Western Standard - March 03, 2026


ON THE GROUND： Israel’s war with Iran

Topics
regime change in Iran Iranian regime brutality and national identity Iranian regime collapse and conflict regime change in Iran
Hosted by
Derek Fildebrandt
Guests
Adam Zivo
Mentioned
Donald Trump Marco Rubio Hormuz Maduro Ayatollah Khomeini Margaret Thatcher Saddam Hussein Lindsey Graham Colin Powell Azerbaijani Tiananmen Houthis Merkel Bella Obama
Western Standard News Update ｜ Escalation Middle East after Hezbollah missile strikes ｜ 02 Mar 2026 Western Standard News Update ｜ TIM HODGSON： ＂We see the money＂ on the war in Iran ｜ 04 Mar 2026

Episode Stats


Length

56 minutes

Words per minute

165.44

Word count

9,271

Sentence count

440

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

19

sentences flagged

Hate speech

57

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I'm joined by Adam Zivo, a Canadian freelance journalist who's been on the ground in the Middle East for a long time. He talks about the situation in Tel Aviv, Israel, and what it's like to live in one of the most heavily bombarded cities in the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 G'day! Today is March 2nd. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.
00:00:29 Today, I am going to be joined by Adam Zivo.
00:00:32 Adam Zivo is a Canadian freelance journalist who's done a lot of really great work in different
00:00:38 publications around Canada on everything from drug policy in Vancouver to the war between
00:00:46 Ukraine and Russia on the ground, often actually lives in Ukraine watching the war firsthand.
00:00:53 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 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 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 His views are sober, and I think they come by honestly.
00:01:18 So I want to welcome to the program Adam Zivo.
00:01:21 Thanks for having me.
00:01:23 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 I am, and the atmosphere here is much more orderly and much calmer than those in the West would assume.
00:01:41 I mean, I guess people there grow up with it, they're used to it, it's not their first rodeo.
00:01:47 um uh but you know we've all been seeing footage of the they're not nuclear tip when we were
00:01:54 everyone spoke about ballistic missiles everyone assumes this uh it's nuclear but it's uh these
00:01:59 are not they're just they're they're conventional ballistic missiles but they they've been pounding
00:02:03 at uh at tel aviv where you are we've all seen some fantastic footage with uh the interceptor
00:02:10 missiles the iron dome um hitting these but it's not hitting all of them well what's the mood like
00:02:16 there right now and what's it just like at nighttime watching these incoming missile attacks
00:02:22 and the uh and the interceptor attacks so the atmosphere on the ground here is very orderly
00:02:27 there's not a lot of chaos uh and no one's watching interceptors hitting missiles in the sky
00:02:34 because they're in the bomb shelters seeking cover and uh you know not looking sorry let's
00:02:40 do that one more time sorry i'm a little bit thrown off by like having this on okay let me
00:02:45 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 one is watching interceptors strike ballistic missiles in the sky because if there is a
00:02:57 ballistic missile on its way to tel aviv then you are already in the shelter so you are not outside
00:03:03 looking at all of this the atmosphere in tel aviv in most parts of israel right now is relatively
00:03:10 calm and that things are orderly. And I'm going to give you some context to build up to this.
00:03:15 So first of all, Israelis have existed in a state of conflict for decades. They're surrounded by
00:03:21 neighbors who don't like the fact that they're there and want to ethically cleanse them.
00:03:25 Now, since 2023, we've had a more active state of war with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with the Houthis,
00:03:31 and now with Iran. And that has created an escalating level of violence and threat. So 0.99
00:03:38 when you had Hamas and Hezbollah sending in missiles, these were usually smaller munitions
00:03:44 that could kill you if it landed nearby, but for the most part didn't do too much damage. And so
00:03:49 you could just go to your stairwell and you would probably be fine. Or you could stay inside your
00:03:55 reinforced room in your apartment, which is known as a mamad. Then when Iran came in, that changed 0.98
00:04:01 everything because these ballistic missiles can do a lot of damage. So just down the street from
00:04:07 where I am, for example, there's an impact site. I was actually only 800 meters away when that hit
00:04:12 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 there. Yes, that was the 12 Day War. You know, that shattered all the glass in 200 meters that
00:04:21 collapsed or half collapsed several buildings, destroyed basically all of the cladding of a
00:04:27 nearby skyscraper. And those buildings are still in ruin. And so in this situation, people go to
00:04:34 the to the main shelter so since the 1990s every single building built in israel needs to have
00:04:40 a reinforced shelter in the basement this is all you know reinforced concrete you have basically a
00:04:46 submarine door that's airtight and these things are borderline impregnable and then of course you
00:04:52 have the public shelters that are scattered all throughout every city and it's illegal to deny
00:04:57 anyone access to any shelter even if it's in a private residence so all of this stuff is very
00:05:01 easy to access i know four or five different shelters within five minutes walking distance
00:05:06 from where i am including unofficial shelters that are not sanctioned to uh you know absorb
00:05:12 these hits but are still protective so people went down to that then there was also a system
00:05:17 in place in the iran war so you would get a notification on your phone it's an emergency
00:05:23 notification that is basically the equivalent of an amber alert and it makes the same sound like
00:05:27 that is jarring it gets your attention it's effective and it tells you that you need to go
