Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/26/25 Trita Parsi: Netanyahu is Back Demanding Trump Attack Iran Again

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

Scott interviews Trita Parsi about Netanyahu’s renewed effort to get Trump to bomb Iran on Israel’s behalf. Discussed on the show: “As expected, Netanyahu back demanding more war with Iran” (Responsible Statecraft) Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app:  https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute:  https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

negotiate now, end this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, welcome the show, Scott Horton's show. Merry Christmas episode here, and happy to welcome back the Great Treaty of Parsi. He is co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and of course, that's at responsiblestakecraft.org. And of course, in Alliance, he founded that thing with the great Eli Clifton

and the great Andrew Bacevich. And they have as their editor over there, the great Kelly B. Blahos, and just what a great bunch of folks. All of these guys, love Quincy. And Trita also wrote these very important books. I'm always beating you all over the head telling you, you got to read Treacherous Alliance,

which is probably in its fifth printing just because of me telling you, you've got to read this book. It's 12 times better than enough already. I told Tucker Carlson. I said, you should read enough already, but really you should read treacherous. Alliance. It's 12 times better. Very important book. And of course, he also wrote losing an enemy and then gaining it again. No, I'm sorry. I made up the second part, but losing an

enemy, single roll of the dice. And of course, he's a great expert on America's horrible Iran policy. Welcome back to the show, Trita. How you doing, bud? Great to be with you again. And Scott, we love you as much as you love us. Okay, well, that's very nice to hear. Very nice to hear. How is old Andrew Basevich these days? I have not seen or heard from him in a little while. Andrew's a legend. It's always going to be a legend. Right, yes, absolutely. All right, so I've been meaning to catch up with you, sir,

because America's gotten a wrong policy, and you know a lot about it, and I'm very concerned about it. Like, for example, after the war was over, a bunch of people said, aha, you scaremonger said the war was going to go badly, but instead it went wonderfully. And what I said was, yeah,

that's just because you don't know nothing about it, because as long as the Ayatollah insists on enriching uranium, and as long as Donald Trump accepts Benjamin Net Yahoo's definition of a civilian nuclear program as being a nuclear weapons program, then we're only at intermission. And the war has to begin again because the Aitol is not going to give up in Richmond. And now I should say on top of that, and I think we talked about this last summer treat of it. You know, if the Iranians ever, we're going to break out and make a nuke, it would be now, just like we always warned, if you attack them, that's when they're going to go ahead and break out.

Although so far I haven't seen any indication that that's the case. And I know that the bombing campaign, in fact, did set their program back pretty severely in some ways, but not in others, et cetera. So I just want to turn the floor over to you and get your read on that situation, especially concerning the recent news that Nanyahu is coming to town. And his purpose is to tell Trump that the war ain't over yet, and we got us started again. And there's been a couple of troublins like that already released. So what do you know? Yeah, so on Monday, Netanyahu is coming back to Washington. You know, it's Christmas, so he's here to sell another war.

That's what he does. And he's here to say that the Iranian missile program is a major threat to Israel and that he's going to go at it again and he wants the United States to either give it a green light or be fully involved. And even if the U.S. is not fully involved, the U.S. is under Biden as well as under Trump, at least halfway involved because the Israelis cannot shoot down the Iranian missile without U.S. support. And even with U.S. support,

we saw how effective those missiles were. So on the one hand, you can make the argument that the Israelis actually do face a real challenge from the Iranian missiles. On the other hand, they're only facing that challenge because they attacked Iran. They started a war of choice, and the Iranians started shooting those missiles at Israel.

And it had happened twice before as well, in which the Israelis had started something in the Iranian response. But this time the response was much firmer. Had they not started it, there would not have been a war. Yes, Iran would have missiles that could hit Israel. But here's the thing that it's important to understand.

