Anti-ICE protester blinded by federal agent during demonstration in Santa Ana, family says by Ruben Vives and Itzel Luna Los Angeles Times Jan. 13, 2026 Updated 4:01 PM PT https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... amily-says
[x] From left, Christina Castillo, Skye Jones and Rue El Amar, members of the activist group Dare to Struggle, take turns speaking during a press conference in Santa Ana about a young protester who was left blind in one eye after a Department of Homeland Security agent fired a less-lethal round at demonstrators protesting the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
A young protester narrowly avoided being killed but was left permanently blind after a Department of Homeland Security agent fired a nonlethal round at close range during a Santa Ana protest last week, according to family of the victim.
Jeri Rees said her 21-year-old nephew, Kaden Rummler, underwent six hours of surgery and that doctors found shards of plastic, glass and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, including a metal piece lodged 7 millimeters from a carotid artery.
“That could have cost him his life,” Rees said.
“But now, for the next six weeks, he can’t sneeze or cough because it could do a lot of damage.”
She said doctors did not want to remove the shrapnel near the artery out of fear that it could kill him. She said her nephew also suffered a fractured skull around his eyes and nose and that doctors said he had permanently lost the vision in his left eye. She said the Homeland Security agent was a few feet from her nephew when he fired the weapon.
Several videos of Friday’s incident were shared on social media. One video shows demonstrators, who were protesting the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good, throwing orange safety cones at the agents, who were standing guard outside the Santa Ana federal building.
The video cuts to three agents approaching the group before one agent tries to take a young person into custody, prompting at least three demonstrators to try to intervene. The person taken into custody was identified by friends as Skye Jones.
In the video, at least one agent appears to fire nonlethal rounds at the crowd, hitting one woman in the leg before aiming and striking Rummler’s face.
The video shows Rummler dropping to the ground after being shot, holding his face as the crowd retreats. The same agent then drags him by the hood of their jacket; they appear to be choking, grasping at the jacket binding their neck as blood pours from their left eye.
Another video shows Rummler inside the building, lying on the ground bleeding while agents fire what appear to be pepper balls at the back of the head and neck of a man trying to record the incident with his cellphone.
Rees said her nephew told her that the agents pressed his face against the pool of blood and did not immediately call paramedics.
“The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” she said, recalling what her nephew told her.
Friday’s violent clash occurred just two days after a federal immigration agent fatally shot Good, a Minnesota mother of three. The slaying sparked public outcry, nationwide protests and scrutiny of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said the agent was acting in self-defense.
Friday’s incident is the latest in a number of confrontations around the country in which agents have used deadly or what experts say is excessive force.
“This constitutes as deadly force as far as the law is concerned,” said Ed Obayashi of the video. The Modoc County sheriff’s deputy and legal advisor to police agencies, who has testified in similar cases, said that “all the training manuals and [legal] cases say you don’t aim at the face because these projectiles can cause serious injury [or] death.”
Obayashi said, based on law enforcement use-of-force standards, an officer can deploy deadly force if they feel their life is in imminent danger, or that they are in danger of great bodily harm.
“I just don’t see that here,” he said.
In downtown Santa Ana, hundreds had gathered that Friday night to protest the killing of Good and the Trump administration’s mass deportations. Some were there to speak out against police brutality as well. Protesters marched around the downtown area, chanting “ICE out of O.C.” and holding signs that read “No more raids, keep families together.”
An earlier protest started at 3 p.m. and was organized by the social justice organization Dare to Struggle, said member Connor Atwood. Some members reconvened just before 6:30 p.m. for a demonstration outside the federal building put together by another organization, he said.
Atwood, who was present during the incident, said the scene turned chaotic as the protest began to wind down and the crowd dwindled. A group of protesters are seen in a video standing near a staircase away from the building’s entrance.
Homeland Security agents stepped out of the building various times throughout the night, firing nonlethal rounds toward protesters, Atwood said.
Protesters had not attempted to get closer or breach the entrance of the building, Atwood said.
A portion of the crowd eventually dispersed, but leaders of Dare to Struggle encouraged some protesters to stand their ground to “say we’re not going to be intimidated away from expressing what we feel right now and delivering our message,” Atwood said.
Some protesters then began burning an American flag. At some point after 8:30 p.m., Jones, a leader of Dare to Struggle’s Orange County chapter, was arrested, Atwood said. The other protester was then hit in the eye.
“It wasn’t just completely out of nowhere, but it was very sudden,” Atwood said, adding that agents “had come out of the building several times before that, but they had not tried to arrest anyone or grab anyone.”
In an email response to The Times, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, said a “mob of 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside of the federal building.”
“Two officers were injured. Two violent rioters were arrested and were charged with assault on federal officers and disorderly conduct,” she wrote. “This was a highly coordinated campaign of violence where rioters wielded shields.”
McLaughlin did not respond to questions about protocols agents must follow when using less-lethal devices.
A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department said the only violence they were aware of that night were demonstrators tossing orange cones at the agents.
Atwood said he didn’t witness bottles or rocks being thrown toward agents. Some firecrackers were set off near the sidewalk but away from the building entrance, he said.
Both Homeland Security agents and Santa Ana police were seen standing outside the federal building just after 10:30 p.m., according to video footage reviewed by The Times. Fire paramedics can be seen taking Rees’ nephew in a gurney.
Atwood said Jones had an initial hearing Monday. Rees said Jones had been released and was at the hospital with her nephew as of Monday night.
For the record:
10:34 a.m. Jan. 13, 2026A previous version of this article said Tuesday’s news conference would be at Santa Ana City Hall. It was at the city jail.
On Tuesday, the social justice group held a news conference outside Santa Ana City Jail where members read a statement from Rummler, who remained hospitalized. The group is also raising money through GoFundMe to help with Rummler’s medical expenses.
There are protests that are happening in Iran. There are two protests that are happening. There are people that are protesting against the regime. That is true. But there are also people protesting against Israel and the United States wanting to come in and intervene in their country. That's the part that corporate media is leaving out. Donald Trump is taking it all the way there. You guys need to see this. Like I told you, they really want to go all in. Um, Iranian patriots, keep protesting. Take over your institutions. Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have canled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. Help is on its way. Mega President Donald J. Trump. Does everybody see what he said there? I mean, I don't know if someone took Donald Trump's phone away from him or what, but that's not MAGA. That's not make America great again. He put make Iran great again or to some I would say make Israel great again. Right. But this is a direct diversion away from his base. Why is Donald Trump, this guy who said he was America first, why is he saying make Iran great again and not make America great again? So you guys see it's just all out in the open. It's all out in the open. It's all there. So they're really inching. They really want to go uh in here. And Iran has officially announced that they're prepared for war. Guys, buckle your seat belts. Listen to this. I don't know if they're leaders or just they they rule through violence, but we're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it and uh we're looking at some very strong options. There is no war, but we are fully prepared for war. You asked whether preemptive operations are on our agenda. They are not. We do not seek war, but we are fully prepared for it. More prepared even than before the previous war. So once again, we're seeing the other country say that they don't want war. Just like with Venezuela, they don't want war, but they're prepared for it if it comes to that. Right now, Donald Trump is going to tell you that Iran reached out to him. Listen to what he says. Called to negotiate yesterday. Yesterday, the leaders of Iran called they want to negotiate. I think they're tired of being beat up by the United States, but we may have to act because of what's happening before the meeting. We are also ready for negotiations, but negotiations that are fair, honorable, negotiations that are serious and genuine, not ones where orders are given or things are dictated, which is the habit of some countries. So ladies and gentlemen, he said Iran called and they wanted to negotiate, but he also said after that, we may have to go in and attack before that's even possible. Isn't this the same thing he just did with Venezuela to Maduro, Maduro said that he was open to those talks, that sitting down with the United States, they went in and they they kidnapped him. They're like, "No, no, no talks. We're just going to go in and take you anyway." So, everyone timestamp this moment. Take a screenshot if you mean you need to just write down the time of this so you can pass it on to your friends of Iran's president making it very clear that they did not want war. That's important because that's not where you're going to hear from corporate media. Corporate media is going to tell you that they did want war, that they're a threat to the United States. Iran issues warning. Trump weighs military strike. Here's another one here. It's getting serious, you guys. When they say that they're fully prepared, that means they have everything that they need to go. Now, the proper thing to do, as I said before, is just to leave them alone. I don't feel like this is, you know, our issue. But Donald Trump made the statement already. Forget the negotiations that he wants to go in anyway. They really want to amp this up. Let's go ahead and bring in U. Max Blumenthal. He is here now. Max, give me a thumbs up if you're ready and we'll um bring Max in for this one. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Max Blumenthal from the Grey Zone is back. What's going on, Max? Hey, great to see you. How's it going? It's going great. Um, thank you for making the time. I I know you're you're incredibly uh busy. We have to talk about what's happening with uh Iran. Um people are starting to get scared and and and I think it's, you know, Donald Trump is making this statement and he's saying that yeah, Iran called and they said they want to negotiate, but he said we may have to go in there before that. So, it's very clear they just want to go in and attack Iran. I I want to get your take on this. Professor Morandi said that there are infiltrators uh at some of these protests that are causing some of the violence and I know I saw other videos that is not being shared on corporate media about some people that are protesting uh for the regime that is currently there. I want to get your take on this. Yeah, we're witnessing a total cover up in our media all across Western media. It's almost impossible to understand what's actually happening in Iran. Part of that was because of an internet blackout that I'll talk about in a second. But the real reason is that our media will not explain what is happening in the streets of Iran, which is not protests. There have been protests. Right now, what Iran has is facing is primarily violent riots and ISIS style attacks in which hundreds of police and security forces and civilians have been killed. And the aim is to destabilize the country in order to create momentum to push Donald Trump, the notoriously gullible, seemingly demented president, into authorizing a massive bombing campaign. And it's Israel that's doing the pushing. Israel's Channel 14 has announced that the Mossad is sending weapons directly into the so-called protest ranks. And we have seen videos of armed men in cities from Kman Sha to Isvahan in the streets of Iran firing on police officers killing people. Molotov cocktails burning down municipal buildings, municipal workers being killed, unarmed guards being beaten to death by mobs of masked men, ambulances being toppled, buses being attacked and burned, mosques being burned, entire city centers being destroyed, literally destroyed, burned to a crisp by mobs of rioters. And people are outraged in Iran, as anybody in any society would be, to see this level of foreign backed rioting and violence. And they're coming out in unprecedented numbers. The rally in Thran two days ago featured something like 1.2 million people. That's a large portion of Thrron's population. And having been there in Tehran, it's very hard to get around. Transportation's difficult. People went to extensive measures to not just show their support for the Islamic Republic, but to show their rejection of this violence, which is being encouraged and cheered on from Brussels to Washington to Tel Aviv. And so this is not the story you're getting from Western media. You're getting a story about a freedom movement. People just want freedom in Iran. But freedom, you can't have freedom if you have no security. And children are being killed in ISIS style attacks. An eight-year-old girl was killed in Isvahan. I actually know her neighbor. We had a picnic with her family by the Xander River. My family did in Isvahan in May and then a month later they were attacked by Israel. The entire country and then by the US for 12 days. And what we're witnessing now is a continuation of the 12-day war. It is not a freedom movement. So, do not be deceived. And the only thing this this can achieve is US and Israeli air strikes on Iran, which could also lead to dead American service members in the many bases that have been surrounding Iran for decades. Yeah. member of the Knesset announced on channel 14 that after uh the regime is overthrown in Iran that they are that they Israel are going to come in and kill everybody in Iran. I mean it it's bl it's out in the open. Well, they're they were saying that they were going to continue to attack Iran as they're doing in Syria because they there there there's no solution that Israel would consider acceptable that would leave any pockets of resistance to total Israeli domination of the region. So even if they somehow topple the so-called regime which comprises an Islamic republic that has clear legitimacy from the protest that you've seen across the country in it in support of it, they're going to continue bombing and that means they're going to continue killing Iranians. And yet you see Iranian monarchists in the streets of Los Angeles waving Israeli flags. They want that country to come save them, but they're never going to go back there. These protests are being encouraged by Resa Palvi, who is the self-proclaimed crown prince. I call him the clown prince of Iran whose father was the king of the Iranian monarchy that was toppled in 1979 in a popular revolution and ran an extremely repressive government before 1979. Russa Palvi said in an interview with Patrick Bet David, a fellow Iranian monarchist that uh he doesn't ever ever plan to go back to Iran, that he's been in the US for over 40 years, that his life is here and all his friends are here. He lives in luxury in PTOAC, Maryland, in a mansion, a giant McMansion. And yet he is instructing Iranians to go and kill government workers, to kill state media workers, to burn down state media stations. Basically, it would be like telling Brits to go burn down the BBC. And he's sending people to their deaths. and he was asked by Norah O'Donnell on CBS about whether he has is he's being irresponsible by sending people out to riot across Iran from the comfort of his home. And he he didn't back down. And this is someone who's backed by Israel, who's visited with Benjamin Netanyahu, who kissed the wall and occupied Jerusalem. And this is this is the face of the Iranian opposition. He doesn't intend to bring freedom back to Iran. And I think the the you know the people in Langley who are in the offices of the research wing of the CIA who are like ordering pizza and getting all frantic. They know what I'm saying is true. They know that the opposition is completely fragmented. That the institutions of the Islamic Republic are united. that they have millions of people in the street who support them and that what's taking place aren't these you know uh woman life freedom protests where people are just protesting for freedom they are essentially riots and any protests that did take place earlier this month which I'll talk about in a second have basically dissipated they know that they have even it's been even expressed publicly by strat for which is the s sort of shadow CIA. It's a private institution that contracts with US intelligence, advises opposition movements around the world. And they have assessed in a January 7th article while the protests were still and the riots were still gaining momentum that everything I just said was true. that the opposition's fragmented, it's too fractious to succeed, that the Islamic Republic is united, that au any US and Israeli attack on Iran would actually unite Iranians further behind the Islamic Republic and end any protests that are taking place and that the only impact of protests could possibly be US and Israeli air strikes. That's the ultimate essential purpose of these so-called protests. They that assessment was very sober, very clear-headed, and it reflects the same thinking that I have about what about the situation. But I don't know if Donald Trump will have the benefit of such clear thinking with the people that surround him right now because at 400 p.m. today, JD Vance held a briefing on Iran. And while Vance has been more open to al um independent and critical views on Iran than some of his colleagues in the administration, Donald Trump has generally been isolated by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, who as a senior Trump official told me is basically functioning like the Mossad's stenographer, feeding Trump phony assessments about, you know, the threat of Iran And Susie Wilds, Donald Trump's chief of staff, a lot of people don't know this. She decides who's in all these meetings and she controls the flow of paper that Trump sees and Trump, you know, he's not exactly a big reader. She worked for Benjamin Netanyahu. She literally worked on Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020 campaign for prime minister. So, I don't know if Donald Trump will understand the reality on the ground. And that's why you see so much disinformation on Elon Musk's Twitter. It's just crazy. And it he juices up all these fake tweets. And right now there are all these fake tweets right now tweeting out protest footage from Thrron from five nights ago when protests were at their peak. And there were like two or three thousand people in the streets of Tehran chanting against, you know, the Islamic Republic. And they're saying this is tonight because they don't have anything left. And CB, it's CBS that is reporting according to sources that 20,000 are dead, which is it's 20,000 now. It was 10,000 a couple hours ago. Yeah, it keeps going up. Uh, you know, the real count is probably at least 10 times less that. And it's not exactly all on one side. But what what what is CBS? CBS is ZBS. It's basically owned by the Israelis through Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire, billionaire CEO of Oracle, who uh is the largest donor to Friends of the IDF. And he installed Barry Weiss, lifelong Israeli first activist, for this for this precise reason to put forward the Kuwaiti incubator WMD lie to trigger a US attack on Iran. And now Trump is saying he may attack Iran because to punish them for gunning down protesters without, you know, any context here, which is not an America first thing to do. You know, you're going to go in and bomb a country because of something that happened internally there. That's not how America first was marketed to the MAGA base. And it's not just it's not Venezuela. Iran has loads and loads of short range ballistic missiles which can easily reach an array of US military bases that surround it and could kill US service members and certainly destroy the bases and overwhelm their anti-aircraft their anti-missile systems. Uh and it will all be because Trump decided to punish Iran for cracking down on protests. And really the real reason is because Donald Trump is controlled by the Zionist movement. That's why. So we're we're Donald Trump is playing with fire here. Yeah. It's really dangerous. Um and to show people this uh what Max is talking about to piggyback off of this. This was published in the Jerusalem Post. MSAD spurs Iran protest as agents with demonstrators in Farsy message. So they're they're openly admitting that they have agents there among like the the protesters. And I I think what's uh frustrating for me, Max, is that I I am seeing videos and people who are Iranian-American who are supporting this. They said they want the US to overthrow the regime. And I'm just like, didn't you see what just happened in Syria? Like what is wrong with people? Why do they think this is going to be a positive thing? Well, many Syrian Americans wanted that just like many Venezuelan Americans wanted Maduro to be kidnapped and Venezuela to be bombed because our country is infested with weaponized immigrants who uh weren't welcome in their own countries because they were, let's say, a liability. and they're a liability to our country because they simply see our country as an aircraft carrier for them to settle scores back home. I I don't know what they're bringing to the table here, but my family came in as immigrants. Most of my family came in over a hundred years ago and they didn't run around uh pushing uh American policy in support of old world concerns.
But you know the the monarchist lobby in the United States works hand-in-glove with the Zionist lobby, and so too does the Miami mafia in South Florida. And their interests align with the neoconservative project that is represented through the figure of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is a Cuban-American who wants to wipe out any resistance in Latin America for total US domination and control over the resources and people of the region. And he's a pet project of Paul Singer who is a top donor to Donald Trump, and funds every neoconservative likudnik think tank in Washington and every likudnik journal in this country virtually, and is the owner through his Elliot Capital management of Venezuela's largest foreign asset, which was stolen from Venezuela and then auctioned off in a fire sale because the US recognized a phony president, Juan Guyaido.
So these elements are profiting from regime change. They're here to manipulate our political system as a kind of fifth column to get Americans to fight their wars. And that's pretty much their main concern. So the Iranian monarchists in LA who are waving Israeli flags, yeah, they're happy to see is Israel kill Iranians. They celebrated the 12-day war when Israel killed people regardless of their political views. And Israel wasn't just killing people through the air. It wasn't just killing people from standoff strikes over the Caspian Sea, from F-15 and uh F-35 jets. It was killing people internally through Mossad agents that it recruited. And they were proud of doing this. Israel boasted that it had infiltrated Iranian society by paying and recruiting Iranians, paying them crypto and so on to carry out attacks inside Iran.
And speaking to Iranians that I knew, their biggest fear was of those internal cells, essentially Israeli recruited death squads inside their own country. Imagine being in a city in the United States, and a more powerful foreign country in your region had recruited and armed criminal elements to simply wreak havoc in your neighborhood. What kind of response would you demand from your government? What kind of response would you demand from the police? I think it would go beyond any partisan issue, or any partisan concern with the police, and people would demand security if their neighborhoods were being burned, car bombs were going off, people were being slaughtered and government and municipal workers were being killed along with scientists and academics, people would demand a response to put an end to that. That's what's happening in Iran right now.
And the purpose of what Israel and the US are doing with this violence inside Iran is to try to overwhelm the ability of the state to provide security so that it will increase the antipathy of the population for the Islamic Republic. They want them to blame their government for failing to provide them with security. And so the government is doing so. It is cracking down on these riots. It's cracking down on these ISIS style attacks which the opposition, the exiled opposition is proud of, including burning mosques, burning places of worship and killing civilians.
And now you have the EU and Trump and the human rights industrial complex, Amnesty International, pointing the finger at Tehran, saying, "You're gunning down peaceful protesters. How dare you do this?" So, they're kind of like between a rock and a hard place. Do they provide security to their population, or do they just allow this all to take place and allow complete rampages and takeovers of their cities by ISIS style elements? If they do the former, and provide security, they're going to get sanctioned, and they're risking attack. But you can't deny security to your population. you just can't do it, right?
And just to show people one of the things that Max was talking about about, these numbers that keep changing, this tweet was deleted after it was called out by community notes. Newswire said that over 10,000 were dead in Iran from the protest, and they got a community note that said it was 500, not 10,000. And then they immediately ended up deleting it, but that was after it got over 1.6 million views. For those who don't have an X account, I know some of you guys are not on X, which is formerly Twitter, this is what's been going on.
There's been a number of these accounts that get this boost from Elon Musk, because they're sharing the propaganda that he wants. But then it reaches a lot of people, and by the time they correct it, if they do correct it, it's too late. Professor Mirandi, same thing here. He shared the footage behind this dishonest warmonger from massive pro-Islamic Republic demonstrations. This was on the BBC news.
And Max, I think you retweeted this as well. I think this guy is a comedian.
Yeah, he's a pro-regime change, pro-war exiled comedian in the UK. But behind him, you see the rolling footage of the progovernent, pro-Islamic Republic protests that were unprecedented in history, and you can see it right there. And they're tricking the viewer of BBC, which is a traditional information weapon against Iran, into believing that those protests were people coming out to protest against the government in favor of regime change. They're duping the viewer. That's so dishonest. And if you actually look at the protests in support of regime change, they are much smaller. And most of what you see, which the Western media will not show, is riots, with masked men beating to death unarmed security guards, and filming it themselves. So, they can't have that.
So the BBC, which BBC World Service works hand-in-glove with the MI6, they're just deceiving the viewers right there, they're manufacturing consent for a regime change war right before our eyes. We're not stupid. We are not stupid.
Yeah. Corporate media, they're not showing the other side of the protest. They're not showing the people that are protesting against US intervention. They're only showing you a totally different crowd, and they're telling you it's something else, but they're only showing you the the other protest, right?
I don't know if you saw this earlier, Max, but, another video that I saw, it showed that Iran was meeting with ambassadors from the UK and from France, and they were showing them the videos of the masked men. We can't show it here, but the masked men that were killing people. To show them who was really doing this.
Just take a look at my Twitter account from the last few days on all my suppressed tweets that have been suppressed. You'll see a lot of that footage. I'm trying to show people what Iranians have been living through that the Western media refuses to show. We're talking about the burning of historic libraries, the burning down of giant government buildings, people having Molotov cocktails thrown in their homes, gunmen with automatic weapons just opening fire in the middle of streets, ambulances being attacked, buses being burned, dozens and dozens of banks across Tehran being burned, and they know exactly what they're doing. And hundreds of cops being killed. Can you imagine if hundreds of cops in the United States were killed? What Trump or any US president would do? Like what kind of response there would be? Just imagine if one ICE officer was shot in the face. What would happen? But we're talking about hundreds of cops. And the police in Iran, you can't equate them with militarized American cops because they're a bulwark against imperialism. But they're being killed just rampantly. So, I'm trying to show that you can see it there.
Iran's foreign ministry presented this to ambassadors from the Western countries that are supporting and cheering on and actively engaged in fueling this violence. And of course, they've done nothing except sanction Iran further. They don't care. They don't care. What this reminds me of is so many of the other kind of color revolutions and regime change operations I've covered at the Greyzone. For example, what happened in Nicaragua in 2018. Nicaragua has an independent socialist-oriented government run by the Sandinistas, which is very popular and has kept violence at a very low ebb in that society. And they faced violent infiltration from gangs Mara Salucha and egged on by the CIA backed opposition. They shut down the country, established roadblocks throughout the country that they called trankes, abused citizens, surrounded police stations and started killing cops, bombed police stations with homemade bombs, terrorized the country, and all you heard in US media, including in left-wing US media and like social democrat circles, was that Nicaragua was just waging some horrific crackdown, shooting protesters for fun who were just in the street holding protest signs and being beautiful people. And I actually went there and met with the Sandinistas. I went to their homes that had been burned down. I saw the hospitals that were attacked. I met with people who had been beaten into comas. I met with the wives of police officers who had been dragged to death by trucks. I met with Sandinistas who had been kidnapped, and had burning plastic bags poured on their faces. I went to universities that had been taken over, free universities for poor students from across the country and working-class students that had been taken over basically by rich kids who supported the opposition, which were totally trashed. And I was one of the first journalists in there. And then I reported this and I showed photos. Go back to my Twitter account at the time, or see any of our videos at the Greyzone, and nobody cared. It didn't change the view at all. It was just Nicaragua did this and US Congress voted unanimously to sanction Nicaragua after this took place.
After they stopped that campaign of terror against their population, AOC voted for the sanctions. It was one of her first votes. And AOC and Bernie Sanders are calling for regime change in Iran right now. There's almost no difference between what they're doing, and what Trump is doing.
It's wild and and crazy. One more thing for you, Max. You were the one that that wrote the article after Charlie Kirk was assassinated and kind of broke the the news to all of us that he was starting to shift on his position. And we we also know when it comes to Israel that he was obviously starting to question them, and also he went to Donald Trump and told him do not go to war with Iran. Do you find it rather convenient that we are back here again and this is now escalated now that he's dead?
Well, I don't think his death is a factor here, except that he was the only one in that world that actually went into the White House and personally challenged Trump. And I think I was the first to report this. Trump didn't just shut him down, he was angry and told him basically to go to hell. I'm not saying, "Oh, Trump went and killed Charlie Kirk or something, but this is part of Charlie Kirk's evolution, and part of the crisis that the GOP is facing. Trump has no popular legitimacy to carry out this war." And what Charlie Kirk did in his final months illustrates that perfectly, because Charlie Kirk was responding to his own base, because he actually had to go out there and face the MAGA grassroots and all of his public talks.
Look at what Trump did at a Ford plant today where he was called a pedophile protector, and he's so thin skinned. He's so pathetic. So delusional. He's so trapped in his own bubble. He started screaming at some union guy and telling him to to go [ __ ] himself. He was going, "Fuck you. [ __ ] you. That's the president." Because someone called him a pedophile protector. How would he respond if someone told him to stop being Benjamin Netanyahu's shoe shine boy? I don't think it would be very pretty.
So Charlie Kirk was probably the last one to do that. And there is no effort by Trump to explain to the American public, or to interact with the American public, but to explain to the American public why this war has to be waged. He doesn't care. He's like the mad king in his forbidden city at this point. And everyone's tuning to Trump's messages." Oh, Trump's speaking at 2:00. What's he going to say?" But let's think about what kind of a commentary that is on this country and our supposed democracy, that we have no idea what the president is going to say or do. And there's almost no effort, except for his truth social postings which are always misspelled and written in in an incoherent way, thrown down like thunderbolts by Zeus to the serfdom that he controls to understand what his thinking is.
It's a disturbing situation, and he's playing with fire as I said because Iran is positioned with its military doctrine to deter the United States. That is its primary goal in its deterrent strategy. Israel is a secondary goal. Fighting Israel is a secondary goal. And the US bases are closer to Iran than Israel is. So this is the important point, when Iran hits Israel, its stockpile of mid and long range ballistic missiles is lower. It has a much larger stockpile of short range ballistic missiles which it can use to hit the US. And it has weapons it can use to attack the US through installations in the Indian Ocean. It may be able to reach Diego Garcia. And Trump is playing with all that by edging towards attacking Iran as his Israeli masters want him to do. And Charlie Kirk understood that. But, you know, he can't speak beyond the grave. He certainly isn't speaking through Erica Kirk, who was enjoying herself at the Peach Bowl after a great session on stage at TPUSA with Nicki Minaj, who's one of been basically bought off like virtually everyone else who's defending Trump or advancing his agenda in public right now. They're all just political prostitutes who are being paid per post.
Quick question for you, Max Kratos said, "Can you ask Max if he's heard from Nema from Dialogue Works? I know he has been in Iran."
Good question. I I haven't been able to reach anyone in Iran because of the blackout. and Starlink is down as well, which is another issue I'll talk about quickly in a second. Dialogue Works is a great geopolitics show to check out. Neima Horshid is the host. He has been in Iran, but he's usually based in Brazil. He was just visiting his family for this time. So, I haven't been able to reach him or anyone I know in Iran yesterday.
So, earlier today, Iranians for the first time were able to call out of Iran to make outgoing calls. And so I've heard from a friend who spoke to one mutual Iranian friend, and the only thing I know is that Iranians inside Iran haven't seen the kind of propaganda we're subjected to in the US, and they're dealing with the reality of having terrifying riots in their streets and heavily armed gangs roving through their streets. And they have never seen anything like that. I don't think the Iranian security forces ever have seen anything like that before. It's kind of like what Syria faced at the dawn of the dirty war.
