The Duran Podcast
Blinken talks escalation with Iran
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the continuing escalation in the Middle East. We are getting some pretty scary rhetoric from the Biden White House, from Anthony Blinken, specifically when he was speaking at the Aspen Institute events, where he said that Iran's going to get a nuclear weapon in two weeks, one to two weeks, just kind of just threw it out there. And yeah, I was kind of surprised to hear that from Blinken. And then, of course, we have the escalation between Israel and Yemen. Yemen, they sent a drone into Tel Aviv. Israel launched airstrikes into Yemen. And now we are getting reports saying that Yemen is planning retaliation to the Israeli retaliation. So continuing escalation in the Middle East, it makes you wonder what was all of the diplomacy, the eight months of diplomacy from Blinken in Sullivan? What was it all for if we continued to head towards some sort of big conflict in the Middle East? Well, it was for nothing because it has achieved absolutely nothing. It has not won over countries to the side of the United States, all of the major countries in the Middle East, including Israel, by the way, utterly exasperated with the current government of the United States. It has not achieved peace in Gaza because there is still fighting going on in Gaza. Every couple of days, the administration sometimes fighting himself come out with statements that a ceasefire is almost about to be agreed or the framework of a ceasefire has been agreed. And all that remains is a little bit more discussion. There are a few more negotiations. And it never is agreed. So the fighting in Gaza is continuing. There is still a crisis on Israel's northern border. Hezbollah and Israel continue to exchange fire, missiles and rockets. There is still not being an Israeli offensive into Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah. But my impression is that that's only because the Israeli military itself is not keen on this and they've been pushing back against the orders from Netanyahu and the cabinet to do it. And of course, now we have this added crisis, which is the crisis between Israel and Yemen, who has launched drone attacks on Tel Aviv and a drone got through and killed a civilian apparently in Tel Aviv. And the Israelis, in response, have launched a big airstrike on Yemen, which is something that we always knew they could do anywhere. They've now done it. And the Houthis are saying that there will be more retaliation. So a situation where nothing, the diplomacy, has been completely unsuccessful. And Netanyahu is still prime minister of Israel. And he now looks, I would say, more secure in that position than he has been at any time since the crisis began, following Hamas's attack on Israel on the 7th of October. Because he's seeing off Joe Biden. Joe Biden is stepping down. It's been absolutely clear for some weeks now that Biden has been, or at least Biden team, have been trying to find some means to leverage Netanyahu out of office. Chuck Schumer, it almost spoke about that. So Netanyahu has seen Biden off. He is in full control of his government. His allies, smart rich and Ben Vere, are still there. And they're still supporting him. He's still making the key decisions in Israel. He's just authorized this, this airstrike on Yemen. He's about to visit the United States. And we'll have a triumphant trip to Congress, where he's going to address the two houses of Congress highlighting the continuing strength of support for Israel in Congress. And with this in Yahoo, visibly now in control of the situation, you can see why the members of this enfeebled, disorganized and chaotic administration in Washington are trying to keep up with events and are now starting to sing Netanyahu's tunes about Iran, and they're now talking as Blinken is, about Iran being within one or two weeks of having a sufficient stockpile of enriched uranium to create nuclear bomb. So this is where we are. The Biden administration has completely failed in its diplomacy in the Middle East. Netanyahu has basically won. Yeah, very interesting. They wanted to leverage out Netanyahu and Netanyahu stays. Biden goes. Things were chaotic with Biden, with the Biden team's diplomacy in the Middle East. No doubt about it. With the situation in the United States right now, with Biden and Kamala Harris and all of this uncertainty and instability, over the next four months, do things spiral out of control? Because we don't just don't have anybody in the White House. You don't know. You don't know what's going on. Do things get really chaotic now? Yes. I think they could get very chaotic. Now, for one thing, if the next, if the candidate for the Democratic Party going into the election in November is indeed going to be Kamala Harris, then Netanyahu, who, as I said, is likely to remain prime minister of Israel for the foreseeable future, will want Trump to win. Because Netanyahu's relations with Trump have always been good. His relations with JD Vance have been good. He will be looking forward to a administration in Washington, the Republican administration in Washington that is made up of his friends. He will not see Kamala Harris, who is probably going to be under even greater pressure, in some respects, from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, who want a ceasefire and a change of policy over Israel. He's not going to want her as the president. He's not going to want to exercise much in the way of restraint. He's not going to want to do anything over the next couple of months that's going to support or assist Kamala Harris going forward into the November election. That points to Netanyahu, probably from now on, looking towards escalation, and he is already escalating. He's escalating with this big air strike against Yemen. Of course, we're now going to see a lot more rhetoric cranking up about Iran again. As I said, Blinken is starting to reflect that. This is where we are. The Biden