All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in the Middle East. The news came out yesterday evening by CNN that three American soldiers had been killed by what appears to be a drone attack. Attack on U.S. forces, according to CNN, located in Jordan. Now when you look at a map, you can see that this area where the U.S. is operating out from is pretty much located in three countries – Syria, Iraq, and Jordan – right on the border of three countries. There are a lot of reports which claim that the drone strike, if it was a drone strike, hit the Altonf bass in series.

Yeah, Jordan is denying that this was a drone strike that hit Jordan. Iran is denying that they were behind this because obviously all of the neocon eyes went to Iran and they're now pushing Biden to strike at Iran. Iran. So where are we with this latest massive, what could be a massive escalation at these three US troops that have died and 25 injured by the way, 25 or 30 soldiers have been injured. Well, so what are your thoughts here? Well, I mean, I think that there's a number of important questions about this particular event which are unanswered. And unexplained. Now we've been in contact with our friend, Larry Johnson, who is, as we know, a very well informed and well connected man in Washington.

And he's pointed out that first of all the story that we're getting that this was all the result of a single drone strike. It's different. To reconcile with what we know about the kind of thing the drones do. Drones don't usually cause this number of deaths and injuries when they're carried out in one place. We can say that with confidence. I mean, I've been following the war in the conflict in Ukraine, I've been watching, I've seen many, many pictures of drone strikes. As I said, there's lots of unanswered questions. What I'm going to say...

Is this, and I don't want to rush ahead and start joining up the dots because I think it's premature to do that. But about a couple of days ago, about a week ago, I read an article, I'm sure it was in the Financial Times, which spoke about how worried the people in the Biden administration were about the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, how frustrated they were becoming about the fact that there's been these attacks on US bases.

And it went on to say that if one of these attacks ended up killing Americans, then the pressure would become overwhelming for the United States to take strong retaliatory action against the party that is behind all of these orchestrated attacks, according to this article, and according to these US officials, that party being, of course, Iran. So that was about a week ago. I remember reading it. And a week later... We have an attack, might have been a drone, that's what the official line is saying. An attack...

American base, it might have been in Jordan, more plausible by far by the way that it was in Syria and Al-Tawmf is an obvious place for a strike like this to take place but three Americans are killed and absolutely

tragedy, a terrible thing, unnecessary deaths as well, in my opinion, because the United States should not be having, keeping troops in Syria anyway. We've discussed this many times. Their presence there has not been authorized by the Syrian government. It has not been authorized by the UN Security Council. The nature of their mission has never been clarified. Anyway, the base was attacked, three soldiers were killed, many more are injured, and lo and behold, all the usual people are now coming up and they're saying they want a strike on Iran. And notice also the timing. Just a couple of days ago, reports circulating about some people in the Pentagon wanting to withdraw troops from Syria, immediate activation of all our friends.

Coming out, Charles Lister, all of these people complaining about the fact that the United States was preparing to withdraw from Syria, and now an attack on an American base. Maybe not in Syria, but in neighboring Jordan, but again, I stress, I am not joining up dots today in this program. There are still lots of unanswered questions, but to say it straightforwardly, I don't believe that we are just looking at a chain of coincidences here.

Article in the Financial Times, all sorts of people would have read it. There are plenty of people in the Middle East who would want a wider war and, well, they've read an article like that and they say, well, how do we get a wider war in the Middle East? How do we get a strike organised against Iran? We strike at an American base and kill Americans and that's what's now happened and, lo and behold, we now see the momentum, the pressure to launch a strike against Iran and to have a wider war in the Middle East.

So that's the big question that everyone is asking. What will happen next? Well, we have a lot of questions as to what happened, the details of what happened, but the question is, what does the Biden White House do? Well, what does the Biden White House do? Now there's clearly been a long-running, agonizing debate going all the way back to the 7th of October when, as we all know, Hamas launched its attack on Israel. There's been one very powerful group of people who are saying that Hamas was clearly acting under Iranian orders. We must therefore not just confine our attack on Hamas or not just support Israel in its attack on Hamas, we must also go after Iran, and Iran is busy enriching the world.

They're enriching uranium to greater levels than they've ever been doing up to now. They're stockpiling uranium. They're very, very close to a position where they can develop a nuclear bomb. So it is even more important, therefore, that we attack Iran. So there's that faction, and then there's the other faction, which I suspect is dominant in the Pentagon and which appears to be concentrated amongst military people who are more anxious to... Prioritize the conflict with China over Taiwan.

