‘Licking Putin’s Boot!’ Alastair Campbell | Witkoff’s Russia Deal & Netanyahu’s Iran War Plan

You are a humanitarian also, sir. That's not serious diplomacy, that is just bootlicking of the worst possible kind. I am beyond despair in trying to work out what his motivation is. I hate conspiracy theories, but maybe Putin does have something on it. By any metric, this war has been absolutely disastrous. Rita has been a mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic of Iran for decades. If you have an argument, please make it. I'm sorry that it offends you when I point out that you are a tool of the Iranian regime, that's just a fact. You're just embarrassing yourself. Shut your mouth. President Trump's approval rating is now lower than at any point in either of his two presidencies. Barely 31% of Americans think he's doing a good job. In fact, he's less popular today than he was in the aftermath of January 6th, when most of the world accused him of inciting an insurrection. With the midterm elections in just 13 days, Trump is betting on war to avoid a wipeout. His envoy, Steve Witkoff, is in Moscow today to fix a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Ukraine's Zelensky. He opened with a grovel. His address to the dictator would seem to embarrass even the Kremlin commissars watching behind him. You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. Well, last night, the U.S. president again made clear where his blame lies for the failure to end a war he said he'd solve in a day. It's not with the man who started it. Ukraine has to want to settle this war. Zelensky has to want to settle this war. And if he doesn't, I think it's going to be a very bad thing. Look, we have given tremendous amounts to Ukraine. We've got nothing back other than high diesel. We have given probably, possibly more money to Ukraine than almost anybody over the years. Hundreds of billions of dollars. We've got nothing back. And the American taxpayers are. I'm tired of it. We want Zelensky to make a deal. Well, the glaring problem here, besides rewarding an aggressor who's wanted for crimes against humanity, is that Zelensky's position is shared by the vast majority of Ukrainians. A ceasefire deal might freeze the conflict where it is, but surrendering territory in a permanent agreement would need a referendum. And if Putin's bombs and drones do pause for long enough to let it happen, the answer would be no. What Trump does get right is that American voters are sick of it all. They're sick of high gas prices, too. And to be clear, the main reason for both is not Ukraine. But Iran. And every indication is now that attacks on Tehran will resume as soon as the elections are done. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing an existential election of his own next week, shared this phone call with Trump. I'm so grateful for this incredible endorsement. You've been an incredible leader of the free world, of America. By far, the greatest friend Israel has ever had or will have in the White House. And all of civilization is emboldened by your. Your boldness. Donald, we have a job to finish. You said it, and we'll finish it together. We'll finish it, and no one else will do it. Actually, I actually crafted that one myself. That wasn't one that was put out by some guy writing something. That was crafted by me. You're a warrior. You've been treated unfairly by. And we will prove that. We will prove that very soon. I think you're terrific, people. We have a job to finish, and we will finish it soon, he said, shortly after an unannounced visit by U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying, in a way or another, the Ukraine war may soon reach a fragile end. The least popular war in U.S. history, however, is only just beginning. We have an exceptional panel waiting in the wings to debate all this. We begin with a man who's uniquely qualified to opine about illegal Middle Eastern wars based on disputed claims of serious weapons technology, Alastair Campbell. Hello, Piers. How are you? Not interviewed you for a long time. Beautiful segue. For our American viewers, we used to lock horns when I was editor of the Daily Mirror, and you were the communications chief. Tony Blair. For seven years, we probably spoke most days, shouted at each other quite regularly. But we both, I think, in our careers, we both were mirror men at some stage, we both in our careers, I think, displayed the qualities which are the basis for your new book. So before we get to wars, your specialist subject, perseverance is the word you've come up with for this new book. There it is. What is perseverance? Perseverance. This is the definition I want to see in the dictionary within a year. Noun, the ability of an individual, group or organisation to turn any situation, setback or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow, to advance and secure their core interests and beliefs. There you go. That's what it is. So it's basically. You've got perseverance and you've got to have resilience. What's the difference between the two things? I think perseverance and resilience are negative concepts. You would never say, I was watching this great film and I persevered to the end. Yes, I would. OK. I think it is a positive, actually. OK. I think perseverance is the Rocky Balboa thing, right? I read the speech a lot to my kids, which is when he has it out with his son and he says, life's tough, it will beat you down if you let it. And the way to win at life is not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can get hit, get back up and keep moving forward. OK, OK. Now, that is perseverance. Right. And actually, it's resilience. So I think they're both positives. OK. There was a very, very good review of this book in a Ukrainian paper, the Lviv Herald. I thought you'd been scouring. I know. Scouring around. It's on the thing. It just popped up. And in fact, the review was almost as long as the book, I've got to tell you that. But he said, his definition of what he thought I was saying was that perseverance says you just keep going. Resilience is about recovery. Perseverance is about learning from both to take yourself to the next stage in a better, more positive way. That's how I see it. So, I mean, I've got. I hate to say this, Piers, because as you say, we've had quite a few bust-ups over our. And good times. And very good times. I always respected you as a very good operator. Yeah. We fell out big time over Iraq. We did. We did. Well, no, I don't think we fell out. Well, I know, unlike a lot of people, I never thought you lied about Iraq. I didn't. And I didn't say that. I felt that we disagreed about whether we should have gone to the war. Yeah. And you were wrong about it. I mean, the weapons of mass destruction never turned up. That was my central point of contention about it all. But unlike a lot of people. People that like to constantly say you deliberately