Artemoine (47:27)
That was the Israeli plan, in my view, but it obviously failed. So the Israeli plan was to create this entire sort of account or narrative about the war, that the Iranian regime is illegitimate, you know, telling or promising people that there will be regime change, that, you know, we're going to bomb everybody and then you're right, come to the street and take charge. And at the same time, the Mossad was paying these secessionist groups in eastern Iraq and, you know, western, western Iran. They won in courts, which many of these groups work as, you know, very well with the, with the Israelis as well as the Americans. Not so much the aeris, because the. If you think about it, both the Supreme Leader and the President are aary Iranians. So the aeries had no interest in this. And they also, because of Turkey and Turkey's pull with Azerbaijan, they kind of saw this as a problem. They didn't want spillover. They didn't want this kind of, this level of regime change. They're not for regime change. So Azerbaijan, no, but Kurdistan was certainly what they wanted to do. And the mek, which is the tools that they use all the time, and the K, as it's called, the Mujahideen cow, which is the people's Mujahideen, is a. Is a combination of Islamism with Marxism. It's like the worst thing that you want to imagine. It's a cult. It's only supported by the most, you know, notorious characters in Washington D.C. rudy Giuliani and Pompeo are their lobbyists. But again, they are just tactical units. They are that are used in on, you know, Mossad uses them inside Iran. They are the group that actually originally sort of revealed the plans that Iran has a nuclear program or nuclear technology infrastructure. And that's how this whole entire nuclear file got blown open. They work again, very close. They used to work with the Saddam regime, with the Ba' Athists and Iraqis during the 80s to fight against the Iranians. So again, these are very like unpatriotic tools of foreign entities. And, and so they, they had that. And then the Israelis basically turned the. The Pahlavi is the sort of the people who support. I don't like the term monarchy is them because it really. Pahlavi is basically using his personal sort of connection as the. Or personal. The. His. No, the fact that he's well known as the, as the former Crown Prince. He's using that credibility to then justify and rationalize Israeli actions in Iran. And that's, you know, putting him in MEK territory for many Iranians, especially inside Iran. And now the war has actually come. So it's no longer this kind of like conspiracy theory that Reza Pahlavi was in on it with the Israelis. So the idea was to get urban warfare to getting the liberal Iranians out in the streets with Mossad supports and then also attack Iranian borders through Kurdish groups. That has not transpired for better or for worse in terms of their Israeli strategy. The Americans didn't want. We really didn't want this. The White House didn't want this as much because the goal, I don't think, was regime change. Trump was happy to say, fine, you know, if you want to collapse the regime, it's fine. But he never supported resolibi. I think that's important to, to, to note and the idea of state collapse because in Iran you're not going to get regime change. You're either going to get state collapse, Syrianization, civil war and refugee flows and a failed state of that. I mean for, for this to happen, this is the level and you know, and the IRGC will do, you know, long time fighting insurgency until it sort of reestablishes control. You get something like this so that Israel can continue to come in and find out where everything is and blow it up. What they did to Syria, that's the Israeli goal. America doesn't have that interest because America still understands that, you know, these huge states can't, we can't have state. I mean America didn't even want state failure in Syria, let alone, so America didn't ultimately like the, you know, the Trump administration didn't want the Syrianized situation in Syria, let alone in Iran. So that's why they worked with the Turks and the Saudis and Tom Barak to try to stabilize the situation after Ahmed Al Shara got, got to power. But that was effectively a change from the Russian Iranian client to the Turkish client. But that's, that's not going to be so easily achieved in Iran. The American position though has to go back to the off ramp again. Donald Trump realized that this is not going to plan, so immediately tried to reach out to the Iranians and say let's do, let's have another ceasefire immediately. But the Iranians, to, I think to their rational credit and also to what D said, realize full well that if they accept the ceasefire, they have just absorbed the costs for no benefit. And this is the war that they, they want to finish this. They want the, the shadow of war. Look, the revolution happened in 79. Ever since then, I think one can easily make the case that Iran has been under a shadow of war both because, I mean the rhetoric of Iran has been hostile to the West. I don't think anyone denies that. And Iran has had proxies and the proxies have been a threat to American soldiers in the region. But from the Iranian perspective, this is our part of the world