Jeffrey Sachs: Iran War Could Escalate Into Nuclear War

Welcome back. We are joined by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss how the war in Iran may be spiraling out of control, but also how it's possible to put an end to it.

So thank you very much for joining us again from Malaysia.

Great to be with you, Glenn, as always.

So Israel has what is often referred to as the Samsung option, that is it's considered to be the last resort if Israel faces an existential threat that is to use nuclear weapons against its enemies.

So this is dangerous because the US and Israel seems to be exhausting their arsenals including their interceptors and the situation is not just deteriorating but it's escalating very quickly.

And I saw that Israel in newspaper Harats reported that one of Trump's top advisors David Sachs warned that Israel could be destroyed and under these conditions Israel could use nuclear weapons against Iran.

So I was wondering how you assessed this like a spiral of escalation and the possibility of this actually going, yeah, pulling into a nuclear war.

Yes, David Sachs, no relation to me by the way, but a friend said a couple of days ago that Trump should declare victory and go home.

And he was speaking essentially as a Trump advisor, he's the AI Tsar in the White House. So he advises on digital and AI policies and he's an influential observer.

He wasn't predicting a nuclear war and he wasn't saying we're at that juncture, but what he was saying is if this just continues, it will be awful.

And he was saying to his boss, Donald Trump, just go home. That was the message, just end this. This is a debacle, but call it a victory. Trump easily does that, but don't pursue this more.

It's leading to worse and worse for the reasons that you said on the economic side, the risk of global calamity is absolutely growing day by day, no matter how they try to talk calm to the markets, no matter how they talk about releasing emergency reserves from the strategic oil reserves.

The fact of the matter is people can do arithmetic. The straight-up hormones is closed. The release of 400 million barrels of oil, which was what was announced, is roughly 20 days of normal flow through the straight-up hormones.

Not very impressive, actually, for what looks like could be a deadly, long crisis and disaster, not only because the straits are closed, but because production of oil and gas is shutting down, and the physical facilities, one after another, are being destroyed right now in the tit-for-tat fire between the U.S. and Iran.

And so this is why David Sachs advised his president whom he serves, just stop and go home, since Trump lives in a delusional world to begin with.

We can declare victory. He can say how wonderful it is. Look at how many people we murdered. Look at how many leaders we killed. Look at how much infrastructure we destroyed. Remember last summer, he declared victory and went home. Of course, it was absurd then as well.

But this is the option. What David Sachs was saying is that that is actually the best security for Israel as well. That's not only the right thing to do from the point of view of the world economy, the right thing to do from the point of view of U.S. security, but the thing that would keep Israel safest as well.

In other words, this war is to nobody's advantage. It's a pure lose, lose, lose all around, lose for Israel, lose for the United States, and lose for the rest of the world. And especially, of course, Iran and the Gulf countries.

I spoke a bit with David Sachs on email. I've been trying to get him on the program. It seems like a good guy. But I was thinking as well that if the U.S. actually escalates one step further and go after Carg Island and Iran retaliates against the energy installations across the Gulf states, it doesn't really matter anymore if the straightover moose is open if everything is inflamed and destroyed.

And of course, it's going to take much more than 20 days. And I also thought the same by opening the strategic reserves. It doesn't communicate a lot of confidence either when one is willing to depleted such an extent.

But you, with your colleague, you wrote, that is you and civil affairs, you wrote about the five steps which Trump could take to put an end to this war, essentially off ramp, which David Sachs advocated for.

So if Trump reads it or calls you or listen to this podcast, what are these five steps you would advise?

Well, one is you's not going to call. And maybe David Sachs will read it. If I could interject very quickly. At one point before he got elected now, he actually tweeted out a video of you when you were talking about the Middle East. So he, you know, I'm glad he listens to recent, but sorry for you.

And that was a video that warned about Netanyahu. I said that is one dark person. I used a little bit less temperate language, but I said that this is one big problem.

And Trump tweeted that out at the time, a mystery. But what I said turned out to be absolutely right, which is that not only is Netanyahu, Mr. Genocide, but now he is putting the whole Middle East in flames.

