The Duran Podcast - US-Iran talks, Russia positioned to be guarantor

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

US-Iran talks, Russia positioned to be guarantor

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the negotiations with Iran and the United States. We had the second round of talks between the Iranian foreign minister and Trump's envoy, Steve Whitkoff. He is now the envoy for Iran as well. Okay. He met the foreign minister in Rome, and I believe Oman was continuing. to mediate these talks. And the outlook provided by Adakshi, the foreign minister of Iran, was actually very positive. He did say that things are going well, cautiously optimistic, I believe, were the words that he used.

And we're going to be entering into technical talks in the next coming weeks between the United States and Russia. What are your thoughts on the negotiations? Well, in some respects, and we've discussed this before, there should not be an impossibly difficult negotiation. Because the Iranians have consistently said they don't want nuclear weapons, and the Americans have consistently said they don't want the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons. So the parties appear to agree on the objective, on the end point. The only thing that separates them is the means to get there. And the means to get there are now becoming increasingly clear. So the Iranians give up their existing stockpile of enriched uranium, the stoppile that goes up to 60%. Apparently, there has a hand it over to the Russians again. The Americans then lift sanctions. There is more, there is more surveillance of Iran to make sure that they don't resume enrichment in the way that they had. This agreement, unlike the JCPOA, is indefinite. It has no end point. The JCPOA was just for 10

years, this agreement would be an indefinite agreement. The role of the Russians is going to be much bigger this time. Now, we've had an article about this in The Guardian, and the article talks about the guarantees that the Iranians are going to get from the Russians who are facilitating these negotiations. The Russians will not only take possession of Iran, nuclear stockpile. But if the United States reneges on any part of the deal, then the Russians will return the nuclear stockpile to Iran. And that's in the Guardian. Apparently, it's fairly well understood that this is what is being talked about. And of course, the Russians will be, as we discussed many times, present in Iran. They will have their people there. They will be

providing Iran with new weapons systems, with Suhoi 35 fighter jets and more advanced anti-aircraft missiles, and probably in time integrating Iran's air defense system into their own and all the kinds of things, all providing Iran with a level of security it has not had up to now, but Iran will not be a nuclear power. Now, Arachi has met with Witkoff several times, now. He's also just been to Moscow. He's had a meeting with Putin. He's had extensive meetings with Lavrov. You can see that the Russians are fully engaged and on side with this. And the Saudi Defence Minister has just travelled to Iran. And we can see that the Saudis are also involved in some ways that we don't exactly know in what ways. So all of the pieces,

in theory, to get a successful deal are in place. The Russians want this. The Iranians want this. Whitgolf and the Americans want this. The Saudis want this. The objective is not difficult to achieve. It should all be within sites. We should be able to get the deal wrapped up.

Perhaps in three, four, six weeks, it's not impossible. What's holding this back? Well, the trouble is that for some people in Washington and for some people in Israel, and by the way, quite a lot of people in Europe, preventing Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not actually the final desired endpoint. the final desired end point is regime change in Iran. And they're coming back and they're putting more pressure again. And you could see that.

So Whitkov comes back from Iran. He speaks optimistically about how the proposal is going forward successfully. Then Trump makes statements, which he's clearly been pushed into making by other American officials, probably by the Israelis as well, which start making. would start adding more demands to the discussions that took place in Oman. They make further demands about Iran giving up all nuclear enrichment entirely, disestablishing its entire nuclear program, even its civil nuclear program, that kind of thing, things which the Iranians are not going to agree to,

and which clearly some people know that, and which look calculated to prevent a negotiation with Iran reaching a conclusion. And even as the negotiations move forward, you hear reports about troop, military deployments, about bombers being forward positioned in order to conduct strikes against Iran. You hear reports about some kind of ground operation in Yemen being discussed in Washington, a disastrous idea, by the way. I mean, I have no idea who is thinking of this and what they think it would achieve. And again, you have this constant narrative about how Iran is weak, how its air defense system was destroyed, about how the regime is isolated, and is in much more fragile position since the loss.

of Syria and all we need to do is to push a little bit harder to launch our strikes against Iran rather more aggressively and we will get what we want. And as by the way you've discussed in a recent program on your channel, we know, we now know that we again came very, very close to another, to an actual attack on Iran. The Israeli came along. They provided Trump with a whole suggestion, a whole proposal list of targets that could be attacked in Iran. They told Trump that, you know, we should attack those targets. It was clearly envisaged as a plan for a military strike on Iran. And Trump actually said no and stopped it in its tracks.

