War crimes day - The Grayzone live

0:02Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the Grey Zone. It's been a little while. I've been on hiatus, but um uh having a comeback run this week, and this is going to be a very special live stream at a critical moment in human civilization as the US President Donald Trump vows a literal war on civilization, declaring tonight a civil an entire civilization will die if his threats are fulfilled or if Iran refuses to submit. I'd been saying and many people many of my colleagues and people in my circle of critical thinkers had been saying that this war was going to be a total war on the people of Iran. We'd

0:52also been saying that the protests that we heard so much about in January actually morphed into regime change riots which were armed by Western and Israeli intelligence. And now all of that is confirmed. It's all plain for everyone to see through the cander of Donald Trump who has vowed to attack the crazy what he calls the crazy bastards in Iran, referring to all Iranians as crazy bastards. So the mask is completely off.

1:27And as we speak, the US-Israeli terror coalition is bombing bridges across Iran. It's bombed a UNESCO heritage site in Iran's railways.

1:40It is bombing prochemical plants.

1:45It is bombing power stations. It is bombing apartment blocks, entire civilian neighborhoods. and it bombed a synagogue uh where I conducted an interview with a major Jewish community leader who happens to be an Iranian parliamentarian just a couple blocks away for a documentary that I will re-release today.

2:09But what I want to do for the first 45 minutes or hour of this stream is talk to two independent journalists who were just in Iran covering this war while most Western agencies stayed on the outside and stayed in Istanbul interviewing Iranian expat regime change activists and underground discos. And these two journalists were on the ground and actually made it all the way to the straight of Hormuz to tell us what's really going on.

2:39at this choke point of the economy and at a pivot point of human civilization.

2:46Uh so I want to welcome Ahmed Sadaldin from Prop and Co and Dmitri Lascaris from Right to Resist onto the show right now. If that Yeah, here they and here they are.

3:00Welcome to the gray zone, Dmitri and Ahmed. It's great to see you both. and I'm extremely jealous that I couldn't join you uh on the ground. Um we >> Yeah, we were all there uh last May before the 12-day war, but I imagine this was a completely different experience.

3:23I'm not even exactly sure where to start, but uh let's just start with your overall impressions and then we can kind of like I I I think maybe then we could start from your like a chronology of your journey from Tabreze all the way to the straight of Hormuz. What what was your overall impression of the war? What you what you saw? what what what Iranian society was like under this imposed war, what they call the Ramadan war, and their reaction to it.

3:58Uh what kind of u differences you witnessed throughout the regions and how you think uh that affects your view of how this will play out. Um you know, I don't know who to start with here, so whoever wants to jump in.

4:14>> Go ahead. No, I was going to say after you my friend elders first by the way elder by a wide margin I might add. Uh well I let me talk first of all about uh my immediate uh surprise. I had an immediate surprise uh when I personally had spent a little time in the country and that is based on what I was seeing in both the corporate media and in the alternative media. I expected the level of devastation to be much greater, physical uh devastation. I thought I was going to see something similar to what I had seen in South Lebanon. Uh and I've been there four times since the genocide began in October 2023. Each time it was

4:56progressively worse, but it was always worse, even on my first visit uh than it was than what I saw in Iran. I I mean you we could have I think if they had just let us walk around the country for 11 days randomly we might we might never have actually seen a destroyed building.

5:14Uh the vast majority of the infrastructure is unscathed.

5:17>> Yeah.

5:17>> Well well over 99%. And it just like you know you suddenly realize you're dealing with a damn big country. It's a very big country. It's the population is well dispersed. It's much further away from Israel than uh than Lebanon is and than the occupied Palestinian territories are. Uh it has, as we've seen over the last few days, real air defenses. And uh and the munitions of Israel and the United States have been greatly depleted by their insane uh wararmongering over the last uh going all the way back to the start of the war in Ukraine. So Iran's now it's also very early in the war. things could get really bad really

5:58fast, but at least when we were there, I was impressed by how unscathed most of the country was. That being said, Max, there's no doubt in my mind that there is a reign of terror here. Everywhere we went, we saw, you know, we were taken to, guided to, emergency centers de demolished, meteorological stations demolished, hospitals put completely out of service, schools destroyed, uh you know, cars blown up in the middle of the street, street workers uh grievously injured, children lying in hospital beds. Uh it was it was absolutely clear that they are engaged in a campaign of terrorism against the Iranian people and

6:38it is really quite remarkable how well they're standing up to it. Uh, of course people there are very concerned. They're very saddened by what has been done to their country particularly, you know, the children and also the historical sites, the cultural sites that have been damaged severely. And we talked about that in our reporting. Uh, but they are defiant. Uh, they are uh steadfast. They are as united as you could possibly imagine. We saw progovernment demonstrations all over the country. I remember Shiraz one night we were driving around. I think we saw four different progovernment demonstrations

7:14at different intersections and we weren't out there looking for them. That was like an half an hour drive around this city. Uh and we didn't see a single I mean can correct me if he saw anything like this but I didn't see a single anti-government protest. Now I'm sure there are people out there who are opposed to the government. There's no question that there are there are in every society. But right now, as a good friend of mine from the Canadian Iranian diaspora who moved back to Iran three years ago because she wanted to come back to her country, she she said there are positive things happening in the

7:46country. I want to be in the country and who's not left during the war. She said the the voices of disscent uh have been muted. The people who support the government have taken the streets.

7:55They've literally taken over the streets to show their support night after night.

7:59and she said there's kind of like a middle of, you know, people who swing back and forth between support for the government and opposition to the government and that middle has swung decisively in favor of the government right now. Uh so what I saw was a very united and determined people and a very dignified people.

8:18>> Ahmed, what were your impressions? And um I guess I I should have mentioned you you both also went to Minab to the site of the bombing of this girl's school.

8:29But yeah, give us your impressions of the trip.

8:32>> I had a very similar perception. Uh I felt like a tourist a lot of the time, especially in Isvahan. Um you know, you heard bombings at night like in our hotel, Dimmitri, maybe you felt the same, but between midnight and 2 a.m. is usually when you'd hear some pretty intense bombings. and it would shake the hotel. But, you know, outside of that, we didn't really see a whole lot. And and as Dimmitri mentioned, it's a gigantic country and we felt that because we traveled from city to city to city and every time we would travel, it was like at least a 10-hour journey and our last journey was like 24 hours

9:08total, you know, and so or actually longer. um going from Bandar Abas by train all the way to Tahran and then taking a bus ride all the way to Tre and then going to the border that that was like a 36-hour journey just to give you a sense of like how massive this country is and as you know Dimmitri mentioned you really wouldn't see the effects of the war damaged or destroyed sites unless you went looking for it and in Tahan is a little different especially um in the area where you have a lot of the government buildings there you drive around and you will find, you know, different sites that are destroyed. Um,

9:43but yeah, for the most part, you have to go looking for it. And, and I don't want to make it sound like uh the war isn't being uh sorry, the country isn't being bombed relentlessly. Like, at this point, I think over 20,000 bombs have been dropped on uh Iran and now they're starting to like they're very open about the fact that they're bombing civilian infrastructure. I think just today they bombed the railway and that was the railway company that we took, Dimmitri.

10:08it was Raja transportation or railway what however you call it. Um and so but the people are I I had the same feeling that people are defiant and you know last time when we took our trip to to Iran Max we spent most of it in Thran so well you you got to go to Istvan and Shiraz afterwards but you know I didn't and so I didn't really know what people felt like all around the country. uh everyone you speak to in the country is um inspired to defend their country.

10:40They're very patriotic, but they're also heavily heavily interested in the concept of martyrdom. Everyone we spoke to was obsessed with martyrdom. There was one woman who discovered a landmine in her house uh in a village outside of Shiraz and she was sharing with Dimmitri how she debated whether or not she should pick it up because it was an opportunity you know to save someone else's life but also attain martyrdom herself and that was like all you heard was martyrdom all throughout the trip and so the I had a similar uh perception I I suppose that people are very defiant and they're inspired to defend their

11:23Let let's turn to some video that Dimmitri filmed in Isvahan in the central square which I visited um last year. But uh you can see from this clip if you watch closely and I'll let Dimmitri narrate.

11:44>> Can you can you max the volume uh m max on this?

11:47>> Yeah, here we go.

11:50Just just listen.

12:10>> Okay. So, a bomb just went off. Look at those people. I mean, >> you it you know, you playing it here. I I urge people to actually listen to it, to watch the video, crank up the volume, and you'll you'll hear very distinctly that there is a large explosion nearby.

12:28And you can also hear the roar of jet engines. And look at these people. I mean, it's the most remarkable thing.

12:34Kids, couples, parents just strolling around as if uh a huge bomb going off uh within a couple of kilometers of the square is uh part for the course. They have uh internalized the war and they refused to be cowed by it even the children. Uh it's the most remarkable thing and uh you know this this video was shot just after the governor of Esvahan so he would be the highest ranking civilian official in the province uh which has the second largest city in Iran gave us a a tour uh about an hour long. Uh there were no bodyguards with him as far as we could tell and uh as he was walking around the square uh you know a number of people uh

13:21came up to him and expressed their affection and respect for him. Uh there was nobody that was disrespectful. He didn't seem to have the slightest concern about his safety. Um and uh I had the overall impression that people liked him. Uh, and so this is not at all consistent with the narrative we've been given that the vast majority of Iranians want to lynch their leaders. Uh, so again, I I'm not going to I can't say what the conditions are like outside of wartime and before I went to Iran in May of last year for the first time in my life, but this is what I've witnessed.

13:55Uh and uh so I think as I put it Max to you know one one of the Iranians in our entourage uh this war was intended to destroy Iran and it is in fact enabling Iran to assume its rightful place in the world.

14:10And I think that that is what people you're seeing here uh essentially feel about it.

14:16>> Yeah. And I think that's how a lot of Americans feel. And I think these walking tour videos which I shot are so important because it shows just what daily life is like. And it eviscerates the propaganda we're subjected to. You see women everywhere without hijab just freely walking around. There's no morality police attacking them. You see people of all all all different kinds of people. And you see the rich culture and history of Iran right there in the middle of one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world which is now being viciously bombarded. And some of these uh buildings were damaged in

14:53bombings. Some of these market stalls, um, some of these religious sites were damaged in bombings.

15:00>> Yeah, absolutely.

15:03>> Let's, uh, turn to another video. Uh, well, well, you you you both went to Minab. This the war opened on February 28th with uh bombing including with some experimental or newly tested weapons produced by Lheed Martin uh standoff cruise missiles in uh Minab which uh you know was in supposedly this uh IRGC military site and 170 school girls and their teachers and school staff were were massacred in the opening strike along with um enlamured uh a volleyball team of young girls were slaughtered in these cowardly US standoff strikes and you both got to visit that site in Minab. Uh let's just take a quick look

15:59or you know we'll roll some footage and you can each kind of narrate and just tell us what what you saw there and what your impressions were. Did you learn anything new about this bombing?

16:10Uh I I'll start with you, Ahmed, even though this is Dimmitri's footage.

16:15>> Yeah. Um didn't I can't say I learned uh anything new um in terms of information.

16:22Uh but when I was there, I realized that like like I mentioned earlier, over 20,000 bombs dropped on Iran and there's been so much bombing now that people forget that Manab took place. There have been so many massacres and war crimes committed. Um but Minab I think remains as the symbolic war crime of this war and you see it all over the country. I mean there's all kinds of posters uh com you know memorializing the young girls and showing them in the you know in paradise in the afterlife with the supreme leader and it's become a rallying cry and while we were there we interviewed a couple of guys that were

17:06actually there the day of and they responded and it was a double tap strike. It wasn't one bombing, it was two. And these guys that came to respond when talking to us couldn't even finish the interview. I mean, they were just crying the entire time describing what they saw because it was so grotesque. I mean, it was just a tomahawk missile directly hitting children. And so, you can imagine what that scene looks like.

17:32We saw what that does to children in Gaza. So, just imagine that everywhere all over this location. And even the the people we were with who were conducting the translations and conducting the interviews alongside us, they couldn't even hold themselves back from crying either. It it's such an emotional uh story and experience for everyone in Iran now. And actually while we were there as well, there was a woman and her daughter who were not from Minab. They traveled across the country. I think they were from Meshad on the other side.

18:03and they came to say a prayer and pay their respects to the people of Min and to this you know because of this site and so it it's just such a tragic story and it's a war crime that I think is symbolic of how unjust the war is right two negotiations interrupted by criminals claiming that they want peace and it manifests itself in an opening strike that is the the wor like one of the worst war crimes that you can imagine.

18:33Dimmitri, what was it like visiting this school in Minab?

18:41>> You're you're muted right now.

18:43>> Sorry. Uh, you know, I was I was standing beside that man when he broke down. He had his he had his two young sons were standing beside him and they watched his father uh melt in tears as he described, you know, finding children who were dismembered.

19:00uh was it was gut-wrenching to see but uh from a from a a sort of legal intellectual perspective I did find this to be quite enlightening because I was operating under the impression that the school was near a military base and early in the war I had heard commentators whom I respect I mean you know and I still of course do saying that they thought what had happened was the the American military targeted the school to send a message to the Ira Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps because these children were largely the children of men who were serving in the IRGC.

19:41Uh in fact, I think that that's not true based on what I saw. Uh there is no military facility that we found anywhere near this school. We walked around this thing. This this was a military base something like 18 years ago. There's the man. You can see he just he's with his sons and he can't he can't hold back his tears and he just leaves. He just he just couldn't continue talking.

20:05>> We were told this was a military there.

20:07It was nestled among military bases.

20:10>> So no, there's no evidence of that that I saw. Absolutely none. So this was a military base 18 years ago. It's clear from the outside of the complex. It's a military base because it's like a 12 or 15 foot high wall with rusted out barbed wire on top. And but once you walk into it, what you find is uh uh that the camp, the former military camp, has been divided into two portions which are separated by a concrete wall. On one side of that wall is what is absolutely clearly a schoolyard. Okay, there's just no question it's a schoolyard.

20:48>> So, the question for me, and this is the part that was most enlightening for me, was what is on the other side of that wall in the second half of the the former military complex. There was a a hole in the wall that which they had created uh because there had been destruction on both sides of that wall.

21:03They created a hole to I guess fy the rubble in and out of the other side. And so, there was a piece of tape uh across that hole in the wall. You can see it right there. It's like off in the distance. Uh the hole in that wall right there. And so we said to them, "Look, we need to go into that other part of the former military camp to see what's there because otherwise we can't warrant that there's no evidence here of a military presence."

21:29>> Yeah.

21:30>> So they just just gave us free reign, Max. Like you go in there, do whatever you want. No one was putting any restriction on us. There were we found like three buildings on the other side.

