The Duran Podcast - Biden, Netanyahu foreign policy blinders. Neocons push Iran escalation

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Biden, Netanyahu foreign policy blinders. Neocons push Iran escalation

All right, Alexander, let's do a video on the big story, which is the conflict in Israel. So it's Monday, Monday, midday for me here. And we've, I guess we've waited the weekend to see how things develop so we can do our first video on this conflict. and what are your thoughts after what you said was a momentous we're living in momentous times a momentous weekend where we had this Hamas operation which according to the media according to Netanyahu the Biden White House took everyone by surprise what are your thoughts well I think it clearly did take everybody by surprise I mean I know that there are especially everybody I know that there are some people who are saying that this was all,

that there was a collusion and the US government and the Israeli government and all of these people were parties to some sort of plan to make it happen. I've seen no evidence of that myself. All the indications that I've seen up to this point all combined to say that there's been a colossal, a catastrophic intelligence failure. The Israeli military were caught completely by surprise.

They didn't expect this to happen. They didn't expect this to happen on the scale that it did or to be as organized as carefully as it was. And they weren't prepared for it. And we now see that Netanyahu, that the Israeli army are hurriedly trying to get on top of this thing, trying to find some means to basically bring this situation, this critical situation under control. And of course, there's many people. Israel, very understandably, very frightened and very, very angry. And it's all happened at a time of political conflict within Israel. There's now been a sort of coming together of people.

And there's talk about forming a national unity government. And Israel feels that it is at war. But I will say, we've just done a program, Glenn Deeson and I with Alistair Crook, in which he's discussed much of the background to this wall. And he points to, he points to the fault lines within Israel itself as having provided both the opportunity for Hamas to launch this strike, but also to a great extent explaining why Hamas decided to launch this strike in this context. and, you know, events within Israel itself sort of shaping Hamas's reaction also.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, massive strike by Hamas, I feel it's taken Israel by surprise. The Israelis are frightened. Many people in Israel are frightened. They're very, very angry. And all the indications are that Israel is going to seek what they hope will be. a resolution of this problem by occupying Gaza, reoccupying Gaza, city of three and a half million people, extremely densely populated, a massive jumble of buildings, an insurgents dream place to fight an urban conflict against.

and I said that was my opinion in a program I did yesterday on my channel. I've now heard lots of people confirm that, including Alistair Crook. By the way, you can watch the program when it comes out who's been there. And I'm very concerned that without understanding exactly what they're doing, the Israelis are walking into a trap. Now, I can't say this for certain because obviously I don't know maybe Israel has some place. about how to deal with the problem in Gaza. Maybe their military is going to be much stronger in terms of the reaction that they're going to undertake than I expect.

Maybe Hamas is less well-organized than it appears. But all the preliminary indications are that Hamas were very well-organized, very strong when they launched this attack, that they know exactly what they're doing and how they go about it and they're going about it in an incredibly ruthless way, by the way, and we shouldn't disregard that. They're taking hostages,

they're parading people in public in the most appalling manner. They're killing civilians. Civilians have died in their hundreds, and I've seen figures of up to a thousand people being killed. But anyway, whatever. Hamas have clearly planned. and prepared for this.

And I wonder whether Israel is planned or prepared for what it is now apparently proposing to do, which is to go into Gaza and to try to take control there and to choke the situation, choke off the situation at its heart. And if that is the case and the Israelis haven't planned this properly, then we could be looking at exactly what Prime Minister Netanyahu said, a long war, a long war in Gaza, with all sorts of real possibilities that it could involve outside powers. And moreover, a long war which Israeli society might not be prepared for and which might ultimately intensify the divisions within Israeli society

and for all I know, that's part of Hamas's plan. Now, there is a further thing I want to say, which I didn't discuss in my programme. We haven't discussed, and I think you've discussed. But apparently now, there's this drumbeat in Britain and in the United States by the neocons, who is saying, time now to deal with Iran. And there's even calls for some sort of attack

on Iran. So we've got a war in Israel, a terrible, prolonged bloody war in Israel, which people have been killed. And already we hear the neocons saying, let's go off to Iran as well. If that does happen, then it compounds all the mistakes. It's adding folly upon folly. Yeah, the neocons wasted no time in their rhetoric for escalation with Iran. Do you believe that Iran was behind this? Because they have come out with an official statement. I know the BBC, I talked about this, the BBC, they interviewed a Hamas official who said that Iran was behind this. There was another interview of a Hamas official.

