The Duran Podcast - Trump, maximum pressure on Iran

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Trump, maximum pressure on Iran

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Iran and the Financial Times article, which claims that Trump's policy towards Iran is going to be one of maximum pressure. Are those the words that the Financial Times are used? Yeah, maximum pressure, right? It absolutely was sanctions. It's going to be, in effect, another return to suffocate the Iranian economy. by strangling its oil exports. But a lot has changed now.

A lot has changed since when Trump was president and they implemented this maximum pressure policy towards Iran. We've now got BRICS. Iran is a full member of BRICS. Iran is integrating their payment systems with many BRICS nations. Russia. They've integrated the payment cards,

the MIR card and the Iran payment card. They're exporting a lot of oil to China. A lot has changed. So why would maximum pressure, why would a maximum pressure policy, which didn't work in 2016 during his first term, when Iran was more vulnerable, why would something like that work now when Iran is in a much better position? I don't think it will work, is the short answer. I think you've sounded up exactly correctly. It didn't work before in 2018, at a time. It didn't work before. In 2018,

time when Iran was still largely isolated. Today, Iran is not isolated to anything like the same extent. Its economic position is much stronger. Its economy has been growing quite rapidly recently. As you've rightly said, it's become a full member of the bricks. It's involved in the setting up the various financial and trading systems that were discussed in Kazan. It's recently agreed. a payment structure with the Russians, and of course it's exporting oil to China in a big way. And China has proved very resistant to all attempts to try to persuade it to stop importing oil from Russia,

and I'm sure they will do the same with Iran. So I don't think it's going to work, and I don't know why this isn't understood clearly in Washington. They've not really been talking very much, about what happened in Kazan. It's as if they don't want to face the reality that that is happening.

But for the moment at least, that seems to be the plan and if it means that there's not going to be an attack on Iran, well, I think the Iranians who responded to this decision, the Iranian foreign minister, has just made the point that we've just made that it failed before and it's going to fail again. I think the Iranians will be actually quietly relieved if this is the course that the United States

and the Trump administration is going to be taking. They would much rather be involved in sanctions war, which they know they can weather, than they would in an all-out military conflict involving Israel and the United States. In a hot war, yeah. Do you believe this Financial Times reporting? Because I say that, given that over the past couple of weeks,

We've had the, was it the New York Times, I believe, that reported on the phone call between Putin and Trump. I don't know if it was the New York Times to watch the post. We also had the story about Musk speaking with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, which Iran has also denied. The Russians denied the call between Putin and Trump. So we've had all of these reports about a Trump policy and the Trump plan. You've had a lot of reports about Trump's plan for Russia.

None of them originating from Trump. There's been a lot of reporting which has claimed one thing and has been denied almost immediately by Russia, by Iran. And now you have the financial times coming out and saying, this is Trump's policy. Do you believe that this is really Trump's policy or are we seeing once again, as we saw in the case of Russia, the reporting on trust plan with Russia, are we seeing people who are associated with Trump, who once upon a time worked with Trump, tell him the financial times. This is what I think he's going to do. Right. I think that that might be the case. You're absolutely correct. We've had all kinds of

stories fed to the media and fed purposefully in order to basically box or munichael. for Trump into unsatisfactory positions. So we've had attempts by, for example, as you rightly say, to pretend that there's been a telephone call between Putin and Trump. It turned out that there was no such call. We've had the discussion, the claims that Elon Musk has met with the Iranian ambassador at the UN. That simply wasn't true. We've had all the various peace, sorry, peace plans that supposedly Trump, but supposedly Trump,

is thinking about with to end the conflict in Ukraine, and it looks as if Trump has not, in fact, endorsed any of those plans. So all of this is clearly maneuvering of some kind. There is one thing about this article that I think makes me more likely to give credence to it than to some of these other things, which is that I don't think Donald Trump wants a war in the Middle East either. I think that he would prefer to try and stabilise the situation,

militarily speaking, in the Middle East, rather than escalate it. At the same time, he is deeply committed to Israel, and he's packing his administration with people who are loyal to him, but who also are people who are very antagonistic, very hostile, to Iran. So he's able to say by coming forward with this plan

that, look, I'm not soft on Iran. I'm pursuing maximum pressure on Iran. I'm standing by Israel. I'm putting the Iranians in their place. I'm asserting the power of the United States.

But I'm doing that in a way that doesn't involve me and the United States in another war. And if I read Trump's thinking correctly, I can see how that makes sense from his point of view. He doesn't want a war, but he cannot afford to appear soft on Iran, certainly not given the kind of people that he's now relying on to carry forward his domestic agenda in the United States.

So I can see why this plan, the maximum pressure plan, is attractive to him. And that gives me some reason to think that this time the article is probably true. All right. Final question. How does Netanyahu put pressure on Trump to escalate militarily? Because that's what he's going to try to do. Absolutely. And that's going to be the major problem going forward.

because Netanyahu is not going to be satisfied with this. He's going to say, this isn't what I want at all. I actually want to go after the head of the snake, as the Israelis like to say. The way to do that is by attacking Iran. He can maximum pressure isn't going to succeed. It's not going to cut it. So he's going to be agitating for all kinds of things that he's going to be trying to escalate the war in Lebanon,

and he's going to be demanding more and more. assistance from the US. This really ultimately comes down to how strong as a president Trump himself is going to be because he is president. He does dominate polis the political situation in the United States. He's two times a winner in the political conflicts in the United States. He's defeated the Democrats and defeated them big. He is is in strong, you know, position with his own party. And by taking this approach of maximum pressure, he's buying himself some degree of political cover.

If he really does want to avoid a war, which I think he does, I mean, this is my own analysis, my own understanding of his intentions. He does want to avoid a war. And by the way, I should add, J.D. Vance, his vice president, has already said, that it is not in the US's interest to get involved in a war with Iran.

If this is what Trump intends to do, then I think he has much more chance of reigning in Netanyahu and the Israelis say, look, you've got to wait, we're going to pursue maximum pressure on the Iranians. We are not being soft on the Iranians, but you have to do it my way. And if you don't, well, there's going to be strains and difficulties between us.

We'll start withdrawing some intelligence cooperation and that kind of thing. And if you do want to get into a conflict with Iran without us, then you're by yourself. And of course, Netanyahu knows that Israel cannot win an armed conflict with Iran, cannot afford an armed conflict with Iran without the full support of the United States. All right, we will end the video there. The Duran dot locals. Come, go to a Duran shop, kickups in the virtual.

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