Iran Talks or Just a Delay Tactic? /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Jeremy Scahill

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President Trump deactivates his ultimatum.

He was going to bring the hammer down about 7.45 PM Eastern time of the U.S. today.

He this morning said, no, actually we're not going to do that.

Is that evidence that there's a potential diplomatic breakthrough?

Is it just a delaying tactic to build up more combat power to try and strike Clark Island,

for example, or is Trump just in a box and he can't figure out how to get out of it.

So he decided to just buy himself more time.

All of these things we're going to discuss today and we couldn't have anybody better to

discuss it today than with Jeremy Skahill, who is a journalist at Dropsight News.

As it turns out, just before we came on the air, you have some breaking news on this

very topic.

Can you tell us what you have learned about where the Iranians are saying about Trump's

change?

Yeah, I mean, to put it really short and to use Trump's own favorite term, they're

saying it's fake news.

Daniel, what I've heard from speaking to senior Iranian officials is that over the past

two weeks, the United States has reached out repeatedly.

Steve Whitkopf has been sending text messages to Iranian officials, including the foreign

minister, asking the Iranians to engage in talks.

And the Iranians, I'm told, debated how to even deal with this and they literally ghosted

Steve Whitkopf.

They did not respond to him.

He reported that last week, the White House went nuts.

They denounced Dropsight News, accusing us of engaging in America last behavior, said

we were abhorrent, and then they went and they spun a story to Axio saying that it was

actually the Iranians that had been begging President Trump to speak.

And so, you know, this kind of played out over the past few days.

And what Iranian sources were telling me, Daniel, is that through a series of intermediary

countries, including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and also some Gulf countries, there have

been a series of messages passed on to the Iranians by the United States where, according

to Iranian officials, these third-party intermediaries have said that the U.S. wants to wrap up this

war.

And that happens while publicly Trump is saying, we're going to bomb Iran's electrical

and power infrastructure, which, by the way, would be a war crime if they did that in a sweeping

manner.

Iran then said, hey, let us tell you what we can do.

We can hit not only in Israel, but we can hit all throughout the Gulf.

And this would cause just like catastrophic shock to the global economy, which we can talk

about later.

But the most breaking stuff I have for you is that Trump today posts on truth social that

there's been this breakthrough, that he's pausing his threat to bomb the Iranian electrical

grid and other energy infrastructure, because there have been these talks going on between

the United States and Iran.

And Trump implies that he has some secret squirrel that he's talking to in Iran, and he doesn't

want to name who it is, because he doesn't want that person to be killed.

It's unclear, does he mean by Israel or by the Iranians, but what I'm told is that there

have been no negotiations, direct negotiations with the United States, and that what the

Iranian officials are telling me is that every time a third country comes to Iran, and

they say the United States wants to talk, Iran says, let us explain to you our conditions.

And in short, what the Iranians are saying is that they will not agree to the kind of

ceasefire that took place last June after the so-called 12-day war, because the Iranians

view that as having been a gimmick to buy the United States in Israel time, to rearm,

to reposition, and then come back in with this full-blown war that they launched on February

28th.

So they're saying they won't go for just a ceasefire that doesn't have conditions attached

to it.

They also want any cessation of the war, not only to apply to Iran, but to apply to

two other fronts of battle as the Iranian see it, Iraq, as well as Lebanon, where the

Israelis are increasingly engaged in ground operations, very heavy bombing, Hezbollah,

which Israel had said was wiped out, has been launching dozens upon dozens of rockets

every single day into Israel.

So they want those two countries also to be party to this ceasefire deal.

They're also saying that they want reparations paid by the United States, and they want

Israel to pay, but they don't want Israel to pay directly.

They want that to happen through the United States, because they don't want to take anything

directly from Israel.

But the other thing, and this is, I think, very relevant, it's, and many people, I know

you've made this point before, and I've heard other smart analysts make it, that because

of the way the United States and Israel have lied about the negotiations, have used it

as a veneer or a cover to then wage these wars, the Iranian position has hardened.

And what Iran is saying now is that there will be no discussion on its ballistic missile

program, that if there is a ceasefire, Iran is going to move rapidly to continue its ballistic

missile program, recognizing that it's only deterrent against the United States and

against Israel.