lied, I don't think you did. No. I don't think you got it wrong. And also, the other thing I'll say in your defence is that I knew that at the time. So, you could have that very, very strong argument. Whereas there were people in the media, some of them I mentioned in this book, who basically wanted to try to destroy me, which makes you Percivillian. Anyway, Piers, look, you see that? That's the title of the book, Percivillians. Yeah. Here's a little present for you. Go on. Because you are such a self-obsessed sort of narcissist. I'm coming from you. Jesus Christ. I've written a book where one letter changed. Oh, look. Piers of Iliad. But, Piers, let me tell you something. Let me tell you. Your guys have just pointed out to me, but it says Piers Evil. I hadn't noticed that. Of course you hadn't. Anyway, that is the only copy. I love it. That's yours. It's probably going to sell more than the other one. Let's take the premise of this and apply it to what's going on now. Because, actually, Donald Trump, I would say this about him. Because I've known him very, very well. I've known him 20 years. Whether you like him or not, agree with him or not, have a pathological hatred of him or not, the things you probably can't disagree with are that he has, as a human being, remarkable powers of perseverance and resilience. 100%. I mean, indisputably. Totally. I mean, the way he's come back from being prosecuted, being shot. Losing an election. Losing elections. All these things. You know, you've been in that position. But for any leader. For any leader to come back, especially as President of America, hardly any ever come back and win again, right, after they've lost. So, how is it that he can be the personification of your book? And yet, if I asked you personally what you think of him, I presume you'd say you hate him. Yeah, well, I've got no time for him at all. I think he's doing massive damage to the world. And I think he's got terrible values. But, and I say in the book, that perseverance can be bad people too. And that's why. I think for me, to make it a positive word, there has to be values and integrity attached to it. And I say, when I watch that, I know we're going to talk about it later, but when I see Steve Witkoff with that thing today, it just makes me feel sick. Well, calling Putin a humanitarian. I mean, it's disgusting. It is repulsive. So, I accept he's got extraordinary powers of resilience and perseverance. But I'll tell you where I think perseverance comes in. So, let's just bring it closer to home. You mentioned Tony Blair, and I know that, you know, whatever differences you had, you thought Tony Blair was an exceptional Prime Minister. Certainly an exceptional politician. He was an exceptional politician. Why did Tony last 10 years and Keir Starmer lasted two? It's not just because he was a better communicator. I think Tony instinctively got this sense of, if bad stuff happens, how do I use this to get good? How do I use it to get even stronger? Whereas Keir, he's got resilience, which is a different thing. Resilience will just get you so far. It gets you through the crisis. I don't think he even had resilience. Personally, I quite like Keir Starmer. We got on well. We're both Arsenal fans and so on. I think with Tony Blair, the difference between him and Starmer is that Tony Blair, hit the ground running with a plan. In 1997, the new Labour, it felt like a revolution. And you guys hit the ground and did bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And they were very popular policies. And actually, that first term in particular was incredibly successful, right? The turmoil began, actually, with the Iraq war. But even after the Iraq war, you won again, right? Which I think that was resilience. But to start with, you've got to have a plan. If you're a leader, and Trump, you know, the interesting thing for me is I spoke to Trump. the morning after he won, literally a few hours after he'd been declare winner and we had a maybe five ten minute chat and I said what's going to be different this time he said that he's going to have people around him are going to be loyal because the first time he felt the cabinet was full of disloyal people who then caused him a lot of damage he's definitely shown he's done that but he was going to hit the ground running he'd be he'd have four years to wait for this and he had a plan and he came out with a blizzard of executive orders largely very popular attacking all the woke stuff uh shutting the border to all the illegal as you said at the top there he's now got the lowest ratings no no I'm going to come to because the values piece has never been well it's not that it's just he's he bet the bank on things which I think have turned out to be disastrous notably the Iran war right now you again I'm not being facetious when I say you guys bet the bank in a way in a similar way by invading Iraq in 2003 do you see parallels here and is the reality that when you go to war you can have all the plans in the world but reality takes charge and then things can spiral beyond any any leader's control well I think that if you go through our whole entire term in office I do think there's a there's a possibility that because Sierra Leone went well because Kosovo went relatively well that once 9-11 happened and it was clear that the Americans were they're going to do Afghanistan and possibly going to do Iraq after that I recognize that we maybe got caught pulled into that in a way that looking back you know wasn't necessarily the right thing for us but at the same time as you and argue you and I argued at the time I remember Tony Blair always saying if we're going to disassociate ourselves from our closest ally because it wasn't like it is now we were like that in so many ways over a fundamental policy of strategic importance to them it's got to be over something where we are 100% clear but the interesting thing you see there you touch on suggestions that are going to be very different from what you think they are going to be we're going to have to look at some of the issues that we're going to have to look at because we're going to have to look at some of the so i think netanyahu hit him at the perfect time psychologically to say look they did nothing last year after the 12-day war of any significance they're there for the taking and if we take them now you know it's going to this will be the moment the regime will fall people will rise up we saw them try in january i think all this was hubris that playing into trump's well this is going to be what you saw with that clip you just saw there of netanyahu on the phone putin plays trump like a fiddle and bb plays trump like a fiddle and i think what happened was that netanyahu wanted to do this for his own purposes he persuaded trump this was the time to do it trump who famously doesn't really listen to advice there's a reason why previous presidents have