There's a difference between saying that Israel is worried about its security and a different thing to say that Israel is worried about its dominance. Because if it's worried about its security, then don't start a war and it will be secure. Because the Iranians were not hitting Israel until Israel started hitting Iran. But if you're worried about your dominance, which is a completely different proposition, then yes, the Iranian missiles are a challenge. But then you're essentially saying that the only way for the Israelis to feel safe and secure

about their dominance is if everyone else is insecure. No one else can have any weapons that can deter Israel. But Israel should have all the weapons to be able to take out anyone at any time in the Middle East. frankly, that is the Middle East the Israelis are seeking and sadly enough that is also the Middle East that the United States

has been seeking and been helping Israel to create. Just take a look at us what's happening in Lebanon right. The U.S. is putting pressure on the Lebanese to disarm Hezbollah and he wants to help arm

the Lebanese military to be able to do so. But it only wants the Lebanese military to be strong enough to disarm Hezbollah, but never strong enough to be able to deter Israel, even though Israel is bombing Lebanon on a daily basis. I think, you know, if people just think about it,

I think it becomes quite clear why no one else in the Middle East is particularly excited about this plan. Now, so I guess I had read a report, although I did not read the whole thing now that I think about it, but I saw headlines. They said that at least the Iranians were claiming that they have really revamped their missile program

and that they have way more missiles now than they did back last summer. I'm not saying I believe that, but it goes to show at least, you know, their stance that that's what they're threatening there. And then, of course, as we know, as is built into this entire conversation, we're just talking about dumb bombs or, you know, not very well-guided conventional explosives. they don't have nuclear weapons or anything like it. I did see a claim by the Israelis. Maybe this was in the big Washington Post piece

about how Trump was in on it all along or whatever that came out a week or so ago where they said the Israelis were claiming that they had intelligence that Iranian, I guess, military guys or maybe just nuclear scientists were looking into, they implied. They didn't say it very explicitly, I don't think,

or maybe I didn't read the whole thing, but at least at the beginning when they brought it up, they were implying that they were looking into making a gun-type nuke that would be way too big to marry to a missile, but at least they could test one in the desert and show that they have weapons-grade uranium or something like that, which even that would be a bluff anyway. But I guess I wonder whether you think that the Israelis

thought that they had any reason whatsoever really to start this war last summer other than they knew that they could get Trump to help them do it in a way that they could not get Bush or Obama to go along? Well, undoubtedly, I don't believe the Washington Post story at all, by the way, because it's presenting what I think is a very useful narrative for the Israelis and the fact that it's coming out now in which it says, look, hey, Trump was in on it from the outset. This was like a six-month deception operation.

That's the kind of narrative you want to get out there. now in order to make sure that the Iranians never, ever, ever again try any diplomas with the United States. So not only do, I think it's false because it's too self-serving, but having had quite a lot of conversations with folk in the administration from the very beginning of when Trump came in and seeing what was happening, it was very clear there was a massive fight taking place in the administration. And the Israelis lost that fight in February.

They wanted to start a war in February. Unfortunately, they won it in June. Something happened in May. I still haven't been able to put my finger on exactly what happened that caused Trump to shift his position on the talks, going from accepting enrichment and only having a red line on nuclear weapons to suddenly wholly embracing the Israeli red line of zero enrichment, which was designed to get the U.S. into a war. And he accepted it once again.

And he had no Mike Pompeo or John Bolton to blame this time. Right. Remind me treatment from the outset. And by the way, the Iranians tend to believe that. And I think that's because, I mean, they got screwed over. There definitely was a deception in the last week or so when the U.S. was telling the Iranians, let's meet on Sunday. You know, there definitely was a lot of deception going on then.

But the idea that this was taking place already back in January, I mean, that's a bit too charitable to the capacity of this administration. to be frank. Did you remind me real quick about what happened with Mike Waltz, the first national security advisor? He got fired for working with Israel to him and Trump on this issue. But can you be specific? Mike was a timeline on that.

Yeah, so this was, if I don't, oh, the timeline I think was March or April. Must have been April, I think. He got fired. You know, the official story, of course, it's because of how he mishandled signal. And he added DeFrichtold Goldberg

to one of his signal chats, which clearly is a fireable offense, but he stayed off for a couple of more weeks, and I think it's because Trump really didn't like the idea of having to replace national security advisors so quickly. You know, he replaced Mike Flynn after 10 days. So he wanted to give the impression that he had a much more stable administration this time around.