I forgot the outlet. I don't know if it was the Washington Post of the New York Times. And that Hamas official said that Iran was not behind this. How they're getting these interviews with these Hamas officials, I don't know. But anyway, that's what the BBC said. One thing, I believe it was the Washington Post. I could be wrong about that. But I know it was a big mainstream media outlet in the West that said,

a Hamas official said that Iran's not behind this. But we do have an official statement from the UN mission in Iran, which said that they had nothing to do with this. And this was just a very well-eastern. prepared, very well-executed operation from Hamas. What do you think is this happening here with Iran? Because we also, I just want to say one thing, we did a video on Saudi Arabia three weeks ago and the negotiations that were taking place. You correctly called, you were the only analyst that correctly called that this is not about civilian nuclear technology. You may want to get into that, but this is actually about giving Saudi Arabia.

the ability to have nuclear weapons. And so there's a lot of different threads at play here, which could point to a benefit from Iran by green lighting this operation. But I want to be clear, the mission of the United Nations, which is an official statement from the Iran government, said they had nothing to do with this. What's your take on? Well, the first thing to say is that, I mean,

I think we should not underestimate Hamas' own ability. to plan and execute these kind of operations. And yes, Hamas has a long-standing and very close relationship with Iran, but we shouldn't assume that there's simply a cat's ball for Iran. I think this is a mistake. It's a complete misconception. It's one that many people promote, but I don't think it is true. And in fact, also, it's important to say that over the last few weeks,

Hamas has been making a serious effort. to improve its relations with Saudi Arabia also. And a delegation from Hamas went to Saudi Arabia and they were received there in a friendly way in Riyadh. So, you know, it doesn't follow. Because there's a close connection between Iran and Hamas, that the two are, you know, Hamas is acting under Iranian orders.

And the second thing I'm going to say is, All these people who are Hamas spokesmen, first of all, are they actually Hamas spokesmen? And besides, Hamas, whatever you may think of them, I mean, they've clearly shown that they're clever and they're very well organised. It is in their interests now, having started this thing, to instigate an even bigger war. So, saying, you know, having a Hamas spokesman say, yes, of course, we did this at Iran's prompting, knowing that that might precipitate an attack upon Iran, enlarging the war, spreading it across the Middle East, involving every single person of Islamic beliefs in this war. Well, that is what Hamas might be wanting to see happen.

and it doesn't prove that Iran actually was behind this attack. All it means is that there might be a strong element of manipulation there and Hamas might be acting with a degree of calculation and self-interest as they have consistently and successfully shown throughout their entire preparation and planning and conduct of this operation. Having said that, you know, I'm not going to, to say definitely and conclusively that Iran had nothing to do with this. But if it did, then the important question is to ask why. Iran has just sorted out a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

It's cut arms deals with Russia. It's looking to import soon. Suhoi 35 fighter jets from Russia. Its economy has started to respond positively to an easing of the economic blockade on Iran that the Western powers have sought to impose. We've now had trade deals with Russia. We've had trade deals with China. My impression of the Iranian leadership is that these are very rational people, whatever you may think about them. I don't really see why at this particular point in time, they would want to jeopardise all of that in order to provoke, to instigate an attack in Israel, which might ultimately come back and involve them, Iran, in a bigger war.

So I don't see the immediate motive. The only thing that the might have been. have been, that might have been behind all of this, is those negotiations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. And the Biden administration has been pushing them very hard. They've been trying to get the Saudis to commit to lowering oil prices. And for the administration, that is the single most important thing. They wanted to get the Saudis to establish diplomatic relations with Israel and for the Biden administration, that is an electoral issue. Because of course, in the election, Jewish voters in the United States historically have tended, as I understand it, to vote more for the Democrats.

But Donald Trump, if he is the candidate, can tell those Jewish voters, look, I was the person who got Gulf Arab states to vote, to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. What has Joe Biden managed for Israel up to this point? Relations between Biden, the United States and Israel, on the contrary, are very bad. So getting Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. for the perspective of the Biden administration, it isn't just a geopolitical win. And the Biden administration at the moment is very, very short of geopolitical wins.

It also has a political electoral benefit because it gives people Jewish voters in the United States a positive reason to vote for the Democrats in the elections in 2024. So there's all that going. But of course the Saudis are saying, look, you want all of this from us. What do we get in return? And, as I said a couple of weeks ago, it's quite clear to me that the US is moving ever so slowly towards giving the green light for Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear weapons and perhaps helping that in some ways.

