Transcription
So, um, these are, yeah, crazy times indeed. We saw that Trump threatened to wipe out the entire Iranian civilization with its 90-plus million citizens. Uh, then he embraced this sudden ceasefire, uh, which he then seemingly undermined immediately thereafter. Uh, then he claims victory and, uh, yeah, begins to, um, distance himself from some of the key requirements of this ceasefire deal. It's, uh, it can be confusing. So, I was hoping if anyone can shed some light on this, it would be you.
Yeah, I think, uh, it is somewhat confusing for sure, and, uh, I think because President Trump, uh, you know, frequently contradicts himself, uh, and says outrageous things, that it sometimes feels like it's hard to make sense of what's going on here. But I, I actually think it's quite straightforward. And I think, uh, if you look at his two tweets on Monday, um, it, it tells you a great deal.
Now, what exactly am I saying? Uh, I think at an over-arching, from an overarching perspective, you want to understand that President Trump is desperate to end this war. He fully understands that we are close to going off a precipice, that if this war is not shut down, uh, we could end up in a global depression that's worse than we saw, uh, in the late 1920s. Uh, and he wants to do everything he can to avoid that.
So, you get two tweets on Monday morning and on Monday evening, and they're very different tweets, for sure, but they both show evidence of the desperation. In the morning, he says that he's going to wipe Iran off the face of the earth. Uh, he's going to destroy Iranian civilization forever. This is a genocidal threat of the first order. This is the kind of language that you expect from Adolf Hitler, not from an American president. And what's going on here is he's desperate, and he's threatening to annihilate the Iranians to get them to throw up their hands before he has to attack them that evening. He wants them to concede defeat.
By the end of the day, he does a 180-degree turn and he says there's going to be a ceasefire. But most importantly, he says that the ceasefire will be based on Iran's 10-point plan. Now, you want to understand that there are two plans on the table. One is the 15-point American plan, which has all the maximalist demands of the United States and Israel. And then there's the Iranian 10-point plan, which has all the maximalist demands of the Iranians. And he says that the negotiations will take place on the basis of the Iranians' 10-point plan. This is really quite remarkable. He says the 10-point plan provides a workable basis for an agreement. And again, these are the maximalist demands of the Iranian government. He says furthermore, in the tweet, that almost all of the points of contention between the two sides have been revol-, have been resolved. Again, remarkable.
What's going on here? He's basically found the off-ramp, and the off-ramp is to concede defeat. It is the only off-ramp. He's long had two options. One is he could go up the escalation ladder, which was he, which is what he was threatening to do in the morning. But as I've argued for a long time, he can't go up the escalation ladder because he loses at every step. And the idea that he's going to obliterate, uh, Iran, this is not acceptable. This cannot be done. So he can't escalate. So he's got to find an off-ramp. But the only off-ramp is surrender, is to concede defeat. And what he does in the second tweet, again, he reverses gears, goes in the opposite direction, and he concedes defeat. He says, "We're going to negotiate on the basis of the 10-point plan." This means none of our demands are going to be achieved, right? None of the big four demands that we made before the war started and after the war started are going to be realized, and we're going to negotiate on the basis of the maximalist demands that Iran has put on the table.
So, what I'm saying to you, Glenn, is if you look at the morning tweet and you look at the evening tweet, you see that Trump is desperate. He's desperate to end this war, and he wants to get a ceasefire as quickly as possible, and then he wants to start negotiations. But it seems like he wants to have it both ways, because, yes, he concedes defeat, will accept, you know, that Iran will set up a toll on the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, we'll put a ceasefire which includes Lebanon, all these things. And, but then once the ceasefire is in place, he seems to be still wanting to claim victory. So now his tweets are about, well, you know, you better not put any holes on the Strait of Hormuz, and, you know, Lebanon's not included. It looks like he wants to have it both ways. He concedes defeat to get the ceasefire, but once he has the ceasefire, he wants to make this victory claim because I noticed that Pete Hegseth, he also tried to do this victory lap, was just reading out all the people who were dead, you know, all the people they killed as a way of, uh, suggesting that this was victory. But it's, I, did you see it in a similar way that he, well, did you see the, the attempt to claim victory here? Because, uh, you know, what they had to agree to and what they're claiming, there seems to be a massive gap there.