not done what he did in iran it's because they worried that they would close the strait of hormuz as an immediate reaction and he was warned that and he was and he and he says well i'm different i can do this in a different way so i think whether it's ukraine which as you said in your opener gonna sort in 24 hours or this i think it's more than hubris with him and and don't forget i know that you know fair play to you you've never accused us as a bad faith going back to iraq tony blair was convinced that saddam hussein was a bigger threat he that that was not for i remember the colin powell it was one of the people i've interviewed who i most respected i remember him on television at the un yeah saying he's got weapons of mass destruction and he's going to use the same we said now we did contrary to the way it was presented afterwards we did there were caveats in the documents that we put out there but and and and also it was not the only reason why we went to war but i completely but if you had your time again yeah i mean the same way that i think if trump could go back to the middle of february there's no chance knowing what he knows now he would do what he did if you had your time again i imagine neither you nor tony blair would make that same decision again i would hope you wouldn't knowing that he had no weapons of mass destruction oh no if you knew that knowing what you know now i don't think you would have invaded right well i think if you'd have known beyond any doubt yeah which we do that that's no but if you'd known then i'll talk about knowing now yeah but you're asking me why are you hesitating because you're asking me to totally reframe the basis not really the pretext the pretext for the it wasn't the only pretext though no but the main pretext for going to war it was it was a saddam hussein and weapons yeah knowing now today many years later so we're 23 years on knowing now that he didn't you wouldn't have taken that decision if we had known without any doubt at all that there were no weapons there i don't think that would have happened right now and as i said it wasn't the only reason there was this part but that's why the intelligence part of all this is to me so crucial because governments and prime ministers and presidents take decisions based on information flow which if it turns out to be flawed becomes incredibly problematic and a lot of people die yeah it does and that's what happened and so but i think but i think i think i do think the iran thing is different because i think that's what's happening in the world right now and i think that's what's happening in the world right now and i think that's what's happening in the world right now and i think that's what's happening in the world right now what what trump was doing in this circumstance he was ignoring the intelligent flows my sense is actually the intelligence people would probably say no this isn't this isn't the way you want to go but he just he decided for his own reasons and i think this is what's so difficult i mean i know you know him i don't know him but my sense of watching him is that it's almost impossible to work out the rationale behind a lot of the decisions that he makes i honestly i am beyond despair in trying to work out what his motivation is in relation to ukraine and i'm i hate conspiracy theories but i'm even moving to that sort of sense maybe if eugene does have something on him or certainly this is in the end about big business before we bring the panel in because it's really interesting territory for you to be part of a panel about all this but the enormity of leadership when you're running a country when you take decisions the biggest decision must be whether they go to war ultimately given your acknowledgement that if you knew what you knew today we wouldn't have gone to war against iraq which i'm sure is would have to be the case how do you feel how do you feel on a human level about the enormous consequences of what happened a million people being killed in that iraq war for example the rise of isis out of the embers of it all and the mayhem they cause and so on on a human level how do you tony blair and others how do you feel about the consequence of those kind of actions i think i think i think tony is in a different position and i think if you had him here now he'd actually be pretty much saying you know we did the right thing and i i can say we did the right thing in the context of what we were being told at the time and i will always defend tony on that basis he gets accused of so much else besides but i'll be honest i mean often i feel i've you know i still dream about it um i spoke to you on the on the day that david kelly uh his body was found the civil servant who took his own life i'm not sure what's going on but i think tony is in a different position i think if you had him here now he'd actually be pretty much saying you know we did the right thing and i i can say we did the right thing in the context of what we were being told at the time took his own life i was i said i felt i'd been hit by a two-ton truck i do know families of people who whose sons lost their lives um so how i feel about it is deep down you'd wish it had never happened i mean the worst thing the worst thing for more was like my brother as you know was went to war in iraq and the disillusionment which came over him when he realized there were no weapons of mass destruction was really palpable for me for me i felt very angry for him yeah i get that but i i one of the worst moments of my entire time was when somebody from the security services came to see me after the saddam had fallen by the way the world is a better place without him in charge so let's just put that out there uh and said how difficult would it be for you guys and for tony blair if it turns out that we don't find these weapons and i said very very difficult so i was always aware of that um but how i feel about it is um i mean i did you know i do the podcast with rory stewart and we did a two hour special a couple of years ago one of the anniversaries and i try to be i try to be nuanced about it because the fact is politics is so much done in black and white and you know i i i know it's a big part of my life and a big part of my reputation um and i i have regrets about what didn't happen in other words i have regrets about the fact that we didn't have the aftermath planned as well as we should have done because we were trusting the americans too much maybe we should learn at that time you can't necessarily trust them in the way that you want to and likewise i i also think just from the political perspective um i think i've not least through perseverance kind of i think i've got a strong reputation which has withstood all that got thrown at me over that but i'm also aware that tony who i like and he's still a good friend and i think a great prime minister that his reputation is has taken a