 And also I think on the Republican side

00:28:50.460 or the conservative side,

00:28:52.240 I think it's become very clear,

00:28:54.200 particularly to the younger demographics there,

00:28:57.600 that Israel is a key factor

00:28:59.180 as to why the United States has been involved

00:29:01.020 in so many different wars.

00:29:03.260 And since the-

00:29:03.860 A key factor in the decline of the United States. 1.00

00:29:06.120 And since so many of these young folks

00:29:08.780 have completely turned against these endless wars, et cetera,

00:29:12.080 It's always been a bit of an issue, I think,

00:29:14.460 for some of the younger Republicans

00:29:16.140 in the sense of being against the forever wars,

00:29:19.080 being against overextended the United States,

00:29:21.900 all of these bases around the world,

00:29:23.600 while at the same time trying to stay neutral

00:29:25.320 or positive on Israel.

00:29:26.580 And that cognitive dissonance worked for a while.

00:29:29.580 It doesn't work any longer

00:29:30.460 because it's just so crystal clear.

00:29:32.180 I've experienced it firsthand for many years.

00:29:35.100 Yeah, you don't want to fight about Israel. 0.97

00:29:37.040 People are hysterical, totally hysterical and ruthless. 0.93

00:29:39.480 It's just not worth it.

00:29:40.320 but you see that relationship destroying your country.

00:29:45.200 I mean, you just, you have to say something.

00:29:46.880 Yeah.

00:29:47.240 And again, you know, it's going to take a while

00:29:49.420 before that really impacts the politics of this.

00:29:52.540 But I think it's going to become increasingly clear.

00:29:55.180 I think it's going to be very interesting

00:29:56.380 to see what happens in the midterm elections,

00:29:59.160 both on the Republican and the Democratic side

00:30:01.880 on this issue.

00:30:02.720 It will still take a couple of more years

00:30:04.380 and there will be a couple of more years needed

00:30:06.360 in order to produce foreign policy thinkers

00:30:08.300 on both sides of the aisle

00:30:09.420 that have broken free from this conventional thinking

00:30:12.520 about what the U.S.'s role in the world should be,

00:30:15.040 what the U.S.'s role in the Middle East should be,

00:30:17.000 and what the U.S.'s relationship,

00:30:18.440 not just with Israel,

00:30:19.240 but any type of a special relationship,

00:30:21.100 whether those should be kept or not.

00:30:23.280 I don't understand what Netanyahu's plan is.

00:30:26.840 What's Israel's plan?

00:30:28.080 So they want to keep the war going. 0.92

00:30:29.660 Okay, so what does victory look like? 0.87

00:30:31.960 This is a really good point

00:30:33.820 because everyone else is looking at this.

00:30:36.280 Every other country is like,

00:30:37.320 okay, what's the win here?

00:30:38.800 Yeah.

00:30:39.420 And best case, how does this turn out?

00:30:41.540 Exactly. 0.52

00:30:42.100 And I think on the Israeli side,

00:30:44.360 there's just been a transition

00:30:45.800 to a completely different type of a security thinking.

00:30:48.360 This happened long time ago,

00:30:49.820 but it's just become more blatant.

00:30:51.500 I remember it was actually David Ivry,

00:30:53.520 the legendary air force general in Israel,

00:30:57.500 who was actually the lead pilot

00:30:59.400 that struck the Osirak reactors in Iraq in 1981,

00:31:02.720 who explained this to me.

00:31:03.960 He said, look, on the Israeli side,

00:31:06.700 all of the countries, they define a threat. 0.65

00:31:09.420 as being a combination of intent and capability.

00:31:14.320 On the Israeli side, 0.97

00:31:16.300 we assume that intent to destroy us is always there. 1.00

00:31:20.440 So we only focus on capability,

00:31:23.280 which means that regardless of whether a country

00:31:26.640 is disposed negatively towards Israel or not,

00:31:30.400 Israel's only way of surviving in the region 0.84

00:31:33.340 is to always outgun everyone in the region 0.97

00:31:36.520 and every other combination of countries in the region.

00:31:39.860 Keeping them weak, keeping them at a much lower level.

00:31:44.140 That's deranged.

00:31:45.100 It's military hegemony on crack.

00:31:47.780 But it's also that worldview that like everyone hates us by definition.

00:31:53.500 That's just not true.

00:31:54.740 It's not true.

00:31:55.660 People's view of you is determined mostly by your behavior.

00:31:59.480 That's just a fact of life that applies not just to Israel,

00:32:02.480 but to you and me and every other living person.

00:32:05.080 But if you go into any scenario,

00:32:06.940 if you go to a cocktail party,

00:32:07.940 imagining everyone at the party wants to kill you.

00:32:10.300 Yeah, you're not gonna have a good time. 1.00

00:32:12.240 You're crazy. 1.00

00:32:13.780 That's crazy. 0.99

00:32:15.040 So look, there's been an experience that they've had

00:32:18.200 that I think has contributed to it.

00:32:19.440 I agree with you that I don't think it's healthy.

00:32:21.220 I don't think it's good.

00:32:21.840 And also historically,

00:32:22.900 I don't think we can see any examples of any country,

00:32:26.340 particularly a small country,

00:32:27.680 being able to pursue that doctrine successfully

00:32:30.560 for a very long time.

00:32:32.220 It's not a good survival strategy.

00:32:33.760 Now they think it is the only way to survive.

00:32:36.200 But what this has done,

00:32:37.520 and this goes back to your earlier question.

00:32:39.440 I remember speaking to another Israeli military official.

00:32:43.400 This is 2004.

00:32:45.240 So this is 22 years ago.

00:32:47.580 And he was very worried about Israel's future.

00:32:50.860 He said that when I fought in 67,

00:32:53.060 when I fought in 73,

00:32:54.960 I genuinely believed,

00:32:56.380 we genuinely believed 1.00

00:32:57.600 that if we won this war against the Arabs, 1.00

00:33:00.320 the Arabs would eventually realize 0.99

00:33:02.060 They cannot defeat us militarily, so they will have to sue for peace. 0.97

00:33:06.360 So the military victory, the best case scenario, as you asked, was a transition to peace. 0.59

00:33:13.780 But he said to me, I look at the Israeli youth now, 2004, 22 years ago, and I don't see any

00:33:20.880 belief in peace.

00:33:22.280 They believe that we're going to be in constant warfare all the time and that this is just

00:33:26.840 normal, that there is no such thing as a victory.

00:33:29.900 You just have to constantly fight. 0.96

00:33:32.840 And that's the only way for Israel to survive.

00:33:34.780 And he said that this worries me

00:33:36.380 because this is not sustainable 0.99

00:33:37.600 and this is gonna change Israeli society

00:33:40.020 in a profound and very negative way. 1.00

00:33:42.900 And I think he was proven absolutely right.

00:33:44.760 So when it comes to your question,

00:33:46.160 what is Netanyahu looking for?

00:33:48.180 Looking for, he thinks that Israel

00:33:50.240 is going to always be in an endless state of war.

00:33:53.780 And as a result, you just constantly have to fight that battle

00:33:56.720 and make sure that you have the tactical advantage.

00:33:58.540 But baked into that assumption is endless,

00:34:01.660 literally limitless American support.

00:34:03.440 That's the thing. 0.90

00:34:04.300 This is all presuming because Israel could never do this

00:34:07.140 without this constant support resources from the United States.

00:34:12.600 So they've structured their entire approach

00:34:14.840 based on the idea that the US is some sort of a cash cow

00:34:18.520 or intelligence cow or weapons cow

00:34:20.600 that will just constantly end up giving.

00:34:22.460 And that is one of the most important things

00:34:24.440 that has now changed in the last five or so years

00:34:26.580 and will change even further.

00:34:27.900 So this is a strategy that simply does not work.

00:34:31.120 Things around the world are moving so fast right now,

00:34:34.100 it's impossible to keep up with all of the changes.

00:34:37.220 But we do know that when those changes happen,

00:34:40.420 markets change too,

00:34:41.860 and nothing changes faster

00:34:43.240 than the price of precious metals, gold and silver.

00:34:46.460 It just shifts in an instant

00:34:48.020 because it is a reaction to and against

00:34:51.340 what's happening in the world.

00:34:52.440 So timing is essential.

00:34:53.720 If you're thinking about adding precious metals,

00:34:55.900 and you definitely should,

00:34:57.220 We do.

00:34:58.400 You need to know when prices are going to move and why they're moving.

00:35:02.160 And Battalion Metals makes that all really simple.

00:35:04.200 You can buy the dip when it happens.

00:35:06.720 So if you want real-time alerts sent directly to your inbox when gold and silver prices move,

00:35:11.980 go to battalionmetals.com slash alerts.

00:35:16.140 Markets move fast to stay ahead of them.

00:35:18.360 So it's battalionmetals.com slash alerts.

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00:37:04.820 join blokes get your edge back so from the because i think it's important to understand

00:37:12.840 other people's perspective it's essential we didn't understand iran's perspective going into

00:37:16.780 this and we lost so it's important to understand israel's perspective going forward

00:37:20.740 americans unconditional american support for israel's regional projects is the centerpiece

00:37:32.080 of their security strategy.

00:37:34.120 Like they can't exist as a nation

00:37:35.820 without that support.

00:37:37.320 Is that correct?

00:37:38.120 Absolutely.

00:37:38.900 And they know that.

00:37:40.020 And that means that anyone who threatens that

00:37:42.540 is like, what wouldn't you do?

00:37:45.940 It's literally an existential problem

00:37:48.520 if somebody threatens that.

00:37:51.040 Yeah.

00:37:51.440 And this is part of the reason

00:37:52.660 why they're so aggressive

00:37:54.300 against anyone who questions that relationship.

00:37:57.580 And again, you can question that relationship.

00:37:59.760 I would, for instance,

00:38:00.380 never argue in favor of having a negative relationship

00:38:03.020 between the United States and Israel

00:38:04.700 or between the United States or Saudi Arabia.

00:38:06.760 I want the United States to have a sound

00:38:09.500 and healthy relationship with as many countries as possible.

00:38:12.920 But this is not sound, this is not healthy.

00:38:15.260 And I would say a lot of this is also our own fault.

00:38:18.020 At the end of the day-

00:38:19.060 Well, it's all our own fault.

00:38:20.480 When we're giving endless support without questioning,

00:38:23.720 without any restraint on it,

00:38:26.480 it actually fuels the worst instincts of any country. 0.77

00:38:29.580 Israel is no exception in this. 0.95

00:38:31.760 I would point to how Saudi Arabia was conducting itself

00:38:35.800 up until 2017 to 2019.

00:38:38.820 MBS came in and was extremely reckless.

00:38:41.320 And he constantly thought that whatever he would do,

00:38:43.640 the US would come in and bail him out. 1.00

00:38:46.160 And then there was these attacks by the Iranians

00:38:48.200 against Saudi oil fields in 2019 over a dispute

00:38:52.120 and with the effort that the Trump administration was doing

00:38:54.480 to stop the Iranians from selling their oil.

00:38:57.240 And the Saudis were stunned to see that Trump said,

00:39:00.000 this was not an attack on the US.

00:39:01.500 This was an attack on Saudi Arabia.

00:39:03.280 And I'm not gonna go to war with Iran over Saudi Arabia.

00:39:06.940 This was a betrayal of the Carter Doctrine

00:39:09.180 that essentially said that the US would do this.

00:39:12.140 But Trump, of course, being a non-conventional thinker

00:39:14.200 and probably didn't even know about the Carter Doctrine

00:39:16.060 was like, no, I'm not gonna do this.

00:39:18.620 This was stunning for the Saudis

00:39:20.040 and for everyone else in the region.

00:39:22.100 And what happened?

00:39:23.260 The conventional thinking in Washington would be

00:39:25.800 that if we are abandoning our allies,

00:39:28.560 there will be more chaos in the region.

00:39:31.420 There will be more war.

