The Duran Podcast
Long & difficult Middle East war
All right, Alexander. Let's talk about the situation in the Middle East, and let's talk about the assassination of Hezbollah leader, Nazrala, as well as many other Hezbollah top commanders and officials, as well as an Iranian Republican guard, a top commander who was with Nazrala at the time when when southern Lebanon was bombed, and the Nazrala was killed. So what are your thoughts with everything that is happening in the Middle East? This escalation that is is pushing us towards towards a full full-out war between Iran and Israel. Some people would argue that we are already in a war between Iran and Israel, which will, of course, pull in many other countries, most notably the United States. Anyway, your thoughts? Well, I think the first point to start with is that things aren't going very much along the trajectory that we discussed in various programs we have been doing, going all the way back to Netanyahu's visit to the United States, and his address to Congress. If you remember, we said at the time, and I want to remind everybody, we said at the time that this came directly after the changes in the Democratic Party as to who would be the leading the Democratic Party into the elections in November. We said that there is now clearly a power vacuum in Washington. Netanyahu was seizing his opportunity. He's been working towards a major conflict with Iran for some time, not just Iran, Hezbollah, all of the various other militias. He clearly wants or wanted to expand the war in some ways. The war that has been going on in Gaza since last October, that war hasn't gone terribly well. He's been looking to expand the war, and he's been taking this very strong stance. Given that this is so, some wider conflict in the Middle East between Israel, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, a conflict that will draw in other countries, to me, to us, it looked all but inevitable. We see that, in fact, Netanyahu has taken steps that lead us exactly to that point. The first step that he took, almost directly after the trip to the United States and the meeting with Congress, was the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniah, who was the chief of the political chief of Hamas. Now, we discussed, and again, I want to remind people of this, the fact that he'd had a meeting with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, and it seemed as if he hadn't discussed with the president of the United States. He didn't tell the president of the United States that the Israelis were closing in on Haniah and were preparing to carry out that attack. And we got lots of comments afterwards from the Americans insisting that they knew nothing about it. And we said that if this was true, then the president of the United States has been humiliated because Netanyahu took this step and went round him, basically ignored him, and that this was not a good look for the president of the United States at that time. Well, a lot of people expected, I expected that the assassination of Haniah would be a provocation too far for the Iranians and that the Iranians would react and react massively, and that hasn't happened. So we also said that if the Israelis, if the Iranians did not react, given that one side, which is to say Netanyahu, members of his government and his their near-con backers are seeking a wider war, that if the Iranians did not respond, an even more violent set of measures would be taken in order basically to get that war going. And this is what we've seen over the last two weeks. So we've had, firstly, the attacks on Hezbollah using the pages and the wonky talkies. Then we've had the missile and rocket and bombing attacks on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Then we had exactly the same game that Netanyahu played with the president of the United States back in August. The Americans supposedly came up with proposals for a ceasefire, a 21-day ceasefire. Netanyahu appeared or at least gave the Americans supposedly the impression that he was prepared to agree to that ceasefire. And then he went to the United Nations. He gave another very strong speech, clearly again indicating, in my opinion, that he wants a wider war. And he then went forward, even as the discussions about a ceasefire were supposedly underway and carried out this major strike on Hezbollah, destroying the bunker where the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Azrallah, was located and killing him. So again, lots of reports, lots of commentaries appearing in the media, especially here in Britain, about how once again Netanyahu has played the Americans and that the president of the United States has again been humiliated. But as we see, the United States unable to restrain or control Netanyahu, if that's really what they're trying to do, and we'll talk about the Americans in more detail at the moment, and Netanyahu pushing and pushing hard against Hezbollah. And Hezbollah, for its part, taking massive blows, such that call into question a lot of things about how Hezbollah is organized. It's clear that its security has been deeply penetrated. There are reports now that it has riddled at many levels with Israeli spies, which is quite possible, by the way. It's lost a significant part of its leadership group, as even Hezbollah itself admits, and Hezbollah now potentially in crisis. The next two weeks where Hezbollah is concerned are going to be absolutely critical, because it's not impossible that under these blows, I think it might disintegrate. It depends how strong its cadres are. It's lower middle ranking officials, how intense their discipline is. They've rushed to appoint a new chief to replace an Israeli, who is, in