Those genocidal maniacs RAPED humanitarian activists trying to take food and medicine to children in Gaza! And the worst is that even this they escalate to much worse forms with the 9000 Palestinians in israeli dungeons (almost 400 children)!
Trump faces heat as US Congress report confirms Iran's claims on military losses | Janta Ka Reporter Janta Ka Reporter May 22, 2026
In another setback to US President Donald Trump, an independent Congressional report has painted a dire picture of the damage suffered by American military infrastructure during the 40-day Iran war. This came amid reports of Iran playing hardball in negotiations for a peace deal. Meanwhile, concerns grow in the US over rising fuel prices due to the Iranian chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Rifat Jawaid looks at Trump's desperation over the elusive peace deal.
Smolotov is more than a brand. It is critique disguised as convenience. It is performance art carried in your pocket. Who is Smolotov: Created by two veteran visual media artists after years producing work for entities like Apple and Google, Smolotov turns the gaze inward, downward and finally… curbside.
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Iran’s ‘ISLAMIC NATO’ Plan To Destroy U.S. Hegemony? Shock Blueprint ‘LEAKED’ To Unite Muslim World Times Of India May 23, 2026
Why don't we establish an Islamic NATO?" Trapped under a brutal US naval blockade, Iran has just pitched its most ambitious geopolitical vision in decades. Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian has formally proposed a unified military and economic bloc of Muslim-majority nations. Ahmadian argues that by pooling their wealth and seizing absolute control of the world's most vital maritime chokepoints—like the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb—this "Islamic NATO" would instantly become the largest economic force on earth, capable of ending Western bullying without ever needing a nuclear missile. Watch the full breakdown.
Transcript
A senior Iranian security official has floated one of the most ambitious geopolitical visions to emerge from Thran in years. The creation of what observers are already calling an Islamic NATO, a unified block of Muslim majority nations stretching across some of the world's most strategically important regions. Speaking publicly, Ali Akbar Amadion argued that if the Islamic world acted collectively, it would represent the largest combined economic and strategic force on the planet. According to Amadion, the roughly 56 to 57 Muslim majority nations together control some of the world's most critical maritime choke points, including the straight of Hormuz and the Bob El Manddeb, while also sitting at top a massive share of global oil and gas reserves. His message was direct that such a block would possess enough economic, demographic, geographic, and energy leverage to deter outside powers without necessarily relying on nuclear weapons. The remarks reflect a growing trend in Iranian strategic thinking since the recent regional war and the prolonged confrontation with the United States and Israel. Rather than focusing solely on military retaliation or nuclear deterrence, Iranian officials are increasingly framing the future balance of power around control of trade corridors, energy routes, maritime access, and ideological alignment across the wider Islamic world. The strategic logic behind the proposal is significant. If a coordinated block of Muslim majority countries were ever to align politically and economically, it would collectively influence vast stretches of global trade and energy infrastructure. From the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, many of the world's critical shipping lanes and hydrocarbon reserves pass through or near Muslim majority states. The straight of Hormuz alone historically handled around 1ifth of global oil flows while Bob Elmanddeb serves as a gateway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean making both waterways central arteries of global commerce. In Thrron's worldview, economic interdependence and chokepoint control could become more powerful than traditional military parody, particularly against Western powers dependent on uninterrupted global energy and shipping networks. The proposal also fits into Iran's broader attempt to reposition itself as a leader of what it describes as an anti-hgemonic order resisting American dominance. But the practical obstacles to such a vision remain enormous. The Muslim world is deeply fragmented politically, economically, and strategically. rivalries between Gulf monarchies, tensions between Sunni and Shia majority powers, competition between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and Iran itself, as well as diverging relationships with the West make the idea of a unified military or economic block extremely difficult in practice. Even so, the rhetoric itself is revealing because it shows how Iranian officials increasingly see the future struggle with the United States and its allies, not merely as a military contest, but as a battle over who controls the arteries of global trade, energy, and strategic geography. And in Thrron's calculation, a coordinated Islamic block controlling the Gulf, the Red Sea, and key energy corridors could become powerful enough to challenge Western influence without firing a single nuclear missile. For the second day in a row, a tense encounter took place in one of the world's key strategic waters. A tanker was reportedly approached by a small craft with five people on board 200 nautical miles west of Yemen's Sakotra Island. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said in a statement in its advisory, the UK MTO said, and I quote, "UK MTO has received a report of an incident within the IRTC 200nm west of Sotra. The master of a products tanker has reported that the vessel was approached by a small craft with five persons on board. Closest point of approach 100 meters. The vessel's armed security team were deployed and the small craft altered course away from the reporting vessel. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UK MTO whilst authorities investigate. On Friday, a vessel was forced to fire warning shots after being approached by a small boat near Yemen's Sakotra Island. A tense maritime encounter near one of the world's most strategic waters. A vessel has reportedly fired warning shots after being approached by a small boat near Yemen's Sotra Island. According to the United Kingdom Maritime Operations or UK MTO in a statement, the UK MTO said, and I quote, UK MTO has received a report of an incident 98 nautical miles north of Sotra. The Cso of a tanker has confirmed that the vessel was approached by a small craft with five persons on board. The vessel's armed security team fired warning shots at the small craft which forced them to alter course. Authorities are investigating. The incident took place days after the US military said that it boarded an Iranian flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman that was suspected of trying to violate the American blockade. The latest action by the Trump administration to try to push thrron to reopen the straight of Hormuz. Tensions in the Gulf are exploding once again after the United States carried out a dramatic military boarding of an Iranian flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. The latest flash point in the escalating standoff between Washington and Thrron. According to the US Central Command, American forces intercepted the tanker MT Celestial Sea after suspecting it was attempting to violate the ongoing US maritime blockade on Iran. Footage released by Sentcom shows a tense operation unfolding at sea. A military helicopter hovering low above the vessel as US Marines descend onto the deck and storm the tanker during the high-risk boarding mission. American officials say the ship was searched, questioned, and redirected before being allowed to continue under altered course instructions. The exact location and timing of the operation remain unclear, but the message from Washington was unmistakable. The blockade is being enforced aggressively. This marks at least the fifth commercial vessel boarded since the Trump administration imposed sweeping restrictions on Iranian shipping in midappril just days after a fragile ceasefire took hold. The goal according to US officials is to pressure Iran into reopening the straight of Hormuz and accepting a broader deal to end the war. But Thrron is refusing to back down. Iran continues to maintain tight control over the strategic waterway, allowing passage mainly to countries it considers friendly while imposing heavy transit costs on others. Critics accuse Iran of effectively holding the global economy hostage through the strait, a route vital for the world's oil supply. The US military says the crisis has already stranded more than550 vessels from 87 countries across the Persian Gulf region. The dramatic interception came just hours after President Donald Trump revealed he had postponed what he described as a very major attack on Iran. Trump claimed Gulf allies urged him to delay military action for several days because negotiations might still succeed. However, several Gulf states later denied knowing of any imminent strikes. Nearly 3 months after the conflict erupted with US and Israeli air strikes on Iran, the region remains on edge. A Pakistan brokered ceasefire technically still exists, but on the water, the confrontation is intensifying by the day. With Iranian ports blockaded, commercial ships intercepted, and the straight of Hormu still partially closed, fears are growing that one miscalculation could ignite a far bigger regional war. The Strait of Hormuz may once again be turning into the world's most dangerous flash point. Iran's IRGC Navy has now released dramatic footage it claims shows one of its attack drones striking an oil tanker moving through the strategic waterway. According to Iran's TSN news agency, the tanker was carrying exported oil and prochemical products linked to the UAE and had allegedly attempted to pass through the Hormu Strait without what Iranian authorities described as permission or clearance from the Islamic Republic. According to the report published by TSN news agency, the operation was carried out by the IRGC Navy using what Iranian media identified as a rod three one-way attack drone. The released footage appears to show the drone striking the funnel section of a large oil tanker while moving through the Hormuz corridor. Iranian media claimed the vessel was attempting to transit the area without authorization. So far, there has been no independent verification regarding the exact circumstances of the incident or the identity of the targeted vessel. The latest footage comes at an extremely volatile moment across the Gulf region. For months, tensions surrounding maritime activity near Hormuz have continued escalating amid sanctions pressure, military deployments, and repeated warnings from both Tyrron and Washington. Iran has repeatedly warned that any attempt to restrict its oil exports or tighten military pressure over the street of Hormuz could trigger direct consequences for regional shipping and global energy markets. At the same time, western countries and Gulf states have increased naval monitoring operations across nearby waterways. The street of Hormuz remains one of the most strategically sensitive maritime choke points anywhere in the world.
