Western Standard - IRAN： Is it really America’s war？

00:00:00.000 Good day, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:00:28.500 Today, I'm going to be joined by Stockwell Day.

00:00:32.420 Stockwell Day, as many of you recall, was the leader of the Canadian Alliance, successor to the Reform Party,

00:00:38.780 and was later on the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Cabinet of Stephen Harper.

00:00:46.240 Also, predating that, the Treasurer or Minister of Finance for Alberta.

00:00:52.460 He's a good Alberta boy, although he's coming to us right now from an undisclosed location somewhere I think is a bit warmer.

00:00:59.880 Not in Iran or Israel, though.

00:01:02.080 That's as far as I can see where he is.

00:01:05.300 Thank you for not exposing me to more danger than that.

00:01:07.860 I appreciate that, Derek.

00:01:09.100 You got a tan.

00:01:09.780 It's obviously you're in a warmer place than me right now.

00:01:13.020 It's from working over a hot photocopier all day.

00:01:17.220 Stock, thank you very much for joining me today.

00:01:19.620 um i uh i wanted to uh you and i talked uh i think it was thursday about uh getting together

00:01:28.260 and talking about the potential war between israel the united states and iran um one i wanted to do

00:01:36.680 this because i think we've uh i don't know maybe we've got some areas of common ground but i think

00:01:40.780 we're probably going to approach this from some different perspectives which is what i what i want

00:01:45.160 That makes for a more interesting discussion.

00:01:47.860 But we wanted to do this Friday, but we were both really full.

00:01:51.620 And we were like, oh, Friday would have been good because we get to look really smart predicting this war. 0.58

00:01:56.740 As if that was an original thought.

00:01:58.320 But alas, Friday just didn't work for either of our schedules.

00:02:02.600 And over the weekend, war has broken out.

00:02:06.680 The United States and Israel have attacked Iran.

00:02:10.840 um the we it's way too early to know how this is going to go we're on day three i think of uh of

00:02:22.720 this war right now um i'm gonna be talking later to uh adam zivo a freelance uh journalist from

00:02:28.820 from canada who is in israel who i've actually visited israel with before uh he's there uh he

00:02:34.060 he was a prophet like the rest of us and predicted war war would be breaking out i want to begin with

00:02:40.140 what are the causes for war?

00:02:42.460 The cases belli, if you will.

00:02:46.160 It's been, there's kind of two main ones

00:02:51.820 as far as I can discern.

00:02:52.800 It's not very clear.

00:02:55.800 It is, you know, Israel, sorry, 1.00

00:03:00.040 Iran is on the cusp of having nuclear weapons.

00:03:02.800 They're weeks away

00:03:03.440 and we've got to stop their nuclear program.

00:03:05.640 um we had um you know we had the 12-day war already which ostensibly devastated their

00:03:14.060 nuclear program again were they actually moving towards imminent uh enrichment of uranium for

00:03:20.120 nuclear purposes no evidence was given to that maybe they were but we were never given evidence

00:03:24.680 for it but we were told that it set them back many many years possibly over a decade

00:03:29.460 if that was true

00:03:32.160 then that can't be true now

00:03:33.460 or they were not telling the truth then

00:03:36.060 the other

00:03:37.060 cases belli given is

00:03:39.700 regime change

00:03:40.500 which is a long standing foreign policy

00:03:43.640 objective of Israel and in particular

00:03:45.740 Netanyahu

00:03:46.360 but the idea is that this is not a rock

00:03:50.020 Pete

00:03:50.600 how do I say his name

00:03:53.280 the Secretary of War says this is not

00:03:55.900 like a rock, there's going to be no boots on the ground

00:03:58.080 we're not doing a rock again

00:03:59.380 it's going to be kind of decapitation strikes against the regime

00:04:02.320 the supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini is

00:04:05.240 dead, I mean the world can't be any worse

00:04:08.300 for that, that's, you know, hard to mourn

00:04:11.260 a guy like that, so decapitation strikes 0.86

00:04:14.080 hitting their military 0.89

00:04:15.460 but then just encouraging the Iranian people to rise up

00:04:20.260 and do it themselves, so these are the two

00:04:23.680 kind of

00:04:25.960 cases belli given, the causes for war

00:04:28.220 do you accept either of these at face value?

00:04:36.740 Kind of a mix, I do. That's a fair analysis. I could tell you, as when I was previously

00:04:43.420 Minister of Public Safety for Canada, so I was also in charge of our intelligence services,

00:04:49.140 I've been to Iran, been to Tehran. I've interviewed people over there who,

00:04:53.980 they didn't have to prove it, but talked to both their loved ones disappearing in the middle of

00:04:58.860 the night. They never see them again. I was in touch with so-called moderates in the regime

00:05:03.500 for a while. They said, please keep emailing. This will be back in the 2000s. This is a vicious

00:05:09.380 regime. We're hoping things will change. If we keep emailing, we might not get snuffed out.

