PART 3 ANTI-ANTI-NAZI BARBARIAN HORDES ARE KNOCKING DOWN THE

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HUGE! US Troops ‘FLEE’ Key Base in Arab Nation; Patriot Missiles Pulled as Iran Vows DEADLY Revenge
Times Of India
Jul 31, 2026 #iran #iraq #erbil

The United States has reportedly removed all Patriot air-defence batteries from its compound near Erbil International Airport and begun withdrawing its last declared troops and heavy equipment from Iraq. Regional officials describe the pullout as a scheduled move consistent with Washington’s agreement to leave by September 30. However, the withdrawal comes as Erbil and the surrounding Kurdistan Region face sustained Iranian and militia missile and drone attacks. Sources claim the Patriot systems intercepted at least 95 percent of incoming threats, protecting American forces as well as nearby Kurdish facilities and civilians. With those batteries now redeployed to an undisclosed location, Kurdish officials fear they have been left exposed while Washington prioritises bases in Jordan and the Gulf. Officially, America is completing an agreed mission. Strategically, Iran and its allies may portray the withdrawal as proof that sustained pressure forced Washington to retreat. Watch.



Transcript

America is stripping away its missile defenses and pulling its last troops out of Iraq as Iranian attacks intensify, turning what Washington calls a scheduled withdrawal into something that increasingly resembles a retreat under fire. The US military has begun withdrawing forces and heavy equipment from its compound near Bill International Airport in Iraq's Kurdistan region. According to well-placed sources cited by Al Monitor, most significantly, all American Patriot air defense batteries stationed at the compound have already been removed and transferred to an undisclosed location. The pullout reportedly [music] began last week.

The majority of US personnel and heavy equipment have now left, although some defensive systems remained at [music] the facility at the time of publication. US Central [music] Command declined to comment on active troop movements. Regional officials insist withdrawal [music] is routine and consistent with an agreement between Washington and Baghdad requiring the last [music] declared American forces to leave Iraq by September 30th. But the timing tells a more uncomfortable [music] story.

Air Bill and the surrounding Kurdish region have faced sustained Iranian and militia drone [music] and missile attacks since the USIsraeli war against Iran began in February. The American compound at the airport has itself been targeted repeatedly. Sources claimed the Patriot systems intercepted at least 95% of the [music] incoming threats, creating a defensive umbrella that protected not only American troops, but also Kurdish facilities and civilians in the surrounding area. With those [music] batteries now gone, Kurdish officials fear they have been left dangerously exposed while Iranian [music] strikes continue.

One source described the Pentagon's apparent calculation bluntly. Iraqi Kurdistan is no longer the priority. American bases in Jordan and the Gulf come first. The withdrawal also follows more than two decades of American military presence in Iraq.

At the height of the 2003 [music] occupation, Washington deployed more than 170,000 troops. Fewer than 200 [music] reportedly remained before the final draw down began. Washington may continue intelligence cooperation and retain [music] special forces at discrete undeclared locations, but the visible American military footprint and the defensive shield surrounding it is disappearing. Officially, this is an orderly withdrawal completed [music] according to an agreed timetable.

Strategically, however, Iran and its allies will see a different picture. Repeated attacks made American positions increasingly costly to defend. Patriot missiles became scarce and [music] Washington chose to remove both the troops and the protection surrounding them. The United States says it is completing its mission in Iraq.

Iran may claim it has [music] demonstrated something far more consequential, that sustained pressure can [music] force America to decide which allies it can still afford to defend. [music] Northern Iraq has been hit by a dramatic new wave of drone strikes after the region's [music] largest gas field came under attack despite a fragile calm on other fronts in the [music] West Asia. The strategically vital Corore gas field, the largest [music] natural gas facility in Iraq's Kurdish region, was struck in a late [music] night drone attack. according to Iranian state media sending shock waves through one of [music] the country's most important energy hubs located in Sullemania [music] province.

The core Morfield supplies natural gas to most power plants across the Kurdish region making it a critical pillar of [music] northern Iraq's electricity network and economic stability. The attack unfolded around the [music] same time multiple explosions were reported in Herbiel, nearly 200 km away, [music] with local and Iranian media claiming that at least seven blasts echoed across the city, including in areas near the [music] US consulate. Reports quoting police sources [music] said that several suspected drones targeted infrastructure sites in the Khaulifon and Saurin [music] areas northeast of her bill, prompting security forces to respond as videos of [music] the explosions spread rapidly across social media. The latest strikes come at a highly sensitive moment after US President [music] Donald Trump declared that Washington remains prepared to launch very strong military action against Iran if diplomatic [music] efforts fail despite temporarily pausing planned strikes to allow negotiations to continue.

[music] The coordinated attacks on critical energy infrastructure are expected to heighten concerns over regional [music] stability with investigators now working to determine who launched the drones and whether the strikes [music] were part of a wider coordinated operation. As northern Iraq assesses the damage [music] to one of its most important gas facilities, the latest drone assault is likely to [music] intensify fears that the region's vital energy infrastructure has become the newest front in an increasingly volatile geopolitical [music] confrontation. Northern Iraq has been rocked by a fresh wave of drone strikes after multiple drones targeted US allied Iranian Kurdish opposition groups near Airbil, triggering powerful explosions and raising fears of a dangerous new escalation in the region. Several explosions echoed across Iraq's Kurdistan region after multiple drones struck areas near Air Bill during the early hours of Tuesday, sending security forces into high alert and prompting widespread concern over the rapidly evolving situation.

Reports indicate [music] that more than seven explosions were heard across northern Iraq, while local media claimed the strikes targeted key locations, including radar installations, opposition headquarters, and areas close to the US consulate in Air Bill. Although the extent of the damage remains under assessment, according to officials from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, a drone struck [music] the Jesan camp in the Baraka area north of Airbil, causing material damage without any reported casualties, while separate UAV attacks also targeted the Komala party headquarters in the Alana Valley. Social media videos circulating online claimed that facilities linked to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups were engulfed in flames, although these visuals have not been independently verified. In a parallel development, reports said the US-led global coalition activated its air defense systems, intercepting one drone over air bill and shooting down three more near the [music] Iranian border in the Saron district before they could reach their intended targets.

The coordinated [music] drone attacks come amid heightened regional tensions and are likely to intensify security concerns along the Iraq Iran frontier where Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have repeatedly faced crossber military operations. A drone has reportedly targeted a US military base in Eril, Iraq, one of Washington's most important strategic sites in the Middle East. Video shared by Tarsnim News Agency showed drones hitting the American base in the Iraqi city. The authenticity or date [music] cannot be independently verified.

The Urbil base has long served as a key hub for US military operations in Iraq and the broader [music] region. It has repeatedly been targeted by rockets and drones during the war. On Friday, at least seven explosions were reported near the base in Erville. m.

local time on Friday, according to an Associated Press journalist [music] in the area who heard the blasts. Iran's military has said it paused retaliatory strikes after the US forces did the same.

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ON CAM: Iran BLOWS UP Military Bases Of Israel-Linked Fighters In U.S. Ally Nation | WATCH
Times Of India
Jul 30, 2026 #erbil #iraq #iran

A massive explosion has rocked Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region, after what reports describe as a kamikaze drone strike. Dramatic videos circulating online appear to show a huge fireball lighting up the night sky as anti-aircraft guns attempt to intercept the incoming drone. RT reported that the drone struck the headquarters of a Kurdish opposition group, while some reports claimed Iran was behind the attack. The latest strike comes amid escalating tensions in northern Iraq, following recent drone attacks near the US Consulate and growing warnings from Tehran to Kurdish leaders. As regional tensions intensify, fears of a wider Middle East conflict continue to mount.



Transcript

Explosions rocked [music] US military host Air, the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region, [music] lighting up the night sky and sending shock waves across the city, the region, and beyond. Unverified videos circulating online appeared to show a massive fireball erupting, followed by thick plumes of smoke rising from a residential neighborhood. The footage also captured the sound of [music] what appeared to be a drone slicing through the night sky moments before crashing into its alleged target. Anti-aircraft guns could be heard firing in an apparent attempt to [music] intercept the incoming drone, but within seconds a powerful explosion ripped through the area, triggering [music] panic among nearby residents.

Russia Today RT reported that a kamicazi drone struck the headquarters of a Kurdish opposition group in northern Iraq. Some media reports also claimed that Iran was behind the deadly strike, though there has been no official [music] confirmation. The latest attack came just days after a series of explosions shook Air, including areas near the US consulate amid reports of Iranian drone activity across northern Iraq. According to Al Jazzer, at least four Iranian drones targeted Halifon and Sauron districts northeast of Airbiel.

The strikes reportedly [music] sparked large fires in and around the targeted areas while police said two drones crashed near their intended targets. The escalation follows a report by Al-Myadin claiming that Washington has been pressuring leaders in Iraq's Kurdistan region to join the conflict against Thran. The report alleged that the Trump administration warned Kurdish leaders that refusing to cooperate [music] could jeopardize the region's existing political and governing arrangements. Thran has also issued a direct warning to Kurdish leaders, cautioning them against becoming involved in the conflict [music] or supporting separatist or anti-government activities.

According to Al-Myadin's correspondent, Iran warned that any participation in the war would invite a direct military response. The report further claimed that Thran threatened to send ground forces into Iraq's Kurdistan region if its leadership became actively involved in the conflict. For Thran, the Kurdish issue remains one of its most sensitive national security concerns. Several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups operate from bases inside Iraq's Kurdistan region.

Iran accuses these organizations of supporting separatist and anti-government activities and has repeatedly targeted their positions with crossber missile, drone, and artillery strikes. During the recent 40-day conflict, Iran reportedly launched nearly 700 missiles and drones toward the Kurdistan region, underscoring the growing volatility along one of the Middle East's most sensitive frontiers. Northern Iraq has been rocked by a fresh wave of drone strikes after multiple drones targeted US allied Iranian Kurdish opposition groups near Airbil, triggering powerful explosions and raising fears of a dangerous new escalation in the region. Several explosions echoed across Iraq's Kurdistan region after multiple drones struck areas near Air Bill during the early hours of Tuesday, sending security forces into high alert and prompting widespread concern over the rapidly evolving situation.

Reports indicate that more than seven explosions were heard across northern Iraq. While local media claimed the strikes targeted key locations, including radar installations, opposition headquarters, and areas close to the US consulate in Airbil, although the extent of the damage remains under assessment. According to officials from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, a drone struck the Jesan camp in the Baraka area north of Airbil, causing material damage without any reported casualties, while separate UAV attacks also targeted the Komala party headquarters in the Alana Valley. Social media videos circulating online claimed that facilities linked to Iranian Kurdish opposition groups were engulfed in flames, although these visuals have not been independently verified.

In a parallel development, reports said the US-led [music] global coalition activated its air defense systems, intercepting one drone over air bill and shooting down three more near the Iranian border in the Suron district before they could reach their intended targets. The coordinated drone attacks come amid heightened regional tensions and are likely to intensify security concerns along the Iraq Iran frontier [music] where Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have repeatedly faced crossber military operations. [music] A drone has reportedly targeted a US military base in Urbil, Iraq, one of Washington's most important strategic sites in the Middle East. Video shared by Tarsnim News Agency showed drones hitting the American base in the Iraqi city.

The authenticity or date [music] cannot be independently verified. The Urbil base has long served as a key [music] hub for US military operations in Iraq and the broader region. It has repeatedly been targeted [music] by rockets and drones during the war. On Friday, at least seven explosions were reported [music] near the base in Urbil.

m. local time on Friday. According to an Associated Press journalist in the area who heard the blasts, Iran's military has said it paused retaliatory strikes after the US forces did the same. From about 2 weeks ago, the Americans violated the Islamabad memorandum of understanding and created a fabricated and illegal route south of the Straight of Hormuz for the passage of ships.

Since this illegal route was contrary to article 5 of the Islamabad memorandum, we responded swiftly and did not allow the route that the Americans were trying to establish and consolidate to become entrenched. As a result, a confrontation began between us and the Americans that lasted about 15 days during which we faced US attacks and acts of aggression at nights particularly along the country's southern coastal belt. While US President Donald Trump reiterated his claim that talks with Iran were going off well, [music] Thran last Friday said that Washington needed to change its position [music] on mediation. What is the exit strategy?

Well, I think there's a lot of them. There's a military exit where we just keep going just the way we are and we can even make it a heavier dose and it's uh knocking out everything they have. or there's a smarter strategy and that's you make a deal and they want to make a deal. I just don't think they're ready yet, but they do want to make a deal.

Sometimes they don't want to say they want to make a deal. They want to be the tough guys, but they do want to make a deal. There's two ways. I mean, it's uh you can just uh keep doing exactly what we're doing and take them apart piece by piece.

We could do it in a more rapid fashion, which we might do, or we can negotiate with them, which we're also doing right now. I mean, as we speak, we're talking to them. As I have said before, there is currently no problem regarding mediation between Iran and the United States. Mediators exist, messages are being exchanged, and each side's views are being communicated to the other.

The real problem is the United States approach, which remains one of bullying and coercion. The Islamic Republic of Iran has shown we are not afraid of threats. We will not bow to pressure, nor will we tolerate unacceptable language. We have a principled policy and we will continue to pursue it.

Protecting the interests of the Iranian people, safeguarding their rights, and defending Iran's rights in the Straight of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf region are among our fundamental principles and objectives. We will continue to pursue them. We fear no one and we will not retreat in the face of any threat.

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Iran Missiles STRONGER THAN ORESHNIKs /MIT Professor TED POSTOL
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive
Streamed live on Jul 30, 2026



Transcript

President Trump threatened to kick the effing s out of Iran because they were misbehaving and weren't doing doing what he told them to do. Uh we're going to see just exactly how effective that's going to be. But there's also some additional issues. Not only are we running short on interceptor missiles of all different types, running short on offensive missiles.

Turns out the Iranian side is starting to expose additional and newer capability missiles, which could cause us even more trouble than we're already in. And to try and knock that down, we go to our go-to guy, our MIT professor, Ted Postol, uh, national security expert, like I could certainly call him, former MIT professor. Uh, Ted, welcome back to the show. Always a delight to have you here.

Well, don't don't call me too much of an expert. I am an academic after all, and given what I say about academics, some may apply to me. Well, all the things you've said on our show have pretty much been validated over many years. So, I'm going to keep that title on there for you.

Okay. All right. [clears throat] I I want to get right into this though because even before I get to some of the details I just mentioned at the at the outset here, President Trump yesterday made an kind of an eyeopening or an eyebrow raising claim about how we intercepted all of the missiles that came from the Iranian side into our base in Jordan. Here's how he put it.

We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming. They're asking us not to do it, but uh you know, they tried shooting it last night. So, we had five rockets shot going 8,500 miles an hour and all five rockets were knocked down to the ground, but they nevertheless took a shot.

So, it's our turn. And we'll see if we get there with an agreement at some point, but we're going to hit them very hard. So, there. What do you say that five five missiles at 8,000 miles an hour?

Um did we knock them down? Uh well I I don't have the data but I doubt the president has any data too or in fact even the contractor has data. The the evidence is that maybe one or two% of the Patriot Pack 3es assuming they were PC 3es fired uh are actually able to intercept ballistic missiles. So, so basically if you assume for example that it's one in a 100 um the uh the possibility of um of impacting uh uh the uh of hitting a warhead which is pretty much close to what we're seeing.

Then um since they're five, it's it's the chances that they would have hit all five is roughly one in 10 billion given what we know. So uh if if he's saying that a 1 in 10 billion event uh probability of one in 10 billion event occurred then I guess I don't know we can take it at face value but it's it really doesn't make much uh doesn't seem highly probable. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah.

We'll we'll we'll call that one in the questionable category until we can get some proof one way or the other. Uh one of the things I really was eager to have you on the show here today. we saw it and unfortunately I don't have the that full screen uh video here uh handy but there was a claim made by some Americans that were on the ground in uh and I think it was actually in Jordan where we suffered some casualties recently both killed and wounded in action and they say one of the big problems that they had is that our uh radar that we had showed incoming and then it tells you where the thing is supposed to land and so that allows people to get ready and all of a sudden the missiles start maneuvering which was a capability we didn't know Iran had and that was causing real problems for the humanities just to even respond to them. Can you tell us anything about what kind of missiles he's talking about?

And should we be worried? Oh, we definitely should be very worried. Uh I'm surprised these guys have only figured this out now. I mean, I I've been talking about this for months.

Uh I even I'm not prepared for this at the moment, but next time I'm on it only take s of video. I have video showing showing these warheads maneuvering. So, uh we know the war. In fact, uh I'll be talking about uh you know, we'll have a few minutes for slides.

I know you want to limit that, but uh I'll just show you with some slides one of their maneuvering warheads. And it does maneuver uh and uh it's it's unstoppable. And to me, it's extraordinary that these people would first be talking about it. Now, it shows that the the last people to know about things that are known in the open are people who supposedly have access to all this classified information.

And you know, Ched, I mean, we can just look here. The these are some of the uh satellite imagery the US has been trying to block this stuff, but there's still some satellite companies that are putting this stuff out there. These are evidences of the specific targets that the Iranian side has been having with this is these are all American bases that you see on the screen here that have pinpoint targets. So there every time they shoot at something they hit it.

Oh yeah. I think uh what we now know about the uh Iranian missiles is is that first of all they're using uh the uh Chinese uh BU uh navigation system. It's it's sort of a version of the American GPS system, but it can't be jammed. In other words, there's no way to stop them from getting the navigation signals.

And they can also get precise information on their locations while they're traveling through space. So they're on a what's at early in their trajectory, they're on what's called the ballistic trajectory. They're it's governed essentially by the gravit gravitational field of the earth and momentum of the object. And um they can get absolutely you know to to less than a meter accuracy exactly their three-dimensional location over the time of their trajectory.

So their location gets more and more refined. Now when they reach the top of the atmosphere which for our purposes are are is the altitude at which aerodynamics plays some role. uh that's well below 100 kilometers. So um but let's say it's 100 kilometers and um uh they know their p they're positioned to about uh uh one meter of accuracy in three dimensions in one one one meter in three dimensions or or less.

And they have um they have accelerometers on on these devices that can measure uh the acceleration that is not uh due to that is due to atmospheric re-entry and also due to the rocket motor that they turn on on the vehicle. So, so the the precision I was just looking this up last week the because they're commercially available. They're called MEMS, micro electronic uh mechanical sensors and they're tiny things. They're they're what when the drones are flying they have them on them and they're they're ubiquitous.

They're all over the place. So you just buy them highly precise and a very very very conservative estimate is they the inaccuracies from these mems uh introduced during a re-entry process is maybe a few meters. Wow. Few meters.

Now there's what's called the control problem. you know, you're trying to control the orientation of the warhead and every small movement out of what you really would like to get causes you to maneuver. And um so I would say that they probably have a few tens of meters of accuracy at the target, which is very good, especially when you're delivering a warhead. The warhead, I'll show you.

Um, yeah. Delivers the equivalent of about a 4,000 or 5,000 lb explosive at the target. That's an enormous explosive charge. And most of the power of that explosive of that explosion comes from the kinetic energy of impact.

In other words, this thing hits the ground so fast that it just vaporizes. It's it's much it's well beyond, you know, for example, it's traveling at a speed well beyond that of the Orchnic munitions. Wow. Are hitting the ground at maybe 3 kilometers per second.

This thing is hitting the ground at over four kilometers per second. Now 3 kilometers/s gives you the equivalent kinetic energy of uh gives you the equivalent explosive energy of the weight of the munition uh in TNT. In other words, all of this this is not explosion explosion from uh uh explosive materials. It's an explosion from all of this kinetic energy being nearly instantaneously converted uh to kinetic energy from you know the the war the piece of material that hits the ground gets compressed so fast by the interaction with the ground that it superheats to 5,000 6,000 degrees Kelvin temperature of the sun surface and that expands violently outward like an explo explosion.

It is an explosion. Now, when it hits at 4 km/s, that's 4 km divide by 3 km/s. 6. Um, you square that and that gives you the rough equivalent energy in TNT of hitting the ground at a little bit over four kilometers/s, which is about two and a half when you do the arithmetic carefully.

So the weight of the warhead is 1,000 kilograms. So it's say it's 2,000 pounds. You get a a factor. So 2,000 lbs of just non explosive material compressed turned into kinetic energy into an explosion by kinetic energy impact.

So that brings you up to 5,000 pounds of explosive power. Plus, you have a couple of thousand pounds of explosive material in the warhead. So, this thing has the power of a 5,000 or 6,000 pound explosive when it hits the ground. And it does tremendous damage.

And I can show you some of the uh evidence for this. Uh, and let's just look at slide um two. This is the missile itself. It's the Alpha.

And if you look to the right of the missile where you can see the warhead itself, you see a a winged uh vehicle uh that has a very very low drag. So it comes into the atmosphere uh it experiences very minimal aerodynamic drag. And if we look at um slide four slide, let's just go to there we go. You can see that in the back of this warhead, it has a rocket motor.

See the rocket motor is in the forefront and that rocket motor is able to generate a couple of thousand pounds of thrust over time intervals of , , you know, no problem at all. So, so that's during the entire time of re-entry. Now, if we go to slide six, we can actually see this is one of these warheads arriving in Israel. That long bright plume, the front of the You can't see the warhead, but that long bright plume is the rocket motor exhaust.

So, it is accelerating this warhead to enormous speeds. And when that warhead hits the ground, it um it delivers a tremendive tremendous explosive force. You can see the whole sky is lit up from the light. That's the light generated by this enormously high temperatures in the generated by the kinetic energy and the explosion.

That's like four or 5,000 pounds of explosion explosive energy being instantaneously released. And if you look in the next slide, we can even see a powerful shock wave. You can see um an an intense shock wave. You know, this is really an intense explosion to have a visible shock wave generated by the explosion.

So, if you just wanted to get a sense of how much damage uh one of these explosions can do, why don't we just go to slide 13. There we go. Now in in the lower right of 13 I have put in uh blast contours. This is uh Washington DC.

Uh the building in the middle is the is the U Library of Congress. That's a big massive concrete and steel building. And to the right is a neighborhood that's immediately adjacent, you know, just regular buildings. Now, the inner circle, innermost of the uh four circles [clears throat] shows you the 40 pound per square inch um blast range, the the limit of it, all those buildings in that circle will just be simply knocked to the ground.

The buildings will be knocked to the ground. That's how intense the blast wave will be. In the next outer ring, uh the buildings will be extremely severely damaged. Some of them will be knocked to ground.

In the further ring, the five pound per square inch ring. Any building that's wood frame or brick that's not reinforced will also be knocked to the ground. And then the two pound per square inch one at the outer circle would would would knock in uh the interior walls might not knock down the buildings at the 2 lb per square inch point but the interior walls of all inside the buildings will be knocked out by the blast wave that's propagating through the BU building. So this one warhead would essentially eliminate this block of buildings.

Remember the term blockbuster from World War II. This is a blockbuster. Now if we go to the next slide just to make it clear what the effects of multiple warheads would be. All this shows is I've just amplified the first slide by putting three uh detonation areas down and the the one to the left which I assume goes through the roof of the um uh Library of Congress will essentially destroy the whole Library of Congress because if it penetrates into the building, the shock wave will tend to be contained in the blast.

wave will be so intense around that 40 pound per square inch point that all of the internal structure will be destroyed at that point. Other areas of the structure farther away will be severely damaged. So it'll look um it it'll look like uh the building um the uh the mirror building in Oklahoma City. If if the warhead went through the roof, it would look like uh you know, the damage that was done to the building in in in in Oklahoma City by the 10,000 pound bomb or 15,000lb bomb that um was detonated in the terrorist attack in Oklahoma City.

So, this building would be gone for all purposes. the uh uh the third uh detonation point which is shown on on the upper right would destroy that other block. So you'd have two blocks of regularly constructed housing destroyed plus the entire Library of Congress by this um these three postulated warheads hitting at those aim points. Now, think of Tel Aviv being subjected to this.

Can you imagine the damage in Tel Aviv? Because this has been going on a little while. Not every warhead hitting Tel Aviv is one of these. Um Here you go.

You're really quick, Gary. [laughter] But this is the kind of damage that would be done into the inter in the interior o of of the Library of Congress from this warhead that I postulated hitting the Library of Congress. So these are very severe levels of damage. And this is what's been going on in in Tel Aviv.

and the Israelis have been uh um censoring the information from these uh uh attacks. But I can see why uh Netanyahu was telling Trump at one point that he's more worried about the missiles than he is about uh nuclear weapon about the Iranian nuclear weapons which which he's on record saying at various points. So, so this is uh the kind of damage you would see. Uh the shock wave would propagate into the building further.

