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What's Coming Will SHOCK the World | Prof. Jeffrey Sachs | The Ceasefire Is a Deadly Trap by Israel
War Strategy Hub
Jun 24, 2025 #JeffreySachs #DeadlyCeasefire #IsraelStrategy

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs delivers a chilling warning: the so-called ceasefire is not a step toward peace, but a deadly trap orchestrated by Israel. Sachs argues this maneuver is designed to manipulate global perception while tightening strategic control in the region. As the world watches quietly, he reveals the deeper agenda behind the calm—and why what’s coming next could shock the world.



Transcript

[Jeffrey Sachs] In a way it is
BB's fulfillment of a 30-year mission to
try to drag the United States into a war
with Iran uh this uh latest episode has
been part of a long-term idea of
Netanyahu which is uh we're going to do
what we want in Gaza the West Bank we're
going to control everything we'll kill
we'll have a genocide and anyone that
objects any other country in the region
will will overthrow that government
that's been the basic strategy for 30
years for 30 years the United States has
gone along with that strategy whether it
is in Lebanon Syria uh Iraq uh Sudan
Libya and Iran was always the big prize
so Netanyahu has been absolutely itching
for a big war with Iran trying to drag
the US in and what we saw last week
probably was the the great battle in
inside between uh the deep state which
is absolutely
in line with Mossad it's basically a
Mossad CIA operation for 30 years and
MAGA which says stop we're sick of this
we're sick of these wars the president I
don't know where he is cuz I haven't
checked my uh my social media for the
last 30 seconds but he's been on both
sides of this uh but his base has been
saying "Do not do this do not do this."
Whereas Netanyahu has been saying next
year in Thran or his his ministers have
been
putting that out in disgusting vulgarity
so I don't know whether this is going to
stop but this is a battle of a long-term
strategy of Netanyahu remake the Middle
East to give uh basically complete total
impunity to Israel to do every murder
massacre genocide that it wants to do
and some of us who think that's not
making the world a better place yeah
that's not helping anything and it's not
making America more secure
um thanks God if this ceasefire holds
that's a good thing that's the bottom
line yeah um professor let's pull in
that thread a little bit more of the
Israelis uh as you mentioned this has
been a multi-deade project of Netanyahu
specifically but it's broadly supported
with the Israeli public and certainly
with his entire coalition including
literal terrorists that are involved in
his government so he's not going to give
up and say "Okay ceasefire and now we
have peace with Iran." That is certainly
not going to happen so what do you
expect to see based on previous
historical actions from the Israelis
what do you expect the Israelis to do
next to try to play their next card to
get us drawn in yet again
well the Israelis will make new
provocations that's for sure they will
make arguments that now we see the
perity of Iran or for whatever argument
to keep drawing us in i have said for
years I think decades now that the main
job of the president of the United
States in modern times is to keep the
foot on the brake of the war machine
because it's always revving if you went
to the deep state in the last few days I
think bombing missions against Iran are
just splendid let's try out those B2s
let's see how the bunker busters do uh
and going beyond that the regime change
well that was in half the tweets of the
last or social uh truth posts of the
last few days uh so I think that Israel
will provoke and it is the job of the
United States when in rare moments
presidents do their job to keep the foot
on the brake and this morning Trump
unusually uh chastised Israel uh in uh
in a post saying "Do not drop that
bomb." Well actually that's his job uh
it's it's pretty interesting he did it
this time yesterday was different we'll
see what happens tomorrow mhm so one of
the things I'm curious about sir you're
obviously always looked at the bigger
picture and there was a lot made
potentially of Russia and China coming
in on Iran's side that didn't
materialize to a major extent but there
were at least some entanglements we can
put this one up on the screen for
example uh president former president
Mediev of Russia at one point basically
threatened you know uh basically said
the Americans have accomplished nothing
in their strikes potentially we could
transfer nukes to them he walked it back
uh a little bit later saying a number of
countries are ready to directly supply
Iran with their own nuclear warheads but
then he walked it back later what do you
make though of how the Russians and the
Chinese will respond to what's
transpired in the last 12 days
yeah I think by the way what Medve was
saying in that point number three was
not Russia transferring nuclear arms or
endorsing that but the fact that
Pakistan is a country closely aligned
with the Islamic cause obviously and
with Iran and absolutely able to
transfer nuclear weapons north Korea is
another case and I think that's an
important point by the way because we've
been told that the be all and end all is
Iran's enrichment of of uranium that is
not the true issue at stake here the
true issue at stake is is vulnerable by
its own actions to a nuclear attack on
Israel the answer is yes does Israel
create more security for itself the way
that it operates my answer is no it
makes Israel more and more dangerous not
only did we see obviously that the Iron
Dome ain't so iron and that there were
easily
it was not hard to penetrate the air
defenses in Israel but Israel seems to
think that Iran is the end of the story
and it is not the end of the story uh
there are 57 countries in the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation that
are absolutely dead set against what
Israel is doing the vast majority of the
world is dead set against it when you
ask about Russia and China it is their
fundamental purpose not to be thrown
under the bus of the United States this
is the basic point they want a
multi-polar world not a US dominated
world and they are succeeding in that
because the US does not have the means
the power in my view the interest but
put that aside the means or the power to
make a US dominated world despite what
Washington has believed for more than 30
years so Russia and China are careful
china's very precise uh I think it is
it's a cliche but it's also true that uh
uh Russia plays uh chess China plays go
and the United States plays poker uh one
hand at a time very quick not any
long-term strategy just go for the hand
and I think that China and Russia bided
their time in the first days but the
point was really
Iran was not decapitated and with regime
change nor was it stopped in its ability
to do great damage inside Israel up
until the very last moment which really
irks the Israelis that it was the the
last exchange of missiles in this case
was Iran's and and then Israel tried to
violate the timeline and launch another
one so it could be last and that's when
Trump said no stop we we already have an
understanding about the chronology so we
are watching step by step the emerging
of a true multipolar world where other
powers that don't love the United States
they don't hate it by the way they just
don't want to be subservient to it they
have nuclear arms arms powerful weapons
the technologies that we have so that we
can't dominate and Iran is a regional
power it's not a pushover for Israel by
any means there was no one strike and
it's all over one of the things that may
have happened last week I don't know of
course but Netanyahu you know telling
Trump "We can do it we can do it we can
do it." and they did their decapitation
murders mossad really is a murder
machine of course and it did its
decapitation strike and it did not bring
down the regime and so it probably led
Trump and people around him to say come
on what you know the Israelis have given
us a bunch of BS on this it didn't
change the regime it didn't end
the threats and I think that's when
Trump heard his base calling he heard
common sense calling
and he said "Look this isn't going
according to plan." And I think the main
point is with Russia and China they were
cautious but they weren't letting Iran
fall by any means and if Iran were to be
facing a more cataclysmic
set of events in the last few days I
think the reactions also would have been
different interesting to your point
about perhaps the Israelis were selling
and perhaps they even believed that they
would be able to you know create a
regime collapse in short time the
Washington Post got a hold of this
leaked audio of MSAD agents calling
Israeli generals and saying "You have 12
hours or else we're going to murder you
and your wife and kids by the way and if
you want to avoid that fate you need to
record yourself in surrendering you need
to film this surrender video and send it
to us which of course would have been
used as propaganda by the Israelis and
as best as we know not one of them did
that which I think you know in and of
itself is an indication that they may
have miscalculated the the strength of
this regime especially once a country is
bombed like it's very common for people
to to rally around the flag but I wanted
to ask you with regards to Israel so uh
they have bombed you know they're
committing a genocide in uh in Palestine
in the Gaza Strip they bomb Lebanon
Syria Yemen Iran Iraq and are are a
nuclear armed nation outside of the NPT
you know did did have a secret nuclear
weapons program and you know are a rogue
nation I think by any um by any
characterization at this point is there
going to be any consequence for them
like is is there any sort of longer term
consequence for the fact that they have
behaved in this outrageous barbaric um
fashion over years at this point and um
you know really made themselves a
villain in terms of the eyes of much of
the world
i think Israel is in its worst
insecurity in its history by far because
it is utterly isolated in the
international
system uh I'm sitting just outside the
UN i've been attending UN Security
Council meetings UN General Assembly
sessions you have 95% of the world
population voting against Israel right
now you have an overwhelming call for
the absolutely practical uh state of
Palestine being established on the
borders of the 4th of June 1967 and
Israel learning finally after decades
and decades it's just going to have to
live alongside the Palestinian people
who have the same number population as
the Israeli Jews and this is the most
basic point of all israel has no
security from all of this it has
achieved nothing except a wasteland in
its neighborhood and if it wants
security the only security is to rejoin
the family of nations and the way to do
that is straightforward it's according
to international law it's according to
basic common sense it's according to
decency it's according to endless
resolutions of the UN Security Council
and the UN General Assembly and that is
that there would be a state of Palestine
for the Palestinian people alongside a
state of Israel and President Trump
actually can make that happen if he
wants his Nobel Peace Prize it's not by
this ceasefire after this behavior of
the last week it is by a Palestinian
state being established how does that
happen one vote change in the UN
Security Council the US vetoed this last
year when it came to a vote in the
security council which is the part of
the UN system or the international
system that establishes the statethood
membership in the UN all the United
States has to do is to say we go along
with all the rest of the world and tell
Israel wake up we're saving you we're
not hurting you we are saving you from
yourself however it's just crazy what
Israel is doing and the idea that this
is any security
i think they should understand that with
uh apartment buildings in Beerva being
destroyed with Hifa being attacked with
Tel Aviv being attacked with the
countries outside of the region like
Pakistan and DPRK watching if Israel
thinks it has any security at all from
its brazeness
it should think again and by the way
what we saw in the Mossad tape which is
chilling of course to listen to yeah uh
is that Mossad
became a killing machine it's very
skillful at mass mur and murder i would
say not mass murder in the sense that
the murder of the leadership of the
Iranian military last week
yes that's Mossad's business but to have
that as your centerpiece of statehood to
be murder incorporated is not going to
get you safety or security or any sound
sleep any day uh in in your uh in your
life israel needs to rethink
fundamentally this BB strategy which
goes back to 1996 when he first became
prime minister and I think to your point
they're not going to rethink it because
the public is broadly supportive of the
BB strategy it has to be forced upon
them and the United States of America
can do that if there is any will to do
it
it depends always it has always depended
on the United States going along by the
way people should get online if they
haven't done it recently and look at
Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress in
2002 telling them how wonderful the Iraq
war is going to be oh it's a cakewalk
it's it's going to inspire the whole
region this man is nuts he's a failure
for 30 years he's the biggest
wararmonger on the planet if Trump wants
a successful presidency don't sign on to
this idiocy do your job Mr president
make peace in the region that has to be
you give the state of Palestine
alongside the state of Israel stop the
genocide and go along with international
law it's pretty straightforward it's
there for the taking