White House made its foundational error about how to handle the situation in the Middle East in the week directly following the Hamas attack on Israel, when Biden went to Israel, gave Netanyahu a blank check, and that, in effect, gave Netanyahu the initiative, which he's kept ever since with the administration, increasingly trying to call that check back, but finding that they lack the political strength and unity to do so. The result is Netanyahu is now in full control, and he's going to press forward, and he's going to press forward in the confident expectation that his friends will soon be backing power in Washington, and that he has absolutely no reason to help Kamala Harris become president of the United States. So, raise yourself for continued escalation in the Middle East. Yeah, there are reports that Netanyahu is trying to work things out with Trump. They had a falling out. Yes, Trump and Netanyahu, so they got along very well when Trump was president. They had a falling out after 2020, but now there are reports that Netanyahu is reaching out to Trump, of course, with the understanding that Trump is going to be the president of the United States in January 2025. What do you think was behind the Blinken statement at the Aspen Institute? Is this another WMD type of moment? Is he trying to distract away from everything that's happening at the White House by creating a WMD moment? What was that about? I think it's lots of different things. Firstly, I think it is the WMD moment. I mean, I'm not saying that Iran doesn't have the ability to acquire all this enriched uranium, it probably does, but as even Blinken admitted, there's no evidence that the Iranians are for the moment working towards acquiring a nuclear bomb. And for the moment, I don't see that it serves their interests to do that either. So in that respect, it is a WMD moment, but what I think it is is an attempt to take away attention from Israel and from Netanyahu, who is clearly now, as I said, overall in control and to shift it back to Iran. Iran has just had an election. It's elected a new president. Many people thought this president would be a reformist. However, he's apparently moving forward with the strategic partnership with Russia, which is about to be concluded apparently in a few weeks. It doesn't look as if Iran is changing its policies in any fundamental or important way. And I think that given that that is so, and given the fact that, as I said, Netanyahu is looking very entrenched at the moment in Israel, I think that Blinken is basically, as he often does, he's trimming his sails to the prevailing wind, which is towards more escalation, further escalation. Biden, Blinken is anyway a near count himself. So he's probably not altogether averse to a conflict with Iran of some form. So this is what I think this is. It is a WMD moment. I think that it does increase the high likelihood that we're going to see a strike on Iran within the next few weeks or months. What I would say, by the way, about Netanyahu and Trump, is that I am sure that Netanyahu believes that when Trump is installed in the White House, and I'm sure that Netanyahu believes that in November, Trump will be the winner of the election. He expects that he's going to have a Republican administration that is going to be fully supportive of him. He might actually be disappointed in that in the sense that I get the impression that the new team that's emerging on the Republican side are hard-nosed American realists. And obviously, they do support Israel, but I think they're much more tough-minded about foreign policy and far less sentimental than previous American governments have been. And they will probably not want to be drawn into open-ended commitments in the Middle East. When he was president, Trump avoided them. He avoided getting involved into conflicts in the Middle East. He avoided getting involved into conflicts in Syria and avoided out-and-out confrontation with Iran, just so. Final question. What about Iran? I mean, okay, you mentioned he avoided Iran, but we seem to be drifting towards some sort of action being taken against Iran, some sort of strike, some sort of conflict. If you go by the words from the Biden White House, is this something that Trump's realist team of foreign policy? Guys, is this what they're going to do? They're going to go after Iran? No, they're not. I think that what they want is peace and quality in the Middle East, peace and quiet wherever they can so that they can stabilize the economy and focus on sorting out the major challenge, which is China, where I think, by the way, that they will want to pursue negotiations. I don't think they will want immediate direct confrontation with China over Taiwan or anything like that. But the danger is not what happens after November or after January, it's what happens whilst the president remains in office because you have a very, very weak administration now, a president who has lost all authority and all credibility and who is the lamest of lame darks. And you have a Netanyahu who is unconstrained and this is his moment he may calculate to do change the configuration of events in the Middle East by launching strikes on Iran, launching strikes against the Houthis, doing all of those kinds of things in order to put an imprint on the situation and present the Trump administration when it comes in, in January, with a kind of fair to conflict. So I think this is going to be Netanyahu's instinct and he's coming to Washington on Wednesday, and he'll be talking with all his friends there, and he'll be trying to make sure that if he does move forward in that way, that he has the necessary backing in Washington. All right, we will end the video there at the Duran.local.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, but you tell the grand rock fan and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop, pick up some limited edition merch. You'll find a link in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]