Transcription
Welcome back. Today is Monday, June 15th, and uh we are joined today by Professor Jeffrey Saxs to discuss if uh well, peace could break out in Iran. So, thank you for coming on.
We see now >> um well, we see that Trump announced that a deal has been reached. Uh again, one would like to be optimistic. Uh but how do you see this deal? Well, how sustainable is it? uh because it implies some painful concessions. I know many people in the US as well as uh possibly the majority in Israel uh do not want this. So if we add to the fact that the US does not have a great history in terms of implementing these kind of agreements especially with Iran uh how I guess how justify this optimism now?
Well, of course, we have to be extremely cautious because the details of what has ostensibly been signed and now all parties, Iran, the United States and Pakistani mediators have said that uh an agreement has been signed. We don't know the details and it comes in many stages and uh from what we do know and in any event it could fall apart uh quite easily. So what do we know? Uh we know that uh the three sides have said that there will be a ceasefire. Uh and the three sides uh uh that have talked about this I should say two of the antagonist the US and Iran and the third being the mediator Pakistan. Uh this does not include Israel. So Israel is not a formal party to this agreement as far as we know. Uh the agreement seems to call for uh an end of hostilities. The phrase that the Pakistani announcement used was a permanent end to hostilities. It ostensibly comes in phases uh two broad phases. One is to reopen the straight of Hormuz and the international uh oil and gas traffic. uh and the second phase is about the nuclear issues. It seems according to the announcements that the agreement does not include uh other kinds of demands that the United States had once upon a time put on the table about uh Iran's missile systems or its support for other groups in the region such as Hezbollah. Uh so it seems to be a two-stage agreement. one to open the straight of Formuz and second to uh then negotiate over a period of 60 days the uh uh some some kind of resolution on the nuclear issue in which Iran would uh in some sense irrevocably but not uh uh produce or uh procure through purchase or other way a nuclear weapon. and US and other international sanctions uh economic sanctions would be dropped. So that's the basic framework within that there are many statements uh but not so much clarity.
Uh how will these straight of horm be governed going forward? It seems from the Iranian side that Iran says this is not an international waterway. It's a waterway shared by Iran and Oman and we will have co-responsibility for that. Uh whether that is somehow inscribed in the agreement or not, we don't know. President Trump uh said uh that there would be no tolls charged and this may be one of the terms of the agreement because uh Iran was claiming uh tolls of $1 a barrel uh of oil on the ships passing through and maybe that has been dropped. On the other side, there are statements that uh the US will unfreeze uh Iranian assets that are frozen and a number that is mentioned is $25 billion. Which assets? Why? How? Who? Under what authority did the US freeze these? What is really being counted here is not clear, but there seems to be some kind of arrangement where the physical traffic will open. Some kind of nominal uh or maybe even more substantial than that, Iranian and Omanian control over the strait will continue. Uh and uh if the rumors are correct uh tolls will not be charged on trafficking of oil and gas. But on the other side, the US will unfreeze uh a significant let's say amount of uh assets that were frozen uh beforehand.
Now, Israel is not part of this agreement. Uh and certainly uh the Netanyahu government would not agree to one of the crucial terms that's claimed about this agreement that it covers a cessation of uh fighting in Lebanon. Um exactly what has been agreed regarding Lebanon is also unclear. But if uh the past is uh in any way predictive, and of course it should be, Israel may try to undermine or destroy the agreement uh by continuing the bombing uh in Lebanon or finding a pretext or claiming uh that Hezbollah shot a drone or a missile into Israel and now the bombing of Beirut will continue. And all of this is to say that this is extremely fragile. It essentially uh at the core from what we can gather returns the situation more or less to uh the uh situation Exxanti before the February 28th attack by Israel and the United States on Iran with some significant uh um changes perhaps on formal control of the straits perhaps with some unfreezing of Iranian assets or perhaps not. Sorry to be so vague, but uh our main media don't even pretend to tell us what's in the agreement. We have some limited reports from the Iranian media, but other than that, lots of details remain vague.
