The Duran Podcast - Trump Iran War Dilemma: Escalate, Walk Away, or Concede?

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Trump Iran War Dilemma: Escalate, Walk Away, or Concede?

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the war in Iran. And let's talk about Trump's latest truth social post. And we can also discuss the Wall Street Journal article, the latest from the WSJ, which is now saying that Trump has told his aides that he may walk away from the war, complete the objectives that Rubio actually. outlined yesterday, which are basically military objectives, destroy the Navy, destroy the army, destroy the launchers, accomplish these goals in the next two weeks, and then he's going to walk away from this conflict, is what the Wall Street Journal is reporting. This comes two days

after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is preparing for a ground invasion into Iran to extract the uranium. So a lot of confusion with regards to Trump's messaging. And then we have the actual war that is happening and the information around the war, which is a continued escalation and the conflict continuing to intensify. So what do you think is happening now with the war? I'll tell you what I think. I think that Trump has now finally grasped the fact that he's losing control of this whole process. The Iranians are not capitulating. They're not negotiating. the way I read his truth social posts, his latest one, is as an expression of frustration, he says that he's involved in negotiations with a much more reasonable and rational government

than the one that was there previously. Of course, there is no visible sign of such a thing. It's pure fantasy. Basically, I read that as a plea to the people who are now in, in charge in Iran to negotiate with him. Because, of course, Trump cannot bring himself ever to just plea in that way. He adds this extraordinary threat, which is the same threat he's made in the past to completely obliterate Iran's energy system. The Iranians were not moved by that before. I doubt they will be moved by that again. I don't believe it is achievable. But anyway, way, that is one thing that Trump is trying to do. He's trying to get or trying to persuade the Iranians to negotiate with him so that he can get some kind of an off ramp. That is one thing.

And then at the same time, because this is someone who is, I would say, I mean, I think thrashing around is not too strong a way to describe it. He's also saying, well, let's have a ground invasion. Let's take Harg Island. Let's take other islands in the Straits of Hormuz. Maybe that will put the pressure on the Iranians. And then there's the third side of him which says, well, look, if I can't get a deal, if nothing can be achieved, well, I'll just walk away. I'll leave it, I'll leave it to the Europeans to make, to sort out what they can with the Iranians over the oil. I will declare victory and walk away. And I think in Trump's mind, All three of these things are going on, spinning around inside his mind from one day to the

next. Sometimes he thinks of doing the one. Sometimes he tells his aides that he's thinking of doing the other. Other times he's talking about doing the third. But I don't think there is any settled policy between the three. The dynamic is out of his control. The Iranians don't seem to be interested in negotiations. There is no sign of this political conflict in Tehran that he's talking about.

There is no sign of this reasonable moderate government willing to talk with him that he wants to see. And I don't personally think the option of walking away in the way that the Wall Street Journal article says he told his AIDS is really a viable one. So I have to say this. I still think the chances are by far the greatest chance. are that we're going to see some kind of military escalation, an attack on Garl Gaelg Island, not that anybody seems to think that that's going to achieve anything. I mean, we had this program with Jim Webb, who is a US military person, somebody with big experience in military matters.

I've seen what lots of other military people are also saying. They think that Garl Gailant would be a very risky, very dangerous operation indeed, one which could easily go wrong. There's ideas of seizing other islands in the Strait of Cornuz. The Emirates are claiming some of these islands. You can see that they're pushing. They're trying desperately to get something out of this debacle so they can at least say if we have the islands that the islands are returned to our control. We've got something over the Iranians. I don't think that really helps in any way either. And I think it's also a high-risk thing. There's still talk about carrying out raids deep inside Iran.

