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Is the Iranian War About to Become Apocalyptic? (w/ Trita Parsi) | The Chris Hedges Report
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Foreign.
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Donald Trump, on Easter of all days, issued an expletive Laden threat to Iran in which he demanded the regime quote, open the Strait of Hormuz, you crazy bastards. He vowed to target the country's energy and transport infrastructure, which is a war crime. His latest rant is part of a pattern of incendiary rhetoric, including a threat to bomb Iranians quote back to the stone age where they belong. Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran, he posted. There will be nothing like it. Open the f king straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. President Donald J. Trump Leaving aside the obvious questions about Trump's mental stability, the threat comes as the Trump White House approaches yet another self imposed deadline. By tomorrow, Iran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important shipping lanes for oil and gas, or, according to Trump, face apocalyptic retribution. The strait has been effectively closed closed since the US And Israel launched the war in Iran in February and has seen global oil prices skyrocket. What does this latest deadline portend? Will it be extended in desperation, as past deadlines by the US have been? Or will it signal an escalation of the war, one where vital energy facilities and infrastructure, including desalination plants, will be targeted by Israel in the United States as well as by Iran? Iran insists that it will only open the strait after receiving compensation for war damages paid via a new legal regime based on transit fees imposed on shipping in the strait. Joining me to discuss the looming Tuesday deadline and the war on Iran is Trita Parsi, an expert on U S Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle east, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel. He is the co founder and Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute and the co founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. He has served as an adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University's sais, New York University, Georgetown University, and and George Washington University, as well as an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and as a Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International center for scholars in Washington, D.C. so Trita, let's begin with this self imposed deadline, the newest that I spoke about in the introduction. But it does seem, although these self imposed deadlines have been extended, it does seem that we have reached a very frightening point where there's serious consideration of massive escalation in desperation, obviously driven by Desperation. Is that where you see us headed?
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I fear that is where we are. We can see a pattern in which Trump is issuing angrier and angrier tweets with all kinds of deadlines and threats of escalation. He has largely backed off from actualizing many of those, knowing very well that he doesn't have escalation dominance. So take a look at what the situation is in the Persian Gulf right now. For instance. We have high oil prices because the Iranians are not letting the tankers through. You know, they're letting some through, but not all. They're trying to collect transit fees, etc. But we don't have a destruction of the oil infrastructure in the region, and this is deliberate. Now, if the United States goes after the power plants and other type of infrastructure in Iran, the Iranians have threatened that they will go after the oil infrastructure in the region. If that happens, we're not just in a situation in which right now oil prices are high because of a bottleneck in the Persian Gulf, but once that bottleneck is open, the oil will flow rather quickly. We will be in a situation in which the oil will not flow for quite some time because there will be a production problem. It can take three to five years to rebuild all of those different things that would cause a prolonged and much higher level of oil prices that would destroy Trump's presidency and throw the world, most likely into a global depression. So, precisely because of these reasons, Trump has so far been very careful not to go that full distance. But because of his desperation, because of his false belief that he's still in a strong position and can dictate the terms to the Iranians, and his psychological refusal to accept the fact that in order to get out of this war, he actually has to give some concessions. There is a likelihood that he will just go all out and do something absolutely insane, potentially using non conventional weapons. So that risk cannot be discounted, because if we presume rationality, well, we wouldn't be in this position in the first place. There's nothing rational about being in this war or having started this war under this false belief that the Iranians would cave or collapse within four days.
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And of course, the other question is, how desperate is Israel?
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I don't think the Israelis are desperate, but I think the Israelis are very comfortable knowing that they can keep on pushing Trump in the direction that they want him. I mean, take a look at, for instance, where he's now suddenly saying that he will bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. And then on top of that, he Said, we will set them back. And then the next president may have to bomb them again. That's the exact Israeli blueprint for their strategy of mowing the grass. This is not the way the US has been conducting war. You know, the US as much as it's committed a lot of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States did not deliberately target universities. Iraq. But that is what the Israelis have been doing in Gaza and in Lebanon. And this is exactly what they are doing right now, together with the US And Iran. Sharif University, their top university, was hit just yesterday. So we're seeing the Israelization of America's conduct of the war, but also of the goals of the war, in which ignoring the grass strategy, which by definition means an endless state of war with Iran, is now being embraced by Donald Trump. That's a sign of desperation and a sign of the control or the influence that the Israelis have over his direction.