And of course, for the Iranians, that is unacceptable. and it could just be, and this is the only motive I can think of, that the Israelis might have had if they've actually been behind this event in Israel, it could just be that the Iranians have put Hamas up to do this in order to try to short-circuit these discussions that are taking place between the United States and Saudi Arabia at this time, to make it, in other words, impossible for the Saudis to move forward

with recognition and diplomatic relations with Israel and basically to bring all of those negotiations to a stall. Now, I should say, I'm far from convinced that this is the case. I think there are alternative explanations that this affair, which might have accounted perhaps better, as to why Hamas would have wanted to act in the way that it has. But if you are looking for an Iranian explanation, and I can't exclude it,

because I don't know what discussions have been taking place behind the scenes, if you are looking for an Iranian explanation, that is the only one I can think of. And as I said, I'm not convinced, because it seems to me that for the moment at least, the discussions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia don't seem to be going particularly well. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I was actually reading an article from Heretz, and they were very angry with Netanyahu, but they said that the deal between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel was flawed from the beginning because the diplomacy wasn't giving anything to the diplomatic negotiations. We're not giving anything to the Palestinians.

And Horat's point was like, you can't have a deal in this region with Israel and Saudi Arabia without including the Palestinians at some levels. It was a failure in diplomacy, period. Anyway, I'm going to get to that in a bit. But real quick, a question that I have is going over this, is talking about this neocon narrative of going after Iran. how does it benefit the conflict in Israel at this moment attacking Iran? Is there a benefit in going after Iran, which will help Israel in this conflict right now with Hamas? I mean, I can't figure out the connection outside of the one thread that you just explained right now, which is Iran gave the green light to Hamas in order to prevent Saudi Arabia from, okay, you explained it. outside of that connection, I don't see how going after Iran actually helps Israel at this point in time.

No, I don't think it does. I think it would be a disaster. I think, as I said, it would risk enlarging the wall. And, you know, let's come to what Hamas is saying as the proximate cause for this event. and they're saying that it is Israeli settlers' attacks. I'm choosing my words very carefully, by the way, Israeli settlers' attacks on the Al-Axa Mosque, which is within the Haram al-Sharif. This is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is where the area where Solomon builds the temple,

which is of course the centre of the Jewish faith during the time of the Kingdom of Judah, and first of all the Kingdom, the United Kingdom of Judah and Israel, and which remained the centre of the Jewish faith right up to the point of its destruction by the Romans in 79 AD during the great Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire. It is one of the most important focal places, in Jewish history and in Jewish religion.

There's also a key place in Islam. First of all, there are religious buildings, Islamic religious buildings there. There's the dome of the rock, and there is the Alaksa Mosque, all of them dating from the very first century of Islam. And of course, the reason it is so important is that it is the point,

place from which the night journey by Muhammad, the prophet, which is mentioned in the Koran, took place. As I understand it, it was the point where he ascended to heaven. I'm not an expert on Islamic religion or Islamic law. If I'm getting all this wrong, apologies. All I am saying is that it is absolutely a key event, a key place, an absolutely central location. in Islam. It is alongside Mecca and Medina, which are of course exist in Saudi Arabia. It is the third most holy place in Islam. So Hamas is saying that this latest attack on the mosque within the Haram al-Sharif, that there was an incursion of it last week by Israeli settlers was the just the latest

in a series of attacks on the mosque, the third holiest place in Islam, and that they've acted to defend the integrity of that Islamic holy place. Now, remember, Hamas itself is a religious party. It's a religious movement. It's, as I understand it, it's ideology. And I'm not an expert on these matters. And if I'm getting this wrong, again, apologies. But as I understand it,

its religious perspectives are close to those of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Anyway, suffice to say, it is an Islamic religious movement and party. For them,

defence of the Alaksa Mosque and of this whole area is critically important. And Saudi Arabia is, of course, the guardian of the two holiest shrines in Islam, in Mecca and in Medina.

