Larry Johnson: Iran Abandons Talks & Threatens to Retaliate Against Israel (Transcript)

So this whole idea that the US and Israel can simply say, well, let’s do a limited ceasefire, we won’t strike Beirut if you don’t hit Israel, but again, it’s open season on the southern parts of Lebanon. The idea that they would be able to, well, decide how the war should be fought, there’s no indications that Iran would go along with this. So again, this seems very, very predictable.

But what do you think is the calculation now in Tel Aviv? I mean, are the Israelis, their bombing of Lebanon, is it deliberately to prevent Trump from making any extended ceasefire or peace deal with the Iranians? Or is this just, you know, well, they’re just going along with their usual business?

LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, no, well, I think it’s a combination of the two. I don’t think it’s an either or. They’re convinced that they can beat Hezbollah, or they think they can. And that’s why they want to bomb, blow up, destroy that suburb. As Katz, Ben-Gvir was saying, “flatten it, flatten it, flatten it. Give it the Gaza treatment.”

But the thing we’re seeing now with the tactics that Hezbollah have employed with the first-person point of view drones that are fiber optic — number one, they are immune to electronic warfare countermeasures. Number two, the drone operators, they don’t have to expose themselves. You know, it’s not like in 2006 when they were shooting an RPG, shoulder-fired, you had to get out and sort of, you know, be visible. If you could see the tank, the tank could see you. And so they lost some personnel that way. This reduces Hezbollah’s casualties and they usually get to do it from underground bunkers.

And then the volume — I don’t know what percentage of actual casualties, killed in action, versus wounded. Some of the public sources suggest, show that it’s well over 1,000 wounded. The official death toll was like 24. I think that’s not true. That’s entirely too low. But an estimated 400 Merkava tanks have been destroyed. That’s a lot of tanks. I mean, Israel’s got thousands, you know, I think a couple of thousand, but this is still a significant loss of tanks. And if you’re losing tanks, that means you’re losing personnel. Now, whether they’re being killed or wounded, you know, that’s a whole nother thing.

So Hezbollah is not going to stop this until Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon, goes back into northern Israel. Now, and that brings back Iran’s threat, telling them to get the hell out of northern Israel because we’re going to hit you. That was the message. Because you don’t tell people to vacate that area just because you’re trying to create business for a moving company. They’re going to hit it.

Israel Defying US Pressure

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, well, I saw that the Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, he was making the point that they should, well, at any opportunity they should say yes when it’s possible to the United States and no when necessary. And his argument was when it comes to attacking Lebanon, it’s time to say no to the Americans, that this is something that Israel will do irrespective of what Trump says, which kind of can be seen as another way now of pulling the United States back into the war. Because if they begin now to intensify the attacks on Lebanon, Iran will then retaliate. Do you think it’s any chance that the Americans will sit on the sideline or is that —

LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, I think initially, yes. Because America doesn’t have any good military options. According to Robert Barnes — and I think Barnes has good enough contact still despite him being seen as a critic now of Trump, he was Trump’s lawyer — he said that Trump was terrified of getting back into a Jimmy Carter situation where you got American hostages being held in Iran. Because day one, day two, day three, the news media starts keeping track of how long they’re being held hostage, which becomes a measure of your own incompetence. So Trump’s not eager to get back into that.

And you know, when you look at it, Iran has become pretty adept at shooting down drones. So if you can shoot down a drone, you can potentially also take down an F-16 or an F-18 or an F-35 or an F-22 or an A-10. Those are like the 4 or 5 major categories of aircraft that are in theater.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, Trump, you know, he took to social media as well. He was making the point that because of, you know, his call, as you said, to Netanyahu, that they’re not going to march on Beirut. So essentially he took care of business.

LARRY JOHNSON: But yeah, I mean, where did that come from? Who was talking about marching on Beirut?

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, that was —

LARRY JOHNSON: I mean, Israel did it. Last time they did that was like 1982. That’d be 44 years ago. So yeah, they’d done it before and then they go up and then they get picked off and killed and wounded and then they retreat and go back to Israel.

