Press TV (Iran):  alive, well and broadcasting

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Last evening I gave a half hour live on-air interview to Press TV (Iran)  that I will not be posting here because under  present war conditions their staff is lucky to be alive and working. They surely do not have free time to edit and upload podcasts.  But I did have the presence of mind to present some points in that half-hour which I wish to share with the Community in this brief essay, namely that BRICS is just another talking shop that counts for nothing in the world of geopolitics, that the Global South has no military forces, no Hard Power to speak of, that in all the world there are presently only two countries actively fighting to bring down American global hegemony and usher in a fairer, multipolar world –  Iran and Russia.

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Stupid is as stupid does. That has been one of my core analytical tools over the years. By this I mean that diplomas from prestige universities do not necessarily tell us anything about a given person in positions of authority. Yale law degrees did not ensure intelligent, effective behavior in James Sullivan or Tony Blinken during their service in the Biden administration. On the contrary, they espoused and implemented stupid, ignorant and destructive policies because they lacked relevant knowledge, life experience and judgment.

Similarly, Power is as Power does. A country with enormous GDP, a nuclear arsenal and otherwise well- armed is not a Great Power if its top officials behave like underlings (to quote Shakespeare) and seek to engratiate themselves with bullies, displaying a lack of dignity and self-respect.

I have discussed the issues of Power, otherwise called Deterrence with professor Glenn Diesen in past months when speaking critically, in particular, about president Putin. A couple of days ago on ‘Judging Freedom,’ I remarked that the recent behavior of chairman Xi of China has been even more depressing. His repeated invitation to Donald Trump to come to Beijing later this spring is unseemly, in very poor taste coming so soon after Trump launched his barbarous war of aggression on Iran in the midst of negotiations which seemed so promising.

Now let me add to this List of Shame prime minister Modi of India who a couple of months ago caved in to U.S. pressure to stop buying Russian oil. Why? To avoid 50% tariffs on a small part of Indian trade with the U.S. which otherwise is dominated by Indian IT services which are irreplaceable for the US?  The consequence was to publicly invalidate the value of BRICS as the creator of a new, more just world order.

Notwithstanding my recent criticism of Putin’s ‘gently, gently’ approach to his war on Ukraine, he is fighting, he is smashing the combined forces of NATO in and around Ukraine. Russia is thereby doing the world an invaluable service.  Meanwhile, Iran’s fight for survival may be even more salutary for a new world order if it is carried to its logical conclusion and inflicts a humiliating defeat on Trump that brings him down, results in ‘regime change’ in the November elections.

Time will tell.  In the meantime, I say ‘hats off’ to the journalists at Press TV

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

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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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