I am especially appreciative that Professor Glenn Diesen let this discussion run the full hour so that we could address a goodly number of issues relating to the Iran-Israel conflict that our peers in the Alternative Media seem to overlook while they drill down on the same few questions and do not look laterally to see still bigger issues worthy of their thoughts. Here I have in mind such questions as how Israel is being used as an instrument of Washington against Iran in a hopeless war of attrition in the same manner as Ukraine is being used as an instrument against Russia; how Mossad proved itself to be no better than other national intel agencies by its failure to see that no decapitation strike could shake the Iranian regime given its depth of management and the absence of any effective Opposition in the country; how Donald Trump may have been moved to authorize the attack on Iran to preempt an Israeli nuclear attack there; and much, much more.
Through his foreign language editions (Russian, German, French, Spanish) of interviews like this, Professor Diesen is building a global audience for serious political discourse.
NewsX: 4:58 Andrew KP Leung is joining us live, a China strategist. He’s live, in fact, from Hong Kong with us. Welcome. Thank you for being with us today on News X World, Andrew. How do you view this latest turn that the conflict has taken?
Obviously, escalation has been warned now by Israel. They say that this is an unprecedented attack on a hospital. They are now directly blaming Khamenei for it. Do you see further escalation in the next 24 hours, looking at these latest statements from both sides?
Andrew K.P. Leung: 6:01 –Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, has been increasingly been emboldened to seek a greater, greater endgame. Originally, he started off with eradicating Hamas. He is already destroying the proxy forces supporting Iran, the Houthis, and also Hezbollah in Syria, and also controlling a lot of strategic assets in Syria. But now it seems to be seeking not only to eradicate Hamas, but also to eradicate Iran. Because Iran has always been the greatest existential threat to Israel. I mean, it’s not just recent years, it’s over decades.
7:03 And it is the confrontation of Iran that has been part and parcel of Israel’s militarization, including its possession of nuclear weapons. But this time around, it seeks that the, it sees that Iran has been sufficiently, gravely weakened, because all these proxy forces, the Houthis to a certain extent, but definitely Hezbollah and to a large extent Hamas, have been weakened. And Israel has also been assassinating the top military leaders in Iran and trying to foment social unrest in Iran with the hope of overthrowing its government. However, the existential threat for Israel is the possession of nuclear facilities, which are said to be on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
8:14 And hence Israel has been planning for this attack for a long, long time. And its military, of course, has been hugely advanced with the support of weaponry by the United States. And now he seems to be targeting Iran’s most secret and most precious nuclear facilities buried deep in the mountains. And they can be reached, according to their intelligence, only by employing the American special bombs, weighing 30,000 pounds, so-called “bunker-buster” bombs. However, Israel doesn’t have the aircraft or the bombers which are capable of carrying these bombs. And then the only bomber that can do so is the [B-2] by the United States.
9:18 And Trump recently has signaled that he has authorized the direct involvement of the US Air Force in the war, without giving the final go-ahead, and asking Iran openly to surrender unconditionally. And of course the Iran leadership refuses to buckle, refuses to [cower in the course] of American aggression. And then, of course, Iran has just displayed its 200 miles special mid-range missiles that can hit Israel’s capital and many other different assets. So the prospects for–
NewsX: 10:15 We’re also seeing a phone call, Andrew, that has taken place between, of course, various international leaders. They’re all deliberating, of course, on this conflict and what is a way to de-escalate for both sides. Amidst all of this, we’ve also heard statements from Russia and China. How do you react to the positions that China and Russia have taken on this conflict, where they’re clearly, of course, calling out Israel’s actions as illegal?
Leung: 10:50 Well, of course, I think that both for Russia and China, a destroyed Iran doesn’t, is doing a lot of damage to their coalition. Because according to the early warning to Americans, foreign policy doyan, the late Brzezinski, in his epic tome called “The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997. On page 50 of that book, he already warned that the most lethal coalition against American hegemony is a coalition between Russia, China, and Iran. And now with Iran, if Iran is being weakened, this coalition is, it would be much more, is greatly affected. And hence, Russia and China do not want to see Iran which is destroyed, apart from the prospects for escalation.
12:04 Because if Iran retaliates with missiles and of course with even other attacks, this could spiral into a regional war, which does not auger well for stability in the region or for the world. And hence, both countries, Russia and China, are supporting negotiations as a means to resolve the crisis. And that call for negotiation rather than military coercion is supported by the international community, by European countries and by other countries in the world, who do not believe that ending– the world’s problems will be solved by unilateral action. And indeed, this is the principle underpinned by the UN Charter, that countries involved in conflict to seek negotiations. But unfortunately, this method has been cast aside in favor of military aggression, which has a great danger.
NewsX: 13:22 Okay. We’re getting further breaking news now coming in this hour. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a moderate and controlled approach in Iran. In a phone call earlier today, Merz emphasized the need for restraint and careful decision making. A German government source confirmed the conversation, highlighting Berlin’s focus on stability and responsible leadership.
Andrew Leung is live with us on this story. Andrew, how do you react to this phone call that has transpired between the German Chancellor and the Israeli Prime Minister?
Leung: 13:56 Well, I think that the– you see, I was referring to these bunker-busting bombs to be carried by B2 bombers. But then, of course, Iran could also seek a way to obtain missiles that can threaten the B2 bombers. And of course, the B2 bombers is a valuable asset.
And of course, if one is shot down, this would blow a hole in America’s military credibility. And that explains President Trump’s hesitancy in giving the final word, go ahead. But then, who knows? I mean, no one can tell what President Trump is going to do, because he may well believe that the missiles couldn’t reach the B2. And even before they do, the Iranian nuclear facilities would be totally destroyed, and that would eliminate the only challenger of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
15:16 And the Israeli hegemony in the Middle East is important for the serving of Americans’ interests, because the United States can thereby control the whole of the Middle East, regardless of, of course, having destroyed Iran and threatening other Middle East countries. But that, of course, would not be supported by the Arab world.