00:05:35 near a safe place near a shelter uh because you're going to get a follow-up alert soon
00:05:41 usually that means in five to ten minutes so you walk near the shelter there's so many nearby it's
00:05:47 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 you hear all the air raid sirens and in tel aviv you have 90 seconds to get into a shelter if
00:05:59 you're for example getting a missile and you're in the south maybe that's 30 seconds if you're
00:06:03 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 15 minutes uh so that the missile is interception many of the debris falls down and doesn't kill you
00:06:16 and then you go outside and that is the process and you just repeat that again and again and again
00:06:24 and again and that's what people did during the iran war and most people were fine and the people
00:06:29 who did die were people who were not in the shelter for the most part and when i was interviewing
00:06:34 people at the time about whether they felt scared they kind of shrugged and they said
00:06:38 look it's not great to say but why weren't they in the shelter why weren't they following protocol
00:06:43 so with this new round of the iran war everyone knew what to expect this was nothing new for them
00:06:48 they had been at war with iran before they trusted in the idf to protect them so when we received our
00:06:54 message at 8 15 in the morning we walked to the shelter everyone was totally calm they were
00:07:01 checking their phones they didn't you know they expected this we all heard for weeks before that
00:07:06 something was going to happen and then the first alarm just said israel attacked you know iran
00:07:13 and people realized well you know israel attacked iran but we don't know if there's a there doesn't
00:07:18 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 and then i was walking throughout the city afterwards and it was fairly empty many people
00:07:28 were leaving for the north and south because iran predominantly targets tel aviv and haifa in the
00:07:34 the center. So people were going to rural areas that are less likely to be targeted by a ballistic
00:07:38 missile. Some people were buying provisions, not a huge amount because everyone was already prepared.
00:07:44 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 I think across the day, we maybe had 10, 11, 12. They all bleed into each other.
00:07:55 So you go in the shelter, out the shelter, in the shelter, out the shelter. The Iranians were 1.00
00:08:01 really committed to ensuring that Israelis 0.95
00:08:02 got their cardio done and got their steps
00:08:05 in.
00:08:07 Yeah.
00:08:08 Okay, so I guess you haven't
00:08:10 seen it. I know
00:08:12 the temptation's got to be there to
00:08:14 watch it once,
00:08:17 but it might be like looking at a
00:08:18 solar eclipse. It's interesting
00:08:20 to watch, but probably a bad idea.
00:08:23 Look, I'm
00:08:24 going to say I'm a curious person. I also
00:08:26 like being alive.
00:08:29 Yeah. No, no, you're
00:08:30 definitely made the right he made the smart decision um but uh you know the the iron dome
00:08:37 is you know world famous for how effective it is it's extremely effective against smaller munitions
00:08:42 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 extremely effective against that stuff uh it's less effective though against the ballistic missiles
00:08:54 however uh how many have gotten through to tel aviv while you've been there it's hard to tell
00:08:59 for sure because there's a sensor in place so there are things you can't always report on or
00:09:04 that you're not aware of because you know there's an operational security element to it if a missile
00:09:09 lands by an area that's militarily sensitive people aren't supposed to talk about it so i don't know
00:09:14 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 like a kilometer and a half away destroyed a few buildings i think killed one person and injured a
00:09:26 few. There were some in the South, but the vast majority of these missiles are intercepted.
00:09:32 And that is great. That is why people are outside jogging and sitting at cafes because they know
00:09:38 that the Iron Dome works. Now, I do want to clarify that if one of these missiles lands directly
00:09:44 on your building, directly on your shelter, you are going to die. That is pretty much understood.
00:09:50 But people say, well, you know what? The chance of that happening, statistically speaking,
00:09:56 small yeah very small you may as well be you you will probably be hit by a car instead right now
00:10:03 one thing that i have noticed over the past few days is that the number of alarms the sense of
00:10:10 danger that we're seeing right now is actually uh less intense than what we saw with the 12-day war
00:10:17 so during the 12-day war they launched a lot of missiles they hope to saturate the environments
00:10:22 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 as much there are fewer missiles heading towards tel aviv and the reason for that is that the
00:10:33 iranians seem to have calculated that they can get the united states to stop this war
00:10:39 if pressure is applied on the arabian gulf states so right now iran is bombing qatar bahrain uh
00:10:47 Saudi Arabia, the UAE.
00:10:50 Well, everywhere where there's U.S. military bases
00:10:54 in these Gulf states, right?
00:10:56 Yeah, but not just the U.S. military bases.
00:10:58 They're bombing residential areas.
00:11:00 They're bombing hotels.
00:11:01 Yeah, but they're hitting countries
00:11:03 that host U.S. military bases.
00:11:05 They're not only hitting the military bases,
00:11:07 but countries that host U.S. military bases.
00:11:09 Well, I mean, it seems as if their campaign
00:11:11 is somewhat indiscriminate, right?
00:11:13 And it seems like you're also attacking
00:11:15 the economic the economies of these of these countries so for example i think they attacked
00:11:20 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 right and so the idea here is that you know these these arab gulf states are allied with the united
00:11:34 states i mean they're not always the easiest of allies but at the same time they do economically
