Tensions have exploded in the Middle East as Israel and Iran enter a direct and dangerous phase of conflict. Defense analyst Mark Sleboda breaks down the escalating retaliation, military strikes, and the geopolitical fallout ๐. Is this the beginning of a broader regional war? ๐๏ธ Or a move that drags global powers into another devastating conflict? Sleboda shares exclusive insight into what's really happening behind the headlines ๐จ. Stay informed as the situation unfolds rapidly. ๐ Watch now to understand the stakes, the risks, and the possible future of the region.
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Hi, everybody. Today is Saturday, June 14, 2025, and our friend Mark Slavoda is back with us.
00:00:12Welcome back, Mark.
00:00:14Nima, thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be on DialogWorks.
00:00:20Mark, let's get started with what Pete Hex said, the head of Pentagon, said about the situation in the Middle East.
00:00:28I'm sure you and the audience, we're monitoring this in real time.
00:00:33The Defense Department has been tracking it at every level, and to include when it started and throughout.
00:00:39Had a meeting just this morning, and the president has been leading the way on setting the tempo of how we look at the region
00:00:47and ultimately recognize, you know, a couple of days ago, Israel believed in its own self-defense.
00:00:52It needed to take action against nuclear capabilities and ballistic missiles, and we saw the response from Iran.
00:00:57We've seen that. The U.S. is postured to defend our people in the region.
00:01:02We've got significant assets in the region.
00:01:04We are robustly postured to ensure that our people, our bases, our interests are safe,
00:01:09and we're continuing to monitor.
00:01:11Any forces we would need to do that, capabilities we would need to do that, we will keep Americans safe.
00:01:17And you saw what Secretary Rubio said in his first statement opening.
00:01:19Ultimately, it should be clear to Iran that they should not turn their gaze to the United States.
00:01:26That would be...
00:01:26You get the tone, the way that he's talking.
00:01:31Rubio said, you know that Rubio said, we have nothing to...
00:01:35Can you hear me, Mark?
00:01:47You froze. Now I can hear you.
00:01:50Yeah.
00:01:51What's going on with the Trump administration?
00:01:54They were prepared to talk with the Iranians on Sunday, and they have decided two days before they attacked Iran.
00:02:03They somehow prepared Iran for the talks.
00:02:06They tried to do everything to just calm down Iran, to believe, to make some sort of belief in the Iranian government
00:02:13that nothing is going to happen to them.
00:02:15Then they went on Iran.
00:02:17They used somehow, Mark, the same method.
00:02:22They used drones that they used on Russian soil with the attack on Russian soil.
00:02:28How do you find it?
00:02:29How do you find the way that Donald Trump is dealing with this situation in the Middle East?
00:02:34Okay.
00:02:34So, you know, Trump, before he became president, among other things, had a career as a reality TV star, right?
00:02:48The apprentice.
00:02:49And it would seem that the Trump administration likes playing roles in Ukraine as they attempt to try to wheedle, beg, threaten, leverage Russia into accepting a ceasefire
00:03:12that would preserve a U.S. proxy regime in Ukraine.
00:03:19They're posturing as some third-party arbitrar trying to bring two warring parties together rather than the proxy master that has engineered this entire thing over a course of, well, a decade, essentially.
00:03:41Now, in Iran, with the conflict in Iran, the U.S. is once again playing a role, a public role.
00:03:52I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing, right?
00:03:59This fiction doesn't fool the Iranians, and it really shouldn't fool anyone else.
00:04:04The Trump administration obviously greenlit and coordinated this, but far more than knowing about it, they are assisting it.
00:04:16They are facilitating it.
00:04:18Now, there's no evidence yet that actually U.S.-flagged aircraft with U.S. pilots have dropped any missiles into Iran.
00:04:31But it's quite obvious that their satellite and reconnaissance capabilities, right, are, you heard it, real time.
00:04:42They're watching it real time like it's a game, right?
00:04:45Okay, are feeding information constantly to Israel in real time, I'm almost sure,
00:04:52because the U.S. has far more capabilities in that regard than Israel.
00:04:59The U.S. is refueling Israeli aircraft over the skies of Syria and possibly over Iraq as well.
00:05:11Israel simply doesn't have enough aircraft refueling capacity to do the job alone to maintain a pace to sustain an intense air campaign against Israel.
00:05:29The distances are too great.
00:05:31They need to be refueled in the air.
00:05:33And, boy, it sure seems convenient that the Syrian government was overthrown just a few months ago,
00:05:40because now Syrian airspace, now that the country formerly known as Syria is now Al-Qaeda-stan,
00:05:49you know, with obviously no intentions of, you know, even casting a bad glance Israel's way,
00:05:58even as Israel continues to gobble up parts of what was formerly southern Syria
00:06:06and to conduct air raids across the former country whenever they want to take out a piece of equipment
00:06:15that they don't want falling into Al-Qaeda's or anyone else's hands.
00:06:20So without the Syrian government there, Israel simply doesn't have to worry about Russian-provided Syrian air defense
00:06:33for their attack on Israel, which, you know, leads me to believe that however scattershot the approach may seem to have been,
00:06:44that there is an orchestration behind all of this leading up to this attack.
00:06:52Because removing, I mean, it is possible, it is not, that they're simply taking advantage of an opportunity,
00:07:01that they're exploiting a situation.
00:07:03But I don't think we should neglect the possibility, the strong possibility,
00:07:10that this is simply part of a plan.
00:07:14You neuter Hezbollah, you attrit the Ar-Ansalah's movement ability to conduct long-range strikes and assist.