And at the same time, they also haven't seen anything like the public support they're getting, grassroots support from the population that is coming out for these massive demonstrations. And it's really, it's not just because they love the Islamic Republic, and they love their leader. It's because they're outraged at the destabilization attempt, and they just want security. Yeah. If I knew that Patrick Beck David lived in Potomac I would have been calling him the real husband of Potomac. I didn't know that all this time.
No, no, no. That's Reza Pahlavi, the fake clown prince who thinks he's the king of Iran. He lives in Potomac. Have you ever been to Potomac? I have cuz my family's from the DMV area.
Yeah, it's kind of hoity toity. Like that area over there. There's like football players and stuff that live like in Potomac and stuff like that. Well, they have a real housewives of Potomac. So if they ever make a real husband of some city, if they make one of Potomac, he could probably volunteer to be on that show because he likes attention.
Yeah. My wife always complains that Real Housewives of Potomac wasn't really representative of what's in Potomac. Like there should be like some wealthy Iranian 79er, and you have wealthy Jews who live there, and some wasps and you have the Saudi ambassador or some Saudi cronies there, and they're all living in their gigantic McMansions with lawns that take teams of lawnmowers, and it's outrageous. So this guy is sending people to their deaths, living in some palatial home. He doesn't do anything for work. He's completely an idler. He's produced nothing of value. He's not charismatic. He can't even perform well in interviews with US media. And his base of of support is completely crazy.
There's this video of them attacking a rival Iranian opposition group's van or U-Haul truck that drove near one of their rallies from the people's MEK, which is another completely psychotic opposition group that's been backed by Saudi Arabia and Israel. It's a cult run by a woman named Mariam Rajvie who lives in luxury in Paris. And this U-Haul came through with an MEK sign into a monarchist rally in LA where they're waving Israeli flags and monarchist flags, and they just started smashing the windows and beating the guy. And he escaped with his life and drove away. You can easily find that video on X or any social media site, but do you think these people are going to bring freedom to Iran?
A monarchist, by the way, was just on Piers Morgan, and she was debating Mohammad Morandi, who you've had on, and we've had him on at the Grey Zone. I consider him a friend, and she called for him to be cut into little pieces like ISIS style on Piers Morgan, and then she boasted about it on her Twitter account, like that's something that she's proud of. That's who they are. I mean, these are just real psychopaths, and they're a complete liability to America.
That's wild. It's wild. Well, Max, anything coming up new for the Grey Zone?
I mean, this been a crazy year so far. So we're just trying to keep our finger on the pulse. Betar USA, the fanatical Zionist group based in New York, which has been threatening, handing out beepers to Palestine solidarity activists and trying to get people deported who had green green cards ,who were supporting Palestine on college campuses. They just disbanded following an investigation by the New York Attorney General, Leticia James, and we published the first and only insider documentary on that group. Actually a filmmaker I knew, became a member of Betar, and took a camera inside their organization, got their leadership on camera, and we exposed them for what they were. So, it's good to see that pay off. And to see some good news in the face of all of this warmongering.
So we're continuing to do investigative journalism and to tell you what you're not supposed to know. And that's just what we're going to keep doing. All right. And I guess we might even do a live stream tomorrow.
So that all right. All right. Kudos. Thank you so much, Max. I know you're you're incredibly busy, but thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Yeah. No, thanks for having me as always, and thanks for all the work you do. And uh thanks to Eric T. read Eric Thomas for uh all of his work supporting us at the greyzone and moderating our chats and producing one of the best live streams on the internet. Savvy Sabs. Thanks, Max. Peace. Bye. Hey guys, this was a savvy clip. If you like what you saw, hit that like button and subscribe.
**********************
Protests in Iran Provide a Window for U.S. and/or Israeli Intervention. Iran protest-riots can only achieve US-Israeli intervention, 'shadow CIA' concludes. by Max Blumenthal Jan 7, 2026 22:49 GMT https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/2011195654849380631
Stratfor, the "shadow CIA" which contracts for US intelligence and coaches pro-US opposition movements around the world, published a remarkably clear assessment on January 7 of the protest-riots raging across Iran.
Stratfor concluded that the ultimate utility of the unrest is to create an opening for a US-Israeli bombing campaign:
“While unlikely to collapse the regime, the ongoing unrest could open the door for Israel or the United States to conduct covert or overt activities aimed at further destabilizing the Iranian government, either indirectly by encouraging the protests or directly via military action against Iranian leaders.”
The private spying contractor explained that the external, US-backed Iranian opposition is too fractious and weak to affect change inside Iran, and that the institutions of the Islamic Republic remain united. Therefore, the only impact the protest-riots can achieve is to ease the path for a military campaign by the US and Israel.
Stratfor’s assessment ends by predicting that “renewed military strikes on Iran would also likely put an end to the current protest movement by leading instead to a wider display of Iranian nationalism and unity, a pattern observed after U.S. and Israeli strikes in 2025.”
This is one of the more sober pieces of analysis of the unrest in Iran to emerge from any US intel-aligned outfit. However, with CIA director and “Mossad stenographer” John Ratcliffe controlling Trump’s Iran briefings alongside White House chief of staff and former Netanyahu campaign advisor Suzie Wiles, the president may not have the benefit of such clarity.
Max Blumenthal discusses the chaos gripping Iran with Ali Alizadeh of Jedaal, uncovering the reality behind Iran's protests cheered from Western capitals and the US and Israel consider waging another war on Iran.
Transcript
Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the gray zone. It's Max Blumenthal and there's a lot to talk about today about Iran. This seems to be a pivotal moment in which even though Donald Trump has pulled back from striking Iran under Israeli pressure as always, we still appear to be on the brink of war. And we have to remember that the last time that Israel struck Iran, it was immediately after Trump announced that he was engaged in negotiations. Netanyahu claimed that Donald Trump was actually part of a ruse, a dirty trick to give Israel the ability to assassinate leading IRGC commanders, nuclear scientists, and take out Iranian air defenses in an unprovoked surprise assault. So, anything could be possible. But what we've witnessed for the past two weeks are what is being described in Western media as largely peaceful protests. Protests in which thousands of Iranians are being gunned down by Iranian security forces which is which necessitates a responsibility to protect operation in which the US intervenes. when Donald Trump had told Iranian protesters that he would protect them. But there's another side to the story, one that I've been trying to help Western audiences understand for the past several days, which is that these are not largely peaceful protests. They have been extremely violent. And many, many Iranians who have been killed have been unarmed guards, police officers, and average citizens. And they appear to be some of the people that you see in the body bags from the footage that is proliferating inside Iranian morgs. This is a story Western media refuses to tell as the death toll goes up to astronomical figures cited to mysterious dubious sources. But it's brought us to this point. And while Western media refuses to disclose the reality of what's taking place in the streets of Iranian cities, Israeli media and the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, has been much more candid and forthcoming. This is a tweet from the Mossad's Farsy Twitter account, Twitter X account. Let's come out to the streets together. The time has come, says Mossad spokesman. We are with you, not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well. We are with you in the field. So they're saying it. Israel's channel 14 had a correspondent declare that Mossad is responsible for many of the body bags that are showing up in Iranian morgs. Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, Christian Zionist, declared, "Mossad is walking beside you to Iranian protesters." Almost identical language used by Mossad. So, they're not hiding it. There is foreign infiltration from an entity that is determined to destroy Iran's government. And they appear to be working handin glove with rioters. And while Iranians had real grievances at the beginning of these protests, and many Iranians expressed grievances and criticisms to me when I was in Iran about the government, the issue now is sort of it's a to be or not to be scenario. Will the US and Israel bomb Iran to affect regime change or not? And so to discuss this pivotal situation, I want to bring in a guest uh we haven't had on before who I think has some very valuable insights and is very well sourced inside Iran. His name is Ali Ali Zade and he is an independent journalist and commentator now based in London. I'll let him introduce himself now. Welcome Ali to the Grey Zone. Thank you very much Max for inviting me. And before starting I want to thank everyone in grayzone who in the last 10 years have done a fantastic job and analysis and investigation to uh open many people's eyes to the ins and outs of these new hybrid warfares. As I remember from Syrian war, uh I became familiar with many of the tactics of these hybrid wars. Uh from reading your articles and your colleagues. So uh me like many other people in Iran, we all thank to you and your work. Thank you Ali. And uh tell us uh where people can find your work. My main work is in art. I have a uh YouTube channel called Jadal Farsy. They can find it easily. is one of the most watched uh YouTube channels in Iran and I have aation in English called Jad English in which like there is some uh videos explaining mainly about uh Iranian from military aspects and I show how they were all made in a native way as a as as a result of very painful experience Iran had in those eight years war in which the whole of the west and Arab world stood behind Saddam and so Iran had to learn how to build missile and that's how Iran now is uh missile powerhouse and no one can take it away from Iran. Iran had to learn how to build uh drones and that's why no one can take it away from it and also there are some interviews with intellectuals and analysts uh that people can go and watch. Great. Well, it's yeah, it's a fantastic resource and as I said, you're very well sourced and you broke what appears to be a major story that we'll talk about in a in a minute, but I want to talk about what happened yesterday. Uh, this is Axios, the Washington or beltway access journalism site. Trump is delaying a decision on striking Iran as the White House consults internally and with allies about the timing for such an operation and whether it would meaningfully destabilize the regime. The military option remains firmly on the table, but Trump's decision to pause has exposed deep uncertainty inside the administration and among allies about the risks of a strike that punishes Iran while inviting major retaliation. And then here's the White House press secretary repeating something that Trump said uh yesterday. And the president understands today that 800 uh executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place uh yesterday were halted. Uh and so the president and his team are closely monitoring this situation and all options remain on the table for the president. what what do you think took place there and what are they talking about uh with you know pausing of executions it seems to be a full fantasy world that they live in which has very little relation to reality uh I don't support execution people but Ali one second one second uh your your voice your mic is going through your airpods and not your microphone phone. So maybe uh go to settings and so there's there's a new study out that shows um AirPods increase the risk of thyroid cancer. So, I also want to make sure you don't get thyroid cancer. Remove me from uh from the image for a second. I I sort come back. All right. Well, I'll just uh I'll just wing it. All right. All right. Well, we while we try to uh correct the sound situation, we well, we'll we'll also get some comments from someone who met with the selfproclaimed crown prince of Iran. Um, I don't know. Is this the the the clown princess? And he seemed very upset about the decision Trump made. This is Lindsey Graham, the most wararmongering senator currently in the Senate. There are a lot of headlines out there that are uh in my view not accurate. President Trump's resolve is not the question. Question is, and when we do an operation like this, should it be bigger or smaller? I'm in the camp of bigger. Time will tell. I'm hopeful and optimistic that the regime days are numbered. So Lindsey Graham seems pretty deflated. He is his statement appears incoherent and he did not get what he thought he was going to get which are air strikes on Iran. And what I'm hearing just like word on the street grape vine stuff is that two things. Number one and Ali give me a thumbs up when you're ready to come back in. Okay, welcome back and we'll hope your sound is better. I'm hearing two things. number one that the US sentcom the military not only didn't have enough assets in the region doesn't have enough assets in the region at the time partly because of the whole Venezuela operation they can't reposition aircraft carriers but they also weren't confident that attacking Iran would achieve any measurable effect on the stability of the so-called regime and that its institutions are stable and united and number two Israel's missile defenses are not prepared for the counterattack and have not been fully repaired since the end of the 12-day war in which they depended heavily on US THAD anti-aircraft systems and US naval assets to defend them. So Ali, what what do you think of what we had we've heard from Lindsey Graham, the Trump White House and why they're not bombing? So unfortunately I was not in the uh in the broadcast when you showed Lindseay Graham's post non-bombing depression syndrome because uh he's like really suffering. I mean he's and and how he is feeling um is common to many other elements across both Iranian diaspora this uh new Iranian monarchy of Zionist monarchies and and across the rest of Zionist. So even if Trump is doing this to create surprise, it seems that his own base and the wararmongers are equally surprised as well. And so how many more times he wants to do that before the momentum they created is deflated. So I think it's not about surprise. I think Trump is very hesitant because he's gradually realizing that he's fed very wrong information. You want to know how wrong this information is? I think uh we have to look at what uh Pierce Morgan said to uh at the end of uh the interview he had with uh Professor Muhammad Marandi. When Marandi left he uh started deriding Marandi for saying that we will bomb every American base and he said you said it last time as well you were weak you cannot do it. And this is the narrative that they are repeating. And by repeating it, they're believing it. If Iran was so weak, why didn't you finish it off last time? That was 12 days. Why didn't you make it to 15 days and finish off Iran? Why why you are dragging it to this level? So in a sense that time they offered the ceasefire because it was becoming very painful for Israel to take it and now six months later like psyches are coming and the bantering and the thing is as I said I I propose people to go to my channel and watch those videos. Iran's missile industry is not something like Qatar is not something like UAE. It's not like Saudi. It's been built by blood. It's been built by sweat. It's been built by young people who were 18 years old and they dedicated their lives to defend their country like uh General Hajisad who died last June with boots in his feet. These people never took off their boots since they were 18 and they were invaded. Iran didn't start the war with Saddam. Iran had a revolution, one of the four biggest revolution in history. And America and other forces, they forced Saddam, who was a crazy criminal uh psychopath, to invade Iran in order to stop the revolution to get to the heart and mind of other people in the region. So other people in the region do not want to topple the monarchies. Monarchies. That's the important thing because every reactionary pro-American state in this region is a monarchy. That's why now by trying to bring back the monarchy are trying to undo the massive impact of the big Iranian revolution in 1979. It's been so painful for America that 47 years later you can see they're still trying to heal their pain. Otherwise they could just try to topple the regime, go for a democratic estate, go for like a republic. What they're going for for monarchy because they are trying to give a bit of like bonus to the allies in UAE in other countries that don't worry we are finishing off the project of becoming republic. So your nations in your subjugation do not do not fight for real freedom. That's number one. Second thing since last June I tell you many of these generals of revolutionary guard have not seen their family because yes maybe Iran in terms of information war in terms of intelligence is behind US and Israel. No surprise because Israel gets information from NATO, from EU, from every European and Western country, from Australia, from America, from Canada and Iran is more or less on its own. So it's no surprise that they have more intelligence. But in order to undo the repetition of a surprise attack, the way it happened on 12th of June, they haven't been home. So there is no way for Israel or America to use their AI tactics to find out who is the driver of the general's brother and then try to triangulate and find where where they are. And they've been what have they been doing since last July? They've been rearming Iran. They've been refueling Iran's missile arsenal and other arsenals. So Iran that you have today is very different from the Iran that you had last June. So, I mean, Iranian army and Iranian IRGC, I'm sure they're waiting for America. They would not be surprised. They know this moment is coming and they've been well well prepared for this moment. So, Israelis are selling and feeding absolute wrong information to America about Iran's weakness and military weakness to drag America to a quagmire. They would love that. They would love America to fall into a quagmire of Iran for years. Israelis celebrate the not celebrate they have they have like fantasy of seeing American workingclass young boys being sent back in coffins. That's the wet dream of every Israeli general and every Israeli politician right now because they know that by doing that America is dragged deeper and deeper in another crisis in Middle East. That's what they want. Everything in this last seven days is about that. It's about pushing and pushing and pushing uh Trump to fall in this trap. And it depends how intelligent Trump is because they will celebrate for celebrate him. They will clap for him. Uh Miriam Adelson will give him another 20 million. than the history of American history and people in MAGA and a big part of America's of Trump's base will spit on him in six months time. The first time the first American serviceman comes back in coffin then things will change for Trump and I think it depends on Trump's intuitive intelligence. Let's wait and see whether he's he's allowing himself to be deceived all the way by Israelis and by Zionist or he's playing with them. he gets the claps and the bonuses and the money without going all the way to the end. Well, this is uh a senior figure in Israel's military intelligence apparatus just days before Trump's decision, Amir Aini, Brigadier reserve Brigadier General at the Jerusalem Post conference in Miami that another fight with Iran and possibly the Houthis is imminent. And today I can say something we couldn't have said a month ago. This regime is going down. There will be no Iranian regime and this is going to change entirely entirely the future of Israel. Can you describe us? It will be an American attack. Israeli American attack. So I think it's going to be an Americanled attack with the assistance of Israel. Uh Iranians even before the demonstration they started rearming again. They wanted revenge. They want to attack us. They want they want to shoot massive amounts of ballistic missiles on us and Israel prepared for a preemptive attack. But as Israel was preparing for a preemptive attack that might have happened even today, uh the demonstration started and a clear message for President Trump. We are not going to let you shoot this demonstrators. We are going to defend them. And indeed, I think that we'll see in the very near future a massive American attack with the help of Israel and with the demonstrators. I think this regime stands no chance and they will fall and I can tell you as I said the bigger the win will be the greater the golden age of Israel and the Jewish people will be the day after the day after this war there will be peace agreements and the economy is going to boom we must unite behind our Jewish Zionist values with no spirit we cannot deal with all these challenges and this is the most important thing that Jews need to do need to remember how great they are they are the heroes of the story not the villains in the story and really get the Jewish people excited again about who we are and what is our vision and the vision at the end of the day is coming to Israel and bringing redemption to the people of Israel and to the whole redemption through war. Some pretty insane statements but that's the attitude I think emanating from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and uh I mean they could still there still could be this massive US attack. it could just be on pause. But it also appears that Saudi Arabia and some of the US regional allies Jordan were not particularly excited about this prospect. So if I may, can I explain something for uh for your audience? And I think the Iranians have a little part here in this situation, the Iranian side, the Iranian state, in Americans being in the verge of being deceived by Israel. And the reason is I think Iran accepted the ceasefire too quickly in the 12 days war. The reason for that, if we have time, I can explain quickly, is that Iran is a country under sanction. sanction has accumulative effect. So it slowly makes you more conservative. So Iranians think that getting into war into a longer war means losing another power station part of our uh power grid, one refinery and when are we going to build it again? Because we have experienced shortage of money in the last 14 years. The country has been very like strangulated on the sanctions in the last 14 years. So the fear is we do not want devastation. The same General Hajisad who is the architect of uh Iran's missile program and he got uh killed last June. He said famously uh to people who questioned him why Iran didn't attack Anol Assad harder after Trump assassinated Kasam Slemani. He said we had the military capability of going head-to-head with American but then that means a lot of devastation. We didn't want to uh go 20 years back in terms of losing infrastructure and other things. However, if America and Israel are pushing the state to the verge of exist, if they're pushing existential threat to a state, the Iranian state will think differently. They would not worry about losing one infrastructure here and there. The only reason that both in anal Assad and al- Udide attack Iran was very conservative and acted in a way that America didn't need to respond was because they wanted to they didn't see it as an existential threat. Now with all this noise, if they see existential threat, I promise you the Iranian military will go all the way and without fear and you will see a very very different Iran than you've seen in the last four, five years. You have to remember the Iran of Asam Manit time, the Iran which uh basically brought American army with about 200,000 personnel in Iraq to its knees. And it's going to be very very different. It's not I'm not I'm not bank I have no relation with Iranian state or I don't have like nationalistic sentiment necessarily. I'm just talking from royal political point of view. That's why the conservatism that you've seen the last five years is because Iran is looking for endurance. They're buying time. They're waiting for dollar to lose its uh value more so the sanctions become less painful. But if they see an existential threat in a way that Trump and Netanyahu are doing it and they're pushing for a very short time of attack, then Iran will act very very differently and you will see a different uh force coming from Iran as you have seen a little sample of it in the last four days of 12 days war. Um and and when you say going all the way, I mean what are we talking about? Closing the straight of Hormuz uh be beyond ballistic missile attacks on US bases which we saw at Aluate at the end of the 12-day war. What what do you what do you mean? I mean America still has many assets. Uh and even like with with Israel, I mean I mean is Israelis know better than anyone else what Iranian missiles can do because I mean both Israel and all his Zionist propaganda uh mouthpieces around the world have the sword has two sides. One uh bragging about the power that they are the only power in the region which can overdo everyone. they no one is like comparable with them and the other side is like they cry like children as they did in 12 12 days war and they like try to victimize themselves. You've seen men the same same people who are saying that we will demolish Iranian military power. They are the ones who were showing building after building and they were victimizing themselves of what Iranian missiles have done and how uh dangerous this these people are. So no I think one is ballistic missile definitely but there are other there are other thing as well there are uh still Iran has very close relationship with and in Yemen the Iraqi forces they have gone to uh they have gone a bit more quiet but it's still not there the relationship between Iran and its allies is organic relationship it's not a paid relationship the way that Turkey has with its proxies or UAE has with uh mercenaries or Saudi has with his mercenaries. They know people in Iraq Ashabi know without Iran being there they going to deal with some kind of ISIS in sure sooner or later they're going to go back to some kind of colonization yes Hezbollah is not comparable with Hezbollah during natural law but the leftover of his know that without Iran they going to be demolished completely so every what what they call mistakenly Iranian proxy is every ally that Iran has, they are built, they are born out of resistance against some form of imperialist intervention or colonization or Israeli occupation and so they know they know by their heart that they have to stand together. So if America comes for existential threat all these forces which have been quiet in the 12 days war they become active and super active. Well, unfortunately, I think there will be uh some breaking point here because of the amount of pressure on Donald Trump from Israel and its fifth column in the United States, which includes Donald Trump's top donor, Miriam add. I think there was some deal with Trump. I give you $150 million for your campaign and more. You destroy Iran. That's what we want. That's what Netanyahu wants and that's who she represents. So, we may just be in a period of pause right now, but this um there's a chronology here. Netanyahu went to Washington in December. I think it was the fifth or sixth time in 2025 that Donald Trump had to play the BBsitter. And Netanyahu clearly wanted to renew the attacks on Iran. He wanted to get back on the war train that was halted on the 12th day of the war that Israel initiated last June. Then a currency crisis hits Iran. The real plummets, merchants come out in the streets and protest. Their protests were protected by police. Many of these uh elements support the Islamic Republic. And then suddenly we go from protests to riots to allout militarized attacks in the streets of Iran. And here is one of the chief Islamophobic anti-Muslim pro-Israel hooligans on the planet celebrating the protests in Iran and a burn and the burning of the al-Rasool mosque in northwest Thran. Tommy Robinson. Real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon. And there this is one of many many mosques across Iran that has been burned along with shrines. And uh we can go through some other footage of the violence that isn't being shown in Western media. But Ali, wh what happened? How did these protests go from uh economic protests to allout riots? Who are the forces behind them? And you and and feel free to set this against the historical backdrop of protests going back to the the green movement and woman life freedom and how this is different. So with people who are not familiar with Iran, Iran actually has a a long history of protests and and social movements uh from the reformist movement which was part of the state in 1997. They won a massive uh kind of massive uh election. Muhammad Katami the reformist president become become became elected. That was a liberal movement. they were trying to open to the west and so with that came a social organic social social political movement and in 2009 again part of that with the help of Mirus Musavi who was prime minister of Iran's uh Iran during 80s they uh disputed the election and out of that was born green movement though I think the election might have been frauded but Ahmed had definitely won And the documents that we have today shows that. But nonetheless, all the frustration that Iranian middle class had found an excuse in disputing the election. And there was a very organic movement. Thran had a demonstration of two and a half million 3 million people. But was very interesting that demonstration that Thran had was called silent demonstration. No one even chanted in order to disarm the police and the security forces uh from acting violently people put plaster on their mouths. So and and the moto of the uh the movement was nonviolent movement. So you can see it was a kind of middle class uh with some more like uh middle class uh movement with a discourse with a spec with a very very very clear leadership and uh and it it got into some kind of violent events like July 2009 and then two this 6th of January 2010 but the level of violence was not comparable. like 50 people got killed in July 2009 and I think about 30 40 in December and and the leaders of green movement they said stop yeah we will not go to to streets anymore and we don't want any more violence but from the time that Trump came to power something happened you have to remember that Hassan Roani the president of Iran in 2013 to 2021 he won the election by uh saying that if I get elected I will go and negotiate with United States about my about Iran's nuclear capability and he actually did for two years they negotiated with Obama administration and more or less they gave Obama what he wanted Iran went for a soft nuclear disarmment Iran closed down is a heavy water reactor Iran uh brought down it enrichment from 60% to 3.5% Iran destroyed and dismantled many of his centrifuges. So Iran gave the West more or less everything they were asking for and the West gave Iran nothing. I'm not talking about Trump. I'm talking about Obama administration apart from unfreezing some of Iran's own assets. They gave Iran nothing. So economically things didn't change much. Then came Trump and from the time that Trump came uh Iran still was hoping to make some uh some deal with Trump. However, mistakes were done on behalf of Iranian administration because they were very close to John Kerry and Kerry told them apparently don't deal with Trump. Uh Trump is going to be impeached soon. Wait for us. We're going to come back stay and wait for Democrats. So leaving that aside, Hassan Rohani got elected for second time in an election with 76% participation and he got he he won with a massive majority on the mandate that I will go and negotiate with America more and resolve the rest of uh sanctions. Next day Trump went to Riyad and he met with King Salman, Ben Salman's father and Cece. You remember that? that picture which looked like Harry Potter. They put their hands on that globe. Yeah. You remember that? Yeah. That happened 24 hours after that massive election and that was the moment that everything changed. Ben Salman came as the funer and the sponsor of Trump's back campaign of maximum pressure on Iran. We have Israel in the background here. The foreground is Ben Salman and they fought against Iran. Trump came out of sanctions. They put a lot of pressure on Iran. The TV called Iran International, which is basically a terrorist headquarter, started in London with $250 million uh funding from uh possibly Saudi according to Guardian and uh through a company called Volant TV. And so they started operation. They work with Arab separatist, with Kurdish separatist, uh with Balouch separatist. And then you have this first round of this protest in January 2018 about seven seven months six months seven months after Roani got reelected and so about 25 people die and the main thing they're asking is for economic uh kind of economic issues and they chant that Resa uh Resa chanting for Sha's father. Yeah. So in a sense disagreeing with the state through memorizing and nostalgiaizing about the past time it continued and from that time John Bolton Pompeo and everyone came and started talking about regime change. Suddenly the language in Washington changed for the first time after Iran deal. So the pressure got uh more and more and things change in Iran's online world. Suddenly you have like a lot of like cyber war against Iran and then one and a half years later and in that time militarily Iran was fighting hard. Sullemani was alive if you remember they brought down uh America's global hulk and Iran was fighting back against America in Iraq in Syria and so they were going hand in hand. In September 2019, something big happened and that was we don't know who has done it but Aramco got bombed by by drones in Saudi. That was a seinal moment in September 2019. From that moment