00:11:40 cooperate and the United States relies on them for their energy. And they're both aligned in
00:11:45 their dislike of Iran. And so the Iranians have calculated, okay, well, if we attack Dubai,
00:11:52 if we attack Doha, cities that are not set up for defense in the same way that Tel Aviv is,
00:12:00 cities that are softer targets, then maybe we can get these states to run to Washington and say,
00:12:06 please stop we are suffering too much yeah well they've also been able to create enough chaos
00:12:11 with the Strait of Hormuz to get essentially everybody to stop moving their tankers through
00:12:17 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 but if there's a silver lining for Alberta it's saying our our budget deficit maybe gets a little
00:12:27 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 tanker traffic at the moment. And that's going to badly hurt the Gulf states at this moment.
00:12:37 So yeah, that'll probably bring some pressure to bear on the United States.
00:12:41 And then that creates some political pressure on Trump because energy prices are rising. So
00:12:45 that's the calculation. And this is why we're not getting that many attacks here. This is why
00:12:53 things are relatively relaxed. But they really miscalculated because they didn't scare these
00:12:59 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 alliance between these states and israel and the united states to combat iran and there's a context
00:13:13 for this so we have to keep in mind that many of these states they are monarchies and they really
00:13:19 don't like they're sunni they're sunni and they really don't get along well yeah yeah you know
00:13:25 it's like it's like catholics and protestants but you know back when that was more important
00:13:30 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 sectarianism and then also these monarchies are worried that the fundamentalism the radicalism
00:13:44 of the islamic regime will destabilize their countries and lead to revolution right and so 0.99
00:13:50 this is why quietly you've seen rapprochement between these states and israel uh this was
00:13:57 epitomized by the abraham accords which normalized relationships between israel and several arab
00:14:03 states and in fact saudi arabia and israel were on the cusp of normalizing their relationship and
00:14:10 establishing some diplomatic relationship in 2023 late 2023 early 2024 and it's hypothesized that
00:14:17 this is why iran essentially got hamas to commit october 7th to derail that process which turned
00:14:24 out to be successful now the underlying problem with this trend is that there was a gap between
00:14:30 elite opinion and public opinion right so the elites wanted to work with israel they were afraid
00:14:37 of destabilization but they were constrained in what they could do because their constituents
00:14:42 not voters because these aren't democracies constituents really really do not like israel
00:14:48 and even if you're not a democracy uh it is destabilizing if your constituents really resent
00:14:55 what you're doing and so i believe that this new evolution could actually dramatically change
00:15:04 the trajectory of the middle east because not only are these gulf elites now really cemented 0.60
00:15:11 in their conviction that Iran needs to be taken care of or that the Islamic regime needs to be
00:15:16 taken care of, I would imagine, this is my hypothesis, I don't have evidence yet, but
00:15:20 I think it's a fair assumption that many of the everyday constituents slash citizens of these 0.56
00:15:26 states may rethink their relationship to Israel if they see Israelis helping to protect their skies 0.99
00:15:34 and protect their glistening skyscrapers.
00:15:38 Maybe.
00:15:40 It could go that way.
00:15:42 It could go the other way as well, though,
00:15:43 where they say, we're only getting attacked
00:15:45 because we're in league with America
00:15:47 and in league with Israel.
00:15:49 It could go either way.
00:15:52 So let's talk about the causes of this war.
00:15:57 You know, the Caesas Belli,
00:15:58 there's been really similar to Iraq
00:16:02 in that it's kind of too put forward.
00:16:04 One is that, well, we just need regime change.
00:16:09 You know, we're kind of back in the war of America exporting freedom.
00:16:13 You know, we're going to give you a McDonald's and strip clubs and nice big banks.
00:16:19 That's one.
00:16:20 Oh, and democracy, of course.
00:16:22 Yeah, I'm sure that's what it's always about.
00:16:25 You know, so regime change.
00:16:27 We'll talk about that in a moment.
00:16:28 But also nuclear weapons.
00:16:31 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 But we haven't, you know, the Secretary of War gave no evidence of this.
00:16:49 Donald Trump gave no evidence of this.
00:16:50 Marco Rubio gave no evidence of this.
00:16:54 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 But Netanyahu has been declaring for 30 years that Iran is mere weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.
00:17:10 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 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 no one seems to be talking about that but israel has been beating this drum and netanyahu in
00:17:46 particular for 30 years i want to just play uh i did this with another conversation i had today
00:17:51 on the topic i want to play a little clip here from benjamin netanyahu kind of best of talking
00:17:56 about iran's nuclear program through the years if not stopped iran could produce a nuclear weapon
00:18:02 in a very short time it could be a year it could be within a few months they have the wherewithal
00:18:10 the stored up preserved knowledge to make a bomb very quickly if they wanted to do it the iran is
00:18:16 so dangerous weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs
00:18:23 they're very close they're six months away from being about 90 of having the rich uranium for an
00:18:28 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 decade. Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. Iran will be capable of producing alone, 1.00
00:18:43 without importing anything, nuclear bombs within three to five years. Okay, so, you know,
