The Duran Podcast - Israel-Iran, FOG of war and misdirection

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Israel-Iran, FOG of war and misdirection

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on between Iran and Israel and what is going on with the Trump administration. Will the Trump administration strike at Iran? And what kind of a strike are we looking at? Is it going to be a massive, full-on air strike and attack on Iran? Are we going to see some sort of a limited strike on one of the nuclear facilities? Axios is reporting that the Trump administration is very close to green lighting and an attack on the Fordo nuclear enrichment facility. And they're going to use the bunker busters. And if that doesn't work, according to Axios, then Israel has a plan B, which is to send commando units into Fordo to put explosives in this case.

facility, very far underground cave facility and blow it up with commando units. And that's where we are. What are your thoughts on what Trump is thinking of doing? Well, I think there's a number of things I would like to say. First of all, I was expecting or assuming over the last two days that the decision to attack Iran had already been made. We've now had certain comments from Trump and other officials which suggest that perhaps there's some doubts starting to creep in. And we have reports that the Europeans are meeting with the Iranian foreign minister Arachi in Geneva.

So it could be that some people are rethinking this and that they're taking a step back. And there might be good reasons why they would do so. but I would just like to address this specific issue of the attack on Fordle. Now, does it make any sense if you really are going to attack on Fordle to publicize the fact in the newspapers in the way that it's being done? I mean, you're talking about bunker busting bombs and sending B2 bombers to attack Fordham. I can just about get that. I mean, I can just about get how if you really, sure that these bombers are going to get through, that you might be prepared to discuss it in the newspapers. And we've seen that the Iranians have been extremely disorganized

and clearly not prepared effectively for the kind of attacks that we've been seeing play out over the last week. And that they were called flat-footed, and we'll come to that shortly. So it could just be that a bomber attack is really indeed on the cards. But a commander raid? I mean, I have commander raids supposed to be secret? I mean, isn't that, you know, you're going to conduct a special forces operation on a heavily defended facility in a mountainous region of central Iran? And you're going to write all about it in the newspapers.

Now, you know, it may be that people are so convinced that Iran is in complete state of disorganization and collapse that you can write about and discuss all of these things openly in the media. And there will be no consequences because Iran can't respond. But it does, I do wonder whether there isn't some degree of misdirection here. And I wonder whether the real objective is not to get to. the Iranians focusing on Fordor and putting up their air defenses there, which I'm sure they will do, by the way. I mean, I think that Fordor is a facility that they're going to have to protect, but that the main heavy strike is going to come elsewhere. And I repeat what I've always been saying and what we've all been saying on this program, that the objective is not

so much to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, because it's, got no program, we didn't tell this by multiple authoritative sources, the IAEA and the US intelligence community, that they got no plan at the moment to develop nuclear weapons, but rather to strike the political and military leadership of Iran at people like Hamene. We've been told already that the Americans have been thinking of killing Hamanae, rather that the Israelis have and all of that. And I have to say if there's an American strike, maybe that is the real objective. Or it could be that the Americans are planning to do both things at the same time.

But as I said, if I didn't have any further information, and of course intelligence officers have lots of information, which is not accessible to us, I would be wondering whether all of these news reports. and media speculations about commander raids on Ford or make any real sense. Because as I said, if you really are planning an operation of this kind, surely you would want to keep it secret. Just said. Yeah, I was thinking they're probably going to do both at the same time, but the real objective is to get the leadership.

I mean, they've been saying for a while now, you've got to cut off the head of the snake, right? They keep on saying that. and Trump in his post on Truth Social where he said that he knows where the Supreme Leader is. He says, we know where you are. And I believe he did say, we haven't killed you yet. Exactly. I think he used that.

Yeah, he used the word yet. He did. Which to me signals that they're going to probably go after Hamini. I think that's the play. I had to take a guess. But who knows? Maybe the other thing I was thinking is maybe this is Trump's way of. I believe he used something similar with Syria back in his first term.

