The Duran Podcast - IRAN WAR peace talks or trickery. Military build up continues

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

IRAN WAR peace talks or trickery. Military build up continues

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on the situation with Iran. And we have Trump announcements on the weekends. Usually on Friday, we'll get an announcement of escalation. And on Monday, we get some sort of announcement of talks or negotiations or the winding down of the war. And this Monday was quite an announcement from Trump. We had the Friday, the weekend announcement of the smashing of Iran's power plants, so 48-hour ultimatum. And then on Monday, we get the truth social post and Trump statements as well to the media about some sort of peace talks taking place.

Which the Iranians immediately deny. They say that there are no peace talk. True. The entire day on Monday is devoted to all kinds of people speculating about the peace talks. There's all sorts of rumors about Pakistan. I was going to say Pakistan is one of the... Whitgolf perhaps traveling there. Kushner.

Kushner perhaps traveling there. Contacts with Galubov, who is the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, and he's the new person. All sorts of people claiming. that they know about these things and paying no attention at all to the fact that the Iranians are denying everything. Over the next couple of hours, it gradually, I've noticed at least as of the time that I'm making of this video, it seems to have faded away. I don't personally believe that anything actually happened over the weekend.

I don't think that there were any substantive talks. There are messages being passed backwards and forwards between the Americans and the Iranians. through various channels. Pakistan, no doubt, is one. Egypt probably is another. The Russians, for all I know, are a third. But Axios also says the UK is one, which is interesting. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But I don't get the sense that so far the Iranians are prepared to make any of this kind of concessions that Trump would want to see in order to be able to declare victory. And I don't get the sense the Iranians have any interest for the moment in doing that. And of course, from Trump's point of view, at the moment, he's in that position where he can't

end the wall without achieving something that he can sell as a victory. So this is the big question. Were all these moves over the weekend, some sort of overcomplicated way by Trump and his people of getting talks with the Iranians started? In a words, scare them on Friday with talk of a massive retaliation and then declare it all on Monday, say that talks are actually underway,

and then hope that the Iranians somehow go with that and that finally does get talks underway, which would not be impossible. Or is it a president and his officials veering from escalation to de-escalation because they're worried about what's happening in the markets? they are at the same time not wanting to lose face with the Iranians, and they have no real plan or idea of how to get themselves out of this situation. That is for me the question. I am not sure which of the two it is, but my senses that it's the second rather than the first.

And again, clear in discipline within the administration. Lots of speculation about people making a lot of money out of all of this because they played the markets and that's all over. The big media, Financial Times. There's no reason to hold, I mean, it's all over the place, all over the media now, which of course is a very, very bad look, to put it mildly. You can say an awful lot more about it. But anyway, the whole thing to me looks ugly and chaotic. rather than the administration or Trump himself following a disciplined plan. Now, that's my take.

I'd be interested to hear yours. No, I mean, I want to, I agree with you. And I think this is a part. Part of it is Trump trying to perhaps find some way to declare victory and to get an offer. Perhaps that's one part. There's another side of me which says this is more Trump trickery. We talked about this with Jim Jadras in our live stream. I definitely can see Trump trying to trick the Iranians, to trick the world into believing that there's some kind of talks.

And then at the end of five days on Friday, nice five days, right, on Friday, you get to the marine operation or some sort of special operation. And you are getting reports of a continual military buildup. I mean, this is a fact. to the, they may be saying peace talks and negotiations, but the actions are pointing to a continued military buildup in the region. So this may be some sort of Trump trickery. It does appear that there's some sort of market manipulation going on. That's how it looks. Everyone is reporting on it. Five minutes before Trump announcements, there were before his Trump announced, before the announcement on troops, true social, there, there was some sort of,

sort of a trade. Other outlets are saying 14 minutes before. The Financial Times is saying 15 minutes before. There were big oil sell-offs and trades there as well. It's all being reported. And then, of course, you have the Trump administration desperately trying to keep the price of oil under 100. So you have this as well going on. And it worked for about five minutes, and then the Iranians said, there's no talks. And then the markets, the markets went up on Trump's news. Then when the Iranians said, there's no talks, the markets went down again. The price of oil went down on Trump's news about talks. Then when the Iranians said, no talks taking place, the price went back up again. So you see this huge swing, this volatility in stocks and in

oil. I come to another point, which I think we should examine. I don't believe it, but could there be negotiations taking place? Could there be talks taking place? I've heard various reports saying Pakistan wants to mediate. I've heard reports which claim that Whitkoff and Kushner are in Pakistan. Some reports say that they're waiting for the Iranian speaker to arrive. Other reports say that they're just sitting in Pakistan waiting for anybody to arrive. They're just sitting there waiting for someone to show up.

