Greenland condemns Trump-linked oil firm for bringing equipment ashore, warns against drilling Saturday, 08 August 2026 10:43 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 08 August 2026 10:43 AM] https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/0 ... t-drilling
Greenland has condemned Texas-based Greenland Energy, linked to President Donald Trump, for bringing drilling equipment ashore without authorization and warned the firm against further operations.
The warning followed the arrival of a tugboat and barge carrying about a dozen containers of drilling equipment at Jameson Land region in late July, where the company plans to conduct exploratory drilling.
“All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority before they are carried out,” the Greenland government said, stressing that no authorization had been granted for the delivery.
Greenland Energy plans to spend $60 million drilling exploratory wells after claiming that as much as $1 trillion worth of crude oil could lie beneath Jameson Land.
Greenland stopped issuing new oil licenses in 2021 on environmental grounds, but the British company 80 Mile already holds exploration rights in Jameson Land and has agreed to give Greenland Energy a majority stake in exchange for financing the project.
While Greenland Energy CEO Larry Swets has claimed that the oil project “is not related to American annexation,” the company has developed ties with figures associated with Trump, including former television host Phillip Calvin McGraw, who was hired to produce a documentary portraying the project as the work of “modern-day wildcatters.”
Furthermore, one of Greenland Energy’s directors is a US Navy veteran involved in Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defense program.
The company previously caused widespread condemnation after a representative told a Jameson Land community meeting in June that it had permission to land drilling equipment, a claim Swets later acknowledged had created “confusion.”
Greenland Energy later told shareholders that negotiations with Greenlandic authorities had been “constructive” and that it remained encouraged about obtaining the approvals required for drilling.
The Greenland government, however, said the application remained under review and that the company had not received any approval.
The dispute comes as Trump has repeatedly threatened to take control of Greenland, including a recent social-media post showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village.
Greenland Energy plans to begin drilling in October, while a vessel carrying about 300 containers of additional equipment is expected to leave Canada on September 12.
Trump’s Greenland envoy, Jeffrey Martin Landry, has claimed that Greenland could be producing oil as soon as next year.
UN Security Council has lost credibility; its resolutions worthless: Anasrullah official Saturday, 08 August 2026 7:13 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 08 August 2026 7:23 AM ] https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/0 ... -official-
Hizam al-Assad, a member of the political bureau of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement
A senior member of Ansarullah resistance movement has dismissed the UN Security Council’s condemnation of Yemen’s retaliatory missile attacks against Saudi Arabia and commercial vessels, stating that the global body has lost its legitimacy and credibility, and its resolutions are worthless.
Hizam al-Assad, a member of Ansarullah’s political bureau, censured the performance of the council regarding unfolding developments in Yemen and the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that the agency rarely lives up to its role as guardian of peace and international security, and its credibility has been eroded.
He stated that the Security Council has not taken effective action regarding the relentless Saudi aggression and siege against Yemen over the past 12 years, and has been practically incapable of addressing the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and stopping Israel’s vicious strikes.
The senior Ansarullah official said the Security Council’s resolutions do not hold any value given its dismal and disappointing performance.
Assad also underlined that the Yemeni nation will continue to tread the path of resistance and steadfastness.
“What has been taken by force can only be taken back by force. Yemen is utterly determined to reclaim its rights and defend its sovereignty,” he stated.
The remarks came after the UN Security Council on Friday condemned the missile strikes carried out by Yemeni forces against Saudi Arabia and commercial ships, while also denouncing the landings of aircraft at Yemeni airports.
The council said its members are worried about the increasing tensions in Yemen and emphasized the necessity of refraining from actions that might jeopardize peace initiatives or endanger international peace and security.
It also condemned missile attacks launched by the Yemeni army against Saudi Arabia since July 13, as well as attacks against commercial vessels since July 22.
The council emphasized that all flights to Yemeni airports must be coordinated with the Saudi-backed and Aden-based Yemeni government and receive prior authorization from it.
On July 20, the Sana’a government announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia, stating that authorities in Riyadh have imposed “an unjust and oppressive siege” on Yemen for nearly 12 years, “plundering our resources and implementing a complete blockade.”
Subsequently, the Yemeni Armed Forces have announced multiple successful operations against Saudi-linked vessels in the Red Sea.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies have imposed a blockade on Yemen, initiating a comprehensive war supported militarily, politically, and logistically by the United States and certain Western countries.
The war has killed tens of thousands of Yemenis, yet Saudi Arabia has failed to achieve its primary goal of reinstalling a puppet regime aligned with Riyadh.
HORMUZ WAR EXPLODES: Ship ‘Bursts Into Flames’ After Another IRGC Attack? ‘Trump Has To Obey… Times of india Aug 8, 2026
A vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile and caught fire off Oman, just 18 nautical miles east of Khasab, according to UKMTO. The fire was extinguished and the vessel and crew are safe, but the incident comes as tensions around the Strait of Hormuz remain extremely high. Iran says the Strait will not reopen until the United States changes its behavior, while Tehran and Muscat are discussing alternative shipping routes. Iran is also considering new rules to regulate maritime traffic through the strategic waterway. With Iran and Oman holding maritime rights in the region and international shipping governed by UNCLOS, the latest vessel incident could have major implications for global trade, energy supplies and freedom of navigation.
Transcript
A vessel burst into flames after being hit by an unknown projectile off Oman on Saturday, sending a fresh shock wave through the waters near the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel was struck about 18 nautical miles east of Oman's Casab. According to the UK Maritime Operations or UK MTO, the impact triggered a fire on board, but the flames were later extinguished. The vessel and its crew are reported to be safe with no environmental impact reported so far.
The identity of the projectile in who is behind the attack remain unclear. But the incident comes at an extremely sensitive moment with the strait of Hormuz still effectively closed amid the ongoing conflict.
Iranian officials are making it clear that Tehran is not prepared to simply reopen the waterway without changes from Washington. Muhammad Bakar Zuladar, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, says the strait will not reopen until the United States corrects its behavior, adding that Iran will not back down, whether in war or negotiations.
Reopening the straight of hormuz follows its own specific set of mechanisms, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the diplomatic negotiations currently happening between Iran and Oman. The potential reopening of the vital strait of Hormuz is in reality entirely contingent upon a specific set of conditions that the Islamic Republic of Iran intends to establish. Furthermore, it remains heavily dependent on the extent to which the United States is willing to fully accept and adhere to those precise conditions as dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely a simple maritime passage for us today. It is certainly not just an ordinary economic waterway for our nation, but rather it represents a significant source of power and a profound strategic strength which the Islamic Republic of Iran will undoubtedly utilize to its advantage, leveraging its unique geographical position and its inherent regional capabilities. The enemy now finds itself compelled to accept the specific conditions set forth by Iran regarding the opening of the strategic strait, and must also refrain from the interference that is currently hindering the delicate negotiations between Iran, the Sultanate of Oman, and other regional countries which have now reached their final stages and are nearing a successful conclusion, and ultimately yield to the conditions established by Iran.
At the same time, Iran and Oman are discussing alternative shipping routes while Iranian lawmakers are reportedly preparing new rules governing maritime traffic through the waterway. And there is an important legal dimension here. Both Tehran and Oman have exclusive economic zones, or EES, in and around the strait. Under Jungclaus, ships of all states, whether coastal or landlocked, generally enjoy the right of innocent passage through a state's territorial sea. That makes the current situation particularly complicated. Iran and Oman have important maritime rights in the region, but those rights exist alongside international rules governing navigation.
So as another vessel comes under fire just off Oman, the incident is raising not only security concerns, but also fresh questions about who controls access to one of the world's most strategically important waterways.
Can Iran really hit the United States mainland? A stunning threat from Iran is now raising that very question. During Friday prayers in Avaz on August 7th, senior Iranian cleric Abdul Nabi Musavi Fard reportedly declared that Tehran is preparing to dramatically extend the range of its missiles, putting the American mainland within reach.
Musavi Farard, who serves as the representative of Mojtabha Khamanei, Iran's third supreme leader, made the explosive remarks while addressing worshippers and his message was chilling.
We are preparing so that the American people also experience missile strikes and understand what it means to be dragged through blood and dust.
He said the message coming out of Avas was unmistakable. Musavi Farard claimed Iran is working toward extending its missile range to 15,000 km, a range that would theoretically put the continental United States within striking distance.
He also pointed to Iran's existing missile capabilities. The cleric said Iranian missiles can already reach Israel, a distance of roughly 2,000 km from Iran. He then led chants of "Revenge revenge," while calling for the destruction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Iran already possesses one of the largest and most diverse missile arsenals in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic is believed to have thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, including systems capable of striking Israel and parts of southeastern Europe. Missiles remain at the heart of Iran's military doctrine. They are one of Tehran's most important strategic deterrence against a far more powerful United States and its regional allies. According to a 2022 estimate by US Central Command, Iran possessed more than 3,000 ballistic missiles.
But Tehran's missile program goes far beyond the launchers themselves. Over the years, Iran has built what it calls missile cities: vast underground military facilities carved into mountains, and designed to protect missile systems from enemy strikes. Some of these facilities are reportedly buried deep underground, and they are believed to house systems including the Shahab 3, Sedial and Koramshar families of missiles, with reported ranges reaching around 2,000 km.
But Iran's ambitions may stretch far beyond that. Military analysts say Tehran has spent decades developing its missile program, with technological assistance from countries including China and North Korea. And now there are reports suggesting that North Korean technology could be playing a role in Iran's long range ambitions. Some reports have claimed that an 80 ton rocket booster linked to North Korea's Hasang 15 intercontinental ballistic missile may have been transferred from Pyongyang to Tehran.
The Hasang 15 is believed to have a range of nearly 8,000 mi, theoretically enough to reach large parts of the continental United States. But there is a crucial caveat. There is currently no confirmed evidence that Iran possesses an operational nuclear weapon or a proven intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the American mainland. That distinction is critical.
[Major General Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Wednesday, August 5, 2026] "As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, we will continue working on them for our national security. If they disarm, we will disarm."
Iran may be talking about what it wants to develop, but that does not mean the capability exists today. Still, Tehran's reported ambitions are already triggering alarm across the West, because Iran has spent years investing in a military strategy designed to offset the overwhelming conventional advantage of the United States. Long range missiles, hypersonic systems, mass drone swarms, underground launch facilities, and electronic warfare, are all designed to make any attack on Iran more costly, and potentially more dangerous.
So, can Iran hit the American mainland today? There is no confirmed evidence that it can, but if Tehran genuinely succeeds in developing a 15,000 km missile capability, the strategic equation would change dramatically.
Iran War OVER? Trump STUNNED as Yemen's Missiles SMASH Saudi | Patrick Henningsen Danny Haiphong Streamed live 3 hours ago #iran #trump #iranwar
Patrick Henningsen discusses Trump's shocking reaction to Iran's massive moves to consolidate power as war that was supposed to bring the Iranian government to its knees backfires badly on CENTCOM and Israel on multiple fronts, including Yemen, where the YAF is punishing top US ally Saudi Arabia.
Transcript
Welcome back to the show everyone. As you can see, I'm joined by Patrick Henningson of 21st Century Wire to break down the latest developments. We're asking whether the Iran war is over. Well, at least the reports are that Donald Trump and his aids or has told his aids that he may walk away from the war without a nuclear deal so long as Iran agrees to reopen the straight of Hormuz in full.
He told this to the Wall Street Journal. Now, Iran has been very firm on its demands. It has now many demands that have to pertain to theou including uh ending US troop presence, uh ending the war, ending wars of aggression on all of its allies and of course giving compensation to Iran for all of the damages. And Iran last night hit a tanker in off the coast of Oman.
as uh uh activity in the straight of Hormuz comes to a standstill. Just six vessels that went through the Iranian uh designated corridor uh went through last night. Now Yemen is escalating its uh counter strike and counterattack to US Saudi aggression. It released footage of drone and missile attacks on Saudi proxy forces in day five of this renewed war.
Uh this includes on mercenary ammunition depots in Yemen's Almuka which have been hit by 30 uh Yemen missiles overnight and actually that is being targeted once again as we speak by a Yemeni drone swarm. 58 up to at least that's what we know of so far 58 Saudi proxies thus far have been killed by uh Ansarala as this war uh uh Patrick has not seen any uh recession whatsoever. So Patrick what's going on first let's start with Iran. Uh is Trump actually walking away or is this more smoke and mirrors?
I don't know. I really don't know. I I look, the US isn't walking away. Um Trump might be walking away temporarily, but uh the United States have very clear plans and strategies for this region.
Uh they might be going into a delay phase. Uh they might I mean, look, these politicians are like school children. They need to have their summer vacation. So this is it.
This is August. So they all off they go to their second homes or their third homes or their fourth homes or whatever to the ranch. And so they're gone for August. So the the the the likelihood of escalation during this month with the western political, the American and the British specifically, uh they're gone on vacation, basically boating and things, crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay if there's any crabs left.
[snorts] Um so that's not happening. And so I I and then once you're into September, the you know the logic of escalation from the US point of view uh that close to the midterm elections, it's very risky. It's very risky. Um so they played all these different hands.
Uh there there could be a few I think desperate moves by by the Trump administration to antagonize um Iran to basically poke to prod to test uh a little bit um just to to remind Iran that the United States is still engaged um in the issue and u but you know the reality is Danny you know you're in America um if if the White House just doesn't talk about it for a few weeks then focuses on something else uh whatever that is uh then you know the American public just like switches off and uh most people will forget there was even a war in Iran if you give given a few weeks that's just the way um the American national goldfishb psyche works just in general so um so so then it's really taking advantage of this lull in fighting uh for the US and Israel to restock on on really essential uh defenses um managed to cobble together what they can in terms of uh interceptors uh in terms of ways that the Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem can defend itself um in the event of a resumption of of hostilities. Um that h that's going to happen and for the US they're they're you know the situation is is not great. You know Iran is being a lot more aggressive. they're they're they're not playing this sort of uh negotiations game anymore with the US.
So, they've been very explicit. We want you out of the region. Get out. You know, there can't be peace until the US is out of the Persian Gulf.
So, it's I mean, the US can't really engage. Trump can't engage in a war of words over this because he's going to have to back it up with some hard force or some power or something. And right now, um, Iran's taking advantage of the situation because of the political situation in the US and Israel, um, and being a lot more aggressive. I mean, you have to kind of marvel at the way Iran has is is has played their hands so skillfully um, at every single stage of this kind of situation, of this crisis.
And right now they're taking full advantage of the the weak footing um the political footing of of Trump and Netanyahu at the moment. It's very clear. And so, you know, the US can't come back with some kind of aggressive threat, but you can't kick us out of the middle out of the Persian Gulf. They can't say anything because the facts are the facts.
They don't have a very strong military position anyway. It's incredibly weak. Um, I I I really think that the uh the blow to the Kingdom of Jordan um over the last month has been really devastating for Israel because the Kingdom of Jordan separate from the GCC kind of arc on the Persian Gulf, that's Israel's last line of defense really um in terms of missiles. So, they really rely on a robust US presence um in Jordan.
Um without that, Israel's naked. they're really the flapping in the wind. So, uh I I think it's going to take time to digest this from the US. So it's it's it's it's a convenient time for them to reassess their position and uh maybe Trump can make a few copes like well we don't need the region anymore and we don't need the oil which we are so hot American economy it's so hot right now everybody wants our gas everybody wants our we're so hot investments coming in trillions of dollar record no one's ever been more employed than now in America our manufacturing sector oh my gosh it's never been more powerful since the country was founded.
That's what Trump is saying. Like it's the dollar has never been stronger. It's so strong right now. Um and so he's rebuilt the military.
You know, it's like it just whatever. He does his thing. He's going to do his thing. He's going to say what he's going to say.
But the fact of the matter is, uh it's a very very uh they have a very very weak hand right now um to play. And you know, it's like they really blew it. the US blew it because if they had played theou game, at least tried to play theou game at least halfway in, um they could have finessed their way um through on this and maybe even got some leverage somewhere. But the problem is now that the illusion of all that's gone, they blew it and they the Iranians aren't going to play the game anymore with them.
So they it's I mean that was the one last chance of of some kind of like uh at least a facade of diplomacy that America could have like kept their foot in and they absolutely blew it. And uh 8 minutesbetween Vance, Trump, Bessant and uh and Rubio and the rest um they just shot themselves in the foot like three or four times and then that's it. It's over. So, uh, that whole ruse is they basically, yeah, there's nothing that can be resurrected from that whatsoever.
Cuz Danny, the the [clears throat] thing is the whole thing with theou is it was it was always going to be the outcome that the straits of Hormuse were going to be settled without the United States. That was that was that was already implicit in that agreement. And so the only play that the US has left, which could come later um is to apply heavy pressure on Oman um in order to muscle their way into Oman to threaten them, perhaps stage a provocation that will create a US landing on the Omani side of the straight and then that would be a kind of a maybe a coup. I mean, we might be venturing into this territory at some point in the next 12 months.
Um, you know, I wouldn't rule any of that out with with this with this administration. You know, they they they'll they'll play every single last tactical angle they can to make it seem like they've still got some kind of cards to play on this and and kind of, you know, wash away the absolute shame and failure of starting a war that they couldn't possibly win. Uh, and having that on on on their record. Uh, so the US has to keep itself in that region somehow.
And how they're going to do that, they do have plans to try to do this, but how they're going to actually do that remains to be seen. So there's a few they they played this hand with Saudi Arabia, Danny, which was to pressure Saudi Arabia to engage the Yemenes and also to um to attack Iraq, but that was mainly a US military strike. I'm beginning to find out. So, and now um the Iraqi prime minister's launched a formal complaint with the United Nations.
I mean, so this is not going well for Saudi Arabia. Uh so, but that was US pressure and it shows you how disjointed Saudi is like as a government, as as a state, as a regime. They're really um you know they they don't have any kind of real solid continuity um as a they're supposed to be the regional hedgeimon but they're really unstable um if someone like Trump can just like put his thumb on them a little bit and then they they commit economic suicide like worse than what Germany did with the Nordstream pipeline. Uh that's not a very to me not a very stable regime.
Um acting against their own interests economically, geopolitically. Uh, I can't believe they did that. And so they must have some uh compromat on MBS or there must be something going. Trump himself is probably hugely compromised as well.
It's like a it's like a daisy chain of compromat between [laughter] Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, and whatever. And you got the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein or maybe not. Who knows? But uh just in you ringing his hands, job well done.
Uh so yeah, we'll see. I mean uh I remember those days when Saudi Arabia was so tough with Biden, right? They received him very coolly and uh things were tense and uh seems like under both Trump administrations, things seem to uh change quite a bit in terms of the optics here. the optics look like Saudi is exact doing exactly what the US says when the US decides to say it.
Um but to the point about Iran uh and Iran getting tougher. I mean here are some of the I mean this is the price tag now for ending the war. So not just an end to the war. Lift the blockade in the 12 minutessanctions obviously uh get all US troops to withdraw.
Unfreeze the Iranian assets reparations and an end to attacks on regional allies. And now Iran is being very specific that it's Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. So very specific about who uh is in is involved there. Uh Iran has completely ruled out negotiations with the Trump administration at this point.
According to multiple reports, including I believe now also the spokesperson for the foreign ministry has also said that they are just going to wait out Trump's term. They don't want to negotiate with this administration. And today, before we got on, right before we got on, the Wall Street Journal reported that $13 billion in damages or $13 billion have been spent on this war and that the damage has been massive. 20 US uh military facilities across eight countries, 42 US aircraft of out from 2,000 Iranian missiles and drone attacks from this war.
So, uh, I've seen upwards up to 9,000 be reported in terms of what Iran fired at US bases in Israel, but nevertheless, uh, Patrick, yeah, Iran is getting tougher. And they just promoted Mosan Razi Razi who's very much they they call him a hardliner but uh uh for me I know I know I don't know much about his history but I do know that in the last uh couple years he's been at the forefront of advocating for a very tough Iranian response to US and Israeli aggression. So, uh, your thoughts on this? Iran getting tougher despite the fact that it seems like the United States is right now, as you said, maybe waiting things out.
We don't know what the US is really doing right now, but we know what Iran is doing. US is doing what it what it can uh and that's not not a lot uh right now but uh given time they can just recalibrate their strategy uh and create some kind of a future uh problem or crisis or pro provocation that they can kind of rally around but uh you know they're also going to have to you know at some point they're backpedaling on their main sort of thesis which is um Iran can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapons a lot of people are calling them out for this now and it's not working. So this this kind of it's a straw man talking point. The administration was effective cuz in a way what that does is it says that oh this is so high stakes.
This is about the denuclearization of Iran. In other words uh we can't have another nuclear bomb Islamic country with a nuclear bomb in the region. That's why we launched this undeclared war of aggression with the Israelis. We're doing God's work, you know, trust us, you know, kind of thing.
Um, and that's why they they always had to issue that talking point. It also it keeps the door open for a uh preemptive nuclear strike against Iran uh under the sort of eegis of uh well, you know, we're preventing uh a nuclear threat in the region. So, it's uh it's a very insidious bit of propaganda, but uh but yeah, so they're going to they're backing off on that a little bit. But I know Trump even gave some ground on that in a recent statement uh saying that uh well you know we might have to you know come to some sort of interim arrangement uh and we might not be able to get Iran's uh you know full denuclearization uh but as long as the straits open we'll be happy with that.
