Jeffrey Sachs on the Real Origins of the Iran War and the Coming Economic Devastation

0:04Jeeoff, thanks a lot for doing this. Uh, great  to be with you. Where does it go from here? The war in Iran. You know, we always talk about the  fork in the road. We're really we're really at a decisive moment. Uh there's an off-ramp. It's  definitely definitely definitely the one that we should be taking. We should be avoiding a return  to outright bombing to uh uh renewed uh military uh action. That's a very real possibility. And  the other possibility in my view is pretty much an uncontrolled uh escalation into uh full-blown  war. Uh that would become a regional war and that could become a world war. Um I think we're really  at that moment right now. Maybe that uh sounds

1:07naive because why not next week? Why not the week  after? Why not the week after? Uh but the problem is that we're not in a stable situation where we  can choose one or the other. We're in an unstable situation as we speak. Uh the world economy is  reeling. It's reeling because uh as everybody has learned in their geography in the last uh  few weeks, the straight of Hormuz is closed.

1:41as long as it's closed uh it means that there's a  worldwide economic crisis building. So time is not uh permissive right now. We can't say well  we'll decide in another month. We'll see how things go. We'll negotiate and see what happens.  Right now there is a an ongoing building global serious economic crisis and that is because uh a  uh narrow stretch of water through which uh comes a an enormous extremely important strategic  flow of resources. oil and gas obviously, but also fertilizers and petrochemicals  and uh many many other key commodities, aluminum and others is closed. To simply open it  is fine. That's basically what the off-ramp uh

2:50would allow. It would be the right answer. uh it  would not solve any of the underlying issues that uh led to this uh and it would not solve any of  the stated objectives of the United States, much less Israel. I don't believe those objectives were  valid and therefore I don't think that they should be the basis of a decision to take or to not take  that exit ramp. But the point is there's a way out of this thing that would avoid uh the escalation  to something quite different. So what is that other path? The other path is well we're in this  uh unstable situation. in the world economy is reeling because of the straight of hormones being  closed and we have to do something about it. We

3:51can't just sit there for weeks or months and we  refuse to just allow it to reopen and not have those goals met. So, uh Trump and his partner in  this Netanyahu uh might say the only thing we can do is make the maximal threat and if that threat  uh does not lead to Iran conceding, then we have to follow through not with more time and waiting  because of this unstable situation, but we have to return to massive bombing this time even more. And  what we can suspect on that alternative is that the Iranians will of course strike back and strike  back very hard and very rapidly. And what we have all learned also since February 28th, since the  start of this war, is that the entire Gulf region

4:58is exposed to missile fire from Iran as is in fact  because we also have come to understand that the anti-missile defenses are permeable uh limited uh  even depleted in many areas. But we know that the desalination plants in the Gulf region, the oil  and the gas fields, uh the port facilities are not protected systematically and comprehensively  against Iranian attacks. and Iran would completely totally understandably respond to what Trump has  repeatedly threatened which is the destruction of Iran. So if we don't take the exit ramp, I  personally don't see anything realistic less than an allout war. And while I'm an economist,  simple economist, not a military analyst,

6:07uh having watched this for decades and tried  to understand from the military analysts, I think it would be but a few weeks before a  very very large part of the infrastructure of the region was destroyed in Iran and in the Gulf  and a lot in Israel as well. And the result of that would not be uh peace followed by some easy  recovery. It would be a global calamity brought upon us in a few short weeks. So to return to uh  the basic question, Trump could say, "We're not going to go to disaster. We just pull back."  That's the right answer. If he says instead, uh, we can't wait any longer. We're going to  attack, I believe we will see a different world

7:13four weeks from now. uh a world uh that is uh  profoundly damaged, the world economy in crisis, the possibility of escalation to a full world war.  And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic uh or naive to say that we are at that fork in the road right  now. The problem once again is that the right thing to do is not uh a political victory for  Trump. Uh it's not and it's an outright loss from Netanyahu. Personally, I don't care about either  of those. I don't think the individual fates of two politicians should determine the fate of the  world because I don't think that the objectives of Trump and Netanyahu going into this made any  sense at all. They weren't objectives that I

8:14supported or support today or that I believe uh  believed uh on February 28th were within reach or that I believe today are within reach. So, the  fact that the off-ramp is not a success story doesn't bother me at all. It's the right way to  save the world. And it's the responsibility of um grown-ups uh to try to save the world. uh not to  save face, not to double down on failed gambles, uh not to engage in reckless escapades, and  that's why the off-ramp is is the right thing to do. Uh it requires uh grown-up behavior. I don't  associate that term with these two leaders very easily, unfortunately. So, I'm not extremely  optimistic about what's going to happen. So,

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10:40That's essentially correct. Uh except for uh  a couple of important considerations. One is uh that um Iran has suffered very heavily uh  by this attack. Uh let's start by recalling the 160 school girls killed on the first day by uh  apparently Palunteer's uh AI system. Uh well, like we find out every day when we're looking at our  screen, uh this is an AI. It can make mistakes.

11:16Uh well, apparently uh uh Palunteer's mistake was  to kill 160 innocent school girls. Uh this is not definitively known, but it's what is being widely  reported. So, we will perhaps someday find out what really happened. Iran has lost thousands  of people. Iran has been devastated. Tens of billions of dollars of uh damages that will take  years and years basically to recover. For me as a development economist whose whole career uh  over half a century is to try to build things.

11:55I don't like to see things knocked down this way.  the mind mindlessness of it, the cruelty of it, the uh brazen destruction, the glorification of  this violence by Hegathth and others uh I find completely completely totally repulsive. So uh  first Iran has suffered a lot. There's no glory uh in the offramp. There's just uh continued  bereiement uh people still being buried.

12:28uh deaths, deprivation, uh suffering. So no joy  and therefore uh no in my view not a humiliation.

12:40Second, it's weird to say and I'm sure many  people will uh object to what I'm about to say or not understand it or think I don't know what  I'm talking about, but I do. The Iranian people are really very civilized. They have wanted  to negotiate for years. All of this depiction of the evil of Iran that we have been uh played  to since 1979 also mistakes uh the reality in a fundamental way. And so when you say that Iran  would control the straits, actually they would not control it in a malevolent way that Americans  would be led to expect by hearing that this is the most evil of evil empires. That's what we've been  told for decades, that this is the axis of evil,

13:43that this is the heart of evil. uh Netanyahu  uh uh said uh that they wanted to annihilate us and so forth. This is not correct at all. It  is our non-stop official propaganda narrative.

14:04uh if you go to Iran, which I have been very  lucky to do, if you speak to Iranians, which I do frequently and have done for a very long time,  the official narrative that Iran is so evil that we can't leave it in control of the straight of  Hormuz just gets everything wrong to begin with.

14:31And maybe I'll just say one quick historical word  about this. Where does this hatred and venom come from? Uh with respect to the United States, it's  very simple. In 1953, Iran was a parliamentary democracy. Uh Iran had not invaded or attacked  another country for a century and a half. This was a peaceful country. Uh it had been invaded several  times. Uh but it was a democracy that didn't threaten anybody, didn't want to threaten anybody,  hadn't threatened anybody, hadn't invaded uh any place actually since the 1790s in a in in a brawl  over who controlled Bazra. So in other words, very esoteric things from uh the 1790s. But since  then, Iran had been bothered but had not bothered

15:33anybody else. And in 1953, the Iranian prime  minister elected uh respected uh prime minister Mosedc had the audacity to say the uh the thing  never to be said by this region which is I think the oil under our ground is Iranian not British.  uh and uh when he uttered that thought uh that maybe Iran's oil belonged to Iran immediately the  British Empire in the form of MI6 came to the new ascendant American Empire in the guise of the CIA  and said um we got to overthrow this guy which of course they did successfully. They made what today  we would call a color revolution. They stirred up protests in the streets. They stirred up unrest  and Mosedc was chased from power. And the United

16:36States installed what the Persian Empire would  have called a satrappy. Uh meaning that Iran became a kind of province of the American Empire  under ultimately CIA rule. And we put the sha of Iran uh as the face of that empire and the police  organization Savak uh as the enforcers of that empire. That lasted 26 years. In 1979, as the sha  of Iran was dying of cancer, the people uh led a revolution, an uprising uh and uh threw out Savak  and the CIA uh and uh and the sha and that's when uh uh Iran had its Islamic revolution and put in  a the government that is government until today.

