The Duran Podcast - Open-ended Iran War (Live) with Matthew Ehret & Robert Barnes

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Open-ended Iran War (Live) with Matthew Ehret & Robert Barnes

Okay, we are live with Alexander McCurice in London. Alexander, how are you doing? Well, watching all of these events in the Middle East with growing distress and horror, but obviously pleased to be here on this live stream with the community. Yeah, we got a lot to talk about Alexander. So a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on all of the various places. platforms. Hello to everyone that is watching us on locals, the durand.locals.com. And a quick shout out, Alexander, to our moderators.

Zareel inside the Russia business. And that's it for now. So, Alexander, we got a war, a full-scale war that is unfolding. The speaker of the House is saying that the U.S. is not at war, but Iran is at war with the U.S., but the U.S. is not at war with Iran. Strange statement for Mr. Johnson to make. Pete Hegseth and Kane, they gave a press conference and they updated the media as to how things are going. They're very positive. They're very positive that they've got this thing won.

And they said within a week, they should have a – control of the airspace. And we're also getting news, Alexander, that they are now hitting the border, the western border of Iran, I believe, the western border. And they're softening up the border for the eventual incursion of militias. So we've seen this play out in the past, Syria, Libya. So your thoughts, Alexander, on everything that's unfolding, you put up a video just about an hour ago where you talk about how Tehran is just getting smashed. I saw that video. I watched

that video, obviously. Watch that video. And it does look like the strategy is getting a little bit clearer, at least for the United States. My opinion is, you know, I'll simplify it, is that they're just going to try and level Iran and level Iran as much as possible, create as much destruction and chaos as they can. And then they're going to, throw in the militias. And I believe the end goal is not even a leadership change, Alexander, at this point. I think the end goal is just to dissect the country apart, to break it apart, create chaos, like Libya, like Syria.

Yes. And then they'll be on their way to the next country. And you are starting to see the collective West leaders also starting to get behind President Trump. Oh, yes. Macron. Calus is absolutely ecstatic. She's very happy at the developments that are unfolding, saying that Iran has been moved off the chessboard of the United States. Anyway, your thoughts, Alexander. And as you're giving your thoughts, I think Matthew Eyret might join us for a little bit, so I'll bring him in.

But tell us your thoughts as to what's going on. Well, this is, I mean, everything that you've described is exactly what one would have expected. I mean, there's massive attacks, attempts to find, to put boots on the ground, but not American boots, Kurdish boots on the ground. The calculus, it seems to me, still remains essentially the same. The Straits of Hormuz remain blocked. Energy prices continue to rise. The United States is still running down its inventories of weapons. That, by the way, I don't think anybody realistically is disputable. But the internal stability of Iran, the capability of the country,

to absorb attacks of this kind, that remains and has always remained in question. Keep it going, Alexander? Yeah, I mean, the key thing is this. Can this operation succeed quickly? I mean, they need, they need. to get this wrapped up in a relatively short time. If this metastasizes into a long war, which is what the Iranian strategy is,

then of course the situation changes completely. Matthew, thanks for joining us. And good to see you, Matt, Matthew. Matthew's doing great work, definitely follow Matthew. I'll put all of his links in the description box down below when we wrap up this live stream. Matthew, what are your thoughts? How do you see things unfolding?

Hey guys. Yeah, thanks for inviting me on for a quick one. And thank you for just providing consistent analysis. I always tune in and recommend people watch and subscribe to your program. Yeah, it's not looking good, you know. It's weird because on the one hand, there has been evidence of a certain degree of sophistication that organizes the chaos with, you know, the Trump phenomenon that there's often almost a consistent methodology behind the madness of saying belligerent insane things and then doing things that seem to be relatively not so bad relatively in many cases so many were understandably hoping that the belligerent language leading up to this as well as the positioning of military systems the the Gerald Ford and other things the SS Lincoln were maybe maybe not so bad maybe maybe there was something planned like a surprise, like a Venezuela

surprise that might result in just a quick end or the 12-day weird war, you know, that is, as it turns out, not exactly what's happening. And there is a weird merger between again, like I said, an evidence of something that has exhibited qualities

of sophistication at the same time of complete incompetence that makes it difficult to speak about too thoroughly. what I can hold on to, despite the narratives that are being promoted, is that there are certain eschatological ideas that are in play shaping things. We know that there is a greater Israel objective, which I think does play into this. We have an invasion of Lebanon happening. I think the body count is something upwards of two, three hundred civilians so far in Lebanon. I don't know.

I could be a little bit off. The numbers change and it's difficult to read. But we have that happening. We have the greater Israel. I think everyone listening knows what that is. They know what the aspire to maps are of the Nile to the Euphrates idea of the lawful land that should be granted to the chosen people, which is believed by certain people like even Pete Hegeseth, who gave a strange speech. in Israel in 2017 that I just re-listened to describing his joy of the miracles of 1917,

of 1948, of 1967, which were all miracles in his language, which were leading up to the miracle at that time of the moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and the building of Solomon's temple for the third time that he said is the purpose of his life's mission. Maybe not those specific words, but pretty much that was the tone. but he's very explicit, the building of the temple. So it's shared amongst certain fanatics on that side of the ocean as well. And when I look at some of the giddiness of some of these fanatics putting out their narratives, there does seem to be the idea that now is the time for the big coming out party.

Now is the time for the ushering of the big ritual to bring in the Messiah. Now finally we can do it. Whether it's the end, you know, the stage has been set, the annexation legislation for annexing the West Bank at a chunk of Jordan who was already passed in the Knesset, what, seven months ago? There is like frothing at the mouth giddiness that makes me very uncomfortable. So to what degree will this be containable at this point after Ahmadinejad's been made a martyr

Ahmadinejad who if anybody had something negative to say about or at least if anybody in Israel who wanted to bomb Iran if they could pick a person to to be there to represent Iran they would have they liked having Ahmadinejad because he tended to use a much more fiery language

he's been retired he's out of play but they killed him now he's a martyr you know there's there's something you can't put back in the bottle as far as this genius concerned and so I'm not too positive right now I'm not feeling We got Robert Barnes in the house. Alexander, the great Robert Barnes, Alexander, I'm going to pass it off to you so you can moderate guys.

Whenever you have to go, Matthew, Robert, just let us know. We've got questions that we're going to answer, and I'll just leave it to Alexander and you through gentlemen to move things along, and I'll be moderating the chat and putting up some of the questions down below. Well, I mean, for me, the thing about this, Walt, there's a number of things to say about this. Firstly, I don't, I still don't understand what the end game is ultimately intended to be. I mean, if it's about installing a new leadership in Iran, that is increasingly looking very difficult. It doesn't look as if the son of the former Shah is even in contention. If it is about dismembering Iran, in other words, carving it up, breaking it up, that is a recipe for chaos.

And it's going to deepen the chaos altogether. If it's some plan to disrupt oil supplies to China, I think all that's going to do is it's going to consolidate the partnership between Russia and China. So the thing I would say about this war, this is what I find very difficult about it, is that in terms of strategy, of policy, I am not quite sure what it is. And Kirstama, great Prime Minister, who undoubtedly does

speak for a fairly strong view here in London, he's actually just made a comment just a short time ago in which he said that he cannot understand what the plan is. So, Robert, I don't know, is there a plan? What is the plan? And why did Trump do this when it is so deeply unpopular in the United States, when it's so strongly contradicts what he himself said in Trump said during the election? What is the objective? Is this driven by some kind of visceral feeling? Is there some great plan here, which I can't myself see? I should say, I had. many of these same questions about the Iraq war back in 2003. At that time, I couldn't understand what that war was all about. What is this one about? Well, I think that in the same sense that

the Western hubris met its nemesis in Ukraine with the Russian bear, the Western hubris will now meet its nemesis in the Persian tiger. And there's the Israeli objective. There's the kind of American objective. There's a deep state objective. You've got different participants in play. Kurt Mills, the editor of American conservative, described it Trump's action as the great betrayal of Trump's anti-war base. Trump himself, I think, is cognizant of this. You use like a confession through projection filter. Look at his attacks on Marjorie Taylor Green, his attacks on Thomas Massey. We're using words like treasonous and traitorous. I think that's Trump describing how he feels about himself betraying his own base.

The best confession through projection filter, though, is still Macron. You listen to Macron describe anything that Russia is up to, and he'll give you all of Europe's plans in advance. It's a very useful filter. When people say ridiculous things against somebody else, assume they're talking about themselves. Trump himself is, you know, people have described him as going through a keen-Lear moment. And this includes people close to the White House.

So that for a while now, Trump has been acting. more and more erratic, more and more irrational. People are afraid to say anything negative to them. One of the people connected to the Joint Chiefs of Staff said this was a bad idea and told that to some members of the press. He got fired. That's how Trump is handling people that give him bad news. He can't fire Jamie Vance. He's the vice president of the United States, but he can relegate Vance. He can relegate Gabbard. There'll be some fake news coming out saying Vance was for this attack. That's utterly false. He's the the only reason we didn't go in three weeks ago and two weeks ago when it looked like an 80%

chance. We would have gone in three weekends ago and two weekends ago, as we talked about offline. So the, you know, when you see Vance basically lying about the nuclear weapon threat, it's because he's trying to come up with an exit ramp. He's trying to say, let's just pretend this objective was really just about nuclear weapons so we can declare victory and go home. And get out of this rather than it spread like a consistent. contagion economically and geopolitically throughout the Middle East and even up into the caucuses. I mean, Alex, I mean, you know, even Cyprus's military base there has been hit. So, I mean, this could spread in bad, bad ways.

Trump, to give an idea where Trump's at, Trump is now shutting out any negative information. Like both General Kane and, you know, he likes to call him Raisin Kane, deeply tied to the Israeli establishment, has gone back and forth. but what he didn't do is say yes this will work you just said i don't know uh CIA director rackcliffe same thing swampy susy who's right there in the room why is the cheap of staff right in the situation room and this in the mara lago version of the situation room for a major conflict what what geopolitical expertise does she have uh if you have any doubts about where vans and gabbard stood and the energy secretary right the fact they got left behind in dc tells you everything you need to know the uh you know the and you know vance vance can't come out and rebut

these stories because he doesn't like to leak and he doesn't he can't be perceived as anti his president so he's stuck in a sort of no man's land uh while trump torches the maga coalition the uh it's i mean trump was told politically this wasn't popular so instead they went about intimidating pollsters told them they weren't going to get any money from any republican candidate or Republican PAC or Trump PAC, which has all the big cash, unless they shut up and started doing fake polls. So insider advantage is now doing fake polls. You'll start seeing Trafalgar's doing fake polls. You'll start seeing Rasmussen pretty soon start doing fake polls. The only person who refused that was Richard Barris, a big data poll people's punitive daily, who has been warning about this

all the way through. They even followed that up with threats. One of these people was sitting there with mother dying on her deathbed and was being threatened by Republican officials that the Attorney General Pam Bondi would try to find something to prosecute him on unless he shut his mouth. I mean, that's how bad it is. It's very like, it's almost like Arab dictatorship kind of mindset. And that was, you only want to be surrounded by people who are yes men. It's, it's Trump is now Baghdad Bob. And that's why you're seeing such erratic, inconsistent all over the place explanations as to the timing of the attack, as to the reasons for the attack, as for the objectives of the attack. And Pete Hankseth is busy playing Team America World Police from the

South Park movie talking about how wonderful all the death and destruction is. It's like, so it's wonderful, 150 kids, girls are dead. That's a wonderful thing. We're bombing ambulances. We're bombing hospitals. That's a wonderful thing. This is a disgusting disgrace. And it is a great betrayal. So Trump doesn't have a plan is the short answer. There isn't one. That's why you've seen all this, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe this is the objective, maybe that's the objective, maybe it's the objective. That's why there was no plan. Trump convinced himself that despite all the people telling him otherwise, that this will be short. This would be a weekend conflict, that we take out

the regime and all of a sudden magically and miraculously peace and freedom would emerge throughout the Iranian world. The real objective, and Trump kind of implicitly, Rubio let this out of the bag when he said Israel was going in anyway, so we had to attack. In the most funny version of a preemptive war I've ever heard, it's proactive in a defensive way. Okay, whatever. And then on the, and then Trump let the county, he was like, well, you know, we had some ideas of who might replace them, but they're all dead now.

Well, who killed him? Israel killed him. Why? Because Israel's objective is not. You know, BB sells the same pitch, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, all the time. We'll bring peace and freedom. by what we're doing. His goal is not peace and freedom. The receipts prove otherwise. His goal is to have no rivals at all. And as Tucker Carlson reported, which I'm sure these governments are going to deny,

but I have no doubts that Tucker is right. Israel was busy trying to do false flag operations in the Gulf states because they don't want the Gulf states to be rivals either. They don't want Qatar to be a rival, UAE and Dubai to be a rival, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia to be a rival. They want there to be no rivals in the Italy's. So them being on full display, the American umbrella of security has actually has a bunch of holes in it because we care more about Israel than we do any of these countries we have a mutual security defense agreements with. Israel will be thrilled at that. Israel's goal is for Iran to fall apart, collapse into looking like a really big version of Syria, Iraq, and Libya. And that's why they're taking out everybody. That's why they're attacking civilians. That's why they're doing things that they know

will backfire in terms of America's political interest because this isn't for America. This is for Israel. The whole world knows it at this point. And even the Democratic Party is starting to wake up to the reality that their own base is now anti-Israel. That's why you see Newsom, the leading Democratic presidential candidate out doing a full-scale denunciation of BBs Israel. So that political dynamics will continue to shift. Now, what's the real polls like Patrick Basham at the Democracy Institute, I think they're published in the UK and the Daily Express, showed Republicans are not, if you had an honest polling data, Richard Barris is doing this in the field now. Republicans are not on board with this attack. Independence hate the attack. And of course, Democrats are completely opposed. What that means is you've got about a 20, 25 percent support at the peak of propaganda. Now, you're going to see tons of fake polls from these bought off intimidated Republican pollsters. You're also going to see it from you go.

of manipulating their data. Like back to back, you go put out two contradictory polls. For the economists, they put out one set of polls. And then Barry Weiss's CBS puts out a totally new, fake new set of polls. The other thing that's also happening is a bunch of independent people who align with the Republican Party are now abandoning Republican identification. Gallup has already been tracking this in other ways. So what you're going to see is a shrinking Republican base may be more unified in support of trouble. But that's because it's shrinking.