NewsX: 15:43 Okay. Andrew Leung, thank you very much for joining us with your perspective on that story. Meanwhile, Ukraine has secured the release of a group of prisoners of war in its latest exchange with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed today. While the number of those freed was not disclosed, Kiev’s Coordination Council for Prisoners of War stated that the group included injured and ill individuals, many of whom had been held since the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. President Zelensky reiterated his commitment to bringing every Ukrainian home, thanking all those involved in facilitating the exchange.
Meanwhile, tensions continue to escalate as Ukraine marks 100 days since Russia rejected a United States-backed proposal for a complete ceasefire. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrei Sibyah accused Moscow of intensifying hostilities, instead of seizing the opportunity to end the conflict. He called on Ukraine’s international partners to increase pressure through sanctions and continued military aid, insisting that the time to act is now.
Despite proposals from the West and Ukraine’s stated readiness for peace, Russia set conditions and maintained a hardline stance, further complicating efforts to reach a resolution.
16:56 Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert, is joining us live from Brussels. Gilbert, thank you for being with us on News X World. You know, prisoner exchanges, of course, continue between the two sides, but have we reached any closer to any sort of peace deal, or is that still a while away?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: The exchange of prisoners is a positive development which we all can praise. It shows that the discussions that were held in two sessions in Istanbul have produced some results at the technical level. I say technical level, that is what the negotiators consider this. At the human level, the families, the loved ones of those who have been returned, of course, can take great pleasure in seeing them once again.
17:48 Nonetheless, to answer your question, this development has no bearing on the conclusion of a truce, not to mention conclusion of a peace treaty. And Mr. Zelensky’s remarks criticizing Russia for spending 100 days resisting the conclusion of the peace or ceasefire is utter nonsense. He is repeating the same remarks everywhere that he goes. He is looking for financial and military aid wherever he goes. And as we just saw in the past week, when he was attending the G7 conference in Alberta, he’s getting nothing.
NewsX: 18:40 Yes. Also, of course, now, do you believe that with different countries across the world’s attention being towards the Iran-Israel conflict, that is going to delay some sort of efforts to continue the talks between Russia and Ukraine, or do you believe those will happen simultaneously?
Doctorow: 19:05 Well, as they broke off following the second meeting in Istanbul, there was no prospect of any progress, because both sides were demanding that the other side capitulate. Now, that is an impossible situation. It expresses the utter irrealism of Mr. Zelensky’s position, the utter rejection of the real situation on the ground, battlefield, by his European backers.
It is not supported. His position is not supported by Donald Trump, which is the main reason why Trump left the G7 meeting early. And that is of decisive importance, because despite all the rhetoric coming out of the European institutions, leaders, mainly the foreign minister, one can call her, Kallas, and the chairman of the Commission, von der Leyen, there is no prospect of Europe saving Ukraine. They don’t have the materiel, they don’t have the money, and they don’t have the will. So Mr. Zelensky’s hopes for European salvation are completely misplaced.
20:22 As for the United States, so long as Mr. Trump is in control, and that is of course always open to question because he has many enemies. But so long as he is in control, Zelensky will get nothing.
NewsX: 20:34 All right. More news that we’re tracking this hour, Gilbert. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you very much for joining us on the broadcast.
I bring to the attention of the Community my 3 minutes on air in one of NewsX World’s hourly news wrap-ups, not only for what I said about the latest Russia-Ukraine exchange of injured POWs (minutes 17 – 20) but also for the sake of the comments just prior to my coming on air by another panelist, Andrew Leung, speaking about the Iran-Israel conflict. In passing, Leung mentioned a factor in the considerations of Trump presently whether to participate in the Middle East conflict by sending B2s to bomb the best protected Iranian nuclear installations: the reality that in such bombing raids these extremely costly planes could come under fire from Iranian air defenses and be brought down. Such an eventuality would not just be a huge financial loss for the USA but a huge humiliation and loss of credibility as a global power.
The very same point was made yesteday afternoon by a panelist on the Russian news and commentary show Sixty Minutes: to be effective in destroying Iran’s most important and best protected nuclear site, which is situated 90 meters below the surface of a rocky mountainside and is well guarded by Iranian anti-aircraft missiles, an American bomber would have to make 4 bombing raids dropping their heaviest bombs on target sequentially. The chance of the bomber being blown to bits would be substantial.
This is something you will not find discussed in The Financial Times or hear on CNN.
Redacted: 0:00 Well, what can Russia realistically do about this war between Iran and Israel and the United States on the Israeli side? Well, according to our next guest, Gilbert Doctorow, the answer is nothing. No rescue is coming from Moscow or Beijing, and a US-Israeli victory is not just likely, it is strategically disastrous. Far from restoring order, he says it will shatter what little regional stability remains and corner Russia geopolitically. The only unpredictable factor left on the chessboard is Pakistan, which is a bleak forecast, but one we’d be foolish to ignore.
It also allows North Korea to strongly align with Russia, which has already happened and most of us have missed it.
[commercial: 0:42]
Redacted: 2:04 Gilbert Doctorow is a foreign policy author and expert on the Russian-US relations. We’ve been speaking to him since the war in Ukraine and he’s been pretty much right about all of it. He has a new book out called _War Diaries_ about the war in Russia between the first two years.
So he joins us today. Thank you for joining us today. It’s a pleasure to see you again.
Good to see you, doctor.
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: Well, very good to be back with you.
Redacted: Okay. So you argue that Russia will not intervene to support Iran militarily. What do you believe? Why would the Kremlin sit this one out? And is that a strategic decision or a sign of restraint?
Doctorow: I think it is a clear understanding [that] the situation is not as dire as many of the hyperventilating commentators, particularly on a variety of Indian stations like The Times of India, that take up space on the international section of YouTube. If you listen to them, the end of the world’s coming next week. The reality is that the Israelis are running out of supplies for their dome, out of supplies for their air defense. They have maybe seven to 10 days more of these missiles that they’re using to protect themselves. So it’s hard to see that this war will go on beyond that date. For that reason alone, I think there are people in the Kremlin who understand that there is no reason to rush to Iran’s assistance.
