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Good morning, everybody, Welcome to Breaking Points. Just me in the studio today, but I do have some guests to help me out with the show. In particular, I've gotten Martaza Hossain joining us to talk about Tucker's interview with the President of Iran, going to share with you a few key moments there and get his reaction to all of that. And also bb naaniaho back at the White House third time. This time he is nominating President Trump
for the Nobel Peace Prize. We've got other developments there as well that we'll get Martaza's reaction to Then we're going to also have Glenn Greenwald join. He has been closely following what is going on with Palanteer with Peter Teele, going to ask him if what he puts the odds at that Peter Teal is actually the anti Christ. So there's a lot to dig into there that is very
consequent quenchol. I also want to get Glenn's view on the Epstein flop and the cope that is going on right now in Maga World, which I have to say is world historic.
I'm actually going to.
Start the show though with the newest tariff announcement, sort of like a Liberation Day two point zero. Trump is unilaterally announcing tariffs on a number of very significant countries. We'll get a little bit of sound from him, from Caroline Levitt and sort of parts through what is exactly going on there.
We also have updates coming out.
Of Texas as the death toll has surged even higher now over one hundred individuals dead because of those devastating floods. We have new information about the response or failures thereof, and also Ted Cruz once again you'll recall previously he was caught in can Kun during a natural disaster in Texas. This time he was in Greece sightseeing and was spotted as the floods ravaged the state and the response continue
to pace. In addition, want to bring you some truly shocking images out of la as federal immigration agents performed a militarized sweep of the park. Ken Klippenstein, great friend of the show, was able to get leaked documents talking about the goals of this sweep, which indications are may not have actually picked up a single person. It was more a demonstration of a show of force that hey, these immigration agents armed to the teeth, looking like a
military occupation. They can go anywhere and they can do anything, and there is nothing that the local government Karen Bass in this case, can do to stop them. So a lot to get to in this show. Before I jump in to the tariff's information, just want to thank you guys so much for supporting this show. If you are not premium member and you want to become one, you get the show in your inbox early no ads, you get access to the Premium amas. You also get access
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Like and subscribe all that good stuff, that helps us out tremendously as well. All right, So let's go ahead and get to this tariff announcement. So yesterday, about halfway through the day, Trump posts these letters, sort of preposterously written letters to a couple of significant countries, announcing new twenty five percent tariffs on those nations. Specifically here we're
talking about Japan and we're talking about South Korea. Now, these are both countries that are close allies of the US, so it shouldn't have been that difficult to get some sort of a trade deal with them. In fact, previously, Trump had negotiated a trade deal with them in his first administration. And yet because his demands have been so hard to pin down and unreasonable, they've actually been unable
to come to terms. So he unilaterally announced this new tariff rate to go into effect, and then later on in the day we get an announcement there are additional countries that are also having these unilateral tariffs being placed on top of them. You guys, remember back in the early days after Liberation Day, and when we had the pause, we were told we're going to get ninety deals, and ninety days so far we've gotten two sort of outlines
of a deal with two countries. So it certainly has not rolled out the way that it was originally portrayed. When Caroline Levitt was asked about all of this, what it means where we're going, let's take a listen to what she had to say.
I have the signed letters that went out to both South Korea and Japan today, and there will be approximately twelve other countries that will receive notifications in letters directly from the President of the United States. And weeks ago I stood at this podium and I told all of you that the President was going to create tailor made trade plans for each and every country on this planet. And that's what this administration can continues to be focused on.
The President will also sign an executive order today delaying the July ninth deadline to August first. So the reciprocal tariff rate or these new rates that will be provided in this correspondence to these foreign leaders will be going out the door within the next month or deals will be made and those countries continue to negotiate with the United States. We've seen a lot of positive developments in
the right direction. But the administration, the President and his trade team want to cut the best deals for the American people and the American worker. That's what they're focused on. And in the effort of transparency, these letters will continue to be posted to true social They will take the
letters seriously because they have taken the president seriously. And that's why the President's phone, i can tell you, brings off the hook from world leaders all the time who are begging him to come to a deal.
So there you go.
That is a little bit of what the official White House line was yesterday has gone with his next piece up on the screen, so you can get a little bit of a sense of these letters. So White House sent near identical letters to the leaders of Japan and South Korea announcing sweeping new twenty five percent tariffs on all their exports to the.
US starting August first. This is significant because the previous.
Deadline was tomorrow, July ninth, and so there had been some confusion about whether that was going to be a hard and fast deadline. They're now pushing that to August First, there is continued confusion about whether the new August first deadline is actually a hard and fast deadline, so we'll
have to see what ultimately pans down there. But let me read you just a little bit of these letters, because it is certainly trademark Trumpian language and sort of preposterous that this is the way that the President of the United States communicates with significant nations around the world. In any case, one of them reads, this is the
one to the Prime Minister of Japan. Dear mister Prime Minister, it is a great honor for me to send you this letter in that it demonstrates the strength and commitment of our trading relationship and the fact the US of A has agreed to continue working with Japan despite having a significant trade deficit with your great country. Nevertheless, we've decided to move forward with you, but only with more balanced.
