The Duran Podcast - LOCKED into a conflict with NO reverse gear

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

LOCKED into a conflict with NO reverse gear

Arad Alexander, let's do an update on the situation with Iran. Trump is given it 10 days. That is what Trump said yesterday at his board of peace or his peace board meeting. He said 10 days is the amount of time left for Iran to agree to a deal. Manultam-Aidum is really what we're talking about. These aren't really negotiations that are taking place. Srirahs trying to buy time, it seems, in order to prepare, the United States is giving an ultimatum. And here we are with 10 days, according to Trump.

Of course, with Trump, when he says 10 days, he may launch a strike tomorrow or within an hour, or maybe he'll launch it after 10 days. You don't know. So where are we with all of this? I think we are moving relentlessly now towards a fight, a battle, a war between Iran and the US. I cannot see Iran capitulating to an ultimatum like this. The objective of the Iranians, of the Iranian government, is to prevent regime change. I think what they realize, or at least what they believe, is that if they did agree to the kind of demands that Trump, the United States and ultimately Israel are all making, then that is inevitably going to lead in the end to regime change.

The government itself, within Iran, would be seriously undermined. It would lose a greatly of its legitimacy and its authority. it would become clear to the many internal factions that it can be pushed around. There would undoubtedly be pushed back from some of the more hard-line factions. And Iran would also critically lose face in the Middle East. And of course, if they agreed to the cap on their ballistic missiles, which the US and Israel, and the Europeans, by the way, are all demanding, then Iran loses whatever deterrent capability it has left, because their ability to deter an attack on themselves

is their ability to strike at American bases across the Middle East and at Israel itself. So I cannot imagine that the Iranians are going to agree to this. What the Iranians are going to do is they're going to say no, the meeting that took place in Geneva this way, week was a disaster. It was a debacle. Again, it's not obvious that this is so because the Iranians officially are trying to talk up the outcome. They're saying that the meeting went well, the discussions went well, they're now going to provide a written proposal, whatever written

proposals. They provide for a consortium to look after the enrichment, for Rosatom, the Russian monopoly to come in and deal with the enrichment. They are proposals which the United States has already rejected. So this is an ultimatum that the Iranians are bound to refuse. And as to the negotiations, my sense is that the Iranians are doing exactly what you say. They're stringing up the negotiations as long as they can so that they can prepare for the strike they now know he's going to come and buy themselves as much time to prepare for the strike as they can. And as for the Americans, as for Trump, I think they're now so far in that I don't think there's any conceivable way that they can back off. If Trump were to agree to the kind of proposals

the Iranians are making the critics in the US, the people who want an attack on Iran, the neocons, the donors, the Israelis, the people who he has already basically handed himself over to. We'll come back and say to him, this is the JCPO or JCPOA all over again. You've led us up this hill. You've led us down this hill. You're a useless, weak president. and we are not prepared to support you anymore. And that would critically undermine his position. So the Iranians calculate that a war is more easy for them to work through and which is more likely to preserve their political system than capitulation. and Trump looking at his own political position.

He's now so far in with this gamble that he can't risk not pushing forward with it because if he doesn't, it will be seen that he was bluffing. And that's the one thing he can't have. So we're going to get a war. The only question is whether this 10-day deadline Trump is giving has any reality to it. it. As you rightly said, Trump might attack tomorrow. I personally think that more likely than not, he will wait, wait 10 days, but it's only because that's the amount of time he needs to get the second carrier, the Gerald Ford interline. Yeah. Well, Iran is damned if they do, damned if they

don't. That's the kind of scenario they find themselves in. Exactly. The ultimatum is from the United States to Iran to remove any deterrent that they have. Exactly. Right. If they don't do it, then the United States is going to attack. If they did do it, then eventually the United States would attack because they would have no deterrent. Exactly. I mean, it's an impossible situation for any country to deal with. Absolutely. Absolutely. And everyone knows it if they were to give up their ballistic missiles. Exactly. Exactly. You know, they would be attacked a week after they gave them up and then the whole government would be removed. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So Trump is now signaling, or at least the, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, they're now saying that