fact, an Israeli son-in-law. We'll see how well that person does in holding all this together. He might fail. He might succeed. But I am not in a position to assess Hezbollah's internal cohesion and discipline. So it's possible that Hezbollah might collapse. It's possible that with further Israeli attacks, the situation for Hezbollah could deteriorate further. The Iranians for their part now put in a position which they simply did not want to be. They don't want a wider war in the Middle East. They made that absolutely clear. The new Iranian President-President Pezishghan clearly has signaled that he wanted a stabilization of the situation in the Middle East, not an escalation of it. But the Iranians facing a major crisis if they don't push back against what the Iranians are doing, then the escalations from the Israeli side will continue. And not just Hezbollah, but he runs entire position in the Middle East, could descend into crisis even before the assassination of an Azrallah. There were mounting complaints, not just from Hezbollah, but from various other Shia groups across the Middle East that the Iranians were betraying them, were abandoning them, and that they were starting to rethink their alliances and whether Iran was indeed a reliable and effective organization of our ally. So now the Iranians have to make decisions. Did they sit back? Did they let their alliance system across the Middle East, which they worked for 20 years to build up? Do they let that collapse, exposing themselves as a much weaker country than they've wanted to convey in the past? Do they start taking action, strong action, which might precipitate a wider war, which is clearly what Netanyahu wants and some of his backers in Washington also want? What happens to Hezbollah itself? Does it hold together? Is it able to hold together in the face of these blows? Can it resist the Israelis, if the Israelis do launch a ground operation? There are many, many questions which we will have to wait and see. And of course, ultimately, there's also the question of what the Israelis do. Do they risk a ground operation on Hezbollah's territory in Lebanon, which might be problematic, or do they cash in their winnings? They've created major stresses between Iran and Hezbollah. They've humiliated both. There's a case, an argument which could be made, not that it's the one I think that Netanyahu is going to be making. But there is a case for saying that having dealt these massive blows, both on Iran and on Hezbollah, and having humiliated both the Iranians and Hezbollah, this might be a good point to stop and cash in in the winnings and start perhaps moving back towards the position that we saw before the events of October last year, when the Israelis were reaching out to the Saudis and trying to establish diplomatic relations with them. And to go back on to that kind of diplomatic track again, we'll see. Well, I wonder how the Saudis look at all of this, given that two years ago, they worked with China to reestablish diplomatic relations with Iran. And all of this was done under the impression that Iran was a strong country in the region, a powerful country in the region. And now, it does look like Iran is, Hezbollah definitely is not looking as organized as many people thought they were, and I believe Israeli intelligence understood this. That's my impression. It seems like they understood that Hezbollah over the years was their structure, their organization was decaying. Iran, I don't want to say Iran isn't a powerful country in the region, but perhaps other countries now, including Saudi Arabia, which we established diplomatic relations with Iran under the idea that Iran is a powerful country in the region, we're a powerful country in the region. Together, we can enter bricks and maybe we can stabilize the Middle East or add some stability to the Middle East. And now they may be looking at Iran and saying, well, these guys aren't as strong as we thought they were, and they really don't have the power to stabilize the situation in the region. Perhaps we need to look elsewhere. I mean, it seems like there's going to be a lot of doubts, not only about Hezbollah, but about Iran as well. Indeed, there definitely will be. Now, I think the soundies are very conflicted, because from their point of view, they actually have come up against the Iranians on several occasions themselves, and they've lost. They lost against the Iranians in Syria, they lost against the Iranians, or maybe they didn't, losing is too strong a word. But anyway, they were pushed to a draw by the Iranians and their allies, the Houthis in Yemen. For how long ago was Syria? Syria was a while back, but Yemen continues to be a problem. So I don't think at one level they will want to revisit all that. They've also seen that the United States cannot deliver on all the things that it says, and that Iranian influence in Iraq has increased, and that will probably remain the case. So that's one thing that the Saudis have to calculate. They've now joined BRICS. They're now participating in BRICS. The oil trade would push them further towards BRICS. On the other hand, they do have to look at the situation, which is what you described. They do have to look at the question of how strong is Iran, but then did they make that decision to reconcile with Iran, because they thought that Iran was powerful, or was it because they wanted to get into BRICS? Because, of course, if they wanted to get into BRICS, then the reconciliation with Iran anyway was a pathway towards all of this. A lot of the calculations the Saudis make, and a lot of the calculations that other people in the Middle East make, are going to depend on what happens within the next couple of weeks