onward, apparently Ben Salman realized that fighting against Iran, fighting against Ansarah is too costly and is destroying it. And that was the moment that he started like going backward and and trying not to get involved with Iran. Uh a months later, Lebanon got into massive protest. Iraq got into massive protest. I was ambassador at the time and suddenly everything in less than few days changed from welcoming Iranian pilgrims. They went to like des Iran. So with the help of a lot of uh kind of the media campaign and thing and then in November 2019 Iran got two days of massive protest. Of course, the spark of that protest, similar to today, was the government's uh the reformist government's ruthless neoliberal shock doctrine and the immediate increase of the price of oil, price of petrol and people came on the street, especially in the uh in the really kind of downtrodden parts of uh big cities. the very the urban pool came out and and they stay and and and there for the first time we saw a different kind of violence. We saw armed protesters in Mahash. We saw armed protesters in uh some of these cities. I'm not sure whether they necessarily had got the arm from Israel or America or Saudi. Uh but but we saw a different kind of anger. But you have to look at the class composure of this as well because these elements were very different from the middle class who would like just chant in a in a silent demonstration. There are angry uh people from fringes of the kind of the big urban places without much much ideology and filled with propaganda from Saudi, Israeli and American TVs. Yeah. So uh with 217 deaths uh that protest uh somehow ended and the state didn't change the price of petrol from that moment until recently. So they learned the lesson and they tried not to despite all the all the hardship of sanctions they didn't mess around with with basic basic needs. So from here we go to Raisi. Raisi was supposed to be a kind of a states bonapart a kind of bonapartism in which the state tries to resolve the issues from above. He got elected in 2021 in a cold election with 50% participation. But then a year into his into his uh presidency uh in which he has done few interesting thing he went to Shanghai he signed Shanghai accord. He made Iran join bricks. So he was opening a path towards towards the east and uh trying to make a breathing space for Iran. uh outside America's uh America and its allies. So what happens here around the issue of hijab which is a organic issue that this content is absolutely organic. I have to say my mom has been arrested many times when I was like 17. They stopped me on the street. They put a clash of on my head and like they they cut my hair. So these things are like organic discontent and government was not intelligent enough to avoid these issues. But through the death of Masa Amini, you have explosion which I have sympathy with it. I think that was a cultural riot. And riots are spontaneous. They're organic. They happen and they die very quickly as well in three or four days. But in three or four days, it didn't die. It suddenly morph into something else. Suddenly you heard the stories about Cordes uprising. You heard the stories about Baluch uprising. And you would think but baluch are salafi extreme Sunni Muslims who do not allow their own daughters come out without full burka. How is it possible that they are joining mass amini? How is possible that the f Friday prayer of zahedan who was very close to saw hahabis suddenly has become a feminist. from from that to Kordan who for example part of them have like a a cemetery for uh victims of uh domestic violence and thing. So all of these things got morphed together and you could see very clear elements of hybrid warfare. And I have to say to audience who say hybrid warfare doesn't mean that everything is engineered the other way around. Hybrid warfare means that you take organic elements and you add and combine it with non-organic elements. In this round of protest in Iran as well the protesters are not engineered by the west. So because accusing anyone who's talking about hybrid warfare in that oh you are denying people's agency. No no no people have a lot of agency. People are angry they are poor they are full of discontent. Why shouldn't they be? The country which is one of the richest countries in the world have been stripped away from its right of selling his resources. You cannot move or transfer $50 if you're Iranian. Even if you're Iranian abroad, even if you are Iranian with an American passport, you are not allowed to have a have a bank account. As long as you are born in Iran, they make your life hell. Of course, life is difficult. You should live under siege for a day to understand life is difficult. That country has been under siege for 14 years. Every single barrel of oil that Iran sells has to go through black market, has to go through this uh shadow navy. And of course that opens Iran into into a lot of corruption. Iran is full of corruption. But what is the source of corruption is the is is sanctions which have forced the economy to go underground which has forced Iran to trust certain elements to sell it oil like mafia. If a state acts like mafia because it's legitimate right of being in the in the global economy has been taken away from it. Of course it opens to uh to corruption. Corruption brings inequality. So while people are getting poorer they see some people who are driving Mercedes and they're driving Porsche and that makes them even more angry. So all these issues exist uh and so these are not inorganic. They are very organic. But what is inorganic? The sudden presence of groups of 10 men of men and women with machete and clashnikov who specifically attack police station. That's inorganic. That's inorganic. But then in hybrid warfare, what do you do? You report all of them together in a seamless way as if they are part of the same thing. So you when the authorities and I saw a video today in which a police station was was attacked by these so-called protesters and five police policemen were killed and policemen in Iran, they're not ideological. a policeman like everywhere else with like $110 a month's salary. A policeman with $110 a month salary was killed by these protesters was where they were shot by them. Yeah. And then when finally the force came and they shot back. You are like the Iran International, BBC Persian Service, Voice of America, they are reporting about all these uh all these like attackers as victims as citizens. Then you come and you talk about their stories and you victimize them and you get you basically seamlessly put them in the pocket of the number of victims. So that's inorganic and and the way that has been narrated the role of media is very very crucial. Iran international specifically which is I think is a terror organization and I'm amazed that Iranian government have not made a claim against Iran international in uh ICJ and ICC and uh UN uh they both act as headquarter telling people to have to go out they Iran international was based out of Saudi Arabia and sponsored by NBS and now it's based in Israel is that right I'm not sure it's based in Israel or not. But apparently apparently in August 2022, it was handed over. I mean as I said Saudi stopped uh Saudi realized that doesn't want to be on forefront of war with Iran. So move moved away and China uh basically uh lies to do a kind of peace process between Iran and Saudi and so Saudi gave away Iran international to Israelis in August 2022. So it is in I'm not sure whether is is Israel or not but uh but you're saying it's basically giving out instructions into the field to carry out these attacks. Barakra said that Mossad uh Msad agents worked very very closely to it and that was before it was handed over directly to Israelis. uh they give instruction if there's a film in which so there was a film that a protester was uh opening this uh capsule of I don't know was like fire extinguisher or whatever it was and it would burn the policeman on motorcycle I don't know whether you've seen it or not and they would propagate these kind of videos as the brave images of protesters fighting back so you are embold things should be illegal to to post or to publish on any social platform they easily post and then that's one part of it. The second part is as I said when uh the terrorists are killed they name them as the victims as well. Nonetheless these protest started as I said the main reason was government's big mistake by doing this round of shock shock therapies. And I have to say something here. I'm and in Jedal TV, we've been campaigning very hard against neoliberal shock doctrine. So I think I am uh in a position of saying that I'm very angry with what Pesky government did. I've been shouting for the last six months that this is not the time to uh do this economic reform or this shock doctrine. But who is doing the shock doctrine? a young man who's done his PhD in Chicago University with one of the students of Milton Friedman. I am and and people who are working with us in Iran and campaigning with us. Many of them are like people who believe in the state. They are like revolutionaries themselves. They call themselves revolution of uh Iranian revolution of 79. They still are faithful to that and they are trying to reform this no liberalization of economy. But we are criticizing the implementation of what IMF, American government, American universities, British government, British universities have injected to Iranian economists and policy makers. So in a sense I am criticizing Iran but CNN, BBC, American government are not in the position of criticizing Iranians for having done a shock doctrine that the West has asked Iran to do since 1990. That's the difference. So have because because many people in this situation suddenly become Marxist, suddenly become socialist. Suddenly they remember that Iran is no liberal. Yeah. Is Iran is like no liberal but like a tense no liberal of what is in British in Britain, America or other kinds of countries close to the west. So that's why it's important to say that our criticism is internal and from within and it's very very different from the criticism of uh those regime changers who can wear any mask including becoming socialist in the moment of regime change. So anyway the demonstration I'm going to go to the demonstration demonstration and here's some more footage just you know for posterity. I can't show the really violent footage because we will be demonetized and suppressed even harder on YouTube. But there is so much footage of mobs beating uh unarmed bases guards to death. These are t these guys are taking so many casualties. Uh but also civilians are being abused. uh contact who I've been unable to reach in Iran. I I know that um their 8-year-old neighbor was killed by the so-called protesters was shot to death in Isvahan. This is the the so-called largely peaceful protesters uh beating an old man, brutalizing an old man, and then they go they go on to torch his vehicle. Uh we've seen firefighters attacked, ambulances attacked, fire stations attacked, banks burned. We've shown some of the mosques that are being burned across Iran. Hund possibly hundreds of police officers have been killed. And I don't think Iran has seen anything like this. You you talked about some of the violence before. This is just a sn a small sampling of what's been taking place. and I can show footage for the rest of this live stream, but I think people will ultimately will quickly get the point. So, um, you know, h how did it get to be so intense? And does this remind you of a kind of early 2011 Syria Libya scenario? Definitely. Let me just take you to the end of this like story about this demonstration because this demonstration very sporadic. They came from many different cities especially uh Cordistan and Lorestan which are like provinces in the in the west of Iran and they were they cor they correlated with the fact that they were underdeveloped the fact that Iran's development is like u uneven so all of these things correlate with that but the fact that it was very violent from beginning in in those in those uh provincial cities was quite alarming but not in Thran all the way we came to last Friday which is I think 8th of January and resale called for a big demonstration. This is important. I think this is a fact. The fact that a significant part of population I'm not talking about millions but hundreds hundreds of thousands of Iranian responded to his call is wor worrisome enough and it shows that out of sanction out of hardship uh as the voice of Israel has made some kind of a small base that's and some other people came out just thinking we want to uh show our discontent but nothing happened apparently I talked to a few people today in Iran. Nothing happened in that demonstration. So it's important when you see many images of young boys and girls who come up with like really aggressive chants against Islamic estate saying that down with the regime, down with nothing happens. No one is shooting them and they go home on Thursday. on Friday morning and he had a sermon in which he warned uh protesters that they are trying to destabilize Iran and we will not tolerate that. So after that Iranian government and Iranian authorities send SMS to every one of 85 million Iranians once, twice, three times, seven or eight times warning them that these protests are turning into something else. We have information. We know that they are becoming very violent. Do not allow your young kids to come on the street. And that's Friday 9th of September, sorry, 9th of January. In that evening, then those who ca who come out and the number is significantly less than the day before those demonstration become super violent and that's what you see in these uh in these uh footages which has come out. They're burning uh people. They're attacking mosques. they are uh shooting guns come up. So let me just explain to that. I'm not saying all of them are Israeli agents. Some of them are what you call traditionally lumparium. So there are thugs in every neighborhood who apparently is become easier and easier in Iran to buy gun. Some of them have machetes, some of them have big big knives. They come out. Yeah. And so uh that's one element. But even they these socks in the in the neighborhood they are not the ones who are running the show. For example, I was talking to someone in Nazi in South Tan and he was saying that these SS organic they are the neighborhoods thugs but those who were like telling them what to do where to go and what leading these uh small crowd of like 40 50 people they were not from the neighborhood they had come there and possibly they are the ones who were coordinating it. Yeah. So who is like defending uh buildings, defending public buildings, defending mosque, defending schools? There are either vigilant vigilante bases or militias or people who are faithful to the state. They are not necessarily besieged. They're just people who call themselves are the followers of followers of revolution. They still believe in that. Like in Venezuela, many people are not official militia, but they just like chavez. They call themselves chavisa. These are the people who gather around the public building making sure they don't get burned or they don't get damaged. They are the ones who get killed a lot and the number is a lot. So I can tell you the official number is about 200 people. Now yesterday there was a uh there was another funeral mass funeral with I think millions of people coming outside to the streets of Tehran for these hundred bodies uh for the second time. I think we've had other funerals that was another 100 people but the number is much more than that and the Iranian state I think is hesitant to talk about that easily. If they could more openly talk about that you would see that the violence has been quite even more than uh the violence started from those elements outside uh among the protesters. Why Iranian state doesn't want to talk about that is quite disheartening. It can disenourage like part of his base and uh it can it can show that the violence of these so-called protesters have been uh crazy but also it will stop other people to go and support it next time that this uh round of wars come around. So that's Friday but after that and after that night which was quite quite quite violent uh I think things have stopped protests have stopped and we haven't had we haven't had anything else apart from this endless protest happening in CBS and BBC and uh which has never stopped yeah the protest ongoing ongoing it's ongoing accord and you were looking at uh rescue workers in Iran who came under attack from rioters in their ambulances. Some of them were badly burned. Some have been killed. Uh firefighters in in Masad Masad were killed. Uh their fire station was burned down. I can't show that footage, but this is uh Iranian media showing the the aftermath of these attacks on ambulances. I don't know how any society could tolerate that and have the state not kind of come in and try to provide security to citizens, but it's a conundrum for Iran because if they provide security, that means cracking down and being blamed for thousands of deaths or um you know, former longtime uh US informant and US government employee Masi Alinad in the UN today said millions of deaths. This is a holocaust. Uh CBS said 12,000 deaths according to um Barry Weiss's source uh trust me Schlommo from the Mossad. And no one is talking about this, but I'd asked you before, Ali, if you thought this reminded you of the early stage of the dirty war that the West and its Gulf allies waged on Syria starting in 2011 or uh what we saw in Libya and could it uh is it going to go any further? You you you remember you remember better than me because you wrote that fantastic uh management of savagery. Who was the woman who wrote that there are mass graves in Syria? And it's very interesting. Ahmed Bib uh said there are more than 12,000 dead in Iran, possibly 20,000 and are mass graves and they are being kuried in an unidentified manner. It's interesting. Ahmed Bibi is a good-looking young guy back in 1998 when Tehran University dorm um had an uprising and he's the one who held a a shirt full of blood and he became the cover of Economist and later on became apparent that he was a student of theater nearby had nothing to do with Teran University and he used uh color to put put fake blood on that picture. So and then he converted to Judaism recently about few years ago. Uh so yeah yeah he converted so he went through the old very difficult conversion thing. So but that really reminded me of that news back in if I'm not mistaken April 2011 the news that there are mass graves in Syria and there was a blog which later became apparent that is not written from Syria. It's a woman from somewhere in America Virginia or something.
Yeah. Uh do you remember that the the this is Ahmed Bib by the way? Ahmed. Yeah. Um so you you sorry uh ask the Syria they talk about mass graves in 2011. Uh that was that was a blog but everyone thought is a Syrian girl writing it and then that later apparently is written by uh a woman Obama. So or had nothing to do and Washington Post quoted that uh talking about thousands of people being put in mass graves. So they they can easily do that or like with Benghazi but it really reminds me of Benghazi because they're doing two things Masia and few others. I would I could I could have shown you some videos if you wanted. Um but they are like crying saying that they are killing people. They're killing everyone. If there's no foreign help, Iranians all going to be killed. All going to be killed. That's that's part of it. And and the second one is they are threatening. Yeah. They're threatening anyone who dares to say, "Mate, I mean, this is the situation has nothing to do with foreign." I I'll I'll play it for everyone. This is one of the major pieces of propaganda that's being used to trigger intervention in Iran. And it's a guy, it's a Persian guy who is trying to look like Eminem circa 2003, uh, fake crying to demand that Trump help and save the people who are dying. And we saw this in Syria with the, uh, last messages from Aleppo when al-Qaeda was removed from eastern Aleppo. We saw this with uh Bana Alabed, the eight-year-old girl who was hosted on CNN, who was actually among those al-Qaeda elements, and then was taken to Turkey uh and taken in by Erdogan after a meeting with Lindseay Lohan, other another former child actor. Um, so we've seen these these movies before, but this is one that's been really blasted into the conscience consciousness of anyone following this issue through their 4U tab on Elon Musk's propaganda weapon X. Uh, and this is Ali London, an extremely bizarre Islamophobic character in the UK who's promoting this uh through Vicrad 24, which is another Israeli information weapon based out of Poland. Guys, I just a lot of trouble. I'm not feeling well at all. They're killing everyone. They're killing everyone. They're killing people's kids. Only foreign help matters. Only foreign help matters. Everyone calls the the prince. He's not really a prince. The prince symbolizes freedom. It has nothing to do with royalty. He's a savior. They're killing people. They're ruthlessly shooting down anything. They're doing whatever they want. My flight was cancelled. All international flights from Thran are cancelled. I barely got an Iranian flight back. Okay, but we get the point. Uh he wants intervention to install uh sentence at the end of this video. He says anyone. I don't care Trump or anyone. Trump mor as we say in far anyone he just wants some bomb he's like desperate for some bomb from anyone and he's not choosy he's like he accept he's he will accept some bomb from Likenstein from Luxmbourg from from Alaska from Canada just some bomb he's desperate for some bomb from uh to be dropped on Iran but then the other side that's why I think is such a Israeli choreographed scenario the other side you have gold who says what you are questioning intervention I will turn you to pieces when we get the power. So, they will shut up anyone who dares to say we don't want intervention. This is the woman uh Goldie Gamar who is uh we'll play a clip of her a little later, who is on Pierce Morgan after Pierce Morgan deceived Professor Muhammad Mandi into uh what he thought would be a one-on-one. Then he brings on this uh trashy, fanatical, failed lawyer who's been like sanctioned by the Canadian bar eight times for unethical behavior, who's one of the top monarchist voices in Canada. And she comes on and and says and promises that uh when regime change occurs, Muhammad Morandi will be cut into pieces and only his pinky will be left. Then she calls for uh tells Jenk UR uh that he too will be killed. So this is like the language of the exiled monarchists and and then they're also they're crying and playing and claiming that uh there's this holocaust taking place. It's actually very Zionist behavior to be such crybullies. Exactly. Victimization and threatening at the same time. Victimization. They have an army of criers and they have an army of those who are threatening to to cut you to pieces. So this that's what I think it's like absolutely come out of out of Tel Aviv. So so anyway that's what we've seen. But there's another side as well which are I think if you know this woman called Elica Leon. Oh yeah. Erica Leon. She's sort of like the the uh then she's calling for like a neocon only fans intervention so she can wear lingerie in the streets of Thrron. That was like her. But that that's a third army because they're acting uh very useful by by being by by acting I don't know because they have to act like this. It's not possible to be that thick because she says how is it possible that every one of you were asking for intervention in Gaza but now you are opposing intervention in Iran. And you think oh my god how thick you are. They were asking for intervention in terms of not sending more bombs to Israel government. American and British people were asking their own government, stop sending bombs to kill more kids. Here you are asking for your government to send bombs. They are not the same. Of course, those people are not the but I think these people are like creating confusion for anyone with IQ less than 85. So they are they're the third part of the army. Yeah, there are a lot of them apparently. Uh I don't know if the cumulative IQ of those who believe this exceeds 100. Uh, someone tweeted, this is my family. Uh, I'll find it in a second. Someone tweeted a picture from the movie Good Fellas and said, "My family, uh, before the Iranian revolution in 1977, an Italian TV did a fact check and determined it was real. Um, what what is going here's this is something I've been wondering about. This got we hear constantly. They found sort of their their poster child for the um the revolution. they claim is taking place and his name is, you know, who's being oppressed and is going to be executed and his name is Eran Sultani. This is Erica Laban, by the way. Um, nice French name. Uh, executions for protesters will begin in 48 hours. And Eran Sultani is the first to be hanged. And, uh, it's we hear about him. I see him everywhere. Everyone is talking about this guy, Eran Sultani, but I had heard that he actually was arrested for rioting and is not facing the death death penalty. Do you know anything about this person that we're constantly hearing about? I I heard him mainly in uh in foreign press in in non- Iranian press and and so they talk about that. But but nonetheless, it's possible I have to say it's possible that Iranians will have very fast and swift uh trials. The head of judiciary said if it's not fast enough it will not have it will not have the same effect. The reason is I don't I have a lot of problems with Iranian judiciary. I think there's lack of transparency. There are some issues and also I don't support capital punishment. However, there's one point that people should consider here. If the official statistic of 200 police and military personnel as dead is correct, we are talking with dead. We'll be talking about war, not with protest. This is important term, important issue to be uh to be clarified. The west is talking about protest, protest, protest when they want to put more pressure uh on Trump to attack and do humanitarian intervention. But when Resvi the so-called leader of this protest talked to his own base and he's been questioned why you are sending people to be killed, he says it's not protest is a war and in war you have to be ready to pay the price. Yeah. So they have war mentality, war terminology and language and war strategy otherwise they wouldn't have killed these uh uh kind of these policemen. And I have to say something else. I mean these Ronda protests uh have the the cause of all this like protest was the economic issue which is shared by about 90% of Iranian society right now. Yeah. So the same people who are going on progovernment funerals and progovernment demonstrations of solidarity, they are very very angry as well. If anyone wanted to do regime change from within or revolution in its classical sociological definition would have tried to drag those people into his movement, try to sympathize them, try to win them over. You wouldn't try to completely alienate them by attacking the religion, by burning them down, by creating this kind of violence. This violence only brings the most radical element to the uh to the to the movement. So from those people on 18th of on on on 8th of January, I think on 9th, a very small fraction stay because they don't like to see violence as well. And many people, many families drag their own kids back home. So my question to to audience is if you wanted to win a revolution, would you burn down police stations and policemen? Would you burn them moss? Because nonetheless, Iran is still a semi-religious country. I give it to them. You are right. Many people hate Islam. Fine, they're Islamophobic. Fine. They don't like religion. Fine. How what's the percentage? 10%, 20%. Still you have a significant number of people who are very religious. Why would you alienate them? Because you want to create civil war not revolution. Revolution needs to stick to elements symbols common among majority of people not to alienate a majority of population. So this is this is very important. the the the pattern of how they have behaved. It has nothing to do with any of the social movements in the world with any of the revolutions in the world. And uh this is this is this is footage by the way of one of the mass rallies uh progovern rallies, people expressing outrage at the killing of police officers, guards, civilians by the riers. And uh these are unprecedented. uh they are larger than have been seen in Iranian cities at any time at least since Kasam Solmani was killed and it demonstrates that there is a level of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic that they have a large constituency and these are the people you say are being alienated and polarized by the anti- Muslim anti-Islamic violence that's targeting mosques unless they don't exist unless they don't exist because none of these images have been shown in any of the western mainstream media. I'm sorry to sorry to interrupt again, but on that point I think it's important for me to mention that real footage from this week was community noted and falsely they falsely claimed it was from November 25th, 2019. Uh and this keeps happening. So uh that's part of the propaganda you see on X. But but yeah, and western media refuses to show it. In fact, uh this uh comedian who's a neighbor of yours in London, whose name I forget, Omit Jali. Yeah, Jaliti. The only time these demonstrations got mentioned what they were mentioned as part of the protest when Omit Jali was talking. This is they they stole these demonstrations. They stole them as the BBC presented the progovernment demonstration as anti-government because they didn't have any footage like that. Um so so yeah this is important so this is this is important for audience to realize that the west is censoring a big part of Iranian population I'm not saying that everyone in Iran is progovernment as I said the last election has 50% participation so it shows that 50% are not even like participating in in the in the election however when Israel attacked Iran a very big part of Iranians uh had rallied around the flag. A very big part of Iranians who in my own show in Jadal TV I've had people who were in prison for eight years during 80s as Iranian socialists. Few of them had death sentence hanging over them and then they were released last minute and they all came and said we support Iran and we support Iran sovereignty and we support Iran's right to fight against America and Israel. So you had this like real uh nationalist sentiments in the in the in that time. So nonetheless, the fact that the west doesn't show at least at least I'm being very like really uh generous with this uh figures at least half of Iranian population and only show the protesters is because the west wants to create civil war as well. They don't want revolution. They don't want revolution. You want to see revolution? Go and see the footage of 1979. You can see 3 million out of 30 million of Iranians go to streets to welcome coming back from Paris. 