Russia Vows Starobelsk Retaliation; NATO Says Russia Hijacking Kiev's Drones; MSM US Losing Iran War Alexander Mercouris May 23, 2026 Al
Transcript
Good day. Today is Saturday, 23rd May, 2026. And before I proceed with this program, let me remind you again to tick the like button and check your subscription to this channel. Well, over the last , much of the Russian media space has been taken up by a drone attack on a dormatory of a student building in a town in Lugansk region. Um, one of the two regions in Donbass, Donetsk and Lugansk. Lugansk region is a region which is entirely under Russian control and where all the citizens all the residents now have Russian citizenship. So this is a dormatory, a student dormatory and there were young people there, some of them children. And there 1 minutewas an attack on this building by drones. And as of the time of making of this program, 16 people, 16 of these young people have been killed. And this incident has attracted massive attention in Russia. It has been the major media story. There have been, as we know, lots of Ukrainian drone attacks across across Russia over the last few weeks and months. Indeed, there was a largecale Ukrainian drone attack across Russia last night, but mostly these drone attacks attract little attention and little coverage in the Russian media. Um, surprisingly so for many people I suspect in the west, but the attack on this dormatory in Stabbilisk was the exception. And it also provoked certain very interesting comments from the Russian President Vladimir Putin um, which he made in the Kremlin whilst he was addressing a meeting. um of the alumni of the highest school of public administration under the Russian presidential academy of economy and n of economy and public administration in the Katherine Hall in the Kremlin and well the comments were very interesting not just because of what they tell us about the stars attack itself self um about which I will say a little more later in the program but about what he said in relation to the overall ituation in the conflict and he also gave us hints about Russian policy altogether. So I'm going to read out his comments and he said that last night the regime that ceased power in Kiev and he gave an adjective describing the regime which related it back to the ideology which existed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s because of the sensitivities of this platform. I'm not going to name the ideology by name. Anyway, last night the regime that seized power in Kiev perpetrated a terrorist attack on a student dormitory at the Starbell Pedagogical College. The attack was carried out whilst the students were asleep. Now notice here that he refers to it as a regime. The government in Ukraine is a regime. He says that he'd seized power in Kiev and that he'd perpetrated a terrorist attack. And he relates it to the ideology in Germany of the 1940s and 1930s. And he continues, according to the reports I have received, uh been receiving on an ongoing basis. Um well he then itemizes the number of people who were killed and injured at the time of his address and says that there are people who um were buried are still buried under the rubble a a a horrible incident um by every definition. He then continues, "I wish to underscore, and this is a particular significance, that there are no military installations, special services facilities, or related agencies in the vicinity of the dramatary. There were no grounds for claiming that the projectiles struck the building as a result of our air defense or electronic warfare systems. No one can assert that the attackers were attempting to strike a certain target and that the drone so having been intercepted by our systems allegedly struck this building by accident. The strike was deliberate. It was carried out in three waves involving 16 drones all directed at the same location. Now that is Putin's account of this incident. Um, what he says obviously points to this having been an intentional attack by the Ukrainians on this dormatory. He describes it as a terrorist attack. I am not there. I do not have access to all of the information. I always say when incidents of this kind that the right thing to happen is an independent impartial investigation in the full knowledge of course that nothing nothing of that nature is going to take place. What I would say about this is that if this dormatory was indeed attacked by no fewer than 16 drones, as Putin says, then that is an extraordinary number of drones. And it does begs about the motive behind the attack. And well, so far as I'm aware, the Ukrainians have not attempted to answer those questions, or if they have done, there's been absolutely no coverage of this incident whatsoever in the media in the West, or at least in Britain. I've looked through the media here and I've not been able so far to find any reference to this incident or any comments or questions that might call into question some of the things that Putin has said about it. So, I'm going to now focus more on what Putin said about the ongoing conflict and where it takes us where it takes us. And he said, "We will investigate the details and they will be thoroughly examined. Appropriate conclusions will be drawn." Well, I say that, of course, he's already drawn some of those conclusions. However, it is clear and it is once again made evidence evident whom we are dealing with whom we are fighting against and what we are fighting for. This constitutes a manifestation of and then he again refers to the ideology that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. and he continues, "It once again serves to confirm the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime." Now, I have to say this straight away that when I read rhetoric of this kind from Putin, I find it impossible to believe that he seriously believes in a negotiated outcome to this war. How is it possible for Russia, for Putin himself? And fairly recently he gave an interview in which he discussed how his own brother 9 minutesdied during the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. Leningrad, which is of course besieged by the German army. I find it impossible to imagine that Putin genuinely sincerely believes in a negotiated resolution of this conflict. Anyway, he then continues, "I want to appeal once again to the members of the Ukrainian armed forces as I have be as I have done before. Do not follow the criminal orders of that illegitimate thieving hunter. Otherwise, you two become complicit in their crimes. Now, to my to the best of my recollection, Putin made his call to the members of the Ukrainian armed forces to disobey the orders of the Ukrainian authorities. um directly after the start of the special military operation in February 2022. I have no recollection myself of him ever having repeated this call since. But now he is doing so again. And he is doing so whilst using further words to describe the Ukrainian authorities which currently exercise power in Ukraine. He refies refers to them as il an illegitimate thieving hunter. Not in other words a government. The expression hunter was one that the Russians regularly used to 11 minutesdescribe the Ukrainian government that was established directly after the Maidan events, the seizure of power in February 2014. an event which the Russians always referred to as a coup for several weeks afterwards, referring to the government in Kiev or the authority that took power in Kiev after those events as a hunter was the standard practice in Russia. However, later on in 2022, as negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians got underway, the negotiations that led first to the first Minsk agreement of September 2020 of September 2014 and then the second Minsk agreement of February 2015. 15, Putin at least dropped use of the word hunter to describe the Ukrainian government and for a time appeared to acknowledge Porroenko who was at that time the elected president of Ukraine as the country's legitimate president. So he has now reverted back to the language that existed in the immediate post 2014 period. He refers to the current Ukrainian authorities as an illegitimate hunter and he's telling the members of the Ukrainian military no longer to obey that hunter's orders. And then he continues, "The reasons for this kind of criminal behavior from the Kiev regime are clear. You know them better than anyone." He's now addressing the people in the hall in the constant it is the constant failures at the front. The loss of positions of towns of territory. The situation on the battlefield for the Ukrainian forces is gradually going from difficult and critical to catastrophic. Western aid is not helping. It gets stolen on a regular basis. They just cannot help themselves. Neither is forced mobilization where they snatch people off the streets like stray dogs and then throw them to the front line. And on that note, desertion is also rising catastrophically for the enemy. It is becoming widespread. Well, there are some people in the West who dispute his description of the situation on the battlefield, but very few people, I think, who are familiar with the situation in Ukraine would deny the factual truth of what he says about forced mobilization and the increase in desertion and the spread of corruption. And about corruption, he then continues, "What makes things even worse for the ruling elite in Kiev is the all-consuming corruption that is rotting society from within. Corruption the regime's leaders are covering up. In reality, they are participants in these corrupt schemes themselves. That is why they then help each other, flee the country, seek refuge in Israel and elsewhere abroad. And this is clearly a a reference to some extent to the existing corruption scandal in Ukraine. Everyone in Ukraine and around the world knows that the Ukrainian government is corrupt through and through. Embezzlement is everywhere. It has got to the point where they are stealing military equipment and personal protective gear meant for those being driven to the front like cattle sent to die for the very people who are plundering Ukraine and its foreign aid. And then he continues, "The Kiev regime clearly needs crimes like this. They need them to distract attention from what is happening at the front and inside the country to provoke a reaction from Russia. And then we know this, we have seen it many times before to blame everything on us, on Russia, on our country, all the escalation, all the consequences of such crimes. I repeat, we have been here many times before. So what Putin is saying is that the reason the motive for this attack on the dormatory in Starabil is to provoke the Russians into taking massive counteraction. And then the Ukrainians and their supporters in the west will ignore the incident in Star Bilsk which as I said at the start of this program has not in fact been reported scarcely in the west at all. We'll focus instead on the Russian retaliation and we'll talk about Russia having been the party that is escalating the conflict and which is responsible for the spread and escalation of the conflict which is taking place. And Putin says that this has repeatedly happened over the course of the conflict. And few people in Russia, by the way, would disagree with him about that. And he says that this is what in the crisis that the Ukrainians currently find themselves in. This is what they're now trying to do again. And then Putin nonetheless goes on to say, "The Russian Foreign Ministry has been instructed to inform international organizations and the international community about this crime. And in fact, there's been a meeting, I understand, of the UN Security Council when the Russians have tried to draw global attention to this incident. though as always I don't get the impression that there is much interest in what the Russians say much global interest and certainly none in the west but then he continues uh but of course you and I both understand that in cases like this we cannot limit ourselves to statements from the foreign ministry that is why the ministry of defense has been ordered to submit its proposals and that was basically where his comments ended. So Putin has asked the Russian defense ministry to come up with proposals for retaliation by Russia for this incident. Now this is an appalling incident and as I said without knowing more I don't want to say more though I don't have very much dou reason to doubt what Putin says. I I'm going to say something here. Um, I might in other circumstances have treated some of Putin's words with greater skepticism were it not for the long history, for example, of shelling Donetsk, the capital city of the Donetsk region, which the Ukrainians have undertaken ever since the 2014 crisis and which has been covered extensively by people like Patrick Lancaster for example. But anyway, beyond that I want to focus again on what Putin has said about the government in Kiev about in effect Zalinski though is he is careful not to name him. He's said that the government in Kiev is illegitimate. It has no authority. It is a regime. It is connected to the It has adopted the ideology that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It engages in terrorism and it has just done so again in Star Belk. And he says this is who we are fighting and what we are fighting against. Again I ask this question when you read comments like this when you listen to comments like this. Can you seriously believe that the person who is making them has any sincere belief that there will be an a negotiated resolution to this war? I personally find that impossible and that in turn makes me deeply skeptical about the entire negotiation process which we have seen which has been underway since Donald Trump was inaugurated president on the 20th of January 20 2020 uh 2025. five and which the Russians now are saying is basically indefinitely suspended. It seems to me now fairly clear that Putin, whilst he was prepared to negotiate with Donald Trump, never personally believed that this process would ever lead to a negotiated resolution. Certainly, if you take seriously what he has just said, he has always at the back of his mind known that the Ukrainians would never comply with any of the ideas for a resolution of the conflict, which Donald Trump um floated. And well, according to Putin's own account, he directly asked Trump in Anchorage whether Trump really would be able to make the Ukrainians agree to the concessions that Putin and Trump had agreed with each other. Putin has Trump said that he would. He clearly hasn't done so. And I in light of what Putin is now saying, I can't really imagine that Putin ever had any serious expectations that it would be different. It seems to me that in light of these words, Putin went through the motions of negotiating with Donald Trump, not because he really imagined that it would ever lead to the end of the war in Ukraine itself. But most probably because he saw this as a way to make Donald Trump and the United States eventually disengage from the entire war. In other words, he was offering the Americans in effect an offramp. And well, what he is saying here echoes what his foreign policy aid Yuri Ushakov said in Beijing after the meeting between Putin and Se. Um during that visit, Ushikov made several comments about the good relationship that existed between Putin and C. Some members of the Russian media then asked Ushakov whether this bore any resemblance to the spirit of Anchorage that supposedly existed between Trump and Putin following the meeting in Anchorage in Alaska in August last year. And Ushikov said that he knew nothing of any spirit of Anchorage. As far as he was aware, no such spirit ever existed. And whereas there absolutely was a spirit of Beijing, a genuine friendship and commonality of feeling between the Chinese president and the Russian president. Now here a certain degree of cynicism is in order because the expression the spirit of Anchorage is entirely a Russian one and one which Russian officials including from memory the Russian foreign minister Serge Lavough have themselves used. So when Ushakov says that he knows nothing of a spirit of Anchorage and has never believed that such a thing ever existed, he is being disingenuous. He must surely know that the spirit of Anchorage was something that the Russians themselves at once at one time talked about. I don't remember, by the way, ever reading or hearing the Americans use that term, but whatever. It's a term that Ushakov has now buried. And well, the Americans have buried it, too. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now come out and he's also said that there really isn't any point in continuing the negotiations with the Ukrainians and the Russians. There is no sense in having one meeting after another meeting going over the same ground again and again um circling round indefinitely the same talking points. Um, in light of that, the whole process that was kicked off by Trump last year is now in indefinite suspension. And well, according to Rubio, if the sides eventually change their mind, which by the way, I think is extremely unlikely, the United States remains there and it is still able to act as a um party offering its good offices to facilitate the negotiations. Um, but it is not directly involved in trying to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ukraine anymore. So that was Rubio, that was Ushikov, and we now have Putin. My own opinion here is that Putin himself probably says to himself that whatever criticisms he came under last year and this year for his dealings with Trump, he has been at least in part successful. The Americans were offered an off-ramp. They haven't fully taken it. They continue to provide intelligence assistance to Ukraine. The CIA continues to be involved in guiding Ukrainian drones in their strikes in targets against Russia. International agencies like the International Money Monetary Fund which are partly funded or mostly funded by the US government continue to provide funding to Ukraine. But then Putin probably never seriously expected that Trump and the United States would ever entirely walk away. The key point is that the United States is no longer as committed or as directly involved in the war as it was during the Biden era. We no longer have massive appropriations approved every few months by Congress at the request of the administration transferring large quantities of weapons to Ukraine. that has now ended and the result is that the conflict has become much more a conflict between Russia and Ukraine and Russia and Europe causing in the process growing tensions between the Europeans and the Americans. So from Putin's point of view, well, he might not have achieved everything that 31 minuteshe would have ideally wanted. He didn't get the Americans to cut off the Ukrainians entirely. But then Putin might say to himself, well, I wanted that, but was it ever seriously going to happen? He has managed nonetheless to make it possible for the Americans to reduce substantially the aid to Ukraine that they have been providing. So anyway, it looks to me that the enti entire negotiating process that has been so distracting over the last year is now over Ushakut basically buried anchorage and whatever agreements Putin and Trump made with each other about Ukraine. in Anchorage. And Putin, also it seems to me, has now essentially read read the negotiating processes last rights. It's over. So that it seems to me is the single most important takeaway from this statement that Putin has just made. Now there is more here. He has described the military situation in Ukraine in ways that are very different from those that you read in the me western media at the moment. And by the way, on some of the commentary channels, he speaks of a catastrophic situation for the Ukrainians. Constant failures at the front, the loss of positions of towns of territory. The situation on the battlefield for the Ukrainian forces is gradually going from difficult and critical to catastrophic. Western aid is not helping. That is what Putin says. And he is describing a Ukraine which is altogether in an impossible catastrophic situation. A government that is illegitimate, that has lost touch with the wider population, that is causing collapse and emiseration, whose organizing principle is corruption. um a predatory, ideologically extreme, incredibly dangerous government. What he's essentially describing is what you might call a failed state. And isn't that exactly the way that Putin's deputy Dimmitri Mvved has also just described Ukraine? And is it not also similar to the description of Ukraine recently provided by the Russian commentator Serge Pletf. So altogether a story of a hollowedout, essentially destroyed, profoundly dysfunctional country whose military is finding itself in a situation that is moving from the bad and critical to the outright catastrophic. I said in my program yesterday that it seemed to me from some of the commentaries that I'm reading in Russia that there's already now a preparation, a psychological preparation taking place inside Russia amongst some of the leadership and commentary out there for a situation somewhat analogous to the one that Russia faced. in the caucuses in the mid 2000s when the conventional war against the fighters in Cheschna had been won. But Russia had to confront for roughly a decade a prolonged insurgency and as the Russians would say a terrorist war which reached all the way to Moscow itself. So anyway, here we see Putin using the same language talking about terrorism and talking about terrorism in connection with the authorities in Ukraine. So when you actually go beyond the tone, it turns out again that the substance of what Putin is saying and the substance of what Medved is saying is not really quite as different as people sometimes assume. Now that's Putin. Another Russian official has also been speaking and he's been speaking also in extremely adversarial terms and that is um Sergey Lavough the Russian foreign minister who has become increasingly hardline in his rhetoric about the situation in Ukraine and about the situation in Europe. Europe and about the European Union and about the whole situation in Europe alto together. Lavrov, for example, has again spoken over the last about the European Union as being no longer an economic union, but as a hostile alliance. He says that all regions of the Eurasian continent have in effect been designated a zone of NATO responsibility. The alliance, the NATO alliance is extending its infrastructure towards the far east under the pretext of containing China. And then he continues, "The European Union has now become almost indistinguishable from NATO. What began as an economic block designed to enhance the welfare of European citizens has transformed into assemblance of the North Atlantic Alliance. Discussions are already underway regarding reduced reliance on 39 minutesNATO given the cooling of American commitments to defend Europe. The proposition which is being put forward is to establish a new military block based on the European Union. For what purpose? precisely to contain Russia. Now again, when I read comments like that and bear in mind the even more forthright comments that Medved very recently said made in which Medved actually straightforwardly said that it's time to stop to give up the idea that Ukraine can join the European Union. This is something that the Russians have been prepared to go along with up to now, but they should not consider it any further given that the European Union is now clearly evolving into a political military organization hostile to Russia. Well, The Russian foreign minister has now more for forthrightly and more straightforwardly than he has done at any point up to now come out and said exactly the same thing. The EU is a military alliance. It is a military alliance directed at Russia. It has ceased to be an economic organization, an economic association. He doesn't exactly say it in these comments, but it makes absolutely no sense. This is the logic of Lavough's words. It makes absolutely no sense for Russia to accept that Ukraine can possibly join in. Now, Lavough has gone on and said further things and he's also talked about the importance of completing the special military operation. When we talk about the need to strengthen Russia's influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a party that always follows through on agreements, the only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation. our friends and neighbors as well as our opponents and enemies are keeping the closest eye on it. This is why the primary goal of our diplomacy is to do everything possible in our area of operations to create the conditions necessary for our troops to act as effectively, successfully, and decisively as possible in the special military operation. Again, these words need to be passed extremely carefully. He says that Russia's opponents and enemies are keeping the closest eye on the process of the special military operation and are judging Russia and its overall position in the world based upon it. But Lavro says, "So are our friends and neighbors." Which friends and neighbors precisely? Well, Russia's biggest neighbor by far, the neighbor with whom Russia now has the most important economic and other contacts. And the one with which it shares by far the longest border is of course China. And Lavough says that when we talk about the need to strengthen Russia's influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a partner that always follows through on agreements. The only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation. Well, what he is clearly referring to is Russia's relationship with China because over the course of Putin's recent visit to China, Russia and China published together a joint statement which well was very different from the sort of joint statements that you normally see. um provided uh uh published by the west. But it was in this particular case a particularly interesting joint statement because it specifically referred to Russia and China as civilizations. In fact, the preamble of this statement reads as follows. The Russian Federation and the people's founding of China are civilizations with ancient histories. And it continues they play a constructive role in maintaining the global balance of power and improving the system of international relations. And this declaration contains all sorts of very interesting language. It talks about um the dangers of conducting hegmanism, the importance of developing harmoniously developing an equitable and orderly multi-polar world. Um it denies the concept of first class countries and secondclass countries. It says there is no universal path of development and no first class countries or peoples exist. Differences between states natural in such a diverse and complex world should not be an obstacle to the development of equal, respectful and mutually beneficial relations. And the statement continues that all civilizations have the same validity, have the same value and carry the same weight in human across humanity. All of them carry the same weight as each other. In other words, Western civilization is in no way superior to any of the others. Well, Lavough was in Beijing when this meeting with the meeting between C and Putin took place. He will have participated in the discussions to prepare this joint statement. Sometime before the meeting between Putin and Ci Lavrov himself was in China as I remember where he was meeting with the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and it is highly likely that he was preparing for this meeting between Putin and Ci and over the course of it he probably played a role in drafting this statement and we can see that in his latest comments he is again referring to some of the language in this statement, the fact that Russia is a civilizational state, not just one European state amongst many, but a distinct civilization different from those of Europe. An important distinction and one which Russians have been avoiding or careful not to make until now. And well, what Lavro is saying is that China has embraced Russia because China as a civilizational state recognizes in Russia a civilizational state like itself. However, Russia's importance as a civilizational state, its influence, the weight it carries in international relations and the weight it carries in terms of its relations with China specifically depends ultimately on Russia winning its war, its war in Ukraine. achieving the objectives of the special military operation. When we talk, these are his words, when we talk about the need to strengthen Russia's influence across the world and enhance its appeal as a civilization, a partner and a party that always follow through on agreements. The only goal is to achieve all objectives of the special military operation. Our friends and neighbors, China, in other words, are keeping the closest eye on it. So what Lavro is saying here is that in order for ch Russia to be taken seriously by China, it must win in Ukraine. Its entire relationship with China depends upon it. There is a narrative which you occasionally come across in the west that the Chinese are um annoyed by the fact that the Russians launched the special military operation that they've expressed doubts and frustrations about this that the special military operation in and of itself has been an issue for China and that China would prefer that it went away where here we have Lavro telling us the opposite that on the contrary for the Chinese it is important for them to see that Russia is indeed an important a powerful a civilizational state and that Russia's value as a partner is ultimately measured by Russia's success in the special military operation. Now that is interesting in itself, but it follows directly from Putin's trip to China when of course the topic of Ukraine will undoubtedly have been discussed as between the Chinese and the Russian leaderships. So what Lavough is also telling his audience is that the Chinese want Russia to win. They absolutely want Russia to win because as far as they're concerned, the relationship between Russia and China is one that China has now invested heavily in. and it wants to be sure that this investment is going to pay off and that its partner and ally ultimately in this war is going to be successful. So it's an interesting disclosure of thinking by Lavro 53 minutesand I doubt that it's one that only he shares. I'm sure that it is widely understood across the Russian leadership. I remember that back in 2024, China for a time appeared to be urging Russia to agree to a ceasefire. The Russians appear to have persuaded the Chinese that the better objective from Russia's point of view ultimately was a victory in the form of Istanbul plus and apparently the discussions which have just taken place in Beijing confirm confirm have confirmed that this is and remains the Chinese position. It may be a difficult fact for people in the west to understand, but Russia after very careful diplomatic maneuvering over the last three years, the last two years especially, has managed, as it thinks, to place itself in a position where it can fully concentrate on the war and it senses that it has the backing of China. And well, as for the United States, I think the feeling in Moscow at the moment is that they've seen the Americans off. So that it seems to me is what in Moscow they are feeling at the moment. Anyway, that then brings us back to the topic of the war. Well, it remains my view that the major battles are the ones that are taking place in Zaporo where the Russians have just captured Vnaya Telsa and apparently Vish Vijka breaking through Ukrainian defenses on the Gshaw River and moving closer to Orejo and where the Russians are steadily tightening their grip on Constantinfka. But rather than focus on that today, which I've discussed already in various programs, um I want to return to the topic of the drone war because there's been a very interesting article in the Daily Telegraph which is about the fact that there are now all of these Ukrainian drones which have been flying over Sweden, Finland, the various Baltic states which have triggered a political crisis in Latvia and which have led to the shooting ing down of a Ukrainian drone by Estonia and which led to some really astonishing comments by the speech Swedish prime minister which I talked about yesterday. Now I have now read these comments of the Swedish prime minister properly and I now understand that what the Swedish prime minister was basically saying was not that NATO should fully take charge of Ukraine's drone offensive against Russia, but rather that NATO should make sure that Ukrainian drones are not misguided towards friendly countries, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States and others, but should rather be guided properly towards Russia. A somewhat less aggressive statement than the one I thought he had made and which I discussed in my program yesterday. And this is where the article of the Daily Telegraph becomes interesting because the Daily Telegraph is claiming that all of these drones that are flying over the Baltic States and Scandinavia are drones launched by Ukraine in good faith towards Russia. However, Russia using electronic methods has successfully hijacked these drones on route towards Russia and has cunningly redirected them so that they are now attacking targets or entering instead of Russian airspace the airspace of Ukraine. 