Trump’s Negotiation Tactics and the Iran Talks

GLENN DIESEN: So what is the negotiation tactic here though? Because it looks like Trump is sabotaging himself at times because, you know, they’re trying to move along the negotiations with the Iranians. And then suddenly Trump decides to elevate the demands of the United States when the initial demands weren’t acceptable anyways to the Iranians. So, you know, it’s not as if the Israelis are alone in sabotaging these talks. He seems to be doing this quite well on his own.

LARRY JOHNSON: Well, in fact, the eerie parallels with the negotiations with the Russians over Ukraine. Because the Iranian position has been unchanged since the outset of the war when they laid out, you know, the 10-point and then the 14-point plan. And it was always: immediate sanction relief, return the frozen assets, recognize we control the Strait of Hormuz, delay comments on the nuclear program. They haven’t deviated from that.

It’s the United States that keeps trying to change what we’re going to talk about or what the position is. And Iran keeps — you know, they thought that they actually had some agreement on that. And then the United States, Trump backed away again. So that’s why, that was I think the frustration with Trump, coupled with the actions of Israel in Lebanon that are just, you know, become untenable. They’ve killed close to 4,000 people now just in the last 4 weeks.

So this ceasefire started, really went into effect like April 15th. And so it’s lasted from April 15th through, you know, 45 days. So, you know, close to 7 weeks, a little over 7 weeks now, or coming on 7 weeks.

A New Security Architecture for West Asia?

But, you know, now Iran’s been dealing with the United States trying to slip ships through the Strait of Hormuz. That has led to these new confrontations and then led to Iran hitting the base in Kuwait. Now notice it doesn’t appear that any of these flights are originating out of Saudi Arabia in particular. Qatar is in this as well. If they were, then Iran would be targeting those bases in those countries. So far, the only country it’s targeting is Kuwait.

And this has been, I’m told, one of the issues that’s been worked behind the scenes with the Pakistanis and the Saudis and the Qataris — that they’re negotiating to get the US out. The US is going to be out of the Persian Gulf. You get this new security architecture, you get sort of a new ruling — let’s call it NATO light, sort of NATO for West Asia — which will include Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, you know, sort of the big four, which could be interesting. And then, you know, Iraq could join in as well.

But the goal would be to bring in Iraq, bring in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, as well as United Arab Emirates and Oman, make them all a joint responsibility for security with no US presence.

Iran’s Nuclear Threat and Regional Realignment

GLENN DIESEN: Well, then the NATO analogy might not be ideal because in security arrangements, one usually divides — because NATO is a military bloc where country A and B seek security against country C, which was Russia here. But in these other security arrangements they might be discussing now in the Middle East, it’s not security against a non-member, but security with the other members. Because I don’t think anyone would suspect that Iran and Saudi Arabia would somehow ally up against the United States. That’s not going to happen.

But I agree. I think this is very significant and I think it’s in the interest of Iran as well — not to make it, well, to reduce the zero-sum aspect of this whole thing.

So what do you think is the significance of Iran walking away from these talks? Because I sometimes think about the way Trump was negotiating with the tariffs. That is, first he’ll come say, “Oh, I’ll put 50% tariff on you,” and then he’ll scale it back to 15, and then the counterpart should be walking away being happy, even though there was nothing there before. And it seems a little bit like that’s what it tried to do with Lebanon as well, saying, “Okay, we’re not going to bomb the southern suburbs of Beirut.” So now Iran should be happy, but this is what we’ll give you, and you should meet us halfway. You should let us bomb the hell out of southern Lebanon at least.

But the Iranians walking away — they, you know, this is interesting because they so far, for a variety of reasons, probably kept talks open all the time. They were willing to talk to the Americans. Why do you think this is just a pressure tactic, or have they given up on the ability to have any diplomacy?

LARRY JOHNSON: No, I think they’ve reached sort of a moment of a clear break. If the United States is not going to be serious, they’re not going to stay tied to this.

So Pepe Escobar and I, we received some information the other day. We have it, and Pepe’s in the process of confirming it. We’ll find out — I’m supposed to hook up with him in about an hour at 5:30. We’re going to be on a channel hosted by Zulfiqar Ali. It’s called Power Shift.