So like how do you define the strait being opened? It's it's not about it being open. It's about whose control will it be under? Uh will it be will be the Americans be meddling in that or will it be Iranian and Omani uh uh or effectively Iranian control uh over the uh the straits?
We'll see. So the the Iran's basically also saying we're going to get paid, you know, we're going to get paid. There's not going to be peace until we get paid. Give us our money.
And uh they're they're being a little more um assertive uh about that. And so all of this talk, you know, where they're floating Jared Kushner's bright ideas uh about uh you know, parlaying uh frozen assets uh to hand to US farmers uh to, you know, so that the Iranian people can can can get food stocks, treating them like Venezuela, basically a country with zero sovereignty, saying that we're going to take your oil, we're going to sell it, we're going to keep it in in an account, and we're going to decide if you get any of that money or not. That's the deal that they have with the Venezuelans. And that's to help the Venezuelan people because, you know, Maduro was allegedly stealing all their money as a drug kingpin.
Of course, that's completely fake. But they're trying to treat Iran with that level of contempt that they do Venezuela or or Cuba. And it's just not going to work. They can't bully uh Iran.
The US's uh position is so weak now in the region. You know, the thing that's amazing about this um aside from what you just showed that list of uh US um damage and the cost and and all the rest of it, you you you you have to be absolutely certain the Pentagon are going to under report everything, not just casualties and uh you know, dead soldiers. Um that's expected, but but we're talking what about equipment losses? What about how many fixedwing aircraft uh have been lost?
What about uh fighter jets? What about um other really key essential equipment and facilities and resources? That that damage I don't think will be fully reported. Uh and because at some point this is this [clears throat] is biting the United States military operation.
So they had all of this stuff uh in place uh you know before February 28th and everything is it the interoperability of all the US bases every single facility all the ones you just mentioned there listed each play a pivotal role and are interconnected in terms of operations with other things uh for you know air power for the US Navy um capabilities for potential deployments and stuff like that. It's very it's a it's a very uh delicate um interconnected system that they couldn't have possibly foreseen. They clearly hadn't they they clearly couldn't foresee it because if they did they would have been able to defend those positions. But as you can see they weren't able to defend any of those positions or go they didn't foresee that anybody in the region would do what Iran was going to do was capable of you know hitting and hitting hard all of those US positions.
So that means that's going to hurt US military operations. So right down to the planning and operational level, it just basically reduces their options down to like really just a handful of of options you've got. That's the problem they facing. Plus all their covert uh clandestine operations that were being organized that were being 19 minutesalso launched and deployed out of northern Iraq uh out of the KRG, Iraqi Kurdistan that those are those have been wrecked as well.
And those were like US joint is Israeli joint uh NATO intelligence uh joint with European like French for instance and probably I would imagine Ukrainians um because there that's the sort of new foreign legion uh for NATO I'm sure they were uh active there uh and so those are all kind of being wrecked so that's a huge like the element of surprise and that reduces down the options now you what can you do uh put what attackums and Himars in Turk menistan uh you know the Azarbaijani role it's it's very tenuous it's very difficult for Azar Azarbaijan now um now it's a problem politically for them uh to be involved or to be seen to be enabling or facilitating or even allowing their airspace to be used for an attack on Iran. um the blowback uh for Alv and his regime could be severe because Iran would not hesitate in responding if that were the case again. Um so you look at look at the the the grand chessboard in this part of the of the world. It's not it's not great.
It was great before for the US and Israel. They they had all these different of attack vectors and paths in which they could mount various types of attacks on Iran. But now you're reduced down to really I think uh long range bombing runs out of Germany. Uh if they activate uh you know there maybe some governments aren't too keen like Romania doesn't want to be used.
Uh Kosovo doesn't want to be used. Um why is that? It could be there there's a lot of problems with that potentially. You know Islamic countries full stop.
Turkey it's not going to be allowed to be used as a lily pad um for the US to attack Iran. So there's there's those issues that come creeping in. Politically, it's a disaster for Italy, the exposure of uh the Mark Route boasting of all these different flights that took off out of that's the blowback has been severe on Maloney and then it we found we found out that they've been basically backing Israel uh be through the back door and that's a disaster. Greece as well.
You know, there that's a little bit close to a little bit too close to home, a little bit too close for comfort there. So, you're really you've got Germany, you've got Britain, you've got a couple of other potential locations. Um, that's it. Um, not great.
Israel, that's not great either, actually. So look u but you know we're seeing the there are you know things that can be done in the region to stoke up instability. Um like in Ethiopia for instance that looks like that might be heating up again. Uh the United States might be able to parlay that uh instability somehow.
We'll see. Um but uh it's it's it's not great. It's not great right now. So um I think yeah time.
They're going to need time to to reorganize themselves. You can't wage a war through naval assets alone and, you know, uh, KC130 air air-to-air refueling. And that's basically the the the entirety of the solution for the US military for projecting force against Iran. It's not great.
It's not great. Yeah. And before we move on to Yemen and then the broader situation, uh I want to pull up what Donald Trump said in response to the uh claims or the reports that Iran is demanding far more now than maybe they were or maybe getting more specific with their demands uh on the United States. " I mean, that's that's the gist of it.
He claims this was never mentioned. And then he says uh after demanding that Iran should pay the United States for all these decades of something or other some some uh damages to the US, he says Iran should be responsible for the death and damages of Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. I I mean uh final word on Iran. Uh Patrick, this is of course you know the United States is not serious about negotiating and Iran is not uh at all naive about that.
But at the same time it is quite something when the US president himself takes the social media and essentially reveals that he's not serious about not only not negotiating but serious maybe about this issue at all. Uh your thoughts? 24 minutesWell, yeah, if there's any doubts about that um there shouldn't be now. Um but uh so negotiations with Iran are finished but relations are still open.
Um [snorts] so there's a difference between those two things. So Iran will leave the door open for relations but uh in terms of negotiations as we said the US kind of burned their opportunity there. Uh and I don't think that was ever a serious theou was not even a serious uh um uh genuine uh offer anyway. Um so but uh but but but relations yes and uh it quietly you could see some deals uh for unfreezing Iranian assets especially the ones held in uh in Gulf countries uh and anything there beyond that though it's going to be I think difficult for Iran but hey they have a they have an absolute case um to make but the the what's clear is that the US has reached the limits of this type of warfare and power projection um by trying to basically manage two major conflicts um to to two major conflicts uh with the Ukrainian theater and then this war in Iran.
Israel is the kind of equivalent of the Ukraine uh as a US proxy, requiring all of the US arms uh requiring the United States to defend it ultimately and keep supplying it with missiles and uh Patriot missile batteries and and money and support and uh provide a kind of uh uh let's say strategic depth, additional strategic depth depth. That's what kind of US and NATO provide for Ukraine a little bit. and but in Israel that the US absolutely provides strategic depth for Israel and it's all predicated on this type of th this way in which they're fighting and the configuration and the array of of military assets that they had positioned around the region. And so now both of those things simultaneously.
So what's interesting is both Russia and Iran are in very similar positions right now. um slightly different obviously conflicts ma majorly different conflicts but they're both in very similar uh positions where they both can be they're both um quietly uh in the ascendancy and they both um can be more uh aggressive now they they both can be more preemptive now and they are and it's it's clear that the the the limits to uh what they were trying to do propping up Zalinsky the facade of Ukrainian military power is is is has collapsed effectively and and the political facade won't be far behind. It's not far behind. It's that's coming as well.
That's a reckoning within what's left of Ukraine. I think that's going to be a very rapid and swift and devastating uh for the Zalinski regime. And that ultimately will provide the instability that will allow Russia uh to achieve its core objectives. Um, so for Iran, their core objectives are to evict the United States out of the Persian Gulf first and foremost.
What's interesting is the announcement of the uh what some people are calling the Islamic NATO uh you know alliance of Saudi Arabia, Turkey uh and Pakistan. And uh I don't know if I left anybody out there, but it's um it's it's not I wouldn't call it uh so much an Islamic NATO as a Sunni NATO. Um the question is who who who who is that alliance meant to defend against? That's the question.
Um is this uh against an Iranian threat or is this against an Israeli threat or is it you is being used as a ball work um to send a message to the United States and the Israelis? Um because all of those countries technically uh Turkeykey's been uh uh Turkey has been threatened by Israel multiple times in the last 6 months. The Saudis have been implicitly threatened by Israel many times. Uh and uh Israel has threatened Pakistan and rhetorically has said on more than one occasion leading Israeli officials have said there that we cannot have an Islamic country with nuclear weapons.
um w within this region and they're talking about Pakistan. So that's I don't know I don't know I can't really tell you what it what that's about. Um I haven't really looked into their manifesto or anything but it's a little bit ambiguous and maybe it could be this the beginning of something where you could have other countries that might want to uh come on board with that. But there's a problem with Iraq at the moment as you can see with uh with Saudi Arabia and Yemen's an issue uh as well.
So I I don't know. I I wouldn't Yemen basically came straight out and sort of spanked Saudi Arabia as soon as that was announced. And you know nothing's going to happen. Turkeyy's not going to send in like a stabilization force.
Although, listen, I joke about that, but Turkey Turkey has a very um capable expeditionary force with their military, and they've deployed it multiple times. In fact, they're still occupying positions uh within northern Iraq. They've done it in Syria. They've done they've gone to Qatar.
Uh they have gone to Libya. they have gone to although sending ISIS fighters under the Turkish banner that was very dodgy but anyway um they've done it in Africa as well. So Turkey has uh the capable 30 minutesexpeditionary units and they can and will deploy them um if need be. Would they be deploying a stabilization force?
We'd like to see it uh keeping the Israelis out of Gaza, but that's of course not going to happen with Erdogan. Uh he won't go anywhere near the Israelis. But um could that be deployed in Yemen? Because Saudi uh mercenary forces uh for people who aren't aware, Saudi Arabia does not have an army.
Okay. Whatever they do have uh of Saudis um are are really um earmarked to protect assets in the homeland and not for uh expeditionary fighting in places like Yemen. Um so they outsource their infantry. Uh they basically hire whoever whatever they can cobble together.
uh from Sud Sudan uh RSF fighters, other various insundry other mercenaries and then right off the sort of general international market um and so some of those have been uh under direct attack 31 minutesby Ansar Allah by the Houthis uh the Yemenes uh just in the last couple of days and it's it's really untenable. They can't hold any territory um running a military like this. It's not it's not serious. And with a little bit of pressure and the Yemenes being more assertive, you can see that that's already falling apart uh for Saudi Arabia.
And so that that that will be interesting as well. Uh so we'll see. But tur Turkey is the one with the with the real capabilities there. I would think Pakistan um has capabilities like that but they haven't deployed them and I haven't seen them um in action except in you know maybe places like Kashmir or um in the near abroad.
I know they've been sort of active uh regarding Afghanistan recently, but Turkey absolutely can deploy and will deploy and can do peacekeeping operations and credibly as well. And so that will be something that could be a possibility uh down the road. Who knows? Yeah.
Well uh so so so much mystery behind that um defense pact between uh Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. But uh uh one thing is clear is that we I mean during the war Patrick uh during the first what was it 38 39 40 days US aggression even afterward I mean there have been strange developments of random drones flying into Saudi airspace uh uh targeting Saudi energy and Iran of course never claiming that that was the case. Yemen was not yet involved in theater. And that's not just Saudi Arabia.
There's similar reports, you know, in Bahrain and in in UAE and Qatar, Cyprus. Cypress. Yeah. Cypress.
So, it's uh, you know, it would if they were smart, they would be coming together for what Iran 33 minutessaid uh, they would support and they support, which is independent, you know, security frameworks without interference of the United States and say, Israel as well. unclear about whether that will be the case given that these countries have so many internal contradictions and um as we see with Saudi Arabia which maybe I want your comment on this Patrick how is it that it seems like Yemen onsala appears stronger today than they were maybe during the March 2020 what was that 2025 uh US war against them um and then even prior since October 7 2023 it appears that they have become more sophisticated militarily as Saudi Arabia, the USbacked Saudi Arabian military seems very much like a like a fish out of water and and Yemen appears very much in control. What do you make of uh the developments there as I showed 34 minutesthe images of the last several days even just an absolute blitzkrieg on Saudi forces inside of you know Saudibbacked Yemen territory? Yeah, I'm not surprised at all.
Um uh if you look at uh the uh Yemeni forces from when the war was uh announced and waged upon them in 2015 by Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and backed by pretty much everybody in NATO and the Israelis were in the control rooms as well by the way. Everybody was piling in on uh answer Allah and uh and then you look at the progression of their organization of their defense plus they you know and then know 9 years later uh we have special forces teams they they you know they're they're they're landing and and seizing uh super tankers on the Red Sea with TAC teams and this is not the Yemen we saw in songs and flip-flops. uh and uh you know RPGs uh shooting at Saudi jets back in 2015 16. This is a different Yemen force.
And so you can see progressively they've just improved over time. The the more they interface with um western military equipment um and western uh defense uh um gear uh whether it's from the US directly or through a US proxy like Saudi Arabia. Um, they're they're they're gathering all the data. They're getting all the intelligence.
They're learning how to fight against state-of-the-art air power, missiles, smart bombs, um, Western drones, and learning how to evade, how to attack. They're the the Yemenes themselves have their own resources, and they actually have a very strong u history of even developing their own weapons and missiles. they don't need the Iranians to come and tell them what to do. Um, but I'm sure they benefited uh quite a lot and also uh you know learned a lot by watching uh how the Iranians are operating and and what they're doing in terms of uh targeting target selection and guidance and there's probably intelligence of components and how to assemble and improve and Iran's fine-tuning their uh missiles for offense and I would imagine the Yemenes are doing the same thing.
So the more they hit them and hit them hard, a it motivates them, uh b it gives them a mandate amongst their people that u they're under threat, they're under attack from the US and the Israelis who want to wipe them out and they're brutal and barbaric Americans and the Israelis. Um so and the Saudis now who are backed by the United States. So, so they've got that and then um tactically uh they they're benefiting from fighting against uh a superior opponent. Um it 37 minuteswouldn't benefit you if you just would hoist the right white flag and uh pack up and want to go home and beg beg beg please don't attack us.
But as we know this is not the answer Allah mentality. Um the the Houthies as the Americans like to call them uh absolutely give no quarter. um they're all in. Um these are born fighters and uh they're looking at this like this is the epic fight of their life and they're not going to back down.
In fact, they're going to take the fight to Israel and the United States and to Saudi Arabia and they will and they are. So this is um you know very highly motivated, highly capable, highly resourceful, uh able to do a lot with very little in terms of money and resources. um highly innovative and uh and and are able to leverage their geographical position uh in a way that uh much the same way the Iranians are getting 100% full leverage from their geographical situation. That's the definition of geopolitics.
It's geography. it's geography and how geography um and in and the use of geography in in in great power competitions, wars or politics will then shape international politics. And so Yemen Yemen is a bonafide regional geopolitical actor and Iran of course is a bonafide regional geopolitical power now. And uh and they they're acting independently.
The these aren't like it's not a hive mind. Of course, I'm sure there's some coordination, but more than anything, they're learning from each other and also they share the same values and they have the same enemy. So, it's like, you know, the biggest mistake the United States did was to basically go in in such a hamfisted and sort of reckless and violent way, just basically killing Yemenes over that whatever that period was. Was it 70 days or something like that?
39 minutesYeah. uh sort of Bgrade style uh campaign uh against uh the Yemenes. That's the worst thing the United States could have done. That from their point of view, from the Yemen Yemenes point of view, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to them.
Uh because now it's really crystallized and they have their priorities and their objectives very clear and they know what the they know what the the the nature of the threat is. Um ditto with the Iranians of course, but but for Yemen, yeah, there's no questions. They also know what what cards they can play and they're playing them, you know, and and that's that's impressive. And I would say if if if people keep if they keep putting pressure on Yemen and and the Yemen you're going to see in 5 years, you will not recognize from today.
I'm telling you right now. I'm telling I'm telling you it's it's they are going to be such a problem uh for any western or Israeli power that wants to uh dictate and dominate the region and bark orders and uh believe that they can act with impunity uh on the Arabian Peninsula and that includes the Gulf States. Yemen's going to be such a problem for them. They're going they're they are you will not recognize I predict in 5 years you will not recognize Yemen.
uh and and surah and they may very well at that point may have resolved the civil war situation um in that country as well and that's another thing that people aren't talking about what the west and what Saudi Arabia are doing what the UAE has been doing um a lot of that is going to eventually lead uh it's going to force a resolution to the to the civil war that the US Saudis and and their allies were were fermenting for so many years to try to uh divide that country and that they're they're really just undermining all of their efforts and the billions of dollars the West and the Gulf States have spent. Do you know you have to realize how much money Saudi Arabia burned out of their sovereign wealth fund when oil was at very low level in terms of price um on the on this this absolutely uh disastrous war against their neighbor. You know, they they really did. and the United States said, "No, just just stay in there.
Keep it up. " That's what they told the Saudis back in 2017. So all these Gulf states, it's amazing how they've dump like the Qataris, the Saudi Arabians, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, they've emptied their sovereign wealth funds to fight dirty wars on behalf of Western powers in Israel in Syria, uh, in in in Yemen and and also uh whatever else you want to add to that. But that's that's they've spent hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions.
In fact, it would be mind-blowing if we actually knew what the actual the bill was for that. Let's say from 2011 uh right till till the present. We're we're we're we're north of a trillion dollars easily. Easily if you think about it.
So I mean what and what do they get in return for this? like, you know, it's that's they're lucky they they don't have any democracy or they they're not an Arab republic cuz if they if they were, they'd be thrown out of power a long time ago, but because they are uh uh monarchies, um they're not they're totally not accountable for anything they do with the country's money. It's Saudi Arabia, look, bless them, but you know, it's a country named after a family. Yeah.
I it's it's it's that's kind of strange if you really think about it. Yeah, I would say so. Modern era, it doesn't end well. It doesn't end well.
I mean, look at Rhodesia. I mean, that one got dismantled. Um, but anyway, [sighs] I'm just saying, uh, good luck to them, but they don't seem to be making very good decisions, uh, at all and consistently bad over a long period of time. So, I don't think um it's not good.
It's not great. Yeah. I know Patrick I know you've been covering since ever since those uh dirty wars that emerged in 2011 what's been happening in this region and in many ways the outcomes of the USIsraeli war in Iran unfortunately speak to a kind of karma for a lot of these Gulf states which did put all that money and then of course all that terror that came with that money into what you know just absolutely uh wreaking havoc and war crimes on you know Syrians and Yemen everything being part Libyans being part of that whole operation destabilized the region now they find themselves on the other side of well it's the same it's the same Danny with Lebanon it's the same you know Saudi Arabia meddles so much in Lebanese politics they inject so much money in all of these political parties like that that's a legitimate source of income for Lebanon is Saudi money injected into politics and And then that money basically, it's interesting how the Lebanese um political system works. But if if it that would be a thing in itself to map out.
But the Saudi money comes in uh to fund these various uh parties along sectarian lines and then that money uh ends up like uh what paying for professional basketball um uh franchises which which they use to mobilize or football to mobilize supporters um along sectarian lines. It's all part and parcel of politics, the the the the the sectarian politics in Lebanon. Um and then businesses that are sponsoring all these other different things. So there's a whole ecosystem there and there's so much corruption in Lebanon and most of its Gulf money that's being injected that totally distorts the politics of Lebanon.
And they just have this Saudi Arabia still will not let go will not let go of their sectarian proclivities um whereby they just cannot accept having a a Hezbollah or Shiite dominated um government or country or a political economy in in Lebanon even though it's an inevitability in the same way that it was uh in Iraq as well. They just won't let go. It's um it's it's not and it's not in their interest what they're doing. And you know the thing is all they've been playing this program for the longest time um and all these other Gulf states as well that have also contributed to this.
They'll back jihadis. They'll back the ISISes and al-Qaeda of the world, the the Golanis of the world. They'll bankroll all of that. They'll pay for all the guns.
46 minutesThey'll pay for all the weapons. United States will procure procure them, but Saudi and and these other Gulf states and wealthy people within them will pick up the bill for that. You know, the US does the procurement. That was when they ran the rat lines in Syria and they did that for like 10 years.
They spent billions and billions of dollars. The US spent money as well, but was nothing next to what the Gulf spent, including Qatar. Qatar played a big role in the destabilization and destruction of Syria as a country. um try to try to work that one out which benefited Israel so much and Qatar and Al Jazzer is supposed to be against Israel.
It's it's kind of weird but that that that's what that weirdness defines the region and and why this is important because now that whole program has been basically rendered kind of inert and why because Iran what Iran has done is now cannot be erased. It cannot be unseen. The the Iranians have stood up to the United States and Israel. They were attacked illegally uh and they were attacked in a preemptive way by the US and Israel, a Muslim country.
And so the you have to see this in the in the context of the global ummah, the Muslim world globally. Uh this is a Muslim country whether it's Sunni or Shiite is beside the point. But they stood up. they stood up and now they're they're now on the offensive against the United States or at least dictating terms and uh effective [clears throat] effectively very close to evicting them from the region from bases of these very wealthy, strong, powerful and influential Gulf states.
