Iran Retaliates Against Trump's Hormuz Blockade, Negotiations OVER Mohammad Marandi

Welcome back to the show, everyone. It's your host, Danny Hai Phong. Uh, welcome back to the show.

From Islamabad, where he participated in the activities of, uh, I don't know what happened there, but we are here. Uh, he participated in the, uh, negotiations, or he attended, uh, uh, the delegation, uh, with the delegation.

And so, Professor Morandi, welcome back to the show.

Hi, Danny. I hope my connection is not too bad. But, um, I don't know why every time at the beginning of shows I'm—I cough and then it gets better.

But, um, yeah, so anyway, hit the like button and, you know, the things that Danny used to do, and he's growing old and he forgets, so I have to help him out. And I'm incredibly—being the younger side in this.

Well, I'm incredibly jet-lagged today, too, because, uh, I'm on day two here in Beijing and, uh, uh, and in this new setup. So everyone, this is—this is all we're doing the best we can, but this is critical, a critical conversation. So hit that like button. As Professor Morandi said, Professor Morandi, let's get started, though, with this. You just came back from Islamabad.

Now Donald Trump has once again issued another threat that's—that is coupled with a declaration of a kind of war, this time a blockade of what he calls the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

So Donald Trump, just, uh, before we started talking, Professor Morandi said that, uh, Iran's navy is now laying at the bottom of the sea, 158 total ships, but we haven't hit those fast attack ships that, uh, I believe the New York Post has been reporting on, uh, and warning if any of these ships come near this

blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, they are going to end up like, and he says they're—they will end up eliminated like those against the so-called drug boats, uh, at sea over the last year or two. So Professor Morandi, how about this? Can you help us understand what happened?

Um, can you, uh, help us understand what happened in Islamabad and why it led to now this, um, this, uh, blockade, uh, that he is declaring for the U.S. Navy against Iran at Iranian ports, etc.?

What's going on here? Well, first, I have to point out that I don't think that—I don't know what he's talking about when he speaks about what 150-some boats or ships or whatever.

Uh, they're—the only ship that they sunk was one that was unarmed, and it was a part of an international program, uh, naval program.

And what he did was barbaric, and he slaughtered 100, uh, sailors, almost 100 sailors who were unarmed, and, uh, he knew they were unarmed. And, uh, it's just despicable, uh, the behavior of the Trump regime.

But of course, it's just like those 168 little girls that he massacred and he never apologized for, and the United States never accepted responsibility for that, that slaughter. So we're dealing with, you know, a psychopath, basically.

But, uh, the Iranian naval ships have not been destroyed. A few ships that are for patrolling and during times of peace, they were imported, and they were hit, and later on they'll have to be repaired.

But Iran's real navy are those many speedboats that are all underground in tunnels alongside the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and, uh, they will come out when the time comes.

But more importantly is the fact that—and that's why Trump cannot do anything about the, uh, Strait of Hormuz, because Iran's navy, Iran's missile defenses, Iran's air force, Iran's air defenses, they are very much intact. Otherwise, he could just walk in and take what it is that he wants to take.

Uh, but, um, but in any case, the the siege that he is imposing now is going to hurt the global economy more than before, because Iran obviously is not going to allow any more ships to leave the Strait of Hormuz if its ships cannot be used.

Also, there is this question in my mind, and I may be wrong, that maybe Iranian ships will continue to leave and come and go because, uh, Iran can strike the United States with its missiles. And that's why the U.S. Navy has always been so far away from Iran's shores.

Only now that there's a ceasefire, they're moving around more freely. So if they threaten an Iranian, let's say, a tanker, and Iran warns them with missiles, then what happens next? We saw during the negotiations in Islamabad, two U.S.

ships tried to enter the Strait of Hormuz. Iranians warned them, sent, uh, drones, and the U.S. backed off. So, uh, it's difficult for me to envisage exactly how this will play out. Well, then, because of Iranian missiles, the U.S.

