The Duran Podcast
Neocons closer than ever to war with Iran
All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in the Middle East. Axios is saying that there's going to be a big Iran retaliation coming either on Monday or Tuesday. One day, Axios is convinced that it's going to happen early in the week. I believe they said Monday citing their sources. The Wall Street Journal is saying that Iran is going to retaliate, like a real retaliation, not something along the lines of what we saw in April when the Iranian consulate was hit in Syria. We have a lot of U.S. military officials in the Middle East as well, planning for this big Iranian strike. What's your sense of things? It does look like markets are crashing everywhere, travel warnings. How are you looking at this right now? It does seem like we are going to get something big coming in the next couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. Who knows? It's hard to time these things. Well, we can't time them because of course we don't know what the plans that have been drawn up by the various parties are, but all the indications, all the overwhelming indications, both from the U.S., but also from Iran itself, is that a major Iranian response is on its way. Now, I'm going to just say one of few things about the timings. The Iranians are calling a meeting of the Organization of Islamic States, and I'm guessing that they will probably want to calibrate their response to align that response with that meeting. So they will want countries, as many Islamic countries as possible, to attend it, and they will want a big show of support. Maybe they will want that to happen before the actual military response takes place, so that might be an argument for delay, or perhaps they will want to time the meeting with the military response, so that they sort of fall together. But this is an aspect of the Iranian reaction, which has not been much talked about, that they are also seeking a diplomatic track. And it was the other thing, the other factor that may be affecting Iranian calculations is that according to media reports, and we are talking purely about media reports, but these are probably true, they are turning to the Russians for help, and that the Russians are providing them with quite a lot of sophisticated equipment, electronic warfare equipment, perhaps radars, perhaps surveillance equipment as well, and as I said to be constant flights by Russian aircraft to Tehran, and it may be that if this equipment is on its way, the Iranians will not only want to receive it all, but to be put in a position where they can use it, in other words put it into some kind of service before the response happens. But that a big response is coming, that this is that we are now on the brink of an all-out war. I don't think anybody can be under any doubts about any longer. The latest reports are that the Foreign Minister of Georgian visited Tehran, apparently he pleaded with the Iranians to show restraint. Jordan has been in a very, very difficult position because it's an Arab country, most of the population is Palestinian, most of the population sympathizes intensely with the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, so they're very, very angry about this, they're very, very angry about the fact that the Jordanian government back in April helped the U.S. to shoot down Iranian missiles as they were flying towards Israel during the first Iranian missile strike, but at the same time the Jordanian government is very afraid that if it sits back and allows Iranian missiles to fly over its territory without taking action, then the Israelis might respond. So it's caught between a rock and a hard place and it's been begging the Iranians to hold off and the G7 has been begging the Iranians to hold off and the Iranians are apparently telling absolutely everybody the look is gone too far, the Israelis have gone too far this time, they crossed a red line, the Iranian president by the way, the new Iranian president, Pasechkyat, has said the same thing, that the Iranians, that the Israelis crossed too many red lines carrying out an assassination on the very day of Pasechkyat's inauguration in Tehran itself and that this time Iran has no option, feels that it has no option but to respond fiercely and aggressively and I've no doubt that that's what they're going to do. So we have been talking on the Duran for months ever since October about the fact that a war in the Middle East is a real possibility that there's agitation and pressure from the near cons in the United States, from the Netanyahu government in Israel to expand the war, to expand it in order to bring in Iran and ultimately the United States as well. We've been warning that this possibility is a very real one and we see that now we're on that, the brink of that very thing happening and as you say, markets are crashing, people are being told to leave Lebanon, the embassies are telling everybody to leave Lebanon which by the way again must be that Western governments have been briefed by the Israelis and who knows by whom else about the kind of military action that could be taken against Lebanon. So people have been told to leave Lebanon, airlines stop, sea stop in their flights, all the indications are that a major war is about to happen, it's going to be between Israel and Iran and the United States has been dragged