Mercouris: The War That Reshapes the Global Order

0:00Or is going to be over very soon just by somewhere after November 3rd, according to President Trump, or according to President Trump, we're going to win the war. Or according to Benjamin Netanyahu, the war is basically already won in case you're unclear about all those things. Now, that may be what people are saying, but there's always, we look at what is actually happening on the ground or in the air or in the air. And then on the ground, this is the case in the what we're going to be talking about here today. But we are always going to try to to pierce through the veil of deception and misinformation, try to find out what the reality is. And there is nobody better to help us do that with than we have today are delightful guests, Alexander, a curious co-host of the Iran and his own YouTube channel. There you see the addresses on their Alexander is always an absolute delight to have you on board. And a huge pleasure to be here, Daniel, and to be discussing these important things on this program. Well, listen, I was especially glad to have you in and you saw some of my

1:03reactions to some of things we'll be talking about here on the show today, because Gary just popped a couple of things on that I had not prepared for. One of which is this one right here that there, that we finally have some some, I guess, confirmation here. Now, we had talked about the fact that after the US had attacked Iran in its previous time and then within hours and maybe not even that long, Iran had fired back and we saw some video of a lot of Patriot interceptors going up and a lot of Iranian missiles coming down and the claim was that we knocked down 18 of 20 missiles and the only two that were intercepted fell it harmlessly in the dirt. That's what was claimed and we said, well, I believe that when I see it and we'll wait for at least 24 hours, which is usually how long it takes for civilian satellites to find out information, etc. Well, now we have it. And according to this CBS report here, if you can toss that back up there, oh, sorry, this is the Jerusalem post one. The damage occurred despite US air defense systems firing over 30 Patriot missiles during

2:07the barrage and if you can roll back up a little bit higher, I think this worked, talked about there were eight F-15s that were damaged and an 810 warthog were damaged. That we know that we're admitting. Now they say this weird thing that 8 F-15 sustained damage and were placed back into service during the attack. So I don't know how that's supposed to make sense. But whatever, that's the claim. So basically said, yeah, no big deal. Sure, eight of them were managed, but I don't know. Almost like they, it's small with flesh wound. I don't know, something like that. But I mean, what do you make of this? First of all, Alexander, that this shows again, we've fired 30 air defense missiles, but obviously quite a few of them got through. Have we many of the real numbers? Who can say, but they sure got through and caused damage? Well, exactly. And this is this is the big story because we've had all these comments. You mentioned them at the beginning and we're going to discuss them no doubt more in this program.

3:07All of these comments from the president, from US officials, everything is under control. The war is on either one or going to be one very soon. It's going to be one after the election. Something like that. But the visible signs that I am seeing tell me a completely different story that the war is ongoing. It's not perhaps as continuous and as intense as it was in March. But the Iranians are still striking American bases, like the one in Jordan that we just see. They're still able to do damage to aircraft there. We hear all the time about a major shortage of patriot missile interceptors. And now we see that 30 more of these, or perhaps even more of these, have just been used over the course of a single Iranian attack in order to try to protect these aircraft, which was not completely successful

4:11because we are getting these reports of damage. To me, it doesn't look as if the war is winding down. On the contrary, it looks to me as if the war is continuing and that the Iranians are still striking and that we are no closer to a military outcome of the war than we have been at any point in it since it was first started on the 28th of February. I don't see any reason why we should expect it to end in the next few weeks or the next few months before the elections in the United States or after the elections in the United States, unless there is effective diplomatic action and a genuine settlement of which at the moment there is no sign. And there's no sign. Let me ask you a question because really, what really centers down into whether this thing can come to you

5:12and then whether our actions can have effect, whether on the battlefield or on the economic front, is how long can the Iranian side hold out? What is your understanding of how wobbly they are? Because we keep your report after report on mainstream media in the West, especially in the United States here, that, you know, their economy is wobbling. They're shelves are buried in the grocery stores, inflations through the roof, two million reels for one dollar blah, blah, blah. And implying that they're going to wake, quaking and are going to fall over at any minute. What do you think? Well, I don't think so. I think that people are perhaps over-focused on the inflation numbers. The Iranian financial system has always been chaotic and extremely disorganized. They've always had, well, they've had for a very, very long time now, very, very high inflation. No doubt the inflation crisis, the inflation, it is a crisis, it is a crisis of living standards in Iran,

6:15is indeed getting greater. But this is a country that believes itself to be a war, which is a war, which is under siege. And alongside the inflation, what it is almost certainly doing and what it has done in the past, is it that it's running a mobilization economy. In other words, what you're probably getting, and I've no doubt that this is happening. In fact, I've heard that this is happening, is that the government is taking more and more control over the allocation of resources. It is able to do that, justifying the fact of the war. So in effect, resources are not being allocated through the market system, through supply and demand. They are being centrally allocated by the government. As tends to happen during wars, certainly wars were survival.

7:16So long as the Iranians believe that they are in a war of survival, or at least a war of independence, then I think they have the incentive to continue, and to continue fighting. And I think that Iran is a big country. It is apparently mostly self-sufficient in food terms. It has a significant industrial base. Its resources should not be underestimated. Well, it doesn't appear that that message is falling on fertile soil in the White House anyway, because President Trump doesn't seem to be following that. And we mentioned that about the election here, if anybody missed it, here was President Trump saying that this is going to be over somewhere after November 30, immediately, as the word he uses. So I would say that the attacks, of course, by us, yeah. And you're going to see a lot more. We've taken out about nine of their tankers, many of our guns, though.