and months. If this is the high tide of what the Israelis have been able to do in Lebanon, and we've been here before, by the way, I remember that in 1982 Israel marched into Lebanon. They wanted to defeat the PLO. They defeated the PLO. They wanted to establish their own government, their own government sympathetic government in Beirut. They established their own sympathetic government in Beirut. And then at that point, everything began to fall apart. They found that Lebanon was a quagmire, from which they couldn't get out of. The Americans were drawn in and suffered severe losses. Things began to spiral out of control. If what we're going to see now is, again, the high tide of what the Israelis can do, that they've assassinated Nasrallah. They've exposed problems within Hezbollah's organization. But if Hezbollah retains its internal cohesion, if Iran starts to take countersteps, and they're talking about sending their army or troops to Lebanon, the Iranian military chief basically said that again this morning. If, in other words, the balance starts to shift, then of course, the whole situation becomes much more difficult to assess. And I think these Saudis will watch and wait. They've learned before, they've learned from experience that these things can turn out otherwise from the way they look at the start. The smart thing for Netanyahu for Israel to do, or for the US to advise Israel to do, is to stop there. I mean, you've accomplished things that many people thought you would never accomplish and just stop. But that's not Netanyahu, in my opinion. I don't think that's Netanyahu. I think the calculus is going to be the exact opposite, which is to keep on pushing, keep on pushing harder and harder, because I get a feeling that there's a sense with Netanyahu as well as the neocons in the United States that they're very close to a war with Iran. And there is a sense, I think they have a belief. I don't know if it's true or not, that's why I'm asking you these questions, that Iran can be easily defeated, which is something the neocons always sell the world on when they're about to start a big war, that the opponent to be defeated easily is going to fold. And there will be peace and order after the conflict ends, which will end very quickly. This is what they promise, but it always turns out to be the exact opposite and chaos ensues, a lot of chaos ensues. But that's the sense of how I'm seeing things, at least with Netanyahu and with the neocons. They're going to push harder and harder now. I hope they don't, but they will. I absolutely agree, that is entirely from the assessment. And I think that is the, I mean, they're probably based on what we have seen before. I agree, I think that they may make some further progress already. They might succeed in gaining control, perhaps, of southern Lebanon, causing more problems for Hezbollah, putting the organization under pressure, perhaps even causing its collapse. But in the long run, and in the middle east, the long run can be very long in terms of years. I don't think this is going to turn out at all well for them. We've seen this happen in 1982, as I described with, you know, the Lebanon war that took place then. We see the same thing happen with Iraq, the various wars with Iraq, which led eventually to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Lots of people said this is much more easy than anybody had expected. And then, of course, it became clear that that was the point when the problems were actually beginning. We've seen it with Libya. We've seen it with Syria. I don't see any reason why the situation with that we're seeing in Lebanon should be any different. And it's an iron rule of near-con wars that they start strong. They start, you know, with shock and all and massive operations and the appearance that they're going to sweep the board until all the problems start to accumulate and the balance starts to shift. And then the United States gets bogged down and things don't turn out at all the way they expected. We see this with Ukraine also, by the way. So I think that is most likely what will happen. But again, a lot depends on how strong the other side really is. I mean, Will Hezbollah holds together. At the moment, I'm not sure. I mean, I really don't know. I mean, I think that both within the Middle East and within Lebanon itself and amongst Hezbollah's own supporters, its fighters, its organization, I mean, there will have been an enormous shock and a potential loss of faith. People will say, well, look, we thought that you were this enormously strong organization. It's clear that your security systems were all over the place. It's clear that Nasrallah had lost contact with reality to some extent. He was meeting with Iranian officials and calling together his leadership. When frankly, he shouldn't have been doing that, not at that particular time. You're clearly not what you set yourselves up to be. And in the case of Iran, you're given this to think that you're this enormously powerful country, able to strike it. Israel, you have powerful armed forces. You've made all kinds of regional alliances. We trusted you on that basis. Are you really what you said? So there has been a major shock and a major loss of faith. But the longer that the conflict continues, and this is, I think, the lesson that Israel and its backers need to learn, the longer the conflict continues for the Israelis and for their backers, the greater the risks and the more difficult it becomes. Israel needs to win fast if the one thing it cannot afford. Remember, it's a small country. It's a relatively small country. It's got limited resources. Its economy has already been downgraded. It cannot afford to get drawn into a long war