3:40 The positioning, the posturing, I should say, of Mr. Trump is typical of him. He speaks very loudly, he catches attention. He did in his first term send those aircraft carriers to just off the North Korean coast. And what came out of that, what followed? Nothing, whatever.
So it is today, The idea that the United States is providing substantial assistance to Israel in capturing and shooting down the various missiles and drones that Iran is sending to Israel is only partly true. The United States doesn’t have the capacity, as no one has the capacity, to stop hypersonic missiles, for example, which is precisely what Iran started using in the last couple of days. So I would calm down. The length, the duration of this war is certainly limited by Israel’s ability to keep on shooting down incoming projectiles. And that is like a week to 10 days. So I don’t think we have the end of the world in front of us.
Redacted: 4:58 What if the United States involves itself with aircraft carriers and additional fad systems being able to shoot down and aid in this process if Israel’s Iron Dome runs out? They’re already not able to stop hypersonic missiles as it is with the Iron Dome technology. Will the United States really step in here to aid this, and then will we see a protracted war as a result of this?
Doctorow: Again, let’s step back for a moment to what the mission of Israel has been with American support. The primary mission has been to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. So far they have done damage, but they certainly haven’t destroyed it. And there are these impenetrable underground or mountainside nuclear units that Iran has, which only American munitions would have a chance to destroy.
Now, the United States has not yet committed itself to sending in B2 bombers to deliver those wonderful bombs, and I rather suspect they won’t. Mr. Trump likes to stir the water, likes to get a lot of attention and hopes to threaten people and force them to do deals on his terms. That does not seem to succeed too often, and I’m very doubtful it will succeed in this case. But the Iranian forces are not just their own. They’re also their allied militias in places like Iraq, which can threaten, which can destroy, in fact, American bases in the region.
And for that reason, Mr. Trump will tread very carefully– again, he’s making a lot of noise– but to actually place those 40,000 American soldiers and officers in the region in harm’s way, I think would be very, very risky. And certainly there are people in Congress who are telling him that right now.
Redacted: 7:21 Now you say that the one wild card here is Pakistan, that Russia won’t get involved, but Pakistan very well could. And if they did, it would be to defend Iran. Can you tell us what the global consequences of that would be, and if you see that as a deterrent or an accelerant?
Doctorow: Well, I don’t think it’s an abstract consideration. If you know Mr. Trump’s schedule today, he received an envoy from Pakistan. And while BBC and other major media were talking about this as having some relation to the recent armed conflict between India and Pakistan, I think it is more reasonable to assume that Mr. Trump and his assistants were interested in talking to the Pakistanis following their very noisy and angry statements in the United Nations about the war of the aggression of Israel and how Pakistan wanted to do something about it. So it’s not just my conjecture that Pakistan stands ready to virtually destroy Israel with nuclear missiles, which it has, but I think that was a subject of Mr. Trump’s discussions with the Pakistani envoy today.
Redacted; 8:39 Gosh, I think people missed that. That’s quite possible. You studied this deeply. You heard, I’m sorry, you heard President Putin today saying that the United States should not interject itself in this, that that would be a really a huge mistake. So what will Russia do– I mean, one of the wild cards here is you know, what will China what will Russia do if the United States fully involves itself in attacking Iran? If the United States decides to hit the Fordow nuclear power plant, President Trump says, “We’re the only ones that can do it. We’re the only ones that can have this attack.” What will Russia do in response, do you think?
Doctorow: Again, let’s take a step back. Destroying the Iranian nuclear program is not the same as destroying Iran. They have said since 2003 that they have no intention of building a bomb. The American intelligence agencies all have been in agreement with that. As recently as under, I think it was March, appearance before Congress, Tulsi Gabbard said the same thing. So the most horrible thing that American intervention could do, if we read the script that Mr. Trump has been reading from, is to impair, damage, or destroy major assets in the civil nuclear program of Iran.
10:15 None of that is the same as regime change or destroying the Iranian nation. So this is not an existential crisis here. That being said, the American intervention would probably bring, would almost certainly bring, a dramatic response from the militias that are associated with Iran in the region, and attacks on American bases that would kill American soldiers. It’s clear as day.
All of that would come back and hit Mr. Trump, because the actions he’s considering have not been sanctioned by Congress. And he’s not even looking for congressional approval. So it’s all his own … standing that will be impaired or seriously damaged if he proceeds.
Redacted: What would Russia do though? If we do, I get the civil side of it. It’s just a civil, you know, we’re taking out their civil nuclear infrastructure. Like if America, if you’re sitting, you know, you live near like Three Mile Island or you’re in Pennsylvania near these nuclear power plants and suddenly, you know, Iran just bombed those and they just said, it’s just a civil, you know, we just want to make sure you don’t have civil nuclear capacity. I mean, would Iran respond largely? Or is it just the militias? And then what would Russia do in response? Are they going to allow the United States to do that?
Doctorow: 11:48 Well, this is not a question of a Chernobyl-like catastrophe. They’re not speaking about destroying electric generating plants. They’re speaking about destroying facilities that process uranium, store uranium, and not in vast quantities. So the environmental impact, the global impact of any of the strikes that Israel has been performing, or the United States could add to, is not of a nature to alarm us all.
Nonetheless, what is at issue is Iranian sovereignty. To come back to your question of where the Russians are, the Russians are profiting from this right now. They’re doing very well, thank you, because the United States has pulled back a lot of its air defense assets from Ukraine to safeguard, to put in place in the Middle East, to protect its bases there. The United States has also very quietly, under pretext of the need to rearm Israel, they have stopped supplying military materiel to Ukraine. All of this has facilitated the ongoing Russian campaign.