It's purification by subtraction. The independent MAGA vote is increasingly, doesn't want to even identify as MAGA anymore. That's how because MAGA is so Trump identified. Politically, it's going to be a wipeout in Texas primaries yesterday. Democrats had the biggest advantage they have had in more than 30 years in a Democratic primary process. They outvoted Republicans, including even on election day. And this was because election day happened after the attacks. Democrats have a very good chance to pick up.

Democrats will win the Senate and they'll win it by a safe margin. Democrats will win the House and win it by a big margin. Right now they're on pace to get the biggest victory in the modern era, bigger than 06, bigger than 08. They may win by double digits in terms of the generic ballot. Texas generic ballot right now is dead even. All these seats that they plan on adding are Hispanic Mexican-American seats. They are massively turning against Trump and the GOP. It will be the biggest Democratic margins in those areas in the modern history of that state.

So politically, it's imploding. The vote will happen tomorrow in the House of Representatives. The only question, I think Democrats will, to the surprise of many people, hold. Because Democrats were weak and wusses to begin with, didn't know whether they wanted to stand up to the Israeli lobby or not. Watch them actually, as they see their base enraged by this, see the and see the political opportunity it provides, don't be surprised if it passes the House a rejection of Trump's authorization to go to Iran. Now, we'll see what happens in the Senate. That's where all the warhorse really love to live.

So we'll see how that works out. But also, don't be surprised if come November, Lindsay Graham is out of the Senate finally from South Carolina because of the tipping factor it is. So, I mean, historically, as a brief overview, Americans, despite the sort of impression that a lot of the world gets that were a blood-lusty nation, that that's true of the powers that be, the power brokers that be, the elites that are and the deep state apparatus, it's never been true of the ordinary voter. Every president who has initiated a war, not responded to one as World War II was perceived as us responding to a war, whether that's true or not another story for another day. But the World War I, Woodrow Wilson entered it after promising to keep us out and all the rest.

It led to 12 years of Republican rule. The same thing happened. Harry Truman gets us into the Korean War, led to eight years of Republican rule. LBJ gets us into Vietnam War, leads to 20 of the next 24 years being dominated by Republicans in the White House. Poppy Bush gets us into war. He gets devastated so badly, even in a war that was perceived as popular, unlike this one. And he ended up getting the lowest percentage of vote since 1912 as an incumbent president in eight years of Democratic rule. ever since the fall of the wall, American presidents are addicted to showing off the empire, hegemonic power with foolish, unnecessary wars that do not maintain and sustain success for very long. Bill Clinton goes in bombs here, Serbia for 75 days. What happens? Al Gore loses the White House because George W. Bush ran as we're not going to be the world's policeman. George W. Bush then betrays that promise. Goes in Iraq war. Leads to a Democratic whiteout. It's 2006, 2008. Barack Obama gets elected on no new wars.

And of course, he decides to destroy Libya. As Hillary Clinton bragged about, you know, we came, we saw he die with that crazy cackle of hers. And what does that do? It cost Hillary Clinton in the White House as Donald Trump is able to seize the anti-war mantle. Trump himself, in fact, there's one question that has been the most predictive of midterm elections and presidential elections going back to 1948. And that has been, which party do you think will keep us out of war? Right now, Republicans had had that edge under Trump. They slightly lost it in 2020 because of all as machismo and macho talk. And Biden was able to get it just slightly edge it out.

But in 2024, it had a big edge. But for the most part, it's been close. Now it's Democrats have a double-digit lead and expanding rapidly on that question. That usually predicts a double-digit midterm win. So I think the reality is BB in the Israeli lobby dogwalk Trump into this. You have a good number of mid-tier military generals that have been promoted by the Israeli lobby that are these extreme apocalyptic Christian Zionists

who you know I mean can you imagine saying hey boys we're about to start the apocalypse let's go woohoo we're going to fill revelations right now I mean that's why you get that leaked out so quickly you know went to soldiers like we're actually governed by madmen insane people and I think Trump is truly

that's concerning too right that's so concerning because when you when you're thinking about what was behind the war in Iraq the outcome of 9-11 if you listen to George Bush he gave a an interview describing his interaction with Sharak and how

in that interview I don't know if you guys have seen that he's directly referencing Gog and Magog in the new age and how everything is about Megito Gog Magog that's the type of crap in this guy's head who's like assigned to put into motion a series of actions that are going to have foreseeable consequences leading up to

what some belief to be their ability to put a magic spell and cast some sort of a cult ritual whereby somehow prophecy will manifest and Jesus will come back or come for the first time or whatever. Depends on, you know, what side of the aisle you took in that. The other factor going on here is it's become increasingly clear that there's a lot of pay-for-play schemes, not only domestically in the United States, our Justice Department turned into

an open pay-for-play scheme so corrupt corporate lobbyists like Mike Davis can line their pockets who aren't even registering. so they're committing ongoing felony, federal felonies as they do it. But that Whitcough and Kushner, why them? One of the reasons is there's so much talk that they're cutting sweetheart deals to enrich their family in the Gulf states and with Israeli billionaire, pro-Israel billionaires, and that this isn't part of that. And now Whitcloth's reputation is completely torched.

You got caught lying, went out to everybody said Iran came in and said, we're going to make 11 nuclear missiles, nuclear bombs. And of course, the problem was they didn't expect Oman to, rebut them. They did it off the record, but they went right to NBC and said, that's completely false. That never happened. So there was already doubts building about Whitkoff and Cushner's role. But now those days, I mean, Whitkoff is making real estate deals on the backside and with the Gulf states and with the Israeli lobby. Kushner is making sweetheart backdoor deals. I mean, some of the things that Max Blumenthal warned about are coming true in live time. And this is,

I mean, it looks like a big pay for play scheme to personally enrich a bunch of Trump allies. So that's the other factor in play. Can I ask a few questions about Vance? Because this is something I'm going to take from the British media. The British media have been playing up very, very heavily the fact that Vance is not in agreement with this policy. There's been articles about this in the financial times, in the Daily Telegraph,

which is very closely connected to the British establishment. indeed. And you see this everywhere. Now, I read the British media every day, obviously, and I become very wise to this. There are lots of different feelings about this war in Britain. There are some people who support it. There are many others who don't. And, you know, I want to discuss this because Britain knows Iran very well. And we've had a very, very long history with Iran. We almost ran it around at one time. well, we'll talk about that shortly. But there are many people who think this is a very bad idea,

that the United States is getting drawn into something that isn't really going to help, and that that's not going to turn out well for Britain or for Europe, either, or for the entire period of the West. And I'm going to say this. The way I have read some of these articles, the way some of these articles have been written is as follows. good that Vance is there, because if things begin to go very, very badly wrong, he is there to take over. Now, that's a British perspective. I want to stress this. But, you know, I know what I mean.

What, Robert, do you make of this? Vance was strongly opposed to this conflict. And it is the main reason we didn't go in sooner, because he's the one person, Swampy Susie, hasn't been able to block out of the White House because she knows Trump just wants to hear good news. Just cheer for him to give him positive news. He loves that he loves he talks to Sean Hannity every night, by the way. That's how nuts it is. And Sean Hannity said, oh, you're so wonderful. You know, all that.

I mean, it's just ridiculous. You know, you even talk to Laura Lumer. You know, that Laura Luzer is a real name. Oh, yeah. It's amazing what you're doing, Mr. President. You're going to go down. It loves to hear BB, you know, seal clap for him as as he seal claps him into the destruction of the MAGA coalition. which the Israel lobby has been very good at over the years.

So Vance is Catholic. Last time he went to Israel, he didn't even go visit the wall. He visited the old, the great church, the old church there, Holy Sepulchre. The Holy Church of the Holy Sepachians, absolutely, yes. So he visited them with the various priests there. The Christian Zionism is a subsect of evangelical Protestantism that emerged in the 1970s with a televangelist movement. it does not have a long history in evangelical Protestantism. And just to quickly say, my own very strong feeling is that it's a very, very small percentage

of American Protestant Christians. I think that's a point I would like to say. In fact, you could divide the event. I mean, I grew up in the evangelical community. So I know people like Jeffrey Sachs and others looking outside think it's across the board. They have disproportionate influence because they've been promoted by the Israeli lobby, funded by the Israeli lobby, et cetera. But they don't represent the broad mass

outside of boomers. Because it only emerged in the 1970s, it emerged because of the religious right, becoming a political movement in the 1970s in response to homeschooling and secular, cultural issues and the like. They created a sort of cultural convenience. televangeles who usually got caught

showing their secretary, the missionary position, usually needed new money in a new church. So voila, they suddenly are pro-Israel. And suddenly it's somehow tied to resurrection, I mean, to revelations and that the how a politician somehow is you know 19 to 2024 it's something to do with the old testaments beyond me but the uh i mean it wasn't even a mainstream thought within zionism the greater israel project that's now been launched i mean this is a different derivation of it but the

majority of evangelical christians particularly you have two groups what i call the churched and the unchurched trump's original base it was amongst unchurched evangelical Christians who don't actually trust the everyday church, but they identify as that as born again. That group is generally not Christian Zionist at all. And even within the evangelical Protestant movement, if you factor out that only the boomers have strong, most of them would still not call themselves Christian Zionists. I grew up in the evangelical Protestant community. I never heard the word until I was in these Israel debates.

So that gives you an idea of how it's not that common at the grassroots. And amongst younger voters, younger, this is why Charlie Kirk in part was turning against this Israel First Agenda, it's actually a very small minority. So people who think there's this big popular voting base amongst evangelical Christians for anything Israel wants are totally wrong. A majority of young evangelicals oppose this. And in fact, many of them get enraged when they're told, like Huckabee tells them, that they're supposed, Huckabee represents that boomer con old televangelist era preacher who believes

in the Christian Zionist movement. He is a tiny minority in terms of the grassroots of the evangelical Protestant vote. And anybody under 50, right now, even amongst evangelical Christians under the age of 50, as many of them sympathize with the Palestinians as side with Israel. It's given it first time ever, Gallup Polling's history, more Americans now sympathize with Palestinians than Israel in that conflict. And I mean, and that's sympathizing with people affiliated or associated with, you know, Hamas and Fatah and PLO. So that gives you an idea of just how much Israel public opinion has collapsed. B.B. Netanyahu is way underwater.

I mean, he's approaching the teens of favorability and approval in the United States. So this is a war that is going to stay deeply unpopular, especially as all the things unfold, to give you an idea of Trump's delusional state. He's out there pretending that something everybody knew, Daniel Davis, Colonel McGregor, you guys, everybody, I mean, Duneberg was writing about this on his substact. And for anybody in the chat, it's Duneberg. I'm not quoting Bloomberg. I know some people got that confused last time.

So not Bloomberg, Dumberg. He didn't think we would go back in because he's like, we don't have the interceptors to sustain a conflict longer than two weeks. That's why we had to fold and beg for a ceasefire the last time. And the Trump is out there pretending, oh yeah, yeah. The reality of the military industrial complex in the United States is that we build expensive weapons because of this huge lobbyist enterprise or everybody gets a piece. So we build these big, fancy, expensive weapons that we can only have

small supply of and that we can't just ramp up. We don't have the industrial base to do it. We don't have the system of military procurement to do it, which you're seeing some on the right be shocked by these disclosures that's but being printed in Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. It's that we in Trump was to pretend, no, we won't run out. We won't run out. Yeah, we already are running out. And there's no easy way to quickly replace it. I mean, the other sense of his delusion, he decides, well, I will just replace Lloyds of London with the Straits of Hormuz. And the U.S. government will now guarantee everybody's shipping like somebody's going to be risk being taken to the bottom of the sea by even taking up that insurance. He's like, well, don't worry, the U.S. Navy will be there to escort him.

One hour later, the U.S. Navy comes out and says, no, he will not be escorting ships in the Straits of Hormuz because they would be sitting ducks. There's a reason why they're way off into the ocean. And you get a sense of the futility and that we make a big deal about sinking a ship coming back from India after doing those joint enterprises that wasn't even in the conflict. And we do a video of it and broadcast it to everybody. That's a sign of losing. It's not a sign of winning. What they think about Iran is completely wrong. They've now made Hamini into a martyr throughout the whole Shia world.

When we had a terror incident that happened in response to this, the media has tried to suppress. But that Austin terror incident was a direct reaction. to the Iranian event because you don't need to have sleeper cells, which I've always been skeptical that Iran had sleeper cells, but you don't need to have sleeper cells. You just need to have Shia aligned or other Muslims who take deep offense to this. I mean, I keep trying to explain to people that cheering the killing of the Ayatollah, how that looks to much of the Shia Muslim world.

It'd be like killing the Pope and going around and celebrating it everywhere. Do you think that won't upset or offend some co-religionists? Instead, they're so delusional. They're talking about this will be the end of the Shia Muslim group as a group. I got those comments today. So the degree of delusion cannot be understated. And that's what makes it so dangerous. They had always had plans to put special forces on the ground.

I took a lot of heat because a couple of weeks ago I put out, the White House even polled on how many casualties Americans would accept. And they included in that poll, what if it's more than 10, thousand U.S. casualties. That's because that's what their own internal estimate showed. It could be if it got bad. They had always, they plan on using the Kurds and ISIS, by the way. That's why they helped release those ISIS prisoners from Syria. They're hoping that ISIS joins with the Kurds with the U.S. special forces to go into Iran. And by the way, they believe Turkey is next. Bebe Netanyahu said, we need to go after Turkey next. He said that two weeks ago, whatever was when he's last at the White

house. That was seriously being broached. That's why people like Vance were like, how insane are these people? So Vance is strongly, completely thoroughly opposed, but there's only so much he can do. He's the vice president of the United States. You'd think that comes with great power, but being number two means it really doesn't. And he's tried to lobby heavily against it. And you can see Trump's way of thanking him was to keep him in the white, keep him back at the White House while Trump did this at Mar-a-Lago. Let's talk about Iran and let's talk about Britain. Britain has been enormously, intimately, closely involved in Iran for a very long time.