8:21I think the war is going to end immediately after the election. I think the war will end immediately after the election, because they can't hold out any longer. They're desperate to try and affect the election, so that we can get a nice week group of people in there, and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon. All they want is a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble. Now, there's that same old comment all the time about, oh, they want to get a nuclear weapon. They would use it. They had it. Thank God for me. He said last night, actually, to a campaign rally. But here's the thing. He said, this was day before yesterday, that the war was going to be over immediately after the elections, right? But then we find out on the Wall Street Journal, in several other places, that Trump's top advisers told him that, yeah, the chances of this being over by the time you leave office is pretty high. So he said this night, according to the Wall Street Journal,

9:24the White House advisers have raised privately with President Trump, the prospect that the Iran War could drag on through the remainder of his term, US official said a message add-ons with Trump's public assurances of a swift victory. In the Oval Office, in situation room, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others have discussed with the President that the Tehran could continue to resist US pressure under the blockade and military tactics, past inauguration day, January 2029. Now, I have it on good authority from someone that I talked to that has knowledge about that stuff and says that that is absolutely true, that is what he was told. So at what point, and this is probably a rhetorical question, I don't know, but at what point, does the Western public stop believing these claims that the war has been won? As he said, in this third or fourth day of this back in the early March, we're going to demand unconditional surrender that, I think it was 50 some odd times that we were

10:24told, we almost have a deal, and then when we actually got one, finally, we got rid of that one, almost within days, and now that we're trying to get a war, and then no President Trump says no, we're going to actually win this, that you're going to hear in just a second. When do we stop believing those kind of things and start believing our odds? Well, indeed, that's an excellent question. I suspect that an awful lot of people, especially in the United States, where the war has never apparently been popular, already don't believe these things that the President is saying. I think he still has a certain electoral support, a certain base of people who want to believe him, and I think there is also, we've not yet reached that point where the pressures of the war are so great that it galvanizes people in the United States and elsewhere to demand that it ends. I mean, we don't have huge

11:27numbers of casualties. Thank God. And we don't yet have a situation where economic pressures have become cumulatively so great that people say, well, this simply can't go on. We can't continue with this indefinitely. We have to find a way to bring this thing to an end. So I think this is what is keeping this war going. It's not so much that people believe what the President is saying. It is more that most people don't like the war, don't believe in him, but don't believe him, but at the same time, they're not angry enough yet to insist that it be brought to a stall. So that moment will eventually come. It inevitably will, because wars always have bad economic consequences. And we will talk about no doubt about the energy situation and all of that. But even if we didn't have the energy situation, wars are always expensive.

12:31Wars of choice are never in the end popular, certainly not with the American people. And that moment when they say enough will come, but it doesn't seem that it's come yet. Well, it didn't come last night either. President Trump had a first ever conference before the midterm elections for the Republican Party in Dallas, Texas. And it was really, I think just kind of a big campaign stop because President Trump loves those because he's surrounded by it during crowds or cheering. And last night was no exception. So he was in the process of telling people how all those processes of everything are coming down, the groceries, the process of gasoline, all this kind of stuff. And then he's going to add in here that the process of oil is also about to come down and notes the reason he says why? And by the way, oil would be going down as soon as we win the war with Iran, which is taking place right now. We'll win it. We're winning it. We control the Hormone straight. I think we should call

13:39the Hormone straight. We should call it the Trumps. I should get something out of it. I mean, yeah, why not? I mean, we're renaming even our own states, much less other bodies of water and every kinds of weird stuff like that. But you know, I know you're not an American, but I mean, you're a very big friend of America. You've paid a lot of attention. You've studied America. You've been here recently. I guess I had the good pleasure of seeing you speak in Tennessee not long ago. But no one should be able to believe when he says we're going to win the war and we're winning it. And they he can say gas prices coming down, but they would you fill up after that after that speech on your way home? You'll see that it's not coming down. And the price of oil is only gone up today. What do you think? Well, exactly. This is it. I mean, back in the late 1960s, we there were again, there was an endless churn of optimistic statements from the then Lyndon

14:40Johnson administration about progress in the war in Vietnam. And people began increasingly to become skeptical and then very disbelieving and then utterly disbelieving. And eventually, the media itself started to talk about a credibility gap that there was a gap in the credibility. People weren't believing the administration anymore. And I think we are quite quickly, much more quickly actually than in the 1960s. We are quite quickly coming to that point as well. He still has some political momentum behind him from his election. But the risk he runs is that as prices rise as the cost of living gets more difficult than remember, he was elected partly in order to bring the cost of living down down. The more that continues, the more people experience that and

15:42see that for themselves. The less they get to believe, he stories about the oil price coming down soon and about the groceries, the prices of groceries falling and about the war being won. And when we reach that point, when credibility falls of the way they did in the 1960s, then it is impossible, but an actual diplomatic resolution, a political settlement of the conflict, which of what we got with it yet now, it is impossible to restore that credibility again. I've no doubt that this is where this is heading. And it's where the president himself has taken himself and his administration, because there has been no lack of warnings at every stage of this crisis. The things are not going in the direction that he says. Yeah, we've had Joe Kent on our show a number of times, who has chronicled in detail,

