The Duran Podcast - Wider war in the Middle East looms

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Wider war in the Middle East looms

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the Middle East. We have Blinken heading to the Middle East. I believe this is his fourth trip in two months, something like that. And according to various reports, Blinken is going to the Middle East to try to prevent a wider war. This is according to the Associated Press and Reuters. That's what they're reporting. And we also have various reports. I read something out of Politico the other day, which said that the Biden White House is preparing for a wider war in the Middle East.

And they mentioned an attack on Yemen. They mentioned protecting their bases in Syria and Iraq, a base in Syria, which is an illegal occupation of Syria. But they said that. And Politico also said that, of course, the main target. if a wider war breaks out, that they're discussing in the Biden White House is Iran and the potential conflict with Hezbollah and Iran. And Politico does say it towards the bottom of the article that the Biden White House is discussing the wider war scenario and the applications it'll have on Biden's reelection in 2024. So they're very concerned about the effects this may

have on the 2024 campaign. So that is the situation with the Middle East. And of course, we still have the ongoing war in Gaza, which doesn't appear to be easing up either. So Lindsay Graham actually was visiting Netanyahu the other day as well. So that's not a good side. Anyway, what are your thoughts on what's happening in the Middle East? Well, I think what he's playing out is that exactly the kind of problem that we identified right at the start of the Gaza crisis. The United States, not this, correct that, the Biden administration, the president himself came to Jerusalem, as I think we all remember, embraced Netanyahu, gave Netanyahu in effect a blank check and did so publicly. and he, as a result, committed the United States to supporting an Israeli operation in Gaza,

which could only succeed politically if it was carried out fast. It has not been carried out fast. The Israelis, to all appearances, are becoming bogged down in Gaza, as many, many people said they would. and the result is that the general sentiment and mood in the Middle East is deteriorating. So the United States committed itself in October to an unsustainable policy. It is seeing its entire position in the Middle East deteriorate. It's facing a succession of defeats in the Security Council and in the General Assembly at the United Nations.

We had an interview, Glendison and I, which we published on the Duran, with the Russian deputy ambassador to the Security Council, Dmitri Polianzky, and he described how in the latest session in the Security Council, 10 states supported a Russian amendment to a draft resolution, backing a ceasefire, forcing the United States to exercise a veto against a Russian-backed resolution. solution. Boliansky made the point that just a few months ago, that scenario would have been impossible. So, the United States also finds itself, having committed huge forces to the Middle East, it's got now a large part of its fleet, patrolling the Red Sea, trying to protect commercial shipping from the Hussis. The commercial shipping is not apparently particularly encouraged by this protection, which isn't hugely effective. The cost of this operation in the Red Sea is mounting all the time. And of course, we have these military attacks on these American bases and all of this going on. So the result is an unsustainable policy. And the administration itself is divided between those, like one suspects Blinken, who,

want to pull back, they understand this policy is causing enormous damage to the United States, but they also understand that if they escalate, that's going to create a bad crisis for the United States in the Middle East and for Israel as well, which will not turn out to their advantage. So people like Blinken, perhaps Sullivan, perhaps these people are also thinking of the election in the United States. pull back. And a couple of days ago, we did a program about this, and we discussed how the Israelis under this kind of pressure have been pulling back their forces from Gaza, though many of them are still there, and how the USS Gerald Ford has been returned to the United States.

And then inevitably, and we also talked about how this might happen in that very same program, we see the pushback. We see the fact that the people. who say we must stand firm, the hard-lying neocons, the people like Victoria Newland, they say, no, no, we can't retreat, we can't pull back, we can't seek diplomatic solutions. That will be seen as a sign of weakness by our enemies in the Middle East, by China potentially, by Russia potentially, and we mustn't any way appease evil people and aggressors. And we must, and And they are now pushing very hard for war. And in any argument that tends to happen in Washington between advocates of diplomacy and advocates of war, particularly with this administration, we consistently see that it's the advocates of war who win out.