I don't think there's anybody who seriously believes they can extract all the uranium. I may be wrong about that, but I don't understand how that would even be done. But overall, I still get the sense that the direction is towards further escalation. I don't think that Trump really can walk away. I think the political damage would be enormous, and I doubt that he can fool enough people into thinking that he's won for him to be able to do that politically. And I don't think he's going to find that I don't think he's going to find that the Iranians, any Iranians, are interested in negotiating with him because of the duplicity and trickery that you've discussed many times in many programs, which has been the characteristic. of his approach to the diplomacy with Iran. So that's where I think we are. Going back to the post on truth from the other day, where he says that he's speaking with a new Iranian leadership,

and this leadership is better than the other leadership. Okay, whatever. In the middle of that post, he talks about destroying the power plants, the energy infrastructure, and even the desalination facilities. Is that legally, is that a war crime for the leader of a country to openly state that? Yes. I mean, to openly publish something like that. We're going to go after the desalination and the energy facilities. And he says it in a way which leads me to believe I'm, I mean, you're a lawyer, I'm not, but the way he wrote it was in a way that that suggested that this has no real military function whatsoever. I'm just doing it out of spite. I'm doing it because of what Iran did to us for 47 years.

So we're just going to ditch, ditch everything in the region. But before we go, we're going to destroy all of this because, you know, we want to. I mean, should publish that. He published that. I should say clearly, I've never been a war crimes lawyer at any point. But I do know a certain amount about it. And I've spoken about this sort of thing in the past. I've discussed it with people who are war crime lawyers, by the way, in relation to the Russian

attacks on the Ukrainian energy system. And provided and so long that these attacks can be rationalized and explained as part of a military effort, in other words, that they are connected to achieving defined military objectives on the battlefields, which is what the Russians have been very careful continuously to do. If you go to their reports about every one of these attacks, they say this is all connected to attacking the Ukrainian military industries, to disrupting logistics, to doing that sort of thing. It may in reality be beyond that, maybe more than that,

but the Russians have been very, very careful to say that. But provided you can at least argue that this is being done for a specific military purpose, then it's all right. But if it's basically done in order to do the kind of things that Trump was talking about in that truth social post, to scare the Iranians into negotiations, and to punish them for the history of bad relations and the various things that the Iranians either did or were supposed to have done over 47 years, then my understanding is that would be a war crime.

Of course, how you would prosecute a war crime against the president of the United States is a completely different question. But yes, I think it would be a war crime. And by the way, if Trump were to give that kind of order, I think the people in the Pentagon ought to bear that fact in mind. Because it's a very well, very well established principle in war crime's law, that orders from a superior to commit war crimes are not a defense for militaries that commit those war crimes. I mean, I'm not saying that in any proximate point in time there's going to be a prosecution anywhere in the United States or elsewhere. But there are moral obligations in war not to commit war crimes. Soldiers are trained, officers are trained around war crimes law,

which the United States, by the way, played a pivotal role in creating. So I hope and would like to believe, though I have to sound skeptical, that there are going to be people in the Pentagon in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who, if they receive an order of this kind, will come along and will, say to Trump, Mr. President, this is impossible. We're not prepared to do this. This is wrong. It is illegal. It is a crime. It can't, it can't be done. Well, I just wonder where Trump's legal counsel is in all of this. I mean, you're a president in a war. Yeah. And I would imagine that before he posts stuff like this, there would be lawyers looking at these true social posts.

That would be my guess, right? It just makes sense. Well, it would make complete, it could But obviously it's... It's obviously not happening that way. I mean, we go back to our program with Jim Webb, who discussed basically a completely chaotic decision-making process, one in which nobody was widely consulted. I mean, there was no proper discussions, no discussions with lawyers, no careful preparation for a military attack or anything of that kind. And of course, Donald Trump doesn't show his true social posts to lawyers before he'd be. publishes them, though as president of the United States on topics like this, he absolutely should. But what he does, as we all know, is he late into the night or early in the morning or whenever it is he

does it, he just flies them off, off the top of his head, expressing his anger and frustration and his opinions at any particular point. Some of these true social posts are clearly very carefully thought out and very calculated. When you read them, you could see that. But others like this one obviously are not. A minority, a minority of this true social posts are thought out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. What is the military saying saying about all of this confusion? I mean, you know, you have the U.S. military engaged in a war. Rubio is very careful to still call it an operation. Yes. other people in Trump's administration, including I believe Hegset has called it a war. I might be wrong