16:45all the warnings he was given before, during and immediately after the launch of these, which of course led to him initially, are eventually resigning from his post. And we've seen it now. Here we see this in the Wall Street Journal that again, President Trump is being told, honestly, this is not going to work. And even later elsewhere in that speech, he went on to say, you know, a lot of people in my administration say we can't win, but they're wrong and blah, blah, implying that he's still not going to be listening. So we shouldn't expect anything good to be coming up anytime soon. He's also bullied by now. It's common knowledge now that it was Benjamin Netanyahu, and we've chronicled it on this show. I mean, the statements by Netanyahu, the statements by Marco Rubio, and just common sense. It's very obvious. That's what led us into this war. It wasn't any weapons of mass destruction or any of that crap that they say. The reality is it was Netanyahu personally got him in. Now then, we have Netanyahu seeming to be joined at the hip in this

17:48victory narrative that Trump said as well. And here's what he said yesterday. What are you talking about? They're very close to victory and we're going to win. I mean, see, he's using the language that Trump did. We're going to defeat. We're going to win the war. And we're going to defeat. There's still a big task remaining. That means military or or economic. Somehow, but you're going to bring down the regime. And that means usually military power. There is no military solution. And these people that continue going on, I mean, the pursuit of the utilities is only going to cause them or harm to us. But again, I guess I got to ask, how long can this go even in Israel? Well, I'm not so familiar with the politics in Israel as I am in the United States. First of all, I do want to say this. You are absolutely correct that it was Prime

18:50Minister Netanyahu who played a major instrumental role in drawing the United States into the war. And if I can just also say it has been brilliantly chronicled on this channel. The best place to see how it was done has been here. Now Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it his life's mission for many years now to try to bring down the regime in Iran. I mean, he's been talking about this for as long as I can remember. Into the 1980s, just for absolutely. Absolutely. So he has also, I think, become very heavily identified with Israel itself as the person who is eventually going to bring down this regime in Iran. If he fails in this, he will be seen to have failed in everything. He is at the moment involved in another parliamentary election in Israel,

19:50which is very bitterly fought. And he can't therefore afford to appear as if he's weakening or softening on this issue, which as I said, is completely identified with him. So of course, he promises victory even though the victory isn't going to come. That is the reality. Prime Minister Netanyahu can no more change it than President Trump. Or they would have already done it. That's for sure. Interesting though, he also in that clip, they're talking about the whole axis of resistance. He's going to bring it all down. That speech, by the way, was made from the Go on Heights in Syria, which basically Israel has just seized and taken by force. They would of Bashar al-Assad fell. They took even more territory there. So he's out there saying, and he was talking about what was over shoulders. And we're going to be taking all this other stuff too. But he specifically said the whole axis of resistance. So Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

20:56He's going to bring all that down. So he says, but he might want to check the newspapers because there are some, actually, let me back up a here. There are clashes in Yemen right now where the Houthis are seizing territory. They have taken some islands. They have taken several cities. And this has given them very significant additional control over this straight of Mayun in the Babel Mondob Street. There's additional, they've just this morning that was reported that they took another island that was just a, it's called Param Island. So it's kind of in the Babel Mondob Street. And if that's true, if they hold it, then that's going to give them even more a chokehold on this. And you can kind of see some of these towns that have been fallen here. This is in Yemen. This is the southwest corner, southwest of Saudi Arabia. This has been stuff that's been contested for a long time because there's the Saudi backed Yemeni government that is recognized by

21:57most of the West. But the significant majority of the country is actually controlled by Ansar al-A' or the Houthis as we call them. But now that they're on this big rampage, where they're going down and taking a lot of territory. And I want to put this up here because so you can see, you know, that the shocking movement there. Apparently the according to one report I read this morning, over 2,000 square kilometers of territory have been taken into the lightning advance, including these major towns, Mokha, right there. You see in the middle of the screen, that was about 40-someone kilometers from the Babel Mondob Street. And from there, if they move down to Dahub, they could complete control of it. They could take the whole thing. If people are thinking, well, Saudi Arabia's got this big military, they're going to take it. Danny Sirn-Chwinewitz, who is one of the best analog analysts I've seen in the business, he put this out on X today. I have these excerpts from a lone post he made. It was really good. He says, I'm sorry to say it, but based on the Saudi Arabia Air Force's performance during

22:58its previous campaign in Yemen, I would be very cautious about assuming that air power alone can stop the Houthi advance. We've been seeing that a long time. Air power alone is almost never going to succeed. Dropping precision got a munitions is not a strategy. The challenge is even greater today because the Houthis are not the same force that it's Saudi Arabia confronted a decade ago. They have accumulated significant combat experience and developed increasingly sophisticated air defense capabilities. That is really the game changer. If the objective is to contain the threat effectively, Riyadh will need more than its own military capabilities. It will require a broad and credible international coalition willing to share the operational intelligence and political burden. And if I can just say the ground burden too because their ground forces are not sufficient, that is the painful issue. Saudi Arabia cannot carry this fight by itself and pretending otherwise will only give the Houthis more room to expand their leverage. And Alexander, I've got to say, these some experts that I'm talking to say it is not out of the question that Saudi Arabia could

