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March 27, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:56
Janet Yellen: Iran Sanctions Not Working

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted over the weekend that US sanctions on Iran are not "changing behavior" of the government in Tehran, but vowed to strengthen the measures anyway. Sanctions don't work? Sanction harder! Also today: US staying in Syria regardless of escalation. And...why were the cops egging Jan 6th protesters to go into the Capitol?

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Good News Amidst Sanctions 00:14:34
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you today?
Doing well, doing well.
Spring is here.
Yeah, it sure is.
New life, new life.
We'd like to preserve some of the old life, too.
Yeah, that would be nice.
But anyway, you know, we look for good news, and we like, and we really get excited if we have a convert.
Oh, they switched.
They say, we watched that Daniel McAdams, boy, he talked me into non-intervention.
I don't know.
There's good news here.
I don't know what it means, but I don't know.
But I don't think it came from anybody watching our program.
But it's interesting.
And it's on anti-war, and there are good guys.
And this has to do with Yellen.
And I've been introduced to Yellen, and I never yelled at her, but she never yelled back either.
She sort of had a wimpy voice.
But she has credibility.
She's been in the university system, and you know that all libertarian constitutional ideas are embedded in all our colleges and universities.
But anyway, she was there and did well because she got picked just out of the clear blue.
They say, I think you ought to run the monetary system.
Can you be our chairman of the Federal Reserve?
She's like, oh, yeah, okay, I'll do it.
So she became chairman, and we had a few conversations, but we didn't have too many agreements on monetary policy.
And yet, and I do not recall a subject coming up of sanctions.
I think when she was in, the sanction issue was not quite as hot as it's been in the last several years, where sanctions are a tool of precipitating war, as far as I'm concerned, or not even precipitating is war when you cut off imports from a certain country.
But the headline says, Yellen says U.S. sanctions have created a real economic crisis in Iran.
So she's complaining about this, thinks it's contributing in a negative way.
And I thought, well, maybe I misread this.
But you're going to straighten us out on that, whether that's right or not.
But anyway, I've had a position on sanctions for a long time.
I think they're much more serious.
And in my lifetime, I remember when sanctions were usually criticized both by Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, and across the economic spectrum.
Most people didn't think a lot of sanctions and tariffs were good.
Yet in this recent years, unfortunately, I think it got stirred up with a Republican president.
There seems to be an enjoyment of using sanctions.
But my political and philosophic point is I believe when you put sanctions on a country just out of the clear pool, clear air, it's punishment, it's violation, it's not morally right, it's economically unsound, and it's not in a way that you can avoid war.
You're more likely to start war rather than avoid war.
So she made a couple comments I thought were interesting, but we'll have to wait and see whether she's been watching our program or not.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, let's put on that first clip because it wasn't anti-war, but here's the original article came from U.S. News and World Report.
And basically, you're right.
I mean, she's basically saying what you've been saying all along, Dr. Paul, which is that sanctions don't work.
They just hurt the average people.
And here's their headline yelling, Iran's actions not impacted by sanctions to the extent the U.S. would like.
And if you could do the next one, there's a clip.
Here's the operative quote.
She said, our sanctions on Iran have created real economic crisis in the country, and Iran is greatly suffering economically because of the sanctions.
Has that forced a change in behavior?
The answer is much less than we would ideally like, she told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday.
So she's saying what you've said all along.
Sanctions make life miserable for the population, for the innocent civilians who can't control their government, as we know, but they don't do a darn thing to change the, quote, behavior of the government.
Sanctions don't work.
But her conclusion, Dr. Paul, was we need more sanctions.
Yeah, but what about the hawks who were behind the scenes cheering her on?
They didn't come up and say something like, hey, you know, that's not a bad idea.
Maybe we ought to reassess the principle of sanctions.
Maybe sanctions aren't that bad.
But it just sort of emphasizes the hypocrisy of policy.
You know, they can use it any way they want.
They can add it and say, this is a good deal, or they can stop and say, look, this helped.
But they don't ever start with any basic principle of free markets, private property, contract rights, and sound money.
No, it's something else that they mess up things.
It's sort of like being tolerant of the Federal Reserve because they screw everything up, make a mess of monetary policy.
And guess what they do?
They volunteer as the most important place where you get regulations because Congress doesn't know how to regulate.
