The Duran Podcast - War in Inevitable - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

War in Inevitable - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi, everyone. Welcome. My name is Glenn Deeson, and I'm joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Alistair Crook, a very famous, well-known, top British, as well as EU diplomats. And, well, the topic today is, well, more or less if war is unavoidable, based on an article written by Alster Crook. So this, of course, focused mainly then on Israel's war. now also with Hezbollah and the possibility of our, or the prospect of unavoidable war with Iran. But in terms of the whole idea of war becoming unavoidable, one could always extend this towards Russia as well. Because I guess what was unique there was for years and years, we seemed to reject all possible peaceful solution or peace agreements.

And meanwhile, pushing towards war becoming the only solution. Now, but again, we really wanted to focus on the Middle East first. But perhaps we could begin with this article you wrote, because I found out to be very fascinating. You wrote more or less the image of the world being pushed as being either liberal democracy or all this bad actors, which is seemingly in cahoots. And I guess the main problem is if you see your adversary as being pure evil, all the bad intentions, no legitimate security interests. It's very easy to end up in a situation where war becomes solving this problem. But again, I was hoping you could elaborate a bit on this article,

especially this concept of the whole of society. I found that to be fascinating, because it reminded me a bit about totalitarianism when politics intrude in all aspects of public and private life. We need a civil society, NGO, media, corporations. Okay. Well, yes. I mean, what it reflects is a sort of a change in politics, particularly in the United States, but also in parts of Europe, like Britain, I think,

came in with the Obama period, when what we saw was a shift away towards politics being determined by the professionals in the backroom, in the backroom of Chicago initially, but in the back room with the professionals and with the big, mega donors are now sort of the directors, the orchestrators of politics, and Hollywood plays a big part in this. They set the memes, they set the ideas. and what is striking is two things I would say out of this recent period because, I mean, it has been brought home to us so clearly by the sort of the coup d'etal mounted against a sitting president

who was just removed by the control room, the back room, and then replaced by someone who hasn't secured a vote by anyone at any time, certainly not in 2020 or lately. And then just suddenly in a big rally, turns around and announce this, hey everyone, just to tell you, I am now the Democratic presidential candidate. And, you know, we all look around and say, really, was there an election or something, did I miss something? Suddenly she announces she is a candidate. Now, let's leave that for a moment and say, you know, the two things that strike you from this whole episode is that actually presidents don't seem to matter so much. I mean, you know, they can be removed.

A new one can be manufactured by mainstream media acting as a whole, and then it comes in, and a new presidential figurehead, it suddenly appears, and then there is a huge acclaim. and by claim more than by vote becomes the presidential candidate. All implies that actually, you know, in the relative way, in compared with the backroom control, the front room of the presidency, clearly doesn't matter so much in this new thing. And also, perhaps also, people are not, the voters don't really matter so much. And I think that's the other thing that is quite striking about this new politics.

Before I get on to the whole of 30s, this new politics that we're encountering is basically a politics, which is about memes and about Hollywood. It's about emoting rather than arguing. There's no debate about policies or... or foreign policies, it's, you know, this is going to be a campaign of joy. Republicans are weird. I mean, these things don't have any sort of substance. They're helping people emote and sort of come together.

And what is the purpose of all this? The purpose of all this is to get an ideological alignment. in the loosest sense because it's not really thought out in an ideological way, it's really a sort of almost moving towards a cult. I mean, you know, you just got to take it on faith and you just follow this. And what happened really sort of with Obama time and the war on terror was the sense that this had to be whole of society, that, you know, that extreme had to be monitored and so we had Homeland Security and we have the national security state being brought into it, the intelligence services, Department of Justice and then,

of course, the tech platforms monitoring and checking people's views and their ideas and what they're thinking. In order to stop what? well, no longer terrorism, but to stop what they say dangerous extremists. Extremists that threaten our democracy. Extremists that threaten our values, our consensus, undefined, but, you know, again, an emotive use of the word. And so they come in and we have whole of society really pursuing if you like

a totalizing approach a totalizing politics of alignment on you know whatever it is this campaign of joy and of you know

or of our democracy against these radical and dangerous if you like extremists but this totalizing in the domestic sphere also feeds across into the foreign policy sphere because then not only and then everyone else becomes an extremist. Putin is an extremist. Iranian mullahs, as they call them. There are no

mullahs in Iran, but Iranian mullers become extremists. China is an extremist in a different way. And they also coalesce into being if you like something that is opposed and against our values, our alignment. They

are the extremists. In a way, it's a sort of substitute for the Cold War when you had a sort of dialectic opposition between Western capitalism and communism and now that's all gone.

on and gone away. So we have the new dialectical sort of opposition between all of society, the whole of society sort of consensus on the one hand, not permitting any ideological non-alignment, you know, like, you know, the banks, you know, closing down people's accounts because you don't share our values. I mean, your account's so sorry, sir, you're account has to be closed because you don't share out values. You recall that happened to Mr. Farage in the UK, whatever his values were. And so you get, if you like, foreign policy sort of coalesces into a single enemy, a single, if you like, extremist that threatens our democracy, our values, our consensus. And so you don't any longer do what I've always complained about.