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Part 2 of 2

i was listening to Secretary Hegsef in Singapore the other
month talking about how the US has been distracted for a generation elsewhere now needs to focus its attention on Asia
it's not a coincidence that Asia is the most prosperous uh stable peaceful region of the planet because this is the
one place the US hasn't been able to really focus on and interfere in and now that it's focusing its attention here
everybody knows that it's going to result in wider instability war uh proxy
war and then eventually allout war so again nations need to do what they need
to do uh Iran would probably be insane not to acquire nuclear weapons at this
point yeah yeah and this again this goes all
back to the United States created the conditions for this um you know there's
huge double standards here and now this war this was a war and it's a war that's
not over the only thing that has been paused are the hostilities uh the open hostilities as hell israel
is still u using its proxies and agents inside of the remote areas of Iran to
launch uh drones that is that Iran still has to shoot down at this very moment so
this is still happening and uh the operation you know Israel speaking
through the United States and itself saying regime change is indeed the goal
so yeah Iran has a lot to think about here uh as it moves forward in um not
only developing itself and keeping its sovereignty intact but also I think we
all have to consider what this word deterrence really means in a day and age
where full spectrum dominance in endless war is the only and primary aim of US
foreign policy if that's the only and primary aim then deterrence is not
really the word anymore the word is what can you do or maybe this is not a word maybe I don't have one uh but what can
you do to ensure that your goals your aims your interests are protected and
defended that the people the development the principles the goals of your particular nation are preserved you know
that's that's really the big question here any final thoughts before we move on yeah well because that that's what
multipolarism is it is a it is a a multi-dommain response to US global
aggression full spectrum domination if you want to call it that which is which is an accurate term to describe it as
that's what multipolarism is it is not just military it is not just political it's not just diplomatic it's also
economic i think it needs to I think it needs to take seriously many other domains of national security especially
information space the multipolar world desperately desperately needs to counter
US information operations because when you really think about it a lot of this
is able to continue because of people not just in the United States that population is hopelessly brainwashed
those people are never going to be part of the equation I don't think I would love to be wrong about that but I I don't think so I still see people
supporting Trump i still see people making excuses for him uh but people around the world are still primarily
influenced by Western media even here in Thailand the vast majority of media is
simply repeating what Western media is saying just translating it into the Thai language this is a huge problem that
multipolarism needs to to face and begin working on i've always said that all of
these nations need to come together because if any one nation tries to do it the US is going to target them all of
these nations collectively need to say no more western uh social media platforms dominating information space
in all of these countries which have always been weaponized are weapons used against these nations no more western
media holding a monopoly over these countries what what China and Russia have achieved now needs to be
incorporated across the rest of the multipolar world i don't know the best way to go about doing that that's something that definitely needs to
happen you could have the largest military in the world you could have infinite tanks and jets but if you don't
have people that are willing to go into them and point those weapons in the right direction then it's all for nothing and I have watched nations with
powerful militaries uh crumble and disintegrate because the US was successful at getting to the minds of
people colonizing their minds if not the physical domain of that country so we're
in the 21st century is the 2025 information space is a national security
domain there's there's way too many old guys in in in the military in the
government in all these countries around the world that still don't get what the internet is it is a national security
domain and if you have secured all other domains but you have left this one on open it's like having your your borders
open your shores wide open your airspace clear for anyone to do anything they want in that's what they're doing in
information space right now and you could see the effect that it's having it's it's like it's like you're you're
you're you're trying to go down the road that you're dragging a a one ton block of concrete behind you you're not you're
not going to get anywhere doing that you need you need to cut that off and you need to solve this problem so
multipolarism and more specifically focusing on these these I would say newer contemporary national security
domains that are still still being completely ignored yeah yeah i think this is where China
has been in the lead i don't want to get too far off because I do want to cover the uh NATO summit uh with enough time
but this is where China is really in the driver's seat on this issue that you speak about uh because it has uh deep
regulations of this very thing information space because it has such a huge indigenous network of its own
telecoms of its own uh you know high technology uh it has and because yes
people in the west think oh freedom of speech Well they ensure that various
networks we know hell we know from Cuba to Syria everywhere Meta all these companies they literally organize color
revolutions against you because they work directly with intel intelligence agencies um and whatever proxies that
they're trying to develop um they work with them to try to overthrow the government so this is where this is why
China doesn't have these issues we haven't seen a color revolution sprout up i haven't seen this because in a big
way uh it is Chinese people it is a Chinese government it's the Chinese media it's its own indigenous
infrastructure that holds the most influence um that was you know uh 30 40
years ago it was uh a little different but times have changed and being open
completely open without um any safeguards leaves you vulnerable to all
these models that we have seen the Libya model the Syria model uh on and on and on and um you know China isn't playing
around with that and I think it's a lesson um one that unfortunately countries like Iran struggle a bit more
with because the sanctions are so crippling and already create uh
difficulties with navigating the overall world market
yes absolutely so now let's talk about the the NATO
summit man this was a clownish i mean there's one thing you can say about
Trumpled US NATO is that it is
it is more outwardly a clown show than it ever is but most importantly uh it is
the results we need to be focusing on because all of that is just um a distraction at the end of the day so the
NATO summit came and went Brian and here is what came out of it nato leaders have
just agreed to increase their defense spending all to 5% of their GDP this is
something that Donald Trump has been demanding of NATO but Danny Danny
there's this huge divide between Trump and Europe this can't possibly be happening i can't believe my eyes this
is fake news Danny no I'm sorry i couldn't I couldn't help no it's true and then I mean the commentary from
Donald Trump himself when he was speaking was "Oh NATO is going to be very strong under us," meaning under his
leadership and then it got weird we know Mark Rut is Trump's man you know that he
is particularly predisposed to being aligned with Donald Trump as an individual but uh this I think expresses
just how uh deeply uh subordinate NATO is as essentially an arm of the United
States and mind you they're talking about in this clip uh Israel Iran they
had a big fight like two kids in a schoolyard you know they fight like hell you can't stop them let them fight for
about two three minutes then it's easy to stop them then daddy has to sometimes do strong language against every once in
a while you have to use a certain word i I think they have so daddy has to stop
them that's how Maruta uh uh uh talks about the United States
here which I think is quite telling um and then Brian this is what Donald Trump
had to say in response to this this is I think showing exactly the the the the
status uh who leads who when it comes to the US and NATO mark Rutter the NATO
chief who is is your friend um he called you daddy earlier um do you regard your
NATO allies as kind of children no he likes me i think he likes me if he
doesn't I'll let you know i'll come back and I'll hit him hard okay no he did he did it very affection daddy you're my
daddy so this is as as uh humorous as that is
Brian though talk about your reaction to the NATO summit ukraine was not spoken
about so much a lot of it was about the United States essentially doubling down
on its commitments your thoughts i I've been talking about this for seven months
before President Trump stepped foot into office I said this this was going to happen because this exactly what's in the policy papers and that's where
policy comes from doesn't come from President Trump's brain or the neocon wararmongers that he surrounds them
himself with these are all just facilitators of this policy doesn't matter if it's a Republican or a Democrat doesn't matter if they're
they're scenile or or conscious of what they're doing there's one policy is produced by corporate corporations and
financial institutions in these think tanks they they put these plans on paper
that are almost always public and then they implement it chapter by chapter line by line the if you go to the the
table of contents of which path to Persia you go through the table of contents you can see that every single president from Bush Jr all the way up
until today has exercised every single one of these options exactly as they were written down it's not as if this
specific paper was the blueprint is a reflection of consensus with among these special interests what is to be done the
policy papers are turned into uh bills or policies by teams of lawyers and brought to Washington to be signed off
on by lobbyists that is how it works and if you don't understand that you don't understand anything about how any of
this works and that is why people are constantly surprised because they're trying to track political rhetoric and
they're looking at political divides that don't actually exist that are actually all theater meant to distract
you and divide you and so back in I think it was 2022 2023 they produced a a
series of papers titled project 2025 and in that paper it says Europe is going to
spend 5% on defense on on NATO of their GDP on NATO and that is exactly what
happened secretary of Defense Pete Hath in February uh this year told Europe in
Brussels he said you're going to take over this war against Russia because we have to pivot to China i had mentioned
this earlier in the program and you're going to spend 5% of your GDP on defense you're going to buy weapons from us
because the US is overstretched and he and Secretary Hankstead have literally said "There needs to be a division of
labor we cannot just do it all on our own we need our proxies to start diverting public money from programs
that actually benefit the people living in their countries and we need to start spending it on our proxy war just like
we in the United States have been doing depriving the American people of any sort of decent life or future that's
what Europe needs to do." And people ask why why does Europe do this because it's been politically captured just like
Ukraine has been politically captured they have captured the institutions through big money interests they control
them through various institutions as well as the EU itself is a layer of bureaucracy thrown over the European
nations as as a blanket smothering national sovereignty across the region and all of these nations obviously
demonstrabably are working against their own best interests to facilitate US foreign policy not just in in Europe
regarding Ukraine and uh Russia but also regards to everything else in regards to
China in regards to Iran in regards to the continent of Africa in regards to absolutely everything the US is
interested in doing they get their proxies to pay the price for them that's how empire has always worked today as a
modernday empire so when they talk about the Europeans being children well they're they're imperial subjects
they're they're they're vassels as as we have been warning and and the scary thing is though it's all accelerating
very quickly very recklessly because again I've been on your program Danny we've talked about this they're out of
time they see multipolarism rising they see China exponentially rising and they know the window of opportunity to do
this is to reassert themselves is closing once it's closed it's irreversible so that's why they're rushing through this whether it's going
to work or not they don't care it's better to try it everyone else is going to pay the price for it they they will
be the last ones to pay the price for it they their proxies will pay american soldiers will pay the American public
will pay they will be the very last people to pay so they there's no reason for them not to try
yeah i mean Brian this it gets more and more ridiculous i I I just found this it
was a message that Donald Trump posted from Mark Rut himself sent to Donald
Trump this is just ridiculous this is Donald Trump posting on his true social from
Mark Rut a message congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran that was truly extraordinary
something no one else dared to do it makes us all safer you're flying into the HEG with another big success this
evening it was not easy but we've got them all signed on to 5% donald you've driven us to a really really important
moment for America and Europe and the world you will achieve something no other American has could get done in
decades uh and then he said u Europe is going to pay in a big way as they should
and it will be your win safe travels and see you at the dinner he just said what
I said didn't he it's just absolutely uh ridiculous and
and not only this Brian but there's also the fact that Donald
Trump is when we're talking about the Ukraine conflict for example uh Donald
Trump is also it's not just the NATO summit where he is uh revealing exactly
what US aims are with NATO not to disband it but really to expand it he's
also showing the truth about these negotiations there are no negotiations
right now mind you and now he is pointing at Vladimir Putin he says NATO
is not a ripoff and Putin is the more difficult partner in ending the Ukraine
conflict this is from the Wall Street Journal so what have we been saying Brian i I mean
to to to the point of I'm not even kidding absolute exhaustion i am physically and mentally exhausted trying
to warn people about this again before President Trump even stepped foot into office his nominee for Vice President JD
Vance was saying "We're dumping the war in in Ukraine on Europe we're not ending it because we need our weapons to go
fight China." That is literally what they're doing right now that is what we see unfolding right now they not me i
didn't warn you they told you but people were just hearing what they wanted to hear and they and in many times they
just imagined things that were never even said in the first place i I know people that genuinely believe President
Trump was going to possibly even dismantle NATO or walk away from NATO and that that was just a again theater
to panic people into doubling down on supporting NATO and and creating public
support for NATO that's all it was it was theater people have to remember go to YouTube type in Donald Trump WWE he
is a performer he's he does theatrics he has done it for years and years of his life he had his own reality TV show
which had nothing to do with reality it was all scripted that is how he does business he made his living in real
estate and in casinos why do people believe that this is a man that was going to change anything it just at face
value was absurd it was an absurd proposition from the beginning it is not how the US government works even if he
genuinely did want to change everything there is no power in the White House or in Congress these are people that sign
off on things just to make it official and they are people who sell it to the
public the policies are dei devised by these corporations in these think tanks
that's where people need to focus they want to change anything they need to change that aspect of it and when I
always talk about this I always hear people moan and groan and roll their eyes the corporations that you give your
paycheck to every single month they're the ones creating the problem those are the people you need to undermine uh it
doesn't matter what you say or do in Washington those interests you need to undermine support for them and it's very
easy for you to do it you just stop giving them your money and find alternatives ultimately that's what multipolarism is it is creating
alternatives to the US system not trying to reform it or fix it or or convince it
to stop doing what it's doing it is the entire planet creating an alternative system and leaving the US in the corner
by itself until it learns how to play nicely with others that's what Americans need to do if they have uh any real hope
of changing things inside the US and in the meantime the rest of the world has to continue investing in multipolarism
each one of us in our own way needs to do you don't have to do it overnight but a little percentage each month paying
into multipolarism instead of Wall Street Washington London Brussels this
is what's going to make a difference and is already making a difference millions of people are already doing it add to it
and and Brian you could argue that this NATO summit is so interesting was was
likely the most friendly and along you know I mean the NATO summit is generally
a gathering that has no real divisions in it but Donald Trump his administration this whole moment of
history Trump coming back in has been framed as by many the now big divide
between the US and Europe that there was these huge problems between them and
what we've seen is Europe not only fall in line to Donald Trump but essentially this this gathering was a a
demonstration of how symbiotic they it really all is and and the Ukraine
conflict itself look at what's happened there maybe you can help us with an update there because the negotiation
side that has fallen apart and Russia has recently said they're not they not only have been forced to take a pause
with the US because the US pulled out of the negotiations but they're saying they're not talking to Kiev either
anymore so where are we Brian so so we have to remember why does NATO exist
nato exists to encircle and contain Russia and it's also been gradually
expanding the scope of that i mean it has always been waging all of these other wars but it's always been as a
means of eliminating nations friendly to Russia and al now also China that has become a priority for NATO that's the
only reason it exists so why is President Trump asking all of these demanding all and forcing all of these
countries to pay 5% of the GDP into NATO because he is advancing US primacy worldwide remember everybody saying "I
heard Marco Rubio say something about multipolarism that must mean he accepts
and supports multipolarism." No all he was do all he was doing was recognizing that it exists and that it was yet
another thing the US needs to burn to the ground and destroy that's all that was and now we can see that's all it was
we can see it unraveling in front of us right now that is what this whole NATO summit was all about it was about uh the
theatrics are over we we've gotten to the position where we need to be and now it's time to push all of this forward we
tried to use diplomacy to lure the Russians in we carried out strikes on
them as they were negotiating we did the exact same thing to Iran it's probably going to be a while before anyone trusts
negotiating with the US ever again although I don't know why anyone would in the first place and so that's that's where we are and we have to remember all
of these conflicts are interconnected it is not just the US fighting Iran and
then just coincidentally also Ukraine and also coincidentally building up in the the Asia-Pacific in the policy
papers this is all part of one policy to maintain what they call American leadership worldwide but that just means
American domination worldwide the the elimination the war on sovereignty peace
stability prosperity for everybody around the world except the handful of elite running US foreign policy
you know Brian we're only someone said
"Yeah that's why somebody said to me to me this recently they're like "Ah there's three and a half left." You know there's three and a half years left of
just the Trump administration people make this out oh you're anti-Trump all this no no no no no we uh for me I am
pro the truth which is that the Trump administration is operating just like
prior administrations including his first operated just in a different historical context so that makes me want
to know Brian your assessment of well what happens to the Ukraine conflict
from here because what's so interesting about this NATO summit is this is how they're talking about it exactly how
we're talking about it right now not kind of shockingly here's the Guardian trump news at a glance Daddy
Trump showered with praise on triumphant lap through NATO summit where he celebrated the commitment by NATO allies
to boost defense spending by 5% of GDP so this is and you know you CNN all of
them they're talking in the same exact way very little about Ukraine so what what's next for this because in my
estimation uh NATO one of as you said its main mission is Russia encircumment
Russia well the Ukraine conflict is huge in that yeah the the the conflict in
Ukraine continues the US had no intention at all of ever stopping it they're going to keep it going until the
last Ukrainian have literally said that in Washington they are going to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian uh notice
how President Trump is flanked by his secretary of state Marco Rubio and his secretary of defense Pete Heget these
were people that I was told were were not arch neocons and that these were people that were going to help President
Trump um remove the US from all all of this globalism and and pursuit of global
domination and focus in on on the United States fight the the the globalist
liberal order and now they're they're all there doing a they literally say a
victory lap uh because they have achieved this this 5% of GDP spending on
on the military which is going to be used to keep the conflict in Ukraine going for as long as possible now the US
literally has no possible way of focusing on Ukraine on Iran and China at the same time they have openly said
repeatedly and all the way back in February just just as President Trump's administration was beginning and this is what President Biden set up for four
years during his administration set the stage for this this pivot toward China and this division of labor the Europeans
are going to have to take over the conflict in Ukraine keep it going for as long as possible keep Russia tied down in Ukraine raise the cost as high as
possible for Russia so that they can dismember Iran people are like "Why isn't Russia helping Iran?" Because
Russia's at war with all of NATO right now that's why why isn't China swooping in and saving Iran they literally don't
have a military designed to project military power into the Middle East their military is stationed almost
entirely inside of China and it's facing off against hundreds of US troops inside
their territory the island province of Taiwan and tens of thousands of troops in the Philippines which is a growing
military presence for the US Japan all across Japan and South Korea and their
ships are applying the waters of the South China Sea not to protect maritime trade there from China it's all of
China's maritime trade they're there to disrupt it when and if if possible and
so that is what everybody was warned was going to happen that is literally what is happening right now so no they're not
going to talk about Ukraine but the conflict in Ukraine has not gone away and they're going to continue it and that was the whole purpose of forcing
Europe to divert 5% of their GDP into defense defense spending military
spending so that they can take over for the US and the US can take its resources
and focus it on toppling the government in Iran or at least destroying the region as much as possible and building
up its military in the Asia-Pacific region visa v China was Secretary Hanks
had told you told everyone publicly that was the plan and that is what they're doing and for whatever reason people
hoped against hope that the things they were saying they were going to do were somehow not going to happen well it is
happening right now right before our eyes i mean it's kind of stunning how obvious
it is it should be a real slap in the face to anyone who thinks otherwise because on the one hand you have this
like coronation fawning over Donald Trump at the NATO
summit and Trump really reciprocating i mean this isn't the confrontational the the what you said Ryan the political
theater oh I'm going to slap you on the head i'm going to I'm going to you know uh I'm going to bring you down to size
whatever it is that Donald Trump was saying uh to NATO uh and then you so you
have on both of these fronts you have with the Russia front now now Trump is talking about Putin being the bigger
problem uh now you have Donald Trump escalating and this was regardless of
the ceasefire the the the incredible things I've heard about Trump bombing for peace i've heard this this is you
know the the strikes were intentionally limited so that uh it could force a ceasefire i'm just like "Guys this is
this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Plain delusion if you send B2 bombers to bomb a sovereign nation's
territory that's never peace and not only that but even if they were intentionally limited the reason is not
because of a ceasefire the desire to do a cease the reason is these strikes were
obviously to feel feel out what's going on what are the actual capabilities slash maybe the United States actually
is kind of limited right now and does not want to use all of its resources for something like this uh maybe it didn't
want to supposedly start a bigger bigger bigger conflict that doesn't mean it doesn't want one soon in the near future
tomorrow next year it doesn't matter the pro the point is is not to force a ceasefire that's ridiculous so so all
this is to say is now we have Donald Trump you know of course the people around him
all one unit operating as both neocon hawks on Iran we have to be very clear
on this uh with Russia it doesn't look any different from the B administration
look at the attacks just before the so-called 12-day war israel and Iran brian what did we see we saw Ukraine
deep into Russian territory with these drones uh bombing Russian bombers
striking Russian bombers it's just on and on so not Ukraine though not Ukraine because the New York Times already
revealed from 2014 onward not 2022 2014 onward the CIA took over the
intelligence agencies that carried that attack out there are US generals at a military base in Germany yes overseeing
the entire chain of command in the Ukrainian military this is a US war fought through Ukraine just like it is a
US war being fought through Israel it against Iran and just like it is a US war that will be fought against the rest
of China through the island province of Taiwan and also the Southeast Asian uh archipelico nation of the Philippines so
this is the reality people need to see this and if they were I I you cannot blame people for making mistakes or or
their analysis is flawed because their their process was was flawed and and then in turn their conclusions are
flawed but now we can see that it's just not adding up so then you have to go back to the drawing board get a a
literally I do this i get a clean piece of paper and you start at first principles where does all this policy
come from who actually has power and leverage and what what is it d what where is it the the uh where is it
coming from or where are you getting it from money and guns is how human power has always been you know weapons and and
wealth and then today it's money and guns that is where power comes from so look at who has the most of that and
that's where the power is flowing from it's not from some uh artificially tanned uh real estate developer in the
in the White House it's not coming from him it is coming from obviously somewhere else and so people need to be
more realistic about how they assess this and analyze it and then they can draw the right conclusions and our job
Danny you and you and me our job is to raise awareness of this to warn people and we have been talking about this for
years we warned people this is exactly what was going to happen and now it's happening so now I I hope that everyone
at least now is on on the same page and you have to ask yourself if you're not
on the same page why is it is it because you have actual evidence to the contrary that none of this is true or is it
because this is a truth you want to believe in rather than just facing the actual truth people really have to ask
themselves that question every time you have to draw a conclusion you should ask yourself is this because it's the
conclusion I wish it was or is it because there's sufficient evidence to support it we have to do that
yeah and uh at this point uh putting hope on hope
on anything that the United States is doing as a regime as a political regime foreign policy establishment and of
course the forces that uh truly control it uh is really a waste of time with
what is really needed which is spreading the truth uh providing people with the information they need that's the that's
the aim of alter true alternative independent media and of course uh all
the other steps the ones that you mentioned earlier Brian and in terms of uh connecting with the multipolar world
and of course all the activity that's needed to to really um uh demand and
make changes on the current leadership in here in the collective west that's
what's needed because here you have Donald Trump you know it's so obvious now looking at providing K with more
Patriot missiles right but this is what's really interesting is is Donald Trump met with Vladimir Zilinski for 50
minutes and he said he's looking to provide Patriot missiles that Ukraine needs and Vladimir Putin really has to
end the war so he now doesn't even sound any different from Joe Biden on Russia
this was the only this was what people were hanging on to and in just a matter of six months uh
everything is even on the rhetoric side even on the PR side it's all it's all different now it's everything is falling
into line and we see that the United States as an empire not the people not
the whatever it's this empire they are consolidating in in really
looking to do exactly as you said Brian divide the labor and see what's possible
they tested a little with Iran uh they're continuing with Russia and of
course we're always going to be uh having to pay attention with China because got a long way to go in just
Trump administration alone and uh a lot has already happened your final thoughts before we get to audience questions yeah
I mean I just regarding regarding Ukraine when Trump became president what
he began doing what the US began doing is just laundering all of its escalations through Europe that's all
they they did so when you see NATO member nations trying to seize tankers
carrying Russian hydrocarbons that is ultimately being presided over by the United States the US runs NATO it is an
institution that exists for the United States and its geopolitical objectives around the world and especially in
Europe so that was that was Trump's policy but he was laundering it through Europe there was this perception
management taking place that tried to create the illusion of distance between the US and the war in Ukraine and this
was all because they were they were working on negotiations i think they hoped somehow they could trick Russia
into some sort of ceasefire because because they can see what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine the the
Ukrainian lines continue to just incrementally crumble and crumble and fall back and if it just keeps doing
that eventually all of Ukraine collapses and then and then that war is over and then the US
cannot use it as a pressure point against Russia any longer as a matter of fact it'll become a pressure point for
themselves aimed at them and so we again we have to pay attention to what is
really going on if NATO is doing all of these things against Russia if there are all of these sanctions being applied to
Russia u but just it's not the US doing it directly but it still serves the exact same purpose ultimately this is a
US proxy where Europe's not getting anything out of this they're not benefiting from this that's how you know they're politically captured because
nothing they're doing is in the benefit of the European people or the European states or even the European special
interests in these there's huge corporations in Germany that are just wasting away because they're subordinate
to US corporations the United States was an empire long before Apac long before
Israel ever existed jp Morgan was not Jewish and he was doing all of these exact same things it is an is an empire
of oligarchy doesn't matter what religion these people camouflage themselves with that's what it is those
are the interests involved and people need to wake up because if you can't see that you can't see anything and then if
you can't see anything you're groping around in the dark how do you ever hope to find the door except by accident
yeah yeah yeah very good points Brian so just a few audience questions before we
close up here um here we go uh let's do
one from Sparky you asked three but let's just choose one and I'll appreciate all of your super chats of
course Sparky as always Brian no matter what sort of sessation of facilities happens here between Iran and the USI
Israel shouldn't Iran ever forget they're on the infamous list General Wesley Clark spoke about exactly the
ceasefire is just a means for the US to to buy time it wants regime change in Iran it does not want a giant protracted
war it wants I heard Jamal Thomas refer to it as pecking pecking away at Iran
just like they did Syria for years and years and then it and it toppled and before it toppled it was it was rendered
into this this failed besieged nation state that was dysfunctional and so this
is the same dynamics they want regime change on the cheap they don't want another 2003 invasion so that's that's
what we're watching i'm sure Iran knows this people by now looking on they
should all know this we should all be on the same page regarding this this is why I actually don't criticize Iran for its
fierce sovereignty that some people see as fierce independence that some people see as maybe detrimental and some even
criticize it as too overly cautious or too friendly with the US all of this uh
what I see is if Iran is truly going to weather this what's going to be a long
storm let's be honest the US isn't falling tomorrow uh Israel isn't collapsing tomorrow even if it's maybe
in the worst uh it's place itself in both the most maniacally expansionist
position but possibly the worst position for a a proxy um
even so uh Iran does have to focus on its own indigenous capabilities and
despite its uh very fierce fight back that uh certainly made a huge impact in
stopping this temporarily uh we pointed out the issues that are still there
especially in the realm of protecting uh you know against infiltration and all
of this that's not an easy task i think people think that Iran is some superstate or any country i I China's
spent years Russia spent years and years you know how many years Russia this is into the Soviet era had to develop its
own intelligence capabilities that's not something that Iran is really since 1979
an independent country that is one of the youngest independent countries to
this day right like this is one of the youngest countries in the world it was not an independent country after Mosedc
was overthrown it was actually one of the least independent countries it was so so you have a dynamic where Iran has
to build up i don't fault it for wanting to be fiercely independent because at the end of the day it's going to have to
be able to protect itself before anyone else can help we saw this with Syria we saw this um you know as Syria began to
open itself up again to the I call them the traitor states the Arab League etc
uh because of sanctions when it was put in that horrific position of well do you
cooperate with enemies that had knives in your back for many years or do you
suffer even more isolation economically than the past and Syria decided h let's
integrate it looks like that integration played some some role in
uh because they didn't they they weren't able to rebuild they had a lot of
difficulties paying their military and just paying people in general and then
uh uh you know the infiltration ended up uh being just ultimately too much and
the military wouldn't fight high up in the military wouldn't fight though
you had a really difficult situation and and Iran I don't fault them for wanting to avoid that with all of the strengths
and the challenges that they face from here so uh uh I I really am just I I
guess I'm just sick of the Western commentary from the US wherever they're based or even if they're not diaspora
whoever you are who are just so uh you know you just know way more than Iran
knows you're just so much smarter than Iran you just have all the answers um
while of course putting out there like you have Brian nuclear deterrent all of
this those are all good things to discuss but then when it comes to this idea that um
you know uh Iran is uh just making dumb decisions and negotiating versus not to
me all of that is not only the wrong place to focus but just just it's just
arrogant like it's just like we have a situation where children are being
slaughtered every day women children men every day in Palestine in Gaza because
of what the United States and the West have done you know Iranians suffered
a significant death toll lebanese onward all across the region and we're talking
about I think the wrong things here you know the right thing is well how do we how do
we play a positive role in um helping countries around the world
with sovereignty keep it and ultimately when we play that positive role we are placing pressure on our own governments
to stop their wars of aggression um last question Brian
does Brian think that Iran will have enough time to rebuild its air defense system efficiently before the next round of war which will likely happen
yeah it's probably it's probably not going to fully recover by then again if
depending on how much damage was done it could take years to replace and almost certainly there will be attacks before
then but then we have to remember uh look at Yemen look at Afghanistan look
at Viet Well Vietnam did have formidable air defenses they they shot down thousands of US aircraft so that maybe
that's not a very good uh example uh but it is it is possible to defend your
nation what what Iran really needs to focus on is unity unity social cohesion
and that more than anything is going to save Iran i don't think the US is is in
a position to invade Iran but they're definitely going to use militant groups opposition groups to try to divide it
from within that is the big danger this is what happened to Syrian society this
is what happened in Libya and so this is ex this is the playbook they're going to use again is regime change on the cheap
they need to they need to preserve their conventional military capabilities because they're planning on waging war
with with China not just along China's own coasts but interdicting maritime
shipping all around the world so this will take a lot of resources they they do not need to get tangled up in a
conflict with Iran so that that's why we see them taking this approach it's not because they don't want war with Iran
it's it's because they are stretched thin and they realize there there is a division of labor and strategic
sequencing which is required yeah yeah and I think one of the big
positives that came out of this at least this short time period I mean there's a long time to go uh but at least at this
moment what it appears has happened is that one I was talking to you Brian about this i was like you know these
opposition forces that the US really hopes you know the they had like the Pavlavi Sha uh living you know abroad
talking about I'm going to take over but yet there was no domestic force supporting that at all uh no no surprise
there because the sha is the most unpopular force in Iran by far given what it did with the US's support
torturing Iranians and creating just an absolute uh just a disgusting regime but
um also you know even Baluchistan all this stuff it was very quiet and then
you had of course reports which I think are credible and true which is that well there's nothing that unites a country
more than uh having external aggression be imposed on you and uh it seems like
especially uh Israel with the US's help that's what they help facilitate in a lot of ways so um there's some positives
there to take out of this and uh something to build upon as uh the aggression continues because you're
right Brian um that is the that is honestly the number one biggest most
important weapon it doesn't matter how many guns you have you got all the air defense systems in the world you can have nuclear weapons doesn't if your
society is not cohesive if it's not united around common principles um if
it's not people centered that's what China says you know if it's not people centered
then uh bad things can happen divides can occur uh so Iran yeah taking care of
its own whatever domestic struggles and problems that it has will will go a long
way in building upon this uh when the next time comes that it finds itself under fire and that
time is coming uh any final thoughts Brian as I say thank you to the rest of the super chat
super chats i just want to warn people against
uh well people that failed to see this conflict coming are now trying to tell us all what the ceasefire means and and
what is actually going on i just want people to be very cautious about people like that if they were wrong up until
now what makes anyone think that they're right now and again ask yourself why are you inclined to believe them even though
they couldn't see this coming is it because you think they're actually telling you the truth or is it because they're presenting a truth you you wish
existed and would like to accept yes indeed everybody uh who gave a super
chat I want to thank you all for your uh your support um who gave super chats
sparky you gave a lot appreciate your viewership as always iranian kiddo thank you so much for your multiple super
chats but everybody uh really who gave one empire we are appreciate your
commitment to this channel hussein Brazil thank you so much for becoming for being a member and giving that super sticker or super chat without further
ado everybody hit that like button before you go I'm actually going to put now I think I have forgotten but I will
put now the information to Brian Blettic's YouTube channel in the video
description below you should be sure you're subscribing there and watching all of his videos and supporting his
work in the video description you can find all the places to support my work from Patreon Substack and so much more i
believe uh the next stream will be Saturday with Mark Labota our mutual friend who just came out with actually I
should have I was thinking about uh putting it up he had a really great thread on what happened between Israel
and Iran but I don't think we had time for all of that but um I'll have him on
on Saturday without further ado everybody thanks so much have a good night morning afternoon wherever you are
taien that's uh goodbye in Chinese bye-bye

