Piers Morgan Uncensored - “Trump HUMILIATED!” Putin Rejects US Ceasefire & Houthis ATTACK Saudi Arabia

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

President Donald Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian fuel risks injecting billions into Moscow’s war machine, weakening Ukraine’s position and adding to the pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky.  As the fallout from the US-Israeli war with Iran spreads, Trump’s proposed “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine appears to have done little to calm tensions, with Russian forces striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure shortly after Kyiv signalled its willingness to comply. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthi rebels are escalating attacks on Saudi oil tankers and energy facilities, with drones and missiles also targeting Riyadh’s international airport. As oil prices surge and instability spreads across the region, Trump’s efforts to ease pressure at the pump risk producing the opposite result. Piers Morgan is joined by political scientist and global security scholar Robert Pape; Robert Harward, former Deputy Commander of US Central Command and member of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Iran Policy Project; Alan Eyre, former Persian-language spokesman for the US State Department; Aaron Maté, journalist with The Grayzone; and Mohammed Marandi, professor at the University of Tehran, to debate the escalating conflict and its global consequences. Then, Piers welcomes History Uncensored hosts Bianca Nobilo and Tim Marshall to Uncensored. As the world faces mounting geopolitical turmoil, are the lessons of history being ignored - or is history repeating itself? (00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:37) Robert Pape: “Most dangerous period since the war began" (00:05:36) Aaron Maté on why the Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia (00:14:16) Putin offers a one-day ceasefire for Ukrainian elections (00:17:22) Alan Eyre: Will Trump end up with a worse Iran deal than Obama? (00:22:23) Zelensky hits back at Trump and Elon Musk over Ukraine’s leadership (00:25:13) Should the Fort Hood shooter’s execution be live-streamed? (00:29:50) Professor Marandi on the Houthis and Saudi Arabia (00:36:43) Robert Pape on the danger of moral certainty in war (00:43:54) History Uncensored’s Bianca Nobilo and Tim Marshall join (00:51:24) Has Trump ignored the lessons of history? (00:54:07) The AI threat: Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking’s warning Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Praise me to Allah. And I say, I do, I say, man, you guys, you're really, you're crazy. What's your response, Professor Miranda? That's the, those are the words of a lunatic. The decision by President Trump to lift U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel is a desperate measure with perverse consequences. Billions will now pour into the Russian war machine, which the U.S. and his allies have spent billions to repel.

It clearly weakens Ukraine's position as it fights for a survival, and it's shames President Zelensky in his military for the global spike in oil prices, which is in fact clearly the result of the war in Iran. Trump announced a so-called energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in a true social post at the weekend. The problem was that neither side knew anything much about it,

and Putin now appears to be doing what he's done many times before, embarrassing the US president. Russia bombed the Ukrainian power plant almost immediately after the apparent ceasefire announcement. Today, Russia said that Ukraine deserves no respite and attacked six energy facilities across the country. Last night, Russian oil refineries were not burning. But at midnight, a Russian jet power jet power jet fuel

a gas production facility in Ukraine. So there were Russian violations of the energy ceasefire announced by President Trump. Well, the unintended consequences of the U.S. Israeli war in Iran, sewing chaos on multiple fronts. Yemen's rebel Houtis have been targeting Saudi oil tankers in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait for several weeks now. It's a leaf from Iran playbook

and a major escalation in a brutal civil war that has raged for 12 years. Now they're attacking Saudi Arabia itself a barrage of drones and missiles this weekend targeted not only Saudi oil facilities but Rehads International Airport. Trump's social media diplomacy this weekend was supposed to calm things down a bit

and relieve the prices at the pumping time for the mid-term elections. Instead, a mess that is partly of his own making, is slipping further and further out of control. Well, joining me to break down a dramatic three days in two of the world's most consequential conflicts. Robert Pape is the political scientist and global security scholar. Robert Harwood, he's the former deputy commander of US Central Command, a member of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America's Iran Policy Project. Alan Eyre, the former Persian spokesman to the US State Department,

and Aramarte, the analyst and journalist with the grey zone. So a stellar panel to talk about what is turning out to be a very consequential week potentially. So welcome to all of you. Robert Payne, welcome back to Uncensored. What is going on here? You've got the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia. You've got Trump doing deals with Putin. There's a lot happening.

Is there a sort of overarching theme that you can pick up that makes any sense? Yes. What we are in is the spiral phase of the escalation trap, where escalation is happening horizontally, and that is bringing in more actors, and vertically at almost the same time. This is one of the most dangerous periods in the next few weeks, probably still more dangerous than since the war began. This is not a calming period. This isn't just another part of the summer. And a big part of the reason is because each of these actors now fears being hit first. And that fear makes striking first seem rational. And on top of that, civilians are now directly in the crosshairs.

We're not talking about just striking first against oil targets, just rising, increasing the price of gas. We are now talking about, as the Houthis have just announced, airspace is a theater of operations. What that means, peers, is the risks that the next target is not going to be just an airline terminal, but an airliner itself is going up. Yeah, Robert Hayward, sorry, welcome to UnsenSense. I'm just finding some of this quite mystifying. Why would Donald Trump want to publicly align himself with doing deals with Vladimir Putin right now? Well, again, the president's, I think, number one objective is to drive down costs for the American taxpayer

to make sure affordability and energy and needs are stuff they can afford. So I think that was his motivation behind his current offering or deal with Russia. But I've got to go back to something the doctor just mentioned, my brother Robert there, of the players in this thing. And you're watching this synchronization maybe intentionally or not and more opportunistic, where this is a rejection of the West, not only by the Houthis of the Iranians, but by others such as Russia and China. So this is all a line. Ukraine and Iran are aligned because it's part of the evil axis going after U.S. and Western interests, sometimes under the hat of radical Islam, but in other ways is also.