and the Americans are interjecting and Israel is an American outpost. So they are trying to get America to leave. But also America from the very beginning said no. And we are going to be threatening war with the Islamic Republic or Iran and sanction them. And that's a form of economic war and do maximum pressure and maximum pain to get what we want. And the Iranians have prepared for this for, for 47 years. And now the war has finally came. And so they're prepared for this war. They know that it has to be a war and go long enough for the other side to really lose interest in, in fighting it. And that might mean months, it might mean years. And it's for this reason that I'm very, very so. Again I, I don't think the Iranian side was willing, especially the irgc that more securitized, you know, the hardened Islamic Republic is ready to do any kind of negotiation until it gets to the point that it knows it has more demands than it did before. It wants acknowledgment of nuclear enrichment rights. It wants missile defense and makes missile capability with no limits. It wants to continue it. It will have the continuous control over the Strait of Hormos attack. I think from this point on it will be irreversible in the Iranian file. And ultimately it wants to find a way to both, you know, re. Re revitalize the economy and do rebuilding but also not be subject to constant threats and basically know that the war with the US has ended. So they want a kind of a non aggression pact with, with America and I think they will be even happy to have it with Israel. That's the level of non aggression pact that they will be looking at. But they are not going to give up any of those things that, that have caused these wars from the Israeli perspective. So I think from that, that from the Israeli angle they have every interest in trying to escalate this to get the region involved. I mean right before we got to the show I saw this report from the Iranians from the IRGC spokesman who was saying that there is reports that we hit Aramco in Saudi Arabia. We want to say that we are very open about where we hit and we have hit all these refineries but we haven't hit Aramco. And that's designed to get Saudi Arabia in onto the war with basically they call it the Zionist plot. So they keep saying that some of these attacks are also done through the Israelis to get the region to join on the Israeli side. Now the Iranians know this is very unpopular on Arab street. You know, even if the Arab governments want to join, it's very unpopular because it's a very strange circumstance because the majority of the Arab population in the region is pro Iran and Islamic Republic. Their governments aren't. And, but then the, even though the government is increasingly getting domestic and Social support. And it does have a base of support, 30% or so, that's very committed and willing to die for the cause. It does have a problem with, with many Iranians, a majority of Iranians that find the Islamic Republic illegitimate from their perspective. So it's a circumstance in which a lot of secular liberal Iranians don't understand why Iran does the things that it does and why it wants to fight Israel or. And they see it as an Iranian problem. But then the Arab streets actually see Iran as the liberator and the only state that's standing up to, to the sort of Western imperialism. So they are all in on the Iranian agenda. So it's a, it makes it very complicated. But ultimately, because the Israelis want America to be doubling down, America is kind of looking at the options of what that would look like. It wouldn't look like a ground invasion at the level of like Iraq. I don't believe that will happen. But I think what's being considered is sort of littoral and limited combat units, Special forces, you know, 82nd Airborne, amphibious operations to try to secure certain things. That could be securing the Car island where the, where Iran exports most of its oil. It could be securing other disputed islands that you know, that the Iranians use to control the Persian Gulf. It could be, or both of them could be false fights for an Iranian American operation into, deep, into Iranian territory to recover the 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium, which we don't know where it is. And I don't think Americans also know where it is. I mean, that sounds like a suicide mission. So again, this, whichever aspects of this we focus on, there will be, I mean, these troops as, as excellent as they are in combat, and I don't think any country has better special forces will be, will, will be setting targets. And if they're in these islands or indeed nuclear underground bunkers, you know, they will be basically just pounded. And Iran has actually expected that. It wants this. Why? Because Iran says it's very hard for us to kill Americans and raise the cost, you know, based on the cost question that we were talking about earlier. But so the American exposure is low. So America is not. Well, Israel and America are now deliberately, including freezing, if this goes through American exposure to Iranian ground forces. Again, Iran has a 2 million people ground force, at least 250,000 IRGC ground forces. These people are not doing anything basically during this war. And they