[admin]

US strikes on Iran were Trump’s ‘showmanship’, not much more: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Al Jazeera English
Jun 26, 2025 #Iran #AyatollahAliKhamenei #US

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made his first public statement since a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Iran.

He said US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites didn't achieve much and that the US exaggerated the impact of the attacks.



Transcript

[Music]
we are bringing you now the statement
from Iran's Supreme Leader his first one
since the end of the conflict with
Israel let's listen to it.

[Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] The Zionist
entity has been swaying under our blows
they would have never imagined
to
have been dealt these blows but yet this
is what had happened
we thank
God Almighty
for
assisting
our armed forces
enabled them to penetrate the
multi-layers
of defense set up by the enemies
all the military and non-military
positions
came under our attack
all
these positions within the Zionist
entity came under attack
the
Zionist entities aggression was met by
lethal and fatal attacks and we
succeeded in destroying
the enemy's capabilities
and this is a message that the Zionist
entity must come to know any aggression
against the Islamic Republic of Iran
will have a dear cost a big and high
price
this is what happened
praise and pride to the Iranian armed
forces the Iranian people
simply the armed forces are part and
parcel of the Iranian people it is the
Iranian people that
provided
raised
and fostered
those
armed forces personnel
today we have a robust mighty armed
forces
a second message of congratulations on
the victory
of our beloved Iran against the United
States of America
the United States
immediately
intervened and got involved in the war
simply for the reason that they
have a firm conviction if they hadn't
the Zionist entity
would be annihilated that's why the
United States harried in rescue and
support
of the Zionist entity
yet they did not win any victory
they attacked our nuclear facilities
and this matter cannot go unpunished
within the international venues
however they failed
to undermine these nuclear facilities
the United States president amplified
their military operations yet it later
proved that they have been excessively
exaggerating
[Music]
it is known to all
that the outward position of the
Americans is failure as they failed to
destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities
that's why
they continued with their attempt
to magnify and amplify their attacks on
our facilities in order to conceal
their failure
the Islamic Republic of Iran dealt a
heavy blow
to the American forces when they
targeted and attacked the American
military base in Alide in Qatar causing
grave damage
to the base
those
who amplified their attacks on our
nuclear facilities came out to downplay
our attack on their military base
what matter is what matters is that the
Iranian armed forces have the capability
to target and attack any position
they desire at any point of time
similarly
the American military bases will come
under our attack if the
American
forces direct any belligerance against
Iran
the third message is by virtue of the
unity
solidarity
and harmony among our people the entire
population
one voice
one hand standing side by side
rising above their differences
they
rose up
and stood by the side of the Islamic
Republic of Iran and the armed forces
not only that they praised and commended
the united ranks of our armed forces
the Iranian people have demonstrated
their metal and their unity
against the bleerance initiated against
the Islamic Republic of Iran it is a
message that
our people are one voice
one hand one block
the key message of my
word here is that one of his speeches
the United States president
said
"Iran must completely
give up and surrender."
Then the issue is not our nuclear
endeavors yet
our surrender however these words are
much bigger than the US president
himself iran is a deeprooted
empire deep rooted in history with
wellestablished
civilization
that's why the word surrender is not
within our vocabulary
the Iranian people
mocked
the
words uttered by
the US president since the victory of
the Iranian revolutions the West namely
the United States
maintained anomosity against Iran under
many false pretext sometimes they came
up with under the guise of human rights
women rights now they are coming with
other pretext about our nuclear
civil nuclear endeavors
their ultimate goal is to see Iran
surrendering
former US president did not publicly
utter such words simply these words are
not acceptable
at the global legal level no president
has the right to
demand
one sovereign people to surrender
the Iranian cannot and will not
surrender
this is a key
point in my message let the Iranian
people know that the United States have
deep
rooted animosity with Iran and the
Iranian people and they want us to
surrender this cannot
and will not happen
iran is mighty
established
with
deep
civilization deep rooted in history
vast geography
and established culture
manyfold bigger than
the United States civilization no one
could imagine that Iran or the Iranians
could surrender preposterous this is
demanding Iran or the Iranian to
surrender
would bring about nothing but mockery
iran and the Iranian people
are dignified
and will remain standing tall by the
grace of God the Almighty and I pray
to God Almighty to bestow blessings and
grace upon our beloved
homeland and our people and may God have
mercy on the Supreme Leader Al Kumeni
may he rest in peace

[admin]

[admin]

Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Iran-Israel Tensions Flare – Mamdani BEATS Cuomo!
Dialogue Works
Streamed live 2 hours ago
6/26/25



Transcript

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] Hi everybody today is Thursday June 26 2025 and our friend Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff are back with us welcome back.

[Richard D. Wolff] Glad to be here.

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] I'm going to start with Michael and what has happened in the Middle East, the new confrontation between Iran and Israel which later on the United States has joined and attacked Iran. and it seems that for the time being we have some sort of ceasefire and they stop attacking each other what's your take on what has happened in the Middle East and the implication or the outcome of those policies coming to the United States?

[Michael Hudson, Economist] Well, the ceasefire is obviously sort of to let both sides recover for a week or so, maybe a month, and then the fighting is obviously going to continue. And the fighting in the near east by Israel, and the US fight against Iran, is going to continue, certainly until the election. And the majority of voters that have been tested in America are against the war. They're against the attacks by Israel on Gaza; they're against America's participation in the war, extending the war in the near east against Iran. But the leadership of both parties is completely for the war. And we're in a very unique situation here. The leadership of both the Republican and the Democratic parties is diametrically opposed to what the voters want, which is for peace. And the fight against what the voters want, the fight against advocates for peace, advocates against the increase in the military budget at the expense of social programs, is becoming very vicious. And you saw all of that viciousness in the election yesterday on June 25th for who was going to be the Democratic mayor of New York.

And this is the first test of actually, "How do the voters feel against all of this, and what does it mean for what the American official politics are going to be in the war?" That's why this was so official. Because it was in a way, very explicitly, a revolt against the Democratic party leadership for who is going to be the Democratic candidate. And it was framed that way.

And I'd like to give a little bit of background on this. I think the election was about much more, as I said, than against the mayor. It's the future of the Democratic Party. And the major reason for the opposition to the Democratic candidate against President Cuomo is the party's pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-Wall street opposition to labor. And yet, the most immediate catalyst for the victory of Zoran Mamdani in New York, was the college educated young voters. And for them, the major frame of this vote was what you've been hearing about for the last few months, Colombia's university crackdown on the anti-war protests, and its punishment of student anti-war demonstrators. This crackdown on opposition to the war has dominated the attention of the whole graduating class this June, and of progressives in general. And these protests are very much like the Vietnam war protests in the 1960s. Most students are against the war. Most progressives are against the war, just as the polls have shown. And so most voters supported the students. And there was a universal revulsion against Colombia University's President apologizing to Congress for not protecting these students against accusations of anti-semitism when the Republican politician was accusing the head of Colombia saying, "You know, why did you let students say that they want peace in opposing the bombing of Gaza? If they support Palestinian rights, they are anti-semitic." Colombia University's president apologized, and said of course she will punish the students who demonstrated against the war. She will expel the students who gave speeches and wrote papers against the war. And, of course, she was fired when the public abhorrence of this toadying, this surrender to anyone who accused someone of being anti-semitic, that just has been in the front pages of the papers for the last few months. Because it's not only Colombia University, there's the fight against Harvard. If Harvard lets a professor write a paper, or lecture about the need to support a two-state solution, or oppose the bombing of Gaza, they're being forced out, and the students are being blocked. And of course, President Trump wants to ban foreign students altogether.

Well, Mamdani, the victor in this election, running against the vested interests, against the Democratic party's candidate, who one month ago was given a 97.5% chance of winning, there was so much money behind Cuomo, there were so many vicious attacks, everyone in New York. I live in Queens, and my mailbox was filled with large campaign propaganda against Mamdani. "He's a radical communist. He's a socialist. His backers are terrorists." You can't imagine the extreme. And the fact is that the pro-war candidates, the Zionists, overplayed their hands to such a point that there was a revulsion for trying to smear him. It's as if to oppose the war is to be an anti-semite. So the voters, for the first time, had a chance to come out and react to this polarization of the economy between the political parties on the right-wing of the spectrum, the pro-war anti-labor parties, both the Republicans and the Democrats, and the voters who are not pro-war, and are certainly not anti-semitic, but they're against the war. So anyone who opposes ethnic cleansing in Gaza is accused of being anti-Semitic. And the fact that a Muslim candidate, advocating peace, wins so overwhelmingly against the party interest, shows that the Democratic Central Committee's attempt to fight against Bernie Sanders, AOC, and any defender of labor's interest of public health, of public spending instead of military spending, is going to tear the party apart. And obviously, that is going to affect how American foreign policy responds to the Near East.

This Democratic Party leadership is the same that in the 2016 presidential election preferred to lose with Hillary Clinton, instead of winning with Bernie Sanders. Their opposition against what they call "socialism," which used to be called "liberalism," or "social democracy," their opposition to this, their support of Wall Street, of the financial class, of the landlord class, of the military-industrial complex, was responsible for Donald Trump's victory. Voters stop voting for the Democratic Party. Well, you can look at the vote for the mayor of New York as a microcosm of what the fight is for voters against the Democratic Party.

Last year you had Jill Stein and me on your show explaining what the Green Party's position was against the war. And Jill's campaigning in Michigan, and the Midwest, and Minnesota, was largely responsible for the anti-war voters not voting for the Democratic candidate, and opening the way for Trump's victory. The Democrats saw that, and Kamala Harris said she'd rather lose the election than support the anti-war position. And she lost the election by her support of Netanyahu and the Likud party.

The interesting thing is that, as I said, the college educated voters voted 3 to one for Mamdani. This is supposed to be the traditional support of the Democratic party's professional managerial class, or the future professional managerial class. Cuomo won largely with the poorest income districts, especially in Harlem, and the very wealthy sections of New York. And the city was blanketed. And you had that polarization of the Democratic party's attempt to base its voters on ethnicity and other identities that are not those of wage earners, not those of the working class. That basically shows the failure of their divide and conquer strategy. And in all the polls of the voters in New York, what they're doing is the post-mortems of the election to show that they want the Democratic leadership replaced. It's holding on to power, it's denouncing Bernie Sanders, and the members of the Democratic National Committee who wanted reform, and said we need younger members than the existing leadership, and we have to replace Schumer who is the Senator from Wall Street and Tel Aviv, because he has discredited himself by the extremism that has polarized American politics. And for the first time, you're having all of this broken out into the open. All the positions that most of your commentators have been taking on your show Nima, are really those of the party. The Wall Street Journal's headline was, "Wall Street panics over prospect of a socialist running New York City." And you've seen Trump call him a "communist radical." Imagine that just for supporting rent controls, for supporting a raise in minimum wage, this is now called "communism." This is called "radical". And it's called "anti-semitism." The people who hate Mamdani, who've been funding him, there was a 20 million dollar support of a PAC against him. The wealthy billionaire supermarket owner, John Catsimatidis, said he was going to close his Catsimatidis grocery stores if New York voted for or ended up electing Mamdani. Hedge fund leaders said that they would leave New York if Mamdani was there.

