I consider it an honor to have been invited to discuss such a sensitive and very timely issue with this Iranian broadcaster over the course of 41 minutes.
Though the viewer numbers are still modest, there was apparently some impact in the region because a day ago I suddenly had 126 Israelis inspecting my Word Press web site, a first time ever event. Who says that Israelis are indifferent to Iranian media?
Our conversation centered on Mr. Trump’s threats of military attack on Iran, his sending an aircraft carrier task force and numerous other military assets to the region for execution of such an attack and his demands that Iran essentially disarm and accept the position of US-Israeli vassal. I directed particular attention to how Trump has exercised great care to control all communications surrounding his foreign policy initiatives, including what he is doing over Iran. I describe in some detail the distinction between what we will hear in public space about any settlement of the Iranian crisis and the real moving parts which are kept secret because they would compromise Trump in the public arena. We will not hear, for example, about the eventual decision on disposition (shipment abroad) of the 400 kg of weapons grade enriched uranium that Iran evidently moved ahead of Trump’s bombing of nuclear installations and their supposed ‘obliteration.’
The presenter, Wesam Bahrani, asks about the possibility that Trump’s aggressiveness towards Iran is being driven by the control that Mossad may have over him going back to his relationship with Mossad-controlled Epstein. He asks why Witkoff goes to visit Israel each time before heading for negotiations with Iran. He asks if Trump really is in control of U.S. policy or is it being decided by far smarter people like J.D. Vance.
I leave it to viewers to follow my answers to these questions in the podcast. Here, however, I want to bring out a bigger point: I maintain that though Trump may have a vocabulary limited to 1,000 words (in contrast to the average educated German who is said to have a vocabulary of 50,000 words), Trump is no fool and has an idea or two in his head. To be precise, I emphasize that the relationship of Trump to, say, the very clever Vice President J.D. Vance is similar to the relationship that Richard Nixon had with Henry Kissinger, who was believed by the general public at the time to be the real brains of the administration. From the perspective of 50 years later, and notwithstanding Kissinger’s efforts to maintain that fiction in his memoirs, it is fairly obvious that Nixon was the author of the foreign policy moves and Kissinger was just the implementer.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026
Gilbert Doctorow 