21:40They had been struck. Two had been completely destroyed. Uh but there were some walls standing. We were allowed to roam freely in there. Uh one of them was very clearly we were told it it had been basically converted into a storage facility for pharmaceutical products and we found all kinds of pharmaceutical products in the rubble. It was clearer that that that thing was >> a warehouse for pharmaceutical products.

22:00The other thing was just kind of like an the bigger building on the other side which you can see if you look right between those two men >> you can see the hole in the wall and there's a bigger building. So that was kind of like an overflow space where there was a prayer room and they had a room where they had a bunch of seats. It looked like they used it as a classroom when they needed to. Uh there was absolutely zero evidence that that thing had any kind of a military function. And that entire space on the other side of the wall you see there on the right side of the screen there was uh a lot of

22:30weeds very very you know they were mature weeds. this it was very clear that these weeds had been growing for a long time and there was no indication whatsoever that vehicles had been parked on >> on those weeds and the the weeds took up the vast majority of the space on the other side of that wall. So then after we saw this it was crystal clear there was no military facility inside the foreign military complex. This was obviously a schoolyard. You couldn't possibly come to any other conclusion if you have the surveillance capabilities of the United States military. And then we walked around the military the former

23:03military base and saw nothing that could be a military facility. So I think and and the other thing I should add, Max, is that we went to the cemetery where most of the victims were buried and we spoke to two fathers >> uh who lost children in the bombing and they were uh they were I rate indignant at any suggestion that they were involved with the military of Iran. They said they had absolutely nothing to do with the military. Any suggestion that these children were the children of s soldiers is a bald-faced lie. We were just ordinary people uh simple people living in this village and they targeted

23:39us on purpose. We have no doubt in our minds that they killed our children intentionally. That's what we heard.

23:45>> One of course now all the pretense is gone. They're not even claiming to be attacking military targets. Trump has declared today to be bridge and power day uh attacking Iran's the the source of life in Iran. But let's uh turn to another war crime that you both exposed. And I think this really speaks to the value of your reporting and the trip you took because not only did you expose this on your independent channels, it kind of forced mainstream Western media to acknowledge that this was taking place.

24:22The Washington Post picked up uh cited you directly, Dimmitri, in its reporting of uh correct me if I'm wrong, but essentially small landmines were dropped all over civilian sites in Shiraz. Uh here's a video from Ahmed's propaganda and company. Okay. Well, yeah. I I mean, just even describing this uh I don't know, Zionist chainsaw massacre might actually get us demonetized, but here we go.

24:53>> Explode on impact. A recently married 30-year-old man with a four-month child found a landmine next to his >> Okay.

25:02>> Death.

25:24Oil prices are through the roof.

25:26Innocent civilians are being inconvenienced all around the region.

25:30And in Iran, they are being killed, leaving behind widows, orphans, and devastated family members. Why? Because of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish supremacy. If you're against this war, share this video and let everyone know that it needs to end now.

25:46>> So, so what what's going on? Why were I mean, I saw the photos that you all shared. Why these these small landmines look like uh tins of tuna or um food?

26:01They don't look like traditional landmines.

26:04Why were they there? What was what was the >> Well, ju just a couple clarifications.

26:09Uh it was not Shiraz. It was it was a village uh outside of Shidaz.

26:14>> Okay.

26:15>> Uh the uh the mines were apparently spread by the US military. the New York it was I was actually the video was used in my report was referred to by not only the Washington Post but also the New York Times and ABC uh and uh I think uh MSN or BC or whatever.

26:36>> Yeah.

26:36>> And uh so the these things were electromagnetic mines. Apparently they can be timed to go off. So when we were filming them we were told you you do a quick quick shoot and get the hell out of there. because that thing could go off at any minute.

26:53>> Uh and uh they also said to us it was raining and muddy that they were concerned that the accumulation of water and soil on top of the mines that were embedded in mud would potentially cause them to go off. They were extremely dangerous. And uh Ahmad heard this. I'm not sure that I heard this directly, but I remember Ahmed telling me that they the they the theory they had, no one knows for sure why the American military showered these things on this village, but the theory they had was that the American military thought that somewhere in the not not too far away from this village, there was some uh entry point

27:30from which uh missile launchers were emerging, some tunnel from which they were emerging. and these things. They were hoping that, you know, those missile launchers might uh blow up on top of one of these mines. Uh but there there was absolutely no evidence of any military presence in or near that village that we saw. Nothing. And we walked around it for, you know, a good two or three hours.

27:55and and Ahmed, you you went to a uh gathering of the family members of this man who had been killed. How did you happen upon that and you know, describe that experience?

28:11>> Well, we were touring through the village and they were showing us different homes that had mines in them.

28:17And actually on some of the homes when they would finish clearing it or if they discovered a mine in it, they would mark it. They would label it on the house so that people knew not to enter that house. And they brought us to the home of this uh this man and he found this landmine next to his truck. He picked it up not knowing what it was and it detonated and unfortunately it killed him and it cut him to pieces. And so while we were there, we were told that his family were inside and that we could go in and speak to them. And so we went in, we paid our respects to his father or his father-in-law. And um then his

28:57mother came in, I believe his sister came in, his wife wasn't present, but I mean they just it was so fresh after it happened. It literally happened the night before. And we were there first thing in the morning. And so their family was traveling from wherever they were, getting the news, and then making their way to the house. And and that all happened while we were in there. and and you could just see on their faces. I mean, they're just completely shocked.

29:23They're devastated. And he was a young man. He had just gotten married like maybe a year ago, if that. And yeah, you just saw the grief and the shock on their faces. And it's it's hard to to witness because we want to tell our stories and we want to capture it, but at the same time, we don't want to impose. You know, we're there as strangers. And what do you even say?

29:47It's difficult to to witness, but we do what we can, I guess, which is tell their stories and with the hopes of bringing an end to this war, exposing it.

29:59>> Yeah. That that scene you saw in the house was, I think, less than 10 hours after the man had been blown to bits in his own home.

30:06>> So, the the grief was very fresh, >> you know.

30:10>> Yeah, that's devastating.

30:13One other thing that happened in that village uh again this is so indicative it's so typical of what we experienced when we were there. I'd had a lot of coffee that morning and I needed to go I needed a washroom facility and uh so there was none of publicly available and one of our Iranian colleagues found a villager who allowed me to use his facilities and when I came out uh the villager insisted with his wife he was an elderly gentleman he insisted with his wife that we remain and have tea uh he said you know this is a custom in our country you have to stay and have tea and we're it was raining and so we're

30:48outside in his backyard we're having tea And he says he just spontaneously broke out. This was all none of this could possibly have been scripted, Max. Okay.

30:56The way it played out, it was utterly utterly spontaneous. He just starts talking. He said, "Man, I will I I'm here and I'm going to stand on this land and I will die on this land and ain't going to take it away from me. Bring it on. Bring it on. I'll fight to the death." And his wife was sitting there nodding her head. You know, this was the overwhelming sentiment of people we spoke to. We you know Ahmed talked about martyrdom. Uh the very first family we met uh who had lost a f lost a family member to one of these criminal bombings was the first city we went to or outside the first city we went to is a village

31:31near Tabis and uh the man was a postal worker and he had been killed uh when they bombed the post office. And so we met the mother and the father and the father first thing out of his mouth he said it's a great honor to have lost my son in this criminal war against our country. And uh and then they uh invited the son to speak who was 10 years old, 10-year-old boy who calmly sat there, you know, in a in a in a measured voice and said, "Uh, I will not allow anyone to dishonor the name of my father and I will avenge his blood and one day I'm going to become a missile maker and the Israelis and the Americans will pay for

32:15what they did to my father." That's the sentiment we heard all over the country.

32:20something I heard a lot in Gaza when I was able to be there from young people because, you know, it's the only way of reclaiming your dignity after you've been kind of stripped of everything you care about and your entire foundation.

32:34Uh Dimmitri, I know you have a hard stop coming up. I want to uh I guess let let's go to the let's go to the straight of of Hormuz and get your impressions there. I mean, this is this is a clip from the only American.

32:53Demetri, you're Canadian. I'm sorry.

32:56From the only American in the street of Hormuz.

33:00>> You can go up.

33:13>> This is what Trump said he wants to do.

33:15Journalists Dimmitri, Tim Anderson, and myself had the unique opportunity to sail through the straits of Hormuz off the coast of Mandaras in Iran in order to witness what can only be described as a historical inversion of the economic world border as oil tanker after oil tanker after oil tanker is forced to pay transit fees, Chinese yuan currency to the government in order to obtain permission this street or moves on towards her death.

33:46>> You can go amazing. I mean, simply amazing.

33:52>> I got to give you some color commentary on this.

33:54>> Yeah. Yeah.

33:56>> So, it it's difficult to un overstate uh how courageous Akmad was in that clip.

34:03Okay. He is like totally cool in the gang. He's obviously having fun with the moment. They had been targeting for the prior two days just about every site that we went to. You know, that was an extremely that was I I don't know, but I think you probably agree that was probably the most dangerous moment of the trip. We were out in the water. We were at a point where it was relatively easy for the Americans or the the American military or the uh Israeli military to strike us because they they didn't have to come inland and they were less threatened by air defense systems.

34:34And uh they told us, you know, there are drones in the sky. So, we're going out there and uh after they struck the Minab school 10 minutes after we left it the day before, uh after they did a drone strike on a demolished antenna facility we were looking at on the way to the Minab school, they did the Done drone strike while we were there. Uh they struck the outside our hotel room in Bucher after we had left it a couple hours afterwards.

34:59>> What do you mean outside your hotel room?

35:01>> Across the street. I'm not a hotel room.

35:03Across the street from our hotel. I misspoke. No, I just mean how close?

35:08>> We don't we don't know. I think it was like 100 200 feet, something like that.

35:10It was it was it was definitely close enough to cause people to say were they trying to send us a message? We weren't there at the time. We had left we had left Busher. So, we got this report from I think Red Crescent uh personnel in the city. So, and also they struck uh we did this piece at a meteorological station in uh Busher uh civilian meteorological facility. They had completely leveled the thing and there was nothing there to to hit. There was absolutely nothing of any value. Why would you waste a missile? And they hit that too after we visited it. So by the time we get to uh the street of Hormuz, everybody in our

35:49entourage was pretty much convinced that the Israelis andor Americans were trying to send us a message and to deter us from uh continuing to report on the ground.

35:59And so when you see Ahmad out there, you know, yuck yucking it up, he's doing it at a moment when his life is at risk. So it was I just have to say, you know, before I go, Max, like this was one of the greatest privileges of my life to travel with these people, you know, and not just Ahmad and Tim Anderson, also we had for a while uh Adam Mitan from Turkey, but above all our gracious Iranian hosts, you know, these people did everything they could to protect us.

36:27uh it was clear they were willing to risk their own lives in order to ensure that we saw what was being done to their country. Uh you know I feel nothing but love and respect for them all and I feel honored to have been on this trip.

36:40>> Well what you what you did was such a service to humanity and to journalism informed all of us and your voices that we can trust because we know >> we know what you believe in. you're totally transparent about your agenda and so what we saw through your eyes felt authentic. Um, and it made an impact because so many other journalists who have much more resources who, you know, would be able to when they go into conflict zones, they have bodyguards and fixers and press vests and credentials. They didn't take this risk that you all took. So, thank you for your service, Dimmitri.

37:26And if there's anything else you want to add before you go, uh, the floor is yours.

37:32>> All I'll say, you know, thank you very much, Max. Very kind. The only thing I'll add is, uh, you know, uh, when this war is over, go to Iran if you can. If you have the ability, the means to go to Iran, see the country for yourself. Meet the people of that country. They deserve our admiration and respect. Whether you like the government, don't like the government, this is a war on the people of Iran, it has absolutely nothing to do with democracy and human rights. We can assure you of that.

38:03>> Well, I will definitely be following that advice. Thanks so much.

38:08>> Yeah, >> sorry. Go ahead. I just want to say before Dimmitri goes, uh, he he was kind of hyping me up as being courageous, but actually what he didn't tell you is the day before I was the one freaking out big time about potentially being targeted. And it was him and Tim Anderson uh, who gave me the courage to just feel comfortable and understand that this is what I had signed up for. This is what I came to Iran for knowing it was a war zone. And both Demetri and Tim, not to like self-deprecate or anything like that, I'm more of a content creator. I'm passionate about these subjects. The real professionals are are Dimmitri and

38:41Tim Anderson and they were cool as a cucumber throughout the entire process where I was kind of like freaking out.

38:48And so it was a a pleasure, a privilege and an honor for me as well, you know, to to work with with Dimmitri, you know, and and experiences with him.

38:58>> Well, uh, Dimmitri, where can people find more of your content and how can they support you? Uh at the outset you you said uh right to resist. It's actually reason to resist.

39:09>> Reason to resist.

39:10>> No, no worries. Uh and it's with the number two uh no spaces. That's the name of our YouTube channel. Uh and uh we've grown quite rapidly since we launched this thing about 20 months ago. Uh we're also I'm also very active on X at Demetri Lsteris and I'm on Sus. So, you know, and I I'm I'm in a position because I'm a lawyer and that's the way that I've made a living, Max, that uh you know, unlike other independent journalists, uh my focus isn't on uh fundraising, although our channel is monetized. What I do ask, you know, uh is that people subscribe and share our content uh and uh help us to u make a

39:50bigger difference. That's that's our objective here, a positive difference.

39:55>> Well, you're well, you're definitely making a difference with this coverage.

39:57Thanks a lot for joining us, Dimmitri, and we'll have you back.

40:00>> Thank you, Max. Take care, everybody.

40:02See you, Akmed.

40:03>> Peace.

40:03>> Take care, brother. Take care of yourself.

40:06>> So, Ahmed, uh, your impressions from the straight of Hormuz. Uh, tell us you you do you describe an economic inversion.

40:16What did what did you see there? And do you think this will actually lead to a permanent shift in the economic order?

40:22This is obviously the central node of Iran's fight. It's it's sort of the the central plank of Iran's demand for sovereignty coming out of this war.

40:37>> Yeah. You know, as you know, one of Iran's demands is that the United States provide them reparations dam for the war damages. And I don't think the US would ever agree to that or give them that. So Iran is kind of and I think they understand that as well. I think they're preparing for that by basically saying, "We're going to just take over the straight of her moves moving forward.

40:57Like, we'll guarantee the security and the traffic, and since you won't pay us damages, you're going to consent to us charging a $2 million fee for any ship that wants to pass through. And they're going to be accepting those payments in the Chinese yuan, uh, and other currencies as well. I heard that they may be using some kind of stable coin.

41:16I'm not sure exactly which network, but you know, they could be accepting Bitcoin. They could accept gold. They could accept the Chinese yuan. The point is they're not planning to accept the US dollar. And I think that's important.