about that, but other people in his administration have called it a war. Maybe even the president has called it a war as well. That has all kinds of complications with regards to Congress and so on and so forth. But Rubio, who was a senator, has been the one official who's been careful to say it is an operation. But what does the military say about all of this confusion? The U.S. military, I mean, you know, we're pulling out, we're escalating, we're going to go into cargo, we're going to take out of the uranium. I'm going to ditch Hormuz. I don't care about it. I'm going to open Hortmousse with force. If you're the military, what do you make of all of this? Well, about Rubio, firstly, I think I'm right in saying that he is, by background, actually, a lawyer. himself. So it's not surprising that he takes a more legalistic approach and that he chooses his

words more carefully. Even if he's not a lawyer, he works within the bureaucracy of the State Department and of the National Security Council. And they are probably briefing him. And they're telling him very, very carefully, this is what you have to say because that's the legal position. And we've got to be very, very careful. And if we start throwing words like war, around, then logically we have to go to Congress and get their authorization because only Congress has the right to declare a war. So that's, I think, something that, again, Rubio as a former senator, understands extremely well. So that's why he's, you know, modulating his language. As to what the military people are thinking, obviously, I mean, I'm not. I'm not.

talking to any of these people, but I would have thought they're tearing out their hair. I mean, I can very well imagine that they're really caught between a rock and a hard place. For American military officers to disobey the order of the commander in chief would be an extraordinary thing. I don't recall any moment in American history where something like that has ever happened. So on the one hand, that would be an incredibly difficult thing for them to do. And I can see very easily that it would be something that they would balk at doing. At the same time, they are being asked to do things that I think in military terms make little to no sense. And in some cases, as we've just discussed, which amount to war crimes.

and they must find that extraordinarily difficult. Now, there are things that they can do in this situation. They can go to Hexeth and they can say to Hexeth, look, this situation where the president is briefed, the way that we hear that he is being briefed with two-minute videos showing, you know, various things in the war, this is simply unacceptable. we insist as soldiers that we have a personal dialogue with the commander-in-chief, that we are in a armed conflict. We owe it to the men that we command to meet with him regularly,

at least two or three times a week, given the kind of situation that we are in. And then we meet with him and we talk to him and we explain to him the problems. and obviously there's a chance that he'll get angry and that he'll sack us, which is his prerogative, by the way. But that is our duty, that is our responsibility. Soldiers, above all, in war or in something that approximates to war, have a duty to speak truth to power. So I think that is what they should do. Now, I find it disturbing that there's no information that that kind of thing is. been done. But logically, properly, that is what ought to be happening now. The alternative

is for someone like General Kane to say to the president, look, if you're not prepared to meet with us regularly in that kind of way, then you give me as the military chief the same role that George Marshall had during the Second World War, which Franklin Roosevelt gave to George Marshall. You leave me in charge, and I make the decisions. I am the professional. I will report to you, but I will deal directly with the other military commanders on the battlefield, and I will conduct this war in the way that I deem fit. Now, you know, you could do it one way or you could do it the other way, but this very eccentric command system that we have now, in which the president is not being briefed properly because that's what the two-minute video seems to amount to.

I think that's absolutely unacceptable. I think that is, by the way, a violation of responsibility to the commander-in-chief also, because the commander-in-chief has not been kept properly informed. I'm astonished that I have to say these simple things. I think Hague's at this clueless. Trump is clueless. I mean, I'm listening to what you're saying. I'm going through all the comments and posts that Trump is making on on truth social, all the comments that he's making to the press, whether it's on Air Force One or from the Oval Office. I'm listening to what Rubio is

saying. He's clueless. I'm just coming to the conclusion. He has no idea what's going on. He has no idea what's going on. So, I mean, will people who do have an idea what's going on? Will Will they let him get out of this mess? I don't think so. No, well, what they want to. I mean, this is the other thing. I mean, the generals don't like Trump anyway, as we know perfectly well. The people, the staff of the National Security Council, don't like Trump. The deep state has twice tried to remove him from the presidency. Isn't he not going to let him out of this? No, absolutely. So none of them are. So, I mean, from their point of view, there's all sorts of people in, Washington, who will not be sorry if he fails. They will be sorry if the geopolitical position

of the United States is jeopardized. But some of them, I am sure, are calculating that things can be retrieved. The most important thing is to get this president discredited and out of the way and either are reduced to a cipher or even removed. So, I mean, I think that there are people like that who are probably talking about these things. And one shouldn't assume that they are not in bureaucracies, conspiracies, I'm sorry to say, the plots and intrigues and that kind of thing, of that kind take place all the time. And as you rightly say, the Israelis who are all in now, will not want to stop. And some of the Gulf states won't want to stop, because from their point of view, stopping now, the kind of scenario that the Wall Street Journal is outlaw,

