Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: I'm Afshin Ratansian. Welcome back to Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from a UAE that has been under Iranian missile and drone attacks since the Trump killing of Iran's leaders in February. Millions have now been killed, wounded or displaced since the Trump Netanyahu wars on Lebanon and Iran began. But this Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping has a canceled and rescheduled meeting with Trump in Beijing that's due. That's just a week after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Al Qadji met China's Wang Yi, who again condemned US Israeli attacks on Tehran as illegitimate. China, along with Russia, has blocked efforts of the UN Security Council to condemn Iran's actions in the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing has instructed its companies not to comply with Washington's latest sanctions on oil trade with Tehran. Those sanctions come after decades of Washington sanctions that the British Lancet Health Journal famously calculated to have killed 38 million people between 1971 and 2025. This time, it is the U.S. s NATO vassal states that are facing economic catastrophe as they struggle to cope with the Trump Netanyahu war. Petrochemical shock combined with siphoning what's left of their wealth to Ukrainian dictator Zelensky. Joining me again from Florida is the former US Assistant Secretary of the treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Professor Paul Craig Roberts. Paul, so good to see you after so long. Let's get straight to it and just ask. After the Gaza genocide, the assassination of Iran's leaders, decades of sanctions on Iran, why do you believe that Iran, aside from any hot war or ceasefire right now that's happening, has catastrophically failed to take advantage of strategic advantage here.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Well, the Iranians prevailed in the war.
I think it's greatly changed events, future events in the world because the Iranians proved they could stand up to an Israeli American attack.
And I believe the Iranians prevailed.
I think it's unfortunate they agreed to the ceasefire because I believe they could have pummeled the American bases and Israel into a surrender, and this, of course, would have been the completion of their victory. So it's always a mistake to stop just short of solidifying a victory, and they had every sign of one.
So I think that that decision, which went back on their vow not to agree to a ceasefire, was a mistake.
It shows the tendency to always try to minimize force by negotiations.
That doesn't work against hegemonic powers like the United States, which insists on its hegemony over the world.
And it doesn't work on hegemonic powers like Israel, which has its doctrine of a Greater Israel, an assertion of hegemony over the entire Middle east or East Asia or West Asia, as they call it these days.
So when you're confronted with hegemonic demands, negotiations are pointless because there's nothing to negotiate other than your own surrender.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's a bit of interference, apparently. I don't know whether it's the drones over Dubai because of course, the UAE has been attacked more than any other country. I mean, Iran, to what you just said, some Iranian leaders would say, no, we recognize it's a hegemonic power.
And headlines like this in the Japanese propaganda sheet, the Financial Times, Iran warns us not to enter Hormuz Strait and launches drones at uae. Iran would say no. We look at what we've been doing with the Hormuz Strait. We have tactically understood the battlefield, and we are reacting in kind and fully understanding of the.
The importance of a lack of restraint when it comes to fighting a hegemonic power.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Well, they may say that, but once again, how do you negotiate with the hegemonic power, particularly the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel?
Because it doesn't recognize your right to exist.
And so you are in position of negotiating with countries that simply are determined on your determination.
If your right to exist isn't accepted, what do you negotiate? So I think you're right that the Iranians were very good on tactics and they dropped the ball strategically.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: When you were in the Reagan administration, can you remember openly the Israelis talking like this, of a Greater Israel? I mean, politicians, the US Ambassador to Israel famously actually talking openly about de facto invading Saudi Arabia, let alone taking over Lebanon and parts of Iraq.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Well, there was.
That was the formative days of the American neoconservatives worming their way into policy positions in the government.
You may remember the Iran Contra controversy. This was a neoconservative event.
It was later, during the George W. Bush administration that we were hearing about the need to destroy seven countries in five years.
The call went out from the editor of the American Jewish magazine, Commentary.
The editor's name was Norman Podhoritz, and he called for the elimination of seven countries in five years.
Of course, it was Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon.
And this became part of the neoconservative agenda in the United States. And in fact, the events of 9 11, when the world Trade center and the Pentagon were attacked, this became the new Pearl harbor for launching the American intervention in the Middle east in behalf of Greater Israel.
So the American troops and American money was used to destroy Libya, Iraq, Syria, and turn them into.
What would you say they are?
They're dysfunctional countries.
There's no functioning state there.
And I think this is the. And we now see that Israel has the United States at work on Iran, and Israel has again renewed its attacks on Lebanon.
So the agenda is very much real. It's very much in operation.
