The Duran Podcast - Trump Iran strike on hold... for now

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Trump Iran strike on hold... for now

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation with Iran. Reuters reported yesterday that, according to their sources, there was going to be military action against Iran. Here we are recording this video on this Thursday afternoon, my time, and there has been no military action against Iran. Trump did appear to tone down his rhetoric towards Iran and the protestant. in the White House. But of course, with Trump, you know, you have all kinds of misdirection and trickery in the way he's conducting foreign policy. So he could appear to be toning down his rhetoric while behind the scenes he could be preparing

and attack. But as things stand, we do not have a U.S. strike on Iran. we have the, actually we have news that flights are resuming now in Iran. They close the airspace, but the flights are resuming. And Alexander also comment on the Washington Post article, which claims that Israel and Iran through Russia, they decided to come to some sort of an understanding that neither side would strike the other side first. So your thoughts on what's happening. Yes, I think we came very, very close to an attack on Iran yesterday. All of the indications were building up to that.

We saw movements of troops out of the Gulf states, out of Qatar and all of these places. And that, by the way, is a sign not that there was not going to be an attack, but that we were heading towards some kind of an attack. because as I said what the Americans and the British and the others seem to be doing was that they were getting vulnerable troops out of harm's way which suggested that an attack was coming and there was interruptions to the flights and there was extraordinary fiery rhetoric coming out of Iran

and there were reports that the Iranian Air Force such as it is had its aircraft had taken off that was not by the way in order to shoot down American aircraft it was to ensure that the Iranian aircraft were not destroyed on the runways of their air bases, just to make that all clear. So everything pointed to an attack coming. And then suddenly Trump weighed in. He said that the Iranians had stopped the executions that were taking place after the suppression of the protests.

And then there were also reports in the media. I don't know whether they've appeared in the American media, but they're all over the media here in London, that he had a meeting with his national security team. And he said to them, he's supposed to have said to them that he would only authorize another attack on Iran if it could guarantee regime change in Iran, which is putting the threshold of success extraordinarily high.

NBC reported on that. by the way, I'll look at that as well. Yeah, I mean, that's what he gets the threshold very hard. You're absolutely correct. Trump says one thing one day, something completely different than next. He is very much somebody who engages in misdirection. He gives the impression that things are stabilising and that he seizes the opportunity when everybody has relaxed in order to attack.

But for what it is worse, my sense is that, that an attack has indeed been postponed. I don't think it's been cancelled entirely, but I think it has been postponed. And I suspect there are two reasons for this. Firstly, despite some heated denials, it does look as if Iran, the Iranian authorities are on top of the protest movement in Iran.

I mean, I'm not going to say it's been completely suppressed, but certainly the back of the war. the protests was broken over the last couple of days. And that meant that there was no protests basically to support. And it does give the impression that the government in Iran is firmly in control and is not about to collapse. So to the extent that this has always and has always been about regime change in Iran, we have been talking about that for months. It's interesting now that it has been straightforwardly admitted

that it is about regime change. Notice that the nuclear enrichment program hardly features anymore. Now, I mean, people are stopped basically talking about this. They're talking now straightforwardly about regime change. Given that the entire premise was that you conduct all of these strikes and you'd have all of these people, all these enormous protests, and people seizing buildings and that will put them in a good position to take over.

Given that that piece has been taken off the board, one can understand why the doubts have grown. The other, and I'm going to suggest this, is the involvement of the Russians. And I think that the Russians, as we have already discussed in several programs, they've clearly been undertaking a big review of their foreign policy. I have no doubt that this was what was happening

over the Christmas New Year Bank holiday. I'm sorry, holiday. And beyond that, we are now starting to see the shadow of the Russians starting to fall over Iran. Firstly, one of the things that was expected to facilitate the protests

was that a lot of the protests was that a lot of the people, of Starlink terminals had been smuggled into Iran. Some of the numbers I've seen about the numbers of Starlink terminals are off the scale, and we should be very careful about those, because I suspect that they are exaggerated, but the fact is that the protest movement relied very, very heavily on Starlink. The Iranian authorities, however, were able to conduct a far tighter internet blocker which, by the way, is still in place, that anybody had expected.

They were able to close down the entire mobile phone network in ways that, again, it seems nobody expected. And on top of that, they were able to successfully jam Starlink. Now, both China and Russia had that technology. There is a debate about who it was who provided the Iranians with that technology. Iran, I can say, confidently does not have the scientific resources, the technological resources, to do this itself.