there's no longer any ability to discriminate to be able to understand that Iran is not like Russia and Russia is not China and that these are quite, if you like, distinct and separate entities and that they're not just simply subsumed. And I saw this long ago

when everything got subsumed into political Islam. And I remember arguing in Washington long ago then and saying, but you have to actually discriminate and you have to understand that there are some parts of the spectrum that are highly dangerous to other Muslims as well as to themselves, and there are other parts of the spectrum

that actually bring their communities, something that is of value to them, people like Amit Shah Massoud, if you like, as opposed to Gobedin Hekmatia, on the dangerous end of, of this process. Anyway, no one wanted to hear that. It was, you know, Islam is a danger, and they used it a form of identity politics. Anyway, so what I was saying really from all of this is that inevitably, then as we move and Iran reacts, if you like, to the assassination of Hania,

then it is quite likely that this will sort of move and will embrace Russia, because Russia is an extremist that is helping Iran. It is providing it with defense mechanism. Rather, as Russia has been, if you like, a dangerous actor in Ukraine. And China is an extremist that has been providing sort of material support to Russia to fight in Ukraine. So with this coalescing into one, this is

one aspect of it. The second aspect of it really is that as I look at how this repossed by Iran plays out, it

seems to me, I wouldn't say it's impossible to stop escalation, but I would say it's going to be extreme difficult. Let me just explain a little bit why because I think the reason it's

taking a little time to sort out is not the sort of nonsense that the telegraph keeps reporting but is because the first part of it given landing a blow on Israel that makes them regret

and which the Iranians understand has to be you know painful because when they did their 13th of April message, which was a message rather than an attack, it obviously was a mistake. It didn't work. And then just after that, we got the obvious provocation by Netanyahu of killing Hanea in Tehran and the inauguration of a new president deliberately. I mean, a smack in the face of Iran.

So the 13th of April didn't stop that. So it's got to be something that is strong enough to stop, you know, a few months later, and then now doing another provocation and starting to start a war. And he made it very clear that this is the aim because he went to Washington and he spoke to the Congress, the joint houses of Congress, and he laid it out. We made a war against Iran and all its allies. This is civilization against barbarism, and America has to assist in this war, and it's a civilizational war.

He gets back here and immediately provokes it. So the first stage that Iran will be doing, and it's a complex one, I think, but out of what I saw from the 13th of April, Iran has the ability, if you carefully manage the waves of the attack and the type, the flight times of missiles and the type of missiles, to use it in a careful way. For example, if you use the first wave of expendable drones, the American aircraft can't avoid, if you like, attacking the drones because although the warhead is tiny, it's still a warhead. But if you do the timing between the droves so that the American aircraft

don't have time to refuel, they won't be there for the second wave. And the second wave can be adjusted. You send them chasing all after cruise missiles. And then the third wave will be ballistic missiles or something that's coming down. And at the same time, you'll have a wave coming in from Hamas, Hezbullah, in Lebanon. which may be again, which will only take a few minutes to arrive. I mean, a cruise missile from Iran, or if they place it in Iraq, can arrive in a few minutes. On the settings of April, they started off with the drones and gave Israel four hours' notice to get their planes up and positioned and everything.

Now they can do the opposite, is that they can play, if you like, the Americans, against the short-term timings and not allow all the aircraft, because they were nearly more shot down by sidewined up missiles. The Israelis didn't use very much, if at all, their own air defense systems. So the first stage may land quite a heavy blow on the first stage. on Israel, on its military limits. Then the question is, what does Netanyahu do? He wants an all-out war with America participating.

So there has to be a new provocation, a bigger provocation. What is that going to be? And then what is the Iranian defense to that answer, which is one of the things that I think has been discussed with Russia at some legs, you know, and we're seeing electronic electronic warfare and radar systems and missiles and things being supplied to Iran at this time. But all of that, that's why I think it's taken some time. All of this is complicated enough just for Iran, but they're playing off with four different

actors with Ansala and Hezbollah and also the Hashanah in the PMU in Iraq. So I think this, how do we then stop it becoming a war? That was my, the first question that I posed. Is it inevitable? Probably not quite inevitable, but I don't see very easily that it already is escalating in Syria. It's escalating, of course, in Lebanon and across the West Bank. the provocations are going on in terms of the Temple Mount

and in Lebanon. I mean, clearly, that Niyahu and that sector of the government want a big war. The question is, does America want it? And the answer is, is that you don't ask people like Kamala Harris or Wolfe whether they want a war. at this stage because they're just

the figureheads anyway. But I mean, obviously they don't, because they don't have the foreign policy expertise and if the war breaks out, everyone will be saying, well, look, we need a safe pair of hands here. We don't want someone who's got no knowledge of the Middle East or etc.

But they're all sort of deeper, what I call these sort of weight-bearing structures of the deep state that cannot allow, if you like, the brittle branch in which the whole of Western foreign policy hangs to break off and crash, because these, if you like, load-bearing structures have been there for a long time

and on virtually immutable, Bush from Wilford's Bush doctrine that, you know, no, no, complete. competitor can be allowed to emerge, the military edge for Israel, the need to have a bipartisan policy on Israel in Congress. All these things are what I call these load-bearing structures because the whole Middle East policy hangs on that critical edge, the crucial and critical edge for Israeli military edge. I mean, so much. what happened in Iraq, what happened in Libya, all of these things flow out of these sort of, if you like, low-bearing structures within foreign policy. So, you know, they're not going to allow, even if she felt like it, Kamala Harris, to destroy

partisanship, bipartisanship on the Israeli issue. It's too much a key, one of these profound elements. of it. So whatever she thinks will be overridden by the sort of the deep needs to maintain, if you like, that brutal branch from which all foreign policy, American philosophy, and of course I include in that financial policy. And the fact that I saw you had Mr. Armstrong on recently, and he talked about debt. But he missed saying, you know, the crucial part in my view, which is that the whole of the West has a sort of inverted pyramid of fiat currency, of options, and of what you call these bigger things, derivatives, huge, trillions of. And

And what's at the base of this inverted pyramid, there is no collateral, no real security. There may be a few bars of gold here and there or something like that. But there's no collateral on which all these claims and all these ephemeral products hang. They are without actually any sort of collateral. So that if they start collapsing, everyone's going to say, yeah, but, you know, where's something solid? where's something of value? Where's the value that we can have? You know, if it's all collapsing,

all these derivatives are moving in a single direction, you know, I won't value. I want something. I want at least, you know, 50% of my money back, where I get it and you can't get it. And so that's why you get people, I think, like Lindsay Graham, say, you know, look, Ukraine has rare materials, has real energy coal and things worth 12 trillion.