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If there is an escalation of a military escalation, if they hit, for instance, the oil facilities on Carg island, if they actually strike the power plants in Iran, what do you see the Iranians
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doing at that point? I see them targeting refineries as well as power grids in the GCC countries and in Israel. And as I mentioned, that will create a completely different oil crisis than compared to what we have right now. Right now, this is just because of a bottleneck. And that other scenario will be because of infrastructure being destroyed, production being degraded. That's going to cause a completely different type of a scenario that ultimately will likely destroy Trump's presidency. And this is part of the reason why he's refrained from going in that direction so far. But out of this desperation in which he realizes he is not in control, he cannot dictate the terms. He cannot decide when this war ends or when it pauses. There is a risk that he will go down this path. Right now, the US Is apparently putting forward these phased ceasefire proposals. And then Trump gets more and more frustrated because the Iranians are rejecting them. But why would any country at this point agreed to a phased ceasefire with the United States and Israel, mindful of the track record that Israel and the United States have in Lebanon and in Gaza, in which these ceasefires have been violated within minutes by the Israelis without any repercussions from the US and we have never reached phase two or phase three because they were not meant to go to that point. And if you take a look at the proposal that has been put on the table so far, it is essentially asking the Iranians to give up all of their leverage in phase one. And then there's a huge question mark as to whether they're ever will be an achievement of reaching phase two.
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Well, that's every agreement going back to Camp David. They're always written in phases. Israel gets what it wants in the first phase and ignores every other phase. That's the pattern for those of us who have covered the Middle East.
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Indeed. And when it comes to Gaza, for instance, the Israelis were very, I mean, they're not even hiding it. They were very clear cut. They're never going to go to phase two. And the Trump administration thought that at least phase two would be achievable, but they knew themselves that phase three was never going to be achieved at this point. If you're serious about diplomacy, you don't put forward proposals of that kind and low balling because it simply won't go anywhere. And if you don't have time on your side, which Trump does not, getting serious means that you actually put some real compromises on the table. And so far we have not seen that.
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Well, you also had strikes on Iran in June and then again starting on February 28th with this war in the midst of negotiations.
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Exactly twice. Iran now has been struck by two nuclear weapons states in the middle of negotiations. So all of that adds to a scenario in which the Iranians are not going to agree to anything that does not end the war in a durable manner, end the war, not just cause some sort of a ceasefire. And within that also, they're going to be asking for concessions that the US probably thought it would never have to give, such as lifting of the sanctions. They may not agree to completely open the strait. They may actually try to install a transit fee system permanently and use their control of the straits not to end the war, but to negotiate or manage the relations with states after the war. States who in the past used to have economic relations with Iran, but who cut those economic relations in the last 10, 15 years because of pressure from the United States. It seems like the Iranians are going to try to use this leverage to restart those economic relations with those states, rather than using it for some sort of a negotiations with the United States. If that is the case, it tells you something of what type of assessment the Iranians have themselves of their position of weakness or strength. And they may be miscalculating as well and overplaying their hands. But it shows you that the distance between where the US Is and where the Iranians believe they are is so massive that any negotiation that is based on These type of low ball things are absolute non starters and are probably setting back the cause of ending this war.
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Well, that's what we get for having two Zionist asset, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff running our negotiations with Iran.