Of course, where the damage is done, it would have would have destroyed and collapsed all the floors. And this building, there's nothing you can do with this building except tear it down. You know, it's done. So uh this is the kind of damage we can expect as the war goes on in Tel Aviv and Hifa.

If the Iranians start attacking with Tel Aviv and Hifa with Alfata missiles, they will do severe levels of damage but at a lower level per missile if they don't use these rocket accel accelerated warheads. But we're talking about serious damage and this can go on for a very long time because And do do you have any sense for how many of these missiles that we think Iran has? Uh we we really don't know but hundreds of them almost surely thousands of them quite possibly. So hundreds of these things would do tremendous damage, but if they're thousands of them, which we can't rule out, uh, you know, we're talking about real levels of damage that's, uh, you know, you know, to Tel Aviv and Hifa, you know, you could you could end uh the economic uh viability of Israel uh, you know, by destroying, you know, there only a few big cities where almost all the economic activity in Israel is is going on.

So, and is there anything in the cumulative integrated air defense system for for Israel? You're talking about the Iron Dome, David Sling, uh you know, all the different kinds of uh facilities they have, THADs, factories, etc. Is there anything [clears throat] that can defeat those missiles? No.

No. I think uh uh the maneuvering these people for example THAAD if it had a high capability to hit targets and I doubt that but uh let's assume it does it requires um 30 or s to reach an intercept point from launch. Well, in 30 or , a maneuvering warhead only has to maneuver a few meters per second to be well out of range of the THAAD warhead's ability to maneuver and finally hit it. So, if these guys are talking about warheads they see maneuvering at high altitude, the game is over.

FAD has no chance. David Sling has no chance. uh because these higher altitude interceptors take many many tens of seconds to reach the locations where they're going to attempt to hit the incoming missile. And you can't predict where that location is going to be if the missile is able to maneuver.

you can predict where it's going to be if it's on a ballistic trajectory and you know how to predict the location because the trajectory is determined by gravitation and and momentum. But you don't have that in the case of a powered vehicle or a vehicle that has wings on it that can maneuver. So the game is over completely. There's no chance at all they can do anything against these things.

So the big fraud that's been going on for 30, 35 years where they're making all these false claims about capabilities is now exposed. There's going to be no capability at all [clears throat] intercept these things. So let me let me ask you, let's let's uh let's continue on down the path here. There was some claims when when President Trump is claiming that we knocked down all eight of those missiles.

There was additional reporting prior to him making that statement. [laughter] What's that? Sorry. Go ahead.

Uh there were some claims before that that there were some on the United States that said, "Hey, we only had minutes of warning before these things hit. " That is a lot less than what we had been in the past. And I wonder if you can just kind of talk a little bit about uh the presumed damage that has been done because of the radars that Iran has been hitting over the last couple of months especially uh and and what whether we're hitting anything or not. It's reducing our warning time before missiles even hit.

Well, the THAAD radar does have a long range capability and uh our satellites in space can see the launch and we can see the first 60 or s of powered flight because we can see the rocket plume, the exhaust plume. Once the rocket exhaust plume stops, the satellites cannot track. So they but they can do a they can get a crude estimate in 60 or s whether or not for example the particular missile is heading toward Israel. They cannot tell they cannot predict on this early data whether it's going to whether the missile is going to land in Hifa or Tel Aviv or Beersa or somewhere else.

So they don't have enough uh impact point prediction from the satellites but the THAD radar can take over at that point and I don't know if there is a THAD radar yet working uh all five of the THAD radars were destroyed uh early in the war in the first few day two days of the war one day of the war by the Iranians but they have taken a THAD radar out of South Korea and I don't know if it's yet operating And the right place to put it so that they it can give warning to the Israeli population is is in Israel. Also, it may be the best place to put it because it's far enough away that there's some chance they can keep its location difficult to find. Although I think that's doubtful. But I think that that radar will be destroyed sooner or later because they will locate it.

And once they locate it, they can go after it as they did in the first day of the war. So what what is the absence of the THAAD radars as opposed to any and are there any other uh similar categories of radars that we can bring in that's going to give us enough knowledge about incoming missiles throughout the region? Well, the Arrow radars uh have some capability. They can probably see objects at a couple of hundred kilometers range which would be uh uh 30 to six, you know, couple of minutes warning.

Uh that's helpful. Any warning is helpful right now without the radars. Uh what the Israelis know is that there's going to be an attack a few minutes before it happens because um they uh uh they can the satellites in space can tell them there's been a launch against Israel. It can't tell them where the impacts are going to be.

So if you're in Tel Aviv, you don't know it's Tel Aviv. And if you're in Hifa, you don't know it's Hifa. But you know, in a couple of minutes something could happen. So that's what the Israelis are probably complaining about.

Now, when they had the radars, they could know that yes, Hifa is about to be hit and you might have um two or three minutes of um of warning from the radar because I could see it far enough away to know to take shelter. So, so you know it's it's in your city hyphus let's say and you know you have two or three minutes to get to a shelter which is not a lot of time but is adequate. So, um, uh, so that's a much better situation than knowing there was a launch and sometime in the next or so, uh, you know, um, [clears throat] there's a warhead that might explode in your city near you or maybe in Hifa or maybe Beer Shiva. You you don't know.

So, everyone has to take shelter all across the country. So that's much more disruptive than when you know it's coming two or three minutes from now in your area. So that's the situation you have without the radars and not an ideal situation you want to fight a war in. I'm going to ask you another question here in a second.

But first of all, did you have anything else on on that slide deck that we need to talk about? Uh not not not particularly. I I could talk about the Pack Two versus the Pack Three, but we already think we I mean, I can talk about that. Uh Okay.

Well, fair enough. Let I I do want to ask you something because it's it's in the news actually right now. Uh and that is that uh apparently the uh the commander of Central Command, Admiral Cooper, is suggesting that President Trump try and change the war one more time, but this time with another two-week campaign, but just heavier bombs. One of the things that really stood out to me, and I'd really like your view on this, is that Cub Cooper argued in favor of stepping up attacks to completely diminish Iran's missile capabilities.

Uh, according to NBC, the uh go big approach, he said, would diminish would minimize the US's need for the use of defensive munitions since there would be less incoming fire uh from Iran. But I still keep going back to uh this um because look, I I heavier bombing. Do do we have anything that's going to get through this stuff that's going to knock the We didn't in the first 40 days or the second 13. Well, I don't know what he's talking about.

I mean, uh and I I think he doesn't know what he's talking about, too, [laughter] because what kinds of bombs is he talking about? I mean, it's ridiculous. the bombs that uh that we have can cannot penetrate close to the depths that you need in order to get at these uh under under mountain targets. The um uh we do have penetrating bombs that may be able to get at uh tunnels because they're tunnels that are just built in the desert open desert areas.

Uh but uh you don't know where the tunnels are. If you know where a tunnel entrance is, you don't know where the tunnel goes behind. So, I mean, uh, so I know where the tunnel entrance is. Here it is.

And the tunnel, you know, the tunnel goes somewhere and the tunnel goes and it takes a turn and it takes another turn and it takes another turn and there there other tunnels off it. I have no way of knowing where those tunnels are. So the the only way I if I happen to have a warhead that might reach deep enough to go through the top of a tunnel, I need to know where those tunnels are and I have no way of knowing that. So I don't know what Cooper's 30 minutestalking about.

Who is this guy? I I I'm sorry. You have to show my ignorance. Who's Cooper?

Oh, he's the commander of Central Command. Well, that explains why. Yeah, that's [laughter] a big problem. I I and so I mean if that be the case then I mean I'm asking what's probably an obvious question here but it's still one that needs to be asked.

If 40 days and 40 nights of bombing did not [clears throat] penetrate all these mountain these missile cities that are scattered throughout the country and then the 13-day bombing campaign didn't um I don't know how another 14-day campaign with heavier bombs is going to have a different outcome than the previous one. So, where is that going to leave us if we use up yet more of our offensive capacity on an unattainable objective? I I don't know where we're getting these three star and fourstar generals from at this time. I mean, uh I think there was a time where a three or four star general had some knowledge of the weapon systems they were supposed to be dealing with.

But this is ridiculous. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I mean, it's um uh I wrote you a little note. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it, but you know, when you uh on Sunday, you made some comments about Wesley Clark's um statements about how we're going to put this band around uh uh Iran, [laughter] what band I mean, and you know, and Wesley Clark oversaw one of the biggest idiocies of the Kosovo War.

he was in charge of the Kosovo campaign. Uh during the during this campaign, they they they talked about destroying uh over 200 um Serbian tanks in Kosovo. When the Serbians finally pulled out, I I think they had lost no more than 10 to 15 tanks. You know, what does this guy Clark know?

I mean, this is the kind of three star and four-star generals we have these days. I think these guys are they have risen to the top of a bureaucracy and they have never been tested in combat and uh you know we need to go and get some of these colonels like you who have been tested in combat and promote them to generals instead of promoting the guys who are politically most astute to generals so that we can fight a war if we need to. It's it's ridiculous that this guy Cooper would make such a statement. He should be ashamed of himself.

Well, if he tries it, I'm hoping that's going to be the case. I think Gary's trying to pull up if people may not have seen it. Uh this uh comment that that Wes Clark made that we showed on here. Yes, it does it does warrant a little bit of of observation.

So pathetic. It's hard to believe that this is the kind of person who who the who the country looks to for military advice because you know I I think it is useful at least for a bit of a time here if you can explain um you know what what what he said during the Kosovo campaign and then what actually happened. Well, uh, during the Kosovo campaign, uh, the Serbs were, uh, you know, invaded Kosovo and, uh, which incident and I'm sorry, just as a precursor to correct me if I'm wrong, you have knowledge about what was and what did and didn't happen. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I followed that war, otherwise I wouldn't talk about it. You can I will always say, and I've said it many times on your program, I don't know anything about this.

And this one I do happen to know something about because followed this wanted to establish that. Yeah. Yeah. And uh and during the campaign uh uh the uh NATO forces were claiming uh that they were destroying artillery pieces and uh tanks and and my colleagues and I were following the war very closely at that time.

I was uh I had not yet been kicked out of my program for my work on missile defense and um and you know we didn't believe it. We we didn't know because we had no way of verifying the claims but we knew that the Serbs were very uh good at building uh decoys. Too bad I I have a lecture I give. If I had it if I had had the foresight to know we were going to talk about this, I'd show you some of the decoys they were building.

you know, they they would take um a a pole, you know, a wooden pole, and they'd put a can at the end of the wooden pole, and they'd put bicycle uh um and then they'd have a cross pole, and they put bicycle uh uh tires, not the tires, but bicycle spokes on both sides. So to a radar, you see the reflection, the radar reflections from the tires and you see the reflection from the end of the pot of the of what what would be an artillery piece. It's just a can that looks like an artillery piece. So you locate this artillery piece with your with your airborne radar system and you attack it.

You count it as as destroyed. But what you destroyed was a decoy. And they did the same with armored personnel carriers. And and so apparently what was being reported, I assume they weren't overtly lying, is that every time they hit a decoy, they counted it as an armored vehicle or a tank or a uh uh or um uh you know, an artillery piece.

So they had a couple of hundred. Now, if you knew what you were doing, let's say, let me use you as my straw man. You know, I come in and I tell you, we struck this, we struck that, we blah blah blah, and you're a seasoned officer. " I mean, you how do you know?

I mean, did you really have eyes on the target? Did you really see this thing visually blow up? Or could this be a decoy? I mean, you you know, you're a general officer.

Part of being a general officer means you understand the weapon systems you're utilizing and your adversaries utilizing. You know, your adversaries using decoys. And so, and you also know that you may be really damaging real forces, but you know, you know that the reports you're getting may or may not be accurate because the systems that are getting you the information and the people who are getting you the information are uh are failable. It can be spoofed.

You know, that's why we put gun cameras on on uh fighter planes in World War II because the pilots weren't lying, but they 37 minutesthought they, you know, in the excitement of combat, they thought they shot down somebody and they didn't. So, we had to get put gun cameras in order to get better accuracy. So, you have a gun camera on your airplane now and you they report they destroyed a tank. First thing you'd want to know is what are the gun cameras showing us?

Because if they were guided to the location uh by um uh by uh a radar queueing system and they shot through foliage and maybe there was a false explosion because you might put an explosive device there to explode. That doesn't mean you destroyed a tank or an armored vehicle or something else that was identified by the you know, you probably you you just you might as well have destroy had destroyed a bunch of chicken wire that was put out there in the shape put put in the shape of of an exploding vehicle, you know, of of an armored vehicle that uh uh you know, that's what tells you that's this is real information that you killed something. But uh if if you're looking through foliage uh you you got no information at all. And so any competent military officer who's commanding his forces and I assume Wesley Clark is supposed to be competent.

Should have you'd have hoped. I mean he was a fourstar general commander of NATO forces. He should have been at least on paper. But um you know somebody said uh the other day we'll we have to call that I'm afraid we're running out of time here right now so we'll be able I've worked personally I've had the privilege of working with a bunch of general officers some of whom were impressively competent when I was in the Pentagon.

I knew a few of them actually most of the ones who were very competent who I knew who were later I knew as two stars and one stars who later became three and four stars. I knew them with and they were very competent. the four stars I knew at the upper level I couldn't some look competent some you just shook your head you know and uh so uh I you know I'm just speaking as a technical advisor I'm not a military officer I have great respect for the skills and knowledge of military officers but I do have some technical knowledge and I know how that interfaces with the with the military operation I'm Not suggesting I could be a military officer. I couldn't be.

You don't even need to. That that's what that's what we have other folks for. But we rely on experts like you for the things that you provide here. These guys don't know what they're talking about if they're saying these things revealing profound ignorance.

Yeah. And we're wor because that's that's what the president is listening to. But uh we'll have to see what that we're going to work out. Listen of our troops depend on too.

Indeed it does. Uh listen, we really appreciate you coming on today and giving us this information. Sorry about the mixup today. No worries at all.

Just glad we were able to get you on. But uh here in just a few minutes, we're going to have uh Matt Bracken on the show uh for the first time in a long time. He's going to be talking about some of the uh the expanding war in the in the Middle East, not just with Egypt, but even some of other areas, too. We're going to be talking about that here shortly with Matt Bracken, and we'll see you then on the Daniel Davis Deep Dive.

[admin]

The Resistance Is Closing In On Israel
Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
Aug 1, 2026

As Trump threatens another wave of attacks on Iran, Western neocons are warning of an American strategic defeat, and the Pentagon says it can no longer defend Israel. Meanwhile, the Resistance continues to strike U.S. military bases.

In addition, Trump's Board of Peace appears to be increasing pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, but there is no indication that Israel will comply.

In this report, Dimitri Lascaris explains that the Resistance is closing in on Israel.

Dimitri also condemns the Canadian government's decision to allow the child-murderer Netanyahu to pass through Canadian airspace on his most recent trip to Washington.



Transcript

Minister McKinnon, did you accept war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu flying through Canadian airspace? Did you accept war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu flying through Canadian airspace? Minister McKinnon, did you did you accept the war criminal going through Canadian airspace? Did you accept criminal Netanyahu flying through Canadian war airspace?

Minister McKinnon, did you accept that? Why didn't you stop his plane? He's wanted by the International Criminal Court. Good day.

This is Demetri Lceris coming to you from Montreal, Canada for Reason to Resist on August 1st, 2026. On July 29th, our good friend Eve Angler, an author and activist who has been roundly persecuted for his defense of the Palestinian cause, continued to confront uh Canada's morally depraved leaders about their complicity in Israel's genocide. And what you just saw was Eve's intervention on July 29th in front of some kind of uh love fest for the Canadian transport minister Steve McKinnon and Steve's uh Eve's intervention as you heard related to the Canadian government's decision to allow the child murderer Benjamin Netanyahu to fly through Canadian airspace yet again on his way to Washington last week. It just so happens that I know Steve McKinnon personally.

In fact, I've known this character for about 20 years. And for some reason, he continues to follow me on X, uh, as he has for a long time, despite, I would say, the radical differences in our politics. Uh, in this episode, I'll explain to you what a morally bankrupt scoundrel Steve McKinnon is, but I'll also discuss far more portentous matters, including uh developments uh in the Gaza Strip and the collective collective West's criminal war of aggression on Iran. Before I get into it, please remember to like and share this video if you find it to be informative.

And if you're not already a subscriber to our channel, please do become one. Help us to expand the reach of our unapologetic on the ground resistance journalism. We are rapidly moving towards our goal of 200,000 subscribers on our 2-year anniversary which will fall at the end of this month. So now let's get into it.

I'd like to begin with the decision of the Canadian Prime Minister Goldman Sachs, also known as Mark J. Carney, to allow Netanyahu's airplane to travel through Canadian aerospace yet again. Here is a post uh that was put out promptly after the news that Netanyahu had entered Canadian Aerospace by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. Uh by the way, this is an excellent uh advocacy group based in Montreal.

I used to be uh the chair of their board and I highly commend to those of you who are in Canada or interested in Canadian matters and the Palestinian cause uh to support Canadians for justice and peace in the Middle East. Here they posted on uh uh the after during in the aftermath of Netanyahu's visit to Washington that for the third time in seven months Netanyahu had entered Canadian airspace and they rightly note that as a signatory to the Rome statute, Canada is obliged to enforce the ICC warrants against Netanyahu. Instead, Mark J. Carney is allowing him to circumvent justice and avoid any consequences for his war crimes and crimes against humanity.

According to protocol, foreign state flights must seek permission before entering Canadian airspace, which should be submitted at least in advance. Why does Carney continue to give safe passage to this war criminal? An excellent question, I should add. Now, the Canadian government uh in the aftermath of uh this event uh has stayed bizarrely mum silent as to the question of whether they gave uh permission to Netanyahu to uh enter Canadian airspace.

But the uh Israeli government hasn't remained silent in that regard. They have stated quite clearly that they sought permission of the Canadian government and I very much doubt that they would have entered Canadian airspace and taken a risk with the prime minister of Israel's freedom uh if they had not yet if they had not actually received permission and as the transport minister Steve McKinnon would have been right at the center of that very important decision one that would have potentially significant consequences for Canada's international standing I can't believe for one second that McKinnon didn't participate in the decision to allow Netanyahu to enter Canadian airspace yet again. It strains credul to put it mildly. And in fact it it it stands to reason that not only McKinnon but because of the reputational stakes and the legal stakes for Canada, the prime minister himself and the foreign minister Anita Nand, a former law professor, they all would have been involved in this criminal decision to allow the child murderer to enter into Canadian aerospace yet again.

And uh in October of last year, the uh so-called prime minister stated explicitly that if Netanyahu visited Canada, Canada would arrest uh Netanyahu in keeping with the ICC warrant. And what this shows beyond a shadow of a doubt is not only that Mark Carney is a pathological liar, as are Steve McKinnon and the foreign minister Anita Anan, uh, but they don't give Irat's ass about international law and about the ICC, and they're only paying lip service to it, uh, in some, uh, you know, uh, failed and belated effort to persuade people living in Canada and elsewhere in the West that the government of our country and other Western countries ries actually attaches weight to humanitarian law in their decision-making. So, how is it that I know Steve McKinnon personally? Well, this is a story that goes back uh 20 years.

Back in around 2006, 2007, I was a partner in a class actions law firm based in the province of Ontario, Canada known as Ciskins. And uh I had four other partners in that department. Our firm was much larger than that. We had about 25 uh partners but uh the ones who actually ran the class actions department which was probably the most uh important uh part of the firm in terms uh of of revenue and in terms of uh the nature and quality of the cases that we pursued.

Uh we had five partners and I was one of those partners. And another one of those partners was a guy by the name of Micah Zinga. uh Mike Azinga, who is no longer doing plaintiff side class actions work, he switched and went to the other side and became a Bay Street lawyer representing the ultra wealthy and Canadian corporations at a firm called Bennett Jones. And uh at the time that he was a partner at Cisco, he and I had, I think it's fair to say, rather divergent politics because he uh for part of the time that I was a partner there was the president of the Liberal Party of Canada.

and he was a president of the Liberal Party of Canada at the time uh that the Liberal Party was in power under a uh radical neoliberal in neocon by the name of Paul Martin who was a a former CEO of a Canadian shipping company. In any case, because he was my partner uh in a relatively small group of class actions department uh class actions partners, I thought it wise as did others in the partnership to try to maintain a cordial relationship with all the partners even if we didn't see eye to eye on politics. And um in 2007 when uh when Barack Obama was running to be uh the uh nominee of the Democratic party in the 2008 election, I made a decision on my own at a time that I was very busy with my class actions practice because I was so inspired by Obama's campaign to go down to Indiana and to uh canvas for him in predominantly African-American neighborhoods to canvas for the Obama campaign in the uh Indiana primary. At that point in time, it was really down to Obama or Hillary Clinton, and I was decidedly on the side of Obama.

I'm not an American citizen. I didn't have the right to vote. Nobody compensated me a dime uh to volunteer for the Obama campaign in Indiana. And I didn't have any of my expenses reimbured to me.

I traveled all the way by car from southern Ontario to Indianapolis to assist with the campaign. I was down there for about a week. Uh Obama ended up winning the Indiana primary and the nomination as everybody knows. And uh then we get to the presidential election when Obama was running against McCain, the Republican nominee.

And uh on the weekend before the election, uh I was uh invited by Michael Lzinga to go down to Pittsburgh. He had heard about my excursion to Indiana and I think that that kind of put an idea and said maybe we should put a group of Canadians together to go down to uh Pittsburgh and Canvas for the Obama campaign and I did. I joined that group and Steve McKinnon was one of the people in that group and so too was a very good friend of mine uh by the name of Atul Bal, a very dear friend of mine who later became uh my uh uh my chief strategist in my campaign for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada in 2020. And after we returned uh to Canada from Pittsburgh on the weekend before the uh 2008 presidential election in the United States, uh Isizinga authored Michael Isizinga, the former president of the Liberal Party, authored a an article for the Ottawa Citizen.

Uh that is the major newspaper in the capital of Canada. And the uh article was entitled Barack Conucks, the sequel. And uh as you can see here in the upper right hand corner uh this was published on November 9th, 2008 uh is a picture of me and uh my good friend Atul uh sitting on a sidewalk in Pittsburgh uh taking a break from canvasing for the Obama campaign. And you can see in front of Atul there at his feet uh there uh are uh uh small posters and pamphlets featuring Mr.

hope and change, Barack Obama himself. And uh in the left hand side here of this uh article highlighted in light blue, you can see during the next , a small band of friends will arrive from Ontario to help the Obama campaign. Dmitri Lceris is a Green Party activist. At Bal works for the NDP, that's Canada's nominally social democratic party, the New Democratic Party.

Steve McKinnon is past national director of the Liberal Party. I am its former president and uh Isizingaoa went on to explain uh what happened uh during that uh weekend in Pittsburgh. Now one thing that uh that uh Isinga omitted to mention in this article is that yes Steve Mck McKinnon had been a past national director of the Liberal Party of Canada which has governed Canada federally for most of the postworld war II period. Uh but at the particular time when we went down to Pittsburgh, he had left politics for a time and was working for a lucrative lobbying firm by the name of Hillan Nolton and was using his connections in politics in order to uh you know advance the interests of his corporate clients uh and and enrich himself in the process.

And some years afterwards, he decided uh to become a candidate for the Liberal Party and eventually ascended to the position of uh the transport minister. Uh and uh I have a feeling that McKinnon harbors uh considerably more ambitious goals than the uh transportation portfolio. But putting that aside, what else do I know about Steve McKinnon? Well, this is really the main uh experience I had of him personally.

It was uh sometime after we all went down to Pittsburgh. And at that point, let me be candid, I was operating under the delusion that Barack Obama was actually a principled humanitarian compassionate anti-war candidate. And we found out very quickly, very, very quickly after he won that election, uh that in fact he was a complete and utter fraud. And it wasn't uh it took me no less than three months following uh my trip to Pittsburgh uh with these persons uh to uh come to that conclusion.

And I was by the time he entered the office of the presidency in January 2009, I was criticizing Obama uh quite vigorously on social media. It had become clear by that point in time, as I say, that he was uh a total fraud. In any case, after we went to Pittsburgh, uh Isinga, he purchased some posh villa in the island, the Caribbean island of St. Martin, and he invited me uh and uh my wife uh to go down and join several other people for uh a weekend at his villa.

