Chas Freeman: Hezbollah Strikes Israel Hard – Israel Now Prepares for WAR with Egypt & Turkey

[MUSIC] >> Hi, I'm ready today's Friday, May 29, 2026, and our dear friend, the Basel Chas Freeman, is here with us. Welcome back, Ambassador. >> Glad to be back with you, Nima. >> We're so lucky to have Ambassador Chas Freeman introducing his self-stack account. >> Here is Ambassador, you just opened up, it's been for the last two weeks or? >> Something like that, I mean, I'm not quite sure how I got on the substack. I didn't do anything with it, but I've decided to put up some material, prepared text that I've used and over the years on different subjects. And it seems to get quite a significant readership. Some nice comments, I'm glad for those. And thank you for mentioning that. >> Yeah, I just put it under the comment section. You can see the link there, you can access that, you can subscribe to the substack on Basel Chas Freeman. And let me start, Ambassador, with what's going on with the case of Hezbollah and Israel. Yesterday, I was watching one of the Israeli commanders. He said that the FPV drones for Israel was some sort of technical problem. Right now, he's turning into a strategic problem because they're hitting a lot, a lot of the [INAUDIBLE] air defense system, communication system, the gathering of Israeli soldiers in trucks, outside of the trucks. So this is basically turning into a new problem. And he said we haven't found any sort of solution for that. We are trying to find a solution for that, but it's difficult because these FPV drones, they try to use some sort of protection, some sort of nets to prevent them. That wasn't possible, it's so difficult for them to control that. What is your understanding? Because if Israel wants something between in the southern border, they have to leave the territory of Lebanon. They cannot stay there forever. They define a yellow line in the southern border and they're crossing that line. They're trying to destroy a smothering said for each and every drone we're going to bring down 10 buildings in Lebanon. That's the reality, how desperate is the situation for Israel. You're understanding of that. Well, I think first of all, on the drone warfare aspect, this is yet another example that the Russian Ukrainian War has changed the nature of warfare very fundamentally, the technology of drone warfare. Of course, Ukrainians and Russians dispute who invented what, but it doesn't matter between the two of them. Sorry, between the two of them, they have come up with a very formidable way of immobilizing troops and vehicles on the battlefield then. Everything is transparent. And the hospital drones apparently are fiber optic guided. They're not guided by wireless signals. So they basically can't be disrupted or diverting. And they are taking apparently quite a heavy toll on Israeli troops, Israeli vehicles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and so forth. And it's a reminder that Osvala, unlike Hamas, which is basically a lightly armed guerrilla force, Pesbola has developed real military capabilities. Its soldiers are. These fighters are battle hardened from the time in Syria. And it has a record of defeating the Israelis in their various invasions of Lebanon. That said, it's very clear this invasion, which is aimed at taking everything self of the Saini River, is intended to annex Lebanon effectively and to turn southern Lebanon into the equivalent of Gaza. Now while we speak Netanyahu has issued a directive apparently yet another directive violating the so-called ceasefire agreement about Gaza. Initially, I think 53% of Gaza was to be under Israeli control that expanded to 60% in finally. Now he's given a directive to expand it to 70% and meanwhile his defense minister, Israel Katz, is saying that the Gossens will quote "voluntarily exit Gaza leave" and Gaza will be ethnically clandest and resettled by Israelis. And the same thing is contemplated in southern Lebanon. Of course the phrase "voluntary departure" or "voluntary removal" or something, "voluntary immigration" is like saying that Jews who got on the cattle cars in Nazi Germany were voluntarily leaving Germany for outfits or for a death camp. This is Orwellian language beyond belief. And the fact is that whereas this kind of obfuscation may once have worked to deceive the people of the world, it no longer does. Nobody believes anything Israel says now because it transparently violates every agreement that it makes or is said to have made. It's never quite clear what Israel has signed on to or not. The situation in Lebanon basically is really trying to create conditions similar to those of the Nakba or Gaza. No structures to which the people who have been made homeless can return. And over a million Lebanese are displaced by all of this. It has been lost holding its own. But I'm not sure that I would call the use of drones a strategic victory yet. It is a tactical victory, of course. It's making things very difficult for the Israelis. In circumstances in which Israel itself is in quite bad shape deteriorating economically, the military, apparently increasingly unwilling to serve, emigration up. We don't know how many Israelis are managing to get out. The divisions between Israelis, between the ultra-orthodox and other Israelis exacerbated. And of course, Israel having lost virtually all support in the world other than that of its paid agents in the U.S. Congress. As we speak, the U.S. Congress is exploring legislation to