41:29Now, it's just a $2 million fee per ship, which could generate a lot of money for them every single year. But they may also just provide a discount where you could either get a cheaper fee or maybe no fee if you're not conducting transactions in the US dollar. And so that's why I described it as a historical inversion. I'm not qualified to to describe it as such, but you know, I hear people like John Mirshimer and Robert Pape describing it as such. The other day, Robert P was talking about how this war is going to see Iran come out and emerge as a major power. And he's saying that despite the fact that

42:07they're being heavily bombed and a lot of their infrastructure is being destroyed. And so as you pointed out the straight of Hormuz is this central node or it's like the main battlefield really. So people are asking like why doesn't Iran do more to the state of Israel? Like why aren't they pummeling Israel the way that you know Iran is being pummeled by US and Israeli bombs?

42:29Well the first thing is Iran is hitting Israel. It's just there's a lot more censorship there and so it's difficult to actually see what they're the damage is. But also they Israel can do whatever they want to Iran. It doesn't matter because the key battlefield here is the straight of Hormuz. And so that's why Iran has been harassing the you know the the Gulf monarchies but also just ensuring that they can control the stra the straight. And so they're kind of unfased. It it's just a difference in tactics. And so the US, that's why Donald Trump is he he's coming across more unhinged than he did at the the

43:02offset of this war because he understands that Iran holds all the keys and it's because of the straight over moves and that they won't let it go no matter what he does. And now it's escalated to the point where it sounds like he wants to nuke Iran.

43:15>> Yes. Or use a MOAB or tactical nuclear weapon.

43:22Um I guess he did ask some questions about that. I was going to turn to something else, but since you brought it up um you met with the um >> Yeah, this is the governor of um the Bandra Abas region. So, the governor of the Hormuz region.

43:41>> I think you're referencing that clip, right?

43:43>> Yeah, here it is.

43:49>> You're asking, are you prepared for the extreme scenario?

43:55US or Israel dropping a nuclear weapon.

44:03>> Our planning was comprehensive preparation for this war.

44:10If they want to, >> if they want to black fame themselves once again in the world, >> let's start.

44:31>> This is the end of war.

44:36>> Hopefully, it doesn't reach that point.

44:41We hope so.

44:45>> Uh there might be some surprises for them.

44:50>> So there might be some surprises for them.

44:53>> What what do you think he meant by that?

44:55>> Well, you saw Akb you know him. He he was our translator in Iran last year as well. And his reaction, you can't really see it because it's from the side of his face, but he was shocked when he heard the governor say that. and he did like a double take. He couldn't believe it. And the implication, so first the governor said that their plan was comprehensive.

45:14So remember, I'm asking him about whether they're worried or not that they could get nuked, right? So he says, "We planned for this comprehensively, meaning we've thought about every single scenario." Uh so they've thought about potentially being nuked. And then at the end, he ends it by saying, "We may have some surprises for them." And the implication is that either they have the ability to quickly make a nuclear weapon and potentially respond to that attack or they may secretly already have it or they have a weapon of comparable destruction and strategic impact. So that clip went viral because a lot of

45:54people obviously interpreted it in the same way.

45:57>> Yeah.

45:58>> This was a civilian governor. I don't know if he's like able to even make these kinds of comments with confidence.

46:03I don't want to make a I don't want people to think I was talking like directly to an IRGC general or anything like that, but that was um that was a very interesting response. I think >> Yeah. I mean, I think what Israel and the US are doing partially by attacking civilian sites is trying to force Iran to rise to the provocation and attack civilian centers in Tel Aviv when Iran has been focused mostly on military sites and on climbing the escalation ladder with respect to energy. And once they do that, then it allows Israel to then, you know, bring or or or the US to bring tactical nuclear weapons into the

46:44mix. And they haven't done that. It this would still not be some fatal blow to Iran. A nuclear weapon isn't going to open the straight of Hormuz.

46:58There's no real tactical gain there.

47:00It's simply a psychological weapon. In 2013, Sheldon Add, who was Donald Trump's top donor along with his late wife, went to I think at a during a speech at a synagogue on stage with Rabbi Schmoolie Boutia, whose uh daughter owns a dildo shop in Tel Aviv that every US soldier is now fighting to defend. Uh Sheldon added that the US should drop a nuclear weapon in an open area in Iran as a message to the Iranians. And so you you got to figure that Trump's largest donor, though Sheldon add, his wife is actually probably saying the same thing. And Donald Trump is sending the message that he might do that. Iranians have been

47:44through so much through the Iran Iraq war. I mean, they didn't have energy for large parts of the Iran Iraq war and were using like gas lamps in their homes. So this isn't going to break Iran. It's simply going to expose the US and Israel as they're already doing. Uh the USIsraeli terror coalition has bombed, as I mentioned earlier, a major railway in Iran, which is a UNESCO heritage site.

48:18And you actually rode the rails in Iran with your uh traveling entourage of Tim Anderson and Dmitri Lascarus. I'm incredibly jealous again. I couldn't have been there. This looks like an amazing experience. You said that um you rode 18 hours over 700 miles from Bandara Bas in the south to Tehran in the north and the train ride cost $8.

48:45You get a bed, Limitless Coffee and tea and lamb kid for lunch. And here's a look at that.

48:58This is pretty luxurious compared to Amtrak, >> which is like the Greyhound bus on rails.

49:04>> Train ride with Tim Anderson.

49:07>> Yeah, you know, it really wasn't a bad ride. It was very comfortable. I even show a clip of the bathroom. Um, it's a public.

49:14>> Oh man, that's incredible.

49:16>> Yeah, the mountains are just stunning. I mean, the the entire ride is all you just scenes of the mountains all over. Yeah.

49:25The reason why I showed the bathroom is just people a sense of like how clean it is for a public train. You know, I don't even >> you can't even stand the smell probably in a public bathroom on a US train. But >> you can see there the beds.

49:41>> They bring you food, you know, directly to your to your room.

49:44>> Amazing.

49:46>> So, this is actually one of the first experiences.

49:52I've never taken a train this long before because I live in Florida. We we don't have trains. They've been talking for like 25 years to do a train from Tampa to Orlando and they still don't like they haven't.

50:03>> It's going to be useless because once you get off in Orlando, you need a car because there's like nowhere to go without a car.

50:08>> Yeah, it's just silly. Um, so it's been, you know, I've never had a train in in Florida and I've taken it here and there in other places, but never for 18 hours.

50:17I've never slept on a train before. So, this was my first time and it was a very interesting experience >> and there was something I wanted to emphasize. I just sent you another clip in the chat.

50:28>> It's a clip of the mountains. So, >> for people to get a sense because you were talking about a nuclear weapon and whether or not that would break Iran >> and like you've been to Iran yourself.

50:40I'm sure you saw it driving to Isvahan and Shiraz. Iran is just this. It's nothing but mountains and then in the valleys in between you have like these incredible cities. So there won't be a ground invasion. It's it's absolutely ridiculous. But it's not just about trying to send troops in and invade this kind of territory which is unforgiving.

51:02It's also the fact that embedded in the mountains are caves containing uh anti-ru anti-ship cruise missiles, missiles, all kinds of things. like they've completely prepared the coastline in order to protect the straight of Hormuz and maintain control over it and all they got to do is threaten one or two ships and that'll give them enough control over the straight and that's what we've seen over the last month. They haven't really gone hard, you know, on on trying to keep the straight closed. They've just sent a couple of messages to a couple of ships here and there and that's enough to do the job. And so if the US tried to

51:39forcibly reopen the strait or if they nuked several cities in Iran, several which would obviously be horrible, devastating war crimes, but even if they did all that, they're they're not going to eliminate Iran's ability to defend itself militarily. And as long as Iran has that, I feel like, you know, they can rebuild cities, they can rebuild factories, they can rebuild railways.

52:02This is a country that built those things under sanctions anyway.

52:06What really guarantees their sovereignty and makes them relevant is their ability to fire these missiles, these drones and and control the straits.

52:16>> And the effort to suppress ballistic missile fire has focused on attacking the entrances to missile cities with J dams and, you know, 2,000 lb bombs. and they get dug out in a couple hours or in two days, but the missile cities themselves remained undamaged because they're built in those mountains and uh then surrounded with heavily reinforced concrete. So, the strategy is completely failed.

52:46Israel's getting rocked. We we don't know what's happening there, as you said, because of the heavy censorship, but they continue to get rocked. They're running low on interceptors. They're having to reproduce. They're having to ramp up production and invest more and more of their budget into arrow systems.

53:02Like it's a disaster for them strategically.

53:07And then you you you mentioned this vast landscape which we saw.

53:11>> Mhm. The only thing I could see the US doing is either kind of a uh attempting to get a moral victory for Trump by invading a place like Chabahar, which is this sort of flat or straight coastline in the south, which the Marines and navy have, you know, they prepare these amphibious invasions, but then they have to actually hold the territory and they render themselves vulnerable to drone attacks, uh, mobile artillery, or they do some kind of special operations stunt where they try to seize the uranium or you know something closer to a heavily populated center like Isfahan which raises questions about the rescue operation we

53:55just saw and what was actually going on there. Uh what what are your thoughts about that and what what actually just took place uh what 25 kilometers south of Ivahan?

54:07Yeah. So, you mentioned um Chabahar. Uh I've heard that as a possibility as well, and it seems like Trump is desperately trying whatever he can to find some location in Iran that helps him gain leverage because of the straight of Hormuz. And that port in Chabahar actually is quite important.

54:30Adakbi told me while I was there that Akbet is our our translator for those who don't know. um and he's a journalist as well. He told me uh that that port is very important to Iran because it imports a lot of food and supplies and so a lot of the goods in Iran actually move through that port specifically. And so that might be why Trump wants to go get it and say, "Hey, I have another important place that I can take from you. Um let's trade, you know, I'll give it back to you if you give me the straight of of Hormuz back." And that I guess to him is a better alternative than Car Island. That's one of the

55:07reasons why they wanted to take it because they want to regain leverage over Iran in trade. Um but they he can't run that risk because they I think their assessment is that Iran will destroy their own infrastructure in order to preserve their sovereignty.

55:23>> Yeah.

55:24>> And he can't afford that because the whole issue with the straight of Hormuz is the are the energy prices. And so if if Iran does that in Car Island, it becomes an issue. So maybe that he's thinking maybe they can do it in in Chavahar. I don't know if that will work. Um but you know going back to um what you're asking about this potential rescue operation now it sounds like there's enough evidence suggesting that it may have been something else. I've seen people describe it as a ground invasion.

55:54Obviously there wasn't enough forces for a ground invasion but it does seem like they had special ops forces. I think there was the identification of an Israeli woman potentially uh who has experience with nuclear power plants. I guess I don't know if they were trying to like run underground with her and say, "Hey, which way do we go? Um do you recognize any of this equipment? Show us where the uranium is." Um, but that's just such a foolish operation. And and it comes after like several generals have either resigned or been fired.

56:26And it just seems like these people are being purged from the administration or from the Pentagon because they're hearing these plans and they're telling the president their honest assessment, which is this is absurd.

56:41This can't work. You're going to humiliate the military if you try this.

56:46and then they get fired and then it happens a couple of days later. And so I think it's just been nothing but humiliation after humiliation and it just seems like they're hoping to do anything they can to regain leverage over Iran and I don't think it's going to work.

57:06>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that based on your conversations with local leadership, you know, governors, mayors, the local population throughout Iran, but especially the the political leadership, they're willing to they're they're willing to see in their infrastructure destroyed in these terrorist attacks so they can retain their sovereignty.

57:33there there's there's no amount there's no pressure point that can be reached by the US and Israel. However, I don't know what you think about this scenario, but we saw what they did to Syria.

57:45Obviously, Iran is not Syria, but Syria did have I mean, Syria, it had like sectarian pro differences. There was a Sunni majority, an Alawite minority, controlled the presidency. So, there were all these friction points that the West could exploit that Iran doesn't have.

58:03and Iran's industry, its history is much stronger.

58:07However, there I see a ser Syria scenario that Israel is trying to play out where by destroying prochemical plants, destroying the three main or damaging the three main steel plants, uh attacking bridges, the B1 bridge and Karage was a real major feat of engineering, the largest bridge in West Asia.

58:29They're trying to set the stage for something in several years, a a Syria scenario in which the population will rise up or some proxy force will launch an armed rebellion and the Islamic Republic will essentially melt away because it has sort of been hollowed out from within. Do you see that as in any way possible?

58:53>> Well, many things are possible. So, I suppose it could be. I guess the question is, is it probable? Like, how likely is it to work?

59:03>> And that's difficult for me to say because I don't really have a an in-depth understanding of like the kind of economic impact that could produce in Iran over like 5, 10, 15 years. But what I'll say is, and you've pointed this out, I think that there is a difference between Iran and Syria. The Syria like many countries in the Middle East is a newly formed like nation state just literally drawn on the borders you know a couple of decades ago let's say almost a century ago where Iran is a civilization uh one of just a few on earth that is continuous and and it's been there around for thousands of years and so you

59:46have many Iranians who are not Persian you have ais for example in the north uh west where we initially went into. I've only released one in-depth episode so far on my YouTube channel, but in my first episode, I covered our journey through these areas in Tre and that whole area is Azari. They don't speak Farsy. Some like some of them speak it as a second language, but Azari is the language that they speak there. And so you would think, oh, this is a potential population that could flip against the government because maybe they feel more ident like more of a connection with Aaraijan next door, a nation, you know,

60:25that they can that they share an ethnicity with. But actually traveling through there, we find that no, these people are very proud of their participation in Iranian civilization.

60:36They and they have a very good relationship with, you know, their fellow citizens. And Dimmitri mentioned the father of the post office worker who was killed in the city outside of Tibre and he said it was my greatest honor.

60:50Like I'm very proud of my son for becoming a martyr. Um he also before he said that he paid his respects to the supreme leader um who was Azari as well. And so my point is that Iran uh is a civilization that people are very proud to be a part of and it's not just Persian people.

61:12It's Kurds, it's Azadis, it's all kinds of people who live within the current nation state of Iran. And I think they're willing to endure a lot. Like you mentioned, Iranians were blighting their homes with gas, you know, uh because they didn't have electricity during the Iran Iraq Iraq war. So honestly, at this point, Max, nothing has worked against this government. I don't think you can flip it. These people are really proud. They're very strong. They're they're very resilient at this point. If I I I mean, I don't know what American Israel thinks they can do at this point. They maybe they'll actually use a nuclear weapon out of

61:49desperation, but at some point, you just have to realize it's not happening. You guys are not going to succeed. Not with this. Not with these people.

