Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: My Week in Tehran.

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Alastair Crooke: My Week in Tehran.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Call 800-511-4620. 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend, the judge sent you. Al Stare, good day to you, my friend, and thank you very much for joining us. You just spent a week in the Iranian capital. Are you able to gauge, if there is one, a consensus of the Iranian people, ordinary folk or elites toward the United States? Yes, we spoke really, and there were no restrictions put out based on this, from the whole, the, if you like, the more the internationalist foreign policy, to more people on the right, the principalists. So we spoke to a lot of people. But the first thing that strikes you coming to back to Iran, I've been there many times in the past over the years, but what is striking so much

are two things. Firstly, how old this conflict is, how old what is happening today, the talks that are taking place in Oman with Witkoff, the origins of these really go back a long, long way to the 70s at least. And if you, there is the Museum of the Savva, which was the security service of the Shah at that time. And what was all that about? It was about Russia, anti-Russia driven by the United States, that they should have this, anti-Russia driven by the United States that they should have the, if you like, this sinister organization. You can see cell 14 at the Savak, which was the cell the present supreme leader actually occupied when he was there on several occasions. The torture there was horrific.

And some of the women that were held there were tortured for wearing the hijab at that stage. How things change, how the wheel turns, if you like, in this context. And the other thing is, you know, you're dealing with something quite different from other parts of the Middle East, perhaps with few exceptions, but you're dealing with a society that is basically 5,000 years old.

So we in the West think two years is the long term. They regard two centuries as the long term, or as the short term. So it gives a very different perspective on what's happened. And all of the origins of what we're talking about really date back to the 70s and to the Hudson Institute and Herban and Kahn. And here's our views both on nuclear issues together with the Rand organization, Albert and Urban and Kahn. And here's our views both on nuclear issues together with the Rand organization, Albert Wallstucker.

And so we're going right back to that period. And there were two things that came out of that period, which were very strong. One was the Hudson Institute's close connection with Scoop Jackson, who hated Russia. And the aim of this was to drive Russia out of the Middle East. That was actually the first point.

It was something that Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz used to say very clearly. And that was the aim of, if you like, the clean break document was how to drive Russia out of the Middle East and to make it, if you like, an American preserve. And the other thing was the doctrine about nuclear issues. I'm oversimplifying it, but essentially that doctrine boiled down to something quite simple. America did not have the ability to mount huge armies to police this area.

So one, it needed Israel as its foreign legion and it needed proxies, the jihadists that were used by Brzezinski from the time I was in Afghanistan onwards to shape the region. But the main point was that civilizations such as the United States, in the last instance, had to rely on nuclear weapons. They had to rely on nuclear weapons against adversaries who did not have them. And that's what it's all about, essentially, in Iran.

No, Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, but could do, possibly. And so the whole of the structure goes right back, if you like, and it is an extension of that 70s view that the United States could win a war using nuclear weapons. We've heard this from others on the show that was the condition, but it implied that adversaries should not have nuclear weapons. And so that has been the policy for a long time.

And that is what we're seeing. And here, I think again, this-term view of Iran is very important because they look on this. There may be a deal with America. There may be a deal with America. And we've seen a lot of shifts in Trump commentary and the commentary of Witkoff. But before these recent talks, Witkoff came down very firmly. And in an interview with Breitbach, Witkoff said very plainly,

no enrichment at all, not ever, in Iran. Those were his words. No centrifuging, whatever. All that he would concede it was possible to allow Iran was the Bush Air reactor could continue producing energy provided it had no enrichment capacity and no centrifuges. So this is again a big shift because as you recall not so long ago, Witkoff was talking about them having, it was all right to have enrichment, but very

monitored and it was inspected by the IEA. Now it's moved to a rather different perspective. So the Iranians have various scenarios which they think will happen. They don't really expect a deal, especially after this last comment by Witkop, if that is what is the policy, and Witkop added. And of course, its missile program is a separate discussion, a secondary discussion.

So the view is that it's toss up whether there will be any sort of agreement with the United States. Maybe things are changing. Maybe because we see very clearly and we see Thomas Friedman's piece that he wrote in the New York Times, in which he was saying that in fact, you know, the policy of the Israeli government is preventing us from being able to bring about the sort of outcomes in Iran and China that United States security policy would like to see, because the whole world is looking at what's happening in Gaza. Netanyahu's policy there is damaging the US interests,

it's damaging heavily the interests. When it seemed to be working, the sort of unreserved violence, it seemed to be all right and the administration seemed to tolerate it. But now it was quite clearly getting in the way of having a policy against Iran. So the Iranians are not sure whether the threats of attack on Iran will actually manifest themselves because there is a shift taking place. And I think it's a profound shift for this reason in the sense that what they're saying is the deeper sense we have of morality is not the morality. There is another morality that we should come to accept, which is the morality that killing civilians

and killing women and children is acceptable and that that is a legitimate morality if you want to win a war and not war is moral to achieve that sort of victory, whereas Christian ethics are not necessarily the moral solution. Let me ask you about some of your observations in your week there. How burdensome are the sanctions, which of course were not imposed by Joe Biden, but by federal statute, by an act of the Congress. How burdensome are they on everyday life in Iran? I mean, well, those sanctions also go back to the Vanik, I forget his name, the Vanik sanctions,

which were the prototype for the sanctions on Russia and were the prototype of sanctions on Iran. No, the economy is okay, but the electronic siege is pretty much complete. It is a nightmare. Coming onto your program, I had the whole resources of Press TV trying to find a way around the external restrictions on entering into the internet and being able to upload onto your program. And it's very hard to go onto Telegram and many of the things that just, you know, Twitter, you can do it by some VPNs, not other VPNs. So, but internally, the internet works fine amongst Iranians and within their system, their internal system, it's okay.

