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Iran denies receiving invitation to join Mecca defense pact. Tehran says regional security talks have been proposed as the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani alliance elicits concern in Israel
Published 24 Aug, 2026 12:03
https://www.rt.com/news/644586-iran-den ... nvitation/

Iran has denied reports that it has been invited to join the Mecca defense pact comprising Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan, while confirming that proposals have been made for talks with the three countries on regional security.

The clarification comes after Mehdi Rahimi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s Khaneh Mellat news agency, told Al Mayadeen on Saturday that Tehran had received an invitation to become a member of the Mecca pact and was considering it.

On Monday, however, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the claim, stating that no formal invitation had been received in Tehran. At the same time, he said that discussions with the pact members concerning broader regional security have been proposed and are under consideration.

The three founding members of the pact had previously repeatedly said the alliance could eventually expand to include other regional states, with Egypt being publicly mentioned as a possible candidate. Pakistan has also said it would have no objection to Iran joining.

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which was signed on August 7, brings together Türkiye, which possesses one of NATO’s largest militaries and a rapidly growing defense industry, Saudi Arabia, which features enormous financial resources and ambitions to shape the Arab political order, and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with one of the largest militaries in the Muslim world.

The pact stipulates that an armed attack on one member would be regarded as an attack on all three, and also calls for closer military coordination, joint exercises and defense-industry cooperation.

Tehran initially said it had “no reason for concern” over the agreement, with spokesman Baghaei noting that its creation reflected a growing desire among regional states to develop their own security mechanisms.

Some observers have dubbed the new grouping an “Islamic NATO,” although experts have cautioned against treating it as a fully-fledged military bloc. Gulf Research Center chairman Abdulaziz Sager has said the pact could strengthen the members’ combined diplomatic and defense weight and contribute to a more regionally driven security system.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded to the pact with alarm, raising concerns that a bloc built around Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and nuclear-armed Pakistan could emerge as a counterweight to its own military dominance in the region.

The Mecca pact members, however, insist that the agreement is defensive, is open to other countries in the region, and is not directed against any other states.

Patrick Henningsen: Israel's Losses Mount As New Middle East Reality Sets In
by Nima Alkhorshed
Dialogue Works

Streamed live 2 hours ago Interviews 02

So, Vanessa, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about was this Mecca defense. So, uh just to recapitulate for those who haven't been following, the most recent developments. So, reports surfaced about three days ago, I guess, that Iran had been invited into the Mecca defense pact. And I think I saw a report that the origin of this story was an an Iranian official. I don't know if the report identified the official, but apparently that's where the claim came from. And then today I woke up and as soon as I opened up my YouTube app, I saw a report on an alternative media program that I watched from time to time that Iran had accepted an invitation, not only had received but it had accepted an invitation to join the Mecca Defense Pact.

And then just before I started interviewing you today Vanessa this happened. So the Iranian foreign ministry denies receiving formal invitation to join the defense pact and the spokesperson of the Iranian foreign ministry Esmaeil Baghaei whom I had the privilege to meet in Iran last month rejected the claim, stating that no formal invitation had been received in Tehran. I think there's always been dialogue, at least at some level, between Iran and these countries about collective security. So, what do you make of all this, Vanessa? And do you find it even remotely credible that a serious invitation would be extended to Iran to join the Mecca Defense Pact?

But to join what, Dimitri? We still don't have in writing what the pact means. I mean, this is kind of insane, you know, and honestly, everyone is writing about it. I saw an article in responsible statecraft that was based on a statement from a foreign ministry spokesperson in Iran, right? And I've actually asked a few Iranian friends, have you seen this statement? Is this actually being talked about in Iran? And they're all scratching their heads. So it's very odd.

The only reason I could think of why Iran might be invited into it is because Yemen and Ansarullah are really punishing Saudi Arabia at the moment. You know, they're targeting oil facilities east and west. So they're effectively disabling the East West pipeline which is supposed to be a sort of an alternative to the closure of the Hormuz Strait even though it's only I think around seven million barrels per day that can actually go across that East West pipeline. And they've shut down the Bab el-Mandeb straits to Saudi ships. They're targeting Saudi ships that are trying to get through there.

So, it's a bit like going back to the Beijing agreement of 2023 when China initiated discussion or negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia which effectively managed to bring in a ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen at a sort of fairly critical point. And so, I wonder if that's why it's been floated. But it it seems to have no substance to it. And ultimately, I can't see Iranians joining a pact that doesn't have any conditions set to it. I mean, there's nothing in writing. And what benefit is it to Iran when Saudi Arabia, as soon as aggression is reinitiated against Iran, Saudi Arabia will be basically back in the US-Israeli war against Iran? So, what's going to happen then?

Absolutely. I mean are the Saudis going to attack the US military bases on their soil if the US attacks Iran? Turkey has US military bases, but it's very odd. I'm not quite sure if it was a rumor. I don't understand who would really benefit from circulating it other than we discussed the fact that the pact was very much a Sunni Muslim pact and appeared to be very much excluding any Shia Muslim, I mean Iran or Yemen to a degree. So are they putting that out to try and kind of scotch that? I did actually see an article written by an American former security intelligence guy basically saying that's what it was.

So he was mocking the fact that people had said, well, this is a Sunni pact, right? It's isolating the the Shia Muslim countries and movements. And he was celebrating the fact that now they've invited Iran. It's all nonsense, but then the reality is that 1) I don't think Iran has been invited and 2) Iran in a million years is not going to be part of something that there's absolutely no conditions, that there's nothing to actually sign that has any substance. It's not going to happen, especially not right now. And I just want to point out to our audience I'm not sure if you're aware of this Vanessa, that just today uh after that's we're now weeks beyond the formation of this pact according to which we are told Pakistan and Turkey are supposed to come to the defense of Saudi Arabia if it's attacked. And just today, there was a report that yet again Ansarullah attacked Saudi Arabia. In fact, what it did was quite impressive from a technological perspective, and this is coming from independent firms in the maritime transportation industry. It struck a vessel just off the port of Yanbu in the Red Sea which is like a thousand kilometers from Yemen.

So somehow they managed to pinpoint strike a vessel. This is huge in terms of the oil crisis, because that would mean if the ships leaving the port of Yanbu are not safe, then they're not even going to be able to deliver oil through the Suez Canal, let alone the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. But the main point I just want to stress is that there have been multiple attacks on Saudi Arabia and Saudi assets since the Mecca defense pact came into effect, and I've seen no indication that either Pakistan or Turkey have sent forces to defend Saudi Arabia since then. And someone told me there was a rumor of a statement saying that if Israel strikes Turkey, then Iran will intervene. And my Iranian friend was saying like after everything Turkey did in Syria, which of course also led to the deaths of IRGC fighters who were defending the country and resistance fighters inside Syria.

So I don't know if it's trying to kind of sow confusion, but certainly we're seeing these weird kind of triumphalist narratives on YouTube, certain podcasters are suddenly saying, "Oh, that's it " But when you break it down, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

My last question to you, I'm curious if you have this impression too. Do you have the sense that even that even by the standards of this region, where there's so much misinformation, that we are dealing at this particular moment in a particularly propagandistic environment, like some of the crazy ass stories I see coming out. And they immediately get stamped with the imprimature of credibility. People start talking about them as if they're absolutely true. And like you said they just don't make any sense. So I don't know. Do you feel like we're in a really extraordinarily misleading narrative and informational environment right now?

Yes, definitely. And it's incredibly difficult sometimes because you know these threads do get picked up by certain media outlets and so on, and then they're blown out of all proportion before you can actually start investigating it, and saying well hold on, this doesn't make any sense because of XYZ, or even logically and rationally it doesn't make any sense at all, right? So definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

The only advice I can offer in that regard to our audience is, when you don't have any objective evidence to rely upon, you see these stories, just ask yourself, does it add up? Does it make sense knowing what you know about the actors that are involved in the story, and is it logical? And a lot of the time, I think that'll give you a good sense of what the reality is.

But in any case, any final words, Vanessa, before we sign off today?

No, just as as you said, I think take a deep breath before before buying some of the wilder narratives that are being circulated at the moment because they just don't make sense in the overall bigger picture. Absolutely. Don't rush to judgment.

-- Is War Between Israel And Turkey Inevitable? w/ Vanessa Beeley, by Dimitri Lascaris

Transcript

Hi everybody. Today is Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 and our dear friend, our brother Patrick Hennington is here with us. Welcome back Patrick. It's great to be with you Nemo.

Patrick, let me start with the latest news. Yesterday, everybody was talking about what has happened, what was the main objective of Sim Maner going to the the army, you know, the the the chief army of Pakistan going to Iran. what was all about and today we've learned from the Iranian media tasim it mentions that Pakistan simonyer who traveled to Iran yesterday was not carrying a threat or any similar message from the United States rather he was seeking to open space for negotiations and to yeah to to see what is the conditions and position what what is the conditions on the part of Iranians and what is the position they're in right now it's about Iranian to know about the Iranian position right now and the way that they see the conflict this is coming after Scott Bessant announcing operation economic outcast which basically is talking about isolating Iran and Iranian economy and collapsing and putting pressure on the Iranian government. How do you see the situation, Patrick?

You know, going from war tit for tat and then attacking in the straight of hormones. Right now, Donald Trump is moving or is changing its attitude going toward an an economic warfare against Iran. And the other point is the case of Israel is always in the background or whatever is happening and the midterm election as midterm elections in the United States as well. So there are people arguing maybe Donald Trump is considering a pause to the war and after midterm elections getting back to the war again.

That is always the case in the background. your understanding of that. Okay. Yeah.

Thanks, Nema. Well, firstly, uh, the United States and Israel desperately needed a pause and the when when the theou expired, the 60 days expired, uh, that kind of put the United States in a very, let's say, uncomfortable position. uh from the optics point of view, they whether whether they had blown it up uh previously or not, they signed that deal and they agreed to it and that that was the initial framework even though the US violated it after and has since done this uh blockade disaster and threatened Iran and so forth. Still, that's that was the original terms.

So that was a that that's a big watershed moment for the US because now the Iran can charge tolls. Uh and the US uh hasn't been able to improve its leverage at all during that period. It should have been able to improve its leverage by maybe cooperating with Iran somehow on this and somehow you know they might be able to get some kind of concession in exchange for cooperation but they chose not to do that. they chose to, you know, escalate and uh increase the aggressive rhetoric and all the rest of it.

So, and then the United States also pushed Saudi Arabia to increase its uh aggression against Yemen uh and neighbor neighboring Iraq. So, so we went from a position where things were two months ago winding down or at least looked like they they have a possibility of of stabilizing to a massively uh in unstable uh region and and position more than before uh on on paper anyway. But but this comes at a time when the United States can't come good on military threats because it doesn't have the ammunition to do that. And that's pretty clear.

I think that's well understood across the board. So, uh, but the thing is, you're right about the midterms, Nemo. The closer we we're getting now to to the midterm elections, we're will be two months off next week. And it's a bad time to escalate.

It's a bad time. August wasn't convenient anyway because all the children in Washington, all the children in Congress and Senate are away on holiday. They got their their little school break. Uh, are elected officials.

they they always get their little school break uh in August. So, it it's not a good time to escalate. So, what can they do? They can send out Scott Besset, George Soros's globalist uh failed hedge fund manager, who who by the way, his career was a disaster as a fund manager.

I don't know if many people know that, but he he's been he's been marketed as this kind of genius, but because he worked for Soros, he's been trading off his George Soros brand association for a while, but reality is if you look at Scott Besson's career, it's a total disaster uh in the private sector. Just I'm just putting that out. Researchers can go and find out that information for themselves. But um so so he's he he can easily come at a very low cost come up uh Donald Trump makes a tweet about economic D-Day.

Scott Besson can go out on the media and make war policy through the US Treasury which he does and but it's it's merely a threat at this point. They're threatening all these comprehensive secondary sanctions but c can they actually come good on it? What's going to happen to the US economy if they come good on it? Those are all open questions.

I don't think I don't think it's going to be good at all for the US economy. It'll backfire as a an unholy disaster for the US. And meanwhile, Besson's doing this at the same time that he is basically attempting this audacious bond buyback, you know, buying basically what he's doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul. He's he's he's getting the he's getting the Federal Reserve to print up dollars so that he can stick those into the uh the Treasury's general accounting fund, the checking account of the US Treasury, and then go and run and use that to buy and refinance future long-term bond debt.

Basically, it's so printing out money out of thin air to buy buy back his own debt to to somehow stabilize the bond market. And guess what's hap? It's not working. Uh it will likely have horrible inflationary effect which is going to send the f bond futures uh even in even worse than they are now.

So the US, the Trump administration is doing everything possible to blow up the economy. And meanwhile, Scott Besson's coming on the uh news programs and press conferences, I I don't want to blow up the economy. When when these people say something like that, expect they're going to do the opposite. That's exactly what he's going to do.

He's going to blow up an economy. The question is, is this because he is totally incompetent and you're dealing with uh a whole bunch of soants in the Trump administration that have just doubled down on every single bad bet imaginable and are about to go from from from bad to worst to critical meltdown? Or the plan is to blow up the economy and the oligarch class in Trump's inner circle are going to make an unholy fortune shorting this market and scooping everything up for pennies on the dollar to reinforce their position as the future oligarch class going forward for the next hundred years at the expense of everybody else. By the way, everybody else.

So this would increase the wealth gap again by orders of magnitude. So, pick your poison. Which one do you think it is? Stupid idiots, clown world, or is this a very cynical attempt to actually blow up the economy?

Now, that's just from the US and that will reverberate globally. Now, we have the other question. What about the US dollar? So, if Scott Besson and the United States government go forward with their threats, that's bad news for sure for the US dollar.

And believe it or not, if you listen to Scott Bessett's own statement, whether this was a Freudian slip or not, I don't know. But he said those countries, he's talking about US allies or countries in the gray area, let's say, not allies, not enemies like China, but these countries should expect if they don't improve their behavior or they choose to trade money or he calls laundering money for Iran, which is basically doing normal business. But to the US, any trade or commerce that Iran does is considered money laundering. That's how ridiculous and over-the-top this is.

But he says that they should expect to be uh to be removed from the dollar system. He said they should expect to be banned from the dollar system, pushed out of the dollar system. This is the most bizarre statement I've ever heard. We've heard some pretty bizarre statements.

He's effectively admitting that sanctions and the threat of secondary sanctions are going to push people out of the dollar zone. The de so accelerating ddollarization. But that's where the power of the US government is derived. It's not from the military.

It's from the US dollar as a world reserve currency that it's it's most ubiquitous and widespread in terms of its use and people holding reserve dollars. So if if he's correct in his own words this week and he said that you're going to be out of the dollar system, he's he's basically I think it was could have been a Freudian slip. I don't know. But that's that's that's the the end of the United States as a global hedgeimon.

Or he's promoting that idea that people need to get out of the dollar to avoid US sanctions and the weaponization, the asset seizures, all of these things. So it's it's really this is really bizarre and I don't know I don't know if we can how how to best look at this. Uh, are we dealing with like rank incompetence here uh in clown world or is this some kind of a cynical ploy uh of of of in the latest in a 11 minutesseries of many cynical ploys by this administration in order to you know game the stock market, game oil prices, game commodities, short this um or somehow game the bond market uh whereby they can sort of temporarily improve uh the US balance sheet. Uh but then I guess the caveat there is that you can't make a move in this government.

This is so corrupt the Trump administration. No move can be made by the US Treasury or by the government without the inner circle using it as an opportunity to pad their nests with a few more billion without doing any work basically through trading and institutional uh investment moves. That's so I I would say that's a guarantee. the the pattern of record's perfect.

They're all grifting and every single move they've realized that they can capitalize their uh their their position 12 minutesby investing accordingly uh prior to any of these announcements or moves and I think this is this is also happening here. So the question Nemo is how does this materially benefit the American working class? And the answer is it doesn't. It's most certainly going to drive up more inflation, more more inflationary pressure.

It's going to be good for the stock market. Maybe in the short term he'll Trump will be very quick to cut rates probably before the midterms and he'll get a what what's called a dead cat bounce on the stock market and a few other indicators that might look like there's economic uh uh stimulus going on when in fact he's just basically devalued the dollar even further. So, a temporary shot of morphine into the system to make the system look good and feel good uh for a month maybe prior to the midterms. Uh and still the inflation's coming, the job losses are coming.

And the crazy thing, Nema, is he's timed this with a trade war with Canada. I mean, that's suicide. That's that's real suicide. Cuz what you have what you have to understand Nema is that look at global diesel prices and diesel shortages.