And being a good partner, a law partner of his, I decided to accept the invitation. Also, frankly, was uh happy to take a break and go to St. Martin. Uh but while I was down there um I uh had the opportunity yet again to see and meet with Steve McKinnon.

He was one of the persons who had been invited down to Isizinga's villa for this uh uh this weekend. And uh over I'll never forget this. It stayed with me uh from the moment it happened. I can remember it clear as day.

Uh one night at uh Visinga's posh villa in St. Martin. " And I found this question to be quite curious because I expected that it would be obvious why I was involved with the Green Party. But I responded immediately and honestly as follows.

As I said, the reason I'm with with with the Green Party is because of all the parties that are in Canada's parliament, it is the one whose core values most closely align with my own. I may not agree with everything the Green Party doesn't says, but uh it is the one that I feel most comfortable with from the perspective of principle. And at that point, they kind of looked at each other, looked at me, thought my answer was kind of bizarre that judging from their expressions. And then I decided to ask them.

" And without, you know, blinking an eye, they both gave the same answer. And the answer was because we win. That was their answer. Had nothing to do with values, had nothing to do with principles.

It was all about power. And they made absolutely no bones about the fact that it was all about power. They didn't feel even remotely ashamed as far as I could tell uh to answer my question in that way. And that pretty much defines who the liberals are, especially the power brokers in the Liberal Party.

These people don't give a rat's ass about human rights, about genocide, about racism, about conquest, about violations of the United Nations Charter, about equality, about compassion, about human decency. All they care about is power. And frankly, they're pretty damn good at acquiring it in our compromised uh political and economic system. The Liberal Party of Canada has mastered the art of deceiving Canadians into believing that they are progressive and principled.

And it's about time that we as Canadians dispense with that delusion and understand that these people are like Steve McKinnon, like Mark Carney, like Anita Anand, genocidal racists. Every single one of you And if you don't like it, sue me. Sue me. I will take that argument to court and fight you any day in in in a legal environment in order to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that you people have absolutely no decency whatsoever.

If you did, you never would have allowed that child murdering lunatic from Tel Aviv to enter Canadian airspace once, let alone three times. So, with that, I would like to turn now uh to uh much more important matters and specifically uh the criminal western war on Iran. More and more corporate media outlets report that the uh the psychopathic madman in the White House is about to launch a devastating uh set of strikes on Iran. Uh and by the way, how many times have we heard this before?

How many threats of uh existential doom has the Donald uttered at Iran? And has any of those threats actually resulted in uh Iran capitulating or making serious concessions that it otherwise would not have been inclined to make? No. There's there's no reason to believe that any of this is effective.

And uh my own view is the more and more that Trump resorts to these kinds of uh blood curdling threats, the more I believe he's not doing it because he believes it's going to change anything. Although he's stupid enough to actually believe that. Uh but I think uh I incline more to the view that the reason he does it is because he wants to please the more uh bloodthirsty members of his uh constituency, the MAGA movement. And there are a lot of not all but a lot of people in the MAGA movement who love that sort of thing.

They love to hear uh threats of mass destruction and murder and destroying an economy and you know sending a state into a state of oblivion. And uh I think frankly he's playing to his base. It's just so difficult to believe that he actually thinks any of these threats are are going to enable him to uh bring around bring about the surrender of Iran. Uh in any case, uh the latest corporate media outlet to report that Trump is about to launch another devastating waves of strikes on Iran is none other than the Wall Street Journal.

Here you see an article that was published in the last . Trump orders fresh attack against Iran as war enters six month. And the article goes on to say uh that of course it's based on the everpresent unnamed US officials. Earlier Friday, Trump told reporters according to this article that he planned to resume heavy military strikes to force the regime to come to the negotiating table.

He predicted that if the US hit Iran hard enough, the hardline regime would eventually peter out. "We will be hitting them very hard," Trump said Friday at a televised cabinet meeting in Camp David. " Trump authorized the new attack plan presented to him at the presidential retreat, US officials said. But they noted any immediate progress on the diplomatic front could convince Trump to halt the plan strikes and return to negotiations.

He also could simply change his mind. Uh and the article uh goes on to say that Trump's threats on Friday contrasted with his insistence earlier this week that quote very friendly negotiations were underway enabling a pause on military operations. Since then, Iran launched a quote unquote surprise attack on troops in Jordan, triggering a US retaliatory attack on Wednesday. Of course, the Wall Street Journal doesn't mention that when uh Iran launched that so-called surprise attack, uh it was actually being subjected to economic warfare, and I'm talking not only about the sanctions, but about the illegal blockade on Iranian ports, which is an act of war.

Uh also, it doesn't mention in the Wall Street Journal that uh Trump was violating from the outset of the memorandum of understanding every single one of its provisions virtually. uh nor does it mention that Trump uh has bombed rep Iran repeatedly prior to this so-called surprise attack attack in the straight of Hormuz which the Trump regime was trying unsuccessfully uh to uh take control of over the prior uh several months. So in any case uh we've heard uh this song and dance before. As of the time that I began this report, I had not seen I was looking uh for any indication that these this next wave of uh criminal attacks had begun.

Hopefully, they won't happen. Hopefully, Trump Trump will chickenen out again as he has so often in the past. uh but uh there is uh every possibility that we are about to witness uh a yet another escalation at the hands of the Trump regime and uh consistently with the tone and content of the article from the Wall Street Journal. Embassies throughout West Asia, US embassy has have issued dire warnings.

Uh here is uh a security al alert issued today by the US mission in Saudi Arabia. uh the it is a worldwide caution. The Department of State advises Americans worldwide to exercise increased caution. And you can see also uh that the US embassy in Kuwait issued the same notice today as did interestingly and these aren't the only notices in West Asia issued by US embassies.

There's a whole range of them. I'm just showing you three. But there was also such a notice issued by the US embassy in Egypt, which I just put up on the screen. which is interesting because of course as we reported two days ago a US LNG tanker was struck by a drone uh in an Egyptian port.

Uh and uh although uh the uh the Trump regime and uh the uh Netanyahu regime would probably want you to believe that that was done by a member of the Axis of resistance. No member of the axis of resistance has claimed responsibility uh for that attack. And in fact, the Adanian government through its foreign ministry uh is suggesting uh that this was a false flag which was designed to uh compromise relations between Egypt and Iran which up until this point in time during the war of aggression, excuse me, uh by all appearances have seemed to be relatively stable and cordial. Uh so uh Israel is a very I'm sorry.

Egypt is a very populous country. It has a sizable military and uh I'm sure there's nothing that the Americans and the Israelis would love than to see Egypt become hostile uh to Iran and to enter uh the uh the battle with its own military forces and sacrifice its own soldiers in order to try uh to neutralize Iran. Now, other US corporate media have uh put out some rather interesting reports about this uh disastrous war on Iran that was launched uh launched by Trump and Netanyahu in February 28th of this year. Here you can see a report the headline of a report published by uh the New York Times uh within the last authored by longtime New York Times columnist Steven Eringer.

title is in it on the US appears headed for a strategic defeat with none of President Trump's aims accomplished in the street of Hormoo's closed US allies are see dysfunction and vulnerability from the war and the body of the article uh states the uh the allies of the United States uh worry that the inability of the US to turn military superiority what military superiority are they talking about exactly uh their air defense systems seem utterly incapable of stopping Iran's uh ballistic missiles and drones and they have uh failed miserably to take control of the straight of Hormuz which was completely open uh to maritime traffic prior to this war of aggression. Iran retains its enriched uranium despite all the bombing of its uh uh nuclear facilities. Iran's uh missile capabilities remain intact uh despite all the bombing of missile sites and launchers. Uh, so I think it's rather generous for the New York Times to characterize the United States military as being in a position of superiority to the Iranian military despite the fact that the Adanian military's budget is a tiny little fraction of the gigantic US military budget.

Now the article goes on Erllinger writes uh for the moment Iran is seemingly seemingly resolute. Well, I've been there uh during the war twice and I can tell you that it isn't seemingly uh their resolution, it is very very real. And uh uh whether there's the government is more radical or not. Listen, there's nothing more radical than a genocidal child murdering pedophile regime such as you have in place in the United States and in all uh or at least some major Western countries.

Uh that's uh where you are to uh find the real uh and the most dangerous radicals in the world today in the halls of power uh in the west. And it says the war has left both the United States and Israel in weaker positions. That's true. And uh blaming each other for the mess.

Iranian missiles and drones not only restrict traffic through the strait and damage the e economic infrastructure of allied energy production, but they also continue to threaten American bases across the Middle East. Uh and this article goes on to quote people from uh you know major western think tanks like Chattam House uh to the effect uh that there is a lot of constrnation amongst uh the so-called allies of Washington uh as a result of the inability of the uh Trump regime to achieve any of its objectives after five to six months of absolutely devastating and extremely costly warfare. And uh on top of the New York Times piece, there's also this doozy from the Washington Post which was published uh today on August 1st. US general warns Pentagon he lacks sufficient forces to protect Israel.

And uh the general in question, his name is Alexis Grinkovich. He's the top US commander in Europe. He has warned the Pentagon that he no longer has enough navy destroyers to keep protecting Israel from Iranian ballistic missile attacks. while also meeting US defense needs.

The destroyers which have intercepted missiles targeting Israel are stretched by operations in the Mediterranean Red Sea and around Iran while maintenance issues have further reduced availability. And by the way, maintenance is something that uh doesn't get nearly enough coverage in the media. Uh there is a lot of wear and tear on these military assets. Whether you're talking about uh uh transportation uh uh aircraft used by the uh US Air Force, you're talking about refuelers, F-35s, F-15s, A10 war uh A10 aircraft, whatever the military asset may be.

uh it uh experiences considerable wear and tear during an intense and uh protracted conflict like this particularly in the environmental conditions in uh prevailing in West Asia at this particular time. extreme heat, extreme humidity, and uh so a lot of this uh this military hardware despite the enormous sums of money that Americans pay for it uh is has to be taken offline for extended periods of time in order to be maintained. And uh that's even in cases where it isn't actually damaged by incoming missile or drone fire, it still has to go offline for significant periods of time to be maintained. any of this military hardware is going to have to be uh removed from the battlefield uh for maintenance for extended and repeated periods of time.

And the more the war goes on and the longer it goes on and the more intense it becomes, the more amount of time uh will be spent uh maintaining, repairing and removing from uh the theater of battle uh these expensive uh military assets. And so uh by all indications and this is just one of them, Israel is becoming increasingly vulnerable. Another uh major source of vulnerability for Israel is that over time the Iranian uh aerospace forces have very effectively degraded the layers of air defense that the US has established in West Asia starting with the Persian Gulf, then Saudi Arabia, then Jordan for the protection of Israel. Uh the Iranians have been very uh uh skillful in destroying radar, long range radar systems and uh also uh air air interceptor launchers and uh forcing uh Israel to become uh more and more uh reliant upon its own uh rather ineffective air defense systems.

So uh this is an article that should be taken quite seriously for those who don't want to see uh the destruction of Israel. Uh that is exactly the trajectory that the genocidal entity is on uh should we continue down the path of war. Now another interesting development is that the Pentagon has uh mysteriously raised the casualty figures for the US military again. The US Department of War increased the number of American soldiers uh injured in operations related to the war against Iran by 32 people in one day in the updates of the casualty statistics of its overseas operations which you see up here on the screen.

The latest statistics published in the official system affiliated with the US Ministry of War, the Defense Manpower Data Center, showed the number of injured people as 236 until July 30th. uh but this figure has increased to 268 people in the statistics of July 31st. Uh more satellite imagery has also emerged uh with respect to Saudi Arab Arabia's Aramco facility in Jazan. This is one of the most sophisticated oil refineries in the world we were told.

And it was attacked by uh Yemeni drones and missiles uh a little more than a week ago. And what this uh satellite image shows is that uh two uh three oil storage tanks were completely destroyed. Uh you can see this indicated here with the black spots and the darkened spots and the red arrows and uh two additional tanks sustained significant damage and uh one Horton sphere was completely destroyed. Uh if you're wondering what a Horton sphere is, it's a spherical pressure vessel which is used for industrial scale storage of liqufied gases.

And the types of materials it can uh store include liqufied petroleum gas, liqufied natural gas, and anhydrris ammonia. Now, by the way, this is my uh daily reminder that uh the Saudi cran crown prince had a bromance with the notorious Zionist pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And uh I mention this uh only uh to remind people of the level of the Saudi autotocracy's depravity. You can see here, this is from November in 2016, well after uh the uh the this animal uh Epstein was convicted for uh offenses, criminal offenses relating to the sexual exploitation of a minor.

Uh and it was well known throughout the world that he was a depraved pedophile. You can see how affectionate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was with this monster. uh and uh that is I think as powerful an indication as any of what we're dealing with when we're dealing with the uh the Saudi dictatorship. Now in related news, a video has emerged which purports to show a massive fire at an oil refinery in Edabil, Iraq.

And here is that video. Now, it's unclear what uh caused the blade. at this refinery. Uh but uh it certainly does not bode well this development for uh the ability of the US military to protect oil infrastructure in the many Arab countries that it currently occupies.

One of them being of course Iraq. In addition, within the past , Kuwait reported that it was under a drone attack. And here you can see a notice put out in Arabic and English. The Kuwaiti air defenses are currently responded to hostile drone threats.

The general staff of the Kuwaiti armed forces confirms that any explosions that may be heard are the result of air defense systems intercepting hostile targets. The public is urged to adhere to safety and security instructions issued by the relevant authorities. So, they're telling you in advance before the attack is over that uh if you hear an explosion, it's not because the drone or missile actually struck a target on the ground. It's because it was blown up in midair.

Uh nothing but bollocks here folks. Uh you know the Kuwaiti air defenses have been proven by video and uh satellite imagery to have been largely ineffective in preventing attacks from Iran's aerospace forces. Uh and the other and probably the most important aspect of this particular announcement is that it shows that the Iranian military is not waiting to be struck again before it hits US military bases in the region. It has clearly seized the initiative, which is precisely what it should do.

It is not allowing the United States to dictate when the hostilities will resume and when they will be paused. If the Iranian military were allow the United States to dictate uh the resumption and uh suspension of hostilities, then the hostilities would be suspended and resumed only when it is in the US interests that they be suspended or resumed. Uh you have to actually hit the United States when it doesn't want to be engaged in a hot war. That is the moment when it is most vulnerable.

And I think that the Iranian military uh has clearly come to that conclusion and also has come to the conclusion which is entirely correct that in order for it to prevail ultimately it will have to maintain control over the straight of Hormuz and will have to restrict considerably traffic through the straight of Hormuz. Now in that regard I just want to mention that I saw recently a SenCom announcement. they were issuing one of their fact check announcements where they purport to be correcting the record uh and they said you know the straight of Hormuz is actually opened and thousands of vessels have gone through the straight of Hormuz that's what they said thousands of vessels in the last four months four months okay so the uh average daily uh number of vessels passing through the straight of Hormuz before this criminal war was 130 to 140 over a 4month period uh if you figure that the average was about 135 vessels a day. That's more than 16,000 vessels.

So, what do they mean by thousands of vessels went through uh the street of Horamoose during that period? Does that mean 3,000? Does that mean 4,000? Okay, let's say it's 4,000.

That's 25% less than 25% of the pre-war traffic. And furthermore, they're not they're not providing any evidence that thousands of vessels managed to go through the straight of Hormuz during this period. uh but uh whatever the number may be it's very clear that Iran has dramatically reduced all the independent sources of information about credible reputable independent sources of information about what is going through the straight of Hormuz are in agreement that the amount of traffic has been drastically reduced and that uh uh even though the straight of Hormuz may be technically opened uh there has been a severe reduction in the uh quantity of oil and gas and other essential commodities that are exiting through the straight of Hormuz and that continues right up until today. The real question, frankly, you know, is not whether the straight of Hormuz is clo quote unquote opened or whether it's closed.

The real question is uh how much traffic is getting through and how does that compare uh to the needs of the global economy and the levels of traffic we were seeing before the war. That's the real question. uh so don't get please uh distracted by talk about whether the straight is open or closed. uh now one other item I want to mention in terms of uh the oil industry is that uh while the West Asian oil industries are suffering enormously from this criminal war of aggression.

US oil and gas producers are quite literally corking open the champagne. And here is an article published on uh July 30th by Common Dreams. Shell profits more than double as Iran war pushes up gas prices. And uh it goes on to say that the Londonbased behemoth Shell has reported its net profit more than doubled in the second quarter compared to the same period in 2025 as the Iran war pushed up energy prices.

Oxfam projected earlier this week that the world's six largest fossil fuel corporations sell among them would double their combined profit in the second quarter of 2026 double. They already had obscene profits. And the humanitarian group also found that quote the emissions from BP Chevron X and Mobile Shell and Total Energies were sufficient to cause around one in four heat waves reported globally between 2000 and 2023. heat waves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change.

" This is from Danny Gross, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Now, uh, two things I want to note about this development. It's not at all surprising, uh, that the profits of these Western oil oil companies are soaring. uh but you know oftentimes it's said because of this development that uh you know these countries the United States and Britain uh and the Netherlands where these huge western oil majors are situated uh that they are profiting from the war on Iran.

Well uh that's not the countries that are profiting. It's the oil companies that are profiting and you know a lot of those profits are coming from the citizens of their own countries. Americans are paying a lot more for oil and gas. So too are Europeans.

And so what we're effectively seeing here is a wealth transfer from ordinary citizens, workers, uh the middle class, the poor. There's a wealth transfer from those people to these huge oil and gas corporations and the billionaires who control them. That's what's actually happening. So America is not profiting from this war.

What is happening is that the oligarchy is profiting from this war. Not just the oil oligarchs but also uh the military industrial oligarchs, the billionaires who control the uh major weapons manufacturers and the intelligence companies and the artificial company artificial intelligence corporations. They are the ones who are profiting from this war. uh the uh the vast bulk of the population in western countries including the United States are being hurt by it uh considerably and uh the degree to which they are being prejudiced will only grow over time.

The other thing I want to mention about this article, it's not something that we talk about often enough, is that these wars, these wars in West Asia and Ukraine, the war on Russia and the intensive activity of the criminal United States military and the Caribbean Sea in Latin America, this is creating enormous contaminants for the environment. All of these fires that you see at oil refineries in oil depots, all of these bombs exploding, all of these buildings being burnt to the ground, these uh acts of terror perpetrated by the West and its proxies are uh causing a an absolute avalanche of contaminants, many carcinogens for example, to be uh you know to inundate the environment and not to mention unexloded munitions and uh so therefore There is enormous absolutely enormous negative environmental impacts from these wars on top of the lives that are being lost. The uh futures that are being destroyed, the uh the monies that are being transferred from socially beneficial purposes to enriching the military-industrial complex, the damage that's being done to the environment by all of these wars is going to have profoundly negative impacts on generations of human beings. uh uh to come all over the world, which is one of the most compelling reasons for which we have to bring these imperialistic wars to an end as quickly as possible.

Now, with that, I'd like to close out my report to talking about a major development in the Gaza Strip. Uh Trump's so-called Board of Peace has announced the finalization of what it describes as a major advance in negotiations with uh Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip. And they are calling this uh plan the roadmap for completing the implementation of President Trump's comprehensive peace plan in Gaza. What you're looking at here is a post on X uh that was put out within the last few days by the X account of the Board of Peace, this fraudulent entity that was set up uh by Trump to conceal the fact that Israel is continuing to perpetrate a genocide in Gaza.

And uh let's uh go through this in some detail because it's important to understand what it is that the resistance has actually agreed to and to dispel all of the mythology that the Zionist uh lobby groups and the Israeli government are putting out about uh the uh actual terms of this plan. So let's begin with uh article one uh or principle one I suppose. It's uh reads as follows. All parties, all parties reaffirm their commitment to President Trump's comprehensive plan to achieve peace, which constitutes together with UN Security Council resolution 2803, the agreed upon international framework guiding the implementation of this process.

Through this process, the party's aim at ending the cycle of destruction, securing the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, restoring normal life, enabling Palestinian governance, reconstruction, security, recovery, and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors, and facilitate launching a credible political path that achieves self-determination and statethood. Okay, why am I putting the emphasis on the this language? because this is everything that the resistance has been demanding but that Israel has fanatically refused to allow any of this. It's not allowing a return to normal life.

It's not withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. In fact, it's encroaching more and more on the little uh part of the territory that remains within nominal control of the resistance. It is not enabling the reconstruction or allowing it or Palestinian self-governance. Uh no recovery in economic development.

no rehabilitation of damaged sectors. So the very first principle under this plan calls for Israel to do a whole bunch of things that it has uh absolutely refused to do both in word and in action from the very day that this board of peace was created. Then let's go on to the next section. This is principle two.

Israel shall fully complete without delay all remaining commitments under sharm shik protocol particularly the cessation of military operations as detailed in annex one. Well, they're they're killing people every day and they have been from the beginning of this travesty. Then it says Hamas and the Palestinian faction shall complete the sessation of all military operations they already have months ago. In parallel, the timetable and implement imple implementation mechanisms of this roadmap shall be prepared within 14 days after all parties approve the road map.

I'll come back to that in a second. Is Israel going to actually approve this road map? Which could be extended by a decision by the International Verification Committee. Upon the completion of the timetable and implementation mechanisms, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza or the NCA shall enter the strip and start to assume its responsibilities.

This is an all Palestinian governance board. Let's be very clear about that. And uh then it says that the progression from one phase to the following one shall be contingent on the verified completion of the commitments of the previous phase. This verification shall be done by the international verification committee which shall also observe any violations by either party through an enhanced monitoring mechanism.

Okay. Then we go on principle four. Hamas and other factions agree that all civilian governance security functions at Gaja shall be handed over to this is the national committee of governance in accordance with the pre with President Trump's plan. They also assert that NCAG shall enjoy full independence in carrying out its responsibilities and the faction shall not interfere in NCAG affairs during the transitional period.

Upon fully assuming its responsibilities in Gaza, the NCA shall maintain the continuity of civilian institutions and public services. I mean those have been basically destroyed and Israel continues to degrade them every day. It then says all civil servants shall be treated lawfully, fairly and with dignity with respect to their rights. Uh with international support, NCAG shall carry out a comprehensive audit of the financial administrative affairs in Gaza and protect, recover and administer public assets and resources.

So, the Palestinian resistance groups have agreed to this, which shows you the degree to which they are prepared to be transparent and they are prepared to allow an independent uh group of Palestinian technocrats to take control of Gaza. They put it in writing and uh there's no indication that they are not serious about meeting their commitments. At the bottom here, it says NCAG shall seek to assess legitimate commitments to suppliers, contractors, and other parties up to a total amount of no more than 400 million USD. I don't know where that number comes from, but I can tell you that it is grotesqually inadequate to meet the needs of the Palestinian people.

Then it continues and at principle 8, a process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depot of weapons and tunnels shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under Sharmik protocol, the entry of NCA and the deployment of the international stabilization force. So the process of disarmament will only begin after Israel has complied with that agreement which requires it to withdraw from Gaza and to allow I believe the number is 500 trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza per day. It's not even come close to that at any point during this so-called uh ceasefire and peace process. And uh the process according to this uh the process of disarmament or decommissioning it's not disarmament it's decommissioning uh shall be administered and implemented by NCA in a gradual sequential and timebound manner according to an implementation time timetable that shall be completed within 14 days after all parties approve.

This process shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal in phases from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of armed militias in accordance with article 10 and the Palestinian faction shall take part in this process. And I'll show you a few more provisions of this agreement that then talks about the or this plan. It says under principle 12, the temporary international stabilization force shall be deployed in Gaza to separate Israeli forces from NCAG controlled areas, ISF shall not perform any police mission or missions related to the Palestinian society. Furthermore, it shall monitor compliance for all parties with the ceasefire, train the Palestinian police, secure the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces shall complete their phased withdrawal from Gaza Strip according to an agreed upon timetable consistent with article 8 of the road map in accordance with the comprehensive peace plan. NCAG shall be responsible for handling internal security incidents. And finally uh principle nine personal weapons in Gaza shall be subject to the regulations of relevant Palestinian laws as the transitional authority in the strip. NCA shall be the sole authority to register weapons, issue and revoke licenses and enforce the law, including through reintegration and social support.