13:09 So the Russians are involved indirectly. The Russian-Ukraine war is definitely affected by the crisis now in the Middle East. In so far as the United States has pulled in its horns in Ukraine, is busy rushing to the aid of Israel, and the Russians can profit from that, as they’ve done in the last two days, with the most dramatic strikes on Kiev during the whole duration of the war. Now, the real interested party in this is not Russia. The real interested party is China.
And there we have– I don’t see anybody talking much about it, because the harm, the economic harm of damage to Iran’s export infrastructure directly affects the energy balance in China, since Iran has become a major supplier to China. This is not to mention the bigger issue of Iran, if pressed hard by the United States and Israel, Iran’s readiness to close the Straits of Hormuz, which would really have a tremendous impact on the global economy. But if you have to look at countries individually, the first ones to suffer would be China, since it is so dependent on energy from the Middle East that would no longer be flowing.
14:43 Will China remain quiet? Well, we know that China has flown in several airplanes with military equipment for Iran. Exactly what nobody knows. But presumably they are ready to do a lot of equipment support for air defense of Iran to prevent the United States and Israel from doing some catastrophic damage and causing many civilian deaths.
Redacted: Now something you had written about is that North Korea is in fact aligning itself with Russia. Now, Zelensky had been saying this months ago, and I kind of ignored him because he’s an idiot. But this seems to be true. You said that North Korea has sent troops to Russian- controlled Ukrainian territory for demining and reconstruction. That seems like more than a gesture. It’s a deepening military and political alliance with Russia. So what does that tell us about emerging global blocks? What do you think Western media is going to do with that other than ignore it for now?
Doctorow: 15:48 They are ignoring it indeed. The numbers, let’s look at the numbers, the demining groups, sappers as they call them, that is 1,000 soldiers from North Korea. And the construction teams, since a large part of the Korean, North Korean army actually is working at construction during its military service, that is 5,000 soldiers. This is considerable. It frees up the Russian soldiers and officers to do something more valuable for Russia’s defense and fighting on the front lines, rather than this restoration work in the Kursk oblast.
Yes, of course, it is very important that Russia has established excellent relations with North Korea. They are adding logistical solutions, new bridges across the river that separates them, since they are neighbors, direct neighbors. And the economic cooperation is substantial. And it also shows that the Russia has finally freed itself from the constraints of the Western- imposed sanctions, which they at an earlier time agreed to and signed up for, but now understand to have been a mistake and to be quite ridiculous when Russia itself is under the greatest number of sanctions ever invented by the United States.
Redacted: Thank you very much. Well, if you want more of this analysis, you can follow Gilbert Doctorow’s substack. We put the link online. He also again has a new book out and has been one of the most reasonable voices during the war between Russia and Ukraine.
17:41 So thank you so much. I know you’re in Europe. You stayed up late for “Redacted” and we really appreciate it. I hope to see you again soon.
NewsX: 8:37 We’re now joined by Gilbert Doctorow, who’s a Russian affairs expert, and he joins us from Brussels, Belgium. Gilbert, thank you very much for joining us on the programme. Gilbert, this G7 conference, formally G8, is coming to a close. What have been your thoughts on how everything has played out in regards to Zelensky’s presence and Russia’s absence?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: Russia has been absent for 10 years, so that’s not a new development. But as regards to Mr. Zelensky, his trip was totally wasted. He was on his way into Alberta when he was apprised of the fact that Trump had already left hours before. I think Mr. Trump’s departure was motivated in part to avoid meeting Zelensky and to avoid participating in a discussion of the Ukraine war that was on the agenda for the day.
The fact is that Mr.– this is a meeting of seven, but Mr. Trump would find himself in the minority of one. He would have six fellow members, all grouped against him on the question of the Ukraine war. And that, of course, is not very agreeable or very constructive. As regards his mention of how sad it was that President Obama, together with Justin Trudeau of Canada, had decided to remove Russia as the eighth member of this group — he called this very sad and said that it was, had there been Russian participation in the G8, then there wouldn’t have been a war that we’re now fighting.
However, this is, these are pure rhetoric. The reality is that when Mr. Trump, sorry, when Mr. Putin was a member of the G8, he was in exactly the same disadvantageous and uninteresting position of Mr. Trump presently. He was a minority of one with seven allies in the West aligned against him who agreed, who met privately before he arrived at any conference, and agreed on a policy line which was all directed against him. So in that sense, the problems of today’s G7 are simply repeating the problems that existed in 2014, when you had seven members ganging up on the eighth. Now it was six members who were planned to gang up on the seventh, namely Mr. Trump.
11:18 Mr. Trump is not Mr. Putin. He is the most powerful man in the world. And so they could only lick their wounds and complain when he left, when he left early on the alleged reason that he had business to do in Washington that was more important.
NewsX: 11:39 Gilbert, the Kremlin has called G7 useless. Ukraine did want to make more gains than it did, but it did produce Canada’s massive support, some massive financial support from Canada. Do you think Russia is losing more ground diplomatically or gaining it?
Doctorow: Well, whatever the G7 does, it really is not news in the sense that they are all aligned against Russia, not a day-to-day matter, not just when they convene together. So Mr. Zelensky left, as you said quite properly, he left this meeting with nothing in his hands other than what Canada could contribute. This may be of some small solace to him, but it in no way helps Ukraine to continue to fight effectively against Russia.
12:33 In point of fact, because of the Israel-Iran war, The United States has withdrawn a large part of its air defenses from Ukraine and moved them to the Middle East to provide some protection for America’s air bases and the 40,000 American soldiers who are stationed in the Middle East, should they come to blows with Iran. The United States also has reportedly stopped sending any further military materiel to Ukraine.
All of this is very bad news for Mr. Zelensky and bad news for his army. It is not a surprise that Russia is staging massive strikes on Kiev presently, as you have otherwise reported, because the air defences there are very weak.
NewsX: 13:25 Gilbert, prior to the G7, Putin and Trump had a direct phone call. They have so far agreed to commence talks again, once again, on the 22nd of this month. What are your hopes going into those talks, given Russia’s escalating strikes on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine? Do you think they’ll make any progress? And do you think peace is still on Putin’s mind when it comes to sending his delegation to Turkey?