We ran Iran basically after the First World War. Before that, we sort of shared it with the Russians, with the Tsarist Russians, by the way. Then we had a brief period during the Second World War. When again with the Russians, we occupied it. At the time the Tehran conference, we had British troops in Iran. There were Soviet troops in Tehran and there were British troops controlling the oil fields in the South. BP ran Iran. I mean, it basically was the dominant power, dominant player in Iran.

It was Britain that got the United States involved in Iran in the first place. It was we who told the Americans that we needed to overthrow the government that had been established after the Second World War, the Mossadegh government, which was trying to nationalize BP's oil assets. The Shah of Iran was a good friend of this country, and we were a good friend of his. And today, a very large proportion of the Iranian diaspora, the monarchist diaspora. It's actually here in London. They're all over the place, by the way, They're driving around London at the moment, waving monarchist flags. It's quite extraordinary to watch.

So what role have we played in any of this? I get the sense that London is very divided. But the view that I sense is that in Britain, in London today, the feeling is Iran is tomorrow's problem. Russia is today's problem. We don't like the fact that the Americans are focusing on Iran instead of Russia. It's all over the media here. We're now for the first time hearing about the fact that the Americans don't have infinite supplies of weapons.

What are your feelings about this? I mean, what is the role of Britain in this matter? No Western country other than the United States itself has had this enormous, intimate, close relationship with Iran that we have had. What, Matt, what are your thoughts? Yeah, everywhere you look in these types of batters and scratch a little bit, and you tend to find a British hand manipulating things from behind the scenes, whether it was Richard Deerloves' role in concocting or overseeing the concoction of the stories,

the 10 Downing Street memos relating to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or whether it's even Kit Clarenberg from the Gray Zone recently published a fantastic short but concise piece on his substack documenting the MI6 role in promoting, promulgating the lie that Iran has been pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And he zeroes in on the figure of Nicholas Leinman who had his CV, an MI6 operative and Iran-desk specialist who had a CV circulate publicly somehow. showcasing him bragging that he played a key role in getting various intelligence agencies across Europe and the United States into adopting accepting the story that Iran, despite having put a fatwa onto the pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2003, had in fact been lying and was secretly pursuing this WMD, this nuclear warhead, which was always a lie.

But he even, Kit Clarenberg, who you guys might want to talk to at some point regarding his his work on this topic, even pointed out that Nicholas Langman has been also behind the infiltration of the IAEA to insert MI6 and MI6 adjacent operatives into positions of influence that could then weaponize the IAEA again. Talk to Kit Clarenberg about that. But sure enough, you go back even to the days of when the Shah, you know, Reza Palavi originally started falling off the reservation. after the oil shocks of 73, you know, oil prices skyrocketed. Now, being a member of OPEC, there was a lot of new money coming into Iran, and Pahlavi was looking with other leaders, you know, other people,

including a big chunk of the leadership at Saudi Arabia, we're looking at the idea, well, maybe we could use our lucrative revenues to industrialize. Maybe we don't have to remain, you know, a single market raw materials exporter under the Seven Sisters. Maybe we can actually have a full spectrum economy and pursue things like nuclear power. I mean, hell, the United States under the Adams for Peace had helped build up Iran's nuclear power sector to begin with. So nobody should have a problem with that, you'd think. And he started working with the nuclear industry of France, of Germany. These countries were even working to create a, was it the European monetary system as an alternative to the IMF with Iran playing a big,

role in that whole dynamic in the late 70s. So you know, you had the European monetary system banks being like negotiated and OPEC nations would deposit their surpluses into this outside of the IMF. That was unacceptable. So, you know, there, there's enough research that that's come to light demonstrating that MI6 Amnesty International played a big role in the color revolution operations to overthrow the Shah originally back in those days. they didn't like him getting off the reservation.

He was well-behaved sometimes, but he got it into his head that he had more power than he, I guess he actually did. And, you know, we know that MI6 has been pissed off. We know that American intelligence is Zionist intelligence agencies have been pissed, especially since the mid-90s when Iran adopted a policy of dialogue of civilizations as their primary policy position under, what was it, Muhammad de Ketami, the president from 97 to 2002, very influential figure.

But he wasn't alone, but he went to Rome. You know, he started promoting this idea that Iran's new policy position, its foreign policy paradigm is going to counteract what he could see clearly emerging through the followers of Samuel P. Huntington and the clash of civilization's doctrinares, which was setting the stage clearly, for what was going to be the onset of a new crusade, crusader ideology that was going to be unleashed by some false flag. No one could know at the time exactly what, unless they read U.S. policy documents and war game exercises that were like, you know, gaming out what planes hitting world trade centers in the Pentagon, we're going to do like a year before it actually happened. So if you weren't reading those things put forth by the project for new American century crowd, you couldn't have known.

But of course, world leaders are paying attention to these things. So anyway, Hitami started promoting this idea that, no, Iran has to be a part of a coalition of like-minded nations and civilizational powers that want to survive, that want to reject the end of history. And he started promoting this idea of large-scale economic development, of working with China, working with Russia. At the same time, you know, that was when Zadignau Brizinski had come out freaking out. Ranchest board saying the only possible threat to our dream of a new world order would be the unlikely but possible convergence of Russia, China, and Iran in some mutual cooperative agreement. That was 1997. So I think from that point on, we really had a consistent Iran that began to play a big role

in the international North-South transportation corridor, you know, with Russia and India, as its two key cooperative partners in that agenda that was announced in 2001. Of course, 9-11 got in the way. The burning of the Middle East got in the way. So it was set back. Though it's since I think 2018-19, it's really taken on new life. So that would be a threat. But it shows you that they played a keynote in that in the Canghai Cooperation Organization.

They joined fully in 2021. The Bricks, they became a full member in 2024. or the East, the East, West, you know, Silk Road, the Belt and Road initiative, Iran plays a vital role. Syria was supposed to play a vital role. But, you know, that didn't happen. Now, ISIS is running Syria and they're probably pro-Israel. But Iran was, it needs to, Iran needs to be viable for the, the Belt and Road initiative to be viable. And so they really locked in their destiny to this dream of Eurasian, the great Eurasian, the Great Eurasian.

partnership. And I think that that definitely is playing a certain role in the calculus behind what's going on as messy as it might be. I think that's a factor in it. I don't think British or American intelligence are very happy in that idea. We know that as well, you know, the offer has been made on many an occasion by the Russians, by the Chinese, to the Americans to say, hey, let's work together on making money together. Let's build projects around the BRI, around the polar silk road, around these new. maritime and land-based transport corridors that also extend

into Africa. And I think that you've got a really really these are great opportunities and the foundations upon which the American nation could finally redeem itself and begin to heal over, you know, decades of self-immolation.

But we've chosen to just drop the ball and instead frame these powers as our enemies against all of our self-interest. We're choosing to do that instead, which is bewildering to me, including on the Arctic front, too. And I don't think you can account for why

we're acting in such a insane way if we didn't look at British intelligence, creeping behind the scenes, manipulating, but also, you know, Israel itself is the concoction. It's the creation of operations that go back to Lord Shaftusbury. The first, you know, major modern Zionist, Lord Shaftusbury, and, you know, the guy who was working with

John Nelson Darby, the nephew of Lord Nelson. of Battle of Chafalgar fame, right? That Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren. These guys were the guy who found the interpretation of scripture to assume that we can read allegorical language to presume that everything happens in these millennialist dispensations and that were on the cusp now of some secret rapture, which was then adopted by Blackstone, who wrote his famous Blackstone memo,

calling for, you know, giving national support to getting the Jews of the world to all just go live in the desert. And then, you know, this was adopted by, by Peter Herzl as well, who also gave speeches calling for the eventual land being of the chosen people spread, which he didn't even believe in. He wasn't even religious. You know, he's writing letters to Cecil Rhodes, the most immoral guy you could imagine, saying how much he admires Rhodes's successes in Rhodesia and how he should, we could learn from. that in settling the Middle East from you know and dealing with savages brown people living in the Middle East but he wanted the denial to the Brady's idea that he included in his language so it was there early on Schofield who is using Darby as well as his foundation for his reference Bible today which which you know supports John Hage and all these fanatics who have seen to have a big influence on a chunk of the U.S. military that do believe that it's their divine mission to usher in

this like weird new age that George Bush had been talking about. Very, very startling stuff. So I think that all of this stuff is for people who say that right now, and I'll end with this, I know that there's a lot of people justifying what's going on that I've been countering amongst the mega influencer community. Based on the idea that if the U.S. didn't do what they did, then Israel would have done it alone.

And then Iran would have likely have started shooting American parties. in response to Israel attacking Iran solo. And so we had to preemptively do it, says Rubio and I guess Trump is saying that too. I don't buy that at all. We were in positive negotiations, probably the most successful negotiations in Oman. Iran had agreed to everything requested, I, unlimited IEA inspections if they wanted it. Like everything was going very, very well. And Trump had even made a point right when sold the mining was killed.

You know, what happened? We were on the verge of a war at Iran in 2020 in January. Why didn't it happen? It's because Trump got on the phone from the Oval Office through the, I think it was the Swiss embassy, right? And directly had a direct line to the Iranian leadership and negotiated a de-escalation whereby they agreed, okay, you've got something that's renegated going on in your backyard. You know, they understood that. And they agreed to a controlled retaliation where they would give four notice and striking U.S. air base, I guess it was in or some military base in Iraq, I guess. And that would give the Americans time to remove their troops from the hit zone that happened.

Iran could then save face and say, okay, we got a revenge. Now we can move on with life. So they've already demonstrated a sensitivity to the fact that there is not one American. but these different aspects of America battling it out. I think that if Israel had been allowed to just go in and pick their own fights and pay the consequences, I don't think Iran being in the peace negotiation on top of everything else, including the 12-day war de-escalation and all of that, not that long ago. I don't think that they would have attacked American bases at all.

I think that we should have probably just stat back and let it happen. So either that's incompetent or it's part of a deceitful lie that we've been. tripped into. It's one of those two things. For the record, I think that is hiding behind Israel and said that because if we didn't attack, Israel will have attacked, I think that's an extraordinarily shabby thing.

After we're talking about the United States, they could have said very straightforwardly to Israel, look, we're not in with this. This is not something we support at all. If you want to negotiate, we're in negotiations.

The negotiations are making progress. This isn't a moment for a war. But anyway, what I wanted to say, there is an important point I want to make about Britain, which is it goes back directly to what Robert was saying about the United States. There's a major misunderstanding about Britain. There is an imperialist oligarchical class in Britain, or at least there certainly was in the 19th and 20th century, that is not representative at all of wider British public. opinion. Most British people have never been imperialists at any time. If you know our history well,

you would absolutely know that. And what one of the factors, there were many factors that brought about the collapse of the empire in the mid-20th century, is that British people were not prepared to go around the world to fight for the empire anymore. That was the single reason why Britain had to give up India, which is the jewel in the crown in the 1940s. After they voted a government in in 1945, which they wanted to carry out social and economic reforms, they were not interested in going out of it.

That was coming atly, right? Absolutely, Atley. And by the way, the same applies. Today, the recent by-election in Manchester, foreign policy again played a surprisingly important role. I have no doubt at all that one of the reasons why the reform vote underperformed was because the candidate, who was in some respects a strong candidate that reform put up, seemed to employ.

that he would be willing to involve Britain in some kind of conflict in the Middle East, alongside Israel and the United States. And that cut his vote amongst precisely the English working class demographic that he needed to mobilize and unite behind him. So I do want to make this point because I don't think it's something that is, widely understood. In this respect, Britain and the United States are not that different, actually. Now, there's something else I wanted to say is because we have all these very strong connections with Iran. We have an awful lot of Iranians here. They are not perceived as being like other immigrants in the Middle East.

They are a far more sophisticated and better educated community altogether. And I get the sense that, Iran is the same. Do people in the United States in North America understand that? What do you think, Robert? Well, we got a couple of different components there. One, I mean, there is a British, Israeli, American connection. And it's to also to whatever genius thought we should name this operation with the first two letters, the same name as Epstein. So they're calling it, you know, the Democrats are running on Epstein class versus the working class. Trump administration is the administration of the Epstein class by the Epstein class for the Epstein class. But what Bill Clinton just testified to, what Les Wexner just testified to, what Alan Dershowitz has previously stated, all three say the reason they trusted Epstein is because of one family. And that family is the Rostchow family. And the Rosteat family is the most commonly named group in the entire Epstein files. They've been busy, by the way,

while the distraction of Iran war is going on, deleting files from the DOJ on the Epstein files that they previously released. Now, a bunch of people already have them, so good luck with that. But one of the key ones is they were eliminating references to the Rothschild. So the Rothschild famously, you know, city of London, I mean, became sort of their base of power, and started out in Germany. Deyen had, you know, banks elsewhere. But the, and then, of course, you know, the famous letter to Lord Rothschild,

the Balfour Declaration to set up Israel and have British recognition of it while they had the Palestine mandate going all the way back to that point. Now, the Ross Childs are fading as a political influence, but it's a common denominator with the Epstein files is if you understood the Ross Child connection, it doesn't surprise you all the European royalty that were implicated, the various high-ranking like Lord Mandelson, the, his implications. Now, Starmor is being dragged into this. And I do have a question for Alexander on that is, I think if Starmor was smart, maybe the very one, maybe the one rare thing that could possibly save him from what looks like he's out in a month would be potentially taking an anti-war position in the anti-tony Blair position on this precise issue, even though he'd

be risking support for Ukraine in the process. But to give what one sec, Robert? Matthew's going to head out. Real quick, Matthew, thank you. Matthew, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I will have Matthew's information in the description box down below.