So at the end of the day, I focus on this at the broader scale and the ramifications that is the east versus the west, is somewhat the new Cold War front we're in now, and you're seeing a lot of players getting into the action. Yeah, Aaron Martin, welcome back to the sensitive. I mean, it just strikes me that a lot of them are looking at what Iran has done with a strait of four moose

and doing the mass and working out, if you control a little straight of full moose, water through which a lot of tankers go with the world's energy, then you may as well have a nuclear weapon. And you're seeing the Houthis trying to seize control of this second straight now. If they do that and have the same control over it, the Iranians have exercised over the Strait of Hormuz, then the ability of Saudi Arabia to get its energy out becomes massively curtailed. And the longer this goes on, the more pressure on all of the Gulf states, particularly with the energy issue, but also the safety and security issues, right?

Because they've been trying to build new business models for all these states based around safety and sunshine and tourism and entertainment and sport. Well, if you're having your airports blown up or your oil refinery is blown up, as we've seen in Qatar and, of course, the airport now in Riyadh, it becomes very, very difficult to sustain that business model, doesn't it? It does. But why is Ansar al-a-a-Huthi. the Houthis engaged? in this. They were attacked by Saudi Arabia over the summer when Saudi Arabia bombed an airport

in Yemen, therefore ending a relative period of calm between the two countries. And it reignited a war that's been happening now for more than a decade. Recall that this began under the Obama administration when Saudi Arabia goes to Washington and asks for permission to attack Yemen because back then, Ansar al-A, the Houthis had overthrown a Saudi ally. And there's a long-wring dispute there in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Parts of Saudi Arabia used to be a part of Saudi Arabia. Yemen and Saudi wanted to retake control of a region that it's long dominated. And so Obama gave Saudi Arabia permission to attack Yemen because it was engaged in diplomacy with Iran and it couldn't afford to lose another Middle East ally at a time when Israel was

opposing its diplomacy with Iran. It's very hard for a president to engage in peace talks with an adversary. It's very easy to make war. So Obama gave Saudi Arabia the green light. The result was a disaster. Hundreds of thousands of killed near famine-like conditions, millions of, and, you know, displaced. Saudi Arabia, I think, made a very fullest decision to reignite this war in July by bombing Yemen. And now, Ansar al-A has responded. And all of this is made more dangerous

by Trump's unprovoked regime-change war on Iran, which Iran also wants to stop. And let's say the overarching theme here. The U.S. has been hostile to diplomacy for a long time, has engaged in acts of aggression against Iran, supported Saudi Arabia's attack on Yemen. And rather than engage in diplomacy, which is always an option. Iran now is offering and mediate between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The U.S. continues to fuel the fire by continuing this regime change war against Iran, and, of course, backing Israel's mass murder against the people of Palestine. Alan, do you think if President Trump had his time again? Would he say no to Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion that they join up and attack Iran in February?

Well, I think to an extent a lot of people overplay the role Netanyahu had to a large extent. He was pushing on an open door. Now, if the question becomes knowing what a total strategic fiasco, this unnecessary war, has been, and how specious his original concept of how it would go has turned out to be, would he do it again? I certainly hope not. This issue, Robert Pape, of the diesel, I mean, this deal that Trump's done, it seems incredibly symbolic for reasons which baffle me, why he'd want the symbolism of doing a deal with Putin. right now. Because the amount they're talking about is minuscule, really, to the needs of Americans for diesel. It's inconsequential. It seems very tokenistic, the whole thing. What is going on here?

Why do it? It's very straightforward, Pierre. What's happening is the ship is leaking, the MAGA ship is leaking, and it's leaking votes fast. And one of the key reasons is because of diesel, and it's because non-college-educated MAGA voters are very big into trucking. And so they're consuming diesel. So President Trump doesn't just have a general interest in reducing prices. He has a very specific political interest in at least giving the appearance that diesel is coming down. And that is for straightforward domestic political reasons. In fact, it's really quite stunning that he hasn't been already on that six weeks ago. Yeah. Robert Howard, at the backdrop of all this is the politics, which is the midterm elections

coming up very fast now in about three weeks. In a polymarket is asking how long the U.S.-Iran ceasefire will continue for the remainder of October high, they reckon, 95% to October the 15th, then drop into 79% by the end of the month after the midterms a significant drop. November 15th, down to 60%. November 30th down to 43%. The suggestion being that Trump will try and keep a ceasefire in place until the midterms, but then after that, all bets are off. What's going to happen with this Iran war?

Because just from the outside, it looks to me, the Iranians, the regime remains intact. The IRGC remain apparently in control. The people haven't risen up at all. They still seem to have broad control of Australia for Moose. now got the secondary straight issue with the Houthis. What is going to happen here? Well, Pierce, there's no defined ceasefire. The president's strategy, this administration has been focused on the financial strangulation.

And they believe at the end of the day that long-term strategy will drive internal dissent in Iran. And you're seeing impact on that right now. So he's in this unique position where he does. doesn't necessarily have to do anything kinetic. There's no offensive operations. Now, if there's a strike on a boat or they see a missile launched and they see the opportunity to hit using five military power, they will do that. But I think they're good to sit steady, wait until the midterms play out and then look at

what their strategy is thereafter. And don't forget, they can use military power to further restrict Iran's finance. and power situation. If they went after refineries inside Iran, then Iran runs out of gas. But the problem it seems to me with that, Robert Howard, is that that's all very well. But what the Iranian regime has shown is very adept at

is the moment anything like that happens, they do the same thing but to their neighboring Gulf states causing enormous problems. I mean, the Qataris had one of their big plants here. And it's caused a lot of damage there, enormous economic damage as well as actual damage to the energy supplies. If the United States and Israel go and attack more of the refineries in Iran, they will simply respond as they've shown their willingness to do by attacking refineries all over the Gulf states. And that would be chaos. Again, back to your initial question, though.

