File photo of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)'s ballistic missiles (Photo by Tasnim News Agency)
An Iranian ballistic missile attack on a Kuwaiti air base has wounded several American military personnel and caused serious damage to two US MQ-9 Reaper drones, according to a new report.
The American news outlet Bloomberg, citing an informed source, said in a report published on Saturday that the attack on the Ali Al Salem Air Base resulted in minor injuries to approximately five individuals, including US service members and contractors.
It also caused significant damage to two MQ-9 Reaper drones, with one reportedly destroyed and another heavily damaged. Each drone is valued at around $30 million.
According to Bloomberg, Kuwaiti air defences intercepted an Iranian Fateh-110 missile before it reached its intended target. However, debris from the intercepted projectile fell onto the US-operated Ali Al Salem Air Base, causing the injuries and damage.
The latest development comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.
On Thursday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed that Iran had launched a missile toward Kuwait, describing the action as a “gross violation of the ceasefire.”
In a statement issued later in the day, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had deliberately targeted the US base, noting that it had been used to launch an earlier American attack.
The IRGC went on to say that US forces had conducted a strike using aerial projectiles against a location near Bandar Abbas airport earlier that morning, describing its missile attack as a warning to the US.
It also vowed that any future acts of aggression would be met with a stronger response, stressing that responsibility for any escalation would rest with the party initiating hostile actions.
The US and Israel started an aggression against Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.
Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching a barrage of missiles and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in regional countries.
On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US took effect.
Negotiations ensued in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, but stopped short of an agreement amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.
Smoke rises from a petrochemical unit in Mahshahr, Iran, following a US-Israeli strike. (File photo)
A new report has revealed that the United Arab Emirates played a far more extensive role in the US-Israeli aggression against Iran than previously known, carrying out dozens of airstrikes on Iranian territory from the opening days of the war.
The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported on Friday that Emirati forces launched attacks against Iranian targets early in the war and continued the assaults even after a ceasefire was announced in April, adding that the strikes were coordinated with the US and Israel, with intelligence support provided by both allies.
According to the report, targets included strategic sites on Qeshm and Abu Musa islands in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as locations in Bandar Abbas.
Emirati aircraft also struck the Lavan Island oil refinery and the Asaluyeh petrochemical complex, targeting key components of Iran's energy infrastructure.
One of the most controversial attacks involved the Asaluyeh complex. The strike, which was conducted in coordination with Israel, sparked international criticism and prompted US officials to urge Tel Aviv to suspend attacks on Iranian energy facilities, the WSJ said.
The revelations contradict public assurances previously made by Persian Gulf states that their territories and airspace would not be used for military action against Iran.
According to the report, Abu Dhabi abandoned that position shortly after the war began.
The report further highlighted growing divisions within the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), noting that Saudi Arabia privately warned Washington in early April that Emirati attacks risked provoking Iranian retaliation against regional energy facilities, threatening oil supplies and global markets.
According to the newspaper, Saudi officials pressed the US to persuade Abu Dhabi to halt its military involvement and instead pursue diplomatic solutions.
The war also exposed tensions between Persian Gulf leaders, with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed becoming frustrated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after Riyadh declined to participate in a coordinated war against Iran.
The economic consequences for the UAE have also been significant. Continued missile threats and regional instability have disrupted air travel, weakened tourism, and shaken investor confidence. Businesses across multiple sectors have announced furloughs and layoffs as economic uncertainty deepens.
According to the report, more than $120 billion has been erased from the combined market capitalization of the Dubai and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges through the end of April.
Aviation has also been heavily affected, with more than 18,400 flights cancelled amid security concerns and airspace disruptions.
UAE failed to push GCC states to join a coordinated war against Iran: Report The United Arab Emirates failed in persuading other Persian Gulf Arab states to take part in a coordinated war against Iran, report says.
On February 28, the United States and Israel initiated a large-scale and unprovoked war against Iran, assassinating the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and several high-ranking military commanders.
The Iranian armed forces responded by launching almost daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories as well as US military bases and assets across the Persian Gulf region for over 40 days, which resulted in significant damage.
They also blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz to oil and gas tankers affiliated with the adversaries and those cooperating with them.
Ray McGovern: Iron Dome HUMILIATED Again – Ukrainian UAV Hits Zaporozhye NPP Dialogue Works May 30, 2026
Transcript
Hi everybody. Today's Saturday, May 30th, 2026 and our dear friend Ray McGovern is here with us. Welcome back Ray. Thanks Nemo. Glad to be with you again. Ray, let me start with what was happening yesterday. Everybody was talking about are they going to announce the agreement between Iran and the United States? what what's going on in the situation room in the United States. On the other hand, we had we've heard from the Iranian side that that they're somehow they're assessing or reassessing the situation and Donald Trump himself yesterday posted that he's going to lift the blockade in this trade for most that didn't happen. So far, we they have no sign of the United States, you know, withdrawing that blockade or or removing that blockade from this trade of Muslims. And here is what was said by Speaker Mike Johnson about yesterday. Bloomberg is reporting that there were Iranian missile strikes that injured several Americans at a Kuwaiti air base. We know the president was in the situation room for about two hours yesterday. He's been very clear. No dust, no deal. There could also be votes about Iran next week, war powers votes. Where do you think things stand? Well, I talked to the president most recently last night about all of this. And you're right, he has dialed in on it. We we've got to get the street of Hormuz reopen and we've got to get this to a situation where there's no kinetic conflict. The Iranians, uh, you know, there there's a a bunch of of alihadis over there, right? And the new leadership, I think, wants to bring an end to this conflict. I certainly hope they do. These guys are fascinating. A bunch of jaw is out there. Just remove the whole question, the whole problem. So we have to your understanding of what is going on, Ray, between Iran and the United States. It will be difficult to write the history books of this episode, won't it? I've never seen the like of it, and I've been around for a while. uh US foreign policy being revealed by truth social and some rants by a president that will or will not take any advice. I think the Iranians are are very settled in their notion that no matter what comes out of Washington, nothing can be trusted. After all, the JCPOA negotiated at great pain. Trump left it and then fool me once, fool me twice in starting an attack that is uh the US and Israel while negotiations were going on. uh that's you know this is enough they don't trust the United States and that don't have to trust the United States because they have their own very specific conditions and one of which that completely a me is that u the Iranian the Iranians really care about Palestinians and others who are oppressed in occupied territories. I think I may have said this before, but you know, couldn't they cut a deal just, you know, I mean, self-centered deal like like the Gulf monarchies? They don't give a rat pizzazzi about the Palestinians or or the people in occupied territory, South Lebanon, for example, or Gaza. Um, so, uh, this is one condition. It's got to be it's got to include no more attacks on Lebanon. Wow, that's big. And then we can talk about well from the Iranian point of view we talk about lifting sanctions right and we talk about opening then under proper conditions opening the straight of hormuz which I think was open before we started these attacks wasn't it? I think was open then. So reopening it and then finally dealing with the nuclear issue as you and I know that can be dealt with. I mean if the Iranians were seeking a nuclear weapon that would be sticky. They're not. Nobody knows that. So Trump is quite free to say I stopped them. I made them promise not to work on a nuclear weapon. and those highlyenriched uranium uh canisters or whatever. We're going to deal with those. The Russians helped us out on the in the past on that. So, that's dealable. We could do that. But there sort of a second stage. Now, of course, everybody has their own ladder of which comes first, right? But who's in the driver's seat? Iran is. Okay? And uh to the degree that Trump will say one day we'll have lifted the blockade. Well, what does that mean if he doesn't do it, there's no trusting him, uh there's no well there's no dealing with someone who is so mercurial and uh who they can't really depend on to deliver on what he says or what some of his uh sickopants say. So, uh, the way I see it, uh, it's extremely disturbing because, well, let's let's face it, if you come down to the to the wise and wherefore, I did some some notes here. I say something about the Epstein factor. I've been saying that for a long time and there is some evidence now from the Mossad case officer who ran some of these people. Uh how much does Netanyahu have on the president and how much is that influencing his inability to step away and his survile uh acquiescence in what Netanyahu wants? Uh let me just remind you I did print these out because I want to say them just so people have some background here. Um first on the 26th of February the Omani foreign minister who had refereed these talks between the Iranians including foreigners Arachi and those real estate agents. uh he came he said wow we're this close to an agreement he came to Washington the next day the 27th of February he said I want to talk to somebody important and they said well we should talk to JD Vance and he talked to him and he must have sensed that JD Vance was not really not really hearing what he has to say so he calls up Margaret Brennan CVS Margaret I got to talk to you right we're this close as a matter of fact There's going to be UN inspections. Uh we have the IAEA right in here. Even there might even be US inspectors here who are this close. I'm so happy we did a good job of mediating this thing. That was the 27th. The 28th, the attack. 28th of February, the attack. Now, how did that happen? Well, we know how it happened because 3 days later on the 2nd of March, this is what Rubio said. I mean, it's really worth remembering. Quote, "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that this would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preempt go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. Okay. So, in effect, Israel made us do it. They went ahead. Of course, probably knew they're going to go ahead. Rubio probably told them to go ahead, but then we had to take care of our own casualties. And so, we had to go. Now, the last thing I'd cite is something I'm very proud of because it's the highest level whistleblower that I've seen in decades in the US government. His name is Joe Kent. He was a deputy to the national intelligence director. So, the highest you can go and what he said was two things. On March 17th, I resigned. I cannot in good conscience support the attack on Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat. We started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. My god, it's bad enough to resign. You don't say exactly why you resigned if it has to do with Israel. This is guts. This is courage. Okay. Two weeks later, what does he say? For any peace agreement to work, we must first restrain Israel. Israel will thwart any peace deal unless we take away the military aid it needs to attack Iran. Now, sometimes these guys just get it so right in so short a form that you have to pay attention to them. So what I'm saying here is that it's intractable right now unless unless Trump can break himself free from Netanyahu and my god it's altogether possible that Israel will will will preempt the the possibility of peace again because they have so much I mean Netanyahu is in danger politically as well as the losing the war so there's so many moving parts that I'm not surprised that The Iranians are just standing firm and say okay these are our this is Dadia these are our our this is what we went out as let's talk we could put off the nuclear issue issue to later but let's re open straight which was open before you guys did these things I can't believe that it's been three months but it has three months my god and you know the world is really suffering and it's going to suffer big time in just a couple of weeks when there are no more deliveries from ships that haven't left the Persian Gulf area. So, I don't want to go on here, but that's how I look at it. And uh I just would add this uh one of my well one of the people one of the statesmen and that uses appropriately um of all time is George Schultz whom I used to brief every other morning with carrying the the president's daily brief one- on-one. I learned so much from him and when he was a 100 years old, older than even I am, Nema, he wrote his last article for the Foreign Affairs Journal and it was it was titled trust. Without trust, you can't do any diplomacy. And without diplomacy, without diplomacy, you're inevitably going to end up killing people and maybe not winning. So that's what's that's what's absent and maybe you see it a little differently. Um please comment if you do. I I don't think that Donald Trump the attitude of the Trump administration would produce any sort of trust between Iran and the United States because he's just coming out and he agrees on something behind the scene or during with these written messages that they're sending back and forth to Iranians. Then he comes out as he did yesterday. He's just putting something else out like the straight of foremost which one of the you know one of the points that he mentioned yesterday the straight of hormones they're going to open it up with no pools or fees. That's not the case. That wasn't mentioned in that memorandum of understanding. The other point would be the enrich uranium which wasn't mentioned in that memorand. There was no term referring to that because that's the next step. It's not the, you know, the initial step. And this is the problem that they're dealing with today. I talked with Professor Morandi. They're so confused. They don't know who to believe or who to trust. You talked to you talked to Morandi today. Yeah, I talked with him today. So, nobody knows what's going on in the United States. Nobody know. Here is Ray. We've heard Donald Trump talking about Oman. It's not about Iran. And he said, "I'm gonna blow them up." And here is what the foreign minister of Oman tweeted on February 28th, the same day that the United States attacked Iran. Look at here what he said. It's I am dismayed active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined. Neither the interest of the United States nor the cause of the global peace are well served by this the attack. He's talking about the attack on February 28th. I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war. Yeah. No. Yeah. Nean, let me just comment. This is the very person that I mentioned mediated the talks on the 26th of February was so enthused was so happy with the results almost there he got on his own private plane didn't have to wait for a charter plane he get over the Atlantic and talked to whoever will talk to him JD Vance oh that's interesting so he went to try publish it on CBS for god's sake chapter and verse what he told Vance and then the next day the attack. So now he's writing that next day. My god, I don't understand this. We were so close. I don't understand either. I understand from you, Nema. You're a bit angry about this. Well, so am I. For God's sake. And I can imagine how Arachi or or how the Omani foreign minister feels about this. Now that Trump has said, well, Oman too will be what? Level to the ground or whatever. So there's no no sense in this except for the fact that the Iranians have shown for three months that they can withstand the worst. And the new factor is China and Russia are behind Iran. In my view, given the closeness of those two major countries and given the stakes they have in the outcome of this, they're not going to let Iran fail. And no matter how much uh Trump has to worry about disclosures about Epstein and all that kind of stuff, somebody sensible has got to say, "Look, this is a no-win situation. Let's ask the Russians and the Iranians to give us enough flipstick to put on this pig of defeat. Let's say we prevented them from making a nuclear weapon. That should satisfy a lot of our critics to the United States. It's all a PR thing and let's go ahead." Now, he doesn't do that, and I just say one more thing. What bothers me about that and bothers me about the whole thing. What bothers me about how Trump doesn't seem to care about the midterm elections, I mean, he he must have known he must have known they could have closed the straight, you know, that's why he was convinced that he would never that he would never join Israel in this thing. And you know, so why is it why does he insult the pope? What percent is it? Well, I don't think he cares about the midterms. Why? I think he has his own plan. In our 250th year of a republic, I am very afraid that the midterm elections will be interfered with by outfits like ICE and national guards and so forth. And that may be why Trump doesn't seem to care much about what happens now uh with his obvious defeat in Iran and with the other things that have gone sour for him. I mean, he can't even get