Matthew, let's get together soon. And definitely. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right.

All right. take care. Bye-bye. Sorry, Robert. Continue. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no problems. It was great to hear from the, you know, good Canadian, which there's too few of. But so, I mean, the, so there's clearly an Epstein-Files connection.

I mean, indeed, you look at Trump's, you know, in March, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, put out an approved report, said Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, has no plans to do something. Three months later, he's completely flipped on that altogether. And he's flipped on everything else. I mean, almost everything goes sideways. And you can time it directly to the Epstein file. What I also said at the time was, in fact, Dan Bongino got nuts and started attacking me online. I said the reason why that the Epstein file reversal is happening and the reason why they're shutting down the two assassination investigations into both what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania and what happened at Mar-Lago is they plan on justifying things for the covering up, the Massad and implications and the Rothschild implications and the Epstein files for Israel and that lobby group,

but also to be able to blame Iran for the assassination attempts, which is utterly absurd. And I talked about this way back when it happened. They had original plans to blame it on Iran until Trump survived. And then they sunk that. A month later, they blamed some Patty and they claimed he was trying to coordinate some Iranian conspiracy, which was all bunch of garbage. But the original plan was Trump gets murdered. They were placing him with Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo was telling Iowa delegates that he was going to be vice president. Just a week before the assassination attempt. And then they could say, you know, justify a war with Iran to vindicate the assassinated President Trump. That narrative fell apart when he survived. But the reason, as soon as they shut that down, they said, okay, they're planning on again blaming Iran. in part to get into Trump's head.

And you can see this, you know, Hegson is out there saying that Iran tried to, it's total garbage, total garbage. It's the American deep state that was implicated. It was Ukraine that was connected to the Mar-a-Lago assassin and a range of a deep-state operations to the person that was, I mean, he was out there doing target shooting with still to this day undisclosed federal government officials at a local place on a repeated basis.

There's even, you know, when they tracked his phone, meetings in D.C. that are unexplained why this kid was down there. The reason why they shut that down is to justify this to come up with a rationale to get into Trump's head. They know it's bogus. By the way, what they planned on doing was not the whole Israel

was going to go in, so he went in. They originally going to circulate a story that they had found that Iran had a dirty bomb and Iran was going to use a dirty bomb on some U.S. military base. And they got cold feet because people were like, that's such an obvious WM.

lie, but it's probably not going to sell well when it gets unravels in a month. So they dropped it at the last minute. But they didn't have any excuse because they can't come out and say, we're doing this for the Israel lobby. They can't overtly say that, even though Rubio kind of let it slip and then had to walk it back. Trump himself was like, no, I just, you know, wouldn't do it. And now you see Whitkoff spinning his lie, which destroys any, I mean, not that there was much credibility anyway. I mean, it appears to me that we timed the assassin. nation of the Ayatollah to be when they were meeting on negotiations again and I get the Ayatollah he was he wanted to be a martyr but I don't he wouldn't have had his daughter granddaughter there if he knew that was

going to be an attack this was another sabotage I mean it's hey I mean Clay Travis was bragging about this that moron that they used to replace Rush Limbaugh about how wonderful it is that we murder people in the middle negotiations I mean it's just it's a degree of delusional insanity that again people I know people have doubts about Vance. I know firsthand Vance was opposed to this conflict. So I have zero doubts about that. And I know because also, you know, Daniel Davis has reported, Colonel McGregor, other people who have their own sources. The only reason they didn't go in, Larry Johnson has reported this, that Gabbard and Vance were the only people consistently opposed to going in. They were the ones that forced Trump to ask the Pentagon, to ask Ratcliffe, can you guarantee this regime change

will magically occur with just one bomb? And that's why they had to back off. And there was more, the Washington Post reporting, his generals considered resigning. And I get people saying, you know, why don't they just resign? You're asking them to give up all political future by doing so. So I get it, but that's not the easiest thing to ask of someone.

And they believe they can still make a difference that they can inhibit the worst instincts, that they can find exit ramps. Tulsi Gabbard believes she can expose all the dirty secrets and family jewels of the deep state if she stays around, even if her advice on intelligence is ignored. So that's what their logic is. We'll see if it works out for them.

But the but the Rothschild connection can't be. I mean, it's really the Epstein war. And you're even seeing Iran media run with this. Professor Mumdani talk about this. This is the Epstein class versus Iran. This is the pedophile protector class. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, I know we discussed like six, eight, nine months ago.

A lot of people are like this Epstein thing is a nothing. People are using it as a description of the ongoing conflicts in the world. So, but do you think what if Starrmer decided to take a big anti-war position Could that salvage him in the UK? Probably not by now. I think he is such damaged goods that it would be difficult to do any, for Burstama to do anything that would pull things around.

But if he had any political nowse, that's exactly the line he would take. But of course he isn't, because he's not got that kind of political mind. He doesn't have that courage. He's also very frightened of antagonizing Trump because he's still very committed to Project Ukraine. He's been told by the people who put him where he is that he must keep the focus, the American focus on Ukraine. So he doesn't want to say too much that will annoy Trump.

So he says, well, we're not going to get involved. We don't really see the plan here. But on the other hand, what Iran is doing is very, very wrong. And, you know, if it falls and the regime collapses, well, that's a wonderful thing too. And he's trying and failing because this is Stama. He always fails in everything he ever does. It's difficult to convey again to people in the US what a profoundly incompetent politician here, Stama actually is. Anyway, he is failing because he's not managing to satisfy him.

anybody, the anti-war people are disgusted with him. The pro-war people are disgusted with him. The neocons here, we've got our own neocons, are disgusted with him. Nobody is pleased with Kirstama. So if he was, as I said, the clever, capable, intelligent political operator that you would like him to be, then, well, frankly, he would run things completely differently. But Kier-Starma cannot, he never will, that isn't at all what he is about. Now, just a few things I wanted to say. First of all, I absolutely think that the last worst thing J.D. Vance could do would be to walk out of this whole situation.

He needs to be there. He needs to be there in the room. As I said, I do get the sense that there is within Britain, within the very complicated political class that we have here in Britain, a. feeling that if and or perhaps when things do start to go very, very wrong indeed, we need someone like Vance in the administration to pull things together, to sort it all out, to try to deal with the president himself, if that's possible, and to basically find the off-ramp, not for Trump, but for the United States

and for the collective West and for Britain too, that we might very well need. I mean, it's very interesting to see how the British commentariat are treating Vance at the moment. There's always been, by the way, a certain current of opinion in Britain that has been impressed by Vance. And I don't know whether I mentioned this,

I might have done in a previous program we did. But when he came to London to Britain last year for his holiday, and he met all sorts of people here, everybody came away very, very impressed. So, you know, I'm not saying, I don't know Vance. He's not somebody that, you know, I'm supporting. I just say what I know, I believe the mood and the feeling about him in London is. So that's one thing I would say.

Now, a few other things. Very quick detail. People mentioned Lord Balfour and the Balfour Declaration. Balfour is one of the sinister figures in modern British history, just to say. He was prime minister for a time. He was one of these individuals who is always there behind the scenes, whether he was prime minister or not, whether he was in government or not. He was always in power.

when he made that declaration, he was foreign secretary. He was absolutely the key figure at that time in what you would be justified in calling the British deep state. He was died in the wool imperialist and he strongly disliked the Jewish people. Just to say, a fact, very few people know, but he never. made any secret of these his feelings about them in lots of internal correspondence in all sorts of statements that he said that he wrote and one of one of the things that he said was if we could create this homeland in the middle east well maybe we'll be able to get them all to leave britain and we won't have them here anymore so that's the kind of person that we're talking about that was an

incredibly manipulative operation that he carried out. He was no friend of the Jewish people then or now, and I've heard that there are streets in Jerusalem named after him. I just really do wonder why, because he certainly doesn't deserve it. That's something else. Now, there's something I want to ask, which is about the situation with energy prices and inflation, because the big weapon that the Iranians have is that they've closed the Straits of Hormuz. And we see this big pile up of oil tankers in Britain. And I think this is part of the reason people are so nervous here. We are particularly exposed.

We already have the highest energy costs in the Western world. We do, by the way. We absolutely do. what is the situation about this in the United States? Are we going to see rising energy costs in the United States? If this continues, what will the political effect of that being? Usually when there's been, I mean, there's two major problems. By the way, Trump had convinced himself,

just like he'd convinced himself that they wouldn't attack our bases in the Gulf, which is just insanity to me, but that gives you an idea of the delusional disconnect with Trump. he'd also convinced himself the Straits of Hormuz would not be closed. Last time, when they went into Iran, those of us who had given advice through Vice President Vance said, look, the straits of they will seek to close the Straits of Hormuz. Once he saw that was happening, remember Trump tends to confess himself what he's concerned about by his truth posting. He has almost no self-control. Remember he was like drill baby drill, drill, drill baby drill?

You know, he's panicking and that's when the ceasefire soon happened. And now his reaction to the Straits of Ramos being closed is to pretend to, he has almost. It just can't happen. But we'll insure them. We'll send the U.S. Navy in again right away. The U.S. Navy said, no, we're not doing that. So that gives you an idea of the disconnect. He's calling in Raytheon saying, hey, can we magically start building all these weapons right away?

The supply change just ain't there. And that doesn't even get into China, potentially cutting off rare earths again. We already have a problem with that from their prior cutting off of rare earths. We got weapons and other things that should have rare earths of them that do not, that are creating potential risk for us. But you can expect in the U.S. mass propaganda on all of this. They'll be fake polls from CBS.

Now the same group of people, the Ellisons who are huge Israel firsters are buying CNN. Because they removed Gail Slater from the antitrust division, so that that will, that'll be a big scandal down the road because of how that went down. But the, so you'll see a lot of fake news. You'll see only positive stuff. We'll be back to like Iraq War II and Iraq War I, where the media will just talk about the U.S. winning and will downpill. play everything. Like those, like they said, the Abraham Lincoln wasn't hit at all. The carrier wasn't

hit at all by Iran. Well, then why is it moving backwards? If it was comfortable and they couldn't reach us at all, why is it moving back? Those three U.S. I think it was that 15th that went down on the Kuwait, Iran border? We had three friendly fire incidents back to back to back? Or was that Iran weapons being effective? We'll deny everything. Apparently we've been hitting. Apparently they painted. Iran had painted things that look like missile launches from the sky. And so we're like, look it out. Wow, we hit another painting. Wow, we hit another one.

They'll pretend it's otherwise. The fact that we're even publicizing, taking out that Iranian tanker or Iranian frigate off of the Indian border gives you an idea that if we had all these huge successes, we would be broadcasting them. And instead we're not. But you'll just see a massively propagandized perspective. They'll try to do the same on gas and oil. The problem is, at some point, it reaches the pump.

And the, I mean, already I think Dewberg said, if we didn't have this conflict, prices would be a $55 a barrel. We're already, I think, at 77 and climbing. And then that doesn't even get into the natural gas problem. Cutter is shutting it down. I mean, the biggest impact on the natural gas will be Europe, but ultimately that radiates out. So typically you get a price hike. But sometimes what happens with the price hike is it doesn't necessarily translate to lots of inflation. It will at the pump.

It translates into deep recession because industries can't afford. to be able to sell their goods at that high cost of energy. That's why we've kind of seen in Germany. The de-industrialization of Germany is their response hasn't always been price hikes. It's been we can't afford to build. We can't afford to make. And I think that's as co-equal a risk with an economy that's already fragile from a working class perspective we're in recession.

The AI, you know, equity boom has kept the GDP. Some estimates say almost all the gain in GDP has been AI. Some say half. Some say a third. However it is, You've been able to, they've been able to keep that up, but it hasn't translated to ordinary voters. Ordinary voters are as negative about the economy as they've been since the global financial crisis of 2008, 2009, in terms of working class people, what they can afford. And Trump made such a big deal about, hey, gas prices are under $2, everybody.

This is how amazing I am. It's already starting to spike in the United States. If it keeps spiking, it's something everybody sees because they see it every time they go to the gas pump because we're very much a car-driven country, more so probably than Europe and some other places, which is a whole other. conspiracy theory for another day can watch who framed roger rabbit for a little bit of that the uh but if you did you know so i think it either triggers recession or it triggers price spikes that they can't ignore like and by the way you can expect tons of fake stories about how rann's about to fold or rann's about to capitulate or ran begging for a ceasefire they did that today to try to keep the markets call it's the reason why trump loves to do weekend wars he loves to do weekend wars because he thinks well

we'll have it all wrapped up before the markets open on monday and the markets have been on up and down around the world, but they usually get a boost because Trump will leak. Oh, Iran's about to cut a deal. Rand's about to see. They'll do this as often as they can until somebody finally figures out that when Iran says they're not negotiating, it means they're not negotiating. The, I mean, they can't at this point. It's an existential battle for. So that's, so I think all of this is, and for ordinary voters when they start, I mean, well, the big problem will be U.S. casualties. And we'll lie about that for as long as we can. The, you know, Daniel Davis has good sources. because Colonel McGregor has good sources.

So, you know, follow them for independent information on this. From what I've heard, the number of casualties are already much higher than it's being reported. I think we've only admitted six. My understanding is in the hundreds. And so Iran's claiming 500. Probably it's closer like 100, something like that. But that's what I've heard. But follow Daniel Davis and Colonel McGregor for that.

They have sources directly in the military. But we'll lie about that as long as we can. We'll lie about all of it as long as we can. in order to try to run cover. The question is in a world of independent information. This is the first sort of U.S. involved major war when the internet is fully available and accessible to people globally. So how much can the mainstream media and the institutional media keep Americans in the dark?