00:07:28You get Hamas, you know, back on its feet, still fighting for survival,
00:07:34and its people undergoing a starvation, genocide, blockade in Gaza.
00:07:41And then you go after, Syrian government falls, then you go after Iran.
00:07:46There's a clear, logical chain that progresses up to that.
00:07:54So that's the role that the U.S. is playing.
00:07:58They're trying to pretend that they don't know anything.
00:08:00And, you know, and of course, all the munitions, right?
00:08:05Both the air defense munitions and the bunker busters and long-range strike
00:08:12has been provided by the U.S., and I'm sure will be provided by the U.S.
00:08:18There will be a stream of armaments to keep Israel going as long as it is felt that they need to.
00:08:28And the Trump administration has already promised that the U.S. will assist and has already assisted
00:08:37in the defense of Israel.
00:08:40That is, if Iran dares to strike back, which they now already have,
00:08:46that the U.S., the U.K., France, Jordan, and a handful of others will assist trying to provide air defense
00:08:58to Israel in the face of quite significant and withering Iranian long-range strike retaliation
00:09:10with missiles, ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles, drones, and so forth.
00:09:18So that's the U.S. is posturing.
00:09:22They're playing a game.
00:09:25We heard this statement immediate from Rubio.
00:09:27This isn't our war.
00:09:29Well, then why are you helping Israel fight it?
00:09:31I mean, it's a joke.
00:09:34They're trying in this regard to have Israel take the brunt of any Iranian retribution.
00:09:46There was an incident, of course, just over a week ago, where the Trump administration transferred
00:09:57some 20,000 small, short-range air defense missiles, really anti-drone missiles.
00:10:06The Biden administration had ordered these anti-drone missiles created.
00:10:13They're kind of an ad hoc type of thing.
00:10:19They're taking an old, dumb missile and adding a guidance kit to it to assist it in taking down drones.
00:10:26They made 20,000 of them.
00:10:27They were supposed to be delivered to the Kiev regime in Ukraine.
00:10:30And suddenly, last week, Trump instead diverted them to U.S. forces in the Middle East.
00:10:36Well, now we know what for.
00:10:39But this pretense that the U.S. isn't evolved, that they're set on, they want to resume negotiations.
00:10:52So Axios is telling us something quite different.
00:10:57Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public
00:11:06and didn't express opposition in private.
00:11:10We had a clear U.S. green light, one claim.
00:11:13The goal, they said, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent
00:11:17because the U.S. was still conducting negotiations.
00:11:22And make sure Iranians on Israel's target list, their decapitation list, wouldn't move to new locations.
00:11:32We're talking about the number of IRGC generals, high officials, nuclear, civilian nuclear scientists,
00:11:40and the like, that Israel has begun an assassination campaign on.
00:11:47And Netanyahu's aides even briefed Israeli reporters that Trump had tried to put the brakes
00:11:54on an Israeli strike in a call on Monday,
00:11:58when in reality, their call dealt with coordination of the attack, Israeli officials now say.
00:12:05And for once, I actually believe the Israeli officials.
00:12:10I'm quite sure that this is what happened.
00:12:15Meanwhile, Trump's, well, first, the Jerusalem Post as well headlines,
00:12:22U.S.-Israel joint deception tricked Iran through nuclear talks, Trump comments.
00:12:27So there appears multiple sources claiming that there was some type of joint deception
00:12:38to lull the Iranians into a false sense that there wasn't in an imminent attack
00:12:45to gain the advantage of surprise, which is all bizarre.
00:12:52I find the fact that Iran was so, and it seems quite clear to me that they were caught wrong-footed, right?
00:13:03So many of the people on Iran, on Israel's decapitation list, were in vulnerable positions.
00:13:12It seems that the air defense was not on the highest state of alert, was not prepared for this.
00:13:19There are various reasons for this, but one of them seems to be that they didn't expect an imminent attack.
00:13:31And that is bizarre, because it was just a few months ago, when Trump was elected,
00:13:39that the Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, told us that there is absolutely no point to negotiating with the U.S.,
00:13:51because you can't trust anything they say, right?
00:13:54That you shouldn't even go through the motions of a diplomatic process, because it will just be used against you.
00:14:00That is what he said.
00:14:02And that was even echoed by Pazeshkian, the Iranian president, who effectively said the same thing.
00:14:12And this is keeping in mind that Pazeshkian is a supposed moderate who was elected on a platform,
00:14:20naive F, of improving relations with the West.
00:14:25And then he also came out and said, it's pointless to negotiate.
00:14:30But here they were, negotiating with the U.S. and caught, well, if not with their pants down,
00:14:36then at least looking the other way.
00:14:39I don't know any other way to read that.
00:14:41And what's more, the Mossad, and we must assume to a lesser extent, CIA and MI6 penetration of Iran is crippling.
00:14:57It's at critical levels, right?
00:14:59The penetration of the government, quite obviously, of the security services, of the intelligence, and of society in general.
00:15:08Mossad, we've long known that they have extensive networks, right, of sympathizers, traitors, ethnic separatists, mercenaries, terrorists, you name it, right?
00:15:22There's a long history of Iran with impunity assassinating scientists, generals in Iran, conducting sabotage attacks.
00:15:33We saw, just last year, we saw the political leader of Hamas assassinated in Tehran during the inauguration of Pazeshkian.
00:15:46And steps should have been taken, especially after the decapitation strike against Hezbollah.
00:15:54The pagers, the exploding pagers, all of this, Iran should have been better prepared for this.
00:16:02They should have purged their own intelligence and security networks.