They'll make things worse.
So the Fed has to have all this power of regulation.
And they are powerful, especially when the markets turn down and they have to do something.
Just recently with the bank crisis, they didn't have time for the Congress to have a vote on who's going to get punished for the bailing out.
No, it was done outside of the Congress.
And Congress, just like on the war issues, they sort of avoid things.
And in a way, Congress isn't going to have a very good debate, I think, on sanctions.
A few people may refer to it, but unfortunately, I don't think the ICE has been correct.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think we could even challenge what she's saying.
She's saying it's making the economy a nightmare, it's a disaster, it's not changing their behavior.
I think even the first part of that is probably not entirely correct, and I think it's exaggerated.
And here is my evidence, Dr. Paul.
The first is an article from Deutsche Vella, and it's from, I think, last month, if we can put that next one up.
This is the German state broadcaster.
How Iran is boosting oil exports despite U.S. sanctions.
So she's saying the sanctions are killing the economy.
Well, Deutsche Vela is reporting that it actually is not.
They're ramping up their exports.
And here's what they say.
If you can put that next one on.
Now, Deutsche Vela is reporting that they're averaging around a million barrels per day exported.
The numbers are far below the 2.5 million per day that Iran was exporting in early 2018 before Trump pulled out of the deal.
But it's much higher than those times during 2020 when exports fell to less than 500,000 barrels a day.
So they're not up to what they were, Dr. Paul, but the point is they're exporting twice as much oil per day, despite the fact that the sanctions keep getting tougher and tougher and tougher.
So even what she's suggesting, I think is probably not accurate.
Which means on the long run, our side's going to win the argument, the intellectual argument.
But, you know, it's sort of like in the foreign policy that they get people thinking about this.
And they have sanctions and they do these different things as punishment, but sometimes they don't even come close to it because our approach, you know, whether it's Syria, Iraq, Iran, instead of divide and conquer, we bring them together.
You know, before that 20-year war in Iraq and probably Afghanistan too, didn't drive these people apart.
They weakened our world stature.
They weakened the world currency.
So Iraq now and Iran are partners.
And just think the natural coming together of Russia, you know, helping the sales of Russian oil.
Turns out Russia, Russia did pretty well.
But they never say, oh, we made a mistake.
Like you say, they just gibberish.
But from their point of view, and probably the Hawks will say, well, we made a mistake and we shouldn't allow that to happen.
And they'll stick to the guns.
Oh, we see the littlest crack and we say, well, you're on the right track, but why don't you follow up on it?
Yeah.
Well, you make a good point that the sanctions aren't driving people apart, driving countries apart.
In fact, they're bringing countries together.
You know, the unintended consequences, I think they're unintended consequences, is that they're not falling down to their knees and saying, Uncle, tell us what we have to do to get back in your good graces.
In fact, they're doing some other things.
And if we can put this next one on, this is a Business Week article I found from December.
And it says, Russia and Iran are building a trade route that defies sanctions.
The nations are investing upwards of $20 billion to ease passage of goods along waterways and railways.
So basically, U.S. policy has driven Iran into Russia's arms, and both of them are building a transportation network.
And if we can put this next one on, that is, I think, 40% shorter than the existing.
Now, this is a little complicated, but if you look at the blue line, that's how they have had to ship in the past, going all the way through and all the way around.
Now they're in the process of building through Iran through a series of canals and rail networks, et cetera, from St. Petersburg to Mumbai, half the distance as it would have been in the past.
All of these things are certainly directly or indirectly, Dr. Paul, I would suggest put together as a part of sanctions.
They're forcing them to be innovative and find new ways rather than to throw up their arms and say, we're sorry, Uncle Sam, tell us what to do next.
You sort of alluded to what is their strategy, what is their motive.
And I think the large part of it is unintended consequences and stupidity, and they don't understand.
But there are some people, and they might be the ones higher up.
They do it very deliberately because they like to see chaos.
They like to see disruption because domestically here in this country, there is a purpose in the chaos on our streets because those who want to change the whole structure, you know, have an opening.
And they're doing a pretty good job at really messing the place up here at home.
So even internationally, there'll be some of them.
They won't complain too much because it's not working well.
That'll give us another point, and that will strengthen us.
That's where the misinterpretation will be.
That doesn't strengthen the United States.
