00:04:28.220do you accept either of these at face value?
00:04:36.740Kind of a mix, I do. That's a fair analysis. I could tell you, as when I was previously
00:04:43.420Minister of Public Safety for Canada, so I was also in charge of our intelligence services,
00:04:49.140I've been to Iran, been to Tehran. I've interviewed people over there who,
00:04:53.980they didn't have to prove it, but talked to both their loved ones disappearing in the middle of
00:04:58.860the night. They never see them again. I was in touch with so-called moderates in the regime
00:05:03.500for a while. They said, please keep emailing. This will be back in the 2000s. This is a vicious
00:05:09.380regime. We're hoping things will change. If we keep emailing, we might not get snuffed out.
00:05:14.740After about two or three months, I didn't hear from any of them again. So, I mean, that's just
00:05:20.160anecdotal personal experience everybody knows the extent to which this regime will go and I think
00:05:28.380that's one thing Derek that's being left out of this equation because in mainstream media certainly
00:05:33.600they don't like talking about certain spiritual realities the fact is that this regime and the
00:05:39.380ayatollah are notably tied to the Quranic predictions of prophetic doom the 13th imam
00:05:46.980so-called will be the one who will wipe out Israel and perhaps die in the process.
00:05:52.960And so when you have a psychotic regime that is also fueled by these religious fanatic
00:06:01.240notions and the fact that they say their constant dictum is the problem with the West and why
00:06:08.400we win is because the West fears death and we embrace death.
00:06:12.740The West wants life and we embrace death and they reward death.
00:06:17.160So 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.
00:06:28.460It obviously got to the point where the U.S. said that's enough.
00:06:33.200I think we can say we can acknowledge multiple over the years.
00:06:37.160I mean, there's multiple warnings been given to Iran, not just by the U.S., but I've lost
00:06:42.700track of a number of Security Council resolutions to stand down to stop their nuclear program.
00:06:48.240There was no evidence they were going to do this.
00:06:50.420Added to that, and we'll have to wait and see, is the possibility.
00:06:53.680We do know there, I mean, the U.S. also stated it's not just the nuclear, it's their capability
00:06:59.760to use their ballistic system to strike Israel, to strike Europe.
00:07:04.060And we've seen just in the last two days, unfortunately, they are able to do that.
00:07:08.240And so whether you have a nuclear head on that or whether you have chemical or toxic warfare, it's just too big a risk.
00:07:17.040And they made the move they had to make.
00:07:19.980So this is primarily religiously driven.
00:07:23.600I mean, we could argue going back for centuries, but this is religiously driven on the side of the Ayatollah regime.
00:07:30.560and it's pragmatically driven on the side of the U.S.
00:07:34.880And incidentally, there, as you know, many of the Arab nations,
00:07:39.460everybody predicted there'd be this giant regional war,
00:07:42.400but most of the Arab nations, they're either standing down
00:07:46.560or they are thankful for what has happened.
00:07:49.440So I'm more convinced about, you know,
00:07:53.220Israel has a threat from the ballistic missiles that are not nuclear-tipped
00:07:57.240at this time, or with any other, they're not tipped with any kind of weapons of mass
00:08:01.520destruction, chemical or biological, nothing of that nature at this time.
00:08:39.100Arguably, 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.
00:08:56.500Are 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.
00:09:06.700But 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.
00:09:30.800um you know we remember colin powell going and giving powerpoint presentations at the un and
00:09:37.700not everyone was convinced but a lot of people were uh and kind of gave the benefit of the doubt
00:09:41.900in the 12-day war the united states gave no evidence and israel gave no evidence they just
00:09:47.040did it uh and after the fact gave no evidence it was done um this time they've also still given no
00:09:53.920evidence and so like i'm gonna need i'm not an american i don't get a say here uh i'll
00:10:00.620I don't think Americans are really getting the say here.
00:10:03.320Americans elected Donald Trump, I think, not to be doing this, and they're doing it anyway.
00:10:08.440But most Americans are not supporting this.
00:10:10.920They're not yet convinced that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.
