Excerpt:

Press TV: It was the US that started this aggression on Iran. It was the US that then had to propose a ceasefire. It was also the US that then had to extend unilaterally the ceasefire. Then it was also the US that had to call off its so-called Project Freedom. And most recently it was US destroyers that had to flee as the Iranian army, as the Iranian navy targeted them when they were targeting Iranian tankers. Iran has said that another targeting of Iranian tankers and they would target American centers in the region and also American tankers.

So the U.S. did everything it could. We’re talking about decades of sanctions. We’re talking about all kinds of coup attempts, bloody coup attempts, especially more recently when more than 3,400 Iranians were murdered as a result of U.S.-Israeli agents on the ground hijacking peaceful protests, turning it into riots. And then, of course, we had war imposed on Iran.

So Iran has been the victor in this battle. Iran was the one who was able to push back the western enemy, the American enemy, and so there is no reason for Iran to make any concessions, especially because when Iran was bombed a second time, Iran was negotiating, was talking about making concessions on its nuclear program, not to an international body, not to the IAEA.

And Iran had of course warned the U.S. that another aggression on Iran and you will be faced with all kinds of response, from extreme retaliation, from a regional war to a new management office, which has shut out all American warships and Israeli warships as well.

This is what the U.S. brought upon itself. Now that they have exhausted all their cards, they have exhausted all their options, and now that their inflation jumped to 3.8 percent, which is the highest. And so it will act as such and it will demand basically what is the rights of the Iranian nation.

Kevin Barrett: Yes, this has been a really amazing period to be witnessing, especially from my perspective, because I got interested in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the revolution when I was young, but I didn’t become a specialist or expert in it. I started really paying attention about 15 years ago.

And I’ve really grown to appreciate the genius of Iran’s Islamic Republican leadership over the decades in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of this ongoing attempt to destroy it and to regime change Iran and to turn Iran back into a U.S.-Zionist client puppet state like it was under the Shah.

This war, I think, has permanently essentially decided the conflict in favor of Iran, because Trump did what Brzezinski warned against 15 years ago, which is he said “we the Americans should not follow Israel into a war on Iran like a stupid mule.”

Today Trump is stupider than a mule. This is completely backfiring against all American geostrategic interests. And it has essentially given Iran the chance to step up and flex its muscles and show that it actually has essentially permanent control over the Strait of Hormuz and the massive resources that flow through it, which is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon. People have always asked themselves why Iran does not want nuclear weapons. It has a religious prohibition. But it also doesn’t need one, because it has the equivalent.

If Trump wanted an off-ramp, he actually had one after the Pakistan negotiations. All he had to do was accept the ceasefire and make it a real ceasefire. Instead, he went and did this so-called blockade of the blockade, which is doubly stupid because the problem, from the American point of view, is the fact that products are blocked. And so he just made them even more blocked. And that was another colossal blunder, almost as big as his original colossal blunder of getting into this war in the first place.

And so now China has absolutely no reason to even try to force Iran to do what Trump tells them to do. Why would China do that? China is actually weathering this situation better than America and its allies. They have a strategic reserve. They have diversified their energy. They have a lot of coal. They have all sorts of diverse energy supply chains, so they don’t need to worry themselves the way that the Americans and all of their allies, including their supposed anti-China allies in the region like Japan, and they hope Taiwan, South Korea, and so on.

Press TV: The global energy crisis, Dr. Barrett, the IEA, the International Energy Agency, said it is the worst energy crisis ever, unprecedented in history and about to get worse. How does this equate, from your perspective, to leverage that the U.S. president has or lack of moving forward or actually pressed into coming up with a definitive solution to this conflict? Or does he not care, simply?

Kevin Barrett: And Russia, China, and Iran, America’s adversaries, are all coming out of this much, much stronger. Russia is selling its energy for a much higher price. The sanctions have had to be dropped…. China has a huge strategic reserve and a diversified energy supply. And then Iran, as we’ve seen, has now got effective de facto permanent control of the Strait of Hormuz, taking it to a whole new level in the geopolitical world.

So Trump has got himself in a terrible fix and he lost his last chance for a graceful exit after the Pakistan negotiations. And now I think he’s going to learn in China that he’s going to be headed for an ungraceful exit.

Press TV: Kevin, for years the Israelis, and you mentioned them, so I want to bring it up now, and the impact this has had on regional resistance. They’ve been assassinating Palestinian and Lebanese resistance leaders and figures and commanders that they think are obstacles to Israel’s agenda for the region. And now the U.S. has joined Israel’s endeavor. Obviously, you alluded to that.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I think they made a huge miscalculation based on their arrogance. They imagine that if anybody threatened them the way that, let’s say, the resistance leaders are threatened, the way Iran’s leaders are threatened and so many have been assassinated, the way the Hezbollah leaders are threatened and assassinated, the way the Hamas leaders are threatened and assassinated, the Islamic Jihad leaders and so on, that they will have to capitulate because people like Trump and the people around him, the Western decision makers, are basically cowards.

But that’s not the way the resistance works. The resistance is made up of people who are spiritual, moral and have principles and are willing to risk and sacrifice their lives for what they believe in, including the liberation of their lands and the preservation of their dignity, their religion and their culture.

And this is something that’s incomprehensible apparently to a major segment of the Western leadership. They imagine that by wreaking havoc with terror attacks on resistance forces and leadership they can somehow terrorize the resistance into giving up.

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