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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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Daniel Davis Deep Dive