Iran’s Potential Nuclear Withdrawal

But what we heard was last Friday — and we’re confident in the reliability of the information, but you’ll understand why I’m a little hesitant with some of the final details — the foreign minister of Pakistan spoke to Marco Rubio and told him in no uncertain terms: “Here is where Iran is right now. If this does not get resolved, Iran is going to withdraw from the talks,” which has now happened. It’s going to withdraw from the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it’s going to set a date for a detonation of a nuclear device.

Now, when I heard that, I said, “Okay, are you saying” — and this is what Pepe’s busy trying to confirm — “are you saying that Iran has its own nuclear device now? Or have they been given it by another country like Pakistan or like North Korea?” And our source said he’s going to get back to me. So that’s one thing we’re trying to verify.

But so far, what we were told Friday about them going to withdraw — they’ve now withdrawn. So that turned out to be true. We’ll see if this NPT thing is true. And if those two things end up being true, then I’m going to say they may not be bluffing about the other. I can’t confirm that yet. We’re trying to get it confirmed.

But it shows that the frustration level with Iran is real, and they are acting not on their own, because they’ve had the full backing up to this point of China and Russia. And the Chinese are working primarily through Pakistan. So Pakistan has played a lead role.

Pakistan’s Shifting Allegiances

Now, this has created some of the confusion in the West because people say, “Well, Pakistan is so closely aligned with the United States.” And yes, that has been true. The history of it goes way back to the ’50s with CIA, and then the role that Pakistan played in supporting CIA operations against the Soviets when they were in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And then all the Pakistani contractors who made millions of dollars off of the United States government, who was needing to get supplies trucked in from ports — Karachi — into Afghanistan to support the 20-year presence of the United States in Afghanistan.

But that said, there’s also been a close relationship between Pakistan and Iran as they fought against the Baluchis. The Baluchi population — the Baluchistan movement — has been a thorn in the side of both Pakistan and Iran, and so they’ve actually cooperated on that. Then Pakistan’s relationships with the Saudis, where they’ve actually signed, in the last 2 or 3 weeks, a security deal with the Saudis.

Qatar Considering Closing Al Udeid Air Base

So what’s happening is the ineffectiveness of the US military attack on Iran, I think, has awakened a lot of doubts about the reliability of the United States anymore. And that’s having a rippling effect as it affects a variety of these different relationships.

This source also told us that the Saudis and Qataris have made a decision, as well as Oman, to distance themselves from the United States. And Qatar is talking about closing Al Udeid Air Force Base. That would be huge if that takes place, because that is the largest US base — and has been for, good Lord, 30 years — in that region.

So this thing’s in flux. But the fact that Iran — I said we were told in that document on Friday they were going to withdraw from the process, and they did that today. So the source got that information right. I don’t know, I can’t tell you about the other two.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I truly hope they’re not going to use a nuclear device. That would be very disruptive, and it would alienate their partners. Also, they’ve been scoring a lot of points in terms of how people view Iran. I’ve never seen this kind of support for Iran. This was unthinkable. I remember 23 years ago during the invasion of Iraq, if anyone would have said there would be this much sympathy for Iran, it would be hard to believe.

But again, I can understand why the Iranians are at least walking away now, saying enough is enough on these talks. Because it’s worth remembering that if we go back, the US agreed to use the 10-point plan of Iran as a point of departure and then walked it all back. And now slowly introducing more and more violence — a little bit like in Gaza — that is, “Here’s a ceasefire, but we’ll still kill Palestinians every day.” And now essentially it’s the same thing with these attacks on Lebanon, that they continued also hostility against Iran. There is no real ceasefire. So what they’re demanding from the Iranians is, “You live by your commitments, we’ll walk away.” But how?

Iran’s Nuclear Deterrence Strategy

LARRY JOHNSON: Let me emphasize — they weren’t talking about using it against somebody. It was to demonstrate, “We’ve got it. So leave us alone.” As a way to use it as a deterrent for a future attack. I think that was the intent. Again, we don’t know — is it their own? Have they been provided it? We know that North Korea, for example, has been providing some missiles as well.