The current New York Mayor Adams was, I think, on the board of CitiGroup, the most right-wing bank in New York, that had thrown all of its support against someone else. And even though Mamdani won the election, Cuomo said he's going to run in the primary still, to try to get all of his funding to fight against Mamdani. And the Democrats have said, "No, please don't run. We're going to back the current Mayor Adams, and we're going to also convince the Republicans not to mount a New York mayor's candidate, such as Curtis Sliwa, by offering him a job in the Trump administration, just so Cuomo will have another chance to run against Mamdani. And we're going to throw the whole power of the press, of the public media, against them."

I think I've given the idea. Richard lives in New York too, so the fact is that both of us are right in the center of this. And I think it's meaning is international in character, not merely local.

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] Go ahead, Richard.

[Richard D. Wolff] Yeah, I would like to build on what Michael has said, and talk a little bit about further dimensions of what has happened. But I certainly start off by saying I was dubious that he could do this, Mr Mamdani, and I was wrong to be dubious. He did it better than I thought he could ever imagine doing it. I don't know him personally, but I would guess, if he were sitting here, he'd probably admit that he's overwhelmed by it as well. We live in a country that for the last 75 years has basically decreed that any candidate for elective office who accepts the label "socialist" is thereby committing political suicide, and will not be heard from again. And one of the reasons Bernie Sanders is the important person he is is because he broke that taboo a few years ago. And then AOC and the others, who have come since, have shown us, and this is the first important thing they have shown us, that the American people, despite 75 years of unrelenting purging of socialists, and anyone who smelled or looked like a socialist, from public office, from respect, from a job, an unbelievable program of 75 years, of something akin to the Spanish Inquisition, it didn't quite kill people, although indirectly, given the jobs it destroyed, the mental health it destroyed, the people imprisoned and deported, because this begins with the anti-communism right after World War II. It is extraordinary that we can see millions of people come out to support Bernie, hundreds of thousands to support other congressional candidates starting with AOC, and now the biggest city in the country overwhelmingly electing Mamdani is a city where the Republican party has very little power. So it's a Democratic city, and it's clear what it just did. This is therefore an historic event. No matter what happens between now and November, this is an enormous step forward for the rehabilitation of socialism within the American political discourse. And everybody should understand it. And that the person who carries that banner is not your charming grandpa Bernie, and is not a beautiful young woman who articulates brilliantly, AOC, but is a young man who has the nerve to be supportive of the Palestinians, and the nerve to present himself as a Muslim. I mean it really does tell you of shiftings in the American political scene that ought to have the leaders of the Democratic Party very worried. That was No. 1.

No. 2. I would like to link the Middle East with this. And I want to do it in this way. Over the last 20 to 25 years we have seen -- I'm exaggerating, but I want to make the basic point, -- we have seen a shift of the definition of politics from something done locally, immediately, by people going door-to-door, advertising their candidate, and leaving a brochure, to spending money on the internet, on television, on big costly promotions. We have at the same time seen the ability of our leaders to basically live, and speak, and act, in their own psychological drama, unconnected from what people think. When Michael reminds us that the majority of people don't want war, and the majority of people don't want persecution of students who have a view on something happening thousands of miles away, etc. etc. etc., he is talking about an alienation. We don't believe the bullshit that's coming from the mass media. That's why it was possible for Mr trump to simply say, "Well that's all fake media," because enough people have figured that out. Not just the ones he called "fake media", because he's a fake too.

And nothing illustrates this more than the last two weeks. We don't know [what happened], because the political leaders of our world don't tell us what's going on. Do you know what amount of damage the Iranians did in Israel? The answer is no. You have a snippet here, a clip over there. But you know., that doesn't tell you very much. Do you know how much damage was really done in Iran? No. Do you know whether the nuclear target was the real target? You don't know. Did they actually get that target if it was? You don't know. This is theater folks. This is all theater. There's something going on, no doubt, and I wish I knew, and I wish you knew, so we could talk intelligently about what the reality means, but we can't. We are a step back. The reality we have is the theater put forward. And there's a reaction that people have when they figure out, each in their own little moment, when you figure out that you don't know. And now you are angry because you're being played with. That anger showed up in the race for mayor in New York in a very dramatic way.

I'm going to give myself as an example. I live in Manhattan. I participated in that vote. The vast majority of candidates never interacted with me, neither where I shop, nor where I work, nor in my home. However, two candidates actually sent a human being, the local city council candidate who won, a young woman whose political affiliations are the usual, that is to say nothing. Two young people, excuse me, three young people came to me for Mamdani. On one occasion, two young men, and on the other occasion one young woman. All three were in their 20s. I could see them, and look at them. They had lots to tell me about Mamdani, but I cut them short, and told them they didn't need to, because this household would all go for Mamdani. Mamdani made the decision, to his credit, to do that. To try to reach voters one by one in an endless process of citizen talking to citizen. And you know, you don't have to be a Freudian psychologist to understand the importance of that. And it's not the words that are spoken, whatever they are. It's the moment in which a person like you, who lives a few blocks from you, and has a life more or less like you do, felt strong enough to come and talk to you. That's worth a million dollars of bullshit publicity. Mr. Cuomo raised money and presented the usual theater. And the people of New York responded by giving him the middle finger. You can't do that in Iran, because it's far away; and you can't do it in Washington; and you can't do it in Tel Aviv. But you are also angry at the theater. One of the few things that we know is real is that what's going on in Gaza is horrific and immoral, because we have enough of the bullshit to know that nobody disagrees on that. The Israelis spin it as they wish. The Americans as they wish. We get that. But we know there's something real. Mr. Mamdani is something real, because he's so different from the normal theatrics. So this is a vote that is corroborated by most of the polls that I see conducted by the Pew folks, who do very good polling, and many of the others. And that is that the majority of people in the Democratic party are alienated from that party. And it is true of the Republicans now as well. Mr Trump is too much like what he promised he would not be. And so he is falling into the trap, as many predicted he would, of being so accommodating. And so he's losing what he once had. And I know it sounds far-fetched, but if you follow the logic, Mr. Mamdani is doing a better Trump than Trump can now do. And that's why he won. And the trick will be, can he sustain it? Can he build on what he has started, with a good solid foundation, a spectacular win. Can he? Will he get the good advice from AOC, and Bernie, and the others, to help him do that? Or will the assembled theater producers unify themselves the way Michael sketched it, and rally behind anybody, somebody, to try to fight this? Their odds are not good. If they were going to do this, they waited far too long. They don't have a good candidate. Choosing Mr Cuomo, with his horrific record of anti-female sexism, being as polite as I know, that was a very poor choice, to say the least. And most of the others, they have don't hold a candle to Mr. Mamdani. On the other hand, they have what a politics of theater needs. They have tons and tons of money. Look at the millions that were reported to have been given to Mr. Cuomo in the declining weeks of this campaign, from Michael Bloomberg, former mayor; from Mr Langone, the Home Depot CEO. You know, the billionaires lined up behind Andrew Cuomo, just like the billionaires lined up behind Mr. trump at his inauguration. Everybody knows it's a theater paid for by billionaires. And Mr. Mamdani teaches everyone across the United States. Every city in America has socialists in it. That's the truth. And they have all wondered, some of them for 50 years, would it ever be possible that a set of circumstances could arrive into which socialists could move? And the answer is, that's what Mr. Mamdani just showed you. Yes, New York is different from other cities, but Bernie comes from Vermont, and that's very different from New York. And even AOC comes from Queens, which is quite different in many ways from Manhattan, and from the Bronx, and and on and on. And Mr. Mamdani won across most of that. This is therefore a very remarkable moment in which, as Marx would have loved pointing out, the internal contradictions of capitalism, the financialization not only of the economy but of the electoral process, its distraction from all human interaction, the desire of capitalists to make money by having each of us lost in our own little cell phone, lost in our internet box, unconnected to anybody else, so that every human activity is mediated by their system of mass media, and mass control, all that we're watching is a reaction against that. The candidate who can mobilize that is Mr. Mamdani in this circumstance. Yet others we don't know of yet, who will pick up this baton, if any of this comes true, as I see the possibility and as I know others like me see the possibility, we are going to be in for some big changes.

Last point, even the theater is now becoming disorganized out of its own contradiction. Let's not miss this. The president announces, with enormous enthusiasm, of the obliteration of the targets in Iran. Within hours, the intelligence chief of the United States says, "No it's not clear that we did it. It's in a mountain. We don't know, but it looks like not much was done."

Okay, this is a poorly organized theater. You ought to be able to do better than that. What the hell is going on here???

And now the the Iranians, as if they almost understand it, began in the first day or two saying very little damage was done, and now yesterday released a statement that great damage was done. Okay, they're beginning to understand too that what is the truth here is utterly irrelevant. It's a theater. Everybody's thinking, "What do I need to say about this event that will enhance whatever project I have? That's the only question. What the truth of the matter is is of no importance. You know, you can do that for 20, or 30 years, you really can, and then people begin to react when they figure out that's what you're doing. And then it loses it. It's like chewing gum. It's very good at the beginning, but within 10 minutes you have no idea what that is in your mouth anymore, because it is no longer able to do what it did at the beginning. That's the lesson of every war. Michael made that point a couple of programs ago. The lesson of Vietnam was, "Don't put troops in these countries. You're going to lose. And you're going to lose because your own people will not tolerate that level of death and destruction.

So now you have to have an electronic war. But an electronic war can't do what boots on the ground can do. The contradictions never stop, and they never see them, which is lucky for us because we do.

[Michael Hudson, Economist] Well, Richard's given a wonderful description of why so many Americans actually support socialism instead of what we have today. There have been a number of opinion polls of Americans saying, "How do you react to the word socialism? And how do you react to capitalism?" Most voters prefer socialism to capitalism, as a word, and presumably as a policy. When Richard says there are going to be big changes as a result of this, the change is going to be how this preference of voters against the pro-Wall street finance capitalist policies that we have, are ever going to express themselves politically in what's become, as Richard said, a financialized electoral system. There's nothing I can add to what he said about socialism.

But I want to make one comment about how Netanyahu's attack on progressive American Jews is splitting them. Netanyahu has said that the greatest enemies of Israel are the progressive American Jews who are not supporting Israel's attack on Gaza. He said that anyone who does not support Israel against the Palestinians is an anti-semite. Well, New York City has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Tel Aviv. So you're having here an expression of the extent to which Zionism has itself become anti-semitic. And I won't say anti-semitic, but against Judaism.

Covenant of the Lord

The concept of the Covenant of the Lord in the Jewish Bible refers to the special relationship between God and the Jewish people, which is central to Jewish theology and tradition. This covenant is described as a binding agreement or pact, often involving promises, obligations, and symbolic signs.

One of the most significant covenants is the one established with Abraham, known as the Covenant of Circumcision (brit milah). According to the Bible, God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations and that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan.

This covenant was sealed through the act of circumcision, which remains a central ritual in Judaism today.

Another major covenant is the one made with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, known as the Mosaic covenant. In this covenant, God promised to make the Israelites His treasured possession among all people and "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," provided they followed His commandments.

This covenant is foundational to the Jewish understanding of the Torah and the commandments.

The Davidic covenant is also significant, as it promised that David's dynasty would endure forever, and that a future king from his line would rule over Israel.

This covenant is closely tied to the Jewish belief in the coming of the Messiah.

In addition to these, there are other covenants mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, such as the one with Noah, which was made with all living creatures, and the priestly covenant with Aaron and his descendants.

The concept of covenant is also explored in Jewish thought as a metaphor for the unique relationship between God and the Jewish people. It is seen as a dynamic and ongoing relationship, not a static or fixed entity.

In the New Testament, the idea of a new covenant is introduced, which is seen by many Christians as a fulfillment or replacement of the old covenant. However, Jewish tradition maintains that the original covenants with God remain in effect.

-- Covenant of the Lord in the Jewish Bible, by Google AI

Netanyahu and Israel's reading of the the Covenant of the Lord backing Israel, is a radical misreading of the Jewish bible. And over the weekend, Senator Ted Cruz said he's supporting Israel, and wants to be Israel's strongest supporter in Congress, because the Bible tells him that God supports Israel, and you have to support Israel if you support God. It's all but saying that the secular Jews, the assimilationist Jews, the Jews who are not pro-war, are atheists.

But this Compact of the Lord, I want to say something about the Compact of the Lord with Israel, because I've written a number of books on this with the leading Hebraist in Israel, Baruch Levine, and one of the leading Israeli Zionist professors from Yale. They're part of my group, my Harvard group, on the history of the economics from the near east to ancient Israel. And most of the Bible is about a a class war that occurred within the Jewish community. Most of the Bible is about what the Jewish prophets accused the Judaic ruling class of abandoning social justice, and letting its economy polarize between the rich and the poor. You have Isaiah, Amos and the other prophets denouncing them for monopolizing the land and putting house to house, and plot to plot together, until there's no room for the population in the land. This led to Israel, and the 10 tribes of Israel, withdrawing from the House of David saying, "What has it done for us?" There's been an oppressive class, and while the Covenant with the Lord in the Bible was all about the Lord will support the Israelis as long as their religion is one of social justice, and even treating the alien decently, that's not how it worked out with the wealthy classes, essentially enslaving, and appropriating the land of the poor. So you had the prophets, Isaiah and others saying, first of all, the the Lord was displeased with Israel, Judaism, and let it be conquered by Assyria as punishment for its violating the Compact with the Lord, to promote social justice, and free the population. And once again, after the war, the Jewish ruling class continued to polarize the economy. And so Isaiah said, "We've lost to Babylonia because the Lord is not supporting us. If we don't support the poor; if we don't support the Covenant as spelled out in the book of Leviticus, especially chapter 25, the Jubilee year, if we don't cancel the debts, and return the land to the population, and liberate the debt bond servants, we're going to be defeated again and again. Because the Lord will not support us if we do that."

Leviticus Chapter 25

Leviticus chapter 25 outlines important laws and principles related to the Sabbath year, the Year of Jubilee, and the redemption of property and people. This chapter emphasizes God's ownership of the land and His concern for economic justice, compassion, and the well-being of His people.

The chapter begins with the commandment for the Israelites to observe a Sabbath year every seven years, during which the land would rest and not be cultivated.

This was a time of rest for the land and a test of faith, as the people were to trust God to provide for them during this period.

The Sabbath year was also a time for the reading of the law and for the people to reflect on their relationship with God.

Following the Sabbath year, the chapter introduces the Year of Jubilee, which occurred every 50 years. During this year, all land that had been sold would be returned to its original owners, and indentured servants would be set free.

This law was meant to ensure that no one would be permanently impoverished and that the land would remain in the hands of the original families.

The Year of Jubilee was also a time of release and restoration, reflecting God's desire for justice and equity among His people.

Additionally, the chapter discusses the laws of redemption, which allowed a close relative to redeem property that had been sold due to poverty. If the person could not afford to redeem their property, it would remain with the buyer until the Year of Jubilee, when it would be returned.

This system ensured that the land remained in the family and that the poor had a chance to regain their inheritance.

The chapter also emphasizes that the land belonged to God and that the Israelites were only temporary residents and strangers in the land.

This principle reinforced the idea that God was the ultimate owner and that His laws were to be followed to maintain a just and holy society.

Overall, Leviticus 25 provides a divine blueprint for economic justice, compassionate servitude, and land conservation, highlighting the importance of balance, rest, renewal, and justice in God's kingdom.

The laws and principles outlined in this chapter continue to offer valuable insights into the nature of God's relationship with His people and the importance of living in accordance with His will.

-- The Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25, by Google AI

Well, today, Israel is one of the most economically unequal economies in the world. There's a very wealthy ruling class there, but most of the Israelis are not so wealthy. And it's very hard to find social justice, or mutual aid, or protection and tolerance of aliens, as the indigenous Palestinians are called, very hard to find that. And you could say that if the Bible says anything, it says that Israel will be punished for its behavior against this. This is the exact opposite of what Netanyahu says. So the fact is that the Zionists, and the Likud party, have a travesty of what the Bible is all about, a travesty about what Judaism is all about, and also a travesty about how Jesus emerged from this class war within Judea, and gave his first speech before the synagogue, unrolling the tablet of Isaiah, and announcing that his mission was to restore the Jubilee year, and lead to a debt cancellation. And we now know there was a very large movement in Israel, not only Jesus's followers, but it was a majority of the popular movement against it. It was defeated by the Jewish rabbinical class led by the rabbis. You had the same kind of class war that ended up with Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's prayer forgiving them their debts as we forgive our debtors.

So the majority of American Jews have played such an important role, intellectually, and politically, and financially, because they believed in universal equality. They believed they were fighting against any kind of ethnicity, and total war, obviously because they had been the victims of all of this, so of course they were against any kind of racism, or economic inequality, because that was why they'd immigrated to America, to begin with. Just as so many Protestants from France and England, the Huguenots, and others had come here. So this attempt to characterize any socialist, any advocate of social justice, and of world peace, as being anti-semitic, should be exposed as the travesty that it is.

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] Go ahead, Richard.

