Alex Christoforou warns the U.S.-led Iran conflict risks becoming a "Vietnam of the Middle East," with Trump’s regime-change push destabilizing global oil markets via Strait of Hormuz attacks—Qatar’s LNG already offline, Saudi plants hit—while Iran’s decentralized strikes could displace 92 million. Despite Trump’s false claims of "unlimited ammo," U.S. industrial limits and Iranian resistance backed by Russia/China threaten prolonged war, economic collapse in Europe within 25 days, and potential nuclear escalation if Israel acts unilaterally. Iran demands trillions in reparations and U.S. base withdrawals; failure to negotiate risks Gulf infrastructure attacks, Dubai/Riyadh collapse, and a regional humanitarian crisis, with audiences urged to prepare for fallout. [Automatically generated summary]
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 US.
They're in a panic.
Yeah.
We got him in a panic for gas.
Totally.
But here we are.
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 Rubio 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 are 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 are exactly right.
You are 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, Khamenei, 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.
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 didn't 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.
Yeah, 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.
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 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 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.
Yeah, 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?
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.
Chances Of Toppling Iran00:06:48
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 what they're, 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.
US Hope vs. War Quagmire00:14:39
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.
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 posts.
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, 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.
You know, 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 25 days max, and then we're looking at a complete global meltdown and economic meltdown and Europe to begin with.
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 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, it's 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 some of 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.
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, enough.
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 it?
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.
It 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 code or something have to type in.
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.
Ships as Bait00:06:14
Yeah.
But no one's talking about it.
Yeah, no one talks about it, obviously.
But 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 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?
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 Hormus.
They're going to provide an escort.
Oh, did he say that?
Really?
Yeah.
Really?
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, 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.
Iran's Decentralized Missile Threat00:04:21
Yeah.
It's a 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 are 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 Houthis 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 as 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 about 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, 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, the airports are closed down.
You're taking hits maybe at your hotel.
Who knows?
You're on your own.
Sounds like Afghanistan, actually.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, who's going to want to buy property now in Dubai?
Right.
I mean, or invest in infrastructure related to 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.
Path To Nuclear00:02:04
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, you know, in terms of engineering, they're very capable.
You know, 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.
Working Toward a Deal00:10:57
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.
You know, 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 the first three months, it was really difficult.
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, 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.
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.
Yeah.
Does Iran demand that U.S. bases leave?
Leave the region?
Clearly.
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 very important.
No, not for the Pentagon.
It's a catastrophe.
Yeah.
But the American people will be better situated.
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.
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.
Yeah.
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 throw someone 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 to 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.
Yeah.
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.
Misadventures.
All right.
Alex, tell us quickly about your channel, The Duran, and just sort of anything else you want to plug here.
Stock Up Now00:05:42
You can follow us on the Duran.
It's a channel with me and Alexander Mercurus, 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 Mercuris.
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 sub-stack or anything else you want to mention?
We have a sub-stack, 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.
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.
But thank you for all that you do.
Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
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 rainwater-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.
Yes, the world is getting crazy, but here at the Health Ranger store, we're putting together a survival supply assortment for you.
If you go to healthrangerstore.com slash survival, you'll see what we put together for you, including iodine and iosat.
That's a specific brand name of potassium iodide that's FDA approved.
Or we have the nascent iodine here, which is less expensive in terms of the iodine that you get.
These are available in case things go nuclear.
It's clear that you will not be able to find any of this for sale anywhere.
All the inventories will be wiped out like what happened after Fukushima in 2011.
So if you want to get your hands on some iodine, this is a chance to get it right now.
HealthRangerStore.com slash survival.
In addition, we have many other survival items for you here, including some silver solutions, some spirulina available in bulk and at a discount, and then a large assortment of storable organic food that's laboratory tested, including our Ranger bucket sets.
Here's a 195-day supply.
We've got the mini buckets, and we've also got number 10 cans available of freeze-dried fruits and vegetables and other things like miso soup powder.
Here's some of the buckets.
There's a big variety available.
Here are some of the number 10 cans right here.
Remember, a lot of people are missing fruit.
They don't have enough vitamin C in their storable food.
So, you know, getting bananas and pineapples and strawberries, especially, again, certified organic, freeze-dried.
That is the highest quality with the highest nutrient preservation that you can get in any kind of a storable food format.
All of this is available.
Right now and so much more.
Just go to healthrangerstore.com slash survival.
And because the freeze-dried foods last for so long, you know, even if you don't eat them this year or next year, just keep them on the shelf.
They're going to last a very long time with good preservation, a long shelf life, and they will have value no matter what happens in the world.
Now, of course, I'm praying for peace.
I'm praying for de-escalation.
I don't want to see World War III break out, and I certainly don't want it to go nuclear.
But we're dealing with insane times and insane leaders and insane situations.
Who knows what could happen tomorrow or next week?
Disruptions could happen here in the United States.
There could be, you know, domestic attacks that disrupt supply chains here in the U.S.
So stock up early, stock up now, get your emergency food, emergency medicine, iodine, anything else that you think that you might need.
Get it now.
And by doing so, by shopping with us, you'll be supporting our platforms and our AI engines that we offer for free.
That's funded in part by sales from our store.
So shop with us at healthrangerstore.com slash survival and help yourself get prepared and also help us bring you more free tools and platforms that can keep you informed no matter what happens in the world.