17:34The United States hated that. When you're an  empire as we are, when you have protectorates, when you have uh places where you have  your military, and in the case of Iran, uh when your major oil companies have investments  there that suddenly are lost because what was stolen from Iran is now taken back by Iran. Uh  that led to uh a reputational question. We need to bring Iran back under our control because we're  an empire. If we're too weak visav any piece of our empire, it damages our reputation anywhere. We  need to punish these people for what they've done.

18:21And there was the hostage taking by uh the uh  youth radical groups who said we're doing this because we want the sha to be brought back  here uh to uh um face uh a trial in Iran for the crimes of the police state over the last 23  years. And the United States had taken in the sha in a very unwise decision by President Carter  uh in 1979 for medical treatment uh knowing that suspecting it was going to lead to this kind  of eruption. They demanded reparations. They demanded an apology. They demanded an end to the  US uh subversion of Iran. All pretty reasonable actually. But of course it became the cause of the  United States in 1979. and another humiliation for

19:17America which an empire never tolerates. An empire  needs to repay any kind of loss of face with uh some kind of extreme punishment not only to get  that particular recalcitrant place under control but to signal to all the rest of the empire  don't you dare try this. So from 1980 onward, the US has been at war with Iran in various ways.  In 1980 onward, we paid, we armed, we supplied.

19:55Saddam Hussein to invade Iran. Uh pretty sorted  deal. Saddam Hussein used uh poison gas uh with American knowledge at the minimum and according  to some uh testimonies, American active support, but we engaged in a war in Iran through a proxy  through Iraq from the very start uh of uh this 1979 government. Donald Trump already back in 1980  said we have to overthrow this government. So when Trump gives his explanations for the current war,  he says, "Oh, nuclear or this or that." This is uh these are convenient uh current explanations for  something that has been on his mind for 46 years as well because the American Empire suffered a  slight uh a country got out from under American

21:01CIA control which you don't allow to happen. And  from 1980, it's been nonstop war. It's been an economic war. what our Treasury Secretary, who I  increasingly regard to be a thug, basically not a Treasury Secretary, but someone who delights  and gloats in crushing other economies by using financial means or trade sanctions or uh financial  blockages and delights in it. uh explained uh in Davos this year in a Fox News interview uh with  Maria Barto Romo that our state craft destroyed the Iranian economy last year. Well, we've been  doing that kind of statecraft. What a horrible Orwellian term for destroying another country's  economy. We've been doing that for decades. Well,

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22:38who are the key to life. Visit heretucker.com  that's hereh artucker.com or call 18004532916 to learn more about how Audian can help you or  someone you love hear better. It's essential healthcare hearing and it's now accessible  and affordable. That's the system should have done all along. And we have been engaged  in assassinations of Iranian leaders. We have been engaged in uh blowing up uh their nuclear  facilities even when uh they have been pleading let's have an agreement that puts us under strict  supervision of the international atomic energy agency. We've been using what's called hybrid  warfare, every possible means of subversion,

23:29of economic warfare, of direct military action,  of covert operations. Donald Trump confirmed that in the protests last year, the US sent weapons  to the protesters. That's not a protest. That's an insurrection we were creating. Uh that did not  work. But the point I'm making is that we portray Iran as evil because it did something unacceptable  to the United States that doesn't involve nuclear weapons or any of the specific issues or Hezbollah  or Hamas. It goes back to 1979. They escaped from the American Empire. They escaped from CIA  control. That's not allowed. That's simply what you're not supposed to to do. And uh this war  has been going on with various pretexts, various

24:29explanations since then. May ask you if I could  just say one more thing, Tucker. Um Trump's main argument has been in the last uh uh months, I will  stop them from having a nuclear weapon. Of course, anyone that knows the history of this knows  that this is Orwell to the nth power. By that, I mean such bizarre propaganda, you don't quite  even know where to start. The reason is that the Iranians have not pursued a nuclear weapon.  Our own intelligence agencies have said that repeatedly. What they have pursued though is a  treaty with the UN Security Council to confirm that to put them under strict monitoring under the  nuclear non-prololiferation treaty but in return

25:34for ending the US economic warfare on Iran. What  Iran has wanted for 15 years is you supervise us, you control us. Fine, but lift your sanctions.  Let us breathe. Let us have a normal economy.

25:53Let us trade. And President Obama. And by the way,  one other thing, let us have our own money back because the United States has confiscated tens of  billions of dollars of Iran's money. Iran's money, not our money. Because we do that as an empire. We  freeze the money of other countries. We sometimes just overtly take it and use it for something  else. It's rather obnoxious to my point of view and rather self-defeating in the long term for the  United States to have the reputation that it just steals other people's fiscal uh and financial  resources. But we did that with Iran. So what Iran has wanted is diplomacy. And I come back  again, they're nice people. They're diplomats.

26:49And I sometimes tell them, you don't even know  who you're dealing with here, how nasty this is, how difficult this is. Uh, no, no, no. We want  an agreement, Professor Saxs. Do you know who we might speak to about uh negotiations and so  forth? very civilized, very nice people. In 2015, such an agreement was reached, the joint  comprehensive plan of action, the JCPOA. It was reached not only with the United States, but with  Britain, with France, with Russia, with China, and with Germany. The five permanent members of the  UN Security Council plus Germany called 5+ 1. Then it went to the UN Security Council where it was  unanimously backed. Then came the Zionist lobby

27:42in the United States. Oh no, you can't have an  agreement with Iran. They're the evil empire. You can't do this. Uh and so when Trump was elected  in the first term, he ripped up the JCPOA. This is the approach that you don't want them to have  a nuclear weapon when you had the control. No, this is the opposite. This is we need to change  the regime because they humiliated the United States by escaping from our empire. We tried to  defeat them in many ways, but they stood up to it.

28:18We need to defeat them. There's an Israeli version  which is not exactly the same. And the Israeli version is we need to have absolute control  over the Middle East so that we can pursue our greater Israel agenda. This is not exactly the US  cause, but there are people in the US that are the backers of that distinct cause. That's not Israel  saying you escaped from the American Empire.

28:54That's Israel saying, "We control almost all of  the Middle East militarily, but Iran we don't yet control." So that's the last big prize. And  that's the other part of this agenda right now.

29:09And why Israel is even more against the off-ramp  than the United States. Trump is against the off-ramp because he can't declare victory because  he would lose face because it would be he'd face pressure groups because there are uh we we have  the Israel or the Zionist lobby I would I would call it uh in the United States. For Israel, the  issue is uh somewhat distinct, but Israel's main issue is that it wants complete military dominance  of West Asia and uh the the Middle East and even into the Horn of Africa and North Africa. And  it almost has that uh not that it uh can easily control all of the territory. No, by no means,  but it is able to act with impunity. It's able

30:09to invade Lebanon. It's able to occupy Syria. It's  able to overthrow other countries governments and that's what it wants. But it faces an obstacle and  the obstacle is Iran. So most people don't wake up in the morning and decide to feel horrible,  exhausted, foggy, disconnected from themselves.

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31:40Israel 30 years ago this year when Netanyahu first  became prime minister uh adopted a strategy that was explained in a public paper called the clean  break strategy. And the clean break strategy said we will never accept we being our new government  never accept a state of Palestine. We will occupy all of what had been the British Palestine,  British mandatory Palestine. In other words, we'll control Gaza. We'll control the West Bank.  We'll control all of Jerusalem. And we may control other places as well. We'll never do that, but  we'll face resistance uh when we make that claim and hold on to this territory. We'll definitely  face resistance. We'll definitely face resistance

32:31of militant groups. But what Netanyahu and his  colleagues in the United States said was rather than fighting those militant groups directly, we  need to bring down the governments in the Middle East and West Asia that support those groups. And  that is what's called the clean break strategy.

32:53The clean break was the clean break from the peace  accords, from the land for peace idea that Israel would return to its borders. there would be a  Palestinian state in return for peace. That's what international law says. But what Israel says  is we're never returning. We're there's never going to be a state of Palestine. In fact, we're  going to have what we call greater Israel, which is all of Palestine, including Gaza, West Bank,  East Jerusalem, legal Israel, but also expanded parts of the region. And when you interviewed uh  Ambassador Huckabe, the US ambassador to Israel, he put it very clearly uh that the great zealots,  including Huckabe. And many of the Israeli leaders

33:47view greater Israel as control from a big  slice of Egypt uh all the way to Iraq. uh from uh what is taken to be even a biblical uh gift of  God to uh uh the uh ancient Israelites uh from the river of Egypt to the great river of Mesopotamia  meaning uh the Euphrates River. So Israel wants military dominance. The clean break idea was  when we aim for that we'll find resistance.