Weapons of the mil militias, this is principle 10, shall be decommissioned and stored under NCA authority according to an agreed upon timetable. Members of those militias shall not be integrated in the security and police services. So what's going on here frankly and it's very clear from this agreement is that first of all the Palestinian resistance is not agreeing to disarm before Israel has completely withdrawn from the Gaza Strip. That's the first thing.

The second thing is Israel has to comply uh with other key provisions of uh the so-called ceasefire agreement uh that it has routinely and systematically violated including the provision of adequate humanitarian aid reconstruction in Gaza and uh uh you know allowing uh the uh this this independent committee of Palestinian technocrats to come in and assume control. It has not done any of those things. And until it does those things, the Palestinians are not agreeing uh the resistance groups to give up their weapons to anybody. And in any event, even if Israel were to do those things, the weapons would not go to Israel.

The weapons would go uh would come into the custody of the NCA, the Palestinian uh technocratic authority. And uh on top of all of that, the plan, as I indicated at the very outset when I was reading to you its terms, is tied to a path to the creation of a Palestinian state, which Israel fanatically rejects, is completely adamant about there being no Palestinian state anytime soon or ever. What does this all mean? This all means that this is nothing but hot air because Israel is not going to do any of the things it's required to do under this agreement in order for this decommissioning process to begin and to be completed.

So if they're telling you that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups have agreed to disarm, they're really lying. That's not what they've agreed to do. They've agreed if Israel uh meets a whole bunch of conditions that it has violated systematically from day one, then they will gradually turn their weapons over to a Palestinian authority, which is not at all what uh Israel is demanding. And I think uh all we need to know is that the Israeli media itself is reporting this Hebrew channel 13.

" Close quote. Well, this is nonsense. Okay? They're not going to have no direct confrontation with Washington.

If Washington actually tries to force them to uh withdraw from Gaza before uh the resistance groups give up their weapons, then they will do that. The problem is that Washington won't force them to do it. It will not use its leverage. Why?

Not because Israel controls Washington, but because Washington wants Israel, its rabbid dog in West Asia, to physically exterminate all of those who resist US age in the region. That's why Washington will not use its leverage to force Israel to comply with this or any other agreement. And this channel 13th art uh report goes on and says the claim that Israel will not retreat by even an inch before Hamas is disarmed. Uh they claim uh adding that Netanyahu on the eve of the elections will not agree to any withdrawal without the disarmament of the Gaza Strip.

So they're not going to give up an inch unless all the weapons have been taken away from Hamas. And I assure you that the Israelis are going to say we won't allow those weapons to be held by the technocratic Palestinian committee. we have to take possession of the weapons, which of course the resistance will never agree to. So this is just a whole lot of smoke and mirrors and you shouldn't believe for one second that this is anything other than a cover for the continuation of the genocide in Gaza and now also in the West Bank and South Lebanon.

Uh and what I think is most remarkable about this, you know, the resistance groups were saying for a long time that they would only turn over their weapons to a Palestinian authority once is once Palestine actually had a state. This is different. So what they're saying is we're prepared under certain conditions to give up our weapons to a Palestinian authority before the state of Palestine actually comes into existence, is allowed to uh form. and uh become a truly sovereign entity.

However, we have to be on the path uh to uh a Palestinian statethood uh before we will hand those weapons over. So, they actually the resistance have made a very very significant concession here. But I think they're fully wideeyed about this and they understand entirely that Israel is not going to comply with any of this and Washington will not comply force Israel to do so. Certainly not the Trump regime.

uh at least there's no indication that it's going to do that at this stage. And what they're doing here by agreeing to this is they're showing to the whole world uh that they are uh doing everything they can to remain flexible and that the responsibility for the ongoing horrors in the Gaza Strip lies strictly and exclusively with the genocidal western bankbacked monsters in uh the Israeli colony. Now, the last thing I want to show you before signing off today is something that brought a uh smile to my face this morning. Uh this is a report from the Cypress Mail.

A few days ago, uh it was brought to my attention uh by uh a comrade in Cyprus that this billboard had been erected in Cyprus near the Laka airport where there's a lot of traffic coming in and out from Israel. huge numbers of tourists and you know uh residents of Cyprus are coming from Israel nowadays and uh this was a political advertisement in Hebrew on a billboard outside the Lnika airport. Imagine that. Have you ever seen in your own country a political advertisement a huge billboard a political advertisement in a language uh other than the official language or languages of your country relating to an election in another state?

You ever seen that in your I've never seen that anywhere. This is the first time. Why the hell are political billboards in Hebrew popping up in what is supposed to be a sovereign independent state, Cyprus? In any case, uh it turns out that somebody decided to take matters into their own hands.

The article says that the billboard was vandalized in Palestinian colors. I prefer to say that it was beautified. That's my report for Reason to Resist on August 1st, 2026. I wish you all well and uh an enjoyable first weekend of August.

[admin]

Iran DESTROYS Gulf Oil & Israel, Trump BACKS DOWN! | Seyed M. Marandi
Danny Haiphong
Started streaming 4 minutes ago #iran #iranwar #trump

Prof. Mohammad Marandi joins from Iran to discuss the blistering developments in the war including Iran's powerful response to Trump's attack threat which has the US and Israel backing down from the edge of catastrophic war.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117023461141824050
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat. Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL. The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment. Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Aug 01, 2026, 8:05 PM

Phone Call: Saudis Issue Ultimatum to Trump on Behalf of GCC. The Gulf countries bought time in a cycle where they themselves are negotiating to pay for the war damages to Iran, make concessions, and advance a peace plan.
Global21
Aug 02, 2026
https://global21.substack.com/p/phone-c ... irect=true

Amid strong rumors that Netanyahu had already agreed with Trump to resume bombings against Iran, Gulf countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were already working behind the scenes.

Qatar, in particular, had been warning about the imminent risks to its massive infrastructure and natural gas exports. This, however, was not enough to dissuade Trump, who was moving forward with his plan, especially since the two major American natural gas exporting companies are benefiting from the scenario and were donors to Trump’s campaign. The UAE had also been warning about the risks to its facilities, but with little progress.

In the last 72 hours, these countries informed Washington that local intelligence reports confirmed Iran had already mapped oil fields, refineries, and power plants across all GCC members for an immediate counter-attack should the US initiate the bombings, but also to no avail.

It was Mohammed bin Salman who aligned the GCC’s position. On Saturday, he placed a call to Trump and warned that Iran would respond to any bombings by directly attacking the energy infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf neighbors. This was nothing Trump and Netanyahu did not already know and had not already ignored in advance when deciding on the attack.

But the Saudi leader went further: on behalf of the GCC, he expressly requested that Trump back down from plans for large-scale attacks against Iranian territory. He directly demanded clarification on Washington and Tel Aviv’s plan of action, arguing that missteps at this juncture would destabilize the global energy market for extended periods. In doing so, he implicitly conveyed two things:

The first is that, if destroyed, the GCC economies would be unable to honor the signed agreements, Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), and long-term structural partnerships celebrated during Trump’s administration, values that range between $2 trillion and $3 trillion. This is not to mention the billions injected directly into the businesses of Donald Trump himself and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

To the wise, it became clear that these resources could be redirected toward investments in other blocs, including the Chinese.

The second is that, if Trump refused the request of the Saudis, acting as spokespersons for the Gulf and pressed ahead, he would be solely responsible for the destruction of local economies and a global economic crisis. Faced with structural disaster in their own territories, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries would close their airspace to American fighter jets and revoke permissions for the use of logistical bases in the region.

It was these two implicit messages that deterred Trump. Everything else he had already evaluated and, nonetheless, decided to proceed with the attack.

Transcript

Welcome back to the show everyone. As you can see, I have Professor Muhammad Mandi on to break down the latest developments. And first, I just want to get to uh Trump backing down. Uh the United States has backed down from strikes on Iran.

And a big reason for this appears to be Iran's planned response to US and Israeli aggression. I'm pulling it up here. This was released by Iranian sources. uh Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, their oil and gas fields were all on the table to be struck should the US and Israel have attacked.

Iran is still actually striking Iraq. Uh the border area where the Kurdish proxies the US has trained are uh formulated and organized. Those forces are said to be incredibly weak at this moment and Iran is not relenting. Now, here is the notice that Trump gave on Truth Social announcing that the strikes were off, saying that the US is locked and loaded, ready to go against Iran at levels military terror, strength, and power not seen since World War II.

But we've been asked by Iran, this is a key point here, and other Middle Eastern countries to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal, not parameters, but the perimeters of a deal have been agreed to. This would include total opening of the straight of hormuz an end to Iran's nuclear threat and based on this request for the benefit of the world and likewise the survival and successful successful and prosperous Iran to cancel the attack. Channel 12 Israeli media said that this was true. They said that Qatar uh brokered a compromise that Iran had agreed to.

Saudi Arabia was reported to have been deeply involved in pressuring Donald Trump or maybe begging Donald Trump not to go through with this joint USIsraeli strike. Iran has rejected all claims that they have agreed to some kind of compromise. So, Professor Brahman Randi, maybe you can help us understand what just happened. Is this taco served on Tuesday?

I mean, on Sunday, I should say. Usually, it is on Tuesday, but it seems like uh Donald Trump has backed down for now. What do you make of it? [snorts] Yes, for now he's backed down.

There's uh no agreement with Iran. There are no negotiations with Iran. Nothing has changed. Uh what caused him to change his position is probably a combination of of what you pointed out first uh the fact that Iran said it's going to strike back very hard.

Uh if you go back to the letter he wrote, he spoke of of terror, which is uh I thought was an interesting word for him to use. Basically saying that the United States armed forces is uh out there to terrorize Iranians. Uh so I guess he's basically accepting that he is a terrorist. Um but um the Iranians made no requests.

It had 3 minutesnothing to do with Iran. One of the reasons was probably Iran's planned retaliation. The second was the I would assume the contacts that the Saudis and others probably and the rest made to Washington begging them not to choose this course of action. Um the real reason of course is unknown.

I don't know what goes on in the White House, but I think that uh the first reason Iran's threat was was first and foremost something that deeply concerned Trump Trump and then other forces at play perhaps helped convince him that this was a foolish act because ultimately if Iran had attacked uh if the United States had attacked and then Iran had attacked Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Batar, the Emirates and uh 4 minutesKuwait uh and destroyed their critical infrastructure. That would send a send a message to markets across the world that uh there will be no more energy coming from or or refined goods or helium or fertilizer coming from the Persian Gulf anymore. It doesn't matter if there's a deal after that or not because there there's there'll be no facilities left working to produce anything. So if that if if there were scenes on uh viewed across the world of plants on fire across the [clears throat] region then no ma no amount of manipulation or u propaganda Israeli regime but even there they have not been safe from Iranian strikes and so they're gathering increasingly in um in in in in smaller places and that would make uh any Iranian strike against them more devastating in future.

So I think there there are a host of different things that work that worry him u as we approach the midterms. I think uh that's about uh 3 months literally now 3 months 3 months and a day left till the midterms and uh I don't think uh I don't think things are looking good for him anyway let alone with this sort of uh with some sort of uh renewed uh war that would have devastating consequences for the world. Uh, however, as I was telling you, as we were discussing before the show, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Uh, he could strike tonight, he could strike next week.

I mean, we're talking about Trump, someone who is completely unpredictable, someone who is easily swayed uh in different directions. Uh, we know that the Zionists are desperate to have this war. Uh we know that the Zionist uh influential Zionists in the United States are desperate to to have this um assault on Iran take place. So anything is possible in the days and weeks ahead.

But for now on for the for the time being, the straight of Hormos is closed. Uh except for very few ships that are allowed through. And as we all know, the Red Sea is closed. Uh it's a southern um bubble mandabra is close to Saudi shipping and that I think is going to intensify the uh energy crisis even more uh in the days and weeks ahead.

So things are not looking good and especially now Saudi Arabia by bombing Iraq and murdering uh members of the 7 minutesIraqi armed forces. I mean, they bombed military bases that belong to the Iraqi armed forces and called them Iranian militias, but these are uh people who work for the Iraqi army, these are people who are paid by the Iraqi government. And by murdering these people, especially now, right before Arbain, the for the 40th day after the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet, who was who is the symbol of resistance in in the Islamic world and especially the Shia world. Uh resistance against oppression and and injustice and the him and the symbol for the supporting of the marginalized and the and the victims and the deprived.

At this particular time, it created enormous outrage among Iraqis and Iranians because five Iranian uh trainers were also murdered in the Saudi American air strikes. And of course in Yemen, the Saudis bombed the ports and the international airport. So things are heating up and Iran's allies in Axis of resistance in the days and weeks ahead are probably going to pay play a much more uh important role in the in this growing conflict. So it does it not we're not in we're not moving towards peace.

the the region is highly um it's the the tensions are very high and there's a there's a very high chance for a regional war breaking out. Yeah. Well, as we speak as we speak the root of the problem, the Israeli regime, they're killing people every day in Gaza. Today 18 people including entire families were murdered today.

I mean we should always remember Gaza. 18 people so far have been murdered today. Entire families wiped out. And this is supposedly a ceasefire.

And so all of this conflict between the axis of resistance in the United States. It's all about Palestine. It's all about Gaza. It's all about ethnosremacism and genocide and the resistance against genocide.

It's basically the axis of resistance against the axis of genocide. What I find really interesting for us is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has entangled itself, has gone headfirst into war, not just with Yemen, but also the Iraqi resistance and then somehow someway is begging on its knees for Trump and Israel not to strike Iran. And uh what you just mentioned Gaza uh we also have Lebanon Israel continues to 10 minutesstrike and terrorize.

Uh this is a this is literally point number one. The idea that somehow uh threats on Iranian infrastructure was the reason that strikes in happened last night seems very far-fetched since Iran never budged on any of these points. especially about you point number one which said end the aggression and the war on all fronts that hasn't happened at all and yet we have Donald Trump uh talking about how Iran is the one that has come to some kind of compromise. Uh what what what do you think is the reason why the United States and Israel are playing this?

It feels like a game almost. It felt like this weekend was some kind of gamble that just didn't come into being. What What do you make of it? Well, I think uh Trump has trapped himself.

He is uh he has obeyed the Zionist lobby. He's obeyed the Israeli regime. He's gone into a war that he thought he would win. He should have known.

He should have known after the 12-day war. But I believe that US intelligence is deeply uh flawed. I don't think it's just it's the Israeli regime uh uh giving false uh intelligence or fake intelligence. I think uh US intelligence is probably uh deeply uh um embedded or deeply they believe very much in these narratives on Iran about it being brittle and falling apart.

I don't I really don't think Western intelligence agencies know much about uh Iran. I think they mostly uh believe what they want to believe. But in any case, u he he went into war which failed and then he we started a much bigger war failed again and I think he's desperate for some sort of victory. So perhaps I'm guessing total guess that maybe last night the intention wasn't to attack and he was hoping that the Iranians would capitulate.

I don't know but that's just not going to happen. We we know that that's not going to happen. Iranians are not going to budge from their condition to name a few. And uh if at some point there is an agreement, the Iranians are going to be demanding more and they're going to be demanding uh certain things upfront because it's obvious that the United States is is completely unreliable and untrustworthy.

It was it was like that before Trump, but under Trump, it's just completely unreliable. Trump's signature means absolutely nothing to anyone. So in future if there's an agreement Iran is going to be demanding about the siege on Yemen. For years they've imposed a siege on women and children in Yemen.

That's no longer acceptable. And Iran is going to be demanding about Gaza. True. it is uh implied in the agreement inou but uh I don't think uh I think after this it's 13 minutesgoing to be more uh there's going to be much more focus on this of course the problem with Gaza as we discussed before together is the is the the fact that leaders of our region really betrayed the Palestinian cause and went to Egypt and signed that uh document basically giving uh full support to Trump and whitewashing his genocide and these countries were guarantors.

They were supposed to be guarantors. these leaders, these regional and global leaders who went to Shamash and yet uh we ever since then the Israelis have been slaughtering Palestinians on a daily basis and now during the past few days and weeks is becoming much worse and today it's been mass slaughter. We're getting it's getting worse by the day and the starvation is increasing. They're they're they're bombing uh medical supplies in Gaza in order to make people die of disease and make children die of illness.

They're not allowing uh food to get in inadequate amounts. And also those who need spe have special needs are intentionally preventing those foods and those medicines to get in so that those children will die because they want to cut the population. They want to decrease the population whether whether it's by bombing them or sniping them or starving them or killing them of disease. All of these uh meth methods are being used by the Israeli regime to bring down the Palestinian population.

I mean it's you know genocide uh that is taking place in front of our eyes. But Western media has walked away. They're look they've always they've always been trying to look away. But now they know that the the Zionist regime has no legitimacy, they can no longer pretend that it's legitimate.

So instead of reporting it and lying and twisting the reports to the benefit of the Israeli regime, they know that's not going to work anymore. So they just don't report. They just look away. They look somewhere else and try to make us forget what's going on in Gaza.

But that makes us more responsible than ever before to, you know, whatever we're talking about to go back to Gaza. [clears throat] If we're talking about the criminal activities that car are being carried out on a daily basis in Lebanon against the people of Lebanon because of Hezbollah's support for the Palestinians, we have to still go back to Gaza and remind people about God. We're talking about Yemen where there's a there's a siege imposed about against women and children again. Still, we have to go back to Gaza when they bomb Iran.

We have to also remind people about Gaza because that is the focus of their criminal behavior. And it's also the reason why Iran, Ezah, and Yemen are being attacked is because their support for the Palestinian people, the fact that they cannot accept genocide. But in any case, those countries that went to Egypt for that uh betrayal, they're fully responsible for what's going on. They do nothing and they make it more difficult for Iran to negotiate over Gaza because Trump and his henchmen say that well, we've already negotiated Gaza and we have an agreement.

So even though that agreement is not being they're not committing themselves to the agreement, Saudi just one thing before we continue because you mentioned Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is quite extraordinary. I mean, his leader, Muhammad bin Salman, we we know he has a what his history is like. He he once beat up the former prime minister of Lebanon, Hari.

Uh he uh he murdered a journalist, Jamal Kashoki, someone who I knew, and we disagreed on many things, not everything, but he still killed him and got rid of his body in in Turkey. uh he waged this genocidal war against Yemen with [clears throat] Obama's Obama greenlighting it and then he besieged which which they were cooperating together with in Syria in the in the genocide in Yemen in Libya but they the Saudis and the Emiratis turned against uh Qatar and then Turkey and Gatar filtered away from them in in and away from cooperating over the genocide and uh Yemen. So this is a person who just is not exactly the an ideal leader. And now he provoked this war with Yemen and uh bombed the international airport as an Iranian passenger plane with a with a with a crew of men and women was about to land enraging Iranians and carrying out an act of war against Yemen.

So he provoked Yemen. And then when Yemen struck at Saudi oil installations in retaliation, he was too cowardly or the Saudis were too cow cowardly to acknowledge that Yemen did it because they didn't want to confront it. They blamed the Iraqis. Yemen took responsibility.

Iraq said nothing happened and they bombed Iraq and enraged Iraqis, killing both Iraqis and Iranians. So Saudi Arabia has has is turning this into a regional war with Americans by the way because the Americans bombed Iraq with the Saudis. The Americans played the primary role and in Yemen it is believed that the Americans pushed Saudi Arabia to to bomb the airport and then later the port aloud. So the Saudis are bringing catastrophe upon themselves by provoking Yemen and Iraq and angering Iran even further.

And then when the Americans want to strike, they call the Americans and say, "We're in trouble. " So it's it's quite amazing what sort of position the Saudis take. And then the Saudis try to create a coalition against Yemen. And then he they claim I don't know if it's you know we'll have to see but they claim that certain countries have joined this coalition.

So instead of these countries joining a coalition to help Gaza, they join a coalition led by Saudi against the people of Yemen who the Saudis have imposing a siege upon for well over a decade. I mean it's the upside. We live in an upside down world void of any morality. Indeed.

And uh what Saudi Arabia is demonstrating is that the leadership of the region in these so-called Arab states are are nothing but misleadership. Uh and uh uh now there are reports person Ronnie that the UAE in that drop in that Wall Street Journal report on the uh United States backing down the United Arab Emirates was said to be the one country in the region that was demanding Trump take more decisive action on Iran. So they were backing the strikes that the US and Israel eventually backed down on. And then another report that has just come in from the Wall Street Journal as well acting I guess as taking I guess taking the reigns from Barack Ravid today from Axios.

They say that Iran is considering a preemptive strike or preemptive strikes as Iran is now aware of Trump's political vulnerability and are looking to exploit it. What do you make of these reports professor Randi? Maybe you can start with the UAE on on downward to the the idea that Iran now is going to uh conduct strikes uh preemptively. Well, with regards to UAE, I don't uh I I really I I can't say this is true or false.

The Wall Street Journal is not uh known to be very honest and they could be uh putting out propaganda to uh create a wedge uh between the UAE and Iran. The UAE UAE officials after the fighting dur like a couple months ago when they were negotiating with the Iranians, the UAE told UA officials told Iran that uh you know when the Israelis were working hard to create divisions between Iran and uh whether that's true or not, you know, that's that's debatable. The Iranians will figure out what role UAE plays in in all this. It has more than enough connections across across the region beyond uh and intelligence to you know to figure this sort of this out.

So it's possible but again I don't trust uh the Wall Street Journal. I don't trust any mainstream western media outlet. But with regards to Iran carrying out preemptive strikes, uh, I'm not quite even sure what that means. I mean, Iran did not start the war.

Iran did not restart the war. As we speak, the United States is carrying out war against Iran. The siege on uh Iranian ports is an act of war and it's it's targeting ordinary Iranians. That's the objective to uh to hurt ordinary Iranians.

So that they're waging war. And last night they they were at least hypothetically speaking uh they were prepared to carry out an all-out assault on Iranian uh power plants and civilian targets. War crime after war crime after war crime. No condemnation from the Europeans.

No condemnation from Western uh funded NGO NOS's. No condemnation from Canada or Australia or New Zealand or you know the European Parliaments. No condemnation from any of the mainstream western media. Nothing which I think says more than enough about whether these are credible institutions and whether the the the ever really cared about human rights and human dignity and justice and that sort of thing at all in the past.

So in the present, let alone in the present. So uh I you know there's no such thing as a preemptive Iranian attack. There is no ceasefire as we speak. A couple when the Iranians struck uh American positions in Kuwait and of course in Jordan after the Americans halted their 13 days of attack.

That's that's not preemptive. Just because America stopped bombing, that doesn't mean Iran is going to accept a ceasefire. Iran didn't accept any ceasefire. And I said, as I said, we have a siege on our force.

So if Iran carried out a strike, there's nothing preemptive about there was nothing preemptive about it. And if Iran tonight, let's say, carries out a strike on American positions, which is possible. They did that in Jordan and in Kuwait, uh that wouldn't be preemptive. That would be a continuation of the war.

When Americans launch war against the Iranian people, they can't complain about any Iranian retaliation and they cannot complain about Iran striking them in order to prevent their gathered forces from being a threat to the country. So there's nothing really preemptive about it. Uh but uh you know that's the narrative that we see that just like the the renewal of the fighting in the western media. They say well Iran struck tankers in the Persian Gulf in the straight of Hamos and that's what start we started the war whereas and then Iran violated the deal theou which we all know that that's just fake the Americans violated the deal not the Iranians the Iranians opened the straight business was picking up the number of ships passing through were increasing meanwhile the Americans refused to force the Israelis to leave Lebanon they refused to hand over Iran and stolen assets They lifted the sanctions on Iranian oil exports and then reversed it after a few days.

They expans They expanded the sanctions regime, a violation of the deal. They continue to threaten Iranian leaders and the Iranian people in public statements, a violation of the deal. And then they opened the corridor in violation of article 5 in the straight of foremost and the Saudis and the amiratis and the kuis collaborated with them to get ships to go through that despite the fact that during the period when is valid it is Iran that manages and normalizes uh trade through the trade. So the Americans were violating with the collaboration of these countries and all of its commitments literally.

And then of course when Iran after days of warning the Saudis and the others and the Americans and the Iraqis not to use that corridor and to use the Iranian corridor after they ignored Iran for days, then the Iranian struck those ships because it's a part of the deal. So the Americans want to vi wanted to violate all of their commitments and then to to to undermine Iran in the straight of hormones and take over the straight of hormones and win the war win a war that they lost on the battlefield during siege warfare. It's not it wasn't going to happen. So they brought this and then they renewed the fighting.

