Western Standard - ON THE GROUND： Israel’s war with Iran

00:00:00.000 G'day! Today is March 2nd. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:00:29.400 Today, I am going to be joined by Adam Zivo.

00:00:32.620 Adam Zivo is a Canadian freelance journalist who's done a lot of really great work in different

00:00:38.800 publications around Canada on everything from drug policy in Vancouver to the war between

00:00:46.980 Ukraine and Russia on the ground, often actually lives in Ukraine watching the war firsthand.

00:00:53.140 And he's also done a lot of great work in the Middle East, in particular on the previous Iran and Israel conflicts and Israel-Palestine.

00:01:03.360 In fact, I've actually been on the ground going around Israel and around the West Bank with Adam before, which is actually where we first met.

00:01:11.960 So I've got a lot of respect for his views on this, even though we don't always see eye to eye on it.

00:01:15.660 His views are sober, and I think they come by honestly.

00:01:18.900 So I want to welcome to the program Adam Zivo.

00:01:21.800 Thanks for having me.

00:01:23.140 Adam, you are no longer in a bomb shelter, that looks a little nice for a bomb shelter, but you're coming to us from Tel Aviv right now, right?

00:01:33.480 I am, and the atmosphere here is much more orderly and much calmer than those in the West would assume.

00:01:41.260 I mean, I guess people there grow up with it, they're used to it, it's not their first rodeo.

00:01:47.120 um uh but you know we've all been seeing footage of the they're not nuclear tip when we were

00:01:54.280 everyone spoke about ballistic missiles everyone assumes this uh it's nuclear but it's uh these

00:01:59.560 are not they're just they're they're conventional ballistic missiles but they they've been pounding

00:02:03.220 at uh at tel aviv where you are we've all seen some fantastic footage with uh the interceptor

00:02:10.320 missiles the iron dome um hitting these but it's not hitting all of them well what's the mood like

00:02:16.740 there right now and what's it just like at nighttime watching these incoming missile attacks

00:02:22.100 and the uh and the interceptor attacks so the atmosphere on the ground here is very orderly

00:02:27.860 there's not a lot of chaos uh and no one's watching interceptors hitting missiles in the sky

00:02:34.120 because they're in the bomb shelters seeking cover and uh you know not looking sorry let's

00:02:40.940 do that one more time sorry i'm a little bit thrown off by like having this on okay let me

00:02:45.260 okay so you asked what's it like you know i'm watching it okay so i want to clarify that no

00:02:52.300 one is watching interceptors strike ballistic missiles in the sky because if there is a

00:02:57.320 ballistic missile on its way to tel aviv then you are already in the shelter so you are not outside

00:03:03.160 looking at all of this the atmosphere in tel aviv in most parts of israel right now is relatively

00:03:10.700 calm and that things are orderly. And I'm going to give you some context to build up to this.

00:03:15.280 So first of all, Israelis have existed in a state of conflict for decades. They're surrounded by

00:03:21.080 neighbors who don't like the fact that they're there and want to ethically cleanse them.

00:03:25.420 Now, since 2023, we've had a more active state of war with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with the Houthis,

00:03:31.760 and now with Iran. And that has created an escalating level of violence and threat. So 0.99

00:03:38.460 when you had Hamas and Hezbollah sending in missiles, these were usually smaller munitions

00:03:44.140 that could kill you if it landed nearby, but for the most part didn't do too much damage. And so

00:03:49.860 you could just go to your stairwell and you would probably be fine. Or you could stay inside your

00:03:55.540 reinforced room in your apartment, which is known as a mamad. Then when Iran came in, that changed 0.98

00:04:01.740 everything because these ballistic missiles can do a lot of damage. So just down the street from

00:04:07.160 where I am, for example, there's an impact site. I was actually only 800 meters away when that hit

00:04:12.160 back in June. That was from the 12 Days War. That was the site that you sent me to while we were

00:04:16.500 there. Yes, that was the 12 Day War. You know, that shattered all the glass in 200 meters that

00:04:21.260 collapsed or half collapsed several buildings, destroyed basically all of the cladding of a

00:04:27.860 nearby skyscraper. And those buildings are still in ruin. And so in this situation, people go to

00:04:34.040 the to the main shelter so since the 1990s every single building built in israel needs to have

00:04:40.680 a reinforced shelter in the basement this is all you know reinforced concrete you have basically a

00:04:46.520 submarine door that's airtight and these things are borderline impregnable and then of course you

00:04:52.040 have the public shelters that are scattered all throughout every city and it's illegal to deny

00:04:57.640 anyone access to any shelter even if it's in a private residence so all of this stuff is very

00:05:01.720 easy to access i know four or five different shelters within five minutes walking distance

00:05:06.280 from where i am including unofficial shelters that are not sanctioned to uh you know absorb

00:05:12.200 these hits but are still protective so people went down to that then there was also a system

00:05:17.400 in place in the iran war so you would get a notification on your phone it's an emergency

00:05:23.640 notification that is basically the equivalent of an amber alert and it makes the same sound like

00:05:27.960 that is jarring it gets your attention it's effective and it tells you that you need to go

00:05:35.720 near a safe place near a shelter uh because you're going to get a follow-up alert soon

00:05:41.240 usually that means in five to ten minutes so you walk near the shelter there's so many nearby it's

00:05:47.160 not hard it's pretty calm and then you get the follow-up alerts which is sent to you via an app

00:05:53.480 you hear all the air raid sirens and in tel aviv you have 90 seconds to get into a shelter if

00:05:59.560 you're for example getting a missile and you're in the south maybe that's 30 seconds if you're

00:06:03.880 in the north maybe that's 10 seconds but in tel aviv it's 90 seconds you go inside you wait 10

00:06:10.120 15 minutes uh so that the missile is interception many of the debris falls down and doesn't kill you

00:06:16.360 and then you go outside and that is the process and you just repeat that again and again and again

00:06:24.120 and again and that's what people did during the iran war and most people were fine and the people

00:06:29.800 who did die were people who were not in the shelter for the most part and when i was interviewing

00:06:34.760 people at the time about whether they felt scared they kind of shrugged and they said

00:06:38.600 look it's not great to say but why weren't they in the shelter why weren't they following protocol

00:06:43.320 so with this new round of the iran war everyone knew what to expect this was nothing new for them

00:06:48.360 they had been at war with iran before they trusted in the idf to protect them so when we received our

00:06:54.520 message at 8 15 in the morning we walked to the shelter everyone was totally calm they were

00:07:01.960 checking their phones they didn't you know they expected this we all heard for weeks before that

00:07:06.600 something was going to happen and then the first alarm just said israel attacked you know iran

00:07:13.560 and people realized well you know israel attacked iran but we don't know if there's a there doesn't

00:07:18.040 seem to be a retaliation yet so we don't need to be here so after two or three minutes they all left

00:07:23.800 and then i was walking throughout the city afterwards and it was fairly empty many people

00:07:28.840 were leaving for the north and south because iran predominantly targets tel aviv and haifa in the

00:07:34.440 the center. So people were going to rural areas that are less likely to be targeted by a ballistic

00:07:38.740 missile. Some people were buying provisions, not a huge amount because everyone was already prepared.

