This interview was conducted Thursday, just hours before Israel launched its criminal attack on Iran. Stay tuned for updates. -KB
Mr. Kevin Barrett…we might be going into war. Do you think the U.S. citizens right now, the U.S. population, is ready to sacrifice many of their sons and daughters once again to go to war and die for the Israeli regime?
No, and I think this is a huge miscalculation on the part of the Zionist element in the American administration, and indeed the Congress. They seem to imagine that somehow they can gain enough popular support for a war that they can credibly threaten Iran. And I think that’s not the case. Neither of the two sides of the American red-versus-blue schism is the slightest bit interested in another big war for Israel. Obviously, the blue side, that is the Democrats who are opposed to Trump, are not going to be following the baboon in the White House like he’s some kind of great leader. We see a huge movement now rising up against “King Trump,” the “we don’t want a king” movement. And we see California getting close to wanting to secede from the union rather than allow Trump to send federal troops in to occupy California and have his way with the immigrants.
So the U.S. is on the brink of falling apart. There might be some in the Zionist circles of the Trump administration who imagine that somehow Trump could play the role of a macho, fearless leader and try to unite the country in a big war. But I think they’re probably even a minority within the administration. The majority of Trump support comes from people who see through these wars for Israel, who are sick of them, who don’t want more losing wars, like the catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan under the neocons.
So neither side is interested in any such war, and there’s no way that any interest or commitment to such a war could ever be sustained. It’ll never even really get off the ground. But even if they were able to whip up some kind of hysteria, if some Americans, a lot of Americans, suddenly died on Mideast military bases, I think that that rally around the flag effect would last about five seconds.
So the U.S. is not prepared for any major war. The Israelis, unfortunately, are. And they’re the ones who are trying to drag the U.S. into yet another disastrous war for Israel, which would certainly be lost and would probably be the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. empire.
Israelis have already cost the Americans $8 trillion in their 9-11 wars after Israel blew up the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and falsely blamed Muslims to drag the United States into a series of wars whose only beneficiary was the state of Israel. And a great many Americans have now seen through this, including a lot of Trump supporters. So the idea that Israel is going to get away with finishing off the American empire by dragging it into another huge war is really a non-starter.
So I don’t think it’s actually the Americans who hold the cards or the Israelis who hold the cards here. It’s really Iran that holds the cards. And behind Iran, Russia and China, who are really the number one or number two and number one militaries in the world, respectively.
So if it turns to all-out war, this will be the last war that fully brings down the American empire. But I don’t think it will. I don’t think the Americans are that stupid.
Okay, let’s hope you’re right. Let’s just hold on. I’m going to give our viewers a roundup of what we’re discussing. If you’re just joining us, you’re watching Press TV’s rolling coverage of the recent IAEA anti-Iran resolution that was just passed. by the Board of Governors of the IAEA. Let’s just give you some updates on that recent story. Let’s just give you some updates on that recent story. The foreign ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in a joint statement have condemned the resolution and they said that Iran has always stood by its commitment. The statement said the IAEA report has time and again confirmed this. The statement further said that Western countries undermine the IAEA’s credibility for their own political ends. It also stated that the resolution is one-sided and has no technical or legal basis. On Thursday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog approved the resolution accusing Iran of noncompliance with the agency. It claimed that Tehran has failed to fully cooperate with the agency. The resolution was submitted on Tuesday by the U.S. and the E3, which is France, U.K. and Germany, and we are covering that for you. with some of our analysts who are joining us.
Let me go back to Dhaka, where we have Greg Seaman joining us. Greg, I want to look at the aspects of this, which is that the IAEA, for the most part, serves the purpose of being a nuclear watchdog. And if you’re a nuclear watchdog, it means you have to be neutral, at least that is what we are told. However, there is no neutrality in the statement that we’ve had. I want to look at the back and forth that has been going on because the IAEA does know from experience that if you give an anti-Iran resolution, Iran usually responds by limiting IAEA’s ability to inspect or increasing its centrifuges. So what purpose does this new resolution serve? What are they trying to achieve by it?
Israel needs to get US to support it in any war with Iran because Israel has insufficient military force capability and capacity. It can commit a genocide against unarmed civilians, but a military force the size of Iran’s is well out of the question. So this comes to the point that war is politics by another means. And so if we look at it, this is, I think, the beginning of the… basis to try and justify and legitimise a war. Just like they did with Iraq, and just like they did with the lies about Libya, about Syria, and if we look even earlier about Yugoslavia, lies and these false condemnations always proceed.
So this is the politics which is meant to facilitate the war. And the only way the war will be facilitated is if it’s seen as justified and legitimate. And like your speaker said before, the American gentleman, the American public are not going to be happy with this, because they’ve just come out of 20-odd years of what they called endless wars, which cost a lot of blood, a lot of treasure, and for nothing.
And so they would see this as an extension of those endless wars. And it’s very hard to justify. That does not mean that the US and Zionist forces will go with the public will and desire. They can always go against it like they have in the past. And so, yeah, I mean, this is how I see it. It’s the beginning of the road to try and justify something which cannot be justified under normal conditions. Because as has been said by yourself and a number of speakers, you still have ongoing negotiations where Oman is the mediator.
And I mean…The US doesn’t do diplomacy anymore. they do economic warfare, they do bullying, they do regime changes, but they do not do diplomacy.
Kevin, the same question that I posed to the previous guests, I want to see if you can also handle a little bit of that for us, because we’ve seen the repeatedly every time this anti-Iran resolutions are taken or whenever an anti-Iran decision is taken, Iran also responds by increasing its nuclear capability, by increasing the centrifuges, by gaining a greater knowledge base that is pushing it closer to the very thing they are trying to prevent it from. What is the whole point of this back and forth? Why isn’t it possible to have reasonable middle ground negotiations where you give and you take and peace reigns? What is the point of this repeated anti-Iran rhetoric coming from the IAEA or some of the other UN agencies that are in charge as nuclear watchdogs?
The real source of all of this is the genocidal extremist administration in Israel. Netanyahu has devoted his entire political career to dragging the United States into a campaign to try to basically destroy the region on behalf of Israel, paving the way for what the extremists in israel believe would be their expansion to and perhaps even beyond the borders of their so-called biblical Greater Israel, which goes from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers. Ultimately, they are targeting for genocide Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis, Jordanians, and even perhaps some Turks.
So this extremist administration in Israel has a certain amount of support planted throughout the West, by virtue of the Jewish Zionist oligarchs who dominate the commanding heights of Western finance and media. And certainly they’re not all on precisely the same page. Some of those people are not Greater Israel fanatics. But Netanyahu has staked his claim and made his career by working with the Greater Israel fanatics, like these crazy people in his cabinet. And his political career now depends on fleeing forward into ever wider war in the region.
And the brakes on that process have been applied by realists in the American foreign policy establishment. They stopped a prospective war on Iran back in 2007, when Ambassador Gwyneth Todd has revealed that she was part of an internal effort by Americans, sane Americans, to stop a plan that was supported by the neoconservative Dick Cheney to sink an American ship and blame it on Iran.
So this has been going on for quite a while. Netanyahu and his people are totally behind it. And the question of why the more realistic voices, both in the United States and in Europe, apparently cannot muster the courage and the wisdom and the strength to stand against it, is probably going to be a mystery for quite some time.