00:18:50 the Iranian regime are crazy. Like they are, you know, they're crazy ayatollahs and they've got a 1.00
00:18:56 particularly radical and apocalyptic 0.99
00:18:59 theocratic ideology.
00:19:05 You know, you got the hidden 13th
00:19:07 Imam and all this stuff we won't get into.
00:19:09 It's pretty kooky
00:19:10 stuff, but
00:19:11 pretty broadly bought into by
00:19:14 the regime and at a minimum
00:19:16 a very large portion of Iranian society.
00:19:21 But
00:19:21 Netanyahu
00:19:24 has been
00:19:26 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 been crying wolf for 30 years we just had the 12 days war where america expended uh no blood of
00:19:39 its own at least but a lot at least a lot of its treasure and military capabilities uh to finish
00:19:45 that war for israel and you know the white house issued a statement afterwards saying uh if uh you
00:19:51 know there's some people are saying that we didn't uh decimate their nuclear program this is fake
00:19:54 news we we got them it's done that those two things that cannot be true and this be true
00:20:01 at the same time um two-part question for you uh how do you buy the uh imminent nuclear threat
00:20:12 put forward by netanyahu right now and israelis you're talking to um you know they as you and i
00:20:20 both know they'll they'll say you know it's not a monolithic culture they have their own opinions
00:20:24 they don't always agree with the government israelis you're talking to are are are they
00:20:30 buying it i know israelis are broadly hostile to iran and iran iranians are hostile with uh with
00:20:36 israel and most most israelis probably want the iranian regime gone but are most israelis you
00:20:41 speak to uh are they buying the excuse of imminent uh nuclear weapons before we go into this i just
00:20:49 want to make a clarification so most israelis actually love the iranian people and iranians
00:20:54 are very they they mostly love israelis and that's something that i really appreciate regimes
00:20:59 the regimes yeah the regimes yeah okay so do i i'm agnostic on the potential imminence of the
00:21:08 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 on it. But do I think that Netanyahu might have been overselling the threat in years past? Probably
00:21:22 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 been able to develop nuclear weapons is because its adversaries have tried to thwart that program.
00:21:36 So for example, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, you had Stuxnet, which was the most
00:21:41 sophisticated cyber worm ever developed at that time. And that sabotaged the nuclear program
00:21:47 gradually and did a lot of damage there in terms of slowing down the development of nuclear weapons.
00:21:53 Then we had the JCPOA. So that was the comprehensive agreement that where, you know,
00:21:59 Iran would receive sanctions relief in exchange for giving up its nuclear program for a certain
00:22:03 period of time. And so they slowed down their nuclear program, but they continued to enrich
00:22:08 their their material far beyond the purity level needed to just you know use it for energy and
00:22:12 that raised a lot of eyebrows and suggested to many people that the ultimate goal for this was
00:22:17 to resume nuclear weapon development once the clauses in this agreement uh eventually expired
00:22:24 because there was a sunset clause right so from my understanding from the experts who i talked to
00:22:30 they all say that yeah you know there's a nuclear threat and we're getting closer to it
00:22:36 And it seems like it's pretty imminent.
00:22:39 We don't know exactly when it could be, but it's something that they are nearing towards.
00:22:45 Regarding the 12-day war, you know, I think the Trump administration is overselling the
00:22:50 success of that operation and is very much in Trump's style to claim a complete victory
00:22:55 when it seems like he didn't actually end up doing much.
00:22:59 And many Israelis who I spoke with, both average Israelis and experts in security, have said
00:23:05 that they were actually disappointed by the American intervention because they felt like
00:23:10 it was kind of performative. The Americans came in, did a little bit of bombing, didn't actually 0.68
00:23:15 destroy a lot of nuclear material, left, claimed victory so that they could seem powerful, while
00:23:20 the Iranians actually didn't have much of their capacity destroyed. And then many people who I 0.99
00:23:27 spoke to in Israel said, look, we expect there to be another war with Iran soon because we didn't
00:23:31 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 up again. And that's exactly what happened. It's also important for us to understand that nuclear
00:23:44 weapons, that is one part of a larger arsenal of weapons aimed at Israel. So Iran has also been
00:23:52 working on a ballistic missile program. So they have thousands of these ballistic missiles,
00:23:57 and just one of them can do an insane amount of damage as mentioned before just one of them
00:24:03 landed down the street from where i am and the damage that it left is insane right and when they
00:24:11 have i think what four five six seven eight thousands of them they can saturate the air
00:24:17 they can overcome the iron dome and they can destroy large parts of tel aviv and that's what
00:24:22 most people were actually expecting earlier.
00:24:25 But those missiles were launched as a retaliatory strike, though, for being attacked by Israel.
00:24:31 I mean, this doesn't make Iran a choir boy here, but they've been used as a deterrent 0.99
00:24:35 to, you know, maybe make Israel think twice about it.
00:24:38 They're also, they're not, you know, they're hitting the Gulf states, as you said.
00:24:44 That's sort of a counterattack, but, you know, those countries did not attack Iran.
00:24:49 They're hostile with Iran.
00:24:50 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 But those ballistic missiles have been retaliatory.
00:25:01 You know, not to whitewash how they're using it.
00:25:03 They're going after civilian targets or just hitting anything they can.
00:25:06 I mean, I'm going to have to push back on this.