lining. Trump ends everything in two weeks, walks away, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. I mean, for the Gulf states, that is the worst possible outcome. It is an existential nightmare. That leaves the Iranians in indefinite control of the Strait of Hormuz, even if they start to allow ships to get through. They will pump up. They will demand hefty fees. the Iranians could make billions out of this long term. And they would be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. I mean, this is something that no one of the Arab leaders there want to see. So they're not going to let Trump do this.

They're not going to agree to anything like that happening. Probably, and they might even be right about this, what they see this, this story in the Wall Street Journal as, is Trump yet again engaging in a shakedown telling the Gulf states indirectly through the media? Look, I'm thinking of walking away, what you need to do is to give me another $100 billion or $200 billion so that I can keep going.

I mean, you know, this is probably what some of the Arab leaders are saying to themselves. But no, no one, none of the major parties are going to help Trump get out of this mess that he's landed himself into. We said before this war began, that Trump was maneuvering himself into Tsukkzwang. And we now see it.

We see it. It thinks have turned out exactly as we said. If the regime in Tehran survived, which he now has, I think we could say that conclusively, then as I said, he is in Zugzwang. And that's exactly where his various opponents and rivals want him to be. Yeah. He did the same thing with Ukraine.

We've said that the best thing for him to do on day one was walk away, but he didn't. He always makes the wrong decision. Yes. Every now and again, he'll say something which provides a glimmer of hope, some clarity in the way he's looking at things. But eventually, he always makes the wrong decision. Always. Always. Without fail, he always makes, at least when it comes to the foreign policy and geopolitics,

he always makes the wrong decision. If he is making the decisions, and we're assuming that he does make decisions, that's our assumption, but, you know, it's just an assumption. And we assume that he wants to try to get out of this conflict. Yes. If the United States was winning and winning big, we wouldn't be seeing this confusion and this panic and all kinds of different statements. The one contradicts the other.

And I mean, sometimes he'll make a statement one minute and then 30 seconds later, he'll issue another statement. And it completely contradicts what he just said 30 seconds ago. That's how confused the messaging is. It is incredibly confused. And by the way, you know, there's all sorts of people who are trying to explain this. You know, this is Trump. He's trying to destabilize people. This is art of the deal.

He's trolling. He's trolling. This is nonsense. That's cope from them. It's cope. It's absolute cope. It isn't that at all. I mean, it clearly isn't.

You don't act like this in the middle of a war. Absolutely not. And the language he's using, I mean, I've, you know, we've been following Trump now for what, 10 years. This shows a man who is very, very agitated and very, very frustrated. and doesn't have a clear idea of where things are going and of what he can do. He's the president, Alexander. He speaks like a five-year-old.

Exactly. And you can be frustrated and you can be confused and you can be all these things. But he's an 80-year-old man who is the president of the United States and he decided to get into a war with Iran. Once again, whether he actually decided or not, it doesn't really matter. He is the person that it is assumed, decided to launch this war. Yes. And the language that he is posting on true social or that is coming out of his mouth is disgraceful. It's the stuff of children.

It really is. He speaks like a child. And now his message, or according to the Wall Street Journal, the message is, I've broken everything. I've destroyed everything, including the lives of people, including 170. girls, those families, including the economies of the world. And now I'm just going to walk away. If the Wall Street Journal article is to be believed. Which is fine. Walk away. Yes. Walk away. Okay. Leave. But we know he's not going to do that. No. No. Right? Exactly. I mean, I don't know. The whole thing is not, I don't know, where are his advisors? Where's his team? Where are the professionals?

in the US government, are there any professionals? Are there any advisors telling him this can't go on any longer? Well, one would like to think so. The other concern one has is whether these people are able to get access to him. And what happens when they do actually approach him? To be frank, I think that everything is all over the place. It is chaotic. and I'm not sure that there are very good advice, frankly.