We can't let that slip. We can't let it go to Putin. They need it to reliquify this great inverted pyramid of fiat nothingness. So this is the recess in the sense. I mean, he started off down that path, but I'm just taking it into the world of geopolitics. and conflict, if you like. It's one explanation.

Lots of points there, Alison. Let me start with your first one about societies and marginalising and identifying and identifying the other and lumping them all together, both the domestic and the internal ones. We've just had an excellent example of this, in my opinion, in Britain. Now, if you've been following the news, which I'm sure you all have, you would get the sense that the streets of Britain are blazing. I have been contacting people around the country trying to find out whether this is so and they all say that it's not.

No doubt there are some events taking place in various towns and cities in Britain. But my sense is not on any particularly big scale. And if you actually go to the newspaper, as look at the media coverage, you will notice one very interesting thing, which is that no one ever puts a number on the number of people who are supposed to be participating in these events that are taking place. And yet, you know, we have endless stream of articles, commentaries, need to control social opinion, need to go after a certain American billionaire who is supposedly responsible for it.

And of course, just recently, we've already had it all lumped together with the Russian, The Russians were behind it. There's apparently a site in Pakistan, which is controlled by the Russians. Nobody ever produces any evidence with this, of course, which is supposed to be behind this. I am not sure whether anything on any particular scale has actually happened in Britain at all. Just saying, I mean, something has happened, but riots in Britain in August are not that unusual, as I'm sure our listener knows. And yet, a whole narrative has been massively constructive around this event. And I'm not sure how much reality there is to any part of it, just saying.

And of course, all sorts of people have been identified and figured out and pointed to in this. Now, on the question of war in the Middle East. Can I just say something about that? I won't go into it because it's, you know, some different beyond. saying it. But again, it's the same thing about ideological alignment. The cordon sanitaire, the far right, cannot be allowed or even the right. They're not far rights, I mean, or even people. And what I think we are seeing, and in Europe, and I've felt for some time, is that when you see the graph of immigration arrivals rising and accelerating, an excellent,

accelerating sharply. And the same time you see the countergraph of standards of living, of people's standard and way of life declining at the point that they intersect, you're going to have problems because, you know, it affects their jobs and their standard of living. And you can see this. I see this here in Italy too. I mean, you know, most Italians many of them are having real difficulties, you know, paying their gas bills and their electricity bills and things. And at the same time, you know, immigrants are coming in that are being given, you know, housing allowances, income and all of these things. Not all of them, but when you see those graphs intersect like that, whatever you want to call it, you want to call it racism

or whatever else you like, the fact is that there are deep problems. in our Western societies and all of this language that they use of, you know, far-eyed thugs and nervous racism and things like that, is basically to sort of deflect from the fact of even admitting that those are, you know, there is a problem. You see some parts, you know, England, I don't know so well, some parts of them are already becoming decrepit. I mean, they're poor. I mean, and they're broken down.

I mean, you know, they call it the Rust Belt in the United States, but there are parts of Britain that are really, you know, become grim and dirty and broken and things like this. And, you know, this, I don't, I'm not suggesting this solutions in these, but, you know, at least address the fact that maybe this is a bit more than just, you know, people, you know, thugs going out and a night that it's just football humanism. I mean, just perhaps think maybe, you know, they need to be aware that there could be deeper problems materializing. Anyway, you want to move on to Iran. My simple point was, as I said, people are being already labeled and targeted even before,

even before the events that you describe actually happen. because I'm not convinced that anything particularly big actually has happened this August. That's just my point. Anyway, let's go on. That's an fair point. So let's move on. Let's move on. Anyway, about Iran and about the war, I read, and I'm sure you probably know him, Michael Oren,

former Israeli ambassador to the US, wrote a piece in the Times of Israel. You might have read it. I find a most disturbing article altogether. First of all, it was going on and on about how, you know, can Israel be sure that he's got America's got its back? What he really means by that is that is it, can we really be confident that America will be with us if we attack Iran? Because that was quite obviously what he wants.

And the most extraordinary thing about the whole article, was that he never at any place in it identified why Iran needed to be attacked at all. What exactly it was that Iran has done that justified the kind of war, that he clearly wants to wage on it. Now, he comes across to me as a very sophisticated, highly educated man. He writes beautiful, clear English. But when that kind of mindset, when you have that kind of mindset, And I don't know how influential he is, but I suspect he's fairly influential and fairly representative of thinking in the government in Israel. I have to say this.

I think war is inevitable. It is clear that one side wants it. And they don't explain why exactly. Not in this article. I didn't see that. And we've discussed the reasons in many other places. But one side clearly wants war. And going back to the point that you made about the events in April and the fact that the

warning that was given then hasn't really been heeded. On the contrary, I think the Israelis are very frustrated about the fact that they would deny the opportunity in April to hit back and hit back hard on Iran. And I think that they want to escalate the situation. We have a situation in Washington that makes that almost possible, Netanyahu. was there. He was applauded by Congress 58 times, as you pointed out, by the way, in a very fine article that you recently did. He is clearly aching for war. So are some of the people around him. I think when you have people who think in that way, war inevitably is going to come.