00:25:08 They clearly want to use these missiles to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. 0.93
00:25:12 They did not start launching them until Israel and the United States attacked them, though.
00:25:17 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 for a very long time using its proxy program you know once the nuclear program was kind of sidelined
00:25:53 by the jcpoa iran pivoted to adding more funding to its proxies to putting more money into hamas
00:25:59 and hezbollah and that turned out to be fairly effective right and we saw with october 7th the
00:26:06 amount of damage that could be done but while while many israelis did suffer in october 7th
00:26:12 it could have been much, much, much worse. So Israelis generally perceived Hezbollah in southern
00:26:20 Lebanon as being the main threat. And Hamas and Gaza was the little guy. You know, we'll take 0.96
00:26:27 care of them later. We will deal with Hezbollah first and maybe Iran first, and then we'll clean 1.00
00:26:30 up with Gaza. Iran's plan was to essentially launch an attack with Hezbollah, with Hamas at the same
00:26:38 time, and to shower ballistic missiles across Tel Aviv, so that all three of these factors
00:26:45 combined would cause the collapse of the Israeli state. Had Hezbollah attacked the same day as
00:26:51 October 7th, the results would have been catastrophic. Northern Israel would have been 0.94
00:26:56 occupied. You could have seen hostile forces in Tel Aviv, but there was a disconnect, right? So
00:27:04 So Hamas launched their attack without consulting Hezbollah.
00:27:08 The reason why is a bit unclear.
00:27:10 Some speculate that they wanted to hog all the glory because they were the junior partner here.
00:27:16 And then Hezbollah was not prepared.
00:27:18 And by the time they were prepared, the northern military had been mobilized.
00:27:22 They also don't particularly like each other.
00:27:24 Again, they're both radical.
00:27:26 Over here in the West, we kind of think, ah, it's radical Islamists.
00:27:29 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 Okay, so let's talk about the other cases, Bella, here, which is regime change.
00:27:52 This is a wild departure for Donald Trump.
00:27:58 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 He's not a pacifist or even an isolationist, but this was going to be America first.
00:28:20 America is going to fight wars that are in America's interests and in America's interests only. 0.81
00:28:24 And that precludes regime change wars, unless it's clearly in America's interest.
00:28:29 You know, something like Venezuela, you can argue if it was prudent or not.
00:28:32 It was certainly impressive at a minimum.
00:28:35 But it was America's backyard with a hostile regime right on the other side of the Gulf.
00:28:41 So, okay, maybe there. Maybe.
00:28:46 But regime change in Iran, that's not a clear American interest.
00:28:52 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 so the absolute best case scenario would be then some kind of color revolution
00:29:23 and it's relatively bloodless and we get some kind of liberal democratic regime in iran
00:29:30 i think the chances of that happening so neatly are extremely small i very much hope i'm wrong
00:29:40 i will apologize to you all our viewers in the world and i really want to apologize i that would
00:29:46 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 one of two things is likely to happen the two likely scenarios one it'll be like gulf war one
00:29:59 where the the regime gets hit um some groups get incited like the kurds in iraq and remember we
00:30:06 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 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 um so the likely scenario one of the likely scenarios is the regime just brutally cracks
00:30:37 down and a bunch of people die and the status quo more or less remains or second uh we do
00:30:45 potentially get regime change but through a protracted and bloody civil war kind of like
00:30:50 syria okay the west is going to provide some uh some air support and weaken the regime will
00:30:55 sanction the regime. The regime collapses and fragments into different sides. In Syria,
00:31:02 we just ended up getting ISIS in a suit, essentially. I make no prediction of who 0.73
00:31:08 would merge victorious in a big civil war in Iran. But Iran is many times the size and population 0.67
00:31:14 and geography as Syria, which is a relatively small, relatively inconsequential country compared
00:31:20 to Iran. That seems to be the more likely outcome. And then who knows who emerges victorious at the
00:31:29 end? There's no guarantee that in a civil war, the good guys emerge. Remember, there was pretty
00:31:33 much no... Who were the good guys in Syria? Everyone was double... It was like a five-sided 0.96
00:31:39 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 a wild departure from America First
00:31:49 foreign policy that Trump ran for
00:31:51 president three times on.
00:31:53 Well, so, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things
00:31:55 you brought up here. I'm going to break it down
00:31:57 in different segments. You can pick what you want.
00:31:58 Yeah, so I'm going to first off
00:32:01 I'll just start before I go anywhere else, just to make the
00:32:03 moral case for this intervention, before we go into
00:32:05 the procedure case, right? So let's not forget
00:32:07 that this is a regime that
00:32:09 is bathed in blood, right? It is
00:32:11 a regime that brutally
00:32:12 oppresses and 0.97
00:32:15 kills any political dissident 0.99
00:32:17 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 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 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 They bubble up, and then they are suppressed with rivers of blood, right?
00:32:51 So back in Iran in 2019 and in 2022, and then just recently, you know, two months ago,
00:32:58 we had millions of Iranians marching in the street, demanding democracy,
00:33:03 and the regime killed approximately 30,000 of them in just a few days.
00:33:08 From my understanding, this is the first time that a government has killed so many of its own people