Doctorow: Oh, peace is definitely on Mr. Putin’s mind, but it’s a peace that he wants on his terms. In that sense, He is no different from Mr. Zelensky, who wants a peace on his terms. Both sides are looking for a capitulation of the other side, which of course is an impossible situation and does not indicate that they will reach any agreement until there is a definitive result on the battlefield. That’s, having said that, the meeting between the Russians and the Americans is really about technical matters. It is about restoring the functionality of their respective diplomatic establishments in the other country. Their embassies are operating on a very weak level because staff is missing.
14:48 Staff was thrown out in recriminatory exchanges going back several years. They are non-functional, and the intent is to restore functionality, because you cannot negotiate with the other side, over important matters of geopolitics, which is what Trump and Putin are trying to do, when you don’t have staff on the ground manning your embassy.
NewsX: 15:16 Gilbert Doctorow, thank you very much for joining us on the program and [for] your insight. We now move over to the Middle East–
It was a pleasure, after a break of several months, to rejoin Natali Morris and her husband on their interview program Redacted for a discussion of the Israeli-Iran war: its likely duration, global significance and the position on this conflict taken by other world powers including the USA, Russia, China and Pakistan.
Redacted is an enormously popular program in the United States, in Europe and, I imagine, in other parts of the world. The viewer numbers on this show are indicative of the interest that the moderators have developed in a loyal audience.
As one Comment mentions, the Israeli air defense is a lot more than the Iron Dome, which is intended to intercept short range projectiles. Other, higher altitude interceptors protect Israeli from ballistic missiles. The problem that few commentators discuss is that the supply of missiles for these air defenses is not unlimited. The Iranian wave attacks are depleting these interceptors so that the effective protection of Israel from incoming missiles may not last more than 10 days. If that is true, then Israel will not pursue the war beyond that point and Iran has already publicly stated that it will halt its attacks in turn.
Accordingly, there seems to be a lot of hyperventilating on the part of my fellow commentators. Moreover, the environmental threats from Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear installations are being blown out of proportion for purposes of sensationalism. The world is not facing a new Chernobyl disaster from Israeli bombing raids.
That being said, the direct entry of Washington into the conflict by supplying its heaviest bombs to Israel or, still worse, by flying B2s into Iran and destroying the underground facilities that are best protected, could create a broad regional, even global conflict. Nonetheless, this is all still a hypothetical risk.
In the meantime, the Russians, like the Chinese, are probably quietly supplying Teheran with air defense installations and other military materiel. One has to wonder how long it will be before the North Koreans offer to sell a bomb or two to Teheran. Why build when you can buy?
In any case, barring some dramatic development in the Iranian political structure, the balance of power in the Middle East between Israel and Iran is likely to continue be a major issue in the region for years to come whatever the outcome of the present exchange of missile strikes and bombing raids.
NewsX (India): Israel Targets Iranian Sites In Tehran Bombing
This interview taken yesterday by NewsX is part of the broadcaster’s live news hour. I appear at minute 8.45 and leave at minute 15.15. Those of you with the time and patience to spare may savor the news presenter’s reportage on the Israel-Iran war which precedes my interview. The broadcaster’s editorial position is, shall we say, equivocal.
The subject of our chat was in fact the gathering of the G7 that ended yesterday with few agreed points in their press release because Donald Trump had left a day before, precisely to avoid entering into discussion of the Ukraine-Russia war on which his position is totally at variance with the other six members. Indeed, one can say that this institution has become a G6+1, with the USA as odd man out. In this regard, we see now a new iteration of what existed up to 2014 when it was a G7+1, with Russia as odd man out.
The main consequence of Trump’s early departure is that Volodymyr Zelensky who came primarily for talks with the American president was on a fool’s errand. He left the meeting with nothing in his hands other than the pennies for the poor offered by Canadian Prime Minister Carney.
Napolitano: 0:32 Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, June 18th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment. And here’s the question for him: What does the Kremlin think of Donald Trump after the events of the past week? But first this.
[commercial]
02:21 Professor Doctorow, good day to you. And welcome here, my friend. Does, how does the Kremlin view President Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia last month, in light of recent developments between Israel and Iran? Do you think that this was a grand, do you think the Kremlin thinks the speech was a grand deception orchestrated by [Trump?], or a momentary lapse by Trump, or he keeps changing his mind? Or are we putting too much emphasis on what Trump thinks?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 2:58 I think we’re putting too much emphasis on what Trump says. The Kremlin, I think, has its own inertia, its own course, and that can be modified if they believe that Mr. Trump is genuine, which I think they do, and it can be modified the other way, if they think that he is losing the battle domestically and internationally to control policy, which I think also is true.
So the Kremlin, will be happy for any benefits to come out of the favorable predisposition of Mr. Trump, but they’re not counting on it, and they’re going their own way.
Napolitano: 3:43 Well, what does the Kremlin think of Trump? Do they believe what he says? When President Putin speaks to President Trump on the phone and they get off the phone, what do they do? Say, “my God, he’s crazy? Who the hell knows whether or not to believe him?” Or do they take copious notes and analyze his every word?
Doctorow: The one thing they don’t think is that he’s crazy. They have thought the American leadership was crazy, insane in the medical sense of the word under Biden. And that made them extremely cautious in proceeding with the conduct of war, because they didn’t know what could trigger a totally irrational and deadly response from the United States. In the case of Mr. Trump, that question does not exist.
They believe he is rational. They believe he is a dealmaker as he– would-be dealmaker, as he says of himself. But they also are perfectly cognizant of all of the difficulties that he has in steering policy, given the heavy hand of the opposition, which is Lindsey Graham allied with the Europeans headed by Mr. Macron. So knowing about all this, they have to be very cautious with Trump, but not because they doubt his commitment or have some doubts about his rationality.