00:07:44.560 And then we started to get more and more and more alerts. And so by 4 p.m., I think we got seven.

00:07:51.220 I think across the day, we maybe had 10, 11, 12. They all bleed into each other.

00:07:55.920 So you go in the shelter, out the shelter, in the shelter, out the shelter. The Iranians were 1.00

00:08:01.000 really committed to ensuring that Israelis 0.95

00:08:02.840 got their cardio done and got their steps

00:08:05.000 in.

00:08:07.880 Yeah.

00:08:08.800 Okay, so I guess you haven't

00:08:10.500 seen it. I know

00:08:12.200 the temptation's got to be there to

00:08:14.440 watch it once,

00:08:17.560 but it might be like looking at a

00:08:18.920 solar eclipse. It's interesting

00:08:20.820 to watch, but probably a bad idea.

00:08:23.920 Look, I'm

00:08:24.900 going to say I'm a curious person. I also

00:08:26.920 like being alive.

00:08:29.360 Yeah. No, no, you're

00:08:30.840 definitely made the right he made the smart decision um but uh you know the the iron dome

00:08:37.360 is you know world famous for how effective it is it's extremely effective against smaller munitions

00:08:42.440 from you know some you know hamas guy you know firing a little thing over the fence uh it's it's

00:08:48.640 extremely effective against that stuff uh it's less effective though against the ballistic missiles

00:08:54.160 however uh how many have gotten through to tel aviv while you've been there it's hard to tell

00:08:59.980 for sure because there's a sensor in place so there are things you can't always report on or

00:09:04.900 that you're not aware of because you know there's an operational security element to it if a missile

00:09:09.640 lands by an area that's militarily sensitive people aren't supposed to talk about it so i don't know

00:09:14.520 but i know of at least two hits that have happened uh there was a hit that was uh near my neighborhood

00:09:21.260 like a kilometer and a half away destroyed a few buildings i think killed one person and injured a

00:09:26.160 few. There were some in the South, but the vast majority of these missiles are intercepted.

00:09:32.520 And that is great. That is why people are outside jogging and sitting at cafes because they know

00:09:38.860 that the Iron Dome works. Now, I do want to clarify that if one of these missiles lands directly

00:09:44.920 on your building, directly on your shelter, you are going to die. That is pretty much understood.

00:09:50.880 But people say, well, you know what? The chance of that happening, statistically speaking,

00:09:56.160 small yeah very small you may as well be you you will probably be hit by a car instead right now

00:10:03.840 one thing that i have noticed over the past few days is that the number of alarms the sense of

00:10:10.080 danger that we're seeing right now is actually uh less intense than what we saw with the 12-day war

00:10:17.520 so during the 12-day war they launched a lot of missiles they hope to saturate the environments

00:10:22.960 and use up the iron dome and get a few missiles through this time they don't seem to be doing this

00:10:28.160 as much there are fewer missiles heading towards tel aviv and the reason for that is that the

00:10:33.680 iranians seem to have calculated that they can get the united states to stop this war

00:10:39.120 if pressure is applied on the arabian gulf states so right now iran is bombing qatar bahrain uh

00:10:47.280 Saudi Arabia, the UAE.

00:10:50.780 Well, everywhere where there's U.S. military bases

00:10:54.560 in these Gulf states, right?

00:10:56.200 Yeah, but not just the U.S. military bases.

00:10:58.280 They're bombing residential areas.

00:11:00.200 They're bombing hotels.

00:11:01.400 Yeah, but they're hitting countries

00:11:03.820 that host U.S. military bases.

00:11:05.300 They're not only hitting the military bases,

00:11:07.220 but countries that host U.S. military bases.

00:11:09.860 Well, I mean, it seems as if their campaign

00:11:11.460 is somewhat indiscriminate, right?

00:11:13.120 And it seems like you're also attacking

00:11:15.200 the economic the economies of these of these countries so for example i think they attacked

00:11:20.720 um maybe it was qatar's like one of the main one of them to attack like their main oil refineries 1.00

00:11:26.640 right and so the idea here is that you know these these arab gulf states are allied with the united

00:11:34.240 states i mean they're not always the easiest of allies but at the same time they do economically

00:11:40.240 cooperate and the United States relies on them for their energy. And they're both aligned in

00:11:45.440 their dislike of Iran. And so the Iranians have calculated, okay, well, if we attack Dubai,

00:11:52.960 if we attack Doha, cities that are not set up for defense in the same way that Tel Aviv is,

00:12:00.720 cities that are softer targets, then maybe we can get these states to run to Washington and say,

00:12:06.880 please stop we are suffering too much yeah well they've also been able to create enough chaos

00:12:11.960 with the Strait of Hormuz to get essentially everybody to stop moving their tankers through

00:12:17.160 so that's uh I mean uh if there's a I don't I don't mean to to make light of a terrible situation

00:12:23.120 but if there's a silver lining for Alberta it's saying our our budget deficit maybe gets a little

00:12:27.480 smaller for the year with the price of oil but uh you know Strait of Hormuz is not seeing a lot of

00:12:31.940 tanker traffic at the moment. And that's going to badly hurt the Gulf states at this moment.

00:12:37.720 So yeah, that'll probably bring some pressure to bear on the United States.