24:02lose more territory to the Houthis. What do you think? I think that is entirely possible. We've been here before. The Saudis and the Houthis fought a war before and it didn't go well for the Saudis. And well, the Houthis are very, very tough, very well organized. Force, military force, and they become stronger over these last few years. Now, I think you sound up the military side of things. I just wanted to say something about the diplomacy. Because here I think we see the folly of this whole Iran war. Because I think one of the major misunderstandings that has existed is that the Iranians have constantly been using all of the so-called allies or proxies like the Houthis to threat another country. I think that to a great extent, certainly over the last 10 years or so, especially the last five years, the role of Iran until the latest

25:11wars began, was to restrain these groups. So Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 agreed a rapprochement with each other. The Iranians, therefore, did not want a Houthi Saudi war. So they were telling the Houthis, please do not fight the Saudis, work with them, settle with them, because we have improved our own relations with the Saudis. Now we have a war with Iran. Saudi Arabia is dragged into that war either reluctantly or not, who can say, but it is now an Iranian target. So Iranian restraints on the Houthis are falling away and we see that the Houthis are now on the rampage and they are becoming stronger and it is threatening Saudi Arabia in its most vital

26:19interests and it is also threatening control of the Red Sea, access for Saudi exports and there's even some reports that the Houthis have attacked Saudi oil installations within Saudi Arabia itself. The war not only is not being won, contrary to what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are saying, all the evidence suggests it is expanding and it is expanding against our interests. Well, it is. I mean, you are seeing this right here. I mean, just let me go back to this map here. I mean, you see that literally cities have fallen already and all of this, Alejandra, I can't really more strongly agree with what you said and affirm it, is that prior to our starting,

27:19this actually prior to Israel starting its war against Hamas and then all the things that went along with that and then expanding it up into Lebanon, etc. Then in Syria and now this one down here. None of these things were happening before we did this. There was reproachment between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There was reproachment between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Things were moving in a peaceful direction. Remember President Trump famously, I want to say it was May, I think, of 2025, if we came in, had just big conference in the Middle East, looked like man, we're going to be doing business, we're not going to be doing a regime change, we're not going to tell anybody else what to do and all that went to hell starting in June of that year when we started operation did not hammer with Israel and they're 12, they weren't, we all know what happened after that. Now then we see that Saudi Arabia's infrastructure is being severely damaged. They could literally lose territory and God only knows where it could go. There's still some concerns about Kuwait. It might also be vulnerable to some ground operations coming out of the PMF in Iraq potentially. I mean that would

28:24seem crazy before but now all of a sudden nothing seems crazy. Well, absolutely and of course if we're talking about ground operations against the Houthis, people should be very clear. There is only one military in the world that could conceivably take on the Houthis. None of the militaries in the Middle East, the Israelis who perhaps have the best military are themselves overextended. It would have to be the United States. Well, I can't imagine that is going to be popular in the United States. I mean bad enough to be fighting Iran. I don't think there's any support for that in the United States but the Houthis in Yemen on behalf of the Saudis. Well, I mean it doesn't even bet thinking about. But that is the nightmare that we are now gradually drifting into. And you know, speaking of the Saudi Arabia, they just signed this mecca accord with Pakistan and they're really trying to

29:29draw Pakistan into come and help them out. But what do you think? What are the pros and cons for Pakistan to make good on this attack on one is an attack on all situation because they've been talking about it but they're really going, yeah, but I don't really want to do it. What do you think about that? I just think they want to do it at all. I think that if the Pakistan army went into Saudi Arabia and then into Yemen to fight the Houthis, firstly it would be a very difficult and exhausting war for Pakistan. And it would create major problems in Pakistan. Pakistan is a country that has a surface stability but not one that you want to test by exposing it to this kind of prolonged war. And I think the Pakistanis know that very well. And I think they also know that a war in Yemen is going to weaken them in other places, relative to India, to other places as well. I don't think they're going to want to do it. And I think Turkey is the same by the way. I think

30:33Turkey does not want to go all send its army all the way to Yemen to fight the Houthis who are known to be extremely tough fighters on their own territory, on behalf of the Saudis in that way. That alliance, that alliance was put together basically in response to the war in the Persian Gulf. It was an attempt to create a security system in the Persian Gulf that would both contain Iran and might eventually provide the basis for some kind of negotiation with Iran. It was not really intended, I believe, to provide Saudi Arabia with a guarantee against threats in places like Yemen. I am sure neither Erdogan, the Turkish President, nor the Pakistan government ever thought that they might be called upon to do that.

31:36Yeah, and I doubt that they will. I mean, we'll see. If anything, maybe they might send a few jets over. I don't know that the Turkey is going to do anything. But obviously, Riyadh is putting a lot of pressure on Pakistan to make good on their vows, etc. Maybe they sent some air power, but as Danny Cintral would say, air power is not going to stop of what happens on the ground. It's ground truth that you need in Yemen. I mean, I've never been there, but I understand it's a very difficult country. It is very mountainous country. By the way, both of British and then in the 1960s, the Egyptians fought a very, very long war in Yemen. It didn't go well for either of them. So I don't think it's a place where you want to go. It is Afghanistan marked to just a second. Yeah, and we know how that one has gone for everybody who's gone there to include the British.