34:25We don't fight and extinguish the militant groups  because we can't. We have to fight the governments that back them. And that's where the idea of  perpetual war in the Middle East came from.

34:37Or not perpetual war, but actually specifically  seven wars uh were designated that would overthrow governments supporting Palestinian militancy. And  those governments were, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. And we've now been  pulled into Israel's seven wars. Six of those wars have led to bloodbaths and disasters uh from  Libya still in civil war. Sudan unbelievably in two civil wars because we broke the country apart  and each of those two parts now has its own civil war. Somalia there's not even a government. There  is a government actually very nice prime minister that I know but uh barely governance uh in in  the country. Uh Lebanon we see it's a invaded

35:44basically destroyed country. Syria. Uh the US and  Israel worked for 15 years from Obama uh until this past year to overthrow the government. That  was an active uh covert regime change operation.

36:02Iraq, the 2003 war and the debacle that lasted uh  for years after that. And Iran was the last. So, six of the seven places are in chaos. And from  Israel's point of view, great. We like chaos.

36:23That means we are the military hegeimon for all of  that region stretching from Libya to Iraq. Chaos is great. They they can't get their act together.  They're all in civil war. What could be better?

36:38The seventh is Iran. And that's where we're  facing right now. And interestingly, when the war started, Netanyahu tweeted, "This is my dream  come true for 40 years." And I had to confess.

36:58I made a mistake. I always said 30 years cuz I  dated it to Clean Break, 1996. But I didn't know Netanyahu before he was prime minister. I didn't  know that he had 10 years more of dreaming of this war. So the offramp violates not only the American  conditions of defending its imperial strength, but the Israeli dream of full control over the  region. And that's why the offramp is so hard.

37:36I have to say one more thing just because it is a  little bit of a complicated uh picture. It's not incidental and I don't want anyone to think I'm  naive in this. When we talk about why the United States wants Iran within the US empire, why it  overthrew Mosedc in 1953 remember the oil. So I don't want to uh forget to mention that that's  not only a 1953 issue that brought that was aimed to ensure that Iran would not take back its  oil from British and then American interests.

38:18Trump absolutely without question, no doubt, 100%  is as strongly beholden to the oil lobby as he is to the Zionist lobby. And he said so vividly,  vocally in 2024. He said, "Raise a billion dollars for me. It's a deal. You'll get all the  benefits from this." what he did in Venezuela, he thought he was about to do in Iran as well.  So, this needs to be understood as just one more piece of this. Yes, he wanted to fight with Iran  for 46 years, at least since 1980, probably 47, since 1979. But what he thinks he learned from  kidnapping the Venezuelan president and then suborning the Venezuelan government is I can  do a decapitation and then own the oil of that

39:23country. And so part of the motivation now was  revenge. Bring Iran back into the empire. But part of the benefit of bringing Iran back into the  American Empire is you get the oil. and he thought within one day he'll get the oil because just like  removing Maduro he thinks gave America Venezuela's oil he thought killing the Iranian governmental  leadership starting with this religious supreme leader and then the top uh officials of  the government that were meeting that day with the supreme leader he would take the oil. So  that's the tableau. This is why it's hard to take the exit ramp because there were reasons for this  war to my mind. Cruel, illegal, delusional. Uh so

40:22I don't abide by any of those reasons, but there  were reasons for this war. And taking the off-ramp means that none of those would be fulfilled. From  my point of view, fine. None of them was valid.

40:37But from the point of view of the two architects  of this war, Trump and Netanyahu, that's quite hard to do. But as I said, the alternative, which  is an escalated war within a few weeks, could destroy the world economy to uh Thank you for  that. That was Sorry to go on. I loved it. I loved it. Um and it's much needed because there's always  a context. You did this with the Ukraine war once in this room and I've never stopped thinking  about it. Uh, thank you for that. Couple quick follow-up questions. You talked about the ongoing  war against Rome by the United States now 46 years since 1980, first a proxy war with uh Iraq, etc.,  etc. There are reports that the United States in

41:26addition to all of that has used geoengineering  to evoke a drought in Iran. Is that true?

41:35I doubt it. There are enough reasons for drought  as a natural condition of uh a an aid and semierid reason that we don't have to go there. Okay.  Yeah. Um second in fact I can tell you uh one uh one visit to uh uh I was in the Gulf region  uh in Saudi uh and then I went to Thran and in both places this was many years ago now there was  already drought and it was it was springtime and there were intense sandstorms uh sandstorms like  uh none of us has ever experienced. if you haven't cocktail or an evening very nice on a uh you know  a top floor of an apartment building you couldn't see anything out the window because it was just  completely darkened uh in the afternoon by this

42:40sandstorm basically so the point was uh it struck  me then uh these are aid regions Yes, they are drying under the forces of long-term changes  that are underway and having been in the Gulf and then in uh Iran, it's of course exactly the  same ecosystem. It's the same environment. It's the most natural thing that they should be working  together to solve these problems. and you say this is where do these lines of division come from?  Uh just because someone drew a political line, it doesn't change the fact that there's the sandstorm  on one side, the same sandstorm on the other side, and they should be working together. And so it  just struck me. I'm just re reminded of the fact

43:31that um I had this intense uh visceral feeling  then how artificial these political boundaries are because this is a region uh and it's a region  that shares some very intense human problems like how to get enough water to stay alive dayto day  and they should be working together to solve that problem. So I don't think in this case that you  need the United States to geoengineer anything.

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45:10Second question, Clean Break 1996 um listed seven  countries whose governments need to be overthrown in order to create room and strategic depth and  options for Israel. Six of those wars have taken place. The US was and well now seven, but the US  was the instrument of all of those. Correct. Okay, great. So this was Israel's plan, but the  US military was used. The US has spent5 to10 trillion dollars on this uh Israel venture.  This is the basic point. Uh yes, we've had our own misguided ideas about this, but um it's just  bizarre. Uh of course, Iraq, we know in detail that this was a concocted war. Uh but Syria  has never been uh understood in as much depth,

46:05but it's the same story. Uh why suddenly did  Barack Obama feel the compulsion to task the CIA with overthrowing Bashar al-Assad? Assad  must go. Yes. That was on the lips of everyone in one day. Are you kidding? I remember I was on  Morning Joe uh that morning that either Hillary or or Obama said Saddam must go. And Joe turned to  me said, "What do you think about that?" I said, "Oh, that's interesting. How are they going to  do that?" Well, it took 14 years, hundreds of thousands of deaths, tens of billions of dollars,  massive destruction, massive destabilization.

46:51refugee crisis to put a jihadist in in in charge  right now and then clean it up. But of course to take a secular government that protected religious  minorities, aloites, Christians, everybody for generations generationally, father and son did  the same and replace it with a guy we thought we were fighting against. and to destroy, of course,  historic sites as they're doing in Iran right now, cultural sites, I should say, that are human  heritage, not only Syrian or Iranian heritage, but world heritage because they've lasted  thousands of years and then our idiocy, we're destroying them in in hours. Yeah, I would  say evil. But yeah, no, that's um Okay, so I

47:32just want to be clear with that. Third question um  about the offramp. So the United States would have to the president but the whole government would  have to swallow that. We'll just have to admit it didn't work and Iran is now more powerful. Iran  is an economic power which we didn't understand. I don't think before this war we thought of them as  this emerging military threat. Turns out they're an economic power cuz they control the street. But  from an Israeli perspective there is this process which I've seen many times where people talk  themselves into believing their own rhetoric. So you start out by saying the real threat from Iran  is its nuclear program, but you don't mean it. You

48:09just want to take Iran out because you don't want  Hezbollah and Hamas to hassle you. Got it. But if you say it enough, you start to believe that the  main threat to your existence is this government.