I mean, I don't want to say that there's absolutely. nothing happening on a diplomacy front because this is the Middle East. And we don't know. There could be some sort of talks taking place. Maybe it's this Iranian speaker. He's denied that he's taking, that he's engaged in negotiations. He said, no, I'm not talking to anybody. We're going to achieve our goals. But people say one thing and another thing could be happening behind the scenes. So, I mean, I don't want to discount anything. No, you could. And we'll find out in the next five days, probably. Probably. But anyway, what are your thoughts? Well, you see, I agree with every part of it.

And I think a key thing for people to understand is that all of the various points that you've made, none of them contradictory or inconsistent with each other. You might have chaos. You might have people testing the waters, trying to get talk started. And, as a lot of, At the same time, there might be a huge amount of duplicity and trickery involved as well. In other words, it could be that there's no actual decisions, there's no actual plan, except that there is a military plan which must have been set in train some weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, which involves the deployment of military forces to the Middle East. Now, it could be, it may be that this was, you know, done then, and it hasn't really been stopped now.

But the fact that it's going on suggests that we're still very much in the situation of escalation. And by the way, I just should say, and I'm sure you've seen the same reports as me, that we're now no longer talking just about two Marine battalions, two marine units. We're looking at four divisions. So the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne Division, these are relatively like divisions, but they're said to be, they're said to be, there are reports that parts of the 82nd Airborne Division are now already in the Middle East. And interestingly, two infantry divisions. These are, you know, people with more heavy equipment, including tanks and those sort of things. They're starting to be sent to the Middle East.

as well. Now, you know, there's lots of different discussions about how many men are involved altogether in this force. Some say around 20,000, some put it a bit less, but it's still a substantial force. And it's obviously not enough to conquer Iran or fight through to Tehran or to occupy the whole country. But in some planners' mind, it might be enough to do various things with various islands in the Strait of Hormuz, in Hargai Island, or to attack positions on the coastline, or do something of that kind. So the Iranians must be aware of all of this. They are able to see the fact that these divisions are moving. And it could very well be, exactly as the Iranians themselves said, that a lot of what we have seen over the last

couple of days. First, the ultimatum, then the announcement that the ultimatum is being pulled back five five days, then the reports about the talks, all of this is basically a smoke stream, whilst these military deployments are completed, and we start to see these forces begin to gather in the Middle East. The big question then is, what happens? Are these units committed to back, And in that case, which battle? Usually, the general pattern with the United States is that they take many weeks and months of preparation before they start a ground operation. And whatever ground operation they might have in mind, this one looks really very complicated. I mean, seizing islands or seizing ports on what is a very, very heavily,

mountainous and rocky coastline might be very challenging. So one wonders whether there's been very much planning done. If there has been, by the way, then that would suggest planning began soon after Trump was inaugurated, which further points to an awful lot of trickery and duplicity being underway. It's possible. It's possible, absolutely, because we don't know. But if there is no planning, if, as I have to say, looks likely to be the case at the moment, they're making it up as they're going along, then I mean, we could see more wild swings.

We could see more announcements of ultimatums followed by walkbacks, more talk. The talks are underway. And in terms of talks actually being underway, I certainly, there are. contacts, certainly the Iranians and the Americans are in touch with each other through intermediaries. We know that for a fact because the Iranians themselves have admitted to this. So the Pakistanis are passing on messages, the British may be passing on messages, the Ammanis may be passing on messages, the Egyptians and the Turks, and even the Russians might be doing something of that sort. But messages of that kind is not the same as proper negotiations.

We are, my senses, we're still some way from that, actually. I think that this has got some way to go. And I don't think there's any good faith on either side or any real belief on either side that negotiations at this particular point would work. Trump, I think, would settle for something that the Iranians gave him, which he could package as a win and then put him in a stronger position for the next round. But the Iranians are absolutely categorically excluding that. And I do think the Iranians are in a mood at the moment or even in a position at the moment to change that approach.