32:36And then in the British. So everybody loses when they go into there. And there's no reason to think this is going to be any different. Interesting about, I'm going to go back to Israel for a second because Defense Minister Israel Kats made a comment yesterday. I think it was giving a warning to Iran. Now, you saw with Benjamin Netanyahu who's already said to go to win the war, etc. And the interesting observation has been, or dynamic has under cover, that even though the US and Israel went to war in the initial period that first 40 days, Israel's after prompting us to start the war, then they've kind of taken a step back. And they said, you know what, you guys have this now. We got you to start. It's all like prime in the pump. And it's been kind of an angry point to me that they got us to start it now. Then they're letting us take all the hits and all the heat. And so Israel wants to give this warning here. You're going to see from Kats. He's going to tell Iran you better not started again. But he's going to

33:39describe what could happen next. And I want to ask you after you listen to this clip, is he talking conventional or something else? I reiterate my warning to the Iranian leadership. Any attack on Israel for any reason and anywhere will be met with a powerful response that will strike Iran with severe blows unlike anything it has suffered to date, including its central energy facilities, which provide resources and capabilities to the Iranian War and terror apparatus. And for harming the citizens of the state of Israel, in accordance with the Prime Minister's directive and his guidance that the IDF is vigilant and prepared to carry out the mission, such a blow would set Iran back decades and further destabilize the Iatola regime. Okay, I mean, we had 40 days of the UF and Israel doing everything they could in it. It caused some damage, but it didn't harm any of their military capacity that matters with their drone and missile forces. What could he be thinking

34:40conventionally that they could do that would like set them back decades more compared to what has been done already? Yes, I think that it is a threat of using conventional weapons rather than to say it's simply nuclear weapons. I think what he's talking about are attacks on the Iranian energy system, the gas fields, the power stations, those sort of things. And we did have a brief moment during the fighting, I think it was in March, where Israel attacked a major gas field. Pars gas field. And that provided a very strong reaction from Iran. And then there was a sort of agreement that this would stop, because obviously it would be a massive blow for the Iranians, if that kind of all was continued in that way. But the Iranians were threatening to retaliate,

35:41and that would threaten the entire energy situation, the entire energy infrastructure of the Middle East. What what Katz is doing is he is repeating these threats and he's wanting to take his back into an extremely dangerous situation that we had in March, which basically the Americans, the Israelis were talked out of, and which Katz in seems to me wants to talk himself back into. Well, and the Iranian side has been unambiguous. In fact, it almost like they've been chaffing at the bit that if those kinds of targets are hit by anyone, then they're going to unleash their own strikes against the similar targets throughout the Gulf era. Everybody's going to be hit, all of our allies, et cetera. So it's going to be just devastating to the global economy, the global energy systems. It won't just be a political decision. It's blocking, you know, blockades or so, something you can politically lift. This would be destroying the

36:42capacity for everybody, which affects all of the globe. Not just the GCC, but the Iranian side, too. You've taken all of it offline. That's going to just crush the global economy. I don't know why anybody's given serious thought to that, but the Iranian side, for their part, they're looking to give some warnings of their own. So there has been some slippage, I guess, of their control the straighter hormones. It's not been completely shut off. There has been seven to nine, sometimes as many as 10 million barrels of oil a day, which is about 40, 50% of what it was pre-war. So it's not enough, but it's more than a little bit. It has been, at least up until recently. But the Iranian side is saying, you know what, we're going to expand our zone of coverage here to include all the Fajira and everything on the East part in the Gulf of Oman. And as the IRGC spokesman says here, they're pretty serious about it. To summarize what I would like to present to you, it starts approximately from the direction of Chabahar, a part of the Sea of Oman,

37:44and another part of the Arabian Sea, along the route that could lead to the strait of hormones. Now our area has become wider. We take the strait as the basis for military confrontation. However, the region that we define and have defined the coordinates of which will be announced later is our sanctioned path. This means that if a vessel enters that area without coordination, it will be subject to our sanctions. And he went on to describe what that would look like, but from from Professor Muhammad Saeed Morandi, who was on television show a couple of days ago, he said the Iranian side has now changed their mentality from a defensive to now an offensive so they don't seem to they're going to be willing to sit on the sidelines much more. Again, this does not sound like that the Iranian side is anywhere close to being capitulated. In fact, it sounds like they're ready to start expanding their operations. What does this tell you? Well, that's exactly what they are. I think what happened is that the the war slippage through the strait of hormones, I think I also think that the Iranians were aware of it.

38:51And I think some people in Iran probably were looking to let it happen. There are people within Iran, like President Pezish Khan, who have been talking about finding a way back towards a piece. Then unfortunately, we had a lot of boasting about the fact that this was going on. There didn't seem to be any attempt to move forward with any kind of serious negotiation. So with any Iran itself, we see the pendulum shift back towards the IRGC and the more hardline groups there. And they're saying we can't allow this and tolerate this. We are going to go on the attack. We are going to make sure that there is no more slippage. We're not going to allow tankers close to the strait of hormones where they can just slip by. We're going to be prepared to hit them. If they enter the zone of control, which we are now establishing, because for the Iranians,

39:55the Iranian leadership, or at least the more hardline part of it, sees control of the straits of hormones as what gives them ultimately leverage and a strong position in this conflict. We've discussed this in previous programs about other wars, the war in Ukraine, but you wrote long ago about the fact that wars, not exclusively or entirely, but will, will to win, plays an important role in wars. And this is an expression, if you like, of the Iranians' will power here. They are obviously being very badly hit themselves. They have high inflation. They have stresses in the economy as we discussed at the start of this program. But they are saying,

40:59our will is greater. We can absorb this. We're going to suffer, but we can put up with this. What you cannot do is withstand $150 a barrel oil, which is what we want eventually to achieve. I mean, maybe not that particular price, but that complete type control of the strait of hormone hormones, which we are intending to impose. Yeah. And when all they hear from President Trump and Benjamin and Yahoo are, we're going to win the war. I mean, where is there any motor? I mean, that's like completely cuts the legs out from under somebody like the Zeskian. He's not going to be able to talk about this when the other two leaders are talking about winning a war. Exactly. Exactly. The messaging, if you want to get it out at this crisis and you want a diplomatic solution, the messaging is all wrong.

