Seyed M. Marandi: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US: All-in on War? (Transcript) 

So the midterms are very important for him. So he wants to keep things quiet for now, and then after the midterms escalate.

But after the elections in Israel, it’s too late for Netanyahu because if he loses, he’s out of power. So what Netanyahu can do is he can start a war. Remember this war when it began, what did the US Secretary of State say? He said, “we went into this war because we knew the Israelis were going to attack anyway.” So the Israelis have shown the ability to force the Americans to enter the war. And the Americans would have to enter the war if the Israeli regime is going to have any form of military impact on Iran that’s hurtful because they’ll need their jets to be refueled. And of course those jets are in the Persian Gulf region. They receive free fuel from these countries in the Persian Gulf. They give that fuel to these jets to bomb Iran. That’s how the model works.

So if Netanyahu wants to attack, in order to succeed, he’ll need the support of the United States. Of course, Iran will devastate Israel. And if he tries to take out Iranian critical infrastructure, then Iran will take all of the critical infrastructure out because this is a bloc that worked together against Iran. The regimes in the Persian Gulf, the United States, the Israeli regime, they are a triangle that cooperates. So it’s possible and nothing is impossible. I’m smiling about it, but it would be catastrophic for the world.

Imagine if the oil and gas assets in the Persian Gulf region were destroyed, that would lead to a global economic collapse. You don’t need to bomb factories across the world or economic assets to destroy them. All you have to do is shut them down and they’re worthless buildings. So people across the world will lose their jobs. Then when we talk about refugees and immigration being a problem today, imagine what it would be like then. As everywhere is collapsing, millions of people, literally millions of people will be on the move from Africa. It will be catastrophic beyond imagination.

But why do I think it’s possible? Because the United States has people like Trump who have shown the willingness to go all the way. We saw what Tucker Carlson just recently said in an interview that he spoke to Trump and said, “we’re all going to die anyway.” So I don’t know how to interpret it. You can interpret that sentence in different ways, but one interpretation is that he doesn’t care.

Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Mohammed bin Salman

GLENN DIESEN: (00:10:00 – 00:10:54) That would reflect the Israeli position. Actually, the Israeli position could make some sense if they see this is the only way. Then at least if they go all in and just burn the region to the ground, at least the United States, as you said, they would be pulled in, as they did the last time around when Marco Rubio said, “they’re going to attack, so we might as well join in.” But one thing that perplexes me a bit again is Saudi Arabia, because they also seem to be going all in. But from what I understand, Trump has already refused the requests of MBS. I heard 3 times, when he asked, “Trump, can the US help us? We have to fight Yemen.” And it doesn’t look like it’s going well. So how do you make sense of the Saudi position at the moment?

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:10:56 – 00:15:05) It’s very difficult to make sense of anything that comes from the White House or from Riyadh. We have to keep in mind, in my opinion, that Mohammed bin Salman has not shown wisdom during his reign. We remember how he kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister and beat him up, the then Lebanese prime minister, Mr. Hariri. Then the way in which he killed Jamal Khashoggi. Murder is a bad thing. It’s a horrible thing. But he could have just had someone assassinate him. He could have just had someone run him over with a car, like the mafia does or whatever, but the way in which it was carried out inside the consulate. And then apparently he was still alive when they were, no, I don’t want to explain further.

And then of course the genocidal war on Yemen, and then the siege of Qatar, which was helping them with Yemen. And then before that, I’m sure you recall he had that gathering of international investors at the Ritz at the beginning, and then a few weeks later, he arrested all of his family members, his extended family, and put them in the Ritz and tortured them. So what does that say to those investors who were there just a couple weeks earlier, when they saw the shakedown? This is not a person who I think is wise at all, and he’s probably surrounded by yes-men.

Like Trump, and that’s what people are saying about Trump. They’re saying that one of the differences between Trump today and Trump during the first term is that now he’s surrounded himself with people who are total yes-men and who are not very smart. So I think there’s a parallel between the two. Saudi Arabia, you would think that it would not engage in war with Yemen. It would not provoke a war with Yemen at a time when it’s having so much difficulty in the Persian Gulf region, but it chose to do so. So all I can think of is Mohammed bin Salman’s own foolishness, although I don’t know if he was provoked or pushed or encouraged by the United States or not. But I just see him as a foolish leader, just like Trump.