And fair trade in all gaps.
Therefore, we invite you to participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States, the number one market in.
The world, weirdly capitalized there.
By far, We've had years to discuss our trading relationship with Japan, have concluded we must move away from these long term and very persistent trade deficits and caps for some reason engendered by Japan's tariff and non tariff policies and trade barriers. And then he goes on to describe how we will be unilaterally implementing these twenty five percent terrorists. Let's go and put the next piece up on the screen here to show you the rates that were announced
yesterday on these countries to go into effect on August. First, you've got Cambodia thirty six percent, tinmely In thirty six percent, Bangladesh thirty five percent, Serbia thirty five, Indonesia thirty two, Bosnia thirty Tunisia twenty five, and then you've got Japan and South Korea at twenty five. In addition, he says
that any retaliation will be met with increased tariffs. So he said, if any of those countries increase their tariff rates visa VI the United States, then that additional amount will be added on tops. So, needless to say, these are quite high rates. These are significant tariff rates. It's easy to become a little bit inured of this stuff at this point because we've had them on and off again and back on, and we're taking a pause and we've got a deadline, and we've got a new deadline
coming in. But I think it's worth just wrapping our minds around the fact that if you're talking about twenty five percent tariffs on significant trading partners like South Korea and Japan, that is going to have a significant impact on the economy, and economists will tell you very likely to raise prices on those goods coming in from those countries.
Not to mention what companies do when they have an excuse to hike prices, they hike prices, so very possible that all that comes down the pike, Not to mention the continue level of extreme uncertainty about what any of this is, what any of it's going to be, where we're ultimately going to end up.
And as I said.
Before, part of the reason why countries like Japan that have a very close relationship with the United States, why even they were unable to strike some sort of a deal with the Trump administration, is because they basically came and said effectively like okay, well what do you want from us? And no one could really answer them. Some of these nations have effectively zero tariffs on the US.
But because Trump feels like we have a trade deficit with them, that that is just it's so facto an indication that something is unfair about the relationship, and so we has to put these tariffs in place. So that's kind of the top line of where we are. You know, I mentioned before that there continues to be questions about, Okay, we had the July ninths deadline, Well that's tomorrow, that's now being pushed down to August first. Is it going
to be the August first deadline? Trump got asked a couple of days ago about these deadlin and how hard and fast they are and what they mean, and he was perplexingly confused himself. It really raised some questions about how much even in this area on terraff, the area where he seems to be sort of the most engaged and the most enthusiastic in terms of his administration, really raised some questions about how plugged in he is even
to this sort of centerpiece of his economic agenda. Let's go ahead and take a listen now to a four, Your president, Do the.
Tariff rates change at all on July ninth or do they change on August first?
What are you talking about?
Tariff rate?
Do they change on July ninth or August first.
They're going to be tariffs, they're going to be the terrifft.
I think we have most countries done by July ninth, Yeah, either.
A letter or a deal, but let they go into effect on August spurs.
So you can see Trump They're saying, oh, I think most of the countries will be done by July ninth. This was just a couple of days ago that he got asked that, and he's said, oh, no, I say it'll be done by July ninth. Again, tomorrow is July ninth, and we now have this announcement that no, actually, in fact,
we're pushing that deadline how off to August first. And you can see Howard Lutnik having to jump in to sort of try to clean things up and say, well, well, I mean July is sure, mister president, but actually they go into effect on August first. So you know, there seem to be significant parts of this administration that Trump is just checked out from. He seems completely checked out from the immigration piece, seems to have just been completely
outsourced to Stephen Miller. As one example where he has become incredibly power powerful within this administration. He also appears to be Steven Miller very powerful even within foreign.
Policy decision making.
But I really thought that Terris were the one piece that Trump was really super engaged with. This is a guy that is, you know, playing golf on a lot of days, which is kind of extraordinary given that you would think that this would be a very busy job.
And so it was just interesting to me to see him even so sort of perplexed by the question that was asked and so out of sorts on what the answer would be about when this deadline is which again is pretty significant question given that he was asked this just days before that deadline was due. So let's go and put the next piece up on the screen, because this is significant as well. You know, this was the market reaction yesterday, the Dallas slides more than four hundred points.