I think that any Iranian political leader, say Pezishgian in Tehran, who proposed it, would be in considerable political difficulty. And Ghalibaf, who is the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, who has been spoken of as the person the U.S. should negotiate. with and the person who the United States is negotiating with. Well, I've looked at his background and he seems to be deeply connected with the IRGC. And historically, he looks like very much of a hardliner. And there's nothing about his rhetoric that suggests that he's engaged in negotiations of any kind.

And I'm not sure anyway that as the Speaker of the Parliament, he has the authority to conduct negotiations. How did they think about? How did they stumble on his? on his name. Do you think there's something at play here? Do you think that maybe the Trump administration and Israel are trying to divide the IRGC, trying to divide the RGC and, say, the foreign ministry or other parts of the Iranian government, trying to sow division by saying, Galabov, this is our guy. And so now everyone's saying, wait a minute, are you actually

negotiating with the Americans? He's saying, no, I have nothing to do with the Americans and maybe they're trying to stir up some trouble. That might be what they're doing? I think there's a very strong element of that, undoubtedly, I think there's obviously attempts to create dissension and division within Iran. And there's been every reason to believe, by the way, that there has been a lot of successful infiltration in the past of the Iranian leadership and successful games played of setting Iranian leaders off against each other. So I would not be at all surprised if there's an element of that. But I'm going to suggest that the single reason why they picked up Ghalibaf is because all the others are either unwilling to negotiate at all, the sort of people that is

impossible negotiate with, or are dead. So, Khamene, the new supreme leader, committed hardliner, impossible for Trump to negotiate with him. He's the sort of he's got he's made public statements, Hamané has, which point to continuing the war. He's also got issues, personal issues, of not wanting to negotiate because so much of his personal family have been killed, so the Americans don't want to talk to him. And it's not difficult to understand why.

Bezishkan, I think there's been an acceptance in the West, in the US that Pezashgan is perhaps somebody who might have been willing to negotiate some time ago, but he simply lacks the authority in Iran today to conduct negotiations. And he's not prepared to break with the leadership of Iran and do Erdelsi Rodriguez. So I think that they've written him all. Larijani has been killed. And I think there were some people in Washington who thought that Larijani might have been somebody who they could talk about, but he's now dead. So that leads Ghalibov amongst the leaders that they know.

So they're focusing on him. I don't personally think he has either the authority or the inclination to conduct negotiations. But, you know, one can see that, you know, having conducted these decalculptial, you know, having conducted these decalienable, They've arrived at this particular point where there's only one person left and he doesn't look very satisfactory from their point of view. But if you're going to negotiate with someone, you have to ask yourself who that's going to be. So they're talking about him. And if in the process this causes some dissension in Iran and doubts about him, well, so much the better. Doesn't seem like he has much authority to be quite honest.

I'm sure everyone's learning about Galabov now. After this announcement that he may be the person they're negotiating with, before that, that no one knew of him outside of Iran. Let's say he wasn't a prominent figure. He wasn't Laryjani or Arachi or Pizashiyan or the Ayatoll or anything like that. And now all of a sudden, everyone's focused on Galibaf and some sort of negotiation in Pakistan. Do you believe that Wickhoff and Kushner are in Pakistan at the moment waiting for someone to show up? Well, I can't hear you.

I don't know. This is the trouble. It's not, let's put it like this. It is not impossible. It's not impossible. The Trump has said to the vogue. Go to Pakistan. Go to Islamabad.

The chief of staff was the Pakistani army's our friend. Let's see whether he can, he's got, he's Iraq. Pakistan has been on good. terms with Iran for quite a long time. So go to Pakistanis will arrange it and somebody from Iran will come. So it's possible. But I have to say if it is like that, then it really is, again, hardly the way the diplomacy is conducted. I mean, you would have expected in negotiations of this kind that yes, if there are secret negotiations, you actually keep them secret.

You don't set Wickoff and then have the whole media talk about it. I mean, when Nixon sent Kissinger to China, they made absolutely sure that nobody knew about it and they kept it very secret and nobody talked about it. So it's just not done this way. Either you have secret meetings, which could be in Pakistan, Or you don't have secret meetings.

You arrange through someone for negotiations to resume. And then it's done in a kind of public way, as happened between the North Vietnamese and the Americans. This bizarre halfway house where you pretend that the negotiations make it appear that Whitkoff is in Pakistan, conducting secret negotiations, which everybody is reading about. I mean, this is so unconventional that, I mean, it's just difficult to make any sense of it. It's a great point. If you really wanted some market stability and to not have all this volatility, wouldn't that approach be the best one to actually publicly announce that you have negotiations, even though we're in a war? Like you said, like what happened in Vietnam, we're in a war.