00:12:41.600 And then that creates some political pressure on Trump because energy prices are rising. So

00:12:45.660 that's the calculation. And this is why we're not getting that many attacks here. This is why

00:12:53.220 things are relatively relaxed. But they really miscalculated because they didn't scare these

00:12:59.880 arab states they pissed them off and now it's very clear that there's going to be an enhanced 1.00

00:13:06.260 alliance between these states and israel and the united states to combat iran and there's a context

00:13:13.160 for this so we have to keep in mind that many of these states they are monarchies and they really

00:13:19.980 don't like they're sunni they're sunni and they really don't get along well yeah yeah you know

00:13:25.280 it's like it's like catholics and protestants but you know back when that was more important

00:13:30.720 back in the day yeah yeah and um and so there's mutual distrust on the on the in terms of religious

00:13:37.680 sectarianism and then also these monarchies are worried that the fundamentalism the radicalism

00:13:44.160 of the islamic regime will destabilize their countries and lead to revolution right and so 0.99

00:13:50.880 this is why quietly you've seen rapprochement between these states and israel uh this was

00:13:57.040 epitomized by the abraham accords which normalized relationships between israel and several arab

00:14:03.440 states and in fact saudi arabia and israel were on the cusp of normalizing their relationship and

00:14:10.480 establishing some diplomatic relationship in 2023 late 2023 early 2024 and it's hypothesized that

00:14:17.120 this is why iran essentially got hamas to commit october 7th to derail that process which turned

00:14:24.000 out to be successful now the underlying problem with this trend is that there was a gap between

00:14:30.320 elite opinion and public opinion right so the elites wanted to work with israel they were afraid

00:14:37.200 of destabilization but they were constrained in what they could do because their constituents

00:14:42.800 not voters because these aren't democracies constituents really really do not like israel

00:14:48.160 and even if you're not a democracy uh it is destabilizing if your constituents really resent

00:14:55.200 what you're doing and so i believe that this new evolution could actually dramatically change

00:15:04.160 the trajectory of the middle east because not only are these gulf elites now really cemented 0.60

00:15:11.760 in their conviction that Iran needs to be taken care of or that the Islamic regime needs to be

00:15:16.000 taken care of, I would imagine, this is my hypothesis, I don't have evidence yet, but

00:15:20.480 I think it's a fair assumption that many of the everyday constituents slash citizens of these 0.56

00:15:26.560 states may rethink their relationship to Israel if they see Israelis helping to protect their skies 0.99

00:15:34.640 and protect their glistening skyscrapers.

00:15:38.560 Maybe.

00:15:40.840 It could go that way.

00:15:42.040 It could go the other way as well, though,

00:15:43.540 where they say, we're only getting attacked

00:15:45.700 because we're in league with America

00:15:47.400 and in league with Israel.

00:15:49.880 It could go either way.

00:15:52.300 So let's talk about the causes of this war.

00:15:57.160 You know, the Caesas Belli,

00:15:58.840 there's been really similar to Iraq

00:16:02.140 in that it's kind of too put forward.

00:16:04.540 One is that, well, we just need regime change.

00:16:09.840 You know, we're kind of back in the war of America exporting freedom.

00:16:13.960 You know, we're going to give you a McDonald's and strip clubs and nice big banks.

00:16:19.280 That's one.

00:16:20.660 Oh, and democracy, of course.

00:16:22.420 Yeah, I'm sure that's what it's always about.

00:16:25.520 You know, so regime change.

00:16:27.080 We'll talk about that in a moment.

00:16:28.740 But also nuclear weapons.

00:16:31.100 Now, if true, that would be, you know, more plausibly in the United States is in America's interest to want to prevent further proliferation of nuclear armed states in the world.

00:16:43.780 But we haven't, you know, the Secretary of War gave no evidence of this.

00:16:49.500 Donald Trump gave no evidence of this.

00:16:50.920 Marco Rubio gave no evidence of this.

00:16:54.760 They barely even tried making the case for evidence that Iran was on the verge of having a nuclear weapon in the 12-day war.

00:17:01.100 But Netanyahu has been declaring for 30 years that Iran is mere weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.

00:17:10.240 The 12 Days War, the United States claimed that they had degraded the nuclear potential capabilities of Iran by years, possibly decades.

00:17:23.700 So I find that very difficult to square with now. If the United States' proclamations of the 12-day war are correct, then it seems to me to invalidate this war so soon after if they have degraded their capabilities between years and decades.

00:17:39.660 no one seems to be talking about that but israel has been beating this drum and netanyahu in

00:17:46.120 particular for 30 years i want to just play uh i did this with another conversation i had today

00:17:51.700 on the topic i want to play a little clip here from benjamin netanyahu kind of best of talking

00:17:56.200 about iran's nuclear program through the years if not stopped iran could produce a nuclear weapon

00:18:02.600 in a very short time it could be a year it could be within a few months they have the wherewithal

00:18:10.000 the stored up preserved knowledge to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it the iran is

00:18:16.140 so dangerous weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs

00:18:23.980 they're very close they're six months away from being about 90 of having the rich uranium for an

00:18:28.860 atom bomb. Iran is gearing up to have to produce 25 bombs, atomic bombs a year, 250 bombs in a 0.90

00:18:36.040 decade. Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. Iran will be capable of producing alone, 1.00

00:18:43.060 without importing anything, nuclear bombs within three to five years. Okay, so, you know,

00:18:50.280 the Iranian regime are crazy. Like they are, you know, they're crazy ayatollahs and they've got a 1.00

00:18:56.460 particularly radical and apocalyptic 0.99

00:18:59.220 theocratic ideology.

00:19:05.620 You know, you got the hidden 13th

00:19:07.060 Imam and all this stuff we won't get into.

00:19:09.240 It's pretty kooky

00:19:10.820 stuff, but

00:19:11.480 pretty broadly bought into by

00:19:14.780 the regime and at a minimum

00:19:16.900 a very large portion of Iranian society.

00:19:21.400 But

00:19:21.620 Netanyahu

00:19:24.800 has been

00:19:26.460 maybe he's not crying wolf this time as the story goes of the boy who cried wolf but he's clearly

00:19:31.600 been crying wolf for 30 years we just had the 12 days war where america expended uh no blood of

00:19:39.880 its own at least but a lot at least a lot of its treasure and military capabilities uh to finish

00:19:45.380 that war for israel and you know the white house issued a statement afterwards saying uh if uh you

00:19:51.340 know there's some people are saying that we didn't uh decimate their nuclear program this is fake

00:19:54.740 news we we got them it's done that those two things that cannot be true and this be true

00:20:01.700 at the same time um two-part question for you uh how do you buy the uh imminent nuclear threat

00:20:12.980 put forward by netanyahu right now and israelis you're talking to um you know they as you and i

00:20:20.320 both know they'll they'll say you know it's not a monolithic culture they have their own opinions

00:20:24.980 they don't always agree with the government israelis you're talking to are are are they

00:20:30.180 buying it i know israelis are broadly hostile to iran and iran iranians are hostile with uh with

00:20:36.040 israel and most most israelis probably want the iranian regime gone but are most israelis you

00:20:41.640 speak to uh are they buying the excuse of imminent uh nuclear weapons before we go into this i just

00:20:49.200 want to make a clarification so most israelis actually love the iranian people and iranians

00:20:54.280 are very they they mostly love israelis and that's something that i really appreciate regimes

00:20:59.360 the regimes yeah the regimes yeah okay so do i i'm agnostic on the potential imminence of the

00:21:08.360 nuclear threat for iran uh i i don't know that area with much depth so i don't want to comment

00:21:15.800 on it. But do I think that Netanyahu might have been overselling the threat in years past? Probably

00:21:22.360 30 years past. Yes. But we also have to keep in mind that part of the reason why Iran has not 0.97

00:21:30.120 been able to develop nuclear weapons is because its adversaries have tried to thwart that program.