's own allies, the Baltic states and the Scandinavians, leading to all the problems that we have heard. And the Daily Telegraph is anxious to assure us that all of the comments from the Russians about the Ukrainians carrying out these drone operations over the airspace of their neighbors. all of the complaints from the Russians that all of these countries have opened their airspace to enable Ukraine to conduct drone strikes against Russia via the airspace of these NATO countries. All of this is untrue and false and propaganda. What the Russians are actually doing is they're conducting all of these attacks on all of these NATO countries, but they're doing so cunningly by hijacking Ukrainian drones, using them to attack these countries, but also because the drones are being conducted, the the drones that are carrying out these attacks are Ukrainians, that supposedly gives the Russians plausible deniability in terms of what they're doing. Now, this is actually a rather interesting claim and one does have to wonder a little whether it might be true. There are some reasons to doubt this article. That's putting it mildly. But I noticed, for example, that the article claims that the Russians have been able to jam the GPS guidance systems used by these drones. But I've always understood the GPS doesn't work inside Russia and that the drones actually operate using the Starlink system. and apparently balloons that Ukraine has launched um to enable them to be guided onto targets inside Russia. And according to the Russian authorities, the Ukrainians have also managed at times to piggy back of signals generated by Russians Russia's mobile phone network and to some extent by its own internet systems. So this is what I've always understood, but the Daily Telegraph article refers to GPS. And I'm not sure that Ukrainian drones in fact do use GPS. So that's one reason why I am more than a little skeptical about this article. Secondly, if the Russians really are jamming these drones in something like the way that the Ukrainians are saying, wouldn't this be done by jamming and interfering with the Starling system, which is what I understand the Ukrainians primarily use to guide and control their drones. Now, there's been lots of rumors and reports that the Russians have indeed on many occasions succeeded in jamming the Starink system. I've already spoken about how the Russians provided technology to Iran in January of this year to jam the Starling system, which proved instrumental in enabling the Iranians to defeat the protest movement that emerged within Iran. Then, but if this story in the Daily Telegraph is true, then we're not just talking about jamming. We are talking about Russia somehow being able to piggyback on the Starink system so as to effectively capture the drones in mid in mid-flight. and then redirect them against targets in NATO states. Now, if that is the case, then that is an important technological advance and one which I'm going to guess will have NATO extremely concerned indeed. And that might be part of the reason for the panic and dismay we are seeing across the Baltic states and Scandinavia at the moment. Now saying all of this again I want to stress that I don't know anything about this and the Daily Telegraph makes assertions but it provides little by way of evidence in fact provides no evidence at all. I correct that that would substantiate or confirm what it is saying. It is purely declaratory and well as a result I'm I'm skeptical and I'm entitled to be. I mean these are Ukrainian drones and I would have thought that that still tends to point the finger towards Kiev rather than Moscow. Having said this, there is a side of me that does wonder whether there might be some truth to this story. I mean, the Russians know perfectly well that the Western powers have been very, very heavily involved in Ukraine's drone activities. After all, the matter is hardly disputed. Um, many of the drones are made in Europe. I can I can imagine a situation where the Russians, if the capability existed, might want to turn this all against the Europeans by hijacking the drones in the way that the Ukrainians are saying so as to redirect them into the airspace of NATO. countries, there would be something appropriate, some might say even elegant about doing it. But I want to repeat again that I don't know that this is actually so and I don't want to push the fact. Anyway, um for the rest, the Ukrainians are still claiming that there is going to be a major Russian offensive targeting Kiev itself. They're claiming that it will happen in the autumn. Um they're making various claims again, various counterattacks in various places, mainly in Zaporosia and north of Slavansk. Again, I suspect that this is intended to distract attention from the fall of Naya Tersa and the Russian advance on Oreov and the deteriorating situation in Constantin. But I will talk about all of that later in other programs when the opportunity arises. In the meantime, I want to say something about the other conflict that's taking place, the conflict between the United States and Iran. Firstly, Phil Marshall Munir, the uh Pakistani um chief of staff has again traveled to Thran where he's trying again to move the dial on the negotiations, the attempted negotiations between the United States and Iran to try to end the conflict. And well, we've also heard that President Donald Trump of the United States has now had a conversation with Yamir of Qatar, who is known to oppose a return to further fighting between the United States and Iran. Against that, there have been further rumors that President Trump deeply frustrated by the course of the war, um, angered by continuing Iranian defiance, has supposedly resolved on further missile and air strikes against Iran. on at some point this weekend. He's done this apparently despite now receiving thorough warnings from US intelligence that these strikes are unlikely to achieve any results and despite further warnings from US intelligence that it will take three to four months at the very least before the sea blockade that President Trump has imposed. osed on Iran begins to have any effect. By the way, on that topic, if you believe the Iranians, the sea blockade is mostly a fiction. Now the Iranians yesterday were saying that 35 ships have actually passed through the straight of Hormuz with Iranian permission either paying fees to the Iranian government or carrying oil from Iran to Iran's customers, China for example, or being ships which are connected in some way to Iran's friends China and Russia. If it's true that 35 ships have been able to pass through the straight of Hormuz in that way, then it seems to me that the closure that the sorry, the blockade, the American blockade of Iran, I won't say it's completely failed or collapsed, but it is not obviously watertight or that effective. But anyway, we have all of this all the all this constant push pull between the United States and Iran, between Donald Trump and the Iranians. Trump at various times threatening war. There was some uh talk that because he didn't attend the wedding of a member of his family that meant that um he's preparing he's still working on further strikes against Iran. Anyway, um the president seems to alternate between moods of wanting a renewed war and renewed attacks on Iran and well other moods when he seems to recognize the necessity of negotiations. The problem with this conflict is that the military options that the United States has are very high risk and very unattractive. There was an article to this effect in the Financial Times yesterday. And perhaps even more alarming for the president, there was another long article but by Robert Kagan, the Arch Neocon in the Atlantic, a magazine which is well known for its strong neoconor oriented views. Anyway, Robert Kagan has gone even further in describing the current conflict with Iran as an American defeat. He accuses President Trump of preparing to surrender to Iran. He says that what President Trump intends to do is perhaps carry out another strike against Iran, but then do a deal with the Iranians and walk away and fool the American people into thinking that this has all been a successful operation. Whereas, in fact, Iran will have won and will have emerged much stronger than it was before the conflict began. Now that was Robert Kagan and well today Reuters, the British news agency has also published a piece of its own which also talks about the conflict in Iran having ended in or or or or moving towards an American defeat and an Iranian victory. The title is three months in is Trump losing the Iran war. US President Trump may have won about every just about every battle against Iran. That is, by the way, an astonishing claim. I'm not sure what battles exactly President Trump has in fact won against Iran. But never mind. President Trump may have just won about every battle against Iran, but three months after attacking Iran, he now faces a bigger question. Is he losing the war? With Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz, its resistance to nuclear concessions, and its theocratic government largely intact, doubts are growing that Trump can translate the US military's tactical successes into an outcome he can frame and convince frame convincingly as a geopolitical win. And um well that is a remarkable admission though to repeat again I am not sure what these tactical successes which Reuters is referring to actually are. We've had more intelligence reports which confirm significantly more damage to US aircraft than had previously been reported. We've seen the American bases across the Middle East essentially evacuated. We've seen that Iran has preserved its ballistic missile and drone force. I am unable to see that there have been any tactical successes in this conflict up to now at all. Now, all of this ought to point in one direction to ending the conflict as quickly as possible in as good terms as possible. and bringing the conflict to an end, even if that does result in accusations of surrender from people like Kagan and well accepting the outcome. My own view is that President Trump's skills as a politician demonstrated again in the primary defeat of his opponent Thomas Nassie um would enable him at least to be able to sell the outcome to his own base as some kind of win for himself and for the United states. However unlikely that might appear, but Trump himself has never shown any ability or willingness to do that. which is why we are in this very strange situation where despite the war against Iran 17 minuteshaving obviously gone terribly wrong, the president won't accept that outcome, won't call it a day and move on to other things, but instead alternates between this strange pattern of threats and talk of deals which never quite materialize because the terms that he demands remain so detached from the actual realities of the current situation. Well, there it is. He is not the only person who continues to face this difficulty. of reconciling himself to reality. Now, two days, three days ago, I discussed in a program the recent 18 minutesdecision of the British government to re relax oil sanctions against Russia to permit imports of aviation of oil for aviation fuel and diesel from Russia. even though this is something of a walk back from British sanctions. And there's now been a truly superb article on this topic by my friend the former British diplomat Ian Proud. It is on responsible statecraft and you can read it there. Um Ian proud on responsible state craft discusses the st the sanctions and the walk back thoroughly. Um as the person at the cutting edge in deciding the Russian sanctions when he was at the British embassy in Moscow. His comments on this topic should be considered authoritative. He says that the san the um walk back of the sanctions does indeed remain in place. So talk that the British government after the outcry in London walked the sanctions back it turns out is wrong as I thought. So the British government very reluctantly, very grudgingly, very unhappily now has indeed agreed to start buying some products, some Russian oil products, perhaps not directly from Russia, but to a certain degree nonetheless. Well, as my friend Ian Proud also points out in this article, whose title by the way is Comrade Care or just finally rational UK energy policy. Um, there has been a storm of protest across Britain in the face of this entirely rational decision. rational in terms of the needs of Britain and of the British public. In fact, the push back has been so strong that as Ian Proud correctly says in the article, it almost certainly means that there's not going to be any move towards negotiations with Russia as a result of it. 21 minutesJust as in relation to Iran, the president of the United States finds it very difficult to come to terms with economic realities. Just so does the European Union when it says, as I discussed in my program yesterday, that it will never buy Russian oil or gas no matter what happens. And just as the bulk of the British political class continue to do, when they criticize this at last rational decision by the Star government as some kind of infamous capitulation. If we talk about the eventual failure of the west and you know we're not there but perhaps we're moving closer and closer all the time in that direction. It will be because governments, political leaders, commentators simply are unable to face the realities. And well, that's certainly true. Or so it seems to me so far at least about Donald Trump in terms of his conflict with Iran. Well, this is where I finish today's program. Let me remind you again that you can find all our programs on our various platforms, Locals, Rumble, X, and Substack. You can support our work via Patreon and Subscribear and by going to our shop links under this video. There's actually a big uh offer and deal there on our shop at the moment which you should take advantage of. And please remember if you've liked this video to tick the like button and to check your subscription to this channel. That's me for today. More from me soon. Have a very good day.
Notorious Israeli Commander Severely Wounded in South Lebanon w/ Laith Marouf Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris May 21, 2026
Israeli media have confirmed that Col. Meir Biderman, the commander of the Israeli military's 401st Armoured Brigade, has been severely wounded in south Lebanon.
Biderman's brigade is responsible for the murder of Hind Rajab, her family and two Palestinian paramedics who attempted to come to their rescue.
Dimitri Lascaris speaks with Laith Marouf, Executive Director of Free Palestine TV, about the soaring casualties Israel's military is suffering in south Lebanon.
Dimitri and Laith also discuss the status of negotiations between Iran and the United States and Iran's ongoing control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Transcript
Good day. This is Demetri Lceris coming to you for Reason to Resist from Kalamata, Greece on May 21st, 2026. I'm very pleased to be joined again on Reason to Resist by our good friend Laith Maru, executive director from Free Palestine TV, who's just returned uh to his humble abode from reporting in the field. Uh, thank you very much for joining us again today, La Le. Great to be with you, Demitri. Thank you for having me. So, Laith, I'd like to start with the state of the so-called negotiations between Iran and uh the Trump regime. On Monday, Trump claimed that he had decided to delay an attack on Iran that was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, but that he had decided not to do so because various Arab autocrats, including the Saudi crown prince, had asked him to delay the attack because they felt that a deal was in the offing and was likely to be concluded in the next couple of days. And here of course I'm sure you've seen it l is the uh loquacious truth social post in which Trump pontificated about how much he respects these Arab autocrats takes their advice seriously and uh in deference to them and out of great respect he was going to delay his attack for a couple of days. Now, uh, as you probably also know, Laith, almost immediately sources from several Gulf autotocracies told the Wall Street Journal that they were not even aware of Trump's intention to attack Iran on Tuesday. So, what do you make of all these developments, LA? Who's who's telling the truth? And um um do you attach any credence to Trump's claims? Yeah, I mean look, uh the question about who's telling the truth is which Trump is telling the truth because the last time we heard about these uh monarchs in the Arabian Peninsula is that they kiss his behind and that they have to kiss his behind. Now he's saying he has all this respect for them and listens to them. So was was the kissing of the behind that nice and that good? I don't know. You know, maybe did did they get him to wash his behind with a PDA or is he just using wipes as usual? Those are all like questions that open up. You know, I trying to prevent these images from popping into my head, the police. He was planning to attack Iran. Let's put aside for a second these autocrats. But what do you make claim he was planning to attack uh uh Iran and that the so close to a deal he thought it was better to wait? Well, it's clear that uh the United States is trying to find ways to attack Iran. Uh it is also find trying to find ways to pressure Iran to accept the deal uh in the terms of the United States. Part of that was the trip of Trump to China. Uh and uh what he got is actually nothing. I got zero. And in fact uh clearly China and Russia are even more behind Iran than before the war. They've seen how Iran performed valiantly and was able to uh inflict damage on the American empire and an American military power unlike any other opponent of the United States since the