That's a significant market drop. I haven't taken a look at the futures yet this morning to see where we are. Oh, it says SMP five hundred futures rebound from sell office investors bet that Trump tariffs will end up lower than what he announced. So Wall Street appears to be taking the taco bet again. And you know, given the ups and downs of this policy. It's hard to blame anyone for them, gay Like, Okay, sure, he's doing Liberation Day two point zero and announcing these very high rates that
would be extraordinarily disruptive if they actually go through. But are they actually going to go through. Who the hell knows at this point. In addition, there was also a significant shot taken at the so called bricks Nations contained in this as well. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. So they say Trump steps up his
fight with bricks Nations. China and Russia push back after US president threatened to place tariffs on countries embracing the policies of the group. I'll reach a little bit of
this article from the Wall Street Journal. They say President Trump's threat to put new tariffs on countries embracing the policies of the Bricks Group has added fresh uncertainty to global trade, prompt to push back from Moscow and Beijing, Trump posted on social media that countries aligning themselves with the quote anti American policies of bricks will be charged an additional ten percent tariff on top of course of
whatever he decided he was going to charge them. The threat appeared to be a response to a statement put out by the Group of Emerging Economies, whose members include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and others, that took a swipe at Trump's policy. The threat comes as his administration faces a crucial week for reaching trade deals.
The Bros.
Group, it goes on to say, has long sought to present itself, sought to present itself as a multilateral counterweight to a US dominated world order, although internal divisions and differing political and financial frameworks have hobbled its quest for expanding its geopolitical influence. So they have actually all been meeting at a summit in Rio de Genera right now. They put out a joint declaration that said they had quote serious concerns about the rise of unilateral tariff and
non tariff measures. So that may have been what prompted this exchange from Trump. But you know, there is a real concern that the world will move away from the United States of America and the dollar as the global
reserve currency. That would be an incredible reckoning for this country and for this economy where we are used to having what's been called the exorbitant privilege of being having the dollar as the world's a currency that effectively means that the rest of the world is financing the debt and the deficit that we have accumulated now over years, in which the one big, beautiful bill will expand even further. You know, I am not someone who is a big
I'm not a big deficit hawk. I'm not one of these how we pay for it kind of people, especially because we see the way that that rhetoric is always used just to take away social safety net programs that benefit the poor in the working class, and never to question, for example, the massive now trillion dollar defense budget that only ever goes up and up and up. Nor is it used to question how we're going to finance the extraordinary, giant, multi trillion dollar tax cuts that are being given to
the wealthiest among us, the people who least need such assistance. However, if the world truly does move away from the dollar, and that is part of what the bricks have sort of set up to do, it's part of what Russia and China have been looking at alternatives. You can hardly blame them, given how chaotic and unreliable the United States is at this point. You know, if that actually does happening happen, it will be a significant reckoning in this country.
So in any case, you know, the irony here of Trump protesting what the bricks nations are doing is that with his insane unilateral trade war on the entire world, he is only hastening the arrival and increasing the logic of those countries that would want to move away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency. So that, of course is the irony here. Last thing I've got for you is Peter Navarro got asked about the original promise of the ninety deals and ninety days that had been pledged.
We were going to see deals being made at the pace we'd never seen before. There are going to be so many wins. We get sick of winning, I guess. And here's what he had to say about what happened with those ninety deals in ninety days.
Ninety days and ninety days. I'm very happy. I'm very happy. I am very happy with where we're at. We have had a global baseline tariff in place of ten percent. We're collecting billions of dollars of tax revenue that are going better, going to pay down for tax cuts. We've got continuing no she negotiations and I think this is great days because the rest of the world has it so good that they're dragging their heels, but the President will not allow that. That's why the letters went out.
That's all I'll say.
So obviously just a bunch of nonsense spin and cope, there needless to say. But you know, I just to wrap this up. It all goes back to like, what are we even doing here? You know, there's never been any clear explanation of what the goal of these tariffs even is. Originally, I remember we were told when they were being put on Mexico and Canada that was about Sentinel. Then we were told at times, oh, this was about
bringing back manufacturing jobs. Well, so far from what we've seen, this has been devastating actually to manufacturing, especially when coupled with the rollback of industrial policy that was actually put in place by the Biden administration. You're going in the wrong direction in terms of manufacturing jobs. At times, we've been told that this was about and Peter Navarro talks a little bit about that there, it's about increasing revenue
into the United States treasury. Well, that goal is actually directly at odds with the goal of increasing manufacturing jobs, because if you're re shoring, then you're gonna have fewer goods coming in being imported, then you will be decreasing the tariff revenue over time.
So those two things are at odds.
Trump seems fixated on the idea of US having a trade deficit with any country, even though in some instances, and we talked about the nation of Lesotho, where it's like they're a poor country, so they just don't buy that much in terms of goods from US, and we buy diamonds and other sort of like natural reas sources from them. There's just naturally going to be an imbalance in that trade relationship. Doesn't mean they're ripping us off.
So we continue to have this central question of like, what are you even trying to accomplish here?
What even is the goal here? How could you.
Even measure whether or not this policy is successful when we've never ever gotten any sort of consistent answer about what this thing ultimately is for. You know, in terms of his defenders, I feel like they've just sort of given up on trying to explain this, given up on trying to defend the ins and outs and the ups
and downs. I'm sure you guys have seen that meme where it's like Trump puts the tariffs in place and they say this will bring back jobs, that he takes them off again, and they say this is the art of the deal. I think they've just given up on talking about it altogether, because any time you go in hard for whatever the current plan is, three days later there's some other new plan that you're having to turn around and now justify. So that's where things are. What is the goal of this policy?