3 million out of 30 million. Iranian revolution had the biggest participation rate among every classical revolution in history. go and read uh Charles Kerisman's fantastic book the un uh thinkable revolution explains all this like unex inexplicable aspect of Iranian revolution not the fact that you have like couple of hundred thousand across the whole country uh which the demonstration gets usurped and hijacked by less than few thousand less than few thousand people who are armed who are trained and they know how to create maximum fear is create is about creating maximum fear. The same tactics they do online, the same way that they come to my private messages and they talk about beheading my three years old child, they are doing it on a street. That's these are tactics that were done by Da by ISIS by Nusra. And I think these tactics come from only and only one place from from Tel Aviv. These are like Mossad trained people. This is not normal. A normal angry person doesn't want to behead someone's three years old child because they don't like his tweet. This is not normal. This is like rule book. And the thing is there's not one person. Then you have like 300 comments under my tweets. They all want to behead. They all want to rape. They all want to kill. They all want to burn. And so you can see I mean like you're coming from the same butt factory from same uh uh butt farm. So anyway Yeah. Yeah. and and any false claim on X, whose owner is responsible for Starlink, which was supposed to be the major information weapon ACE card for these riots, these regime change riots, has juiced up any tweet that says anything. Oh, and and they'll say, uh, protest in Thran tonight is massive, but there will be no protest in Thran, and it'll be footage that was 5 days old. Then a few days later it gets community noted and then you know ridiculous characters like we mentioned Elica Leon are being put into the forefront of the information warfare narrative. Here's the tweet I me I had mentioned earlier where she's calling for basically uh an only fans revolution and saying if you bomb the crap out of uh my supposed country Iran I will wear lingerie in the middle of Tehran. My New Year's resolution is to wear this on New Year next year in Tehran. Uh and and many many pe many people don't know Ela Leon. Um her father was an adviser to IRGC. Her father was a well that kind of explains it nationalist political scientist who actually actually I I admired him. I mean for years he came to BBC Persian service and he was the only one who dared to defend Iranian nuclear uh capabilities and then I don't know what happened he changed that was before 2014 and 15 and he got sick and and then he sent his daughter abroad and then uh things changed so so in a sense Elica is there because his father got paid from Islamic Republic of Iran. Interesting. Well, let's talk about the we've talked a little about the propaganda, the SCOP. Let's talk about the opposition. This is uh the crown prince. This is the man who wants to rule Iran. Resa Palvie in Israel. Need that trap music. But here he's going to the Western Wall. He's a wall kisser. He's There he is. Um, new footage has surfaced of him partying in Israel with his wife. The yoga instructor, I guess, wasn't there. Um, I don't know if that's an an omen above him. But here here he is. um his pack in Washington has pledged uh security cooperation with um with uh Israel in in including uh plans to in their proposal for the day after to purge supporters of the Islamic Republic in cooperation with Israel's Mossad. And uh he recently appeared in a video announcing this is his latest video message in which he announces uh his plans for the day after and uh it's he he's not really concealing his support for Israel which just which is still committing genocide in Gaza which just committed the Holocaust of our time. hear about how a free Iran will act towards its neighbors and the world after the fall of this regime. In security and foreign policy, Iran's nuclear military program will end. Support for terrorist groups will seize immediately. A free Iran will work with regional and global partners to confront terrorism in diplomacy. Relations with the United States will be normalized. And our friendship with America and her people will be restored. The state of Israel will be recognized immediately. We will pursue the expansion of the Abraham Accords into the Cyrus Accords, bringing together a three Iran, Israel, and the Arab world. So, he's pledging to expand uh the Epstein Accords into Iran and get rid of Iran's nuclear program, that may even include the civilian nuclear program, which his father started. A lot of people don't realize that, but the civilian nuclear program, Iran's first reactor, which I tooured in Thran was built under his father's watch. And there was a lot of suspicion by Israel and the US that he actually wanted to nuclearize uh militarily. So, uh total just surrender of Iran sovereignty. How much credibility does Reza Palvi have inside Iran? uh who is he and is he really the leader of the opposition and I guess uh is the opposition united in any way for any clear agenda? So um I don't know whether I can show a piece of document to you or not but a book called I think a book called uh countdown for crisis written by one of the CIA old agents talk about uh when in 1980s CIA decided to topple Islamic Republic of Iran and they asked Resaphim that we have a plan we're going to move you to Kish island in south of Iran and then we asking Iran's army to defect and to join you and uh and then we're going to like topple the regime. So then at the beginning he accepted it and he said he needs money. America asked Saudi Arabia five $5 million to be given to Raza Palim and he got it and he spent $700,000 of thousand dollar of that for a private disco in Virginia. After that when uh the time for the plan and the operation came and after he had got all the money he told the CIA agents but what if your plan gets defeated? I have no exit plan and you have no uh plan for getting me out of Kish Island. Yeah. And so uh after that they called him uh what was that? They called him uh the test would go into uh the preview uh pairs to pay his uh retainers. Yeah. And and so even CIA didn't have much respect for him. That's why in these years CIA never promoted him much. CIA and America always they tried to hedge their bets and they defended a kind of variety of Iranian actors from the Nobel Peace Prize winners Shirin Abadi the new Nobel Peace Prize winner Nargas Muhammad is the typical Havs and alleaz and the kind of uh cold war uh figures which could bring a democracy movement. I think he first was chosen by Saudi Arabia around 201617 and after that he was like uh bought by by Israelis. Yeah. So so even today America is not 100% sure about him. That's why in woman life freedom the American government didn't support him completely. They had like about six or seven different leaders. They had a committee of leadership including Masi Alinad, the other the other guy um Mohammed Ismaun uh an actress who hardly can speak uh Farsy and and then this time I think Israelis really really pushed for him to be the only star of the show and that is not bought much in Iran because right now many of the opposition figures who who want to be the leader of uh regime change they are in prison. So they think we went to prison and this boy who has never worked in his life uh he's going to like lead the lead the revolution. So I think I think Rosalie just goes with anyone who gives him money and the reason for that is he has never worked in his life even one day. I mean, uh, he still gets like pocket money from his mother and he's still living with the money that his family stole from Iran when they were escaping Iranian revolution in 79 and that was a big amount of money. Washington Post at that time said $20 billion. I mean 1979 you have to like uh do calculation to understand how much would that be today. Uh, and that's Washington Post claim. I don't know whether it's true or not. So that's Razaf Alvie. But why they chose him? Because he is really saying anything that Israelis want. Who is his main aid is someone called S Kasamad who works with Mark Dowitz in FDD. So everything comes from FTD and then they put in front of him if he's not playing because Patrick Bav said he's not even doing his job well in like reading the letters written for him and acting as a leader. He's playing chess. He's playing different things and he's he's very lazy as a as a leader of Israeli paid regime change. He's very lazy and Israelis are very not fully happy with him anyway. So uh he's acting there. But I have to say he's only the cover for the moment because even though he's fulfilling the job at the moment and the kind of pahi ideology that he's defending is based on white supremacy, they have this delusion that Iranians are white Aryans who uh left Europe 5,000 years ago and they got ended here. So they have nothing to do with their Arab, Afghan, Pakistani neighbors. They are superior to them. And so uh Sha talked about uh his geographical dislocation. So we are dislocated in this region. That's why hatred of Arabs, hatred of Muslims, they see Islam which is part of Iranian culture as part as Arab invasion. and uh uh quantum Arab external uh intrusion into Iran. So they want to purify Iran from any Arab presence, any Islamification etc. So imagine if in Britain today we see Christianity as Roman invasion and we want to purify ourselves. We have to go back all the way to third or fourth century to go to pre-Christian uh Britain. So anyway, well you would start burning churches. This is why I guess they're burning mosques in Iran. It's because of this ideology that you're describing. And here's a perfect example of that. This is uh Goldie Gamar Gamari and Armen Navi celebrating videos of mosques burning in Iran from her live stream uh just yesterday. This is the woman who threatened to chop up Muhammad Mirandi to pieces and to kill Jenk U. 100% it will. All right, let let's let's see some mosque burning videos. Yeah, I I'm always down for mosque burning videos. Oh, wow. We got a big super chat. Hold on. Look at this. Oh, well then they Thank you. I'm an Iranian Jew with we see Thank you. All right, so watch this guys. Let's Can I just Someone said Goldie has turned into a pyromaniac. I mean, I'm I'm I'm Zorastrian. What do you expect? I I'm literally I'm Zorastrian. There you go. I don't understand why that's like breaking news. Well, I mean, that's a that's a good segue to this video. Py, there we go. You know what this is? This this is this is the Zarastrian comeback of Iran. Yes. We're cleansing things with fire as do. Well, fire is fire is the best cleanser, right? Yeah. Fire is a cleanser. Yeah. So watch this. You can see her pumping her fist as they burn a mosque. That kind of pra level violence. She's getting excited. I'm gonna stop the sad music that the Islamic Republic has put in this. Oh, you know what? Something tragic. Why? Why don't you play it from the beginning and I'll I'll add like that epic Persian music, the symphony music. Oh, so I mean that's the mentality of the monarchist propagandists in the US and Canada. And these aren't nobodyies. Uh Gamari has had meetings with Resa Palvi. There's photos of them together online. Uh and then there's this guy, what's his name? Mayar Tusi Tusi TV. He has publicly celebrated the burning of mosques. It's just a thing they're openly doing online. Uh Tusi appears to be one of the chief online propagandists for Palvi and the monarchists. So I because I you know I studied engineering in Iran in Shahif University and then here I studied philosophy in Britain. That's why I really want I have this tendency to go and find the sociological analyze phenomena as sociological organic. So I want to understand what makes these Iranian monarchies close to Zionist and thing. But I think as a as someone who's done few years of journalism, I think it's more than that. Yes, it's true that in the ideology there is a lot of tendency for white supremacy, hatred of Arabs, but also there are connected together here by Israeli embassy. Emish trader comes to London regularly and meet with Nayat Gorbani Mahar Tusi and a few other elements of the Iranian side and then also with the Zionist side. These people are the ones who have been running the cont protest from beginning of 7th of October to the very end. They are the ones who've been trying to agitate every single protesters in uh in London in the last two years. And it's quite amazing because in demonstration which have been sometimes as big as 800,000 people Nyak Gorbani comes with a big plot card saying that [ __ ] Hamas trying to agitate trying to attack. If they see Iranian people their tactics are even more horrendous. There was this uh 70 something years old woman who is a good friend of my aunt who is a economist who came to Britain in 1970s and there's a footage of that. The guy goes to her in Farsy and say, "You want to be raped by Hamas people? We do it ourselves." Yeah. Uh to a 70s something years old woman who was traumatized after that. And so they really went and targeted a specific Iranians. I was with my own child at the time who was like a year old. They came for me filming me and like really the language is beyond the the verbal violence is beyond. And so and this Nayak Gorbani has been arrested about 25 30 times and every time he got released after a while. How that happened? Yeah. Who helped him with his legal aid? Who paid for that? How did he become He hardly spoke English. Who how did he become the darling of the Zionist movement in Britain? Yeah. So Mahusi had a live yesterday with 75,000 people watching it. Yeah. So in a sense they become the internationality of the fascists, the internationality of the races. Who connects them to Tommy Robinson? I'm sure you've seen again Emily Schrader's video with Tommy Robinson that Tommy Robinson has gone to Holocaust Museum and has come out of it and he's been reformed. They ask him, "Do you still have the same sentiments you had about Holocaust once upon a time and you were like really rude and you were denying it?" And Tommy says, "No, no, no. It really changed me. No, no, I think differently." So he's reformed now. He's not anti-Semite anymore. He can be used. And Tommy Robinson has been there from day one in this uh Iranian protest in London against uh against the Iranian state asking for intervention. Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage. But I have one message. I mean given your show is in English to Tommy Robinson's followers with their own language. Tommy is lying to you. He is not truly racist. He's not truly xenophobic. If he was xenophobic as if Farage was xenophobic as they claim to be, same as Trump. If Trump was xenophobic, he would not have destroyed another country in Middle East, which would eventually create two, three, four million refugees and immigrants and about 200, 300,000 of them are going to end up in Britain. So if you don't want to see more blackhead people like me, if you don't want to see more Muslim like me, you should not destroy another country. So Tommy Robinson is not even a racist, xenophobic uh bigot. No, he's just an agent of Israel. And people should know, people should know that the ones who uh the ones who are following him, he's not delivering his promises to clean Britain from foreigners. He's actually ending up bringing more foreigners to your country. Well, he claimed he was dradicalized by Majid Noaz from the British backed uh Quilliam or was it called Quilliam? And then he went back to being a hooligan again, but he was but it was only after he was recruited by Israel to be a Zionist hooligan. And now he's pretending to be a reporter. And um he had a pretty embarrassing moment I think two days ago where he didn't know what targeted ads were. So, he accidentally revealed the ads targeted to his to himself. And uh well, I'll just leave it there. Uh anyone can look that up. Uh let's I I I I don't think I can go without uh playing. This is one of um Palvy's lobbyists in Washington who is on Israeli TV and I just called him the Persian Ben Shapiro. There are a bunch of lunatics living in the west hating the guts of western civilization and preferring to side with a genocidal terrorist organization like Hamas. These lunatics for two years were on the streets repeating talking points of a terrorist organization that killed innocent Israelis, raped women, killed children. They were on the streets chanting Hamas slogan. They were chanting in favor of erasing Israel off the face of the ma the earth. They were chanting what the Islamic Republic has been calling for. Where are these lunatics? Where are these useful idiots? What are they doing right now? Where innocent Iranians are sacrificing their lives for liberty? Where are they? Innocent Iranians with empty hands facing guns and bullets. And these lunatics are sitting silent in the west. They are doing nothing because they are nothing. They have done nothing in their lives. They are spoiled brats who live in freedom, in prosperity, and don't know what they even have. Well, I got to play that at double speed just so it sounds exactly like Ben Shapiro. Does Does it have Does it have the same stylist organization like mosque? These lunatics were now repeating talking points of a terrorist organization on the streets chanting Hamas. They were chanting Israel. They were chanting what is but at normal speed. these lunatics and he sounds like a cartoon villain delivering the final death sent mass death sentence to the left to the leftist anti-war movement. By the way, he's in Paris uh working for an organization that uh provides some pretty luxurious perks. So, uh he he didn't like that I tweeted that out. I I I I just send you kind of the little video of him, 24 seconds video of him in which uh he's being interviewed by Channel 4 and he says uh he's asking them to be bombed very openly. So no shame. He's like uh he's he's asked whether uh he wants Trump to bomb Iran or not. And he says people in Iran want it. And so I don't care whether you call it bombing or anything else. So I uh yeah I'm going to struggle to get that in our system right now but it's pretty clear what they want. But one thing I should say from here is even though they have attracted these sites uh around them in in their movement not the people people in Iran have to say those who chant Razab have sympathy with them. They are the result of sanctions. Sanctions make you tired. Sanction destroy future. Sanction is a crime against humanity. Sanction is slowly erode any any light at the end of tunnel. So you don't see anything and so anyone who gives you hope and so you will buy it. Uh there were there were two main channel Manoto TV based in Britain uh that never revealed his funding but apparently was uh about 20 about 90 million pound over like uh eight years or something um possibly from Israel they got the money. So they started in 2010 with one single agenda to make pre-revolutionary Iran look very glorious and very colorful. So they had this like beautiful young boys and girls in all in pastel colors. Uh they bought the right to have a Persian version of X Factor uh called Academia Guush and others and everything and they had this thing called the time tunnel. So they would show images of pahi Iran but they wouldn't tell you that that images were they belong to five persons of Iran because the rest were uh were rural they're very poor they were dealing with colola and basic disease and the life expectancy was 55 when the revolution happened most of women were illiterate and they wouldn't tell you that they would only show you north teani uh young beautiful women uh coming out. You've seen them. You've seen those pictures. Anything beautiful is Pal era. Yeah. So that that TV channel was designed for that. And Iran Iranian state really couldn't couldn't neutralize that couldn't uh fight back with that level of propaganda. So these young people who say Palav they they just they think is a is a kind of future. They don't know Paliv. They don't know what the grandfather has done, what the father has done. They don't know about the relationship. They don't know about his relationship with Israel and they're just tired of the current situation. They're tired of the lack of hope and future in the current economic situation. So u in a sense they are not but the thugs that the palvi movement has recruited I think they going to be they're going to look like moderate rebels in comparison with what will come after that because they are ths they are not going to fight the fight that you need to destroy a country so it's useful for the beginning they can make the streets of London New York and Washington unsafe for anyone who wants to say no to intervention fine They can go and burn few M and thin but for the next level you need to bring real people real fighters and real fighters are meahin who used to be in America's terrorist list if I'm not mistaken until 2012 and with the help of many people including Rudy Giuliani and and McCain they got out of that and and also Pompeo I mean if you look at their annual gather gathering they bring a lot of American senator they just give them money directly and and John Bolton John Bolton is another friend of them. So MK is a big contender to actually go into the country because they are coming from Marxist Islamist uh ideological background. They sold themselves to Saddam in 80s. They were involved in gassing courts in 80s for Saddam and uh then when Americans invaded Iraq in 2003 they were moved to uh Albania to Tyrana. Yeah, there are interesting uh footages. I think Lindsay uh Hilum from Channel 4 they she went to Tana tried to uh interview some of the people who defected from them. Apparently, even if you have a sexually arousing dream, you have to report to authorities in the camp and you have to let them know that you you have to apologize for that. Every morning, you have to come and talk about your inner feelings, making sure there is no uh and they are the ones who many of them are old, but some of them u uh they've been in the camp since 1980s, but they have some young recruits. also is going to be Kurdish guerilla forces like mek pjak pak party uh kumalev they are the ones who are pish mara they are the ones who have been fighting since they are 12 13 they know how to kill from very early age and they are like real gerilla I mean whether you like them or not but they know how to fight so this regime change operation is not going to be handed over to palvi he's just a transitory uh transitionary transitional figure with his sides who at best can uh do some street violence alongside Tommy Robinson. Tommy Robinson is a man to fight in Syria, is he? He's not. I mean, you need like real psychopaths with who who don't get drunk. Tommy and his friend, I mean, his his psych. They cannot fight. They cannot have an RPG on their thing. You need like people with real ideology, dark ideology to become Iran's new ISIS. And so I I was I was going to say that so as much as people look at and his people and think they're so violent, they're nothing with the forces who are waiting to jump and come to the surface. And so what would then happen in that scenario? Iran would be bulcanized presumably. I mean, the ultimate goal is really to destabilize and bulcanize Iran in order to weaken this historically powerful country at the center of Eurasia. I isn't that really what Israel wants and what the psychopaths in Washington who do Israel's bidding want? It is a big revenge of what Iran has done to America's presence in the region. I mean, look at that. As Wesley Clark said, the plan was to invade and occupy seven countries. Iraq, uh, Syria, uh, Somalia, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and then come for Iran at the end. And so, why why are we hearing so much about Somalia right now? It was always on the list. Uh, you think the daycare center harassment is unrelated to the fact that Somalia's been bombed nine times already this month? But anyway, you were saying so but then Iran didn't allow America to say and again to people who are not familiar with Iran and what Iran wants, you can disagree with many things in Iran but nonetheless Iranian leader Ali K and before him Kasim Solmani they always made it very clear for the regional governments and and and nations in the region that they have two aims. and nothing more. The first aim was uh American troops out of this region. Number two was a referendum for people in occupied Palest in Palestine to decide their own fate themselves because they know that with Israel as a colonial project there you cannot have peace, prosperity or any possibility of having regional cooperation there and with American troops there you cannot have any form of independence, prosperity and development. That was the only two things they wanted. So all these uh uh things ascribe to Iranians that they want to be hegemon of the region. They want to like uh irran Iranianize the region. They want to destroy the Arab monarchs and others. They just believe that we don't want American troops here. That's why when America came to Iraq, Iran helped some of the insurgents to push Americans out. However, Iranians didn't do it. Iraqis did it. Iraqis pushed American troops out. And when Israelis occupied parts of Lebanon, Iranians empowered them. They gave them knowhow information with Yemen. Again, Iranian gave them knowhow and nothing more. I mean, Iranian cannot fight the war for Yemen. So, so in a sense, that's the revenge that America is taking from Iran for not having allowed America to stay here and occupy here for a long time. But I think uh destabilizing Iran and bulcanizing Iran is more or less uh is is going to be good for America because if Iran is bulcanized, China will lose access to the whole region to a safe and a stable region. If this region becomes destabilized, even Saudi oil cannot go peacefully through a straight of Hormos and Persian Gulf. So it will be a big blow to China. America doesn't uh have much dependency on oil at the moment. It can create it. It is dependent on its own oil. But it's very important to sabotage China's access to uh to energy resources. Number one. But I think America would opt for a softer uh plan and scenario as well. A regime change without Iran's becoming bulcanized so they can control this this area. So that's why as Simh said in his uh article before America bombed Iran on tw on 19th of June 2025, Washington wants uh decapitating Iran's leader and the move and the transition of power to a moderate clergy possibly someone like Hassan Roani or another uh pro-western moderate clergy. those who want to normalize relationship with Israel, want to normalize relationship with America and they are willing to disarm Iran in line with what Washington and Tel Aviv want. I mean Iran is already disarmed in terms of its nuclear capability to a high extent. So possibly they're willing to shorten Iran's missiles to I don't know how much 250. So Iran can only attack Iraq and u and and Azarbaian. So uh but Israel wants bulcanization. Israel wants uh Kurdistan, Azarbaijan, Kistan and Baluchistan. Four region to fall into separatist wars of the Iranian Arabs, Iran, Iranian courts, Iranian Azaris and Iranian Baluch and Israeli forces and Israeli uh American uh kind of analysts are constantly in these places. are either in Baku, they're or in Slemania and they're trying to like find any fault line which is possible to be weaponized. Brenda Schiffer for example, she's constantly working on Azarbaijan and she's focusing on creating Azari separatist uh uh to come to four. The other one is working on Kurdistan and things but whether they succeed or not I I'm hesitant to think so. I think they are undermining Iran's power and also they're undermining Iran's internal coherence. You have to remember if you go to 1600 uh AD there are only 11 countries which is still exist and Iran is one of them. So Iran is not Iraq which is uh with all respect but uh being shaped out of Sykes Pico in 1918. Iran is not Jordan, is not Syria, is a country with uh and I'm not like again I don't want to sound nationalist. I'm just explaining the fact that the country as a whole existed before every other country in the region. So I think it would be a much harder job to try to bulcanize it. But I'm sure they can give a very hard time to Iranian state and Iranian people. They can definitely create uh terror network. They can have explosions. they can have city wars. Uh they would be happy with even like few of Iranian cities fall to the hand of uh opposition and terror groups for few days. I think even that would give them opportunity and excuse to call for no zone and and things of this level. But I don't think they can destroy Iran easily. And I have to say again, Iranian state still has about 10 million uh really diehard supporters. I mean what you see on I mean I'm critical of that. I've been always criticizing Iranian state from within saying that do not only talk to your own base. Iran is bigger than that. We are 85 million. Try to include everyone. And I think many people like me are trying to reform the state from within and make sure that Iran Iranian state doesn't only rely on its own dieh hard supporters. But with 10 million any state can survive. 10 million who don't get drunk in the middle of war like Tommy Robinson and and and Maherti. They are not on drugs. They they don't need uh copagon. They like they have religious belief that you have to fight all the way to your martyrdom for this uh to keep this state stay alive. the same people who many of them fought in Syria against ISIS and and many of them got martyed. So, so in a sense with 10 million Iranian state is not gonna fall and the lie that Iranian state is falling. Iranian state is about collapse. This is like black propaganda. We had this black propaganda during woman life freedom as well. the news was coming out of Iran International and then going to some of the western media outlet was the fact that Iranian IRGC are flying to Venezuela. They're not. And even if there was Venezuela, they're going to arm Venezuela and give them some drone and come back. At the beginning of this protest as well, they said Arachi has flown to uh Beirut with his family and possibly not come back. The other news coming from Deutsche from Euro News is amazing. If you just go back a week ago, you see many of these reputable outlets, they sold the reputation so cheap. Euro news said Mas Peskan Muhammad President Muhammad Balib, the head of parliament and about hundreds of Iranian uh top authorities have asked visa from France to fly to run. Why France? A country full of Iranian opposition and full of full of Zionist. They can go somewhere better. we go to somewhere with better weather I think and so so in a sense the the image produced is Iranian state is about falling but I ask every one of your audience based on again the basic principles of political science a state will fall when there is a big division in the public and I think yes there's a meaningful division in the public but not the way that they show in the west uh there's a division in the international community. There's a division in the elite. There is a division in the Iranian elite as well. Half of them are reformist, pro- west liberal and the other half is like they want to be independent and fight against the west and have more internal integrity. But the first one which is the most important condition for a regime collapsing is defection and division among military and security forces. And I want to repeat this very out loud that not a single person in Iranian IRGC, Iranian army, Iranian police, Iranian uh intelligence minister or sepa has come out and saying that I'm defecting. I've had enough. I mean I'm sure there are many corrupt elements in them and people always talk about the corruption but why not even a single one of them has been bought. You remember that in the 12 days war I think Washington Post published this uh audio recording from Israelis calling Iranian top authorities giving them few hours to defect otherwise they and the family would be killed and not a single one of this estate defected not a single one of them defected so I think I'm not saying that this state is eternal but the day that you see someone coming and saying that I used to be commander of IRGC and now I'm not then you can think about that but until that day anyone who talk about the imminent collapse of Iranian state is just lying so such a big lie that everyone should just u question them and the fact that people don't question channel 4 BBC 1 news night sky Sunday times is just unbelievable that when you think about that how much propaganda exists for a normal average person in the West is like is beyond me. And the fact that all these people have seen the same pattern of propaganda in Syria and Libya and they still fall for the same trap is is unbelievable. Unbelievable. that for those who have some critical faculties and uh I IQ above 85 well the corporate media is discrediting itself again discrediting itself before their eyes and they know where to look for the other story and that's why we're doing the work that we do here and that's why we had you on as a guest at the grreyzone Ali Aliad uh excellent presentation outstanding analysis this where remind people who are watching now where they can find your work. Uh people can find my work on YouTube if they go to Jadal which is J E D A L English and I suggest that they go and watch there are four or five short documentaries there. One of them is about Iran's nuclear project which actually tells you is not only about Islamic Republic. This is like any it goes back before revolution and it explains how painful it's been for Iran to fight for its sovereignity and having deterrence capability and the fact that even until today Iran has refused to build a bomb. It tells you that among every other state in the region and I'm saying that in a difficult time which has they have made it impossible for anyone to defend this state. I say as a critique of this internally, I say Iranian state even today with the current uh numbers of the dead coming out has more integrity than every other state in the region. Iran has not even become fully nuclear and a state as a threshold state because they believe that we don't want to make we don't want to build weapon of mass destruction. Iran has never used chemical weapon in this region while American allies have done. Iran has never kept the biological arsenal. Yeah. So, uh there we have a documentary about that. There's another documentary about Hezbollah. Again, people watch that and realize Hezbollah has very little to do with Iran. Is about the organic sentiments of people in South Lebanon who did not want to be occupied by foreign occupation. And it's very unbelievable for Europeans and Western people who have watched endless number of movies about Nazi occupation of Western Europe. and they sympathize with partisans and with anyone who was in resistance and they don't understand similar resistance by other people in other regions and and there are as I said other works there about like Iran's missile and about drone capabilities and so many other uh interviews with you with other people and and I encourage them to see okay well check out uh Jidal Ali Ali Zada thanks again for joining us at the gray zone and we look forward to talking to you again. Best of luck. Thanks for inviting me. And our documentaries or my documentaries at the Greyzone I think are especially relevant right now. um uncaptured, my recent documentary on how minorities, religious minorities and particularly Jews exist inside the Islamic Republic, which was co- directed and produced with a Kurdish Iranian filmmaker named Maria Mavati is free at our channel. recommend watching that and my tour of the IRGC's museum of ballistic missiles outside Thrron where I basically give you a tour of the showing the development of Iran's ballistic missiles which would be on display in any conflict. Uh, also a tour of the Savvak torture museum showing what people lived under under the sha, the severity of the torture. And the lead torturer whose uh figure is recreated through a mannequin at that museum, a wax figure was actually he came out of hiding in Los Angeles at a woman life freedom protest in 2023. So this is the real face of monarchism and it isn't the face of freedom. And I think those uh video reports and documentaries I was able to produce based on my trip to Iran in May are very valuable resources right now. as is my interview with Nicholas Maduro, which I conducted on my last trip to Venezuela, which was, I think, uh, 2021 or 2022. Um, and it's, you know, people are going back to that as a reference. It's one of the few interviews you'll see with him and an American interviewer where he's not being treated to an kind of enhanced inter like a an interrogation. and now he can't can barely speak for himself because he is a prisoner, a political prisoner of the US regime. He's been kidnapped. So, I wanted to do a segment on Venezuela. Um, but we went overtime with Ali because his analysis was so outstanding. So, we're going to follow up in a few days and cover the situation in Venezuela. There's a lot more news to catch up on. Um, it was it was really interesting for me to hear Ali explain how the opposition channels being backed by Saudi Arabia and Israel were pumping images of glorifying life in the in the sha er in the era of the sha under the Iranian monarchy um with nostalgic images of families before the mullas took over in 1979. And I remember it. I actually um had an image of uh my my family uh my I had some Iranian family who lived there then and actually fled in 1979 to New York um to uh Morningside Heights in New York actually. And I wanted to show a photo of them before Iran turned really dark and was controlled by the Mullas. Um and this is them. That's my um my uncle Jerry and his brother George Elaine and uh that's their friend who was left behind. Um and I he he joined the MEK actually and went to Iraq soon after. So yeah, fond memories. Anyway, thank you. So thank you all so much for watching. Uh subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so yet on YouTube. Subscribe to us on Substack. You'll get everything free in your inbox and you will learn about our new campaign. Uh since we have been suspended by PayPal hopefully tomorrow. Um you can still you can easily support us, find ways to support us on our Substack site or at thegrazone.com. Uh but thank you all for being here and as always we aim to tell you what you are not supposed to know. See you next time. Peace.
Trump CORNERED, Iran's DEVASTATING Missile Warning Calls His Bluff | Ben Norton Danny Haiphong Streamed live 2 hours ago #iran #trump #ww3
Trump tapped out of his own war with Iran at the last minute, leading to a complete collapse of the regime change operation against the country says geopolitical analyst Ben Norton who joins the show to break down why the US failed to strike Iran despite major preparations, and what it says about the current state of America's declining empire.