And all the indications are that they're now doing so. So we have Lincoln, who probably is one of the moderates, one of the people who wants. to exercise restraint. He's going to the Middle East. Perhaps he's really generally trying to find some means to pull this back, to try to get people to agree to pull this back. But realistically, what can't see what it is that Blinken can say or do, that is in fact going to achieve that, because he is not the ultimate decision maker. And as you said, in many programs that we've done on this topic, the hardline neocons, empowered by the presence of all these huge American forces in the Middle East,

are not going to pass up the opportunity for a war and a strike on Iran when it is presented to them. So that is the scenario that we are seeing unfold, and that is what that our whole. in Politico is telling us. Is there anything that Blinken could do, assuming Blinken is one of the moderate forces in the Biden White House, is there anything that these moderate forces in the Biden White House could do to pull this thing back?

I don't see how, because if you're looking at the sort of people that Blinken needs to speak to in order to broker a compromise, you can see that he's not really speaking to them. He's not really able to speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government. And Netanyahu in this is clearly a hardliner. Netanyahu doesn't like Joe Biden. He doesn't like Blinkert. He's been out pretty obvious.

And they're exasperated by the attempts by the Blinken faction in the United States to get Israel to moderate stance on Gaza. So he's not able to persuade Netanyahu. We see that Netanyahu instead is having meetings with Lindsay Graham, who is always an advocate of war, especially war against Iran. So he's not able to speak to Netanyahu. But the problem is, Lincoln can't speak to the other side either. He's not able to talk to the Iranians.

He's not able to visit Tehran. He's not able to talk to Iran's regional backers, the Chinese and the Russians. He certainly can't go to Moscow at this particular time. So he's going to be doing exactly the same thing as he's done in all those other visits that he's carried out in the Middle East, aimlessly visit Arab capitals, Arab capitals like Riyadh and Jeddah and Amman, and Cairo, he's going to find the Arab leaders there, frankly frustrated and exasperated with him, because the United States has not been facilitating diplomacy, which is the only real way to end this crisis. So I don't really see what Blinken could do. The one thing that might avert this slide to a bigger war is for the United States.

States to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. And that's the one thing the United States says it will not do. Okay, so let's take it from the other side of things. Let's say the reporting for Politico is accurate. And I have to mention their sources are anonymous, but they say they have their sources within the Biden White House, multiple sources within the Biden White House that are saying that the Biden White House is indeed preparing for a wider war in the Middle East. The scenario that they paint is an attack on Yemen first and then things kind of escalate from there. Syria, Iraq, eventually, Hezbollah, Iran. Is that how you would see this playing out? I mean, would the first strike happen towards Yemen and then everything would just kind of unravel from there? Or could

this be contained at only Yemen if the political reporting is correct, and that is indeed what's happening? Well, in theory, it could be contained in Yemen. You launch a couple of strikes of the Houthis, you declare victory, and then you move away. But actually, think of it in practical terms. What is a strike on the Houthis going to achieve? The Houthis are an extremely tough organization. They have weathered a ferocious war against the Saudis when the Saudis were bombing every part of Yemen that they could with aircraft and missiles supplied by the way by the United States. Why would chucking a few more Tomahawk missiles at the Houthis by the United States, by the U.S. Navy, persuade the Houthis to change their stance? And the Houthis have repeatedly shown that they

have the ability to maintain some kind of industrial processes, to continue to produce missiles, to continue to send missiles, and rockets, despite the fact that they're coming under bombardment. And I understand that the landscape of Yemen, a very mountainous country, lots of caves, lots of rock places, all kinds of things, but lots of densely populated urban environments, makes that possible. So you launch missiles at the Houthis, the Houthis absorb the blow, and then retaliate by launching more rockets at the Red Sea. And then what do you do? I mean, if you're not solving anything, if you're not solving the practical problems in the Red Sea, what do you do? What do you do especially if the Houthis start retaliating, as they might,

to against American warships and other Western warships. American warships, one gets the sense, are well protected. They've got lots of air defense missiles and air defense systems. Some of the other Western warships in the area, much less so. So what do you do? You probably say to yourself, well, if I stop with these attacks on the Houthis, but the Houthis continue their attacks. I'm going to look a loser. And the one thing the Biden administration cannot afford is to appear a loser, especially in an election year. And the neocons anyway won't accept that. They will say, well, let's forget about the Houthis.