deep scar because of it as well yeah um and you just gotta live with that let's let's bring in the panel uh joining alistair is uh trita parsi executive vice president of the quincy institute jim hansen the chief strategist of the middle east forum and will chamberlain host of counterweight well welcome to all of you to tee it up i mean alistair you were in oslo this week uh when zelensky was over there with steve whitkoff and the norwegian prime minister the you know here we have vladimir putin illegally invading uh ukraine nearly five years ago now where do you think we are with this war i i just don't know because i i've lost i've lost my capacity to judge what's going on in this uh i watching that clip at the top of your show whitkoff it strikes me where i think we are is that donald trump has basically several times said to Vladimir Putin, I'm going to help you win this war. I am basically on your side. It feels like he's on Putin's side. In the last few days, with the satellite getting shut off, the sanctions relief, the diesel deal and all this stuff, it feels to me like he's more on his side than ever. And the way they treat and talk about Zelensky, as though he's some kind of rogue actor, when he is the victim in this war and Putin is the aggressor. So I've reached a conclusion. And I hate to say this, because I want to be able to respect the United States president. I've reached the conclusion that Trump and Putin have got some sort of future deal carving out this whole thing. They both believe that they, as powerful regional leaders, should be in far greater control than they are of the entire region. And that's why, for now, Europe has really, really, really got to get real about this. I don't think we can look at the Americans right now as an ally in this. And that's terrifying. Well, Will Chamberlain, you've been grimacing there. What's your response to that? Well, I think that's ridiculous for two reasons. First off, President Trump has been extremely supportive of the Ukrainian government, sanctioning Rosneft and Lukoil for the first time in a long time. He put a 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil. Meanwhile, the British government is still buying Russian diesel. They're doing so. It's being shipped down to India and Turkey. But they're still buying it the same way America is buying it. Moreover, a big part of the problem here is that we have this huge increase in diesel prices that isn't helped by the fact. The net zero policies that Alistair has been a primary advocate of are responsible for the U.K. seeing its refineries go down from 18 to 4 and for your own domestic energy production to be anemic when it could be very much more bountiful. So I think that it's kind of ridiculous to say that this is, like, the Americans' fault and Trump's now on Putin's side when he's taken a slew of much more aggressive actions than Obama did, for example, while also, you know, advocating for the very policies that make the U.K. dependent on imports for all its energy. But, Will, when you see Steve Witkoff representing the United States, the United States of America, your country, looking across the table to Vladimir Putin and calling him a great humanitarian, do you not share the same vomiting view of that that I did? I mean, I don't vomit about it. It's just diplomacy, right? We have to do diplomacy with the Russians. Trump is trying to manage the war in Iran, the war in Ukraine, Do you think Putin's a humanitarian? No, of course not. What do you think he is? Very simply, no, I don't. No, I don't think he's a humanitarian. What do you think he's a humanitarian? Is he a dictator? Of course. Okay, so why is America sucking out to a dictator? Well, because, unfortunately, diesel prices are six bucks a gallon. I mean, the same reason that you're talking about what a mistake it was for America to go into Iran, despite the fact that I don't think you have any defense of the Iranian regime, Piers. But, you know, we have to, essentially, we're managing a number of different crises and world oil prices. And, I mean, you're saying we've got to withdraw the Iran war is a huge mistake. I mean, the other incoherent part about Al-Assar's position, if I may briefly, is Al-Assar's position. Al-Assar says the big mistake they made in Iraq was the fact they were wrong about weapons and mass destruction. If they were right, then the war would have been justified. Well, guess what? Iran had a massive nuclear enrichment program. I don't think anybody denies that. And so, if the idea is you would have been right, Al-Assar, to go into Iraq if you were right about weapons and mass destruction, how can you then say we are wrong when, in addition, our own war has cost far less in blood and treasure? Well, I mean, my response to that would be that after the 12-day war last summer, we were assured by the President of the United States that we were wrong. We were assured by the President of the United States that the Iranian nuclear program had been put back, quote, decades. It turned out it wasn't even eight months, right? So, I think there's been a lot of bullshit spewed about all this. Can I also say, Piers, I do also think that the JCPOA, which I think was a very, very good piece of diplomacy, I think when you look at the work that went into that and set it against what Kushner and Witkoff have done in the various wars that Trump has deputed them to settle, I think you'd have to say that nobody wants these wars to end. Nobody wants these wars to go on. Trump was elected on no more forever wars, and I think that was a sensible position to take. And now, we're into this war that he started with Netanyahu and now seems unable to stop. And I think then to try to blame Zelensky for the effect on gas prices in the U.S. as a result of that is just, it's a form of madness. It's not, you talk about serious diplomacy, saying to Putin that he's a humanitarian, that's not serious diplomacy. That is just bootlicking of the worst possible kind. And Trump, and Putin's laughing at them. Putin's laughing at that. Well, I mean, we gave weapons to Zelensky with explicit instructions not to use them on Russian oil, because, you know, I think we're in a position to do that. We've been, I mean, the primary funder of the Ukraine war for a very long time. We've been a huge supporter of it. We've given, we've done a lot to Russia, I guess I said, more than other countries have before. And so when Zelensky just ignores our instructions and starts using it. Well, what about Putin ignoring all the instructions, too, and bombing away at Ukraine's refineries? What's the difference? Well, that's why we put sanctions on him in the first place. That's why. That's why we've been aiding the Ukrainians. But for American aid, obviously, Ukraine would have faced far, far more serious consequences. We haven't been on Russia's side in this war, and the suggestion that we are is