The other factor is Americans are so accustomed to being lied to about conflicts, about what's going on in those conflicts and why we got into those conflicts, that there is a deep, built-in skepticism. So they will look to independent information. information even more. And what we'll do is it further undermine Trump's credibility. I mean, Whitcloth's credibility is gone. I don't know why you could even use them anymore with any negotiations anywhere. I don't know why anybody would trust us at this point, unfortunately. I mean, I get the Russians may see this as cover for other reasons, so they don't really care that it's all fake. But there's no

legitimate reason right now to trust the Trump administration and negotiation. But I think on the oil and the gas, I think it will be, I think the price is only going to keep going up because I don't see Iran quitting. I don't see Iran And I don't see us being able to free up. I mean, they're already closing up. There's going to be derivative effects. Like I think it was a major aluminum factory that they got shut down and said it will take them a year to get back up because of the energy issues. So I mean, they also there were alternative pipelines that are being in Iran is hitting some of those at key point at key points at key ports. They clearly had a very detailed sophisticated plan. Which by the way, Trump just ignored people were he was told this and he's like, no, I'm going to pretend that doesn't exist. I always call it momentum. memory after the movie Memento. Not to give away the ending if anybody hasn't seen it. But the character Memento basically loses his memory every night. So he writes fake things to himself so that when he wakes up the next day, he can believe something that's totally fake as legit and true. And so it's this capacity of the human mind to suppress any dissonant information. Trump, that's what I mean by his keen learish mindset, the degree of madness infecting him, not just hubris. He is locking out

any bad news and believing any good news. And he'll try to do that, propagandize that to the country as well. I just don't think it will hold for very long because the country's not in a position to take it. And then as they see Iran not fold, Iran not capitulate, Iran not quit, Iran continued to have success in its counterattacks. I mean, and these other plans are just terrible where we're going to get back into bed with ISIS.

We unleashed the Kurds. How are the Turks going to handle that? We're talking about bringing in the caucuses. I mean, that's a good way to just end our, you know, that whole thing. We've made a big deal. We got Azerbaijan, Armenian, and now they're going to be in our pocket because of that deal and all that jazz. What happens to, I mean, he always gets the country wrong. God bless Trump, just like the dumb row doctrine, which is what we're motivated by. I saw, you know, there's some people that I all get attacks as you're somehow anti-patriotic

if you oppose a dumb American war. Just to remind people out there, the founders, as John Quincy Adams, my cousin many years ago said, we do not go abroad, searching for monsters to destroy. That's American patriotism. American patriotism is not a betrayal of the principles of our founders, just FYI. But I think it's we're looking for a shit show on steroids. And I don't think it's going to get any better. The question, you know, what do you think it could spread to the caucuses? How do the Gulf states react if, you know, Bahrain is already a rebellion? They're sending Saudis are sending in their military forces. What if that fails? There's a substantial Shia minority in Saudi Arabia. There's a Shia-lined groups in, you know, Nigeria. There's

people all around the world that have Shiah ties. How much could this continue to extend, expand, and get radioactive? Not nuclear, I hope, thank God. But how much could this just spread in terms of a real regional conflict that brings in the caucuses and other parts of the world? It's the possibilities of this are very great. I mean, I don't know what is more dangerous, the success of this operation or with failure.

I mean, if it fails and you're left still with the government in Iran that is in control of the country, well, you can at least move on from that. You can, perhaps at a future time, find somebody there that you can talk with and you can do a deal with them. I mean, that's a theoretical possibility. But if this succeeds, if there is a systemic crisis in Iran, if the country breaks down, if it starts, to be subdivided into various parts, then of course you have chaos. And I don't see the chaos is good for anymore.

It's not good for the Central Asian states. It's not good for the Caucasus. It's not good for Azerbaijan. It's not good for Turkey. It's not good for the BRIC states. It's not good for the Gulf states. It's not good for anybody. And the point I think you made earlier about a mass movement of people

towards Europe, you know, huge renewed refugee flows. Absolutely. So as I said, I don't know which of the two outcomes. I fear more. The one outcome that I think is extremely unlikely is that we'll have some kind of regime change in Iran, which will bring to power in Iran, a government that is friendly to us and which is able to keep the country stable. Again, I don't think people who understand the region and the country and the history of the country well really can believe that that will happen. If it does happen, if by any possible chance it were to happen, it would be therefore only, I think, a relatively short time. So that's, that's, as I said, I think a point I want to make. Now, as for the bigger, more long-run implications of this and what particular,

who's particularly to blame for this affair and whether there's a way of getting out of it or how the war is going, I get to say something. There is so much disinformation from every conceivable side that it's very difficult to know exactly what is happening. One thing I do know, Tehran has been very badly bombed. I mean, the destruction in Tehran is appalling. That's all over the British media yesterday. It was terrible.

The other thing I know is that the Straits of Hormuz is closed. Now, neither of these things promise good outcomes. I wasn't aware that the US Navy had said that they are not prepared to provide escorts. duty for ships. It doesn't surprise me at all. But that appears to leave open the possibility of an indefinite closure of the Straits of Cornwall Moose, in which case we are going to have a deep economic crisis in Europe. Also Qatar, Alexander, for the gas. They announced said that it's going to take, even if they started it today, it would take two weeks for the gas to get back online, which means that Europe is screwed.

Exactly. Absolutely. Now, the other thing, one very quick, further point I wanted to make, is that about the breakup of Iran, which is, nobody should say that this is impossible. If you know the history, one country consistently opposed that. Which country was that? It was the United States. The United States, in fact, when, I mean, they worked very hard in the 1940s to preserve Iran because they're thinking perfectly well that the disintegration of Iran, a huge country, would cause enormous problems throughout Central Asia and the Middle East.

Who wanted to break up Iran in the 1940s? Joseph Stalin. He actually tried to chop up Iran to take various bits of it to united into the Soviet Union at that time, which had been a disaster, by the way, and it wouldn't have worked well. And the US told him, look, you've got to stop.

If this cannot continue, He had his troops actually inside northern Iran at that time. And it was the United States that told him you got to get them out. And he, indeed, in fact, he pulled them out. At that time, the US had the nuclear monopoly. And he did not. So for the United States today, foment the breakup of Iran is a complete reversal

of its historic foreign policy towards Iran and would be, I think, a disastrous mistake as the far more competent leaders that the United States had in those days. People like George Marshall and others understood perfectly well. Robert, Alexander, could I ask both of you guys a quick question? What did you make of Heggseth's press conference and Keynes Press Conference today? They put a very optimistic positive spin on things. Hegeseth said that in a week. They'll have air, the airspace secured.

And they started to talk about Iran's usage of missiles that over the past couple of days, Iran is firing less missiles and less drones. And this shows that their military is fading. I just wanted to get your opinion because it was a very optimistic and positive spin to how the war is unfolding. So Robert Alexander, I was watching and I was thinking, you know, the live stream i'm going to ask them what they thought of of hexseth and k well hegseth is by his own confession you can watch the sean ryan uh interview he did uh back right after the election as a recovering

neocon and now you know instead of a duran cup he's got a little CIA cup and he's drinking that neocon liquor again uh his job will be to go out and BS everybody on it on a daily basis it'll be worse than rumsfeld you know the uh remember who's predicting he said all kinds of things are happening it weren't happening. And that's why, and the Blitz Creek will come at every level. Now that they got the Ellison's in charge of CBS and they're about to get in charge of CNN, you're going to see propaganda on steroids of people that, you know, some Americans haven't, don't recall this degree of it, this intensity of it, unless you're around for Iraq War I,

especially. But remember, mission accomplished, Iraq War II, George W. Bush on that ship, you're going to to see a bombardment of propaganda saying it's going great. Now, at the same time, he said, it's going so great that now maybe it'll take eight weeks. And it's going so great that a range of other things that, you know, that we're supposed to have air dominance. When we're supposed to have it like three days ago? Now I'm saying, well, maybe a few more days. Maybe a few more days.

It's kind of like COVID, 15 days to stop the spread, to flatten the curve. It's going to be 15 days, that 30 days, and 45 days, that 60 days, at 75 days, that 90 days. and unfortunately Trump and nobody else on that side of the aisle is taking the JD Vance exit ramp. Just say it was all about nukes. Get the heck out. Just say it's all about nukes. Hey, we destroyed it.

We destroyed the nukes they never had. But just pretend they did. Let's move on. That's why Vance is out there spinning that. Notice he stayed consistent. He's never said ballistic all the rest. Rubio other people have. Vance is not.

That's what he's trying to do is to force into that. But nobody else is on board. And so you can expect them to just lie profligately and profusely. and profusely about what's going on militarily. You're going to have, there's places on X, there's you guys, there's Daniel Davis, there's Colonel McGregor. I mean, for people suggesting it's anti-patriotic, these people actually serve in Davis and McGregor.

So they're going to provide independent insight information. It's far, we will keep pretending we're winning Baghdad Bob style as long as we can. The question is how much, how can you sustain that when it's going on and on and on? on and on, when Democrats start to realize and vulnerable Republicans start to realize that that vote may pass tomorrow in the House. I know two other congressmen, Thomas Massey, if Democrats hold and Thomas Massey joins, they only need, I think, two more. And I already know two people that are inclined to vote against the authorization. So they're nervous because of the political pressure being brought upon them. But over time, that any war sentiment's going to grow and grow and grow as the

lies keep, I mean, it's such a mistake to just go out and lie and lie and lie and lie with an active war that the world can see we're lying about. I mean, we've pretended that our radars didn't get hit. They did. Because, you know, even the New York Times is starting to confirm these things. Other sources are starting to confirm these things because in the modern internet age, it is very hard to suppress information. But just remember, there's a Trump administration that just six months ago believe Russia was losing 30,000 soldiers a month and Ukraine was losing next And that's the level of delusional nonsense they're capable of. And my biggest concern is that Trump is convincing of himself even more and more

that anything good stays, anything bad disappears, even if the good is a lot. I'm afraid I agree with all of this. My memory, unfortunately, extends all the way back to Vietnam. I can remember the optimistic things which people were saying that the losses on the other side are enormous, that we're making all sorts of gains, that everything is coming together well. And of course it wasn't true. And if we talk about Ukraine,

which is the most recent war, remember the success of the 2022 offensives in the way the Russians were on the last legs and the Russian economy turning into the ruble, turning into rubble. I mean, there's just been too many, too much of this. The Iranians are still conducting strikes.

I suspect, and I think this is my own guess, and it's probably, just take this as a guess. But I think on the very first two days, they hit with all they had because they needed to. And it was psychologically important. The Supreme Leader had been killed. There'd been the shock of an attack upon their own country. They needed to stabilize morale.

They needed to show to their own people that they could hit back and that they could hit hard. And they did that. And now they need to outlast the U.S. It's now a case of inventories. We don't know who's got the bigger inventory or the bigger productive capacity. Probably the Iranians can go on making drones. but maybe they don't have that many missiles. So they're husbanding their missiles

because they understand that it's a long haul and it's a big endurance test. The key thing that they're doing at the moment is that they've closed the Straits of Hormuz. And that's what's going to put the pressure. It's going to put the pressure on the Gulf states. It's going to put the pressure.

on the Europeans, it's going to definitely create severe problems in places like Japan as well, which are very heavily dependent on oil from the Middle East. And as I said, the Iranians know that it's long. At least they need to make it long. I don't think the problem of the Iranians reducing firings of drones and missiles is so important. What is more important is the fact that they cannot defend their capital. That is absolutely clear. The bombing of Tehran has been exceptional. And their own ability to control their own borders.

I think the rumors that Kurdish militias might be crossing the border from Iran, Iraq rather, I think that's is something that is going to concern them very, very much more. So keep focused on what probably really matters. But that's my own guess assessment of the situation at the present time. What do you guys think Turkey will do? I mean, Erdogan loves to play all sides of the equation. But in case he had any illusions, after the breakup of Syria, like said, Bibi was lobbying to go after Turkey next. You could see a potential angle where if you get the Kurds involved, they turn around and go back the other way towards Turkey.

How does Erdogan play this? He is an opportunist to his fingertips. I mean, he's even at this moment in time, he's saying to himself, how am I going to gain, take advantage of this affair? So on the one hand, he looks at Iran and he says, look, there's nice juicy morsels in Iran I might actually want to help myself to. northern Iran, Azerbaijan, it's Turkish speaking, just as Azerbaijan, the country of Azerbaijan. I mean, they speak a language so close to Turkish that they can understand each other perfectly well.

Azerbaijan, Iranian Azerbaijan is Shia. Harmené himself, by the way, had an Azerbaijani, Abba-Azerbaijani and Turkish father. So does Peshkin, who's the president. They've been fairly well-integrated societies. But just possibly Erdogan himself, Aliyev, his friend, across the border in Azerbaijan, they may be saying to themselves,

this is our chance, this is our opportunity. Maybe we can grab a bit here, we can grab a bit there, we can try and establish influence in Iran or something of that kind. He won't be happy if the Kurds go into Iran take control of the Kurdish areas there, start to set up some kind of a state there.

Now, that will be on a much bigger scale, by the way, than the Kurdish presence in Syria, because we are talking about a much bigger block of territory and one which is contiguous with the Kurdish regions in Iraq itself. So that will start to look to him like something coming dangerously close to an independent Kurdistan and Erdogan, like any Turkish leader, won't want that. And of course, he's also got to think to himself that, yes, there are these

people in Israel and in the United States who don't like me and would like to see me go. And if Israeli influence increases in the Middle East, well, they might come after me as well. So he's going to be balancing all of this out. He's going to be saying to himself, look, on the one hand, I want to stay in with Trump. I might be able to get nice bits of Iran, you know, juicy bits of Iran that are attractive to me. I want to establish myself as the great emperor of Central Asia. But he's also going to worry. And he does think in this way of the risks as well.

and he's going to be very clever as he always is, balancing and playing the risks and playing one side off each other. Look what he did with the missile today, the Iranian missile. Iranian missile launched, shot down over Turkey. Oh, no, no, no, it was not intended to strike Turkey. It wasn't going to hit Hidden Cheerleck. It was heading to Cyprus. That was what it was actually doing. So obviously, it's not directed at Turkey or really.

at me. I haven't got to respond to it. But at the same time, you Iran must never do this thing. Your missiles go across Turkey. We will of course shoot them down. So this is this is one, as I said, playing this game. He's a master at it. Alex, you know him even closer. He's very close to you. Is there anything there you want to wear? I would just add that I think the last couple of months, the reports that Turkey is next. I think those were warnings to Erdogan. Don't get involved

with the Kurds as we recruit them and train them. You know, into Iran. That's my sense of it. I think they were telling Erdogan, keep your distance. Yes. Because the last thing that Turkey wants to see are armed Kurds, possibly taking a chunk of Iran. That would be existential for

for Turkey. How would they respond? Let's say that starts to actually happen. Will they, I mean, they have a very big army? Will he actually use it? Will he actually align with Iran? I think with the Kurdish issue, yes, he will use it. I do believe that.

