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May 21, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:19
Neocons Strangling Iran Talks, Putting A 'Deal' In Jeopardy

It started with President Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff claiming that Iran can have zero ability to enrich uranium, even for power generation. Then he shifted his public stance. Then he said it again and Trump chimed in. If this is the "red line" then the deal is off and the neocons may well get their US war on Iran. Also today: Trump SLAMS Thomas Massie for questioning massive debt increase in the "big beautiful bill."

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Nuclear Enrichment Debate 00:10:52
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Good.
Well, in our preparation, we talked a little bit today about the tragedy going on in Washington, trying to balance the budget and steal more from the people.
And I think that gets the biggest news, but we're going to start with something else because we think it's equally big.
It's not quite out there in the press as much as the budget is for today and yesterday and will be, but in a way, they're connected.
Foreign policy is always connected to economic policy.
And what I'm talking about is what's going on in Iran.
And that's a continuation of a monstrous position that we've held with Iran since 1953.
And it continues.
But there was hope that Trump would work something out with them, but it doesn't look like that's going to work out with another agreement on how to handle the nuclear issue.
So the headline on Zero Hedge that we're referring to is, Ayatollah Khomeini slams outrageous U.S. red line demand of Iran on nuclear talks.
In other words, your first reaction was, that's the end, you know, essentially.
So that to us is not good.
Not that we think that the Iranians are perfect partners and would do everything they said.
Our responsibility is to try to point out some of the ridiculousness of our foreign policy.
And to me, I think it's sort of naive for us to think that we can rule the world, tell everybody what to do.
And this red line is saying, well, not only are you not allowed to make nuclear bombs, which they're not doing, and the inspectors agree they're not doing it.
It's saying you can't do 1% enrichment.
And that's almost like, we don't want to talk to you.
And that's what seems to be happening right now.
Yeah, this is a colossal struggle, Dr. Paul, between the neocons who are, I think they're feeling their grip loosen a little bit on foreign policy in the U.S.
They do not want this deal to go through.
They do want Trump to go to war with Iran.
That is what they've wanted since well before 9-11, since well before the Iraq war.
They've wanted this.
And so they feel like this may be their last opportunity.
And indeed, it is slipping away.
We've talked about opinion polls, and they're consistently showing the Americans are less enthusiastic about war in the Middle East, less enthusiastic about Israel and defending Israel.
And I think they're feeling that it's slipping away.
So right now we have this bizarre situation where Steve Witkoff, who's gotten a lot of probably deserved credit for being an envoy, he's been to Russia a few times.
He's been to the Middle East.
He said a couple of weeks ago that Iran could not have any enrichment, not even civilian enrichment.
Now then there was an outcry, of course, because that's obviously never been the case.
So he walked that back a little bit.
And then he said it again.
And then Trump said it again, that they can't have enrichment.
Well, that the deal is off the table.
And the terrible thing, Dr. Paul, is there is a deal right there on the table that it is a win-win for everyone.
Trump can say, I got a better deal than Obama did.
Obama only got a 10% 10-year sunset on Iran's nuclear development.
I got a permanent one.
I got a better deal.
I beat Obama.
I'm the greatest presidential negotiator in history.
It would have been a great deal for everyone, but the neocons are putting poison pills.
They're feeding poison pills as fast as you can.
Now, put up this first clip.
This is what you were referring to, Dr. Paul.
And obviously, there's no question about it that the Iranians view this as outrageous that the U.S. will say that it's a red line, that they cannot enrich any uranium.
As, of course, a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, they have an absolute right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
So, go to the next one.
This is from anti-war, the same thing.
This is what Witkoff said yesterday.
Witkoff says the U.S. cannot allow any Iranian nuclear enrichment.
He said that is a red line.
Well, the response to that comment from Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the supreme leader of Iran, is the next one.
He said, cannot allow.
Go to that next clip.
He said, the American side in these indirect talks should avoid nonsensical remarks.
Saying they will not allow Iran to enrich is a big mistake.
No one waits for their permission.