00:39:33.220 The opposite happened. 0.98

00:39:34.520 Once the Saudis realized 0.92

00:39:36.160 that the US was not gonna bail them out 0.97

00:39:38.420 from every war that they would start

00:39:39.800 or any reckless behavior they did,

00:39:41.740 guess what they did? 0.92

00:39:42.680 They secretly reached out to the Iranians

00:39:44.540 and began a secret negotiation process

00:39:47.500 that eventually led to, years later,

00:39:51.120 the normalization of their relationship

00:39:53.080 through the help of Oman, Iraq,

00:39:55.340 and ultimately China as well.

00:39:56.920 They opted for diplomacy

00:39:58.560 when they could no longer hide

00:40:00.420 behind American military power.

00:40:02.820 And if we do the same thing with Israelis, 0.87

00:40:04.720 eventually they will also come to that conclusion 1.00

00:40:06.740 that they're gonna have to find a way

00:40:08.580 to manage threats, manage relationships,

00:40:11.440 rather than thinking that domination

00:40:13.360 is the only way for them to be secure.

00:40:15.660 It's hard if you've got a country of 9 million

00:40:17.340 with no resources and not actually a real economy,

00:40:20.440 just an economy based on spy software.

00:40:23.080 So it's kind of hard to maintain a dominance posture

00:40:27.520 for very long.

00:40:28.280 It's a completely fake domination.

00:40:31.040 I mean, the talk, clearly there is a perception

00:40:33.520 in the region that Israel is trying to become

00:40:35.700 the military hegemon and their attack against Doha.

00:40:38.340 You saw how a lot of the GCC countries

00:40:40.220 explicitly started talking about Israel's attempt

00:40:43.700 of establishing hegemony.

00:40:45.380 But I think we have to be very frank.

00:40:47.360 Israel doesn't have the capacity to do so. 0.56

00:40:49.620 This is a fake hegemony.

00:40:50.660 This is the tip of the spear of someone else's hegemony.

00:40:54.060 It's the US's hegemony.

00:40:55.500 But the difference is the US has grown tired

00:40:58.540 of being the hegemon of the region

00:41:00.020 because it's not particularly fruitful.

00:41:02.000 In fact, I would not wish hegemony over the Middle East

00:41:05.300 on my worst enemy.

00:41:06.340 No, of course not.

00:41:07.180 What's the benefit of it?

00:41:08.820 You know, we're not in the 1950s or 60s, et cetera,

00:41:12.760 in which the geopolitical circumstances were different.

00:41:15.200 So the US has grown tired of it.

00:41:16.760 We have four or so presidents in a row

00:41:18.940 promising the American people to bring troops home

00:41:21.920 from the Middle East.

00:41:23.120 There were even a moment in which the Biden administration

00:41:26.180 was considering, as you remember,

00:41:28.020 there was that forced posture review

00:41:30.280 in the first year or so.

00:41:31.820 They were considering closing down 17 out of 19 bases.

00:41:35.800 They ended up not doing so.

00:41:37.340 And the main argument against it was,

00:41:39.940 well, if we close these bases, 0.99

00:41:41.940 the Chinese are gonna come in and replace us. 1.00

00:41:44.660 The Chinese would never be so stupid to take on that role. 1.00

00:41:48.440 There's no benefit in it. 1.00

00:41:49.600 They have completely benefited from the fact 1.00

00:41:52.080 that we have taken on that stupid role 1.00

00:41:53.820 and they have been free riders on this 1.00

00:41:56.580 and they will never do anything like that.

00:41:58.360 But nevertheless, that was part of the reason

00:42:00.100 why the Biden administration didn't do

00:42:01.940 what they at least at one point were seriously considering.

00:42:05.960 And now it's been done for us.

00:42:10.060 So when, right, when this is resolved,

00:42:13.460 however long that takes,

00:42:14.840 the United States will not have, you know, almost 20 bases in the region. Is that fair to say?

00:42:21.360 I find it extremely unlikely that 10 years from now, we're going to have that many bases there.

00:42:27.860 Because you have to also ask yourself, first of all, what was the use of these bases? Every time

00:42:32.620 the United States attacked Iran, it emptied those bases because they knew that the Iranians have 0.99

00:42:38.520 the capacity of striking all of those bases. 0.94

00:42:41.920 And in order to minimize any casualties,

00:42:44.800 bases were empty.

00:42:45.580 The material was even, the equipment was taken out.

00:42:48.620 So if you can't use the bases in a war,

00:42:51.560 what's the bases there for?

00:42:53.800 And from the GCC standpoint,

00:42:55.820 they thought that these bases

00:42:56.820 were going to be a deterrent against Iran. 0.94

00:42:59.140 It turned out that they were a magnet, 0.90

00:43:00.540 the reason why they were being attacked.

00:43:02.620 Now, American weaponry was very useful for the GCC states,

00:43:05.540 but the bases were not.

00:43:06.660 So I suspect that going forward, you're going to see a scenario in which they will continue

00:43:11.760 to buy and probably even buy more American weaponry, but they're not going to invest

00:43:16.340 in the bases.

00:43:17.120 And again, many of these bases have been destroyed.

00:43:19.560 Who's going to pay for them being rebuilt?

00:43:21.620 I don't think the US will.

00:43:23.060 And I'm not so sure that the GCC states will do either. 0.90

00:43:26.200 So if no one is paying for them, they're just going to sail into the sunset one way or another. 0.99

00:43:30.000 I suspect at least with most of them, that will be the case.

00:43:32.680 Here's an opportunity.

00:43:33.600 If the region now understands, there is no such thing as an external security guarantor for them.

00:43:40.980 Similar to what I mentioned with the Saudis realized that the U.S. is not going to come in and support them.

00:43:45.240 They're going to have to deal with their security issues on their own.

00:43:48.800 They're going to have to, through diplomacy, see if they can build a security architecture that intensifies economic integration and other things, perhaps transitions towards collective security thinking in order to create stability.

00:44:02.860 That I think is a blessing for the United States

00:44:05.040 because it actually enables the U.S. 0.99

00:44:07.120 to also extract itself finally from the Middle East

00:44:10.440 while supporting an effort by the region itself

00:44:14.380 to create its security architecture.

00:44:16.260 So we're not leaving chaos or anything like that. 0.62

00:44:18.340 It won't be Afghanistan 2021,

00:44:20.800 but it will be stable 0.76

00:44:22.900 and is no longer on the shoulders of the United States.

00:44:26.040 I think that would be very popular with the American public

00:44:28.280 and strategically it would be very, very good

00:44:30.640 for the United States.

00:44:31.380 But it's a nightmare for Israel. 0.99

00:44:33.220 It's the nightmare. 0.97

00:44:35.880 Because again, as you said, 9 million or whatever,

00:44:38.980 the only way you can actually not forget about the hegemony,

00:44:41.640 but just have this type of extended maneuverability

00:44:43.940 in the region is to have the United States

00:44:46.080 artificially put its finger on the scales 0.50

00:44:48.480 and tilt the balance in the favor of the Israelis. 0.63

00:44:52.640 And if the US leaves, 0.77

00:44:55.180 then Israel is going to be faced

00:44:56.020 with a completely different scenario.

00:44:57.600 Now, I don't think Israel will get destroyed at all, 0.76

00:45:00.600 But Israel is going to have to deal with the region in a completely different manner, not based on domination or, you know, creating all of this chaos that they have helped fuel in order to keep everyone else weak. 0.76

00:45:12.960 The goal of the war was not to, in my view, was not to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. 0.51

00:45:18.720 That was not the main goal.

00:45:19.660 The main goal was to eliminate rivals to regional hegemony.

00:45:25.120 Absolutely.

00:45:25.620 From the very beginning, this has been the case.

00:45:28.040 Yeah, including, I would argue, the United States.

00:45:30.000 I do think there's deep resentment

00:45:31.720 toward the United States in Israel.

00:45:33.720 They like Trump, I guess, or have liked Trump,

00:45:36.180 but I don't know, they don't like the United States.

00:45:37.760 Why would they in the same way

00:45:39.020 that teenagers resent their parents?

00:45:41.380 But the opposite happened.

00:45:44.580 So now you've got Arab states,

00:45:47.840 which have really deeply resented,

00:45:50.600 hated Iran for a long time,

00:45:52.640 now making overtures toward Iran

00:45:55.060 after getting bombed by Iran?

00:45:57.760 Look, what did the Europeans do after World War II? 0.98

00:46:00.420 They realized that the effort to contain

00:46:03.520 and isolate Germany after World War I

00:46:06.420 only led the way,

00:46:07.740 paved the way for World War II. 0.72

00:46:08.920 Exactly.

00:46:09.740 So they shifted towards the European Union,

00:46:13.620 the steel and coal union, et cetera,

00:46:15.020 in order to increase economic interdependence

00:46:17.360 between themselves,

00:46:18.400 to create as many buffers as possible for another war,

00:46:22.280 making it as costly as possible

00:46:23.700 for the states to go to war.

00:46:24.780 And Germany became more central even in Europe

00:46:27.720 than it was before the war.

00:46:29.540 Absolutely. It took some time, of course,

00:46:31.740 but it emerged as a major power

00:46:33.400 and a force for stability in Europe as well.

00:46:36.600 And, you know, I grew up in Europe.

00:46:38.000 When I grew up, it was completely inconceivable

00:46:40.280 that France and Germany would ever go to war

00:46:43.340 with each other again.

00:46:44.620 And that's still, despite the fact that 50 years ago,

00:46:47.060 they were butchering each other 1.00

00:46:48.360 that made Middle Easterners look good. 1.00

00:46:50.460 That transition is a remarkable transition.

00:46:53.380 And it is because they transitioned to collective security

00:46:55.880 and recognizing that any country's security

00:46:58.860 is based on everyone else's security.

00:47:00.920 Yes.

00:47:01.720 And the region, I think it's going to be very difficult.

00:47:04.760 I don't want to in any way, shape or form

00:47:06.200 put forward some sort of a naive picture,

00:47:09.120 but I think they've had a close encounter with death

00:47:12.740 and that tends to sharpen your mind.

00:47:15.100 Yes.

00:47:15.500 It tends to make you a bit more mature.

00:47:17.820 And despite the fact that there's a lot of anger,

00:47:19.920 A lot of anger in Kuwait and on the GCC side.

00:47:23.460 There's a lot of anger on the Iranian side as well,

00:47:25.600 because they believe that there's plenty of evidence.

00:47:28.500 And some evidence has been verified by independent actors.

00:47:32.100 France 24 showed, for instance,

00:47:33.480 that there were a lot of attacks on Iranian soil

00:47:36.060 from the US, from Kuwaiti territory.

00:47:38.280 Yeah.

00:47:38.880 And the Iranians believe that the Emiratis

00:47:40.460 were far more involved in the war

00:47:41.860 than they thought earlier during the war.

00:47:44.040 So nevertheless, there's a lot of common anger.

00:47:45.840 And that Israel was using Arab states as staging grounds

00:47:49.660 for attacks on Iran. 0.85

00:47:51.660 So, and you know, they have two secret bases

00:47:53.800 in Iraq, for instance.

00:47:55.700 Yeah, we didn't know that.

00:47:56.580 How did the Israelis get bases in Iraq?

00:47:58.420 I have no idea how that happened,

00:48:01.360 but it makes me wonder how many more bases there may be.

00:48:03.880 Because if it's two that we know of now,

00:48:05.660 how many more may there actually exist?

00:48:07.540 And remember for years,

00:48:08.540 the Iranians were actually fighting,

00:48:10.700 shooting missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan,

00:48:13.780 saying that they were destroying Mossad houses.

00:48:17.600 I don't think they ever said that they struck a base,

00:48:20.000 but nevertheless, and it was oftentimes dismissed.

00:48:23.340 No clear evidence was provided by the Iranians.

00:48:26.620 But it is unmistakable that the Israelis

00:48:28.680 have had a very long presence in Iraqi Kurdistan.