[Richard D. Wolff] If I could, I want to get yet another dimension of all of this on the table, so that we've talked about it, and your audience can think about whatever it finds reasonable in it. Mr. Trump became an oddity, a Republican candidate who was very strong for peace. He came very close to what Michael was just talking about. He promised -- I want to go through this with people -- he promised that he would end the war in Ukraine, I believe he said either I'll end it in a week, or I'll end it in a day, one of his typical exaggerations. I'm being polite. He said much the same about Israel in Gaza. He seemed to recognize that by far, the most destructive war at the time that he was running for president was the war in Gaza. In other words, the Israelis were killing people at a rate on a daily basis far exceeding -- which it has -- what Russia and Ukraine did to each other. Okay? So if anything, he was giving us to understand he understood that difference, and he would bring wars to an end. Remember his, "I'm going to end the forever wars in the Middle East, etc.?" Okay, he has not done that. He has given us a theater of doing it, on-again/off-again, though he will not stay with Zelenskyy in Ukraine, "he's now going to meet him/he isn't going to meet him." Unbelievable! But one thing we know, the war is not over. And even if he withdraws, he is encouraging the Europeans to keep this war going, which they seem committed to do, because they live in the same theatrical universe that we do in this country. They have leaders who are in a fight against Russia, but which the mass of those people do not feel part of, do not want the war in Ukraine, will not participate in it. Meanwhile the leaders keep doing what they're doing. Because they're engaged in a theater. They are making a theater of the evil intentions of Russia, for which there is no evidence, and no foundation.

But okay. What did he do about the war in in Gaza? Nothing! He sat by, like Mr. Biden, and allowed Netanyahu to continue to use American money, and American weapons, to pursue what was the most horrible of the existing wars. But he has gone further. He's now attacked Iran, with whom there was no war before. He gets the full credit for starting a third war in that part of the world. He didn't stop the other two, he made a third war.

Now, we have a ceasefire. Both sides will now be reorganizing themselves, because it would be folly for either Israel to assume Iran won't bomb it, or vice versa. So we're sitting on top of more theater.

But now the biggest theater of all, which can't be spoken: If it was true that Mr. Trump believed that there might be nuclear enriched uranium, enriched enough to be weapon ready in those three sites in Iran, and he dropped the biggest bombs we have on them, what could have happened is that the bombs blew up the nuclear material, in which case we would have had what? Another Chernobyl? If we believed him, the risk he took ought to throw him out of office. He risked a nuclear catastrophe, which he didn't have to do, because Iran wasn't doing anything to the United States at the time. How in the world? So maybe he knew there was nothing there like that, like he could defend himself. But if he did, we would get MORE evidence that it's all theater as we are getting hints now that the Iranians knew to move their stuff out of those sites, just like the Iranians told the Americans before they hit the base in Qatar that they should leave there, which they did.

So we're at a point which was prefigured by a film made by Dustin Hoffman many years ago called, "Wag the Dog." I don't know if you've seen the film, but if not, see it -- but his point was, a war is simulated by Hollywood to achieve the political and other objectives of the people who pay for the theater. That's where we are. That's why Mamdani won. There is a reaction. Going beyond the details of Israel, or Judaism, or any of this, it's the honest expression of a population that knows it's being ripped off economically, politically, ideologically. And whoever can emerge from this bad time with some genuine honesty attached to him or her, will do very, very well. And right now, to my fellow left of center Americans, Bernie has that, and AOC has that, and now Mamdani has that, from which certain lessons should be drawn for all of you in terms of thinking about what strategies you should pursue to try to take advantage of this situation.

Mr. Trump is the President because he figured out that nobody had any sympathy, not in the Republican party and not in the Democratic party, for the victims of 40 years of neoliberal globalization, white, male, Christian, factory-working union members. They were the forgotten. They were the unimportant. And he addressed them. "I'm yours." And he was brilliant. He focused them not on the corporate executives whose decisions to move production to China, to automate, and to bring in immigrants, that they were exempt. He knew who he had to please. He knew who he was. So he came up with the solution: "It's those horrible Democrats who have been favoring black, brown, and female people at your expense. That's why you're screwed. That's why you have no job, no future. Instead of being a union machinist, you're a greeter at Walmart. So turn your anger, turn your bitterness against black people, brown people, women, all the DEI beneficiaries. They're your enemy." Classic! "Vote for me; I'll fix it. What does he fix? Nothing. What has he solved? Nothing. We got more war in the Middle East than when he came, but he knew that he could cash in. I'm telling us, learn the lesson: Mamdani; AOC; Bernie; they have taught us something. The system has destroyed the basis of its own mass support. But we have to act if we're going to become the inheritors of the reaction against where this country has landed.

[Richard D. Wolff] I think what Richard has described so wonderfully as the the theater of, "How do you frame the issue," and how do you frame the issue in a way that avoids talking about what he's just talking about, what it's really all about for wage earners in the economy, this is the theater of deception. And you can say that the United Nations and Nima's guests have pointed out how the International Atomic Energy Authority party has been a theater of deception, pretending to make the world safe from nuclear war while Mr Grassi, according to the Iranian documentation, simply acted as spies for the CIA and for Israel to turn over to Israel the names of the atomic scientists for assassination, and to locate, "Here are where we've inspected the actual places where uranium is stored, for the Americans and Israelis to bomb, the Israelis to drop American bombs on. So you're you're having this whole framing of deception is sort of broken away by an intuitive sense of American voters, and I bet voters all over the world, to realize that this is all deception. And the dominant politics of almost every country have become based on framing the issue in a way to distract attention from what most voters care about: the economy; the way that society is structured.

So what this is really all about is what kind of an economic system, what kind of a political system we're going to have. And the fact that there's the perception now, the reality is that the political system of both parties here is corrupted, just as the European political parties are corrupted, in supporting NATO, and the war in Russia, against the votes of their own population against the NATO war, against all of the polling of the voters. You have from America to Europe politics versus the voters. This is not democratic. This is the antithesis of democracy. That's what's at issue.

[Richard D. Wolff] Nima, could I add a couple things? Do we have time?

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] Go ahead. Go ahead, Richard.

[Richard D. Wolff] I want to pick up on the question of Europe that Michael just raised. The Europeans, the theater there is so obvious, that I think Europeans can be expected to give us events like Mamdani in New York soon. Here's the theater. With the United States, Ukraine is defeated by Russia. We've been watching that for three years. And that's not going to change. Without the United States fully engaged, the Europeans have even less chance. So why the demonization of Russia? What in the world is going on? The answer: Russia no longer needs Europe to sell its oil and gas. It can sell oil and gas to India and China forever, and do very well in the process, as well as cementing a political alliance, the BRICS, which is crucial for all of them. So what is the European plan? You hype the Russian danger. Why? So that you can shift governmental spending from social benefits to militarism. What we're watching is a classic program of military Keynesianism.

Germany Rearmament Plan

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spearheaded a significant shift in Germany's defense policy, aiming to create what he describes as the "strongest conventional army in Europe".
This plan marks a dramatic departure from Germany's post-reunification stance, which traditionally avoided heavy military investment due to historical sensitivities.

Merz's rearmament strategy includes increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP, a target previously advocated by former U.S. President Donald Trump and echoed by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.1 This would place Germany second only to the U.S. in terms of defense expenditure within NATO, with current U.S. spending at 3.4% of GDP. The plan also involves raising troop levels from 182,000 to as many as 240,000 by 2031, potentially through the reintroduction of conscription.1 Additionally, Germany plans to modernize its military equipment, replacing aging aircraft, tanks, and ships, and investing in defense-related infrastructure.

To fund this initiative, Merz has proposed modifying Germany's constitutional "debt brake" to allow for increased borrowing specifically for defense and infrastructure projects. This reform would exempt military expenditures above 1% of GDP from the constitutional debt limits, potentially doubling the defense budget to around €100 billion ($107 billion) annually.5 The plan also includes a €500 billion fund aimed at upgrading Germany's infrastructure, which could help pull the country out of a prolonged recession.

The urgency behind this rearmament is partly driven by concerns over the reliability of U.S. security guarantees, especially in light of Trump's previous threats to reduce American involvement in European defense. Merz has acknowledged the changing geopolitical landscape, emphasizing that Germany must take a leadership role in ensuring European security, particularly as Russia continues its aggressive rearmament efforts.

However, the implementation of Merz's plan faces several challenges. It requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to amend the constitution, likely necessitating support from the Greens. There are also practical concerns about how such a massive increase in defense spending will be managed, including questions about the availability of necessary raw materials and the capacity of European defense industries to meet the demand.

Internationally, the plan has drawn mixed reactions. While some see it as a necessary step toward European defense autonomy, others, particularly frugal EU nations like the Netherlands and Sweden, are wary of the potential economic and geopolitical implications of such a large-scale rearmament.6 Despite these challenges, Merz's commitment to boosting Germany's military capabilities signals a fundamental transformation in the country's approach to national and European security.

-- Germany Rearmament Plan, by Google AI

Look at Merz in Germany, an $80 billion a year rearmament, for what? You're going to fight Russia? You're going to lose again. The Europeans, there's no stomach for it, there's not enough money for it, and whatever they could do, let me remind you 80 billion is the German allocation. The United States in one year allocates 10 times that amount of money. They're not going to threaten or endanger the United States, and they're not going to do that with Russia, or China either. It's way too late. But they don't care, because that's not the point. The point is with higher energy costs, because these idiots sanctioned Russia, and wouldn't buy its oil and gas, so now they have to pay too much, they're de-industrializing, their companies are leaving, moving around Europe, moving to the United States, going anywhere. They have to stop that, otherwise they literally become a tourist attraction and little more. And so now they found the way. They're going to subsidize industry at home by an enormous military Keynesianism, and to cover that, to make that fly politically, they put on the theater of evil Russia that endangers all of us from right underneath our beds at night. Otherwise, the absurdity of the Russia bashing would have to be explained. And Russia isn't the reason for it. This has got nothing to do with it. Russia's job is to be the player, the symbol in the theater for what is necessary. That's what I mean. These are theatrics designed to cover, in some acceptable idiom, a project that they dare not honestly present. And so we have a political system of theater which has now run out of the tolerability, and even large parts of Europe don't believe their own leaders.

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much Richard and Michael for being with us today. It's a great pleasure as always.

[Richard D. Wolff] Thank you, thank you.

[Michael Hudson] Thank you all for having us.

[Nima R. Alkhorshid] See you soon. Bye-bye.

[admin]

How the US and Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran. The agency's chief has not only continued its subservience to U.S. and Western interests, but also its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons.
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies
Common Dreams
Jun 23, 2025
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ho ... ar-on-iran


The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, before the start of a special IAEA meeting on the U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. (Photo by Albert Otti/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Rafael Grossi, director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowed the IAEA to be used by the United States and Israel—an undeclared nuclear weapons state in long-term violation of IAEA rules—to manufacture a pretext for war on Iran, despite his agency’s own conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.

On June 12th, based on a damning report by Grossi, a slim majority of the IAEA Board of Governors voted to find Iran in non-compliance with its obligations as an IAEA member. Of the 35 countries represented on the Board, only 19 voted for the resolution, while 3 voted against it, 11 abstained and 2 did not vote.

The United States contacted eight board member governments on June 10th to persuade them to either vote for the resolution or not to vote. Israeli officials said they saw the U.S. arm-twisting for the IAEA resolution as a significant signal of U.S. support for Israel’s war plans, revealing how much Israel valued the IAEA resolution as diplomatic cover for the war.

The IAEA board meeting was timed for the final day of President Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. Even as the IAEA board voted, Israel was loading weapons, fuel and drop-tanks on its warplanes for the long flight to Iran and briefing its aircrews on their targets. The first Israeli air strikes hit Iran at 3 a.m. that night.

On June 20th, Iran filed a formal complaint against Director General Grossi with the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council for undermining his agency’s impartiality, both by his failure to mention the illegality of Israel’s threats and uses of force against Iran in his public statements and by his singular focus on Iran’s alleged violations.

The source of the IAEA investigation that led to this resolution was a 2018 Israeli intelligence report that its agents had identified three previously undisclosed sites in Iran where Iran had conducted uranium enrichment prior to 2003. In 2019, Grossi opened an investigation, and the IAEA eventually gained access to the sites and detected traces of enriched uranium.

Despite the fateful consequences of his actions, Grossi has never explained publicly how the IAEA can be sure that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency or its Iranian collaborators, such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (or MEK), did not put the enriched uranium in those sites themselves, as Iranian officials have suggested.

While the IAEA resolution that triggered this war dealt only with Iran’s enrichment activities prior to 2003, U.S. and Israeli politicians quickly pivoted to unsubstantiated claims that Iran was on the verge of making a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence agencies had previously reported that such a complex process would take up to three years, even before Israel and the United States began bombing and degrading Iran’s existing civilian nuclear facilities.

The IAEA’s previous investigations into unreported nuclear activities in Iran were officially completed in December 2015, when IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano published its “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program.”

The IAEA assessed that, while some of Iran’s past activities might have been relevant to nuclear weapons, they “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.” The IAEA “found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

When Yukiya Amano died before the end of his term in 2019, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi was appointed IAEA Director General. Grossi had served as Deputy Director General under Amano and, before that, as Chief of Staff under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

The Israelis have a long record of fabricating false evidence about Iran’s nuclear activities, like the notorious “laptop documents” given to the CIA by the MEK in 2004 and believed to have been created by the Mossad. Douglas Frantz, who wrote a report on Iran’s nuclear program for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, revealed that the Mossad created a special unit in 2003 to provide secret briefings on Iran’s nuclear program, using “documents from inside Iran and elsewhere.”

And yet Grossi collaborated with Israel to pursue its latest allegations. After several years of meetings in Israel and negotiations and inspections in Iran, he wrote his report to the IAEA Board of Governors and scheduled a board meeting to coincide with the planned start date for Israel’s war.

Israel made its final war preparations in full view of the satellites and intelligence agencies of the western countries that drafted and voted for the resolution. It is no wonder that 13 countries abstained or did not vote, but it is tragic that more neutral countries could not find the wisdom and courage to vote against this insidious resolution.

The official purpose of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.” Since 1965, all of its 180 member countries have been subject to IAEA safeguards to ensure that their nuclear programs are “not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”

The IAEA’s work is obviously compromised in dealing with countries that already have nuclear weapons. North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994, and from all safeguards in 2009. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China have IAEA safeguard agreements that are based only on “voluntary offers” for “selected” non-military sites. India has a 2009 safeguard agreement that requires it to keep its military and civilian nuclear programs separate, and Pakistan has 10 separate safeguard agreements, but only for civilian nuclear projects, the latest being from 2017 to cover two Chinese-built power stations.

Israel, however, has only a limited 1975 safeguards agreement for a 1955 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. An addendum in 1977 extended the IAEA safeguards agreement indefinitely, even though the cooperation agreement with the U.S. that it covered expired four days later. So, by a parody of compliance that the United States and the IAEA have played along with for half a century, Israel has escaped the scrutiny of IAEA safeguards just as effectively as North Korea.

-- The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, by Seymour M. Hersh

Israel began working on a nuclear weapon in the 1950s, with substantial help from Western countries, including France, Britain and Argentina, and made its first weapons in 1966 or 1967. By 2015, when Iran signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a leaked email that a nuclear weapon would be useless to Iran because “Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran.” Powell quoted former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking, “What would we do with a nuclear weapon? Polish it?”

Columns of the Apadana of Darius and Xerxes in Persepolis. This audience hall or Apadana contained 72 columns with capitals adorned with lions and bulls.


Achaemenid capital from Persepolis


Bull capital from the Apadana of the Palace of Darius in Susa, now Louvre

Most Persian columns were made from stone, typically limestone or marble. The stone was finely dressed and polished to create a smooth and visually striking surface.

-- Persian Column, by persianempire.org

The question of how these pillars had originally been moved round India, and whether they were still in their ordained positions, was an intriguing subject in itself. It was now appreciated that they were all of the same stone, all polished by the same unexplained process, and therefore all from the same quarry. Prinsep thought this was somewhere in the Outer Himalayas, although we now know their source to have been Chunar on the Ganges near Benares. Either way, they had somehow been moved as much as 500 miles, no mean feat considering that the heaviest weighed over 40 tons.

-- India Discovered, by John Keay

A number of the pillars were thrown down by either natural causes or iconoclasts, and gradually rediscovered. One was noticed in the 16th century by the English traveller Thomas Coryat in the ruins of Old Delhi. Initially he assumed that from the way it glowed that it was made of brass, but on closer examination he realized it was made of highly polished sandstone with upright script that resembled a form of Greek.

-- Pillars of Ashoka, by Wikipedia

Alexander's Altar That Once Stood Near Hyphasis

The Englishman Thomas Coryat who came to Delhi in 1616 was one of the first westerners to notice the Asokan pillars after the middle ages. Coryat was greatly impressed by the superbly polished forty feet high monolithic column and presumed that it must have been erected by Alexander the Great 'in token of his victorie' over Porus.

-- An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [REDUCED VERSION], by Ranajit Pal (An expanded version of this paper appears in Scholia, vol. 15.), January, 2006

In 2003, while Powell tried but failed to make a case for war on Iraq to the UN Security Council, President Bush smeared Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” based on their alleged pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction.” The Egyptian IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, repeatedly assured the Security Council that the IAEA could find no evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon.

When the CIA produced a document that showed Iraq importing yellowcake uranium from Niger, just as Israel had secretly imported it from Argentina in the 1960s, the IAEA only took a few hours to recognize the document as a forgery, which ElBaradei immediately reported to the Security Council.

Bush kept repeating the lie about yellowcake from Niger, and other flagrant lies about Iraq, and the United States invaded and destroyed Iraq based on his lies, a war crime of historic proportions. Most of the world knew that ElBaradei and the IAEA were right all along, and, in 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for exposing Bush’s lies, speaking truth to power and strengthening nuclear non-proliferation.