The Gulf states are now taking the path of the Europeans, the path that they took with Project Ukraine. Yes. Yes. The Gulf states were egging Trump on for this war. We've had a lot of reports claiming that the Gulf states were telling him, okay, no problem, it'll be just a weekend thing, it'll be a quick regime change, assassinating.

Khomey and then we'll be all good on Monday when the market's open in much the same way that Biden sold the war in Ukraine to the Europeans and they were all on board. And instead of doing what the Europeans did not do, which is as things were going bad to tell Trump enough, we're out, they're doing exactly what the Europeans did with Ukraine. They're telling Trump, go faster, go harder, hit them harder, finish this thing quicker, but continue to fight and continue to escalate. This is a huge mistake from the Gulf countries. I mean, I understood what you said earlier, that they're afraid that they're going to now have to deal with the more powerful Iran.

But you know what? You bet on a quick war. You bet on a regime change. You gambled and you lost. So now you have to face the consequences. And those consequences for the UAE and for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Kuwait are that you're going to have to enter to some sort of an agreement or some sort of a deal with Iran so that you can coexist. in much the same way that Europe made the wrong bet on regime change in Russia. And what the Europeans should have done three years ago is they should have,

they should have sat down with Russia and said, you know, we tried to regime change you, Putin. It didn't work. So now we're going to have to find a way to coexist and we're going to accept whatever concessions, you know, you place on us. That would have been the right approach. Absolutely. You lost.

Absolutely. I get to say a few things about the Gulf states, which is in no way. contradicts what you say. I think you're absolutely right. Back in 2023, when Saudi Arabia and Iran seemed to sort out their issues with each other and there appeared to be an improvement in relations, you know, this deal that was brokered by China. I was one who did think that, you know, this is a diplomatic revolution, this would provide stability to the Middle East.

I think what we have seen makes me wonder whether any of that was real. I think what happened was this. I think that I remember MBS when he first became effective leader of Saudi Arabia. His rhetoric against Iran at that time was absolutely extreme. I mean, it was off the wall extreme. I mean, he was, even by Saudi standards, he went further about it. I wrote about this, by the way. I did an article.

You can find it on our website if you look far enough at the time. Then what happened was Joe Biden was elected president. MBS didn't like him. He didn't like any of the Obama people. He also sensed that Joe Biden and the Democrats weren't perhaps quite the people to conduct the war with Iran, that MBS and Co. wanted. And I said, Menacek and Co. I mean, all of the other Gulf states as well, the UAE, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, all of them.

And so they did this deal with the Iranians that was brokered by China. The moment Trump comes back and Joe Biden is gone, they then come back and they revert to their old policy. of hostility to Iran. They say that we they say to themselves, look, Biden is gone. He was weak. He was impossible. He was incompetent. Now we have Trump in the White House. He listens to us. He's the guy who will finally do this thing that we have longed for. Attack Iran, topple the Ayatollahs, do all of these things. He was the man who killed Soleimani. He was the man who did all of those things. And I suspect that over the course of the summer and autumn,

as the Israelis were pressing Trump to attack Iran, the Gulf states and MBS, as indeed the media was reporting, were doing the same. And now the war has started, and it has turned out to be catastrophically wrong. the government in Iran proved much more stable than they imagined, far stronger than they imagined. The war has taken what is for them and a completely disastrous direction. And they don't know what to do, but being so deeply implicated in the start of this war,

they can't let it end and obviously the right thing for them to do is exactly the one that you said go to the Iranians say this has been a disaster we made a terrible mistake we promise we will never do it again let's see some way forward talk to the Russians talk to the Chinese

who have influence over Iran China after all broke at that deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran the Gulf states could do all of that and they could take it forward, but of course they were. What they're doing instead is that they're continuing to tell Trump see it through. Suncost. Yeah, exactly.

Sunk cost fallacy, which is exactly what you've talked about. You've been a business, you have experience in business. You've seen it many times. Ukraine, we've talked about it in Ukraine. It's the same situation here. Yeah, and the crazy part about it is that the Strait of Formos before the war, war was open and free to pass. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this is it, because so long as the current government in Iran survives, there's no reason to think that it will ever once again be free.

