Mike Adams warns March 4, 2026’s U.S.-Iran standoff risks nuclear war after Trump orders Navy escorts through Hormuz despite Iran’s blockade, leaving 150+ ships stranded and insurers pulling coverage. He accuses Israel of orchestrating false flags—like a radiological attack—to sway public opinion, citing 9/11 ties and Khamenei assassination plots, while predicting Iran may demand trillions in reparations or nuclear weapons to reopen the strait. With U.S. munitions shortages exposed and Iran’s air defenses unmatched, Adams calls Trump’s strategy reckless, urging Congress to impeach him as global markets crash and supply chains collapse, urging listeners to stockpile iodine, food, and fuel for potential fallout. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, welcome to Bright Videos News for Wednesday, March 4th, 2026.
I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for joining me today.
And this is a crazy day because of some things that Trump has just announced, such as he wants to send the Navy right through the Strait of Hormuz in order to escort oil tankers.
And Iran says, no, don't even think about it because we'll blow up your ships.
So I've got a special report about that very topic coming up.
In addition, I have interviewed from the Durand, Alex Christoforu.
He joined me from his bunker in Europe, wherever he is, but he joined me late night his time.
And we had a very important and breaking news discussion about what's actually happening.
So that's coming up later.
And then I've got a couple other reports about the war, about what's happening in the world, about the importance of preparedness, etc.
And then on top of that, we have launched a new collection of products at our store, Health Ranger Store, for survival and nuclear preparedness, of course, including storable food and also iodine, etc.
You can find that at healthrangerstore.com slash survival.
If you want the most heavily scrutinized, certified organic, lab-tested, storable, you know, long-shelf life, organic food and supplements and personal care products, that's the place to get them.
HealthRangerStore.com slash survival.
All right, we're about to jump into the reports here, but I want to mention also that the AI model called DeepSeek version 4 is rumored to be releasing today, possibly today, maybe tomorrow, who knows?
Or maybe another week because it's already been delayed several weeks, but it's rumored to be today.
I will keep you posted on that.
You can follow my post at brightion.social, where there's no censorship, there's no shadow banning for anybody.
It's just you get all the posts from all the people you follow.
It's one of the few honest social media platforms in existence.
So check that out.
DeepSeek version 4 is supposed to be a multimodal model, which means it handles text and images, and I think audio.
And I'm not even sure if it includes some level of video too.
That would be very surprised if that were the case.
But who knows?
The Chinese engineers these days have done some amazing things.
And we've seen over the last week numerous model releases from Quen, which is an Alibaba brand.
And Quenn has put out small models and medium models and multimodal models.
And they are really, really impressive.
They're fast, they're lean, they're free, they're open source.
I mean, my goodness.
If DeepSeek is able to beat the Quenn 3.5 models, it's going to be groundbreaking.
AI Threats and Panic00:15:31
And right now, something extraordinary, well, something horrible is happening in South Korea that I think is related to this.
And it's that in South Korea, the markets are crashing, especially the tech markets are crashing.
And I think some of this is related to AI advancement.
Probably some of it's related to China's new announcements of breakthrough battery technology, which is putting many South Korean battery companies utterly out of business.
But it might also be related to energy inputs because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
So there are a number of possibilities, but South Korea is in trouble financially.
Japan is in trouble financially.
The United States is the empire of debt, the great Ponzi dollar pyramid or whatever that's on the brink of collapse.
And Western Europe is in deep trouble because of their inability to acquire energy.
And now they're going to have to pay through the nose.
And they can't get gas from Qatar because of the Strait of Hormuz.
So there's a lot of panic in the world right now.
And Trump set this off.
Trump and Netanyahu, they're the ones to blame for the panic.
You know, Qatar has halted all natural gas production.
Halted it.
Major oil refineries in Saudi Arabia are offline.
We've got an energy crisis in the making here that could be absolutely catastrophic for our world.
We could see in the United States even gasoline at over $10 a gallon within a few weeks.
Now, we do have our own oil supply in America.
Fortunately, we have good domestic production.
We have domestic natural gas.
But global prices will be so high, a lot of other countries will be trying to source it from the United States, who otherwise would have purchased it from the Persian Gulf Arab states.
So that's going to really spike demand and spike prices, and that's going to cause higher prices for you and I.
And that's going to bleed over into, of course, food prices and transportation prices, everything else that you can imagine.
Energy affects everything.
So be prepared for inflation to explode, all because Trump wanted to be the puppet of Netanyahu and do Netanyahu's bidding, which he has done obediently from day one.
So none of this is good news.
But let's proceed with the special reports that I've recorded.
And remember, stay tuned for the interview here at the end with Alex Christoforou from The Duran.
And it's a very informative interview and fresh.
I just recorded it a few hours ago with the latest information about what's happening in the Middle East.
All right, so enjoy the rest of the show.
And there'll be more tomorrow as well.
Okay, this is arguably the craziest thing that any of us have seen from Trump so far in this war.
He put out a social media post that says the following.
Effective immediately, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation, that's the DFC, to provide at a very reasonable price political risk insurance and guarantees for the financial security of all maritime trade, especially energy, traveling through the Gulf.
He means, I mean, maybe he means the Persian Gulf, but he really means the Strait of Hormuz.
He continues, this will be available to all shipping lines.
If necessary, the United States Navy, get this, will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.
No matter what, the United States will ensure the free flow of energy to the world.
And remember, this is the same United States that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, of course, and cut off Europe from the free flow of energy from Russia, right?
He says, the United States' economic and military might is the greatest on earth.
Typical Trump, all caps.
More actions to come.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump.
So, I mean, where to even begin on this?
All right, let's start with the basics.
So, first off, the only reason that he's doing this is because, of course, there's total panic among European countries.
There's panic all over the world because the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed because Iran said so.
And they have attacked some tankers, apparently with drones, and set some on fire is my understanding.
But more importantly, the insurance companies that typically insure these ships and oil tankers, they are refusing to insure these ships for obvious reasons because it's a state of war.
As a result, these ships aren't moving and roughly maybe 20 to 30 percent of the world's energy supply has been cut off because of this.
And although there's a little bit of a buffer in the system, a little bit of tolerance for some shortfalls or some delays, that buffer won't last very long.
And many countries will be in deep, deep trouble if they can't get energy out of the Strait of Hormuz.
And that includes many European countries, by the way, Western Europe.
They will be the ones that will be in the most dire situation.
Also, I believe Japan will be impacted quite dramatically.
They will have to look for oil and energy sources from elsewhere, which will drive up the prices of the non-Gulf oil.
And so guess who benefits from this?
Russia, of course.
Russia benefits.
So Trump, by starting this war with Iran, yes, Trump and Netanyahu conspired to start the war.
They initiated the attack.
They cut off the negotiations.
They did a surprise attack, assassinated the Ayatollah Khamenei.
And now they're going to make Russia even more wealthy because of the increased cost of energy.
So the big picture here right now is that Trump, you know, he operates in reaction mode so often because he doesn't anticipate these things happening.
For some reason, he doesn't anticipate there being a problem.
You know, he just thinks he can bluff his way through and brag his way through every problem.
But it turns out that reality is much more difficult.
And reality is starting to sink in.
He's no doubt getting panic calls from the Gulf states and panic calls from European countries.
This is why Spain has already refused to cooperate with Trump in terms of allowing its air bases to be used to attack Iran, etc.
So Trump then reacts by saying, well, I'm just going to have the U.S. taxpayers cover all the insurance costs for all these ships because the DFC, the Development Finance Corporation, is, of course, funded by U.S. taxpayers.
It's actually, the budget for it is approved by Congress through congressional appropriations.
And while in a normal year, the DFC is largely self-funding because it charges premiums, it offers loans, they get repaid, you know, it generates premium revenue from selling essentially risk insurance and things like that.
But there aren't going to be any premiums from the ships in the Strait of Hormuz that are going to be anywhere near covering the cost of Iran sinking the ships.
It's kind of like if there's an arsonist standing right outside your home with a can of gasoline and a pack of matches and a flamethrower, then Trump is saying, well, we'll sell you insurance for your home.
Well, you know it's going to get burned down, so whoever is fronting the bill, the risk for the payouts, whoever that is, is going to be eating massive losses.
And apparently these losses could exceed $100 billion if multiple ships are destroyed in the Strait of Hormuz.
So Trump is, Trump, the same guy who started this war, is now saying that you and I should pay for the ships that Iran destroys.
Because Trump wants to try to insist to the whole world that the Strait of Hormuz is not closed, that it's open for business, and he's going to tell these various tankers, yeah, go ahead, sail on through there.
And, you know, if a missile blows up and you all die and your ship sinks, don't worry.
We'll pay back whoever owns your ship.
We'll pay for it.
We, the U.S. taxpayers ultimately.
Which, I'm sorry, that's not acceptable.
If anybody should pay for the premiums, it should be Trump himself.
He should pledge his own personal wealth for this insurance project if that's what he wants to do.
But guess what?
Even if there's insurance, insurance doesn't bring back the oil, does it?
So if there's an oil tanker that is destroyed and that sinks, number one, it's going to be an environmental catastrophe, but secondly, it doesn't bring the oil back.
And while Trump, of course, knows that you can print currency, you can print dollars, you can't print oil.
You cannot print oil and you can't print ships.
You know, when the ships are destroyed, they're destroyed.
That's it.
So that's why then Trump is saying, well, if necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.
Oh my God, the U.S. Navy leaders must be losing their minds at this point.
Like, what the hell did Trump just promise that we were going to do?
Because the whole reason that the U.S. Navy is keeping its ships more than 500 kilometers typically away from the southern coastline of Iran is because Iran has an enormous collection of missiles and drones and even ocean water drones, you know, drone boats.
In addition, Iran has shore-to-ship anti-ship missiles that are basically cruise missiles that hunt down the ships.
And the closer those ships get to Iran, then the more missiles and drones can hit them.
And if you're within 100 kilometers of the southern coast of Iran, it's a suicide mission.
Your ship is going to be struck and probably destroyed because Iran's going to throw everything they have at you.
And how close is the Strait of Hormuz to the southern coastline of Iran?
Well, it touches it.
It's right there.
And the entire Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest point is only something like maybe 35 kilometers wide.
So it's no distance at all.