00:48:32.200 And this goes back before the revolution as well,

00:48:34.580 in which frankly, back in the 60s and the 70s,

00:48:37.040 it was the Iranians and the Israelis together with the CIA

00:48:39.380 that established Israel's presence in Iraqi Kurdistan. 1.00

00:48:43.480 One of the reasons that the Kurds

00:48:45.420 get such great coverage in the United States

00:48:47.560 Everyone loves the Kurds in the United States,

00:48:49.720 except Trump.

00:48:50.400 Trump doesn't like the Kurds for some reason,

00:48:51.800 but everyone else,

00:48:52.520 the American media loves the Kurds,

00:48:53.800 the brave Kurds.

00:48:55.120 But on that issue that you mentioned

00:48:56.880 that is never about enrichment,

00:48:58.640 I was at a track two meeting,

00:49:00.580 this must have been 2012, I think.

00:49:04.600 And I wrote about it in one of my books.

00:49:09.000 It was a remarkable moment

00:49:10.800 because you had several Iranian officials,

00:49:14.520 some of them former,

00:49:15.320 some of them actual nuclear negotiators,

00:49:18.700 together with a couple of American military folks,

00:49:22.120 and then five people from the Israeli side,

00:49:24.200 all military except one who was a top intelligence person.

00:49:27.380 In fact, he was the former head of Mossad.

00:49:30.240 And at one moment, he just laid it out.

00:49:32.820 He said, this was never about enrichment. 0.82

00:49:36.740 This was about preventing Israel from becoming free. 0.78

00:49:41.040 Let me see, remember exactly how he put it.

00:49:42.620 He said, Israel will not tolerate the United States 0.96

00:49:45.360 making friends with Iran 0.84

00:49:47.040 unless Iran first makes friends with Israel. 0.92

00:49:51.020 And it was not gonna allow the United States

00:49:52.980 to resolve its tensions with Iran

00:49:55.140 because the Israeli fear, 0.94

00:49:56.540 and this is a very legitimate fear,

00:49:58.420 if the US manages to resolve its tensions with Iran,

00:50:01.040 one of the things that would happen,

00:50:02.200 which is also what the administration is talking about now,

00:50:04.980 we would potentially start leaving the region as we should. 1.00

00:50:08.680 The threat of Iran has been a key reason 1.00

00:50:11.180 for justifying all of these bases, et cetera, et cetera. 0.57

00:50:14.680 And the Israelis then ask themselves a very valid question.

00:50:17.760 If the United States reduces its tensions with Iran,

00:50:20.760 does that mean that there will be a proportionate reduction

00:50:23.620 in Israeli-Iranian tensions?

00:50:26.420 And they conclude, I think erroneously,

00:50:28.780 but nevertheless, they conclude,

00:50:30.020 no, the Iranian-Israeli tension will remain,

00:50:32.520 but now the Israelis will have lost

00:50:34.820 the support of the United States.

00:50:37.280 And this is what they call the fear of abandonment.

00:50:39.680 They need to keep the U.S. in the region,

00:50:42.860 prevent it from making friends

00:50:44.180 for these different countries.

00:50:45.160 Because if it does make friends

00:50:46.380 with these different countries,

00:50:47.640 it will exit the region. 0.99

00:50:49.300 The Israelis will have to deal with them alone. 0.88

00:50:51.080 This is a very sick relationship. 1.00

00:50:52.640 You can only have one friend.

00:50:53.800 We're your only friend. 0.99

00:50:56.200 Yeah, this is like seventh grade girls locker room stuff.

00:51:00.600 But it's diseased. 0.98

00:51:02.440 So, but from the Israeli perspective, 1.00

00:51:04.500 because I think this really matters,

00:51:06.520 what's happening right now

00:51:08.180 and what's almost certain to happen

00:51:09.600 whatever happens this mou or this particular set of negotiations but like ultimately it's really

00:51:14.620 clear that iran is going to emerge as a major world power like how could it not yeah because

00:51:22.540 it has de facto control over one of the most important pieces of geography on the planet so

00:51:26.680 like that alone it's a very important development for them and however yet it ends even if there's

00:51:34.280 no, there's not going to be any toll, but what potentially will be there, I suspect will be

00:51:39.560 there is some sort of a environmental management fee. And whether that is handled just by Iran and

00:51:45.540 Oman, or if it's regionalized, nevertheless, something will be there. But the important

00:51:50.300 thing to understand is that their control of the strait is not because they have minesweepers or

00:51:55.600 that they have a couple of islands there. That was the case 20 years ago. In all of the war games

00:52:00.600 that the U.S. did back then, 1.00

00:52:02.580 the Iranians would close the strait 0.99

00:52:04.000 by mining the strait. 0.99

00:52:05.340 And it would take the U.S. about two weeks to reopen it.

00:52:09.220 What happened now is because of technology, 0.99

00:52:11.840 the Iranians can shoot missiles and drones 0.99

00:52:13.840 from anywhere of their 1,500 kilometer shoreline

00:52:17.120 at any of these ships.

00:52:19.340 And just the risk of being hit is enough

00:52:21.620 for no one to insure them.

00:52:23.740 So it's a completely different scenario.

00:52:25.940 That capacity does not go away.

00:52:29.380 That's what I'm saying.

00:52:30.300 So it will still be there.

00:52:32.000 So this is a very, very important development.

00:52:34.240 But without sanctions relief, 1.00

00:52:36.280 I don't see the Iranians being able 1.00

00:52:37.980 to fully live up to their potential. 1.00

00:52:40.060 And on top of that, I have to say,

00:52:42.360 their political system is a huge inhibitor

00:52:45.920 of their own potential.

00:52:47.680 It is not a free system.

00:52:49.000 It is not a dictatorship like Saddam or Gaddafi's

00:52:52.240 or Assad's systems in Syria and Libya and Iraq.

00:52:56.360 It is a weird system.

00:52:58.140 It has democratic elements,

00:52:59.700 but most importantly, the power is dispersed

00:53:02.060 throughout a system.

00:53:04.240 It's not a family.

00:53:05.240 This is not, you kill,

00:53:06.440 this is what I think Trump was sold. 0.99

00:53:08.560 You kill Khamenei, the Supreme Leader,

00:53:10.620 the whole system implode.

00:53:11.940 Not at all.

00:53:12.860 This is not Saddam in which you take him out

00:53:14.720 and his kids out and the dynasty is over. 0.83

00:53:16.920 This is a system that was designed specifically

00:53:19.840 to be able to survive a counter revolution

00:53:22.900 because it was itself a revolutionary system.

00:53:26.760 And it's also assassination proof.

00:53:29.060 Yes, yes.

00:53:29.800 I mean, 135 or so senior officials have been killed,

00:53:34.560 immediately replaced, immediately replaced.

00:53:37.480 In fact, replaced by more hardline people most times.

00:53:40.000 Boy, that's a durable system.

00:53:41.380 Yeah.

00:53:41.520 But even if you were to take out

00:53:43.400 the entire infrastructure of government in Iran, 0.56

00:53:47.080 even if you were to nuke Iran,

00:53:49.180 you still couldn't return to February 27th status quo

00:53:53.920 on Hormuz because it could be closed by piracy.

00:53:57.920 Yeah.

00:53:58.560 So you have to have a powerful central government in Iran. 0.89

00:54:02.700 The world needs that in order to keep the strait open. 0.80

00:54:05.360 Look, bottom line, we need,

00:54:07.280 it's a very bad scenario

00:54:08.640 if we have a weak central government.

00:54:10.520 That's what I'm saying.

00:54:11.360 It's terrible.

00:54:12.460 It's a recipe for instability. 1.00

00:54:14.840 It's a recipe for a country turning into Lebanon 1.00

00:54:17.340 in which the state is so weak 0.99

00:54:19.420 that you could have non-state actors

00:54:21.400 performing the duties of a state.

00:54:24.200 But even if it were to turn into Lebanon or Syria 1.00

00:54:27.140 or Somalia, which would be a disaster 0.98

00:54:30.740 for the people of that country and for the region. 1.00

00:54:33.640 That's a massive threat to the global economy.

00:54:35.820 Definitely.

00:54:36.140 That's the difference.

00:54:38.120 And by the way, we had what,

00:54:40.320 25 to 30% of the Syrian population

00:54:43.940 becoming external refugees

00:54:46.900 as a result of that civil war. 0.52

00:54:48.560 Yes.

00:54:49.220 And a country of whatever, 20, 30 million people.

00:54:52.600 So, and that profoundly changed the politics of Europe.

00:54:55.540 Right.

00:54:55.760 So what if that happened to a country of almost 100 million?

00:54:57.900 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:58.560 It would be an absolute disaster.

00:55:00.100 I said this to Trump before it started. 1.00

00:55:02.220 The migrations could be just like,

00:55:07.040 you know, really, really, really a big deal. 1.00

00:55:09.420 And I think he understood he did it anyway.

00:55:11.500 But I guess what I'm saying is I don't see a way 1.00

00:55:14.580 that this is not the nightmare scenario for Israel. 0.99

00:55:18.740 Totally is.

00:55:19.520 No matter what.

00:55:20.400 Yeah.

00:55:21.260 And they can, you know, from the Israeli side, 0.57

00:55:23.400 And there will be, I mean, Netanyahu will keep on insisting that they set back Iran a decade or two.

00:55:29.320 And absolutely, they really have damaged Iran's infrastructure tremendously.

00:55:34.660 There is no doubt about that. 0.99

00:55:36.780 That can be rebuilt, however.

00:55:38.240 What they have done that is really difficult to undo is that, I'm not saying that the system in Iran has necessarily gained popularity.

00:55:48.340 I don't think the actual support base of that system is more than 15 to 20 percent.

00:55:53.400 And then you have 60 or so percent, 15 to 20, 15 to 20. Oh, it's that unpopular. Yeah. 60 or so percent of the population that absolutely would like to see a different type of a government, but they're not willing to risk war or revolution over it. They want to see gradual change.

00:56:06.800 And then perhaps 20 or so percent of the population that are just so fed up with how this system has been so repressive, so corrupt, so incompetent in many different ways, mismanaging the economy, that they've gone so desperate that they're willing to try almost everything, right?

00:56:25.400 But what has happened because of this war, which always happens in these types of wars, is that you have a rallying around the flag phenomenon.

00:56:32.600 is not necessarily made the system more popular,

00:56:36.920 but the performance of the Iranian military

00:56:40.140 in all of this has made the confidence

00:56:43.020 of the 15 to 20% of the population

00:56:46.280 that do support the system absolutely skyrocket.

00:56:51.300 It has made them think that, you know,

00:56:53.140 they themselves had question marks

00:56:54.760 about the viability of the system.

00:56:56.360 It faced so many problems,

00:56:57.520 so many of them self-inflicted.

00:56:59.120 Many of them also, of course,

00:57:00.600 absolutely a result of the sanctions.

00:57:02.600 But there was actually a very low confidence in that system

00:57:05.660 in December, in January of this year.

00:57:08.840 That has just completely shifted

00:57:10.260 because now they feel that, as you said,

00:57:13.340 they have become a global power.

00:57:16.820 They have managed to not only resist

00:57:19.340 the attack of two nuclear powers,

00:57:22.000 one of them is superpower,

00:57:23.240 but in some ways they may have come out on top

00:57:25.160 and strategically inflicted a defeat on them.

00:57:27.740 And this has just really just boosted their confidence. 0.98

00:57:32.600 And that is gonna make the Islamic Republic much stronger, 0.73

00:57:36.440 at least temporarily than it was before February. 0.99

00:57:39.620 It seems so obvious.

00:57:41.880 Absolutely.

00:57:42.720 And the rest of the world sees it

00:57:43.560 and the rest of the world is to some extent dependent 0.89

00:57:45.860 on Iran. 0.80

00:57:46.700 Like that's what we all learned.

00:57:48.440 Oh, absolutely.