The only thing that could stop it is if a government were to form in Washington, which would to say absolutely not, not in any way, not at all. And I don't believe that's going to happen. I don't believe that's going to happen. Whoever wins in November, just saying, just for the reasons that you were saying before. I don't think, and it, you know, even if a government forms in November,

and I've said this before, you know, they may be in office, but they won't necessarily be in power. because, you know, all I've watched this over a period, you know, all of this institutional America has sort of disaggregated into princestoms, small princdems, there's the CIA Princeton, the CENTCOM Princeton, and they all have their own, you know, the Treasury Department has its own foreign policy. They, Homeland Security, has its own foreign policy.

I remember going to the Treasury about one thing. some time ago, but there had been an executive order signed by a president, I think it was Trump at that stage, affected European companies. It was in the context of the Iranian negotiations and something. And I said, but, you know, there's an executive order. The president has signed it. And they said, well, that may be the president's policy, but this is not the policy of the United States Treasury. Just like that. This is known as the interagency view in America. We saw that during that sort of impeachment of Trump,

when I think it was Colonel Vindman said, yes, there may have been Trump's view, but it wasn't the interagency view. He was wrong. And of course, when he ordered the troops out of Syria, CENTCOM said, no, sorry, may stay. So, I mean, you know, there is a really, there's a major problem here of sort of managing

the situation we're in in that whoever I mean whatever happens if there is an election and there's someone in the White House they can't commit whole of America

whole of society they can't do that because the people who control what I call that sort of that sort of leveraged you know structures that underlie it the deep straits, long-term policies that have been around for, you know, a long-time, and are untouchable.

Whether you're a president or a presidential candidate, you cannot touch certain things. I mean, until that changes, I don't see that one can really, you know, sort of see that. So it's not just a change in the government. I mean, you know, the government is not particularly important. part to make those sort of changes. And it's going to require something more. I mean, let's not go there. It's too complicated discussion, that one.

Let's stay on Iran. I just wanted to say a couple of things was that a friend of mine was in that in that guest house. at the time Hanneye was killed. He's from Hamas, but I've known him for years. I mean, so I know he's very, I've known him from my visits to Iran regularly and things like that. So I know him well. Now, he was sleeping in the same wing on the fourth floor,

and Hanaya was on the second floor of the scarce dance. And what he said was that Hanier came back from the inauguration around about 1113. at night. And then they sat around in the guesthouse, the Hamas sort of contingent with the AIDS of Hanyeh and so on, talking about the assassination of Shukhar in Beirut and how that was going to play out and impinge on things, until about 1.30 when they all went to bed, he to the fourth floor and Hanir to the second floor. And then about 3.30 in the morning. there was this huge crash in the middle of the night and this friend was thought it was an earthquake. I mean, and he was sort of really worried that there was, you know, the whole building was shaking and worsening.

But he rushed down to the second floor to find mayhem. The outer wall had been completely demolished. The building was no outer wall. The bathroom, the ceiling, all of that had crudgeon. all of that had crashed in. He saw Hanier dead, quite clearly dead, went to look for the bodyguard and then

found him also dead, and then brought in the guards, the authorities into that case. So I think very, I think almost certainly it was a projectile that was fired

actually into the building. I mean, he was there and was very firmly that, his And as I say, I've known him for years, and he was actually, you know, just two floors up from Hania when this happened. So, all that story that they're trying to peddle that it was, you know, some clever Mossad. Look, let's be straight about it.

I have no evidence for this part whatsoever. But, you know, it's not so difficult with Iran because there are 3,000 of the MEK that are still being trained by the U.S. in Albania. They've been moved from Ashraf base now to Albania and they are trained there. These were the people

that fought with Saddam Hussein against against Iran. They're bitter, bitter, extreme leftists. And, you know, they have their you know, I mean, it's impossible to have complete security in

in Iran against these people everywhere. These are the people that have been doing on behalf of America and Israel, some of these assassinations, nuclear scientists and so on, because they're Iranian, and they know how to move and come in, and they were originally, as I say, in trade in Kurdistan, and then they were moved, I think, about 2003 to Albania or something, 2013, now the alberians are getting set up with them. They've been taken off the terrorist list now.

For purposes, one can guess that, but don't know. Anyway, I mean, I think my guess, it's just a guess. I have no substantive. But, you know, these are the usual forces that can do these sort of operations and do them at quite short notice if, you know, asked to do it. So I don't think one can read too much into it. the Daily Telegraph article, and the same author then wrote that stupid piece about how there

was a sort of great fight going on, but with the Revolutionary Guards and that Pazakhian was sort of fighting to have. He obviously, whoever wrote that, has no idea about how policy works in Iran. The president has domestic responsibility. He has a, as the administration of domestic policy. And the policy, foreign policy, is entirely in the hands of the Supreme Leader through the Supreme National Security Council. And the Pesachkian will undoubtedly sit, does sit on the Supreme National, on the National Security Council, but along with IRGC, the intelligence service, the foreign service.

everyone who has an interest in these processes. And the ultimate decision, like the decision to attack, Iran was made by the Supreme Leader. And he has absolutely the last word on foreign policy. And the second thing is, Pesachian is close to and is admirer and is loyal to the Supreme Leader. And, I mean, in any case, I mean, he wouldn't be able to, He has no prerogative to tell the Security Council.

The Security Council is the policy-making body. No one else. There's not that sense that they try to convey that there's a sort of government and it has a foreign policy and a domestic policy and all of this and that he's sort of sitting there in charge and the security policy people are answerable to him. Oh, that's nonsense. That's not how it works in Iran.

So I was going to say, you know, I mean, to your listeners and so on, you know, the Daily Telegraph is a notorious purveyor, both on Ukraine and on Iran, a pure, nonsensical propaganda. They should treat it with a long, wrong spoon. I should be besides which, would the event... Which is said. Yes, weird. Yes, would the Iranians ever talk to the, any, any, anybody in Iran in government, would they want to disclose this kind of information to the Daily Telegraph of all you believe?