Transcript
Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the program. It's your host Danny Hiong. Please hit the like button as you come on. Helps boost the stream. As you can see, I have Ben Norton back on the program from Geopolitical Economy Report. Ben, great to see you on this 2026. It's been a wild one. How are you? Yeah, I mean, personally, I'm okay, but with all the madness in the world, it's it's a crazy time and it's hard to be excited about the way that the world is going right now. Yeah, at this point the the Trump administration appears to be averaging about a war a week. And uh we have to get into what just happened with the latest war escalation by the Trump administration because Donald Trump essentially cornered himself into uh striking Iran. He was going to strike Iran. Everything was set up to strike Iran. There were planes in the air according to reports. And then at the last minute, this is at least how the narrative is being told. At the last minute, the Iran strikes were delayed because of concerns raised by not just Trump aids, but even Israel saying that Israel, this is according to Axios, Israel felt they needed more time to prepare for Iran's retaliation. There was also a lot of talk, Ben, about the uh Gulf States and Turkey being very concerned about Iran's retaliation. Iran was warning every minute of every day leading into Trump's promise of strikes that there would be US bases struck if the United States decided to attack. And Donald Trump did not attack. Uh, but this has come amid now major disappointment. I'll just play this and I'll get your first reaction. Major disappointment from the likes of people like Lindsey Graham who are really banking on this strike happening. Here we go. Here's what he had to say. Lot of headlines out there that are uh, in my view not accurate. President Trump's resolve is not the question. question is, and when we do an operation like this, should it be bigger or smaller? I'm in the camp of bigger. Time will tell. I'm hopeful and optimistic that the regime days are numbered. So, this came as Trump promised, help was on the way to the protesters, quote unquote protesters. Uh Iran of course was not only warning about its uh you know military response with its ballistic missiles but also uh there were millions of people on the streets in Iran uh demonstrating for the sovereignty and uh you know preservation of their current government. Ben, what's your reaction to all of this? Lindsey Graham looked very dejected and sounded very dejected there as uh the strikes have been delayed. Yeah, and he was extremely red. I mean, it's like he's either drunk at 11 in the morning or just he's been crying all night. This reminds me of this narrative we've heard for decades about China, right? Gordon Chong has been saying for 20 years now, that China is on the verge of collapse. He published this book, I think it was in 2012, the coming collapse of China. China obviously has not collapsed. Now we hear the coming collapse of Iran. Every few years we hear this. The Iranian regime, the mullas are on the verge of collapse. In this case, what's actually quite striking is how openly the US and Israel were backing these very violent riots in Iran. You know, if you listen to the Western media, they call them peaceful protests. Trump called them peaceful protests. They were extremely violent. And you you've even seen some media mainstream media outlets admit that these riers were burning down many government buildings in Iran. They were even burning down mosques which is crazy. I mean like this is a religious country and burning down religious institutions is going to alienate so many people. It shows how extreme a lot of these riers are. And we've seen that Trump was openly supporting these very violent protests. Trump called on them to take over Iranian institutions, which is a call for regime change. And back last year when Trump bombed Iran, he also openly called for regime change in Iran. He's repeated the slogan, make Iran great again, MIGA. And as for Israel's role, a major Israeli media outlet, Israel's Channel 14, admitted that foreign countries, unnamed foreign countries, but you know, it's heavily implied the US and Israel are arming these so-called protesters. That's what the way that the Israeli media reported this. They're obviously not protesters if they're getting weapons from foreign countries to wage war against their own country. That's an armed insurgent. But the Israeli media reported that these Iranians are getting weapons to try to to try to overthrow the government. And this Israeli media outlet reported that this is why hundreds of security forces including police and other security officers of the Iranian government have been killed by these armed insurgents. This is again according to the Israeli media boasting about this. And then Mike Pompeo, who is the former CIA director and former Secretary of State in Trump's first term, Pompeo went out on Twitter and he he praised all of the Iranian protesters and the Mossad agents walking aside walking beside them is what he said. So, it's just like they're just they're saying the quiet part loud. They're not even hiding that this is a blatant regime change attempt using extreme violence, burning down buildings, burning down mosques, killing Iranian officials like they did in Libya in 2011 and Syria. Now, Libya and Syria, of course, had different paths to the same result, which is destruction and chaos and destabilization. In 2011, we saw that the US backed these violent so-called protests, these riots and insurgencies inside Libya. And then it culminated in NATO, US-led NATO forces waging a war, bombing Libya and killing Libya's leader, Marmar Gaddafi, causing a failed state. Here we are 15 years later, and there's still no central unified government in Libya. There's still an ongoing civil war, chaos, openair slave markets. I mean, this is what the US and NATO unleashed in Libya. They brought they literally brought chatt slavery back to the African continent. And then, of course, in the case of Syria, it was even bloodier. Honestly, you had a civil war that you the US started this. I mean, even calling it a civil war is misleading. You had a straightup proxy war. The US, Israel, Gulf States, Turkey flooded Syria with weapons, waged this insurgency, this war against the Syrian government. After 13 years, they succeeded in overthrowing the Syrian government. And now here we are 15 years later. And Syria has a puppet government that is literally run by the former leader of al-Qaeda who is a senior official in ISIS. This is the guy Muhammad Al Gulani, also known as Ahar Shara. He's the leader now of Syria. By the way, you know, the West loves to talk about democracy and Iran and all that nonsense. Syria never had an election for the former leader of al-Qaeda to be their leader. He just declared himself the so-called leader at gunpoint and he has no intentions of having elections because if you actually believe that any of this has to do anything with democracy, I mean, you have the geopolitical understanding of a child. I it's just so frustrating seeing people when it comes to Iran say we have to support human rights and women's rights and democracy. If you actually believe that I mean you have drunk the Kool-Aid to such a degree that you are fundamentally incapable of understanding what's happening in the world politically and it after what happened in Libya and then after what happened in Syria, if you look at what's going on in Iran and you actually believe that propaganda, I don't even know what to say to people anymore. It's just like you have not learned anything from the past 15 years. Not even to mention the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 again in the name of human rights and democracy. A million Iraqis died and now we have a new Iraqi government that you know it's not entirely independent of the US. But I mean what was the point of that? Just destabilizing this entire region killing a million people. And now they want to repeat that in Iran, which by the way is significantly larger than Iraq, significantly larger than Syria. There are a 100 million Iranians. Like if the US actually does succeed, fortunately I don't think they will succeed. We've been told again and again that they will and they haven't. I don't think they will succeed because so many Iranians have seen what has happened in their neighboring countries and they're going to rally behind the government and they're not going to allow this to happen. But of course, this is what the US and Israel would like to do is I mean, in their best case scenario, what they really want is they want to put in power the so-called crown prince Resa Palvi, this puppet who is a complete fail son. He's never had a real job his entire life. His his so-called job has been the crying sickopantic son of the dictator, the westernbacked monarch, the Shaw, who was put in power. Let's not forget the context here. In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence organized a coup to overthrow Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mosedc because he nationalized Iran's oil reserves which previously were being exploited by US and British oil corporations. And in 1953, the CIA and and MI5 organized this coup. They overthrow Iran's democratic government and put in power the monarchy, the Sha, who then proceeds to run, by the way, on the issue of human rights, he he proceeds he then proceeds to run one of the most brutal regimes in the history of the country in which the Savak, the notorious secret police of Iran under the sha, just torture and kidnap and kill any dissident. I mean, they make the current Iranian government look like it's, you know, all cuddly based on hugs and rainbows. Like, it's a complete joke. This idea that the West cares about human rights. And then in 1979, which is really where everything starts here, the Iranian people rose up in a revolution and overthrew this westernbacked puppet monarchy. And ever since that revolution in 1979, the US and the West more broadly have tried to overthrow Iran's revolutionary government, the US has imposed illegal sanctions in violation of international law aimed at suffocating the Iranian people by collapsing the economy like the illegal sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba and Zimbabwe and other countries. And yeah, there are serious economic issues in Iran. There are high rates of inflation. There are shortages of certain goods. And that's largely because of the sanctions. People love to say, you know, there's corruption and there's mismanagement. Corruption, mismanagement exists in every country on Earth. Look at the US talking about corruption. I mean, we're now seeing some of the most naked corruption ever. Look at the insider trading that just openly goes on in Congress. Look at Trump just like enriching himself with all these businesses with the UAE and all this stuff, all these crazy deals. Like corruption and mismanagement exists in every country, but what doesn't exist in every country are suffocating illegal sanctions imposed by the world's hegeimon that dominates the global financial system which is based around the US dollar. The US has been economically suffocating Iran for decades. So you see, you know, Andrew Yang, these politicians in the US say we must help the people of Iran. The only response to that nonsense should be, okay, if you truly want to help the people of Iran, then take your boot off the neck of the Iranian people and lift these illegal sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy and hurt millions of Iranians. Yeah. And Cornell West said, uh, we must stand with uh anyone who's oppressed, including Iranians. Uh, and yeah, they're oppressed by the US. Yeah, exactly. That's what you're saying. It's like, okay, yes. So, we need to stand by them and, you know, make sure we listen to those uh millions of people who are out on the street saying that they want to protect their own government, their own country from the United States, from Israel, from those proxies. And Ben, you know, when you said earlier that Trump and the United States won't succeed here, I I fully agree with that. And Moon of Alabama wrote something really interesting saying essentially Trump here we go. Hold on. uh uh that Trump essentially uh chickenened out. Here it is right here. Um you know, Moon of Alabama's great work in a very succinct manner goes over all the elements that just didn't exist in this round, right? You didn't have widespread support from the Gulf. I'm sorry. We We can't see it. Oh, you can't see it. Hold on. No, at least I can. Okay. Okay. It's okay. It's okay. Let me uh let me just add it one more time. Um can you see it now or No. or no, it's okay. It's Yeah, I can see it now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, um in, you know, in this piece, very succinct, just goes over the elements that did not exist, uh during this, uh round of potential strikes. A big part of it was that the Gulf countries, regional countries, they were very afraid of what Iran could do and that Iran was far more prepared. We, you know, Iran had already quashed the violent riots. Uh, and the United States and Israel didn't have time to prepare their missile defenses. And hell, Ben, a lot of those destroyers and those aircraft carriers, they are in the Caribbean now. And they and or in the South China Sea or in the Asia Pacific, they have to travel all the way uh to uh the Persian Gulf, to the Red Sea. Very far. Very far. So it was not the right time. Yes. And a lot of people are saying, "Oh, this could happen again." But it seems like Iran is far more prepared this time. That's how it seemed when there was plane there were planes in the air. They were definitely doing reconnaissance. I can imagine that Iran already had since Trump was talking for days about a strike, Iran had their air defenses ready. And hell, even if their air defenses aren't, you know, 50 60 70% accurate, uh there's a risk. There's a big risk. So, I think that's I in my opinion, I think that's what happened here. A lot of people are saying, you know, have a lot of different theories, but it seems like uh while this isn't over, this was a major major uh in my opinion, a major win for Iran, showing that, you know, they can defend themselves. There are millions of people on the street. Starlink was shut down. What are your what are your reactions to these developments? Yeah, a lot of things you mentioned there. First of all, it looks like Iran did establish some kind of deterrence because it showed that if the US did attack Iran again that Iran could respond effectively and punish Israel and some of the Gulf states, including, by the way, Qatar hosts the largest US military base in the region. Of course, the US has many military bases in the region and thousands of troops, but Qatar hosts the Alu air base, which is the most important. And we saw reports that the US actually was withdrawing troops from this major air base in Qatar, anticipating that it would be bombed by Iran. So clearly, there was some kind of deterrence established here. And Iran has spent the past year preparing for another US attack after, you know, Trump bombed it. What do they call it? The 12-day war or whatever. Um, Israel and the US bombed Iran. And ever since then, Iran has been preparing knowing that there's going to be another attack. And by the way, I I've been closely following the Chinese media. I'm speaking to you here from from Beijing. And there's been a lot of coverage of satellite data showing that US military forces have been surrounding Iran in the past several weeks and there were there were a lot of Chinese analysts were expecting there could be a US attack sometime soon. So obviously if they know this and this information is public then certainly Iranian intelligence and the Iranian military also know this and they've been preparing. So, I think, you know, Trump recognized that it would not be as easy as last time when the US just bombed Iran and then he said, "Okay, we're done." I think he recognized that if they were to bomb Iran again, it would potentially escalate into a larger conflict and Trump doesn't want to get, you know, bogged down in in a larger war. Trump loves bombing countries, but he obviously doesn't like to have troops on the ground because this is part of his whole image, right? He's he says peace through strength. His whole thing is, yes, we're going to use military force when they think it's necessary to bully small countries, but they don't want to get involved in larger conflicts, especially with countries that can actually defend themselves. They love bombing women and children in Gaza. They love kidnapping leaders like Venezuela's president, Nikolas Maduro. They love bombing Venezuela, a small country that can't defend itself. But Iran is a pretty big medium-sized power. It's not a superpower like China and Russia, but Iran is a is a pretty major power in the region. It's probably the most powerful military force except maybe Turkey might be at the same level as Iran. Like these are very serious powers. And Trump recognized that. I mean, look how I I mentioned the Iraq war. Look how devastating the Iraq war was for Iraq and for the region. And Iraq is quite small compared to Iran. Iran is several times larger. So yeah, I think it's true that that Trump chickened out. And I think also, you know, we know that Trump is very close to the Gulf monarchies, especially Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and the Emirati monarchs. And you know, Jared Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, has been doing a lot of investments in the Gulf monarchies. And you can bet that Iran also has a t a very long target list of what it could hit in the Gulf monarchies, including potentially what would be interesting is if they start targeting investments made by the Trump family. So I mean it's interesting. It's one of these moments where the US I know you want to talk about Venezuela and we should. The US again they love attacking small countries that can't defend themselves. In 1983, the US invaded Grenada, a tiny island in the Caribbean. In 1989, the US invaded Panama, a very small country in Central America, and kidnapped Panama's leader, Maniega, who ironically had been a longtime US asset. But, you know, so so was Saddam Hussein. Uh, and then now we see, you know, many other examples. The US in the 80s waging war in Nicaragua, another small country. the US, you know, Iraq, not as small, but still not that big, invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan. It could not even win in Iraq and Afghanistan, by the way. It lost both of those wars. The US could destroy Libya, which wasn't able to defend itself. It's in pure chaos today. And now the US is attacking Venezuela, a country that can't defend itself. But Iran is again of a different level. Uh, two other quick points I want to make. one on this issue of Trump loving to bomb countries and this like fake anti-interventionist rhetoric. Just last year in his first year, Trump bombed seven countries, which by the way means that thus far in this administration, he's tied with Obama in all four of his years. And Obama, of course, was a a war criminal. Obama bombed seven countries. And when you consider Trump's first term and his second term combined, of course, Obama had two terms. Trump has now the world record for bombing more countries than any other president in US history. You know that the so-called peace president and peacemaker, he's bombed 10 countries now because he bombed the seven countries that Obama bombed, the same seven. And Trump added three more countries, Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. He bombed Nigeria on Christmas. And you know, Biden was also a war criminal. There's no excuse in the horrific crimes he oversaw and the genocide in Gaza. I'm not in any way trying to to defend Biden here, but just to understand the context. According to a study published by CBC, Trump in in his first year, he bombed more countries or let me let me take that back. Trump bombed countries more times. So, the number of bombings overall, Trump bombed countries more times in one year than Biden did in all four years. And I'm not, again, I'm not trying to excuse Biden, who's also a war criminal, but just to get an idea of how extremely hawkish the Trump administration has actually been. A lot a lot of MAGA supporters love to listen to Trump's rhetoric, but then when you actually look at what he's doing, it's just crazy. Every day they're bombing another country. And actually, anti-war.com has done a lot of really good reporting on this, especially on Somalia. We're we're two weeks into Somalia and Trump has already b two weeks in. We're two weeks into 2026 and Trump has already bombed Somalia a dozen times almost every day. So, I mean, it's crazy just seeing how wararmongering, how hawkish this administration is. One other quick point which is just hilarious. The far-right Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Kunita Machalo just met with Trump in the White House and she gave Trump her so-called Nobel Peace Prize, which is the perfect symbol of this fake peace prize being given by this far-right extremist from Venezuela who openly lobbied for the US to attack her country and who openly supported Trump's bombing of her country. Trump killed more than 100 Venezuelans. He kidnapped Venezuela's president. She supported all of this. She won the fake Nobel Peace Prize in order to well, it's real, but the Nobel fake peace prize, which is a complete farce. I mean, Obama, the war criminal, also won this fake peace prize. And Henry Kissinger, one of the worst war criminals in modern history, also won the fake peace prize. So, Machalo was given that so-called peace prize as part of a campaign literally to defend war, to justify war. I mean, this is just so Orwellian. This is the goal of the of the so-called Nobel Peace Prize is to manufacture consent for more wars. And now she just gave it to Trump, the the US president who has the world record for bombing the most countries. It's just we live in opposite land. It's a crazy world we live in today. Yeah. And uh she did all of that without anything in return, Ben, because the Trump administration immediately squashed any idea that they were going to change policy and support her and her people in uh eventually taking over in Venezuela, which doesn't look like it's anywhere um in the cards anytime soon, ever, at least in the near future. So what's interesting too, Ben, what you were talking about with Donald Trump in his record. He was also remember early in his administration very gung-ho, very like I am about getting rid of all the NOS's all where you know stop spending money on humanitarianism and even the National Endowment for Democracy was said to be closed. But throughout this whole Iran really what it was was a very open proxy war uh those riots he was from the very beginning using the same justifications that all presidents before him have ever used in in terms of using these proxies these protesters from Euromaidon to Venezuela you know during the kimbas all of it uh uh it's the same exact thing and even after the strike didn't happen he essentially has been taking credit for Iran not killing all the protesters, right? He says, "An Iranian protester will no longer be sentenced to death after President Trump's warnings. Likewise, others." This is good news. And he claimed credit for uh using the threat of war and strikes as saving all of these protesters from executions. It's the same narrative over and over and over again, Ben, to do the same things that we've seen other presidents do. And yet, we're supposed to believe it's different. Yeah, related to this, it's so funny. I I don't know if you looked at the Venezuelan court documents, the US court documents in the show trial against Venezuela's president, Nikolas Maduro. And of course, we know that the US government has lied about many things and the Justice Department was forced to admit that Maduro is not the leader of a so-called drug cartel, the the fake cart de loles, the so-called sons cartel, which was invented by the US government. The DOJ admitted that's a lie. But now what's funny is they're changing their argument. And I saw on Twitter there were people joking about how Trump has gone full woke and the Trump DOJ under Pam Bandi is now arguing that they have to prosecute Maduro because the Venezuelan government was overseeing these projects in indigenous land. So that's one of the arguments that they're using is that the Venezuelan government supposedly was violating the rights of indigenous people. Therefore, it was a humanitarian intervention. I mean, this is the the neoconservative rhetoric that we've always heard, you know, in every single US war of aggression. And now the Trump administration is bringing it back. And I have to say, I mean, you and I talked about this, Danny. I remember months ago or years more than a year ago before Trump even was officially president. I remember when he nominated Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. I just knew that his foreign policy would be like this. Honestly, I It's actually crazier than I thought it would be. I knew it would be very hawkish. I knew they would wage wars, but like kidnapping foreign leaders and all this nonsense. Like it's just it's a whole two a whole new level of just neoconservatism 2.0. And I have to say that as evil and machavelian as Marco Rubio is, I mean, he's up there with Henry Kissinger when it comes to just being like this just bloodthirsty, heartless imperial strategist. But you have to say that at least compared to someone like Trump and Hexath who are morons, Rubio has actually been very smart again in this mchavelian way and how Rubio who's been a neoconservative his entire political career. He supported every US war and he's actually been very smart in how he's combined this like MAGA nationalist ideology with neoonservatism. And basically Rubio recognized that neoonservatism was dead. The the marketing of it, the branding of it was dead. And you saw these MAGA Republicans criticize neocons and Max Boot and all these people. So Rubio basically end he he infiltrated the so-called MAGA movement from within and helped to take it over and turn it into what we're seeing now. And I remember that when when Rubio was still a senator, he started talking about like we need an American industrial policy and supporting tariffs and protectionism, which is funny because he had long also been economically very neoliberal, free trade, free market, all that nonsense. He kind of took this turn toward like fake populist rhetoric, but then he combined it with neoconservative foreign policy, very hawkish interventionist wararmongering, but instead of saying that it's about human rights and democracy and all that, he made it we have to defend our national security, we have to stop drugs, we have to stop narotism and and all this, combining like war on terror rhetoric with war on drugs rhetoric, combining it with like we need security and in order to have security we have to have peace through strength like Marco Rubio was able to combine the basic tenets of neocons neoconservatism and synthesize it with MAGA Trumpist you know so-called nationalism and all of this so this is this is Trump 2.0 I know. I mean, we could see this in the first Trump administration. Let's not forget, you know, Trump supporters love to make excuses for him. And they say in his first term that he was forced to appoint all of these neocons, like John Bolton, the worst neocon of all probably, I mean, the the godfather of the neocons, one of the co-founders of the project for the new American century, Pinoch. And uh, you know, John Bolton was the national security adviser. And then you had CIA director turned secretary of state Mike Pompeo in Trump's first term. Another insane mouth foaming neocon. Trump supporters in his first term claimed that he had no choice. The deep state forced him to surround himself with neocons. And then you had McMaster who was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. They ignored the fact that Trump voluntarily appointed these people. He had the authority to do so.
And now in his second term where they you know they say it's dark ma and they say that Trump is fighting the deep state and all this stuff and he appointed all these people like you know Tulsi Gabbard one of the biggest frauds in you know recent history. Tulsi Gabbard claimed she was going to fight the deep state and and oppose regime change and regime and interventionism. And now as she's been the head of the US intelligence agencies, Trump has bombed Iran and bombed Venezuela, which she claimed that she would she's on record multiple times saying that she's against these things and that she would fight against them and she would oppose them and yeah, silence. Silent not even and not even in the rooms often times. I mean, this is the way the media has been saying it. She's not even in the room. Supported it. She supported both attacks on Venezuela and Iran. Silence would actually be better. She came out and justified it. I mean, it's just like complete complete like moral bankruptcy. No consistency, no morals. In her case, I think it's quite likely that she was always an intelligence asset. She's literally the head of US intelligence agencies. I mean, like that just it's just blaringly obvious. But, you know, she was also part of this campaign like Marco Rubio to try to like co-op this popular energy, right? like these different populist movements on the left and you know right-wing populism as well. We saw like you know anti-interventionism became a big current on both the left and the you know so-called populist right. So Tulsi Gabbard she started out as like a Bernie Democrat and then she joined the Republican party and she like recruited a lot of these kind of like libertarian leaning Republicans to all support Trump. you know, we saw the same thing with Kennedy who's now, you know, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Like they they just brought they they sheep dogged, you know, like you have these people in the Democratic party who sheep dog to try to bring like left-wing people like us who are critical of the Democrats to try to bring them into the Democratic party. Similarly, we saw Tulsi Gabbard and Kennedy and these others were like sheep dogging for the Republicans, bringing in these independents and like libertarian-minded anti-interventionist people to all vote for Trump so they can carry out the same wars but on steroids this time. And again, Marco Rubio, like I'm not like I'm not absolving Trump in any way. Trump is the one who voluntarily appointed all these crazy neocons in both terms, including now he has Pete Hegsth, another card carrying neocon, Fox News host, and also just a complete And by the way, an an extreme end times fundamentalist. We've talked about this in the past, Danny. In 2020, Pete Hgsathth and for people don't know, Pete Hgsathth is the head of the Pentagon, previously known as the Department of Defense. Now, Trump has proudly renamed it the Department of War, which again is so funny, the so-called peace president proudly renaming the Pentagon the Department of War. At least it's a more honest name. It's a much more honest name. But anyway, Pete Hgsth is now the Secretary of War. He wrote this book five, six years ago in which he it's called American Crusade. He says that the US proudly is in a crusade and he said what are the targets of this holy war? He calls it a holy war. He says the target the three main targets one China which he always calls communist China. to the international left including you know Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and then of course he said not just Iran but Islam as a religion there are two billion Muslims but if you read his book and I I have a video about that he especially says that Iran is like the main target and he says there's like this is left-wing Islamo alliance islamos socialist alliance against the US so the US has to go around and overthrow the Iran Ian government and the Venezuelan government and culminating with the Chinese government. This is the guy who's the head of the Pentagon right now. And then finally, you have Marco Rubio, who by the way, I always emphasize this because it's very important to keep in mind. Rubio is the second person in US history to simultaneously hold the position of both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. Danny, do you know who the other person in US history was? the only other person to simultaneously hold both positions. No, I don't who. Henry Kissinger. Yes. Yes. Rubio really is like a Kissingerian figure in the way that like Kissinger was this figure who was present in many administrations and was always like this. He was seen as like this kind of godfather of US foreign policy. always, you know, very Mchavelian, completely heartless, heartless, ruthless, an insane war criminal who had the blood of tens of millions of people on his hands. Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao, Bangladesh, Chile, the coup and Chile, the list goes on and on of his crimes. And Rubio is now very much playing a similar role. Rubio is the Kissinger to, you know, the Nixon of Trump, right? And if you just look what's happening, this is just one year. Imagine what they're going to try to do in the next few years. They're already talking about invading Greenland and colonizing Greenland. Greenland. They're threatening to attack Cuba. They're threatening Colombia. They're threatening to bomb Mexico. And who knows what else will be on the target list in the next few years. This is absolutely crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with Trump snapping fingers and at any point it's a a different position, a different take and a different even a different approach in policy. It changes. so quickly and that's by design. Uh because the people who you're talking about here, Ben, Rubio, Heg said, I mean they HGA, forget that Rubio, let's be very clear, Rub guys like Rubio, they are uh uh really they are the architects and Trump is someone who loves to bomb, but he is not a strategist. There's no doubt he is not someone who is looking to shape the world order in his image. He doesn't have that in his uh in in in you know in his tool belt. But back to Iran uh quickly, Ben, just I just want to make one quick note on that really quickly. If if you watch the press conference that Trump gave just a few hours after bombing Venezuela, killing over 100 Venezuelans and kidnapping Venezuela's internationally recognized constitutional president, Maduro. That is a very interesting press conference because throughout it, right behind Trump, Marco Rubio is standing there mostly quietly, although Rubio does speak a few times. And throughout that that press conference, you can see that Trump he'll say something and then he'll be like, "Isn't that right, Marco?" And he'll like give credit to Marco for a lot of to Rubio for a lot of stuff. And especially like he he makes it clear that that Rubio was like kind of the mastermind of this strategy for war on Venezuela. And of course I'm not evolving I'm not absolving Trump. Trump Trump is the one who gave the green light. But like this whole idea that like R that uh that Maduro supposedly is a drug trafficker and all this and like narot terrorism and the links to Iran and all this like Rubio is the one who's like overseeing this. And then he and then Trump's like, "Yeah, great great idea, Marco. Let's do that." And then another point in that interview at that press conference is Trump is asked about uh Cuba and whether or not this is a threat to Cuba and he's like, "Yeah, we're talking about Cuba." He's like, "Marco, do you want to say a few words?" So, it's like once again, like they're just working handinand glove on these issues. And then another point in that press conference is Trump is is asked about uh Honduras because there's this myth that the Venezuelan government is linked to drug trafficking. Completely absurd. Meanwhile, Trump in December pardoned pardoned and released from prison one of the worst drug traffickers on earth, Juano Hernandez, who's the former US backed dictator of Honduras after the US carried out a coup in Honduras in 2009. So, this guy was convicted of trafficking more than 400 tons of cocaine, which is just like when you think about how much that is, it's completely insane. this guy was imprisoned and then Trump pardoned him and then a journalist was like, "Wait a second. If you are attacking Venezuela supposedly because of drugs, which is obviously a lie, why did you pardon the worst drug trafficker on earth?" And then Trump says, "Oh yeah, you know, Marco and I we were talking and like we he got a really bad deal." So it's just like Trump doesn't know anything about any of these places. And Rubio is simultaneously the secretary of state and the national security adviser. And Rubio is also by the way the acting human the acting coordinator of USAID the US agency of international development which was merged into the state department and Rubio is now overseeing it. So it's just like Rubio is running so much of this and then Trump's just like yeah I'll do we'll go along with any of it. Because Trump, all he cares about is just like being seen as strong. And he wants the US, he wants the rest of the world to fear the US empire. Trump is obsessed with this idea that he wants to physically expand the territory of the US empire by colonizing Greenland, taking the Panama Canal and all this stuff. And he, if you read his national security strategy, he makes it clear he wants the world to fear the US again. This is what MAGA means. Make America great again. make the world fear the US empire again. So he's like he's down with anything as long as it doesn't involve like a long-term troop commitment for like a five-year war. Trump is fully on board with like bombing any country, bullying any country, imposing sanctions on any country and he's just letting Marco Rubio just decide to do whatever he want. Again, this is the the synthesis of neoonservatism and MAGA. This is what we're seeing now. Yeah. And and there are major tradeoffs with this Ben as you are uh aware. So uh just to get back to Iran uh you know as the strikes were really in motion uh these strikes were in motion there's major preparation for days and this is what came out in terms of this is exactly the approach you've been describing here in terms of how the United States under the Trump administration is going to be conducting its foreign policy. Iran is such a good example of this where he literally tells I mean they're not keeping the secret. They're saying they want military action, for example, in Iran to be swift and decisive. There will be no weeks to months of entanglements that it's bomb, bomb, bomb, strike, strike, strike, kill, kill, kill, and get what you want, which is here, of course, the change of regime, which has been Rubio's dream. But, you know, uh there are trade-offs because, uh, there's a lot of popular support, for example, in Iran for the government. I mean, these are just some of the photos. There are videos, too, that have come out of massive demonstrations, massive rallies in the streets. And this alone, coupled with the fact that Iran actually does have the capabilities to defend itself, it does have a massive ballistic missile system, which every single regional country in Israel were all very afraid over. And I believe the United States was also very concerned about what was going to happen. I mean, all of this shows that there are tradeoffs to this shock and a get, you know, get what we want as quickly as possible. The world really isn't in that place anymore, Ben. Um, we're talking about Iran. We could also talk about Venezuela even with what happened, a very horrific operation, but