end of World War II. uh remember every war that the United States fought even the ones that it lost uh in uh Vietnam, in Iraq and Afghanistan were on the enemy's territory. uh for the first time we saw an opponent of the United States uh uh you know making the war uh be fought on the territories of imperial domains like the Gulf States, the Zionist colony, the seas and the United States wasn't able to confine the damage and the war to its opponent. So this is huge changes in uh battle scenes uh and um it's it's it's unprecedented. So I think right now what we're seeing is that the United States is still trying to find ways that it can um maybe manipulate or pressure Iran into accepting uh deals that are not going to be to its benefit and could open the door for new wars later on. And Iran is is steadfast in its position. It it has won this war and is expecting that the United States will have to change its um conditions uh to having normal relations with Iran from the conditions that existed prior to this war. So uh will the US attack Iran? Um it is hard to uh actually come to conclusions from just looking at the uh realities on the ground because you know if the actors in the United States and Israel were rational just pure capitalist or pure imperialists uh they wouldn't have allowed for the destruction of their own assets in the Gulf. they wouldn't have uh allowed to for the you know the destruction of world economies and and and trade but because they're driven by an ideology which is Zionism Jewish supremacy it is sometimes very clear that they are making irrational decisions. So will the United States attack uh Iran again? Rationally it the answer would be no because the US doesn't have any more means uh to attack Iran except a nuclear weapon and the world will not accept that and so uh the rational answer is no but again there's ideology playing at hand and uh that's the unpredictable factor. So, hot on the heels of this uh controversy, Trump and the Gulf autocrats contradicting each other, uh Trump's favorite mouthpiece in the corporate media. I imagine he's his favorite, Barak Davidid uh put out another article in Axios uh claiming that a new Iran peace proposal had triggered a tense Trump Netanyahu call. So this article was published late last night and in the body of the article he says that Pakistan, Kataf, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt have been working over the last several days to refine uh a proposal. I think this is an Iranian proposal to bridge the gaps. Three sources say of course they're not identified. And uh he says according to two Arab officials in an Israeli source kata recently presented the US and Iran with a new draft. The fourth said there was no separate Katabati draft blah blah blah. Um and then in the middle of the page says the goal of the new effort is to get more tangible commitments from the Iranians over steps regarding their nuclear program and more specifics from the US as to how frozen Iranian funds will be gradually released. An Arab official said um and all three sources stress it's unclear whether the Iranians will agree to the new draft or shift their position significantly. And then at the bottom uh for uh color, we are told that Trump told Netanyahu that the mediators were working on a letter of intent that both the US and Iran would sign to formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations on issues like Iran's nuclear program and open rate of Moruse. And two Israeli sources said that the two leaders were in disagreement about the way forward while the US source briefed on the call said quote BB's hair was on fire after the call. Close quote. Uh what's your response to this report? Uh Le we've seen a lot of uh attempts to u in in the media over the last few days to kind of confuse things uh in the mind of the audience because much of the audience is the west is sick and tired of uh what Israel is doing and what the United States is doing to support Israel. uh and uh clearly you know Trump uh his inner circle is um the same inner circle as Natao. I don't think there is a divergence of opinions between Trump and Netanyahu. Trump in himself probably doesn't even have the mental faculties to deal with these situations uh the complex situations of negotiations with with Iran. uh and uh there's a lot of things that the Epstein class holds on Trump. So I I I I doubt that there is any fight between Trump and Netanyahu. This is uh all maybe to lift some of the pressure that is building up inside the United States uh on Trump. We saw that whole battle with the um elections in Kentucky with uh Congressman Macy and how it's damaging deeply the MAGA movement uh and the split is widening deeper and deeper. So I think we can take this article uh within that context. Uh the issue is there uh isn't much that Iran is willing to uh give to the United States. uh you know, Iran had agreed and signed on to a nuclear deal before this war and it was Trump that threw that deal in the garbage and decided to take military actions in order to better the uh position of the United States within whatever agreement uh it signs with Iran to force Iran to give more concessions. And what ended up happening in the military battle is that Iran won. So Iran would be expecting what Trump would have expected if he won the war. So now Iran is refusing to agree to the same uh points it signed on to with the nuclear deal and is wanting concessions from the United States as the victor in this battle. So I think uh this is the reality on the ground and and anything that we read from Barak Ravid who's a who's a Musad agent uh should be always counted as propaganda. Right. So for those of our audience audience members who don't know the background of this character, he he worked for years in unit 8200 uh an intelligence gathering arm of the uh the Israeli military. Um my my theory about this which is consistent with yours le and and I I highlight Avivid but you can find a lot of characters in the corporate media in the west who are doing this. They're lending credence to Trump's incessant claims uh that were just on the verge of a peace deal. So and I'm going to just put up on the screen here the headline from another Axio article authored by Ravid uh on April 17th. Okay. and he lent credence to Trump's claim at that time that there was going to be in a day or two an Iran deal that was uh over a month ago. And uh the problem I think that Trump has of course is that with each patching day pressure upward pressure on the price of oil increases. And uh every time the market uh is told uh that they're on the verge of a peace deal, the price of oil tends to recede. Uh and so I think Trump is and the corporate media are working hand in hand to try to suppress the price of oil. They keep putting out these stories that they're just around the corner. Past deal's just around the corner, price comes down because he needs time and the time I think he's hoping uh time he's hoping will be on his side that this blockade of Iranian ports is ultimately going to cause Iran to capitulate. Uh do you think that do you agree with that assessment? Do you think that's what's going on here? And and do you think there's any real prospect of Iran capitulating uh because of the blockade on its ports? Yeah, I mean clearly the prices of oil play a lot and and the inner circle of Trump that is uh manipulating the markets not only to keep the price of oil down but also to enrich themsself. We see all those investments that are happening minutes usually before Trump says something or minutes after he says something. uh the inside trading that is happening um and the um blanket uh you know um what do you call it uh uh decision by the IRS to give amnesty to Trump and his family for perpetuity for any financial uh crimes that they may have been committed uh is clear example of that reality so I think there's those two parts on the one hand you have the attempted manipulation of the oil prices. The other is manipulation of markets in general for inside trading within the Trump inner circle. Uh the other thing that uh is uh causing Trump to do this uh constantly uh bring up that there will be some peace agreement or some ceasefire is uh to extend the period of time that Israel has to attack Lebanon. you know, uh the there had one of the conditions of Iran to enter negotiations with the United States is that there will be a ceasefire in Lebanon. Uh the Israelis are refusing to implement a ceasefire in Lebanon because they have yet to have any victories in the battlefield. that if there's a ceasefire without any permanent changes on the ground in Lebanon, uh all the losses of equipment and man men and and and credibility that Israel has uh faced over the last two and a half three months since the beginning of this war uh will be for nothing. So I think in my mind actually the issue of the ceasefire in Lebanon and giving more time for Israel to achieve some of its goals is the main reason that Trump keeps on uh extending uh these negotiations with Iran. And I definitely want to come back to the battlefield conditions in Lebanon uh in a few minutes. Uh before we get there, um I wanted to show you an announcement uh made today by the Iranian military. Uh they've set up a new authority, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, and uh they have uh defined the the authorities control zone of control in the Strait of Hormuz. And you can see it in the map here. By the way, this is consistent with a map that they published earlier this month. It's almost precisely the same, but this time uh they're stating that this is their new uh their definitive position and it's being backed up by the creation of a new agency to control the straight of Hormuz. And as you can see there, Leifith uh this uh uh on the right side in the lower right hand corner that red line uh places the uh Emirati port of Fuja uh inside the zone of control and that is the port that has enabled uh the Emirates to uh circumvent the straight of Hormuz with some uh oil exports during uh the past uh two two months or so two and a half months. uh and uh this would be a crushing blow were this actually to be the zone of control uh that Iran maintains uh going forward indefinitely over the strait. This would be a crushing blow uh to the United Arab Emirates. Do you think there's any realistic prospect of uh the Trump regime agreeing to this or uh alternatively of the Iranian the Islamic Republic giving it up? I think you know talk and signing uh documents and so on in the world that we live in today is irrelevant. What is m what matters is force and so can Iran actually make sure uh this zone is under its control? Yes. Can the Imiratis uh break the siege on Fujer by the Iranians? No. Can the United States break this the control of Iran over the Hormos and all of this these waters and and coastlines? No. So it is de facto facts. It's de facto, right? Uh and the thing that we um I think we we should put into context here. If you if you notice that that coast uh on the Gulf of Aman, the Marathi coast there is all now under this uh control of Iran. So there will be no ability of the Emirates to build a different port or something. So that that that zone of control extends all the way to the border of Alman. Um so um this is one thing. The other thing that uh um it's it's clear is that uh the the Iranians said if they are attacked again and if the Imiratis are involved in such attack that they will occupy uh the coast of the Emirates they may end basically the existence of the state of the United Arab Emirates. Uh and they are not joking when they say something like this. the Emirates doesn't have the ability to defend itself if uh Iran decides, especially with the absence of American troops uh on the ground to defend them um or nearby to defend them if that happens. Right now, the uh Iranian uh military put out another warning uh that well that first document I just showed you wasn't a warning. It was just a declaration, but they put out a warning as well uh in the last day or two. And uh their warning was that uh they will extend the conflict beyond the region. Uh I'm sure that they're referring here to West Asia if the US and Israel resume attacks. Now uh Leif, you were recently in the Eastern Mediterranean uh in uh I think you were in Italy, you were in Greece. I can't recall if you also visited Cyprus. In your opinion, Laith, if uh Iran carries out this well, first of all, do you agree that Iran has the capability to carry out this threat given the range of its missiles? And if so, what do you think its prime targets are going to be outside the region? Yeah, I mean, I I didn't visit Cyprus, but I was in uh CIT and I was in Italy and I could see obviously all the uh military deployments that are there. Uh I watched the documentary that you also did on soda base in cit. Uh and um you know during the 40 somewhat days of direct war with Iran, the Iranian armed forces were able to destroy all the airfields and American bases in Western Asia as well as inside the Zionist colony. And we saw the um um imperialist coalition using the airirst strips in Cyprus, in Greece, in uh Hungary, in Turkey, in Djibouti, in Diego Garcia to bombard uh Iran. And as the costs uh and of the refueling jets uh with the multiple attacks on these refuelers on the ground became higher and higher, we saw the United States res revol result to to uh using its long range strategic bombers taking off from its territory uh in North America to bomb Iran. And this is not not n not sustainable, right? uh in general you can't bombard all the way from the US Iran. So um you know Iran uh sent one time a missile or a drone that hit the base in Cyprus. Iran denied it was it but everybody knew that the base in Cypress was hit. Uh and that was a hint to the uh anyone who is aiding the United States outside Western Asia that you could be a target. And that caused uh all the NATO uh alliance to send all these um um ships to the coast between Lebanon and Cyprus, mainly ships that have air defenses all to protect the uh NATO bases uh in Cypress and and west even more west. And so in in a in a situation where there is a return to hostilities with Iran, Iran has no choice this time but to attack the bases in Djibouti, Diego Garcia, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and and further in East Europe to uh take away the possibility of the United States bombing it except with long range bombers. uh and that's this is very logical and I think uh you know given the um alliance that we saw happening between the Zionist Cyprus and Greece and again that was something that you filmed those meetings uh that happened uh between the governments there about their military alliance about their um you know fight against uh the axis of resistance. I think uh it is about time that the government of Cyprus and the government of Greece specifically are taught a lesson. uh and the you know uh having uh Iran attack those bases uh will uh not only humiliate these uh comprador elite in those countries but it may help the people of Cyprus and the people of Greece that uh disagree with how their governments are participating in genocides and wars uh to actually rise up. You see, I think I think it's it's time for uh this to happen. Uh and you know, I don't know how much uh the elite in these countries are willing to risk their whole nations for the sake of the Zionists. But if uh Germany and the UK are willing to destroy their own credibility to support Zionism, I don't know how more how less how more humiliating of themselves they'll be the the elite in Greece and and Cyprus. Yeah, I I have to think that the British military base in Aquati Cyprus is going to be a prime target. Uh they've just shipped huge amounts of uh weaponry to Israel throughout not just the war in Iran, but the genocide. Uh their planes have been used planes from that base have been used I believe to bomb Yemen. Uh they the British have been spending sending spy flights over Gaza from Maciri uh sharing intelligence with the Israelis as they were mass murdering uh Palestinian civilians. Greece allowed the Israelis to use Greek airspace to practice bombing runs on Iran. And as you know from your visit to Suda Bay on the island of Cree, uh the Americans have a major presence there which has almost certainly been facilitating attacks on Idan. Before we move on from the subject, I just do want to show with uh our audience and you may have seen this late. Just this past weekend, Greeks of conscience came out in force uh in Suda Bay to demand the uh departure of the Americans in NATO from that uh facility. I just want to share a little bit of that footage with the audience. Let's go. We are not. So local local organizers told me there were well over a thousand people there in Kanya where uh that protest began. It's not a big place. Uh so I think more and more Greeks and criates are realizing that we are being endangered by our government's deep complicity with the genocidal entity. Uh with that le I'd like to turn to Lebanon. Um, and it's it the the news that's coming out of the the