42:00Bragging, talking about victory, saying that the war is being won when it clearly isn't. Disincentivizes the other side to sit down and talk with you. Because what they assume you're going to do is you're going to demand capitulation. Yeah. And nobody's going to be capitulating any time soon. So not a good look here. We'll have to watch and see how that develops as it can go and forth. And the remainder of the time we have here, I want to shift to the other war that we just we've alluded to a couple of times. Because it is mind boggling. What's going on here? I mean, the starting foundation here is that U.S. side with Europe and Ukraine has effectively run out of the ability to defend their skies from ballistic missiles. They still have some integrated air defense for some of the slow cruise missiles and drones that can still do some of that. They'll be running low on that too. That's all report this morning, especially on some of

43:04these like AIM120s and other kinds of air missiles that they used to knock down the Russian jet-powered drone. So that's all draining that. But they still have some. But for the ballistic missiles, they basically have none. Trump just sent Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcough to Moscow, apparently to try and find some way to just get this off the table. So that's kind of the condition. That's where the war seems to be going on the ground. It's definitely not going the Ukraine's way. And of course the air now belongs to the Russians. In light of that, we had this gym of a statement from NATO Secretary Mark Rutte that I just still can't even get my head around. Russia wants to defy us. But we are united. Russia wants to stop us helping Ukraine. But we are going to do more for Ukraine. Russia wants to act tough. But we, we are stronger. Russia's actions are a

44:06sign of weakness and a symptom of its failure to get its way in Ukraine. A sign of weakness. You've run out of air defense missiles. I mean, if you just look at the two categories alone, you got no more air defense capabilities. Russia is increasing its air offensive to ballistic missile production capacity per month. Make that make sense to me. Well, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, it is so completely not sensitive. You can call it irrational. It is a refusal to acknowledge the changing realities in the war. And they are changing. Are they changing fast? Because the Russians have made advances of various times in the war. Well, they've never secured the kind of dominance in the air that they now have. I mean, as well as missiles and drones, I was reading this morning that they're now dropping around

45:06283 fab bombs on Ukraine a day. So that's a lot of bombs. And likely that is also going to increase along as the war continues. But the fundamental thing to understand about this is that however bad the situation gets in Europe, in Ukraine, there continues to be a coalition of people in Europe, in European capitals, who simply refuse to acknowledge these realities. And they continue to press both for the war to continue. And for a no real negotiation with the Russians on any acceptable terms and for further escalation. And I think Mark Ruta and the NATO, the civilian, I should make this clear, the civilian NATO bureaucracy. I think I'll fully

46:13committed to this line. They cannot imagine a situation or contemplate a situation where there is a diplomatic settlement, which they would say was in the Russians favor. And so for that reason, they have to continue the war and go on pretending to themselves that the Russians are weak and we are strong. But they're not weak. They're getting stronger. If anybody's getting weaker, it's being the Ukraine side. So all you're going to do is continue to whittle away at the literal lifeblood of the country, the physical territory, the manpower, all that is going to continue to go down. This is going to be a pretty bad winter with the air situation being what it is. And it was pretty bad last year. Probably is going to be worse this year. So the question is, how long can they go on? Now, it's one thing for this year, P. N. Elite, to get amongst themselves and say, yes, we're just going to just ignore reality. But their populations are not starting to do that.

47:18So I mean, we have this situation in Germany, where I, if they has made some significant headways here, there's reports in France that Marine Le Pen is moving in a direction that may well win the next presidential election. And all kinds of other places, there's even some movements that are in some portions anyway of the UK. A lot of people are unhappy politically. Don't these governments, and especially Germany, don't they have to worry that, hey, we have to start listening to the people and doing something they want because one of the planks of IFAE is that they want to have improved relations with Russia. They don't want to have a war with Russia anymore. What about that part? Well, I think you're absolutely right. And can I just say, I think there's been a major shift these last few months in wider European opinion. I was in Germany quite recently, before these recent elections in Saxon Unhalt in eastern Germany. I was actually in Western Germany. I was in

48:21Ireland Fals, very much a part of West Germany. But I spoke to an awful lot of people there, at various political persuasions and traditions and various ages. And the overwhelming view that I heard was that this war is terrible, that it is wrong, that Germany is being sacked and weakened by this war, and that the war should end. And I recently seen some opinion polling data. And I found very interestingly that in Germany, the issue of war and peace is gaining increasing traction with the German population. And it is precisely because the IFAE is positioning itself remarkably,

49:22as the party of peace, that it is starting to win support in more and more places in Germany, including in Saxon Unhalt. In Saxon Unhalt, the issue of peace was more important for German voters who voted for the IFAE than the issue of migration was. Wow, that's a big deal. The opinion polls. So this is something that I think is important. And I think that this is what is also making the German political class, the establishment political class, and people like Mark Luther, who was previously Prime Minister in the Netherlands, extremely nervous, because of course they're now so identified with this war that any policy of peace ultimately vindicates their critics, including their critics in the IFAE, and calls into question everything that they