00:57:49.280 They have the ability- 1.00

00:57:50.100 Like South Korea needs Iran. 0.85

00:57:52.060 Japan needs Iran.

00:57:54.080 These are real countries with huge economies like- 0.89

00:57:57.600 And even if they try to reduce their dependency,

00:58:00.840 First of all, they were not dependent on Iranian oil.

00:58:03.380 They stopped buying Iranian oil 10 years ago

00:58:05.560 because of the U.S. sanctions.

00:58:07.260 So they were not buying a thing from Iran.

00:58:10.160 South Korea has been in the Iranian market for so long.

00:58:13.340 It's only during this last 10 years

00:58:15.120 that they were completely chased out by U.S. sanctions.

00:58:17.760 Samsung was so massive.

00:58:19.500 Oh, no, no, no. 1.00

00:58:20.340 I mean, they need Iran 0.99

00:58:21.180 because Iran controls the outlet to the Persian Gulf. 0.99

00:58:24.020 Exactly.

00:58:24.860 So now you don't have to have any dependence on Iranian goods.

00:58:27.120 Exactly. 0.99

00:58:27.960 But you still need Iran. 0.98

00:58:29.440 Because it's a question of geography. 0.98

00:58:31.120 Yeah.

00:58:32.000 Only in America, as an American, I hate to say this, 1.00

00:58:34.700 but only our policymakers are so stupid they don't look at maps. 1.00

00:58:39.460 No, I'm serious. 1.00

00:58:40.540 They're so caught up in this ideology.

00:58:43.040 Rogue state, terror state, Hitler, Chamberlain, Churchill.

00:58:46.400 It's like they're all in this weird fantasy world

00:58:48.360 where no one consults Google Maps.

00:58:50.580 It's like, hey, guys,

00:58:51.820 they could shut down a fifth of the world's commodities.

00:58:56.180 And I remember I was in some meetings.

00:58:57.760 These were not formal government,

00:59:01.320 but several people who were in and out essentially.

00:59:04.600 And this question came up

00:59:06.340 and I was actually quite stunned.

00:59:09.080 The degree to which a lot of people

00:59:10.660 actually thought the Iranians

00:59:11.720 would not close the strait.

00:59:12.920 They thought that that would be a suicidal move by them.

00:59:15.600 And I had to remind them

00:59:16.940 that they will see this as an existential threat.

00:59:19.480 So all of the patterns we've seen in the past

00:59:21.620 in which they responded politely,

00:59:23.760 they didn't even respond to certain attacks.

00:59:25.920 You have to set that aside

00:59:27.240 because if they're actually faced

00:59:28.420 with an existential threat,

00:59:30.240 their behavior will likely be very different.

00:59:32.360 We framed it as an existential threat.

00:59:34.740 The president of the United States demanded

00:59:36.180 in the first days, and I'm quoting,

00:59:38.260 unconditional surrender.

00:59:40.540 Once you say that, it couldn't be clearer.

00:59:44.100 You're fighting for your life.

00:59:45.260 What wouldn't you do?

00:59:46.380 Exactly, exactly.

00:59:47.680 One of the things I think is also very interesting,

00:59:49.900 and I don't know the answer to exactly what happened,

00:59:53.540 but the Israelis were remarkably successful

00:59:56.560 in penetrating Iran intelligence-wise.

01:00:00.540 How did they do that?

01:00:01.980 Over the course of years,

01:00:03.480 they had recruited a lot of Iranians. 0.99

01:00:06.760 They had flipped them essentially. 0.95

01:00:08.340 And this is something that the Islamic Republic 0.96

01:00:10.400 absolutely needs to understand. 0.99

01:00:13.520 That game is a game of numbers.

01:00:16.180 If you have a lot of options,

01:00:18.400 a lot of candidates that you could turn into a spy

01:00:21.300 or to turn against their own country

01:00:23.600 to work for the Mossad,

01:00:25.100 you will get a larger number of them successfully flipped.

01:00:30.500 What determines if there's a large number of candidates?

01:00:33.380 Well, part of it is the repression

01:00:34.760 of the Islamic Republic itself.

01:00:36.960 Because it was so repressive,

01:00:38.700 it actually created a very large pool of people

01:00:41.160 that the Israelis could turn to 0.65

01:00:43.300 and try to see which ones of them could they flip.

01:00:45.820 Three days before the war,

01:00:47.840 those people started to,

01:00:48.820 they had been extracted out of Iran, trained.

01:00:50.900 Three days before the war, they went back into Iran.

01:00:55.100 And they were conducting attacks from inside of Iranian territory, similar to the way that 0.87

01:00:59.460 the Ukrainians have done it in Russia. 0.81

01:01:01.320 In fact, the methodology seems to be identical. 0.66

01:01:05.660 In this war, we saw none of that.

01:01:08.800 Whatever happened, either they expended all of their Mossad assets inside the country

01:01:14.600 or something else happened because we just did not see that same repeat of a pattern

01:01:19.680 in this war.

01:01:21.120 And again, I don't know the answer to it, but it is a very, very big question mark.

01:01:24.360 exactly what happened.

01:01:25.640 How were they so successful in June

01:01:27.800 and apparently achieve nothing in this war

01:01:30.780 in terms of penetrating Iran? 0.97

01:01:33.800 Well, the Iranians rounded up a bunch of- 1.00

01:01:35.920 They certainly did. 1.00

01:01:36.940 And I'm sure they also rounded up

01:01:38.340 a large number of innocent people that were executed.

01:01:41.240 But again, I don't know if that's the full answer.

01:01:45.100 Will attitudes change immediately during war?

01:01:49.020 Yes, absolutely.

01:01:49.860 But those people were not,

01:01:51.320 it takes much more than six months

01:01:52.700 to be able to recruit them and train them.

01:01:54.140 So they would have to be recruited and trained

01:01:55.920 for a much longer period of time.

01:02:00.060 So what does Israel do in the face of this?

01:02:05.680 Because just with the stipulation that this is,

01:02:08.300 they're always talking about existential threats,

01:02:10.080 everything's an existential threat. 0.79

01:02:11.620 This feels like an actual existential threat to Israel. 0.70

01:02:14.220 I don't think it is an existential threat. 0.83

01:02:15.520 I think Israel's own security doctrine 0.92

01:02:17.760 is the real existential threat to Israel. 1.00

01:02:20.100 Of course, I agree with you completely. 0.96

01:02:21.580 I mean, if Israeli assumptions about it's that country's place in the world, its own place in 0.84

01:02:27.980 the world remain unchanged, this is an existential threat to them. Like they have to change or else. 0.56

01:02:34.980 They have to change. I agree with that. Absolutely. And I also, I want to point out one thing,

01:02:40.800 this whole idea that Iran is or was an existential threat was a talking point. 0.98

01:02:46.500 I'm aware of that. 0.67

01:02:47.420 It is a talking point that they always use in the United States because it was necessary to try to get the United States to make Iran its top national security threat, which in and of itself is absurd.

01:03:01.880 Not to say that Iran is not a challenge, but to be the top national security threat.

01:03:06.120 Go back to some of these. 0.97

01:03:07.040 When the drug cartels control New Mexico, which they do, and parts of Texas and Arizona and like our own countries collapsing, the biggest threat is Iran.

01:03:18.240 Look at the debates in 2012.

01:03:20.520 I think it was between Obama and Romney

01:03:23.200 or was it the vice president?

01:03:24.320 I think it was Obama and Romney.

01:03:25.800 And the ABC anchor asked him,

01:03:27.320 Iran is the top US national security.

01:03:29.300 And I was like, how is this just accepted as fact?

01:03:32.060 You just keep repeating a lie

01:03:33.420 and people just start nodding. 1.00

01:03:34.580 But this is something the Israelis

01:03:35.300 have been pushing for since 1994 or so.

01:03:38.820 But the Israelis themselves internally

01:03:40.920 were not necessarily saying this.

01:03:42.900 Efraim Halevi, Pardo, Mayor Dagan,

01:03:46.060 three consecutive heads of the Mossad openly said Iran is not an existential threat. Iran is a 1.00

01:03:52.180 threat, but it's not an existential threat. Ehud Barak, former prime minister, defense minister,

01:03:57.420 already back then said to say that Iran is an existential threat is to diminish Israel's own

01:04:02.420 power. But it was a very effective talking point to push the United States towards believing that

01:04:09.140 the United States needs to attack Iran or sanction Iran, or just treat it as a top national security

01:04:15.280 threat because it is an existential threat. And in New York Times and all of these papers,

01:04:20.260 it's just as religion repeated that the Israelis view Iran as an existential threat. Never question

01:04:26.540 as to whether that is really how they see it. Well, what's never questioned is why that would

01:04:30.980 be our problem, true or false. That's an even deeper question that would never occur. Okay,

01:04:34.840 I'm sorry that you don't get along with one of your neighbors and you feel deeply threatened.

01:04:38.600 I, you know, good luck resolving that. What do we have to do with that?

01:04:41.100 I, you know, I wrote my dissertation on Iranian Israeli relations and I spent some time in Iran and in Israel interviewing top officials about this issue. I wanted to get to the heart of the matter. I didn't want to rely on secondary documents and I couldn't get access to the primary documents. Of course, they don't have that type of transparency. So I needed to sit down with them.

01:04:59.120 And one thing that always came through

01:05:01.820 with my interviews with the Israelis,

01:05:03.440 I had been in Iran a couple of weeks earlier.

01:05:05.260 So I almost every door in Israel was open for me

01:05:07.640 because in my email or letter, I told them,

01:05:09.440 I just came from Iran.

01:05:10.440 I spent time interviewing top officials about Israel.

01:05:13.500 Do you have time to chat?

01:05:14.540 And they almost all did, including very senior people,

01:05:17.540 including people in the intelligence and community.

01:05:19.800 Some of the most valuable things I got from those interviews

01:05:22.980 were not my questions of them,

01:05:24.800 is that they almost always kept me for another 30 minutes,

01:05:27.460 another 60 minutes interviewing me,

01:05:29.800 trying to see what I had found out.

01:05:31.760 In government officials,

01:05:32.940 they always know how to conceal the true motives, et cetera.

01:05:35.780 When you ask them a question,

01:05:37.620 when they ask a question,

01:05:39.440 they reveal what they're actually looking for.

01:05:41.660 I've noticed.

01:05:42.880 And there you could clearly see the premise was not that

01:05:46.480 Yvonne is an existential threat.

01:05:48.140 The premise was not that Yvonne is irrational

01:05:50.860 or that it is suicidal, was exactly the opposite.

01:05:53.980 That they were dealing with an adversary

01:05:55.700 that was far more cautious, calculating, and rational.

01:06:01.160 But in order to get the United States on your side,

01:06:04.020 you have to portray a completely different image,

01:06:06.860 that Iran was suicidal, that it was irrational.

01:06:10.640 Because if they're irrational and suicidal, 0.96

01:06:13.240 it means diplomacy doesn't work.

01:06:15.760 Of course. 0.69

01:06:16.340 Deterrence doesn't work.

01:06:17.800 And because they're suicidal,

01:06:19.060 the only thing that will work

01:06:20.580 is to take preemptive military action. 1.00

01:06:23.160 Killing them before they kill themselves and you. 1.00

01:06:25.380 Yeah. 0.99

01:06:25.700 um but again i just have to keep asking the same question what option i mean in real life

01:06:33.520 this leaves israel in a history you know manufactured hysteria and hyperbole and

01:06:39.420 lying and propaganda leave that aside it's easy to be mesmerized by that and all of israel's

01:06:45.260 many agents in the united states are all hair on fire all the time but like in real life i do think

01:06:51.240 this is a major problem for Israel.

01:06:54.180 Oh, yeah.

01:06:54.820 Yeah. Oh, yeah. For real.

01:06:56.220 Absolutely.

01:06:56.960 Biggest problems since 73, I would say.

01:06:58.780 And I'm worried that by now,

01:07:01.980 they just don't have the creativity

01:07:04.680 to think in a different manner and adjust.

