0:01 Welcome back. We are joined again by Seyed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you for coming back on the program. These appear to be quite troubling times though. What I hear is that another US attack on Iran could be imminent, which could also have an additional component out of a limited land invasion. I was wondering how do you see it from there in Tehran? How stable is this ceasefire? Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being on your show. Since the ceasefire began, they've been preparing for war literally 24 hours a day.
0:51 And the assumption was that this is not over, especially since Trump is not the sort of person who will accept defeat. And the 39-day war did not go well for the United States. It was a horrible war for the world and for humanity. But ultimately, the Iranians won the war. And so the belief here was that that would not be acceptable for Trump. And that would not be acceptable for the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime that is the true force behind the war. As we recall, Joe Kent, in his
1:40 resignation letter, he said that this war is all about the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. So there's no reason to think that anything has changed in the last couple of months. So it is possible that we will have war, no one knows for certain in Iran, but it is possible we will have it this weekend after the markets close because apparently killing Iranians when the markets are closed is better so that, you know, God forbid, stock prices don't go down or anything like that. It could, of course, be tomorrow morning. It could be tomorrow evening. It could not happen this weekend. But I think that the problem
2:28 is that Trump is incapable of using an off-ramp. We saw that earlier when the Iranians and the Americans had a ceasefire agreement, Netanyahu tried to wreck it by carpet bombing Lebanon. And so the Iranians said as long as He's violating the ceasefire deal. We won't allow those extra ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz because I should point out that the Strait of Hormuz was never closed by the Iranians. It was only closed to ships that were linked to Iran's adversaries. So Iraq had no problem, the Russians, the Chinese, and of course Iranian ships never had any problems. But
3:16 the agreement was, within the agreement, there was going to be more ships passing through that included ships belonging to the Emirates, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, and the, I don't know which one I missed, but in any case, those extra ships would be going through. And because of Netanyahu, it didn't happen. And Trump sided with Netanyahu, even though the Pakistanis pointed out clearly that the, um, The ceasefire included Lebanon. But here's the point. When Netanyahu ultimately was forced to accept the ceasefire, even though now he's again killing
4:03 Lebanese citizens 24 hours a day, like in Gaza, he could have, Trump, chosen the off-ramp because the Iranians, when Netanyahu accepted that ceasefire, the Iranians said, okay, now we'll allow those extra ships to go through. And Trump almost immediately afterwards said, the Strait of Hormuz is open. It's never going to be closed again. The Iranians have promised. And he said a lot of nonsense, of course. But then he said that, but I'm keeping the siege on Iranian ports and the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, in place. So he could have chosen that as an off-route. That was possible, especially since Netanyahu accepted ultimately the ceasefire, at least for
4:49 a couple of, a few hours. So the belief is that he is incapable of moving in that direction. And therefore he's going to continue following, falling into the escalation trap. And that's why they believe that inevitably we're going to have another round, which will be devastating for the global markets and for the, for global trade and, and for the global economy, because as things stand, the global economy is going to suffer enormously, and we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. But even if there's some sort of agreement, let's say in a few weeks' time between Iran and the United States to allow more ships to get through
5:39 and the siege, let's say, on the Strait of Hormuz to come to an end, then things will still be very bad. And the The pain is still on its way, the real pain. But if there is war, then that means that not only will there be devastation, especially if they target Iran's critical infrastructure, Iran will do the same to the Israeli regime and to those Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, which will, of course, make in future much less oil and gas and energy and fertilizer available for the global markets for a very long period of time and lead to a global economic depression.