In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with the IAEA’s finding that Iran, like Iraq, had no nuclear weapons program. As Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?” Even Bush couldn’t believe he would get away with recycling the same lies to destroy Iran as well as Iraq, and Trump is playing with fire by doing so now.

ElBaradei wrote in his own memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, that if Iran did do some preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it probably began during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, after the US and its allies helped Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians.

The neocons who dominate U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy viewed the Nobel Prize winner ElBaradei as an obstacle to their regime change ambitions around the world, and conducted a covert campaign to find a more compliant new IAEA Director General when his term expired in 2009.

After Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano was appointed as the new Director General, U.S. diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks revealed details of his extensive vetting by U.S. diplomats, who reported back to Washington that Amano “was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.”

After becoming IAEA Director General in 2019, Rafael Grossi not only continued the IAEA’s subservience to U.S. and Western interests and its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons, but also ensured that the IAEA played a critical role in Israel’s march to war on Iran.

Even as he publicly acknowledged that Iran had no nuclear weapons program and that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the West’s concerns about Iran, Grossi helped Israel to set the stage for war by reopening the IAEA’s investigation into Iran’s past activities. Then, on the very day that Israeli warplanes were being loaded with weapons to bomb Iran, he made sure that the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution to give Israel and the U.S. the pretext for war that they wanted.

In his last year as IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei faced a similar dilemma to the one that Grossi has faced since 2019. In 2008, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies gave the IAEA copies of documents that appeared to show Iran conducting four distinct types of nuclear weapons research.

Whereas, in 2003, Bush’s yellowcake document from Niger was clearly a forgery, the IAEA could not establish whether the Israeli documents were authentic or not. So ElBaradei refused to act on them or to make them public, despite considerable political pressure, because, as he wrote in The Age of Deception, he knew the U.S. and Israel “wanted to create the impression that Iran presented an imminent threat, perhaps preparing the grounds for the use of force.” ElBaradei retired in 2009, and those allegations were among the “outstanding issues” that he left to be resolved by Yukiya Amano in 2015.

If Rafael Grossi had exercised the same caution, impartiality and wisdom as Mohamed ElBaradei did in 2009, it is very possible that the United States and Israel would not be at war with Iran today.

Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in a tweet on June 17th 2025, “To rely on force and not negotiations is a sure way to destroy the NPT and the nuclear non-proliferation regime (imperfect as it is), and sends a clear message to many countries “that their 'ultimate security' is to develop nuclear weapons!!!”

Despite Grossi’s role in U.S.-Israeli war plans as IAEA Director General, or maybe because of it, he has been touted as a Western-backed candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as UN Secretary General in 2026. That would be a disaster for the world. Fortunately, there are many more qualified candidates to lead the world out of the crisis that Rafael Grossi has helped the U.S. and Israel to plunge it into.

Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA Director before he further undermines nuclear non-proliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war. And he should also withdraw his name from consideration as a candidate for UN Secretary General.

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Rafael Grossi’s role in provoking war on Iran
by Soheila Zarfam
Tehran Times
June 23, 2025 - 23:9
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/514868 ... ar-on-Iran
A diplomatic failure with catastrophic consequences

TEHRAN – The recent attacks on Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities have raised serious questions about the role of international oversight institutions in escalating tensions—especially when their neutrality is seen to have diminished over time.

At the heart of the growing controversy is Rafael Grossi, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). His handling of Iran’s nuclear file has drawn sharp criticism from Iranian officials and sparked broader debate among analysts about the risks of politicized reporting in already unstable environments.

Tensions between Tehran and the IAEA have been simmering for years, but recent developments have brought them to a head. In the days leading up to the first wave of Israeli strikes on Iran, a report from the Agency citing uranium enrichment levels in Iran “higher than those in countries without military nuclear programs” was widely referenced as justification by the Israeli regime. The timing of the report, its tone, and the broader diplomatic context have since come under scrutiny.

While Grossi later clarified in an interview with CNN that the IAEA had found no evidence of a “systematic effort” by Iran to build nuclear weapons, this admission came days after the damage had been done. The report had already been cited in support of a resolution drafted by the E3 and the U.S. at the IAEA Board of Governors—one that accused Iran of non-compliance and arguably laid the groundwork, diplomatically speaking, for what unfolded soon after.[/size]

Iranian officials view this sequence of events not as coincidence but as consequence. Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, addressed a letter to the UN Security Council strongly objecting to the “selective, politicized, and discriminatory” conduct of the IAEA leadership toward Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. The letter emphasized the consistent departure from the agency’s foundational principles: neutrality, professionalism, and objectivity.

[size=115]Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei posted on social media last Thursday, directly addressing Grossi’s comments. He noted that Grossi had acknowledged the absence of evidence too late—after a resolution had been drafted and an attack carried out. “You obscured this truth in your absolutely biased report,” Baghaei wrote, “which was then utilized by a genocidal warmongering regime to wage a war of aggression on Iran.”

The controversy has also drawn attention to a broader, more systemic issue: the vulnerability of international institutions to the political agendas of powerful states. For Iran, this is not the first time the IAEA has been accused of overstepping its mandate. But in the current context, the stakes appear higher than ever.

Earlier on this month, the Tehran Times revealed that Iran has uncovered sensitive IAEA-related documents in the occupied territories—documents that include confidential communications between Tehran and the Agency.

According to Tehran Times sources, these documents may not have been obtained through espionage but handed over through less clandestine means. As one source said: “this would only confirm what we’ve long suspected—that the IAEA is not merely a technical body, but a political instrument in certain hands.”

The implications of such a breach are far-reaching. Iran has already hinted that it may scale back cooperation with the Agency, possibly reverting to pre-JCPOA levels of engagement. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) warned that continued politicization and lack of gratitude for Iran’s transparency could result in a shift in policy.

Meanwhile, Grossi has urged all sides to show restraint and return to the negotiating table. He emphasized that Iran is still expected to notify the Agency of any transfers of nuclear material between facilities, and admitted that the full extent of the damage to the Fordow enrichment site—hit during the Israeli strikes—remains unknown.

Yet Iranian officials remain deeply dissatisfied. Mohammad Eslami, head of the AEOI, has criticized Grossi for what he called “silence” in the face of Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities operating under IAEA safeguards. He also suggested that Tehran may pursue legal avenues against the IAEA chief, accusing him of failing to uphold the agency’s obligations.

Former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has taken an even firmer stance, calling for Grossi’s dismissal. In Zarif’s view, the Director-General’s “irresponsible and fallacious” reporting has not merely failed to deter conflict—it may have helped pave the way for it.

Following the airstrike on facilities in Arak, Iran sent a formal letter to the IAEA demanding that it condemn Israel’s actions. The agency’s lack of response only deepened Tehran’s sense of betrayal. Officials pointed out that, despite informing the IAEA of protective measures taken to safeguard nuclear equipment, Iran received no public support. Instead, they argue, IAEA reports amplified doubts rather than acknowledged Iran’s compliance.

This sense of disillusionment has added to concerns over the IAEA’s credibility at a global level. In Tehran, many now believe that transparency with the Agency has only made Iran more vulnerable. The principle of neutrality, they argue, is not being applied equally, and when impartial oversight becomes a political weapon, it undermines the very framework meant to ensure peace and security.

For now, the consequences—diplomatic, operational, and humanitarian—are already being felt and Rafael Grossi is now perceived as a figure whose conduct has actively contributed to the escalation of tensions. His selective silence on Israeli attacks, the timing and framing of Agency reports, and his ambiguous public statements have lent political cover to those seeking confrontation rather than dialogue. Iran has already said it will seek legal redress, as a message that neutrality must not be sacrificed without consequences. Grossi has crossed a line—one that may redefine how Tehran engages with the Agency going forward.

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Secret documents seized by Iran expose IAEA chief's close cooperation with Israel
by presstv.ir
Thursday, 12 June 2025 4:08 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 12 June 2025 4:08 PM ]
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/06/1 ... Fars-News-


Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaks to journalists during a press conference, shortly after the IAEA’s Board of Governors meeting at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on June 9, 2025. (Photo by AFP)

Thousands of sensitive documents on Israel’s nuclear program recently obtained by the Iranian intelligence reveal direct cooperation between Tel Aviv and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, against Iran.

Iran's Arabic-language television news network al-Alam TV said in a report on Thursday that leaked documents revealed a major intelligence breakthrough against the Israeli regime.

The newly released documents show that the IAEA chief has been closely cooperating with Israeli officials and has carried out their directives and orders in full, the report said.

This raises questions over the neutrality and independence of the IAEA, it added

A recent report by the semi-official Fars news agency also said that the UN atomic agency had become a tool serving the interests of the Zionist regime.

“These documents clearly show that instead of playing a neutral role, the IAEA has become an instrument serving the objectives of the Zionist regime,” the news agency cited an informed source as saying.

The report noted that several top Iranian nuclear scientists ended up getting assassinated due to their names being disclosed by the IAEA.

The documents prove that “Iran’s official and confidential letters to the IAEA – containing sensitive information – were channeled to the espionage agencies of the Zionist regime through covert conduits,” it added.

Press TV@PressTV
4:21 AM · Jun 12, 2025

Documents released by Iran show that IAEA chief Grossi has been completely coordinated with Israel and has been carrying out Israel's orders.

Iran recently managed to obtain a wealth of secret documents from the Israeli regime.

The Islamic Republic's Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib earlier said that the transfer of this treasure trove required security measures.

“The transfer of this treasure trove was time-consuming and required security measures. Naturally, the transfer methods will remain confidential, but the documents should be unveiled soon,” the Islamic Republic's Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib recently told Iranian television.

“Talking of thousands of documents would be an understatement,” Khatib went on to say. The “vast collection of strategic and sensitive [Israeli] documents” includes “plans and data on [Israel’s] nuclear facilities,” according to the intelligence minister.

“They also include other documents about the relationship with the US, Europe, and other countries, as well as intelligence documents that would boost Iran’s offense power,” Khatib added.

The chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami, said the intel will provide Iran with an advantage in any missile attack on Israel.

Meanwhile, Tehran condemned an anti-Iran resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency, calling it another politically-motivated use of the board of governors.

The foreign ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) in a joint statement said the Islamic Republic has always stood by its commitments. It said the IAEA’s reports have time and again confirmed this.

The statement further said that Western countries undermine the IAEA’s credibility for their political ends.

It said the resolution is one-sided and has no technical or legal basis.

On Thursday, the UN nuclear watchdog approved the resolution, accusing Iran of non-compliance with the agency. The anti-Iran resolution was submitted on Tuesday by the US and the E3, namely France, the UK and Germany.

Mohammad Eslami, head of the AEOI, in remarks on Thursday, said the “anti-Iran” resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors is aimed at pressuring Tehran into giving concessions.

www.presstv.co.uk

***********************

Iran files complaint against IAEA chief for bias, ignoring aggression
by Al Mayadeen English
Source: Al Mayadeen English
21 Jun 2025 09:00

[x]
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Gross speaks during a joint press briefing with head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, November 14, 2024. (AP)

The public remarks made by Rafael Grossi on the eve of the Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran constitute a glaring violation of the principle of neutrality required in his position, Iran's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, asserted on Friday.

Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had remarked that “nuclear sites must never be attacked,” yet pointedly refrained from condemning the Israeli aggression on Iran’s nuclear facility, an omission that Tehran views as tacit complicity.

Iravani filed a formal complaint against Grossi, in a letter to the UN Security Council, voicing deep concern over Grossi's grave dereliction of duty, as well as his failure to fulfill his legal responsibilities under the agency's statute.

The Iranian diplomat further noted that Grossi not only failed to condemn the attacks on nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, but also disregarded the open acknowledgment by "Israel" of its ongoing assaults.

IAEA’s legal obligations questioned

Iravani also emphasized that Grossi’s public comments contradict the agency’s foundational legal duties. He argued that the Director General's conduct following the Israeli aggression reflects persistent shortcomings in adhering to neutrality, objectivity, and professional standards.

Grossi's continued silence, Iravani warned, as well as his failure to take concrete measures against such violations, could be regarded as passive complicity. He condemned the IAEA head's inaction as a dangerous precedent in the face of an "unprecedented act of aggression in the history of the IAEA."

It is worth noting that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence had obtained a series of documents that reveal covert coordination between IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and "Israel", a collaboration Iranian officials say was designed to politicize the agency’s oversight of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

According to reports by Fars News Agency, the documents expose a long-standing partnership between Grossi and Israeli officials, showing that the IAEA chief repeatedly acted in alignment with Israeli directives regarding Iran’s nuclear file.

The unveiled documents implicate Merav Zafary-Odiz, "Israel’s" permanent representative to the IAEA from 2014 to 2016, as playing a pivotal role in advancing Tel Aviv’s position within the agency. According to the documents, she regularly criticized Iran’s cooperation during Board of Governors meetings and accused the previous IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, of disseminating “inaccurate” information about Iran’s nuclear progress.

Zafary-Odiz also maintained a direct line to Grossi, including an urgent meeting request dated May 10, 2016, to discuss shifting developments. Iranian media claim this correspondence is part of a broader pattern of coordinated narrative-setting that aligned IAEA priorities with Israeli talking points, while ignoring “Israel’s” own unmonitored nuclear arsenal.

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Spies of Empire: Beware UN-Affiliated Organisations
by Kit Klarenberg
Substack
June 24, 2025 DR, iran, israel, kit klarenberg, robert scheer, scheerpost, substack
https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/24/spies ... nisations/

On June 13th, the Zionist entity carried out an unprovoked, criminal military strike on Iran. While its impact was limited, with Tehran’s counterattack far more devastating, Israel’s targeted assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists indicates Tel Aviv knew their identities and locations with some precision. Coincidentally, a day prior to the entity’s broadside, Press TV published documents indicating the International Atomic Energy Agency previously provided Israeli intelligence the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently killed.

Other documents indicate IAEA chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials, and has frequently acted upon their orders.The files are part of a wider trove obtained by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, containing unprecedented insights into Tel Aviv’s secret, illegal nuclear weapons capability, and its relationships with Europe, the US and other countries, among other bombshell material. The tranche could well shed further light on the IAEA’s brazen, murderous collusion with the entity.

Further reinforcing interpretations the IAEA assisted Israel’s June 13th strike on Iran, a day prior, the Association’s Board of Governors declared Tehran “in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.” The basis for this finding, which provided Tel Aviv with a propaganda pretext for its illegal attack, was an IAEA report published two weeks prior. The document provided no new information – its dubious charges related “to activities dating back decades” at three sites where allegedly, until the early 2000s, “undeclared nuclear material” was handled.

Under the terms of Tehran’s July 2015 deal with the Obama administration, for years the IAEA was granted sweeping access to Iran’s nuclear complexes, to ensure the Islamic Republic was not using the facilities to develop nuclear weapons. Association inspectors collected vast amounts of information on and within the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents. The question of whether this yield was shared with the Zionist entity, and in any way assisted its June 13th strike, is an open and obvious one.

Despite the prospect of war erupting between Iran, Israel, and its Western puppet masters, US President Donald Trump has expressed optimism he can both broker peace between Tehran and the Zionist entity, and finalise a new nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. Both outcomes seem highly implausible. At the very least, there is little chance of IAEA inspectors being permitted anywhere near Iran’s nuclear sites again, given the Association’s intimate covert relationship with officials in Tel Aviv, and complicity in its attacks old and potentially new.

It behooves states the world over – particularly those in the crosshairs of the Empire, and its assorted proxies and puppets – to think twice before granting entry to representatives not merely of the IAEA, but a panoply of supposedly neutral, international, intergovernmental organisations. Especially if they seek access to sensitive information and installations. It is almost inevitable any intelligence gleaned from such operations will be shared, to the immense detriment of the countries and governments that have allowed these entities access to their soil.

‘Very Precise’

Founded in 1975, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is an intergovernmental entity with member states hailing from Asia, Europe, and North America. The world over, its monitors oversee elections and human rights compliance by foreign governments, and are frequently posted to active warzones and spheres of unrest to keep an eye on events on-the-ground. Its officially stated mission is crisis management and conflict prevention. Yet, OSCE’s activities in Yugoslavia during the late 1990s amply demonstrate its utility for fomenting conflicts.

During the latter half of that decade, Yugoslav authorities engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army. An Al Qaeda-connected extremist group armed, funded and trained by the CIA and MI6, the KLA sought to construct an ethnically pure “Greater Albania” – a Nazi-inspired irredentist project, uniting Tirana with territory in Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia – via insurrectionary violence. Come September 1998, hostilities had erupted into all-out war. A UN Security Council Resolution that month demanded the two sides implement a ceasefire.

Yugoslav military forces were duly withdrawn from the province – in turn, the KLA exploited the army’s absence to intensify its bloody rampage, seizing further territory and purging non-Albanian inhabitants. A dedicated OSCE unit, the Kosovo Verification Mission, was also created to ensure Belgrade’s ceasefire compliance. KVM was granted full, unimpeded movement anywhere they wished locally. Their presence proved pivotal not only to the KLA’s savage crusade, but NATO’s subsequent criminal bombing of Yugoslavia March – June 1999.

As a May 2000 British parliamentary committee report documented, KVM “started slowly” on October 25th 1998, with only 50 staff. That figure quickly swelled though, with London “[spearheading] efforts to get verifiers on the ground as speedily as possible,” the majority being “military personnel.” Before long, the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] mission was 1,500-strong – unmentioned in the report, many KVM observers were intelligence veterans drawn from the ranks of NATO member states, among them a preponderance of CIA spies.