48:19And I think the Israelis are there. Like I think  they believe that. So could not just Netanyahu, the prime minister, but the whole country, could  they live with a strengthened Iran or would they be forced to do something really radical? Well,  Netanyahu said a couple of days ago that um they're out to annihilate us, which is not true.  Uh and that's a heavy thing to say. And and it shows uh I think a deep part of uh the the psyche  uh of Netanyahu personally and of uh one strand of uh uh Israeli extremism which is the belief and um  it is taught that uh they're out to annihilate us uh every generation. And um the uh Holocaust uh  is used as the model that um we uh can never uh uh

49:26tolerate this again. So we must fight preemptively  against anyone that would annihilate us. Well, it it leads to uh as even Netanyahu said, a  Sparta state, a state that is just a war state.

49:43They've lost the capacity for diplomacy at all.  Israel, unfortunately, has no diplomacy. It has diplomats, but the diplomats rip up the UN charter  or shred the UN charter or stand in the podium of the UN General Assembly and accuse the whole  world of anti-semitism and hatred and so forth.

50:08It's not diplomacy at all because uh one strand  of thought is nobody can be trusted. Uh we have to kill them before they kill us. If you live  like that, you end up as a killer non-stop. Uh and this is uh definitely one tragic reality of uh  the mentality of a Netanyahu or others. He's been killing before they kill us for decades. He's  a killer. He has become a non-stop killer. He kills in the name of self-defense, but he kills  in the name of preemptive self-defense. And so, if you believe that the others are out to  kill you and you must not talk to them and must not try to understand or must not uh do  anything else, you end up as a non-stop killer.

51:07Nao would say, "Oh, you're I don't know if you  what he would say to me, not not much nice, but he would uh say you're you're so naive." Uh  and what I would say to him is but you sir have the idea not out of uh any reason but you have  the idea that you will have a greater Israel and expunge the people uh that live in your area that  are not Israeli Jews. That's your idea. Uh that for the millions and millions of people there,  you will exterminate them or ethnically cleanse them or rule over them. uh in some racially  segregated society and then you want others to uh then when others object to that you say that  they're out to destroy you. Why don't you show

52:03that you have a human reason that you have a  human decency and say that in conditions of peace there would be a Palestine? Yes, of course.  because there are 8 million Palestinians and in a situation of peace, we could have calm uh with  the rest of the region without going to war, subverting governments and so forth. But you don't  try to do that. Netanyao's position is there's no possibility of diplomacy. We must kill them before  they kill us. But without trying to have any peace, without trying to understand that there  are legitimate, deep moral, legal, and historical reasons for doing something different from  greater Israel that kills, maims, destroys,

53:04expropriates the Palestinian people and claims  territory seemingly wherever they want in Lebanon or Syria and who knows where else according to  Ambassador Huckabe. So I don't give any credence to Netanyahu because his starting point is not  only fear but his starting point is something obnoxious which is we don't recognize the people  that live among us that we have expropriated that we have taken the land that we have uh uh killed  in by the tens of thousands uh that we have denied basic political rights and without that how  can he think that there could be some kind of uh solution. So Netanyahu's absence of an exit  ramp starts from his own radicalism. Not only from

54:07his fear, but from a complete absence of diplomacy  that recognizes that there's another side that needs to be dealt with as human beings. And where  that extremism comes from is uh I'm not sure. It's very pathological. uh you could uh find it uh in  some uh religious extremist views that this is our land. God gave it to us. It's nobody else's  and everyone else has to get the hell out. I'm not sure exactly what motivates it, but there's  a complete collapse of understanding that there are people to talk to that actually want to make  peace. So I always thought that it was Netanyahu was leading this that he had a particular  worldview um and that I don't know through his

55:05brilliant political skill he was able to control  the country. Now it seems like there are a lot of people who have even more radical views and  one of them would be Danny Danon whom I know I always thought was kind of a reasonable guy. He's  the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

55:19There was an amazing exchange between you and him  at the UN fairly recently that made me think, wow, it's not just Netanyahu. Can you explain that  exchange? Well, I can explain the exchange and I can also say that there are uh two variants  of Israeli extremism that are not the same, but they are now literally a coalition. I  mean, they're literally a political coalition.

55:45uh and uh they are a a um ideological uh coalition  as well. So one is the view every generation they're out to kill us. We have to kill them  before they kill us. uh the preemptive strike, the clean break idea, but again grounded in this  perverse uh maybe related idea that there will never be a Palestine alongside an Israel,  which is actually what led to clean break, led to all these wars, led to the militancy,  was the absence of Palestinian political rights alongside Israeli political rights, the so-called  two-state solution. And since Netanyahu's party lood going back to its opening charter in 1977  said there will never be a Palestinian state.

56:41Nothing to talk about, no terms, no uh security  arrangements to make it possible. This will all be Israel's sovereignty from the Jordan River to  the Mediterranean. There was never a basis for a a diplomatic way out within Israel from Netanyahu's  point of view. Now there's a second variant in Israel which gives a theological interpretation  of this. Uh Netanyahu's interpretation is mainly security and secular with the only theological  twinge being this uh idea that they're always out to kill us every generation. Uh and the  Holocaust put that into overdrive for completely understandable reasons, but not rational  reasons that attend to current realities. So,

57:42I'd say Netanyahu is the uh basically the security  vision, but again, to my mind, irrational, cruel, illegal, self-defeating, disastrous, not real  security for Israel, but security in the phrase, we kill them before they kill us. then is a  very different variant that is now the coalition partners represented by two now well-known  leaders to us Ben Gavir and Smootrich two cabinet ministers who are religious religious with a very  strange idea and it's a new form of Judaism which uh actually attaches to some ancient texts, but  was not a real form of Judaism for 2,000 years.

58:42It's not what I grew up with at all. It's not what  I grew up with as a Jew at all. Uh it's something absolutely late 20th century, early 21st century.  One of the parties is called Jewish power. Uh and it is uh the idea that that's it actual name.  Yes. uh in in Hebrew, yes. Uh we redeem God's promise to us by becoming greater Israel. So  the act of this expanded Israel is a religious uh demand upon us. This is our redemption is this  very political military program that we have and that is Smootrich and Ben Gavir uh which says  on a religious basis we couldn't have a state of Palestine next door. God gave us that land.  Uh that's ours. That's part of the promised land.

59:52that's not theirs. Even though the Palestinian  people were living there for well over a thousand years, probably incidentally according to uh  some uh historical uh studies and interpretations perhaps Jews who converted to Islam uh in the 7th  century when Islam swept across uh the eastern Mediterranean. Iranian and North Africa uh in its  foundational moments. Uh the Islamic societies the Omayed and Abvisid caliphats uh enabled Jews  and Christians to live within uh the Islamic lands to live peacefully and to govern themselves  primarily but to pay a tax. uh and so as a way to a avoid taxes many people converted we know this  uh and probably today's Palestinians many of them

61:00are you know descendants from across centuries  of Jews who were the settlers you know who were living there before the 7th century uh sweep  of Islam across the land that's a footnote even David Benorian the so-called founder of the state  of Israel held that view uh in the 1930s and 40s calling the Palestinians really the original Jews  of the land who probably converted and and became the Palestinians but today wait Bengurian said  that Bengorian said that yes what was not to get sidetracked but Bengurian was secular I think yeah  of course all of the original Zionist yes from Eastern Europe so what were I don't understand  I know they wanted to leave Europe I get

61:50But what was the justification in his mind for  displacing millions of people from their land if he acknowledged that they were the actual heirs  of Abraham? Yeah. The idea was uh Jews are instead of a religion in their view. The these were not  religious people by the way. They didn't consult with the rabbis. So it's all very uh ironic. But  in their view Jews are not a religion. uh they are a people and in the ideology of Europe of the late  19th century a people needs a state and um so uh the idea was there should be a Jewish state that  was the name of uh the founder of Jewish Zionism Theodore Herzel's first book the Jewish state  well that makes sense no but but but but uh he

62:46asked so where and One option was uh maybe what is  today's Uganda. Yep. It it wasn't the Holy Land.

62:55It wasn't some religious compulsion or a return  to uh this promised land in part and ironically uh again very weird uh twists. The rabbis had  said 1500 years earlier, don't go back to the Holy Land. Live where you are. Stay peaceful. Someday  a messiah will come and there will be uh again the holy land for us. But in the meantime, stay calm,  live where you are, behave and uh and uh and uh obey God's laws. That was the idea of the Jewish  religion of the rabbitic Jewish religion. So the variant on display now that this is our land, God  promised to us. Uh we need to redeem it. God will protect us is a new variant that came in the  20th century with the actual founding of the

63:59state of Israel. It was not the original Zionist  movement which was almost completely secular.