The US economy runs on diesel 100%. Trucking, Amazon, long-distance hauling. That's the US economy. Small percentage runs on railroads.

The majority runs on trucks. What fuels those trucks? Diesel. Where does that diesel come from for the middle and upper half of the United States?

Comes from Canada. And the fuel distribution networks for trucking are regional. They're regional hubs and they're all they're all they're all supplied from different uh energy sources and the Midwest and the northern states are supplied via Canada. Okay.

So if there's any disruption in the supply chain, which it looks like there's going to be because Trump had the bright idea or Besson had the bright idea. I mean I think they're trying to blow up the US economy. That's what it looks like. Trump, what the other thing people don't want to admit, especially Trump supporters and Democrats who are totally clueless about finance, is that Trump blew up the economy in his first term.

He he initiated the process of putting trillions of dollars onto the debt balance sheet of the Federal Reserve to pay for the COVID ferago to pay businesses to stay shut and pay people to to stay at home that cost trillions of dollars and it created an inflationary spiral which is still pushing today. The inflation that the US and Americans have seen that have ruined them over the last 5 years didn't appear out of nowhere. It didn't just like ma magically manifest. It came because Donald Trump in his first term frontloaded the Federal Reserve with more money being printed than any any other sort of span in history.

More debt was put on in that very short space of time uh in 2020 and 2021. Uh well, yeah, the 2020 being the most obvious. Biden actually continued this policy in his term uh when he became president. So Donald Trump's already responsible for one economic nuclear fallout and now it's the second one coming.

So this president has done e this is this is the worst president from a money and economy point of view in easily in the history of the United States. much worse than Her Hubert uh Herbert Hoover. Much worse, and obviously more incompetent. And he's hired a whole bunch of uh crooks, thieves, and charlatans and grifters, including his own sons who are also making bank off all this, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and all the rest of them.

They're all rinsing it. They're all rinsing it at the expense of everybody else. This is the most insane period. uh I think in American political history right now it it's it's unbelievable.

It's not just about Canada. The way he's he's going against South Korea. Yes. Just unbelievable.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing uh Nema uh just on the sanctions front secondary sanctions if if he comes good on those sanctions. So ob the obvious number one is China. That's the number one target.

Okay. I think we can know we know that from uh the Venezuela uh farago and we know this with the Persian Gulf that's so when Washington have to justify this the to themselves uh either when they're in meetings together or whether it's a trategic meeting with Rubio or whether they're reporting to the Senate or Congress to them it's a double win because they're they're hurting Iran and China at the same time. So, I think that's one of the reasons why this policy, as hamfisted as it is and bad for America and the global economy as it is, it's been able to be sold because it's good. It's it's good for Israel, they think, and it's damaged China and and uh Iran and other BRICS countries.

So, that's how they've justified it internally. But South Korea as you mentioned, uh Russia, uh other countries, um potentially Brazil, uh even the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but but also the UAE, Qatar, these countries that could have normal uh economic relations with Iran or at least on a certain limited level with Iran. So, they're going to enforce it on that basis, plus South Korea, plus any other potential clients for Iranian oil sales. So I don't know if I left anybody out.

Probably India possibly and I guess Pakistan. But how enforceable is that? It's not really enforcable. It's not going to work.

But the that's that's going to create uh an economic downturn as a result and and it's going to be the global economy is going to go into a global recession. So you can't he's trying to bulcanize the global economy by force by coercion. So e economic weaponization of the dollar sanctions backed up by military threats. Okay.

This is this is basically a recipe for disaster. Normally you do sanctions and if you really are serious about them then you'll I guess attack and bomb that country if sanctions failed which they've done already to Iran. So you don't come back with another after you've depleted your entire arsenal practically and you've lost all of your bases in the region. Now you're coming back with sanctions to to try to destroy the Iranian society and economy and and all of their neighbors in the process.

It it this is insane. It's like the loser coming in trying to dictate terms after they've lost and and are going to turn the screws on all of their allies because they've lost. So the US is so buttth hurt about having lost that they're going to take it out on all their allies. That's or or you know non-eneemies like I said important trading partners of which China is one of them and South Korea is one of them.

This is just suicide. Why would you do such a thing? Uh so it's it's um so so keep an eye on uh gold, silver, bitcoin, the US bonds, US dollar, the that's the basic volatility index. If and and oil prices are are also going up obviously, but that's the basic volatility index.

So if everyone's making a run for for the door right now, the exit dumping US treasuries, people have been nice about it up until now, but a lot of people are, including Wall Street. Nema, you better believe institutional investors are trying to get rid of somehow US treasuries. They don't they just don't want to be exposed. So, and people need money.

And Besson's been running around trying to basically prevent like Japan from dumping their US debt because they they're in a cash liquidity crisis. So he's doing these bailouts. Where's the money coming from? It's it's being printed out of thin air.

And at the same time, they're doing policies that are encouraging ddollarization. Make it make sense. Make it make sense. Who's in charge?

People need to look at Scott Besson's uh resume and see what a failure he was prior to being appointed as Treasury Secretary. I I am now suspecting that he was appointed Treasury Secretary because he is corrupt and because he's willing to do corrupt things and he's basically a yes man. This is how this is why he's been put into this position because it's not because of his past performance. He he you know he's been he trades off his George Soros association but look at how he did in business after that and I think that will provide a lot of answers to a lot of people if they want to look hard enough.

Where do you find Donald Trump with the I would say economic isolation of Iran which he knows that China is not going to be part of this. China rejected, you know, the secondary sanctions to be part of it or to facilitate that against Iran. Russia is not part of it. GCC countries are under tremendous pressure.

They they're 22 minutesdesperate somehow to be honest behind the scene. They're trying to do everything to get rid of the war in the West Asia because their economy they they don't know how to export their oil. The Babel Mandab has its own problem. the trade of most the same way because of the war between Iran and the United States and that the United States itself it doesn't seem that the Trump administration cares about what's going on in the West Asia.

He basically sees the conflict as a continuous sort of war against Iran. Right now is economic war before it was tit for tat. And where are where are we with the Trump administration right now? And what is their assessment in your opinion?

Well, um, China could have taken a lot a few different approaches to this and they're trying to have good relations with the United States. I think there's a summit that's coming up very soon um with with the United States and China. That's a very important summit. So, the US can't outright declare economic war in China ahead of a major summit.

Although I wouldn't put anything past the Trump administration, but China's basically invoked uh its own legal mechanisms um telling telling their companies and telling also sending a message to their trading partners like Singapore that that this won't be tolerated that uh in fact and BRICS has come together to draft uh a type of a resolution that's basically chapter and verse invoking UN charter international law that this type of these types of sanctions by the United States are illegal. These are weapons of war. These these are massive coercion instruments designed to damage to destroy international relations between countries to attack free trade. U the US created the the you know it backed it promoted it created the postworld war II free world free trade system.

It's a USbacked system and the US is dismantling it now. They're the lead sort of actor dismantling it. The reason they're dismantling it, Nema, is because like petulent children, specifically these uh neoonservatives, uh and Donald Trump, who himself doesn't have any ideology other than power and fame uh and his massive galactic size ego. But besides that, the this this layer of the US establishment of the oligarchy is upset because they lost They lost the era of globalization and the reason the US lost in the era of globalization an era they promoted all of the multilateral institutions and right the WTO and everyone else these are British and American creations but both the British and the Americans did something they they basically financialized their economies and assets that stripped their industries and what they consider to be non-performing sections of their corporations or or industry whatever are things that turn the smallest profit like labor.

So what did they do? Outsourced the labor to China, to Vietnam, to Southeast Asia, to the global south. They did so in exchange for shareholder dividends. Simple as that.

share prices go up and all Donald Trump cares about Nemo. What does he talk about with the economy? The stock market. That's it.

The stock market. That's that's the index of happiness for this president. That's the only thing that matters. So, but that's a superficial that's that does not represent the fundamentals of the economy.

It doesn't. Um what it does is it represents Wall Street's ability to make money by doing nothing. That's what that represents at the expense of all of the workingclass rust belt jobs that Donald Trump and JD Vance put on this whole show with this fake MAGA populism because they wanted all those votes. They wanted all those uh Reagan Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats.

They wanted them. They wanted them to to get him elected in 2024. Make America great. I'm going to bring the jobs home.

It's it's this is all a show. Now you're seeing the show has collapsed. The show has collapsed. This is the final episode of The Apprentice.

You're watching it right now. It's tragic. It's a tragedy. So, the whole thing is collapsed.

They They've lost the war of globalization cuz Wall Street got greedy. The city of London got greedy. And now they're trying to blow up the very system that they created, finally dismantling it. They already killed it before.

through uh through the sort of asset stripping and offshoring of their own industries uh for Wall Street and for the city of London. But now they're really killing it and they're they're messing around Nemo with the goose that lays the golden egg and that is the US dollar as a world reserve currency. They're playing around with this and they're not tending to their goose. And guess what?

The goose is going to die. And with that, American power disappears. Everything you're seeing Scott Bessant doing and Trump and his these people doing right now, pure tactics. There is no strategic thinking whatsoever.

Scott Besset hit they hit 40 trillion in US deficit already this month. Last year it was projected that they would hit that in 2027. Nema. They're six months ahead of schedule for in terms of poor poor economic management and performance.

Everything I'm telling you is a fact. So this these are not my opinions. This is this is what the numbers tell us. So, so, so then how how do we rate the performance and credibility of the current US government, including the Treasury Secretary and everybody else?

I don't hear any other You know what's funny is they're using Besset as the sort of whipping boy. If it if things go well in the short term, he gets the credit. If things go to the wall, which they are, he's going to get the blame. Watch.

Watch. because nobody else is speaking next to him. You notice when Trump goes up, he puts a wall of people behind him. He'll have Vance, Rubio, Besset, Hegsth.

He'll have all his henchmen there. It's like Don Corleó with all of his sons because he's so insecure. He can't go out in public without an entourage, Trump. But when Besset goes up, he's always on his own.

And no, I don't see any supporting statements really from any of the other cabinet people. They're all just basically being koi and sitting back. Why? Because a lot of them know this is a disaster.

That's why nobody wants to burn with with Scott Besset because he's going down in flames. I can tell you right now, he will be the fall guy in the same way that Pete Hegsth is already becoming the fall guy for the failure of the Iran war and the the war against Yemen as well. You see how they positioned uh uh Hegathth as a sort of the fall guy and he's being dragged in front of the Senate and he's having to answer for all these epic failures when in fact he he's certainly not alone. But for him to be let go, fired or crucified in the media or in front of a Senate hearing, that's good enough for Donald Trump.

And that's his that's his job. his job was to hire an unqualified person to to to to fill an important position and if goes wrong they have to basically take the fall for for for the godfather and that's kind of what Bessant is as well. So this is uh this is quite an incredible situation Nemo uh in Washington. It is.

Do you think that Patrick something is changing in West Asia? Recently we had the military pack, defense pack between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey. They're talking about new understanding between Iran and Pakistan. Maybe between Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is, you know, doubling down in Yemen. We had in Yemen the two forces Ansah and the pro- Saudi forces fighting in the last you know 10 days I would say so where is that how do you see the West Asia as an outcome of this war as as an outcome what has happened what has happened so far and the way that Israel sees it and I'm sure that nothing good came out of this war for Israel with the case of Iranian war. Well, yeah. I mean, you could say that that I think it's it's been a net loss for Israel.

We'll start there and work our way backwards. It's been a net loss for Israel. However, Nema, however, Israel has also achieved some of its core objectives. It's expanded its territory.

It's managed to annex the Golden Heights, East Steel. Israel has been able to steal uh very important strategic and also oil rich territory in Syria. Theft basically uh underwritten by the US and its allies. Um it's also been able to steal uh a Lebanese territory and is probably threatening to permanently keep that and that was handed to Israel by a very corrupt Lebanese president named Joseph Ayun who's a puppet of the United States and Tel Aviv.

uh and also their corrupt prime minister Noaf Salam who is just basically uh a limp bureaucrat which they cherrypicked out of the uh international courts of justice I think and parachuted him in as prime minister hasn't spent much time in Lebanon probably uh in a long time probably for 50 years but anyway uh they handed they've handed Lebanese territory uh the US the Gulf states by having a hands-off approach to Gaza. Obviously, the US's hands-off approach is diplomatic, not militarily. US had a very hands-on approach militarily with Israel, but they're not basically protesting. Nobody uh none of the European countries are protesting that Israel has has taken 70% of Gaza.

They're not giving it back. Never. Not not not willingly and not voluntarily. Okay?

So it's been a great success for Israel within its near uh near near abroad. Okay, it's expanded. So it's achieved uh the really I think core objectives of the greater Israel project which is not a conspiracy theory by the way. It's absolutely it's not only true.

It was admitted by Netanyahu himself last September. So let's just put that to bed. Okay. So they they achieved the core objectives of the Greater Israel Project.

The other objectives of the Greater Israel Project, Nema, are interesting. Uh, and that would be to weaken all of the neighboring Arab countries. Weaken weaken their state, weaken their government, perhaps subdivide them if possible, and demilitarize them. They've already achieved that in Syria.

Totally demilitarized. You just have an al-Qaeda leader with a bunch of toy Toyota pickup trucks with a few, you know, mounted machine guns and maybe a few RPGs laying around. That's it. And all they can't do anything to Israel or they can't really invade any of their neighbors.

Uh they can only terrorize Syrians. That's really all they're good at. Um so they've achieved that. The other thing is they managed to by by provoking Iran, by getting the United States to attack Iran, Israel has achieved something great for the Israel greater Israel project.

Iran has then retaliated and has damaged and weakened uh the Gulf States and and the Kingdom of Jordan uh in and around. Now, Jordan was already a very compliant uh Zionist partner, but now it's much weaker, and they've driven the United States as well out of there. So, that kind of opens the door for Israel to uh I think flex its muscle even more against those neighboring countries, I would argue. And it's been able to threaten Turkey.

And Turkey not going to do anything clearly or hasn't done anything and in fact is is providing uh a corridor for Israel to receive oil from Azerbaijan. So nothing no resistance from Turkey not really anyway. So I I would say that while Israel has been pummeled by Iranian missiles and been its deterrence has been questioned and exposed as lacking in the region uh for its own devices. Israel has increased its uh its territory and has weakened its neighbors which are all important uh uh tenants of the Greater Israel project.

The US is weak though as a result of having been thrown at Iran by the Israel lobby. But uh I think that's something that while while it's negative for the United States and and probably negative for Israel, it seems to be a trade-off that has been made and the if the US is able to regroup and somehow uh reorient itself in the region and still play defender of Israel, uh then going forward uh I think we can expect more war uh basically.

[Patrick] But the Gulf States is the big question and that's what you asked as well, Nima. And in fact I saw the Cradle, or somebody tweeted out, that Iran had formally accepted, or was asked to join the Mecca Accords. Yeah, that's not true. And that was denied by the Iranian head of the foreign ministry. So there were communications between Iran and Pakistan which were being reviewed, and I think that was misinterpreted in some of the media outlets as this formal invitation to join the Mecca Accords, or something like that. So there's some disinformation going around on this. We got to be careful.

[Nima] We heard it from the head of national security council everyone. He said that they wanted us to confirm that agreement in Persian. This is the head of national security council, Mohsen Rezaei, talking about it directly. And he asks why are we going to confirm that when we don't know what the details of that pact are, that military pact? So we're not going to go that far. And if something happens, they want us to confirm that you have to consider Egypt as well. You know, all these Muslim countries should come together.

When he says confirm, it means to me in Persian that they wanted Iran to be part of that. Patrick, I don't know what you would learn from this, but in Persian, when you say confirm, it means that they wanted you to be part of it.

[Patrick] Sure. But still this is miles away from anything official. So, we're dealing in translations and rumors. And unfortunately, there's a lot of overzealous people, including in the podcast circuit, shows that we know and love, that are claiming to have sources, and making big announcements that aren't actually true, and not grounded in any sort of official reality at all. But I realize this is just part of the churn of day-to-day media churn. Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that we have to sort of end up debating these things.

But I think the more important question Nima is that to understand the relationship Saudi Arabia has with the region and the Gulf states, but especially Saudi Arabia, and when we look at this so-called Mecca Accords, and we try to think about what is it for, is it to defend the members against Iran? There's no article 5 type provisions at all that I've seen. So I think it's maybe an interim step in some kind of regional security architecture, which many have been calling for, including myself, for a long time. But an architecture that's for the region, and by the region, and has nothing to do with the United States. And Israel should not be included in this at all so long as it's waging war against so many people in the region. Obviously, that will be the first objective, to defend against Israeli attacks, because they're the one who's attacking everybody.