one that hasn't really borne maybe the fruits of if we look into Rubio's mind. I don't think this was the ideal uh uh result uh that he would have wanted uh in terms of the endgame. Of course, none of this is over. Iran, Venezuela, but maybe first comment on Iran and then we can move to Venezuela. Yeah. Well, I would be a little cautious about saying that. I mean, you said it's not over, so I'm not saying you're saying this, but there are people who who are saying, you know, the the window passed and Trump is not going to bomb Iran again. I would be very cautious about that because we also know that part of Trump's strategy is this this kind of Nixonian madman strategy where he wants the world to think he's a madman, which, you know, he is. It's not just an act, but it's this unpredictability, the chaotic nature of it. Let's not forget Mark Ames pointed this out on Twitter. It's a very good point that when Trump bombed Iran the first time, let me take that back. When Israel bombed Iran last year, starting this war, and then Trump also bombed Iran after Israel had bombed Iran for several days, but let's not forget it was Israel that started that war. And when that happened, Trump was still technically in peace talks or whatever you want to call it, negotiations with Iran. So to go back a few years after the Obama administration imposed these very aggressive illegal sanctions on Iran to force Iran to the negotiating table to sign the Iran nuclear deal, the joint comprehensive plan of action, the JCPOA. That deal was signed into international law. And it was not only a deal between the US and Iran. It was an international deal including the five permanent members of the UN security council. China, Russia, the US, the UK and France along with it was P5 plus1 Germany plus the European Union. They all signed this agreement and then the Obama administration allowed that to go to be written into international law to go through a UN security council resolution which the US did not veto. So the Iran nuclear deal was written into international law. Trump came in in his first term and in 2018, Trump unilaterally and illegally tore up the Iran nuclear deal and impose sanctions on Iran again in violation of international law, which has caused many of the economic problems we're seeing in Iran today. So since then uh the Trump administration has claimed the first and the second they've claimed that they wanted to broker a new agreement with Iran and last year the Trump administration was in several rounds there were five or six rounds of these negotiations with Iran and then out of nowhere Iran after out of nowhere Israel started bombing Iran with the green light of the Trump administration. This was reported by the US media that Trump personally gave Netanyahu the green light and then after several days of Israeli bombing, Trump also bombed Iran. So, it's very possible that what we're now seeing is part of again this larger strategy where Trump says, you know, I don't doubt like we said earlier that Iran has established a deterrence and part of the reason why Trump did not bomb is this fear that Iran could retaliate. And there are certainly many US assets in the region that Iran could hit. I don't doubt that's a factor here. But another factor that we should keep in mind is that this could be part of another strategy where the US says, "Okay, we're we're not going to bomb now." And then Iran the the US thinks that Iran will put down its defenses. It will not be as prepared as Iran was obviously prepared for this US attack. And then like who knows a week, two weeks, a month from now, a year from now, Trump could just suddenly bomb Iran again. So it's very hard to predict. This is part of Trump's strategy, right? Is this unpredictability. So I I I do think that again we are right in this analysis that other people have pointed out as well that Iran in the short term establish a deterrence, but again I would be very cautious about saying this is the end. You you yourself said, you know, this is obviously not the end. Oh no. Oh, and just with the policy that we're describing, Ben, this idea of needing to go as quickly and as hard as possible to get what you want, it's often not going to work out like that. I mean, it's not it's likely not ever going to work out like that with Iran where you just get a, you know, a couple of days. You can do this in a day, less than a week. That's what that's what Trump wants to overthrow Iran in less time than the 12-day war. Uh I think that's exactly what they were because in 12 days the air defenses were run dry and Iran still had firepower. So that wasn't a good thing. That would have led to an even larger escalation required. So uh there's no doubt I hell we could be talking next week a week from talking them preparing again. There's destroyers that are moving into the region. They are moving these assets. I do believe that the United States, Israel, uh they want to try this again. They might try this every six months. We are on kind of a six-month schedule. They might that might be what's in the car is to try to maybe grind down um Iran as much as they can. But what I saw in this iteration, Ben, I'm curious your reaction is uh we saw not only Iran's deterrent, its missile capabilities as being a major concern for so many involved in such in in these kind of strikes. But you also had new developments like Iran being able to jam Starlink, which was shocking to so many people. When Iran closed its airspace, you also had the first plane that came into Iranian airspace when they reopened it was a Chinese cargo plane. So there was a lot of I think signals that were being sent uh to the United States uh and maybe information. I believe from the very beginning that the US was not only uh conducting intelligence but probably was speaking. They probably have back channels to Iran. I'm sure they were speaking about what's going to happen here, you know, and and it just wasn't the right time. But yes, the United States, Israel, they are fully committed to this. It's just how is this policy going to play out? Even in Venezuela, you can talk about this, Ben. We saw the kidnapping with we saw what 100 plus people killed. Horrible civilians were killed. Um you know, uh just an absolute nightmare for Venezuela in many respects. But the regime change operation as a full regime change. It it just wasn't really in the cards. This was like an operation on top of probably a larger a larger quote unquote strategy if we can call it that. Really, it's a maybe just a shift in how the wars are being going to be waged. But I'm curious on your assessment of this. Yeah, I'll get to that point in a second. I want to briefly talk about this issue of Starlink. It's very interesting. Now, I saw reports online and I haven't been able to independently confirm them, but apparently Iran got this Starlink jamming technology from Russia because of course we know that Elon Musk's Starlink has been very active in the war in Ukraine and uh by the way Starlink has also been active in Venezuela. So all of these countries where the US is stirring chaos and war in Ukraine Starlink was helping the Ukrainian military very important asset for the Ukrainian military in this proxy war against Russia. Starlink was also given the technology was given to the Venezuelan coup plotters including Maria Konina Machalo. We know this because she herself admitted this and I have talked about this in some of the videos I've done. Machalo did an interview with Trump Jr. Trump's son on his his show on Rumble. And this is a there was an infamous clip in that interview. This was earlier last year before Trump invaded Venezuela. And in this interview, Machalo famously says that they're going to private that she wants to privatize all of the oil and other assets in Venezuela and sell them off to US companies. And she says US investors will make a lot of money. But in that same interview, Machado also thanked Elon Musk personally for giving her and other coup leaders like her, giving them hundreds of Starlink devices to use that to try to overthrow Maduro. And then now, of course, we've seen many reports, this is not the first time, this goes back a few years, that Musk was giving the the Starling technology to these, you know, color revolutionaries. if you will, the you know regime change plotters and rioters in Iran trying to overthrow the Iranian government. And what's interesting is we saw these reports that Iran was able to block this technology using Russian alle this is we know that Iran has been able to block them. That's been reported widely. We don't know where exactly this came from but I have seen reports that it came from Russia. So this is also related to this you know growing partnership between Iran and Russia and also Iran and China. Iran is now a full member of BRICS. There are 10 full members of BRICS now. And there are also a dozen partner countries. And Iran is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization alongside China and Russia. So they're obviously coordinating more closely. They're working together definitely on security issues and opposing these kinds of, you know, westernbacked color revolutions and regime change and such. So you know all these issues are related and of course Iran and Venezuela have been very close partners and Iran has provided a lot of support to Venezuela especially economically and technologically because Iran like Venezuela is a major oil producer and Iran has been suffering under illegal US sanctions since the revolution in 1979. So because it's been under sanctions so long, it obviously has very much hurt the Iranian economy and contributes to inflation, very high rates of inflation because it's very difficult for Iran to get foreign currency which it would need to stabilize its own currency through the central bank intervening in the foreign exchange market. And it's also difficult for Iran to trade which tends to lead toward current account deficits. you know, trade deficits with the rest of the world because it's very difficult for other countries to buy products from Iran because of the fear of secondary sanctions. And Trump is now openly talking about putting on more secondary sanctions, even through tariffs. Trump said that he's going to put a 25% tariff on any country that trades with Iran, which is part of like an economic blockade that he's trying to impose against Iran, like the blockade against Cuba, where the US threatens secondary sanctions against foreign governments and foreign companies and financial institutions that do transactions with Cuba. So, these issues are all related, of course. But anyway, getting back to Venezuela, Venezuela has been a major oil exporter for over a hundred years. It's been a pro state and this is, you know, well before Ugo Chavez was even born. Venezuela has been a pro state. But the Venezuelan oil industry has relied since its beginnings on technology from US companies and to a lesser extent European companies. Venezuela is a pretty small global south country, 30 million people. It does not have, you know, the ability of creating drilling infrastructure and other, you know, capital goods that are needed to actually get the oil out of the ground. Venezuela, you know, has been a major oil exporter, but doesn't actually produce all of that technology. Very few countries do. One country that does have its own domestic technology because it's been under sanctions so long and because it has, you know, over 90 million mill over 90 million people, which is Iran. Iran has been able to develop some of that technology and share it with Venezuela. So, as the US has been putting sanctions on Venezuela, starting in 2015, starting under Obama and then in Trump's first term in 2017 and then 2019, he imposed very aggressive sanctions on Venezuela, culminating in 2019 with the the first Trump administration's coup attempt in Venezuela when Trump recognized this littleknown right-wing opposition politician, the US puppet Juan Guilo, as the so-called interim president of Venezuela and then Trump imposed an economic embargo on Venezuela in August 2019. I remember I was there at the time and this is modeled directly after the US economic embargo against Cuba. So, you know, these same tactics that the US Empire has been using against Cuba since the 1959 revolution, against Iran since the 1979 revolution, against Venezuela since the 1999 Bolivarian revolution. Like these are the same tactics the US repeats. So, it also makes sense that these countries that are targeted by the US Empire have been closely coordinating. Iran in addition to the the support it's provided to the Palestinian liberation struggle against Israeli colonialism and to other resistance movements anti-imperialist groups all across West Asia you know the Middle East Iran has been supporting resistance movements in Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Yemen and similarly Iran has provided a lot of support to these revolutionary movements in Latin America and I spent a lot of time living in Latin America and you know the revolutionary leftwing movements in Latin America have a very positive view of Iran even though obviously ideologically they have very different movements at the same time they have a lot of similarities you can think of the Iranian revolution as following in the vein following in the footsteps of anti-colonialist global south national liberation struggles the Algerian revolution the liberation struggles in Angola and Mosmbi and Guinea Basau, the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua and Venezuela, the revolutions in Vietnam and Korea. Like you had all these revolutionary movements in the global south fighting against Western colonialism and not many of them were communist and socialist, but not all of them. A lot of them were were some of them were also just nationalist movements. And Iran is very similar to that. It's it's a kind of global south anti-colonial nationalist movement. And that's why it's not surprising to see that Iran has had so much solidarity with other, you know, national liberation struggles and anti-colonialist movements around the world. So when the US is targeting Venezuela and Iran, it's part of this larger kind of imperialist assault on the global south and on anti-colonial national liberation struggles. Just as you know the US assassinated uh the founder of the Democratic Republic of Congo uh the first ever you know by the way democratically leader democratically elected leader of the Congo and then the US and Belgium Belgium Belgium Belgian intelligence they dissolved his body and all that was left were his teeth. This is Patrice Leumba the founding father of the DRC. And then you know you can go to every single global south country that had this kind of revolutionary struggle. The US and the European imperial powers they just constantly waged these assaults against all of these independent independence movements. And you know today Europe is very weak compared to what it used to be in the mid 20th century and the US now is you know following in the footsteps of the European colonial empires. So Iran has always been, you know, a thorn in the side of Western imperialism since the revolution. Yeah. No, very well said, Ben. And and and I think that in many respects, what we're seeing is the United States Empire, the the wararm mongers, and especially Trump himself. I think uh well, they don't know, they can't explain it like you just did, Ben. They do know there's a reality of the situation which is that uh no matter how strong or how much more powerful you think you are over let's say Venezuela's uh military or even Iran's even though they're much more scared of Iran's ability to send a a missile that can travel 12,000 kilometers in 20 minutes or something like that they're scared of those missiles that Iran has. Um uh I think they're also afraid of the fact that uh they are messing now with countries that do have widespread popular support in many respects and that that plays a big role and and I think that's why we see no matter there's always a consistency right Ben there's always a a policy that is always going to exist which is starving these people trying to get the people of Iran to submit to regime change which is what sanctions are are really all about. And so this is what happened when the strikes didn't occur and against Iran. Uh Trump said, "Okay." And the United States Trump administration said, "Okay, well, let's do sanctions." Not just on, you know, the very vocal uh uh you know, uh people who lead the Iranian national uh security policy, but also, you know, uh talking about shadow banking networks and essentially any, you know, trading in oil. That's what they're trading the oil. And, you know, they're doing this to Venezuela, too. uh they're seizing tankers. There's still there still is a blockade on Venezuela despite a partial easing of sanctions. But even so, we have been and I want you I definitely want your comment on this. We've seen developments for example in the streets of Venezuela, massive amounts of people uh you know every single day uh on the streets saying free Maduro but also continuing the process. And a lot of people say Deli Rodriguez is this uh you know secretive agent of the United States. But you know as we've been speaking uh the proposal from Deli Rodriguez is to use any trade any benefits from trade with the United States which has increased a bit um since this horrific uh act of war against it uh to fund health care to fund you know to continue the Bolivarian project. that's what's actually happening. Um, and this is not something I don't think Trump and Rubio and everyone would be applauding for. I don't think that's what they are looking uh for uh trade with Venezuela to really result in, but that's what's happening. So, I think there is this element of um popular sport, people in these countries who want to see a different kind of world, they have to contend with that. What's your thoughts? Yeah. Uh you raised some really important points there. First of all, if you follow Venezuelan social media, there have been lots of big marches in support of the Bolivarian revolution, in support of the government and calling to free Maduro. And another big point, and of course, you don't never see that in the US media. Another very important point you mentioned there is about Deli Rodriguez, the acting president of Venezuela. Now, if you know about Deli and the Rodriguez family and her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, who's an an important Chavista politician, this is a a longtime revolutionary family, left-wing family. their their father was a a socialist revolutionary in in a militant group and he was imprisoned and tortured and killed by a right-wing Venezuelan regime that was allied with the US. So for them this is not just about ideology. This is also personal. They've been their entire lives engaged in this struggle for sovereignty fighting against US imperialism. And for them like there's no way that they're that she deli who's the acting president now she was the vice president under Maduro and constitutionally she's the acting president but also her brother Jorge Rodriguez they're important Chavista politicians. The idea that they're just going to like sell out and just abandon the revolution and let the US control Venezuela is absurd. What you did mention is true is that you have to be pragmatic. You especially when you're under sanctions and a siege. Trump not only the sanctions on Venezuela go back to 2015 under Obama, but the blockade Trump literally declared an embargo in 2019, an economic embargo of Venezuela like the embargo of Cuba. This is an economic blockade. And by the way, Trump has now expanded that economic blockade into a naval blockade, as we've seen. In those conditions, when you're a small country with 30 million people, you can't just like say, "Screw you. We're going to fight you." I mean, that it's just not it's not possible. So, yes, Deli understands that she has to be pragmatic, but she's not selling out her country to the US. I explained this in a very long video on my channel, but to you know make the message very short, Venezuela's oil out Venezuela has been a pro state for hundred years. I already talked about that like this is well before Ugoach Chavez was born. It has been a pro state and the the way that the system worked is that the the country exported oil and until 1976 that oil was being exploited by US corporations. In 1976, the Venezuelan government on paper nationalized the oil, but most of the extraction was still being done by US companies with concessions being given to them. Technically, the oil was nationally owned by the people of Venezuela, but US companies were still making most of the profits. There was a stateowned company, PVESA, but it was not, you know, the main force driving the oil sector. And then Ugo Chavez came in through democratic elections in 1998. He became president in 1999. He launched the Bolivarian revolution. And in 2007, he fully nationalized the oil industry. And he told foreign oil companies that they would have to leave unless they agreed to only having a small minority stake in projects that were majority stateowned by Pedvesa, the state oil company. And some companies agree to that but most did not including Exxon Mobile including uh Konicle Phillips. So he kicked them out and this is why Trump is saying you know this is our oil it belongs to our companies. And then the US in 2015 if if you look by the way if you look at Venezuela's oil production as I showed in this video I did Venezuela's oil production under Chavez was still very stable and it was still very high. Venezuela was also at that time benefiting from very high prices of oil in the global market, a commodity super cycle. There was a big boom. But then in 2015, so Chavez died in 2013. Maduro won the election in 2013. He became president. In 2015, Obama put sanctions on Venezuela. And then in 2017, Trump put very even more aggressive, heavy sanctions on Venezuela. And starting with the sanctions, Venezuela's oil output started to fall significantly even after the nationalization under Chavez in 2007. Oil output for for like seven or eight years was very stable. So you like you see all this propaganda in the Western media saying socialism destroyed Venezuela blah blah blah. No, it was the US sanctions that devastated Venezuela's economy like they devastated the Cuban economy and the Iranian economy. Iran doesn't have a socialist system, but it's suffered under very similar consequences. So, so Venezuela's oil sector was uh their output was devastated especially because as I mentioned earlier, Venezuela could not import the technology and the capital goods and the chemicals it needs and the sweet the light sweet crude it needs to refine and process its own very heavy sour crude. So the oil infrastructure in Venezuela started to degradate, started to really fall into disrepair and it was not able to import a lot of the technology it needed to update and fix and repair its oil infrastructure because of these illegal US sanctions. So naturally, Venezuelan oil output fell very significantly. It was around 2 and a.5 million barrels per day and and then it fell at the peak of the US coup attempt in Trump's first term in 2019 and 2020 that oil output fell to less than to fewer than 1 million barrels per day. And in the past few years, it's been slightly recovering and it's now a bit over 1 million barrels per day. So, you know, you look at this situation. You're under siege. You don't have the infrastructure needed. You don't have the, you know, the light crude that you need to refine your oil. Like, you're under siege. You have to make some kind of concessions to try to get some of those sanctions lifted. So, basically what Deli has done with the Trump administration is she made a deal where Venezuela will sell they Trump says 30 to 50 million barrels of oil. That's like 30 to 50 days of Venezuela's oil production. But the US is not getting that for free. If you actually read in my video I showed, if you look at the language of Trump's executive order and the language of the Department of Energy's press release on this deal, and if you look at the language of Pervesa, the Venezuelan state oil company, the Venezuelan oil company made it clear that they're not giving this oil away. They're selling this oil. And the US government, yes, because they're being forced to do this deal at gunpoint, the US does have control over that money, but this is actually money that Venezuela sold to the US and in return, they admit that they're basically giving sanctions relief. Now, the Trump energy department did not use the term sanctions relief, but it actually is on it's de facto sanctions relief because they say that what is Venezuela getting in return for that money. The US is selling Venezuela oil equipment to to fix and and modernize Venezuela's oil infrastructure and light crude and chemicals like NAFTA in order to refine their oil. So basically what we're seeing here is Trump does not want to publicly admit that he's agreeing to sanctions relief because that's actually what this is. So instead he says we're taking Venezuela's oil. But in reality, what DELC has agreed to is selling some of Venezuela's oil and allowing some US companies to invest in Venezuela because at this point, I mean, they have to increase oil output. And so, it's a concession they're making. But actually, Maduro also made that concession when he allowed Chevron under the Biden administration to come into Venezuela to to increase oil output because Venezuela's perspective is like, look, we have around a million barrels per day. We could potentially increase that to where it was before the sanctions, 2 and a half million potentially, but we need many billions of dollars of investment and technology that we don't have because of the sanctions. we have to have these sanctions lifted in order to function. So Maduro made a deal with the Biden administration that amounted to a slight lifting of sanctions. Biden still did not lift most of the sanctions, but he allowed some sanctions relief and that helped Venezuela to increase its oil output. And then Trump came in and he canled that deal made with Chevron. And then a few months later, that was in February, and then in July, Trump allowed Chevron to to go in again. And that was under Maduro. So basically the deal that was made now under Deli is very similar to the deal that was made between Maduro and the US government allowing Chevron to come in. Basically, they're doing the same thing. And Deli is doing this in return for the US with that money that Venezuela is getting from selling to the US because the US still has sanctions on Venezuela and the US does not allow the Venezuelan government to use the US dominated financial system.
You know, the US still dominates the global financial system. China and Russia are creating alternatives and China was buying 80% of Venezuela's oil but still Venezuela is blocked from much of the international financial system. So Trump is now saying that we control that money, but in reality that money is being used to give and and then Trump also said that Venezuela is only buying US goods from us like you know so Trump is you know he wants to sell to his MAGA base and all you know he says that we're taking their oil but actually what's happening is that it's trade but they don't call it trade right Venezuela exports its oil to the US it allows ows US companies to help to invest to repair its oil infrastructure to export that oil. The US buys that oil. That money goes into a US administered account, but it belongs to the government of Venezuela. And then the US uses that money to buy US goods in the form of this equipment and in the form of light crude in in NAFTA which is then exported to Venezuela, which what does that what does that look like in practice? It's it's short-term sanctions relief. So Deli has not abandoned her country. She's not abandoned the Bulvarian revolution. She was forced to make this concession to the US in order to have, you know, a more functioning oil industry which the Venezuelan government needs in order to fund social programs, healthcare, education, public housing. The Venezuelan government under the Bolivian revolution in the last two decades has built more than 5 million housing units for poor and workingclass Venezuelans. The Venezuelan government needs oil revenue in order to fund all of that and it needs to repair the oil infrastructure in order to get that oil revenue. So this is just a matter of political pragmatism and what Deli is doing is basically what Maduro was also doing previously. And Trump wants to convince people that supposedly he's running Venezuela, but news flash, he's not running Venezuela. The I think the US thought when they kidnapped Maduro, I think they thought the Venezuelan government probably would fall. And this whole idea, this whole narrative that like that deli is just doing what we want. That's like that's their way of saving face because Trump doesn't want to maintain a military occupation. He wants to we talked about this earlier. Trump wants to bomb a country quickly, overthrow its government, have regime change, and then just, you know, let it let let it collapse and do whatever. But like Trump doesn't want to send in thousands of troops and be bogged down in these forever wars. He saw how this was, you know, disastrous in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump's strategy is, you know, just bomb the hell out of them, overthrow their leaders, and, you know, that's what they did in Venezuela. And I think they thought, they believed their propaganda. They believed that Venezuela was a so-called dictatorship. and all they had to do is take out Mazuro and the government would collapse. But, you know, obviously that has not happened. So, now Trump is saying, well, you know, we're controlling Venezuela and we're controlling its oil. But that's not what's happening. Yeah. And I, you know, I'm not going to get into all there's, as you've probably saw over social media, Ben, and and even mainstream media, a lot of speculation about what why why things happened the way they did in Venezuela. But I wouldn't be surprised if in these phone calls or I don't know if it was one or two phone calls, whatever it was, I don't know how many that Maduro and Trump had. I wouldn't be surprised if uh uh you know Trump being a double dealer uh someone who is a completely untrustworthy uh parasite in many ways. If he literally proposed this exact thing that's happening to Venezuela and then in the background was just like nope not with Maduro and then that's where the operation comes in. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's what happened, which which is, okay, we're going to do a regime change operation, see how it goes, but this is the deal. This is what we want out of it, or this is at least what we can get out of it, and let's do it. And I I think that's at least how it looks on the surface, but it doesn't amount to certainly um the the dreams and, you know, the wet dreams of someone like Marco Rubio or anything like that. This really what it amounts to is a uh alteration of the relationship between the US and Venezuela which has been a relationship despite all the economic warfare as you said it was the only real uh partner that Venezuela could have in a major sense before these major sanctions around their oil. That's just how their uh economy is. So, it's it's a very I just think it's a it we really are seeing the the realities, I think, of what the US empire is going to look like. And I think we're going to see this with Greenland, and we're going to continue to see it with Iran. Russia and China, I don't really know. The play with them is, I think, to continue on this process of uh trying to cut them off from all of these countries. But whether it'll work or not, I I have huge doubts in its effectiveness. Even Deli Rodriguez, despite all of the talks of, oh well, she's going to abandon everyone but the United States to be under control. The first people that she was talking to after she came into power were chi, the Chinese ambassador was greeting the Russian ambassador, the Iranian ambassador, and then saying outright that there's going to be no abandonment of any partners. Even if it's just words to a lot of people, words do matter, especially when you are confronted with the empire. That's just, you know, you say the wrong thing with the Empire, they have the ability to kidnap you or to do something to you. So, I think it matters. But your thoughts on this before I have one last uh topic I'd like to cover. Yeah. It's not just words. Look, people have to understand that even at the the height of the Bolivarian revolution under Ugo Chavez and no one would dispute in any way that Chavez was a completely independent leader, not in any way a US puppet, but you know where Venezuela sold the vast majority of its oil during Chavez's administrations. You know, Denny, who is the main purchaser of Venezuelan oil? America. Yeah, the US. So like look, this is China's whole point. This is like to understand about like this trade war that Trump was waging that Biden continued and Trump started again in his second term. China's whole point is that trade should not be considered political. Now, you know, I understand China's perspective. I don't really agree. I think trade is inherently political, but I understand China's perspective. China is like, look, all countries have to trade. Technically, even, you know, in World War II, Germany was still trading with some European countries until like really like until the war really took off. Like, you know, just because you're trading you're France and you're trading with Nazi Germany doesn't mean that you support Nazi Germany, right? Like, who were Nazi Germany's main trading partners? It was its European neighbors, right? Like trade, I understand that perspective, especially if you're China, which is the world's biggest economy. a massive country, 1.4 billion people. China's the largest trading partner of most countries on Earth. So, I get why they're trying to say like, look, trade should not be considered political. We all know that there are political elements of trade, but look, who's the third biggest trading partner of the US right now? It's China. And the US is in a new cold war right now against China. Like, Trump threatened tariffs of 145% against China, his third largest trading partner. So even at the peak of the the height of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Venezuela was still selling the vast majority of its oil to the US. Now then, you know, 2015, Obama put sanctions on and then 2017, Trump put very aggressive sanctions on. 2019, it was a full-on embargo and as of 2019, the US stopped buying any oil from Venezuela. So from 2019 until the Biden administration until like around 2022 2023 for like four years the US was not buying any oil from Venezuela. However, if you look at the past 100 years, the US was the main purchaser of Venezuelan oil. So what we're seeing now is basically going back to this situation we were in 10 years ago where the US was still buying Venezuelan oil. Now, maybe the US will not be the main purchaser of Venezuelan oil. Maybe China will still be a main purchaser of Venezuelan oil. Who knows? I mean, Trump is now he's a pirate and he's hijacking and seizing and stealing these oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela and trying to prevent Venezuelan crude from going to China, which was previously buying 80%. Who knows what's going to happen there, but essentially this idea that like Venezuela is selling out and abandoning the revolution by selling oil to the US, that's what it was already doing. And in fact, Venezuela wants to sell its oil to the US because it needs to get dollars in order to stabilize its currency, to reduce inflation, and to import all its technology. Like look, of course, Venezuela has been strongly supportive of dilization from the very beginning. And of course, I've done a lot of reporting on dauization, but Venezuela is not China. Venezuela is a very small country. It's a very small economy. Venezuela is not Russia. I mean, China and Russia are superpowers. They are big enough to actually create an alternative to the US dominated financial system. They are strong enough to challenge the dominance of the US dollar. Venezuela is not. So, you have to be realistic and pragmatic about the situation these countries are in. So, I totally understand the perspective of these of the leadership in Venezuela right now. They just want to do everything they can to get the sanctions lifted to whatever degree they can. They know that Trump is not going to lift all the sanctions, but essentially what's happening now is that there is a slight lifting of the sanctions to allow Vene the US boot on the neck of Venezuela is being slightly lifted. It's still on its neck, but it's it's making it possible for Venezuelans to breathe finally. And that's their main priority at this point. But they're not just going to like allow the US to colonize them and take them over. If you listen to Deli Rodriguez's speeches, she makes that very clear. She's like, "We are a sovereign country." She still recognizes Maluro. She's calling for Maludo to be released. And and honestly, Trump has this idea that he can do this to every country in Latin America and by extension the world. And it's not going to happen. In fact, the point I made in that that video that I've been referencing, people can find on my channel. I think this attack on Venezuela could backfire in a lot of ways because now a lot of countries in Latin America, even relatively pro- US leaders, are going to say, "Wow, we could be the next Venezuela. So, we need to really diversify our relations. We cannot put all our eggs in the US basket. Trump thinks that, you know, with this like mafia style tactic, he can just threaten everyone and force them to ally with the US. But in in reality, it's actually going to probably continue to accelerate the move toward a more multipolar world. And certainly, I think that's China's perspective. They can see that, you know, when you look at trade, China is the largest trading partner of South America, period. The US cannot replace China when it comes to trade with South America because the US is a competitor with China. The US is a major aggre sorry the US is a competitor with Latin America not with China. Latin America's main exports because of you know the history of US interventionism and imperialism and de-industrialization and neoliberalism. Latin America's main exports are commodities, agricultural goods, iron, ore, soybeans, corn, and you know what the US and oil and gas. And you know what the US's some of the US's top exports are? Oil, natural gas, corn. Like the US and Latin America export many of the same commodities. The the US cannot replace China in that trade relationship. So, you know, as desperate as these attacks are in Latin America and the attempt by the US to impose this, you know, colonialist Monroe doctrine, they're now calling it the Donro doctrine. It also, in many ways, I think is a reflection of an empire in decline. And as it's in decline, it's trying to desperately impose its hegemony in its imperial sphere of influence, as it says, in its so-called imperial backyard. And yet this is actually going to accelerate the movements in Latin America to say, "No, screw you. We are independent. We are sovereign. And we're not going to be your imperial so-called backyard. We're going to diversify our relations with China and Russia and other countries." So, you know, Trump, they have this like Mchavelian strategy. They think they're going to pull everything off, right? I don't think it's going to be successful. No. No. I no I I mean just the the results of what you the what you just described the results of this