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- [00:00]
Artemoine
Hey, per don' por interrumpirto playlist.
- [00:02]
Daryl Cooper
Peroesto es mejor que musica son cosas gratis. Descarga TikTok busca free y comparte elinqu para consegir productos gratis en piesa es la shara hora. All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans Negotiate.
- [00:27]
Artemoine
Now end this war.
- [00:30]
Daryl Cooper
You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton debunking the propaganda lies of
- [00:37]
Scott Horton
the past, present, and future. This is provoked. All right, you guys. It's provoked. All right, so recording on Thursday night because I'm traveling, and actually we plan this poorly because I won't be traveling until Saturday morning. But anyway, we're recording on Thursday to play on Friday. It's Provoked with the great me, and especially him, Daryl Cooper. Martyr made. And we have a very special guest. But I'm going to go ahead and let Daryl introduce him and take the interview from there.
- [01:19]
Artemoine
Go ahead, sir.
- [01:20]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, so this is somebody I've been excited to talk to for a long time. I followed him on Twitter for a very long time. He's one of the best accounts on there when it comes to foreign affairs, especially stuff dealing with the Middle east and US Relations in the Middle East. But also, you know, you can find interviews and things. And I've been. He's. He's been very helpful in, like, helping me keep track of sort of the broader issues. You know, ever since this war started, I tend to get, if I'm left to my own devices, kind of very focused on the technical military details. And so, you know, he's. He's really been a huge help. So thanks for coming on, brother. It's great to finally talk to you.
- [01:57]
Artemoine
Thank you, Daryl. Thank you for having me. It's been. It's been a while that we had to do this, so I'm glad that we finally made it happen, despite the entire America first movement going down the drain. But we're going to find a way to hopefully keep it alive with these conversations. So, yeah.
- [02:14]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah. Hopefully the next time we speak will be under better circumstances, but I guess I'll jump right into it. I know Scott's had a long day, so I'll take the lead here. You know, the. The big news in the last 24 hours was that the Israelis hit the big natural gas field, Iranian side. The facility. Iranian facilities on the big natural gas field they share with Qatar. And when I saw that news come through, two thoughts sort of immediately came to mind. The first was that Iran is definitely going to hit back at infrastructure in the Gulf states, which they did, is something that the United States won't like. And the second thought I had right after that though was that Iran would hit back at the infrastructure in the Gulf states. And that's something that Israel probably really, really will like. You know, these pampered monarchies in the Gulf, you know, they're, they're saying what they have to say to stay on the good side of the United States and so forth. But you know, these people are not like plain stupid. They're not blind. They understand that Israel and the United States are the ones who have devastated their region for decades and, you know, are the chief sources of instability certainly in this particular instance. And so it seems to me that Israel probably knows that. They know that. And if Israel is preparing for a future where the US Is not going to be this automatic on call attack dog for them, you know, it seems to me they'd be perfectly happy to see the Arab countries reduced to chaos as well. And so by hitting Iranian infrastructure, hitting by the Iranians, hitting the Gulf infrastructure, are they kind of doing Israel's dirty work for them?
- [03:56]
Artemoine
So I think we got to sort of step back for a second and see sort of where we are. The American plan, to the extent that there was a plan, was to have basically 48 hours to 72 hours of conflict, decapitation, the regime capitulates, everything goes away. Donald Trump is a hero and America has another Venezuela on its head. That was the message, that was the story that was sold to the White House, especially by Benjamin Netanyahu and his backers, who happened to be very close with the administration. That didn't work out. And we are now in the midst of a long winded conflict. In my view, it's going to be a conflict that is going to be drawn out, it's going to be attritional. It is, it is an air campaign so far. And it has had a lot of tactical successes. But tactical success, as you know, might usually, unless it's actually planned according to a coherent strategy, doesn't lead to strategic success or strategic victory in this case. We don't even know what the goal of the US Side ultimately was. I think we were sort of goaded into this conflict by Israel. And I think the Israeli end for this conflict is a kind of a state of affairs that is in no one's interest. It's not in America's interest, the Persian Gulf and the region's interest. It's going to mean a very devastated, perhaps civil war wrought within Iran. It will be. They basically have no red line when it comes to what they want in Iran. Regime change is a nice cover. There might be some diaspora folks that they, they can convince that this is what they want to do, but that's not really what is at stake here. The stake for Israelis is to eliminate any potential adversary or rival for their regional hegemony. So that's the, that's the goal. And yet they cannot achieve