64:07It had a couple of rabbis which had some modest  influence. And then it especially came after the 1967 war and the conquest of uh the Palestinian  territories then and the occupation of them and the beginning of the settler movements and  things became radicalized after that and some radical rabbis and militant militarist violent  uh violence preaching rabbis like Mayor Kahani which was an an American rabbi who preached  violence uh for the settler cause in Israel gained a following and that group grew with the  illegal settlers in the occupied lands. illegal because you're not allowed to settle territory  conquered in war according to international law.

65:12And the UN Security Council said repeatedly, "No,  you can't have settlers there." I started visiting Israel myself uh 54 years ago. Uh, and when I  first went in 1972, uh, the, uh, first settlements were taking place, and I was a high school kid,  so I didn't understand much of anything, uh, but, uh, of what was going on, but they told me this  was making facts on the ground so that this would be ours. We would have our security and so forth.  Facts on the ground was the the famous expression.

65:53When I continued to go back uh in the mid70s,  the late 70s, suddenly there were groups of young zealots dancing in the streets of Jerusalem  proclaiming God's will about these settlements because these were settlements in places mentioned  in the Bible. This was suddenly now the redemption of God's promise. This was something new. This was  not traditional Judaism. But I mean traditional from 400 AD to to 1970. I'm talking about uh about  1,600 years or so. This was something brand new.

66:41It was a fervor. It was a zealatry. It was a  fundamentalism that uh emerged that said this is ours. No one can interfere with this. More  than that, it's God's command that we control this land. It's not about security. It's not about  division. It's not about where to draw lines. It's not about treaties. It's God's command. That's a  big part of the Israeli political scene right now.

67:16It's half the the motivation and it's why all  of this is so radicalized and so zealous. But uh as as we were talking um it's extremely  important in the US context to understand the Christian Zionist dimension to this because  Zionism did not originate with Judaism strangely or with Jews I should say. uh Herzel was  encouraged in his Zionism by a Christian Zionist and Christian Zionism was an evangelical belief  that the Jews should go back to make a homeland in the promised land or the holy land. And that  has roots hundreds of years before these Jewish secular Zionists started at the end of the 19th  century. And a big part of the Christian Zionist

68:18movement started in Britain in the first half of  the 19th century. These were Christians reading the Bible and reading the Bible in very particular  ways. one may say increasingly with an emphasis on the last book of the Bible, Revelation. So  what's called esquetology or the end of the world beliefs and part of that esquetology preached  by a British preacher named Darby with a huge effect subsequently in the United States was that  the Jews should go back to the Holy Land so that the second coming can occur because the book  of Revelations says that the second coming of Christ will occur. when the Jews are in control  of the Holy Land. It happens, interestingly,

69:12that these Christian Zionists were often rather  confirmed anti-semites uh that wanted the Jews out of their own country. They didn't want the Jews  in Britain. They didn't want Eastern European Jews migrating to Britain and so forth. So, they wanted  them conveniently anyway out of out of Britain and back in the Holy Land. But the point is there is  this uh there there is a uh set of non-religious claims. Our security depends on this. They're out  to kill us. We need dominance. Uh they're evil.

69:51Uh they have nuclear weapons or they're they want  whatever. Those are all security side. But then there's this whole strong religious dimension.  And when you had the amazing interview with uh with Ambassador Huckabe, which was I think a  world eyeopener, he displayed in a way that people all over the world had never seen before this  very particular British and American Christian Zionism. Uh it's very particular. It's 19th  and 20th century. It's a very uh specific way of reading a couple of books of the three books  of the Bible. Uh I would say uh the uh Genesis uh the promise of the land, the book of Joshua, uh  which says go kill everyone in the land so you can

70:54take the land. Uh it's a commandment strange  in the Bible to commit multiple genocides in the name of God to get all the land that has been  promised to you. And then the book of Revelation which is the final book of the New Testament and  it's a very very particular reading. It's not at all mainstream Judaism. It's not at all mainstream  Christianity anywhere in the world. But it has its important political uh base in the United States  and more traditionally in Britain. So what we're seeing in Israel is an extremism that is shocking.  And now coming back to my exchange with uh the ambassador at the UN, I said to him that I thought  Israel was was and is committing suicide. Uh, I

71:54didn't accuse Israel of what it's doing to others.  That's implicit perhaps in what I was saying, but I said it's committing suicide because it's  taking such a violent extremist course that it's putting it outside of the bounds of civilization,  outside of the bounds of uh opinion in all parts of the world. putting it outside of international  law and relying entirely on the United States to do that because if Israel did this on its own,  it would be immediately suicidal. It wouldn't stand for a day. It thinks the United States is  going to support this extremism on an unending, unconditional basis. But you and I know that's not  true. Americans are sickened by this extremism.

72:57They're sickened by uh the tens of thousands of  innocent deaths in Gaza. They're disgusted with this war in Iran. They're disgusted with the  trillions of dollars that the United States has spent for Israel's clean break. They're we're sick  of it. Uh most Americans are just sick of this right now. overwhelmingly and the polls show that.  So I read analysis that says it's going to take, you know, years and years for America to reset its  relationship with Israel. I think that's absurd.

73:28If our current system remains in place, which  was an open question, but if it does, that's going to be abrupt. I mean, people aren't going  to get elected if they're taking APAC money. We see nobody supports what's going on right now. And  wait four weeks. If they don't choose the off-ramp in the next few days, wait a few weeks what it's  going to be like when their incomes are decimated, when the world's economy is in a tail spin because  suddenly they realize in four weeks half the Gulf has been blown to pieces. What are they going to  say then? So, how is this going to be sustained when just Americans basically don't want to be the  agents of mass murder and mass suffering and most

74:15of us don't believe that the mass expulsion of  people is somehow God's command. We don't believe that. Well, no. It's insane. And by the way, from  a Christian perspective, you can only support Christian Zionism if you ignore the Gospels,  which are the heart of Christianity. I mean, there's nothing in nothing in there that supports  it. So, you would think, by the way, the greatest speech I know of is the sermon on the mount. It's  unbelievable for everybody, for the whole world.

74:46This isn't a matter of who believes, but blessed  are the peacemakers, of course, should resonate.

74:54I think it does resonate with people all over  the world. The message of Jesus in the s in the sermon of the mount is completely the opposite of  what we're doing right now. And that is not from a Christian or Jewish or any other. That's from  a human perspective cuz he was speaking about humanity about what is decent for human beings  about how human beings should treat other people.

75:22They should not kill them. They should not make  strangers out of them. The good Samaritan was the one that rescued the man on the side of the  road. The Samaritan who was the outsider, he's teaching us something. And the part that I love  about the teaching that I think is so important is why do you point to the moat in the other's  eye when you have the plank in your own eye?

75:50And what Jesus is saying very clearly, don't be  a hypocrite. Yes. And don't just say they're evil without reflecting on yourself. This is so basic.  All of that is left out because this new version of Judaism or of Christian Zionism is one chapter  of Genesis or maybe two. chapter 15 and chapter 18, God's promise, the book of Joshua, which is  probably a political tract written during the late 7th century BC during the reign of King Josiah of  the state of Judah as a political tract that says, "Murder other people to take the promised land."  And then the book of Revelation, the gospels are not part of that text. No. And it's clear that  they're not because the message of the gospels

76:50is completely different. Yeah. Jesus is saying,  "You've been told don't murder. I tell you, don't even be angry at at someone else." It's  a it's a message of radical reconciliation and nonviolence. So that's just what it says.  I mean, it's inconvenient, but it's true.

77:06So I guess my question is though, if the United  States withdraws under popular pressure, its unconditional support for Israel and the Iranian  regime stays in place, some form of it does, and once again, Iran is more powerful than it's ever  been and now has a clear incentive to buy a nuke from Pakistan or somewhere else. Those are like  like what does Israel do at that point? That's my concern cuz now it's kind of out of options.  Yeah. So here's what I think. First of all, we should look at uh Iranian um invasions of other  countries. As I said, it hasn't happened for 230 years. If I have the uh the arithmetic right, as  far as I know, uh the the last uh actual military

77:54operation of Persia or Iran uh was against Basra  in the 1790s. Uh Iran is not out to destroy Israel. Iran does not want to be destroyed by a uh  a petulant uh annoyed American empire from which it escaped. This is the most basic point and if  you've dealt with Iranians for decades as I have, that message is absolutely clear. So, Israel  is not at threat from Iran. It is not a threat from Iran. This is the basic point. Iran wants  its place in the world. It doesn't want to be bombed and destroyed by Israel and the United  States. This is the first most important point.