Morally, constitutionally, it's a violation of everything that we should stand for.
But they'll still do it because there is a contest between decency and the criminals that want to run the world.
Yeah.
And they'll probably give us a thank you note.
Thanks for forcing us to find out a better way to shift these things.
Yeah.
Well, let's move on because this is related.
And I know you wrote about this this week in the column in the report, but there's been a lot going on in Syria.
You know, first, toward the end of last week, there was this drone attack.
Apparently, they blame, the U.S. blames Iran-backed rebels, Iran-backed troops.
They say it was Iranian-manufactured drone.
We haven't seen the drone.
We don't know, but we'll take the word for it.
Attacked a base there.
I think a contractor was killed and a few American soldiers were injured.
So the U.S. retaliated and did a lot of bombing in Syria, in that northeastern part of Syria.
And then the other forces again went with drones.
And so there's a lot of activity.
They want the U.S. out of there.
But the U.S. is not taking the hint.
And this is from anti-war.
If you could put the next one on, the U.S. says, no, we're here to stay.
Go back one if you can.
There we are.
After the escalation, White House says U.S. troops in Syria are there to stay.
This is John Kirby, who I believe is really out of his league, Dr. Paul.
That's a different topic, but the guy has really got a screw loose.
Anyway, he's the National Security Council spokesman.
Here's what he said on Face the Nation.
He said, here's what's not going to change.
The mission and ISIS is not going to change.
We have under 1,000 troops in Syria that are going after that network, which is, while greatly diminished, still viable and still critical.
So we're going to stay at that task.
Again, maintaining the fiction, Dr. Paul, that we're there to fight ISIS.
Yes, and it looks like they never were going to go in there and fight ISIS and leave.
Besides, that would be a dumb thing to do anyway.
We go into countries to fight ISIS, and they weren't there before we go in, and then they're there when we leave, and they take over the country.
But, you know, I think it was Assad.
You know, Assad was attacked by Obama.
And that was early in Obama's administration.
That's the good war.
We have to go in there and help out and make sure that we satisfy Obama.
And he was the one.
And we have to get rid of the has to go.
But that's persisted.
I'm just wondering if we had all the records of the last couple weeks whether Obama might have called Biden and said, hey, look, this is my war.
This is a good war.
You're not going to quit again, are you?
Because, you know, look at what they did.
They quit in Vietnam and they became civilized and a good creating partner.
We don't want those kind of things to happen.
What a mess.
Yeah, it is.
You know, the interesting part is if we can actually do the next one, because, again, it is the fiction.
ISIS, as you point out very well, Dr. Paul, ISIS is Assad's enemy.
The last thing the U.S. wants to do is to take out his number one enemy.
And this is an interesting point because why are we really there?
Breaking The Cycle 00:04:42
We know that it's about the oil.
And here's one person on Twitter, Kevin Leversey, he makes a very good point.
U.S. forces have illegally occupied Syria and the Conoco gas fields for years since Obama under the guise of a counter-ISIS mission in Syria.
This isn't some allegation or something either.
It's literally called Mission Support Site Conico.
How much more explicit can you get?
We name the mission after the oil company that we're supporting there that's stealing their oil, and that's what's really going on there.
You know, there was a group, and we can't claim credit for this, but we encourage this type of thinking.
Because at the very beginning, there was a progressive group that very loudly said, it's all about oil.
And that was before they were even talking about oil, before we understood exactly where the oil was and what was going on there.
Oh no, we're making Syria safer democracy.
So they did that.
It's all about oil, and it continues.
So I think that they knew it from the beginning.
You know, what they say and what they do, it never coincides with what their real goals are.
So that should be put into the category of flat-out dishonesty.
Maybe lying, lying to the people.
Oh, why we send kids over and they die for this?
I mean, Americans died this week in Syria.
It makes no sense.
But it's the potential danger of doing these things.
Just think they've learned a little bit of a lesson because we slipped into war in Korea by the United Nations giving us our cover.
Then we jumped into the war in Vietnam and thousands of Americans were killed.
And we disappear and leave with our tail between our legs.
And I thought, not once did I see a story about the criticism of how Biden left Afghanistan.
That was the greatest sin in the world.
It was messy and it was dumb, but the dumbest thing was going in there.
So that happened.