00:05:14.740 After about two or three months, I didn't hear from any of them again. So, I mean, that's just

00:05:20.160 anecdotal personal experience everybody knows the extent to which this regime will go and I think

00:05:28.380 that's one thing Derek that's being left out of this equation because in mainstream media certainly

00:05:33.600 they don't like talking about certain spiritual realities the fact is that this regime and the

00:05:39.380 ayatollah are notably tied to the Quranic predictions of prophetic doom the 13th imam

00:05:46.980 so-called will be the one who will wipe out Israel and perhaps die in the process. 0.83

00:05:52.960 And so when you have a psychotic regime that is also fueled by these religious fanatic 0.69

00:06:01.240 notions and the fact that they say their constant dictum is the problem with the West and why

00:06:08.400 we win is because the West fears death and we embrace death.

00:06:12.740 The West wants life and we embrace death and they reward death.

00:06:17.160 So when you put that together, as you sort of touched on, with the very real possibilities that who knows how close they are to actually being able to launch something of nuclear capacity.

00:06:28.460 It obviously got to the point where the U.S. said that's enough.

00:06:33.200 I think we can say we can acknowledge multiple over the years.

00:06:37.160 I mean, there's multiple warnings been given to Iran, not just by the U.S., but I've lost

00:06:42.700 track of a number of Security Council resolutions to stand down to stop their nuclear program.

00:06:48.240 There was no evidence they were going to do this.

00:06:50.420 Added to that, and we'll have to wait and see, is the possibility.

00:06:53.680 We do know there, I mean, the U.S. also stated it's not just the nuclear, it's their capability

00:06:59.760 to use their ballistic system to strike Israel, to strike Europe. 0.71

00:07:04.060 And we've seen just in the last two days, unfortunately, they are able to do that.

00:07:08.240 And so whether you have a nuclear head on that or whether you have chemical or toxic warfare, it's just too big a risk.

00:07:17.040 And they made the move they had to make.

00:07:19.980 So this is primarily religiously driven.

00:07:23.600 I mean, we could argue going back for centuries, but this is religiously driven on the side of the Ayatollah regime.

00:07:30.560 and it's pragmatically driven on the side of the U.S.

00:07:34.880 And incidentally, there, as you know, many of the Arab nations,

00:07:39.460 everybody predicted there'd be this giant regional war,

00:07:42.400 but most of the Arab nations, they're either standing down

00:07:46.560 or they are thankful for what has happened.

00:07:49.440 So I'm more convinced about, you know,

00:07:53.220 Israel has a threat from the ballistic missiles that are not nuclear-tipped 0.62

00:07:57.240 at this time, or with any other, they're not tipped with any kind of weapons of mass

00:08:01.520 destruction, chemical or biological, nothing of that nature at this time.

00:08:07.080 But, I mean, these

00:08:08.920 the ballistics, I mean, I kind of hate this kind of debate

00:08:13.040 because I never want to be in the position of, in any way, even be perceived as 0.67

00:08:16.760 defending crazy mullahs. The Iranian regime 0.99

00:08:21.080 is nuttier than fruitcake. 0.91

00:08:23.340 And you talked about the 13th hidden imam and all this stuff. It's pretty crazy stuff. It's arguably an apocalyptic religious ideology. 0.92

00:08:38.940 Right.

00:08:39.100 Arguably, it definitely is. But indications are that they still act more or less as a rational actor in foreign policy. They're an extreme actor, they're a disruptive actor, but, you know, like the Soviet Union, it still doesn't want to die, necessarily. 0.81

00:08:56.500 Are they more prepared to die than the Soviet Union was? My guess is probably so, but I don't I don't think they are actively seeking it. They haven't acted that way, at least at this time.

00:09:06.700 But I really just am not sold on the nukes thing. We had, you know, with the Iraq War, the powers that be did a pretty good job in propagandizing the Western and American public that there were weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons already there to find, let alone being made.

00:09:30.800 um you know we remember colin powell going and giving powerpoint presentations at the un and

00:09:37.700 not everyone was convinced but a lot of people were uh and kind of gave the benefit of the doubt

00:09:41.900 in the 12-day war the united states gave no evidence and israel gave no evidence they just

00:09:47.040 did it uh and after the fact gave no evidence it was done um this time they've also still given no

00:09:53.920 evidence and so like i'm gonna need i'm not an american i don't get a say here uh i'll

00:10:00.620 I don't think Americans are really getting the say here.

00:10:03.320 Americans elected Donald Trump, I think, not to be doing this, and they're doing it anyway.

00:10:08.440 But most Americans are not supporting this.

00:10:10.920 They're not yet convinced that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.

00:10:15.240 I want to play just a quick little montage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

00:10:21.200 warning us that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.

00:10:27.160 If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.

00:10:32.300 It could be a year. It could be within a few months.

00:10:35.880 They have the wherewithal, the stored up preserved knowledge to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it. 0.86

00:10:43.060 Iran is so dangerous. 1.00

00:10:45.120 Weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.

00:10:51.700 They're very close. They're six months away from being about 90% of having the rich uranium for an atom bomb.

00:10:57.160 Iran is gearing up to have, to produce 25 bombs, atomic bombs a year, 250 bombs in a decade. 0.91

00:11:04.280 Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out.

00:11:07.540 Iran will be capable of producing alone, without importing anything, nuclear bombs within three to five years.