it. They've taken his name off the Kennedy Center. My god. Oh, isn't that awful? So, you know, he's uh he's reeling from a lot of and how a how a mercurial uh person reacts to all that is really worrying. That's why, as I said before, I think that's particularly why a Puchin and she to a degree treat them with kids gloves. give him any benefit of the doubt, at least rhetorically. Separate him, for example, as Putin does from the crazy Europeans. And that's legitimate because Putin said on the 9th of May, look, it's not the Americans, it's the Europeans. We we believe about Ukraine. We come with the same solution that the America Americans and we think alike about Ukraine. Whoa. Wow. That's come a long way, hasn't it? So, uh, they're trying to make sure that they can do a deal with Trump if it's possible. And until it becomes possible, they're just going to persist and build up their defenses and make it still more difficult uh for the Americans and the um and the Israelis to attack, which unfortunately doesn't rule out the possibility that they will again. Right. You look uh when you look at Pete Hacket, he's the head of Pentagon and the way he behaves, the way he talks, the way he you know he he express himself or his position. Do you do you see any sort of you know any any sort of decency in the way that he behaves or because this this this guy is the head of Pentagon for for God's sake. It has to be some sort of understanding because we had Lloyd Austin. I'm not telling you that Lloyd Austin was the best guy in Pentagon. Thanks. It was it's not even comparable to what Pete Hexad is doing. Let me play a clip of him convincing American troops about the war in the Middle East. Hey, Iran has a choice. Meet at the table with the president and give up their nuclear program. And as the president said, I'm lost on time. two days ago now in the cabinet meeting sitting right next to him. He looks in the camera and says, "Well, Iran can either do it the right way with a deal across the table or they can deal with my guy on the left." It happened to be me. But it's not me. It's you guys. It's what you're ready to do. What? No. H Rey, what is your I I know because you you've seen many of these administration coming and going. Have you ever seen such a guy in the as the head of Pentagon? No. No. And what's important is how the Russians look at that. They know that Hexath has been egging on Trump. He and Rubio probably the rest of them just go along. So if this guy is so deranged if he thinks that war against Iran is a good idea um I mean they take that into account. His demeanor is one thing but what what it means in terms of the inner councils in the White House that's another that's much more important. I can see Bella Uso who's 180 degrees away from this kind of approach. He's the Russian foreign defense minister looking on at this and say, "Oh my god, it'll come. The time will come I may have to talk to this this fellow now. I'll I'll have to have a little tutorial as to how to get through to this guy because he's not all there." Now the other thing of course is those troops. USA, USA. Um they have been indoctrinated just like everyone who goes into the army or the marines or navy or whatever. And so they're not able to make calculated decisions. It used to be that you would have officers at higher ranks. Uh not so high. I was a captain when I got out of the army. You don't have to be all high, but you get all that high in rank. But uh you know a little bit about the world and you can you can kind of say, "Oh my god, well this is not a good idea and you can kind of u tell the troops the truth in terms of saying well okay we have these orders to do that. You'll get a lot of conscientious objectives that way. But at least there used to be people even some generals at the top, some generals even under Kennedy who advised him, a marine general who was really a terrific adviser who dissed all those real wararmongers like uh Curtis Lameé and gave him good advice. So that's missing now because u as one one marine um captain told me the way you get from captain to lieutenant colonel is you take a test and then they give you a labbotomy and then you're good to go because you'll do whatever you're told. So you know that was a joke I hope but uh it's not far from the truth. Ry, we know one of the issues as you've mentioned is the case of the war between Israel and Lebanon and this was this has always been the first point of the negotiations between Iran and the United States and there was still the same but we have seen recently some sort of escalation on that front. Israel is attacking Lebanon, killing many people, destroying their homes, everything there. And Lebanon, Hezbollah is escalating by using drones, FPV drones. These are the new strategy. It was a new a new technique, I would say, which it seems that it's turning to some sort of strategic problem for Israel. As one of their commanders said, they don't have a solution for these FV drones. And yes, today we've learned that Hezbollah's rocket they hit, you know, the the target in Kiriat Shimona in the northern part of Israel. I saw that and these are the escalations that are happening and looking at the Trump administration. Do you think let's assume let's be optimistic. Let's go and let's believe that they're going to get something after all. What about the front? What about the war between Israel and Lebanon? Is Donald Trump going to be able to do that? Force Israel in some sort of ceasefire, meaningful ceasefire? I mean, not the ceasefire we are witnessing right now. Not as things now stand. Uh, in other words, Middle East experts who know more about these things than I do would tell you, forget about it. Uh, Israel sees this as its way to prevent any progress in a ceasefire or a real deal having to do with Iran. Um, Iran is in this for existential reasons, uh, strategic ones. Israel is in this for, uh, existential political ones. Netanyahu can't lose this one, else he ends up in jail or has to flee to the Bahamas or some place like that. Uh it's getting really really uh narrow, very narrow elections are coming up in Israel. All kinds of bad things are happening to Netanyahu. Uh so you know, will we see a false flag attack that uh Trump will be persuaded to oh resume the the attack? I I fully expect that Israel will do anything in its power to do this. Uh whether they succeed or not depends on whether on what Trump thinks they have on them and whether he can see the light for once. If I were Iranian, I would say, "Well, that'll be the day. We'll wait for it, but we won't expect it." Ray, shifting the gear to the war in Ukraine which was supposed to be over in since Donald Trump was elected in the he said I'm going to put an end to the war in Ukraine in . It's going to be as easy as this. It's I'm going to go there. I'm going to teach a lesson to Zalinski and Put and they're going to put an end to the war. And right now we are more than a year of the Trump's presidency and we have the war. We have the escalation happening. We've seen Ukrainians attacking using drones, attacking civilians in Russia and killing, you know, teachers, you know, students. And then we had a an attack on Romania, which would they said it was Romanians said that it it's a Russian drone coming and hitting the target some targets in Romania. Then we had Vladimir Putin coming out and saying something else. I would I I let you say what what was happened and what is your understanding of the way that Russia is talking about what has happened in Romania and what Romania is trying to put out about the attack and the situation on the battlefield. uh the presser the the press conference Q&A uh that poin gave at Astana in Kazakhstan yesterday is really worth reading in full actually I've selected some excerpts from it but as he comes out very late from an hour and a half with Lucanka the head of Belorus um he's not as he doesn't seem as at ease or confident Uh my guess is that Lucenko was uh playing some themes on this. You know, you got to retaliate. You got to you got to hit those NATO bases or NATO capitals. Come on, let's get these thing off. That's just a guess of my point. But an hour and a half with Lucena in Oana and he comes out and he's really kind of miffed and the first question he gets is Mr. President, uh breaking story every minute. Um. Uh. Oh yeah. Let's see. I Here is my question. Are you Are you aware of this story about the drone that flew into Romania? Yeah. I just been told about that. My question is why didn't the Europeans shoot it down? You know, Putin, something really strange here. I just learned about this. I was informed something happened. Um, you know, if you would be so kind to explain again what really happened. I'm not joking. I'm not being ironic. Just tell me what really happened. He's just in a really prickly sort of mood. He's not the the calm, graceful pooching. Okay. He's not feeling very much in command. Okay. No, I understand. Oh, so so why didn't they shoot it down? Why don't they shoot down a drone? Poo, are you listening to me or not? I don't even understand what you're talking about. Before ending at the hall, they told me, you know, some drone flew into Romania. I said, I don't know what kind of drone. So, tell me what's going on. What is the media saying? They are saying it was our drone. Who's saying that? Many people in Europe are saying that many people are nobody. Give me a specific name. lion. Oh, okay. And he goes on, he gives he gives a couple of harsh words about what the Iranian tell me a real person who is saying this. So what I'm saying here is that he was irassable and he's so up to here with the drone attacks and now he hears about one in Iran. It's being blamed on the Russians. I mean, hello. Are the Russians going to fire one drone into an apartment building in Romania? I mean, hello. What happened, Rick? Well, he's saying we have to look at this. Has lion done an investigation? Has she she been there? No. Well, who's she relying on? Do there are there pieces to this drone? For God's sake, let's look at what the you before we make judgments. And then he says, you know, there were pieces to the drone that were shot at one of the presidential residences near Valai, you know, and we pieced those together and we gave them to the Americans. So it is possible to find out uh where such drones were fired from, what kind of guidance they had and so forth. Now, uh he hasn't often mentioned that, but that must have been a real real uh provocation to have that happen at the same time that he was talking to Trump on the telephone. Maybe worst case people in the United States thought that Vladimir Putin was also in that residence in Valdai at the time. I mean, how can he escape that possibility? So, so he's he's pissed off. He's really angry and he's up to here with these drones. Now, when they asked him later now, uh the Latafians, the Latafians are are reportedly ready to give bases in Latvia uh for the Ukrainians to fire drones and missiles from. Uh the SVR, the CIA equivalent in Russia has reported interesting report. I didn't know they had a press office, Nema, but apparently they did. And they said, "Look, um we know this is the CIA of Russia. We know that the Ukrainians have persuaded the Latafians that they can put drone bases in Latvia and no one will ever know when we shoot drones into Russia. And uh Putin says, you know, uh it's a combination of irreversible rousophobia and not clear thinking. Don't they know that we could find the coordinates? Don't they know? So, it was wishful thinking here, but apparently they're going to do this. Now, if they do that, says the SVR, membership in NATO is not going to prevent retaliation. Okay. Woo. Now, so Putin is asked about this just just yesterday in Astana in Kazakhstan and he says, "Well, yeah, you know, if they do that, then uh they would be legitimate targets, you know." Now, uh in my view, if the Latians have any sense at all, they're going to enull those plans for those five bases. Okay? So, I don't think it'll be a problem. But if they do, uh, what is Putin, uh, sort of committed to doing something against Latafia? Retaliation against Latvia. Most people assume, well, they will strike those bases in Latvia. I suggest that there are other options that uh, yeah, they will be legitimate targets, but Russia has all kinds of ways to get to get at at Latafia. Uh, some of them subterranean. Uh, so it could be that Russia would hit Latvia and that would be hitting a NATO country and that would be big. Now, you've heard me say NATO really is falling apart and that the other NATO members cannot depend on the US honoring article 5 obligations to come to its aid if it's attacked. But, you know, I'm not pooching and as I read pooching, um, he's going to be very, very careful. Uh, he's always careful. And if there are other ways to get back at Latafia, which there are, uh, I just think that even in his view, if I'm thinking about how Trump, this unpredictable person, this mercurial person, might react to an attack on a fellow NATO state. Well, my advisers can tell him, "Wow, he Yeah, he's not going to Yeah, right. Easy for you to say. The last 25 years I've been building up this country, my overarching priority is never to give people like Trump, irassable and unpredictable as he is, uh an excuse um to u to art honor article five of the NATO treaty. So even if that you tell me it's a 5% chance, right? Oh, you say 10%. That's too much. Still too much for nuclear war. Now, I may be wrong in that. I hope I'm not. But, uh, everything in Putin's demeanor and his record so far and how I think he looks at the world, especially the fact that they're winning in Ukraine and no, nobody ever says that on the ground they're winning big time in Detsk and just, you know, wrapping up this year, slow as it has been, it's been positive and from the Russian point of view. So uh my view is that the risk benefit calculus in Putin's mind is uh yeah if Latafia does some really stupid things uh it will become a legitimate target and you know that Putin is a lawyer. This means something to him. But whether they'll uh whether the Russians would fire back and and hit a NATO member state, I just don't know. I think the chances are that as Putin ducked it, he said, "Yeah, they'd be a legitimate target." He didn't go to the next sentence and say, "N would blast the hell out of him with level and the rest of Latafia." He didn't say that. He might do that, but I don't think so. Ray, I I think the other point we you talk about the case of Israel, with the case of Ukraine, we have the same sort of issue, the use of drones. Ukrainians are using drones. They're using as we've been witnessing against civilians because and the other point is Mo just hours ago before coming to this live we've learned that they have hit the nuclear power plant in Zaporosia and again attack on a nuclear power plant and everybody knows how dangerous is that these sort of attacks. It seems that the damage they made a hole on the wall of the unit, unit six. They call it number six, unit number six. But the main equipment was not damaged as Rosatham reported. And who's Ray? When it comes to the production of the drones, we know some of them are produced in Ukraine and some of them are produced outside of Ukraine, naming United Kingdom. United Kingdom is one of the countries that is producing them and sending them to Ukraine. How do you see the you mentioned about Latia? Don't you think that as the escalation because the war in the Middle East somehow distracting all of us because of the importance because of the impact on the global economy and what's going on with this trade of foremost but many people don't understand how dangerous the situation in Ukraine is getting as time goes by and these people are producing these drones are attacking civilians and how these attacks are putting pressure tremendous pressure on the Russian president from the people in UK in Russia from the politicians decision makers going back to ordinary people they are all angry about what's going on with the case of the war in Ukraine and don't you think that is hugely is is of particular concern when it comes to the escalation and how do you see as time goes by Donald Trump defining or making some sort of new new negotiation ations I would say because Rubio said there is no negotiations going on right now. There have some sort of pause. Your understanding of that? Well, Nema uh one has to go back to the spirit of uh Alaska uh that spirit that the Russians talk about all the time. Uh meant that Trump was going to lean on the Ukrainians. He was going to tell the Europeans, look, the war is going to be settled. Don't do any more of this stuff. And I thought when Trump convened the what I call the seven dwarfs there in front of his desk there 3 days after Alaska that he was reading in the riot act telling them uh in the midst in the midst of that conversation, he said, "Oh, could you hold on for a second? I promised that I'd call the lady of Putin. just holds. Well, you could go have some coffee or some I'll be back later. Go. I mean, hello. So, it was clear to the West Europeans and to Zalinski that the US was not going to support him anymore. And yet, they did it anyway. That was the violation of the spirit of Alaska. More and more European stuff for some strange reason because Europe is not really very powerful without the US. So, how do you explain all this stuff? Well, it continued. Now, what is the good news as far as Russia is concerned? Air defense, missile defense. Ukraine has none. Russians are keep building up. Keep building up. And so, in some ways, these drone attacks can be regarded as pin pricks, okay? In the grand scheme of things. Yeah. Are they embarrassing? Yeah. Do they increase pressure on Putin to do more? Yes, they do. Okay. How much you control the sea? Uhoh. You slipped from 70% to 67%. Okay. I make a joke now. So if we have if the Russians have ear defense, the Ukrainians don't. And uh uh if uh I think well 21 young women well 18 of those 21 who were killed in uh in um Lugansk were preparing to be teachers. So were in college teachers college. um uh they they had to be avenged and that was the 22nd of uh of May and they were avenged on the 23rd and the 24th. Uh they that Putin said he was going to do that. He warned everybody and he did. Now, uh, the West is saying they attacked civilian targets and they indiscriminately wreaked havoc in Kief. How many people died? Well, Ukrainians say 19. How many people were injured? Well, twice that, you know. Well, if the Russians are trying to obliterate civilian targets in K, they're doing a really lousy job. I mean they they they don't have it calibrated right. what they're doing is pin pinpointing military industrial targets which uh which apparently there are a plethora of still in in Kiev without and trying to get the people to move out so that they're not uh so this myth about the Russians deliberately targeting civilians is belied by the fact that even though they were provoked 21 young budding teachers killed and the next today not only an archnik but all kinds of other missiles modern ones 19 uh well you know you have to keep this in proportion and again the saving grace in my view is