Джеффри Сакс: истоки войны с Ираном и грядущая экономическая катастрофа

Jeff thanks a lot for doing this great to be with you where does it go from here the war in Iran you know we always talk about the fork in the road we're really we're really at a decisive moment there's an off-ramp it's definitely definitely definitely the one that we should be taking we should be avoiding a return to outright bombing to renewed military action that's a very real possibility and the other possibility in my view is pretty much an uncontrolled escalation into full-blown war that would become a regional war and that could become a world war I think we're really at that moment right now maybe that sounds naive because why not next week why not the week after why not the week after but the problem is that we're we're not in a stable situation where we can choose one or the other were in an unstable situation as we speak the world economy is reeling it's reeling because as everybody has learned in their geography in the last few weeks the Strait of Hormuz is closed as long as it's closed it means that there is a worldwide economic crisis building so time is not permissive right now we can't say well we'll decide in another month we'll see how things go we'll negotiate and see what happens right now there is a an ongoing building global serious economic crisis and that is because a narrow stretch of water through which comes a comes a an enormous extremely important strategic flow of resources oil and gas obviously but also fertilizers and petrochemicals and many many other key commodities aluminum and others is closed to simply open it is fine that's basically what the off-ramp would allow it would be the right answer it would not solve any of the underlying issues that led to this and it would not solve any of the stated objectives of the united states much less israel i don't believe those objectives were valid and therefore i don't think that they should be the basis of a decision to take or to not take that exit ramp but the point is there's a way out of this thing that would avoid uh the escalation to something quite different so what is that other path the other path is well we're in this unstable situation the world economy is reeling because of the strait of hormones being closed and we have to do something about it we can't just sit there for weeks or months and we refuse to just allow it to reopen and not have those goals met so uh trump uh and his partner in this netanyahu uh might say the only thing we can do is make the maximal threat and if that threat uh does not lead to iran conceding then we have to follow through not with more time and waiting because of this unstable situation but we have to return to massive massive bombings this time even more and what we can suspect on that alternative is that the iranians will of course strike back and strike back very hard and very rapidly and what we have all learned also since february 28th since february 28th since the start of this war is that the entire gulf region is exposed to missile fire from iran as is israel in fact because we also have come to understand that the anti-missile defenses are permeable uh limited uh even depleted in many areas but we know that the desalination plants in the gulf region the oil and the gas fields uh the port facilities are not protected systematically and comprehensively against iranian attacks and iran would completely totally understandably respond to what trump has repeatedly threatened which is the destruction of iran so if we don't take the exit ramp i personally don't see anything realistic less than an all-out war and while i'm an economist a simple economist not a military analyst uh having watched this for decades and tried to understand from the military analysts i think it would be but a few weeks before a very very large part of the infrastructure of the region was destroyed in iran and in the gulf and a lot in israel as well and the result of that would not be uh peace followed by some easy recovery it would be a global calamity brought upon us in a few short weeks so to return to the basic question trump could say we're not going to go to disaster we just pull back that's the right answer if he says uh we can't wait we can't wait any longer we're going to attack i believe we will see a different world four weeks from now uh a world that is uh profoundly damaged the world economy in crisis the possibility of escalation to a full world war and i don't think i'm being hyperbolic uh or naive to say that we are at that fork in the road right now the problem once again is that the right thing to do is not uh is not uh a political victory for trump uh it's not and it's an outright loss from netanyahu personally i don't care about either of those i don't think the individual fates of two politicians should determine the fate of the world because i don't think that the objectives of trump and netanyahu going into this made any sense at all they weren't objectives that i supported or support today or that i believe uh believed uh on february 28th were within reach or that i believe today are within reach so the fact that the off-ramp is not a success story doesn't bother me at all it's the right way to save the world and it's the responsibility of um grown-ups to try to save the world uh not to save face not to double down on failed gambles uh not to engage in reckless escapades and that's why the off-ramp is is the right thing to do uh it requires uh grown-up behavior i don't associate that term with these two leaders very easily unfortunately so i'm not extremely optimistic about what's going to happen so the weather is warming which means grilling is here and you're probably already thinking about your first backyard barbecue of the year what should you put on the barbecue we recommend good ranchers we've been using good ranchers for a while and the difference is obvious they partner with local american farmers and ranchers to deliver 100 american meat right to 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30 percent of its fertilizer iran controls that supply chain that's essentially correct uh except for a couple of important considerations one is uh that um iran has suffered very heavily by this attack let's start by recalling the 160 school girls killed on the first day by uh apparently uh palantir's uh ai system uh well like we find out every day when we're looking at our screen uh this is an ai it can make mistakes uh well apparently uh uh palantir's mistake was to kill 160 innocent school girls uh this is not definitively known but it's what is being widely reported so we will perhaps someday find out what really happened iran has lost thousands of people iran has been devastated tens of billions of dollars of damages that will take years and years basically to recover for me as a development economist whose whole career uh over half a century is to try to build things i don't like to see things knocked down this way the mind mindlessness of it the cruelty of it the brazen destruction the glorification of this violence by hegseth and others i find completely completely totally repulsive so uh first iran has suffered a lot there's no glory in the off-ramp there's just uh continued bereavement uh people still being buried uh deaths deprivation uh suffering so no joy and therefore uh no in my view not a humiliation second second it's weird to say and i'm sure many people will uh object to what i'm about to say or not understand it or think i don't know what i'm talking about but i do the iranian people are really very civilized they have wanted to negotiate for years all of this depiction of the evil of iran that we have been uh played to since 1979 also mistakes uh the reality in a fundamental way and so when you say that iran would control the straits actually they would not control it in a malevolent way that americans would be led to expect by hearing that this is the most evil of evil empires that's what we've been told for decades that this is the axis of evil that this is the heart of evil uh netanyahu uh uh said uh that they wanted to annihilate us and so forth this is not correct at all it is our non-stop official propaganda narrative uh if you go to iran which i have been very lucky to do if you speak to iranians which i do frequently and have done for a very long time the official narrative that iran is so evil that we can't leave it in control of the strait of hormuz just gets everything wrong to begin with and maybe i'll just say one quick historical word about this where does this hatred and venom come from uh with respect to the united states it's very simple in 1953 iran was a parliamentary democracy uh iran had not invaded or attacked another country for a century and a half this was a peaceful country it had been invaded several times but it was a democracy that didn't threaten anybody didn't want to threaten anybody hadn't threatened anybody hadn't invaded uh any place actually since the 1790s in a in in a brawl uh over who controlled basra so in other words the very esoteric things from uh the 1790s but since then iran had been been bothered but it not bothered anybody else and in 1953 the iranian prime minister elected uh respected uh prime minister mosadek had the audacity to say the uh the thing never to be said by this region which is i think the oil under our ground is iranian not british and uh when he uttered that thought that maybe iran's oil belonged to iran immediately the british empire in the form of mi6 uh came to the new ascendant american empire in the guise of the cia and said um we got to overthrow this guy which of course they did successfully they made what today we would call a color revolution they stood up protests in the streets they stirred up and mosadek was chased from power and the united states installed what the persian empire would have called a satrapy meaning that iran became a kind of the province of the american empire under ultimately cia rule and we put the shah of iran uh as the face of that empire and the police uh organization savak uh as the enforcers of that empire that lasted 26 years in 1979 as the shah of iran was dying of cancer the people uh led a revolution an uprising uh and uh threw out savak and the cia uh and