It's his way of perhaps signaling to Iran that they're going to drop some bunker, buster bombs on Fordo, and then Trump can exit Iran by saying we destroyed their nuclear capabilities or we set back their nuclear capabilities a couple of years. And now we're ready to talk. I mean, there could be that possibility as well if the Trump administration is genuinely looking to get out of this mess that it put itself in. Perhaps that could be an exit out of this. We drop a couple bombs. We say we destroyed the nuclear facilities and, you know, Trump would say these are bunker buster bombs. No one else has them. These are the most powerful weapons in the

world. Even how Trump is, he'll say something like that. And now that we've delayed Iran's nuclear weapons enrichment for two, three years, now. we can return back. We can return to the negotiating table. That might be, might be the plan. But more than likely, I agree with you. This is misdirection and all the signs point to going after Kamene, because they believe that's what's going to collapse the regime. They believe if they get him, that collapses the regime. I think that there is an overestimation, by the way, of what the Supreme Leader actually means in Iran. I think there's this idea that he's somehow the dictator-type figure and the whole

structure revolves around him. I don't myself believe that is true. I think that while Harmonic clearly is an important, a very important, a key decision-maker, I think that pretty much as soon as he's gone, somebody will take his place. So I think if that is the plan, then I think there may be misunderstanding there. But that takes us back to this attack on this potential attack on Fordor, because there's something else I want to say here, which is that people perhaps don't know this, but as part of the original JCPOA agreement of 2015, Iran had to hand over its enriched uranium above 3.6% of the Russians, which it did.

and it had to destroy nearly all its centrifuges, which it did. In other words, it had to dismantle pretty much its entire nuclear enrichment program above a certain level. But then Trump pulled out of the JCP away in 2018. And despite the fact that we had the pandemic between then and now, the Iranians were able to reconstitute the entire nuclear enrichment program, to rebuild all the centrifuges, to develop these highly protected sites at Fordor and do all of these things in an extremely short space of time. And there's no reason to think if an attack on Fordor takes place and the facility is indeed

damaged or even destroyed, that they wouldn't be able to do that all over again, provided, of course, always provided that the political will to do it is there. So attacking Fordor might buy you a little time, but it might actually not be quite as effective as, again, some people assume. And of course, if these bombs really do destroy Fordor, then quite plausibly the Iranians will then next time round, build even. even more hardened facilities, deeper in the ground with more centrifuges, less vulnerable to the kind of attack that we're seeing today. So this is a little bit like cutting off the head of the snake, only for two to grow back in its place. Both in terms of decapitation strikes, you know, Hamané can be replaced.

He's not as indispensable to the system as I think some people think. This is not a Saddam Hussein type regime in which there's one individual who basically controls everything. This is a much more diverse and, if I could put it like this, decentralized political system. So I think that, you know, killing Hermannes might not be the solution to the political problem. Destroying fordil, assuming it can be done, might not resolve the nuclear issue either. It could set the Iranians back. It could confuse them. But as I said, provided, and this is, of course, the key to this, the political will in Iran continues to be there.

And the, I'm going to call it the regime, the system survives the blow. Then, as I said, you might simply be creating further problems, more problems further down the line. It all hinges, again, as we've been discussing in program after program, on the stability of the system within Iran. Yeah, that's why we did the video with the title regime change and regime survival. It's all about the survival of the government, of this system that you're talking about. But the misdirection, the issue that I see with everything around Iran and Trump is that there is the misdirection of this is about nuclear weapons. And Trump uses misdirection effectively. It's a slogan for him.