61:59>> Yeah. It's sort of hard to see how this I the ignorance going into this war really stunned me. The ignorance of Trump, the Israelis obviously know better, but they had to draw Trump in by exploiting his ignorance and the ignorance of those around him. And it really stunned me the idea that there would be decapitation strikes and then some mass uprising. They really believe their own propaganda. And this is Iran today. Well, this is the oldest usable bridge in the world, and it's the old bridge of Desool, which was built in 255 AD.

62:38And Iranians have come out to defend this bridge against the terrorist threats of the mad king Donald Trump.

62:50>> This is today.

62:58Yeah, I've seen this video and some other videos as you described. Um they're starting to form like human chains around uh different civilian sites to protect them. But this this place in particular, you you actually went to this bridge, right?

63:12I went to the bridge in Isvahan >> which is over the Xanderude River and >> yeah this is it.

63:31>> It was >> this is >> I was under the bridge. So >> yeah, this is an important cultural heritage site that they want to protect because on our trip we went to several cultural sites. In Isvahan, we went to Chahel Sutun uh which is like this pavilion in a garden that's hundreds of years old. Uh and in Tahan we went to Golastan Palace and there are many locations >> has been bombed by you know in the war of civilization war on civilization by Trump and >> exactly >> uh this is uh you know me under under the Kaju bridge the Xander River flows through Isvahan it's Isvahan's a central plain city um

64:22you know with farming areas around it and the river has been damned in order to irrigate the central plains and Iran has a water problem has droughts and when we arrived there in Isvahan they had actually opened up the river and and so people come out and picnic and sing under the bridge and it's sort of like this citywide festival that was really inspiring and it was just kind of a magical moment and you know here's under the bridge they've just brought me out as they saw, you know, obviously a non-Iranian in the crowd and just brought me out to sing for me >> or to, you know, bring to make me a a

65:05part of the festival. You know, just classic Persian hospitality.

65:12>> That's incredible.

65:15>> And uh you know, at the end of this song, he >> said, you know, he wishes for peace between the US and Iran. That's what everyone would say to me. People were very hospitable to me when they realized I was an American. I don't know if they would have been so hospitable if I had ejected from a plane that was on its way to bomb a university or a bridge. Uh I came actually to build bridges, not to bomb them. So I think there was a recognition there. We actually also explicitly called for an end to sanctions.

65:47He asked me to tell America to end the sanctions. It didn't matter if people supported the Islamic Republic or not.

65:54They all hated the sanctions because it was wrecking their lives by design, >> right?

66:00>> Uh >> yeah. I spoke with um a young couple in Tahran at a mall. They were out on a date. They're like young college kids like 21 22 years old. And it was interesting because the the guy supported the government uh the his girlfriend or his soon-to-be fiance did not >> Yeah.

66:22>> And uh you know, but ultimately after a series of questions, what it came down to really is just the crushing weight of the sanctions. Yeah. Just >> not being able to make money, save money, and then travel. Like it most people would like to do like I I have I'm aware of the fact that I'm incredibly privileged. I look like I'm from Iran. So when I go people are shocked when they find out I'm not Iranian, but I get to move freely and go wherever I want and then leave. And uh but you know a lot of people in Iran don't get that opportunity because they don't like they live under sanctions.

66:56They're paycheck to paycheck. And their government honestly has done, from what I can tell, as good a job as any trying to alleviate the suffering of the people under sanctions. They subsidize everything. They use the nation's resources for people. There was one post I posted that went viral.

67:12>> It cost people 15 cents max to fill up a 15 passenger van >> with fuel.

67:21>> And it was funny because there was some like that that really irked I guess a lot of people who support Trump in this war. So one guy commented goes, "Yeah, but you're" He was like mad. He's like, "Why aren't you pointing out that these are subsidies?" I was like, "Who cares?"

67:33Like the point is it's a good thing that the government does for its people. It doesn't have to do that. Like Saudi Arabia has a ton of ton of oil and they could make that gas cheap as well, but they don't. And for different reasons, you know, it probably doesn't even make sense to compare the two. Uh but the point is um you know, Iran subsidizes food. They subsidize oil, you know, they they do whatever they can to make life affordable for people, including mass transportation, like being able to go across the entire country for $8.

68:06>> Yeah.

68:10>> There there have been lots of benefits for the population, including free college. I mean, women's education has surged since the revolution in 1979.

68:27A lot of this isn't recognized. And, you know, we take for granted in the US that we're going to be paying thousands of dollars a month for health care that will do nothing for us and that could be dropped at a moment's notice. uh you know, we take it's it's almost like people are masochists in this country and that might explain the lack of resistance as diesel surges to like what $8 a gallon in some areas.

68:53>> Yeah.

68:53>> Gas is over $5 a gallon, like regular in in California. And people are just kind of like, oh, we're just sitting here taking it. We expect this. Uh let's keep bombing some universities in Iran. And you know, they you you really have to pay very close attention to see the writing on the wall. And I mean, we'll be talking about this more throughout the stream. Uh we're we're going to be joined soon by Aaron Mate, but you really have to pay close attention on social media to get the real story here, which is that the the world, the global population is heading into another crisis, a crisis like the kind that we

69:40experienced during COVID. But it's also going to be it's always it's also going to contain features of the foreclosure crisis. The dollar is going to face a major crisis especially as Iran retains control over the straight of Hormuz where 20% of global shipping passes through. Uh you know countries are dumping bonds backed by the dollar for very good reason.

70:08So what do you think there is sort of an economic pain point which will force the US to withdraw from this war as it's literally physically withdrawing forces from Bahrain 1,500 sailors and soldiers panic evacuated by Pete Heget this week but you know will it leave Israel on its own at any point? Where do you see this going?

70:37I think the Zionists have such a tight strangle hold over Trump. However they do it, I don't know. But I think they have so much control over him uh that it's difficult to imagine that the that Trump would ever actually abandon them. Um so so that's one. too. I think you know even if the US tried to just walk away from this, Iran has already I guess if they want to walk away and and also agree to like have evacuate their bases forever, then maybe Iran would be satisfied. But Iran is kind of got them they're pulling on their sleeve. You know, they won't let them walk away uh from this so easily and and the way they

71:20do that is just by holding the straight.

71:21And so I don't really know how this ends. But I will say that we know in the summertime gas prices go up.

71:27>> Yeah.

71:27>> As people want to travel. And so gas will continue, I think, to become more expensive the longer this goes. And that will culminate in or that will merge with, you know, average prices being higher during the summertime. I think we haven't really even felt the effects yet of these higher energy prices because of the games Trump has been playing. Like he keeps saying, "Oh yeah, we're making peace and this will be over." and he keeps manipulating the market and and pushing energy prices down with these statements. And I think even going so far as like lying about the Iranian president saying that they're close to a

72:00deal as well because people no longer believe anything Trump is saying. So now they have to make it sound like Iran is saying it themselves. Um so at a certain point though these tricks will no longer work and the market I think will fully understand that this isn't ending you know anytime soon and it's gone on long enough where you know people have pointed out that it's not as simple as like Qatar turning back on the gas or or or the oil you know that process itself takes time before they even start producing and then getting them on the ships and then sending them. So, I think this could produce um pressure on the

72:35American people, especially as they get closer to at least the midterms, but I think it's it's kind of less about America. You pointed out how this could be like COVID or this could be like the 2008 economic crisis that was felt around the world. Yeah.

72:52>> And mostly in third world countries first, I think before >> as this is in Asia right now. I mean, >> exactly.

72:59>> Exactly. This is going to be felt in third like Pakistan now is in a lot of trouble. People in Paces are through the roof and people are they have to wait in line for hours before they can fill up just their little motorcycle. So those kinds of countries around the world, Nigeria which produces oil also is experiencing some issues. I think Egypt is very concerned like Cece is one of the only leaders to like actually call for an end to the war because it he's so terrified of the fact that you know they can't provide energy and they already have curfews like past 9 or 10 p.m. I think they're asking people to stop

73:36using electricity and so it's un unfortunately the developing world is going to pay the price for this and that's not Iran's intention but it is a consequence and there's no way around it and once we see I think we will see governments flip there will be people that come out onto the streets they put pressure on the governments I don't know where this will happen but I I would guess that Pakistan's a potential option Egypt is a potentially op a potential option could be other countries as well, wherever they are. Once that starts to happen, I think you'll see more and more pressure on Donald Trump, like, okay,

74:11you really need to bring this to an end because this could undo a lot of the progress we've made in installing certain leaders and puppet governments and things like that.

74:21>> Yeah, I agree. And one more quick point before I bring in Aaron Mate, which is that the stakes here are different for Iran than they are for the US and for Israel, but especially for the US. I mean, Iran's clearly making a military assessment based on its own capabilities and successes that it can continue this war and reject negotiations with Trump which demand its capitulation. But it also needs to send the message because this war is existential for Iran as a sovereign state. It's not only about maintaining the Islamic Republic. It's about maintaining Iran as a powerful state that it cannot be controlled by the air

75:03from the air by Israel. There can be no mowing of the lawn going forward as we saw after the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel and what Israel did between in the interregnum between that war and this current war in Lebanon.

75:18Iran won't allow that. So, it's going to keep going until it guarantees that it has deterrence against the US-Israeli terror coalition and that this never happens again. And so, that to me suggests that this war will go on for significantly longer and that Iran's calculus extends beyond any uh military assessment and is based more on its survival as a nation. And with that, uh, want to welcome Aaron Mate to this disturbing timeline that we're on today on so-called bridge and power day.

75:57Welcome, Aaron.

75:59>> Good to see you guys. Uh, I appreciate as Trump uh, threatens to wipe out Iran civilization that we get this window into what it's actually like on the ground from Akban. So, Awan, thank you for going to Iran and for bringing us the uh the reality that we're deprived here as uh our media has been enlisted in manufacturing consent for this um absolutely uh criminal evil war of aggression that Trump is now threatening to make even unfathomably worse. So, thank you Ahmed for doing what you're doing.

76:32>> Thanks for having me. Thanks for >> if you guys can banter for 30 to 60 seconds while I take a quick break. I'll be right back.

76:42>> Sure.

76:43>> Um, how long were you there for?

76:46>> Was there I think 11 or 12 days. Um, I say I think because it was we were moving so quickly that I I didn't keep track of time. Uh we every day and a half we were moving to a different city and we spent a lot of it on the bus or the train uh traveling for hours like moving in between cities is is not a short drive. Um you're talking about like at least six hour drives. In one case, we had a 14-hour drive. And so, there was a lot of movement, you know, going from city to city and inspecting the different civilian sites that were damaged and destroyed by US and Israeli bombs.

77:25>> And did I hear right uh the the school in Manab, one of the first targets of Trump's war. Um, so the claim there was that this was a uh a that the school was next to a military base. But did I hear right that the base actually had been out of commission for years that essentially that the school was built next to a I'm now a former military base.

77:49>> Correct. Yeah. The the base was out of service for like something like 18 years. And one of the reasons why the school was there is because the base had a bunch of infrastructure that could be used. But even with that, right, um just imagine like a very large compound. The school was like on the far corner on the other side. So even if even if it was an active base and it was connected, >> uh it's still so far away and separated by a barrier wall with clear paintings of children on the school and on the wall and on the ground. There's no way a Tomahawk cruise missile, which as I don't know if you know this or not, but

78:31it usually flies around its target first and it has a camera and it's being observed and so they're able to, you know, identify whether or not they should hit that. So, I can't imagine a tomahawk missile flying around several times before they decide to actually drop it onto the school. But, uh, yeah, it was out of service for like at least 16 or 18 years. I forget the exact number. And when you go if you go to the site, you'll see like it's rusted and run down. Like there's nothing modern or active about this place whatsoever.

79:03And uh I I think they knew that. But for however they struck it, intentionally or unintentionally, they committed a vicious war crime. Well, we we definitely owe it to Palunteer and their Maven targeting system, which is combined with Claude, Anthropics Claude, to generate targets and generating targets almost out of thin air based on old maps and names like Police Park, which happens to be a civilian park that was bombed. uh this is what you get that you just look at Gaza which relied on the same systems to generate a genocide which is which what Trump is promising when he calls for the death of a civilization. But uh

79:51Ahmed thank you so much for joining us today. This was incredible an incredible window into the reality of life inside Iran. not just the war, but the, you know, the Iranian society demonstrating resilience and vibrancy in the midst of this war that's been imposed on it. And, uh, how how can people follow you and support your work?

80:17>> Uh, follow us at uh, Propaganda and Co.

80:21on YouTube. I've already released one in-depth episode from my journey to Iran, and I'll be putting out over the next few days a series of episodes, about five more episodes, uh, to cover the story in its totality. And I appreciate you platforming me and having me on. And I guess my final message would just be, you know, I would echo what Dimmitri said. If you have the means to go to Iran, you should go meet these people. See, you know, how beautiful and wonderful they are.

80:48They're human beings just like you. And Iran is an a wonderful place to live uh to to visit. The people are very hospitable, very generous, and there's so much culture and history there. It's really a shame that it's been like closed off from the world for so long. I would highly encourage people there uh to go there and see it for themselves.

81:09So, thanks for having me, Max, and and Aaron.

81:11>> Absolutely. Thanks so much for giving us your time, and we'll definitely have you back.

81:17>> Thank you. Take care, guys.

81:19>> Take care.

81:22Iran is not our enemy.

81:25Our enemy is in the White House. Our enemy is in a bunker in Tel Aviv. Our enemy is in a boardroom at Palunteer.

81:37Our enemy is building data centers in our backyards without our consent and stealing our water and raising our electricity prices.

81:47Everybody knows that now.

81:51That's why Israel first financial freak shows like Shawn Maguire are complaining that Americans are not rooting for America because in his view rooting for America means rooting for Israel's war which is using America's army as its proxy. He doesn't understand what Americans are going through or what people see and un and know in this rising consciousness that we have been gifted by independent journalists like Ahmed and Dmitri who are showing what life is really like in Iran and how this war was imposed on people who are not our enemy.

82:40And so I'm really grateful that they could join us and glad that Aaron is here now because we have a lot to cover.

82:48Um probably starting with Trump's Easter Bunny or we could call it the Easter BB spectacle outside the White House next to his planned ballroom or should we call it the BA Broom B- A uh $400 million project. I don't know if there is a rose garden anymore. I was actually down in downtown DC by the White House yesterday and people were pouring out of the White House from this bizarre ceremony and I missed it. I wasn't able to watch it live, but what I saw afterwards was pretty shocking. Aaron, what was your takeaway?

83:29>> Well, everything feels like an AI generated nightmare. uh Trump next to the Easter Bunny talking about how uh the people of Iran, he literally said this and I think we have the clip, but it's just hard to fathom everything that comes out of his mouth. He said, "The people in Iran are upset when there's not bombing."

83:47>> Yeah.

83:49>> Among many demented comments that he keeps making.

83:52>> Well, this is Trump ranting about Iran next to the Easter Bunny.