But where does Saudi Arabia really stand? Could Saudi Arabia really have an alliance with Iran along these lines? Or Turkey, or Egypt? Because these are two fundamentally different forms of societies and governments. One is the monarch model, and as to Egypt, the US and Israel have managed to buy off the military dictatorship and have a president for life. First it was Mubarak, then they just basically switched it to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

But if Egypt had a normal representative democracy, that would be viewed as an existential threat by Saudi Arabia. And the same with Lebanon. If Lebanon had a strong central government, and was truly representative of the demographics in Lebanon, not the census from 1958, the current demographics, Hezbollah and Shiite government, the president would be Shiite. The speaker of the house would be Shiite. It's a different situation, isn't it? The Americans would be out. Guaranteed, the Americans would be out.

And if Iraq wasn't under the control of the United States, which it still is financially, Saudi Arabia would view Iraq as an existential threat. So Saudi has enemies, the Houthis, which is a fundamentally democratic grassroots movement that's not aligned religiously or politically with Riadh. And Iran is a huge threat. This is an Islamic republic that contrary to popular western belief, is a hugely democratic country. Hugely democratic, with a very sophisticated multi-layer democracy, and that's a threat to the Gulf monarch model. So all the Gulf states are surrounded. Turkey is another one. While Turkey has shifted towards a more Islamic society under Erdogan and the AK revolution which really began in the '90s, and is a 30-year project and you can call it many things, but this is basically the mission of Erdogan. That's his legacy. And that includes recapturing territories in Syria that he and his fundamentalist base believe are Turkish or Ottoman, and belong to greater Turkey, or the new Turkey as it's called. But that's still a threat to Riyadh.

So, can Riyadh really be in any kind of alliance with any of these other Gulf countries that are backed by Israel and the United States? That's a very hard question to answer right now, Nima. I think the answer is no. The answer is no. They can't. Saudi Arabia cannot have a meaningful relationship on equal footing with any other Arab nationalist country. Syria is not a problem for them now with an al-Qaeda terrorist head of state. The Saudis are very happy with that.

So you see the difference in the values here. This is irreconcilable. So what I think you have with Saudi Arabia is schizophrenic foreign policy. It doesn't make sense on the surface. They can be pushed around by the United States. They can be coerced and blackmailed, because they're so exposed in terms of their US dollar assets and holdings, and their business model. So I don't think they're sincere at all. This is what Qatar has been doing, and they all did with Syria by the way, and the Saudis are constantly meddling in Lebanon, constantly meddling in Egypt and militarily meddling in Yemen, and meddling in Iraq.

Why? because they are a threat to Saudi Arabia's preeminence as the regional superpower, as the custodian of the two holy sites in Mecca and Medina, in the Islamic world, in the Umah, because they have the money to intervene. And they have this massive soft power network, and they can fund radical mosques, and they have control of hundreds of satellite TV stations, hundreds and hundreds. They don't have to wait till a problem arises. They're constantly doing preemptive meddling, and their meddling goes all the way to Europe and also to Britain and the United States, to preserve their interests. These interests are not the interests of the state. It's the interest of the royal family. It's the interest of the royal family. They are the state. The state is named after a family. That's the kind of country you have there. So I think that they've always been like this. They've always operated like this. And I think this is the only way they can operate. They view any success in Iran, or a democratic Iraq, a Shiite-led Iraq, a Shiite-led Iran, a Shiite-led Ansarullah, and a Shiite-led Lebanon, as an existential threat ultimately. And that's what's going to determine Saudi interests at the end of the day.

And it always has and it will continue to do so unless MBS comes out and makes this big speech at the Arab League saying we are now going to, you know, democratize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,, because they're right in the middle of a Shiite dominated part of the world. That's where their oil is. They share it with Shiite countries. They share their oil fields. So Bahrain is another one. Sunni minority in charge of a Shiite majority. And they think that Iran has the potential to activate the Shiite community in Saudi Arabia. And they view that as an existential threat. It's always there.

So if you understand this, that will help you to understand to a a large degree why Saudi Arabia seems so schizophrenic and insecure all the time, and why they spend hundreds of billions of dollars destabilizing and meddling in other country's affairs in the region. Then it makes sense.

And the reason they do this is because they get full backing and encouragement from the United States and Britain, and the European countries. Full support in those endeavors. In fact, Saudi Arabia picks up the tab. They pay the bill for US imperial endeavors in the region, and US military presence in the region. And the main US military endeavor in the region, and foreign policy endeavor, is the defense of the state of Israel. So Saudi Arabia pays for the defense of the state of Israel. Full stop. That's the reality. So if we peel back all the layers of politics, that's kind of what it comes down to. And so does Qatar. Qatar carries water for Israel. So does Kuwait. So does the UAE, and so does Bahrain.

And all the Abraham Accords were a way to kind of formalize that and make it official policy, not just clandestine policy, but official policy. And that would provide the backing for the greater Israel project that Israel requires in order to be the regional hegemon. The decision to attack Iran has thrown a wrench into this agenda temporarily. But it doesn't mean the US and Israel are going to give up, or Saudi Arabia for that matter. It doesn't mean they're going to stop doing what's in the best interest of the royal family. Full stop. There's no other way to really describe it, because none of it makes sense from a logical point of view when you look at their maneuvers and behaviors, unless you look at it through that lens.

So that's that's the thing. So I'm not impressed, and don't believe that the Mecca Accords are anything at this point anything at all. And I don't think they're going to lead to anything constructive. Saudi Arabia will only reform its positions and its bad habits if it's forced to do so. If it's done by force. Like if the US is evicted from Saudi Arabia, and then they have to recognize Iran as a responsible regional hegemon, maybe then you might see some reform in the behavior of Saudi Arabia, and will stop using its money to basically buy off Lebanese politics and make it permanently dysfunctional, and doing the same with all of these countries, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, around the region. So it's not ideal, Nima. It's not an ideal situation.

You know, I really believe that the situation between Israel and Turkey is serious, and as time goes by, it's getting more serious for the United States, because the United States has a decision to make in West Asia. The Israeli expansion that you mentioned, this is not going to end anytime soon, and Israel is going to expand and expand. It's going to make new conflicts in the region.

And with the case of Syria, it doesn't matter. Today, the foreign defense minister of Israel Katz said they're not going to withdraw from Syria, and they see Turkey as an enemy. No one can change that mindset.

It's not about Benjamin Netanyahu. It's about Naftali Bennett. It's about the whole establishment in Israel. They all think the same way.

You know, the other day I was listening to one of these reporters of Haretz, the guy who is so against the Israeli agenda in the region. I forgot his name, but he said that the majority of the people, 90% of Israelis are Zionists. There is no room in Israel to change the policy. There is nothing there.

The only thing that could happen to Israel by force, and the only country that can do that, is the United States. The United States has to understand that what's going on is not going to benefit these states in the long run. And Iran could also force Israel to change its position. Yeah, the United States or Iran. It would be more preferable if the United States were able to do that. That would be preferable, but it doesn't look like that's possible at the moment. It might be in the future with a change of regimes in Washington, and a change of political thinking in the U.S. And that could happen down the road. But by the time that happens, Nima, it might be too late for the Palestinian people. They might be extinct, or ethnically cleansed by then.

So that issue then is never going to be resolved and then that will just create, I think, the pretext for vengeance for generations going forward. And that story is not going to end. Even if Israel killed and ethnically cleansed 90% of the Palestinian population, the native Palestinian population, the story's not over. Cuz then that's going to become a regional issue.

It's going to become an Arab issue and they're not going to forget it. That that vengeance, that that grudge will go for hundreds of years, centuries into the future. They'll never forget it. So Israel will have to subdue and destroy the entire region, turn it into Rafa in order to feel quote "safe." So, it's not sustainable at all. And someone needs to bring Israel to heel, because this is just a malignant rogue state that's out of control at the moment, but is being backed, if you will, underwritten by the United States government and the European states as well, collectively Britain, France, Germany, and the others and Italy have empowered Israel. They've underwritten the genocide as much as anybody.

So that's unfortunately a reality. So going forward I think those are those are kind of hard pills to swallow for some people. But unfortunately Israel only understands one language, and that's the language of force. As you said, the entire country is Zionist.

Uh the the only nuance left in the uh internal Israeli political conversation uh between what they call liberals and hardliners who are all on the far right. By the way, the the liberal quote left is now a mythical liberal left in Israel has been pushed so far to the right. And this is kind of following a trend in Europe as well where, you know, you have former left-wing parties that have been pushed way past the center and to the right. But in the case of Israel, the nuanced internal debate isn't whether, you know, Zionism or no Zionism.

That the internal debate is should we do full-blown genocide or ethnic cleansing. That's the internal debate. It's not very good. And and if you think Benjamin that a lot of people a sa a safe position to take like the Bernie Sanders position or you know AOC is that oh Netanyahu needs to go this is Netanyahu's problem.

Netanyahu's done this. Netanyahu's done that. I guarantee you Naftali Bennett is going to be more extreme than Netanyahu. More extreme.

And that's saying a lot. Look at look at Netanyahu. How extreme he is. How murderous he is.

how unrelenting and unwilling to compromise or negotiate anything uh and maximalist he is. Bennett will be more extreme. I'm telling you now. And uh and there's a few other potential uh candidates uh for the Israeli leadership who are ex very extreme, very extreme, and when pressured by the far right in Israel, uh could could easily outpace Bennett or Netanyahu in their strident rhetoric uh and the calls to exterminate the native Palestinian population.

Uh so that's the reality. So it's not it's not a you can't make this into a personal political story about a leader. No, this is a this is a society and a system funded by the West, sponsored by the West, allowed to get away with murder to the point now where it's had to double down because it has no other way to go than to kill kill its way to what it believes is 100% absolute security for the Jewish state. And to to achieve that, we must kill everybody who might attack us or might not like us in the future based on how many people we've killed in Arabs.

It's it's insane. This but this is what happens in history. You get these insane outcomes. Insanity begets insanity.

There's no come to uh Jesus moment. No pun intended for the Christian Zionists who are listening. No pun intended. There's no epiphany coming for the state of Israel.

It's reached the logical end of its uh its existence. You can see the resat. This is it. We're witnessing it.

The resat is Rafa. It's Gaza. It's it's the villages in South Lebanon. Make no mistake about it.

There's no middle ground here. That's it. And you and there's only going to be more of this in Syria and in maybe Iraq and there's no limits unless somebody's willing to step up to restrain them actively. And the only country that's done this is Iran so far.

Past US administrations have intervened to restrain the Israelis, but right now at least with the this Trump administration, that's not happening. Under Biden, it really didn't happen either. um you got sort of lip service from Biden. Don't do this, you shouldn't do that.

Trump tried some of this early on uh in his term and it was a joke. Um so really the last three administrations have done nothing to restrain Israel. So I I expect the next administration will probably be the same, especially if it's a Republican administration. Um there might be some language, some harsh language, and there might be some meetings and things like that, but uh I don't think the US at this point can do it on its own.

I I think the Israeli lobby can overpower US politics. It has to be a European coalition and other foreign actors coming together to try to impose order and safety um in the Middle East. um or it's going to come from Iran and its allies and the axes of resistance who are then going to have people jump on board to help them at some point um when it's less risky to to do so. So, they're going to have to do the hard work um in in the meantime.

So, that that's that's the one we're witnessing now. We're witnessing that option now. Iran in the axis of resistance are active in trying to uh restrain Israel and sort of head off the United States in its efforts. Um so if if if European countries came on board with sanctions like we saw in South Africa like we saw in other uh examples in history then I think different conversation could happen that would also then open the door for US administration to kind of partner with its European allies in that effort and then it all of a sudden that would probably weaken the hand of the Israel lobby which operates on both sides of the Atlantic by the way.

So this is a global uh international lobby network. So hence it's going to require an international effort to oppose it and to restrain Israel. So it has to happen really on both sides of the Atlantic otherwise it's not going to happen because one side will be able to undermine the other clearly and they they do that from time to time. So uh that's that's my assessment of the situation at the moment.

Thank you so much Patrick. Just below Patrick's name you see 21st century wire. Go there and follow him. All the links to his YouTube channel substack are in the description of this video. Go there and subscribe to his YouTube channel and help him. Subscribe to the substack and 21st century website going there and helping Patrick as well.

Great pleasure as always, Patrick.

Thank you so much, Nima.

Iran's Retaliation BEGINS, Trump's 'D-Day' Attack Sparks WW3 | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
Danny Haiphong
Streamed live 3 hours ago #iran #trump #china
https://progressive.international/wire/ ... -lives/en/

-- PI Briefing | No. 28 | 38 million lives. A study by the Center of Economic and Policy Research has revealed that, between 1971 and 2021, US and EU sanctions killed 38 million people around the world.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discusses Iran's stunning response to Trump's 'D-Day' attack as the march to World War 3 accelerates. Trump's economic and military operation is backfiring badly already, and China & Russia are giving Iran a boost to its devastating retaliation underway. Join us as we analyze all of this and more in geopolitics!



Transcript

Welcome back to the show everyone. As you can see, I am joined by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to go over the latest development. Well, uh the latest developments. Well, Iran promised that it was going to retaliate against countries that cooperate with the sanctions that were declared on so-called uh operation or I should say just DDay, the sanctions operation of the United States against Iran.

Last night, Iran uh choked the straight of Hormuz to an incredible degree, striking an oil tanker off the coast of Oman in the US so-called escorted corridor. And only one ship made its way through over the last . Well, as Trump was calling uh for a D-Day economic attack on Iran, it was also sending messages to Pakistan saying that it wanted to settle with Iran, saying it was going to lift the blockade and sanctions in exchange for a reopening of the straight of moose. It already seems like Colonel Wilkerson, I know this is something very much uh on your radar that uh the United States is expanding this war to global proportions.

It was already a global war and China has taken a whiff of these sanctions targeting it that it was not it said that it is not going to abide by Trump's sanctions and it is very much aware that it is being targeted here. It said it is ready to retaliate. China did against these sanctions should the US drop the hammer which Colonel Wilkerson uh Axio says the United States hasn't just yet done this but I wanted your comment on uh the global implications of this because uh it appears Iran is very much ready to retaliate if countries do abide by this sanctions regime. Qatar said that these are unilateral and it seems like it doesn't have any interest in following this.

There's been a lot of silence in the Gulf. China has rejected 2 minutesthem. Uh what do you make of the United States, especially Bessant declaring an almost a world war using the dollar as a weapon? Well, Scott Bessant basically made a total ass of himself as well as showing that he's not very smart.

And I've known that all along. Ever since he started prognosticating about economic affairs and made some of the idiotic, stupid, even insane statements that he's made, he just followed up with one that is probably as insane as it could be. and he threatened he said that it could possibly mean these sanctions as it were that anyone not adhering to them would be forced out of the dollar-based international order. m.

in the morning maybe and read the papers or something or even looked into the intelligence datab banks that that idiot over at Langley supposed to be providing you. China is taking over the global monetary system. twothirds of the world has already agreed to that takeover and is moving to all of the commodity commodity exchanges that it does either using a basket of currencies that they've all agreed upon and you're going to see Modi and bricks talking about this at the summit in India in September and China is moving very very slowly because it wants to be careful about the way it does this to completely replace the And their ultimate motivation, I should say one of their ultimate motivations according to Xi Jinping who has published all of this unlike us. One of their motivations is to do away with US sanctions because they read the report.

I read the report. Lots of people have read the report. Apparently, my senator here from Virginia read the report that says since 1972, the sanctions that OFAC has blessed and put on other nations of the world and people of the world have killed 38 million people. Think about that for a minute.

We knew about 500,000 children dying in Iraq in the 10 years of sanctions for the UN oil for food program. Maline Albbright dismissed them and said it was worth killing all those children in order to get rid of Sodom Hussein. But we didn't know about 38 million casualties that rivals Ma Satong and the Cultural Revolution. It rivals and surpasses Stalin and his purges.

It even gets up there without off Hitler in World War II. So thank you United States. Your sanctions have killed that many people in the world. And by the way, the report also very accurately in my view because half the world is women says that half of those people were women and many of them were children.

In Iraq, as I said, it was uh almost all children that died from those draconian anctions about which Sodom is saying cared nothing. Um and that's what sanctions do. Sanctionists don't go after the people you are after, the leadership and others with whom you're angry. It kills the people, the basic fundamental people in the society.

We should be taken before the criminal court and hung by our neck as it were until we're dead. This is unconscionable what we have done. We have rivaled the worst tyrants in the world in terms of people killed since 1972. And I suspect that the report is light on its details rather than heavy.