01:07:09.580 Meaning if it's not an assassination,

01:07:11.140 it doesn't even seem like a real solution to them.

01:07:13.480 I think, look, they have a track record

01:07:15.660 of successfully not only preventing diplomacy

01:07:19.800 between the US and Iran,

01:07:21.240 sabotaging talks when they were happening.

01:07:24.700 Even when a deal was struck,

01:07:26.700 fight tooth and nail against it in Congress.

01:07:28.920 And even when they lost,

01:07:30.640 two years later,

01:07:31.480 convinced the next American president to walk out of it.

01:07:35.600 I remember I sat down with some folks from APAC

01:07:39.160 after the JCPOA.

01:07:40.740 I was very involved in that fight.

01:07:43.460 And I thought I was gonna come there and kind of see,

01:07:47.480 okay, how are they gonna adjust to this new reality?

01:07:50.600 Iran had been a cash cow for AIPAC since 1994. 0.90

01:07:55.460 In my first book, Treacherous Alliance,

01:07:56.960 I spent a lot of time interviewing the AIPAC folks as well

01:07:59.920 on how they started just becoming so anti-Iran

01:08:04.320 and become the leading force pushing for sanctions, et cetera.

01:08:08.200 Although they never said that they pushed for war,

01:08:09.780 it was very clear that they were.

01:08:12.400 And they said that, you know, once 1993,

01:08:14.500 the Oslo process started, AIPAC was having

01:08:17.140 an existential crisis.

01:08:19.120 how are they going to raise money

01:08:20.320 if their cash cow, Yasser Arafat,

01:08:22.880 no longer was a terrorist, but a peace partner?

01:08:25.060 Exactly.

01:08:26.160 And I have it quoted from an AIPAC official

01:08:28.580 saying that Iran was what saved them

01:08:30.260 because now suddenly all of the focus

01:08:32.280 was shifted towards Iran.

01:08:33.960 It saved AIPAC.

01:08:35.160 It became a boon for fundraising,

01:08:36.820 particularly once Ahmadinejad became president

01:08:38.640 and started questioning the Holocaust, et cetera.

01:08:40.460 It was massively helpful for them. 0.77

01:08:44.420 So I thought that once we were going to get there,

01:08:47.000 I would see an AIPAC that was starting to have questions

01:08:49.840 of how they're going to adjust to the situation.

01:08:51.540 And I walked away realizing

01:08:52.660 they're going to fight tooth and nail to destroy this deal

01:08:55.760 even once it's been achieved,

01:08:57.540 even once it's starting to be implemented. 1.00

01:08:59.680 And I would suspect that the Israelis 0.93

01:09:02.500 can think of other options than to do exactly that 0.77

01:09:06.000 if there is a final deal.

01:09:07.800 I don't see how that works

01:09:08.660 because the last reservoir of support

01:09:11.940 for unconditional love of Israel in the United States

01:09:15.600 is Trump loyalists.

01:09:18.380 And Trump is now, you know,

01:09:20.500 on the record attacking Netanyahu,

01:09:22.380 on the record endorsing this deal.

01:09:24.860 How do the Israelis blow that up? 1.00

01:09:27.560 Everyone's going to know. 1.00

01:09:28.760 If the deal falls apart, the Israelis did it. 1.00

01:09:30.660 Well, at this point, 1.00

01:09:31.540 the Israelis are not trying to hide their fingerprints

01:09:33.300 in any way, shape, or form.

01:09:34.200 Okay.

01:09:34.460 Very different from 20 years ago.

01:09:35.880 But basically they're now on a course

01:09:38.160 for conflict with Trump,

01:09:39.720 open conflict with Trump.

01:09:41.080 Yeah.

01:09:41.420 But their only supporters of the United States

01:09:43.320 are Trump voters.

01:09:44.560 Yes.

01:09:45.580 Well, look.

01:09:45.920 So, I mean, I don't, you know.

01:09:47.660 It's a very different environment.

01:09:50.040 And they've played the last card.

01:09:52.420 Unless, I mean, look,

01:09:53.240 they still have Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton

01:09:54.800 and Lindsey Graham in the Senate.

01:09:56.460 Okay, they got all.

01:09:57.660 And Tom Cotton just introduced this bill

01:09:59.400 or this amendment that would essentially

01:10:01.160 more or less merge U.S. intelligence

01:10:03.520 and Israeli intelligence

01:10:05.420 by making it mandated for the United States.

01:10:07.620 And he's the chairman of the Senate Intel Committee.

01:10:09.820 Mandate the U.S.

01:10:10.480 One of the most evil things

01:10:11.360 that's ever come out of our Congress.

01:10:12.700 it's one of the most anti-american you know anyway i encourage everyone go to responsible

01:10:19.460 stagecraft uh what is that what is the tom cotton story i don't know the story i don't know exactly 0.83

01:10:25.400 why he ended up i mean he was a protege of uh uh bill crystal and uh served in iraq if i'm not

01:10:32.920 mistaken i'm not really sure exactly how deep his ideological commitment to this is or if it's other

01:10:37.620 reasons. But Paul Pilar, former CIA legend in many ways, someone who really stood up against

01:10:45.900 the manipulation of intelligence during the Bush years, trying to get us into that Iraq war,

01:10:51.900 has a fantastic piece laying out exactly what this is on a responsible statecraft and showing

01:10:56.360 that this is an extremely dangerous situation. And what they're trying to do, not only with that,

01:11:01.180 but also with 224 is to,

01:11:03.980 in which they're trying to take away the aid

01:11:06.740 because the aid is public, it's scrutinized, et cetera.

01:11:10.320 They're all trying to do it

01:11:11.280 in some sort of a procurement accounting exercise.

01:11:16.080 So it will continue to happen,

01:11:18.520 probably even more money for Israel,

01:11:20.300 but it will all be hidden in the bureaucracy

01:11:22.380 with no congressional oversight.

01:11:24.960 So they're recognizing exactly what is happening.

01:11:27.560 They're losing the American public,

01:11:29.180 but they can use some of their last juice

01:11:31.720 that they have in Washington

01:11:32.900 to go push through these different reforms.

01:11:35.280 And it will become a structural impediment

01:11:38.260 towards the type of healthy break, healthy detachment.

01:11:43.300 They should be in prison, all of these people.

01:11:45.280 This is happening right now.

01:11:46.260 So when you're saying that, look, they're losing Trump,

01:11:48.220 yes, you're absolutely right,

01:11:49.880 but they're doing other things

01:11:51.000 that will make it very difficult for future presidents

01:11:53.240 and members of Congress

01:11:54.680 to be able to break free from some of these things.

01:11:56.420 so where is this process it is right now in the the ndaa's and senate's going to be voted for if

01:12:05.840 i'm not mistaken some parts of it's already been voted for and it's going to go to a final vote

01:12:09.580 and this is happening in front of the american pass most likely it will pass and what is it can

01:12:14.620 you just summarize what it will mean well the intelligence part is really devastating because

01:12:19.720 essentially it means that it is mandated for the u.s to share significant amount of intelligence

01:12:25.840 with the Israelis and it can only be prevented

01:12:28.840 if the president himself goes in and stops certain things. 0.73

01:12:33.200 The president does not have the time,

01:12:35.120 should not have the time

01:12:36.200 to micromanage the intelligence relationship.

01:12:38.500 Why would the United States

01:12:39.300 share any intelligence with Israel?

01:12:41.140 Why would we be required to do that?

01:12:41.600 I mean, there's always gonna be sharing of intelligence,

01:12:43.860 but it's gonna be very careful

01:12:45.320 because we will get intelligence from them.

01:12:47.120 I have no idea whether-

01:12:48.180 The intelligence we get from them is fundamentally untrue.

01:12:53.300 Well, that's for certain,

01:12:54.420 and particularly when it comes to some of the things

01:12:56.140 that they try to sell us.

01:12:58.020 I don't know if that relationship is sufficiently balanced,

01:13:00.980 but we're making it increasingly unbalanced.

01:13:03.800 And essentially saying that for something to be stopped,

01:13:05.920 the president has to intervene.

01:13:07.520 And this is also very problematic

01:13:08.820 because it means that we would have to share intelligence

01:13:11.000 about other partners that we have with the Israelis

01:13:13.480 that actually could be betraying them in a way.

01:13:16.080 So again, it's once again, 0.60

01:13:17.820 putting the relationship with Israel

01:13:19.660 above all other relations that the United States has.

01:13:22.020 Above all other concerns,

01:13:23.220 including like the most basic concern,

01:13:25.020 which is how's America doing?

01:13:26.860 That's subordinated to how do we support Israel? 0.60

01:13:30.340 Absolutely.

01:13:32.260 And look, I think because they see

01:13:34.380 that the writing is on the wall,

01:13:36.600 that they're losing the American public,

01:13:38.200 they're trying to do as much as they can now

01:13:40.300 before they're going to be faced with an environment

01:13:42.520 in which a lot of these things

01:13:44.320 are going to be completely unthinkable.

01:13:46.440 And pushing for this war,

01:13:47.660 I think also Netanyahu thought of it

01:13:50.000 as probably his last chance.

01:13:51.560 Of course.

01:13:52.860 I just, I think that was clear in February.

01:13:55.240 This was their last chance. 0.95

01:13:56.400 I mean, they're not, they're certainly not stupid 0.76

01:13:57.880 and they're laser focused on what they think their interests are. 0.78

01:14:00.680 I think they are not good at assessing their own interests.

01:14:02.980 I don't think they're long-term thinkers.

01:14:04.920 I think they're nihilists. 0.96

01:14:06.500 I think they're kind of crazy actually in their behavior. 0.91

01:14:08.840 Bombing Doha on September 9th was one.

01:14:12.500 But again, we have to also take some responsibility

01:14:14.700 when we have put forward so few consequences.

01:14:19.360 We've created this.

01:14:20.500 There's no doubt.

01:14:21.020 on them doing things like this.

01:14:22.640 We shouldn't be surprised.

01:14:23.340 When you see a child like this,

01:14:24.540 you point to the parents and you say,

01:14:25.720 you're a bad parent for creating a kid like this.

01:14:27.620 Oh, I totally agree.

01:14:28.780 It's our fault.

01:14:30.540 I guess I just,

01:14:32.540 I just don't see this getting resolved peacefully.

01:14:40.200 And it feels like the United States is vulnerable 0.97

01:14:41.940 to attacks from Israel. 0.94

01:14:45.620 I can't even fathom what that would mean. 1.00

01:14:50.060 Wow, I think there's precedent for it.

01:14:52.200 Yeah, there is, there is.

01:14:53.940 But I mean, that would be such a suicidal turn of event,

01:14:58.900 turns of event for-

01:15:00.100 Unless you lie about it and classify everything for decades.

01:15:03.860 I think there absolutely has to be ways to prevent that.

01:15:06.880 And again, these are not technically difficult measures.

01:15:11.840 It's just making sure you don't give any country,

01:15:15.540 Israel, Saudi, if the US and Iran

01:15:17.940 has a relationship in the future,

01:15:19.340 I sure as hell hope that it doesn't get structured like this

01:15:22.200 because it's ultimately bad for both sides.

01:15:24.120 It's not good for Israel to have turned into

01:15:26.840 this type of a, having this type of a security

01:15:30.360 appraised welfare case.

01:15:32.520 Yeah, no, I agree.

01:15:33.460 So, you know, we just have to take away

01:15:36.060 some of those things.

01:15:37.180 And I think Joe Kent has been right on the money

01:15:39.340 of certain type of restrictions

01:15:41.540 that need to be imposed in my view now,

01:15:44.240 not after they've done something,

01:15:45.800 not even as a threat if they do it,

01:15:47.280 Take it away now. Make it very clear. They're not going to be able to drag the U.S. into another war. So creating false flags or creating these things is not going to lead to the U.S. reentering the war. Once that is entirely clear, the incentive to do so is, or at least the incentive to use those methods to do so, is going to be significantly diminished.

