Transcript submitted by a reader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXxG3qAa7oI
Diesen: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome. Today we are joined by Gilbert Doctorow, an historian and analyst of international affairs. So welcome back to the program.
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Good to be with you.
Diesen:
So America has attacked Iran, and it seems like a good place to start would be the extent of the destruction. Now, obviously, we don’t know this yet, the extent of destruction that the Americans inflicted on Iran. And the commentary appears to vary between Trump’s insistence that this was a spectacular success, the complete obliteration of Iran’s nuclear facilities — to the other side of the spectrum, which would be that this was a complete failure and the attacks were symbolic at best. Obviously narratives have become an increasingly important part of wars, and given that we have to wait for evidence about the destruction, I think it’s possibly more sensible to explore the meaning of these competing claims. So what do you make of them?
Doctorow: 1:14
Well, as regards the Fordow installation site, which is the most critical, the most important, so we understand, among the various nuclear sites that have been struck by Donald Trump’s B-2 bombers and cruise missiles, we don’t know. And I don’t believe we will know in the foreseeable future when decisions are being made by all parties on how to behave and how to proceed. Why do I say that?
Because these are deep underground. It is the remarks by Trump concerned the external parts of this installation. Of course, nobody from Iran is going to say what was done was not done, what was there was not there. It’s not in their interest to say it. And I’d say that by remote the Americans and all other outside parties have no ability to determine precisely what was … destroyed, nor are they necessarily interested in stating publicly what they find if they find anything. Because the narrative that Mr. Trump gave is the dominant narrative, and it is a sufficient narrative for political purposes.
2:33
And I maintain that this attack had political purposes, and not really military purposes. The important thing to say is that some of the best informed and most informative peers who are on other interview programs, Scott Ritter in particular, has made the claim that no significant damage was inflicted, imposed on the Iranian installations, that whatever was of value had been removed a week earlier and is now in storage in the many different underground centers that Iran built over decades for just this eventuality.
3:23
So that is what Scott has said. And I respect very highly what he said, particularly since it was supported in so greater detail by the one military panelist on the Vladimir Solovyov talk and commentary show on Russia’s first channel, which is Russia One, in the sense that he, General Burzynski, this expert panelist, who is a frequent visitor to the program, maintained that now that there had been no consequential damage to Fordow, that the materials had been removed well in advance and that nobody knows where they are.
He also went on to say that the chances of such an attack achieving success in obliteration, as Mr. Trump said, were close to zero, because you’d have to have sequential dropping of these bombs in the same exact spot, not nearby. If you were going to drill down sufficiently to destroy the deeply underground storage centers and the centrifuges, you would have to have more than one bomb falling at exactly the same spot. And that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in these wartime conditions when the planes would be very much on the lookout for attacking missiles that could bring them down. So these are the points that General Burzinski made, and they support what Scott Ritter was saying; I don’t know what his sources were. And they leave us with, as I say, the question what else can we discuss?
05:15
And my peers have discussed a lot of other things, but particularly the question of the legality or illegality of the American military operation. Was it constitutional or unconstitutional? The general feeling is that Mr. Trump was acting in violation of the American constitution. And he certainly was acting in violation of existing American law, which requires that he go to Congress for approval when entering upon a military action against another sovereign state.
That did not happen. Mr. Trump did this entirely in his own initiative. However, that is where the narrative ends from the peers whom I’ve listened to. I don’t pretend to spend all of my time listening to everybody else.
6:02
But these are the most important. I listen to the shows that I consider the least sensational and the most factual. And there, my peers end their discussion and go into speculation that Mr. Trump is irrational, that he’s acting on his own initiative without any solid inputs and so forth. I don’t find that there are attempts to make sense out of Trump to be very convincing or to be very profound.
I don’t say that what I’m about to say is profound, but I’ll just give it a try. What is said now is that if indeed it comes out that the Americans attacked a hollow shell or that their attack was ineffective because it wasn’t deep enough or whatever, then the Americans are left with a second mission. Would they do the same thing a second time? Improbable. It was very risky. It was very costly. And the results seem to be insufficient to the stated objective.