00:21:36.060 So for example, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, you had Stuxnet, which was the most

00:21:41.380 sophisticated cyber worm ever developed at that time. And that sabotaged the nuclear program

00:21:47.220 gradually and did a lot of damage there in terms of slowing down the development of nuclear weapons.

00:21:53.280 Then we had the JCPOA. So that was the comprehensive agreement that where, you know,

00:21:59.060 Iran would receive sanctions relief in exchange for giving up its nuclear program for a certain

00:22:03.760 period of time. And so they slowed down their nuclear program, but they continued to enrich

00:22:08.140 their their material far beyond the purity level needed to just you know use it for energy and

00:22:12.920 that raised a lot of eyebrows and suggested to many people that the ultimate goal for this was

00:22:17.240 to resume nuclear weapon development once the clauses in this agreement uh eventually expired

00:22:24.360 because there was a sunset clause right so from my understanding from the experts who i talked to

00:22:30.980 they all say that yeah you know there's a nuclear threat and we're getting closer to it

00:22:36.840 And it seems like it's pretty imminent.

00:22:39.240 We don't know exactly when it could be, but it's something that they are nearing towards.

00:22:45.100 Regarding the 12-day war, you know, I think the Trump administration is overselling the

00:22:50.300 success of that operation and is very much in Trump's style to claim a complete victory

00:22:55.260 when it seems like he didn't actually end up doing much.

00:22:59.500 And many Israelis who I spoke with, both average Israelis and experts in security, have said

00:23:05.180 that they were actually disappointed by the American intervention because they felt like

00:23:10.180 it was kind of performative. The Americans came in, did a little bit of bombing, didn't actually 0.68

00:23:15.540 destroy a lot of nuclear material, left, claimed victory so that they could seem powerful, while

00:23:20.700 the Iranians actually didn't have much of their capacity destroyed. And then many people who I 0.99

00:23:27.340 spoke to in Israel said, look, we expect there to be another war with Iran soon because we didn't

00:23:31.980 finish the job in the 12-day war. Trump says we did. Obviously, we didn't. And it's going to blow

00:23:37.360 up again. And that's exactly what happened. It's also important for us to understand that nuclear

00:23:44.060 weapons, that is one part of a larger arsenal of weapons aimed at Israel. So Iran has also been

00:23:52.240 working on a ballistic missile program. So they have thousands of these ballistic missiles,

00:23:57.300 and just one of them can do an insane amount of damage as mentioned before just one of them

00:24:03.800 landed down the street from where i am and the damage that it left is insane right and when they

00:24:11.080 have i think what four five six seven eight thousands of them they can saturate the air

00:24:17.220 they can overcome the iron dome and they can destroy large parts of tel aviv and that's what

00:24:22.520 most people were actually expecting earlier.

00:24:25.600 But those missiles were launched as a retaliatory strike, though, for being attacked by Israel.

00:24:31.180 I mean, this doesn't make Iran a choir boy here, but they've been used as a deterrent 0.99

00:24:35.160 to, you know, maybe make Israel think twice about it.

00:24:38.760 They're also, they're not, you know, they're hitting the Gulf states, as you said.

00:24:44.620 That's sort of a counterattack, but, you know, those countries did not attack Iran.

00:24:49.060 They're hostile with Iran.

00:24:50.120 You know, there's a longstanding kind of cold war going on in the Middle East between Iran and the Sunni Gulf states. 0.60

00:24:56.920 But those ballistic missiles have been retaliatory.

00:25:01.620 You know, not to whitewash how they're using it.

00:25:03.480 They're going after civilian targets or just hitting anything they can.

00:25:06.580 I mean, I'm going to have to push back on this.

00:25:08.680 They clearly want to use these missiles to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. 0.93

00:25:12.700 They did not start launching them until Israel and the United States attacked them, though.

00:25:17.200 Okay, so Derek, let's say you started, you had a baseball bat and you were wrapping it with razor wire and you clearly said that you wanted to kill me. And I saw that you weren't finished wrapping this baseball bat. So I grabbed my own baseball bat and hit you before you can attack me. And you say, actually, this was my defensive baseball bat. I don't think that would fly. And I see a similar dynamic here. Look, Iran has been waging war against Israel for several years.

00:25:47.200 for a very long time using its proxy program you know once the nuclear program was kind of sidelined

00:25:53.600 by the jcpoa iran pivoted to adding more funding to its proxies to putting more money into hamas

00:25:59.920 and hezbollah and that turned out to be fairly effective right and we saw with october 7th the

00:26:06.560 amount of damage that could be done but while while many israelis did suffer in october 7th

00:26:12.800 it could have been much, much, much worse. So Israelis generally perceived Hezbollah in southern

00:26:20.800 Lebanon as being the main threat. And Hamas and Gaza was the little guy. You know, we'll take 0.96

00:26:27.120 care of them later. We will deal with Hezbollah first and maybe Iran first, and then we'll clean 1.00

00:26:30.780 up with Gaza. Iran's plan was to essentially launch an attack with Hezbollah, with Hamas at the same

00:26:38.640 time, and to shower ballistic missiles across Tel Aviv, so that all three of these factors

00:26:45.000 combined would cause the collapse of the Israeli state. Had Hezbollah attacked the same day as

00:26:51.740 October 7th, the results would have been catastrophic. Northern Israel would have been 0.94

00:26:56.820 occupied. You could have seen hostile forces in Tel Aviv, but there was a disconnect, right? So

00:27:04.660 So Hamas launched their attack without consulting Hezbollah.

00:27:08.740 The reason why is a bit unclear.

00:27:10.940 Some speculate that they wanted to hog all the glory because they were the junior partner here.

00:27:16.180 And then Hezbollah was not prepared.

00:27:18.420 And by the time they were prepared, the northern military had been mobilized.

00:27:22.860 They also don't particularly like each other.

00:27:24.520 Again, they're both radical.

00:27:26.960 Over here in the West, we kind of think, ah, it's radical Islamists.

00:27:29.940 But, you know, one's radical Shia Islam and one's radical Sunni Islam, and they don't particularly like each other, which, you know, which is probably good for Israel that they don't particularly get along.

00:27:44.540 Okay, so let's talk about the other cases, Bella, here, which is regime change.