And of course, it is also a state which is religiously founded. And Iran is also a religious state, as we all know. I mean, it's based upon Islam. And of course, an attack on the Alaksa mosque would have a massive effect, especially if that mosque were, seriously endangered, if its physical existence were ever endangered, would have an enormous

effect on Islam generally. So that is what Hamas is saying. Now, if you start a war against Iran, which is a Muslim country and putting aside the Shia, Sunni issues, but you start broadening this war in that way, then of course the risk you run, the enormous risk you run, is that you broaden the war and you make you in you risk making this not just a war between israel and hamas between israelis and palestinians it at that point starts to become a war on the most important religious issues between Islam Israel and the west now I cannot see for the life of me how that helps Israel and I cannot see how that helps the United States. I am not saying that an attack on Iran would directly lead to that. But if I was somebody with the interests of Israel

at heart and of course also even more so the interests of the United States, I would say that don't enlarge the war, keep it contained as far as far. far as possible, that is in Israel's interests, that is in the US interests, that is in the West's interests. Don't start a war against Iran, especially at this time. That's not going to help Israel in any conceivable way. And of course, it risks involving the United States, putting aside all these massive religious and emotional issues. It involves the United States in another war against another powerful country. And I can't see, even if you can get it to stop at that point,

I can't see how that works in the interests of the United States at all. It seems to me it's another forever war. The neocons have been aching to go after Iran. Well, for decades, they've just in the process of suffering a debacle in Ukraine and here we see they're putting that debacle or they seem to be putting that debacle behind them and they're trying to leverage this affair to start a new war somewhere else against another potentially powerful adversary which is Iran. Yeah, 100 billion won and done for Ukraine. That's what the telegraph wrote the other day and

now they're focusing in on Iran. Ukraine has been forgotten. They're focusing in on Iran. All the flags have changed. The virtue signaling has changed. The buildings now have the Israeli flag. You know, it's not about as long as it takes or the long war. This is a stalemate or any of that. Now it's, Israel has the right to defend itself. That's the new talking point. That's that the collective West is pushing out in their messaging. But, you know, you mentioned politics. in all of this, there's an election in the United States. Nereñaz, Nenehu is having a terrible time of things inside of Israel.

He has a lot of issues that he's fighting from the judicial reform stuff to, to a whole bunch of corruption cases, legal issues, that he's been fighting for God knows how long. And you mentioned that you believe this was indeed a support. surprise. If it was a surprise, let's go down this line of thinking. I want to ask you this question. If this was a surprise and it caught Netanyahu off guard, everyone is now blaming Netanyahu. Okay. If this was a surprise and it caught the Biden White House off guard, which I believe they're so incompetent that this absolutely caught them off guard, they're so hyper-focused on Ukraine,

which we've said a thousand times that they've ignored the rest of the world, I definitely I definitely believe the Biden of the Biden White House. I'm not saying about the Intel HGs. The Biden White House, this group of people, they are completely incompetent and they have no clue what the hell is going on and they're so invested in Ukraine. But if it caught them off guard,

is it in their best interest from a political level to try and widen out the war? For example, Netanyahu says they're coming after me now. They've come after me with court cases. They're protesting in the streets on a weekly basis.

And now they're going to try and blame me for the incompetence of this operation that Hamas has launched against us. So what am I going to do? I'm going to say this is our Pearl Harbor. I'm going to say this is our 9-11. I'm going to try to suck in the United States. I'm going to try to suck in the UK, the European Union,

widen out this war, get Iran involved, get Syria involved, get Russia involved, because I'm not going to be the one that's going to be thrown under the bus for all of this. and the Biden White House says the same thing. They say this is our off-ramp from Ukraine. You know, we're not going to be the ones

during an election cycle to get the criticism from the Republicans that we screwed up, that our intel messed up as, you know, we're the foreign policy dream team, right? The adults are back in D.C., right? That was what they were saying when they got it to fire. Jake Sullivan three weeks ago was saying there's peace

in the Middle East, we did it. And all of a sudden, you have this. they're going to say, at least in my opinion, they're going to say, you know what, we need to distract, we need to widen this thing out. Let's focus on Iran. Let's try to figure out a way that we get the criticism off of us and, and distract it towards something else. So what do politicians do? They widen the war. They escalates. They take certain actions to remove the blame from themselves. I mean, do you see a political component in all of this? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think you've nailed it, in fact, because of

Of course, what would be a disaster for the West for the United States and for Israel works quite plausibly in the interests of all of these political leaders. I'm Jake Sullivan and Biden. They're worrying about the election next year. Donateniahu worries about surviving as Prime Minister of Israel and perhaps avoiding a prison sentence. So from their point of view, you can absolutely see the attractions. get away from Ukraine, find something else to talk about.