01:16:07.920 So I think there are a lot of means by which foreign countries exert influence in the United States up to and including violence and blackmail.

01:16:17.000 That's all real.

01:16:17.980 But on the most basic and powerful level, it's campaign contributions.

01:16:23.440 It's the donors pushing policies that the public doesn't want that's not good for the United States.

01:16:28.800 That's why Tom Cotton exists and Lindsey Graham and the rest.

01:16:32.580 So for the Republican Party to be a party that serves the interests of its own country, an America First Party, it has to break with these donors.

01:16:42.160 You can't have Miriam Adelson, who's not even an American, use her gambling fortune to hijack the political process.

01:16:50.840 Like, do you think the Republican Party, Democratic Party is hopeless in my view, but the Republican Party, there was hope.

01:16:56.640 And now it seems like until they break that addiction, there's no hope.

01:17:01.660 I frankly don't have any hope

01:17:03.440 with any of the parties right now

01:17:05.220 unless they fundamentally change the leadership.

01:17:08.680 I think we need to move towards a post-partisan situation.

01:17:12.900 Yes.

01:17:13.760 I have to say, you know,

01:17:16.420 I'm very skeptical about the two-party system

01:17:19.080 when you have a public

01:17:20.420 in which the spectrum of views are as wide

01:17:23.000 as they are right now.

01:17:24.240 Yes.

01:17:24.580 If this was a European parliamentary system,

01:17:26.640 I'm not saying it's superior in all ways,

01:17:28.820 in any way, shape or form,

01:17:29.940 but these two parties would at least have been five or six parties and many of them would actually

01:17:36.080 have been able to work much better together because they were in different parties but now

01:17:40.740 you put so many different views in the same party and they're supposed to have one line it just

01:17:44.720 creates all of this internal infighting and it also shoots out pushes out a huge amount of the

01:17:50.560 spectrum that the american public holds today there's a reason why young people don't watch

01:17:54.380 mainstream media any longer. They don't trust it. But it also is a very narrow set of views

01:18:00.140 that are constantly being presented there. And those narrow views do not represent the

01:18:04.300 majority of Americans. I don't know. I want to believe, I want to agree with you, but I don't

01:18:09.220 see, I don't see any liberal democracy representing its population. It seems like no matter how many

01:18:16.460 parties you have, your options are neoconservative foreign policy and neoliberal economic policy.

01:18:21.280 both of which are just totally wrong

01:18:24.380 don't serve the populations

01:18:26.080 destroy countries

01:18:27.180 and they're so intertwined by the way

01:18:29.140 I know they are

01:18:29.880 and they're also just basically immoral 0.99

01:18:31.380 and anti-Christian from my perspective

01:18:32.900 so yeah monopoly capitalism

01:18:35.940 and more wars in the Middle East for Israel 0.54

01:18:37.880 like that's 1.00

01:18:38.400 but that's true

01:18:39.620 all European political parties support this

01:18:42.200 and the ones that don't are called Nazis

01:18:43.940 and like prevented from even participating

01:18:45.740 so

01:18:47.140 I think there are like no options

01:18:50.060 under our current system

01:18:51.140 in any Western country,

01:18:52.740 but correct me if I'm wrong.

01:18:54.500 You may be in a darker place than I am

01:18:56.240 and it might be simply-

01:18:56.960 Well, I'm just looking at the evidence.

01:18:58.360 Yeah, it may be because I haven't spent enough time

01:19:00.180 thinking about it.

01:19:00.880 I might be as skeptical or cynical

01:19:03.720 or just pessimistic about the situation.

01:19:09.040 I do, I mean, I've said it before,

01:19:12.240 in order to be able to make any change,

01:19:13.780 you have to have a degree of irrational optimism.

01:19:16.680 If you're entirely rational about the processes,

01:19:18.700 there's no way you're going to be able to succeed.

01:19:20.280 You have to believe further.

01:19:22.060 And again, this may be a case-

01:19:23.940 No, that's really wise.

01:19:24.720 No, that is wise, what you just said.

01:19:26.900 You're absolutely right.

01:19:28.940 But you also have to marry that irrational optimism

01:19:31.760 that let's go to like a rational understanding

01:19:36.520 of what the problems are

01:19:39.480 and what the structural impediments-

01:19:40.780 Definitely, yeah, absolutely.

01:19:42.800 There should be absolutely no illusion

01:19:45.640 of what the problem is.

01:19:47.080 And the problem is, as you pointed out, the neoliberal economic system that is just destroying societies off the right, atomizing them, combined, and again, there is a strong link between that and this essentially empire type of a foreign policy.

01:20:03.960 You know, I helped co-found the Quincy Institute and we named it after John Quincy Adams, because we wanted to remind Americans that there's a long tradition of American foreign policy that actually is nothing like what we're seeing right now.

01:20:17.980 He gave that speech on July 4th, 1821, in which he said, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

01:20:24.960 And later on in the passage, he points out,

01:20:27.540 if she does, she can become the dictresses of the world,

01:20:31.180 but it will come at the expense of her own liberty

01:20:33.420 and her own spirit.

01:20:35.060 That's exactly what we've seen.

01:20:36.900 The first thing that happened after 9-11

01:20:39.800 was the Patriot Act

01:20:40.820 and the significant removal of Americans' civil liberties.

01:20:45.240 And it's just been a trend that has continued ever since.

01:20:47.120 Yeah, so we were told the war started,

01:20:49.740 the attacks on New York and Washington

01:20:51.800 were inspired by a hatred of our freedom. 1.00

01:20:54.040 by 19 Arabs with box cutters. 1.00

01:20:58.560 And then we took away those freedoms. 1.00

01:21:00.640 First thing they do is eliminate our freedoms.

01:21:04.280 Yeah, no, it was not lost on me.

01:21:06.260 But it's important because so many people

01:21:08.600 have been led to believe

01:21:09.740 that the current foreign policy we have,

01:21:12.360 this idea that we need to have liberal hegemony,

01:21:14.400 we have to dominate every corner of the world,

01:21:16.900 750 bases around the world,

01:21:19.740 that that's what we always have been,

01:21:21.280 that this is like written into the American DNA

01:21:24.300 from the outset.

01:21:25.160 And it's just not true.

01:21:26.240 We have a very long history.

01:21:27.100 Well, we fought the American Revolution

01:21:27.880 to get pride parades. 0.54

01:21:29.020 I mean, that's kind of why we did it.

01:21:33.280 Yeah, well, the good news is it's so absurd

01:21:36.340 that it's going to come crashing down

01:21:38.700 within my lifetime without question.

01:21:41.980 And, you know, the only question is like,

01:21:44.960 what do we get in its place?

01:21:46.680 And I just really want it to be a good thing.

01:21:48.640 Yeah.

01:21:49.280 But you don't think there's any hope

01:21:51.660 that the Republican Party changes

01:21:54.780 just in this one specific way,

01:21:56.240 that it stops taking orders from people

01:21:58.060 who don't put America first?

01:21:59.360 Look, a bit outside of my expertise,

01:22:02.660 but the money in politics obviously is,

01:22:05.040 I mean, how could you not conclude

01:22:07.160 that that's going to be corrupting,

01:22:08.380 particularly mindful of the manner

01:22:10.840 in which the amounts are just so astronomical

01:22:13.540 as it is right now.

01:22:14.440 And then there's also other areas

01:22:16.040 that are not astronomical,

01:22:17.140 but nevertheless are so opaque, non-transparent

01:22:21.540 that it's become a loophole.

01:22:22.640 So for instance, one of the things our team,

01:22:25.720 Ben Freeman and Eli Clifton and Nick Cleveland

01:22:29.500 at my shop really work on is the manner

01:22:33.000 in which American think tanks are taking huge amounts

01:22:36.140 of money from foreign governments.

01:22:37.940 That's unbelievable.

01:22:38.960 And there's no transparency around it at all.

01:22:40.860 If you give $250 to an American candidate,

01:22:44.160 it will be in the public record and people can see that.

01:22:47.120 But you can give 10 million plus to a think tank

01:22:50.540 that pretends that it is completely neutral.

01:22:54.360 And then they produce all of these different reports

01:22:56.340 in support of the country that supported it,

01:22:58.140 or these weapon companies that are giving that money.

01:23:00.780 And there's no transparency at all.

01:23:02.720 Most of the people that are testifying in Congress

01:23:05.600 are coming from these think tanks.

01:23:06.860 They never have to announce in any way, shape or form

01:23:09.600 that I'm coming here to testify about this specific problem,

01:23:12.440 but you should know I'm funded by this country

01:23:15.120 that is very much part of this problem,

01:23:16.700 or I'm very much, I'm funded by the weapons company

01:23:20.280 that is producing the very system

01:23:22.040 that you're having a hearing about.

01:23:23.380 That transparency is completely non-existent.

01:23:26.980 So, you know, there's gonna take a lot

01:23:29.760 to be able to change the system

01:23:31.040 given how much it's essentially been neoliberalized.

01:23:34.820 Totally corrupt.

01:23:36.360 I remember when I first learned that Heritage

01:23:37.620 was taking money from foreign countries or foreign interests,

01:23:40.060 I was like shocked by it.

01:23:41.600 I couldn't, it was a long time ago too.

01:23:43.720 I couldn't believe it.

01:23:45.420 AEI and Hudson and Brookings.

01:23:47.840 And, you know, I think there are smart people.

01:23:49.820 I know people at all of those places and they're smart

01:23:51.780 and some of them are good people.

01:23:54.040 But the system itself is just so rotten.

01:23:56.260 It's beyond redemption.

01:23:58.500 So that kind of-

01:23:59.140 But that is fixable.

01:24:00.020 I mean, you could have a piece of legislation

01:24:02.540 that essentially ensures,

01:24:04.540 I mean, you have it in California.

01:24:05.900 You cannot, I mean, there's limitations

01:24:07.860 of how much you can give to a nonprofit.

01:24:09.980 You could just make sure that think tanks

01:24:11.840 are a separate type of a category

01:24:13.800 or research institutes that have to have transparency

01:24:16.260 about who they are funded from.

01:24:18.840 You can have a situation in which

01:24:20.780 if someone is testifying in Congress,

01:24:22.700 they have to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

01:24:25.640 There's ways to fix these things.

01:24:27.040 And they're very simple.

01:24:28.460 We just don't do it.

01:24:30.680 It's just, it's fascinating to me.

01:24:33.360 You're born in Iran.

01:24:34.660 You grew up in Sweden.

01:24:35.820 You spent most of your life in the United States,

01:24:37.420 which is why you don't have an accent, I think. 1.00

01:24:41.320 But you have the most, but you're foreigner.

01:24:43.800 I didn't even know you weren't a citizen. 1.00

01:24:44.980 I just found out, and I want to ask you about this.

01:24:47.180 But you have by far the most pro-America

01:24:50.460 kind of take on all this of almost anyone in Washington,

01:24:55.160 which is kind of weird since you're not an American.

01:24:58.280 But I think objectively,

01:24:59.580 you have a pro-America position on these questions.

01:25:03.900 Because you have a pro-America position,

01:25:07.180 there was this story that emerged last week,

01:25:09.300 which is why I called you initially,

01:25:10.700 that there was a move to get you deported.

01:25:14.840 Can you explain what happened?

01:25:16.980 So there was this hit piece in Bari Weiss's Free Press,

01:25:21.380 very ironic name for that outlet,

01:25:24.840 that just listed, I mean, it was 10 pages long,

01:25:28.720 just listed this long list of lies against me

01:25:33.280 that has been repeated by the neocons in Washington

01:25:35.680 for the last 20 plus years.

01:25:37.440 What and low? 0.97

01:25:38.200 Oh, I'm an agent of the Islamic Republic.

01:25:40.180 all of these different things

01:25:41.640 in order to kind of cancel me, shut me down. 1.00

01:25:44.760 You're an Iranian agent. 0.98

01:25:45.800 Exactly, I'm an Iranian agent, essentially.