This is considered point-blank range for drones and missiles and whatever else Iran wants to throw at these ships.
On top of that, Iran probably has mines that are under, you know, at the bottom of the strait right now, mines that are awaiting commands to release themselves and float to the surface.
And they also, today's sea mines are very intelligent.
They can either be programmed to not detonate if it's a ship from a certain country like China, let's say, or if it's a ship from the UK, then they can be programmed to detonate.
Now, I'm not saying that the mine knows where the ship is from, but from being controlled from the shore, Iran can determine the ship's country of origin or country of ownership or whatever, because that's all public monitored information on the sea lanes.
And then they can remotely direct the mines to go into detonation mode.
So Iran may not even have to fire any missiles at all.
Iran could sink U.S. Navy vessels.
That could kill hundreds of U.S. sailors, depending on the vessel.
And some vessels, the larger ones, obviously, you know, aircraft carriers, they carry 4,000 to 5,000 sailors.
I'm not saying that Trump would be crazy enough to send an aircraft carrier into the Strait of Hormuz, but who knows?
Maybe he will.
And if he does, it's bait.
Let's be honest.
It's bait.
He's trying to get it sunk.
And this may be the whole reason behind this, is to try to get the American people to support a ground war, you know, boots on the ground, troops invading, by first allowing Iran to sink a U.S. naval vessel.
And how do you do that?
You just sail it right up to the shores of Iran and wait.
Now, what do you think the U.S. Navy thinks about this?
What about the sailors on those ships?
Because for the past week, you know, you've been hanging out 500 kilometers or more away from the shore of Iran, talking amongst each other.
Yeah, we're steering clear of that.
We got to keep our distance, you know, so we have time to react if they launch something and we're out of range of most of their missiles out here, you know, 500 kilometers away.
And then Trump calls up and says, oh, by the way, I need you to sail right there.
I need you to go right to the shore and go through the Strait of Hormuz.
At that point, if you're a U.S. Navy sailor, you're just like, that's a suicide mission.
And I don't even know how to swim.
You know, I mean, it's not a good thing to be.
I mean, do all sailors know how to swim?
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
You would think that that would be a requirement, but maybe not.
Maybe they figure they never have to swim.
But in this case, they might have to swim.
You might have to swim to the southern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, you know, to get rescued and picked up out of the water once your ship sinks.
So that's what this is right now.
This is some kind of crazy, insane thing that it's just the latest crazy, insane thing that Trump is pushing.
The reaction to this that I've seen on social media and on videos and so on has already been just astonishment.
Like Trump couldn't possibly be that strategically ignorant.
Could he?
Could he?
And then, you know, the question kind of answers itself.
It's like, well, yeah, he probably could.
Because he's living in a delusional fantasy land.
Trump's Delusional Fantasy00:15:22
He thinks the U.S. has almost completely destroyed Iran already.
He thinks the U.S. is winning.
He thinks that the U.S. military has unlimited ammunition and can fight wars forever.
He said that a day before.
He said all those things.
He believes that.
And he's wrong on every single point.
The U.S. is losing this war.
Why?
I mean, you can see it in the panic.
The U.S. is losing because they're losing the support of the Gulf states.
The world is in a panic over lack of energy supplies.
And if the Gulf states can't sell their energy in dollars, then that's going to crater global demand for dollars, which will crater the demand for treasuries.
You know, the financial implications of this are catastrophic for the United States.
You can't look at this war just in military terms or kinetic terms.
You have to look at it in economic terms.
The U.S. is destroying the economies of Western nations right now, or at least setting up conditions that will lead to economic destruction by attacking Iran, knowing that Iran was going to close the Strait of Hormuz, which they already promised to do previously.
They promised to do it.
And now it's happened.
And then for Trump to think that, well, we'll just escort ships with U.S. Navy vessels, that doesn't stop drones.
It doesn't stop missiles.
And even if you if you think it can, if you're going to fire anti-air interceptors from whatever Navy ships you send in there, well, how much ammo do they have?
Not enough.
Not enough.
Even if they carry 300 interceptors, let's say.
Well, Iran's got, you know, 30,000 drones or whatever the number is.
They can just, once they see a Navy ship and a tanker coming through the strait, Iran will just say, well, you know, launch 500 drones or whatever, just to make a point.
Just sink a Navy ship and sink an oil tanker, and then there will be no question that the Strait of Hormuz is closed for business.
Then there'll be, you know, a giant oil spill, tanker at the bottom of the strait, and a U.S. naval vessel at the bottom of the strait, maybe blocking the strait.
Who knows?
Kind of depends on how big the craft is and how deep.
Because it's not even very deep there, by the way.
It's not that deep.
So I don't know what that would mean in terms of physically blocking the strait.
But it would certainly psychologically block the strait.
And it would also make Trump look like the complete idiot that he's proving to be.
Because if Trump is boasting of this big promise, oh, we're going to escort all, everything's going to be great.
You'll be safe.
You know, we'll escort you through the strait.
And then the first time he tries to do that, a naval vessel gets destroyed.
Then what's the world going to say then?
Well, hey, Trump, you can't keep your promises.
You can't protect the Strait of Hormuz.
You can't protect the Fifth Fleet headquarters.
You can't protect U.S. air bases.
You can't protect the airport in Riyadh.
You can't protect Tel Aviv.
You can't protect anybody.
You can't even protect your own ships.
So what can you protect?
And the answer is going to be nothing.
Nothing.
That's why it seems increasingly likely that Trump is going to absolutely destroy America's credibility and presence in the Middle East.
After this is all said and done, most of these Arab Gulf states are going to tell the U.S., get the hell out.
It's not worth it having your military base here and there's no benefit.
You didn't protect us at all.
And even Israel's realizing, gosh, you know, the U.S. military can't protect us either.
Israel's taking heavy hits.
You're not seeing many of them because of all the censorship, of course.
But they're taking heavy hits that you can find from alternative sources, such as certain Telegram channels, for example.
Not on X, but on Telegram, yes.
Here's a report from The Cradle.
Major insurance companies have canceled their war risk coverage for vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz amid Iran's ongoing military operations in the Persian Gulf, according to notices posted on their websites.
Quote, here's a notice from David Smith, head of Marine with brokers McGill and Partners.
Okay, I'm not familiar with that company, but I'm not in the shipping insurance business.
He says, quote, as a result of this fast-moving situation, each underwriter is invariably increasing rates, or in some instances, for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, even declining to offer terms right now.
Yeah, declining to offer terms.
In other words, no soup for you.
No insurance at any price.
Nothing.
This decision takes effect Thursday.
It follows vessel strikes in the Gulf that have left around 150 ships stranded, several of them damaged, and at least two people dead.
The insurance providers, including Guard, Skuld, North Standard, and the London P ⁇ I Club and the American Club, withdrawing war risk cover, ship owners must now secure new policies at sharply higher rates or avoid transiting the Strait of Hormuz altogether.
Of course, the problem is that once you're in the Persian Gulf, the only way out is back through the Strait of Hormuz.
It's like a dead end.
So you're going to have to get insurance or you're stuck.
You know, Iran has already proved that it can destroy U.S. military bases, that it can hit targets with precision, that it has an ample supply of missiles, and that it's not lying about it in the same way that Trump is obviously lying.
Oh, we have unlimited ammunition and we can fight wars forever.
There's no limits.
We're the greatest military, blah, blah, blah.
See, Trump's BS is starting to hit reality.
And reality is a harsh mistress, it turns out.
Yeah, that's an allusion to a book by Robert Heinlein as well, in case you're wondering.
Reality sucks when you're a bullshit artist, which is exactly what Donald Trump has proven to be.
And in reality, no ships are going to be allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz unless they are ships from countries that are friendly to Iran, such as China or Russia or maybe North Korea or Brazil.
Who knows?
But certainly not Western countries.
So here's the real question.
How long or for how long can Iran maintain a credible threat to the ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz?
If Iran is able to continue this credible threat for a period of a few weeks, even just three weeks, then this becomes a global existential financial crisis that is Trump's doing.
The world will point the finger at Trump over this, not Iran, because Iran is simply reacting to being attacked.
See, that's why Iran had to wait to be attacked, because that put Iran in a situation where it can say, hey, we didn't start this, but we have every right to defend our national interests.
And we have every right to defend ourselves against those who attacked us.
You know, it's like a Second Amendment at a national level.
Yes, Iran has a right to defend itself against acts of aggression.
And it's using asymmetrical economic warfare in order to achieve that result.
Now, you might say, well, there's innocent people caught up in this.
There's the ship captains.
Yeah.
There's all the innocent consumers around the world who are trying to just buy gasoline.
They're paying more.
Yeah, that's Trump's fault and Netanyahu's fault.
They didn't have to start this war.
If they had not started this war, Iran would not have closed the Strait of Hormuz.
So 100% of what happens from here is on Trump and Netanyahu.
They chose to start the war.
They initiated it.
Despite what Marco Rubio says, somehow he says this is all Iran's fault that they started it.
No, Israel struck the first blow and assassinated the Ayatollah Khamenei.
That was the first blow.
And from there, Iran has simply been defending its right to exist, which every nation has.
I mean, the United States has, even the negotiations were bad faith.
Even just the whole idea that there were going to be negotiations was nothing but a fake act by Trump and Witkoff and, you know, who is it?
Was it Kushner?
Is that who's with them?
I mean, they're actors.
They're not real negotiators.
They're working for Israel.
They're cosplaying like U.S. negotiators, but they're actually basically agents for Mossad.
So that doesn't even count as real negotiation.
So the U.S. is constantly operating in bad faith here.
It's not interested in peace, not interested in diplomacy.
They're only interested in kinetically destroying the nation of Iran.
And Iran has the right to defend itself and to fight back through whatever means it has available to itself.
And that includes closing the Strait of Hormuz.
So if Trump wants to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he's not going to be able to do it with Navy vessels because Iran will just sink them.
You know, if you send five, they'll sink five.
If you send ten, they'll sink ten.
What Trump is going to have to do, I believe sooner or later, is he's going to have to offer terms to Iran.
And if I were Iran, I would say, okay, here are the terms.
Number one, you're going to end all Western sanctions permanently.
You're going to ensure that we will never be sanctioned again.
Secondly, we are going to acquire nuclear weapons, and you're going to be okay with that because nuclear weapons are the only way that we can obviously protect ourselves against Israel and the United States.