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I think at the end of the day, though, the real issue is that it's not the negotiators, not to say, you know, in defending them or how they conduct themselves or even if they know anything about these subjects. The details that have come out of, from the Geneva round of negotiations really are frankly embarrassing in terms of how little technical knowledge Witkoff and Kushner appear to have had. And as a result, opportunities, you know, they contributed to those opportunities being missed. But the fundamental problem is who the negotiators are reporting to, and that is Trump. And with him right now, you have a scenario in which he had been lulled into this belief that the Iranian regime is so weak it has no choice but to capitulate. And all you need to do is to push it a little bit, whether it's through military threats or actually taking military action. And they will either implode internally or they will surrender. And that was a fundamental misread of the situation, but it was not a misread from the Israeli side. I think the Israelis knew very well that that was not the reality. But they knew also that the only way you could convince Trump to do something like this, take military action, adopt a regime change policy, things he had promised his base that he wouldn't do. The only way you could do that is to convince him that it's going to be so easy, it's just going to be a repeat of Venezuela. And as a result, you're better off doing that than to negotiate a deal and agree to a compromise with Iranians. And that mindset ruined the negotiations and then also led to this war being turned into a debacle.
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You already have the Iranians imposing tariffs, fees, whatever you want to call it. I think it's $2 million per oil tanker. I think those tankers have about $200 million worth of oil. They've already set up this kind of toll booth system in the Strait.
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They have, but it has not been. I mean, de facto is operating right now. Even the French apparently now are getting some ships through. And I suspect that there's going to be a larger number of countries that will negotiate either collectively or their bilateral deals with Iran. But whether that is a temporary situation on the war or whether that becomes a permanent mechanism post war remains a question. Clearly, the Iranians want to go towards the latter, making sure that this is now a permanent situation. If that ends up becoming one of the long term outcomes of this war, then it's a clear sign of what a disastrous decision it was for the United States to initiate this war in the first place. But there's still a lot of question marks as to whether that mechanism in the long run will work, will be accepted, et cetera. But right now, that is where the Iranians have their mindset.
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I want to talk about the diaspora. I was in a Persian restaurant in New York on Saturday and the owner told me when the. On February 28th, when they assassinated the Supreme Leader, they all broke out the champagne. But there is this disconnect between the diaspora, the Iranian diaspora, and I think at this point, the citizens of Iran were watching their schools be obliterated with the death of, what's the final count? 175 schoolgirls, you know, basic infrastructure being they just hit a petrochemical plant. And it reminds me very much of the Iraq war where you had figures like Hanan Makea and Chalabi and others kind of cheering on the destruction of Iraq. Can you speak to that issue?
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Sure, absolutely. First of all, I think it's important to note that those people in the diaspora who were cheering the war, not just the assassination of Khamenei, but actually wanted war, were never a majority in the community, but they had become a very strong plurality. And just in the last year or so, which in and of itself is quite astonishing, mindful of the fact that just 10 years ago, support for war within the Iranian American community was less than 5%. So some things clearly had shifted. The latest poll done by the National Iranian American Council that was published last week showed that two thirds of the Iranian American community oppose this war. But this brings us to the other parallel that you just mentioned in regards to Iraq. Back in 2003, those Iraqi voices, Iraqi American voices that were cheerleading this war, they were paraded on mainstream media, going from channel to channel, begging the United States to bomb their ancestral home. The same thing happened here in which a lot of those voices were overwhelmingly invited onto all mainstream media shows to kind of give an Iranian face to this war, to humanize it, to say that essentially this is done out of humanitarian concerns. Those voices were never representative of the majority of the community, and that right now they're representative of a shrinking minority because more and more people are understandably turning against this war. They had been criminally naive, thinking that this was going to be a quick affair and that this would liberate the country, that Israel would bring democracy to Iran in the midst of its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Criminally naive, but nevertheless, people are understandably turning away from that position. But it is the mainstream media that I think more than anything else, have been responsible for giving everyone the impression that that is the totality of the Iranian American community. Whereas it wasn't even a majority to begin with. It is a shrinking minority now, but still those are the voices that are being paraded on tv just as they were in the Iraq war.
