Part 2 Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down ...

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Iran Just HIT US Navy HARD in Strait of Hormuz, Trump STUNNED | Mohammad Marandi
Danny Haiphong
Apr 19, 2026

Prof. Mohammad Marandi joins to discuss the massive turn that the war on Iran has taken as the Strait of Hormuz becomes the flashpoint for major escalation between the IRGC and the US Navy



Transcript

It's always a pleasure and I hope that you enjoy yourself in China and let me let us know what's going on over there.
Yeah. Yeah, we can definitely get into that. Everybody hit the like button as you come on because that helps boost the stream in YouTube's algorithm. So, okay,
let's get started. A lot has been happening. So over the last we had Iran clarify through concerted action in the straight of Hormuz turning
back ships stating very publicly directly to the United States that its naval blockade
that has continued is a violation of the ceasefire and therefore the straighter form is not just being the control
that Iran had over the straight of was not really questioned or challenged in this time but Iran essentially said we
are not going to open it up more for additional oil tankers. We are going to keep strict control over and turn back
every single ship that we believe it is deemed hostile andor an important
element to gaining leverage over the United States. Now, , Trump has answered back saying that, , you know,
if, , Iran doesn't stop this and if Iran doesn't come to the table, , he is going to begin once again, ,
threatening air strikes on Iran's infrastructure, its oil infrastructure,
all of its power plants. It's that, you know, he's going to wipe them all away.
We're here again, it seems like at square one. So Iran has answered the US naval blockade with a pretty hard hit
because there was a lot of hopes that the straight of Hormuz was going to be reopened now that there's a ceasefire in Lebanon. That's not happening. The exact
opposite is happening. And Trump, the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself seems to be in a panic going
back to the old threats of wiping out this infrastructure which led to the major increase in energy prices in the
first place. So, Professor Mandi, where are we right now? , your reaction to the developments, especially over the last 24- , which have been, I
think, a shock to the Trump administration and, , the US , power elites at large.
Well, we have to sort of go back a bit just to remind everyone what happened and what is happening.
There was a genocide going on in Gaza and Iran supports the Palestinian people. It is the only country that
supports the Palestinian people. And I mean the and I mean as a state, as a government
otherwise the entire world now supports the Palestinian people. Everyone has woken up to the truth. in in in the
west and included in India. there too the the mood is shifting away
from this genocidal and illegitimate regime. so the United States wants
and wants and wanted and wants to help the is excuse me the Israeli regime
take the region control the region. We saw that from the US ambassador's interview with Tucker Carlson when he
said if Israel takes the entire region then um that's fine with the United States. So, we're facing an expansionist
regime that's genocidal, that's ethnosuppremacist,
that considers itself to be a master race, a chosen people, and everyone else to be subhuman.
And the United States and the West and the Europeans, they fully support this,
the Australians, the New Zealand, and so on.
So, we fast forward and we have a 12-day war where the United States under Trump and the Israeli regime
conspire and they carry out an aggression against Iran, a war of aggression. The West entire the collective West supports it.
The German chancellor says, "The Israeli regime does our dirty work for us. They condemn Iran, the Europeans, for the
Israelis and Americans launched the war and they condemn Iran for the war.
So, but Iran does not strike back at these Arab dictatorships except for once
at Qatar because the Americans Qatar was symbolic of Sentcom. It is it is where Sentcom is. And so after the
Americans bombed Iran, Iran bombed the American base in in Qatar.
But these Arab dictatorships, they've been complicit in conspiring against Iran for decades. I mean, in 1980 when
the West pushed Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, gave him chemical weapons. These family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf funded Saddam Hussein.
And ironically, when the Americans wanted to invade Iraq,
they all helped the Americans invade Iraq and they hosted US forces.
Whereas the Iranians who hated Saddam Hussein, they were opposed to the invasion and they condemned it and so did Hezbollah.
Then these regimes after the Arab Spring, they worked with the CIA to overthrow the only governments that were
opposed to the West, Libya and Syria,
right? Like so the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf, they didn't, you know, they there was no Arab Spring there.
They spent money to destroy Syria and Libya, two countries that were highly critical of the Western Empire. And of course, al-Qaeda was used in both. first
in Libya and then in Syria, the same al-Qaeda that a decade earlier we we were told carried out 9/11.
o the 12-day war was supposed to finish in
one or two days and Iran was supposed to collapse.
Didn't happen. Iran won the war and we fast forward to this war again. Like
the 12- day war, Iran is negotiating with the United States. The United States is consiring to attack Iran.
Same model all over and over again. supposed to finish in a couple of days.
They begin by slaughtering 168 little girls, Americans,
and a couple of dozen teachers and and um school staff in Minab and carry out atrocities across the country for 40 days with their Zionist allies.
So again, they started the war. Iran did not start the war. They escalated.
They started escalating and targeting critical
infrastructure. They began with bombing hospitals and schools, but then they be started bombing
unfortunately, Professor Mandy, we're having some lag.
Yes. issues. Um can you hear me? Okay.
esolation and then Iran escalated. So every step of the way they escalateated
and every step of the way these Arab family dictatorships were with them.
Professor Martin, can you hear me? Okay.
[clears throat]
8 minutesbecause their territory was used. Without them, this war could not happen with without them.
Right now, the can't attack Iran.
Um, Professor Morandi, can you hear me?
Okay. Hey wage war there's a lot of um Iron without sod
is it me or um I'm hearing I don't I think professor Randi we're having some
I think we're having some audio issues. It's slowed down quite a bit. Um I think it's Yeah, I might be on your
end. I don't know if you're able to you might want to come in and come back out.
that could be something you do and then we can restart. Um but I can um
and I can wait here if you want to reload and I'll be right and I'll be right back. Um and we can I can keep
talking. But yeah, you've completely frozen. Can you
Okay. so profi yeah if you can just reload and yes and I'll bring you back in. So yeah we are dealing with
some connection issues everybody please hit that like button will be back. Um yeah so what person is saying is that
there's a huge context to what is going on now. What is going on is absolutely it it just feels like full circle again.
We are back where we were u not too long ago when Trump and the United States
were threatening to destroy all of Iran's power plants and their bridges,
Iran's bridges, which, you know, ,
10 minuteslet's be honest, is probably not even possible in the short-term sense,
meaning that this would have to be a major long war. And we know what happened last time. The Trump administration threatened this and it
was a massive spike in the oil prices and a massive problem for the global economy as a whole. And I know President
Ronnie and I have been talking about what the global ramifications of this are, which is the potential for a worldwide global economic recession,
which would only make it even harder for the United States to supposedly accomplish whatever objectives it sees
in its head as worthwhile pursuing in this war, mainly the destruction of the
um Iranian government and the Iranian state. so that's
that's kind of where we are now and you know first Marty has not come back just yet. So I'm just going to check something real quick. Here we go.
He is coming back now. Um and hopefully we can just get started again. So thanks so much for your patience. Um
yeah, but in any event this is all being spurned by the fact Oh, here we go. I see Professor Mart in the backstage. Let's bring him back in.
Professor, welcome back.
Sorry, Danny. Well, thank you. No, it's okay. I think the closer we get to war,
the the worse the internet connection become becomes. Um, right.
Yeah. So I was saying that throughout you know so yeah the so these Arab I don't know where I got cut off but in the 1980s these Arab family
dictatorships they supported Saddam Hussein against Iran alongside the West and then they
helped the West overthrow Libya and Syria during the so-called Arab Spring and all these dictatorships that were pro- West remained in place using
al-Qaeda literally a decade after 911.
U then of course we but when the Americans struck Iran with the Israelis and the Americans Iran only struck and
not and only the American base during the 12-day war but in this war the Americans have been using their territory
their airspace their bases not just American bases but their bases their civilian infrastructure their
ports against Iran So they're waging war against Iran.
So Iran was striking the Israeli regime a day, day and night for 40 days. Their American assets and then
gradually when they started striking Iranian civilian infrastructure repeatedly like critical
infrastructure, Iran began to retaliate against critical infrastructure where the Americans and the Europeans had shares in these countries.
So, so now without these family dictatorships, this war is not possible.