The United States, or we should say Washington, has been fighting the Greater Israel calls for Netanyahu for the first quarter of the 21st century. We did for 25 years.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: What did you make of Trump openly denying what you just said and protesting that it was nothing to do with Netanyahu, his decision to assassinate Khamenei and begin bombing Tehran and, of course, kill all those schoolgirls in Minaab. It was Trump's decision.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: I make the same of it as I do of everything he says.
It's nonsensical.
We have from the legal advisor of the United States Department of State a document seeking to justify the United States attack on Iran.
And he opens the document with the statement that the United States attacked Iran at the request of Israel.
That's the official document.
I have provided a link to it on my website and recent articles.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: When you were associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. You've got to tell me what you think of that Murdoch paper today.
So that link would have been on the front cover and the document would have been reproduced.
Why is it your old paper now parrots? I think Axios is an infamous agency to aid certain people in making money out of the dead in this region.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: In the United States, all of the traditional journalists or the legacy journalism, it no longer exists. These.
These people are now known as prostitutes, a short for press prostitutes.
They repeat and support official narratives.
And so the.
To extent journalism exists, it's offshore, or it's in the alternative media and the Internet.
So it doesn't much matter what Trump says. I mean, he says all kinds of things. They don't make any sense, do they? I mean, he claims that he's totally destroyed Iran, and yet Iran controls the strait.
The American ships don't dare go near.
Trump is enamored with his power and the power of the United States, and he's delusional about it.
If you will remember, just as this war was announced, Trump said it'd be over in three days.
Well, it wasn't over in three days. It may not be over now.
But certainly the expectations of Trump and Netanyahu were completely wrong.
And they suffered humiliation and Iran I think saved both Netanyahu and Trump by agreeing to a ceasefire.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Do you think Iran could.
You've criticized Iranian strategy for accepting the ceasefire, but do you think Iran's stature would have been greater if it had preempted all of this and intervened to prevent the Gaza genocide and shown leadership that way, way ahead of the June war?
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Well, that's the question for the whole Middle east, not just for Iran.
You see, my view is that the Muslim world, particularly the Arabs, but also the Iranians, they have never confronted Israel or the United nations or Washington with the Israeli agenda, the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel.
They should have been asking for decades, what are you talking about, Greater Israel? You're saying we don't have a right to exist.
Are you determined to destroy all of the countries in the Middle east in order to exercise your hegemony, your claim?
They've never raised this question, in my view, if the Iranians would take advantage of their semi victory in this conflict and start raising this question because it affects the remaining Arab states. I mean, what Arab states remain? Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
The rest of them have been destroyed.
And then of course, we have the Muslims and Iran and in Turkey.
But as you know that recently,
[00:14:00] Speaker A: we'll have to go to part two for the rest of it. Professor PAUL Craig Roberts. I'll stop you there. More from the former U.S. assistant Secretary of the treasury for Economic policy and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal after this break.
Foreign.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with Professor Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. assistant Secretary of the treasury for Economic Policy and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
I interrupted you, Paul, when you were talking about how Iran should globally encourage people to understand the Greater Israel Project. But I suppose through all that and your criticisms of Iranian strategy in this war, I mean, isn't the danger here that of course, the only real nuclear state in West Asia is Israel and the danger here is that Netanyahu could detonate a nuclear weapon over Iran?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Well, that is a possibility, but of course, you know, in a way the Iranians have a nuclear weapon. They could hit Dimona if, if the as they did.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: But they don't have a nuclear weapon yet, the Iranians. But they don't need one to hit Dimona.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: But what I'm saying is they don't need one because the Iranian nuclear weapon is sitting right there in Dimona. All they have to do is hit it with their ballistic missiles, which they can do.
And then you have, you have a nuclear explosion in Israel and Radiation all over the place. And you know, of course, Israel is a tiny, tiny country. Iran is huge. Iran is as large as Western Europe.
Israel is tiny. It doesn't take much to destroy a small country.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's obviously very difficult because the west bank would be affected, Jerusalem would be affected, and holy sites,
[00:16:07] Speaker B: well, they're going to be effective also if Israel uses nukes on the ran. So I, I think that the constraints on the use of nuclear weapons are powerful. They haven't been used since 1945.
And I think that the country that uses them, that lets the genie out of the bottle would be damned and destroyed by the world. Because if Israel uses the nukes or Trump, the cork is out of the bottle, the genie's loose. Now anyone can use them.
And that can come back on the United States and Israel.
There's a limit, in my view, to how much the Russians and the Chinese will put up with.
Apparently they'll put up with a lot to avoid conflict, but there is a limit.
And when that, if that limit is approached, that's when we have the real war.
So my view is for the Iranians to win this attack on them in order to show that you can stand up to Israel and the United States.
I don't understand why the Arabs haven't taken unified action before.