6:26 But if the war goes, if it's a major war and it goes on like the 39-day war, the Ramadan, then I think it's, we can be confident, we can be pretty sure that there will no longer be any oil or gas coming from this region for the years to come. I mean, it will just be a very long-term economic depression for the world. But even if it's a short war, and as I said, it will still, if some critical infrastructure is destroyed, it will lead to an economic depression for two reasons. One, because there will be less oil and gas available. But the second reason is that any negotiations to partially open the Strait of Hormones or
7:13 to open... the Strait of Hormuz and to lift the siege on and to revive the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, that will be put back for many weeks because they'll be fighting. No one is going to be negotiating about ships going through the strait, Iranian or otherwise, or a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. And that will definitely be catastrophic for for global trade and business and the global economy. Yeah, the Trump diplomacy is quite strange because, you know, besides all the propaganda and his efforts to control the narrative, we know some things for certain. That is
8:01 that the US was in getting into deep trouble and Trump was getting desperate. We know this from the numbers of the missiles, interceptor missiles, that this was not sustainable. They couldn't absorb the pain and they couldn't, well, essentially they didn't have enough ammunition. So we knew that things were going bad. They wanted a ceasefire. We also know this because otherwise the U.S. wouldn't have accepted Iran's 10-point plan as a condition for ceasefire, whatever Trump says about the Iranians begging him. But what happened thereafter is, again, I guess it's a lot of deception. He walked away from Iran. He never talked about those 10 points again. And then, you know, he offers now an extended ceasefire as if he's doing the Iranians a favor. So in some
8:49 regards, sometimes he can be good at controlling the narrative. Sometimes he goes, well, it stops being believable. But that's why it's a bit strange that after finally getting the guns to go silent, he wants to start this thing up again, which... make you think that they have something up their sleeves, something that they would do different this time around? And from your perspective there, sitting in Tehran, what do you think the U.S. would do different if they now, as you suggest, could invade or attack over the next few days, if not today? Well, the only thing I can think of is that they will continue to do...
9:34 the same as they did before, assassinate, bomb infrastructure, terrorize the population, and also probably go more after critical infrastructure, as he had threatened to do so before. But the problem would be that the Iranians will strike back. And we've heard just today from a very senior Iranian MP, who is a part of the delegation in Islamabad, that if any assassinations take place this time around, that Iran will take out the leaders of the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf, meaning Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates,
10:23 Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. That's what he said. And because he said that they are complicit, without them this war can't take place, So if they start murdering our leaders, then they will destroy their palaces. And I would assume that would also mean destroying not just their critical infrastructure, but their intelligence agencies and their defense ministries and that sort of thing. So Iran will take its retaliatory violence to a very different level. So Iran has already said that critical infrastructure will be responded by striking critical infrastructure in the Israeli regime, but also in our region. So when you...
11:14 It's not a situation where the Americans will win. And we already see that Iranians are defiant. People are on the streets. They see the United States as the aggressor. The world sees the United States as the aggressor. I don't see how this will do Trump any good. It will just make things a lot worse for him because at the end of the day, Trump is going to be answerable to Americans for their economic hardship. And one of the disturbing things that we often hear in the United States is that there are people who are sincerely anti-war and who are against the murder and slaughter of innocent people who care about the children at the in Minab, who the Americans massacred on day one.
12:01 And there are others who don't really care, but they say they talk about jobs and they talk about inflation. And like many elites, they talk about American lives and American soldiers who are not victims at all in all of this. But in any case, both groups of people, their voices are going to grow louder. whether those who see the United States regime as being, as they point out, that it is aggressive and barbaric and doing all of this for the sake of Zionism and for a genocidal regime, or those who are going to say that you're ruining our livelihood, our farms are going to go bankrupt, our businesses are going to get ruined, American lives will be lost, and the U.S. economy will suffer, and the deficit
12:52 will grow. These two forces combined, though completely unrelated to one another. One is moral and the other one is simply selfish. But they're going to make Trump suffer enormously as a result of the war. It's not a situation where he can win. I don't even believe that the Israeli regime will win. This is not because after two and a half years, we've seen what has happened to the image of the Israeli regime. Across the world, it's despised. People are watching now what's going on in Lebanon, even though Western media is not reporting it and Western journalists are quiet about it or they're misrepresenting it, trying to portray it as like Hezbollah targets
13:39 and they're ignoring Gaza. But people across the world are still seeing these images in a much censored social media. It's still coming through. But in addition to that, as people's personal lives become much more influenced by the global economic catastrophe heading our way, they're going to blame Israel. They're going to blame Zionism. They're going to blame Netanyahu. They're going to blame Trump. So I don't see how the Israeli regime benefits from this. It hurts this. It is hurt from all of this. The only person who would probably benefit would be Netanyahu, who thrives on crises, at least for now, and the
14:27 fanatics in his coalition. Well, with the usual Iranian response, though, what's been interesting in this 39-day war has been this tit-for-tat. That is, they've been able to essentially follow always the Americans up the escalation ladder denying this to the US, which is quite important. But what is interesting is the assassination of Iranian leaders. We never saw the Iranians doing this in kind. And also the attacks on Iranian nuclear plants. This is also something we didn't see the Iranians doing either. Do you think it's possible that Iran will, I guess, go further up that
15:15 escalation ladder this time around? Well, I think what the MP said about the Arab regimes would basically mean that they would, the chances that they collapse altogether would be much greater. Because if the United States starts targeting Iranian leaders and the Israeli regime as well, this Epstein coalition, as I like calling it, I like to call it, um, and then alongside that they start targeting Iran's critical infrastructure like power stations and so on, then these Arab leaders and their elites around them, they'll be targeted too, and then their critical infrastructure will be targeted.
