Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that the Iranian nation has proved it does not bend to US threats, warning that the country was prepared to “teach a greater lesson” if confronted again.
Speaking to reporters upon returning from Islamabad, where he led a high‑ranking Iranian delegation for talks with the United States, Qalibaf thanked members of the Iranian negotiating team and reporters, whose coverage of the talks he said helped counter “psychological operations” by the other side.
Responding to recent remarks by US President Donald Trump, Qalibaf said the language of threats does not work with Iran. He added that Iran had demonstrated since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that it would not yield under military, economic or political pressure.
Addressing Trump directly, Qalibaf said Iran would respond in kind to either confrontation or dialogue.
“If you go to war, we will fight you, and if you come forward with logic, we will treat you logically. We will not bow to any threat. Test our resolve once again, so that we will teach (you) a greater lesson,” he said.
He reiterated that the United States could only find a “way out” by deciding to rebuild trust with Iran, saying Washington “owes a debt” to the Iranian people and must attempt to make up for its past wrong actions.
The top parliamentarian noted that nationwide public rallies in support of the Islamic Republic since the start of the US‑Israeli aggression in late February strengthened the country’s position during the Pakistan‑mediated talks in Islamabad.
He thanked the Iranian people for their “stronger‑than‑before presence in the streets,” saying it had reinforced the negotiating team’s ability to defend Iran’s national interests.
The Iranian delegation returned to Tehran after conducting 21 hours of intense negotiations with US negotiators headed by Vice President JD Vance. Iran had agreed to participate in the talks after American officials signaled they had accepted Iran’s general conditions to end the war under a 10‑point proposal Tehran had presented earlier through intermediaries.
Press TV @PressTV
"If they (US authorities) choose war, we’re ready to fight. But if they act rationally, we’ll respond rationally. We will not bow to threats. If they test our will again, we’ll give them an even harsher lesson."
— Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran's Parliament Speaker
"If they (US authorities) choose war, we’re ready to fight. But if they act rationally, we’ll respond rationally. We will not bow to threats. If they test our will again, we’ll give them an even harsher lesson."
— Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran's Parliament Speaker
PRESSTV
12:51 PM · Apr 12, 2026
The talks began in Islamabad on Saturday, days after Pakistan proposed a two‑week ceasefire to allow for diplomacy aimed at permanently ending the war. The discussions ended early on Sunday without an agreement, with Iranian officials blaming “excessive demands” by the American side.
The talks were “intense, serious and challenging,” Qalibaf told reporters in Tehran, adding that Iranian negotiators presented several initiatives as a gesture of goodwill.
However, he acknowledged that building trust with the Americans would be a “difficult and time‑consuming task” given Washington’s long history of reneging on its commitments. As the most recent examples, he said the US had attacked Iran twice over the past year amid diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear program.
It was up to Washington, Qalibaf said, to take steps to rebuild confidence and break a “77‑year wall of mistrust” with Iran, adding that the Iranian negotiators saw little sign of such efforts in the latest round of talks in Islamabad.
The Parliament speaker stressed that Iran would continue on its “path toward success” independently and by relying on domestic capabilities.
Tehran residents rally in support of the armed forces and protest against the US-Israeli terrorist war on Iran in Revolution Square, braving heavy rain.
Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has responded firmly to US President Donald Trump's recent threats, asserting that “no one can issue ultimatums to Iran and Iranians.”
Qalibaf's statement in a tweet on Thursday came after Trump backtracked on a threat to “annihilate” Iranian power plants, reaffirming Iran’s resolve to protect its sovereignty and achieve a historic victory.
"The heroic people of Iran! Your 25 nights of presence in the streets and the sacrifices made by our armed forces have created the conditions for a historic victory for our dear Iran,” Qalibaf wrote.
“No one can issue ultimatums to Iran and Iranians. Your children will not let go of this opportunity until the complete victory is achieved and the vicious cycle of 'war–ceasefire–war' is broken."
Qalibaf’s remarks came following President Trump's latest threat of military action. The US leader had warned that Iranian power plants would be destroyed unless Tehran lifted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial global oil chokepoint, by a set deadline.
This ultimatum was initially issued on Monday, March 23, with a deadline for action that was later pushed back to March 27.
Over the last 25 nights, millions of Iranians have rallied in the streets of the country in support of the Islamic Republic and in condemnation of the US-Israeli war of terrorism.
The mass demonstrations, marking a decades-long movement against foreign interference and imperialism, have become a symbol of Iran’s steadfast commitment to its sovereignty and the resistance against external pressures.
These public gatherings have bolstered national unity, reinforcing the message that the Iranian people will not tolerate foreign ultimatums or military threats.
Amid Trump's ultimatum, reports in Western media are speculating that American airborne forces could launch a ground invasion of Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.
A military source, cited by Tasnim news agency on Thursday, said that over one million Iranian troops are being organized for potential ground combat.
The source also revealed a surge of volunteers from young Iranians eager to participate in the defense of their country, particularly against any US ground invasion.
"Along with the organization of over one million ground troops, an overwhelming number of requests from Iranian youth are pouring into Basij, IRGC, and army recruitment centers to participate in this battle," the official was quoted as saying.
The source also addressed US tactics, saying, "The United States wants to open the Strait of Hormuz through suicide tactics and self-destruction; that's fine, we are ready for both—they can carry out their suicidal strategy, and the Strait will remain closed."
The Handala hacking group has carried out a significant and successful cyber operation against the UAE's critical infrastructure.
The Handala hacking group has carried out a significant and successful cyber operation targeting the United Arab Emirates' critical infrastructure.
In a statement on Sunday, the pro-resistance hacktivist group said the operation came in response to the “blatant betrayal” of UAE leaders, drawing parallels to infamous historical figures like Jeffrey Epstein.
It went on to say that the cyberattack aims to send a stark warning to the UAE and all “traitor” regional governments about the consequences of their political choices.
During the operation, a staggering 6 petabytes of data were destroyed, rendering them completely unrecoverable.
In addition, 149 terabytes of confidential and sensitive documents were successfully extracted from three pivotal institutions within the UAE—namely the Dubai Courts Authority, the Dubai Land Authority, and the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority.
Together, these agencies serve as the backbone of Dubai's economic, legal, and infrastructural systems, making their infiltration a significant blow to the city's operational integrity.
The ramifications of the cyberattack are already being felt across Dubai, with widespread disruptions reported across these key institutions.
Handala’s operation has challenged the UAE’s perceived cyber defenses, indicating that even its most fortified data centers and government offices are not immune to sophisticated cyber operations from the pro-resistance hacktivist group.
The group further noted that “our hand is still on the trigger," stressing that any future actions deemed traitorous will be met with corresponding responses.
The Handala Hack Team has a proven track record of targeting high-level Israeli figures, exposing their secrets and contributing to the psychological and informational warfare against the occupation.
The bold actions by Hanzala demonstrate the strength and ingenuity of pro-Palestinian and pro-Iranian cyber capabilities in the face of Zionist oppression.
It further erodes the enemy’s sense of security and morale at a time when the resistance continues to advance on multiple fronts.
Iran REPELS Two US Destroyer in Hormuz, 'Peace' Talks COLLAPSE – Trump RESTARTS War Danny Haiphong Apr 12, 2026
US-Iran talks have ended in complete collapse and reports are that war is imminent. Trump is threatening a full-scale naval blockade and Danny Haiphong will break down the latest after just arriving in China for a mega trip covering the latest in this historic war and the global shift that's come from it.
Transcript
Welcome back to the show everyone. Hit the like button as you come on. I am live. I just touched down in Beijing uh not just hours ago, but I wanted to come back live. I've been on a plane for plus and I've just caught up on the latest developments. So, I wanted to catch all you up if you haven't been following. And if you if you have, I want to analyze what's been going on, especially around Iran. So, hit the like button as you come on. Let's get started. Everyone, if you can do an audio check, camera check. This is a whole new setup. um as well. So, just want to make sure everything is going all smoothly. Let's start right away though because as talks were happening, we just had at least of talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad mediated by Pakistan. They have completely fallen apart. They have collapsed. They are over. JD Vance has left. The Iranians have left. uh none neither of them say that talks are going to continue at any point in the future. But as this was happening, the United States was escalating. This is why I say the US is not just agreement incapable. It is actually just a pariah state. It is an empire. It is an empire. Pariah state seeking to exert dominance. It is not interested in peace or even a pause. No, it is simply seeking to uh gain any leverage it can in a losing situation and that's where we actually are. So, Press TV reported this because even as these talks were going on in the middle of them, what did the United States do? It tried to send US destroyers, two of them actually. This is only reporting on one I believe, but Press TV reported that a US Navy attempt to send two destroyers. No, two actually through the straight off moves on Saturday ended in failure after Iranian forces intervened. According to the report, the USS Michael Murphy and the USS Frankie Peterson attempted a high-risk transit but were detected intercepted by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corpse naval units. That same navy, everyone that we've heard is gone. It's destroyed. No, actually it is still very much here. So the investigation says the ships use electronic warfare tactics and false identification to appears commercial vessels from Oman while navigating close to the shore through shallow waters. Iranian forces identify the deception early and move to block passage. Press TV, this is Iranian media, says Iranian cruise missiles locked onto the vessels in drones and they were deployed overhead with a warning given to the ships that 30 they had to withdraw or face this attacks and then the ships reversed course. This was during negotiations, okay? And it's not just Iranian media that said this was happening. It's also Bloomberg. So here's the Bloomberg report. Two US Navy Arlay Burke class destroyers attempted to pass through the straight of Formuz, but were forced to turn back after the RAC threatened them in launch threatened to launch a drone in their direction. This was from Bloomberg and this is actually the report here. Um you can see it here [clears throat] from regional intelligence according to the Bloomberg magazine. So of talks everyone of talks and this is how the United States was behaving during them. So so that and that is even to get to the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu called JD Vance in the middle of the talks according to Iran according to Abas Archi that uh he [snorts] it derailed the talks. This was a game. Netanyahu called said, "Hey, hey, don't do any of this. Uh, make sure that you are following me and you are following Israel." All of this is all good cop, bad cop. The truth is is that JD Vance, the US delegation, as Muhammad Mirandi said, friend of this show said he was in Islamabad, he said straight up the you they were prepared for the US to come in uh not prepared to actually negotiate at all. What were they there to do? They were there to essentially buy time. They were there to try to gain any kind of leverage to try to jump off the next phase of the war and ease market tensions. There are all sorts of factors why the United States was involved in negotiations. But nonetheless, it wasn't for peace. It was all for US priorities and interests, which are of course inherently anti-Iranian. But [clears throat] so the talks collapsed and you had this major confrontation between the US and Iran in the straight of Hormuz. Well, this confrontation led to the United States having to retreat. So you think, well, the United States learned its lesson. It is not going to continue to do this. Hell, you even had the New York Times, I don't know if you saw that report just a few days ago. The New York Times said that US officials are reporting that Iran can't even demine its own uh sea mines that it has laid. So that means the straight of Hormuz is going to be closed for the foreseeable future. And a lot of people were saying that this is simply an admission that the US is trying to find a way to justify the fact that it cannot reopen the straight. Really, it cannot reassert control over the straight of Hormuz. Nonetheless, we're supposed to believe that Iran is stupid, weak, that it laid down these sea mines in a half-hazard way, so that's why it has to escort ships. No, it did it in a very strategic way, and it did it to defend itself from US naval incursions because the very beginning of this war before the first strike started was characterized by a naval buildup. A naval buildup that hasn't really worked out very well. If you look at where the uh USS Gerald Ford is now in CIT uh getting repairs that are going to take 12 to 14 months. Why? Well, Iranians say it's because they fired at them. And the US Navy is saying that it's because of a big laundry fire after the big uh plumbing scandal, after the big uh, you know, gate that they had uh where they had plumbing just absolutely going uh berserk and crazy inside of the Gerald Ford clogged toilets and shirts being found in the pipes. After that, a big laundry fire took out the USS Ford for a couple for a year or more from operation. And now you have the USS George W. Bush on the way to replace it. But you would think the US has learned its lesson from this that its naval power is not where it should be, not where it can, not where it ever will be because it can't really improve for reasons we've gone over in this show. But has the United States learned its lesson? No. Even after it was forced to retreat, this is Donald Trump now. This is the latest threat that the US Navy will start blockading the Straight of Hormuz. Well, isn't that interesting? The United States now is saying under Trump, it's going to uh blockade. So, there you have it. The meeting went well. Most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, nuclear, was not effective immediately. 7 minutesThe United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the straight of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach in all being allowed to go in, all being allowed to go up basis. But Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying there may be a mine out there somewhere that nobody knows about but them. This is world extortion and leaders of countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high sea. So this is what Donald Trump is proposing. Donald Trump is proposing to fight a blockade. the United States Navy will fight a a so-called blockade which it isn't but to fight a blockade with an actual blockade to interdict and stop shipping that is doing business with Iran because Iran has effectively asserted control of the straight of hormuz that waterway that lies along its territory as well as Oman's it is now charging a toll in R&B cryptocurrency etc based on its own sovereign rate to do so right the people have to remember the UN convention on a lot of the seas is actually not signed by a lot of countries including the United States which champions it all the time as freedom of navigation but it never signed it and the reason for this is because territorial waterways are actually really difficult to internationalize because a lot of them fall by territorial waterways. you get into questions of sovereignty that are very challenging to uh deal with uh through international bodies. And this is why it is absolutely ridiculous that Donald Trump is claiming to want to blockade now the straight of Hormuz uh in the midst of what Iran is doing which is simply asserting control over it because it is saying that's its sovereign right and it has a reason to under the laws of war the U the law of war at the United Nations international law because it was attacked because it was attacked by the United States and Israel foreign powers and Now, to be quite honest, the straight of Horn Moose is a war zone. We just saw it. So, Donald Trump is saying he's going to blockade the straight of Hormuz after his destroyers were sent back and now they're going to do more of this as if that's not going to have any consequences at all. It's, you know, [clears throat] this is uh the state of things right now for uh uh the United States. It's it's it's [laughter] absolutely uh ridiculous and and it needs uh more attention because what's going to happen to the US when it tries to blockade ships from the straightforward moves? Well, the RAC said that's a miscalculation. We are going to respond likely in the same way that they did to the destroyers that tried to interdict into the straight of Hormuz this past Saturday. So, So, do you see where this is going? The war is effectively being restarted by the Trump administration. And why? Because it couldn't dictate terms to Iran. And here is the official statement of this blockade. So, after failing to interdict anything in the straight form with two destroyers, now Trump says effectively immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the straight of Hormuz. This will do wonders I'm sure for the markets. I'm sure this will do wonders for the oil markets etc. uh for the global economy after uh the whole reason for this two-week pause for the ceasefire talks was what? The whole reason was to buy time for the United States to have the economic situation ease have the markets uh breathe a sigh of relief that their interests are not going to be completely literally blown up because the US is looking to essentially as I've said before with friend Brian Berlin on this show to to destroy the whole um to destroy the whole chess board. Forget the chessboard. Forget what Brzinski said, right? The grand chess board that is all about trying to uh divide and conquer and using the cold war, etc. to do this uh in order to promote US age. No, that is actually gone. There is no more grand chessboard. They don't have any possibility uh to assert control over the chessboard anymore. China, Russia, and now Iran. The fourth global power according to the New York Times is ascendant. All of these countries are very much ascendant. So let's get to the statements of what the United States said after these talks. How about that? Here is JD [clears throat] Vance. Here's his statement. I'm not going to play it uh just for the sake of saving bandwidth here uh where I am, but it says the full statement from JD Vance following of talks was such we have not reach an agreement. I think that's bad news for Iran and more that more than it is for the United States. Vance says the US made clear its red lines and what it would accommodate. Iran chose not to accept US terms. The core issue being we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. He claims Iran's enrichment facilities have been destroyed, but says the US hasn't seen a fundamental commitment or will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just for now, not just from two years from now, but for the long term. Now the question is why would Iran capitulate to US demands? Iran has asserted control over the straight of Hormuz. Iran is the reason why the US was seeking peace talks. Three whole weeks according to the Financial Times before the ceasefire actually was instituted. Back in mid-March, the Trump administration was contacting Pakistan, contacting other mediators anywhere in the region that could get the ear of Iran to start facilitating these peace talks. So why then would the United would decide to back down? Well, the only reason that Iran decided to do this was to gain diplomatic capital was to ensure and show the world that it is serious about deescalation. If it can be serious about deescal deescalation if there's an opportunity to deescalate, Iran is showing the world that it can. It's not allowing the US to rebuild. Certainly not because a twoe ceasefire doesn't really allow anything to be rebuilt. You can't produce weapons that take years to produce and and have them uh to Israel and [clears throat] the United States within a couple weeks. That's just not how any of this works. So Iran knows this. Iran is using the clock, the proverbial clock of US imperial decay toward its own advantage. And now it has just done this diplomatically. So that was JD Vance's [clears throat] JD Vance's commentary. Well, let's look at what Iran said. Okay, because uh what Iran said is also very important. Uh the Iranian perspective is often not given any attention, but in times like these when there's a war, you have to give it. So here is uh what Iranian state TV revealed about the reasons for the failure of the talks. The US tried to achieve at the negotiating table. This is what Abasarachi literally said uh to the media. They tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could not achieve through the war. The Americans demanded that Iran hand over rich uranium and open the trade of Hormuz without recognizing Iran's sovereignty over them. Iran has decided to defend its national interests by military means. And what's really interesting about what Iran ultimately did is it said it was defending the gains, defending their gains at the negotiating table, which is a tactic in war. So, one can look at these negotiations not simply as Iran trying to talk its way out of war or the US and Israel trying to talk their way out of war. Both of them were using negotiations as a tool for their own forms of warfare. For the United States and Israel, of course, it's about aggression. It's about gaining leverage for that, building legitimacy toward that, and maybe [clears throat] buying time, maybe buying uh some more favorable political atmosphere from which it can launch again. the Donald Trump administration, even Israel, they both like surprise and shock. So, you even had people, I don't know if you saw this, making rumors about, and I don't think any of them really substantiated that the Israelis were going to kill the negotiating team, which would have had our friend Muhammad Miranda. He was there, right? So, he was traveling with the negotiating team, and uh there were rumors that he was that they were all going to be targeted by Israeli strikes. And this is why you had Pakistan uh uh sending out an escort, military escort with Chinese fighter jets and various uh defense systems uh to escort them back to uh [clears throat] Bonder Abas I think it was back to Iran. But nonetheless, it wasn't ever I don't ever I never saw any verification for this. It's hard to verify what the US and Israel always tend to do in the moment, right? They don't tell you. They threaten. They threaten and many people think it's a bluff until they decapitate. And that is that's what they do. So it was a legitimate fear. But nonetheless, that is uh that is the environment, right? That is the environment that the United States and Israel want to dampen. They want to ensure that when they do these kind of attacks, it's under the opaces of well, we tried to negotiate, right? And Iran was intrigent. Iran was not negotiating with us. So Iran is the reason for this failure. And that's what the United States is saying. And of course Iran is saying the opposite. But the truth of the matter is is that it's the United States that was ultimately negotiating from a position of weakness and ended up getting mad that a country that did not have to capitulate to them would not capitulate to them. And here is what Patricia Marin says, who's a a very good geopolitical an analyst and she writes a lot on Twitter. But here are [clears throat] the 10 points explaining why Iran is not in a position to give in and why the US seem to be living in a different reality. Iran controls the straight of Hermuz and any attempt to take it would be extremely bloody and result in heavy casualties as Iran warned today as Iran demonstrated by turning back the two destroyers. It can close the other straight that is the 18 minutesBabel Mendde straight using the Houthis or Ansar and I would just put a caveat in it. We'll be using the hus on will be very much willing to do this in a very strategic manner to ensure that there is uh continuity in the resistance and that it strengthens not just Iran's position but the position of the entire region. It has maintained a stable daily rate of missile and drone launches for several weeks demonstrating has a large arsenal. And now some of this is coming out. I've seen RT share it. I've seen others share it, for example, at the Ros uh energy hub in Qatar and other locations in Kuwait. The video is starting to come out. Remember, it was suppressed for a period of time by places like Planet Labs. You might remember Planet Labs said that it was going to censor for a period of time these images for national security reasons, aka for the United States's war effort. Now, some of these videos are coming out, and it's very devastating. And a lot of these countries are seeing losses that are going to take months to years to rebuild if they ever are able to. So Iran's ground forces still intact equip with equipment and high morale especially after the failure of Isvahan. Yes, that failure of the so-called F-15 rescue mission that was likely transformed according to analysts I've had on this show was transformed into a rescue mission. It was a rescue mission transformed from a ground operation that had gone horribly bad that had seen that saw an Iranian ambush which led to the destruction of those C130s and many other aircraft like helicopters etc chinukes. So it is Iran that is effectively sanctioning America with fuel prices and inflation already knocking at the door. Is Iran generating pressure on Gulf on Trump from Gulf countries? It's Iran pressuring Trump from its Asian and European allies. Iran is well aware of the shortage of interceptors that Israel and the US have and is actively exploiting that. Its air defense capabilities are gradually improving through the deployment of new equipment, showing that Iran has a long-term strategy. And I would agree with all of these points. I actually I would say that they are undisputed. Iran has shown and in those last days before the Trump administration called for the ceasefire by downing the F-15 by showing what it could do during that attempted invasion at Isvahan. Iran demonstrated that it has air defense capabilities which are not even let's forget the technical part of it. They are strategically being utilized in a way that is causing the United States problems that it cannot tolerate for long periods of time. And it's likely that Iran does have the ability to do that for a long period of time. And with the JSOMS, according to Bloomberg, uh these long range standoff missiles that the F-15s, 18s, 35s that they're firing outside of Iranian air defense capabilities, those are about to run out. The they are already depleted to such a degree that [clears throat] the US has had to admit it must gamble them all away in order to keep fighting this war against Iran. It's a dis I mean this is a this is a unmitigated disaster to a degree that I don't think anybody could have uh predicted when this war started. So, the United States is looking for an out, but it's looking for an out that leads to it looking like it is in the driver's seat uh uh politically that it can um I don't know what's going on there. [laughter] So, essentially, this is what the United States is trying to do. It is trying to use threats, to use intimidation to claim to the world that it can actually get an outcome that it desires when in fact everything's already been proven. It's already been proven. And now the big question in the future will be as this war begins again, because this is what this is. This is the beginning of war. You can expect that the US will at [clears throat] the very least attempt to blockade ships around the straight of Hormuz. I could see a very realistic scenario where ships come out of the straight of Hormuz in transit elsewhere and the US starts intercepting them from waters outside, right? Just like the US S. Abraham Lincoln had to move outside of range of Iranian anti-ship missiles and ballistic missiles. I could see the United States in a scenario like this following these tankers out of the straight of Hormuz. Once they exit, then the US comes in because it's likely that those parts aren't minded because Iran can't mine every single part of the waters that the straight of Hormuz flows into. And then there you have it. You have the confrontations. It's what it's the Venezuela model, right? And this is the model that the Trump administration, Trump wants to repeat because it's the only model that it can really uh it can really apply. And the problem here is that Iran is not Venezuela. It's not Venezuela for all of its strength that it had politically in terms of uh the support that people have for that government. It was never ready militarily to fight the United States headon. And many people didn't think Iran was until it happened. And here we are until it happened. Right? So the talks have collapsed and the United States is where predictably if for those who have watched this show would have guessed they would be. The United States have pulled out of the talks. They were not ready to come to any kind of peace agreement. Some have said that maybe this is a tactic of the Trump administration to talk violently, to talk big, but then we'll actually be conducting talks from here on out. I don't think the Iranians trust the United States enough for that to be a viable option either because why would you give your adversary, why would you give the country, the empire, the imperialist apparatus, the war machine that has been unleashed upon you and unleashed upon your people. Remember the Iranian delegation took uh saved 160 plus seats in they put not only the pictures of I don't know what happened there. They put not only the images of the young girls who were killed in those horrific criminal uh genocidal war crime strikes by the United States to begin the war. But they also had the backpacks there uh that they found right there were remnants of the children uh that were incinerated by the tomahawks and the strikes against uh