7:09
So what is that left with? They’re left with the same thing that Israel had. Everyone says, “Oh, Israel can’t do this by themselves.” That’s not a serious proposition. They could do it by themselves, if they use their nuclear arsenal. And that is what we have in front of us, the United States. If it should go back and try to redo this, the only option it will have is to use nuclear arms.
All right. Now, that takes us back to Mr. Trump’s thinking. What did he do? Why did he decide on this? And everyone assumes that he is serving his Zionist masters, who are among the big donors to his electoral campaign and simply to his friends in Israel. And that is an assumption which may be true, but it also might be false. It could well be that Mr. Trump foresaw the possibility of Israeli nuclear attack and preempted it by an American strike using conventional weapons, which only the United States has.
8:23
So I would like to give– I’m not intending to be an apologist for what he has done. It was illegal. It was in its own way barbaric. But I can’t say it’s the first barbaric act in American, recent American military history. So it has to be given full consideration and not judged by the prejudice that the man is by nature irrational and whimsical and does whatever comes into his silly mind. That is not a serious way of going about political analysis.
Diesen: 9:07
It is interesting though, because I also made the comments earlier that if the US and Israel oppose a peaceful settlement in Iran because it’s seen as too humiliating, then there’s only two options now, given that Israel is not doing well in the war of attrition. Again, I think they were mainly going for decapitation strike which then failed. That is the only two options then, if they’re losing a war of attrition is either United States comes into the war, or a nuclear weapon by Israel. But what I thought was interesting, which you have commented on, is that if Trump now says that this was a spectacular success and the only objective is to end the nuclear program– indeed JD Vance came out with a comment saying that, you know, the US is not at war with Iran. We are at war with Iran’s nuclear program.
I mean, this is a very strange framing. I haven’t heard this before. But again, I think this is the modern politics is stripping words of their meaning, but either way, if this is true, they’re only after the nuclear program, and they claim that this was an astonishing success, then the US can declare victory. In other words, they can then pursue peace. There is some logic here though, because if Israel is saying that they’re attacking Iran because they can’t allow them to have a nuclear weapon and their American sponsors are saying, well, there is no more nuclear program, why can’t there be peace then? They could have taken the nuclear option off the table.
10:56
So it is a very interesting argument. I guess a good hypothesis– to test this hypothesis, whether or not this is the case, would be what happens next, because Iran have to retaliate in some way to have a deterrent. So when it retaliates, what will the US do? If it walks away from this, that would very strongly support, well the hypothesis that you put forward. On the other hand, if the US looks for an excuse to get further involved in the war, then they would take the Iranian retaliation and use it as an excuse to escalate the war further, I guess. Do you think that would be a reasonable way to assess it? In other words, why not end the war now?
Doctorow: 11:45
Yes, let’s take a step back and put the same thing we just said in slightly different words. I think that by this action, Mr. Trump has taken away from Mr. Netanyahu the whole justification for continuing his campaign. Netanyahu cannot turn around and say that the American attack was a failure. He can’t do that.
The Americans will not tolerate such impudence, and he would lose at once the support that he desperately needs to do anything in the region, for the Americans are the main, principal supply line of all of his military supplies. Therefore, he cannot insult Trump by saying, “You are dead wrong, the program still goes on, the Iranians still have a capacity.” He can’t do that. And if he continues to fight, then why is he continuing to fight?
When he tried regime change as one of the issues– Even the BBC is now putting on air panelists, experts, largely academics, who are saying that the notion that Iran had a weak government structure, low popular support, could be overthrown, that all of this was nonsense. Let me just stop on that point for a moment. What does that mean? It means that Mossad’s intelligence was rubbish, which is an interesting conclusion that nobody is saying. All we know about is that the brilliant, the most effective intelligence in the region, if not in the world, is Mossad. That’s what we hear every day.
13:32
But wait a minute, what was their intelligence good for? It was good for locating the residences or the daily offices of the military, of the Revolutionary Guard’s top generals, and the location of the nuclear scientists who were about to be assassinated by Israel. In that, Mossad did a fantastic job. But I’m sorry, they missed the big picture, that the regime is solid and that the regime is resilient and a regime which lived through eight years of American-fueled war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988, that that regime knows how to have depth of management and resilience in case leading figures are picked off.