What is their strategy ceasefire or not? they're in the position where they don't think or believe they have to strike. The financial stradulation play out its course. And as you saw the Houthi strike on the airport, that may have been messaging to Saudi, hey, we can hit your critical infrastructure. So the administration may find themselves in a quid pro pro where Iran or the Houthis initiate strikes. As the doctors noted before, some of the critical infrastructure. and we know the refineries in Saudi.

So they may be following in kind as opposed to initiating. So these are all options that I think the president will address after the midterm elections. And he'll have to see how far his financial stradulation is going on. And you've seen the comments by Secretary Bacent, who's been very clear on this of what their strategy, what their approach is, shut down their commercial airspace, shut down their banks, their ability to move forward. So we're seeing the ramifications of that and we'll see where we sit at the end of the midterms.

Yeah, Aramate, as we're talking, Vladimir Putin's reportedly offered the US a one-day ceasefire in the Ukraine war for the specific purpose of holding elections. The comments have been perceived as a further embarrassment to Trump after announced an energy ceasefire and this new deal for Russian diesel.

Look, Putin's up to all his old tricks and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. Obviously, Trump and Elon Musk and others have been calling for a change of leader in Ukraine. They want Zelensky gone, someone who can do a deal. Zelensky's response is, well, you know, no thanks. We're trying to save our country here. And we thought you were with us. What's going on?

Well, I have a different take. What's been going on is that Ukraine's been exploited for a very long time for a practice war against Russia. And now we're seeing the results. Ukraine can't defend itself against Russian missiles. They're heading into a very, very scary winter where their energy infrastructure is under attack, and it's a tragedy. And I'm sympathetic to Zelensky when he says that he can't hold elections when he's under bombardment. Fair enough.

But I think the overall point here is that there were opportunities to end this war a long time ago. There was a peace deal negotiated between Ukrainian and Russian officials in the first weeks of the war, which undermines this narrative that Russia wanted to wipe Ukraine off the map and ended sovereignty when there were immediately peace talks and they were successful. A Ukrainian negotiator, Alexander Chali, said, we found a very real compromise. Well, what happened? The U.S. and U.S. and U.K. stood in the way and told Zelensky that we're not going to back you up if you make a peace deal with Russia because they thought that they could hand Russia a major defeat on the battlefield.

That's come at the cost of many, many Ukrainian lives and quite likely Ukraine's long-term future. I don't know what Russia would accept now. I think it might be even too late for negotiations. I just has to be recognized that all this could have been avoided had Ukraine's long-term. sponsors cared more about Ukraine's long-term future than about their goal to use Ukraine to bleed Russia. And heading into winter, it's a very scary prospect. And I want to make one comment on Iran because the previous speaker accurately said the strategy now is financial strangulation. That's accurate.

What does that really mean? It's called sadism. It means imposing a blockade on Iran, imposing crippling sanctions that make life for ordinary Iranians, not the government, ordinary Iranians much more difficult, harder to afford food, harder to afford medicine. And not only is that, I think, cruel and immoral, it's also a strategy that hasn't worked. This has been the policy for a very, very long time. The Obama administration tried it.

They had harsh sanctions on Iran as well. But they realized that it wasn't going to work in terms of cutting off Iran's nuclear program. So they engaged with diplomacy instead. And that was successful. The deal was working. Even Trump's own State Department certified in this first term that Iran was respecting,

the JCPOA. Trump can't tolerate diplomacy with Iran because his goal for a long time, similar to what the U.S. goal has been in Ukraine with regards to Russia, has been regime change. Regime change in Moscow, regime change in Tehran.

And it's always the civilians who have to suffer the costs of these policies. Alan Ed, in 2011, you became the first ever Persian-language spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State. You were part of the Obama administration's negotiating team for the Iran nuclear deal, and now at the Middle East Institute.

extremely well qualified to discuss what's been going on. You know, the Trump narrative was always that the Obama deal with Iran, the nuclear deal was a disaster and a fiasco. Is it highly likely now that the United States will end up with a worse deal with Iran? If we're lucky, I think it's more likely we won't get any deal. I mean, the Obama deal, the JCPOA, satisfied. It was enough. It put the Iranian nuclear program in a box so we could deal with other issues.

Again, negotiation is a situation where both sides walk away unhappy. You know, as President Obama said, if he had had his way, he would not have left one centrifuge spinning. He decided to allow a certain measure, very low levels of uranium enrichment with very crude centrifuges. That's one of the reasons why we were able to get a deal that put Iran's nuclear program in a box. President Trump unilaterally ripped that up in 2018. We've had two wars since then. The Iranian nuclear infrastructure was blown up in the last war, the 2025 June war. They haven't tried to rebuild it. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, they could now be more determined to build a nuclear weapon than they were before these two wars. Before these two wars, U.S. intelligence,

and this has been out in open source, has said they were a nuclear hedge state. They weren't actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. That might not well be the case going forward as they need strategic deterrence in their eyes. All they have gotten out for strategic deterrence is control of the strait and the threat of bombing GCC energy and economic infrastructure.

So in retrospect, the JCPOA did its job. it was good enough. And we're in a situation now where President Trump will be hard-pressed to get something even remotely as closest to the JCPOA as we can get.