this school, the Manab school. and uh the Iranian delegation put out a statement saying that we are bringing them with us. So why would after that even just that one act let alone the thousands upon thousands of civilian targeted strikes against infrastructure against hospitals uh what schools why would the Iranians give even the just the United States a an avenue to bluster. No. So, this is why Iran is not going to talk unless there's a reason to talk. And the reason why there was talks in the first place is because Iran said, "We're in the position of strength and we want to see where that can take us." So, the situation [clears throat] only gets worse, though, because you have not only Iran repelling the strikes, right? You have Iran repelling the uh the two naval destroyers that went into its territorial waters in the straight of Hormuz. Not only have the peace talks collapsed, but now US intelligence is sounding the alarm about China. Big shock. And Trump has already come out and said if China does this, then they're going to be in big trouble. Well, this is what US intelligence is saying. They're saying that China is preparing weapon shipments to Iran amid a fragile ceasefire. US intelligence, of course, take this with a grain of salt because if there's any institution that lies through its teeth, well, here is that one. It's US intelligence. But also, US intelligence, when they do tell the truth, what they're usually doing is they're trying to sell a narrative. China bad. Um, and they're usually trying to sell that narrative through the prism of, well, actually, this is a this is a real foe. So this is why we have to take US intelligence reports with various levels of scrutiny. Not just rejection because they're all lies, but also what do those lies tell us about the situation the US finds itself in? That is analysis. US intelligence indicates that China's preparing a delivery of new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks. According to three people familiar with recent intelligence assessments, it would be a provocative move considering Beijing said it helped broker the fragile ceasefire agreement that paused the war with Iran and the United States. Donald Trump is also to visit China early next month for talks with Chinese leader Xiinping, which those talks are not a guarantee, right? Just going to put that out there. The intelligence also underscores how Iran may be using the ceasefire as an opportunity to replenish weapon systems with the help of a key foreign partner. Two of the sources told CNN there are indications Beijing is working to route the shipments to third countries to match their true origin. The systems Beijing is preparing to transfer our shoulder fire anti-aircraft missile systems known as man pads the sources said which pose an asymmetric threat to low-flying US military aircraft throughout the course of the fiveweek war and could gain could again if the ceasefire falls apart. So I mean look far better technology than this. Iran has already been shown to use this kind of technology. Um, they definitely have used it during the Isvahan raid. Uh, they've used it at various times to fire on the F-15s, the F-18s that have entered its airspace. And what I believe the US intelligence actually doing is it is warning the Trump administration that an air war is only becoming more dangerous and that if the United States doesn't pay attention to this, it could be seeing more downed aircraft in the future. And of course, it's going to throw in China because there's a big segment of the US intelligence, US neocon, uh the the elites, the foreign policy elites that want to see the United States shift more toward China and away from this Iran business because the Iran business right now is creating an economic headache and it's causing a military defeat. But if you can focus on China, well, that's a long-term project and you get a lot of money siphoned into the US military-industrial complex and maybe, just maybe, in your delusional mind, you'll be ready for some kind of military confrontation with China over Taiwan or or elsewhere in some other theater. It's all fantasy, of course, at that level once you get there. But that is the thinking. That's the mentality. It's it's like someone who's addicted to uh to drugs or some kind of substance and they're just moving and substituting one um you know uh one dopamine hit for the next and that is what the US empire is doing often times now because and this is a big point because it has to not because it wants to right there's a lot of talks about war of choice and look I believe that the United States yes is choosing to go to war in many instances with Iran based on the timing of this the timing of this intervention was a disaster because there of course wasn't the preparation there wasn't the strategic knowhow capabilities organization look who's leading the white house look who's leading these war efforts but truthfully that's likely that was likely always going to be the case right in competence is kind of where the US empire is when it doesn't have any solutions it doesn't have any vision toward how it's going to get to the objectives that it has more so, okay, more so to the point is that [clears throat] the United States has to be in a war with Iran because if it isn't, then it's going to be at war somewhere else. And then the United States Empire and Israel, I decide, has to ask itself, is this going to satisfy our objectives? Right? is just bombing Lebanon, which is a horrific war crime, uh supposedly to weaken Hezbollah, which it's not doing. But uh is that enough for the US and Israel? No. First of all, the United States doesn't really even care about Lebanon. It only lets it lets the United lets Israel do what it does in Lebanon, the genocide there because it wants Israel to uh continue to satisfy its uh US interests in the region through the chaos, through the violence, but also through the joint efforts to subdue any alternative to US hijgemony. That is why Lebanon the catastrophe there the atrocities are are tolerated. Uh but no other theater right now is uh either feasible. China and Russia not feasible. Let's just put that out there right now. There's no military or even economic or political mechanism that the US can take right now that can weaken the trajectory. Not just some short-term, okay, that's going to maybe put a little dent in China's trade and oil somewhere or Russia. Oh, you know, the Ukraine conflict kind of means it has to exert military power, maybe overextend itself. No, no, that's a lot of that is shortterm problems because there are problems with these things. But when you stack it up with how these countries have gained in this period of US imperial chaos and overreach, ultimately the scales are way more in their favor than they are not. And so ultimately Russia and China table that that's not happening. You go to Iran now because Iran's the only thing left. The United States has left the region a wasteland. They try to destroy everyone. It had to back away from Onsarella, but Yemen is not so strategic to the United States other than what its so-called vassal state allies want from it. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, you know, we can go on and on on Venezuela, even Venezuela was a nice optical shift and it also US empire. But nonetheless, just that alone is not going to satisfy the expansionist and the desperately um uh uh panicked whims of an empire in decline. So, here we are with Iran. That's why we're here. We're here because the US empire has said where it's at time. It's out of time. It's got to go. It's got to go and it's got to go now. And if it doesn't go now to take out Iran, well, we've seen the results. They were right. They were right. They had no more time left because look at how this has blown back. And now look at this. All right. This is coming out across all Western mainstream media. This is the editorial board of the New York Times. Trump's war has weakened America. Four ways. All right. They they list four ways that since February 28th, this has weakened America. The most tangible blow to the United States and the world economy of course is a straight of Hermuz where 20% of the world's oil and liqufied natural gas flows through the strait. The second setback is to America's standing in the world militarily. This war together with the US assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies has burned through a substantial portion of the stockpile of some critical weapons such as tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors. Experts believe the Pentagon used more than one quarter of its Tomahawk missiles just in the war against Iran. Returning the stockpile to its previous size will take years and the US will have to make tough choices about where to maintain its military strength. In the meantime, already the Pentagon has pulled missile defenses from South Korea. The wars also revealed the US military is vulnerable to new ways of warfare. America used billions of dollars worth of high-tech munitions to destroy Iran's traditional air and naval forces while tan used cheap cheap disposable drones to halt traffic through the straight of Hormuz and hit targets in the region. The world saw how a country that spends one 100th or 100th of what the US does on its military can seek to outlast the US in a conflict. It's a reminder of urgent reform to the US military. So you see the the prospects here the the the uh do you see the the framing here? The problem is not war. The problem is how the war is being administered. And this is why you cannot ultimately you you can glean information and you can glean significance from what the New York Times is saying, what the whole establishment is saying. To be honest, this is significant significant that the US mainstream corporate media military-industrial complex class is willing to admit these errors. Uh it shows the US empire and decay. But you cannot follow their lead when it comes to the conclusions because the conclusion will be do war better and that's not what we need. War better only leads to worse outcomes actually. And that's why we have this cycle, right? we have this cycle of neoliberal uh neocon so-called strategic thinkers leading more to fanatical forces which then um fanatical ideologically at least how they present themselves and then they all come back to a whole a s a single entity so the wars war's third big cost is to America's alliances Japan South Korea Australia Canada most of western Europe refused to support the US in the war unsurprisingly given Trump's treatment of them so the tariff riffs, right? All of this, I mean, it's all coming back to bite uh the United States in uh the butt in many ways. This this this way of acting like you can go it alone, you are um you know, you're friendless, you don't need allies, right? All of this so-called isolationism by the Trump administration is really just a cover for its need to expand its hubris and aggression uh wider and further. All right. Right. And the fourth se setback is to America's moral authority. This one is questionable. For all the flaws of this country remains a beacon to many around the world. When posters ask people where they would move to if they could, the United States consistently is a runaway number one answer. Which is interesting because new polls do show that actually people [clears throat] favor China in terms of its image around the world than the United States at this point. But nonetheless, America's appeal stems not only from its prosperity, but also from its freedom and democratic values. Trump has undercut those values for his entire political career and perhaps never more than the past week when he made the odious threats to erase Iran's civilization. His Secretary of Defense Pete Hexath made a series of bloodthirsty remarks, too, including a threat to offer no quarter, no mercy for our enemies. So, moral authority. Now, I have I have a gripe with that one because uh the US Empire is centuries old. The US empire has roots not just around the world but within its own uh borders that it established centuries ago 250 plus years ago and they're bloody they're blood soaked and they are actually rife with the use of certain kinds of morals uh certain kinds of values like American exceptionalism sitting on a hill the beacon of a hill these kind of values that are being portrayed there uh in order to justify these horrific crimes and that isn't to say that people in the United States, that there aren't good people, that there aren't good things that happen in the United States. Hell, the United States did take all of that blood soaked uh warfare, expansionism, etc., and did build an impressive hegeimo. It it did become that. And there were things out of that which ultimately bore fruit for even a segment of the population, right? During that golden age that Trump talks about, he doesn't mention that part. He also doesn't mention the cold war and the threat of the socialist countries which required employers to give more wages and the government to give more benefits 39 minutesto more and more workers. mention those parts. But truthfully, truthfully um there can we have to have my analysis that you can't have a horrifically corrupt violent system like imperialism, like capitalism, like uh all of this uh and they can bear fruits of development and they have. Now that's all reversing because of the internal contradictions of the system leading to the logical conclusion. You cannot destroy your way into a number one position forever without expecting resistance and that resistance eventually leading to a um leading to a breaking point. And that's that's where we're coming to. We're coming to a breaking point. We're coming to a point where the United States doesn't just say it competes with China. But now when it comes to even the Iran situation, the US says that China is a gamecher there because now even if it's completely made up, the US is making up or the US is referencing ideas and stories. And hell, if it's true, it's even worse that China can supply Iran to make a big difference on the battlefield against the United States. That is a big hit against the American exceptionalist ethos. Um, we can go on and on and on with this. Uh, right with the Iran situation, the straight of Hormuz blockade. So now the Trump administration wants to blockade the straight of Hormuz because Iran has taken control of it. And you told us that Iran is blockading the straight of form. So if Iran's blocking the straight of moose, why would you blockade it? Doesn't that just lead to more blockading? And even Iran's foreign ministry came out with a statement saying this defies logic. Really the only way to resolve any problems that come from what's happened to the straight horses is to have discussions. And that's exactly what Iran invited. And Iran did those discussions, mind you, without a ceasefire taking place in Lebanon. And there's an interesting story about that because Iran was effectively told by the mediators through the United States that there would be an effective ceasefire when talks began. And guess what? There wasn't. The US lied. Shocker. This is why the talks went on the way they did. You better believe that the Iranian negotiators were at the table saying, "How can not only how can we trust you, but how could we not demand that you now do this? We're here now. We took the trip. We almost didn't. I was informed that it they were waiting for hours and hours and hours waiting to see if they were even going to go. This is the mentality right now of Iran. It is different. It is different than what a lot of Americans and what a lot of people in the collective west are used to, right? It is not just defiant. It is dictatorial in the way it is asserting its terms. And it's also methodical and it's impressively strategic. And so this is causing just absolute nightmares. This is creating absolute nightmares for the US which doesn't have I don't even like to use the word strategy with the United States empire at this point with the way that it behaves and conducts itself based on its own desperate um you know contradictions in issues. Don't even use the word right. It's not that the way that it behaves, not strategically, but just imbecillically, uh, chaotically, the only goal it has in mind is to get to that point of destruction that leads it to some kind of promised land that leads it to some kind of changed outcome that it couldn't get. What did Iron say? It tried to get in talks what it couldn't get on the battlefield. That's that's a strange way to to to approach negotiations. You usually go into negotiations because you have leverage and what the United States would say and what JD Vance has already said, what Trump has said. Trump just said it again. He said, "Yeah, we can we can wipe out Iran." He did it again. He went on Fox News and he said, "We can wipe out Iran. We can take out all of its um infrastructure, all of its oil." Not mentioning that if the US does this then what happens? Oh well, I'll tell you what happens. The markets crash. The econ global economy tanks. You have a situation in the United States where gas prices are up 21% in a month. And all items, all goods are up two, three, four times what they were before February 28th. So yeah, Donald Trump doesn't have any more targets. Scott Ritter was on the show. He said the United States doesn't have any more targets because those targets that it has, those are not only are those not military targets. Forget the technicalities after that, right? They're not military targets. You can even count those if you're following the rule, the laws of war, but the US never does. But they're not even targets in the sense that the consequences of hitting those things only falls harder at the feet of the US. Crushes crushes its feet. Right? shooting yourself in the foot. No, no, no. The consequences are just are just going to shatter [laughter] at the feet of the US. So, this is the situation we're in and the US could very well this all I mean honestly this is all a re I view this as a restart of the war because war doesn't always look the same all the time as it's being fought, right? You're not, you know, in the movies we get the war scenes, right? we get the scenes of the the you know uh front lines, the you know the the battles from World War II, these kind of things and you know it looks like what Ukraine became in a lot of ways uh where you have two standing armies confronting each other based on but oftentimes war doesn't look like that and it hasn't look like that for quite a long time and even the the the Ukraine war doesn't look like that fully and now we're seeing that the battlefield is basically resolved even if it is in this kind of amorphous uh situation some would call stalemate but really it's just Russia methodically going about its business but there's other parts to this economic war that's been lost uh by the United States uh the diplomatic war the attempt to just overthrow the Russian government actually kind of smells a little familiar to the Iran war it's just that the Iran war the United States was never going to be able to organize a proxy strong enough like it did Ukraine to be able to confront Iran militarily on a battlefield. That's actually the biggest reason why the United States right now is where it is because as I've had Larry Johnson, so many people on this show explain, if the US sounds ground forces into the region, then it just gets massacred, right? Then then it has to face the consequences even if it causes casualties itself like it likely would. I mean, the US trains for this. The US uh practices the art of killing, invading, etc. But it would have to bear the consequences of Iran's response and its ability to have, as Patricia Marin said, a high morale military that's big and you have a lot of people volunteering to join to defend the country. now meaning that this is this is a bad situation for the United States and um [snorts] they don't have a force inside of the country of Iran to do its bidding and overthrow the government and fight Iran's military forces, tie them up. It doesn't have a Syria style situation. It doesn't have even in Venezuela we have to remember that Venezuela did have a violent opposition to the government that did cause damage and that did create the conditions for what happened to Maduro eventually right to the kidnapping all of this multiple iterations of guimbas as they were called where you had right-wing fascist Venezuelan forces uh and even forces from not inside of Venezuela right Colombians etc uh uh spark a kind of color revolution quote unquote scenario to try to destabilize the government. Didn't work. They tried Nicaragua as well. Honduras I multiple countries in Latin America they they go through this model. This is not a new model. Iran though has uh just in such shocking fashion to the US consolidated itself politically to the point where you don't have that. Sure, people have criticisms. People have opposition to the government. But you have no force in Iran that's willing to organize themselves to confront the government and military headon and replace it and replace it with something favorable to the United States. You don't have that. You don't have any iteration, but you don't have that in particular. And especially before the war started, right, the late 2025 into the beginning months of 2026, that violent riot that was successfully put down after a lot of violence and losses, thousands of Iranians killed, that was really the nail in the coffin of this war. We have to go back to that because if it wasn't for that, Iran would have a lot more troubles to contend with. it wouldn't be able to focus so much on the external aggressors. It would have had to focus on the internal. And in truth, historically, if we look at this, the reason why the United States start implementing models like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, these models of trying to do internal dissension and uh trying to create chaos and proxies, right? the dirty wars in Latin America, all of that is because the anti-colonial uh the liberation movements, the anti-imperialist movements of the 20th century, right? The whole cold war, all of those movements were deemed as impenetrable threats, right? So, think about North Korea for example, DPRK, the Soviet Union when it was viable. Think about China now, think about Iran now, right? These countries had movements that were viewed as impenetrable and without a force strong enough internally to weaken their legitimacy. No outside invasion could defeat them because an outside invasion will never right get will never bring about the popular will of the people to fight for you. No, no, no. You're destroying the country. This is a historic fact. All throughout history, even the French, the British, other empires had to learn this, too. is that when they tried to invade and settle, they had to deal with the people at a certain point. So it was always about either trying to as Israel has done try to outnumber, right? Like in Palestine, you try to outnumber, you try to spread out, you try to displace everyone and then you try to you basically try to eradicate, right? You try to rise what they did to the indigenous people, etc. or you build up an internal force strong enough to protect the interests that you have conquered and occupied. Even Donald Trump uses the word conquer. So this is ultimately where we are and I'm in China now and I am going to be covering. Okay, I'm going to be doing interviews. I'm going to be talking to uh John Wei. I'm going to be talking to Victor Gao uh during this trip. I'm also going to be trying to do today I didn't do it because I just got in and I just want to set up the internet see if it was working. So tell me how that went. Um I want to see if it works and but I will be doing like more out andabouts where I'm out walking and talking. You can see what's going on. Where I'm staying in Beijing right now at night time I don't think it would have been uh very pretty. So I'll have to figure that out um at another point. But I will do it. Um, and I want to see how the internet worked out in case I want to also get guests back on the show to comment on these uh developments. But nonetheless, I'm here now in Beijing. I mean, I can prove it to you. Uh, we got some food here. You know, uh, this is Hunanese food from Beijing. Um, and uh, you know, uh, I'm going to be reporting about China's perspective especially too because right now China is being of course from the beginning China's been brought in. Oh, look at the radar technology, satellite technology and it was all very impressive but it was all done within the opaces of general cooperation and not really a military partnership. the military part is just part of an overall economic uh understanding and agreement and and a political one really because the China Iran relationship is political and that's what I want to talk to uh those who I'm going to be interviewing about is is why is it so important for China and Iran uh to have this kind of friendship and and why does it threaten the United States so much and what exactly is China's rule did China strong man its ties with Iran, squeeze Iran to into these talks. I don't think so, but I want to hear other perspectives about that. And um so we're gonna we're going to do a lot here to uh to talk about these things. And um you know, I get to show you China. I like to come here once a year if if not more. hard to do that these days but um you know once a year to refresh that perspective see what kind of changes are going on and how it applies to the world situation because right now we are in historic one everybody we're in historic one the United States went to negotiations with Iran essentially to try to plead it to uh let go of its control over the straight of hormuz and the whole so-called nuclear question forget about that forget about Trump said nuclear forget about it really it's about getting Iran to stop asserting its advantages over the United States. The same I I mean this is what Iran said they were going into it with. They had won things. They'd achieved something and they did. They have they have created a system with the straightforward moves that's going to essentially act as the mechanism for reparations for their country for years to come. And now the calculation is too that no matter how much the US can destroy, unless the Trump administration can figure out a way to stop Iran from gaining revenues from the straight of Hormuz traffic, Iran is saying it can rebuild itself after the fact. And it already is. It's already rebuilding train systems. It's already rebuilding uh bridges etc. uh that have been damaged by US and Israeli strikes. So Iran is moving very fast uh to do this. It obviously has been preparing for this. It is under a wartime economic footing but also it's under a footing that is prioritizing of course the people in a time of absolute horror, trauma and um just criminality being imposed against them of a foreign power. Iran has made all the right moves to keep itself not just legitimate to grow that legitimacy and the straight of form moves is really where the United States empire is completely stuck and so the US empire doesn't even you notice where Trump is going now and this is where we will end it Trump administration is no longer going to yay yay yay let's let's go into a full war let's do ground invasion let's do all this right it was banding about those options and talking about them for a Now it's not doing that no more. Now it's back to blockades, naval, the economic roots of the problem because the US is seeing right before its eyes its ability to dictate terms economically Wayne. And what Iran has done has not just strengthened Iran, it's strengthened China, strengthened Russia. Because if these countries begin to form a kind of new center of power around how global trade happens, which already has been happening with China, China's already been doing that just by its sheer economic weight, how it leads as a trading partner with nearly every country in the world. But uh and the infrastructure is topnotch. The technology is topnotch and also people have benefited from it. These are all just facts. Whatever you think about it, that's just the facts. But this would be even a a step further in that China often takes the view of it doesn't want to be dominating anything. It now Iran has been forced into a position where it has to dominate the straight of Hormuz if it's going to survive. China now can say, well, Russia can say, yeah, there are plenty of areas where they could assert themselves militarily and economically to shore up their own national security at the economic level, the fundamental level of their survival. So everybody, this is a game-changing moment. The talks have collapsed. The US Navy is getting ready to go into a war that will be a disaster for it. Trump is restarting this war because he has nothing else. He can't bow down to Iran's terms which have been out there from the very beginning, right? Uh respect Iran's sovereignty, stop the strikes, international guarantees that the strikes will be stopped through a UN Security Council vote as well as a mechanism to enforce that vote. um reparations, ceasefire in Lebanon, all these terms that have been out there for months. And now the United States can't 57 minutesleave the room with Iran without taking those into consideration. And it ran out of the room like like a like a tantrum. Like a like a like a toddler in a tantrum. I want to thank everybody for the super chats. The main reason Trump kidnapped Madura to try and force him to lie and say Venezuela interfere in 2020 because he can't stand losing. That's one of the reasons. I don't know if that's the main reason. Dan the man, thank you buddy for insightful analysis and your wonderful guests these past weeks. Have a good week in trying to be safe. Yes, I'll be here for a few actually. Um, great job Danny. Thank you. Thank you uh for all of this. Uh, Danny Empire. Danny Empire relentless as a Vietnam compatriate. Remember this year marks 80 years. France tried to recolonize Vietnam after World War II 1946 led to the historic defeat in Dian Benfu in 1954. Yes indeed. My father was also a Vietnam vet. Um, so he got to face the consequence of that many years later. I'm sorry. People need to stop blaming Trump off the hook. He drives me nuts. He's grown adult with agency. Shirby be lied. Always lies. Uh, but did No. No. I I agree with that. I agree with that. I mean, Trump is the president of the United States. He is a war criminal. He is he falls within the rest of the war criminals. And uh he is Yes, he is indeed he he believes this war is in his interest. He's not just playing this is not just an acting role. Dear Danny Grigle lose the governing by tweets and seeing an aggression the solution any promise to real Salv dolly's on the sidelines don't you think thank you so much for that comment has there been actually evidence that Ron is deploying any mines yes the only reason there's evidence is because the IRGC is escorting tankers and it's not just for fun there's definitely mines there now how many how devastating how whatever we don't know right we don't know do you know if Arachi person back home safe and sound they're 26 I I believe they are But I think there's a lot of silence around this because there's a there's a lot of um Oh, he just messaged me, so he's safe. All right, I'm going to get with him some point soon, either by stream or or pre-record. All right, everybody hit the like button. We are done here. I got it. It's It's 1:30 a.m. 59 minutesin Beijing. I got to go, but I'm going to keep doing this. All right, each day I'll be doing something for all of you. And um take care. All right, hit the like button as you leave. Be sure to do that because uh that helps. What do we have here now? We have 5.6 likes. Thousand likes. That's great. But hey, 12,000 of you. If you can get another th00and, 2,000 up, that helps a lot. I saw another big super chat here. Oh, no, no. I already I already said I already reported that. All right, everybody. Hit the like button. I'll be back again tomorrow. Let you know what time that is. Peace out.
Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani hails Pope Leo's 'brave stance' against US arrogance, Zionism Monday, 13 April 2026 7:24 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 13 April 2026 7:24 PM ] https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/1 ... ce-zionism Grand Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani has written a letter to Pope Leo XIV, praising him over his brave stance on the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Grand Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani has written a letter to Pope Leo XIV, leader of the world's Catholics, praising the pontiff's courageous stance against the American-Zionist alliance, calling it a position that will "immortalize" his name and conduct.
In the letter written on Monday, the Qom-based senior Iranian cleric described the Pope's stance as among the most necessary and timely.
"There is no doubt that your courageous stance against American arrogance and corrupt Zionism was among the most necessary positions, one that will immortalize your name and conduct on a global scale," Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani wrote.
He emphasized that throughout history, there have always been scholars of the pure divine religions who defend humanity and human rights, even at great cost to themselves.
"This stance demonstrated that throughout history, there have always been insightful scholars of the pure divine religions who defend humanity and human rights, even at great cost to themselves," reads the letter.
Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani further expressed gratitude on behalf of the Islamic Republic's religious establishment for the Pope's "rightful stance" as the respected leader of the world's Catholics.
‘Unhinged & unchristian’: Global outrage erupts after Trump attacks Pope, poses as Jesus https://t.co/aXM7TJORrC
— Press TV (@PressTV) April 13, 2026 "We, for our part, thank you for your rightful stance as the esteemed leader of the world's Catholics and the bearer of the message of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)," the letter read. "It is clear that what you have expressed exists in the deepest layers of Islamic religious texts."
The senior cleric expressed hope for the formation of a global coalition of followers of divine religions based on the teachings of the prophets, "under the shadow of the appearance of the Righteous and Universal Reformer."
Pope Leo XIV has strongly criticized Trump’s unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the threat to end the Iranian civilization, which the Pontiff calls “truly unacceptable” on moral and international law grounds.
In response, Trump lashed out at the spiritual leader of over 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide.
During a Q&A with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said, “We do not like a pope that is going to say that it is OK to have a nuclear weapon … He is a man that does not think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world,” adding, “I am not a fan of Pope Leo.”
People, cutting across the political and religious spectrum, labeled the remarks as “deranged,” “abhorrent,” and a dangerous display of a “messiah complex.”
Iran Retaliates Against Trump's Hormuz Blockade, Negotiations OVER | Mohammad Marandi Danny Haiphong Streamed live 5 hours ago #iran #trump #straitofhormuz
Prof. Mohammad Marandi joins to break down his direct witness to the collapsed US-Iran negotiations and what new US attempts to blockade Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz means for the war.
Transcript
Welcome back to the show everyone. It's your host Danny Haiphong. Welcome back to the show from Islamabad where he participated in the activities of uh I don't know what happened there but we are here. uh he participated in the uh negotiations or he attended uh uh the delegation uh with the delegation and so professor Marandi welcome back to the show. Hi Danny. I hope my connection is not too bad, but um I don't know why every time at the beginning of shows I'm I cough and then it gets better. But um yeah, so anyway, hit the like button and you know the things that Danny used to do and he's growing old and he forgets so I have to help him out. And I'm incred younger side in this. Well, I'm incredibly jet-like today, too, because I'm on day two here in Beijing and uh uh and in this new setup. So, everyone, this is this is all we're doing the best we can, but this is critical a critical conversation. So, hit that like button as Marty said. First, Marty, let's get started though with this. You were just came back from Islamabad. Now, Donald Trump has once again issued a another threat that's that is coupled with a declaration of a kind of war. This time a blockade of what he calls the blockade of the straightforward moves. So, Donald Trump just uh before we started talking, Professor Rod said that uh Iran's Navy is now laying at the bottom of the sea, 158 total ships, but we haven't hit those fast attack ships that uh I believe the New York Post has been reporting on uh and warning if any of these ships come near this blockade of the straight of Hormuz, they are going to end up like, and he says, they will 2 minutesend up eliminated like those against the so-called drug boats uh at sea. over the last year or two. So, Russandi, how about this? Can you help us understand what happened? Um, can you uh help us understand what happened at in Islamabad and why it led to now this um this uh blockade uh that he is declaring for the US Navy against Iran at Iranian ports, etc. What's going on here? Well, first I have to point out that I don't think that I don't know what he's talking about when he speaks about what 150ome boats or ships or whatever. Uh there the only ship that they sunk was one that was unarmed and it was a part of an international program uh naval program and what he did was barbaric and he slaughtered 100 uh sailor almost 100 sailors who were unarmed and he knew they were unarmed and uh it's just despic despicable uh the behavior of the Trump regime but of course it's just like those 168 little girls that he massacred and he never apologized for and the United States never accepted responsibility for that that slaughter. So we're dealing with a psychopath basically. But u the Iranian naval ships have not been destroyed. A few ships that are for patrolling and during time of peace they were import and they were hit and later on they'll have to be repaired. But Iran's real navy are those many speedboats that are all underground in tunnels alongside the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. And uh they will come out when the time comes. But more importantly is the fact that and that's why Trump cannot do anything about the uh straight of formulas because Iran's navy, Iran's missile defenses, Iran's air force, Iran's air defenses, they are very much intact. Otherwise, he could just walk in and take what it is that he wants to take. Uh but um but in any case the the siege that he is imposing now is going to hurt the global economy more than before because Iran obviously is not going to allow any more ships to leave the straight of Hormos if its ships cannot be used. Also, there is this question in my mind, and I may be wrong, that maybe Iranian ships will continue to leave and come and go because uh Iran can strike the United States with its missiles. And that's why the US Navy has always been so far away from Iran's shores. Only now that there's a ceasefire, are they moving around more freely. So if they threaten an Iranian let's say a tanker and Iran warns them with missiles then what happens next? We saw during the negotiations in Islamabad two US ships tried to enter the straight of Hormos Iranians warned them sent uh drones and the US backed off. So uh it's difficult for me to envisionage exactly how this will play out. Well, then because of Iranian missiles, the US Navy pull back and uh patrol the intern or enforce this blockade uh from far away. I think that would may mean that they have to bring in more ships. It would be much more costly. I don't know how that would work. But the point is that uh they can't just stand outside the you know they cannot just be outside the Persian Gulf and wait for ships to come out. The Iranian missiles will strike them and destroy them. So they have to be, I don't know, 1,000 kilometers away, 1,500 kilometers away. And does that make it uh possible to enforce a blockade that easily or not? So, but what they are doing is definitely they're hurting their own proxies in the Persian Gulf region because their their ports will no longer be used except for the Saudis who will pump three and a half to four million barrels a day from the Red to the wet Red Sea. But my understanding is that the Amiratis will not be able to use the for port uh based on what the Iranians have said. So the other countries will have nothing and the Saudis will most of their uh most of their imports and exports come from the Persian Gulf. So it will be very very it will be very costly for Saudi Arabia. Now in addition to that, what Trump is doing is that he's is that he's warning the entire world that you shall not use the Persian Gulf. you are not allowed to purchase oil. He's saying that to Beijing. He's saying that to New Delhi. He's saying that to everyone. And I'm not sure how that is going to uh be received in capitals across the world. Trump dictating terms to the entire global community. And then of course he's going to exacerbate the global economic crisis, the energy crisis which is growing by the minute, literally by the minute because the uh the deficit for of energy is increasing increasing by the day uh by the hour by the minute. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg basically and uh excess oil is running out. I mean, uh, I heard from someone who seems to be somewhat credible, who seems to be very credible actually, that Iran and Russia had a lot of oil on the sea in tankers uh, before the war and uh, because they had problems selling them obviously. So, the Russians have run out of that oil. Iran had much more than Russia and Iran has sold half of it. They had apparently Iran had 200 million barrels and now they have only 100. That means that Iran will soon be selling that 100 barrels because the price is going up as we speak because of Trump's threat. Uh which will make make Iran a lot of money as it has been making over the last few months. Ever since the United States began threatening Iran bringing in troops, the price gradually went up. Then during the war, Iranian oil both on the seas and from the Persian Gulf was uh the price went through the roof and no more discounts, no middlemen, no nothing. So the Iranians have make been making huge amounts of money from their energy exports and uh but the point is that Iran will be selling that 100 million barrels. But then that this is also an indication that the shortage is getting much worse. There is no more extra oil. The Russians don't have anything. Western governments are using their strategic reserves. Uh and the prices have gone up. We're at the beginning of something big. And of course there's the fertilizer, there's petrochemicals, there the money that's no longer being uh you know the money that they the these family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf send to uh for the US stock market in the bond market that no longer is going in the reverse may happen because they'll need money. So they'll have to return some of their money from the United States. this is not and or and they won't be able to have the money to purchase the weapons systems that they always do which they don't know how to use. But um so this is this is not going to get worse just for Iran. It's going to get worse for the world. And in the case of Iran, I'm not sure how much worse it becomes because a I don't know if Iran will really not be able to export or import from the Persian Gulf because of the Iranian missile defense capabilities and so on. and B, Iran has a lot of money to be made uh but with the oil that's on the high seas as we speak and the price is going to go up so they'll make more money and then in order to import an ex some of Iran's oil can go by land for years Iran used to reexport Kazak Kazakistan's oil to the Persian Gulf or for example the Iranians already believe that from From the very beginning, the Iranians thought the Americans were going to start this war with a siege. And so Iran trades with Pakistan. It trades with India. But Iran's uh rice imports were from India. So before the war, Iran decided no longer to buy their rice from India and to buy it from Pakistan and use the border to to give them energy or whatever needs they want. So part of Iran's needs because of its you know it borders 15 countries can be met by land and as I said when I explain it so and also another difference is that the these Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf they their countries are deserts Iran uh produces roughly 90% of its I think I'm not sure people can look that up but roughly 90% of its food uh is uh local. We have you know we have a east west mountain range Albor's a north south mountain range uh zagros where um most of you know right now above tan we have snow if you stand outside on the streets it's nighttime now but if you look at the mountains you'll see snow Iran is not Saudi Arabia it's not Qatar it's not a you know we have deserts but 12 minuteswe have forests we have you huge swades of lands that you know that are um that are for agriculture. We have we have many dams. It's a so we are self-sufficient in many ways and as I said we can import and export from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmanistan uh the Caspian Sea which links us to uh Kazakhstan and uh to Russia and uh through Azarbaijan in Armenia and Turkey and Iraq. So, you know, this country is bigger than uh Germany, France, and the UK combined the size. It's not that easy for the United States to strangle Iran. But US proxies in the Persian Gulf, they can be strangled easily. And we're heading towards a very hot weather. These countries, those who've visited these countries, they know that six months the weather is good. 6 months the weather is terrible. humid, hot, and without uh infrastructure, if there's conflict, if the electricity goes out, uh if there's no water, then these countries just collapse. Yeah. Yeah. And uh you know as we enter this uh now uh period of a so-called blockade for Mirandi you know Donald Trump uh these threats come as there are Iranian uh tankers Iranian linked tankers at least about to sail through uh the straight of Hormuz. And uh even with everything that you just said, not only this, it seems like the retaliation could easily be and this is what Iran is promising that uh well if you blockade our ports or so-called blockade our ports, then we can just hit any port that uh uh that exists in the region just like they've been hitting or they had been hitting before the ceasefire. Uh Gulf assets, Israel, etc. And also there have been talks about the Baba Menddeubstra that that could also be closed. So there's a lot of options here it seems like that are on the table for Iran uh as this escalates. And uh I'm curious on your reaction to this and also the uh the linkage to Islamabad because right now it seems like negotiations are over that uh there's some talks with in Axios of uh there being back and forth between Iran and the United States through the mediators still but Iran hasn't said anything of the sort. The US has been intransigent if not hostile to the very idea of continuing any diplomatic process. So, uh, how does this all relate now? Uh, why is it that the United States under Donald Trump at this moment you believe is choosing this path which as you just outlined has a lot of negative consequences or and potential consequences associated with it? Well, I don't know why Trump does this because Trump is uh I don't I don't know anyone who can give me a clear reason or you know a clear analysis of his state of mind and how he thinks. And I've stopped listening to Trump a you know a long time ago. Um, I'm invited sometimes to speak after on a program after Trump gives a speech and I usually say, "Look, I just looked at the headlines. I don't listen to his speeches because it doesn't matter what he says. He'll say something else a few hours later, few sentences later, day the next day." So, uh, you know, there's nothing really to learn from listening to him. What happened? You know, Axio is I never read Axio. I hear about what they say, but it's not a reliable or credible source. So I usually stick to reliable outlets. But um basically the Iranians when they went there they uh on the way there uh in conversations uh and at the airport it was clear that no one really had uh uh the belief that the United that we would have a deal with the United States. There was great skepticism on the way there and um when we were there uh a number of things happened. One is that the Americans they bizarrely you think that like when people are negotiating the side would try to show like uh to show good faith or give positive single signals so that things would progress. The United States tried to enter the two ships of the United States tried to enter the Persian Gulf and they failed. The Iranians warned them and they had to go back. That was like bizarre.
Then the Washington Post, which is not an ordinary newspaper, basically threatened to murder us. They called on the United States to assassinate us. And on our way there, we thought it was possible that they would kill us. But on the way back, we were mentally and spiritually prepared to to be killed. We were thinking that the chances that they would fire a missile at our plane on the way back were high. That was the mood on the plane. Both men and women, everyone. And of course, precautions were taken; I don't want to go into detail -- but we took a different plane. We didn't go to Tehran. On the way to Tehran, the plane suddenly started going down, and immediately went to an airport that was close to the Turkmenistan border in Mashad. The Americans and the Israelis wanted us to think the plane was going towards Tehran, and instead it landed much further away. And then some of us took a train, and people came to Tehran by different means.
But in any case, this is unprecedented that a newspaper, or mainstream media outlet, would call for the murder of all these men and women who were participating in the negotiations. But the United States is a mad house, so nothing is surprising anymore. Just like when a bounty was put on my head on X, and it was promoted, and then X refused to take it down, or to even delete the account which was verified, and had a blue tick. I don't want to go into that again, but the point is, we're in a new era now where in the west, you can just murder and slaughter, and the media actually advocates it. They're not silent as they were when they murdered Ayat, and martyed him. Now it's normal for presidents to kidnap. The media is actually calling for it to be done. That's the sort of mad house mentality that exists in the US political class now.
But the point is that the Iranians there had negotiations throughout the day, and progress was made, and there were debates, and discussions. But near the end, two things happened that are important. Near the end, the United States suddenly shifted, and became very negative, which was a bit surprising to the Iranians, this sudden shift. And then US vice president JDVance went and said, "They didn't listen to our demands," which of course is ridiculous. So he lied, and said that they are insistent on their nuclear weapons program, which of course, when you look at Joe Kent's resignation letter, it's clear that this is all a lie, right? And he said clearly that Iran wasn't making nuclear weapons, and weren't moving in that direction.
But the other interesting point was that the Iranian delegation made no calls to Tehran. None. Zero. They had the authority to speak. The head of the delegation spoke to the foreign minister and the deputy head of the supreme national security council, who were at the table with him, and then in the room next door, there were his adviserss who he could go and speak to between rounds of negotiations about issues that needed to be better understood, or better explained, or negotiated. Vance was constantly making phone calls to different people, including including Netanyahu. Yeah. And Netanyahu went and actually said Vance would give him reports, which I think is the biggest insult to the American people possible. So basically, and here I'm sort of overgeneralizing, Vance gave reports to his boss Netanyahu, and Netanyahu basically said, "No, no agreement." That's how I see it. I think that Trump is compromised in a very bad way by Netanyahu. I have no evidence for this, and I know many people have different views, right? But I think that it's probably something very dark, you know, children, or something like that, because nothing that they do makes sense anymore
So while they were moving forward, Vance is constantly making phone calls to Trump, to others, and to Netanyahu. And near the end of the day he suddenly shifts, and even though the expectation was that the next morning the negotiations would continue, he just walks away, and starts saying that Iran did not meet our demands, which is a bit ridiculous.
So when this happened, I was in my room, still awake actually. I was busy, and no one called me from the delegation. It was something surprising. People started calling each other, making all sorts of conversations, right? No one was surprised. It was so early when I went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel, and those who were staying at the hotel, no one was surprised. The only thing they were really talking about in detail was not about Vance, it was about, "Okay, well now we take the dangerous journey home." But everyone was prepared. No one said, "Okay, I'll stay here. Maybe I'll spend a few days in Islamabad, and I'll take the land route home or something." Everyone as far as I know who came with us returned with us. None of us knew that we were going to land somewhere else. It was a courageous group of men and women.
But the point is that Vance was not serious. And it goes back to what Joe Kent said, and something that we've always known. This war has been dictated by, or been carried out through dictates from the Zionist lobby, and the Israeli regime. And this is a continuation of that process. So even though Trump seemingly wants an offramp -- that's what we're always hearing from different people, right? -- he's not the guy in charge. That's how I see it.
