The Duran Podcast - US-Iran talks, sabotage?

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

US-Iran talks, sabotage?

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Iran. I believe we had the third round, the third meeting of talks between the U.S. and Iranian officials. And the part that a lot of people are talking about is that while these talks were taking place, there was a huge explosion at a southern port, Bandad al-Bas, I believe is the port's name, a massive, massive explosion. Some journalists are saying, analysts are saying it wasn't one explosion. It was three explosions. Hard to confirm any of this. We don't really have much information at all as to what happened. This does remind me of the explosion that happened in Lebanon. Remember that explosion? I forgot the time that that happened a couple of years back.

But a very big explosion. Iranian authorities are investigating what's going on or what happened. The reports that were getting from the Iranian port authorities is that there were some chemicals and storage, I believe they said, that caught fire and they were mishandled. But you also have Iranian authorities saying that there were no chemicals used for fuel, for weapons fuel or anything like that that were stored in this facility. So they put out a message saying to journalists do not talk about some sort of weapons fuel at this facility because that's fake news. Hard to get an understanding as to what happened. A lot of people are saying sabotage. and a lot of people are pointing the finger at Israel as this sabotage.

It's worth noting that the IDF has said that they had nothing to do with this. So they actually came out with a statement and said they had nothing to do with it. That's the situation right now, this massive blast at this port. What are your thoughts on it? Well, I think most people who follow the user, at least a lot of them, are going to assume that it was sabotage. I'm not convinced that it was. I mean, I don't know for a fact that it was.

And I think a few things do need to be said here, which is that Iran has been under intense sanctions pressure for years. It's likely that this has had an effect, a fraying effect, on the operation of Iran's infrastructure. It is not impossible that, you know, chemicals, were mishandled, that generally was negligence and that this resulted in this enormous explosion. The trouble is that, you know, you can say this and you can make a very plausible case that this was actually an accident. And the Iranians are not saying that it was anything else at the moment.

But I know an awful lot of people are going to say, look, almost certainly it was Israeli sabotage, because of course we've had a very, very long history of Israeli sabotage against Iran, going all the way back to the Sukk's net virus that was inserted into Iran's nuclear and other facilities back in Obama's time to all kinds of assassinations that have been carried out on Iranian territory, including, by the way, the assassination of the political head of Hamas, you remember at the time when President Pej de Chaghan was being inaugurated. And what are the other features of a lot of these Iranian, sorry, Israeli sabotage attacks on Iran is that regularly, routinely, the Israelis deny involvement.

And then sometimes years later, we discover that they were involved at some level. And the Iranians also deny involvement. They deny that the Israelis were involved. They also say, you know, this wasn't really sabotage. It all happened because of these other reasons, because they don't want to admit that their security systems have been penetrated. So I'm afraid you can't trust the denials. and there are possible explanations.

And I want to stress it's all very hypothetical because, as you correctly said, we really don't know. But there are possible explanations why there would be a sabotage attack at this time. First of all, the negotiations between the United States and Iran, the ones that have been conducted by Witkoff and Arachi do appear to be making

some progress. We don't know how much, but it does look as if some kind of progress is happening. Now, and we can get some sense of what the outlined deal or agreement might be, which is that Iran transfers its nuclear material, its enriched nuclear material to Russia. Lavrock gave a long interview on Face the Nation, the United States, which he says, you know, absolutely, Russia is prepared to help in any way that it can to facilitate this process. And the idea of transferring nuclear material to Russia was brought up over the course of this interview. And Lavrov said, absolutely, you know, we did this in 2015. We would be prepared to do this again.

So Iran's nuclear material is transferred to Russia. Russia agrees to supply arms to Iran. And the Iranians have been coming out and they've been giving us details of what arms the Russians would be prepared to supply to Iran. Or in fact, they wouldn't be prepared, have already agreed to supply to Iran. These include Suhoi 35 fighter jets, yak-130 ground attack aircraft, and also MI28, a helicopter gunships, you know, powerful weapons. And as on top of that, almost certainly, the Russians would take steps to sort out and build up Iran's air defense system. There's reports that the United States in return for Iran giving up its nuclear material would lift or at least relax sanctions. The Russians are already in effect ignoring most of the sanctions.

But anyway, that's the idea. By the way, I would just say Russia is now itself exporting natural gas to Iran. Iran is a major gas producer, but because of the chaos within its industry, the way its industry has become very run down. It is short of gas for its own domestic market. The Russians are stepping in and are now started to supply Iran with gas. And presumably over time, there would be major cooperation. between Russia and Iran to step up and redevelop Iran's natural gas industry. But anyway, moving forward, the Russians would take the nuclear material.