In other words, I think we probably killed even more than that when you look at the spin-offs and the indirect indirect effects of these sanctions. All to say that this is not anything other than a weapon of war. It is economic warfare that we're declaring. It is a part of the warp and woof of Trump's inability to do anything with the normal instruments of war.

, etc. And he can't. And I could go into the detail as to why he can't because ever since George W. Bush and to a certain extent Bill Clinton before him, we have been messing with the American military in a way that does three really dramatic things.

One, it makes it extremely difficult to recruit, especially to recruit good people and extremely costly, which the Gates Commission, which set up for Richard Nixon, the dismissal of the draft, pointed out, if anybody would care to read it closely, that it might become exorbitantly expensive over time to have an all volunteer force. And second, the money that they have spent that has not gone to people, which is a huge portion of the budget growing every day. They haven't the money that they haven't 7 minutesspent, they have spent primarily 51 to 52% on contractors. Just think about that for a minute.

Loheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, Grumman, all these guys have gotten 52% of what amounts to now a trillion dollars plus. And then the third reason is because no one knows what they're doing at the Pentagon. And that includes General Kaine, the chairman of the joint chiefs. And it includes all the service chiefs, all of them, including the CNO, who of course is the man who is responsible in some ways for Bradley Cooper, the surface warfare officer idiot who's in the Gulf in charge of central command.

So we have a totally broken Pentagon about which Hegs said he knew. And I took him at his word when he first assumed the position, even though I thought his testimony and his hearings and everything should have relegated a decision, no, not approving him to be the secretary. And it was a close vote, I'm told, in committee and in the full body, but he did get approved. And he did say some things that I thought were pretty smart, and I was watching very close to see if he moved out to do them.

He has not done a single one of them. uh about the only thing he has really done is get rid of uh the diversity initiatives which include now probably or at least it looks like a hatred for black people. Uh taking Dory Miller off the carrier that's coming off the ways in a few years is the latest case in point. Taking Coen Powell and Chappie James and other people's pictures down in the Pentagon or other cases in point.

But I think he's a racist. I think he and his wife both are closet racist. But all to say there has been no improvement. And Danny, I can start back with the first reductions under chairman Powell, HW Bush directing a 25% cut in the US military.

Then less Aspen coming in with Bill Clinton in his first year of his first term and cutting another 3%. And I can show you not only how we did what we did to give American, the American people, as HW Bush said, a peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, but what we did was we murdered the defense industrial base by reducing the contractors that did a billion dollars or so business with the Pentagon in the course of fiscal year down to about six. And we got told by one of those defense contractors who was left Loheed Martin, you know what you're going to do? You're going to create a monopoly group.

You're going to have one of them the prime, two or three of the others as the subprimes, and you're going to create what is the result of this kind of monopoly. exorbitant price, cheaplymade product that won't work, and a whole bunch of people cheating all over the place to take the money out of the Pentagon. And that's what we've got today. But the biggest thing we've got today that's a problem is this all voluntary force which couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag, which we started to prove in Afghanistan and Iraq and we're proving in spades everywhere else because what?

we won't use it. We can't use it because it's not capable of being used. Not against a real enemy, not in a real fight. So that's where we are today.

And that's why Trump and Kaine and Hexath cannot do anything that would constitute some sort of military victory over Iran because Iran is not burdened with any of this. And they are further motivated by the fact as Kaine himself told the Congress, no bombing campaign all by itself has ever proven capable of persuading a state to change its ways the way they the way you want them to. No bombing campaign has ever 11 minutesdone that. That's all we're doing.

So Trump is caught. He's caught in a fight he can't get out. And now he's talking. He's talking again.

He has no diplomats involved in it. He doesn't have any diplomats, but he has people talking and some of the people that are third parties and fourth parties in this are in fact diplomats. So he's trying desperately, I think, behind the scenes to affect some kind of diplomatic solution. And what you talked about in your opening is a part of that.

The real ingredients I'm being told are the talks that are going on between the Omanis, the Pakistanis, the Iranians and others who are interested in first and foremost the straight of Hormuz being not so prohibited to traffic and it is prohibitive right now. If you want the truth, the straight of Hormuz is controlled for the moment that a particular ship attempts to make passage and that ship is known to one of the waring parties and that ship is protected by that waring party or conversely attacked by the other party. That's the only way the straight is operating right now. And it isn't open to anyone really.

But if if it's open to any two states, it's open to Oman and Iran more than it is to the United States because again, we do not have the military. We do not have the naval, marine, army. Air Force is a little bit better off because we haven't trimmed them so much and they still have a lot of aircraft and a lot of res residual uh munitions, but it's not as good as it was and it will never be uh as good as it was again until we change the entire approach we take to the military. I'll say we have a defunct military.

We're proving it. We cannot beat Iran. We couldn't beat Iran if we put the entire military into it with all the trillion dollars behind it. We couldn't beat them.

So, we've got to do something else. And that's what we're trying to do now. And Trump is getting rather desperate to do it. And let me add footnote one.

DB Netanyahu is doing everything he possibly can to screw the pooch on anything we do because he sees it as a surrender no matter what it is. diplomatic solution, even a a military solution that's halfass and blessed anyway. Unless that regime falls into Iran, Netanyahu is not going to accept whatever happens. He'll commit suicide first.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems like the United States uh military, despite all of its problems, is still organized or at least wielded in a way to exactly try to ram through that ultimate quote unquote objective of of destroying Iran. But, uh, that seems no longer possible.

I wanted to It was never possible, Danny. Yeah. The only way you only could do it is use a whole bunch of those weapons that are called nuclear. Right.

Right. All right. And even and even then uh that I don't think nuclear weapons are going to uh uh persuade Iranian people that somehow they should come under the dominion of the United States. I wanted to ask you, Colonel Wilkerson, about uh the global connectivity of Iran and how it fits into its overall approach of retaliating against the uh so-called uh D-Day, Operation Economic Outcast, I think Bessant is calling it because this is Saudi media here and they outline all of these alternative routes especially to China where 90 plus% of its oil exports go.

Of note, China was not directly targeted in the so 60 plus sanctions package that was leveled on Iran uh uh in initially but there are some who say that this Friday that institution he was talking about Bessant that will be sanctioned might be a Chinese bank. Uh what do you make of this? I know you've 15 minutestalked a lot about the dimensions of of World War II, how it is constantly being sparked and uh the uh the fuel is constantly being poured uh the lighter fuel is constantly being poured over it. Uh what do you make of the situation now especially how Iran uh what Iran has at its disposal to retaliate against these sanctions which seek to do exactly as you said but it cannot happen which is to destroy Iran.

Well, that map showed why this is impossible. And if Mark Carney is able to say what he's saying and doing what he's doing, which is monumental in my estimation, Mark Carney is proving that Canada does not need the United States. And it's proving that that eastward power, that power that is inexorably moving west is in fact going to be is in process right now of being globally triumphant. And as long as you've got that power behind you and beside you and I I use those two words guardedly or descriptively because they're not just behind them that is the railroad coming in to Tehran directly.

they are also beside them. They're with them. Um and these exercises that China is conducted, they're air force only right now with Egypt and may conduct with the UAE and other countries is another indication that China is slowly but surely and they will be very circumspect about doing this, taking off the gloves. Um, they don't want a an open conflict with the United States, but like Carney and what Canada is doing, they will fight us tooth and nail economically.

And I got news for you, they're going to beat the hell out of us because they are the number one economic power in the world. No question about it. The only thing, as I said, that they haven't done yet, and that Xi Jinping has declared that they're in the process of doing is replacing Swift, replacing the global-based order based on the United States and the pro dollar, getting rid of all of that because they see it not only as being enimical to their base road initiative policies, development mostly, they also see it being punishing of the world's populations. And if you want to talk about an altruistic public diplomacy, China's got it because it is gathering the nations of the world to its breast, as it were, with the idea that it will get rid of this heinous, punishing, brutal empire that's been screwing everyone now for the past 20 plus years, either by going to war with them or sanctioning them or both.

" And that's going to be the that's going to be the leaf that turns for the Empire. Uh the Sith Lord is going to be kicked out of his seat. And Darth Vader, too. uh you can't continue to oppose twothirds of the world and twothirds of the world's GDP which now constitutes what is China's realm and we've forced a lot of it there's no question about that we forced it to be done with elacrity rather than over time over time where we might have developed some sense and began to develop a collaborative cooperative goal along to get along long, if you will, policy with China's inexorable power mood.

Now, it's going to be dramatic and quick and incidentally, it's going to coincide, I think, very dangerously with the domestic situation in the empire in the United States essentially collapsing too. And how that's going to transpire and how it's going to unfold is anybody's guess. Steve Bannon is is even talking about it again. You may recall that Steve Bannon was the one who talked about the first coup.

Everybody better get ready for the coup, the one on January the 6th in the first term. Well, and now he's talking about you got to do something. You got to do something to make sure these elections are somehow controlled. Well, that's dangerous language in my view because what he's talking about in my view, I don't know this, but I I suspect he's talking about somehow deploying Trump's powers and Republican powers in particular in order to prevent the inevitable loss of power at at least in one house, if not both houses, and certainly the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Trump.

So, we're looking at a domestic situation that Trump is exacerbating majorly by his inattention except where it hurts to pay attention. And we're looking at an international situation where he's really screwing his own future by do what he's doing in Iran and to a certain extent by what he's allowing to happen in Ukraine. We're looking at a situation now where, you know, the British prime minister's uh offering billions of euros to start storm shadow production, taking the tech data package for storm shadow to Ukraine. That can only be to strike deep into Russia.

Now, I don't think it's going to develop in time because the Russians patience is pretty much what it always is. and they're grinding grinding away and they're going to get what they want which is the Dawnbass pre primarily and they've closed the straight uh or closed the port of Odessa and its accompanying port. Uh so I I think the Ukraine conflict is just going to be a torturous bloodbath until the Europeans and Donald Trump and others wake up and do something to put a stench in the wounds there. So we're looking at two conflicts that are being so maladroitly handled by the empire indirectly in Ukraine directly in Southwest Asia that what we were talking about in earlier shows could transpire.

we might wind up with a regionwide conflict and even a global conflict if we're not careful and we're not watching the domestic scene as well as the international scene. Because you may recall that when the last big conflict broke out on the globe that killed about a 100 million people in the course of the years that it was pursued by a number of countries from Japan to Germany. We uh had a a massive depression and we could have that same thing again. Only this time it is not going to lead to the most powerful country in the world at the end of the war that follows that depression.

It's going to lead to the collapse of that country. Yeah, that's I mean all the data and facts back that up. Uh Colonel Wilkerson and and here are the reports about China that you were referencing. Uh, China has threatened to retaliate against the US and signal it won't back away from its cooperation with Iran after the Trump administration's latest sanctions targeted businesses in China and Hong Kong, which is China, by the way.

Uh, this was an interesting report. I want you, by the way, Danny, that's like biting your own hand. I mean, we get so much that we absolutely have to have from China. Yep.

Exactly. Exactly. And this is why too, Colonel Walker, as you know, uh even yesterday, Scott Besson had a really hard time answering any questions about China in large part because it's very difficult to uh try to cut off the most important economy in the world, especially from the dollar system, which does rely on China's commodity circulation to a large degree. Uh here is the I really don't I don't think Scott Besson has a clue about China.

I really don't. I don't I don't think he's done any study. I don't think he's put his mind to it. I I just don't think he knows anything about China.

Well, it seems that he like a lot of uh I guess uh talking heads who are anointed to positions like he's in they have the view similar to Iran that you know it's it's weaker than the United States. It must be ready to fall. It's it's not like the United States. It's not a friend.

So that means it must be bad. That means it must be right, you know, and and they view China with hostility in large part because of of this notion that it's not a system that they can tolerate. And so this is interesting. And yet ever since Dung, ever since Dong Xiao Ping, and that was my first trip to China, 1984, that was my earliest trip to China.

Ever since Dong Xiaoing, they have been better capitalists than we. 24 minutesThat's the that's the real uh kicker here. And they have better been better capitalists than than we in two dimensions. One, profitm and what takes what it takes to do that.

And two, having oversight. We have no oversight anymore. Our capitalists are predatory. They can take anything they want.

They can do anything they want. Bill Clinton started the process. I think Clinton said the era, this is almost a direct quote, the era of big government is over. He was right.

The era of the government overseeing capitalism was over. And when he got rid of Glsteagle, that was his final act. So we are the worst capitalists in the world. We are predatory.

predatory on our people, predatory on the system, produces lousy products at maximum price for everything. China has oversight. China actually punishes predatory bosses. In fact, sometimes draconianly so it punishes them the princes, you know.

So, their capitalism is far more efficient and far more effective than ours. That's what really irritates us if you if you really scratch it. That's what really irritates. They're beating us at our own game.

Yeah. And that's because they have their own uh game as well. they, you know, unlike the United States, which as you said, has this predatory system that is really dictated by these uh incredibly corrupt and super exploitative uh oligarchs at the top of these monopolies that you labeled in the military-industrial complex, but they're everywhere, energy, etc. uh China has a government and a system and a political party that is willing to uh you know uh ensure that these forces are not able to run rough shot over the society and that is why also I pulled up this article uh Colonel Wilkerson because Iran during this Iran war uh everyone was saying and it was true that in large part you know trying to destroy Iran was to get to China and a big part of it was trying to cut off China's energy imports or you know from Iran, right?

But not only has that not really even been cut, but this uh article from a professor at Oxford University in the New York Times today said this. He said uh in response to this war, Beijing responded with a wide-ranging strategy to reduce exposure, diversified supply sources to limit the share of oil coming from the Middle East and began to build up what are now estimated to be the world's largest crude stock piles of oil, roughly equal to those of the US and Japan combined. China has pushed aggressively to shift to pass to passenger cars from fossil fuels to electric power, making it by far the world's largest market of EV vehicles today, and is extending that to trucks. Electricity generation relies almost entirely on domestic energy sources such as new coal, nuclear, hydro, hydrogen, and increasingly wind, and solar.

That long-term strategy has been put through a real world stress test by the Iran war, and it has passed. And arguably, this is coming very late to the game, Colonel Wilkerson. But the only thing I would change there is I would say it has passed with flying colors. Yeah, pass with flying colors.

And maybe it maybe it was never even viewed as a test at all because when I was there, people were saying that this was always the case. You know, this is what we do. Yeah. China doesn't want to be dependent upon outside energy because that would make it very vulnerable to the war.

So Xiao Ping like to use the expression capitalism with Chinese characteristics. Uh, and other people would say, you know, nodding in the back of the room, they would say, uh, capitalism with communist 28 minutescharacteristics. That didn't make any sense. Contradiction of terms.

But what I would say is capitalism with confusion characteristics because that's their version of capitalism. Now, I'm not going to say that it's kind and gentle, but I am going to say that it ain't like ours. It's very difficult and any Chinese person who is telling you the truth, who's coming in from the cold, so to speak, and living in Shanghai or some place like that is going to tell you, "Yeah, I like it. I'm happy.

" Right. Right. How many Americans are you going to find that do that these days? Well, the situation is absolutely horrific in the United States now.

9% I think real unemployment or adjusted unemployment for those who are on poverty wages. I left the giant grocery store yesterday in sticker shock. I buy the same groceries pretty much every two weeks or so. They're usually around 260 265.

Yesterday they were $327. Same groceries. I mean, and it's just been creeping up all along that I've been doing it. And this is hitting all Americans.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so Colonel Wilkerson, I guess the question is, you know, you mentioned uh Benjamin Netanyahu. I mean, this is a global re you said this is a regional war.

U this is this seems to be an attempt by the Trump administration to try to shift away focus from the military uh side of this. But at the same time, there's a lot of, for lack of a better term, landmines everywhere. Yes. Including, as you said, Israel.

Uh, does the Trump administration, even if it wanted to, which I'm not so sure it does, uh, wants to get out of the war in Iran, uh, even if it wanted to, could it, given that it's laid all of the traps for itself almost so conveniently that, uh, you know, those forces in the military-industrial complex can only drool at the mouth over them. Your your thoughts on the the situation? I think we're looking at a a truly draconian situation in Israel right now. And I mean that from a number of perspectives.

First, I don't necessarily have a whole lot of love for the Jewish citizens of the state of Israel, but I think we're seeing the cracks in that society began to widen into crevices. We've got an egress from Israel now that is almost panicstricken. We've got all kinds of problems within the IDF. We've got enormous problems developing in Lebanon with the IDF.

