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Transcript:

Richie Allen:Yeah, I mentioned my guest today is a friend of the programme. He’s a terrific broadcaster and writer. You’ll find his work at kevinbarrett.substack.com. He wrote a very, very well written piece on his Substack today (“Did Trump Just Make Iran Great Again?”) which he shared with me kindly before the programme, his take on what’s gone on. Let’s welcome him back. Kevin, it’s lovely to have you back on.

Good news, I think. I think you are happy. At least I think that there’s not satisfaction, but there’s relief that we didn’t see an escalation in the bombardment of Tehran and other Iranian cities last night. Is that fair to say?

Kevin Barrett:Yes, Richie. Hey, it’s good to be with you. And it’s good to have some relatively good news to share for a change. So yeah, I think it’s good news.

Richie Allen:You see this—and I understand why you see it as you do, and I’m going to let you explain it. I’m going to get out of your way. You see this as a complete humiliation for the American government, for the U.S. administration, and something that has empowered Iran and Iran’s allies in the region. Explain why you think so.

Kevin Barrett:Well, it appears that what happened was that Netanyahu visited Trump in early to mid-February and convinced him to do this, claiming that the Israelis had it all covered, that if the United States bombed Iran, assassinated some of their top people, that they could get regime change. They could get rid of the nuclear program. They could eliminate the threat of Iran’s missile program and their drone program. And they could take down all of Iran’s allies in the region, starting with Hezbollah and including the Houthis or the Ansarullah movement in Yemen, and of course, the resistance forces in Palestine, as well as much of the military in Iraq, which is part of the so-called militias that defeated Al-Qaeda and ISIS, even as the U.S. has turned out to be supporting those terrorist groups.

So anyway, that was the plan. It was supposed to totally solve Israel’s problem by getting rid of the source of what it sees as the opposition to the greater Israel project, the expansionism and genocide. And Trump swallowed it. His advisors mostly didn’t. Apparently, Hegseth was the only one who really bought it. And the rest of them sort of threw up their hands and said, well, we’re not sure this is going to work—or actually, no, this isn’t going to work.

But Trump, once he gets an idea in his head, apparently it’s hard to get it out. So they went for it. And the goals that were openly stated were, of course, maximalist and unrealistic. Here’s what they said they were trying to achieve by attacking Iran: First, a regime change that has put the Shah Jr. in power, get rid of the Islamic Republic. And the second goal was to eliminate the nuclear program completely. The third goal was to eliminate Iran’s missiles and drones. And the fourth goal was to eliminate Iran’s relationship with everybody in the region. Of course, finally, they were going to destroy Iran’s navy, which means the U.S. totally controls the waters around Iran.

Every one of those goals blatantly failed. The only regime change was now we’ve got a different Khamenei who’s much more of a hardliner than his father was. Plus, he’s annoyed that they murdered his family. Iran still has a nuclear program, and it’s not going to give up enrichment. So Trump’s not getting a better deal there than he would have otherwise. Iran’s missiles and drones now are much more formidable than they were before the war, because they’ve been tested and they’ve been shown to be effective and there’s no way to stop them and take them out. Iran’s allies in the region are now stronger than ever, with Hezbollah bogging down the Israelis at the border of Lebanon.

And then finally, most importantly, Iran runs the Strait of Hormuz. This is an epic geopolitical shift, and it wouldn’t have happened without the war.

So this war was a complete disaster for the Americans and their Israeli sponsors. The pro-Israel lobby is going ballistic about the ceasefire because they can see that it’s an admission of defeat. They would have preferred to see things continue to escalate until the whole region was destroyed. They imagine that the Messiah will come back and save them and put them in charge of the region and the world if that happens. But that’s also pretty unrealistic.

So as it turns out, Iran has just raised its status and power several notches and made sure that the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic that it founded will continue. It’s got more legitimacy now than ever, not just with the Iranian people, but with the whole international community that can contrast the sane, reasonable, and effective leadership in Iran with these lunatics in Washington and Tel Aviv. Overall, it’s a rare case where the good guys seem to have won at least this round.

Richie Allen:Kevin, two questions on that. What is known? I mean, I could check the BBC and CNN, but I wouldn’t believe it for obvious reasons. What is known about the health of Khamenei Jr.? Because we were told earlier this week, again by the mainstream media, that he might be unconscious in a hospital. And then I heard from an Arabic source that he wasn’t, that he was well. What’s the best information we have about his well-being now?

Kevin Barrett:You know, I haven’t seen any really hard evidence around that question, but he’s been putting out statements. I thought I recalled some video statements as well as written ones. And so I don’t see any reason to be particularly concerned. But again, it doesn’t even really matter that much because Iran’s leadership, especially its clerical leadership, welcomes martyrdom. And, you know, somebody else will step up if you get killed. It just makes everybody else fight that much harder.

So the idea that you can somehow stop Iran by assassinating people like this is really a huge misconception and a mistake. It’s crazy that the Israelis think they can achieve anything by doing this stuff.

Richie Allen:Yeah, it’s for the birds. Something that moved me—and I’m a fairly hard, I wouldn’t call myself a hack, but I’ve been doing what I do for a very long time and I have a bit of a hard heart. I think I’ve been desensitised to a lot of things, which isn’t a good thing really. But I have to say I did wipe a tear or two away yesterday when I saw thousands of Iranian people coming out to ring fence the facilities, the power stations and that.

What an amazing thing that was. And this was while they probably genuinely thought there was a good chance that, you know, U.S. and Israeli jets might blow them to pieces. It was an amazing thing, that, wasn’t it?

Kevin Barrett:It sure was. And it really did demonstrate that the Western media propaganda claiming that the Iranian people don’t support their government and are oppressed and are just waiting for the chance to rise up and get rid of the Islamic Republic is a bunch of nonsense. And it always has been.

The Iranian government probably has a lot more support than any Western government and has had that consistently since 1979. And now we can see it. We can see that the lies coming from people like Trump and Netanyahu claiming that, oh, if we just bomb Iran, then they’re going to welcome it, they’re going to cheer it, they want us to nuke them, they want us to come liberate their women—is nonsense.

You go talk to even, you know, the westernized women who don’t want to wear hijab, and you can watch lots and lots of person-on-the-street interviews with those people confirming what I learned during my eight or nine visits there from 2012 to 2019, and then once again in like 2022 or something. People there are basically patriotic, and it’s only a tiny fringe that has any interest in trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

And so now we’ve seen that in the strongest possible way—millions of Iranians in the streets supporting their government, supporting their armed forces, and even coming out and ringing these facilities that Trump was threatening to nuke. I mean, that shows a lot of courage and a lot of devotion. And I don’t think that the West, or rather, the media, is going to be able to fool Western people any longer into believing that Iranians are oppressed and they don’t like their government.

Richie Allen:Are you confident that the ceasefire will hold, that the negotiations will be conducted in good faith and that a solid agreement will come out of it? Or are you like me, and you worry about a false flag—some big event may be staged by the Israelis, may be staged by the Americans that could derail it—and we might see the bombing of Iran again and the Iranians closing down the Strait again, and the Iranians firing on U.S. facilities in the region?

How confident are you about these talks which are going to, I believe, Kevin, begin in Islamabad on Friday?

Kevin Barrett:Well, I think that we have more reason to be optimistic than we did in the past after earlier rounds of this war on...