essentially fuse the American and Israeli militaries to remove the barriers between them and to make everything joint between them. This at a time when the American public emphatically wants less and less cooperation with Israel, less and less support for Israel, it's a measure of how alienated the American political elite in large measure because of their co-optation by Israel as become from the American public. The American public no longer trusts the American political elite in large part because of this manipulation by Israel, which I think is becoming less and less effective. We're seeing members of Congress of the United States Senate, for example, Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland, speaking out in the New York cons in a very forceful way, saying this relationship with Israel is unhelpful to the United States, it's damaging to the United States and it has to be brought to an end. So I think there's a lot going on beyond what's happening in the battlefields of southern Lebanon, but that is not going well for Israel either. They're not happy about Syria as well. I don't know what they want from Syria and what is the problem? They want to annex the southern part of Syria, beyond. Yes. It was until, you know, it was go on high right now they're going further and nobody seems to understand that and look at Israel today, the population they have, something eight million people before this sort of chaos happening right now less than that. of the Israeli 20 modern. 20% 21% of the Israeli population is our Arab Palestinians. So they're so dire in Israel and they want to occupy it, they want the next other lands. Well they have the ambitions of the religious Zionists for a greater Israel extending as far as to the Euphrates and to the Nile, it does not go away. And it's very clear that they have an intention of the next thing additional tracks of land in southern Syria. They have tried to come up with various explanations for why that would be an appropriate thing of protecting the Jews being a major element in that. The Jews, it doesn't appear, want to be that protected by Israel. And so you have people now like the convicted Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, who spent 30 years in American prison and then was received with the heroes. Welcome. In Israel became an Israeli citizen, is now running for the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. And he's talking about Syria in terms of preventing the Turkish presence from coming to Israel's borders. That is one problem. The other is of course that Israel continues to bomb Syria that creates enemies rather than friends or subordinates. And the Turkish policy is not clear, but it is clearly against the annexation of any part of Syria beyond the Golan Heights by Israel. Pollard even mentions attacking Egypt again. I guess he is basically voicing a very common opinion in Israeli circles to the effect that Israel cannot tolerate anyone that with a capacity to injure it. And therefore it demands absolute security and the subjugation of all of its neighbors. Where does this end? I remember many, many years ago, as the Israelis expanded their settlements in the lands they had illegally taken from Arabs. There was a cartoonist who had a cartoon of Israeli settlers taking land in Nepal. You know, where does this stop? There is no border of Israel. It continues to expand in its own mind. And in fact, and I think the tolerance of the world for this is wearing very, very thin. You are what Johnson Pollard said in his interview yesterday. We don't think geostrategically. Forget about Jolani. Forget about Donald Trump. I am principally worried, first of all, for the welfare of our Druze brothers across the border. But secondarily, if Jolani and his Islamists actually reoccupy that area. They will have the Turks right on our border. We will eventually will. We eventually will. And I'm not so sure that we will have as easy a time with the Turks as we've had with the Iranians. I've been following Turkish military doctrine and the storm is coming. Yes, of course. I'm not even worse. They're a member of Nanto. So I look at Iran as a problem. We absolutely have to finish. And I'll explain what I mean by that. Gaza same thing. And the Shizbullah. Why am I fixated on this now? Because we have to be prepared for the next war, which will be probably against Turkey and Egypt. So I hope not. I hope not also, but we hope you remember it was the last demon out of Pandora's box. And there's a reason for that. So there you have it. And he's representing a majority of Israeli opinion. He's running for the parliament, for the Knesset. That is a campaign stance that he's taking. He's voicing the fears, the ambitions of ordinary Israelis. And basically what we have is a society in Israel that has become totally sociopathic. It has no empathy for anyone other than its own constituents. It is paranoid. It believes everyone is out to kill Jews. And I think the Israeli is so called Jews because they don't bear any resemblance at all to the ethical people that I know who are Jews in the United States or Western Europe or Iran for that matter. Those are very decent people who espouse humane thinking and who are not paranoid. And yet you have just heard this idea that everyone's against Israelis, everyone needs to be subordinated to Israel. Everyone needs to be kept under control. And by the way, he starts off by saying that first and foremost, he's concerned about his Jews' brothers. The