In March that year, The Times exposed how KVM was “swallowed” by the CIA, which concertedly pursued an “agenda” making “airstrikes inevitable.” Agency operatives embedded with the OSCE “admitted they helped to train” the KLA, and “undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict” in Kosovo. This included “giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police” to the separatist militia. One CIA operative referred to KVM as “a CIA front”. Another admitted:

“I’d tell [the KLA] which hill to avoid, which wood to go behind, that sort of thing.”

The Times further revealed how before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia erupted, “many” of KVM’s “satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with NATO and Washington” throughout the campaign. This extended to “several KLA leaders” having the mobile phone number of US General Wesley Clark, who oversaw the bombing. Moreover, information gathered by OSCE during its mission in Kosovo was pivotal to the destructive operation’s planning.

During Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, numerous defence and prosecution witnesses – including OSCE veterans – testified to KVM’s malign role in laying foundations for NATO’s bombing of Belgrade. A Yugoslav army colonel, suffering severe health issues due to NATO’s illegal use of depleted uranium during the campaign, offered extensive insight into how the Mission’s members would routinely and intensively scout out Yugoslav military facilities, taking comprehensive notes every step of the way:

“[NATO] had very precise…[targeting] data which had been amassed in 1998 and 1999 precisely by members of the verifying commission…[KVM] came to visit [my] barracks very often, very frequently…I would come across them many times taking the coordinates of the facilities and features and drawing maps of the communication network, and they were well-trained…There were a lot of retired officers. They had excellent maps, satellite maps. They had GPS…for automatic determination of coordinates in space over the territory.”

‘Direct Evidence’

Fast forward to March 2014, and OSCE monitors were deployed to Ukraine, as the country’s east and south descended into civil war following the Western-orchestrated Maidan coup. Their presence and role in the conflict was barely acknowledged by the mainstream media at any point over eight years on-the-ground. They were withdrawn in March 2022, following the outbreak of all-out proxy conflict in the country a month prior.

One might speculate the media’s mass omertà on the OSCE’s activities in Donbass stemmed from their observations completely undermining the official position of multiple Western governments, militaries and intelligence services, Ukraine’s own, and Western news outlets. Namely, that the Donbass civil war wasn’t a Russian invasion, but a brutal crackdown by Kiev on the region’s Russian-speaking population. In October 2018, Alexander Hug, deputy head of the local OSCE mission, was asked by Foreign Policy magazine for his agency’s “official stance on Russia’s involvement.”

Hug firmly declared the OSCE had seen “no direct evidence” of this at all. Suspiciously, the article was later updated, with Hug’s answer revised – he claimed monitors had in fact witnessed “convoys” of an indeterminate nature “leaving and entering Ukraine” at night, “specific types of weapons,” alleged Russian prisoners in custody, and individuals wearing jackets “with the insignia of the Russian Federation.” He nonetheless stressed these could be bought “anywhere”, and he’d also seen military garments bearing the insignia of “Germany, Spain, and others” in Donbass.

It would be unsurprising if these extremely slim pickings were served up by Hug to Foreign Policy under duress, by unknown actors. Still, his unrehearsed initial answer is all the more notable given it is now apparent the OSCE mission in Ukraine was heavily compromised and infiltrated by Western powers. Its observers not only failed to record grave abuses and ceasefire violations by Kiev, but provided sensitive information to NATO and Ukrainian forces.

In September 2023, a British OSCE monitor was sentenced by a Russian court in absentia for providing detailed satellite maps of military installations operated by the breakaway Lugansk People’s Republic to NATO. This espionage allowed Ukrainian forces to carry out precision attacks on these sites, resulting in personnel casualties and material damage. Greece’s former ambassador to Kiev has charged such intelligence sharing by the OSCE was routine. It has also been alleged a Russian OSCE observer was assassinated in 2017, explicitly to remove them from the mission.

Iran wisely is not a member of the OSCE and does not allow its “observers” access to its territory. Nonetheless, the Organization has taken a keen interest in Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In June 2012, an OSCE delegation declared, “we can no longer ignore the international security implications presented by a nuclear Iran.” It further noted Iran borders OSCE members Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan, suggesting they could somehow assist in neutralising the Islamic Republic’s purported nuclear ambitions.

Given recent bombshell disclosures about the IAEA’s collusion with Israel, and the deplorable track records of fellow UN-affiliated “intergovernmental” organisations such as the OSCE, it is inconceivable Tehran shall be willing to permit any international entity to play a role in mediating its conflict with Israel. All non-Western countries would be wise to follow her lead.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

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War on Iran is part of US plan for global domination: Economist Michael Hudson explains
Geopolitical Economy Report
Jun 27, 2025

War on Iran is part of the US empire's larger attempt to re-impose its unipolar dominance on the global political and financial system, argues economist Michael Hudson. Washington wants to preserve dollar hegemony and the petrodollar, while disrupting BRICS and Eurasian integration with China and Russia. He is interviewed by host Ben Norton.



War on Iran is part of US plan for global domination: Economist Michael Hudson explains. War on Iran is part of the US empire’s larger attempt to re-impose its unipolar dominance on the global political and financial system, argues economist Michael Hudson. Washington wants to preserve dollar hegemony and the petrodollar, while disrupting BRICS and Eurasian integration with China and Russia.
by Michael Hudson and Ben Norton
Published16 hours ago
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06 ... el-hudson/

US empire plan global domination

War on Iran is part of the US empire’s larger attempt to re-impose its unipolar dominance on the global political and financial system, argues economist Michael Hudson.

Washington wants to preserve dollar hegemony and the petrodollar, while disrupting BRICS and Eurasian integration with China and Russia.

Hudson explained this in the following interview with Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton.

You can read Michael Hudson’s article here: War on Iran is fight for US unipolar control of world.

Transcript

BEN NORTON: Why is the United States so concerned about Iran?

US President Donald Trump admitted that what Washington wants is regime change in Tehran, to overthrow the Iranian government.

Trump backed a war on Iran in June, in which both the US and Israel directly bombed Iranian territory.

Trump claimed that he brokered a ceasefire after what he calls the 12 Day War that the US and Israel waged against Iran. But it’s very difficult to believe that this ceasefire will hold.

Especially considering that Trump said the same in January. He claimed to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, but then in March, two months later, Israel started the war again, after Trump had given Israel the green light to violate the ceasefire that he helped to broker.

So it’s very difficult for Iranian officials to believe that the ceasefire will truly hold. And even if it does hold in the short term, the reality is that the US government has been waging a kind of political war and an economic war against Iran for many decades, going back to 1953, when the US carried out a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed a pro-US dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.[/quote]

[x]
Iran’s dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with US President Richard Nixon in the White House in 1973

So why is this? What does Washington want to get out of its never-ending political and economic war on Iran?

To try to answer this question, I interviewed the renowned economist Michael Hudson, who has written many books and is an expert on global political economy.

Michael Hudson published an article in which he outlines the economic and political reasons for this war on Iran, and he posits that this is part of the attempt by the US empire to impose a unipolar order on the world, like we saw in the 1990s, when the US was the only superpower and it could impose its political and economic will on almost all countries on Earth.

Iran was one of the very few countries that was actually resisting US unipolar hegemony. And today we see, as the world is more and more multipolar, Iran plays an important role as a BRICS member, and as a supporter of resistance groups.

Iran is pushing for a more multipolar world, in opposition to the US empire’s unipolarity, as the economist Michael Hudson describes in this essay.

Hudson wrote:

What is at stake is the US attempt to control the Middle East and its oil as a buttress of US economic power, and to prevent other countries from moving to create their own autonomy from the US-centered neoliberal order administered by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to reinforce US unipolar power.

In our discussion today, Michael connects all of the different factors involved in this conflict, including the oil and gas and other resources in West Asia (in the so-called Middle East); including the role of the US dollar and the petrodollar system; and how Iran, as a member of BRICS, and many other Global South countries, are de-dollarizing and seeking alternatives to the dollar.

[x]

We also talk about the geopolitics of the region, the trade routes and interconnectivity among China, Iran, and Russia, as part of a project of Eurasian integration; we talk about the geopolitical goals of the US and Israel; and much, much more.

Here is an excerpt of our conversation, and then we’ll go straight to the interview:

MICHAEL HUDSON: What we have seen in the last month — or I should say the last two years actually — is the culmination of the long strategy that America has had ever since World War II, to take complete control of the Near Eastern oil lands and make them proxies of the United States, under client rulers, such as Saudi Arabia and the king of Jordan.

[x]

Iran represents a military threat to Russia’s southern border, because if the United States could put a client regime in Iran, or break up Iran into ethnic groups who would be able to interfere with Russia’s corridor of trade southwards, into access to the Indian Ocean, well, then you have boxed in Russia, you have boxed in China, and you have managed to isolate them.

That is the current American foreign policy. If you can isolate countries that do not want to be part of the American international financial and trade system, then the belief is that they cannot exist by themselves; they are too small.

America is still living back in the epoch of the 1955 Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned nations in Indonesia. When other countries wanted to go alone, they were too economically small.

[x]
The 1955 Bandung Conference
But today, for the first time in modern history, you have the option of Eurasia, of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the neighboring countries in between. For the first time, they are large enough that they do not need trade and investment with the United States.

In fact, while the United States and its NATO allies in Europe are shrinking — they are de-industrialized, neoliberal, post-industrial economies — most of the growth in world production, manufacturing, and trade has occurred in China, along with the control of the raw materials refining, such as rare earths, but also cobalt, even aluminum, and many other materials in China.

[x]
World shares of gross production

So America’s strategic attempt to isolate Russia, China, and any of their allies in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ends up isolating itself. It is forcing other countries to make a choice.

That is the only thing that America has to offer other countries in today’s world. It can’t offer them exports. It can’t offer them monetary stability.

The only thing that America has to offer the world is to refrain from destroying their economy and causing economic chaos, such as Trump has threatened to do with his tariffs, and what he has threatened to do to any country trying to create an alternative to the dollar.

Hence this free lunch, where other countries can earn dollars, but they have to re-lend them to the United States. And the United States, as their banker, has to hold it all, and the banker may just decide whom to pay and whom not to pay.

It’s a gangster. It has been called a gangster state, for just such reasons. And other countries are afraid of what the United States can do, not only under Donald Trump, but what it has been doing for the last 50 years. It is simply confiscating, and destabilizing, and overthrowing.

America has basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the United States does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. It’s a greedy empire.

Interview

BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me. It’s always a real pleasure having you.

Let’s talk about this article you wrote, in which you argue that the war on Iran is part of an attempt by the United States to impose its unipolar hegemony on the world.

We see that we’re living in more and more of a multipolar world, and Iran has played an important part of the multipolar project as a member of BRICS, as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as a partner of China and Russia. Iran has also been pushing for de-dollarization of the global financial system.

Talk about how you see the war on Iran — which didn’t start under Donald Trump, this goes back many years — and how you see it in particular as an economist.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the war on Iran started in 1953, when the United States and MI6 overthrew the elected Prime Minister [Mohammad Mosaddegh], and the reason he was overthrown was because he wanted to nationalize the oil reserves of Iran. The United States has always viewed Iran as part of the Near Eastern oil Gulf.

[x]

American foreign policy, in terms of weaponizing its foreign trade, has always been based on two commodities: food grains — the ability to stop exporting food to countries that oppose US policy, as the United States stopped exporting grain to China under Mao — and oil.

For a century, the United States has focused on control of the oil as the basis of its international trade balance — it’s the largest contributor to the trade balance — and of its ability to sanction the rest of the world, by turning off the oil supply, and thereby turning off the electricity, turning off the gas, turning off the home heating, of countries that break away from US policy.

When I worked for the Hudson Institute in the early 1970s, Herman Kahn brought me to a meeting with some generals, and they were discussing what to do with Iran in case, under the shah, Iran should ever once again try to assert its autonomy and go its own way.

Iran has always been the strongest power in the entire Near East, and the capstone to controlling the Near East. You cannot fully control the Near Eastern oil — Syria, Iraq, the rest of the countries there — without controlling Iran too, because of the size of its population and the strength of its economy.

[x]
Herman Kahn

It was a very interesting meeting. Herman Kahn, the model for Dr. Strangelove, discussed how to break up Iran into its various ethnicities, five or six ethnicities, in the case that it should, take a policy independent from the United States.

The United States’ concern already in the 1970s, 50 years ago, was, “What do we do if other countries do not follow the kind of international world order that we are, organizing?”

Herman said that he thought the crisis point that was going to break up in international news was going to be Balochistan, at Iran’s border with Pakistan. The Balochis are a distinct population, just as the Azerbaijanis, Azeris, the Kurds.

Iran is a composite of many ethnic groups, including a very large Jewish group there. It is a multi-ethnic society, and the United States’ strategy, in case there was a war against Iran, was to play on these ethnicities — just as similar plans were drawn up for Russia, how to break it into separate ethnic parts; and China, how to break China into ethnic parts, at such point as America wants to take them on.

And the reason this ethnic division was developed was, as a democracy, especially in the 1970s, it became very apparent that the United States never again could field an army for invasion, as it was doing in Vietnam.

At the time I sat in on this meeting, late 1974 I think, or early ’75, there were demonstrations. It was obvious that there could never be a military draft again.

How was the United States to exert its international power without military power? It had military bases all over the world; it spent more on military than any other country.

The entire US balance of payments deficit was military spending abroad, and yet it couldn’t go to war. It had to use proxies.

This was the time when, in addition to the discussions that I sat in on how to use ethnicities in countries that we declared war on, as opponents; America decided to create the largest military base in the Near East, and that was Israel.

Henry Jackson, the pro-war, Military-Industrial Complex’s senator, met with Herman Kahn — I actually was in Herman’s office, listening to the phone call, when it came through — and the agreement was that the Military-Industrial Complex and Jackson would back Israel, if Israel agreed to act as America’s landed aircraft carrier in the Near East, as it was put at the time.

Herman very gladly made that arrangement, because the Hudson Institute at that time was a Zionist organization, and it was a training ground for Mossad.

[x]

One of my colleagues was Uzi Arad. We made a number of trips together to Asia. And Uzi became Netanyahu’s advisor and head of Mossad in subsequent years.

So I sort of sat in at the time when the American strategy was being outlined.

Israel was going to be America’s face, and indeed has been coordinating America’s backing of Al-Qaeda and the Wahhabi butchers who have taken over Syria, and are now busy killing the Christians, killing the Shiites, killing the Alawites.

And you will never see any criticism of Israel by Al-Qaeda, or the group [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)] in Syria, whatever you want to call it there now. And vice versa, there has always been a working relationship.

[x]
[x]

So this gives some background as to how long the United States has anticipated the day when it would try to finally capstone its invasion of Iraq, its attack on Syria, its destruction of Libya, its backing of the destruction of Lebanon, and other countries, in North Africa, etc.

What we have seen in the last month — or I should say the last two years actually — is the culmination of the long strategy that America has had ever since World War II, to take complete control of the Near Eastern oil lands and make them proxies of the United States, under client rulers, such as Saudi Arabia and the king of Jordan.

Geopolitics and global trade

BEN NORTON: You raised so many interesting points, Michael. I want focus on two main issues here: one is the geopolitics of Iran’s integration with Eurasia, and the other is oil and the petrodollar system.

I will start with the geopolitics. Of course, when we talk about the petrodollar, we should keep in mind that Iran has been selling its oil and gas in other currencies, and pushing for de-dollarization.

But before we get to that, I want to talk about the role that Iran has played not only in supporting resistance groups in West Asia, but also in deepening its political and economic partnership with China and Russia, as part of a larger Eurasian partnership.

There are numerous physical projects integrating these regions.

[x]

Iran is at the heart of China’s New Silk Road. This was originally launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, and then it expanded into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Iran is an important part in that, connecting East Asia, through Central Asia, through Iran, into West Asia. And the US has really tried to disrupt that.

[x]

Iran also plays an important role in a Russian-led economic corridor that connects from St. Petersburg, through Moscow, down through the Caspian Sea, through Iran, and to India.

This is known as the International North-South Transport Corridor, the INSTC.

So we have seen that Iran has played a very important role challenging the US dollar, challenging US hegemony, and also seeking economic and political integration with other countries in Eurasia.

Can you speak more about this and why these imperial planners in Washington see this as so much of a threat?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you just summarized the two maps that I included in my article.

About a month ago, Iran just completed its Belt and Road railroad, that goes all the way to Tehran. For the first time, there is a land corridor from Iran to China.

[x]

Now, the Belt and Road corridor means they’re avoiding going by sea.

American and British military policy has been based for a hundred years on control of the seas, and control of the oil trade was part of that strategy.

Because if Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other oil-producing countries can’t load up tankers with oil, how are they going to be able to export? And how can importers such as China, or India, obtain oil from the Near East?

[x]
Belt and Road Initiative expansion plans

Well, with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its intention was to go all the way through, via Iran, and then proceed on all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, to Europe.

This Belt and Road was to span the entire Eurasian continent, the entire eastern hemisphere.

[x]

And if the United States could conquer Iran and take it over, that would interfere with China’s long-distance railroad development, and it would block it — just as the United States is hoping to goad India and Pakistan into some kind of fight that would interrupt China’s Belt and Road Initiative that goes through through Pakistan [the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)].

So, on the one hand, Iran is the key to China’s overland trantransportation to Europe.

[x]

And as you just pointed out, with Russia: Iran represents a military threat to Russia’s southern border, because if the United States could put a client regime in Iran, or break up Iran into ethnic groups who would be able to interfere with Russia’s corridor of trade southwards, into access to the Indian Ocean, well, then you have boxed in Russia, you have boxed in China, and you have managed to isolate them.

That is the current American foreign policy. If you can isolate countries that do not want to be part of the American international financial and trade system, then the belief is that they cannot exist by themselves; they are too small.

America is still living back in the epoch of the 1955 Bandung Conference, of Non-Aligned nations, in Indonesia. When other countries wanted to go alone, they were too economically small.