But on the flip side, Robert, don't forget that Turkey, Israel, and the United States, they work together to carve up Syria. Yeah. So as Alexander says, you know, Erdogan always plays both sides. Yes. And he always comes out of it. Yes, he's always managed to come out on top all the time. One of the quick, quick thing to say about the Kurds, the interesting thing about the Kurds is that the Kurds in Turkey have all kinds of problems with Turkey.

The Kurds in Iran have been fairly well integrated into Iranian society. Kurdish and Kurdish is an Iranian language. It's not the same as farcee. The two languages are not interchangeable. But there's not the one Middle Eastern country that has never had special problems with the Kurds up to now has been Iran. And I'm not convinced that these Kurdish militias,

if they go into Iran, will be very welcome from the Kurdish populations there. At least that's what I've heard. But, you know, that doesn't mean that it won't be attempted. It doesn't mean that it won't put enormous pressure on the Iranian government in Tehran. And, you know, this is a dynamic situation.

There's lots of things in play. We'll just have to see how it succeeds, or not succeeds, as the case would be. Kurdish perspective, I mean, we use them in a, and then dumped them in Iraq. We used them and then dumped them just recently in Syria. If you were part of that Kurdish group, whether in Iraq, Turkey, or Iran,

would you take up the US again on what is likely going to be a suicidal mission? Well, you know the extraordinary thing about the curse? He says, one says this about them all the time. I mean, they have been repeatedly led up the garden path by the United States. the United States can repeatedly dump them at the right moment,

and yet they still seem to fall for this. Now, I'm going to be absolutely brutally cynical here. I suspect an awful lot of money gets passed under the table. I'm sure, I mean, remember, this is the Middle East, so I'm sure an awful lot of this is going on. I mean, people like Barzani in Iraq or all of these other people, they're probably already on the CIA payroll to some extent. Doesn't mean that they're not independent actors and they don't have their own agency,

but they play the game with the Americans. The Americans play the game with them and they do this sort of thing. So yes, I suspect that in the end, that's exactly how it is going to turn out. But for the moment, the Americans do seem to be trying to do something with the Kurdish militias. And I do suspect that this is something that the Iranian leadership is generally worried about how it will play out for the Kurds in the end. Who knows? But some people amongst them will come out very well from it. I see that Iranian Kedar has been saying a few things.

So it would be quite interesting to see what he has to say perhaps. call here you, Alex. Let me look for for some of those questions. Actually, there's a bunch of questions for Robert and for you. Charlie Kirk question. Yeah, there was a Charlie Kirk comment.

Yes. One second. The last promise that president, there it is. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, no problem. The last promise that President Trump made to Charlie Kirkwellers alive is that he would not do a regime change war in Iran. And I personally, I know playing Trump supporters that will pardon him for this, I personally will not.

It's one thing to break all your promises to voters who stuck with you for a decade. Many of them took personal and professional sacrifices to it. That's morally offensive enough. There's the horrors of the war itself. But to betray your promise to a guy who was just assassinated, you know, that's just something at least me. I personally can't ever pardon. Yeah. Sparky says what what opportunities might arise for Erdogan in Syria, as Israel is continually pummel it, pummeled by Iran. He has a significant army. And they're going into Lebanon and all the rest.

It's, yeah, so what do you think? And what do you think about unleashing ISIS? I mean, the whole bunch of them were released. It appears they're part of all of this. I mean, what, and what happened in Iraq? Will the Shia militias start to be active? What's your take on that? Well, it's very likely. I mean, all of these things. and there's Hezbollah in Lebanon and there's fighting with them, and all of this is going on as well. Now, I'm going to say straight away,

I think the one group who will be the least, most unpopular in Iran will be ISIS. I mean, ISIS is a, well, I mean, it's not just Sunni. I mean, it is a Takfiri, Sunni movement that regards Shia as heretics who should be killed, basically. I cannot imagine that they'll be welcomed in Iran. If they start to appear there, you were likely to see a significant consolidation of Iranian society. But having said that, I mean, this isn't the point of this. I mean, nobody, I think, expects ISIS or indeed the

Kurds to march all the way to Tehran. But what they can do is that they can increase the pressure, the pressure points on the Iranian political system, and that can trigger a crisis there. And that is something which we have to acknowledge the CIA, the U.S. intelligence agencies, are very good. Robert, do you actually believe that Trump genuinely believes that Iran tried to assassinate him? He didn't initially, but he's out there publicly saying it. Hegsith is now saying it. When they shut down the whole Butler investigation, I suspected that was the ultimate going to be the ultimate explanation to him.

And so the question is, has he convinced of himself of this retroactively? I mean, he previously knew it was garbage. But when you start getting in this delusional mindset where you just look for things to justify and rational, I mean, as you pointed out, Alexander, I mean, he has rashes all the time now. And he can't hide him. That was a huge rash on his neck. That is, as you pointed out, stress. This is a guy who's falling apart internally by people I've talked to at the White House.

So he kind of knows that this is not who he's supposed to be, not what he's supposed to be doing. But when you're in that kind of madness, he turned to justify all kinds of things. And he was up there saying, I told him tried to get me twice. What? You're now thinking that the Mar-a-Lago? I mean, that guy was connected to Ukraine and the deep state. I mean, come on. But I think he's convinced he increasingly convinces himself of things that are just patently insane

Like I mean think about you didn't think they were gonna ran what hit the Gulf states He thought we could put the Navy into the Straits of Hormuz and we could just ensure all the tankers anyway and everything would be fine He thinks that we have unlimited interceptors that we can just get them in anywhere and we can fight a forever war in his own words He convinced himself that the that they really were somehow a nuclear weapons program in Iran. I mean, it's just one after the other, after the other, after the other, that he convinced himself of things that just don't make any sense. And that's where his mindset is.

He's convincing himself. Whatever delusional thing justifies his action, he's believing him. What about Spain, Robert and Alexander? What about Trump? Oh, you mean the patently illegal Trump? He just got struck down his tariffs by the Supreme Court, as we predicted backaways, once he went haywall from an industrial policy. And now he says, I'm just going to shut down all.

trade from Spain. There's no legality for that. So he has to show an actual tie to an economic issue. There isn't one because this is Trump back to doing the old thing. It'll be another one of those big statements that won't be backed up. We can't shut down. There's no legal constitutional basis to do it. Put it that way. What was incredible about that was that Maltz, the German Chancellor, gained every impression. I practically said that I support this. I support what Trump is going to do. Now, bear in mind that trade issues are supposed to be decided by the EU as a whole. And Spain is an EU country, as of course is Germany.

And so you have Mertz appearing gleefully to support tariffs, whatever you want, against an EU country, one of the big EU countries. I mean, for people in Germany, if they really want to see what kind of a leader they have, that for me was the most grotesque incident of all. What do you guys think? Let's say this plays out 30 to 60 days. What do you guys think Europe does? I mean, if they're getting hammered, hammered, hammered.

Do its leaders do nothing? Do its people do nothing? What do you? Is there a chance? They reverse force. Sanction Russia. And if it goes wrong in any way, blame Putin. That's what they're going to do.

We laugh, but they just might actually do it, to be quite honest. They might actually do it. I don't know, Alexander, did you say that you read the, J.P. Morgan, wasn't it? That said 25 days, that's all Europe has when it comes to energy. Yes, yes. Exactly. If they don't get this resolved in 25 days, it lights out. Exactly.

Yeah, wow. What about this question? What if Iran falls? Would it Russia and China regret their no intervention policy? What will the world look like in 2029? I mean, what if Iran falls, Robert, Alexander? What if? Well, again, I think the first thing I was to say about this is that people talk about China, Russia,

having a non-interventionist policy. To repeat again, for China and Russia to intervene, they must get a request for assistance from Iran. From everything that we have learned, from everything I've learned, the Russians and the Chinese repeatedly offered assistance to Iran for many years, and Iran wasn't taking it.

Now, I've expressed my own bafflement about this. I understand some of the reasons. I've discussed the very difficult relationship between Iran and Russia. I talked about the events of the 1940s just now, but it still seemed to me a strange line for the Iranians to be taking at this point. And I'm going to say,

I mean, now that he's, dead, I think that Hamé was probably getting very out of touch and I think he was very dogmatic on many things and I think he was probably dogmatic on this one. Now if Iran falls, it is a major blow for the bricks, no doubt about it, but it is not an existential blow. China and Russia have their partnership and it will continue. I mean, I think it's much more likely that I think it's only about a 10% chance that they fall from, you know, even if they keep taking out different leaders that it'll be some form of Islamic Republic is still more likely to emerge out of it. But let's say that 10% and I think by the way, Mearsheimer's right, they will then now that we took out the guy who had the fatwa against nuclear weapons. They will now develop nuclear weapons. They have been educated that you have to have that in order to actually have deterrence. But let's say the 10% chance it collapses, you've got Libya, Syria, and Iraq on steroids. And how has that worked out for the world? Not only in terms of refugee migration flows, not only in terms of explosion of terrorism.

Now you've got the entire Shia Muslim world that has motivation, ideological and personal and religious motivation against the United States of America. I think it could, as you pointed out earlier, Alexander, it could be the worst possible outcome for the United States for the Iranian government to fall. I'm just going to add something else, which is, let's say, everything that the United States wants to happen, happens, or you say the United States, correction. Hague says, Mike Wals, that crowd of people happens. And, you know, you get to say someone like Pahlavi turning up in Tehran as the new leader of Iran. I predict that within six months he'll be in Moscow doing deals. That is the way the Middle East works. Look what happened with Jalan, looks what's happened with the various groups in Libya. Both of them are now maneuvering to try to get Moscow's help. So the Russians will come through this, but make no mistake that is not in any way to deny that a collapse in Iran would be a major headache for them,

and it would be a big blow for the Greeks. Robert, has Vance ruined his political career with all of this? Or has Trump ruined it for him? This whole thing. This whole thing has it affected Vance told him forward? He knows that the probabilities of winning in 2028. I mean, I put out the Democrats about 95% chance of winning the House. Likely margin is 20 seats or more. 85% chance of winning the Senate. Likely margin is four seats or more. And 75% chance of winning the White House, though I don't think it will be Newsom, though I'll give him credit for finally realizing being anti-war and being skeptical of Israel is a huge winning issue. And he flipped, if Newsom's anything, he'll just, he's a win vain politically.

But I still doubt that he'll be the nominee. I think somebody else will emerge. Maybe this Tala Rico just won the Senate Democratic primary in Texas, popular on Joe Rogan. And John Ossoff is basically campaigning on this platform of the Epstein class versus the working class that is going to resonate in the U.S. We even tested it at 1776 Law Center, a nationwide survey. The Democratic populist message of Epstein class versus the working class in all the ways that

translates massively popular. Majority of Republicans supported it. That gives you an idea. So I think Vance knows that right now, if this war continues, if we don't get an exit within two weeks and some face-saving cover story for the whole thing, then Vance knows he really can't run in 2028. Let narco Marco run, let him get wiped out and maybe go back to be run for governor, try to do it Nixon, you know, like Nixon's in 68, build a populist platform and do it. The only people that I think the last prominent person to resign in protest of war was

often misunderstood, great populace, the great lion of the West, as he was once called, I will not be nailed to this cross of gold, William Jennings Bryant. He was Secretary of State. And as soon as Wilson brought us into World War I, he resigned in protest. He was the last noble leader that I know of to do that. But I agree with you, Al. If you realize, okay, I'm politically damaged no matter what here, why don't I stay in the administration and get as much good as I possibly can get done?

I think that's what Tulsi Gabbard is thinking. I think that's what Jamie Vance is thinking. Absolutely. And he's a young man. He's got plenty of time. maybe the best thing for him to do is not to stand in 2028 do exactly what he said seek a governorship somewhere and prepare himself for the next for the next turn of the of the wheel because the will will turn and it might turn in his favor and if it becomes known that he was opposed to the

war and that his good advice was not listened to well he can build on that as well You mentioned Elbridge Colby. The other people that oppose the war, you know, within the administration were obviously Tulsi Gabbard and J.D. Vance. But the other ones were Colby and Kent at the director of national intelligence. I mean, Colby from Pentagon and then Kent also director of national intelligence. It felt bad for Colby. How does this war comport with your national security strategy when the national security strategy said you're not going to be doing regime change wars in the Middle East? And he was like, uh, well, all.

I feel bad for that guy. I agree, actually. Yeah. By the way, just quickly on the subject of William Jennings, Brian, please nobody base their ideas of him upon that film, which is completely wrong, just to say. Absolutely. That happened right up the road from me in Dayton, Tennessee.

It's about 30 minutes up the road. There's a college named after him, Brian College. He originally had no problem with Darwinism. It was when Darwinism became social Darwinism. the United States that he flipped he was like hold on a second you're using this for a eugenics doctrine now I'm I'm against it he was that he won that trial from a public perspective uh no granted that was the audience there but I'll never forget he goes I'm not worried about the age of rock I'm worried about the rock of ages you know he was a brilliant rhetorityishicic

if if Iran is so desperate to get a nuke why don't they go with missionable material in the if they wanted to nuke they would have had one 20 years ago people went about it the it's It was only the man we murdered. It was the man holding them back. And I don't think they'll be held back. I think they'll have it within 18 months to two years if this regime holds. Yes. What about this question about international law?