They're also saying, and they wouldn't go into more detail on this, that they're going

to, that they're in the process of developing a new doctrine on the nuclear question.

They didn't say, oh, we're going to go, and we want to enrich uranium to make nuclear

weapons.

But what they're saying to me is that because of the U.S. and Israel targeting their nuclear

infrastructure, because they blew up the negotiations where the Iranians had put terms

on the table that went beyond the Obama or a deal, they're saying now that they're having

discussions about developing a new nuclear doctrine, potentially in partnership with Russia

in China.

Well, that's not good news really for anyone, and that's actually this morning, you probably

saw these comments here.

President Trump was actually asked that issue about the uranium, because it's like, okay,

you can reach these deals on opening the straight-of-war moves, but that still doesn't

answer your primary issue of no nuclear weapons, especially this 400-some-odd kilograms

of reprocessed material.

President Trump said, you said you want to get the enriched uranium, how are you going

to get the enriched uranium?

It's very easy.

If we have a deal with them, we're going down and we'll take it ourselves.

So it's very easy.

Does that match with what you've heard from the Iranians out today?

No, and actually, there is some scuttlebutt that special operations forces, U.S. Special

Operations Forces have been pulling long days, potentially sketching out some conops,

some concepts of operations for potentially a raid into Iran to try to secure enriched

uranium discs, which would be madness, especially, if it harkens back to 1980 and Desert

1, when the U.S. tried to send helicopters in to free the American hostages in the embassy

there.

I mean, the idea of a U.S. Special Operations raid into Iran is just madness to contemplate,

but there is some scuttlebutt that that's at least being talked about.

The reality, though, Daniel, is that the Iranians did put on the table terms that would

have solved this issue, and Trump could have declared a major victory if he had just gone

in good faith through those negotiations.

But right now, what we're looking at is, and this is what the Iranians are perceiving

it as, that in some of the messaging from the United States, it sounds like Trump wants

the Iranians to essentially go back to what they were agreeing to in those negotiations

in February as a way for Trump to desperately cling to an off-ramp and claim victory.

The public has a short attention span, and most people are caught in this whirlwind of

lies that are being told by the White House.

But the reality is that one possible way that this ends from the perspective of the White

House is that they claim that their war got Iran to agree to some terms on the enriched

uranium.

When in reality, the Iranians were already very far along that path with actual negotiations

without the need to drop any bombs or subject any American troops to death or injury, not

to mention to subject approximately 2,000 Iranians so far to death by American and Israeli

bombs.

So, I think what's happened is that the Iranians are very, very intent on sending a message

that the costs of attempting to do this again or create a dynamic where you can bomb Iran

every few months is not going to be acceptable.

And question now is going to, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, that's going to, at least the automatic question that comes to my mind is, how can

you square this circle, I guess, with Trump this morning, and I'll show you just a second

ago where he was saying, you know, basically they've come to me and how we're going to

square the public statements and then what could come out of it?

Let me give you an example.

Here's what he said on why he has delayed his ultimatum.

Now, I think this is something that's going to happen and why wouldn't it happen?

So, tomorrow, morning, sometime, their time, we were expected to blow up their largest

electric generating plants that cost over $10 billion to build.

It's a very good one.

There was no dearth of money and one shot, it's gone.

It collapses.

Why would they want that?

So they called, I didn't call, they called, they want to make a deal and we are very willing

to make a deal.

It's got to be a good deal and it's got to be no more wars, no more nuclear weapons.

They're not going to have nuclear weapons anymore.

They're agreeing to that.

Any of that stuff is no deal.

You see, I mean, so he almost precludes to have the kind of a deal you just talked about

there because he's ballistic conditions that, according to what your sources are telling

you, they're not going to agree to.

How did we get those two things reconciled?

Well, let's also remember that Trump has repeatedly been shown to be lying throughout

this and unfortunately, as an American, I have to say, unfortunately, the reality is that

Iran has been much more transparent about what it intends to do than Trump.

What I would say is that when Trump said we're going to potentially target Iran's energy

infrastructure, the IRGC and senior Iranian officials all said, okay, if you do that,

then we're going to strike the energy infrastructure in Israel and we're going to strike the energy

infrastructure all throughout the Persian Gulf.