50:30have been doing over the last four years. And how about in Great Britain itself? Because when Kirst Starmer left, I thought, okay, this is an opportunity to shift gears. And Andy Burnham just like went double, double down and said, no, we're going to do everything that Kirst Starmer did. We're not going to make any changes. And it's 100% heading over to Ukraine. And now he's still like saying, he can here have some more storm shadow missiles. What do you make of that? Well, I've heard about this. And again, this is for me in formal sources. So I can't absolutely vouch for it. But for the record, I believe it to be true. Is that Andy Burnham himself is not exactly a skeptic of the war. He's certainly not enthusiastic about it. He lacks that sense of commitment that Kirst Starmer used to have. And if anything would probably want to see it end so that he can focus instead on domestic issues. But he leads a party, the Labour party,

51:39where pretty much the entire leadership, the rest of the leadership is fiercely committed to the war. The political elite in Britain are fiercely committed to the war. The media is so in Britain, we don't yet have the kind of political insurrection against the war that we are seeing in Germany. I think it probably will come in Britain. I don't think we're there yet. And well, it may not come soon enough to help you. And how are the confluence of these two wars affecting, you can start with the UK, but look throughout Europe as well. Because actually several leaders have said recently, here in the United States, especially, that the problem with diesel is not just what's going on in the Middle East, but also Ukraine, Straszyn, Russia has stopped their export of diesel abroad. So the cumulative problem is that it's exacerbating the problem. Although

52:44that user, Europe, both diesel and Jeff, which of course means the cost of everything is going to be going up. And at some point, don't the economic issues have to make people say, you know, both these wars are stupid. Let's just get them off. And the other issue, of course, is as well as as well as diesel and aviation fuel, and in the gasoline, there's also in Europe, specifically, the very, very difficult issue of natural gas. Natural gas reserve are lower this year, going into winter, than they have been for many, many, many years. Supplies of natural gas are low, because of course we can't import natural gas from Russia. We can't import it from Qatar. And LNG, liquefied natural gas, has been bought up heavily by the Asians. The Asian economy is over the last few months. So Europe looks like it's going to be short of natural gas. And you're

53:46absolutely right. All of these things are coming together. The shortage of diesel oil, the shortage of natural gas, the problems with crude oil, the overall problems, oil shortages. The two wars together are having a major cumulative impact. They are pushing up the cost of living. They are weakening the position of the European economies. And people are affected by them. Now, this is where the IFD has been effective, because in Germany they talk about this. They have not been afraid to say the reason why your bills are rising are because we're not importing gas from Russia as we used to do, as well as these problems in the Middle East. They've not been shy of saying that.

54:47And because they've had the courage to say that, they have one over more and more people in Germany. As sooner or later, elsewhere in Europe, especially by the way in Britain, where we are even more vulnerable to energy movements in energy prices than they are in Germany, somebody is going to say it too, but so far nobody has found the courage to say it yet. And doesn't there have to be an inevitable point because the war in Ukraine can never ever be won by Ukraine. They can't. I mean, there's no, you would have to say, all right, here's what's happened on the ground, here's what's happened in the air, here are the production, here's the manpower, all the, and somehow you have to be able to make a logic case that here's how that can be reversed. It doesn't exist. There is not. And therefore, continuing to pursue the unattainable militarily is going to be to increase the

55:54economic cost to Europe and it can't be reversed except by reversing the order of the war and getting it off the table so that they can start doing this. Doesn't there inevitably have to come that point to where people can say, wait a minute, you keep talking about, well, take them as long as it takes and you know, and the last thing in Durypeaks, it doesn't exist. And we're paying a now price that I can't avoid. Does, will that point arrive at some point? Yes, it will arrive. I mean, it's already arrived in Germany. And as I said, that's one reason the IF days doing is doing as well as it is. It hasn't arrived in some of the other European countries and it still hasn't arrived in Britain. It's as if there's a kind of agreement across the entire political spectrum that you never mention in Britain, the economic cost of the war. But this is not sustainable and it will eventually break through and people will begin to discuss it. By the way, one thing that is starting to happen is that in the British media, there are now the first frank admissions

57:03that the war in Ukraine has been lost. The most important, current affairs, politics, magazine in Britain is the spectator. It is read by everybody who is interested or involved in politics. And they recently had an article which said its title very simply was Ukraine is losing the war. It came out just a few days ago. And you know, just what about this? I think it's a new party by a Nigel Farge. Is he willing to pick that up? Or because I know he's talking a lot about things that affect regular Britons. This kind of affects them. So what's his position on all this? He probably deep down inside himself knows that, you know, all the understands all of these things just said. And I think it was about two years ago. He actually, you know, dipped his toe if you like

58:04into the pool. He published an article in the Daily Telegraph in which he said, I'm tired of hearing all the time about how this war in Ukraine was unprovoked. Obviously it was provoked. Anyway, there was a fierce reaction from across the political class. And he backtracked. And since then, he's been careful to stick by the official line. But I think the worse things become, the more difficult it becomes to sustain the fiction that this war is not having an effect on us. The greater the temptation for Farage to come out again and to start saying that once more. So he is someone to watch. There are also, I think, people on the left who quietly think that too. They're even more reluctant to speak about it than for Arges. But sooner or later, this debate in Britain has to happen. And well, probably it will follow from further events in Ukraine itself. As I said,