The Iranians have seen that they can charge a fee atoll for any ship that passes through. Let's say the war ends tomorrow. Why would the Iranians agree to stop that? It would give them an income stream as big probably as the one they get from all exports. I just say. Yeah. Well, you know, that was the gamble that they made and they lost. Absolutely. Where were their advisors telling them, you know, if you go to war with Iran, we risk

screwing up a very good deal that we have with the Strait of Hormuz? Yes. You know, it's like, it's like, you know, we have a good. We have a good thing with Hormuz. Absolutely, yes. Our ships pass through there free. Any ships. It doesn't matter.

Yes. Why jeopardize that? We're all making money. We don't have to pay any, any tolls, any fees, nothing. Nothing. But it wasn't enough for them. They wanted it all. Yeah.

This is their problem. They wanted it all. It's never, ever enough. Exactly. What does Iran do now? What's going on with Iran, final question? How's Iran looking at? at all of this now?

Well, I mean, they have their own problems. I mean, there's obviously issues within their economy. I mean, they're getting an enormous battering, and we should not overlook that. They're getting an enormous battering too. Exactly. That's the point. I mean, but they're getting a battery. Many of their people have been killed.

Some of them, of course, want to embrace martyrdom. I'm sure that isn't true of everybody. But I think if you are... are looking at this from the perspective of the Iranians. Well, it must seem to them at this precise time that they are winning. And I don't see why they would want to negotiate. I think they feel that they got the Russians solidly behind them, by the way. And this is a story that many people are sort of dancing around. On the one hand, you get articles saying that the Russians are there. and they're running this war and that the Iranians are their proxy.

Well, that obviously isn't true. But there are others who say that the Russians aren't really involved in any way whatsoever. And I don't think that is true either. I think the Russians definitely have an incentive to keep Iran going. I think the Chinese, it's the same. So the Iranians have this backing behind them. They have the ability to launch their drones. They have their ability to launch their missiles.

Above all, they have the ability to keep the Strait of Hormnose closed. They are saying to themselves, perhaps wrongly, perhaps their confidence at this time is misplaced. But up to now, their confidence has never been misplaced. They're saying about ground invasions, operations inside their country, all of those things, seizure of violence. They're saying, bring it on. Bring it on.

It will only leave us in an even stronger position. They're looking at what is happening in the world economy. I read, I think it was in the Financial Times, that in some gas stations now in the US, it's $5 a liter or a gallon or whatever it is that people have in the US. So I mean, from the Iranian supposition, it must see to them that they are winning. And given that they are winning, they are doing what you would, expect them to do, they're setting up their conditions, and they're waiting for the other side decay. And why would they want to change that? Is there a leadership that Trump is talking to?

You know, Carolyn Levitt, she said the other day that Iran is lying when they say there have been no negotiations or there's no leadership that's negotiating with the Trump administration. Those are what she said. She said this in front of the entire media. And I didn't see any pushback from the media to her statement. But I asked the question, is there a leadership that Trump is speaking to? Is it Palavi?

Is it Zelensky acting? Is there someone in Iran somewhere that is negotiating with Trump? Or is this Pakistani mediation? Is this Pakistan passing messages back and forth and Trump is just exaggerating everything in the usual way that he does?

I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve what the Iranians are saying here. I really don't. I mean, the Iranians are in a strong position. So why should they lie about something like this? Trump, as we've discussed in this program, is in Zugswang. He has every incentive to lie. And I think that is what he's doing. So I say lie. Obviously, there are communications taking place. The Americans sent messages to the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis pass them on to the Iranians. Pakistan admits this. The Iranians, by the way, also admit this. I mean, there's no doubt about this. But this is not a negotiation, not a negotiation in any serious sense. If you want to get a negotiation, by the way, there are ways to do it. And again, we discussed it in previous programs, and we discussed it in the program we did with Jim Webb, who, by the way, has been the national security advisor of a presidential candidate. So, you know, he's got experience here. The way you do it is by contacting

those countries that have leverage over the Iranians, the Chinese and the Russians, and you see whether they will use their good offices and their leverage over Iran to set up serious negotiations. In Islamabad, in Istanbul, in Kuala Lumpur, I've seen all of these places suggested, but you get negotiations, real negotiations going in that kind of way. I don't get any sense that that is happening. I think for Trump personally and for other people in the administration,