Jews' distaste from the Shara or al-Jalani government in Damascus. Absolutely not. That is cynical and duplicitous and manipulative. But it's the line. So Turkey is going to be in Syria on the border as we got to fight the Turks. And they're terrible because they're members of NATO. That doesn't sound like anything that anyone in the West to be very comfortable with. The point is he has mentioned about Iran says, "We're not going to have an easy time as we had with Iran." Oh yeah. Turkey. I don't know what sort of mindset is that because without the United States, what are the capabilities of Israel of fighting other countries? Of course, that is a fundamental point. Israel has benefited, if that's the word, I would say, the unconditional support of the United States for Israel and everything Israel does has created what a moral hazard. And Israel has walked right into it. So there does all kinds of things, which if it were so-bremined, irrational and concerned about, its long-term interests, it would not do. It puts itself in danger because it assumes the United States will always be there to save it from its own consequences of its own actions. And that is clearly the assumption that underlying Mr. Pollard's statements. Mr. Pollard is one of the most damaging spies in the entire history of the United States. He gave almost truckloads of very sensitive material to the Israeli sum of which they resold to the Soviet Union. So he has no credentials whatsoever as a patriot of any country. And now he's posing as an Israeli patriot and he's doing what the Israeli government and establishment want, which is to downplay the damage Israel has suffered both strategically and physically in its war with Iran. The war with Iran has done huge damage to Israel. I normally focus on the damage. It's done to my own country, which is considerable. But Israel is on the front line. It suffered quite a significant physical damage from Iranian missiles and drone attacks on it. It has basically lost the support of every Gulf Arab country other than the United Arab Emirates. And it seems to me that the Emirates is wobbling at the moment trying to hedge on this issue. It has lost its ability to deter Iran, Iranian attack, even with the backing of the United States. I think it has lost the backing of the United States in the long term. Whatever the Trump administration may do, it's not going to be an office forever in the American people clearly want an end to this unconditional support of Israel. I think most Americans want Israel to continue to exist. But as they discover what Israel does, what Israel stands for what it plans their support of Israel's continued existence diminishes. And many people would argue now that Israel has forfeited a right to exist, by the way it has behaved. It's conducted a genocide. It is still conducting a genocide. It plans ethnic cleansing, not just in Gaza and in Lebanon but in the West Bank. It seeks expansion beyond when Donald Trump, Pollard speaks about the Turks on Israel's borders. Where are Israel's borders? Nobody can tell you. So this is entirely as great a mess as those who oppose the establishment and recognition of the state of Israel in 1948. Imagine it would be. I mean, famously George C. Marshall, a great man who was Secretary of State as well as the head of the American Armed Forces, counseled Truman not to do what he did. Because he said, and he was joined by others of great stature like Dean Atterson, because he said the establishment of the state of Israel would poison the Middle East. It would create instability turmoil and suffering for everyone. But the Truman for domestic American political reasons went ahead. So we are seeing what is clearly a tragedy in the Greek sense. That is, the outcome has been obvious from the beginning and it's tragic. And Israel marches to its doom, unimpeded by the advice of those who foresee the future. So anyone who has counseled Israel over the years that it was setting itself up for its own demise was immediately smeared as an anti-Semite rather than as someone who cared about, not just Israel, but the relationship that their own country had with Israel. And so Israel basically has lost more and more friends and supporters, not gained them. And this is almost inevitable. And as in the case of a Greek tragedy, there is a chorus warning Israelis about where they're going, but they are deaf to the warnings. I think as time goes by in the Middle East with this behavior of Israel, we're attacking each and every country around them. And trying to enact Syria, Lebanon. And I am sure when they're talking about fighting Egypt, they're talking about some lands of Egypt to be an Israel. Of course. Let's remember that Israel not only jumped the gun at the Declaration of Independence, which coincided with the withdrawal of the British colonial regime in Palestine. They actually, a month before that moment of British withdrawal. They began their attacks on the campaign of terror against Palestinian Arabs with a view to taking territory and driving the population out of Palestine. That created the knock-bow. We know that there were at least 70 massacres of civilians during that so-called war of independence. In 1956, Israel connoved with the British and French to attack Egypt in the Suez War. For the United States at that time, took a principled position under Dwight Eisenhower. And the Israelis and the British and French were forced to give up their attempt to control the Suez Canal and