So we're going to become a nuclear nation.
You can inspect the nukes or whatever, but we're going to have 100 nukes.
We're going to go Pakistan level of nuclear warheads here.
And then thirdly, there would have to be payments for all the damage caused by the United States.
So, you know, I don't know, a trillion dollars, whatever it's going to take to rebuild all the buildings that have been bombed by Israel and by the United States.
It's going to have to be compensation for that.
So those would be my terms.
If I were in Iran's shoes, again, we're going to have nuclear weapons.
You're going to take us off sanctions forever, and you're going to pay us a trillion dollars now, right now.
And this begins when you pay us the $1 trillion.
And then we'll open the Strait of Hormuz.
Because right now, if you think about it, Iran has the Western world by the balls.
Iran's got like an iron claw with your nut sack in it, and it's squeezing, just squeezing, you know, because that's oil.
That's energy.
Got you by the balls.
And every day that goes by, the ball squeeze gets a little bit worse.
For those of you who are women listening, you may not understand the level of pain I'm describing here.
But those of you who are men, you know what I'm talking about.
If anybody's ever really grabbed your balls and tried to compress them, not good.
Iran's going to keep squeezing and keep squeezing until Trump capitulates.
And at some point, or if the United States goes nuclear on this and just starts nuking Iran, well, that might be the other option to stop Iran.
Because I don't think a ground invasion is going to do it.
So either Trump is going to have to capitulate or probably resort to nukes.
Those are the two options that I see.
And if Trump resorts to nukes, well then, that's when China and Russia retaliate with their own nukes.
And that's when every city on the East Coast gets vaporized, you know, East Coast of the United States.
Goodbye, New York City.
You know, goodbye, Miami.
Goodbye, Houston, too, probably.
Goodbye, half of Virginia, etc., etc.
Goodbye, Chicago, Denver, L.A.
I mean, at that point, it's global thermonuclear war.
And that's where Trump is pushing us because he's a war-mongering, deceptive lunatic at this point.
He broke all his promises to his voters.
He said he was going to be the peace president.
He immediately went to war.
well, within a year, let's say, went to war.
After creating the Board of Peace, no doubt.
Let's create a board of peace and then use it to start new wars.
That's what he has done.
It's disgusting.
And if he's not stopped, he might take us to global thermonuclear war, which could result in the deaths of billions of people.
So if there was ever a time for Congress to stand up and either declare that the president cannot wage war without congressional approval and threaten to impeach the president if he does not put this to a vote, if Congress isn't willing to do that, then they're useless and they're complicit in the potential escalation to global nuclear war.
But that's where this is headed.
So somebody needs to stand up in Congress and say, no, this is not okay.
Trump, you are not a dictator.
Congress has the right or the only power to declare war.
And if you're not going to allow Congress to have that power, then you're going to be removed from power.
And they should vote to impeach.
We might see that if U.S. naval vessels start to get destroyed and we start losing hundreds or thousands of U.S. sailors, which could start happening in days, technically.
In days.
So that's what's at stake here.
That's my assessment.
And, you know, we have a madman in the White House now, completely disconnected from reality, high on his own supply, just arrogant, ignorant, incompetent, has no idea what he's doing.
And he's going to end up getting potentially thousands of U.S. military personnel killed, perhaps drowned.
Death by fire, death by drowning, whatever.
That's what's going to happen to potentially hundreds or even thousands of U.S. personnel.
False Flag Nukes00:13:56
According to the IRGC, there's already over 600 U.S. soldiers that have been killed.
Of course, the White House tells us, no, that's only six or something like that.
But of course, they're lying.
They're always lying.
And they're trying to paint a picture that this is a great victory when it isn't.
Not even close to a victory.
So anyway, we're still probably about, I'm guessing, one to two weeks away from the U.S. largely running out of defensive munitions.
After which time, if Iran is still able to launch missiles, then things get absolutely catastrophic for both Israel and for whatever's left of U.S. military bases in the region.
They will be decimated.
There will be nothing left but, you know, rubble, half of a concrete wall with rebar sticking out or whatever.
That's where this is headed.
So Trump is delusional.
He thinks he's going to win.
He thinks that the U.S. is unstoppable.
And he's already running up into the harsh reality of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
So we just have to watch and see where this goes.
I will continue to keep you posted as best I can.
You can catch my analysis and interviews at brightvideos.com.
You can use my free AI engine for deep research at brightanswers.com.
It's about to undergo some major upgrades, by the way.
I'll be working on that myself.
And you can also follow my articles with amazing infographics at naturalnews.com.
And I pray for America.
I pray for our soldiers and I pray for humanity.
But it doesn't look like that's going to be enough because, you know, the Satanists are running this thing and they want blood and death, even of Americans.
So sadly, pray for humanity right now.
We're all in danger because of these madmen.
Netanyahu, Trump, Rubio, others, they're insane.
They're war criminals.
And they're in charge.
And they're going to take us to potentially the brink of global destruction.
Let's hope that they can be stopped by either Congress or maybe through diplomacy, some method that can bring them back from the brink of destruction.
Let's pray for that.
Thank you for your support.
I'm Mike Adams.
Take care.
The risk of a false flag attack against the United States of America, that is, you know, domestically, or against U.S. military forces, especially naval vessels, that risk is now extremely high.
And Israel is the nation that they're the king of false flags.
They know how to carry out any kind of false flag that's necessary to push their agenda.
They were involved in 9-11, obviously.
Of course, they have exploding pagers.
We now find out that they hacked the traffic cameras in Iran in order to track the movements and the location of the Ayatollah Khamani.
So they actually hacked, I mean, they hacked the traffic cameras in order to track him and kill him and his family members as well.
So they know how to do all of this.
And when they see that the majority of Americans oppose this war with Iran, which is currently the case, according to recent polls, roughly about 60% of the American people oppose the war.
Well, Israel wants to have full support for the war, like, you know, 9-11-level support, which was almost, what, 80 or 90%, something like that, because the propaganda was really well organized in 2001.
And also, people didn't have a lot of internet options then.
They didn't have the alternative media very much.
You know, things were very, very different in 2001 in terms of who controlled access to information.
So today, Israel seeing that most Americans do not support this war, they are no doubt scheming some kind of attack, some kind of attack on a target, most likely in the United States.
And in this case, it has to be something big.
They will want it to be something that will absolutely terrify the American people and will get 80 or 90% of the population to blame Iran.
That's the most important part of this, is that it has to be blamed on Iran.
Now, there doesn't have to be any evidence linking it to Iran.
That just has to be the narrative.
As long as they push the narrative and they have a photo of some guy who looks kind of Middle Eastern and they say he's, you know, an Iranian agent or whatever, that's all that's required.
And most people in America will buy it, especially the brainwashed, heavily vaccinated, Fox News-watching Christian Zionist boomers, who are primarily the only real people who support this war at this point because they've lost the ability to think rationally.
And yes, I think vaccines actually had a lot to do with that.
I think there's a lot of brain damage from the jabs.
And most of those people took the jabs and they kept taking them.
They're still taking them.
So the brain damage keeps being inflicted.
It's really quite something.
All right.
So 9-11 was a big psychological attack on America, obviously.
It had the effect that was intended.
It got America to go to war against Israel's enemies in the Middle East.
You know, Iraq in particular, but also Afghanistan.
Now, Iran is the one country remaining on Israel's destruction list.
It's the one remaining.
You know, Syria held out for a long time, but that fell last year.
So now it's down to Iran.
And this is a regime change operation.
But to blame Iran at a level that would terrorize America today, it would have to be something more than 9-11, something bigger.
Because I think the American people have been anesthetized against a lot of violence.
And so literally just toppling a couple of buildings or three buildings in the case of 9-11 and killing 3,000 Americans, well, that was very psychologically terrifying in 2001.
Today, they would have to turn up the volume on that quite a lot.
They need, I mean, in their minds, because this is the way that the Zionists think, they need something massive that kills more like 30,000 people or maybe 100,000 Americans.
So in order to do that, they need a nuke.
They need a nuke.
The thing is, they've got nukes because the U.S. illegally gave Israel nukes.
And importantly, Israel has the capability to sneak those nukes into the United States and have the State Department look the other way and have Homeland Security look the other way.
Because of course, the entire federal government right now works for Israel.
So if Israel wants to do something like, let's say, you know, park a nuke in Denver, Colorado or something, yeah, the State Department will say, sure, yeah, go for it.
Marco Rubio will say, well, that's necessary.
Yeah, we have to sacrifice some Americans in order to get public support for the war.
They would justify it.
And of course, Trump would do whatever he's ordered to do because he is, you know, Netanyahu's puppet and has been for a long time.
So don't be surprised if there's a nuke in America or something smaller would be a dirty bomb, still a nuclear classification event.
You know, it's still the release of radiation, but without an actual nuclear detonation.
Rather, a conventional detonation that disperses radiological material.
That would be panic-inducing.
And if that can be blamed on Iran, then, you know, its mission accomplished.
They could render a large area of a city uninhabitable for easily months, maybe years, maybe longer, depending on sort of what radioisotope was dispersed.
You know, if it's cesium-137, then it's going to be more than just a few years.
Now, a false flag could also be committed against U.S. naval vessels.
That is the sinking of a vessel and a large vessel, even an aircraft carrier, and then blamed on Iran, even though Israel would just pull another USS Liberty like they did in 1967, attacking the USS Liberty, trying to blame it on Egypt.
You could see Israel sinking a U.S., I don't know, a frigate, a carrier, a destroyer.
I don't even know what all the ships are these days.
You could see Israel sinking a ship, blaming it on Iran, and then the U.S. obedient media reporting, oh my God, Iran sank, you know, you sank my battleship, like the old game.
And then that would spur most Americans to get behind the escalation of war on Iran.
And in particular, the justification of the use of nuclear weapons on Iran.
That's why I think the false flag is going to be a radiological event, because then Trump and Rubio will argue, well, Iran already nuked us first, so we're nuking them in response.
So watch out, folks.
It could be a nuclear event.
It could be a radiological event happening in America any day now.
And that's going to be catastrophic in so many ways to the economy, to the psychology.
Be prepared for that.
I will keep you posted as best I can.
You can follow all my work at brightvideos.com.