this goal absent US Support and US Backing and not just, you know, financial that we have been doing, or even with military supplies. They need the United States to take a lead in many of these operations. And so the United States is starting to waver because Donald Trump knows that this is a very unpopular war. They also know that it's not going quite well for them. So there are, you know, rumors of, you know, are we going to do this, are we going to do that? They're still kind of considering options. I think it's almost inevitable that we will double down. But if there's any president that can, you know, all of a sudden pivot, it would be Donald Trump, because he can claim any, any defeat as a victory as well. So. But in terms of what the Israelis want is to try to find ways to get more of the region involved in the war to get to close the off ramps to the Iranians. That, that was what the killing of Ali Lauri Johnny signified. He was probably one of the most sort of out of the people who are in charge at this moment. He was one of the most Western oriented. He was a content philosopher. He, he could speak to the Americans. He would have found a way, if it was possible. So eliminate that on the Iranian side to close that door also, then close any kind of golden offramp to Donald Trump by getting him to commit to more and more, more and more bad options, ultimately. And so this, the fact that you are escalating in the first place, if you are actually in a sort of a superior military position. So there is no question that the American and Israeli sort of equipment and military doctrine is in a, in a way more superior to the Iranians. Right. So they do have the upper hand in terms of technology and equipment and weapons systems. And yet they are the ones that are escalating this. And the Iranians, after the first response to try to show that they are not decimated, they have, they have basically prepared for this kind of war for half a century. So they, they are looking this time for an Attritional war. They know what they're doing. They're doing, you know, specific number of hits every day to Israel and to the Gulf. But they're not, they're not going out of their way to shoot everything that they have, you know, in one cyber. So the, the Israeli side then is escalating because it's frustrated and desperate. And so I think we should, look, we should understand what that means. The side that escalates in a conflict like this is the one that is trying to, to try to get every, every side more involved in a conflict. And so we are fast and quite quickly moving up escalation ladder. And unfortunately, I think that Donald Trump is stuck in an escalation trap. So you can discuss what that means, but it is certainly not to the United States interest. It might tank his presidency and America's great power status. So it's something that's really a big deal. This is not an excursion, as the President called it. It's definitely not an excursion and I think, I guess we're going to get there. But Joe, Joe, Ken's resignation doesn't come because he's against striking Iran through aerial campaign. He has, he, he was an advocate for comes in my view because the escalation ladder is getting us to positions in which a kind of a ground force invasion and, and more and more a Vietnam scenario would be impossible to avoid. And I think seeing that and not being able to have any kind of consultation in to the decision making process is getting Joe, but also others in the admin to reconsider what their position is and to whether they want to resign heroically or try to sort of fill a position so that they prevent other newcomers. But other, but you know, there is that kind of civil war within the administration that's also happening and that's for the better in one sense. We actually have, you know, if you are inclined to our America first or realist point of view, which I am, then we do, we do have voices within the administration, but they're not being heard. So I think it is, it is a very strange scenario or phenomenon that we are witnessing. So I will stop there. That was just like kind of a broad view and we can, we can focus on, I mean, in the past,
- [09:56]
Daryl Cooper
whether after the strike on General Soleimani or last June, the Iranians were very much, they were obviously very carefully being almost exactly proportionate in their response to whatever, whatever actions we took. I think, you know, at the end of the 12 Day War when they launched the missiles at Qatar I mean it was very telegraphed and I think if I remember correctly, they launched the exact same number of missiles that we dropped bombs, sort of a long range, you know, non verbal communication going on between, you know, the two sides. This time it seems like Iran has a very different mentality. And this, this most recent hit on their, on their natural gas facility, they did not respond proportionately. They escalated, they hit several more and did a lot more damage than they themselves took. And you know, I mean it kind of, I think that, you know, if you want to establish deterrence, you have to sort of create situation where the other side can, you know, you, you can't just respond proportionately forever because that gives the other side full initiative and allows them to sort of tailor their attacks on you to what they feel like they can handle at any given moment.
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Artemoine
Right.
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Daryl Cooper
And so that probably plays into what you're describing as the escalation ladder. Maybe you can talk about that.