operation uh I mean there's just so much backfiring to be had it's what you just described in terms of the impact on the larger region and also in Venezuela people underestimate all the time what it means to do for example what Deli Rodriguez and I'm 100% sure Nicholas Maduro was in agreement with this economic strategy of ensuring that you can uh while whatever concessions you gave, you're getting something back, you're you're getting revenue back, you're able to consolidate uh your own political project because that is that's really the best defense against empire, right? You can have guns, you can have air defense systems, you can have whatever, but you need to have people on your side and advancing the Bolivarian project, advancing the standard of living of Venezuelans, that's what's going to do that. So that the next time that the US does this, it's going to be even harder to concoct some kind of alternative to the Bolivarian government, to the current government that's in power. I mean that's that's the objective for the United States eventually and uh I think that this is really for to me it's genius. A lot of people are very skeptical. I think it's what you need to do and they're doing it. So um and I think that this is a larger thing and maybe we can close on this kind of shift in the world that's going on because uh of course we had the Iran situation that's really deteriorated in many ways at least for now. um you know in large part because Iran can do things like jam star link. They can do things like uh you know hit US bases in a in a manner that cannot be defended against. uh you also have been I wanted your uh uh you know your opinion on this because this was another big uh move in 2026 that was made in the world which is Russia using the archnic for the second time the arric missile and now Europe according to Emanuel they need something like it and I think this underscores a major change in the world I mean you can see this video which is in Lviv uh in Ukraine right on the Polish border of how fast this missile moves it looks like whatever or Zeus or you know Greek mythology in the sky. Um but it's a it's a massively powerful weapon and Europe is panicking and the United States at the UN said what was it Tammy Bruce she said that this is a major escalation and you know Russia needs to to stop using this kind of weapon. So we are seeing I think a major shift in the world where uh despite the fact that the United States still has the ability to conduct operations like it did in Venezuela, still can and probably will try to bomb if not actually bomb Iran. It will continue to try a proxy war on Ukraine or wherever else to try to contain Russia. It'll continue to try to contain China and wage war against it. But there are these big limitations happening because there is a an actual development process that's occurring different from the United States's unipolar world which has things like major technological advances like the archnik and also you know countries that do have people who support their governments and don't want to see a return to whether it's the sha in Iran or the neoliberal hell that existed in Venezuela. This is a different world. So I'm I'm curious on what your comments are on this. Yeah, this is a point that you and I, Denny, have have always emphasized, you know, going back in these discussions back years. The US empire and following the European colonial empires loves to attack small countries that can't defend themselves. But when it comes to medium and largesized countries that actually can establish a deterrence and can defend themselves, suddenly, you know, these imperial bullies have to actually think twice. China and Russia are just at a whole new level. And we can see that in Ukraine where there was this propaganda we we were bombarded with, I'm sure you remember it, at the beginning of this new phase of the Ukraine war. Let's not forget this war goes back to 2014 when the US backed a coup in Ukraine that overthrew Ukraine's independent non-aligned geopolitically non-aligned leader and put in power a pro-western puppet regime who vowed to join NATO starting this war this you know proxy war in 2014 and then the new phase of the war in 2022 and after that you know the Biden administration claimed that they would turn the Russian ruble into rubble that they would defeat that NATO would defeat Russia. Well, all of NATO combined was unable to defeat Russia and Ukraine. And compared to China, Russia is still much weaker. Obviously, you know, we're talking about Russia is a major military. But China is probably the only military on Earth that is close to the same level as the US military. So clearly the US has to really not only think twice, they have to think three or four or five times before any potential conflict with China, which is why they prefer proxy conflicts and you know attacking Chinese partners. This is the cold war, right? We are in cold war and just as in cold war I was they never directly fought a conventional war with the Soviet Union. Instead they fought proxy wars and wars against Soviet allies and partners. This is what we're seeing today in Cold War II. And I have no doubt that 50 years from now, historians will look back at these US attacks on Venezuela and Iran as also part of cold war attempts to destabilize Chinese partners. I'm not saying this is only because of China. We know in the case of Iran that this goes back much further with the Iranian revolution and Israel and all of that. Like clearly there are many factors involved here but this is part of a larger cold war and every time we talk about geopolitics today and any of these issues happening around the world we always have to keep in the back of our minds that we are in cold war too just as you know in the 1960s and 70s we saw a lot of revolutionary movements in the global south and they were not only because of the cold war. So if you want to under like this is what the US claims that like the Senista revolution they claim that the Saninistas in Nicaragua were just puppets of the Soviet Union which is absurd. It's not it's not true at all. Yes, the Soviets did support the Saninistas, but the Saninistas were a national liberation struggle, fighting and overthrowing a US puppet dictator, a right-wing corrupt regime, just like the Algerians in the Algerian revolution and the Angolans and the Angolan national liberation struggle and all these re the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were not Soviet and Chinese puppets. They accepted support from the Soviet Union and from China to rage a revolution, right? But they were not puppets and they were not just like at the same time though you you cannot understand any of those conflicts outside of the context of the first cold war. And today in the second cold war, yes, Venezuela and Iran obviously they're not in any way like puppets of China and Russia, but they are important partners of China and Russia in this new cold war. And Trump now, I mean, the Trump administration is just saying this openly. Did you see, Danny? The Trump White House posted this crazy stupid cartoon of Greenland. Did you see this? No, I didn't. I have I have it on my Twitter account. Get up my Twitter account. And the last tweet I have is I'll just show you should show it because it show like this is the perfect symbol for people to understand geopolitics in the world today. And it shows that like the Trump administration is now trying to justify its attempt to colonize Greenland by saying that Greenland has to pick between either the US on one side or China and Russia on the other side. Wow. Yeah, you should get that up. I mean, this is cold war. Like this image, this is it. This is from the White House. Go up a little bit because it's cut off. Can you go up a little bit just to see that it's from the White House? Uh, yeah. Let me just do this here. Yeah. There we go. Here we go. Like and and this is not just a message to Greenland. This is a message to everyone around the world. The US is telling them you should either pick between us or on one side or China and Russia. And like they have this crazy propaganda like China and Russia are cartoon villains. It should be the opposite. China has not fought a war since 1979. The US is constantly at war every week. So, like again, I'm not saying that we we were talking about Venezuela and Iran and all these issues. Again, I'm not I want to stress this again. I might be redundant. I'm not saying that like what's happening in Venezuela and Iran is only because of China and Russia, but we're in Cold War and the US can't the US again loves to bully these small countries that can't defend themselves. The US is afraid of actually getting directly involved in a war with China and Russia. You know, it's using Ukraine as cannon fodder and and US-led NATO forces are sacrificing Ukrainians, an entire generation of Ukrainians to try to weaken Russia and they failed in doing that. And now the US wants to just, you know, they want some kind of agreement to end that war because they recognize they lost and they want to focus more on China. And now we see in in Venezuela, Iran and unfortunately there going to be many more wars and conflicts and geop and uh you know regime change operations like if you want to understand geopolitics today this is always in the background. But at the same time just as in the first cold war the US thought that it could just overthrow governments and carry out coups and wage wars and the US still lost most of those. The only wars and invasions that the US really succeeded in were like very small countries like Grenada and Panama. But the US failed in Vietnam. It failed in Korea still today. It failed in Nicaragua. It failed in Angola. It failed in Mosmbique. It failed in South Africa. And now, by the way, the last thing I'll say is I saw someone on Twitter, a professor tweeted this and I retweeted him because I agree with him. He said, "The biggest lesson you can get from since 2001, the past 25 years of foreign policy is that North Korea's uh conclusion is the most logical one." And he didn't say what it was, but it's obvious. Nuclear weapons are the only thing that actually guarantees you independence and sovereignty because otherwise the US thinks that it can just invade you and overthrow your government. Trump literally said international law doesn't matter. So what the message from the US empire is this is the law of the jungle that if you don't have the ability to defend yourself then the US thinks that it can attack you. Yeah. I mean then I think that's exactly right. And how how then does Russia having these you know these technical developments? We talked about Iran and its missile capabilities, but like Russia being able to unveil something like the Arashnik missile, which is something far beyond. It reminds me of the co first cold war when the Soviet Union uh they were advancing very fast technologically, militarily, not surpassing the United States, but uh making it very difficult for the US to think about any kind of direct attack. Now we are in a situation where Russia, not the Soviet Union, but now has military capabilities like the arric which just dwarf anything that the United States has outside of I mean maybe even it does dwarf the capabilities even the US's nuclear arsenal which is deadly and very dangerous because the US has used nuclear weapons in the past. But how does something like the archnik and some of these other developments that we've seen uh es especially with regard to China, how do they change this kind of calculus? Are what we seeing with the Trump administration the result of how the US as an empire is responding to uh these kind of advances? Yeah. I mean, again, this is something that I always emphasize here, Danny, when we when we have these discussions, which is that the US empire constantly underestimates its adversaries, what it calls its adversaries or enemies. And in the case of Russia, especially remember when Obama was president and Obama said that Russia is a gas station posing as a country. And John McCain, who is the Republican presidential candidate, also said the same thing. He's the one who popularized that phrase. And when this new phase of the Ukraine war started, this proxy war, you saw you didn't see I didn't see any Western leaders say that, but you saw a lot of Western pundits say Russia is a gas station posing as a country. You saw this nonsense from, you know, mainstream neoliberal economists claiming that Russia's GDP is the size of Italy's, which is completely ridiculous. It's because they were using GDP measured at market exchange rates and because the Russian ruble had significantly depreciated against the US dollar and GDP tends to be measured on US dollars. So they said look Russia's economy is so weak but then when you actually measure Russia's economy at purchasing power parody Russia is one of the biggest economies on earth the fourth or fifth biggest economy on earth. And but also by the way when you measure China's GDP at purchasing power parody accounting for the fact that the Chinese yuan the ren minim is also significantly undervalued compared to the US dollar which ironically you know western officials love to accuse China of manipulating its currency and they complained that China's currency is undervalued which increases the competitiveness of Chinese exports. So, Western policy makers say China has to appreciate its currency because it's too undervalued. And at the same time, they measure China's GDP and market exchange rates, not purchasing power parody. So, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to make the Chinese economy seem smaller than it actually is, but also complain about the yuan being undervalued. When you actually account for the purchasing power of the yuan, you see that China has had the largest economy on earth for 10 years now since 2016. China's GDP according to IMF data is now nearly 20% of the global economy whereas the US is a bit over 14%. And the US share of the global economy is falling over time. China's share of the global economy is increasing over time. Similarly, if you look at GDP according to the purchasing power parody, China's number one in uh India, the US is number two, India is number three and then fourth or fifth are Russia and Japan depending on the measurements but Japan but Russia is a major power economically and technologically and militarily. So just as the US underestimates China, it has significantly underestimated Russia and they believe their propaganda. This is what's dangerous is when you know every country has its propaganda, but not every country actually believes it's propaganda. The US does. It's full of these arrogant imperialists in Washington who truly believe that Russia is a gas station posing as a country, or at least they used to. Now, they've seen that Russia's been able to fight a proxy war against all of NATO combined and is winning that war, which is why Trump now wants to just, you know, just call it quits and force Russia into some kind of agreement. But Russia knows that it has all the leverage. We've talked about that a lot, Danny. And the same thing with China. The US is constantly underestimating China in every realm, economically, technologically. They also underest the point that you've been stressing today. They underestimate the legitimacy that these governments have. The fact that in China the government still has a lot of popular legitimacy and support because of the incredible things that it's accomplished in the past several decades. When you believe your propaganda, when you when you actually think that like Gordon Chong is an expert and not just a complete joke, like these are the people, not to mention the the fake Russia experts in the West, right? like they believe that propaganda. So when Russia makes it clear that it has this very new advanced military technology, it's a surprise to these people who believe that propaganda. So the last thing I'll say is that we know that China is the main target in this new cold war. And unlike Russia, China's strategy has always been going back to Deng Xiaoing, this idea, this slogan, maintain a low profile, b your time. This the slogan is hide your strength and bide your time. Hide and b. China has always been implementing a strategy. And it's also kind of linked to like Chinese culture. If you spend a lot of time in China, it's very humble. It's so funny like I'm sure you've had this experience, Danny. You you'll talk to someone in in uh in China and and you'll be like, "Do you speak English?" And they'll say, "A little bit. I speak a little, but my English isn't good." And then they have like perfect fluent English. Like this is they're always very humble and and they're hiding and biting, right? Like they're not showing their strength. China's politically, economically, militarily, technologically. This is how China's been for several decades. And I'm telling people from the West, like I've lived in China for over two years, and like even I do not know, of course, and even a lot of Chinese people don't know like China's military capacity. That's all very secret. We did see the military parade and that's that's the stuff they're showing publicly. Imagine the stuff they're not showing publicly, but the stuff that I've seen just living here, seeing the level of development, seeing the infrastructure, seeing the technology, and this is all the stuff that's publicly available. Like the US is really underestimating its adversaries. They drank the Kool-Aid. They believe their propaganda. And this is why I constantly say that the that these US attacks, they blow back constantly because it's the US is constantly underestimating not only are they underestimating underestimating China and Russia, they're also underestimating Venezuela and Iran and and it's very dangerous to drink your own Kool-Aid. Oh, yeah. I mean, uh, I'll get your final reaction to a few videos I I'll play for you, not only about, uh, Tammy Bruce on the archnic, but also, uh, Mike Waltz at the UN. They called this emergency security meeting, a n um, UN Security Council meeting, the US did to, uh, essentially try to brandish just how supportive they are of the Iranian so-called riots after they didn't strike. It was really a weird safe attempt to face save. Uh but it really just looked very poorly. Uh it really reflected poorly on the US. But before I do, I'll just say that when you um we're talking, you know, there's this idea that uh all the things that the US is doing right now around the world, the Trump administration has this really laser center focus. we saw in the national security strategy is everything it's doing now is meant to cut off especially China from Venezuela from the West Asia from anywhere everywhere but you know they're focusing on the western hemisphere supposedly from Greenland how whatever but in in truth the the the long the long arc of history shows that the more that the US does this bully tactics the more that these countries end up just building more solid relations anyway because they're scared of the ruin that comes from just being a complete subservient uh vassel of the United States. We're even seeing this in West Asia with Saudi Arabia, which one of the first countries to say, "Oh, wait, wait. these strikes. Don't forget that if you hit Iran, uh they're going to send their uh ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles toward us and it's going to be very bad for us, the oil, uh industry, everything. It's going to be very bad, so don't do it. And that's a big reflection. And they said they wouldn't even let the US use their airspace for these advice. a lot of the planes that were being rumored were coming out of Kuwaiti or Iraqi airspace because they couldn't get um permission from Saudi Arabia. This there is uh there is this big blowback effect, Ben. And I'll just play these two videos really fast um because I think they do show just how these bully tactics are are really all they got at this point. Um here is uh Tammy Bruce. Where is she? Uh, where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Here she is. Um, I'll just fast forward quickly to the 14 second mark here where she starts actually talking to Ukraine at this meeting. Just days ago, US diplomats met with EU and Ukrainian counterparts to advance negotiations toward a lasting peace. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, we are closer to a deal now than at any point since the war began. Despite this, Russia launched more attacks on Ukraine, including its launch of its nuclear capable or rishnik ballistic missile, targeting an area of Ukraine close to the border with Poland and NATO. This constitutes another dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war even as the United States is urgently working with Keev other partners and Moscow to end the war through so that I mean you can just hear the bully they're even trying to bully when they're angry they're still trying to look she looked right at Russia I believe uh when she said that and then here's Mike Waltz on Iran. I mean this is just shows where exactly the US is I think in its overall posture. This is our message. President Donald J. Trump and the United States of America stands by the brave people of Iran. Period. And regardless of its excuses, and you will hear many today from the Iranian regime and from its friends, the regime is solely solely responsible for the economic misery of the Iranian people and the repression of their freedom and they will be held accountable. I I mean this is this is what we have, Ben. This is exactly what you were describing. Your reaction to this Yeah, I mean I forgot to mention earlier way on earlier we were talking about all the neocons that Trump has voluntarily appointed to fill his administration. We talked about Marco Rubio the you know arc arc neocon and pete tags. Also Mike Waltz another longtime neocon. Listen to that rhetoric. Also it's so funny. Regime the most politically loaded term. If if a government is independent and resist US hegemony it's a regime. If a government is a US ally and doesn't resist US age, it's just a government. Like Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is ne never called a regime. It it's called the Saudi government, but not the Western media would never refer to Saudi Arabia as the Saudi regime. But at the same time, every Western media outlet refers to the Iranian regime, the Venezuelan regime. What about the US regime, the European regimes? They're the ones carrying out a genocide. They're the ones waging war around the world. So yeah, it just I mean it's just reaffirming everything we've been talking about today. And the rhetoric is just so arrogant and the tone that they have. It's so funny listening to these US officials speaking at the UN when honestly if you look around the world the US is more and more isolated. The US loves to project strength in international bodies. Trump just withdrew the US from more than 60 international organizations. Like everyone around the world can see the US is a rogue state. It's a complete pariah. This didn't start under Obama. Of course, we saw the Biden administration constantly vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Biden administration did that at least five times. And they also vetoed Palestine's membership in the United Nations against the will of the vast majority of the international population. But now the Trump administration is just like proud of it. They're like, "Yeah, we're a rogue state. We're a bully. We're a pariah. Yeah, the world hates us, but that's that means we're that means we're on the right side of history." That's the way they see it. If everyone in the world hates us, it's because like we're we're doing something right. But actually like it's just so obvious to the entire world that this is just a crazy rogue state. It's a crazy decadent empire that is so obviously in decline. US age around the world is massively declining. So this is their last harrah. This is their last attempt to use to be as violent and as aggressive as possible to bully everyone around to try to maintain their declining hijgemony. And so much of the world is saying we're we've had enough of it. No more. Yeah. Yeah. It's and it's incredibly rare for uh the US to call a UN Security Council meeting for anything other than uh trying to push through some horrific uh wararmongering policy. Uh, and it's also incredibly rare for the US to speak on anything worth of relevance, something like the UN Security Council, other than what exactly Tammy Bruce did there, which is to just uh lecture and arrogantly point the fingers at uh their so-called adversaries uh while they do everything under the sun to brutally enforce what's left of their agenomy. It's just I I think this is what we have to look forward to on the horizon. been we're so early in 2026 and uh yet we have the Trump administration kind of looking the part of this very phenomena that you just described this very desperate empire that wants to hold on wants to ex wants to expand even with Greenland and things like this uh but is running into the wall uh the wall that is uh the fact that we're 70 plus years into I guess the US's uniolar moment uh but we're also hundreds hundreds and hundreds of years of western empire uh western capitalism and uh it's it you know people can only take so much and there have been so many moments and so many moments of history and periods of history and and into today where people are just not going to take it and that's that's the conflict I think that's the real conflict we have on our hands you have any final words before we uh head out of here no you said it well Danny I I've spoken a not but uh yeah I mean it's always great having these discussions and unfortunately there's so much crazy stuff happening that I have no doubt that in a few weeks or a month from now we will be talking about another region of the world being destabilized by the US empire but I think we'll also have lots to talk about in terms of resistance because again I I just want to go out stressing that that point there were a few points that I emphasized multiple times today the how US attacks tend to backfire and accelerate US imperial decline, how the US has not succeeded in installing, you know, compliant puppet regimes in all these governments, and how there is always resistance in these countries. You know, the US failed in Venezuela thus far. Maybe they'll attack again, but I don't think they'll succeed. The US has failed in Iran for many years. I don't think they'll succeed. And certainly, they failed with Russia and China. And I, you know, people sometimes get really depressed and look what happened in Syria. They look what happened in Libya. There are some examples of that, of this horrible chaos and destruction. But I will say that we shouldn't be too depressed because that's not the majority of cases. And there's always resistance. Always. Yeah. Yeah. I I find it to be unfortunate. There's a lot of pessimism uh right now. I think I think Trump's it's very exhausting for people to see how Trump's administration behaves because it is optically it's different. I mean optically it's different. It looks different if so people feel it differently and then they begin to almost buy into the idea that this is like an empire and ascendance again or something of the sort and then that's where the pessimism comes in. And it's not to not to mean that we shouldn't be angry and extremely disheartened by, you know, a hundred plus Venezuelans being killed in a matter of a day. Uh the threat of uh hundreds, thousands, maybe more Iranians being killed by a future US strike or Israeli US strike. Um or any, you know, the continuing continuation of Ukraine. We we shouldn't be happy about this. Gaza, what's happening there? All of this. we shouldn't be happy about this or even normalize it and say oh that's just how it is but there has to be some element of well we know this is what the United States can do and can only do maybe at this point uh it's the only tool it has violence the threat of violence the sort of nuclear war these things uh I think we just have to we have to be able to accept that that's what it's going to be and there's always going to be but there's always going to be push back to it as you said so I I hope that people get this message into 2026 because I think I think people have been blindsided pretty hard by uh nearly on the brink of two major wars in in just a matter of weeks. I think I think that really did hit people very hard and it it's kind of happened in a flash and we're already in I think which is the next phase of whatever is to come next with these uh developments. So without further ado, everyone though, everyone should follow if you aren't already and subscribe and support uh Ben's work at Geopolitical Economy Report, which the YouTube channel is in the video description. Hit the like button before you go. Um I think that helps with keeping the stream going. After we're done, I'll just say thank you to all the super chats. Won't be able to read uh them deeply. We did have a member here who's been a member for quite a long time who works for Brazil 247, which I've heard of. Um, and so, uh, they want to get in touch. Um, my email is in the channel description and, um, Ben, you're very reachable, uh, over at Geopolitical Report X. Um, just look up Ben Norton. You I'm sure that you can get in contact with with you. Uh, but without further ado, everyone, we're going to head out here. Ben, anything you want to say to the audience as we leave? No, just uh, thanks for having me, Denny. And if people want to hear more, I just published a video about Iran and the US and Israel supporting the protests and I have a lot of videos about Venezuela. So yeah, uh thanks for having me, Danny, and we'll we'll talk again soon. Yeah, great. All right, we'll head out together everyone. Video description, Ben's work, you can find find that video, watch that after this. And uh all the places support this channel are there, too. Patreon, Substack, and much more. Until next time, everyone, I'll let you know. Take care. Bye-bye.
A new investigation by ProPublica finds over 40 cases of immigration agents using potentially fatal chokeholds and other moves that can cut off breathing. “These arrests are playing out around the country, and often in full view of cameras and witnesses,” says ProPublica reporter Nicole Foy. She also reports that at least 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested by immigration agents.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at ICE’s escalating use of violence and force. Last week, an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide protests. On Thursday, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops to Minnesota.
Following the shooting of Renee Good, ICE’s violent tactics have come under increasing scrutiny. A new investigation by ProPublica documents more than 40 cases of immigration agents using banned chokeholds and other moves that can cut off breathing.
In one case, ICE agents violently arrested an ICU nurse in California named Amanda Trebach while she was documenting ICE operations in the Los Angeles area. Two plainclothes, masked agents were filmed pinning her against the pavement as they knelt on her back. One agent put his knee on Trebach’s head for a brief moment.
EYEWITNESS 1: Filming you.
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off her head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off! Your knee is on her [bleep] head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
EYEWITNESS 2: Get it off!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back. Get back.
EYEWITNESS 2: Get off her head!
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back.
ICE AGENT 2: You better get back.
AMANDA TREBACH: Get off me!
ICE AGENT 1: Get back. Get back.
EYEWITNESS 1: This is public property, sir. This is public property.
EYEWITNESS 2: Streaming live, this is ICE beating her up. They’ve got a knee on her head.
ICE AGENT 1: Scoot back.
EYEWITNESS 2: I am where I need to be: 10 feet. So…
ICE AGENT 2: Can you guys get her in the van?
AMANDA TREBACH: Sir?
EYEWITNESS 2: You OK?
AMANDA TREBACH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Trebach was then held in federal custody. After her release, she appeared on Democracy Now!
AMANDA TREBACH: They came out in a convoy. They jumped out of the vehicle. As you could see, they pinned me to the ground, and they handcuffed me. They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights. They didn’t tell me where I was going. They shut the vehicle. They drove me to the other side of the noncivilian side of Terminal Island. And basically, they kidnapped me.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by ProPublica reporter Nicole Foy, her latest article headlined “We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing.” In October, Nicole also revealed how ICE detained more than 170 U.S. citizens.
Nicole Foy, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Why don’t you lay out your latest findings? Talk about these potentially lethal chokeholds — which are, in fact, illegal?
NICOLE FOY: Yes. My co-worker McKenzie Funk and I, we spent of this last year documenting aggressive tactics by immigration agents. And what we found is that over the last year, immigration agents across the country have used these really dangerous and banned — by their own policy — chokehold and carotid restraints, as well as many of these also dangerous kneeling on people’s necks, kneeling on backs, like we saw with Amanda, in ways that can really restrict your breathing and your blood flow, which is one of the reasons why their own training actually highly discourages these types of arrest. But we’ve seen it across the country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nicole, can you talk about some of the specific examples that you document — for instance, Arnoldo Bazan, a 10th grader in Texas?
NICOLE FOY: Yes, he was — that’s a case that I think really sticks out, because he is a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, and he was really violently arrested with his father in a store in Houston. You can hear him in the video, as officers are putting him in a chokehold, screaming that he’s a minor, that he’s 16, he was going to school, that he’s a U.S. citizen. And yet he told us that that didn’t matter. The agent continued to use a chokehold on him, that, again, is banned unless there is a call for deadly force.
And when we showed videos like this one to a number of police officers, other former immigration officials and top DHS officials, they were really appalled, and they had no idea what could have prompted this level of deadly force, especially against someone like a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, who really had really difficult and dramatic injuries to deal with in the aftermath.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. Have any officers, from your reporting, who’ve used these tactics faced disciplinary measures?
NICOLE FOY: We’ve yet to find any evidence that they have. We asked the Department of Homeland Security if they have disciplined any officers, especially in cases where we showed them these videos and said, “Your own policy bans the use of a carotid restraint, the use of a chokehold. Have these officers been disciplined?” And they did not answer us, would not tell us if any had been disciplined for these tactics. And they stood very firmly behind their officers’ actions and said that they were acting with the utmost professionalism and even using a reasonable amount of force.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read from your piece. “Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns. An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard … his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; [she] then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.” That’s what you wrote. Tell us more about these cases.
NICOLE FOY: I think the case of the young father in Massachusetts is particularly disturbing, and was really disturbing for so many of the bystanders who were there witnessing it and recording it. Like you said, he refused to be separated from his young daughter, a 1-year-old, who was in the car with him in between him and his wife. Agents had come to arrest his wife, but she also didn’t want to leave her 1-year-old behind. She said that she was still breastfeeding, and she couldn’t leave the child behind. And in an effort — and we know this because we reviewed bodycam footage and bystander footage — we know that officers really wanted them, specifically this young man, Carlos, to let go, and he wouldn’t let go of his daughter or his wife.
And so, you can see in the video the moment when an agent decides to reach around from the back and press his fingers and thumb into his neck. And he appears to start having a seizure. And he shakes so violently that his young daughter, who is, of course, crying, is shaking with him.
He did end up getting to be released with his daughter, but he’s filed a lawsuit alleging not only excessive force, but also alleging that ICE officers delayed medical attention when he requested it on the scene. And so, it was — it’s really a difficult video to watch, but these arrests are playing out around the country, and often in full view of cameras and witnesses.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this issue of ICE arresting American citizens? You mentioned there have been about 130 of them, including about a dozen elected officials. Could you talk about some of those cases, especially the case of Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales?
NICOLE FOY: Yes. So, last year in October — and this count was only updated as of October 2025 — we had found that more than 170 U.S. citizens in total were arrested around the country by immigration agents. Around 130 of those were actually arrested after accusations of assaulting officers or during protests or because they were alleged to be obstructing ICE activities. But there were also many other U.S. citizens, like Dulce, who were arrested and detained because of the fact that immigration agents believed that they were not U.S. citizens. And this is despite evidence that was often presented to them at the time of arrest or afterwards by family members. I believe that is the case of what happened with Dulce, that she — they presented a birth certificate, and yet she was still detained for a number of days over the holidays, if I’m remembering correctly.
AMY GOODMAN: Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales’s case first gained national attention when one of her attorneys took to the internet out of frustration with the lack of legal process and progress in the case.
VICTORA SLATTON: My name is Victoria Slatton. I’m an immigration attorney. I currently have a client who is a U.S. citizen who is in ICE custody. … They are blatantly ignoring orders from the court. They are not allowing me access to my client. And I am at a loss, and I’m incredibly angry.
AMY GOODMAN: Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales was finally released from ICE detention earlier this month. And this is how NBC4 Washington reported on her release and reunion with her 5-year-old son.
MAURICIO CASILLAS: This is the moment when Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales is once again able to embrace her son. The 22-year-old mother says she was overjoyed, and it was an incredibly emotional moment when she saw her son once again. She says she was detained by ICE agents on December 14th in front of her family near her home in Baltimore. She says ICE agents told her to get out of the car because she was being detained. She says she tried to explain to them that she was born here in Maryland, but she says they didn’t believe her.
AMY GOODMAN: In your ProPublica exposé, what has surprised you most, Nicole?
