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June 25, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
22:36
Will The Ceasefire Hold?

Seemingly before either side agreed, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. In several social media posts it appears the President is convinced the ceasefire will hold and that the two countries will never shoot at each other again. Is he correct?

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Time Text
Israel's Ceasefire Holds 00:06:41
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is away for the day, but I'm joined by my good friend and colleague, Mr. Chris Rossini.
Chris, are you there?
Welcome to the show.
Sure, Daniel.
Great to be with you today.
Great to see you again, Chris.
We awoke to good news, I suppose, which is that President Trump has somehow cobbled together some sort of a peace or at least a temporary ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
He announced it, I think, late last evening, our time.
And it appeared at first that neither of the two parties involved were aware of the fact that they had made a deal.
But ultimately, it seems like they have agreed to it.
I guess Cotter was involved in the negotiation process.
But whatever the case, at least right now, a couple of few hours in, with a couple of early glitches and uncharacteristically, and I guess we can talk about this, President Trump raising his voice to Israel, which is not that common in American politics.
It seems to have more or less held.
So what's your take on the ceasefire, Chris?
Well, obviously, we have to be happy that people aren't dying and things aren't being destroyed, especially since we are, you know, against our wishes, yours and ours, a big part of this.
We shouldn't be a part of it at all.
But yeah, so no death and destruction is a good thing.
Whether or not it holds is, you know, that's a big gamble.
Based on history, it probably won't.
But, you know, it's definitely worth trying at this point.
And it definitely was weird how it all happened, especially with President Trump's true social posts.
I mean, I think of him now as a postmodernist president where there is no truth and he just says anything at any time and nobody knows what is going on because we have to remember he was unconditional surrendering a few days ago and regime change.
And then yesterday he's congratulating the world and praising everybody, praising Israel, praising Iran.
And it's very odd how you go from unconditional surrender to that.
It's a good thing.
We want peace, but it's very strange how this is all occurring.
I mean, I think it is a problem the way he's conducting the office of the president, because as you say, he really has sacrificed a lot of credibility.
Now, people are right now going to be yelling at us in the comments.
Sorry, constructive criticism of President Trump is not Trump derangement syndrome.
I didn't make that up.
I read it on X, but I believe it's true.
It is constructive criticism of President Trump.
It doesn't mean we hate his guts and we can't stand him.
But it is really not a good way to conduct policy, either foreign or domestic, Chris, when, as you point out, unconditional surrender becomes, they've all accepted peace.
You know, it's just not the way to conduct policy.
However, as you point out, it is at least now temporarily a positive.
However, if I'm Iran, Chris, I'm going to say, well, does this mean they're just reloading the Iron Dome?
Are they preparing for the next round?
I'm not sitting and resting on my laurels, and there are some laurels, and we can go into winners and losers, in our opinion, if we want to do a play-by-play on the war.
But if I'm Iran right now, I'm certainly going to be on guard because, you know, Israel, both Israel and the U.S. have shown that they're capable of serious treachery.
This sneak attack was launched in the middle of diplomacy.
And we know that the U.S. government was aware of what was going to happen, regardless of this denials by a few of the administration.
Trump himself said he knew what was going to happen all along.
So with that kind of treachery, there's no way they can sit back and take a breathe a sigh of relief.
No, and as you mentioned, and I mentioned earlier, if what President Trump says can't be taken seriously no matter what he says, that's a very big problem, not only for world leaders, but for the American people.
Everybody's jumping back and forth, not knowing anything because he's saying both things and very close together.
Not, you know, a month goes by, days.
So the way I see it, and I don't know what's going on, but I don't think Iran called for a ceasefire.
My guess is that Israel is getting pounded pretty good.
And we are on Israel's side.
Our government is on Israel's side.
And this ceasefire may be some relief for them.
That's just my opinion.
I don't know.
So go ahead.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no.
I was just going to just point out.
And the other thing is that Israel is much less able to withstand attack than Iran.
Israel hasn't had attacks like this for 50 years or so.
And Iran, on the other hand, is more able just by virtue of geography, by virtue of recent experience of war and conflict with larger countries.
And don't forget the 80 to 88 war with Iraq.
They're just more able to withstand these kinds of blows.
We saw, and I'm sure you saw clips too, Chris, of the difference between the Israelis going to their fallout shelters where they were in there screaming and fighting and crying and flipping out.
