← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/16/26: Massie Rips Trump On Epstein, Rubio Colonialism Speech, Pentagon Preps For Iran War
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
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Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.
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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
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B
Indeed we do. So Pam Bondi says we are not getting any more Epstein files. We'll see if she holds true to that. There's also a bunch more developments there, including revelations about significant allegations against President Trump. So break that down for you. Marco Rubio gave quite a speech in Munich calling for a full on return to colonialism. Trita Parsi is going to join to talk about that. Also give us an update on Cuba and where we are with regards to war with Iran. AOC and a bunch of Democrats also went to Munich. We're gonna take a look at some of their comments and see what they say about the state of the Democratic Party as they head into 2028. Anthropic is now fighting with the Pentagon over the way that the Department of War is deploying their technology. And Obama says that aliens do exist. He's now sort of like cleaning up the comments, but interesting. Noteworthy Sager of course has thoughts on that.
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D
Aliens exist. Aliens are real. Tom DeLonge tried to tell us. He tried to tell us all along. Thank you to everybody who has been watching and subscribing to the show. We deeply appreciate it. As we've said, all of our Epstein coverage routinely gets demonetized and hurts us financially. So if you're able to subscribe to the show, breakingpoints.com makes it so we don't worry literally at all about advertising revenue, which is very fickle and up to the big technology overlord. So premium subscribers of course get access not only to our full show Uncut, but you also get our ama, which we are doing later on today. If you can't subscribe, no worries. Hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this podcast, please share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But let's go ahead and get to that Pam Bondi letter which was released on Saturday. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. So there had been some rumors, There were some 3 million more emails and files that were to be released by the doj. But Attorney General Pam Bondi is saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast. So all of this was in a letter that was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to a request for more information. Pam Bondi writes that all Epstein files have been released consistent with Section 3 of the Epstein File Transparency act, quote, in accordance with the requirements of the act and as described in various Department submissions to the courts and SDNY and related orders. The Department has released all records, documents, communications, investigative materials, and the possession of the department that relate to any of the nine different categories. The letter then listed some 300 high profile names, many of which were already known and in accordance with the Files Act. The list of names includes all persons that were a government official or politically exposed person. Their name appears in the files released under the act, some of the names mentioned had extensive direct email contact with Epstein or Maxwell. Others were mentioned in a portion of the document. So basically what this says is that the broad range of materials that were required release by the law have now been released according to the law. And that's it for now. Thomas Massie was reacting to some of this as well as the general handling of this by the administration over the weekend. Let's take a listen.
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You've supported most of what Donald Trump has done during his presidency because of your actions with these files.
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D
He is supporting your primary opponent and.
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A
Has waged very personal attacks on you. I know we just have a few seconds here, but just your reaction to that. Look, this is about the Epstein class.
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D
The people who are funding the attacks against me.
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A
They may or may not be implicated in these files, but they were certainly rubbing shoulders with the people who are in these files. They're billionaires who are friends with these people, and that's what I'm up against. In Washington, D.C. donald Trump told us that even though, you know, he had dinner with these kinds of people in New York City and West Palm beach, that he would be transparent, but he's not. He's still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration, and they're attacking me for trying to get these files released.
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D
Attacking him to not try to get the files not released. In fact, one of the things Massie noted, Crystal, is that because the DOJ is allowed to not release files which are part of an ongoing investigation, that they are opening what he thinks are a lot of sham ongoing investigations which will preclude them from being able to release everything. That's part of the switch around that's currently happening because remember, there were some 3 million more or so files allegedly that were going to be released to the public. But if you open investigations, you can stall that off for the six months, a year, three years maybe, you know, until the next presidency. So that is seems to be the ball game as of now. And you can see, I mean, right now they're trying to weather the storm. Howard Lutnick. It remains completely in place. All of the accountability in our society is held right now in the private sector. Yeah, it's like Peter Attia maybe got in trouble or not. Seems to have kept his gig. Now, for now, a Casey Wasserman Hollywood agent is going to sell his agency. You know, he lost Chapel Roan as a client. Like, fine, you know, okay, cool. That's nice to see, I guess.
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B
Kathy Rumler.
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D
Kathy Rummler, the Goldman Sachs lawyer. But that's all in the private sector. Like, why is it only in the private sector? It's actually at the government. These are the people who are supposed to be most responsible. They're facing nothing and everybody's corralling the wagons around them. Pam Bondi, her disastrous press conference, by the way, as we predicted, Trump loves it, loved it. He was like, oh, she did a phenomenal job. Stood up for her. He stood up against these radical left lunatics like Thomas Massie. So here we are. It's over. Yeah, it's over as of now.
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B
Well, what's the Dow at this morning? We're allowed to talk about pedophiles.
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D
I do believe that the Dow 49,500.
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B
Green light to talk about the pedophile billionaire cabal.
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D
That's the futures as of today do not have it over 50,000. So as long as the Dow is a sub, 50 were allowed green light.
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B
Okay. I mean, I want to underscore part of what Massie said. Calling this the Epstein administration is quite stunning, you know, for a Republican who has a lot of credibility with, you know, significant part of the American public, not just, I would say, the Republican base saying that this is that Trump is in the Epstein class, he's with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration is pretty stunning. I also want to underscore in the way that they sent out this letter and included this list of politicians and politically, what do they say? Involved persons, exposed persons, that's the term of art. I think this was also an attempt to manage the information flow because you have Trump on that list, who is in the files. We know the unredacted files named some million times, close friends with Jeffrey Epstein, hanging out with him in New York, hanging out with him in Mar a Lago, all kinds of allegations contained, et cetera, et cetera. And then you put that on the list with someone who's mentioned in there, but in an innocuous way. And so by putting his name in this list of 300 various people, you're kind of trying to equate the vast mentions, the many mentions of Trump and the allegations of wrongdoing with someone who just is innocently mentioned in some context within the Epstein files. So there's such an attempt to manage the flow of information, which I always wanna warn people, is really important when you're evaluating what we can see so far. And even Sager, with the initial release that they put out, they've now clawed back some significant number of those. You know, thank goodness for the people over at JMail, you know, DropSite and Ryan have been working with them on this, that they've been able to pull down all of this information before they started to claw it back. Because now if you go in and search the Epstein library on the DOJ's website, which is something that we do routinely, you are not going to have access to the same number of files and documents as were originally put out. So it's definitely limited hangout. They're trying to staunch the bleeding. They're trying to say, this is it. This is all you get. We're moving on now. And if history is a guide at this point, it's not gonna work because there has been so much pressure around this. The revelations that we've gotten here have just made people even more disgusted and even more committed to getting the full picture as much as we possibly can.
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D
I hope so, but I just don't know where the next needle can drop whenever it comes to this story because we had to force government action if they use these shams, investigations also. What are we about to talk about? Iran. Right. So you got major geopolitical situation might be kicking off. We might be in a war potentially in the next three to six months. Will people move on? I hope not. Like, I hope people can see the linkage between these two, and we're not going to stop talking about it here. But unfortunately, their strategy is just evade, evade, evade, and wait it out. Now, here's the one thing. If the Democrats take power in the House of Representatives next year, then it's definitely not going to go away, because you're going to have subpoena after subpoena after investigation and this. And Cash Patel, I mean, he's gonna be living up on Capitol Hill, so it might die down for a little bit. But I do encourage everybody to take advantage and, like, really pressure your lawmakers and make sure that they know it's the only reason that this ever became law is because, remember, Trump tried everything to kill this bill. Everything. He threatened members of Congress. They all voted for it. He threatened members of the Senate. They had to vote for it. He signed it. What, in the dead of night, didn't invite the bill makers or the lawmakers who authored the bill to Congress, put out a signing statement and was like, fine, you know, I acquiesce. It's the biggest l he's ever taken legislatively as president in both terms. That's only because of all of you and everybody whose interest is hearing the story. So you just gotta keep at it and yes, Like, I think they might temporarily get away with it kind of going away, but don't let it get so. And look, there's still a lot more to discover inside. We had MTG with a little bit of her reaction as well. Let's take a listen.
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B
Attacking Thomas Massie. Non stop attacking Thomas Massie.
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A
And then one day I get a.
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B
Phone call from the President in September and he is so mad at me and he's yelling at me and he's angry at me. And the fact that he's like, you're supporting Rand Paul Jr. And he's chewing me out for signing my name on Thomas Massie's discharge petition to release the Epstein files. And I'm trying to tell him, Mr. President, they say you did nothing wrong. This needs to come out. And so we're having this argument and he tells me on this phone call, he's like, marjorie, my friends will get hurt.
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D
That's it. That's it. I mean, that is it.
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A
Obviously that's it.
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D
Because they're all in here.
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B
Imagine the phone calls. It's everyone. It's.
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D
Every single person is on this fricking list. They're all there. Every billionaire, every heads of state, Larry Summers, Peter Thiel, they're all in there. So, you know, mtg. Look, I don't really know what her goal is here exactly, but man, we welcome her voice out into the public also. We'd love to have her here on the show.
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B
And that's. I mean, that's an interesting revelation, if true, that he said to her, we can't release these things. My friends will get hurt.
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D
Well, yeah, that had been released previously in that New York Times piece. I think we covered it over Christmas. But yeah, to hear her say it, you know, on the record, serious allegation. I believe her generally whenever it comes to this story because it's something that she actually cares about.
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C
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B
All right, everybody pack it up. Nothing to see here.
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D
By the way, they didn't even get real Mossad. They said X is, I guess. Is there any such thing? Ex Israeli intelligence officials told Fox News Digital FC never worked for the Mossad, describing the allegation as baseless and inconsistent with how the agency operates.
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B
Didn't we already know this from that Barry Weiss interview?
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D
Right? Well, of course Barry Weiss interviewed The was it the current head of Mossad or maybe head of Mossad? And then they pointed to denials by Netanyahu and by Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister, as evidence that it has now been officially denied. So we can just put that to rest. Everybody can move on. We don't really have to continue. And looking at the story, not to mention all of the links between Eiyud Barak and all the emails where they joke about Mossad and joke about Mossad. They're working specifically on behalf of the state of Israel for the Cote d' Ivoire, in Mongolia and all these other countries, in addition to making CIA and link Russian contacts with multiple foreign governments. Everyone can just put it to bed. Thank you to Fox News Digital for breaking that story. Let's continue next to a 5. This was one that came out yesterday. Roger Sullenberger releasing this story. The FBI, quote, did interview a victim who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault, according to the Epstein file documents, quote, undermining claims that Trump has not yet been accused of wrongdoing. It's unclear what became of the investigation, but it is certainly, you know, shows that they did interview somebody. This was according to that release that came out from the DOJ where they say, quote, stated Epstein introduced her to Trump, who subsequently forced her into. Yeah, we've talked about this now previously, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out. We talked about this specific accusation where there was an interview done. I do know that we had looked a little bit in the past and they said that there was no credibility or anything. But it does go to the point around where Trump himself has issues in the files as long as everybody else. This is.
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B
Let me just, let me just to break this one down a little bit because this was one of these things that came out and there was like an anonymous line. And so the reporting here from Roger Sullenberger, what he adds to that is it wasn't just that call into the FBI tip line. He says the FBI spoke to that alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who also accused Trump of sexually violently assaulting her, according to records that were released. They don't show what became of that investigation into the allegations, but the documents indicate the government found her to be a credible accuser. Records elsewhere in the files reveal a woman with matching biographical details sued Epstein's estate and won a settlement in 2021. One of the women who made allegations as well was actually used by the government as a witness in the trial against Ghislaine Maxwell. To tell you to show you that, you know, they found her to be a credible person and a credible witness enough to use in that prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell. So this also speaks to not only the seriousness of the allegations being leveled against Donald Trump, but against others as well that comes out in these files. It also speaks to the incomplete nature of what we've received. Because if they interviewed this woman and found her to be credible, what happened next? Where was the decision and who made the decision that, okay, we've ruled this out, we're not gonna proceed or what happened there. Right. Why did this go nowhere? And not just with this investigation, but so many others. I mean, when you have a list of individuals who are being considered as potential co conspirators and then that all goes nowhere, like Les Wexner being one of them. Okay, well, how was that decision making made? That's nowhere to be found here. And that seems to be an incredibly critical piece.
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D
Yeah, that's right. Let's move on to the next one. By the way, for everybod who continues to say that Epstein had no involvement here with underage children, this is a very graphic conversation from Epstein to a redacted individual where he instructs a woman. Now that I understand. Try to take some nude photos, be open, brave, wild, dance, jump, have fun, live. And then he follows up and says, I think you should take some of your self first. Etc, again, some very tawdry discussion quote, you are going to be 22, not 14 years old. All right, so that's an explicit instruction in terms of the age where he tells her that she needs to be. Again, just for everybody else who's wondering about, oh, actually these were all women who lied about their age and he had no knowledge of any of that. He's explicitly saying, you're going to be 22 and not 14 years old. Let's continue on to the next one. This is a very difficult one and I am going to give you a warning before we put any of this up. This is from a footnote which was released which is purported to describe an image. Now, I want to be clear. The image here was submitted by a lawyer specifically accusing of epso. This is not necessarily of his own, in his own, like, possession. What they're basically admitting to is child pornography in the possession of this lawyer who's using this as an accusation against Epstein. And it is an allegation, you know, in terms of trying to accuse him of similar type of behavior. But yes, I'm not going to read it. It's really horrific. It involves underage abuse. And you can see very clearly that this is. Look, I mean, you know that this exists on like an intellectual level, but to see a description like that is just. I mean, it's horrifying, right? It's horrifying. Doesn't really do it justice.
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B
Right.
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D
The point just remains that, like, this is a very, very dark world and this is where people have described as satanic panic or any of that. But like, I don't really know how you can't read them all of these files. And we can parse individual claims of underage abuse or any of that. But I come back to this point about, like this was a systematized ring of abuse and of using power, money, influence, et cetera, to take advantage of very young women, some of age, many who. Many of age, some who are underage for a variety of reasons. But it's a. One of the most. It's one of the worst cases of abuse I've ever seen. Involves all of these international women who are all being abused. Yes. Okay. They may be of age. Still illegal to fly women in from Russia for the purposes of sex. The power dynamic there is totally off. And these people got away with it for years. And then the bigger intelligence question, which we started off earlier, is kind of what enables this entire thing? And, you know, it gets you to confirm Eyes Wide Shut was a documentary. Like it's a real thing. It really was real. That there is a global kapal of elites who genuinely operate at a different moral and ethical code than the rest of us. All of that also involves like low level financial crime, like insider trading and tax evasion. And it all kind of works together. And it is one which is we are ruled by. And I think that's the grappling nature of this entire story.
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B
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, the ideology is one in which they. It's a supremacist ideology where they see themselves as a different, almost species, a different class of human, which is why that term, Epstein class is so fitting, because that's how they viewed it. You know, they viewed themselves as in solidarity and what enforced the sort of silence and made sure that they could trust each other. The sex and the abuse and all of that was the currency that created mutually assured destruction where, you know, Bill Gates is not gonna walk away because I know these things about him and he's gonna think twice before he does that. So that's what is sort of the glue that holds it together so that they can operate and have trust with one Another, that no one is going to betray that system. That is the role that this served. You know, again, with this specific allegation, you have a lawyer who provided this information from their client and an alleged victim here. And not only do you have this victim who was underage, by the way, at the time of the alleged abuse, you have them providing this information, but then you have photographic evidence to back it up, which is what the description of that photo, incredibly graphic and horrifying description. What that is. So again, what happened with this allegation? What happened with this investigation if it was deemed not credible? In what way? How do we know that you actually pursued this and decided nothing to see here? Those are the pieces that are completely missing. Or was this just swept under the rug? Because in the same way that Epstein got his sweetheart deal back in the early 2000s, you still wanted to look the other way and make sure that him and Ghislaine and all of the powerful people that they were in league with, that they got off scot free. So it's, you know, it is horrifying and it's such an extraordinarily disturbing glimpse into the way that global power actually operates. How money, power, sex, horror, how this all intermingles together and creates an entire system that, you know, is extraordinarily powerful and I'm quite sure continues to be. The fact that Epstein is gone doesn't mean that the Epstein class is gone, doesn't mean that things are not operating in exactly the same way. Which is part of why there's been such an effort, such an unbelievable effort to cover all of this up. That spans not just this administration, although this one is certainly the most brazen, but that spans, you know, whatever party is in power because they all benefit from the way things operate presently.
- [25:39]
D
That's right. All right, let's get to treat to Parsi.
- [25:42]
C
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- [26:45]
A
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- [28:08]
B
All right, guys. So we have a whole range of issues with regard to foreign affairs, everything from Iran to Cuba, but most notably the Munich security conference. And Dr. Trita Parsi is going to join us now to break down some pretty remarkable speeches that were given there. Just back himself from Munich and still recovering from the flight and the time change and all of that. Welcome. Great to see you.
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D
Good to see you, sir.
- [28:30]
A
Good to see you. Thank you for having me.
- [28:32]
B
Yeah, of course. So, most noteworthy speech that occurred there was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who explicitly called for a return to colonialism and sharing the spoils of that colonialism with European allies. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.
- [28:47]
A
We cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate. This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before. And hope to walk together again. For five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding. Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers, pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe. But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an iron curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come. Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice. And it was a choice they refused to make.
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B
You can see there at the end, him getting a standing ovation apparently from many of the Europeans in the room. Dr. Parsi, what did you make of his remarks?
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A
Well, there's a couple of things. One is just to look at the remarks themselves and then also the European reaction here you have a Secretary of State that is decrying the end of the Cold War. He's decrying the fact that the west is no longer expansionists, decrying the collapse of Western non American empires, decrying decolonization and the end of Western empires, and gets a standing ovation for that. I mean, there's so much to unpack here because at the end of the day you could see that the Europeans, by standing up and giving a standing ovation for this, are willing to accept any basis for a partnership with the United States as long as they're allowed to continue to live in the illusion that they matter to the United States. It didn't matter that the values that he was putting forward here are values that vast majority of Europe already has abandoned decades ago. But Rubio was going back to this era of empire, imperialism, colonization as something positive and he got a standing ovation for that.
- [31:51]
D
Yeah, I mean, Putting those together, Dr. Parsi, it seems to me that they abandon it internally. But we've talked here before, if you look at the European stance on, let's say Iran, they're very quick to say not the legitimate government, it has no legitimacy. On Venezuela, they de facto supported the United. Their only complaint is there wasn't a full on regime change. They fully believe in no colonialism or expansion on their continent, but outside of their continent, they seem fine with it. So is this just a reconciling of their own hypocrisy? What do you think?
- [32:21]
A
So I think some of these things that you mentioned obviously are true, but they're more recent developments. This vast abandonment of international law, for instance. Not to say that Europe always has been perfect or anything like that, but this is a more recent development. The whole tone at the Munich conference this time was more regime change than I've ever seen before. And I think, again, these are some new developments. Not to say that there hasn't been a route for it or that it's been always perfectly different before. But remember 2003, the Europeans went out of their way to stop the regime change, war in Iraq, and they paid a very high price for it. Back then. Germany, France took the lead, and they had all of Europe, with the exception of some Eastern states and the UK on their side, fighting against that war because of its illegality, because of its neocolonial character, and because it was regime change. That is not what we're seeing right now. So in many ways, Europe has already changed, but this is still taking them a much more explicit step in the direction that it should embrace its colonial past, it should embrace its pursuit of empire. And I have to tell you, as much as the Europeans are increasingly saying, look, we can't stand up for international law, we just have to do whatever it wants to say, the idea that there would be an embrace of empire is still a step that I don't think most Europeans have been willing to take so far.
- [33:44]
B
It was very. I mean, it was very disturbing to me. But it was also, I thought, extraordinary, the way it almost seemed he was rebuking the lessons that were learned from World War II. I mean, World War II. One of the things that's taken from this is, you know, when you have an expansionist power like Germany, for example, this is a disaster for humanity. It's a problem for a variety of nations. We need to put these institutions in place. And by the way, I feel like this gets lost from the Trump administration. We set up those institutions to benefit us. It has been a tremendous benefit to the United States of America. And then we run around acting like we're the victims of these institutions that we ourselves set up. But I thought the almost rebuke of the learnings of World War II was something that was pretty stunning to me.
- [34:33]
A
Well, if you want to drive matters in the direction of a great power competition, this is what you have to do. Right. You have to rebuke these lessons because these lessons were there to make sure that we didn't have another great power competition in the world. And on the point about these institutions, I totally agree with you. I think I've said it on this show before. Not only did the United States, but play a critical role in establishing these institutions, flawed in many cases, obviously in need of significant reform, particularly the UN Pushing it back towards more focus on peace and security, I think would be a good thing. It has strong support internationally to go in that direction, but it was a very useful institution to the United States in the past. But here's the more important point. If we are going towards a multipolar world, and Rubio is the one who said it exactly a year ago, that not only is the world multipolar, unipolarity is an aberration, he said, which kind of contradicts what he said in the Munich speech. But if that is the case, that means that the United States no longer has the power to constrain its rivals, such as Russia, China, future countries in the same manner that it did before. It still have the interest of constraining them, but it doesn't have the same power any longer. So there's a delta now between its interest and its power, which. What alternative instruments do you have to be able to fill that delta? Well, the obvious answer is international law. International law, these institutions who have served exactly that purpose for all other countries throughout this period and will increasingly play that role for United States that no longer have the unipolar leverage and benefit that it did in the past.
- [36:10]
D
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's interesting, Dr. Parsi, is we can parse a lot of what's happening here, and let's say that we are moving in a shift to multipolarity, which I would argue makes international law, or the fiction of it, kind of less useful in and of itself. However, within that same framework, as you and I are thinking generally, I think both aligned as restrainers, how does this idea conflict generally with, let's say, any coherent vision of restraint that was originally supposed to be a part of the second Trump administration?
- [36:41]
A
To me, it seems to have been a complete leap away from restraint. Restraint at the core was that we have to have a more narrow definition of U.S. interests. Instead of thinking that we have to defend everything outside in the world, instead of thinking that we have to think about alliances or the free world as the thing we have to protect, we go back to our national interest. And narrow definition of it, not because we're against alliances, not because we're against the free world, but because those type of conceptions led the United States to constantly enter into war. And if we have that type of a definition in which we believe that every corner of the world is part of a US Vital interest, then we will be at war somewhere all the time. And that is the history of the last 20 or plus years. Here you have a massive expansion of the US interest because he's not only talking about an alliance system, he's not only talking about the free world now he's talking about Western civilization as the core of what the United States needs to defend. And without even being able to define exactly what is it. I mean, is Latin America part of Western civilization, or is it part of the global south, as many people in Latin America would define themselves? Is Russia? I mean, it's such an ambiguous term, and to have that as the basis of what you have to defend in the opposite direction of restraint, in my estimation.
- [38:08]
B
There was a part in the speech that I found to be interesting coming from Marco Rubio, who has centered a lot of his politics around, you know, being son of Cuban immigrants and, you know, wanting to overturn that regime. And we'll ask you more specifically about that in a moment, but where he explicitly frames himself as the direct descendants of Spaniards, so as the, you know, the colonizers versus the colonized. And I thought that was an interesting moment as well and an interesting choice to put in this speech where, like you said, they're trying to claim all of Western civilization, talking about this shared Christian heritage and the Scots, Irish and all of these sorts of things.
- [38:51]
A
Well, I mean, he was. I mean, it was noteworthy because there's no mention of anyone else contributing to the United States. Now, of course, in his defense, he's saying this to a European audience, trying to console them and reassure them that the United States still is there, which, again, again, I think it's contradictory in many different ways because the message was supposed to be, you have to understand, you have to stand on your own legs. What Rubio gave with this type of reassurance is another bite at the illusionary apple. For the Europeans to think that there still is an ability for them to rely on the United States without actually taking full responsibility, despite the fact that he keeps on saying Europe has to step up, et cetera, et cetera. The way this whole thing landed in Munich was that this was the opposite of vamps. And as a result, they can go back to the old illusion that they lived in, in which they can just rely on the United States.
- [39:43]
D
Right. And I think that is the part that grates me more than anything is that if anything, what's ironic about this administration is if you were to ask the Europeans, they would say this is the most anti European US administration in decades. That was one of the most pro Europe speeches I've ever seen. It was a direct contravention of a lot of the restrainer philosophy that goes back to the original pivot to Asia, where it's this acknowledgement that Europe is increasingly an irrelevant power base, that there's a rising GDP in Asia, that the US is an Asian power with, you know, significant interests. China is our main geopolitical rival. Most of our interests of our economic like trading partners and all that lie outside of the continent. It's really only blood and shared history that seems to combine us together. Rubio's declaration was basically we will fight for that shared interest, so called Western civilization, which again, we don't even really agree between us and Europe on what that even seems to mean. So the confusion of this centered more than anything, whereas it made it so that for me, the Trump Doctrine, if there is such a thing, basically doesn't exist. This speech is the mirror image of the J.D. vance speech from one year ago in Munich. It is actually the mirror image of a similar speech given in the exact same conference. Maybe you were present at the Elbridge Colby speech which specifically talked about, yes, shared interests in history and all that is great, but we need to actually operate on real hard power and on what our mutual interests, like economic interests, may be. So it just seems to be either a freelancing, but regardless, it's very important for what the vision of foreign policy under this administration is going to look like.
- [41:21]
A
I agree with most of what you said there, Sagar, and I don't think it is freelancing. I think this is an effort by former neocon to essentially try to co opt much of the restrainers within the administration by appealing to some of their conservative values which tend to lend themselves to this idea of this civilizational discourse and as a result make sure that he gets a neoconservative at its root policy in the clothes of something that is supposed to sound to certain conservatives as restraint. I mean, keep in mind he talked about the Western century. A colleague of mine pointed out that this is the exact same language of the neocons in the 1990s when they talked about the new American century. So to me it sounded that this was a Very clever. And I have to say, you know, though, I strongly disagree with a lot of elements in that speech. It was a brilliant speech for his purposes.
- [42:22]
B
Yeah, it's using the language of Christian nationalism to, you know, advance the agenda that Marco Rubio has. And that's a good place to shift to part of what that agenda is. Let's go ahead and put B2 up on the screen. We've been tracking here the ongoing US Triggered crisis in Cuba which is becoming quite dire. This is a dispatch from the Guardian. They say, no fuel, no tourists, no cash. This was the week the Cuban crisis got real. And, you know, talk about just how incredibly difficult things have been made there by US Policy. Can you just describe to us, you know, what the latest is there and what our goals are?
- [43:03]
A
I think it's very important here to make the connection to Gaza. The United States has had an embargo on Cuba for decades. Even when the Obama administration had the opening with Cuba, they did not touch the embargo because the embargo goes through Congress. And Obama essentially chose not to do that. He only lifted executive orders. Never in that embargo did we pursue this degree of closure of the island so that they can't even get food, medicine and fuel. But guess who else just did this two years ago and is still doing it. This is what the Israelis did to Gaza. This is the excessive form of capital collective punishment that the Israelis pursued and continue to pursue in Gaza, which they normalized through their action. And now it is being adopted by the Trump administration against the Cuban people. And this is very important to understand. But so much about what was happening in Gaza was about exactly the destruction of these norms of the use of force and international law, these things that we have built up since Second World War to make sure that civilians are protected in conflict. We may not be able to end conflict altogether, but we are giving rights to civilians so that they are protected. Those are now being destroyed first in Gaza and now we see its application in Cuba.
- [44:32]
C
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- [45:34]
A
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- [46:57]
D
Let's move on to Iran. Dr. Parsi, while we have you, there's some major, major developments here. Let's put C1 up here on the screen. President Trump apparently told Prime Minister Netanyahu this is according to CBS News, he would support an Israeli strike on Iran's ballistic missile program. This was back in December, not necessarily indicative of the latest meeting that just happened between Prime Minister Netanyahu and between President Trump. What do you make, let's say both of the of the news itself and of the timing of the leak for when it's coming out right now.
- [47:30]
A
Clearly something happened on December 29th of last year when Netanyahu, almost six months to the day, came back to the US and said, hey, let's have another war with Iran. But what we saw immediately after that was not that the Israelis would take the lead, but rather that the US Would take the lead. In fact, take a look at Netanyahu's profile on this issue. Since then, up until just A couple of days ago, he was staying completely quiet. He was letting Trump take the lead. He was avoiding an impression that Israel is the country pushing the US into war because Trump essentially took full ownership of the war and was in the lead of taking, of doing an attack. So I don't think that is actually what was being said. I mean, it may have been that it was said, but it was not part of the final decision. The final decision was that the United States would take the lead. The reason why I think this is now being leaked, incidentally, by cbs, and you can draw your own conclusions about that, is because of an effort to sabotage the talks that are taking place and the next round that will take place tomorrow in Geneva. The Iranians have made it absolutely clear there's not going to be any restrictions or at least limitations on the size of their missile program. This is the only deterrence they have left against Israel. For them to dismantle their missile program means that they would be completely defenseless against Israel. And Israel has shown its ability or its willingness to attack any country that is defenseless against it. So for them to leak this at this point seems to be more of an effort to try to sabotage those talks because of a fear that Trump ultimately will agree to this. I mean, first of all, let's keep in mind, Trump didn't even talk about missiles until December 29th. Right. So this is not an old American red line. This is a very new red line that is no more than five weeks old. And he may be putting it to rest. And this is something then that I think certain elements are trying to sabotage.
- [49:29]
B
There was some also significant reporting from Reuters that we can put up on the screen. They say exclusive U.S. military preparing for potentially weeks, weeks long Iran operations. U.S. military is preparing for the possibility of sustained weeks long operations against Iran if Trump orders an attack to us. U.S. officials told Reuters the disclosure spoke by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, raises the stakes for the diplomacy underway. They say they go on to discuss the, the buildup and the region and the preparations for what they expect would be a longer, protracted, more protracted conflict than what we saw in the, you know, the previous bombings of Iran. What do you make of this development? Because one of the things that we have been hearing is that perhaps the reason for the delay is just further preparation so that it can be a more widespread or more large scale military action.
- [50:22]
A
Well, this leak may have had the intent of putting pressure on the Iranians by saying that, you know, the US Is ready for A longer war. But he may also have had the opposite intent. He may have had the intent of putting pressure on the administration itself, recognizing which I think many people in the Pentagon recognize, that Trump ultimately does not want to have a long war. He likes quick, glorious successes. And if he gets dragged into something that is longer, what he tends to do is that he cuts them short and he withdraws, which I think is the right thing to do when you're into something that is not working, but that's not something the Pentagon likes. The Pentagon doesn't like to be sent off into a military confrontation and then be pulled back without having succeeding, particularly if it's only after a couple of weeks. So I think this is also a bit of a warning of essentially saying, don't put us into something that you're not intending to finish. And this will not be finished quickly and it will not be finished easily. And it will probably drag on much more than weeks, probably months. So I think, again, part of the reason why this hasn't happened yet is not that he just didn't have the resources there to pursue it. Even with those resources, we have like a third of the Navy in the Persian Gulf now or in the Arabian Sea. Even with those resources, this is going to take a very long time. And by the way, keep in mind that a couple of weeks is also exactly what they said about Iraq. And it ended up being a decade.
- [51:47]
D
Yes, Very, very important point. We have Prime Minister Netanyahu now laying out conditions, you know, before we Even play that, Dr. Parsi, everything about this is giving me the exact same, you know, deja vu of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. And then a lot of people forget the 2009 crisis with Iran as well, where Netanyahu is working the press openly trying to push the US into war, intimating that, well, if you don't do it, I'm gonna do it trying to box in using the Republican Party. So I do wanna set the stage. This is a well established playbook here from Prime Minister Netanyahu before we. Now, let's actually take a listen to what he says are acceptable conditions, according to him. Let's take a listen.
- [52:27]
A
I said that if a deal is to be reached, it should have several components, several components that we believe are important not only for the security of Israel, but for the security of the world. The United States, the region, the world. The first is that all enriched material has to leave Iran. The second is that there shall be no enrichment capability. Not stopping the enrichment process, but dismantle the equipment and the infrastructure that allows you to enrich in the first place. And the third is to deal also with the questions of ballistic missiles. There's an empty CER limitation of 300km, and Iran is supposed to adhere to it. Of course, it doesn't. As the rising lion operation by itself manifested. Everybody knows that. And the fourth is stop the dismantle. The axis of terror that Iran has built. It's. It's been smashed, but it's still there. It's trying to recover, as Iran itself is trying to do. And the last thing is remember Ronald Reagan's dictum vis a vis the Soviet Union, trust but verify, distrust, distrust and always verify. So there has to be real inspections, substantive inspections, no lead time inspection inspections, but effective inspections for all of the above.
- [54:05]
D
What do you make of that?
- [54:06]
A
Well, as you pointed out, this is exactly what we've seen in the past. Whenever there is any chance of a deal, he goes out and he puts out impossible conditions in order to signal clearly that he will attack the deal if it is made that meets short of these conditions, which it obviously will. These are impossible conditions to reach. These are poison pills that he puts in there in order to sabotage diplomacy. Now, here's where, from my standpoint, is a positive. For about a month, he kept a very low profile. Things were going his way. There was no need for him to be out there saying these things. Then things changed. He came back to Washington, D.C. he apparently did not have a good meeting with Trump. And now he's out there giving this commentary again, which I think should be interpreted as a sign that he's nervous that he's not in the room and that he's trying to influence it from the outside. Whereas before, just a couple of weeks ago, he felt confident enough that he did not feel the need to influence it from the outside. That does not mean that chances for a deal necessarily are great or that things will work out. But it does mean, I think, that the type of control that Netanyahu felt that he had up until a week ago is no longer there and he's back into his old playbook of trying to salvage it. This from the outside?
- [55:26]
D
Yes.
- [55:26]
B
And finally, we wanted to underscore a bit of the bipartisan nature of some of this approach here vis a vis Iran. We had some comments from Nancy Pelosi backing up Besant's desire to cause economic suffering among the Iranian people. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [55:42]
D
Is there a way to sort of.
- [55:43]
A
Bring about the regime fallen without using.
- [55:46]
D
American Force, I guess, is the question there.
- [55:47]
A
Well, use economic forces. Use economic forces. Use. There are ways that cripple their economy and some of that has been in the works.
- [55:58]
D
It does feel very tenuous, though. The regime there, you know more than.
- [56:00]
A
It has in a long time. I agree with you.
- [56:03]
B
I agree with you.
- [56:03]
A
But again, it's not about a threat from war. It's hopefully it's more about just make their economy, weaken their economy.
- [56:12]
B
And that weakens the support they do.
- [56:14]
A
Have because they do have support in.
- [56:16]
B
The rural areas and the more conservative.
- [56:19]
A
Imams and all the rest of that.
- [56:20]
B
But we have to make them feel.
- [56:22]
A
The pain as well.
- [56:23]
B
Have to make them feel the pain as well. I mean, it reminds of the comments that you just made tying Gaza to Cuba. I think there's a tie in here as well. Not that sanctions on Iran are anything new.
- [56:35]
A
You have to remember during the Obama years, it was called crippling sanctions. Hillary Clinton constantly used the language of crippling their economy. I wrote on Twitter this was not a slip of the tongue. This is not her accidentally saying that, the quiet part out loud. This was always the intent to get to a state in which you destroy the economy. And as a result, you get people to rise up to overthrow the government. But to do so, you have to make their lives as miserable as possible so that they have no choice but to go out on the streets and risk their lives. But the playbook has been to never admit it, constantly say that the medicine shortage is not because of sanctions. It's because of the regime's incompetence and corruption. And without a doubt, there's a tremendous amount of incompetence and corruption in the Iranian government, for sure. But these type of shortages do not occur by themselves. They do occur as a result of the sanctions. The latest research has made it very, very clear that the sanctions is the triggering thing that really causes the degree to which the economy is collapsing. But you don't admit it until the very end when you think a regime change is about to happen, because at that point you want to take credit for it. But up until that point, you do, and you go and you gaslit and you say, well, sanctions have nothing to do with this. Sanctions have nothing to do with the fact that medicine cannot get in. Sanctions have nothing to do with the fact that the currency is collapsing, that the economy is collapsing. But once it does, then you take credit for it because you say that you achieved this.
- [58:06]
D
Well said, sir. Well, thank you so much for joining us for so much of your time. We appreciate your dispatch from Munich. Thank you, sir.
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A
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