They'd supply the weapons. There is reports saying that the United States would then relax some sanctions. The Russians would then tell Iran that if the Americans went back on what they promised, they would return the nuclear material, the enriched uranium to Iran. So all of the pieces are starting to fall into place with all of this. Arachi, who was the, who's the Iranian foreign minister, went to Moscow. He had long discussions with Lavrov. He then met Putin himself.

We haven't been told very much about that meeting, but apparently whatever it was, it went well. The Sultan of Oman, who is the mediator between the Americans and the Iranians, also, visited Moscow. He too had a long and very, very friendly meeting with Putin. So you could see that the negotiations are moving forward. Now, as we know, there are a lot of people, both in the United States and in Israel, who don't want to see these negotiations come to fruition. They want they want instead an attack on Iran. They've been agitating and pressing for it for at least 20 years. They are now spreading the narrative that Iran is weaker than it's ever been

that the collapse of Assad's government in Syria exposes Iran to attack because Israel can use Syrian airspace to launch missile strike. closer to Iran and that the Israelis in the military exchanges that took place in October destroyed Iran's S-300 air defense system. So, you know, these people want a conflict. They want presumably the negotiations to fail or collapse or be ended. So you can see how sabotaging an very important Iranian seaport, it's the port which is most important or was historically

the most important seaport for exporting Iranian oil, just to say Bandai Bas has a very long history, is a major oil exporting port for Iran, launching a sabotage attack upon it. causing it massive destruction will affect the Iranian economy in the short term, but it would also possibly goad Iran into taking some kind of counter reaction against Israel, presumably, which would wreck the whole negotiations and bring forward that moment when the attack on Iran took place. So I'm afraid, despite all that we've been told, that

it was an accident, both the Iranians and the Israelis telling us it was an accident. There is a very, very plausible scenario whereby it was not, and that it was a genuine sabotage attempt in order to lead to a conflict and to bring to a stop, nuclear negotiations, it appear to be progressing well, but which powerful people, both in Israel and the United States, don't want to see happen. So that, unfortunately, is where we are.

So if it was a sabotage, if it was a sabotage, maybe it wasn't so much about chemicals for weapons. Maybe that's a misdirection. And if it was a sabotage, maybe this was about damaging the Iranian economy. I mean, that's possible, right? Absolutely. I mean, it had nothing to do, because everyone's talking chemicals and rocket fuel and weapons and all of this stuff.

That's what a lot of the analysts, social media, that's what they're talking about. But maybe this was just a sabotage on Iran's economy. Absolutely. To me, it looks like an attack on Iran's oil exports. I mean, Iran is a major exporter of oil. It's a major customer, by the way. It's biggest customer.

China imports an awful lot of oil from Iran. That's interesting. Yes, there have been other times when Iran has exported oil to India, but mostly now it is China. And of course, as we know, China is involved in a trade war with the United States. So, you know, disrupting Iranian oil exports at this time, you could say, serves two purposes. It puts pressure on China because it's not able to get all the oil it needs. And it puts enormous pressure on Iran because oil is what... Much of the economy of Iran is structured around.

So that's what it looks like to me. It looks more like an attempt to disrupt Iranian oil exports than to damage Iran's military. Just saying. Does this derail the progress made in the negotiations between the United States and Iran? Well, again, this is where it becomes very interesting. with the Iranians denying that it was a sabotage attempt, they're taking away the pressure on themselves if it was a sabotage attempt of having to respond.

And something else was very interesting happened because the moment this explosion took place, and we got all of these reports, the Russians, Putin contacted Iran. So, you know, we're terribly sorry about what has happened. Putin wrote a letter to Hamanae, Iran's supreme leader, you know, expressing, you know, huge condolences for this. It's on the Kremlin's website.

And the Russians rushed or said they're going to rush an aid to Iran to repair this damage. So again, you can see that this works at various levels. On the one hand, it's telling the Iranians, look, for heaven's sake, don't be provoked. We will help you out of this. We will help you get this port back working again so that your oil exports can continue. And of course, given the China is the biggest importer of Iranian oil, it's a nice gesture to China too.

All right. We will end the video there, the durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Petit, Telegram, RockFit, and X. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch, like what we are wearing in this video. So update the link is in the description box down below. Use the code spring 15 to get that discount. One quick question before we exit, Alexander. Do you think we'll ever find out what happened to this port?

Yes, actually. One of the funny, one of the things about this sort of thing is that eventually the people who do these things have an enormous initiative. If this was sabotage, they eventually can't resist telling us about it. So in one, two, three, five years time, we'll be hearing the whole story. Of course, if it was simply an accident, then probably, you know, we won't hear. But if it was sabotage, at some point we will probably find out. All right. Take care.