battlefield in southern Lebanon and northern occupied Palestine is really quite uh compelling. The level of casualties that are being inflicted on the Israelis is uh seems to be mounting. And I just want to share one particular piece of news uh and that is that uh this character uh Colonel Mayor Beerman was uh seriously wounded in South Lebanon I believe by a roadside bomb and he is the commander of the notorious 401st Armored Brigade uh which whose members murdered Hindab Rajab and her family and two paramedics who came to save them. Uh and uh they also stormed Alshifa hospital and terrorized Rafa. Uh so uh that is quite a blow. Apparently this uh terrorist is fighting for his life. It's not clear whether he'll survive, but could you just talk to us more broadly, not just about this particular attack, but what is happening uh in South Lebanon uh and and northern occupied Palestine and how uh the resistance is managing to inflict so much casualties on these criminals. Yeah. Like just for our audience, uh a brigade is around 3,000 soldiers. So this man was in charge of the uh central sector of the war zone in the south of Lebanon. So um and and he's not the only uh commander or officer that was hunted this way and uh targeted by his other officers who were of lower ranks. We saw multiple videos of FPVs hitting command and control vehicles, uh, APCs that have all those antennas and so on that are controlling the battlefield and the movement of their troops and whatever officers were in those APCs who are definitely dead or injured. Um, Israelis didn't admit their name, but this is the highest um, ranking admittance right now. There was also attacks on uh command and control vehicles and um locations inside occupied Palestine over the last few days. We saw uh Hezbollah using those FPVs with unusually long fiber optic cables uh flying them into occupied Palestine and hitting houses where the Israeli soldiers are hiding. Uh, by the way, the frontline colonies uh in occupied Palestine are are considered military zones. You can't just purchase if you're an Israeli a house in one of these frontline villages. Similarly, in um in the Golan Heights, you have to be a member of the armed forces and or intelligence agencies to be a resident of these frontline um v uh colonies. So, so um they are empty right now these colonies of the families of these soldiers and so forth but uh the soldiers have left the bases around these colonies because they become easy targets those spaces and have moved into residential homes in those colonies using them as uh their command bases and his hunting them inside those colonies. So this is shows us how much advanced uh intelligence gathering and surveillance the the is doing and uh being able to pinpoint where the locations of these uh offices are in these colonies and or inside occupied parts of Lebanon. um you know those uh we saw uh over the last 24 hours release of those videos of attacks on um uh Iron Dome batteries inside again inside occupied Palestine. Uh we saw a video of uh a a a montage that Hezbollah did uh of all its attacks on a temporary Israeli base inside Lebanon uh in Albayada on the coast uh line. Um, that video showed how uh the FBVS were uh going through windows of the temporary command center, hitting equipment like the uh advanced cameras and the communication arrays and and eventually how the Israeli uh soldiers abandoned this uh temporary base. and then one FBV coming to take down the Israeli flag uh that was put up on top of this building in Albaya. So the um efficiency of use of the FPVs is unprecedented I think in any battlefield and according to the admittance of the Israelis themselves uh the use of these FBVS have limited the movement of Israeli soldiers uh 80% of all of their um operations had to be cancelled. Uh and they have orders right now not to move during daylight. Uh that's limiting all their abilities. And um finally, I would say when when we're talking about counter measures that the Israelis have been trying to implement against the FBVS, the only thing that they came up with is uh fishing nets. And Israeli soldiers are uh fundraising online to buy their own fishing nets to put them on top of the houses in Lebanon that they're occupying. But when they do that, it's making those houses uh easily recognizable. So here you have Israeli soldiers trying to hide in an occupied village in Lebanon and you know making it easier for Hezbollah to know which house they're in by when they put these nests on top of the house and then Hezbollah doesn't need to use an FBV to attack that house anymore. Uh it just can throw a suicide drone and or missiles on it and it's done deal. So the the measures that the Israelis are attempting to use to solve this problem of the FBVS is causing them even more problems. Now 5 days ago le the Trump regime announced uh that the so-called ceasefire in Lebanon had been extended by 45 days. I mean I I just fell off my chair when I saw this. What are they talking about? But I mean, you know, the as we've covered on this program, the Lebanese resistance is now mounting 25 to 30 military operations a day. Uh we we just saw one of the, you know, casualties that the Israelis have suffered of many. Uh so look, any rational human being having even a passing familiarity with the facts knows there isn't really a ceasefire. Nothing that could reasonably be called a ceasefire in Lebanon. But why do you think um what do you think is going on here from the perspective of the Lebanese government? Like why is the Lebanese government pretending that there's a ceasefire? And are there is there any credence to these reports that have accompanied this announcement that they've made great progress, the Lebanese government and the Israelis, in reaching some sort of a peace deal? Yeah. Well, the Lebanese government cannot uh take any decisions without Master in the White House telling them. Obviously, they're not negotiating anything. They're just waiting to sign on the dotted line as master tells them. Uh the reason we see this claim of extension of the ceasefire for another 45 days is because the uh Israelis need to uh achieve some of their um goals, their military goals uh in Lebanon and they haven't been able to achieve any of their goals and because the Lebanese uh collaborationist government cannot offer anything to the Israelis in terms of attacking or what have you. Though those attempts to have the Lebanese military attack or disarm it are unrealistic. It's not going to happen. So we see the Lebanese government basically telling the Israelis, "Go ahead and kill more ofah, destroy more of the Shia villages, uh displace more of the population, impoverish them more. Maybe I can help you at the end of it if the if you weaken them enough." That's literally what's happening. And you know this nefarious use of language where genocide becomes ceasefire, where invasion be becomes uh you know liberation, where uh genocide, you know, war crimes become um normal, warfare and resistance is terrorism. This is, you know, the norm. Uh language has almost lost its meaning. Spec, you know, whenever we hear these officials in the United States and or in Israel use language, we almost want to erase language. You know, it's it's so ridiculous. Uh and and it's it's uh you know, the conditions on the ground uh tell us that Hezbollah is winning. Uh the Israelis are are not going to achieve anything. They're just going to continue killing civilians, destroying infrastructure. uh the number of Lebanese civilians uh in the last two and a half months since the beginning restart of this war uh is is um around 3,000 martyrs and around 10,000 injured. But when we look at the Israeli numbers, they admit uh that there is around 1,500 Israeli casualties. uh they're not they don't tell us who's how many Israeli soldiers dead and how many of them uh injured but that's you know 1,500 Israeli soldiers dead or injured uh even if we believe that number although in my mind it's 10 times that it is uh clear that they have not been able to kill 1500 Hezbollah fighters they have been able to uh you know kill 3,000 civilians but has lower casualties as a fighting force than that of the Israelis. Do you uh sense that uh an ignominious withdrawal is in the offing another one from South Lebanon by the uh terrorist entity or you think is your sense that this going to take several more months of bloodshed to uh to accomplish the expulsion of the uh the Israelis from South Lebanon? I know that's a hard question to answer, La. I mean just so you're not on the front line and even people who are on the front line you know probably would be struggling to answer that question but what's your best sense as to um the state of the battle at this stage you know overall the axis of resistance had won this war whether it's in Iran andor what's happening right now in Lebanon has won there's if there was a rational enemy uh if the command of the Israeli military was not bound bound by the political orders of the establishment, they would have abandoned South Lebanon uh from long ago. Their losses are huge. The numbers of tanks that they lost is uh nearing now almost uh 350. This is above and beyond the APCs and and the bulldozers and and Humvees. So these are all huge uh losses that are not justified by the territorial gain or the uh military casualties of the enemy. Hezbollah's military casualties are lower this time because they're they've taking a different tactic in this battle than the one in the 66 day war. Um so I I think just like with the war on Iran uh it's impossible to calculate things rationally in terms of the future pro prospects because ideology is a driver behind it. I believe in general since October 7th, since the the genocide on Gaza started and the Alaka flood started, I saw that as this is going to be the last war in the region and that this war will not end except with the either the total collapse of American hijgemony in Western Asia and the collapse of the Zionist colony or the total genocide of Palestinians, Arabs and uh Muslims in western Asia through a nuclear holocaust. There's no third option. You know the the people in the region here will not accept another 15 year 10 years of of peace then war again then 15 years 10 years of peace then war again. This is not going to happen again. We don't want to live this another generation. Uh so I see it as the last war and and that means that this will continue until either of those uh outcomes uh happens in different forms and shapes. I uh I must say I agree with your assessment as horrifying as that is uh in any case not the victory of the resistance of course that's not what's horrifying. It's the bloodshed that will be required to achieve it and the possibility that these lunatics will resort to nuclear weapons. In any case, Leia, always a great pleasure talking to you. Stay safe out there. Uh, please tell our audience where they can find your work and how they can support Free Palestine TV. You can go to free Palestine. Our website and from there you can uh go find all our social network accounts. We're on YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, X, all of those and and more. Uh, and please donate. Uh, we're 100% uh dependent on our viewers. If you like our content, you can donate on the website. Again, free pasteline.vide is the website. Thank you, uh, Dimmitri, for having me. Thank you. And we're signing off. Peace out. Uh, from Beirut and Kalamata.
Independent journalist Jim Acosta channeled President Donald Trump when he bragged to his guest after he “aced” a cognitive test live on camera during his show.
Trump has spent years bragging about his performance on a test called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA), which begins, as Trump himself has noted, with tasks like identifying animal drawings and progresses to a climax of knowing where you are and what day it is.
Over the years, it has become clear that Trump falsely equates the assessment with an “aptitude” or IQ test.
On Friday’s episode of The Jim Acosta Show, Acosta was joined by Dr. Rob Davidson, an emergency room doctor who is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care.
Dr. Davidson administered the test to Acosta in order to illustrate the true purpose of the exam, which is to assess for cognitive impairment rather than for intelligence.
Acosta passed with what Davidson described as a perfect score, despite a “hiccup” in recalling five random words — Acosta forgot the word “daisy.”
The host did a brief impersonation of Trump as he celebrated the accomplishment:
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Okay, so I’m going to go ahead and score this.
JIM ACOSTA: Wait, are we done?
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Sorry, yeah, yeah. You’re done.
JIM ACOSTA: Oh my goodness. That’s it. Wow! And it was like, that was taxing!
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: While I’m doing this, like how–?
JIM ACOSTA: Actually, no, it was not. It was very easy. And I don’t want to make fun–.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: It was, right? And like the one thing with a little hiccup. No, no. But it should be, right? This is testing mild cognitive impairment. At 26 or less. And if you got less than 12 years of education, we talked before, I know you said you went to college. Then you don’t get a point, less than 12 years education, you get an extra point. Because we’re saying, okay, a lot of education.
JIM ACOSTA: What if I partied mostly through college? Does that count?
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: I don’t think you need the point.
JIM ACOSTA: Give me a point there.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: So, and this is the one here we got. Yeah, so technically, as we’re rounding up, I mean, they don’t do decimals, so as it goes. So the only thing that was not like 100, 100% was the Daisy, right?
JIM ACOSTA: Was the Daisy!
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: The five minute recall.
JIM ACOSTA: I’d never forget the Daisy!
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: That’s okay, you’ll never forgot it in your life. I had a dog named Daisy, so I’d never lose it. Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy, Red, again, no order in particular. And then you get an option, category queue, like hey, it’s a flower. And then multiple choice queue, I’ll give you like, hey, Daisy, table, you know, whatever, and then you’d get it. But you got it on the one, and so it’s times two for that, okay? So three times this, I’m going to get this. So it’s 14 out of 15, we divide it out, and we’re still rounding up. We don’t do decimal points. Your score is a 30. You’re given one of those. Oh, I did get a 30 out of 30. Your score was a 30? I still got it. Amazing.
JIM ACOSTA: Alright, thank you so much Dr. Rob. You don’t, do you normally give somebody a point? Oh, you just don’t let me. No, you give them. I just want to show right here. The score’s the score. It’s official. I aced it!
(TRUMP VOICE) I totally aced it! can I say that? Totally aced this test! And it was fake news when you said Daisy. That was fake news.
Alright, no, I’m just kidding. This is right here and I must say that was, and I shouldn’t joke too much because there are people who have to take this and families go through all this stuff and or whatnot.
But I will say that it is totally nuts that he claims that this is some sort of measurement of his IQ, because this is not an IQ test.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Let’s make it clear. It’s not an IQ test. It is a measurement of cognitive decline, right? Nothing to do with intelligence. There are like Rhodes scholars, right, geniuses who suffer from dementia.
JIM ACOSTA: Right.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: You know, I had a patient once, her husband came in and said, this woman in front of you who was a patient with dementia was a first chair violinist with the Boston Symphony. And like this clearly accomplished person, she had this horrible disease.
JIM ACOSTA: Amazing.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: And was, you know, brilliant at a point in her life and then lost it. So yeah, this has nothing to do with intelligence. Cognition, you’re cognitively intact, you can let your family know.
JIM ACOSTA: I’m good.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: For now, yeah, we’re both the same age and I don’t feel
JIM ACOSTA: I don’t feel this good every day, so maybe I should take it again just to double check.
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: I think you don’t need to take it unless someone who is close to you thinks that you should.
JIM ACOSTA: You don’t think I should ace it three times or anything like that?
No, but I think this is instructive and I’m glad that we did this. I do think that, you know, when he goes out there and brags that he can find which one is the squirrel, I think that that’s not good. It seems to me.
I mean, when you listen to him, do you think there’s something, what’s going on here? Like, do you ever have that thought?