We've got problems developing with the orders that are being given to them now to move further north than they currently are and to continue continue killing not Hezbollah necessarily. Oh, they'll say that there was some Hezbollah agent or something involved in the 12 or 13 people they killed, but they're mostly Lebanese citizens. They've got a government in Beirut, as feckless as it is, that is awakening rather late to this going on south of them. And they've got a BB Netanyahu who is not only taunting the Beirut complex or you know essentially challenging he's also challenging Erdogan and he's challenging him in his face in Syria now with the al-Qaeda dude Salani running it and caught in between Israel with their threats on one side and Erdogan was his threats on the other and with Israel even attacking attacking Turkish assets inside Syria and you know what the hell I'm I'm going to continue doing this when Erdogan complains and then on top of all of that he's got what's happening in Kurdistan with Barzani and his boys.

I don't know how much Erdogan is involved in that. I know that they had a pretty good relationship with the Kurds up there. um a lot of money going back and forth and a lot of profit being made and Kurdistan of course was probably the only place in Iraq where citizens of Baghdad like to go on vacation because it was fairly peaceful and it was pretty and the weather wasn't so bad and everything. Well, now I understand it's gone to hell.

And part of the reason it's gone to hell is because they allowed Barzani and maybe the Turk complicity, they allowed so much to go in there that Iran now sees as enimical to its interest. So it's destroyed a lot of it. So you got a possibility here. All of this to say that you look at the three, actually four different groups of Kurds, the ones in Iran, the ones in Iraq, the ones in Syria, and then you look at the ones in Southeast Turkey, and you say Erdogan's got to be really concerned now about us and what we've been trying to do with these Kurdish groups.

So far, we've been singularly unsuccessful because I think they learned their lesson. Burn once, burn twice, burn three times. you can't get me for the fourth time. Um, but nonetheless, Erdogan does have a problem with that and now he's having a growing problem with Netanyahu and and not just in Syria, but in Lebanon, too, because he doesn't like what's going on in Lebanon either.

So, we're looking at, as I said before, we're looking at Netanyahu while Donald Trump is sleeping on the switch. We're we're looking at him creating the possibilities of a much wider war involving a whole lot of different contestants and involving some pretty significant powers like Turkey, a bastion of NATO, if you will, if you look at their military. I don't think they're a bastion in terms of their ideological affinity for NATO, but they are a pretty powerful military. Um, so you've got again Netanyahu while Trump is sleeping on the watch and while Jared Kushner comes back from the fixer Tony Blair, the one of the most corrupt men that's ever lived on the earth and been a prime minister of Great Britain.

You got them working telling telling Netanyahu's forces in Gaza, go ahead and kill as you want to. police go ahead and kill. Do do whatever you need to do and and we'll just sit here and protect you from our position as not yet forming the humanitarian organization we're supposed to form, not yet having the stabilization forces to use. Go ahead, do whatever you want to do.

So Netanyahu is killing about 20 30 a day. Add the 20 or 30 a day he's killing in the West Bank and disenfranchising of their homes and farms, olive groves and everything else and what he's doing with regard to tenders. And you've got a man off his rocker, but he's off his rocker in a very politically astute way because he knows the Jewish citizens of Israel aren't going to vote for him unless he does all this. So look at the mess that we are supporting that we're allowing to go on so Jared Kushner can make a few more billion dollars.

Um this is you know it's unconscionable. We if there's a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court we should be in the dock with them. Right. Yeah.

And Jared Kushner from my understanding uh he is not he has no appointed position inside of the Trump no security clearance. no position. At least I I was told yesterday I think that Woodco at least got a a a prefuncter clearance and he's been made special envoy or something like that. But Kushner is just what is he?

Grandson and chief, daddy and chief. I don't I don't know what he is, but he he's kind of like this uh uh well, I won't say anything. I was going to say something about Hegs wife. I I you know I think both of them I think his wife is a real influence on him and I think they both are they have to be closet they can't be out out with it.

They're both racist particularly with respect to blacks. Yeah, that wouldn't be that wouldn't be a shock uh to me. Colonel Wilkerson. Well, back to the sanctions on Iran uh circling back to them uh and economic warfare supposedly supplanting military intervention.

Do the sanctions work this time, Colonel Wilkerson? Uh, some note that, you know, secondary sanctions can be quote unquote effective in terms of starving an economy, but Iran says it's ready and not only with retaliation against anyone who participates in this, but also in terms of its own uh domestic internal uh 37 minutesneeds and issues. What's your thoughts about this? Will it work this time?

Well, as long as that uh base road initiative railroad comes in from the uh from the eastern border and comes into Thrron as it does and as long as the Caspian Sea is what most of the ports are only about 120 130 km north of Tehran and the Russians are using that sea for whatever supplies Iran needs. China is using it as well and China is using the railroad. I don't see how sanctions and let's back up a minute and let's look at the JCPOA. Remember the team that came together to do the JCPOA.

It included Russia and China and included Russia and China fully supporting. This is why Obama got the leverage and why Monise the nuclear scientist was so good at at talking to his counterpart in Iran and the pressure that he could bring on that talk. The reason was because all these people were together and they were all for the first time consolidated and in their view doing what was in their interest that is enforcing the sanctions on Iran until the JCPOA could be affected. So you got all these parties doing what they did then.

Now look what they're doing. And I'll ask you the question, who made them change? the empire. I mean, you know, now we've got total disintegration of that unity that forced the Iranians into a deal that was a good deal.

And who got rid of that deal? Uh, Donald Trump. And who's trying to affect a deal that'll top that one because he hates that black man by having been in the White House and he abominates the fact that he had a diplomatic triumph while he was in the White House and that was it. And now he's screwed it all.

I mean, you know, this guy just is his own worst enemy. There's no question. He's his own worst enemy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's why you see so many in the establishment current works as you've noted um they go up in arms about the destruction of the JPCOA and the terms now that the US is operating on because the JPCOA was less favorable to Iran, far more favorable to the United States and now the tables have turned completely and Iran is now the one saying it will be dictating terms and the United States under Trump of course Trump is trying to I think push out the image that the US is dictating terms. Even going so far as to claim that the strait is America's territory now and that they've cleared all the mines. You probably saw that today.

All the mines are cleared. Has the you the US Navy hasn't even taken a you know hasn't even set an inch foot into the straight of war since February 28th last time I checked. Not not only that, Danny, we we probably have, you know, going back to my assessment of the military, we pretty much passed mind clearing operations to other NATO partners that have mind sweepers and crews and people who know how to do it. We have very little mind sweeping capability.

We have a few helicopters. We have a few boats. the boats are not ideal for doing it because they haven't got the right kind of bottoms or the bottoms that they do have if they are the right kind are deteriorating majorly. So we would have to call and this is one reason I think Hex Seth and Kaine and Trump actually said something about it.

He didn't use mind sweepers as an example but he could have. This is why they're angry with NATO not providing help for the Persian Gulf because that's where a lot of this esoteric capability is. When we cut forces in NATO, when we cut them to the bone, we started this business of okay, we cannot need mind sweeps, we cannot need ice breakers, we cannot need this or that aspect of what we are maintaining at great cost to ourselves in Europe because the Finns will do it, the Swedes will do it, the Norwegians will do it, the French will do it, the British will do it. Although that latter is not much of a will do it because British the British couldn't fight a flee and win today.

Uh but that's what we did. We spread all these esoteric duties out to other allied partners in the idea that if we had to fight the big one, they would do those functions. Well, that means you don't be able to do that function when you go off and do something on your own. That's where we are.

42 minutesYeah. Yeah. That is that is indeed where we are. Uh you know, Colonel Wilkerson, um the conversation about the dollar has become very prominent now that Scott Bessant on numerous occasions during his declaration of economic outcast operation and D-Day.

uh CNBC posted published this about China hedging on wa on Washington sanctions and talked about uh China having its own crossber interbank payment system sips which actually allows for a lot of uh you know currency swaps and other kinds of arrangements between uh bilateral and multilateral or you know uh partnerships to flourish. Uh how how ineffective then are will these sanctions be if the biggest countries because you can throw Russia in there too because Russia participates in a lot of this. If the biggest countries that do ally and see Iran as a major partner have no interest not only have no interest but are actively interested in building alternative to them. Seems like the US can't really do much about this short of doing what Scott Besson said he doesn't want to do, which is blow up the world's economy.

Yeah, he could protest all day long. He, as I said earlier, he doesn't understand what China is doing. He doesn't understand the world financial system. That's what worries me.

And let me give you a good case in point. The Bank of International Settlements, which we fought for a long time to get a member on and do have a member on, put out uh a paper not too long ago, about if memory serves, it was about a year ago or so. And they said there's somewhere around, I may get this a little bit wrong in terms of the exactitude of the figures, but I'm not far off. There is about $60 trillion in the world that is utterly unsupported by any physical asset that we can put our fingers on.

Think about that for a minute. There's about $60 trillion of wash in the world that is unsupported by any asset that's physical. Now, that goes from gold to real estate to that building, that highway, that farm. I mean, it's nothing supports this money.

They have now put out a new report which is sort of clandestine because it's hard to get your hands on it. The new report says that has doubled. The new report says not only has that doubled what they can look at. This is the so-called white economy in the black economy which Misha Glenny wrote quite well about in his book McMafia and said was at any given time when he wrote that book which is about 20 years ago or further about $5 trillion.

That's the black money. That's the black economy. That's everything from trading in people to trading in organs to drugs, you name it. Well, now that's up to about $12 trillion and it's being laundered in places like yes, Tel Aviv.

It's one of the leading launder money laundering points. Yes, New York City. Uh I doubt Doha anymore because I think they blew it up in Doha. But these are the places where these things are happening.

So when you look at the debt that Americans have, credit card debt, other kinds of debt, when you look at the debt the nation has, when you look at the entitlements programs, when you look at the things like social security and so forth, when you look at the defense budget, when you look at $2 trillion a year going to be the interest payments on our debt probably within the next two to three years, if not sooner. And when you look at the fact that Japan and China and other countries are dumping our bonds as fast as they can and not make it difficult for themselves, although Japan has made it a little difficult for itself because it barked at China. Uh a a really astute Asian scholar put it this way recently. He said, "Japan barked at China and look what happened.

The yen is collapsing. Uh Ukraine barked at Russia. Look what's happening. And who trained both dogs to bark?

The Empire. He's right. He's right. We are killing our allies with our system and our failures as fast as we are.

Or maybe maybe not as fast as we're killing our enemies. Cuz we ain't killing our enemies except women and children like Manob school and hospitals and other things. were bombing in Iran, which is just unconscionable. Uh Danny, this whole war from the air is a war crime.

It's a war crime. Indiscriminate bombing. Uh and they can they can call it discriminant all they want to. It isn't.

It's hitting everything in the world. Um some of it by accident probably, but some of it by intent. It it's the whole war is a war crime as as it usually is or almost always is Colonel Wilkerson and uh I think one of the byproducts too of what's what's going on and even this shift to economic warfare seems to exacerbate a reality that these uh labeled adversaries of the United States, Iran, China, they are only gaining actually in prestige around the world in large part because uh economic warfare isolates not just the country targeted but secondary sanctions are meant to punish everybody and and you're right it hurts it hurts children it hurts families it hurts the people who have no grudge for you as a matter of fact one of the dynamics of this that just pains my heart because the only Iranians I've ever met and the only time I spent amongst Iranians I was stunned at how they still had faith in the United States of America. They still loved America, if you will, the average Iranian, because they went back to the history and they saw us as having replaced those bloody-minded British and not been so bloody minded ourselves.

That's gone. That's completely gone. They hate our guts now. I dare say there isn't an Iranian inside Iran that doesn't hate our guts.

And pretty much probably a few of them in America, too. Iranian-Americans whom I met quite a few of when I was with Treata Parsy and we went all over California and other places raising money when he was Nyak, you know, when he was the head of Nyak. Um, good people, dentists, doctors, obstitricians, all kinds of people all over California. I bet they hate us now, too, cuz most of them didn't want kinetic solutions.

You know, a a few of them were Pavlavi fans, a few of them were, you know, okay, that regime's got to go down, but we don't want a war. Almost unanimously. Don't want a war. Don't want a war.

So, we probably got them hating us, too. Yeah. Well, uh, one of the consequences, it seems, of the US's wars in the era of great power, so-called great power competition, as some, uh, have called it, is that these wars continue to diminish any kind of legitimacy of the US Empire to the point where these whether they're proxies or whether they're just like a political opposition that uh, would rather see a more US and Westernfriendly style of governance uh in the world especially in their countries like in Iran uh they're becoming muted if not turned the in the opposite direction because the US is the uh actor that is actually doing the attacking rather than uh the governments that are so maligned and belleaguered by US and Western propaganda. " What MAGA has done is changed my mind.

You're heathens. That's the image we're putting out there in the world now. No matter how many good people there might be left in America, and I I continue to insist that at least 60% of us are halfway decent people, uh it's the other 40% that are mad, they're running us into the ground. Yeah.

And there's uh you know, there are some and maybe in the last five or that we have, Colonel Werson, you can ponder on this question. There are some who have been debating about the state of the US empire, which direction it's going in, whether it is declining or collapsing or whether the opposite is true. How does this, you know, uh it can be propaganda. It could have been propaganda decades and decades ago.

I I believe it was. But even lies uh can hold legitimacy if uh the empire has something to offer that maybe uh other places cannot. For example, a higher standard of living uh whatever even just the prospect of a higher standard of living can be attractive enough to uh you know embrace an empire. All of that appears to be gone.

But there are some who still believe that because the US has the capacity for violence, has the capacity for war, has the capacity to try to isolate, choke off uh and uh you know uh attempt to destroy uh other countries that this signifies power. I'm wondering where you fall on this uh uh you know this debate here. I fall on the side of the coin that uh David McCulla's book portrays really well in John Adams. Uh just reread that book.

Um I noted there were no marginelia of consequence in it and no highlighting. So I said, "You didn't read this book very well. " So I reread it. And they're throughout.

You're listening to people like Benjamin Russ and Franklin and you're listening to people like John Adams himself and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams and John Hancock and George Washington and even that ass Alexander Hamilton. I have a new distaste for Alexander Hamilton after reading McCulla's book. Always didn't like him very much. But what what they talked about was the promise that this country showed to the world as a result of what we had done to the British Empire.

And I can't tell you how much that was reflected without saying the British Empire was not looked upon very favorably. And it was a lot of things. It was India eventually and how badly they treated the Indians, the racism, uh it was the slave trade in which the British of course were paramount until they finally got a prime minister that decided to turn it around. Um, so Britain was, I would say, throughout its Commonwealth, if you will, despised far more than Winston Churchill and others who were exponents of it would would let on.

And they were despised because they had done such heinous things like what they did in Iran, for example. At one particular point they were taking about 95% of the profits out of Iran that oil 54 minutesproduced which were astronomical for that time period about $40 billion US immediately following the war that went straight into the British excheer which explains Mosedc's attempts to nationalize the oil more than anything else. So they were reviled they were hated they were despised. Neil Ferguson can write his books all day long about how Britain was such a wonderful place.

They were hated. They were despised. That's where we are now. Yeah.

Well, uh, Colonel Wilkerson, I think that's a very apt way of putting it. Uh, that's indeed where the United States is now. uh your your final thoughts before we head out on the state of the Iran war. Uh do you see kinetic action starting up again despite all these attempts of the US to uh uh scramble towards some kind of new normal of economic warfare and kick maybe kicking the can down the road to the next administration or at least until November.

It seems maybe that's the Yeah, there are two bodies of thought that I'm encountering right now on that. And I'm not sure where I fall on it or have a third body of thought. One is that Trump is going to quieten down, pretend he's doing diplomacy and get through the elections and then start the war up again. However he would do that, god forbid nuclear weapons on the other side of Christmas, let's say, or on the other side of the elections.

The other body of thought is that he is so desperate that he is going to press and press and press and maybe turn Netanyahu loose in order to make the pressing even more existential. Um, and that is the side that I would probably come down on, but I'm not sure yet because I've got to see a little bit more develop with regard to the elections in Israel, which are looking really panicstricken right now from the point of view of Netanyahu and Lood in general. Although those who might win if it is basically looded or the kind of coalition that Netanyahu has now with some of the same people like Bezel Smootrich and Benny Gavir in it then we're we're not changing anything at all. We're making it worse.

So I think the more important election right now to watch is the one coming up in Israel. I I'm not discounting what might happen in in this country because things are not looking good for the prospects. Um but both elections are important. Let me put it that way.

All right everybody. Well uh I just want to thank all the me the new member here. Thank you so much J486. Thanks for to Auntie who gave the super chat.