- [11:11]
Artemoine
Yeah, sure. Well, I mean this question ladder is really being driven specifically by the, by the US and Israeli side, specifically the Israeli side. But it is, it is true that the older leadership, the, the late Supreme Leader harmony and, and the people who were close to them, they were, they were mostly in their 70s. You know, they had, they were kind of the first generation of the revolution still. They had become more, more and more cautious. They didn't want this war. They were very reluctant about this war because they knew the cost of this war. And so again, let's have no illusions that this war is costing the Iranian, you know, the Iranians, the, the, you know, with their infrastructure, huge damages and increasingly people will die. So it's not something that they walked into willy nilly, but at the same time they realized that, that, you know, Israel is precisely running a madman kind of campaign when it comes to war. It doesn't have any red lines, it acts as it pleases, it decapitates heads of states. I mean this is, this is a big deal when you, you know, traditionally or conventionally, the idea of, you know, killing off heads of state is something that terrorists do. Right, because they're non state actors. States have this level of stability with one another no matter what kind of ideology they had. I mean, we had at the height of the Cold War, it was unthinkable that either, I mean, forget about the nuclear weapons for a second, just even the idea of eliminating, you know, the heads of state of another country, it's not something that was ever discussed during World War II. The same thing, I mean, if even attempts that were made at Hitler's life, were made by, you know, German opposition groups, not by, you know, not necessarily by, by, you know, directed campaign by, by America or Britain. So the idea that we are going to go and eliminate heads of state itself is something that's very out of, out of, you know, outside of interested relations. And I think we should, you know, emphasize that, but in it, that in itself shows that Israel acts in a very rogue way when it comes to international politics. It doesn't have red lines, it escalates, it goes to, you know, infrastructure, it hits civilians, it does whatever it wants and it considers that as sort of a unapologetic use of force. Right. And it doesn't have any qualms or moralisms about that. It has moralisms when somebody attacks them, but it doesn't have any sort of moralism when it comes to attacking others which, which, which is very cynical. But that, that's what they're view is. So the, the Iranians during the 12 Day War still were following this kind of like proportionality and, and before that, for the past, you know, escalations from 23 onwards, there were rounds of this as, you know, and you know, true promise one, true promise two. These are the various things for the operations that they use. They also had strategic patience. So for example, when, when the Hamas leader was eliminated in Tehran, there was no immediate response from the Iranians, right? This was a, this was an attack on, on sovereign Iranian territory, killing somebody that they had invited. But in any case they didn't respond. And that was creating a lot of backlash within the Iranian decision making structure saying why aren't we responding? These people will not back off. So that's sort of, that kept on going until we got to the 12 day war. But even during the 12 day war, first of all, Iran was entirely, I mean, this is very interesting to consider, right? They had seen that Israel does this to their proxies. Hamas is not an Iranian proxy, but it does. But again, you could see that it did that to Hezbollah, it did that to other commanders in the field. So, and President Trump, you know, with Israeli support, had done that to Soleimani before. But Iran seems to have been entirely shocked and stunned by what happened. They were prepared for attacks and even a war with Israel, but they did not account for a decapitation strike on the, in the first hours of the war. I'm talking about the 12 Day War. And so that in itself caught them by surprise. They had to sort of reorganize themselves and change their kind of command and command and control structures. But the regime is a, it's not just a, you know, a one person system. It is a deep, total state. And so it had various levels of redundancy to be able to cope. But over the 12 day war, they started to hit back, but still in a proportional way. And also they were always worried about the United States joining the war. So they were trying to back channel, they were trying not to get America angry again. This kind of hesitancy existed. So what was the, I mean, the result of that? I think immediately it created a perception of weakness in Washington. And with Donald Trump, that was, I think, one of their most, the Iranians, you know, most severe mistakes. They, they thought that they were acting in a rational way, but then they did not appreciate the cognitive psychological impacts of war. And as you know, war, half war at least, is the, is a war of narratives, is a propaganda war. And so you go from the first accounts of the war, where Rubio distances America from, from the, from the war in the first hours to the first 24 hours when Donald Trump comes on and says, oh, actually I did it. We were consulting and everything was great. And I want to take credit for it. Right. Why did that shift happen? Because there was this impression that Iran is weak, that the Israelis were right, that Iran was a paper tiger. That impression held all the way till the resumption. And this is not a new war. This is the resumption of that war. That war had only paused. And I think those of us who follow international politics or our Iran experts knew that this war was going to come back. And so that, that's what happened. And this time around, the Iranians were prepared. They had a very different, more disaggregated, decentralized defense doctrines. They were going to escalate as much as possible, you know, widen the war and horizontally escalate the war within the categories of escalation. So if you hit the Iranian energy, Iran is not going to hit a different unrelated sector, but it's going to hit that sector in various countries. That's the level of escalation. But if you, even in this war, I think there's a degree of proportionality that's just ingrained to the Iranian doctrine. Even if they're trying to act like a, like, you know, try to be mad, they can't do it. It's just a different Iran as a, as a state, as a civilizational state, acts and has a different strategic doctrine than Israel does as a, as a new state. So it's Just, it's very hard to do that. But at the same time, they're looking at long term conflicts. So Iran thinks that if it goes into a war now, it has to sustain a war for months, if not years. That's the mentality. So they're trying to escalate proportionally within what they have and the means that they have, preparing for not just an acute conflict and confrontation, but actually something that's going to be long, long winded. So I think it's a different type of war. I think the United States didn't expect it. And that is why the Iranian response and the capacity to response was underestimated. And I think at this point we have to acknowledge that Iran was not a paper tiger, that Iran did have various capacities, that Iran has been strengthened because of this war, not weakened, not even the same strengthened. I'm choosing the words carefully. I think strategically Iranian position in the, in the Persian Gulf has become tantamount to that of the hegemon. There's no, there's no tactical scenario to change that. And all of these were Iranian advantages that it gets from strategic depth and geographic advantages that it wasn't really using prior to these conflicts. It was willing to give Donald Trump a win because he didn't want this war. And now because Israel, we have a situation in which Iran is actually benefiting, pushing and asking for better terms than it was two or three weeks ago. So I think it's a, it's a different circumstance. Again, this war is going to get, give pain to everyone. And the question becomes who has a higher tolerance for pain, for maximum pain to experience, as well as who has better resilience and who has better willpower to continue to fight this war. And my argument, as you know, as a realist, and specifically as a cultural realist, someone who looks at the ontological aspects of wars and the cultural and geographic elements and the civilizational elements and tries to combine those two lenses of analysis is ultimately Iran has, has staying power. And this is an existential conflict for, yes, the Islamic Republic, but also Iran as a state. If you carefully follow what Israel has been doing to the region and what it has claimed to want to do to Iran and also Turkey, other countries, it's not just limited to Iran. So we are seeing this and Iranians are acting as if this is an existential conflict, which it is for them. So when, when countries actually have existential, you know, wars that is threatening them, as you see with Russia and Ukraine, they act very differently than something that's a war of choice. America is still kind of on the fence. Donald Trump definitely is on the fence. Even, you know, Israel is not going to put ground troops. It's relying on America to put its troops to fight it. But the fact that we are even, you know, if this was an actual conflict that was existential and part of our vital national interest, that would be a debate. Right. Americans would sign up to go to war. So one would argue that, you know, the cartels in the south is, is something that's much more of a pressing concern to Americans than a war in the Middle east over oil that we don't even need because we're energy independent. So just putting that in the context of American politics, I think is important. It's not an existential conflict for us. It is an existential conflict for somebody else. And so that is going to impact decision making.