59:15the admission that Ukraine is losing the war is out there. But it has to be something that everybody finally is able to see that there is no prospect of victory. And at that point, we're going to have this whole debate. And then people will start to say, well, you know, this is a disaster what we did to ourselves over the last few years. And maybe we shouldn't just now look for a diplomatic solution to the problem in crisis in Ukraine itself. But perhaps we ought to look towards a solution that will secure peace in Europe, a peace which will benefit everybody, the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, and of course, the United States. And what about if you could just briefly in France? What's happening there? Why, is there talk that Marie Le Pen may end up winning each time? Is that all domestic issues? Or is that also related to the war? No, I think it is again related to the war. Again, Britain is an

1:00:21outlier in the sense that as I said, there is this taboo of talking about the war. In France, they talk about the war. And in France, there is both right-wing opposition to the war. And left wing opposition to the war, the most prominent politician on the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is also a critic of France's role in the war. He's also, by the way, a fierce critic of the United States. And I think that perhaps to some extent weakens his argument. But I think there's no doubt at all that a large section of French society is deeply disillusioned by this war and by the entire policy. Of course, there are many other issues as well in France. France has a degree of economic malaise

1:01:22which goes on as gone on longer than in Germany. And there is a lot of disaffection about that. There is migration, which is also a very, very big topic in France. There is also the question of France's own role in the world and its role in Europe. There's much resentment in France of the fact that France has been subordinate to Germany within the European Union. And great restlessness about the EU structures. So of course, there's all of these things are playing out in France. But the war definitely is a major factor. And what about Italy, the longest serving post-war Prime Minister, George Imeloni? Because she hasn't been exactly like Keir Starmer and always standing out front. Where is she falling into this? And how are the economics in Italy playing with this? Well, Italy has gone through a period of relative economic stability and political

1:02:28stability as well. And the two are linked to each other. In the sense that George Imeloni was able to form a government and be an effective Prime Minister and bring the debt expansion that has been happening in Italy under control. She has not been able to increase significantly the pace of growth of the Italian economy. And arguably, living standards in Italy have also continued to slide. But I think people in Italy have been grateful to her because of the relative stability that she has offered. I think this is starting to wear thin. And again, Italy, there is criticism of the war both from the left, from the five star movement. And from the right, they both say that the war is a mistake. I should say that Italy, perhaps more than any other European country,

1:03:31has a very, very strong, Russophile tradition. I mean, Italians and Russians have mostly got on with each other. So this hostility to Russia has never had as much support in Italy as it has in some other places. What is now happening is that Meloni is being criticized increasingly from the right over the war. And she's been criticized from the left as well. If there is a breakthrough either by the IFD or by Le Pen in Germany or France, then Italy will change and change very fast. Yeah, I mean, you know, it seems at least my perception is, at least from, you know, 6,000 miles away from over here, that there has been this burbling recognition among the people, not the the more root that we just showed in the Kaya Calis and of Ursula of Andalana. I mean,

1:04:34they're they're like on another planet. But the regular people have been grumbling and seeing this, they see what's going on in social media. They can see the truth beyond the statements. And it seems like that at some point, you could have just slow burbling and all of a sudden, whether it's a geyser pops up like, you know, the IFD or on Reel of Pen, but then you could get a political earthquake. And everybody could say, yes, we're sick of this war to get it over and then the whole thing can collapse pretty in short order relatively speaking. How do you say? I think that's exactly why you talking about the political burbling. I mean, I'm a mutual friend in Proud has made an entirely proof point. Anyway, you go in Europe, you can have a much more intelligence conversation with a taxi driver about the situation with Russia and the war in Ukraine than you can. Can talking to some of the political leaders that bubbling is undoubtedly there. It is certainly there in Britain. In Britain, I think we are behind for all sorts of reasons which have complex explanations,

1:05:39which are perhaps outside the scope of this program. But I mean, in Italy, I think they're very close to the surface. In Germany, they've come to the surface and in France, I suspect they will come to the surface also very soon. Well, it can't come soon enough. And I always circle back to the people of Ukraine. They're the biggest billpayers in all of this insanity and this stupidity and all these different capitals. They are the ones that are suffering the worst. The war cannot be won. It can only be lost or it can be ended by a political decision and for the sake of everyone who's alive in Ukraine today, I pray that day comes quickly. I completely agree. And that is the tragedy of this. Because we're talking about political processes in Europe, but the political processes in Europe might not be fast enough to reduce the scale of the tragedy that is playing out in Ukraine. And it is a tragedy that is playing out every day in Kiev, in Odessa, in towns and cities

1:06:45and villages right across that tormented country. It is, and it's it agrees, agrees us here on our channel as well. But listen, we as always, we really appreciate you coming on. We win a little bit long today. We appreciate you giving us that. Alexander Mercurius YouTube channel you can see on the screen right there and also his appearance on the Iran. Check both of those out. Always excellent stuff that's going on there. We appreciate you giving your time to us today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Daniel. And we appreciate you guys. We will be back at three o'clock today, not possibly you back with something before then. I'm going to be talking about another issue. We'll see if that comes up. But for sure at three o'clock today, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, NATO sounds the alarm. He's got a lot of interesting things to talk about here. And actually in both of the wars, you don't want to miss his sage wisdom and the military experience that you have. We'll see you then at three o'clock.