uh and the shah and uh that's when uh uh iran had its uh islamic revolution and put in a the government that is a government until today the united states hated that when you're an empire as we are when you have protectorates when you have places where you have your military and in the case of iran when your major oil companies have investments there that suddenly are lost because what was stolen from iran is now taken back by iran uh that led to uh a reputational question we need to bring iran back under our control because we're an empire if we're too weak vis-a-vis any piece of our empire it damages our reputation anywhere we need to punish these people for what they've done and there was the hostage taking by uh by uh the uh youth uh uh radical uh groups who said we're doing this because we want the shah to be brought back here uh to uh um face uh a trial in iran for the crimes of the police state over the last 23 years and the united states had taken in the shah in a very unwise decision by president carter in 1979 for medical treatment uh knowing that you're suspecting it was going to lead to this kind of eruption they demanded reparations they demanded an apology they demanded an end to the u.s uh subversion of iran all pretty reasonable actually but of course it became the cause celeb of the united states in 1979 and another humiliation for america which an empire never tolerates an empire needs to repay any kind of loss of face with uh some kind of extreme punishment not only to get that particular recalcitrant place under control but to signal to all the rest of the empire don't you dare try this so from 1980 onward the u.s has been at war with iran in various ways in 1980 onward we paid we armed we we supplied saddam hussein to invade iran a pretty sordid deal saddam hussein used uh poison gas uh with american knowledge at the minimum and according to some uh testimonies uh american active support but we we engaged in a war in iran through a proxy through iraq from the very start of uh this 1979 government donald trump already back in 1980 said we have to overthrow this government so when trump gives his explanations for the current war he says oh nuclear or this or that this is uh these are convenient uh current explanations for something that has been on his mind for 46 years as well because the american empire suffered a slight a country got out from under american cia control which you don't allow to happen and from 1980 it's been non-stop war it's been an economic war what our treasury secretary who i increasingly regard to be a thug basically not a treasury secretary but someone who delights and gloats in crushing other economies by using financial means or trade sanctions or financial blockages and delights in it uh explained uh in davos this year in a fox news interview with maria bartiromo that our statecraft destroyed the iranian economy last year well we've been doing that kind of statecraft what a horrible orwellian term for destroying another country's economy we've been doing that for decades well there's been a lot of noise in the news lately but none of it matters if you can't hear it and there's no shame in that it happens to millions people every year if you shoot a lot you know the feeling our friends at audien can change your life audien offers fda compliant hearing aids for as low as 98 dollars no prescription no doctor's visit required available to over 10 000 retailers nationwide including walmart and walgreens over one and a half million americans already use audien and has changed their lives no more squinting and struggling to hear as people try to talk to you audien helps you reconnect to the world and more important to other people who are the key to life visit here tucker.com that's here h-e-a-r tucker.com or call 1-800-453-2916 to learn more about how audien can help you or someone you love hear better it's essential healthcare hearing and it's now accessible and affordable that's the system should have done all along and we have been engaged in assassinations of iranian leaders we have been engaged in uh blowing up uh their nuclear facilities even when uh they have been pleading let's have an agreement that puts us under strict supervision of the international atomic energy agency we've been using what's called hybrid warfare every possible means of subversion of economic warfare of direct military action of covert operations donald trump confirmed that in the protest last year the u.s sent weapons to the protesters that's not a protest that's an insurrection we were creating uh that did not work work but the point i'm making is that we portray iran as evil because it did something unacceptable to the united states that doesn't involve nuclear weapons or any of the specific issues or hezbollah or hamas it goes back to 1979 they escaped from the american empire they escaped from cia control that's not allowed that's simply what you're not supposed to to do and uh this war has been going on with various pretexts various explanations since then let me ask you if i could just say one more thing tucker um um trump's main argument has been in the last uh uh months i will stop them from having a nuclear weapon of course anyone that knows the history of this knows that this is orwell to the nth power by that i mean that's such bizarre propaganda you don't quite even know where to start the reason is that the iranians have not pursued a nuclear weapon our own intelligence agencies have said that repeatedly what they have pursued though is a treaty with the u.n security council to confirm that to put them under strict monitoring under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty but in return for ending the u.s economic warfare on iran what iran has wanted for 15 years is you supervise us you control us fine but lift your sanctions let us breathe let us have a normal economy let us trade and president obama and by the way one other thing let us have our own money back because the united states has confiscated tens of billions of dollars of iran's money iran's money not our money because we do that as an empire we freeze the money of other countries we sometimes just overtly take it and use it for something else it's rather obnoxious to my point of view and rather self-defeating in the long term for the united states to have the reputation that it just steals other people's fiscal and financial resources but we did that with iran so what iran has wanted is diplomacy and i come back again they're nice people they're diplomats and i sometimes tell them you don't even know who you're dealing with here how nasty this is how difficult this is uh no no no we want an agreement professor sacks do you know who we might speak to about uh in 2015 such an agreement was reached the joint comprehensive plan of action the jcpoa it was reached not only with the united states but with britain with france with russia with china and with germany the five permanent members of the united states the united states oh no you can't have an agreement with iran they're the evil empire you can't do this uh and so uh when trump was elected in the first term he ripped up the jcpoa this is the approach that you don't want them to have a nuclear weapon when you had the control no this is the opposite this is we need to change the regime because they humiliated the united states by escaping from our empire we tried to defeat them in many ways but they stood up to it we need to defeat them there's an israeli version which is not exactly the same and the israeli version is we need to have absolute control over the middle east so that we can pursue our greater israelis israelis agenda this is not exactly the us cause but there are people in the us that are the backers of that distinct cause that's not israel saying you escape from the american empire that's israel saying we control almost all of the middle east militarily but iran we don't yet control so that's the last big prize and that's the other part of this agenda right now and why israel is even more against the off-ramp than the united states trump is against the off-ramp because he can't declare victory because he would lose face because it would be he'd face pressure groups because there are uh we we we have the israel or the zionist lobby i would i would call it uh in the united states for israel the issue is uh somewhat distinct but israel's main issue is that it wants complete military dominance of west asia and uh the the middle east and even into the horn of africa and north africa and it almost has that uh not that it can easily control all of the territory no by no means but it is able to act with impunity it's able to invade lebanon it's able to occupy syria it's able to overthrow other countries governments and that's what it wants but it faces an obstacle and the obstacle is iran so most people don't wake up in the morning and decide to feel horrible exhausted foggy disconnected from themselves but it does happen and it happens slowly you're working hard you're showing up and your energy disappears by midday your focus is dull your weight won't move a lot of people are told that's just getting old that's what it is but that's not actually true for many men and women these are not personal affairs they are signals tied to your metabolism your hormones and nutrient imbalances that go undetected for years you don't even know you're deficient and that's why we're happy to partner with joy and blokes a company that was built for people who are all done guessing and ready to figure out what exactly is going on and that starts with comprehensive lab work and a one-on-one 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claim and hold on to this territory we'll definitely face resistance we'll definitely face resistance of militant groups but what netanyahu and his colleagues in the united states said was rather than fighting those militant groups directly we need to bring down the governments in the middle east and west asia that support those groups and that is what's called the clean break strategy the clean break was the clean break from the peace accords from the land for peace idea that israel would return to its borders there would be a palestinian state in return for peace that's what international