can be deployed at any place. Even the threat that Scott mentioned about the Iraqis rising up and taking cities, which was something that was considered by the administration as, you know, is something that the Iranians, you know, were very, you know, they were ready to go in and actually take the war to Iraqi Kurdistan. And that's why Barzani and the Talibani, the two basically family heads of the Kurds in Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds with the Iraqi army and the Shiite mobilized units basically created a buffer zone on Iran's behalf to prevent the Iranian Kurds from doing anything too long because they knew that the Iranian IRGC was going to come in. And already one of the hardest hit places is Erbil is the American base, which basically is the COVID for a lot of Mossad and Israeli operation in the region. Iran has made it clear that places like Erbil, places like, you know, like in Kuwait, a lot of these places that were used to see into Iranian territory and see where these missile factories are and where the launches are, a lot of that is, you know, they have made it clear they're not going to allow for any of that to come back. And the Iranians, they do have a lot of patience. They have made their name in strategic patience. But if you think about what they did with Iraq after Iraq, they vowed that they will make sure that Iraq will never threaten them again. And so once Saddam Hussein was removed, Iran has made Iraq part of its strategic picture. So there's no threat from Iraq to Iran. If, if Saddam was not still in the picture, this would have been a very different war, for example. Right. So this is the kind of. So, so the Iranians understood where their vulnerability was and they've completely neutralized it and actually have gained strategically from the, you know, gwat wars and, and our wars in endless wars in the Middle East. It's, it served in a way, Iran and Israel and this is a very strange scenario. Israel does certain things that is all for itself, but also helps the Islamic Republic in retrospect. And I think it's because they are very, they want to create this sort of like us versus them and just expand as much as possible. But it, but it doesn't make any sense from an American perspective. Right. And I think everyone should agree on that point. You know, even if you are against the Islamic Republic, I think you should be. You know, we can see that the Islamic Republic did become stronger during the wars in the Middle east that happened on behalf of Netanyahu. Ultimately there was, I still don't know why we attacked Iraq from a, from a rational perspective, but it makes a lot of, it made a lot of sense based on the project Clean break. And what, what Netanyahu's view of, of the world is. And that's a very different view. I mean, I sometimes say as a joke, my view is very much close to the IDF in the 80s. I think there is ultimately a deep relationship to be made between Israel as a real estate and Iran as a real estate. And that's what the, at the height of the revolution, at the height of the rhetoric, at the height of we're going to eliminate and you know, Israel and go to, you know, Jerusalem, Israelis were supporting Iran through Iran contractor to fight the Iraqis. That's based on the periphery strategy that they had. It was, and that's only Sharon, but also it's Rabin who started shifting from this after the Cold War. And that really put, put us in a very different strategic environment. I think that is a very nonsensical, unrealistic posture from the Israelis. So I, you know, the Israelis that I talk to, I, I see that if they're older, if they remember the 80s, I think they tend to agree with what I'm saying. And, and it's, you know, it's a more sort of neo Zionist Israelis who don't, who are really threatening the longevity of Israel. And this is what the, the more sort of security oriented, realist Israelis understood. You know, there's no, ultimately Iran is not going to invade Israel and Israel is not going to invade Iran. They don't, there are thousands of miles apart and you know, they can actually use, you know, their relationship to, to make sure that their other rivals or adversaries don't get powerful enough and balance other countries. And that's, that's, I mean, again, I think the logic of power and power balancing as a realist triumphs over or trumps this kind of ideological posturing. But yet we're, you're having groups in America and we're having groups in Israel today and, and promoted by Netanyahu for his own kind of neocon ideological posture. But, but they are effectively apocalyptic and engaged in eschatological psychosis and they just, it's, it's very divorced from the reality of power and what that means. So I, I see the scenario as Israel still wants America to fight this war. I think it will be ultimately successful in getting Trump to double down because the Iranians also don't want it and they have eliminated, they will continue to eliminate anyone in Iran that would be western oriented and allow for Iran to be more hawkish so that, you know, hawkish elements in America, hawkish elements in Iran and the war will escalate. This is what they did with Hamas. They, you know, Netanyahu supported Hamas, funded Hamas. Why? Because you want