83:56>> I don't think it gets much more than I rant. They're capable fighters. They are very tough people and there are others like that. You don't mind when the enemy is weak, but that enemy is strong. Not so strong like they were about a month ago. I can tell you in fact right now they're not too strong at all in my opinion. But we're soon going to find Oh, we don't even know.

84:20Does feel kind of like an acid trip.

84:23A bad like the bad side of an acid trip.

84:25not where you like gain this consciousness and understanding that you know it doesn't matter what people think about you or something you realize when you're like 17 or 18.

84:37It's more like, oh man, you know, I've been on the road with the dead too long and my life is destroyed and there's this freak show game. We're I'm like riding on a short bus called the United States, a nuclearized short bus, and the driver is a demented game show host and he owes millions of dollars to racist Jewish investors. And I'm totally screwed in the Easter Bunnies in the in riding shotgun. And there's this like Jeanluke Brunell catalog bride behind him and we're just so screwed. That's the US government right now.

85:12>> You know, Trump's threat to Iran today that uh you know, unless Iran caves to all of his demands, a civilization will end. You know, it underscores and images like that of Trump ranting next to the Eastern Bundy underscore that this civilization as we know it led by someone that evil needs to end. That we need to transform here. and his call to end the civilization of Iran should be another wakeup call to us that whatever this is whatever has let this guy become the head of and the face of this civilization this has got to change um because he is a threat to now everybody on this earth not just the people of Iran not just the

85:57people of Palestine and Lebanon and throughout West Asia but everybody because even if he's not talking about nuclear weapons here, which the White House says he's not, but who knows, maybe he is. So, you never know like with this guy. Um, whatever he does, I mean, talking about wiping out all of Iran's infrastructure, uh, that then will lead to a retaliation that will just cause permanent dam damage for an untold number of people throughout the world because Iran is using the only leverage it has, which is if if if any country is going to be complicit in destroying our country, they're going to bear the brunt of

86:36Iran's response. And that's where all this is is headed with these unhinged threats from Trump. So unless something happens from within this civilization, people under Trump refuse to obey his orders. Um, Congress acts, you know, for once Democrats have delayed a war powers vote. I think now they're finally coming around to saying that they'll do it. Uh, but something in this civilization has to change or else Trump's threat to wipe out civilization pretty much extends to the entire planet.

87:03It's an in he's expressing the intent to commit genocide as Israeli leaders have for years.

87:12Now we all remember Yo Galant's call uh pledged, you know, no food, no water, no fuel. These are human animals intent to commit genocide. Amale, as Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians and the Iranians, that's intent to commit genocide. And we've heard one Israeli leader after another call for bombing Lebanon back to the stone age. Just use whatever search engine you use and look up Israel stone age Lebanon and you'll find statement after statement by Israeli leaders going back decades or saying that about Gaza.

87:50Trump went into this war without a strategy, without any plan, without any clear objectives. Everything was driven by the Israelis and now he's taking on the rhetoric of Israel and we now have a truly Israeli American president pledging to destroy civilization because a settler state has no civilization.

88:12All of its culture is stolen.

88:16So that's what we are are witnessing with Trump. Of course, the US is not a party to the Rome Statute, but there should still be ICC action here.

88:28There should still be congressional action. The 25th Amendment should be invoked.

88:34Trump should be removed for this. But when was the last time the Democrats tried to impeach Trump for doing something warlike? It was the last time they tried to impeach him was when he wouldn't be warlike enough in Ukraine. We're going to have to witness a real political shift for there to be any obstruction to Trump's intent to commit genocide.

89:02But but he's put it all on the record there.

89:08>> Uh here's his other statement.

89:11>> Open up the straight, you crazy bastards. on Easter.

89:17Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one. In Iran, there will be nothing like it.

89:22Open the effing straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell.

89:26Just watch. Praise be to Allah. I guess he's mocking Islam.

89:31President Donald Trump. I I didn't bet on uh Trump praising Allah on Easter, but you know, if I was into that, I would have made some cash.

89:41And there was some talk that maybe, you know, JD Vance is on standby, ready to come in and broker a last minute >> Yeah.

89:48>> peace deal with Iran. Well, JD Vance is in Hungary today campaigning for uh Victor Orban. And here's what he has to say.

89:59>> You asked about, you know, is is God on on our side? Is God on, you know, whose side? And I think my attitude towards military conflict has always been to pray that we're on God's side. And my own view is that um we're doing this for the right reasons. We're doing this because we don't want an a regime that has committed acts of terrorism to have it the world's most dangerous weapon because that would mean a lot of innocent people dead. I certainly hope that God agrees with the decision that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon.

90:31But I'll keep praying about it and if he gives me a good answer, you'll be the first to know.

90:35>> Great. Yeah. So, keep praying, JD. Uh, as your president threatens to wipe out an entire civilization.

90:43>> Well, it looks like they sent him out there as like kind of like busting him down to traffic duty or kind of getting him out of the way like send JD to Hungary. We don't want him making any problems here. And he obviously never makes any statements that counteract Trump's propensity for genocide and war crimes, but they don't want him there as bridge and power day approaches. And since he was asked if God was on our side, I mean, well, here's what's really going on inside the White House. It's a display of or a celebration of religious warfare with a cast of garish corporate Christian right influencers

91:28evangelical leadership praying over the depraved serial sexual abuser president and invoking the book of Esther.

91:42>> Let us pray.

91:44This is Franklin Graham, Billy Graham >> in the book of Esther >> next to Paula White. That's Paula White to his right who is one of the most corrupt evangelical televangelist huers in recent history who has asked her audience who are mostly you know hardworking people lower middle class workingclass people to tithe 10% of their income to Israel and give much of the rest to her. that the Persians, the Iranians, were wanting to kill every Jew, woman, child, and do it all in one day.

92:23But you raised up Esther to save the Jewish people.

92:31Father, we thank you today.

92:36the Iranians.

92:38The wicked regime of the of this government wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire.

92:49But you have raised up President Trump.

92:54>> You've raised him up for such a time as this.

92:58>> And Father, we pray that you'll give him victory.

93:02>> Yes.

93:02>> Father, we pray for our military that you'd watch over, protect them. Yes.

93:06>> Father, we pray for the the people of Iran who want freedom to be set free from these Islamic lunatics.

93:16Father, we thank you for your son, Jesus Christ, who came to this earth to take our sins that he died and sh >> I think we're good on that, right? I think that's enough.

93:28>> I think we got enough of that. Well, that's apostasy. Paula White had previously compared Trump to Jesus.

93:37They're praying for mass destruction, invoking the Passover tale of Esther to justify genocide as Netanyahu has done.

93:52And did Donald Trump does Donald Trump believe in anything? Is Donald Trump even a Christian?

93:59This is this is this is the end of the Christian right. I mean, no one could look at that from the outside and not see something that's just so detestable.

94:16>> One of the comments he makes there is that Iran is a threat to what? To Jews, right?

94:21>> Yeah.

94:22>> That Iran seeks to kill every Jew in the world. Yeah, >> I laid to feeling at a synagogue in Iran.

94:28>> And what did Israel just do in Iran? It bombed a synagogue.

94:32>> Yeah. I mean, I was teeing that up for later, but Israel has bombed one of the central synagogues in it's the Rafaia synagogue in central Tehran.

94:45And uh I actually I went by that synagogue. I didn't go in. I was on my way to interview a Jewish parliamentarian who serves in Iran's majayun, Dr. Jameun Sam, who's the head of the Jewish community in Thran. And I interviewed him just around the corner from this synagogue. I mean, this is the like this is the Torah, which has been, you know, I I've been through so many mosques in Gaza that were bombed by Israel that looked like this. And now I'm looking at a synagogue that was bombed by Israel in Tehran.

95:20Thran being the in Iran being the site of the largest Jewish community outside Israel which Israel can't control. It's not a Zionist community. Dr. Samya, he's an anti-ionist.

95:35He condemns Israel's wars on Palestine along with other Jewish community leadership. They do not support Israel.

95:42So it it feels like a deliberate targeting here.

95:47I mean, isn't that the kind of the logic of Zionism >> to drive religious warfare and prevent these societies from being diverse and >> representing what the Islamic world has historically been before the, you know, this the Crusades when they lived among Jews and Andeloo? I mean, isn't that kind of what they're driving at here?

96:08when they bombed the synagogues, the Jewish community centers in Baghdad in 1952, when Israel sent Zionist spies to bomb those undercover to compel Iraqi Jews to leave and move to Israel through the Leavon affair in Egypt, when Zionist spies bombed areas around Egypt and, you know, compelled the destruction of the Egyptian Jewish community or when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and with artillery bombed the main synagogue in Beirut, which has actually been rebuilt with the blessing of Hezbollah, but compelled the destruction of the Lebanese Jewish community. They're driving at the destruction of Iran's

96:53Jewish community to push them into the militarized, hatefilled frontiers of Israel. Isn't this the logic of Zionism?

97:04Yes, it underscores that Zionism is a threat to uh everything on this earth in its way in including Jewish people. Um and uh I have no doubt that that strike on that synagogue was deliberate just as every strike on uh Iranian infrastructure is deliberate as Trump is bragging about. But what else have they hit in recent days? They've hit universities and people like Jake Tapper go on CNN and say, "Well, you know, Trump could argue that this is dual use."

97:33>> He said that.

97:34>> Jake Tapper said that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

97:37Um here, I'll mute myself while I have this siren going off, but go ahead.

97:44>> Well, I don't have that Jake Tapper clip. We we we we can do some some more tapper later, but you know, it's rare that you hear Melania speak uh in any way that's offensive, but at this White House Easter festival, she was asked for her view on the assault on Iran. And I thought found this stunning.

98:12>> You can kind of hear like a loun like lounge music in the background. It's very Trumpian. She's next to this trippy Easter bunny, the Easter BB.

98:21>> Well, all of this is happening for their future. So, they will be safe in years to come.

98:32>> So, all this bombing is happening for the future of the children of Iran.

98:36>> Are now in a war zone. We're keeping them as safe as we can possibly keep them, but we're fighting for their parents, their grandparents. We're fighting for them. were fighting for their future. And I will tell you, I it was given to me loud and clear, the time the Iranian people are the most unhappy when you hear bombs all over is when those bombs stop.

98:56>> Well, there it is. The time the Iranian people are the most unhappy is when those bombs stop.

99:03That and you know, Aaron, that really is the R2P doctrine distilled, isn't it?

99:09Like that's kind it's kind of a liberal doctrine, but you know, we're witnessing its decline along with the decline of US empire from Harvard University boss lady Samantha Power as its architect and main promoter to Epstein class catalog bride Melania Trump expressing the same thing, which is that we're bombing to save the children of this country. I mean, it's what we heard in Syria. It's what we heard in uh Yugoslavia.

99:40That doctrine is so moronic and ridiculous that it does deserve to be expressed by Melania and Donald next to the Easter Bunny rather than uh in a Harvard lecture hall by Samantha Power.

99:53That's the true face of it right there.

99:55It's so cartoonish. This idea that, you know, we can bomb entire countries, entire populations to save them. So yeah, Trump is a more um honest expression of the responsibility to protect doctrine that Samantha Power espoused. Um here is uh the Jake Tapper clip I mentioned where he's and there's so many clips of these, but here's one of many where Jake Tapper says, "Yeah, basically Trump's threat to wipe out Iran civilian infrastructure.

100:26It could be considered a war crime. But there's also this this watch.

100:32>> We should note that destroying civilian power infrastructure is generally considered to constitute a war crime under international law. Though the president could argue that the infrastructure has dual use and also is utilized by Iran's military.

100:46>> Jake Tapper Jake Tapper giving Trump tips on how to sell this one to the public. Well, yeah. Yeah, sure. People call it a war crime, but the president could argue if he wanted to, and Trump is not even arguing that yet, but Jake Tapper is out there like giving him pointers like that it is dual use. So, yeah, let's let's blow up Iranian schools because uh maybe there's some tangential military connection to a school. And of course, if anybody applied the same logic to an Israeli university or a US university, Jake Tapper would cry anti-semitism or something like that.

101:17>> Well, you could argue that Jake Tapper is dual use. He's used by America and Israel, his second fake country, to which he is very dedicated. You could argue that George Washington University is dual use here in Washington. It's situated right across from the State Department. It's it's just like a pipeline to the State Department.

101:38Uh it has a tech campus that's a pipeline to the CIA.

101:42Stanford pipeline to the CIA, dual use.

101:47Uh, I don't know.

101:51>> There's some Big 10 schools that you probably called douche use, but they also Clemson University has a major sort of CIA factory, intelligence factory inside of it.

102:03>> Douches are pretty good. You remember Joel? Remember Joel Rabburn? He's one of the architects of the Caesar Act, >> which impoverished ordinary Syrians.

102:14>> Yeah. He happens to be like extremely obese while sir he's he starved Syrians.

102:19It's sort of like >> well here he here he is uh on Fox News making the same argument.

102:27>> Right. So far five weeks into this campaign the president has been refraining uh from striking some of the Iranian regime's critical infrastructure because it has dual use. It has some civilian purposes. So we're talking about the electrical grid. I'm talking about some of the fuel uh distribution and and and so on, but those are legitimate military targets if they're performing the function of supporting uh military forces and security forces, which they are for the Iranian regime.

102:52It's very dangerous and they're very vulnerable obviously to us being able to strike them or the Israelis being able to strike them. So, that is the next step and I I think the Iranian regime leader should learn by now to take President Trump very seriously when he makes these kind of warnings.

103:08So yeah, uh that's Joel that's Joel Raburn, who helped design the sanctions that impoverish ordinary Syrians, now making the case, uh that it's fine to bomb Iran's infrastructure because it has quote unquote dual use.

103:21>> Well, here's the sort of pilot program for Trump's bridge and power terrorist campaign. It was the bombing of the B1 bridge in Karage, which as I mentioned before is a major feat of modern engineering, pride of Iran.

103:37largest bridge in West Asia. People were picnicking under the bridge on that day that they bombed it. Over a dozen people were killed, over a hundred wounded. It was a double tap strike. Rescuers were attacked. And here's Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, on that terrorist assault.

103:56>> Because you want to talk about what the United States of America can do, take a look at this video. Take a look at all the videos he's posted of the bombs dropping, of the explosions, of us targeting something the size of basically a fingernail, our United States military. It is really impressive. It it it has so much more gravity to it. When you see it like this, and I just think it's so impressive because again, we have never seen something like this happen. We've never had a president like this willing to do this sort of thing. and and hopefully it's all for the best, you know, for the entire world, the best for

104:28our people, the best for the rest of the world. And just to go back to what you guys were talking about with the allies, um this president has talked about how disappointed he is with his with the NATO allies. He also talked last night.