So that's where we are now in a very unfortunate situation when it was so close to a deal.
It seems so ridiculous to go and look for it.
But you know, the conclusion politically for me is that there's sort of a victory cheer today from the neocons because the neocons are much more influential than Trump says he wants them to be.
And you know, he has a mixed group of them, but what do you expect?
But not only if you if you have two or three, that's all you need, because they're out there in different places that puts on pressure when you think of the pressures that come from the military-industrial complex.
And so, unfortunately, how some people think of this is not thinking of good and evil, bad policy and good policy.
They say, well, we'll have a little better good policy, and we'll talk this way, and then we'll have some bad policy and get away with it.
And we will appeal to everybody, which is, you know, in general, the way politicians look at everything.
We have to appease every faction.
My thoughts have always been that why don't we get every faction to see the benefits of freedom?
You know, and I truly believe that whether you come from the left or the right or whatever, if you approach it from a principle of individual liberty and peace, that people can come together.
But the system we have breeds this type of stuff.
And here we have the neocons winning out on something.
Yeah, it's been back and forth, and there's a lot of other things.
Everybody's talking about the spending, and the Republicans can't agree with this.
But they slip this in here now, and they have to know this would close the thing out.
That's what they want.
They can't believe that they would talk like that and say, we've had it.
See, the Iranians dropped out.
Yeah, that's exactly what they want.
The neocons want to make a perfectly reasonable position, a perfectly reasonable compromise position to beat Trump backing down because they know how to stroke his ego.
And they know how to make it.
If they make it look like he's backing down, he's a loser, then he's going to be very affected by that.
They know exactly what they're doing.
They knew exactly what they were doing with George W. Bush when they got him, when they goaded him into invading Iraq back then.
They knew pretty much how to manipulate Obama.
They knew how to manipulate Biden's team.
So this is exactly them trying to make something that looks very reasonable.
You can have enrichment for your own purposes, your own civilian purposes, which will be monitored by IAEA, which may well be monitored by the Russians as the guarantors.
Russian is a close close ally of Iran, as a guarantor of the deal.
You know, it's like they're going to sign for you when you get a car alone.
Russia is going to sign for Iran for this car alone, so they're going to be on the hook for it.
Perfectly clear deal, but the neocons want to make it look like a terrible compromise.
What surprises me is how successful they are.
Yeah.
Because, you know, the position you just stated appeals to the majority of the American people.
They want us to be reasonable and talk about this because there's been polling on this.
72%, I think, said they want a deal.
The people want it.
And yet they get away with this by the money interest and the people who are carrying the propaganda, and they're able to shift this type of support.
And that's why you can become a deep believer in the deep state and realize there's a lot of strings being pulled.
And politicians are not all that principled.
They're principled to a degree.
But then there's a point where, well, you know, if I don't do this, I'm going to lose my position on such and such committee, and I won't be able to do fundraising, and Trump's going to get me.
And all of a sudden, they become political.
Yeah.
Well, let's turn to Glenn Greenwald, who makes the case.
Now, listen, we just had Tulsi Gabra come down and say the entirety of the U.S. intelligence community once again assesses that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear bomb.
But the U.S. neocons are screaming, they can't get a bomb, they can't get a bomb.
Well, we've already determined that they're not making a bomb.
So they're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, trying to make something out of nothing.
Well, here's Greenwald put that clip up, and he makes us, and he actually, there's a video clip here that's too long to put on the show, but he goes through every single time that it was claimed that Iran was just, you know, days away, weeks away.
So here's what he said.
Americans have been told for 20 years, Iran is just a few months away from a nuclear weapon.
The world has heard continuously, we only have months to bomb Iran to prevent it.
And then in the video, he goes through every single occurrence over the last 20 years to say this.
And of course, they have never done it.
They've not worked on it.
Our Intel says they're not working on it, and still they want to bomb them.
See, I wanted to emphasize the fact that they claim in Washington and politics that there's two separate sites.
They're dealing with the budget, and that's over here.
Oh, we're dealing with the foreign policy.
But just the things that we've been talking about, how much cost is that?