of attrition in Lebanon or anywhere else. Oh, yeah, you're right. If Israel does press forward, which I think they will, they're going to have to go for a quick win or quick wins, whatever that may be. But, yeah, I agree with you. Hezbollah has been completely exposed as being very, I was going to say careless or reckless. I don't even think that's the right way to describe it. Well, I never heard the situation where I suspect there's been a lot of corruption as well. It's that corruption. Yeah, well, corruption deals done with change to buy pages, infiltration people bribed and giving away information, things of that kind, things which people had not been led to associate with Hezbollah. And I think that we can now see that that has happened and it's weakened the organization and it's weakened its prestige. The question is, how far has it gone? Has it affected the fighters at lower levels? The middle ranking people, has it undermined their discipline? If it has, as I said, the whole thing could collapse like, well, I like a souffle. I don't like to push that, but it could collapse very suddenly, very quickly or alternatively, has this corruption, which clearly has been because, there's no other explanation for this, has this corruption not reach that critical level where the entire cohesion of the organization is in jeopardy? Well, we'll just, I mean, I don't know at this point and I don't think anybody does. Perhaps the Israelis think they have some idea, but you know, I don't know. Well, they definitely have some idea because they have some idea. Yeah, they understood that that the organization is corrupt just by the the page of story itself shows that they understood that that the organization was corrupt. So and they took advantage of of that corruption. This is without a doubt. Yeah, I agree with you there. And the problem with corruption though is, you know, when you have this type of carelessness, incompetence and corruption, which is what we're seeing at the top levels, you know, it's hard to see how does the rank and file state committed. I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to suggest anything, but this is going to, it's going to be hard going forward for absolutely, absolutely, and for Israel and for Israel and Hezbollah. But I mean, we just don't know. We don't know what exactly is going on. I mean, as I said, the Israelis undoubtedly have, you know, fairly good idea of the extent of the problems in Hezbollah, whether the Iranians too, I don't know. But again, it again comes back to this question of how deep does this go and how demoralize the entire organization has become? Because you could argue, and you know, I'm not saying this is the case, but you could argue that what the Israelis have done is that they've eliminated a leadership, a Hezbollah leadership cadre that had become soft and that had lost its way, and that they're now going to be replaced by much tougher, harder people from below who might take a much more hard-line view and have not been affected by the corruption that has affected the rest of the organization. That has happened. I mean, if this isn't, this wouldn't be the first time that something like that has happened. I mean, I simply don't know. I don't know how deep-seated the problems in Hezbollah are, that they exist is indisputable and that they were far greater than anybody I think on the outside, except probably the Israelis and some other intelligence agencies realized, well, that has become clear. Yeah. Yeah, you can make that argument, of course. What does the U.S. do? What is Russia doing? Because Shoy Gu has made many trips to Iran. The Russian prime minister is also heading to Iran. What's going on there? Well, right. Okay. So let's first of all talk about the Americans. I think the Americans are right out of the picture at the moment. They do not have a strong administration. I don't think anybody doubts that. They are deeply divided amongst themselves. Tony Blinken has been making statements which frankly support Israel and all that it is doing. The president has made statements which clearly support Israel and all that it is doing, notwithstanding the media reports that are appearing in Britain and to some extent, the United States, that Netanyahu is running rings around him. And for what it's worth, it may not matter at the moment. It depends how strong a week the Iranians turn out to be. But if the Iranians come through this and are able to play themselves back into the game, which I suspect they will certainly try to do, well, the Iranians have realised that the Americans, at least this administration simply cannot be trusted. And if the Democrats win the election in November, I suspect that lesson will carry over. The Iranian president, Peziskan, has already been making very, very big statements about this. He's been saying that he made all kinds of concessions on the basis of promises that would be ceasefire, both in Gaza and Lebanon. And those promises that he got from the Americans were never kept and that this has put him in a very difficult position. But this is really all of this, whether it even matters depends on what happens on the ground. The Americans, as I said, are not, I think, major players here. The major player is Prime Minister Netanyahu. He is in the driving seat. He is making the decisions. The Americans can't restrain him and they divide it anyway. Some of them back, Netanyahu, others sort of go through the motions of wanting to oppose him, but they can't control him. That, it seems to me, is obvious. What do the Russians do? Now the Russians, can I stop you right there before you talk about the Russians? Yeah. Real quick, your thoughts on the Iranian president? Yeah, he is, he is, he's getting played left and right. That's the way it seems. He's, it seems to me, he's, he's way out of his, his depth in all of this. I don't know. That's my impression that, that I get of, I mean, I know he's new to the job. I know that the way he came to the job is from, from the death of the, of, of Raisi, that, that happened a few months ago. I understand all of this and he's kind of been thrown into, into the deep end, but it doesn't look like he's performing too. I don't know what your, what your sense of things are with the Iranian president, but it looks like he is, he is just getting played on, on all sides. I think he's performing so badly that I'm not convinced that he's going to remain president of Iran for very long. He, he came in, he had all, he, he won the election, basically on two issues. He wanted to make changes to Iran's economic and welfare positions, which were very popular with a lot of people and on its social policies. At the same time, he wanted to restart the nuclear negotiations with the United States and he wanted to work with the US to stabilize the situation in the Middle East and to get the sanctions lifted. Now, on the second, I mean, that was completely delusional. It was entirely detached from realities because the kind of concessions that Iran would have to make in order to achieve those things would put into question the whole stability of the Islamic Republic and in other words, of the regime in Iran itself. And I don't think Pezishkhan seems to have understood this. And the result is that he's now, I think, lost critical face and authority within Iran itself and the Americans and the Israelis simply don't take him seriously. So I wonder how long he can even remain president of Iran. He's a kind of non-entity, isn't he? He has a kind of sense, I mean, absolutely. Yeah, he's a non-entity. Anyway, I go on about there. He's not, I mean, right? He was, okay, he was, he was, he was present. I mean, he was a force, but yeah, this guy just seems like he's in the background somewhere. Exactly, that is exactly what I think it was a, I think, I mean, I don't want to go into the details of the way Iranian politics works. I think that the people who run things in Iran wanted to put on a sort of gentler face after Ariese's death. And I think they made a huge mistake. And I think this has actually weakened Iran and its responses at this particular critical moment in the Middle East. And I think that there will be huge amounts of recriminations and problems about this within Iran itself. But there it is. I mean, they made the decision and now they have to work, work it through. We'll see what happens to Pesesh Khan. Let's turn to the Russians. The Russians do not want a wider world in the Middle East. They do want to continue the process of BRICS construction, which is very much a priority for them. One of the reasons they do not want a wider war in the Middle East is because they fear, correctly, that if there is a wider war in the Middle East, then the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia may fray. Because these two countries have distinct and competing interests in the Middle East. They managed for the moment to reconcile their problems. But as I said, if there is a major war, that those relations will come under extreme pressure. So they don't want a wider war in the Middle East. They are undoubtedly, I am sure, therefore, amongst the people who are advising the Iranians to exercise restraint, to the extent that they can, they are also advising the Israelis to exercise restraint. There was an Israeli-centered delegation to Moscow about 10 days ago. And clearly, the Israelis are reaching out to the Russians at this time to try to discuss with the Russians what the situation, how the Russians see the situation in the Middle East. And what triggered that from the Israeli side is that the Russians are sending advanced weapons to Iran. I don't have any doubt about this, by the way. There's never been any convincing denials of this. The reason the Russians are sending advanced weapons to Iran is not because they want a wider war or because they want Iran to attack Israel, but in order to re-establish deterrence. And I think they understand that Iran was not in a position to show deterrence in the face of what Netanyahu has been doing, and the Russians want to strengthen this. So, Shoyu, as I discussed in a program I did yesterday, has disappeared. He's nowhere to be seen in Moscow. He skips to very important security council sessions in Moscow. There is no word in Moscow that he's in any trouble. He has been repeatedly visiting Tehran. I suspect that he is there and that he's talking with Iranian leaders, and he's trying to work out what the Iranians intend to do in this situation. He's trying to discuss with the Iranian military how to build up fair forces in order to repel any potential attack that might take place against Iran, and at the same time, I think he's inviting the Iranians for all the other problems to act with extreme restraint, not to fall for Israeli provocations. If that means facing a defeat in Lebanon, so be it. If Iran isn't able to do that, if it has to send troops to Lebanon, like it sent troops to Syria, will to do so in a restrained way, a limited way, one that is intended to keep Hezbollah together, but one which does not directly threaten Israel. So, I think that is what the Russians do. All right, we will end the video there. The durian.lockers.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchew Telegram, RockFinn, and TwitterX, and go to the Duran Shop. Pick up some merch like the shirts we are wearing today in this video. There is a link down below to our shop. Take care. [Music]