along. Is there any other option outside of a big retaliation for Iran? I know you just said that that Iran feels like they have no other option, they've stated they have no other option, the president has said as much. I've been trying to think is there any other way that Iran could retaliate without losing face? I can't think of of one, I don't want to say akin to the retaliation, I believe it was April 13th when Iran sent the drones and the missiles with the five, five, six hour notice so that Israel and all the countries around Israel could do what they needed to do in order to track those missiles and shoot them down or whatever happened on April 13th which wasn't a retaliation, it was more of a warning but in this instance is there anything that Iran could do or could be convinced to do so that we don't escalate to a large war? I think it's very difficult to say it again, to make a point which we've made many times in many programs, the Iranians have not been wanting a war, they've not been looking for a war. American and Israeli intelligence say that Iran was not involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on the 7th of October. Iran has taken no military action of any kind against Israel until the moment when their own embassy in Damascus was attacked and they were forced to retaliate and then they told the Americans days in advance when the retaliation would take place and they gave them ample notice of it and they conducted it in such a way that basically they they pulled their part of their punches and they've tried to talk their allies Hezbollah into moderating their response against Israel as well. They bent over backwards as far as I can see to avoid an all-out war. They haven't wanted it. The problem is that that restraint has been interpreted by the neocons and by the hardliners in the Israeli government as weakness and I think the Iranian calculation now is and has to be that if they respond in some other way some way that isn't perhaps visible starts undertaking a stealth campaign for example to eliminate Israeli agents across the Middle East which is one possibility I've seen happen precisely because that isn't going to be visible and will take place over a long time. The effect will not be to redress that appearance of humiliation that Iran has suffered as a result of the latest attack and it will not be sufficient to restore deterrence because what we see is that every time that Iran exercises restraint every time it acts in a you know covert way in response to a public attack from Israel it's construed as a sign of weakness and it simply encourages the Israelis to come back and do more. And here you see this is the fundamental difference in calculus because I get the sense that the neocons and some people within Israel I mean it's important not to say everybody in Israel but some people in Israel and some people in the Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu himself positively want to war with Iran. That is why they carried out this assassination of Hanir in Tehran they actively want to war with Iran they could have assassinated Hanir in other places he's based in Qatar no doubt he's protected there but we've seen that the Israelis can get round protection systems and I'm sure they could do the same with Qatar he moves around the Middle East or has moved around the Middle East so they could have killed him if they really wanted to kill him somewhere else but they chose to kill him in Tehran on the day when the president of Iran was being inaugurated and this was I think a calculated signal to the Iranians. Look if you don't respond we are just going to go on doing this and all the time until your credibility collapses we don't accept that you have any deterrent capability against us at all and the reason the Israelis are behaving like this is because some people in Israel the key decision makers in Israel actively want to war they want to widen a war they want to war with Iran and there's the second part of their agenda because I think Israel knows that by itself it cannot inflict the kind of defeat on Iran that the Israeli leadership wants they want to involve the United States and perhaps other countries in that war other Arab countries and Western countries in that war against Iran as well so the Israelis have been pursuing a policy of deliberate escalation and unless these Iranians take a strong firm public stand to generally restore deterrence that's what they try to do in April that they show that they have the capability to strike at Israel but they pull their punches on that occasion but that you know unless this gets through in Iran in Israel that you know the attacking Iran in this way that the Israelis have been doing is not going to be without cost then I think the Iranians feel that they're just setting themselves up for more attacks by the Israelis of this kind so I don't really see a way out I think that the Iranians very much against their wishes are boxed in and that they have to take this action and this big action and that's why that and that's what they're telling everybody What is this we're going to look like if we do enter into this big war I hope we don't I think everyone is praying that we don't what does this what does this look like I mean if it pulls in the United States it pulls in Lebanon I imagine Syria what Well what's this thing going