- [21:12]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, that's very similar to, you know, the criticism that a lot of us had at the outbreak of the Ukraine war when we got started getting really, really involved in that, is that this is a war of choice for us, it's not for Russia. And you really probably shouldn't get yourself into fights where there's that much of an imbalance in terms of, you know, motivation. You know, you mentioned earlier that this is kind of becoming an attritional war. And, you know, maybe the, the sort of initial thought that somebody has when they hear that is like, well, Iran can't possibly win that. I mean, we obviously have so much more in terms of resources and everything than Iran does.
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Artemoine
That's.
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Daryl Cooper
But, you know, the other side of that is that, you know, Iran has in a way, like, a lot easier job to do than. Than we do. You know, we have to inflict enough damage and enough pain. I guess, like, if this is the goal to either crumble the society, which it seems very resilient so far, or to get them to tap out, which seems extremely unlikely. They, on the other hand, really just have to show. They have to come out of this and be able to show that, look, you can take out 90% of our military capacity and we can still keep the straight of Hormuz closed and the, and the whole energy sector of this region shut down for 10 years if we go want to, you know, because it doesn't take that much. You know, I mean, you, you don't have to shoot every tanker that tries to go through the straight of Hormuz. You take out one a week, one a month, and you complicate the whole situation. You know, you.
- [22:40]
Artemoine
And also the straight of Horus is not closed. I think that's a very important distinction. This is why I use the word control. Right? It's, it's one thing to say that the Iranians just went mad, they had no other option and they just, you know, threw a bunch of mines that just blew up the region. So close trafficking for everybody. They didn't do that. They have basically, they're, you know, they're basically having, using smart bombs through precision drones and other other types of selected, you know, attacks to give you safe passage if they want and not if they don't want. So for example, China has been getting the oil that it wants as an India called the Iranians and, and Modi negotiated for Indian vessels to also pass. So this is not, this is, this is not a sort of a madman theory of closing down and shutting down all traffic is actually the kind of hegemonic or dominance doctrine which Iran has proven that it, that it basically owns the, the, the traffic there and it can control it. And so if you are trouble then you, you won't pass. But if, if you work with the Iranians, then they will guarantee your passage and that's what's giving them leverage on, that's just on the straight up Hormuz question.
- [23:55]
Daryl Cooper
And notice today in the news, Steve Witkoff was giving an interview, I can't remember with who, and he was announcing that we're considering lifting sanctions on about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that's currently floating in, in tankers on the sea right now. And you know, I guess the idea being that that's 10 or 12 days or so of supply that, you know, that's, that's supposed, I think it was marked for China that will, you know, we're using their oil, their own oil against them. We're going to allow this onto the market. That's going to keep oil prices down for, you know, maybe a week and a half, two weeks. And that's going to buy us some time to prosecute this war. And I guess I understand what he's saying, but I, I mean we have sanctions on them for a reason. Right? And the other side of that is they get what I think what physical oil is trading over in that region right now, what $20 billion for that oil or something. And so, you know, I, I, I can be sure that if you were to go back at the beginning of this war, in the first day or two of this war, the plan was not to be lifting sanctions on Iranian oil 20 days into it. So you know, it seems to me that that's sort of a, it wreaks of desperation by the way.