law says but what israel says we're never returning we're there's never going to be a state of palestine in fact we're going to have what we call greater israel which is all of palestine including gaza west bank east jerusalem legal israel but also expanded parts of the region and when you interviewed ambassador huckabee the u.s ambassador to israel he put it very clearly uh that the great zealots including huckabee and many of the israeli leaders view greater israel as control from a big slice of egypt uh all the way to iraq uh from uh what is taken to be even a biblical uh gift of god to uh the uh ancient israelites uh from the river of egypt to the great river of mesopotamia meaning uh the euphrates river so israel wants military dominance the clean break idea was when we aim for that we'll find resistance we don't fight and extinguish the militant groups because we can't we have to fight the governments that back them and that's where the idea of perpetual war in the middle east came from or not perpetual war but actually specifically seven wars were designated that would overthrow governments supporting palestinian militancy and those governments were libya sudan somalia lebanon syria iraq and iran and we've now been pulled into israel's seven wars six of those wars have led to bloodbaths and disasters from libya still in civil war sudan unbelievably in two civil wars because we broke the country apart and each of those two parts now has its own civil war somalia there's not even a government there is a government actually very nice prime minister that i know but uh barely governance uh in in the country uh lebanon we see it's a invaded basically destroyed country syria uh the us and israel worked for 15 years from obama uh until this past year to overthrow the government that was an active uh covert regime change operation iraq the 2003 war and the debacle that lasted uh four years after that and iran was the last so six of the seven places are in chaos and from israel's point of view great we like chaos that means we are the military hegemon for all of that region stretching from libya to iraq chaos is great they can't get their act together they're all in civil war what could be better the seventh is iran and that's where we're facing right now and interestingly when the war started net yahoo who tweeted this is my dream come true for 40 years and i had to confess i made a mistake i always said 30 years because i dated it to clean break 1996 but i didn't know net yahoo before he was prime minister i didn't know that he had 10 years more of dreaming of this war so the off-ramp violates not only the american conditions of defending its imperial strength but the israeli dream of full control over the region and that's why the off-ramp is so hard i have to say one more thing just because it is a little bit of a complicated picture it's not incidental and i don't want anyone to think i'm naive in this when we talk about why the united states wants iran within the u.s empire why it overthrew mosedeck in 1953 remember the oil so i don't want to uh forget to mention that that's not only a 1953 issue that brought in the u.s empire that was aimed to ensure that iran would not take back its oil from british and then american interests trump absolutely without question no doubt a hundred percent is as strongly beholden to the oil lobby as he is to the zionist lobby and he said so vividly vocally in 2024 he said raise a billion billion dollars for me it's a deal you'll get all the benefits from this what he did in venezuela he thought he was about to do in iran as well so this needs to be understood as just one more piece of this yes he wanted to fight with iran for 46 years at least since 1980 probably 47 since 1979 what he thinks he learned from kidnapping the venezuelan president and then suborning the venezuelan government is i can do a decapitation and then own the oil of that country and so part of the motivation now was revenge bring iran back into the empire but part of the benefit of bringing iran back back into the american empire is you get the oil and he thought within one day he'll get the oil because just like removing maduro he thinks gave america venezuela's oil he thought killing the iranian governmental leadership starting with this religious supreme leader and then the top uh officials of the government that were meeting that day with the supreme leader he would take the oil so that's the tableau this is why it's hard to take the exit ramp because there were reasons for this war to my mind cruel illegal illegal delusional uh so i don't abide by any of those reasons but there were reasons for this war and taking the off-ramp means that none of those would be fulfilled from my point of view fine none of them was valid but from the point of view of the two architects of this war trump and netanyahu that's quite hard to do but as i said the alternative which is an escalated war within a few weeks could destroy the world economy to uh thank you for that that was sorry to go on i loved it i loved it um and it's much needed because there's always a context you did this with the ukraine war once in this room and i've never stopped thinking about it uh thank you for that a couple quick follow-up questions you talked about the ongoing war against ron by the united states now 46 years since 1980 first to proxy war with uh iraq etc etc there are reports that the united states in addition to all of that has used geoengineering to evoke a drought in iran is that true i doubt it there are enough reasons for drought as a natural condition of uh a an arid and semi-arid reason that we don't have to go there okay yeah um second in fact i can tell you uh one uh one visit to uh tehran uh i was in the gulf region uh in uh saudi uh and then i went to uh tehran and in both places this was many years ago now there was already drought and it was it was a springtime and there were intense sandstorms uh sandstorms like uh none of us has ever experienced if you haven't been in those places and in tehran i was invited to a kind of cocktail party uh or an evening uh get together very nice on a uh you know a top floor of an apartment building you couldn't see anything out the window because it was just completely darkened uh in the afternoon by this sandstorm basically so the point was uh it struck me then uh these are arid regions yes uh they are drying under uh the forces of uh long-term uh changes that are underway and having been in the gulf and then in uh iran it's of course exactly the same ecosystem it's the same environment it's the most natural thing that they should be working together to solve these problems and you say this is where do these lines of division come from uh just because someone drew a political line it doesn't change the fact that there's the sandstorm on one side the same sandstorm on the other side and they should be working together and so it just struck me i'm just reminded of the fact that um i had this intense uh visceral feeling then how artificial these political boundaries are because this is a region and it's a region that shares some very intense human problems like how to get enough water to stay alive day to day and they should be working together to solve that problem so i don't think in this case that you need the united states to geoengineer anything i think it's happening by itself for decades russell brand was one of the most famous actors and comedians and agnostics in the world today he is one of the most sincere christians we know a follower of christ his personal transformation is remarkable we saw it up close he has now recounted it in an amazing book called how to become a christian in seven days and it recounts what happened to him and it makes the case to all of us for stepping away from our secular assumptions and returning to the only thing that matters which is god i've read it it's amazing and right now there's only one place to get it tucker carlsonbooks.com this is the first release from our new publishing company we created tucker carlson books to bypass the censors and bring you things that are actually worth reading and sharing and we're starting this venture with what matters most and that's russell brand's message of the promise of forgiveness and joy through jesus we're proud to launch our new bookstore with russell brands how to become a christian in seven days it is the message this country needs most find us today on tucker carlsonbooks.com second question clean break 1996 um listed seven countries whose governments need to be overthrown in order to create room and strategic depth and options for israel six of those wars have taken place the u.s was in well now seven but the u.s was the instrument of all of those correct okay great so this was israel's plan but the u.s military was used the u.s has spent five to ten trillion dollars on this uh israel venture this is the basic point uh yes we've had our own misguided ideas about this but um it's just bizarre uh of course iraq we know in detail uh that this was a concocted war uh but syria has never been uh understood in as much depth but it's the same story uh why suddenly did barack obama feel the compulsion to task the cia with overthrowing bashar al-assad asad must go yes that was on the lips of everyone in one day are you kidding i remember i was on morning joe uh that morning that either hillary or uh or or obama said uh saddam must go and joe turned to me said what do you think about that i said oh that's interesting how are they going to do that well it took 14 years hundreds of thousands of deaths tens of billions of dollars massive destruction massive destabilization refugee crisis to put a jihadist in in in charge right now and then exactly clean it up but of course to take a secular government that protected religious minorities allowates christians everybody for generations generationally father and son did the same and replace it with a guy we thought we were fighting against and to destroy of course historic sites as they're doing uh in iran right now cultural sites i should say that are human heritage uh not only uh syrian or iranian heritage but world heritage because they've lasted thousands of years and then our idiocy were destroying them in in hours yeah i