We're going to continue to strike targets in Iran and they're going to keep the Strait of Hormuz blocked off and they're going to also strike at our targets. But we're announcing the beginning of negotiations or some sort of talks that are going to lead towards negotiations. They're going to take place in Oman or Qatar or whatever. And these are going to be the parties that are going to be involved. And this way, the markets, at least they're not. not as volatile because they may sense that there's some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe it'll take three weeks. Maybe it'll take two months. Maybe it'll take a year. But at least they understand that there's some sort of communication and contact. It seems to me that if you want a lot of volatility and huge up and down swings, then this secretive approach, if it even is taking place, no one even knows if any of this stuff is taking place. Everyone has their doubts that it's actually taking place, including me and most likely.

you as well, then the best thing to do is to announce on Friday that you're going to escalate and then on Monday to announce that you're going to de-escalate. And that way, you get these huge swings and you say that there's all these secret communications and talks taking place and everyone is kind of left wondering what is going on and the markets are reacting in the same way. They're going up and down, huge swings. Well, that's exactly right. This is exactly how you would do it if you wanted to create as much volatility in the markets as you possibly can. I mean, some probably do. And some people are no doubt riding the markets and doing very well for themselves as a result. The problem with this sort of approach is that it can work for you in the short

term, in that you are able to manipulate the markets. At least you can play the markets in that kind of way and perhaps do so in ways. that do give you time to send more and more troops to the region, if that is your plan. But the longer term problem is that beyond a certain point, if you do conduct the game in this way, you lose credibility. The markets stop believing you, which is fatal, by the way. If markets no longer trust what the president of the United States and his official, are saying and pay no more attention to them. That is absolutely fatal.

But of course, not just the markets, the international diplomatic community, and eventually increasing numbers of voters as well. So it's something you can do for a while, probably since we're talking about the United States, a long time, I mean, several weeks, months even. But the longer it goes on, the more your capital of trust is used up, and then you're into what used to be called in the Vietnam era, the credibility gap, in which whatever you say, nobody believes it anymore, even when it's true. Trump has spent quite a lot of that capital already, I would say, and I think the markets are already starting to begin to doubt. what he's saying. He blamed Hegeseth in a press conference.

He said Hegset was the one that wanted to go in. He was the one that was very excited about the war. What do you think about that? We have the news that Israel and the United States hit a gas pipeline of Iran's. That is energy infrastructure that they are targeting. Okay. No attacks on energy infrastructure. They're hitting a gas pipeline.

Yes. And how do you get off of this escalation, if that is what you intend to do, even though we're seeing the exact opposite in the troop deployment? But once again, let's say that is what they want to do the United States. How do you do this with Israel? How do you convince Israel to go along with this? You can't because the two interests are very different. In some instances, the interests are aligned, but you also have different interests as well. indeed. Of course, what one should say is that it is ridiculous for the United States to be,

to let itself be held hostage by Netanyahu. I mean, what Trump could do, what any U.S. President could do, is tell Netanyahu, look, you can continue by yourself if you want, we are out. They could do that. They'll never do that. There never ever happens. I mean, I think it's worth making that point. It's not, I mean, there is, there is this issue because of the way everything in Washington is tied together, but there ought not to be. But no, I agree. And I think, first of all, talking about it's all Hegseth's fault. Well, I mean, it's lining up Hagseth as the full guy if it does all go wrong. I don't think many people will be convinced by it, but it's the sort of thing Donald Trump does. He's suggested at very last week it was Netanyahu and Israelis who were

attacking gas fields without American permission. I mean, I never believed that story. We didn't, we didn't believe that story. When we discussed it at the time, we said that it's inconceivable that an attack on South Paris would have happened without the US being involved. But anyway, that's what they said. That's what Trump said. Now, if Hague said, it's what. It's what. Hegseth has started the war. Wasn't Donald Trump's original idea, but Hegseth talked him into it. He gave him, gave Trump the force prospectus about the way the war would go. Again, it's very ugly, actually, looking always for other people to blame.

But it's quite, like Obama? Like Obama? Like Obama did. Obama did exactly the same. Obama did it. It must be said very wrong. ruthlessly and very, very cunningly. I mean, he was always there in the background.