Who knows?
What is it going to accomplish? Who knows is August one to headline? Now real we don't know. Are these new tariff rates, which again would be really significant extraordinarily hih and I don't want people to lose sight of how disruptive it would be economically if these actually get put in place on Japan, South Korea and other trading allies.
We don't really know. So that's where things stand, all right.
Very fortunate to be joined this morning by Martaza Hussein of drop site News. He's going to help me cover a couple of topics here. Great to see you, maas Hey, Thanks for having Yeah, of course, so we mentioned on the show yesterday, Tucker Carlson recorded an interview, a sit
down interview with the President of Iran. There were a few different moments that I thought were interest I mean, first of all, I just I think it's important to hear the perspective of the Iranian government, how they're viewing all of this, and you know what their position is, which is something you very rarely hear in Western media. So I thought this was significant for that reason. But let me start off by getting your reaction to this
particular clip. Tucker asked the President of Iran, do you plan to re enter diplomatic negotiations? And of course, previously, these negotiations that the Trump administration was engaged in, which seemed to have some possibility at least before they drew a hard line on zero Uranian enrichment, seem to have some possibility of coming to fruition. The Trump administration then comes out and admits or claims that they were using those negotiations as a ruse to create an element of
surprise for Israeli attacks on Iran. So that's the backstory in the context. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of this exchange.
Do you have plans to re enter negotiations with the United States with Envoy Steve Woitkof or anyone else, and if not, what do you think will happen.
We see no problem in re entering the negotiations. Before that, I have to remind you that because of the atrocities by the Zionist regime by Israel, not just against my country, but in the whole region, we are now facing a crisis, that the people are facing a crisis that we need
to put it behind ourselves. Our commanders were off duty, They were spending the night at their homes with their families, but they were killed and this is considered a war crime according to the international law because they were off duty. As I said, for our scientists were also killed and assassinated along with their families and their wives and their children. They were also killed, pregnant women, children. They were killed in the atrocities in the attacks of the Israeli regime.
Because they wanted to kill one single person, they had to demolish and destroy a whole building and as a results of this, a lot of innocent people were killed. That there is a provision for the restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the United States again? How can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack US?
So he says there, how are we going to trust the United States again?
Which I think is.
A pretty reasonable question, given not just this most immediate diplomatic rules, but the fact that previously we had a deal with the Iranians that the first Trump administration backed out of.
Yeah, Unfortunately, it's been very difficult for the US to engage in diplomacy with Iran for one primary reason, which is Benjamin Netanyahu, And for over a decade now, mister Netanya who's been working to insert himself and sabotage effectively any sort of meaningful diplomacy between the US and Iran.
He sabotaged the Iran nuclear deal, and he himself takes credit for doing that in twenty fifteen or later in the Trump administration deal they'll sign in twenty fifteen, and most recently, the US and Iran, by no means seem to have exhausted their diplomatic talks over the nuclear program. Under the second Trump administration. But in the middle of that,
Netanyahho intervened. He launched a surprise attack on Iran. There's conflicting reporting about the level four knowledge that the US had about this attack, but you know, ultimately it was Israeli attacked and it's very difficult to continue negotiations after as the President said, there was this, The Iranian president said, there was this killings and very provocative attacks in the Iranian capital and Iranian nuclear sites, which affected the very
subject that the talks had taken place between the US and Iran. So I think that he kind of has the understandable perception that if we the US engaged with the talks with Iran again, which is very plausible and the Irani seem to want to do it, who can guarantee that that Nia won't intervene again. He'll attack, escalate, maybe he'll kill Irani and political officials, and do whatever it takes to avoid any deal taking place with the US and Neuron. And I think Netanyahu's main issue is
actually not Iran's nuclear program. I think he just doesn't want there to be a deal between the US and Neuron. He wants Iran and the US to remain enemies and the sanctions to stay on and things like that, because that makes it easier for him to achieve his goal of escalating gradually a direct confrontation militarily between Iran and the US, which ultimately leads to regime change or heavy destruction in Iran, even if it requires the US being a war in that country and some point in the future.
Yeah, I think the nuclear program is largely a pre tax. Not to say they don't care about it at all, but mostly what Nanyahu's interest is in is in Iran being a weakened or even failed state because he doesn't want any sort of regional rival power to check his you know, significant at this point, regional ambitions. There was another section I wanted to get your reaction to that
I thought was really interesting. You know, as the whole debate was unfolding about whether or not we should get involved in a hot war with Iran and what was the threat to US interests, et cetera, Routinely people who were in favor of US, you know, getting going all in for some regime change operation in Iran, they would talk about these death to America chants and say, how can you allow this regime to persist when they want all Americans to be killed when they're out there chanting
death to America. So Tucker actually asked him about those chants, which I thought led to an interesting exchange.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Americans are afraid of Iran and they believe that Iran would like to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. They see video of Iranians saying death to America, describing our country as great Satan. What is your opinion of that should we be afraid of Iran?