You know, our intervention, whether it's in Gaza, any place in the Middle East, Ukraine, and now we're trying to stir up someplace else, and we don't want to forget about China.
They're available for a little fight here and there.
That is so disgusting, I believe, that the people do this deliberately.
And they try to pass it off as good intentions.
Security, national security.
If you're not for this, that means you're un-American and you don't want us to be safe.
And yet those same people sometimes have weird positions on the border.
Absolutely.
Well, the second, it was a good segue, Dr. Paul, because the second part is about the domestic issue.
Fiscal Fraud and Waste 00:12:06
And that's a quote-unquote big, beautiful bill that the Republicans are, anyone who makes a peep about it on the Republican side is getting whacked around.
And we have an example of that in a minute.
But Politico brings up a point.
Not only should the American people be worried, but actually Wall Street is getting spooked on this.
Put on that Politico clip first.
If you can, put it on next.
Debt cloud suddenly hangs over mega-bill talks.
And you go to that next clip.
It says Republicans knew they'd have to overcome fierce internal divisions, thorny policy trade-offs, and rock-solid Democratic resistance to pass their massive Democratic domestic policy bill.
And I highlighted this, that they didn't count on a Wall Street backlash too.
A softening Treasury bond market and the surprise downgrade Friday of U.S. creditworthiness are the latest forces weighing in on the GOP mega bill.
An unmistakable nudge to lawmakers that investors are growing increasingly concerned about legislation that could pile trillions of dollars of debt onto an already staggering national debt.
Sounds like the bond market's getting nervous, Dr. Paul.
Boy, they should be, but not nervous enough.
You know, this reminds me of that famous book written in the middle of the 19th century, The Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
And when you see this, many Republicans appear fully prepared to brush off, brush off the warning, including the dying grade.
The dying grades are there.
They get worse all the time.
And even Trump said, I mean, I was with the response of when it's most recent, the third downgrade, the third different group, he was saying, well, we don't have to respond to that.
We don't have to deal with that.
So they're brushing it off, which takes some deceit on themselves.
They deceive themselves on this.
So it's tax cuts.
I think this mess is going to end badly in picking one thing, our first issue or this issue.
They're one and the same thing as big government and the special interests and the pressure on, and especially in foreign policy, it's the deep state, but it's the deep state that controls the money.
So if they don't have the money, they can't do this stuff.
And it's just amazing.
And then there was one place where they were talking about the budget, and they were saying all the good things that were supposed to make the Republicans happy.
And they were.
They were some good things in there.
And then the list of the good things is we increased the budget on the military.
So they don't even try to hide from it.
They're assuming anything spent in the military is for national defense.
And I would say that most of it aggravates our ability to defend this country on long-term principles.
And like defending ourselves and protecting us from a financial calamity, which is what they're working for.
One of the sentences in the article, the market watchers say it's the pricing of treasury debt that lawmakers should be paying close attention to.
So what would it look like if there was a bond rebellion over this massive intake of debt?
Well, the first thing is interest rates, and it could happen.
The shift in interest rates can be real rapid.
And interest rates would skyrocket.
And that's the one thing they're really concerned about.
But they're going to try to cover it.
But, you know, once the interest rate is bigger than the budget, and the military, it's bigger than the military budget, it's crazy to think, well, we'll borrow the money to pay on the interest of the money that we borrow.
And that's what they're doing.
And it's a wonder that this delusional thing keeps going on.
But there will be an awakening.
When that happens and they see interest rates, and they forget about how dangerous things were in the 70s when you consider the interest rates went up to 21%.
Now Trump is arguing and the administration says, oh, it's 4%.
That's way too high.
I want them down.
So it's a real mess, and it has to do with the philosophy of government.
What's the role of government?
All those things that we work on.
And there's a big difference because I always argue that marketplaces and monetary policy and interest rates are very, very powerful.
They can't erase the bad effects.
The people decide that.
They can't inflate the money, and they try to say with wage and price controls.
They never work.
Or they say, okay, we have a balance of trade.
It's not balanced right, and we want to sell more stuff.