The outcome is the intent. the US powers shouldn't uh that the US powers that shouldn't be are collapsing our economy to usher in a global epsene class CBDC agenda and Kushner Kushner's building the new island right off Albania right uh I my take on this is generally yes true um not so sure the uh outcome is the intent though I think the outcome may just be the only one that is possible it may be the only one that uh if we call them the Epstein class, these oligarchs. That's the only one that they're willing to and maybe can pursue less we call it something different. Isn't it amazing how this stupid insane war has put Epstein on not just the back burner but in the oven?

Yeah. And maybe that was part of Trump's intent. Everybody hit the like button before you go. uh that helps thank Colonel Wilkerson for his time by boosting the show and YouTube's algorithm so more people see our conversation after we are done.

All the places support this channel or in the video description below. Uh Substack, Patreon, and so much more. Tomorrow I'll be on 400 PM Eastern time with Larry Johnson, our mutual friend of off and on together. Any final words, Colonel Wilkerson, before I hit end stream here?

No. Keep up the good work. All right, take care everybody. m.

Eastern. Bye-bye. Take care.

EXCLUSIVE Ex CIA & PEPE :Hormuz Deal in 24 Hours? Iran–US Deal: Sequencing Agreed SANCTIONS LIFTED
Transition Protocol
Aug 26, 2026

A source described by Zulfiqar Ali as the person drafting a Pakistani announcement says Iran and the United States have agreed on a contemporaneous first step: a controlled reopening of the Strait of Hormuz alongside U.S. sanctions and naval-blockade relief. That claim is not yet publicly corroborated. What is verified is that Pakistan’s mediation channel is active, Iran and Oman are working on a temporary maritime corridor, Hormuz remains severely disrupted, and Washington has just intensified sanctions pressure.
In this urgent Transition Protocol conversation, Pepe Escobar and Larry C. Johnson stress-test the reported Trump–Iran off-ramp: who moves first, what “simultaneous” action would actually mean, whether a 60–90 day indirect process exists, how an oil and fuel shock changes Washington’s choices, and why Trump—or a third-party spoiler—could still collapse the window. The central question is not whether officials sound hopeful. It is whether reciprocal action becomes observable.
Zulfiqar Ali brings source-based reporting from Pakistani and Iranian contacts; Pepe Escobar and former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson provide geopolitical and security analysis. Transition Protocol is a source-driven geopolitical and economic analysis channel focused on evidence, power shifts, and real-world consequences. Source claims in this episode are identified as developing or uncorroborated where appropriate.



Transcript

Hello everybody. Today is the 26th of August. Uh a day that we believe is [clears throat] very very significant because we have some explosive news coming out of uh the prime minister's office in Pakistan that we are privileged to bring to you. We have news coming out of the president's office in Iran that we are very privileged to bring to you and of course our other channels as well.

Uh if you like what we do, hit the like and subscribe button. Go to Substack, become a paid member. We will deliver this exclusive intel to you inside your mailbox twice a week. I have with me my dear colleagues and uh highly admired, highly respected analyst uh Larry Johnson and Pepe Escobar.

So I'll turn it over to Larry Johnson first. Hi there. Thanks Z. Um We're at an interesting time with respect to the war between Iran on the one hand, Israel and the United States on the other.

Uh Trump is trying to find an exit ramp, but uh can't even really find the highway yet. Uh you know, you got got to realize you're on the highway before you can take an exit ramp. Uh the this week's announcements by the D-Day announcement by um Scott Besson, Secretary of the Treasury, turned out to be a dud day. Not a D-Day.

It was a dud day because he talked about imposing sanctions on countries that do dollar transactions with uh Iran. Well, guess what? Iran's not doing dollar transactions with China, with Russia. uh and I'm not sure with respect to Pakistan, but I I suspect they're not necessarily doing it with Pakistan, Turkey maybe.

And uh those are the four key countries when it comes to the trade issue and sanctions. What what Bessant and I had a long discussion this morning with a a good friend of mine who's uh he's an experienced bond trader. He knows Bessant and he insists that Bessant is not as stupid as he appears to be. Uh that he actually realizes he's having to say stupid things and carry water for Trump.

And so I thought, okay, I I I trust my friend's judgment. But when I say that Besson is saying stupid things, he's talking about isolating that that the Iranian economy is collapsing. and he based that upon what's happening with the gross domestic product. 2 trillion uh in 2026.

Uh I've spoken with uh uh three different people uh who have been in Iran. One of a good friend of Pepe and I Nema Alkashid. Nema was last he was there in January but his prior visit was 12 years ago. " And today it's just in it's so much better.

Uh I spoke to two outsiders who visited Iran during the funeral of Ali Kami. Uh Sulaman Ahmed and Chris Alali. Chris is an American. Sulaman is a British citizen.

And I said, 'You guys have any trouble getting food? They said, 'The only problem we had with food was getting too much. We all put on weight. They were getting fat from all the food.

He said, the Iranians were incredibly hospitable. So this notion that, you know, when you hear Besset and Trump say, "Oh, the Iranian troops are going without pay. They're suffering. " It's all just nonsense.

It's a lie. It's self-d delusion. So uh Iran is now positioned by virtue of its economic relationships with Russia and with China and with Pakistan and with Turkey that um it it it is not clo cut off from the world of trade as it was 10 years ago when JCPOA was still in place. And at that time both Russia and China were willing to enforce the western sanctions on Iran.

Not today. So the the foundation of the uh potential for an offramp for Trump revolves around will Trump revive theou or not. uh our understanding is and I'll stand corrected if I'm mistaken but the message that Munir brought to Thran was what do we need to do to get this restarted and Iran's answer was very simple Trump needs to comply with theou all of it not some of it all of it um this is confronting the United States with the need to if you will make the 6 minutesfirst move Now uh the there there's some talk that I know that Pakistan believes it may have uh the the outlines for an agreement getting both the United States and Iran to re-engage on theou at the same time. Um I I personally think there's some real difficulties with this still because uh Iran is not going to give up its control of the straight of Hormuz.

Period. It is going to the deal that is cut with Oman will allow Iran to collect fees off of all inbound traffic. At the same time, Iran's made it very clear, no more military ship, you know, any ship uh naval vessel associated with a foreign military will not be allowed in the Gulf. It's only for peaceful transit only.

For the United States, these are going to be some hard pills to f swallow. But one thing that may force it to swallow is the fact of what's taking place on the international energy front specifically with respect to diesel and aviation fuel. uh we have emphasized before and I will reiterate again that the kind of the type of oil the heavy sulfur oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf is the type that is used by particular refineries that you find in India in China and in South Korea and Japan. uh there is the difference between those these refineries are set up to handle sour crude and it's within sour crude that you get what's called the middle distillates and out of that middle distillates they create cook refine diesel and aviation fuel the cut off of 20% of the global supply of that fuel has really come to in into effect around 1st of August.

They forced it wasn't readily apparent for the first 40 days of the war phase one because there were still oil and tankers on the high sea. Phase two was all the company countries around the world were drawing out of their petroleum reserves. They were drawing on their savings. Think of it like you you you build up $60,000 in your savings.

You make $10,000 a month. You get fired, laid off. and you keep drawing that 10,000 out of that bank account, you're good for six months and then empty. And that's what's happened to the world now because that 20 20 million barrels a day that was coming out of the Persian Gulf, it's no longer coming out.

Despite what Trump says, despite what Hex says, the the oil is not flowing out of the Persian Gulf. And this global shortage of diesel and aviation fuel is real. It's growing. 30 a gallon minimum.

And right now on the west coast of the United States, from Alaska through to California, they're paying over $6 a gallon. Previously, they're paying three. So this and this impacts the economy both the agricultural sector the transport transportation sector and even the heating sector what what people put into their uh to heat their homes with fuel oil come winter. So what we're looking at is I think the economic pressures on the United States are going to be growing and increasing for them to make a deal.

That's what I have. Uh Pepe, do you want to comment on the news that uh we received from the prime minister's office in Pakistan which is corroborated by the information that we received directly from the possession office president of Iran. I understand that he is not the dealmaker but from my understanding he was in the room while Asamir was talking to uh the dealmaker who is the right-hand man of Maba Mos Mosen Rai I mean this is our reporting Pepe and this is what I stand on because I believe these sources to be telling me exactly what they know. Okay.

Thanks Larry. Thanks Mr. Z. Yes, I'm going to go for um let's say uh a slight update on our long conversation yesterday. Yesterday we went in detail about what a simonyer and the Pakistani delegation actually managed to do in Thran and the Iranian response and of course when uh uh Naki went back to Islamabad, he contacted the acting American ambassador Baker in Islamabad.

So let's let's try to get to the five key points of what could be the teen pathway towards reviving the dead catouou. It's amazing. This this is the cat that it doesn't have nine lives. It has 1 billion500,000 lives.

You know it keeps being resurrected every week. But that's all we got. we poor mortal souls who are not a Greek gods. So let's say point number one straight of horm and I and I'm going to follow what the Pakistani mediators the Pakistani delegation that was in Thran how they frame the possible pathway ahead and of course uh with input of the let's say relatively apicious feedback that they got from Terra including for instance Pasheskin yesterday saying that the war may be about to come to an end.

Coming from Paskin, this was a little bit over the top because we are very very far away from even the the beginning of the end. So very very important straight of our moves. Let's assume the Iranians make a first move which by any rational consideration would be a suicidal move because they would be making a first move to let's say initiate a sort of controlled reopening mechanism of the straight of our moves without any reciprocity or guarantees from the American side. But let's assume the Iranians uh will do that.

What kind of reciprocity they will be uh expecting from the US that Washington will be start to implement right away the end of the neighbor blockade and let's say the follow the money scenario which means starting uh devolution at least some of the Iranian funds. Let's start with those funds in Qatari banks for instance and start alleviating some of the sanctions. This has to be simultaneous. If Iran starts, there's no guarantee whatsoever that the Americas will start fulfilling their and by the way these are commitments written in I wouldn't say in stone but written anyway uh in a papyrus for uh maybe by the president of the United States and by the president of u Iran both sign theou and all these provisions are part of theou so once Once again, it's like we are it's Groundhog Day.

In fact, the Iranians have to keep reminding the Americans via the Pakistanis that there is an offramp. it's respecting theou and start implementing theou okay for the eenth time and this is a cifian task you know and and the ball of stone is the size of the planet in fact you know rolling up uh the hill will trump finally understand that this is his off ramp no guarantees whatsoever although of course the Pakistani mediators after the trip which lasted over a day and a half in fact because they were talking to everybody especially as Mr. Z just uh mentioned the most important conversation was between Munir and Mosen Razai which means practically Munir talking to the supreme leader because Mosen Razai is the personal representative of the leader apart from being a secretary of the supreme national security council. So the key the key two points are hormus and reciprocity and they have to be walking hand in hand from minute one.

Are there any guarantees that this is going to happen? None only optimism even on the Iranian side. Okay let's assume this works because we're trying to be not uh today. Let's try not to uh be engulfed by the dark clouds uh everywhere.

There's the deescalation process. This means that the military deescalation would start immediately right after these first two moves. uh a controlled opening by Iran of the Strait of Hormuz and the Americas starting to fulfill the commitments of theou especially on the on the money angle and on the naval blockade angle. The mediators once again like they were before even before theou was actually decided and signed is going to be Pakistan once again.

So Pakistan will be in the unviable position right in the middle to try to carry this indirect negotiation between Washington and Iran which by the way goes back toou territory because and that's our final point of what might happen afterwards between 60 and 90 days where they uh both sides try to convert uh what would be an interim cis fire or an entering off ramp this whole architecture into something vaguely [snorts] approaching at least a broader political settlement. Okay. Is the are there any guarantees that this road map is going to work? No.

Zero. Is there some goodwill in built in making this work from the Iranians? Yes. Like once again they're giving it an extra chance because after all this was a very important delegation who took the trouble to go to Thran and talk to all the major players in Thran because Trump told the Pakistani delegation please go to Thran and bring them back on the table.

So this is the president of the United States begging the mediators again after they were demoted by the same president to okay now you are not demoted anymore. Please save me from myself and go to Iran and try to sell them some sort of exit that doesn't look like an exit. And that's the key uh point. I just wrote a column a few hours ago.

It's already out in Russia and I hope it will be circulating in US as well. The problem is when I publish this in Russia, it's censored all across NATO stuff. But the title of my column and the gist of my column is that Trump is desperate to find an exit that does not look like an exit. And much much more important, in fact, it cannot look like he's backing down.

In fact, the exit has to look uh the optics on both sides have to be the same for US domestic opinion, for uh Iran domestic opinion, for the whole of West Asia and for the rest of the planet. They are backing down in tandem in sync at the same time. Who can pull that off? I would say not even Zils and Poseidon.

Seriously. But okay, you know, hope [clears throat] springs eternal, right? So this is where we are at the moment. Once again, a very tiny window of opportunity.

Any outside actor, and I don't even need to name them because all of you are audience, you already know, they can derail everything that was more or less agreed in two days in Islamabad with just one single action. But at least once again we have maybe the the laments of an exit that is not an exit that might suit both sides because both would be able to proclaim victory. So I think this gives all of you a feeling of how precarious the whole situation. Uh we are clutching at straws here all of us and every in everybody all all over the world but at least these straws are still there at least for the moment.

[snorts] Well, Pepe, there's an extraordinarily succinct uh summary of what has taken place, but I need to add to that uh with respect to with great respect to you and to Larry. Uh as you know, I deeply respect your analysis. I deeply respect uh Larry's analysis coming from different places but I am the person who actually has spoken to people inside the room and I'm able to judge their uh enthusiasm the mood mood their feelings of course of course correct correct and not only that I I was fortunate privileged honored to speak with somebody inside the room in the president of Iran's office I No, he is not the most powerful guy. I do know that.

I know the decisions are being made by Mushtab through his chosen person, General Mosen Razai. I know all that. But I've already been I have been speaking to these people and I can sense a shift, an enthusiasm, a a a hope that I did not see even uh one day ago. and that is that they believe that this time around not because of any goodwill that has has sprung from sources unknown into Trump's dark heart which uh you know is totally dark and we all know that but because he's been forced he has been cornered China is pressuring pressuring down on him uh like a rock the size of the Himalayas he has nowhere to go so I am I 22 minuteshave heard as uh recently as like three hours ago from Prime Minister Mosh Prime Minister Sharif's office somebody who is his right-hand man that Sharif has spoken to Trump Sharif has spoken to uh leaders in Iran and the mood between the two capitals is we are going to sequence it as the as following contemporaneously that is the right word contemporaneously There will be an an opening of the straight of armos with the lifting of the sanctions and the lifting of the naval blockade.

First step, next step 60 to 90 days of truce, you know, no fighting. And the next step uh announcement of a place where these two parties will meet indirectly, not directly, indirectly with Pakistan as the mediator and talking about everything else. Uh, Trump, I am told, is cornered. Trump, I am told, is cornered like a rat.

Okay. Like like a like a dead rat. Almost dead. He does not have a place to move around.

Uh he has been told that he listens to the Zionist lobby and that is the end of him. I mean already the end of him is there but the total end. I mean this is what I have heard. This is what I sense and I believe we owe it to our global audience uh to present it the way that we know it.

We are not able to see what happens in the future. We never said that we can do that. We never said that we have the ability to forecast what nobody else has has the ability to do. But we do have privilege uh to see what decision makers are doing.

Well, but but Z, we only seen one. you you're talking about one side of it and there are multiple sides here. So I I have no doubt that you are accurately reporting what you're how the Pakistanis perceive it. But the Pakistanis aren't the only one with a vote on this.

And uh we have had experience in the past where they have had more enthusiasm about what Iran's position was. and Iran actually did didn't coincide with the Pakistani view and and particularly with this issue of opening the straight of Hormuse uh getting that defined in a way that uh because it's got is it will be consistent with this agreement that Oman and Iran have reached that on on how that's going to be handled. I I beg to differ with you, Larry, with great respect to your ability to look beyond what I can see in a military sense, but uh I did speak to personally spoke to a person uh with direct access to uh 25 minutesPresident Basheskin and and he described to me that the mood was uh was upbeat. He described to me that there was hope for the first time in many many days, weeks in fact.

And from the PM's office, Pakistan PM's office, uh I was told that there are constant uh communications back and forth uh with a role being played, a significant one, uh with the acting ambassador Baker. And I mean, of course, Larry, nobody can predict what Trump is going to do, including himself. Well, actually I disagree. We can predict what Trump is going to do.

We can predict Trump is going to be very erratic. Trump is going to say contradictory things and and and right now Trump is still on a a public a public position that uh that shows no opening for consiliation with Iran. Now, you're 26 minutescorrect that he would be wise to try to take an off-ramp, but uh the the the issues that are before them, I I think what again, as I as I said at the outset, what's going to drive Trump on this is what's happening with the US economy. And that that may ultimately end up being the biggest leverage that Iran will ultimately have.