So the the message across the Muslim world uh of what Iran is doing, it transcends sectarian division and this can't be unseen. This can't be undone. This is historical. This has been marked in the history books now.
And that's that's going to have a transformational effect on this sectarian program that's been running and absolutely backed and fueled and supported and encouraged by the United States and the British and everybody else the whole way you know since since oil was discovered uh in in the Middle East and that whole program's now come to an end. So they can't because the the the narrative that sectarian narrative is not as strong as the the the imperialist story which Iran has just basically upended because the imperialist and and the anti-imperialist paradigm is a universal that can be universalized globally and and those those those uh universal uh ethics th the the moral imperative there which is that um we need to defend and stand up for the Palestinian people and other oppressed people around the world. That's universalized. And it doesn't matter.
It can be it can be in Christian. It can be an Islamic. It can be even an atheist. It doesn't matter.
It can be in a communist. It's it's ubiquitous. It's a through the through the left, through the non-align movement, through the Islamic world, through the Christian world. It doesn't matter.
So, and and that's melting away the sectarian program that the US and Israel have have have that's been their sort of framework for basically divide and conquer uh in the Middle East. It was for the British and then for the Americans as well. So, what the Americans and the Israelis have done to Iran and how Iran responded is melting away that sort of program, that framework that has stood for a long time. So those Gulf states, they're really exposed because they've been playing that uh with the total support and encouragement of the United States.
50 minutesThey know from the formation of the mujaheden uh in Afghanistan and all these other sort of uh you know all these other dirty wars and the dubious global war on terror as well. All of that's been exposed. Iran has exposed all of it. Yemen also has done its part to expose all of this as well.
They tried to implant al-Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, you know, AQAP, you remember that brand? It was really a trendy uh and they tried to do that and that total failure. Total failure.
That all that was was to to soften up and weaken uh certain uh areas and tribal areas in advance of the 2015 war that was coming. That's all that was. That was the whole point. Um, and now everybody can see is it's so blatantly obvious now.
And so that's really weakened the all of these fanatical uh Wahhabi uh clerics uh in that Saudi has been paying and pumping and injecting money and these radical clerics that are pumping out these um diet tribes 24/7 on sat hundreds of satellite channels constantly 24/7 and then paying for uh radical mosques all around the world including in Europe. um which the US and the British and the other intellig and the French they use that to basically farm you know potential informants and other assets which they can then redeploy to Syria and whatever and they've been doing this they've been playing this game and recycling this uh toxic uh agenda for like decades and guess what it's all been exposed now because it was all running on a sectarian program. That's how they that's how they recruited fighters to go to Syria mainly along sectarian lines. Assad is an infidel in Alawite.
Um he is uh brutalizing uh the Sunnis of Syria and the White Helmets are saving them from Assad's barrel bombs and all that. That was all all that propaganda was designed uh first and foremost to fuel recruitment for hundreds of thousands of radical fighters to be cycled in and out of Syria over the period of that decade to wreck and destroy and ultimately do what happened to this country. And uh and the Gulf States were underwriting the whole thing. And Israel is just sitting there in the background.
They didn't have to pay a penny for that. And they got and look what and they're the beneficiaries of it. Look look at the they've just done a whole bunch of other incursions into the golden heights increasing their occupation uh illegal occupation of Syria and they're not giving that back. That's that's is for the Israelis.
They believe that's their territory that we're taking what's ours. That's their attitude. And that's what the whole campaign to oust Basher al-Assad was about. It was for Israel.
So people like Medi Hassan who were basically fronting that whole train. Assad must go and Assad these people who are you know uh pro Palestinian to the hilt. All of them, all of these Western liberals on Western media and organizations were carrying water for Israel for 10 years, you know. I mean, and and because that was the greatest strategic uh uh the greatest strategic victory for Israel was the collapse of Syria.
It was that was the thing that was really um making all they wouldn't be in Lebanon right now and the way they are if that uh if that hadn't happened. Uh, that's a fact. And and Iran would not have been attacked by Israel and the United States if Syria, I'm telling you, it's it's, you know, all of these things are connected. You can't attack Iran till you've collapsed Syria and you put Hezbollah into a corner.
Yeah. I I said this back in 2012. I remember I was I was on a Russian I have to dig up the video. I'll send you the video.
I I literally laid it out in 2012, but and it's just logic because when you see that the region is interconnected in terms of the resistance that you can't move on, you know, C unless you eliminate A and B first and uh that was Israel's objective and they got it. So what does the US get from all this? You know, that's the question. What this hasn't been good for the US empire, Danny.
I mean, if some people will say, "Oh, how can you say that the tail wags the dog? " Okay, that might be true to a degree, but how 55 minuteslosing 20 bases and being evicted from the Persian Gulf, how does that serve the great US Empire? That's not a very good proxy, is it? That dragged you into that one.
And you just basically you're being evicted from Central Asia and West Asia. Not great. So, I mean that kind of kills that sort of um debate that a lot of people are kind of, you know, arguing over in the alternative podcast space, which is that, you know, is Israel uh just a a tool of the American empire or is the tail wagging the dog? Okay.
Both are true. Both are true. Yeah, exactly. That's what I say.
The age-old debate both have. Both are true, but what matters is which one uh is is more dominant um in in terms of politics because which one influences foreign policy decisions of the United States. And I will argue that Mary addi lobby slapping down $600 million in the last election for Republican seats, including the president. That's that's not just they're not doing that for kicks.
They're not they they they absolutely expect they're going to pick the whole cabinet and people make policy in America and that cabinet is going to make policy and we're seeing that policy now. So to to make the argument that Israel the tail is not wagging the dog is not a serious argument and I think pe there are people who make that argument but is coincidentally a lot of them don't spend a lot of time in Washington or in America to understand how powerful and dominant um Israeli lo the Israeli lobby the whole ecosystem that includes the media by the way how powerful and dominant it is in US politics and that makes its way to policy decisions and military decisions. You know, this little country commandeered the United States military, most powerful military in the planet, commandeered by a little strip of land the size of New Jersey. How is that even possible, honestly?
But it happened. So, anyway, that that's that debate is um is interesting, but to me, it's not it's it's it's a it's a no contest on that debate right now. No, I I remember back in 2012 when the reports were coming out that as you were saying, Israel got all of this essentially for free and and we could even say it got paid to do this or got it got [laughter] paid while doing it because the United States was constantly increasing its uh military aid to Israel over this period. But I remember when there were photos and footage of you know Israeli military forces giving the only thing they gave to these uh you know Wahhabists and all these forces that the Gulf countries were supporting with US assistance to destroy Syria and Libya and to turn the region to what it was is medical care in the golden heights.
I mean this is how this I mean 58 minutesthese are the people that a lot of even a lot of the pro Palestinian pro Palestine uh you know factions and groups today a lot of them were supporting these forces that Israel was actively uh helping out to the bare minimum of course al-Qaeda forces al-Qaeda forces well well actually Danny actually they they the Israelis did more than that they the is Israel consistently launched um thou well over a thousand air strikes right against Syria during that time with US planes, US weapons, US satellites. So we were the United States was so we paid for all that. The Gulf States forked out probably you know upwards of a trillion dollars over a decade. Um plus what we spent in terms of ancillary costs supporting all that and defending Israel.
the real bill for Israel if you add the US and the Gulf state contributions because the Gulf States are bandwagoning with the United States and what they want. So it you look at the we're talking if if if you had to actually write a check out of this is what it costs to for Israel to get what it wants and protect Israel, you know, in the last decade, you know, that would be like well over a trillion dollars. 5 trillion at a minimum. So imagine if you had to publicly make out that check and make that as a policy.
5 trillion. Who would agree to that? Nobody. But it's diffused through all of these different proxy wars, all of these different dirty wars and clandestine operations.
So nobody can quite add it up and the accounting never comes due. But it's mindboggling what America spends. All those bases, the budget for all those 20 bases that got trashed by the Iranians. the operating cost annually year on year.
All of that is to defend Israel. It's not to defend the petro dollar. It was prior to 2000, but it's re or to prior to 2010, let's say. But it's really all that's just to provide a massive uh perimeter of strategic depth for the state of Israel and then to project power and to hit Israel's enemies and people that Israel wants to knock out and destroy.
So all of that that co the cost of this it's mind-boggling and it's more than the little pittance of 3 million or 4 billion sorry 4 billion in Israeli military aid per year that's nothing that's just what's you know that that's just what's wo w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w waved in public as a cost. all the other cost built-in infrastructural ancillary costs from the Gulf contributions as well as the the war against Yemen uh 100%. That's that's an Israeli war 100%. That is an Israeli war.
So Saudi is basically carrying water for Israel by attacking Yemen because Yemen is an absolute direct threat to Israel in terms of supplies, shipping, economics, and even in terms of like being able to to to hit them and respond. And so the Iranians and the Yemenes are o openly saying, "We are defending the Palestinian people. Um, you need to withdraw from Gaza. You need to stop the genocide.
" And so that's Yemen's policy. So that's very much against Israel. So if Saudis attacking Yemen, they're doing so on behalf of Israel quite clearly. And if they're if they're being nudged by the United States, Israel's behind the US.
Israel's behind the US. The US is doing the nudging. But who's behind America? Israel.
You cannot. No one can basically say this is not the case. The whole Abraham Accords forago is for Israel and the United States is enforcing that. They're pushing Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords.
So anybody, no one can make 2 minutesthis argument that, you know, Israel is not micromanaging and directing US policy in West Asia because they 100% absolutely are. And the United States has lost tremendous imperial footing because of this misadventure. just the the loss right now. Yeah.
The losses of the US, Danny, the lo if you list out the losses of the US in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East because of this war which they waged on behalf of Israel ostensibly, maybe a little bit on behalf of the US Empire. But um if if you list out the cost of that, that obliterates the argument that Israel is just a hless proxy of the US empire. I'm sorry. It just obliterates that argument.
It's not a serious debate anymore and it's uh to me baffling how people are still kind of scratching their heads on this. I mean it is it they were a beach head for Western uh British and US imp Anglo-American imperialism but at some point they ceased to be a beach head and that beach head was dictating policy at some point. So, and then it's a then then the the the tables have been flipped. Um, and now it's a liability.
It's the tail the tail basically turned into a carcinogenic on steroids and it threatens the life of the dog now. It's so big and so toxic that it's threatening that the tail is threatening an existential threat to the life of the dog, the well-being of the dog. That's that's the truth of it. Yeah.
Yeah. And uh you know I always like to this I don't know who made this. It's really funny. But uh you know when you have uh frightening Yes.
It's these these group of friends people these kind of I mean I like to see you know of course the media people Loomer and uh Fuentes whatever but you know when you think of Trump the Epstein 4 minutesclass maybe you can he's you know he may be dead but uh the people that he uh you know entrapped so to speak and then uh Netanyahu you know uh I I like to think of it as exactly how you put it Patrick and then it's the people who actually wield this kind of power they they they may be wrong in this. They may be uh burning down the uh the US's actual footprint in West Asia, but you know, they see Israel's interests. They see these these policies as beneficial to them. They think they are going to make out huge uh and in some cases they will especially in the immediate.
Uh so that's how I see it. is like there are ob, you know, it's it's the the dog is uh there's a leash around the dog and the tail is on the dog killing the dog and then there's the leash or you know the people who back these kind of forces. Oh, put that image back up on screen again. Can you put that image back up on screen?
I just want to make a comment here. Um that that's actually a really cool shirt that uh Trump's wearing there. He would never wear a shirt like that. They totally overplayed his fashion sense there.
Yeah. AI failing us. That Trump Trump would never wear a shirt that cool. Um that is a proper 70s sort of bowling shirt style.
Um it it that's way too much fashion sense for for this guy [laughter] for Trump. Although [clears throat] yeah, he is a little bit chummy uh too too too a little bit too enamorous with Laura Loomer there. That's slightly worrying, but uh Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it's a good reference to I guess Laura Loomer's uh come to Jesus moment where she's acting as a Ukrainian Nazi ambassador uh suddenly um after being Israel Israeli Nazi ambassador I guess. But um all right, Patrick. Well, this was a great show.
Everyone should know that your YouTube channel 21st Century Wire and your Substack are in the video description below. Everybody should hit the like button before you go because that helps boost the show uh uh before you check out that in the video description. And then of course all the places support this show are in the video description. Uh Patrick, any uh final comments and words before we head out of here?
No. Uh thank you very much Danny. I appreciate the uh the conversation. Uh so yeah, we're in a we're in a very interesting lull right now and we'll see how long this uh this lasts.
But uh anyway, um hopefully it's a productive uh uh preamble to possibly some some peace and stability in the region. That's what we're praying and hoping for. Um so hope hopefully we'll see. We'll see how this develops.
Yeah, that's what it's all about. Uh all right, everybody, hit the like button before you go. m. Eastern time with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
I'll see you then for another update. And hit the like button, check out Patrick's work. Oh, I have few super chats I'll put up on the screen. Thank you so much, Helpful Harm.
And thank you so much, uh, IDF kills children. All right. [laughter] Uh, I I love that handle. All right.
Even though I don't love uh the reality of it, but all right, everybody. m. Eastern time. Until next time.
Empire Games: What Do the Ruling Elite Really Want? 21st Century Wire Aug 10, 2026
We continue our walk along the Thames in Central London, with 21WIRE's Patrick Henningsen exploring the Southbank, the City of London, we explore the foundations of former British imperial power, and which aspects still endure today under the US-dominated hegemonic system of global governance and control. What is the primary objective of the ruling elite? Is it money, control, or the power to steer our planetary civilization? We answer that question during this walk. The war in Iran is merely a symptom of a procession of world orders we are watching in realtime. All this and more.
Transcript
And there it is, the British Houses of Parliament. Once managed the world's most expansive and largest empire, former member of the EU, junior partner of NATO. What is Britain up to these days? Well, to answer that question, we're gonna have to ask what America is up to these days.
And that might give you the answer of what Britain is up to. And see, note the dark, menacing clouds of words. It's very dramatic, but you get dramatic scenes uh here in London. dramatic British weather.
Sometimes usually it's not dramatic. It's just gray, but today we got a little bit of 1 minuteadditional color, a little bit of sunshine poking through. Very different from the previous environments which we've been filming. We're along the south bank of the temps here.
We're going to talk a little bit about Empire today as we go for a little walk. This is a feature that I wasn't aware of. This is the CO wall. This is the national co memorial.
All these hearts represent actually messages written in their families were invited to write messages to their family members who said to have died from COVID 19 during the [clears throat] pandemic. Uh I don't really want to get into the debate on PCR tests and viology and COVID statistics. Of course, a lot of people lost a lot of family members during that period. How they were lost is another matter altogether, but uh we can debate that another time.
So, we're here and we're going to talk a little bit about geopolitics today as we go for a little jaunt down the South Bank. You know, it's always a good day if it's not raining in London, but it's a little bit cold. There is a deep chill that you get on these islands that's different from chills in other places. I like the brisk freezing temperatures of Moscow in a certain way because it's, you know, the river the river is frozen.
It does what it says on the tin. It's winter. It's cold. There's snow.
People are indoors keeping warm here. You just never know what the weather's going to be like. like we're in May and you know in some places in America you probably think that this is uh sort of the winter. That's just how it goes.
Who knows? It'll be sunny tomorrow and everyone will sprint out in their summer gear is usually what people do. But we're going to talk a little bit about geopolitics. There's a lot.
The thing that strikes you when you come to London, I don't I don't spend much time in this city, not as much as I used to, but one of the things that strikes you when you come here is the sheer amount of money and wealth that is concentrated in a megatropolis like London. It it has its own economy. It's got its own economy, its own economic sort of world. But the the majority of the money in London is sunk into bricks and mortars into property and it's divided amongst two groups.
One of which is growing rapidly over the years and the other which has always been there. Most of the money in this city is concentrated into old money and foreign money, DFI, direct foreign investment from all over the world is here. You could call that the colonial dividend. It's a term I'm using a lot.
that is honestly it's given while the British Empire may have folded the British Commonwealth is still a thing and those relationships over the centuries still exist those connections and somehow a lot of the money ends up here. So that's a big part of it. And the old money, well, the crown estates as an example, that doesn't really circulate amongst the rest of the population. It's not there's no real trickle down theory.
But on a certain level, I guess it provides some kind of an economic uh ballast, if you will, that uh there is quite a lot of capital sunk in here. And uh but [snorts] anyway, that's that's a discussion for another day. But what's the source of all the a lot of the uh a lot of the wealth is just down the road. We're walking towards the city of London, the notorious square mile, a city state, a state within a state.
Has its own Lord Mayor has its own police force. uh the king or the queen before him had to ask permission to enter the city of London like Washington DC like the Vatican. Wow. Uber has boats.
This is interesting. I didn't know that. Uber boats looking across the river there. 6 minutesWe'll take a look at that.
That's uh Yeah, that's interesting. Didn't know that. So, yeah, Uber taxis on the temps. That white one right there.
Maybe we'll take one of those on another visit to the city. So, where's all the where does all the money come from? We'll cut to the chase and we'll talk about geopolitics. A lot of the money comes from the maritime industry.
trading, shipping, commodities, the financialization of the global economy. That that all happens just up the road here uh in the city of London. Of course, tourism is still a big pull, although with the economy tightening and Brexit, uh there's been a little bit of a chilling effect on that side. one of the great dividends of uh of Brexit.
Truly wasn't very good for the economy by anyone's measure, but who cares? Nobody wants to talk about that. Uh but the ship the shipping industry, why is that why is that important to understand? Well, that has everything to do with what we're seeing right now in the Persian Gulf.
And I can't help but comment on operation, what is it called? Operation freedom. This is the uh Trump's blockade. This glorious blockade the US tried to lay down on Iran to prevent any shipping, trade, commerce, anything coming in and out of uh of Iranian ports.
And they called it Operation Freedom. and it was kind of shortlived after a week. Trump eems to have tacoed on it. He says it's been a great success, but he's going to put it on hold.
I'll bring it to But like with so many things with this president, you don't he's saying that today and then it could be back on again on on Monday and then off again on Tuesday. It's just uh what we're used to, this uh erratic, inconsistent announcements. But just the name Operation Freedom so tacky. It's just uh the latest sort of title.
It's embarrassing. These fake initiatives by the United States. Who writes this stuff up? Honestly, it's like uh like it's been written by Trey Parker and uh Matt Stone.
Team America. I can't wait for the next Team America sequel. That's going to be fun. I think Pete Hex's going to feature pretty prominently in that.
It'd be it'd actually be funny if it wasn't so scary and horrific. Anyway, you got to laugh at these things. Another interesting telltale sign here. what I'm going to show you right there.
That used to be one of the global headquarters of Shell Oil. Uh, and it looks like it's in the process of being turned into flats. So, more luxury flats. That's what London needs, more luxury flats.
If you go down to Battery Reach, just in the other direction towards Victoria, I mean, it's like Dubai. seeing these massive towers being built, more luxury flats. I don't know who can afford all that, but there's so much money sunk into property here, but I think there's a little bit of an over supply on the luxury and who knows. Uh Dubai seems to be drying up and because of the the UAE, the geniuses in uh in the Emirates decided it' be good to throw their lot in with Israel in the US uh rather than their own rather than the Arab world or the region.
And they're probably going to feel the economic implications of that. But so who knows maybe people will move back to all the tax refugees in Dubai will move back to to the UK. Who knows? But huge concentration of wealth and the US is it's it's interesting.
The US is trying to enforce a power of the seas. And this is a not an unknown geopolitical concept. This was the basis for the British Empire over the years. Britain held power of the sea for a very long time.
I mean it was challenged first and foremost challenged by the Americans in 1812. uh but in terms of of global power the sea so yeah that would have been for the you know the Atlantic the eastern seabboard but besides that the you know the British navy the British Empire it it was massive and it ruled the roose for a very long time but uh after the second world war that baton was passed to the United States but the infrastructure this is an important part the infrastructure for global trade, global shipping was based here uh in London and and also the financing, maritime financing in the Netherlands just across the English Channel. uh the Dutch very important huge concentration of money and power in the Netherlands that's a country that has punched above its weight former kingdom of of Holland but very much a partner with the city of London. So these insurance companies that's and again another lay another layer of power who ensures global shipping very important who ensures global shipping and that's down the road in the city as well.
So, if I kept walking down this path, I'd eventually run into the Baltic Exchange somewhere in Canon Street just up uh a few bridges up past the inner temple. That's another interesting foray into the inner temple. Uh named after the Knights Templars where all the law firms are, what they call the legal chambers. uh on these islands.
But the insurance company of basically that's ultimately what sets the price of goods and services that transit on the on the high seas. And so we saw that come into effect when this when the US and Israel started this war on Iran and then Iran retaliates and all of a sudden one of the biggest thorough affairs maritime thorough affairs comes to a grinding halt. We're talking about the Persian Gulf because these companies in London will no longer issue insurance or or if if if if you did manage to get insurance, it' be so expensive. It might be prohibitive prohibitive in terms of what you're trying to ship and the price [clears throat] when it lands to market won't be competitive.