that Manichean view of the world to really get, get its place and do the kinds of, create the kind of environment that you think you can capitalize on. I just don't see, see how Israel ultimately in 10 years will have capitalized on this. But again, because they have, they have a very, they, they overestimate their own power, but underestimate the power of regional states, that's specifically Turkey, Egypt and Iran. It's very different what Israel can do to Lebanon, Gaza, Syria. But even in Gaza they haven't been able to eliminate all of the Hamas leadership after all of this, you know, draconian, reckless, devastating bombing. So I don't see how they're going to do this to a, to a country that, that, that is, you know, three times this, this, you know, at least the size of Western Europe or three times the size of Germany. So it's, it's a very different kind of environment. But this all raises, I want to raise this. There's another scenario other than the ground warfare is well, we are not getting what we want. And imagine the, what we do with the ground forces, the special office, which is going to probably going to be the next step of the ladder that's going to fail and Americans die. What are we going to do? We're not going to go put a hundred thousand troops, deploy them to go and conquer specific parts of Iran or even go to march to Tehran. So what's the next step? Either we have to step away from the escalation ladder or I think the Israelis are going to pressure us into something that's very, very dangerous. And I think that is tactical nuclear weapons. I, I don't use that lightly. I hate fear mongering. But I do think that not because Iran is pounding Israel even, but because there is this impression that this nuclear bombardment works in Japan and therefore if that might work on Iran and get them to finally capitulate. Well, this didn't work in Japan. Japan actually surrendered because of the ground forces of the Soviet Union and it was going to do this anyway. Truman was actually doing this to show the might of the American power and he was able to use it because it was the only nuclear state at the time. So the devastation aside, the moral crisis and the question of whether or not the Israelis have the, have the river told to do that themselves or actually are going to throw this on us as well, I think we need to have huge red lines starting now as to what is it that America is going to do to prevent the hand of Israelis either to use tactical nuclear weapons themselves or force us to do it in the hope or the illusion or delusion that some sort of a nuclear attack on Iran is going to change the trajectory of this war and get the Iranians to capitulate. They're not going to capitulate even after a nuclear attack. They're only going to get all the reasons that they want to pound Israel back with whatever conventional force that they have. And they already will kind of consider moving towards a nuclear weapon because of the fact of, you know, this is probably the only way that they can establish deterrence because they think that the American side is now being irrational. And so we need to really think about why we are here. I don't believe into, in the conspiracy theories of, you know, they have something under president or whatnot. I think it's easier question than that. And again, I will be, if, if someone can show me some evidence of how the Israelis kind of like manipulate us, I think I would love to see it. But I actually think it's a different scenario. I think Israel is the only country that has nuclear monopoly in the region. It wants to prevent nuclear parity by any other country no matter whatever cost and whatever red lines. And it will try to protect this as long as possible. But it's using that, and it has used that since first 67, but really since 1973 on Nixon to try to basically what I call nuclear blackmail us into doing what they want. And so if you consider the 12 day war, we went into the 12 day war by trying to say we, well, okay, is Israel has its war, it's all about nuclear weapons again. But we're going to, we are going to run for their defense. We are going to cover them. And from our perspective, this is defensive war. We're also going to sort of sweeten the deal because they're so worried by actually eliminating, obliterating, as the President said, the, the Iranian nuclear capacities and facilities and use B2S and do it. Operation Midnight Hammer. Okay, well, what was actually revealed by that war is that Iran has all these missile cities and we only know half of it if, if even that, and that they can outlast and continue to pound Israel and Israel is quite small. So then the Israeli question became not only the nuclear material and the dual use technology in Iran and eliminating any capacity in Iran for nuclear industry and nuclear technology, but also eliminating any kind of missile, medium to long range missile system that Iran might use to exact pain on Israel or at least have a second strike capability. And that is why I think we went back in this time around and I think Donald Trump might have been, you know, if, if Nixon, with all of his realism and all of his rational thinking, I think the, the greatest foreign policy thinker that we have had in the post war