that Putin says we're winning in Ukraine there's not a damn thing that the Europeans can do now uh to beat us in Ukraine on the ground the US and we look at this the same way even midif the the fire breather says in his last paragraph yes uh we believe that the United States is sincere his word in trying to wind this thing up it's just that you know we can't use their help now they're distracted by Iran and there'll come a time where where we can get together the big thing is that there's a comparison to be made here uh the Russians are not going to settle for simply a battlefield victory in Ukraine. That that would bespeak another war in three, four, five years. Okay? They want a new architecture for security in Europe. And uh they're going to be gradual and try not to kill too many Ukrainian cousins and so forth and try to get rid of the Nazis after they do away with the army. H So they look they're kind of cooland Luke here. They're looking toward the longer term. Similarly, the Iranians are not going to settle for some sort of false ceasefire. Okay? It's an existential threat for the Iranians. Okay? So you have that kind of comparison which I think is apt and which besp speaks the tenacity and resilience that you will be able to see both in Iran and with respect to Soviet objectives in in Ukraine and unless you deal with that unless you look more than just two months ahead or three months or two years ahead as we tend to do in Washington uh you don't quite understand you can't win these things quickly. you can't even make progress quickly. You have to understand where the other people are coming from. And uh and that's a that's hard for Americans to do for some reason. We used to do a lot better about it. Now it's a lost art. Ray, do you think if the United States decides to do something in Ukraine, it's going to be the same people, same I'm talking about Jared Kushner and Steve Wkov again. back to negotiation because you know imagine way just imagine you have you know lover of as this foreign minister of Russia and you have to negotiate by krill deitrif I'm not I'm not talking about the guy because the guy is not negotiator he's not a diplomat he's a no he's he's in the business he knows the market he knows you know everything about market but he's not a negotiator he's not a diplomat and that is the main problem with the Trump administration. That is the main problem with Iran and with Russia. They don't have they don't see anybody any negotiator on the part of the United States to talk with to negotiate with. That's the main problem in my opinion. And go ahead. No, I say that that you're you're quite right about that. I think it was a a mark of courtesy to Trump that Putin would receive Trump's personal representatives. I mean, it's not though it's not as though they came as real estate agents, uh although it's pretty much the way they acted, right? But uh actually I remember one time they came on a Saturday night and they started negotiating 11:00 at night and didn't finish till 4 in the morning and Putin sat through that whole thing and later said, "Oh, that was awful." But we covered each one of the points and then that paper that we so so it that's over as far as uh as the Iranians are concerned. I don't I don't see I think if somebody said oh uh foreign minister Arachi you have we have Wikov on the phone and he said well tell him I'll call him back maybe you know I can't see the Ukra the Iranians doing that whether whether at some point in the coming months u Trump insists look this is my man uh then I think the the Russians probably said, "Well, could you send somebody with them that knows a little bit about uh Ukraine or knows a little bit about Russian history or like that?" So, these things can be finessed, but this is a in my view a reflection of how well how it's not really survile. It's kind of a weird sort of diplomacy that you have to exert with somebody who's a narcissist. Okay. So after after Puchin called up Trump and that's the important thing when when that's the way the call comes that's because Putin wants Trump to do something. Okay. Almost all the other calls are the other direction. So, I remember last October when Puchin called Trump and he said, "Look, uh, we hear that you're about to think about giving tomahawks to Ukraine." Well, you know, he's Yeah, I actually Zinsk is coming tomorrow. Well, that's a really bad idea, Mr. President. That's a really, really bad idea. Two and a half hours on the phone that time. Two and a half. Okay. Next day, Silinski appears in the White House and Trump says, "You know, we really need those drones for ourselves or we're not those tomahawks that really need them for ourselves." And so that was last October. Now, right before Mayday, I guess was the end of April 29th, I think, Putin calls Trump again. This time only an hour and a half, but he says, "Look, do you realize what's going to happen? What I will be prompted and eager to do if those you Ukrainians uh mess up my Mayday parade. Do you know what's going to happen? And he says, "Look, I don't depend on any word. I don't trust the Ukrainians, but you said you had some influence with them. You told me that in Alaska." Okay. So, if you have any, please stop them here and do it publicly so I don't have to worry about this. Well, that's what exactly what happened. Okay. So, my point is here that Putin has some has some reason to believe that when push comes to shove, Trump still has some some influence with u with Silinski. Uh with with the Europeans, not so much, oddly enough. So, he he's so willing to say, look, when push comes to shove, I can use Trump. And I guess what I starting to say is that at the end of that telephone call, Ushakov, his uh main man for these matters, gives this briefing. How's it start out? The president talked and and uh the president of Russia thanked and and praised President Trump for dodging a bullet from an assassin. again, a heroic defense and and he thanked uh Mrs. Trump, Melania Trump, for all her good work uh dealing with the separated children from families and so forth. and so you know and then he comes into the real thing about what really went down and uh the the the the um the text gets harsher. And of course uh Putin himself has said you know if you resume if you resume an attack on Iran that would be completely unacceptable completely is subsm in Russian. It means every it means not in particular as some translation completely holy completely unprem unacceptable. And two days later not by coincidence Wangi a very softspoken foreign minister of China said the same thing completely unacceptable. So what I'm saying here is that uh they're warning these things in very stark terms, but in terms of massaging Trump's ego, well, you saw how diplomatically she treated him in Beijing. Uh and you know, sure, he gave much more attention to Putin, but he was he was discreet and he was diplomatic. Um, I just I can't resist saying this that watching some of that video footage, I was really reminded that that Trump before he went to China said, "You know, I'm going to get a great big big hug from Well, none of the footage I saw indicated that she was interested in doing that. As a matter of fact, I don't know it was Bo or or whatever, but he kept his distance. Okay. When Putin leaves Beijing, they're walking uh just bantering or their translators are translating and you can almost sense the camaraderie they have there. After all, this was what Putin's 25th visit to Beijing. They've talked to each other 40 times in the last. Okay. So then you see Putin is kind of they're going to say goodbye and Putin's not going to make the first move. Uh, and he's just standing there and she goes um and then that's that's over and Puchin walks off to the train or the plane and what what does she do? You know, bye. you know uh you know I like to depend on more concrete tangible facts when I analyze things but sometimes you can see sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. I think that spoke it all and that tectonic shift is working in all these areas perhaps even in Cuba which we can talk at at a later date. Uh, but there's two against one now. For God's sake, two against one. And those two are not going to let Iran go down the drain. You can bet on that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ray, for being with us today. You're most welcome, Neoth. It was always a pleasure. Great pleasure as always.
Former ICC Prosecutor reveals decade-long Mossad intimidation campaign. Ex Mossad chief Yossi Cohen personally pressured the ICC official to drop the Palestine war crimes investigation News Desk MAY 28, 2026 https://thecradle.co/articles/former-ic ... n-campaign
Former International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda revealed on 24 May that she had been subject to a years-long coercion campaign by Mossad, going as far as to threaten her life if she did not drop an investigation into Israeli war crimes in occupied Palestine.
During a keynote address in The Hague, she urged the European Union to trigger blocking statutes to shield the court from foreign sanctions and intimidation that have intensified since early 2025, adding that she had felt “left alone” and “unsupported” throughout the ordeal.
The disclosure followed the 2024 announcement by her successor, Karim Khan, that the court is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
However, the campaign against the court was reportedly led much earlier by former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who reportedly acted as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger” to derail and undermine the Palestine investigation.
Former ICC prosecutor faced Mossad threats and blackmail over Palestine war crimes probe —— Former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda has revealed that she faced intense pressure and direct threats from Israeli intelligence to halt investigations ...
“The fact they chose the head of Mossad to be the prime minister’s unofficial messenger to [Bensouda] was to intimidate, by definition,” one anonymous source familiar with Cohen's operation said, adding that “It failed.”
Despite nearly a decade of clandestine harassment, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber ruled in 2021 that the court had jurisdiction over the occupied territories, formally authorizing the criminal investigation.
The intimidation campaign dates back to 2015, immediately after Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the “cycle of violence” in Palestine that encompasses both Palestinian and Israeli victims, and was not exclusively targeted at Israeli crimes.
In one early incident, unidentified men delivered an envelope containing $500 to Bensouda’s private home, a gesture she said was intended to make it clear that her residence was being watched.
“They came directly to my house,” she told Al Jazeera in an interview, adding that “I got the message that they’re sending.”
In 2018, the operation escalated when Cohen reportedly “ambushed” Bensouda in a New York hotel suite while she was meeting with then-president Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Between 2019 and 2021, the former Mossad chief initiated a series of secret meetings where his tone shifted from an attempt to “win her over” to explicit threats, warning that her pursuit of justice would put the security of her and her family at risk.
During this same period, Mossad reportedly targeted Bensouda’s husband with a “smear campaign,” using transcripts of secret recordings in an unsuccessful attempt to discredit her.
These efforts coincided with the 2020 sanctions against Bensouda and her son, and the February 2025 revival of executive orders targeting Karim Khan and eight judges, freezing their assets and blocking their personal bank accounts.
US base strike escalation: 5 soldiers wounded in Kuwait as Iran shows wreckage by Rifat Jawaid Janta Ka Reporter May 30, 2026
The Iranian missile strike targeting the US military base in Kuwait yesterday has left five soldiers hurt. This comes after Iran displayed the destroyed parts of an American drone that the Islamic Republic claimed to have downed over the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has still not been able to secure a peace deal with Iran. Rifat Jawaid sums up the day's big developments with his sharp commentary.
Transcript
The Iranian military's Kathamul Ambia brigade has asserted its control over the strait of Hormuz as the members of the Trump administration continue to behave like headless chickens over the Iran conflict. There's still no indication that a peace deal may be a reality despite constant blabbering by motormouth Trump and his uncouthed minions in the cabinet. Iran has meanwhile released the footage of the downed US drone in the state of Formos. The US has also confirmed that at least five American soldiers were injured in an Iranian missile attack on the US military base in Kuwait yesterday. This will be the broad focus of my video tonight. Also in this video, a former US Marine wants to be armed so that he can teach Israeli and other genocidal maniacs in Gaza a lesson in the language that they truly understand. So, please stay tuned. It's confirmed the Iranian missile strikes on the US military base in Kuwait have left at least five American soldiers injured. Although there is no clarity over the extent of their injuries, new report indicates at least five Americans were hurt in a recent Iranian missile attack on Kuwait. Remember the US military first violated the ceasefire on multiple occasions, thereby testing Iran's patience. The IRGC waited until Eid before they struck hard by targeting an American military base in Kuwait. The Iranian military also shot down an American drone over the state of Femos. The Iranian state TV has now released the footage of the downed American aircraft. And Trump says he has decimated the Iranian air force, Navy, and the armed forces. This is what happens when the so-called Supreme Commander of the US Army is a deranged occupant of the White House. This charlatan has been busy making nonsensical claims for two months now. Each time claiming to secure a peace deal with Iran. But the fact remains that we are nowhere close to signing a peace deal. Yesterday we heard that Trump had decided to end this US blockade of the estate of Hormuz. But Trump's secretary of war or notorious racist thug today said that that was not the case. Did you discuss that with them? And is that blockade still in place? The blockade is very much still in place. uh and the straight of hormuz came up relatively often and and and usually once we talked through it countries were reassured that the American perspective accounted for that which it did from the beginning and that also our view toward energy I think will reshape the global map and the president has talked about whether it's Texas or Venezuela or energy production how the future in energy is actually an American future and that's good for energy security around the world. This idiot later said that any deal signed by Trump would be a good deal. And I and I don't think enough has been enough credit has been given to President Trump for his willingness to take on this global threat uh and do so through Admiral Cooper and our Sentcom commander in in a devastatingly effective way. Uh and and you know status as of right now is that um any deal will be a good deal. And I had a chance to talk to President Trump this morning. uh he he wanted me to reiterate how patient he is in ensuring uh that with America undertaking this kind of historic endeavor uh any deal will be a good one uh a great one and he's patient in the pursuit of that uh because of how uh the implications of how that sorts out and certainly our department um he we were in a cabinet meeting just uh a couple of days ago and the president said hey it will be a great deal and if Iran doesn't want to make a great deal uh that ensures they you don't get a nuclear weapon. Uh they can deal with the guy on my left. That was the only time I've ever been accused of being on the left. Uh and he was pointing at the War Department and we're serious about that. We our ability to recommence if necessary is uh we are more than capable. Our stock piles are are more than suited for that both there and around the globe because of how we balance exquisite and and more plentiful munitions. So we're in a very good place. This is why I say that members of the rogue regime of Trump are behaving like headless chickens. And I'm not the only one calling out the insanity of this Israeli lap dog sitting in the White House. This is Aaron David Miller, a former State Department negotiator for the Middle East on CNN. Us now is Aaron David Miller. He's a former State Department Middle East negotiator and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Now, as we wait to hear President Trump's reply to this tentative deal, I want to ask you, Erin, what do you think he's waiting for? I'm not sure it's up to the president only. Paul and thanks for having me. Look, none of this should surprise. US Iranian negotiations have two speeds, slow and slower. There's profound mistrust on either side. You're talking about a one or twopage document, which is essentially a ticket by a ticket to have a negotiation on all the core issues. And you're going to get push back. You're already seeing push back uh from Iranian harder line elements that the one than the ones we're negotiating, believe it or not. And Trump's getting an enormous amount of blowback that basically he's punted on the nuclear issue. And what he's going to have to show for the first several weeks if this agreement is signed and I'm I'll take a fly here. I think it is is going to be reopening the straits which were open the day before the war started. So I think the combination of no no trust, no confidence and negotiator pangs, uh, buyer's remorse, insecurity about whether the deal is the right one. Uh, are we going to get hammered in Thran and Washington if we go forward with it? All of this is combining to slow things down. Another expert on Al Jazzer, Nagar Mortazawi, brilliantly summed up the utter stupidity attached to the ongoing talks. This will make you wonder why Iran is even entertaining these genocidal maniacs who had seldom stuck to their words. What's the guarantee that they will honor the terms of the ceasefire this time? And they get attacked. And so this year in the course of negotiations, I was talking to Iranian sources. They said, "Look, we're going to these talks every time with our finger on the trigger, expecting bombs to fall from the sky." I mean the lack of seriousness in diplomacy in negotiation in that process and then we're here two wars down lots of destruction in the region and no achievement and the goalpost keeps moving there has been no movement on I don't mean to interrupt you but I just want to validate what you just said even within this I wouldn't call I mean there are negotiations yet again going on both sides saying they're within an eyelash of a deal and then and then we fired again on Iran Are we repeating this so often that the Iranians have no trust in the process? There's absolutely no trust for this administration in Thran. So that's why they