00:16:07They should have taken extra precautions.
00:16:09And if the leader of the IRGC, the leader of the head of the IRGC's air force, and the chief of the general staff of the Iranian armed forces was killed in the first hour of this assault, that's a problem.
00:16:28And Israel says nine nuclear scientists they killed, civilian nuclear scientists, Iran says it was only three, but this was significant.
00:16:41And what's more, as you pointed out, much like with Operation Spiderweb, right, we see these containerized drone-in-a-box sneak attacks,
00:16:58where at least the Israeli press is telling us that Israel intelligence, Mossad, effectively set up drone bases inside Iran, where they were flying drones out of.
00:17:15And we now know that several trucks carrying drones to be launched, just like what happened with Operation Spiderweb in Ukraine, were stopped.
00:17:28You know, after the initial couple of waves of the attack, already several days in, in Iran, but that this had obviously happened during the first attacks.
00:17:41That is one of the reasons why it appears that Iranian air defense was so wrong-footed, because they were attacked from both without and within.
00:17:53I mean, it's hard for an air defense system to take down a drone, when the drone appears two kilometers away, and that's an air defense that is really targeting aircraft and incoming missiles and the like.
00:18:09You know, different functions for different, you know, different functions for different air defense systems, but that's, that's a bad situation.
00:18:17So it, it led to, you know, quite my understanding, is fairly effective initial first wave attacks, not only on Iranian air defense, opening the way up for further attacks,
00:18:31but also on Iranian, at least a number of Iranian missile launchers, inhibiting their ability to respond quickly, and also the command and control, right?
00:18:47The, the, the, the, the decapitation strike against so many top officials, also inhibiting their, their quick decision-making process.
00:18:55So this was obviously worked out for some time, years, you know, months, years, uh, it even is like, this was, uh, you know, no, no operation has a hundred percent success.
00:19:10And we have to understand that, of course, the Israeli government is going to try to exaggerate its successes, right?
00:19:19As they spin their narrative, uh, the Israeli government and the Iranian government, of course, is going to downplay, uh, Israel's, uh, successes as, as, you know, the, the narrative war ensues, uh, after, you know, the facts on the ground.
00:19:35Um, but this is, was, you know, fairly successful, um, uh, at least initially.
00:19:42Now, uh, the Eradians seem to have collected themselves and launched substantial long-range, uh, retaliatory strikes with missiles and drones.
00:19:52And now we are in a long-range strike war of attrition, uh, both sides exchanging volleys back and forth, um, hunting for each other's air defense, hunting for each other's long-range strike capability, um, and also essentially trying to, uh, exhaust to overextend air defense systems.
00:20:18Because ultimately, air defense missiles are far more expensive than missiles, right?
00:20:24Than, than, than ballistic missiles, right?
00:20:27They're produced at a lower rate and they're far more expensive.
00:20:30And that goes for both sides because both sides are enduring long-range strikes.
00:20:34And the Israeli long-range strikes are more focused on, uh, aircraft, uh, firing missiles, right?
00:20:41They're not actually yet that I can see confirmed entering Iranian airspace.
00:20:47They're still firing, firing out of Iraqi airspace, right?
00:20:51But, you know, they've got that, that capability, uh, whereas the Iranian long-range strike ability is composed almost entirely of missiles and drones.
00:21:02So, interesting weaponry choices, uh, being, being played out now.
00:21:07But, uh, you know, Donald Trump, you know, the White House initially tried to pretend, oh, we're not involved with this.
00:21:16Don't you dare strike us.
00:21:17We're, we're not involved in this.
00:21:19These is, as they're obviously directly facilitating, uh, these, uh, attacks.
00:21:24These, uh, this, uh, attacks.
00:21:26They're obviously coordinated and facilitated.
00:21:29And we get these increasingly, just absolutely insane.
00:21:36Like, batshit insane tweets, uh, social media posts and statements by Trump, right?
00:21:43So, the U.S. doesn't have anything to do.
00:21:46But then Donald Trump is tweeting out, just going completely off script, making clear that this is some kind of mafia-style diplomacy, right?
00:21:56If you don't agree with what I want, then I'll break your leg and burn down your cousin's house until you agree, right?
00:22:03That's what seems to be going on here.
00:22:05Two months ago, I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to make a deal.
00:22:11They should have done it.
00:22:13Today is day 61.
00:22:15I told them what to do, but they just couldn't get there.
00:22:18Now, they have perhaps a second chance.
00:22:22Yeah, after they've been bombed, right?
00:22:23That's, that's gonna happen.
00:22:25Uh, then we had Trump saying the, uh, to ABC, the, uh, attack on Iran was excellent and more is to come.
00:22:35I think it's been excellent, Trump said.
00:22:37We gave them a chance and they didn't take it.
00:22:40They got hit hard.
00:22:41Very hard.
00:22:43They got hit about as hard as you're going to get hit.
00:22:45And there's more to come.
00:22:47A lot more.
00:22:48When asked if the United States participated in the attacks in any war, Trump responded by saying, I don't want to comment on that.
00:22:57All right.
00:22:58That's fine.
00:22:59We know anyway.
00:23:00I mean, it's, it's not really, uh, any, any surprise there.
00:23:04Uh, and then the, the, the, the piece de resistance, this absolutely chilling and insane, uh, social media post.
00:23:17I gave Iran a chance.
00:23:19I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal.
00:23:23I told them in the strongest of words to just do it, but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they couldn't, just couldn't get it done.
00:23:32Maybe because that's, you were changing the goalposts on nuclear enrichment the entire time.