Yeah. Well, uh, your point about Donald Trump may have, uh, dirty bones or, uh, lots of skeletons in the closet, that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Donald Trump's entire, uh, economic and political history. Now, uh, but Professor Mandi, what you just said there, two things that people should definitely highlight out of them is one, when you're talking about the Washington Post issuing a a direct threat for Israel and the United States to kill the negotiators to strike them as they were leaving. Uh, that happened in the opinion section of the Washington Post. I want people to understand why that is. The Washington Post is known as a CIA Washington Post because uh you know Amazon bought it and you know Bezos bought it when he was part of Amazon and then he had a huge contract with CIA but nonetheless they actually got rid of their entire Middle East department like every journalist everyone who is any quote unquote journalist we know that they were always stenographers but they got rid of the entire thing uh as part of cuts to save money and all of this. So actually and this is a pattern we see throughout the western mainstream media and it's almost ironic a lot of opinion pieces now in the corporate media New York Times Washington Post etc. They actually uh are in the opinion pieces basically pushing for these kind of in this being one of the more egregious act literal war crime u these kind of policies the wararm mongering in the opinion section not just there's no it's not it's not so much anymore that it's right on the front page it's you just got to go to the opinion section you read someone's opinion about why uh Israel and the United States should you know uh murder professor Randi here and the rest of the delegation uh attendees. Well, I I wasn't I'm let I mean, let me be very blunt. I'm probably one of the most high-profile people because I'm in media, right? But I'm not a senior person in the delegation. I'm not an important person at all. It's the entire delegate. I mean, everyone was on the plane, you know, men, women, young, old and basically everyone was even if they were saying, "Well, we wanted to take this." I mean, that's what the Americans and Israelis do. They usually wait till people go to their homes both with in Iran, in Lebanon, in Gaza. And when they say, "Okay, okay, we know where his home is. Let's say he's gone. Let's send them. Are their family there?" Yeah, of course. Kill them all. How about the neighbors? Kill them all. It doesn't matter. Kill everyone. That's their 27 minutesmentality. We're dealing with a um you know very uncivilized and brutal people with a you know brutal base of of immoral um nature. So you know so you know for us you know you know in Lebanon every day they're the western media is saying nothing about the genocide in Lebanon. Now we have a second genocide. It is a genocide and people should call it a genocide. What what uh the Israeli regime is doing in Lebanon is exactly what it did in Gaza. They're targeting ambulances, medics, homes, men, women, children, double tap attacks day and night, bringing down apartment blocks. And Western media is trying to hide it from you. They're trying to hide it from everyone because they're a bunch of criminals. Western journalists are a bunch of criminals. They're a bunch of murderers. those western especially when it comes to Lebanon they're more criminal than in Gaza in Gaza they pretended not to know remember they say we don't have any journalists here so we cannot what verify you know like they're bringing down hospitals they're unplugging incubators and killing and intentionally murdering infants and you know but you know they can't verify it then weeks later when it you know they they slowly admit things because they can't hide it forever or months later years In the case of Lebanon, they all have journalists there or senographers. And uh and when I speak to some of them, I say, "Why do you say Hezbollah strongholds? This is an ordinary neighborhood." He says, "I didn't write this." The the editor that the the in wherever he like makes the final decision. That's unacceptable. That's a a a lousy and unacceptable excuse. If you if the editor is changing the meaning of what you write, then you should resign, but you have blood on your hands, you're no better than your the the person in charge who does this. So, they're all a bunch of criminals than the mainstream media. They are and they have people in Beirut, but they say, you know, Hezbollah targets, Hezbollah strongholds, Twitter does that, X does that, too. uh when they give you, you know, where they give you like the the news items that they think are more relevant to your interests and so on, they say the same thing. Heads will targets, you know, when they're wiping out family after family. But um so, you know, the Western media is not just, you know, assassinating Iranians and bringing and murdering, mass murdering Iranians. That's what they do. That's who they are. you know, if they don't encourage it, they will not oppose it. You know, when Trump says that he's going to uh de he's going to um um what was it? take Iran back to the stone age or when he said that um that he's going to erase the civilization from the face of the earth or or you know what was the other thing he said um the other word he uses often when he speak about the nuclear program that he totally obliterate when he said he'd obliterate Iran he's been saying that for weeks have you seen any wester western media outrage like the guardian that pretends to be different let's say no or do you see any of those major western journalists with their millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers put out tweets saying this is outrageous what have we turned into we are the monsters no they because for them this is this is you know they're right this is normal their abnormality is just as evil and disgusting as that of Trump's. They're no different. But he's more crude and bombastic and they are more subtle, but they're the same thing. They're they're criminal. Yeah. No, those are are great points for some Rand. And you know, uh, now I wanted to continue to, uh, talk about the the state of this of this war because, uh, as you just outlined there in terms of what's going on and the continued push, uh, of these lies in order to justify the war in order to um, continue onward, the lack of outrage with it in the Western mainstream media. uh Iran is pressing forward with its demands and it's pressing forward with its the delegation. I remember hearing this from uh Iran uh before they even left. They said something to this effect of we are going to approach these talks from the perspective of maintaining and building upon achievements already won 32 minuteswhich in uh general when people think about wars for irrani they don't usually think about any side talking about this coming into negotiations but especially the side that has been told to Americans by the western major media by Donald Trump by Pete Hankstead etc Iran is losing. Iran is losing. Iran is obliterated. Iran's navy is gone. Everything is gone. Uh we won. We won. We won. But yet, it's the United States that huffed out of there with uh abruptly changing the whole situation. Now, it's the United States uh and Israel. I think people should note that Netanyahu was literally involved and engaged in these negotiations when he had absolutely no part to play in them. He was dictating terms to the US. It's it's incredible. But it it shows a huge uh uh it's a huge example of this decline that we talk about here of the empire. But if you could just talk about how Iran is uh going to you think in the 33 minutesnext days and weeks ahead go about achieving these uh accomplishments or like moving forward with them and moving forward with their demands without any or at least without at least at the very moment any prospect that the US will concede them in any kind of negotiated and diplomatic process. Well, you know, one interesting footnote is that I think that the name of the flight um to Islamabad was called um the Mino Mino 168, right? meaning the 168 little girls and some boys that were murdered in the city of Minab by the Trump regime and by Trump uh Trump the Trump's military uh and uh of course representative of a much greater slaughter that took place across the country for making many orphans and so on. another unprovoked war which is not condemned in the west at all in the media uh because they believe that they have the right to just kill and slaughter and just like they're doing in Lebanon now you know people should call them out the western media is assisting Netanyahu in the genocide western journalists in Beirut are assisting their overlords uh are assisting Netanyahu the whole political order in the west is assisting Netanyahu to carry out the genocide in in Lebanon as we speak. But um the Iranians are confident about their position. They won the war. When the war began, Trump said unconditional surrender. It was supposed to end immediately. It didn't. Then they said, "They're running out of missiles and drones, and we're destroying all their underground bases and all their factories, and there are no more missiles and drones." After 40 35 minutesdays, Iran was firing more missiles and drones with much more devastating consequences than during the the initial weeks of the war. So then Trump after you know evolving his position, he put out thoseif that 15-point plan. The Iranians rejected it and said these are these violate our sovereignty. And then the Iranians put forwarded their own 10-point plan which Trump said he'll you know they expect that particular the framework of conversation now and the negotiations now Iran didn't believe that Trump would expect would accept all 10 demands which are all reasonable by the way compensation you you murdered people you destroyed or you know assurances that you cannot attack Iran again and so on they're all very reasonable Trump accepted a ceasefire there and in Lebanon that was a part of the in fact they said the entire region but Iran stressed the word Lebanon because that's where the genocide is taking place he agreed and the prime minister of uh of Pakistan said so repeatedly that that is a part of the ceasefire and he wrote so well but why did Iran why did Trump lie and exclude it because Netanyahu wanted it excluded so who again is the boss Is the boss the guy who tells Trump that you cannot have Lebanon as a part of the ceasefire that you agreed upon? Or is it the guy who Vance calls and reports to? Again, Netanyahu. Who's the boss? Of course, it's it's the one. They're one and the same. He's the boss. The Zionist lobby is the boss. Again, going back to Joe Kent and his resignation letter, it's clear who the boss is. the United States is controlled by the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. That's just how it is. So, 37 minutesbut ultimately when and and now the the Zionists and Netanyahu he was complaining that saying that well Iran did not abide by its ceasefire agreement because it it did not allow the expansion of uh of ships going from the straight of Moses. Well, Iran isn't doing it because you Netanyahu violated the ceasefire. Iran is not allowing more ships to come and go because of Netanyahu. He is the reason for this. And the straight of Horos is not closed. It never was closed. It's closed to ship to countries that are hostile towards Iran. Well, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, they host US bases. Their territory is being used to attack Iran. There are spaces being used to attack Iran. They're not friends. But Iraq can export. And uh countries like China and Russia and others that are friendly. Their ships can can come and go. 38 minutesBut this expansion was going to include these countries too that are hostile towards Iran. But Netanyahu effectively blocked it. So, but in any case, it was the United States that said unconditional surrender and ultimately accepted that framework. So, if if if so, it wasn't Iran that sought a ceasefire, it was the United States. Why? Because things were going very badly. Not only was Iran striking US assets across the region, but also the the global economy is heading towards a catastrophe and it continues to move in that direction. Yeah. And according to the Financial Times, uh the Trump administration was actually for weeks uh before the actual uh ceasefire took place uh reaching out uh to Iran and Iran was not reciprocating uh for quite some time. Uh we discussed this, right? You and I discussed this. I I said that Iran wants this war to last longer, right? We've been discussing this. We discussed this ever since the war began. Iran is not looking for a quick end to the war. Iran wants it to go on longer because Iran knows that the longer it lasts, the worse it is for the United States. And thus, it creates a long-term uh um let's say it creates an incentive in the United States for the long run not to do this again. Yeah, definitely. And uh that gets me to this, Professor Rhonda. You know what? There's been a lot made. I What's so interesting about this blockade now that Donald Trump is in the United States Navy, etc. are taking part in is that you mentioned the case of the two naval destroyers. We covered this here too yesterday of uh that went in that or attempted to uh interdict the straight of Hormuz and were immediately turned back. There's a ultimatum. You have to get out of here or you're going to be attacked. um and they h high tailed out of there. Uh that seems to me, you know, a lot of people now have been saying, well, okay, if they can't get into the straight of horm, uh, you know, do what the United States did with Venezuela, right? They they they stop tankers outside of territorial waters. In the case of Venezuela, they did both territorial waters and outside of it. But nonetheless, it seems like Iran not only has many options to counter this, but uh ultimately what we're seeing is uh this uh dictating of terms by Iran that now Iran has so and not only has options to retaliate, but as this is being put into place by the United States, now Iran also has options to call whatever bluff United States has. So the this the sea mines have been made. There's been a lot made about this. Uh Trump says or the US says h Iran laid these mines. They don't know how to unmine them. So they don't know how to demine. So uh now everything's dangerous. That's why things are going to be troubled and straight up for moves. Uh uh but Iran is more than willing to escort tankers that are cooperative and that are not part of the hostile parties. uh and this includes of course Russia and China where there's been a lot made about Russia and China having are going to have troubles but we know from throughout the war that that hasn't really been the case. So I guess I'm seeing all the options kind of on Iran's side and I'm not really seeing many for the US side other than this kind of rehashing of uh it's almost like the jack in the box. You know, this there's like the song that you keep spinning and and then eventually something comes out of the box, but it's the same song over and over again. We're going to obliterate, we're going to eliminate, we're going to bomb, destroy all the ships, destroy the navy, destroy the country, we're going to hit hit if Iran doesn't listen to us. And then uh ultimately we got talks and now we have a strange a very strange blockade in my assumption. So, how do you see this moving forward? This is a this is a very I think um what many might see as an odd time in the war because it comes within a ceasefire but uh uh the I think the writing is kind of on the wall about which side and which party in this war has initiative has options has uh choices and which is running out of them. Well, Trump does have options, but he's not using them. He he he can use an an offramp, and Iran through negotiations could have provided that opportunity, but uh Netanyahu won't have it. He he's he wants escalation. He wants genocide. He wants war and death and destruction. He wants the American people to pay for it, not anyone else. 43 minutesSo and you know the Iranians from the very beginning were thinking that there will be a blockade and they pursued policies to uh to to deal with those circumstances. So for example, Iran used to I mean Iran does trade with Pakistan but Iran used to buy its rice from India and before the war they shifted to Pakistan and they can take oil and fuel from the border to Pakistan in return. So that's basically the Iranians were predicting this beforehand. The Americans did this uh you know a month and a half and Iran has borders with many countries. It's a huge country. It has it's the size of France, Britain, and Germany combined. Uh even bigger. And Iran has many neighboring countries that to do with trade. And as I said, Iran is self-sufficient in in many areas. So, it's not going to work. And the United States is going to harm its own image because it's telling it's dictating terms to countries like India and China and so on. It's going to make their lives more difficult. is going to create a worse economic situation for the world and the American people. And people will all see this as Zionism. Zionism carries out genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. Zionism carries out unprovoked wars. Zionism is ruining our lives because they're destroying the global economy. So, this is all downhill for the American regime and the Israeli regime. The Iranians will they will outlast. No doubt about it. We've discussed this during the war. I've always said that Iran will come out on top. Why would it not come out on top now and uh Trump is people inside the United States are increasingly unhappy and you see major commentators turning against him, proTrump commentators, Tucker Carlson attacking him now and uh and others, you know. So I I see this as and if Iran is hurt, there's no doubt about it. But the Iranians know that this is a fight for their own survival. And everyone across the world is being purged. Who is being saved? The United States is not even sparing its proxies in the Persian Gulf who they milk. Trump always speaks about milking these regimes. What is he doing to them? He's destroying them and they will not survive. I mean, when the weather grows hot, if there's war and we're getting there, they won't survive. So you know this is where we are for Iran it's as being a fight for survival. They will outlast the United States where and and and the world will attack the United States for and Trump for bringing about this misery upon them and the America and the American people will increasingly be unhappy. I don't see a victory for the United States at any point down the road. And of course uh it's not really the United States, it's the Zionist lobby. American people are the ones who are suffering. And remember I I said this last time if I mean when Flint and Hillary Lebert wrote that book going to Thran, they provided all the solutions. But instead of listening to them, they listened to the likes of Netanyahu and attack these two people. If they just listened to them, we wouldn't be where we are today. We wouldn't have war. we wouldn't have this energy crisis. But uh you know the it the people are in charge of the same people who uh oh Kent alluded to you know uh it seems that also Iran what it has done especially on the military front what's been so interesting to watch is you know um a lot many people were a bit concerned it seemed when there was a ceasefire called because There is a narrative that many analysts talk about when it comes to ceasefires and pauses and this sort of thing, especially when it comes to Ukraine. And of course, we've had this with Iran uh during the June 12 day war. It's like, okay, if there's a pause, then that means the aggressors have the opportunity to rearm and rebuild. But now, as the days go by and the weeks go by, I don't know if you've noticed, but look at what hap has happened to oil prices. Look at the reports that have come out about the damage done to Saudi oil to Qatari gas to I mean on a Kuwait's oil. I mean it's across the board the region has been changed seems permanently in Delaw like there's no you can't turn this back anytime soon and this is still basically a war situation. So any attempts to rebuild these kind of things, energy systems amid the lack of any kind of real genuine peace and justice um for for Iran seems uh I guess foolish to even consider. And it seems like Iran's also been counting similar to how Russia has been counting what the US has and how much they may have in terms of things like air defenses. Seems like Iran has been doing a similar thing. They they this this ceasefire came right around the same time that reports came out that uh the US was running out of their standoff munitions which it's kind of the perfect time to have a ceasefire because they can't really replace these standoff munitions and the only other option is flying closer to Iran and we already saw for what happened when F-15s C1 you know C130s etc flew into Iran or close to Iran you know they got hit so that that was kind of what was facing the US so there seems to be also this um time on Iran's side consideration which maybe gets underplayed. Not to mention the fact that now Donald Trump is you see he's lashing out of China. He says, "Oh, China's in big trouble. If the intelligence reports that have no basis in reality about sending all these man pads to Iran are uh are is going to happen, then they're going to be in big trouble and we'll we'll hit them with something economic tariffs or whatever." Uh but nonetheless, it seems also that the Trump administration has big problems. It's like the oil prices continue to rise. Now he's doing the same thing again, the Trump administration, where he targets the literal the literal thing that the oil markets and everyone in the Wall Street financial big energy, big big petroleum, uh they want to see the opposite of. They don't want to see more restrictions, more blockades work. They want to see the opposite. They want to be able to sell, sell, sell sell, and make their money. Trump's going after that. So, and Israel is going after that, of course, as you make the good point. So anyway, this situation seems very u I guess there's this broad landscape which I think is is getting undersold here as to why we just don't see a resumption of strikes by the United States just because this ceasefire talks fell through. Actually quite the contrary. All we hear is well now there's a blockade and maybe the US is trying to contact Iran still and and maybe you know we don't have any verification of those talks but nonetheless it's a different kind of atmosphere than where we were what uh two three weeks ago. I don't know if you have any uh reaction to these developments. You're you're right. You're absolutely correct. And um and those who say well why did you accept a ceasefire to the Iranians? The Iranians are it's not as if the Iranians are on vacation now. They're also preparing for the next round of war. And we discussed this I think before when during the 12-day war Iran got the upper hand and people were saying well why didn't they continue? Because if they continued then the US would enter the war and Iran saw its shortcomings and its problems during the 12-day war that had to be addressed. And during the last eight months they've been doing that. And today we see that despite the immense firepower of the United States, which far outweighs that of the Israeli regime, the Iranian military is doing even better than during the 12-day war. The the Israeli regime is not a, you know, a threat to Iran. Iran is much more powerful. It defeated it in, you know, even though it carried out a Blitz Creek attack on Iran, it turned the tide in days and within nine days, they were the ones begging for a ceasefire. Here, Iran is confronting a joint attack with all these proxies helping directly and indirectly and the United States being far more powerful than the Israeli regime. And yet, Iran has the upper hand. There's no doubt about that. It wasn't Iran that sought a ceasefire. So, Iran when it accepts a ceasefire, it is also working. It's not the Americans are bringing in new munitions, but so is Iran. But the fact is that as the Americans are bringing you new new uh munitions and Iran is preparing itself, the oil crisis, the LG crisis, the fertilizer crisis, the prochemical crisis, the lack of money being produced in these countries, these Arab family dictatorships that goes to the US stock exchange and the and the stock bond market. And so all of this is accumulating. It is in the the problems are increasing by the minute, by the hour, by the day. And as I said, summer is approaching. Hot weather is approaching. It's not going to be summer for these Arab regimes is not July and August. It's it's, you know, it gets very hot in in May. Yeah. And I don't know if you've uh also there have been reports uh I know that you are aware person of the uh massive public turnout during the big threat that led to that I don't even know what to call it. There's was always called a deadline by the Trump administration by Donald Trump. Oh, we're going to hit Iran's everything, its energy, its bridges, everything. And we're going to do it all in one fell swoop in four hours and it's going to happen 8:30 p.m. I forget what day it was. It was it was uh the day, you know, the day that the ceasefire was called. Um uh that's what came out of it. But uh Iranians in massive numbers came out and and circled their infrastructure and said, "No, we're going to protect it with our very lives. So if you do this, well, you're not Okay, there we are. This is so weird. Our image keeps on going away on uh the screen share. But nonetheless, we can still I think you can still hear us. Uh we are having I think uh with that situation, Professor Mandi, a uh a scenario where Iran is also taking consideration rebuilding. It seems like Iran is rebuilding very fast. a lot of infrastructure. It's focusing deeply on the trains, the bridges, etc. that Israel and the US struck, the civilian infrastructure. That makes a big difference. That's also a big part of preparing for war. Yeah. You know, you can, you know, uh prepare your strategy, get the weapons you need together. Militarily, there's a high morale right now in the Iranian military. So, preparing for whatever next steps might be coming, reviewing intelligence, all these military things. But then there's the like what Pzeskin said. He said, "No, we're we're for the people like this government is doing everything it can during these negotiations process to keep people in mind and rebuilding infrastructure in a rapid time say sends a pretty strong message to people that this is uh this war like the fighting back against war is not simply just about like missiles, drones, air defenses, fast attack ships, whatever. Uh it's also about ensuring that people are protected to the best extent possible and that their livelihoods are protected. All of that is pretty impressive and it's not happening in the US where you have people crying over gas prices and not knowing where they're going to be uh because they can't afford uh to get to their jobs, they can't afford their rent anymore, etc. because gas prices have gone up 21% in a month. So I know we're heading toward the last five minutes here for us but any analysis any reaction you have to this because I think this contrast is uh also a stark indicator of what is possible in a war like this moving forward. I think the biggest miscalculation of the west is their orientalist. It comes from their orientalist mindset mindset and their lack of understanding of Iranians in particular and the resilience of the Iranian people. They like to talk about the regime and how it's despised by the people. The the so-called regime that it is that is the people just like those who were in the delegation and risk their lives going to Pakistan and coming back. The people the other people they risk their lives young people predominantly risk their lives by going to these power stations telling the Americans no you you cannot commit these crimes against humanity. True, Western journalists support your crimes against humanity. True, Western elites support your crimes against humanity. True, you are agents of uh Zionism and the Zionist lobby. And true, you're subordinate to the Israeli regime and its genocidal uh leadership and its genocidal mentality. But we are going to stand firm. We're going to stand here. We're going to stand our ground. And those young men and women, like those young men and women on the flight, they're the same. They're And so they misread Iran at all levels. And they misread Iran's capabilities because they say it's an orientalist country. You just murder the martyr, the leader, and everything falls apart. Well, nothing fell apart. Not a single, you know, someone said this to me yesterday on the flight on the way back or maybe in the in the train on the way back to Tehran. I don't I don't remember. I think it was on the train. He said to me that you know not a single government official during this war they are targets. Not a single commander not top rank middle ranking. Not a single person resigned across the country in any in any you know not a single person left. When we flew all the people on the flight who were invited came when we flew back. Not a single person said I will stay behind for a couple of days and I don't know go and look around Islamabad and then you know do some sightseeing which they could do. Not a single person did that. And you know that I think is a and so the people held this the country together during a week when we didn't have a leader. The people are the ones who are the the for and the armed forces. The fact that they kept flying missiles and drones and defending when they had didn't have a leader shows their competence, their sophistication, the sophistication of the state. All of those orientalist tropes, you know, that they're just, you know, death spots and everything is, you know, falls apart and there, you know, you just fire one of those sophisticated missiles of yours and everything, the whole military will collapse. All of that is gone. Iran did something unprecedented. And Danny, when I was in Islamabad, the Iranians were treated as heroes everywhere they went at the hotel, the the people who kindly cleaned the rooms, the people in the restaurant, the people the at the 59 minutesdoor, the people in the at the U media center, the drivers, everyone. I had never seen such a thing before in my life. Like we're just ordinary people. Everyone viewed us as heroes. I mean, not like me, but like the delegation you Yeah. and in Iran and you know the the the you know the Iranian people and the Iranian leadership. It was it was extraordinary. They were extraordinarily uh kind. So Seems like uh Pastor Marty, you might have frozen. I don't know if you can hear me. Uh but Yep. Yeah. I don't know why you have frozen. I your your audio isn't coming through anymore. So, uh just give a holler when it is back. Um, no problem at all. Yeah. I mean, if people people understand Israel, the United State, especially Israel in the region, but United States too, uh, those images of those videos we saw early in this war in Bahrain and elsewhere of people filming, cheering. We saw it during the 10 12 day war in the region, Jordan, etc. uh people really uh when they see a force fighting back like Iran, many people are going to support it. Uh and many people are going to uh uh align with it. And so really what it's taking now is uh looks like Professor Randi has to come back and we will uh close up once he does get his final points. But uh it really what the the writing on the wall. Hey, here he is. I was just saying to Yeah, I was just saying final note while people in Pakistan viewed Iran as heroic and Iranians as heroes, they despised the United States. Everyone hated them. Everyone hated Vance and Witoff and Kushner and Trump. It's universal. Yeah. And why is that the case? because they know which side is sinister and which side is the victim. So hopefully one day the American people will be able to liberate themselves from this uh this menace. Yeah. In the region too. I was talking about the region and you know you mentioned Pakistan but we've been seeing videos images of people celebrating looking at on you know recording uh Iranian strikes and things like this since the 12-day war in this one and uh and the censorship was much worse in this uh you know uh period the how however long it was over a month six weeks of uh active kinetic war censorship was so bad but we we know first as you said people are know they're they understand in the the region uh which side their governments are on, which side Israel and the United States fit on versus Iran's. And now the the region's at a tipping point. The whole global order is at a tipping point. And it's moving in Iran's direction. moving in uh countries that are are are uh you know in their own way uh fighting back uh and doing what they can to develop independently and that's uh it's a it's a very dangerous uh period I think for the US empire but also I think it shows that despite the hard times that we have uh you know we have a kind of uh uh road map that's being developed. Uh that is, 3 minutesyou know, that's going to continue to be uh bricks are going to be continue to be laid uh for that road. And uh we're going to have to see where things go from here. But uh nonetheless, I think desperation is the word to describe where the US is and Israel is at this moment in this war. But Professor Ronnie, any final thoughts as we uh close out here um today? Hey, it was a great show. No, thank you very much. Just uh people should uh create aware more push to create more awareness because Western media is trying to hide the reality of what's going on in Lebanon that there's a a second genocide uh initiating and Zionist expansionism is being brought about and Western media is trying to help them along the way and so is social media. So we should all be more active and exposing and of course hopefully Iran will do what is necessary to help defeat the Zionist entity. Yeah, for sure. Uh Lebanon right now all eyes because especially now that this war is at the current period it's in in Iran and the forces of resistance, the ISIS resistance which includes Hezbollah and Lebanon and the resistance in Lebanon. Uh they're fighting for that. They're fighting for that ceasefire to stop the wreckage that Israel is causing. Um, and uh, all I should be on it. So, everyone do do exactly what President Brandi says. After the show, definitely hit the like button as you leave. All the places support the show are in the video description. You can find uh Professor Muhammad Randi on X and I will be putting that now in the video description of this show. Without further ado, everyone, uh I'll be back again soon. Somebody said I look really jetlagged in the uh comments. I am very very very jetlagged. It's like hit me pretty hard in the last . So, I'll be back. Uh I'll let you know when, but uh it's time to rest now. So, hit the like button. Get the um you know uh uh get the video description going for all of you. If you can hit the like button, Preston will be heard far and wide. All right, everyone. Take care and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye.