It's just not doable.
They need their airspace. They need their air bases. They need their land
to wage war. So, what is going to happen as soon as the Americans strike?
Iran is going to strike back. They'll strike back and strike back hard.
And from the from where I'm viewing things, I think that will we are finally going to
reach the point where the world moves towards a global depression
because I do not see at all. I don't see it one even the slightest the slightest
14 minuteschance that Iran will sub to accept US demands and I do and I have no doubt that the
United States will not be able to defeat Iran but what the United States will probably do is that it will try to devastate the country and which is just
shows how genocidal the United States is. It just shows how genocidal the collective w is because Trump has been making genocidal statements about Iran
for many days now for weeks. It wasn't just about wiping out the civilization of the Iranian people. He spoke about
obliterating Iran. He told spoke about taking Iran back to the stone age. We never saw any outrage in the Western
media. We didn't see any of these mainstream western journalists outraged by these these calls or these
threats to wipe out the country. We never saw anything. Not from the Guardian, not from the Times, not from the New York Times, not for from the um
Breitbart, from none of them. What we did see, Danny, and I don't know if you saw this, was that when the Iranian
delegation was going to Pakistan, the Washington Post put up an editorial
saying that that the um negotiators should be murdered. They put up an
opinion piece, the Washington Post. So the media, the journalists in the west are competing with the state to, you
know, to promote crimes against humanity, war crimes. Just like in Lebanon, you see Western journalists in
Beirut who are a bunch of criminals. they talk about Hezbollah strongholds
and Hezbollah bases where everyone knows that they're bombing towns. Right now, as we speak, they're blowing up villages in the south and the areas that
they've occupied. The Israeli regime. So just just homes, people's homes. They're flattening it to make it look like Gaza.
This is how monstrous they are. And this is how monstrous Western journalists in Beirut are. I spoke to two of them. They contacted me for to get, I don't know,
an opinion, like a a sentence or two.
Not a sound bite, , but u I think for like written. It may have been a sound bite bite. I don't know. But in any case, and I told both of them, why are
you why do you write strongholds? Why do you write um Hezbollah targets? And both of them
separately said more or less the same thing that it wasn't us, it was our editor. I told them both you're you're both you're you're complicit. I told both of them that you're complicit. ,
it's in your name. So, you're a war criminal just like your editors, just like the owners of your media outlets,
and just like a Netanyahu. There's no real difference between any of you because you're part of the apparatus that helps enable these crimes.
So, the Wall Street Journal, I mean,
sorry, the Washington Post was calling for the assassination of the negotiators while they were in Pakistan. And on the
flight back to Iran, we all felt that there was a very good chance that our plane would be shot down. So,
um, we are now where we are and it's unclear what will happen. I don't know if what the Iranian decision will be
about sending a negotiating team. Um but I think that the chances for a major
war are close and I think that if that happens then the infrastructure of the Persian Gulf
will be destroyed and we're heading towards the hot season. In other words,
people will have to evacuate all these countries, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar,
Bahrain, and and many parts of Saudi Arabia because they will no longer have if they don't have if they start
targeting our critical infrastructure like power plants, Iran will have no no
choice but to retaliate because these countries are part of the war and the United States uses these countries. So Iran will destroy their electrical power
plants which are much easier to do for the Iranians because the Iran's power plants are spread out all over the country. Theirs are they're they're
few and large and when they're destroyed it the the Persian Gulf region becomes very hot and very humid. It starts
getting very hot and very humid from about a month from now. So it's not going to be a place where people can live. The countries will collapse. I
think that oil and gas and petrochemicals and helium and all that that we should
just forget that they exist in this part of the world for the next few years and the the world economy will crash.
Yeah. I know that's that's a very you know dark picture you paint but one that now
we have at one point we could say well this is quote unquote hypothetical but we've
already been at war. I mean the United States and Iran have already been at war and we've saw Iran's response. It was very measured but it was severe and it
was it had an escalation ladder to it. so it's what you're saying should
be I mean people shouldn't doubt your predictions anymore given everything that has happened and and so you
know professor Mandi you know all of this has come or at least the latest
round of I think a break from this movement toward so-called
negotiations it's all come from the United States. The United States still in right as Iran did a goodwill
gesture around the Lebanon ceasefire saying it would begin the process of giving permission to more tankers to
come through the straight of for moves easing some of the pressure.
Let me explain that. Let me explain that please. What happened was Iran and the United States ultimately through
messages and then indirect talks they negotiated the ceasefire through they didn't negotiate the only
time that Iran and the United States negotiated was during the day that Dr.
the head of parliament met Vance before and after that there have never there have been no negotiations no one should be mistaken all of this done has been
done through messages now what happened was that there was a ceasefire why was there a ceasefire in initially the
Americans Trump was saying unconditional surrender then that didn't work out then they said Iranian missiles and drones are running
out that didn't happen Iranian firepower increased Ultimately the United States put forward I think on day 34 maybe or
36 I don't remember put out that 15 point plan Iran rejected it then Iran put out its own 10-point plan and Trump
accepted it he accepted to negotiate had to have the negotiations it to be the focus of the
negotiations and of course Trump didn't do that because he's dishonest and that's something that the Iranians expected but in any case that's what led
to the se to the ceasefire that the Americans had to evolve their position to accept the Iranian 10-point plan which is a very reasonable plan for the
basis of negotiations then the ceasefire in the ceasefire it was there was
supposed to be an end to the fighting especially in Lebanon because the the fighting was very heavy there
the prime minister of Pakistan said Lebanon is a part of the ceasefire and then Netany Netanyahu went and carpet bombed Lebanon.
He carpet bombed it, slaughtering people, hundreds of people in in . Just women and children and
ordinary people in in all neighborhoods resistance
proionist neighborhoods where you have the Lebanese forces and other sinister groups funded by the West.
Why? Because Netanyahu did not want the ceasefire. So Iran was supposed to open up the straight of Hormos to unfriendly ships. Because why unfriendly ships?
Because these five regimes they are part of the war. So Iran allowed
um Professor Mandi. Unfortunately, the um
audio again is cutting out. If you can hear me. Um I can hear you. Okay.
Okay. Good. Good. Good. I just wanted to see if I could if I interrupted a bit. It's destabilized. So, yes, I think it has.
Okay. So,
so Iran said that it will allow more ships to exit the straight of hormones,
including ships from unfriendly countries. Who are the unfriendly countries? The American the countries that hosted US bases.
the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bah.
So these extra ships were about to go and then the Israelis basically tore up the ceasefire by
slaughtering the Palestinian the the Lebanese. And so Iran stopped and for 10 days Iran said, "We're not allowing
these ships to go until there's a ceasefire because that's part of the deal."
So the string of hormones was never closed.
It it was only ships that were hostile to Iran that couldn't go. So Chinese ships, Iranian ships, Iraqi ships,
Russian ships, they can go back and forth. But these five countries that were complicit and are complicit in aggression, they couldn't. But here they
agreed to let some of them go. But but Netanyahu wrecked the ceasefire. So for 10 days, Iran kept the straight of
hormones um you know restricted until finally the Israeli regime was forced to accept the ceasefire. 10 days
10 days of keeping the straight of hormones like it was put a lot of pressure on the United States. Then on the then Netanyahu
almost accept was being forced to accept. He he refused to do so. Iran made a further threat that it would strike Israel. The next day, Netanyahu
accepted. As soon as Netanyahu accepted the ceasefire, even though he's bombed destroying buildings across southern
Lebanon right now in a violation of the ceasefire, and he killed someone soon after the ceasefire with a drone,
Iran allowed the straight of hormones to open. But 3 or 4 days earlier
during that 10day period when Netanyahu was violating the ceasefire, the
Americans imposed a a siege on Iranian ports. So the Iranians opened up the port then.
But Trump said, "I'm I'm preserving the siege." Right?
So Iran said, well, if you're going to preserve, if you're going to keep the siege in place, that's a violation of the agreement,
that's a violation of the ceasefire. So we are going to again go back to restricting ships from leaving the