absurd. I don't think it's absurd at all. I think it's sounding more and more like your administration is on Putin's side to try to Trump it. Whether the administration is, I don't know. Well, yeah, but, you know, silence is cowardice if you don't agree with it. And let's bring in Trita Parsi. Trita, welcome to Uncensored. There's a lot going on here. You've got the Ukraine war raging way longer than anyone, least of all. Putin anticipated it would rage. A lot of that down to the very first civilians, which Alistair talks about in his book. They've been remarkably resilient, I think, the Ukrainians, and deserve great credit for doing that. But you have the Iran war also raging much longer than Donald Trump thought it was going to be lasting. We talked about two to three weeks, and it would be all over. It seemed naive at the time. It seems preposterous now. When you look at it in totality, how big a hole has Trump got himself into? And are we? How are we going to see, at the midterm elections, the kickback from the American public by him losing both the House and the Senate? By any metric, this war has been absolutely disastrous for the United States' strategic position, for the stability in the region, and I think for the longer-term American deterrence on a global scale. If you compare this war with the Iraq war, it's important to note that in the Iraq war, the United States won the war militarily within three weeks. - Are you scared of the truth? hear what you have to say. Shut your mouth and let me speak. The point is, you're telling the Iranian position, as you always have, you're undermining U.S. foreign interests. And I find that offensive for someone who sits in the United States, slithered away from fairer violations you should have been caught by, and now acts as if you're giving advice the world should listen to. What has undermined the U.S. position? I'm done with them for a second. Well, Jim, to be fair, Jim, you have launched. Hang on, guys, don't talk over each other. Jim, to be clear, you have launched a pretty savage personal attack at him. I think we should, out of respect for another panelist, let him at least respond to what you've said. He did while I was talking, which was a bit disrespectful. Well, you went personal and savage pretty quickly, so I think he's entitled to feel a bit aggrieved. Trita, respond to what Jim has said about you personally. These are just completely preposterous accusations that people are making. Because they don't actually have any real arguments to make. I mean, I joined this debate because I thought that Jim would actually be able to put forward some proper arguments as to why this war apparently is achieving tremendous results. I think all facts beg to differ. Now, let's just debate the facts in that case. You're pointing out that there are destructions of Iran's military facilities, et cetera. That is absolutely correct. Those are tactical achievements. We're talking about strategic achievements, things that actually lead to a different situation. We're talking about strategic achievements, things that actually lead to a different situation in the region, a different capacity for the Iranians to be able to achieve their objectives. None of that has been achieved. It doesn't matter how many times the Pentagon says that 90% of Iran's launchers have been destroyed. They clearly have not. And had they, this would need to be a stepping stone towards achieving something else. But we haven't seen any of that taking place. And as a result, it is the strategic level results that we're debating right now. And those are simply not there. Okay, Jim. I mean, my problem with what you said about putting back the Iranian nuclear program is this could all have the complete reverse effect in the sense that we knew how much enriched uranium they had. It was being controlled under the agreements that Obama put through, which were widely condemned by Republicans. Okay. But I would argue America's in a worse position now in terms of controlling Iran's nuclear aspirations. We're now reading that there are members of this new Iranian regime who actually think the big lesson from all this is that they're not going to be able to achieve their objectives. this, is they need to have a nuclear deterrent. And so you could end up with them advancing now towards something that maybe they didn't plan to do in the first place. And as we sit here, we've gone from last summer, after the 12-day war, that the nuclear program being put back decades, we're now told it was so imminent in February, it was two weeks away from apparently having nuclear bomb, that there had to be attacked and invaded. And now we sit here, they've still got every tiny bit of their enriched uranium. They're talking openly about whether they should develop a nuclear weapon. It's hard to see the win here. And where's the win? I will explain that, first of all, if we were still operating under the JCPOA, Iran would have no limits at this point on the number of centrifuges they could run, which Trita lobbied for and Alistair lobbied for. Both of them were making certain that there was a path to a fully legitimate nuclear program for Iran with the JCPOA. So President Trump threw that out the window because that was an absurd thing to allow. Now, what we've done now is destroyed the bulk of the Iranian nuclear program, the bulk of the Iranian military-industrial complex, because it's visible from space. Why should we believe that, Jim? Why should we believe that claim now, when we were told this had all happened last summer, and it turned out to be bullshit? There has been enough destruction to set them back a decade at least. So again, so now it's decades again. But how do you know that? I don't see any evidence of that. I was told that we were told, in fact, Trump was told by Netanyahu in the White House Situation Room right before the war started, look, they're there for the taking. You saw what happened last summer. They've got no way of responding. We can take out the Ayatollah now. And when you do, with our help, then the regime will collapse, IRGC will collapse, people will rise up, and they'll all be too distracted to think about the Strait of Hormuz. What happened other than the Ayatollah got taken out and replaced by his even more hardline son? That would have been ideal. It didn't happen. Fact. You don't get to take the outcome of the war before you start it. Now, what did happen is the region is now united. Iran is no longer the hegemon with their axis of resistance and all of their proxies pushing things their direction. All of their proxies are more or less destroyed. Their ability to project power is minimal. Well, hang on. Just to be clear. Sorry. Houthis are a proxy of Iran. They're not looking very destroyed to me. It looks to me like they're attacking Saudi Arabia with impunity and they're controlling