Iran must not have nuclear weapons. That's the slogan that he's using. That's the slogan that's being repeated by his. everybody in the White House, by everybody in Congress, by the mainstream media. Iran must not have, must not get nuclear weapons. But that's misdirection. And everyone knows it. So the whole foredoor thing is to me, we're talking about an issue, which is not really

the issue when it comes to Iran. If this was, if this was, and maybe it is. I could be wrong. Maybe Trump really is. is sincere in his belief about nuclear weapons and his desire to remove nuclear weapons from Iran. And maybe he does try to take out the four-door facility. And he returns to the negotiating table because he says it was a limited military operation. We did what I thought was correct with the nuclear enrichment.

Now let's talk again. Maybe. But I give it a very low. a chance that that's what's going to happen. More than likely, we are looking at thecapitation strikes and regime change because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about. All of it is about regime change. I agree.

So I mean, that's the, I mean, this is the lie that has been told, that is being told, even when it comes to strikes on Ford door. It's not about four door. It's not about nuclear weapons. It's about removing the regime. I just want to get your thoughts on this. I agree with what you're saying about Iran. It's a different situation if you go after the Supreme Leader.

But if you try to put yourself in their shoes, they may be seeing things from the standpoint of Iraq. We got rid of Saddam Hussein, yeah, the country's a mess. But what do we care? What do we care? We got rid of him. It's in chaos and that serves us fine. Libya.

Yeah. The country's a mess. It's in chaos. But what do they care? It serves them fine. You can say the same thing about Syria. Absolutely. The same thing.

Assad's gone now. The country's in chaos. But maybe it serves their needs fine as well. And maybe you can make the same argument about Nazarala, Hezbollah, Hamas. I mean, for then, they don't do they want a, do they want a, a new regime that is structured and liked by the population or is voted on in new elections or stuff? I mean, that's not what they really want, is it? No, I don't know. Absolutely not. I mean, I completely agree with all of that.

I mean, at the end of the day, if the entire objective, and I think this is an essential thing to say. People have been coming up with all sorts of videos showing how Netanyahu has been talking since 1992 about Iran's nuclear program and that Iran is, you know, on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons and therefore must be attacked. And you're absolutely correct. I mean, it's not ultimately about nuclear weapons and Iran acquiring them. I mean, this endless repetition of the same issue is not really about preventing Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. It is about destroying a political system in Iran, which has seen by the neocons in the United States and by the leadership in Israel as a particular problem in the root of their objectives in the Middle East and in the wider

world. So, you know, the fact that Netanyahu talks about nuclear weapons and he's stuck in the same groove and it's, you know, he's repeating the same point again and again again. Pointing this out to Netanyahu isn't going to worry him. It's not going to embarrass any of his supporters, because their objective isn't to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. It is to prepare the ground for the overthrow, the destruction of the regime. And if the regime collapses, and if there's chaos in Iran, and if the country fragments into various constituent parts, Again, as you absolutely rightly say, they live with chaos. They thrive on chaos.

They've achieved chaos in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, as far as they're concerned. Provided, these are not structured, strong countries, then they can live with that, at least in the short term. It may cause all sorts of problems for others, but it ultimately doesn't matter. the way, what you've just said, I can remember years ago when George W. Bush was still president, an interview with John Bolton. And he made that particular specific point. He said it quite straightforwardly. People were asking him, there was an interview. And they asked him, well, look at Iraq now, the chaos that he'd seen. Do you really feel that this was a success,

the war in Iraq. And John Bolton says, what goes on in Iraq today is not of any importance to the United States overthrowing Saddam Hussein was. So the fact that we have overthrown United Saddam Hussein

is mission accomplished. The subsequent chaos is not our problem. Now, I mean, I don't actually agree with I think chaos is always a problem. But I mean, we're talking about the thinking of the neocons. My point is simply this, that the system in Iran is actually profoundly different from the system that existed in Iraq, Syria and Libya, which were indeed constructed around either one individual,

Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi, or a particular family, the Assad family and the Ba'ath party that was constructed around it. In Iran, it's different. I don't think the Supreme Leader, Khamene, has anything like the same kind of role. And I think there are all kinds of institutions and agencies, very diversified and complex agencies, which function almost semi-autonomously, but somehow in a strange kind of way It's not easy for outsiders always to understand, overlap and support each other to keep the whole structure together. And of course, in Iran, there is a kind of politics as well.