So it was the Americans who did this. It's clear as day. But you know since western media is obedient to power they'll just repeat nonsense. And so right now when they say the Emirates wanted more, I can't say.

I don't I can't say it's true or I can't say it's false because I don't know if there's an agenda there. Or when they say that Iran may carry out a preemptive attack. When they use the word preemptive, it's it's obviously a loaded word. But of course, Iran may carry out an attack because we're at war with Iran is at war with the United States.

And of course, this issue about Trump's vulnerabilities. discovered Iran's vulnerability as if like we've been you and I and others have been and many of your discover audience membersh everyone has been talking about it for months like as if like this was something that [laughter] they figured out last night. Yeah. All you have to do is follow the events of this weekend and uh conclude that indeed Trump is vulnerable.

There is a report actually a new poll I think. Give Danny a like so that it could Yeah. Yeah. Hit the like button because that will help illuminate more people in understanding just how vulnerable this administration.

Maybe it's because they watch your the Iranian maybe enough people liked your show so that the Iranian leaders last night saw whoever was on your show and then that caused them to recognize that Trump is in a vulnerable position. So you need more likes. Yeah. Exactly.

28 minutesSo, uh, but you know, uh, a new poll says that 67% of, uh, those pled now in the United States believe that Trump's actions against Iran has been harmful to the United States. So, uh, vulnerability doesn't even begin to describe uh, the situation, especially domestically, but globally too. President Randi, this is was reported in Financial Times as this strike was supposedly about to gear up even though it didn't really uh get off the ground so much uh this weekend. But the Financial Times is confirming that the US is now withdrawing and has withdrawn most of its presence if not all from Kuwait and Bahrain after Iranian attacks.

So again, vulnerability I don't think is the right word for us. What word would you use to describe this? It's it's very bad. Kuwait is incredibly important.

Bahrain is incredibly important. A lot of people have been downplaying the US's military posture and whether it's important to the Epstein class or not, but nonetheless, these are two major military strongholds that are supposed to be used against Iran. I don't think that the Americans have fully withdrawn from northern Iraq, uh, Kuwait or Bah. They may have moved around forces.

They may they may they have removed some assets and taken them to Jordan which the Iranians struck that and surprised them with very precision with great precision those some of those assets were destroyed but uh they haven't emptied these uh these bases and they haven't emptied these countries and they've been they've moved from bases to hotels and uh and other buildings. So the forces are in, you know, they're embedded in civilian uh neighborhoods and civilian um they're making civilian targets. If uh just a a few days ago, I think a week or so ago, maybe a bit longer, the Iranians warned that the Americans were now using buildings outside of their bases to hide in and to carry out their work and that uh these places are no longer safe. So, um yeah, they they haven't left Kuwait or they haven't left uh northern Iraq and they they are assisting proxy groups in northern Iraq.

They're trying to organize them to carry out an assault. Iranian soldier was murdered today in the clashes. And they're also working in in Pakistan in the no man's land in Pakistan where it's not well governed. They are supporting these takiti groups, these Wahhabi groups, the Salafi groups.

And uh over the past two three weeks I think a couple of couple of Iranian uh police officers and soldiers were murdered by these people. Of course they they they take lots of casualties themselves and the Iranians as you know have been bombing northern Iraq day and night for for weeks now. But in any case, I'm sure that I mean there there is an American presence in there is an American American military presence in there is a American military presence in Bah. Yeah.

In the report it specifically says repositioned a lot of these troops and equipment to as you said Jordan and also to Israel. And I wanted your comment and in hotels and in hotels. Yes, hotels. Well, right.

Uh and other franching point during the it was something that came up during the initial February 28th uh onward uh 40 or so days. But remember what they would do in Gaza in order to carry out genocide. they would say they're like under hospitals or they're un you know in schools or any excuse was of course and the western media would just run with it because they were helping them carry out the genocide but uh I guess but here they can go into hotels they can go into other build they can hide among civilians and it's okay and no one in the west is going to and it have no doubt that if Iran starts striking those hotels which they probably will at some point if this continues then they'll you know they'll be screaming about Iran targeting civilian targets they will and uh Iran during the as I was uh mentioning before the initial USIsraeli aggression those 39 40 days or so uh this was happening uh uh Iran was ve saying they were very aware for example in Bahrain and mana and other parts of the Gulf UAE and Dubai that there were US forces hauling themselves up in civilian hotels, warning the uh civilians there and uh other non-combatant forces to get out because uh and get as far away as possible because it's a huge risk and that that and that's what's happening. And I wanted your comment on the Israel Israel situation in this because you mentioned Gaza and we've talked about Lebanon.

uh you know, Israel is still on a rampage. But one really interesting thing, the European Command uh said that they don't have the ability to protect Israel. I guess they've been supplying the destroyers assigned to them to protect Israel and they're saying that they don't have the ability to do this. And this came right as this strike was supposed to happen and then the strike didn't happen.

So uh uh I'm curious on whether you believe this might have played a role in the fact that even before this talk of a major strike on Iranian uh power facilities, energy infrastructure, Israel has been staying back and uh you know of course doing what it does uh more on its periphery genocide. So what are your thoughts on this? What do you make of those reports that Israel is also finding itself vulnerable uh as it moves through this war? It could have played a role, but I mean uh that you know they were incapable of protecting the regime and of course which begs the question why is the United States always focusing on protecting the Israeli regime?

But I mean every day they they sacrifice Kuwait, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia by striking Iran and then Iran retaliates. I mean just like last night they were threatening to destroy Iran and Iran you know said that if we will retaliate if you do so and this by the way shows the difference between Iran and the United States. Iran does not intend to destroy anything. The only reason why they said they'd do it was in retaliation to American attacks.

And the reason why Iran would do it if if the Americans attack is that these countries are collaborating with the United States against Iran. Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, increasingly Oman, and of course Jordan, and of course Israeli regime, all of them are collaborating with the United States, these regional uh regimes. So, but but when the United States doesn't attack, Iran doesn't retaliate. Iran does not strike.

So this is for Iran it's deterrence is to prevent the United States from carrying out these atrocities. And as we discussed before during the war itself through the United States and Israeli regime murdered 3,500 people with the help of these regimes and these regimes when they after after the war they only had a handful of people killed only handful despite all the drones and missiles that the Iranians fight all the damage the Iran caused. Why? Because Iran was careful not to strike civilians.

Yet you still see people from these regimes saying why is Iran bombing us or they're western think tankers who obviously get their funding from these people some of them they say why is Iran targeting these countries which have nothing to do with the war of course they key to the war without these countries this war could not have been waged but um but in any case it is interesting that uh this was said about being not being able to protect Israelis but It's a bit odd too that this would be said in public and I would imagine that a person of that stature would be in trouble for saying it in public. But uh it may have played a role or maybe they allowed him to say that to give them um 37 minutesa means to um back down or to to change their posture not carry out the attack. I don't know. But um but it is strange.

I mean I I I uh I would like to figure out why he was allowed to say that because that's not the norm. The mil military officers usually do not go out in public and say we can't do this or we can't do that right before major military operation unless it's like uh in they're in parliament or United States in a hearing committee or something like that. It's it's bizarre. It's it's strange.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is strange. And some have surmised that the United States, especially the military breasts, are trying to find some way to create an off-ramp because of the massive damage that they've sustained.

Yes. But why would such a high ranking officer say that in public? Yeah. I mean, have any of your guests speculated on on the reason?

Okay. No. No. No.

Um Oh, it looks like we might have lost you for a second for us. If you do end up uh regaining connection, just come right back. Oh, now you're back. " Uh just saying that you would think that someone of that stature would be punished or reprimanded or removed for saying that in public right before an operation.

I I don't understand why he said it unless he was said that they told him he he can't say that for whatever reason. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it I guess the question now is uh person what next?

because uh uh some have said that this cancelling of the attack is like a uh period where Trump is claiming a fig leaf to Iran to and everybody involved to get the deal done as he said in his post. But it doesn't look like there's any deal. It doesn't look like there's any talks. Iran is rejecting all of this.

Uh Israel is still wreaking havoc in the region. Saudi Arabia is now entangled further and deeper into war and the United States isn't at war. And that point about preemptive strengths earlier, it's really important to remember that the United States started using this term adnauseium when they declared the war on terror after 9/11. And it was just an excuse to attack other countries to destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, and of course the rest of the region uh through military means out of the justification that if it didn't happen, then the consequences for the US would be worse.

Now Iran is actually at war and nothing there's no ceasefire, there's nothing on the table. So any any Iranian military operation is within the confines and bounds of an actual war. uh and one that is not a war of aggression obviously if anyone's been paying attention. But your thoughts and comments on on on these two fronts.

Well, first of all, Danny, if the United States does launch an attack on Iran's civilian infrastructure, the Iranians have said that they're going to go all out in destroying the civilian infrastructure of the countries in the region that assisted the United States in this war. That means all these countries in the Persian and it would probably include Oman too after what they've done in this last phase. And what would that mean? That would mean that these countries which are desert regimes, they have nothing but oil and gas.

If the if the electricity goes out, if the water desalination plants go out and these are small countries and all of their assets are are gathered in like together close by close to each other and uh they don't for example in Iran you have many of power plants across the country. It's a huge country. So you'd have to bomb and bomb and bomb uh day after day after day. In these countries, everything is centralized and so it's very easy to destroy their critical infrastructure.

So these dalination plants, this electrical power plants, the oil facilities, the refineries, it's very simple for Iran. And if Iran destroys them, the countries fall apart. they just collapse because these as I said you don't have farmers or you don't have uh different these countries are completely dependent on oil and gas and they don't have natural you know they don't have water they don't have farming they have nothing and what would happen that would lead to a collapse of the of the stock market because people as I said earlier wouldn't recognize that the talk you know Trump's talking down the market or talking up the market or uh talking down the price of well that's not going to work anymore. People will know that it's finished at a time when the shortages are already there.

We've had until theou was signed we had shortages growing during the period when theou was being implemented halfway we had let's say the the let's say the the the shortage of oil didn't increase but it remained the shortages remained they weren't able to decrease the shortages and other shortages continue to grow because the focus of the United States was getting out uh oil out of the Persian Gulf not uh other goods and then after the United 43 minutesStates restarted the world shut down again. So the shortages are growing rapidly and of course the Red Sea added to these problems. So with this situation if we suddenly see all these assets being destroyed there's no room for maneuver anymore. So that would bring about a collapse and that that would end Trump's presidency.

But another thing that I think um is important is that the Iranian strategy as far I mean it's not the Iranian strategy but I think that the Iranians do have an eye on this. It's not a strategy but the Iranians have an eye on this. The next two three months are very difficult for Trump and Netanyahu because Trump has elections at the beginning of November. Netanyahu has elections in October and the internal strife in Israeli in in Israeli politics is very uh serious.

There's in in Hebrew media, they even talk of civil war. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but that's how serious it is. And so the Iranians don't want to disturb the crisis. They don't want to bomb Israel right now because they want they don't want anyone to rally around Netanyahu or anything like that as I mean his opponents are genocidal.

But right now the Iranians want to see this crisis play out. The same is true for the United States. The Iranians want Trump to feel the heat. And so unless the United States backs down and implements theou and as I said theou the Iranians will be more demanding than before on Gaza and Yemen and they will want things up front because the United States has no credibility.

But unless the United States backs down and implements the MOU in full, the way which Iran wants it, then the pressure will continue to build on Trump until November. And the Iranians believe that if he loses in November, then it will be increasingly difficult for him because the United States population has turned against him and then this he'll have problems with the Senate in the House. Not that the Democrats are not genocidal, they are. But uh there is a sort of civil war going on among Democrats, among the base and of course the elites.

Perhaps you see how that plays out. And of course among the Republicans, you see a civil war of sorts in a playing out in a different way. So the Iranians want to put pressure on the war party to to weaken them. So October and November I think are some are two uh important uh events um there'll be two important events that the Iranians will be looking at.

That's why Iran doesn't strike Israel. Now of course if Israel strikes Iran will hit very hard harder than during the 40 days because if the Netanyahu strikes that gives Iran an opportunity to hurt the regime and hurt Netanyahu and make people turn further 46 minutesagainst him. But in the case of Trump, Iran will is is if he does not go back. So when Trump says a new de a deal or whatever, he's talking nonsense.

The Iranians will only accept an implemented and article one will be more stress upon beyond Lebanon, Gaza, and Ye. Yep. Hell, even Donald Trump mentioned Yemen uh when there was uh talks of so-called renewed uh discussions between Iran and the United States around theou not too long ago. Uh so uh and yeah, that that seems 100% the case.

Uh, Professor Morandi, another point I wanted your thoughts on is, you know, as all this go is going on, I I mentioned the CNN poll that says that 67% of Americans are very unhappy with the harm that the war on Iran is doing to them, to the United States. There's also a poll that says more, for the first time in the United States, more people are sympathetic toward Palestinians than Israel or Palestine uh than Israel. and that over half of people in the United States pled now believe that the US is too supportive of Israel. So these are I think big numbers in the sense of while of course the Epstein class doesn't really do partisanship actually it's a bipartisan consensus on war and genocide at the same time they care about their seats and they care about uh uh you know uh when when midterms come along that they do want to sit in the halls of power.

Uh they don't like to be voted out. So these are these are big numbers. What do you make of them? If anything, Danny, and I uh, you know, I don't have any evidence for this, but based on what I see from afar, if anything, these numbers are a bit manipulated in favor of Israel.

All of these institutions, they they're linked to power. I would say it's probably a bit worse than that for the Israelis. I mean um again this is anecdotal but I was on a debate a couple of days ago with Pier on Pierce Morgan's show and uh you can see from the responses that it's universally almost universally hostile towards Israeli regime and this is not your show this is not some alternative media outlet where you know this is he is very mainstream very pro Zionist very pro- genocide in my he would say no but he is he he he manufactures consent for war against Iran that's something I witnessed when the 12-day war began he had me on and started saying all sorts of lies about Iran and uh I mean all sorts of lies and again I I I asked him to read the book going to tan uh by the levers and then he got really angry when you know you're you know as if like just advising him to read this book was like an outrageous uh proposal. And but in any case, the point is that the the feed that what you see in the comments, again, that's not scientific.

It's not full, but it does make me wonder if it's really like more than half or or maybe even probably I would imagine it's probably a few percentages worse. Yeah. Percentage points worse than what they're saying. I would guess.

Yeah. Well, uh certainly it doesn't take into account uh what you know the deeper questions. Uh, a lot of these questions are are very broad and often I mean polls have a lot of problems with them and generally tend to be designed to diminish or maybe water down uh the extent and gravity of crises like the one that you are referencing now and it's a big crisis even if it wasn't even if the numbers were just firmly there. The fact is is that you have also more and more people not just in numbers in volume uh opposing Israel in record numbers but you also have in terms of how vocal they are how energetic they are what what they're willing to do to uh respond to their sentiments that Israel is also important.

Yeah. Sorry for interrupting, but again, you know, another thing that sort of makes me think about this is that both in 2016 and in 2024, the polls, I recall the polls did not really, none of them really uh predicted that Trump would win the election. I mean, some were saying that the polls in 2016, they were national polls and that uh he he didn't win a majority and but I'm sure they took these things into account. I mean, they're not the these people carry on polls don't know what they're doing.

There was no prediction of Trump winning. And then in the recent election, this landslide of Trump again, I don't think they were saying that he's going to win a landslide in a landslide beforehand. So I think that most of these polling agencies since they were hostile they they they were hostile to Trump uh they were able to sort of tilt the uh the numbers or play with the numbers a bit and I think that when it comes to Israel they probably I'm I'm pretty sure they do the same thing and probably even more in I mean in they they would probably do it even they do worse when it comes to pal Palestine and Trump. H I'm just guessing.

Again, this is not based on any evidence that I have. I'm just guessing. Well, I mean, the sentiments are likely to get far worse because you know, you know, regardless of how we frame it, whether we frame it as US and Israel together, US doing Israel's bidding, Israel as a tool of the United States, you know, there's all kinds of arguments about that. But the fact is is that the United States and Israel are engaging in a massively unpopular war on Iran that has no prospect of ending on terms that are favorable to them and they seem to have no desire or capacity to come to some kind of settlement that will actually end the war.

So that means this is likely to go on a lot longer and that means also the behavior of the Israeli regime and the US regime is likely also to get more volatile and therefore affect uh the harm that people in the United States are citing. So this is like a cycle it seems like that uh isn't set to necessarily change dramatically in the coming days and weeks. But uh any final thoughts you have in the last five or so minutes uh we have on the program about about where we are? Well, first of all, I think that this shift in public opinion in the United States will continue because obviously we know that young people are opposed to uh genocide and Zionism in huge numbers and it's among older people where like above the age of 60 and so on 65 where the there's larger support for this genocidal regime.

And of course, you know, as this genocide continues, it's going to, you know, the and these people 54 minutesand and time goes by, the this shift will continue. And the more the gen the longer the genocide continues, the more entrenched the hostility will be. And when younger people grow older, the teenagers right now, they're they're growing at a time when this genocide is ongoing. So they're going to be uh like the 20 year olds and 25 year olds are going to be supporting Palestine.

And then as the Israeli regime and the United States drags the global economy down and it's going to get worse. I mean there's no doubt about that. All the experts that I read uh whose materials I read or who I watch are saying it's getting going to get worse. People are going to blame Trump, Netanyahu, and the Zionist lobby and the Zionist regime for the economic woes.

So, you'll have genocide, economic woes, and people will be seeing both of these. It's not going to it's going to it's all downhill for the regime. And Iran is not going to lose this war. I mean, the smart thing for the United States to do is just to back off and to accept theou and plus because Iran is not going to, as I said, allow it to be played around with like before.

But even if they do accept and walk away, this is still going to go downhill for them because this is the beginning of a crisis and there's so many other problems with the the economy that this is just, you know, this is just going to make all of it a lot worse. But I don't see them walking away. I don't see the Zionist allowing the United States to walk away. And so we may have a continuation of this situation.

We may have escalation. If there is escalation, as I said twice already, it's going to lead to collapse. In my opinion, at the end of the day, Iran is still going to win and Iran's allies are going to win. The only thing that would happen is that if the United States escalates, those regimes, those family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, I don't think they'll last.

If the United States really escalates, I don't think they'll last. And they're already in economic problem. They're facing grave economic difficulty. They are spend they have to spend money.

Where's that money going to come from? It's going to come from US stocks, the money that they've invested in the United States in US bonds. So they're going to have to withdraw more and more money from the United States. And then you have the situation in Japan, which I'm sure you're covering elsewhere.

Not an expert, so I can't comment on, but you know, and this is going, this intensifies all those problems. So I, you know, I don't see the situation this ending well, but the more the United States and Trump pushes and the Zionist push for this um crisis, this military confrontation to continue. The loser is are the people of the world, but I'll but it's going to be Zionism as well. 57 minutesAnd uh on a final note, I just want to uh remind everyone again that we have to keep the the uh we have to keep reminding people of what's going on in Gaza and in the West Bank.

It's outrageous what they're doing in the West [clears throat] Bank. You don't see any Europeans saying anything European politicians or European parliament. Instead, what they do is they, you know, they condemn Iran for whatever it is they want to condemn Iran for. I mean, the British government has stated the Iranian armed forces, the guards, as a terrorist organization while genocide is taking place in in in Gaza.

You know, it's sort of like the the Saudi um coalition. It's just like [clears throat] it's like we're living in this upside down world. But in any case, I advise your viewers to press the like button. [laughter] that that that's very much appreciated.

Yeah. Well, the what you said about the Gulf countries, I I think in this conversation being able to connect how the Gulf countries have behaved around Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon as a whole, uh, versus how they're behaving around Iran, I think really speaks to exactly why it's so important to continue talking about, uh, all of this because, uh, yeah, we have Gulf countries, this is like a pattern now. Uh I think they realize that yeah existentially they are uh in major trouble if the United States and Israel restart war on the basis that they were saying it was going to restart. Uh and that's why every time Trump threatens some massive strike on Iran, you have reports that the Gulf countries are the ones getting on the phone uh uh begging, pleading, oh no, don't do this.

But at the same time, these same countries, UAE, Saudi, all this, they're not doing a damn thing about they they're organizing coalitions against Yemen, while Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, uh you know, people who should be their brothers, their sisters, their, you know, uh allies, people who share a lot of history, uh likely with them. They're the they're uh they're they're disregarded if not in the case of the UAE, in the case of Saudi and so many others. uh you know they're they're actively working with Israel in uh underhanded ways that we don't always get to see or talk about. So it's it's disgusting.

But yeah, first Mandi uh any final words for the audience before we hit endstream here. No, just once again I advise people to read more about Iran, the book going to Tan, Alistister books, crooks book resistance. These are good for people to read and to have others read because now is a time to create greater awareness and uh the the the propaganda is the machine is falling apart but uh the the military machine is still very much intact. Yes.

Uh everybody hit the like button as first said earlier that will help more people see our conversation in YouTube's algorithm. Uh, in the video description you can find all the plays support this channel, Patreon, Substack, and more. I want to thank everyone who gave a super chat, who became a new member. I appreciate I put you all up on the screen.

Tomorrow, I'm on with Patrick Henningson. m. Eastern time, I believe. m.

Eastern time. Uh, tomorrow, August 3rd. All right, everybody. Really good guy.

I'll I'll be He's an amazing guy. He's a He's He's act, you know. Yeah. If you want to know someone who's very serious and also just an immense pleasure to work with, similar professor Randy here, it's Patrick Henningson.

A great guy and I love working with him.

[admin]

Iran DOWNS MQ-9 Reaper Drone, US Precision Missiles WIPED OUT | Sharmine Narwani
Danny Haiphong
Streamed live 110 minutes ago #iran #iranwar #trump

Sharmine Narwani discusses Trump's mounting crisis for his Iran war as Iran strikes down more US aircraft and the US military loses its capacity to fight further. Sharmine Narwani is Editor of The Cradle.



Transcript

Welcome back to the show everyone. It's Danny Haiphong. As you can see, I'm joined by Charmaine Arwani of the Cradle where we begin breaking down the news. First, Iran did shoot down overnight an MQ9 Reaper drone.

This would mark at least two dozen MQ9 Reaper drones down by Iran since the war began. In other news, Iran also struck a cargo ship in the straight of Hormuz, which marks again another uh component of this is usually the United States responds by bombing Iran. But now we know that the United States is having a really difficult time continuing the war against Iran. According to Reuters, this is republished by Israeli 24 News.

According to Reuters, uh the US's attackums and precision strike stockpiles have been exhausted entirely. And we see reports now that the United States is actually shipping air defenses and other munitions as well from South Korea and Asia, marking a total depletion in the United States's munitions. Now, Donald Trump has threatened, despite all of this, Iran with decapitation. Here's what he said at the Oval Office yesterday.

People were wondering what has changed this time. Why should it be? Well, you don't know. I don't know.

I think we're going to maybe get something, but I want to give him every last chance before decapitation. So, there's Donald Trump once again threatening major strikes on Iran Charmine. Yet the situation appears to be very bleak with these attackums and precision strike missiles being all but wiped out and Iran appearing to have seized the initiative. But maybe you can help us understand what's going on here.

That would be nice. Um, look, I think uh, one of the things that has surprised me and probably a lot of viewers this week is how much the, you know, US officials or how many times US officials have conceded, you know, things that one shouldn't concede during an ongoing war. Um, for instance, I think the head of US um, uh, European Command said that uh, we're not going to be able to defend Israel, you know, in if if it gets dragged into the war. Um that we need more destroyers in the region.

Um others of course were hearing these these uh these statements about how their weapon systems are you know being depleted and then there was that was it from the Pentagon or no it was some official uh military official who you know sent out a call saying give us suggestions on how to uh we could punish Iran suggesting that the Pentagon the war room of the United States is out of ideas and I'm just wondering what those narratives are meant to do. Are they meant to um make Iran complacent and put it on the back foot uh you know and and and and allow the US to to escalate in a s surprise way? I I don't know. I don't know.

But um you know, empire is not doing well and when uh companies don't do well, leaks abound. So, um, right now we're coming off the back of the US, uh, threatening, uh, and suggesting an overwhelming military strikes across Iran, uh, with the Israelis. And then, you know, we had another taco moment on Sunday and, uh, uh, Trump said he'd been talked out of it by his Gulf allies. Um and and now we're hearing Bessant say that uh we could have a deal on hormones as early as tomorrow.

