Behind the News, 5/14/26

[Music] Hello and welcome to a norm restoration edition of Behind the News. My name is Doug Hennwood, two guests, two segments, but one topic. The war on Iran and the politics of the wider Middle East. We'll hear from Blale Kaleili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, and frequent behind the news guest, Mawin Robani, expert in all things Middle Eastern. Amazing times. Two marquee names of the old war-mongering Neocons school have published some shocking material over the last week. Robert Kagan, one of the leading architects of George W. Bush's new American century, who like to say things like "Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus," says the US has suffered a world historical defeat, worse than Vietnam, at the hands of Iran. And Max Boot, a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, and like Kagan, an explicit proponent of American Empire, did an interview with a CIA alum who says China has now surpassed the US militarily. What's going on? To attempt some answers to that question, we're joined first by Lala Kaleili. Lala has an impressive array of expertise. Unusually for an academic, she's Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter in England. She's had a wide variety of experience outside the ivory tower. Her undergraduate degree isn't chemical engineering, and she worked for several years as a management consultant. She was on the show back in August 2020 to discuss her book "Signus of War and Trade," a history of the role of shipping in the economic development of the Arabian Peninsula, which provides an excellent background for understanding the role of oil tankers in the war of Iran. I apologize for my ignorance about the history of the straight-of-form moves. You're of Iranian origin, you weren't born there, but you spent a lot of time there as a youth. What are your thoughts watching the country under attack after all these decades of relentless demonization? It's actually quite difficult to watch the devastation that is wreaked upon Iran, and then to see the sort of fantasies of Iranian expatriate about the possibility that somehow a savior that is supported by Israel or the US are going to come and rescue Iran from devastation. It is completely and entirely predictable what was going to happen. This is basically Iraq Redux in the sense that the US and in this instance, really Israel thought that they could parachute in some princeling and do what they need to do and kind of raise the ground of Iranian institutions the way they did in Iraq. I think that they actually drank their own Kool-aid in the sense that they really didn't have very good intelligence. They may have had people on the ground. They obviously seem to have had Israel in particular, seems to have had drone bases inside Iran and we discovered yesterday from Wall Street Journal that they've had a base in Iraq for years. They thought that they would be able to muster some internal breakage the way that they did with his Wallain Lebanon. I think both Iran's ability to hold them off and the way that they have managed to respond has actually taken me by surprise. The other stuff is of course completely predictable. The devastation that is wreaked by the US and Israeli bombings, the fact that it is the assassination of all the heads of state which is absolutely shocking, has actually led to the empowerment of some of the more unrelenting and perhaps more radical members of the regime, the consolidation of the power in the hands of the revolutionary guard who were already very ascendant is more or less complete. This is what the US also did in Iraq when they went in in 91 and then put Iraq under sanctions as they've strengthened the hand of Saddam Hussein. The major miscalculation here is that Iran is vastly larger than Iraq. It has a vastly more functional set of institutions and despite the incredible fissures inside the country which has driven some people into the arms of Israel and the United States, the Iranian nationalism has played itself in the sense that some of the people that were against the regime have rallied behind at least the state, if not the regime, in trying to challenge this attacks from the outside. And people in Iran are traumatized, traumatized from the killings in January by the state and by relentless bombing and by the misrepresentation of their lives and their livelihoods and who they are and what they want in the press both at home and abroad. It's a really demoralizing thing. It's not a lovely regime. But what is your advice and how to make that point without feeding the imperialist agenda? The main advice that I have is that right now as the bombing is going on, I think the focus needs to be on the fact that the United States is the most malignant empire in human history and that is at least since the end of the Second World War, what the devastation and death that it has wreaked upon Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, not to mention a number of other places in the Caribbean and in Africa is basically horrendous. There's no redeeming factor in that. There is no cloak of democracy or goodness or whatever that can pretoffize this empire. And then when it comes to Israel, Israel is a state that is basically at this point completely rabbit and what it has wanted since 1948 was complete and total domination in Eastern Mediterranean, no matter what the liberal Zionists may say. And it has now been given a card loan, not only by the United States, which is it's basically a settler colonial mother, but also by the Europeans to do whatever the hell it wants to do. So it is basically that destroyed Gaza and the genocide against Palestinians there. It has destroyed Lebanon. It's constantly punishing it. There yesterday, there were 40 people that were killed there. It has