would say evil but yeah no that's um okay so i just want to be clear with that third question um about the off-ramp so the united states would have to the president but the whole government would have to swallow that we'll just have to admit it didn't work and iran is now more powerful iran is an economic power which we didn't understand i don't think before this war we thought of them as this emerging military threat turns out they're an economic power because they control the strait but from an israeli perspective there is this process which i've seen many times where people talk themselves into believing their own rhetoric so you start out by saying the real threat from iran is its nuclear program but you don't mean it you just want to take iran out because you don't want hezbollah on hamas to hassle you've got it but if you say it enough you start to believe that the main threat to your existence is this government and i think the israelis are there like i think they believe that so could not just netanyahu the prime minister but the whole country could they live with a strengthened iran or would they be forced to do something really radical well netanyahu said a couple of days ago that um they're out to annihilate us which is not true uh and that's a heavy thing to say and and it shows uh i think uh a deep part of uh the the psyche uh of netanyahu personally and of uh one strand of uh israeli extremism which is the belief and um it is taught that uh they're out to annihilate us uh every generation and um the uh holocaust uh is used as the model that um we uh can never uh tolerate this again so we must fight preemptively against anyone that would annihilate us well it leads to uh as even netanyahu said a sparta state a state that is just a war state they've lost the capacity for diplomacy at all israel unfortunately has no diplomacy it has diplomats but the diplomats rip up the un charter or shred the un charter or stand in the podium of the un general assembly and accuse the whole world of anti-semitism and hatred and so forth it's not diplomacy at all because uh one strand of thought is nobody can be trusted uh we have to kill kill them before they kill us if you live like that you end up as a killer non-stop uh and this is uh definitely one tragic reality of uh the mentality of a netanyahu or others he's been killing before they kill us for decades he's a killer he has become a non-stop killer he kills in the name of self-defense but he kills in the name of preemptive self-defense and so if you believe that the others are out to kill you and you must not talk to them and must not try to understand or must not do anything else you end up as a non-stop killer that now would say oh you're i don't know if you what he would say to me uh not not much nice but he would uh say you're you're so naive uh and what i would say to him is but you sir have the idea not out of uh any reason but you have the idea that you will have a greater israel and expunge the people that live in your area that are not israeli jews that's your idea that for the millions and millions of people there you will exterminate them or ethnically cleanse them or rule over them uh in some racially segregated society and then you want others to then when others object to that you say that they're out to destroy you why don't you show that you have a human reason that you have a human decency and say that in conditions of peace there would be a palestine yes of course because there are eight million palestinians and in a situation of peace we could have calm with the rest of the region without going to war subverting governments and so forth but you don't try to do that net now's position is there's no possibility of diplomacy we must kill them before they kill us but without trying to have any peace without trying to understand that there are legitimate deep moral legal and historical reasons for doing something different from greater israel that kills maims destroys expropriates the palestinian people and claims territory seemingly wherever they want in lebanon or syria and who knows where else according to ambassador huckabee so i don't give any credence to netanyahu because his starting point is not only fear but his starting point is something obnoxious which is we don't recognize the people that live among us that we are the people that we are the people who are the people that we are the people that we have killed in by the tens of thousands that we have denied basic political rights and without that how can he think that there could be some kind of solution so netanyahu's absence of an exit ramp starts from his own radicalism not only from his fear but from a complete absence of diplomacy that recognizes that there's another side that needs to be dealt with as human beings and where that extremism comes from is i'm not sure it's very pathological you could find it in some religious extremist views that this is our land god gave it to us it's nobody else's and everyone else has to get the hell out i'm not sure exactly what motivates it but there's a complete collapse of understanding that there are people to talk to that actually want to make peace so i always thought that it was netanyahu was leading this that he had a particular worldview um and that i don't know through his brilliant political skill he was able to control the country now it seems like there are a lot of people who have even more radical views and one of them would be danny dannon whom i know i always thought was kind of a reasonable guy he's the israeli ambassador to the united nations there was an amazing exchange between you and him at the u.n fairly recently that made me think wow it's not just netanyahu can you explain that exchange well i can explain the exchange and i can also say that there are uh two variants of israeli extremism that are not the same but they are now literally a coalition i mean they're literally a political coalition uh and uh they are a uh a um ideological uh coalition as well so one is the view every generation they're out to kill us we have to kill them before they kill us the preemptive strike the clean break idea but again grounded in this perverse uh maybe related idea that there will never be a palestine alongside in israel which is actually what led to clean break led to all these wars led to the militancy was the absence of palestinian political rights alongside israeli political rights the so-called two-state solution and since netanyahu's party likud going back to its opening charter in 1977 said there will never be a palestinian state nothing to talk about no terms no security arrangements to make it possible this will all be israel's sovereignty from the jordan river to the mediterranean there was never a basis for a diplomatic way out within israel from netanyahu's point of view now there's a second variant in israel which gives a theological interpretation of this netanyahu's interpretation is mainly security and secular with the only theological twinge being this uh idea that they're always out to kill us every generation uh and the holocaust put that into overdrive for completely understandable reasons but not rational reasons that attend to current realities so i'd say netanyahu is the uh basically the security vision but again to my mind irrational cruel illegal self-defeating disastrous not real security for israel but security in the phrase we kill them before they kill us then is a very different a very different variant that is now the coalition partners represented by two now well-known leaders to us ben gavir and smotrich two cabinet ministers who are religious religious with a very strange idea and it's a new form of judaism which uh actually attaches to some ancient texts but was not a real form of judaism for 2000 years it's not what i grew up with at all it's not what i grew up with as a jew at all uh it's something absolutely late 20th century early 21st century one of the parties is called jewish power uh and it is uh the idea that that's its actual name yes uh in in hebrew yes uh we redeem god's promise to us by becoming greater israel so the act of of this expanded israel is a religious uh demand upon us this is our redemption is this very political military program that we have and that is uh smotrich and ben gavir which says on a religious basis we couldn't have a state of palestine next door god gave us that land uh that's ours that's part of the promised land that's not theirs even though the palestinian people were living there for well over a thousand years probably incidentally according to some historical studies and interpretations perhaps jews who converted to islam in the seventh century when islam swept across the eastern mediterranean and north africa in its foundational moments the islamic societies the omayyid and abbasid caliphates i enabled jews and christians to live within uh the islamic lands and to live peacefully and to govern themselves primarily but to pay a tax and so as a way to avoid taxes many people converted we know this and probably today's palestinians many of them are you know descendants uh from across centuries of jews who were the settlers uh you know who were living there uh before the seventh century uh sweep of islam across the land that's a footnote even david ben gorion the so-called founder of the state of israel held that view uh in the 1930s and 40s calling the palestinians really the original jews of the land who probably converted and and became the palestinians but today wait ben gurion said that ben ben gurion said that yes what was not to get sidetracked but ben green was secular i think yeah of course all of the original zionists yes from eastern europe so what were i don't understand i know they wanted to leave europe i get it but what was the justification in his mind for displacing millions of people from their land if he acknowledged that they were the actual heirs of abraham yeah the idea was uh jews are instead of a religion in their view these were not religious people by the way they didn't consult with the rabbi so it's all very uh ironic but in their view jews are not a religion uh they are a people and in the ideology of europe of the late 19th century a people needs a state and um so uh the idea was there should