The Houthis are only one tentacle of the octopus. Let's attack the head of the octopus instead. The head of the octopus is in Iran, in Tehran. and we're going to start to see inevitably adrift towards a war with Iran. I can't really see any other logical outcome. And bear in mind, we applied. We used the same kind of logic with the Gaza crisis right at the beginning. We said, you know, that the Israelis, if they move on Gaza,

they're going to find this much more complicated and difficult than some people understand. and we predicted many of the moves that would happen at the UN and the deterioration in the overall standing of the United States. We applied that kind of logic there. We're applying identical logic to this crisis, and I don't see why that logic should be wrong. I don't see why it should fail. So I think if we do see strikes on the Houthis,

the prospect of a major escalation, a regional war, in other words, one possibly involving Iran is going to become very great indeed. And I can't see how it can be. How does that look? I mean, a conflict with Iran at this point in time for the United States, with Biden as president in an election year, the U.S., the entire collective West, bogged down in Ukraine, losing badly to Russia and Ukraine. and now they're going to start a conflict with Iran. Iran is much stronger than any time that I

could remember in the past 10, 20 years. Economically, they're part of bricks. They have a lot of support now from very big, powerful countries, superpowers, China, Russia. How does that play out a conflict with Iran because, you know, Iran, it seems, it seems that after the terrorist strike in Iran the other day, it seems like Iran is exercising a lot of restraint. That's how it seems. There doesn't seem to be any talk of any type of retaliation or any type of escalation. I mean, is that, am I reading that correctly? How does this all unfold? Well, in the, And let's make the point straight away that somebody is clearly trying to goad is run into some kind of war. So, I mean, you know, we're talking about containing the crisis with the Houthis.

We, you know, with a strike on the Houthis and saying, you know, we don't actually, how it can be, how that will almost certainly lead to a pattern of US escalation. But, of course, there are some people who are trying to short circuit that. problem and to put the Iranians in a weaker diplomatic position by provoking them into starting the conflict themselves. And we've seen a multiple series of attempts to do that over the last couple of days. Note all of this starting the moment we saw that pull back from Gaza and the report about the Gerald Ford being returned to the United States. So firstly, we had the attack, the murder of Musavi, who is this Iranian official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard call of Iran.

Then we had the assassination of a Hamas official in Beirut. Now, Beirut is a city largely, as I understand it, controlled by Hezbollah. Hezbollah is allied to Iran. To me, that looks like a blow against Hezbollah and ultimately against Iran itself. And then, of course, we have this massive bomb attack near the tomb of Soleimani, the general who, of course, the United States assassinated. And of course, that has now been attributed to ISIS. And ISIS has come forward and made that claim. But we also know that ISIS is a complex and interesting organization where the Czech had passed, which has a habit of appearing at odd and interesting moments in the Middle East.

I'm not going to say more than that because people understand why. So, somebody's trying to gode Iran into a reaction, and Iran is not letting itself be goaded. They are acting, again, contrary to what many people, I think, expected, with a great deal of discipline. And it is entirely understandable why they would, because by acting in a sense, a disciplined way, they strengthened their position. And coming back to what you said, you're absolutely correct. Iran is now in a stronger position than it has ever been in, ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It's now a full member of the Bricks. It's got a free trade treaty with the Eurasian Economic Union. It's negotiated a major arms deal with the Russians. It's going to be

supplied with Suhoy 35 fighter jets, yak-130 ground attack aircraft, other equipment that we probably don't know about. Its economy is booming. It's registering a 7% growth rate. Now, this has not yet translated into a dramatic improvement in living standards because this growth has only very recently started. But all the indications are that the growth is going to continue and that the economic situation in Iran is going to change very soon. Iran also has good relations with India, good relations with Turkey, good relations with Pakistan, and it's achieved a diplomatic revolution in resolving its long-standing problems with Saudi Arabia. So given that all of this has happened to Iran over the last year,

that the Iranians have achieved this tremendous improvement in their position. Why should they put all that at risk by taking the gamble of a war against Israel and the United States? And they're not doing so. They are telling their allies, look, you can rely on us, our friends, their partners, their BRICS partners, you can rely on us. you can rely on us. We are acting with the maximum degree of restraint. We are not encouraging these attacks by the Houthis or by the people in Iraq and Syria. That's what they're saying. These are not our proxies. They're our allies. You can believe that or not. But that's what they're saying. They're telling Hezbollah, don't strike at Israel. That's not what we want you to do,

not in a big way. They are exercising restraint. And that makes them, puts them in a stronger diplomatic position, it means that if an attack does come on Iran, Iran will not be seen as the aggressor. It will be seen as the victim, and that will shore up its alliances even further than put it in a stronger position as the crisis unfolds. So this is the worst time to attack Iran. I mean, it's never been a good time to attack Iran, but this is a particularly bad time to attack Iran. And of course, as the Iranians themselves like to point out, their military anyway has been developing quite significantly over the last couple of years, and they're in a better position to resist attacks than they have been in the past.