Scott Ritter: TRUMP's BLOCKADE IS A JOKE Daniel Davis / Deep Dive Apr 13, 2026
Transcript
... will be a blockade. There will not be blackmail according to President Trump just minutes ago. Now, of course, that a lot depends upon your perspective and where you stand on what's blackmail and what's blockade uh and what's good negotiations. And we're going to look into all that today. And we're delighted to have with us back today to to discuss all of this Scott Ritter, uh veteran Marine Corps intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector, uh and guy who's super tied into what's going on in this whole region here. It's got some great comments that we're going to look forward to. Scott, welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much for having me. Uh, well, listen, I I'm I'm I'm eager to to get some of your views on this stuff, not just from your diplomatic experience and and your military experience, but also from your connection to, you know, a lot is going on in the region, both in the Middle East, where you have extensive experience, but also your connections to what uh maybe China and Russia are viewing all this and economics, how this is going together. So, really eager to get on it. Uh let's jump to what just happened a few minutes ago because President Trump out in front of the White House uh said, "Listen, this whole thing about the blockade is fine, but but Iran blackmailing America never." What's the endgame? Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the straight so that gas prices ultimately come down? Maybe everything. I mean, you know, both of those things certainly and more. Uh we can't let a country blackmail or extort uh the world because that's what they're doing. They're really blackmailing the world. We're not going to let that happen. Yeah, we're not going to let that happen. Okay. So, let's just as a quick reminder to our studio audience here, the only reason the straight is blocked or closed right now prior to Trump's blocking it from the outside is because we started a war of choice against Iran in 47 years. They had never done this, never would have. So, just let me ask your your take right off the bat that um a couple things from that soundbite I want to talk about. Well, let's look at the last part first where Trump just declares no, we're not going to let this happen. It's not going to be blackmailed. Well, let me It's not just a war of choice. Uh it's an illegal war of aggression. I think everybody needs to understand that there's no legitimacy at all in anything the United States is doing. Nothing. So we have that that it's so important to point this out because everything that follows including every statement made by the president of the United States must be seen in the light of he is a war criminal. He is a man leading a nation um in in actions that have zero legitimacy constitutionally and zero legitimacy under international law. Um, and I also want to remind people that, uh, a blockade is an act of war. Um, you know, he's treating this as if he has some sort of, uh, you know, legal duty and responsibility to, you know, carry out this, that he's somehow legitimate in, uh, in pursuing this. It's um, it's an act of war. Literally an act of war. And again, because it's tied to nothing from a legal foundation, it's an illegal act of war. Um, you know, blackmail. Um, I mean, what does what does Iran hold over you, Mr. President? What is the blackmail? It seems to me what he really meant to say is that Iran has strategic leverage. Uh, because Iran has outplayed this president in every way, shape, and form. Um, I I I want to remind again your audience that um, you know, we hear the president and Pete Hexith speak of destruction, destruction, destruction. There's been a lot of physical destruction, but there's been almost zero destruction of uh meaningful strategic um capabilities of Iran. Iran always went into this conflict uh knowing that its ballistic missile and drone capabilities would serve as the foundation of their military response. Uh so for Pete Heg and the president to redefine this war as um you know based upon Iran's naval prowess as if the 4 minutesIranian Navy ever um you know positioned or postured itself to be a competitor of the United States Navy or uh as as an air power. Um no Iran never said that it was either of those. what Iran said and I was told by the Iranian president in person together with the foreign minister last September um that Iran's strategic deterrence comes from their conventional ballistic missile capabilities that this is you know how they postured themselves and this is how they would um hopefully deter somebody from attacking them but if somebody attacked to punish the attackers you know deterrence doesn't work unless people know and understand that there will a consequence for your actions. There are many people who believe that the Iranian missile and drone um capabilities were overhyped, that Iran lacked the political will to uh to follow through. Um not anymore. Now we know that Iran has the ability, 5 minutesthe wherewithal to employ these weapons, employ them effectively. They hammered the United States military installations in the region. They punish the state of state state state of Israel and they send a clear signal to the Gulf Arab states that the totality of their infrastructure is at risk should they continue to support the United States in this illegal war of aggression. So Iran holds literally all the cards. They have not been defeated at all. Not even close. um they're getting in fact they were getting stronger as the war went on because their underground missile factories started kicking in and um you know not only were they launching missiles they were producing missiles. It's underground missile production capability that's immune to anything the United States does overhead. Um you know here we have the president threatening you know the potential resumption of military force. I again want to point the following facts out. There's nothing left to bomb. Everything's underground and we can't destroy that. Anything that's above ground has zero military value. If it was of military value, we would have struck it already. Um, so we will simply be bombing buildings, probably buildings affiliated with civilians. But no matter what, if you think at this juncture, more than 40 days into this conflict, that Iran has left anything of value in a building inside, you know, inside their nation, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. Um, there's nothing in Iran to bomb. So, these threats of the president that he's going to blow things up and obliterate Iran, it's it's just it's it's just bluster. Um, there's By the way, I'm sorry. I want to interrupt here. Just this image that the video Gary's showing you here, this this shows how these underground uh bunkers are are missile cities are specifically designed to survive an atomic blast. Even that is not going to take them out. They just want to reinforce that. Yeah. Look, the Iran the Iranians are some of the smartest people in the world and they've been studying how the United States fights for more than two decades now. And they have prepared themselves to not only survive, but to thrive, uh to prevail. and they were winning. It was not the Iranians that sought uh the ceasefire, bringing it in. It was the United States. In fact, Iran was going to reject any effort at a ceasefire because they just simply don't trust the United States when China pressured them. And China said, "It's imperative that, you know, we bring this conflict to an end because it's impacting our our economy." Um, but the Iranians aren't the ones saying, "Please, please, please, let's bring this to an end." They would like to see the war end. They would like to see the sanctions lifted. They would like to see uh their economy function smoothly. Um but you know they're willing to to to see this to the bitter end. They believe in what they're doing. They um you know the people of Iran were actually quite angry when the ceasefire happened and the negotiating team went to Islamabad. They were in the streets saying no no peace with America, no peace with Israel. Um and again some people say, "Well, wow, that's pretty harsh. Uh they're very violent people." No, they didn't start this war. We attacked them in an event that makes Pearl Harbor pale in comparison. We assassinated their supreme leader. And in the process, you know, we carried out attacks that included a school where we killed 175 innocent civilians. 160 odd of them were innocent girls between the age of 6 and 12. This is what we did and this is what we're doing. Um th this president is I mean I I have trouble coming up with words that I can say in civil company. Um but this this this president Let me ask you something Scott on that point you just raised up here because I wonder if you can draw some uh analogies maybe to help our audience understand the impact of this. You mentioned that issue with the the school girls getting killed. Uh when the when the negotiating team flew to Islamabad uh they had some artifacts from that time. They had some photographs and some backpacks and shoes and other stuff on board one of the aircraft that were going on there. How important is this? Is this something like it used to be in the the US? You know, they remember the Alamo and all that something this rallying cry. Is anything similar to that going on with the Iranian side? Oh, this has become one of the defining um you know moments of this conflict. Um the the murder, the assassination of Ali Kaman is one um the supreme leader who was at home. I mean, it doesn't take an intelligence uh, you know, specialist to uh to track him down. He was at home with his 14-month-old granddaughter when he was murdered uh in a surprise attack. Um, an act of perity. Um, that same morning, um, a cruise missile struck a school in Manab, um, in in in Iran along the southern coast. um that that that that the missile that struck, you know, didn't kill everybody uh but it caused some damage. The uh the the principal and the surviving teachers um rallied the children, the surviving children, and brought them in and took them to the safest place they knew. You know how when you have a tornado uh in the Midwest, there's the basement or there's some the gymnasium that's deemed to be a safe place. This was the prayer hall. It was the the the most strongly built portion of the building. They brought the surviving children in and huddled them in while their parents were being called to come and and get them. Um, we had another cruise missile flying overhead. These are advanced block four cruise missiles that have retargeting capability on board. They have a camera that's capturing imagery and broadcasting imagery back to the command center on the ship. In this case, the USS Vincens. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Not the Vincent. The Vincens is the one that shot down an airplane and killed 290 people. Um, I'll get the name of the ship in a minute, but the um the people the guys on the ship were looking at these images and they saw, you know, humans clustering in. The the imagery is of enough resolution that they could see the painted flowers and the painted playgrounds on the ground. So, they knew this was a school. And yet, as the people congregated in, that missile was sent out, redirected, and reattacked and killed everybody in that in that building. All the women, the principal died holding children in their arms. Uh, you know, teachers were were killed shielding their their students from the harm brought by the United States. This was a deliberate act of murder. And the Iranians have identified the commanding officer and the executive officer of the ship involved and they're calling them out as war criminals, saying these are the guys responsible for murder. This is a big deal. This is a huge deal. This is remember the Alamo. This is, you know, any any rallying crowd you have. And these are the most innocent. When you go and look at the stories, I mean, the Iranians aren't playing propaganda here. I mean, there's a lot of Americans and they disgust me. But every one of those girls there had a backstory. Every one of the the children killed there. These were kids with a life. And Iran is a modern nation state. This is not, you know, we're, you know, we hear these people talking about these savages. The president of the United States calls them savages. These girls had more culture and more education than the president would ever have. They have more in their pinky. These are girls who were training to be gymnasts, training to to be doctors. Uh they had visions of being lawyers to help their families. Uh one of the girls was in a contest where she would memorize passages from the Quran. And she was two weeks away from going to Thran, the capital city, to enter into a major competition where if she won, it would get her on a pathway where she could be a journalist and do broadcast television. Um these are the people we killed. We America killed them. our weapons directed by our officers, taking orders from our leadership. And the Iranians have made this a rallying cry. It disgusts them. It enrages them. And yet they sit there and and they have their they just poo pooed by American negotiators who, frankly speaking, JD Vance wasn't there to negotiate a successful outcome. JD Vance was there to prolong a a deliberate attempt by the United States to reframe what was going on as Iranian desperation. Um the Iranians weren't desperate. They came very well prepared to have an agreement. They they they had done their research. They had experts. They had done they had the research papers. They had the facts. They had everything. We came with Jared Kushner and and Steve Witco and JD Vance and nothing. Yeah. 300 people showed up with nothing. zero. We didn't come in and say, "Here's our position. Here's what we want. This is how we think." They said, "Hey, let we we'll see what you got." No, we reject it and they walked away. Why? Why are we doing this? I think it's a game being played by the president. Because remember, let me make this point, too. If we're evaluating what's going on right now from a geopolitical perspective, from a military analytical perspective, um from an economic perspective, you're doing it all wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, the only perspective that matters when talking about this conflict is the perspective of Donald Trump's ego. That's all this 14 minutesis about. This is about Donald Trump very concerned that his brand, his legacy is being tarnished, perhaps irreparably and fatally if he can't survive the midterm elections. That's the end of his political legacy. And for a narcissist like Trump to see everything he has built collapse like this and failure is unacceptable. So he needs to deflect responsibility for the failure, his failure in this conflict onto the shoulders of others. And I think JD Vance was thrown out there as a sacrificial lamb. JD Vance led the initial team with Wickoff and Kushner. And when the story is finally written, it's going to be Vance was unable to close the deal. I, Donald Trump, was able to come in and get a deal. I don't think we're going to go on to a next phase of bombing. I could be wrong. I mean, of course, anything can happen. It's a very dangerous situation right now. And as I said, a blockade is an act of war. But we, you know, the military knows that what are we going to do? Bomb what? What targets do you want bomb? Because from now on it becomes a literal, you know, without any debate. War crime because we'll be bombing civilians. Collective punishment. What we're doing that is a war crime. There's no legitimate military activity to attack and we can't do it. We're out of weapons, out of precision strike weapons, we're out of ballistic missile defense. So the same situation um the the the deficiencies and failures that led us to seek a ceasefire are are not going to be cured. Iran is stronger. Iran is better. We'll just repeat this scenario. So I don't believe we're going to move into the next phase. I think what we're seeing right now is a lot of political jockeying as Donald Trump seeks desperately to find the perfect sequence of events that allows him to slip in, be the one to negotiate a deal and declare victory and say, "I'm the man that did it." you know, he he may have that intention, but I I evidence is starting to acrue that uh there has been some pretty profound miscalculations up to this point, which does not give any optimism for how this is going to get resolved anytime near term, but and I'd like your view on this. So I think that the the it's pretty clear now that the initial going in process is that there was this belief among President Trump which was fed to him by both Israeli and American officials on the inside that this is going to be something quick. It's going to be like Venezuela. We're instead of snatching Maduro, we're going to assassinate Ali Kami and then the other people will be more reasonable and then they'll talk and they'll give us what we want. We'll take their oil. Uh two thumbs up. It's a in a big victory. That didn't happen. And now all of a sudden there, oh snap, what do we do now? And then they had to figure out a war plan on the fly. Clearly was not resourced. And they bring another aircraft carrier in. They bring some troops in later. It's just totally disjointed. It appears that there's some evidence that in this negotiation here, he may have meant what you suggested there. He also may have had some idea that that because I'm threatening that I'm going to get a submission into what we want here. But now that is failed. And in this soundbite we just showed you, you they asked President Trump, "What's the play now? Do you think that they're going to come back and you use this as leverage?" And you can see in his mind, he's like, "Uh, sure. Yeah, that that sounds good." I read that is I have no idea what we're going to do next. I guess we got to figure it out on the fly. Do you see any re possibility that President Trump literally has no idea what to do next? Well, there's no doubt in my mind that he has no idea what to do next. That everything that's going on right now is to buy time. um as he desperately looks for something. This is why I've I've always said that um I think it's that, you know, the Russians will save the day because I think the Russians and the Chinese um you know have a clear vision of you know what needs to be done to bring an end to this conflict but also you know how to balance um you know the the needs, wants and desires of all parties involved so that you get an equitable outcome. And for Iran, the equitable outcome would be, you know, allowing being allowed to continue to enrich not to a nuclear bomb, but enrich for a peaceful nuclear program. That is their lawful right. Um and also the the straight of um you know Iran you know may not the way this could be negotiated is that Iran doesn't get permanent control of straight horm moves but because this war was thrust upon them by the United States Israel and the Gulf Arab states that Iran has an inherent right now to seize control and you know put out a toll to raise money that could be used for re reconstruction. Um I think this is a a legitimate thing. it it it doesn't violate international law if there's an agreement in writing that Iran will you know take tolls and this is this resolves the issue of the United States having to write a big check uh to for reparations which is something the Iranians are demanding um for Trump you know here's a chance for him to you know say he's a peacemaker I mean he's already said I have uh I I've I've reset the region uh like nobody's ever done before so he can make the argument that this was all necessary for a regional reset that um there was no chance for peace. Um you know using the old framework that a war was necessary to shake things up so that you could now come together with a new you know a new way of doing business together. China showed has shown tremendous political um acumen. Remember they're the ones that brought the Iranians and the Saudis together uh in a repro. Uh the Russians have very good relations with all the parties involved including the United States ironically. Um, so I I do think that there's a chance for, you know, Russia and China to step in and and help shape the events. The idea of the United States and Iran successfully carrying out bilateral negotiations even if moderated by Pakistan isn't going to happen because it be too much about, you know, the United States would have to actually posture in a way that leads no doubt that they lost this war and that's politically unacceptable to this president. So, there's going to have to be some gamesmanship played where, you know, the the the substance of the uh of the outcome is in favor of Iran, but the perception uh can be balanced so that Donald Trump can declare victory and walk away because otherwise there's no incentive for him to um to walk away. Um you know, he'll he'll desperately be looking for a for for you know, a positive outcome using military resources if there's no guarantee that he can have a positive outcome by seeking peace. So, so he's it seems like though he's he's walked himself into a near-term trap. It's hard for me. I I mean, I can see what you're saying there about that would be a a plausible exit and and the fact that he had that in his hand. He could have done that in his past negotiations, but it didn't. We we spoke to uh Professor Morandi earlier this morning uh who said that the first couple of sessions of this were were actually positive more than they expected and then something happened after the second pause and everything went downhill. Well, now then at that same press conference we just showed you from President Trump a minute ago, now he's saying that it turns out Iran is calling him back and asking for a deal. Now, we've been called this morning by the right people, the appropriate people, and they want to work a deal. They would like to work a deal. Is it your anticipation, Mr. president that other countries will assist in this effort to blockade Iran and those other countries are going to also I mean now he says that they want a deal but that they called him but I mean just look at a couple of uh uh this is this is Abas Roshi who was one of the chief negotiators from there uh he says that in intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years Iran engaged with the US in good faith to end the war but when we were just inches away from Islamabad memorandum of understanding we incurred maximalist shifting goalpost and blockade which validates what professor Morandi told us zero lessons learned goodwill begets goodwill enmity begets enmity and then uh golly buff uh he posted this also late yesterday he said enjoy the current pump figures interestingly he's using a map here that's Washington DC in the middle uh I guess he's trying to point out something uh the so-called blockade soon you'll see you'll be nostalgic for four or five dollar gas so that doesn't sound like the kind of guys that are going to be calling Trump back this morning and uh I don't know, begging him to come back. What do you make of that? Well, the Iranians have always accused Donald Trump of negotiating with himself. Um meaning that there, you know, they're not reaching out. Um what what I believe has happened is that the Iranians have told the Pakistanis that they're willing to continue the negotiations based upon the formula that was being agreed upon, the Islamabad min memorandum of understanding. um you know and so it's the Pakistanis that are calling Trump. Trump never said it was the Iranians calling. He said they've reached out the appropriate people etc. It's the Pakistanis calling them saying hey come back to the table. Um but it's not the Iranians calling the the Iranians right now they don't need Donald Trump now. They would like to have peace on here but they don't need this. Donald Trump needs this. This is a requirement for Donald Trump. So I think you know the fact that there is a deal ready to be made. Understand Donald Trump couldn't let JD Vance be the one who successfully negotiated that deal. Donald Trump shares the glory with nobody. He will share the glory. So JD Vance went in there did all the hard work got him up to write about the cross line and then Donald Trump went kill it. Boom boom boom boom boom hardline position. Da da. Netanyahu calls. D end of negotiations. And now Donald Trump at the appropriate time is going to slide in and he's going to get all the glory. He's gonna he's going to be the one that closes the deal. Um but you know he in the meantime he has to posture. Remember he has to be able to make the case to ignorant Americans who don't know all of the subtleties here that it was his pressure that created the possibility for a deal. See that was the problem that they were going to get a deal too easy. um and and and and therefore it looked like an American surrender. Um can't have that. And so you have to get it up to the finish line, stop, pull JD Vance, blame the Iranians in transit, blockade threats, boom, boom, boom, slide back in, close the deal, and say it was only because of our threats that the Iranians finally came across the finish line. Now that that is fascinating because I could definitely see that happen. The the flying net ointment though is will the Iranians play ball with that because I I as you said be at the beginning they don't need a deal here. They want a deal. They don't need one and they're certainly not going to just like backtrack and say all right we'll give you everything you want so that you can come out looking good. Um or or do you think that they would would the Iranians be willing to let him get public credit if it gets the terms that they need and ends the war? I don't think Iran cares about domestic American politics. So Donald Trump can sell this any way he wants to the American people. I don't think the Iranians are in a PR game with the United States. The Iranians want very basic things. One, they will continue to enrich uranium. How that's defined, I would imagine, be similar to the deal that was uh almost reached before we attacked Iran on February 28th. Um so we already have a solution to that. That's what the audience needs to understand. This problem's already been solved to the satisfaction of the United States and Israel. Uh closing all possibilities for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. And yet Iran gets to retain its enrichment capability, which is all they want. The pride of saying we get to do this. Um and so that's already resolved. It's just a matter of the president coming in. And here's the president. He can spin it and say I was able to get the deal that Barack Obama couldn't. Barack Obama could only get the JCPOA which had sunset clauses and at the end massive enrichment to as much material as you wanted out of control here. He'll be able to say, "No, we permanently shut the door on a pathway to nuclear weapons. This is the best deal. I gave you this deal, a better deal. I told you I would get a better deal than um than Barack Obama." So there he spins it. The Iranians don't care what he says to the American people. They could care less. What they care about is the end result, continued enrichment. It's the same thing with the straight of Hormuz. There's a deal to be made there. Um whether it's uh you know some sort of revenue sharing uh some sort of consortium uh of of collecting revenues that are passed out um that allows Iran to retain the physical control of the straight of Hormuz but with to be sold in a different way where the United States gets to say the favorite Donald Trump thing. I'm making you money. I'm getting revenue from the straight of moves. America's there. We're inging everything. We're controlling everything. We're America. And the the mouth breathers back in America go, "Wow, he's the greatest. This is 5D chess. He's awesome." When all it is is the Iranians going, "Give the guy a nickel." Um, you know, make him go away. That that's that's a deal. That's missiles. We're not going to touch the missiles. The Iranians are never going to give up the missiles because that's their deterrence. And frankly, we're just going to suck that one up. Um, and that that's it. There's the deal right there. Um, that it can be made right now and Donald Trump gets to sell it anyway. When it comes to, you know, forces leaving the Middle East, Iran doesn't get to dictate that outcome. However, it's an outcome that's going to happen no matter what. And so, Donald Trump gets to say, "I reset the region. We now have peace and stability. I can pull the boys home. we don't need to keep a beer anymore. See, makes it look like he did a good thing. Um when in fact he got his butt kicked and he's retreating for the Iranians. People say, "Well, what's in it for Iran?" Imagine for the first time in five decades being able to get total control of your economy and sell the oil and gas that you produce on the market at fair market value and the money comes in without restrictions that you're able to work with the global finance um uh you know system um to get investments coming in get China coming in without fear of secondary sanctions getting the Russians coming in without fear of secondary sanctions and this and for the Iranian government for the first time to deliver on the promise of prosperity to the Iranian people. You people say what's in it for Iran? That's it. The better future. This is it. This is the better future that has Iran has eluded Iran for vi five decades. It's available now. Iran can join bricks without restrictions. Iran can become involved in the European Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, all without restrictions. uh able to maximize their economic potential and Iran will become one of the most, you know, prosperous nations in the region. Um and that's what's there for the Iranian people, but they're not going to sell their soul to get to that objective. Well, that's exactly what I was going to say because there there are some big headwinds against that inside of Iran because there are we've heard from some experts here just recently that there uh there was a lot of uh I guess I don't know if conservative is the right term. Uh but those who were who were against any of this uh working with us because they said we can't trust them at all. They backstabbed us so many times and done all this stuff. So you can even if they agree to this stuff, you can't agree to it. We need to try to have a military uh solution. But so far the the u I think they call them the reformers element the the Galibbah and and the Pesken they have been able to run rough shot because they want that outcome but like there are headwinds for the Iranian side there's headwinds for the American side and for all that stuff you talked about that Trump may be man uh you know working in his mind to try to get done to somehow twist things around no matter how many people got killed to make him look good. Uh that may be his intent, but there's headwinds here, too. Let me just show you a couple here. Here's uh Mike Pompeo uh seeming to want to, you know, do anything besides have the negotiated settlement. He wants a military victory over Iran. Iran now has a very difficult decision to make. Um it's already had significant resources depleted. It's already found itself in a politically difficult spot with most of its leadership wiped out. But they'll now have the choice to make. President Trump has essentially gone for the jugular. He will cut off essentially all revenue that has been flowing into the Iranian regime. And so now they'll have to decide. But imagine that they fire on an American vessel or American escorted vessel that's moving through. President Trump will unleash even more fury and that can only put them in a lesser position. So I think President Trump has done a very smart thing. I think this is superior to having put boots on the ground to try and take one of the islands. This will put not only the Iranians but the Chinese in a very difficult spot where now they will have to buy marketbased marketpriced oil or convince the Iranians to stand down and allow the straight to be reopened. One thing you said right there it lends some credibility to your to your theory that maybe there's not we don't want to restart the war here by saying well you know now we don't need to do boots this shut down the straight of Hormuz that's thing we don't have to worry about taking Car Island anymore. Uh, and boy, that's put them in a hard position here. But, uh, I I don't know that the Iranian side, any of the crews over there are going to play along with that and give him what he's asking for. Well, first of all, let's talk about this blockade for a second. Um, how many ships we have available? 13 ships available. Um, and I'm pretty sure this includes at least one carrier battle group, which means that we have a carrier and then we have the escort. probably, you know, between three to five ships that are dedicated to this. 32 minutesThey're not intercepting any ships. The carrier is doing its thing and um the escorts are providing a picket uh air defense picket. It'll probably be reinforced given the fact that Iran is a serious player here, reinforced with other ships. Um so now what we're we're we're looking at, you know, maybe seven, eight ships maximum to enforce a blockade. As people look at a map, really look at a map, understand that our ships can't get anywhere near the straight of Hormuz. Um because once we and a blockade is an act of war, Iran will sink these ships.