Therefore, uh you cancel that order, you cancel that shipment. So, we're getting a a tight tightening of the markets, supply chains, etc. So, but that that's one side of it. That's one side of it.
Insurance is one side of it. It's an important side of it, but you have no idea how much money these companies make. Insure. insurance of all the of all the great businesses.
It's in in a way it's even better than it's almost even better than fractional reserve banking. Insurance has massive profit margins and it's a very powerful industry. It's got a very powerful lobby 15 minutesand over the years they've been able to bouncing between one crisis to the next, bouncing between one natural disaster to the next, they've been able to lobby governments in order to lift the caps on the profit margins they've been allowed to have. In other words, the it used to be mandated, I'm talking from the American the American market, but at one point it was mandated that uh they had to pay on out on claims a certain percentage of their total income.
And so in a way that their their profits were their profits were capped. And so yeah, so that th those caps were lifted. And if you knew the amount of money these companies have have rad in insurance policies in America, the biggest one is car insurance and you've got home insurance and you got all sorts of insurance. They got insurance on everything.
And uh the amount of money that these it's a cartel of companies, there's a handful of them. And then they have subsidiaries that have marketing brands, but really you're talking about probably half a dozen firms uh that managed to somehow pocket, you know, 500 billion last year or a trillion or something like that. I mean, it's it's it's mind-boggling sums of money. I mean, it's even better than big tech in terms it's better than Google in terms of margins in some cases.
So, they're really running running wild. But, and if I walked even further down this path and I get to Trinity Square and then you have another class of insurance firms. And so, who ensures the insurance? The insurance giants.
These are the real oligarchs. You're getting close to the center of the empire here. Uh it's right up there alongside the central bank even more so. So who insures the insurers?
So these are the reinsurance companies. So reinsurance rates and liabilities. This also is hugely deterministic in terms of which way the economy is going. which way markets are going, inflation, prices, all these things.
So, and in the in the reinsurance, in the world of reinsurance, you have if you were sitting inside the boardroom in Trinity Square at a firm like Willis Karun or some one of these old city institutions and you're sitting around and at lunch, liquid lunch, they would be talk in the director's boardrooms, they'll be talking about the names. The names. Who are the names? The names are the reinsur the those who are underwriting the insurance industry.
The names. So, and and there you're getting very close if not you've arrived in many ways at the center of power in the establishment in in the British Empire, the former British Empire, the city of London, and the global economy in many ways. So, it's important to kind of understand that onion that this is pretty incredible. But if I had more time, I'd take you on a tour of the city of London.
And uh the symbol the symbolism there uh the architecture, the uh freezes, the pelmets, the gargoyles, it's all there. The the crest of arms, the dragons. At every entry point into the city, defending the city, you'll find dragon iconography. there.
But that's uh it's an incredible place. Constantly changing, constantly being remodeled, constantly being rebuilt, never stops. The building never stops in the city. The square mile, Londinium, that's the original Londinium.
It's the Roman square mile which became ultimately the city of London, a state within the state. But it's it's it's it so it is in the interests and one you have to ask yourself the question and Britain's also often it it's it's called under Tony Blair it was very very fashionable to call the UK uh America's poodle and while this is certainly true in a political sense uh Britain doesn't project the type of military power that it once did. It's been relegated to a different role militarily. It specializes in certain types of jobs that it performs for the US uh le u empire if you will special forces sabotage blowing things up dropping uh high skill teams behind enemy lines sabotaging things basically disrupting wrecking uh in the case of Ukraine uh doing everything possible to keep the war going uh and of course intelligence, ingenuity, all these things.
Uh that's what the British military excels in but also politically Britain excels in disciplining the United States nudging the United States and it does this has many tools at its disposal uh including intelligence some real some fake some exaggerated red herrings. This has been used many, many times. Many documented examples of it. We've reported on it.
The Iraq war, yellow cake uranium, uh, chemical weapons in Syria, and the list goes on. So, uh, Christopher Steel, the Steel Dossier. So, it's a it's an endless endless story there. So, that's his roles.
But what what is what is the city of London's interest in all that? Well, it has interests as we've just outlined. It it has a a chunk of the global economy is managed. US maritime power is in many ways backstopped by the city of London which is behind me now.
So that's it's important to understand that. So they this state, this former empire does have an interest in what goes on and what America does. Absolutely. Because it represents the interests of all of that money, all of that generational wealth, that oligarchy, the names.
People have great interests in the say the stability, the predictability of markets, uh global maritime shipping. I can't imagine what Donald Trump has done is a disruptive force to this global economy and it's probably wre a lot of havoc in the markets. That's for sure. Uh and it's also is it's also a paradigm shift away from I mean the US has uh it's interesting.
So you probably heard of Halford Mckinder and this is the uh world island theory. So this is a British geographer. Some of you may know about this but he had the theory of and what do you have to understand? Uh the British Empire also brought forth the intellectual framework for modern geopolitical analysis.
In other words, it was the first empire, if you will, to conceptualize the world as one unit, as one sort of the planet, as one unit, this planet we're on, uh, that we forget that we're on that, uh, is, uh, is spinning. e. Eurasia that includes the Middle East now called West Asia, East Asia uh and so forth. So uh South uh South the South Central Asia, Afghanistan, South Asia, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh etc.
So who whoever controlled the world island all of that controls the world or can control the direction of power projection. So if you can't control it, which Britain couldn't control all the land routes, although it fought many bloody wars to prevent other countries, other empires like Russia from linking up overland across Afghanistan for instance and connecting with India. So disrupting the Silk Road, disrupting land trade, disrupting land power, setting countries against countries, uh that was also part of the imperial remitt. So Halford Mckinder that sort of great game uh strategy uh very important.
Now then you had I believe his name was Alfred Mayor Mayan uh American Admiral power of the seas uh and this is the doctrine that he articulated and the power of the seas. So if if one was to prevent overland empire or the silk road or all 26 minutesthese trade routes now that are being planned between Russia via Iraq and Iran, these middle corridors, etc. that those are all violations of the British uh great game uh domain remitt. So that's why a lot of these wars are being fought.
e. new silk road uh land routes and land initiatives for the global economy. Um and and then you maintain the majority of global trade and commerce on the oceans on the sea administered by the city of London behind us. uh then effectively you control the global economy or it has to go through your uh thorough affairs, your ports, your legal framework, your insurance and commercial uh systems and frameworks.
So effectively you can control it. So it's about disrupting what's happening on land, controlling what's happening on the sea. important choke points the Suez Canal Egypt uh the Babandub Straits that's Yemen Djibouti Atraa this is why all these are battleground have always been battleground countries so the Persian Gulf is a massive one but the global economy is changing and while the Persian Gulf certainly was in the ascendancy for a very long time this past century. The Gulf States there, the Gulf monarchies were used to backs stop the petro dollar which was no longer backed by gold after Richard Nixon broke from the gold standard became then backed by oil and those Gulf states which formed a cartel called OPEC.
That was essentially OPEC's essentially a cartel of countries oil producing GCC shikdoms and they helped to kind of that cartel it it may seem like it's for Arab countries but in a way the ultimate beneficiary of OPEC is the United states as long as those OPEC countries will buy and sell 29 minutesgoods and services, commodities uh in US dollars, then the US dollar can maintain its supremacy as the global reserve currency. So it just kind of mandates that it's going to be large volumes of US dollars that are going to be constantly in demand. And you can kind of see that breaking down right now. One of the first straws that breaks the camel's back is the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE have basically announced they're leaving OPEC. Now, that's a potential nuclear bomb for the US dollar as a global reserve currency. And it's quite simple what happened because the country like the UAE which is completely in terms of cash and balance of payments it it relies on the ability to sell its oil and natural gas and and and byproducts that come from that um to sell that on the market. But by doing that they accumulate dollars and because they're sold in dollars but Now the UAE is short of dollars.
So they're having to leave OPEC and they're going to be selling their oil in Chinese swan and then maybe exchanging that for dollars. In other words, they're short on foreign currency. This is a kind of third world developing country problem. Or a country that's under a punitive sanctions will also have those sort of issues.
is like we can't get our hands on foreign currency. Uh so that's kind of an interesting development and really that's the beginning of an er the end of an the beginning of an end of an era what we're witnessing there. It's very significant. Anyway, we're here just to give you guys we're on the embankment right now.
That's the temps. I'm looking towards the city right at the city of London there. You can get sort of a zoom in on the skyline. There's St.
Paul's Cathedral in the middle. And as as we spoke to Dr. Peter Gandandy the other day in the uh Victorian Albert Museum in that video that the building of the of St. Paul's Cathedral bankrupted the crown.
So that's a little bit of a story there. But you can see all these uh massive massive skyline. You have the CLD Institute there. Somerset House, Customs and Trading.
The boats used to rock up right there, offload their goods. That's the customs house right along there. It's now called Summer Well, it's now Somerset House. So, but uh yeah, Waterlue is behind me from the station.
So that's the story. That's the story. So transition now and a battle to see who is going to steer the global economy. So whoever's so why is this important?
Well, it's not just about economics. Um there's levels even higher than economics. Then we get into the civilizational question and this is the whole point of empire. It's the same thing uh with oligarchy in a country.
Um at some point you've got more money than you know what to do with. So it's not about the money at that point. Yes, it is about the money but it's also then about power. Power and influence.
the power and influence to shape a society, to shape a culture, to shape a civilization. But to do that, you have to be able to be in control of directing civilization. So that's that's where the real priority comes with power is what are you going to do with that power? What what sort of world are you going to construct?
What is going to be the direction of culture? Um, and that's what people who have lots of money and power become obsessed with. And because that's what you do. But what's the point of having it if you can't use that money and and the power that comes with that to shape your world and to shape value sets uh and so forth to build a a framework and a structure to maintain your hold over power for the next uh hundred years rolling on century to century generation to generation creating massive foundations of generational wealth like the Rockefellers.
And that's now that torch has been now passed to the titans of tech creating their own dynasties uh and and setting themselves up to the ground level of whatever that is technical infrastructure the Bezos server farms or who knows but they want to be the Rockefellers of the next hundred years the Gateses of the world the Ellisons of the world and so forth that's their obsession But back to the civilizational question, does the AngloAmerican Empire and and they are they are still the preeminent global force for influence, but very rapidly being overtaken by economically anyway by the Chinese. That's beyond debate at this point, but that's actually happening. So, so who's going to steer the next hundred years? Because the last h 100red years, the last I'll say 200 years, the leading edge of global culture undoubtedly is angophone.
So, it's the English language. That's that is the foundation that is the basis of everything of law, academia, literature, education, culture, music, art, modern media, television, Hollywood. It's all language- based. So imagine if that was to transform and in the next hundred years the number one driving leading edge of culture of civilizational direction is Chinese Mandarin Chinese then what that's that is uh that is a major thing.
So that's that that's what's at stake. o at that level that we were talking about earlier uh that that is the priority that is the priority who will be leading civilization. This when when when Marco Rubio and all these people that work on behalf of the oligarchy you see them panicking you know the sheer the sheer terror uh about China Chinese economy and China is our enemy. ch China means us harm.
They say all these things like on a daily basis even though China hasn't really done anything but probably help provide cheap goods and uh you know a really incredible manufacturing base for the world. It's the world's workshop and uh China's lifted more people out of poverty than anybody any other government in history. Full stop. So they haven't really done any harm probably to anybody.
Uh but I I couldn't say the same about the United States or Britain for that matter or the other former European colonial powers. France probably that's the biggest conversation. If we were going to have a be in our bonnet about any former colonial power still clinging to their colonial possessions, that would be the French. But uh that's falling apart in central Africa.
But anyway, we digress. Uh the civilizational edge, that's what matters. That's what you're playing for. And it's a bit it's a bit of a circular uh feedback loop because you can control the civilizational edge and you can control the direction of culture and civilization.
And it's it's it's it's you formatted it, whoever's in char, the British, the Americans, the Anglo-Americans, and you're formatting that. Then you you're you're able to control or create the framework for wealth and power for your base for the next hundred years and 100 years after that. So in a way, it's it is in your interest. It's in the interests of high finance and all these institutions that we're talking about.
So they do have a common goal. They do have a a mission. They do have a resison on debt tray as they call it. So that's what they're playing for at the end of the day.
It's not just about money and power. That's just on the surface. So yes, the city does have interests. the city of London.
You know, it's funny that uh Europeans play chess. They play chess and they're probably the best chess players in Europe are not actually well, they're in the periphery of Europe, you could say. It's Russia. Russia is a great chess player and that's how they run their foreign policy.
It's also how they run their military affairs. But and and the Americans are good chess players, although they're more America plays more power checkers. It's more power checkers. It's brute force.
And if they're losing, they'll just tip the board over. They sort of have that privilege. Uh which they exercise quite often in fact. Um but the British are master chess players as well.
uh little bit perfidious albian I think they used to call it. Um but China doesn't play chess. China plays a different game. It's called go.
And go is very different than chess. Go is a very different game. There's a very different philosophy behind the game of go. And this is very much 40 minutesreflective of Asian Asian philosophy, Asian thinking, there's also a collective aspect to it.
And in go, you saturate areas of the board. So even if you can't overpower your opponent, you can't beat them in power checkers. Maybe you can't beat them in chess. But in Go, if you're playing Go, depends what game you're playing.
Everyone's playing different games simultaneously against each other. That's kind of bizarre. But in Go, you just need to prevent your opponent from being able to move or thwart you. And to do that, you need to saturate parts of the board gradually.
So you're sort of surrounding your opponent to prevent it from being able to sort of defeat you. So that's that's how China kind of runs its its great game, if you will. And this is a source of endless frustration for Western imperialists because they've been able to exert power and influence over these former colonies for hundreds of years. If you think about it, European civilization or European empire has dominated the planet in one form or another uh for the last if we count Rome uh and the Greek Empire.
I mean, we're talking the better part of 3,000 years, but European, modern European borders specifically in the modern colonial era, uh, we're talking a thousand years, basically a millennia, a millennium. So, they've dominated for millennia, but specifically the last thousand years. that we're today in 2026 we are witnessing the collapse the disintegration of a thousand years of dominance. So for a thousand years the global south have been there's so much money here in this city it's uh unbelievable it doesn't really trickle down but the global south for a thousand years have been saying how long how long how long must this go on as Richard Prior famously said the genius comedian median.
How long must this BS go on? How long are we going to get kicked in the ass? And here it is. We've arrived at that inflection point in history.
And a lot of people are, let's be honest, much much unhappy about it. Much much unhappy about it. And they will go to any length to sabotage, disrupt, undermine, thwart, wreck, you name it, to prevent this changing of the guard of global power politics and transitioning from a well previously various unipolar hegemonic epochs. to a bipolar distribution during the Cold War to a unipolar moment after the Berlin Wall fell with the United States ruling the roost globally and then the transition to a multipolar world with multiple centers of power and it's going to be difficult.
Let's be uh we'll be honest. It's not it's not going to be easy. It's going to be chaotic. So, as as uh Antonio Grampshi, the famous uh theorist political theorist, Italian political theorist as he wrote from the prison in Trin where Mussolini had him in turned because he was too dangerous.
Uh, the old world is dying. I I think this is the quote. The old world is dying. A new world is waiting to be born.
Now is the time of monsters. And I think we're seeing those monsters. I have remarked about this in the past and certain public talks, lectures, and things that I've given at different conferences and things. But it is an apt and a very precient quote by uh Grahamshy.
Yeah, Grahamshy was a Marxist. So I just the fact that you should be allowed to quote anybody whether they're a Marxist or Adam Smith, a free marketist, there's truth in there's truth in everything. If you get hung up on ideological labels and you disqualify, 46 minutesclear genius insights and absolute golden nuggets of truth and you shoot the messenger because you don't like the politics of the messenger or you're going to miss out on a lot of the world's most valuable knowledge. That's why I don't get hung up on the labels.
I just look at the substance. But uh that is a great quote and it very much describes where we're at. So this little stroll through the halls of power, it's uh it's amazing. The accumulation of wealth to build this city over the centuries is uh breathtaking and uh it is and remains one of the world's super megatropolises and it's because of all that behind it.
So there's a lot the people who built this and their forefathers and their descendants, they want to maintain the as much of that as possible. So the great game is still very much alive and well. But that's all we uh we got time for. I'll sort of cross the road here over to the temps.
We can give you a good view here of the London Eye. This was a giant ferris wheel paid for by British Airways, but uh or they took it over. I think that thing went bankrupt twice. Anyway, it's still there.
You can ride one of those pods for a princely sum and it's nice and slow. You get a great view of London, but it is deer. That does cost a pretty penny to go up in that thing. And there's the old county hall next to it, which itself is a pretty incredible grand building.
Uh I think that's like a Marriott hotel now. But it's an incredible many incredible pieces of architecture here. Yes. And they will they will outlast everybody.
Well, the ones that are the older ones will I don't know about the new ones. Problem with new buildings are these modern buildings there is they tend to look they they get dirty very quickly. It's very expensive to clean all that glass. So anyway, there's the city.
This is the temps. That's London. We'll we'll try to give you a better we'll try to give you a better uh a better view that that part of London later next time. But anyway, it's been uh nice hosting you today.
I look forward to coming back exploring some of the history, connecting the history to present day events and politics. That's actually what interests me the most. And uh that's what we'll do. Thank you guys for joining.
Listen, I know this is I think we said this last time, I'm going to say it again. This channel has been artificially suppressed by the lords of speech at uh Alphabet, Google, YouTube for over a decade. So, they have pushed they have kept us down for over 10 years. And we're breaking out.
And we're breaking out because you guys are liking and subscribing. you're physically pushing this content into people's feeds to be recommended and for that I appreciate everybody who's participated in that effort. So, thank you very much and uh don't forget to support our work. com.
Uh managing our Substack community as well. We do that with your support. So, thank you guys for those you stepped up to help us. We got a lot more work to do and we will get on with it.
But, uh, until next time, take care. Patrick Henningson signing out. All the best. [music]
WW3? Russia & North Korea's Missiles HAMMER Kiev, Iran HITS US Ships | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Danny Haiphong Aug 11, 2026
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discusses a stunning turn of events as North Korea enters the Ukraine war again overnight with its ballistic missiles raining on Kiev and massive numbers of troops deployed. Plus, a secret Israeli cable has leaked out devastating new information about a daily humiliation for the US Navy that no one is talking about. This stream does.
Transcript
Welcome back to the show everyone. It's Danny Hiong. As you can see, I'm joined by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to go over the latest developments. So, we begin actually in Ukraine this time.
So, Russia struck Zaparogia, the Ukrainian controlled Zapogia as well as Kiev yesterday uh with missile and drone strikes over 100 drones at least in missiles in the dozens missiles, hypersonic missiles. But the big report is that North Korea, according to Vladimir Zalinsky and Ukrainian intelligence, North Korea has supplied ballistic missiles to Russia as well and has uh fired them in yesterday's strikes. Now, this comes as Ukraine has actually stopped reporting the amount of missiles that are uh uh hitting Ukraine, hitting Kiev and other areas because air defenses are incredibly short. Now, this all follows reports that the DPRK North Korea may be sending 50,000 troops to Russia very soon, according to Vladimir Zalinski.
Now, back in 2024, Colonel Wilkersonson, you may remember we talked a lot about the Kursk offensive and the DPRK sending troops during that time. We believed it wasn't true until it was. And so, uh, these reports may have something to them. to the Middle East.
Now, in West Asia, Israeli media came out with something that nobody else was reporting on, that Iran is actually firing at US ships every single night in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, and that these launches are being covered up by Washington itself. and also in the Middle East every single day, including in the last on Tsala, Yemen has targeted Saudi commercial shipping in the Babel Mendde Strait, hitting one earlier today. So, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, uh, thank you for coming back.
Your reaction to these developments, in particular, the state of the Ukraine conflict and these reports about DPRK involvement. Are we in World War II? Well, let me take the least one, not necessarily the least in consequences, though I think probably that too first, and tell you that uh this morning I learned that the Saudis had deployed ambulances into Yemen trying to pick up and treat and bring back to Saudi Arabian soil soldiers that have been wounded badly and those who have been killed. So the the uh the king as it were is doing something that I didn't think they would do.
They love flying jets and dropping bombs from altitude. They don't like fighting on the ground and aren't very good at it. Is nonetheless doing that. And apparently from the reports they're getting their rear end handed to them.
" Our patience with the West is done. Period. Now, Lavough would not have said that if he didn't absolutely 100% mean it and mean it throughout the entire structure of Russia's national security complex to include the Duma and of course Putin. What is happening now after they have pretty much decimated whatever targeting is left of Ukraine origin, they're hitting NATO targets inside Ukraine.
This is step two, if you will. Before they were hitting Ukrainian targets inside Ukraine. Now they're hitting Ukrainian targets inside Ukraine. And there aren't too many left really of viable content.
And they're hitting NATO targets. They have killed Americans. They have killed British. They have killed Germans.
Probably killed French and others. They're going to continue to do this. The war is with NATO. Now Putin has said he is at war with NATO and he means it.
So start inside Ukraine's borders, see if they get the message, and then if they don't, expand out. The significant difficulty was that is Trump doesn't get messages. He doesn't understand what's going on. He doesn't understand how deeply he's getting embedded in two different theaters of war.