The whole world is going to come very soon to understand Israel created our global economic crisis. It's not going to be good for Israel security, this kind of approach. So yes, Mr. Trump didn't tweet that out. Maybe he can listen to somebody to tell him.

Culture losses, declare them a victory in your own way. That's your business, but don't drag us into disaster. This is the point. Now what I and my colleague, a civil Ferris recommend is a real end to the conflict in the Middle East because we say that there are interlocking parts.

It probably won't happen. We stress that in the article. We're not naive optimists. We're just saying that the way you make peace is to recognize everybody's security interests. That is also the point about Ukraine since Russia's security interests are never recognized. There's no peace.

The same in the Middle East, if you want peace, which most normal people in the world, I'd say all normal people in the world do, then you recognize everybody's security interests. What are Iran's security interests not to be bombed repeatedly by Israel and the United States and not to have Netanyahu say for 30 years overthrow that government.

It's okay. It can't be more simple than that. The US and Israel need to stop their brazen, blatant, illegal armed aggression against Iran.

This is not even a preemptive attack because Iran wasn't attacking anybody. This is just a brazen, naked aggression. And it's the essence of the violation of international law. So that was point number one.

Point number two, Trump says every day, I need to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

I don't know whether this is fattuous, whether he's so ignorant, he doesn't understand what he does or whether it's a gain, but the simple point is there was such an agreement.

And you, Mr. Trump, ripped it up. Of course, that was the joint comprehensive plan of action negotiated in 2015 between Iran and the permanent five members of the UN Security Council.

Not just the United States, but Russia and China, Britain, France and the US and Germany and then ratified unanimously by the UN Security Council.

And the essence of it was to underpin the Supreme Leader's religious command that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon because the Supreme Leader said this is against our faith.

And so Iran put itself under scrupulous inspection and honored the agreement. It was the US that ripped it up. Trump in 2018.

I don't know if he remembers the man on the surface remembers nothing, learns nothing, knows nothing.

But I don't really know whether he remembers that he ripped up the agreement that accomplished exactly what he said.

Maybe he can remember that the Iranians said again last year and this year they don't want a nuclear weapon. They want to have a negotiated agreement. They want to be under UN scrutiny.

Maybe I doubt it, but maybe he could find an aide to let him know what the Omani mediator said the day before they killed all the leadership, which was we made great progress and we're going on to an extra round of negotiations in Vienna because the Iranians don't want a nuclear weapon.

And so this is the second point is, yes, it's not even hard, Mr. Trump. It's never been the issue with Netanyahu. It's not about the nuclear weapons. It's about overthrowing the Iranian government. That has always been his dream.

The third point is to open up the straight of Hormuz. And that is not by Trump. Hitifully, pathetically, demanding NATO do this, China do this to get him out of the incredible mess that he and Netanyahu have created for the world.

It's something for the Gulf Cooperation Council. That is the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and Iran to work out bilaterally. And what is needed is for the Gulf countries to say that they are taking sovereignty of the military bases in their territory.

And those bases will never be allowed to be used in aggression against Iran. So that's how to get the straight of Hormuz opened up again. It's the Gulf countries on one side. It's Iran on the other, all Islamic nations, all part of the organization of Islamic cooperation.

In fact, both the United Arab Emirates and Iran are part of the BRICS countries. It's not even hard for them to agree with each other. The mistake that the Gulf countries made was to hand over their sovereignty to the United States as if that's some kind of protection for them.

But what they should do now, seeing that there's no protection to having these bases is to reassert sovereignty over the bases in their country and to agree with Iran.

The straight will open and these bases will never be used against Iran.

The fourth plank is the one that is the one that is so obvious, but the one that is actually the cause of all the wars of the last 30 years.

And that is that Israel needs to return to its borders of the Fourth of June 1967 so that a state of Palestine is created in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

And the internationally recognized borders. And this is what Israel has gone to war repeatedly to block. And this is the basic point of all of these wars, including this one.

Why is Netanyahu dreamt for 40 years of overthrowing the Iranian regime? Why is Netanyahu been part of every war in the Middle East?

Because his doctrine is that Israel will control all of Palestine and with some of his zealot partners, even more part of Syria, part of Lebanon, part of who knows what?