I I think there's one overriding truth that we can say even at this stage. This war accomplished absolutely nothing. It was useless. It was stupid. Uh it was a Mossad uh operation uh principally sold to the United States. Uh it killed a lot of people. It created a lot of harm. uh it is uh the result of uh essentially irresponsible people uh being in charge in Israel and in the United States. Uh nothing good came out of this. Not an iota of substantive achievement of any value for the US. It weakened Israel to be sure diplomatically. Uh, how many times now has uh Trump himself called Netanyahu uh crazy in exploitivefilled terms, including uh again yesterday. Uh Israel's image in the world, rightfully so, uh is in a catastrophic condition because Israel is truly a rogue state and a a murder state incorporated. Uh and it's a disgrace how it behaves. So, Israel is the clear loser. Uh the United States uh has uh uh certainly lost any any aura of uh strength and invincibility in all of this. I wouldn't say Iran is the winner though. It's battered. Uh it has suffered thousands of deaths, tens of billions of dollars of damage. Um wars can produce just losers. Uh, and uh, this is what this war did. This was a lose-lose war stupidly launched by Israel and the United States. It accomplished absolutely nothing. And whether it's over, of course, remains to be seen. This is hardly a new day in the Middle East breaking out as Trump's sickants have said. Uh but maybe it is a maybe it is a fragile uh ceasefire that will hold uh my inbox is already filled with people saying it will fall to pieces within 48 hours. It's a pretext. It's a ruse. I I would not myself go that far to make that conclusion. Both sides uh Iran and the United States have good reason for the fighting to stop. And so maybe the fighting will stop. Uh Israel never seems to stop fighting. But uh Israel is in a state of uh open collapse in terms of it the support that it has in the United States and the rest of the world. So maybe this time Israel won't defeat the peace because maybe what Trump is uh very visibly saying in public that you're [ __ ] crazy bastard to quote the president of the United States. Otherwise I wouldn't use the language. I'm just quoting from the White House. Um maybe that actually reflects the fact that with American politics the way it is and with an upcoming election and with Trump's approval ratings uh in a steep descent uh there isn't a mood for Israel to play its typical uh disastrous games.
>> Well, you mentioned this vagueness um in terms of what the deal would entail. I think that's almost required now because there's a lot of painful concessions. Uh for example, on the straight of Hormuz they say yes there won't be a toll but a toll suggest it's mere cost for entry but there will be a fee. It's um which would suggest I guess operational support. It's I mean it's not legally it's not a nothing. It means it entails the navigation assistance, rescue operations, environmental protection, different security issues. So uh there is a legal distinction between a toll and a fee but at the end of the day the fee did not exist before this war and it will exist after. So for >> exactly Trump it will it will be a concession it will be a loss. Uh so it's just going to be hard the way he talks about uh has talked about this war and the outcome over the past few months. You would think he will meet a lot of opposition once the details start to come out to the front. I mean it would be a minefield. Uh but >> yeah and and two kinds of opposition of course we have the Zionist lobby uh which will uh openly attack the deal as a concession to the evil uh regime. Uh and there will be uh of course eventually uh if our our media ever get around to it and if there are at least a few politicians that are not pathetic in our country questioning what the hell just happened? Why did we do this? What kind of absurd uh war was this? Uh launched singlehandedly by the president of the United States without any public backing, without any congressional backing, without any clear explanation with the statements at the beginning that the goal was regime change and unconditional surrender. Uh and uh all of the the claims that were made and none of those was achieved. So in this sense of course there deserves to be and will be criticism but we certainly are not at the end of the uh Zionist lobby in the United States either.