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I want to talk about the sanctions. Iran is a wealthy country. It had a thriving middle class. We should also be clear, Iranians, like Iraqis, who I also worked in Iraq, are highly educated. A vast majority are highly educated. It's not in any way as, you know, kind of the way it's painted, certainly by the Trump White House, but often in the media. And the middle class is a bulwark of any democracy. Our own disintegrating middle class certainly contributed to the rise of Trump and the right wing. But many of the policies that the United States has carried out since the revolution, I think have been counterproductive to building democracy. And then we just have to throw in the Mosaddegh, the overthrow of Mosaddegh by the CIA and British intelligence, which at the time he was the Prime Minister and he wanted control of Iranian oil rather than turning it over to British Petroleum. He was overthrown in a coup. And that was one of the last, if I have that correct, truly functioning democracies in the Middle east, which we destroyed. So, but talk a little bit about how this, I don't think Israel, the United States actually wants democracy. That's why they're kind of pushing the Shah's son on us. Not so much Trump, but certainly the Israelis. But talk a little bit about how counterproductive our policies have been and how those policies have really played to the advantage of this Ayatollah. You know, the Ayatollah led regime.
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You're absolutely right. And you're putting your finger on something very important. That goes to explain why you had 5% support for military strikes 10 years ago. And. And then suddenly a strong minority in the community, above 45%, but not 50, that in the beginning of this war were in favor of it. Obviously, the fundamental factor is the repression of the Iranian government itself. That has intensified, but the question is, why has it intensified? And here the sanctions come in as a very important factor. Between 2016 and 2017, when the JCPA was in effect, and the US had lifted or at least waived its sanctions, the Iranian economy grew 6 to 7% every year. The middle class was getting stronger. And if this had continued for another 10 years, if the US had never walked out of the JCPOA and sanctions had remained.
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This is just for people who don't know. This is the Obama the agreement which freed up, I think, billions. You probably know the exact figure of Iranian frozen assets.
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Correct. Frozen asses were freed up. But more importantly the the Iranians were able to sell oil again. Investments could be flowing in. It didn't happen to the extent that the Iranians hoped for, but nevertheless, even in that limited sense, their economy grew 6 to 7%. If that had continued, economists have made calculations Iran's middle class would have become the strongest, if not, or one of the strongest middle classes in the Middle east by 2025, 10 years after that, so signing of the JCPOA, this would then have led to a scenario in which the Iranian middle class, as in all other middle classes, would be exerting pressure on their government for greater openness, political liberalization, same trends that we have seen in other places. But they would be doing so from a position of strength because the growing economy would have reduced the state's ability to control all means of production and assets and income in the country. Instead, Trump walked out of the jcpoa, imposed even stricter sanctions on Iran, which then decimated the Iranian middle class. Between 2018 and 2019, 1/3 of Iran's middle class actually went into poverty as a direct result of the sanctions. This then predictably led to an even more repressive Iranian government who had to use more repression in order to be able to sustain their own power in the country as the economy was deteriorating further. Then we saw the massive protests in 2022 around Mahsa Amini, and of course the protest earlier in December and January in which the government was using more and more repressive means and in January killing several thousand protesters. And what you saw there is that as a result of this increased repression, which to a large extent has to do with the economic situation, which has very much to do with the sanctions being reimposed, is that the population also then in reaction became radicalized. In 2009, they were protesting in favor of making sure that the election results would stand, that there wouldn't be any election fraud. But it was about change within the system. By 2022, there was no demand for reform. It was a demand for the regime to fall altogether. And the means for that was street protest and revolution. By 2025, 26, the demands that we were increasingly hearing from the protesters was again, no reform, just get rid of this regime. But now, suddenly, at least a portion of the protesters, a minority, but nevertheless started asking for military intervention from the outside. The argument being that the population no longer is in a position to overthrow the government on its own. It has to have military intervention. So you had these protests again occurring, of course, but instead of being from a position of strength, as they could have been had the sanctions been lifted, now people were out there out of desperation and despair, protesting from a position of weakness. And I think this is a very important lesson for us to understand, because, yes, sanctions can destroy and devastate the economies of these countries, but we have almost no examples in which the sanctions lead to successful protest movements that overthrow the government. More protest, but less successful protests and more desperate protests. That's exactly the pattern that we have seen here. And. And it tells us how counterproductive US Policy has been if we assume that the goal actually has been to see Iran move in a more liberal and democratic direction.