be a jewish state that was the name of uh the founder of jewish zionism uh urzel's first book the jewish state well that don't make sense no no no but but but but uh he asked so where and one option was uh maybe what is today's uganda yep it wasn't the holy land it wasn't some religious compulsion or a return to uh this promised land in part and ironically uh again very weird uh twists the rabbis had said 1500 years earlier don't go back to the holy land live where you are stay peaceful someday a messiah will come and there will be uh again uh the holy land for us but in the meantime stay calm live where you are yeah behave and uh and uh uh and uh obey god's laws that was the idea of the jewish religion of the rabbinic jewish religion so the variant on display now that this is our land god promised to us uh we need to redeem it god will protect us is a new variant that came in the 20th century with the actual founding of the state of israel it was not the original zionist movement which was almost completely secular it had a couple of rabbis which had some modest influence and then it especially came after the 1967 war and the conquest of uh the palestinian territories then and the occupation of them and the beginning of the settler movements and things became radicalized after that and some radical rabbis and militant militarist violent uh violence preaching rabbis like mayor kahane which is an american rabbi who preached violence uh for the settler cause in israel gained a following and that group grew and that group grew with the illegal settlers in the occupied lands illegal because you're not allowed to settle territory conquered in war according to international law and the u.n security council said repeatedly no you can't have settlers there i started visiting israel myself uh 54 years ago uh and when i first went in 1972 uh the uh first settlements were taking place and i was a high school kid so i didn't understand much of anything uh but uh of what was going on but they told me this was making facts on the ground so that this would be ours we would have our security and so forth facts on the ground was the the famous the famous expression when i continued to go back uh in the mid 70s the late 70s suddenly there were groups of young zealots dancing in the streets of jerusalem proclaiming god's will about these settlements because these were settlements in places mentioned in the bible this was suddenly now the redemption of god's promise this was something new this was not traditional judaism but i mean traditional from 400 a.d to uh to uh 1970 i'm talking about uh about 1600 years or so this was something brand new it was a fervor it was a zealotry it was a fundamentalism that uh emerged that said this is ours no one can interfere with this more than that it's god's command that we control this land it's not about security it's not not about division it's not about where to draw lines it's not about treaties it's god's command that's a big part of the israeli political scene right now it's half the the motivation and it's why all of this is so radicalized and so zealous but uh as as we were talking um it's extremely important in the u.s context to understand the christian zionist dimension to this because zionism did not originate with judaism strangely or with jews i should say uh herzel was encouraged in his zionism by a christian zionist and christian zionism was an evangelical belief that the jews should go back to make a homeland in the promised land or the holy land and that has roots hundreds of years before these jewish secular zionists started at the end of the 19th century and a big part of the christian zionist movement started in britain in the first half of the 19th century these were christians reading the bible and reading the bible in very particular ways one may say increasingly with an emphasis on the last christian zionist book of the bible revelation so what's called eschatology or the end of the world beliefs and part of that eschatology preached by a british preacher named darby with a huge effect subsequently in the united states was that the jews should go back to the holy land so that the second coming can occur because the book of revelations says that the second coming of christ will occur when the jews are in control of the holy land it happens interestingly that these christian zionists were often rather confirmed anti-semites that wanted the jews out of their own country they didn't want the jews in britain they didn't want eastern european jews migrating to britain and so forth so they wanted them conveniently anyway out of out of britain and back in the holy land but the point is there is this uh there is a uh there is a set of non-religious claims our security depends on this they're out to kill us we need dominance uh they're evil uh they have nuclear weapons or they're they want whatever those are all security side but then there's this whole strong religious dimension and when you had the amazing interview with uh with ambassador huckabee which was uh i think a world eye-opener he displayed in a way that people all over the world had never seen before this very particular british and american christian zionism uh it's very particular it's 19th and 20th century it's a very uh specific way of reading a couple of books of the three books of the bible uh i would say uh uh the uh genesis uh the promise of the land the book of joshua uh which says go kill everyone in the land so you can take the land uh it's a commandment strange in the bible to commit multiple genocides in the name of god to get all the land that has been promised to you and then the book of revelation which is the final book of the new testament and it's a very very particular reading it's not at all mainstream judaism it's not at all mainstream christianity anywhere in the world but it has its important political uh base in the united states and more traditionally in britain so what we're seeing in israel is an extremism that is shocking and now coming back to my exchange with the ambassador at the u.n i said to him that i thought israel was was and is committing suicide uh i didn't accuse israel of what it's doing to others that's implicit perhaps in what i was saying but i said it's committing suicide because it's taking such a violent extremist course that it's putting it outside of the bounds of the bounds of uh opinion in all parts of the world putting it outside of international law and relying entirely on the united states to do that because if israel did this on its own it would be immediately suicidal it wouldn't stand for a day it thinks the united states is going to support this extremism on an unending unconditional basis but you and i know that's not true americans are sickened by this extremism they're sickened by the tens of thousands of innocent deaths in gaza they're disgusted with this war in iran they're disgusted with the trillions of dollars that the united states has spent for israel's clean break there's we're sick of it uh most americans are just sick of this right now overwhelmingly in the polls show that so i read analysis it says it's going to take you know years and years for america to reset its relationship with israel i think that's absurd if our current system remains in place which is an open question but if it does that's going to be abrupt i mean people aren't going to get elected if they're taking a pack money we see nobody supports what's going on right now and wait four weeks if they don't choose the off-ramp in the next few days wait a few weeks what it's going to be like when their incomes are decimated when the world's economy is in a tailspin because suddenly they realize in four weeks half the gulf has been blown to pieces what are they going to say then so how is this going to be sustained when just americans basically don't want to be the agents of mass murder and mass suffering and most of us don't believe that the mass expulsion of people is somehow god's command we don't believe that well no it's insane and by the way from a christian perspective you can only support christian zionism if you ignore the gospels which are the heart of christianity i mean there's nothing and nothing in there that supports it so you would think by the way the greatest speech i know of is the sermon on the mount it's unbelievable for everybody for the whole world this isn't a matter of who believes but blessed are the peacemakers of course should resonate i think it does resonate with people all over the world the message of jesus in the sir in the sermon of the mount is completely the opposite of what we're doing right now of course someone's and that is not of course from a christian or jewish or any other that's from a human perspective because he was speaking about humanity yes about what is decent for human beings about how human beings should treat other people they should not kill them they should not make strangers out of them the good samaritan was the one that rescued the man on the side of the road the samaritan who was the outsider he's teaching us something and the part that i love about the teaching that i think is so important is why do you point to the moat in the other's eye when you have the plank in your own eye and what jesus is saying very clearly don't be a hypocrite yes and don't just say they're evil without reflecting on yourself this is so basic all of that is left out because this new version of judaism or of christian zionism is one chapter of genesis or maybe two chapter 15 and chapter 18 god's promise the book of joshua which is probably a political tract written during the late 7th century bc during the reign of king josiah of the the state of judah as a political tract that says murder other people to take the promised land and then the book of revelation the gospels are not part of that text no and it's clear that they're not because the message of the gospels is completely different yeah jesus is saying you've been told don't murder i tell you don't even be angry at someone else it's a it's a message of radical reconciliation and non-violence so that's just what it says i mean it's inconvenient but it's true so i guess my question is though if the united states withdraws under popular pressure it's unconditional