Napolitano: 5:17 I want to play a clip for you. Chris, I’m pretty sure we have this– I don’t know the number; bear with me a minute– of President Trump on Air Force One on Sunday night, where he was asked about Tulsi Gabbard. Okay, we have it.
She of course, and we’ll run this clip as well– Chris has interspersed one inside the other– told a congressional committee under oath that the IC, as she calls it, the intelligence community uniformly agree that Iran is not developing and is not close to a nuclear weapon and hasn’t been since 2003. And then a reporter asked him what he thought about this. I’d like your views on this. Chris? —————-
Reporter: People always said that you don’t believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon. But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one? Because Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.
Gabbard: The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
Trump: I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having it. —————-
Napolitano: 6:34 Under federal law, she is the principal and sole briefer of the President of the United States on intelligence matters. And he says publicly, knowing it’s going to be aired internationally, “I don’t care what she says.” How does the Kremlin view that?
Doctorow: 6:56 It might be scandalized. I don’t think the Kremlin would say, but I’m about to say now, that she should resign.
Napolitano: I absolutely agree with you.. Scott Rittera said it. Our colleagues on this show have said it. If he says, “I don’t care what she says”, and she comes in with a briefing book three inches thick, he’s only interested in the top two pages, she should resign if he doesn’t trust her. What is his source of information if it’s superior to hers? She has supposedly the best intel sources in the world, the Five Eyes and their collaboration with Mossad. She comes to a conclusion and he says, “I don’t care”?!
Doctorow: 7:36 Judge, I wouldn’t read too much into this. I wouldn’t look for the source of his latest statement. I wouldn’t necessarily say, “Oh yes, Netanyahu or Netanyahu’s minions whispered this in his ear.” I don’t think that’s what’s going on.
I just– it’s inconvenient for him to hear this when he sees the opportunity to strike gold by joining Israel in a victorious attack on Iran. My colleagues have said various things about Trump’s personality, that he’s weak or that he’s stupid or he has no strategy. I don’t agree with these remarks, not because I think that he is a saint or a genius, nothing of the sort. I think he has another problem. And the problem is opportunism.
8:24 Now that may sound– opportunism taken by itself in general cultural or intellectual discussion is considered a negative. I’ve had experience with opportunism, people who’ve hired me and who made my career possible only because they were opportunists. And so I am personally predisposed towards opportunists. Opportunists generally are not corporate people. They are people like Donald Trump, who is an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs have their own belly feel for people who come in and make all kinds of crazy or brilliant proposals for investments and so forth. And they use their nose for opportunity to back or to decline these proposals. Trump is that kind of a person. So by itself, his leaning to opportunism is not necessarily a big discredit to him, but in the given case, it certainly is. The question is, is he right?
9:30 I mean, he could be right. As I’ve written today, judging by what the talk shows in Moscow were saying last night, the Kremlin thinks that Iran will get bashed, bashed if the Americans join the fight. And that is obviously the reading of the situation that Donald Trump has. And he would like to cash in by being on the winning side, not only because that is good by itself, but it’s important in keeping onside and behind him all the political forces on Capitol Hill.
Napolitano: 10:07 Is the Kremlin, can the Kremlin do anything to resist or temper the effect of that bashing?
Doctorow: It is again, reading the, listening to the remarks of the expert panelists on Vladimir Solovyov’s show, they are not the Kremlin, they are not Mr. Putin speaking, but they give you a sense of what insiders are thinking. They believe that Russia will not intervene and they believe, sad to say, because this runs counter to what I and many of my colleagues thought, they do not believe that China will intervene. They are placing their bets on Pakistan intervening, which to my knowledge, nobody much is talking about. Apparently Islamabad has come out saying that it will blast Israel to bits with its nuclear missiles if this proceeds.
11:09 And that is believable. So I think the Kremlin is hoping maybe they have backtrack, they have back channels to Islamabad to know what’s going on. I think that would be a safe guess
Napolitano: What is the Kremlin’s view of Benjamin Netanyahu? Do they think he’s a madman?
Doctorow: I imagine so. I’m not sure that there are professional psychologists who are advising Mr. Putin on what he should say or do. But they do not believe he’s rational, that’s correct.
Napolitano: Do they believe that Mossad– or they, the officials around President Putin in the Kremlin– was responsible in any way for the drone attacks on four Russian air bases and two or three Russian civilian targets a few weeks ago?
Doctorow: Well, when I heard this, it must have been a week ago or so, expressed as a possibility by Alistair Crook, I thought, no, this cannot be. It seemed improbable to me. But now I have to take back my words. Again, on last night’s program, experts in Middle Eastern affairs were saying that it looks like the hands of Mossad were all over the Ukrainian attack on those bases. And the logic for this is what happened, the way that the attack by Israel was carried out. Part of it was drone attacks on the air defenses, knocking them out.
And those attacks were by drones prepositioned near these defense installations, very similar to the way the attack was carried out on the Russian air bases. So it would not have been possible to make this conclusion until the Israelis carried it out. And I said another thing. We go back to the same time period. It was said on the show that these drones were pre-positioned or the whole program was put into effect at virtually the same time as Spiderweb in Ukraine, that is to say 18 months ago. This was not done last week.
Therefore, the involvement– and why would Mossad get into it? Well, here’s where I disagree with Alastair. He was saying, “Oh, but the Russians always have been villains for the Jewish people going back to Tsarist times.”
13:47 That’s a very nice generalization. I won’t take it, I won’t begin to dispute it, though I think I can. The issue is not that. The issue is: the Russians were playing footsie with Iran over a comprehensive cooperation agreement which at various times in his discussion appeared to have– this goes back more than a year– appeared to have a defense alliance within it. What they actually signed does not have any alliance or common defense in it. Nonetheless, it could have touched off alarm bells in Israel that the Russians and Tehran were an alliance. And therefore they decided they are strategic enemy and they would act on its strategic assets. That is all credible.