It's only when you try and cross the frontier of the sanctions and the electronic sanctions that difficult. Economically, you can't say the place is booming, no, but it is not suffering too badly. And people are reasonably relaxed. My wife, Aisling, was able to go around quite freely. I was busy with a very intense program that they had laid on. But she was able to go and walk in the parks, go on a local bus, go down to the bazaar, buy the food, see the food.

And the people are quite relaxed. Did she have to dress in any prescribed garb or could she dress in her normal western clothing when out in the open in Tehran? Well, she did use hijab going around, but more as a courtesy to people. But the hijab is not an issue in Iran. She could have done and did take it off periodically, but she wanted to stay by the courtesy of observing the norms.

But when you're in, if you like, urban parts of Tehran, some 40% of women are not using the hijab. Right. Maybe 30% if you take the whole city. It's less in the countryside. Maybe about 20% of women do not have the hijab in the countryside. But there's no one there bothering you or bustling you. There aren't any police around.

And if you, when she went into the park, she could see people playing music and dancing in the park and they were dancing Arabic music to Arabic music, men and women together, none of them wearing, none of the women wearing hijab. So it's much more relaxed. I did not see and she did not see, as I say, going quite widely around the city, going to parks and using the public bus system to travel. She saw no sense of, you know, a sort of heavy-handed police. We didn't actually see any police at all. And no one came up and sort of corrected you if you took a hijab off. Can Iran defend itself effectively

from a joint attack by Israel and the United States? Yes. I think it can, of course, you know, there's no such thing as 100% in any war, there's going to be hits and you're going to sustain it. But they are very confident in their defense position. And that's why they're not sure. There may be agreement, maybe not, but they actually do not see the question of an agreement with the US

as connected to whether there will be military action taken against them. They see this as two disconnected issues, by which I mean it's possible that if you like the Israeli first element, the deep state, the basic deeply buried architecture of the deep state will require an attack on Iran irrespective of whether there's a deal or not a deal. It is a separate issue because it's an internal American question ultimately. And so all these shifts taking place in America that I just was talking about, the Freemanars article, Marjorie Taylor Greene, all these sort of shifts are quite important, changing the sort of the moral situation, but effectively making the administration. It was Trump wonder if he can achieve his objectives in the region, because it is becoming an obstacle, the slaughter in Gaza and the general image

of whether it is Lebanon or Syria are actually creating an adverse situation in which United States cannot reach its security objectives vis-a-vis Iran, Russia, and China. And as I say, the Russia and Iranian thing have been interlinked for 50 years or more. This question, Iran damaging and neutering Iran was always part of the project against Russia. It was always the Mekinda project about undermining the heartland of Asia. And Iran is seen as one vital element in that.

So this is an old war. And so Iran takes a long view on this. And their view is essentially that there are a number of alternatives. It may be that America just decides, even if there is no deal, not to attack. Why? there are a number of alternatives. It may be that America just decides, even if there is no deal, not to attack. Why?

Because they've seen what happened in Yemen. If they look more carefully, it's fine when it's just language, it's fine. You know, oh, we'll destroy Iran and it'll be nothing. It'll be smoldering ruins and so on. But when it comes to actually having to do it, you have to look more closely. Right. And they may well conclude that it's not worth the candle to do it. But the other thing is they might do a sort of theatrical public relations attack,

like they've done in Yemen, where they've really achieved nothing, and then declare victory and say Iran has exceeded and has accepted all our terms and Think do you think that the neo cons really believe? Iran is a threat to the national security of the United States Are they just saying this because they're wedded at the hip to Netanyahu? Well, this goes back to the sort of deepest structure of the deep state, which has always been the absolute primacy of having a bipartisan policy of complete support for Israel and bipartisan policy of, if you like, undermining and fracturing Russia.