Navy pulled back and, uh, patrolled the internet or enforced this blockade, uh, from far away. I think that would mean that they have to bring in more ships. It would be much more costly. I don't know how that would work.

But the point is that, uh, they can't just stand outside the, you know, they cannot just be outside the Persian Gulf and wait for ships to come out. Iranian missiles will strike them and destroy them. So they have to be, I don't know, 1,000 kilometers away, 1,500 kilometers away.

And does that make it, uh, possible to enforce a blockade that easily or not?

So, but what they are doing is definitely they're hurting their own proxies in the Persian Gulf region because their ports will no longer be used, except for the Saudis, who will pump three and a half to four million barrels a day from the Red to the wet Red Sea.

But my understanding is that the Emiratis will not be able to use the Fujairah port, uh, based on what the Iranians have said. So the other countries will have nothing. And the Saudis will, most of their, uh, most of their imports and exports come from the Persian Gulf. So it will be very, a very, it will be very costly for Saudi Arabia.

Now, in addition to that, what Trump is doing is that he's, is that he's warning the entire world that you shall not use the Persian Gulf. You are not allowed to purchase oil. He's saying that to Beijing. He's saying that to New Delhi. He's saying that to everyone.

And I'm not sure how that is going to, uh, be received in capitals across the world, uh, Trump dictating terms to the entire global community.

And then, of course, he's going to exacerbate the global economic crisis, the energy crisis, which is growing by the minute, literally, by the minute, because the, uh, the deficit for energy is increasing, increasing by the day, uh, by the hour, by the minute.

We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, basically. And, uh, excess oil is running out.

I mean, uh, I heard from someone who seems to be somewhat credible, who seems to be very credible, actually, that Iran and Russia had a lot of oil on the sea in tankers, uh, before the war, and, uh, because they had problems selling

them, obviously. So the Russians have run out of that oil. Iran had much more than Russia, and Iran has sold half of it. Uh, they had, apparently, Iran had 200 million barrels, and now they have only 100.

That means that Iran will soon be selling that 100 barrels because the price is going up as we speak, because of Trump's threat, uh, which will make Iran a lot of money, as it has been making over the last few months, uh, ever since the United States began threatening Iran, bringing in troops.

The price gradually went up. Then, during the war, Iranian oil, both on the seas and from the Persian Gulf, was, uh, the price went through the roof, and no more discounts, no middlemen, no nothing. So the Iranians had been making huge amounts of money from their energy exports.

And, uh, but the point is that Iran will be selling that 100 million barrels. But then that, this is also an indication that the shortage is getting much worse. There is no more extra oil. The Russians don't have anything.

Western governments are using their strategic reserves, uh, and, uh, the prices have gone up. We are at the beginning of something big.

And of course, there's the fertilizer, there's petrochemicals, there's the money that's no longer being, uh, you know, the money that they, the these family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf send to, uh, for the U.S. stock market and the bond market, that no longer is going.

And the reverse may happen because they'll need money, so they'll have to return some of their money from the United States. This is not, and, or, and they won't be able to have the money to purchase the weapons systems that they always do, which they don't know how to use.

But, um, so this is, this is not going to get worse just for Iran. It's going to get worse for the world.

And in the case of Iran, I'm not sure how much worse it becomes because, A, I don't know if Iran will really not be able to export or import from the Persian Gulf because of the Iranian missile defense capabilities and so on.

And B, Iran has a lot of money to be made, uh, with the oil that's on the high seas as we speak, and the price is going to go up, so they'll make more money. And then, in order to import an ex, some of what Iran's oil can go by land.

For years, Iran used to re-export Kazakhstan's oil to the Persian Gulf. Or, for example, the Iranians already believed that, from the very beginning, the Iranians thought the Americans were going to start this war with a siege.