00:23:38Anyway, I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world.
00:23:50Yeah, that's obviously debatable now in Ukraine.
00:23:53Anyway, by far, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come and they know how to use it.
00:24:00I mean, mafia threats much certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen.
00:24:11I guess he did though, right?
00:24:13They're all dead in big screaming capital letters now, and it will only get worse.
00:24:19There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks even more brutal come to an end.
00:24:31And Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.
00:24:40Actually, I think it was the Persian Empire and the Ahmadinej.
00:24:44I mean, there's a whole lots of historical names, I don't think, but never mind.
00:24:47That's expecting too much of Trump.
00:24:50No more death.
00:24:51No more destruction.
00:24:53Just do it before it's too late.
00:24:55God bless you all.
00:24:56I mean, this is just madness.
00:24:58This man is an unhinged lunatic.
00:25:04In many ways, Joe Biden's corpse was more reasonable.
00:25:09Joe Biden's corpse propped up, you know, Weekend at Bernie style by Sullivan and Blinken.
00:25:16They went out of their way to avoid any conflict with Iran during their four years, right?
00:25:22They had pantomime attacks where both sides could save face.
00:25:27And any time Netanyahu tried to position the U.S. into, you know, being quote unquote dragged into, I hate that term, right?
00:25:39The U.S. has never dragged into anything, but, you know, convincing them to join an attack on Iran, you know, the Biden, the Blinken-Sullivan administration said, no, I'm sorry.
00:25:54We got other priorities right now.
00:25:56We got this Russia-Ukraine thing and we want China.
00:25:58And, you know, we don't really much like Iran, but, you know, we're not, it's not good for us right now.
00:26:06We got other priorities.
00:26:08So, but Trump, I mean, he's obviously going right along with this, even as he, his lies aren't even convincing with social media posts like that.
00:26:20I mean, he's not even lying, of course.
00:26:22It's his administration that comes out and plays the straight man.
00:26:26We have nothing to do with this.
00:26:28It's not our war, Mark Rubio, right?
00:26:30Meanwhile, Trump comes out and says, I told you what was going to happen.
00:26:34There's going to be a lot more death.
00:26:35You're all dead now.
00:26:38The guy is, the world is in a dangerous place with a man like this in charge of the United States.
00:26:47I mean, I know a lot of people out there were hoping for some reason that Trump was going to be different,
00:26:54that he was going to change things, that he was a peacemaker, right?
00:27:00I don't know why they thought these things after his first administration.
00:27:07But now we've got a full-blown regional conflict that, you know, it's a big regional conflict at one level.
00:27:17At another level, it's a geopolitical proxy war, right?
00:27:22It's another battlefield of the same battle that's occurring in Ukraine.
00:27:27Because as the U.S. is supporting Israel in this with intelligence, with refueling, with munitions,
00:27:38Iran, doubtless, is going to be supported in much the same way by Russia,
00:27:45which they have a strategic partnership with, a new, deepened, strengthened strategic partnership,
00:27:50and almost certainly also China, which they have a strategic partnership with.
00:27:56So this is another proxy war at one level.
00:28:01I mean, there are different multiple levels to this, and we can't neglect the regional issue.
00:28:06But this is also part of a geopolitical proxy war in a world order shaping.
00:28:15This is the West, right, of which Israel is undoubtedly a part of the collective West,
00:28:22trying to maintain and extend the U.S.-led Western global hegemony against the challengers, right?
00:28:31The great powers and the rising regional powers of the multipolar world, right?
00:28:37Of BRICS, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, right?
00:28:41There's multiple layers here, but Russia, China, Iran, right?
00:28:45I mean, that's what we see here.
00:28:47And Iran is considered the weakest of the three.
00:28:51So now they're attempting to take out Iran.
00:28:54And while they're making these noises about nuclear enrichment and nuclear weapons,
00:29:00I mean, come on, Israel has been warning since 1984 that any day now Iran is going to have a nuclear weapon.
00:29:11And those were the headlines in newspapers in 1984.
00:29:14Netanyahu personally has been yelling about it since 1993, saying that in just a few months, Iran.
00:29:25So, I mean, here we are, you know, 30 years after that, and that this is being used as justification again.
00:29:34The primary goal here is regime change.
00:29:37That's what this is about.
00:29:38And the growing deterrent threat that Iran had, even without nuclear weapons, right?
00:29:46And we have to, again, point out that whatever they may say and obfuscate,
00:29:53both U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency agree that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
00:30:04They have a nuclear enrichment program that could create what's called breakout capability because they'll already have enriched uranium on hand if they decide to start a weapons program.
00:30:19But they're entitled to that, right, under international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
00:30:25And there was a deal to limit the amount of enrichment that, you know, the percentage of enrichment that Iran was doing.
00:30:34But that was the JCUPA.
00:30:36And Trump ripped that up right away during his first administration, presumably just because it was Obama's signature foreign policy accomplishment.
00:30:45So, and it's quite obvious, Iran doesn't want a deal.
00:30:51They don't want, you know, the U.S. and Iran negotiating.
00:30:55It's certainly not in good faith.
00:30:57That was just a game.
00:30:59That was just smoke and mirrors.
00:31:01They want regime change in Iran.
00:31:03That's their goal.
00:31:04And they hope that these attacks, coupled with destabilization campaign from within, will do that.
00:31:12I find that not impossible, but extremely questionable, whether they're capable of achieving that.
00:31:21But, I mean, we're going to find it out.
00:31:23The Iranian government is going to be stress test.
00:31:28Israel has made clear that they, on one hand, they said they'll continue these attacks as long as are necessary.
00:31:36And we've heard from other officials at least a 14-day window.
00:31:40So, they, other Israeli officials have come right out and said Iran was on set to have 8,000 ballistic missiles, conventional missiles.
00:31:52And that was too much of a threat for Israel.
00:31:54That's why we attack, right?
00:31:56Their long-range strike capability, their ability was becoming too much of a deterrent to Iran doing exactly this.
00:32:04So, they're essentially trying to take a window of opportunity now before Iran becomes too strong.
00:32:14That's what they're doing.
00:32:15And there's also the very high likelihood that with the new strategic partnership that Russia was going to begin building an interconnected, integrated, multi-layer air defense and electronic warfare system for Iran, you know, model after their own.
00:32:35And that was too much of a defensive threat.
00:32:40They felt the need to act against Iran, you know, before.
00:32:45I mean, that's something that would take probably a couple years at least to start building up.
00:32:51And quite obviously, it hasn't gotten very far yet.
00:32:55But that is the goal.
00:32:57They felt a growing Iranian threat, a window of opportunity.
00:33:01But ultimately, what they want is regime change.
00:33:04And they made that perfectly clear.
00:33:06That Yahoo's screaming to the Iranian people, rebel, liberate yourselves, you know, come to the streets, become cannon fodder for Israel.
00:33:17Mark, does it seem familiar to you?
00:33:20Of course it is.
00:33:21I mean, this is the U.S. playbook, right?
00:33:23Regime change, dominion, primacy.
00:33:26I mean, this is...
00:33:27You remember February, March, April 2022.
00:33:32I remember clearly they were doing the same with Russia.
00:33:39They said this is cool and war.
00:33:41This is 2020, yeah, 2022.
00:33:45When they started, they have decided to go to fight Russia in Ukraine.
00:33:51The economic side.
00:33:52You remember, Antony Blinken, you know, all the officials in Washington, they said, this is Putin's war.
00:33:58People in Russia doesn't want this war.
00:34:01Russia, Putin is invading Ukraine.
00:34:03I remember it clearly.
00:34:05And they wanted to point everything at Putin.
00:34:10They said that, and the main goal was the regime change in Russia.
00:34:15And they failed to do that.
00:34:17They went toward this more than three years of the war infiltration in Ukraine.
00:34:23The same strategy right now.
00:34:25Eight years earlier, it was much more effective in Ukraine.
00:34:29Ultimately, I believe that a much greater threat to Iran, a much greater existential threat to Iran, is not from Israeli or even Israeli U.S. airstrikes.
00:34:44It's from Israeli and U.S. the stabilization of Iran from within, right?
00:34:52There's Mossad, you know, say what you want.
00:34:57They've demonstrated again and again their capabilities.
00:35:00Not only in Iran, again, but Hezbollah, Hamas, and so forth.
00:35:05I consider Mossad a far more remarkable, you know, capable institution than I consider, you know, in its field than I do the Israeli armed forces.
00:35:20So, and, you know, of course, they're focused on a region and very particular things, but it has become painfully obvious the extent to which they penetrated Iran, they penetrated Hezbollah, Hamas to, in effect, maybe not quite as much, but obviously, you know, effective enough.
00:35:50They haven't managed to wipe out Hamas, but they have repeatedly gone after its leaders and been fairly successful with that.
00:35:59So, the big goal for the Iranian government now is survival.
00:36:06And for Russia and China, their big goal is continuance of Iran, the Iranian government surviving.
00:36:15Beyond that, the second goal of the Iranian government, after survival.
00:36:23Survival is the priority.
00:36:25The second is deterrence.
00:36:27They have to hit Israel and possibly Israel's allies back hard enough to stop the attacks and deter future attacks.
00:36:38Ultimately, it's very likely that Iran will come out of this, and if they do come out of it, they will immediately start a nuclear weapons program because it will have finally been brought clear to them that, as North Korea has proved, the only thing that saves you from a U.S. regime change operation is getting that nuclear weapon.
00:37:02And Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi can tell us of the perils of those who were not successful or gave up on that goal.
00:37:16So, a deterrent is โ John Mearsheimer has said that the very best stabilizing thing for the Middle East would be Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon as a strategic deterrent.
00:37:30And I certainly agree with that.
00:37:33Obviously, the U.S. โ the whole Middle East is extremely unbalanced in favor of the U.S. and Israel still.
00:37:41I mean, there is a genocide going on in Palestine, and no one is or really can do anything.
00:37:48Well, we could argue that the Houthis are doing something, the most moral people on the face of the earth, but they're limited capabilities for all that.
00:38:00So, now, from a pure, cold-blooded, real politic look at this, I'm putting aside my sympathy for Iran, my sympathy for the Iranian people, my sympathy for the Palestinian people.
00:38:23So, if you're in the Kremlin right now, you've got a smug smile on your face.
00:38:32Now, there are two red lines, of course, that the Kremlin doesn't want crossed, right?
00:38:38They don't want this to end up with the use of nuclear weapons, right?
00:38:43Which is, at the moment, a far off โ you know, never an impossibility, but off โ and they want the Iranian government to survive.
00:38:50But, other than that, they are perfectly happy with these events transpiring.
00:38:58Because all of the military assets, especially the U.S.'s shortaged Achilles heel air defense interceptors, that they waste more of them in the Middle East is less they have to either give to the Kiev regime or to ever use if what happens at some point devolves into an open NATO-Russia conflict, right?