So now we're going to have to wait till the ships clear the straight of Hormuz. Um you know, and then get out into the Indian Ocean. Um big ocean, little ships, lots of ships transiting. We're not going to do anything. This blockade is a joke. a straightup joke. Um, and what are we going to do? Board a Chinese ship? Board a Russian ship? Um, you know, this again, we we lack the resources to fully do Mike Pompeo should know this. Uh, he should understand this, but you know, he's just he's he's a propagandist mouthpiece right now instead of doing reality. But again, the job right now of the Pompeo and world is to create the impression that we have the ability to impose this blockade and they were going to threaten it. But watch what happens. The first time we get push back, you know, Trump is going to find a reason to say, "I've reconsidered now. They they've reached out to me and they've talked to me and we're going to go ahead and pull back on this um on this blockade here because we we think there's a window of opportunity here and and all that. this. We can't do the blockade, Colonel. I mean, it's it's impossible uh to do the blockade. We don't have the resources to do it. I know what happens when the ships start skirting the Iranian Pakistani coast. How close do we want to get? Because that's a standard smugglers route. Now, they'll come out and they'll they'll they skirt the coast. What are we going to come in and intercept them in Iranian coastal waters? I don't think so. And and even if we tried to get them outside of the coastal waters, they'll sink our ships. They've got the We can't do this. The Iranians are not going to just sail out of the straight or Hormuz, you know, and put a big target on them and and sail straight to an American ship saying, "Here we are. Board us." That's not how this works. Well, it's funny because in the United States from people who are watching mainstream media and not watching shows like this where we put the actual truth out there, they see a former admiral, Admiral Howard, uh, talk about how not only is this something doable, but our regional allies are cheering it on. Everyone in the region is cheering how the vice president handled this negotiations where he gave them a shot, they didn't capitulate, we're done. So all these states UAE, Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait, they have an existential threat from Iran and all the components of our demand indicate that developing a nuclear weapon, closing the straits of our most missile programs, funding their surrogates. All those represent su existential threats to them. So they don't want us to go through any negotiations unless all those conditions are met. Come on, Scott. Those conditions will never be met what he wants because they're asking for an abject surrender by the Iranian side. They're not going to. So, how do you get to this point to where you're telling and convincing all the American people how great President Trump is and how powerful our military is and it's going to accomplish these things when it doesn't? And if he tries to walk it back, he he's not going to walk back the, as you said, he's not going to walk back the nuclear program, the reprocessed material, the long range missiles, the support from the allies, or full control of the of the strait. He's he's revenue sharing is probably the best he can get. How is he going to spin that into something positive when you're claiming everybody's cheering it on? 36 minutesWell, I mean, Colonel, that puts me in an unfair position because I've always been a fact-based guy. My job as an intelligence officer was never to tell my boss what he or she wanted to hear was tell them what the hard facts are and then they get to run with it. Um, you know, I wasn't there to massage their ego. I wasn't there to uh promote their uh course of action. My job was to say these are the facts and these are how these facts will impact your courses of action. Um, now earn your pay. Uh, you know, and uh so you know I I'm not good at the game of spin. I'm not good at the game of up there telling outright lies. But here's the thing. Pompeo and the former admiral know that they're lying. These aren't stupid people. Um these, you know, these are people that have played the game. They know exactly what they're doing. And these aren't people that are out there with their own, you know, they didn't formulate these. They're playing from a script. There is a White House script, a narrative that's been farmed out. And these people, their job is to receive that script, get on mainstream TV and say this stuff and um and get the American people moving in one direction. So their job right now is to create the impression of overwhelming American strength and overwhelming American advantage so that when the president does make a deal with the Iranians, they'll say it's only because of the strength that this president has shown. And you know, the Iranians, you know, bent the knee to the reality of American supremacy. That's the game they're playing. Whether or not they'll be able to pull it off is another thing because the Iranians aren't playing that game. And as you said, there's going to be um a gap between reality and perception. But as you know, Colonel, perception creates its own reality. And sadly with the American people, your audience possibly excluded, uh we're the most ignorant people in the world today about the world we live in. We don't know anything about this world. So we believe at face value the nonsense. We 38 minutesbeing the collective. Yeah. um tend to believe the the nonsense that's put out there by mainstream media and therefore we are susceptible to having you know our our perceptions altered by you know narrative shaping perceptions create their own reality. So if enough Americans believe that this president is the modern incarnation of Jesus Christ who can come down lay hands people and and cure them and um and and and therefore man he can do anything. I mean he's better than the pope. Py put out a picture of himself as the pope. Um, I'm sorry. I don't mean to go this route, but I'm so irritated about that that that that image. I acted out on that, so I'm I'm right with you on that. Yeah, I'm I'm I I I I'm my brain blew up. Um, but and not from a religious standpoint because, as I've told people before, I'm not the most religious person in the world, not because I don't believe, but because I want to believe, but I look at the world today and I have a hard time connecting the horrors I see on the ground with the concept of a greater good. uh there's something going 39 minuteson that's got to be explained to me better. Maybe there's men of faith and women of faith who can do that for me, but I'm not there yet. But I respect people of faith. I respect their faith. But more importantly, as an American, I respect the Constitution of the United States and the vision of the founding fathers. And you know that James Madison, John J, and uh and Alexander Hamilton, the men who wrote the the the the Federalist Papers, these are men of deep faith, deep faith. And they actually believed that God um was was driving them you know through his you know divine spirit. But they never once said I am God. I am acting as God. What they said is God motivated God inspired us to do this to make this country. And then Thomas Jefferson wisely came in in 1802 uh in his letter to the Danbury Baptist and said separation of church and state. We don't have state religion. This president is ignorant of that. He couldn't tell you who Thomas Jefferson was. He doesn't know. I'm just telling you, this is not a smart man. And he doesn't know who Alexander Hamilton is. He doesn't know who, you know, uh, James Madison is or John J. He doesn't know anything about these people. And if he did, he he he has to understand that what he what that that image isn't just an insult to people of faith. And if you're a Christian, I I can't imagine you're not hugely offended by this, but this is to every American. Every American because a president of the United States can never wrap himself in the cloak of religious divinity. We have a separation of church and state. It cannot happen. We do not have a supreme leader. And yet, that's what he's postured himself as being, a supreme leader. This man is a blasphemist. It That's it. I'm sorry. I'm I'm blown up. I get it, man. Believe me, I felt the same way. That's why I sent something out on X. People can go look at that if they want to hear my views. Um, let's take a look at kind of where this leaves us, though. Uh, because there's there's some near-term issues. I'm going to put back up this comment by Galib. Where did that one? I think it's this one here where he seems to be tracking on on what's at risk here. He says, "Enjoy the current pump prices because this blockade is soon going to make you nostalgic for gas. It's only as expensive as it is right now because President Trump can try and massage things the way they want, but time is definitely on the Iranian side. They know how to suffer. They're definitely suffering from these bombs that have happened so far and now than the shut off from the straight, etc. But they're designed that way. I mean, they they planned for it is a better way to put it. We, on the other hand, Trump desperately needs this stuff off the table quick because oil price is still above $100 right now and it's only going to continue to go up if he has this long-term blockade. I mean, he could do the blockade. He cannot go in on the ground, but that's not going to defeat Iran. It's not going to do anything more to Iran. Just going to make him sit there and say, "Yep, how long you want to go?" Well, we can't go that long and then something will have to be done. So, how does President Trump square that circle? He does. I know. I'm asking you stuff is not fair again. But that's the thing. You know, you you look at gas prices. I'm I work for a company. I I I I'm not an employee, but I I've been writing for them now since 2004. Uh Energy Intelligence. It's a um they they basically it's a publication company that has a number of publications. Uh Energy Compass I think is their their flagship. U their clientele are the major oil producing companies of energy producing companies of the world. Every year they have a conference called oil and money. Um it sort of explains where they at and it's attended by every single CEO of every of the of the majors. The these guys are the flagship of the energy uh world and they do energy security. Um and that's where I come in. I'm supposed to you know be I I I I write on issues of energy security. I don't claim to be an economist. Um I don't I I couldn't tell you anything about Kinsey economics. Um and I don't claim to be a petroleum engineer. There's people out there. But what I am is a geopolitical analyst who understands the the global energy market. You know, we we have a lot of people out there right now talking about Venezuela and Venezuelan oil. You do know that Venezuela isn't producing that much oil right now. And to get Venezuela to produce oil is going to require years, 5, 10 years, 15 years maybe to get it up to its potential. Um, so there is no Venezuelan oil available to offset the loss of 22 to 25% of the world's energy resources that are no longer coming out of the Middle East. Um, so there, you know, I I hear there's ships flowing in to the Caribbean to load up with Venezuelan oil. No, they're not. literally they're not uh they may be coming in and hope to get access to you know energy from the United States but again there's a finite level where energy self-sufficient um you know and we can export energy but we don't have the capacity now to replace what was uh is being locked out by the the Middle East. So this notion that the United States is going to be the world's gas station is absurd. what we're going to become is a is a place for people to come if they want to pay, you know, top dollar to American oil companies. But this is why we had to lift sanctions against Russia because Russia is a major oil producer. They can export a hell of a lot more oil than we can. And um they're they're going to be making money. And the fact that Russia is making money, I think it's good for Russia. It brings a lot of stability to Russia and all this, but and there's no reason why Russia shouldn't make money on the oil market. I mean, they're a sovereign nation. The United States shouldn't have any right to impede. But the policy objectives of the United States in imposing sanctions were to deny Russia access to this income stream to help, you know, choke off Russia's defense industry, the funding of defense industry. Trump administration threw all that out. They're the ones who invented it. They're the ones who invented the policy of sanctioning Russian energy, and yet they just threw it away. Which means the Trump administration stands for nothing. There is no foundational ideological, you know, basis for anything they do. It's all about Donald Trump's image, all about his ego. It's all about pleasing the cult of personality that has surrounded him. Um, and and that means that we can go anywhere and, you know, in terms of direction, what's going on, as long as it can be spun to be favorable to the president, all bets are off. We anything can happen, right? And now let's let's take a look at what happens when spin meets reality. Trump can say whatever he wants, but with this big declaration of this uh oil blockade. Uh there are others. This is in the Russian media here on top. This is translated into English, but they're saying Beijing warns the United States that the blockade of hormones does not 46 minutesapply to Chinese tankers, warning the United States against any interference in the process of their energy supply. So that leads us to the problem. You talk about how hard it would be if we actually wanted to do a a blockade. They could skirt the shoreline, whatever. What happens, Scott, if the Chinese says, "You know what? I ain't skirting anything. I'm going right down the middle, and I'm going to come out and dare you to stop my ship." What happens if we do? Well, you're a student of the Bible, Colonel. Um, what happened when Moses went to the Red Sea? It parted. And that's what the United States Navy will do. It will part. and uh and and and and we will do nothing and nor will we interdict there there's less demand for it but you know Russian tankers I don't I don't see but Chinese look one of the first things that happened when this uh ceasefire came in is that China and Pakistan went in and signed a whole bunch of deals with um with uh with with Iran to get China desperately needs the spigot to be turned back on. They need Iranian energy to be flowing. This is essential for their economic stability. Um, this is an existential issue for the Chinese and for the Americans out there that like me are struggle with multi-el, you know, words with multiple syllables. Um, that means this is life and death. Literally life and death. The Chinese have worked too hard and too long to build up the economic reality that they have. They are thriving. They are prospering. If you guys don't believe me, go to China. You'll be shocked by what you see. highspeed trains that actually work at high speed. Uh cities that are clean, modern, well lit. Um are there problems in China? Sure, there are. And if you look hard enough, you can find them. Just like here, I don't have to look very hard. I can go right out my front yard and find a whole bunch of problems with the infrastructure in modern day America. But the Chinese are doing all right. Um but in order to do that, they have a model that requires a certain level of energy consumption on a reliable basis. That's called energy security. And um you know I think one of the things we're going to see from the Chinese is that they will never again allow themselves to be in a position where you know this this significant percentage of their energy supplies can be put at risk. You're going to see a whole bunch of new pipeline deals with Russia and and things of that nature. And but right now they need the Iranian energy. We're not going to if we stop them we are literally talking about a war with China. Now, I want to remind the American people, too, that um in case you think that the Taiwanese are going to be on our side long term, um one of the things that happened here is that Taiwan understands the United States can never secure it, that the United States provides no security at all. The head of the opposition party, and that's the opposition party only in terms of the presidency, uh Kintang party, they're the majority party or they're part of a majority coalition in the parliament. um just flew to uh mainland China where she met with Xi Jinping, the president of China, who's now talking about the possibility of a visit to Taiwan. It's over, ladies and gentlemen. It's over. We lost. Uh and we're losing everywhere because of this energy. South Korea, um you know, 43 I forget, I think it's 43% of their energy comes from the Middle East. Imagine losing 43%. The ch the Japanese are worth 93% of their energy comes from the Middle East. Uh they're shutting down. Australia, no diesel. And you've looked at Australia, all the cities are on the coast, which means that trucks, big ass trucks, use my language, big trucks have to drive across, trucks use diesel. And when you don't have any diesel, trucks don't drive. And when trucks don't drive, goods don't get to the stores and the store shelves are empty. That's Australia, great American ally. You guys know about Alus, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, the big tripartite alliance that was supposed to create nuclear submarines to deter the Chinese. Well, there ain't no outus anymore. The UK is done with us. They're not playing that game anymore. And Australia just realized that we we're nothing. America provides nothing but harm. That's the end of that. We ruined the tripartite relationship with South Korea and Japan. We've ruined the Alus relationship. We're ruining everything. NATO gone. I mean, this is an I call it an empire termination event. uh this war with Iran there. The ramifications of our defeat in Iran are mind-boggling. Um but again, most Americans probably didn't understand a word I just said. Yeah. Well, they'll they'll they'll know soon enough when the ramifications start to come out and then they can't be spun anymore. Uh but we'll see how that's going to man manifest itself. Let me in the last few minutes we have you mentioned Russia and and NATO. Um, with all the focus on this war here for the last six plus weeks, there hadn't been a lot of focus on what's been going on in Russia, Ukraine. U and, and it looks like that the Russians have, it was also during the rainy season, so there wasn't a lot of movement, but there still has been some pretty consistent uh, at least positional battles that have been going on, but there's growing evidence that there could be a either a late spring or early summer offensive by the Russian side, which could be their biggest offensive of the war. What can you tell us about the status of the the Ukraine war and and what impact has this war had on Ukraine's portion in it? Well, let's just start. First of all, Ukraine has been blown off the headlines. Um the war hasn't stopped. I can tell you right now the war is going on with the same level and intensity as before, even more so. While we've been focused on Iran, Ukraine has been trying to launch a number of um you know counterattacks regionally to gain or their goal is to show that they have the ability to continue to resist to push back the Russians to justify uh continued expenditures by Europe, the NATO and hopefully motivate the United States. Uh the only thing that's happened is that the Russians have slaughtered uh tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers uh and destroyed hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles um without losing significant territory. The Russians have this, you know, when you look at a map there, it's not, you know, a single line here. You have, you know, the blue, which is the Ukrainians. You have the red, which is the Russians. In the middle, you have a gray zone. 52 minutesThat gray zone is sort of like a no man's land. So these Ukrainian advances are advances into the gray zone. They don't penetrate into the red zone. And as they come through the grain zone, this is part of Russian defensive doctrine to absorb the attack. They have lead elements in the first line of defense, second line, third line of defense, all of which are designed to yield, bring them into a fire trap where they die. And the Russians have been very good at killing the Ukrainians, slaughtering them by the tens of thousands every week. Um, Ukraine is running out of resources. The Russians are shaping the battlefield. Even in this bad weather, Russia is moving in. If you take a look, every day they're seizing this tree line. They're seizing this village, which is gives them a geographical advantage. They're securing this line of communication. Um, and what's going to happen this summer once the weather gets better, uh, there's two big there's a there's sort of a an urban belt that's left in the Dombas. Uh, Kamatsk and Slavansk are are two of the the major cities there and the Russians are closing in on that. you're going to see the Russians seize uh these uh these cities um before the the the summer ends. And when that happens, um the the Ukrainian position in the in the Dome Bass collapses and um that you know that now you know where the Russians say we will never uh the Ukraans we'll never give up the dome pass. Well, you don't need to. The Russians will own it. They'll have it. You'll be kicked out. Then they'll just continue to advance. This war doesn't end until Ukraine capitulates completely. And what's happening right now is that the uh the Russians have, you know, just the all the advantages. Uh, another interesting thing is just drone warfare. The fact that we just don't have a clue what the reality of warfare is today. I'm actually going to be going back to Russia in June. And um I can't get into the details, but I'm going to be doing a very big program on drone warfare to try and capture it and understand it so that I can bring it back and tell the American people and tell the Europeans too, if you think you're going up against the Russians, you're not. You won't survive a day. an American armored division would be completely attrated within 3 to 5 days of contact uh with with the Russians without doing any meaningful harm on the Russians because the the drone the reality of drone warfare and the intensity of drone conflict um the the the it's an interesting topic um you know one that we should be we should be knowledgeable of not because I want to you know position us to defeat the Russians I want us to say that war isn't the answer right now there's too many people that think, you know, oh, we're just going to go to military power. Well, we're not. Um, war isn't the answer. And in this case, it's just like with Iran where I tried to tell as many people as possible, their missiles will bring down death and destruction on anybody who goes against them. And we're not going to be able to stop their missiles. I'm telling you right now, if we go to war with Russia, their drones will slaughter us. I mean, the Ukrainians, who are very good at drone warfare, uh, participated in a series of NATO exercises and small Ukrainian hunter killer drone teams stopped a NATO armor advance before it even got started. The NATO guys didn't even know how to begin to operate there. And the Navy side, halfway through the exercise, the Allied commanders are like complaining, Ukraine, where are you? They're like, we've already sunk all your ships. We've been bouncing uh drones off your holes for the last several hours. You just don't notice it. Um, you know, and this is the reality of drone warfare today and the Ukraine are very good at it. Question that that baffles me. You're an intelligence officer. You talked earlier in this show about your job is to tell policy makers the truth and they can make whatever decision they want with it. How can it be that I I thought that when this war started off, I thought Russia was a little bit behind the eightball with drone warfare given the 2020 war between Armenian Azarban where it was really demonstrated. I thought Russia would have been further along. They weren't, but they figured it out pretty quick. And then they just gone through iterations. Ukraine been on the up, the Russians have, etc. But now then we've got four full years of observation about the realities you just talked about here. And it should be painfully aware to everybody in NATO and especially the United States who's supposed to be paying attention to this stuff. But so far, all I've seen is that Pete Hexth make a couple of videos about how cool it was in front of the Pentagon that one time and had drones following him. Uh, and then they have this I saw one contract in the last month I think it was to where we're going to get 300,000 drones in some period of time. And I'm like, wait a minute. The the Russian the Russians make that much in like about a month. I think if you don't have something that's already at scale, you can't even dream about going up on a head-to-head notice uh with the Russians anywhere. And yet I don't see us doing that. How can you explain that? Well, first of all, that that that thousand drones is the Shahed drones which Russia now produces. That's just of the the Shahed 136 variant. Russia now does the uh guranium 56 more advanced models. The Russians are producing several thousand of these strategic drones a day. Um so so people understand uh they on their big days against Ukraine they'll fire um 700 800. That means that they still have 200 a day they're putting into storage. On the normal day, they're firing 250, which means 750 plus are going into storage. Russia has accumulated um close to a 100,000 strategic drones that are able to be used against uh the West and we have no defense, literally no defense against them. So, it's they've already run won the strategic war on that. The tactical drones, first of all, the the then, you know, we see these uh these these quad, you know, quadcopters, right? You got one in your back. They're running around doing their stuff. But there's, you know, the Russians have several different variations and so do the Ukrainians. They have something called the Molen now, which is like a a giant um you know, RV