DR. ROB DAVIDSON: Yeah, of course. I mean, and I work with other physicians and nurses and we talk about this. Well, you talk about what’s going on in the world and like I won’t make a diagnosis We don’t.
It’s not ethical to try to diagnose somebody and I don’t know if the president has a condition.
But something just seems not right. Again to perseverate on this test and to tout its difficulty when Anyone can just go I mean anyone can go find this.
You Google in MOCA and that you’re gonna get a hundred images You know.
JIM ACOSTA: Right. And you were asking me what city I’m in, you’re asking me what day of the week it is, you asked me what a lion is–.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs [and Glenn Diesen] discusses why NATO's escalation in the Baltic region has made it the most likely staging ground for a great war between NATO and Russia. RECORDED ON MAY 23, 2026.
Transcript
Welcome back. We are joined today by Professor Jeffrey Saxs to discuss a a situation, a security situation in Europe which appears to be coming more and more uh dangerous. Um so thank you very much for coming back on the program. I've been looking with a great concern at um the possibility of a NATO Russia war breaking out because we've always over the past four years had this incremental escalation and it now appears to have reached a point where it seems almost impossible for Russia not to retaliate. That is drones are attacking Russia out of the territory of the Baltic states. First, it was denied by NATO and now they recognize that it's happening, but they claim that Ukraine doesn't have the right to use their territory, but the fact that they're doing this is Russia's fault anyways. So, it's u yeah, it's quite incredible stuff. And uh now they're condemning Russia for threatening to retaliate. So, how do you make sense of this situation? Of course uh as has been the case uh for many years there is uh no diplomacy taking place between Europe and Russia. Uh both sides uh therefore uh are talking past each other. The Europeans are strident. Uh the European voices in the lead are from the Baltic states and from Poland which are the most rousophobic parts of Europe. Strangely, Europe gave the voice for the European community, which is uh 450 million people over to the Baltic States in in the person of uh their external relations vice president Kaya Kalas, also the commissioner for defense uh who is from Latvia um or Lithuania, excuse It's very strange. Much of Europe is not of this strident rousophobic view. Uh the Baltics for lots of reasons, psychological and geographical uh are and they are driving European policy right now to a shocking extent. And unfortunately the uh major powers in Europe especially Germany and France don't put on the brakes. We have uh in the person of Chancellor Mertz the most uh irresponsible leader of Germany in decades actually. Uh he is an outright uh wararmonger. uh he has not hown uh one cintillaa of interest in diplomacy even uh contacting his counterpart President Putin even having foreign ministers of Germany and Russia meet to discuss the situation. Mertza seemed to have determined in his mind that he would uh base his government's policy on remilitarizing Germany. A not very pleasant prospect I have to say. And so uh one of the things that has gone wrong in addition to the voice of Europe being the voice of three Baltic states with the combined population of 6 million people and the most extreme of all rousophobia is Germany uh which I think plays an extraordinarily dangerous and irresponsible role in all of this because Germany has the most responsib ability as not only the largest country of Europe, but also the country that explicitly promised the Soviet Union in 1990 in unambiguous terms that NATO would not enlarge. It was the country that was supposed to be the guarantor of the end of the Ukraine war in 2015 with the Mins 2 agreement. It failed on that as well. So Germany has a special burden of responsibility. Of course, history is another matter, but not even going to the history of World War II, but just going to the history of German reunification. And afterwards, Germany has cheated repeatedly and Chancellor Mertz acts as if there is no responsibility at all. Then we move to France which is just bizarre in its foreign policy I have to say. Uh maybe Mcronone's idea which is not all wrong but is absolutely peculiar in how it is being carried out is Europe's strategic autonomy. I have no problem with Europe's strategic autonomy from the United States, but to implement it through wararm mongering with Russia is a quite a dangerous game, completely unnecessary. One could argue for Europe's strategic autonomy on the simple fact that we're 80 years after the end of World War II and it's time that Europe get on with it. It doesn't need the United States to either be its defender or the determinant of its foreign policy. But Mcronone seems to think that in order to carry out his idea of strategic autonomy, he has to be a hostile rousophobic leader as well. Add in Britain to this mix which is also and always rousophobic and has been since 1840 at least we have quite a brew which is no diplomacy uh only talk of escalation now the actual events of escalation taking place from Ukraine and let's understand the Ukrainian situation this is a radical government it has not anything to do with democracy. Obviously, it is a small group that runs the state under martial law. Uh that is extraordinarily corrupt as everybody knows. either you see it in the villas owned by Ukrainians all over Western Europe or you see it in the reports of Nabu and uh many many other accounts but you have a dictatorship corrupt and uh extremist and so this is uh what is happening right now and Ukraine is trying to provoke uh Europe Europe into an expanded war. Just like Israel always tries to provoke the United States into joining Israel in an expanded war in the Middle East, Ukraine will do whatever it can to provoke an expanded war. This is Ukraine's tactic because Ukraine can't fight Russia. But maybe Europe will fight Russia. Maybe if Europe fights Russia, then the United States, they think, will have to fight alongside Europe. I don't know what goes through their minds, but sending drones through Baltic airspace, if that's what they're doing, and it seems like it is the case, then this is part for the course. They have bombed Russia's nuclear triad, bombing the the airplanes sitting on the tarmac as part of uh the surveillance mechanisms of nuclear arms control. They have taken whatever provocative steps they can. They want a wider war because they think that that's their best chance to win. You combine all of this uh Baltic state rousophobia, Europe giving over its foreign policy to the Baltic states, uh a German leadership which for the first time since World War II, I would say is openly calling for remilitarization, which incidentally runs against the 4 plus2 treaty that was negotiated for German uh unification which says precisely that Germany will not remilitarize in the context of a reunified Germany and uh the uh aarent leadership of France and the UK and we have a perfect colossal disaster which makes now the Baltic front line probably the world's most dangerous hot spot even more than the contact line of the war in Ukraine. The Baltic states are probably the most dangerous place on the whole planet right now. That's saying a lot because we have the war in Iran. We have the war in Palestine. We have the war inside Ukraine. We have the tensions in Taiwan. But I would say the Baltic states are are now on the front line because they are screaming for war, for vengeance, for hatred of Russia and counting on Europe to follow through through an active engagement in war. Well, uh there's some indications that well either Russia there were some drones entering the Baltic states from Russia now in what appears well it could be a retaliation. Some arguing that the Russians simply, you know, um, scrambled Ukrainian drones, so they went in by accident. Others are saying that the Russians brought down and then essentially attacked the Baltics with B with their with Ukrainian drones. It's hard to say, you know, it's only the speculation, but anyways, it does appear that uh yeah, the the situation escalating. And of course, all of this is also fueled by mutual rhetoric now of war. And uh it's um yeah it's very 11 minutesconcerning because in such a war they're talking about there will be no winners. There will be only mass death and and it doesn't seem to make much sense. So we now moving to a place it seems we're either going to actually enter war with Russia you know whatever the consequences would come from this or there's time to put an end to this thing. And uh we're seeing some discussions now in Europe at very slow slow speed but nonetheless about restoring possibly diplomacy with Russia and indeed of all people Angela Merkel she argued that uh it's time to speak to Russia and it was has been a mistake by the EU not to do this. I mean it's a bit strange coming after more than four years of fighting and uh but still it's it's quite significant it seems because for more than four years the Europeans have been sitting on the sidelines boycotting all diplomacy and presenting it as some kind of virtue that oh we don't speak to the Russians as if you know this is a sign of how how good they 12 minutesare. Uh do do you see any potential here? Because so far they're talking about whether they should talk to Russia and if they can agree then who should represent them and if they can agree agree then they of course they have to come to agreement uh what they should actually speak with a common voice and whenever the 27 EU countries will speak with a common voice it tends to be the lowest common denominator being aggressive as possible. So probably they will end up asking for Russia's capitulation or I'm not sure where they're going, but it at this point it seems better if any European leader will just pick up the phone and at least just talk. It's um No, it's it's a I don't know. Are you optimistic about at least uh the efforts to decriminalize diplomacy? I mean, I haven't heard anyone talk about speaking with the other side in a long time. They're not doing it yet, but at least they're discussing the possibility of it. I think uh what has happened is that the rhetoric and the wararmongering is spinning out of control. And I think there is an analogy with what's happening with Israel and Palestine. For a long time, Israel was engaged in a strategy to conquer and control all of Palestine, including, of course, that means the occupied territories uh of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, and even to expand into neighboring countries in Lebanon and Syria. But this was uh mainly I would say strategic security policy. It's has spiraled especially after the October 7th attack by Hamas but more generally in the changing millure into the most radical ethno uh dehumanization massacres and in the end genocide against the Palestinian people. The the reason I mention this is that the war in Ukraine has been a war of great power politics. It's a war that emerged from NATO enlargement and Russia's resistance to it. uh that emerged from a coup in February 2014 where uh the Russian view which I agree with is that the United States was a major actor and proponent of the coup uh and that it was directed against Russia in order to bring Ukraine into NATO. Uh the idea was to overthrow a government that was uh neutral and wanted to remain outside of NATO. Uh and one could say that this was a unpleasant, dangerous great power politics, a great game uh over Ukraine of the kind that new Brjinski described in the 1990s. But in the context of uh events, it has spiraled into a deep ethno hatred. Uh especially we see it in Poland and the Baltic states, places where I have worked and supported 30 years ago when a new era of peace looked to be taking hold. And I worked with Poland to help them to cancel their debts and to stabilize their currency and to open their trade and to join Europe. All of 16 minuteswhich proved to and I helped Estonia to introduce a currency and worked with Kayakalis's father who was then governor of the central bank of Estonia. But the idea at the time for me and the idea as expressed by Germany and the United States and President Gorbachov and President Yelen was that this was in the interest of a new peace and a common European home. And the uh 4 plus2 treaty which enabled German reunification speaks of uh a treaty uh following the Helsinki final act in which it said that security in Europe is indivisible and that no security could be at the expense of another country and that there would not be remilitarization and so on. But what has happened now is rampant radicalized ethno hatred. These countries have their historical memories, I think, grossly distorted in my own view about Russia, but stoked by the war in Ukraine and by the unrestrained rhetoric and the tragedy of war itself. There's no appreciation at all. not even for a moment a nancond that what is at stake in the Ukraine war has a lot to do with Russia's security visav the United States that isn't admitted or understood or acknowledged at all everything became interpreted as Russian evil as Russian aggression uh as unpro provoked war and massacre by the Russians. All of it false in its uh pseudo history. all in its deliberate denial of basic facts about German reunification about NATO about Minsk 2 and many many other things arms control uh the US abandonment of the anti-bballistic missile treaty the US participation in the Maidan coup of the history that you and I and many others have talked about for years none of this is mentioned for a moment in Germany or in Estonia or in Latvia or in Lithuania or in Poland or by the European Commission in any way. So what we have instead is just the emergence of hatred. Hatred can boil over. This is what makes this so dangerous in the Israel context which I mentioned. hatred boiled over to open genocide. The Israelis have no self-control anymore. They don't even know how they're viewed by the rest of the world. They don't understand because they are in the grip of hatred. And I would say that this is what is happening on the front in Europe right now in the Baltic States and in Poland and in Russia's response. What are you doing? Do you really want a war in Europe? And then that echoes back and we heard from Berlin, yeah, we have to get ready for a war in Europe maybe by 2029. And we hear about uh the need to prepare for war. Uh the nuclear umbrella now 20 minutesthis debate, should we actively support drones attacking Russia? the celebration when Ukraine attacks Moscow and so forth with a drone attack. Now, the only thing I can say, Glenn, is that not only is this about to boil over, but maybe, just maybe, it's giving some uh responsible people in Europe the idea that this has reached the point where there's no self-control on the European side and it could completely uh explode and explode in a way that would be devastating for all of Europe. Europe. And so maybe this is the genesis of the idea four years late that somebody should be discussing this with the Russian counterparts. And I've been saying this for years. 