And so Iran, uh, trades with Pakistan. It trades with India. But Iran's, uh, rice imports were from India.

So before the war, Iran decided no longer to buy their rice from India and to buy it from Pakistan and use the border to, to give them energy or whatever needs they want.

So part of Iran's needs, because of its, you know, it borders 15 countries, can be met by land. And as I said when I explained it, so, and also another difference is that the, the, these Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, their, their countries are deserts.

Iran, uh, produces roughly 90% of its, I think. I'm not sure if people can look that up. But roughly 90% of its food, uh, is, uh, local.

We have, you know, we have an east-west mountain range, Alborz, a north-south mountain range, uh, Zagros, where, um, most of, you know,right now above Tehran, we have snow.

If you stand outside on the streets, it's nighttime now, but if you look at the mountains, you'll see snow. Iran is not Saudi Arabia. It's not Qatar. It's not a, you know, we have deserts, but we have forests.

We have, uh, you know, huge swathes of lands of that, you know, that are, um, that are for agriculture. We have, uh, we have many dams. It's a, so we are self-sufficient in many ways.

And as I said, we can import and export from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, uh, the, uh, Caspian Sea, which links us to, uh, Kazakhstan and, uh, to Russia, and, uh, through Azerbaijan and Armenia

and Turkey and Iraq. So, you know, this country is bigger than, uh, Germany, France, and the UK combined by size. It's not that easy for the United States to strangle Iran, but U.S. proxies in the Persian Gulf, they can be strangled easily.

And we're heading towards a very hot weather. These countries, those who've visited these countries, they know that six months the weather is good. Six months the weather is terrible.

Humid, hot, and without, uh, infrastructure, if there's conflict, if the electricity goes out, uh, if there's no water, then these countries just collapse.

Yeah, yeah.

And, uh, you know, as we enter this, uh, now, uh, period of a so-called blockade for Esmorandi, you know, Donald Trump, uh, these threats come as there are Iranian, uh, tankers, Iranian-linked tankers at least, uh, about to sail through, uh, the Strait of Hormuz.

And, uh, even with everything that you just said, uh, not only this, it seems like the retaliation could easily be, and this is what Iran is promising, that, uh, well, if you blockade our ports, our, our so-called blockade our ports, then we can just hit any port that, uh, uh,

that exists in the region, just like they've been hitting, or they had been hitting before the ceasefire, uh, uh, uh, Gulf assets, Israel, etc. And also, there have been talks about the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, that that could also be closed.

So there's a lot of options here, it seems like, that are on the table for Iran, uh, as this escalates.

And, uh, I'm curious on your reaction to this and also the, uh, the linkage to Islamabad, becauseright now it seems like negotiations are over, that, uh, there's some talks with in Axios of, uh, there being back and forth between Iran and the United States through the mediators still.

But Iran hasn't said anything of the sort. The U.S. has been in transition, if not hostile, to the very idea of, uh, continuing any diplomatic process. So, uh, how does this all relate now?

Uh, why is it that the United States under Donald Trump at this moment, you believe, is choosing this path, which, as you just outlined, has a lot of negative consequences or potential consequences associated with it?

Well, I don't know why Trump does this, because Trump is, uh, I don't, I don't know anyone who can give me a clear reason or, you know, a clear analysis of his state of mind and how he thinks.

And I've stopped listening to Trump a lot of, you know, a long time ago. Um, I'm invited sometimes to speak after on a program after Trump gives a speech, and I usually say, look, I just looked at the headlines. I don't listen to his speeches, because it doesn't matter what he says.

He'll say something else a few hours later or a few sentences later or the next day. So, uh, you know, there's nothing really to learn from listening to him. What happened, you know, Axios is, I, I, I, I never read Axios.

I hear about what they say, but it's not, uh, a reliable or credible source. So I usually stick to reliable outlets.