They don't say, well, maybe we're not providing the right kind of product.
They say, well, we have to put a tax on it and regulate it and put tariffs on it.
And they always resort to patchwork, but that works for a while because there's a lot of wealth stored away.
But I think what we're talking about is what happens when they realize there's no more wealth there, and that's what we're getting awfully close to.
Then they have to dump the money.
And if anybody's going to make a loan, it is going to cost a whole lot.
Yeah.
Well, it looks like they're circling the wagons around their president because he wants this bill.
Go to that next clip because this looks like, and this is entirely predictable, Dr. Paul, as you know, this looks like how it's going to end up.
Go to that next clip.
However, meanwhile, the cadre of conservative, go to the next one if you can.
That's, yeah, we skipped that one.
We'll skip that one too, yeah.
Meanwhile, the cadre of congressional fiscal hawks who have insisted on deep spending cuts appear to be in retreat.
That's going to shock you, Dr. Paul.
When the Moody's downgrade hit Friday, House GOP hardliners felt they had maximum pressure to force major changes in the bill, including dramatically restructuring the design of the spending cuts, which are backloaded toward the end of the bill's 10-year lifespan.
They always do that.
It's so fake.
And they think they can get away with that.
We'll shift the way we divvy up the loot.
Eight years down the road, we're going to cut.
Promise, promise.
Put that up.
So here's the thing, though.
And I highlighted this.
But all signs, and this will shock you, Dr. Paul, all signs are that the Republican Party's Trump-centric politics are set to outweigh any push for fiscal purity.
That's a shocker.
I wonder if that's true.
Well, there is one member of the House who is not going to cave, and he is getting whacked around the head and neck by Trump.
This just came out in the New York Post.
Go to the next one.
Trump rips GOP grandstanders as he tries to sell House Republicans on a big, beautiful bill.
Now, let's grab our earpieces because I got a video of Trump absolutely slamming Thomas Massey.
If we can cue that, you might want to grab your earpiece, Dr. Paul, and listen to that Massey clip or the Trump clip.
Hold on.
Okay, here we go.
Here's Trump flanked by Speaker Johnson.
Let's hear what he has to say.
I'm a fiscal hawk.
I'm a bigger fiscal hawk.
There's nobody like me.
That's more deficit than Biden did.
Because we have to fix the country.
Do you think that Thomas Massey is correct in saying that this adding part of the government?
No, I don't think Thomas Massey understands government.
I think he's a grandstander, frankly.
He'll probably, but we don't even talk to him much.
I think he should be voted out of office.
And I just don't think he understands government.
If you ask him a couple of questions, he never gives you an answer.
He just says, I'm going to go.
You know what I think about this?
Where is the memory about how they were going to destroy Trump?
We're going to impeach these guys and nobody will like him.
We'll make these charges.
Nobody will like him.
We're going to put him in jail.
Oh, was he that bad?
And then peach him again.
And guess what?
The whole thing backfired on it.
Do you think they're going to destroy Thomas Massey's reputation?
You can't touch him.
And they all know about it.
Except it sounds like it doesn't matter.
But I think in a way this is already backfiring on him because Thomas becomes a hero among people who want to live with principled government and the Constitution and the whole works.
But they still do it.
They want to attack him.
Like he's the bad guy.
It's almost like 1984.
You know, here's Trump arguing for a massive increase in debt, saying, I'm the biggest fiscal hawk of everyone, as he wants us to spend tons more money in attacking Massey.
Now, he may have gotten one thing right.
He says, I don't think Thomas Massey understands government.
Which is go along to get along.
He doesn't understand this is how you do things here.
You can't stand on principles.
When he said that word government, we knew exactly where he's being misled.
Exactly.
We don't necessarily aim our goals at enriching the government.
The one thing that I can't stand is that if you cut something, cut a tax, you have to pay it back to the government.
Like the government owns everything, and if you take it shifted around or cut it back, you have to pay it back.
You have to find another victim.
Yeah.
Well, here is why they're so mad at Thomas Massey, because he actually brings, as they say, the receipts to the discussion.