the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, right? They're fighting the Saudis and the Saudis and Israelis who are providing them intelligence. And now potentially Turkey might be joining that conflict against the Houthis. President Trump asked the people who live in the region, the Gulf states, Israel, Turkey, and others to go ahead and take care of their own region. He said, I'll take down Iran. A few notches. Would have been nice if it was all the way down. Didn't happen. But he took them down a few notches for sure. They are no longer capable. Their country's broke. They've got zero revenue coming in. And yet astonishingly, the regime remains completely in charge. There have been zero uprisings from the public. They control indisputably the Strait of Hormuz, whatever Trump says about that. They do not. They do not. Okay. Look at the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz and try and pretend to me that you've got control of it. You've got control of it. You haven't. They've got more, as much oil coming out now as there was between the Strait and between the pipelines and other ways out of the Gulf than there was at the start of the war. The Wall Street Journal reported that yesterday. So the Strait is not under Iranian control. The U.S. changed the entire balance of power. And now the other people in the region whose neighborhood it is are taking action and are united against Iran. Actually, I would say they're all feeling extremely vulnerable. I mean, Alistair, to bring you back here on the geopolitical aspect of all this, if you talk to anybody at any higher level in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in the UAE, in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, any of them, they're all very, very twitchy about what's happening here. Because the Iranian strategy of attacking the Gulf states, attacking their refineries, you know, helping the Houthis and Saudi and so on, all these things are having a really serious material effect on the business model of the Gulf states moving out of oil to safety, sunshine, tourism. Sport, entertainment. All that right now is dead in the water. This has enormous implications for the whole region. And they're all responding in different ways. And a bit like us in Europe, they're all having to respond to a changing relationship with the United States. So you mentioned that the Houthis there and the Saudis thought that the Americans would immediately come to their aid on the back of that. And Trump said no, because we're too busy with what we're doing in relation to Iran. And what I find, I'd really like to ask Jim, and I'm a big fan of this, and, you know, I like the way he sort of lumped you in there with treaty there. But let me just ask you this. Genuinely, do you, can you honestly hand on heart say that the reason for the rise in oil prices that is affecting your midterm elections, that is sort of really making things hard on the affordability front for American people, that that is more to do with Ukraine than Iran? Because I just find it incredible that Trump is now moving the goalposts on this so far. In a way, that I think is what's pushing him towards, frankly, whatever's been said before, I think throwing Zelensky under a bus, basically saying to Zelensky, you're now on your own, you cannot depend on us. And I also must, from a European perspective, hit back at this notion that the Americans have given so much. Since Trump came in for the second term, the big funders of Ukraine's defence have been the Europeans. I think that should at least be recognized. Will, on this, look, I want to play a clip. This is from Zelensky when he sat in this studio with Trump last week. And he talked about this demand for him to go, which Trump made and Elon Musk made. And he said this. Moving me. But it's a decision, of course, of our people. Yes, no Trump, no Musk, no anybody in the world can can choose the president or elect in other countries. But this is not the problem of the president. I mean, there's moving me. And I'm sure. I'm sure that the president and the woman will defend our country because we are. I mean, this is where it's our as I said, it's our home. Now, he's taught Will today on Fox News about agreeing with the principle of having a freeze in the war on the current lines. It's been misinterpreted by some people as meaning he give that away. He's not talking about giving anything away. He's talking about having a ceasefire and a freeze where the war currently is, because it's basically hardly moved now. But let's just play just to be clear exactly what he said to Fox News. Would you accept a peace deal that freezes everything the way it is right now, where you still keep 75 percent or more of your country, regardless of how it started? Would you be would you accept where it is right now? Yes, we right now we have to freeze. And I think this is real way to end this. War. We call it ceasefire or stop killings like President Trump called it freeze and stop. And of course, this is. what we need from Russia today then of course we'll go to president and to Europeans and we'll ask security guarantees the most important it's peace and also security peace now just just to go with that I'll play another clip from my interview with him where he clarifies what he meant about any giving up any territory is your position just to push you on this yeah is your position as the president of Ukraine that in those negotiations you would never agree to any territory being given to the Russians or is your position that it's negotiable in other words obviously you don't want to give the whole Donbass but is there a deal to be done that would involve potentially some Ukrainian land being given to Russia I think in your in your question yes there is an answer why some big guys want to change me because I will never accept Ukrainian land as Russian land yes I am realist and I understand that people more important than one kilometer or two kilometers not about kilometers I mean this it's it's about land and homes so well you know I think it's pretty clear what Zelensky is saying here he wants the killing to stop to freeze things where they are and then get into proper negotiation but he's damned if he should give up an inch of Ukraine territory and frankly why should he you wouldn't expect America to give up any territory if they've been invaded right yeah I think that's perfectly reasonable and I think that's why ultimately the United States has been broadly supportive of Ukraine in this war why we provided them so much financial military intelligence support for many years now that said I think if everybody's making a big deal out of this diesel deal and saying it's a betrayal of Ukraine I expect people like Alistair to start actually backing real policies for their own energy independence like is Alistair gonna say that it's time to for Britain to get rid of its carbon tax and it's 78 percent taxed