But really what also was about it was that Flint as a Waltz and the CENTCOM head were the ones who were really pushing Trump into starting this war with Yemen with the Houthis, which went on for a month or so. And the U.S. failed. And Trump actually got pretty impressed by how fiercely the Houthis were fighting back, despite the fact that, I mean, we're talking about a guerrilla movement, essentially. And as a result, he turned. I mean, this is one of the things with Trump. I mean, once he tries something, it doesn't work. He's happy to shift gears and move in a different direction. Any other American president would have just gone on for another four years

and then have it over to the next president. But Trump put an end to it, but he was very upset about the fact that he got dragged into that as well. And again, it comes down to the issue. Surround yourself with more reasonable, more restraint-oriented people, and you won't be tricked into all of these different, wars, as was the Iran war. Now, in Trump's mind, the Iran war was a huge success. You know, much larger in his mind than I think anyone objectively could say that it is,

because you're right. They did set back to that nuclear program two to three years. That nuclear program was a large-scale civilian nuclear program. You need a large number of centrifuges to produce civilian nuclear energy. the program that I may have given birth to is a much smaller weapons program because when you're producing nuclear weapons you actually don't need a large number of centrifuges

you need a much smaller. Now we don't know if that has happened or not and as you said we don't see an indication I would suggest so that if the Iranians were going underground and building something building a nuclear weapon we would not find out about it until it gets the bomb. And right now, the IA has very little access to any at all to Iran's nuclear program.

So Iran's nuclear program has gone largely dark. We're just relying on intelligence rather than on inspections. So they may very well be moving in that direction. We don't know. And that has always been the risk of even a successful military strike. We saw that with the strike that the Israelis did against Saddam Hussein. Very successful strike against Ossirac reactor in 1981. But the end result of it was that Saddam Hussein quadrupled his nuclear budget.

And 10 years later, he was only six months away from actually having a nuclear weapon, much closer than he was in 1981. And it was only because of his mistake of invading Kuwait before building the bomb, that we found out that he was that close. Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian, Daryl Cooper, that is Martyr Made. He's my co-host and we host a show

every Friday night. We might be switching to two days a week here sometime soon, but right now we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o'clock Eastern Time on the YouTube's. Checked out our Twitter handle, Provoked show.

Man, so look, you and I, speaking of confirmation bias of things, we've been so right about this for so long. We're probably sick of winning. I mean, not that we won the argument, really, but maybe, were we just taking it for granted, Trita, that obviously the reason they have a civilian program is because it's a latent nuclear deterrent, right?

What they're saying is, not don't attack me because I've got a nuke. They're saying, don't attack me or I'll make a nuke. But if you don't attack me, I won't. And you don't want me to have one. You say you'll attack me if I make one. So fine, don't attack me. don't and I won't make one like that was I think what you and I had always talked about and other experts had inferred from the Iranians position but they had never really said that right they'd

never really threatened to make a nuke they'd always insisted it was just a civilian thing um but of course you know neither of us wants to look like a sucker so we're willing to give it like the worst case interpretation um which by the way in this wind if this if this audio sounds good it's because of Popsworth Media, everybody. But anyway, so I guess where are we now? You really are afraid of that same thing that, no, yeah, no, if they were ever going to make a gun-type nuke, now would be the time, huh? Well, look, things have changed as a result of the attack.

Public opinion inside of Iran was never in favor of a nuke the weapon, never above 20 or 25% support for weaponizing. And this is a long-standing position that Iranians had already during the time of the show-off. Because they recognize if they nuclearized, if they got the bomb, there was a risk for an impact in the region in which other countries would get the bomb as well. And if you just take a look at the map, you see that there is a huge benefit for the Iranians not to have a nuclear weapon. And that is because they are one of the largest countries in the region by landmass, by resources, by population. they have a huge conventional superiority. If they weaponize and a bunch of other countries in the region follow suit,

for instance, let's say that Qatar or Bahrain, tiny, tiny states would get a nuclear weapon as well. Then suddenly the Iranians have wiped out their own conventional superiority and these two countries or these three countries would be at parity with each other. This has always been something that has been guiding the Iranians. That doesn't mean that they would never go for a nuclear weapon. And again, we have to assume the worst. case scenario. And that would be a scenario in which their security environment dramatically

deteriorated. And one of the most likely way that would happen is if the United States attacked the bombing. So what has happened now in public opinion by all anecdotal evidence, everything I'm seeing, it has shifted starkly in favor of nuclear events. I've not seen any polls to confirm that, but I've seen a poll from Turkey, a neighboring country, in which prior to this, 56% of the Turks favored building a nuclear weapon in case Iran built a nuclear weapon. After the attack, another poll was made. And now you had a majority of Turks saying that regardless, Turkey needed to build a nuclear weapon because they didn't trust that NATO would come to Turkey's defense if Israel attacked