Not not directly, but simply by virtue of Trump will be so busy trying to save the US economy that Iran's going to fall to the back burner. Well, the economy is tanking. You and I know that. And because Iran is running the clock and they know exactly what's going on in Washington and they know all the pressures accumulating around Trump, they are not in a hurry for anything.

For instance, they are not in a hurry to normal normalize between commerce uh a new navigation system uh across the 27 minutesstreet of Orbus. By the way, they just told the Obanis, stop facilitating your uh southern uh corridor because you're interfering with the way we are running our um navigation system across the so now it's going to be essentially controlled by everything will be controlled by run north and south and this is a reporting as this even as they practically have a relatively final draft of a temporary navigation system in the straight of Mus Muskat and Thran. But the tyrannis at the same time, they already told the Omanis, look, we control the whole thing for the moment. Maybe we can sign something in a few days.

It's going to be temporary and then we're going to start to discuss on the negotiating table what's going to be the final uh settlement on navigating the straight of so Iran is on top once again they have the cards they run the clock they are not in a hurry and they know that as you mentioned Trump is cornered the problem as we all know cornered animals become much much more dangerous So there's once again when I when I was making my mini summary of what we learned since the beginning of this week since the beginning of the trip the Pakistani trip to to Thran there are no guarantees that this uh let's say uh uh at face value it looks like a very auspicious road map implying a lot of diplomacy involved and as Larry knows better than anybody the United States does not do diplomacy Where where does that leave us, you know? Well, I I beg to differ with with both of you only because I spoke with certain people who expressed We are not a lot of enthusiasm. We are not exactly uh Zufiar. We are not contradicting or contesting this this wonderful new mood and spirit between Pakistanis and even some Iranians.

That's extremely positive considering how dark the situation is. But this is not a guarantee that this new revamped uh uh road map which is basically the previous road map before theou was blown up by the president of the United States is going to work that that's it this is not we for instance I I can understand why pzeskin must pesk is under a lot of pressure and pzkin is not a hardliner on the contrary he's a reformist so the reformists want some sort of deal. It's not and very very important Mosen Resai. He doesn't want some sort of deal.

He wants the deal that he's he's been saying all along. These are our conditions from the beginning. We have not much and we only accept a deal following our suggestions, recommendations and demands in fact and they are all very very explicit. Everybody knows about them and they are contained in theou which once again we go back to the same old problem over and over again.

Is the president of the United States finally uh you know resigning himself to fulfill the commitments of the MOU that he signed. Once again no guarantees whatsoever. Well, I I do need to add one additional piece of information which I should have mentioned earlier. Uh lot of coordination taking place between Pakistan and the office of Wang E who is totally totally behind what Pakistan is doing.

Of course, totally behind China. I'm totally behind Iran and Pakistan. Both of them and Iran, Beijing, Islamabad, totally aligned. No question.

Totally one 100% 100% aligned and pushing pushing pushing pushing. So, uh I should have mentioned that that enthusiasm comes from that place as well. So uh I am going to be a little bit in fact a lot more optimistic than my esteemed colleagues whom I respect greatly respect and I fully support their view because uh it comes from learned observation of somebody who is who's completely unreliable completely without any integrity. He is in fact malicious.

This is the president of the United States. Uh so we're dealing with somebody who has spent his lifetime acting like a crime boss uh Bulgarian in fact but this is what we have. So uh based upon what I am told based upon what I have heard based upon I've been all night I I was up up most of the night maybe got couple hours of sleep uh at best because I was being awakened with the phone calls but uh I I I am optimistic and I I'm told also that expect within a day maybe sooner uh an announcement coming from Prime Minister Shahabas Sharif's office that what we have just reported has in fact been agreed upon. So I'm I'm told that this is going to be the first step.

So if that happens uh the world is going to hear what we just informed our audience uh about which is a significant movement on the path towards a a resolution of a war that is unwinable by the United States has in fact been won by by Iran and has put all of the world at great distress in every aspect. So if we have an announcement within the next two, three, four days, this means that in theory Washington and Iran have agreed to start simultaneous concessions on both sides uh following the spirit of theou. Yes, if that happens, it's something larger than life. So for the moment, this is correct.

Yeah. So for the moment this is what everyone is expecting still with no guarantees of course but uh compare to the day that Larry defined very very well as the day. And when we have the secretary of the treasur of the United States basically telling the whole planet, any of you who does business with Iran or helps Iran, you're going to be expelled from the US dollar system, cue to the whole planet exploding in laughter and dancing [laughter] in the streets just like Martha and the Vandelas during Mtown. all around the world.

Are you dancing? Are you ready for a brand new thing? Yes. Everybody's dancing in the streets, Larry.

Yes. We're going out of the the US dollar system and it's the Americans that they are forcing us to do it. How cool is that? Well, uh uh Pepe and Larry, uh I will disclose this uh because I was actually allowed to do so.

I spoke with the person uh working in the prime minister's office tasked with with writing this announcement. This particular announcement that I just told you about but in fact told the entire global audience about uh uh announcing that this deal has taken place uh contemporaneously I'm told this is the word contemporaneously Iran and the United States will take the first step. The sequencing has been agreed upon. Uh Iran will in a controlled fashion open the straight of Hermos.

Sorry, you're saying that the Americas already agreed on the sequencing. Correct. That's what I've been telling you. We have no I just told you that.

I I've just told you that. Okay. But so far we have no evidence about that. I I understand you have no evidence.

But but uh this is our privileged information coming to to me and from me to you and to our global audience that this is this is from the man who's writing this uh announcement. It will be announced by by Sharif not by Aimir uh and it will be done in the next 24 to . That's big news. The man who's drafting this is the man who spoke to me.

How specific can I get? The only thing I can say is okay, let's wait and see. Well, of course, you know, we have to wait and see because we are dealing with a with a with a Bulgarian who is also stupid and who's also malicious, who is like a four-year-old. Well, but that means that means it won't it could possibly not happen.

That and that's my point. I have I have no doubt that about the reliability of the person that you've talked to. I have no doubt that he said what he genuinely believes. I have no doubt that you're accurately reporting what he said.

But I'm also saying he is not inside Donald Trump's mind. Yeah. And it doesn't even matter what Donald Trump has said because depending upon the moment we've had Trump take every position around the if you could draw a circle he's been on every position in that circle and which means at times the very opposite. So even you know JD Vance has experienced this in the past.

Uh, Robert Barnes calls it pulling the rug. That just when you think you've reached an agreement, Trump pulls the rug out from under you. And I'm just saying that's where we need to caution this with uh while it's optimistic that the the likelihood that Trump could still pull the rug is not to be ruled out. Well, uh, I I and I do not disagree with that assessment, Larry, at all.

I I respect that. I completely respect that. 38 minutesBut I also think that from our point of view, I mean uh the point of view of this channel, uh we owe to our audience to report uh uh with integrity what we heard. Yeah.

And and and that is what we are doing exactly. We are not adding to it. We're not taking any away from it. In fact, I even disclosed where I got where I got it.

I got it from the man who is tasked by Shahif personally to write this announcement. He spoke to me on the phone uh with the permission obviously of of Sharif and everybody else and Moner and so forth that uh this is what I'm writing. This is what we believe is going to take place and wait for it. 24 to is the time frame within which we are going to announce it with with the permission of the Iranian leadership and PC and US leadership uh Trump obviously.

So uh when that happens uh we take one more step towards the end of this unwininnable war that has created nothing but catastrophe but has also created we must emphasize a new global order but Iran is now the dominant regional power and the US is out and the do and the petro dollar is on its way down. So it's a it's a very big significant news and we are privileged honored to be trusted with it and to bring it to the people who who subscribe to our channel and uh and deeply grateful to you and to Larry for analyzing it and giving your perspective on it. Okay, that's a wrap. Thank you.

[laughter] Yeah, just a reminder to everybody, please hit the like and subscribe button. Uh please check out the Substack and uh tell your friends about it. Uh you're going to get uh we give you the best information and analysis that we can give you things to think about and again as Pepe and Z have said, we'll see how things unfold in the coming days. Thanks for watching.

Thank you very much for coming to our great channel. We appreciate it. Uh, Pepe, go ahead and say the final word, please. No, no, no.

That's it. That that that's it. I am on a waiting sea mode already. Cheers.

Okay. You will be the first to know when that uh when that uh whatever announcement comes out. Uh as you know, I will be honored to receive it and I will immediately get it to you at whatever time it comes. And uh hopefully hopefully it confirms what we just said.

So, please hit the like and subscribe button. If you like what we do, go to our Substack channel for $5 a month. We will deliver it inside your mailbox twice a week and that will support us. Thank you very very much for being our our our very valued members.

Bye-bye.

Trump Must Admit Defeat in Iran — John Mearsheimer Explains Why
The Realist Lens
Aug 26, 2026

John Mearsheimer examines the Iran war and argues that the United States has failed to achieve the major objectives it set at the beginning of the conflict. In this analysis, he looks at regime change, Iran’s nuclear capabilities, ballistic missiles, and Tehran’s support for regional groups.

Mearsheimer breaks down the different strategies used by the United States, including the air campaign, naval blockade, and tit-for-tat escalation, while explaining why he believes these approaches failed to produce the desired outcome.

The discussion also explores the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. military power in the Middle East, Iran’s ability to retaliate, the risks to the global economy, and why negotiations may ultimately become the only realistic path forward.

Watch the full analysis to understand Mearsheimer’s argument about Iran, U.S. strategy, and the future of the conflict.



Transcript

The Iranians are more aware than ever that they're in the driver's seat. They're more aware than ever that President Trump is in deep trouble uh and that he needs an agreement. The West [music] is leading Ukraine down the primrose path. I mean, the Israelis are executing a genocide in Gaza.

It's not [music] China's fault that it wants to be powerful. So, if you get into trouble and you dial 911, there's nobody at the other end. Hi, this is John Mirshimer. Uh, and I'm back again with another episode.

Uh, and this time I want to talk about the Iran war. And what I'd like to argue here is that it's time for President Trump to settle this war, to reach an agreement with the Iranians to put an end to it. and in effect to accept defeat uh to recognize that you that that Iran has won this war uh and that we have lost the war. And the way I'd like to proceed is I'd first like to talk about the goals that the United States set out to achieve at the start of this war.

And then I'd like to talk about our failure to achieve any of those [clears throat] goals. And I'd like to describe how badly off we are in terms [clears throat] of having pursued these particular goals. And then I want to switch and talk about the military strategies that we have employed in pursuit of those goals. And of course, the argument that I'm going to make is that the different strategies that we have employed have failed to achieve the goals that we set out with in this war.

And I want to talk at some length about those different strategies and why they failed. And I'm [snorts] going to make the argument as will become clear that there were five potential strategies that the United States could pursue. It only pursued three of them, two it did not pursue. And I'll talk about those three strategies and why they failed.

And then I'll talk about the two strategies we didn't pursue and why we did not pursue them. And you want to keep in mind here that what I'm going to be constantly doing is talking about the relationship between the goals that we're pursuing and the strategies that we adopted or didn't adopt to achieve those goals. But let's start with the goals. When the war started, the United States, and this was true of the Israelis as well, had four goals.

The first goal was regime change in Thran. 3 minutesThe second goal was to make sure to eliminate Iran's ability to enrich uranium because if you can enrich uranium, you can rather easily make a nuclear weapon. The third goal was to eliminate u Ukraine's long range ballistic missile program. And the fourth goal was to basically get Iran to no longer support Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

Those were the four goals. And very importantly, I think regime change was the most important of those four goals because if you didn't achieve regime change, you really could not achieve the other three goals. So regime change was the numero uno goal, but you still had these three other very important goals that were in my opinion subordinated to that overarching goal. Now the question you want to ask yourself is where are we today in terms of those goals?

And let me make two different sets of arguments here. First of all, just looking at the four goals, we have achieved none of the four goals. None of them have been achieved and there's no evidence any of them are going to be achieved anytime soon. In addition to that, we are now in a situation which we were not in back on February 27th, the day before the war started, where Iran controls the straight of Hormuz.

and today as we speak has shut off the flow of traffic in and out of the straight of Hormuz. Furthermore, on February 27th, the day before the war, the United States had a robust alliance structure with the Gulf States in the region [snorts] and it had a serious set of military bases in the region. Today, those bases have been either badly damaged or destroyed. And the alliance structure that the United States had with the Gulf States has been basically torn to tatters.

To take this a step further, the international economy because of the blockade on the straight of Hormuz is in a very dangerous situation and there is a real risk of a worldwide depression if this war is not settled sometime soon. And then finally, I would note that China, which is America's principal adversary according to the Trump administration, has benefited enormously from this conflict. Uh so this is a situation where the United States has not only not achieved any of the four goals it set out with, it also has a number of other serious problems today that did not exist on February 27th, the day before the war started. Let me come at this from a different perspective.

If you look at the memorandum of understanding that President Trump signed with the Iranians on June 17th of this year, this memor memorandum of understanding was designed to shut the war down. [clears throat] What you see is that that was basically a surrender document. President Trump basically conceded every point that was an issue between the Iranians and the Americans. The way the document was set up, this is the memorandum of understanding, is that we would have a ceasefire upfront.

The the fighting would stop and the straight of would be opened up. And furthermore, the Iranians would be able to sell oil on the open markets, which had not been the case before the June 17th memorandum of understanding was signed. They could sell oil without having to worry about American sanctions. That was the first part of the agreement.

again to get a ceasefire number one and number two uh to open up the straight. Then there would be a 60-day negotiating period and at the end of that 60-day negotiating period there would be a decision on the nuclear issue. But it was very clear that the Iranians would maintain [clears throat] a nuclear enrichment capability which was at odds with one of the goals we had going into the war. Uh furthermore, it was clear that the United States would have to allow all of those frozen Iranian assets to go back to Iran.

Uh, and furthermore, reparations would have to be paid to the Iranians for all of the damage that was done to Iran in this war. And an enormous amount of damage was done. So, an enormous amount of money would have to be paid to the Iranians. uh and uh on top of all of this, the Iranians would be able to sell oil freely uh on world oil markets.

So all of this is to say that if you look at the memorandum of understanding, the United States conceded on every key issue. The Iranians prevailed. So in terms of the goals that we went into this war with, we failed to achieve any of them and we ended up much worse out much worse off after the war got going. Now the question you have to [clears throat] ask yourself is what happened here?

We had a set of different military strategies that we tried to use to achieve those four goals that we set out with. And the question you want to ask yourself is what were those strategies and why did they fail? Now, what I'd like to do is I'd like to frame the discussion in terms of what I think are the five possible strategies that the United States was presented with and then describe what happened and then analyze why the strategies didn't fail. So, I'm going to lay out the five strategies.

that I'm going to describe what happened from February 28th up to the present in terms of employing those strategies and then I'm going to analyze why they failed. Here are the five strategies. The first three involve air power. The fourth involves naval power and the fifth involves land power or armies.

Regarding air power, the first strategy is what I would call discriminate air campaign. Okay, a discriminate air campaign. And when I say discriminate, a discriminate air campaign is basically a strategic bombing campaign where you do not go after certain targets. In other words, you discriminate.

And in this case, a discriminant air campaign 11 minutesinvolves going after uh military targets, a handful of civilian targets and civilian infrastructure, but basically staying away from massive attacks on civilian infrastructure and staying away from the oil facilities in Iran. Now, when I say civilian infrastructure, this means staying away from bridges, staying away from attacking bridges, staying away from attacking power stations, and of course, staying away from attacking the oil facilities, the oil and gas facilities inside of Iran. This is what a discriminate air campaign, a discriminate strategic bombing campaign looks like. I contrast that with an indiscriminate air campaign.

An indiscriminate air 12 minutescampaign is where the United States and the Israelis go after all of the targets that I just described as being legitimate in a discriminate air campaign, but also going after civilian infrastructure, power stations, bridges, and going after oil facilities. In other words, targeting all of the possible targets inside of Iran. That's an indiscriminate air campaign as opposed to a discriminate air campaign. The third strategy is tit fortat.

And this is an air campaign as well, but it involves smallcale attacks where one side hits the other and then the other hits back. And that's what I call tit for tat. It's on a much smaller scale than either the discriminate or indiscriminate strategic bombing campaigns. Much more limited.

So those are the three strategies that involve air power. Then the the one strategy that involves naval power is a blockade, a maritime blockade. And in this case, the Iranians um are blockaded by the US Navy. Then the final option involves the army and this is a ground invasion.