Because don't forget, final point, that Trump administration doesn't do diplomacy. It doesn't have that muscle. It doesn't believe in it. It believes in threats and force. So I don't think it has the ability to do

to seek a diplomatic solution on the nuclear issue with Iran. I mean, Robert Pab, it's hard to escape the fear that what happened here at the end of February was a massive hornet's nest being smashed up. And that's how... It's how it felt at the time to me. I said this on this show many times in the early days and weeks.

I feel it even more strongly now, that this was a hornet's nest that could have been contained and were suddenly smashed to pieces and hornets are flying all over the place and it's chaos. And a lot of actors in the various regions are seizing the moment caused by the chaos. You are exactly right.

That's the core logic of this escalation trap, which is getting worse. We're now at the point peers where things are moving from controlled steps of escalation. We're starting to get the risk of things moving out of control. And the Tel Aviv co-pilot incident is a key bellwether for the future. You'll recall, peers, I was warning about that we had to be concerned about civilians on your show would become targets.

It doesn't just mean controlled command directed from one of the key governments. It can be inspired attacks, and somebody's got to defend the lives of civilians on that next airliner. So what you see in this panel, and not everybody on the panel, so I want to be careful about that, is exactly what you see all the time, which is moral defense of every, each side is right. One side's morally right, the other side's morally right. Notice, we're not standing up for the civilians on the next airliner. And the problem here is that can come from a command directed attack by one of the governments and the actors, can also come from inspired attacks.

And we are now at that very precarious moment, and we've got to start calling, and leaders on all the sides need to start calling hands-off civilian airports, hands-off civilian airliners. Where are the leaders in Tehran, Jerusalem, Sana and Washington, who are going to call for that? That is very important right now, because otherwise, they're going to be inspired actors that will just take matters into their own hands.

Robert Harvard, as we're talking, President Zelensky, has responded to statements by Trump and Elon Musk, as I said, saying Ukraine needs a new leader. He said, if President Trump wants to change the leader in Ukraine, he has to know that only our people can change. I'm ready for elections,

but we need a minimum of 60 days for security of infrastructure to prepare. We have a tax each hour. It's not realistic, surely, for Ukraine to have any kind of meaningful election. Given, I think, 7 million people have been forced to leave the country. You've got, obviously,

hundreds and hundreds of thousands of troops fighting on the front line. You've got active war zones all over the place, as he says. They're being attacked all the time. How can Ukraine have a truly serious democratic election in the middle of all this? They are in a state of martial law

because of the state of the war. Well, there's some here in Warsaw. The Warsaw security form where Solensky talked today in fact just a few hours ago and he made that very close. He said, look, I'm not opposed to elections, but at a time of a war and conflict and where we are now,

it just, they don't have the capacity. or time to do that now. So I think that's another issue. The President Zelensky will address when the time is appropriate. But I would like to note one thing where I may be the odd man out on this table, have him watch this. And Dr. Pate's comments caught this about this pilot. I've watched the Islamic Revolution start in 1979. I saw Hezbollah join in early 80s. I saw the Houthis joining in the 90s. I saw the Houthis joining in the 90s, I've seen some of our failed policies, such as funding the Mujah Hadin to go after the Russians in Afghanistan. We are in a war with radical, primitive, threatening Islam, the ideology. And the conflict right now encapsulates that in so many ways.

And so if we do not address it now, how do we address it in the long time? We've seen this cancer has grown for decades, and now you have individuals on every plane, Omani pilots. So this conflict is part of that as well. And I don't want to lose sight on that. We've seen it destroy Lebanon. We've seen it destroy Syria. We've seen it destroy Yemen.

We've got a problem on our hands, and we're going to have to confront it at some time in one means or another because we have been unable to do that. and it's presenting a real threat to the region, especially those nations who do not follow strict authoritative Islam, the Qatars, the UAE, the Kuwaits, and Bahrain, and they're threatened by that ideology. So let's lose sight of that problem. Can I ask you, as a military man,

what you think about the Fort Hood shooter, apparently facing death by firing squad, and it being live streamed to the water, Are you comfortable with that? Well, let's talk about himself. Hassan was a doctor, a psychiatrist in the hospital, who shot and killed 13 service members in the hospital when they were more vulnerable than ever before young people.

So I do believe that is worth capital punishment without a doubt. If there was ever a case for that, so be it. I would also note this lethal injection of this. woman who survived in a coma. Is execution by firing squad more humane than lethal injection? I don't know. So these are some issues we've got to address with. And again, I would note where we are with our adversaries,

as radical Islam has used the Internet to promulgate beheadings, murdering, torture, all those heinous crimes. So it's out there each and every day. I mean, putting aside the debate about whether there should be a death penalty, UK doesn't have it anymore, US does. The fact that Pete Higgsett, the Secretary of War, says that he wants to live stream this to the world, is that not going to play right into the hands of the jihadists who love martyrdom,

who would love nothing better than this guy, he's in a wheelchair, being gunned down by American troops, it could be the best recruitment thing they ever have, You must be concerned about the optics of a live-streamed American firing squad killing a radical jihadist about how that would play into the hands of the enemy. I would say everything we've done for the last two decades that played into the hand of this ideology. That's what they've claimed and what we've shown.

So I don't know. That would be my answer. I don't know. We're in uncharted waters in so many ways. And so I don't know how it would play out. Robert, you want to do it? Yeah, so I have studied 8,000 suicide attacks. As other people know, I published two books on suicide terrorism.

So when we did Abu Ghraib, we did not do it in public when we did the torture, but we released those videos. Those images radicalized immediately, AQI suicide attackers to kill us. And so this idea of the public execution, it's the public issue that's the problem here. And we need to understand. So I'm not doubting people don't know. That doesn't mean we can't know. And there are, I'm just telling you, 8,000 suicide attacks. This is what I've done for 20 years at my center.