14:22
That, Masada did not get, which means the value of Israeli intelligence is no better than anybody else’s intelligence. And the notion that they are leading the Ukrainians into attacking this or that. But if they’re so poor in protecting themselves from their neighbors, what good are they in the larger international environment? So I just say this is a point that is extremely, to my way of thinking, extremely important in our judgment of the relationship between the United States and Israel. It seems to be missed by everyone because they’re not looking at it from a different perspective.
They’re all drilling down in the same spot. Now, is this misjudgment of Mossad the only misjudgment here? What about the ongoing war? We hear very little about it on mainstream media, and also on alternative media. How can you hear about it if there is the strictest war censorship in Israel that we see, now see.
15:37
And even under the strict war censorship, even the pro-Israeli BBC is putting up eyewitnesses on their morning programs who are admitting that, for example, in yesterday’s attack on Haifa, the alarm systems didn’t go off. This fabulously engineered Iron Dome and the three other levels of air defense did not catch the incoming Iranian missiles. And therefore, there were substantial civilian casualties in Haifa from people who were near, but not inside their air raid shelters.
So the notion that the Iron Dome and other air defenses are effective has been given up, even by the BBC. They no longer are saying that, “Oh yes, Israel just had to intercept a few missiles, because obviously the Iranians have run out of missiles or they’ve run out of the capability of launching them because of the strikes that the Israelis and Americans have made.”
17:00
The BBC doesn’t say that any more. There is the understanding, tacit understanding, that the Iranians are firing as many missiles as they think they need to on any given time on the assumption that nearly all of them will hit target. Now, that’s a whole new understanding of the level of conflict between Israel and Iran. The fact that Israel’s air defenses are no longer effective even if they have not run out of all of the replacement missiles that they use to intercept. That is shocking.
They also receive very little attempt to bring together two issues that are very big. The $175 billion that Mr. Trump has committed to building a golden dome in the States. Anyone who looks at what’s going on in Israel today should accept that it is useless. And I don’t see that being aired yet in Congress, that line of attack that the vivid demonstration is occurring every day in Israel’s failures.
18:25
So there’s a lot going on, but not everyone’s looking around, A lot of people looking in the same tunnel vision of one or two issues.
Diesen:
You mentioned that if Netanyahu would say that the American strike was a failure. In other words, they have to continue the war, that the Americans wouldn’t permit it. I find this interesting because it goes to the core of another discussion, I guess, which is also existing, which is that, you know, are the Americans owned by Israel through the Israeli lobby or is Israel being used as an instrument of America? It goes back to this question whether or not the Americans will permit disobedience.
Now, I tend to lean towards the former, that is assuming that Israel has huge control over United States, but it is interesting. Yeah, there are opposing arguments And I haven’t really, you know, haven’t locked myself in firmly to my beliefs because there are some, I guess, solid arguments going the other way, that the United States might be using the Israelis as well as an instrument in the region. I was wondering if you, what are your thoughts around this issue? If I just add quick, because it is important to the wider issue whether or not did Trump get dragged into this war, or are they using, for example, Israel as an instrument?
Doctorow: 20:09
I subscribe to the second view, but before going into that, let’s take a step back and look at professional biases.
Now, again, one thing that surprises me is that so few of us look in the mirror and try to discern the level of our understanding and where our prejudices shape our understanding of things that are new. Journalists generally don’t have a time horizon going back more than two weeks. Commentators, perhaps a few years. Historians, maybe a few centuries as a bias. Academics, no, please don’t take this personally in any way.
Although I haven’t taught more than one year at a university at the start of my postgraduate period, nonetheless, I do have an academic background and could be considered one. We have our own limitations, which we very rarely admit to. We tend to love our dissertation subjects. And they tend to influence things that we do 30 years later. I mean, this was Henry Kissinger’s a case in point with his Congress of Vienna, his studies from his doctorate, which influenced his work to the end of his career.
21:31
And he’s not the only one; most of us are that way. The issue here is of one John Mearsheimer, who in 2007 published a book which almost resulted in his banishment from university life because it was so scandalous. It touched on the taboo subject of Israel’s control of the US Congress and US foreign policy. He and Stephen Walt, he’s a, Meersheimers from the main school of American realist studies international affairs. And his colleague at Harvard, Stephen Walt, they published a book on the control of Congress, control of American foreign policy by Israel and its lobbyists.