Those Gulf countries already are feeling like they've been totally abandoned by Trump

that they're paying a very heavy price for hosting these American bases and standing silently

by.

They don't ever criticize the US and Israel war.

They just refer to Iranian aggression and they're watching their systems given to them

by the United States get pummeled and they're recognizing that if their oil and energy

infrastructure gets pounded, this is going to set them back generations.

It's also going to have massive implications on a global scale.

What I think is far more likely is that Trump was hearing panic and anger from his buddies

in the Persian Gulf.

His advisors, particularly the military advisors, were painting a picture for him of what it

will look like when the Iranians start launching ballistic missiles all throughout the Persian

Gulf targeting soft targets of energy infrastructure.

Trump kind of concocted this pyramid of lies about the Iranians begging him.

I think this is a case where people in the White House and the Pentagon said to Trump

and the Gulf countries, if you do that, the Iranians actually do have the capacity, no

matter what Pete Hague Seth says every day when he goes in those briefings, no matter what

Trump says about every day, it's like 90% degraded, 90% degraded, and Iran carried out in

Dhamona and elsewhere in Israel.

Some of its heaviest, most devastating strikes of the war, when we've been hearing that the

war secretary saying every day how they're basically in the last throws of their missile

program.

Well, and actually what I wanted out of this is something from Dropsite News here, I folded

off early this morning.

You reported something that the IRGC said, you struck our hospitals, we did not do the

same.

You struck our emergency centers, we did not do the same, you struck our schools, we did

not do the same.

But if you struck our electricity, we will strike electricity, we are determined to respond

to any threat at the same level necessary to establish deterrence, and we will do so.

So the question isn't, you kind of alluded to this already, but what is as far as your

understanding from some of your maybe White House contacts, the implication that, well,

maybe they didn't do those things because they can't, because Pete Hague Seth said that

their diminished capacity is 90%, who should we believe here?

Yeah, I'm not a fan of just believing the pronouncements of officials, and part of the

reason why Daniel, I decided to really try to speak regularly to Iranian officials,

is that I think it's better for democracy if we have a full understanding of what is

the position of the people we're told are our adversaries.

And I think that's a tradition rooted in good solid journalism.

But I have to say that in general, I think the Iranians have been pretty transparent,

and when they've said that they are going to respond in kind to these types of attacks,

we see them doing it pretty swiftly.

And so, you know, these warnings issued by them, I don't think that they would be bluffing.

I think that the American public has been led to believe a series of lies about the currently

existing capacity of Iran.

Iran also has underwater missiles that I believe are still intact, that U.S. forces have

not been able to obliterate.

I think Trump has a real problem in the straight-of-war moves.

I think that the Iranians are probably telling the truth when they say that most of the munitions

they've used thus far are earlier generation munitions from 2010 to 2014.

I think they have hypersonic missiles that they haven't even put into operational display

yet.

And I think that Pentagon war planners are very well aware of this.

I mean, you know that scene much better than I do, but I would imagine that there are war planners

that are presenting briefings that are indicating, yes, it's true, we degraded a bunch of these

missiles, but the Iranian launchers, we haven't been able to destroy them.

Some of them are embedded in mountains, they have missile cities, they have an ability to clear

rubble from inside of the sites to put bulldozers out and clear rubble.

I don't believe that we've been told the truth about this, so if that's true, and I think it is,

then if you're a Pentagon war planner and you're listening to the political pronouncements or

what Trump wants, you know, says he wants to do, but you know that on an operational level,

the Iranians have the ability to inflict the pain they claim that gives pause.

And I think then Trump hears that, he hears from the Gulf allies, but he's also hearing,

it's not only that it's lies, there's something to it.

And this may be hard to explain, but what I, the sense I get from the Iranians

is not that there isn't any messaging going on.

What I think is happening is that the US is saying things to intermediaries,

and those intermediaries then are speaking with the Iranians.

And the Iranians, according to what they've told me, keep reiterating the same points.

So let's imagine a scenario where the foreign minister of Turkey or Pakistan or Egypt is speaking

to the Iranians, and he says to the Iranians, are you going to target energy infrastructure

in the region? And the Iranians say, we'll only do that if struck, as we've said repeatedly.