But, um, basically, the Iranians, when they went there, they, uh, on the way there, uh, in conversations, uh, and at the airport, it was clear that no one really had, uh, uh, the belief that the United States, that we

would have a deal with the United States. There was great skepticism on the way there. And, um, when we were there, uh, a number of things happened.

One is that the Americans, they, bizarrely, you think that, like, when people are negotiating, the side would try to show, like, a, uh, to show good faith or give a positive signal so that things would progress.

The United States tried to enter, the two ships of the United States tried to enter the Persian Gulf, and they failed. The Iranians warned them, and they had to go back. That was, like, bizarre. Then the Washington Post, which is not an ordinary newspaper, basically threatened to murder us. They, they, they called on the the United States to assassinate us.

And we, on our way there, we thought it was possible that they would kill us. But on the way back, we, you know, we were mentally and, um, and let's say spiritually prepared to to be killed.

We we were, uh, thinking that the chances that they would fire a missile at our plane on the way back were high. That's that was the mood on the plane, both men and women, all everyone. And of course, precautions were taken. I don't want to go into detail, but we took a different plane.

We didn't go to Tehran. On the way to Tehran, the plane suddenly started going down and immediately went to an airport that was close to the Afghan Turkmenistan border in Mashhad.

Uh, so to sort of, like, they wanted them, the Americans and the Israelis, to think the plane was going towards Tehran, and instead it landed much further away. And then we took a train, or some of us took a train. People went, came to Tehran by different means.

But in any case, in order to, uh, to, to, to spare that, because this is unprecedented that a newspaper or media outlet, a mainstream media outlet, would call for the murder of, uh, all these men and women, uh, who were participating in in the negotiations.

But the United States is a madhouse, so, uh, nothing, uh, is surprising anymore, just like when, um, a bounty was put on my head on X and it was promoted, uh, the and then X refused to take it down or to even, let alone, um, delete the

account, which was, um, uh, which had a blue tick and was verified, you know, all that. And I don't want to go into that again. But the point is, we've, we're in a new era now, yeah, where in the West you can just murder and slaughter, and now the media actually advocates it.

It's not just silent as they were when they murdered, uh, Ayatollah Khamenei and martyred him. Uh, it's, you know, it's just now normal. It's kidnapping presidents. Now the the media is actually calling for it to be done. That's the sort of madhouse mentality that exists in in the U.S. political class now.

But the point is that, uh, the Iranians there, they had negotiations throughout the day, and there was progress made, and there were debates and discussions. But near the end, there are two things that are important.

Near the end, the United States suddenly shifted, and it became very negative, which was a bit surprising to the Iranians, the sudden shift. And then, of course, uh, U.S. uh Vice President went and said, you know, they didn't listen to our demands, which, of course, is ridiculous.

But so we're walking. And he lied. It said that they're they're insistent on, you know, their nuclear, implying nuclear weapons program, which, of course, when you look at uh Joe Kent's resignation letter, it's clear that this is all a lie. Right.

Uh And he said clearly that Iran wasn't making nuclear weapons and not they weren't moving in that direction. So, but the the another interesting point was that he was the Iranian delegation made no calls to Tehran, none, zero.

They had the authority to speak. The head of the delegation spoke to his two, uh, the two other, the the foreign minister and the deputy head of the Supreme National Security Council, which were at the table with him.

And then in the room next door, there were his advisors who he could go and speak to them or, between rounds of negotiations, have conversations about issues that needed to be better understood or better explained or or negotiated.

Vance was constantly making phone calls to different people, including including Netanyahu. Yeah. And Netanyahu went and actually said Vance would give him reports, and which I think is the biggest insult to the American people possible.

So basically, and here I'm sort of overgeneralizing, Vance gave reports to his boss, Netanyahu, and Netanyahu basically said, no,

no agreement. That's how I see it. I think that Netanyahu is in trouble. I increasingly believe that Trump is compromised in a very bad way. I have no evidence for this, and I know many people have different views.