78:53Second, Iran has supported Hezbollah and Hamas and  it would stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah if there is a Palestinian state alongside the state  of Israel. This is the most basic point. You want a path to peace, you make peace. And the way to  peace is there are two peoples in that land. Uh when it started there were 90% uh Palestinian  Arabs. Now it's roughly half and half between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, but there  need to be two states. Or I'm fine if there's one democratic state, but Israel doesn't want  that for sure. So two states, but there can't be one state in which Israel rules over everybody  or kills the others or expropriates the others,

80:00that's what's not possible. But if there  is a political settlement within Israel, then there will be an end of the militancy as  well. And this is a fundamental point. Iran does not want to live as a militant state. I know  it because I watch and I discuss for decades.

80:27It wants to live though, not as an American  satrappy. So the idea that if we leave Iran is just overpowering and they're going to defeat  Israel and so forth. No, there. First of all, first of all, Israel will not be defeated. It has  nuclear weapons. It would use them. Iran does not have nuclear weapons. It actually doesn't want  nuclear weapons. If we had the slightest sanity, honesty, and rationality in the world, it would be  the easiest thing in the world to make sure that Iran has no nuclear weapons cuz they don't want  them. And the first thing, just in digression, that you would do if you wanted to make sure that  Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, you would not

81:19kill the religious leader who issued the decree  that nuclear weapons are against the religion.

81:28But the first thing they did was to kill the very  religious leader that issued the so-called fatwa to uh prohibit nuclear weapons. So, Israel,  the idea that it's in dire threat if we leave is wrong. We also need to remember there's a whole  world out there. We don't like to admit that it's not the American way, but there's Russia, there's  China, there's India, there's Brazil, there I'm mentioning countries in the so-called bricks. They  will tell Iran, "No, now you have peace. Now you live peacefully." So Iran cannot engage in some  regional takeover to become the super regional power because they're also profoundly constrained  right now. They're trying to stop themselves from

82:31being destroyed by American bombs. Precisely what  Trump has threatened repeatedly, the end of their civilization, which by the way is 5,000 years old,  two 20 times longer than the United States. Okay?

82:47So, they're not about to do all these terrible  things. They're not about to hold a chokehold over the world economy. President Xi Jinping, who  has, let's just say, a lot of influence with Iran, uh, as a main consumer and supplier and trader  and many, many other things said yesterday, the straits of Hormuz need to be opened. Need  to be open. Iran is not going to do all these horrible things that are imagined. And when I  say leave, it wouldn't hurt to leave also with an agreement. Okay, we're leaving. You don't invade.  We're not invading you. Israel. There's going to be a Palestinian state alongside uh Israel as  is the core of international law since 1967

83:51indeed since 1940 uh47. Uh and um you'll live  peacefully. They'll live peacefully and uh you won't have nuclear weapons. you'll go under IAEA  inspection according to the terms of the nuclear non-prololiferation treaty which by the way Israel  doesn't abide by of course at all so it's already asymmetric but Iran has said okay we'll do it  asymmetrically but put us under this don't put us under the bombs so all I'm saying is there's  no sense in which the exit ramp means Iran becomes the great threat to Israel and the dominant  threat. But what it does mean and I think this is really the fundamental point here. I have  to say greater Israel is an untenable project.

84:49This is the most basic point. If you believe Mike  Huckabe then what I'm saying is not acceptable.

85:00If you believe that Israel should control  all of this land should and if you take uh Israel's leadership uh that they will I would  still advise Donald Trump don't fall for it. It's a $10 trillion disaster for the United States. Not  the least in America's interest. Stay out of it.

85:28Stay clear of it. It's a Netanyahu is a repeated  failure and liar and everything he's told us for 30 years has turned out to be the opposite. So I'd  say that anyway from our point of view. But yes, if you believe that your purpose is uh  greater Israel and continued expansion of Israel's borders, then what I'm saying,  no, you you wouldn't accept it. You say, why should we settle for that? But I don't believe  that. I believe in peace. I believe in a secure state of Israel. I believe in a secure state of  Palestine. I believe in getting on with our lives and not focusing America's resources, squandering  them endlessly for decades in this absolutely

86:20delusional Israeli cause of greater Israel. It's  absurd. It's tragic. It's got to end. And it needs to end now before we have a complete disaster.  Can it can Trump constrain control Netanyahu?

86:37Of course. The question is, can Trump constrain  himself? Uh, can he say just ending this, I thought it was going to be a one-day Maduro  type operation. That's what BB told me. BB was bullshitting me. Uh, now I understand it. It  didn't work. I'm stopping this and I'm telling BB, you stop this, too. Um, and could that work?  Well, when Trump said to Netanyahu, stop stop the bombing of Beirut, we had a demonstration, it can  work. Could Israel continue the war without the United States? Basically, not for one day. Could  Israel uh actually survive the global approprium including the American approprium of Israel's  extremism? I don't think for one day actually

87:32Israel needs to trade. It needs tourism. It needs  contracts. It needs finance. And if Israel's totally completely a rogue state without the  American Empire backing it, without the American military backing it, without the American  intelligence, uh without uh the uh uh the uh satellite data coming in, it's not Israel's, it's  America's. Believe me, uh without all of that, no, Israel cannot do anything on this. But we bought  into the whole package. We bought into it for a mix of perceived American self-interest in our  global power. That is Israel's hijgemony in the region was consistent with our desire for global  control. We bought into the Iran story because

88:26Israel's story that we got to kill them before  they kill us is not inconsistent with our desire to have revenge and to control their oil. In other  words, it's a partnership. Y and uh it's a real partnership. But Israel's capacity to have this  uh uh war that stretches now from Libya to Iran.

88:55That's an American capacity, but we're bleeding  from it. We're bleeding from Israel's wars. And this, I think, is really important to understand.  You know, Trump said something quite interesting.

89:10the Washington gaff, meaning that he told the  truth. Uh, not off script, but he said, "We can't afford the wars and those things like child care,  Medicare, and Medicaid, and other those individual things," he said. And you know what? It's true.  We're bleeding. And what did he do? He said, "Okay, we're going to cut all those things that  Americans actually need and want because we want our health care. We actually want to be able to  have uh dental repairs or get medicines or see a doctor or have an operation uh if our lives  depend on we we want that." And Trump said, "No, we have to have war instead." So he put in  a budget a couple of weeks ago which didn't get

90:10any attention because it won't be enacted by  Congress, but he put in a budget in which the military spending goes up another half a trillion  dollars and the things like he said, you know, the health and other things, oh we can't afford  that, goes down in this budget to make people who are hurting in this country, they would hurt  desperately more. Not to mention the gas pump and not to mention uh everything food prices and  everything else that they are already facing from these wars, but will face cataclysmically  if they don't choose the off-ramp. So, can Trump say this? He has to say this for the  American people. First of all, he has to because

91:08this is really about us right now. He has to  listen to the American people. We don't want this. It's no good for us. It's anyway crazy  extremism. We don't buy into this. We don't buy into the story. We don't need this. We don't need  the American Empire owning Iran. We don't need revenge for 1979. We don't need greater Israel.  We don't need all of these things. We need our health care, our dental care, our daily lives. We  want peace. We don't want to be murdering school girls. We don't want to be murdering uh people.  We don't want to be destroying ancient cultures in different places in the world. And Mr. President,  your partner cannot do this for one moment without

92:05your backing. So your job is to tell Mr. Netanyahu  your your clean break, 30 years, maybe 10 trillion dollars of American treasure now piled up in debt.  We tried your approach. It's done. Now we're going to try peace. That's what he needs to tell him.  It can work. If he doesn't do that and in the next few days, uh, you know, this accelerates, and  you've said if it does accelerate, Iran's first move will be to destroy civilian infrastructure in  the Gulf, uh, Del Energy, the rest. What are the effects at that point? Like what are the Let's  just start with the economic effects. by the rest of the world. Yeah. Strangely enough, I came  into my profession, which I've been a professor at

93:03universities for 46 years and advised well over  a 100 governments around the world. I came into this profession writing my PhD dissertation on the  oil shocks of the 1970s. I wrote the first model of what uh how they worked, why they had such  negative effects after 73 after 73 and 79. So uh I wrote the book literally and it's published  in uh 1982 called the economics of worldwide stagflation. The results of those two oil shocks  give us an idea of what would happen. uh what happened in 1973-74 when there was an oil embargo  and then in 1979 80 when there was the Iranian revolution was a big disruption of oil supplies.  It sent oil prices soaring and it sent the world

94:01economy into a tail spin and it was a very uh  particular kind of tail spin because people lost their jobs, incomes went down uh and inflation  soared at the same time. And so you had a economic downturn and a rise of inflation which at the time  was viewed as a paradox because usually you have a recession and the prices come down or you have  a boom and the prices accelerate. But this was a contraction and an inflation. So people had less  money coming in and everything costs more to buy.

