Transcript of WION interview of 17 June

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Transcript of WION interview, 17 June

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQw6ECkhvk

Netanyahu: 0:06
Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted almost every day “death to Israel”.

Trump:
I want to see no nuclear weapon in Iran.

WION: 0:32
Well, US President Donald Trump has left the G7 summit in Canada a day early, heading back to Washington. Trump’s helicopter lifted off from the summit venue in the Canadian Rockies to take him to his plane shortly after G7 issued a joint statement calling for de-escalation on Iran while stressing Israel had the right to defend itself in the escalating West Asia crisis.

Now the statement said, and I’m quoting, “We affirm that Israel has the right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel. We also affirm the importance of the protection of civilians. Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror. We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

1:22
Now earlier French president Emmanuel Macron claimed Trump was considering the prospect of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Calling Macron a publicity-seeking president, Trump said that his French counterpart had mistakenly said that he had left the G7 summit in Canada to go back to work on a ceasefire. The US president further said Macron had no idea why he was on his way to Washington and that it had nothing to do with ceasefire but something much bigger than that.

This is not the first time. At the 2018 summit, coincidentally also hosted in Canada, Trump left the gathering of the world leaders to meet with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Now, owing to his early departure, Trump will miss important discussions, including that on the Russia-Ukraine war. But he kicked off the summit with a big statement on the war, though. He said it would never have begun had Russia continued to be part of Group of 7, which used to be Group of 8, until Moscow’s removal in 2014, following its annexation of Crimea. He called it a mistake and pinned the blame on former US President Barack Obama and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump: 2:48
The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in. And I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in. And you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago, but it didn’t work out that way.

WION: 3:18
All right for more we are being joined by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, who is joining us from Berlin. He is a Russia affairs analyst and an international relations expert, author and historian. Thank you so much for joining us on the broadcast.

Now, let me begin by asking you, sir. US President Donald Trump has departed the G7 summit early amid escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. And he said that– well, it’s when President Macron has said that perhaps this, he has also mentioned the crisis in Israel-Iran– Trump said it’s something bigger. What could be bigger than a ceasefire?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 4:01
Saving American military assets in the Middle East from an impending Iranian attack if the United States pursues its support for Israel by providing it with bombs capable of destroying underground Iranian nuclear facilities. The situation is very fragile. It is improbable that Iran will attack these assets, but it is a possibility.

WION: 4:30
Right. Also another thing that I want to point out was earlier Trump did say that he will impose sanctions and back to secondary sanctions on Russia because he was not happy with how Russia acted. However just recently while he was speaking with the UK prime minister, he said when asked about the sanctions, he said that Europeans should do it first and that “sanctions cost us a lot of money”. What do you make of this comment?

Doctorow:
Well, I do not follow very closely what Mr. Trump says. I follow very closely what he does. And the two are very often in sharp contradiction. He is an opportunist. He tries to make the best of things which are outside his control. The imposition of new sanctions on Russia is outside his control. It is now being steered through the Senate by opponents of Trump’s rapprochement policy towards Russia, and it has 82 senators backing it, which means that it is impossible for him to veto it if it should be passed by the Senate.

5:41
He is making the best of the situation and pretending that he is deliberating over sanctions to do this or that. I don’t believe that for a minute. But it also is a key to understanding his behavior overall. When he waffled, when he went back and forth this past weekend as to whether he knew anything about the Israeli attack on Iran, first saying he knew nothing about it, and then when it looked like he was being very successful in the first wave of Israeli strikes against Iran, then he took credit for it and said that he was in from the beginning.

He– as I say, you should not pay too much attention to what he says. What he does is often extremely important. So I don’t mean to suggest that the man is not worth paying attention to. He certainly is, but not his words.

WION: 6:37
Right. Also, since you’ve mentioned Israel, now he has been speaking of a good deal with Iran, while also asking Iranians to evacuate Iran. And we have seen Iranians do evacuate, they are evacuating. What do you make of this, what do you expect in the coming days after these statements from Trump? Do you think that has, is going to force Iran to come on the table?

Doctorow:
Yeah, he’s jumping on the seeming success of Netanyahu in the first stages of his attack on Iran. The situation is very difficult to judge. I’m not a military expert, and I will not pretend to give an evaluation. I can only say that following the remarks of people who are experts in these matters, it appears that we are in a state of war, and that is a fog of war. We, the commentators, are not privy to the real level of destruction that Iran has been wreaking on Israel. All Western reporting, not speaking about yourselves, but the BBC, the “New York Times”, the “Financial Times”, all of them highlight the level of destruction of residential properties in Israel, the suffering of individuals whose apartments have been destroyed, how somebody pulls a dog out of a wrecked house or a baby out of a wrecked house. That sort of human interest story is what this featured in the major coverage of the war by Western media.

8:14
The reality is that Iran has struck many military assets, starting with Ministry of Defense headquarters and intelligence headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv. So there is a lot of military impairment that Iran has inflicted on Israel, about which we know nothing.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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