take Sinai. In 1967, Israel noted a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria. And in 1973, it was taken by surprise, but it invaded Egypt as a counter to the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal. And it took land from Syria. In the middle of all this, who has not hesitated to kill foreigners, including Americans, there is this case of the USS Liberty, which Israeli jets, unmarked jets, by the way. It's an attempt to impersonate some unknown force. Attacked and killed many of the crew members. They machine gun crew members who were in lifeboats. And there was a cover-up by Lyndon Johnson and others in the United States entirely for political reasons. So this is not a history that suggests that anything Israel is now doing is unusual. Listen, it's more of the same. The difference is that people now see it. They're not blind to it. They hear it. They listen to it. They listen to what Israelis are saying. Israelis are very unguarded in their comments about their own intentions and their own view of the future. And so you have Ben Grier, for example, echoing Jonathan Pollard, by the way, Pollard apparently is a great supporter of Ben Grier. Ben Grier demonstrating the sadism of Israel toward anyone who is not Israeli Jewish. There is a partate inside Israel between the 20% of the Israelis who are of Arab origin, Christian or Muslim. And Israeli Jews. Beyond the pre-1967 borders in occupied West Bank and Gaza, there has been everything from genocide to mass murder, to pogroms, to a military assisted persecution of people of Arabs who are not Jewish. Of course, let's not forget many Arabs were Jewish, are Jewish, that Jewish Arabs, the Mizrahiim are a significant element in Israeli society. And they too suffer discrimination by the European descended colonists. So this is not a pretty picture. And it has been obscured by very skillful propaganda, by censorship, by the Zionist dominated press in the United States and Britain. But those barriers to the perception of reality by ordinary people outside Israel are crumbling. And more and more people are now seeing what Israel has become, which is a terrorist state that rules by terror that has no respect for the rule of law, no respect for human life, no respect for the dignity of other human beings and continues to behave in a manner that can only be described as evil. Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that we must complete the mission in Iran in a way that constitutes a final solution. And I speak with Donald Trump almost on a daily basis regarding this. And what is the final solution when it comes to Israel? What do they want from the conflict in Iran? What else can the United States do for Benjamin Netanyahu? Well, it's obvious. Well, I think, say, first of all, the phrase final solution is something that comes directly out of the Nazi lexicon, and it referred to the extermination of European Jews. What does he propose? The extermination of Muslims, of Christians in West Asia? What is the final solution? I think Henry Kissinger was once quoted as saying that an absolute security for one country equals absolute insecurity for all the others. And I think that is exactly what Israel proposes, absolute security for itself, subordination, subjugation, or extermination for everyone else. What can the United States do to beyond what it has done? Absolutely nothing. The best thing the United States could do would be to cut Israel off from its arms supply, to pull the plug on its conquest of Lebanon, to pull the plug on its genocide in Gaza, to pull the plug on the funding of settlement activity and pogroms in the West Bank. In other words, and the moral hazard that Israel has walked into. And that is not what Benjamin Netanyahu has in mind, although he clearly understands that writings on the wall when it comes to America. American support for Israel, which is why he periodically suggests that Israel should wean itself from American, from its dependence on the United States logistically and politically. That is a pipe dream because he has created he and other Israelis have created circumstances in which there's not a single country in the world that will step up to support Israel once the United States fails to do so. So what can the United States do with regard to Iran? Nothing. That is compatible with Netanyahu's vision of a final solution. In fact, as I've said before, the Trump administration has maneuvered the United States and Israel into Saksfam, into a situation where any move that either makes results in a defeat. And no success. And we now have the Trump administration, once again, in my view, lying about progress in discussions with Iran, putting words in Iranian mouths that I don't think any Iranian would ever say about the Straits of Hormuz, about the regional politics, about the war in Lebanon, about the nuclear issue, to the extent that is still an issue. So we have some sort of memorandum of understanding being negotiated. That's all it is, a framework for negotiations. And obviously very vague, obviously not agreed at all despite the claims that agreement is imminent. And so what I'm happy for is that every time it has the same result, that is oil prices go down. You want to bet somebody didn't cover that fall with short sales? I bet they did. They've done it every other time. Billions of dollars have been made by the manipulation of the stock market by the Trump administration. We don't know exactly who has been reaping those benefits, but