um you know, RV controlled aircraft, but that goes out there and it does tremendous uh damage attacking in the depth. Then they have the um the the the the other man, I'm blowing up my bra. They have another one that goes out and uh and does the same thing. But the point is the Russians can control and dominate um the battlefield from the line of contact all the way out to 50 to 70 kilometers deep. Um that means anything operating in that zone is going to be located and struck by by a Russian drone. But here's the thing. You say, why why isn't America catching up? Well, we'll we'll take uh you know, Sergeant um I don't know, we'll give him a name. We'll just call him Ivan. Why not? He's Russian. He's Ivan. Sergeant Ivan's out there with his drone team. And um you know, they have a 3D printer that's printing out drone parts and then their guys at the front assemble them uh using different components. But let's say yesterday the Ukrainians did something that the Russians noticed their drones were going out and were getting deviated. They collected the intelligence. Instead of reporting back to, you know, the Pentagon and saying, "Hey, something happened. Could you get a tiger team together to uh to look at this?" And then six months later, defense industry says, "Here's the fix." And they put it down. The the the sergeant right there starts tinkering and they send out a drone. It didn't work. It it veered off, blew up. Give me another drone. They send out he can send out 15 drones and um and until he gets the solution, and then he, you know, writes it down, radios it out, and other people's doing the solution, and now they got the fix. They'll get the fix the same day the problem manifests itself. But you heard what I just said. The sergeant expended 15 drones. Could you imagine Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli in the Marine Corps going out there and blowing through 15 drones? I mean, I've been there when we signed stuff out to Marines. Um, and you know, if I sign something to a Marine, I said, "Here's a $2,000 drone. What are you going to do with it?" You know, so I'm going to crash it experimenting. No, he won't because he's going to be scared. He be like, "I can't crash it. I'm signed for it. I'm responsible for this." We have to change the You know this crew. You know that. You know how this works. You you've seen we have to change the mindset. We have to change we have to empower that Lance corporal to make decisions right now that are only made by three star generals. We have to push down the decision-m capability in drone warfare because that's you don't have time in drone warfare to collect information, push it back up to a Tiger team. Defense industry gets together and then they come down. That takes months to do that. We saw that with the the defeating the IED uh campaign. and it took too long to respond. What you need to do is push down the innovation right there on the ground level and trust the sergeant and the lieutenant and the captain to know their business. And that's what the Russians and the Ukrainians have done. This is why the innovation is taking place. We are so far behind. We are sitting there fighting drone warfare that's two years old. We're looking at two years old doctrine. We don't comprehend what's happening right now. Um, and and until we change our mindset, until we allow Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli to go out there and just blow through 15 drones a day, experimenting, having fun. Just go out there and have fun. You know, you can just see the commanding officer freak out. What do you mean 15 drones? They're $2,000. He just blew through $30,000 worth of drones. We can't have that. No, you have to have that. Money cannot be the issue. And, you know, just go ahead and stop building an aircraft carrier. take all that money from the aircraft carrier, put it into this what the Russians did. They've created a drone branch. You know, we have infantry, we have artillery, we have armor. They now have infantry, artillery, armor, and drones. The drone branch that um operates. They have a special unit Rubicon that hunts and kills things. It's hats off to the Russians. This is why I want to go and capture what they're doing so the American people can better understand the reality of drone warfare. And in fact, this is this is showing you what the Russians are doing specifically on the fiber optic drones. This is this is as of last September, but the Russia were producing 50,000 of those drones per month. And uh I've seen some reports to suggest that it's actually higher rate than that right now. And and we're not doing a a shred of that. Uh we don't even have that postponed in there. Uh I I just still though there has to be other guys like you and we'll you will stay with the Marine Corps that are saying um excuse me sir but um we're way behind the power curve here. I'm looking at the intelligence like I'm supposed to on the Russian side on the Ukrainian side. They're doing all the stuff that you just said open source. Shouldn't someone be telling our the the the three star generals like you're talking about there that hey, we have to make some massive changes immediately if we even have a prayer of holding our own if we get into a war with these guys. There there should be we have to change uh the fiscal approach. Um you know, not to when I was a lieutenant, I got arrested um and was going to be put in jail because I did invasion. And I went out and I uh I went to um Defense Logistic Agency in Mojave and got excess. You know how when you order the new radios, there's always some that don't get issued out and so they send it to Mo. So I said, "What the hell are you doing with these radios?" They said, "They're just sitting here." I said, "I'll sign for them." I built my own Humvee with radios communicating with drones. I'm the guy that helped invent uh the initial adjustment of artillery from drones before we had GPS and all this. Um, I I got radars to communicate with the drones, radars to communicate directly with. I, you know, combined it all in. Um, and I did it all because I was an innovative battalion S2. Um, I also ended up obligating millions of dollars of um, you know, R&D money. I wasn't authorized to obligate. I didn't realize it. I just thought I could go to place and sign for something and things, magic things happened. And when the bill came to headquarters Marine Corps, uh they they were looking for me. And explain that to you. Yeah, they well they sent me to flight school first of all. I got that's how I got to be an aerial observer because um they were going to grab me in court marshal me. But my commander said, "Well, he's in flight school. It's high-profile school. Why don't we let him finish and then we'll talk to them." And they took the four months that I was away to calm down. When I came back, they attested what I did and it all worked. And they they realized, "Okay, we're going to give it to the right people." Um and I just got yelled at. Um but but my point is that's the kind of innovation you need if you're going to succeed. Um had I not done this, had I done it the Marine Corps way, we wouldn't have been directing um uh artillery fire from uh drones. You know, the battleship Missouri during uh during Desert Storm was directing fire using drones, using the tactics that were developed in 29 Palms. Um you know, had had we done it the normal way, we may not have been there at that time. This is the kind of thing we have to stop threatening people to put them in jail. Maybe we don't let lieutenants sign for $3 million worth of stuff. But um but maybe what we do is create the budget so that lieutenants can sign for three million and we don't blink. We don't worry about it. We go let them. You failed. That's okay. Did you learn? Good. Move on. We we have to stop making the expenditure of money um problematic. We have to let these guys at the junior level do their job. They're the ones who know. They're the ones who are out there. They They understand what's going on. The people up in the Pentagon, the people in defense contractors, they only care about the dollars. They only care about the big bucks. They care about the contracts. We want success. We have to empower the people at the tactical level to do this stuff. Um or else we're never going to catch up. The Russians have the laboratory of war. We we're in a peace time environment. We'll never catch up in a peace time environment. Right. No. Never. And and of course I I I'm in on the same sheet of music as you. I I am definitely not advocating for us to get ready to go to war with Russia or China or anybody else. Uh but I also want us to have a good self-defense capacity. And right now we don't I I fear and I'd like your view on this as I know I've got you a little bit over time already. Uh but uh I I fear that we could be setting up a situation like the French did in in World War II where they thought they were the dominant military power on the European continent and they basically just did World War I better. Whereas the Germans were saying no, they're they're they're doing all kinds of things to to uh modernize their forces. They they've lowered down the power to to the lower unit commanders and they didn't put everything at the top. The the the French specifically did. And then when May 1940 came, the Germans came and they had one breakthrough on there and the whole place collapsed on the other side. Literally the entire British, French army uh and France lost about two weeks. The their entire country they lost because they were there was they were too uh their brains were not sophisticated enough to be fluid enough. They're still thinking World War I, slow, methodic, etc. The Germans were quicker than mentally and thinking. And right now, you tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I think that if the Russians and maybe even the Chinese for that matter, because they seem to be paying more attention, if we went up against somebody commensurate about that, whatever it says on paper, the mental acuity of the Russian side is is like light years ahead of where we are. Yeah. It's, you know, the Chinese right now are not combat tested. So, um I think they're very innovative, but as you know, um the bestlaid plans, nothing survives initial contact with the enemy. Um, except that having been in initial contact with the enemy, it's no longer initial contact with the enemy. Meaning, you're doing combat proven tactics. That's the Russians today. When we face, if we ever face the Russians on the battlefield, this will not be their day one. This is their day, you know, 1,400. It's our day one. We will all die. That is a guarantee. We do not have the tactics capable of surviving on a modern battlefield. If we go up against the Russians, they will decimate us. We don't we we we still think in terms of armor brigade uh employment like we did during the Cold War. Um that's not how it works nowadays. And if we don't have drones, drones do everything. They serve as cavalry. They serve as screens. They they they do deep strike. They do intelligence collection. Um drones are fire support. When you do an assault, a drone unit comes with you and is out there doing support. If you haven't integrated this all in, you're going to die. And if the United States goes to war with an enemy like Russia or um the Chinese, um again, like I said, the Chinese, you know, it'll be their day one, too. They have they'll have lessons to learn. But the Russians, they've already learned all their lessons and we're not going to teach them anything. We're just going to die. Let's hope that that stays theoretical because I don't want us to go up against them at all and I don't want anyone to die. But, uh we're we're not doing what we're we're not earning our money right now. Our leaders aren't. That's the bottom line. Um, and we appreciate you bringing that uh that illuminating that because we need to have that done. But as always, Scott, we really appreciate you coming on to these these truths, these uh these Marine Corps truths. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And we also appreciate you guys. Thanks you being with us today. We've had quite a few uh shows. We got it at least three more tomorrow. We'll see what happens. If anything happens overnight, we'll always bring that to you. But, uh, we're always grateful for you and appreciate you and we'll see you on the next episode of the Daniel Davis deep dive. You know, I don't try to talk you into buying gold or tell you how to run your stock portfolio, but there is a way you can help us. Subscribe, hit that like button, and share this with somebody you love.
Iran & China CRUSH Trump’s Hormuz Blockade, US Navy BACKS DOWN | Elijah Magnier Danny Haiphong Streamed live 2 hours ago #iran #trump #china
Elijah Magnier joins to discuss Iran's devastating counter to the US naval blockade and why Trump is losing it with each passing day of the 2-week "ceasefire."
Transcript
Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the show. It's your host Danny Hiong. I am joined by war correspondent and independent journalist Elijah Magnier. Everyone hit the like button as you come on. That helps boost this show in YouTube's algorithm. But Elijah, welcome back. Hello and thank you for having me. Of course. Well, Elijah, I wanted to get right to the uh developments here uh especially uh the uh blockade. I wanted to ask you about this, okay? Because this is uh this comes on the heels of this so-called ceasefire. And I wanted to ask you first your reactions to it seems like this blockade is underway. Reports from Al Jazzer say there's over 10,000 US forces, a number of destroyers and ships sailing around the straight of Hormuz uh not in the straight of sailing around it. And uh essentially uh what has happened though is that both Iran and China uh and and other related ships have been actually getting through at least four in the last day including two that actually visit Iranian ports which the promise of the blockade was to hit these ships like he did like the Trump administration did Venezuela if they were to dock and and load up on Iranian ports. and at least three others have crossed the straight of Hormuz since this blockade essentially began. Maybe you can help the audience understand Elijah what what what role does this blockade now have in this war and how is Iran and of course its partners and friends China being the biggest condemning this and also uh uh making good on its word that it was going to continue to sail through the straight of Hormuz and and do what it needed to do with Iran. Uh what does this all mean? Where are we at right now in this war? I need I need to give a little bit of background first for people to just be able to follow. So we have a 40 days war and then we have the Americans coming up with uh the different narrative, different objectives, not able to meet the objectives. They told us they want to regime change. They failed. They said they destroyed the Iranian missile system. They failed because Iran was still launching missiles until they acknowledged that actually the Iranians are defending themselves and the Israelis and the Americans are unable to achieve their objectives. This is why they agreed to go to Islamabad for the first round of talks. Now that's interesting because this is where everything started. We have at the end of the talks the US vice president uh vans saying that these talks have failed. In my opinion, these talks did not fail. They were not destinated to reach an agreement from the first time they meet after 40 days of very brutal war. So they were supposed to exchange ideas, set the limits, try to elbow one another, try to test the limits of one another. And then we have something interesting coming from Donald Trump. He's saying, I don't accept 90%. I don't accept 95%. I want 100%. That says a lot because it means they have reached more or less 90% of the limit what Donald Trump wanted and what the Israelis wanted because at the end of the day this is an Israeli negotiation meeting. This is an Israeli war is not an American war. And then the Americans decided to set up a blockade around Iran. Now this is not working and we have seen today in the last in the first uh hours of the blockade the movement of the shipments. The Americans cannot stop the Iranian oil being sold to China because then the Americans are endangering the national security of China because the Chinese economy and energy represent the red line for China. Therefore, the Americans are caught now between not being able to implement the blockade until the end as they wished. But at the same time, we see the Iranians not being very harsh on the movement and the passage within the straight of Hormuz. And then we have an information coming out that actually both sides are going to meet maybe in Vienna, maybe in Geneva, but in a European country. They're not going to meet in Islamabad. And the Americans by accepting to meet in a European country actually they trying to regain the relationship with the Europeans. And what is the conclusion about what's happening today? We have a ceasefire that is still holding. We have the gathering of forces that has no purpose really but to show a force that is not going to deter Iran and make it change its mind. This is why we see there is a space within only two days of the announcement of the failure or what the Americans said it's a failure of the negotiations then we have a second meeting happening this week in the next few days which means that all this blockade actually is not working and is not going to work not because this will not affect Iran it will affect Iran but will not it because Iran has a railway with China through Isbakistan. They have railway reaching the Caspian Sea. They have the supply line with Russia open. They have seven countries bordering Iran. The line with Turkey is very active. So they can really bother the Iranians like they have been doing for the last 47 years. But this is not going to give the effect that Donald Trump wants or wants us to believe. So at the end of the day, he is trying, but then he's going to go back to the negotiation. Is that a good thing for the Americans? Yes, because it offers a ladder for Donald Trump to come down the tree he climbed on for Iran because Iran is in a defensive position, but not for Israel who wanted the chaos in Iran. Yeah, those are all uh great points, Elijah. I guess my question then is is why why were these ships allowed to pass? Because some have noted that perhaps US forces are not ready to interdict these ships uh just yet uh given the rapid nature in which this blockade was called, declared and acted upon. while others have noted that there may be deeper reasons to it. uh especially given that Saudi Arabia right now we're hearing is actually begging essentially through back channels for Trump to stop this given all the news we've heard maybe you can comment on too about the situation in the region the Gulf region in particular being very bad in terms of exactly what the straightforward is all about or has been all about which is uh the shipments the trade and the movement and flow of oil and other precious commodities for uh the global economy which now have become a major part of this war. Now, this war has offered uh Iran a new leverage card, which is the straight of homes. That was not the case before the war. For Iran, this is a great source of income because it can bring between 70 80 to 90 billion a year, which is quite a lot, equal more or less to the income from selling the gas, the energy, and the oil. Now for the Gulf countries, this is a problem because they will have to end up increasing the price of oil and it's no longer going to be competitive in comparison to the Venezuelan oil for example even if there is a difference of quality in particular the Kuwaiti oil that is the most expensive one and the uh Venezuelan is very heavy but it will create a disturbant in in the market in the energy market. But what's happening with the Gulf countries? First, they are extremely angry with Iran and the level of hate toward Iran has never reached this level. Nevertheless, on the other hand, they understand now that the Americans are incapable of defending themselves because they did not protect their own bases. They are incapable of defending the Arab countries where they have offered bases for the Americans spending billions of dollars. The Qatari spend 11 billions to Aladid military and air base. So all this it turned out to be really useless because the Arabs needed to spend on their interception missile system to defend themsel and the US bases and they have to go and buy more missile system to defend the American bases and themsel because the Americans have put all their effectives in Israel and this is not their war. They were not consulted to start a war for the Americans to start a war and they were not consulted even when the Americans uh decided to go and sit with the Iranians and they show their limitations. For the Arabs, it was for some of them like Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis, they wanted to finish off Iran, but this didn't happen. Which means that now they have to deal with Iran that is going to say rightly, I have managed to stand up against two of the most um powerful armies in the world, the Americans uh in the world and the Israelis in the region and still alive. and the um Iranian uh ruling system is still intact and the Iranians show a high resilience by renewing the leadership on the first and the second level immediately and continue the war for the Arabs. Now they have to deal with Iran, but they also have to find an alternative to the straight of Horus that is going to require a lot of investment like the one of the Saudis through the Yombo um Oloduct going toward the Red Sea. But even that is vulnerable because Ansar in Yemen are sitting on the corner of Babel Mandib and they can shut down that. So the message to the Arabs today, they really have to establish security agreement with Iran to make sure that the people of the region can look after their own security, which is something that Jawad Zarif, the Iranian former prime foreign 12 minutesminister when he was uh inactive in the Iranian administration under President Roani proposed exactly this to the Arabs to set up a security agreement where they look after their own securities. So for now the Americans are behaving in a way disregarding completely the interest of the Arabs and looking only after the interest of Israel which is going to bring more logic not love. There will never be love and good ties between the Arabs and Iran. But the logic is to establish a relationship sufficient enough to create a kind of balance in the security agreement. Yeah. Well, that's a far different arrangement, Elijah, than what we've had especially in the last month and a half, but uh everything leading up to it. And so I I guess my next question to you is does this mean that the Trump administration, the US and and even Israel in some respects given its dependency on the US in so many ways is uh on the retreat now despite all of this talk about the blockade and obliterating ships if they you know end up passing through and uh you know that they'll hit all of Iran's fast attack miss uh ships. all of this. Does this simply mean that actually the the opposite is happening? The United States is gearing up and uh and is preparing to settle this conflict given that uh all of these developments you laid out are very unfavorable for the United States. Your thoughts on this?
Well, I think the Americans would like to show their muscles to the Iranians in this blockade and they would like to clash with the Iranians to a certain point just to show the world how they can sink this ship or that ship or they have intercepted a tanker or whatever. They want to demonstrate something for the Iranian side. They're not going to give them the possibility or the chance to do so, because Iran has been reacting, but not taking the initiative to attack, and the Americans have been taking the initiatives to attack all the time. This is how this war has started. So if the Americans want to keep the pace as it is today, as we have seen, no clashes, no provocations, we've seen the Americans keeping at least 200 kilometers away from the Iranian limits around the Shahaba port, that is by the way run by the Indians, not run by the Iranians. There's an agreement with India. So the blockade is not against Iran, it's against China, India, and other parties who are buying the Iranian oil. For Iran, it's really careless. Iran is more or less careless about the American decisions, because 30% of the Chinese oil comes from Iran, and Iran is selling around 1.5 million barrels per day to China with the increase of the price of the barrel falling to the advantage of Iran, and Russia, by the way, that plays a very important role.
The Americans so far are not provoking the Iranians, and vice versa. So what we see today is more talk toward a possibility of meeting, where they will meet, what is the agenda, what are the concessions one side will give to another. So for example, the Iranians are saying we can stop enriching uranium, because we have enough for five years. So we can stop for five years, and you can inspect our program. So we are back to the JCPOA 2015 set up by Obama. But Donald Trump cannot stick to this nuclear deal concluded between Barack Obama and Iran. So he's trying to do something different, which is more or less exactly the same. Obama said 10 years for no enrichment beyond 3.75 and 20%. Donald Trump is going to say exactly the same, but he's saying 20 years, just to show that he can reach the double for Iran. As long as Iran is capable of enriching 3.75 and 20% for medical and research, it's enough. In fact, the 60% were only a response to Donald Trump, who pulled out of the JCPOA 2018. In March 20, 2018, and in March 2019, Iran started to enrich to a level beyond the 20%. So it is easy for Iran to reach an agreement over the nuclear dossier. However, it will never accept any agreement over the missiles, because that is Iran's only way to defend itself. Without the missiles in the last 40 days, we would have seen Iran completely destroyed, and the relationship with the allies that is sovereign. Nobody can tell any country who they can be friends with or not. So at the end of the day, now as I see it, today the situation actually is not as bad as the Americans would like us to think, as long as there are no provocations.