00:11:14.280 um okay so uh it's a little montage uh Benjamin Netanyahu warning us that

00:11:24.240 uh Iran is on the edge of having a nuclear bomb weeks away going back to 1995 I mean the man is

00:11:31.700 nothing if not consistent but uh I'm not going to take his word for this one we have not had any

00:11:40.040 evidence provided nothing that'll convince me yet and i'm and i'm open to this i gotta say i

00:11:46.400 want to like this war i mean like watching some of the videos of these american fighter jets just

00:11:50.640 doing wild acrobatics uh dodging around anti-aircraft fire and missiles uh you know i i

00:11:57.900 love america it's i i i like to root for america uh i kind of i want them to be successful even

00:12:04.600 if i disagree with the war i want to cheer this war but i can't yet because they have not yet

00:12:08.680 convince me. We've got Netanyahu playing Chicken Little here, or crying wolf for 30 years, 0.57

00:12:18.160 for 30 years, saying they're weeks away. Why, Stock, should we believe him this time?

00:12:26.800 Sure. At some time, and I know you're well read, and you've got a lot of stuff to read,

00:12:32.340 but I sent you a reference at some time

00:12:35.700 for your reading pleasure on a warm evening.

00:12:39.760 The Treaty of Westphalia goes way back, 1648.

00:12:43.000 People are going to say, what on earth is that?

00:12:44.740 1648, that was in what we would call pre-modern history

00:12:48.780 was a turning point, certainly in the European context

00:12:52.100 of how nations would deal with each other.

00:12:56.500 This is a European context, but it's spread.

00:12:59.060 And this is following the so-called 30 Years' War.

00:13:01.520 we remember studying that at school or university. And then there was the 80 years war and the

00:13:05.520 Spanish and the Dutch and everybody was invading everybody all the time. And this remarkable 1.00

00:13:10.160 agreement came into place, the Treaty of Westphalia. And they said, nations, many,

00:13:13.840 many nations said, you know what, we're going to stop invading each other. And even if you're doing

00:13:18.240 bad stuff to your people, we're going to leave you alone. If your people can't rise up and throw you

00:13:21.920 out, whether it's a monarchy or something else, then so be it. And that really, I mean, that was,

00:13:27.280 in terms of world history that was a major shift between nations and really a change to that among

00:13:34.880 nations seeking peace it could be argued probably didn't happen until the formation of of nato

00:13:41.680 where there became this agreement when there was a force that was seen as so ominous being the

00:13:45.440 soviet union that all these nations got together and said look if one of us gets hit we all get

00:13:51.120 hit and we're all going to attack back and that was a great step towards dealing with

00:13:56.800 so-called rational people the soviet communists as nasty as they were did have a sense of

00:14:02.160 rationality to them they did want not want as what was being threatened mutually assured destruction

00:14:08.480 which was you launch yours we launch ours mine's bigger than yours and everybody gets obliterated

00:14:14.080 And so that was really the first major global move away from a kind of a general peace agreement

00:14:21.900 that it held in place for arguably close to 400 years.

00:14:26.740 And that set a new stage.

00:14:28.700 And now you have a situation where they're not trying to deter the Soviet Union anymore 0.69

00:14:34.700 by saying, if you hit us, we hate you.

00:14:37.140 You actually do have a nation with all of the ultramodern technology, but who's saying, 0.84

00:14:43.420 don't care if you hit us we welcome a nuclear inferno we'd like to start one ourselves and if 0.80

00:14:51.500 we don't get the first shot we don't care because uh disappearing in a giant a global flame of

00:14:58.860 nuclear holocaust is something we that actually entices us so when you've got somebody in the 0.98

00:15:05.900 neighborhood like that how long and you and you watch someone in your neighborhood continue to go

00:15:11.900 into other people's houses and kill and destroy and so you've got the record very clear record

00:15:17.820 and and i know you you agree with this of iran uh financing hezbollah financing uh hamas the

00:15:26.140 houthis around the world without nuclear power they're wreaking literally hell and destruction 1.00

00:15:31.980 wherever they go and at what point do you say we think they're we think they're close and we've

00:15:38.700 we've got to put an end. We've begged them. Obama tried to buy them, if you recall,

00:15:44.180 plane loads of hard cash, anything to get them to say, please stop your nuclear pursuit of nuclear

00:15:51.560 weapons. Even to the case, as we saw, and I was actually kind of shocked to hear this over the

00:15:55.720 last couple of weeks, where the U.S. was saying, actually saying to Iran, you know what? We will

00:15:59.700 actually give you domestic nuclear capacity so that you can provide energy, for instance, to your

00:16:07.220 hospitals so that you can run some of your basic energy we will even give you

00:16:12.140 that nuclear capacity it can't be very difficult to upgrade certain types of

00:16:16.580 that capacity and even then they were saying no so do you wait then for the

00:16:22.940 person who has already proven and at home where where they the the estimates

00:16:28.160 I was just talking with one of my contacts in Iran and I had the

00:16:32.460 opportunity to meet Reza Pahlavi, the grandson of the first Shah, some time ago. We actually met

00:16:41.860 him at Mar-a-Lago. I wasn't there at the commission of Donald Trump, but I was there meeting him.