00:39:26They were just wasting tons of air defense missiles and long-range strike missiles, playing whack-a-mole against the Houthis in Yemen, just like the Biden administration did.
00:39:38And what did it achieve them?
00:39:39That's why they just decided, oh, this is โ the math is not working out good here, right?
00:39:44Let's just leave, declare victory, and go away, right?
00:39:48I mean, that's what they did.
00:39:49But they wasted it a lot.
00:39:51And they'll be wasting more now.
00:39:54And that โ not only are they going to be wasting military assets that could have โ and we've โ again, we've already seen one example of this with these anti-drone missiles that were transferred to U.S. troops to help protect them for this instead of being sent to Ukraine.
00:40:12I'm sure a lot more will come about.
00:40:14But also political capital, right, for conflict.
00:40:18There's only so much appetite for that in the United States.
00:40:22And now all of the political attention, all of the focus is going to be on this and not Ukraine because Israel, because IPAC.
00:40:32You know, I mean, it's that clear.
00:40:34Another thing, because of this, because Iran is a major energy-producing country, right, and the threat that Iran continually has, their nuclear option of shutting down the Persian Gulf, the price of oil has spiked, right?
00:40:52And that's good for Russia.
00:40:55That's very good for Russia, right?
00:40:56That provides them with extra funds for their SMO, for their economy, and so forth.
00:41:03And really hurts China.
00:41:05And it really hurts โ it does hurt China, right?
00:41:08I mean, this is โ but this is โ Iran, Russia, and China are all now interconnected to a much greater degree.
00:41:18They're cooperating with each other.
00:41:20They're sharing information.
00:41:22They're acting together.
00:41:22Kellogg, the former General Kellogg, now the Trump administration's envoy slash babysitter to the Kiev regime in Ukraine for its diplomatic talks.
00:41:36He spoke just over a week ago to the media, to the U.S. TV channel, and he was talking about exactly how the geopolitical situation is different now.
00:41:51Because whereas in the 1990s and the 2000s, the U.S. could deal with China and Russia and Iran and North Korea separately, now they're all allied, you know, for lack of a better word, together.
00:42:07They're coordinating with each other, they're coordinating with each other.
00:42:09This makes it very hard to go after any one of the three without exposing yourself in painful ways to the other two.
00:42:22So you go after Iran and the price of oil spikes, right, helping Russia.
00:42:30You threaten tariffs against China, and China responds by restricting U.S. access to rare earth metals that the Pentagon desperately needs, right?
00:42:46That's their primary source for high-tech components, for their high-tech weapons.
00:42:52You come up, you back off of the trade war with China, and then you threaten bone-crushing sanctions on Russia.
00:43:00Turns out those bone-crushing sanctions, because you've already sanctioned everything, is actually secondary sanctions on the countries that still trade with Russia, principally China.
00:43:11And you're threatening, by trying to threaten Russia, you are in extent threatening 500% tariffs on China again, putting yourself back in the same situation, meaning that you can't effectively sanction Russia anymore.
00:43:28There's all of this, you try to move against one, and you're exposing yourself to the other three, and the U.S. is having a real problem with this.
00:43:36That's why they're trying to edge their way out of the conflict in Ukraine on their terms, but turn it over to Europe to deal with, because they simply don't have the bandwidth anymore.
00:43:50They don't have the capability to deal with everything at once, certainly not Russia, China, and Iran, and that's what we see here.
00:43:59Now, China, they're going to suffer from higher oil prices, but once again, all the military assets, air defense missiles, long-range strikes, if they get involved in that, that the U.S. wastes in the Middle East, that's assets they don't have to provoke a war with China in the near future in the Taiwanese Straits or the South China Sea.
00:44:29That gives China more time to build up their military to prevent, to, you know, make it so that they have such a substantial gap over the United States that the U.S. won't even ever attempt it, right?
00:44:43That's the goal, the turrets.
00:44:45The same thing with the conflict in Ukraine.
00:44:47Yes, China makes all the right words.
00:44:49We want peace.
00:44:51You know, we want a diplomatic solution and everything.
00:44:54But at some level, you have to know that there are realist people within Beijing saying, the longer this goes on in Ukraine, the more it drains U.S. and NATO of their armaments, then that gives us more time.
00:45:12So, you have this trifecta of Russia, China, and Iran now.
00:45:19Their coordination, their economic cooperation, their political and military cooperation has reached the level where the U.S. can't go after any one of the three without exposing themselves in uncomfortable ways to the other two.
00:45:35Mark, with what's going on in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and the situation in Ukraine, there is a third player that nobody seems to talk about that much.
00:45:53In Iran, they're talking about them.
00:45:54In Russia, they're talking about them.
00:45:56But when it comes to overall estimation or analysis, we don't have that much talking about these people.
00:46:05Here is what the Russian ambassador at the U.N. said.
00:46:10The current strikes about Israel, what we noticed is the information in mass media about the fact that there was likely coordination between Israel and British special services.
00:46:21Immediately after the Israeli strikes, they sheltered the Israeli aviation, which participated in the strikes in their bases in Cyprus.
00:46:30We also noticed the statement made by Israel when they said that they warned about their attacks.
00:46:37They warned Germany, JCPOA participants, and Italy.
00:46:40It also came to the fore that our American colleagues also had had information about the strikes.
00:46:48The Israeli strikes were also supported by the French, who clearly knew about them beforehand.
00:46:55The U.K. did not participate in this action.
00:46:59And let me say clearly and unequivocally that Russia's claim that British sovereign bases on the island of Cyprus were in any way involved is nonsense.
00:47:14It is deeply irresponsible at moments like this for Russia to be spreading disinformation.