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B
The US Government has admitted to also arming factions within Iran. Can you speak about that?
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A
Yeah. So we had Trump himself reveal it to a Fox News reporter that the US had been sending arms to the Kurdish rebels in Iran. And on top of that, of course, we saw how both the Israelis were saying that they were on the ground, how we saw the former head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, saying that the Mossad and others are on the ground and that armament, et cetera, have been shipped. I think what is emerging here with these revelations or admissions is that the protests in December and January were overwhelmingly peaceful, and they were overwhelmingly by people who just came out out of their frustration and anger at the repression and mismana of the economy by the Iranian government. But there were also elements there who operated under the shadow of these protesters, who the protesters had no relationship with and did not know about, who were armed and trained by Israel or the United States, who used extensive violence, burning banks, burning mosques, burning fire stations, killing a lot of police and other members of the Basij, for instance, which is something we had not.
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I just want to interrupt you. The best seizure. These popular militias. The popular militias, for people who don't
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know which are used by the government to repress the population. But, you know, despite the fact that they are, of course, extremely unpopular, we had not seen this level of violence from protesters before. The 2009 protesters were extensively peaceful for the very strong, nonviolent Discipline. A person I spoke to who has essentially attended all protests in Iran since 2009 said that in 2009, if anyone started using violence or throwing stones at shops, etcetera, Other protesters would intervene to keep a nonviolent discipline. This time around, he said he was out protesting in January, but then he saw people dressed in black that seemed to move very coordinated, planned way, using violence. And he saw no one intervening because people were as afraid of those violent elements as they were of the repressive representatives of the state. And this is a phenomenon we had not seen before in Iran in the last 40 years or so. And again, when Trump is coming out and saying, hey, we armed these people, it frankly makes sense. That picture is starting to become complete.
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B
Well, and now those armed attacks became the excuse for wholesale slaughter. We don't really know. I mean, 7,000 Iranians killed in the streets, maybe more, but they became the excuse to gun people down.
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A
Yeah, the Iranian government essentially started gunning people down en masse, not making a distinction between, you know, peaceful, legitimate protesters and others who have been trained and armed by foreign services. And as a result, you had, frankly, a massacre. You know, some people are throwing out the number 30,000, 40,000, etc. See no evidence for that. But reality is, there is evidence for around 6,7000, and 7000 people killed is a ridiculous and horrific number of people killed by the Iranian government in just two days. And that tells you something. It tells you how bad the situation was, how perhaps desperate even the Iranian government was, thinking that it was losing control and then allowed its militias to just use violence in an indiscriminate manner.
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B
There's an Internet blackout. It's hard to get information. But one senses from a distance, you know, more than I do, that the mood within Iran is changing, as Iranians understand that this is not about regime change. This is about the destruction of the physical infrastructure of Iran. To do to Iran what Israel did to Gaza, what it's doing, as I speak, to southern Lebanon, and what it did to Syria to turn Iran into a failed state, absolutely.
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A
I think it's starting to become clear. I think it was clear to a lot of people. But for those portions of the Iranian population who, out of desperation, thought perhaps military intervention can help them, it's starting to become very clear to them that this was never about them. This was never about their freedom. This was a campaign that had nothing to do with those things, and that the goal of the Israelis always have been to turn Iran into a failed state, because that takes Iran off of the geopolitical chessboard. And Iran can no longer pose a challenge to Israel's designs for hegemony in the region if Iran turns into a failed state. And I've written about this going 10 years back, that that was the Israeli objective with any war that they would be engaging or starting. And now I think it's become clear to a lot of folks that, you know, they're not out there to help them, but to destroy the country as a whole. And we're seeing, at least on the side of folks inside of Iran that, you know, more and more people are speaking out against this war, even people who may have been part of the protests early on or who perhaps even were in favor of the war, that they are shifting sides still. Some people, I'm sure this is a huge country, 90 million people. You can find a lot of different opinions. But the trend, I think, is quite clear. And I think what is not happening with the same clarity is within the diaspora. And I think part of the reason is for many of those who took these strong positions in favor of the war, they've essentially entered no man's land. They don't know where to go from here. And as a result, they're just doubling down on the position that they held before and just becoming more and more radical to be able to essentially handled the cognitive dissonance that they have put themselves in and helped put their compatriots in inside of Iran. We had a similar phenomenon happening in the 1980s with a group called the Mujahideen Ekhaabh, which was an opposition group
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B
on the USSR labeled as a terrorist group by the United States.