That's a debacle, but it's now yesterday's story. Make for something far bigger, far more spectacular. Also, you can't really fight the Russians directly because, well, the Russians are a superpower, or at least an emerging or re-emerging superpower. They've got nuclear weapons. They've got better weapons than we have. But of course the Iranians might not be so scary.

We might say to ourselves, well, you know, if he bombed Iran and we launched some missile strikes and various places in Iran and we try to decapitate the Iranian leadership and we do all of these things. Well, we can get away with it and we can control it because Iran, it may be a powerful country, but it is nowhere near as powerful as Russia is. So it's very easy to see how these kind of

bad calculations are being made. And if we go back to that other event, which I know people argue about in its origins and its causes, but let's just stick with the official narrative about it for the moment, which is 9-11. Much the same thing happened then. There was 9-11. There was lots of warnings of all kinds of experts at the time.

I remember them. I remember, you know, listening to them on the radio, on the reading about them and the very early internet that we had in those days. I can remember all the experts saying, you know, maintain self-discipline. Don't let yourself do things

that are unwise. Don't invade Afghanistan or go after people in all sorts of places, in all kinds of ways that aren't going to work in the end to your advantage. Above all, don't invade Iran. Of course, they did all of those things. And it, in the short term, resolved the then

president, George W. Bush's electoral problems. He went from being an unpopular president and being a massively popular one for a certain period of time. It hugely strengthened the deep state in the United States. It made their political position very secure and very strong. and to some extent they're still, those people are still there now. So you can look back on all these events. You can say that for the United States, for the West, the events of that time, Afghanistan, Iraq especially, were a disaster. But for the people who were behind it all, well, it wasn't a disaster at all.

It turned out very well politically for them. And I can very easily see the kind of calculation, the same kind of political calculations being made now. Because the experts were assuming that the leadership of the United States back then was acting in the best interests of the United States and the West. But the politicians had personal concerns that were even more paramount for them. And of course, it was they who in the end were the decision makers. and we could be seeing exactly the same process unfold with this event now. All right. I want to ask you a question about how this all started.

Do you believe that there could have been, perhaps there could have been some knowledge about what was happening? I mean, I understand that my thinking on this is that there probably was an element of surprise. This is probably where we differ a bit. I agree that there was an element of surprise on. a certain level for the Biden widehouse and for the Netanyahu administration. But I'm thinking that there might have been some knowledge, perhaps by intel agencies. I don't know, perhaps by intelligence in Israel, perhaps by intelligence in the United States, perhaps by some military

officials. I don't know. But there must have been some indication that something was happening. And either it deliberately that it wasn't relayed to the Biden White House or to Netanyahu, perhaps for political reasons, perhaps for other reasons, distraction from Ukraine, to go out to finally go after Iran. I don't know. Maybe a combination of things. Or it wasn't relayed to the administrations of, because out of just pure incompetence. Or maybe the administrations, the Biden White House may have gotten this info and they're so incompetent or Netanyahu. They said, you know, just, you know, I don't want to hear it.

You know, I'm hyper-focused on Ukraine. Don't tell me about Hamas's training or doing some stuff for an operation. I don't care. Maybe. I mean, I'm just asking you a question of, is there the possibility that there were agencies or military officials that knew what was going on and that had an understanding that something was coming? We had some events, some tension in the region, for example, the drone strike. on the academy in Syria that happened three, four days ago. I mean, you know, what was going on at the mosque, which you covered in your video,

there were some signals that things are bubbling up, that things are getting very tense. Well, I'm going to say straight away, first of all, as I said, I've just done a program with Alastair Crook, who knows the region, he told me that he could see it coming. And in fact, if you go back and look at the kind of things he's been saying and writing about, he clearly did see it coming. And I am absolutely sure that when and if, which is a big if, by the way, we ever get a proper investigation into this and into what people knew, we will find that lots of people in the intelligence agencies,

in Shindvet and Mossad in Israel, in the CIA and the other large parts of the intelligence community in the United States, lots of people. could see that something was coming and that something was, you know, going to happen. And I suspect the accumulation of intelligence was enormous. And maybe what happened was that somebody took a decision somewhere. I say somebody, I mean, I'm not talking about just one individual, perhaps more than one person, took a decision to let the thing run its course because they think,

they calculate that if they do, it will turn out well for them in the end and well for, you know, the forces they represent in Israel and the West. So that's a possibility. Or it could be, and I think this is a real, real possibility. I think that up to this point,

the president himself, in the United States, I don't think he's very on top of anything very much at the moment. I have to say that. I know people don't like me saying it, but I will say it. I think his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has been fixated with Ukraine. And he's, besides, I consider him to be completely incompetent anyway. And remember, he's the person who advises the president about most things. He was telling us all, you know, just a few weeks ago on the 29th of September.