This is all over the intel community, all over the FBI. My work is well documented, not just handwomened. A.V. Summaries. So this is extremely important to understand. We're crossing thresholds with civilians. We're fueling the fire of inspired people to do what? Shoot down and blow up airliners with Americans on them. And are we going to have to just wait for the first airliner to go down? This is the problem. We keep saying we don't know. And then, gee, we're surprised by that next But then that begs the question, doctor, what would you do to stop that ideology? This Obama pilot, I am absolutely glad to have that conversation.

We stopped that ideology, sir, for so many years. I was one of the leaders designing the Hammer and Anvil strategy to defeat ISIS. And it took years to have that endorsed. and it was endorsed both by Obama and by Trump, the same strategy. I published it January 2015 in Foreign Affairs, and that was at a point, sir, when nobody in the military wanted to touch it. They were afraid to embrace that strategy. It happened over time.

We did end up solving that problem. And now what we're doing is the exact opposite, sir. So this idea, we don't know how to do it? No, this is wrong. And what's happening is this is fueling. the flames of people to kill us. Yeah, okay, look, I want to bring in another panelist now. A war with Islamic ideology, says Robert Harbour.

Join the panel now is Muhammad Miranda, Professor at Tehran University. Welcome back to Uncensored Professor Miranda. What is your assessment of all the stuff that's been going on in the last few days, notably what the Houthis have been doing in Saudi Arabia, apparently the behest of the Iranian regime? Well, the Hothis, as you call them, or Ansarullah, because they're not the Hothis, it's a movement much broader than them. And they are coalition partners in the government in Sanhaw.

They have survived years of genocidal war. And I was listening to one of your guests just a few moments ago. It's a very one-sided history that apparently is being presented to. the American military and the American public. They survived genocidal war against, carried out by the Saudis and the Emirates with the full support of the West, with the full support of the United States, Canada, the UK, the EU. They starved the country. They prevented food from getting in, medicine getting in.

Hundreds of thousands of people died. But they couldn't take the capital. Why? Despite the Saudis and the Batati is having all that money. and all the weapons from the West and all the support from the other Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, they couldn't take the capital. Why? Because popular support is behind the so-called Houthis and Saurulah. But the West was determined, along with the Saudis, to crush them. And today, why is this, why are the Saudis losing? The Saudis has probably spent well over a

trillion dollars in weapons over the last few decades. And yet, their proxies in Yemen are easily defeated, and with all their money, they can't stop Ansar al-Lah. Ansar al-Lah does not have F-15s. They don't have the sort of equipment that the Saudis do. But on the battlefield, they're much more effective, and they're much more competent. Why? Because they are motivated.

They see themselves as a national liberation organization. And in addition to that, they're opposing a genocide that they, like the rest of us are watching every day. And we see Western media saying, no, it's not a genocide. No, Israel is a democracy. No, Israelis share our values. So what do you expect people across the world to think about Western governments? When they're seeing Yemen strangulated for a decade and then the people in Yemen defeat the Saudis. Where do you think popular opinion lies?

Forget the governments. People across the world don't sympathize with the Saudis, and they don't sympathize with the Israeli regime, and they don't sympathize with the United States. Whether you like it or not, that's a reality. There has a reason for this. It's because the United States is not behaving like a normal country. It is destroying country after country,

and in every case, it has an excuse for this. It tries to crush Iran. It's been doing it for 47 years. Yet it says Iran is a bad guy. Our cemeteries are full of dead people, thanks to wars imposed on us by the United States. I survived two chemical attacks. Who gave those chemicals to the Saddam regime? It was the West.

Yet the West presents itself as the good guys and everyone else as the bad guys. This works in U.S. schools with the school books that kids there have. It works for Americans who watch CNN or Fox News. It really doesn't matter. Or CNN or Sky News. But in the rest of the world, people are seeing reality. And the reality is very different from the narrative coming from the West. Let me play you a clip from President Trump about Iran.

This is what he said. I see, you guys are freaking crazy. They are. They speak. We will kill, we will kill everyone, everyone. We will kill everyone. And I hear like 20 guys behind him, he's talking, we will kill everyone.

This is, they don't talk that way anymore, by the way. We will kill everyone and behind, I got 20 guys, praise be to Allah, praise be to Allah. Praise me to Allah. And I say, I do, I say, man, you guys, you're really, you're crazy. What's your response, Professor Miranda? Those are the words of a lunatic. First of all, who has he spoken to?

What is he talking about? Who said this? Who spoke like this? Who in Iran says that he's the one who's been saying time after time that he'll take Iran back to the Stone Age, that he'll wipe out a civilization? So who's the one talking about killing everyone? Is it him or the?

Iranians? Who's the one that's waging the wars? The United States encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1980. And as I said, the West gave him chemical weapons, all sorts of support, including these very same countries, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and so on. They gave him a couple of hundred billion dollars to wage war against Iran. They were in the U.S. camp. Just like now. Then last year, they waged the 12th day war unprovoked. This year, they waged another war, which started with the slaughter of kids in an elementary school. And then it's the Iranians who are saying, we'll kill everyone.

And then he has the audacity to say that the Iranians may wipe out San Diego or Los Angeles. And then he seems to be ambivalent whether it's okay to do it or not. So the problem is not in Iran. This is all projection. It is the United States. The United States is supporting a racist and apartheid regime in Palestine.