Anyway, putting all that aside, where are we going? I mean, there is going to be. Today, I mean, we had the swing a couple of days ago that the Iranians were rethinking and pulling back and all that. Now, today, last yesterday, where again, full of alarmed, big attack from Iran is coming. What are the Israelis, what are the Americans going to do? Because I've heard it suggested that there is no simple answer to the question of the kind of missile attacks which you've been describing. By the way, what do you describe about the sequencing of attacks? You've been seeing it.

I've been seeing this for some time in Ukraine. I mean, this is what the Russians do when they conduct missile attacks in Ukraine. And so there is also a shortage of air defense missiles, which is something which I didn't know about until about a year ago, but it seems that there is. This is a worldwide shortage, or it's a westernwide shortage, understand themselves. So what are they going to do? I mean, are they going to, are they going to try and launch an air campaign on Iran? I mean, is there, I mean, this is the problem. Is there a military plan behind this war that appears to be coming? I sometimes get the sense, for example, that there was no really, well, it clearly wasn't a military plan to speak of about the war in Ukraine, which they nonetheless provoke, but do they have a plan this? time, how is it going to play out? What does they think is going to happen? And Israel itself,

it seems to be going through many stresses and strains of the present time. The economy isn't too good. The military is said to be very unhappy. There was an article in the FD. I don't know whether this one is reliable, but apparently Netanyahu called his generals weaklings because they weren't. leftists. So how do they conduct a war like this? You know, actually, it's

quite interesting because you have both the wars, the one that you follow so closely, the Ukraine war. I mean, it's really, you know, in a sense, look what Zelensky's done. You know, he has he has launched this sort of last hurrah raid into, you know, through the sort of border forests into Russia.

I am, by the way, with you in the sense that I think the Russians knew this was coming and were, you know, pleased to see the stripping of the most experienced reserves from the Don and put into these, because, you know, the Russians are not quite clearly not panicked about this at all, but they can just take their time and they can eliminate it, you know, slowly it's not a great threat to Russia. And they just leave a great gaping hole in the Dombas. And so what do we get? We get the provocation. Drones are fired at the Zappalicia nuclear pipeline.

Oh my God. help me. You know, come and help. West must come in and we've got to do something, we've got to, and it's obvious that the, from the prisoners that have been taken in Kursk region, the Kursk station was put down as one of their targets as well. So again, you know, one of these sort of like a sort of child, you know, wanting attention and wanting to sort of, you know, Why in the West you're not talking about us anymore? And we need you to come in and you've got to join in this war and look, they're going to destroy a nuclear power station.

And you've got Netanyahu more or less doing the same thing. I mean, going in, he didn't destroy a nuclear power station, but well, let's wait and see what he has up his sleeve. But he goes in and he assassinations Hania in the most provocative way, just after he'd been embraced by the pesashean, who, by the way, is very pro-Palestinian and very much a supporter

of Hania. So there was a personal element to it as well. And so where do we, you know, what happens next? This is what all the preparation has been gone once

why I think, you know, and so I saw all as sort of arrogant things who were little cartoons. Varry Johnson had one of sort of lipping, yapping, yapping church, what you call those little dogs that yapp a lot. Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas and the big, you know, Israel, sort of. They, you know, they dant. They've all been petrified by us and, you know, they dend.

Well, the proof of the pudding will be when these missiles start flying in a probably, I think, coordinated fashion between the various four axes here. And then what does Netanyahu do? Well, I think it'll be a little bit like Zelensky. I think there's a close symmetry. Okay, there's not the nuclear power plant to attack. But, you know, they have been hinting pretty obviously. I have no knowledge.

I have no confirmation. But they have been talking. There was a long article that came out from one of the... the thing saying, you know, really now is the time we've got to just drop a tactical bomb on Iran to let them know what's what and where they're going. I have no idea, but I mean, it's very hard to see, you keep saying what the plan is. Well, there is no plan B. I mean, Israel quite clearly doesn't have the means, I mean, all of the nuclear plant. I mean, two years ago, he had Barak wrote an article, long article saying it's too late. Iran was already a threshold, nuclear threshold,

not a weapons threshold, state. And he said, we don't have the intelligence. We're unlikely to ever have the intelligence. It's almost impossible to know if they'd ever move to a weapons threshold because you don't have to, you just do this deep underground in a small place. There's going to be almost no chance.

This is the Prime Minister speaking and former Defence Minister. There's no chance that we Israel will be able to know whether that is happening or not. They're sober. So they can't destroy it. Their claims will go over there and we'll knock out. Yeah, they can hit

in that tans or something like this with conventional weaponry, but that will change nothing. There's enough enriched uranium anyway. So it won't, they can't change anything by that way. So, you know, then we get into the field of, you know, Omageddon and Gog and Magog. And, you know, I've mentioned before when I think I spoke on your program before about, you know, trying to see Israel as a sort of, as an eschatological state, that, you know, that we can't keep asking these questions rationally about Israel because it is rational, but with a completely different epistemological. base. Their epistemological base is revelation and Torah and faith. It is not the sort of democratic process where, you know, Jews who become, who are Democrats, if you like, there's a privatization of their Judaism. I mean, it becomes a sort of personal relationship. with the Torah and with the Talmud and things like that, subject to what the rabbis tell them

and so on. But what they're looking at is something quite different, which is going back to a form of Judaism, which is about revelation, about trust in God's promise to the Jewish people, and that you don't question this, and that you are, you know, a real foot soldier. And this is why what's happening in Israel now is so significant is that you have these many rabbis, for about 100, that support this man, Doblior, who is the sort of main rabbi for the Jewish underground and for the settlers. And these are the ones that give the legitimacy to soldiers killing and torturing, killing in schools and hospitals

and so on. And they do that basically under the base of the sort of Babylonian Talmud. They have the right to, they have the ability to do this. But so you're getting into this crisis between, if you like, you know, democratic Zionism and fundamental Zionism. And there are 700,000 settlements in the hills who now call themselves the state of Judea at war with the state of Israel. And people like Smartridge and Ben-Govir can call on this army of vigilantes if they disagree with what the army is doing and what it's saying.