support for israel and the iranian regime stays in place some form of it does and once again iran is more powerful than it's ever been and now has a clear incentive to buy a nuke from pakistan or somewhere else those are like like what does israel do at that point that's my concern because now it's kind of out of options yeah so here's what i think first of all we should look at uh iranian um invasions of other countries as i said it hasn't happened for 230 years if i have the uh the arithmetic right as far as i know uh the the last uh actual military operation of persia or iran was against basra in the 1790s uh iran is not out to destroy israel iran does not want to be destroyed by a uh a petulant uh annoyed american empire from which it escaped this is the most basic point and if you've dealt with iranians for decades as i have that message is absolutely clear so israel is not a threat from iran it is not a threat from iran this is the basic point iran wants its place in the world it doesn't want to be bombed and destroyed by israel and the united states this is the first most important point second iran has supported hezbollah hezbollah and hamas and it would stop supporting hamas and hezbollah if there is a palestinian state alongside the state of israel this is the most basic point you want a path to peace you make peace and the way to peace is there are two peoples in that land uh when it started there were 90 percent uh palestinian arabs uh now it's roughly half and half between israeli jews and palestinian arabs but there need to be two states or i'm fine if there's one democratic state but israel doesn't want that for sure so two states but there can't be one state in which israel rules over everybody or kills the others or expropriates the others that's what's not possible but if there is a political settlement within israel then there will be an end of the militancy as well and this is a fundamental point iran does not want to live as a militant state i know it because i watch and i discuss for decades it wants to live though not as an american satrapy so the idea the idea that if we leave iran is just overpowering and they're going to defeat israel and so forth no there first of all first of all israel will not be defeated it has nuclear weapons it would use them iran does not have nuclear weapons it actually doesn't want nuclear weapons if we had this slightest sanity honesty and rationality in the world it would be the easiest thing in the world to make sure that iran has no nuclear weapons because they don't want them and the first thing just in digression that you would do if you wanted to make sure that iran doesn't have nuclear weapons you would not kill the religious leader who issued the decree that nuclear weapons are against the religion but the first thing they did was to kill the very religious leader that issued the so-called fatwa to prohibit nuclear weapons so israel the idea that it's in dire threat if we leave is wrong we also need to remember there's a whole world out there we don't like to admit that it's not the american way but there's there's russia there's china there's india there's brazil there i'm mentioning countries in the so-called bricks they will tell iran no now you have peace now you live peacefully so iran cannot engage in some regional take over to become the super regional power because they're also profoundly constrained right now they're trying to stop themselves from being destroyed by american bombs precisely what trump has threatened repeatedly the end of their civilization which by the way is 5 000 years old 20 20 times longer than the united states okay so they're not about to do all these terrible things they're not about to hold a chokehold over the world economy president xi jinping who has let's just say a lot of influence with iran as a main consumer and supplier and trader and many many other things said yesterday the straits of hormuz need to be opened need to be opened iran is not going to do all these horrible things that are imagined and when i say leave it wouldn't hurt to leave also with an agreement okay we're leaving you don't invade we're not invading you israel there's going to be a palestinian state alongside israel as is the core of international law as well that's the core of international law and that's the core of international law that's going to do all these and uh you won't have nuclear weapons you'll go under iaea inspection according to the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which by the way israel doesn't abide by of course at all so it's already asymmetric but iran has said okay we'll do it asymmetrically but put us under this don't put us under the bombs so all i'm saying is there's no sense in which the exit ramp means iran becomes the great threat to israel and the dominant threat but what it does mean and i think this is really the fundamental point here i have to say greater israel is an untenable project this is the most basic point if you believe mike huckabee then what i'm saying is not acceptable if you believe that israel should control all of this land should and if you take israel's leadership uh that they will i would still advise donald trump don't fall for it it's a 10 trillion dollar disaster for the united states not the least in america's interest stay out of it stay clear of it it's a net yahoo is a repeated failure and liar and everything he's told us for 30 years has turned out to be the opposite so i'd say that anyway from our point of view but yes if you believe that your purpose is uh greater israel and continued expansion of israel's borders then what i'm saying no you you wouldn't accept it you say why should we settle for that but i don't believe that i believe in peace i believe in a secure state of israel i believe in a secure state of palestine i believe in getting on with our lives and not focusing america's resources squandering them endlessly for decades in this absolutely delusional israeli cause of greater israel it's absurd it's tragic it's gotta end and it needs to end now before we have a complete disaster can it can trump constrain control netanyahu of course the question is can trump constrain himself uh can he say just ending this i thought it was going to be a one day maduro type operation that's what bb told me bb was bullshitting me now i understand it it didn't work i'm stopping this and i'm telling bb you stop this too um and could that work well when trump said uh to netanyahu uh stop stop the bombing of uh beirut we had a demonstration it can work could israel continue the war without the united states basically not for one day could israel uh actually survive the global opprobrium including the american opprobrium of israel's extremism i don't think for one day actually israel needs to trade it needs tourism it needs contracts it needs finance and if israel's totally completely a rogue state without the american empire backing it without the american military backing it without the american intelligence uh without uh the uh uh the uh the uh satellite uh data coming in it's not israel's it's america's believe me uh without all of that no israel cannot do anything on this but we bought in to the whole package we bought into it for a mix of received american american self-interest in our global power that is israel's hegemony in the region was consistent with our desire for global control we bought into the iran story because israel's story that we got to kill them before they kill us is not inconsistent with our desire to have revenge and to control their oil in other words it's a partnership yep and uh it's a real partnership but israel's capacity to have this uh uh war that stretches now from libya to iran that's an american capacity but we're we're bleeding from it we're bleeding from israel's wars and this i think is really important to understand you know trump said something quite interesting the washington gaff meaning that he told the truth uh not uh off uh script but he said we can't afford the wars and those things like child care medicare and medicaid and other those individual things he said and you know what it's true we're bleeding and what did he do he said okay we're going to cut all those things that americans actually need and want because we want our health care we actually want to be able to have dental repairs or get medicines or see a doctor or have an operation if our lives depend on we we want that and trump said no we have to have war instead so he put in a budget a couple of weeks ago which didn't get any attention because it won't be enacted by congress but he'd put in a budget in which the military spending goes up another half a trillion dollars and the things like he said you know the health and other things oh we can't afford that goes down in this budget to make people who are hurting in this country they would hurt desperately more not to mention the gas pump and not to mention everything food prices and everything else that they are already facing from these wars but will face cataclysmically if they don't choose the off-ramp so can trump say this he has to say this for the american people first of all he has to because this is really about us right now he has to listen to the american people we don't want this it's no good for us it's anyway crazy extremism we don't buy into this we don't buy into the story we don't need this we don't need the american empire owning iran we don't need revenge for 1979 we don't need greater israel we don't need all of these things we need our health care our dental care our daily lives we want peace we don't want to be murdering school girls we don't want to be murdering uh people we don't want to be destroying ancient cultures in different places in the world and mr president your partner cannot do this for one moment without your backing so your job is to tell mr net yahoo your your clean break 30 years maybe 10 trillion dollars of american treasure now piled up in debt we tried your approach it's done now we're going to try peace that's what he needs to tell him it can work if he doesn't do that and in the next few days uh you know this accelerates and you've said if it does accelerate iran's first move will be to destroy civilian infrastructure in the gulf