Well, first of all, Glenn, they don't have a ceasefire because to have a ceasefire, the Iranians have to open the Strait of Hormuz. And the Iranians have refused to open the Strait of Hormuz because the Israelis are bombing Lebanon and attacking Hezbollah inside of Lebanon. And the Iranians say there will be no ceasefire. Uh, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until the Israelis, uh, stop attacking Hezbollah. And that hasn't happened. So the Israelis are undermining the ceasefire. You want to understand here that first of all, there's the ceasefire, but then there's the negotiations to end the war. But before you can get to the negotiations, you have to get a ceasefire. But we don't have a ceasefire. That's a key point to understand. And the question is whether or not President Trump is going to be willing to lean on Netanyahu in a really serious way to get him to stop attacking Hezbollah. Uh, and then we'll get a ceasefire. Then the Strait will be opened. Uh, but in terms of Hegseth and Trump declaring victory, this is putting lipstick on a pig. Come on. This is, it's clear we've lost.
I, I, you just want to think about it. We went into this war with four demands. One was regime change. Two was Iran would get rid of its nuclear enrichment capability. Three is Iran would eliminate all its long-range ballistic missiles. And four, Iran would stop supporting the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. None of those four demands have been realized. None. Furthermore, Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz, which gives it enormous leverage. Furthermore, Iran still has a huge inventory of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, which allows it to attack American bases in the region, American forces in the region. Uh, the GCC states, they're allied with the United States, and Israel itself. So Iran is in an excellent position today compared to the position it was in on February 27th. And furthermore, as I said, President Trump, in his Truth Social post on Monday night, this is April 6th, said, "We're going to negotiate on the basis of the 10-point plan that the Iranians have put on the table." Uh, this is a clear defeat. And by the way, it's an even bigger defeat for Israel. And, uh, uh, in Israel, there is all sorts of talk, uh, to that effect. The Israelis fully understand that if you look at where this train is headed, this is a catastrophic defeat for them. And of course, it is for President Trump as well.
Well, in the future as well, if Israel or any of the Western states would want to attack Yemen or, um, attack Lebanon or genocide the Palestinians again, then Iran could just, yeah, shut down or increase the toll. You know, they have some different steps up the escalation on the Hormuz. They can, you know, block some ships. I don't know. There's this gives a massive instrument of power to the Iranians. I mean, they seem like they will exit this conflict as, uh, uh, maybe superpowers, a bit too much, but, uh, at least, um, yeah, adjacent to a great power. This is, uh, this is quite a, yeah, instrument of power they have, and as you said, they didn't have this before the war.
So, well, there's two points to be made. First of all, I, I think you don't want to, uh, overestimate, uh, how powerful a position, uh, Iran is in because of years of sanctions, and because of the destruction we've wrought on Iran since February 28th. Iran, in a very important way, has been devastated. Uh, this is a country that has been wrecked in a lot of ways. So, the idea that they're coming out of this war in great shape, uh, is wrong. Uh, they're going to have to spend many billions of dollars over many years to recover, or to come close to recovering, from all the damage that we and the Israelis have inflicted on them. Uh, there's no question, however, that given the fact that they control the Strait of Hormuz, uh, they have a huge amount of leverage. And I take it a step further, Glenn, you want to remember that the Houthis are their allies. They're one of the three groups that the Isra-, that the Iranians remain very close to: the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. And the Houthis can, they can shut down, uh, the Strait that leads out of the Red Sea, as they have done in the past. So the Iranians, working with the Houthis, have the ability to shut down traffic coming out of the Red Sea, out of the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, and they have the capability to shut down the traffic coming out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, so they do have enormous leverage. There's just no question about that. And, uh, this is going to present huge problems for the Israelis moving forward and for the Americans moving forward.