So, where are they taking this? I mean, I think they will be looking for provocation that the United States cannot ignore or won't ignore because the United States has these deep structures of support for Zionism across all of its institutional leadership

Qaeda in the US. So how do they not support it? So what sort of provocation after the killing of Shukhar and Hanir? I mean, what's next? I don't know. But you say to me, what can

they do? I mean, this seems to me the sort of direction of travel that we're on rather than the sort of rational sort of go to war with Iran in this way and troops and tanks and things. Forget all that. I don't think it's

that at all. So that's where I think we're at. Unpredictable and is it inevitable? Yes, and maybe we're talking about all of region war. Russia involved as well, because

the West is escalating. I mean, it's really for me, quite striking that you hear the spokesperson of the EU and of the US saying, effectively, look, we don't rule out sort of attacking Moscow. This is, I think, one of the sources of the irrationality, as you said, is because I think they recognize there's not any war solutions, but they also have ruled out peaceful solutions

implicitly, I think, because what you started to talk about was this idea we talk about the political identities being diametrical opposite. But what's fascinating is whenever in the media or politicians, they never ever talk about competing security interests and more. I never turned on the news and heard about Iranian security concerns or Russian security concerns or ours for that sake. It's always this competing ideological identities. So whenever we deal with problems from Hamas to Iran,

it's always, you know, how do we stop them, which is either a deterrence or defeating them. but I guess never reassuring and seeking to accommodate their security concerns, which is why we end up with this slogan airing. I would say, as you spoke of earlier, Alexander, this also addressed to some extent with the rights in Britain as well. We at no point do one ask, well, what are their concerns? As Alster suggested, economic problems, work instead is just these labels, if they're hateful thugs, weird, or whatever they would be.

So, anyways, my point is never do we explore any peaceful solutions. And even when we do talk about peace, it's usually the idea of buying time to fight later, even Ukraine, even if we see territory, okay, but at least have to be part of NATO so we can take this fight another day. And it seems it's the same with Iran. Even if the Israelis are able to pull in the Americans, what can actually be achieved in a war with Iran? because it seems, for example, nuclear weapons, they can build a bomb if they would want to, and the best way to make them want to is to bomb Iran. So I'm just curious what could actually achieve, even if they get America.

What they can achieve in Iran is highly important to those deep structures. It is that they can control China's energy flow, because if they can control the energy, flow from Iran and to an extent from Russia. China has no energy resources, and therefore you can contain it, you can shrink it, you can create disturbances as the economic system deteriorates because of lack of more expensive oil. China is wholly dependent, I mean very much dependent on oil from Iran and Iraq. I mean, in a sense that Iran is more important because Iraq is still under American control.

And so, you know, it's been a long ambition of those structures to be able to, they can't, I mean, and it's already obvious, they can't control China by, you know, putting sanctions on chips. It's not working. It's just not functioning. the Chinese are just doing it anyway.

And actually what it's doing is it's putting up the expenditure. I wrote a piece of it. It's putting up the costs of the Western companies in the tech companies and making them less competitive international. It's an own goal effect in many ways. And so the one way in which you can bring cut China down to size, other than by a war, which I think America knows it doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to wage at the moment. It just doesn't have.

This is something you've talked about, Alexander, I know, some things. They just don't have their capacity. But Iran off the map or Iran under American control, regime change in Iran, then China can be switched off its energy supplies. So that's one. I'm not saying that is. I'm not being prescriptive. I'm just saying one has to think about how, you know,

Russia and China will be looking at what's happening in the Middle East at the moment. In Russia, particularly we'll be looking how, you know, it affects them and it affects China and it affects the whole bricks. sense because, you know, we're going back to this whole issue. I mean, the West, all our wealth, was about, you know, drawing in the wealth from India and from around the world and the oil and the energy supplies. And that was at the base of our pyramid of wealth that I described earlier. And then we had a pyramid. But it had a real base at the border, real wealth coming from, not from us, but from the Middle East and from India and other places.

And now, you know, all the juice has been sucked out of the Western economies by the sort of financialized capitalism that it pursues. So, you know, there's only service industries basically sort of rarely left. And there's nothing solid. So they, you know, they at some point need to reset this if they're going to survive in the longer term. Are those people, I suspect they're in the control room. I know they're in the control room. Some of these people from the banks and from the big banks and New York and things,

together with the Hollywood and the Silicon Valley people. I guess it must be, you know, reasonably sized control room. that is running things. But of course, we'll never be told who's actually in that control. But there is this argument going on in Wall Street as well as Silicon Valley that, you know, the West Canal, it's structurally impossible to go on spending as it has been spending now without some sort of great change that will, you know, reliquify the whole of the Western system.