>> Yeah. Well uh I I think people always could lur into this wars because of the the way political discourse is now. I mean, you notice when they went in when they attacked Iran, essentially the logic was, well, if if if you support it, uh, then you're pro- Israel. If you're not supporting it, then you're pro Iran. This is how people talk. No one began with the point of departure being what what should we achieve and how can it be achieved, you know, an actual strategy. And we do the same with the war against Russia. That is uh uh, you know, the language on youth. If you support actions, that should signify whether you're for against or pro-Russian or pro- NATO. But at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything what your position is, it if you can't achieve your objectives, and it's very hard to explain why this was a pro-American or pro-Israeli war to begin with. It didn't serve their interest. But um I I think a couple more things I would add. First, there are no operative norms against war uh in the US executive branch and certainly not in Trump's mind. So, the idea that you bomb places, kill people, assassinate people, this is a norm. There's no sense in which any single American official would say, "Oh, but the UN charter doesn't allow that." That statement doesn't exist. We are led by gangsters uh and with a gangster mentality. Do what you can, get away with what you can. Anyone else is a sucker. Don't be stupid. There's no international law. So, first there are no norms against this. There's no moral compunction, legal compunction uh need to justify other than victory itself. Then comes the uh very uh pragmatic question, well will this succeed? And I think it's probably the case that Trump was on a drunken high from delusional high, let me say from Venezuela uh in which uh some kind of inside operation between the CIA and the Venezuelan government agreed to the removal forcibly of the president of the country. It left a regime intact, but it changed the government and it changed uh politics in a way because it was the cover for the US to remove sanctions that had been put on Venezuela beforehand and start shipping Venezuelan oil to the United States. And the Venezuelans were in a rather desperate need of cash and so they went along with this as well. And I think uh the Iranian gambit was not aiming to be a war. It was aiming to be a one-day operation. And everything we know about it tells us that story that there was a plan to install a leader. Trump said as much uh kill the leadership decapitation and everything will be all right the next day. So this is also uh the behavior of uh very naive uh very arrogant people. It does show to my mind a complete breakdown of politics in the United States. Our institutions don't work. We don't have a institutional review. We don't have a functioning national security council, national security apparatus. We certainly don't have a republic in the sense of a constitutional order in which Congress would either declare war or have oversight uh over the actions of the executive branch or control through the budget. We have none of that. We have a small uh gangster mentality group running things right now. Uh it didn't work for them. they face some uh constraints as a result of the failure of this one-day operation. This is essentially trying to find a way out. I think it it's not a surrender. It's not a victory. It shows how useless entirely uh all of this gangsterism was and how much it hurts everyone else, us uh especially the Iranian people, the 160 school girls killed on the first day of the strike in Minab. Uh it's been a disaster for everybody. the the one uh place where it's not been a disaster is in big tech which has tried out its weapons uh gotten expanded uh Pentagon contracts for AI systems made a few mistakes like uh mass murder of school girls but you know that's all in uh uh the machine learning uh process and the systems learning process. Palanteer has won. The Israeli stock market has won. Uh so the wararm mongers they came out ahead. Uh the world suffered much much larger losses from a military, strategic and foreign policy point of view. This was uh not only useless, it was a loss. the United States lost any claim to protect countries in the Middle East or to have military dominance or to have any kind of uh hegemonic control.
One more point, Glenn, that I would add just as in these early hours of trying to assess this, the Iranians were hurting badly economically. Uh the blockade did hurt them, but more than that, the US has been on an economic war against Iran, and that war has been years underway. Our uh Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant is also very much a gangster mentality and talked about how economic statecraftraft had crushed the Iranian economy. And I think I'm guessing that the Iranians wanted some kind of deal to release uh some of the assets, which is interesting because what was being released was assets illegally taken by the United States in the first place, but the US was using that as bargaining leverage. I do think that this shows that while the US military might does not have the strategic leverage, neither in Ukraine nor in uh in Iran and certainly not in East Asia that Americans might pretend that it does. the uh US uh chokeold on international transactions remains uh not insignificant. I have to say I think it's a a real puzzle to me why the BRICS nations by this point have just not made a full workound from the US unilateral uh economic warfare because it's illegal and it can be circumvented. But so far the US continues to deploy its economic warfare with some effect in Venezuela and in Iran.
