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While the official White House X account posts video montages featuring video games and Hollywood movies spliced with real footage of their attacks on Iran, the situation on the ground could not be more different than an American propaganda blockbuster.

To pierce the fog of war and offer a concrete analysis of what is taking place across the Middle East, author and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke of the Substack Conflicts Forum joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

Iran’s military power has seen the depletion of Israeli defensive interceptor missiles, the destruction of billion-dollar American radar systems and the diligent preparation of the Iranian leadership — Crooke explains these losses of the hegemonic West and their ally in Tel Aviv is what’s shaping the reality of the unfolding war.

“The Iranians say they also have newer missiles, which they will show and unfold at a later stage. They haven’t reached that stage yet, but that is waiting to be used and deployed at the right moment. They’re quite comfortable that they have huge missile stocks that they can continue for a long war,” Crooke tells Hedges.

Crooke also touches on the wider implications this war will have on the region, in particular, the Gulf states that have been subservient to American and Israeli interests and subject to attacks since the war began. “The Gulf used to be known and thought of as a safe place for businessmen, for investors and others and that — AI, holidays, airliners, tourism, et cetera… That’s finished.”

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Host

Chris Hedges

Executive Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos and Sofia Menemenlis

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Transcript

Chris Hedges

The ineptitude of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio is turning the war against Iran into a very lethal version of “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” The excuses for the war and the goals shift by the hour. Is it to take out the nuclear program Trump insisted was obliterated last June? Or is to, as Steve Witkoff says, because Iran is a week away from producing industrial-grade, weapons-usable nuclear material, a claim the Israeli prime minister and proponents of war with Iran have been repeating for three decades. Is it about regime change? Or is it, as Rubio said, being fought because the U.S. had to join Israel, which was determined to attack, to prevent preemptive attacks on U.S. assets.

The U.S. killed the top leaders of Iran, including the Supreme leader, and then killed the second tier of Iranian leaders it said it hoped to negotiate with. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump admitted. “And now, we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.”

Trump demands the Iranian army surrender or “face absolutely guaranteed death.” He says he will order the U.S. Navy to escort tankers and ships through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a move that would line up U.S. ships in what will become an Iranian turkey shoot. Hegseth insists Trump will decide who will rule Iran while our ally in Kuwait shot down three U.S. fighter jets. The U.S. or Israel or both, we don’t know yet, obliterated an elementary school killing 175 schoolgirls.

Over 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed. Tehran is being pummeled with thousands of bombs. And yet Trump, and his vile counterpart in Israel, claim this is a war of liberation. Meanwhile the CIA, which has spent decades fueling one debacle after another in the Middle East, has embraced arming Kurdish militias to bring down the Iranian regime.

If one thing is clear it is that Trump, and his coterie of misfits and buffoons, have no idea what they are doing. Joining me to discuss the war in Iran and its consequences is Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and member of the British negotiating teams. He served for many years in the Middle East working as a security advisor to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, as well as helping lead efforts to set up negotiations and truces between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian resistance groups with Israel. He was instrumental in establishing the 2002 ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He is also the author of Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic movements in the Middle East.

Well, I don’t know where to begin. I’ll let you begin with this utter fiasco which is rapidly of course spreading throughout the region. Give us, I guess, in your view a kind of overview of where we are and what’s happening.

Alastair Crooke

Well, you listed some of the options for what the war was about just now at the start. But actually, it wasn’t really like that because and we’ve seen it very clearly because it was reported extensively in the Hebrew press, not in the English language press, but in the Hebrew press, which we monitor quite carefully.

When [Benjamin] Netanyahu went at the end of the year, 28th, 29th of December to Mar-a-Lago for his summit with Trump, at that summit, he said some things which were a little bit surprising, but are relevant to today. He said to him, “Listen, the nuclear issue isn’t the issue. I’m not going to tell you they’re a month away from a nuclear weapon. No, actually, what I’m going to tell you is you’ve got to change the priorities. The first priority is the Iranian missile system. We have to destroy that because what is happening is the system is becoming much more sophisticated. It is not just that after the June war, they replaced it. They have created a completely new defense paradigm in the interim and it has several layers to it. And I’m telling you that if you do not destroy the missile system, even if Iran got a nuclear weapon, or we knew that it was going to move to nuclear weapon, we could know nothing about it because we wouldn’t be able to penetrate that umbrella.”

And he said, “So this is what you have to do.” And Trump agreed at that point, gave the green light for an attack on Iran. This is reported in various Hebrew accounts of this meeting that took place that he agreed to do an attack. And even the date was more or less set. In fact, the date changed a little bit, but it was set for...