devastated Syria. It has annexed the whole bunch of Syrian land and it is alongside its allies in the United Arab Emirates. It's also wreaking havoc in other parts of the region. The fantasy that somehow Israel was going to be this wonderful supporter of Iran is basically a delusion and this is all horrendous. And so I think that this has to be really seriously recognized. I also think that it is absolutely horrendous that Israelis are boasting about the fact that they had Mossad agents on the ground in Iran because basically what they're trying to do. And I do think that they're doing so consciously is to try to polarize the situation to create a backlash by the regime, which the regime is happy to do, as any regime would be about when you find that there are spies amidst your opposition members. And they're basically trying to turn Iranians against one another. They've said so. It's really, really grim. They want to fail state. They want a society in chaos. Exactly. Exactly. What they want is they want a repetition of what happened in Iraq. A weekend state, which allows Israel to be dominant where Israelis could have a secret base. And nobody bats an eye. You mentioned the UAE. What is your understanding of what the interests and preferences of the Gulf states are right now? This is also really fascinating to me. I'm going to begin by talking about the whole of the Gulf as a whole. And perhaps the most important actor there, which is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is obviously has the largest economy in the Gulf. It has one of the largest populations. And it's fascinating to me that the former head of Saudi intelligence yesterday published an op-ed in Arab news, in which he basically called out, not only Israel, in trying to drive a wedge between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but also in a kind of a sub-tweet, if you will, mentioned Arab states that are rearing to have a war admonishing Abu Dhabi. There, what we're seeing is that Saudi Arabia wants a status quo extent, even though they were, for example, funding Iranian International, which is the satellite television station, which a lot of Iranians watch, which supported Pahlavi Prinsling. Then their Qatar and Oman, both of whom are home to some of the more important US bases in the region. But both of whom have a long history of collaboration with the Islamic Republic. Oman, in particular, has come out very clearly in trying to stop any kind of US attacks. They try to even prevent it before this current round of attacks started on 27th, 28th of February. Bahrain is very rapidly anti-Iran as is Abu Dhabi. But what is fascinating to me is that although we talk about the United Arab Emirates, there are also fissures inside the United Arab Emirates itself, where Abu Dhabi, which is the little sparder, as former US general, Madison said, and it closest ally right now of the Israeli state. Yet, you bought the rumors floating around on Arab Twitter about how the Emir of Sharja and some of the other Emirates wanted to actually break out from the UAE, that they did not like the direction of that Abu Dhabi was going. And there was some contention online as to whether the Emir of Dubai was sub-tweeting and he was tweeting in this instance, whether he was sub-tweeting the Emir of Sharja. or Sharja or the Amir of Abu Dhabi when he was talking about divisions in the unity of the Emirates. So there's obviously stuff going on that we're not seeing. And there's a lot more variation in the way that these Emirates and kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula are reacting to the US war. I think the other thing that is really important is to recognize that a lot of these places were looking to the kind of, I hate to use the term that security won't use. The security umbrella that the United States provided as a way of instituting the economies that for example Dubai had around tourism and finance or Abu Dhabi had around, you know, the same sorts of stuff. I kind of a financial petrodollar state quite luxurious living reliant on the labor of migrant workers. Absolutely everybody now agrees that most of not most all of these Arab states have felt to some extent betrayed by the United States. And the fact that they felt that the US took the interest of Israel and ran with it. And that might also explain part of the reason why they're also pissed off at the Amir of Abu Dhabi because it seems that the Al-Nahian, the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, seem to have thrown their lot in with Israel at the expense of all of the other rulers of the Arabian Peninsula. The US security guarantees are looking pretty worthless now. The US security guarantees the solidity of the dollar denominated global trade never mind the international institutions which allowed the US had Germany to work outside of domination. What Trump has done is like been the fantasy of every anti-imperialist. He's shot the US in the US empire in the foot. And of course while I'm celebrating the demise of the empire, we all know that an empire in decline is actually like a injured beast, the bloodshed that is going to come out of this. And what the Israel is going to try to rest because of course, Israelis are also realizing that their primary patron is weakened. So what they're going to try to rest from the US and from the region before the US is in terminal decline is going to be absolutely horrendous. I'm speaking with Lale Khalili, professor of gold studies at the University of Exeter. Let's talk about some things you've written on. Trade and shipping. The Strait of Hormuz or the Straits of Vermouth is best in said the other day. It seems surprising that this passage of water never really emerges a vulnerable choke point that turned out to be. Has it just never come up before or are we just learning