00:27:52.900 This is a wild departure for Donald Trump.

00:27:58.520 So Donald Trump, in the last years of Obama, before he even announced he was going to run for the Republican presidential nomination, said no more regime change wars, no more fighting other people's wars, no more Team America World Police.

00:28:16.180 He's not a pacifist or even an isolationist, but this was going to be America first.

00:28:20.420 America is going to fight wars that are in America's interests and in America's interests only. 0.81

00:28:24.460 And that precludes regime change wars, unless it's clearly in America's interest.

00:28:29.380 You know, something like Venezuela, you can argue if it was prudent or not.

00:28:32.580 It was certainly impressive at a minimum.

00:28:35.380 But it was America's backyard with a hostile regime right on the other side of the Gulf.

00:28:41.940 So, okay, maybe there. Maybe.

00:28:46.020 But regime change in Iran, that's not a clear American interest.

00:28:52.320 And they've said that, well, this is, you know, Secretary of War said no boots on the ground. This is not like Iraq, no boots on the ground. It's going to be decapitation strikes against senior political and military leadership. We're going to degrade their naval and air defense capabilities. We're going to work on the army. And then when this is all done, the Iranian people should rise up and seize the government for themselves and bring about regime change.

00:29:16.800 so the absolute best case scenario would be then some kind of color revolution

00:29:23.740 and it's relatively bloodless and we get some kind of liberal democratic regime in iran

00:29:30.720 i think the chances of that happening so neatly are extremely small i very much hope i'm wrong

00:29:40.080 i will apologize to you all our viewers in the world and i really want to apologize i that would

00:29:46.560 be a fantastic outcome and i'll admit i'm wrong but i i really don't think i'm going to be i think

00:29:53.180 one of two things is likely to happen the two likely scenarios one it'll be like gulf war one

00:29:59.360 where the the regime gets hit um some groups get incited like the kurds in iraq and remember we

00:30:06.500 got kurds in iran too quite quite a few uh these groups rise up and what did saddam do to the kurds

00:30:12.340 He gassed them. He massacred them. And you're going to see more brutal repression from the Ayatollahs, from the Islamic regime. And they're going to hold on to power. The Ayatollah Khomeini is gone. Great. But there's a hundred more lining up to take the job. These guys are not afraid to die. 0.59

00:30:31.300 um so the likely scenario one of the likely scenarios is the regime just brutally cracks

00:30:37.780 down and a bunch of people die and the status quo more or less remains or second uh we do

00:30:45.660 potentially get regime change but through a protracted and bloody civil war kind of like

00:30:50.560 syria okay the west is going to provide some uh some air support and weaken the regime will

00:30:55.620 sanction the regime. The regime collapses and fragments into different sides. In Syria,

00:31:02.340 we just ended up getting ISIS in a suit, essentially. I make no prediction of who 0.73

00:31:08.560 would merge victorious in a big civil war in Iran. But Iran is many times the size and population 0.67

00:31:14.000 and geography as Syria, which is a relatively small, relatively inconsequential country compared

00:31:20.260 to Iran. That seems to be the more likely outcome. And then who knows who emerges victorious at the

00:31:29.860 end? There's no guarantee that in a civil war, the good guys emerge. Remember, there was pretty

00:31:33.620 much no... Who were the good guys in Syria? Everyone was double... It was like a five-sided 0.96

00:31:39.420 civil war. None of it made sense. This just seems to be a recipe for a big mess. And it seems to be

00:31:47.380 a wild departure from America First

00:31:49.360 foreign policy that Trump ran for

00:31:51.320 president three times on.

00:31:53.500 Well, so, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things

00:31:55.280 you brought up here. I'm going to break it down

00:31:57.520 in different segments. You can pick what you want.

00:31:58.760 Yeah, so I'm going to first off

00:32:01.300 I'll just start before I go anywhere else, just to make the

00:32:03.260 moral case for this intervention, before we go into

00:32:05.200 the procedure case, right? So let's not forget

00:32:07.440 that this is a regime that

00:32:09.360 is bathed in blood, right? It is

00:32:11.300 a regime that brutally

00:32:12.960 oppresses and 0.97

00:32:15.440 kills any political dissident 0.99

00:32:17.360 You know, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the first thing the ayatollahs did was murder thousands of political dissidents and torture them and rape them and imprison them. 0.99

00:32:28.960 And everybody in the egregious is a gangster. Like we got the Saudis that were allied with. They're all gangsters. They're all crazy and murderous. 1.00

00:32:36.360 I mean, I'm sorry, but the Iranian regime is of a different nature. Right. And this is and this is where, you know, you have had these pro-democracy movements that have happened every once in a while. 0.99

00:32:46.400 They bubble up, and then they are suppressed with rivers of blood, right?

00:32:51.940 So back in Iran in 2019 and in 2022, and then just recently, you know, two months ago,

00:32:58.560 we had millions of Iranians marching in the street, demanding democracy,

00:33:03.180 and the regime killed approximately 30,000 of them in just a few days.

00:33:08.960 From my understanding, this is the first time that a government has killed so many of its own people

00:33:15.280 in such a short period of time in peacetime, right?

00:33:18.840 This is like 10 Tiananmen squares.

00:33:19.960 Yeah, but do we think for a second

00:33:20.400 that if the Saudi people rose up demanding democracy,

00:33:23.840 they don't tend to rise up in the same way,

00:33:26.000 different people, I guess, different reasons.

00:33:27.900 But if the Saudis rose up, 0.99

00:33:29.120 do we not think for a second

00:33:30.460 that the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabists 1.00

00:33:33.060 would not brutally slaughter them too

00:33:35.440 and were allied with those people? 0.84

00:33:38.060 I think that we understand

00:33:39.860 that the Saudis have their own problems,

00:33:43.800 but as of now, the reality is that we do not see a huge tension between the Saudi people

00:33:50.520 and their monarchy, right? So if there's a future where that changes, then I might change my opinion,

00:33:57.180 but we're dealing with the world as it is. And with the world as it is, we do not see that same

00:34:01.820 tension in Saudi Arabia. What I will say is that Iran is not like Iraq or Syria. Iraq and Syria

00:34:10.440 are recent fabrications from the colonial era.

00:34:14.200 These are countries that are highly artificial,

00:34:16.220 that group together different ethnic groups

00:34:19.440 and religious groups that have very little

00:34:21.880 to do with each other,

00:34:22.820 which is why they've been so dysfunctional.

00:34:24.920 Essentially, some Europeans drew some lines on the map

00:34:27.560 and said, this is the country now.

00:34:29.060 And all the people were like,

00:34:30.520 well, I guess we're part of the same country,

00:34:32.080 but we don't really have a national identity.