16:04 And that will be at a time, and this is, I think, very important, that we are... nearing the hot season in the Persian Gulf region and in the Arabian Peninsula. So the month of May is a transition month. By the end of May, it gets very hot. And in the middle of May, it is getting hot. And then the sandstorms and the humidity and all that, you combine that, it becomes very difficult for anyone to work in these countries unless there's electricity, unless they have the
16:49 ability to stay cool, if they lose their electrical power plants, it is going to be very difficult for the, I don't know, 50, 60, I don't know how many American troops are there now because they brought in a lot of equipment for ground attack. So there may also be extra troops. But the tens of thousands of American troops stationed there is going to be much more difficult for them. Not a great thing for morale. And the population too. So let's say their leaders are being targeted, their kings and princes are being targeted, and they also lose their electricity and the heat and the humidity is going through the roof. I think it would be catastrophic. Not just for the
17:39 global oil and gas markets and so on, but also just being in these countries. And the Iranians have warned them. I mean, the Iranians don't want to target anyone. The Iranians are far more humane than any of their antagonists. When they fired missiles at the Israeli regime, they didn't target schools and synagogues. And when they did the same in these Arab regimes, they didn't target civilians either. Iran has something like 3,400 marchers. The five Arab regimes that were targeted, American assets targeted, American
18:27 bases targeted, and retaliatory targets, the targeting of infrastructure linked to the West, In all, despite all the damage in these five countries, only a handful of people were killed. Something like 10 to 20 people died. Something like that. I mean, I checked the number on DeepSeek, and that was more or less the number I got. People can look that up for themselves. So compare the 3,400, 3,500, I don't know the exact number, I don't remember it now, Iranians who died, and a handful of people who died in all these countries. And the same is true in the Israeli regime. So Iran does not want to kill people. Iran has been very careful not to kill people. It's been very careful to fire at
19:12 targets and installations in a way in which ordinary people don't die. But people will have to leave. They will have to leave. If Iran's critical infrastructure is struck and their critical infrastructure is struck, It is far worse, the weather in those countries than in Iran. And right now in Tehran, you've been to Tehran in the mountains, we have snow. You see the snow above the city. It would be difficult if they start targeting our critical infrastructure, but there it would be just completely intolerable. And then again, if their family, the ruling families are targeted, that would mean the collapse of each of these regimes. I don't,
19:57 I don't think that the United States is thinking this through, uh, maybe in their arrogance or saying that, oh, we'll just, you know, hit them and they'll collapse like they did before the 12 day war and before the 39 day war. But, um, but I still think that they, this exceptionalism that they have, um, and, and of course Zionist, uh, uh, ethnic superiorities, uh, this sense of superiority perhaps leads them to believe that, well, this time we'll, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll make the so-called regime fall apart. But I just want to go a bit back to the, the, the possibility of the United States,
20:43 uh, attacking. So we kind of can, it will figure out what they might do, but, uh, what, what make you suspect that an attack could be coming? Have you seen? significant shifts in the troop levels. What kind of weaponry are you seeing? And also, what do we know about the whereabouts of these troops, just in terms of what they might go after? Are they going to invade some islands in the Strait of Hormuz? Are they going to go after Yemen? obviously because of the troop levels, it can't be some kind of a full-scale invasion as what they did to Iraq, but surely there's something else, a smaller limited invasion, I'm assuming. They brought in a lot of
21:32 equipment for ground troops. They've also brought in ammunition for their planes and so on. But from what I've been told, most of these flights have been to prepare for a ground war. And I don't know details, but two places that I've heard that there's a large contingency that's practicing or training, or at least ready for fighting, one is in Kuwait and one is in Bahrain. and where they're large, they're large numbers. I don't know, maybe there are more now in the
22:17 Emirates and Saudi Arabia and, and Qatar too, but these are the two countries that I've, I've heard of and Kuwait in particular and Bahrain in particular, I've heard that in Bahrain, they, they were, they were practicing and in Kuwait, they're in, they're, they're in large numbers. So the expectation is that it could play out in two ways. Either the Americans want to go for a long war again, which is, I don't think they can personally. They may go for a short war, as we've been hearing, where they would strike very hard and fast, but the Iranians will retaliate. And there could be, and there