Well, I you mentioned before that your you know inbox was full of people who was uh warning or dismissive of this being a temporary deescalation and I think that's fair as well. uh what you said now though do do you think this could be a turning point in the US not just this Middle East strategy but overall not because this is a moment of you know moral clarity but the recognition that the distribution of power has shifted that is if you try to do everything and you end up being punished then at some point you have to change course I mean same as with the I heard with the US Israel the tensions as well some argue that it's a bit theater but I have a hard time seeing that it's pure theater given how it's treated in the Israeli media, how it's fueling descent in the US. Um, again, it could be extended to the war against Russia. That is, if it's it didn't, first of all, if if a war isn't successful, at least one can lean back. Usually in Washington argue, well, at least we weakened our adversary. We destroyed a lot of things. We killed a lot of people. But but at the end of this it looks strategically that uh not just Iran but the Russians will come out on top and then NATO the US they all coming out on a very weaker position. This is not how the wars were supposed to work. Do you do you think it's a possibility that well especially in the Middle East that this war could compel the US to fundamentally change his strategy? I mean its bases have been harmed, it alliances have been harmed. Uh at some point they must they must I guess adjust to reality that is what can actually be achieved you know to enhance your own security.
I think uh yes at a fundamental level uh the world is changing and the sense of US power is changing in a in a definitive way. Uh the US remains a powerful country but after 1991 it claimed the mantle of global hegeimon. It claimed that it was the unipolar power of the world. Uh it claimed a writ uh over uh the entire world basically and it was spelled out most clearly by big new Bjinski in 1997 in the grand chess board and the subtitle of the grand chess board was essentially preserving American primacy. Uh and the idea of that book very influential and reflecting even more importantly than its influence reflecting the mindset in Washington was the United States needs control over Eurasia to ensure control over the world and the way to keep control over Eurasia was uh essentially to weaken Russia surround Russia with NATO prevent any kind of alliance between Russia, China and Iran. Uh and uh play the different states off against each other uh and by taking Ukraine essentially that would be the pivot uh the geographic pivot for all of Eurasia because Russia would be weakened. Russia would have no alternative but to turn to the US and the West. In that book, it's interesting. Bjinsky says this is the way the world will go. The US will remain the uh hegeimon because of its technological and economic dominance and that fundamentally is over. The rise of China itself changed that. Geopolitically uh Iran uh China and Russia are aligned in a way that Bjinsky said could never happen. Militarily, the US is at a stalemate. It cannot impose its will militarily on Russia. It could not even impose its will militarily on Iran. That's one of the clear lessons of this. There's not a a chance in the world it could impose its will militarily on China. I think maybe the United States has recognized that in all three theaters. In Ukraine, it's washing its hands of the Ukraine war. In China, Trump rather uh openly said visav Taiwan, "We don't want a war. We don't want you to declare independence and we're holding our weapon sales to Taiwan in obeyance." This is was basically what he said as he left Beijing from the summit last year that we can't impose our will on China. So in a sense I think what is being seen is the US does not have any kind of hegemonic control over the vast realm of Eurasia uh which is I'm sorry over Asia in particular and over the non-EU part of Eurasia. So I should be careful. It still has influence. Uh it still has uh the ability to impose pain and sanctions, but it cannot impose military victory. And I think increasingly its ability to impose econ economic uh compulsion is fading away though I would say it played some role in what we've seen now visav Iran. So if I could put it in ancient terms, the Roman Empire was an expansionist empire through Augustus and through the first century AD and then it reached its limits of course it reached its limits in Germania early on in the battle of Tutenberg forest and I I when the Roman Empire decided added we won't conquer Germania. And that painful loss happened early on I think it's 9 AD if I remember correctly. But after that the the Romans said we're not going to really fight in Germania. We're going to hold a line. Then by the time Hadrian became the emperor in I think it's 117 a he said we've reached the limits of the empire will live in peace or maybe we'll battle on our borders a bit skirmishing but we're not