And also I suspect there are people in the State Department, some people in the State Department, very invested in politics in the Middle East, who understand the Middle East perhaps a little better than some of the more hard-line people. And they're saying, look, an attack on Iran will be an absolute disaster. It will involve us in another forever war. The war in Gaza is not going well. Israel failed to achieve a quick victory. It's taking losses. Our strikes on the Hizballah is a disaster.

Houthis are achieving nothing. We got a fifth of the US fleet cruising around the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis are taking potshots at it. They're still able to stop shipping passing through the Red Sea. We are inexorably being drawn, sucked into another conflict in the Middle East, and that will be a disaster for the United States. So we must instead try to de-escalate and pull our forces out. And we were hearing a couple of days ago about how these people were asking, were calling for withdrawals from Syria.

Syria and from Iraq and apparently negotiations are underway with Iraq to do just that. So we've had this conflict and the argument has seesawed and we've watched it. We've been tracking how this argument has seesawed. Now there's been an attack on an American base. Three American soldiers have been killed. The people who want the strike on Iran are in the ascendant. They're going to be saying, look, we even communicated to the US media, to the international media that the deaths of American soldiers was a red line. That red line has been crossed.

The President himself has come out and said almost immediately, before there was any opportunity to conduct a thorough and proper investigation, that Iran is behind this, so let us do that which we have always said we should do, go after the head of the snake, attack Iran. And I have to say, I think all the indicators are that it is the hardliners who are going to win.

On this incident, which said that Biden is trying to avoid a wider conflict. But if Biden really wanted to avoid a wider conflict and avoid escalation, why doesn't he just do the two obvious things that will calm everything down, which is a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. And pulling the troops out of Syria. To me, this means that these troops are tripwires.

In a way, all these bases are tripwires. Well, I completely agree. I mean, either he is not just utterly incompetent, but incapable of taking any kind of decision at all. I mean, if he really wants to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East, or – and not for the first time – what we're being told about what he wants is simply not true. I say that because look at what's happened in the Middle East. Look and track what we've been saying on the Durand. And we're not the only people who've been saying this, I mean, to say this. But look at how things have turned out. We were very skeptical about this operation in Gaza, right from the start. We said – we were worried that it would go nowhere, that tens of thousands of people would be killed, that it would wreck diplomatic efforts to sort out the crisis in the Middle

Middle East and that it would drag the United States over time into a much bigger war. We've also discussed how the situation in Gaza would open up further routes for the United States and Israel to be increasingly embarrassed and isolated in the United Nations, in the Security Council, in the General Assembly and we've also discussed the possibility of legal action being taken against Israel, especially in light of the kind of things that Israeli officials have been saying. Well we've now had a decision from the International Court of Justice. We analysed it a couple of days ago. I was lucky over the weekend, fortunate over the weekend to participate in a programme on Consortium News.

Francis Boyle, who is a lawyer who has argued cases before the International Court of Justice was there. He's actually explained the procedures and I'm glad to say overall it corresponded exactly to our legal analogy. But he also made a number of very important points, which is that the Security Council now has the right to take action. Not just the right to take action, but the right, the obligation to take action if Israel continues to defy the order of the International Court of Justice. If the Security Council fails to take action because...

The United States and Britain block it from doing so, then the General Assembly is entitled to take action. And it has the right to do that under the Uniting for Peace procedure. There's now a big majority in the United Nations. We've had a decision now from the ICJ, and he listed the kind of things they could do. They could recognize Palestine as a state. They could order a mandatory ceasefire, they could set up a tribunal to actually, you know, indict people. They could do all kinds of things. And we said right from the start, from the situation, when the situation exploded in October.

That we were heading steadily, remorselessly towards that point. And it seems that the ICJ decision is another massive leap there and we now have confirmation of this from an expert. but. A deteriorating situation in the Middle East because the administration, instead of acting intelligently, looking ahead, saying to themselves, What are the problems? What are the risks? They came and they gave Israel, or at least to be more precise, they gave Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government to do whatever they chose in Gaza. That was a disaster. We said it and things are turning out exactly as we predicted. And in terms of the situation, the larger situation...