But now the people, people just go along with it and say, you know, this is the thing that we have to do, and it's our intention of doing it, which is, I think, the problem that we have is getting the message out that it's a bigger issue.
It's a bigger point, a more significant and philosophic point about what type of foreign policy you have.
Do you have a constitutional foreign policy?
It's like arguing, you know, real bitterly over what the interest rates should be.
And you're over here, oh, no, they should be 6.2.
No, 6.6.
And they do that.
And that's about the way in foreign policy, because they both accept interventionism and it's constant.
And not only is it interventionism, it's flip-flopping.
It depends on what happens next week or if an election is coming up or there is a sentiment.
The sentiment of the people, which is important, changes, and these interventionists, they'll adapt and say, oh, okay, we better be more careful.
But I think all along they had intended those troops to be there for a long time.
And it was in combination with Republicans and Democrats in contrast to the few people left that will look toward constitutionalism, conservatism, property rights, and non-intervention and putting people together who believe, which we are making an effort to bring the progressives together on this particular issue.
But I guess we'll have to keep plugging.
Well, you mentioned flip-flopping, and it is definitely that, but it's also a good sprinkling of hypocrisy because if you know the administration, the way they're talking about Russia in Ukraine, oh, they're violating their sovereignty, they're occupying their territory.
This is awful.
It goes against the international rules-based order.
We'll put on this next clip, and I think you did mention this this week, because this is a great point.
Professor Zenkis writes on Twitter: the United States is currently occupying a larger portion of Syria than Russia is of Ukraine.
So a larger proportion of the country Syria is occupied illegally by U.S. troops than Ukraine is occupied by Russia.
So that's the usual projectionism of our policy.
You know, that is so astounding.
Police Lie Contested 00:10:24
I'm sure you better be prepared for next Sunday morning because all the three major networks, they're going to have you on the three major next rounds.
Breaking news, breaking news.
But I wish that were so.
I guess the best we can do is sort of laugh a little bit at their stupidity.
Yeah, we can for sure.
Well, one thing that we're not going to laugh at is being hungry.
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Dr. Paul, our last story for the day is something that we have been following ever since it happened.
Our position has been that this doesn't really look like an insurrection, and the story, the gospel that the Democrats preach on this gets flimsier and flimsier all the time.
Right, insurrection.
That is a bit of an overstatement, to tell you the truth.
But the issue here that I think is so bad is the politicizing of the judicial system.
It's all about politics, has nothing to do with justice.
I mean, there's some individuals, hundreds were arrested, no due process, no hearing in court, no charges made, and some of them ended up in prison, and they never talked to a judge.
So standing there not knowing is pretty severe punishment.
Sometimes it's worse than, okay, we did this, and we'll lie a little bit, and we're going to get you six months.
That's probably easy compared to sitting around for two years just hoping that you'll have a hearing made.
And I remember over the years of saying, well, you know, we are so fortunate in this country that you get into a little trouble.
There's understanding.
At least we have a justice system that will be fair to you.
And it just isn't so.
And it's one that's so politicized that people have to realize that until we change that thing, and they keep saying, and this is a propaganda machine.
This is a propaganda machine of even social media on foreign policy.
Although it has been a Republican-Democratic argument, there have been a lot of Republicans who said, oh, no, let's forget about this guy.
We have to punish him.
And they do it, and they don't stick to the issue.
Where does this authority come from?
And there was one case where the individual, well known, and I think he spent three minutes in there, but all by himself, just looked around and left.
And then he got prosecuted, I think, in prison.
Yeah, yeah.
Horse.
Well, you know, Speaker McCarthy has actually surprised some of us by coming out on the right side of this.
He's argued for transparency.
He gave over hours and hours of those tapes over to Tucker Carlson, has promised full transparency to the American people.
Let everyone see it, and I know that's what you've already argued for.
Let us see it.
Well, why have the Democrats been so against letting these tapes out?
And I think this is one reason.
This next story is one reason.
This is from the Epoch Times.
If we can look at that next clip, prosecutor admits D.C. police officers acted as provocateurs at U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
Now, I watched all the body cam that this story is about, and it's very, very clear what was happening, that they were egging them on.
We can go to the next clip because this is part of an ongoing case.
Federal prosecutor admitted in court papers that three DC Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers acted as provocateurs at the northwest steps of the Capitol on January 6th.