One, a totally war of choice theater, and the other a war of I said I'd get out, but I didn't. And I'm lingering. And the Russians are winning. Winning dramatically finally in terms of both cutting off Odessa and the ports next to Odessa and in terms of giving Ukraine nothing really but the ability for Zalinsky to scream bloody murder for a ceasefire.
Now he can fly drones all day long and attack Russian assets. Not going to do any good. They've lost the war. And it's about time someone admitted this before Sergey Lavough's statement is expanded beyond Ukraine's borders.
And it's about time we stop the one in Southwest Asia, too. But that's even more impossible to stop because Trump has his entire personality, his entire character, his entire relationship with BB Netanyahu, which is still strange to me how much influence BB has on him. Look what he's doing right now. BB is calling Trump every night virtually and telling him, "I'm going to say this.
I'm going to say this. I'm going to say this. I'm going to say that I'm not supportive of the Gaza arrangement. I'm not supportive of stopping what's happening in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.
I'm not supportive of the things that we've talked about and I seem to have agreed to in Lebanon. I am not supportive of any of this. I'm only saying these things because if I don't say them, I won't be reelected. I will not do them.
I promise you I will not do them. But I've got to say them. I've got to tell them to the Jewish population of Israel. Now, your guess, my guess as to whether Netanyahu means any of that in terms of not doing them.
I don't think he does. I think he will do them. But we're wrapped up now in his desperate and it is becoming increasingly desperate attempt to make sure by Hooker Crook that he is reelected and he can finish this war which is the ultimate aim of his life with Iran. We can talk about that later because that has its own possibilities tied to it.
But that's where we are in terms of Trump's ability to control either one of these theaters which are rapidly both spinning out of control. And the latest example is this on taunt because that's all it is between Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, uh who else is in it. Uh it it is not, you know, I had to explain this this morning. Article 5 even in the NATO treaty does not mean that an attack on one is an attack on all responded to immediately.
What it means is in all the country's cases that they consult their processes for making these kinds of decisions. In our case, it's the Congress. Supposedly, Donald Trump seems to have obiated that, but Biden before him, too. And once those constitutional processes determine that they okay war, then you can honor your commitment to NATO.
Well, this untaught is even more convoluted than that. So, not a lot is going on with regard to that except the Saudis are getting their ass kicked on is kicking their butt and kicking their butt on the ground. Now, I never thought I would see I've trained a lot of Saudis, most of them pilots. Never thought I would see the Saudis, National Guard or National Force, either one, 8 minutesever go to war on the ground because they're not very good at it.
But apparently, they have decided to at least try their luck at the Houthis on the ground. They're not, their luck's not holding very well. And of course, you've probably heard the Houthies hit another ship in the Red Sea. Um, and so things are looking bad in both theaters, Danny.
Really bad. And I don't see how this president I just not do not see how he's going to get out of either one, Ukraine or Southwest Asia. Well, before we get deeper into Southwest Asia, Colonel Wilkerson, I wanted to ask you, you know, the last time we heard about DPRK, North Korea in the Ukraine conflict, it was during the Kursk offensive. And we know how that turned out for Ukraine in NATO very, very badly.
And then we got confirmation that North Korea actually was participating in operations there uh in a very uh important way. So I'm wondering if these latest reports while they are coming from Ukraine and they are coming from Zilinski uh and they lie like the day is long. Um uh I'm wondering uh what you believe about this, what your thoughts are about this and uh do you think North Korea is using this conflict now given Russia in the driver's seat as more opportunities to uh get some battlefield experience in modern warfare? The last time they fought was the United States as you know in that plus they've never fired their ballistic missiles in anger.
Not as far as I know anyway. They've tested them and things like that, but I don't think they've ever fired them in anger. Um they're doing that here if they're doing it. And I'm with you.
I don't trust a lot of this stuff because it does get filtered through Z. Um, but if they are there doing that, I would clearly understand that they don't have an opportunity to try their ballistic missiles on a real battlefield. So, here they are trying them. And I don't blame Putin for accepting their assistance because he's closing in for the kill now.
May take a while still, but he's closing in for the kill. There is almost no ability of Kiev now, Ukraine, to shoot down anything Russia sends in. They can send little efforts up like drones and things like that that are designed maybe to go after this or go after that in a sort of uh singular way. But in terms of having air superiority, air supremacy even, they are pretty much there in Russia.
They can fly with impunity. They can shoot missiles with impunity. It's sort of like Israel. Israel's much in the same boat now.
Iron Dome is virtually gone. And of course we have no THAD or patriots to spare to give to them. So and IMRs and other things like that too are being gradually used up. So I don't think either place Israel or Ukraine anymore and the former we can talk about further because this I 11 minutesthink is a clear route to a very disastrous happening with regard to Israel.
And Neta Netanyahu once again in his inner circle is talking about this. He's talking about the big surprise very dangerous situation developing there. But in terms of North Korea, your original question, they're getting battlefield experience if they are participating. And I clearly understand why their missiles would be there because this is the first time they ever had an opportunity to shoot them in anger and see if they get to their target on time and on mark and if they explode.
And that is a question when you're in the game that North Korea's in and you've never done it, right? And technically uh there is no peace agreement right now uh with the United States with I guess you could say the US is NATO. So you know uh through DPRK, North Korea, they're always preparing for for war given it's just an armistice right now. Here um here uh in the Kiev Independent, this was the initial report on this.
I'm wondering if you could help us understand what these missiles are. Uh, Colonel Lawrence Wilkersonson, and for the audience who may not know, uh, they're talking about uh, Ukraine reported the air force that they saw KN23 ballistic missiles of North Korean origin as well as Iscander and Zerkcon, which are Russian origin. uh what makes these missiles particularly uh challenging, particularly devastating, especially given the fact that now all the reports are that Ukraine has uh virtually no air defenses. Uh very very small and those that they have are really only good for drones, not necessarily for these kind of missiles.
So help help us understand what these missiles are. Well, the North Korean ones, as far as I know, and I I'm not an expert on North Korean ballistic missiles, but well, I shouldn't say that. The the one that they most likely would put a nuclear warhead on, I know a little bit about, but others uh are sort of what I would call knockoffs of Russian or Chinese missiles or in one or two cases, the North Korean originals. Those are the ones that I would expect them to be testing.
Uh they know the Russian ones. because they're just knockoffs. And the Chinese knockoffs, they know they work because they've worked for the provider or for the designer in the first case. They don't know the ones that they've built work or they've tested them in some cases.
With the tactical missiles, it's less than it is even with the strategic missiles, which they shoot periodically. And now we know um the one that I'm most familiar with will reach Washington DC for example certainly the west coast of the United States but pretty much cover the United States with a nuclear warhead and it's fairly accurate as far as we can tell from the test that they've conducted. So it adds to the arsenal that Russia has. It gives North Korea experience with missile categories that they have not had anything but a test range experience with.
And normally for them, their test range is out into the ocean, which makes it uh not too much more difficult, but a little more complex when you're doing the telemetry checks and you're doing the actual strike pattern, and you want to see where the the uh if it happens to be a conventional warhead, for example, which most of these are, if not all, um then you want to see what the pattern looks like and so forth. It's easier to do that or more accurate doing that if you're shooting it on land. And if you're shooting at a target, a specific target, it's of course easier to check the accuracy and easier to check what your spread of the munition is and so forth. So, I could see that as I said before, North Korea would want to use this not only to help an ally, which Russia is now, um, but also to check their own weaponry.
And let me go back to that Russia is an ally. Now um there's some tension between Beijing and Moscow. Um, one of the few points where I do read about and hear about some tension between Xi Jinping and Putin, between Russia and China with regard to the well to quote Maong the closest lips and teeth relationship of Russia with Pyongyang. China has always managed to maintain a certain circumspection and distance from Pyongyang.
Not to say that uh they didn't consider North Korea an entity worth supporting from time to time on different issues, but their concern about North Korea is much more poignant, if you will, than Russia's is apparently now in particular. And so they don't particularly care for the relationship growing closer between Putin and Kim Jong-un, between Moscow and Pyongyang. And that I'm told that's not a disruptor of the alliance that's formed out there now, including Iran. Um but it is a subject of tension that I would have thought would be there because China always has had a different relationship with the uh having a much longer border with them too is part of the situation and also having a situation now where I'm told that on the river in particular where women on both sides for example used to go down and wash their clothes.
I mean you know it's a river and it's each side and you can go in and you can you can wash your clothes and do other things you do with water. Now, they're not doing that because they'll get shot on both sides. They'll get shot. So, that's not the kind of relaxed attitude that I was used to in observing the yellow in 17 minutesparticular when I was in the State Department.
They're killing people going down there now. They don't want anybody near there. And it's because of this tension between North Korea and China. And the tension is exacerbated by the fact that now North Koreans who used to try to get out would try to get out that way.
They had a very securous route. They went into China first. They were sort of fed and watered there and kept intact and they met up with a party that took them down and around and sometimes through Thailand, sometimes other places and they would wind up on the South Korean peninsula as defectors. That's created some tension, too.
At any rate, this this relationship between North Korea and Russia is not uh making China that much a happy camper about it. Well, what do you then make of the report uh Colonel Warerson in the Wall Street Journal uh that happened earlier in July about the and uh the Center for Strategic and International Studies piggybacked off it. uh that North Korea is having a very surprising economic boom right now and a lot of it has to do actually with economic ties to China that have been growing including in the uh you know areas of tech and uh electric vehicles which is what was noted in the Wall Street Journal that they saw that it it's seen that the streets are full of Chinese cars and that the North Korea has seemed to mirror China's uh technological ical advancements especially in the realm of uh these apps that are everywhere especially for payments and all the kinds of things like that. So what do you make of that?
Uh because it's there seems to be a contradiction uh that there of course are disagreeing between China and North Korea but seems like both China North Korea China and North Korea China and Russia right China and Russia yeah but all three of them seem to be getting close to each other. There are even reports too that Russia has supplied uh a greater amount of oil to China in recent weeks in large part because China I didn't mean to imply that the greater alliance was being impacted by it. I'm just all alliances have little imperfections in them, little problems with them. You want to watch it close though because it might grow.
North Korea is uh a puzzle right now. I've been going to webinar after webinar that Stempson holds because some of the best career experts in the United States are at Stson. Um, one or two in particular, really good women, both of them. Um, North Korean, one's South Korean, I think, once North Korean.
Um, and their webinars are quite good. They have a cell phone uh deal going in North Korea now. uh you can have a cell phone, you can own a cell phone, you can talk to people, you can get on the network, you can do all manner of things with them. Um some people are saying that that's because the South is giving them the cell phones.
I don't think so. There might be some coming that way, but I think most of them are coming the way you said that coming from China and that includes other things coming from China because China never met a country that it was mad enough at not to trade with except maybe us now with Donald Trump. But China wants to trade and it wants to ship things like electric cars and such all over the world and North Korea DPRK is no exception in that regard. But some of the webinars I've been attending and listening to very closely uh indicate that Kim is trying some new things.
And some of the things he's trying, they resonate with me because I remember the economic package that in 2001 and 2002 we developed at state in conjunction with Ken Dam, I think at the Treasury Department. Ken was a real Korea expert. I think he even spoke Hungle um and a China expert too. Good guy.
You rarely get those kind of people at Treasury with that kind of regional and geographic experience. But uh we put together a package that strangely enough seems to be included in what China is doing for DPRK and what the DP DPRK not to be shortened or anything doing for itself. So they're creating these economic zones. They're creating little places where they can experiment if you will with uh more market oriented experiences.
We did this if you may recall as a part of the Bush administration really the South Koreans were doing it. We created this zone where Korean workers, North Korean workers could come in and be trained. South Koreans provided management in the beginning. Then the North Koreans move management in when they got the skills and such.
And that product was distributed to both countries for profit on both sides. and Kim Jong, I guess it was Kim Jong-un when he first came in, he brutally shut it all down and it it just stopped and the sunshine policy went out of South Korea and such. But I think that is happening again, but it's now happening, oddly enough, with Kim's initiative, with Pyongyang's initiative. They're trying to do things not to liberalize, but to make life a little bit better for the average North Korean citizen.
Um, we're hearing that also from people like Catholic Relief Services and others who've been in North Korea all along um and worked there all the time. So, it is changing. It is changing. And maybe some of this is Russia and China's influence on it.
I'd like to think it probably is. The Chinese were a part of all these talks. The six party talks included the Chinese and the Russians and and we talked about these economic packages and I remember in particular China talking about what it would like to do for North Korea if Pyongyang would just allow it. So apparently some of this is happening now which I think is positive.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean decades and decades of sanctions it seems like DPRK did nothing really Yeah. did nothing and they're looking for ways to not only survive and be resilient from them, but to Well, it didn't do nothing.
It created a nuclear weapon. That's true. That's true. That's true.
Uh, Colonel Wilkerson, uh, you know, all of these wars are connected as you've you noted in the beginning. And so I'm curious on, you know, you said there's two theaters, the Ukraine theater that is hot and the Iran theater that is still hot even though there is an active firing between the US and Iran right now. But what do you make of what's happening uh with Iran, the United States? Donald Trump literally I mean these words coming out of his mouth that he is now blaming Iran in maybe in just maybe in seriousness for all of the deaths that have occurred in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen.
Uh but you also have the fact that Iran has just released a new missile or at least a new missile upgrade. Uh and uh the United States seems to be out of a lot of what they need to continue this war. So what's what's going on? Where are things at?
Uh Iran says they are willing to wait out the United States now until Trump is gone. Uh your assessment of the situation? I just received and looked over carefully after Nema and I had talked about it earlier this morning on dialogue works the list of people who are now in the IRGC principally but security and leadership positions in Iran in general. It reads like a list of resolute, experienced, dedicated, 100%, qualified, totally competent leaders across the board.
I mean, I don't know them all, but I know enough of them to know that they are tough men, very, very dedicated to Iran. And in some ways, more dedicated than previous people in similar positions because of this reason. They're all IRGC. They're almost all veterans.
One of them was a 22 year old or something like that when he was involved in the war, just like the former guy he just replaced. grew up in the IRGC. If you read the reports put out in the mid 200 well they were put out in 2007 8 n that time frame and they came from people like the Carnegie Foundation and others and these reports re very categorically and with metrics and data and everything told you how much money Iran was making annually from its oil sales and natural gas sales. And as you might imagine, they were making trillions of dollars, which is one of the reasons Dick Cheney and Hallebertton wanted to get in there big time.
Um, of those trillions of dollars, the estimates didn't vary very much on a fiscal year basis. The IRGC was taking well over a trillion dollars. Well, think about that for a few minutes. This is a group of very dedicated people, mostly men, and they have had in many cases the experience, the brutal experience of war.
They are what you might call the creme de la creme of Iran's very, very good, as we're finding out now, military structure. And they are the most highly remunerated paid people in Iran. Rosan Johnny Aadin Jad all those others notwithstanding these people know where the money is and they get a line sheriff. All to say when you are that when you are dedicated to the state and when you are very competent in terms of military experience and competence and you are so well entrenched in the hugely remunerative income Iran takes in from its oil and gas industry, you will defend that state to the death forever.
This is a formidable, formidable group of people we're up against. And when they say they're prepared to wait until Donald Trump is gone, until there's a new president, until the United States is completely evacuated the region, until Israel disappears, they mean it. o, I wish we were paying attention to this. I wish we understood whom we are up against and what we're up against.
I don't for a moment think Donald Trump has the capacity to do that, but someone in the administration has. I'm sure like JD Vance or maybe even chairman of the joint chiefs Dan Kaine, certainly some of the service chiefs and others ought to have the wherewithal to think this through and go to the president and say, "Mr. President, this is a totally losing proposition. They aren't going to give up.
Nothing we do to them can make them give up. They are sitting on the high ground and we are on the very very low ground. And you are running out of things. Now think about that for a moment.
" Putin now targeting NATO facilities, known NATO facilities inside Ukraine, killing Germans, killing French, killing Americans inside Ukraine. The next step is outside Ukraine to hit NATO. And Grinkovich is responsible for defending NATO ultimately. He's the shape commander, the sackurer, and he's watching us spend all these munitions that will not be available to him.
I'd be having a cat frenzy if I were you. I'd be apoplelectic. I'd be in Trump's face. I' I'd be resigning my position if Trump didn't change the disposition of the US military.
Well, let's talk about a number of these crises for now that as you've mentioned on this show many times, Colonel Wilkerson, you know, the US is so dependent upon using what is now becoming a more abundary apparatus to enforce its empire. Now, what you just said is kind of apt right now because uh European establishment media like Politico said that Europe is also running out of Patriot missiles as Ukraine braces for Russia's winter attacks. Uh so you know Russia has shown itself to have an incredible air defense system and for whatever people want to say about Russia what they've done against these drone attacks by Ukraine is just you know we've never I don't know if we've seen something like this where you know 500 will be shot at them and 99% of those will be shot out of the sky. Uh Europe the US doesn't have this anymore.
So in the Iran theater no more air defenses. in the European theater, if Russia needed to escalate against Europe, they're also fish out of water. Your your thoughts on this and then we can get to the naval crisis, which has also been reported on recently. Your thoughts, though?
You know, I just read a paper last night. This might s might not sound relevant until I make it so, but the paper was about how Stalin put his scientists to work and within six months was beating the best of Vermach had after they moved into Russia and tried to take Russia. And it didn't look like it at the time because they weren't being very demonstrative about it until they were absolutely sure that their organization, their uh equipment in that organization, the people in that organization and everything were very competent at doing what they were doing. All to say that the Russians are pretty good.
They're darn good. And I could say though there hasn't been as much experience or experience factor associated with it and their little excursion in 79 I think it was in the Vietnam was not a testimony to this but there is evidence now from exercises and from things that we've learned about those exercises from observers whom the Chinese did allow um that China's getting pretty good at it too both in the technical realm in terms of producing military equipment that works and works well. But also in the experential realm of using it, they have pretty large exercises just as the Russians did back in the early 2000s. The Russians were having core size and even one army size.
We haven't had an exercise like that since Desert Shield, Desert Storm. And that really was not that big of an exercise compared to the one the Russians and the Chinese have. So all to say they're pretty damn good. They're pretty damn good.
And Russia is pretty damn good with real battlefield experience now being demonstrated more and more on the actual battlefield. So all to say I wouldn't be very anxious if I were Donald Trump or General Grinkle in Europe to take them on. I just wouldn't. I don't think that Putin wants to take the entire apparatus of NATO on uh but I don't agree with some of these US generals that would say he would be absolutely stupid to do that because he'd get the hellbe out of him.
I don't think so. I have seen alliances try to fight. I've read about alliances for a thousand years trying to fight. They don't do it very well.
And the United States in particular does not do it very well. So this is a dangerous world. I keep saying that a very dangerous world that an incompetent uh let me say that a little harsher an utterly insane commander-in-chief president of the United States is dealing with and I don't see a whole lot of brain power and competence in the collection of sycopants mostly. I accept Vance in that regard.
I accept General Kaine in that regard. maybe one or two others, but I don't see a lot of help for this president. And I certainly don't see any help in the Congress because they are a fully owned subsidiary of Israel. And this is this in Southwest Asia at least is all about Israel.
And I'm not sure that some of it in Ukraine is not about Israel, too, because Israel's got its fingers in there in the drone production business and such. Israel will always have its fingers in every war and conflict it can get its fingers in. Um, so we're tying these things together, these theaters of war and this complex situation we have in Europe and Southwest Asia with a rapidity that really alarms me. Um, we could produce a regional conflict certainly very swiftly and we might even be able to produce a global conflict if we try hard.
One of the things that might be precipitous of this sort of conflict is what's going to happen if Iran feels like it needs to go deeper and further into its target list and begin to really take out some substantially important economic targets. The here to four it has not taken out. And I'm pointing decidedly at those in Saudi Arabia that encompass almost 20% of various and sunundry parts of what we call the oil industry. It's different things, but it's what we call the oil industry.
It's not all crude. There are other things that come out of there, too. And I'm not even talking about the ura and the helium and the other things that come out of there that are essential to other processes in the world like fertilizer and so forth and helium of course to computer chips. So this could get really deep and dangerous and bad especially for the empire very quickly.
And I say that latter because China and Russia and Iran to a certain extent. Iran by the exigencies of conflict and what they've done to tighten their economy. But Russia partly because of that, but also because Putin has been very smart about the way he has used US sanctions in particular to diversify very effectively and very helpfully the Russian economy. And China we don't even need to talk about.
's number one economy in the world. Number one economy in the world. So we are up against this monstrous huge largest country in the world. Big population country second only to India.
Third big country with lots of natural resources and lots of people and lots of land mass in Iran. All fused together. I didn't even include North Korea. We we're looking at all of them against us.
That's not good. Yeah. Well, uh, now if you could comment on, you know, there is a a burgeoning naval crisis for the United States, not just the air defenses, because, you know, I pulled up this report earlier about Israeli media is supposedly sounding the alarm, saying that every night the U, the Iran uh, they claim is attacking US ships or at the very least uh, deterring them from entering the space. Of course, we have had the United States claim that they are escorting and doing all of this uh around the Persian Gulf.