- [25:10]
Artemoine
This is what inspirational mean exactly. It reeks of desperation. I mentioned that in a tweet I think yesterday or a couple days ago. But after the attack on the, on the south parts gas release because by the way shared gas with Qatar and we had promised the Qatar is no more attack on things that touch them after September. And yet this was another attack and they got very angry at us. And that's why that's part of the reason for Donald Trump's, you know, true social post all of a sudden denying any knowledge of an attack that the entire admin was saying in the morning that everyone knew about and it was supportive of, that the President was supportive of. But that also goes to the way that we have to understand this war. This is not a conventional war between superpowers, between, with, with like you know, we have F35. What kind of, you know, Sukuk jets do you have? It, it's, it's. Iran doesn't even have a very credible air power. So this is not that kind of a war. This is not a cold war or 20th century conflict. This is the perfect asymmetric warfare campaign. It's like Vietnam 2.0 with, with drone technology strengthening the hand of the asymmetrical power here, Iran to actually have precision guided munitions that perhaps the Vietnamese didn't have. So, so it's allowing them offensive capability and capacity to tactically hurt the other side to, you know, go after, you know, their, the targets that they want to go after and actually have precision in doing so. And now that with Raiders and with the interceptors both being depleted, they will have a better chance with lower number of launches to get higher penetration rates. And that's being proven by satellite imagery. So that's the tactical side. So they do have that power. But ultimately the way that the Iranians are seeing this is the pain threshold that we have to, you know, exact on the Americans has to be outside of the battlefield as well. So economic energy and you know, the psychology of this war really. So the straight inform loses one such data points. But then you have others such as, you know, not just the energy, they can go after desalination plants or electricity grid or infrastructure as well. That's what the precision munitions gives you. And also they can escalate later on because again they haven't used their most sort of advanced generation, third, fourth generation missiles very much and they were waiting because they have fewer of them to have a weaker air defense, let's say, in Israel and other places. So their first phase of defense was to go after the region in terms of the Persian Gulf countries with the short range ballistic missiles and a lot of drones, something that they didn't use even during the 12 day war. And they have tens of thousands of them, not, not in the thousands. So, so we have to see this in terms of what does that do economically? What does it do in terms of energy costs? What does it do to the paycheck of Americans? What does it do politically to Donald Trump? Right. There's a midterm coming and, and they are actually considering this in a holistic account of what war means. And so that's the, that's the way that you measure pain. Now, there has been no air campaign ever in history that has successfully changed the regime or gotten them to capitulate. So they have history on their side. And there are what I call a middle power, a regional state that has staying power as a civilizational, enduring, civilizational state and power. And so it is able to leverage its social solidarity as well as its geography and strategic depth to be able to, to project power or at least be resilient. And so that has now shifted the strategic picture in the Persian Gulf. I don't, I don't know how the United States moves away from this. And that's why I think there's a, there's a trap. Because Donald Trump, no matter how he wants to spin this, it's very hard for him to say we have gained anything out of this other than to say we have killed some of their leaders or decimated their navy, which is, that's not even necessarily true because they don't really have a navy in the way that we have a navy. Or is like saying that we eliminated their air force. They don't really have an air force. A bunch of like f boards anyway. So, so the question then is how do, how do we change the strategic picture and the strategic gains of the Iranians? You know, this war from the American side and from the president side was about a few things. Nuclear enrichment, which by the way, it shouldn't be an issue. Iran has always insisted on having a sovereign nuclear enrichment. Nuclear enrichment does not mean nuclear weapons. But we have, because of push by the Israelis, we have changed our red line and the president has changed his own red line about nuclear weapons to include not just nuclear weapons, but any capacity for nuclear weapons down, down the line. So they are targeting all dual use technology and that's. That's the way that you get into a position in which no deal is ever possible because everything could be dual use. So then you're asking a country not to have any kind of technologies. And that's exactly what happened. After the nuclear enrichment red line. We got the missile technology red line and missiles are the last deterrence. Imagine if Iran didn't have missiles on drones today. Well then it had to capitulate, right? So it couldn't exact pain. So any country would need to, any sovereign state would need to have a defensive capability or retaliatory capability, at least in a symmetric one. And in the Iranian case, they have spent a lot of energy to try to endogenize that supply chain and that technology. So it's not something that they import. They do import some, some, you know, preliminary parts or some, you know, sodium percolate that could be used for solid fuels in the rockets. But which country doesn't do any importation but they do have a domestic supply chain, something that we actually lack in America for many of the things that we do. And so it's, it's. Iran has been isolated because of our sanctions, but they have also tried to, this is a, this is a rev. This was a revolution about self reliance. And so for all the costs that they have paid and for all the draconian measures that they have put on their own people, they are also a deeply resilient and self reliant state. And so I think that's something that even the Shah didn't have the previous sort of monarchy in Iran because Iran at the time had so many beautiful gadgets as Donald Trump likes to say, big, beautiful American, the best, top of the line. But it was all dependent on American support and logistics. So as soon as the Shah was toppled, Iran couldn't use most of them during the Iran Iraq war. That Iran Iraq war both strengthened the regime. That's why I have been saying for months that when this war happens, as long as republic will get strengthened, part of that is just the rallying factor against, against foreign enemy in any, for any political state. If there was an invasion in America, what would we do? We would, we would sort of come together even if it, you know, his Biden as president doesn't matter who's the president or if you're anti Trump, you would still come and support the US Government because it's an invasion. That's a normal human reaction to your community. But, but in this case it wasn't just that. It was also that their entire perception, the entire rationale of the revolution was about sovereignty. In a way. The Iranian revolution united the left and the right elements at the time, and then Islamist won at the end. But all of them agreed on one thing and that's that Iranian sovereignty should be ironclad. 