23:04 probably will be some sort of land offensive and also attacks deep inside Iran. like the attempt that was made near Esfahan before. But again, you know, the thing that I said earlier, regardless of the fact that the Iranians are going to retaliate, and Iran has missile and drone bases across the country, and the Iranians will definitely allow them to come in if they carry out a land attack. And the Iranians will then pound them. The Iranians are not going to sit there and let, you know, they're not going to prevent them from taking territory. They're going to play smart. They're going to let them come in and then hammer them for days and weeks and months if necessary. But more
23:54 importantly for in the broader picture of things is that any attempt, any move to ease tensions, to open up the Strait of Hormuz, is going to be delayed for many, many weeks because the fighting will take weeks for it to finish and then to die down and then to have some sort of deal. So it is going to make the global economy definitely move towards a depression, regardless of how much critical infrastructure is destroyed, regardless of that. So any violence will put the global economic situation much worse, in a much worse situation. And this, I think,
24:40 Trump does not comprehend. Iran is not controlling the Strait of Hormuz from the shores. It's not the 19th century. It's not even the 20th century. The ability to control the Strait of Hormuz comes from hundreds of kilometers inside the country and from many, many different locations. And Iran's capabilities near the shores... of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz are also unknown to the United States. That is also a major... They miscalculated on Iranian missiles and drones and these sort of capabilities, Iran's anti-aircraft capabilities. It's definitely the case that they're going to miscalculate on
25:27 Iran's other capabilities. Iran has not shown them and it has not used them. They're deep underground in the mountains. The areas around... near the Persian Gulf and all the way up to the border of Iraq and until northern Iraq. It's all mountainous territory. And the terrain is very difficult. And lots of Iranian installations are hidden in these different areas. And when the time comes, Americans will have to deal with them things that they know very little about. The reason why the Americans have made so many miscalculations about Iran's missile and drone capabilities is that the factories themselves that produce them are underground.
26:12 The bases are underground, the factories are underground, so the Americans think they know the numbers, but they have no idea how many missiles and drones Iran has. As we speak, as you and I are speaking, Iran is making missiles and drones and other military hardware, because everything that is of Great significance is deep underground. Well, Trump recently made this comment that Iran is at a state of collapse. So apparently everything is falling apart. They're begging for a deal. And this blockade, naval blockade, is tightening every day, which is suffocating Iran. But if this is the case, though, if the economic war... on Iran is so successful,
27:04 one would think that time would be on the side of the Americans, which I guess begs the question why, you know, it doesn't fit in their narrative. If they're so successful at this economic war, why go to war with Iran? So it does seem to be, well, there's been dishonesty from the beginning, so let's not be too surprised here, but how do you assess it? this, I guess, economic attrition warfare. That is, both the Iranians and the Americans are taking pain. But how do you see, you know, time being on Iran's side? What is a good way of assessing it if you're... Well, you know, this is very similar to the argument that the Iranians are deeply divided and the leadership,
27:52 you know, I always stress in interviews that no, they're not, there's no division. That doesn't mean they're not differences. There are 90 million Iranians and 90 million different views. And I'm sure that when political leaders and military leaders and security leaders or when they're sitting around at the table among themselves, they have very different opinions. But that is very different from a division and decision-making process. The decision-making process is clear. You have a Supreme National Security Council. You have a leader. They've designated the Speaker of Parliament to be in charge of negotiations. He makes the decisions. So it's clear
28:42 that there's no division. And so saying that it's chaos and there's division, that serves someone's interests or it's either propaganda or or it's serving some other purpose. In this regard, the claim that Iran is falling apart and that the sanctions or the siege is working and Iran... Well, first of all, it's quite interesting how they gloat about starving Iranians. It's just like they gloat about starving Cubans or Syrians. It's like, you know, these people have really... There's nothing left in Iran and you know there's no sense they have no
29:28 concept of humanity these people but this is nonsense I mean is the economy suffering of course it's suffering they bombed pharmaceutical factories they bombed you know many different factories they destroyed businesses and then you know when they block ships from coming and going to Iranian ports, of course, is going to have an impact, no doubt. But we're at war. And just like during the 39-day war and the 12-day war before that, the Iranians won the war not because they were not hurt, but because they tolerated the pain. And they