00:47:21You know, it's, you know, it's, they're, they're totally involved.
00:47:28They're totally, just look at this.
00:47:30I mean, this satellite data, this flight pass, this is actually kind of undeniable.
00:47:34I don't know what disinformation she's talking about.
00:47:37Denial is policy, I guess.
00:47:39And I don't know if you saw the video in which just a week ago, a week ago, on Sky News,
00:47:48the conservative leader in the United Kingdom, Kemi Beidanoch, said that the war in the Middle East is a proxy war on the part of the United Kingdom.
00:47:59Israel is fighting for us.
00:48:01Despite what's, what have been said so far, how do you see the role of the British intelligence?
00:48:09We know that the army is not that much important, but their intelligence is so much involved in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
00:48:17And it doesn't seem that it's appreciated by the two governments.
00:48:23I'm talking about Russia and Iran.
00:48:25Maybe China is not considering that much of the United Kingdom.
00:48:29What's your evaluation on the role?
00:48:31In both conflicts.
00:48:34Yeah, I mean, the U.S. doesn't do anything without their sidekick.
00:48:38I mean, because that's the role that the U.K. has had.
00:48:41And occasionally, like with Trump, when you have a leader whom maybe isn't living up to the proper role of hegemonic master,
00:48:54then the United Kingdom occasionally plays, you know, the tail wagging the dog of doing what they can to encourage the U.S. in the right direction, right, aggressively.
00:49:08And it has to be said that the U.K. power elite, right, in the government, in the military and the intelligence services, they still have delusions that the British Empire never ended and that they're still a great power.
00:49:22Right. And they're they're playing games that are way above their pay grade and capabilities.
00:49:29All you have to do is read the British press, the Telegraph and others, and the British brag about it, that basically everything, all of the regime's operations in the Black Sea.
00:49:44Right. Whether we're talking the failed attempt at Krinke to cross the Niper and get killed in these swamps on the Russian side or their games, you know, in the Black Sea trying to destroy the Black Sea fleet, etc.
00:50:03This was all planned. This is the British baby. Right. They've they've been in charge of this.
00:50:08And they're very proud of it somehow for, you know, massacres of Ukrainians and very little effectiveness, you know, for what they've gotten.
00:50:18So, you know, they've they've been instrumental in this. They have been throughout.
00:50:25I mean, it was the British that sent the challengers first, goading other countries on, even though the challengers didn't arrive for some time.
00:50:33It was, you know, this escalation. It's it's like I don't I don't want to impugn hyenas because hyenas are really fascinating animals.
00:50:42But you've seen a group of hyenas goading each other on in their pack to go after a lion.
00:50:50Right. You know, they're all moving back and forward and snapping.
00:50:54The UK often plays this role.
00:50:58So I don't want to overestimate their capabilities, but their chutzpah, their their belief that they are at the at the center of things and that they occasionally need to act as a goad to the U.S.
00:51:15Right. To be more aggressive is there.
00:51:20Kit Klarenberg did an excellent piece in the Gray Zone talking about the role the British have had in Operation Spiderweb and other.
00:51:36Crazy plans of of dirty war against Russia in Ukraine.
00:51:46This is what David Ignatius in The Washington Post talked about last week, that that increasingly as the regime is losing on the battlefield,
00:51:56they're going to turn to what they call asymmetric warfare, unconventional warfare, dirty war, assassinations, terrorist bombings, asymmetric attacks like this Operation Spiderweb.
00:52:12That's what they're going to do.
00:52:14And they've actually trained for it in the U.S. even before Russia intervened in 2022.
00:52:20That was openly admitted in the Western press that, yeah, we were training them for future guerrilla warfare if the Ukrainian government falls.
00:52:30That was before Russia intervened in 2022.
00:52:33So they they first of all, they know exactly what they were doing.
00:52:37But the click, I actually I really strongly suggest that you try to get him on.
00:52:42And I know he's busy, but try to get him on to talk about that piece because he he got some inside information.
00:52:50And the British had just absolutely.
00:52:55Shall we say fantastic plans or absurd plans?
00:53:00They it doesn't read so much like the plans of a young man fantasize, having Ian Fleming, James Bond fantasies of operations.
00:53:17It's a little more Austin Powers, to be perfectly honest.
00:53:22One of their plans from Clint Karenberg's piece was in their plans to destroy the Black Sea fleet was to establish a brothel in Crimea, a house of prostitutes with Russian speaking Ukrainian spies who were the prostitutes.
00:53:47And they would manipulate drunken sailors to get inside information.
00:53:55This was their this was an actual plan as part.
00:53:59I mean, it's just like like crazy stuff.
00:54:02You know, that was part of their plan to destroy the Black Sea fleet, which, OK, I mean, there was a few lucky shots.
00:54:08But in reality, the Black Sea fleet has, you know, only suffered very, very minor losses over the course of this conflict.
00:54:18And Russia basically just took it off the board.
00:54:21They they moved it into Nova Resis and said, we're not using this anyway.
00:54:25We don't need it.
00:54:26This is a land conflict.
00:54:27Why why put our naval assets at vulnerability?
00:54:30But the British had these grandiose ideas.
00:54:33They seem utterly fixated on refighting the Crimean War from the 19th century.
00:54:41They seem to have an odd fixation on that, on Crimea and against Russia.
00:54:48But I think it is certainly unquestionable, you know, with the Trump administration right now.
00:54:57I mean, yes, they can't they don't have a coherent policy on anything.
00:55:01They change their minds every other day.