00:10:15.240I want to play just a quick little montage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
00:10:21.200warning us that Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.
00:10:27.160If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.
00:10:32.300It could be a year. It could be within a few months.
00:10:35.880They have the wherewithal, the stored up preserved knowledge to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it.
00:14:28.700And now you have a situation where they're not trying to deter the Soviet Union anymore
00:14:34.700by saying, if you hit us, we hate you.
00:14:37.140You actually do have a nation with all of the ultramodern technology, but who's saying,
00:14:43.420don't care if you hit us we welcome a nuclear inferno we'd like to start one ourselves and if
00:14:51.500we don't get the first shot we don't care because uh disappearing in a giant a global flame of
00:14:58.860nuclear holocaust is something we that actually entices us so when you've got somebody in the
00:15:05.900neighborhood like that how long and you and you watch someone in your neighborhood continue to go
00:15:11.900into other people's houses and kill and destroy and so you've got the record very clear record
00:15:17.820and and i know you you agree with this of iran uh financing hezbollah financing uh hamas the
00:15:26.140houthis around the world without nuclear power they're wreaking literally hell and destruction
00:15:31.980wherever they go and at what point do you say we think they're we think they're close and we've
00:15:38.700we've got to put an end. We've begged them. Obama tried to buy them, if you recall,
00:15:44.180plane loads of hard cash, anything to get them to say, please stop your nuclear pursuit of nuclear
00:15:51.560weapons. Even to the case, as we saw, and I was actually kind of shocked to hear this over the
00:15:55.720last couple of weeks, where the U.S. was saying, actually saying to Iran, you know what? We will
00:15:59.700actually give you domestic nuclear capacity so that you can provide energy, for instance, to your
00:16:07.220hospitals so that you can run some of your basic energy we will even give you
00:16:12.140that nuclear capacity it can't be very difficult to upgrade certain types of
00:16:16.580that capacity and even then they were saying no so do you wait then for the
00:16:22.940person who has already proven and at home where where they the the estimates
00:16:28.160I was just talking with one of my contacts in Iran and I had the
00:16:32.460opportunity to meet Reza Pahlavi, the grandson of the first Shah, some time ago. We actually met
00:16:41.860him at Mar-a-Lago. I wasn't there at the commission of Donald Trump, but I was there meeting him.
00:16:47.640It is quite literally a matter of time. And what you have in the last few weeks,
00:16:53.640his estimates were over 60,000 that have been killed. More moderate estimates say at least
00:16:59.58030,000, at least 30,000 people killed. And they kill, as you know, everybody that disagrees with
00:17:07.740the law on anything, whether it's sexual orientation or what you think the stock market should look
00:17:13.160like. And there just becomes a point which I tend to agree with and which Mark Kearney, I have some
00:17:20.820big disagreements with him. I post that regularly, but I also post when I think he did the right
00:17:26.020thing and he has come out in support of this because it is too big a risk of it wouldn't be
00:17:33.680world i don't think it'd be global uh annihilation but for them to get either from another bad actor
00:17:39.860it doesn't have to be them coming up with it it could be a china who would delight in this type
00:17:44.160of thing for them to get the capability to launch something of that nature when they're already
00:17:49.060launching launching the ballistic missiles and killing people anyway then you have to as they
00:17:54.500say, you've got to cut off the head of the snake, and that's what they've done. So you've got
00:17:58.260somebody who is already importing, ordering, and perfecting mass murder, and you're just saying to
00:18:06.200yourself, or the Western world is saying to themselves, how much more mass murder until we
00:18:10.520run the risk that something even worse does get launched at us?
00:18:14.540Oh, okay. But Iran, you know, we all agree it's crazy. That's table stakes. But there's lots of
00:18:22.120crazy regimes in the region. And we're allied, and the United States is allied to some of them.
00:18:27.420Saudi Arabia is, you know, it's a different flavor of Islam. It's Sunni Islam, and Iran is Shia Islam.