about it? Oh my god, no, no, no, no. Hormuz has always been considered a really significant choke point. In fact, a huge amount of US security sort of thinking basically since Kissinger actually maybe even before Kissinger maybe actually since the nationalization of Iranian oil in the 1950s has been about the safety and security of the Hormuz Strait. And of course in the Iran-Irach war, which took place between 1980 and 1988 and the latter four years of that war, the tanker wars happened, which it's really strange for me that they have been basically memory hold in the US because the tanker wars, which started when Iraqis, under Saddam's regime were given superatundard planes by the French and exosat missiles. There was a stalemate going on between Iran and Iraq on land. There was a kind of an attritional war going on at the border. Saddam's regime in Iraq decided that what they wanted to do was to change the balance of power and Iraq's maritime posture by attacking any tankers that were lifting oil from the carc or laryk island, islands where there are oil terminals, Iranian oil terminals. And they started attacking them and Iranians did exactly what they have done this time, which is that for every attack that you do, we'll do another one in response and they did a tit for tat. And this went on for a couple of years and it was particularly affecting Kuwait in part because Iranians for every attack against one of their oil terminals, they would attack the Kuwaiti oil terminals because Kuwait at that stage was actually the biggest and most significant outlet for Iraq and they had lent a ton of money also to Iraq, they were supporting Iraq. In fact, the subsequent Iraq invasion of Kuwait was really in response to the fact that they felt beholden to Kuwait because for everything that it had done for them during the Iran-era war. Nevertheless, Kuwait comes to the United States and to the Soviet Union and says our shipping is in danger, our oil is being cut off, Hormuz straight is being effectively closed off to us, you need to come and flag some of our ships to the US or Soviet flag so that the Iranians won't attack them. And the US was of course very wary of Soviet Union gaining a foothold in warm waters that was a concern at the time. And so they decided to flag Kuwaiti shipping, Lao Kuwaiti ships tankers that were carrying oil to fly the US flag. In effect, by all legal measures, by all legal writing of the time, even the military folks, military legal folks in the US were saying this, this essentially made the United States a belligerent in the war and it made it a belligerent on the side of Iraq. Because the US then starts attacking the Iranians, not the Iraqis for the attacks and the tankers. Over the course of the four years, where the two countries were engaged in these tanker wars, something like 450 tankers were hit, most of which were hit by the Iraqis, about 60% of them were hit by the Iraqis. But the US was actually bombing the Iranians. And so there is actually a long history of this. In fact, the pipeline that the Saudis built between the Gulf and the Red Sea was built in response to the possibility of the closure of Hormuz. For years and years and years, the openness of Hormuz has been on the list of reasons why the Gulf matters to the US security apparatus. And so this 20% of the world's oil goes through that straight. And so this energy corridor is incredibly important. The other thing that we all learned once this war started was that it's not only important for oil. It's also important for things like byproduct refining, like urea and ammonia, which are used in fertilizers, helium, which comes out of processing of natural gas. Helium is really important for MRIs, but also for making semiconductor chips. The Middle East or the Gulf countries also produce a very significant amount of aluminum in the world. That has been cut off sulfur, which is also a byproduct refining has been cut off. And of course sulfur acid is really important for smelting copper. We've learned that the Gulf is not just about oil, that the state of Hormuz is incredibly significant space through which huge amounts of material that are important to the day-to-day work of life and work of commerce and work of agriculture and industry. It is critical to the trade in those things. It was amazing to see a senior banker at the Mokin Conference in Beverly Hills the other day, according to the FT saying, who cares if this trade Hormuz is closed? I know. What are these people thinking? To me, it's really interesting. If I ever find time, I want to write actually a historical account of how the sort of derivatives trading emerged in the wake of nationalization of oil. It was a way that the sort of the losses of the nationalization of oil could be recouped in the global north by the oil companies and their pals that had lost so much oil reserves in the region. In fact, what you're seeing is this idea that somehow the future trading in oil is going to be is enough. And this is like, it's quite funny to see how actually they are caricatures of what the stuff that marks road in Thus Capital. This is like fictional capital, money as a fiction, as a fabulation, playing out right there at the Mokin Conference. It's nuts. What will this do to shipping in the region? How feasible are alternatives to this route? Are they being developed? A really good question. So what is this doing to the shipping in the region is one of the things that has been quite clever in the Iranians have done it. And the Ansara Allah, or the Houthis also did it in Yemen, is that they operationalized the vulnerabilities of the global commercial networks in order to extract the price from their enemies. And the way that they did that is by providing such a credible threat to shipping that insurance companies increase the war