104:40>> Okay. Well, it's just so impressive what we can do as Americans uh bombing bridges. We're not building bridges, we're bombing them. And it's just really impressive. And this president is just willing to do it. That's his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump. And just two points about that. First, I um Barack Ravid, the Israeli asset, who was a Israeli army reservist until fairly recently and is now Axios's main Middle East reporter, who is a stenographer for Steve Witoff and Jared Kushner. He's their main sort of dumping ground. He declared that after that bridge was bombed that it was what?

105:24Dual use. And that the bridge was uh trafficking point for Iranian weapons to the battlefield. The problem is the bridge wasn't in use at all. It was still under construction. It wasn't even finished.

105:39Okay. So, I mean, how has he not run out of journalism for that and all the other Well, of course, we know why, but he he actually won a White House Press Correspondents Association award when all he is is a stenographer for the these militant Zionist terrorists who are bombing bridges. The second point is Laura Trump is a key figure in the merger of MAGA and Israel.

106:08This isn't well understood, but you can see all of the uh independ more independent voices in the right in the right-wing world that supported Donald Trump. The Tucker Carlson's Candace Owens called Trump satanic.

106:27Tucker Carlson denounced Trump and denounced him demonizing an entire religion on Easter, which was sort of incredible and stunning. Alex Jones is calling Trump insane and a terrorist.

106:40You're seeing this mass exodus.

106:43Everyone in MAGA right now, all the voices of MAGA, all the influencers, they're all just paid. And many of them are being paid directly by Israel. If they are on Salem in Salem Media Group, which is like a who's who of MAGA influencers, like the entire mighty world for Trump is Salem Media Group.

107:05Laura Trump and her um brother-in-law Don Jr. own a 30% stake now in Salem Media Group through a very complex, fairly complex business deal that was presided over by Brad Parscal, who was the former campaign manager for Trump, who created the digital infrastructure for Donald Trump's uh 2020 campaign.

107:30Then he uh you know fell into a personal scandal, got hit with a Baker Act raid.

107:35He was accused of abuse and so on. got run out of Trump world and he was adopted by Israel and through his clock tower strategies got a major $10 million contract to game AI systems and buy MAGA influencers through the Israeli foreign ministry with money sent directly by Israeli the Israeli foreign ministry through an intermediary based in Germany called Havas media and the messaging and talking points will be planted according to the Farah contract that's on the DOJ's website by Salem Media in which Laura Trump has a 30% stake.

108:16And so like all the major voices are being basically paid by Israel. MAGA has merged with Israel. There's there's there's there's no space between them now. They're basically all a bunch of unregistered foreign agents and they're being fed these talking points to support terrorism across Iran.

108:36So that's what we just witnessed there.

108:39>> I really miss the days when Hunter Biden taking taking a contract with Berisma was like the face of government corruption that I mean as you pointed out I think your line was what that like uh the Trump team makes Hunter Biden look like Ralph Nater.

108:56It's it's true. Uh the corruption combined with the evil and servitude of a foreign power is just absolutely um off the charts. And and meanwhile, look, the Gulf sovereign wealth funds are now um they've committed something like $20 billion in loan guarantees for the Ellison's takeover bid of Paramount. The Ellison's deeply tied in with Trump. Is anything going to get the Gulf to rethink their investment in Trump Inc.? They already have a lot of money. The UAE has a lot of money in the Wickoff Trump crypto business. Uh, a lot more money states in Jared Kushner's uh firm. Is anything that that that that Trump does which

109:44threatens all their economy is now going to get them to rethink their investment with this guy? Um, it's it that's the aspect of this that I just don't understand.

109:54Well, they're still clamoring for more military action. Saudi Arabia is still allowing Donald Trump's the US-Israeli coalition to use its airspace. Kuwait is still allowing the US to launch HIMAR strikes on Iran.

110:13Bahrain, the the hated al- Khalifa dictatorship is has been allowing the US to use its space for attacks on Iran. I'm only seeing Qatar pull back a little bit and Oman remain neutral. So they're still relying completely on the protection racket model in which the United States protects their oil fields in exchange for basing except the US is no longer protecting it.

110:47>> Exactly. Yeah.

110:47>> Donald Trump is sacrificing the entire region for Israel for his masters in Israel.

110:55And we can see uh what just took place at the Aljubal oil facility in Saudi Arabia for a clear illustration of this and for the crisis that we are all going to face. I mean it's already hitting home in Asia and across the Middle East, North Africa. But there there's no THAAD systems there.

111:22Listen to these Saudi citizens cheer >> for Iranian retaliatory strikes on the Aljubel prochemical facility. I think many of them might be Shia who face heavy oppression in Saudi Arabia, but that's just speculation.

111:41>> Okay, th that prochemical facility, it burned all night long a night ago.

111:50The flaring and the heat maps were off the charts.

111:54>> And Al Jubel produces 7% of all the the world's prochemicals. 7%. That's enormous. So Iran can do enormous harm to these vassal dictatorships in the Gulf who have basically s uh sold off their sovereignty to the US military in exchange for this failed protection racket. They can dis if they destroy their desalination facilities and this would be clearly in retaliation for strikes on Iran's own prochemical plants which are underway right now and its own desalination facilities. If they destroy those desalination facilities, they simply won't have water to function and you will see a mass exodus of citizens

112:50from the Gulf States by this summer when it gets really hot and there is not any energy for them to cool their homes. And this will be because Donald Trump has sacrificed the region for Israel without any idea of what he was getting into.

113:08Um, I'm just showing like a, you know, sort of a sampling of what's been going on in the Gulf States. This is NPR's reporting on what happened to the fifth fleet naval base in Bahrain, which is really Go ahead.

113:28>> Yeah. Well, sorry. I wanted to show this first. This is >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it.

113:31>> From Oh, sorry. I didn't hear that. This is from Israel's channel 13. They've set up a countdown clock uh for Trump's threat to wipe out Iranian civilization.

113:44And you know, this is like a it's like a this is like a celebratory clock.

113:49They're excited.

113:50>> They can't wait.

113:51>> Oh my. I didn't even see this. Is insane.

113:54>> They can't wait for Trump to uh hit that.

113:56>> Oh my god.

113:57>> Yeah. Yeah.

113:58>> Everything I see out of Israel is like it's like it feel it feels like an AI recruitment video for the American Nazi party.

114:10>> Yeah. Yeah.

114:11>> That is and and that's channel 13.

114:13>> That's channel 13. Yeah.

114:14>> Channel 14 is the pro- Netanyahu likas channel. 13 is sort of mainstream.

114:20>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

114:21>> They look so indigenous, don't they?

114:23>> Yeah. And and you have that, you know, you see in the top right corner that Israeli and American flag sort of >> Yeah. merged >> with Israel over the American flag.

114:34>> Israel over the American flag. But honestly, there's more of a distinction there in that graphic than there is on Fox News. If you watch Fox News, the Israeli and American flag is sort of been morphed into one. So even Israel draws more of an distinction with the US flag than than American state TV, Fox News does right now. But that's what's happening. Israel is a countdown clock to the extinction the the the threatened extinction of a civilization in Iraq.

115:03>> A bunch of demons.

115:05>> But sorry, you wanted to show an NPR uh report.

115:08>> These demons have inhabited the empty caverns of Trump's infeebled mind.

115:16Yeah.

115:19Well, I can show that later.

115:24Um, let's go back to uh some more of what the US is already the US-Israeli coalition has already done. I mean this is considered one of the dual use universities. This is one of the main technical universities in Iran. Shahid Beaheshi University in Thran.

115:54The laser and plasma research institute which has um been involved in anti-cancer innovation was bombed along with the female dormatory and now schools across Iran have been forced to go to remote learning. They've been closed because they're being bombed.

116:15Um, another technical university was bombed 48 hours ago in Tehran.

116:24The that's the Sharif University of Technology which was bombed.

116:32uh the pastor institute in Thrron 100-year-old medical institute that has made innovations and vaccination basic medical services hundreds of years of scientific learning in partnership with France was bombed and they attempted to say it was dual use not sure what the dual use dual use there would be the Bucher nuclear plant which is the only active nuclear plant It's a civilian facility that provides energy to Iran. Has been evacu has been evacuated by Russia because Russia was partnering with Iran to maintain it because it's been hit so many times by Israel.

117:17The Kazaroon power plant in Iran, it's a combined cycle power plant is on the in the target bank of the USIsraeli terrorist coalition and Iranians have in defense of humanity in defense of civilization against this war of barbarism And you know, I find that inspiring because this is that's it's it's not a defense of any political party. It's not a defense of the Islamic Republic. It's a defense of the Iranian nation.

118:06And it's a nation that's made enormous achievements under sanctions.

118:13There's the um we mentioned the bombing of the Rafinia synagogue.

118:21While Israel is bombing universities in Tehran and the US is bombing power plants and threatening to bomb further bridges.

118:31It is multitasking and Israel wiped two entire villages off the map in southern Lebanon. Nakura and Taibbe and then publicized the footage was proud to do this to these villages which predate Israel by hundreds and hundreds of years.

119:00These are historic villages that have been wiped off the map. I mean, it's Israel that's always wiping people off the map.

119:13bookmark that when the same happens to Israel and when so few are crying.

119:23I could go through these terrorist attacks for the next hour, but the point is that even before the eight hour deadline, which we saw in that channel 13 demon studio for Trump enacting what he calls the death of a civilization.

119:45They're they're already carrying out attacks on power plants and bridges and it's already leading to retaliation which is triggering a global economic crisis. They can't wait. And Israel is the one that's driving the timeline. And they're also do taking measures to prevent negotiations by, for example, assassinating Kamal Karazzi or attempting to assassinate him in his home. They killed his wife and badly injured him. And here's a post that's important because it explains how he was Iran's lead negotiator working with Pakistan to arrange a back channel meeting between Iranian officials and JD Vance. That was

120:29the only diplomatic channel. So, Israel bombed his house. His wife is dead. He's in the hospital. Pay attention to the timing.

120:39Uh, Israel killed Mossen Fakri Zade, remember? With a remotec controlled machine gun. He was Iran's top nuclear scientist, the openheimer of Iran, the man considered most essential to any future nuclear negotiations. In November 2020, the nuclear talks were set back by years. In 2012, Israel killed Mustafa Ahmad Roshan, who is a senior figure at the Natan's enrichment facility, killed him in a targeted car bombing in Thran.

121:10The pattern holds every time. Every time Iran and the US get close to talking, someone removes the people doing the talking. Trump said two to three weeks.

121:19Someone in Iran was actively building the exit ramp from that window. And today, the man building that exit is in the hospital and his wife is in the ground. Uh and we can consider what took place for example during the uh assault on Gaza. Israel killed every single negotiator starting with Salah Aori who was killed in his office in Beirut.

121:45They killed Ismael Hania in Thran in order to bring Iran into this war triggering the true promise operations.

121:53Haniah was the negotiator.

121:56So, Israel's driving this entire thing.

122:00>> And there's a a new article in the New York Times by uh Maggie Herman and and Jonathan Swan. And the main point of the article is that essentially what swung Trump to approve all this was a meeting in February where Benjamin Netanyahu was invited into the White House situation room, which is very rare. you don't usually have uh foreign leaders come to the situation room and Trump sat as like Benjamin Netanyahu basically led the meeting uh with some Israeli officials next to him and uh gave a presentation saying that you know we could have regime change very very quickly and this would all go great. uh

122:44Jared Kushner was there even though Jared Kushner doesn't even have an official White House role and they scheduled the meeting right when JD Vance happened to be traveling out of the country in Azarbaijan >> and and he couldn't make it back in time. So, so just to make sure that anyone who's a possible skeptic or has questions like JD Vance is is is said to have or um uh wasn't there and Netanyahu's presentation this article says is what uh ultimately sealed the deal and uh it's just amazing. So yeah, Jared Kushner and Steve Wickoff, who are supposedly Trump's top negotiators with Iran, are there at a meeting where

123:27Benjamin Netanyahu is convincing Trump to go to war. And then they go off and they still pretend to engage in negotiations with Iran. And again, Jared Kushner doesn't even have an official government position, but yet he's at the most sensitive meeting possible.

123:43Um, and uh, yeah, that's apparently what did it according to this article at least.

123:50>> Well, we were I was in DC when Netanyahu arrived.

123:55It was obvious what he was driving at and he got what he got his wishes.

124:00Lindsey Graham was trading places with Netanyahu. He would go over to Tel Aviv and he'd meet with Netanyahu and the Israelis and tell them how to negotiate with Trump. He was advising Israel, a foreign country, on how to manipulate the president.

124:17And now that they've got him in it, they're not going to let him out. Israel will not let Trump out of this war.

124:24Trump is essentially an Israeli proxy using Israeli rhetoric of genocide in Iran, shredding the global economy, destroying the region.

124:40And this connects actually to the rescue operation for a single US soldier. I talked about it with Ahmed who raised questions about whether it was all bringing you know 2C130s, A10s, uh drones, Blackhawk helicopters, Apache attack helicopters, uh something like 100 special forces troops. I could be getting the numbers wrong and maybe some of the aircraft wrong. The US lost about six aircraft in this entire operation starting with an F-15E where the two pilots ejected. There are so many strange details about that rescue operation including uh claims that this um you know colonel who may have been much older than the average US

125:31service member walked like 110 miles after ejecting and being wounded in order to reach this rescue site.

125:39Strange details. Ahmed raised the question of whether this was an an attempt at a sort of pilot program for a ground operation, whether there could have been I I don't know an attempt to steal Iran's uranium, which would have given Trump the wind he needed to get out of the war. or there are so many theories going around.

126:00But one of the stranger things that happened was um and I don't know if you you I actually don't have this clip ready but it would be um I can pull it up momentarily is that after the first pilot was rescued there was a second there there was the weapons specialist who ejected and the US US military and Trump did not want that to be known because they didn't want Iranian soldiers, paramilitary, basie, police, average people rushing out to capture that second pilot. So they they wanted sort of a gag.

126:43Um even though anyone could have deduced that there would have been a second pilot because they, you know, don't go solo in F-15s.

126:54Somebody leaked that a second service member, a second airman was still missing, was still unaccounted for. Here it is.

127:08And so Trump, uh, you know, he was he was eventually rescued in this supposedly dramatic operation. We haven't seen him yet. We don't know who he is, what condition he's in.

127:18Is he the next John McCain, who by the way was on his way to bomb a light bulb factory in Vietnam when he was captured?

127:25We don't know. Trump threatened the entire US media over this leak and threatened to jail reporters.

127:35As you probably know, we didn't talk about the first one for an hour and then somebody leaked something which we'll hopefully find that leaker. We're looking very hard to find that leaker and talked about there's somebody missing.

127:50They basically said that we have one and there's somebody missing. Well, they didn't know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.