And you can also catch my articles, my analysis, and my very popular infographics at naturalnews.com.
So thank you for listening.
I'm Mike Adams.
Be safe.
Well, we have to talk about survival strategies again because, of course, we're on the verge of a situation that could escalate into World War III.
Let's hope it doesn't.
Let's hope that there's some kind of an off-ramp from this war with Iran.
But it doesn't look like it at the moment, although it's still pretty early in this.
But I don't see any indication that the U.S. or Israel is willing to do anything other than seek the total destruction of Iran.
And I also don't see any indication that Iran is interested in any so-called negotiation because you can't negotiate with the West because the West never keeps its word.
Doesn't even believe in negotiations, as has been proven again and again, because Trump keeps ordering the killing and assassination of the negotiators.
So does Israel.
So I don't see an off-ramp at the moment, which means this is going to escalate.
And if it escalates, there's a risk that it goes nuclear.
If it does go nuclear, the most likely party to use nuclear weapons first is Israel, of course.
And they're crazy enough to do it.
And Trump is crazy enough to let them do it or obedient enough at this point.
If Israel takes this nuclear, then at that point, we're in a whole different world.
At that point, the risk of additional escalation from countries like Russia and China, that risk goes through the roof.
And of course, none of us want to see that happen, but it's something we have to prepare for.
Now, in my assessment also, we're at very high risk of a nuclear false flag event that could take place domestically in the United States.
And really, I should be more specific.
I think it will be a radiological terrorism event or a false flag event that happens in the United States.
Not necessarily a nuclear bomb detonating, but rather a dirty bomb detonating, spreading nuclear material across an area, obviously a high population density area.
One more reason to not live in the cities, but as you can imagine, if someone were to release a dirty bomb in downtown New York City, the economic devastation that it would cause and the fear and panic, et cetera, would just be off the charts.
And of course, the purpose of such an event, if it were a false flag, would be to drive U.S. support for further escalation of the bombing of Iran with more aggressive weapons, possibly nuclear weapons.
And of course, the narrative at that point would be blaming Iran and saying, well, Iran nuked us first, and now we're going to nuke Iran in retaliation.
That's how that would go in terms of the narratives.
What that means is that you and I have to be prepared for this thing to go nuclear.
And if it does go nuclear, then global supply chains just collapse at that point.
Then nobody is sailing ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
I mean, can you imagine the uninsurability of ships when there's a nuclear war happening involving the Middle East?
High-Tech vs. Low-Tech Survival00:02:50
I mean, forget it.
There's no insurance company in the world is going to write policies for ships in the middle of a nuclear war.
So you're not going to get supplies.
I should say ships in that region.
Now, ships will still be able to sail around Asia and maybe the West Coast of the U.S., et cetera.
But I'm talking about the ships that move through the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, maybe the Mediterranean, and maybe even parts of the Indian Ocean, for example.
That's going to be highly questionable.
And that's a big percentage of the world's shipping volume.
So yes, this is going to impact you and me and all of us.
And if China gets involved in the trade war aspect of this, China could block exports.
They could just cut off the United States from all exports as a means of leverage.
I don't mean just rare earths.
I mean everything.
No computers, no electronics, no shoes, nothing, no car parts.
Forget it.
Nothing.
That would be devastating.
So it's a good time for us to review our preparedness materials.
Now, you may recall I've written a book called Resilient Prepping.
Well, I'm sorry, it's an audio book from a few years ago, but it's just as relevant today.
And it's available for a free download at resilientprepping.com.
Now, I will probably turn that into a new audio book.
I'll probably have my AI agents rewrite that whole thing and then do an audiobook version.
I'll package that up, you know, sometime soon.
So you'll have new free versions of it coming.
But for now, you can download what's there right now, which is a bunch of MP3 files.
And that's completely free.
Resilient Prepping is a really great book because it teaches you the low-tech, well, the high-tech, low-tech, and no-tech options for every area of survival, such as food or shelter or medicine or protection, self-defense, etc.
Communications.
So for each one of those, there is, you know, the high-tech version, which is what we live in right now.
There's the low-tech version, which I generally consider to be where we have no electricity functioning, the power grid's down.
And then there's the no-tech version, which I generally say that's where we have no combustion engines.
That is no diesel, no gasoline, and no power grid.
Then you're completely offline.
You have to go with a no-tech version of survival or shelter or whatever.
No-Tech Survival Skills00:05:09
That makes life very, very difficult, of course.
But you need to know that information.
You need to have those skills.
So that's where you can get that.
But again, I'll bring you additional information on all of this in the weeks and months ahead.
But as part of the survival solutions, we've put together a survival page for you of our product solutions at healthrangerstore.com slash survival.
And right there, we have all of our most popular iodine products, our storable foods that are lab-tested, certified organic, heavy-duty, rugged packaging.
We've got number 10 cans with freeze-dried organic fruits and vegetables.
We've got the Ranger buckets.
We've got mini buckets and mega buckets of all kinds of different things from nuts and grains to the fruits, like I mentioned, and miso soup and meal kits, all organic, all laboratory tested.
So that's available right now.
Healthrangerstore.com/slash survival.
Beyond that, it's a good idea to be thinking about supply chains breaking down.
So what is it that you depend on that you can't live without?
It might be parts for your car, you know, an oil filter or an air filter, or maybe you have a tractor or whatever.
You might need some parts.
I was just ordering some oil filters recently for one of my ranch vehicles.
You might need tools.
You might need shoes.
You know, remember when I ordered extra pairs of shoes last April when Trump announced the big tariffs against China?
So I panicked bought a few pairs of shoes that I like that happen to be made in China.
Well, I don't regret that because now I'm sitting on those shoes.
And even though I wear shoes until they're basically falling apart, I know I've got a few pairs of shoes I can get by.
Same thing with, you know, your clothing, your tools, your dishes, whatever.
It's also a good idea, especially if you live in a rural environment, to have extra oil.
Like I have 50-gallon drums of diesel engine oil, as well as what's it called, DEF fluid.
Plus, I've got a 50-gallon drum of hydraulic fluid for tractors, you know, with the hydraulic oil.
I guess it's called oil.
And some other things as well.
You know, I've got a 50-gallon drum of isopropyl alcohol.
I've had that sitting there for a number of years, just thinking, hey, you know, what if we get cut off from China?
You're not going to get isopropyl alcohol.
You're not going to get the hand sanitizers.
You're also not going to get a lot of prescription drugs, by the way.
I don't depend on those, but many people do.
You know, you're going to see a supply chain shutdown that could be absolutely devastating if this war escalates and it increases to a trade war, which in some ways it already is.
For example, Spain has said that it doesn't want its airports and air bases to be used by the U.S. to strike Iran.
And so Trump has threatened to cut off Spain from all trade with the United States.
So no more imports from Spain, period.
It's over for now.
I mean, that's devastating.
What if that happens with China?
It could happen tomorrow.
You could end up with no access to anything that you buy from China.
And there goes Harbor Freight.
You know, Harbor Freight, it's a very interesting retail store.
I don't know if you've ever been to a Harbor Freight, but we have them in Texas.
And I kind of like the Harbor Freight stores because it's a lot of hands-on tools.
Everything is made in China, just about everything.
Well, imagine if Harbor Freight is just emptied with no more inventory coming in.
That could happen.
Imagine no more tires for your vehicle.
The tires you have now, that's it.
Those are the last tires you have.
No more spare parts for your tractor.
There goes agriculture, right?
I mean, you get the idea.
We could see a global shutdown of supply chains if this thing goes nuclear.
I mean, our system is more fragile than most people think.
It's very fragile.
So resilience is the name of the game here.
Get personally prepared in every way that you can have backup supplies of everything, get more decentralized, grow more food off-grid, etc., etc.
These are the things that will keep you alive.
And also, of course, have your firearms and your ammunition and your skills and your ballistic vests and your night vision or whatever else that you think you need in order to be safe to protect yourself and your community and your family members, etc.
This is a time to be thinking about that.
Maga Narratives and Beyond00:16:11
I'll remind you that at my website, rangerdeals.com, we have those links to the affiliate programs that I recommend.
And there's not very many of them, but there's Shield Arms, which has the firearms that I recommend.
There's a de-googled phone provider there.
There's the satellite phone store, sat123.com, is also how you reach them directly.
There's gold and silver providers there.
In addition to that, we've got the therapeutic peptides, the link there to limitless with discount codes.
Usually the discount code there is Ranger.
You can go to rangerdeals.com and you can see all of those affiliate deals and all those specials and discounts, whatever.
A lot of those providers will help you get prepared and stay prepared.
In addition to that, you can follow my videos and my interviews at brightvideos.com.
You can use my free AI deep research engine at brightanswers.com.
And finally, you can read my articles and see my infographics at naturalnews.com.
So get prepared and stay safe.
Thank you for listening.
I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
Take care.
We knew this from the conflict in Ukraine: that the United States and all of Europe is, was, continues to not be able to match the capacity, the industrial capacity, the military output of Russia.
So we're talking about 40 countries.
The fact that they're not able to keep up with Iran, I think that shocked a lot of people.
Welcome to today's interview here on BrightVideos.com.
I'm Mike Adams, and today we are joined by one of the co-founders of a channel, a very popular channel called the Duran.
It's Alex Christoforu, and he joins us from Europe right now.
And Alex, I'm partially European today because I have a Belgian Malinois dog right here on my desk.
So see, there he is.
Okay.
So this is our nod to Europe today.
We got him from Europe.
The headquarters of the wonderful European Union.
Yeah, we're not fans of the paddock for gas.
Totally.
But here we are.
You know, we're days into this new war with Iran that was clearly initiated by Israel and the United States, even though somehow the White House claims that Iran started it.
Give us your big picture breakdown because you on your channel, you go deep into this, but give us your big picture where we are right now.
We're at the very beginning.
That's exactly where we are at the very beginning.
And I think there's a lot of fog of war.
It's a conflict that's expanding.
It's a conflict that is bringing in many, many countries in the region.
Could possibly bring in countries from outside of the region.
It's definitely affecting countries outside of the region.
It's going to be affecting the world because of the energy and gas and oil situation.
And it was a war of choice, a war of choice from the Trump administration, from the U.S. president.
They are not able to get their messaging right as to why they're in this war of choice.