to come along to the Chinese and the Russians, and to admit that we are in trouble, we are in trouble, is something that they find psychologically and temperamentally impossible to do. And that is why it is not being done. Again, you go back to Nixon and Kissinger. Nixon and Kissinger inherited the Vietnam War. they didn't have that same issue of pride and investment that the Lyndon Johnson administration that got the United States involved in Vietnam did. So they did exactly that. They said to

themselves, who has influence, who has leverage over the North Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Russians. And yes, the United States did have to make big concessions. But, you know, I'm no fan of Nixon. And I consider a Kiersinger one of the most terrible human beings that has ever existed, at least since the Second World War. But they were very clever, and everybody who has studied that period can see that they played the very considerable cards, strong cards that the United States still had with immense skill. And at the end of the process, by the mid-1970s, the United States came out actually in a stronger position than the one it had gone in and in a much stronger position than anyone expected. But that was through proper exercise of diplomacy, of which at the moment we are seeing no sign. I don't even think the United States has cards, big cards left to play.

I think Trump burned those cards. He burned those cards by assassinating negotiators by trying to take out Putin, by capturing, by kidnapping Maduro. I think he's burned a lot of those cards by all the sanctions that he constantly puts on everybody by not walking away from Project Ukraine. by breaking all of the promises, the campaign promises that he made to the American people. I mean, he's burned all of those cards. He's trashed all of it. And the only thing he can do now is address the media by showing pictures of the ballroom or the plans to build a ballroom. That's where we're.

That's where we are. That's where we've arrived at. So I just don't see the cards that he has left to play. And just a final note, wouldn't, if you really wanted to calm the markets for an extended period, not just a day, but say, weeks, wouldn't you want to set up proper negotiations in a location at a big table with two different negotiating teams and a mediator and have it formalized? Wouldn't that really calm the markets? But you see none of that. It's all this secret shadow leader and stuff, which means that it's all bullshit. I mean, that's how you would calm everything down as if you said, okay, we're meeting in Islamabad.

Pakistan's the official negotiator. This is my team of four people. Iran is appointing this team. Maybe it'll take two weeks. Maybe it'll take six weeks. Maybe it'll take a year to work through all this out. The war will continue as we try to. to work through the negotiations, but at least we have a location, a time, a date, teams in place.

And it's real. I mean, it's real. You can see the photo, as you could see the two teams sitting at the table. This is really happening. You see none of that. You're absolutely right. If you want to come and stabilize the situation globally, that is exactly what you do. You work to get negotiations like that started. And by the way, that ought to be the objective. It should not be a ceasefire. It should not be. setting up various terms which the Iranians are not going to accept, which itself, by the way, making ultimatums to the Iranians, is going to make the Iranians even less interested in conducting negotiations. You say to the Iranians, look, we're in this situation, we're in this conflict.

It's in everybody's interests that the fighting ends. Let's sit down and talk. Let's do so with a clean sheet of paper. Let's look at this whole relationship from the start, and see where this is going. And, you know, if you get the Chinese on the side, you get the Russians on side, you get the Pakistanis, the Turks, everyone else, yes, I think you could probably bring the Iranians in time around. When I say in time, I mean within about a week. I don't think it would take much longer than that, actually.

And yes, that would, exactly as you described, it would transform the entire international atmosphere. It will tell people in the markets, this is not going to go on forever. We are going to find a way forward, especially if you put together a serious negotiating team led by serious people. The vice president heading it is an excellent idea, by the way, especially given and he's well-known skepticism about the whole enterprise, but also the fact that he's known to be somebody who pushes hard for the best interests of the US. So you get a serious negotiating team together. The other side has a serious negotiating team.