But I think that it's probably something very dark, you know, children or something like that, because nothing that they do makes sense anymore. Yeah. And uh so so they were moving forward. He's constantly making phone calls to Trump, to others, and to Netanyahu.

And then near the end of the day, he suddenly shifts, and then he goes, even though the expectation was that the next morning the negotiations would continue. But he just walks away and starts, you know, saying that Iran did not meet our demands and, you know,right, uh which is, you know, a bit ridiculous.

But uh so on our way back, when this happened, I was, when Vance made this meeting, I was in my room. I was uh I was still awake, actually. I was busy. No one called me from the delegation.

It was not, you know, you if it was something surprising, people would start calling each other, or in the in the in the groups, they would be, you know, making all sorts of conversations. Right. No one was surprised.

Everyone, it was so early when I went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel and the colleague, those who were staying at the hotel, I think Dr. Abadi Bouf was not, he was staying somewhere else at the embassy, I suppose. I think, yeah. But um but those at the hotel, no one was surprised.

So the only thing they were really talking about in detail was not about Vance. It was about, okay, well, now we take the dangerous journey home. And uh but everyone, you know, was prepared. No one said, okay, I'll stay here.

I want to go back a few days, or maybe I'll stay, spend a few days in Islamabad and I'll take the land route home or something. No one. Everyone, all everyone, as far as I know, everyone who came with us returned with us. None of us, and we didn't know that we were going to land somewhere else.

So a very, you know, courageous group of men and women. But the point is that uh Vance was not serious. And the and, you know, it goes back to what Joe Kent said and something that we've always known.

This war has been dictated, or it has been uh carried out uh through dictates from the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. And it this is a continuation of that process.

So even though Trump seemingly wants an off-ramp, that's what we're always hearing from different people,right he's not the guy in charge. That's how I see it. Yeah.

Well, uh your point about Donald Trump may have uh dirty bones or uh lots of skeletons in the closet. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Donald Trump's entire uh economic and political history.

Now, uh but Professor Morandi, what you just said there, two things that people should definitely highlight out of them is, one, when you were talking about the Washington Post issuing a direct threat for Israel and the United States to kill the negotiators, to strike them as they were leaving, uh that happened

in the opinion section of the Washington Post. I want people to understand why that is. So the Washington Post is known as the CIA Washington Post because, uh you know, Amazon bought it and, you know, Bezos bought it when he was part of Amazon, and then he had a huge contract with the CIA.

But nonetheless, they actually got rid of their entire Middle East department. Like, every journalist, everyone who was any quote-unquote journalist, we know that they were always stenographers or what, but they got rid of the entire thing, uh as part of cuts to save money and all of this.

So actually, and this is a pattern we see throughout the Western mainstream media, and it's almost ironic, a lot of opinion pieces now in the corporate media, New York Times, Washington Post, et cetera, they actually, uh are in the opinion pieces, basically pushing for these kind of, and this being the one of the more egregious,

literal war crime, uh these kind of policies, the warmonger in the opinion section, not just there's no it's not it's not so much anymore that it'sright on the front page. It's you just got to go to the opinion section.

You read someone's opinion about why, uh, uh Israel and the United States should, you know, uh murder Professor Morandi here and the rest of the delegation, uh, attendees. Well, I'm I'm wasn't I'm I mean, let me be very blunt.

I'm probably one of the most high-profile people because I'm in media. Right. But I'm not a senior person in the delegation. I'm not an important person at all. It's the entire delegation. I mean, everyone was on the plane. I mean, you know, men, women, young, old.

And, uh, basically, everyone was, uh, even if they were saying, well, we wanted to take this. I mean, that's what the Americans and Israelis do. They usually wait till people go to their homes, both with in Iran, in Lebanon, in Gaza.

And when they say, okay, they okay, we know where his home is, let's say, he's gone, let's send him. Are there family? Yeah, of course. Kill them all. How about the neighbors? Kill them all. It doesn't matter. Kill everyone. That's their mentality.