And then that foreign minister goes back to Whitcaw for Kushner or Trump or whoever,

he says, look, the Iranians are saying they won't touch any infrastructure if we don't do it.

And then Trump says, oh, here's opportunity.

So none of this is going to happen. You know what I'm, you understand what I'm saying?

I think that part of it is that the Iranians just keep saying the same thing,

and Trump is so desperate to kind of latch onto this idea that the Iranians are begging,

that he's taking anything that third countries are saying. And those third countries may be adding

their own optimism or spin on it, because they may want this to end. So what Trump is getting,

because there aren't direct talks, is filtered through the lens of either Pakistan or Egypt or the

Gulf countries, all of whom have, or Turkey, all of whom have their own agendas.

So, but I would say that we have been repeatedly lied to about how this war is going,

how damaged Iran's military capacity is, and ultimately, you know, this is all going to come out.

In fact, it comes out every night when the Iranians announce another round of missile strikes,

and they're devastating. They're actually devastating. I want to go down a path here. You say

about these intermediaries and third parties. Well, there are a few things that we have

gotten, or that you have gotten from drop-side news. I wonder if you can give us a little bit

information here. This is something that drop-side is published on the speaker of the Iran's parliament,

and he is saying that our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors,

all officials stand firmly behind their leaders, and people. This is the goal achieved. No

negotiations with America have taken place, and then you went on to do a little bit more detail

where he says no negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate

financial and oil markets to escape the quagmire that the Americans are saying. That's what the

leader of the Iranian parliament is saying. Can you give us any expansion on how much do you think

that there's evidence to support that that's what the people are demanding, meaning there is no

imminent agreement on Trump's terms that he mentioned a second ago.

You know, there's a backstory to why Galibov, the speaker of the parliament,

posted this when he did. What happened is that Trump puts out his initial statement this morning,

and the markets react. Somebody made it an enormous amount of money this morning on that.

The markets react to it in a very positive way, and then the Iranian denials start coming out,

and then the markets swing in the opposite direction, and then the White House and Trump start

getting bombarded with questions about who are you actually talking to? Because the Iranians

are saying that this is totally false. We're on a screen. You see the dramatic drop here when Trump

makes his statement at 723, and then you see it start popping around here afterwards.

Because the markets that are trying to figure out, I mean, everybody knows Trump really lies all

the time. So the markets are then trying to figure out what's going on. The Iranians are saying

something different, but there's some interesting intrigue behind the Rahlebaf, the speaker of the

parliament's tweet. So Trump then implies that he's speaking to some secret top Iranian official,

and he won't say who, and then the preferred outlet for the White House and Israel for that matter

to leak information in the American market is Axios Barakrovid. So then they start leaking a story,

Israeli official start leaking a story to Barakrovid, saying the person that the White House has

been talking to directly in Iran is Rahlebaf, the speaker of the parliament, who is a hardliner.

If you just, I invite anybody, just look at his Twitter feed, or search his recent pronouncements.

He is one of the most consistent rapid fire responders to everything that the United States has

in terms of publicly, and laying out very clear threats of if the United States does this,

we will do this. So they plant the story that it's him that they've been talking to. So he then

posts that tweet that you just cited where he's saying there have been no negotiations,

and this is fake news. Now, these stories continue to to percolate, and there are rumors

that Pakistan has offered to host talks as early potentially as later this week in Islamabad,

and they're talking about Rahlebaf, the speaker of the parliament, and other Iranian officials

coming, and then Whitkopf, Kushner, and Vice President J.D. Vance, and some of the reports have said,

oh, it's because the Iranians no longer want to deal with Whitkopf, and so Vance may come.

Now, this could be a complete concoction. It could be a total invention or figment of someone's

imagination, or it could be that there's truth to it. So when I went back to the Iranians and asked

them about this Islamabad thing, what they said today is all of the intermediary countries that

are talking to us want to host talks in their home countries. Pakistan is no different. So he wasn't

exactly saying no, this is nonsense. He was just saying no details have been worked out yet.

So I don't know what is true in any of that. I spoke to another Iranian source today who knows

the speaker of the parliament. Well, he said he doubts that he would do that. We have his

public denial. I don't get the sense from Iranian officials that they are in a state of panic.