Don't worry about the Middle East. It's never been more peaceful. So, you know, that's what he thinks. So it could be that all this intelligence is coming to him. He's not paying any attention to it. He's not advising and briefing the president about it. And the president himself isn't on top of it. And besides, the only issue in international affairs that he's fixated about and cares about is Ukraine.

and it's impossible to get the old man to look away from Ukraine and focus on this disaster that's coming. And of course, in Netanyahu's case, he's got a political crisis underway, constantly ticking away in Israel. He's got a fractious and difficult coalition to operate and to run, and maybe he's not looking at all of this carefully either, and he's got distracted and isn't really focused.

He's taken his eye off the ball. But, you know, I don't know what exactly took place within the intestines of the deep states in Israel and the United States in other places. It's, I don't exclude the possibility that somebody made a decision to let this thing play out in order, as they believe, to take advantage of it. I think if that is what they think, that would be a catastrophically ill-judged policy decision that somebody took. And if that is indeed what has happened, then, you know, this is not just a disaster, but an authored disaster. somebody sort of set it up to work out like that. But, you know, I don't know for a fact that that happened. For the moment, I think there was surprise.

I think that surprise does reflect incompetence. But again, that doesn't mean that there weren't many, many people in the intelligence agencies, in Israel and in the United States, who weren't giving out warnings. I'm sure that they were. It's just that I don't think they were getting the attention that they needed to get because their bosses, the US administration, fixated with the Ukraine and the election. In Israel, the prime minister in his cabinet, obsessed with the political crisis there. The generals in Israel who are trying to mobilize opposition to the prime minister

with whom they're apparently on bad terms, it seems to me, more likely than not, that they just weren't listening. Yeah, I completely, I'm starting to come around to that belief. There must have been people, a lot of people that had intel as to what was going on. But I can very easily see that intel going to Jake Sullivan and Jake Sullivan just taking it and just moving it to the side of his desk and saying, I don't care about this stuff. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. I mean, I could definitely see that.

And, you know, we've done many videos over the last year and a half where we have said time and time again that the Biden White House is so hyper-focused on Ukraine that they are ignoring the rest of the world. They're giving up on the rest of the world. We've said it a hundred times. They've given up because they're just completely so invested, emotionally invested in Ukraine that they don't see anything else. It's just complete tunnel vision. When you have tunnel vision and people are saying, look, this is happening in Gaza, this is happening here. You're like, I don't see it. I don't see it.

I don't see it. I don't care to see it. I don't care to see it, you know. So I can absolutely see that. A couple more questions. Real quick, the chances at Hezbollah enters this conflict. And I imagine that would be a huge problem for Israel. What are your thoughts?

there. Oh, absolutely. And I've got one more question and we'll wrap the video up. Absolutely. But before we do that, can I just come back to what you were saying, that they weren't looking and tunnel vision? The way to understand, conduct of foreign policy, especially if you are a great power, is imagine that you're running, you're driving, you're driving your car up the motorway, you know, the highway. You have to see the obstacles in the head. You look at, you know, the car here, the truck there, the fact that the lanes are widening. or narrowing or converging. You have to think and plan ahead

and you have to do that all the time. You have to be observant and you have to be watching and looking out for things and that you have to find ways round and people who drive will know exactly what I'm talking about and it's something which if you've done it's enough

and you're experienced in it, you acquire that skill. What happens if you drive a car up a motorway and you have tunnel vision. So you only see one thing ahead of you and you pay no attention to everything else. Well, a crash happens. Now, you might have ample warning.

All kinds of things might be having. People might be hunking away at you and flashing their lights. But if you're not looking, if you're only looking at one thing, there will be a crash. Now, again, let me reiterate, I don't know for a fact that that is how it came about.