We're dealing with a, uh, you know, very uncivilized and brutal people with a, you know, brutal base of of immoral, um, nature.

So, you know, so, you know, for us, you know, you know, in Lebanon, every day they're I mean, the Western media is saying nothing about the genocide in Lebanon. Now we have a second genocide. It is a genocide, and people should call it a genocide.

What what the Israeli regime is doing in Lebanon is exactly what it did in Gaza. They're targeting ambulances, medics, homes, men, women, children, double tap attacks day and night, bringing down apartment blocks.

And Western media is trying to hide it from you. They're trying to hide it from everyone because they're a bunch of criminals. Western journalists are a bunch of criminals. They're a bunch of murderers. Those Western, especially when it comes to Lebanon, they're more criminal than in Gaza. In Gaza, they pretended not to know.

Remember, they say, we don't have any journalists here, so we cannot, well, what, verify, you know, like they're bringing down hospitals. They're unplugging incubators and killing and intentionally murdering infants. And, you know, but, you know, they can't verify it.

Then weeks later, when it, you know, they they slowly admit things because they can't hide it forever, or months later or years later. In the case of Lebanon, they all have journalists there or stenographers. And, uh, and when I speak to some of them, I say, why do you say Hezbollah is strongholds? This is an ordinary neighborhood.

It says, I didn't write this. The the editor, the the the in wherever, he, like, makes the final decision. That's unacceptable. That's a a a lousy and unacceptable excuse.

If you if the editor is changing the meaning of what you write, then you should resign. But you have blood on your hands. You're no better than your the the person in charge who does this. So they're all a bunch of criminals than the mainstream media.

They are and they have people in Beirut, but they say, you know, Hezbollah targets, Hezbollah strongholds. Twitter does that. X does that too.

When they give you, you know, where they give you, like, the the news items that they think are more relevant to your interests and so on, they say the same thing, Hezbollah targets, you know, when they're wiping out family after family.

But, um, so, you know, the Western media is not just, you know, assassinating Iranians and bringing and murdering, mass murdering Iranians. That's what they do. That's who they are. You know, if they don't encourage it, they will not oppose it.

You know, when Trump says that he's going to, uh, he's going to, um, um, what was it, take Iran back to the Stone Age, or when he said that, um, that he's going to erase the civilization

from the face of the earth, or, or, uh, you know, what was the other thing he said, um, the other word he uses often when he speaks about the nuclear program, that he told the obliterate, when he said he'd obliterate Iran, he's been saying that for weeks.

Have you seen any Western media outrage, like The Guardian that pretends to be different, let's say? No. Or do you see any of those major Western journalists with their millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers put out tweets saying, this is outrageous, what have we turned into? We are the monsters.

No, no. They've because for them, this is this is, you know, they'reright. This is normal. Their abnormality is just as evil and disgusting as that of Trump's. They're no different. But he's more crude and bombastic, and they are more subtle, but they're the same thing.

They're they're criminal. Yeah. No, those are great points for some Morandi.

And, you know, uh now I wanted to continue to uh talk about the the state of this of this war because, uh as you just outlined there in terms of uh what's going on and the continued push uh of these lies in order to justify

the war, in order to um continue onward, the lack of outrage with it in the Western mainstream media, uh Iran is pressing forward with its demands, and it's pressing forward with its uh the delegation.

I remember hearing this from uh Iran uh before they even left.

They said something to the effect of, we are going to approach these talks from the perspective of maintaining and building upon achievements already won, which in uh general, when people think about wars, Professor Morandi, they don't usually think about any

side talking about this coming into negotiations, but especially the side that has been told to Americans by the Western mainstream media, by Donald Trump, by Pete Hegseth, et cetera, that Iran is losing, Iran is losing, Iran is obliterated, Iran's navy is gone, everything is gone. Uh We won, we won, we won.