And then you see pictures of the Iranians in the middle of Tehran just selling sunflower seeds on the street, not freaking out whatsoever.
So I think you can see there that the Israeli people are not able to withstand the kind of psychological.
And hey, I don't blame them.
I would definitely not want to be living here in Lake Jackson with bombs falling next door and clue.
I'm not saying that they are, you know, cowards, but nevertheless, they seem to be less able to withstand that sort of psychological pressure.
No, and they are a much smaller nation, 9 million people versus 90 million people.
And Iran is staying focused on pounding on them.
They're not going out and bashing everybody.
I know that they shot some bases, but they warned everybody to get out.
And kind of like President Trump's how he dropped bombs in the sand and warned everybody and nothing, contrary to what he's saying, we're definitely reading different reports than what he's saying.
But yeah, I mean, they're focused on Israel.
That's why I don't know.
And if you think about it, if the U.S. and Israel were prevailing, they would not be calling for a ceasefire.
No, they want to finish.
Israel's Unfinished Job 00:05:20
Yeah, they would want to finish the job.
So that's just speculation.
I don't know.
But I don't think it's going so well for Israel.
Yeah, within the context.
And, you know, they've got to still have a lot of Palestinians to kill next door.
So they've got to return to what they're best at, killing people without bombs, without weapons.
But I want to dig into something a little bit really quick, Chris.
And I noticed this first on Slavyan Grad, which is a Telegram channel that I follow.
But they found this article in the Washington Post, which is fascinating because the timeline of the attacks is so interesting.
Because if you remember, pardon me, if you remember, it's sort of a rough timeline is that we had in March, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, delivered her, I think it's an annual report that's due to Congress about the state of Iran's nuclear weapons situation, production situation.
And she again, she again, as the intelligence community had done since 2003, affirmed that they are not working on a weapon.
They don't have a weapon and they haven't started working on a weapon.
And that sort of went by the wayside a few weeks ago.
And there's the famous clip of President Trump saying, I don't care what she says.
I know they're close to it.
And which led a lot of people to say, well, if he doesn't get his intelligence from the United States intelligence community in the person as represented by the DNI, then where is he getting it from?
Well, it was a big question.
And that was solved to a degree by John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, who after President Trump threw Gabbard under the bus, he came out and finished the job, as they say.
And he said, well, I have intel that says they are at the one-yard line and ready to go in for a touchdown.
And subsequently, the mainstream media reported that that information came from the Mossad.
We talked about this together on the show, Chris, whose motto is, by deception, you will make war.
So probably not the most reliable.
Well, here's a little bit more information.
I'm going to read a little bit of this from the Washington Post of all places.
And they write, ultimately, when Netanyahu finally launched his surprise attack on Iran in the early hours of June 13, while Trump's negotiations were still underway, the decision was not so much driven by new intelligence indicating an Iranian sprint for a nuclear weapon or any imminent threat to Israel.
Rather, Israel seized on what it saw as a unique opportunity to execute plans carefully laid months and years in advance to heavily damage a weakened Iran that had long waged a bloody proxy conflict with Israel and to set back Iranian nuclear and missile programs, Israeli and U.S. officials and advisors to both governments say.
So this was not a response to any new intelligence.
This was a plan that Iran had in place for months, if not years.
And they realized at that point on June 13th, just a couple of days before the sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, now or never, this is the time to strike.
So all of the intel, the new intel that John Ratcliffe provided to the media and to the administration on a new, clear, and present danger was absolutely fabricated.
So I just wonder if anyone is asking, what's up with John Ratcliffe?
Who got to him?
Who's he really working for that he presents false information, false intelligence to push a war or to push the U.S. involvement in a war?
I think it's a big question, Chris, that has definitely not been answered.
I don't even think it's been asked.
No, and it probably never will be because these types of details, the general public, I'm sad to say, will not dive into.
And it definitely won't be presented to them.
And this is the same story with every lying war that we're in, whether it be Assad Gasta's own people, Colin Powell with his little thing that he, that the weapons of mass destruction, and now Tulsi Gabbard is the new Colin Powell.
They just need a justification in their own minds, and then they get away with it because once the war gets going, there's no going back.
And they know that.
They know that they just have to get it started.
And you need some kind of story.
So this is the story this time.
Will it ever be investigated?