In the Middle East. We also said that because the situation in Gaza has been allowed to deteriorate in the way that it is, and because the diplomatic position of the United States is deteriorating in the Middle East as well, and because all these huge military forces have been concentrated in the Middle East, that will only spur a situation where at some point there is military action by the United States against its adversaries And here we are, we're now in a situation where the United States is striking at the Houthis and is striking at – well, there's now talk of a big war between…

Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel coming, and we have talk about strikes on Iran. And going back to your original question, either… The president, who is the man who is ultimately in charge, is utterly incompetent and doesn't understand the effects and consequences of his own policies. Or at some primal level, he wants these things, he wants a conflict of some sort in the Middle East because instinctively. He is a hardline, nihicon himself. Now, I suspect the truth lies somewhere between those two things. I do think Biden is a nihicon. I think…

You know, viscerally, he is somebody who always goes for the most belligerent type of response. But I also think that he has long since lost control of the situation in the Middle East, and it is spiraling out of his control. And what we're seeing is improvisations. The president and his team, who are very, very powerful around him because the president himself has his well-known problems, they have no clear plan about what to do, but always their response is to take the most confrontational line that they can whenever they come under pressure. And that is why.

Drifting into the situation of conflict in the Middle East. Well, Biden has always been a neocon, absolutely. He's 50 years in Senate. You look at his record, he has always opted for war. So that I don't think that's that's a doubt. And then you're right, there's no doubt that that Biden is is a weak executive and the people around him are the ones that are really running the country, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Jake Sullivan and Blinken. That doesn't surprise, that shouldn't surprise anybody that they're the ones that are calling the shots. New Lindens and all of these people. But the other big question is if the United States does go forward with an escalation and eventual conflict with Iran. How many wars can the US handle?

That's a critical question because, okay, Ukraine, they're losing that one in a big way. You already have the war in the region, Israel and Gaza. That's not going well at all. There's talk about this war expanding to Lebanon and going after Hezbollah. You have the Houthis, which one would have thought for the US and the UK would have been easy to deal with. Nope, not easy at all. We said it wasn't going to be easy. The neocons thought otherwise, but this one has proven to be a very difficult conflict, if you can call it a conflict to deal with. And you have Texas as well, which is, it's not a conflict, but... This is a serious situation what's happening in Texas Now you have a rod how many how many

conflicts can this White House handle? Indeed. And by the way, you forgot to mention North Korea because we're now getting lots and lots of articles appearing in all sorts of places that Kim Jong Un is supposedly about to attack South Korea. I mean, I don't believe that for one microsecond, by the way, but you know, the articles are So, you know, go after North Korea as well, which also of course has nuclear bombs. And of course there's Taiwan, there's a crisis. And as you absolutely rightly say, Texas. And by the way, and this is not a program about US domestic politics, but let us quickly make the point that the crisis in Texas... There's so much similarity to what we've seen, the way in which these other crises, these foreign crises have been handled. You have a conflict with Texas over the border. So what do you do? Do you call him the governor, Governor Abbott? Do you speak with him? Do you try and hammer out a compromise with him? Do you...

Do you invite him to the White House? Do you concern yourself, worry with him about what, you know, what, you know, the real problems on the border, which nobody realistically can deny? No. You immediately go to the Supreme Court of the United States. And you get an order from the Supreme Court of the United States and then you find yourself in the situation, do you enforce the order when, you know, most of the country backs Texas? And, you know, most of the states back Texas, or do you back down and expose yourself as weak? It's exactly the same. Pattern as the one we're seeing in the Middle East, picking fights which you don't need to have.

Land you and the United States of America which you are supposed to be responsible for in more and more trouble. Now your point about can the United States afford more wars well you're think they can't objectively, they cannot afford more wars. There's been, you know, articles now appearing about, you know, the, um... Armaments issues about Ukraine, the fact that the United States cannot meet Ukraine's need needs with artillery shells, other weapons, the fact that they've exhausted their abilities to supply that. There's already a crisis, there's already a war that's being lost in Ukraine. So of course, what do you do?

you start another war somewhere else and you know you think that's going to make better make things better for you because I'm afraid that is The calculation that some of these people are making they're going to be saying to themselves what Ukraine is being lost so what we what have we got to do we've got to show that despite the fact that things in Ukraine train aren't turning out well. We're still strong. So we go after Iran instead, which is weaker than Russia. We go after...

Houthis and Hezbollah because we must show that we are strong. And of course, all that you're doing is you're planning one unwinnable war upon another and making the overall foreign policy catastrophe, which is now looming on the horizon for the United States, greater still. One of the fundamental problems with the Neocons is that they never accept that the United States is onto a losing proposition when they advocate for wars. And they will always rationalize defeats. They will always say, you know, the problems in Ukraine are not because we went in too deep, it's because we didn't go too deep.