01:25:48.260 And all of that, but the only thing that was new

01:25:51.160 is that they claimed that the State Department

01:25:54.500 was now investigating me in order to have me deported.

01:26:00.120 And it took only a couple of hours,

01:26:02.640 but the State Department itself came out and denied this

01:26:05.640 and made clear that they have no plans of doing so,

01:26:07.840 at least not for now, they said, obviously.

01:26:09.260 So this ran in Barry Weiss as a free press, which exists to promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel.

01:26:16.540 I mean, that's the reason there is a free press, is to promote the Israeli government.

01:26:21.500 The elements that have been constantly trying to silence me have come from that direction. 0.57

01:26:27.080 And it's a lot because of, you know, I wrote my dissertation, which ended up becoming my first book, Treacherous Alliance, on Israel and Iran.

01:26:35.460 And no one had written a book on it

01:26:37.920 for about 20 years prior to me writing that book.

01:26:40.680 But everyone was constantly talking about it.

01:26:43.040 I mean, it was on the news all the time.

01:26:44.440 Should we bomb Ivan?

01:26:45.400 And Ivan is an existential threat.

01:26:48.060 And I tried to get to the bottom of the story.

01:26:50.480 And I did so by actually really spending time in Israel

01:26:53.240 to try to understand their perspective,

01:26:55.940 understand the perspective of the Ivanians

01:26:57.520 and then do it as a dissertation.

01:26:59.940 But it revealed a very different picture

01:27:01.840 of what they were saying.

01:27:02.980 And I got a lot of play in media and that really threatened them.

01:27:06.640 And they started to do everything they could to silence me.

01:27:09.500 Later on, when we started Quincy, that became an even greater threat

01:27:13.140 because we were trying to build bridges between the anti-war left

01:27:16.960 and the anti-war right for such a long time.

01:27:19.740 Andy Bacevich was one of the people.

01:27:21.280 Andrew Bacevich, the absolute legend, was our first chairman

01:27:24.760 and then one of the co-founders.

01:27:26.600 Who had been, I mean, I first dealt with him when he,

01:27:30.360 I worked at the Weekly Standard run by Bill Kristol

01:27:32.380 And he was writing for us at the time.

01:27:35.280 I thought of him as a neocon.

01:27:37.200 And then his son was killed in Iraq

01:27:40.040 and a war that was waged on behalf of Israeli interests,

01:27:45.060 not American interests.

01:27:46.480 And he changed, this is my read

01:27:48.060 as someone who doesn't know him well.

01:27:49.040 He changed before that.

01:27:50.180 He did, okay.

01:27:50.640 He was against the war from the outset.

01:27:52.520 Towards the end of the 1990s,

01:27:54.620 he actually, after he left the military,

01:27:58.100 he started to, I mean,

01:27:59.540 I think he's one of the absolute sharpest

01:28:01.800 and deepest American intellectual critics

01:28:04.560 of American foreign policy.

01:28:05.400 There's no question about that, I agree with you.

01:28:06.820 And so the tragic loss of his son happened already

01:28:12.180 after he had completely turned against that foreign policy.

01:28:15.140 He was against the Iraq war from the outset.

01:28:16.860 His son still deployed, went there and sadly got killed.

01:28:20.260 But we were trying to build bridges

01:28:24.220 between the anti-war left and the anti-war right.

01:28:26.300 There had been collaboration between the two sides.

01:28:28.420 Ro Khanna was working with Mike Lee in the Senate,

01:28:30.660 for instance, to prevent, to stop the support

01:28:32.920 for the war in Yemen, but it was episodic.

01:28:35.420 It was never something structural.

01:28:37.260 And we thought that if we can establish this institute

01:28:39.380 that tried to marry the two,

01:28:41.380 it would be a real strong counter to the uni-war,

01:28:44.400 uni-party war machine.

01:28:45.900 And that became an even greater threat to the-

01:28:48.600 But it remained this kind of tiny island

01:28:50.760 in a sea of people who disagreed with you in Washington.

01:28:53.800 Well, at least there's an island.

01:28:55.240 There wasn't an island at all before we founded Quincy.

01:28:58.060 I guess what I'm saying is even though you represent

01:29:01.800 one-tenth of 1% of, you know, opinion among powerful people

01:29:06.340 in DC, but probably 80% of public opinion.

01:29:10.320 Exactly.

01:29:11.180 But within Washington, like it's you

01:29:14.220 and not many other people, they couldn't tolerate that.

01:29:18.680 No, no, absolutely not.

01:29:19.860 They don't tolerate anything.

01:29:21.580 They don't tolerate the slightest question marks

01:29:23.820 because at the end of the day,

01:29:24.900 If people start to question the very foundational premises of this foreign policy in a structured and in a rational way, it's going to collapse.

01:29:32.800 You can't defend this.

01:29:34.600 You can only silence the voices that are trying to question it.

01:29:37.440 That is the truest thing right there.

01:29:39.900 And the more reasonable you are, the bigger the threat you are.

01:29:43.980 Absolutely, yeah.

01:29:45.040 And I lay this out on my substack, trying to explain exactly what happened here.

01:29:51.240 And I think the most critical thing

01:29:53.060 that has caused this significant spike

01:29:56.240 against these attacks,

01:29:57.280 because look, they try to silence me for a long time.

01:30:00.400 They never elevated it to try to actually deport me.

01:30:03.820 And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact

01:30:06.120 that despite the fact you're absolutely right,

01:30:07.840 we're a small island in Washington,

01:30:10.080 but nevertheless, there is an island now

01:30:12.120 and we are making inroads

01:30:13.540 and we certainly have the support of the American public.

01:30:16.100 That is a massive threat.

01:30:17.260 That's for sure.

01:30:18.020 So this piece in Barry Weiss, who now I guess runs CNN and CBS, I got to give her credit.

01:30:28.280 I mean, she is just, you know, mid-level IQ, zero talent, very charming, relentless, great with people.

01:30:38.940 She's great with people and on the right side of the donors.

01:30:42.920 And she has done, she has outperformed her ability like I've never seen it.

01:30:46.640 Like America still is a land of opportunity for certain kinds of people.

01:30:51.340 Amazing.

01:30:53.380 So she commissions this or runs this piece that claims something factually untrue, that the State Department is planning to deport you.

01:31:01.600 Who wrote the piece?

01:31:02.940 The guy's name is Jay Solomon, who is a former, he was fired from Wall Street Journal for ethical violations.

01:31:10.800 He was apparently involved in an arms deal with one of his sources in the region.

01:31:16.640 As a reporter?

01:31:17.640 As a reporter, yes.

01:31:18.680 So they fired him in 2017, I believe.

01:31:21.860 He was involved in an arms deal?

01:31:24.200 Yeah, I mean, this is all public.

01:31:25.700 If I remember the details correctly,

01:31:27.640 he was involved in a lot of different business deals

01:31:29.840 with this source that he was relying on a lot

01:31:32.560 for his reporting.

01:31:34.160 And at least some of those business deals

01:31:38.020 were actually arms deals in the region.

01:31:40.840 And he was covering the region.

01:31:42.380 I've never heard of anything like that before.

01:31:44.260 But it's funny, again, you know,

01:31:45.900 you can commit something as egregious as that

01:31:50.000 and still have a successful journalistic career afterwards

01:31:55.360 as long as you're on that side of the aisle

01:31:57.100 because that's where the money is.

01:31:58.280 Barry Weiss can run CNN.

01:32:00.640 Yeah.

01:32:01.320 Zero experience running any news organization.

01:32:03.900 I mean, the whole thing, yeah.

01:32:04.900 And she made a name for herself, 1.00

01:32:06.320 Countering Cancel Culture.

01:32:08.120 And most of what she's doing right now is exactly that. 0.96

01:32:10.280 Well, actually, she initially made a name for herself 1.00

01:32:12.540 as a proponent of cancel culture,

01:32:14.940 canceling people critical of israel exactly at columbia so that that's when i first read about

01:32:20.800 her i don't know next thing i know she's like a conservative hero someone who shares not a single

01:32:25.740 one of my beliefs or values at all they're all repugnant to me socially liberal economically

01:32:32.060 neoliberal um that that's not the program that i thought i was defending it's the opposite

01:32:38.640 it pride parades monopoly capitalism and bombing iran okay now um sorry so i'm the third worlder

01:32:48.900 yeah okay i'm the american actually anyway so she gets that guy to write a piece falsely claiming

01:32:55.600 that the state department is planning to deport you because you're not enthusiastic i don't know

01:32:59.680 if it was falsely in the sense that again i don't have full insight but we had a lot of conversations

01:33:05.940 as well as the folk inside the administration

01:33:08.880 that had made it clear this is not actually happening.

01:33:11.780 And it may have been that there was a rogue element

01:33:14.740 inside the administration who was wanting to push this.

01:33:18.800 You know, Laura Loomer had been tweeting about this 0.96

01:33:20.680 for weeks trying to get me deported.

01:33:22.960 Really? 0.76

01:33:23.580 Oh yeah, Laura Loomer had like 7,000 retweets 1.00

01:33:26.040 on all of her tweets trying to get me deported.

01:33:27.820 This has been going on for several weeks.

01:33:31.360 Deported?

01:33:32.080 Deported, yeah.

01:33:32.400 How long have you been here?

01:33:33.600 I've been here since 2001.

01:33:37.240 I have three American kids.

01:33:38.360 I love this country.

01:33:39.180 I'm in the process of getting a citizenship, but-

01:33:41.600 You've got three American, you've got three kids born here?

01:33:43.980 Born here.

01:33:44.560 Absolutely, yeah.

01:33:45.360 Born and bred here.

01:33:46.120 Do you ever, are you on the SNAP program?

01:33:48.200 Are you taking welfare?

01:33:49.200 No.

01:33:52.300 What?

01:33:52.940 Are you an MS-13?

01:33:54.480 I don't think I am.

01:33:55.820 Last time I checked.

01:33:56.220 Have you ever sold fentanyl?

01:33:57.420 Never even seen it.

01:33:58.960 Okay, so, but you're the priority.

01:34:02.260 I'm the priority, exactly, exactly.

01:34:04.660 Interesting.

01:34:05.360 So it seems like, again, a theory,

01:34:07.880 I can't claim that I have full evidence for it,

01:34:09.720 that there were some people inside

01:34:10.980 that wanted to get this done

01:34:12.960 who thought that this hit piece

01:34:15.040 would further push the State Department

01:34:18.740 internal process to move it forward.

01:34:21.200 They even produced an AI video

01:34:23.640 of me getting arrested by ICE.

01:34:26.520 It's actually, I mean,

01:34:27.860 it scared a lot of my family members

01:34:30.220 because it's so realistic.

01:34:31.400 They even got my ball spot right in the AI video.

01:34:35.460 And at the end of that video,

01:34:37.220 there's a smiling Marco Rubio.

01:34:39.800 And it really made it clear

01:34:41.200 he is the audience for this video

01:34:43.380 because the statue that they're using,

01:34:47.160 he is the ultimate decision maker on this.

01:34:49.280 And what's the statute?

01:34:50.680 Are you in violation of the immigration law?

01:34:51.400 I don't know the full details of it,

01:34:52.860 but essentially that the State Department determines

01:34:55.000 that someone who's on a green card

01:34:56.640 is acting against the US's interest.

01:34:59.820 And the case they would use for that in me

01:35:01.600 is that I've opposed this war.

01:35:03.000 I opposed it for 25 years.

01:35:04.920 I've argued so strongly against what we have now seen.

01:35:08.940 There's no longer a theoretical argument.

01:35:10.820 It's practical.

01:35:11.540 We've seen what a disaster this is.

01:35:13.580 I've argued in favor of diplomacy,

01:35:16.680 argued in favor of a different approach to the region,

01:35:18.900 a different relationship,

01:35:19.940 not a hostile relationship to Israel,

01:35:22.660 but nevertheless, a different,

01:35:23.980 much more healthy relationship.