want to do it in stages. They want to make sure they do guarantees, they take something, they give something. There's no long-term thinking as far as a deal on something that requires trust. But I just wanted to add one other point. I mean, the goals of this war from the beginning, regime change, destroying their army, destroying their navy, obliterating the nuclear program, which supposedly was obliterated already last year. I mean, that statement still exists on the White House website that says Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. And anybody who says otherwise, is fake news. Go look it up. And then comes this new goal of reopening the street of hormones, which wasn't even a problem. Most of the world didn't even know where the straight of hormones is. And then they create this problem. They can't resolve it. The whole world wants it open. So talk about this war and digging deeper, not achieving any of the stated goals and then going back to square one to have to negotiate a nuclear deal with the Iranians which the United States of America already did 10 years ago and and had a deal that was working by the reports of the state department. The UN nuclear watchdog, it was a civilian program. The Iranians were abiding by all the monitoring and inspections. So why the question is why are we here to war down and what was really the achievement? That's a good question. But the answer lies in the election of an Israeli slave as a US president who has also been a known associate of a dreaded Jewish pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. It's as simple as that. No wonder this American savage has to work hard to hide his tarnish reputation with fake claims such as Iran is begging to make a deal. Watch what the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson is bakai has to say on this. Did we start this war of choice? Did we welcome this confrontation? It is not Iran that initiated this war of aggression. And I think that's crystal clear. So recently, President Trump said uh that the United States is beating Iran badly. They're begging to make a deal. I hope we don't have to do the war, but we may have to give him another big hit. And that Iran is begging to make a deal. Do you agree with that characterization? This characterization is of course part of u new normal in the United States um jargon, political jargon. But we as a as a proud nation, as a sovereign member of the United Nations make our decisions on the basis of our interests and uh we do not care what or how others may characterize our way of life or policym. So let them say whatever they want to say. We remain steadfast and and we may we remain determined to defend our uh dignity and and sovereign rights. From imposing a counter blockade of the state of foremost to stealing Iranian cryptocurrency, Trump's murderous regime has tried everything to hurt Iran. But Iran appears to have found solutions to bypass such criminal actions each time. Not only has Iran managed to pass more than 22 ships every day despite the American blockade, the Islamic Republic has also started its rail route to Pakistan and China. This explains why the Israeli lap dog is incensed and has no idea what more should he do to hurt Iran. The easiest thing for him would be to call off his military misadventure immediately against Iran and promise to never repeat such recklessness again besides paying a heavy compensation to Iran for causing death and destruction to please his terrorist Israeli masters. But this would remain wishful thinking for most of us given the rapidly growing clout of the rogue settler colony over the functioning of the US democracy. Watch Josh Paul, the founder of the American Lobby Group, A New Policy, explain how the Congress is busy quietly passing another law to integrate the functioning of the Israeli army with that of the American armed forces. How much more evidence do you need to conclude that the US has now been completely occupied by Israeli terrorists? Every year, America gives billions of dollars of our money to fund Israel's military. Now, even Republicans, even Benjamin Netanyahu, are talking about changing that. But don't buy it. It's a shell game. What Congress is trying to do now is find different ways of entrenching the relationship so deep in America's own defense industrial base that it's impossible to root it out. A new section of law in the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA would give Israel unprecedented access to American technology and would force the United States military to integrate Israeli defense technologies into our own critical military supply chain, giving Israel incredible leverage over America's own defense priorities. We need to stop this before it starts. Visit awpolicy.org/advocacy /advocacy today to find out how you can help. No wonder the younger generation has had enough of Israeli barbarians and their supporters in the West. I came across this video clip from the UK. Salute to this brave pro Palestinian activist for standing up to the old British Zionist who simply cannot bear the sight of a Palestinian flag. torch the end of my flag. Yeah. Why is that? It burned nicely in this would be honest. Well, you Well, I mean, I wouldn't burn the Palestine flag, but I may burn an Israel Israel flag. No, no, no. I mean, I probably wouldn't bother cuz I don't think it's a waste of my energy to be fair. I ain't got it. Wasting your energy. Why don't you carry a Palestinian flag? Cuz this is a symbol of hope and love. Hope and love. Yeah, that's right. Do you know there's tens of thousands of children being murdered? Oh, I know. in Palestine by Israel. No, it doesn't doesn't surprise me at all. Doesn't surprise you. Why not? Cuz you see it on the news all the time. What's going on? So, it happens all the time, doesn't it? What? Tens of thousands of children be murdered by weapons in this country. Happens all the time. And you're happy about that. You don't mind. You just doesn't matter. Does it not? Why not? It doesn't affect me. So, I don't live there. Right. But you're a human being, aren't you? Yeah. No, no, no, no. I'm I'm a dog, aren't I? You're a dog? Yeah. Just a human being. Well, you don't need to live somewhere to feel empathy for another human. Be honest with you, I don't give a kiss. I really don't give a [ __ ] about it. And what pisses me off you hater? Got nothing against Jewish people. I love Jewish people. Zionists though, they can [ __ ] off. Sorry for my friends. Saw it. What is Why don't you go over there while we flag over there? Bomb you might. Well, is they bombed the airport in Gaza in the year 2000 and destroyed it in the year 2001. So I can't get there. All right. So you can't get to Palestine there then. No, no, no. You can't go via Israel. Just go. Go via Israel. What? Where? Like where where the new Hitler is currently their president or prime minister? Yeah, he is, mate. He's responsible for at least 71,000 civilians being murdered. There's 100,000 missing in Gaza. That's nearly 200. Yes, he is. This is pure fascism. Why did you not look what's happening to look what's happening not? It could be him reincarnated. Look what happened in uh Lebanon. Lebanon. 1.2 million. Okay. 20 years ago. I pushed that off my [ __ ] ass. I'm too old for that [ __ ] now. Oh, bless you. No, no. Bless you. Fortunately for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. No, I do. I love you and I wish you have a great day. Is that better than I? How's that annoying you? That's a nice thing to say, my friend. All right. Well, we've all got one, so it's not the worst insult I've ever heard. Thank you. You're a lovely person, and I wish you all the best in your remaining years. Thank you. Best day of my life. This despite bloodthirsty Israeli thugs touching new low every day on committing war crimes in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and now Lebanon. The murderous race of Israelis today slaughtered many more people in Gaza. Elsewhere in Lebanon, Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese municipality of Alun in the district of Sidon yesterday killed nine members of the same Syrian family, including six children. Yes, six children. Israeli human devils are global experts when it comes to slaughtering children and babies. An Israeli drone attack on the southern Lebanese village of Jebchit also killed a paramedic and injured four other people. The attack also damaged the Lebanese relief hospital, but all medical nursing and ambulance staff are believed to be safe. I will now leave you with this clip of former US Marine and activist Ken O'Keefe who tells American journalist Rick Sanchez why the anger against Israel is reaching a boiling point in the US. He now wants a machine gun for himself so that he can go to Gaza to target the foreign mercenaries committing genocide on behalf of the rogue settler colony. Do you see this this this swelling of Americans who are just angry about the neverending wars and the fact that Israel controls us completely? I do. I do. And I always knew it was going to come to this. We were going to get to a crisis level. The cost of this willful choice of a war against once again Iran which is being imposed is a war is being imposed upon them. But more than that, it was Hamas and Operation Alaka flood October 7, 2023, which led to the human animal statement and AMLC and cutting off water, food, electricity. I've known this for years. I've lived in Gaza. I've been awarded Palestinian citizenship in the key to the city of Gaza for my service to these people. I am angry. I am outraged. If you would give me an M249 machine gun like I carried in the Marine Corps and a proper fighting force with some air cover, I would be all too happy to go into Gaza and go and kill some of these foreigners who were raping and claiming the right to be able to rape us. This is not my opinion. Is this anti-Semitic? It's you, Jewish state of Israel. 80% support for the genocide in Gaza, 80% support for this war against Iran because they refuse to submit. and you're writing for the right to rape us goyam. Yeah. If we as non-Jews do not heed the call, the consequence could be Samson option nuclear Israel firing missiles at Europe, America, uh Iran, all over. They have advertised this for decades and it baffles me how we have not put this at the top of our priority list. Never mind the fact that all of the Arab world and the Muslim world, barring Iran and Yemen, have turned a blind eye to the real-time genocide of my family in Gaza, which outrages me. I want to see all of these traders in the presidents and the prime minister positions, all of these Arab traders, all of these Muslim traders. I want to see justice for them in this world and in the next. So, I do see the sea change, though. A lot of Americans are being confronted with an upside down version of what they've come to believe. They think, you know this, we're the greatest da da da da da. We're greatest at mass murder. We're the greatest at genocide. We're the greatest at uh hypocrisy. Oh, we are great. But in none of the ways that you'd want to be great. And it's clear a lot of Americans, there is a sea change. We must take this momentum. We must arrest the traitors within the United States, especially Donald Trump, but virtually the entirety of the US Congress. And there you go. Thomas Massie, somebody who actually exhibits some honor, integrity, humanity, $15 million of Apac money into a local campaign to beat him so that we could put yet another puppet traitor into the Congress, which represents the American people. It's not a dictatorship. That those are your representatives. Those congressmen, those senators, and that president represents you, and you pay taxes to that, and you fund that genocide. So I mean shame on my birth nation for its insanity, its willful ignorance and its financing of potentially the end of the world as we know it. So yes, many are finally getting it. That's it from me. Thank you very much for your support of this platform and our journalism. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so because that's one of the many ways you can support independent journalism. God bless you all.
Oil Industry Experts Sound The Alarm Over Impending Disaster Reason2Resist with Dimitri Lascaris May 30, 2026
Yesterday (May 29), Donald Trump announced that he was entering the situation room to make a final decision on a framework for negotiation with Iran.
The oil markets responded favourably to Trump's announcement by driving down the price of Brent crude to a six-week low.
Since Trump made his dramatic announcement, however, the White House has issued no statements about any decision. At this stage, there is little reason to believe that the United States and Iran are on the verge of a deal.
What does this mean for the price of oil and the global economy?
Dimitri Lascaris reviews recent statements by oil industry experts. What emerges from their commentary is that the price of oil is about to soar, and it is unlikely to return to its pre-war level ever again.
Transcript
Good day. This is Dimitri Lascaris coming to you from Kalamat Greece on May 30th, 2026 for Reason to Resist. Today I'll begin by reviewing the latest scene in Donald Trump's Segrade Hollywood movie about solving the dilemma of the Strait of Hormuz. Then I'll explain with reference to expert analysis why it's no longer possible even in a best-case scenario to avoid a global oil crisis that will have severe and lasting negative impacts on the global economy. Before I begin, please remember to like and share this video if you find it to be informative. And if you are not already a subscriber to Reason to Resist, we warmly encourage you to become one. Please help us to achieve our goal of achieving uh 200,000 uh subscribers uh by the end of the summer, which is the 2-year anniversary of the founding of this program. Now, uh let's get into it. As I previously reported uh two days ago, on May 28th, there was another exchange of fire between the US and Iranian militaries in the Persian Gulf. On that day, Iran fired at least one ballistic missile at a US military base in Kuwait. That attack was Iran's retaliation for a US attack on the airport in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. At the time, Iran said it had fired the missile at the source of the attack on the Band Abbas airport. In other words, Iran's military apparently believed that the attack on Bandar Abbas airport originated from Kuwait. US Sentcom responded with its customary lies about who had violated the ceasefire. You can see it statement here. And the part I want to highlight for you, this was issued on May 27th at 10:17 Eastern time, early uh morning hours on May 28th in Iranian time. They stated, sentcom that the ballistic missile fired toward Kuwait was successfully intercepted by Kuwaiti forces. When we reported a couple of days ago the missile strike on Kuwait, I cautioned our audience not to take seriously Sentcom's claim that Kuwait had successfully inter intercepted this missile. Uh after all, Iran has succeeded as the US corporate media has reported over the past several weeks in hitting that and other US bases uh repeatedly during the hot phase of this war. They in fact the Iranian forces inflicted severe damage on Kuwaiti military uh facilities of the United States military. Uh and this was corroborated by uh satellite footage. Now that the air defenses of the Gulf autotocracies, including uh those of Kuwait, are severely depleted, one would expect that they are even less capable of defending US bases on their territory from Iranian uh missile and drone attacks. Sure enough, after we uh cautioned our audience to uh to weigh up this uh sentcom statement with uh healthy dose of skepticism, Bloomberg reported today uh that the targeted US military base uh had suffered significant damage. And here you see a sum summary of the broom Bloomberg article from the everhelpful drop site news who uh summarizing the article which is behind a payw wall uh that the Iranian missile strike on the Kuwaiti air base injured five Americans. Uh an Iranian FAT 110 ballistic missile struck Ali al-S Salam air base in Kuwait uh injuring roughly five Americans both act active duty personnel and contractors and destroying at least one MQ9 Reaper drone worth approximately 30 million while seriously damaging another. Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted the missile according to Bloomberg, but falling debris caused the casualties and damage. And the Pentagon's previous casualty report for Operation Epic Fury listed 14 Americans killed and 409 injured since the war began on February uh 28th of this year. As stated by Dropsite, each of those uh MQ9s is worth an estimated 30 million. There was even more bad news for the Trump regime and the Pete Hegsthled military of the United States when Unsatala and Yemen released footage of its shooting down this week of another MQ9 Reaper drone. And uh I'm going to share that with you now. Now, uh, the news got even worse for the US and the military of the genocidal Israeli entity. Iran's military just reported that it shot down an Israeli orbiter drone. And it's showing here uh I'm showing you footage which it published of uh pieces of the drone that had washed up on the uh shores of Keshum Island. This is uh an island, an Iranian island in the straight of Hormuz, the largest island in the uh in the in the Persian Gulf as a matter of fact. And um uh experts have confirmed that this does appear to be the wreckage of an orbiter drone. Uh according to Iran's military, Iran shot the drone down in the skies over uh Keshum Island. And uh the orbiter drone is a reconnaissance and intelligence gathering platform manufactured by Israel's aeronautics group. The news of Iran shooting down the orbiter drone follows Iran's announcement on May 26, just a few days ago, that it had shot down another US MQ9 Reaper drone and had almost shot down a US F-35 at that same uh time. So, what does this all add up to? Uh what it adds up to I I would suggest is that uh the Iranian military can and will inflict pain on the US and Israeli militaries whenever they strike Iran. They are uh in every sense both uh capable and determined to go up the escalation ladder if uh they are forced to do so by uh the United States or its proxy Israel. Now, when the news broke on Thursday that the US and Iranian militaries had exchanged fire, the price of oil understandably shot up. So, Trump and his scribes promptly went to work. I'm referring here to his scribes in the US corporate media uh to uh suppress the price of oil. And I'll highlight for you one such article published by the New York Times on that day. this article uh amazingly uh it's uh apparently was uh put together by no less than five reporters at the New York Times, but it doesn't say anything of uh real substance or significance. Uh according to these five New York Times scribes, uh US officials were closing in on a framework for negotiations. What does that mean, closing in? Does that mean they're 90% of the way there, 70% of the way there, 40% of the way there? Uh, as long as they're making forward progress, I suppose you could say they're closing in. Uh, and furthermore, what are they closing in on? A framework for negotiations. not a peace deal but a framework for negotiations uh that could according to these uh these scribes could extend the ceasefire not will but could lead to the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and set the table for more substantive talks which of course uh could fail and probably will uh given that uh the Iranians are dealing with people who are both inflexible and completely out of touch with reality. And then they added uh the five New York Times scribes that Mr. Trump has not signed off on the emerging framework and it was not clear if it matched Iran's understanding. Uh wow. So basically this article to which uh no less than five uh New York Times reporters devoted significant time and energy uh doesn't amount to a piece of toilet paper. It doesn't really tell you anything significant, anything substantive, anything concrete which would lead rational people to believe that the United States and Iran are on the verge of resolving their issues. But nonetheless, the New York Times actually had this as the headline news on its website for several hours. I I watched this uh throughout the day for several hours on Thursday, May 28th, you know, and presented to the public as some sort of, you know, uh extraordinarily important news when in fact it didn't really amount to a hill of beans. Um, and then came Donald Trump himself in a desperate effort uh to prevent the IC of the price of oil from going up uh further, which is exactly what happened on Thursday after Iran struck uh the US military base in Kuwait. Uh Trump put out a post, a bombastic post, and one which made a jeratic claim. And uh I'm quoting here. This is May 29th at 10:51 a.m. Washington time. So that would have been yesterday in the morning. This would have been around the opening of uh trading in the uh markets including the global oil markets. Iran must agree. He wrote that they will never have a nuclear weapon or bomb which they agreed to or committed to decades ago. And he goes on and says the hormu straight must be immediately open no tolls for unrestricted shipping traffic in both directions. Of course, that is a non-starter for Iran, which has said consistently that it will require fees of at least some of the vessels passing through uh the straight of Hormuz. And then uh Trump says that all water mines, bombs if any, will be terminated. We have removed through detonation numerous such mines. There's no evidence to back up either the claim that Iran has mined the straight. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but there's no concrete evidence that it did. There's certainly no evidence that the United States, no credible evidence that the United States has removed any of those mines. In fact, getting any of its vessels in the straight of Hormuz is a perilous enterprise as it has already found out the hard way. And Trump goes on and says Iran will complete the immediate removal and or detonation of any mines that are left, which will not be many ships caught in the straight due to our amazing and unprecedented naval blockade, which will now be lifted. I'll come back to that in a moment. He said, "Now be lifted." Just park those words in your minds. Uh may start the process of heading home. Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families. For me, your favorite president. I have a feeling that some of the families of some of these soldiers don't regard uh Donald Trump as their favorite president. In any case, he then writes, "The enriched material sometimes referred to as nuclear dust, he's the only one, by the way, who refers to it as nuclear dust, which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains caused by our powerful B2 bomber attack 11 months ago. sitting on top of it will be unearthed by the United States which it is agreed is the only country along with China with the mechanical capability of doing so. Uh that's not true that they're the only two countries with the mechanical ability to do so. But it's a complete non-starter that you know Iran is not going to allow US military forces onto its soil for any purpose uh and particularly for the purpose of recovering uh the enriched uranium which it says repeatedly and the this goes all the way up to the supreme leader must remain within Iran. And finally he says uh that no money will be exchanged. This is Donald Trump. Meaning presumably that he's not going to unfreeze any Iranian assets uh which uh the Iranians have consistently demanded or or he nor will he pay any reparations which the Iranians have consistently demanded. Other items of far less importance. What does he mean by that? Is he referring to the uh the the Iranian demand that Israel stop mass murdering Lebanese and Palestinians? Uh that is something of the primary of primordial importance to Iran and to the Lebanese and the Palestinians of course uh but to who knows what he's actually referring to here. So he says other items of far less importance have been agreed to. I will be meeting now in the situation room now to make a final determination. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Now, predictably, uh, terminally stupid oil traders responded by driving down the price of oil to its lowest level in six weeks. And I'm showing you here a screenshot from uh the website of oil pro oil, I'm sorry, oilprice.com. And you can see that uh uh at the close of markets yesterday uh the price of Brent good crude was all the way down to 91 uh2 US a decline of 1.7% from the prior day. Uh this constitutes uh a 17% decline in the price of Brent crude futures uh during the month of May. Uh this makes no sense whatsoever that such an enormous decline or any decline at all in the price of Brent crude futures would have happened in May because uh at the time that we entered the month of May uh from the time of the ceasefire coming into effect in the first half of April until the end of April uh the Iranian and US militaries were not shooting at each other. The situation was less tense. It was not escalating. uh they began to shoot at each other always uh with the United States initiating the hostilities in the month of May and those hostilities are escalating. The strike on the US military base by Iran uh the one in Kuwait uh a couple of days ago was the first time since the ceasefire came into effect that Iran targeted a US military base in the Persian Gulf. So there's clearly escalation going on here and there are direct exchanges of fire going on here. So one would think that you know rational uh observers would uh infer that we are less likely to re to reach a negotiated resolution of this conflict at this point in time than we were towards the end of April uh when there had not been exchanges of fire uh for a few weeks uh between the Iranian and US military. So it makes absolutely no sense that the price of uh oil would have dropped at all, let alone 17% uh during a month, the month of May, when uh tensions were clearly escalating. What is perhaps most befuddling about the market's uh enthusiastic reaction to Donald Trump's post is that uh shortly after he issued it, uh major figures within the Iranian political elite poo pooed the notion uh that the uh two sides were on the verge of a deal. Here is a post issued uh yesterday afternoon shortly after uh Trump's uh bombastic post which he said he was about to make a final decision. Uh this is from uh the Iranian parliamentary speaker Ber Galibah Mr. Bagar Galibah who is also the lead negotiator for Iran and he said one we seize concessions not through dialogue but with missiles. Uh that's probably a reference to uh the missile fired upon Kuwaiti uh the Kuwaiti military base of the United States. Uh and in negotiations we merely make them understand. Two, we have no trust in guarantees or words. Only actions are the measure. No action will be taken before the other side acts. And three, the winner of any agreement is the one who is better prepared for war from the day after. That hardly sounds uh like people who are clasping hands with the Trump regime and singing kumbaya. And there was a similar comment uh from Dr. Mosen Desai who is the secretary of the Iranian government's supreme council for economic coordination and who also served from 1981 to 1997 as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He wrote uh subsequent to the post by Mr. Bagar Galibbah as predicted the president of the United States is betraying diplomacy for the third time by continuing the naval blockade and making excessive demands in negotiations. He has once again proven uh that he is not inclined toward negotiation and is pursuing other objectives. This is a an entirely predictable response from the leadership of Iran because as uh I just uh explained when we reviewed Donald Trump's truth social post uh from yesterday uh the demands that he is making there are uh well beyond the red lines of Iran's negotiating position. Uh in fact it's hard to see whether there is any overlap whatsoever even after these weeks of peace Kabuki theater uh in the two negotiating positions. So, it has now been more than since Trump said he was going into the situation room to make a final decision. That's the way he put it. Uh, but yet we have no news, none, from the White House about whether he has made a decision and if so, what that decision is. Uh, since Trump posted yesterday morning that he was about to make a final decision, uh, I counted just about an hour before I started recording this report. uh he had issued 14 posts since that time or somebody whoever has control of his truth social account put 14 posts out and um uh almost none of them had anything at all to do with Iran and none of them even the one or two that have something to do with Iran say anything about this portentous decision that he said he was going to make yesterday in the situation room. Meanwhile, US Secretary uh Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant made an announcement yesterday that is radically inconsistent with the claims made by various anonymous sources to the US media that the Trump regime has agreed to unfreeze uh some of the frozen Iranian assets. What did the uh uh Bellose Treasury Secretary say? He said that the US has seized roughly $1 billion in Iranian crypto as regime near end of their tether. The Treasury Secretary detailed Operation Economic Fury's impact on Iran while speaking at the Reagan National Economic Forum. Well, uh I would suggest to you that uh a a government uh like that of the United States which is seizing uh assets of an adversary is not uh likely to be inclined to unfreeze assets of the adversary. Uh and so this kind this type of behavior completely undermines the various claims that people who didn't want to be identified had made to various media outlets including Axios. uh the ever faithful scribes of Donald Trump that the Trump regime was on the verge of uh unfreezing Iranian assets. There's absolutely no credible evidence to support uh that uh claim. Now I just want to pause here and point out that even if uh the framework of negotiations as it as it has been described were to be agreed to and there's no evidence that there is an agreement on the framework for negotiations thus far. Uh but even if it were to be agreed to that doesn't mean there's going to be a peace deal. What the framework for negotiations basically says, and this has been widely reported uh by both Iranian and non-Iranian media, uh that uh if the United States lifts the blockade and unfreezes uh billions of dollars in Iranian frozen assets, uh Iran will uh open up the straight of Horamuz uh and within a period of 30 days will uh ensure that the amount of commercial traffic through the straight of Hormuz reaches the level at which uh it was uh immediately prior to this criminal war of aggression being launched on Iran. uh and uh uh the blockade would be lifted and then at that stage when all of that happens oh and also this is very important there would have to be a complete ceasefire in the region meaning Israel would have to stop its barbaric uh destruction uh and targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and in Gaza. All of that would have to happen and then there would be a negotiation uh about other issues including uh primarily this is from the perspective of the west this is the most important issue they claim Iran's nuclear program. Now it's and Iran has been insistent that at this stage it has made no commitments whatsoever regarding its nuclear program. Although there's some indication that it would be willing to accept assuming all of their conditions are satisfied uh a uh a limit of let's say 3.6% on the enrichment of uranium and that it would be perhaps willing to dilute the enriched uranium but it would not allow it to leave the country. It would not be put in the custody of any other government certainly not the government of the United States. uh that is what Iran has said and it it it's perfectly willing as it has been for decades to commit not to develop uh nuclear weapons. So that is what the framework agreement uh is uh supposedly uh calling for. Now if that is uh agreed upon both the Trump regime, Trump himself uh you know not only says yes I agree with this but signs the agreement commits to it in writing along with the Iranian leadership. There are a number of ways in which in which this could go off the rails. Uh so for example Israel might decide uh as it does every single time that it's going to violate the ceasefire. And even though Trump says, you know, Trump said back in midApril that Israel was prohibited from bombing Lebanon. Uh and he said enough is enough. He expressed outrage that the bombing of Lebanon continued while Israel just you know uh you know shook its head in just in in in contempt. Uh you know, sorry Donald, we're not doing that. And proceeded to bomb the be Jesus out of Lebanon. has escalated uh consistently right up until the current time its slaughter of uh civilians and its destruction of civilian infrastructure. There's not a single ceasefire, as far as I can tell, that Israel has ever respected. Uh so uh that's just one of the ways in which this framework for negotiations could be could go off the rails. Another way it could go off the rails is that the Trump regime takes a maximalist position on the nuclear program and says, "No, no, we we have to take custody of the enriched uranium or you can't have any enriched uranium. You have to give up all enrichment or you have to give up your civilian nuclear energy program altogether." And Iran says, "No, we're not doing that." Which is almost certainly what it will say. Another way this could go off the rails is Iran and the United States come to an agreement on some kind of restrictions on the nuclear program, but then Iran says, as it surely will, uh, now you have to lift the sanctions. And not only that, but you have to lift the sanctions before we put in place the restrictions on our nuclear program. Because the last time we agreed to sanctions with the Obama administration, Obama didn't deliver sanctions relief even though we were complying with the deal. So this time, you go first. you lift the sanctions and then we will start uh respecting limits on our enrichment. That's another way in which the negotiations could go off the rails. So people need to understand that even if there is an agreement on the framework of negotiations uh it is uh likely I would say in fact highly likely uh that this will not ultimately lead certainly not in the near term uh to a peace deal and that this uh impass in the straight of Hormuz uh will persist for some time and perhaps uh right into next year. uh we are a long way away from resolving uh the uh severe constraints on the flow of uh commercial traffic through the straight of Hormuz which is deepening uh the economic crisis in which the world has been plunged by uh this war of aggression. Now uh on top of all this by the way uh the Iranian officials have confirmed uh that the blockade is still in effect. I remind you that when I read Trump's truth social post from yesterday, he said, "We are now going to lift the blockade." Well, uh, the Iranians are maintaining that it has not been lifted, uh, despite, and I'm I'm reading here from, uh, a post today by the Tasnum news agency on Telegram. This is an Iranian uh, outlet. Despite some misinterpretations of Trump's tweet last night regarding the cancellation of Iran's hostile maritime blockade, Iranian sailors say that the maritime blockade is still in place and that ships are receiving warnings from Sentcom to stop and not allow them to pass through the maritime blockade. So this too is uh certainly going to engender even more distrust on the Iranian side uh and uh impede uh any progress uh towards a resolution of this uh this catastrophic war. Now uh as I've said repeatedly uh the uh Trump regime continues to pretend that he seeks peace while adopting a maximalist position with Iran. There's no agreement. There's not even a preliminary agreement. Iran remains control in the Strait of Hormuz uh of the Strait of Hormuz. And there's not a damned thing that the United States can do about it. If there was, the United States would have done it by now. As I've said uh quite often, Trump's refusal to make any meaningful concessions to it spells doom in all probability for the global economy. To help our audience understand just how dire the situation for the global economy has become, I'm going to share with you today uh some troubling expert commentary uh on the state of the oil crisis and what lies ahead. And uh let's begin with statements by the senior vice president of Exxon, Neil Chapman. Uh just a few days ago, he said as follows. commercial inventories of crude oil of liquids, think petroleum, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, they've all run down and running down those inventories has mitigated or offset supplemented by the release of strategic petroleum reserves which most of the western countries have done. All of that has mitigated the impact. You can model this. We've modeled it. I think a lot of people in the industry have modeled it. We're approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean really, really low levels. you can debate whether that's going to hit those really low levels in two weeks or three weeks. Uh so this would put us in the first half of June. Uh and he goes on and says once you get to that point then you'll see price shoot up. I mean I think dated Brent most people well I a model would say dated Brent will shoot up once you get to that really low inventory level up to 150 or $160 per barrel. And I'm just going to pause here and remind everybody that the beginning of the year, Brent crude, dated Brent crude was trading at about $61 a barrel. So he's talking here about the price of Brent crude shooting up to a level that is two to three times as high as it was at the beginning of the year and much higher than it has been at any point uh during uh this criminal war of aggression. And the senior vice president of Exxon goes on and says the models would tell you that and then what happens is that when the price gets to a certain level demand destruction begin brings brings it back into balance. Prices go so high it becomes unaffordable and that's