94:34That's it. And that's what was called stagflation.  Now the difference of then and now is that the two shocks then were temporary stops of the flows  of oil. One was a boycott by the Arab countries against the US and other buyers like shutting  down the straightforward. Just to be clear, what were they mad about? They they were mad about  this the uh uh 1973 war US support for Israel.

95:06Exactly. Just to be clear, this goes this has been  the same issue. I was four years old when that happened. This this was this goes back a long way.  And then 197980 was the Iranian revolution. Um and uh they were the the oil got turned off but the  oil fields weren't destroyed. There was no war in the oil fields. There was no physical destruction  of infrastructure. Refineries weren't destroyed.

95:35What will happen in the next few weeks if we don't  choose the off-ramp is the physical destruction of a lot of the Gulf region and of the Middle East  more generally because the US will rain missiles and bombs on uh Iran and Iran will launch what  it has against targets in the neighborhood to show deterrence. and hoping that that deterrence  will stop something. Often instead what you get is just both sides unleashing their arsenals. And  what will happen in a short period of time is not a closure of shipping but a destruction of the  physical capacities of providing the oil and the gas and the fertilizers uh and the prochemicals  and the other uh very core commodities for the

96:37world economy. And it doesn't take that much to  bring the world economy into a tail spin because uh you don't need to close down half the oil  supply. uh you might need to uh shut off uh 20% of the world oil supply and that by enough will  send the prices soaring make Americans really suffer across the board because it's not only at  the gas pump and not only in the utility bills but also in the cost of food which will soar from  this as well because there will be a worldwide disruption of food supplies coming from this  because we're a very significant proportion of the ura which underpins the nitrogenbased fertilizers  of the world come from this region from natural

97:38gas from from the natural gas production. Exactly.  from from the oil and gas um fields, the the hydrocarbon production and other prochemicals as  well. I I'm afraid that it won't take long for this to happen. And fall if that happens globally.  Yes. One one leader uh pulled me aside a few weeks ago. I don't want to say who exactly but said  um that uh that person was in a uh in a uh a country that has a lot of oil production not  not from the region and said Jeffoff you don't understand I governed our state oil company these  are complex systems they don't get rebuilt so fast believe me right this was a very authoritative  figure and um I really take that to heart. Well,

98:34energy extraction, refining, petrochemicals,  distribution, it's all about a million times more complicated than people understand. Exactly. And  these are very sophisticated plants and they are not built for war. They are built for just normal,  peaceful, complex, sophisticated operations. And a lot of that could be destroyed in a very very  short period of time. No, I I appreciate that.

99:01And I think the view in the US seems to be like  if there's oil under the ground, you stick a straw in, it comes out, then it's if you ever if you go  and tour a petrochemical plant or oil refinery or any extraction facility, I mean it is like highest  level technology, smartest people, super hard to understand the market. I'll tell you, we had uh  you know, one of a place you know well and I know well, one of the most sophisticated places in the  planet uh the the Emirates. Yes. uh asking uh the Federal Reserve a few days ago for emergency swap  lines that may be needed in the event of a crisis.

99:40This is kind of shocking because uh first of all,  the Emirates you think of as super rich. Yeah. Uh it's the uh it's the place where rich people go  to put their money uh in the region. Of course, it's completely destabilized by all of this. It's  a complete disaster for them what's happened.

100:00But they are girding for the downstream effects  of what I'm talking about which is that first you get the physical destruction then you get the real  economy so-called the actual physical production of industrial products of uh employment in the  manufacturing sector and cascading across the economy having huge uh negative consequences.  But then you get the financial effects because people say, "Is this place viable anymore?  I'm I'm withdrawing my money." But the the Emirates operates on a USbacked dollar standard.  And suddenly you have a run on your banks. You have a run on your financial markets. So they're  already asking, can we have emergency lines of

100:51credit? And maybe yes, maybe no. But that's the  tip of the iceberg of the financial consequences that can come from all of this. So you get a huge  cascade of effects. And then I want to mention because I want to mention for completeness um it's  more speculative but the daily evidence is growing that the what we call the intraanual phenomenon  of uh ENSO which is fluctuations in uh air pressure and uh currents in the uh or sea surface  temperatures in the Pacific which cause Elinos.

101:35which people know about and leninas. It looks  like a very large maybe what they're calling a super El Nino is building for later this  year and it may not happen but the evidence is growing that it seems like that's the case.  So people might be curious what does that mean?

101:56It means that warm surface water over the Pacific  would spread to basically the west coast of South America. When you get a very powerful El Nino,  the temperatures and rainfall patterns and drought patterns and storm patterns in all of the tropical  and subtropical regions of the world are hard hit.

102:24One of the things for example that happened in  the 197374 oil shock was that there was also an El Nino that year. It just I'm remembering uh  and it was the combination that sent food prices soaring worldwide. Uh, and if we have that dual  combination, I've been saying to myself for years, the next big El Nino or super El Nino is by itself  going to be world destabilizing because there are a lot of countries on the edge right now, on  the edge financially, on the edge socially.

103:06Uh the world's an unstable place because it's  been so perturbed by everything that's happened in in the last years that many places are just  on the edge of solvency in their governments or financial stability and so forth. But if you  combine a mass uh destruction in West Asia, the Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean, uh with  a super El Nino, I don't even know. Somebody's going to have to write the next book quickly  about this because we would not have had a shock like that since World War II. Certainly.  and the effects on political destabilization uh on the effects of uh governments falling  the potential cascading of this war would

104:02be tremendous and uncontrollable. Just think in  addition to everything else uh a uh naval fleet from China is heading towards the Gulf right now.  It's heading towards the Gulf to escort Chinese vessels or uh I don't know if it's only Chinese  flagged or chi vessels heading to China uh to give them military escort. Suppose there's a war  going on. Suppose the United States says we have a blockade and we interdict uh a Chinese vessel.  Suppose that a Chinese destroyer comes alongside You know, we're not in self-control right now.  Uh sailors are not in self-control. Captains are not in self-control. Uh we're living uh at uh  at at uh nanocond speed. Maybe uh Palunteer's

105:03uh Maven system will say shoot. Uh, who knows what  will happen, but we're just lighting fuses that could blow up everything if we choose the ramp of  escalation. And I think it will go faster than we imagine and without control. We don't seem to have  any real control in our government right now even of basic processes. We don't have inter agency  reviews. We don't have expert intelligence that are guiding policy. We don't have anything that is  systematic. I think in Israel it's the same way.