And John, as a lecturer, you use the same material year after year. And you don’t necessarily start revising or reconsidering it. I don’t think he’s adequately reconsidered what he was saying in 2007 with respect to current events. Because I maintain that it doesn’t explain what’s going on. It’s just the opposite.
22:45
And when I said this a year ago, I wasn’t the only one who said that Israel is a tail being wagged by the American dog with his head in Washington. The consensus view was the tail was wagging the dog and that American policy was being set in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and not in Washington. So I was in a small minority when I disputed that consensus view a year ago. But now I hear around me people saying as if it’s a matter of course, that Israel is being used in the American foreign policy, war that’s been going on with Iran since 1980. And was alluded to even by President Trump in his speech to the nation two days ago explaining why he attacked Iran and made reference to a hostage-taking of Americans in the embassy in Tehran in 1980 after the Ayatollahs came to power.
23:45
That this tradition is invalidated by the way Israel is being destroyed under the eyes of Washington by the Iranian counterattacks, which resembles, if you want to take three steps back, resembles what the Americans are doing to Ukraine as their tool or instrument, as you said, in weakening, strategically defeating Russia. Would anybody think of saying that Mr. Zelensky controlled Biden and his minions? Well, that’s not easy to entertain because Zelensky was one of a kind, a joker, a third-rate actor and so forth.
But looking at Israel, you have the same man there for 30 years, Mr. Netanyahu, dominating Israeli politics, who seems to have strong personal influence on his American counterparts. Nonetheless, what I see is the destruction of Israel, the degrading of its critical infrastructure. The ports, Haifa’s largely damaged. The refinery, the key refinery there was up in flames. We don’t know the extent of destruction of infrastructure in Israel, though we can assume it’s substantial.
25:24
We know that the Iranians have very precise missiles. Again, this comes up, I think it was on Russian news. Yes, certainly I got this from Russian news. But the Israelis attacked the headquarters of the Ministry of Interior in Tehran. Two hours later, the Iranians blew up a Ministry of Interior head offices in Haifa and the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Tel Aviv.
Now, with such effectiveness, with such fine knowledge of where these buildings were, obviously prepared by drones well in advance, we’re talking about enormous potential destructive power. But we can only touch it here and there and say, “Well, I[they] must be doing something more than just hitting the Ministry of Interior.” Of course they are, but the Israeli censorship will not let any of this word get out. And they’re hitting, as we hear, without specifying which generating plants have been destroyed, they’re hitting the electricity supply in Israel. So they’re getting at critical infrastructure.
26:47
How long can Netanyahu continue this when he no longer even has a reasonable explanation to his nation that he’s answering their long-held prayers of neutering the Iranian nuclear program? I say it’s a question of time; which is going to come first? That Israel’s economy is destroyed or largely incapacitated, or Mr. Netanyahu will be pulled out of office and sent to prison. I don’t know which, but something’s got to give here.
Diesen: 27:20
Yeah, it can’t continue like this. I find that interesting though, the comparison to Ukraine, because that is often where the criticism comes from. That is because when it comes to Ukraine, it’s often much like with Israel, it’s presented by the political and media establishment that there is no higher purpose or no more virtuous goal than to help Ukraine. And this is our moral duty. We have to do everything we can for the Ukrainians and you know it’s such a virtuous goal to the extent that dissent becomes immoral. You can’t criticize this, you know holy mission, and thus opposition becomes illegitimate. But what is interesting is where criticism does come, because often when this policy of backing Ukraine is criticized, often it’s said, “Well, our politicians, they’re all captured, their loyalty is all to Zelensky. Why are we giving more to Ukraine than to the poor people in our own country? You know, we are struggling [with] infrastructure, yes, our politicians care more about Ukraine.”
28:26
And this is kind of where the main criticism comes from, our Ukrainian policy. But this is also, this is not reality. If you look at the actual policies, I would say that our political and media establishment couldn’t care less about Ukrainians.
Again, with every election, they appeared to have ignored the popular will of the Ukrainians. As you said, Zelensky was a peace candidate. Through our backing of a different nationalist group, we were able to flip Ukraine. They had the election again in 2019. They voted for peace, implementation of Minsk.