01:35:25.300 and that they are trying to say

01:35:27.640 is a threat to U.S. national interest

01:35:30.040 and the basis for getting me deported.

01:35:31.420 Well, this is what happens when this is the logical outcome 0.72

01:35:34.000 of conflating Israeli interests and American interests

01:35:36.760 or whatever Netanyahu says Israeli interests are.

01:35:40.720 But remember, I mean, that very premise

01:35:42.180 is something they would even disagree with

01:35:43.680 because there's no such thing as a difference between them.

01:35:46.000 They're one and the same.

01:35:47.360 So you're not conflating two different things.

01:35:49.580 Israel and America's interest from their perspective

01:35:51.480 is the same.

01:35:55.300 um so you're not getting deported that you know of not that i know of but uh i don't think this

01:36:02.520 episode is entirely over uh i think this first attempt by them probably backfired there was

01:36:09.920 also a lot of public support that came out that was completely organic we had nothing to do with

01:36:14.120 that that i think was uh potentially a factor in all of this i suspect that it was but i don't

01:36:19.500 again as we talked i want to add to that organic public support thank you because i think you're

01:36:23.820 one of the most reasonable pro-American voices

01:36:26.020 on this question.

01:36:27.840 But as you said before, they're relentless.

01:36:30.340 And I am, and the work of Quincy

01:36:33.380 is not designed to be against them.

01:36:35.260 It's designed to be in favor

01:36:36.920 of a much better American foreign policy

01:36:39.440 that actually serves US interest

01:36:41.580 and serves the American people.

01:36:43.420 It doesn't serve the American people

01:36:44.980 to be in these endless wars.

01:36:46.680 It doesn't serve the American people

01:36:48.480 that so much of our involvement in the world

01:36:51.380 is not even structured to be based on our interests,

01:36:55.920 but is based on the interests of our allies.

01:36:58.000 I mean, if you take a look at any average think tank report

01:37:02.200 in Washington, D.C. on the Middle East,

01:37:05.280 if they even would bother to define

01:37:07.960 what the U.S. interest in the region is,

01:37:10.620 and oftentimes they don't even do that.

01:37:12.680 But if they do, it would be a long list of things.

01:37:15.160 And at the end, it would be stand with our allies,

01:37:17.980 as if that is a core vital interest.

01:37:19.860 What does that mean?

01:37:20.940 That's a catch-all variable that means

01:37:23.000 whatever interest they have is now suddenly our interest

01:37:26.320 because we have to stand by them.

01:37:28.720 This is part of the reason why we're at war all the time

01:37:31.320 because the bar for us to use military force,

01:37:35.100 the bar for what is a vital interest,

01:37:36.940 has just essentially been pushed down to the very ground.

01:37:39.760 Whatever some foreign politician wants.

01:37:41.440 Exactly. 0.97

01:37:42.180 I do think Gaza changes everything. 1.00

01:37:45.940 You can't do something like that and get away with it. 1.00

01:37:48.920 They will not get away with it.

01:37:50.280 In the end, they will be punished for what they've done.

01:37:52.720 Everyone knows what they've done.

01:37:54.060 And anyone who defends it will be diminished at best, punished at worst, as anyone who defended the Nazis was in the end.

01:38:03.700 And their memory is soiled for all time. 0.65

01:38:08.000 Because whatever else you did, you defended the Nazis. 0.80

01:38:10.960 And no normal person thinks that's good. 0.65

01:38:12.900 It's awful.

01:38:13.760 It's absolutely terrible.

01:38:15.060 And defending the genocide in Gaza is not different from that.

01:38:19.500 no matter what they say.

01:38:22.040 And we're also going to have to reckon

01:38:25.220 with our role in this.

01:38:27.060 Yeah, we made it possible.

01:38:28.880 And it started under Biden, of course.

01:38:30.700 And, you know, Biden explicitly,

01:38:32.940 well, I don't know if he used the term,

01:38:34.340 but they said that the strategy they had

01:38:36.300 was to bear hug Israel,

01:38:39.340 give it everything it wants.

01:38:41.520 And as a result of that, 0.92

01:38:43.560 have leverage to be able to constrain the Israelis. 1.00

01:38:46.860 It's a completely nonsensical and idiotic approach. 0.99

01:38:51.120 First of all, it presumes that the U.S. doesn't have leverage with Israel 1.00

01:38:54.200 unless it first gives Israel everything it wants.

01:38:58.080 The United States has a tremendous amount of leverage with Israel.

01:39:00.240 It's just that we don't have politicians with the backbone to use that leverage. 0.62

01:39:04.500 But the idea that once you've given them everything,

01:39:07.980 suddenly they would not go and act as recklessly as they did

01:39:11.180 is, of course, also nonsensical.

01:39:13.440 It was obvious that if we never imposed any cost

01:39:16.480 in which the Biden administration even lied to Congress,

01:39:19.700 Tony Blinken lied to Congress

01:39:21.120 about the fact that the State Department itself

01:39:24.000 had concluded in their reports

01:39:25.620 that the Israelis were violating international law

01:39:27.820 in a manner that would, according to U.S. law,

01:39:31.740 not make them eligible for military support any longer,

01:39:35.600 but lied to Congress and said that that was not the case,

01:39:37.780 that they have not come to any such finding,

01:39:39.620 whereas in reality they had,

01:39:41.100 but they suppressed those reports.

01:39:42.440 and you had several people resigning,

01:39:44.460 of course, from the administration.

01:39:46.020 Not as many as I wish have seen.

01:39:48.080 In fact, I think it was a big point of shame

01:39:51.840 for the Democratic Party

01:39:52.820 that it were so few of them.

01:39:54.580 Samantha Power, who wrote a book

01:39:55.600 scolding the world for tolerating genocide

01:39:58.520 in Rwanda in 1994,

01:40:02.200 aided and abetted genocide.

01:40:03.680 She did, sorry.

01:40:05.100 And then it's very defensive

01:40:06.400 when you ask her about it in Gaza.

01:40:09.480 But it almost doesn't matter.

01:40:11.780 like everyone's internalized this upside down moral structure where criticizing the killing

01:40:18.400 of innocence is the crime no killing innocence is the crime we're supposed to object to that

01:40:26.060 and we're just in upside down world but everything returns to true north in the end

01:40:32.220 because it's nature exactly exactly and anyone who has defended this or participated in it

01:40:38.220 knowingly sent money to it,

01:40:40.400 made excuses for it,

01:40:41.380 attacked its critics.

01:40:42.300 All of those people

01:40:43.300 are going to at some point 0.83

01:40:45.560 be treated as a betters of Nazism

01:40:47.860 have been treated for the last 80 years,

01:40:49.520 which as, you know,

01:40:51.260 accomplices to a crime.

01:40:52.600 And we're going to see the reckoning of that

01:40:53.940 in the Democratic Party, I hope,

01:40:55.460 because whatever yet happens,

01:40:57.440 whether they win in 2028 or not,

01:40:59.040 there's going to have to be a reckoning.

01:41:02.220 There's going to be

01:41:03.040 people rising up in that party

01:41:05.780 and their challenge

01:41:07.200 to the existing leadership

01:41:08.800 is very much going to center on Gaza.

01:41:11.960 And the fact that the DNC report-

01:41:13.900 Because it's a conversation ender.

01:41:15.260 Exactly.

01:41:15.960 It's like, you're lecturing me?

01:41:16.980 Oh, I'm sorry, you support the genocide in Gaza?

01:41:18.920 I don't have to listen to you.

01:41:20.180 What are you even talking about?

01:41:22.360 Adults are talking, right?

01:41:24.840 And you saw the DNC report

01:41:26.200 that was going to be an autopsy of why they lost

01:41:28.480 and they didn't even mention the word Gaza in it.

01:41:30.540 So they're still afraid of touching the subject.

01:41:33.440 And that's going to be, again,

01:41:34.740 And part of the reason why I'm skeptical

01:41:36.500 about their ability to be able to make

01:41:38.500 the type of changes that are necessary

01:41:39.900 unless they have a complete overhaul

01:41:41.560 of that leadership of that person.

01:41:42.640 It's just crazy.

01:41:43.740 I'm sorry, I will stop after this,

01:41:45.480 but it's like, I don't like moral lectures.

01:41:49.500 I regret when I give them.

01:41:51.720 I really don't like receiving them. 0.51

01:41:53.580 The self-righteousness is disgusting. 0.87

01:41:55.480 It's prohibited in Christianity, by the way.

01:41:58.220 But I just noticed a connection 0.98

01:41:59.720 between the people committing

01:42:01.300 or making excuses for the worst crimes of my life

01:42:04.140 are also the most self-righteous

01:42:06.020 and the most to call themselves victims

01:42:07.760 and like attack you.

01:42:09.000 It's like, what?

01:42:10.560 Have you noticed this?

01:42:12.040 Oh, absolutely.

01:42:13.480 I know it's, you know,

01:42:15.380 it's a self-protection mechanism.

01:42:17.660 Of course it is.

01:42:18.600 And I guess we all do it.

01:42:20.180 Not to have to deal with the reality

01:42:22.740 that they supported a genocide.

01:42:25.820 You're right. 0.87

01:42:27.160 And it's not just supporters of Israel.

01:42:29.720 It's like, it's all of us.

01:42:30.940 We're all that way.

01:42:31.860 People are that way.

01:42:32.660 I'm sure I've been that way and I don't want to be self-righteous in my attack on self-righteousness

01:42:38.420 because I do think people have that capacity, but it's so ugly.

01:42:42.700 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then when you make it into a foreign policy doctrine

01:42:47.960 in which we're going to run around and just lecture every other country and think that

01:42:54.980 all they're yearning for in those countries is for us to come and save them and recreate them

01:43:00.120 in our image.

01:43:01.260 I mean, this is highly, highly problematic.

01:43:04.260 And again, something I think 1.00

01:43:05.300 the younger American demographic

01:43:07.020 is not in line with at all.

01:43:09.800 Recognizing that we have plenty of learn

01:43:11.260 from everyone else

01:43:12.360 and they have plenty to learn from us,

01:43:13.660 but you only learn it if it's two-way street

01:43:15.820 and if it's voluntarily.

01:43:16.860 No one is running around

01:43:17.840 really thinking that their 5,000 year culture

01:43:20.960 needs and some sort of Americanization

01:43:22.920 and neoliberalism and McDonald's

01:43:24.600 on every street corner.

01:43:26.240 You know, we have to be humble about these things.

01:43:28.420 We have to be humble about everything.

01:43:30.980 So for people who've made it through these two hours

01:43:34.720 and want to know more about your views

01:43:38.260 and what you think the right path forward is,

01:43:40.900 where do they go?

01:43:41.580 They should go to the Quincy Institute's website,

01:43:43.800 which is quincyinst.org.

01:43:46.520 We have also a foreign policy magazine online,

01:43:50.000 responsiblestatecraft.org,

01:43:53.340 that has really become one of the biggest.

01:43:55.220 It sure has.

01:43:55.860 And it's frequently cited even by mainstream media now.

01:43:59.340 And it's really a home for this alternative restraint and realism line of thinking, which is getting so much support.

01:44:06.940 You've been proven right, so that helps.

01:44:09.520 Yeah, and they can go to my sub stack, which is treat up rc.substack.com or to Twitter.

01:44:15.060 But we're out there.

01:44:16.520 We're going to continue to fight and get our views out there.

01:44:19.700 And, you know, you mentioned that we're an island, but that was the entire point.

01:44:22.520 You have to take the fight to Washington at the end.

01:44:24.580 Well, it actually worked, and I do think you have a reality on your side.

01:44:27.820 it's a good thing to have on your side

01:44:30.460 thank you very much

01:44:32.800 thank you so much for having me

01:44:33.840 thank you

The Tucker Carlson Show - June 15, 2026

The Key Points of Trump’s Iran Peace Deal, Israel’s Nightmare Scenario and What to Expect Next

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