straight of Hormos. So the ceasefire was first violated by the Israeli regime and then it was violated by the Trump
regime. And that's why the global energy crisis is growing
worse and worse by the minute because of their actions. Trump could have yesterday when Iran the after sorry
after Netanyahu accepted the ceasefire the day before yesterday when Iran said okay now these ships can go through the
straight of Hormos he could have lifted the the siege on the on the U ports
and that would have been a good offramp but he chose to do the opposite he chose to escalate and that means that the we
are heading towards war and of course today he's been making genocidal threats again and so where we are where we are.
Yeah. Well, according to Tasnim Iranian media person there reports that Iran is indeed refusing or
rejecting talks while the US naval blockade continues and until it is lifted at least these are the initial
reports it's not going to happen. Of course, things are subject to change in the coming hours and days, but the
c the ceasefire so-called ceasefire deadline for Mandi is soon on the way too. So that's another element to this is the US has only escalated during
this time um and has treated talks similarly to how it's treated talks with Iran for quite a long time now which is
to use them as a another tool to build up and eventually engage in war.
But the Iranian you know the Iranian military and the IGC, they're saying that and we talked about this before we came on that they are
producing and building and developing missiles and drones at a faster rate than they were before February 28th before the war started. So,
, talk about what kind of preparations then are being made and how how is it that Donald Trump
28 minutesin his true social post, he's reacting to a development, this allegation that Iran fired on an Indian tanker as
the basis for increasing the level of threats despite all of the consequences that are going to come
should strikes occur, should the US make good on its threats. Why do this? I mean, why why do this now? What's your thoughts on all of this? [snorts]
Well, the plan was escalation. After all, we wouldn't be here. First of all, if Netanyahu had abide, if he
had accepted the ceasefire instead of slaughtering Lebanese citizens and when he was finally forced to
stop, if Trump had lifted the siege after Iran had opened up the straight
of foremost to hostile shipping, then we wouldn't be here at all. There would be no reason to hold force ships to go
back. But when Iran saw that he was imposing an embargo, a siege, he was preserving it, then Iran told ships to
stay in the Straight of Hormos. A couple of ships tried to ignore Iranian demands and they were met with force. Iran fired
at them, but they weren't really seriously damaged. They didn't fire missiles or anything at them, and they quickly went back into the Persian Gulf.
But um you're right, the the Iranians have been preparing for war since the ceasefire. I posted um footage of um the
commander of Iran's missile force. He was visiting a factory and I I've said this before and we've been saying it for
years and you know the analysts in the west like to ignore what we say and therefore they always miscalculate.
But we've been saying that Iran's underground missile bases are untouchable. They can't be touched by the Americans or the Israeli regime and
its drone bases. The the same is true for them. And Iran's factories that produce key weapons are all underground,
too. So, the footage that I posted is of an underground base, but also it shows a place where they're assembling missiles has no shortage of missiles and drones.
And if the US and the reason is, as we discussed multiple times, the reason is because Iran has been preparing for a an
a war against it by the Americans ever since 9/11. Ever since they the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
Remember what Wesley Clark said that the general told him they want to invade seven countries.
You hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you. You You're getting cut off and it's such a such a convenient time as you're about to explain. seven countries in five years that Yes. You were talking about Yeah.
Continue. Yes.
Yeah. So Wesley Clark said that a general told him that they were going to take seven countries in 5 years
and a lot of people assisted the Americans and the Israelis, the Americans in doing
that. They helped undermine Libya. They undermine Syria and they all were playing useful idiots for the empire.
I mean if if we look at them as not being assets then they were useful
idiots. So all these six countries are gone but not in 5 years but in 25 years.
Now the last country remains and that's Iran the the the crown jewel but Iran is
has been preparing itself since then and even before but since then especially because the threats became more direct.
32 minutesThe United States surrounded Iran. They took Iraq, Afghanistan. They had bases across the Persian Gulf.
Turkey as a part of NATO.
So, the Republic of Azarbaan, a client regime.
So, the Iranians, they developed these missile capabilities, but they've also prepared themselves for land war.
And this is and just as the Americans are mi miscalculated about Iran's missile and drone capabilities, they are going to
miscalculate when they carry out the land offensive. The Iranians will let them probably take some land, some
islands, and then they will start hitting them and they will go on and continue to
strike and strike and strike for days and weeks and months and then Hegath will go on TV and say they're running
out of missiles, they're running out of drones and it's about to finish and it's all over. And CNN, you know, even the opposing media as in the 40-day war and
in the 12- day war, they say yes, we're winning. They'll show footage of all the destruction. They'll probably be like during the 48 day war, mostly decoys
because Iran deployed at least tens of thousands of decoys during the months
before this war. And the Americans have and the Israelis have destroyed many thousands of decoys, airplanes,
helicopters,
launchers, air defenses, all fake. And they even they're really good. They even give off heat. a lot of most of them
I think are Chinese, but there are some Iranian. I don't know how much of it's Iranian, how much of it Chinese, but they're quite good. But in in any case,
just as Iran is has been prepared has prepared itself with missiles and drones, it has prepared itself for the
34 minutesland war. The geography of Iran is not it's it's mountainous.
The terrain is rugged. Iran has underground bases across the the
south of the country. It's navy is largely untouched. Those number of sh
naval ships that were in port that were you know damaged. they'll be repaired but therefore like patrolling the seas.
They're not for war. They destroyed one ship that was unarmed. there was in a international maneuver which was a crime
what they did but the other but the the real naval assets that are will be used for war underground tunnels Iran's air
forces in underground tunnels Iran's air defenses are in underground tunnels I've posted images of all of these before footage so that people would know but
again they ignored in the west so when this ground attack begins Iran will Iran will be ready and We'll hear propaganda
about how fantastic the US is doing, but after a week or two, it'll become clear that it's not going to go well. And then
there's the issue of striking Iranian infrastructure. If they strike Iranian infrastructure, Iran has no choice but to strike back. Iran will strike back the Israeli regime and American assets.
But those regimes that are complicit, they cannot escape retaliation.
They cannot pretend to be neutral when they're killing Iranians. They're full partners in this. They are full partners. And in a month from now, as I
said, it's going to get be begin to get very hot in the Arabian Peninsula. So, people are going to have to leave.
They're going to have to drive to Iraq or to Jordan. These countries,
especially the tiny ones, they won't last. So, what Trump is doing is he's going he's pushing an economic crisis
fast forward. He's making this economic crisis worse by the hour. And I think
in the coming days we're going to see we're going to see a catastrophe unfold unless Trump backs down. But he he's not
the sort of person who so far has shown himself as being capable of taking an offramp. He could have done that when
the Iranians, as I as we discussed earlier, , eased the passage, allowed
more ships to go through the passageway of the Persian Gulf. Yeah, you could have done that then.
Yeah. Yeah. And um this blockade which as many on this show have noted is has a has a huge farcical nature to it given
the range of the area of operation that the US Navy is conducting it in.
all of that is to say is that there's a lot of room to just stop this to go
back to what already was a pretty disastrous status quo which is having already fought you know several over
a month of war and come out of it only with a global economy and tatters a military that's a a military apparatus
that's over spent and an Iranian government and Iranian society that is much more united before and an
element to this professor M the two things are kind of happening at the same time I feel like you have this high morale in Iran right now both with the
people and of course I'm hearing you can confirm this for me I'm hearing that there millions of people signing up to
volunteer should there be any kind of ground operation should there be any need forces um you know in addition to those who
are you know operating the air defenses and operating the missile systems And then there's the you know other
side of this which is the Trump administration also is saying that in the coming days as they're talking about negotiations in Pakistan the coming days
the United States Navy is going to start boarding Iranian vessels that Iranian vessels that are sailing through not only the straight of horm but out out of
it um and back into it are going to be boarded which is a major escalation especially with a country that you're already at war with or already had been in active war with before the ceasefire.