If what Trump is doing, not even constitutional, let alone, not legal following international law, can't the U.S. military refuse his orders? They can refuse any illegal order. Yes, they can. They have that legal authority. it's tricky to do it when it's a political right it's one thing to say i want you to murder these kids that's clearly illegal that's a violation of everything um it's another thing to refuse to obey a war instruction that's you know if you're in the military that'd be a good

question uh for daniel davis and colonel mcgris at what point do you as a military officer uh have to refuse uh a instruction from an elected leader I mean, soldiers are people who would find it very, very difficult to refuse an order from the commander-in-chief. I mean, that's mutiny, and mutiny is not something that certainly American soldiers want to do. There apparently are, according to the Washington Post, multiple generals thinking about resigning in protest. No. Robert from Brian on Rumble. Barnes, many calling World War III.

So isn't today more like World War II, Civil War American Revolution than Vietnam? You know, I mean, I think this will stay a regional war. At least hopes, Hobo doesn't explain it to World War III. There's a risk of it because, you know, by what Tucker Carlson was saying, that, you know, Beebe has suggested the possibility of using nuclear weapons. If the U.S. didn't get involved, I hope that's not true. I hope there's no possibility of that. The my recollections that Pakistan said if Israel uses it, Pakistan will use their nuclear weapons against Israel.

So, I mean, that's a whole other nightmare scenario. So I hope it doesn't become World War III. I think it's more likely to become a regional war that gets out of control unless the U.S. just claims to win and go home. But I don't think we'll actually win with the real objective, as you gentlemen have pointed out now for the better part of a year. This is a regime-change war. All the other excuses are bogus. Vance is trying to give an excuse that's different so that we don't have to get regime change

to declare victory. But that's what the Trump administration in Israel is up to. They want regime change. Now what Israel wants is chaos. They want no regional rival. I don't think they'll achieve that through this conflict. But you see even Trump's starting to walk it back in part like, well, maybe we can just do a pretend Venezuela,

pretend the new leaders. Problem is this isn't Venezuela. Iran is not Venezuela. I mean, this is a religious-led movement. that says deeply, and especially the Shia culture and religious tradition, built on sacrifice and standing up for the underdog and martyrdom is something that's part of their religious tradition, they're not going to just go gently into the good night. They're not a small Latin American country that can easily be bought off at key levels.

That's not Iran. I think, by the way, they convinced Trump it was. They convinced him a whole bunch. I mean, you even give you an idea of Trump's delusion. He was out there publicly stating he thought the same people he accused of murdering, 30,000 protesters for which there's very little empirical evidence. But he said, they were just going to go out, lay down their guns, and give it to the people. I mean, this is the level of nuts that's happening, unfortunately.

Robert Alexander, what's going on with the tankers from Nicos? The French, they helped sink, they helped Ukraine sink a tanker. So we still have this tanker issues. Not only do we have the straight of four moose closed down, but they're going after the tanker still. This is absolute insanity. This is complete stupidity. We're in the middle of a potential energy crisis. We're now taking pot shots of tankers. Russian tankers. This is a proper Russian tanker in the Mediterranean off the coast of Malta attacked by Ukrainian, by Ukrainian boat drones, water drones. And again, again, no doubt.

at all that this was done with somebody's help. I've been told that Ukraine acquired a former Soviet Foxtrot submarine. Don't tell me how I got this information, but I believe this to be the case, and that they've been moving it around in order to conduct these attacks on Russian tankers. They can only do this with help from some Western countries. Quite plausibly, it was France. But to start doing a thing like this at this particular time, when, as I said, energy crisis is building, some people are not going to be pleased. Macroix, quite possibly, was the one. Jesus. Considering how mental Trump is from Bouloghame, Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, evidence, Robert, do you think he revisits Greenland, Canada, and directly threatens invasion? Well, especially if he thinks

lost. There's no real regime change in Iran. He's going to be tempted. So when Reagan, we got attacked in Beirut, which apparently were blaming all in Iran, that was by a Shia militant group in response to the U.S. hitting mistakenly, I guess, a Shia camp there. But that was a militia group that long existed before Islamic Revolution even existed in Iran. Just FYI, everybody. But Reagan's reaction was number one, get us the heck out. That's he had people underestimate that about Reagan. Both Reagan and Eisenhower kept us out of war. They didn't get us involved in a major conflict.

That's what Trump was supposed to continue, that Republican tradition. But as he immediately went into Grenada, you know, he had some grounds to, but a tiny little country, whatever. But it was to build bravado. So given where Trump's mental state is, you can guarantee it will look at something. But it probably won't be Greenland. It'll probably be Cuba. so that we may actually, we apparently had some, you know, maybe they did it on their own, but I kind of doubt that.

I think we were testing the Cuban Coast Guard. We sent some people in. They got a couple of them got taken out literally, and then the rest got arrested on a little mini gunboat. The Russian tanker that was going to provide oil apparently has stopped for the time being because of there's no agreement about what we're going to do there. I mean, are we really willing, what if Russia puts military convoy with it, we'll see, just like the other tankers, how much risk are we willing to take?

but I think the temptation to if Cuba doesn't collapse in the next six months like Trump by the way believes this is the kind of stuff he's believing these days but if it doesn't I could see him in response to losing the Iran war immediately going into Cuba yeah yeah here's Iranian kiddo Barzani

Barzani was educated in Iran and Pesesh Kian made a joke that he speaks Persian better than Kurdish Peskian himself is half Kurdish and half Azeri well they say Zari Kurdish and Persian. Exactly.

Just to say, Balzani is one of the leaders of the Iraqi Kurds. Yeah. Could Trump and co-scaremonger Senate to amend the 22nd, Robert? No. I mean, Trump's going to be a dead man walking politically, if this continues for another month or so, by fall. And he'll get impeached, and he'll be at risk of even being removed. I'd say the odds of that are somewhere like one in four, one in five.

But you're talking about maybe as many as 55, 56 Democratic senators, especially if Murkowski flips in Alaska. And the same people that are cheerleading him into this war, if they're still in the Senate, will backstab him in a heartbeat. Because they'll blame him for the failure to get the regime changed because that's who these people are. Just as they have no reverse gear, as you guys often point out, there is no stop in their neocon automobiles. They are natural-born, A2 Brutus saboteurs. Joe Madge. Just a quick, very quick point there. Of course, if Trump is impeached, and this is a big if,

and I don't want to get into that, Vance becomes president. Yes, that's, by the way, the number one restraint from the neocons in the deep state taking Trump out. They will try to take Vance out first, using different issues that happen in the antitrust division to try to go after him. And so, but I don't think they have the votes to take him out. And that will be the number one deterrence for them taking Trump out. He'll likely survive the impeachment vote, not in the House, but in the Senate. But it might be thin margins.

And political capital be gone. Jomaz Q on Rumble says a personal friend of mine and Iranian expat, Christian Persian, by the way, who celebrated the death of the Ayatollah is apparently making contingent plans to move home to Tehran. I wish him all the best. I can. Interesting. I mean, there's a big Iranian, I mean, the bigger ones in London. But there's a big one here, particularly in Los Angeles, California. So a lot tied to the monarchist regime.

They all love it. They're the ones out celebrating. They're celebrating in D.C., other places. My guess is in terms of the U.S., 80 to 90% of those Iranians ain't going home, no matter what happens. Exactly. Same here in London. There is also, by the way, a leftist diaspora, Iranian diaspora here in London as well, connected with the former Iranian Communist Party, the two days.

which is quite influential in Iran. And you got, I mean, I'm sure another group they're planning on bringing in with all this, it'd be like the most unholy alliance, Kurds, ISIS, and M.EK from up from, aren't they, a lot of them in Armenia in the caucuses these days? I think so. What exists of them? Exactly. Joe 995 on Local says, what do you think of Pete Heggs as statement?

And for how long will the U.S. be able to drop guided bombs on Iran? He mentioned guided bombs now at HECSeth, yeah. Yeah, it's going to, I mean, they think they're going to get air dominance. They haven't yet, so we'll see. The bigger questions whether they can, they're pretending that they've taken out, it doesn't appear to me to have it all. I mean, my understanding the Iranian strategy was to send drones and the low end aspects of their missile supply in order to exhaust first the interceptors, but that they're out.

This is a huge mountainous region, which people tend to forget. They think of a lot of Americans think of Mideast and just they think desert. That's not Iran, very mountainous country. They've got 100 plus underground bases in places and missile launchers. So I think Iran's calculation is not that their interceptors can prevent bombing and attack. It's more can they, can the U.S. stop Iran from causing a lot of pain in Israel and the Gulf states? And I think that's their calculus as long as enough of the regime. last and survives. And I just think there's going to be continued successors that, you know,

you can keep killing him, killing him, killing him. You can't kill an idea. You can't kill a whole population. So, you know, Ian Keen says a general question. What was the last, what was the last several years told us about the concept of deterrence by bricks and members specifically? They don't appear to be dealing with rational actors. What should they do? Well, deterrence does work because we have not had a direct attack on China and Russia. And China and Russia are about deterring attacks on themselves. Again, these countries that we're talking about, Venezuela, Iran, whatever, they are not in a military alliance with China and Russia at the present time. So deterrence does work. If Iran had nuclear weapons, it would not have been attacked. That's deterrence.

Mr. Mike, Mr. Mike says Caspian Sea scenarios, how will neutral Turkmenistan play out considering soft U.S. military ties? My understanding is Turkmenistan is basically run by the Russians. I can't imagine anything being attempted from there. Azerbaijan is a different story. What do you think happens in the Caucasus? Because it seems like that's the most natural place

for this to extend to outside of the Middle East itself. Well, the key player here is Azerbaijan. I mean, there is Armenia as well, obviously, and there's this gigantic American embassy, which Alex has seen, by the way, in Yerevan, which is enormous, and which is mostly about Iran, but also to some extent about Russia, of course, also. But Azerbaijan is the key player, because Azerbaijan has the contiguous border with Iran. Azerbaijan is the country which might have potential

territorial claims Azerbaijan is an ally of Israel or has been an ally of Israel so this is the place to look at Azerbaijan is unstable the government is what I've heard again don't ask me

where I've got this information that the Russians are looking for an opportunity to move against it that they've been conducting secret criminal probes against Azerbaijani leaders, that there's actual indictments already been prepared against them, just to say. And that involving drug trafficking and people smuggling and all of that kind of thing on Russian territory. So if Azerbaijan would it become involved, I mean, there's a fair chance the Russians would as well.

They have all kinds of issues with the leadership in Baku, and we'll see. World War III started with Ukraine, folks, not with Iran. Well, from Claudius, risk of another Syria, different factions fighting forever inside Iran. I think it's possible. I don't think it's going to happen in the more Farsi areas. This is not Iran's history, actually. Iran has always tended to hold together quite well as a country. But there are different regions. There's Azerbaijan.

There's the Kurds. There's the Baluchis in the West. There's the Arabs in Kuzistan. So you can see how that could play out. And then the other, I think, more likely danger in Iran is not a subdivision into regions, but of a long-term political crisis. with a kind of civil war type situation developing with different, you know, resistance groups operating in Iranian cities, resisting the whatever authorities are imposed

on the country or things of that kind. Iran, by the way, has a history of that. Matthew says, how long can America realistically last? Does the war simply end when America runs out of missiles? Trump posted on truth social, Robert Alexander, it's unlimited. And Hex said that, I believe, or was it Kane? I think Kane said the same thing, pretty much. Yeah, which they're just lying about.

Kane knows he's lying about. Hexeth, who knows what he knows these days? He's just out there to be Team America, World Police lead cheerleader. Trump has deluded himself into believing this, even though he's known it's not the case now for a while. All the assessments I've seen, and this comes from people who study this in great detail, including people like Duneberg and others who do it because there's a lot of money at stake

for them to be right or wrong about this kind of thing is that we could last 30 days and then after that we are at a major munitions disadvantage and so that when he came out and said eight weeks it's like okay how is that going to work are there going to be any bases left in the Gulf by that point I mean we already are

things are slipping through and Iran hasn't used I mean Ted Cruz even admitted Iran can build at least 100 missiles a month. Well, just do the math on that going back the last 20 years. And they haven't used hardly any of that supply yet. Mostly have been cheaper drones and their low-end supply. They appear to have hypersonic missiles. They appear to have things that the other way you're going to see complete suppression

is the Gulf states are mass censorship states. Israel is a mass censorship state. They censor the heck out of anything so that almost nothing gets out. Somebody occasionally will glimpse something and will snook her out. But for the most part, they don't show anything that's going on. They deny everything. no matter what's happening. So we won't, but, you know, some of the things have shown these, these, uh, missiles that come in

like do what do you call cluster like separation, like a lifetime. There's been other ones where they've shown it like moving in certain directions. So it looks like they're, the technological advancement is there. So, uh, you know, the plus way, what Trump was told is 30 days were out. That, that's what Trump was told. So he's convincing himself something else now. But that's why there's such an accelerationist demand within the Pentagon is they don't think we can last pass the month.

From from Rumble, many parallels to Crush's campaign in Parthia. Interesting. Very good. Very good. Interesting. The only guy to really conquer Persia was, you know, the Greek name, you folks are not.

Alexander the Great. Yeah. And we'll do a couple more and we'll wrap it up. There's a question about the Gulf states and whether they're going to get involved. got who sent it. I think you just answered it, Robert, that question. What does that even mean? I mean, how are they going to get involved? They rely on us. So the, the, well, what are they going to do? They find their five draftees from their police force. I mean, somebody like Dubai is, you know,

90% foreigners are their workforce. I mean, they don't have any. And do they really want to publicly get involved and now make all those shiny little palm and all the rest, those fancy seven star hotels now legitimate targets by officially announcing there at war the Saudi Arabia want to announce their war and now make everything including all of their very vulnerable and unprotected oil refineries everywhere completely vulnerable i don't see the logic of that a lot of questions about turkey turkey would love to have a land land bridge to central asia yeah have you heard israel foreign minister in tv interview stating iran is not the biggest problem it's turkey a i fell out of might share.