Here are a couple of his posts on X.
Now, here's a first one from yesterday.
He said, the big, beautiful bill will add $20 trillion of federal debt over 10 years.
And that's according to the authors of it.
But there's another huge problem.
It will increase the price of the $36 trillion of debt we already have as bond buyers realize we aren't fiscally responsible.
In fact, I just asked you about that a minute ago, and you explained that.
It's going to actually raise the cost of our existing debt because the bond market's getting scared.
Oh, they can't stop it.
And it is automatic.
You're right.
And if you don't do it, they have to try to cover the basis of, well, we don't want them to realize what's happening.
So we'll do it in secret.
That's why you don't get all the records.
You know, in the 008 crisis, there were trillions of dollars being shifted around.
But nobody really knows how they maneuver that or the details of it.
But yeah, they think if they shift it around and people don't see it, that it doesn't happen.
It does fool the people a long time.
And the business people who have billions and billions to protect, they want to believe, and they don't want to say a word about it because it would challenge the system.
But the system is based on fraud.
Waste, fraud, and abuse.
All they have to do is think about getting rid of fraud.
And that is the monetary system of fraud.
Waste, who's for waste?
Nobody wants to waste, but government generally does waste things.
And abuse.
What does abuse mean?
But fraud is something they ought to deal with, and that's counterfeiting, counterfeiting fraud.
And that is the basic issue that if you don't like certain things about government or debt or too many wars or runaway welfare spending, you have to deal with the fraudulent monetary system.
And it's good for a while.
People say, those Federal Reserve notes, they're not redeemable oil and silver, but my stores are still taking it.
The Importance of Monetary Policy 00:07:32
And we won't use bills anymore.
We'll make it sort of a computer that people don't pay any attention to.
But eventually they do, when prices double and triple and quadruple.
And when that day comes, we're asking about that, it goes so fast.
And that's when there's the blow-off, you know, that people want to get rid of every dollar they have because stuff is more valuable than currency.
Well, here's how Massey explains it.
I think he does a very good job of explaining what this downgrade means in terms of the cost of debt.
Go to that next clip.
So Massey said, Monday, on the news of the BBB, which is the downgrading of our creditworthiness, on news of the BBB, 30-year U.S. Treasuries rose to 5%, and 10-year U.S. Treasuries rose to 4.52%.
That's the price we pay to finance the national debt when old notes mature.
We are approaching $1.5 trillion of annual interest payments, over $4,000 per U.S. citizen per year.
And he continued.
In the next clip, perspective.
Now, this is where he really breaks it down, Dr. Paul.
The part of the big, beautiful bill that renews the TCJA.
I'm sorry, the BBB was a big, beautiful bill.
I'm sorry, it wasn't the downgrade.
I was mistaken in the first one.
The part of the big beautiful bill that renews the tax cuts will benefit each family on average of $1,600.
Now, that sounds pretty good, $1,600 benefit.
But he adds, the policies changed or left in place by the bill will obligate each family of four to $16,000 of interest rates on behalf of the federal government.
And you'll remember this, Dr. Paul.
He did this during the COVID free money stimulus checks.
He's saying, yeah, you're getting $1,600 now, but it's going to add to the interest that each family pays by, I don't know, he said $60,000, whatever.
He calculated it all out.
So they get you with this, you know, here's $1,000, but it's going to cost you $50,000 to pay off.
But, you know, McGovern was laughed out of, I think he had the lowest number ever for president, but he was going to give everybody $1,000.
And people will say, well, it's just crazy.
Now you give them $20,000 and they want it.
Yeah, give us more.
We don't care.
Well, thankfully, our good friend and in some cases, relative, Senator Ram Paul, chimed in on it.
And I put that last clip up.
And he makes a good point.
He says, I stand with President Trump on cutting taxes and shrinking government.
But tacking a $5 trillion debt hike onto his agenda, that's DC sabotage.
I want to deliver Trump's agenda without bankrupting the country.
And that's a good point.
He links to a Cato report on how this will add an additional $5 trillion in debt.