And that actually, I think, maybe I may be wrong, but increases the chance of this all-out war. Because if it’s not important to preserve the energy assets of Saudi Arabia, then how important is it to stop an expanded war in the Persian Gulf? You would think that the Americans would be desperate to end this war because it’s obvious that Yemen has the upper hand. They’re more motivated. Their forces believe in their cause. They are seen across the region and beyond as the people who, despite the hardship and the genocidal siege, stood up for the Palestinian people. And they have a wealth of targets, everything that they strike causes huge damage.

What can Saudi Arabia do to Yemen except kill kids, bomb marketplaces, which is horrible? But the impact that the attacks on Saudi Arabia have are enormous. And if they continue for, let’s say, a few more weeks with these missiles and drones being fired, then Saudi Arabia will no longer be the Saudi Arabia that we’ve known, a country that exports huge amounts of oil, which is key to the petrodollar. It’s quite stunning to see this happen, and no one in the West trying to end this, and no one in Riyadh trying to find a solution.

Why Hasn’t Trump Accepted Iran’s De-escalation Proposal?

GLENN DIESEN: (00:15:07 – 00:16:27) Well, as you said, the United States would have strong incentives to put an end to this, because I can see why the Israelis would have an interest in going all out, even if you sacrifice the whole region just to defeat its main adversary. It’s not good for the Americans. You see the Saudis, they’re also stuck. This can’t end in a good way. I haven’t seen any analysts looking at this and saying, “the Saudis are going to turn the tide.” So if they’re worried about what the Israelis might do, they know that Saudi Arabia can be destroyed, and then of course Bahrain, others would fall. Why aren’t they doing something? Because Iran has put forward this proposal now for de-escalation, this roadmap, and Trump hasn’t seized upon it yet. It should be surprising because isn’t this a great gift? You see that your allies or proxies might do things against your interest, they might collapse soon, all your strategic interests in the region are falling apart, and then your adversary, your enemy, says, “let’s de-escalate.” Why hasn’t Trump jumped upon this, you think?

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:16:28 – 00:21:30) When you listen to yourself, and I listen to myself, it’s pretty clear that very little makes sense. You’re saying, why are they doing this? It’s difficult to say. First of all, I don’t believe that a destructive war by the Israeli regime will benefit them at all. If the Persian Gulf oil and gas assets are destroyed, Iran won’t fall. It will be these regimes that fall. These oil and gas rich regimes that have nothing but oil and gas. They’re family dictatorships that have been propped up by the West for decades. Who’s benefited the most from the West? The United States first and foremost. They do business, of course, with China, but they buy US weapons almost exclusively, which they can’t use as we’ve seen even during the war, and against Yemen, the Saudis have been an utter failure. I don’t know if you saw the clip of the Saudi soldiers marching on the streets. It was pretty sad to watch, but I felt sorry for the soldiers.

But the extra wealth that is accumulated as a result of the sales of oil and natural gas and the products that come from the refineries and the petrochemical plants, where does that money go? It goes for US stocks. It goes for US bonds. It goes to buy assets in the United States, some in Europe, but mostly in the United States. And not just the governments, but also those princes and the elites who take their share of the wealth. They take it to the same place. So that strengthens the United States. Trump would always speak about milking these regimes. You recall when Mohammed bin Salman went to see Trump in the White House, he had these cardboard papers with these weapons, these s*** naval ships and so on, saying he’s going to buy this, this, this. It was obvious that they were just taking their money. And then of course, Witkoff and Kushner and other Trump flunkies or overlords, depending on how you look at it, they will take their share of the wealth. So the destruction of these regimes, the collapse of these regimes, the impoverishment of these regimes hurt the United States badly.

The Israeli regime needs the United States to sustain itself. It doesn’t have anything on its own. It’s just a tiny regime. All of its high-tech, even Trump, if you recall a while back when he spoke about the Iron Dome, he said, “it’s our technology.” I don’t know if you saw that piece. This was a few months ago. He said, “the Iron Dome, we did that.” And he’s right. The high-tech industries in the United States, the money comes from the United States. They intentionally invest in the Israeli regime. It’s not because there’s something extraordinarily important happening there. In fact, it’s the most vulnerable place possible because Iranian missiles can destroy all of those assets. It’s not the best place for investment at all. So the Israeli regime needs the United States. It needs a powerful United States.