So, you know, this is, you know, part of the thing. And yes, in the short term and tactically, it may not be very suitable. But, you know, it's always been not a bad thing to be a war candidate, a war president in the United States. If you haven't got a good economic program agenda to present, you can always try and do that. Who knows, you know, all right, today we have Kamala Harris if they wanted to change it. It looks at only change it, you know, before November anyway, and have a sort of a war candidate put in there instead. Maybe that was what was being planned with, you know, the Republican, because these are

a uniparty things with the Republican. Milwaukee. I mean, you know, Trump wasn't supposed to arrive, I think. He turned his head at the wrong moment anyway, and he arrived. Otherwise, we'd have probably Nikki Haley as some candidates and Pence's vice candidate. Maybe that would have been, maybe, and I'm only sort of talking, totally sort of free wheeling. But, you know, maybe this was sort of sort of. of a scenario that one could envisage too. Anyway, it didn't happen. He was stopped and it didn't happen. And Trump and Vance are the team going forward if they get that. And but on the Democratic side, if they can change it so quickly and sort of, you know, provide the sort of

you know, the claim for a new candidate without, you know, touching a voting system. I mean, they can always do it again. But I'm not saying that, and I'm not suggesting it. I'm just saying we're in a time of huge uncertainty. And there are these sort of pressures for war that are coming from Netanyahu and also the pressures for war in Ukraine that are coming from a different quarter. But, I mean, we shouldn't underestimate those. I mean, look what we saw with Belasov.

It's pretty clear that what he warned the Americans from, you probably heard more, but when he spoke to the U.S. Defense Secretary, was a planned assassination against Putin and the leadership during that naval celebrations in Petersburg. and he said, do you know about this? You better pull the leash hard on your people there. So, I mean, you know, it's both all of these things are sort of,

I don't want to paint a gloomy picture because I'm not actually gloomy at all because I feel change is inevitable and we're on the cusp of big changes. It's not going to be pleasant and everything. but we're at an inflection point. And this is how change happens. It's not abnormal, but we're going through an intense period of change at the moment. So, you know, everything that we can see, six months hence will look completely different. Will be completely different?

That will be my prediction. Whatever we see today, six months hence, it will be quite different. It seems things can't continue like this. because I very much agree with this idea that the system has to be reliquified, as you said, that it's running dry. But it seems every effort to do so it has the opposite effects. So, for example, the sanctions on Russia. Breaking Russia could have been a good way of rebooting the system.

But instead, we saw that Russians could diversify their economic connectivity to the East. Europeans could not. And now, as you mentioned, the same with the Chinese. the Americans trying to break their chip industry, the Chinese were able to pursue self-sufficiency and diversify, while the Americans lost, especially Intel, their most important clients. So they cut 15,000 jobs, and now you see they're going from bad to worse. So it does seem that it's not, well, with every effort, things go from bad to worse, it's counterproductive. It begs the question, when do we stop doubling down?

and instead absorb these losses and, you know, try something different? The problem, that won't happen because, you know, these structural things, how do you change the, you know, the financialized structure of the United States? I mean, even if you, you know, you had an empowered president who was capable of doing it, how would you set about, you know, you have to change the, whole economic structure. I mean, you know, the corporations, the structures, the financial, the banking system, everything is geared to one, you know, a hyper-financialized consumer economy.

How do you, now, I mean, Russia is changing it and has changed it in 10 years in a way and move towards a real economy and changed. its whole basis, a way towards the sort of sense of saying the prime responsibility of an economy is to provide employment sufficient so that your people can afford to buy a house, can afford medical assistance, can go to school, and can live normal lives, and that you have a responsibility for the welfare of the community, not a responsibility for the welfare of oligarchs and corporations.

Just, I mean, you have to have a strategic view about how to manage a real economy. Yes, and Russia has that too, but you have also got to sort of ground it in the fact that you have to, and you know it was Friedrich Liszt,

I mean, in the 19th century, you kept predicting against Aaron Smith, and he said, you know, if you move to more and more a debt-based consumer society, after a while you'll get to the point where you're unable to provide employment for your people. The people, there will not be the means for people to have the full employment. If you sort of financialize the whole economy and move away from, you know, a real economy, then ultimately then you will have the problem that there is not the ability there to give people. employment and a life and so I mean he saw those danger long ago so did Count Vitti who was the Prime Minister of

Faris Russia of it what do you say to the view which is one that we've discussed with Professor John Meersheim on programs that we've done that in order for there to be a real fundamental change in American and Western policy that the only thing that really do it, is the shock of a major military defeat. An absolute military debacle. It could be in Ukraine. It could be in the Middle East. But that might be the final shock in the system that finally causes a rethink. I quite agree. I call it something slightly different. I just call it catharsis. We have to go through this process. We have become so dysfunctional. I mean, look,

you know, wherever you look in Europe, things just don't function very well. Problems don't get resolved. Things just deteriorate and deteriorate. We've become so dysfunctional. We have become so morally bankrupt, and we've become so decrepit in many respects. as, you know, a civilization. I don't want to bring in sort of controversial things, but I think the recent Olympics underlined that pretty clearly. I mean, to the rest of the world, they just look at that and sort of thing, oh, my God, you know, they've gone crazy.

And I think therefore catharsis comes. Now, the question is, from my point of view, is not what? whether catharsis is going to come, but is there anyone going to be able to manage it so that catharsis is only painful sufficiently to finish the job of bringing about a transformation, or are we going to see it slip into something which is going to result in a huge suffering catastrophe for millions of human beings. And I don't know which it will be. I hope it would be the former.