127:58So, whoever it was, we think we'll be able to find it out because we're going to go to the media company that released it and we're going to say national security, give it up or go to jail.

128:11And we know who and you know who we're talking about cuz some things you can't do because when they did that all of a sudden the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life. And it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him. All of a sudden uh they know that there's somebody out there.

128:41They see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation.

128:47So, you get the point. Trump's furious at the leaker. He wants to storm into a legacy media outlet with federal agents and arrest journalists for that leak. Uh the situation got a little more complicated though, didn't it? when we when uh Israeli Hebrew language journalists started pointing the finger at who the real leaker probably was.

129:20The first journalist to report that there was a second airman who was still missing appears to have been Amit Sigal who is Netanyahu's main water carrier, Netanyahu's main stenographer in the Israeli media. And he reported it and then he took credit for it on his own personal telegram channel. Now he's kind of feeling the heat. Here he is today.

129:52We're look, you know, he's saying, "Well, I appreciate the attention. I fear it's undeserved. I was not the first journalist to report he was missing. Uh, you know, I suppose the accusations are a testament to my timely reporting, but The Guardian and two Israeli channels broke the story uh before I did. I imagine Israeli journalist endangers American pilot makes a better headline."

130:14And you know I pointed out that you know Netanyahu's main water carrier seems worried and this is his telegram channel where he said as you may recall this was first published here.

130:28Another journalist who prominently shared this information at this time at that time on telegram in Hebrew is named Ariel Kahana. He is a journalist. He's the main diplomatic correspondent for Israel Hyome, which is the main pro-Netanyahu paper in Israel, sponsored by the Aden family. So, put two and two together here. They got it out there.

130:55Seagal attributed his uh leak to a quote unquote western source. Kahana attributed it to a Israeli source.

131:04It seems pretty clear to me that Netanyahu leaked that.

131:09Isn't that kind of like wouldn't that kind of make sense? And Netanyahu has a history, by the way, of leaking and then attributing it to Western sources or intelligence proxies.

131:21I can provide a specific example, but we don't need to.

131:26So Netanyahu, it looks like he sold out a US service member. Why?

131:33Because it forces the US to deploy ground troops into Iran.

131:41That's my theory at least.

131:44I don't know if you've been following this, but it it further demonstrates how Israel is controlling Trump and his delegation of authority and deployment of the US military to sink deeper and deeper into this quagmire.

132:04I didn't follow the story so I don't really have any thoughts but yes certainly Israel has every interest in uh prolonging this war of aggression for as long as it can and uh I think the points you made about Israel killing every possible Iranian official that it can think of who could be a conduit for diplomacy. Um that's been clear from the start.

132:30>> Yeah. in ter in terms of who they've been targeting? Like I imagine when they go when they decide to target someone in Iran, their number one consideration is like, is this person a someone who could possibly help negotiate an offramp? And then if so, then they're selected to go.

132:45I mean, if you look at the list of people they've gone after from Ali Larajani, >> yes, >> the latest victims, it's uh every it's all people who've previously advocated diplomacy. Um yeah, >> Larjani was the channel to the Gulf States and so they killed him and and and killed many families and many people and bombed five separate sites in order to kill him in an apartment building which is disgusting.

133:11Amit Seagal, the journalist who claimed credit for that leak or revealing the leak, blocked me after I referred to him as Netanyahu's main water carrier. He had been following me for months. I never followed him back, but he had been following me for months and then he suddenly blocked me.

133:30He He's a little bit nervous right now.

133:34He's he'sing under the collar. Uh that rescue operation was a disaster from what I can tell. They they they they cap they captured they managed to get this colonel. They're saying three US soldiers were rescued.

133:50Uh this doesn't look like success to me.

133:54These are some photos from the of the destroyed aircraft which were supposedly destroyed by the US military itself to prevent Iran from capturing them. And they said, "Oh, they got stuck." Uh, C130s have the capacity to take off on rough airfields, on rough terrain. So, I don't know if they got stuck. They may have been struck e in any case.

134:19Not really a sign of victory or success.

134:23And why did this happen in the first place?

134:28Well, according to um is it Bloomberg?

134:36Yeah, it's Bloomberg.

134:39The US is running out of standoff weapons. The kind of standoff weapons that were used to destroy that girl school in Minab that were used to carry out decapitation strikes on the first day of the war.

134:53The US is deploying nearly its entire inventory of JASM er stealth cruise missiles for the war.

135:01The Pentagon ordered Pacific stockpiles pulled at the end of March. Missiles from the continental US are being moved to Sententcom bases in RAF Fairford in the UK. These are weapons reserved for a China contingency. 1.5 million each. 912 were already fired in the first 16 days of the war. The US is draining its Pacific deterrent to sustain a war it said would be over in weeks. And remember, it's also draining THAAD missiles and relocating them from South Korea, uh, which is a China were there as a China deterrent.

135:34So, another big imperial fail, but this helps us understand some of the aerial problems the US is facing in Iran. If you don't have all that standoff weaponry to deploy, then you have to send in your aircraft.

135:51Uh why are F-15s being used more and more? Could it be that F-35s have been struck at the Nevatim air base in Israel where they're being protected?

136:02Uh because they're not so protected there and Israel's running out of interceptors. The censorship in Israel is so thick and any citizen who films Nevatim from the outside gets jailed.

136:12So, we don't actually know what's happening there. And Planet Labs, the major satellite imagery Pentagon contractor, has just agreed to censor its images. So, we don't know if F-35s are being lost, but F-15s are coming in because the standoff weaponry is dwindling. And Iran actually does have anti-aircraft defenses, as I saw and learned when I went to the Tehran Aerospace Complex last year, and they're pretty good. the Majid system, passive infrared radar that homes in on US aircraft and prevents the US from detecting uh radar systems on the ground that it could blow up in advance. These are not systems that are designed to

136:55totally, you know, dominate the airspace and control the airspace. I mean, Iran is a massive country. You can't control all the airspace from the ground.

137:05They're like highly mobile ambush systems that are placed at expected bombing paths and they opportunistically will strike US aircraft. They've taken out well over a dozen uh Reaper drones as well as Israeli Hermes drones. They have hit A-10 wartthogs. Now they hit F-35 for the first time. And now they've taken down an F-15 in Iranian airspace.

137:29Remember, another F-15 went down outside Iranian airspace the day before and there have been emergency landings of C130s and other aircraft. So, I don't think this is the last time we're going to see something like this if the US is running out of standoff coward weaponry and has to send its pilots in. This really um emphasizes the urgency for uh Donald Trump to, you know, carry out terrorist strikes and wage some kind of psychological war on Iran before the next disaster occurs.

138:18In the meantime, uh we have uh something you know Elsa that I think the rescue operation obscured which is a major major retreat on by US Empire from its main base in in the Middle East, the fifth fleet. And I actually just lost that. Uh I lost that one.

139:00The US has pretty much evacuated the fifth naval air base, the fifth fleet naval air base. And this, you know, it was missed by most US media. This is this is huge.

139:14NPR has learned that hundreds of sailors were evacuated from the US back to their base from their base in Bahrain after it was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones and that there have been evacuations at other US military bases in the region. I should mention 15 US soldiers were wounded in an Iranian attack on the Ali al-Salm air base in Kuwait just yesterday. Another story that's being buried.

139:42Um, the soldiers were basically panic evacuated by Pete Hegsth.

139:50They were along with their pets. They were sent back to the US to Norfolk, the home of the world's biggest naval base in Virginia. And the um people in in that area are being asked to donate toiletries because the the sailors have nothing.

140:07They literally told them, "Get what you can in the backpack. You've got to go."

140:11They came with no uniforms, nothing. The three we met first, they came with the clothes on their back, what they could fit in their backpack. This is like a retreat, like Dunkirk level retreat from the multi-billion dollar air base that I mean, naval base that was the lynch pin of US power projection in the Persian Gulf.

140:34I wonder how many were also sent to hotels in the region for use as basically as human shields.

140:43uh that because Trump the Trump administration has put US military personnel in Gulf hotels and then when Iran has received intelligence about their locations and hit those hotels then the White House has claimed that you know Iran's attacking civilian infrastructure when they're in fact attacking the personnel of the military that's attacking Iran. And uh even the New York Times recently had to admit that this could be illegal. What the US is doing is putting US military personnel in civilian hotels using civilian infrastructure and the civilians in these hotels as human shields.

141:19>> Well, they're they're moving them out of those hotels and they're they're they're deeply worried because apparently Iran knew where they were. They didn't expect this. Hegset said, "Oh, we're we were taken back. We were takenback by Iran attacking our bases in the region.

141:38Were you taken aback because uh I don't know, Laura Loomer got the head of the Iran desk, the Iran director at the NSC fired who had warned explicitly that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and would wage a regional war if attacked. That's Nate Swanson. Laura Loomer is having this meltdown on me on Twitter because I pointed that out that she got him fired and left Trump with uh midlevel National Guard officer by his side in Pete Hegth as is yes man who I don't know if he ever saw combat other than combating rape charges through out of court settlements.

142:31Donald Trump ignored all the warnings from the joint chief and here we are and they're now howling that, oh no, Russia's giving intelligence to Iran and telling them where our soldiers are. As if Iran doesn't have intelligence of its own and recon of its own uh doesn't have people on the ground in places like Bahrain telling them where the soldiers are. But no, maybe Russia is. Well, guess what?

142:52The US basic the CIA trained Ukraine's SBU, which has been killing Russians in Belgarod, bombing Russians in civilian centers, blowing up pipelines.

143:06So, all's fair. Sorry.

143:10Finally, finally, Russia and China actually uh did something today standing up to Trump at the UN after previously going along with the border of peace. They vetoed a measure that was backed by the some of the Gulf states calling on Iran to reopen fully the the straight of formoose. Um and >> finally, >> and Iran, it should be said, has not closed the straight of form. They've only closed it to countries that they deem to be complicit in the war of aggression against them. So even this talk about uh Iran's blockade of the state of Hormos's closure, it's not even true. It's very US- ccentric because

143:45Iran's kept it open as long as you're a friendly country and not complicit in a war of aggression against Iran. But anyway, Russia and China uh vetoed the resolution because of course it singled out Iran as the problem here and not the US-Israeli war of aggression. Uh so that's them finally at least standing up to Trump at the UN after previously going along with uh the you know Orwellian uh named Board of Peace.

144:16>> Yeah. And they had abstained from the Bahraini resolution which originally condemned Iran for basically defending its territory and defending itself against a war that was imposed. So now they're finally standing up. China is solidly behind Iran.

144:32Uh whilst sort of standing back and watching, it does have a it does have its own naval assets in the Persian Gulf which are likely assisting Iran. There may have been Chinese there may be Chinese anti-aircraft systems that are active in Iran. There certainly is Chinese assistance economically, logistically, and when Iran rebuilds, they will be turning to China. All the construction equipment I saw in Iran was Chinese and to transit the straight of Hormuz. At present, you have to pay in Chinese yuan.

145:15That may be the order going forward.

145:18Which means that the straight of Hormuz was open before this war was imposed.

145:24And if Iran succeeds in securing a toll system, it will be it will represent one of the biggest blows to dollar dominance, the hegemony of the dollar since the the petro dollar system was established.

145:46We're witnessing with the withdrawal of US bases in the region, uh with the possible collapse of the Al Khalifa imperial you colonially imposed family dictatorship in Bahrain. We're witnessing decolonization in real time.

146:05We're witnessing the the unraveling of Sykes Pico through this war. That could be part of Trump's ultimate legacy beyond all of his terrorist threats and their fulfillment.

146:21that this war is as could be as significant in history as World War I in reorganizing the world order.

146:34And again, it doesn't serve US interests in any way.

146:42>> But what hasn't happened yet is uh major unrest inside the heart of the hegeimon.

146:48Like >> that's a great point. big big protests against Trump haven't even happened yet because I think people feel with a lot of evidence that their voices are just totally useless that it it doesn't matter what public opinion is anymore doesn't matter what popular sentiment is that we're ruled by people who are you know by Trump who is just fundamentally anti-democratic who doesn't care about his own country is tied at the hip with Netanyahu and so there is this sense of pacivity uh and people struggling to make it uh in increasingly precarious times. As Trump just announced a brand new budget

147:28that cuts even more from domestic spending than he previously did and increases funding for the military to $1.5 trillion >> and and he talked about how we can't even afford to uh cover daycare. We can't take care of daycare. That was his line. and we have to we he said we have to focus on our military only.

147:50>> Yeah.

147:50>> I'm trying to find that clip. Um the White House actually removed the footage of his Easter of his um they removed the footage of that weird Easter ceremony in which he said, "We can't afford Medicare. We have to have a $1.5 trillion military budget."

148:13>> I have it here. And amazingly, it came right after Marco Rubio was saying that Iran is a country that, you know, rather than spending money on their military, they should be taking care of their people. And then Trump Trump goes ahead and says this can't take care of daycare.

148:31That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars.

148:39We can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. But we It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.

149:00They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing. Military protection. because the United States can't take >> and by military protection he means protecting Israel and spending all this money in the military-industrial complex. So his latest budget for $1.5 trillion and if Democrats were an actual opposition party, they'd have so much opportunity to mobilize people. Like they could be organizing rallies themselves. Like why not have a war powers resolution, organized rallies, organized people around this issue of Trump, you know, threatening genocide

149:39against Iran, destroying its infrastructure, blowing up the global economy, stealing money from working people here to uh help uh uh blow up Iran and and serve greater Israel, but they're not. So there could be the opportunity here for change, but so far it hasn't happened yet. And you never know how history goes. You know, like Dr. King said, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. I'm not I used to believe that. I'm not sure if I do anymore, but certainly the opportunity is there to bend the arc toward justice if if if enough people seized it.

150:14>> It's a long arc.

150:17>> It's it's it's so long. You know that 1.5 trillion, it's not going to go to uh soldiers or defense. It's all just a kickback to Trump cronies, to Lheed Martin, to the big five, to Palunteer.

150:34It's all going to contractors. That's what the US economy will be under any Democratic or Republican administration.

150:42Trump's just more obvious about it. It's kind of like military Keynesianism. No offense to John Maynard Keynes.

150:50It's and and and the rest of the economy is is going to be hollowed out.

150:57It's it's paying Alex Karp's salary.

151:00It's money to Peter Teal. It's money for the military wing of the Epstein class.

151:07That's all it is.

151:09>> And it's the exact opposite of what Trump promised back in 2016 when he talked about he literally said the exact opposite of what he's saying now. He would talk on the campaign trail constantly. And this is why people would compare him to Code Pink uh back in 2015, 2016 because he would say, "We spent all this money blowing up other countries. We could spend that at home, rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our our roads and all that stuff." But that was, as we're seeing now, a complete con. He tapped into popular sentiment there to move policy in the exact opposite direction.