Okay. I have to say this is, this is, this is, and here's another. And here's another one. Paranoid megal. Thank you. Go ahead, Alexander. Will Iran get help from the Turks? Take, taking on Turkey as well.

I mean, this is disastrous for Israel itself. I think there's, what do you guys think? I think there's, the people say the regime change that may happen is B.B. Netanyahu in Israel six months for now, if this continues to go south and sideways. I mean, he's using these wars to stay out of jail, is part of what he's doing. There's a, you know, it's supposed to be upcoming elections. Is there a chance? And then, you know, like one of the reasons why Duneberg didn't think it would happen, the geopolitical analyst and oil and commodities trader, was that the desalination plants and other key energy supply within

Israel is so vulnerable from Iranian weapons that if they were taken out, Israel would be a serious, serious problem. And is there a chance that at the end of this six months from now, Ann Ayatollah is still charging Iran, but Bibi Netanyahu is sitting in an Israeli jail? I think it's quite possible. I'm not predicting it, but I think it's entirely possible. I mean, Israel is a very sophisticated political system. And if there's a sense that's starting to gain hold in Israel, including within, you know, the top political circles there, that Netanyahu is becoming a liability and that he's leading Israel to disaster, then I can absolutely see the political class in Israel and the wider population too,

turning on him. I had the would-be Shaw there, the son of the former Shaw, was raiding in all of his bots, writing my ex-jacks this past week. He even appeared in one of his spots to make sure everybody flooded in so they could fake ex-poles and all the rest. There's been an uptick in Batsia, no doubt about it. Elliot says Iran had a lot of division before Rezacan, grandfather of current Pallavi. Rezacan fought many wars to unite them.

Well, I think that this is referencing the collapse of the Khazard dynasty in the early 20th century. The point was all of that happened very much in the context of, And I'm going back to what I was saying, British and Russian imperial interference in Iran itself. So I don't think one should draw too much of this. I mean, the Russians and the British, it's a completely unknown history. But the Russians of the British before the First World War actually partitioned Iran between themselves and divided it into spheres of influence. So the Russians had the North, the British, at the south and they did the same during the second world war.

Speaking of the MECA the question, there are people that, I agree with the commenter that the MEC does not have legitimacy in Iran. But in the, in the U.S. and the West, there's people who believe it, like Chilabi. Remember that fake Iranian president? We're Iraqi president. We were to put it in all the way back. The Rudy Giuliani takes a bunch of money from the MECA aligned groups. So these people propagandize that they could really come in.

Let's ignore their combination of Marxists and Islam in terms of how that. That would work for U.S. interest. And they propaganda is like crazy in the U.S. And there's parts of the U.S., including power structure that really believe there's some sort of viable source, at least of fighters, if not political leaders. That's the nutty part of people in the Pentagon and the State Department. Zareel says, Alexander, we're disgusted with all our leaders. I'm looking for a question on Postal, Ted Postel and missiles. Someone is asking about interceptors, too.

I remember what it was. If they run out, yeah. Yeah, Ted Postal's point was that interceptors, the Patriot missile interceptors, cannot shoot down ballistic missiles. Now, I'm not able to discuss this because I do not have the scientific knowledge that Ted Postal does. Could you guys discuss Ted Postal's point that interceptors are useless versus ballistic missiles, less than 5% intercept and the impact on the U.S. military posture worldwide? that's from Brulaham.

Yes, I'm going to say what I think here. I think this was true 20, 30 years ago. I think that today missile interceptors are more effective and can shoot down ballistic missiles. But ballistic missiles have also become more effective as well. So if you're talking about, say, the Iskanda ballistic missiles that the Russians use in, Ukraine, those cannot be shot down by the kind of air defense missile interceptors that we have in the West. And of course, the Oreschenik, which is a ballistic missile, by the way, cannot be shot down at all. Yeah. Do you think this could turn into something like the Ukraine war, guys?

No, no, I think it's completely different. I think that it's been conducted in a completely different way. and I don't think it's going to be. The Ukraine war is a classic war. It's the kind of war that people used to fight before the Second World War and during the Second World War. It's armies moving across battlefields, fighting each other, generals doing making tactical decisions,

staffs doing detailed plans. This is the kind of post-model. modern 21st century war, you know, do it from the sky, do it just do it quickly, knock out as quickly as you can. I don't think either side, include the Iranians here, have the resources or the endurance to keep doing it for four years. This is an interesting question, Robert. Will Iran survive this war and will the USA lose its credible face of freedom and democracy?

after this geopolitical catastrophe of their making. This is existential for Iran. What about the U.S.? I mean, I think can we continue to project power through our Navy and the sea if we can't defeat Iran, if we can't defend all of our bases and allies in the Gulf countries?

We can't even maybe defend Israel effectively. What does that mean for power projection globally? I think that is there is a serious risk that the U.S. loses its projection power globally when it can't get the regime change at once through its predominant form of global power, naval and air. And I think there's a substantial chance that I think we're seeing the dying throws of a decaying empire. I'm personally all for that like Patrick Buchanan wrote many years ago, my old friend. We are a republic, not an empire. That's what we're supposed to be. That's what our founders wanted.

So I'm all for the death of the empire. But I think you're seeing the death throes of it, especially if we're seeing globally as having lost the Iran war. The best parallel with Britain here is the fall of Singapore in 1942. When it became absolutely clear that Britain could not fight a war in Europe and at the same time project power in Asia, It could not maintain control of places like Singapore and Malaysia, and the British fleet wasn't capable of operating by itself without air cover

and wasn't able to fight the Japanese. Now, that was a liberating moment. It didn't play out immediately, but it was. I talked about how after the Second World War, British soldiers weren't willing any longer to go out and fight in, in colonies in order to maintain British control. That really starts conclusively with Singapore. The greater Israel project will ironically birth the Neo-Ottoman project.

I'm sure Erdogan would love that. If BB gets impeached in Israel, nothing is going to change. Neo-Zionist government will take over. You know, I don't agree. Netanyahu has skills. political skills that no other Israeli leader matches. The fact that he's been the most long-running Prime Minister of Israel shows the very, very real political ability that he does have.

MECA is not Marxist, 100% Western Op. Lisa Henderson says, if China and Russia fails to help, then it's a matter of time for each of them. your thoughts? You've talked about this many times, Alexander. No, I mean, no. I mean, you cannot, I mean, Russia has the largest number of nuclear weapons in the world, China has nuclear weapons. I mean, these two countries operate in a completely different way, and a completely different scale to Iran, which is not, however, to deny that the fall of Iran

will be a major blow for bricks and for these two countries too. What do you think the chances are that China, even though I know they have an agreement to ultimately provide certain anti-ship missiles, but they've designed those missiles that take down a U.S. carrier. That's designed to make very difficult to sink. You can take away the ability to land and fly planes off of it, but that, you know, the, but supposedly these are designed, and according to the U.S. simulations, they believe it would actually work.

It seemed there would be very tempting for them to be able to disguise, as an Iranian one tested out in this conflict. What do you think the chances of that are? It becomes very, very real if this war drags on. It will be exactly like what happened in the 1960s in Vietnam. Now, the point was in Vietnam, if you follow the war carefully, the North Vietnamese started to get assistance from the Soviets and from the Chinese after they had demonstrated that they could fight the United States. And then gradually the Soviets and the Chinese both started to provide more and more military aid. And by the way, because at that time the Soviets and the Chinese hated each other,

they were in competition with each other over that too. And what both of those two countries, the Soviet Union and China, then realized and indeed planned was that giving assistance in that way to North Vietnam was giving them leverage over the United States as well and the Chinese used that to get Nixon to come to China to Beijing. If there hadn't been a Vietnam war, it's unlikely that would have happened or at least if it had happened,

it would not have happened in that way. And of course, the Soviets used it in order to promote their policies of detente and what all that amounted to, which is pretty hard-nosed as well in Europe. So that's how it would play out. The Chinese will not do it tomorrow or next week, but if we are still talking about a war in Iran, you know, six months from now, then those possibilities start to become much more real. Nino says Iran has not begun launching their top arsenal yet. They have underground bases scattered all over the country, waiting orders with advanced drones and hypersonic missiles.

I don't think they're waiting orders. I think they're waiting execution of those orders, because I think they put them in in advance. And it was like, we're going to do this for the first five days, the next, and then boom. Pain Drain says, I see a lot of right-wingers, severely underestimating Iran's military lasting power in a real ground war based on Iran's lack of suitable anti-air. What do you all think?

The Pentagon has told the president they cannot survive or win a ground war in Iran. And so the, but the idea has been all along on the table, have somebody else do the fighting with special forces enmeshed within them. And that's what the actual objective is for, we don't even have the troops anymore. We don't even have the troops anymore. We don't have the same level size of army and ground troops that we did back with the last Iraq war. It's not there anymore. And a 90 million plus country with a million plus revolutionary guard in a very mountainous region, that it would be the shit show of all shit shows.

Yeah. Iran and Qaeda says modern Iran was probably at its weakest point in history in the late 19th century and start of the World War won by the time Reza Khan's father of the last king of Iran established Pahlavi, country was in shambles. Yes. Yeah. Dark horse says self-perceived digitalism is a symptom of the absence of justice. I expect tea attacks from this had to hide some words due to you to.

Yeah. Sadly it is. Trump chose the easy path of dropping the empire's mask instead of actual good governments and half of MAGA bast in that euphoria. The dream will soon reveal itself. a nightmare. The power of partisan logic. People who came to Trump because of his anti-war position, now justifying being pro-war because they've substituted their own principles for the personality of Trump. Okay, here we go. Arctic Lord says from day one to today, the number of ballistic

missiles is down 86%. The number of attack drones fired down 73%. This war is over. It's a wrap. If you want to trust beat exit, good luck with that. I don't recommend you, wager on it in any stock, financial, or prediction markets. Brulaham says, why do people delude themselves that Iran is losing because of catastrophic losses? They have in recent times sustained 100,000 losses and have a much more difficult lifestyle than the West. If the regime doesn't collapse, it seems they could lose a few million people, less, greater than 80% of the elite and still win in a few years.

Does America have the stomach? at the Iraq-Iran war right after the revolution. You have the Soviet Union backing Iraq. You had the United States backing Iraq. You had Israel backing Iraq. You had a big Iraqi army right on their border. And ultimately, Iran survived it, despite losing up to half a million people. Yeah. Iran, the nation, is not going to fall. Iran's been around for a long time. The government may fall. They had many different governments in the past. Yeah, it's true. Iran as political and cultural and civilizational and national entity will certainly survive. Well, in fact, by the way, that's another place of the fake polls.

There's NED, CIA, USAD cutouts in Toronto and the Netherlands who've been doing polls of the Iranian public that Trump totally believes. Patrick Bet David, formerly from Iran, was about their, you know, pushing this nonsense, which was at 80 to 90%. the Iranian people can't wait to overthrow this government and establish a pro-Western government. Fake polls. There's a Sadat professor at the University of Maryland that's been polling the Middle East for a very long time. And what he found was Iranians were upset about the economic conditions, but there was no great appetite for regime change. They preferred security over democracy, according to their own public opinions.

And there's nobody in Iran that wants to look like Libya, Iraq, or Syria. All right. Let's wrap it up with the last few super chats. Lisa Henderson says true, but these idiots will harass each to the brink. China and Russia need to act now. We see how all of this unfolds. Chaos Panda says, what's your opinion on the effects of the war will have on China and Taiwan tensions? Whatever the outcome, US will be exhausted.

Such situations will make Taiwan very vulnerable. Much love from Serbia guys. Why do you think Elbridge Kobe is unhappy? Yeah, exactly. Good point. And we're leaving South Korea undefended too. We're like, hey, we'll just take all those. We'll take those from Taiwan, take those from South Korea.

There was a previous super chat, which said it's not been a good week for South Korea. No, no. Very true. Very true super chat. Christina said, first time catching you live. I watched almost every video since I heard about you from the late Gonzalo Lira, and you still didn't show up on my YouTube year review. I don't think YouTube will be promoting us at the moment.

Yeah. Let's see. Russia from Nina, Russia and China are helping with ISR and targeting behind the scenes. They are not idle. China's publishing detailed maps of all the U.S. military bases. And that can be used not just by Iran. That can be used by anybody that's got any problem with the U.S. military. All right.

And we'll wrap it up with Elliott, who says, What shape are the Iranian launchers in? Is there a chance Iran may not be able to use its most advanced missiles because their launchers are gone? How do I know? How do we know? The Iranians know, perhaps the Americans know. We cannot know. I've heard this said by many people that the real problem that Iran faces is not missiles, but launchers, and that the US and the Israelis have been hunting the launchers. But I've heard also that launches are very, very difficult things

to track down and find, and that it's not easy to find them and trap them and to destroy them. I've heard all sorts of numbers, but some of them, some of the launches that have probably been destroyed are probably dummies because the Iranians did that during the first, the war with Saddam Hussein, and I'm sure that they're doing it again. All right. Well, that did with Monty. Is there a point beyond which Pete emptyhead will say to Trump that what he wants is impossible? Anybody who has said that within the Pentagon has been fired or demoted. So don't expect it from Team America.

or World Police cheerleader number one. All right. We will end it there. Thank you, Robert, for joining us and sticking around for the whole show. That was awesome. Thank you for that. I will put Robert's information where you can follow. Robert, I'm sure everyone knows where you can follow.

The great Robert Barnes. Thank you, Robert. Alexander, thank you. Thank you to everyone that joined us. Thank you to all the questions. We'll wrap up whatever questions we didn't get to. You know, Alexander will answer those questions tomorrow. I will publish.

Absolutely. The answers to a total of that in a dedicated Q&A. Take care, everyone.