to be I mean is Europe going to get involved is the UK going to get involved well do you have any any ideas this is what we don't know there was a long article of the Financial Times which made all kinds of guesses about how a war might might take place I don't think those guesses are very useful or very helpful I think the first thing that's going to happen most likely is that there's going to be an Iranian missile strikes on Israel I mean I you know and rather more fierce missile strikes than the one where much more fierce missile strikes than the ones we saw in April and the United States is going to try to intercept those missiles but it's much more likely that many more will get through and that they will do more damage now I as I understand it and as the Financial Times appeared to acknowledge the combined missile arsenals of Iran Hezbollah and its other regional allies exceed Israel's own air defense capabilities Israel can shoot down most of these missiles and it can go on doing so for a while but eventually they will run through air defense missiles sooner than the Iranians run through their own cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and the you know simpler rockets that Hezbollah uses so there will be a missile war but it's likely eventually I would guess that especially if the balance starts to tilt increasingly in Iran to Iran's advantage in this missile war which might not be immediately obvious but could turn out to be the case over time that the pressure will grow full air strikes Israel to launch air strikes and perhaps commando operations against Iranian missile bases both in Iran itself and elsewhere in the Middle East and we could almost we will almost certainly see anyway some kind of major ground and air operation almost immediately being conducted against Hezbollah in Lebanon and this is the point I think of maximum danger because at that point if that those operations don't go particularly well then the Israelis might call on the Americans for help the Americans decide to provide that help then they will be going up against Iranian air defenses and there's the risk of American aircraft being shot down that could have political effects in the United States which we can't judge that could also lead the United States to escalate further and of course the great uncertainty the big issue is whether at some point the Iranians will do that which they have said on previous occasions they would be prepared to do which is to close the Straits of Hormuz now the Straits of Hormuz the only exit from the Persian Gulf it's 35 percent of the world's oil apparently travel or 30 percent of the world's oil apparently travels through it if the Straits of Hormuz aren't closed then we're going to see a massive increase in oil prices and the effect will be almost immediate and the repercussions on the world economy will be profound and we have seen from the events in the Red Sea where the United States has been unable to stop the Houthis destroying or hitting merchant ships that are traveling through the Red Sea that you know if the Houthis can do that and if the United States can't stop them then I don't have any doubt at all that the Iranians can do the same in the Straits of Hormuz which is much much narrower and much much easier to close but I think that the Iranians will not want to do that immediately because obviously it's a massive deterrent that they have also the other the Gulf Arab states Saudi Arabia first and foremost will be extremely angry and upset that the Straits of Hormuz are closed because of course the Straits of Hormuz are up for the Saudis their economic lifeline and of course for the Iranians to do that that might force the Saudis finally to turn to the Americans so I think the Iranians will be reluctant to do that in the meantime as I said we'll just have to see how the Gulf states respond if there is already if there's this kind of missile and air war whether they will allow Israeli aircraft to overfly that territory to launch Straits on Iran what will happen if they do that kind of thing so I think initially as I said it would be a missile war and a war in the air except that it is likely that there will be a ground operation by Israel and Lebanon but you know I can't go into the details of this because to be frank I don't know and I don't think anybody outside the general staffs of the two countries and perhaps the United States knows exactly how it will play out imagine Iran is going to pick the targets that they strike if they do launch missiles if this does happen imagine they're going to pick the the target very carefully well I think so because the problem with the problem is that if we're in a war situation and it was this is a war by the way which unlike every other Middle East war Arab-Israeli war you know 48 56 67 73 has the potential to go on for months and months and months because we could very well find ourselves in a nutrition war again in fact that might be the type of war that the Iranians choose to wage against Israel because they know that Israel is a small country with limited resources and the United States already is overextended in many places anyway if we are involved in a long war then the restraints that each side imposes on itself over the course of that kind of war starts to fall away so yes the Iranians initially will almost certainly pick