NICOLE FOY: I think one of the most surprising things is maybe that both — like, this is just happening around the country, and often just really in full view of cameras, whether people — whether immigration agents are arresting U.S. citizens —
AMY GOODMAN: And they’re grabbing cameras.
NICOLE FOY: And grabbing cameras. I think that is really, like, as someone who is a journalist, and so, of course, as a huge advocate of the free press — it is perfectly legal to document these activities, and yet many of the U.S. citizens who have been arrested by immigration agents believe that they were arrested because they were filming, and after they were told to stop filming.
AMY GOODMAN: And agents are usually masked. How can they be held accountable? You are documenting illegal actions.
NICOLE FOY: I think it’s really difficult. We’re, of course, seeing a number of states and other municipalities try to find some way to allow their residents to file — to file lawsuits against officers. But that’s really difficult when not only have — are these agents masked, the government is not telling us, usually, who someone is that has committed an act of excessive force or something like that. But on top of that, the institutions within ICE and DHS that are supposed to hold these officers accountable and at least conduct some type of internal review have been just completely stripped of personnel and authority.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Nicole Foy is a reporter for ProPublica covering immigration and labor. We’ll link to all your recent pieces.
Coming up, President Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops to Minneapolis. We’ll talk about the significance of this and also speak with Mahmoud Khalil about a ruling that came down in court yesterday. Could it lead to his rearrest and possible deportation? Stay with us.
We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing by Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk propublica January 13, 2026, 5:00 am https://www.propublica.org/article/vide ... s-citizens
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Reporting Highlights
Chokeholds: We found over 40 cases of agents using chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen.
Former Police Are Appalled: We showed former police and immigration officials videos of incidents. They said agents are out of control. One said it’s “the kind of action which should get you fired.”
Banned Tactics, No Punishment: There is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. But there is no sign of punishment for officers who’ve used them.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns.
An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis — less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week — police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow.
But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Examples are scattered across social media. ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret. The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.
In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”
About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed. Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation.
We reviewed footage with a panel of eight former police officers and law enforcement experts. They were appalled.
This is what bad policing looks like, they said. And it puts everyone at risk.
“I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters — some of them will resist,” said Eric Balliet, who spent more than two decades working at Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, including in the first Trump administration. “I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period.”
“If this was one of my officers, he or she would be facing discipline,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a longtime police chief in Seattle who also served as Customs and Border Protection commissioner under President Barack Obama. “You have these guys running around in fatigues, with masks, with ‘Police’ on their uniform,” but they aren’t acting like professional police.
Over the past week, the conduct of agents has come under intense scrutiny after an ICE officer in Minneapolis killed Good, a mother of three. The next day, a Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot a man and woman in a hospital parking lot.
Top administration officials rushed to defend the officers. Speaking about the agent who shot Good, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, “This is an experienced officer who followed his training.”
Officials said the same thing to us after we showed them footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds. Federal agents have “followed their training to use the least amount of force necessary,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
Both DHS and the White House lauded the “utmost professionalism” of their agents.
Our compilation of incidents is far from complete. Just as the government does not count how often it detains citizens or smashes through vehicle windows during immigration arrests, it does not publicly track how many times agents have choked civilians or otherwise inhibited their breathing or blood flow. We gathered cases by searching legal filings, social media posts and local press reports in English and Spanish.
Given the lack of any count over time, it’s impossible to know for certain how agents’ current use of the banned and dangerous tactics compares with earlier periods.
But former immigration officials told us they rarely heard of such incidents during their long tenures. They also recalled little pushback when DHS formally banned chokeholds and other tactics in 2023; it was merely codifying the norm.
That norm has now been broken.
One of the citizens whom agents put in a chokehold was 16 years old.
[x] American citizen Arnoldo Bazan was hospitalized after being choked and pinned to the ground at a restaurant supply store in Houston during the arrest of his father nearby. Courtesy of the Bazan family
Tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan and his father were getting McDonald’s before school when their car was pulled over by unmarked vehicles. Masked immigration agents started banging on their windows. As Arnoldo’s undocumented father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, drove off, the terrified teenager began filming on his phone. The video shows the agents repeatedly ramming the Bazans’ car during a slow chase through the city.
Bazan Carrillo eventually parked and ran into a restaurant supply store. When Arnoldo saw agents taking his father violently to the ground, Arnoldo went inside too, yelling at the agents to stop.
One agent put Arnoldo in a chokehold while another pressed a knee into his father’s neck. “I was going to school!” the boy pleaded. He said later that when he told the agent he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.
“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica, showing where the agent’s hands had closed around his throat. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”
DHS’ McLaughlin accused Arnoldo’s dad of ramming his car “into a federal law enforcement vehicle,” but he was never charged for that, and the videos we reviewed do not support this claim. Our examination of his criminal history — separate from any immigration violations — found only that Bazan Carrillo pleaded guilty a decade ago to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated.
McLaughlin also said the younger Bazan elbowed an officer in the face as he was detained, which the teen denies. She said that Arnoldo was taken into custody to confirm his identity and make sure he didn’t have any weapons. McLaughlin did not answer whether the agent’s conduct was justified.
Experts who reviewed video of the Bazans’ arrests could make no sense of the agents’ actions.
“Why are you in the middle of a store trying to grab somebody?” said Marc Brown, a former police officer turned instructor who taught ICE and Border Patrol officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. “Your arm underneath the neck, like a choking motion? No! The knee on the neck? Absolutely not.”
DHS revamped its training curriculum after George Floyd’s murder to underscore those tactics were out of bounds, Brown said. “DHS specifically was very big on no choking,” he said. “We don’t teach that. They were, like, hardcore against it. They didn’t want to see anything with the word ‘choke.’”
After agents used another banned neck restraint — a carotid hold — a man started convulsing and passed out.
[x] Officers used a carotid hold on Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera while arresting his wife in Massachusetts. Newsflare
In early November, ICE agents in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, stopped a young father, Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera, as he drove with his family. They had come for his undocumented wife, whom they targeted after she was charged with assault for allegedly stabbing a co-worker in the hand with scissors.
Body camera footage from the local police, obtained by ProPublica, captured much of what happened. The couple’s 1-year-old daughter began crying. Agents surrounded the car, looking in through open doors.
According to the footage, an agent told Zapata Rivera that if his wife wouldn’t come out, they would have to arrest him, too — and their daughter would be sent into the foster system. The agent recounted the conversation to a local cop: “Technically, I can arrest both of you,” he said. “If you no longer have a child, because the child is now in state custody, you’re both gonna be arrested. Do you want to give your child to the state?”
Zapata Rivera, who has a pending asylum claim, clung to his family. His wife kept saying she wouldn’t go anywhere without her daughter, whom she said was still breastfeeding. Zapata Rivera wouldn’t let go of either of them.
Federal agents seemed conflicted on how to proceed. “I refuse to have us videotaped throwing someone to the ground while they have a child in their hands,” one ICE agent told a police officer at the scene.
But after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed.
The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death.
“Even milliseconds or seconds of interrupted blood flow to the brain can have serious consequences,” Dr. Altaf Saadi, a neurologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told us. Saadi said she couldn’t comment on specific cases, “but there is no amount of training or method of applying pressure on the neck that is foolproof in terms of avoiding neurologic damage.”
In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him.
[x] Video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest shows him shaking violently while suffering an apparent seizure in the front seat of his car, with officers continuing to attempt the arrest. Newsflare
“Carotid restraints are prohibited unless deadly force is authorized,” DHS’ use-of-force policy states. Deadly force is authorized only when an officer believes there’s an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” and there is “no alternative.”
In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
“These statements were lies,” Zapata Rivera alleges in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit he filed against the ICE agent who used the carotid restraint. His lawyer told ProPublica that Zapata Rivera was disoriented after regaining consciousness; the lawsuit says he was denied medical attention. (Representatives for Zapata Rivera declined our requests for an interview with him. His wife has been released on bond, and her assault case awaits trial.)
A police report and bodycam footage from Fitchburg officers at the scene, obtained via a public records request, back up Zapata Rivera’s account of being denied assistance. “He’s fine,” an agent told paramedics, according to footage. The police report says Zapata Rivera wanted medical attention but “agents continued without stopping.”
Saadi, the Harvard neurologist, said that as a general matter, determining whether someone had a seizure is “not something even neurologists can do accurately just by looking at it.”
DHS policy bars using chokeholds and carotid restraints just because someone is resisting arrest. Agents are doing it anyway.
[x] Federal officers arrested American citizen Luis Hipolito with a chokehold, pinning him to the ground in Los Angeles on June 24. @the_moxie_report
When DHS issued restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints, it stated that the moves “must not be used as a means to control non-compliant subjects or persons resisting arrest.” Deadly force “shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.”
But videos reviewed by ProPublica show that agents have been using these restraints to do just that.
In Los Angeles in June, masked officers from ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agencies pepper-sprayed and then tackled another citizen, Luis Hipolito. As Hipolito struggled to get away, one of the agents put him in a chokehold. Another pointed a Taser at bystanders filming.
Then Hipolito’s body began to convulse — a possible seizure. An onlooker warned the agents, “You gonna let him die.”
[x] In the video of Hipolito’s arrest, four agents can be seen pulling at his body, choking him and pinning him to the pavement. @the_moxie_report
When officers make a mistake in the heat of the moment, said Danny Murphy, a former deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, they need to “correct it as quickly as possible.”
That didn’t happen in Hipolito’s case. The footage shows the immigration agent not only wrapping his arm around Hipolito’s neck as he takes him down but also sticking with the chokehold after Hipolito is pinned on the ground.
The agent’s actions are “dangerous and unreasonable,” Murphy said.
Asked about the case, McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said that Hipolito was arrested for assaulting an ICE officer. Hipolito’s lawyers did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Hipolito limped into court days after the incident. Another citizen who was with him the day of the incident was also charged, but her case was dropped. Hipolito pleaded not guilty and goes to trial in February.
Some of the conduct in the footage isn’t banned — but it’s discouraged and dangerous.
[x] An officer kneels on the neck of nurse and activist Amanda Trebach, a U.S. citizen, during an arrest in Los Angeles. Courtesy of Union del Barrio
A video from Los Angeles shows a Colombian-born TikTokker who often filmed ICE apparently passed out after officers pulled her from her Tesla and knelt on her neck. Another video shows a DoorDash driver in Portland, Oregon, screaming for air as four officers pin him face down in the street. “Aire, aire, aire,” he says. “No puedo respirar” — I can’t breathe. Then: “Estoy muriendo” — I’m dying. A third video, from Chicago, shows an agent straddling a citizen and repeatedly pressing his face into the asphalt. Onlookers yell that the man can’t breathe.
Placing a knee on a prone subject’s neck or weight on their back isn’t banned under DHS’ use-of-force policy, but it can be dangerous — and the longer it goes on, the higher the risk that the person won’t be able to breathe.
“You really don’t want to spend that amount of time just trying to get somebody handcuffed,” said Kerlikowske, the former CPB commissioner, of the video of the arrest in Portland.
Brown, the former federal instructor and now a lead police trainer at the University of South Carolina, echoed that. “Once you get them handcuffed, you get them up, get them out of there,” he said. “If they’re saying they can’t breathe, hurry up.”
[x] DoorDash driver Victor José Brito Vallejo was pinned to the ground by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, on Sept. 11. The Oregonian
Taking a person down to the ground and restraining them there can be an appropriate way to get them in handcuffs, said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer turned law professor who also works at the University of South Carolina. But officers have long known to make it quick. By the mid-1990s, the federal government was advising officers against keeping people prolongedly in a prone position.
When a federal agent kneeled on the neck of an intensive care nurse in August, she said she understood the danger she was in and tried to scream.
“I knew that the amount of pressure being placed on the back of my neck could definitely hurt me,” said Amanda Trebach, a citizen and activist who was arrested in Los Angeles while monitoring immigration agents. “I was having a hard time breathing because my chest was on the ground.”
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Trebach impeded agents’ vehicles and struck them with her signs and fists.
Trebach denies this. She was released without any charges.
Protesters have also been choked and strangled.
[x] A Border Patrol agent chokes and then slams down a protester in Chicago on Oct. 7. Storyful
In the fall, a protester in Chicago refused to stand back after a federal agent told him to do so. Suddenly, the agent grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him to the ground.
“No, no!” one bystander exclaims. “He’s not doing anything!”
DHS’ McLaughlin did not respond to questions about the incident.
Along with two similar choking incidents at protests outside of ICE facilities, this is one of the few videos in which the run-up to the violence is clear. And the experts were aghast.
“Without anything I could see as even remotely a deadly force threat, he immediately goes for the throat,” said Ashley Heiberger, a retired police captain from Pennsylvania who frequently testifies in use-of-force cases. Balliet, the former immigration official, said the agent turned the scene into a “pissing contest” that was “explicitly out of control.”
“It’s so clearly excessive and ridiculous,” Murphy said. “That’s the kind of action which should get you fired.”
“How big a threat did you think he was?” Brown said, noting that the officer slung his rifle around his back before grabbing and body-slamming the protester. “You can’t go grab someone just because they say, ‘F the police.’”
[x] Two federal officers arrest a construction worker in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Nov. 19. Ryan Murphy/Getty Images
In November, Border Patrol agents rushed into the construction site of a future Panda Express in Charlotte, North Carolina, to check workers’ papers. When one man tried to run, an officer put him in a chokehold and later marched him out, bloodied, to a waiting SUV.
The Charlotte operation was one of Border Patrol’s many forays into American cities, as agents led by commander-at-large Gregory Bovino claimed to target “criminal illegal aliens” but frequently chased down landscapers, construction workers and U.S. citizens in roving patrols through predominantly immigrant or Latino communities.
Freelance photographer Ryan Murphy, who had been following Border Patrol’s convoys around Charlotte, documented the Panda Express arrest.
“Their tactics are less sophisticated than you would think,” he told ProPublica. “They sort of drive along the streets, and if they see somebody who looks to them like they could potentially be undocumented, they pull over.”
Experts told ProPublica that if officers are targeting a specific individual, they can minimize risks by deciding when, where and how to take them into custody. But when they don’t know their target in advance, chaos — and abuse — can follow.
“They are encountering people they don’t know anything about,” said Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director at ICE.
“The stuff that I’ve been seeing in the videos,” Kerlikowske said, “has been just ragtag, random.”
There may be other factors, too, our experts said, including quotas and a lack of consequences amid gutted oversight. With officers wearing masks, Shuchart said, “even if they punch grandma in the face, they won’t be identified.”
As they sweep into American cities, immigration officers are unconstrained — and, the experts said, unprepared. Even well-trained officers may not be trained for the environments where they now operate. Patrolling a little-populated border region takes one set of skills. Working in urban areas, where citizens — and protesters — abound, takes another.
DHS and Bovino did not respond to questions about their agents’ preparation or about the chokehold in Charlotte.
[x] Arnoldo, 16, and his sister, Maria Bazan, 27, at their home in Houston. Maria brought her brother to the hospital after his detention by federal officers. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica
Back in Houston, immigration officers dropped 16-year-old Arnoldo off at the doorstep of his family home a few hours after the arrest. His neck was bruised, and his new shirt was shredded. Videos taken by his older sisters show the soccer star struggling to speak through sobs.
Uncertain what exactly had happened to him, his sister Maria Bazan took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff identified signs of the chokehold and moved him to the trauma unit. Hospital records show he was given morphine for pain and that doctors ordered a dozen CT scans and X-rays, including of his neck, spine and head.
From the hospital, Maria called the Houston Police Department and tried to file a report, the family said. After several unsuccessful attempts, she took Arnoldo to the department in person, where she says officers were skeptical of the account and their own ability to investigate federal agents.
Arnoldo had filmed much of the incident, but agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center. The footage, which ProPublica has reviewed, backed the family’s account of the chase.
[x] After Arnoldo was choked by a federal officer, his sister took him to the hospital, where doctors quickly moved him to the trauma unit. Courtesy of the Bazan family
The family says Houston police still haven’t interviewed them. A department spokesperson told ProPublica it was not investigating the case, referring questions to DHS. But the police have also not released bodycam footage and case files aside from a top sheet, citing an open investigation.
“We can’t do anything,” Maria said one officer told her. “What can HPD do to federal agents?”
Elsewhere in the country, some officials are trying to hold federal immigration officers to account.
In California, the state Legislature passed bills prohibiting immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring them to display identification during operations.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that allows residents to sue any officer who violates state or federal constitutional rights. (The Trump administration quickly filed legal challenges against California and Illinois, claiming their new laws are unconstitutional.)
In Colorado, Durango’s police chief saw a recent video of an immigration officer using a chokehold on a protester and reported it to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which announced it was looking into the incident.
In Minnesota, state and local leaders are collecting evidence in Renee Good’s killing even as the federal government cut the state out of its investigation.
Arnoldo is still waiting for Houston authorities to help him, still terrified that a masked agent will come first. Amid soccer practice and making up schoolwork he missed while recovering, he watches and rewatches the videos from that day. The car chase, the chokehold, his own screams at the officers to leave his dad alone. His father in the driver’s seat, calmly handing Arnoldo his wallet and phone while stopping mid-chase for red lights.
The Bazan family said agents threatened to charge Arnoldo if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. DHS spokesperson McLaughlin did not respond when asked about the alleged threat. Arnoldo’s dad is now in Mexico.
Asked why an officer choked Arnoldo, McLaughlin pointed to the boy’s alleged assault with his elbow, adding, “The federal law enforcement officer graciously chose not to press charges.”
How We Did It
ProPublica journalists Nicole Foy, McKenzie Funk, Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar gathered videos via Spanish and English social media posts, local press reports and court records. We then sent a selection of these videos to eight police experts and former immigration officials, along with as much information as we could gather about the lead-up to and context of each incident. The experts analyzed the videos with us, explaining when and how officers used dangerous tactics that appeared to go against their training or that have been banned under the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy.
We also tried to contact every person we could identify being choked or kneeled on. In some cases, we also reached out to bystanders.
Research reporter Mariam Elba conducted criminal record searches of every person we featured in this story. She also attempted to fact-check the allegations that DHS made about the civilians and their arrests. Our findings are not comprehensive because there is no universal criminal record database.
We also sent every video cited in this story to the White House, DHS, CBP, ICE, border czar Tom Homan and Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin provided a statement responding to some of the incidents we found but she did not explain why agents used banned tactics or whether any of the agents have been disciplined for doing so.
Corrections
Do you have information or videos to share about the administration’s immigration crackdown? Contact Nicole Foy via email at [email protected] or on Signal at nicolefoy.27 and McKenzie Funk via email at [email protected] or on Signal at 212-379-5757.
Mariam Elba contributed research. Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar contributed reporting.
LIVE FROM MINNEAPOLIS: ICE CRACKS DOWN on Protesters in MINNESOTA Katie Phang and Robert Held Jan 16, 2026 Interviews
Attorney and activist, Robert Held, traveled to Minnesota to show support for that community as it is under siege by ruthless and lawless federal agents. He joins Katie Phang live from the streets of Minneapolis to provide the latest details of operations there.
Transcript
Those officers. Oh my god. Why are there so many? Robert, this is insane. This is This is like literally Oh Oh I can't get arrested. That's attorney and activist Robert Held. You've seen him before at the Katy Fang News Channel. He's from Chicago, but he's in Minneapolis right now. And he joined me live to be able to tell us to tell you what is happening on the streets of Minneapolis. Let's take a listen. And joining me now from Minneapolis, Minnesota is none other than Robert Held, a dear friend, lawyer from Chicago. And you know, Robert, I'm going to say activist. And you are actually walking the walk, my friend. You are going to the places where it's important. Tell us exactly where you are and what you're seeing. So, I am at the uh Whipple Federal Building uh right here in Minneapolis where protesters have gathered and been particularly active since the death of the murder of Nicole Good. And I'm on uh Federal Way. And you can actually see behind me the federal building right over my shoulder. We have federal agents u that are uh entering and leaving the building on a frequent basis and protesters behind me that are uh I would say exercising their first amendment rights. Something that you know well Robert, you have been at Bravview detention facility in Chicago exercising your first amendment free speech rights. Tell us how the protesters have been treated outside of the Whipple federal building where you guys have been. Well, um, when I got here this morning, shortly after my arrival, a a phalance of about 30 federal agents, um, in full military gear, brandishing their weapons, marched across the street over my shoulder. We're all on this sidewalk that you can see behind me, and you can see the protesters. They marched aggressively across the street, singled out one particular woman protester and arrested her on the spot and dragged her away. And that was uh oh, I don't know about 5 hours ago or so. Robert, what was she doing when they did that? Well, at the time she was doing nothing. She was standing amongst all of us uh shouting uh saying things to the uh to to the agents that came by in their vehicles. But I had observed her. She, you know, made a a name for herself, so to speak, because what she would do is she would go up to the cars that were arriving and she would literally put her camera almost against the window that the agents uh, you know, of the agents vehicles and obviously taking pictures or video of agents that did not have a mask on. And then she would go and and and photograph their license plate. And I'm sure that she had their attention and they made a determination. I mean, they've had a drone out here. They've got all kinds of monitoring equipment. They know exactly uh who's here and what we're doing. I'm sure there's also electronic monitoring. So, they came out, in my view, with a specific intention of going up to her and placing her under arrest. And that's exactly what they did. Yeah, Robert, we do know that in Illinois and in Minnesota, there's been lawsuits filed by those states and by the cities that one of the things is addressing biometric technology that the federal agents have been using to take pictures and to try to create almost like a directory of what they're trying to deem to be opposition. You know, one thing, Robert, you know well as a lawyer is this idea of the possible invocation of the insurrection act by Donald Trump. Do you think that the federal agents are intentionally trying to instigate violence with the protesters? You know, it's interesting and and you as a lawyer are aware that that we can say facts that we know. Yeah. We can observe things, we can hear things, we can see things, and so what we know are facts, but what we almost never know is what's in someone's mind. M so I all I can say is that the tactics and the weapons and the conduct that I observed in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz from September uh through through a month or so ago um were aggressive violent tactics. what I see on the videos um and and what I saw this morning are a much more aggressive style, a much more um emboldened stance that the agents are taking. They with Vice President uh Vance saying that they have absolute immunity, which is something they don't have, but something he said they have, they appear to be acting much more aggressively and much more brazenly and much more dangerously. And it's sad for individuals and the communities and the American people. Robert, we also know that for example, last night there was a minivan or small SUV full of children and that the there was a family trying to get out of a clash in the street and federal agents let stun grenades off underneath the van and also tear gas. So much so that the children were hospitalized. Um the six-month-old was unconscious as a result. I mean, those are the people that they're trying to paint as being Antifa or being violent leftists or doing horrible things. I don't see any of that behind you, Robert. I just see people waving flags and shouting and maybe honking their horns when they're driving by. Yeah, the protesters and I I didn't see that incident, but we we know of incidents in Chicago itself where children, small children and even babies, you know, have been teargassed and maed. protesters, you know, from my observation, um, they are shouting, they are being derogatory and vulgar. Um, they're using curse words, they're blowing whistles, they are giving the finger, um, she's shaking their fist. They're displaying emotion and their anger, disdain, disgust, and sadness about what the administration is doing. But but, but there's no violence here. I didn't see a single rock thrown. I didn't even see a snowball thrown. They're just literally yelling at the agents. Robert, earlier you were also at the memorial for Renee Nicole Good at the actual scene where she was murdered. Talk about the sentiment there and and kind of what's going on at that memorial site. Well, very different from you what you can hear perhaps uh going on behind me. Uh very somber, very sad. Um, some people had made a, you know, a small fire for warmth. Um, there were people handing out food. There were people just talking in small groups. And it was a very somber, very sad memorial, you know, with piles and piles of flowers and notes of well-wishes and, you know, feelings of camaraderie, community support. Um and and so really just you know a dozen or more people some some foreign journalists I should say were there as well. Um really interesting but uh really just a somber sad community get together if you will of strangers people from all over the country. I met people from LA and from the east coast, Wisconsin and and various other states that came there um really just to pay their respects. Did you get a chance to speak with any of those foreign journalists that were there? Um just informally. Uh there was RTL which is a major conglomerate in uh from Germany and France. Um and then here uh there was journalists from Sweden, from Germany. Um and of course the Spanish uh Spanish stations as well. But did any of them express to you kind of what the thoughts are or the feelings are from their countries? what they're looking at happening in our United States. Robert, well, it's interesting you say that because u the journalists are the ones usually asking the questions. Um I tried to ask questions, but they were at work um and so I didn't get as much of a chance um to, you know, to get a real exchange going. But what they did say is that look, the people in Europe are interested in what's happening in America. They made reference to Germany in the 1940s. Um you know the fascism um the dictatorship uh you know of Hitler. They made reference to to to that history and how the Europeans are interested in what's happening here and they made reference to um the fact of where is this going, where's the trajectory. Katie, I don't know if you would mind, but when the federal agents um become aggressive like they are now, um I like to put them in their place. Um so I if if you want it um if you don't mind, I'd like to pick up my bullhorn and do what I do. Go ahead. Do it. Okay. All right. I don't know if you're going to stay on the air with me. I'm gonna I'm gonna stay on. I want to hear what you're doing. I want so there's almost as many foreign journalists here as there are um you know domestic journalists. Uh we did have CNN um the Minneapolis uh newspaper the star with here. Yeah. And um but but like I said the with the uh foreign journalists here I find it very very interesting. Go Robert go. Okay, officers, you need to stand down. You need to step back and stand down. Okay, it looks like they are uh I think they're going to they are going to stand down. So, were they come were they trying to cross the street? Robert, what they're what they're trying see Marshall amongst us uh here who is a protester who puts a vest on and and and keeps people out of the street. I think there is a little bit of a danger with all the slush and the snow and the ice. M um so there is a bit of a danger and I appreciate that the marshall you know keeps us on the street but there's no reason for the federal agents uh to try to police us. So that's why I I started to intervene there. Sure. Robert, I want to remind people uh you and I first got to know each other when you again were um protesting outside of Broad View. You let Gregory Beino know exactly what you thought about him and you also did a little bit of a, you know, attempted mooning of Bo and the federal agents and then showed them your sprinting expertise. But Robert, you're from Chicago. You're an accomplished successful lawyer. What are you doing in Minneapolis? Why was it so important for you to go there? Katie, every person with a conscience is speaking up, standing up shouldertosh shoulder um to support the immigrants, the communities that are being terrorized and traumatized. Katie, I just want to tell you um that I can see and um that the the the federal agents are swarming. They're in their riot gear and there's going to be another they're going to do something out here because this is what they do. They come out with their gear. Um, I've seen more than a dozen, perhaps 20 of them that are are walking um in the parking lot of the federal building. I'll just uh pan a little bit. Well, you won't be able you won't be able to see them, but where those cars are uh behind me is where they were just walking and so they're going to they're going to probably form up and and come out here shortly. I I don't know why they feel like they have to do this show of force uh because it is a peaceful assembly other than with people perhaps jaywalking because they are in the street and you you might be able to see them in the street there other than some jay but they're not obstructing federal vehicles. They're not obstructing federal agents. They're not doing anything right now, right? They're not doing anything right now other than shouting at the vehicles that go by. The ones that are honking are generally showing support for the protesters and the ones that are not honking are generally either neutral or they're um ICE that are hostile. By the way, I should tell you that many I would say many of the ICE agents that drive by have their phones up to their window. So they they think that it's either intimidating or they're gathering data. And you mentioned the biometric piece of the Illinois lawsuit that was filed against the administration just five days ago, but they are um these agents are filming us with their own phones. I don't know why, but part of that lawsuit um that you alluded to earlier by the state of Illinois against the administration alleges that ICE is using um an app that can take a picture of a face and then ID it and then store it for 15 years according to the lawsuit just filed. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of terrifying to know what they're capable of doing. Robert, I want to say thank you for giving us a literally a a playbyplay of what's happening in Minneapolis right now. I want to urge you to stay warm. I know that's kind of tough to do. It's cold there, but I also want to urge you to stay safe and I want to say thank you um sincerely for all of your advocacy and keep us posted when you can and let us know how you're doing. Okay, you are so welcome. It's great to see you. Thank you so much. Good to see you, my friend. Be safe. Okay, Katie Fang here. We launched the Katy Fang News Channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news. Straight, no chaser. So, if you're a fellow trutht teller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a highinformation America