Now, I'm not a military person, expert on military technologies. I don't know how advanced runs weapon systems truly are. We'll have to wait and see. but that it is a powerful country, that is indisputable. Okay, let's go back to Israel and Gaza. One thing that could bring everything to an end, to a stop, all of this escalation is a stop in the conflict in Israel and in Gaza, a ceasefire of some sort.

We're not going to get that from the Netanyahu administration. We're not going to get that from the United States. What do you make of the recent moves by the United States? nations? Is it making any headway in trying to get a ceasefire in Israel and in Gaza? And what about South Africa's suit to the ICJ, to the international justice? Is that for real? Does that have merit? Can that bring a ceasefire to this war? Would Israel be obliged to to follow a decision from the ICJ. Right.

The first thing to say is that I think it is absolutely for real, but that it will probably play out over a very, very long time. And, you know, we're talking about probably years of litigation. I can't see the ICJ ordering an injunction, for example, to restrain Israel at this time. And of course, Israel itself will deny or try to deny that the ICJ has, um, jurisdiction, but it is a ticking bomb because if the ICJ makes this decision, it's important to stress, we're talking about the International Court of Justice, we're not talking here about the international criminal court. That has, to all intents and purposes, by the way, discredited itself.

I mean, it accepts that he does have jurisdiction because Palestine is within, has ratified the Rome statute and Palestine extends to Gaza, but it is incapable, apparently, of making any sort of decision. And I think most countries around the world outside the collective West have washed their hands on it. The International Court of Justice is a different matter entirely. A country like South Africa has the right to bring a claim to the ICJ. It will be backed by. It will be backed by many other countries and of course there is a case now this is a point people need to understand that the case comes from a combination of two things the actions that the Israelis have been taking in Gaza and there have just been more reports by the way that they're again trying to displace part

of the population from Gaza and that they're talking to people in countries in Africa and in Congo and such places to take these people from Gaza. I predict, by the way, that that holotype will fail. So there's the Israeli actions. And then there's been this succession of disastrous comments by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu itself. So to use legal language, you have mens rea statement of intention, and you have actions,

Actus Reyes, which is consistent or arguably consistent with those intentions. Now, that doesn't in itself and of itself produce a verdict, but it does produce a case. If the International Court of Justice

what comes forward and says, yes, there is a real arguable, case here, and we are going to proceed with it. This is going to be catastrophically embarrassing for the US administration, and it is going to be even more embarrassing for many of the US's allies in Europe, countries like Britain, but perhaps especially Germany, which has been taking a very, very strong position in support of Israel in this thing. If the Germans see Israel facing these kind of legal suits in courts like the International Court of Justice, that will be, well, a nightmare for them politically in Germany itself and in the rest of Europe.

So yes, this is important. And what happens in the United Nations is also important. Because what we see is that with every move in the United Nations, exactly as we predicted, we see that the support for the United States is gradually dwindling away, and the global community is slowly, not so slowly, by the way. I mean, you remember, we're now in January, and this whole crisis only began in October, which in diplomatic time and UN diplomatic time, it is no time at all. What we see is every single resolution proposed to the UN,

is now becoming stronger, it's becoming supported by more and more states, the UN Secretariat is increasingly supporting these resolutions, is becoming outspoken in support of these resolutions. The last vote in the General Assembly saw 153 states vote to support a ceasefire resolution up from 121 in November, and all the indications are that the pressures are growing, And we see that in the Security Council as well, the pressure is increasing. And yes, eventually, if this were to continue indefinitely, we would see a vote in the General Assembly,

a mandatory resolution under the potentially under, you know, the Uniting for Peace formula, which by the way, it was the United States itself, which was, instrumental in creating back in the 1950s. And at that point, that would be an equally huge political disaster for the United States. Just as a decision by the ICJ, rather, to take on a case would be a political disaster, especially for the Europeans. A decision of the United Nations like this would also be a disaster for the United States. because these resolutions, mandatory resolutions, form part of international law. And the United States claims, of course, that it is the champion of what it likes to call