Napolitano: 14:39 I’m going to jump in on this a little deeper in a minute, but first I want everyone to know that we’re running a chat room poll. So all of the thousands of people that chat, that text us during your show are being asked to vote on the following. Can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? Yes, no, undecided. We’ll have those results before we finish.
Is Netanyahu out of his mind that he would dispatch the Mossad against Russia?
Doctorow: 15:14 He is a desperate man, and there you have it. He’s a cornered rat. And cornered rats do things which are rational for the rat but are quite irrational for everyone depending on the rat. That’s to say the whole Israeli people are held hostage by this cornered rat who happens to have the name Netanyahu.
Napolitano: Is there any military or political significance– and maybe this hasn’t happened; I thought it did– to the transfer of the name, the nomenclature of the conflagration in Ukraine from “special military operation” to “war on terror” or “war against terrorists”? Can you explain that to us, please?
Doctorow: 16:08 Well, a lot has been made of that in the last 10 days or so, with the reason that obviously a change such as that would mean that Mr. Putin is assuming far greater powers of control over the military, where it is acting and indeed who is acting, than he enjoys presently under the Duma-approved edict giving him a special military operation. As you know, he cannot move Russian conscripts out of the borders of the Russian Federation under the powers he enjoys now. This is one example, one small example of the ability he would enjoy to have virtual free hand in conducting the war in and against Ukraine if it were changed in designation from a special military operation, which is very circumscribed activity, to a war on terror, which has an international, is an international concept widely shared. When you’re speaking about acting against a terrorist state, all bets are off. You can do whatever you want, you can assassinate anybody you want, and so forth.
17:25 The problem with this change is: I don’t believe it ever took place. It was hinted at. Mr. Putin was suggesting that this is where we could go, but he’s not going there.
Napolitano: This change, even though to the West it just sounds like nomenclature, obviously it triggers a lot of things legally. I would imagine, and correct me if I’m wrong, this change can only be done by the Duma, the Russian legislature.
Doctorow: Exactly right. When the special military operation was initiated, it was with the specific voted approval of the lower house of parliament, the state Duma, ratified of course by other authorities. The point is that no such bill has been introduced into the Duma.
Napolitano: 18:13 Is the Duma basically controlled by one political party, which is headed by Vladimir Putin? I mean stated differently, if he wanted this, even though there are some legislative hoops through which he’d have to jump, couldn’t he get it just by asking for it?
Doctorow: He could get it just by asking for it, but not because there are no opposition parties in the Duma. Their opposition parties are opposition basically on domestic policy. As regards foreign policy, all of the several parties in the Duma are aligned totally with the governing party, United Russia.
Now, having said that, as a matter of fact, the legislation, enacting legislation, which made possible Russia to stand behind the Donbas independence, the declarations of independence, and to treat them as sovereign states and to conclude treaties with them for mutual defense — all of that was initiated by the Communist Party, not by– there were two bills before the state Duma. And-
Napolitano: 19:24 Let me just copy it. There still is a Communist Party in Russia? Forgive my ignorance.
Doctorow: There is, it’s the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Mr. Zhuganov is a 20, 25 years leader of it. If it were– but for the historical record and all of the old timers who constitute a large part of the membership and who hold very dearly a memory of the old Communist Party. If it weren’t for that, Mr. Zyganov would do– what he should do, is rename it the Social Democratic Party of Russia, because in all respects, it is like a West European social democratic party. It fights for workers, it fights for unions, it fights for social justice.
Napolitano: 20:11 OK. And where is it on the war with Ukraine? It’s aligned with President Putin.
Doctorow: It is, but sometimes it’s one or two steps ahead of him. It is more patriotic and more aggressive, I would say, regarding Ukraine than Mr. Putin and his United Russia party.
Napolitano: You mentioned something earlier, and I don’t want to nitpick on words that under the special military operation, President Putin is unable to send conscripts, people who have been drafted into the military outside the geographic area of the Russian Federation. Is there a Russian manpower shortage in the military as we speak, Professor Doctorow?
Doctorow: Oh, not at all. They’ve been running 50-60,000 new recruits. Now, these are not drafted people. These are volunteers who are signing up for a service in the area of the Special Military Operation and receive 8,000, 10,000 euros upon signing, maybe more, because I’m speaking now of the federal allotment. But each region where these people are resident has its own additional allotment. So it could be 30,000 euros that you get on signing up. It’s a very big incentive for people who don’t see more than 10,000 euros a year at their jobs. And so they have, this is an incentive, it is not the incentive to sign up, be patriotic, do your service and look after your children and grandchildren.
21:51 The signees are not 20 to 25. When you look at them, they’re more like 40 to 50. And they’re even people who are older, because not every job requires perfect physical fitness. You can send up a drone very nicely when you’re 80. So the point is that he has no problem filling the ranks of the– And additionally, they’ve gotten a bonus in the last week by Mr. Shoigu’s visits to Pyongyang, where he met with the Supreme Leader Kim. And he agreed on 1,000 North Korean soldiers who are specialists in mine detection and disarmament, and 5,000 construction worker soldiers from North Korea to come to Korsk province and rebuild it. So that also frees up several thousand Russian combatants to do fighting.
Napolitano: 22:53 Understood, understood.
On the poll, can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? There are about 8,200 people watching us now, 1,600 have voted in the vote. Can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? No 93% Yes 6%. I guess there’s 1% in there: Not sure. That’s the … tenor over here in the US, if I can put my finger on the pulse. I haven’t seen any official polls. Even the MAGA people are, a lot of them are very dismayed about all this.
One last thing, my longtime friend and former Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson has an interview coming out later today. It was taped either yesterday or the day before, and he sent us a small clip with Senator Ted Cruz, who’s in the Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, bombed them into the Stone Age camp, meaning Iran, in the Senate.
And Tucker begins by saying, what’s the pop– to Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz, what’s the population of Iran? – -I don’t know.
How big is it? –I don’t know. It’s a big country.
What’s their ethnic makeup? –I don’t know.
You want to kill these people and you don’t even know who they are?