You can see that they're spitballing many different narratives and ideas because the regime change narrative that they were going with up until the conflict started appears to not be doing them much good in the recent polls.
It doesn't look like there's a lot of support in the United States for this war of choice and for the explanation of it being a regime change.
So they're trying to switch things up.
And even Rubio is getting all twisted up in trying to figure out the correct answer as to why the United States is in this war.
We know the answer.
Regime change, because Israel wants a regime change.
Right.
So they're just trying to put icing on this ugly cake here, I guess, to try to get the American people to swallow it.
But what did you make of the fact that Marco Rubio admitted on camera that the U.S. can barely manufacture air defense munitions, can't even keep up with a tiny percentage of what Iran can manufacture.
And then within a few hours after that aired, Trump went out on Truth Social and posted, we have unlimited ammo and we can fight forever wars.
What did that say to you when you saw that?
Well, honestly, it didn't surprise me because we knew this from the conflict in Ukraine, that the United States and all of Europe is, was, continues to not be able to match the capacity, the industrial capacity, the military output of Russia.
So we're talking about 40 countries in the collective West that cannot outproduce Russia when it comes to weapons, whether it be drones or missiles or anything else.
So the admission from Rubia was no surprise.
The fact that they're not able to keep up with Iran, I think that shocked a lot of people.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I want to mention to our audience that you have a very popular channel on YouTube called The Duran.
It's spelled just like it sounds.
I'll show it on the screen here.
You and Alexander have really outstanding analysis.
I want to encourage people to follow your channel.
And I started following your channel when the Ukraine conflict began.
We're talking 2022.
And the reason I even mentioned that is because there's so many parallels with what we have now.
So in 2022, you had all of this Western propaganda saying how quickly we were going to defeat Russia and how Russia's economy was going to be destroyed and how maybe we're going to have regime change in Russia.
Doesn't that sound exactly like what we're hearing right now?
You're exactly right.
You are exactly right.
Pretty much the same narrative, isn't it?
Biden gathered all of the Europeans together and the pitch to all of the European Union members, all of the collective West, even the Five Eyes, the pitch to all of them was, give us three months.
We'll place terrible sanctions on Russia.
You're going to join us in those sanctions and people will be out on the streets and they will overthrow Putin and we will finally be done with the nasty Putin regime and we'll put in place our own guy.
Many people believe that guy was probably going to be someone like Navalny.
And then we can enter Russia and we can plunder and pillage and everything will be great.
And everyone worked out that way.
Didn't work out that way.
No, not at all.
And you're exactly right.
You're seeing, in a way, the same type of narrative with Iran.
But instead of the Europeans, swap out the Europeans, swap in many of the Gulf states.
And the narrative is we'll have a regime change in two, three days.
Probably they thought over the weekend.
That's my guess.
They thought over the weekend, we'll kill the top leadership, including the supreme leader, Ahamenei, and then we'll have our own people to put in place.
But what's extraordinary to me, the political slant on this is that during the Biden administration's pushing of its narratives about Ukraine, we had mostly MAGA and Trump supporters and conservatives were mocking that and saying, no, that's nonsense.
And now a big part of MAGA have become exactly the same people that they used to mock.
And, you know, it's not even a very creative spin on the narrative.
It's the exact same narrative.
We're going to go in and we're going to change this kind of regime change.
We'll collapse them.
You know, our sanctions are going to work, et cetera.
Well, sanctions haven't collapsed Iran for how many decades has it been?
Almost five decades.
So I don't think it's going to work tomorrow.
No, no, you're exactly right.
And not even, it's not even the Ukraine spin that they've put into the Iraq narrative.
They've also thrown in there the Bush-Cheney Iraq WMD stuff in there.
And much of MAGA, well, maybe you could say 50% of MAGA, a certain part of MAGA is completely buying into it.
And this is even a lazier WMDs, at least with Bush, WMD, at least there was discussion in Congress.
Trump hasn't even discussed this with Congress.
I don't even think he cares about having any kind of discussion with Congress.
They went to the UN.
Bush, Bush did go to the UN.
We all remember Powell.
Powell made many appearances in front of the UN.
We all remember him holding up that vowel of anthrax or whatever it was.
It was discussed in the Security Council.
They sent inspectors there.
Hans Blitz, I remember it.
He went there as a special representative of the UN, and he looked around for a couple of weeks as to what was going on.
I mean, at least Bush was covering it a lot better, covering it up a lot better.
The real intentions and the real motivations behind the invasion.
Trump didn't do any of that.
He didn't go to the UN.
He didn't go to the Security Council.
He didn't go to Congress.
He didn't do anything.
None of that.
He just went straight in.
Anybody happy about this attack on Iran?
It's George W. Bush because he's no longer the dumbest president in terms of pushing war.
It's like you just said, Trump didn't even try to sell this war to the American people or to Congress or to other nations.
It's just like, I'm going to do it and screw my base.
Yeah.
And he said regime change.
He said it many times.
This is about regime.
He started out with uranium enrichment.
Then we went to protesters because the United States has to protect the protesters, right?
And now they're bombing them, but just a couple of weeks ago was about protecting them.
So we have to protect the protesters.
Then it became ballistic missiles.
Iran is not allowed to have any ballistic missiles or ballistic missiles over a range of 300 kilometers, which effectively means no missiles at all.
No country in their right mind would ever agree to that.
And now it's get rid of Khamenei.
The goal was to get rid of Khamenei.
That was what this is all about.
We had to get rid of these 49 people at the top.
And I'm going to pick the next leader.
So just so I understand, we understand this.
The country, the people that lecture us every single minute of every single day, every single month, every single week about democracy this, democracy that, are now telling the entire world we have killed the leadership, like the leadership or not.
That's not the question in all this.
That's not the debate.
You killed the leadership of a sovereign country, murdered them, killed them.
Right.
As they were negotiating, even worse, as they were negotiating with you, which is something you've done many, many times already.
Numerous times.
Numerous times.
The U.S. never negotiates in good faith.
The U.S. negotiates as a tactic to distract you while killing your negotiators.
Yeah.
This year, yeah.
This year, that's what Trump has shown.
If they don't kill you, then they kidnap you.
And now you're saying, I'm going to choose the leader.
And not only that, he's saying, I'm going to choose a leader, just like I did in Venezuela.
So you're telling me that you chose the leader in Venezuela too?
This is the rules-based order, the democracy that you're selling the world on?
We have to protect freedom now, Alex.
Yeah, if Trump chooses who it's going to be.
Right.
Okay.
And he may get his way.
I mean, we're very early in this.
I just want to say we still don't know how this is all going to unfold.
We know we're lonely in this conflict.
We don't.
But I want your analysis on one of the critical differences between the Ukraine situation versus what's happening in the Gulf and with the Gulf states right now is that when Russia would hit Ukraine targets, it didn't threaten the world's energy supply, right?
It didn't threaten the petrodollar status if Ukraine took a lot of damage.
But now what's happening is Iran has strategically identified the key vulnerability of the West, which is its dependence on the gas and oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.
And we've already seen now, I think, the LNG is offline in Qatar right now, as well as there are oil facilities, I think, maybe in Riyadh that have been hit and some are shut down.
So this, what do you make of this?
Is this something that the Trump administration didn't think of or they think they can overcome it?
Or what do you think they're thinking about this?
Because this puts the West at risk.
Well, Trump has told us what they think about it.
They weren't expecting it.
He said in an interview, I don't know if I think it was the Washington Post or the New York Times.
He said that the big surprise in all of this was Iran going after the Gulf states.
He said they did not expect that.
But they promised to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
They said they were going to do that.
This is existential for them.
This is existential.
This is about their very existence.
And this may be about the very existence of Iran, not even the leadership.
This may be about the very existence of Iran.
I don't think anyone should fool themselves about what the plans are for Iran if they are to lose.
If the government that's in place now, if it does collapse, Iran most likely, in my opinion, will be carved up and split apart, for example, just like Yugoslavia or just recently like Syria.
That is in my opinion, the plan.
Now, I don't think Trump wants, he says that he's going to appoint a new leader, an al-Jalani type, an ISIS al-Jalani guy, someone like that.
Sure, but Iran is going to be going to be carved up.
So this is existential for them.
So of course they're going to hit whatever they need to hit.
But the fall of Syria was sudden and it surprised many, many people, the swiftness of it and the disorganization of the Syrian government at the time.
And then, of course, Israel followed that up by bombing and destroying any remaining military assets that could later on be used to defend Syria.
But Syria was no Iran, right, in terms of its might and its sophistication, its land mass, et cetera, and its culture, right?
It was more fragmented from the beginning.
What is your assessment of the chances of the West succeeding in toppling the current Iranian administration and splitting it up and fragmenting it like they did Syria?
Resistance and Occupation00:08:47
Well, the current airstrikes are not going to be enough.
And I think everyone realizes that.
But the goal appears to be to weaken the internal security enough to the point that you can then move in the boots on the ground.
Now, Trump wants to avoid American boots on the ground.
I think there are going to be American boots on the ground.
I think there are going to be Israeli boots on the ground, but not many.
I think where they're going to source the soldiers from, where they're going to source the militias and the ground troops from, is already being revealed.
Axios is reporting on it.
The Wall Street Journal reported on it.
They are going to be looking at the Kurds.
They're going to be looking at ISIS.
And this is going to be their militia with perhaps some special forces from the United States, for which the United States probably has the best special forces in the world, special operations, special forces.
They'll probably be in there.
They'll probably command things.
They'll probably direct how things play out.
The CIA will be involved as well.
But the soldiers, at least what Trump is trying to do, will be sourced from the Kurds and from ISIS.
Actually, in very much the same way that they did Syria.
Now, will it succeed?
I don't know.
I don't know if the Kurds are saying, yeah.
I don't know if ISIS is saying sure, we'll do it.
As you rightly pointed out, Syria is one thing.
Iran is a whole different ballgame.
And maybe these groups are going to say, well, this is kind of a suicide mission for us.
See, that's my concern, because even the geography is so different between Syria and Iran.
It seems like a suicide mission to try to physically invade and hold Iran.
I mean, certainly you could hold some areas close to the border, but unless you have dominant air support, which seems unlikely given that Iran has reportedly acquired surface-to-air radar and missile technology from China and perhaps some technology from Russia, and that Iran may be hiding some of these systems underground, waiting for precisely such an event.