Trump himself says, to the victor goes to spoils, and then his maggie crowd cheer. Is that what Christ would say? So the people of Venezuela have to hand everything over to Trump because he's the victor? And do you think people in Iran are going to allow him

to defeat the country to take the spoils? It's not going to happen. Okay. Okay, let me bring in the others. Robert Pape, you know, whenever I have Professor Miranda on, he inspires a big reaction, good, bad and ugly, depending on your viewpoint about what he's saying. But he does like to portray the Iranian regime

as a really just a very much misunderstood bunch of nice guys trying to do the right thing. Well, whether, if we just look back in January, whether the numbers are several thousand protesters that were killed by the Iran regime, or higher than that, the fact of the matter is killing protesters is not something we think of as just okay. And I want to keep coming back to the issue of looking at moral certainty on your side as justifying all the behavior on your side. And I'm not just blaming Iran here. I think this is an issue

that is across the board, and this is across wars. How do you break thresholds and get cycles of violence, where you get wars of the cities, where you get what's happening in Russia and Ukraine, which are now trading back and forth. You go back to World War II, which spun all the way up to firebombing. I've studied these for decades. And how you get it is moral certainty on each side, which causes then civilians to be attacked more and more and more aggressively as if they deserve it. And that, I'm sorry to say, peers, is something that we just need to understand.

And I'm not telling you that America's not done this. My work has shown occupation is the leading cause of suicide terrorism. So I do this in granular detail. My job, peers, and what I've done for 30 years, is try to produce stability, diminish the escalations of violence. That's what I've done advising every White House since 9-11. And that's worked. We've actually diminished those problems. But moral certainty, and it's just on whatever side it is, that is the fuel for the escalation trap that I'm talking about.

And we just need to identify it. I think you're spot on. Alan Eyre, what is your view of Professor Morandi's picture of what's really happening here, that Iran are the innocents, America and Israel are the aggressors and oppressors? And nothing to see here. Well, there's a lot to see here. I think it's, Professor Miranda is right. I think in describing a lack of morale.

I mean, this war is an immoral, unstrategic, unprovoked war, okay? It's not America's finest hour. President Trump is not the first president to blunder into a war with unrealistic expectations. He's just the most recent. However, having said that, that doesn't absolve Iran for being a corrupt police state, I disagree respectfully, with Admiral Harwood when he says

this is an ideological fight. Iran right now is a nationalist power. It has the same national strategy the Shah did, which is Iran is the regional hegeman. The difference is back when the Shah was the Shah, it was within the U.S. imprimatur. The Islamic Republic of Iran is wholly outside of, you know, what others call the rules-based international order. So there's no good guy in this war. U.S. and Israel shouldn't have attacked Iran. There was no preeminent threat. As the deputy chief of staff, Steve Miller said, current U.S. administration is all about force, power, and strength. It's not about comedy. It's not about diplomacy. It's not about the rule of law. Having said that, that doesn't make Iran the good guy. The Iranian regime suppresses, suppresses,

represses its own people. It's corrupt even by, you know, international standards. And we have done regime change. Unfortunately, the regime that we've put in power in Iran by killing illegally and immorally, the previous leaders is more hardline, more militarized, and less risk and also less able and less concerned about dealing with the ordinary concerns of the Iranian people. At one final point, Trump administration believes an escalation of power will cause Iranian capitulation or compromise. It won't. All it will cause is Iranian escalation against regional targets.

Okay. Professor Miranda, you have 60 seconds to respond. Well, first of all, I respect Professor Pate. And I advise him to read going to Tehran by two former White House officials, a very good book. And I never spoke. I do believe in moral absolutes, but I never said that Iran is perfect. The issue of the protesters, of course, is a very inaccurate picture portrayed in the West. This was a violent uprising where hundreds of police officers and volunteers were killed.

and the Western intelligence agencies were involved. The former head of the CIA admitted that Israeli Channel 14, close to Netanyahu, was praising the fact that these weapons were taken into Iran. So this is a Western crime. If Iran had done that in the United States or in Europe, what would the reaction be? They'd wage a war against our country. So, yes, I do believe that, morally speaking, Iran is in a higher position than the United States. And it may be outrageous to you, but I think there are.

I mean, I don't mean Professor Pay. But I mean general. But I do think that, yes, morally speaking, Iran, I survived two chemical attacks. Who in this, you know, how many people do you know who survived those? Where has Iran used chemical weapons? When has Iran initiated war against another country? And why is the United States so steadfast in its support for a regime that's carrying out genocide, a regime that believes in supremacism?

You did that for apartheid? I don't mean the people on this panel. The United States did that in South Africa. Who was opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa? It was Iran and other countries. and the United States called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. So there are moral issues at stake here. And the number one moral issue of our era

is the genocide in Gaza. And if we cannot take a clear stance on that, then I think we can't take a stance on anything. And if we're unable to take a stance on that, then I think we have no right to take a stance on anything else. Okay. We've got to leave it there. A fascinating debate. Thank you all very much for leaving me.

I appreciate it. Well, these are unprecedented times. It's a phrase we use quite often at the moment. My next two guests may disagree with it. History Unsensored is a show which uncovers how the past shapes the present. Our host, Bianca Nobolo, has just announced her own historic pact with a very familiar face. Tim Marshall, the seasoned foreign correspondent and author of the best-selling Prisoners of Geography series, has joined the Unsensored History Alliance, where both of them join me now.

Well, Tim, welcome aboard. Thank you. I'd love to the first episode this week about... the history of hijacks. In a way, I look at what's happening here in Saudi Arabia, and you could argue that the hootis have hijacked a playbook out of what Iran has done with a Strait of Hormuz because they've realized that you don't actually need a nuclear weapon

to cause enormous damage to global economies or to inflict a lot of pain on your enemy. And they've seen the effect of the Strait of Hormuz being controlled by the Iranians, and they've gone after this smaller strait while simultaneously attacking the Saudis. How significant is this? This conflict has raged between the Houthis

and the Saudis for over 10 years now, but how significant is this battle, do you think, for the Bab El Mandeb Strait? It's probably as significant as what's going on in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. And that's because it's more directly connected to Europe because the oil that comes up through the Babel Mandeb, and then up through the

Red Sea and then through the Suez Canal and up to Europe, obviously destined for Europe. Whereas the stuff for China actually doesn't touch that, it goes the other way. So that's why when you fill up your car at the moment, you see those dials spinning very, very fast for a very long time. And there's another element to this, which is that the... The Houthis are almost in a stronger position than the Iranians. And that's because the Houthis haven't got any oil. The Iranians have got a lot of oil, but they're not getting it out.