that Trump may opt for limited strikes. At first, the Wall Street Journal talked about decapitation strikes. And now they're saying that Trump may go for limited strikes to take out the nuclear facilities and the military facilities, the ballistic missile facilities. What do you make of that? Well, I mean, it could be disinformation and it quite possibly is, but I'm going to suggest that there might also be some degree of nervousness. Trump does give the appearance of being under a lot of stress. He publish this extraordinary comment about aliens, and he's going to publish all the thing about aliens. That is so weird, even for Trump, that I have to say it does look to me as if he's under real stress now,

because he's getting himself into a war. And war always is uncertain. You can never completely predict what the outcome of any war is going to be. So it could be that he's stressed. It could be that he's throwing out ideas. War and Epstein, by the way. Epstein, absolutely. War and Epstein.

Epstein may be contributing to his stress level. Absolutely. So, I mean, you know, absolutely correct. And, you know, to some extent, there may be connections between those two as well, just to say. But it could be that he's, you know, throwing out ideas. Well, let's just try and limit it strike and see whether that works. Of course, it's not going to work. Or, and, you know, it could simply be that, you know, that he's dithering.

He's nervous about taking the... the plunge, but he's now, of course, boxed himself in also with this 10-day deadline. So there it is. I mean, we're in a very difficult position. He's maneuvered himself into this one. To repeat a point which we've made in previous programs, and bears repeating, this entire crisis is one that he has completely created by himself. I mean, he decided to walk out at the JCPOA, which was working during his first.

term, he had all sorts of proposals, which would have been absolutely good face-saving proposal, not even space-sailing, good proposals that were there on the table in the first half last year, and he didn't take them up. He went along with this idea of decapitation strikes, which is what the Israelis sold him on last year, and that led to the 12-day war in June. and now he's been maneuvered again into this huge operation against Iran, which he must be extremely worried, inevitably must be worried, and nervous might not succeed. But there it is, that was his decision.

He was the president of the United States. He listened to the various people who were talking to him. He listened to Lindsay Graham, who's also, by the way, started to look sound increasingly nervous, in my opinion. I mean, Graham oscillates between euphoria and nervousness. But anyway, whatever, let's not waste time with him. The point is Trump listened to these people. He listened to Netanyahu.

He went along with all of these people and he is where he is. Well, Graham is a senator from South Carolina and he's running around the world conducting foreign policy. Absolutely. That's completely messed up. just right there is something's wrong with what's going on in the United States. Totally. I mean, he even had a massive row with Martin Friedrichson, the Prime Minister of Denmark over Greenland.

Why is Graham involved in that? Yeah, why? Trump lets, Trump has him there. Absolutely. Absolutely. But, I mean, you know, the whole way in which the whole thing is run, I mean, the Geneva negotiations with Whitgolf and Kushner racing between one meeting with the Russians. Russians and one meeting with the Iranians. The Iranians are so angry about this that they

complain to Reuters. And on this one occasion, I believe the Reuters account, by the way, because the Iranians will say, what is this? What kind of a negotiation is this conducted in this way? It's theater. It's theater. It's theater. It's theater. Trump can't get away from the conflict because he needs the regime change. If he doesn't get the regime change, it's like you said. He's going to look like an idiot. Everyone's going to say, Oh, you just went back to JCPOA. They're going to say it's even worse than JCPOA because instead of the Europeans overseeing their enrichment, it'll be someone like Russia because the uranium would go to a third country.