And again, everything was done by Western governments and their NGOs, which are financed by Western governments, to overturn that entire election and keep them on the path to conflict with Russia, even knowing that this would result in the destruction of Ukraine.
29:24
But again, it’s a useful tool. We saw our governments escalate whenever possible, reject all diplomacy and negotiations, not just to end the war, but even to reduce some of the intensity of the war and prisoner exchange, anything that could have actually helped Ukrainians. And even now that war is, let’s be honest, has been lost, they still want to fight to the last Ukrainian, something we would never do with our own soldiers. But again, these are not our men. And as more and more Ukrainians are recognizing, they are, you know, they’re a cheap instruments to weaken an opponent.
30:01
So this idea that our politicians are all, you know, that they’re subordinated to the Ukrainian interest, it’s a lot of nonsense. They took Ukraine from its beginning when nobody wanted to be part of NATO, when they saw Russia as the main partner and they’ve been using it as an instrument to throw out the Russians. So this idea that the problem is that our politicians are owned by Zelensky.
He was a peace candidate. He didn’t, initially, he didn’t want these policies. We helped to shape these policies. But again, I’m not saying, and I’m not sure if Israel is simply another Ukraine, given that they have this powerful lobby. A lot of America’s wars have been pushed by Netanyahu over the years.
30:46
But what would you say about the argument that Israel is no longer, supporting Israel is no longer in the national interest of the United States? Because this is a key argument by Mersheimer, that you wouldn’t need the lobby if there was a natural harmonization of interest. That is, Israel is costing America much more grief and costs in terms of the money, blood, but also allies in the region, given that its partnership with Israel is so destructive and costly. What would be the counterargument?
Doctorow: 31:23
Americans are very vengeful. And what we’re seeing now is acting out what happened in 1980 when the Shah was overthrown, when a regime was installed that was hostile to American interests and American domination of the country for the preceding decades, which saw massive graft and corruption and lifestyle that was inimical to the conservative elements in Iranian society.
So what we’re seeing now is Donald Trump answered the question for me, the question you’re posing. He gave a litany of complaints about Iran’s conduct. It’s the calculation of death to America that has been in the air since 1980. And he was describing why America was interested in attacking Iran achieving regime change.
32:31
This was all valid without reference to the interests of Israel. And that is an answer to your question. If I were a resident of Tel Aviv, and I looked at the destruction around me of residential blocks, maybe my own home. I mean, the journalist who has been covering Israel for Russian television for the last 25 years, his apartment was shaken, the windows were blasted out. I assume there are many others besides the Russian journalist who saw firsthand destruction of residential blocks.
And I would ask, what is Mr. Netanyahu doing for me and what kind of friend is America if it’s supporting him in these crazy activities that are destroying the country in which I live? So from the standpoint of Israel, America is no friend at this point. America is the friend, so it would seem, of Mr. Netanyahu, in his insane, not to mention criminal, but insane war on Iran, in which Israel is as small a player versus the giant Iran, putting aside the nuclear weapons, but otherwise in conventional forces, the two are not evenly matched by any means.
Of course, Israel has vastly stronger air power than Iran has, but Iran has ground power and Iran has missile power, but they have something like 40,000 missiles and were prepared over well more than a decade for the conflict we’re seeing now. That is an enormous advantage. And say you have Israel that’s from hubris and successive victories against less powerful neighbors going into a combat with the strongest military in the region, Iran, is about as crazy as Ukraine going into combat with Russia.
34:42
The similarity is there as well. It is, you can have the image of David and Goliath, but in this case, Goliath is really pounding on David. And the David sling so-called air defense is not helping. So the Israelis now are paying a price for being America’s friend in the sense that Kissinger said long ago. You know, being an enemy is dangerous and being a friend is fatal. And if they don’t stop Netanyahu, it’s going to be fatal for the state of Israel as it has existed since its establishment.
Diesen: 35:25
That’s an interesting point though that if one addressed the question to what extent Israel’s, I guess, partnership with the United States is in American interest, it assumes that the US is all based on rational thinking around its own national interests. But to bring up, well, I think there was a quote by Oscar Wilde where he said, America’s the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Well, just suggesting that endurance, the sustainability of the project and the rationality is not always there, but I’m not sure if it applies here. I just wanted to shift a bit towards, given that we are comparing this also with Ukraine, How does this relate to Russia? Because Russia, it’s often argued now, has a responsibility to support Iran, given that they’ve signed some agreements.