21 minutesYou've been saying this and many others. talk to the other side because there's actually real things that the Russians have to say to help jog the memory uh of the Europeans about how we got into this colossal disaster. And with Chancellor Merkel, it's very interesting and very poignant. I like Chancellor Merkel. I I respect her as a level-headed uh decent, honest, hard-working leader and as someone who wanted peace in Europe. But she herself has described what went wrong. And the poignant moment is between the first day and the second day of the Bucharest NATO summit in 2008 when the United States was pushing for NATO enlargement and Chancellor Merkel knew and said so this could be the path to war with Russia. Very sensible. And the United States was pushing for a fixed date, what they called a map uh which was a plan for uh NATO enlargement to Ukraine and incidentally to Georgia in the South Caucus' region which is not only not the North Atlantic but isn't even in Europe, it's part of Asia. But not to digress, Chancellor Merkel knew and wrote that the commitment to expand NATO was likely to lead to war and she resisted the first day of the NATO summit and then gave in the second day and gave in in a way which uh she thought she was still holding some ground. Uh there won't be a specific plan or date, but the conference would close with the 23 minutesunequivocal declaration that NATO will enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia. That was the end of Germany's voice for restraint. And then unfortunately fast forward to the events of February 21st specifically 2014 when the coup was uh nearly uh undertaken in Kiev and uh the Germans together with colleagues negotiated with the then president of Ukraine. ain President Victor Yanukovic that there would be no coup and that President Yanukovic's term would extend till uh late in 2014 at which point there would be new elections held and Germany agreed to that and the United States did and there were conversations with President Putin that evening about this agreement and then the next day the uh cool leaders stormed the government buildings in uh Kiev or Kev, whichever you prefer, and then the US immediately recognized the new government rather than saying, "Wait a minute, we had an agreement. This is extra constitutional. President Yanukovich is still the president." The United States played its card and immediately recognized the new government. It didn't formally recognize it. It said that it would work with the new government. didn't call for constitutional order and Germany went along. So this was the next step and then one year after that came the Minsk 2 agreement. It was actually February 2015 and Germany was to be the guarantor of the Minsk 2 agreement. And people may not recall the Minsu agreement, but it was an agreement to end the fighting in the Donbas by creating a new constitutional order in which the Donbas, the two oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk, would be granted autonomy for essentially self-ruule within Ukraine. And Ukraine agreed with this. The agreement was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council. Germany and France were to be the guaranurs of Minsk 2 and then the United States and Ukraine privately said now we're not going to implement this and Germany did not stand up and say wait a minute we have an agreement. It's backed by the UN Security Council. We are responsible for enforcement. it will be implemented. Germany remains silent. So much so that in 2022, I believe it was, Chancellor Merkel rather uh strangely said, "Well, we never really meant it. It was to buy time for Ukraine." I actually don't believe that was her view in 2015, but it was her excuse in 2022 when she was under attack for having signed such an agreement, under attack within Germany for having been uh too obliging to the Russians. And so all of this is to say we've come to a point of hatred and we've come to a complete amnesia about actual events and we've come to a point where this could easily boil over into open war in the Baltics or other parts of Europe. In other words, the potential for complete disaster. And so maybe maybe maybe this is why Chancellor Merkel among others I mean it's surely why Chancellor Merkel is saying we need to talk but maybe it's why some others are also uh perhaps agreeing that Europe needs to talk. It's quite notable by the way in this discussion of search for the individual that would be the counterpart where Chancellor Merkel herself is named as a potential uh European representative or Mario Draghi is mentioned as a possible European representative. It's taken for granted that their own real uh external affairs chief Kaakalis could not be that person because her rousophobia is so so blatant uh so uh so so basic that she cannot serve the 28 minutesrole of diplomat. They know that that by itself is very very sad. It's like saying we need diplomacy, but in the US context it can't be the secretary of state. He's no diplomat. That's what it would be like saying. But Europe is implicitly acknowledging that fact. Well, the EU picked Kalas as the foreign policy chief when the EU was uh following the line that they were boycotting diplomacy and weapons were the path to peace. So, if you don't want any diplomacy at all, then I guess she could be a good choice. Uh I I often think about what you just mentioned as well that how could he go from Angela Merkel who once stated that offering a membership action plan for NATO to Ukraine would be interpreted by Moscow as a declaration of war to where we are now where it's impossible to even discuss uh our side having provoked anything. I I sometimes think that part of the the way the the narrative has been manipulated or the discussion has been uh suppressed is they they often tend to present any issue as being only two sides. Either it's our narrative or the Russian narrative and you essentially have to pick one. And uh I I think of in this country actually in in Norway we we used to because of our geography have a key uh point in the Americanled missile defense which is now NATO missile defense strategic missile defense which threatened to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent and the Norwegian uh Norwegians used to be quite concerned about this and then Wikileaks taught us that the ambassador American ambassador to Norway he was making the point that well we can you know flip the Norwegian All we have to do is make this an issue of alliance solidarity. That is either the Norwegians are repeating what the Russians are saying or they or they prioritize NATO solidarity. And he argued if we frame it like this there's no way they can anymore talk about you know security and uh you know also making the point that you know we'll engage with NOS's think tanks journalists politicians and later on you saw another um Wikileak yeah cable being released where the uh where essentially confirmed that oh no they're all falling in line now. So it's it's not more it's not more complicated than that. either you repeat the Kremlin talking point or you have solidarity. And I noticed in this war as well, that's what they're saying as well. If you're saying, well, NATO provoked this. Well, that's a Kremlin talking point. We NATO helped to topple the government Kremlin talking point. There's no discussion. It's just pick one camp and somehow, you know, arguing for war, pretending it's unprovoked. That's the pro-western and pro, you know, Ukrainian. You know, if you mention perhaps, you know, kidnapping all these young Ukrainian men and sending them to their death is not pro- Ukrainian, well, that's a pro Kremlin talking point as well. If you're pro- Ukraine, you're pro, you know, busification, sending all these men to die. It's a it's I think it would be very interesting in the Norwegian context to ask the leadership today, what was Norway's position at the Bucharest NATO summit? uh in its actual position. I happen to have some information about that. Uh and uh I believe that NATO that Norway's position was to be a gasast at what George Bush was promoting and to ask how is it that Bush who promised that he wouldn't go down that path went down that path. I I'd like to know what Norway's leadership says about that. Uh, is there any remembrance of events in 2008, of attitudes in 2008, of the sense that Chancellor Merkel expressed and wrote down at least honestly in her recent book, her diary in in effect or her memoirs, uh, that yes, she knew that this was tantamount uh, to war or would be seen that way from the Russian side. I'd like to know what the Norwegians would remember about that, the Norwegian leadership, because there is historical memory. And that reflection should be helpful. Okay? There's a lot of American bullying. We we know that there's a lot of arm twisting. You step out of line, Americans will say you're corrupt. They'll try to bring down your government. They'll do one thing or another. But this is actually what has brought Europe to this disaster. Uh you know I I view Europe's situation today as tragic and as mistaken. I view the rousophobia uh as a terrible self harm of Europe by being so rousophobic. Europe has hurt itself many many times in history. It's a a long and fascinating subject that I'm writing about and studying myself right now. It's very harmful for Europe to take these extreme positions. Doesn't unify Europe. It just brings Europe closer to disastrous conflict by uh absolutely deliberately uh evading history and not uh uh attempting any honest assessment. uh but people do know at least uh there are people who should remember and can recall and again I put primary responsibility for all of this on Chancellor Mertz because Germany has the most responsibility here and the most accountability here uh not only World War II But I'll put that in. And not only the terms of German reunification, but the explicit promises of no NATO enlargement, the terms of the 4 plus2 treaty, the events around Maidan, the events around Minsk 2. If Mertz would just spend an honest day, one day reviewing German recent history and diplomacy and how many times Germany lied to the Soviet Union and to Russia since 1990. And by the way, I'll add one more incidental fact which is also puzzling but true. Germany took the lead in saying no NATO enlargement. The United States and Germany expressed this absolutely explicitly to Gorbachov and to Yeltson. 35 minutesAnd then around 1992, the US started to reconsider and Germany, interestingly, especially the business community, started to lobby for NATO enlargement as early as 1993. So while I tend to put a lot of blame on US foreign policy uh of manipulation and reigging on commitments, Germany actually has a direct independent responsibility not just falling into line with the United States, which it did often enough, but rather independently blowing off the terms of German reunification within a three-year period and starting to lobby for NATO enlargement and I know that some scholars are studying this right now. The German businesses I think believed that they were going to invest in Eastern Europe and they wanted the ecurity of these countries being within the NATO umbrella. But they gave short shrift or no shrift I should say to the fact that Germany had explicitly promised in the 4 plus2 agreement not to move troops into even Germany and that this was in the context of absolute clarity not ambiguity as our narrative says now but absolute clarity that that commitment included not just not moving troops into Eastern Germany, which is what's in the 4 plus2 treaty, but more generally into central and eastern Europe, much less to the Baltic states and to Ukraine and to Georgia, which became the the ploy and the plot soon after those commitments were made. So I would above everything 37 minuteslike the German chancellor to review the history and from the position of honesty say it's time to talk to our counterpart. Yeah. But again when we meet it's uh I wonder what can actually be achieved. Now I saw the Finland's foreign minister make this statement that uh NATO is not a threat but Russia is a threat to world peace. So in other words this is how you see the world now that is more NATO is more peace less Russia is more peace uh essentially the world is good guys and bad guys. If the good guys have more guns the be bad guys are weak and then we'll have peace. This is uh I mean this is the the thinking. So there's no I agree with that. I Glenn I just believe I believe I hope without proof but I hope that a face-to-face discussions where 38 minutesfrankly the Europeans are forced to remember some recent history would be helpful. There is a lot of uh experience both the actual events and uh experimental data which shows that face-to-face uh discussions can make some difference uh that it's very hard to keep a false narrative directly in the face of the counterpart on a prolonged basis. I happen to know well foreign minister Lavrov. I respect him enormously. He is a walking encyclopedia of the last 36 years of history. I think he would be a very excellent counterpart for discussions of these issues and I believe since I've seen a lot of them with my own eyes, I think that the Europeans would have a lot to remember and that that would be beneficial for Europe's own security. Yeah. No, I agree. Well, when diplomacy becomes sitting in a room with people you agree with only, then uh it's easy to have this uh bubble mentality where crazy narratives begin to move forward and uh dominate. Anyways, I've already taken too much of your time, so thank you very much and uh enjoy in Brazil. Thanks a lot. See you soon. Bye-bye.
'Iranians shattered aggressors' illusions': Iran FM spox invokes history amid prospect of MoU with US Sunday, 24 May 2026 1:25 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 24 May 2026 1:25 AM ] https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/05/2 ... ry-Baghaei
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman cites a historical instance of the Roman Empire's failing to secure victory against Persia amid the prospect of realization of a memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US following unfaltering Iranian retaliation and resistance.
Esmaeil Baghaei invoked the example in a post on X after reporting that Iran and the United States had edged closer to finalizing an MoU to end unprovoked American aggression against the Islamic Republic, halt an illegal American naval blockade, and secure the release of Iran’s frozen assets.
Press TV @PressTV Iran, US moving closer to 'finalizing memorandum of understanding': Baghaei From presstv.ir 2:29 PM · May 23, 2026
"In the Roman mind, Rome was the undisputed center of the world. Yet the Iranians shattered that illusion; when Marcus Julius Philippus (Philip the Arab) marched east against Persia, the campaign did not result in Roman victory — it ended in a peace established on Sasanian [3rd-7th century Persia] terms," he wrote.
"The emperor had to come to terms!" the post went on.
Press TV @PressTV Iran’s resistance has already proven a profound truth: war not only failed to force Iran into surrender but granted it strategic advantages it could not have achieved in peacetime. Every war imposed on Iran has left the enemy weaker and Iran stronger.
The United States and the Israeli regime launched their latest bout of unprovoked aggression against Iran on February 27.
US President Donald Trump announced a unilateral ceasefire on April 7 following at least 100 waves of decisive and successful Iranian retaliation and after the Islamic Republic closed the Strait of Hormuz to enemies and their allies.
Throughout its course, the aggression fell far short of overthrowing Iran's Islamic establishment, while the closure of the waterway began unleashing shockwaves onto global energy markets, including in the US, where soaring gas prices started chipping away at Trump's already record low popularity levels.
by admin » Sat May 23, 2026 12:27 am 