But the fact that the Israelis came up with this proposal at all shows that they must have had some support for some people within the administration and in Washington. So we are close to an agreement, but the counter forces are so strong. And the idea that victory over Iran is within reach is also so strong, it's going to be very difficult to get this through. What do you make about the report that Israel is pitching to the Trump administration

limited strikes without the U.S.'s involvement? What do you make of those sometime in the summer? Well, have we not heard this before? Limited strikes. It's like, it's like, you know, the Macron's plan in Ukraine last year, limited deployments by French troops and all that. The United States doesn't have to be involved. Leave it to us. We can do it all by ourselves. All we require is of some intelligence from you, that kind of thing, you know, invisible assistance. But you don't have to be directly involved.

Your people don't have to be directly involved. The reality is that Israel cannot by itself inflict significant. damage on Iran's nuclear program. Now, or indeed Iran's military, I suspect. So when the Israelis are saying this, just like when Macron was talking last year about sending troops to Ukraine, what he really wants to do, what the Israelis really want to do, is that they want to provoke a crisis with Iran because there will be an Iranian reaction. There would be counterstrikes on Israel, which would draw in the United States. It's still the objective of killing the head of the snake, taking out the head of the snake.

So, and drawing the United States into this conflict. When people say, when people tell the Americans, look, we're going to do all of this. We just need you to agree. We don't need your support. the Americans need to be especially careful because clearly, but people say that they have another agenda on their minds. Now, I just say something about Iran. I don't know how extensive the damage as a result of that Israeli strike to the Iranian air defense system really was. The Israelis say that it destroyed the entire S-300 air defense system. The Iranians dispute that.

vigorously. I'm not there. I don't know. But the idea that Iran is in a weaker position than it was back in 2015 is completely wrong. Iran may have lost its ally in Syria, but it has gained far more powerful friends since then. It's now a member of Bricks. It has a strategic partnership agreement with Russians. It's reestablished economic, economic, relations with China, the Strategic Partnership Agreement with Russia contains security provisions. Iran, from every point of view, is in a much stronger position to resist a long war this time than it was had that war happened in 2015. Again, people are not looking at the totality of the of the, of the war.

the reality of the situation now. And I'm going to say something else. Clearly, this deal has to involve the Russians. And apparently the Iranians are now saying, can I get at getting this from the Guardian? That they don't want the United Nations involved, and they don't want the Europeans involved either. Because the Europeans acted as the guarantors for the JCPOA, and they weren't able to fulfill their guarantee. The people they now trust to act as guarantors of this new agreement are the Russians. It's in the Guardian. The Guardian is saying this. This isn't myself, you know, inferring this. It is there. It will be the Russians who will provide the guarantee. And that tells you that today Iran's position is actually very, very much stronger because they're now going

to get guarantees, which they weren't able to get before from, they're able to get guarantees from a country that conceives of itself as an ally of Iran and which is itself a nuclear power, whereas in 2015, they had to look to allies of the United States to act as a nuclear power. guarantors. And of course, we saw that those guarantees were never on. Yeah, that's a good point. The Europeans can't be trusted. They're not neutral. They're not honest brokers. They're vassals of the United States. So you go to Russia and I think you brought this up maybe two months ago. You actually mentioned that Russia is going to play a part in this. A lot of people said, no, this is crazy. What are you guys talking about?

But sure enough, here we are. Russia is playing a part of this, a very important part. But you don't only have Russia. When you talk about Iran, you talk about Bricks now. When you talk about Iran and Russia, you're talking more about Bricks. With Russia comes China and comes the entirety of Bricks. The U.S. is in a conflict, a hot war, more than a proxy war, coalition war. with Russia. They're very much involved in a war with Russia, and they're trying to negotiate

some sort of way out of this, if you want to believe that. The Trump administration is trying to figure out how to get out of this conflict with Russia. They're now in a very hot economic war with China. And now you have Iran. How does all of this play out? Iran is a simple one to to resolve if you really want to resolve it. But when dealing with Iran, you also have to deal with Israel as well. And Israel does not want to deal with Iran. The U.S. is involved in all kinds of problems, many of them of their own making. Most of them, most of them, but their own making. They're mostly of their own making. I mean, this is where we come back to that comment that we've made so many times in so many programs about the neocons who captured control of the US foreign policy

in the 1990s and have held a lot grip over it ever since. And still have still, despite the fact that Trump has pushed back against them in some respects, they still exercise far too much influence in Washington, which is that these people have no reverse gear. So it's completely unsurprising. It is in fact completely predictable that these people would eventually lead the United States into multiple conflicts all around the world against a whole host of enemies who are, of course, now cooperating with each other. So you're absolutely right. They've got this conflict with China. We've got this conflict with Iran. We've got this coalition war, proxy war. Could have called it whatever you like. The United States is clearly a direct party in Russia.