Seems like air domination is not, you can't count on it from the West, and that troops on the ground would face an enormous domestic resistance, a quagmire.
I've called it a Vietnam of the Middle East.
Do you agree with that assessment?
Or would you correct that?
No, I agree with that assessment 100%.
I think you're exactly right.
But we just don't know how this is all going to unfold.
I believe the United States and Israel are going to just try and level Iran.
I think they're just going to attack Iran with everything they have.
They're going to throw everything they have at Iran.
And they're going to try to flatten the entire country.
Definitely whatever security infrastructure that exists in Iran, police stations, National Guard stations, whatever security apparatus, infrastructure that exists in Iran, they're going to try and destroy it all.
And the goal is to create instability.
And then when you get that instability, or at least when they feel that they have the instability, then they're going to move in the troops.
I mean, Trump is looking for the militias.
He's saying as much.
We have the news reports saying he's interested in militias to enter Iran.
So, I mean, we know the plan.
And we've seen the plan.
We've seen it in Libya.
We've seen it in Syria.
We've seen it unfold time and time and time again.
I think your question is the million-dollar question.
Can Iran hold together?
Will the air campaign, whatever air campaign it is, even if it's a limited air campaign, will it create the conditions so that these militias can move in?
Or will Iran and the leadership in Iran resist and hold together?
I think that is the question that no one can really answer at the moment.
And it seems like many of the actions by Israel and the United States are actually increasing the cohesion among the Persian people.
So, for example, the bombing of the school with the school girls in it.
That does not make people like the West.
Also, the bombing of what I don't know the name, but the group of the religious experts that were voting on the replacement of the Khamenei.
Yeah, the clerics, yeah.
The clerics, yeah.
Bombing their building in the middle of their vote.
You know, these are considered extremely offensive to the Iranian people.
And it seems like it would.
And also, I would add that the Iranian people are used to living in very difficult circumstances, as they have for a couple of generations now under sanctions.
So these aren't weak, you know, comfortable people to start with.
These are people who have endured hardship.
Don't you think that that state of mind, you know, the West is actually creating the worst nightmare of resistance in Iran?
Yeah, well, you know, the neocons, they never think of these things, right?
I mean, you're thinking of these things, but the neocons never think of these things.
They've got their foot to the pedal and they're just going to drive straight into the wall.
This is the way they operate.
They don't think about the country, the culture, the resistance, the economics, the geopolitics, the world economics in all of these regime change operations.
Their goal right now is collapse the country, collapse the country, break it apart.
That is their goal.
The Trump administration, they killed the supreme leader during Ramadan.
Not only is he the supreme leader of Iran, but he is considered, I believe, the second most powerful religious leader in Shia Islam.
You have protests breaking out in Pakistan against the United States embassy.
You have Bahrain about to collapse because of the anger from this event.
You have images of people out in the streets, Iranians, Shia in other countries, not by the hundreds, not these little parades that are all paid for and organized in Los Angeles, showing Iranian Americans, about 50 to 100 Iranian Americans.
The whole thing is completely set up.
It's obvious it's all set up.
And they're marching through the streets of Los Angeles talking about how wonderful it is.
that the United States is bombing our homeland, right?
Bombing our homeland, killing our people so that we can bring democracy of which Donald Trump will be choosing the leader.
It's crazy, but the images that we're seeing coming out of the region, the anger from the murder of Khamenei is hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, in protest rallying against what the United States has done.
Even if Trump gets his quick result, even if this week he manages to collapse the country to get his regime changed, as we saw with Iraq, as we've seen with every single neocon war, and Alexander on the Durant says it all the time.
Every single neocon war always starts out well, always starts with a bang, always.
But then over time, over months and over years, everything goes wrong and things get worse and worse for the United States.
Well, let's talk about that specifically, because one of the things that you and Alexander did so well over the years of covering Ukraine is you compared the industrial output of Russia with its munitions, artillery, also the Kinzal hypersonic missiles, and then later on the Oreshnik advanced system.
War of Attrition Assistance00:15:05
You compared that to the ability of the West to provide Ukraine with comparable munitions or equipment.
And as you may recall, every six months or so, America or the UK would announce, we're going to have the new killer weapon.
We're going to send them, you know, these Abrams tanks, or we're going to send them the HIMARS.
And this is the game changer.
This is going to be the secret thing that defeats Russia.
Every time, it didn't.
It didn't change things.
Now what we've seen is the United States going to South Korea and saying, well, you need to give us your fad, you know, high-altitude air defense systems because we don't have enough.
And you've got the Gulf states begging Trump, we need more interceptor munitions.
We're about to run out.
Instead, Trump is saying, no, we need to send them over to Israel.
I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what's happening.
We were out of ammo with Ukraine.
Obviously, we are still short of ammo today because, I mean, give us your thoughts on the supply chain of munitions here.
Well, I think that's what's going to decide this conflict.
Who is going to be able to last longer?
Is it going to be Iran or is it going to be the United States and Israel?
I mean, this is a war of attrition now.
That's where we're moving towards, a war of attrition.
We don't know how many drones and how many missiles Iran has.
We don't know.
They could run out tomorrow.
Maybe they have enough to go for six months.
Of course, both sides, rightly so, both sides are saying they can go for years.
Trump is saying unlimited.
He says unlimited.
And then he says that he has to go around the world and find and find stockpiles.
So he says that in the social post.
And he blames it on Biden too, by the way.
Rightly so, too.
Absolutely.
But Trump is also giving weapons to Ukraine and has been giving weapons to Ukraine for the past year.
I'm sorry, but I read Trump's tweet last night or post.
He said that Joe Biden caused the depletion of the military.
And it's a good thing that I, Trump, in my first term, rebuilt it back.
Right.
I'm like, wait a second.
Your first term was before Biden's term.
So how does your first term cover for us running out of ammo during Biden's term?
Nothing makes any sense.
Nothing makes any sense at all.
He says in the first sentence, he says we have unlimited, unlimited stockpiles and high-end, unlimited.
We can go on forever.
And then he says, well, because of Biden, though, we have to go around the world and find stockpiles.
Obviously, it's not unlimited.
Okay, we get it.
But that's going to be the deciding factor in all of this.
And we just don't know what Iran has.
We don't know how many missiles, how many drones they have.
Right, right.
But clearly, they have factories that are underground.
Obviously, they have stockpiles that are underground.
Probably their supply chains are taking a lot of hits right now.
But they're still able to get some things.
They're still able to feed most of their people, et cetera.
And they can be quite resilient.
Russia may be offering assistance.
China may be offering assistance.
There's obviously a direct connection between China and Tehran in terms of land routes, et cetera.
But as this war of attrition, as you describe it, is happening, the cost to the West of this is getting more and more dear, right?
And more pressure from Israel, where we haven't even been allowed to see a lot of the damage that's taking place, but Tel Aviv is getting hit hard, is my understanding.
It seems bad.
It seems bad.
Yeah.
And remember, it only lasted 12 days last summer before Israel called up Trump and said, you've got to find a way to stop this.
We can't take this any longer.
We're not even on, you know, we're not even in week one.
I mean, we're not at week one yet.
We're only a few days into this.
What happens by day 12, do you suppose?
What happens by day 25?
According to Goldman Sachs, by day 25, Europe is in big problems with the gas situation.
They said maybe, maybe 25 days max, and then we're looking at a complete global meltdown and economic meltdown and Europe to begin with.
So, so I mean, this thing, the more it drags out, the worse it gets for everybody, for everybody, the United States, Europe, Iran, the Middle East.
Everyone's going to get hit.
Except perhaps maybe not Russia.
Yeah, good point.
Right?
Okay, right.
If anything, Russia benefits from the higher energy costs or prices.
But they prefer stability.
There's no doubt about it.
They don't want this going on.
They prefer stability.
And they prefer that Iran, which is a BRICS member, also has stability.
But the price goes up.
Their products are in demand.
China's going to be the benefactor of that as well.
China's going to be getting all of the Russian gas and all of the Russian oil, or most of it.
Europe, they've sanctioned Russia.
They've cut off Russia.
Where do they go?
Qatar is not online anymore.
That's right.
Where does Europe go?
Well, they have nowhere to go.
They have to pay exorbitant prices from U.S. exports of LNG.
Exactly.
But here's the interesting part.
If you're in a war and you're the United States, do you give over that LNG given the market conditions?
Or does Trump say, and I think it's well within Trump's character to say, you know what?
We need that LNG or we need that oil.
We need to conserve now that we're stuck in some sort of a long war, a quagmire.
Yeah.
Well, it's amazing how rapidly this situation deteriorated because it started out as a one-weekend thing and then it became, well, it might be four weeks.
Now it's four weeks and maybe boots on the ground and then it's forever war.
I mean, that didn't take long, actually.
The escalation ladder to insanity is like a water slide, actually.
And Western Europe is going to, like you said, is going to get hit very hard already.
LNG prices are through the roof.
They've gone up dramatically.
And since a lot of Western Europe shut down their own domestic gas resources because of the climate change nonsense over the past couple of decades, they're entirely dependent or nearly entirely dependent on imports.
So I guess good thing the winter is almost over in Europe right now.
Otherwise, they'd be freezing.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know, you even have Mertz, the chancellor of Germany in the United States meeting with Trump.
And what's Mertz's message to Trump?
The Iranian government needs to go.
It needs to collapse.
Instead of him going to the United States and telling Trump, stop, this needs to end.
Nope.
He goes to the United States and he basically says, continue.
Continue doing what you're doing because Iran has to collapse.
Now, Spain is taking the opposite approach, though.
So tell us about what Trump is saying about Spain now.
He's upset with Spain.
He's upset with the UK a bit, a lot.
He's upset with Spain because Spain's not going along with all of this.
So now he's saying no trade with Spain, but we're going to use Spain's military facilities.
Well, that's what happens when you're a vassal.
Spain has no one to blame but themselves.
Whether you go along with Trump or whether you defy Trump, a vassal is a vassal.
And it's not only Spain, it's all of Europe.
The entire European Union has become a vassal of the United States and of the Trump administration.
They were a vassal of Biden, but Biden made them believe that they were equals, even though everyone knew that it was the United States and that they were the subordinates.
Biden at least pretended as if they were equals, they were peers.