00:18:36.080But, you know, the Saudis are wildly theocratic. They're in bed with the Wahhabists exporting
00:18:43.640radical Sunni Islam around the world, including into our own countries.
00:18:49.260um they kill people for their sexual orientation uh they're just as barbaric and stone age and
00:18:58.400or medieval to you know pick your era uh as the iranians and but we do business with them uh
00:19:05.300just kind of the way it's worked out in the region so i'm not sure that just you know yeah
00:19:10.640their crazies means we need to go to war because if that's the case we need to go to war with damn
00:19:15.300near every regime in the region and you know the the country that wanted this war the most israel
00:19:22.200uh it's not as extreme but i'll tell you it's pretty extreme there are uh very powerful elements
00:19:28.820within the coalition government that are religious fanatics in their own right that are hell-bent on
00:19:34.220ethnic cleansing i've seen the ethnic cleansing of christians uh in the west bank firsthand at the
00:19:39.440hand of Israel with the complicity of the Israeli government. There's no Boy Scouts in this region,
00:19:46.580and I don't think we should be under any compunction that we need to only deal with Boy
00:19:51.020Scouts here, that everyone's good. We're not always comparing apples and apples here. I'm not
00:19:57.120saying the Israeli regime is as totalitarian, say, as Iran or Saudi Arabia, but there's no good guys
00:20:04.200at this point um they um the the big thing is like i still i didn't hear from you that you're
00:20:14.380that you believe that they are that they're on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon we had the 12
00:20:20.320days war um which was ostensibly to eliminate that threat again there was no evidence provided even
00:20:26.960at that point that that's what they were doing that that the iranians were on the cusp of having
00:20:31.420a nuclear weapon when they made those strikes, anyone who doubted it, you know, the White House
00:20:37.780said this is fake news. We've set their nuclear program back years, if not decades. How could
00:20:43.940that be true if they're now doing it now? You know, where we're in now, we have not had any
00:20:51.260evidence. So I'm in agreement with you about how terrible the regime is. That's stable stakes here.
00:20:56.880You 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?
00:21:15.580Sure. 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.
00:21:40.360But I can tell you, we exchanged, and we still do, on a security basis, we exchanged mutually helpful terrorism-related information.
00:21:56.820Also, we share with Israel in that regard.
00:22:00.100But the Saudis, one of the clear differences, and you've already articulated the fact quite rightly, that they're a different stream of Islam.
00:24:50.420when you talk, when you're dealing with the Ayatollah and the people around you.
00:24:54.820So I'm not personally feeling very good about waiting until if they had the,
00:25:02.220first of all, I want to deal with the nuclear thing again,
00:25:04.820but if they had the ballistic capacity to hit New York City or Montreal,
00:25:10.040which they were developing, clearly they're getting further and further field,
00:25:13.520they would use it within about a nanosecond of being able to do that.
00:25:17.340And 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.
00:25:33.740But every opportunity they get, they launch into killing fields at home and abroad.
00:25:43.000Their ballistic capacity increases and they're pressing on every opportunity they get to nuclear capacity.
00:25:50.360Why 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?
00:26:03.340certainly more around that region why why would we wait why would we not take them out to me it is
00:26:09.080the it's the sobering but it's the prudent thing to do okay uh all right so let's talk you you
00:26:18.380you talked about you know no troops on the ground the other cause for war given here was regime
00:26:24.800change now uh i'm i'm gonna spare everyone a compilation clip because it'd be even much much
00:26:30.620longer than netanyahu's but a compilation clip of donald trump um saying you know no more regime
00:26:38.220change wars no more team america world police we're done with that it's america first if amer
00:26:43.220you know and and that does it's not it's not a peacenik message saying america doesn't believe
00:26:47.720in having a strong military and using it but it means using it when it's in america's direct
00:26:51.880interest normally and it's near abroad you could argue the kind of kidnapping of maduro which
00:29:37.960I can remember the New Year's Eve mass raping in Cologne.