with Russia, and it's trying to do too much in too many places all at the same time. And the United States itself now acknowledges that its resources are now being stretched beyond breaking point. It needs to start to find ways to de-escalate some of these crises. But whenever we get to the point where we look like we might be on the brink of a breakthrough in any one of these crises, with Witkoff going to Moscow, for example, the coming back with all kinds of proposals on the Russians, which, as he's correctly points out, don't act contrary to the core interests of the United States. when Wilcoff again comes back from Oman or Rome and says, you know, look, this deal with the Iranians is there.

It's there for the taking. Again, they're not demanding the impossible things. The Russians can help us that they're offering to. They want to help us. Whenever anything like that happens, we get the same people. You know, the neocons of various types and various stripes. They all come back and they don't, no, no, we can't do this. We can't make these concessions doing this.

Rewards bad behavior. It makes it more likely that the Chinese will attack Taiwan. They come up with some explanation, some reason for saying that, you know, we can't make these concessions. And they always say the same thing. The other side is weak. We are strong. All we need to do is push back hard.

The Russians, their economy is in. Their army is exhausted. Iran, they're in a much weaker position that they were previously. They've lost Syria. Hezbollah's leadership has been decapitated. Their air defense system has collapsed. China is basically all smoke and mirrors. Their economy isn't really that strong.

They depend on us as a big market. They always say this. And they always have, you know, armies of people. who write these articles in the various big journals in the United States. And when you read them, you know, they look like they're well argued, except that they never are. They always skip over inconvenient facts. But they always push back.

And that makes it, because these people are so influential, and because American domestic politics are so partisan, and because they also hold a lock grip on parties. of the American political class, including around 25 Republican senators, just to say, it becomes incredibly difficult to negotiate these agreements with Iran, with Russia, with China, maybe over Taiwan or the South China Sea, which are there for the taking. They could be agreed. They would be very straightforward to do. If we're talking about Taiwan, I don't want to discuss Taiwan extensively on this program. But in my opinion, there's a deal available on Taiwan. Go back to

what existed before, you know, Barmer and all of these people started to stir up the pot in Taiwan. Just let it continue as an autonomous entity, treated if you like, as an economic entity, but just go on recognizing the fact that China is the, you know, the country. Anyway, you can do things, but they never do that. They don't negotiate with China over Taiwan. They are negotiating with Iran, but the agreement as is there is almost within reach. But you get all of these people who say, no, we can't do that. And the proposals they make to the Russians in the conflict in Ukraine are such as the Russians

will never accept, and which makes. no sense if for the Russians, as even a cursory understanding of this problem would make clear. Until we break from this tradition of no reverse gear, we are going to find the United States constantly getting into these conflicts. And that is something the Trump and the people around him need to understand. Yeah, just a final note, the interesting thing is that you have Trump's envoy, Whitkoff, who is outside of the government structures, the media constantly points this out. They constantly mock him as he's the real estate agent that Trump is sending around the world. But to be fair to Whitkoff, he does appear to be able to find common ground with the people

that he negotiates with, whether it's in Iran or whether it's in Russia. And he also did manage to get a ceasefire in Gaza four or five months ago. He does seem to be able to negotiate. This is clear, but there's always other forces that derail his agreements or his possible agreements. And Trump, the Trump White House always goes with those other forces, those establishment forces, which makes you wonder, why send Wickoff then? Why do it?

If you're not going to commit to him to what he's doing, then why go down that path? Just send Rubio. He is your secretary of state. What is Rubio doing? Does he just sit in his office and just spoil whatever Wickhoff is negotiating? Is that what his purpose is? Well, as far as I can see, that is exactly what his purpose is. I mean, the point is that Whitgolf is supposed to be the lead negotiator, but he is not

the Secretary of State. He is not the National Security Advisor. He doesn't have any formal role. Now, you talk about the fact that Whitgolf comes from outside the structures, and nonetheless, he's able to have a more realistic understanding of these conflicts, and is able to be able to able to negotiate them more successfully. Well, the reason he's able to do that is because he comes from outside the structures. He's not somebody who's, you know, brought up in near con thinking and absolutely conditioned with it and cannot see beyond it. Precisely because he is an outsider,

he can see the facts and he can see the opportunities far more clearly, which is why, course, the foreign policy apparatus doesn't like him and I'd be pushing back against him all the time. But you're absolutely right. Unless the president finally commits himself fully to Wittgoff's course, because the neocons control the institutions, they will always pull the president back. It's not difficult to understand because neocons are not going to change their habits of a lifetime. They're not going to make concessions, which, I mean, neocons don't negotiate. That's the first thing to say. I mean, the United States is a state department would stop doing negotiations a long, long time ago. I mean, they don't negotiate.