Turkey, which of course, after the Turks won in Syria has become increasingly likely. and we've just seen the news in the last couple of days and which tensions between Turkey and Israel. So a country that didn't get attacked had a major shift in their public opinion in favor of building nuclear weapons as a result of Iran getting attacked. So you can just imagine what likely happened on the Iranians.

Now, within the Iranian elite, which at the end of the day, it matters most because they're the decision makers. You've clearly seen a shift in favor of building a nuclear weapon. You've even had some senior Iranian officials coming out and really, regretting that they didn't. And we always knew that this was going to be the effect of striking.

And the Israeli art counter-argument to that has not been that this wouldn't be the effect. The counter-argument has been, that's okay. We'll just bomb them every two years. We'll just bomb them every three years. And now it's gone six months, and Ed Danielo is going to be at the White House on Sunday asking the United States to bomb Iran again, as they promised they would. Yep. Well, and I mean, the idea of this administration being able to get back into real talks with Iran at this point for any time in the next three years is virtually impossible, right? I mean, if they sent Whitkoff over there with a golden offer, so to speak, and just, you know, really laid it all on the line and some real normalization.

but the I told wouldn't believe that anyway, right? Like, they really, it would have to be a whole new administration with a whole new approach to even be able to, I don't know how they can get back to. Yeah, Scott, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's going to be extremely, extremely difficult, but I wouldn't entirely rule it out. And I say that not because the Trump administration

has proven itself to be trusted for it. I say that because he has a, another quality that I think the Iranian at a minimum should be a television, which is he can, at least for the next year, we don't know if this is going to be true after November. He can do things that we've never seen any of the administration do. He just lifted all sanctions on Syria. The Caesar Act lifted through Congress.

I've never seen anything like that. The celebration of al-Qaeda taken over. Certainly, certainly. Although I have to say I personally was opposed to the Caesar Act because I've seen what these sanctions do to civilian populations. Sure. And so, you know, for the sake of the Syrian people, it's got to be bad enough given their current situations,

but the sanctions just absolute drains out every, you know, drop of life out of a society. And, you know, when Obama opened up to Cuba, he never touched the Cuban embargo. He just lifted the executive. order, never the congressional sanctions, because he knew he didn't stand the chance. He didn't have the Jews. He didn't have the power. And frankly, I don't even recall Congress ever lifting sanctions at all because you have to have an actual voting Congress voting in favor

of that. Now, Trump pushed this through. And what the Iranians want as part of a nuclear deal is sanctions relief. And even in the JCPOA, the only sanctions that were lifted, were executive orders. All of the other sanctions were only waived. And those were congressional sanctions in which every 90 days, 120 days, 180 days, the administration had to waive them as part of the deal.

But he never actually lifted them. So with Trump, you have someone that can go all the way towards total war, but he could potentially also go all the way in complete peace lifting all the sanctions, et cetera. Whereas with Biden, he refused to lift any sanctions. then, yes, he didn't go to war either, but he was just status quo.

And I think if the Iranians make a calculation that status quo is good enough for them, I personally think it's a mistake. Because on what basis do you think you're going to have a better chance getting a deal that actually gets sanctions relief after three years? And you're not going to have another president that may actually be even more eager to go to a middle of you, actually. Yeah. Awesome. Hey, you guys, big news. I have just added part one of the new Cold War, my second course at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. So pick it out, Scott Horton Academy.com.

Got my terror war course. You got the great Jim Bovard on the domestic police state, mostly. COVID and Waco and drug wars and TSA and so much good stuff. Ramsey Baroud on Israel Palestine, Bill Bupert on America losing war after war since World War II. Adam Francisco on debunking Christian Zionism, well, and really the whole history of Christianity and Judaism and, or at least since Christianity, and the modern state of Israel and all of that. And now we have part one of my Cold War course for you, the new Cold War course, based on my book, Provoked, of course. So check it out. It's been a huge success already. Everybody loves it getting nothing but positive feedback. And really happy that everybody's getting such a good kick out of it.