risk premium to such a level that for example, if you have a 200 or 300 million dollar ship, your insurance goes from hundreds of thousands of dollars per day or per journey to millions of dollars per day or per journey. And so I think just becomes unaccompanied completely unaccompanied. There's of course also the danger to the shipping itself and the alternatives that are being developed were already to some extent in development, some of some of the more pipelines. For example, Saudi has, as I said, the east west pipeline that goes between the Gulf and the Red Sea. But in effect, if oil is being produced in the Persian/Arabian Gulf basin, I'm not sure what alternatives there are. Pipelines are really hard to scale up to the degree that they need to. That big pipeline, east west pipeline in Saudi, nominally has 7 million barrels per day. But in actuality has actually only been carrying about 4 million barrels per day. And the amount of oil that used to go through the straighter form is this 20 million barrels per day. So it's not very easily replaceable. It's funny that Trump in addition to undermining US empire in the ways that no anti-imperialist ever could has done more to promote alternative energies. Indeed indeed. Although it is important also to point out the war has been an incredible windfall for oil companies, particularly those in the Western hemisphere or in West Africa for example, which are not affected by the closure of farmers. But yes, you do see this incredible rise in people shifting to sustainable forms, solar or wind outside the US. And in the US, the amount of oil production that various US companies, exons and chevrons are engaged in, has been ramped up, although not to the extent that Trump has been begging them to do. And part of the reason that they don't want to ramp it up is because this would require an investment and they don't, given how incredibly mercurial the Trump administration and not just Trump himself. But the administration itself has been in terms of actually indicating what sort of plong term plans it will have. These oil companies don't want to sink a huge amount of money into additional production when the war could end in two weeks when Trump is completely entirely bored of it. So there's that element of it as well. We are seeing oil companies making money hand over fist, but then they always do from every crisis benefits them. So Trump keeps making noises about how wrecked Iran is, but it just won't fold. In fact, it looks contrary to Trump, like it holds many, if not all the cards. So how do you evaluate the balance of forces here? I would have never guessed that somebody like Robert Kagan, who is that was a stunner. I got to say. Yeah, the, the, the, the Iranians had managed to force the US into a stalemate, although it was really fascinating for me because he really did do a very clear and sort of systematic study of the balance of forces. The problem here is that yes, if you're looking at this geopolitically, Iran does seem to be holding the cards and it is probably going to arrive at, let's say that they come to some kind of an understanding, perhaps a permanent temporary ceasefire where you go from month to month or week to week and then the Iran continues to control the straight-of-formers. And it comes to some sort of a modest vendee with what its Gulf neighbors, which benefits it financially, which I think most of the Gulf oil producers are probably quite happy to pay the necessary fees if they need to for a time at least. Geopolitically, this has also been fascinating because of course this is proven to China and to everybody else that the US is in the immortal words of the Vietnamese, a paper tiger. And not only a paper tiger ideologically, but also just before I got on the call with you, I was looking at an FT article from today and it has a little table of the kinds of munitions that the US has lost and it is mind boggling. So security-wise, this has also been completely to the detriment of the US. But the thing not to lose sight of, of course, is that the people that are going to be absolutely screwed by this war are the Iranians who are bearing the suffering of whatever economic devastation the US has managed to recon Iran on the one hand. And I think cascading over time are going to be consumers in order in Africa and South Asia and then East Asia and Southeast Asia and then the US and Europe are going to feel it. They're going to feel it in their pocketbooks. My sense is that the cost of this adventurism is going to be felt slowly and in stages and it is going to be massively inflationary. We're already seeing a lot of central banks for example, either raising their interest rates or holding the interest rates at what they were before when they had previously wanted to lower them. Of course, this affects people that have mortgages, people that are borrowing money people. It's horrendous. It's a really incredible moment. I think the biggest beneficiaries out of this adventure is China. Yeah, well, it looks like the US would be incapable of defending Taiwan if it wanted to. Not only in that sense, but also China has proven itself to be kind of measured and able to actually address the various players. Everybody's been visiting China in order to sort of figure out what routes they're going to take next. And I think that this in itself is an astonishing development. Also, of course, it's benefiting China because China is at the forefront of green energy revolution. It also is benefiting China because of course, Iran has been talking about how if it is going to assess fees on ships going through a Hormuz, it's going to do so in the Chinese remember. China is really coming out of this the unintended consequence of Trump administration's utter stupidity and cupidity has been that they have strength in China. Every