This is a land attack against Iran. Uh the United States could uh try and conquer an island or two that belong to Iran in the Persian Gulf. It could United States could try to invade the uh Iranian mainland. Uh it could concentrate on all of the territory that Iran controls around the straight of Hormuz for the purpose of trying to open the straight of Hormuz with land power.

So those are the five strategies uh that uh the United States uh had on its menu. Now let me switch gears and describe which strategies the United States used at which points in time and then I want to analyze them. And of course, what I analyzed them, what I'm going to try to do is explain why those strategies failed to achieve the goals that the United States was pursuing when it started the war on February 28th. But to go to the description, on February 28th, when the United States launches the air war, which lasts until April 8th, it's basically a 40-day war.

The United States pursues a discriminate air campaign. They start off, as almost everybody acknowledges, with a shock and awe campaign that's designed to decapitate the regime. And in fact, the United States and the Israelis are successful at decapitating the regime. uh and they clearly launch a shock and awe strategy, but [snorts] it's all part of a discriminate air campaign.

It's very important to understand that with a few exceptions, the United States and the Israelis do not hit power plants, civilian bridges, or oil facilities and gas facilities in Iran. In other words, it's not an indiscriminate air campaign. It's a discriminate air campaign and it lasts 40 days. At the end of those 40 days, a ceasefire is put in place.

But it's very important to understand that right before right before the ceasefire on April 8th, 16 minutesPresident Trump was talking about putting Iran back in the stone age. On April 7th, he said, this is on April 7th, a whole civilization will die tonight. What's going on here is that President Trump over the course of the 40-day war is beginning to think about moving from a discriminate air campaign to an indiscriminate air campaign. That's on April 7th, he makes that comment about [snorts] a whole civilization dying.

Okay, that's on April 7th. Then on April 8th, he switches gears. And we've seen him do this many times now. He switches gears and he says it's time for a ceasefire.

Ceasefire comes on April 8th. Then there are actually negotiations. You remember when JD Vance went to uh Islamabad to 17 minutestalk with the Iranians. This was on April 11th and April 12th uh about putting an end to the war.

Remember, we have a ceasefire starting on April 8th. The 40-day bombing campaign has ended and April 11th, April 12th, Vice President Vance is talking with the Iranians about ending the war. It doesn't work. The negotiations fail.

The ceasefire basically remains in place. Very important to understand that. But what we do on April 13th, the following day, April 13th, is we decide to employ a naval blockade. Between April 13th and June 17th, the United States has a naval blockade on the Straight of Hormuz, which is effectively a naval blockade on Iran.

Then on June 17th, the United States signs the memorandum of understanding that I described earlier. As I told you, that was basically a surrender document. This is telling you in effect, and I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, that the blockade did not work. So, we sign on June 17th the memorandum of understanding with the Iranians and it looks like we're moving to put an end to the war.

What then happens um in early July is that the United States decides that it's going to violate the memorandum of understanding. It's very important to understand that article five of the memorandum of understanding says that Iran controls the straight of hormuz during the 60-day negotiating period. And you understand that once the memorandum of understanding is signed on June 17th, we then move into this 60-day period where the two sides are going to negotiate and deal with all those issues that are still on the table. And during this 60-day period, the memorandum of understanding makes clear that Iran controls the Gulf.

But the United States decides in early July that it's going to basically violate the agreement. And the United States is going to create with the Omanis a channel through the Strait of Hormuz that Iran doesn't control, that in effect, the United States controls. The Iranians say this is unacceptable. The Iranians start shooting at ships that go through that channel.

And of course, the United States retaliates and then Iran retaliates and then the United States retaliates. This is the tit fortat campaign. So, you see what's happened here. We had a 40-day air campaign, right?

40-day air campaign, which was a discriminate air campaign. That ended and then we went to the blockade and now we're involved in tit fortat. It starts on July 7th. That's when the tit fortat campaign starts and I would argue it goes up to about July 31st.

So the ceasefire is now over. Remember the ceasefire was on April 8th and you basically had a ceasefire involving Iran and the United States, Iran and Israel and uh the Gulf States and Iran. basically had a ceasefire from April 8th up until July 7th when the tit fortat starts. The tit fortat basically lasts from July 7th up until July 31st.

I would argue this past Friday. The Iranians and the Americans are going back and forth. Not every day, but almost every day between July 7th and July 31st. And then what happens uh on the 30th and on the 31st is President Trump begins to talk about going back to an indiscriminate air campaign.

He's basically once again talking about uh driving the Iranians back into the Stone Age. Uh and uh people this past weekend, this is August 1st, were August second, thinking that maybe President Trump is going to launch this indiscriminate air campaign. But what happens is at the end of the day on August 1st, he says that's not going to happen. Uh let's go back to negotiations, right?

So, you remember at the end of the 40-day bombing campaign, he had threatened to drive a whole civilization to its death. Remember, that's his rhetoric back then. He was talking back then about driving the Iranians back to the stone age as well. And here he is again doing that.

And in both cases, he didn't go that far. And in fact what he did was the next day he called for a ceasefire the first time April 8th and this time he said let's go back to negotiations which is another way of saying I think that he's interested now in another [clears throat] ceasefire so that he can negotiate. So that's my description of what happened. Now what we want to do is we want to analyze what happened and we want to pay very attent very very careful attention to why the discriminate air campaign the uh the blockade and the tit fortat all failed.

Those three strategies were all failed if you all failed. If you listen carefully to what I said, we went from discriminate air campaign to blockade to tit fortat. But we did not contemplate or move toward the land option. And we want to talk about why that's the case.

Nor did President Trump ever go to an indiscriminate air campaign, although he threatened it as I tried to make clear. and we want to know why he didn't do either of those two or employ either of those two strategies. Okay, so let's go to the discriminate air campaign, the 40-day campaign. Truth is, it just didn't work.

There was no evidence as that campaign wore on that the Iranians were going to throw up their hands and surrender. The shock and awe campaign, the decapitation strategy which came at the end came at the beginning didn't work and we continued to bomb. Uh most estimates say that the United States hit over 13,000 targets. You want to think about that.

This is not the Israelis. We can't get a good number for the Israelis, but the Americans alone hit 13,000 plus targets in that 40-day campaign. This is a strategic bombing campaign. But the Iranians were not showing any signs of quitting.

Furthermore, the Iranians made it perfectly clear during that campaign that they had the ability to retaliate. And retaliate they did. and they were inflicting massive punishment on American bases in the region, on America's Gulf state allies and on Israel itself. So the Iranians were doing quite well for themselves in the fight.

And all the time this is happening, people are deeply worried that the war goes on and on and on like this. That number one, the United States is going to run out of munitions because we only have a limited number of offensive munitions and defensive munitions to protect ourselves, our allies, and the Israelis against incoming ballistic missiles from Iran. So the inventory of offensive and defensive weapons is being run down. The Iranians show no signs of quitting and furthermore they are retaliating in serious ways to threaten the world economy.

So what does President Trump do? What President Trump does as we move towards the end of the 40-day war is that he threatens to go to an indiscriminate air campaign. Just think about that. He's thinking about going to an indiscriminate air campaign.

He's talking about bombing the Iranians back to the Stone Age because the discriminated air campaign has failed. and he sees this as the best alternative. But what happens is he does not pursue that strategy. He does not.

What he does is after threatening after threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilization, he then the next day declares a ceasefire. A ceasefire. He doesn't go up the escalation ladder. And the question you want to ask yourself is why doesn't he do this?

And the reason he doesn't do this is because the United States does not have escalation dominance. We've learned this in the 40-day war. The fact is that if President Trump goes to an indiscriminate campaign, that means he's going to hit bridges, he's going to hit power plants, he's going to hit desalination plants inside of Iran, he's going to hit their oil facilities, he's going to destroy their oil and gas facilities. The Iranians make it clear they're going to do the same thing to all the Gulf States, and they're going to do a lot of the same thing to Israel itself.

And President Trump understands full well he cannot prevent this. He understands that as he goes up the escalation ladder, the Iranians will go up the escalation ladder with them. And you want to remember that if in the event this were to happen and the Iranians were to destroy all of those desalination plants in the Gulf States and their oil and gas infrastructure, this would have devastating consequences for the international economy and that's the last thing that President Trump wants to have. So you see it makes no sense to go up the escalation ladder.

This is why an indiscriminate air campaign makes no sense. And it's why the next day after making those genocidal threats on April 7th, he goes to a ceasefire on the 8th. And the ceasefire is followed by negotiations. As I said, in Islamabad, this is where Vice President Vance meets with uh Iranian negotiators.

That fails and he has to do something. So what does he do? Does he go back to the air war? No.

He sticks with the ceasefire, but he employs a blockade. He employs a blockade and that starts on April 13th. Uh, and it runs until June 17th when you get the memorandum of understanding. But the question you want to ask yourself is, what good is the blockade?

And the answer is, it's basically no good. It doesn't work. Anybody who's studied blockades understands that blockades, if they ever work, take a long time to work. They take many, many months, if not years, to strangle a country the size of Iran.

" Therefore, having failed with the air war and that's the discriminate air campaign being unwilling to go to an indiscriminate air campaign having failed with the blockade on June 17th. President Trump signs the memorandum of understanding. And as I made clear at the top of the show, that's a surrender document. Okay.

after President Trump 30 minutessigns that agreement, uh, he can't bring himself to stick to it. The thought of the United States losing, the thought of Donald Trump losing a war that he started to Iran uh, is just unacceptable. So he begins he begins to challenge to undermine the memorandum of understanding. He begins to look for ways to put pressure on the Iranians again to get the Iranians to throw their hands up.

And this is the start of the tit fortat campaign, right? Uh, as I said to you, as soon as the Americans establish this channel in the straight of Hormuz, contrary to what's in article 5 of the memorandum of understanding, the Iranians start shooting at ships that are going through that channel. We retaliate with air attacks and the Iranians then retaliate against us. And of course, we retaliate.

They retaliate and we're going up the escalation ladder. But it's just tit for tat. And what you want to understand here is that a tit fortat air strategy is much less ambitious than that strategic bombing campaign that we waged during the first 40 days of the conflict. And you just say to yourself, if that strategic bombing campaign, even though it was a discriminating bombing campaign, when it discriminated in terms of the targets, it was still a substantial bombing campaign.

13,000 plus targets by the United States alone. Uh if that right couldn't bring the Iranians to their knees, why would anybody think that a tit fortat strategy is going to bring the Iranians to their knees? And in fact, it didn't. And in fact, the tit fortat strategy was causing the United States huge problems.

In fact, we were beginning to move our military assets out of the Persian Gulf back to Jordan and back to Israel. And what did the Iranians do? They started targeting Jordan. And they were doing substantial damage to American military assets in Jordan, which is outside the Persian Gulf.

All of this just shows you that escalation dominance, whether you're talking about the uh the the discriminate air campaign or the indiscriminate air campaign or you're talking about tit for tat, you go up the escalation ladder in either of those three cases and it's not clear that America wins. And in fact, it's clear to me that Iran wins. So the end result is that President Trump late on Saturday, this is August 1st, I believe it was August 2nd, uh in Iran, said, uh, I'm not going to try to bomb Iran back to the stone age. And what we now have to do is we have to go back to negotiations.

Now keep in mind here that there were two strategies that we never employed. We never employed the indiscriminate air campaign number one. And I explained why that was the case. We do not have escalation dominance as you go up the escalation ladder to that level.

Right? And then we did not pursue a land campaign. And let me say a few words about that. To actually conquer the straight of Hormuz, I believe would involve more than a 100,000 troops.

Would involve a huge fighting force uh and [clears throat] many Americans would die in the process. There is no way that President Trump is willing to do that. In fact, there's no way the American people would tolerate that, which of course is one of the reasons that President Trump never went down that road. We would need, in other words, a good 100,000 combat troops, maybe 150,000 combat troops in the Persian Gulf to conquer enough territory to control the Strait of Hormuz.

And if you were talking about conquering all of Iran the way we conquered all of Ukraine, excuse me, the way we conquered all of Iraq in 2003, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of troops. That was not going to happen. We were not going to try to conquer um all of you all of Iran. We were not even going to try to conquer enough territory to control the straight of Hormuz.

So what people ended up doing was talking about conquering an island or two in the Persian Gulf that belonged to Iran. But President Trump was not even willing to do that. And if you look at the number of combat troops that we had in the Persian Gulf, it's quite clear that we were never serious about even trying the land option. I would estimate that at the most we had 8,000 combat troops.

8,000 troops that you could use for land attack uh in the Persian Gulf at any point since February 28th. And 8,000 troops uh trying to conquer even an island in the Persian Gulf against the Iranians uh in the heat of the summer uh would be an almost impossible task. But furthermore, what if we did conquer an island? What would be the result?

What's the story that one might tell about how conquering an island uh puts an end to this war? How 36 minutesdoes conquering an island get the Iranians to throw their hands up? The answer is it doesn't. We have no land option here.

We don't have the troops. We don't have the stomach for a land war. uh and a minor attack on an island or landing somewhere on the coast of Iran uh has little effect on the outcome of the war. So there's no land option, number one.

[snorts] Number two, there's no u indiscriminate air option. strategic bombing of an indiscriminate sort going against the entire target set inside of Iran. That doesn't work either. So, you're left with three strategies.

A discriminate air campaign, which we tried and failed, a blockade, which we tried and failed, tit tit fortat, which we tried and failed, and here we are. So, the question is, what do we do moving forward? Well, it seems manifestly clear to me that we've tried all the strategies that are available and they have not worked unsurprisingly. And the two strategies that we have not tried are not a solution to the problem.

And to go back to the goals, [snorts] we have failed to achieve any of our goals up to this point. It's manifestly clear when you look at the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17th and when you just think about where we are today in terms of those goals and in terms of who controls the stray uh and what's happened to our basing structure, what's happened to our alliance structure and the go it's clear that we've lost we have failed to 38 minutesachieve our goals and worse and this is reflected in the June 17th memorandum of understanding. As I said to you, if you look carefully at that memorandum, it's a surrender document. So, what is President Trump going to do now?

Now, I would point out that when it comes to President Trump, you can never be absolutely certain what he will do and in a situation where he's desperate, and he is desperate because he is surely sophisticated enough to know that he is in deep trouble in this war and that he is in effect lost the war. So, he may lash out and he may do something foolish. But assuming that's not the case, he really has no choice at this point. but to pursue another memorandum of understanding to try to get a deal with the Iranians as quickly as possible.

I want to point out two things here. One is President Trump would have been much better off cutting a deal immediately after the April 8th ceasefire when the bombing campaign failed. The discriminate air campaign failed on April 8th. He moved to a ceasefire.

He should have then tried to cut a deal. Furthermore, when the blockade failed and he signed the memorandum of understanding on June 17th, he should have stuck to that memorandum of understanding and he should have gone to great lengths to work out a deal with Iran to put an end to the war. But as I told you, he didn't do that. Instead, he uh tried to violate article five of the memorandum of understanding.

We got in this tit fortat strategy for almost the entire month of July. It failed. And now I'm telling you it is time to cut a deal. Although I'm arguing that it would have been smarter to cut the deal earlier.

One final point on this is that it's going to be tougher to get a memorandum of understanding from the Iranians moving forward uh that is as good as the memorandum of understanding that the president signed on June 17th. Uh the Iranians are more aware than ever that they're in the driver's seat. They're more aware than ever that President Trump is in deep trouble uh and that he needs an agreement. So, they're going to drive a hard bargain, a harder bargain for sure than they drove in the runup to the June 17th memorandum and a harder bargain I believe than they would have driven uh back in April after a ceasefire was declared on the 8th.

So there's no question that President Trump and the United States uh is in really deep trouble here and getting a peace agreement is going to be uh not an easy task. U but the bottom line and this is where I'll stop is that President Trump has no choice. He has no military strategy that he can employ to reverse the dire situation that he finds himself in. The fact is he foolishly started a war uh on February 28th that he was destined to lose.

Many of his advisors understood full well that the strategy that he was employing, this is the discriminated air campaign that I described earlier, was destined to fail. And fail it did. And there was no viable alternative strategy. And there still is no viable alternative strategy.

So, it's time to cut a deal. But that is not going to be easy for him to do. So let's just hope that things work out that in the month or months ahead he's able to put an end to this war once and for all. Thank you very much uh for listening to my video and uh I look forward to the next one.

Scott Ritter: Russia UNMASKS Desperate CIA Plot as Iran HAMMERS US Navy
Danny Haiphong
Started streaming 54 minutes ago #iranwar #iran #trump

Former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter discusses the mysterious fall out from the CIA's rushed visit to Moscow as Iran lands a major blow on the US Navy no one is talking about.