And so their economy is absolutely cratering because the Americans have blocked and won't let them get anything out. Houthis don't have that problem. They can just inflict pain on everybody else. Right. Bianca, welcome back to the main Unsensor channel. It remains that way until you catch me up. You're doing great.

Not for long, peers. Well, you've got nearly 50,000 subscribers in pretty rapid time. So it's going great guns. And we're all really enjoying the content. And I think you and Tim are going to be a great double act. What is, in terms of geopolitics, everything at the moment appears very chaotic. And yet some people argue on the Iranian and Houthi's side is very, very coordinated.

That they sense an opportunity out of the mayhem of the attacks on Iran back in February to achieve their ambitions, and they've been causing indisputably enormous damage to the business models of all the Gulf states and now Saudi Arabia by attacking the infrastructure at airports and oil refineries and so on. There's a big, big play going on here, isn't there? The headlines look more chaotic than some of the machinations underneath. And the alignments that are happening underneath the headlines are what. makes all of this so combustible and dangerous. A good example is because you were just talking about Russia and Ukraine and then you moved on to talking about Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.

Let's just take those two separate wars. They seem like they're far apart. Their geographies are very different, but you have Russia aligned with Iran and then Iran being the main backer of the Houthis, even though the Houthis have more independence and, for example, Hezbollah. And more and more, we're seeing these alignments that are strategically helpful for these different countries. They might have different ideologies. They might not naturally get on. But Khrink is another one that people talk about. So China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.

And then you have all of Iran's proxies as well. A lot of that is to do with history and an anti-Western projection of the existing world order and what we would call the rules-based world order, always hypocritical and imperfect. but nonetheless, we see these constellations emerging. And they're often around these geopolitical choke points like the Taiwan Strait, in China's case, Babel Mandab you were just talking about, or the Strait of Hormuz when it comes to Iran. Yeah, I mean, Tim, look, you've covered stuff on the foreign stage for decades

and a very expert in it. It just seems to me what we're witnessing here is it feels like it's on a different scale to anything we've had for a long time. But is it? Don't you hate yes and no answers? Yes and no. Yes, in that it hasn't happened for a little while,

but no, when you look at it through the lens of history and geography, you see that it is just another turn of the wheel that was inevitable. The example I've got is that of it being inevitable, the Middle East is one, but Europe and the Pacific is another. I'll try and be brief on this, but basically the American default position is not to be involved everywhere. George Washington said it in his farewell address in 1799,

under no circumstances entangle yourself with Europe. But of course, we think it's normal that they do because that's been in our lifetimes. But if you look at it through the lens of geography, it's not normal. And so eventually they're going to say, actually, let's start driving. drawing back, which is exactly what's happening in Europe and saying, you guys take more responsibility,

bring it back to the Middle East. They've clearly said to the Saudis, you've got to take more responsibility, we're going to do less, which is the background to these new pact that the Saudis have got with Pakistanis and Turkey. And they're saying to the people in the Pacific, you are going to take more responsibility, you're going to rearm it. This is something that was always going to happen and it's easier to get a handle on it when you look at it through the lens of geography and history. It's why I accepted your team's very kind invitation to join history and censored because when I quit having a proper job, I swore I'd never wear a lanyard again. But this allows us to go into these really interesting topics without having to show up

to work every day. I love the template peers. You take a headline, the hijacking, which is in the news, or another example, the plague, because it was a bit of a,

still is a little bit of a scare about this story in Russia. So you talk about that, but then you go all the way back to put it into context of the great plagues that have always plagued us, how they happened,

why they happened, and the effect. effects that they had, and then you bring it back up to the present day. For me, that's a template because I'm a nerd. Well, I love it. And Bianca, the truth is, it seems to me we rarely seem to learn the lessons from history we ought to learn. The same mistakes get repeated again and again and again. And a lot of it is because, you know, human nature, right?

People, dictators are going to be dictators, are going to be dictators. So much as you would love them to behave differently, they're going to behave like dictators. The odd thing about what's going on here now is that when Donald Trump ran for re-election in the last election, he was pretty emphatic about what he was going to do. He was going to not get involved in pointless, expensive Middle Eastern wars. He was going to focus on domestic issues,

shut the border from illegal immigrants pouring in. He was going to focus on getting the cost of living down and so on. And with this one, Incredibly reckless attack, seemingly at Israel's behest on Iran in February. Everything's been thrown up in the air, and yet surely a cursory look at history could have told him this was likely to go the way it's gone. Most people who study Donald Trump will say that he's not a student of history, and that could be part of the reason that he makes some of the decisions that he does. I agree that we don't see much evidence that we learn from our. mistakes as humanity. What I do think is unprecedented, just to add to both of your points,

is human nature remains pretty constant. What is more concerning is our capacity to self-destruct has never been greater, whether that's coming from AI, bio-weapon concerns, or something like nuclear weapons. It's now more ubiquitous and it travels faster. But what I would also say, to anybody watching Pierce Morgan Uncentered, is even if we don't learn from the mistakes, of our past. Leaders are giving us clues all the time about what they're doing in the future, what they have planned with history. So for example, before Putin invaded Ukraine, he released an essay on the Russians and Ukrainians, on the unity of those peoples in which he said Ukraine doesn't have the right to independently exist, and it's a creation of the Russian state.