And you have this element, if you could comment on it, the Baba Mendep straight,
which Yemen for a few days now has said they're waiting for the right time and they are ready whenever that right time comes to close the Babe Strait, which
would be a major blow to the already burnt and overheated global economy from this war. So, you know,
your reactions to these things because these are additional I feel like elements to what already is, I think, a catastrophic situation that is
confronting especially the US side of things, US empire side of things. It's it's it's very I guess it's very
damning um to say the least. Your thoughts?
Well, if the United States starts porting ships, Iran has all sorts of ships in the Persian Gulf that it can
board too. And remember, these ships hold
material or or energy or assets that largely belong to these five countries
that are complicit in the war and that and which without these countries would not have been able to happen.
So Iran will retaliate.
It's not going this is not going to end well for anyone and it's definitely not going to end well for the empire.
So you know the they can board a few ships here and there and steal Iranian grain or steal assets of the Iranian
people but the Iranians will be forced to retaliate. And the Persian Gulf is stacked with ships right now
full. I mean if you look at the images they're just right be one after another and of course if the war if there's a
restart of the war and then attacks are launched on infrastructure those ships will all be destroyed too just like the
the other infra I mean just like the in oil and gas and other infrastructure it's it's just you know madness
it's like the United States is run by madmen who are either utterly compromised or it's just the Zionist
first people who are in full control and they don't care about the United States or the global economy or the Indian economy or the German economy or the
Argentinian economy or anything like that. They just care about the Zionist regime and its expansionist policies and
its genocidal policies and so it's willing to sacrifice everyone. There's just no good scenario here. The only
the only thing that we see if we look ahead at at the way things are going now is utter destruction. And this is all
just to to help the Israeli regime. It's all about the Israeli regime. It's all about Zionism. The the the collapse of
the global economy is seems to be coming about why because of Israel.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean that that appears to be the case and you know professor
Mandi there is a deep I think contradiction occurring. You know recent
polls are showing that not some 20% of Americans support how Donald Trump has
handled the Iran situation. And yet you have the Trump administration continuing onward with this. You have of
course Israel. You know Israel interestingly enough because of the cessation of the you know both
sides of direct strikes on Iran because that has stopped. Israel has tried to fade into the background and of course
um focus a lot of its attention on Lebanon and Hezbollah. But nonetheless,
it does appear that Israel, despite not having the ability to fight any of this
on its own, is placing a lot of pressure on the United States to continue this. Um so yeah, your thoughts,
they're killing they're killing people in Gaza every day. They're sniping kids.
just a couple of days ago a girl in class I I think they just sniped her as she was sitting among her classmates.
This is this is the Israeli regime and in the West Bank they continued to batter and beat and kill these
colonizers continue to batter beat and kill Palestinians. I mean it's not just Lebanon. Lebanon right now
they're blowing up village after village and of course we had this the slaughter that Iran forced them to stop but
it's it's you know what they're doing in Lebanon is ongoing what they're doing in Gaza is ongoing and what they're doing in the West Bank is on
Yeah. Yeah. And the all of that is ongoing and we are now on the
precipice of another round of you know it's just so it's just so blatantly
obvious that um we're kind of coming back full circle to where we were just February 28th after the initial strikes.
we're coming back to threats which then led to strikes which then led to Iran's response itself which caused a
huge amount of damage to the region to the regional actors involved in all of this and the United
States itself. So this a repeat of this though I imagine would have a
cumulative effect. Um you said that you believe that a great depression is coming. How does that square with a
kinetic war though? I you know in the past there was only one time I believe where there was a real depression
occurring at the same time as a major nation a a confrontation between nations
and that was World War II. there was a depression happening and the depression was not over when World War II started and it had a major
impact on the outcome of that war. so your thoughts on how the you
know the infusion of an economic disaster that is still building and still there and and will be pushed to
45 minutesthe edge if the US starts again. um how that will affect the outcome because that economic depressions affect
everybody but Iran has been in the position of being mainly iced out of the and keep kept out of a large part of
this global economy and has had to even mainstream media, think tanks, all of them have had to acknowledge has essentially developed a pretty
self-sufficient economy potentially prepared to also take blows that the global economy hits likely the US is
not in that position. So your your thoughts on this?
Well, there's no doubt that the war has caused significant damage to Iran, but Iran is a huge country also.
Um and a future war will create more damage. But what what the damage that's being done to the global economy is not
something that happens within seconds like when a missile strikes a building and the building comes down. When the
when the right now we're seeing the tip of the iceberg and it the tip of the iceberg is the rising energy costs and
rising food costs that we're seeing here and there. Some places it's worse, some places it's not as bad for a host of reasons because of the supply chains,
because of the fact that some countries don't have reserves, some countries have different needs than other countries. But in any case, it
is it is getting worse. But we are going to reach a point where within some they some say and I I again I I don't have
I'm not a I can't be certain of this but it is said that within the next two weeks we're going to have a new
the the the crisis is going to reach a new level and then within four weeks it's going to become a fullblown crisis and so we're just as
47 minutesI said we're right now we're witnessing the tip of the iceberg, but when it hits, it's like an atomic bomb. It's
like multiple atomic bombs because factories will shut down. A missile is not going to hit the factories, but those factories will no longer be
functioning. Economies will be shutting down. And again, this and and agriculture will be badly affected.
We'll probably have global hunger. will probably have tens of millions of people if not more on the move.
I mean imagine if you if countries begin to face food crisis, people will move and they'll go to the traditional places
that they used to go to and even though those places will be on the verge of collapse too. I mean the the the way in
which the world is going to be impacted by what the Israeli regime and Trump have are doing
is
person I'm just gonna interrupt just because Oh yeah. Okay. I think you're back. I think when I interrupt you actually come back. So that's a good
thing. That's a good thing. Yeah. You were saying that the impact of this and then you kept Yeah. kept going.
Yeah. So the impact of this is going to be beyond anyone's imagination.
Hunger, factories shut down, businesses shut down,
unemployment across the world, in the West and the the global majority. people will be on the move in probably the tens of millions.
It's just mindboggling. And all of this is being carried out because a genocidal regime is ordering
the United is forcing the United States to launch war. It that this genocidal regime with US support launched a war against Iran and lost 12 days.
Even though it carried out a blitzkrieak attack, it had full US support. It lost that war in 12 days. It's it's just not capable of fighting a war against Iran.
So now the United States has got to come in. They fought for 40 days. They failed. And now they're saying, "No, we have to go and wipe out the civilization.
Wipe obliterate the country. Send them back to the stone age." And again,
instead of being outraged, outlets like the Wall Street Journal, sorry, the Washington Post say, "Assenate the negotiators."
This is this is what we're today dealing with in the west. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, personally,
I'm in China and I talked to I'm I know he's I think a mutual contact of yours too, John Weii. And he you know, he
was very clear um and you know, usually what John Wei says is a very informed type of clarity. And he was he's very
clear that you know, a lot has been made of China and Iran. And recently there's been rumors that China was the was a
major player in pushing Iran to the ceasefire table and and to agree to the ceasefire and he said no he does
not believe that that happened at all and that actually um China's position is that of course it
doesn't want to see instability. doesn't want but at the same time it is not afraid of the consequences of
what is going on here and won't interfere with that which is a general principle of China you know for
every kind of conflict and every war that occurs in the world but um with that it seems like that's also angered
the United States because what has Trump always done during his tenure this time around. He's looked at both China
and Russia and said, "You need to help me solve things." You know, Russia, you need to help me solve the Ukraine