Nobody's denied that Arakshi is an extremely capable foreign minister. And yes, that would completely transform the entire international atmosphere. And it would take you several weeks, but you could work towards a ceasefire, and then you could set out a framework for further negotiations. And over time, an agreement could be reached, and then the Strait of Hormuz could be opened. And actually, I don't think it would take years. I think if there was good faith negotiations, this all could be sorted relatively quickly. Again, I go back to that program, we did with Jim Webb. The Iranians say they don't want nuclear weapons.

the United States says Iran doesn't shouldn't have nuclear weapons so there's an agreement in principle already there you can build on that and find a way you could improve on what was previously agreed the JCPOA which the US recklessly Trump recklessly walked out of but you could find a proper way forward and it can be done so that's the right way to do it. Absolutely. You're completely, absolutely right. The Iranians don't trust this president for all of the reasons you said. The Russians don't trust this president. For all the many reasons we've discussed. The Chinese don't trust this president either. For all the many reasons we've discussed in many programs. Unfortunately, it goes beyond this particular president.

we have had a long history. We have had before this president, we've had Joe Biden, who was also sanctioning everybody in every possible way, instigating wars and conflicts, speaking in Congress in ways that directly insulted the leader of China. So we've had that problem. And then beyond Biden, we had Trump won. And then beyond Trump won.

We had Obama. And then beyond Obama, we had. George W. Bush and then beyond George W. Bush, we had the Clintons. The history, the recent history, is incredibly bad. It is going to be very, very difficult to get people to sit down and trust the United States and negotiate with them seriously anymore. Even in Obama's Day, there were people in Russia who were saying that the United States is agreement incapable. I mean, I remember when they were saying that.

But the point is, and by the way, there are many people watching these programs who will say it too. But the point is, if you are the government of the United States, if you care about American interests, if you care about the wider interests of the global community and the international system, and what used to be called the collective West, and more importantly, the people who live in the collective West, not the dreadful crowd of vassals who populate the chancellaries in Europe, but actually the real people who live in all of these countries. Well, it is your duty to try, to actually try and find a way back and to try to rebuild trust with all of these people. It may be unbelievably difficult. It may be all but impossible. But it is your job.

And you can at least point out to these countries, to the Iranians, to the Chinese, to the Russians, to all of the the others, that yes, despite everything, we do still all have a common interest to preserve peace, to preserve trade. We accept now that sanctions are incompatible with trade. I mean, the point has now been made. The Americans talk about freedom of navigation all the time. How is freedom of navigation possible when there is no freedom of trade? How is that compatible with Sanchez? You're blowing up ships. You're blockading Cuba. You're here. Do you take all of these things? Exactly. So yes, you can, realistically, it is a labor of at least a decade. But the effort must be made. And if it's done consistently, well, perhaps you might get. there in the end. Unfortunately, one doubts that with people like Lindsay Graham around and others

like him, it will ever be done consistently. He's in Disney World, Alex. He's in Disney World. I know exactly. I mean, you know, can I say something? I mean, he's hiding. I mean, that's what he is doing. I mean, he's now being finally criticized even by people within his own party. He doesn't want to answer questions anymore because he made all sorts of claims about how easy this was all going to be that weren't working out. So he's hiding in Disneyland. But can I just say something? I mean, he can hide. But when things change, we all know what's going to happen. He's going to come back and he's going to repeat the same things all over again. He's not going to learn anything. He's not going to change anything. His approach is not going to be any different. We have recently learned how much

influence Rupert Murdoch has had over decision making, which again, I find incredible, but apparently it's true, unless there is a fundamental political change in the United States itself, than the kind of diplomatic process that I talked about, which is, as I said, it's the duty of the United States to at least try to do, however difficult it is. But without that change, without that understanding in Washington, that things cannot go on like this, it's going to be, it's going to fail almost from the first moment. Because nobody trusts the United States. government anymore. Not the Cubans, not the Venezuelans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the Iranians before long, not the Gulf states either. The Israelis are not going to trust the

United States. Nobody is going to trust the United States before very long. Nothing's going to change, unfortunately. No, nothing is going. I agree with everything you're saying. But it's not going to change. One of the purposes, as far as I'm concerned, of this channel, is to point out that when people say that there is no alternative, that we must continue to do what we're doing, even as it goes from one disaster to the next, there are alternatives. There are alternatives, and they can be followed, and they might in time, if followed consistently, lead to better outcomes. I don't say that with any expectation that that will happen. I don't say that with any belief that any of the people who might make the difference are even listening.

But unless somebody says it, you know, it's just us, but we're not the only people who say these things. Unless these things are said, then, of course, they cannot ever take place. All right. We will end it there. The durand.com. We're on Rumble. We're on Telegram.

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