So that told us what he was going to do. Xi Jinping in China says that the wheels of, of history are turning in the direction of reunification with Taiwan. Benjamin Netanyahu refers to the territories of Gaza as historically Jewish land. And when Trump does talk about history, he talks about how the US wants to reclaim that greatness of a bygone era when it was more isolationist, protectionist, and also more aggressive in terms of territory and geopolitical choke points that it wanted to possess. Yeah. Tim, AI, it seems to me, looming. over absolutely everything.

I watched an interview with Bill Gates. I think it was with CNN with Farid or one of those guys. Actually, Jake Tapper, I think, at the weekend. And it was very ominous. I mean, for someone like Bill Gates to be sounding the alarm in quite the way he was really did make me think, wow. And I've said this repeated on the show,

but I did the last television interview with Professor Stephen Hawking nearly 10 years ago now before he died. He said the biggest threat to mankind wasn't nuclear weapons, it wasn't climate change, wasn't any of these things. He specifically said, when artificial intelligence learns to self-design, it could very rapidly get out of our control. And at that point, it's over.

Are we, I mean, do you fear that we're living through that moment? There's a whole bunch of things there, including, for example, the Houthis are said to use Claude, which I think is Anthropics, but, you know, the AI, I think, to. actually help them to track and target their enemies. These are guys wearing flip-flops, but they're using AI in modern warfare. That's one thing. Other thing, I interviewed Bill Gates once, and it was quite the experience because I'd

ask a question and he'd answer it, and then halfway through he'd answer it, he would already know what I was going to ask him for my next follow-up, and he'd answer that before I could even ask it. He was impressive. The counter-argument is that we're not there at superintelligence yet, and we can still talk to each other about what we're going to do. The other argument says that the tech bros in Silicon Valley are so far ahead. They're deliberately scaring everybody to say, let's stop now so that nobody else can catch up

with them. I'm not convinced. I do think it is a genuine threat that the world needs to discuss at the very highest levels. And Xi and Trump didn't talk about it really that much, apparently, in the latest. Summit. Anyone that hasn't read the anthropic report of what happened this summer, I would recommend it because in shorthand, the agents, as they're called, the strings of ones and zeros, hacked their way out of what was supposed to be isolated computers, joined up together, hacked their way out onto the internet, hacked their way into another company's internet chat room, got their passwords. And the idea is that

they could do this, especially once the superintelligence, get into a bio-weapons lab or get into a nuclear weapons launch system. And that's something that is global. That's something that the whole of humanity has to talk about. You know, it's not just the superpowers. So bring on the big global meeting to kickstart the treaties. Will we do it? It's an arms race.

most people tend not to say, I'm going to stop you, just in case you carry on. But the discussion needs to be had. Bianca, he said to me, Professor Hawking, when I say, well, if it is the end looming, how would you spend your last day on earth? He said, with my family, drinking champagne, listening to Wagner.

And at his memorial service, we drank champagne in a twinkling sunshine, surrounded by his family, listening to Wagner, bellowing out over this wonderful hall in Westminster, it's off the abbey. If it is the end, have you thought about historically

with all the influences you've gleaned from your studies of history, how you would spend your last day on earth other than obviously wanting to be in my company? I'm not sure that would be top of the list bit, mainly because it would just make me so sad that time would not be continuing. I think that I would be trying to do

whatever little bit I could to try and overt the end of everything. I just want to make one more point about AI in the end. And that's, we've been seeing in the last couple of days alone, the beginning of weaponizing AI and data centers, because Ukraine has been knocking out some of Russia. We're now threatening to do that to its enemies and those supporting the US's war against them.

So we're going to see that more and more trying to knock out these critical lines that we all now depend on that run our national infrastructure. And that's something you see throughout here. history as well, that any strategists will always try and knock out the supply lines that will cripple the enemy. And today's version of that includes now AI and data. Yeah. And in fact, everyone has been picking up on the fact that the number of Russian bots all over social media appears to have dramatically receded this week since the Ukrainians had direct hits on some of

these data centres where a lot of it seemed to be originated. So it's fascinating. Thank you both very Briefly, Piers. Yeah, Tim, yeah. Two very quick things. One, it'll probably be all right, because it usually is. That doesn't mean... That's what my executive producer says. He's often wrong.

Honestly, we remember why 2K was going to kill us all on the turn of the century. It'll probably be okay. No, but I'm not going to miss this opportunity. But in the end of days, as it approaches, I'll be watching the 1972 FAA Cup final on a loop. I would actually watch the 1971 FA Cup Final on Loop because that's what made me an arsul fan when Charlie George scored that 25-yard screamer at Wembley. I'm thinking more of the Alan Clark.

I know what you're thinking of because you're a Leeds fan. Just to remind you, we just literally played Leeds two days ago and beat you, just to remind you. Were you there? I was there. Yeah, I was there. I've got a home and away season ticket. Can the end come now?

Yeah, the better team won were only just, but I did agree with Roy Keane because I watched it back on television when I got home. He did say that the referee appears to think that the rules of the game appear to say you cannot book an Arsenal player. Well, I just sincerely hope so. What's the point being champions

if you can't rewrite the rules? Thank you both very much. Very excited for your collaboration. History Unscensis is going to go into a rocket-fueled new phase. I will be watching, as will I hope many of the viewers of this channel. Go and check out History Unsensit. with Bianca Nobolo and Tim Marshall. Good luck to you both.

Peers Morgan Unsensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Pierce Morgan Unsensored on Spotify and Apple Podcast. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent Unsensored Media has never been more critical, and we couldn't do it without you. Thank you.