on oil production and it's ban on oil exploration and it's ban on fracking so that it can be pull its own weight in terms of energy and if not then I feel like this is all just green virtue signaling on the one hand and whining about the fact that President Trump is both concerned with supporting Ukraine and concerned with global oil prices and just like you're not willing to do anything about oil prices by changing your own ridiculous green virtue signaling we are going to try and deal with oil prices and the Ukraine war is not our only policy concern okay well I quite like the idea of leaving it hanging that Alistair may be a green virtue signal so we'll leave it there Alistair thanks for coming in thank you the book just give it another plug another little plug they are guys per civilians Zelensky's got it the world the world needs now the word the world is that way yours has got a question mark in the end of it yeah I think actually that if you called it peers of aliens you'd probably sell more copies thank you to all my panel and thank you to you and I thank you well don't forget this week we're proudly launching the uncensored Club ad free episodes extra content early access Q&A is never thing else you've asked for there's a massive founding members discount available now as is this interview with our sense of favorite Dave Smith which our members will get first I'm not voting for a socialist I'm not voting for a woke Democrat and I'm not voting for a neocon if there was a ballot and on the ballot is Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong at a certain point I don't want to get into an argument about which one is worse than the other I want to just I want to reject the entire system don't launch a war of choice sold on lies on behalf of a foreign country and then lose the war now I'm not defending anything Putin or Assad did they're both very bad guys but if you had to be trapped on a desert island for a calendar year with one of the following who would you choose Adam Sosnick Douglas Murray or Natasha Hausdorff well general Keith Kellogg the former US special envoy for Russia and Ukraine joins me now general thank you very much indeed for joining me on uncensored where do you think this war in Ukraine first of all currently is because you got Putin claiming he's making great advances and you've got Zelensky telling me no they've got it pretty well frozen now the front line and they've been putting up a hell of a fight and they're not gonna give an inch yeah Pierce thanks for having me it's great to be with you this morning look I think you you played just a minute ago the take from Zelensky this morning on Fox News when he talked about the fight ongoing in Ukraine and when you look at what's happening there they the Russians really are not winning what they got at the initial invasion which is about so much of the land which is Luhansk Donetsk province operation croissant and discounting Crimea they've only gained about 1% of the land and Ukrainians have counterattacked in that and in the so they've got so much of Luhansk so much of Donetsk they want the rest of don't ask of the Donbass area and then we'll call the day Zelensky isn't willing to give that up and I understand why I have physically been on that ground that is the last defensible terrain before Harki and Kiev and he doesn't want to give it up because he got the three fortified cities there so from a military perspective I understand what he's doing and they're not losing ground and I believe when when President Trump he kind of says well the Russians are invincible they're gonna go forward they've got massive amounts of manpower you know I'm a big believer in history and I look at 1415 with Agincourt what the British did against the French totally outnumbered I see what the degrees did at Thermopylae when they are outnumbered even though they lost there's a famous story about the 300 Spartans look I was physically in the first Gulf War Pierce when we went there with 4 000 troops and we were facing three hundred thousand and four Republican Guard divisions and you can't just count numbers it's as Bonaparte once said it's Morales three is to one and the fighting heart of the Ukrainians and I think what Zelensky is saying right now let's freeze in place I think that's a good approach we should tell the Russians this is what we'll accept it now we've got a uh basically we call it the Wells Declaration here in the United States where we never admit that a country that takes land an adverse or adversary that takes land by force you get the land du jour the facto they're on it physically but for example in World War II we never recognized that the Soviet Union took Lithuania was going to keep it we never said it we said yeah you own it because you're physically on the land but legally by du jour you don't and I think you have to be very clear about what this means about the land and what Zelensky is saying I understand what he's saying we will never legally give that land up and he can't because that's up to the Rada but will we acknowledge the fact that they're there de facto and I think what he's saying let's have a ceasefire in place Putin declare victory go home and and I don't know what was said currently in Finland in Finland and what what Witkoff took into Moscow with him but I hope that was a proposal let's just say let's call it a day and finish this war and stop the killing which is you mentioned in your last panel which has been horrific when you're talking about casualties of 1.2 to 1.5 million by Russian soldiers that is astounding in that number you just it's almost impossible to comprehend let me let me give you a data point the Soviet Union and Afghanistan spent 10 years they lost 18 000 and went home now they've lost 1.2 to 1.4 million dead or wounded and that's almost a conservative number I think somebody's got to tell Putin this is a done deal just declare victory go home call it a day you hear a lot of people's talking about that as well I recently talked to people in Pakistan when I was there just recently they kind of said the same thing just call it a day but in that arrangement what you're saying is that they would keep the territory they've taken but it wouldn't be officially declared Russian territory correct you de facto you physically are on the ground got it I understand that but by desure by law we're not going to say you now own this terrain it's now Russian territory just call it a day call it a ceasefire and do you think do you think not withstanding they're very strong uh positioning about all this do you think if it came to it they Zelensky would agree to that kind of deal if he got the safety security guarantees he needs for the rest of the country I do I I think he's very serious and being in Ukraine and talking to leaders there they're very serious about stopping the killing as President Trump said in a ceasefire in place