Iran says there is no uh naval carriers that will get anywhere close to the Persian Gulf because uh they're afraid. But we also heard that the USS Lincoln has a major crisis on board uh where uh you know the sailors there are just without they you know they're on to now close to a year of being out that way and they are absolutely miserable. They have nothing on board that they need whether it's quality food, toothpaste, these kind of things. And uh the ship seems to be breaking down as well.
Uh where there are reports of holes in the ship that are being identified and and hidden and not fixed and as well as other issues with the uh functioning of the ship for their own purposes which many parents now of these sailors are saying this could be a disaster in the making where people end up dead not for you know just for the fact that there are so many issues on board this. Could you talk about the crisis for this part of the US Navy which is supposed to be the enforcer of freedom of navigation and as well as the launchpad for a lot of the US's air power too. Your thoughts on what's going on here? You know, I've been paying attention to some of the parents who have been reported in the various press.
Um, and their comments really go to the heart of things. I think uh the Navy the US Navy has never been taking its its uh lesson if you will from the British Navy because they were the same way. Um much concerned with it enlisted ranks. A little more concerned with the petty officers, their non-commissioned officers and of course with the officers climbing with rank.
Officers on naval ships do things, for example, that soldiers would never do. Um, they eat simultaneously or before and eat better than the crew. They drink before the crew. Um, they often have much better accommodations than the crew.
I mean, let's face it, soldiers and generally Marines sleep in the same sleeping bag and on the same ground their soldiers do. eat the same food and eat it last. A principle in the army is if you're standing in a line for food on a combat field, you eat last. And if there's no food when you get to the tray, you don't eat.
That's a rule in 40 minutesthe Army. It's a rule in the Marine Corps. Not so with the Navy. You eat all the time and you eat much better if you're an officer.
And you eat in much better quarters than the crew does. uh much better in terms of the size and the atmosphere and much better in terms of what might be around you like rats running around or whatever. This is a heritage from the British Navy. The British Navy was the same way.
Treated the tars like they were crap. The officers were treated fairly well. So that's the first thing. Second thing, these ships, think about this for a minute now.
These ships have not seen land in quite a while. Not only that, they are a thousand miles, I'm told, out into the Indian Ocean. Not in the North Arabian Sea or in the Sea of Oman, let alone in the Straight Om area. They're out in the Indian Ocean.
Uh tumultuous body of water, and they haven't seen anything but water for a quite extended period of time. as my calculations are some of them for as long as six months, five, six months. This war has been going on since 28th February. Um, I haven't checked the actual deployment figures to see who's got 600 days and who's got 400 days or whatever, but it's a long period for most of them.
And I'm not accepting the the CGs and the DDGs and the DDS, the destroyers, the missile destroyers, the cruisers, and so like Tyonderoga, Eegis class cruisers and such. These crews are on a even tighter uh ship, if you will, in terms of space and room and in terms of being a dot in a vast ocean. And if they're getting shot at, these other ships, not the carriers, they can't be shot at really because uh they're too far out. Now, a drone could go out there probably and do something, but shooting a drone down with guard to a carrier and its defense is is probably not that difficult.
So, you've got a variety of things happening, but they're all bad. They're all bad on morale. They're all bad on the wear on the ships. They're all bad for the complexity of operations.
For example, if you're going to use carrier air power, sorry, you're not going to tank all the way into Iran to use your munitions. And we've sort of run out of the munitions that you shoot from a distance. So, how do you get that carrier air power in there if you can't bring the platform launching it in closer? And you can't because they'll sink it.
5,000 souls in the water at one time. very difficult situation. And what it's doing is demonstrating to the world, I think, and most demonstratively to the Chinese and the Russians, that we're a paper tiger when it comes to the capital ship of the United States Navy, the carrier. It is obsolete.
It costs $16 billion. It has a huge complement of men and women on it, but it is obsolete. And all it's going to take is a single missile to prove it's obsolete. We don't want that event to occur, of course, because this is too expensive.
We have two of them right now. One is about to be launched, I think, and the other is due out in about four or five years. Both of which will be overpriced. They'll be 16 to20 billion.
The second one might be as high as 223 million billion dollars. and they will be not that much more capable than the ones that are out there right now which are I will repeat for people who are deaf obsolete and we're just waiting to prove that and we're waiting to prove it with the resolute enemy that confronts us on the other side of the straight horses Iran so this is a very bad situation not just for Donald Trump and not just for the American military my heart goes out to them especially the soldiers and marines who might be used in a land operation but they also Alo goes out to the sailors who were under people like Bradley Cooper, a surface warfare guy about, you know, I know all about them. I taught them at Newport at the war college. I couldn't stand most of them because they were different kind of military people.
They had no concern for their soldiers, their troops. They had no concern for anything but themselves and their ship. Now, that's not all of them. There are some very good captains, some very good commanders and lieutenant commanders.
Uh but they are in my view in the minority when it comes to taking care of their troops. And one of the ways it demonstrated that Danny in a way that was spectacular was when they left Bahrain. Many of them were sailors or uh belonged to the Navy compliment civilians whatever when they left Bahrain after Iran initially destroyed virtually everything there. 2,000 plus of them went home to NOFK and when they got there there was nothing nothing for them.
No birth space, no leeping, no food, no water. So what the citizens of Chesapeake, Norolk and other places in that area had to do was band together and give them places to stay and places to hang their hat. And by the way, they didn't bring anything home but what they could put in a kit bag. So they had to leave everything else there that were was their worldly possessions at sea uh or in a foreign country.
This is, you know, you can't make this stuff up. It's terrible what they're doing. And and they're doing it because there was no planning. There was no fall looking.
Marco Rubio didn't even think about non-combatant evacuation operations or if he did, he was way late in doing it. So you had to fly these people out on whatever craft you could find, commercial airliners, things like that. It's a disaster and we made it a disaster because we were not prepared. We went to war unprepared and we went to war in a stupid idiotic way thinking air power would do everything it needed to 46 minutesdo.
And even General Kaine before the Congress of the United States gave testimony that air air power has never been a decider of war. 5 trillion HEGS Seth is always boasting about to the US military. Where did it go? Exactly.
That's what I'm saying. The fact that you know these these people that you sent out to the you know Indian Ocean you know for this Iran war and that's I mean this is a long-standing pattern though you know that's just treated more like fodder than uh uh than anything else and and now I you just wondering what's going through their heads because in general and I can't imagine this doesn't affect sentiment on something like the USS Lincoln now how people broadly this is semaphor so this is you know as you know colonel workers are connected to intelligence but how Americans view the US military campaign in Iran has only gotten worse every single month since April. So now only 12% of Americans believe that uh the US military has achieved its goals as opposed to 88% saying nope they haven't. So people are really catching on to how bad this is.
And now US military officials, Colonel Wilkerson, have also informed Trump, according to NBC, that any operation to try to take the straits, although he says it's already taken and controlled by the US would be lengthy, costly, and deadly with no guarantee of winning. So, uh, none of this spells, uh, good things for at least the, uh, uh, babbling Trump administration on the future of this war. What your thoughts on on this these numbers and these reports? I don't think it'll take long before Trump's ratings as president of the United States reflect those polls you just showed.
I mean, he's he's headed down to about 12%, I think. Um, and that's going to be devastating in more ways than one. I I hate to complate contemplate how the Republican party might deal with that and how Trump might help them deal with that. That could be some real domestic turmoil.
Um, but I think that's reflective of where he's going to go ultimately. I I heard yesterday from competent authority that he is seriously thinking about pardoning Gizlane Maxwell. Think about that for a minute. He's already moved her out of a fairly high security prison to a plush prison for, you know, whatever.
Why would he be contemplating that unless she has something on him and has threatened to reveal it? I mean, I wouldn't even be thinking about it. This isn't like letting uh what was his name? Hernandez, the president of Honduras, who was the drug dealer and was convicted in a US court.
It's not like giving him a pardon. Oh, by the way, you know, he's down on the coast of Honduras right now running an organization that I understand is turning over a lot of money for people like the CIA and like Jared and Steve and others who are gaining money. Um, so it it it's perplexing to me. And then you come to BBE and what BB's doing and BBE is setting up Israel.
We talk about Ukraine being devoid of air defenses. Israel is pretty much in the same boat. We don't have a lot to give them. Certainly not THAAD, Patriot, and not a lot of other things like high Mars and so forth, which we've been expending at an alarming rate as well.
All the categories of high Mars. So, what is BB thinking about if he's really seriously 50 minutesgoing to put the end to the most heinous regime in his estimation in the region, Iran, and that's been his dream for a long time. What is he thinking about doing because he doesn't have the capacity to do it now? I don't even think he has the capacity joined with the United States to do it.
I think you've demonstrated that. But even if we were to concentrate roundthe-clock aerial campaign, Israel and the US together against Iran, I'm not even sure Israel could fly because it doesn't have the refined product to fly. It's JP4, JP5, JP, JP8, you know, jet fuel. I don't think it has the product to fly.
Not anything more than maybe one mission. and we are lined up on Bengurian airport like we were at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Um, we could be taken out probably with three or four Rashnik type missiles with submunitions in probably . We wouldn't have a tanker left because they're so jammed up wing tip to wing tip on Bengorian airport.
I'm waiting for us to move them. you know, the defense minister or someone cats or someone said we should move them and Netanyahu intervened and said, "No, don't talk to the United States that way. " Does he want them to be there so they're part of the carnage when Iran launches an attack on Israel and then he responds to that attack with the only weapon he has left, a nuclear weapon? This is not a good situation that BBE and Donald have allowed Israel to slip into.
Mostly BBE because I don't think Donald understands any of this. But BB has allowed Israel to slip into what could very well be an existential situation. And the only thing he has to defend against that in any way really effective is nuclear weapons. Well, you know, we've tied many conversations, Colonel Worker said, now of eventually these global conflicts that the US is in the lead, Israel is in the lead, um, in many ways in being involved with, especially in West Asia, in Eurasia proper, is eventually going nuclear.
Uh, as of today, do you see that still as the overall uh, momentum? Uh that's where we're going because what I see is the United States militarily uh is just you know you said paper tiger. Yeah. It doesn't really have the capabilities of militarily uh uh defeating China, Russia and Iran.
Now we know and that means these countries are going to keep doing what they're doing which the United States doesn't like. Uh even if it is maybe a far more peaceful future if they keep doing what they're doing than what we have now. But to the uh masters of war, 53 minutesthey're not loving this. So, where do you see things headed now?
Uh maybe in the last or so, we can talk about that. I think it's a very dangerous world. I think we're in trouble, the empire. I think our power is receding rapidly.
I think China, Russia, and Iran are a triumvirate. And throw North Korea in there, too, if you'd like. But you also got to throw a lot of the bricks in there eventually. I think probably even ultimately you'll have to throw India in there and then you've got probably 60% of the world's population probably same percent of its GDP and certainly the dynamic portion of the world that is to say the part of the world that's growing economically powerful going to be even more economically powerful all lined up against the empire the United States of America and for that matter against Europe too who are showing both in the EU and and their individual governments almost as much hard-headedness and stupidity as the US is showing.
It's the end of a reign of a long period of time with regard to the West. But it doesn't have to be the end of everything. I mean, we're 340. Some people say 350 million.
I think it's more like 340 or lower because Trump has deported so many people and is fully intent on deporting hundreds of thousands more. But we're still a fairly sizable nation. We could fall apart at any minute and are showing signs of that. But we're still a fairly powerful nation.
And there are other countries in the region too. I cite Brazil as one and of course Canada and Mexico. But we are decidedly on the decreasing end of the power scale while the rest of the world minus Europe which is on the same scale as us is on the increasing power side of the scale. Whether or not that side 55 minutesthat's losing and that's not really the right word if you come at it with the right attitude and you recognize this is happening and it has to be accommodated not fought.
But the only thing that is going to save this side that's losing as it were is nuclear weapons. And that's not a victory. That's not a victory at all. So we need a leadership that begins to understand this dynamic and begins to move to accommodate it.
And there's a clear path to moving to accommodate it in a way that would be collaborative, cooperative, and work. And that's for everybody to put their heads together, so to speak, and to work on corraling this treatyless world for nuclear weapons. Work on making the non-prololiferation treaty a little more viable, getting rid of at least a couple of the countries that already have the weapons. I'd include in that Israel for sure, and limiting any future acquirers with the treaty regime.
plus protecting those that are already possessed of the weapons. And then we need to work desperately on what is burning down France, burning down much of Canada, burning down a lot of the United States, drowning people, and doing other things. And that's a climate crisis, which Trump calls a hoax. He's as stupid and as ignorant with regard to that crisis as he is the war in southwest Asia or the war in Ukraine.
We need to deal with both of these things or we are going to be in deep deep trouble. The way the French firefighters are around the wine reason just short of Paris right now. We are in desperate straits. They are long-term in some sense, but not that long term.
We've already had the hottest years on record. We aren't going to have any cooler ones. We need to work on these problems and we need to work together on them. All 8 n billion people of us.
Ain't going to happen probably, but it's being held up right now. Not by China, not by Russia, not by India, not by any of the other countries in the world in the dynamic region of the world. It's being held up by the empire and by its lackeyis and that's a sad commentary. Yeah.
Well, I think this is a a good place to end on that uh very alarming but necessary message. I want to make sure everybody knows to uh hit the like button because that will boost the show after we are done here and that continues to allow people uh casually searching YouTube to see Colonel Wilkerson's muchneeded analysis and our conversation. Thank you so much for becoming new members uh to both of you here. Appreciate that.
Thanks to all the moderators. Thanks everyone who viewed uh in the video description below. You can find all the places to support this channel, Patreon, Substack, and much more. Tomorrow I'll be back with our mutual friend and oftentimes our mutual guest Larry Johnson at 400 PM Eastern time August 12th and uh you know uh hopefully I'll see you all there.
m. Eastern time good friends DD Geop Politics are live. That link is below as well today, August 11th. All right everybody, we are out of here.
PEPE: KHAMENEI PIVOTS-SECRET 6 HOUR MEETING With PEZESHKIAN,PAKISTAN’S MECCA PACT SHAKES EURASIA Transition Protocol Aug 11, 2026 #BreakingNews #Iran #Geopolitics
TEHRAN SHAKES THE CHESSBOARD: In this emergency briefing of Transition Protocol, geopolitical analysts Pepe Escobar and Zulfiqar Ali break down exclusive intelligence regarding a secret 6-hour face-to-face summit between Iranian President Pezeshkian and Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Discover how Tehran is restructuring its national security apparatus under IRGC veteran Mohsen Rezaei, resetting negotiation terms with Washington, and asserting operational oversight over the Strait of Hormuz alongside Oman.
Simultaneously, we analyze groundbreaking shifts across Eurasia as Pakistan adopts strategic nuclear ambiguity under the Mecca Pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey—and opens unprecedented dialogue channels with Tehran. As US Strategic Petroleum Reserves reach critical depletion thresholds, how will these interlocking military and diplomatic moves reshape global security?
Featuring analysis from Pepe Escobar and Zulfiqar Ali. Hosted by Transition Protocol #BreakingNews #Iran #Geopolitics #StraitOfHormuz #MiddleEast #Pakistan #Economy #BRICS #PowerShift #TransitionProtocol
Transcript
Well, I am literally under the volcano today. Uh, there are only flames around me and I'm being sucked to the heart of the volcano. So, this is what we do when we are presented with some groundbreaking and explosive intel. This is transition protocol.
It is the 11th of August. The tectonic plates underneath the volcano keeps shifting, putting up a lot of uh smoke, very hot air in the air in up in the atmosphere. And we have been hard at work trying to gather all of that uh deep inside uh the rooms where decisions are being made. Uh deeply sourced, verified to the extent that we have the ability to so do so.
And we believe what uh we bring to you is as close to being accurate as possible. With me is my dear friend and 1 minutecolleague uh a geopolitical analyst of global reputation. You like him, you love him, Pepe Escobar. Uh we'll be discussing all of this news with you and breaking it to the world and we believe information that you have not heard anywhere else.
Certainly not in corporate media and certainly not uh in independent media because they lack the access and we are honored to have it. This is transition protocol. If you like what we do, hit the like subscribe button. Go to our Substack channel for a small fee of $5 a month.
Twice a week. We will deliver news of this quality inside your mailbox. Pepe, please go ahead and enlighten us and the global audience of the breaking news that we are privileged to have. [snorts] Thank you, Mr.
Z. Uh thanks everybody, our uh growing global audience. Well, I am literally under the volcano today. Uh there are only flames around me and I'm being sucked to the heart of the volcano.
So this is what we do when we are presented with some groundbreaking and explosive intel. Some cases one source some cases there's another source corroborating the first. In this case, a very privileged source and of course it's practically impossible to confirm some of the aspects of this intel considering how explosive the material is. So once again, I'm going I think this is becoming a habit between us.
U I usually get intel reports five minutes before before we go live on air. three minutes, one minute, sometimes if uh you know if the fates or if zeals is not throwing a dart over my 3 minuteshead. So uh okay, we have to live with it, right? It's part of our job.
What I'm going to tell you has not been directly confirmed with the highest levels of the Iranian government. Point number one, it can be confirmed over the next 24 until the uh rest of the week. There are two possibilities. Uh they may uh uh go for a nonresponse response which is what they usually do when we are dealing to extremely sensitive matters of national security for Iran.
" In the case of what we have, we're not going to get an option to no, it's not true. But we can get a no response response, which is something that already happened with me two months ago when I submitted something that we revealed here at Transition Protocol. and uh a very important character close to the office of leader Moshava Kame he basically said um uh I cannot comment on this matter but this was not a denial and this was not a known response response it was a response basically saying no we cannot talk about this and the Iranian government is very very uh demonstrative when they prefer to have issues of national security outside of the public sphere and not even very wellconed Iranian media reports about it. This may be the case considering parts of the intel that we uh received.
It concerns essentially a meeting, a direct meeting between President Pzashkin and leader Morava Came which might have lasted no less than six hours a face-to-face meeting. Essentially, the intel is trying to tell us that Pzashkin presented a very clear case to leader Morava Kame on how let's put it the no peace no war environment visa v the United States should proceed from now on simultaneously with this very very long conversation between the president and the leader and we have to understand probably the fundamental fact from the beginning when he was still the son of Ayat he never believed in 6 minutesnegotiations with the Americans in the let's say the period that he was the invisible new supreme leader and he was basically sending a few messages and There were some leaks in the Iranian media about meetings that he had with members of the Supreme National Security Council. It was more or less clear that his initial instinctive reaction to dealing with the Americans was correct because the Americans basically blew up the memorandum of understanding. As all of you know, we here uh follow this story a transition protocol in detail.
many other of our colleagues in the internet sphere spheres not only sphere but now there's got to be some sort of a rearrangement at the top of the Iranian government because they are entering a new phase and this new phase we could characterize it as the negotiation end game it's not there yet it's maybe the path towards the negotiation end game. But for that Iranian government as a whole has to be a very solid negotiation path and this is what may have been achieved this last 24 not even for this last between the leader the president and others that are part of this this negotiation. of course and we would include uh foreign minister Arashi, we would include uh leader of parliament Galibah and of course all the other members of the supreme national security council whose secretary now from now on is a towering figure to say the least. Moshen Razai.
Moshin Razai is a veteran of the Iran Iraq war. He's a former commander of the RGC and now he is the top military advisor to leader Moshtaba Kame and he is the let's say the the the key organizer of everything that is discussed at the Supreme National Security Council of which by the way President Bzashkin is also a member. So we have a series of developments uh happening more or less at the same time although they are all interconnected and that's what makes for people who don't understand how the Iranian system work makes it's practically impossible to understand how they connect to each other and who are the main characters and if there is a change in the past towards something or in the procedure of their decision making. It's very hard for anybody outside of the ruling circle to understand what goes on especially foreigners.
So we have a series of concentric uh facts now uh a a very very substantial change at the supreme national security council when Mos Mosen Rzai now is the big big guy with no competition. They are discussing a mechanism for uh reparations which is going to be a cifian task. The Trump administration will never agree to pay reparations to Iran, but this is presented on the table and is part of the as the Iranians interpret is part of the MOU. 10 minutesWe can detect the and this is quite subjective but there are elements that suggest that the Iranian negotiating uh strategy is more flexible now because at the highest level they not only have a consensus but they more or less understood and devised the new procedure from now on.
They're They refined their strategy to the point of okay this is what we really want. This is what we are presenting and this is how we're going to act to for these things to be delivered to us concrete uh results. Then there are some uh uh details which are quite fascinating in fact considering uh the scope of the Iran Pakistan relation which has to be at all times a relation based on trust especially now when you have a new element an explosive theoretically explosive element in the chess board which is the Mecca NATO style pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey which by the way was communicated to Iran beforehand by the Pakistanis. This is very very important which proves the trustworthy uh relationship.
And then there's something that might have might be happening by the end of this week on uh August 14th uh Friday actually and it was postponed. It's going to happen after that. August 14 is Pakistan independence day. And this is something we reported two weeks 12 minutesago or so, a little over a week ago if I if I remember well, that a delegation led by Kalibah would visit Islamabad on uh August 14th and could probably stay for two days because August 16 is one of those uh deadlines that disappear in the fog of war, but they are still there.
is the end of the 60-day period of theou negotiations which were blown up by the United States. But uh the timeline still remains in place. It's August 16. By August 16, they should have reached some sort of agreement.