Yeah, I I saw you reporting on this. you know, China being the first to break the blockade, Iran not holding back on continuing its uh shipments and its uh you know, activities in the straight of Hormuz just because the United States made these threats. And so, you know, from here, Elijah, I guess a lot of what happens next and what's happening now is uh the exchange still of terms of this war. How will these terms what are these terms and how will these terms either change or not change uh given uh now the US I mean this has happened before during the Trump administration blockades Venezuela etc having varying degrees of success Iran is a different situation and so now with the talk of more talks I'm seeing Pakistan maybe as being another venue uh where the they could happen um I guess I I'm curious about your uh uh thoughts on uh Iran's right now Iran has a certain set of demands including Lebanon which I know you've been following closely fighting is still happening there is very active and uh the Israelis are continuing to strike uh Lebanese civilians in infrastructure. uh how do how does this all play out now that this blockade seems to be um ineffective and and essentially confronted pretty directly by Iran and China and the rest of its friends. It's important to recognize that Benjamin Netanyahu managed to divide the two fronts, the Iranian and the Lebanese fronts, and he was mainly held by the Lebanese president and prime minister who rejected uh any inclusion of Iran into the deal and to speak in the name of the Lebanese people to uh force a ceasefire. uh upon Israel. So the Lebanese came out say nobody negotiates on our behalf which is right. Iran was not negotiating on their behalf but was imposing a ceasefire that the Lebanese said no even that we don't want. And actually while we are talking there is a meeting between the Israelis and the Lebanese in Washington uh at the US foreign ministry secretary of state. So the meeting uh the Lebanese are going to completely naked. They have no leverage. They cannot offer anything to Israel but the skin of Hezbollah. And to offer Hezbollah on the table for the Israelis is not something that the Lebanese government can do because the Israelis are in a incapable of uh killing or destroying or disarming Hezbollah and the Lebanese government is very weak, not in a strong position to do so. So basically the president and prime minister really put themselves in a very awkward situation where the way out is only a picture with the Israeli ambassador and the the Lebanese ambassador in Washington and the Israelis asking them to disarm Hezbollah before they can talk to them. So that is one side how it's going to play out for Iran because of the Lebanese said we will deal with ourselves thenah and Israel will continue fighting and this fight is going to continue is not going to stop not in in the next week because the Israelis want to occupy the village of Bentage Bale and create another kind of security zone but not made of villages made of um completely destroyed villages similar to Rafa. This is what the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz promised at the very beginning of the renewal of this conflict saying we will turn all these villages to exactly the same uh way we have turned Rafa which is completely destroyed. It's a flat area with nothing. So it means that tens of thousands of Lebanese will be completely homeless and it doesn't mean that by doing so for the Israelis there will be security. Hezbollah will not stop fighting. Controlling the land by the Israelis means is one thing and defending it remaining without being harassed is something else. Hezbollah today has turned into a resistant force. It's not a kazi army. It is a force that is dedicated to one objective to harass the occupational forces and for that they can do that for decades. Yeah. Elijah, do you see any scenario where as how I'm seeing this develop is the Trump administration of the United States appears to be while talking a very harsh and big kind of war game. Uh it does it's engaged in a ceasefire and even its blockade as you wrote and maybe you can elaborate on this too will might hurt Iran. uh but it also won't break it and it's probably the case that the United States administration knows this.
Do you see any scenario where the US essentially tries to broker a settlement with Iran in order to get out of the mess that it essentially made, and can't really continue, while Iran, given what you just laid out with Lebanon and Hezbollah, actually re-engages with Israel? Because that has been the promise by Iran. And Iran has this demand in the ceasefire terms, while the ceasefire is fast approaching it's two week expiration. And of course Israel is now showing very few signs of letting up. Actually those signs you mentioned of how it is reacting is quite the contrary. So your thoughts on this.
So basically what US vice president Vance told us is quite important. He said the negotiations have failed. But then we have the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he receives a report daily from the US administration, and that Mr. Vance contacted him on his way back to Washington to tell him about the news. And Netanyahu called Vance during the meeting in Islamabad. Which means Benjamin Netanyahu has no problem in offending the American people, and the American administration, by saying, "actually the American administrations report to me about what's happening. So I can tell them what to do, what they cannot do, what I accept and what I do not accept." That clear declaration of control and power from Israel over the United States of America is really scary. To come out to the media and say it so clearly. And because of that, for Benjamin Netanyahu, it's important to continue the war on at least one front, because this is how he survives. Without war he cannot survive.
Therefore, if there is a deal between the Americans, Israel and Iran, the Iranians will not enrich uranium, let's say for 10 years, like the deal with Barack Obama, then Donald Trump can say, "Well, I'm satisfied." And Benjamin Netanyahu can accept this conclusion too, because both Netanyahu and Trump failed to destroy Iran, and to change the ruling system, and for that the reward that Netanyahu has is to continue the war on Lebanon.
But is he going to achieve any of the objectives? Of course not. Because he did not achieve his objective with Hamas. Hamas still exists in Gaza, is still in control of Gaza. Iran did not fall. It fought back. And Donald Trump said he wanted to participate in the selection of the new leader, but he did not. He accepted that the same ruling system remains in place. And he has no choice to accept it or not, because Iran defended itself well enough to impose its own ruling system on its own people. And Hezbollah only remains because of the weakness of the Lebanese government. But it doesn't mean Netanyahu is going to succeed in Lebanon. He will have some tactical victories, like he can take the city of Bentage Bale. This is where the late S Hassan came out and described Israel as weaker than the spider web. And Netanyahu can come out and brag about it, but he's no longer taken seriously by his own people. For the first time, the Israeli media did not report his words in his last speech, because they are fed up. They don't believe him. They see him repeating exactly the same thing, over and over again, and achieving nothing.
So we see a complete shift of dynamic in the world. The Americans are angry because they see their administration lying to them. They voted for Donald Trump because he declared himself the peace president. They see that the ruler of the United States of America, in relation to foreign policy, is Benjamin Netanyahu, who is telling the world he is leading the United States by the nose.
And then we see the United States losing its allies in Europe and in the Middle East. In Europe, they're not shy to tell Donald Trump off, and say, "We're not participating in your war." In the Middle East, they don't say it, because they have a different culture, but they go to Pakistan, to Turkey, to China to make security deals with them, and then they look at the Americans like, "How dare you talk to us now, or try to impose anything? We're not going to go against you." Otherwise, the Americans can topple all these regimes: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the Emirates, and can change them with the flag of color revolution and democracy.
But the Americans have lost their weight in the Middle East, and they've lost their weight in Europe. Europe today, particularly the United Kingdom, said to the Americans, "No, I am not participating in patrolling the Strait of Hormuz." NATO is not going to support America. These are big decisions that were taken during the war. And this is a huge shift in the future of the United States and its hegemony, when the most powerful country failed to destroy, and control, and make a nation submit, a nation that has been under 47 years of sanctions in this way. And it cannot sit around the negotiation tables like it has achieved something, because what the Americans are taking from the negotiation table today are more or less the same things they took during the last negotiations in Oman, just a few days before the war. And that was said by the British member of the UK foreign ministry, who was an expert, and present during the meeting, who said that Iran has never given what we have received in this dialogue of peace talk, and it was really good to take and grab it. But the Americans did not do that because they were driven by the Israelis to go to war. Therefore, we see today the Americans accepting, and they will accept, what's on the table, that Iran has already offered.
But one thing that is new today. America has lost all its allies, or at least the allies can say no to America now. China has looked very carefully at what happened in the Middle East, and what is the capability of the US to tame and destroy Iran, what the US are capable of, and the way they use their force, and how they escalate from military objectives, to civilian objectives, to destroy the entire civilization of Iran, which just shows how desperate the Americans were to achieve some of the objectives that they did not. So all that today has changed the whole dynamic of geopolitics around the world, and will have consequences for decades to come.
Yeah. That's that's for sure. Uh and you know these consequences are are indeed mounting especially given that Iran is saying that it hasn't shown all its cards. It's talking about having weapons at its disposal if it has to restart any kind of um significant kinetic action against the United States and or Israel that these weapons can be easily unveiled. It's also promising uh to ensure the closure of the Baba mendup straight which for now the last week including the last this has caused a lot of concern among observers especially those observers with connections and attention to the oil markets. Maybe you can talk about what exactly uh you believe in terms of the strategy and the uh flow and movement of this war. uh what exactly is the not just the significance but I guess what 34 minutesis the possible trigger for the closure of the Bedab Strait because that in my estimation at least what I've seen uh in terms of how people are talking about how observers are talking about that it would be a massive catastrophe for both the straight of Hormuz to be under the uh concerted and assertive control of Iran and for the Bend straight to be controlled and uh enforced in that way likely by Ansar Allah maybe also Iran too so uh your thoughts on this what's a question sorry oh what would be what would be the trigger possibly of the closure of the bend straight and and why is it significant to I guess bring up because there's a lot of concern I think by observers and Iran has said that it has this uh ready to uh to happen if uh things get out of hand uh with the United States So the straight of hormones has never been closed. It was uh the passage was reduced and uh particularly anything related to the United States and Israel did not cross the straight of Hormuz. But Iran showed also other things. They uh threatened to close the Babel Mandib and Hezbollah showed us surfacetos surface missiles saying that it has attacked an Israeli vessels in the Mediterranean but showing that the Mediterranean the Mediterranean can also be subject to a closure in case the war escalates. So these messages were uh received by the Americans. The um US administration was taken by surprise. This is what Donald Trump told us from the first few days. They said uh the the Trump said we did not expect the Iranians to react against the Arab countries. And then he said we did not expect the Americans to attack us in the Gulf. He did not expect the Americans to put a limit on the passage of the straight of Hormuz. The Iranians just said, "Oh, we launched several thousands of mines in the water and uh we don't know where they are because uh we just uh putting them there, which is not entirely accurate because they have minds that work with artificial intelligence. They have electronic minds and they have traditional minds and they have exactly the map. But they are saying to the Americans, well actually if you want to be tough on us then you will not be able to cross the straight of Horus in particular when NATO and Europe is not helping you and even if they do they have to slow down and they will be exposed to our missiles. So these are the messages that the Americans have received and I think in my opinion this is why they are not acting too harshly still not excluding the fact that they can still try and attack a vessel or a tanker or anything but they will not be as aggressive as they wanted us to believe when they have taken this decision. So all these elements that Iran uh threw in the uh uh available in the market saying this is what I have. This is where your limitations you will not be able to cross without us and we can tell you where is the safe passage and for that we dictate the policy here. This is why the Americans did not really provoke further the Iranians until today. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow and what kind of leverage Donald Trump wants to bring out of his hat before the meeting. Thinking that that this can be used as a leverage against Iran. He forgot in 2018 that he said, "I'm waiting by the phone for the Iranians to call me." And they never called. He's still not really relying on his memory on how the Iranians function. Is there any act of intimidation because it feels like what or at least the facts are that the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself has taken an approach of intimidation leading to outcomes and talks, right? the more you punish, the harder you hit, the more uh the scarier you are, the bigger you are, the more you bully, that will lead to some kind of outcome in talks. Uh is there I do you see any scenario where that could work at all with Iran? And then that seems to me mean if not there are no options left for the Trump administration other than maybe two in front of him. continue the war, face the consequences there, uh, you know, continue at a more full-scale level or, uh, begin talking seriously about what a reasonable settlement would look like, not just for the United States, which always cares about itself only, but uh, the Iranians, Iran, your thoughts. Well, I think Donald Trump renewed the ceasefire and he said we add additional days to the ceasefire. So, he's not really trying to provoke Iran into the resume of the fight because although we see the gathering of forces, when we see generals resigning in the United States or asked to resign, it means the war plans are not working. There's a big difference between Donald Trump saying, "I want to occupy an island or several islands in Iran and being able to protect them and keep them and keep the control of these islands." This will cost a lot of lives and the Americans will not be able to stabilize themsel in these islands. So the invasion idea has dropped. So what remains when the Americans moved to destroy energy plans, it means they cannot find any more military objectives. Although Iran is still firing missiles on the Gulf, on the Americans, in the Gulf, and on the Israelis. Therefore, the Americans have shown their limitations in this war. And the Iran the Iranians have learned the lesson how to deal with an overwhelming superpower in control of the sky more or less. But it shows how Iran with 1,648,000 kilometers can really defend itself. So that option is off the table. Destroying the energy. Well, the Arabs told the Americans that if you do that, then the Iranians promised to destroy our energy. And the energy in the Middle East is extremely fragile because they have cost billions of dollars, but they need only few drones. Each one cost $10,000 to destroy them. This is the damage that was caused to the uh Qatari gas facility that Qata said has spent $26 billion and then two drones caused a damage of $20 billion. So this is not in the advantage of the Gulf countries and the Gulf countries really are fed up of these irrational decisions that are not going to achieve anything in Iran. If these objectives can be reachable and achievable, then the Arabs would support Donald Trump. They don't like Iran. But because they are not achievable because the Iranians show they can defend themselves because Israel and the Americans tried everything in their power and they have exhausted the bank of objectives. This is where the Arabs say no stop. It is important for you to stop now because we cannot sustain further damage. So there is a ceasefire. So what other leverage can the Americans do? Impose more sanctions. Well, the Iran is drowning with sanctions since 1980. The first sanction imposed by Jimmy Carter and it has never stopped on every single new US president. There were sanction until Donald Trump imposed maximum sanctions. Joe Biden found something else and then impose it. Trump now is doing the same. And now with this blockade that is not working really because it transferred the battle into Asia when the Americans have shown their limitation against Iran and they certainly don't want to start another war with China or with anybody else. This is why I doubt the Americans can really impose themsel with a new leverage, but to say, well, okay, well, now we can effectively block your oil. And the Iranians will say, well, you're blocking the Chinese oil because we're selling it. And I don't know if people remember when Donald Trump said, I'm going to give the Iranian the possibility to sell their oil. They have 400 million barrel of oil in the sea. and Iran said no thank you they all sold to China so they we don't have anything to sell so even there Donald Trump showed that he can give concessions on sanctions on oil uh on the energy on the asset that Iran has frozen in several banks around the world we're talking about dozens of billions of dollars so what we see today and here I conclude good is Donald Trump giving much more concessions in this war than before the war started and including in the Iranian deterrence um agenda or list the straight of hormones you know and it even extends Elijah out of the theater at least the direct theater with Iran the the conflict the before the economic war even. I mean uh I think the Trump administration just extended sanctions relief uh against Russian tankers and Russian oil being sold uh on the market. So that that shows that yeah the concessions are even deeper that there's there's obviously a major crisis and and I'm curious if you have given your long experience covering wars in the region um especially in West 45 minutesAsia if there's a precedent here that's being set because it's hard for me to remember past back when I was very young and the war on terror began for example uh a situation where the United States is a step toward fullscale war and this massive escalation over the last 6 weeks leading to a scenario where it seems like every move the United States makes has the potential to trigger a massive global economic catastrophe that has essentially already been building up and people are facing consequences for it. Is there a precedent for this and is this changing the nature of war itself given that uh the United States is so dependent upon it? Israel basically lives and dies on it. if it doesn't have it, it's not going to really have much of a future if it has one. Um, yeah, I'm curious on your thoughts about this. You have raised many points. Uh, let me uh tackle differently your questions. So, first of all, we've seen the limitations of the Americans um military power. The Americans can destroy any country if they want to. They have a lot of bombs, a lot of air force object um they have capabilities beyond belief. Yes. But then what? Destruction is not achieving objectives. This is not Venezuela we dealing with in Iran, but even Afghanistan. The Iranians uh were dealing with Afghanistan in the past and they had bad relationship with the Afghani until the Americans came and restored the relationship between Iran and Afghanistan. And the Americans moved into Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from Kabul because Taliban left Kabul. and after 20 years they gave it back to the uh to the Taliban. In Iraq, it's a catastrophe. Iraq is not an independent country. The Iraqis cannot select their prime minister. They don't have their oil coming to their accounts because it goes to the federal bank in the United States. They have the military that the Americans control the sky, allow the Israelis to come and bomb the Iraqi security forces. Hash shabi. So they are occupying the country and they don't know what to do with it. They don't know how to run it since 2003. So yes, they toppled Saddam Hussein. But then what do they do with the country? And this is exactly what they wanted to do with Iran. What do they do with Iran? It is there are so many ethnic groups, so many resources in the country that the chaos will spread on all borders. And what do they do then? But they create havoc in the world without any objective. They say, "Okay, we go and destroy." Well, then what? You go and destroy and what is the consequences? Do you have any plan? No. On the third day, Donald Trump said, "I did not expect." And he repeat this word three or four times in two weeks about so many other things that Iran reacted. So yes, the use of power it shows the power of the side using it. But then people need to think what is behind it. What is the objective that this country or this entity or this army wants to achieve and if it is achievable or not. And so far we have seen Israel incapable of achieving any objectives against non-state actors and state actors which shows the limitation of the power when the culture and the ideology is misunderstood. Now if you look at what Donald Trump is doing in this war, I'm going to give you another aspect in another window. The relationship with Europe. Donald Trump gave Russia the possibility to sell the oil for over $100 a barrel. Why he's doing so? Because he's seeking revenge against the Europeans. He's saying to the Europeans, "You don't want to help me. I'm going to make Russia rich again by selling Russian oil in the market when the Europeans have been trying since uh 22nd of February 2022, the beginning of the war in Ukraine to destroy the Russian economy. And Donald Trump is saying to the Europeans, you are going to pay the price of what he considered a misbehavior. So my point in telling you that is we have the most powerful person on earth leading the most powerful country and the most powerful army reacting out of anger. This is not how not even if I want to write an article I can't write it out of anger. I have to remain a bit balanced. So you see a leader of the world reacting out of anger, damaging his allies and his enemy, but for no objectives. He doesn't have a long-term policy. Where is he taking the world? Where is he taking America? He cannot answer this question. One day he is a Jesus. another day he is uh a winner of a peacemaker and then he wants to win prices that he doesn't uh deserve and then he doesn't know how to run uh the domestic policy saying I don't care about the medicare of the American people why is he a president if he's not going to look after the domestic policy and the foreign policy This kind of leader is attacking other countries around the world and creating havoc in the world economy where now in Europe we have to pay the gas 37% extra but the damage is not the day the war this this war stops then the damage will stop absolutely not for the next 6 months we will continue paying the additional bill and the additional energy because of these kind of decisions. Now, if you look at the interest of the United States and the interest of Israel, you cannot be the president of America and go and fulfill the objectives of another one like the Benjamin Netanyahu because these objectives are incompatible and you want to please him. It doesn't work because Benjamin Netanya want chaos and chaos cannot rule the world because our population will starve or migrating. The uh crime will increase uh the poverty will increase the lack of goods food are is reaching um and impossible prices. All that because Donald Trump was convinced by Benjamin Netanyahu to go the war without any objective. This is what we are seeing today. Yeah. And maybe finally uh as we as we get close to the end here, Elijah, um it's it is quite the contradiction what you're spelling out especially in terms of interests, right? Because I have I have seen and I have also argued that you know um the US obviously backs Israel because there are many in the at least the top brass that see uh Israel as not just uh you know ideologically uh a friend and all of this uh if you can even call it that but also that uh Israel will serve uh certain military uh and maybe expansionist and hegemonic goals but at the same time. the way that it goes about this partnership ends up leading to something like what we've seen the last six to you know u 12 months here last six to 10 months the June war and now uh this one where it seems like the b the the outcomes and this has been maybe true since uh the last 20 plus years the outcomes of these wars end up with the United States actually uh having to reduce its presence reduce its influence even uh talk about and pander to the the need to get out of the region. And this war has shown that yeah, the further that you go down this path of chaos like what uh ultimately the escalation ladder for the United States was going to lead to. Um then you have a major problem with the markets. You have a major problem with the pers the Gulf allies. All of this you have the potential for US interests to actually uh be decimated reduced. they have been, but it could get even worse. Uh your your reactions to this because I think this is kind of the material side of uh what you were just saying there about how US interests are actually uh impeded. Even the empire, imperial interest actually impeded by uh this pursuit of chaos. Oh, sorry about that. Hold on. Continue. Some people think that Donald Trump is out uh to follow the money or he wants to control the energy or he wants to be a great man but it is not that easy to control the energy. He cannot control the energy because he's losing the control over the energy. Of course, he can make a few a bit of money and his friends around him can make money on the speculation when he comes out on the Monday before the opening of the market saying, "Well, this is I am talking to the Iranians and I'm reaching a deal." So, he can play with the prices and also that is illegal by the way. However, this is not the control of energy because today those who control the energy in the Middle East are shifting toward the yuan and China. They want alternative markets. They want alternative relationship. So, he is losing the energy. He's not after the money for the United States because if you look at the cost of this war, it's humongous. He's spending five billions every two days or three days. So for in 40 days, you can imagine how much money he has spent. And what is going to happen to the uh world industry and world economy and energy? Is he today in a position to control more energy than he was before? Well, what happened with Venezuela? that the Venezuelan um oil is heavy and uh it is one of the largest reserve around the world but he needs to invest a lot of money to make it work. And in fact all the big companies the American big American companies refuse to uh go to Venezuela and start business because they want laws to be changed. They want refineries to be working and that cost billions of dollars. They're not ready to invest now with the instable market. So no, people are not really very accurate when they say he's after the money, he's after the energy. He says so and he allows us to think so. But what he has done with the energy today, he did not control it. He today he is not in a better control of the energy than he was 40 days ago with the war on Iran. On the contrary, he made the oil producer um countries richer than they are they were before uh 40 days despite all the damage that they have suffered from because their gas and oil is much more expensive today than before the war when it was around $60 and today is navigating. It has reached 120, 110, 100, 96, 92 and then 100. So they are making an awful lot of money but not Donald Trump. He is not in control. So what he likes us with all his fear to show us that he is in control. Actually he's not. He's confused. He doesn't know what he's saying. He doesn't know what to do next. He's trying to keep the attention always focused on what he's doing. Maybe for the Epsteinfire reason. Maybe for other reasons. Maybe he this is what the only thing he knows what to do. This is why he goes and put the photo of Jesus and put himself uh in this position or he criticizes the pope. He you criticizing the representative of 2.5 billion Christian around the world. Why is he doing so? Again attracting attention. This is not a policy. This is not something that the American people can benefit from. People need to shift away from uh comedies, from theaters and go to the essence what they have achieved, what Donald Trump has achieved to them. Are their life today better than yesterday than a year and a half ago? Today, are they making more money? Do they pay less money on the utilities and the goods they are buying? Is the world a safer place? Every act he has done has been uh positive and constructive to the American people and to the rest of the world. Well, the answer on all levels is no. So, people need really to think carefully before they vote for a president next time. Indeed, indeed. Indeed. Well, Elijah, it was great to be with you. I want to make sure everybody knows that your website, elijahmagnier.com, is in the video description where they can check out all of your work and support and subscribe. Um, everybody hit the like button before you go. That helps boost the show even after we are done here. Uh, I want to thank everyone who gave a super chat. I want to thank everyone who watched, all the members, and of course all the moderators who helped out with today's show. I'll be back very soon, everyone. I'm in Beijing. I'm very jet-lagged. I got to go. I got to like run out of here. I want to thank Elijah again. We're going to head out together and uh I'll be back very soon and hopefully I'll be able to get some kind of walking around China uh uh going soon. I've been messing with their internet and trying to figure that out. Without further ado, everybody, take care. I'll see you guys soon and uh bye-bye.