Last February, the former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett came to the United States to address the annual conference of American Jewish organizations, the Israel Lobby.
And he said, this is a direct quote, Turkey is the next Iran.
Well, at the time he expected the Iranians to fall to the American Israeli attack.
But you can see they clearly have an agenda of aggression.
And to sit there and be knocked off one by one by one, never organizing, never presenting a common front, this is nonsensical.
And so this is why I say the Muslim world has never understood or confronted the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel.
That should be the issue for negotiation, not whether or not Iran can enrich uranium or control its coastal waterways.
The issue should be this agenda of Greater Israel. It implies the lack of sovereignty of all the Muslim countries, maybe in their non existence as states.
It's hard for me to describe what exactly is the state of government today in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria.
In what sense is there an organized state?
[00:19:38] Speaker A: So
[00:19:41] Speaker B: that's the kind of argument that I think needs to be under discussion. The, the Arab, the Muslim world should raise this, the United nations and say, look, this is a professed aggression against us by Israel and we know that the United States or Washington acts in behalf of Israel. We've seen it over and over. We. It was the United States that provided the weapons and the diplomatic cover for the genocide in Gaza.
So we are threatened with termination.
This is a declared policy of war against us. This is the issue that the United nations has to address.
So they haven't done that. It would be of great propaganda value for the Iranians if it got into Israeli politics. You know, not everyone in Israel is a Zionist.
And the.
Not. Not all of the Israelis are Zionists. Netanayu's party has a low support, 25%. He has to rule with coalitions.
And so we see now previous prime ministers forming a coalition to challenge elections this fall in Israel.
And they feel strong enough.
They feel strong to do that because of the outcome so far of the attack on Iran. It has not been successful for Israel. Israel suffered a lot of damage and had to ask for a ceasefire.
So this has made Net Nayu vulnerable. And so if the whole question of the Zionist agenda became an issue inside Israeli politics, it's possible a government could form that would understand that that agenda is unrealistic. Okay, well, the area is too big to be ruled by Israel.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And you've advocated that. You've advocated that Israeli opposition should be involved in any U.S. israel, Iran talks. I just wanted to ask about another genie out the bottle besides nuclear weapons. I mean, you served a president who was the subject of an assassination attempt.
And we're not advocating this when we talk about it, but surprised that Iran hasn't retaliated to the assassination of its leaders by assassinating.
I mean, Trump believes that one of the assassinations, or maybe both, he was given intel about, was somehow connected to Iran. Iran denies that.
Surprised. Iran hasn't assassinated Miriam Adelson or members of the Israeli lobby in the United States.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: No, I don't think that's the Iranian way. That would be dishonorable.
I think the Iranians would regard that as dishonorable and ineffective.
What effect did the American and Israeli assassination of so many Iranian leaders have? Apparently none. The Iranians still prevailed.
They stood against the United States, they stood against the US Israeli attack and won the conflict.
And it's trying to find a way out. He can't find a way out that he can't. That he can call victory running out of time.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Running out of time, Paul. But of course. Yeah. And martyrdom is indeed part of elements of theology there. Just finally, as regards your criticism of Iranians not taking advantage of what they have, similarly, you criticize Putin for not taking advantage of what he has. I mean, you draw a parallel of the pointlessness of negotiating over Ukraine with the Trump administration.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yes.
Putin's never ending war has expanded greatly. And now the Iranians are using an airspace of NATO countries such as Poland to attack Russia. And these attacks are expanding. And so by letting the war go on forever, it widens and the wider it gets, the more dangerous it becomes comes.
So this was a strategic blunder on the part of Putin and it's now recognized as such. Increasingly, inside Russia herself, former generals are speaking out, talk shows are speaking out. And so it could end up destabilizing Putin.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: But you don't have any sympathy for those who feel that reticence is something in a nuclear armed world that all nations have to show to a degree, given the stakes are so high.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Yes, I think that's important.
But it's also important if countries are not sharing that retinas that you stand up for yourself or they keep pushing until you are forced to respond.
And the longer it goes on, the worse the response has to be.
So, you know, it's kind of like the argument that everyone made about Chamberlain not standing up to Hitler.
Sooner or later it gets out of control. And that, I think, is the situation that Putin has brought about and worsened.
How much, how, how much further can Putin back up?
How many times can he turn the other cheek? How many times can he ignore his own red lines before he finally has to respond? That's the issue that needs to be examined.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Professor Paul Craig Roberts, thank you.
And that's it for the show. Continued condolences to all those bereaved by today's NATO nation wars of aggression. We'll be back on Saturday. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel and going underground TV on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See Saturday.