Well, look at Fauci.
Is anything ever investigated with these people?
No.
So now that the war has started, now becomes the toughest part is to ending them.
And as we know, these things can go on for 20 years and go nowhere, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the others.
So it's a shame that these players do this always and they get away with it, but that's the state of our nation at the moment.
Yes, unfortunately, that's true.
But now there was, I think, 12 days of war.
The War's Tough Part 00:09:26
And I think we would agree that there are no winners in war.
There are only losers.
Well, there are some winners.
They live around the Beltway.
But the losers are always the people.
And so we don't mean to suggest that there are winners and losers among the population.
But if you look at the winners and losers, I mean, I just thought maybe we could throw a couple out if you feel like it.
I think one of the big winners was Iran, because even as the Washington Post article mentioned, Chris, they believe their own BS.
And that's the danger that we do.
They believe the rhetoric that they put out that Iran is incredibly weak, that this will be a cakewalk.
We're going to go in there.
We've got to do it now.
We have to preempt U.S. talks with Iran.
And they are so weak that it will be easy to overthrow.
We'll decapitate them like we did with Hezbollah.
And once we do that, we'll disrupt their response systems like we did with Hezbollah and the Pagers.
We'll cause chaos and confusion as we did with Hezbollah.
And it will be easy.
And that did not happen.
There were about eight hours where Iran was shocked and bleeding, literally and figuratively.
But then they regrouped and they were able to come back.
And they were able, most importantly, to pierce the veil of invincibility that Israel has falsely proclaimed, not to the world, but to its own people, that we will protect you.
We have an iron dome over you that's impenetrable and you will be safe here.
That's gone, completely gone, and it won't come back.
And in fact, what we've discovered is that it can't come back because it's an impossible concept in the first place.
So I think in that respect, it was an attempt to act on false information and reality bites back hard.
Yeah, and we've pointed out on a show, we're not the only ones, of course, Iran is not like the others.
This is a 2,000-year-old civilization.
They've been invaded and fought off invasions.
Their country is deserts and mountains.
And this is not the same as beating up on the other countries.
And Iran is proving it to be true.
It's not because we're geniuses.
This is obvious stuff.
But, you know, when these people in power get something in their head, they think they're invincible.
And then they go and they're getting beat back.
And they gave Iran the moral high ground.
They attacked Israel and the U.S. attack.
There's no, you know, this isn't like 9-11 where they, you know, our stupid government went and attacked the country.
It had nothing to do with it.
Everybody knows who started this.
And it wasn't Iran.
So they are now fighting back.
I mean, our power-hungry government, along with Israel that they latched on to, you know, they gave Iran the moral high ground.
So yeah, our country is the losers.
And we could talk about even more losers if you'd like.
Yeah, there's a lot of them.
If you and our audience will indulge me, Chris, I would like to, I would rather summarize it, but it's so good.
Pardon me, that I'd like to read it.
There's an analyst.
His name is Sina Tussi, and he's with the Center for International Policy.
And I think it was such a, it's on X, and you can find him.
But I just want to read it out because I think he does such a great and succinct job of summarizing what happened.
And he said, from the outset, Israel's aims were unmistakable.
One, torpedo U.S.-Iran diplomacy.
Two, drag Washington into conflict.
Three, take out Iran's nuclear and missile programs.
Four, trigger regime change.
If the ceasefire Trump just announced holds and is paired with serious U.S.-Iran diplomacy, it would mark a strategic defeat for Israel in launching this war.
Netanyahu took his shot, a desperate Hail Mary, and none of it has worked up until now.
Fordo was evacuated.
The site may well be intact.
And in any case, Iran's enriched uranium stockpile and advanced centrifuges are now hidden with a stronger covert breakout ability than ever.
Key point.
The Iranian public has rallied in defense of the country and against foreign aggression.
If the government channels this unity into a new social contract, it could be transformative.
If not, the old polarization may return.
Meanwhile, Iran has hit Israel hard over these last 12 days.
Tel Aviv, Haifa, the North, South, and other cities have seen major destruction.
Military and intelligence sites damaged.
Energy and resource infrastructure hit.
Israel's vaunted air defenses failed the test.
Its reliance on the U.S. has never been clearer.
Netanyahu saw that Netanyahu saw the costs of a war of attrition and blinked.
But for Iran, can any ceasefire be trusted?