36:29
But also, Iran has provided important critical assistance to Russia in its own war, this proxy war in Ukraine where a lot of drones have been shipped. This was also something put to Putin, and Putin rejected the idea that Russia had betrayed Iran by not rushing to its aid. Again, it’s a bit unclear exactly what kind of aid that the Russians would send, because the Iranians haven’t sent soldiers to Russia. But what do you see as being– How are you reading this? How much support could they expect from the Russians in this conflict?
Doctorow: 37:18
Well, I’ll answer that in a second, but I don’t want to forget something else that is, that is, comes from inside information within Russia that we don’t have in the West. Mr. Dmitriyev, who is Vladimir Putin’s assistant and was his envoy for establishing a rapprochement with the United States, the man who was very well connected with all Russian business and also with American business. He made a statement which is quoted on the Russian news tickers this morning, that what would– since everyone’s looking at the possibility of Iranian response to the American attacks, not only a direct military response, but also in economic warfare, precisely the question of closing the Straits of Hormuz and vastly affecting the global trade in hydrocarbons, oil and gas.
38:15
Dmitriyev said this morning that the Iranians are considering closing the Straits of Hormuz to specific countries, the countries being the United States, Britain, France, and Germany. Why not? Of course, it’s more complicated than that because it’s not necessarily tankers flying the flags of those countries. In fact, it’s improbable to be flying those countries’ flags, which are serving the interests of Western Europe and the United States.
Nonetheless, if you just look at it more broadly, the way that the Houthis were banning passage through the Red Sea of ships, merchant ships, that are serving Israel, regardless of the flags that they’re flying, so the Iranians could do something similar, which would not completely interrupt global trade, but would certainly be noticed and affect the trade in gas and oil in the affected countries.
39:25
But to come back to the bigger question of Russia’s obligations, this is a lot of them make this. Of course, the same people who are saying, “Ah, the Russians have been thrown out of the Middle East. They lost Syria. They lost it.”
Look, this argument is all developed by a whole team of well-paid, well-paid formerly by the CIA, perhaps by Mr. Soros today, consultants, professional panelists, spokespeople on BBC and elsewhere, who are spreading propaganda against Russia and spreading defeatism for Russia, not corresponding in any way to reality. Like, “Oh, Iran had a tremendous loss when Syria went down.”
40:12
Well, yes and no. There was nobody who could save Syria in the final days, largely because of mistakes made by Mr. Assad. That’s a separate issue. The point is that the Russians did not have, and do not have, any military obligation to Iran. And they don’t have it because the Iranians didn’t want it. The Iranians have made a number of errors along the way leading up to their present situation.
Scott Ritter called out their mistake in calculus in their negotiations with the Americans, in that they quickly built up the level of enrichment of uranium as a negotiating tactic and point of leverage with the Americans when in fact it was ready, it was waving a red flag in front of the United States and led to the actions that we saw in the last few days.
That’s not the only mistake that the Iranians have made along the way. They made a very important mistake with the Russians. The negotiations over the so-called comprehensive cooperation agreement with Russia, which they concluded in December, finally signed off, had been talked about for well more than a year in advance. And there were many issues which kept the sides from completing the agreement.
41:39
One of the major issues was what is the level, does it have provisions for mutual defense in it? And finally, the Iranians rejected such provisions. It wasn’t the Russians who refused to give it to them. It was the Iranians who said they didn’t want it.
And they didn’t want it because, again, their own intelligence and their own understanding of the global politics was wrong. They assumed that Washington would, under President Trump today, would conclude an agreement with them under acceptable terms for the continuing enrichment at low levels and supervision of international agencies, and including American inspectors, that this could be achieved and that as a result, the very punishing American sanctions on their country would be lifted and they would be back in the warm embrace of the Western world. They would not be stuck with the Russians and the Chinese.