And it's too bad to hear, I mean, it's disappointing to hear President Trump attacking Massey like this.
The idea that he should be voting out of office, everyone, every, we don't usually take sides in politics, but everyone should be supporting Thomas Massey there.
Right.
And I want to repeat an issue I brought up a minute ago and read a part of this article.
And it says Trump's support for the Speaker.
And the Speaker's a nice guy, but I don't know if he has nice economic theories.
He says, this is Trump.
I don't think there's anybody that's more well qualified to be Speaker of the House.
Well, you know, considering all their options, that might not be a major statement.
Trump added of Johnson describing himself as a big fan of the Louisiana.
It would be to Trump's benefit, you know, to get along with him.
You know, in order to say, if we were working there for a freer society, that would be nice to have that coalition.
The legislation includes an extension.
This is the part I m mentioned before.
The legislation includes an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.
Well, that's good.
And the Jobs Act.
No taxes on tips.
Hey, we talked about that in a minute.
Someone else had that idea.
Yeah.
They never mentioned my name.
How we were introducing that little idea.
Yeah, it was bad.
No taxes on overtime pay.
Well, that's a good idea.
And finalize.
And more spending on defense and border security.
More spending.
Even though Trump said he doesn't want to be interventionist anymore, we've got to spend more.
So, but I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was just saying he still has a lot of loyal supporters.
I'd like them to not be loyal supporters of mine or yours.
I want them to be loyal supporters to the principles of liberty and they get rid of the personalities.
And you can support Trump by encouraging him to do the right thing.
I mean, I looked through, I had to stop doing it because I was getting so angry.
I looked through the comments, you know, about Massey.
And oh, he's just a liberal, oh, just another Biden supporter.
You know, like they have no idea who this guy is, you know.
Anyway, I want to thank Georges who put in $20 saying, gents, please write your congressman, badger your friends until they do so too.
And that's a good thing.
We always encourage that because it does work.
And we've been on the receiving end, and it does work.
So thanks a lot for listening.
Please hit that thumbs up or like and please subscribe wherever you are to the Liberal Report so we can keep coming to you with the truth.
Over to you, Dr. Farmer.
Very good.
And I want to acknowledge our viewers that have been loyal and turning into us and those who spread the message because to me that's the most important thing that we that we do.
And I think it's so important that we do this because sometimes we don't have a whole lot of control of the media, the educational system, and we need these help.
But ideas can't be stopped.
If they're powerful ideas, it may take time.
It might be a big effort, but eventually they do spread.
And that is very important.
So I would say that the best thing that we can do is to continue to do what we're doing by spreading a message and getting people to understand it.
Because I think once they do, all of a sudden I saw and see continually the bringing together of this message.
You know, we talk about civil liberties.
Oh, the liberal Democrats used to be that.
And what about a non-intervention of foreign policy?
Well, that's across the board.
Sometimes Republicans are like that.
Sometimes the Democrats are like that.
But I see the principles of liberty in the Constitution bringing people together, and there shouldn't be so many factions.
The founders had a daydream about this, and they said, you know what?
It'd be good if we didn't have political parties.
But human nature sort of invites political parties.
But I think the idea and principle of bringing people together, say, for the monetary policy or the policy against Iran, is very, very important and take it out of the hands of the wealthy.
So that's what we can expect.
We're talking about this debt out of control.
And a lot of people over the years, and they continue to, especially now, when's it going to happen?
Because we believe it's going to happen.
And all I know is getting closer.
So I wouldn't be shocked if this week or next week or whatever that there wouldn't be a real shocker in the bond market and the interest rate skyrocketing.
And that will be a real shake-up.
This Week's Shocker 00:00:39
I think the ability to get out of this mess is going to be much more difficult than getting out of the mess we had in 08, where Y2K, why the easing of interest rate, the massive inflation with lower interest rates to zero for years.
This one's going to be tougher.
We'd like to warn people: look to the issue of liberty, and you will find that the answer is not complicated, but difficult to overcome from those who benefit monetarily over it.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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