00:16:47.640 It is quite literally a matter of time. And what you have in the last few weeks,

00:16:53.640 his estimates were over 60,000 that have been killed. More moderate estimates say at least

00:16:59.580 30,000, at least 30,000 people killed. And they kill, as you know, everybody that disagrees with

00:17:07.740 the law on anything, whether it's sexual orientation or what you think the stock market should look

00:17:13.160 like. And there just becomes a point which I tend to agree with and which Mark Kearney, I have some

00:17:20.820 big disagreements with him. I post that regularly, but I also post when I think he did the right

00:17:26.020 thing and he has come out in support of this because it is too big a risk of it wouldn't be

00:17:33.680 world i don't think it'd be global uh annihilation but for them to get either from another bad actor

00:17:39.860 it doesn't have to be them coming up with it it could be a china who would delight in this type

00:17:44.160 of thing for them to get the capability to launch something of that nature when they're already

00:17:49.060 launching launching the ballistic missiles and killing people anyway then you have to as they

00:17:54.500 say, you've got to cut off the head of the snake, and that's what they've done. So you've got 0.98

00:17:58.260 somebody who is already importing, ordering, and perfecting mass murder, and you're just saying to

00:18:06.200 yourself, or the Western world is saying to themselves, how much more mass murder until we

00:18:10.520 run the risk that something even worse does get launched at us?

00:18:14.540 Oh, okay. But Iran, you know, we all agree it's crazy. That's table stakes. But there's lots of 1.00

00:18:22.120 crazy regimes in the region. And we're allied, and the United States is allied to some of them.

00:18:27.420 Saudi Arabia is, you know, it's a different flavor of Islam. It's Sunni Islam, and Iran is Shia Islam.

00:18:36.080 But, you know, the Saudis are wildly theocratic. They're in bed with the Wahhabists exporting 1.00

00:18:43.640 radical Sunni Islam around the world, including into our own countries. 1.00

00:18:49.260 um they kill people for their sexual orientation uh they're just as barbaric and stone age and 0.97

00:18:58.400 or medieval to you know pick your era uh as the iranians and but we do business with them uh

00:19:05.300 just kind of the way it's worked out in the region so i'm not sure that just you know yeah 0.98

00:19:10.640 their crazies means we need to go to war because if that's the case we need to go to war with damn

00:19:15.300 near every regime in the region and you know the the country that wanted this war the most israel

00:19:22.200 uh it's not as extreme but i'll tell you it's pretty extreme there are uh very powerful elements

00:19:28.820 within the coalition government that are religious fanatics in their own right that are hell-bent on

00:19:34.220 ethnic cleansing i've seen the ethnic cleansing of christians uh in the west bank firsthand at the

00:19:39.440 hand of Israel with the complicity of the Israeli government. There's no Boy Scouts in this region,

00:19:46.580 and I don't think we should be under any compunction that we need to only deal with Boy

00:19:51.020 Scouts here, that everyone's good. We're not always comparing apples and apples here. I'm not

00:19:57.120 saying the Israeli regime is as totalitarian, say, as Iran or Saudi Arabia, but there's no good guys

00:20:04.200 at this point um they um the the big thing is like i still i didn't hear from you that you're

00:20:14.380 that you believe that they are that they're on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon we had the 12 0.94

00:20:20.320 days war um which was ostensibly to eliminate that threat again there was no evidence provided even

00:20:26.960 at that point that that's what they were doing that that the iranians were on the cusp of having

00:20:31.420 a nuclear weapon when they made those strikes, anyone who doubted it, you know, the White House

00:20:37.780 said this is fake news. We've set their nuclear program back years, if not decades. How could

00:20:43.940 that be true if they're now doing it now? You know, where we're in now, we have not had any

00:20:51.260 evidence. So I'm in agreement with you about how terrible the regime is. That's stable stakes here.

00:20:56.880 You know, you're not talking to a river of the sea blue haired campus protester here. We're agreed about how terrible the Iranian regime is. But do they pose a real risk of having, are they imminently about to be able to have a nuclear weapon? 0.93

00:21:15.580 Sure. And the comparison with Saudi Arabia is a fair one up to a point, Derek. I have been there both as a minister of international trade and also as minister of public safety. It might surprise people. And I'm just about at my 25 year mark of having secrets that I'm not allowed to talk about.

00:21:40.360 But I can tell you, we exchanged, and we still do, on a security basis, we exchanged mutually helpful terrorism-related information.

00:21:51.020 We do that.

00:21:51.380 We sell the weapons?

00:21:54.000 Yes, we do.

00:21:55.240 And we share that information.

00:21:56.820 Also, we share with Israel in that regard.

00:22:00.100 But the Saudis, one of the clear differences, and you've already articulated the fact quite rightly, that they're a different stream of Islam. 0.93

00:22:07.500 Do they still kill people?

00:22:08.840 Yes, in my times over there, there was still, and I think they still do it on a Friday afternoon in Riyadh.

00:22:15.760 They will gather up everybody who's in the very large market there and they take you to the courtyard where one of the large mosque is.

00:22:23.940 Some vans pull up, they put some hay bales in the middle of the yard.