00:34:33.940 We have our own tribal identities,

00:34:35.640 our own ethnic identities,

00:34:36.560 and we're going to keep on fighting.

00:34:37.980 well the iranians have their own major minorities too they're more homogeneous than say uh iraq and

00:34:44.920 i agree that's correct but they have a very large kurdish minority very large azerbaijani minority

00:34:50.560 and uh not huge but sizable arab minority as well and and these these guys are not particularly

00:34:56.800 happy they're not f they're not uh you know they're not necessarily speaking uh i'm getting

00:35:02.000 And they're not speaking the same language as Fahan or whatever.

00:35:05.620 Uh, they're not ethnic Persians or Iranians, uh, you know, the way the majority are, they 1.00

00:35:11.140 have their own big minorities too.

00:35:13.180 They, they, they do, but for the most part, this ethnic separatism is not a big issue

00:35:18.580 in Iran right now, right?

00:35:20.400 Um, uh, you know, it's a country that's about 20% of Azerbaijani.

00:35:23.960 I'm not sure what, how about the Kurdish percentages, you know, it's not all Persians.

00:35:27.540 It's not as ethnically as modern as some people believe, but there's much

00:35:31.520 more, there's a much firmer sense of national identity than what you would see in Iraq.

00:35:37.120 And we also have to keep in mind that Persia, Iran has millennia of civilization behind it,

00:35:46.640 right? This is not some new country that was invented 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago. You know,

00:35:54.080 this is a a civilization that has been around for millennia that has a long history of basically

00:36:02.400 operating as a single state in this region so we're not the idea of it falling apart into

00:36:10.320 warring states would be a big historical anomaly they have a long tradition of

00:36:16.480 ideological you've got there's a sizable i i'm not going to chance what the proportions are but

00:36:20.960 But there's a very large, westernized, fairly liberal, pro-democratic part of Iranian society.

00:36:27.660 Most of the Iranians or Persians that we meet in Canada or the United States, they tend to be self-selecting. 1.00

00:36:33.780 They tend to be of that variety. But what proportion?

00:36:37.240 I don't know if it's a majority or just a large plurality, but there's a bunch of crazy revolutionary Shia Islamists as well. 1.00

00:36:47.500 So, you know, it'll be along ideological and religious lines as well.

00:36:52.360 It might not be as ethnic as, say, the Kurds versus the Sunnis versus the Shia versus kind of Western-backed forces in Iraq.

00:37:01.440 But it'll take on different dimensions if Iran falls in some war.

00:37:05.920 I think it's unlikely that it falls into a nice, peaceful color revolution.

00:37:10.500 No, no. I mean, obviously, there's going to be some tension.

00:37:12.240 But I think that the degree of this tension and the risk of tension is a bit overblown.

00:37:16.220 And yeah, of course, there is some radical, hyper-conservative, hyper-fundamentalist elements to Iranian society. The mullahs, you know, have some base of support, but every Iranian who I've spoken with, you know, every single one of them, they all emphasize that Iran as a country is not really that deeply Islamic, right?

00:37:37.620 Well, that's because you're talking to the good ones over here.

00:37:40.240 The ones here, like, I've never met an Iranian I didn't like over here 1.00

00:37:43.540 because they're self-selecting.

00:37:45.380 The ones that are here are great.

00:37:47.120 I like these ones, but there's some ones over there who are a little less noble.

00:37:51.960 No, I mean, they don't say that everyone is secular-minded.

00:37:55.260 They'll, of course, acknowledge that Islam is a part of this,

00:37:57.820 but they say that, yeah, Islam is a part of Iranian society,

00:38:02.420 but it is not nearly as important as it is in other countries. And there's a historical element,

00:38:09.940 right? So for Arabs, they might see Islam as being a big part of their ethnic identity.

00:38:16.740 Islam came from the Arabian Peninsula. But for Persians, they often view Islam as something

00:38:25.300 that was imposed upon them historically. They existed as a civilization long before this.

00:38:29.620 they were Zoroastrians, they viewed themselves as having civilized the first Islamic empire,

00:38:37.940 and they always kind of maintained a certain degree of secularism, and they looked down

00:38:42.420 upon the Arabs, and they looked down upon radical Islam, which they associated with the Arabs,

00:38:47.300 right? And then now many Iranians, not all but many, view this radical Islamism as a foreign

00:38:59.540 uh imposition on persian culture right and they think that the islamic regime is trying to

00:39:05.300 erase persian culture by replacing persian identity with a pan-islamic identity 0.95

00:39:11.060 but on the whole it seems like everything points to this this uh reality that

00:39:19.540 iranians for the most part not all of them are relatively moderates they're well educated they're

00:39:26.180 sophisticated um the you have a lot of human capital there that you wouldn't have for example

00:39:32.740 in afghanistan like the average iranian is going to be much better educated and much more i guess

00:39:38.660 even cosmopolitan than the average you know afghan sheepherder right and uh and that creates fertile

00:39:46.020 ground for successful governance and then on top of that you have an iranian diaspora

00:39:52.260 which is very well educated and often fairly affluent and they are yearning to help rebuild

00:39:59.620 a new Iran because many of them left because of the Islamic revolution and this diaspora is a 0.99

00:40:06.500 huge asset for stabilizing a post-revolutionary Iran in a way that you wouldn't see with Iraq 0.97

00:40:14.100 or Afghanistan. Okay well I think that's a good segue to where I want to go now is that if we have

00:40:21.700 something that does fall into civil war again if this is not a nice peaceful or relatively

00:40:27.620 peaceful color revolution uh you know the the regime's weekend millions of people you know go

00:40:34.580 surround government buildings demand regime change and they get it great and i i hope i'm wrong i

00:40:40.340 hope i apologize for my predictions here uh but i think much more likely is it's going to be an

00:40:45.860 armed conflict of some kind, some kind of civil war. That would generate a lot of refugees.

00:40:54.160 You know, we've got, you know, we had, when we had Syria, Syria is a much, much smaller country,

00:41:00.160 and we had millions of refugees flowing into the West, into Europe, into North America,

00:41:05.860 particularly Europe. It's a conflict right now. The Germans said on paper, Merkel said,

00:41:11.820 it's temporary. I don't know. Nobody really believed that. They're now telling the Syrians,

00:41:16.340 you got to go home. The civil war is over. It's safe. Most of them are refusing. It's been vetoed

00:41:21.840 by the minority coalition partner, the Social Democrats. So they're probably staying. The West

00:41:28.280 has its own huge migrant crisis right now, and I can't absorb this. But if Iran falls into deep 1.00

00:41:35.240 and destructive civil war, it is so much bigger than Iran. The number of refugees 1.00

00:41:40.920 could dwarf, sorry, that's what's bigger than Syria.