50 years before we were talking about, we were talking about sovereignty in the way that we are. So it was a populist sovereignist revolution and it had religious elements. I mean, hello, think about our own situation today. We have many of the same sort of, you know, tropes in our own kind of society because when, when we feel like we are powerless, we want to talk more about sovereignty. So the Iranians did the last great revolution of the, of the 20th century and that was all about sovereignty and self reliance. Every time the focus moves away from the foreign affairs and international pressures and enmities and wars, they have serious problems because they, it's very hard to manage the Iranian society, half of which, more than half of which is very liberal and westernized. So they have serious issues there. But then as soon as there is a war, as soon as there is international pressure, that works to the benefit of the system anyway. And so I just saw a repeat of this happening and I don't, didn't, I couldn't even see how the United States changes that picture other than then doubling down every, at every turn because it cannot fathom how do you destroy any target that you want, kill anyone that you want and with, and yet you can't get any wins strategically. That disconnect is something that's very hard specifically for Donald Trump, who is a very personalistic person and is trying to figure out who is running Iran. Nobody is running everyone. It's like saying who runs the Soviet Union or who runs China? Yes, there is, you know, President Xi, but China would survive the absence of Xi. That's what these modern total states are. It's the same. By the way, America is a modern total state. That's what, what, what is a deep state if not a modern total state? So if President Trump is eliminated, the government continues, if most of the cabinet are, you know, eliminated, God forbid government continues. Those are, that kind of resilience is baked in to modern total state. That's what the leviathan of modern state is. Now it's very different from the sultanates of, of the, of the Persian Gulf or the, you know, Venezuela even, or these other countries that, that don't have the tradition of statehood and the mod and its modernization over decades and centuries. Again, you don't, you can't get A modern total state over a decade or two, you need to have long term actions that, that sort of do that for you. And the modern total state in Iran is not a creation of the Islamic Republic, is a long term development that has happened since the Iranian confrontation with modernity back in the 19th century. So every, every kind of premier, whether it was monarchy or even the monarchs and then the, the ayatollah doesn't matter what the political system is, have modernized the political faith and use it as leverage for whatever it is that they wanted to do. That's, that's the difference that I think needs to be understood.
- [35:53]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah.
- [35:54]
Scott Horton
Hey, I want to jump in here for a second. I interviewed Joe Kent today and I think I got the second published interview of him. Obviously Tucker got the first one. I'm interested in hearing you guys discuss him and, or more importantly, what all you think his defection from the government represents, what difference you think it'll make, you know, politically.
- [36:15]
Daryl Cooper
And that kind of thing led her to go.
- [36:19]
Artemoine
I think Joe is a hero for doing what he did. I don't know him personally. I know him through acquaintances, but it's, you know, every, everyone who talks about him, talks about him as man of principle and utmost integrity. And I think we see this in the letter. We see this in the way that he resigned, I think, and that my view is that he resigned because he knows as the direct, as the former director now of the National Counterterrorism center, has access or had access to the highest level of intel to know what might be coming down the road, and he wanted to distance himself from that. I think some of the options that this administration might consider for the sake of Israel and for the sake of saving face at this point is truly atrocious. It is not going to make America safer. It's going to evaporate American credibility, American moral standing. If we, if, I mean, I'm a realist, I, I don't bring any moralism into my analysis. But if you are, if that's your thing also, you are, you're in trouble. And, and ultimately it's not going to change anything other than create a lot of misery for a lot of people, including many American families, not just the ones that are going to be paying higher gas prices and, you know, higher prices for consumer goods and food and, and everything else, but also bodies, American bodies might be coming home again at a large level if we start committing ground troops. And also, then there is, there's a sort of what the nuclear scenario of all this would be, which we can discuss later, but I think that's a big deal as well. But I think this sends a signal that there are people in the administration, first of all, that are unhappy. And he's opening the door for them to also have the courage to leave. That's why they're coming after him. They're trying to criminalize what he did. That, that should worry and concern all of us. The FBI, I mean, what is it doing? What's happened? What happened to Charlie Kirk? Why don't we actually figure that out first before we go after, you know, an American hero who has deployed 11 times to an Iraq war and actually true to the global war on terror and actually has been defending the president and his previous kinetic actions in Iran, and he has fought Iranian and the Iranian proxy for years. So I think his record is unimpeachable on this and it should raise concerns about that. It also shows that America first is no longer beholden to Trump. I think America first needs to understand that it is something bigger than Donald Trump, that America first actually, as we know from history, it comes from a long time before Trump was even alive. So America first is a common sense strategy for putting American interests first and, and doing things that are in their national interest, period. And doing certain things when even the administration itself, today, Ratcliffe said so, Rubio said so the first day we did this because of Israel or Israel have interest, that is not our interest. These kinds of messaging from the administration itself is clearly signaling that we are there for Israel. This is not an anti Semitic trope. Israel is not every Jewish person in America and most of many of the Jews here in America, American Jews are against the war. So I think this is the kind of cynical attempt to try to silence any dissent about this, about this war. And I think by putting himself out there, Joe Kent has allowed for others to come out. Now, I also want to say something in terms of other restrained friends in the admin who choose not to resign. And I think that's also a respectable position because they are deeply worried about if they resign, who else is going to come and replace their position? Maybe someone very, you know, with, with more either manufacturing intel if, if they're in the, in the position that they can do so, like, like Tulsa Gabbard's position, maybe they would, they would actually push the, the most draconian, the most devastating tactics and operational ideas to the president. Again, this is, this is, this is a personal choice. I understand those who resign, I understand those who don't. But it just shows that America first itself is. Anyone that can claim to actually be America first and not make it into a cult of personality can clearly see that this war on Iran is not in America's interest, and therefore, it's not America First.