I mean, if you go to the media in Iran, I mean, it's unbelievably disputatious. There is a kind of public debate in Iran, which you certainly would not have found in any of the other countries. So they may be applying a model to Iran, which doesn't actually apply to Iran. Killing the Supreme Leader and some of his officials might not actually result in the collapse of the regime. It might simply mean that the regime reconfigures and new people appear and that somebody else takes their place. So, you know, this is this is the, I mean, by the way, I don't know. that is the case. But that, it seems to me, is a possibility that I do wonder whether the neocons in Washington or their friends in Israel have really worked out and thought about carefully.

This is a complex regime. I don't pretend to understand it very well. I don't pretend to understand or know the inoccurrence of Iranian society. But my sense is that, as I said, the regime, the system does continue to have a very high level of support within the country and has legitimacy within the country. And if the Supreme Leader himself is killed and a replacement is found from the existing, within the existing structures, I suspect that the system will reproduce itself and it will continue to function. And that may not be what, as I said, the proponents of this policy quite expect or understand. Well, I think answering your question about the neocons, if they think these things through, if you go off of the Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz, it's obvious that they think none of this stuff through, nor do they even care about the countries that they're going to destroy.

But the regime change is, to me, it's ultimately. The ultimate goal of regime change is not about putting in place a U.S.-friendly government. It's not about putting in place a democratic government. It's not about putting in place a stable government. That's not the goal of the NEO-Kan regime change operations. I believe it's all about fragmenting the countries. And I go back to, say, Yugoslavia. where the goal was the volcanization and fragmenting Yugoslavia into very small micro-states,

and that's what we got. You look at what they want to do to Russia, which is to regime change Russia. But it's regime change Russia, not so you can keep Russia together. It's regime change Russia so you can break it apart. They have the same ideas for China. They did it to Libya. They broke apart Libya. They did it to Syria.

Syria now is in three different pieces. The goal is always fragmentation. Now, sometimes the fragmentation results in micro-states that end up joining the European Union, for example, in the case of Yugoslavia. Okay, fine. But most of the times, you have fragmented regions, which end up being even more chaotic and even more violent. But, you know, if you're the neocons sitting in D.C., you're probably saying it doesn't matter

what kind of microstate we get. I know. As long as it's not this big, powerful country. And the micro state, whether chaotic or stable, is so much easier to manage. It's easier to put NGOs there. It's easier to bribe people. It's easier to put them into the EU or to put them into NATO or to control their parlius. When you break it up into small pieces, it's just a lot easier to manage than to have a bigger

regional competitor or maybe even a global competitor sitting there. I mean, this is how, I think the ultimate goal is always about balkanization and fragmentation. I think that is the ultimate goal of all regime change operations, whether it's a smooth fragmentation or whether it's a chaotic fragmentation. I mean, to repeat again, I am not sure the fragmentation is going to happen in Iran. I think there's a fundamental difference. There is just to put a posit. I did read a Jerusalem Post article, which actually did say that what should happen,

given the demographics of Iran. And actually Tucker mentioned this. I mean, with Tucker and Ted Cruz, they were talking about the demographics, right? I did read an article which did say that given the demographics, what the Trump administration should strive for. is to carve up Iran. That was an article. Yeah, absolutely. I've read the article as well, and I'm sure you're absolutely right. And fragmentation and partitioning of a country is indeed what they want.