So if you haven't signed up yet, now is your chance. We got annual as well as lifetime subscriptions there. And you get a free copy of enough already if you sign up for a lifetime subscription, asterisk in the U.S. only. And thanks very much. See you over there. Scott Horton Academy.com. Man, you know what? Speaking of all of that, if we go back to 21, when Joe Biden came in, there was an obvious option there, Trita, to say, hey, listen, this was Obama's deal and it was a perfectly good deal, and it was that aberration Donald Trump who undid the deal.

And so we're getting right back in it. And instead, he did not do that. And he kept Trump's maximum pressure campaign and all of that. Was that simply that Netanyahu came calling? Because after all, it was, I don't know exactly the role they play, but Jake Sullivan, and Anthony Blinken played at least some role in helping with the JCPOA back in the Obama years, and they were his same guys running his government.

So it would have been pretty easy for him to save the deal at that time. He could have just... Was there a specific story or why he didn't? Yeah, I mean, Joe Biden. Let me tell you some of the details that I know of this. First of all, you're absolutely right. He could have just threw an executive order, got the U.S. back into the deal.

Whatever advances the Iranis had done on the nuclear program outside of the JCPOA that needed to be rolled back, would have been much easier to roll back once the U.S. was part of the deal again rather than doing it from the house. But that wasn't the real reason why they did. The real reason why they didn't is because Jake Sullivan had made the point inside the administration that he never wanted to have another fight with Netanyahu in the manner that the Obama administration had with the JCPUA. And in some ways, even blaming Obama for it saying that, you know,

if Obama had just been a little bit nicer to Netanyahu, you know, the Israelis would not have a proposed it. Which is complete nonsense. Go back to December 2020 and see what Ben Rhodes said in his podcast once he realized that that is the strategy that Obama, the Biden folks had. I chose that. He was so upset. It was like, we tried this 100 times. You're making a huge mistake. Don't do this. And of course, he was right. Biden never got a deal. That's not entirely

Biden's fault. But the biggest mistake, the biggest error was made by the Biden administration by not going straight back in. And a huge part of that was because they did not want to have a fight with Israel over this issue. In fact, they spent the first 10 weeks consulting with the Saudis, the Emirates and the Israelis trying to come up with some sort of a formula that would make them happy. And these were the three countries that at the time were completely opposed to the JCP. So I think as much as, you know,

we have to put a lot of blame at Trump's feet for walking out of the deal in the first place. Biden deserves so much blame, so much blame, but just completely mishandling this and really trying to appease Obama, Netanyahu more than seeking to advance you with him. Yeah. All right.

Well, I was about to go off on a whole thing about Obama and how bad he is, but I'm going to stop and switch back to where we are now. How damage, Trude, from your best information, was the nuclear program? The best thing I saw was David Albright, who is, I know, very iffy. And I don't even, well, anyway, David Albright, him and his group, ISIS did a pretty quick survey right after. I don't know if they followed up since then, but they said that I thought crucially that they really did destroy the facility at Isfahan

where you do the transformation from uranium metal to gas back to metal again. Without that, and that was above ground. Without that, they're severely set back, although I don't know exactly what it would take to rebuild that. And then obviously there's the question of just how destroyed, and Forteau are and or just how accessible what's left of those facilities are and then also the fate of the enriched uranium stockpile that they had at the time. What can you tell us about that and with what degree of certainty do you think? So the degree of certainty is at the end

of the day pretty low when it comes to the stock power. The stockpile obviously is very, very important. 400 kilos of 60% in rich uranium. The degree of. to which all of that was in one place, the degree to which it was hidden before, whether it is bombed, inaccessible but not destroyed. Again, not much is known at this point, and this is what the IEA wants to get back into Iran

to investigate. And the Iranians are very disinclined to agree to that because in their view, one, if they let the IIA in and they do locate the 60%, then that's just a huge target for the U.S. of Israel to bomb again. Secondly, and this is very important, relations with Grossi is at a very, very low stage right now

between the Iranians and Grossi, the head of the IEA. And the reason is because the Iranians believe that the IEA actually shared a lot of information, particularly about the wearabouts of Iranian nuclear scientists, with Israelis, which the Israelis then used to assassinate them. And one data point that in some ways, confirms this Iranian view in their own mind is that when the Russians bombed Ukrainian nuclear facilities, the IEA condemned it because it is a violation of the Geneva Convention, I think