uh desal energy the rest what are the effects at that point like what are the let's just start with the economic effects on the rest of the world yeah strangely enough i came into my profession which i've been a professor at uh university for 46 years and advised uh well over 100 governments around the world i came into this profession writing my phd dissertation on the oil shocks of the 1970s i wrote the first model of what uh how they worked why they had such negative after the 73 after 73 and 79 so uh i wrote the book literally and it's published in uh 1982 called the economics of worldwide stagflation the results of those two oil shocks give us an idea of what would happen uh what happened in 1973-74 when there was an oil embargo and then in 1979-80 when there was the iranian revolution was a big disruption of oil supplies it sent oil prices soaring and it sent the world economy into a tailspin and it was a very uh particular kind of tailspin because people lost their jobs incomes went down uh and inflation soared at the same time and so you had a economic downturn and a rise of inflation which at the time was viewed as a paradox because usually you have a recession and the prices calm down or you have a boom and the prices accelerate but this was a contraction and an inflation so people had less money coming in and everything cost more to buy that's it and that's what was called stagflation now the difference of then and now is that the two shocks then were temporary stops of the flows of oil one was a boycott by the arab countries against the u.s and other buyers like shutting down the straight forward just to be clear what were they mad about they were mad about this the uh uh 1973 war u.s support for israel exactly just to be clear about the cost to us this goes this has been the same issue i was four years old and that happened this was this goes back a long way and then 1979-80 was the iranian revolution um and uh they were the the oil got turned off but the oil fields weren't destroyed uh there was no war in the oil fields there was no physical destruction of infrastructure refineries weren't destroyed what will happen in the next few weeks if we don't choose the off-ramp is the physical destruction of a lot of the gulf region and of the middle east more generally because the u.s will rain missiles and bombs on iran and iran will launch what it has against targets in the neighborhood to show deterrence and hoping that that deterrence will stop something often instead what you get is just both sides unleashing their arsenals and what will happen in a short period of time is not a closure of shipping but a destruction of the physical capacities of providing the oil and the gas and the fertilizers and the petrochemicals and the other very core commodities for the world economy and it doesn't take that much to bring the world economy into a tailspin because you don't need to close down half the oil supply supply you might need to shut off 20 percent of the world oil supply and that by enough will send the prices soaring make americans really suffer across the board because it's not only at the gas pump and not only in the utility bills but also in the cost of food which will soar from this as well because there will be a worldwide disruption of food supplies coming from this because we're a very significant proportion of the urea which underpins the nitrogen based fertilizers of the world come from this region from natural gas from from the natural gas production exactly from the oil and gas fields uh the the hydrocarbon production and other uh petrochemicals as well i i'm afraid that it won't take long for this to happen and well governments will fall if that happens globally yes one one leader uh pulled me aside a few weeks ago i don't want to say who exactly but uh said um that uh that person was in a in a uh a country that has a lot of oil production not not from the region and said jeff you don't understand i governed our state oil company these are complex systems yes they don't get rebuilt so fast believe me right uh this was a very authoritative figure and um i really take that to heart well energy extraction refining petrochemicals distribution it's all about a million times more complicated than people understand exactly and these are very sophisticated plants and they are not built for war they are built for just normal peaceful complex sophisticated operations and a lot of that could be destroyed in a very very short period of time no i i appreciate that and i think the view in the u.s seems to be like if there's oil under the ground you stick a straw in it comes out then it's if you ever if you go and tour a petrochemical plant or oil refinery or any extraction facility i mean it is like highest level technology smartest people super hard to understand the market i'll tell you we had uh you know one of a place you know well and i know well one of the most sophisticated places in the planet uh the the emirates yes uh asking uh the federal reserve a few days ago for emergency swap lines that may be needed in the event of a crisis this is kind of shocking because uh first of all the emirates you think of as uh super rich yeah uh it's the uh it's the place where rich people go to put their money uh in the region of course it's completely destabilized by all of this it's a complete disaster for them what's happened but they are girding for the downstream effects of what i'm talking about which is that first you get the physical destruction then you get the real economy so-called the actual physical production of industrial products of uh employment in the manufacturing sector and cascading across the economy having a huge uh negative consequences but then you get the financial effects because people say is this place viable anymore i'm i'm withdrawing my money uh but uh the the emirates uh operates on a u.s backed dollar standard and suddenly you have a run on your banks you have a run on your financial markets so they're already asking can we have emergency lines of credit and uh maybe yes maybe no but that's the tip of the tip of the iceberg of the financial consequences that can come from all of this so you get a huge cascade of effects and then i want to mention because i want to mention for completeness um it's more speculative but the daily evidence is growing that the what we call the inter-annual phenomenon of uh and so which is uh fluctuations uh in uh air pressure and uh currents in the uh or sea surface temperatures in the pacific which cause el ninos which people know about and la ninas it looks like a very large maybe what they're calling a super el nino is building for later this year and it may not happen but the evidence is growing that it seems like that's the case so people might be curious what does that mean it means that warm surface water over the pacific would spread to basically the west coast of south america when you get a very powerful el nino the temperatures and rainfall patterns and drought patterns and storm patterns in all of the tropical and subtropical regions of the world are hard hit one of the things for example that happened in the 1973-74 oil shock was that there was also an el nino that year just uh i'm remembering uh and it was the combination that sent food prices soaring worldwide uh and if we have that dual combination i've been saying to myself for years the next big el nino or super el nino is by itself going to be world destabilizing because there are a lot of countries on the edge right now on the edge financially on the edge socially uh the world's an unstable place because it's been so perturbed by everything that's happened in in the last years that many places are just on the edge of solvency in their governments or financial stability and so forth but if you combine a mass uh destruction in west asia the gulf the eastern mediterranean uh with a super el nino i don't even know somebody's gonna have to write the next book quickly about this because we would not have had a shock like that since world war ii certainly and the effects on political destabilization on the effects of governments falling the potential cascading of this war would be tremendous and uncontrollable just think in addition to everything else a naval fleet from china is heading towards the gulf right now it's heading towards the gulf to escort chinese vessels or uh i don't know if it's only chinese uh i don't know if it's only there's flagged or china vessels heading to china uh to give them military escort suppose there's a war going on suppose uh the united states says we have a blockade and we interdict a chinese vessel suppose that uh a chinese destroyer comes alongside you know we're not in self-control right now uh sailors are not in self-control captains are not in self-control uh we're living uh at uh at uh nanosecond speed maybe uh palantir's uh maven system will say shoot uh who knows what will happen but we're just lighting fuses that could blow up everything if we choose the ramp of escalation and i think it will go faster than we imagine and without control we don't seem to have any real control in our government right now even of basic processes we don't have interagency reviews we don't have expert intelligence that are guiding policy we don't have anything that is systematic i think in israel it's the same way uh when you have a cascade of crises when missiles are at hypersonic speed and you're making decisions uh at uh you know with the a few seconds warning or uh a minute or two warning of incoming missiles oh what are we doing with all of this gamble when the whole premise of this war was wrong and when the tactical premise that this was a one-day operation was proved wrong by the second day why are we still facing this possibility of complete disaster and i have to say i'm sorry to say it tucker but um uh every few days i get an email from somebody who says um i really appreciate what you say professor sax but i do want you to know that we're in the end times uh and uh that this is all uh as prophesied um and so thank you for your voice they're not hostile messages they're very nice sweet people uh who say we're in the end times i i'm hoping we're not in the end times this is the basic point we should have some prudence