But yet it's the United States that huffed out of there with uh abruptly changing the whole situation. And now it's the United States uh and Israel. I think people should note that Netanyahu was literally involved and engaged in these negotiations when he had absolutely no part to play in them.

He was uh dictating terms to the U.S. It's it's incredible. It's it it shows a huge uh uh it's a huge example of this decline that we talk about here of the empire.

But if you could just talk about how Iran is uh going to, you think, in the next days and weeks ahead, go about achieving these uh uh accomplishments or like moving forward with them and moving forward with their demands without any,

or at least without at least at the very moment, any prospect that the U.S. will concede them in any kind of negotiated and diplomatic process.

Well, you know, one interesting footnote is that I think that the name of the flight

to Islamabad was called

the Minab 168,right meaning the 168 little girls and some boys that were murdered in the city of Minab by the Trump regime and by Trump, the Trump's military,

and of course representative of a much greater slaughter that took place across the country for making many homophones and so on. Another unprovoked war, which is not condemned in the West at all in the media because they believe that they have theright to just kill and slaughter.

And just like they're doing in Lebanon now, you know, people should call them out. The Western media is assisting Netanyahu in the genocide. Western journalists in Beirut are assisting. Their overlords are assisting Netanyahu.

The whole political order in the West is assisting Netanyahu to carry out the genocide in Lebanon as we speak. But the Iranians are confident about their position. They won the war. When the war began, Trump said, unconditional surrender.

It was supposed to end immediately. It didn't. Then they said they're running out of missiles and drones and we're destroying all their underground bases and all their factories and there are no more missiles and drones.

After 40 days, Iran was firing more missiles and drones with much more devastating consequences than during than than the initial weeks of the war.

So then Trump, after, you know, evolving his position, he put out those fifth that 15-point plan. The Iranians rejected it and said, these are these violate our sovereignty.

And then the Iranians put forward their own 10-point plan, which Trump said he'll, you know, they'd expect that to be the framework of conversation now and the negotiations. Now, Iran didn't believe that Trump would expect would accept all 10 demands, which are all reasonable, by the way. Compensation.

You murdered people. You destroyed. Or, you know, kind of assurances that you cannot attack Iran again and so on. They're all very reasonable. Trump accepted a ceasefire. And in Lebanon, that was a part of the ceasefire.

In fact, they said the entire region, but Iran stressed the word Lebanon because that's where the genocide is taking place. He agreed. And the Prime Minister of uh of Pakistan said so repeatedly that that is a part of the ceasefire. And he wrote so.

But why did Iran why did Trump lie and exclude it? Because Netanyahu wanted it excluded. So who, again, is the boss? Is the boss the guy who tells Trump that you cannot have Lebanon as a part of the ceasefire that you agreed upon?

Or is it the guy who Vance calls and reports to, again, Netanyahu? Who is the boss? Of course. It's it's the it's one they're one and the same. He's the boss. The Zionist lobby is the boss. Again, going back to Joe Kent and his resignation letter, it's clear who the boss is.

The United States is controlled by the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. That's just how it is.

So but ultimately, when and now the the Zionist and Netanyahu, he was complaining that saying that, well, Iran did not abide by its ceasefire agreement because it it did not allow the expansion of uh of ships going from the

Strait of Hormuz. Well, Iran isn't doing it because you the Netanyahu violated the ceasefire. Iran is not allowing more ships to come and go because of Netanyahu. He is the reason for this. And the Strait of Hormuz is not closed. It never was closed.

It's closed to ship to countries that are hostile towards Iran. Well, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, they host U.S. bases. Their territory is being used to attack Iran. Their airspace is being used to attack Iran. They're not friends. But Iraq can export.

And countries like China and Russia and others that are friendly, their ships can can come and go. But this expansion was going to include these countries too that are hostile towards Iran. But Netanyahu effectively blocked it.