I got into a discussion — I forget with who — but initially they said, “Well, Iran can’t hit the United States.” So I said, “Well, if the latest missile that North Korea has — if they provided that to Iran — from Tehran, that missile covers the distance to San Francisco.” So they absolutely could hit New York or Washington, D.C.

So yeah, this sounds like crazy territory. But again, put yourself in — well, we know how America reacts when we get attacked on 9/11 and how we perceive that we’ve been attacked by this foreign threat. We go around the world, track down and kill the people responsible, ostensibly. So why do we think that Iran won’t do the same thing?

Sorry, my dog. Hey, quiet down.

GLENN DIESEN: No worries. But what do you think is likely to happen now? Because Iran has said they’re walking away from the talks and more or less warned that they are prepared now to retaliate against Israel. So what do you expect to see now? Because I don’t see any way to get back on the diplomatic track now. Again, I hope I’m wrong, but the most likely scenario now is that Iran begins to launch missiles towards Israel. The US will then have to decide whether or not it gets pulled back into this, and then we’re back into full all-out war.

Economic Fallout and the Path to War

LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, well, that may be very well where we’re headed. And only this time, the growing economic pressures on the global economy will become more and more important.

Let’s note that Trump has been playing games with the oil, asserting that, “Oh, we’re America, we’re energy independent.” Well, we’re not. Yes, with light crude, we’re energy independent — that crude is used to make gasoline and maybe aviation fuel. But that price is going up because there’s a 20% shortage around the world. Diesel comes from heavy crude, and the United States is a net importer of that. It doesn’t produce enough. It has to import it from Mexico, from Canada — Canada has been the number one source — now Venezuela. Used to get it from the Saudis. We could have got it from the Russians, but we stopped trading with the Russians on that account, and Russia’s sending more of it to China.

So that’s one of the reasons here in the States — I don’t know what the situation is for you in Norway — the discrepancy between your gasoline, your petrol price and your diesel price. But here in the United States, it’s about a $1.50 to $2 difference, because the diesel has to be processed in a different way and it comes from a different source. So that price is going to continue to go up.

And this is where we get into the impact on the global economy, because you’ve got the price of computer chips going through the roof now. Why? Because the helium — 44% of it came out of Qatar — it’s not coming out, and that helium is used to make computer chips. So without the helium, you don’t make computer chips.

Unprecedented Global Economic Shock

I think this whole economic cloud that’s hanging over the world will be another factor in here. We’re in unprecedented territory. We don’t have any historical example to point to. I don’t think in modern history can you point to a period where you lost 25% of the liquid natural gas supply and 20% of the oil and 35% of the urea and sulfur used to make fertilizer, and 44% of the helium. These go to different sectors of the economy. Never have we had that kind of shock that I can recall. And I’ll leave the history judgments to you — you’re far more qualified on that.

But then how does that impact against the backdrop of this war? Iran is basically — it looks like they’re prepared now to reengage Israel, if for no other reason, to stop Israel from attacking Hezbollah and stop it from attacking the Lebanese.

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, after all these years of making more efficient economies, decades of globalization, to have it all unraveled at such a rapid pace — it’s very destabilizing.

But often you hear about Iran in the context of these other energy wars — for example, going after Venezuela. I keep hearing the argument that the United States as an energy exporter will make a lot of money from these energy shortages. It will, I guess, restore some of the strength of the petrodollar, given that people will have to pay the US in US dollars. They refer to the ability to cut off China from Iranian energy. So energy-wise, it will be good for America, bad for China as its peer competitor. Do you see any credibility to this, or is this just an oversimplification?

The Dollar Under Pressure

LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, it’s a Western fantasy. Because, look at what both Russia and China have done in the last week. They’ve continued to increase their purchase of gold, increase their purchase of silver. And just two days ago, China sold off $41 billion worth of US Treasury bonds. So a significant number. And this comes against a time when the Japanese are going to actually have to sell, because their debt situation’s growing so much worse. So they got to raise some cash, they sell those bonds.