I believe that this is a very wrong impression that anybody might have of Iran or the Iranians. I would like to remind you that Iran has never invaded another country in the last two hundred years. When they say death to the United States, it doesn't mean death to They don't mean death to the people of the United States or even to the officials of the United States. They mean death to crimes, death to killing and carnage, death to supporting killing others, death to insecurity and instability.
Iranian killing an American have you ever heard that? Or a terrorist that was Iranian and he carried out a terrorist attack against the Americans. Know, it was it was your president who confessed that the Americans created the isis in our region and they were responsible for this wrong image that is portrayed of religion or the Muslims in the world. This is not death to the American people
or to the officials. Death to crimes and atrocities, to to bullying, to to to the use of force and anybody who would like to become an accomplice in the in the crimes perpetrated by others.
Maz what did you make of that response?
Well, I mean to be clear, it's not a great slogan, to be honest, it's kind of lend itself, to lend itself to negative interpretations. Just space that said, you know, I think it's also important to be aware that in Iran in the past, this slogan of death to X thing has been used for many different purposes than Mahmood Amadinajad's political campaigns. Some years ago, I was talking about the price of potatoes and the slogan became death to potatoes because.
Of the price has been very high.
So, you know, it seems like there's some there could
be some cultural misinterpretation. But yet you know, still the Iranian government since nineteen seventy nine, and I can go in a long history of the events before that, but it's has a defined itself as opposed to being American presence in the Middle East, and as a possession said, they associate that presence with oppression or war or sanctions and all these other negative things not just directed to them, but directing others as well too, So they defined themselves
in opposition to that ideologically, and you know, it makes it difficult or harder than it would be otherwise to engage in diplomacy of the US, because you have, at least at a rhetorical level and the symbolic level, this
opposition definitely against the US. And people have actually asked Iranian leaders about this before this slogan, and including the Supreme Leader Alikamani, even Iranians at Baptist and it has been discussed in Iranian television quite a bit, and they kind of get the same answer every time, and they kind of say it almost like, you know, of course, we don't mean possibility to Americans or to America as
a country per se. We're talking about certain bad people in America or certain things that the US is doing in our region.
Which we don't like.
So you know that people can take that explanation on its face, I still would say that really probably not an advisable kind of slogan to use because for this reason, but that's what they mean. I think it's reasonable in the sense that there's no US security efficient who think that Iran's trying to destroy America or using nuclear weapons against America. It's not a serious sort of contention that
anyone who follows the subject thinks. But you know, there is this historical and rhetorical tension between the two countries which has makes it difficult as well to overcome people like the Tanyahu were others who like to engineer direct confrontation militarily between the two.
You know, there was another point, and I didn't pull this particular clip, but there was another point where Tucker was asking the President about their nuclear program and whether they were developing a nuclear weapon, whether they wanted to develop a nuclear weapon, and he indicated that this was all just an invention of net Yahoo effectively, and the Israelisi specifically pinned it on Netanya and said, like, listen,
there's a actually religious prohibition against developing nuclear weapons. We have no interest in it. What did you make of that particular comment and that framing.
So the current Supreme Leader if Ron has said before these issued a edict saying that nuclear weapons are against their values there against our religious beliefs. They are like evil weapons. We don't want to introduce them to the region or use them and so forth. So you know, that is a position that they've taken before and that
they've continued to hold. We don't really know in a sense of what that means per se, but I think that's very clear if you look at Iran's behavior over the last twenty years, they haven't been rushing to get a nuclear weapon. They could have got a nuclear weapon many many times in the past. That North Korea got a nuclear weapons sometime in the last twenty years in the world too. The Iranians have not tried to develop a nuclear program for the purpose of getting weapons. They've
done it for a different purpose. They've done it to give themselves a leverage for the removal of Western economic sanctions. They never enriched uranium up to weapons grade. They reached it past the grade which is used specifically for energy, but they kept it in like a gray zone. They never trieved this seriously of the weaponization program in a way that endangered them, Because if you are going to have a nuclear program at all and you're in batteroms
with the US, you're opening yourself up to scrutiny. And you could either, in my opinion, I think most people would agree with this. You either go all the way and develop a nuclear weapon and get it deterned that protect you and then no one cant attack you, and then you're like North Korea and that people have to you will do if they don't like you.
Or you can give it up entirely.
Getting a nuclear latency, having a program, enriching it but not weaponizing it kind of gets you the worst of both worlds. Yeah, you cut attacked by the Israelis, you have sanctions, you have your Karia and what's mistreating you, but you don't actually have anyclear weapon, so they can't
you actually defend yourself or deter people from attacking. I think most security experts have assess also that the Israeli attack that happened last month would not have happened had the Iranians developed a nuclear weapon, and they may or may not do that now, but their policy, I think the issue is true, they have inside a nuclear weapon today, but hasn't really gotten them much. Have they got them in a very bad situation? Whereas I said, they have the worst of both worlds.