I think that they feel like Trump is painted himself into a corner. I think that they've calculated

that their pain tolerance is higher. I think that they believe that Trump is under forces of nature

in terms of a timeline to get this thing wrapped up. And the wild card here is that Netanyahu

clearly wants to keep going. Netanyahu is saying, oh, we're going to have regime change.

And another phase of this could be that they do try to initiate some kind of internal

situation. But as far as we understand, even Iranians who were out in the streets protesting

are not down with what they've seen the United States and Israel doing. I'm sure there are some

Iranians that want that regime to be brought down. They want an overthrow of the Iranian government.

I don't doubt that. But I do think that the US and Israel have unified large segments of the

Iranian population against them. And so, you know, Netanyahu is really pushing that. But to put

it short, I think the Iranians have assessed that Trump has painted himself into a very tiny corner.

And he's desperate to find a path out. Well, I want to touch on something. You've mentioned

actually else a couple of times. I want to go down that path because they're not just his

Trump painted himself into a corner. But he's also kind of bouncing around different corners

of this small little box he's made. And it's really hard for anybody to figure this out. I want

to show you a couple of things. First of all, here is in a matter of three straight days, 20th,

21st and 22nd. On the 20th, this is Friday. President Trump says, hey, we're very close to

meeting our objectives and winding down the great military operation here with the respect to

the terrorist regime. And he goes on and lays a bunch of reasons why they completely destroyed

their missile launchers, navy and all that kind of stuff. Then the next day, inexplicably, 21st,

if Iran doesn't fully open without threat within 48 hours of this exact point, you know, America

will hit and obliterate all their very stuff. The next day on the 22nd, then he says, now with Iran,

with the death of Iran, past tense, like that had already happened, then he starts talking about

some domestic issues there. Then all of a sudden, you know, this morning, we have that issue with

taking off the 48 hours. But then in between that, here's the part I wanted your opinion on,

we had this odd duck here in Axios, did say in Trump's team, game planning for potential peace talks

with Iran. And then you get into that and there's this six point plan. And I was reading through

those six points and I'm like, well, why would Iran agree to any of those now when they had

agreed to most of them, even before the 26th, 27th of February, then you get down the third and

you find out whether there actually have been no negotiations direct between. What are we to make

of what's being said on Axios and then what's being said on the Iranian side?

I mean, the number, the number of stories that have been planted in Axios that have to get

either retracted or clarified, like in real time is astonishing. You know, Barack

ravied at Axios. He was the one a couple of weeks ago who said that an invasion had begun

with Kurdish led forces, you know, and that was completely false. And I won't even get into the

Gaza genocide and the negotiations with Hamas. I mean, they were just repeatedly Axios publishing

stories that were official leaks that turned out to be completely false total nonsense. They've

also published things about Gulf countries bombing Iran over the course of the past three weeks that

turned out to be completely false. And, you know, and there's this, there's sort of a conveyor belt

for, you know, there's wiki leaks and then there's official leaks. They're kind of the official

conveyor belt for official leaks from, you know, this administration and some of it may be testing

the waters or trying to see how, you know, how other parties react to it. But I think that

there's one common sense factor here that all of us, I think, really need to wrap our heads

around in a clear way. If Iran was to agree to the kinds of terms that Trump is stating,

there wouldn't be an independent Iranian state anymore. It would be also a total betrayal from the

perspective of the political echelons in Iran of a 40 set, what they view as a 47 year revolution

against the United States and against Israeli hegemony in the region. So for any Iranian official

to negotiate on those terms and accept those terms would basically be to say we surrender this

entire 47 year revolutionary project. I don't see that happening. I think the United States has

dramatically underestimated also the ideological and in some ways, some clear ways, religious

commitment of people that have built this project or had or don't fully understand

what the IRGC is as an entity, what its origins were, what its ideology is. And so when we don't

speak to the other side, we don't try to understand their perspective, then you end up with situations

like Trump is in right now where he doesn't know how to get out of it. And so I think that he's caught

between two sort of dynamics. One is trying to lie his way in to lucking out and getting something

tangibly he can claim as a victory or he's going to go down this heinous war crime path where it's

just we're going to start bombing their electrical grids. We're going to start just carpet bombing

cities. I really think that it's these two sort of polls right now that this guy is stuck between.