Enough we should have gone in even deeper and they're now going to be saying in the Middle East well We must take off the gloves the fact is We can't rely on Proxies what Ukraine shows is that we the you know? The United States of America must go in ourselves, do the fighting ourselves, take off the gloves. We are the most powerful country. We have the most powerful military. If we go in ourselves, we will win. And that's what we must do. And that was the mistake we made in Ukraine, that we didn't do that. I mean, on any rational calculus, that is ludicrous. That is insane. But that is the kind of argument these people make.

The neocons and the media that they control is that they lie to the people, to the American citizens, but they also lie to themselves and they end up believing the lies, and that was the case in Ukraine. It wasn't that the US didn't do enough for Ukraine. The US gave everything to Ukraine. The entire collective West, you're talking 40 countries plus or minus, gave everything everything they had to Ukraine, everything they could possibly give some country. Please gave more than they should have given it weapons and money and they still lost that's the truth of Ukraine. So they come out with these narratives, like you said, which is, you know, we should have done more. We should have gone in deeper. We should have given more. It's more money what weapons what money you've given two three four five hundred billion to

Let's ski. Where is that money? Where are those weapons and the same in Iran and okay comment on that but You know, also, can you also comment on how strong is Iran now? I remember we did a video on this a couple weeks ago, and you said that... This is the wrong time for the US to pick a fight with Iran because the US is probably at one of its weaker points, while Iran is at one of its stronger points. Anyway, comment on what I said. Absolutely. You can work your way up to… To whether this is the right time to actually go after Iran. Well, indeed, you're absolutely right. I mean, if we're talking about, firstly, the military, the armaments issue, I mean, a fifth...

British Army gave a fifth of its weapons to Ukraine. Germany apparently has given an even greater proportion. And when we say a fifth of these weapons, we're talking purely quantitatively. We're not talking qualitatively. I mean, they've given, apparently the British have given... Of their storm shadows and the French are being strong armed into giving most of their scalp results. So we are and the United States has given apparently the bulk of its arsenal, you know, its... A stockpile of shells. I mean it's been an absolute disaster. Of course, on any objective analysis. The United States has not underinvested in Ukraine.

Catastrophically over-invested in Ukraine. I mean, there are many clever people. In the United States who understand that. J.D. Vance is saying it all the time. He's making these points. He's making them very well. But of course, those are points that the neocons never acknowledge. Because for the neocons, the mere suggestion that the United States lacks the power to prevail in any conflict is heresy. It's not one that they are ever prepared to countenance. Because of course they see themselves as the vanguard of history and to admit that the

The United States doesn't have the power to achieve all these objectives in all of these places, all at the same time, is to admit that there are limits on American power and therefore that history isn't actually... Being shaped in the way that they want, and that is of course something that they will never do. So they come up with all these specious narratives, you know, that we didn't do enough, when the reality is on the contrary, they did fine. Far too much. And about Iran coming back to Iran, you're absolutely correct, Iran is waxing, even as in large part because of the over-commitment to

Ukraine, the United States is waning. Now, you know, 2023 was a very good year for Iran. I mean, it got the invite to join the BRICS. It is now, to all intents and purposes, a member of the BRICS. It's achieved strong economic and military links with Russia, its economy's booming, it's achieving a 7% growth rate. Got strong links with China, it's achieved its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, and all the indications are that its armed forces are becoming stronger.

They've already established some kind of military industrial capacity. They've demonstrated that they do have advanced ballistic missiles which can hit targets with great accuracy and which are very difficult to intercept. They've shown that they can do this in these two attacks on bases that Iran itself acknowledges that it carried out. Well, at least the first one it did. The second one, they haven't acknowledged it, but it seems likely that that was Iran. The attack on the base in Iraq. So, they have these capabilities, they're getting stronger, and they've got now many friends. It's not like it was 15 years ago. Ago when Iran was an isolated country at odds with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies the Russians keeping

a distance from it, China also keeping a distance from it, because all of those countries at that time Valued their relationship with the United States much more than they valued their relationship with Iran. American policy has reversed that. All of these countries, Russia, China, all of them, even Saudi Arabia, now have come to a halt. To see the United States as unstable and unreliable and in the case of Russia as an outright enemy. So the result is that they've all done Switched and they're now friends of Iran so you'll be attacking Iran at a time when it has the largest number of friends, when its economy is at its strongest for many years, and when it is back.