30:14 tolerated the pain more than the Americans did. That's why, as you earlier pointed out, Trump accepted Iran's 10.5%. is the framework for negotiations because he needed a ceasefire. Whereas at the beginning of the war, he said Iran must accept unconditional surrender. And the same was true during the 12-day war. He said that then too. So of course, Iran is going to be hurt and ordinary Iranians will face difficulty. But that's war. But how about the other side? I mean, they keep talking about the siege and how effective it is. Well, that siege is intensifying the damage being done to the global economy through
31:05 the very few ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz. Now less ships than even before are going through the Strait of Hormuz. So the global economy is going to suffer catastrophe faster than before. And one critical mistake that they made, Glenn, is that the Iranians at the beginning of the war, they expected a siege on Iranian ports. And they planned for it. And they're implementing those plans, obviously, to minimize the hurt. You know, trade routes through neighboring countries and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Turkmenistan and on top. Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, to Russia, Kazakhstan,
31:52 Azerbaijan. Iran has many borders, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, and so on. But all that aside, the Iranians thought that the Americans were going to impose a siege on the ports when they initiated their joint aggression with the Israeli regime. They didn't. And so the Strait of Pohormoz was almost closed for a month and a half And Iran was selling its oil at very high prices. And early on, it's petrochemicals too, before they targeted Iran's petrochemical plants. But at very high prices. And then only late in the day did they begin to implement this siege on
32:38 Iranian ports. So Iran is way ahead of them. And also Iran has been selling its oil. I don't know exactly how much it is, but between 150 to 200 million barrels of oil on the seas. And from what I'm hearing, it's almost finished. And they have all that money. And they've sold that oil at huge, had a huge, you know, at very high prices. Before they couldn't sell that oil. The oil was on the high seas. So they've sold all that oil at very high prices. And they have that money now. It's a lot of money. And in times of war, expenditures do go down because the focus is on managing the war. So the Iranians have a clear advantage. And the Iranian economy has already been under siege.
33:28 This nonsense about oil wells, that's just propaganda. Iran has had its oil wells exports shut down under Trump during the first term. You recall as well as I that it was... Trump's revived the maximum pressure. We were not exporting any oil except for very small amounts. And most of that was a debt that we had to China for projects, a project or something that they did in Iran. Iran was paying them back with oil like 100,000 barrels a day, very small amount. But Iran wasn't exporting that. So Iran knows how to deal with its oil wells. It's not like the Arab regimes on the other side of the Persian Gulf, they never experienced sanctions. And the entire Iranian economy has been
34:17 constructed in an environment of sanctions. I'm not saying it's sanctions proof, but it survives more easily. It sustains itself much more effectively than countries across the world that are now going to experience a crisis. Because They don't have sanctions. And then suddenly they're going to be facing a catastrophe, thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, that they don't know how to deal with. So the siege against Iran began late. Iran has sold a lot of oil at a very, very high price. And Iran's economy has been living under siege and
35:03 sanctions for decades. And Iran's adversaries They have none of those experiences. Yeah. When I hear this talk about another U.S. wave of attacks against Iran and planning for a short war, it feels like they already made this mistake. Why go down this route again? Again, if I was the one advising, I would say, you know, my warning would be that the U.S. doesn't get to decide when the war is over. Also, as Iran showed the first time around, they're not able to dictate the terms of the war. That is claiming, you know, Iran can't shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can't hold the Gulf states accountable for participation. You know,
35:53 all of this was essentially very, very flawed. And that's why I was wondering what possible surprises the Iranians might have, because again, would It seems almost very predictable that Yemen would shut down the Red Sea. It wouldn't be inconceivable that Iraq could make a move against Kuwait. The Gulf states could lose their desalination plants and oil installations. I mean, it's going to be very hard to control all the variables to the point that one would feel comfortable in confidently predicting how this war against Iran would go. I guess... This is why it's so hard to comprehend after just getting out of it and
36:38 getting the ceasefire and then being able to pull off this narrative that it was the Iranians who came to Trump, despite all the evidence pointing the other way. Going back to this, it seems like a disaster. But yeah, just as a last question, what surprises might the Iranians have up their sleeve? I'm not saying the governments are whispering in your ear, telling them what you're planning to do, but... You know, you're there in Tehran, you have a general idea what cards can be played and also Iran has allies. They have autonomy of their own. So what do you expect? Well, just as Hezbollah has shown itself to be far more powerful than the West was expecting, and we discussed this before, they were saying how Hezbollah is a