00:33:15 in such a short period of time in peacetime, right?
00:33:18 This is like 10 Tiananmen squares.
00:33:19 Yeah, but do we think for a second
00:33:20 that if the Saudi people rose up demanding democracy,
00:33:23 they don't tend to rise up in the same way,
00:33:26 different people, I guess, different reasons.
00:33:27 But if the Saudis rose up, 0.99
00:33:29 do we not think for a second
00:33:30 that the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabists 1.00
00:33:33 would not brutally slaughter them too
00:33:35 and were allied with those people? 0.84
00:33:38 I think that we understand
00:33:39 that the Saudis have their own problems,
00:33:43 but as of now, the reality is that we do not see a huge tension between the Saudi people
00:33:50 and their monarchy, right? So if there's a future where that changes, then I might change my opinion,
00:33:57 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 tension in Saudi Arabia. What I will say is that Iran is not like Iraq or Syria. Iraq and Syria
00:34:10 are recent fabrications from the colonial era.
00:34:14 These are countries that are highly artificial,
00:34:16 that group together different ethnic groups
00:34:19 and religious groups that have very little
00:34:21 to do with each other,
00:34:22 which is why they've been so dysfunctional.
00:34:24 Essentially, some Europeans drew some lines on the map
00:34:27 and said, this is the country now.
00:34:29 And all the people were like,
00:34:30 well, I guess we're part of the same country,
00:34:32 but we don't really have a national identity.
00:34:33 We have our own tribal identities,
00:34:35 our own ethnic identities,
00:34:36 and we're going to keep on fighting.
00:34:37 well the iranians have their own major minorities too they're more homogeneous than say uh iraq and
00:34:44 i agree that's correct but they have a very large kurdish minority very large azerbaijani minority
00:34:50 and uh not huge but sizable arab minority as well and and these these guys are not particularly
00:34:56 happy they're not f they're not uh you know they're not necessarily speaking uh i'm getting
00:35:02 And they're not speaking the same language as Fahan or whatever.
00:35:05 Uh, they're not ethnic Persians or Iranians, uh, you know, the way the majority are, they 1.00
00:35:11 have their own big minorities too.
00:35:13 They, they, they do, but for the most part, this ethnic separatism is not a big issue
00:35:18 in Iran right now, right?
00:35:20 Um, uh, you know, it's a country that's about 20% of Azerbaijani.
00:35:23 I'm not sure what, how about the Kurdish percentages, you know, it's not all Persians.
00:35:27 It's not as ethnically as modern as some people believe, but there's much
00:35:31 more, there's a much firmer sense of national identity than what you would see in Iraq.
00:35:37 And we also have to keep in mind that Persia, Iran has millennia of civilization behind it,
00:35:46 right? This is not some new country that was invented 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago. You know,
00:35:54 this is a a civilization that has been around for millennia that has a long history of basically
00:36:02 operating as a single state in this region so we're not the idea of it falling apart into
00:36:10 warring states would be a big historical anomaly they have a long tradition of
00:36:16 ideological you've got there's a sizable i i'm not going to chance what the proportions are but
00:36:20 But there's a very large, westernized, fairly liberal, pro-democratic part of Iranian society.
00:36:27 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 They tend to be of that variety. But what proportion?
00:36:37 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 So, you know, it'll be along ideological and religious lines as well.
00:36:52 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 But it'll take on different dimensions if Iran falls in some war.
00:37:05 I think it's unlikely that it falls into a nice, peaceful color revolution.
00:37:10 No, no. I mean, obviously, there's going to be some tension.
00:37:12 But I think that the degree of this tension and the risk of tension is a bit overblown.
00:37:16 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 Well, that's because you're talking to the good ones over here.
00:37:40 The ones here, like, I've never met an Iranian I didn't like over here 1.00
00:37:43 because they're self-selecting.
00:37:45 The ones that are here are great.
00:37:47 I like these ones, but there's some ones over there who are a little less noble.
00:37:51 No, I mean, they don't say that everyone is secular-minded.
00:37:55 They'll, of course, acknowledge that Islam is a part of this,
00:37:57 but they say that, yeah, Islam is a part of Iranian society,
00:38:02 but it is not nearly as important as it is in other countries. And there's a historical element,
00:38:09 right? So for Arabs, they might see Islam as being a big part of their ethnic identity.
00:38:16 Islam came from the Arabian Peninsula. But for Persians, they often view Islam as something
00:38:25 that was imposed upon them historically. They existed as a civilization long before this.
00:38:29 they were Zoroastrians, they viewed themselves as having civilized the first Islamic empire,
00:38:37 and they always kind of maintained a certain degree of secularism, and they looked down
00:38:42 upon the Arabs, and they looked down upon radical Islam, which they associated with the Arabs,
00:38:47 right? And then now many Iranians, not all but many, view this radical Islamism as a foreign
00:38:59 uh imposition on persian culture right and they think that the islamic regime is trying to
00:39:05 erase persian culture by replacing persian identity with a pan-islamic identity 0.95
00:39:11 but on the whole it seems like everything points to this this uh reality that
00:39:19 iranians for the most part not all of them are relatively moderates they're well educated they're
00:39:26 sophisticated um the you have a lot of human capital there that you wouldn't have for example
00:39:32 in afghanistan like the average iranian is going to be much better educated and much more i guess
00:39:38 even cosmopolitan than the average you know afghan sheepherder right and uh and that creates fertile