00:55:04But I think it's clear that the level of of Russophobia of Russia hated Russia hatred is much stronger in the British government and driving the British government right now than it is even the U.S. government.
00:55:19I think it's clear that the face of the conflict today, we know that Donald Trump talked with Vladimir Putin.
00:55:34He said that he wants to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible.
00:55:37The same thing, he doesn't have anything new to offer, but how how is he going to influence the mindset of the leadership in Russia?
00:55:50Do you think that he's going to get what he wants from Russia with the case of the Middle East?
00:55:55No, no, I mean, what are they going to threaten Russia?
00:56:02We'll overthrow the Iranian government unless you get a ceasefire and Russia will say, go ahead and try, you know, waste your assets.
00:56:10You won't achieve it.
00:56:11Right now, there appears to be a, shall we say, a rejigging of the Kellogg plan.
00:56:22The U.S. is still trying to put a ceasefire.
00:56:24They're trying to force a ceasefire.
00:56:26Why?
00:56:27Because the Kiev regime is just getting clobbered on the battlefield and they know where things are going in the next year.
00:56:32They know Russian plans for offensives, for new huge troops being put in.
00:56:38They know that, you know, the Kiev regime is close, if not to collapsing, then crumbling along various points of the front line.
00:56:46They know how bad the manpower situation is.
00:56:49They know what and what an advantage Russia has over all of NATO and the collective West in the military industrial range for this war of attrition.
00:56:59So they want to freeze this conflict.
00:57:02They want to stop it now.
00:57:04They want to preserve and rebuild their proxy regime in Kiev and fight this war again another day.
00:57:15When the Kiev regime is better prepared, when Europe is better prepared, that's their goal now.
00:57:20To preserve an anti-Russian U.S. proxy regime in Kiev.
00:57:25That's when he says peace.
00:57:27That's what he's doing.
00:57:28Now, I accept that Donald Trump doesn't like Zelensky, that he has nothing but contempt for him on a personal level.
00:57:36The same thing, Trump hates all of the European political elite for the most part, you know, exceptions like Orban.
00:57:43But he sees them as liberals who sided with his domestic political opponents, were engaged, you know, were, took part in the attempts to impeach him and to prevent him from regaining office.
00:57:54He hates them all.
00:57:55He doesn't much care for NATO.
00:57:57We know that.
00:58:00But he's still the U.S. president.
00:58:03And there are certain pressures, there are certain momentum to the hegemony that even he can't ignore.
00:58:11He needs to save a U.S. proxy regime.
00:58:14He can't be seen as weak.
00:58:16He can't be the president who surrendered Ukraine to the Russians, right?
00:58:22If he can cut a deal and he loves spinning deals to make it look like he accomplished something, you know, that that would be one thing.
00:58:31But Russia is not biting, not playing along.
00:58:33The new, there seems to have been a rejigging of the Kellogg plan for a ceasefire.
00:58:40And Kellogg has put out now that there will be a ceasefire on the current contact line with de facto people keep what they have, i.e. no more U.S. demands that they get control of the Zaporozhian nuclear power plant or that the Kinburn spit gets turned back over to the Kiev regime.
00:59:05And they're also now hinting at a removal of all sanctions against Russia.
00:59:14That's the new Sweden.
00:59:15Now, they have no ability to actually do that.
00:59:17And Russia knows that.
00:59:18That's political.
00:59:19That has to go through Congress and other things.
00:59:22And the Europeans are certainly not on board.
00:59:26But it's not enough.
00:59:30Russia has already made clear before that they have geopolitical concerns.
00:59:35That they have security concerns here.
00:59:38And they're not particularly, it's not high on their priority list to get rid of sanctions.
00:59:44In fact, there's a lot of Russians that argue that sanctions have been good for Russia.
00:59:49They decoupled the economy from the West.
00:59:51They made them independent.
00:59:53The Russian economy is growing.
00:59:55The European economy is, you know, stagnant or entering depression.
01:00:00You know, depending on, or recession, sorry, depending on which country.
01:00:04So, this is not a, they still aren't listening to Russia.
01:00:10Or they convince themselves what the Russian government says isn't what they really mean.
01:00:16Right?
01:00:17I mean, that's the mental gymnastics that they're jumping through.
01:00:21So, now that's their new plan to try to get a ceasefire.
01:00:26But, of course, that's going to fail too.
01:00:30And the Kiev regime is already insisting that they're walking away from any further Istanbul process or something like that.
01:00:39Which is fine for Russia because I believe that they're, they truly believe that no diplomatic settlement is possible that will meet their terms.
01:00:47And that they'll have to achieve them on the battlefield.
01:00:50Ultimately, with an unconditional surrender of Ukraine, of the Kiev regime in Ukraine.
01:00:55And, um, the only question left is, at the end of the day, when, when there's no longer pretending that nyet doesn't mean nyet, what does Trump do?
01:01:10Does, does he, I can't see him walking away with nothing, but does he level token sanctions?
01:01:17Does he attempt to level real sanctions?
01:01:19Does he continue armed supplies to, to the Kiev regime in Ukraine?
01:01:25These are all questions that are, of course, important to Russia.
01:01:28They're not going to change Russia's goals and motivations.
01:01:32But, going one way instead of another could make Russia, for Russia achieving those goals, the time frame, it could make it much quicker and much less costly.
01:01:43So, that's why they're continuing to play this diplomatic games, this dance with Trump.
01:01:51Yeah.
01:01:54Thank you so much, Mark, for being with us today.
01:01:57Great pleasure, as always.
01:01:59Thanks for having me, Neil.