And the purchases of oil are increasingly being made with yuan, not with the petrodollar, but with the yuan. So the yuan’s almost becoming the petroyuan. And the supply that Iran is getting out of the Persian Gulf is going into the yuan. Russia as well is selling yuan, not dollars. So the dollar is starting to come under real pressure and you’re not looking at a global economic situation that’s stable and healthy.

The Trump people — I think I’ve mentioned it on some other broadcasts — but Danny Davis did an interview with a geologist who’s an oil expert named Art Berman. And he did that last Friday. And that is an outstanding — I mean, Berman really knows his stuff. And he’s not political. He’s not emotional. He’s just the facts guy. But when he lays these facts out, it makes you sit there and go, “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

He thinks we’re in for some real trouble. He was commenting on Kevin Hassett, who’s a White House advisor on the economy. And he made some claim about, oh, the oil’s going to be back down, we’re going to be back to normal prices in 4 weeks or 5 weeks. And Berman said, “He’s lying. This is just not true.”

So now, this added factor — instead of being on the cusp of peace, we’re going back to war. That is what the signals are saying unless we get a complete reversal in position. But we’ve got the IRGC spokesman saying — and he wasn’t being vague at all. He’s just telling, “Hey, you people in northern Israel, get out for your own safety.” I would take that seriously.

Israel’s Overextension and the Risk of Escalation

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, it doesn’t seem like a bluff. But my last question is just about Israel. Why this enthusiasm to restart the war with Iran? Because as I understand it, even from statements from the IDF, they are very overextended. And they also know that the United States, irrespective of any will to support Israel, doesn’t actually have the capabilities. The 40-year war drained the US to a large extent. If the US can’t achieve its objectives in terms of defeating Iran, and the Israelis are already overextended — why go into this? There’s a lot to lose here at what appears to be quite predictably a losing bet.

LARRY JOHNSON: Okay, so your problem is you are a rational, logical person. You don’t think with emotion. I’m not saying you’re unemotional, but you know the difference between your brain and your heart. Israel doesn’t.

From my own personal experience having worked with them — I did some training 20 years ago for Israeli police — there is an arrogant factor where they just assume that they know more than you, that they’re smarter than you, and that they know what they’re doing. And even though you could objectively sit down and show them that they’re wrong, they won’t listen to that. And they don’t think it through 2 or 3 steps ahead.

Let me just illustrate with a semi-automatic pistol. Anybody familiar with that knows it has a magazine that holds ammunition. You put that into the magazine well, you grab the back of the slide, you pull it back, and then release it like a slingshot, and it chambers a round. The Israeli Army trains everybody not to do that. They walk around with an unloaded gun, and they say, “Wait until you’ve got a threat,” where you pull it out and then quickly cycle it to chamber a round. The reason they do that is their training is so lousy that in the past people would shoot themselves because they’d put their finger on the trigger when they weren’t supposed to. So instead of properly training them, they came up with this as a method.

Even though I can show them with a stopwatch that doing that adds at least a half second to the time from when you draw to when you have to engage a target — and plus, if that target is close, within arm’s length of you, when you’re up there trying to cycle your gun, they can grab it.

That’s just an illustration, but that same mentality transfers over here. “Oh yeah, we’re going to go in and we’re going to kill Hezbollah. We’ll stop them.” And then you go, “But they’ve got more fortifications underground after the experience of 2006. And now they’re using FPV drones with fiber optic cable. You’re going to face a tougher fight.” And they say, “No, no, no, we’re not. They’re no good.” They underestimate the enemy always. I don’t know if that helps explain it, but that’s been my experience with them.

Iran Strikes US-Israeli Ship

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I see up on my screen here that Iran’s IRGC announced it targeted a US-Israeli MSC Sariska ship with a cruise missile.

LARRY JOHNSON: So, yeah. Here we go. Here we go.

GLENN DIESEN: It appears so. Here we go. Well, it seems at least more likely than not that this escalation cannot be stopped now. Again, I hope I’m wrong, but thanks again. I know you have a lot of commitments today, so I’ll let you go. Thanks again for your time.

LARRY JOHNSON: Hey, my friend, I always appreciate the invitation, Glenn. Thank you so much.

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