their initial targets in Israel very carefully but if the Israelis respond and respond aggressively as they have shown every indication that they are prepared to do then it's likely that over time the Iranians are going to start to expand the positions the targets in Israel that they seek to attack and then of course there's the other there's the other uncertainty I mean I've talked about Iran closing the straits of whole news as being the ultimate point to which Iran might eventually go but of course there's always been the rumors not rumors I mean everybody is aware and knows that Israel itself possesses nuclear weapons there's been claims recently by Secretary Blinken that Iran is close to developing to having a sufficiently large nuclear stockpile to make nuclear weapons of itself I'm afraid I don't like to say this I mean I like this a terrifying thing to talk about but I'm afraid if we are in a long war then of course the risks that these kind of weapons could be used are very high and they're much much higher orders of magnitude higher than anything that we've seen in the conflict in Ukraine up to now so you know let's desperately hope that the war is avoided and if it starts the diplomatic action of which to be frank there's been very little up to this time manages to bring it back under control and bring it quickly to an end I have to sound concerned about the latter because in order to bring a war to an end after it begins the allies of Israel which has been the major escalatory driver need to finally draw red lines with Israel tell the Israel look you can't you simply can't go on doing this if you continue doing this we are going to have to take action against you we don't want to do it but we're going to have to we will go to the Security Council we'll start talking about chapter seven sections and that kind of thing absent that then the logic that is has been following of escalating endlessly is likely to continue at least whilst the government current government remains in office yeah and then you have the rumors of of bunkers being built for the Israeli top level officials Netanyahu his cabinet that's not a good sign if it's a bad sign it's a very bad sign it shows that they're hunkering down for a long war with Iran I mean they've been as I say itching for this war now they have it coming and of course they're already building bunkers in fact you're getting lots of reports that people in Israel having brought everything to this point are now becoming nervous but I cannot imagine Netanyahu and he's the people around him being prepared to back down willingly so if a war comes you know they're much more likely to build bunkers and even deeper bunkers and to keep the war going as long as they can until they achieve victory and hope that something turns up to rescue them then they are to agree to a compromise unless the Western powers put the kind of pressure on them to stop which they have not been prepared to do up to this point now can I just say something there was this extraordinary article in Axios and there are now media reports about it all over the middle east about this extraordinary telephone conversation between Biden and Netanyahu and I know you follow them W obviously you've listened to my programs but I've been saying that one of the things about the assassination of honey in Tehran was that it looked to me like an extraordinary calculated and very cynical snub carried out by Netanyahu against Biden he'd come to Washington he delivered he's speech to Congress and we did a program saying what an incredibly belligerent and confrontational speech it was and how it clearly signaled that Netanyahu was now you know felt himself or the constraints had fallen away and that he was going to go to a war and then of course after he did that he met Biden and they had this chat and according to Axios and all of these other reports Netanyahu did not disclose to Biden that the Israelis were planning to assassinate Hania this despite the fact that Biden has publicly state his prestige on brokering a ceasefire in in the Gaza conflict and that Biden and the sorry and the Hania was Hamas's chief negotiator in those very same ceasefire negotiations so we're getting all of these reports that Biden is furious about this the administration is furious about this that other countries are furious about this to the Jordanians are said to be angry with the Israelis supposedly some of the countries in Europe are angry with the Israelis well anger gets you nowhere unless you are prepared to actually start doing something so Hania is assassinated what does the United States do does it publicly say that they condemn this that they think this was an absolutely incorrect and outrageous reassure the Iranians that they are not only were not involved but that they completely distance themselves from it no they say that they're going to go on supporting Israel and protecting Israel against Iranian responses and and at the same time spreading these stories via Axios and the rest you know telling us about this angry conversation between Biden and Netanyahu now the Israelis could see the absurd inconsistency of this I mean it's like you know the headmaster the teacher in the class who's got you know a pupil who's constantly misbehaving and the teacher wags you know his finger at the pupil who's you know done some other terrible thing