Most likely that country would be Russia. So they would even say you got a worse deal than the JCPOA. Yes. And Israel will not allow anything other than a regime change. Yes. Israel wants to see a regime change and then the Balkanization of Iran. Yes. And they removed the big commasional.

competitor in the Middle East. At least that's the way that they see it. So Trump is completely boxed in. Both sides are boxed in when you think about it. Trump is boxed in. Iran is boxed in, but Trump brought us to this position. Going back to his first term with the JCPOA, no one mentions the fact that he walked away from the JCPOA, we mention it all the time. But no one wants to bring it up that Trump walked away for the JCPOA. The one good thing that Obama did, the one accomplishment that Obama did in all his eight years of disaster. The guy was a wrecking ball disaster, Obama, but he did one good thing. That was a JCPOA.

Exactly. Anyway, there it is. Now, to repeat the point which we've made many times in many programs, yes, the United States has assembled an enormous force against Iran. People are saying that it is as powerful a force in terms of air and missile assets as the one that was brought against Saddam Hussein in, I believe, 1991, 2003. But of course, there's a critical difference, which is that Iraq was a much smaller country. Iran is a huge country.

Iraq was centered on one big city, which was Baghdad. Iran has lots of different cities all over. I mean, it functions on a completely different scale. Missile and bombing did not bring down Saddam Hussein's government. Missile and bombing on Iran in the 1980s by Saddam Hussein, who had the backing of the Russians at that time. And people forget what an enormous bombing campaign, the Iraqis, with the Russians, with the help of the Russians, conducted against Iraq in Iran, in the last years of the Iran-Iraq war. That didn't bring down to the Iranian government. So this is a huge gamble.

It assumes that the Iranian government is brittle and fragile and has lost legitimacy and is deeply unpopular and won't be able to maintain control of its security agencies. Now, all of that may be true because to repeat again, a point we've made in program after program, we don't know the full extent of the internal situation in Iran. And we have to face the fact that repeatedly over the last five years, we've had proof after proof that Iran is deeply infiltrated. But if the government in Iran is able to survive the first three weeks, or let's say the first months, the pendulum shifts, and if the Iranians close the Straits of Hormuz, then this is a debacle. So that's the big question. It's not, can the United States conquer Iran?

It can't. I mean, it's impossible. I mean, the size of the country renders that impossible. It is how stable the government in Iran is, how strong it is. It's the same calculation the Iranians themselves are making. There's an article in the Financial Times, which repeats, almost where the word, the points we've been making over the last couple of weeks about the fact that it all depends ultimately on Iran's ability to absorb the blow. Currently, the Iranians themselves calculate that they

can absorb the blow, that regime survival is more likely to be achieved through a war than through the kind of capitulation that Trump and the Israelis are demanding. And that's their calculation, if they are right and the people who are advising Trump are wrong, then frankly, as we're looking at a debacle, a debacle, the end of Trump's presidency, quite plausibly. Another huge spike in oil prices is the Straits of Hormuz are closed and a major crisis for the entire Western position in the Middle East. If the operation succeeds, if the government falls, in the short term, big boost for Trump, very big boost for Israel, but then in the end, as we've seen with all the regime change

wars, a huge further set of problems going down the line. That's, I think, the point that we can, the only points we can make at the moment, we will just have to see how it plays out. Yeah, we're going to find out, Alexander. We're going to, most likely, we're going to find out. It's very much a heavyweight boxing match in a way, isn't it? The Trump administration, the U.S. is needing a knockout within the first three rounds, four rounds. Iran needs to take this to 10 to 12 rounds and then they've won the decision.

Exactly. That's exactly what we're looking at here. Yes. And even if they get that knockout in three rounds, the thing that I fear about all of this is that, yeah, you're going to get a short-term boost. Israel comes out at a much stronger position. Trump gets a boost going into midterms. He can go on the campaign trail and say, look what I did with Venezuela, look what I did with Iran. Then he can shift his focus onto Cuba and deal with Cuba. Help Rubio deal with Cuba. And he can go around the United States and campaign on that. But what happens when you remove a religious leader like Hamene, what happens if he issues a fatwa? Someone said it during our live stream the other day. I forgot to the viewer that posed that question to us, but I think that was a very good observation. You're not removing, and we've said this as well many times in previous videos, you're not removing a Maduro.