now and then you see some certainly mega types, but even some leftists saying that actually there's a method behind Trump's apparent madness that he's actually playing 12-dimensional chess. That's ludicrous, isn't it? It's kind of interesting because there was an article. I can't remember where it was. It might have been New York Times or Wall Street Journal. They actually did an interview with Trump or with some of the people surrounding him. They basically admitted that a lot of the crazy that he says, for example, like this is the end of the Iranian civilization, we're going to pulverize them whatever, is pulled out of his or in other words, pulled out of his how to make a deal playbook. And he thinks that this kind of bluffing is effective. The man is in some ways a brilliant con artist and in many other ways an absolute and utter buffoon. And both of those at the same time. And I think his complete and utter lack of awareness about other instances where such threat escalation has actually led to warfare just because he thinks everything is run like a business is horrific. It is genuinely horrific. That was La Le Khalilie, professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter in England. Her book, "Sign Use of War and Trade" was published by Versa in 2020. My name is Doug Henry Wooden, the program is behind the news, back after musical break. [Music] [Music] That was some of the second of six piano pieces by Johannes Brahms, Opus 118, performed by Raud Al-Ulupu. And now, Muin Rabani. I've been working Muin pretty hard lately, but there are a few people who rival his breadth of knowledge about the Middle East, a reason that has been somewhat prominent in the news lately. Muin has a long resume in diplomacy and journalism and is currently co-added through the E. C. Injadaliyah and host of its podcast. His book, "Gaza Apocalypse" will be published sometime this summer by Orbukhs, Muin Rabani. I want to talk about Iran, but first, what do you make of this Nicholas Christoff column on the Israeli's use of rape? This has certainly been reported before, but the dogs are perhaps a lured detail. A lot of people will not be familiar with. Although David from, Sykes the American Kennel Club, saying this is impossible. But I believe David Ben-Gurian even wrote about rape in his diary. But what do you make first of the claims, and second, perhaps more interestingly? What do you make of the New York Times reporting this? I think those are both very interesting points. As you mentioned, rape goes back to at least the late 1940s. It's true that after 1967, for a few decades, instances of rape and sexual violence and so on were few and far between, but they have, again, skyrocketed. It's now, I think, not an exaggeration to say that rape has become part of the Israeli national ethos. And by this, I mean that you have senior politicians and government officials literally rioting for the right to rape. You have prominent journalists and commentators screaming and yelling about the legitimacy of rape on national television. They talk about rape as if they're talking about the weather. And there have been multiple reports showing that certainly in Israel's prison system, rape has become systematic. But the meltdown that has accompanied this Nicholas Christoff article is really something unprecedented. I think it far exceeds even the meltdown we saw among Israel apologists when the International Court of Justice first agreed to go to a full hearing on South Africa's genocide case or one Netanyahu was indicted by the International Criminal Court. One, as you'll flunky, has called for Christoff's execution. Others have called for him to be fired and the New York times to be sued and so on. I presume they really vetted this very carefully considering how explosive it was. One effort to dismiss this article is by pointing out that it was published in the opinion section rather than as a news report. Palestinians have said why was the fabricated false report on Palestinian sexual violence on October 7th? That was in the news report. But in this case, Christoff is an opinion columnist. So it makes sense that his report was in the opinion section, but as others have pointed out, that doesn't mean it is isn't as carefully vetted as everything else. Now, he spoke to 14 direct victims of rape. He spoke to them separately. It's not easy to talk about being raped. And these people all spoke independently of each other. So it was hardly a coordinated campaign. And he, of course, also spoke to human rights organizations and others who have documented the systematic use of sexual violence in Israel's prison system. And then he spoke to one person who testified that they had been raped by a dog. And the response to this has been, well, it can't be possible. Canine rape is anatomically not possible. But in fact, of this is hardly the first case of canine rape, we know that there have been multiple reports that Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo officer in France during the Second World War, used it against prisoners. There's a famous case in Chile, and a documentary was made about it, and a book was written about it. So the idea that it is simply impossible, I mean, it seems that for Israel apologists, it's become easier to say that a particular crime is impossible to commit than to deny that Israel actually committed it. The fact that this major expose was published in what is for all intents and purposes, the world's leading newspaper has really led to an exceptional meltdown among Israel flunkies and Israel's apologists. - What is this suggest about where the American political class is now? - The ferocity of the response, essentially demanding punitive measures against the author of this article, against the newspaper that publishes it. We're not talking about