And they go back and forth and back and forth. This is just the beginning. I’m sure there’s a lot more fireworks. Are you surprised if that is typical, a typical level of ignorance of those calling for the destruction of Iran? They don’t even have the faintest idea of the amount of human suffering and death that their calls if enacted on would produce.
Doctorow: 24:43 I can agree with you completely about our opponents. I’ve spoken of the world leaders in the West as being depraved and I don’t take back those words. They are jackals. At the same time, I urge all of our fellow thinkers to look in the mirror, not because we’re depraved, but because we are sometimes a little too liberal, a little too limited in our own perspectives and horizons.
When I studied, when I dealt with Russian dissidents– these are not active dissidents but just people in intellectual circles who are very critical, hypercritical of their government and all of its failures and corruption, and they go on and on– the unique thing about them is that they don’t think about the rest of the world, and they don’t want to hear about the rest of the world. Their concerned only to focus, they are razor-focused on the flaws they see around them, that it’s not a perfect world around them, that it’s quite an ugly world. I say the same thing to us. You have to consider that Mr. Trump is working in a world of depraved fellow leaders.
25:54 When he was at the G7, he was a minority of one with six warmongers. That is the world we live in. And before you make any judgment about Mr. Trump and whether he is trustworthy or not trustworthy, you have to consider where he is operating.
Napollitano: It’s hard for me to accept the exact use of your phrase, he was with six warmongers. He’s not a man of peace, even though he claims he is. He’s threatening to drop 30,000 pound bombs on Tehran.
Doctorow: We’ll see if he does that. But there is around him, there is around all of us, a controlling political elite in our country, in every European country except Hungary and Slovakia. The people in control are ugly people, ugly people, not physically, morally ugly people. They are, they all should stand before courts for their warmongering.
Napolitano: 27:09 On that I agree with you fully, but Donald Trump is migrating toward them. He’s funding a genocide in Gaza, he’s funding Joe Biden’s useless war in Ukraine, and now he’s threatening to destroy Tehran. This is a man of peace?
Doctorow: In the middle of that, you slipped in Ukraine. The reports are that he stopped all supplies and military equipment to Ukraine. So let’s give him a break on something.
Napolitano: Oh my goodness, if he did that, I would applaud him. It would also be front-page news. This must be, I know you wrote about it, but this must be either unknown to the West or of such recent vintage we haven’t seen it here.
Doctorow: It is not broadcast on the “Financial Times” or the BBC. They are still hopeful, though they’re wrong, that they can bring him around. And he leaves open that possibility. Why did he sign this ridiculous trade agreement with Keir Starmer, giving them a benefit? To shut Starmer up and to let him also know that it hasn’t been completed, and he can still revise the tariffs on British steel and so forth, to keep him on the hook.
28:21 This man is more tricky than any of his critics in the liberal camp, liberal I mean, our camp, not the neoliberal camp, than we give him credit for. But he is working in a vile environment.
Napolitano: Your analysis is so astute and so nuanced, Professor Doctorow, and I’m deeply grateful as are the viewers, now that you are sharing it with us. Thank you very much. Continue to send your notes to us. We may have to call on you if something dramatic happens in the Middle East and we need your analysis. Short of that, we’ll look forward to seeing you next week.
Doctorow: Well, thanks so much.
Napolitano: 29:02 Thank you. Great analysis, very smart, nicely nuanced, very helpful.
Coming up later today, we’re going to call and wake him up, at 11 o’clock this morning, Max Blumenthal, and Max is my dear friend and he loves to be teased. And I’m sure he’s been up since the crack of dawn.
At three o’clock, Phil Giraldi, just back from vacation and filled with vinegar, so to speak. And at four o’clock, I’m not sure where he is, but at four o’clock, Pepe Escobar.
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.
‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 18 June: What the Kremlin Thinks of Trump
Today’s chat opened with the title question, what the Kremlin thinks of Trump.
I am always a bit embarrassed by questions of this nature because, of course, I am not a member of Putin’s inner circle, nor do I have direct access to such people. My reading of the Kremlin views on any given subject comes from my watching the leading talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s in which the panelists include chairmen of Duma committees like Defense, as well as experts in Middle Eastern affairs and professors of political science at Moscow State University or MGIMO, the university which trains the diplomatic corps.
Does the Kremlin believe that Trump is rational? I believe so, and this stands in stark contrast to their reading of Joe Biden and his ‘puppet masters,’ nominal assistants Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken, whom Putin and Kremlin insiders considered to be insane and therefore very dangerous.
Does the Kremlin trust Trump? I think not. But not because he is a liar or a card cheat. No, because so much is beyond his control given the very strong opposition his policies face from leading figures in Congress and in the European Union, who are united against him.
Our conversation then moved in many different directions, often building on points I have made in recent essays published here.
One point that I was especially happy to elaborate on was my view that Trump is opportunistic. I qualified this by noting that I, for one, have respect for opportunism, which is a common trait in entrepreneurs, because my own start up the career ladder in the business world in 1975 was made possible precisely by opportunistic entrepreneurial employers. Of course, his opportunism can get Trump into trouble, as for example his latest jumping on the Vanquish Iran bandwagon in the belief, yet to be validated, that the Israelis truly have dealt Teheran severe blows from which their war effort cannot recover. The fact is that we don’t really know at present who will win this war.
Another point we discussed was how flawed American foreign policy is right now under Trump. The problem with this is that it all sounds like what I heard years ago from dissidents in Russia about the Putin ‘regime’ and life in their country: all their complaints may have had some validity but they were unwilling to hear that the corruption and other ills they named were no greater and often less than what goes on in other countries around the world. My colleagues in the Opposition to American foreign policy do not want to consider the world as it is and whom Trump has to deal with – namely elites whom I call jackals and depraved individuals. This goes for all of the leaders in Europe with a couple of exceptions, Hungary and Slovakia. Not to mention the war mongers who dominate Congress in both parties. It is a mean world and that has to be taken into account when passing any judgment on Trump.
Gilbert Doctorow 