I get to just make a few points. Firstly, I'm not sure that they can achieve the first objective, which is indeed to destroy the regime. And remember, if they don't destroy the regime, this whole operation has become a failure. And there are reports today, whether you can trust them or not, I don't know, but there are reports today that Trump himself is becoming increasingly nervous about involving the United States in what could turn out to be a protracted war, especially given the marked hostility to this of his political base, electoral base, back home. So it may be that this operation, doesn't succeed even in destroying the current regime. Now, as for Iran, Iran is very different in some respects from Iraq, Libya, Syria and those places, in the sense that, yes, it is a very diverse country. Many ethnicities live there. But it is a country with a millennial history. And what tends to happen is that despite all of the various, you know, different demographics that exist in Iran, within Iran, over time, it tends to coalesce and regroup and come together again. That has been the consistent pattern.

So even if the political system collapses, it doesn't actually follow that there will be the kind of fragmentation. that they imagined because Iraq, Syria, Libya have only existed as states since basically the 1920s. Iran has a history going back, well, 700 BC or thereabouts. So we are talking about a profoundly different society. And that's exactly, comes back to what you said about Ted Cruz. people like him have very little idea and understanding of the previous history and of the past history of these nations.

So, I mean, those are two points I wanted to make. But, and I will also quickly make a quickly third point, which is I'm not convinced that chaos actually does work to the advantage of the United States. I mean, they created chaos in Iraq and what happened was they ended up with the government that was more friendly to Iran. They've created chaos in Libya and the country that looks like it's going to become the dominant power in Libya is actually Russia.

It's Russia that's now starting to make the big deals and establishing the bases and things of that kind. And in Syria also, chaotic and terrible that the situation in Syria is, the effect of the collapse of Syria is that it's made Turkey and Erdogan stronger. So I'm not convinced that chaos and fragmentation in the way that they imagine does ultimately work to the advantage of the United States, whatever the neocons and their fellow travelers, their friends in Israel, for example, think. But the key thing, again, is this, will this operation succeed? in destroying the regime in Iran. If it simply is able to go on reproducing itself, then you're in a long war. And of course, that war may not work out, play out to your advantage.

And that is something that any US president who is really concerned about US national interests or to be worrying about because the United States is massively overextended. It's got problems in the bond markets now. There's C to be greasing. There's financial issues. The military itself is overextended. I understand that there are only a certain number of aircraft carriers that are now operational. So they are gambling and trying to conduct these operations on an epic,

scale. And one wonders whether in Iran there might be risking going for something rather more difficult than they expect. Just saying. Yeah. Just a final question. Isn't it always the case that when you have a coup d'etat or regime change, that it naturally progresses towards some sort of fragmentation? Well, yes. Up to now. I mean, I say that even in the case of Cyprus. even in the case of Ukraine. I mean, whenever you have a coup d'etat, even in the Maidan, 2014, I mean, eventually, the forces push whatever or whatever was the country towards some sort of a split. So, I mean, even if your regime change, that's the key.

If you regime change Iran, whatever happens is naturally, can you make the argument that it will gravitate towards some sort of a split? Well, absolutely. You haven't mentioned perhaps the most important case study of all, which is the Soviet Union. Now, you know, what happened in 1991 had many of the qualities of a coup about it. And again, we've never really known whether the US was involved or to what extent it was involved. Most people in Russia believe it was heavily involved. But here is a case in point.

Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union did resolve. in the disintegration of the union and a massive fragmentation of the union. But ultimately, and here it may not be that different with Iran, out of that chaos, a new state appeared, which was Russia, and that state stabilized, became much, much more coherent and much clearer, had a much clearer vision of the dangers that it faced. and of its adversaries. And of course, it is now reasserting itself and reasserting itself very effectively

in that particular space. Now, you know, I don't want to look too far ahead. I don't think we're going to see anything like that happen in Libya, Iraq or Syria. Because to repeat again, these are ultimately rather artificial countries and societies, but I can certainly see it happen in Iran. Right.

Yeah, good point. All right, we will end the video there, the durand. Dotlocals.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitschate, telegram, rock for the next. Go to the Duran Shop, pick-up, some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.