Trump doesn't have any of that in him at all.
And he makes it very clear, whatever I want to do, whatever I say, that's how it's going to be.
And the Europeans hate it.
They like being vassals.
They like being vassals of the United States.
They enjoy it and they enjoy all the benefits of having the big, strong United States behind them.
They can go around the world and bark things at other countries, bark orders at other countries and talk about rules-based orders and democracy and human rights.
And they have the United States right behind them.
And they can go around and talk their smack.
But they don't like the way that Trump disrespects them.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And also Trump slaps tariffs on EU countries until the Supreme Court decision smacks on that down.
But now he's saying we're just going to completely cut off all trade with Spain.
So that's an economic embargo against Spain, I take it, and also against America on the receiving side.
Why not?
Yeah, well, why not?
I'll take Greenland.
Right.
Why not?
Right.
Right.
I guess he's going to take Greenland after he takes Iran and defeats Russia.
So there's a cue.
Greenland was an easy one, to be quite honest.
I mean, if you take a step back and look at it big picture, Greenland would have been an easy one for Trump.
I mean, there was nothing that the EU would have been able to do, that Denmark would have been able to do.
Nothing.
Yeah.
Well, maybe that's still on his to-do list.
We shall see, but I have a feeling he's going to get caught in a quagmire with Iran.
Now, I'd like to ask you about the risks of escalation.
And at what point does almost certainly Israel decide to start using nuclear weapons that we all know they have?
So talk to us about your thoughts on escalation.
You know, a lot of people are asking us about the nuclear issue.
Let's hope we just don't get there.
Let's hope we don't get there.
And let's hope that if there is the temptation because things are not going well, if things do not go well and that temptation arises, let's hope that there are people in the United States, in the Pentagon.
And I believe there are.
I hope there are.
I believe there are, who will say no.
They will say no to Israel.
They will say no to whoever is talking about these things within the Trump administration, within the Netanyahu administration.
They will say no, but not.
But hold on.
Marco Rubio just admitted that it was Israel that dragged us into the war.
So couldn't Israel drag us into the nuclear war also by launching?
Yeah, but that's why I'm saying I hope that there are people in the Pentagon somewhere.
And I say the Pentagon because it seems like the Pentagon is the last place where you have some sanity left.
Not all of the Pentagon, but it does feel like there are some pockets in the Pentagon which are telling Trump or that did tell Trump, don't go ahead with this war, that are leaking things to the press saying that the Pentagon was not for this and they were warning Trump.
So you are seeing these leaks to the media, which shows that there are some people in the Pentagon who are basically saying, we told Trump this was a bad idea.
We didn't want this.
So my thinking is, yes, yes, Rubio says Israel took us into this conflict, but still the United States is the United States.
And if it wanted to, it could say no, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Could say this is too far, even to Israel, if they wanted to.
But I don't, I mean, I don't believe that Israel needs U.S. permission to launch the nuclear weapons.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
Maybe there's a code or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I've heard different scenarios.
I've heard they don't need, I've also heard people that say there is a U.S. kill switch.
I don't know.
This, I don't know.
Yeah.
No one's talking about it.
Yeah, no one talks about it, obviously.
But walking.
Let's just hope we don't get there because that'll be.
Yeah.
I still want to ask you, though, about what it would take for Russia to get involved kinetically.
You know, at what point does this break the threshold of regional war and become world war involving either Russia or potentially China?
But Russia kinetically and China maybe, you know, fiscally start dumping treasury, start cutting off trade.
Who knows?
What are the scenarios where this goes global?
I don't see right now Russia getting involved kinetically in this right now.
I just don't see that that scenario.
Of course, if this continues to expand, then perhaps you could get into a situation where Russia is dragged into this conflict, but I just don't see it.
And I don't see Iran asking Russia or China to get involved.
Obviously, they're helping out.
Obviously, they're giving assistance to Iran.
But right now, it appears as if Russia and China are seeing Iran basically handle itself against the United States and Israel.
And it seems to be holding up.
And I think that's the role that they're going to play, at least for the next, let's say, month or so.
If this continues and we are in this type of attrition, then I think China and Russia are going to be looking on and they're going to be providing whatever assistance they can to Iran, satellite, intel, weapons, perhaps, if they can get the weapons there, whatever weapons they can provide, whatever technology sharing they can provide.
After a month, if this war is still going on, then you could be seeing Russia and China saying, you know what?
Saudi Arabia's Involvement Risks Crisis00:08:34
Maybe we can ramp up our assistance to Iran.
Because now we've really got Trump stuck.
Right, right.
And as Trump continues to pull more assets out of Asia, it also makes Taiwan more vulnerable to whatever China wants to do there, which of course involves Taiwan semiconductor and microchips, et cetera.
But I'm thinking about Russia's submarine fleet, which my understanding is the submarines are extremely advanced.
They have various stealth technologies.
They are highly capable and they could sink U.S. ships in the Arabian Sea, for example, without anybody knowing who fired the shots.
I mean, that's a factor.
The latest post from Trump is that Russia may not even need to do that if they were even considering doing that, which I don't think they are.
I'm pretty sure they're not.
But it looks like Trump's going to bring the U.S. Navy right to Iran because he's saying that they're going to protect any tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz.
They're going to provide an escort.
Oh, did he say that?
Really?
Yeah.
Really?
Actually, that's well within the range of Iran's missile batteries.
Right now they're out of range.
But his latest post was, actually, I'll even read it to you right now.
Effective immediately.
I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation to provide at a very reasonable price political risk insurance and guarantees for financial security of all maritime trade, especially energy traveling through the Gulf.
This will be available to all shipping lines.
If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.
That sounds like a suicide mission.
He says if necessary, so he throws those qualifiers in there.
Okay.
But, you know, he's basically saying, I'll bring the ships to you.
You don't need to find the ships.
You don't need to hunt down our ships.
I'll bring them to you.
Now, whether he does it or not, okay, that's a different story.
But that's the latest tweet, the latest truth post.
You know, I hate to be thinking in, you know, 5D chess terms.
I hate that whole metaphor.
But it's almost as if Trump is putting ships there as bait if he were to do that, hoping that one of them is destroyed so that that can enrage the American people to justify more aggressive strikes on Iran, possibly including American nuclear weapons.
I mean, I have to just wonder about that.
It's, you know, there are so many pathways to insane escalation here, and they're all bad.
I mean, the ramifications for all of us are horrible.
It's all bad.
It's all bad.
Even a quick victory, even if Trump does manage to collapse the regime in the next two, three days, say it happens.
And it might very well happen.
Even that is a catastrophic scenario.
It's not going to go well for the United States, for Europe, for the world over the next five to 10 years if that were to happen.
You're talking about 92 million people.
92 million people destabilized.
Yeah.
Instability.
Where do these people go?
What happens to this country with weapons, with guns?
Angry.
Hateful.
I mean, what happens in that scenario?
Well, as I understand it, already the military command in Iran is decentralized.
They don't need orders from headquarters to attack everything in sight.
So, you know, so you kill the Khamenei, that doesn't stop the missiles from flying.
Yeah.
It's the mosaic command.
Yeah.
It's the mosaic command structure that they have.
Right.
So even if you, quote, collapse the central government, that doesn't stop because as I understand it, the missile launch sites are really spread out across the country.
And of course, we talked about the coastal on the south coast there, near the Strait of Hormuz.
You can imagine those people on autopilot.
If they start seeing U.S. naval vessels, they're not going to call in and get permission.
It's going to hit launch.
Yeah.
Mountainous terrain.
Yeah.
Has Belaz now involved in this?
If Saudi Arabia is going to get involved, they're saying that they are going to get involved.
The minute Saudi Arabia gets involved, then you activate the Houthis.
Oh, my.
Well, I thought the Houdis were already promising to close the Red Sea, which cuts off the Suez, creating an even larger global routes crisis.
But also talk to us about the fact that I believe 90% of the food that comes to the Gulf states like the UAE and Qatar comes via ship through the Strait of Hormuz.
So they're not receiving food right now.
And I understand it, the water desalination plants are easy targets for Iran.
I was just going to say the same thing.
So yeah, tell us more.
The water desalination, easy targets.
Iran has water issues too.
Iran has water problems as well.
So, I mean, we could be looking at a major crisis if both sides decide to go after food or water.
Yes.
We could be looking at a massive crisis.
You know, think about the economies of the Gulf states, the Dubais, the Riyadh, the Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, which hosted a World Cup a few years back.
They positioned themselves as these very stable, low-crime holiday tourist areas.
They built their economy on finance, on business.
Dubai, definitely on tourism.
The best hotels in the world, no crime.
Expats, come and live in Dubai, buy property, buy real estate, set up your business.
And they're all getting smashed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even worse, the U.S. State Department has alerted Americans that you're on your own.
We're not going to help you evacuate from Israel or Riyadh or anything.
Like you're just, you're stuck.
If you're an American, airports are closed down.
You're taking hits, maybe at your hotel, who knows?
You're on your own.
Sounds like Afghanistan, actually.
Yeah.
I mean, who's going to want to buy property now in Dubai?
Right.
Or invest in infrastructure or into energy.
Yeah.
Or what about the lack of insurance?
You know, you can't buy insurance now for a lot of commercial operations in that region.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so if you break apart Iran, if you collapse Iran, does that fix the situation with stability in the entire region?
No.
No, it makes it worse.
It makes it worse.
What Trump should have done is he should have negotiated with Iran.
Khamenei was a moderate in the context of the power structure in Iran.
Maybe he's not seen as a moderate in U.S. terms, but in Iranian terms, in that context, he was a moderate.
Pezesh Gian, the president, it was definitely Western-friendly.
That was his whole campaign.
He campaigned on opening up to the West and talking to the West.
It's all gone now.
Nuclear Threats and Deals00:13:01
Also, wasn't Khamenei, he was the one who issued the fatwas opposing the development of nuclear weapons domestically.
Now that he's gone, it seems almost certain that there's going to be a stronger call domestically for the development of nuclear weapons.
Because if you have nuclear weapons, you usually get left alone.
I mean, look at North Korea.
Exactly.
Well, if Iran makes it out of this, if the Iran government that's in place right now, if it survives and makes it out of this, then I can't see any other path for them other than nuclear weapons.
I mean, what are they going to say if they survive this?