00:22:27.500 They bring out some people who've got, you know, handcuffs on and they kneel them down and the imams come out. 0.99

00:22:35.040 they read out the crimes, they read out the dates of their appeals because they are allowed three

00:22:39.400 appeals. And then if it was something worthy of some type of theft, they chop off their hand. Now

00:22:45.080 there's a doctor there who takes care of them. If it's something, if it's a capital crime, they will

00:22:48.760 decapitate them right there for all of their towns people to see. Now, are they still doing it at the 0.97

00:22:53.740 same degree as back in the years when I was there? I don't know. But their propensity to kill in a

00:23:00.140 different manner than us? Yes. But they do not threaten the entire world with nuclear immolation.

00:23:06.140 They do not say, the Saudis do not say, we want to, it is our goal to kill all Jews everywhere 1.00

00:23:12.140 all the time. It is our goal to evaporate all of Israel and then go after North America with 1.00

00:23:20.160 our missiles. Those are the key distinctions. As odious as some of the practices of the other

00:23:25.460 Islamic nations that are in that area, they are, I'll use the word carefully, much more moderate in

00:23:31.520 terms of what they say they're going to do to other nations. And that's the key distinction.

00:23:37.120 Iran refused, has never backed off of, yes, it's Jews everywhere. It's Israel gets vaporized. And 1.00

00:23:44.200 by the way, with the ballistic capacity we have, if they had something that could reach North

00:23:49.700 America, they would have done it by now. They will do it if they get that capacity. It's not a big

00:23:55.060 leap to go from something there can go nuclear weapons we've had benjamin netanyahu crying i

00:24:02.240 would say wolf maybe you disagree since 1995 we just had the 12-day war which apparently set their

00:24:09.200 nuclear program back years if not decades and now we're here uh i i don't want to be pedantic about

00:24:16.640 it or or or harp about it but like nuclear weapons they're crazy we agree they're crazy we agree

00:24:22.640 they're kind of an apocalyptic ideology in a sense.

00:24:26.180 How much they would act on it is a matter for debate,

00:24:28.680 but take a mid-face value, fine.

00:24:32.760 But is this war about nuclear weapons?

00:24:38.560 It's about, as indicated with their particular brand of theocracy,

00:24:44.520 it is about ushering in the final great war.

00:24:49.060 That is what it's all about.

00:24:50.420 when you talk, when you're dealing with the Ayatollah and the people around you.

00:24:54.820 So I'm not personally feeling very good about waiting until if they had the,

00:25:02.220 first of all, I want to deal with the nuclear thing again, 0.93

00:25:04.820 but if they had the ballistic capacity to hit New York City or Montreal,

00:25:10.040 which they were developing, clearly they're getting further and further field,

00:25:13.520 they would use it within about a nanosecond of being able to do that.

00:25:17.340 And the possibility, as I say, how long do you wait? Because indications were. And are you and I going to be able to pour over the isotope readings and say, you know, here's how close they are to a nuclear warhead? I don't know.

00:25:33.740 But every opportunity they get, they launch into killing fields at home and abroad.

00:25:43.000 Their ballistic capacity increases and they're pressing on every opportunity they get to nuclear capacity.

00:25:49.000 Why would we risk?

00:25:50.360 Why would we go to that risk when the risk can be stopped by not evading, but the one who has been responsible for the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world?

00:26:03.340 certainly more around that region why why would we wait why would we not take them out to me it is

00:26:09.080 the it's the sobering but it's the prudent thing to do okay uh all right so let's talk you you

00:26:18.380 you talked about you know no troops on the ground the other cause for war given here was regime

00:26:24.800 change now uh i'm i'm gonna spare everyone a compilation clip because it'd be even much much

00:26:30.620 longer than netanyahu's but a compilation clip of donald trump um saying you know no more regime

00:26:38.220 change wars no more team america world police we're done with that it's america first if amer

00:26:43.220 you know and and that does it's not it's not a peacenik message saying america doesn't believe

00:26:47.720 in having a strong military and using it but it means using it when it's in america's direct

00:26:51.880 interest normally and it's near abroad you could argue the kind of kidnapping of maduro which

00:26:58.820 I mean, hats off.

00:26:59.460 That was a slick operation and kind of funny.

00:27:02.040 The memes were top shelf.

00:27:04.440 But, you know, Venezuela, you can argue, was in America's interest.

00:27:08.520 You can argue if it was a good idea or a bad idea.

00:27:10.560 But, okay, that's their near abroad, America's interest, they did it.

00:27:15.120 Okay.

00:27:17.520 But regime change in Iran is not America's interest.

00:27:22.580 And Trump made that.

00:27:24.860 That was the core of Mega.

00:27:26.360 That was the core of his brand from the years leading up to the launch of his first Republican nomination in 2015.

00:27:35.240 And now they're saying regime change.

00:27:37.620 Now, they're not going to do it like, you know, Secretary of War.

00:27:40.340 I said it's not going to be boots on the ground, which means, you know, maybe magically there's just a there's a color revolution.

00:27:47.100 You know, so you have the leadership decapitated, the military degraded, and there's a color revolution and it just comes together. 0.58

00:27:55.040 Maybe. I mean, that would be great.