If there is this destructive war, it will hurt everyone, but it will hurt the empire the most. It will hurt all the billions of people on this planet in a big way. But I don’t think it will be good for Israel. It will be terrible for Israel because the world will blame the Israeli regime for this catastrophe alongside the genocide, alongside this war that has been going on for 7 months. So it would be a foolish move, but Netanyahu doesn’t care about Israel. In my opinion, he cares about Netanyahu. He wants to stay out of jail.

His speech at the UN, in my opinion, was deeply damaging to the Israeli regime. But I think he was just speaking to his own population for the elections. He doesn’t care about the damage that it does to the regime. He wants to tell his people, “look, I’m tough, I’m powerful, I’m the person that you want as your prime minister.” If he cared about the Israeli regime, if he cared about its future, he would be trying to carry out his crimes in a much more subtle way, to preserve at least the remnants of the supporters of the regime. But imagine if we have total economic collapse. Who will people be seeking out across the world? They’ll be looking for those who caused it to deal with them.

Netanyahu and Trump at the UN: Projecting Strength

GLENN DIESEN: (00:21:31 – 00:22:29) And this performance at the UN, for me, that was shocking. Well, it shouldn’t be shocking anymore. If you bet on reason, as you said, they wouldn’t go down this path at all. But he came off as this Bond villain, standing there, talking about fighting till the end. And again, the beepers, holding it up as some source of intimidation. I mean, why would you do this after doing this terrorist attack and then you hold it up in great pride? It reminds me sometimes a bit about Trump. If people call him aggressive and he doesn’t care about international law, I don’t think that matters so much. I think it projects strength, and I think that’s the most important message to send. “Yes, we’re so powerful, you should fear us because we’re not even constrained by law.” And maybe that’s what they’re going in. Again, I’m desperately trying to define it, so somewhere I have some reason.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:22:30 – 00:24:38) I’m like you. I’m desperate to figure out what this all means. But at the UN, I think Trump was doing the same thing. He doesn’t care about the United States and the image of the United States. In front of all those leaders, not only did he threaten to carry out the greatest holocaust in human history against the Iranian people, but he also, when he spoke of Venezuela, and I think the Venezuelan president or the acting president, she was sitting in the hall and he said, “to the victor goes the spoils.” He was saying that to all the world leaders and their representatives. That’s immensely damaging to the United States. But why did he do that? I think he was speaking to his base because his base, the MAGA cult, they’re like him. They like that sort of language.

We’ve seen him give speeches to them when he said, “to the victor go the spoils,” and then everyone would cheer in the halls of his MAGA supporters. And these are supposed to be Christians, or I don’t consider them to be Christians, but “to the victor go the spoils.” Where is that in Christianity? But these Christian Zionists or white nationalists or whoever it is that comprise the MAGA base right now, they cheer this on. If I was like Trump, God forbid, I would be using the UN as a platform to speak to my base and say, “I’m the tough guy. I’m the mafia guy. I’ll give them an offer that they can’t refuse,” just like in the Godfather movie. So I think that the UN was used both by Netanyahu and Trump to speak to their own base for election purposes, because both speeches were catastrophic for the Israeli regime and the United States, in my opinion.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:24:38 – 00:25:46) No, I think that’s the major background though, that everyone in the US senses that the country is in decline and showing any decency or morality can be seen as a weakness. So for example, when we hear him say about Venezuela, “we’re taking their oil, all this oil, all this money goes to us now,” we hear criminal activity, but for them it shows, “okay, we show strength, we’re not constrained, and we’re not in decline.” And now we are rising again. And the UN speech sounded a bit like that as well because the context of his genocidal threat was, “listen, it’s up to me. I can allow Iran to become very powerful, or I can annihilate the entire nation.” So for us, we hear the genocidal threat, but I think for him, he wants to project this, “I can make them powerful or kill them all.” I guess a lot of his base wants to hear this message of power, but it’s also the story of the Pharaoh.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:25:47 – 00:27:45) It reminds me of the Pharaoh because the Pharaoh said, “I can kill this person and I can let this other person survive. I have the power to kill. I have the power to give life.” And Trump in a way is doing the same thing. He’s saying, “I can choose to destroy this country. I can choose to wipe out this civilization if I want, and I can choose something else if I want.” That I think appeals to the cult. I recall back in the day Trump once said, and I forgot what he said exactly, I’ve been too lazy to check on this, but he said if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, his supporters would still support him. He’s right. His base would still support him.