On the other hand, I'm sure they're looking at, for example, Libya and saying, well, when you give up even the latent threat of potentially developing a nuclear weapon, that's what ends up to you, you know, happening to you. So getting rid of it altogether, even if it gets rid of this you know, this particular pretext for getting bombed and attack, doesn't mean that Israel and the United States are going to ultimately leave you alone.
Exactly giving up capitulating and doing what the US and wants right now, or what the Israel actually wants a but acceding to a full dismantling of any enrichment capacity. The nuclear program itself. The Libya option, as it's called, is not a very attractive option. It's very dangerous, very iran actually, because the what it could be interpreted as is, well, you're capitulating, you're weak, Let's keep pushing our advantage further
and let's keep this right. Well, the blood in the water and take it.
All the way.
So I think that people who say that, well, you know, things can be fine, you give up and we can trade and things like that, it's a very very risky, contentious and dangerous position.
I don't think that. I think the Iranians very much.
I'm thinking of what happened to Libya and Walmart Kadaffi and so forth when they think of this option. So, you know, I think that ultimately nuclearizing also is not a very attractive option in some ways too.
It's very dangerous, it's very expensive.
You have to open yourself up to a whole do different range of problems as a result of that. But the Iranians have two very onerous options. It's not really a good option on the table right now. There was the possibility of a mutually beneficial agreement when they stayed and had limited enrichment under international monitoring. The US and the Trump administration initially suggested that they were okay with that,
but again there was this Israeli veto. There was a Natannaho veto which took place, which said that no, no enrichment can happen. People in the US who were sort of aligned with the new Conservative Camp successfully inserted that condition into later rounds of negotiation, so they kind of closed off the ability if any enrichment happening at all, or any deal really happening at all.
So now there's two options. Which is the Libya option, which would.
Probably lead or could lead down the road to more war between the US and Iran, a regime change war, or this nuclearization, which could by a preemptive nuclear attack by Israel or the US to try to stop that, I could have attracted other forms of attack. And then if they do it successfully, you have to modernize the nuclear program. If they expanded, you have to develop it all throughout the country. Look, you're starting in marathon, you're not ending it, and that's very risky as well too
and very costly. So I think that, as said, there's two very very onerous options. I think this is very unfortunate that diplomacy was killed in twenty fifteen by Netanyahu and then again more recently in the second Trump administration, because that would have been better for all sides, would have avoided the US war with Iran, and would have avoided Iran having to fight to the US and Israel and all the casualties that have taken place in both
sides and the results of that. So, you know, I think that now we're in a much more dangerous and fraud stays in this conflict rendering.
Let's go and turn to Naanyahu's visit to the White House yesterday. You know, obviously all that we're discussing with regards to Iran.
That's part of the back drop here.
Also the continued genocide in Gaza, these daily AID massacres ongoing, you know, ceasefire talks which don't seem to be developing very effectively at this point. That's some of the backdrop here. And let me go ahead and start with this clip of Natna who they're you know, sitting all sitting across from each other at the dinner table, and Netna who makes a big show of presenting Trump with these papers where he says he has nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Let's go and take a listen to that.
Express the appreciation and admiration not only of all Israelians, but of the Jewish people and many many admirers around the world for your leadership, your leadership of the free world, your leadership of a just cause, and the pursuit of peace and security in which you are leading in many lands, but now especially in the Middle East. He forged the Aram records. He's forging peace as we speak, and one
country and one region after the other. So I want to present to you, mister President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved and you should get it.
Thank you very much.
This I didn't know.
Wow, Thank you very much.
All coming from you in particular, this is a very meaningful Thank you very much.
Baby, Thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you. It's a great honor.
And if we can put B seven up on the screen, these are images. So basically, at roughly the same time that this whole you should get a Nobel Peace Prize conversation is going on. This is the aftermath of tents being bombed by Israel on the grounds of a school shelter. This was happening while Natan I was arriving at.
The White House.
Of course, it's Israel directly bombing these tenths of displaced palace Estinians, and it's the United States of America that is providing both the bombs and the diplomatic cover for these sorts of horrors to continue. So it's just it's so grotesque. I mean, you almost want to laugh at it. But it's such so grotesque that these two people who are perpetrating a genocide are patting each other on the back like they're these great peacemakers.
Yeah, you know, I feel that the Nobel Prize kind of became a bit of a punch line ever since Henry Kissinger won it.
But this is particularly grotesque. Sort of.
The example crystal, as he pointed out, those taking place in guys that are right now is so horrifying. It really is a genocide, and we're seeing it live streamed in a way which had never seen any genocide in the past, depicted and shown to us in the real time. And I think that in Netanyahu's case, he's being he's being cynical and smart in a way. He's taking advantage of Trump's vanity. And you could see when Trump was given the envelope with the nomination almost responds, you know, auditory.