The problem is the Americans blew it all up. So is uh this Iranian delegation led by Kalibaf going to visit Islamabad soon? Yes. but after August 14th.
So we have this interlocked uh at the highest levels of the Iranian government they are moving personnel around and it's coalescing into a very solid decisive negotiating position with very identifiable players of which we can say that arguably the most powerful now is Moshen Resai. And in fact, his exper experience compared to everybody else, it's it's on a whole new level. And very very important, he has an excellent relationship with Moshaba himself because they have been talking for decades. In fact, when Mustaba was the son of Ayatab, but he had he was the key bridge between his dad who could not follow all those years at the same time and the IRGC.
The key bridge between Ayat and the RGC was his son Mustava. And one of his top interlocators was always Musin Rail. So this is relationship of deep deep trust. So okay we can ask a question uh rhetorically to all of you our audience is the run prepared to show flexibility on reparations and on the negotiations with the Americans.
The Pakistanis and the Qataris in their conversations with the Iranians are saying or are suggesting show a little just a little more flexibility Persian style very sophisticated as only the Iranians can do it and of course the Iranians understood the message. Is this uh some form of a mechanism to induce Trump into committing some extra mistakes apart from the ones he usually does? No. Uh it's in good faith because once again coming back to this possible six-hour conversation between Pzashkin and Mtaba when Pzashka was trying to impress to the leader.
Okay, let's give one more chance to the negotiations but under our terms. We set the agenda. We set the tone and we set the terms and let's see how the Americans react. Obviously, Moshaba could not say no to something like this even though he doesn't believe in any possibility of negotiating with the Americans.
So uh one of the conclusions that we could reach based on this intel is that they run uh the highest levels of the Iranian government. Now it's not only a matter of just negotiating an agreement or coming back to renegotiate renegotiate now to negotiate theou because the negotiation itself never started and this assuming that the Americans will be willing to start actually to fulfill the commitments to theou that they signed. If we follow the rhetoric coming from War Alago and Washington together, not to mention true social posts, there is less than zero chance in heaven, hell, and purgatory that Trump will ever fulfill any commitment to theou. But hope springs eternal like all of you know.
And obviously the Iranians are perhaps relatively inclined to give it another chance as long as they keep their strategy and that's the most important thing and this is what all of us will have to pay 17 minutesattention from now on how the negotiating strategy of Thran is going to change from now from now on substantially. uh are they going to press specific points of theou? Are they going to stop uh telling Trump uh to behave and just listen and without reacting to all the fiferations? Are they going to uh come up with new facts on the ground and that means on the grounds and on this on on the skies and all across the Persian Gulf, all the way to Iraq, all the way to Jordan, etc.
Uh irrefutable facts of war. Nobody knows for sure at the moment. So one thing that we can uh we are and once again none of that has been officially confirmed by the office of supreme leader Morava Kami. This is based on the privilege source that we have that had has access to the office of the supreme leader and can uh with I would say a high degree of certainty transmit intel from the highest levels of the Iranian government but also knowing that if this intel goes public it's an enormous problem for him as a source and as a member of the the whole system and it may not be in the interest of the Iranian government to have this information out.
So what we are presenting to you is take it as a possible plausible very solid scenario of what may be happening from now on in terms of a solidified Iranian strategy that may be substantially different from what we had so far. This is a diplomatic way of of presenting what we have. The fact that we have this new IRGC command, the fact that we have at least six people at the highest levels in new positions, the fact that the command apparatus behind the negotiators seems to be very very solid. These are all uh this is evidence for all of us that yes, something very substantial is changing at the very top, but we don't still don't know the repercussions.
is too early to tell. So this is not only about uh deterrence. So this is how Iran is going to solidify its new found status of being a top power in West Asia, a top power across Eurasia and a top emerging power all across the global south which is the new status of Iran nowadays. So Mosen Rai uh does he fit uh the this pattern that I'm trying to describe to all of you?
Of course. Because not only he is uh now the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council with a direct line every aspect, not to mention face to face with Mustava. But and this came from leader Mustaba himself. He has a second mandate.
He is the supreme leader's personal representative. So from now on when you see Mosen Razi let's say on X Twitter X for instance saying something this is the voice of Mustava Kame himself. So, so we are on a whole new level in terms of respectability and in terms of authority by Moshen Razai and when he's saying something, this is the official position at the highest levels of the Iranian government. uh Pzeskin uh comes out of this reshuffle uh in a very strong position as well like exercising his presidential authority and at the same time Moraba listening to him and listening to the way he proposes that the negotiation from from now on should be conducted and this is important because Pzeskin's position is not necessarily and I'm putting it diplomatically the position of the streets in Iran which are adverse to any negotiation with the Americans and not necessarily 22 minutesand certainly has nothing to do with the position of some let's say more aggressive uh members at the highest level of the IRGC.
So this new IRGC, what is it? Well, it's a new style IRGC with military institutional authority to do literally everything that they want to do and authorized directly by the supreme leader via IRGC star Men Resi. So uh security command has been reorganized. Yes, the security command has already been reorganized with the appointment of these six very very important figures.
So uh there is an element that I am particularly uh fascinated by is this possible visit of a Pakistani delegation to Thran after um August 14. So, and even after this deadline that's still there, August 16. So, this is something that might happen uh let's say early next week or mid next week depending on what happens during this Galibah visit. And of course, he's going to talk to everybody including Mosen Resai and possibly Khalibah will meet with the Supreme Leader himself for the moment.
uh we already have an architecture that it's solidifying itself. So and there is a division of labor which is quite uh significant. Oman Oman is taking care of the maritime let's say maritime implementation is a very diplomatic way of saying but Oman is suggesting which is something that they spent days discussing with the Iranians this temporary technical agreement on the navigation in the straight of Hormuz the Iranian channel in the north the Omani channel in the south but basically Iran controls everything in the northern channel and possibly 50% of the southern channel via Oman. This is this deal is practically clinched.
It's something that could be signed until the end of this week or by early next week. Qatar as we already knew and this keeps going on is uh well they support diplomacy in the background. This means they support diplomacy by Oman and Pakistan essentially. And of course they will have to supervise uh the money if follow the money if there's any money following two Iranian accounts in the next few days this is due to a great extent to the role of Qatar and Qatari banks very very important and of course there's the role of Pakistan which gets more and more complex day after today because the Pakistanis they have to deal with literally everyone and his neighbor and especially his neighbor the Americans, Iranians, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, literally everybody, you know, every grain of sand in the old and the new silk roads, China, obviously.
So, they have to deal with everything. I don't know how they do it. Nobody knows how they do it but uh you know hats off uh to the hard work that they are putting uh no question about that but Pakistan there there's something quite interesting that merits a more uh uh detailed analysis uh Pakistan's defense minister he said something in the public record which is enormous responsibility basically saying that Washington and Thran are approaching an arrangement no details what kind of arrangement does that mean that the Americans are going back to theou no we there's no evidence supporting that as it stands u and of course the most complicated aspect is even if Pakistan continues to have this medi mediator the messenger role. Now Pakistan is directly involved in a extremely complicated and still quite murky deal.
The I call it the Sunni NATO deal signed in Mecca with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Uh I'm sure all of you have heard all sorts of possible scenarios about what what what kind of monster is this or what kind of figment of somebody's imagination is this? Is this real? Is this fiction?
Is this a PR operation etc. So we have three unrealiable facts all together in the same uh u side of the chessboard. We have a Muslim nucle Islamic nuclear power. We have the eastern arm of NATO, the second largest NATO army in the world, which is basically in Eurasia territory all across Anatolia.
28 minutesAnd we have the theoretical unlimited funds of Saudi Arabia, but maybe they are not so unlimited as many would love to or are betting on. So if you have a NATO style pack between these three, things are getting very very very serious. So it can be anything. The official spin which for the moment has been quite minimalistic.
In fact, it's like they signed something and they prefer to ignore it. So far, nobody nobody's making any effort to explain this to in fact to the Arab world, to the NATO world, to the global south, to everybody in Eurasia, in fact a global audience. Is this a pact to prevent Israel from going completely nuts? Possible.
Is this a pact against Iran? Not really. And if it was, Iran will simply cut off relations with Pakistan like yesterday. Is this uh an American side war operation against the axis of resistance?
Quite possible. But if Pakistan is into it, they have to be very careful what they're getting into it. Turkey, okay, consider that Turkey is always hedging. Considering the neo-toman dreams, considering that the whole at least 90% of the ruling classes in Turkey, they are Atlanticists and they are pro- NATO.
They're not pro- Eurasia. This is something that you only learn when you spend time in Istanbul and Ankara over and over again. Is this a a pact to save uh Saudi Arabia from himself? I would love to be to believe this is quite possible as well.
But to have Erdogan and Asimir telling NBS, you know, stay shut up, don't do anything. And we assume respond. We are the grown-ups here. We assume responsibility for you.
So any possible scenario applies to this Mecca deal which is still very dodgy, very murky and and this is my personal interpretation and I uh I give you the right to disagree completely all of you but the key fact is that we still don't know what this act is about in detail and it's very very very dangerous. the fact that we don't have full details about. So will this interfere in the possible uh revamping of the already destroyed communication channels between the US and Iran? No.
If Pakistan makes it very clear, especially to the Iranians and Islamabad answers all of Thran's questions regarding this pact, which after all is a nuclear linked pact. That's why it's so serious. So this is where we are at the moment. Are we entering a more strategically ambiguous geopolitical phase in terms of the whole chessport?
No question about it because we we we really don't know the repercussions of all these changes when they are interlocked. And what we do know is that the Iranian position is even more solid now than it was 24 or ago. Are they uh in a rush to do any sort of uh agreement? No.
On the contrary, do they know their the timelines constraining the American presidency back and forth? It's the best they know. By the way, one of them is right in the middle of this week. The red line concerning the uh depletion of the American strategic petroleum reserves, it's falling now, this week as we speak.
All the domestic pressures against Trump, all the domestic pressures by the Zionist axis, all the domestic pressures by Trump's donors, the Iranians know everything about all that. So they're not in a hurry. They are watching Trump being consumed in flames by all these accumulated pressures. So in this particular aspect he Trump is under the volcano and obviously he still refuses the only offramp for him which will be to go back to theou.
Are the Iranians going to uh give this go back to theou to Trump as a favor? Of course not. He's going to have to beg for it. And if he begs for it, he's begging to Pakistan.
Once again, there's nowhere else to beg to. He has to back to Islamabad. Please get me back on the table with his bloody Iranians. And especially now that Iran with this rearrangement in Thran is so much more cohesive and solid is going to be much more difficult for the Americans to reach any kind of agreement.
Right? So this is more or less uh I I try to give you a realistic appraisal of some really groundbreaking intel but we cannot affirm with a 100% certainty some 34 minutesof the aspects of uh this intel but we can foresee that from now from now on the conversation is going to change substantially the rules of the game tan is tweaking with the rules of the game from now on. And the Americans uh I'm not sure the Trump administration understands what they are up against from now on. It's not what they were up against until ago.
It's a completely different story. And of course the mediators Pakistan, Oman, Qatar, they continue to play the game and they are solidifying their all their mediating efforts waiting waiting now expecting that the still so so so small window of opportunity to get this whole thing back on track is still there. But that's when we enter, of course, what our Chinese friends call auspicious territory. And life, as we all know, it's never very auspicious.
Life can be a So, okay, Mr. Z, this is my uh summary of what we have at at the moment. Please uh jump in, correct me, destroy me, uh uh you know, throw me against the wall, anything you feel entitled to. All right.
Well, Pepe, you are my dear friend and colleague. You are a founder of this uh great channel that is being recognized globally as the purveyor of truth not varnished by corporate media, not varnished by special interest and I'm deeply deeply privileged to be a part of that and I will never never ever throw you under the bus for anything. In fact, I respect you greatly. Against the wall.
against the wall. [laughter] Never, never, never do will will I do that. But in any case, I will offer my interpretation if you will allow me. Of course.
Yeah. And and my interpretation comes from a different place. Uh the audience needs to know that that I have the honor of speaking with some of the people in the room. We have sped that many times and that is one of the reasons why we have access to this information that as far as we know nobody else has.
So uh this is my interpretation. This is not uh what Pepe may have s said to you or the channel says to you. My interpretation, my interpretation is that uh we reported this on this channel a couple of days ago with Larry that Musta has has it has arisen basically and has taken control. We said that very clearly a couple of days ago and uh and and we see visible signs of that everywhere.
We have visibility through our sources with what goes on in very privileged places in Iran. We cannot really say to you exactly where the visibility comes from, but we can say this to you with great confidence that it comes from very near and dear circles. And we see that happening every every time we report that we reported that Mushtaba is back. Mustaba has come back.
We reported that Mosen Rai is ascendant. Mosen Rai became ascendant and and and occupied a very very significant place. We reported that Pesashkin uh is rising in rank and his and his points of view that align with Arachi are being uh understood appreciated by the supreme leader. We say that we see that happening.
So we see all of these things and the reason we see them is because we have access to this information and we are very honored to have that access and privileged to bring it to you. So now my interpretation is the following. My interpretation is that Trump is uh is uh on his way out. A big bold assessment that I will make.
he is not going to last. Uh in terms of his uh maximalist pressure that he vif voseiferously loudly proclaimed out of the white house that that is on its way out and Iran is ascendant. Another point that I would like to make very clearly uh and perhaps for the first time to a global audience that uh has not been so emphatically mentioned by my dear colleague because he is much more conservative than I am uh is that Pakistan has deliberately adopted a position of strategic ambiguity as far as the nuclear umbrella is concerned uh extending to both Turkey and Saudi Arabia. IA a very very big thing.
This is the first time that this has happened since Pakistan became a nuclear power. Pakistan actually actively went away from extending its nuclear umbrella. But it has now decided by this uh Mecca pact to extend that to both Turkey and Saudi Arabia. And I'm told that it shall soon be extended to certain other countries.
And one of the countries that uh our audience will be happy to know that has been invited for discussions is Iran. Big big deal. If that happens really tectonic shift will be more tectonic even greater tectonic than what we have been talking about because the animosity between Riyad and Thran will begin to gradually dissipate with Pakistan as the glue between them and this will greatly significantly alter how the next 50 years are going to be in Eurasia and of course behind all of that is China. So I see this uh uh playing out.
I in my view uh United States is on its way way out of that region. Uh I believe that a deal will be made in the coming week. A big bold production prediction that I'm happy to go out on the limb and make. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
But u as far as I know, I'm reading the tea leaves correctly. Uh that is where the winds is winds are blowing. Uh Pakistan is expecting a 21 member delegation from Thran probably led by Galibah probably carrying a mandate from Moshtaba and Mosen Razai uh that uh will put a final uh uh you know points together that allows an agreement to take place and uh and that that would be a strategic defeat of the United States, a humiliation of the malignant toddler that the world will be happy to see in the White House. Obviously, this malignant toddler will finally have been put in his box in his in his small, you know, sandbox that he should be confined to.
Uh, and that happens uh at the hands of Iran uh extended through Pakistan. A really really extraordinary event. Extraordinary event. And I'm happy to say that I am witnessing signs of that.
Uh I'm happy to say that I am uh confident that this is a fail plea. Uh not something being negotiated, something already agreed upon and the final touches are being being put in place and maybe as early as next week this will come about. Big big changes will happen soon thereafter. So that is my take.
uh be okay so uh I I'll leave it to all of you our audience we have uh complimentary points of view analytical point of point of view on what's going on now so we leave uh the debate uh to you so write to us uh comments etc and keep uh uh feeding this debate tomorrow we'll be back the three of us uh Mr. Larry and I and it will be an excellent opportunity to go over many of your questions since since yesterday with Larry yesterday with myself uh today and tomorrow we can get maybe a bigger picture of how deep this uh reorganization of the chess of the whole chess board uh is. So this is my wrap-up. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much to our global audience. We are deeply grateful to you for supporting us. Uh we have seen enormous enormous uh commendations coming from all over the globe and we are so deeply grateful for that. Kindly keep uh subscribing to us, keep hit the like button, the algorithms like that.
And if you would like to support what we do, please go to our Substack channel, same name, transition protocol, become a paid member, and this high quality briefing will come to you in your mailbox twice a week. So until tomorrow, thank you very much. Bye-bye. Cheers everybody.
Trump Descends Into Paranoia As Global Oil Markets Worsen Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris Aug 11, 2026
According to new reporting by the Washington Post and New York Times, Trump is going to absurd lengths to protect himself from an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate him.
Meanwhile, the Resistance continues to pile pressure on oil producers and shipping companies in West Asia. With each passing day, the danger of an economic crash is increasing.
In this report, Dimitri Lascaris discusses these developments and more.
Transcript
Is Donald Trump a sniveling coward? Well, based on new reporting from the New York Times and the Washington Post, the answer to that question would seem to be a definitive yes. This is Demetri Lceris coming to you from Montreal, Canada for Reason to Resist on dis August 11th, 2026. Today I'm going to discuss the extraordinary lengths to which the Donald is going to avoid an alleged plot by the Iranian regime to assassinate him.
And we will also update you on latest developments in the Bab al-mand and Hormus Straits and the impact uh that these developments is having on uh the global oil markets. Before we begin, uh please remember to like and share this video if you find it to be informative. And if you're not already a subscriber to Reason to Resist, please do be become one and help us to reach our goal of 200,000 subscribers before the end of this month. So with that, let's get into it and we'll begin with the report from the New York Times.
You can see this article published uh today, actually published yesterday, updated today, uh headline, Trump said to have secretly used military jet to leave Turkey amid threats. And the article goes on to explain uh citing two senior US officials that uh top administration officials engaged in an elaborate deception to spirit President Trump out of Turkey during the NATO summit there last month. Transporting I'm sorry I laugh when I try to imagine this uh in my mind. transporting the Donald in a catering container to a military jet because of a threat against him in Air Force One from Iran.
Of course, whether there was any such threat is another matter altogether. This could have been a figment of their imagination. Or maybe there was something to it. After all, the Iranian uh people and their government have every justification to want to wipe Donald off the face of the earth.
The article goes on and says, "Mr. Trump and other officials had said publicly that he would be leaving Turkey on July 8th aboard one of the older versions of Air Force One rather than a luxury 747-8 donated by Qatar that he had flown in on. So apparently Donald Trump travels with two Air Force ones when he goes abroad, maybe more than two, who knows? Uh, in any case, the article states, according to these two officials, uh, that Trump told reporters at the time that he was making the switch for oldtimes sake.
He comes up with some mighty witty explanations for his bizarre behavior, doesn't he? The article continues, "Mr. " Uh so apparently the luxurious gift from the Qataris uh accompanied the older version of Air Force One from Turkey to Britain. And then the switch was made and uh uh in the final paragraph here it says, "But instead of flying out aboard that older powder blue modified 747, Mr.
" One of the US officials said the president was then taken to a third plane which he flew in secret to Britain. The official with knowledge of the matter said it looks like half the US Air Force was was engaged in trying to get uh the orange lunatic uh from Turkey to uh Britain in one piece. And here is a similar report from uh the Washington Post also published yesterday. Contradicting public statements Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat.
And then the article uh which is based on uh a US official familiar with the operation and another person with knowledge of the president's travel. So there's at least two sources here. Uh it was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members even staff members believed they were on the same plane as the president uh according to material reviewed by the post. So, it's not just they were not just relying on two uh or verbal statements of two officials.
They also have uh apparently reviewed some material. Maybe it's uh photographs, maybe it's videos, maybe it's uh some kind of classified cable. Who knows? In any case, the post goes on says the administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8th on the former Air Force One.
Trump announced on social media that he would use the former Air Force One rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing Boeing, blah blah blah. The security of the Qatar provided aircraft has been called into question and Trump said last month after the trip that he would undergo additional upgrades in Ankara. Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane, an Air Force C32A.
I guess they don't have golden toilets on that one. Or maybe they do, judging from the obscene cost of these uh uh pieces of military hardware. Uh, in any case, they use a catering truck uh to spirit him off of the uh Air Force One onto this military plane. You know, an interesting question here is what is the motive of these people uh who are going to presumably it's the same people who have gone to the two uh papers of record in the United States, the Washington Post, New York Times to reveal this.
Uh certainly it doesn't make Trump look good. uh maybe their goal was to try to make uh Iran seem like an even more dire threat. Uh but uh if that was their objective uh in the process, they have managed to make Donald Trump look like a sniveling coward. And then when you add uh this news to the Washington Post and New York Times uh uh pieces, it only gets worse for the Donald.
It appears there are multiple reports on the media that uh when Donald Trump was playing golf recently, they had an Avenger surfaceto-air missile system protecting him. It was following him around the golf course. Now, I don't know. I think that's the Avenger uh there in the upper right hand corner.
I can assure you, and I don't need to be a worldclass weapons expert to say this, that that sucker isn't going to be able to take down a ballistic missile. Not that Iran has one that is capable of reaching the United States, at least at this stage. Uh but uh you'd need something considerably more powerful and sophisticated than that little puppy uh to take down a ballistic missile. And it may be that that wouldn't even be able to handle a sophisticated drone.