00:29:44.340in Germany. You know, Angela Merkel threw open the doors to
00:29:49.520unlimited refugees. They still haven't gone back, even though
00:29:53.160the war in Syria, civil war in Syria is is done, and they're
00:29:56.760supposed to go back, they're refusing to leave. We're if this
00:30:00.540goes into a civil war for regime change that could end
00:30:05.640still with the regime in charge, maybe not, we're gonna
00:30:08.700have floods of refugees. And I know a lot of people are going
00:30:10.920say uh i know persians or iranians in canada and they're great people that's my personal experience
00:30:17.240i've never met in a uh i've never met a persian in canada i did not like like they're solid but
00:30:22.760that's somewhat self-selecting people they tend the ones who come here tend to hate the regime
00:30:27.240their families hate the regime they tend to be westernized and liberal and they they assimilate
00:30:31.720they fit in really well but if we're getting flooded with refugees from a war we're not just
00:30:37.080going to get those ones. We're going to get people of all varieties, which means we're going to get
00:30:41.320ayatollists here. So we're going to, like, we're already, we already have this crazy migration
00:30:47.760problem in every Western country on the planet, save maybe Poland and Hungary. We're going to be
00:30:54.060flooded with refugees. And the country that has been pining for this war the longest, Israel,
00:31:01.620I'll bet you, I'll give you a 10 to 1 odds, is not going to take a single refugee from this war.
00:31:07.080Well, I mean, one of the things that, and you know this, mainstream media won't talk
00:31:13.640about is the fact that when you look at the Palestinian conflict, so-called Palestinians,
00:31:18.840none of the Arab nations, none of the Muslim nations will take any of them in. They say,
00:31:23.160you are too toxic. They kicked them out. Jordan kicked them out. They refused to take in their
00:31:27.960own cousins this is you know this is these are rabid palestinians palestinians uh on steroids here
00:31:37.480and and you know it's sort of interesting because we we were concerned of course um
00:31:43.480that this attack would be launched but you know you go back to 1998 1999 serbia and kosovo
00:31:51.560So 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.
00:32:07.700And the Ayatollah has been doing this in spades, upgraded significantly, and death and mayhem everywhere.
00:32:16.980And 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.
00:32:24.860Milosevic, we've got to stop these nutbars.
00:32:27.140And if it means we bomb them, we bomb them.
00:32:29.540So far less threat, far less of a global threat, but people being slaughtered.
00:32:37.760Boy, 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.
00:32:46.720it's there's still some very deep resentment um they saw you know you go back to 1953 this is when
00:32:52.400the the cia and uh m16 uh uh mi5 the group out of britain they really caused the coup there
00:33:02.880to knock out some nasty people okay they were but there's but there's resentment on that part
00:33:08.160and i think the u.s is quite aware i've learned from history there they can't come in and do the
00:33:13.920regime change but they're saying look we will take out the one who's killing you by the thousands
00:33:19.840who's telling people around the world by the hundreds that we'll take we'll take him out and
00:33:24.800his top henchmen and you're going to need to rise up but that is not going to be an easy uprising
00:33:31.340there's nine million people okay but there's going to be there it's going to it's going to be tough
00:33:35.200and there's going to be refugees from that i mean so when when kosovo happened in the late 90s uh
00:33:41.120I was living at CFP Trenton at the time, Air Force Base, you know, and I remember the refugees coming into my town.
00:33:48.460They were living in the military barracks that I would sleep in sometimes when I was a cadet, spending weekends on the base.
00:33:54.120But Kosovo was a tiny little country that was not a ton of people.
00:33:58.300Many of them went back when the war ended.
00:34:01.220We did not at that time recognize a massive migration crisis.
00:34:07.020We had no, there was no fear of losing our own identity in our own countries at that time.
00:34:12.660We were absorbing and relatively assimilating most, not all, but most migrants.
00:34:29.780But yeah, I don't think either of us think that's going to happen.
00:34:32.420The best case scenario, best case likely scenario would be a civil war.