37:27 spent force The West basically took control of Syria through Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And there's now a proxy of the United States. And they exposed puppets in Beirut, the prime minister and the president. And then you had the Israeli regime. So Hezbollah was finished. But now we're seeing that Hezbollah is hitting the Israeli regime hard. And there's talk that they're removing some of their troops from southern Lebanon because they're so vulnerable. So, you know, imagine if those capabilities exist in Iraq or in Yemen. And I'm talking about on the ground troops that can move beyond borders and do damage. That's one thing that I can
38:14 think of. Second is when the Iranians start striking the Israeli regime again, the regime obviously does not have the number of surface terror missile capability, surface air missiles that they would need. The last few weeks is not nearly enough to make up for what it needs. So Iran, if they continue down this path, then they can swiftly begin striking targets within the Israeli regime without much difficulty, if any. The third is that the Iranians would go after more sensitive targets in the Persian Gulf region. That could
39:03 include the ships now. If they could start targeting the ships in the Persian Gulf, they can start targeting the critical infrastructure that they haven't destroyed yet. I think the commander of Iran's missiles said that don't count on oil from the Persian Gulf for many years to come if there is war. So that could happen. But also I think, and I'm speculating here i've heard and i don't know i don't remember who told me this uh i think it was some i mean this was a while back this was during the previous war at the beginning and i don't recall who told me this as i said but um but i think it was so incredible um that person was saying
39:51 that the iranians have the ability to sink u.s ships But they don't do so because we would need to be higher up on the escalation level for Iran to do so. And as you know, and as everyone knows, Iran did not start this war. Iran did not initiate any phase of escalation, whether against the Israeli regime or against U.S. proxies in the region or U.S. assets. Every time they escalated, Iran escalated. One good example was when they bombed Iran's gas installations in the South Pars field. And then Iran struck Qatar and the Emirates and somewhere else, I don't remember. And then Trump put out
40:38 that to social saying, I didn't know about it. The Israelis won't do it again. That was Iran's retaliation and they hit very hard. So Iran does not initiate escalation. And as I said earlier, Iran is very careful not to have people killed. And the numbers are, show that. I mean, anyone can do searches and they'll find out. But if Americans now go for critical Iranian infrastructure, that would be, I would say, very high up the escalation ladder. And then I think that if Iran were, if Iran indeed has those capabilities to strike deep, deeper than what it has now, then I think Iran would start sinking U.S. ships.
41:23 And there have already been statements made by senior Iranian officials that that is on the card. So there are many things I could do. But also remember what we discussed earlier on, where the Iranians said that if there are assassinations carried out, then the leaders of these regimes, a member of the delegation who was with us in Islamabad, a senior MP, said this, a very well-known public figure, and he said this as a fact, not his opinion, that Iran will take out these regimes, these leaders, because they are a part of the war effort against Iran. Because without these five Arab regimes and Jordan,
42:12 the United States cannot wage war against Iran. It's just not possible. Logistically, it's not doable. And so there are all these options that Iran has. And again, The United States has brought in lots of weapons to the region, but Iran has been preparing itself during this time. And for Iran, it's not that difficult. This is its own home turf. And it's been preparing for this war for two and a half, three decades. So, you know, we are where we are. We didn't have to be here. I spoke about this before in your show, the Leverett's book, Going to Tehran. I advise all your viewers to read it. they deal with a lot of the lies and myths that Western media and Western
42:58 think tanks and Western academia has been saying about Iran for all these decades. But also they point out that if the United States doesn't move towards rapprochement, it will move in this direction. And when they wrote this book, they were antagonized, demonized, and marginalized. And yet everything that they said turned out to be correct. So now we have a global economic crisis. The lives of everyone will... inevitably be impacted in a big way. And if we continue to go up the escalation ladder, then I think the catastrophe will be beyond imagination. Well, let me squeeze in a last question. The Putin and Arachid meeting, that is,