Um I mean it's hard to say until the news breaks, but clearly there is some momentum in the Iranian Omani negotiations. That's not Iranian US negotiations. The Iranians still absolutely deny that they're in negotiations with the Americans. And I have long suggested that, you know, with a with an unreliable adversary like the United States, where, you know, Trump's signature doesn't count for anything, not just for the Iranians, but I think around the world pretty much now, um, that the Iranians should forge ahead striking deals with West Asian actors, um, circumventing altogether the Americans, uh, and and and that's what essentially an Omani Iranian deal would be.

it would be um regional actors deciding on how they were going to administer the waterway. And it looks like um Trump's threat to to bomb Iran uh came after the Iranians had sent around along a draft proposal to the Omani suggesting that they control inwardbound ships uh you know into Hormos and uh the Omanis could more or less control the outwardbound ships but Iran would have to okay each and every one of those uh that transited the the strait and and then the Americans, you know, that was that was terrible for them. No, we're not going to allow this. And so massive threats of bombing and then of course we hear very publicly that the Gulf allies stop the the Americans from bombing Iran.

And now there's um it looks like the Iranians are going to get the deal they want in Hormos, right? the Americans tried to undermine their discussions with the Omanis and force the Omanis under incredible pressure to try to help um ships bypass the strait without going through, you know, Iranian waters and uh Iran wouldn't allow that. It started hitting ships and uh war back on. But in the end, at least on theou point about hormones, Iran is going to in our view be able to um you know be the main administrative uh um state as far as hormones is concerned and I do think in fact Iran will be charging fees and I think the Americans will uh will you know narrate the story in such a way that it doesn't look like transit fees.

fees. It doesn't have to look like transit fees because uh transit fees creates a bit of a legal issue for Iran. There are many other fees Iran can charge for ships transiting the straight uh for services, right? I mean, even insurance, you know, most of the trips, sorry, ships traversing the straight could be persuaded to switch their insurance carriers to Iranian ones because then they can guarantee they will get through the state into the straight and out uh safely because obviously these are Iranian insurance companies.

So there's a lot of way ways for um that um that point to be managed and once this is done it's not over because um because there's other things that Iran demanded in theou that are essential and you know top of the list item number one was for the Israelis to withdraw from from Lebanon. And now that's going to be I think that's the Iranians are going to double down on that. I mean look I I hope they do but I think they will as well. And uh the the Israelis are talking about just yesterday we were discussing um a point by uh minister I don't I Israeli minister had said essentially that we have deterred Iran from striking Israel.

The Israelis believe Danny that Iran is not striking Israel because it's deterred, not because Iran currently in at the moment has other fish to fry, right? And that it will come back to Israel. And you know it will because when it went after Jordan, right, Jordan is essentially Israel's buffer state, right? And it is where the US have moved a lot of their heavy military equipment, you know, where there are a lot of uh inter US interception systems and uh and and other uh military hardware.

Um and in fact the US, you know, we've heard now the US has has largely withdrawn from from Iraq, right? Northern Iraq, uh the Kurdistan region, uh and Kuwait and Bahrain. So where have they gone? You know, they they're going close to Israel.

Um because they know that's going to come next. So the Israeli minister had said, "Look, Iran's been completely deterred from striking Israel. " Let me just sort of circle to a point that is really important I think to be made. Today is the sixth anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut, right?

The second largest um I guess explosion the world has ever seen since the you know the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And um this same week we've had uh so much Israeli destruction in the south. I mean again anou was agreed upon and a ceasefire was reached here by the Lebanese government and the Israeli government. Um and we are getting statistics today like Israel has destroyed 18,000 buildings across 19 villages in South Lebanon.

Okay. Um, Israel has burned, this is a cradle report, too. Israel has burned more than 120 hectars of centuries old olive groves in southern Lebanon. 120 hectars.

Okay, these are like ancient olive trees, you know, that have been there forever and continue to be fruitful season after season, decade after decade. Um many of these are well over a hundred years old and most are um at least 50 years old. Uh so the you know the the Israelis despite what's happening today the Israelis are meeting um with the Lebanese government uh you know to to negotiate further points in Rome. Uh it will be a three-day meeting.

You have Israeli uh military officials there too. And what the Lebanese would like is more um you know more zones in which Israel will completely remove its troops from these areas. Um and nothing nothing's happening in the south that benefits Lebanon right now uh 100%. So you know I think uh after the the rate of hormones issue is put to rest uh and and uh the waterways open up.

By the way, uh don't think just because there's a deal between Oman and Iran that these waters ways will be opened up. There will be absolutely Iran is administering those waters and there is a hot war, okay, or hostilities taking place, Iran can close the strait for those reasons as well, right? And we're now hearing that uh it will take if you add 2 million more barrels per oil per day to normal demand that existed before the war, it will take 18 months of completely open shipping. All right, for national strategic reserves in all the countries that used up their strategic reserves to be replenished.

So there's a lot ahead no matter what happens in the next day or two. Yeah. And to your point about Israel feeling very good about having stood back on the Iran front uh Netanyahu said the exact same thing as who you were citing uh Charmine about why Iran has not fired back Netanyahu in Israeli media saying it's because they've been deterred. Uh that's that's what Netanyahu thinks about Iranian capabilities even though it appears as you said that the uh future of this conflict is moving closer and closer to Israel uh just for by way of the United States uh retreating that way.

Yeah. And I mean it's it's really interesting with how you know we're we're using this word debasement right as in dy-en basement um or debasing the region from US bases and um obviously the this US withdrawals from Iraq uh or northern Iraq and um Kuwait and Bahrain are significant. Uh the these are three countries that have been hit hard by Iran. Of course, Jordan is now another one.

Um, but I think it'll be one of the last to be debased simply because Israel relies so heavily on it. Um, but what what apparently happened uh in this last week with this withdrawal from Erbil, don't forget is uh the capital of uh the Iraqi Kurdistan region. And um this is of course where we have, you know, Iran has um attacked and targeted Mossad agents and Mossad headquarters from time to time since the killing of Gasimsmani by by the Americans in 2020. Um it is like most Kurdish regions unfortunately in this area because they're USbacked uh you will always find secessionist Kurds to arm and use against their um the state in which they live and that's primarily Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

And um I don't know why the Kurds fail to understand that the Americans will always let them down. They did in Syria. They they they will with Iran. They're now leaving uh northern Iraq, leaving the Kurds to their own devices.

And of course, uh northern Iraq is uh Iranians have been striking specific targets there, secessionist Kurds or um oppositionists, Iranian Kurdish oppositionists, armed ones, militants who are based in Iraqi territory. But um in this move by the US military out of air, apparently the US, France and Germany also have withdrawn hundreds of personnel and military hardware from air during like a 3-day period now. Just right, we've just passed. Um the British apparently transferred all their remaining systems uh to Cyprus.

You know the British have these two military bases in Cypress that are considered sovereign British territory, not Criate. Okay. And and and the Criates are up in arms about this. Like you know you have these military base in our country that are outside our jurisdiction.

They're not even considered Cypress even though they're on our soil. And they can launch wars from here. And and what do you think's going to happen to us then? Um the Americans transferred all their remaining patriot systems to Jordan.

We have seen now there's no red lines for Iran. If you're we're not going to allow you to regroup elsewhere, right? Iran hitting Jordan means we're not going to let you regroup or you know move your systems out of the Gulf because you're afraid of being hit or maybe your host countries don't want you lingering around anymore. We don't know the details of that.

and move just further down in in West Asia to another country. So, Jordan's continue to be hit, especially if Western, you know, NATO states are moving their systems to Jordan because it is entirely in defense of Israel. Let's let's be clear here. Um I think there's some German and uh French forces that are you know symbolic ones that remain uh in Iraq and uh you know a a lot is happening uh and it's hard to frame these things but increasingly it looks like Iran is setting the pace for everything that's happening in this region because it has some very interesting levers that nobody nobody's contended with before.

uh at least in modern times and uh you know certainly not a global south country you know against empire which has been around for centuries now. So this is a real gamecher and of course this kind of thing happening emboldens a lot of other middle states and powers. Um and I I cannot emphasize enough to your viewers that it is not just uh in Iran and the Persian Gulf region where things are happening. You know, Morocco has become another hot spot.

The cradle is covered this week and will next week. Um two important uh geostrategic developments in Morocco which essentially from my point of view has become the UAE of North Africa. Absolutely. you know, um, uh, affixed to the Israelis, same strategic goals and interests, same willingness to deploy all kinds of malign acts and and maneuvers to get what they want.

Uh, I find it astounding that two countries like this, the UAE and Morocco, at at a time where it's so obvious the global balance of power is shifting eastward that they would ally themselves so strongly with the players that are going to go down, right? and Israel in particular because nobody wants to be standing next to Israel now. It's the genocidal state, right? And these are two Muslim countries, two Arab Muslim countries doing so.

And one of the stories at the Cradle this week was the the the naming or the inauguration of the um Donald J. Trump highway through western Sahara, okay, which is disputed territory that Trump recognized as Moroc to get them to join the Abraham's Accords in 2020, right? But this this uh highway runs through an area where I think it's is it f phosphate mines? Okay.

Which are going all of this is going directly to New Orleans. It's going to the United States tax-free and it's done within a system of companies that are owned largely by the king of Morocco and his his uh his right-hand man. You know, I mean, it's so ugly what's happening there. And then our story next week will be covering why exactly the events of last week, the Moroccans storming into, you know, the the the two Spanish territories.

Um why that happened and why the US Congress had been talking about these two territories prior to any of this happening. You know, it is again um strategic the American empire as it's collapsing is trying to grab on to resourcerich countries and strategically located geographically, right? Um states and areas and and this is another one of those grabs like Greenland, like uh uh like Canada, right? like Venezuela, like Iran, uh the these two areas are, you know, in in the American plans.

Um and as they move further away from from West Asia, because they're being forced militarily, they will be looking to set up bases elsewhere. And Africa is one area, but now Africa's pushing back, too. You know, um uh Panama, for instance, they did a coup in Panama. They kicked out the Chinese from a port that the Chinese owned, right, and ran.

And now China's done a very clever thing. I don't know, have you seen this in in in the media this week? They they basically sanctioned uh um Panama flagged ships. Um not just sanction them, held them as well.

Uh you get to do that when a ship is passing through your waterways. You get to hold them if you suspect this or that. They're doing that which has caused more and more um shipping companies to not be flagged, decide to not use the Panama flag for their shipments, which is caused economic repercussions for Panama, etc. And this is going to be a case study because if the Chinese don't get on top of this one and um and sort of you know make international law prevail in this instance where you know the Americans got Panama to kick out the Chinese uh with no you know process due process then this can happen in other areas of the world.

So um the multipolar world is pushing back very interesting ways right now. Um, and I think for me the next thing to watch is, and I'm waiting for this, when is Russia going to address the fact that Ukraine and its NATO backers have moved the war inside 22 minutesRussian territory which is being stried every single day. Yeah, it's a a very good very good question, Charmaine. And I believe actually also China and Panama have once again struck a deal because of the pressure of exactly what you said uh the Panama flagged uh vessels that were being sanctioned by China.

I think they've uh reopened talks and China's gotten quite a lot from Panama back from what they lost during the initial US pressure period. So uh again once again showing that when the United States only has bullyism to offer even when it moves forward it can't hold that line for very long. Exactly. Eventually uh the reality sets in and uh the country that can actually do business uh will be the one that wins out.

But Charma I want to actually uh you know show some more data on the U. 23 minutesyou were talking about the US being pushed back militarily and the data is even worse than what we opened with because the CSIS which is a state department defense department funded think tank um has come out with like a massive data showing that now there's fewer than 827 interceptors patriot inter interceptors left and 20078 THAD interceptors left these are the things that will be protecting Jordan and Israel by extension uh down from 2200 patriots and 452 that this is just since the war began. So 60% gone. Uh and I guess that's going to explain a little bit why we're going to see a lot more of this probably uh in the future.

Uh there's already been seven times since this war began and since the initial strikes by the United States that Trump has said that there will be devastating strikes like massive strikes not just oh we're going to w you know restart operating no this is devastating strikes power grid energy all of this and then they didn't come to pass this is according to ABC News. So um how do you see this then the uh weakening uh US military posture not just in the region the world impacting uh both this region and uh the world as well. My I I'm not interested in the US military being weakened. I'm interested in them being destroyed.

Um, I mean, it's not me sitting in West Asia saying this, but Europeans in repeated polls over the last decade have said that the US is the biggest threat to peace and security in the world today. I mean, it's it's uh this is not new, right? But we have to start thinking differently about this. We more importantly, we have to start talking differently about this.

Um, okay, you get US troops out of the region. Well, actually, let me just rewind and go back to something I was saying on the Cradles podcast just recently. And I was lamenting the fact that uh they're ne never losers in any wars anymore in in the sense that in the old days if you if you breached the moat, right? um if your enemy breached your moat, you would wave a white flag and surrender.

Or in like uh you know uh Latin American countries, if the rebels reached the radio station, you would hand over the keys to the presidential palace. Like it was over. Wars were over. There was, you know, it was underlined.

It's not just because of a treaty. It was just accepted. And now there isn't that thinking, right? So even if there is a uh peace agreement, it doesn't mean that the Americans will not fall back on their old proxy tools, right?

Because I've argued, I think on your show as well, that this is the first um pure adversary war we've had since World War II. Okay. Um because otherwise it was usually through proxies, right? Um so even uh well anyways uh the the Americans can fall back on sabotage on proxy wars on pure terrorism.

Okay. Uh and that's a continuation of war. That's not a joke. This is what we live with here in the region and have done so for decades.

you know, these proxy wars, these dirty wars, you know, sanctions and other tools, why should we put up with this anymore? Why? Right? They have to definitively be defeated.

And so for me, to have the Iranians and Americans sign a deal right now doesn't stop anything. One of Iran's interests is to making sure that the Americans cannot open strikes on Iran anytime they want, the way the Israelis do with Lebanon, with Gaza, with Syria, etc. right? That's not going to be tolerated.

But then that may be the case. you know, it's uh um the the the that term may be um um you know, the Americans may abide by that term, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't arm Kurds and train Kurds, you know, inside Iran or out on its borders or they wouldn't fund uh Pakistani militant groups in Baluchasan or that they wouldn't try to create like Azeri separatism inside Iran or Arab separatism inside of southern Iran. Uh- why should we put up with this? We need uh we we need the Americans to lose.

And for me, the continuation the direct continu direct continuation of this war by the United States is important, an overt one. Okay? So that Iran can keep punishing, can keep escalating its punishments. Now, it doesn't mean the hot war will continue in the way it is now, but it could move into other areas.

The war shouldn't be over until the Americans are defeated. And one way to do that is um to hit a destroyer, to hit a major American warship or aircraft carrier and disable it completely. Because if the Americans can't use ground facilities in neighboring or countries neighboring Iran to launch missiles and aircraft and drones from, they'll have to do it from aircraft carriers. And excuse me, my mouth's getting so dry.

And um and so what you need to do before you let the Americans leave is to destroy one of their, you know, these these billion dollar projects of theirs so they know they can never use that again. Right? If you can't bring the stories in the region, you don't have bases, how are you going to work? Or you're going to work from neighboring countries and training whatever.

Oh, no, no, no. Iran is now going to work hyper effectively with Pakistan, with the Iraqis, etc. to make sure this doesn't happen. If you're you can't end a war when one party will never never accept its defeat.

All right. Um or it being outclassed, right? Um and uh and and prepared to leave. The Americans will never be prepared to leave.

The Israelis will never allow them to leave this region. Uh we have to end this war decisively. So I do want to see more Iranian proactive actions. I do want to see escalations in um you know very very smart calculating ways by the Iranians.

Um I want to see them trump the Americans in various theaters. Uh I I want to see them get a major concession from Iraq. Okay. Because the Iraqis have played too closely with Washington.

I mean right now how can any country in this region argue for for for being allied with the Americans or the Israelis? These are the most destructive forces in our region. That can't be allowed anymore. You know, I I think we have to take this to the wall.

It has to stop. We have to be able to grow uh economically, develop, thrive. None of that will be allowed if there's just anou because it will continue in the way it did before. And look what's this region's been a mess uh for decades because of the Americans and Israelis.

You have to end it now. which also entails Israel being hit, Israel being hit very decisively by the Iranians. And uh so does it benefit Iran or this part of the world for the war to end next week in a you know weakou because the Americans forget also what they signed right and there's another American president that'll come in in two and a half years and what what will that mean? I think there needs to be something very definitive happening here.

And to me, it could just be um collapsing the petro dollar. Like that's a smart uh that's a smart uh weapon, right? Where people aren't getting killed. You collapse the petro dollar because now let's say everything that moves through hormones and the Persian Gulf has to be priced in non-dollar currencies, right?

Um petro dollar collapses and the Americans cannot afford to wage wars anymore. Uh, so I I I definitely want to see more. I'm not war hungry, Danny. I just I know it's not over.

It's not going to be over if the Straight of Hormos gets opened on deals favorable to the Iranians. What about Lebanon? What about Syria? What about Iran's borders?

You know, there are attacks on Iran's borders all the time. Oh, another thing for your viewers to know, and this is also a piece of the cradle covered. Um, we've not seeing this in English really is uh uh Iran ratified the Caspian uh the Caspian what convention which basically divvies up the Caspian Sea between I think five um um literal states um which weakens Iran's position in the north. Right.

This is at the same time that the Americans are working with the Azerbaijanis who were you know Mossad agents in the region to to um you know to bring themselves and bring and build roadways right on Iran's border right another Trump initiative to build out the Zangazura corridor and uh cut out Iran's northern geography and now Iran's ratified this Caspin convention and makes zero sense um and and that's how Iran was getting a lot of its product out, not just through the new Pakistani routes that were open during the war, but through the international north south transportation corridor um run by the Iranians, Russians and Indians, right? That goes to the north of Iran. So there's a lot of other games the empire can continue to play with Iran. Iran cannot leave this without defeating the enemy um so decisively that the enemy doesn't ever want to contemplate a rerun.

Yeah. Yeah. And and and a big part of that point or those series of points you made uh Charmine is that the United States and I'm sure uh Iranians especially those who are in the military for us understand that a big function of US wars is is not really winning anymore or if it really ever was. A lot of it is about the chaos and it's about how to build and build out control and dominance via that chaos.

oftenimes it has downsides also for the United States, but it tends to be at the very least very effective in stopping or uh making as you call it a mess out of a particular region uh series of countries and then that disallows them from being able to build out independent uh institutions, sovereignty, economic, military, what have you. So that's that's going to be the aim regardless of whether the US feels it can attack Iran just a little bit, not at all. Go all out. Uh those kind of calculations won't really change the aim that the United States has for the region.

And and I think that uh it seems pretty clear that even when the US finds itself, as it has under the Trump administration, needing to shift focus a little bit here, a little bit there, there tends to still be a pretty continuous trend all across the world of how the US behaves. It doesn't necessarily leave anything alone. It just shifts resources, limited resources, finite resources to areas where it feels like it can uh try to push things further for its own objectives whether they meet them or not. But nevertheless, a big part of it is just disallowing uh the multipolar world, disallowing countries, people who are trying to uh you know build out their own destinies free from the United States's interests.

That's the that feels like a big aim regardless of the consequence. But if if people and this is important, perception is 100% of politics. This is an old adage and it I really have come to understand why it makes so much sense. Perception is everything.

And if Iran is perceived as having won this decisively, there is no country in the region that will not jump up to deal with Iran, Iran will become unsanctionable. All right? And this is important. It can be done.

, right, without going through hell. Um, but I but again, I I I say this, the easiest way to defeat the Americans is for the dollar to just um lose its position as the global reserve currency. It is the most painless way for the world to stop American wars and American overextension and and US bases in your region or in your country. um they it when when the US dollar is no longer the reserve currency, the US um becomes is unable to move the world the way it wants to.

The dollar loses its meaning. the US will have to just print with no end because of course we're at $39 trillion national debt which doesn't include the over $70 trillion of private debt in the United States. It is a broke ass country. Remove it as the reserve currency.

um the dollar collapses and the and the United States ability to um move the dial on everything everywhere absolutely disappears. And uh and this is this is really important. I mean I think everyone should strive for this right away, you know. um empty your bank accounts, buy gold, silver or whatever, you know, but uh um and and and and I mean the point is if you're living in the west, you're transacting through these systems, right?

Um Swift or whatever. And and and this too, well, you know, I'll tell you something that's really important is another thing what happened with the yen last week, right? um the everyone jumped in to try to save the yen. Um Japan, you know, lost a lot of money in in this war situation and um started to what is it?

What did it do? Did it sell its yen? Did it sell its bonds? I can't remember.

But the US jumped to they said they would do everything to save the yen. And and you know those countries in the US orbit are going to have a more and more difficult time. Having said that, US stock market hit new heights today, you know, and you're thinking like nothing is attached to reality. How did oil prices when the straight of hormones is not open?

How are they at $76 a barrel? They should be over $200 a barrel. Everything I know about men straight too, I was going to ask you next about that, but men straight too is also uh bottlenecked when it comes to Saudi oil. So yeah, it's a it's it's the reality is not really being reflected.

No, it isn't. And don't forget the same time that the US was going to launch this or relaunch a massive military um attack on Iran, the Saudis were going to do the same against Yemen and that hasn't materialized. In fact, the Yemenes hit um a Saudi airport. I think it was a Najan, but a a a very important site in the airport because Saudi drones overflew Yemen airspace.

Not even hit anything, just overflew. And of course, I think um an Indian flag tanker, was it an Indian flag tanker was just hit today? Um coming through those waterways u by the Yemenes, I guess. Uh but it was a Saudi It was a Saudi tanker.

Um so you know this is another theater uh the Americans waited too long by violating theou they gave birth to the babo mandabub situation and so they can fix hormones let's say through a deal but what happens to the babo mandubab now do you know the axis the the resistance axis in the region has just way too many interesting levers right now and if they don't use them now they may lose the opportunity to do so. And I for one am very pleased that they're stepping up in these various theaters and and doing so because we have to end this. We have to end this. We don't want to just weaken the Americans and Israelis.

We want to absolutely wipe them out, you know. Yeah. And uh so I wanted your reaction on this broader uh you know blockade situation because as you've noticed Charine the United States has been relying a lot on blockades under the Trump administration. It has blockaded Cuba.

It's blockaded Iran. It's attempted some kind of creatively I don't know ineffective but also uh I targeted uh campaign against Russia and the Black Sea. Uh so there's multiple points where the US is trying blockade, but Yemen has kind of flipped the script and uh engage in a counter siege against Saudi Arabia, which again is a pretty big deal because now we're seeing the Saudi economy falter. We're seeing their tankers have to, you know, go around the Cape of Good Hope on the African continent just to get their oil out.

It's it's a big deal. And so I'm wondering, you know, how do you see the axis of resistance as a whole uh attacking these various points that you made earlier in terms of not just weakening the American empire but uh wiping it out or at the very least getting to the point where it is pushed back and it cannot um you know wage this campaign of terror that we see all across the region. You know um it's a very difficult question to answer. It's been my view for a really long time that the axis of resistance is way too well behaved.

Um they've been groomed and tamed into that position. It's sort of uh it's one of the most frustrating things I've observed since um you know kind of quasi moving to this region 14 years ago. uh realizing that what's the point of a well- behaved native when when the aggressor um is so completely violent and uh has has no leashes on them whatsoever now because international law doesn't mean anything anymore, right? Um meanwhile, the Axis tries to cleave to international law so nobody can point fingers at them.

Um but I don't see the point of that because they're going to be blamed for things they never did anyways. You know, they they talk about the IRGC setting off bombs in countries around the world or Hezbollah doing that. It's absolute rubbish, right? So, even if you do try to follow the law and be a good boy, um you're going to get uh ridiculous claims like this thrown at you.

Um, I have seen a two well- behaved resistance axis and um, I need to see evidence that they're willing to throw off those psychological shackles that they've been groomed into accepting um, and do the unthinkable. You know, um I 43 minuteshate to say this out loud because we've all been trained not to, but if American soldiers don't die, if Israeli soldiers don't die on mass, they're never going to stop, right? They have to be killed. I mean, why do they kill us?

Because they figure at some point they will exhaust us. But that doesn't happen because people here, people in Gaza have nowhere else to go. People in Lebanon have nowhere else to go. People in Syria have nowhere else to go.

they have to stay there and put up with it, right? But what we have to do for the Americans and Israelis who don't belong in this region is to if they feel pain, they will go, right? The Israelis, the majority of Israelis have second passports. And during this war, they've been lining up those who don't have second passports to get second passports to countries their mom and dad came from or their grandparents came from.