So clearly they got help from someone. I personally have little doubt it was the Russians. So the Russians are helping Iran with its internal security. And that, I think, has played a role. And that, of course, put the Russians in us. And the Russians are apparently moving with further arms deliveries to Iran. This has been a long vexatia story that we've been hearing about for a long time. So the Russians, I think, have intervened behind the scenes. Putin is back. He's very active again. We've heard this story, which I suspect is true, that the Russians and the have been talking to both the Israelis and the Iranians, telling the Iranians and the

Israelis to back off. And we see that both sides supposedly have agreed to this. But I think there is something else, which is that I think the Russians intervene to provide Donald Trump with an off-ramp, which is, I think they told the Iranians, for heaven's sake, stop these these serial executions starting on Wednesday, which you were proposing to do. Not only is this disastrous in terms of your international image and is exactly the sort of thing that might get the protests in Iran itself restarted and might delegitimize yourself even further with your own population. But if you do that, you're acting straight in your face with Donald Trump. He's going to feel obliged in that case to intervene.

So we got reports over the course of Wednesday that the executions had been postponed or perhaps even called off. The message was conveyed to Donald Trump and that gave him the off ramp so that he could call the strikes off. And that looks to me very much like probable advice and diplomatic action. And I suspect again it came from Moscow. Right, and they're mediating between Israel and Iran as well? Yes, yes. So they're playing a big role in what's happening. I think so. I think the giveaway was the defeat of Starlink, which was something that some big player, one of the great powers, either China or Russia, had to step in to do.

It seems to me overwhelmingly likely that it was the Russians. Everything points to it. I mean, I have a technical question, which you probably will not be able to answer. But most likely it was China. Wouldn't it have been China? Because isn't Russia still having a problem with Starlink in Ukraine? Yeah. Yes. But what I understand is that the Russians can jam Starlink from short distances.

So right on the front lines, it's all that Starlink doesn't work completely. but that Starlink is interfered with. And one of the things I have been noticing over the last couple of months is that the Russians have been able to track and destroy on the front lines, Starlink terminals. You've been reading about this all of the time.

So I think that on the battlefields, this is not 100% effective. but in terms of the protests in Iran, it probably would be. So you have a general idea of where the Starling terminals are. You're able to send your jammers using lorries, and you're able to jam and, well, at least interfere sufficiently with Stalin. Not completely. I mean, it's not a complete 100% cut off of Stalin, even in Iran.

But even if it's a 70% cut off of Starlink, it has been enough basically to quell the protests. Now, I say the Russians. The Chinese obviously have enormous technological resources. It's fully possible that China developed this technology and shared it with the Russians. Or perhaps the Russians and the Chinese have been working together. the nature of things we simply don't know. The point is that I think the immediate assistance came from Russia. It seems logical that it would do, and it is consistent with other things we know.

Yeah, I remember an Air Force One interview of Trump three, four days ago, where Trump actually said that he's going to be speaking with Elon Musk. He didn't get into the details of it. He was asked by a reporter about Musk and Starlink. And he said he's going to speak with Musk. So Elon is playing a role in the regime change, yeah. Of course he is. And can I just say it?

Even though he's come out against regime change operations. Yes, I know. He's on record saying he doesn't like the regime change operations, but he's playing a big role in the regime change operations. He is playing a big role. As he played a big role in Ukraine. Absolutely. And continues to, by the way.

But the thing to say about Stalin altogether is that this is a game. I mean, sometimes the Chinese, the Russians get ahead. The Americans then, Elon Musk's technicians and other technicians in the US, then find ways round. It's never a situation where one side wins conclusively and is able to close down Starlink or get it to operate completely. As I said, sometimes the one side gets the advantage, sometimes the other gets the advantage. It's a game of cat and mouse, but for the moment at least, the Russians and the Chinese are in the ascendant. And they were able to interfere with Stalink sufficiently in Iran in order to defeat the protest movement in the way that we saw. Yeah, well, it also highlights how Elon Musk's companies are very much an integral part of the U.S.

military complex. In fact, in fact, he said this. He actually has, he admitted this straightforwardly on a program on X-PASIS, which we both attended. He actually said that he was actually very close to the intelligence community and talk to them all the time. So, as I said, there's no, there's no secret. Okay.

Anyway, let's move on. The NBC article and the other articles that you're seeing in the UK, which talk about how Trump wants a quick, big win in Iran, a quick, big strike that would knock out the regime, but he can't get it. It shows the type of neocon, if you want to call that that Trump is. He's not the neocon of long wars, of boots on the ground, stuff like that, the Bush, let's say the Bush type of neocon. His, his, his, his, policy is a quick defeat, a quick removal of the government, and he'll use any tactic to get that. And it seems like in Iran he can't find that tactic to remove the government.

I mean, he'll use whatever he has to use, whether it's drones into residencies, whether it's capturing the leader. He'll use trickery, misdirection. But what he wants is to avoid the boots on the ground, avoid the long wars, but to get that quick shock and awe regime change executed. That's what he's looking for. I think it's revealing in Iran that he's not able to find that way to get that quick win. Absolutely. And I think the 12-day war showed that, actually. After 12 days, Trump and Israel said, OK, we have to get out of this.