00:27:57.920 And if that happens and we get a nice, peaceful, liberal democracy in Iran from a color revolution, I'll eat my hat. 0.94

00:28:05.480 I really want that to be right. I really want to be wrong because I don't think that's what's going to happen.

00:28:10.920 I think most likely it weakens the regime and you're just going to have another round of brutal repression.

00:28:17.800 The other plausible scenario is, OK, you decapitate the top of the regime.

00:28:21.380 other players are just going to fill that vacuum and then you get a civil war uh we you know because

00:28:28.600 that's kind of what happened with syria okay fine we're going to help with the air we're we're going

00:28:32.100 to put economic pressure on we're going to weaken the regime uh and then you just get kind of a

00:28:37.000 multi-front uh civil war uh except iran is god knows how many times larger in both population

00:28:45.120 and geography and importance

00:28:47.340 than Syria. So it would be a 0.99

00:28:49.020 gigantic war.

00:28:51.700 Syria ended with 0.98

00:28:53.280 essentially

00:28:54.920 ISIS in a suit, 0.82

00:28:57.000 essentially. It is kind of a polished up, more

00:28:58.740 respectable version

00:29:00.920 of ISIS, but essentially an ISIS boss

00:29:02.880 in charge. So, okay, that

00:29:04.640 worked out well. We switched out

00:29:05.980 kind of a bloodthirsty Ba'athist for a bloodthirsty 1.00

00:29:09.000 ISIS guy. Great. 0.75

00:29:11.520 Who knows how this ends,

00:29:12.940 but if we have

00:29:14.340 than this huge civil war in Iran.

00:29:22.580 We remember the refugee crisis that came out of tiny little Syria. 0.99

00:29:26.980 Syria is a small, relatively inconsequential country,

00:29:30.580 and the West was flooded with refugees.

00:29:34.340 Some of them were perfectly fine people.

00:29:36.420 Some of them were not.

00:29:37.960 I can remember the New Year's Eve mass raping in Cologne.

00:29:44.340 in Germany. You know, Angela Merkel threw open the doors to 0.83

00:29:49.520 unlimited refugees. They still haven't gone back, even though 1.00

00:29:53.160 the war in Syria, civil war in Syria is is done, and they're

00:29:56.760 supposed to go back, they're refusing to leave. We're if this

00:30:00.540 goes into a civil war for regime change that could end

00:30:05.640 still with the regime in charge, maybe not, we're gonna

00:30:08.700 have floods of refugees. And I know a lot of people are going

00:30:10.920 say uh i know persians or iranians in canada and they're great people that's my personal experience

00:30:17.240 i've never met in a uh i've never met a persian in canada i did not like like they're solid but

00:30:22.760 that's somewhat self-selecting people they tend the ones who come here tend to hate the regime

00:30:27.240 their families hate the regime they tend to be westernized and liberal and they they assimilate

00:30:31.720 they fit in really well but if we're getting flooded with refugees from a war we're not just

00:30:37.080 going to get those ones. We're going to get people of all varieties, which means we're going to get

00:30:41.320 ayatollists here. So we're going to, like, we're already, we already have this crazy migration

00:30:47.760 problem in every Western country on the planet, save maybe Poland and Hungary. We're going to be 1.00

00:30:54.060 flooded with refugees. And the country that has been pining for this war the longest, Israel, 0.99

00:31:01.620 I'll bet you, I'll give you a 10 to 1 odds, is not going to take a single refugee from this war. 1.00

00:31:07.080 Well, I mean, one of the things that, and you know this, mainstream media won't talk

00:31:13.640 about is the fact that when you look at the Palestinian conflict, so-called Palestinians,

00:31:18.840 none of the Arab nations, none of the Muslim nations will take any of them in. They say, 1.00

00:31:23.160 you are too toxic. They kicked them out. Jordan kicked them out. They refused to take in their

00:31:27.960 own cousins this is you know this is these are rabid palestinians palestinians uh on steroids here 1.00

00:31:37.480 and and you know it's sort of interesting because we we were concerned of course um

00:31:43.480 that this attack would be launched but you know you go back to 1998 1999 serbia and kosovo

00:31:51.560 So hardly anybody was upset about the fact that NATO went in and intervened against Serbia, bombed, if I can use the expression, bombed the crap out of them to stop them killing people in another nation.

00:32:07.700 And the Ayatollah has been doing this in spades, upgraded significantly, and death and mayhem everywhere. 0.93

00:32:16.980 And so I find it sort of interesting that some, you know, when you're talking about this geopolitically, some who were saying, yeah, we've got to stop that.

00:32:24.860 Milosevic, we've got to stop these nutbars. 1.00

00:32:27.140 And if it means we bomb them, we bomb them. 0.99

00:32:29.540 So far less threat, far less of a global threat, but people being slaughtered. 0.99

00:32:36.400 And I agree with you.

00:32:37.760 Boy, if anybody thinks that all of a sudden all the students and their wonderful students in Iran are going to rise up and take over and everything's going to be beautiful, that's not the case.