Right. And that's scary. Here's the real challenge to that. I mean, you mentioned that you know

do it on the war crimes path. I mean, we already see the USS Boxer, USS Tripoli. I think the

Tripoli arrived today. If I'm not mistaken, the Boxer is another week, 10 days away, something like

that. The 82nd Airborne Division has allegedly been mobilized. But then you have the problem that

also you have reported here on Dropsets that an Iran link hacking group has said that it published

detailed maps and coordinates of Israel's water and electric infrastructure, including layouts and

transmission data for major interstitial sites and on and on. And lots of things in there that

could be targeted if they want to. They buy all accounts, have the capacity to do this. So if the

president chooses the military path, it's virtual certainty that that target list will be executed

and it will cause incredible damage. And as I've laid out in much detail, the idea that you're

going to accomplish anything with any ground troops is absurd. And all you're going to do is

increase the casual account and increase the amount of loss for our side. So the question is

where can he go? Where can President Trump go? Given what you know from the Iranian side,

their capabilities, their statements, and our limited combat power?

You know, it's a great question. And I won't pretend that I know the answer, but I'll share with

you some sort of vignettes from conversations I've had. One thing I try to decipher when I talk

to, you know, when I talk to people on the Iranian side is, is there any wiggle room here?

Like, yes, I know what they're saying. They're saying that they need to restore long-term

deterrence. And that the only way to do that is to show that the cost of trying to repeat this is

so high. I get that. That's their official position. And I think they've conducted themselves in

that way. And I think that's been clear. And I think that they have rejected US overtures or attempts

to try to read, you know, open talks. All of that is true. So in that sense, the Iranians have been

clear and truthful about it. They are not taking an off ramp themselves. At the same time,

this can't go on forever. And certainly within Iran, there has to be a calculation about their own

people, their own sustainability as a state and as a society. I don't think that they believe

they've hit any kind of an existential threat yet in this. And if that remains true,

then I think that they that they're rhetoric about being able to continue this on for months

remains solid. But I would also imagine that there are voices within the political elite of Iran

that are having discussions about what is our acceptable endgame here. When they say,

we want all US bases removed from the Persian Gulf. That's one of the things they've put on the

table. That's one of the things that they've told intermediaries. I would imagine that Iran

knows that that's not going to happen overnight. That the United States is not going to simply

dismantle all of its military bases as part of a settlement with Iran. And yet the Iranians have

put that on the table. But maybe a way of looking at that is what they're saying is they want GCC

countries as part of an agreement to renegotiate their own relationships with the United States with

all these bases that they have surrounding Iran. So I guess what I'm saying is I don't hear any

indication at present that the Iranians have any flexibility in their negotiating position

because they don't believe that the West and Trump in particular and the United States in particular

really get it yet. That they are not going to fold. And so I don't have optimistic news to offer

you. But I'm sure that there are those discussions. They have their own war planners. They have

their own political thinkers. They have their own gaming out of scenarios. But I haven't heard

one centilla of evidence that the Iranians are panicking right now. Yes, they've taken huge losses.

The Supreme Leader was killed. Dr. Ali Larajani was killed who would have been a figure that

probably would have been one of the more flexible Iranians that could have helped bring this

war to an end. I mean, a real scholar on Kant and Arachi, the foreign minister, also a Western

educated guy with a PhD from the University of Kent. I'm sure the Israelis want to murder him.

But I don't get a sense that they're in that phase right now. I think their phase that they're

in is they feel like they have the United States in a very bad situation. And they want to keep

watching Trump fall on his own right. And let's look at a couple of other players in the region.

I know your time's limited. So I'll kind of get a lightning round here. But let's look at from the

Israeli perspective. After this news came out that President Trump had postponed his

doomsday of this 48 hour deadline, the Israeli side Benjamin Netanyahu in particular still says

we will not stop this until the Iranians know they're on the bottom and we're on the top. So

implying that I don't even care anything about what the President said this is what we're going to do.

How does how does President Trump reign that in if he wants to go to a negotiated settlement?

You know, I learned from you know, from too many years of watching how the Israelis deal with

the United States to believe that what we're seeing right now in public is the full story regarding

what's happening between Trump and Netanyahu. I mean, look at how many times through the Gaza

genocide, through this thing, the stories go, oh, there's a different the disagreement between,

you know, Trump and Netanyahu. Oh, Trump has pissed at Netanyahu. Netanyahu is upset with Trump.