conflict, which you know, I am the, you know, the major party to the US is the major party to the reason why it's even
happening. And of course, he always looks to China. China, you need to help solve Ukraine. You need to help solve this and that problem for us or we're going to tariff you or this kind of
thing. And now it seems like the target is okay, we need to hit Iran. We need a wage war on Iran. And oh yeah, we we'll
we'll reveal what the real motive here is too, which is to try to cut off the entirety of the multipolar world with of
course China being one of the if not the most important economic pillar of this. So your thoughts on the global
ramifications of where we are now, how especially outside of the region, how
this is set to impact the multipolar world, Iran with its you know biggest
friends China and Russia and where all of this stands to fall on on the multiple world and some say it benefits,
some say it It hurts, but I think the picture is pretty nuanced and complex. So, your thoughts on this?
, oh, you were muted. Hold on one second, President Randy. , starting.
No, that was Sorry, that was me. That was me.
I did it on purpose to So, um I thought it would help the connection. So
I think it's going to be devastating for the global economy, for majority and the west. No one is going
to be spared from this catastrophe. But I do think it's going to bring an end to the empire.
Already I think this is a turning point and the United States has succeeded in destroying its
its image over the past two and a half years, its credibility. It's shown itself to be military incapable and
people are shocked across the world that Iran was able to stand up to the United States in this way including in China.
Many of my Chinese friends and colleagues and people who are experts
in the field in China during the past few weeks have been telling me that in China that their views of Tehran have
evolved completely because people across the world were influenced by western narratives on Iran. They, you know, they
believe the nonsense that the the so-called regime, as they love to say in the West, is unpopular, that it's imploding, that it's corrupt, that its
leaders were hated, and and so on. You know, all the narratives that we've been hearing for it's anti-woman, it beats kids. I don't know. I don't know. Cuts
54 minuteswhat was it that Trump said? He cuts kids in half or, you know, exactly the thing that the Israelis do. You know, he was saying that they cut kids in half or
something like that. I know that this psychopath something barbaric. Yeah.
Yeah. So anyway, so so a lot of people influenced by western think tanks
and western media and western officials thought that Iran would would fall. And
when it didn't, everyone was shocked and surprised. And people across the world have been contacting me contacting me.
I' I've been overwhelmed with with with speaking with people across the world with media. I'm just, you know, I'm
running right now. And um but but the point is that people are fascinated
about Iran. They want to know more about Iran. That's why on all these shows I've been there there's not much material out there for people to read. And I said on
55 minutesyour show and on other shows to read going to the the book by the leates and people are interested in about Imam
Hussein about Ashur about Iran's history about Iranian civilization
interest towards Iran Hezbollah the axis of resistance has grown and contempt contempt for Zionism and for Israel and
for Trump and sadly the United States even though most Americans are opposed to this madness. but
contempt for the United States is is growing. That is not good news. None of that is good news for for an empire. And ultimately when the when the glo when
the global economy collapses, people are going to remember who brought it about.
It is the Israeli regime and the United States just like they were the ones along with the West that brought about the genocide in Gaza that ena enabled
the genocidal acts in Lebanon, brought about the destruction of Syria and the the rise of al-Qaeda and all that. They
56 minuteswill remember that their own lifestyles were infinitely impacted or heavily impacted by by
a Zionist regime that was willing to destroy the global economy so that it could just carry out so that it could just wipe out people and take their land.
Yeah. And our last couple minutes here professor Mandi it is very clear in this very large country that I'm in the largest really the largest country
in the world especially economically um that nobody thinks that the US is winning nobody you know and everyone you
know everyone that I've spoken to is very much um there's no
antipathy toward Iran and there's a lot of there's surprise But there's I think yeah there's there's a lot of like
awe over how Iran has done this and you know I think Iran did something that's very difficult to do in this day
and age which is to you know in China Dang Xiaoping said you know hide your strength and bide your time and Iran
had done that to a shocking level like a shocking and a in a time period where it's very hard especially when you have
entire entities colonial entities like Israel and the United States as a you know imperial albatross um invest so
much money in intelligence, so much money on spying, so much money infiltration, so much money and in and time on all of that. And still Iran,
they admit it. They they were surprised.
They didn't know this was going to happen. Hell, even Hezbollah, which is right next door to Israel, is what did Israel say when Hezbollah entered
the war? Oops. We were so surprised that they could hit so hard. We had no idea that they had this kind of artillery,
that they had this kind of missile systems. No idea. And now they do. But the resilience behind that that which is
the real thing, the the resistance, the resilience of the axis of resistance, I think is the most extraordinary thing.
If you have I mean the weapons still don't compare to what the empire has. But if you you know but you can have even
better weapons but still if you don't have the resilience, the resistance, the the motivation, the faith, then they will all fail you.
Yep. Yeah. And you know and and that's that seems that's seemingly where we are now. And
your final thoughts because yeah this is a real inflection moment. We're probably, you know, we'll probably talk again soon, , depending on what
happens in the coming days. , it seems like the United States is in a really bad, it's a really bad state. This is probably
[clears throat] in a terms of a direct war where the US cannot help but be ,
very directly involved and climb an escalation ladder like this because Iran has been able to defend itself and stand up to each and every single blow that
it's tried to land. Um it seems like an unprecedented moment and as you said before the show, the
world will change. Any thoughts? Or the world will change incredibly. So um your final thoughts as we close out here.
Well, I don't know what will happen in the days ahead. The United States may strike tonight. That's just how they do things like the Israelis. But um and and
we may not have electricity or I may have problems with the internet or
other problems. So um I you know my what I basically would like people to
remember is that we're all responsible and we h all have to be active and we all have to stand up against this evil empire and Zionism.
And I think that while it looks very bad right now for the world but we all
1 hourhave to keep pushing and it's not just the axis of resistance that has to
resist. It is the broader resistance that exists across the globe. boyc
whether it's boycots of goods or whether it's protests or whether it's putting
pressure on local governments to halt cooperation or to halt purchasing goods or to to distance themselves from the
empire. we all responsible to do whatever it is that we can do but we have to remain optimistic and no one
should feel guilty for what their government does as long as they are doing the right thing.
Yeah, I think that's a great note to end on. indeed you know we are
in a moment where I think the mask is off the United States as the empire with who controls it. You know the Epsian
class, the oligarchs, the elite um this kind of trans I guess you call transnational Zionist you know
imperial um you know wararm mongers. They are in desperate straits and yeah we we
truly do not have control over especially those of us in the west over what they do. What we have control over
is how we try to change that fact and and that is I think going to be a
huge point of contention and something we will have to reckon with in the days and weeks to come. So everybody presandi joined. We did really good here
despite me having no VPN right now because the VPN companies are absolutely in complete crisis. I have a
suspicion it's the war that it's the consequence the economic consequences of this war that actually have these companies. The dates are very
2 minutessuspicious. April 8th was when it seems like it seems like a lot of these companies have cut made major cutbacks and say they have outage issues
everywhere. And that's my my hunch. But nevertheless, I think we're going to see major impact on all industries everywhere should this continue. So,
first Randi, thanks so much for joining.
We're going to head out together. I want to thank everyone who gave a super chat.
They were very generous. Especially thanking First Randy who we want to see him at home. So, do your part everybody. Look, he's at home right now.
He doesn't have to be in hiding because the US is bombing his country. So, be sure to not only hit the like button,
support this show. um you know in the video description. But you know, of course, keep coming back and keep you
know, fighting the good fight and keep raising your voices and doing what you can to put pressure in order
to make this all stop one way or another. All right, everybody. Hit the like button before you go. first Randy is still here, I believe, but his camera just went circle circle circle.
So that's our cue. Bye-bye. Peace out. See you again soon.