And it may have been that there was a citizen. degree of calculation in this. But I have no difficulty having followed, having discussed many times with you the realities about the administration and how it conducts things. I have no difficulty in imagining that it was this shambolic incompetence that we've just been talking about. Now, let's talk about Hezbollah. Hezbollah, I guessing, is in itself in a complex, The first thing to say is Hezbollah and Hamas, Hezbollah is a Shia organization. Hamas is a Sunni organization. But as I understand it, they do have contacts with each other. They're both enemies of Israel. They're both implacably hostile to Israel. It's not impossible that Hezbollah and Hamas have been in contact and that Hezbollah was aware of what was going to happen and played a role in it. You know, that's not impossible. In which case, if Hezbollah does become involved,

well, we have Israel as a second front. It can't just, it can't just focus exclusively on Gaza. It's got to think about its northern front, its areas in the north, in Galilee, and all of those places. At a time, by the way, bear in mind, because of the over-focus, the fixation with Ukraine, The United States and Israel are short of shells,

and you would need shells both to fight in Gaza, but you would probably need shells even more if you were fighting Hezbollah in the north. So, you know, it would indeed be a grave security issue for Israel. Now, that begs the question, what is Hezbollah going to do? Hezbollah is very close to Iran. And if Iran, the Iranian authorities get a sense that there's going to be an attack on them, it's more likely, much more likely, I would have thought,

than the claim that they put Hamas up to do this, that Iran will speak to Hezbollah and will try to get Hezbollah to start something in the north against Israel. So we can already see that all this talk about attacking Iran, might actually complicate further Israel's current security problems. But of course, if Hezbollah does decide to get involved, either because they've been put up to do it by Iran or because the Israelis themselves start to worry about what Hezbollah might be up to

and decide to attack Hezbollah, then we're going to have a massive escalation of the war and it could involve drawing other Lebanese factions. It could join the Syrians. It could start radicalizing the Middle East. And of course, potentially, it could join Iran as well. And Syria as well. So again, I come back to this. The best policy is to try to contain this thing

and then sitting down and coming up with some achievable. realistic approach to deal with this problem I'm not going to say what it is because I don't have the means to know but I'm confident that there is

there's even a security solution for Israel and the United States to come up with which would be better and would enhance their security more than expanding the war would do

expanding the war by taking on Hezbollah or much worse Iran is just about the worst mistake that could be made and at the moment far from trying to go after Iran I would have thought that at this time the better policy for the United States assuming that anybody were running things with any degree of intelligence in the United States is for the US to have private meetings with Iranian officials perhaps in New York.

And so, for heaven's sake, let's try to keep this thing under control. We don't need an all-out Middle Eastern war. Neither do you. Put whatever influence you have on Hezbollah to try to keep them out of this thing. And we will put pressure on the Israelis to do the same. And then we will try and find some kind of resolution to this problem with Hamas.

That, it seems to me, is far more intelligent foreign policy but more intelligent policy for the United States. It's the kind of thing that once upon a time the United States instinctively new to do, but of course the neocons will never allow it. You kind of answered my final question, which was what kind of diplomatic off-ramp do you envision? And I think you just explained it.

So let me just ask you this. the Biden White House, they don't have the ability to do what you just said, to sit down with Iran and to come up with these creative, out-of-the-box ideas as to how to, number one, keep this contained, and number two, find a diplomatic off-ramp, so people stop dying, and there's some sort of a solution, at a minimum, a pause to what's happening in Israel and in Gaza. just so that we don't enter into a wider catastrophic war. I mean, you know, we're talking catastrophic if that happens. If the U.S. attacks Iran, this is about as worse a situation as the world can be in. Do you think that there's anybody in the Biden White House that can engage in this type of diplomacy? I mean, I don't want to be pessimistic, but I mean, their instinct is escalation. and they just don't have the ability

the know-how, the intelligence to navigate what you just explained. They just can't do it and they can't bring themselves. They don't have the humility the humility to bring themselves to sit down with the Iranians and say, let's try to figure this out. You've seen it in Ukraine. I cannot think of a single person

within this administration. Not one. who would be capable of that kind of thing. There isn't a single person in the administration, in the State Department, in the Pentagon, in the National Security Council, even in the Treasury of the Commerce Departments, which tend nowadays to be somewhat a little better run than other parts of the American government.

Anyway, I don't know a single person who has that degree of skill and ability and competency. to do that kind of thing anymore. Now, once upon a time, the US government could do that. As recently, it was just a few years ago, when there was a crisis between the United States and Iran, the then-President Donald Trump got in touch with the Iranians,

through intermediaries, and said, look, you know, you're going to launch some strikes against one of our bases, just make sure you miss, and I make sure that we don't come after you. and as a result, that particular crisis was diffused. He had that knowledge and that ability to do that kind of thing. I don't know anybody in this administration who has that ability or that knowledge to do that kind of thing. If you're asking about the United States as a whole, yes, of course, there are such people. The United States is a big country.