42:40
Well, they are stuck with the Russians and Chinese, but without any military protection because of their own inability to read properly the United States. What people misunderstand when they look at Russian policy is that occasionally there’s some good logic behind it. I don’t say every time, but often there is. Why didn’t the Russians take Kiev in 2014? Well, they could, of course. The Ukrainian army back then was worthless, but there would have been economic sanctions that would have crushed the Russian economy within a week or two, because the Russians were not prepared in 2014, as they were in 2022.
43:27
So it is here, the reason why Russians were for their own part a bit skeptical about agreeing with the Iranians is they knew that there’s a very strong undercurrent in Iranian politics, notwithstanding the Ayatollahs and the very conservative people nominally in control of the politics, there were strong part of Iranian society and government that were liberal, the same way that Russia had its big group of fifth-column liberals that finally were cast out or fled the country at the start of the special military operation.
44:14
So it is with Iran. They had a large contingent of Iranian government officials and society, civil society, that wants good relations with the United States and was not keen on dealings with Russia but could not meet their needs economically as they saw, as they believed. So Russia was very cautious. And when the Iranians didn’t want to have its mutual defense, they didn’t say.
This goes back again to another issue in recent Russian history. Why not only didn’t they– I just said why they didn’t take Kiev, but why didn’t they support the Donbas oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk in 2014, and instead forced them into accepting the Minsk Accords? Because the Russians then were not confident that a referendum on leaving Ukraine and joining Russia in 2014 would be won by their side. They weren’t going to hold a referendum and lose. Therefore, they said, “Let go, do what you can, boys. You’re part of Ukraine, and we hope that this Minsk Accords gives you protection.”
45:41
It was not lack of guts or confidence. It was better intelligence on the Russian part than any of us Western observers had at the time.
Diesen:
It’s interesting. I heard the same thing from Moscow, that is that the Iranians were, as Iranians didn’t want it again, that is not a big surprise. But the reason is this lingering suspicion that is to make themselves too reliant or get too close with Russia. Again, they have had centuries of history, not all giving reason to high trust.
I mean, I see the things being very different over the past 10 to 15 years as Russia has shifted more to essentially use the Iranians as a currency to buy their way into a common European home. But now, of course, that the Russians are looking east, Iran is elevated in their views to a key indispensable strategic partner as opposed to something that can put sanctions on, you know, to score some points with the West.
But it is interesting that a purely strategic, if not cynical view that this is not all bad for Russia. That is, a lot of the weapons which the NATO countries are sending air defenses but also offensive weapons to kill Russians are now going to the Middle East instead. So again you see this on the battlefield in Ukraine that the redirection of weapons to the higher priority in the Middle East is quite favorable to Russia.
47:20
But also the West doesn’t tend, you know, it doesn’t like to learn from the lessons of lost war. So when you have the humiliation of losing a war, the best thing to do is we like to offer to, at least there’s been a lot of precedent here to shift focus on something else. So you have a new one to replace the failed one. Also you have, yeah, so it might be easier for political reasons for the West to let go of the Ukraine project.
Also oil prices are going through the roof, which is not bad. And as you said, with the Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz being closed, at least the Iranian parliament voted for this, then it could take the same format as what Yemen did, that is to let some ships through, not others. Again, I think if Russia is looking for punishing its adversaries and they do see that the NATO is, they’re fighting NATO in Ukraine, this is not primarily about Ukraine, then a lot of this isn’t a bad deal for the Russians. Now, I’m not saying that they see this as positive, that they’re all cynical, but this could be a variable in the strategic thinking. However, that being said, the devastation and possible collapse of Iran would be likely a disaster for Russia as well as China for that sake. Now, I think China was happy that America’s focus was redirected to Russia.
Doesn’t mean that they want the destruction of Russia. I think on the contrary, it bought China a few years that America’s focus was somewhere else. But also China can’t afford to see Russia fail in this war with NATO. So it’s again, I’m not saying that they’re all acting on pure interest, but this is an interest. You kind of have to factor this in.
49:11
I’m not saying that Russia– China is happy about Russian casualties or Russians are happy about Iranian casualties, but interests do have to come into play here. But on the topic of Iran’s possible failure, is this something you believe that the Russians and Chinese would step in to ensure that they wouldn’t lose this fight?
Doctorow:
Both countries have possibilities of applying pressure to the Americans that are not directly involved in the Iranian conflict. So I don’t think that they necessarily have to, well, they would avoid at all costs entering into a direct conflict with the United States in and over [thero]. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. China can step on the toes of Taiwan and create an enormous distraction for the Americans.