Oh, Israelis are the Israeli leaders were caught off guard by this. I tend to think that that remains

largely nonsense. I do think the Israelis are probably nervous that Trump is going to cave

and decide like he just wants to take the off ramp. But I guess what I'm saying is

if you and I talk in two or three days, I think it might be clear that they were in

Khutsan something going on here that there was some reason that they rolled this thing out

the way that they did in in this manner. I do think that Trump genuinely would accept a

Delce Rodriguez type scenario if he thought he could pull it off like they got in in Venezuela.

I don't think they're going to get it from the Iranians. Trump might try to fabricate it and

pretend that the Iranians are something that they're not in that regard. But I think I, you know,

look, at the end of the day, who has really won here in a way is Netanyahu in terms of the US

Israel relationship because Netanyahu got the war that he wanted. He he's gotten a pummeling,

unleashed on the Iranian state. But I think that both the US and Israel massively underestimated

how the Iranians were going to respond and the resilience. And I think we could see if this

goes on, the death toll in Israel go much, much higher because I don't believe they have given

the public an honest assessment of the missile capacity that Iran still has left.

And you say the only winner has been Netanyahu. That's definitely a period victory because we have

combined definitely launched off on something we don't have the military wear with all to bring

to a military conclusion on any kind of terms that we want. So now that we are in a real, real

world of hurt. Can I say one thing on that, Daniel? Just what, you know, in the bigger scheme,

I mean, this is for a whole whole different story. But I think that we're going to look back

years from now, maybe even decades from now. But I think that the history that's being written

now is not going to be the history that we read, you know, 20 or 30 years or maybe even five or

10 years from now. What happened after October 7th and the way that Israel responded to October 7th

and all these wars that were unleashed in the Middle East, I think we're going to look back and

realize that this was the beginning of the end of a huge part of Israel's project. It looks like

the Israelis are running the deck. It looks like the Israelis are succeeding in everything that

they're doing. But history is funny that way. I think that they have overshot here in a very

serious way. And I think we'll look back years from now and see this as a huge historic crossroads

in the history of the Middle East. And so in the short term, yes, it looks like Netanyahu is winning.

I wouldn't bet against the long scope of history coming to a different conclusion.

And that's also about it right now. Yeah, and in April of 1943, if you just took that snapshot

right there, you had the Nazi Germany, this conquering all of the territory of Europe, they had

just won a big victory in battle on your Kursk in a tank battle. Well, a few months later,

that got reversed. But up until that point, they had this huge operational defeat of

multiple Soviet divisions. I mean, it looked like they really had a big issue here. They still had

troops in it. In North Africa, I believe at that time, they looked like at the dominant position.

But history, we now look back and say that what happened at the battle of Kursk a few months

later was the death nail. And it was even though it took another almost two years of war for

Japan to come to an end, the death nail was there. But you wouldn't have known that in April of 1943.

And I think that you're probably right. And for very practical military reasons,

looking beneath the headlines in the emotion, I'm real concerned about Israel's future that they

have embarked on. Yeah, I mean, I do think, I mean, a lot of Palestinians, when you talk to them,

about what has what has gone down, believe that Israel has doomed itself with with what it's done.

Remember, the Palestinians who Gaza didn't wave a white flag, you know, they didn't lay down

their arms and say, we, you know, we surrender. Yes, Israel currently is in control of 60% of Gaza.

But on Edel Fitter, you know, closing out Ramadan, uniformed members of Saraya al-Quds and

Qasambra Gades were in the streets passing out candy to, you know, to children showing that they

they still exist, that they're still there. And, you know, the Palestinian struggle over the past

77 years has shown that they are constantly portrayed as on the verge of elimination or

surrender. And then another chapter of history shocks the world. So, you know, I think that it

is possible that while Netanyahu thinks he's going to go down as the man who started the real

path of a greater Israel, he may be the single most influential figure in initiating the destruction

of this entire Zionist project. Yeah, well, that, that, that chapter remains to be written,

but it's not on a good path. I'll say that last question I got for you. One of the things that

is surprised a lot of people up to this point is that when the full scale war started with Iran

in, on the 20th of February, that you didn't see the, the axis of resistance, law and chin. You,

you saw, as well, it finally starts to do some stuff you mentioned earlier. But what about the