00:32:46.720 it's there's still some very deep resentment um they saw you know you go back to 1953 this is when

00:32:52.400 the the cia and uh m16 uh uh mi5 the group out of britain they really caused the coup there

00:33:02.880 to knock out some nasty people okay they were but there's but there's resentment on that part

00:33:08.160 and i think the u.s is quite aware i've learned from history there they can't come in and do the 0.94

00:33:13.920 regime change but they're saying look we will take out the one who's killing you by the thousands

00:33:19.840 who's telling people around the world by the hundreds that we'll take we'll take him out and

00:33:24.800 his top henchmen and you're going to need to rise up but that is not going to be an easy uprising

00:33:31.340 there's nine million people okay but there's going to be there it's going to it's going to be tough

00:33:35.200 and there's going to be refugees from that i mean so when when kosovo happened in the late 90s uh

00:33:41.120 I was living at CFP Trenton at the time, Air Force Base, you know, and I remember the refugees coming into my town.

00:33:48.460 They were living in the military barracks that I would sleep in sometimes when I was a cadet, spending weekends on the base.

00:33:54.120 But Kosovo was a tiny little country that was not a ton of people.

00:33:58.300 Many of them went back when the war ended.

00:34:01.220 We did not at that time recognize a massive migration crisis.

00:34:07.020 We had no, there was no fear of losing our own identity in our own countries at that time.

00:34:12.660 We were absorbing and relatively assimilating most, not all, but most migrants.

00:34:17.680 That's not the case today.

00:34:19.620 And Iran is a nation of 90 million people.

00:34:22.840 There's going to be refugees.

00:34:24.800 So if this does tip into civil war, which is, I mean, the best case scenario would be 1.00

00:34:29.040 color revolution.

00:34:29.780 But yeah, I don't think either of us think that's going to happen.

00:34:32.420 The best case scenario, best case likely scenario would be a civil war. 0.84

00:34:36.080 and that's going to mean millions and millions of refugees um and yes the arab neighbors of

00:34:43.140 the palestinians don't take in they did take some but they don't take a lot they could take a lot 0.90

00:34:47.320 more um but uh there's many arab nations there there's only one persian nation in the world

00:34:53.040 iran uh there's no other persian nations really around them um to take these people uh there's 0.99

00:35:00.420 minorities like Azerbaijanis within Iran who could go to Azerbaijan, I suppose. But this is going to 0.60

00:35:07.380 fall on Europe and North America to take everyone. We're going to be facing floods of migrants. And I 1.00

00:35:13.040 have no faith in the collective leadership of the Western world that we're going to say no to these

00:35:18.300 people when they show up to our borders. And the country that wants it, the country that wants this

00:35:23.940 war, has been pining for it, Israel, is not going to take one of them. 0.94

00:35:27.260 i think it's a fair concern but it shouldn't be in my view that's not the major concern um i can't

00:35:37.000 say you know and i'm glad that wasn't the calculus that was used in the late 30s though some are

00:35:41.940 recommending it towards hitler saying you know what if we if we take hitler out there's gonna

00:35:46.960 there's a lot of germans who don't like him there's going to be war and you know then we're

00:35:50.240 going to be stuck with all these immigrants flooding over to us uh that's that's something 1.00

00:35:54.040 to be considered, and our record relative to letting in illegal, very dangerous immigrants, 1.00

00:36:01.540 our record in Canada is deplorable, and so is most of Europe in that regard. I see it, and again,

00:36:08.080 this is somewhat guessing, I see there's going to be tensions. Trump has made clear, which is sort

00:36:15.140 of interesting, that they will fund, they will take care of all members of the existing IRGC,

00:36:21.000 the Revolutionary Guard. In Iran, there'll be no sanctions against them. So there are some

00:36:28.120 carrots available. There's going to be some that are really dug in, of course, and they're going

00:36:32.000 to fight hard. The fleeing immigrant, the refugee problem is a potential. To me, it's not as 1.00

00:36:41.140 dangerous as incoming refugee is not as dangerous as incoming either nuclear or non-nuclear ballistic 0.58

00:36:48.860 missiles, which he has proven, which he, sorry, he's dead now, but which he had proven he will

00:36:53.760 do every, every chance that, uh, that regime had to export the terror they did at the cost of

00:37:01.060 thousands and thousands of lives, every single chance that was never, ever going to stop until

00:37:06.640 they were killed. They've been, been killed now. And yes, there could be, there will be civil

00:37:12.560 unrest. Uh, us has learned that lesson. They're, they're going to stay out of it in that regard.

00:37:18.860 I believe that with the change that we've seen in the population, certainly the younger population, many of whom have been the ones being killed, I don't think you're going to see it to that extent.

00:37:29.820 But it's a gamble and it's a risk.

00:37:32.280 But fear of that, improper refugees, is not as large as the ongoing export of death and destruction, and eventually it would be nuclear destruction. 1.00

00:37:43.300 Okay, but like, you know, I won't talk in circles, but you know, we have the nuclear boogeyman. Would they like a bomb? My guess would be yes. But, you know, Nanyan has been warning us for 30 years, since I was 10 years old. He's been saying they're weeks away from having a nuclear bomb. We had the 12 days war. We've been given zero evidence that they're on the verge of having a nuclear weapon.

00:38:08.160 So I just I really am not buying that. All I'm seeing is then is regime change. And that really, I think, has been the foreign policy objective of Israel here having a or actually more even than regime change would probably be a destabilized and weaker on the way that Iraq is essentially fragmented effectively into three countries at this point.