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A
Exactly up until 2010, they sided with Saddam Hussein during the Iraq Iran war. They actually were a pretty popular group prior to that as part of the opposition to the Shah. But because they sided with that invader, it was essentially their death knell. And instead of reassessing and rethinking what they had done, their response was to just double down and become more and more dependent on any foreign entity, a rival of Iran, that would seek use of them. And as a result, essentially, they turned themselves into a hated group that became like a mercenary for any of Iran's geopolitical rivals. I fear that the monarchists may actually go in the same direction because they made this massive bet on this idea that bombing their own country would bring about democracy instead of it's bringing about death and destruction. And I think it's very hard for them to manage that. So I think they will frankly double down Instead of trying to extricate themselves from this situation, unfortunately, I just want
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B
to close about the use of nuclear weapons. That is, you know, especially with Israel. There's no. Been. No. Israel has. Certainly, if they've learned anything with the almost three years of genocide, it's that they can kill with impunity. Not only with impunity, but they can be supplied with billions of dollars of armaments to continue to kill with impunity, and yet they are not achieving their objectives, as you pointed out correctly. It is Iran that will determine, I think, when this thing ends and they can, through asymmetrical warfare and crippling the global economy. They have, you know, they have us by the throat. I know it's speculation, but I unfortunately, you know, my fear is that we can't rule it out. And. Can you talk about that?
- [31:41]
A
Yeah. No, it's extremely concerning because this is just a scenario the United States should not be in. But I'm hearing it increasingly from people, including former officials, that fear that this is the direction that Trump may be going, that his desperation for something that can turn this war around, something that can allow him to declare victory and end it even without an agreement, requires him to take actions of this kind. Perhaps it could have worked if there was a successful effort to extract the highly enriched uranium, the 60% enriched uranium that the Iranians have somewhere underneath the ground around Fordeau, which they apparently have not been able to access or extract themselves. But this would be a tremendously difficult operation, probably quite a few American deaths. But Trump seems to think that he needs something of that kind in order to say, I won the war, it's now over, and I'm going to leave, and that this is then pushing him in the direction of more seriously considering nuclear options. And from what I hear, there is that pressure from Israel as well. I don't know this for certain. Again, there's a lot of communication, a lot of information that is flowing around right now, a lot of speculation. We don't know any of this for cern, but folks are pointing to the fact that Trump is using the language of World War II, for instance, total surrender, the type of language that preceded the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they're very worried that because Trump doesn't have any other options, he doesn't, you know, he doesn't seem to be willing to take the de escalatory off ramps that are available to him because it will be an admission that this war was a failure. It will be an admission and that he did not succeed. That As a result, he may actually go so desperate that he will take escalatory action such as using nuclear weapons
- [33:39]
B
and just to close. What would be the Iranian response? How fast can they. I mean, at that point it's impossible
- [33:46]
A
to know because we don't even know if this were to be used. And it feels frankly uncomfortable even talking about this publicly, given the fact that it is such an unthinkable option or should be such an unthinkable option. No idea whatsoever what the Iranian response would be and if they even could respond in any way, shape or form because it would be completely unclear, because it all depends on exactly where they would hit, et cetera. But again, I don't think we are there yet. I hope we don't get to that point. But the fact that this is increasingly being discussed in Washington as a potential possibility, it tells you about how badly this war is going.
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B
Great. Thank you, Trita. And I want to thank Sophia, Max, Thomas and Victor who produced the show. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com thank
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A
you so much for having me on. Chris.
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B
Sa.