what happens. And so we're at the level right now to be very clear demand destruction basically means that people and corporations start consuming a lot less oil. uh and that means that there will be a uh a severe reduction in economic activity particularly economic activity that is fossil fuels intensive like manufacturing uh that's just going to have to happen uh because uh people are not going to be able to buy and consume oil uh in an economic manner and finally he says and I think crude being in this sort of 90 to$110 range for the last whatever it is 6 weeks has really been mitigated by running down inventories. It can't last forever. So we'll see what happens and predicting this in the exact timing is always a challenge but that's the way we see the picture. Next I want to share with you an article in a widely read uh widely read by people in the shipping industry publication Helenic shipping news. Uh this is an article uh from May 20th. Uh it may be a bit too small for you to read, but I've highlighted here the sections uh that I think are most uh important and I'll read them to you. Uh the title, as you can see, is Europe faces oil crunch as Iran war chokes Hormuz inventories plunge. In the first paragraph, global oil inventories are plunging and may not recover until late 2027, more than a year and a half from now, as the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatened to trigger physical shortages across Europe within weeks, according to a CNBC report. Further down, it says, "According to the report, inventories are falling at a pace unseen since the 1970s oil crisis and physical shortages could hit Europe any day now." Uh that was by the way 10 days ago. Uh Jeff Curry, executive co-chairman at Abbach Commodity Exchange told CB CNBC's Squawkbox uh Europe that the severity of the supply crunch is not yet reflected in prices or policy responses once the shortage is hit. Prices will go nonlinear. He said then we find out what the willingness of is of somebody to pay for that last molecule. And uh Curry noted that the market is currently in its shoulder months, a seasonal lull between winter heating demand and summer driving season. But that lull is ending. With the US Memorial Day and the UK's spring bank holidays approaching, demand for diesel, gasoline, and crude is set to surge. That's when you're going to begin to feel it, he warned. Analysts at Society led by Mike Ha said that even if the traight open reopens by early June, and there's no indication at this stage that that's going to happen, the complex logistics of tanker transit, discharge, refining, and distribution mean a delay of at least 52 days before normal normal supply resumes. At least 52 days, almost two months. That leg leaves several million barrels per day offline, forcing refiners to draw down already depleted inventories. A reopening in late June would bring deeper and more prolonged stress, pushing physical relief into late August and delaying meaningful normalization until September. Hayes team warned that if the reopening is delayed further, oil prices could spike toward 150 per barrel per barrel and remain elevated for the rest of the year. Even as flows resume, the delayed timing embeds a deeper inventory deficit prolonging uh tightness into 2027, the analyst wrote. And finally uh towards the end of the article, they quote again this analyst uh Curry. He said the situation is deteriorating faster than poly policy makers realize. Yeah. Our policy makers seem uh indeed to be uh utterly clueless or they're feigning ignorance. I don't know which. And then he says, "Anybody who gets their hands dirty in this business is telling you this is bad." So this is not just some extremist here. And I'm going to show you there's a consensus, a consensus amongst experts in the industry about what is coming. He goes on and he says, "The Iranians want to inflict pain. It's not the price of oil that matters here. It's the availability of oil. The International Energy Agency echoed those concerns, warning that global stock piles are rapidly depleting and that the world could face a sustained supply deficit la lasting into 2027. Lastly, I'd like to show you a few excerpts from an excellent interview uh that Daniel Davis on the deep dive uh published this week. uh he interviewed uh a person by the name of Art Burman who is a ge geologist and a wellrespected energy consultant. This interview merits close attention, especially the last two clips that I'm going to show you. Uh and we will leave a full link uh to this interview in the uh description to this video. Uh if you have uh a little bit of you know an hour or so to spare, uh I do recommend you watch it in full. Uh the information in this interview is something that is of primordial importance to just about every person on this planet because of the uh profound importance of affordable oil and gas uh to the functioning of the global economy. Um, as you watch these excerpts uh from Burman's interview, bear in mind, as I've already said, that the price of a barrel of Brent crude was at around $61 at the beginning of this year, two months before Trump and Netanyahu launched this criminal and catastrophic war in Iran. It slowly began to rise in February uh as uh people became more and more concerned that there was uh going to be another uh attempt made uh by uh the United States and Israel to destroy Iran and then it shot up uh the price of oil uh when this war began on February 28th and has not come anywhere close to the level it was at which it was trading uh beginning uh in the beginning of the year. So let's begin with uh this excerpt. You just laid out in very articulate way that no, they own the hill in your your vernacular there. Uh the Iranians do and they're not going to give that up. So President Trump say what he wants. If we could do that, we would have done it in the first 40 days. We can't. So but when he says that with such confidence, what is the oil industry thinking when they hear that? The most generous interpretation that I can provide here is and I I alluded to this earlier. They don't own the straight of Hormuz. It's not like a toll booth for Iran. What they have created is enough risk and disruption that nobody will push a ship through there. No insurance company will ensure a tanker to go through there. Nobody will accept the risk. So they effectively control the straight of moves by disruption. So the president can say that it's an international waterway and he is correct in saying that. But if nobody will move a tanker through it then again you know what does it matter? I just want to as a footnote say there is it's it's a much more complicated question of whether this is simply an international waterway but that's another question here. Uh what I want to stress is that what you just heard from this industry expert is almost precisely what I was saying when I was in the straight of Hormuz during the hot phase of this war in late March. Uh those of you who have been uh following our reporting uh over the last few months will probably be aware of the fact that I was there and I explained not just then while I was in Iran in Bandar Ababas on the straight of Odmuz but when uh in subsequent episodes that the Iranians in order to put an end to any commercial traffic through straight of Hormuz don't have to send some kind of you know naval armada out there and you know set up a wall of ships through which no other commercial vessel can pass. They don't even have to uh you know mine the straight. All they have to do is occasionally fire off a missile or some drones at some tanker that is trying to go through the state the straight without the permission of the Iranian military. Do that occasionally uh once in a while strike one of these vessels, cause significant damage to it. And that's all it's going to take for uh the industry, the shipping industry to say uh that's too much risk for us and for the insurance industry to say we're not insuring these vessels or we'll only do so at rates that are uh economically prohibitive uh for these shippers. Uh so Iran has six ways from Sunday to disrupt the flow of traffic through the straight of Hormuz and there's absolutely nothing that the United States can do about it. Uh now let's uh check out what uh Mr. Burman had to say next that I just read yesterday by Robbo Bank says that 700,000 barrels a day of Gulf Persian Gulf production is lost forever that those reservoirs are damaged and it's never coming back. Now, I know the guys at Robbo Bank and um I'm sure they'll tell you that's not a hard number, but that's probably a middle-of the road number. So, you know, we we that's that's a big number. That's a big number. That's just never coming back. Reservoir is damaged, pipes are broken, and it's not worth fixing them. Okay. So, but but for for the rest of it, how long does it take before all the plumbing, you know, works again and and and everything is flowing? I don't know. Months. All right. What about the damage? How long does that take? Well, who's going to pay for it? Somebody's going to have to put up the money for it. Yeah, someone's going to have to pay the piper. And as I've been saying for quite some time, ultimately it's going to be the United States or we're doomed economically. Now, um, uh, I don't really have anything to add to this. That's a big number. You heard this industry expert say, and it's gone forever. Here's what Mr. Burman had to say next. Very effectively laid out just how big it is. Actually, before we wrap this section up here, uh, back to your magic day and and whether that's because everybody agrees or or we have some sort of agreement that Iran's going to do a toll, whatever that that that they say, "Yeah, the normal flow can come. As long as you pay my toll, everything can go out there from that day." How long would you calculate? I know there's so many factors, but how long would you calculate before something was back to, let's just say, 80% of what it was on the 27th of February? Never. We're never going back. Never. No. What's the best case we can get in a year from now? 45%. And I And that's not that's not my number, okay? That's Kepler. I mean Kepler is is a internationally respected organization that does nothing but this kind of work. So again, he's not an outlier. This is very important to understand and I just read to you some excerpts from Hellenic Shipping News, uh the Exxon senior vice president. I could find Jeff Curry. I could find plenty of stuff like this from bonafide uh widely respected industry experts who are saying the same thing. It's never going to go back to 80% of uh the uh production uh that uh existed prior to the uh criminal war of aggression on Iran. And he said within a year it's going to be in his estimation 45%. This isn't a best case scenario. Okay, best case scenario. And it just it just gets more distressing from here. You know, you're going to look at a screen. If you're an average Joe, you're going to hear it on CNN or you're going to read it in your newspaper or wherever you get your news. And that number, you know, today is what? What is it? It's like $85 for Brent, right? Something like that. $89. Okay. $89. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, what does that number mean? By the way, what you see up on the screen there is I think he misspoke. It's not Brent, it's WTI crude. Brent is trading at a higher price uh than WTI crude. Brent is now at about $92 and I think when this interview was done it was about $95. But anyways, listen to what he has to say next. That is the futures contract for the end of July. So, we are discounted two months in the future. That's not the price that you're going to pay for barrel oil today. If you want to buy a barrel of WTI today, it's going to cost you $140 a barrel. So, that price you're looking at there is is somebody's bet on what it's going to cost in two months. So, by the way, this is WTI is $145 a barrel now. So, Brent would be even higher. Uh, and so this is really important to understand because all the media is talking about is the futures market. When they tell you that the price of oil for Brent crude is 95 or 92 or 98 or whatever, they're almost invariably referring to the futures market, which is a bet. There are people who are betting. And throughout this interview, uh, Burman, uh, refers to the people who are betting, uh, that, uh, the price is going to be in that range, uh, you know, two months down the road. They are the dumb money. That's what he calls them, the dumb money. And he says that at some point the dumb money is going to run out and the uh futures prices are going to merge uh or converge with uh the uh the price uh for a physical barrel of oil today. Uh let's ee what other disturbing uh uh opinions he has to share with us. Done modeling on this and and and other people have too. And once places like the United States get hit with the reality of this, and I've already said that it's, you know, it's going to happen sometime. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to happen in stages, but end of June, mid July, it's going to hit hard. And by then, can you hear me now, by the way? I do. Okay. By then, the price on your screen is going to be pretty darn close to the spot price. Then we're going to be at 150. And I think it's going to go higher. I think we're going to go, you know, I mean, I've modeled it out to 160, 180. Wow. At which point demand destruction kicks in. And for those who don't know, can you explain what that is? Well, I won't get into demand destruction. I think you can imagine what that is. But again, remember what he just said. He said 160 to 180. 180 is almost three times almost three times what the price of oil was at the beginning of the year. That is the insanity into which the Trump Netanyahu criminal war of aggression on Iran has plunged the global economy. And finally, I want to leave you with this. It's ne we're not going to get lower than 105. Wow. in in in the most likely case. In an adverse case, we're never going to get to 130 again. So, we're never going to get below 105, which is what uh 80% more than the price at which oil was trading at the beginning of the year. So, that's going to be uh the base the the the the best case scenario. And and listen to what he says next. But in in in the best case scenario, which says that by the end of the year, uh things I don't want to say they're normalized, but they're, you know, they're moving in the right direction. Yeah. Okay. And and so we're going to get we're going to go up, we're going to go down, and then we're going to slowly go up, and it's going to stay, you know, the the average price of of WTI or or Brent is going to be 115 or 120 forever. Okay. So what what happens if that's back to your magic scenario where everything got done and we started all the difficult stuff, but what if the the dueling blockades stay in place say through the end of June and we're still not to that to that start point. Then we get to, you know, $200 and and the same the same mechanics fall, you know, I mean, the higher it gets, the uh you know, the more extreme the demand destruction is going to be. So $200 uh would be uh an absolute uh catastrophe for the global economy. Uh would surely plunged uh the world into a prolonged uh and severe economic depression. Uh and uh you know if you're you know making sort of calm, coolheaded, rational assessments of where we're likely to go here, you would operate in the assumption that we're probably going to go into the worst case scenario or close to it because we're dealing with Donald Trump and Benjamin Yahoo. These are not rational actors. These are people who don't have any conscience. Donald Trump is, I think, certifiably insane. Many people agree with me, uh, including people who are psychiatric experts. But one thing is for damn sure, uh, the man couldn't care less about ordinary human beings. He's extremely irrational. He's delusional. He's megaloman maniacal. Uh and you've got this uh satanic psychopathic war criminal, his sidekick Benjamin Netanyahu, uh you know, pressuring him to be even more and more depraved. In these circumstances, you know, it would be I think quite foolish for people to assume assume that the best case scenario is uh the one that is going to materialize in the months and years ahead. We are very likely much more likely to be dealing with the worst case scenario. So that is a price of oil uh that is uh you know uh at least uh two and a half times the current or the price of oil uh at the beginning of the year and quite possibly more than three times as high. Now I'm not telling you all of this because I want to uh discourage you or sadden you or cause you unnecessary anxiety. I've been going on and on about how bad this is going to get because I look around me and I see an absolutely shocking level of complacency amongst ordinary citizens in the West. Uh, and I think in the other parts of the world, they get it much better than we do. But the West, we've been relatively spoiled, you know, compared to the non-western world for so long. Uh, and we're so brainwashed, frankly, that I, as far as I can tell, the majority of the population of the West believes that somehow this is all just going to work out when industry experts are telling us that that's not going to happen. Even in the best case scenario, it's not going to happen. And my motivation for harping on this theme is that I want people to uh get into the streets and to start demanding that the West make the concessions to Iran that are necessary to bring this insanity to an end as quickly as possible. And you know, call up your elected representative. uh you know uh protests, send petitions, uh stop voting for politicians who support this war and virtually all of uh the governments of the the Western world do. Uh stop giving them your campaign dollars, stop volunteering your time, uh you know, any way that you can apply pressure on your government uh and particularly the United States government to make the necessary concessions to Iran as quickly as possible. that is something that you should be doing uh and it's just it's just a matter of self-preservation at this stage and uh you know the preservation of the well-being and the prospects for prosperity of your family your your children. So that is why uh I have devoted so much time uh to trying to convey to people that we are being treated to a peace kabuki theater. uh that these people uh the people who are making the decisions uh in Washington and other uh capitals in the west whoever they may be uh that they are leading us down the path to an economic disaster and they do not feel nearly enough pressure to do the right thing at this stage. We need to escalate the pressure on them to act. With that, I'll be signing off now. Uh on a lighter note, I just want to congratulate uh the fans of Paris Sanja on their Champions League victory this uh evening. Not because I particularly care about the Champions League, but because I was impressed over the last few weeks at the demonstrations of solidarity from PSG fans uh for the people of Palestine. And for that reason alone, I was happy to see PSG prevail. Uh, I'll signing off tonight on May 30th, 2026 for Reason to Resist from Kalamata Greece.