And go to the next one.
Just as a little bit of taste of what they were saying, the officer clearly incited that area, and we still don't have the video from all the undercover MPD.
That's the Metropolitan Police Department.
The undercover video, a portion of which was posted on Rumble on March 21st, 4th, just a couple of days ago, shows three members of the police department's electronic surveillance unit approached the Capitol Northwest steps.
One of the men, while surveying the crowd, stated, someone's going to get shot.
Officer 2 replied, they're not going to shoot anybody along the edge of the Capitol property.
Officer 2 encouraged one protester to go up to the building.
Go join them, he said.
The man replied, no, I got my bike to guard.
And over and over, if you do the next one with a quick sorry to Paul, but do it over and over, you look at this, a short time later, Officer 1 joined the crowd saying, USA, USA.
And then he said, come on, go, go.
Officer one encouraged the crowd to move up the stairs with repeated shouts.
Keep going, keep going, keep going, come on.
So over and over, you see when you watch this video, these undercover police officers trying to egg the protesters on, climb up that scaffolding, get into the building, do this and that.
So I think that might be why they don't want this stuff coming out.
Yeah, you're right.
That's the discovery.
It makes sense from them.
They're only using common sense.
If you're going to lie, you've got to have a bigger lie to cover the first lie.
And they're pretty good at this.
And they talk about the Capitol Hill police.
So they're supposed to help a little bit.
And then you have the D.C. police who are the officers that are accused of this.
But there's so much evidence.
We barely touched on all the evidence.
I mean, the FBI, I think, had a little thing to do, too.
The FERs in there.
You know, over the decades, I have been careful to try to understand exactly the FBI and the CIA and all the atrocious, useless killing called assassination within our own country, starting with Kennedy.
And the evidence is so strong that so there is no real confidence that we can show, have about our legal system, the judicial system.
And yet the propaganda is so bad and they get away with it.
All they have to do is say, oh, he's an insurrectionist and he's a terrorist.
Oh, yeah, they use the word terrorist.
Even the person that just walked in and looked around, they lay on terrorists.
Oh, it's over.
You've just lost.
We don't even need a grand jury to rubber stamp this.
And so he's a terrorist and his life is ruined.
And of course, there was a lot of that activity similar, but not exactly the same.
In COVID, all they had to do was catch you saying one word that was politically incorrect and scientifically right.
Then you could end up with the same thing.
So there was no justice there in many parts.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I think we're about done with what we have to say.
Just to thank our viewers for tuning in in another week.
We'll keep an eye on everything and do our best to keep you informed.
Don't forget to write in your calendars, June 3rd, Houston, Texas, the first Ron Paul Institute Conference of the Year.
Those tickets are going to be on sale soon.
I'll keep you posted on that.
Dr. Paul?
Very good.
And I want to finish by just mentioning once again on our last point, the prosecutor admits D.C. police officers acted as provocateurs.
That is interesting news.
It's very important news.
I believe it's true.
And it should awaken a lot of people to what's really going on because don't buy into this thing.
Anybody, the louder somebody shouts in Washington politically or in the courts or in the media about insurrection, the more they're lying.
And there's a general rule that we followed when I was in Congress.
You look at a title of a bill, and the title of the bill really sounds good.
And I sort of passed the message along, be prepared.
The staff should be prepared because the bill will most likely say something exactly opposite.
So yes, they use this.
And that is why it is important to sort all this out.
So this is a breakthrough in a way.
But like you say, the video is affected.
They had that kangaroo court, and nobody said hardly anything.
Jonathan Turley and a few other good guys would say something.
The defense wasn't even allowed to have the information.
I mean, that is so bad that if that's not corrected, and you know, a lot of people worrying about the Constitution and our government judicial system as well as Western civilization.
But if you don't correct that, if the crooked police are monitoring everything that we do, and now they can monitor like nobody's business, I'll tell you what, things aren't going to work out so well.
But the good news is a lot more people are waking up and they're sick and tired like we are and they're just looking for an opening.
First thing is, is be informed the best you can.
Talk to your friends and neighbors.
Talk to yourself and stay informed because right now, I mean, here the Speaker of the House is starting to, you know, make sense and saying we need more transparency.
So there is a contest going on and it should be easy for us because I really believe that our position is much closer to the truth than the people that we have to contest with.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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