Now China comes, but just Israeli nationalists, who I think very much that these are the fundamental elements and have been such for 50 years. And further back, you can go right back to the absorption of the Galen organization into CIA with its fierce anti-Russia commanded by the whole element of German intelligence, which was the basis of CIA at the outset because they didn't have the resources. So General Reinhard Galen, an SS officer and the advisor to the leader of Germany at that time, became the important element. And most of intelligence shortly after that period was coming, if you like,

from these former German intelligence officers. Seventy percent, it's estimated, came from them. So this push, as I say, is so deeply embedded in the architecture of American policy that many people endorse it, even if they don't like what's happening in Gaza. They don't like what is going on in, if you like, in the region, in Lebanon. But hasn't this sort of backfired because today there is Russia, Iran, China, I'm going to use your phrase, common vision. Is there not? Yes, precisely. We're not moving. I don't think we're moving to a multipolar world. We're moving to bipolar on the one hand, the United States and its acolytes in Europe, but on the other hand, we're moving to China,

Russia and Iran operating as a single unit, not in a sort of defense, formal defense back, but they are coordinating, cooperating precisely on every aspect of how do we meet the next challenge coming from the United States as a unit, as a collective, if you like, entity. So it is really a new form of policy. And they're seeing, you know, the weakness of Israel. And, you know, Freedman's article was basically saying, oh, well, it's all Netanyahu. Get rid of Netanyahu and then there's no problem.

Well, that's a facile way of looking at it because, you know, 70%... I've been saying this before, 70% of Israelis support what Netanyahu is doing. Well, is the reported breach between Trump and Netanyahu real? I mean, look at the snub to Netanyahu that the world will see this week as Trump visits his neighbors, but not him.

It looks from all those articles and the things that I've seen. And I was deeply skeptical about it. I thought it was reality TV rather than anything so serious. But I don't think this should divert us. This is not a diversion. Yes, you know, many who can be blamed for, if you like, America's deteriorating situation everywhere in the global South, in Africa, as a result of what the rest of the world has seen taking place in Gaza. And that they've now realized that this is actually damaging to Trump's whole project and to his probably to his midterm election results. And so I think there may be that sort of shift, but is that going to be made into a different

policy? Is what we hear from Witkoff in the Breitbart article, then the policy towards Iran? Because if that's the policy and it doesn't shift again, if there's no further back, right, then it won't shift again, if there's no further backtrack, then it won't succeed. I don't believe that Iran will accept to remove, have, if you like, all of its infrastructure of enrichment pulled out and destroyed. And they will be allowed nothing. So, but as I say, they're not, there's not a sort of, there's no sort of sense of anxiety or panic or anything.

They believe that if there's no deal, then they will accept the risks for no deal. And if that means conflict with the United States, so be it. That will be the policy. Well, you and I have been on the air. Chris has run a poll of the folks watching us. The question is, how much of a threat do you think Iran poses to the United States? The options are moderate threat, major threat, minimal threat, no threat at all.

77%, no threat at all. 17% minimal threat, major threat, 3% moderate threat, 2%. So three quarters, no threat at all. I'm going to guess that you would have voted that way yourself. It's completely no threat because Iran does not threaten or challenge the United States directly in any way. It's only a threat if you see Israel as, if you like, the foreign legion of the United States, and as the foreign legion cannot be touched and must dominate the region. This is entirely an exercise in actually normalizing the whole of the Middle East with Israel,

so that Israel is primus over Paris. And that is not going to be acceptable even to Saudi Arabia, even to Gaza. And so that part of the whole project of Trump is threatened by coming apart, not because Iran is threatening the United States, but because of the actions of Israel already clashing with, you know, the Western idea of morality, that you don't kill women, you don't kill children. This goes back, it's not a question of laws or something. Shakespeare said very clearly described in one of his poems when King Takwin was going down the corridor to rape Lucretia. And as he moved down the corridor, he knew that this would destroy his soul and bring heaven and earth down on his head for the action he was taking. This is not something that is particularly Christian

or particularly Muslim or anything. These are the deepest, if you like, structures within the human being. And so somehow, you know, whatever your cultural background, the idea of children being blown apart and body parts lying across the ground is just outrageous and unacceptable. But this is now the threat, not Iran, this is now the threat

to not threatening directly American people, but it is threatening Trump's ability to bring about the policy outcome that he wanted to achieve. Last question, the Qatari plane gift. The West is murmuring, the media is murmuring this morning that Trump is going to receive a $400 million jumbo jet, Air Force One from Qatar. Trump says he's not receiving it. The Defense Department is receiving it. There are serious legal and constitutional questions about a gift of that magnitude while

the United States is negotiating with Qatar. How do you see this? I mean, it's no really different to what has been happening with Israel. It's the same argument going on in Israel about Netanyahu and his officials' contacts with Qatar who were being paid with Qatar, Qatar money and getting gifts from Qatar. When Netanyahu's wife was in, I think, Florida for some months, she was staying in a Ghatari-owned hotel.

No one sort of really brings us up. But Ghata has played this role. It plays, uses money for its geopolitics. The Syrian, if you like, disaster was largely financed by Qatar. It's not, it's, you know, you have to sup with a long spoon, as the Arabs say about such things. Yes, yes. He who dines with the devil must sup with a long spoon. Thank you, Elstair. Great conversation. Glad you're back home safe and sound and had safe travels. Thank you very much for joining us today. As always, we'll look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you. Thank you, Judge. And coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning, it's our regular Monday at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern at 1130, Larry Johnson at three o'clock, Scott Ritter and at 430, Professor Jeffrey Sacks. Judge Napolitano, thank you for voting. Those of you who voted will keep the voting lines open a little bit longer. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC