A (10:58)

Well, let me push a little bit further. In a speech, I believe a week or. Well, no, last year, I'm Sorry, Vice President J.D. vance made a famous speech in which he said the following Previous presidents before the current one, Mr. Trump, were, and I'm quoting now, too dumb. D U M B Too dumb to do in Iran what the current President is going to do, solve that problem once and for all. And more words along that line, a full throated endorsement of what Mr. Trump and the Israelis have been doing June of last year and now again the last 45 days. So his analysis has no depth. He seems to think he has said something when he has accused a dozen presidents for from being dumb, whatever exactly that means. And yet the irony is, given everything you've said, and if I take you literally, that it's not a defeat in the making, but a defeat already made, how do we account in a serious way for the United States not to have learned from all those years and all those efforts and all that history not to do what may be the undoing of this empire?

B (12:47)

Well, the Israelis in particular, Netanyahu has been pushing the United States to go to war with Iran for four decades. That's not new. If you remember several years ago, he went before the UN had held up this little drawing of a bomb and said, you know, they're almost ready to create nuclear material and produce a bomb. And that's always been the line. But the Pentagon has, for reasons that are now obvious, refused quite adamantly. So whether it was Biden or Obama or Bush, they have absolutely or recognize that an attack such as the Trump administration carried out would result in what it has resulted in, which is the seizure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. Now, remember, before this conflict, ships, tankers had free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, not only is it all bottled up because the United States has violated the ceasefire agreement by seizing Iranian ships and prompting Iran after one day to reclose the Strait of Hormuz, but any tankers that do get out are charged the equivalent of $2 million. But not in dollars, it's in the Chinese currency, because this is also part of the attempt by Russia, China, Iran to sever the global economy from the tyranny of the American dollar. So all of the goals that were set out by the Trump administration were not. Did not, did not, were not achievable, were not achieved. So that was the shutting down of its nuclear program, the stopping of the arming of Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, blocking its ballistic missile program and regime change, none of it worked. So on all of the four major points, they've lost. Now, the issue is the Strait of Hormuz, because of course, Iran has A stranglehold on the global economy. It's already creating devastating effects. And in countries like India, Japan has had to release its strategic reserves. About 90% of the oil that Japan depends on goes through the Strait of Hormuz. But those numbers are also about the equivalent for South Korea, for Indonesia, for India. I mean, these countries are really getting hammered. And there will be a kind of global effect, of course. And this asymmetrical warfare that Iran waged proved highly effective, including taking out the sophisticated radar systems that the United States had positioned. Some of those systems, by the way, cost about a billion dollars, and they take them out with relatively cheap drones, carrying out significant damage. It's classified, so we're kind of, you know, groping in the dark, but it appears fairly significant damage on US Military installations. This war was. None of our GCC allies in the Gulf were consulted, although they've paid a horrific price. They weren't consulted, just like our allies in Europe were not consulted. So Trump is in a really terrible situation. And let's be clear, by the way, Israel wants the war to continue. This is just. This defeat is catastrophic for Israel. Israel sees Iran as an existential threat. You can argue whether it isn't or isn't. I don't think it is, but. But certainly in the Israeli mindset, it is. And that is why they have continued to pound Lebanon. One of the preconditions for the ceasefire was, of course, and I think justifiably so, the Iranians said, well, we won't carry out attacks on your allies in the Gulf, but you have to stop attacks and against our allies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Israel is, is. Is doing everything they can to sabotage the agreement, because what they want to do to Iran is turn it into a failed state, the same way they've done in Syria. And we're watching them destroy Lebanon as. As we speak. Iraq was as splintered into factious entities, Kurdish and about 60% of Iraqi, Shia and Sunni. That is Israel's goal. And if they can't change the regime, they'll just carpet bomb Iranian cities, Iranian oil installations, Iranian infrastructure, including water desalination plants. But, I mean, this is just suicidal because Iran, the best estimate is that they still have significant stockpiles of military, maybe half of their ballistic missiles, as well as drones. And that desalination issue is not small, because I think Israel depends on about four or five desalination plants, and Israel's a small country. And let's not forget that Russia and China provided satellite intelligence to the Iranians, which is why their strikes were so devastatingly precise. You have cities in Saudi Arabia like riyadh, I think, 100% dependent on desalinated water. Take those desalination plants out, and you're talking about a catastrophic crisis, not just an economic crisis, but a human crisis. And let me, just, before I stop, throw in that this war has created within Iran, although some may be going back. 3 million displaced people. Let's not forget the 2 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza and another 1 million, that's a fifth of the population in Lebanon. So these are seismic dislocations, seismic trauma, seismic catastrophe that has already been visited throughout the Middle East. And Trump does not know how to get out of it. He's got the Israeli and the Israel lobby pushing him on one side, and then on the other side, he is flirting with catastrophic economic catastrophe. I mean, if this is not resolved, we're already hitting in many countries, I think we could say a recession. You're the economist, but you're really flirting with a global depression unlike anything we've seen going back to the 20s.

A (19:37)

Chris, as an observer, my mind reels at the thought that, is this the way this empire is going to end? That it could not understand the limits of its own reach and power. It could not imagine the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, what the Iranians said they would do. It didn't take a detective to figure it out. It was an obvious ploy, and it shows the world in the most dramatic way. I mean, there are the Straits of Malacca. There is that passageway that the Houthis can control in the Red Sea. I mean, I could go on. Many parts of the world are being given a training course in how to use their role. Their moment within a global economy created by American capitalism as much as by anything else, is now coming back with its extended supply chains to haunt the very system that created it. In a kind of Hegelian contradiction explosion My question to you is, am I reading right? How do you see the reverse? Not how the United States got itself into this horrific defeat, but how that defeat is going to react back upon the United States to change it.

B (21:23)

Well, either the United States accepts the defeat and Iran has very clear conditions. The lifting of primary and secondary sanctions, some kind of promise, UN Security Council or something else that says that there will be no more attacks on Iran. The country has been attacked twice in the last year. Reparations for the damage that has been caused by the Israeli and Americans. The unfreezing of Iranian assets estimated about $100 billion. These are our preconditions. And the United States, these are very bitter pills for the United States to swallow. Either they're going to accept them or Iran will carry out this assault on the global economy. Now, remember, you got about 20% of the oil and natural gas, and then you have all the derivatives, fertilizer and heat, helium and aluminum and everything else. So it's not just fossil fuels. So the Saudis, through their pipeline, are able to divert and ship oil out through the Red Sea. But as you mentioned, if the Houthis shut down the Bab El Mandab, which is again, a very narrow strait, much like the Strait of Hormuz, then nothing's getting out. Nothing's going to get out. And at that point, the global economy probably pretty quickly starts to go into a very serious tailspin. This was a catastrophic mistake, one that Trump should not have had the power to make. I mean, this is, again illustrative of the collapse of our democratic institutions. Congress makes war. Congress was never consulted. Most of his intelligence, from all we can tell from the New York Times reporting, I think all of his intelligence with. Let's skip Hegseth. But his military and intelligence chiefs, including Kaine, warned about the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. And Bibi Netanyahu, who kind of tricked Trump into doing this, said, well, no, we'll take out the Supreme Leader, the regime, everybody will come to the straits, they'll overthrow the ayatollahs, and they won't close the Strait of Hormuz. It'll all be over in a weekend. And Trump was stupid enough to fall for it. I mean, this is how empires die. How did the British Empire die? It kept funneling its youth into the maws of German machine guns at the Somme and Verdun and everything else. You know, they never learned. They were too obtuse and stupid, and they were finished much through the same kind of stupidity. Haig being a very limited figure like Trump, he was the chief of the General Staff of the British Army. So, yeah, that's how empires die. They are captured by callous, amoral buffoons. You know, the history of the Roman Empire is no different. Nero Caligula, all these figures, commodious. And, yeah, that's how we die, too. This really does have the potential if it's not resolved. And I don't see it being resolved. I mean, there is no ceasefire. Don't use the word ceasefire. It's not. A ceasefire would mean that the preconditions for the ceasefire, which is opening the Strait of Hormuz and the United States not carrying out aggressive acts in terms of seizing Iranian tankers would not be going on. And of course, there would be no bombing of Lebanon. So. So this is not a ceasefire. We haven't even gotten there, much less to the incredibly complex and difficult negotiations that would be required to extract ourself from this conflict. And who's in charge of it? His son in law, who, of course has received billions of dollars in his investment firm from Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis are mortal enemies of Iran. And his golfing partner, Steve Witkoff. I mean, it's. You can't make this stuff up. And let's also be clear, Wyckoff and Kushner, these guys are Zionist assets, they're Israeli assets.

A (25:43)

Is it possible, and here I want your opinion, just as an American thinker, is it possible that Mr. Trump will be able, given everything you've said, to do what he is frequently famous for, which is doubling down when he's made a terrible mistake in the hopes of kind of bullying his way through? Could he unleash some kind of military activity on Iran in some desperate effort which won't work and will make the empire yet again weaker?

B (26:31)

Yeah, I think that is, I worry that that is probably the likely scenario if they. You know, let's be clear that Trump has no concept of Iran. He doesn't know anything about Iran. His whole worldview is colored by, you know, very repugnant kind of racism. Iran is not Lebanon. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not even Iraq. Iran is a country of 92 million people, the size of Western Europe. And the Iranians, I think this conflict has shown, have learned, especially after the 12 days of attacks last June, exactly how to fight back. Decentralized command. Their ballistic missiles are buried deep underground. That's why when there are pictures of them, you see clouds of dust, which the Israeli and American Air Force have not been able to get at. No, I do worry that he's impulsive, he's ignorant. He by his nature is a bully. You know, a belief that violence, threats, force, will bend everyone, including the rest of the world, to his will. And let's not forget also that we are now very isolated. Our allies in Europe and in the Gulf are really furious. And because many of them are paying the consequences of this, we'll all pay it, but they particularly are paying it now. And Trump doesn't bother to inform them, consult them, or take their interests into account. So that has further isolated the United States, not just globally, but within the region. And I think yes. That is, given Trump's character and given the heavy lobbying that will come from Israel and the Israel lobby, that is a distinct possibility. But at that point, then we're in really, really serious trouble, because the fact is, Iran holds all the cards. Yes. I'm not saying they haven't been punished in terms of the bombing campaign, in terms of their infrastructure, but imagine taking out the oil facilities on Kharg Island. I mean, you would think, given the pressure on the global economy, if they were rational in the White House, that they would want Iranian oil on the market. So we're dealing with highly inept, impulsive, ignorant people in the Trump administration, unfortunately, have almost unilateral control over the largest military in the world. It's a very, very bad combination.

A (29:23)

Thank you very much, Chris. It's exactly what I had hoped for. I hope you don't mind that we picked your brain and let you not at all do this. And thanks again for coming on the program, and I hope to be working with you again soon. And to all my audience, as usual, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.