[x]
The 1955 Bandung Conference

But today, for the first time in modern history, you have the option of Eurasia, of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the neighboring countries in between. For the first time, they are large enough that they do not need trade and investment with the United States.

In fact, while the United States and its NATO allies in Europe are shrinking — they are de-industrialized, neoliberal, post-industrial economies — most of the growth in world production, manufacturing, and trade has occurred in China, along with the control of the raw materials refining, such as rare earths, but also cobalt, even aluminum, and many other materials in China.

[x]

So America’s strategic attempt to isolate Russia, China, and any of their allies in BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization ends up isolating itself. It is forcing other countries to make a choice.

This was made very clear immediately upon Trump taking the presidency and announcing his tariff policy, saying, “In three months, I’m going to impose such devastatingly high tariffs that you, the Global South countries, the Global Majority countries, your economies will be in chaos without having access to the American market”.

But, [Trump said], “We have three months to negotiate, and, if you give us a give-back, I will roll back these tariffs to 10%, so that it won’t devastate your economies. And one of the agreements that you have to make is you’ll agree to America’s sanctions not to trade with China, not to invest in China, not to use alternatives to the US dollar”.

China is trying to avoid using dollars, just as Russia no longer is able to use dollars, because the United States has simply confiscated $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange holdings in the West, that it held in Brussels, in order to manage its foreign exchange, to stabilize its exchange rate, which is what central banks do throughout the world.

Well, it’s very interesting. The Financial Times had a front page article [reporting] that now European countries, especially Germany and Italy, which have the second- and third-largest gold holdings, have asked, “Could you please [give us our gold back]? We have, since World War II, we have left all of our gold supplies at the Federal Reserve in New York”.

America’s gold is in Fort Knox, but other countries keep their gold reserves in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank, right across from Chase Manhattan bank in the downtown area.

And other countries now realize that, under Trump, if he says, “Well, Europe has been really taking advantage of us; they have been exporting more to us than we’ve sold to them” — you know, Italy and Germany are worried that somehow America will say, “Well, we’re just gonna grab all of this gold that you’ve built up by taking advantage of us”.

[x]

So you’re having the rest of the world pull back from the dollar. This reflects the effect of everything that the United States is trying to do to isolate the other parts of the world from contact with the United States, if they try to have an alternative economic system to neoliberal finance capitalism, if they try to have industrial socialism — which is really industrial capitalism on the way to being industrial socialism, with active government investment in basic infrastructure, instead of privatizing the infrastructure Margaret Thatcher style.

The effect will be to leave the United States isolated, and all the rest of the world going its own way, unable to trade with the United States because of the high tariffs that Trump has imposed, and afraid to trade in dollars because of the predatory weaponization of the dollar standard, which had been America’s free lunch under the whole epoch of US Treasury bill standard, since America went off gold in 1971.

Oil and the petrodollar

BEN NORTON: Again, Michael, you raised so many good points there.

I want to stick with this issue of oil and the US dollar, and the petrodollar system.

Now, you have mentioned a few times that the US really relies on exports of oil and control of the oil trade, partially to try to reduce its enormous current account deficit — which, I mean, it still is not very successful. The US runs massive current account deficits — that is, trade deficits with the rest of the world.

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But what is something that is different in the 2020s is that the US is now the world’s largest exporter of oil. It’s the largest producer of oil on Earth, and the largest producer of gas.

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So that’s a significant difference. That’s largely a development in the past decade due to the explosion in fracking in the US, and also the shale oil revolution.

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So, it’s not necessarily that the US needs to physically get access to all of the oil in the region.

Although, of course, US fossil fuel corporations would love to privatize all of the oil in West Asia, that is state-owned.

So for instance, we talked about Mohammad Mosaddegh, the prime minister of Iran who was overthrown in the 1953 CIA-backed coup, after he nationalized the oil in Iran and kicked out US and British oil companies.

Well, the current Iranian government, following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, also nationalized the oil, and the Iranian state does actually have a lot of influence in the economy, including through state-owned enterprises.

So, of course the US would love to privatize that. But this is not really necessarily about getting access to all that oil.

This is about maintaining the current financial order, which is really backed by oil, especially after Richard Nixon in 1971 took the dollar off of gold.

Then, in 1974, Nixon sent his treasury secretary, William Simon — Bill Simon, from Salomon Brothers — who was a bond expert. He ran the Treasuries desk, trading US government debt at Salomon Brothers, this major Wall Street investment bank.

He was sent to Jeddah in 1974, where they brokered a deal saying that the US would protect the Saudi monarchy, and, in return, Saudi Arabia would sell all of its oil in dollars, maintaining global demand for the US dollar.

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This came one year after the OPEC oil embargo, in which the countries in the Global South showed that they could use their control of oil as a geopolitical tool to punish the US and the West for their support of Israel.

So I mean, all this history is still so relevant today.

Now, Iran is directly challenging that petrodollar system. Iran is selling its oil to China in Chinese yuan, the renminbi.

Iran is also trading with India, selling its oil, and it is using its currency, the rial. India is also using its currency, the rupee, and India is essentially trading its agricultural goods for Iranian oil.

So can you talk about this petrodollar system, and why Iran is seen as such a major challenge to this system? And really what that means is a direct challenge to the global dominance of the US dollar itself.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I mentioned that the original drive of the United States was to control Near Eastern oil.

I was the balance of payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, and I did a whole study on behalf of the US oil industry to calculate the balance of payments returns, and the average dollar spent by the Seven Sisters, the big oil companies.

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The average dollar invested in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other Arab countries, was recovered in only 18 months.

Oil was the most profitable investment in the entire US economy, and it was tax free.

Now, the original plan, as I mentioned, of the US in the Near East, it viewed as having oil. Then came the oil war — and it was more than an oil war — in 1974, after Israel waged the 1973 war, and after the United States quadrupled its grain prices.

Well, you mentioned [Nixon’s Treasury Secretary] Bill Simon. Herman Kahn and I went to meet with Bill Simon in 1974, to discuss what should America’s strategy be with the oil companies.

Simon said, “We’ve explained to them that, they can charge whatever they want for oil. They can quadruple the prices”.

In fact, that made Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony [later Mobil], and the other American oil companies very happy, because, as you point out, America was itself a huge oil producer.

When the OPEC countries quadrupled the price of oil, that made the American oil companies immensely profitable on their and Canada’s oil production.

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So, Bill Simon told me that he had explained to them that they could charge whatever they wanted for the oil; quadrupling was okay.

But the agreement was they had to keep all of their savings from what they made off this oil — I won’t call it profit, because it’s really natural resource rent — they had to keep their rents in the United States economy.

The deal was that Saudi Arabia and other countries would export their oil for dollars; they would not remove these dollars from the United States.

They would leave the dollars that they were paid by European countries, by other countries buying their oil; they would invest it primarily in US Treasury securities, and they could also buy US stocks and bonds.

But they could not do what America did with its foreign exchange of European currency, for instance. The OPEC countries could not buy control of any major American company.

They could buy stocks and bonds, but they had to spread the investment in the stock market over the market as a whole. So I think the king of Saudi Arabia bought a billion dollars of every stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, to spread it all out.

But most of their money was kept safely in US Treasury securities.

So, essentially, the OPEC revenue — I won’t say earnings because, again, it wasn’t really earned; it’s unearned income — OPEC revenue from the oil sales all ended up in the United States, most of it lent to the United States government.

Well, that inflow of dollars is what enabled the United States to do two things.

One, as a balance of payments inflow, it enabled the United States to continue spending its military overseas spending abroad, in order to have the military fist behind its economic empire.

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But it also funded the domestic budget deficit. Foreign central banks were largely funding America’s own domestic budget deficit, by their holding of American Treasury bills.

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So the OPEC countries essentially became captive parts of the American financial system that I had described in my book Super Imperialism.

So I met with the Treasury Treasury people, basically explaining what I had written about in Super Imperialism, about how ending other countries’ practice of holding their international monetary reserves in gold, but holding them in loans to the US Treasury in the form of buying Treasury bonds as the vehicle for their savings, essentially made the savings of the entire world, the monetary savings, all centralized in Washington and New York.

That control of what began as control of the oil trade, to weaponize the trade in oil, became control of the international financial system with the dollar’s surpluses being thrown off by the oil trade.

So you had that symbiosis between the trade system and the financial system as the basis for American military policy, and what I called super imperialism.

Super imperialism

BEN NORTON: Yeah, and what you described over 50 years ago, so brilliantly, as the system of super imperialism, what we’re seeing today is that Iran and other BRICS countries are challenging that system.

They are challenging the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar and trying to seek alternatives.

So maybe you can speak more about this global de-dollarization movement and how Iran plays a central role in this.

And that is one of the reasons, of course, why it’s a target of the US.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Iran really wasn’t central to it, because the United States has been able to isolate Iran.

As soon as the shah was overthrown, the United States played a dirty trick on Iran — Chase Manhattan Bank did.

Iran had a foreign debt — like every country has, by issuing foreign bonds — and it sent the dollars to the Chase Manhattan Bank, to pay the bond holders their dividends.

The Treasury went to David Rockefeller and told him, “Don’t send this Iranian money along. Just hold it there”. And so Iran was considered to be in default, and the entire foreign debt came due, and America seized, confiscated, Iranian economic and financial resources in the United States.

They later negotiated to give it back, because all of this was illegal under international law, but that has never stopped the United States, as we’re seeing right now.

After the shah was overthrown, the United States said, “We’ve got to destabilize the the new Iranian government, and if we grab its foreign reserves, that will cripple it and cause chaos, and that’s how we run the world, by causing chaos”.

That is the only thing that America has to offer other countries in today’s world. It can’t offer them exports. It can’t offer them monetary stability.

The only thing that America has to offer the world is to refrain from destroying their economy and causing economic chaos, such as Trump has threatened to do with his tariffs, and what he has threatened to do to any country trying to create an alternative to the dollar.

Hence this free lunch, where other countries can earn dollars, but they have to re-lend them to the United States. And the United States, as their banker, has to hold it all, and the banker may just decide whom to pay and whom not to pay.

It’s a gangster. It has been called a gangster state, for just such reasons. And other countries are afraid of what the United States can do, not only under Donald Trump, but what it has been doing for the last 50 years. It is simply confiscating, and destabilizing, and overthrowing.

America has basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the United States does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it. It’s a greedy empire.

Sanctions and economic warfare

BEN NORTON: Yeah, and what you’re getting at, Michael, is such an important point, because essentially what this shows is that these tactics that the US has abused more and more frequently in the past few decades are not entirely new.

Today, one-third of all countries on Earth are under US sanctions, which are unilateral; they are illegal under international law.

But of course, Iran was one of the first countries to be sanctioned, after its revolution in 1979.

And we know that in 2022, the US and the EU seized $300 billion dollars and euros worth of Russian assets, and that was a huge wake-up call to the world.

But, actually, Iran was the kind of first test case. It was the US that seized Iran’s assets first, and then they later seized Venezuela’s assets, and then Afghanistan’s assets, and now Russia.

So Iran was always the first country to be targeted by these aggressive tactics, and now they have become so commonplace that we have seen a kind of global rebellion against this system, even by longtime US allies.

Like for instance Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which historically have been US client states, but they see what has happened to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, and they’re worried that they could be next.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is exactly what is shaping Saudi Arabian and Arab policy in the region.

Obviously, the Arabs don’t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.They don’t like the ethnic cleansing, and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and the whole attack on the Palestinians and other Arab populations.

But they’re afraid of acting on behalf of Iran.They may be very sympathetic with it. The populations of these countries are very much against the violence that Israel is waging against the Arab states, but the leaders of these countries have a problem: All of the savings that Saudi Arabia has accumulated for the last 50 years are held as hostage in the US Treasury and in the US banks.

And the US banks, essentially, are arms of the Treasury. Most of all, Chase Manhattan was a designated bank that would act on behalf of the Treasury. Citibank was more independent, of that.

So you have not heard a peep out of Saudi Arabia and its neighboring oil-producing countries, because they’re afraid. They realize that they’re in a very delicate position.

All of this money that their sovereign wealth fund that they have built up to finance their own future development — if you can call what they’re doing, it’s a twisted development — but their plans for the future are held hostage, and they’ve been politically neutralized, because of this exposure to the US dollar.

Well, you can imagine that other countries realize what is happening, and Asian countries, the Global South countries, and even European countries like Germany and Italy, say, “We don’t want to be stuck in the same trap that the Arab countries are stuck in, where not only our savings, and Treasury securities, and US stocks and bonds, and our investments in the United States are held hostage; our gold supply is being held there!”

And the whole world is now moving toward gold.They’re afraid to hold dollars. Dollar holdings by foreign central banks have been at just stable, while the gold holdings have been going up.

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And many foreign official gold holdings are held off the books. The government will hold stock in a company that holds gold. You can conceal what they’re doing, so they won’t very conspicuously being shown to be dumping the dollar.

There’s a kind of Kabuki dance going on in financial statistics, as well as in dropping bombs on countries.

The Military-Industrial Complex

BEN NORTON: Michael, I want to talk about the military-industrial complex, because another point that you made in this article which is very important and is often left out is how US military contractors profit from these wars — like we saw in what they’re now calling the 12-Day War, between the US/Israel and Iran.

You pointed out that Iran was mostly using its older missiles. It was emptying its stockpile of old missiles to hit Israel, and trying to overwhelm Israel’s air defense system.

Now, we know that US military contractors have boasted about the advanced military equipment the US has given to Israel, like the Iron Dome, the David’s Sling system, and the Arrow system.

US corporations have benefited from helping to design these systems, and from providing the missiles and interceptors.

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So Israel has spent many millions of dollars trying to shoot down these old Iranian missiles that Iran wanted to get rid of anyway.

If the war had continued, it would obviously have bled more and more resources of Israel and the US.

But as you point out, this is actually something that the military-industrial complex in the US benefits from, because what the US calls the “aid” that it gives to many countries is actually not really aid; it’s actually contracts given to US private contractors, and then they give that military equipment to Israel, or to Egypt, or to Japan, South Korea, and other countries.

So can you talk more about the role of the military-industrial complex, and how it has profited from all of this?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this is the key to the debate in Congress that is now occurring over the Republican tax law. The enormous amount of money that is spent on the military-industrial complex that basically, the weapons it makes do not work.

We’ve seen in Ukraine the inability of the NATO countries to defend against the Russian missiles.

We’ve seen in Israel that the Iron Dome is very easily penetrated by Iran.

And Iran, already several months ago, demonstrated this when it sent two sets of rockets. It warned Israel, “We don’t want to go to war. We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we just want to show you that we can bomb you whenever you want, and so we’re gonna drop a bomb on this particular location; get everybody out of there; we’re just gonna show you that it works. Try to shoot us down”. And they dropped it.

They did the same with the United States, in Iraq, saying, “You know, we don’t want to really have to go to war with you in Iraq. We lost a million Iranians fighting the Iraqis, when you were setting Saddam Hussein against us before [in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s], but you should know that we can wipe out your American bases whenever we want. Let’s give you a demonstration. Here’s a base that’s not very populated. We’re going to bomb it, so get everybody out; we don’t want anyone to get hurt. We’re gonna bomb you on such and such a date. Do everything you can to shoot us down”. Whoosh! They bombed it. America could not shoot them down.

Well, the Iron Dome obviously doesn’t work, nor does the American military defense work.

Well, President Trump has just come out and said, “We’re going to vastly increase the US budget deficit by creating an Iron Dome in the United States for $1 trillion”.

Well, imagine spending a trillion dollars replicating the system that Iran and Russia show that they can penetrate right away.

BEN NORTON: Michael, this is called the Golden Dome. And Elon Musk’s companies like SpaceX are poised to get massive US government contracts. It is estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars in total will be spent to make this Golden Dome that won’t even work.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Of course, for Trump, everything is gold, not iron — I should have noticed that — just like the doorknobs in his Trump Towers, of course.

So we’re seeing this fantasy.

What the military-industrial complex makes aren’t arms to actually be used in war. They’re arms to be traded or sold.

And, as as you pointed out, in addition to the enormous amount of direct Congressional spending on buying arms for the US Army, Navy, and Marines, on the military, the United States gives foreign aid to South Korea, Japan, and other countries, and this foreign aid is spent by their own purchases of US military arms.

This is not included in the American military budget, but in effect, it’s financing the military-industrial complex through the back door, by giving money to America’s allies to buy America’s arms, that also don’t work.

Well, you must wonder what these allies are thinking now, especially in Europe, it’s almost embarrassing to see NATO refusing to acknowledge the fact that the American arms that it wants to buy, and the European arms that it has made, simply are not able to defend themselves against Russian and Iranian arms.

American technology is backwards, because the military-industrial complex companies have taken all this enormous money that they’ve paid, their profits that they’ve made, by paying out dividends and buying their own stocks.

They haven’t spent it on research and development. 92% of every dollar they’ve got is recycled into supporting their stock prices, not in actually making arms.

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So, by financializing its military system, along with the industrial economy as a whole, the United States has essentially de-industrialized itself, and you could almost say disarmed itself, against the rest of the world, that actually spends their military money on arms that work, arms that are intended to work, not simply to make profits, to increase the stock prices of military-industrial companies.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, I think that’s actually a great note to end on. We could go on for another hour, but we should save that for another time.

Michael, is there anything you would like to recommend for people who want to find more of your work?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I have my website, Michael-Hudson.com, and all of my articles are on the website, including the one that Ben has just mentioned. So you can see my ongoing commentary on all of this.

And my book Super Imperialism explained the whole unfolding dynamic of all of this.

BEN NORTON: As always, Michael, it’s a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us today, and we’ll talk again soon.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it was a timely discussion.Thanks for having me.