00:38:29.340 Iraq has been neutered as a threat to Israel 1.00

00:38:33.660 Syria has been broken as well 0.81

00:38:36.780 it's in no position to oppose it

00:38:38.520 it's the foreign policy objective of Israel here

00:38:42.020 to have a weakened Iran 0.79

00:38:43.600 I don't think Israel really cares 1.00

00:38:47.340 if it's a nice happy liberal democracy

00:38:50.960 with capitalism and McDonald's

00:38:53.620 and all the trappings there

00:38:54.980 um it's this is an israeli foreign policy and i can see how this is in the interests

00:39:01.140 of israel but uh if we take nukes off the table because i really just i'm not buying that at all

00:39:08.800 then we're down to regime change and how would regime change be in america's interest if this

00:39:13.800 is america first trump ran on no war with iran he ran on it in 2015 uh he ran on it the second

00:39:20.620 time and he ran on it the third time no war of the rand no more regime change wars we're not doing

00:39:26.140 it this is not in the interests of america i how how would a regime change war then be in the

00:39:35.280 interest of the united states well when you're when the mass when the proven mass murderer in

00:39:40.740 this case it's the ayatollah and quite a number of other people in that regime when they say look

00:39:46.600 We've got two main targets, Israel and the United States, and we will do everything we can to eliminate them in any way we can at any time we can. 1.00

00:39:56.080 That's when it's in the interest of the United States, especially as they see that increased capability for them to do that, either by either ballistically or by.

00:40:04.540 And as we know, there's some concern right now that certain cell groups, if you want to call them that, within the U.S. could now arise because they are of that same toxic flow as the Ayatollah and do some killing. 0.89

00:40:18.520 There's no question about that.

00:40:19.640 So that's where it's in the interest of the United States.

00:40:24.580 Public enemy number one and number two, according to Iraq, is Israel and the United States.

00:40:30.040 So do you wait until they kill the other one on the wanted list, or do you take the chance, and there's so much chance in geopolitics, take out the one who is actually doing it, who has promised to do it, who will continue to do the killing, because you are on the list.

00:40:48.780 Canada isn't directly on the list, but how we see the Western worldview, yeah, we are. We are on Iran's list. I can tell you the times I met with the Saudis and the members of the royal family, I can tell you Canada was not on the list to destroy in Iran. Yes, eventually we'd be on the list too. It's the entire worldview as they see it.

00:41:12.560 So that's where I see it in the US.

00:41:14.900 I get their argument.

00:41:16.520 They are coming for us.

00:41:18.440 They, well, we've seen it with the USS Cole.

00:41:20.660 We've seen it with the embassy, and of course, a different strand.

00:41:25.220 But we saw it on 9-11.

00:41:27.740 The US is saying they can hit us.

00:41:30.260 They have hit us.

00:41:31.840 They have wrought terrible death upon us.

00:41:34.340 And we just ain't going to let it happen again.

00:41:37.400 The nuclear threat, I think, helps them to make the argument.

00:41:40.960 So there's some argument there, but I believe the time was coming for the Ayatollah anyway, because the U.S. knows they are in the bullseye also. 0.93

00:41:52.880 All right. Well, I'll just correct myself in the beginning.

00:41:56.060 You were not Minister of Foreign Affairs.

00:41:57.260 You're Minister of Public Safety and International Trade in your time.

00:42:02.400 Yes. Sorry, I had mixed that up.

00:42:04.620 It's close. It's close. It's OK.

00:42:06.140 Yeah. Well, with public safety, you were dealing with a lot of foreign policy issues and obviously is international trade as well.

00:42:10.960 I mixed that up, so I just wanted to correct myself.

00:42:14.320 Stock, it's always a pleasure chatting with you on the issues of the day.

00:42:19.120 I know we're not eye-to-eye on this, but I think it's good to have...

00:42:24.820 Yeah, normally one side's accusing the other of being mass murderers 0.98

00:42:28.000 and the other side saying you're a bunch of French surrender monkeys. 0.96

00:42:33.140 It's good to have a rational and respectful conversation on something as heated as this.

00:42:37.900 So thank you very much for your time.

00:42:39.660 I appreciate your goal in that regard because it doesn't happen enough in politics and

00:42:44.080 people wind up losing.

00:42:46.260 And if people want more information relative to some of my findings on this at stockwellday.com,

00:42:52.560 sorry to steal the time there, but stockwellday.com, a lot of my postings on this and on the documentary

00:42:58.040 I did relative to October 7th.

00:43:00.160 So it'll show where I've got some of the background information here.

00:43:03.260 And thanks.

00:43:04.160 Let's keep up the conversation.

00:43:06.240 You're always allowed to make a shameless plug. 0.96

00:43:08.040 it's good all right thank you very much stock for joining us today and thank all of you for

00:43:12.960 joining us on the western standard i'll give my shameless plug go to westernstandard.news click

00:43:16.960 on subscribe it's only ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year for unlimited access

00:43:20.720 to all western standard content thank you very much and god bless

00:43:38.040 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 02, 2026

IRAN： Is it really America’s war？

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