- [40:56]
Daryl Cooper
I got a, a call from a friend, Iraq War combat vet guy, army, who knows Joe Kent fairly well. And right, right after, right after Joe issued his letter and he called me very worried. And the reason he was worried, he said, you got to understand who Joe Kent is. Like, this guy's never quit anything in his life. And for him to do this, he's this, to speak to what you just said. He said the only reason he said I, I, he hadn't talked to him about this or anything, but, like, the only reason he could think of is that we're about to do something really, really stupid that he just can't be a part of. That's the only thing you could think of. And so, you know, when I step back and just sort of look at where we're at right now, this 48 hour war that we're three weeks into, it seems, it seems like the administration has accepted on some level that Iranian regime change is probably not something that can be accomplished within an acceptable time frame for us, just due to the effects on the global economy, the fact that we're already drawing down troops and weapon systems and munitions from other critical theaters like the Asia Pacific. And, and as you said, too, of course, the midterms are coming up. You know, the new ayatollah does not have an election in November he has to worry about. And so, you know, and I think even if Trump doesn't care what happens in the midterms, a lot of Republicans do. And so there's some pressure that's there. The Israelis, you know, they may, they might think, there's been some indications that they seem to think regime change is unlikely at this point, too. But as we talked about the beginning, they keep taking steps that are clearly designed to take away our off ramps and to keep this thing going as long as possible and to escalate it and bring in as many other parties as possible.
- [42:42]
Artemoine
Right.
- [42:43]
Daryl Cooper
Very similar, I guess, to, you know, in a way to when we took out Nord Stream to sort of cut off the possibility of Germany maybe looking for, you know, a route to peace with Russia in Ukraine. So there's all these reasons that, you know, it looks like it's, this can't possibly go on forever, you know, the economy, the politics, the diplomatic price, all that. And yet it seems impossible for Trump or Netanyahu to really take an off ramp that would give into Iran's primary demand, which is, you know, they talk about reparations and all those kind of things. That's, those sound to me like demands that are meant to be climbed down from. But I cannot see how Iran can back down from their primary demand of getting some kind of enforceable guarantee that this is not going to happen again. You know, and if, if we were to give into that, not even Trump could talk his way around this being anything other than a total disaster, like a real military defeat. And it's impossible for me to imagine his ego allowing him to do that. And so, you know, and it's almost impossible to, to imagine the Iranians accepting anything less because, you know, as you said, they've taken a huge amount of damage and they know that we can retool a hell of a lot faster than they can. And so if we come back for round three and nine months, they're going to be in a much weaker position than they're in right now. And so the rational choice is to die on this hill, you know, fight it out right now. That's, that's clearly, I think, the rational choice for the Iranians. But given our force structure and our defense industrial capacity and the midterms and the economic and diplomatic problems, all these things that indicate it can't go on forever. You know, you counter that with what I, what I just said, like, what do you think are the chances that we will find a way out of this or that one side somehow beats the other into submission, you know, by the end of the month, by the summer, by the end of the year? I mean, where do you see this going?