They're going to say, well, in order to prevent this from ever happening again, The only thing that we can do to make sure we are never attacked again is to enrich the uranium to the level of a nuclear weapon.
Clearly.
It's just a logical path if they make it out of this.
Well, do you suppose they already have nuclear weapons that they might demonstrate?
I mean, because in terms of engineering, they're very capable.
In the modern world, assembling a nuclear weapon is not as difficult as it used to be.
And they clearly have the capability and the technical expertise to achieve that.
Do you suppose they already have a nuclear weapon?
Sometimes they talk like they might, or certain leaders talk like they might.
I don't think they do.
I mean, I can't say for 100%, but I don't think that they do.
I don't think they wanted a nuclear weapon.
I really don't think they wanted a nuclear weapon.
You know, they were driven into this direction, but they're on record many, many times.
And they had the inspector, and the inspectors there.
They had the JCPOA.
Yeah, that's true.
Trump tore that up.
Yeah, he tore that up.
And it was working.
Don't listen to what Trump says wasn't working.
It was a bad deal.
No, it was working.
It was approved by the United Nations.
The Europeans were in charge of the whole thing.
It was working.
Yeah, it was working.
They tore it up.
And they had inspections.
Yes.
Yeah.
And they were open inspections.
And the IEA was in the country and they were looking at the sites.
Trump says, oh, they only went for a week or no.
No, it was working.
You came along and tore it up on your first term.
Right.
Because you didn't like the deal, because Obama made the deal.
So tell our audience, again, I want to remind them of your channel, The Duran, on YouTube is where people can find you and Alexander, who also has a really excellent grasp of history and the geopolitical dynamics.
I love your show.
I think you're just top-notch with your analysis.
And I would also add, you've been proven correct again and again about what you said about Ukraine and Russia.
It's just, if we're keeping track of who had the correct assessment, you guys come out on top.
You had the correct assessment.
It was a very different landscape back then.
There was not many, many channels interested in geopolitics, not many at all.
I think we were pretty much the only ones.
And we took a position way back then of saying, you know what?
It's not like the mainstream media is reporting it.
And for, you know, for the first three months, it was really difficult.
You know, we were getting a lot of crap, a lot of heat for the position that we were taking.
Oh, yeah.
But over time, it proved to be the correct assessment about the conflict and how it unfolded was pretty much how we were calling it back then.
This one, this is a hard one.
This is a hard one to get a feel for.
I think we still have a lot of fog of war.
That's true.
Israel is not letting any, or they're trying to not let any images or any videos come out which show what's going on.
So it's really hard to get an understanding as to what's going on there.
Yes, yes.
So wrapping this up then, and I appreciate you spending time.
I know it's late night where you are.
I very much appreciate your time.
What's the takeaway for our audience?
You know, you already said we don't know the outcomes here.
Things could change dramatically, but we do know that the world's energy supplies are in deep trouble.
We know there's going to be economic disruption, possibly currency disruptions.
Possibly a large number of U.S. soldiers might die, or maybe they're already dead, and we just don't even know it yet.
How should our audience prepare themselves for what may be coming?
I think it's very difficult to prepare for what may be coming.
I think the best thing to do at this moment in time is for the next week or two to just monitor the situation.
Follow you, follow us.
You're updating everyone on X.
I mean, I follow you.
I see all your posts.
You're keeping everyone up to date on what's going on in the world, what's going on with this conflict.
I think the only thing that we can do at this moment in time is to just be informed, or at least over the next week.
I believe after about another week, if the conflict continues, if we haven't had a collapse or some sort of miracle ceasefire or agreement, which is also possible, perhaps the Gulf states convince Trump that they've had enough.
Perhaps we can find an off-ramp.
All these things are possible.
But if the conflict is continuing after a week's time, then I think we can start to make some assessments with regards to energy, with regards to precious metals, to the USD, to currency, to trade, to all these things.
But I think we still have another week ahead of us.
I agree with you.
And let me offer you my two prediction paths and get your response on this as the last thing here today.
So number one, there could be a negotiation, but Iran would have to demand an ending of all Western sanctions.
If that were put on the table, Iran might accept that is my guess, and then we could de-escalate from there.
But there might have to be also additional payments from the West, you know, from the Gulf states, maybe a trillion dollars, who knows.
But if we don't get that, and this continues beyond two weeks, my prediction is that Israel goes to the nuclear option, you know, with inside of two to four weeks, something like that.
And then we end up in a whole new scenario of horror at that point.
So obviously, I'm hoping for the peaceful route.
But I think this thing goes nuclear if we don't get a deal within a couple of weeks.
I think you summed it up well.
If there were to be a nuclear weapon used, then as Alexander says it all the time, we're in a whole new world.
Right.
We're in a very, very new world if a nuclear weapon is used.
So I don't even think we want to go there.
It'll be a very different world.
The point that you make about Iran is actually very good.
It's a very correct point.
If this thing continues for the next week or two, and we are in this kind of attrition state of war, then we have to wait and see.
And no one talks about it.
I'm glad that you mentioned it.
We're going to have to wait and see what demands Iran makes because we're getting a lot of demands from the United States and we're getting a lot of demands from Israel.
But if we're still in this war after two weeks, it'll be interesting to see what Iran says about their terms for winding things down.
Is it sanctions relief?
Probably.
Does Iran demand that U.S. bases leave the region?
Clearly.
Probably.
Some of them are already destroyed.
Is that good for the United States?
Absolutely.
Yes, for the American people.
Well, for the American people.
Yeah, but not for the Pentagon.
The Pentagon is a Philippine.
No, not for the Pentagon.
It's a catastrophe.
Yeah.
For the American people, it would be better.
Liberating.
Absolutely.
Liberating.
Absolutely.
Is it good for Israel?
No.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
So they could make demands like that as well.
We have to see where we are in a week or two.
The key is that Iran has now established credibility of power projection, which it had never demonstrated before to this degree.
So Iran can credibly say to the Gulf states, we can make your lives miserable.
We can shut down your economies.
We can shut down your cities, your tourism, your energy, everything.
And that threat has credibility now.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think with Iran, it's a factor of Iran Wanting if they are going to get to some sort of agreement with the United States, it's going to have to be from a place where they feel they are not being disrespected.
Right.
And they're going to need assurances that this will not happen again.
I don't know how you get those assurances.
One way is a nuclear weapon, which we've already discussed.
Another way could be full sanctions relief.
And another way could be remove your bases.
But no doubt about it.
If Iran is still standing in the next week or two, they're not going to just want a pause.
Well, right.
And also, if Iran is still standing, let's say 45 days from now, that's a loss for America.
That's a loss of credibility for Trump, the Pentagon, and Israel.
Yeah.
Look, for Trump, I agree with you.
For Trump, anything other than a regime change and a collapse of the Iranian government is a loss.
Yes.
And not for the United States, for the American people, but for the neocons, for his donors, for all these people, they're going to be furious with Trump if he doesn't get the regime changed.
They are going to be absolutely furious with him to the point where they are going to throw him to the wolves.
Which is fine with Netanyahu because he considers them all expendable.
Sure.
It's fine with Lindsey Grahams, and it's fine with the Mitch McConnell's, and it's fine with all of these people.
They don't care.
And they're going to have to want to throw them under the bus.
Yeah.
They're going to have to throw someone under the bus, aren't they?
If they don't get the regime changed.
Well, that's the thing about taking orders from Netanyahu.
You're expendable.
I mean, you're just a pawn in his game.
It seems like.
He put himself in this position.
He did.
Trump had the support of the American people.
Trump had the support of the world.
Of the world, he had the support.
Everyone was ecstatic, was greeting the Trump victory for his second term as just a sigh of relief.
My God, we're finally done with the madman Biden.
And now we can get to some more pragmatic, rational leadership in the United States.
And he threw that all away.
Right.
Yes, he did.
Yeah.
That's why so many of us who were really hoping for Trump's victory, even though I didn't vote for him this time, by the way, I did vote for him twice before.
But I'm terrified of what he's doing now with the Constitution, with the tariffs, with the wars.
I mean, it's everything he campaigned against.
And I'm not the only one noticing.
I don't even understand what the whole America first thing that he campaigned on was because he doesn't even talk about America anymore.
He doesn't even care.
His whole presidency seems to be completely consumed with these foreign policy adventures.
Yeah, misadventures.
I would misadventures.
Yeah.
All right.
Alex, tell us quickly about your channel, The Duran, and just sort of anything else you want to plug here.
Duran's Perspective on Current Events00:05:42
You can follow us on the Duran.
It's a channel with me and Alexander Mercuris, where we do geopolitical analysis.
We post videos every single day on many platforms.
And you can also find my channel at Alex Christoforu, and you can also find Alexander's channel at Alexander Mercury.
So these are individual channels.
And then we have a channel together, which is called the Duran.
Okay, outstanding.
Is there any other, is there a substack or anything else you want to mention?
We have a substack, which we're just starting up right now.
And we also have a locals community group as well.
Okay, got it.
If you go to the Durad, you'll find those links there.
Find everything.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you so much, Alex, for your analysis.
You are greatly valued and appreciated.
You don't even know how many of us watch you and learn from what both of you are doing there on the Duran.
So thank you for all that you do.
Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
There you go.
Wow.
What an incredible conversation.
And again, the Duran is a channel worth following because their analysis has been spot on for years.
And I believe it will continue to be that way.
Of course, none of us can predict the future here.
This is a very volatile situation.
But overall, we're all hoping for de-escalation.
We're hoping for peace.
We're hoping for humanity to do well and to experience abundance and health and joy rather than death and desperation and poverty and famine.
But it seems like the leaders of the world are delivering all the worst things.
So get ready in every way that you can.
I want to remind you that you can follow more of my interviews and videos at brightvideos.com.
And if you want to get prepared, our online store, HealthRangerStore.com, offers lab-validated, tested, and almost all certified organic storable foods, preparedness foods, nutritional supplements, high-end personal care products that we formulate, and we manufacture most of them, including our rain water-based first aid gel with colloidal silver and essential oils.
We have many such products, hundreds of different products to choose from that can help you get prepared no matter what's coming.
And you can find them all at healthrangerstore.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
Thank you for watching today and join me in praying for peace and de-escalation everywhere around the world.
Thanks for watching.
Take care.
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