I think in due course we'll find out. And we certainly will find out if as expected control of the Congress passes out of the hands of the Republican cult of Donald Trump in the midterm elections. And the Congress assumes its constitutional role as an in the exercise of oversight over executive action. And investigates war crimes and crimes against American law and the Constitution. We will certainly find out who made all this money. I don't think we need to actually do investigate very far if we think of the principle of Kui Bono. Who benefits? It's very clear who benefits from this. So I would very much like to see an end to this war which is done huge damage to everyone, including Iran, including Israel, including the United States, the Gulf Arabs. Nobody has benefited from this. The United States has lost the war. Iran has not won it, but Iran has survived. And its bargaining position has been greatly strengthened, which is one reason I don't believe these claims of imminent victory at the negotiating table. I am sure that Pakistan and Qatar, which are who are acting as intermediaries and mediators, are doing their best to produce some kind of true ceasefire rather than the phony ceasefire that is currently in place and regularly violated by the United States, which Iran then responds to with a tit for a tab reprisal. Everybody would be better off if it descended, including the world's economies, which are being badly heard by the loss of free navigation through the state of our moves. I'll just make a final comment and that is on the state of our moves. It's very clear that Iran has redefined the toll gate. Iran now talks about administrative fees, navigational fees, fees for services, not arbitrary tolls. So this is at a bit of flexibility on the part of Iran. It does not mean Iran is going to give up control of the state of our moves or cease to cooperate with Iran. And I don't think Iran is going to be a friend of the United States under circumstances when Donald Trump says that he will blow it up, whatever that means, if it cooperates with Iran. Iran has one side of the state of our moves. Iran has the other. So does the UAE. UAE is eventually going to have to come to terms with that reality. But to talk about blowing up your former diplomatic mediator, Oman, your friend, Oman, your neutral party, the one that has played an historic diplomatic role in composing differences in the region, to blow them up because they won't sign onto your belligerent stand is self-incriminating and enormously damaging to the reputation of the United States, not to the reputation of Oman at all. Because we haven't heard anything from the Omani government. And they tried every year, remember, before the second round of war, Oman, the foreign minister, went to the United States, went to Washington talking. He was so optimistic about the results. He said, we are on the path of achieving some sort of agreement and coming back and attacking them this way. It's just amazing to watch. Well, the Omanis have well-deserved reputation for realism in their foreign policy, for neutrality in the corals of others, for a diplomatic role in composing differences. For a minister of society is an excellent diplomat. He was humiliated by Donald Trump and the use of negotiations under his auspices to conceal surprise attacks on Iran. So I think the United States has lost a very important diplomatic asset with the President's Donald Trump's intemperate attacks on Oman. Ambassador, here is what Donald Trump said about the situation between Iran and the United States. That they would cross for you to go on the offensive again militarily? Well, a deal that wasn't going to be good for us is the line ultimately because you know, I'm playing it out and we're going to see and that's what I do. I negotiate, they negotiate, they're very good negotiators, they're crafty. But in the end, we have all the cards because we've defeated them militarily. This is of course the major problem that Iran understands that it has defeated the United States militarily because the United States has not achieved any of the objectives for which it used force. And you can only measure the success of war or policy by whether it delivers the desired results. None of the desired results have been achieved by the United States. On the other hand, Iran has gained control of the straight-up armours. It has apparently lessened the internal divisions in the leadership of Iran. Now the leadership seems to be quite united in stalwart and supportive of a United position. This business of Iran being divided and so on is, you know, which we're thinking on the part of the United States, probably fueled by Israeli intelligence, which always seeks to divide its adversaries. You know, the idea of putting up a Dinajad back in power is childish, really. So I would say, you know, looking at the performance of the Trump administration, that the heart of the deal should be retitled, the heart of the shake down. The Donald Trump does not know how to close a deal, apparently. He only knows how to bully and coerce and impose conditions on the other side. And in this case, the United States is not in a position to impose conditions on Iran. And what we've come down to is a contest to see, you know, both Iran and the United States are, in effect, under water. And who can hold their breath the longest? This is what we are down to. You know, this is not holding all the cards. There was a very, there's, I don't know if you ever