going to expand. If I could make a crude analogy, maybe in Washington they'll learn stop you cannot control, divide, weaken or defeat Russia. You can't control the Middle East hegemonically. Certainly not West Asia with Persia or today's Iran and certainly not with China. This doesn't mean that games won't continue. Economic statecraft as Bessant, our Treasury Secretary calls it using ugly and illegal tools will continue. But I think Glenn, you're you're right that essentially in in the three main theaters that Bjinsky himself talked about, US and Russia, US and Iran, and US and China, the limits have been reached. People should view the experience of the Ukraine war, this stupid, useless war with Iran and the failed trade war with China as all showing America's certainly not the unipolar power. It's certainly not the world hgeaban. It does not have its rip over the world maybe from 40 degrees east longitude to the Pacific to China and maybe it will learn some lessons. Stop being so gangsterish because basically the US has used gangsterism to try to extend, prolong enhance its power. But gangsterism wears very thin. There's no cooperation, there's no trust, there's no respect, there's no real power from it, only tactics and maneuver. And I think the US has been exposed in that way. Again, the US is still powerful and very nasty in our own hemisphere. You know, events today could be followed by an invasion of Cuba at any moment. We we could see more terrible things. The US has not turned into some kind of beneficent international law abiding state. It remains an orary, nasty, gangsterish empire in the Washington mentality, but limits are being understood more than before even if they are not openly acknowledged and certainly they are very much disliked.
Well, I on the unipolar moment, I think what key criticism in the 1990s was that the uniolar moment would unavoidably be temporary because the US would exhaust itself and then it would incentivize adversaries to collectively balance the US. I think now the war against Russia pushed the Russians in closer to China. The war against Iran pushed Iran even closer to Russia and China. So at some point I think the lessons have to be made that the hegemonic peace does not reflect reality and when pulses do not reflect reality it has very unfortunate u consequences.
Exactly, Glenn. And I think there are two things that people should keep in mind about this. One is that you get balancing. So you push so hard on adversaries, they join forces together and you turn out not to be as powerful as you think. And the second is the myth of the US technological dominance. This is still a continuing myth certainly in the US stock market. But the idea that ultimately and Bjinsky said it very clearly in 1997 and he was suffering from that myth. The US ultimately will triumph because ultimately western technology is superior and the other countries will have to face that fact either on the battlefield or in the economy. And that is in truth a core reason for the failure of the unipolar moment. China absolutely competes and in many ways out competes the United States technologically on a very very wide range of activities. But it's more than that. Look at Iran. This is a sophisticated country that can make sophisticated weaponry. and that was completely not understood or felt in Washington. Same with Russia. Technology has spread, advanced weaponry, digital technologies, AI. These are not the preserve of Elon Musk himself or Palunteer or Israel or the United States. These are worldwide technologies and they have spread to many power centers and there are a lot of smart people in a lot of places. And so the idea that the ultimate control of the western hegeimon is its technological superiority needs to be put aside. And if it were put aside, there would not only be peace and mutual respect, but a lot more economic gain as well. Because one of the things that I completely completely reject and I would laugh at but I find it so tragic is that the global economy has been taken over by the military strategists who now view trade and finance as strategic weapons rather than as the ways of mutual gain and economic progress. So I want the economists who believe in open trade, finance and mutual benefit to reclaim these tools from these economic warriors like our treasury secretary and others and our commerce secretary and our trade representatives who view everything about the economy in warfare terms.
Thank you for taking the time. Uh actually if I can just add one note, I think what you said about the technology is quite important because it shows that this these wars don't just signify the end of the postcold war hegemonic era but also centuries of western technological dominance and well you can put it well at least uh yeah international leadership over the past 500 years since the western maritime powers set out to reconnect the world. So it's uh yeah interesting times. So uh thank you very much again.
>> Of course. See you see you again very soon. Thanks a lot.