And by the way, Glenn, just to take this a step further, if you look at the maximalist demands of the U, of the Iranians, one of them is that all American military forces leave the region. Uh, I find it hard to believe that that will happen. Uh, but I would note that we have 13 bases, let me put it differently, we had 13 bases in the region on February 28th. And the New York Times reports that of those 13 bases, all of them have either been destroyed or badly damaged. You just want to think about that. Uh, our presence in the Gulf has been seriously undermined by this war. Uh, the 13 bases that we depended on are basically gone or almost gone. And then you have to ask yourself the question, are the Gulf states that hosted us on these bases going to want the United States to come back and rebuild those bases? And as I said, there's also the question of where, whether we're going to want to do that, right? And then there's the point that the Iranians want us out of the region. So what our military presence in the region looks like, uh, when all the dust settles is hard to say, but we are going to be no more, we're not going to be any more influ-, we're going to be less influential, have less power in the Gulf, uh, less power projection capability in the Gulf, uh, when all is said and done than we had before February 28th.
It's quite extraordinary that, uh, how horrible this war was, and, uh, uh, but again, uh, it was a defeat. But, uh, I'm not sure what else Trump could have done than to accept defeat, because there was obviously a growing desperation. I was just wondering how, where you think most of the pressure came from. Was it that they were running out of missiles, intercepted missiles, in other words, the, the military? Was it the massive economic pressure, especially, yeah, the growing oil, oil prices? Or was it the, you know, the fueling the political havoc at home, loss of voters? What, what do you think, or is there other dimensions to this, uh, disaster that we're missing?
>> Well, I think the secondary factor is that militarily, we couldn't figure out how to win the war in any meaningful way. Just the, you know, ground invasion didn't make sense. Uh, we couldn't use the navy to do much of anything. Uh, we, we just, we just didn't have many options. And I think that was becoming manifestly clear. And you want to remember that in this rescue operation, uh, where they got the second pilot out, we lost more aircraft that day than we have lost on any single day since the Vietnam War. And think about that. Since the Vietnam War, right? We have never lost as many aircraft in one day as we lost in this rescue mission. Just tells you that we were not doing well militarily. Uh, so I think that was of secondary importance.
I think what's of primary importance here is, uh, what's happening to the world economy. I think, uh, the Chinese and the Russians are very scared about what the long-term consequences of this war are going to be for the world economy. Uh, and that includes the supply of food around the world, as well as oil and gas. Uh, and I believe the Chinese put pressure on the Iranians and talked at great length to the Pakistanis about getting Iran to come to the negotiating table, uh, and to work out a ceasefire and then get talking about settling this war. I think the Chinese understand full well that this will have disastrous consequences for everyone, and I want to underline that word, everyone, if this war continues. This war has to be shut down. Uh, if you look at what's happening in East Asia, and this includes countries like South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, uh, and the potential for really grave damage in China, uh, and countries like Russia over the long term, everybody understands, and I believe the Trump administration understands, that we have to shut this one down. So I think you see Trump trying to do that. It's Trump who's actually been pushing hard for some sort of exit option, some way of settling this war. There's no question that Trump is deeply interested in doing that. Uh, but the Iranians, as I've long argued, have a vested interest in stringing this out. The, the Iranians don't want to settle this war quickly because the longer the war goes on and the more damage it's done to the international economy and the deeper the panic that Trump is in, the more leverage the Iranians have. So it's no problem, I think, from the Iranian point of view, if this ceasefire doesn't work out, because as it goes on, the conflict, that is their leverage, increases. But nevertheless, I believe what happened here is the Chinese, working with the Pakistanis and directly with the Iranians, put great pressure on Iran. They might have even brought the Russians in to put pressure on Iran to go to the negotiating table because this one has to be shut down.
So I think as you look at the situation today, you go back to those two tweets of, uh, President Trump on Monday, this is April 6th, and you ramp forward up to the present, and then you project out into the future. I, I think it's the global economy that really is driving the train here.