Because according to the U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who is another part of this disaster, Israel has the right to all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, says Ambassador Huckabee.

Okay, well, the whole reason for all these wars from the Israeli point of view is they've said there will never be a state of Palestine.

We'll kill them, we'll expel them, we'll rule over them in a partied state, but there will never be a state of Palestine.

And any government in this region that backs the Palestinians, we will overthrow.

That is the so-called Clean Break doctrine of Netanyahu that has been in place for 30 years.

So the fourth plank is a state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.

And you know what? Israel has no veto over that.

The reason it doesn't happen is the U.S. and the U.S. alone.

This was voted in the Security Council last year.

And the year before, the U.S. blocks this. This is simple. People should understand.

Almost every country in the world says, of course, there should be the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.

But the U.S. uses its veto in the U.N. Security Council to block that.

So that's the fourth plank. Enough of this.

This is the most basic point. And Israel got insanely greedy, or insanely zealous, depending on who exactly we're talking about, to say we get 100% of the land.

You know what we're talking about for this Palestine right now? It's 22% of what was British mandatory Palestine.

And Israel says, no, not even 22% for what is half the population. Not even 22%. We demand everything.

That's why we're a non-stop war.

So that's the fourth point. And the fifth point is that with a state of Palestine established and welcomed into the United Nations as the 194th member state,

Hamas has blah and any other militant groups will be disarmed. They will disarmed.

And they will disarm because all of the region will insist that they disarm, and so will the U.N. Security Council.

And that will be, and they will disarm because the state of Palestine will be created.

And this is how to make peace. So what blocks this? What blocks this is a coalition of Israeli supremacism, of Israeli apartheid, of Israeli violence that goes back to Netanyahu and his party, the Lakoud,

which in its founding charter in 1977 says that all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will be Israeli sovereignty.

That's why all of these wars across the region have raged because that basic fact is against every standard of international law and decency.

And countries have supported the Palestinian cause, and therefore Netanyahu and the United States have gone to war to overthrow those governments that have supported the Palestinian cause.

I like this five step, but also like here a focus on indivisible security, though, because I think this goes at the heart of what is required as well, because states they compete for security and weapons for one state is often security for one is insecurity for another.

So you have two ways of producing security either you have indivisible security where we elevate our common security. In other words, you know, I don't point a gun at you to have more security for me.

This is one invisible security alternatively one can pursue hegemonic peace in this you don't care about indivisible security. You have one dominate to such an extent, no one can even dream of challenging it.

I think this is the Iran source of the Iran war, but it's also the Ukraine war if we just accept that the hegemonic era is over just as a matter of fact the distribution of power has shifted.

Then we would have to essentially restore the principle of indivisible security. Otherwise, if one wants hegemonic peace again like the 90s, one has to restore it.

That means defeat Russia, defeat Iran, defeat China, and you know, I would read China, Israel's clean breaking to this because you know, when it merged in 96, this is part of the hegemonic era that is a abandoned diplomacy and compromise instead go for everything because you're backed up with overwhelming military force and that is exactly right.

And this is the delusion that such overwhelming force exists. It's immoral. That's another matter, but it turns out to be disastrous to hold such delusions.

The United States held those delusions in Ukraine because we should remember the Ukraine war started with the United States attempt to assert its hegemonic over Ukraine.

It was the doctrine of the neocons. We're going to expand NATO anywhere we want up to Russia's borders surrounding Russia in Georgia, in the South Caucasus, in Ukraine around the Black Sea. That's our business. We are the superpower.

Well, Russia had different thoughts about that, but that's where that war came from because no one cared to listen to Russia's security concerns at all. And that's still true today. It's a blank wall to talk to any European leader that Russia has legitimate security concerns.

Okay. And now in the Middle East, it's exactly what you say. Netanyahu thought, well, I got the easy plan. I don't have to compromise on anything. We win because we have the United States.

And their famous clips of Netanyahu explaining to, I don't even know who he's talking to, we own the Senate, we own the Congress. We can get the United States to do what we want.

The truth is our crazy CIA and military as well have delusions. So they see Israel's hegemony in the Middle East is just fine because it's part of America's global hegemony.