Article 36. No such statement from Gross at all when the Israelis and the US bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. So the inconsistency is clearly a huge weakness on the IAA side, whether that confirms, of course that the IAA was some way somehow involved. It's a different story. But nevertheless, we know very little because the IAA is not there. But I think, again, going back to what I said early on, it's very important to understand. Bombing a civilian nuclear facility, which I think at this point is really clear, it was a civilian nuclear facility.

There was no bomb making place there. In fact, the transcript of the Israeli minutes at their cabinet level when they were debating this. The Netanyahu actually there says that if we don't bomb within a few years, Iranians could have a bomb. Keep that in mind. You were in extensively about this. In a few years, already since 1990s, the Israelis have been saying Iran is a few years away

from a bomb. Yeah, that's because they don't have a nuclear weapons program. Right. Right. And the messaging that they gave to the American public hour, the Israelis were saying that they had to bomb because Iran was a few weeks. away from a nuclear weapon. But the minutes of the meeting

actually says that he said a few years. They were clearly lying to the American Republic, lying to the Trump administration. But I think the Trump administration at the end that they went along with it, even though they knew that there was no real proliferation risk or an imminent one at least. I mean, this is what Tulsa Gavid herself,

testified just weeks before. But there was an opportunity, in their view, to bomb because Iran had been weakened, because Hezbollah had been weakened because other militias had been weakened because Iran's air defense systems were at a less strong place than they were before. And as a result, they took that opportunity

and the Israelis push were very hard. And now once Trump is in it and the Israelis feel like, okay, now they can go back, they're not focusing on nukes because Trump has said that he obliterated the program, so they're not making a nuclear argument any longer. Now they're complaining about the missiles. And if they take out the missiles,

Rest assured, at one day, they will come back to the American public and say, Iranians have kitchen knives. Those are existential threats to Israel, and you have to help respond. Yeah. Expandesigns.com. That's my friend Harley Abbott's company, and he is the webmaster for the Scott Horton Show, as well as the Libertarian Institute. He is the guy that redesigned the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website.

He's done a lot of great work for other friends of mine. and unlike a lot of webmasters and web developers and different guys that I have worked with over the years, the thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable and 100% vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there.

You got a website, you need it fixed up, you need a new one, setting up a business, working on any kind of online project like that check out expanddesigns.com well now overall in the region ninyahu you got admit is uh is winning i mean he's decimated the poor palestidians in the gaza strip he's i don't know the percentage and i don't know if if anyone knows how to quantify it exactly but he's severely crippled hesbala he killed their charismatic leader um nassarala and you know bomb the crap out of them as well as the horrific pager attack. And then they helped al-Qaeda overthrow the Alawites

and the Balthus regime there in Syria, which had always been allied with Iran. So if they put Iran up two pegs in Baghdad, they finally took them down a peg in Damascus, as they've been trying to do since 2011. And so, and now the Iraqis, as close as Baghdad is, Tehran, they seem to try to stay out of most of this trouble.

I guess you had Shiite militias to a few strikes on the Syrian border against U.S. troops and stuff like that, and in Jordan, but relatively like pinprick type stuff. And the Baghdad regime is not like militarizing and aligned with Tehran in any major way or anything. But certainly they got strategic depth there, right, in all of at least southeastern Iraq, if not the whole country there. But otherwise, it seems like the Israelis are really pulling ahead. So I wonder if you think that that's probably going to make much difference in the Iranians calculation about what to do with their nuclear program

or whether to go ahead and make nukes that now that they've really, I don't know if they've really lost Hezbollah, but they've just lost them probably as any kind of significant force inside southern Lebanon, right? Oh, and also, again, Assad gone in Damascus. Yeah. So the loss of Assad, of course, is a very significant challenge for the Iranians because it just gave the Israelis so much more maneuverability

to attack Iran. That is not being a challenge. The Turks are setting up new air defense systems inside of Syria, which the Israelis are complaining around, saying that this is limiting their maneuverability. It's Syrian airspace. It's not your place to have any maneuverability in the first place. But again, it goes back to.