Unless it's tied to credible U.S. diplomacy, not maximalist demands.
And unless Israel halts covert attacks and assassinations and continued airstrikes, this truce will likely collapse.
Trump helped create this mess by enabling Netanyahu.
If he truly wants to stop the region from being destroyed, as he has just said, he'll have to restrain Netanyahu and force a ceasefire in Gaza too.
Lasting peace is impossible until Netanyahu and his war-first approach is gone for good.
I apologize, Chris.
That was long, but I just think it really captured everything in a nutshell.
Yeah, it's a very good statement.
Hopefully, a lot of people on X read it.
Trump is criticizing Israel, you know, for once today, and he's even using the F-word out there for the media.
So, but, you know, again, we can't trust what he says, even because it's a lot of it's entertainment and you don't know what's true.
So, by his actions, he can do stuff to end this, and that's cut money and weapons to Israel, which we shouldn't be doing in the first place, not only to Israel, but to anybody else, too.
So, we're not going to just single them out.
So, his actions, then he would prove to us, the American people, that he's serious.
And I'm going to say that his presidency is a big loser to all of this, because look at what's happening to his presidency.
He was supposed to be keep us out of war.
Once you get into war, war becomes everything.
Forget about improving America.
That is back burner, not even on the back burner.
You know, war becomes the focus for everything.
The guy only has three and a half short years left, and he could blow it all on this.
You know, so his presidency is going down the tubes the longer that this lasts.
So, do what we've been saying and what Ron Paul has been saying: cut all foreign aid to everybody, bring all the troops home, and wipe your hands of this.
But, you know, it's easier said than done.
He's got pressures to do it, but that is the American position.
If you care about our country, do these things.
Somebody has to do them.
You're the guy that should be able to do them.
You came in on a wave of populism, unlike anything before.
Do it.
Get us out of this mess.
Instead, they started it, and now he's trapped.
And now he's writing like a thousand-word criticisms of AOC.
I don't know if you saw that.
He was on the plane going to the NATO summit, which I understand why that would put you in a bad mood.
The last thing I would want to do is go hang around with NATO members.
By the way, that's another thing he could have done: take us out of NATO.
But yeah, he's irritated.
He's in a bad mood.
He's got to go meet these people that he doesn't like.
And so he attacks AOC and a few other goofy things that he's posted.
He's attacked Thomas Messi.
Thomas Messi had a funny retort where he had said something like, Trump has declared so much war on me, it almost needs a congressional authorization, which is funny.
Which is true.
Dumb thing to do, alienating your allies.
But you're absolutely right, Chris.
The one thing he could do was disengage.
And people are starting to see it.
The other thing, Chris, that's important, and you cover economics and finance closely with Dr. Paul.
But, you know, this little episode, this little war, not just the bombing at the bombing on Sunday, which was significant.
You can imagine 120-some aircraft, how many B-2 bombers, how much ordnance, how much refueling.
This had to have cost multiple billions of dollars to, as you say, bomb an empty desert.
But not only that, but all of our backstopping of Israel throughout this crisis.
Imagine how many billions of dollars that has been.
This is coming back, as you know, Chris, better than anyone, back to the American taxpayer in the form of inflation.
We are all going to pay for the fact that Netanyahu tried to wrongfoot the United States, tried to wrongfoot Trump and launch an attack on Iran.
We have to pick up the bill.
Americans need to start getting sick of this and asking questions about it.
Backstopping Israel Crisis 00:01:07
Yeah, very good.
Our viewers are going to want to get out of here soon.
So I have nothing else to add.
But yeah, I second everything that you just said.
Yeah, right, Chris.
Well, we're in agreement.
That's going to be a surprise.
Well, I just want to thank you, Chris, for taking some time out and doing the show together.
It's a lot of fun and interesting to do.
I hope our audience shares that view.
Remind everyone, please get out there and get those tickets to come see us at Dulles, Virginia.
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Trust me, you're going to want to hear from these people.
But we've already got great speakers: Doug McGregor, Ron Paul, Nassim Nicholas Tala, people that are just the top experts in their field in so many important areas.
Get those tickets.
I will put a link in the description of this.
But if you can't find it, just go to ronpaulinstitute.org.
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Get those tickets at a discount right now.
Early birth special.
Sounds pretty good to me.
I want to thank everyone.
Thank you, Chris.
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