Now, if the economy collapses, if this all-out war happens, or even if there’s an escalation without targeting the infrastructure, because that too will cause Iran to shut down the strait, that’ll drive up prices. That will also be catastrophic. But it’s like a highway with 3 lanes. The targeting of infrastructure is the fast lane. The limited escalation is the middle lane. And the path that we’re going down today is the slower lane. They all go to hell. They all lead to the same place, but one just quickly takes us there, another one a bit slower, and the third even slower.

But if he continues to go down this road or changes lanes and goes down this road faster, I think his base will be seeking to lynch him after the collapse. And I think the same is true for the Israeli regime. A global economic collapse may save Netanyahu or it may serve the fantasies of Trump, but ultimately it will devastate them both.

Europe’s Contradictions and Decline

GLENN DIESEN: (00:27:47 – 00:28:40) I think this is probably the contradiction because, like I said before, with Netanyahu and Trump, whenever they make these statements, their base will say, “yes, we’re back.” But they ignore or care not to care about the international community because the rest of the world is looking at this going, dear God. I do want to ask about Europeans as well, because if I’m not mistaken, Macron implied that they might come to help the Saudis. I’m not sure if that’s an actual plan or if it’s just to try to show some strength. But they’re also trying to sit on 2 chairs. They keep reassuring the Iranians, “we’re not part of this war. This is America and Israel who attacked you, not us.”

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:28:41 – 00:28:41) But if they—

GLENN DIESEN: (00:28:41 – 00:29:12) So they wouldn’t do this. But on the other hand, they also want to show that they have a value for the United States. They want to preserve the alliance system with the US. The US sees them as weak, not great, and they want to then of course sell this idea that “no, we’re a force amplifier.” And so you then have 2 messages. One, we’re not part of this war, and then you have NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte saying, “5,000 planes took off from Europe to attack Iran.”

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:29:12 – 00:34:03) Until up to April, and since then it’s a lot more. Yeah, I was going to say that you raised exactly. I don’t think that Europe can do much against Iran. If they could, they would do more for Ukraine. They’re already sacrificing themselves for this foolish war that is destroying Europe, in my opinion. Germany, you know better than I, it’s collapsing. And we’ve seen the election results, the local elections, as being catastrophic for the status quo. But I’m certain that the same is true almost across Europe. So Europe is collapsing. If this continues, I don’t think the European Union will continue to exist in its current form because the center is falling apart. The center cannot hold anymore. So he’s going to go and take his troops to Saudi Arabia too, to do what? What does he have that he can use? I think that these countries don’t recognize that they’re increasingly irrelevant. They’re not important. France is not a major player. There are many countries now in BRICS that are more important than France. And the same is true with the UK. And now increasingly Germany.

Europe is the biggest loser in all this so far because they sacrificed themselves for the United States. And not just Trump, during the Biden years, they sacrificed themselves. They sacrificed themselves by not signing a deal with Iran. I was at the negotiations in Vienna when the war in Ukraine began, and then we saw Nord Stream destroyed later on. But when they began sanctioning the Russians, I was telling journalists, some of them are quite famous, and elites and others, and diplomats who would come and see me, we’d have coffee together somewhere. You’re not giving me coffee, but at least they would.

So when I would tell them that, look, you need to deal with Iran. Do a deal and you can invest in Iran’s gas sector and you can invest in Iran’s oil sector. You can expand the pipelines that exist that go through Turkey. And universally, as far as I remember, this was a few years ago, every single one was saying, “this war is going to be over in weeks. The Russians are going to collapse. Putin is out.” And I would say to them, look, you failed against Cuba. You failed a plot back then. Venezuela. Syria back then. They actually did overthrow Syria. Venezuela later on. But I said, you’ve been struggling to destroy these countries for years. You’ve been struggling to overthrow Iran for decades. So you’re going to overthrow Russia? How is that going to work in weeks? But that’s what they were saying to me.