to what the Israelis are looking for, which is complete hegemony in the region and anything that challenges that they see as illegitimate. Hezbollah definitely has been weakened. I don't think they are out. The Iranians cannot count on Hezbollah in the same manner that they wanted to before. The Iranian, the terrorist,

was essentially resting on three legs. one was a latent nuclear program. Secondly, was the missiles, and the forward defense was this relationship that they had with Hezbollah, with many of these Iraqi militias, with the Houthis and others. All of those forward defenses are significantly weakened, not entirely out, but significantly. And as a result, the only thing that actually remains that Iran's deterrence is it's missile program, which is part of the reason why there's just zero chance that they will give that up. If they lose their missile program, then essentially they have been subjugated by

the Israelis to be under-complete Israeli hegemic, which obviously they're going to be resistant. But it doesn't mean that they've given up on the idea of rebuilding these different militias and reconstituting the forward defense. that will be done, whether it can be done, how costly it will be, how long it will take, et cetera, remains to be seen, of course. But if you have a situation, as we do right now in Lebanon, for instance, in which a very large majority of the Lebanese once has followed this arm and then incorporated into the Lebanese army. But they want it on Lebanon's time schedule. They don't want it on Israel's time schedule. They don't want it on America's time schedule.

And at the same time, the Israelis are bombing Shia villages. Right now, they are in certain places in Lebanon enjoying de facto occupation, but through drones. So you have drones that are essentially over a lot of these different villages. If you want to leave your house, you have to go outside, you have to look at the drone. The drone has to scan your face and determine that you are not one of the people they're looking for, and then you're allowed to leave your house. This is happening. I mean, this sounds like sci-fi,

but this is actually happening in southern Lebanon right. You have that type of a situation continuing, and you have a situation in which the Shias in Lebanon are going to continue to feel that they are being oppressed. They are going to be, as a result, as they did back in the 1980s, look for some sort of support in order to have their own deterrence. If Lebanon or much of Lebanon decides that they're just going to embrace Israeli hegemony and not resist.

That may be a choice that some of the Lebanese want to make, but I find it very hard to see that the Shiads will make that choice because of the way that they will be treated by the Israelis. And that will then create a demand from their end, a desire for them to have some sort of support for Iran. This is exactly how Hezbollah was created in the first place. The Israelis invaded southern Lebanon. The Iranians had tried hard to get something going

in southern Lebanon and have it as a front against the Israelis and have failed until the Israelis handed it to them on a silver platter

by actually committing that invasion of them. Right. And now, it's been a long time since I was up to date on this,

but the last time I was, the government in Beirut was a coalition of the Christians and the Shiites. So they play at least, or did play a significant role in the confessional government system that they have there, right? Yes.

The thing that has changed of, of course, too, is that because of the weakening of Hezbollah, there's been a huge shuffle and the people that are now mainly in charge are much, much harsher against Yvonne and against Hezbollah, and they're pushing it. Yeah, they have support from the large part of the Lebanese public. They want to see Hezbollah disarm, but to them, This arming largely needs incorporating them into the Lebanese army and making sure that as well as Lebanon ceases to be the split state in which you have an army that is weak and then you have a militia that is very strong.

I think that's totally understandable at the end of day. But it should be on Lebanon's time schedule and it should be for the sake of Lebanon, not for the sake of the Israeli Genie or for the sake of the Trump administration completely handing over much of its Medellese policies. Yeah. All right. Well, Trita, I'm going to let you go. It's a day after Christmas, and you've been so generous with your time here.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me, Scott. Next time I want to be with you on the boats. Yes, absolutely. Come to town, man. I'll take you out, feed you some barbecue. We'll have a good old time. Awesome.

Look forward to it. Thanks so much, Matt. Absolutely. Absolutely. You too. You too. All right, you guys. That's Trita Parsi.

He's at the Quincy Institute. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and Roberts Brokridge, Inc., Moondos Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places, and check out my books, Fools Aaroned, enough already, and my latest, Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scott Horton.org, and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provote

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