[admin]

Jack Matlock [97 YEARS OLD]: How NATO Expansionism Broke European Security
Glenn Diesen
Apr 19, 2026

Jack F. Matlock, Jr, was the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, 1987–1991, and had a key role in negotiating an end to the Cold War. Ambassador Matlock discusses misunderstandings about the Cold War, the West’s promise to Moscow that NATO would not expand, NATO expansionism undermining the pan-European security architecture, and how NATO became an offensive alliance and provoked the war in Ukraine.



Transcript

Welcome back. We are joined today by Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union who contributed greatly
to negotiate an end to the Cold War with President Reagan in the late 1980s. So, thank you very much for taking the time,
sir.
Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on. So I'm a big fan of yeah your books,
your work and of course also your um his I guess contribution to diplomacy and
history. It's quite impressive. I based on your work though I thought a good place to start would be
uh from your from your perspective what are the main misunderstandings about the the end of the cold war?
I think there have been several serious misunderstandings among most of the commentators.
1 minuteUh first of all the idea that the cold war ended with the break up of the
Soviet Union is incorrect. The cold war was over ideologically and practically
at least two years before the Soviet Union broke up. and second, the idea
that we we that there were winners and losers in the cold war that somehow
the United States and the West won and Russia lost is quite incorrect. We
negotiated an end to the cold war to the interests of both countries and everybody else for that matter. and
uh that was a negotiated in without victors.
That in occurred because Gorbachoff actually abandoned what had been the
2 minutesideology that had caused the cold war in the first place and that is the communist ideology which
was totally incompatible with our political system and ways of life in the
west. The idea was that there was going to be a worldwide proletarian revolution which would bring
about a society that first was communist but would become first was
socialist but would become communist and that the state would actually wither away. Of course, what happened in the
Soviet Union and the other communist countries was that the state took control of everything and instead of
what they called in a socialist system it was for all practical purposes a
state of a condition of state monopoly capitalism and but that was being
abandoned. Now at the same time of course Gorbachoff was trying to bring
the Soviet Union into you might say the European system.
And I remember that when we were negotiating on
such issues as German unification he would say at times by the way
we assured him that if he allowed Germany to unite on the terms that
West Germany had set that there would be no expansion of NATO to the east.
Even earlier when President Bush and Gorbachov met in Malta and announced the end of the Cold War officially,
one of the conditions there was that the Soviet Union would not use force in Eastern Europe to preserve the system
there and the United States would not take advantage of that. And that was announced and in
writing. As a matter of fact, that commitment President Bush reiterated in a letter to Gorbachoff
that I delivered when we got back from that meeting. So
the idea that the cold war was a defeat for the Soviet Union or that the
the Soviet Union broke up because of the pressure of the Western Alliance are simply incorrect. The Soviet Union broke
up because of internal pressures and probably would not have broken up if the cold war had been continued.
So I think those basic misunderstandings fed many of what I consider the mistakes that were made subsequently.
This promise to of a never expanding NATO after the German reunification
it often becomes a very hot topic in the media. Many politicians and academics,
journalists, they dispute it. They say such a promise wasn't made or it was a misunderstanding. But this was made at several occasions though, wasn't it?
Well, the promise was made. It was not incorporated in the treaties.
uh but um parts of it were to go into a little more detail
uh in February ' 89 when when
ecretary of State Baker came to Moscow in
in I think it was February 89, the hot topic then was the question of German
unification because the communist regime had been sort of overthrown in East Germany.
And first of all we said the United States said all right we we need
to negotiate this in what we call the two plus4 format.
And I would say Europeans and others said, "Well, what do you mean?" And keeping us out of it. And we said,
"Look, the core issues are between the United States and the Soviet Union.
We'll coordinate what we do with our allies, but we have to initially work this out directly with the Soviet
Union." And so the idea was that we would try to get an agreement and
then we would refer it to our allies the the other four which were the
victors in World War II. You know, at the end of World War II, there were
certain agreements between on the one hand France, Britain, and the
United States and the Soviet Union on the other. And some of these gave the Soviet Union rights in Germany and
Eastern Europe. And in order to legalize the unification of Germany, we had to
have legally the approval of the Soviet Union. So um then when Baker came to
Moscow in February of that year, he
proposed to Gorbachoff. He said, "Think about this." In that sense, he was
throwing out an idea and that wouldn't it be better
to have a United Germany a member of NATO
than cut loose from NATO, and then he began to imply that after all we would need still to make sure that Germany does not go
nuclear, that Germany does not pursue the policies they did before, and we need a NATO for that.
And Gorbachov answered that of course any expansion of NATO would be unacceptable.
But he understood the points that Baker was making, and he added that you
know it has been the policy of the Soviet Union to try to exclude you from Europe militarily,
but we now understand that some American military presence could be a stabilizing effect. So we are no longer trying to exclude you from Europe. But then he added, "Of course, you don't really need 300,000 troops stationed in Europe to perform that."

Later in other conversations, when the question of expansion of NATO came up, Gorbachov would say, "Well, if you do that, you're going to have to take us, too." I would have to say this was in the background of both sides, in effect calling for the same end. Gorbachov, beginning in a speech in the UN in 1988 said that we have a common European home, which should be without barriers, and so on. And on the other hand our president, and also I think prime minister Thatcher, who was then the president, spoke of a Europe whole and free, and you know by the end of 1991, the world had a Europe whole and free.

So later in the '90s, when a new administration began to consider to expand NATO, I would say not only did I testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that that would eventually be a catastrophe if we started expanding NATO and continued it, and I was joined in that statement by I think more than 30 of the senior people who negotiated the end of the cold war.

Now the reason we said that was that NATO had been conceived as a defensive alliance in order to make sure that the Soviet Union could not successfully invade Western Europe. There was a great fear that that was their intent. And indeed, if you thought of the Soviet Union, and its then East European allies, they had military forces that in quantity were superior to those in the west. I might say that later, when all the documents became available, it is clear that the Soviet Union never intended to invade the West. Their policy was that if the West started a war, they would respond and try to push to the English Channel. But that was planned as a response to what they would have considered aggression from the West.

But what I'm trying to say now is that the idea of bringing more countries into NATO would turn it from a defensive alliance to an offensive alliance if these forces were used particularly outside Europe. One of the arguments that people for expansion made in the 1990s was out of area, or out of business. In other words, we had to use the NATO alliance militarily outside Europe, or else there was no point to it. People who were not even involved also testified that there was never any agreement regarding expansion.

Now what I say is whether or not there was an agreement, and certainly we were given assurances that we wouldn't expand NATO, but whether or not that is true, it was a huge mistake to start expanding NATO.

Another point I would make is that it was not so much article five of the NATO treaty that worried the Russians. I know the Russian ambassador to Washington whom I had dealt with many times, when he was deputy foreign minister at the Soviet Union, in the mid 90s Uliv told me, "Look, we don't worry about your article five. We're not going to attack these countries, or any others. What we worry about is bases. If you put your bases in it, that is going to be very worrisome to us. And in fact, in the 2+4 agreement, though there was no mention of NATO expansion, there was a provision that the territory of the former East Germany would not be used to base any foreign troops or any nuclear weapons. In other words, what was then accepted in the treaty as NATO expansion.

And let me back up a bit. The fact was that after Baker had returned to Washington, he was told by the lawyers if East Germany and Germany unite, there's no way you can exclude part of it from the NATO alliance. So a lot of these issues got mixed up. And then next NATO in the '90s was used in an offensive way against Serbia. A war was declared against Serbia, which had not attacked any NATO member. In fact, we were extending NATO protection to others as Yugoslavia began to break up. That was one of the first things that created extreme tensions between the United States and then Russia.

Another point I should make is that when people talk about Russia always being aggressive and so on, it was precisely the elected president of the Russian Federation who played the key role in bringing the Soviet Union down, and also he was a firm supporter of Baltic independence, which was declared legally before the Soviet Union broke up.

So in effect the breakup of the Soviet Union was not something that the west was pressing for. As a matter of fact, although the first Bush administration was firm in supporting the restoration of independence of the three Baltic countries, we actually, for a number of rational reasons, wanted the rest of the Soviet Union to preserve a voluntary federation of the sort that Gorbachov tended to support. So the idea that we brought the Soviet Union down is absolutely the opposite. We were doing our best to support Gorbachov in negotiating a new union treaty to the point that when President Bush, after visiting Moscow, spoke to the Ukrainian Parliament -- they were called the Ukrainian Parliament -- he recommended they enter Gorbachov's Federation, and he said that they should avoid suicidal nationalism. But he said at the time that this speech was made, that it was meant for all the non-Soviet republics, not just Ukraine. And when he spoke of suicidal nationalism, he was thinking of what was going on in Georgia at that time. But it was clear that the U.S. did not want the Soviet Union to break up at that time.

But events got ahead of things, and certainly by November it was clear that it was probably going to break up, and so obviously the United States, after December 25, when Yeltsin sort of took over in Russia, and with the cooperation of others in the Soviet Union, we immediately proposed to recognize their successors, because one of the things that worried us throughout was the proliferation of nuclear weapons. So one of the conditions for recognizing the independence of Ukraine and others was that they relinquish their nuclear weapons. I know this has become an issue later, and most of these were scheduled to be eliminated under arms control treaties we had with the Soviet Union, but as a condition of recognizing their independence, they had to agree to abide by these agreements. In other words, those UK weapons that were in Ukraine, first of all, were never under the control of Ukraine politically, and practically. The codes were in Moscow and passed on to Gorbachov to Yeltsin. And it is not at all clear that if Ukraine had kept them, that they could have maintained them and and so on.