and so you know you know just go to the back of the class and don't do it again and this is they've said this about you know 50 tons the Israelis know perfectly well or believe have every reason to believe perfectly well that all this anger all this criticism that they're getting which is such so muted it means nothing the Israelis see it as a bluff they don't take it seriously which is why they go on doing what they're doing as an if diplomatic action is going to stop this wall then we not only have to tell the governments and the West not only have to tell the Israelis that they disapprove of what the Israelis are doing in private calls they need to have the courage to come out and say in public and they also need to have the courage to tell the Israelis if you do this again then not only are you on your own but we the West will take action to make sure that you can't do it again until that happens the Israelis will see this as a bluff and they'll go on doing what they're doing and because I don't think Western governments have reached that point as we see they're sending all that military assets to defend Israel just confirming to the Israelis that all this anger is a bluff and it doesn't mean anything that is going to mean that the Israelis have no incentive no that feel under no pressure to compromise the hunking hunkering down for a long war and they will continue to fight it it's obvious to me yeah the the uh diplomacy the diplomacy from the Biden White House is never going to happen never going to happen if there's going to be any diplomacy that can de-escalate the situation is going to have to come from from China or Russia or countries in the Middle East Saudi Arabia I don't know but that's not going to happen either they're not going to be able to to exert leverage over Israel it's only it's only the United States not even Europe Europe's going to do whatever the US orders to do period end of story whatever the US tells Europe to do they're going to do it the EU the same goes for the UK the UK will take their orders from the United States and unfortunately you have a situation in the United States where you don't really have a president everyone understands this the president has effectively been been coup d'etat everyone everyone knows this you have Kamala Harris who's in no position to to make decisions I don't even know if she has a clear understanding of the region or what's going on and you just have a lot of uncertainty in the United States and you have the the neocons and even neo-con lights like uh like people like Mike Johnson for example who may be not so neo-con-ish like a Lindsey Graham but you know he's still he's still a neo-con maybe in a lighter format or a newer a newer model of of the neo-cons and they absolutely want this war to happen absolutely this is their chance yeah this is their chance to finally get Iran maybe this is their chance to reset everything that's happening in the United States maybe on an economic level maybe maybe this is their way to to wash away the defeat that has been afflicted on them by Russia in in Ukraine so maybe this is a way to move on from from the embarrassment of what's been dealt to them in Ukraine I don't know you know the no everything is pointing to to a group of people in the United States that really do have the power that absolutely want to want to engage in this war for multiple reasons I mean this is exactly this is exactly the situation which we which we see Netanyahu sensed it when he went to Washington he it became obvious to him how strong politically his position there was there that as a said the administration has essentially advocated the scene that there is no strong government any longer in the United States that there is a vacuum of power there we discussed it and he's taking advantage of that and you have the hardliners in Washington who support him and you know if you listen to Lindsey Graham not just the statements that Lindsey Graham has been making over the last couple of days including his you know proposed bill to authorize military action directly against Iran by the United States and all that you go back to an interview he gave a couple of months ago which was by the way about the Middle East situation he was banging his fist on the you know on the table in front of him he was talking about Hiroshima I got the sense listening to him that there was no limit at where at which there was no point at which Lindsey Graham was prepared to stop I mean he's talked in the past about you know assassinating the Russian president you know that's the kind of person who I think is now in the ascendant in Washington and in the Middle East you know they're basically in control and you know the Israelis going down into their bunkers the leadership going down into their bunkers it tells you that they're not prepared to compromise if the war escalates if you know cities are devastated above them that still means that they won't want to negotiate unless they're forced to and only the United States can force them to only the United Europe will not do it as you correctly said and they will ignore Europe anyway only the United States can make them do that and the United States at the moment is in a leaderless position is in a leaderless condition which is why we are where we are all right we 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