Iran just WON, Trump in PANIC as Israel’s Demise goes Nuclear | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Danny Haiphong May 31, 2026 #iran #iranwar #trump
Former Joint Chief of Staff for Colin Powell and Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins to discuss
Transcript
We have Scott Bessant, Donald Trump. They're all saying that their patience is waning thin with Iran. Iran has been very firm in its uh positions on what it would like out of an agreement with the United States. We've seen now the US strike Iran. Talk about Iran's response here. Uh why h why and how has Iran become so firm and confident in its position? I think we're looking at, as I've said before, a very frustrated president who does not know how to extricate himself from something he should never have started. And there's got to be at least an occasional light bulb going off in that dull mind that tells him that. So, he's looking hard for a way out. At the same time, I have to say that I don't think I've changed my original conception of what's going on here, which is that we are going to lull the Iranians. I say lull, they're not being lulled into it. They're got their eyes open, but we're going to take them into another period just like the previous two periods of quote diplomatic engagement unquote and attack them again right in the middle of what is supposed to be a ceasefire. But increasingly we seem to have the same interpretation of the English word ceasefire that BB Netanyahu and other Israelis seem to have of the Jewish word for ceasefire, the Hebrew word. uh because they aren't ceasefires at all. They're just maybe a little less killing, but the killing continues nonetheless. And this whole process is beginning to fall apart. It's beginning to fall apart, I think, around some key issues. One of which is the somewhat dire straits that Netanyahu finds himself in increasingly inside Israel politically and the fact that there are rumors around that Miriam Adlesen has grown he's grown tiresome to her and thus tiresome to the big money that she's been sending his way. And there are other things that are happening too. I even I even posited the idea the other day that maybe if we think that the Epstein files really have an impact and that impact is blackmail, maybe BB Netanyahu does not own that portion of the files or any portion of the files that deal directly with Melania and with Donald themselves and therefore would be the the most crushing if they were revealed. Maybe MSAD controls them. That would make sense to me. And maybe MSAD is not all that happy with BB Netanyahu either. So they are not allowing him to wield that blackmail and have even put word out that they're not doing it as much as possibly they were before. Um there is some let's put it this way there's some tension right now amongst the elements not only in his coalition but in the entire Israeli government structure. And in that I include Shinbet and uh the IDF and the Air Force and the rest of the military and security instruments. Uh it's not a happy camp. Um and it's certainly not a h a happy camp in Israel, particularly not up there in the north where Hezbollah continues to pound the people who have been pounded out back out back pounded again back out again. Um, I suspect that the Jewish population of Israel is probably lost somewhere between a quarter to half a million people, Jewish people, just because of that interplay in that region where they can't go back to their homes or their farms with any confidence that they won't be killed. And that's why he's pressing so far north of the Latani River, even possibly going to I forget the name of the next river, but even possibly cross the next river. He's already got advanced parties on that river and he's killing people in between and the people are not necessarily Hezbollah. In fact, they aren't Hezbollah in many cases. They're just citizens of Lebanon, which is of course irritating majorly the government in Beirut, which frankly, as usual, doesn't know what to do. Um, so you you've got a lot of issues that are happening there, but I'm not backing away from my original statement that we're going to do what we did before, two different diplomatic periods. supposedly uh our way of doing diplomacy is really weird. No diplomats involved. Um and we're going to attack them uh yet a third time out of supposed negotiations and this time out of a supposed ceasefire which we're seeing every day is quote supposed unquote just like BB's. So that's all I know and I think it's going to unfold again. And Bradley Cooper's testimony for the Congress was p pitiful. absolutely pitiful. Um, I think it was Jason Crow and Seth Molton in particular that I watched just grill him and he reminded me of a lieutenant commander on the game floor in Newport who would answer a question when I as an army colonel supervising the the floor of that game would would walk up to the terminal and look at the lieutenant commander and say something really basic like how's it going commander and he would look at me look at me and say it's going according to plan and I would say come here jerk him up take him into the corner and say, "Whenever a superior, especially on a game room floor or in a real world situation, God forbid, never answer a question like I asked you with the answer you gave because the mission doesn't outlast contact with the enemy. What you want to answer is, are you accomplish your mi your mission?" Are you accomplishing your mission? You can be according to plan all day long and not be accomplishing your mission at all, which is what is going on here. But then the problem is, and Seth Molton sort of pressed in on this, what is your mission, Admiral? Do you know what your 6 minutesmission is other than to sail aircraft carriers and destroyers and shoot at Iranians and drop bombs on Iran? Do you know anything beyond that? A mission normally, as we taught at Newport, has two parts. It has the part where you say what you're going to accomplish, and then it has the purpose and the why. Okay, what's your purpose? How can you have a mission without knowing the purpose? They don't know the purpose. They're just executing. And the Iranians know their purpose. Their purpose is to stand up to it and if necessary and in stages that make some sense, inflict major damage on you. There's a real discrepancy here and we're losing. The United States seems to be engaging. You know, they strike Iran bonder Abbas. They they they retreat. They strike again. They retreat. Iran retaliates um in an equal kind of manner and yet the US keeps on saying this is all within the bounds of the ceasefire. This is limited. Why is the United States even engaging engaging in these strikes? Then a lull could simply mean just waiting until ready. Uh, of course with the weapon stockpile situation being as it is for the United States, that could be many years to be ready for another uh uh long uh intervention, another long uh campaign of strikes. But nonetheless, the US is going about in this way under Trump. Why is it why what is with these what some call pin prick strikes where it seems like the US is in this pattern now uh where seems to be almost every weekend they go uh in this direction. I have no idea, Danny. I have no idea except that maybe they think and maybe the military's advising that you have to keep hitting them every now and then to remind them that you have the capacity to do so. I can't figure it out. But as far as munitions go, you know, we got tons of dumb bombs. And you can strap a JDAM set, you know, a smart bomb making set on any iron bomb and make it a smart bomb at least for a certain range. So, we got plenty of them left. Um and and there are probably in ours in Israelis or Israel's combined arsenal quite a few that you could go on bombing in other words odd nauseium. Uh it wouldn't be very smart and it wouldn't do anything probably but destroy civilian in infrastructure and kill civilians. But what after all what is Netanyahu doing in Lebanon? That's exactly what he's doing in Lebanon. It's what he's doing on the West Bank. It's what he's wants to do further in Gaza and is doing peace meal every day. And God forbid, I heard this morning on another interview that he's talking or someone in Israel is talking about uh Jonathan Pollard perhaps about going on and not stopping at Lebanon. Well, you know what the next country is after Lebanon. Uh good luck. Good luck. uh Erdogan didn't parade that new ballistic missile down the avenue in Acra just for uh looking at the shiny metal. I think we're we're looking at again I I come back to this proposition. We're looking at merging all these conflicts and Ukraine is the one staring me in the face right now after Lavrov's comments to Rubio apparently and others too. Um the next strike is going to be in a NATO country. Well, the next strike is going to be against NATO assets, including ours, who've been warned duly to get out in Kev, but I don't put it past them to go one step further on the escalation ladder. Called it a half step. Somebody put another rung in there below the present one in the uh or below the one above the present one. And that rung is okay, we'll do that in Ukraine. And if that doesn't work, a few arrange and doing things like directing storm shadow missiles and such to targets in Russia, deep deep in Russia. If that doesn't work, we're going to hit somebody else. Maybe we'll hit Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia where we we know there are other cells. In fact, we know there's a sale that is a planning sale and it includes a number of NATO countries including Yukon, the United States command in Europe, um that are planning on an attack on ClintR. So why don't we just take that out and let's take it out inside a NATO country. Dare you dare you to invoke Article 5 in any meaningful way. So we're playing with fire here, I think. And I don't mean that uh in terms of lighting matches. I'm talking about playing with real fire, maybe backing Putin's uh patience up to a wall and getting something really started and and maybe some cohesion, momentary cohesion in NATO. The Poles would afford it, probably one half of them. The Germans about a quarter of them would afford it, including merits. Maybe some of the others would jump in, but we wind up having an article five to which only a few answered the call. And not for a moment, and this is my sincerest view, not for a moment do I think Donald Trump would answer the call. So where are we then? We've got a war between certain NATO countries and Russia and Article 5 invoked but not adhered to. And where do we go from there? Uh I know Putin's probably thought about it. I doubt we have. Yeah, we know that the US empire is a really hard time especially when it comes to uh leading institutions, if we can call it that, uh within NATO, staying away from war, staying away from wars. Yes, this this stuff is coming home too. It's coming home to the United States. You can't fight wars overseas basically without some of the violence and some of the uh attitudes that are developed in wars like this coming home. And I keep telling people, you know, this is a country that has not had bombs dropped in its front yard since 1865. And you know, oh, we we had 12 million men or 16 million men, depending on how you count them in World War II. Uh-uh. They were overseas. There was nothing on our soil of consequence. A few firebombs floated over by the Japanese to the Pacific coast. A little bit of action in the illusions which stopped very quickly when we took action against it. And there was a little on the east coast with a few Nazi spies and this that and the other thing. But no American in three or four generations has had bombs in his front yard. None. We just don't know what it's like to be in a place like Ukraine or in a place like Gaza or in a place like the West Bank or a place like Lebanon. We simply do not know. We fought all our wars at arms length. What kind of thing is going to happen to the empire when it comes here? And it might come here for domestic reasons, not necessarily some foreign power attacking us. That could happen. It certainly could happen with a dirty bomb or something like that coming across one of our borders, but that would be the excuse for the invocation of the insurrection act, the declaration of martial law, and we'd be off to the races because I think that's what the domestic agenda of this administration is led by none other than your favorite secretary of war. He whom Trump likes to hold up as a movie star image of a killer. beat hexag there seems to be another kind of diminishment happening with the US empire that's being more and more acknowledged uh even by neocons and that is uh the decline of the overall uh empire and I'm curious given that you talked about the merging of these conflicts uh you mentioned Ukraine uh there's of course heavy US involvement there uh munitions intelligence etc Iran uh this has been a pet project of the Trump administration And uh now we see the China seems to have gotten away for many in many respects from the United States still a heavy military presence but China has been showing itself very very very resilient strong rising and now becoming a center of global power and uh they're even talking about Cuba and and other kind and other projects that the US empire wants to engage in but it's it seems heavily overextended and what else in terms of, you know, we talk about the military all the time, but where what else might the US empire be losing right now through this engagement in endless war?
I think an article that appeared in a publication put out by World Without War, I believe it was. I think I've got the author's name. Yeah, Nicholas Davies. The title of the article is very pertinent, and the article itself is eloquent. The title is, "Do US war crimes doom the world to endless war and chaos?" And the answer to that question, I think, is absolutely.
And that's what's happening. We are destroying international law. We are destroying everything that we built up after World War I, that Franklin Roosevelt talked about at Yalta, that Eisenhower was very instrumental in helping to build, that Harry Truman was 100% behind, that the United States became the real look-to, if not the actual, and in many cases we were the actual power behind that law -- if Mao was right, that international law comes out of the barrel of a gun, and I think to an extent he was, that gun was owned by the power that had dramatically supplied all of the United Nations. And that's the term we used at the time, not allies. We called them the United Nations. Eisenhower used that term. Marshall used that term. We supplied all of those powers that wound up being quote "victorious" unquote on our side. They were prostrate at the end of it, most of them. Britain certainly was; the Soviet Union was; France was; Japan, an enemy, was. We were the Titan in the world. And we put the Titans' weight on the Security Council, often thwarted by others, mostly Russia, when it was in their interest to do so. But we were the Titan behind international law. We were the law. However imperfect that was, there was law.
Now, as that title implies in Davies' article, and I think he's right, we have destroyed it. Not only have we destroyed it, we have had a president who impugned it. A president who disregards it. "His mind is more important than the law." James Madison is spinning in his grave. "If men were angels, they wouldn't need governments, and they wouldn't need laws." Well, we destroyed international law, and we are working hard to destroy US law, constitutional and otherwise.
What goes on overseas, comes home. That's almost an axiom of our wars. And we have been at war for the past 30 years if you count them off. And all the people we've destroyed, hurt, put into either internal displacement, or external displacement, or killed: 38 million is one analysis of how many people we have killed with our sanctions, 50% or more of which were women and children. Since 911, 38 million people. That rivals Mao Tse Tung in the cultural revolution. That rivals Stalin in the purges, in the deepest, darkest hours of the purges. It even rivals Hitler really when you talk about the people he personally, or his Wehrmacht and other forces, killed 100 million total, but probably somewhere between 30 and 40 million at Hitler's door personally. So we are the rival of those people. And the people that we have killed with our sanctions since 911?
We are no longer the arbiter of international law. Good or bad. We are no longer the world's protector, good or bad. And I would argue that for a long time there was more good to it than bad. Now we are just all bad. We are all evil. And we sponsor people who are even more evil than we are, like Israel.
Those numbers that you put out there. Yeah. There's no way to cold war spin that or to you know um feain ignorance. The all of the world has witnessed uh this destruction. Uh and in Colonel Wilkerson to Israel we have a very difficult situation that is being played off. I believe not being covered very much in western mainstream media and that is uh the situation the the uh war that Israel has launched on Lebanon which has led to massive resistance from Hezbollah. And you know in this we also have developments emerging like uh what we saw the horrific war crime uh humiliation that Ben gave uh conducted on the flotillaa activists and now the UN has put Israel on their uh list of those states that the blacklist of those states that commit sexual violence in war which is a a big blemish now and blight on Israel's already blighted uh resume in history. So uh Colonel Wilkerson, talking about the situation here and the impact on on the world, it it appears that the Israeli regime, the the regime, you just said, is behaving, if we can believe it or not, worse than the US war machine in many ways, and is really upfront and center in terms of being exposed as such.
Well, I take Lindsay Graham to heart when he says that if they weren't doing it, we'd have to be there doing it. And were the forces doing it for us composed of Lindsay Grahams, I have no doubt that if they could overcome their cowardice, they would be doing that.
And that's one point you got to make about these people. I mean, I'm sorry. These are not the most courageous, bravest warriors in the world, who make it their practice on a daily basis to kill men, women, and children. Now, I will admit in Iraq, in Somalia, in Afghanistan, in Libya, and elsewhere, we were responsible directly, or indirectly, for a lot of women and children being killed. But I don't think we ever walked out on a battlefield with a marine, or a soldier, or a sailor, or an airman, whose purpose in life -- there may have been some aberrations, because there always are -- but at large, whose purpose in life was killing women and children.