No. And you don't have a Delci Rodriguez in place as vice president, you know, ready to take over. Yes. You're removing a leader, a supreme leader, but also a spiritual leader of Shia Muslims. Correct. And what if fat was, or issued not only by Hamene, what if other religious leaders issue fat was? Yes. I mean, I don't know where this can go, but it can be disastrous for the United States, for Europe, for the West. Absolutely, completely correct. And it's something that I doubt that anybody understands. You know, you made a point on that very same live stream about the fact that all of this is going to happen during Ramadan,

removing a religious leader like that during Ramadan. Incredibly, there are some people in the United States who believe that is an advantage, that defeating, you know, destroying a religious-based, government during the most important festival of that very same religion is going to play to the US's advantage, presumably because some of these people will be fasting during the day and that might make them more difficult. On the contrary, you know anything at all about Islam and the way the Islamic religion works.

Nothing could be more calculated to provoke massive problems. further down the line. The fact that people think that, you know, eliminating harmonade during Ramadan works to the U.S. advantage just shows how little they understand the situation and how they are incapable of looking forward and understanding how this is going to play out. All right, so I asked this of you, the other video that we made on Iran, asked you the same question, I'll ask it to you again. Iran and China and Bricks, where is their position in all of this? I think now we have an accumulation of evidence that the Chinese are doing whatever they can

in this very difficult situation to help Iran. And I think the Russians also are doing something, though obviously not on the, well, definitely not on the scale that China is. The problem is, and we've discussed this many times, in many, many places, Iran itself has left this. far too late. If they'd started working with the Chinese and the Russians to prepare for all of this, say in 2003 after the events in October, sorry, not 2020, after the events in October 2023, they'd have had three years to prepare. Now, rushing, trying to sort it all out in a few weeks, it's impossible. You can get radars, you can get missiles even, you can do all of those things. But none of these systems will be mature. They can do some things. The Iranians will be

getting intelligence. They will be getting satellite data. They'll be doing all of those things. But it's impossible to be fully ready anywhere near as prepared as they might have been. if they'd started doing these things, say, three years ago. Now, having said that, one of the reasons for the urgency, I think, in this whole operation is because the Americans obviously know that all of this is going on. They'll be saying to themselves, look, we've got a strike now, before these systems start to coalesce and become mature. So that's probably creating further pressures for an early strike on the American side.

And if Iran is able to survive, let's say a month of strikes, if the governmental system is still there, if they've closed the Straits of Hormuz, which they've now rehearsed doing, if they're able to strike at Israel, if they're able to do any one of these things, then, of course, at that point, the support from the bricks, China and Russia begins to become increasingly important. It becomes like Vietnam all over again. China and Russia. supplying weapons maybe, supplying economic assistance, supplying intelligence assistance to Iran, enabling Iran to continue the kind of long war against the United States that Vietnam was able to undertake in the 1960s. And then, of course, that adds another major geopolitical factor to what would already be a debacle. I was just thinking, what if Iran does manage to draw Trump into a long war and does actually do damage to U.S. military assets in the region? I mean, does Trump, given the timing of all of this heading into the midterms, does Trump double and triple down, or does he cut his losses? I think he doubles and triples down. I think he's not going to care

about the midterms, if that's a scenario. If this goes to around the round. four or five or six. I think Trump's not going to throw in the towel and say, okay, we tried, you know, we tried everything. We tried, we tried the 12-day war, it didn't work. We tried, the protesters, it didn't work. We tried this didn't work. Okay, we're done. I don't think that's going to happen at all. I think he's going to build up more and more forces and continue to push. I mean, I just don't think there's going to be a reverse gear available to Trump, nor will he be allowed a reverse gear. No, exactly. I mean, the neocons would never agree to a reverse I mean, they never agreed to a reverse gear ever anyway, but especially not over a crisis like this.