He never let himself go forward. He put people like Hillary Clinton or whoever up front to do all of these things. And he was always there in the background. But as I said, now, as you rightly say, now we know that, in fact, Obama was deeply implicated in everything. Trump does things differently. He likes to be there up front. But he still goes off and blames everyone else when it all goes, when it all goes wrong. And, well, there it is.

I mean, the fact that he is now blaming Hegseth does suggest that at some level, at least, doubts are growing inside Trump about where this is going. And he's already looking for the full guy. And Hegseth is the obvious one. No. Okay. The facts are that the buildup is happening. Yes, exactly.

That's the key. That's the thing that's the thing people need to focus on. All the rumors about talks, the decision not to attack the energy facilities, which is reversed within hours, which we see happening within hours. within hours and all of that. All of that is just smoke and mirrors. It really does not mean anything. Again, I was astonished yesterday that so many people were taking it seriously and weren't asking, weren't asking the questions. I mean, that's what they needed to do. They needed to ask Trump, what talks, who was involved in them, where did they take place, Who were the intermediaries?

What messages were exchanged? Will you tell us more about them? But nobody really does this. Nobody tries to pin him down. And so he spends the whole other day giving evasive answers, insisting that talks are underway, but giving no information. Probably because there is no information to give, probably because there are no talks,

at least not real, actual talks. And people going off and putting things together, They see that the chief of staff of Pakistan's army had a telephone call that the Pakistani prime minister speaks to Pezishkan, and they put it all together, and they say, you know, there's a mediation going on. When really, until Trump spoke in the way that he did, nobody had suspected or thought that there was one. Yeah, I mean, Trump's saying that he's going to control the Strait of Hermuz, possibly with a, with the Ayatollah. Maybe not this Ayatollah, maybe a different Ayatollah, but it's going to be joint control. That's what he pretty much said with this trade of Formos, which is just such a bizarre out there

comment. Absolutely. The United States work, okay, now you're going to work with Iran to control the Strait of Hormuzes. Is that what you're telling us? And maybe it's this Ayatollah, maybe it's going to be a different Ayatollah. I don't know. That's what Trump said.

I don't know. We're talking with leadership, but we've killed all their leadership, he says. We've killed everybody, but we're also talking with leadership. And maybe it's this parliament speaker, maybe it's not. We don't know. Well, who knows if you don't know? Exactly. Exactly.

Who do? I mean, exactly, you're only the president of the United States leading the country in this conflict, which you yourself started, by the way. But anyway, there it is. As I said, I think that we should, exactly as you said, we should not waste time too much with the smoke and mirrors. It's the military deployments that tell the real story and we see forces continuing to gather in the Middle East.

If you remember before this started, when all those negotiations underway in Amman, in Geneva, we were making the same point. We were saying, look at all the deployments of aircraft carriers, of warships, of troops and all of that of air refuelments. refueling tankers, this calls into question whether those negotiations are real, and we saw that it was the deployments that were the real things, not the negotiations. And it's exactly the same, in my opinion today. Yeah, the hard part that everyone has with it, including myself, is trying to come to terms

with the fact that is the President of the United States really saying these, these crazy things? Is he really coming up with these stories that are not true or there must be some truth to him? Because I listen to him and I say, no matter how much I know about all the crazy stuff that he has said in the past and all of his trickery and everything, he can't possibly be lying this much, could he? I mean, it's hard to put the two things together.

That he's the president. He's in a war. I know he's lied and he's tricked and he's captured leaders and assassinated negotiators and all of these things. But would he really lie about this? Would he take it to this level? And I think that's what throws everyone off. Well, indeed. And if I may say so, I got myself burnt by this because back in June, when the,

the Israelis first attacked Iran, I said it's inconceivable that the president of the United States, that Donald Trump would have been conducting negotiations with the Iranians and at the same time have come up with some, you know, cunning plan to get the Israelis to attack the Iranians whilst those negotiations were underway. And for several days, I had doubts about this, and I did think that the Israelis, perhaps. did move by themselves. I no longer believe that anymore, to be honest. I think that we've now seen too much of Donald Trump. There's been too much of this duplicity and trickery and deception. I mean, we had the valdiotay. We've had all of these other things, the attacks on the negotiators

in Qatar. There's been too much of this going on to have any real doubt that, unfortunately, the president of the United States does conduct diplomacy, what he calls diplomacy, in exactly this fashion. All right. We'll end the video there, the durand.locals.com. We are on X, Rumble, and Telegram. Go to Duran Shop, pick up some merch, and also check us out on Substack as well. Take care.