Right? They don't belong here. m. in the morning from midnight Lebanese were lined up in their cars waiting for the army to let them go through to the south.

Okay. They didn't care if they they were going to believe in the ceasefire even if Israel continued to uh you know lob missiles into southern Lebanon. They didn't know if it was would hold or not. They were going there with their kids, with their their grandparents, their aunties and uncles in cars with like luggage strapped to the top of their cars.

They were going home. In Israel, they couldn't pay Jewish settlers money to go back to their lands in the north because they were worried about future Hezbollah attacks. Right? There is a connection with the land here.

We will never leave. All right? But the invaders, uh, the aggressors, they will leave because they don't have that connection to the land. They never did.

Right? That includes the Israelis, of course, the Americans who have no connection to this this area. And uh, that needs to happen. Danny, and I don't know if the resistance axis has what it takes because it's been, you know, tamed into good behaviors for decades.

I like that the Iranians did an unexpected strike on um on US military facilities in Jordan the other day. I like that, you know. Um why did everyone freak out about it? because they could they could predict Iranian behavior so well they didn't anticipate it.

It shocked them. Okay. Stop acting so well. You know, match the aggressor.

You make them make them have to deal with a body count. You know, we have to. Why shouldn't they? I just think the thinking needs to be different.

The language needs to be different in this region. then you're going to unleash uch widespread public uh um support for for these kind of actions in the region. Everyone's been tamed in the region. Everybody talks in this this colonized language, you know, even the axis and that needs to change.

And if we don't use this opportunity to change it, I'm afraid, you know, u we might have to deal with the slow burn of death and destruction for years yet to come. Yeah. Then I guess that makes me wonder Charmaine uh with what you're saying how does this what seems to be negotiations Kubuki theater that's happening because that seems to be part of it is that uh there is consistently you know Iran gains leverage Iran obviously is not losing this war but in each and every step where this war gets worse for the United States it generally uh leads to this period of negotiation ations or no negotiations, but uh you know attempts for mediators to negotiate. Anyway, that just all revolves around talks, but it seems like what you're saying is that these talks aren't really going to go anywhere because the United States isn't built to um come to an agreement that will actually respect the the rights of Iran and the rest of the region.

The one part of the axis I have great hope in is are the Yemenes. The Yemenes don't read um Western MSM and so they've not been colonized. I find them the most decolonized people in this region right now. And it's it's kind of fascinating when you're decolonized what you're willing to do.

I mean, we we know the the sort of, you know, the grouping of countries that a year ago were trying to um uh punish Yemen for its blockade of waterways, right? um to in defense of Gaza. Um you know, they were saying, "We've never seen anything like this. We've never been attacked so hard.

These people don't understand the meaning of, you know, of um uh I mean, limited warfare or just like military messaging to each other. They hit to hit, right? They hit to destroy us. And they're doing it everywhere.

They're doing it in the Arabian Sea. They're doing in the Indian Ocean. they're doing in the Babel Mandab and the, you know, the Red Sea, etc. And and uh this to me is the way to go.

Okay, punish your enemy. They're always talking about punishing us, sanctioning us, depriving us, destroying our economies, even if it's not a hot war. Those are severe punishments. They're collective punishment.

They're against international law. Let's punish them back. They cracked open the international law, you know, Pandora's box. Let's use it.

Let's use it. Who's going to, you know, was it the Wall Street Journal that said, uh, Iran may be considering preemptive strikes? Shut up. Literally, do you remember George W.

Bush? His whole doctrine was preemptive strikes against countries or individuals or groupings who may one day think of attacking the United States. And now Iran's in a hot war and it can't blow the hell out of a US base in Jordan. No, there should be blowing up US bases everywhere.

I mean really for me one of the most fantastic moments in this region in Lebanon where I am right now was the the blowing up of the US Marine barracks. You know they were there trying to expand a war and and and you know um have the US was there with its Marines to help right but no in fact that's the US never helps. They just get a foothold and you know wasn't a permanent thing. It was a temporary thing which would have become a permanent base.

Right now the US has built okay the biggest the second biggest US embassy in the world. It's ridiculous if you have a picture of it. It's a sprawling thing with that goes way down like the Pentagon you know many many layers down is many many layers down. Uh for a country this size with a population of 5 million a base like I mean sorry an embassy like that is basically a precursor to the base.

That's what the US Marines back in 19 was it 83 were doing here. Okay. Okay. It was the precursor for another US base in the region.

And they got blown up. And guess what, Danny? They left. They left.

And as they left, because they're they're absolutely, you know, um genocidal maniacs, they bombed Lebanon from the sea with bombs each of which so I read one account of it by American military specialists saying the biggest singing single salvo um since the Korean War on Little Lebanon. All right. Not even the perpetrators of the bombing, all right, of the Marine barracks, but Shia and Drew's populations in they they basically killed people just, you know. So what is that?

What is that? And and we want to deal with this country. We don't want to deal with this country. Honestly, we don't.

American goods are more expensive. They're becoming third rate. You can get better stuff in China. You know, you can get better stuff in Iran.

You can better stuff in Turkey and India. Like seriously, the US has we we we need the Americans out of this region. And of course, psychologically there's a long way to go. But actually kinetically we can do that now.

Will they? I don't know. But hopefully Yemen will teach the Iranians, the Lebanese, the Iraqis, because they just they just don't know. Um they just don't know that they're supposed to be well behaved natives, you know.

There is a question here from the audience from DC Hawaii. Do you think some of the leadership in Iran is secretly co-opted by the US and Israel? I too wonder why Iran hasn't struck back harder. What is your thoughts on this?

Because this is a narrative actually a lot of people uh have these thoughts because I think a lot of the world even people in the United States and the West see Iran even just ever talking to the United States on any terms that could be seen as diplomatic as being uh an affront because of just how Iran has been treated by the US and of course the rest of the region. Look the you know I I disagree with that and I'll tell you why. Because to end wars, you have to settle them. Okay?

In the worst wars we've ever seen in humanity, they have sat at the end and settled them. Okay? So, that does have to happen and you have to keep those avenues open. But every time that uh Iran has been betrayed, you know, using the cover of negotiations to attack Iran or its friends, um Iran should then set more punishments for the United States.

So, I don't think theou that was signed in I you know there's so much is happening I'm forgetting dates all the time was it April was it or June? It was June. Oh, theou was in June. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know I I think I think theou June 17th. Yes, it was June 17th. Yeah. So it's so um almost it's become such an irrelevant document almost to the political geopolitical situation that uh but it it was it was a a fairly good document.

The problem with the document was I mean the Americans were so desperate to have it that time was absolutely of the essence for for them. So they agreed to Iran's terms but allowed them to stay as vague as possible. If you read them through an Iranian lens you'll see that it's a good deal for Iran. Iran kind of gets what it wants right?

If you look at it through duplicitous American lens, you can look at you can find a lot of loopholes in the language that you can, you know, um, take advantage of. And that's what the Americans did. I believe, and I've been saying this since theou because I believe that the war is going to be back on since theou because the Americans, they're not done. They're not done.

They they've lost. Um, and and and nobody loses these days. That's my whole thing. They they just keep going.

There's no end to war. There's no white flags waved anymore. Um, I think Iran needs to get many of the Aprilouou, sorry, Juneou terms before the sessation of violence. Okay.

So, Iran should receive its um frozen assets before the sessation of hostilities. uh Iran uh should have control over the straight of Hormos and uh charging service fees before the the sessation of hostilities. Iran should get um part of its reparations um before the sessation of hostilities. And I think what's interesting in the change of Iranian thinking is the what you would call hardliners have made a very good argument in Iran, I think.

And people just can't argue against it. Even the reformists can't. And so I think it's going to stick, which is we negotiate in good faith to prevent further hostilities or hostilities at all. If you attack us what we would have agreed to in those negotiations, we now move the goalpost because you attacked us.

You're not going to get what we were going to offer you yesterday after you attacked us. And so as the Americans are groomed and tamed to understand that more hostilities means more concessions from Washington, they are less likely to engage in hostilities. You know, I I think the Iranians are masters of these kind of things. They need to um make their you know their million what what thousands of years of um chess playing and negotiation tactics very apparent right now.

They have to um they have to get an an agreement that uh is so good it'll make uh neocons cry you know. But can Trump do that? I mean Trump's also in this hard position. I think the best case scenario for Trump is maybe not even getting a deal.

Saying something like, "You know what? Iran's their problem. It's in West Asia. Let the Saudis, let the Emiratis, let the Israelis deal with them.

" Right? He could actually win the midterms with that. But if he keeps trying to get a deal, okay, every deal is going to make it look like a loss because his opponents will be like, "Oh my god, you sold out. " Right.

He should just walk away and leave the Israelis to us and the Yeah. Yeah. I mean uh that's the I think you spelled it out uh very clearly and yeah I 100% agree that that what's so 57 minutesinteresting too is that uh um the United States um you know when it comes to this this particular issue the Iran uh I think that there there's such a big double standard of course with what Iran and the axis of resistance what they're allowed to do which is nothing uh in the eyes of uh the west versus what the US is is supposedly allowed to do but I think in this moment what is going what is so I think surprising and shocking is that it appears that Iran understands this is a long war and to the question from the from the person in the audience who gave a super chat uh DC Hawaii Right. I mean, negotiations, you said it, are always going to be part of the end of a conflict.

The big question is is are we truly at the end? And it's obvious that uh we're not. And yeah, the United States, even Afghanistan when Biden administration had to order the complete chaotic hightailing out of the country, even that wasn't necessarily the end of the war. The United States still conducts intelligence.

It still tries to use humanitarian aid to, you know, infiltrate the society. It still attempts at every moment to isolate it and to use it as much as possible as a focal point of chaos in the region. Uh Afghanistan is nowhere near where Iran is in terms of sovereignty. So the United States doesn't really end wars, as you said, unless it is forced to.

And Trump at this moment, yeah, he could win the midterms if he just said, uh, this is done. We won. Uh, it's not our problem anymore if problems occur. It seems like they're trying to have to say we won.

He said, I'm just not going to waste myself on this project anymore. This is Israel's problem, Saudi Arabia's problem, whatever. Okay. Um and and we you know Trump as the isolationist um you know stop neverending wars candidate Trump right can reinvigorate his base by saying I'm pulling out every base out of this region because we're just not going to be distracted by this region anymore.

You know we have bigger fish to fry. um China's getting ahead of us, etc. He can just unilaterally withdraw the way he unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, and he can win. He He won't He will struggle if he signs a deal, and he will struggle if he goes back to war.

But I think he could whip up a narrative if he just said, "Forget you people. " Right? He didn't take any bad hits when he did that with Yemen. When he said, you know, we're out of here.

Let the Israelis deal with the Yemenes, right? What happened? Nothing. Everyone forgot nothing.

I think that's the best option. But I'll tell you what'll happen in the American vacuum is Iran will be signing deals with every single country around there and making sure Iraq will, for instance, not be able to do as many contracts with American companies. Iraq will have to um probably not use American security contractors for its security work or British ones, you know. Um I just think there's uh if whatever the case is, yeah, if Trump leaves the region, Iran will gain.

But, you know, he can move on to China or those two Spanish enclaves in Morocco or Panama or any other thing and distract people. But a deal will kill his midterms and uh war will kill his midterms. So, if you're watching Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I guess the final point I wanted to make and get your reaction to and then we we can close here is that um for the resistance side of it in the region, there's an interesting contradiction in all of this in that it is possible that let's say Trump is out in 2028, let's say the midterms don't go too well, that we will see a shift in the policy toward the United States toward Iran and maybe even the region that was more like it was pre February 28th, which actually may not be beneficial to the resistance. Of course, everyone wants to see less dying and killing and murder and all of this that the US empire, Israel, etc. engage in, but in terms of the facts on the ground and what uh even uh any kind of direct conflict with Iran is bringing, which is kind of the opposite of what the US uh really actually wants. Uh it might be that a Democrat uh does shift focus away from the region and says, "Okay, now it's Russia China time," which is generally how they like to play it.

Um and that leads to maybe, as you said, this slow burn getting maybe even slower and therefore the prospects of maybe seizing the moment diminish. And it might be it's so it's an interesting contradiction. Uh, nobody wants to see war in Iran that has any kind of conscience and cares about human beings because it's connected to all these other genocidal and catastrophic wars that are being waged in this region. But also there is an interesting moment of opportunity that you've outlined here Charmaine that uh I think has to be on the minds of like this clock.

A lot of people like Pepe had pepe on the show others who said you know Iran's running out the clock. What happens when the political situation in the US changes though and there is a shift even if it is just nominally are you talking about the midterm a shift in the midterm the midterms just starting I mean the midterms will start but Trump will still be president and Trump has already said that he'll use executive orders allow Obama you know or or Biden to affect policy directly which is not surprising but if things get worse and worse you know a Democrat comes in or even a more a less Trump like Republican. Danny, I'm not so sure that because people dislike Trump. What is he?

His ratings are like in the 30s, low30s now. I'm surprised they're that high even. Um, so I'm I'm thinking like it's not necessarily the case that because Americans don't like Trump, they'll vote in a Democrat. I used to watch US politics much more closely cuz uh it was just entertaining and fun for me.

Um, and uh, not as much now, but uh, my sense is that there's no natural Democratic candidates. Like the Democratic party has like a huge problem. The fact that they could only put up Biden and then Camala Harris was Oh, yeah. So pathetic.

And then the other thing that's happening in the Democratic party other than just no candidates that have any national renown is that um the progressive wing of the Democratic party is getting more support from Democratic voters, right? Uh so you have like socialist types and like anti-Israel types, etc. And then you had that crazy vote where um a full quarter more than a quarter I think of um US Congress voted to cut military aid to Israel. I couldn't believe that.

So you have that but the party establishment that you know rigged the election and made sure Bernie was out and Clinton was the candidate even though she would lose to Trump. Like it was obvious, right? Bernie is maybe the only one who could have given Trump a run for his money because he was a populist the way Trump was, but on the other side, right? Um, here's the thing.

Uh, the the the DNC, the establishment cannot fathom allowing a progressive, you know, into the seat. They cannot there. I mean, the the Democratic establishment is as corporate as you can imagine, you know, is as warin inclined as anyone in the GOP. That's how they operate.

So, the the U DNC, right, the the Democratic elites, um, will will end up sabotaging themselves because they have an opportunity to run a progressive who would be super popular with young voters, right? And and and win, but they won't do that. And so I think, you know, right now, okay, we're two and a half years away, right? No, two years.

Yeah. Two and a few two years and a few months away from the presidential elections. Um, right now it's Vance versus Rubio. And God forbid Rubio gets in.

It's not like Vance was anything, but at least, you know, he pushed against the Iran war and, you know, was a nightmare. Yeah, he's he's an absolute nightmare. He'd set fire to Latin America. You know, get a So, I mean, uh, I don't think a Democrat president is a shoein by any means because they don't have their act together.

Yeah. It's like, look what happened in Turkey. Like, Erdogon had like really low ratings. Uh, the lowest he's had in a long time, but they had such an awful candidate.

His opposition, right, main opposition, the longest, you know, the party that's been around longest in Turkey, had such a bad candidate that Erdogon won. So, um I think that's what we're looking at re really like awful awful American political scene is just terrible right now. It's a total it's a it's a total crisis and yeah no the Democratic party because it's such a corporate wararm mongering entity. It has to rely on the Trump administration, especially Donald Trump himself to be polling like this and performing like this consistently, never rising, just only r only staying or falling at this level for this the rest of this period.

You know, that's what they have. It's not going to be the Democrats that are going to convince people to vote for the Democrats. No. " And I'm like, "Oh, how?

" And uh I mean, he listed a a myriad ways that they can and they intend to. And the thing is, everyone's contesting elections. Everyone's rigging elections. We have like headlines that the Israelis have rigged elections or worked on rigging elections in a dozen or or more countries and are just expanding that.

8 minutesYeah. So nobody's trusting elections anymore. You know, the very people who talk about democracy are undermining it wholly. I mean, this is such interesting times we live in as commentators and journalists covering the world right now.

Um, but yeah, I I don't know what's coming. H well, you know a little bit about at least what's coming. You know a lot about what's happening right now. Charmine, that's a great place, I think, to end.

And I want to thank everyone who gave a super chat. You became a new member. Thanks so much. I'm pulling you up on the screen now.

Bring the troops home. Yes, thank you. Uh so thanks all uh to all of you who gave super chats today. Um in the video description below, you can find Charmine's publication or the publication she edits, The Cradle.

Uh you can find that in the video description. Definitely support it, read it, subscribe, all of that good stuff. Um, also in the video description, all the places to support this channel, Patreon, Suback, and more. Most importantly, this is a very free way to support.

Hit the like button. That helps boost the show after we are done. Uh, Charmaine, any final thoughts before I hit end stream here. Um, no.

I think we'll be having this discussion for a long time to come because the Americans don't know how to stop and so I'm really hoping for a some big Iranian plays or resistance axis plays that shuts them up and makes them want to run home. Amen to that. And uh yeah, I always say, you know, US needs a revolution if it's going to change. That's really the reality.

But uh Charmaine, thanks so much again for joining. We're going to head out of here. I'm pressing end stream now. Hit the like button before you go and I'll see you tomorrow, 400 pm Eastern time.

I'll let you know what's going on then. Bye-bye.

[admin]

After Trump's Latest TACO, The Resistance Increases The Pressure
Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris
Aug 4, 2026

During the night of August 3-4, reports emerged of Iranian drone strikes on a U.S. military base in Kuwait. In addition, Yemen's Ansar Allah announced that it had struck sensitive military targets at a Saudi airport.

The Resistance continues to conduct military operations against the U.S. and its Arab vassals despite the fact that the U.S. has not bombed Iran since last week.

In this report, Dimitri Lascaris discusses Iran's seizure of the initiative and the disarray in Washington.

He also reviews the latest shenanigans by Trump's 'Board of Peace', the bizarre behaviour of global oil markets, and a new report about mass emigration from Israel.



Transcript

Good day. This is Demetri Lceris coming to you from Montreal, Canada for Reason to Resist on August 4th, 20126. What you just saw was a video of an apparent Iranian drone strike launched last night against uh a US military base in the Gulf Arab autotocracy of Kuwait. Iran reportedly launched this drone track attack despite the fact that Trump chickenened out again this past weekend and has not bombed Iran since last week.

Today, we'll provide the latest news in this criminal war of aggression on Iran, including an analysis of what this all means, this apparent drone strike on uh the US base in Kuwait. And we'll also discuss the latest treachery from Trump's so-called Board of Peace, record levels of immigration from Israel, and the ongoing bizarre behavior of the global oil markets. Before we get into it, please remember to like and share this video if you find it to be informative. And if you're not already a subscriber to our channel to please do become one and help us to expand the reach of our unapologetic on the ground resistance journalism.

So with that, let's begin. Uh this morning, the video I just showed you began circulating widely on social media, including resistance telegram channels. Arab media reported that the explosion documented in this video was heard as far away as Bazra, the Iraqi port city uh on the Persian Gulf. Then soon after the video began circulating, at least two Israeli media outlets reported that Iran had indeed struck a US military base in Kuwait last night.

Here is the first of those reports from I24 News in Israel. IRGC conducts overnight drone attack on a US base in Kuwait. A source familiar with the defa details confirmed this to I24 news and stated that the attack was carried out using three drones. And interestingly, a similar report appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

Uh this again from this morning. The IRGC has attacked a US military base in Kuwait. A source familiar with the details confirmed to the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday morning. So somebody is really probably an Israeli.

some maybe from the intelligence community, the government, the military uh seems anxious to uh put the uh the Israeli media on notice about this attack. And again, the attack it has stated was carried out using at least three drones. Now, um, what is notable, of course, about this attack, uh, is that it is coming, as I indicated at the outset of this report, despite the fact that the United States has not bombed Iran, uh, since last week. Now, I should caution you uh that there has been no official confirmation, as far as I can tell, from the Iranian military or government that it is indeed behind a drone attack launched last night on uh a US Air Force base in Kuwait.

But it would be consistent with the uh apparent decision of the Iranian leadership a couple of weeks ago to take the initiative in this war. And I'm referring specifically to the uh uh the decision to attack a US Air Force base, an important one in Jordan, a couple of days after Trump unilaterally announced a so-called pause in his criminal bombardment of Iran. And um I I must say that if in fact the Adanians are behind this attack, although I always prefer the option of peace to war, uh I think that in the circumstances in which they find themselves against an implacable genocidal enemy like uh the Trump regime, uh it is absolutely the right thing to do uh to take the initiative and uh to dictate the pace at which this war is conducted. It is going to be conducted against Iran uh whether they like it or not.

And it is quite clear at this stage that Trump and Netanyahu are bent on the destruction of Iran and the only thing holding them back is uh Iran's ability to inflict devastating retaliation on the uh on the region and particularly the oil infrastructure of Israel and the Gulf Arabitocracies which would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and indeed for the US economy. That is what is holding back the United States. But the United States is waging a multifaceted war against Iran which includes an ongoing blockade of Iranian ports which is designed to crush the Iranian economy and uh and to inflict severe suffering on the innocent population on top of the theft of the Iranian assets many years ago and uh the maximum pressure sanctions that the United States has imposed on Iran. So there is a war being waged in every conceivable sense against Iran and the best way for Iran to emerge victorious in this war as it is on the path to doing uh is to dictate uh the uh pace at which the war is fought and to decide on its own terms when the hot phases of the war will resume and when they will be suspended.

If it allows the US to make that decision, the US will always pause the war, the hot phase of the war, when it is in US interest to do so, and will resume it when it is in US interest to do so. We'll always try to time the resumption and suspension of hostilities to disadvantage Iran to a maximum degree. So, if this is what Iran is doing, I strongly uh uh believe that that is the uh the best course of action. And uh quite apart from the necessity of uh of maintaining the initiative, as I say, there is an economic war being waged on Iran.

So even if there has been a pause in the actual bombardment of Iran, uh that doesn't mean that the United States uh government isn't continuing its efforts to uh to uh bring about the destruction of the country. It quite clearly is doing that. Uh so you don't have to take my word for it when I say that Iran has seized uh the initiative uh in this war. uh that is in fact the view of uh the neocons in Britain and uh I'll show you here an article that was just published by the Financial Times as neoonservative a British media outlet as you're likely to find and uh this article by the way uh is entitled Iran sets pace in war with Donald Trump and uh written by Jacob Judah and Steve Chavez in Washington uh after six months of war they say With Donald Trump, Iran can claim to have seized one significant advant advantage.

Washington is increasingly fighting at a pace set by Thran. Over the past two weeks, Thran has taken the initiative, launching preemptive attacks designed to exhaust 7 minutesthe US and frighten its Arab allies into acquiescing to Iranian control of the straight of Omuza. And by the way, this article was published before the news about the apparent drone attack last night on the US base in Kuwait. And they continue uh they write it struck against an American military installation in Jordan, breaking a lull in the fighting last week with a surprise attack.

It wasn't really a surprise, but uh that's another matter. Iran and its regional proxies have widened the theater of conflict, disrupting shipping in Red Sea, striking Syria for the first time, and being suspected a drone attack in Egypt. Uh by the way, the Iranians have uh categorically denied that they're responsible for that attack on an US LG tanker in an Egyptian port. uh and it's entirely possible that that was a false flag perpetrated by Israel uh or perhaps even by the United States in order to uh draw Egypt into this war.

The article goes on uh to uh conclude that uh this is uh this is not uh something that is likely to be to Washington's liking and uh that uh this is causing considerable angst uh to the uh criminal Trump regime. Uh now uh it's not just the Iranians who have seized the initiative. So too have their allies in Yemen. Ansarah uh today uh the Ansarah uh leadership announced that they had launched a drone operation against sensitive targets in Saudi Arabia's Najaran airport.

Uh these were uh according to the Yemenes military positions. Uh and that they used a drone in order to conduct this attack. and uh they say that it directly hit the sensitive facilities and targets in that airport. I've seen no uh external confirmation of this either from the Saudis.

I've not seen any video evidence to back it up, but the Yemenes tend uh to uh be quite uh truthful in their accounts about their military operations. And uh what's interesting about this is that uh the reason for this attack was apparently that some Saudi drones uh entered Yemeni airspace. Now, I haven't seen reports that those Saudi drones actually did any damage or hurt anyone. It appears that the mere fact that they violated Yemeni airspace was enough to cause the uh Yemeni uh military leadership to launch a retaliatory strike on a Saudi airport.