some obscure college newspaper or left-wing publication. I think it demonstrates very clearly that Israel and its supporters recognize that they have definitively lost the battle for public opinion, even among mainstream public opinion, increasingly even among right-wing public opinion. And therefore, there go two response, whenever inconvenient facts and reporting emerge, you would expect that if Israel genuinely believed it was being illegitimately falsely accused of rape, that it would call for an international investigation. It would call for an independent investigation in order to prove that Christoph is engaging in blood libel and is an anti-Semite, an anazzy and an Islamist and a jihad, and that these reports were false. But no, they call for the punishment of the messenger, which to me demonstrate quite clearly, they know they're in trouble. Onto Iran, it's looking like the US has lost the war, although there's always the possibility that Trump will wipe it off the face of the earth and see threat in some time to time. What do you think is going to happen here? It's easier, I think, to predict what is not going to happen than to know what is going to happen. And by that, I mean, the current situation is one where formally there is a ceasefire agreement or a ceasefire rather between the United States and Iran mediated by Pakistan and which the US has also imposed on Israel. But there's no agreement. And the problem with a ceasefire without an agreement is that it doesn't resolve any of the problems being faced by the party's concern. Most particularly for the United States, it doesn't resolve the question of passage through the state of Hotomos, which as many have pointed out as a problem that didn't exist before the US decided to go to war. - Ex-F was just a site of Congress that we control the state. - Yes. - Do they really believe this or is it pure delusionally? - I think it's a combination of trying to put a lot of lipstick on a very ugly pig, but at some level, they make these statements so often that I can imagine that at some level, they don't actually believe their own propaganda. The problem for the US is absent in agreement in which Iran commits to certain actions. The ceasefire in and of itself doesn't resolve anything. And so therefore, the US ultimately has two options. It can either reach an agreement with Iran and that doesn't have to be a comprehensive final agreement. It can be a framework agreement that lays out the objectives of subsequent negotiations and perhaps the duration of such negotiations or it can resume hostilities in the hope of forcing the Iranians to either capitulate or collapse. But here's a problem. The Iranians are not going to settle for less than they offered prior to the war. And they feel emboldened and powered. They feel that they are in a better strategic position than they were before the war because they now have an asset that is worth the nuclear weapons that they were accused of seeking to develop. They now have an asset that's actually worth a lot more because it's not a theoretical deterrent, but it's actual control. And that is, of course, the straight of Hormuz. The Iranians are not going to settle for less. The Americans are insisting that they get much more than the Iranians offered before the war. So an agreement seems extremely unlikely. At the same time, if the Americans decide to resume hostilities and even full-scale hostilities, they would have to commit enormous resources to achieve what they have been unable to achieve so far. In some cases, resources that they may not even possess anymore. And in other cases, resources such as tens of thousands of boots on the ground that Washington appears unwilling to commit, and even if the US did possess those resources and was prepared to commit them, it's far from clear that resuming full-scale hostilities would actually succeed. So the US is, I think, very much in a strategic dilemma to run at least for the time being, is sitting quite pretty. Although, of course, it could sustain enormous additional damage if the US decides to resume full-scale hostilities. The difference here is that the Islamic Republic is convinced it's fighting for its very survival, if not for the very survival of Iran as a country. Whereas for the US, this is far from an existential conflict. Now, the New York Times, simply the way it's got some leaks from the CIA saying that Iran still has lots of missiles. It's interesting they're leaking this sort of thing. Trump will be happy. But apparently, the Iranians are just not out of options. No, and I mean, if you followed the war prior to the ceasefire, it was abundantly clear not only that the Iranians retained their basic military capabilities, but were able to deploy them coherently and were, in fact, escalating during the last few days of the conflict. If you remember, in June of last year, we were told that Iran's nuclear program had been comprehensively and permanently obliterated, and then less than a year later, the US and Israel went back to war purportedly in part to eliminate a program that we were told no longer existed. So you can take these statements with a grain of salt and indeed, many respected military analysts and now, apparently, also US intelligence is telling us what we pretty much knew all along, which is that Iran is far from defeated. I mean, don't forget, yes, Iran has been under sanctions since the late 1970s, but ironically, one impact of those sanctions has been to compel the Iranians to develop their own military industries, their own weapons. And so it's not reliant on external supplies and external support for its ability to fight. It has prepared for a US attack for decades. Iran itself is, I think, the 17th or 18th largest country in the world that's twice the size of Turkey. That's an absolutely vast geographical region. And the idea that you can bring it to heel, so to speak, with an air force is just pure delusion. I'm speaking with Mouin Rabani, co-editor of Jadaliyah. I can't help but think that a lot of Americans think Iranians are basically just more uncertain, sort of primitive people, a grip of a primitive religion, and never really properly understood just how resourceful they were. You had earlier mentioned the statement by Hexath. I think that is exactly the mentality that persuaded the US to go to war. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about the extent to which Trump genuinely realizes what he was doing. My own sense of the situation, and again, this is speculation, is that Trump was, well, it's not only speculation, there was a detailed New York Times article explaining the US decision to go to war, was it Trump was persuaded, perhaps, allowed himself to be persuaded by Israel and by the Hawks in Washington, that Iran was essentially on its knees, that it would take no more than a overwhelming first strike to decapitate the leadership, and then perhaps an additional three or four days of bombing. and it would be over. And And the US and Israel are hardly the first in history to completely underestimate their enemies and adversaries on the basis of preconceived notions about their backwardness and weakness. Think of Napoleon and Hitler invading Russia just to give one other example. Speaking of the Hawksian Washington, we've got old Neocons like Robert Kagan saying the US lost the war in Iran and Macboute interviewing a CIA alum saying that China has surpassed the US military. What is this loss doing to the image and reality of US power globally? What do you make of this? Many people have compared the war against Iran to the 1956 Suez crisis and I think that fundamentally that analogy holds, which is that here you have a global power seeking to reassert its global supremacy and in the process of doing so confronts the limits of its power and the limits of its power are exposed and it forms the moment at which imperial decline sets in. Of course, you know, we're talking about the conflict that is not yet over and so as you mentioned that the outset a lot can still happen but based on what we've seen so far, I think that's quite true of the United States. I think the Iran war will be looked at by future historians as a turning point in US imperial fortunes. I also think that from Israel's perspective the war against Iran was supposed to be the final part of a comprehensive regional campaign to establish Israel's regional supremacy and hegemony for a generation and here again we see in both Iran and also in Lebanon that in fact Israel has now come up against the limits of its regional power and has proven unable to achieve its objectives. You've got Israel now saying BB saying that he wants to wean the country from US support. Is that possible? No, it's certainly not possible. I mean Israel we've learned in the past few years if we didn't know already how extraordinarily dependent it is on external support and particularly US support for its weaponry for its military resupply for diplomatic and political support. So the idea that Israel can play this role in the region without the level of Western and particularly American support is I think purely delusional. You know you mentioned Robert Kagan another neo-cons earlier and I think it's important to understand what's happening here. These are people who have agitated for the war we are now discussing for years if not decades. They're now confronting the reality of strategic failure and of course the immediate response is what's known as Operation Cover Your Yes. Find anyway not to take responsibility for what you have agitated for so strongly for so long. Kagan essentially tries to pass the buck to Trump. Netanyahu is I think also concerned perhaps the Trump will throw him under the bus. He's looking at the changes in the US and a lot of people are increasingly recognizing how much support the US gives to Israel and protesting against it and his response is to say well you know we've been doing you a favor all these years but we don't really need it and maybe reconsidering the idea that Israel can simply renounce USAID is I think purely delusional. It's a country of what 10 million people say. Something like that yeah eight or nine million yeah Israel is a small country it's geographically vulnerable it has limited resources and it has limited manpower so the idea that it can be a regional superpower without at the same time being the proxy of a global superpower is purely delusional yes left to its own devices and on its own it can probably impose its will on the region for a few years but over the longer term Israel has always derived its power from the support it received from foreign global powers I mean without the sponsorship of the British Empire during the first half of the 20th century there of course would be no Israel to begin with. It's not like they can make their own F 35s or B1s or you know these giant bunker busters and things like that they just don't have the means to do that. No I mean they you know they they tried in the 1970s and 1980s to develop their own fighter jet but this was largely reliant on US funding and also on key inputs from US military industries and at the end the Pentagon pulled the plug on that because it was just costing the US too much. Israel is a technologically advanced society there's no point in seeking to deny that. Israel does have enormous military capabilities. Israel does have enormous intelligence capabilities but that's something quite different than saying that Israel as this small vulnerable state with limited resources and limited manpower can over the longer term dominate in entire region which is increasingly hostile to it and which