43:44 Foreign Minister of Iran, he met with President Putin in Russia. There's been a lot of talk about this, apparently didn't make Trump very happy at all, which led to a 10, 90 minute phone call between Trump and Putin. What do you think is the significance of this? I mean, this, because whenever one looks at this greater Eurasian chessboard, one always looks at these three powers, that is Russia, China and Iran getting closer. Of course, if you throw India into the mix, it's becoming, you know, Kissinger's worst nightmare. So, How can we interpret what happened or what do we know what happened there in Russia? I think many Indians are realizing, just before I respond to the first part of the question itself,
44:33 many Indians are realizing that their economic suffering and they've suffered a lot, even though Iran has allowed a number of Indian ships and Pakistani ships and Bangladeshi ships to go through, even though they belong to these regimes in the Persian Gulf that were complicit in the war. but the suffering of the Indians is at the hands of the United States and the Israeli regime. And they're increasingly recognizing that. So that may have a significant impact in the months and years ahead on how they deal with these countries. But the meeting with President Putin apparently went very well. And President Putin praised the Iranian people a lot. And that sort of reminds me of another book of one of our mutual friends. And that's Alistair Book once wrote a book on resistance and the Islamic revolution. The book is called Resistance, and then the
45:22 subtitle is about the Islamic revolution and so on. And that's also a good book to read. The resistance of the Iranian people during this period, of course, decades of sanctions and terrorism and three wars, but this particular war has created has made people across the world see Iran in a very different light. And Iran has become very popular. And this is what people from across the world tell me, from Latin America. I don't know if I told you this before. In private, I said this on a couple of programs. One of my Brazilian friends, who's a Marxist
46:08 and has very good connections, he told me that a very well-known Brazilian Marxist, one of the major figures in Brazil said that if Iran wins this war, I'm going to become a Shia. So the sort of the way in which people are now viewing Iran is very different from what it was just a few months ago, or especially after Gaza's been changing. But like Hezbollah, Iran, the axis of resistance. And this is the exact opposite of the situation for Zionism and the Israeli regime and Trump and the United States is They see that in a much more negative light. So there's a big transition taking place in the way in which people in many parts of the world are viewing Iran and the world. Even
46:57 in the United States, Iran is gaining support from quarters that I would have imagined to be impossible just a while back. But Trump, I mean, Trump obviously, when he spoke with Putin, it was definitely linked to the trip. But I would imagine that this trip went, I think the trip went very well from the statements made by the foreign minister and from the statements made by President Putin and the foreign ministry in Russia. Because Iran's, I think two things happened here. One is that, and this I know for a fact, Iran outperformed Russia and China's wildest expectations. even though many of us in
47:47 Iran were not surprised. I would say that I think Iran did better than I expected, but I expected Iran to win this war. But I think that many of our friends, you know, they've been influenced by Western narratives, even those who are in the non-Western world and those who are critical of the West. And they're in shock that the war ended this way. So President Putin, I think... this meeting went very well, but it's very different because Trump, when he won the presidency, took all the swing states, won the majority of the vote, he had a mandate, and he said clearly many times on the
48:36 campaign trail that he's going to end the war in Ukraine in one day. Well, it's a year and a half now, and The war in Ukraine is still going on as far as I know. So, and they met in, when was it last year? In Alaska. Nothing came with that. And they've had multiple phone calls. Still the war is going on. So I'm not quite sure that it's going to have much of an impact. I think at the end of the day, it's going to end on the battlefield. and probably with the collapse of the global economy, unfortunately.
49:21 I think also Iran has created a bit of an uproar in Russia in this regard as well, because they've begun to question what they've been doing over the past few years, because the U.S. have a lot of similar experiences as the Iranians, that is, this fraudulent... diplomacy, the deals which would never be followed through to begin with. And of course, this existential threat, which is based on the efforts to degrade and weaken and try to collapse the country. Many people in Russia now, from what I hear, argue that they should have changed course already in June when not just Iran, but Russia also had this surprise attack that is That was the same one month the Russians had an attack
50:10 on the nuclear deterrent, which was, well, quite obviously, it was not only Ukraine who carried out this one. So now, of course, there's a lot of pressure for the Kremlin to do as the Iranians, that is, being more prepared to go up the escalation ladder, restore their deterrents, and, yeah, except that the emperor doesn't really have any clothes, so... So anyways, you're already taking a lot of your, giving me a lot of your time. So thank you very much as always. And I hope to see you again very soon. It's a great pleasure being on your show. Always, Glenn. Thank you very much for having me.