00:41:43.580 The number of refugees from Iran would dwarf 1.00

00:41:45.300 what we saw from the Syrian refugee crisis.

00:41:49.580 So, you know, how is it,

00:41:52.140 I don't think it would be in the interests of America.

00:41:55.460 It's not very America first.

00:41:56.380 It's not in the interests of Canada and Western Europe

00:41:59.240 to have all of these refugees flowing into them.

00:42:03.920 And in particular, you know, you're on the ground in Israel.

00:42:08.140 I want to know if you maybe agree with me on this point.

00:42:09.980 And my inkling is that Israel, who has been, you know, and Netanyahu in particular, who's been itching for this war for 30 years, Israel's not going to accept a single one of these refugees. 0.78

00:42:21.540 These refugees are going to be our problem. 1.00

00:42:24.420 Canada, maybe not the United States, because maybe Trump will not, maybe he won't let them in.

00:42:28.840 But Canada is going to get hit with them.

00:42:30.820 And Western Europe is going to get hit with them.

00:42:33.240 And I don't think Israel is likely to accept a single refugee.

00:42:36.760 I mean, fundamentally, you're opposing support for regime change because you're taking the worst possible scenario and treating it as if it's sort of like a preordained outcome, right?

00:42:51.100 It's a plausible scenario, though. I'm not sure it's the most likely scenario. I think the worst case scenario is just like the Iranian regime cracks down and gases everyone, the way Saddam Hussein did with the Kurds after the first Gulf War. 0.89

00:43:04.100 Look, I personally don't think that this idea of there being some massive refugee crisis is too likely, because if this regime change fails, then you're just going to have, you know, another military junta coming in and taking control of everything and then clamping down on the protesters.

00:43:23.500 Right. I think this idea of there being this Syria like conflict, sorry, like quagmire is pretty implausible, but we can agree to disagree on this.

00:43:33.120 i i hope you're right i i hope you're right i what i will say is that there's a tendency

00:43:39.400 amongst millennials like ourselves to assume that every middle eastern conflict is going to look

00:43:46.380 like iraq or is going to look like afghanistan and um they've all turned up poorly like they've 0.96

00:43:53.380 all turned up poorly we got in syria we got isis in a suit you know we we fought blood for 20 years

00:43:59.420 in Afghanistan. The Taliban's back in charge. Iraq is a shattered. Iraq is essentially three

00:44:04.680 countries at this point. On paper, it's one, but you know, like none of these have turned out well

00:44:09.140 for us. So I just, I mean, because we're looking at states that were deeply artificial and

00:44:14.740 dysfunctional to begin with and have no historical tradition of operating as a single, unified,

00:44:22.900 stable state, right? I mean, Afghanistan was a series of tribes before. So, and we try to force 1.00

00:44:27.940 them to be democratic and to function as one state? No, that doesn't make sense. Persia is 1.00

00:44:31.800 different. Persia is an ancient and, you know, singular civilization. But in terms of America

00:44:39.780 first, look, Iran is an essential part of this authoritarian bloc that wants to undermine American 0.98

00:44:47.940 interests in every way possible. Its allies, Russia, North Korea, China, they are all working

00:44:56.320 together closely as friends. And I think that sometimes in the West, we fail to fully appreciate

00:45:04.620 that. We are divided, they are united, and that puts us at a disadvantage. And so I think it's

00:45:11.400 myopic to view Iran as just an enemy by itself. We have to think of it as a key member of this

00:45:20.460 larger uh anti-western alliance and so i think that the united states has a clear interest in

00:45:28.300 knocking out one of the most anti-american powers in the world right the the iraq like the the mullahs 1.00

00:45:36.300 always say the united states is the big satan the big satan the big satan and israel is little satan 0.97

00:45:41.980 so once they get rid of israel from their perspective they can move on to getting rid of 0.66

00:45:46.460 the big satan united states so these are not our friends these are not you know these are enemies 0.99

00:45:51.180 who are itching to try to attack the united states so getting rid of them good idea let's kick our 1.00

00:45:57.580 enemies ass why now well iran is in the middle of an economic crisis its main bank basically failed 0.99

00:46:05.580 and so to deal with that the iranian regime printed a whole bunch of money which as we all know never 0.97

00:46:12.620 works you know luckily for us trudeau printed some money but not enough to cause hyperinflation

00:46:19.020 there it was much worse so now the uh their their currency is basically worthless their

00:46:25.100 other banks are on the cusp of collapsing as well and so we know there are economic problems there's

00:46:30.940 a water crisis they we we have mass unrest we had millions of iranians protesting against the regime

00:46:39.340 in January and February. And now they, you know, 30,000 of them were slaughtered. And that shows

00:46:46.800 that the regime is fragile. And that shows that there is, you know, this reservoir of support

00:46:52.420 for change. So this is the perfect time to strike, right? There is no reason for us to wait until

00:47:00.400 Iran stabilizes and continues to build up its ballistic missile stockpile. It is prudent for 1.00

00:47:06.460 us to attack now? Okay. We're running out of time, but the American public is not backing this right

00:47:18.480 now. You and I are pretty similar age. We remember the full court press of propaganda around going to

00:47:27.020 war with Iraq. They at least went through a bit more of a dog and pony show. We remember Colin

00:47:33.180 Powell at the UN with his PowerPoint presentation or whatever, big blown up pictures. They at least

00:47:39.880 made the case that they had nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction. You know, a reasonable

00:47:46.960 person could have given the government the benefit of the doubt at the time, and a majority of

00:47:52.360 Americans did, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was therefore an American 0.50

00:47:57.280 national security interest, a vital national security interest to do this. They didn't do it

00:48:01.600 with the 12-day war. They didn't do it this time. The Americans don't have a stomach for regime 0.75

00:48:07.800 change wars right now. You know, the Democrats are mostly against this. The Republicans are now

00:48:15.880 very split. You know, the harder kind of America first, maybe original mega wing is pretty hard

00:48:22.000 against this. It's maybe the softer, you know, you see Lindsey Graham, more establishment 0.82

00:48:27.240 Republicans, they're loving this. They're very supportive. But the American people are not

00:48:32.840 there for this right now. And I know foreign policy cannot be conducted by polling. Leaders

00:48:40.880 are elected to make tough decisions, often unpopular decisions. But this goes completely

00:48:45.660 in the... Trump said no war with Iran, all three elections. This was his thing. No war with Iran,

00:48:52.960 no more foreign adventures, no nation building was determined. And this is very clearly

00:48:57.280 nation building and interventionism in the region. This seems to be, to me,

00:49:08.020 is really just kind of the Israeli wish list. This is what the Israelis want. They want regime 0.97

00:49:14.800 change. They want Iran defanged. And I understand why the Israelis want that. That's what they want. 0.97

00:49:21.660 but the american people do do not want this i and collapse for israel sorry support for israel is

00:49:27.900 collapsing it's collapsed already on the left and it is very quickly collapsing on the right

00:49:31.740 in america and across the west as well i i put it to you that this is just kind of netanyahu

00:49:38.460 cashing in his chips for america to do one more big war for them because i that's why it's happening

00:49:44.540 now because i i i don't think america is going to be doing this in the future that they've

00:49:48.780 support for their wars has collapsed.