follow him, but there's a very clever American humorist named Borowitz. And he had a, he writes fake stories about what happens, which are very entertaining. One of them was that Zelensky had offered to supply cards to Donald Trump, since Donald Trump was out of cards. You know, I mean, this is, everybody sees this. So the posture that we have all the cards just doesn't persuade anyone of anything. Iran is very realistic. So are they Gulf Arabs? And so are the Israelis, which is why there is now a lot of difficulty between Trump and Netanyahu, and they're arguing of Netanyahu responded to Donald Trump's first effort for an art most recent effort for a memorandum of understanding by inserting two impossible conditions. One, freedom to continue the war in Lebanon. Two, the full opening of the state of our moves with no charges. And, and of course, the export of all of the enriched uranium in Iran. Now this, these are poison pill proposals. They're designed to make sure that there's no agreement. Israel doesn't want an agreement. It wants the war to continue. It openly said so. You just heard Jonathan Pollard say that. We've heard Benjamin Nyan and Nyan say that. You see the final solution with Iran. What he doesn't say with that means, but that phrase is something that should give chills down the back of anyone who hears it. Do you think that the GCC countries, because we've seen how the communication is happening between Iran and that, for example, maybe Saudi Arabia? What is the calculation on their part as time goes by? And they see the continuation of the conflict is hurting their economy drastically. I don't know what else can they do because they're in a desperate situation. Their economy has been influenced by the war because of the blockade of the state of our most. And they're only, they're not produced. They're not self-sufficient countries. They mostly depend on each and every thing they receive from outside because of their energy, the solar energy, the importing everything from outside. That's why the problem is growing basically in Tata in my opinion more than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is actually the least affected of all the countries because it has an exit for its oil away of exporting its oil through the Red Sea port. Not just one port but several ports but mainly Yenbu. So it is actually able to sustain oil exports and of course the price of oil is very high now. So it is not suffering as much as the others. Kuwait is basically completely cut off. But also Bahrain has been badly damaged physically because of the fifth fleet headquarters that was bombarded in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. And the United Arab Emirates has suffered terribly physically but more importantly its model of economic development which was exemplary. That is it had open frontiers, open trade, open investment regime and a very pleasant environment for the wealthy to make their own. Because it is basically they offered security and freedom of transit for everyone. These have both been badly damaged by the war and once again in the long run the UAE has no alternative but to make peace with Iran somehow. But you ask what are their attitudes. I think they are not stupid, they are good negotiators. Unlike Donald Trump they don't blurt out boastful claims of this or that. They are realists. They have a long history of, I mean their political models are based on tribal models in which the shape or the Emir in the case of a state leader has two responsibilities one to provide for the welfare of the needy through Zakat, through charity, through the redistribution of wealth. And the other is to shape form or discover a consensus for policy. Well I think the consensus for policy now in the Gulf Arabs, first of all completely rules out any kind of normalization of relations with Israel. So the Abraham Accords are living on borrowed time and you know the UAE may be doubling down in some respects on its alliance with Israel. Israel has come to the UAE's aid. The United States is not ineffective in defending the UAE but this is a temporary condition. And it can't last. So to use the metaphor of cards again, the Gulf Arabs are holding their cards close to their chest. They don't want anybody to see them. But they know very well that in the future they have to have a working relationship with Iran. It may not be, you know, love affair. It may not be anything very friendly but they need a working relationship with Iran. That requires them to distance themselves from the United States and Israel. And so that is what is going to happen once the conditions allow. In the meantime, they've been very clear. They don't want this war. They didn't want this war. They feel exploited and they feel they were abused by being made part of this war with the exception of the UAE. They have learned to listen. And so what are they going to do? They are going to abide their time. I hope that the discussions between the Pakistanis and Qataris, the Iran and the United States, produce some backing away from the current tit for tat military confrontation that a workable arrangement for the transit of their exports through the state of our mosaise is worked out with Iran. And you know, some of them may in fact eventually end up asking to be part of the management system for the state of our mosaise, whether Iran will allow that or not is another question. But in the meantime, you know, they are they are abiding their time. They are hoping something