If they had actually done a deal with Iran, they would be in less pain than now. If they had ignored the United States and stopped antagonizing Russia to this extent, they wouldn’t be in this situation. Then they go and tell the Chinese that they want to work with them, but simultaneously they insult them and sanction them and punish them. Okay, so you’ve lost the Chinese, you’ve lost the Iranians, you’ve lost the Russians, and then you go to the United States and Trump slaps you around. So what’s left for you? Where are you in this global arena? So they’re the biggest losers of all, and I don’t think that there is much that Macron can do to help the Saudis against Ansar Allah.

And that says a lot that these imperial powers, which had so much influence across the globe, now there’s no way that they can stop Ansar Allah that has been starved and besieged in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula for decades. They can’t defeat them. Yeah, well, that’s the problem now though, with the possible—

GLENN DIESEN: (00:34:04 – 00:35:36) If Saudi Arabia would collapse, but it doesn’t even need to collapse, they already stopped exporting oil to the Europeans. So I think they definitely painted themselves in the corner. I think it’s desperation as well. As you said, their allies, their main protector, slap them around as well, and they see their own position dwindling and their adversaries, they can’t defeat them. Like you said, with Russia, they did think it was going to be quite easy. And again, it’s been scrubbed from the narrative now, but after they sabotaged the Istanbul talks in 2022 to end the war, you have people like Niall Ferguson who then wrote in Bloomberg, this was in March of 2022, and he interviews all these American and British leading military political figures, and he says, they all have the same message. The only acceptable outcome is regime change in Moscow.

And this kind of corresponds with what you heard the Turks say, the former Israeli prime minister, they all said the same thing. The West saw an opportunity to use the Ukrainians to knock out Russia, and all the evidence is there, but suddenly Russia didn’t get knocked out, and suddenly we had to get rid of that whole thing out of the narrative. And now we call that Russian talking points, and if you repeat it, then you’re, oh yeah, it’s quite incredible. But my point is, it’s so much self-harm.

Exceptionalism and the Failure to Read Reality

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:35:37 – 00:39:10) I guess it’s the arrogance of exceptionalism, and it’s an exceptionalism that is not manifested in the reality on the ground anymore. These were empires of old, not good empires. I don’t think you can say there were many good empires throughout history at all, but in the past they had power. Now they pretend that they have power, but it doesn’t exist. So they’re behaving like they have a great deal of power, but in reality they have very little. And it is, I think, through that arrogance that they misread everything. They expect Russia to fall in front of them because they are superior. They expect Iran to fall because they are superior. They cannot acknowledge that the Chinese are innovative, that they’re just as smart as anyone else. They say, “no, they can copy our innovations, but they can’t innovate.” They think Iran will collapse in days because they cannot imagine that the Iranians would have the resilience and the strength and the intelligence and the brilliance to create a defense capability that can outmatch the superpower and its proxies. It just goes beyond.

So even if you provide them with the real facts, I don’t think it would change their perceptions at all. They’ll say, “forget the facts. We’re going to eat them. We have this heritage. We are powerful.” And I think the worst of them all is the United States, this American exceptionalism and all that blinds them to reality. And when you look at what they said about Russia and what they say about Iran, it’s almost identical. The Russians are running out of missiles. They’re tearing apart washing machines or dishwashing machines. And then same with Iran. The Iranians are collapsing. They’re falling. They’re running out of missiles now. Bessent says we’re going to collapse in 2 weeks. Well, he just said that on D-Day, we were supposed to die. We were supposed to be gone by now. Now it’s 2 more weeks. Our currency was supposed to collapse, didn’t. Okay, now we’re going to collapse in 2 weeks. Okay, 2 weeks, if we don’t collapse, then what?