But in any event, the return of those weapons to Russia, which at first was resisted by the Ukrainian Parliament, was insisted upon by the United States, not because we feared that they would be used against us necessarily, but that this technology would seep out into elements that would use it. And I might add, that is still much more a threat in the future than any government actually using them.

And one of the big issues we had in the 1990s was a cooperative effort to make sure that the nuclear materials, and nuclear weapons in Russia, were first of all reduced as we had agreed earlier, and second that the materials were secured. That's one of our more successful efforts in the '90s.

Now I wanted to explain that background, because so many people say, "You know, if Ukraine just kept those weapons, Russia would not have attacked them. That was never a practical or political possibility.

Yeah I hear that argument all the time as well. But I think people often forget that in the 1990s a lot of great statesmen, George Kennan, yourself, and others, many were warning against essentially going for NATO expansion instead of pursuing this new panuropean security architecture, though I was wondering why we failed to establish a common European home, as Gorbachov had said, or at least a common European security architecture, because we did have some agreements, like the charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990, the organization for security and cooperation in Europe set up in '94, based on these principles, all essentially originating from the Helsinki Accords, of how to have a common Europe. Why did we fail?

I think there may have been a variety of reasons, but in fact I think that particularly the United States, but also other western countries, were responding to domestic politics, and in the case of the United States, we have a very large numbers of voters in states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, from Eastern Europe. And they were determined to get these countries in NATO because they traditionally looked at Russia as a threat. And that was one thing that I know politically. And when I testified against NATO expansion, during the intermission, some of the people came up to me and said,"Look be practical. The president needs those electoral votes. The two swing states of Pennsylvania and Illinois, and all those East Europeans, are demanding we go into NATO. So I would say in the case of the United States, it was largely entirely a matter of the internal politics.

But second, you had the growing influence of what we call the neoconservatives, the neocons, those who Reagan and Bush had sidelined. At that time, most were Republicans, but I would say that Reagan was able to sort of sidelined, and ignored their advice. They advised against most of our arms control negotiations. They wanted to continue to use force, and to bring down the system. They were thinking of regime change. Which by the way was something that neither President Reagan nor the first President Bush thought of. I mean, they did not think they were trying to bring down the Soviet Union. Reagan's ideal was communism is a crazy idea, but if that's what the Soviets want, that's their business. What we objected to is them forcing it on other people. So there wasn't an idea that we had a mission to try to change their political system.

What I'm trying to say is that suddenly you had a philosophy being expressed that the United States won the Cold War, and that now it was the sole superpower, and could therefore determine the future of other countries, that there had been two superpowers that ran the world, and now there was only one. And so we were in what they call a unipolar world.

Now there are several things wrong with that. First of all, yes, the United States had much more power, both militarily and in terms of economics than any other country. But military power is power to destroy, not power to build. And the economic system is one which could be responsibly managed to the benefit of everybody, or by more powerful states, turned into a weapon.

Now to my sorrow, beginning in the 90s the United States started to do both, to sanction other countries for things that really had nothing to do with the United States, but for what we considered their behavior internally. And second, by expanding NATO, and then beginning in the 21st century to put bases there, basically violated the whole spirit of what we should have been building. Obviously we should have been building a European security structure, in fact, a world security structure, that included everybody. Afnd what strikes me is that after the second world war, we were wise to insist that France and Germany, who had been antagonists, bury the hatchet, and start cooperating. We were great inspirers, and pushed for what later became the common market. But after the end of the cold war, instead of the break up of the Soviet Union, instead of bringing Russia and the East European countries into a unified security structure, we began actually to treat Russia as a pariah. And I think that spirit was expressed by Secretary of State Madeline Albright, our first woman Secretary of State, when in justifying the war against Serbia, she said, "America stands strong and can see the future." I think this was absolutely incredible hubris. And I would note by the way to those who say we need more women in high politics, yes, we should have leaders, whether they are male or female, on the basis of their merits, but all three of our women secretaries of state have been warmongers, let's face it. So one's sex or gender doesn't necessarily determine one's political opinions or abilities in certain respects.

Yeah, it often cuts a hole in the assumption that women would be more peaceful leaders than men. I think we're all pretty flawed in this regard.

But I also see that the prospect of a hegemonic peace, that is peace through dominance or strength, was very appealing, and contributed to dismantling the work that had been done for panuropean security architecture. But beyond, I guess creating a Europe without the Russians, unavoidably became a bit of Europe against the Russians organized around EU and NATO. Do you see any other mistakes being done in terms of how we could have managed this relationship with Russia? Because it is interesting when everyone reads the memoirs of, for example, the former CIA director Robert Gates, or I mentioned that many relations were mismanaged, and we are now paying some of the consequences of this mismanagement. What do you consider to be the main mistakes being made thereafter?

Well, as we continued to expand NATO, in the first decade of this century, we began putting military bases there. The most sensitive of those as far as Russia was concerned was the establishment of anti-ballistic missiles in Romania and Poland. Now these missiles could be used either offensively or defensively, depending upon the software. So there is no easy way to understand that Putin, the Russian president, would find this threatening. And he made it very clear in a speech in Munich in 2007 how he considered the expansion of NATO, and particularly the plans to place bases there, bases that could practically be used to attack the Soviet Union. Yet we went ahead with this, and later, particularly during the Obama administration, we purposely tried to bring about a western oriented government in Ukraine. And this is something that anyone who knows history should have known was totally unacceptable to any government in Moscow. Just as any expansion of an outside power into the western hemisphere was considered virtually a causus belli by the United States. Yet we continued to do that. And I think this is one of the big issues that weighed upon Putin's mind. And he warned against it publicly, but later we went ahead with it. And at one point, our representatives were bragging that they spent billions trying to determine the government of Ukraine. So later, when a coup d'etat occurred there, I think Russia had every reason, and certainly President Putin, to feel that this had been fueled by the United States and its West European allies, because our representatives openly tried to promote specific candidates in Ukraine, and in fact gained control of Ukraine in 2014.

So this is a very complicated situation. Not only did the US and our West European allies try to determine the internal politics of Ukraine, so that it would in effect be hostile to Russia, something which the United States would have reacted very forcefully to if it had happened to us. I can bear witness to that, because I was in Moscow in 1961 during what we call the Cuban missile crisis. And let's recall what that was all about.

The United States had attempted to invade Cuba unsuccessfully, and Cuba had asked the Soviet Union to supply nuclear weapons. Now, under traditional international law, that was not a violation of international law particularly, since the United States had nuclear weapons poised in Turkey, and also Italy, that could reach the Soviet Union. This was before either of us had intercontinental missiles. These were intermediate range of course. And President Kennedy considered this totally unacceptable, and ordered a quarantine of Cuba. And we came very close to a nuclear exchange. I was sitting in Moscow then, and translating some of Khrushchev's comments, but finally Khrushchev backed down, and agreed to take those weapons out. And Kennedy declared victory, although he had agreed that we would remove the missiles in Turkey, but that could not be publicized. In other words, he forced Khrushchev to make it look as if he had backed down, when in fact there was a deal. But having been through that, it was very clear to me that trying to influence the internal politics of Ukraine against the wishes of Russia was not a good idea, to put it mildly.

And in fact, when NATO declared that someday Ukraine and Georgia would be members, at the United States' insistence -- this was in 2008 -- it was clear to me that this was going to create very great difficulties. So at that time, polls showed that two-thirds of Ukrainians did not want to be in NATO. This country was increasingly divided, and increasingly the politics were pushed by those in western Ukraine, the areas that traditionally had never been part of Russia, but had been in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then in Poland. And I might say that the current borders of Ukraine, which the current government is trying to recover, were borders created by Hitler and Stalin. So the Ukrainians and West Europeans who are supporting this are ironically trying to enforce something created by Hitler and Stalin. Think about that, and think about how that resonates with Russians.