the rules-based international order. It can, of course, disregard these resolutions. It can ignore these resolutions. It can tell Israel to ignore these resolutions. It can throw a hissy fit if a resolution like this is passed. But, that carries still more geopolitical costs. It means that countries like the Russians, the Chinese, all of these countries will be able to say, look, it's the United States, that's the rogue state. They are defying mandatory resolutions by the United Nations, by the place where international law is made. So this, again, diplomatically is an unsustainable position, but it was the one that the United States trapped itself into back in October when Joe Biden made that disastrous trip to Jerusalem,

followed it up with an equally disastrous speech from the Oval Office, committed the United States to an open-ended support for Israel and found itself in a situation where this war is dragging on. The Israelis are refusing to call it off and it is now trapped in a position. in the General Assembly, in the United Nations, and potentially at the ICJ, which is not just embarrassing, but potentially catastrophic. And that's why we had this fork in the road. That's why people like Blinken and Sullivan, who are looking at all of this, are saying, let's pull back, let's bring back the Ford, let's get the Israelis out of Gaza, even if we can't get a ceasefire. And that's also why the others are saying, we have. have to act fast before we get decisions of the ICJ and before we get decisions from the UN.

We've got to act fast. We've got to act now. This is the moment when we must launch our strike. The Houthis are doing all of these things. We are seeing the situation deteriorate. This is the point where we must assert our strength, show that we are strong, take the action that we should have taken all those months ago, launch attacks on Houthis, launch attacks on Hezbollah and strike it Iran. The fort in the road, yeah.

Unfortunately, we know over many situations similar to this one, which side usually wins out. This is exactly correct. Ever since, I can remember, ever since the Yugoslav crisis, whenever there's been a choice, you know, a definite choice between war and peace, the advocates of war, the neocons, have always won. Why should this crisis be any different? And the thing about every one of these wars,

including, by the way, in my opinion, the war in Yugoslavia, which I'm not going to discuss now, but certainly the wars in the Middle East, is that not only are they wrong, but they have always invariably ended up leaving the geopolitical position of the United States damage. But that never seems to change anything. We still see these advocates of war, they always win out.

And I'm glad you brought up the reference to Ukraine, because of course, Ukraine was a wholly avoidable war. We could have had peace agreements. The Minsk Agreement was there. There were all kinds of opportunities, forks in the road there. But no, we had to act strong. We couldn't negotiate. we had to support the Ukrainians to the ultimate.

We had to arm them. We had to support them. We had to encourage them to take kinetic action in the book, Dombas. That has ended disastrously. No lessons at all have been learned. Right. Who's Russia to tell us who can enter NATO and who can't enter NATO? This is an existential policy, an existential threat, Russia telling us that Ukraine can't enter NATO.

That's what it all balled. down to. Yeah. And then, of course, when there was the last attempt, when there was the last attempt to negotiate a deal in Istanbul between the Russians and the Ukrainians, we can't allow that because, you know, that's, again, compromises the fundamental principle about NATO entry, and the Chinese will think, will we? The Chinese, this is, you know, Xi Jinping's going to invade Taiwan because Zelensky and Putin have signed a deal in Istanbul. I mean, it's the kind of warp logic that these people follow and which, unfortunately, they have persuaded everybody of importance in Washington and in London and in Brussels to adopt.

Yeah, it's the paranoia that everyone's going to see us as weak. Was it Reagan that said peace through strength? Was that Reagan? Absolutely. I think they've taken that to just a very dangerous level. Well, of course, he meant it. Very destructive level. Very destructive level.

But of course, he meant it in a completely different way because his actual objective was peace. I mean, that's the other thing, of course. I mean, they always cite Reagan. But it was Reagan who did the big deals with the Soviets. I mean, you know, he was prepared to put all the evil empire rhetoric that he had himself engaged to one side and meet with Gorbachev, and they did all those deals.

and he negotiated an end of the Cold War. And I'm not going to get into the detail of all of that, but we've had programs again with Jack Matlock and Chas Freeman and others who were involved, that all sorts of people who've discussed all of this, and we know how it was done. They pretend to follow Reagan's example, and in fact they do the opposite.

Good point. All right. We will end it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichute, Telegram, Rock Finn, and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop, 20% off. Use the code, the Duran 20. Take care.