somebody should reach the president of the united states and say stop before disaster i've tried i wonder what do you know what do you make of that what do you make of i know you're you're not a famously observant man however things are happening that certainly don't have any precedent in our lifetime i mean you've watched the world carefully for 50 years and all of a sudden anomalous things are happening all over people are behaving in ways you never would have expected they behave do you allow for the possibility that some of this is preordained that like there's that no getting off the train i don't uh i've studied history now for uh my whole life and i've seen um disasters uh i've studied intensively disasters and near misses and avoided disasters uh with care i wrote a book about the cuban missile crisis and its aftermath i've studied world war one and world war ii upside down right side up from every country's perspective i've spent a half century looking at this terrible things things happen because individual leaders and governments make miscalculations they don't talk to each other they don't understand the ramifications they have a breakdown of uh systematic processes um so i don't think that this is ordained but i think we're close to overload right now which is what you see happening around crises often what does that mean overload it it means that um very consequent decisions need to be made skillfully and the decisions are a big deal they have a very very large consequence i i would call them uh non-linearities meaning it's uh that that the consequence of the choice can take us into uh disaster or into uh into solution so in other words these are really big choices and um the truth is individuals make a big difference at times like this um what we've seen what i've i've tried to understand you know better than i do but i'm trying to understand the decision process in the u.s government right now normally you would have a a deliberative process uh we know process that i've studied very carefully as have many many scholars uh the cuban missile crisis uh president kennedy uh immediately uh immediately installed an executive committee excom and uh during the 13 days of the cuban missile crisis they met repeatedly they debated they discussed options it was all put on tape it's all been studied for decades later many of the judgments that were made were very wrong president and one of the lessons by the way of the cuban missile crisis was that it was president kennedy's cool and rationality and decency that saved the world actually um quite a remarkable truth because many hotheads uh and many hotheads in senior military positions especially curtis lemay said no go blow up the commies let's go to nuclear war uh and almost to the point of uh insubordination uh lemay was uh pressing kennedy uh to uh launch attacks and basically accusing kennedy of uh you know not not uh being uh not not standing up uh properly for america kennedy did save the world but what it showed was a mix of very detailed deliberation back channels that were extremely important for example then the u.n secretary general utant played a huge role as an intermediary and um good judgment of the leader today i can't see any process uh what we hear from outside accounts and again you know better than i but what we read is that this was trump's decision basically led by netanyahu that's correct okay netanyahu has an agenda his agenda in my mind is uh fanatical and wrong and has been mistaken for 30 years and has cost america a fortune it's just been wrong i think the man is a disaster i think he has the wrong framework of the world just a wrong understanding of course he also has his incentives for his job and everything else i'm talking about his understanding of the world and um trump bought into that normally there would be the national security council with detailed interagency assessments there would be the uh national intelligence agencies reporting uh our friend uh tulsi gabbard the head of uh the director of national intelligence would be be weighing in heavily the joint chiefs of staff would be explaining doubts which they clearly had there would be consultations with senior members of congress that was routine in the cuban missile crisis the president of the united states consulted with the leaders of congress in detail by the the way even though this was an emergency commander in chief yes but he knew there was a branch of congress that was essential for uh this i don't see any such decision making taking place right now and this is absolutely dangerous uh actually uh the president of the united states needs to get real analysis data intelligence internal debate opposition and uh the president has uh ultimate decisions on many things not on everything but on many things but not on the basis of a gut not on the basis of a whim not on the basis of i believe that iran is like venezuela which i think was part of the idea not on the basis of netanyahu spinning some absurd yarn or mossad spinning some absurd yarn to one person with a group of sycophants listening in and saying well i don't know if looks doubtful but i will follow you mr president that is that is not the kind of the kind of deliberative process that keeps us in safety and yet i think that's exactly the process i don't think there's any decision maker or even uh anyone who influences the decisions greatly other than trump i think uh the degradation of our political system is so uh deep right that uh maybe there is no uh no chance for that but i do every day plead with the congressional leaders to do their constitutional duty because they're not doing it right now i know uh and it's not uh you know be good and go tell trump they're a co-equal branch of government that under article one of the constitution assigns them the responsibility for war for the declaration of war it's not even shared they are the only branch that can declare war and when i don't know how many umpteen times now the republicans all but one all but the best republican senator by far ran paul i regard him as the best senator and in the whole senate uh and all the democrats on the other side but one john fetterman who i regard as uh weird uh in his complete total allegiance to israel's reckless agenda um vote that congress should not have any oversight should not have any oversight over this war completely contrary to the whole framework of the constitution it shows how degraded we have become maybe it's an inevitable process where you know in late stage republics like ours all power vests in the executive the legislative body well think of it this way since you know so many world leaders is there any legislative body in any country you're familiar with that has become more powerful in the last 10 years or they're all shrinking in authority i know lots of places that have very high levels of deliberation yep very rational processes by the way people will be very surprised to hear me say it and they'll doubt it and they won't believe it but china has among the most deliberative processes that i see in any government in the world because we portray you know xi jinping is uh the mao as as the leader who decides everything i i was just in beijing a couple of weeks ago when they've just announced a very very sophisticated uh economic program um and i spoke to many people that were part of it it was two years of detailed deliberation over cutting-edge sectors and what to do and how to uh combine public and private initiatives very sophisticated we don't have that right now so this is quite strange we have just the opposite but i wonder do you think that our big picture asking a lot to predict something like this but that our current system survives this moment we have one uh overwhelming delusion that is held firmly by a president who has his own personal delusions and that is that america reigns supreme in the world and every day when president trump says we are the most powerful blah blah blah blah blah in the history of the world this is uh of course he feels good saying this of course maybe his followers feel good saying this but it's a it it's completely totally the wrong approach to our world right now the serious part of our world is the world faces many deep challenges there are many nuclear armed countries there are many powerful countries we need to find a way to get along to understand each other to cooperate to solve problems and to avoid the traps of a war that can destroy the world economy or even the world in a short period of time so all the bluster is a remnant of the idea that the us has pursued during its imperial era since world war ii that we should run the world and trump has a particular view of that which is that he should run the world and so we have a workable system it's actually worked quite brilliantly at times it's a pretty complicated machinery uh it could be updated in some pretty useful ways but i used to work for some years in internship positions in the congress in the 1970s and congress actually worked as an institution for example it held hearings it wrote papers it proposed legislation it actually did things uh there were leaders uh uh fulbright and others who spoke out and wrote brilliant books and did all sorts of wonderful things and uh i met many of them as a kid uh and that idea that there was a legislative branch where you would have lions of the senate and the house of representatives and a speaker who would be an independent uh an independent uh voice of uh politics as the people's uh tribune it actually worked to an extent it really did i was there i watched it i saw it i quite loved it uh we don't have that right now so could it could it could it could it work yes uh i think there are many interesting things to do in our digital age we can get people involved much more we can have public deliberations in different ways we can upgrade update the way that our system works but yes the system could work it doesn't have to dissolve or devolve to one person operating on gut hunches uh based on delusions of grandeur that could send the world to disaster that doesn't have to be the way the world and our system works or ends or ends exactly great to be thank you jeffrey sacks thank you very much for that great to be with you tucker thanks