in many cases for example a country like Saudi Arabia or Egypt who are not hostile to Israel as a matter of principle perhaps but don't want to see any state in the region establish a gemini over the region you know whether it's Israel or Turkey or Iran they want to be able to preserve their own autonomy their own independence their own room for maneuver and of course don't want to have Israel be the mediator of their relationships with the United States or other foreign powers. Speaking of Saudi Arabia they denied the US the use of air bases there and overflight rights what's happening with that alliance. It's a very interesting question I mean in March we saw a lot of unsourced reporting that the Saudis were publicly saying that they opposed the swore and would have no part of it but were in private encouraging Washington and Israel to go all the way and to stay the course and all the rest of it. I never bought those arguments I think there are all kinds of reasons why initially at least all the Gulf states and I would argue including even the United Arab Emirates were against the swore because they recognized that they would be its main victims the states that have been hardest hit during this war have not been Israel or the United States but rather the Arab states on the opposite coast of the Persian Gulf. Now of course once Iran started attacking US facilities and infrastructure in these states their positions began to change and particularly the United Arab Emirates has taken an increasingly hostile and belligerent attitude towards Iran but from Saudi's perspective they want this war to be resolved as soon as possible and let's not forget that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have a very close relationship in fact they have a mutual defense treaty and Pakistan would not be playing the role that it has played as a mediator without close coordination with Saudi Arabia I think Saudi has seen the very significant damage that Iran can inflict on its energy and other infrastructure already during the first Trump administration and they see this essentially as a war that is being fought on Israel's behalf by the country the United States that is supposed to be the ultimate defender of their national security but is instead exposing them to the most severe threat to their national security since the state was formed the last century and they want to be rid of this file of course they don't want Iran to emerge strengthened there's no love lost between Riyadh and Tehran but that's quite something different than these suggestions that the Saudis are somehow going whole to see this war renew and escalate finally Israel is giving southern Lebanon the Gaza treatment what do you think their aim is there we can take them at their word that their aim is to fully depopulate southern Lebanon and then establish it as a buffer zone under permanent Israeli occupation and should they succeed in this it would only be a matter of time before we began to see Israel develop settlements in it just as they've done in the Syrian Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula and so then those settlements will be attacked and they'll have to push even further where it never stops that's Israel strategic challenge here it's not going to work in Lebanon the way it worked in the territories that occupied in 1967 particularly now because the Lebanon file has become absolutely germane to the resolution of the Iran file so the other thing that Israel is seeking to do is to foment conflict within Lebanon between the government and hasballa but again you know the Lebanese army primarily it is really urging and with the act of support of the United States has been kept extraordinarily weak for half a century and also half of its recruits are from the Shia community which is of course for it's the mainstay of Hasbada's constituencies and most of the rest, while they may have very hostile feelings towards Hasbada, that doesn't translate into any particular love for Israel. Israel and the United States may succeed in producing an internal conflict in Lebanon, but the idea that somehow the Lebanese government can defeat Hasbada militarily is, I think, a pipe dream. - At this point, is there anything that can stop Israel? - There are war with like seven countries, and apparently that's not enough for them. Is there any end to this barbarism? - There will be, and my sense is that sooner or later, the US will confront the limits of its power, and unless it drops the big fund on Tehran, which is not something I would dismiss out of hand, but I think it's very unlikely. I think at some point, an agreement will have to be reached, and I think the Iranians will absolutely insist that as part of that agreement that the US brings Israel to heal, certainly in Lebanon and perhaps more broadly in the region as well, and should that scenario come to pass, that would create a new dynamic in the region that could see us heading into a more positive direction. The US has reached a strategic impasse, it has no good options left, and sooner or later, it is going to have to adapt and accept reality, and part of that reality is going to have to be reigning in Israeli regional aggression. - That was Mouin Rabani, co-editor of the Ezin Jadliya and host of its podcast. His book, "Gaza Apocalypse" will be published sometime this summer by Orbukes. That's it for me, Doug Henrywood. Let's go out with this some of an old favorite, what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding, perform live at some unspecified point in the past and KGSR, Austin. Till next week, bye. (soft guitar music) ♪ Is all hope gone ♪ ♪ Is there only pain, hatred and misery ♪ ♪ And each time I feel like this inside ♪ ♪ There's one thing I wanna know ♪ ♪ What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding ♪