Uh so again, it looks like Ansadala too is taking uh the initiative, taking the fight uh to the proxies of Washington in the region. And there's also this report uh that six Saudi flank uh flagged tankers have been detected routing via the Cape of Good Hope. Uh that's the southern uh coast of the continent of Africa to avoid the blockade in the Babal Mandab strait in the Red Sea implemented by Ansala. And this person goes on to write that one Taiwan to Yanbu voyage, Yanbu is the Saudi uh oil exporting port on the Red Sea.

one Taiwan to Yanu voyage nearly doubling from approximately 24 to 56 days as Brett Ericson notes uh in the reply to this post. Uh 56 is more than doubling uh the time it takes to go from Yanbu to Taiwan. In any case, this not only uh delays the shipment of uh Saudi oil to Asian markets considerably, but uh because the voyage is so much longer, it also increased the cost. Uh so this too is bodess uh ill for uh the price of oil in uh the weeks and months ahead.

There's no indication whatsoever that this situation at Bomba Almandab Strait is going to be resolved anytime soon because uh the the the condition that the Yemenes have set for lifting the blockade is that uh the Saudis lift their criminal genocidal blockade on Yemen, something that's been in effect for more than a decade. And I haven't seen a hint of willingness on the part of the Saudi autotocracy to do that. So, it looks like this blockade is going to stay in effect for some time and may well uh intensify. For now, it's only limited, as I understand it, to Saudi oil tankers.

Uh other ships are being allowed uh through the Bomb Almad Strait. That may change uh if this war intensifies. Now, all of this is uh causing uh the Donald to become increasingly agitated. Uh you know, after the Iranians denied repeatedly and strenuously that they were meeting with US officials yesterday, which is what Trump said on the weekend, he said that there were going to be meetings to resume negotiations with the Iranians on Monday during the day, which conveniently happened to be the day on which the markets uh the oil markets reopen for trading.

Well, the Adranians denied all of this. So, Trump puts out uh this uh wacko tweet tweet uh post on truth so social in the last . 12 minutesIranian leadership is unbelievably duplicitous. This coming from the world's worst pathological liar.

And then he writes, "They ask for a meeting. " Uh no, the only person who would say beg uh is Donald Trump and the sickopants who surround him in the White House. And he says that there are more meetings scheduled in the immediate future. and they say openly and proudly that they're not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about and they're only dealing with Oman.

They then go on to give their usual blather and saying the straight of Hormuz will be operated powerfully by them when it is already completely controlled by the United States Net Navy and are blockade or as some say the United States wall of steel. Actually, there are no uh naval vessels uh that I can see in the straight of Hormuz. What happens is they entice some civilian tankers to try to go uh through the strait using a lane that hugs the coast of Oman and uh they provide an aerial escort which typically means a helicopter or two uh guiding the vessel but they're not sending their uh expensive naval vessels into the straight of Hormuz because as the US uh military understands all too well they could be sunk. uh and all the reports are that the uh the traffic through the straight of Hormuz continues to be highly constrained and that almost nobody is using that Omani lane now and the few vessels that are going through are going through the lane that has been authorized by Iran.

So this is nothing but a pack of lies which makes it uh you know doubly ironic that he begins by accusing the Iranians of being duplicitous. Uh in any event, uh all of his ranting and raving is not going to uh significantly alter the reality on the ground. Uh and that is uh something that I think is becoming increasingly apparent to the Donald himself. Now, by the way, if there are meetings, uh going on between US and Iranian officials, then why are there no photographs uh to evidence these meetings?

You know, it's not unusual when dignitaries from countries get together to negotiate, even in circumstances of war. Uh there will be photographs available uh to the media to show that they've actually convene for the meetings. Uh couldn't Donald uh easily have his underlings uh take a photo or two of the uh representatives of these governments getting together? But no, there's nothing like that.

uh and uh you know furthermore uh why would the Iranians meet with the US uh government at this stage uh after they were uh tricked into negotiating with Iran in with the United States in June of last year only to find themselves subjected to a war of aggression during 12 days of in that month and then after having been uh you know uh deceived or at least there was an attempt to deceive them again in February there were negotiations happening. The Omanis reported that the Iranians were making significant concessions in those negotiations in February of this year. And then on February 28th, uh Israel and the United States launched this criminal war of aggression, uh murdering much of the top leadership of the country, including the martyed supreme leader Ali Kamei. Uh so then comes theou the memorandum of understanding which the United States violated from the very beginning and in every imaginable way within the first two weeks of its signing.

Uh there is absolutely no reason for the Iranians to believe that negotiating with these lunatics is going to lead anywhere. So, uh, Trump's claim, uh, to be, uh, in meetings with the Iranians in negotiations, uh, has absolutely no credibility. And the fact that he has a motive to lie because this inevitably, uh, impacts the price of oil, the price of oil comes down whenever Trump makes some ridiculous claim that they're on the verge of a deal. You know, nobody should take any of this seriously.

And I think that the Adanians are being quite honest when they say that they are only meeting with Oman. And the meeting with Oman, by the way, is for a very uh limited purpose. is just to discuss or determine jointly uh whether they can agree upon a single lane uh for on a temporary basis for uh shipping through the straight of Hormuz to pass pending the resolution of the critically important issues uh as to who will have custody or control of the straight of Hormuz and whether ships will pay uh fees for passage and if so to whom and in what amount. Uh these issues are going to take some time to work out.

Uh and so in the interim, all they're talking about on and Oman reportedly is a temporary lane. And what's quite interesting about this report, which you see here in I24 News, and you can find this is Israel's media outlet again and other media outlets, is that the plan, which appears to be taking shape, would give tan control over inbound shipping. Uh now if you control who goes into the Persian Gulf then you effectively control who can come out of it because there's only one way into the Persian Gulf and that's through the straight of Hormuz. There is no other maritime uh route into the uh Persian Gulf.

So uh if you give Iran control over who enters uh the Persian Gulf, you're effective effectively giving Iran control over uh all maritime traffic in and out the Persian Gulf. Uh and uh this may just be a clever way of making it seem as though Oman uh will retain some authority over who gets to go in and out of the uh the the Persian Gulf. But at the end of the day, if the Omanis do agree to this, uh it's going to be quite a significant blow to Trump's efforts uh to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. And the situation overall has become so desperate that Sentcom, the uh arm of the US military that's responsible for West Asia, is now soliciting opinions from its soldiers for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.

You can see this up on the screen. Uh this was uh posted uh by the Hormuz letter yesterday. " Close quote. The crowdsourcing style query, which military officials said was unusual over email is one sign of the limited and potentially unpalatable options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms.

Um, this comes a week after a US official said Trump is exasperated and there was not a real strategy for how long or what they should do. You'd think that the rocket scientists running SenCom would know that an email a an email of this nature sent broadly to its military personnel was highly likely to be leaked to the media. But apparently that didn't deter them from uh soliciting these opinions. Now with that, let's turn to developments in the bizarro world of the global oil markets.

Uh this is a report of statements made by Amin Hassan al-Naser, the CEO of the giant Saudi Aramco oil company. He announced the suspension of the supply of a huge amount of oil to world markets, referring to the deep effects of security tensions in the region. 6 billion barrels of oil from the market. Uh that is an absolutely uh massive amount of oil that would normally have been distributed to consumers around the world but that has been uh deprived to them because of this uh war of aggression launched uh by Trump and Netanyahu on February 28th.

Of course, one would think in these circumstances that the price of oil would be going through the roof. Uh that has not happened. Uh certainly not currently happening. I'll come back to the price of oil in a moment.

com about what is going on here. It was uh authored by one of their uh uh columnists uh Ena Slav published on July 28th and she wrote uh that oil prices ignore the warning signs in physical markets. Oil markets remain surprisingly optimistic despite major supply disruptions. That optimism is increasingly being tested as record refining margin margins tightening fuel supplies and declining global inventories point to growing stress in physical oil markets rather than futures.

the current pause in hostilities does not resolve underlying supply constraints and physical fundamentals deserve more attention than short-term price movements. I completely concur. And in the body of the article, um, she points out, uh, that, uh, some of this optimism may be arising from the fact that back in 2022 when, uh, Russian forces interveneed militarily in Ukraine and then they were hit with sanctions on their oil, the Russians uh, the price of uh, oil uh, a barrel of oil spiked to about 120 US uh, very quickly. And uh people were surprised to see that the market adapted and basically what happened was somehow Russian oil found its way out and continue to flow uh to customers around the world.

And uh she writes here uh that unfortunately for those doing that betting in other words that the market this time is going to adapt as it did in the case of uh the sanctions on Russia in 2022. Uh warning signs are flashing and especially in oil products. Crack spreads are at all-time highs. Uh this is the difference between the price of oil and uh the price of refining uh a barrel of oil.

I believe that's uh how you define the crack spreads. And uh that this is reflecting an increasingly tighter market with some analysts suggesting this may only be the beginning. In fact, some analysts have been warning since the spring that if 22 minutesthe war extended beyond June, all bets would be off with global crude inventories depleted and shortages emerging in fuels. This is exactly what is happening.

Albeit perhaps more slowly than many would imagine given the dramatic nature of developments. Gloable global oil inventories are not yet empty but they are being drawn down considerably with the US strategic petroleum reserve nearing a critical level. Gasoline, diesel and jet fuel supply is tightening because demand is outpacing supply suggesting that the disruption in Middle East energy exports have indeed been severe enough to warrant a closer look than just the future markets. Now um I I just want to comment on this.

Russia is a very different case uh than the Persian Gulf. Russia is a massive country with uh huge uh coastlines. It has a Black Sea coastline, a Pacific coastline, it has an Arctic coastline, the Baltic Sea uh in addition. So it has many ways to get uh oil out.

Very very difficult given the size of the country and the length of its coastlines. uh to uh stop uh what they call the shadow fleet tankers from delivering oil. Plus it has uh it can deliver oil to huge markets like those of China in India by land and China and India particularly China are you know determined to buy Russian oil whether or not they're being threatened with sanctions by uh Washington. So this is very different from the Persian Gulf where you have uh you know huge major oil and gas producers like Qatar and uh Kuwait and Bahin having really only one way to get their oil out and that is by maritime transportation through the straight of Hormuz and even Saudi Arabia which does have another option the Red Sea.

um the pipeline from eastern to western Saudi Arabia, its capacity is limited and it can't make up for all or even substantially all of the lost oil exports because of the closure of the straight of Hormuz. Plus, you now have the blockade on the Babal Mandeb straight for Saudi oil tankers. And as I mentioned, this means that they now have to take a much longer route. So, this is a very different environment from uh the Russian oil environment.

And uh what that means is reasonable investors would not expect uh there to be anywhere near the degree of market adaptation this time around as there was uh back in 2022. Now uh a professor who comments extensively on developments in the oil markets by the name of David uh Adam I'm sorry Cochran uh he came out with an interesting post on July 31st. Uh I want to share this with you. At the start of this war, I suggested that the US Treasury Department was trading oil futures with Treasury money to suppress prices.

They were then forced to sell from the SPR. When that go low or that goes low, Japan suddenly started selling its reserves of oil and their currency saw steady intervention. When the war looked like peace had been reached, Japan stopped selling its oil but also had much less currency intervention. Now the war is back on.

The US publicly makes a massive intervention in the Japanese yen. I suspect Japan will in turn release more oil reserves. I believe the US Treasury has dangerously and stupidly tried to use cash settled futures to intervene in the US oil market repeatedly since the start of this war. If they cannot keep the price of oil suppressed, there will be biblically catastrophic results for both the global economy and the US Treasury, all at the expense of the taxpayer.

So, I'm going to try to break this down for you and tell you what I think uh he's saying. I think what he's saying and there have been other uh reports about this from oil industry experts suspicions uh not proof hard proof but suspicions that the uh US Treasury is secretly uh selling oil futures in which are effectively contracts uh to purchase or sell oil at some point in the future let's say two months down the road and they're offering to sell that oil at a very low price uh in uh you uh two months time and uh if in fact it fails the US government in keeping the uh the price of oil at or below the price in those futures contracts when it comes time for them to deliver the oil uh the the US tre the US Treasury Department deliver the oil to the buyers the people on the other end of these contracts they're going to have to go out into the physical market and buy the oil to satisfy their obligations under the contracts and if the price of oil in the physical market is much higher uh than the contract price then the uh US treasury is going to lose a ton of money huge amounts of money uh and uh therefore um the US taxpayer could get hit enormously depending upon what happens uh to the price of oil in the next few months and uh this would be a double whammy because US taxpayers are already paying themselves higher prices for gas and uh of course uh products that are affected by the price of oil are themselves their prices are being inflated. So they're getting hit once uh when they purchase gas or other products that are affected by the increase in the price of oil and then they'll get hit again if and when the US Treasury has to deliver um oil at prices that are well below the the current market price of oil uh some some point down the road. In effect, what may be happening is that the US government is secretly subsidizing the price of oil for the entire world.

And this could indeed become extremely costly. Uh, you know, possibly to the tune of trillions of dollars depending on how things play out. Is this what's actually going on? I don't know.

Is it entirely possible? Are there indications that it's going on? Yes. Is this something of which the US government is capable?

Absolutely. Just think about all the times that the US government secretly spent gigantic amounts of money on a war. And we didn't find out about that uh until years after the fact. Uh that a war that was thought to have cost hundreds of billions of dollars in fact cost trillions of dollars uh to the United States.

uh and so uh I don't think that the uh Trump regime would have any hesitation in engaging this this type of behavior to suppress the price of oil even if it believed it was taking enormous risk uh with uh uh US taxpayer money. Uh time will tell what indeed has caused uh the price of oil to remain so low and in fact the last time I checked about an hour ago uh the price of oil had actually fallen again today despite this attack. uh you know this reported attack on a Saudi airport by Yemen despite all of these Saudi oil tankers having to be diverted uh and take the much longer journey and much more costly journey around uh the continent of Africa to Asian markets despite the report of the uh uh the Iranians being on the verge of a deal which would give them strict control over inbound traffic despite the reported attack on the US air base in Kuwait. Despite all of this, the price of oil today thus far has fallen in excess of 2% and is trading uh at just below $82 last time I checked.

Now, this is still well above the price at which it was trading a barrel of Brent crude at the beginning of the year, which was a little bit north of $60, but it's well below the high point during this war, which was up close to 120 and certainly far below uh what many experts uh expected uh to happen. So, uh all bets are off, I would say, on what is going to happen in the months ahead. And uh we I continue to believe uh that these shenanigans cannot persist and that we are going to see an explosion in the price of oil uh sometime in uh the next couple of months. With that, let us turn uh to the latest developments in the Gaza Strip, ground zero for Israel's ongoing genocidal wars in the region.

The Board of Peace has just put out another statement regarding uh the deal that it had negotiated with the Palestinian resistance uh to implement. It was a roadmap they called it for the implementation of uh Trump's supposed peace plan. And uh what uh that deal provided for, as I explained in a report a couple of days ago, was the gradual decommissioning of heavy weapons by the Palestinian resistance. They would gradually turn them over to a a techn technocratic Palestinian authority in the Gaza Strip, not to Israel, and they weren't going to be destroyed either.

uh they were going to be handed over gradually and the handover of those heavy weapons was going to be linked to a gradual Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. It currently controls physically occupies uh somewhere around 70% of the Gaza Strip in flagrant violation of uh multiple agreements. So the board of peace puts out this uh post stating as follows. part of the process of decommissioning weapon in Gaza and enabling the transition to civilian governance and creating a safe safer future in the region for both Israelis and Palestinians.

A meeting was held earlier today, Monday, so this was yesterday between high representative Nikolai Maddenov together with the board of peace team and the child murdering Benjamin Netanyahu. The meeting was constructive and detailed. Israel and the board of peace share a common understanding of the ultimate objectives. The goal is clear and is not in question the complete decommissioning of weapons.

Notice it doesn't say heavy weapons. It says weapons period. So this would include light weapons in the strip and transition away from rule by the gun to civilian governance. Reaching it will be a process and that process will be set out in the next phase of the work.

Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that withdrawal of the IDF beyond the yellow line will take place only once decommissioning is complete. Not once it is started. Once it is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators, this is what they're now claiming. This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.

So basically, the the the the victims of this ongoing genocide have to be divested of all the weapons, which are peanuts compared to the destructive power of Israel. But Israel gets to remain in the Gaza Strip until that process is complete. Now, once they've given up their weapons, uh what deterrence, what would deter Israel from actually finishing them off? At this stage, the only deterrence they possess are those weapons, the destructive power of which, as I I said, is vastly smaller than that of Israel's destructive power.

No sane, decent person would insist that the victims of a genocide be divevested of their light weaponry or any of their weaponry before the perpetrator of the genocide is divested of its own far more destructive weaponry. That's how a normal uh humane uh decent human being would go about resolving uh this genocide, bringing it to an end. But instead, these uh racist lunatics on the Board of Peace are now insisting, contrary to the agreement that they struck with the Palestinian resistance, that the Palestinian resistance be completely disarmed before Israel withdraws even an inch from the territory that it illegal illegally occupies. Now, let's take a look.

I showed this to uh my audience uh a few days ago when I talked about the agreement. Let's take a look at what the agreement actually says. This is clause eight. A process to decommission and store heavy weapons.

Notice it says heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons and tunnels shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under sharmshik protocol. The entry of the NCA, that's the technocratic independent Palestinian Authority and deployment of the international stabilization force. This process shall be administered and implemented by NCA in a gradual, sequential and timebound manner according to an implementation time timetable that shall be completed within 14 days after all parties approve of the road map uh which could be extended by a decision by IVC. This process shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal in phases from the areas under its control and the decommissioning of our militias in accordance with article 10 of this road map.

So what is supposed to happen clearly and this is evidenced elsewhere in the agreement. This was published by the way on the board of peace X account what you're seeing here just a few days ago. What was agreed was that the two things would happen in concert with each other. There would be a de decommissioning process that would happen uh alongside a withdrawal of Israeli forces pro process.

They would begin at the same time, these two processes, and end at the same time. Instead, what this liar uh Madden is now saying after meeting with the child murderer is that oh no. Oh no. Despite what we told you on our exac account a few days ago, in fact, what the Palestinian resistance agreed was that they would give up all their weapons, not just heavy weapons, to the NCA, and only then would Israel begin to withdraw.

Again, this just drives home the point that the Board of Peace is a fraud. It is nothing for a but a cover for Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. And in that regard, I show you the report of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. 36 minutesOn August, this is for August 3rd, 2nd to 3rd.

During that 24-hour period, there were 19 martyrs, 18 new martyrs, 18 people killed by the genocidal Israeli entity and one succumbed to an injury. 35 injuries had arrived in Gaza Strip hospitals in the prior . Since the ceasefire, October 11th, the number of people killed by Israel, 1,250, over 4,000 injured, and 804 bodies, revealed the total death toll from the aggression. Of course, this number is nowhere near uh the actual uh death toll in Gaza.

Uh but the official death toll, these are the bodies that the Gaza Health Ministry has actually been able to collect and identify. It is 73,375 with 174,220 injuries. You know, this is well over uh 10% of the population of Gaza. This is just the official number has been killed or wounded.

Now, all of these fatalities, 1,250 and these over 4,000 injuries since the ceasefire came into effect and this this disgusting board of peace has done nothing, absolutely nothing to stop the carnage. Every single day there are people being murdered in Gaza uh by the genocidal Israeli entity. So, don't buy any of it, my friends. This genocide is ongoing and as I've said many times has expanded since the ceasefire to the West Bank and to South Lebanon.

Now uh despite all of the Israeli savagery, it cannot be concealed that uh the uh that Israeli society continues to fall apart. So just as an example, uh there was a report today of yet another Israeli being arrested on charges of spying for Iran. This one is actually a settler. Uh the most fanatical of the Zionists are even they are even spying for Iran.

And uh this individual was this settler was arrested by Israeli security forces on suspicion of susp spying for Iranian intelligence in exchange for $15,000. According to a report by Israel's Channel 12, uh the individual was acting on instructions from Iranian operatives using detailed maps. He allegedly photographed and documented the residence and security measures of highprofile Israeli officials including former military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi and the national security minister Beng. Uh now Israel is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world uh relative to uh the vast majority of countries.

It is indeed an affluent country. It's rather surprising that some fanatical Zionist settler would be willing to sell out the head of the Israeli military and the national security minister potentially enabling Iran to kill them for a mere $15,000. But I guess uh that's the going rate uh for getting these lunatics to betray uh their genocidal entity. Uh but uh a far more uh significance is uh reports emerging that uh immigration from Israel is at record levels.

Here is a report that was published yesterday by the Israeli newspaper Hadets. Immigration from Israel remained at a record high in 2025. Study finds about 90,000 Israelis left the country for at least three months in 2025, compared with an annual average of roughly 60,000 before 2023. Researchers warned that rising immigration could eventually threaten Israel's security and economy.

And uh on the uh in the uh at the outset of the article, it says, "The findings suggest that the wave of immigration that began in 2023 likely remained high last year. A previous study found that those leaving included disproportionately large numbers of doctors, PhD holders, engineers, academics, and highincome earners. uh and that is if that trend persists, it will undoubtedly have a seriously negative impact on Israel's economy. Now, this was 2025.

Since 2026, what has happened? Well, you know, in 2025, there was a 12-day war with Iran during which Israel got pummeled. Uh during this uh year, uh in the first half of this year, uh there was a 40-day war during which Israel was pummeled. And that war is not over.

It is ongoing. And uh at any moment uh as Israelis well understand this whole thing could erupt. And uh they also have seen the reports many Israelis of depleted air defense systems a lack of uh PAC 3 interceptors for the Patriot air defense systems. They've seen reports about uh critically important US radar systems being destroyed by Iran during uh the this year's war.

Uh and so uh if you're 41 minutesthinking rationally as an Israeli uh you would be very concerned about uh Iran's ability to inflict catastrophic damage on the country. If anything, the immigration from Israel has likely is likely to have accelerated this year. And by the way, I don't believe that these numbers are accurate. I think the Israeli government is perfectly capable of uh putting out fraudulent numbers to conceal the extent of the problem.

And when I see how many Israelis are snatching up property in Greece and in Cyprus, something I've reported on extensively, others have reported on it as well, I suspect that the actual level of immigration is uh much higher now uh than what it was reported or what it is being reported to have been in 2025. And I just want to point out that in November of 2023, within about uh 6 weeks of the genocide having been launched, I uh published a lengthy two-part article in which I predicted that Israel was going to suffer a strategic defeat in its war with the Axis of resistance. And ultimately the way Israel would come to an end would be uh a massive exodus of Zionists from the genocidal colony which would fatally compromise the ability of the Israeli uh regime to control the majority Palestinian population and that out of the ashes of the genocidal Israeli colony would be reborn the state of Palestine in which all peoples uh would live with uh equal rights. So that remains my prediction and uh based on the information that's available uh it appears to me uh that that is precisely where Israel is heading.

One other piece of news I'll share with you is that a German appeals court has just ruled that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is not a violation of German law. Uh it ruled this in a case in which a woman who had done just that compared Israel to Nazi Germany uh had been charged criminally by German authorities. Uh at the trial level uh the prosecution succeeded but the decision was overturned. The German court held that this was protected speech under Germany's constitution.

Uh and of course by any rational measure uh Israel's behavior is entirely comparable uh to that of the Nazis. uh if you give them enough time, they probably will will end up killing just as many people as the Nazis did, too. Now, admittedly, at this stage, uh the numbers uh are nowhere near as great as the number of people killed by uh the Nazis uh in World War II. But as I say, uh that's it's just a question of uh when, not if.

If if we continue to allow Israel to engage in this satanic behavior and to to enjoy complete impunity for its monstrous crimes, uh the death toll will continue to increase throughout the region and increase rapidly. And of course, uh the extreme danger of Israel ultimately resorting to nuclear weapons remains. Uh so let us hope that uh we will ultimately as uh western citizens uh come together and remove from power uh the Zionists who rule us because uh unless and until we do that we will continue our governments will continue not only to tolerate Israel's crimes but to enable them in every uh conceivable way. for that.

Uh for now, that's my report uh on the uh ongoing uh criminal war of aggression on Iran. Uh in the interim, stay safe and uh we'll be back to you uh later today or tomorrow uh with our latest discussion with friend of reason to resist uh Lebanese geopolitical analyst Le Maru.