105:47uh when you have a cascade of crisis, when  missiles are at hypersonic speed and you're making decisions uh at uh you know with the a few  seconds warning or uh a minute or two warning of incoming missiles. Oh, what are we doing with all  of this gamble when the whole premise of this war was wrong and when the tactical premise that  this was a one-day operation was proved wrong by the second day? Why are we still facing this  possibility of complete disaster? And I have to say, I'm sorry to say it, Tucker, but um Every  few days I get an email from somebody who says, um, I really appreciate what you say, Professor  Saxs, but I do want you to know that we're in

106:45the end times. Uh, and, uh, that this  is all, uh, as prophecied. Um, and so, thank you for your voice. They're not hostile  messages. They're very nice, sweet people, uh, who say we're in the end times. I I'm hoping we're  not in the end times. This is the basic point. We should have some prudence. Somebody should reach  the president of the United States and say stop before disaster. I've tried. I wonder what do  you what do you make of that? What do you make of I know you're you're not a famously observant  man. However, things are happening that certainly don't have any precedent in our lifetime. I mean,  you've watched the world carefully for 50 years,

107:33and all of a sudden, anomalous things are  happening all over. People are behaving in ways you you never would have expected they behave. Do  you allow for the possibility that some of this is pre-ordained that like there's that, you know,  getting off the train? I don't uh I've studied history now for uh my whole life and I've seen um  disasters. Uh, I've studied intensively disasters and near misses and avoided disasters uh with  care. I wrote a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis and its aftermath. I've studied World War  I and World War II upside down, right side up from every country's perspective. I've spent a half  century uh looking at this. Terrible things happen

108:26because individual leaders and governments make  miscalculations. They don't talk to each other.

108:36Uh they don't understand the ramifications. They  have a breakdown of uh systematic processes. Um, so I don't think that this is ordained, but  I think we're close to overload right now, which is what you see happening around crisis  often. What What does it mean overload? It it means that um very consequent decisions need to  be made skillfully and the the decisions are a big deal. They have a very very large consequence. uh  I would call them uh nonlinearities meaning it's uh that that the consequence of the choice  uh can take us into disaster or into uh into solution. So in other words, these are really  big choices and um the truth is individuals make a

109:42big difference at times like this. Um what we've  seen, what I've tried to understand, you know better than I do, but I'm trying to understand the  decision process in the US government right now.

109:56Normally you would have uh a a deliberative  process. Uh we know process that I've studied very carefully as have many many scholars uh  the Cuban missile crisis. Uh President Kennedy uh immediately installed an executive committee  XCOM and uh during the 13 days of the Cuban missile crisis they met repeatedly they debated.  They discussed options. It was all put on tape.

110:28It's all been studied for decades later. Many  of the judgments that were made were very wrong.

110:34President, and one of the lessons, by the way, of  the Cuban Missile Crisis was that it was President Kennedy's cool and rationality and decency that  saved the world actually. Um quite a remarkable truth because many hotheads uh and many hotheads  in senior military positions especially Curtis Lameé said no go blow up the commies let's go  to nuclear war uh and almost to the point of uh insubordination uh lame was pressing Kennedy  uh to launch attacks and basically accusing Kennedy of uh you know not not uh being uh not  not standing up uh properly for America. Kennedy did save the world but what it showed was a mix  of very detailed deliberation back channels that

111:37were extremely important. for example then the  UN secretary general Utant played a huge role as an intermediary and um good judgment of the leader  today I can't see any process uh what we hear from outside accounts and again you know better than I  but what we read is that this was Trump's decision basically yes led by Netanyahu that's correct okay  Netanyahu has an agenda. His agenda, in my mind, is uh fanatical and wrong and has been mistaken  for 30 years and has cost America a fortune. It's just been wrong. I think the man is a disaster.  I think he has the wrong framework of the world, just a wrong understanding. Uh, of course he also  has his incentives for his job and everything

112:38else. I'm talking about his understanding of the  world and um Trump bought into that. Normally there would be the National Security Council  with detailed inter agency assessments. There would be the uh uh national intelligence agencies  reporting. uh our friend Tulsi Gabbard, the head of uh the director of national intelligence would  be weighing in heavily. The joint chiefs of staff would be explaining doubts which they clearly had.  There would be consultations with senior members of Congress. That was routine. in the Cuban  missile crisis. The president of the United States consulted with the leaders of Congress in detail.  By the way, even though this was an emergency

113:34commander-in-chief, yes, but he knew there was  a branch of Congress that was essential for uh this. I don't see any such decision making taking  place right now and this is absolutely dangerous.

113:54Uh actually uh the president of the United States  needs to get real analysis, data, intelligence, internal debate, opposition and uh the president  has uh ultimate decisions on many things.

114:17Not on everything, but on many things, but not on  the basis of a gut, not on the basis of a whim, not on the basis of I believe that Iran is like  Venezuela, which I think was part of the idea, not on the basis of Netanyahu spinning some absurd  yarn or Mossad spinning some absurd yarn to one person with a group of sick offense listening  in and saying, "Well, I don't know. It looks doubtful, but I will follow you, Mr. President."  That is not the kind of deliberative process that keeps us in safety. And yet, I think that's  exactly the process. I don't think there's any decision maker or even uh anyone who influences  the decisions greatly other than Trump. I think

115:13uh the degradation of our political system is so  uh deep right now that uh maybe there is no u no chance for that. But I do every day plead with the  congressional leaders to do their constitutional duty because they're not doing it right now. I  know. uh and it's not uh you know be good and go tell Trump they're a co-equal branch of government  that under article one of the constitution assigns them the responsibility for war for the  declaration of war it's not even shared they are the only branch that can declare war and when I  don't know how many een times now the Republicans All but one, all but the best Republican senator  by far, Ran Paul. I regard him as the best senator

116:18in in the whole Senate. Uh, and all the Democrats  on the other side, but one, John Federman, who I regard as u weird uh in his complete  total allegiance to Israel's reckless agenda.

116:37um vote that Congress should not have any  oversight over this war completely contrary to the whole framework of the Constitution.  It shows how degraded we have become. Maybe it's an inevitable process where you know in  late stage republics like ours all power vests in the executive the legislative body. Well,  think of it this way since you know so many world leaders. Is there any legislative body in  any country you're familiar with that has become more powerful in the last 10 years or they're all  shrinking in authority? It's I know lots of places that have very high levels of deliberation.  Yep. Very rational processes. By the way,

117:27people will be very surprised to hear me say it  and they'll doubt it and they won't believe it.

117:32But China has among the most deliberative  processes that I see in any government in the world because we portray, you know, Xi  Jinping is the as as the leader who decides everything. I I was just in Beijing a couple  of weeks ago and they've just announced a very very sophisticated economic program. Um, and  I spoke to many people that were part of it.

118:03It was two years of detailed deliberation over  cutting edge sectors and what to do and how to uh combine public and private initiatives. Very  sophisticated. We don't have that right now. So this is quite strange. We have just the opposite.  But I wonder do you think that our big picture asking a lot to predict something like this but  that our current system survives this moment?

118:34We have one uh overwhelming delusion that is held  firmly by a president who has his own personal delusions. And that is that America reigns supreme  in the world. And every day when President Trump says we are the most powerful blah blah blah blah  blah in the history of the world, this is a of course he feels good saying this. Of course maybe  his followers feel good saying this, but it's a it it's completely totally the wrong approach to  our world right now. The serious part of our world is the world faces many deep challenges. There  are many nuclear armed countries. There are many powerful countries. We need to find a way to get  along, to understand each other, to cooperate,

119:36to solve problems, and to avoid the traps of a  war that can destroy the world economy or even the world in a short period of time. So all the  bluster is a remnant of the idea that the US has pursued during its imperial era since World War  II that we should run the world. And Trump has a particular view of that which is that he should  run the world. And so we have a a workable system.

120:17It's actually worked quite brilliantly at times.  It's a pretty complicated machinery. Uh it it could be updated in some pretty useful ways. But  I used to work uh for some years in internship positions in the Congress in the 1970s. And  Congress actually worked as an institution.

120:42for example, it held hearings, it wrote papers,  it proposed legislation, it actually did things.

120:50Uh there were leaders uh uh Fulbright and others  who spoke out and wrote brilliant books and did all sorts of wonderful things and uh I met many of  them as a kid. Uh and that idea that there was a legislative branch where you would have lions of  the Senate and the House of Representatives and a speaker who would be a independent uh voice of  uh politics as the people's tribune. It actually worked to an extent. It really did. I was there.  I watched it. I saw it. I quite loved it. Uh we don't have that right now. So could it could it  work? Yes. Uh I think there are many interesting things to do in our digital age. We can get  people involved much more. We can have public

121:50deliberations in different ways. We can upgrade  update the way that our system works. But yes, the system could work. It doesn't have to dissolve  or devolve to one person operating on gut hunches uh based on delusions of grandeur that could  send the world to disaster. That doesn't have to be the way the world and our system  works or ends. Or ends. Exactly. Thank you, Jeffrey Sax. Thank you very much for that.  Great to be with you, Tucker. Thanks.