There are lots of ex-diplomats I can think of. I'm not going to name them and embarrass them. But I can imagine who could conduct that kind of creative, intelligent, effective diplomacy, which, as I said,

once upon the time, the United States did know how to do. Unfortunately, all of those people have been pushed far away from the centre of power. I don't think anybody's listening to them anymore and I don't expect them to get the call because they won't. The people who are in charge are the neocons and as I have said so many times these people have no reverse gear. Try, you know,

going back to that metaphor about the motorway, driving the car up the motorway. Imagine what happens if you try and drive a on a motorway and you have only one and you're only keeping your foot, you're only driving on one gear. But that's what these people know. Not even slow down. They don't even know how to slow down. That's, yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. They're not to stop.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Right away, they're trying to escalate with Iran. And no one is asking the question. Now one journalist is asking the question of Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, how does going after Iran solve the problem right now? in Israel. No one. No one is asking how. It doesn't. It doesn't. Everything's abstract. Everything's good guy, bad guy. Anyway, you know, you said that this could be along the lines of George Bush at 9-11 and we could see a huge escalation, which I think the U.S. just cannot

absorb. Back then, the U.S. was strong enough to absorb the debacle that happened post-9-11, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and everything else. This time around, the U.S. cannot absorb this, and going after Iran is going to be, it's not going to be a cakewalk. It's actually, I think, it could lead to a catastrophic defeat of the U.S. Iran can fight in ways that many people don't quite understand. Many people think this would just be the U.S. Air Force,

as Lindsay Graham said, knocking out. some oil refineries and then leading it to a collapse in Iran. Uh-uh. That's not how it's going to work a conflict with Iran. It's going to be much more complex and much more devastating than I think a lot of, a lot of Americans having quite wrapped their heads around. I mean, final thoughts and we'll wrap up this very long video. I mean, you're absolutely right.

I mean, Lindsay Graham, it always tells it's going to be easy. And how often has he been proved right? Never. I mean, you know, he used to talk, I mean, he was one of those people who talked about Russia of being this gas station, masquerading as a country. You know, its military was all over the place. It was, you know, just kick the door, and the whole thing will come tumbling down.

Another person said that, by the way, who ended up dead in a bunker underneath Berlin. But, you know, this is how the neocons always talk about every war. It's going to be a cakewalk. It's going to be incredibly easy. And, of course, the first few days, weeks, it seems like it might be. You have all the bangs and the flashes

and it does amazing things for CNN's ratings and all of that. And then, of course, the grind comes in and it all turns out bad. It did it in Afghanistan. It did it Iran. It did in Syria. It did in Libya.

It's done so catastrophically in Ukraine. And as you absolutely rightly say, taking on Iran, they always think Iran is this fragile. place held together with, you know, with sticking plaster and cellar tape. And again, if you blow hard enough, it'll all fall over. It won't. It absolutely will not do that.

I mean, we already see how, you know, Iranian weapons have been used effectively by the Russians in the conflict in Ukraine. And we've got, and they're some of the simplest weapons that Iran has. And, of course, Iran is now a member of the bricks. remember it's it's integrating into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation it's got friends

it's not the friendless place that it used to be 20 years ago and as for the United States you are absolutely right when George W Bush and the neocons went off on their extraordinary frolics after 9-11

well we were still in the unipolar moment. Nobody at that time really believed that the United States' power would ebb as quickly as it has. China still, you know, will below the United States in economic and industrial and above all military power. In Russia, Putin had only just come to power. He was trying to make, have good relations with the US. The country was still in deep, deeply deep, deeply difficult situation. The oligarchs in Russia was still very, very powerful. We had no organisation like the bricks in those days. And of course the United States was in much better shape. The economy was far stronger. The debt was much lower. There'd been rapid economic growth

in the 90s. The internet had just been introduced and people were talking about how the United States would surf the tide of the internet and lock in its economic supremacy, you know, indefinitely. It's a completely different world. So yes, the United States could afford things, could afford mistakes, big mistakes, like the ones it carried out then. This time, this geopolitical and economic situation is far less accommodating. dating of errors. You need more skill. You need more care than you did then. And in fact, if anything, we're approaching this with even less. All right. Okay, let's leave it there. The Duran of excellent points. Duran.orgas.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bich shoots, telegram,

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