00:39:46 ground for successful governance and then on top of that you have an iranian diaspora
00:39:52 which is very well educated and often fairly affluent and they are yearning to help rebuild
00:39:59 a new Iran because many of them left because of the Islamic revolution and this diaspora is a 0.99
00:40:06 huge asset for stabilizing a post-revolutionary Iran in a way that you wouldn't see with Iraq 0.97
00:40:14 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 something that does fall into civil war again if this is not a nice peaceful or relatively
00:40:27 peaceful color revolution uh you know the the regime's weekend millions of people you know go
00:40:34 surround government buildings demand regime change and they get it great and i i hope i'm wrong i
00:40:40 hope i apologize for my predictions here uh but i think much more likely is it's going to be an
00:40:45 armed conflict of some kind, some kind of civil war. That would generate a lot of refugees.
00:40:54 You know, we've got, you know, we had, when we had Syria, Syria is a much, much smaller country,
00:41:00 and we had millions of refugees flowing into the West, into Europe, into North America,
00:41:05 particularly Europe. It's a conflict right now. The Germans said on paper, Merkel said,
00:41:11 it's temporary. I don't know. Nobody really believed that. They're now telling the Syrians,
00:41:16 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 by the minority coalition partner, the Social Democrats. So they're probably staying. The West
00:41:28 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 and destructive civil war, it is so much bigger than Iran. The number of refugees 1.00
00:41:40 could dwarf, sorry, that's what's bigger than Syria.
00:41:43 The number of refugees from Iran would dwarf 1.00
00:41:45 what we saw from the Syrian refugee crisis.
00:41:49 So, you know, how is it,
00:41:52 I don't think it would be in the interests of America.
00:41:55 It's not very America first.
00:41:56 It's not in the interests of Canada and Western Europe
00:41:59 to have all of these refugees flowing into them.
00:42:03 And in particular, you know, you're on the ground in Israel.
00:42:08 I want to know if you maybe agree with me on this point.
00:42:09 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 These refugees are going to be our problem. 1.00
00:42:24 Canada, maybe not the United States, because maybe Trump will not, maybe he won't let them in.
00:42:28 But Canada is going to get hit with them.
00:42:30 And Western Europe is going to get hit with them.
00:42:33 And I don't think Israel is likely to accept a single refugee.
00:42:36 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 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 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 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 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 amongst millennials like ourselves to assume that every middle eastern conflict is going to look
00:43:46 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 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 in Afghanistan. The Taliban's back in charge. Iraq is a shattered. Iraq is essentially three
00:44:04 countries at this point. On paper, it's one, but you know, like none of these have turned out well
00:44:09 for us. So I just, I mean, because we're looking at states that were deeply artificial and
00:44:14 dysfunctional to begin with and have no historical tradition of operating as a single, unified,
00:44:22 stable state, right? I mean, Afghanistan was a series of tribes before. So, and we try to force 1.00
00:44:27 them to be democratic and to function as one state? No, that doesn't make sense. Persia is 1.00
00:44:31 different. Persia is an ancient and, you know, singular civilization. But in terms of America
00:44:39 first, look, Iran is an essential part of this authoritarian bloc that wants to undermine American 0.98
00:44:47 interests in every way possible. Its allies, Russia, North Korea, China, they are all working
00:44:56 together closely as friends. And I think that sometimes in the West, we fail to fully appreciate
00:45:04 that. We are divided, they are united, and that puts us at a disadvantage. And so I think it's
00:45:11 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 larger uh anti-western alliance and so i think that the united states has a clear interest in
00:45:28 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 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 so once they get rid of israel from their perspective they can move on to getting rid of 0.66
00:45:46 the big satan united states so these are not our friends these are not you know these are enemies 0.99
00:45:51 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 enemies ass why now well iran is in the middle of an economic crisis its main bank basically failed 0.99
00:46:05 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 works you know luckily for us trudeau printed some money but not enough to cause hyperinflation
00:46:19 there it was much worse so now the uh their their currency is basically worthless their
00:46:25 other banks are on the cusp of collapsing as well and so we know there are economic problems there's
00:46:30 a water crisis they we we have mass unrest we had millions of iranians protesting against the regime
00:46:39 in January and February. And now they, you know, 30,000 of them were slaughtered. And that shows
00:46:46 that the regime is fragile. And that shows that there is, you know, this reservoir of support
00:46:52 for change. So this is the perfect time to strike, right? There is no reason for us to wait until
00:47:00 Iran stabilizes and continues to build up its ballistic missile stockpile. It is prudent for 1.00
00:47:06 us to attack now? Okay. We're running out of time, but the American public is not backing this right
00:47:18 now. You and I are pretty similar age. We remember the full court press of propaganda around going to
00:47:27 war with Iraq. They at least went through a bit more of a dog and pony show. We remember Colin
00:47:33 Powell at the UN with his PowerPoint presentation or whatever, big blown up pictures. They at least