Who knows? But apparently it makes Donald feel more relaxed when he's out on the golf course uh contributing to the destruction of the world. Uh so it's quite interesting and instructive to uh compare this behavior on the part of the president of the world's most powerful country to that of senior Iranian officials during 7 minutesthe time that the child murdering Trump and Netanyahu regimes were mass murdering their top leadership. And I'm referring here, of course, to the fact that back in March, during the hottest phase of this hot war, only days after uh the Americans andor Israelis slaughtered the martyed supreme leader of Iran uh Imam Ali Kamei and his daughter and his 14-month-old granddaughter.
Only days after that uh during a uh pro Palestine protest, I believe this was the Alud's uh march in Thran, they went out into the streets and publicly unveiled themselves, made themselves uh you know readily available uh to the child murdering uh Israeli and uh US regimes. And here is a report at the time, published at the time by the Washington Examiner about this, which is hardly uh a media outlet that is sympathetic to Iran. Let me assure you, multiple high-ranking leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the president, walked about the streets of Tran for a pro Palestinian rally before explosions erupted at the event. Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani blamed the explosion on the United States.
" The origin of the explosion and the casualties of the attack are not yet known, but no high-ranking officials have been reported as harmed. Now, I just want to point out, uh, you see right here, uh, you can see smoke billowing from the top of a building there in the center upper part of this image. Uh, this was I was in Iran, uh, in the second half of March. I arrived in Thran a few days after this attack and visited the site of the attack right what you're seeing there in the screen and uh I was shown uh by uh members of the state media uh the blood of a woman uh who was killed by shrapnel from that criminal attack while she was on the street protesting in support of the uh Palestinian people who are being subjected to a USbacked genocide uh in occupied Palestine of course uh she was murdered On that day, at this very event, there were senior elite leaders of Iran, as uh the Washington Examiner and others reported at the time.
And one of those officials you just heard was Ali Larijani. You can see him here. He was out in the street uh giving uh venting his uh indignation at the criminal behavior of the Trump regime. Again, this is just days after they had murdered the Americans and the Israelis, the Supreme Leader of Iran, his daughter, and his granddaughter.
Now, uh what happened to Mr. Ljani? Well, a few days later, he was assassinated by the child murdering Israelis uh and Americans. Uh this is a report uh from uh March 18th, 2025.
And uh you can see that he was blown to bits. uh by what was purportedly an Israeli air strike on a house where he had taken refuge with his son. So presumably uh the child murderers also killed uh his son. They seemed to specialize in wiping out entire families associated with uh resistance.
So uh this man undoubtedly knew a national security adviser the risks that he was taking uh not simply by going out into the street but simply by serving in that capacity. When you're up against an enemy like the United States, like Israel, uh, with the unscrupulousness, the ruthlessness of that enemy and the destructive capabilities of that enemy, merely serving in a position of a power and influence in a government or an organization that is resisting US and Israeli hijgemony in the region is a 11 minuteslife-threatening undertaking as been as has been demonstrated again and again. And uh this may explain why uh today there are so many people in Iran as uh I think uh we showed uh convincingly when we covered uh the funeral of the martyed supreme leader. Tens of millions of Iranians came out to support uh the slain constitutional leader of the Islamic Republic uh the martyr Imam Ali Khani.
Uh, and they did that not only when it was extremely hot outside, but also when the United States was bombing their country. For the latter half of that 7-day funeral program, the United States had resumed the bombing of Iran. Uh so I can hardly think as I argued at the time of a more convincing demonstration of of one's support for a government uh than coming out in those conditions and mourning uh uh the killing of your leader and also demanding uh revenge. So um it it it it also I think is instructive to look at the approval ratings of these uh mass murderers who rule us in the west.
You know, Trump's approval rating uh at this point is down to about 33%. Uh it's certainly far less than a majority of Americans, and that's with extremely proTrump coverage from a very large and influential media organization like Fox News, and there are others who are supportive of Trump. Uh and then you have you know people like Emanuel M who has an approval rating I think down around 12% the French president Mertz Frederick Mertz the chancellor of Germany the Nazi uh his approval rating is also in the gutter down around Macon levels Starmer resigned the British prime minister even though he had a majority in the British parliament he didn't even last two years in the job uh because he was so deeply unpopular uh so uh whether you agree or disagree with the politics of the Iranian government. I think it's quite clear that these leaders are far more courageous uh than uh the current crop of leaders in the west.
And that may explain why uh apparently a very substantial or at least help to explain why a very substantial proportion of the Adanian population uh supports these individuals. So with that, let's turn then to developments in uh in uh on the battlefield. I reported yesterday that there had been another attack on the massive Jazan uh oil refinery in southwestern Saudi Arabia near the border of Yemen. Uh and uh at the time that I reported that yesterday uh I was not aware that uh the Yemeni uh government ins uh the Ansarala government had in fact uh claimed responsibility for the attack in Jazen.
It was my understanding that no one had yet claimed responsibility, but uh they have since or perhaps just before I did my report, the uh the Ansala government have uh stated that they were in fact responsible for a drone strike on the Jazzan facility over the weekend. And as you can see here uh the oil industry uh uh media are reporting that uh the gigantic Saudi oil company Ramco has delayed the opening of that refinery to August 30th. This is a 400,000 barrel per day refinery. So it's very important uh to the refinement of petroleum products.
I think particularly to uh the the production of diesel and you'll see that uh the according to this article uh what the what they refer to as the Houthi militants the the correct way to describe uh the uh government in Sana is Ansarala. Uh they said on Sunday this past Sunday that they had attacked the refinery which had been shut down on July 27th and it was previously planned to restart on August 15th. So, they've delayed at a time, as I'm going to explain, when there is uh a a severe shortage in the world of refined products and particularly diesel, they've delayed the opening of this by two weeks. And they may well be able to delay it again with another drone strike, which I'm sure I'm sure they're eminently capable of doing.
And uh uh again this just goes to drive home the vulnerability of the uh Iran the Saudi and uh other Gulf uh Arab uh oil infrastructure to attacks not only by Iran but also other resistance for forces including Ansarah in the region. Now, uh, another point I should make about this is, uh, so there's been an official confirmation that Ansarah attacked a Saudi refinery, a major Saudi refinery on Sunday. Well, only a few days earlier, uh, as we discussed in our last two reports, uh, the governments of Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia entered into a military alliance, and they said at the time they entered into it last week that it provided for mutual defense. So if one of the parties was attacked, uh the other parties would regard that as an attack upon them.
Well, Saudi Arabia was attacked. Uh what are the Turkish and Pakistani governments going to do about it? Maybe something, but at this stage, there's no indication they're going to do anything. Rather, they're talking about Egypt joining their uh performative military alliance.
Again, I'm not saying that there is no prospect that they'll take action. I hope they don't. Uh the last thing we need is an expansion of this war uh to include uh Turkey and Pakistan. And uh there is overwhelming opposition in both countries thankfully to their governments becoming involved in this war particularly on the side of the United States and Israel.
And I think at the end of the day that will restrain them. But it does raise a question. What are they actually trying to accomplish with this military alliance if they're not going to do anything in response uh to uh this attack by Ansaralah? Uh my interpretation thus far is that this is uh what I would call deterrence kabuki theater.
They're trying to create the impression that they'll act collectively against any attack on Saudi Arabia uh in order to deter those attacks but at the end of the day uh they are not willing I uh believe and would hope to drag their countries into this criminal war of aggression on Iran. Now uh relatedly there has been yet another uh Saudi ship struck in the Bab aland strait. Uh this is a report from today. Yemeni government affiliated media reported today that three crew members had been killed in a Houthi attack on a ship in the Babal Mande strait.
Uh tragically uh this is the first time that uh crew members have been killed in an attack by Ansarah on a ship in the Babal Mand strait. Uh Al Jum Kura TV reported that a strike by uh the uh Ansarah movement on a ship killed two Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national. While the outlet did not identify the ship that was struck, Adan's ISNA news agency reported that it was a Saudi vessel. The report said the ship was hit by a missile.
Under the current circumstances, it is the height of folly and irresponsibility for the Saudis to be uh directing or causing or uh inducing uh ships affiliated with Saudi Arabia to go through the Babal Mandibra. uh it has been demonstrated uh conclusively that these ships are highly vulnerable. Ansadah has made very clear their intentions and they've also given an out to the Saudi autocracy uh a way to get out of this uh war in the Babal Mandab strait and that is to lift the criminal and inhumane blockade on Yemen which has been in place for over a decade and caused at this stage probably hundreds of thousands of innocent Yemenes to die. All of this could be avoided if the Saudis uh lifted the criminal blockade, but they refused to do that and in fact continue to send vessels or at least some in the Babal Mandabub Strait when there are lethal risks to uh the passengers uh the crew members of those vessels.
Now, as I mentioned a few moments ago, there is a serious uh supply problem uh in the diesel fuel markets. com uh by the ever uh insightful Edina Slav. Uh I've cited her work before. Uh the title global diesel crunch worsens ahead of peak winter demand.
And she writes that as peace in the Persian Gulf remains elusive and Ukrainian drones keep raining on Russian refineries. Yes, the Ukrainians are doing their best to contribute by the way to this diesel fuel crisis. Uh she says a global fuel crisis is looming larger by the day as demand is set to increase in the coming months especially for diesel. Shortages are already reality in some parts of the world.
Uh in Southeast Asia, Reuters reported last week palm oil farmers are seeing diesel supply shortages and spiking prices. 9 million barrels. Meanwhile, Russia, the world's number two diesel exporter, has banned exports in order to deal with the local supply squeeze caused by Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries. So, yes, US refiners are making a killing.
But she goes on to say the situation is quite far from perfect for large fuel importers such as the European Union because is now because it is now facing new competitors such as Brazil and Turkey, which previously took in a lot of Russian diesel fuel. Still with that gone, they have to compete with US barrels as supply from the other big refining hub in the Middle East remains severely disrupted. And she goes on says Europe, she's quoting quoting here Eugene Lindell, head of refined products 21 minutesat consultancy FGE, Nexent ECA, saying to Bloomberg, quote, Europe has a tremendous diesel problem. It will get ugly in the sense that you will probably see extremely high flat prices.
These high prices will spread to everything from consumer goods to services and according to Lindell translate into pressure on political circles. Uh then uh she quotes Rabbo Bank senior energy strate strategist Joe Delora said we're in a diesel supply crunch right now because none of the Persian Gulf refineries can get product out. Uh crude oil is just the input but diesel is the everything the industrial economy runs on. He said everything in agriculture, everything in construction, everything in mining.
Also, everything on the supply and distribution side runs on diesel. Big oil majors have also been sounding the alarm on a supply squeeze in fuels that a lot more is a lot more serious than the squeeze in crude oil. But it has led to nothing but an attack on the industry by President Trump, who told Exxon and Chevron they were making too much money and had to pass some of it on to consumers. Well, they are making too much money.
Uh but uh the fact of the matter is uh this is going to get worse uh in any event. Uh and she goes on to write that those record diesel exports are costing the United States. 5 million barrels daily for five weeks in a row before rising to the record high according to Bloomberg. Because refineries cannot produce more diesel at the moment, fuel sellers have been dipping into inventories.
As a result, these are now at the lowest since 1996, Bloomberg reported. with peak demand season right around the corner and refinery maintenance season even closer. Uh so look out folks uh this extremely important fuel uh is going to be in increasingly short supply as demand increases uh in the next several months. Now, in these uh rather desperate circumstances, there's some interesting news from the Wall Street Journal about uh the attitude of the Gulf uh refineries, the Gulf oil producers to the demands of Iran uh that it uh maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that it be free to charge fees for passage through the straight of Hormuz.
The Wall Street Journal uh just reported that Gulf states are accepting a new normal in Hormuz. Iran is in control. And according to the Journal, Persian Gulf energy producers are concluding that Iran's control over the Straight of Hormuz will become permanent, disrupting their oil and gas exports and global energy supplies indefinitely. The problem is they worry the alternative, going back to war, would be worse.
The conundrum highlights how the war has unleashed a more antagonistic Iran and left a region that is vital to the world's energy security with no good option for countering it. You know things are bad when the Wall Street Journal uh is willing to be this grim in its assessment of the situation. The journal continues, "Iran's rivals in the Gulf don't like the deal now under consideration to crack crack open the vital waterway that formalizes Iranian oversight of inbound ships, but Gulf officials said the region sees the agreement as preferable to further military action between the US and Dan, which would put Arab states energy infrastructure at risk. So, um the interesting question is going to be this.
Even if the uh the Gulf uh autotocracies agree uh to Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz and even if uh they accept the payment of a fee which is from the Iranian perspective satisfactory, is Iran in that event going to reopen the strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels? I think that's an open question because okay on the one hand if it uh reopens uh the street of Horamoose fully while having the uh authority to impose fees Iran will be able to reap tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue much needed revenue uh and uh which in part would undoubtedly be used to strengthen its military even further but I'm sure much of it would also be used to improve the lives of Iranians who have and suffering under this maximum pressure uh sanctions regime inflicted by the west criminally uh not to mention the hot war. Uh so that would be the advantage of opening up the straight of Hormuz. But on the other hand, if they opened up the straight of Hormuz and alleviated pressure on the American economy, what would stop the Americans after the price of oil drops and these supply problems have been rectified uh in the oil products markets?
What would stop the American government from coming back and attacking Iran again? Isn't it going to be necessary in order to deter the United States from doing this to inflict uh severe pain on the US economy? Wouldn't it make more sense for the Iranians to say even though uh the oil shippers have agreed to pay this fee, we're still not going to up open up the straight of Horamuz until the United States complies with all the terms of the memorandum of understanding like unfreezing all of our stolen assets, uh lifting all of the sanctions, forcing the Israelis out of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and uh forcing the Saudis to lift the blockade on Yemen. It may well be that even if you have in place a deal with all of the major players in the Persian Gulf for the Iranians to take fees, that the Iranians are still going to insist on severely restricting traffic through the straight of Hormuz to uh deter further attacks by the United States and to secure other concessions from the criminal Trump regime.
Uh so again all of this points to a uh prolonged closure of both the straight of Hormuz and the Baba Almandab Strait with uh you know severe economic consequences mounting by the day. Now it's in this desperate environment that uh the Pakistani defense minister uh you know a a minister of a government that is truly uh sickopantically committed to the Trump regime came out today with an entirely bogus claim that uh the United States and Iran were on the verge of some sort of an arrangement. This is an article in the Jerusalem Post uh from today. It has been uh echoed this report in other media outlets.
Uh and uh what that arrangement might look like uh only uh the defense minister knows because it is a figment of his imagination. There's absolutely no evidence that the Iranians and the Americans are even having meaningful ne negotiations let alone uh you know uh being on the verge of some sort of an arrangement. Uh so the uh the Iranian officials have been absolutely crystal clear that there is no direct negotiation going on. At most they pass some messages through the mediator, but they put a set of demands on the table uh which are are completely unacceptable to the Trump regime even though in my view they're completely reasonable.
Like the US has to pay reparations, the US has to return stolen assets, the US has to uh lift all the sanctions, the US has to get the child murdering Israelis out of Lebanon and Gaza and on and on. So the US is nowhere near the point of accepting those concessions. It may one day have to do so. I believe it will.
Uh but it it's not there yet. Uh and so this is obviously um a feeble attempt to try to suppress the price of oil. I can only imagine that that was the intention of the defense minister of Pakistan and uh he may have been put up to this by uh the United States government. Uh but what's really interesting is how miserably uh this attempt to suppress the price of oil has failed.
com. I uh took a screenshot of the uh price of oil about ago. So that would have been uh at around noon Eastern time today, August 11th. And you'll see that not only did the price of oil not go down uh within the hours after this report, it's actually gone up.
35%. Uh that's Brent crude. And Brent crude is now trading at almost $89. Uh as I said uh several days ago, you can expect the price of oil to march up inexurably.
as the market uh comes to the sobering realization that Donald Trump has been lying all along about the prospects for peace, he doesn't want peace. And uh in that regard and as a footnote, I have to say this. I hear uh in the alternative media, people who are uh not at all supporters of this criminal war of aggression in Iran sometimes say uh that the Iranian leadership no longer wants peace. Uh I think that that is even though it may be uh you know uh uh stated with good intentions I think that that is a misconception of the situation in Iran.
I've been to Iran as I've said many times to my audience three times in the past uh 14 months twice during uh bombardments of the country. Uh also there during uh the uh 7-day funeral program for the martyed supreme leader. I have met hundreds of Iranians uh from uh across the political spectrum. I have met government officials.
I've met many members of the state media. Just ordinary Iranians, people who are secular, people who are uh religiously conservative. I have yet to meet a single person, a single person who wants war with the United States or anybody else. Uh they don't want war.
I can assure you of that. not the Iranian leadership, not the uh Iranian people, not the Iranian media. Uh what they want is a permanent end to the war. And they've come to the realization that the only way to achieve a permanent end to the war is to inflict a price upon the United States that is so severe that it is deterred from attacking Iran in the future.
So, their goal is a permanent long-term peace. It isn't war. uh but they're willing to pro continue to wage war in opposition to the United States and Israel in order to achieve that goal of a long-term sustainable peace. That is the proper way uh to characterize it.
And since I'm on the subject of some misconceptions, another misconception I think that we hear a lot about in the media uh is that Donald Trump is trapped. No, my friends, he's not trapped. He has a way out of this entire mess, an honorable way. uh and that is to go to the American people and to say I screwed up.
This was the wrong thing to do. And if he wants to blame the Israelis for it, he can do that. He can say, you know, I trusted uh the Israeli intelligence and the Netanyahu government when they told me that the regime would be toppled. I made a mistake.
This is going badly. Uh I am going to bring an end to this now. the Iranians, if they want to charge a reasonable fee for passage of ships through the straight of Hormuz, they can and should do so. Uh they can, you know, rebuild their country that way.
Uh it's up to, you know, the shippers in the region whether or not they're willing to pay that. Uh but I'm going to uh withdraw our forces from the region, protect our forces, and we're going to redirect all of that money that we have been committing to waging wars in West Asia to improving the lives of American citizens. I've learned from this experience. Uh even at my advanced age, I'm capable of learning from my mistakes.
" He could say something like that, and if he followed through with it, I actually believe that he uh would probably become wildly popular. Not everybody would forgive him. Uh there's some things that Donald Trump has done and probably will continue to do for which a great many Americans will never forgive him. But he would win over a lot of hearts and minds if he actually just had the humility to admit that he up royally.
Not just from a practical perspective, but from a moral and ethical and legal perspective and uh that he's learned from the uh tragic mistakes of his uh second administration. Uh so uh that is his way out and it's an honorable way out and it's a way out that would make the lives of everybody better all around the world. He chooses, Donald Trump chooses not to take that out. So, let's be very clear.
He isn't trapped. He is uh free to do the right thing but has elected to continue to pursue this satanic objective of imposing US dominance on the region no 34 minutesmatter what the cost including uh the physical extermination of children uh who happen to be uh happen to have the misfortune of being members of a population whose resources are coveted by western elites. Uh so please uh my friends let's stop saying uh that Donald Trump is trapped. Now a couple of final news items I wanted to share with you.
Uh this one I thought was brought a smile to my face. US rights groups are suing the Trump regime over sanctions on the international criminal court. This is a report published today by a France press. rights groups sue US President Donald Trump over his sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court, saying the measures block victims of war crimes from pursuing justice.
The Trump uh administration, which rejects the ICC's authority, has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on several judges and prosecutors, just making their lives extremely difficult because they're assuming the responsibility of uh passing judgment on the satanic war criminal Netanyahu and the former Israeli defense minister Yuv Galat. This is so disgraceful. In a New York court filing, four groups, including Human Rights Watch, say the sanctions should be struck down as they violate laws, including First Amendment free speech protections. Uh indeed, uh that is what this is all about.
It is about stifling the speech uh of uh the critics of Israel, not just about uh you know uh uh maintaining the impunity of uh the world's worst war criminals. " Here, here, couldn't agree more. Uh, you know, I practiced law in the United States for a long time. Uh in my judgment, although I haven't had the opportunity yet to read the complaint, uh this uh lawsuit stands a reasonably good prospect of success, uh I think much will turn on whether uh they uh the uh plaintiffs in this proceeding uh get a judge who is truly committed to the rule of law or is one of the uh less uh shall we say consionable uh appointments of the Trump regime.
Uh time will tell, but I feel good about this lawsuit. And finally, I wanted to share with you this doozy from Trump's uh truth social account published yesterday. I see that representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran are asking for compensation for the damage done to them during the last five month military conflict started because they will not have a nuclear weapon even though it was never mentioned in any of our negotiations or meetings. That's a flagrant lie.
They were saying this publicly for the last several months that they wanted uh reparations publicly. But it is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs in many conflicts. Blah blah blah. Well, Donald Trump uh and his regime have just distinguished themselves as the first perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity to have demanded compensation from their victims.
Yet another inglorious distinction for the orange lunatic in the White House. That's my report today, my friends. We'll be back to you tomorrow when uh we expect to be interviewing uh the inestimable uh wonderful VJ Prashad and we're going to be talking uh with VJ about what has happened to the government of Venezuela. For now, I'm signing off from Montreal on August 11th, 2026.