will happen. They are not as gullible as the oil traders appear to be. But every time the Trump administration leaks all kinds of disinformation about progress in talks with Iran, the oil price immediately goes down. The stock market goes up. I don't think the Gulf Arabs believe that nonsense. That's a real living in an era of AI, which everything, you know, people are asking their question. Grog answered this question. Is that right? Is that wrong? And the only, my understanding of AI is they providing data. They don't have AI is not a brain. It's some sort of tool to provide you with data. And what's really good about that? You can do a little more than that. But it basically says logically, usually this word, word A, is followed by word B, which is followed by word C. That is, but how does it know that? It knows that from analyzing the stupidity of human beings on the internet and elsewhere. Anything digitized. What does it know? It knows what the collective human species knows. The human species is fallible. We make errors. So what it can do, yes, it can provide you with facts. If you ask it, what was the date of Herodotus publication of his history, it can tell you, more or less, as much as we know. It can't tell you anything we don't know. And if you ask it, however, was Haradidus right or wrong in his theories. It will tell you what the majority opinion is, or maybe it will tell you both the majority and the minority opinion, but it can't make a judgment independently. So you're quite right. Its utility is great. If I write a speech and I want to check a fact, I find it very useful. If I want to have an opinion, a judgment, I will look at it maybe, but I reserve my own judgment to be made by me, not by it. And I don't see any reason to believe that the search for super intelligence on the part of AI, general intelligence as it is called, is actually going to happen. This seems to me to be like the search for the holy grail, the cup with which Jesus drank his last cup of wine. That's the last supper. Does it exist? We don't know. People have been looking forward forever. Maybe it's like the hidden imam, who knows where the hidden imam is or when you will reappear. These are theories. They're not their hypotheses. They're not facts. You can't rely on them. I apologize to anyone who expects that hidden imam to turn up immediately in Minnesota, I.S. in Brazil. The reason I mentioned that is investor that this sort of, we are every time we're talking about Israel, Middle East, Palestinian, Muslim Jews, there is a huge problem in understanding the differences because when we talk about Islam, they're talking about ISIS, Daesh, Al-Qaeda, the imam, the face of this is Islam. When it comes to Judaism and Jewish people, they're talking about what Israel is doing is Jewish. This sort of distortion of the reality, when it comes to Christianity, the Christian, so-called Christian Zionists, this is not the reality of what is happening in the case of Judaism, Islam, Christianity. The analogy you draw is correct. ISIS, the Islamic State, Daesh, is for Islam. What Zionism is for Judaism. Zionism is a heresy. It is an idolatry, it is a deviation, it is a perversion of Islam. Here, let me tell you a story. After I retired from the government, I didn't want to have anything to do with what is called the Middle East. I was talked into heading the Middle East Policy Council by George McGovern, who was then the head of it, and Frank Carlucci and a couple of other people. I agreed to do it basically for nothing because I thought that the American people were ignorant and needed to have access to facts about Islam, about West Asia, and so on. As part of the exercise of sharpening the message of the Middle East Policy Council, we arranged a program, a struggle session, if you will, with some well-educated, well-known television personalities. How can we simplify our message so that it connects to our audience better? We did a whole day seminar and two very famous people, one close to President Carter, one well-known journalist. When I said, "Islam regards itself as the summation of Judaism and Christianity, as God's direct advice to human beings, to whom he had previously sent messages through prophets, Jewish prophets, Jesus, the greatest Jewish prophet, in the opinion of Muslims." The recipients of these messages ignored them or forgot them or didn't follow the messages, the directions. He finally said, "Take this down, memorize this, I'm speaking directly to you, Muhammad, take it down." One of the participants turned to me and said, "You mean Islam is related to Christianity and Judaism?" This is the level of ignorance that we're dealing with. The Islamic tradition builds on the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is part of it. One of the interesting things when you learn Arabic, as I did, is by contrast with the language like Chinese or Tamil, which I also learned at various points. You encounter the same figures of speech, the same parables, the same stories. In fact, the Holy Quran has the most beautiful account of the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary and the angel, Jupiter, or Gabriel, that you can find. It's much clearer than anything in the Christian documents. I think we're dealing with an enormously ignorant audience here. They just think, "Islam must be totally unrelated to our ethical traditions." No, it isn't. It is entirely consistent with those traditions. It also reflects the life in the 7th