Thank God we've got a few sane people in the world like Putin and like Zee and the supreme leader who actually realize these dangers. I mean, whatever, whether people in your audience listening think that this is a terrible thing to say that these people are sane and have ours. But I've sat with Putin for ours, and I find him always thinking long term, always thinking in these terms, but strategy, Z is the same. And in Iran are notorious. I mean, this is why they take so long doing anything, because they're always thinking things through. And I keep

having to tell, you know, when I speak to my Iranian friends, I say to them, stop being so wretchedly rational. Can't you understand that the West works on emotion more than reason? So don't sort of calculate this all in your rational way because the Iranians are so rational. But I think, yes, the question is, are we going to find a break in this catharsis that stops it slipping into the abyss. Let's hope so, but I think catharsis is inevitable, and I think Mirchema is right with that. Now, I do disagree with Miersheimer at one point is he's very much a realist, and I don't mind the realism. I mean, I agree with realism in the sense, but I think he undervalues the ability of human agency and also.

that societies and whole civilization can have a change of psyche. It is possible. I think he sees these things much in terms of GDP, on the one hand, and military strength and economic strength, and this is the things that determine these outcomes. And I think there is human agency. I mean, look at what Putin has done during this period since Yel. him. I mean, I think it's undeniable that he has, you know, pulled Russia, whether Westerners like it or not is irrelevant. Russians like it. He's pulled Russia out of the doldrums, which

is an extraordinary thing, and much of it was his personal human agency that's done. And so I think there's human agency, and I think also one can almost feel there's a change in psyche globally. I mean, it's not a very pleasant one for the West because the psyche of globally is that they just think so little of us now. And they think we are, you know, spent force. And what is more, they are turning increasingly to the view that we should just be ignored or set aside. And maybe we've deserved it, that's all. Well, it's interesting what you say about political realism because back in the days, Kenneth Walts, he made the argument that it was not a foreign policy theory, simply because, well, as you suggested, it's based on the principle of rationality. But if the states aren't acting rational, then the laws of physical laws of political realism no longer applies. And I think that also goes into what you argued about, the Hawaii things don't also get fixed because the, yeah, the, the, yeah, the, the, you know, the, yeah, the, the, you know, the, the, yeah, the, the, the, the, yeah, the, the, the, yeah, the, the, yeah, the, yeah, the, the, yeah, the, the. political discourse as well. It's been so terrible. For example, in your article, you pointed out

this with Kamala Harris when she was some pressure for course correction. People are screaming about the genocide in Palestine. All she has to do is say, listen, if you want Trump to win, continue to talk, otherwise, shut up. And then people are quiet and they applaud. And how can you really fix any trouble, even be opposed to genocide once things reach that polarization? And it's not even, of course, it's a problematic, it's problematic that oligarchs can choose their candidate, the way they dispose of Biden. But what's even more shocking is the way public opinion can now be manipulated to the irrational as well. So, you know, this excitement they try to create with Kamal Harris after ignoring her for four years and, you know, bringing a no-one like Tim Moleson

and now everyone should be excited about him. It's like they're pressing buttons and people buy into all the nonsense. Under these circumstances, has to beg the question whether or not society and states are even rational anymore, in which they're not. I would agree that a lot of the premise of political realism seems to go away. Well, I think this is, you know, these are the issues that are not being discussed in the West that are at the subject of this complex debate taking place in Iran, between Iran and Russia and between Russia and China and between Russia with many different actors.

Acting as a sort of center for this whole process, both in the region and beyond. And sadly, the Europeans just, you know, instead of turning their attention to asking for restraint from Israel, can only just simply take.

and beg Iran that it needs to be restrained, even after it did restrain itself and was then immediately provoked again by Israel. But no, it's, you know, there's so no rationality in this, this is all about something going far beyond it. I mean, we're going, you know, it's into politics. I kept trying to explain, you know, eschatologically politics. has completely different epistemology. It's about the Bible, it's about revelation, about law and Torah and faith and things like those. And, you know, we go on looking at it

through enlightenment rationality, which is secular. And so it's not surprising we just can't understand it, and therefore we find it threatening and we find it is something that we can not manage. except with Israel, because Israel is deeply, I mean, in many ways Israel is the United States and the United States is Israel in a very complicated way, I mean, about seeing it and about how they react to it and everything else. So, you know, it's so important because there are

so many of those structures that depend, his rationale, survival depends on Israel surviving as a state. Well, one very last point from me, that you were talking about how most of the rest of the world is giving up on us. But I'd say pretty much all the world. You look at the reactions of the African countries to the latest thing that the Ukrainians have been

saying. How a Ukrainian government would do such a thing, how Western governments would allow a Ukrainian government to do such thing? It's just beyond belief. But a much more important country, a very powerful country, a rising

country, Indonesia, likely to become a major part of the world economy, a major player in the future. It's had elections recently. Its new president chose, he's not yet president, his president-elect, he chose to visit Moscow. If you read the things that you said

whilst he was in Moscow, I mean, he talks about the country as his friend, he talks about the times when Indonesia and the Soviet Union were very close in the 1960s. He's clearly charting, of course, that he's going to take Indonesia in a completely different direction from the one the West would like. And what makes it interesting, is that this is a former close associate, apparently, within the military of ex-president Suharto, who I'll remember. So, I mean, this is, you know, this enormous shift

that's taking place around the world, and people in the West are not aware of it, not aware of it at all. I never read articles in the British media about Indonesia anymore. People are not interested in what it's doing or what it's thinking or what is, new president is all about. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

I opened sort of Politico this morning, and, you know, they have this sort of, you know, high school sort of language that they use, which is supposed to be joking, clever and cool. And they're sort of saying, well, you know, let's, you know, the one thing we, there was, one item on the foreign policy agenda about securing the nuclear pastations and then saying, so now we can all get back to concentrating on the American election and how Kamala Harris

is doing in the polls and she's coming up and in the, you know, the closing the gap in the swing states. Clearly, you know, they don't want to know what's going on in the rest of the world at all. So, unfortunately, this is a lonely job trying to talk about foreign policy, I think, except people listen in other parts of the world, I'm sure. With that, yeah, we went a bit over time, so yeah, I suggest we wrap it up unless there's any final.

Okay. No. Excellent. Well, thanks again, Alastair Crook, very much for your time. and yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for the hosting the program.

Thank you.