These people's [Israeli's] purpose in life is killing women and children, because they will tell you they have the wounds, or the potential, to grow up, and they will be terrorists, or they will produce terrorists. That's the kind of language I hear out of these people. They remind me of some of the neoconservatives in this country who would say the same thing for the top page of the New York Times, right side above the fold, if they could get away with it and maintain their jobs, because that's the way they feel. Kill them all. Slaughter them all. As my lieutenant in George Washington University seminar told me about his two years in the IDF, and his time in Operation Cast Lead, which was three weeks of preparation for what you're seeing post October the 7th in Gaza, which was always planned to be done eventually. And October the 7th, whatever its inception was, October the 7th, like 911 for us, gave the Israelis the excuse to go out and put Operation Cast Lead into play across the whole breadth of Gaza. That's what they're doing. And they've been planning it for a long time. And they are bloody minded about completing it.
Naftali Bennett. What has Naftali Bennett been accusing Netanyahu of? Not finishing off the Palestinians in Gaza. Not finishing off Hamas. Go down in those tunnels, and kill Hamas. Get them out of those tunnels. Kill them. And Bibi, and the IDF, and I don't blame them, are content to stay up above ground, and kill them piecemeal during a ceasefire, and belie any kind of humanitarian aid really that could get in there and help. They even got cheating going on right now with Israelis and Palestinians making money off the cheating. That'll always happen. But humanitarian assistance in there now is sort of a joke amongst the relief agencies that really know how to do it, and know what's going on there.
So this is just terrible. All the way from East Jerusalem, across Gaza, the West Bank, into Lebanon. But he'd be in Syria if he had enough troops to take that on at the same time, too. He's only got a holding force in Syria. And I'm sure Bibi would tell Trump that at any moment that Trump wants to march ground forces into Iran, he'll turn the IDF around from Lebanon, put it on hold in Lebanon, and go on and join him with the ground forces in Iran. I almost wish he would, because they would get swallowed up and murdered. I hate to say that, but it would probably be the end of the IDF. But that's whom we're dealing with. And now I'm trying to figure out, have I been right that Israel has all along been our tool, or are other people right that we're their tool? I think the two have had moments where each was operative, and now they've merged. They've merged. It really doesn't matter now, because we're both criminal.
Two wings of the same bird. At this point, it feels like they are uh --
Two wings of the same drone.
Yeah. Exact. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. or as our friend George Galloway often says two chicks two cheeks of the same you know what um backside so but you know to what you're saying this situation in West Asia of course has global implications and what you see in the world that's changing dramatically because especially in the last several years but even in this last iteration from October 7th to the February 28th uh strikes it feels like the world has changed quite dramat dramatically and it's the US and Israel too that feels like they're catching up and and almost committing atrocities in order to try to do that and get ahead of it, but doesn't seem like that's occurring. Well, I don't for a moment attribute the same kind of almost evil genius to Donald Trump that I would Netanyahu. I mean, you don't stay in power as long as he stayed in power in a volatile Jewish state like Israel. And I say that with emphasis on the Jewish because I don't think the Arabs really have much say in it. Um, and of course there are more Arab more Arab Palestinians plus Christians and others in Israel than there are Jews by a slight amount. I suspect it's more than a million now because I think a million Jews have left. They've voted with their feet and I don't think they're coming back. But I I think what we're looking at now is a situation where the United States is so locked in this and we're led by a person who really does not understand except for the pecuniary aspects of it where he and his family are making tons and tons of money. I don't know if you saw that story this morning. is sort of an aside, but it's indicative about the $40 million in gold and uh Rolex watches and other things that they found found in the CIA agents home and now the agency is saying that you know there were some circumstances in hiring him that weren't copacetic and all I mean this you can't make this up. You know where he got that? He got that in Ukraine. And and I as I told my daughter this morning, you know, you could go to Ukraine as a CIA operative and if you really had sticky fingers, you could pick up $40 million in gold overnight virtually and walk out with it. I'm the man who saw 16 billion US dollars go on pallets on a C130 and get shipped to Iraq and disappear. 16 billion dollars. So there's more money lying around in Ukraine you could shake a stick at, but it's indicative of what you and I are talking about, the corruption of all of these wars and the corruption associated with European and American support for Ukraine and Zalinski in particular and what's happening in Israel and Lebanon and elsewhere and what's happening in Georgia. We must not leave that out. They're still trying to overthrow that government. and what's happening adjacent to Kenrad and in the Baltic in general and on up to the Arctic. We are painting a tapestry that the Chinese and others in the world who are about to meet in India in September with the bricks meeting Modi in charge they can't figure out I don't think but they know they're winning and they don't want to do anything to disturb that victory. So you have the kind of advice coming out of Xi Jinping. I suspect it goes something like this. If you can damage them, damage them, but don't damage them in such a way that it reflects back on us or causes them to respond against us. Which is why X told a whole bunch of lies to Trump with regard to support for Iran. Of course, he's supporting Iran. Is he doing it through third countries? Well, how else would you do it and get away from, you know, the patrols and so forth? And is he doing it with overhead satellites? Well, probably so. And is Russia doing it? Well, probably. So, are they doing things because they feel like they have to protect Iran? Yeah, to a certain extent, but mostly it boils down to protecting their own interests, particularly China's interests with regard to the railroad to Iran and so forth. So, we're up against them in Ukraine. We're up against them in Iran. We're up against them largely everywhere we go. Were we to try and take Cuba, I bet you we would probably be up against them there, one or both of them. Um I hope we don't do that. So why are we doing this? This this is a huge question. Why are we doing this? Is it just to make money for Trump's family and Trump himself? Is that the only reason we're destroying the domestic environment of this country? destroying international law, waging war, and killing people for no purpose whatsoever except money. I can't figure it out. I I I mean, I I can't say that enough. People don't like that as an answer, but I'm sorry. This is in many ways that old word inelutable. You you you can't figure out what's happening because it is so base. B A S E base as in depraved as in broken as in nonsensical illogical except that a lot of people are making money. Yeah. Money and the uh attempted uh full spectrum dominance to get it plus Yeah. Where's the full spectrum dominance when you can't even open the straight over move? That's what it's so I think that's why what what we're we're seeing money so go so much in command. I think there's often uh times in history where it feels like you know state military power in a system like ours comes in command you know is in command in some respects and now it does feel like uh money is far more in command but then there's also the fact that you've talked about this a lot we can end here when a you when an empire is is falling or in decline uh you we often get these empires lashing out but we've never really seen an empire like this one uh the United States Empire which has denied it's an empire for the duration of its history and also uh it claims all kinds of virtuous values and just so happens to uh at one point have been the dominant economy in the entire world and that is no longer uh the case and is quickly becoming the opposite. Uh, so it is a different moment in history. And of course, as you also mentioned a lot, nuclear weapons, we've never had that ace in the holes. Yeah, that's the one that scares me is the nuclear weapons. No treaties and 10,000 or more between us and Russia. That's a hell of a lot of nuclear enough to destroy the world several times over. Um, and the other thing that truly troubles me, and I can't emphasize this enough, is the profoundly inept leadership we have right now. You can say it's superb in grifting, superb in manipulating the stock market for money, superb in using the taxpayers's dollars for its own purposes, either personal or what it calls national purposes, what the Congress is becoming, even in the Republican part, more and more skeptical of, particularly this these things like this 1.6 six or whatever billion dollar fund to pay back all the people who participated in January the 6th which got even thun the majority leader in the Senate up on his back legs. But all of that is going on right now and there seems to be no counterpunch. There seems to be no effort that is meaningful to write the ship of state to use a metaphor. Um, I'm not sure it can be writed, but I don't see anybody actually trying to do it. And that's that's extremely worrisome. And then you come back to what you pointed out. You come back to the nuclear weapons and the desperation we're going to feel at one point here, probably not too far into the future, maybe even in my lifetime. This desperation is going to be so deep and so all-encompassing that we're going to start something that we can only finish with nuclear weapons. And that that's not a very pleasant prospect for me to think about for my grandchildren and and their children.
On May 24, Iran rejected President Trump’s latest fake peace deal, confirming that he had misrepresented what Iran had agreed to and that the two sides are still very far apart, on nuclear enrichment, on control of the Strait of Hormuz, on peace in Palestine and Lebanon, and on lifting US sanctions, paying war reparations and Iran’s $100 billion in frozen assets.
Iran’s conditions for a peace agreement are necessarily uncompromising, in response to the US record of using negotiations as cover for sneak attacks, and the charade of one-sided “ceasefires with Israeli characteristics,” in which the US and Israel routinely ignore and violate every ceasefire they agree to, including the present ones in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Since no agreement with the United States or Israel is worth the paper it’s written on, it’s hard to imagine an agreement that would really protect Iran from future attacks. Without a more radical change in US policy, the United States and Israel will keep attacking Iran, in open violation of the UN Charter, no matter what they all agree to.
After decades of hostility and maximum pressure sanctions, and repeated attacks and assassinations by Israel and the United States, Iran has built its own arsenal of defensive and offensive weapons, and taken control of the Strait of Hormuz. The impact on the world’s oil and gas supply and the global economy now gives Iran leverage with which it hopes to deter future attacks. By attacking Iran, the United States and Israel triggered a war that is reshaping the Middle East and possibly the world.
Losing this war is forcing the United States to finally start reevaluating the neoconservative tactics it has blindly substituted for a rational U.S. foreign and military policy since the 1990s: sanction; threaten; bomb; kill; destroy; occupy; escalate; leave countries mired in violence and chaos – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Lebanon – never admit defeat; never question American exceptionalism or superiority.
The systematic U.S. disdain for the rule of international law that undergirds this policy appears to make peace impossible in today’s world. But the final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the US and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has effectively exempted itself from the entire system of treaties, international laws and agreements that are supposed to govern international affairs, starting with the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force between countries, and the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians, prisoners-of-war and wounded soldiers and sailors from the impacts of war.
These treaties were drawn up and universally adopted in the wake of the Second World War, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the UN Charter says in its preamble. President Roosevelt returned from his Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in 1945 to tell a joint session of Congress that they were designing the United Nations as a “permanent structure of peace.”
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed,” FDR told Congress. “We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join.”
The UN Charter codified and strengthened the age-old common law prohibition against international aggression, and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact, which German leaders tried at Nuremberg were sentenced to death for violating.
However, amid overblown Western triumphalism after the end of the Cold War, a new generation of US leaders, likeMadeleine Albright and Dick Cheney, came to see the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions as obstacles to their ambitions to further expand US global power by more widespread and unrestricted use of military force.
Believing that the new imbalance in military power freed them from compliance with post-1945 treaties and conventions based on the hard-earned wisdom of past leaders in two world wars, the US and its allies unleashed their armed forces to attack and invade other countries, torture, rape and kill prisoners, and massacre civilians.
U.S. officials assumed that the new military imbalance so greatly favored the United States that neither the UN, international courts, other powerful countries, nor even the entire people of the world could enforce the rules of international law and the laws of armed conflict on the United States if it chose to ignore them.
It is ironic, and deeply frustrating and confusing to U.S. officials, to find out that what they hailed as a position of overwhelming power and impunity has led them to squander America’s day in the sun and waste the chance that its great good fortune provided to improve the quality of life for Americans and their neighbors.
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword. There is no such thing as unlimited military power, short of the mass suicide of nuclear war. The idea that America’s virtually unlimited investment in weapons and war would give it the final word in every dispute was a mirage, as even Trump is now finding out.
As Americans reexamine the state of the world and the conflicts by which warmongering US leaders have tried to define it, it is obvious that war and military power do not lead to peace or prosperity, for Americans or anyone else. The more countries the Pentagon and the CIA take aim at, the more people they kill, and the more resources our leaders throw at them, the more other people all over the world rightly come to see the United States as a threat to their own lives and futures.
Governments around the world face difficult choices between meeting the needs and aspirations of their own people or complying with the hegemonic and undemocratic demands of the United States.
After holding itself up as the champion of democracy and freedom for 250 years, the United States is only accelerating its own decline by wasting trillions of dollars, and what little is left of the world’s good will, on this failed, ill-fated bid for global imperial power.
When the United States rose to great power in the first half of the 20th century, its leaders were wise enough to recognize that exercising naked imperial power would not succeed in a world still fighting to free itself from the ravages of European colonialism. So FDR and his colleagues based the UN system on sovereign equality between nations, and created a framework for international relations that the whole world could agree to.
Like all legal and political systems, the success or failure of the UN system rests on whether the most powerful countries will agree to live by the same rules as the others. The veto is a poison pill that corrupts the system, as Albert Camus predicted when it was unveiled in 1945.
“If this report is accurate, … it would effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy,” Camus wrote in Combat, the underground French Resistance newspaper he edited. “The world would be ruled by a directorate of five powers… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”
However, the UN has developed the “Uniting For Peace” process, which allows the General Assembly to hold Emergency Special Sessions (ESS) on international problems when a veto prevents the Security Council from acting to resolve them. The General Assembly used that process to resolve the Suez Crisis in 1956, and it has been using it, albeit intermittently and inadequately, to address the crisis in Palestine since 1997.
In response to a request from the General Assembly in its Emergency Special Session on Palestine, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end without delay. And so, the General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel must bring “to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories… and do so no later than” September 2025.
Israel did not comply, so the General Assembly must take further steps, such as an arms embargo and an economic boycott. But it does have the means to do so and just needs to muster the political will.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly – too slowly – coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by, and on which the lives of millions of vulnerable people and the future of humanity depend.
While U.S. leaders are finally realizing that they do not have the power to intimidate and conquer the whole world, the American people are gradually understanding that we have an even greater power, the power to refuse to fight their criminal wars, and to insist on making peace and cooperating with all our neighbors on this small planet that we all share.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He is also the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a new revised, updated 2nd edition.
Can't Trust Enemy!" Iran FM, parliament speaker clash with Trump on peace deal | Janta Ka Reporter Janta Ka Reporter May 31, 2026
Two senior Iranian officials—Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf—today contradicted claims made by US President Donald Trump regarding a potential peace deal. Araghchi dismissed the claims as speculation, while Ghalibaf warned that the enemy's words and promises cannot be trusted. Rifat Jawaid examines these statements and their immediate impact on the ongoing peace talks.
Alastair Crooke (clip): The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing Glenn Diesen Clips May 31, 2026
Alastair Crooke discusses how the Iran War is transforming geopolitics of the world. Crooke is a former British diplomat and the Founder of the Conflicts Forum based in Beirut. He was formerly an advisor on Middle East issues to Javier Solana, the EU Foreign Policy Chief.