century, which was different from the 21st century. It seems to me that there is the beginning of some kind of Islamic Renaissance going on, but I won't live to see whether I'm right or wrong about that. Before I pick up Ambassador, the other conflict is in Ukraine as we were before coming to this life, which is so important because of the war in the Middle East, we somehow are distracted from the situation in Ukraine. We know that Ukrainians are using drones to attack civilians in Russia, and Russia had to respond because there are a lot of pressure. The Russian community, society is putting pressure on the Russian president. He has to respond to that. He used a wrestling missile, another type of missiles to respond. It doesn't seem that anytime soon, we're going to have some sort of solution in Ukraine because of the use of drones. It's not a battle, it's not a fight on the battlefield between two bodies of soldiers, two different armies. It's about drones, as you mentioned, because of Hezbollah. They can use these drones to attack civilians. They did that. That's why Russia responded. What is the priority of the United States today? It seems that Donald Trump doesn't have that priority to put an end to the war. He wanted to end it in 24 hours, which didn't happen. No, I think what we're seeing, the war in Ukraine has two dimensions. One is Ukrainian Russian War, which was basically inspired by Ukrainian nationalism and the desire of Ukrainian nationalists to forcibly assimilate Russian speakers and Russian influence in Ukraine. There was a coup d'etat, there was a prohibition on the use of Russian language for official purposes and education and so on and so forth. This is one dimension. The other dimension is a proxy war between various components of the West and Russia. The United States has essentially dropped out of that proxy war. For two reasons, one, we got tired of it. It wasn't going anywhere. Donald Trump didn't want to continue it. And so we basically handed our role off to the Europeans. Europeans are engaged in a proxy war. The British in particular, the United States, through its intelligence services, remains involved, are doing the targeting for Ukraine to hit targets very deep inside Russia. So we have escalated into direct attacks into remote regions of Russia. That's one escalation. Another is things like the Boy School in Logansk that was hit with a death of about two dozen students or so. And the resentment that this causes in Russia. This is it seen by the Russians right now. Or wrongly is an act of terrorism that deserves a frightful response. So the battlefield itself has bogged down largely because of the nature of drone warfare and the inability of troops to advance without being seen and attacked by drones. Each side is now firing more and more into the rear areas of the other. The attack on Kiev and the warning from Foreign Minister LeProv to foreign diplomats to leave Kiev are very ominous because they are response by Russia to the Western assistance either through intelligence for targeting or through the supply of weaponry to Ukraine to conduct attacks inside Russia. Attacks on Moscow attacks on other places, oil refineries and other installations. Russia is now counter escalating. The use of the Oraznik missile was a signal not just to Ukraine but to everyone that this could escalate to the nuclear level. In the end Russia's protection from Europe is nuclear. And when you see the Russians mapping out the factories in Germany and UK and elsewhere that are producing weapons for Ukraine, they're telling you something that this could go into a full-fledged war between Europeans, European members of NATO and Russia. The United States would be obligated to intervene in that war on behalf of the Europeans. It's not clear how seriously Donald Trump takes that warning. So we are on the verge of a further escalation. That has been the pattern in this war from the beginning. One side escalates, the other side counter escalates. The Russians are now in a face of counter escalation. Just add that Vladimir Putin has several times said that he thinks the war is in its final stages. I think what he means by that is that there will be an all-out push to take that small part of the Donetsk oblast that is still under Ukrainian control from the Ukrainians and transfer it to Russian control. So one way to end the war would be, as Russia demands, for Ukraine voluntarily to withdraw from that, whatever it is, 10 percent of the Donetsk that it continues to occupy. Failing that, I think the Russians will now be very costly, offensive, a very bloody, offensive, and try to finish the war with the capture of that territory. But meanwhile, they are going to wreak havoc deep inside Ukraine because Ukraine is attempting to do that to them. This is very dangerous. We should be paying attention to it, but we are distracted, as you said, by the closure of the Strait of Armours. They continued tit for tat fighting between the United States and Iran, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Israel's expansion of its campaign of extermination and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Israel's pogroms and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. So there is a lot on our plate and we are just not paying the attention. We should be to the looming crisis in Europe, in Europe. Thank you so much, Ambassador, for being with us today. Great pleasure, as always. Well, I'm glad you do what you do, Neema, and keep it up.