They constantly boast about their power, and then they fail to impose their will, but it doesn’t change their worldview. It doesn’t make them more humble, and it doesn’t make them think more carefully. They continue to behave. Right now, the Secretary of Treasury is speaking like the Secretary of War, constantly boasting and making claims about what a tough guy he is and how he’s going to smash the Iranians. And then after that doesn’t work, he’s going to smash them again. But there’s no thinking at all. It’s just that exceptionalism. And I think that the political establishment to a large degree allows them to get away with it because this is a collective problem, even if they hate Trump.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:39:12 – 00:39:34) Yeah. Well, I noticed the same. They criticize Trump, but all the European leaders seem to be channeling their inner Churchill. They all want this position in history. They see the rise of Russia, China, Iran, this huge menacing barbarians. And this is the time to stand up and fight. This is when the history books are written, essentially.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:39:34 – 00:39:37) But it’s not going anywhere.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:39:38 – 00:39:57) I spoke to a friend in the EU Parliament who was making the point that a third or half of their statements in the EU is all about condemning someone, but it doesn’t do anything. Again, it’s the idea of regulatory power. You can just make speeches and then the world will change, but it’s not happening.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:39:57 – 00:40:13) And they don’t condemn the genocide. They don’t condemn the war on Iran. They don’t condemn the starvation siege against Iran. Nothing. They only condemn what the empire needs to have condemned.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:40:14 – 00:40:34) Well, if you see that the US is losing interest in Europe and trying to snatch its territory, the logical thing would be to diversify your ties, that is to become less reliant. So you have China, you have Iran, you have Russia. But again, I think the problem is that they want the same as the US.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:40:34 – 00:40:37) They diversified to Canada. Oh, there you go.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:40:37 – 00:40:37) Yeah.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:40:38 – 00:42:37) But what’s the difference between Canada and the rest? It has to do with tribalism. It’s not real. The Russians, they’re Slavs, the Chinese, the Iranians. So with Canada, Canada can come to Europe and they can talk and speak as if they’re allies, but it’s tribalistic. It’s not based on morality. If it’s morality, you’d have a very different world than that which we live in today. If the Europeans had stood up against Israel, that would be enough to end the genocide regardless of the United States. That carries enough weight to have influence over events in Palestine.

If they had stood up, we’d have maybe a million people alive in Ukraine today that are gone, and they’re mostly men. So that basically means that Ukraine is finished because all those women, how are they going to have families? How are they going to have children? How is this country going to sustain itself 30 years from now? So basically they demolished the country and it’s all for the sake of tribalism, for the sake of empire. And the facade of morality is gone. At least in the past, they had this facade of human rights and human dignity, but now they’ve just thrown it away. And the language of genocide and, as you said, condemnation of whoever they don’t like is all that we hear. And it seems like the whole world is rushing towards demolition. Unfortunate.

Iran’s Shifting Worldview and the Multipolar Order

GLENN DIESEN: (00:42:38 – 00:43:12) Well, those 3 powers though, it would have been good to take out if you want to restore the unipolar moment. That is China, Russia, and Iran. But that’s kind of what I want to ask, because all of these projects are failing. And how do you see, from within Iran, how do you see them readjusting now towards working with the Chinese, working with the Russians, because this is the alternative world order we see emerging now.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:43:13 – 00:48:13) Well, let’s take a look at President Pezeshkian during the presidential campaign. He criticized China, and a lot of his supporters were critical of Russia, critical of China. The former foreign minister criticized Russia many times, Dr. Zarif, for whatever reasons. But now his worldview has changed and his administration has changed completely. Because he’s come to power and he’s seen the reality of the United States. He’s always been, in my opinion, a very decent person. And I know some of these revolutionaries and hardliners dislike him immensely. I see their comments online. But when he took power, the first thing that happened was on inauguration day, they murdered Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, one of his guests for the inauguration. And then it went downhill from there. So then 2 wars were imposed as his foreign ministry was negotiating. So his worldview has changed.

Then the reformist groups in Iran, which are very diverse, there’s no single reformist ideology, the reformist camp in Iran is very broad. And so are the conservative or principlist camps. They’re very broad and they mingle. Iranian politics is very fluid, very difficult to keep up with. Because it’s not so much party blind, it’s not like you are the conservative and I’m labor and so I follow. No, I may agree with you on something and not agree with them on something else. So the balances shift and the politics thus become fluid. But the reformists who are in power now, they control much of the state. That’s where most of the money goes, the government. Their views have shifted. Some of them had already been very different, but collectively they’ve shifted.

Then you have the liberal elites who are Western oriented. And who are significant in number, but they’re more significant in wealth and influence. They’re obviously not the majority or anywhere near the majority, but they’re a substantial force. After the war that the United States imposed on us, especially the second war with the Israelis, their worldview has shifted. I was speaking to a number of colleagues at the university about something completely different just a couple of days ago. And then somehow the conversation turned to our students, and they were saying how the students have changed, their worldviews have changed during the last 7, 8 months. So you see that all these different segments of Iranian society looking to the West and saying, no, it’s useless.