So the issues there are very deep, and I think increasingly tragic. Both countries have followed policies which are not in the interest of their people, and it's difficult to see how this is going to be resolved. But this is where things are now. But I must say that when we look at the causes, the attempts by the United States and its West European allies, to control an area which is absolutely vital to the security of Russia, shis is I think, an important causative factor. And we have reached a point now where it is very difficult to see how that's going to be resolved, so that it doesn't negatively affect all of us.

And in terms of ending the cold war, we see that diplomacy was very important, and we were blessed with having some good statesmen at that point in time. But how do you make sense of the current political leadership across the west, both the US, and Europe, compared to the kind of diplomacy which helped bring an end to the cold war? Because when I look at people today, be it Mertz in Germany, the rhetoric there, or Macron in France, Starmer in the UK, all three of them talking about war with Russia, or Trump in the United States, who is hardly a benign leader himself, how do you make sense of this, and why don't we seem to have diplomacy anymore? I often ask why not one of our political leaders, or even journalists, want to even discuss the security concerns and interest of our opponents. Not just the Russians, but all opponents. It's very confusing. Sorry, that was a very long question, but how do you make sense of the current political leadership?

I can't make sense of it. I can only say that I think that previous norms of diplomacy have simply been abandoned. And we talk about democracy, you know, democracy can mean several things. For one thing, it can be a process that the citizens or resident citizens of a given country uses to determine its government and so on. That's a process. Or you can begin to put labels on countries. Some are democratic, and some are not. I think the labeling can be quite false. The United States is not in the final sense a democracy. We are a republic, and a republic which by any current analysis is run by an oligarchy, an oligarchy which is divided. And yet it is one in which the majority of the people do not decide our policies. And I think that has happened also to some degree in other countries. But the idea that somehow there is a division between democracies and non-democracies, and that it is the duty of the United states to "spread democracy," even if it means changing governments, I think that was very very similar to the idea the Soviet Union had until Gorbachov, that it was the vanguard of the proletariat, and had to support what they call proletarian revolution throughout the world, because socialism in their definition, and communism, was the future of the world. In effect, with just a few changes, we tried the same thing.

Now we used very high flown language. We said that you know human rights are very important, and we need to enforce them. The problem with that is first, it's a misnomer. What we really should be talking about is civil rights. I think that human beings do not enter the world with rights. In fact, they're totally dependent upon other people, and every other mammal is. And I know this is ingrained in a lot of rhetoric, and that should be the fact, that every great civilization defines their values, rights and needs, to understand that is to know that interfering in other countries is going to create great difficulties. So I think the idea that was expressed first by the scholar Fukuyama, that the end of the cold war meant that what they call the west, and democracy, was the future of the world, and it was the duty of the democratic countries to spread it to other countries, I think that was fundamentally a mistaken idea. Not that human rights, as we call them, are not valuable things, but to consider that anybody who doesn't agree with you on that is somehow at fault, gets it all wrong. Because I think that civilizations [of all kinds] have risen and fallen throughout the last few millennia of human history, and to think that there is one formula that fits everybody is fundamentally incorrect. And there's this idea that the United States and the West survived the cold war in better economic shape, and other countries tried to adopt our system. But once they do, we find that the West is actually sanctioning Russia economically, and so on, instead of keeping them in the one world economic system that was created after the end of the cold war. So I think that this feeling of righteousness, has undermined the ability to think straight. Right now I cannot understand how any German government could tolerate the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline. I mean, after this, Germany is not going to be competitive in many ways, because of the high cost of energy, and the misapplication of this policy in Ukraine. And the idea of the West Europeans that Ukraine is a democratic society, simply struggling, Ukraine is one of the least democratic countries in the world, and it has a government that was achieved by a minority. And it is one of the most corrupt.

Now the Ukrainians are not bad. They're wonderful people. I happen to be someone who knows both Russian and Ukrainian. I got my PhD in Slavic languages. And it is tragic the way that West Europeans, and the United States, have been pushing for something which is not in Ukraine's interest. So without going into all the details of [the Ukraine-Russia relationship] I'll say one thing: that when the agreement was made in Minsk in 2015, that in effect Russia, though it had taken Crimea, where the majority of people clearly preferred to be in Russia, that President Putin refused any attempt to bring the Donbos into Russia, and said that Ukraine must return to recognizing the Russian language as having political validity, and to grant amnesty. But France and Germany, who were parties to that, continued to supply military supplies to Ukraine, with forces that attacked the eastern front. So one can say that one of the reasons Russia opposes a ceasefire now is that they had one before, and not only Ukraine, but also Britain and France, violated that ceasefire, by supplying military weapons to Ukraine. And later the former German chancellor said they signed that just to give Ukraine a chance to build up their military. So, I think it is tragic. And I think that President Putin made a horrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine, and I'm not someone who justifies that. But I have to recognize that my own country and NATO illegally attacked Serbia when Serbia had not attacked any NATO country. And then the United States, with some, but not all of the NATO allies, attacked Iraq on fabricated grounds that they had nuclear weapons, when they didn't. We completely occupied the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were probably killed, and it stimulated a revival of the extreme Islamic groups. And then later we had the case of Libya, and yes Gaddafi was a tyrant in many respects, no question about that, and there was a a UN Security Council determination that we should protect the the opponents of Gaddafi in Benghazi, but that was expanded to a war that ended in the assassination of Gaddafi, just as the war in Iraq ended in the assassination of Saddam Hussein. Now these were certainly bad guys in many ways, but it wasn't the responsibility of outsiders to deal with them in a way that brought about internal conditions that were worse for everybody there.

So there was a certain hubris, and a feeling that, "Oh we can do things that others can't," and the idea that by using force, you could topple a government and get something better. It doesn't happen. And one of the great dangers now when people talk about needing regime change in Russia is that if President Putin is removed by force, you are probably going to get something even worse, because there are forces there that are already arguing that Russia has to use its nuclear forces to defend itself. And when the west Europeans start sending weapons to Ukraine that they use to attack Russia, I think already former President Medvedev has said that, you know, we will consider anybody who makes these weapons legitimate targets. And I'm not saying that this is a a good policy or not. I'm just saying I think you have to look at the realitie. And why Germany would be involved again, and be arming rebels in any area that was once part of the Soviet Union, is almost inconceivable, and I can't understand why the current government is doing it.

But let's put this in a broader context. I think right now, in both economic ways and political ways, China is profiting greatly from all of this, because to most of the world they seem to be the only great power right now that is asking for peace, and tending to support it. And I think it is really a catastrophe that we in the west, through our own
hubris and misunderstanding of the situation, are in effect conceding leadership in many of these areas to China. Certainly they're doing a better job of developing alternative energies, and they're increasingly doing a better job engineering and producing things like electric cars and so on. So how we continue to think of wars, and use of the military, to change things, seems to me very irrational.

And in saying this, I'm not endorsing the Chinese government, or the things they do internally. I think that's something that only the Chinese can change if it needs changing.
But the hubris we in the west possess, our superiority over others, seems to lie behind some of this. And I think it is deplorable, and I hope it will chang.

Let me also say that we haven't mentioned the near east, which is dominating many things right now, and all I can say is that I think the recent exchanges between Pope
Leo and the president of the United States show that for once we have a pope that is calling it like it is. There were churches during the Second World War where the Pope did not condemn what was going on. I'm not a Catholic, but right now I do think that our American Pope, the first, is telling the world something it needs to hear.

I very much agree. And that's one of the great tragedies as well that no one is speaking about peace anymore when we are currently engaged in this war with Iran, also war with Russia, and people are talking about a possible war with China. European leaders have sat by for four years while all these hundreds of thousands of people have been dying in Ukraine, and they didn't even pick up a phone to discuss the security architecture, or some way to mitigate the security competition with the Russians. It's quite appalling, and grotesque really. But hopefully we'll be turning a corner.

Anyways, Ambassador, thank you so much for taking the time. I think I've already taken a bit too much of your time, so I very much appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on and for listening.