And, of course, the Israelis arguably can't afford one. Because if Iran were to come out of this appearing the victor, and when I say appearing the victor, you know, I don't mean that Iran is going to, you know, sink the entire American fleet, take over the hold of the northern Middle East or anything of that kind. I mean, that's, I think those things are almost certainly, or at least I believe they are. Avoid a knockout. Avoid getting knocked out. That would still be seen around the world in the Middle East as a win.

People would say Iran is strong. It took on the whole power of the United States and Israel as well, and it came through. And for the Israelis, that would be a disaster. So they will not allow that. They will come back. They will press. They will talk to all their many friends in Washington and across the United States. They will also escalate the pressure for a further escalation.

And this is where we run into problems because we already know about the deficiencies that the U.S. has in terms of missile production, both air defense missiles, and apparently these are now critically short. Because of Ukraine, you mean. Because of Ukraine. Exactly. Problems with, problems with air-to-air missiles, long-range missiles, automobiles, automobile production is apparently very, very low, if it's even taking place at all, which I'm not sure about, by the way.

And then, of course, there's also the problems with the aircraft. Apparently, the stealth fighters are very, very heavy maintenance. They aren't really. So some say, I mean, I'm not an expert on this, obviously, but they're not really designed for long, sustained, grinding operations day after day, week after week, months after months. So in that kind of situation, what does the United States? What did Israelis do if they want to maintain the pressure? Well, we can all imagine absolutely catastrophic scenarios like using nuclear weapons.

I don't want to explore those. But, I mean, we might have to start thinking about them and exploring them, say, around April or May, if the present government of Iran is still in power at that time. What a mess. What a mess. Is there a possibility that Trump can get out of this, walk out of this? I mean, his presidency will be over. I mean, the neocons, the Israeli lobby, the Republicans, they would remove him, obviously, I think he would be done as president.

But he prevents a big war. I mean, would that be the trade-off? Well, absolutely. By the way, that's what he should do. He should cut the deal. There are deals there. He should cut deals set up this consortium on nuclear enrichment. bring Ross Atom in, the neocons would be furious, the Israelis would be furious. He is the president,

however, of the United States. Opinion polls in the US show that there is a clear majority of Americans, this is something we haven't mentioned, but there is a clear majority of Americans who oppose conflict with Iran. He might even win some support as a result if he was seen to be facing down the Naircons and the Israelis over this sort of issue. But he can absolutely do that. It might even limit to some extent losses in the midterms, which are certain to come. He could try and package it all as a win. The reality, of course, is that he would have lost faith.

His donors would be furious with him. He clearly listens to these people. far too much. The Israelis would be furious with him. The neocons would be furious with him. The Democrats would still win, probably. And the Democrats would be furious with him. Absolutely. Let's not let the Democrats off the book. They also want the conflict. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, it was still, I mean, whatever he does now, his presidency is likely to be badly damaged, unless, as I said, he gets the short-term boost because he manages to overthrow the government in his presidency.

Iran. But, I mean, to repeat again, that would be a short-term boost, but it might carry him through the midterms. But anyway, if he pulled back, he would be making the right decision. And in this kind of situation, somebody, the president of the United States, responsible for the best interests of the United States and of the American people, is under a duty. to make the right decision. But I'm afraid, and I have to say this, I don't think he's going to do it. I think he cares far too much about issues of face.

I think he's far too impressed. And now in the pocket of people like Graham and the donor class and all of those people, I think he also has real visceral feelings himself about Iran which cloud his judgment, I don't think he's going to take this step. I think, as you absolutely rightly said, he's boxing. All right, we will end the video there. We're all boxed in, it seems, with this one, Alexander.

We are passengers. We are passengers on this train. It's a runaway train, and we can't get off. I mean, that is the other thing that is so frustrating about this. Okay. We will leave it there. The durand.com. We're on X, we're on Rumble.

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