By a nuclear superpower, which is Russia, which has already agreed to supply Iran with advanced weapons, Sukhoi-35 fighter jets and other equipment, and which would now be incentivised. Therefore... To provide more technology, more equipment, satellite information for example, about the whereabouts of American troops and conceivably even American ships. Things of that kind to Iran and potentially long-range missiles and other things or technology of that kind. I'm not sure what the Russians will do. I don't want to speculate too much about what the Russians will do. But potentially they could assist Iran in exactly the same way that for example they assisted the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. And that's the situation that the...

Cons of taking the United States into. Yeah, I'd never imagined this, this, this White House to be this. It's bad. I mean, we knew it was going to be bad, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this White House to do so much damage to the United States domestically, but also foreign policy wise. I mean, wow, it's really unbelievable. One final question. Do you believe there are forces in the Pentagon that could convince the Biden White House to not escalate with Iran? Maybe something like along the lines of what Trump did with... Syria and the whole Soleimani affair where they launched...

Launch missiles into Syria or something like that in order to de-escalate. They picked the target, the base was empty, they launched... Missiles, they well they allowed Iran to launch the missiles and and that was that. I mean, do you think that maybe there are some forces that could convince? of it and blink in look, we can't take this on right now. We can't take on Iran at this moment. Let's let's forget about it. But in order to save face because we did have three Americans Soldiers who died in order to save face, let's contact the Prime Minister of Iraq or Iraq. Or the Jordanian officials and just pick a target, make sure it's-- Or there are no people there and we'll launch some missiles and we'll call it a day. Do you think that's possible?

It is possible, and I think there are people in the United States who understand the dangers of the situation, and who would probably try to counsel precisely the sort of de-escalation that you're talking about. Blinken, believe it or not, in his more awake moments, seems to understand this. He seems to have understood. You remember, he's the one who's been going to the Middle East, so perhaps he's got a better feel for what the… Mood is like that. He does seem to understand that the United States is getting into a very dangerous situation in the Middle East and I suspect that people in the US Navy must be deeply frustrated that the Navy is trapped in this. Endless situation in the Red Sea. A US Navy carrier is there.

Destroyers are there trying to protect merchant shipping which is not what the US Navy is designed for and at the same time being exposed to potential attack. Acts by the Houthis who are still able to destroy shipping in the Red Sea. So the... and you know, there'll also be people in the US Air Force who must be worried about this. They must be saying, Look, if we're getting... Get into a conflict with Iran. We don't have enough surface-to-air missiles to protect ourselves against Iranian counter-strikes. Patriot missiles are in short supply. Missiles are also in short supply. We're sending missiles to Ukraine, where the Russians, by the way, are destroying them, and we just can't afford to have this conflict.

It with Iran as well and there are those people and they will be giving that advice and I again make a guess I think General Brown who is the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of the United States. To staff who seems to me a more, you know, straightforward person than his predecessor General Milley. I suspect he is one of these people who is getting… this advice. The problem is, and this is the difference, when Donald Trump was president... There was no doubt that he was the president. He had his own ideas, he had his own policies, he took advice. Sometimes he listened to bad advice.

Sometimes he rejected bad advice, but ultimately he made his own decisions. It was he who decided to contact the Iranians. It was he who took the decisions, the decision to de-escalate after the Soleimani affair. With Biden, you can't be certain. So yes, I can imagine a situation where General Brown rocks up to the Oval Office and says to the President, Mr. President, we've had discussions about this in the Pentagon. We think an attack on Iran, especially at this time, would be a terrible mistake. Let's try and de-escalate. Let's try and sort out something with the Iranians. I don't think Biden himself is capable of conducting.

That kind of diplomacy with the Iranians. But let's assume that he does, and let's assume that there is a strike on a lesser target, a lesser Iranian target, perhaps one not located in Iran itself. The point is that where Trump could say, That's it, that's what I've done. We've now reached this point. This affair is closed. With Biden, nothing is ever closed. They will do that. And then there'll be an army of Neocons. All the usual suspects and they'll be all coming and saying this is too weak, this isn't going to deter the Iranians, it's not going to end the problem, we got...

Escalate. We're not showing strength, we are showing weakness by responding in this way. You'll get the articles from John Bolton, you'll get the comments from Lindsey Graham, and Biden, who is very influenced by this kind of thing, will then pendulum shift back to that position, be back to looking towards a strike on Iran. So yes, I can see those forces of restraint, but I can't see them winning in the end, not under this President, and not in this administration. Unfortunately, all right, we will leave it there. TheDuran.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchute Telegram, Rock Fin, and Twitter X and go to the Duran shop. 15% off all t-shirts.

Take care.