00:34:36.080and that's going to mean millions and millions of refugees um and yes the arab neighbors of
00:34:43.140the palestinians don't take in they did take some but they don't take a lot they could take a lot
00:34:47.320more um but uh there's many arab nations there there's only one persian nation in the world
00:34:53.040iran uh there's no other persian nations really around them um to take these people uh there's
00:35:00.420minorities like Azerbaijanis within Iran who could go to Azerbaijan, I suppose. But this is going to
00:35:07.380fall on Europe and North America to take everyone. We're going to be facing floods of migrants. And I
00:35:13.040have no faith in the collective leadership of the Western world that we're going to say no to these
00:35:18.300people when they show up to our borders. And the country that wants it, the country that wants this
00:35:23.940war, has been pining for it, Israel, is not going to take one of them.
00:35:27.260i think it's a fair concern but it shouldn't be in my view that's not the major concern um i can't
00:35:37.000say you know and i'm glad that wasn't the calculus that was used in the late 30s though some are
00:35:41.940recommending it towards hitler saying you know what if we if we take hitler out there's gonna
00:35:46.960there's a lot of germans who don't like him there's going to be war and you know then we're
00:35:50.240going to be stuck with all these immigrants flooding over to us uh that's that's something
00:35:54.040to be considered, and our record relative to letting in illegal, very dangerous immigrants,
00:36:01.540our record in Canada is deplorable, and so is most of Europe in that regard. I see it, and again,
00:36:08.080this is somewhat guessing, I see there's going to be tensions. Trump has made clear, which is sort
00:36:15.140of interesting, that they will fund, they will take care of all members of the existing IRGC,
00:36:21.000the Revolutionary Guard. In Iran, there'll be no sanctions against them. So there are some
00:36:28.120carrots available. There's going to be some that are really dug in, of course, and they're going
00:36:32.000to fight hard. The fleeing immigrant, the refugee problem is a potential. To me, it's not as
00:36:41.140dangerous as incoming refugee is not as dangerous as incoming either nuclear or non-nuclear ballistic
00:36:48.860missiles, which he has proven, which he, sorry, he's dead now, but which he had proven he will
00:36:53.760do every, every chance that, uh, that regime had to export the terror they did at the cost of
00:37:01.060thousands and thousands of lives, every single chance that was never, ever going to stop until
00:37:06.640they were killed. They've been, been killed now. And yes, there could be, there will be civil
00:37:12.560unrest. Uh, us has learned that lesson. They're, they're going to stay out of it in that regard.
00:37:18.860I 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.
00:37:32.280But fear of that, improper refugees, is not as large as the ongoing export of death and destruction, and eventually it would be nuclear destruction.
00:37:43.300Okay, 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.
00:38:08.160So 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.
00:38:29.340Iraq has been neutered as a threat to Israel
00:38:54.980um it's this is an israeli foreign policy and i can see how this is in the interests
00:39:01.140of israel but uh if we take nukes off the table because i really just i'm not buying that at all
00:39:08.800then we're down to regime change and how would regime change be in america's interest if this
00:39:13.800is america first trump ran on no war with iran he ran on it in 2015 uh he ran on it the second
00:39:20.620time and he ran on it the third time no war of the rand no more regime change wars we're not doing
00:39:26.140it this is not in the interests of america i how how would a regime change war then be in the
00:39:35.280interest of the united states well when you're when the mass when the proven mass murderer in
00:39:40.740this case it's the ayatollah and quite a number of other people in that regime when they say look
00:39:46.600We'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.
00:39:56.080That'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.
00:40:04.540And 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.
00:40:19.640So that's where it's in the interest of the United States.
00:40:24.580Public enemy number one and number two, according to Iraq, is Israel and the United States.
00:40:30.040So 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.
00:40:48.780Canada 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.
00:41:31.840They have wrought terrible death upon us.
00:41:34.340And we just ain't going to let it happen again.
00:41:37.400The nuclear threat, I think, helps them to make the argument.
00:41:40.960So 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.
00:41:52.880All right. Well, I'll just correct myself in the beginning.
00:41:56.060You were not Minister of Foreign Affairs.
00:41:57.260You're Minister of Public Safety and International Trade in your time.