Or create he is created up now he played it exactly right.
Yeah, you liked it, So you know, ultimately this is an attempt to sort of it's almost depressing, to be honest, the way that personalities can actually individual personalities can drive politics in the sense, and that now knows how this game is played very very well.
He's been around in Washington longer than Trump has.
Really, he knows how to change manipulate the levers of power.
He knows how to manipulate his interlocutors.
He knows how to push Trump's buttons, so to speak. So you know, Trump that is not actually the first person to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prizers. The Pakistani government nominated him for a peace for a few weeks ago, as well to knowing the same sort of vanity and the desire for this award that Trump has.
And I hope, I'm not very optimistic, but I hope that in some sense Trump lived up through the which he's seeking a Nobel Priest prize and at least the clients to engage in further confrontations, at least the sense with Iran. But you know, respecting that he's doing nothing to stop what's going on in Gaza, He's arming it, he's green lighting it, he's giving a political cover, and he's also helping you bring it to a more extreme stage where potentially the population of guys that will be
expelled from the territory entirely. That's what these really governments saying NOWHO talked about in this meeting as well too, And I think that is a very very grotesque and dire escalation of the situation to what you can call full blown ethnic cleansing.
Well, that's a good segue to the next clip that I have for you to react to, because Trump got asked if the Palestinian relocation plan, also known as ethnic cleansing, which Trump had floated of, Hey, let's get all of these Palestinians down of Gaza so that me and my billionaire buddies can come in and develop this beach front property. People call it Gaza Lago. Is that still on the table, he was asked, and he actually pitches the question over to Natan Yahoo to get him to respond to it.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that exchange.
The city in relocation plans fell along the table. Is there a plan that during any proder and finding fund Yeah, maybe one or I let you answer that question, mister. Where a man when he's got to answer.
I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It's called free choice. You know, if people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn't be a prison, should be an open place and give people a free choice.
We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say that they want to give the Palestinians a better future and those who and I think we're we're getting close to finding several countries, and I think this will give again the freedom to choose.
Palestinia should happen, and I hope that we can secure it a close by.
And we've had great cooperation from surrounding meaning surrounding Israel, surrounding countryes, great cooperation from every single one of them.
So something good will happen.
Freedom to choose mas who could object?
Yeah, you know this is the thing. Basically he's seeing freedom to choose.
But he's the actual variable here is you can stay and starve to death and be killed or leave.
In that sense, it is not the freedom to choose.
It's a duress, extreme extreme duress to try to force people out.
What they're doing now is they're trying to concentrate.
This is the word that they actually use themselves to concentrate the population in a very small southern stript and I suppose eventually it make life so difficult and so hopeless over a long period of time that piecemeal people can be gotten out of there. And I think that, regardless of Trump is saying, there's not really any country which is going to take millions of people. It will
destabilize and either countries, people get very angry. They believe in the Two States solutions on paper of these governments around Israel as well too, and this will put an end to that forever. What they may try to do is to try to get you know, a thousand people out here and there over a long period of time, and gradually, you know, make pastings so miserable in this place that they send them somewhere else in the world
that may take them. But you know, I don't I'm skeptical that any country, as I said, is agreed to take large numbers of people. There've been people floating in the Israeli government sending them to Somami Land or Sudan or Congo or other places like this, and this kind of is reminiscent of you know, I hate to use the analogy, but in World War two, the Madagascar plan that they Germany out of sending the Jewish undesirable Jewish population and saw.
It to the madagas star just send them far away, somewhere in Africa, somewhere far away, someone have to hear about them. That's the way that they're talking about the subject.
And again, this is not people leaving under free choic the way that now was framing it. They're trying to give him a choice. You can die, you can starve, your family can be killed.
Here, or you can go somewhere.
We don't have to hear about you again, and you won't really add anything over there either. But that's your choice. You can die or you can leave. That's epic cleansing. And his framing of it, which seems to portray it in a more benign way, couldn't.
Be more further from the truth.
That's really, really terrible and monster's thing happening right now and very unfortunate. It's very shameful. I think that the US government is public facilitated. And again, and when Trump talks about this, it seems like you've deferred the whole policy that Netnago seem that is running the US at least policy, because he didn't even get an answer to it. He just said, well, mister Neiho, what do you think about that? And let him effectively defying what is the US policy on the subject.
He did the same thing when he got asked about whether to state solution was still possible, he said the same thing. Oh, let me give the question to the best person in the world to answer that, and pitched it over to net Yahoo, who you know, gave some answer about how well, of course we'd love them to have the you know, ability to govern, but he said, we will always make sure that we have the ultimate security control.
So effectively the answer there is no which has been which is nothing new for.
I mean, this has been his life's project political project, is to make sure and guarantee that Palestinians never have a state of their own, and he's used any sort of tactic that he possibly can in order to effectuate that.
Ocome, Yeah, you said that very well, Crystal. Both two things those lifetime projects are preventing past and in state and bombing ran and his.