12 days. That's how long Trump was able to last. Absolutely. But the key point, and this is the thing people need to take away, is that there is now clearly an objective of achieving regime change in Iran and Trump is signed up to it. The Israelis obviously are signed up to it. Trump is also signed up to it and the American government is signed up to it. So if the Iranians, have two brain cells to rub together. I'm sorry to be a little tough here because sometimes I've got the sense that they are not. They need to understand that Trump,

the United States, Israel and the West are coming for them. I'm talking about the government now. This is not ended. There was an attempted regime change in June. there was an attack on Iran carried out in incredibly duplicitous circumstances. I mean, we discussed it then.

You discussed it in many programs. A duplicitous attack, whilst there was supposed to be negotiations about to happen in Oman, the Iranians. You mean the Wittkoff negotiations? Yeah, exactly. The Wittok-O-Rakshi meeting.

Yeah. And I still find a meeting on Thursday and then the attack happened on Sunday. day. That's right. Absolutely. I still find it incredible, by the way, given that the whole story about how the attack was coming was all over the media in the United States. The Iranians let themselves be taken by surprise, which is why I do say, as I said, the Iranians do need to get their act together. And I still get the sense that they haven't fully got their act together if they're going to defeat a regime change. Anyway, there was an attempted regime change back in June. It started

very much as a decapitation strike. And you do that not in order to stop an enrichment program, but in order to achieve regime change in Iran. We've now, we then said, and we said many times over many programs after the June war, that because the June war did not achieve regime change, as far as the Israelis, Trump himself and the neocons, Iran remains unfurbanes. Iran remains unfinished business and they would come back. We've seen that they have come back.

That was partly what the protests were about, which is not to deny, by the way, that there are many internal reasons why there would be protests in Iran. But it was clear, obvious, that there was some degree of organisation behind these protests intended to create a crisis that would lead to regime change. The very fact that these people were using Starlink in the way that they were and the fact that they had so many terminals, Starling terminals,

however many that was, all but confirms this. And at the moment, possibly, just possibly, the latest attempt at regime change has been called off. But if the Iranians continue, to play around, don't prepare properly, dither, all of those sort of things, then the next attempt at regime change is going to come. They need to understand this. In fact, I would say as night follows day, another attempt at regime change almost

certainly is going to happen over the course of this year. The thing is that it is proving more complicated and more difficult than the Israelis and the near cons expected. I mean, at the beginning of last year, they probably assumed that Iran would collapse like a house of cards. The moment the strike came and that the decapitation strike that started the June 2025, 12-day war, would itself collapse the regime. And we saw that that didn't happen. As I said, now they've tried again. They've tried using somewhat different methods.

It didn't work. The Iranians need to be prepared for the fact that another attack almost certainly is going to come. And they need to prepare for it more carefully and more deeply. And I say this because, again, in advance of this latest attempt, all the indications are that the Iranians were again caught unprepared. There were protests, but they weren't ready to handle the protests. They did not handle the protests well.

There was far too much violence at the beginning from the Iranian security services. When the other side started to bring out armed men and all of those things, They were completely unprepared for it. Over the course of last week, it began to look briefly as if they would lose control. They were fortunate in that they did have this assistance from the Russians or the Chinese or both because otherwise this thing could have got, well, it could have acquired a momentum which might quite possibly have led to regime change. They need to start getting much more organized about how they manage their economic matters.

And I have to say, I think that people make many excuses for Iran there. I think that Iran is potentially a rich country. It's got a big economy. They could prepare for these kind of attacks, economic attacks that come much more effectively. And they could run the economy on a much. more stable basis despite all of the sanctions. The problem is I get the sense that the senior people in the government aren't very interested in economic matters in the way that they need to be. And I think that they think that there are simple and easy solutions which of course

they never are. They need to organize themselves and they need first and foremost and above to work more closely with their friends. They did get help over the last week. As I said from someone, I think it was the Russians. Perhaps it was the Chinese and the Russians. But whoever it was, they need to start consolidating that help and getting more of that support. And of course, if they do, then at some point,

perhaps the regime change attempts will abate because Iran is actually a difficult place place to regime change. And last but not least, I think this pattern of serial production executions is an extremely bad thing at every level. And I think that the Iranians need to stop and stop doing this. I think it, well, I mean, there's the moral dimension about it, but I think it is deeply destabilizing within Iranian society. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, absolutely. No excuse for Iran when it comes to the economic stuff anymore.

Understood a lot of sanctions, very difficult, no doubt about it. But they're not part of bricks and they have an opportunity to really figure things out when it comes to the economy. Something they didn't have before. Now they do have bricks. So this is important that they need to utilize it. They need to take advantage of being part of bricks. So, yeah, I totally agree with you there. It's more than Iran when it comes to the regime changes for the Trump administration.

