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Home » Lawrence Wilkerson: Araghchi Meets Putin as Russia Goes All-In on Iran (Transcript)

Lawrence Wilkerson: Araghchi Meets Putin as Russia Goes All-In on Iran (Transcript)

Editor’s Notes: In this insightful discussion, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins Glenn Diesen to analyze the shifting geopolitical landscape following the recent meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Vladimir Putin. Wilkerson explores how Russia’s “all-in” support for Iran signals a formidable challenge to U.S. hegemony and examines the broader implications for the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Southwest Asia. The conversation delves into the strategic miscalculations of the Trump administration, the decline of international law, and the rising influence of the BRICS alliance as a counterweight to Western power. Ultimately, Wilkerson provides a sobering look at the potential for global economic disaster and the urgent need for a more coherent diplomatic strategy. (April 29, 2026)

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We are joined today by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who spent decades in the US military, from serving in the mid-1960s during the Vietnam War to becoming the Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of Defense. So thank you very much for taking the time.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Secretary of State. Secretary of State.

GLENN DIESEN: Oh, I made this mistake once before. Sorry. US Secretary of State, not Defense. I apologize. And thank you for the correction. Colin Powell, I should add, which was of course quite a troubling time in the United States as well with the invasion of Iraq. And I guess there’s a lot of parallels to our present era.

Araghchi Meets Putin: The Significance of the Meeting

GLENN DIESEN: So I wanted to start off with what’s been happening very recently now, that is Iran’s foreign minister, Araghchi. He went to Russia and has now met with President Putin. And both their countries see themselves as fighting in an existential war in which the US, I guess, is a common adversary. What do you think, though, is the significance of this meeting?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, what he needs to do now is drop by Beijing and see Xi Jinping. I think the significance of the meeting is pretty much summed up by the words that Putin uttered following the meeting. It was sort of, to me, like, “in your face, empire.” You may think that you’re going to pursue this to the nth degree, but this country that you’re pursuing it against has allies. One of its allies is fairly formidable. It’s me. And if you want to talk, I’m willing to talk, but you aren’t going to make much headway with this particular war. So why are you wedging it? I mean, that’s kind of the way I read it.

But what I’m really impressed with — again, I had this conversation yesterday with another individual who is somewhat skeptical. I said there are 3 true diplomats in the world: Wang Yi, Sergey Lavrov, and Abbas Araghchi. They are proving their mettle. And he actually came back with this as a counter: “Well, he’s doing whatever the IRGC says because they’re in control. They’re in control. There’s no one else in the Islamic Republic of Iran in control but the IRGC. So he’s doing whatever they want.”

I said, “Bingo, bingo.” That’s what a really good diplomat does. He does what his leadership tells him to do, and he does it with finesse. He does it with, dare I say, diplomacy. He does it with quintessential skills. He doesn’t deviate. Not a Witkoff, not a Kushner, not there to make billions of dollars off contracts that they can affect on the sides of the talks. He’s there for the government such as it is and what it is, and he’s doing their bidding and he’s doing it well. And this meeting with Putin was a quintessential example of that.

Escalating Demands: Iran and Russia’s Parallel Trajectories

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I’m also thinking that the two countries — there are other things in common. That is, the absence of diplomatic solutions have resulted in what was initially quite reasonable demands being escalated to some extent. That is, Russia initially had some demands of restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. NATO’s incursion into Ukraine was considered an existential threat. But in the absence of any political will or solution, this manifested itself into a territorial dispute where the Russians now are seeking to control the territory that they can’t afford ending up in the hands of NATO.

Now, with the Iranians, it looks like they also had quite reasonable security concerns. That is, they can’t live under crippling sanctions for decades more. They don’t want to have the perpetual military threats on their borders. And this essentially manifested itself into the crisis of Hormuz, as controlling this essentially allows them — well, not just to have operations and pressure on countries to stop threatening Iran by, well, not hosting US bases.

You know, if there were any serious negotiations, some of these things could be solved. But for the Russians, they saw 7 years of sabotaging the Minsk agreement and sabotaging Istanbul. The Iranians, of course, had 2 negotiations ending up in surprise attacks. And now these negotiations don’t seem serious either. So how do you see us going from here on? Is this going to be essentially a war in Iran — well, I mean, focusing on Iran — which will just end in one side capitulating, or do you think there is a common ground?

The Global Struggle: A Renewed Great Game

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Let me back up, if I may, to what my original conception — I never remember whether I’ve discussed it with you at length or others, but let me just rehearse it a bit here.

I think what we’re looking at, as I’ve said many times before, is we are engaged in a global struggle. Call it the Great Game renewed, if you will, but we’re engaged in a global struggle. I see it developing in the Arctic, majorly in the Arctic right now, because Russia has invited China, at China’s request — something we denied China when they asked, for example, to be a member of the Arctic Council — up to the Arctic.