Own political power. That would be the third yeah, in.
His own political power, and he's seen in a Trump sort of like a cipher through which he can accomplish these goals alongside uh, you know, and that said Biden was also giving him as much support as he could as well too. These are both very appliable and supportive administrations.
In the US.
I think the most important thing here is actually in historical context, you look at Niao's career. He's fanatically wanted these things for a very very long time. Whatever beliefs Trump had or Biden had, uh, you know, they're seemed much more malleable, to seem much more bleeding, you could.
Say, or you know, they did there to a degree.
When you have someone who's fanatically committed to what they want and they know exactly what it is and they're absolutely driven to get it, and you have an interlocka or so on the other side who is unsure even ten percent, I would bet on the person who knows what they want getting what they want, and that's net Nyiaho. In this case, he knows he wants to bomb Merun, he knows he wants to stop at Palistinian state, expel
the Palestinians. Trump doesn't even know what he wants as much he differs to net Niyaho even these questions to the press. So I would expect net Nyaho to win in this uh innocent scenario to get what he wants.
And I think it's.
Say that net now is almost running these policies in a way in the US, and it's unfortunate, but that's what appears to be the case.
Yeah, Which is not to take away agency or blame from Trump because he's the one who's outsourced the policy to NETANYAHUO.
But to say that ultimately.
Our interests are not being reflected here whatsoever, you know, let alone forget about the interests of Palestinians. That doesn't even enter into the equation. It's all been outsourced effectively to Natanyao. And actually that's the last piece I want to ask you about. Let's put B six up on the screen here. This is one of these axios reports from Barack revied. So you know, this is something that has been leaked to him, either from the Israeli officials
or from the American officials. In any case, they think that they can get Trump to give them a green light to attack Iran again. They say that Ronderner Ron Dermer told officials in close briefings he came away from a recent visit to Washington with the impression Trump administration would back new Israeli strikes on Iran under certain circumstances. One scenario would be an Iranian attempt to remove the highly imbris uranium inside the damaged facilities. Another would be
if the Iranians are rebuilding their nuclear program. They go on to say that Dermer met last week with Vice President Jaety Vance, Secretary of State Marko Rubio, and White House Envoy Steve Whitcoff, and so I think this speaks directly to your point of the Israelis know very much what they want to do, and so what they feel like they can do is create this framework of like, well, you know, this is this whole.
Twelve day war piece situation.
This is great for now, but obviously if Iran goes back to building a nuclear weapon, then we're going to have to go back in. And then, as we know from the last time, the last war with Iran, you know, mere weeks ago, there was no actual change in Iranian
nuclear development. There was just a pretext that was created of oh, now's the time we have to go, and this is urgent, so there's nothing to stop them again from producing some sort of intelligence estimate that oh my god, Iran is rushing to a nuclear weapon, not to mention that they may well do that at this point, because the logic that this war on them from Israel in the US has created is one that would lead you logically to conclude, I guess I have no choice but
to develop a nuclear weapon to give myself some sort of protection against these maniacs.
I think the real purpose of this war last month was actually not to stop the nuclear program, as really didn't. As you pointed out, they still have a problem, and they can reconstitute in a year or two. It's not a huge impediment. What they really are seeking is to make it normal to bombing Iran. They wanted to make it like Iraq in the nineties, where the US and
other countries could bomb the country whenever they wanted. They can gradually weaken the country, weaken its sovereignty, undermine it, and so forth, such that maybe in ten years from now, after that's been done, we bomb Iran all the time, and we fight them all the time, they can say, well, we'll just sumergme change, then let's just get it, take it one more notch further. I think it's about turning up the temperature gradually. That was the purpose of bombing
Iran in this case. And when they're saying we want to green light, it's not saying that give us permission. The whole question was about they're saying, you know, you need to provide a support the US arms these attacks. It gives fuel for them, it gives logistics and intelligence. It's saying that you're committing to being part of the
future operations. It's not just about Israeli. It's about the work could not have happened without very very intensive American support at all levels, logistical, tactical, strategic, very very practical weapons and logistics and so forth. And it's saying these promises and guarantees I interpret them, is saying that you will commit to giving us that support in the future, because without that, Iran's very far away from Israel. They can't really carry out the attacks, they can't really do
anything they're doing without American, very intensive American backing. So I think that now it's basically looping America into a
forever war with Iran. But he's doing in a slow, gradual way, whereas you get the commitments first the original attack, then you give commitments for their attacks, and then ten years from now, who knows, you could see an aerroch type situation gradually developed where the US is forced to ultimately do regime change, may put boots on the ground and so forth, and none of us ever really knew how it got to that point. We won't paying attention
was happening today. But I think that's when that Neil's aim is, and that's what the administration is gradually allowing itself to be roped into.
I think, unfortunately, that looks very likely. All right, Martaza Hussain, thank you so much for joining me this morning helping make sense of all of these things.
Thanks Chris,