50:07
But coming back to the benefits that Russia has from the present situation, of course, I agree completely with your remarks that, yes, they benefit from the higher oil prices, they benefit from the panic in Europe that they could be cut off from hydrocarbons from the Middle East and would have to come to the Russians on their knees begging to get supplies if they otherwise have condemned. And of course, the withdrawal of the American air defenses from Ukraine and of non-supply of further military materiel to Ukraine while everything is being directed at Israel in the Middle East. All of this is to Russia’s benefit, although it doesn’t change the direction of Russia in the war. It may speed things up a little bit because the Ukrainians don’t have the wherewithal they otherwise would have to prevent massive airstrikes and movements on the ground by the Russian infantry.
51:12
So yes, there are benefits. There also is the Joker in the pack. I think the Russians are very attentive to what we talked about earlier in this program, the possibility that either Israel or the United States would use nuclear arms in the conflict with Iran, which would open a Pandora’s box and which would be highly dangerous for the global situation. I think that’s improbable, unlikely, but it cannot be excluded. I think that the actions of Mr. Trump in the last week have put in question the confidence of the Kremlin that they were dealing with a wholly rational person, unlike the mad men who populated the Joe Biden administration.
I think they must be somewhat unnerved by the … well, cynical way that Trump has used negotiations to roll his enemy while preparing for a Pearl Harbor type attack because all of these lessons are valid for their own dealings with the Americans. And that puts into question, I think the Americans are now totally distracted from the peace process in Ukraine, which for the Russians is a good thing. It’s also a good thing that the primacy given to the Middle East conflict has removed Russia, this war in Ukraine from the front pages of our newspapers. The less that we see on television about the Russian devastation on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, the better it is for the Russians.
53:01
So there are positives which outweigh the negatives in this conflict for Russia, but there also are negatives and jokers in the pack, particularly the nuclear question. But the nuclear weapons question of, not being Iran developing it, but of Israel and the United States using it.
Diesen: 53:22
Yeah, no, I think the trust in American diplomacy has taken a, has gone down significantly because it was only once, it was twice. Keep in mind that when the Israeli launched this surprise attack with American knowledge and I’m assuming support on Iran, you know, as they say, they were in the middle of negotiations. This is very deceiving.
But then the second time around, Trump saying, well, consider this for two weeks and then get directly involved by attacking Iran. This is a whole new level of deception. But I think also the Russians started to look at the way Iran has been attacked because the way they smuggled in the drones to then attack Iranian nuclear reactors, it’s almost identical to the way the drones were smuggled into Russia, assembled and then used to attack the nuclear deterrent of Russia. And obviously, I guess the idea that America didn’t know or Trump didn’t know this is looking less and less likely from their eyes given that this is now being replicated in the war against Iran. And do you have any final thoughts before we conclude?
Doctorow: 54:42
Well, there’s one other small winner in all of this. That is to say the damage being done to it is less severe than what was experienced before this latest Israeli-Iranian conflict, and that is Palestine. The Gaza, “only” 500 civilians were killed in the last week by the Israelis in Gaza, which is a low number considering the genocide that’s been going on since almost two years, one and a half years.
Diesen:
No, but I agree with your assessment. I think the Russians are happy if they’re out of the headlines. But also I think it allows for more aggressive actions. If you see the way they’re attacking in Kiev now and all, it’s much more powerful with higher destruction of civilian infrastructure and also civilian casualties, which I guess is more acceptable if it doesn’t make the headlines. But again, it’s interesting how the media can only focus on one thing at a time because we can’t focus on the suffering in Lebanon because of the increased suffering in Syria. We can’t focus on the suffering in Syria because of the genocide in Gaza. But now we can’t focus on the genocide in Gaza because of the war against Iran.
56:06
So it is a very narrow focus which the media has, I guess. So … and whoever isn’t in the headlines, you have some opportunities to increase the destructiveness until the cameras are back on you. So, anyways, thank you so much for letting me pick your brain, and I hope to have you back on as soon as possible. Thank you.
Doctorow: 56:31
Well, it was a pleasure.
Gilbert Doctorow 