Houthis? What can you tell us about them? Because they, other than a couple of statements,

haven't really done much. What do you know? Well, remember that there is currently a cease-fire

between the United States and Ansar Allah, commonly referred to as the Houthis. And it was kind

of an extraordinary cease-fire that was signed between the US and Ansar Allah. And it was

brokered by Oman, the same people that were mediating the negotiations between Iran and the United

States up until February. And what Ansar Allah, the Houthis were able to get in that deal,

was that it was an agreement that if they don't target US ships, the US is going to stop bombing

Yemen. And that happened. And what they didn't agree to was that they were going to stop

attacking Israel. It was an extraordinary thing where Trump basically said, yeah, you don't

need to include Israel in this deal. So they have a cease-fire. And Ansar Allah has released

very strategically careful statements lately. But they're getting more, the escalation ladder

is being climbed a bit. One of the top figures in the political bureau of Ansar Allah said recently

that a zero hour may come. And that the option is on the table for them to actively enter the war.

And what that would mean is that all of these ships, this armada of cargo ships and tankers

that are on the west coast of Saudi Arabia right now, and the Saudis have opened that up

as an alternative route. They're increasing the output there. And if Ansar Allah then closes

that straight, then everything goes exponentially worse in terms of the situation in the

strait of Hormuz, because both of them are completely then shut down by access of resistance

forces. And the Iranians, by the way, are very clear. The strait of Hormuz remains open just

not to the U.S. and its allies. And they're making a deal. It's great you're putting up this

map here. So if you look at the Bab al-Mandab, that is where the Houthis Ansar Allah have implemented

this blockade in response to Israel's genocide in Gaza. And so right now there is a flow of ships

that are passing through there as long as they're not related in any way to Israel. So that is,

you know, that's a pretty free flow of traffic. If they then re-implement this blockade comprehensively

or they say nothing will come through here, then you have two fronts that have enormous implications

for the global economy and the flow of energy quantities to the rest of the world. They so far have

not gone into it. One last thing I'll tell you is I spoke a couple months ago before this war

started to a senior Iranian diplomat who said that former diplomat actually a pretty famous

Iranian. And he said, you know, no matter how many times we would ask our allies in the access

of resistance to do things on behalf of Iran, they would never do it. And he said, you know, we

wish that the way that we were painted was actually true because we've had a hard time getting

them to actually respond. And I think one of the things you've seen now that is quite extraordinary

is coordinated operations between Hezbollah and Iran on a pretty ongoing basis. And I would

imagine there are active discussions with Ansar Allah about doing the same. My guess, this is just

a guess, but it's an informed one, is that Ansar Allah is willing to enter the war. It's not that

they're afraid or they're sort of calculating. I think it's possible that the Iranians have asked

them to hold off for now because Iran has said they have other surprises in store. So it could be

that the Iranians recognize that as a serious card they could play. And I think it's possible that

that's part of the strategic calculation of why Ansar Allah hasn't gotten in. But we could wake up

any day and hear an announcement from the leader of Ansar Allah saying they've reimposed the blockade.

It could happen. But no, today it hasn't. Hezbollah. Well, that's fascinating. And thank you so much

for sharing that. We value your time here. Thank you so much. I know you got a lot of other stuff to

do to not there in London. I think you are. We appreciate that. And listen, tell everybody I

recommend anybody go to dropside news. That's one of the more accurate, honest and unbiased new

sites that I've seen out there. I check with it all the time as you've seen on our show here.

So really kudos to you and appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for all your work and for

your voice. Our pleasure. Listen, we got speaking of voices. We got Iranian professor Miranda

on with his Mohammed Morandi who's going to be on in about 20, sorry, about 20 minutes, 18 minutes

from now. And he's going to give us some additional inside information into what is the Iranian

leadership thinking? Where is their track year? You've just heard some of the comments from some

of the statements. Professor Miranda will have some inside information of what they're thinking and

where things could go next. Never want to miss in him. He's always a very entertaining person.

Listen to and always has some good insight. We'll see you then in about 16 minutes on the Daniel.

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