era, if he was, he was forced, and he and Kissinger were forced to go to Israel's defense convention in 73, someone like Donald Trump could easily be told that, well, we're going to start this, we're going to go to war. Let's say Iran doesn't attack America. There's no imminent threat in that regard. And this tit for tat continues. Well, at some point you're going to escalate to a level in which Israel is going to use nuclear weapons. So that threat of nuclear weapons against Iran might be the actual pull that brings America into the war in the first place and this time in an offensive capacity. Well, let's eliminate that threat. So the Israelis, you know, don't actually use nuclear weapons. But, but the quagmire effects of this war, the strategic disaster that this war has caused for the administration might actually make that more likely. Which is why previous presidents basically told Natanie to get bossed. And so including in the Bush administration. Right. I mean, so this is like we are in a territory in which the American neocon didn't, wouldn't consider. And I think this is the first time in my lifetime I've been a critic of the rock work from the very beginning that has been very formatted in my experience. But it's the first time that I think the realist anti establishment voices as well as the establishment, your, your sort of liberal internationals, your neocons, David Patriot, David Petrius and even Bill Crystal and Kagan are all on board in a sense that this is a bad war. Why? Well, because strategically it doesn't advance any of our interests. Actually it's empowering the Iranians. It is having far reaching systemic effects around the world in China, in Russia. It's making all of it actually creating that unit Eurasian axis that we kept claiming has been created against us. That you're actually kind of forcing them into this kind of alliance even though they are very different and they don't want to have that alliance. And so ultimately then we are in this position in which this might escalate into this kind of a nuclear exchange. The first since 1945. And I think that is, that is a death blow to American credibility, to American power. I think it's going to fundamentally reshape the world. But even if that doesn't happen, I think we are the, the, we have to consider the systemic effects of America's power and its decline. America was in a unipolar moment. That's why we have all these bases in the Middle east in the first place. That all happened in the 90s after the first Persian Gulf War, right? So we ended up, you know, surrounding and encircling the Middle east and Iran in the 90s to supposedly, allegedly provide protection and make sure the free flow of oil. But ultimately the Iraq war, the war on terror, our endless wars in the Middle east and the financial crisis eroded our power to the point that we are no longer really seeing signs that the unipolar moment has ended. I think that the first sort of siren call of that was the Russian war in Ukraine and the fact that we kind of expanded NATO to get this war. And that was a disaster. But we are not seeing the full picture until the Iran were. I think the Iran war will be remembered as the culmination of the rupture. And we are, and everyone would clearly see what we are talking about as theorists when we are talking about the end of the unipolar moment, that we are then in a post unipolar era where all of the post war rules of the rules based system, but also the very conception of the globe as we considered is ending. And we're not moving towards another kind of great power competition between us and China, but actually a different arrangement of the world in various regions in which regional powers will have much more, much more endurance and much more resilience and much more say as to what's going to happen in their newer problem. And I think that's something that the only again, modern president and to kind of recognize that with Nixon we have to really, I think, bring back the Nixon doctrine to be able to continue to be a great power in this era. But the, the culmination of the rupture and the end of American primacy, global primacy, global hegemony, the illusion of global hegemony itself. I think that's, those will be the lessons of this war. And I just hope that we realize that before we commit thousands of lives and trillions of dollars to a cause which will only make it more painful and maybe will threaten our own great power status as, you know, as a, as a, as a regional hemispheric power, which is basically what Donald Trump and, you know, the people who wrote the National Security Strategy, the Don Row doctrine, wanted. Right. So this is. This goes against all of the logic. And I think there is a. There is again, I think realism is not pacifism. So there is logic to what that document was trying to do. And recall what it says. It says the Middle east is perfect, is peaceful. We have no business there. It is right. We have destroyed that peace and that stability, and we have done it over years and decades or for the sake of Israel. But also because we have misunderstood the role of regional powers, and those regional powers are no longer going to be bullied and intimidated by our conventional military might. I would stop there.