- [44:39]
Artemoine
I mean, that's a great question. It's very hard to read the tea leaves on that. I, I just think that at this point, just putting aside, I think we all need this war to end. It doesn't serve anybody, especially North America. But I just putting the sort of objective lens on, I just don't see how we're going to extricate ourselves from this. I think we're going to see a deep, ever expanding quagmire. And I think that those are the kind of poisons again, Donald Trump, I think, to his credit, realized in the first 24 to 48 hours, it's not going the way that they thought that it was going to go, that they have actually given a lot of spiritual fuel, as I wrote in an article for Unheard, by martyring this, this guy who, that was what he would demand, he would want, he was crave. And that really supercharged his followers. The liberal Iranians, especially in diaspora, were celebrating on the street and opening champagne bottles. But then in Iran there was this kind of like, you know, he had. There's all this symbolism about how he died in this, like, holy month of Ramadan. And like, you know, he look like the symbolic sort of heads of Shiism, the first and the third Imam, you know, basically being martyred. And so that psychology of martyrdom and dying standing up and resistance really, I think, translated. So I think in a way, his death was the greatest gift that he could give the, the regime than. More than his 37 years in charge and the greatest gift that we could give the regime. So that's why, I mean, these, some of these things, I mean, it's just. It's so easy to think from our sort of Hollywood lens, we're going to eliminate the guy and everything's gonna go. And that's not how it works in most of these other cultural domains. But. Yeah, go ahead.
- [46:29]
Scott Horton
Yeah, I think you just answered this, but I was gonna say. So then what are the chances then of the daydreams? Because after all, America does have a lot of money and the Israelis do when we hand it to them to also spend. So what are the chances that. And, and I know the way things are now, it doesn't seem like these groups are. Are taking us up on or whatever, but let's say we keep really bombing regime leaders, middle managers and lower and lower down the chain as much as we can. And then they start pouring money into groups like pjak, mek, the monarchist mercenaries, maybe John Dolla suicide bombers, Aziri separatists of whatever description, or Sunni Arabs from the southwest. Is it completely crazy to think that the west, using those levers, could actually go ahead and combine with a massive air campaign, tear Iran apart and into a massive civil war?
- [47:27]
Artemoine
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.
- [74:17]
Daryl Cooper
Well, as we move toward what seems inevitably a rebalancing of power in the world, first, we got to make it through this gauntlet, as you said, without, you know, dragging ourselves into a catastrophe we're not going to recover from. So I think we'll go ahead and let you get out of here, man. I really appreciate your time. I'd love to have you on more as this, if, you know, hopefully this thing ends tomorrow. But as this goes on, this has been super useful for me, as your stuff always is. Scott, you got anything?
- [74:46]
Scott Horton
No, just gratitude. It was really interesting hearing you go over this stuff from your perspective here. I learned a lot. So thank you very much for joining us.
- [74:53]
Daryl Cooper
Where can people find you, bro?
- [74:56]
Artemoine
My. My Twitter. I'm sure you guys are gonna put. Put all the information, but my X account, you can see the name on the bottom of the screen. So they can find that at Artemoine. There's also the website that we have for our institute, Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. The website is peace diplomacy.org, just peace diplomacy.org and that's where we have our more sort of strategic analysis, a realist perspective. We are the only, I think, fundamentally realist think tank in Washington, D.C. we. We refuse to go on a more holistic direction. And I think that's something that is important for our policy because it's very America first in that regard. And ultimately, Agon. Agon is a bit more highbrow intellectual magazine that focuses on radical realism, a very Nietzsche perspective on world affairs, and not just foreign affairs. It's, you know, a lot of my work, I'm an international political theorist. A lot of my work focuses on modernity and the crisis, the various crises of modern liberal order, as well as other faces of modernity as a paradigm. And so I think to see that in. In that way, I think, is the goal of Agon. And so I think a lot of your listeners, especially Daryl's listeners, might appreciate the work that Agon.
- [76:16]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, that kind of stuff is actually why I really started following you in the first place. So I hope this war ends so that you can kind of get back to focusing on more.
- [76:25]
Artemoine
Exactly. I hope so, too. But. But, yeah, it's. Agonmag.com www.agonmag.com so, by the way, my
- [76:34]
Scott Horton
listeners are a lot more highbrow than me, so don't count them out.
- [76:38]
Artemoine
No, of course. I. No, I'm just saying in terms of. I. I know. D. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just. Yeah, I know it wasn't. Of course. I'll be happy to collaborate further and talk anytime you guys would.
- [76:53]
Daryl Cooper
Thanks, brother.
- [76:54]
Artemoine
This was a pleasure. Thank you. Byebye.
- [76:57]
Scott Horton
All right, Cooper, that was a good one, man.
- [77:00]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I love those. I love those ones where all I have to do is kind of throw out a little red meat and he'll just take over and run with it for a while.
- [77:07]
Artemoine
That was.
- [77:07]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, those are the easy ones.
- [77:09]
Scott Horton
That must be a lot like what it's like to interview me, I think. All right, well, I've had it. You're my eighth interview of the day today of. People have been interviewing me, and I've been interviewing people all day. Everybody go check out my interview, Joe Kent, and retweet it. And here, let's play this outro and get out of here, and we'll see y' all next week.
- [77:27]
Artemoine
This has been Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton.
- [77:32]
Daryl Cooper
Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm.
- [77:38]
Scott Horton
Go follow at ProvokedShow on X and YouTube and tune in next time for more Provoked.