00:47:39 made the case that they had nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction. You know, a reasonable
00:47:46 person could have given the government the benefit of the doubt at the time, and a majority of
00:47:52 Americans did, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was therefore an American 0.50
00:47:57 national security interest, a vital national security interest to do this. They didn't do it
00:48:01 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 change wars right now. You know, the Democrats are mostly against this. The Republicans are now
00:48:15 very split. You know, the harder kind of America first, maybe original mega wing is pretty hard
00:48:22 against this. It's maybe the softer, you know, you see Lindsey Graham, more establishment 0.82
00:48:27 Republicans, they're loving this. They're very supportive. But the American people are not
00:48:32 there for this right now. And I know foreign policy cannot be conducted by polling. Leaders
00:48:40 are elected to make tough decisions, often unpopular decisions. But this goes completely
00:48:45 in the... Trump said no war with Iran, all three elections. This was his thing. No war with Iran,
00:48:52 no more foreign adventures, no nation building was determined. And this is very clearly
00:48:57 nation building and interventionism in the region. This seems to be, to me,
00:49:08 is really just kind of the Israeli wish list. This is what the Israelis want. They want regime 0.97
00:49:14 change. They want Iran defanged. And I understand why the Israelis want that. That's what they want. 0.97
00:49:21 but the american people do do not want this i and collapse for israel sorry support for israel is
00:49:27 collapsing it's collapsed already on the left and it is very quickly collapsing on the right
00:49:31 in america and across the west as well i i put it to you that this is just kind of netanyahu
00:49:38 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 now because i i i don't think america is going to be doing this in the future that they've
00:49:48 support for their wars has collapsed.
00:49:53 I mean, I'm sorry, but, you know,
00:49:54 one thing we know about Trump
00:49:55 is that he does what he wants to do.
00:49:58 And I don't think this is
00:49:59 He always said he doesn't want to do this.
00:50:01 In the United States.
00:50:02 But he said he doesn't want to do this.
00:50:03 Like, three elections.
00:50:04 Three election cycles.
00:50:05 He's, this was his main thing.
00:50:06 He's erratic.
00:50:08 He's erratic.
00:50:09 He went and he took out Maduro just like this,
00:50:11 partially because Rubio said
00:50:12 that Maduro is big in drugs, right?
00:50:15 So, like...
00:50:15 I'm not denying he's erratic.
00:50:17 That's not...
00:50:17 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 things he's been consistent on. He's, he's not changing his views on Iran, like he would change
00:50:28 wives or something here. He's been very consistent on this. He's always opposed it. The mega base
00:50:32 opposed it. This, this made him, this is one of the big things that made him president two out of
00:50:37 the three times. And he's just switched. Look, look, things change. He, he set a red line in the sand.
00:50:45 He said, Iran, if you kill these protesters, I will do something. 0.97
00:50:51 And he set that line. 0.98
00:50:52 Maybe he did it impulsively.
00:50:54 And then that line was crossed. 0.85
00:50:57 And Trump is an egotistic man.
00:50:59 He's a proud man.
00:51:00 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 So I think for Trump.
00:51:11 He also said he was going to invade Greenland.
00:51:12 I mean, the guy says a lot.
00:51:13 You have to take Trump seriously, but not literally.
00:51:16 So, I mean, how does anyone know where a Trump red line is?
00:51:20 He said he was going to take Greenland by military force if necessary.
00:51:24 Well, he suggested it kind of like it could be an idea in the future,
00:51:27 but he was pretty unequivocal in saying, look, this is my red line and I'm going to offer help.
00:51:32 And I think he painted himself into a corner here.
00:51:35 But at the same time, I think that there is this unique opportunity to get rid of this regime
00:51:43 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 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 Now, regarding the fact that this is unpopular, look, I'm going to put my cards out here.
00:52:28 I respect politicians who do the right thing, even if it's unpopular.
00:52:32 I deeply respect, for example, Margaret Thatcher.
00:52:35 She pushed for reform even when she didn't fully have buy-in from the voters, and she 0.90
00:52:40 changed the United Kingdom dramatically for it.
00:52:45 And the Falkland Islands, for example, is a great example of this.
00:52:47 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 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 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 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 And so we'll see if that gamble plays out.
00:53:41 I'm not a fan of Trump.
00:53:42 I really
00:53:45 dislike many of the things that he's done
00:53:47 including on the Ukraine
00:53:49 front, but
00:53:51 for the sake of the Iranian people, I wish
00:53:53 him the best here
00:53:54 Well, I wish him the best
00:53:57 and I hope you're right
00:53:59 maybe I'm
00:54:01 just too bloody cynical at this point
00:54:03 I hope
00:54:05 I'm wrong
00:54:06 that this has a
00:54:09 happy ending, because I like to cheer for
00:54:11 America. I like, you know, traditionally the good guys. I
00:54:15 like I like to cheer for America. I'm still cheering for
00:54:17 American forces in this, you know, I want them to succeed. I
00:54:21 just don't think they should be doing it. But I really
00:54:24 appreciate your time. We should definitely this is very quickly
00:54:29 evolving. There's gonna be a lot more about this. I hope you get
00:54:34 to say I told you so to me. That's, that's what I hope.
00:54:37 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 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 Well, thanks for having me on the show.
00:55:16 Thank you.
00:55:32 We'll be right back.