I think there's a lesson to be learned by every country that's potentially targeted by the United States, by the Trump administration, for regime change. Because the pattern from Trump is very much going for the knockout. He is looking to go for the knockout. He is trying to avoid a long war. He's trying to avoid boots on the ground. He doesn't want any boots on the ground. He doesn't want any U.S. military actively engaged in some sort of a long conflict. He wants to avoid that.

He is looking for a knockout, whether it's Iran, whether it's Russia, whether it's Syria. It doesn't matter. That's what he wants. He wants that knockout blow. And the United States is playing to their strengths. And they're very good at exploiting the weaknesses, searching for weakness. is searching for holes or gaps that they can find when it comes to removing a government, whether they're economic holes, whether they're information, war, gaps that a government may have,

whether they're military gaps, intel on the ground that can bribe certain officials and the military can go in and capture the leader. So they're using everything that they can to get these knockout wits. And Trump loves that. Absolutely. He loves this game. He wants to avoid the long, drawn-out conflicts. So I think every country needs to, I mean, if you're being targeted by the U.S., this is the lesson that you can take from this.

And they may have not been able to find the knockout punch with Iran just yet. They got very close. But next time, they might succeed. Yes. Well, absolutely. And what you've pointed to is both the U.S.'s enormous strength, but also its weakness. It is extremely good at finding these weak points. And you cannot afford to let them develop within your country and your society because the United States, if it's coming for you, is going to find them. So you need to run a monetary and financial policy that will keep your currency stable. And Iran has all the resources to do that, despite the sanctions. And you're absolutely right about Ricks.

The very first thing that happened, if you remember, what started this process on was a collapse of the Iranian currency, a 40% collapse of the Iranian currency. Why did Pezishkan not call Xi Jinping? Why did the central bank chairman of Iran not contact China or the BRICs institutions and say to them, we need a billion dollars to stabilize the currency? Now, that's all it would have needed. We're talking about a relatively small economy. The moment traders knew that China was stepping in with money, even if it was only a billion dollars, which of course for China is, you know, it's just small change.

The currency would have immediately stabilized and that would have transformed the entire mood and situation in Iran. It would have created an enormous surge in confidence. that would have stopped the protest movement, gaining momentum right from the outset, and it would have enabled Iran to take further steps to stabilize its economy and to take the process forward. We're not talking about huge sums of money here, certainly not the kind of sums of money that Millet borrowed from the United States just a few weeks ago. And by the way, Millet was right to do that. I mean, if you wanted to pursue that policy. given that the Americans were willing to offer him the money and were in a position to.

He's absolutely right. The Iranians should be doing the same thing with their own friends. And they could have paid the money back very quickly as soon as the economy began to stabilize as well. Instead, they went around telling everybody, well, you know, we've got all of these sanctions. And the situation is very difficult. and there isn't really very much we can do in this situation, which of course gave people in the bazaar, within the business community,

within the Iranian middle class, no reason to hope that anything was going to get better in the shorter medium term. And of course, that weakened confidence in the government, and of course it opened the way for these, as I said, organized attacks to take place. But at the same time, talking about these organized attacks, I mean, Iran has never succeeded in gaining a complete and proper handle

over the internal situation, security situation. In Iran, it's, I mean, there are still any number of people, agents, insurgent groups, people with guns, still functioning inside Iran. We saw how the Israelis and the Americans and people like that have been able to conduct assassinations and sabotage operations inside Iran. Obviously, there are difficulties about stopping this entirely. But, you know, we saw that with the Russians. I mean, the Russians have had difficulties dealing with the Ukrainian infiltrators. But it's been nothing like as bad as what we see.

in Iran. And again, I get the sense that the security services in Iran are not especially efficient at this kind of internal protection and control. And at the same time, they are largely a law unto themselves. And they're very difficult to supervise and control. And again, Iran cannot afford to have those things happen. So there are many, many things that Iran can do. And that brings us back to the other point, which is the other side of the equation of what you said. Just as these techniques are America's strengths, they're also America's weakness, because especially with this president, Donald Trump, who does not like long-term, open-ended commitments of the Bush-Cheney. kind, you know, occupations of countries, attempts to administer them, democracy promotion

and all that kind of thing. It means that if you can counter this kind of thing and counter it effectively, there is a reasonable chance that the Americans will leave you alone because they're not in it for the long duration. And if they can't achieve it quickly, then they will probably pack their bags, decide it can't be done, and leave it. you alone. So there are things that the Iranians can do and which up to know they haven't done. All right. We will end it on on that note. The durand.locals.com. We are on X and rumble and telegram. Go to the Duran shop pick up some merch and also check us out on Substack. There's a link in the description box down below. Take care.