There are still some who believe that, and I can’t say numbers, but I’m sure they’re substantial in numbers. Percentage-wise, maybe not so much, but still. But their numbers have decreased, their influence has decreased, and the bulk of society has shifted away. I can imagine the same being true in China. It used to be that when I went to Beijing University, because I go there a lot, I still do, students used to aspire to go to the West, to the United States. More recently, I’ve seen a lot less of that. In Iran, the same is true. You see that a lot of people who used to talk about immigration, they say, no, I want to stay here.

So the United States has succeeded in creating hostility and anger towards themselves, and the West has, and bringing these countries together at the same time. Countries that are very diverse historically. We’ve had many problems with Russia. Iranians have had historically, for historical reasons, suspicions of Russia. China, which is far away, we didn’t have much contact with them since the Opium Wars because they collapsed. Now Iran and China are being pushed closer to each other. That’s a great achievement. The Americans have done a lot in bringing about these changes. I’m not sure that that was their intention, but the way they did it seemed as if it was their intention.

Brzezinski, Multipolarity and the Limits of Change in the US

GLENN DIESEN: (00:48:14 – 00:50:10) I often cite Zbigniew Brzezinski because he wrote America’s Bible for the unipolar moment. And for him, a lot of it was, if you want to preserve hegemony, you have to keep your vassals dependent and keep your adversaries, or you call it barbarians, divided. So everyone’s familiar with that work. What is interesting is later on he wrote another book in, I think, 2012, and he was making a point, if our hegemony is now going away, and it appears that’s what’s happening, we have to rethink. Because you can’t just wed yourself to the strategies of the past, because now a multipolar world is emerging. And if it is, we can either facilitate it and try to be the first among equals, the leading state at least in a multipolar system, or we can resist it, but then likely this multipolar system will nonetheless form, but then in opposition to us.

And I thought that was wise because that’s exactly what you see now. Not only did it push Russia and China together, but now Iran as well. And I think that’s a good thing that they get closer. But for the United States, you don’t want them to get against you. So for me, I would hope that the US from this also takes a new lesson. You said the worldview of Iranians had shifted, that in the US there are more people perhaps who take the Tucker Carlson view, that perhaps it’s in our interest to retreat a bit, scale back the empire, restore our strength. You can’t have a multipolar world and then still try to pretend you’re hegemon. This is what happens though, the system punishes you essentially. So any final thoughts before I finish off?

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:50:12 – 00:51:43) I agree. And I do think that the United States is changing from the bottom, but I think that the problem is that at the top, they don’t have that ability to change, or at least it’s almost impossible. It is impossible for most of them and very difficult for a minority that may have a more realistic worldview of the world. And that is largely because of exceptionalism. Because even Brzezinski in his second book, he still says it from an exceptionalist perspective. And that is what impedes you to really interact and to create and be involved in this dynamic, new evolving world. So as long as they try to hold the reins of power and then simultaneously acknowledge change, that contradiction will remain very destructive. I don’t even think the United States is there anyway, but things are changing at the bottom. But I don’t think it’s going to have necessarily a, well, we’ll have to see. But I think it’s very hard to see it having an impact on the situation that we are seeing today for the time being.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:51:44 – 00:52:26) Yeah. Now the elite, there is a problem, but that’s also how you define decadent states and institutions or civilization, that is if you can’t reform the institutions anymore to serve national interest, but instead institutions just seek their own self-preservation. For me, this is what the elite politics in the US is. And this is my point, because at the bottom, I think the majority of Americans, more and more at least, are starting to recognize, “how is this in our interest, how is bombing Iran in our interest, how is keeping the Ukraine war in our interest?” It’s the more peaceful paths which weren’t taken.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:52:26 – 00:52:50) But the difference between now and past declining empires is that now we have nuclear weapons, we have AI, and we have a global population that is much larger than before. I’m not a pessimist. But the road ahead is going to be very, very difficult.

GLENN DIESEN: (00:52:52 – 00:52:56) Well, that’s a horrible note. Thank you very much again for taking time.

SEYED M. MARANDI: (00:52:57 – 00:52:59) Thank you very much for having me. It’s always an honor.

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