151:42>> Well, I I want to shift focus to the media.

151:47I've got about 10 more minutes. Uh, and we're going to bring in our um I don't know what his title is. Editor leader. He was called a leader of the gray zone at by the Washington Post. And he he and his >> You're kind of sideways.

152:06>> I am sideways.

152:08Straighten that out.

152:10>> The pride of Western Virginia or Eastern Kentucky or wherever you are.

152:16Great to see you. You're looking dapper and you just published a important piece for us that I want you to discuss that we had prepared to discuss about uh another journalist who comes out of nowhere and manufactures consent for this war and turns out to be some kind of plant.

152:41Um, this let me pull up the piece because it's on our website at thegrazone.com right now. If you subscribe to us on stack, you'll have gotten it or get it soon or you already got it if you um subscribe to us at Patreon.

153:01It's a senior BBC Iran reporter Gonch Habibi Azad. Habibi Azad. Gone Habibi Azad, senior BBC reporter, exposed as opposition activist after a top reporter at the BBC drew outrage for publishing a quote demanding that Iran be nuked.

153:21She's been revealed as a dedicated regime change activist whose career was launched by a CIA founded propaganda network. Serious questions remain about the BBC's editorial process. Um, so this reporter quoted some random Iranian calling for Iran to be nuked. Basically manufacturing consent for the deployment of a nuclear weapon on Iran and then Wyatt, you're sideways.

153:50>> Yeah, it keeps happening every time you switch cameras. I'm not sure why.

153:54>> I won't I won't switch cameras again.

153:56>> I just put it vertical.

153:58That's that's what we're doing for today. Um, yeah. I uh this was a >> Who the hell is this that she she seems like a you know she's she seems u less senior than us, let's say, but she's listed as a senior correspondent for the BBC.

154:16>> Who is this shady character? What What's going on? Well, she's a 27year-old um who has been after just four years appointed a senior reporter at the BBC, which uh is a pretty prestigious role.

154:31Um most journalists who work at the BBC never never reach that level. Um so that's that's reserved. It's it's almost like a management track position. Um it involves editorial decisions. um and she's been placed in this role, this senior editorial sort of position. Uh after just four years in journalism now, I I looked up a job listing for a similar position as a senior reporter at the BBC and found that the minimum requirement was 8 to 10 years in the field of journalism. She has less than half of that. So, you know, it's a great question. how did she come to this position? Um, and the reality seems to be that she was

155:19basically hand selected to to insert a bunch of uh supposed quotes from Iranians into the public discourse. Uh, she was selected obviously because she has uh she grew up in Iran, she speaks the language. uh she can be a much more effective uh protest whisperer than someone like her colleague who we previously exposed a woman named Deepa Parent who is a French uh supposedly a French I guess she lives in France but um as far as I'm aware she's she's not a native French speaker she's an Indian woman who married a French man and adopted the last name Parent or Pant as she likes to say in interviews

156:08Um, >> she was a fashion blogger in India who came out to basically hype up all of these uh death toll numbers from the so-called protests which were actually regime change riots. And she was the one pushing the 30,000 dead which now Trump is inflated to 45,000.

156:26She basically multiplied by a factor of 10 the real death toll. And she just she came out of nowhere at the Guardian. And it turns out she's collaborated with this woman, Habibia Azad.

156:38>> Yeah, they were they seem like >> she, by the way, she deleted her account.

156:43She deleted her account on Twitter X after you exposed her, but she's collaborated with this woman, Habibi Azad, who, as you can see here, has quoted a random Iranian, Radin, who said about them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran. My honest reaction is that I'm okay with all these. And then the BBC quietly deleted that quote. But you found that this woman um Habit Gehabid is is was like a dedicated regime change activist for years.

157:21>> That's right. So So this kind of all came about yesterday when the account Zquirrel and a couple other uh sort of anti-imperialist accounts noticed this quote had been blundered by the BBC.

157:35this horrifying quote from a supposed Iranian inviting the United States to nuke their home country. Uh all sorts of questions were asked. Is this a real Iranian? Uh does this person actually exist? Is this just a figment of, you know, another sort of uh regime change crazed BBC reporter's imagination? Is this a real person? Uh and rather than addressing any of these questions, Habibi Azad elected to change the quote without uh making any explanation or offering, you know, any reason for why they did this. Uh they changed the quote to something much more uh anodine uh much uh less horrifying sounding. No

158:18explanation. Uh and then this author uh Gochce Habibia Assad began blocking people all over social media who were pointing out that this was an egregious uh journalist journalistic malpractice that uh either she invented the source of this quote or uh you know at the very least she's inviting a nuclear strike on her own country and and trying to manufacture consent for that. Um, so >> and blocking that's a violation of BBC policy, isn't it?

158:52>> Oh, well, yeah. So, they're only supposed to block uh social media users under extreme circumstances of personal harassment.

159:02It's not meant to, according to their policy guidelines, it's not meant to be a way of reacting to legitimate criticism, which this obviously is. It's been picked up uh all over the place.

159:13This article that I put together late last night and this morning has gone pretty much viral. A number of posts pointing this out have gone viral. The woman in question, Habibia Azad, is kind of locked down her social media. She hasn't posted anything since. Her LinkedIn is been deleted. Uh so they're doing the same thing that Deepa Parent did last time around, which is kind of scurrying away. Uh refusing to address this. I imagine in a few days she'll start uh reposting tweets from colleagues sort of implying that this is somehow sexist or that you know we're bad people for pointing this out. Uh but the reality is that yes this

159:52woman uh from the very beginning immediately after she graduated from a a publicly funded 4-year degree at Tran University at a very prestigious university in Iran. uh immediately after she sucked up all tens of thousands worth of dollars of of tuition uh from the Iranian taxpayers, she moved abroad and started working with a subsidiary of RadioFree Europe, Radio Liberty, which is a CIA founded propaganda outpost that is openly described as an effort to subvert communism, subvert the Soviet Union when it was founded in 1949 by Alan Dulles. Uh that is where she went to get her her internship um in

160:38journalism after she graduated. Uh she got a a briefly a one-year masters in journalism and then she was off to the races, right? She was working for RF.

160:48She was working for um a Iranian opposition network uh called Mangar TV.

160:56And if you go on their page, you go on their YouTube channels and you look through the videos that they have on offer, it's uh basically just a it looks like a family gallery of a of Palavi family reunion. It's just series of photos of different angles of Reza Palavi uh looking inspirational and this is about 50% of the content that they produce. So, you know, she's simultaneously working for a CIA founded US government state propaganda outlet and for an opposition anti-Iran outlet.

161:32Um, and when she became involved in the uh women life freedom protests that quickly devolved into riots in Iran in 2022. And this seems like it was kind of her big break. Um, you know, the BBC apparently looked at this woman's uh, you know, her her materials, her what what she produced, and I guess they liked what they saw because they decided to bring her on to their verified team uh, after her work kind of documenting these these protests and whitewashing these protests and making them seem less violent than they were, making them seem um, the the the big break as far as I can tell came after this collaboration

162:17that she did with Deepa Parent in which they falsely claimed that the Besiege this sort of paramilitary force in Iran that's a affiliated with the government uh had been targeting female protesters and shooting them in the genitals because they were sexually frustrated men um and that this is this is how they they decided to take that out on women out in the streets. Um it is a ludicrous story. Uh there they did include evidence in the term in in terms of photos of people who'd been hit with buckshot. It looked like uh certainly no people anywhere near the genital area.

162:58That that was that was there are no photos that show anything like that.

163:02There are three photos that show that somebody uh in Iran during this time period was shot with buckshot. Um but but they provide no evidence of any of these horrifying claims that they lead with in the headline. Um so that never came up in this interview that I described where she and where Deepipa and uh Parant and Gochce Habibad are sort of reminiscing about what it was like to put this article together.

163:30Instead, they describe how they basically just interfaced with this network of doctors, this shady network of doctors. Uh and it's a group of doctors that we've covered before uh in our in our previous expose on Deepa Parent. It's a it's a monarchist tied network of uh dozens of of alleged doctors in Iran who have been behind some of the most incendiary uh ridiculous quotes and and narratives that have come out uh from the Western press during this entire uh you know sort of post January Iran moment. Um, some of this this this alleged network of doctors uh was behind uh first of all the absurd death toll of 30,000 people

164:18killed by small arms in two days by Iranian police. That's where that's where this this figure came from. Um, and now I'm realizing, you know, writing this report, that's where the claim that Iranian security forces were targeting women by shooting them in the genitals, that's where this came from as well. Uh, so it's it's a it's a disinformation factory, a conveyor belt that's been set up. Um, and people like Deepa Parent and Habibia Azid are sort of like the mindless wage slaves that are just churning this out. They're at the end of the conveyor belt dumping it into Western audienc's faces. Um and and in

164:57that regard, it kind of makes sense why they would pick morons with no experience. They don't want legitimate journalists who will actually do the real due diligence that it takes to to to work on a story like that to go in and say, "Okay, well, we have people who because Max, you and I have worked on a story like this before where we we had heard some very horrible things and we said, "Okay, well, we have sourcing on this thing." We declined to print this article because we couldn't verify that one of our sources was not being ideologically motivated when saying this. This is what this is what

165:34journalists are meant to do. And this for me, this is probably why these people have been elevated to these positions of authority because they're they the people calling the shots of the BBC understand that they don't know anything, that they're morons. They're young 20somes who picked up picked this field because it seemed like something to do. It seemed like something fun.

165:56Deepa Parant fashion blogger. She likes writing about dresses, right? And then, you know, a few years later, she's dropped into the midst of a new cold war. Uh, it doesn't inspire much confidence, but I think that's kind of the point. and Deepa apparent was subsidized by regime change CIA adjacent billionaire Pierre Omidar through this cutout at the Guardian, Humanity United.

166:24If you see look at her articles, it's it's it you can see in the upper leftand corner that an NGO called humanity united sponsors it and that's Omidar.

166:34It's run by his wife.

166:37So, the Guardian itself has a lot to answer for, as does the BBC, violating its own stated hiring practices, violating its own editorial policy, and then violating just established editorial guidelines by quietly editing out a random quote manufacturing consent for nuking Iran and softening it without acknowledging that at all is a huge scandal.

167:03And it speaks to what the BBC has been doing in Iran through BBC Persia. It's the sophisticated regime change propaganda mechanism which was run under the opaces of the British foreign commonwealth and development office. Its version of the state department which itself interfaces with the MI6.

167:26You know, you have the kind of ratchet backyard wrestling hardcore monarchist regime change network, Iran International, which is seems to be pretty much controlled by Israel at this point. But BBC Persia, that's the sophisticated wing. and BBC's main, you know, English out, English wing has hired this monarchist activist, as you've exposed, as its main senior correspondent who said, Wyatt, that she only interviews opposition activists. Didn't she say that? It's that openly. Um, in in an article that she published on the BBC website, the second sentence, it was it was describing the reaction of Iranians

168:16to the downing of the US jet. The second sentence, I I'll just read the first paragraph for you. I've been asking some of my contacts inside Iran what they think about the US jet downing. All those I talk to are against the current establishment.

168:33All those I talk to are against the current establishment. And and look, you've seen the videos of these marches that are going on every night all across Iran. There are millions of people out in the streets, many of whom were against the current establishment, or at least they were until the US began indiscriminately bombing their country.

168:55Um, but you I'm trying to emphasize here. Do you understand how hard it is to interact only with Iranians who hate their government? You have to go way out of your way. There are tens of millions of Iranians who do support their government. You have to be either extremely uh isolated socially uh and living in just this ex bubble of extreme wealth uh or you have to deliberately, you know, avoid and and and sort of isolate yourself from the the the majority of Iranian people in order to only know people who are against the current establishment. Uh it's a damning indictment. Um, it tells you exactly who

169:39she's talking to, uh, exactly what perspective you're getting. You're never going to hear from anyone who supports the government because you definitionally cannot because she refuses to interact with any of them.

169:52So, that's not journalism. That's that's propaganda. That's laundering regime change talking points. That's laundering war propaganda. Um and it really gets to the entire purpose as you've noted of uh sort of groups like BBC Persian which which are directly managed by the British Foreign Office which are tied at the hip to the British uh intelligence services. So, uh, this is, I think, a perfect distillation of of how the war propaganda industry operates and how it works to manufacture consent for what is otherwise an extremely unpopular war. It get back it gets back to what you and Aaron were discussing earlier about the

170:37responsibility to protect. If you can convince Western audiences that Iranians hate their government so much that they're willing to endure a nuclear blast on them on their own homes, uh, well, then why shouldn't we give them what they want?

170:52Well, th this is fantastic reporting, Wyatt, that really highlights the importance of independent media at this point when state media outlets, state propaganda outlets like the BBC, legacy pseudoft outlets like the Guardian and pretty much the whole of Western media are exposing themselves and ex and and we can see their failure in how they are playing catch-up when if you go back to our interviews with Professor Muhammad Morandi who gets maligned so much in Western media as he eviscerates his interviewers warned of all of the consequences of launching a war on Iran completely accurately here and on so many other

171:46independent and counter hegemonic channels. everything he predicted has come true. But we weren't seeing this from these outlets. And now you have the BBC manufacturing consent for a nuclear strike on Iran and violating all of its editorial policies. These networks are infested with these monarchist opposition activists posing as reporters. And it's just as we exp uh exposed during the Gaza genocide uh working under Jeffrey Gtlman, the disgraced New York Times reporter responsible for Screams Without Words.

172:26This discredited article, debunked article about the uh advancing the Hamas rape, mass rape October 7th hoax on the cover of the New York Times. who was working directly under him. It was an a pro- genocide Israeli with no reporting experience, Anat Schwarz, and then they quietly fired her. Will the BBC meet out any consequences to this reporter? I doubt it. But through your your reporting and your analysis here, more and more people can actually see how the sausage is made at these outlets. And uh we also benefited enormously from the on the ground reporting of Ahmed Sadalin of Propaganda and Company and Dmitri

173:16Lascarus today and uh our regular co-host and colleague Aaron Mate really came through for us today as well. Uh Wyatt, anything else you want to add before we jump off here?

173:36Send me any tips if you see any more people up to no good.

173:43>> We seem to have lost our connection with Wyatt. So with Frozen Wyatt Reed, I will bid him farewell.

173:52And I really grateful uh to all of you for bearing with us on this brief hiatus from the gray zone, but we're back and uh thanks for liking this stream.

174:07uh subscribing to us here on YouTube, subscribing on Substack where you'll get all of our original investigative reporting free in your inbox, supporting us on Patreon or any other way you seem see fit. Uh we'll definitely be back soon with uh with much more.

174:31So, thanks again. Peace everybody.