00:49:53.680 I mean, I'm sorry, but, you know,

00:49:54.860 one thing we know about Trump

00:49:55.880 is that he does what he wants to do.

00:49:58.220 And I don't think this is

00:49:59.760 He always said he doesn't want to do this.

00:50:01.120 In the United States.

00:50:02.100 But he said he doesn't want to do this.

00:50:03.340 Like, three elections.

00:50:04.840 Three election cycles.

00:50:05.880 He's, this was his main thing.

00:50:06.880 He's erratic.

00:50:08.340 He's erratic.

00:50:09.220 He went and he took out Maduro just like this,

00:50:11.560 partially because Rubio said

00:50:12.900 that Maduro is big in drugs, right?

00:50:15.160 So, like...

00:50:15.640 I'm not denying he's erratic.

00:50:17.100 That's not...

00:50:17.740 I'm not gonna argue on those grounds. But there's, he's been consistent on this. This is one of the

00:50:23.320 things he's been consistent on. He's, he's not changing his views on Iran, like he would change

00:50:28.200 wives or something here. He's been very consistent on this. He's always opposed it. The mega base

00:50:32.940 opposed it. This, this made him, this is one of the big things that made him president two out of

00:50:37.600 the three times. And he's just switched. Look, look, things change. He, he set a red line in the sand.

00:50:45.840 He said, Iran, if you kill these protesters, I will do something. 0.97

00:50:51.300 And he set that line. 0.98

00:50:52.740 Maybe he did it impulsively.

00:50:54.340 And then that line was crossed. 0.85

00:50:57.460 And Trump is an egotistic man.

00:50:59.480 He's a proud man.

00:51:00.720 And he is the kind of man who made fun of Obama for setting red lines in the sand in Syria and not following through.

00:51:09.800 So I think for Trump.

00:51:11.240 He also said he was going to invade Greenland.

00:51:12.820 I mean, the guy says a lot.

00:51:13.980 You have to take Trump seriously, but not literally.

00:51:16.760 So, I mean, how does anyone know where a Trump red line is?

00:51:20.220 He said he was going to take Greenland by military force if necessary.

00:51:24.200 Well, he suggested it kind of like it could be an idea in the future,

00:51:27.900 but he was pretty unequivocal in saying, look, this is my red line and I'm going to offer help.

00:51:32.600 And I think he painted himself into a corner here.

00:51:35.780 But at the same time, I think that there is this unique opportunity to get rid of this regime

00:51:43.400 And that can change people's calculations. You can be against an action and then you can say, well, the situation has changed. I didn't know that there were going to be millions of people protesting. I didn't know there was going to be an economic crisis. I didn't know that my enemy was going to be so weak. And I'm going to take advantage of it.

00:51:58.020 Now, I don't think that this is Netanyahu orchestrating things. I think that there's a tendency to imagine that the Israelis control everything in the United States, which is ridiculous. We know that there are many Republicans, many foreign policy hawks who have never liked Iran and viewed as its threats, justifiably so. And this is a natural extension of that long-established American foreign policy tradition. 0.93

00:52:22.820 Now, regarding the fact that this is unpopular, look, I'm going to put my cards out here.

00:52:28.480 I respect politicians who do the right thing, even if it's unpopular.

00:52:32.800 I deeply respect, for example, Margaret Thatcher.

00:52:35.720 She pushed for reform even when she didn't fully have buy-in from the voters, and she 0.90

00:52:40.540 changed the United Kingdom dramatically for it.

00:52:45.040 And the Falkland Islands, for example, is a great example of this.

00:52:47.840 So what I see here is an administration that sees an opportunity to do something that would bolster American security interests, that is also morally the correct thing to do, that could be an enormous win.

00:53:03.240 And Trump is taking a gamble because I think that should this be successful, should the regime fall, then this would be one of the most revolutionary changes in the Middle East in a generation.

00:53:17.840 And he could go down in history as the guy who got rid of the Islamic regime and the political dividends of that would be insane. 0.99

00:53:27.320 So I think on some level, the Trump administration feels confident enough that they can achieve their goals, that they are willing to take this gamble and put a lot of political capital on the line.

00:53:39.340 And so we'll see if that gamble plays out.

00:53:41.580 I'm not a fan of Trump.

00:53:42.880 I really

00:53:45.640 dislike many of the things that he's done

00:53:47.620 including on the Ukraine

00:53:49.680 front, but

00:53:51.060 for the sake of the Iranian people, I wish

00:53:53.780 him the best here

00:53:54.540 Well, I wish him the best

00:53:57.520 and I hope you're right

00:53:59.680 maybe I'm

00:54:01.800 just too bloody cynical at this point

00:54:03.340 I hope

00:54:05.620 I'm wrong

00:54:06.660 that this has a

00:54:09.480 happy ending, because I like to cheer for

00:54:11.580 America. I like, you know, traditionally the good guys. I

00:54:15.340 like I like to cheer for America. I'm still cheering for

00:54:17.680 American forces in this, you know, I want them to succeed. I

00:54:21.420 just don't think they should be doing it. But I really

00:54:24.040 appreciate your time. We should definitely this is very quickly

00:54:29.360 evolving. There's gonna be a lot more about this. I hope you get

00:54:34.800 to say I told you so to me. That's, that's what I hope.

00:54:37.620 I hope so too. My closing message is this. If you have a regime that calls you the great Satan, that has spent decades trying to undermine you, and you see that they are weak, you should kick their ass and help put in a new government that is more amenable to your interests. That is the right thing to do in terms of your security, and is the right thing to do for the people in this country.

00:55:02.240 All right. Well, Adam Zivo, independent freelance journalist and globetrotter on the ground in Tel Aviv. Greatly appreciate your time and your insights.

00:55:14.760 Well, thanks for having me on the show.

00:55:16.680 Thank you.

00:55:32.240 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 03, 2026

ON THE GROUND： Israel’s war with Iran

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