I really do believe that they're look they're tired of war they've been at this for five years so I think they're the people are willing to have a ceasefire in place understand what the condition will be uh on the fact that they de facto own the land they're not going to push it back just stop it right now where it's at well the the Kremlin uh as we've been talking the Kremlin's announced it's ready to resume trilateral peace talks between Russia the U.S and Ukraine in mid-November Putin said this to Steve Witkoff how did you feel about Witkoff looking at Putin and calling him a great humanitarian well look Steve Witkoff speaks for himself and he speaks how he feels it is with him one-on-one with Putin he's thinking for America really if he's on camera isn't it well well but a lot of times you know let's be honest about it people say things they based on their what they feel and sometimes they don't really account for how it impacts everything globally and I'll leave Steve to answer the comments he makes for himself I'm not going to make any comments like that at all just quickly on Iran you know I I look at, I try and be objective about this. I've looked at it from day one and thought it was an ill-conceived war to start. And I feel that even more strongly now. Do you think if President Trump had a do-over, knowing how things were going to play out, not least on the domestic prices of cost of living in America, do you think he would have agreed to go to war with the Israelis against Iran? Well, look, that's a lot to unpack. Look, nobody can doubt what the Iranians were heading to on the enrichment of uranium. Under the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, they were authorized to enrich uranium at 3.67%. They were enriching at least at 60%, maybe to 80% of uranium. And you have to ask yourself a question. Why are you doing that? What's the purpose of enriching uranium to 60% to 80%? And I think the president was right. If we had thought this before, like with North Korea, we could have probably stopped having another nuclear state. So I think the president is right on this. We cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. Look, we shouldn't let any more countries have a nuclear weapon. And I think when you get a nuclear weapon, if you develop one, then you don't know what the outcome is going to be. And you treat, Pierce, you treat a nuclear state significantly different than a non-nuclear state. Because if they get nuclear weapons, that impacts the United States globally and the world globally. And here's the thing you have to ask yourself. If Iran did get a nuclear weapon, does that mean the Saudis will not get one? We know the Israelis have one. Are the Emiratis going to get one? They're not going to sit quietly with Iran and have a nuclear weapon. And so they were along the developmental stages to get a nuclear weapon. And for what reason are they going to get a nuclear weapon? And I think just the enriching of uranium was at such a level, you have to ask yourself a question. Why were you going there? And, you know, I think that's the question. I think that's the question. You know, the United States presidents have talked, the last several presidents, about Iran not having a nuclear weapon. President Trump was the first one who took actions to ensure, or try to ensure, that they're not going to get a nuclear weapon with his bombing of the sites at Fordow or Estran and other places as well. Now, I think, you know, you made an earlier comment to your panel, which I think is really accurate. How do you really know? Well, I think that's important as part of the process of getting to a peace process. We guarantee. Or they guarantee that the IAEA will get on the ground and physically look at their nuclear sites, basically without saying, well, it's going to take 24 hours or 48 hours, put somebody physically on the ground that can look at their sites and have a good understanding of their sites. I'm kind of like you are. I don't believe anything until I physically put my eyes on it and make sure that those sites are clear and also cut down on the centrifuges that they've got as well. And I think that. That ought to be part of any peace deal that you come up with. But look, I agree right now with what's happening with Iran in the sense that it's very hard to deal with a theocratic government, which you are. We don't know if the Supreme Leader is really still alive. We hear that, well, the Supreme Leader says this through statements, but we haven't seen him. No, it's true. He hasn't given us proof of life at all. We don't know that. You've got people that are really hard about it, like Paseshkin, when he made those comments at the U.N. General Assembly, which were really hard. You look at Arachi, who's their foreign minister, who's hardcore. He's actually said this is how you negotiate with America or anybody else when he actually wrote the principles of negotiation for Iran. So the question is, as long as you've got a theocratic government in place, do you really trust it? I don't. And I think the president has at least taken steps, rightly or wrongly, to get to a point of making sure they don't have a potential for a nuclear weapon. So I applaud him for that. When you look at the end state, would I have done it differently? Sure, I would have. Look, I'm hardcore. I'm a hardcore guy, and I understand that. In the sense that when you go to war, you go to war. You basically try to finish the job and finish the job. And I would take it to extreme to give you leverage what you'd want to do. I have said repeatedly on American TV that, look, take something like Karg Island. Why? 90% of their exports coming out of that. It's defensible. It's 16 miles offshore. Are you getting shot at? Of course you do. But now I own something that you're not going to get back that basically is economically important to you. And I own it. It's like owning your house. You're paying rent on it. And I understand that. Now, does that mean we're going to put boots on the ground in Iran? No, it doesn't mean that in Iran proper. But it means certain select targets you go after, and you close them off now much more than the blockade. The problem is now we're controlling. I understand the rationale. But the problem, it seems to me, is what the Iranians would almost certainly do is they would then target refineries in the Gulf states. That is the problem. They'd be waging. They'd be waging this asymmetric war, where if America did do that, I think they would go and do some big hits in the Gulf states on their refineries. And, you know, if they hit a desalination plant or something, the consequences could be catastrophic. So I think that I'm sure that is weighing on Trump's mind. General, we've got to leave you there. Fascinating to talk to you. Great to have you on Uncensored. Thank you very much. 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