What's happening right now in paradise, Trump thinks I'm going to corner every export of oil, Venezuela. I'm going to demand the Mexico behave itself. I'm going to take over the Americas as he's explained. I'm going to take over the Middle East. I'm going to choke off Russian oil through sanctions. I'm going to decide who gets energy in this world.

Well, this is a madman thought. It leads to global disaster, but it's exactly that hegemonic idea. I don't have to deal with anybody. We don't have to discuss with the run. We just have to kill him. That's all. And that's what they think they're doing right now. And it not only is it murder, but it doesn't work to achieve your own security. Israel is at far greater risk than it's ever been because of this.

And so is the United States at grave risk because our risk is nuclear war and we keep pushing the world closer to nuclear war through these actions of not respecting even in discussion, the security interests of the other side. It's the same in Taiwan. We say we're going to send arms as we like to Taiwan.

China says, excuse me, Taiwan is part of China. Do not send arms on your own. That for us is a red line. The United States filled with the idiocy that it is the recklessness that it is. We don't have to listen to them. It's our business. We are the United States of America. And by the way, it's Trump, but it's also the CIA. It's also the congressional armed services committees. It's also the arms contract.

It's also Silicon Valley. They all have this illusion of we don't have to take into account anyone else's concerns. And that's what's leading us to the disaster.

This is a last question. I do make sense of the way that Iran was underestimated because you worked with a lot of state leaders around the world to see how they work their strategic thinking their considerations.

How could it be that we have the reports suggesting that Trump dismissed the likelihood of Iran closing the straight of our moves, which should have been the most predictable thing. The attacks on the US bases seems to be underestimated the weapons that Iran has at its disposal or the belief that killing harmony would collapse the government and make people pouring to the streets with American flags.

And essentially also now the assumption that the threats will make Iran capitulate even though they see this in an existential fight.

I'm just wondering how they got it this wrong. Is this just hubris or is this disconnect with the intelligence community?

I don't have seen this in previous wars. There always been mistakes, but this seems to be something very, very different.

Well, remember the Iraq War, for example, how every single thing was wrong, every prediction about the cakewalk that we were going to have and how democracy was going to come and so on.

And there was an interesting interview in 2004. I think it was a time magazine reporter if I remember correctly in a White House official, maybe Karl Rove, I'm not absolutely sure.

But he was asked about the reality of the situation and the response from the White House is, excuse me, we create our own reality.

And this is part of the issue, which is when you are so powerful and arrogant, you just think we'll make it work.

Trump didn't know what he was going to do after the first hour, but he said, we'll make it work. It's complete improvisation.

Of course, the real lessons are that these are disasters. It said that it took 20 years for the United States to go from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

So that was a 20-year effort. And they credit Trump that it took nine days to go from harmony to harmony. So this is American efficiency.

In other words, we're not accomplishing anything. We're going around in circles, killing a lot of people, spending a lot of money. Maybe that's part of the point because they want to spend a lot of money.

That is a profits for somebody and losses for all the rest of us. But I think the main point is we don't even have a process in the security state right now.

The United States planning on anything has collapsed. We're just in improv mode. We have a psychologically unstable president.

We have a constitutional process that is over because Congress does not use its constitutional, I mean, it rejects using its constitutional authority and responsibility.

And I can tell you in every area that I know of, there's no thinking going on. There are no reports. There are no studies. There's no careful scrutiny. There's no review.

It's improvisation. It's flailing around. So frankly, none of this surprises me. We don't even have minimal processes of thought. We have a president who just makes up things as they go along.

And you end up with everything fake and then desperation. Oh, NATO has to come to our aid. Even China, which was the target of much of this, has to come to our aid. Where are our friends? Says Donald Trump.

My God, a five year old would show more self-awareness and responsibility, frankly.

And I'm thinking with all the religious advisor who comes to his office, he should have known that Pride comes before the fall or that God opposes arrogance.

But he has different religious advisors, it seems so.

Anyways, it's late over there in Kuala Lumpur. So thank you very much for taking the time. I was very much appreciative. We'll see you soon.

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