They don't compromise. They don't make concessions. All of that is impossible for them to do. their entire conception of foreign policy is that the United States comes, makes demands, and the other side submits. That's the only approach they know how to make. And when somebody like Witkoff comes along and actually looks for common ground and acceptable solutions and shows a certain willingness to make concessions, it's called a question. appeasement. We have, you know, Munich and 1938, uh, revived all over again and Chamberlain and all of that. And, you know, this has been utterly disastrous, but it's brought us to what brought us to the point that you said. It's not working. It's not working. It's failing

miserably, actually. It cannot work. What it has done is exactly what you said. It's landed the United States into all of these conflicts simultaneously in all of these multiple places. The global south has become increasingly exasperated. There are people in Europe, obviously, who are themselves neocons are are fervidly supportive of all of this. But the long-term effect is disastrous. But, I mean, if you expect the neocons ever to have that moment of realization, I mean, they never will, because that's not what they are.

You know the interesting part to all of this, to all of the conflicts that the U.S. is now stuck in? If the Trump administration had taken our advice that we gave nine months ago, nine months ago we gave this advice, walk away from Ukraine, normalize relations with Russia. If this had been done on January 21st, then with a normalization, three months later, after January 21st, with the, with the, with the, with the, with the, with the, of the, more advanced normalization that would have probably happened between the United States and Russia, Ukraine completely off the table, not an issue for the Trump administration. I just want to find good relations with Russia. Many of these problems involve Russia, or Russia could play a key role in helping to mediate or solve these problems. You would be looking at a very different situation today for the United States, whether you're talking about Iran, whether you're talking

about Gaza, whether you're talking about Israel, whether you're talking about China, whether you're talking about Syria, whatever, whatever the issue, Russia is there. The US dollar, the position is the US dollar, trade, energy, all of these things. I know, I know, I know. But no, again, as I said, doing that, going down that route is appeasement, it's Neville Chamberlain, it's all of that. So, you know, what you said, peace through strength, it's... It's actually a disastrous meme.

It leads you down a complete blind alley. Because, of course, at that point, you worry all the time about whether instead of strength you're conveying weakness, which is a hopeless approach to take in negotiations. Do you remember an interview with Putin where he did say something along the lines of Russia may not be at the superpower level, the complete superpower level of, say, China and the United States, but Russia makes a difference in so many parts of the world. I forgot the exact quote, but Putin did say something along those lines. He did indeed say, and we know when he said it. We don't have the exact words because, of course, they were never sent in a public place.

But what happened was this, and I can tell you exactly, was it happened back in 2011. them. Putin was at that time prime minister. Medvedev was president. Medvedev and Putin had agreed that they would switch places again and that Putin would run for president in the election in 2012. The Obama White House, Obama himself, and he's, and McFaw, his ambassador, and Biden was his vice president, had were determined to stop Putin becoming president again. So they sent off Biden to Moscow and told Putin under no circumstances, are you going to become president again? If you do, that will not be looked upon favorably by the United States.

And Putin was furious and he said to Biden, Biden, we make our own decisions here in Russia. We don't have you decide for us who our president should be. And then Biden came back and said, look, you've got to understand that you're not a superpower any longer. You can't dominate the world as apparently you want to do. And then Putin apparently shot back and said, look, we're not interested in dominating the world. And of course, we are not a superpower like the United States. But we do have the power to decide who will dominate in the future.

It won't be us, but who we align with. That was what happened. Apparently, this very, very fierce argument that took place between Putin and Biden all those years ago. And which, by the way, neither of them ever forgot. and which explains to a great extent Biden's animus against Putin ever since. In 2011. It's a pretty prophetic statement from Putin. It shows that Putin does have a very clear understanding of geopolitics.

Absolutely. And understands Biden doesn't. Biden doesn't. He understands also the limits of Russian power. This is a thing. I mean, Putin is many things, but he's certainly no megalomaniac as. Some people in the West like to suppose. Yeah.

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