So but in any case, it was the United States that said unconditional surrender and ultimately accepted that framework. So if if if so it wasn't Iran that sought a ceasefire. It was the United States. Why? Because things were going very badly. Not only was Iran striking uh U.S.

assets across the region, but also the the global economy is heading towards a catastrophe, and it continues to move in that direction. Yeah.

And according to The Financial Times, uh the Trump administration was actually for weeks uh before the actual uh ceasefire took place uh reaching out uh to Iran. And Iran was not reciprocating uh for quite some time. Uh We discussed this. Right.

You and I discussed this. I I said that Iran wants this war to last longer. Right. We've been discussing this we discussed this ever since the war began. Iran is not looking for a quick end to the war.

Iran wants it to go on longer because Iran knows that the longer it lasts, the worse it is for the United States. And thus it creates a long-term uh um let's say it creates an incentive in the United States for the long run not to do this again. Yeah, definitely.

And uh that gets me to this, Professor Morandi. You know what? There's been a lot made. I it What's so interesting about this blockade now that Donald Trump is and the United States Navy, et cetera, are taking part in is that you mentioned the case of the two naval destroyers.

We covered this here too yesterday of uh that uh went in that or attempted to uh interdict the Strait of Hormuz and were immediately turned back. There's a 30-minute ultimatum. You have 30 minutes to get out of here or you're going to be attacked. Um And they hightailed out of there.

Uh That seems to me and a lot of people now have been saying, well, okay, if they can't get into the Strait of Hormuz, then maybe they will, uh you know, do what the United States did with Venezuela,right? They they they stopped tankers uh outside of territorial waters.

In the case of Venezuela, they did both territorial waters and outside of it.

But nonetheless, it seems like Iran not only has many options to counter this, but uh ultimately what we're seeing is uh this uh dictating of terms by Iran, that now Iran has so many and not only has options

to retaliate, but as this is being put into place by the United States, now Iran also has options to call whatever bluff the United States has. So the the the sea mines have been made. There's been a lot made about this. Uh Trump says, or the U.S.

says, uh Iran laid these mines. I don't know how to unmine them. So they don't know how to demine. So uh now everything's dangerous. That's why things are going to be troubled in the Strait of Hormuz. Uh uh But Iran is more than willing to escort tankers that are cooperative and that are not part of the hostile parties.

Uh And this includes, of course, Russia and China, where there's been a lot made about Russia and China having are going to have troubles. But we know from throughout the war that that hasn't really been the case. So I guess I'm seeing all the options kind of on Iran's side, and I'm not really seeing many for the U.S.

side other than this kind of rehashing of a it's almost like the jack in the box. You know, there's like the song that you keep spinning, and then eventually something comes out of the box, but it's the same song over and over again. We're going to obliterate. We're going to eliminate.

We're going to bomb, destroy all the ships, destroy the navy, destroy the country. We're going to hit, hit, hit if Iran doesn't listen to us. And then uh ultimately, we got talks, and now we have a strange, a very strange blockade in my assumption. So how do you see this moving forward?

This is a this is a very, I think, um what many might see as an odd time in the war because it comes within a ceasefire.

But uh uh the I think the writing is kind of on the wall about which side and which party in this war has initiative, has options, has uh choices, and which is running out of them.

Well, Trump does have options, but he's not using them. He he he can use an an off-ramp. And Iran, through negotiations, could have provided that opportunity. But uh Netanyahu won't have it. He he he wants escalation. He wants genocide.

He wants war and death and destruction. He wants the American people to pay for it, not anyone else. Uh So and you know the Iranians from the very beginning were thinking that there will be a blockade.

And they pursued policies to uh to to deal with those circumstances. So, for example, Iran used to I mean, Iran does trade with Pakistan, but Iran used to buy its rice from India.

And before the war, they shifted to Pakistan, and they can take oil and fuel from the border to Pakistan in return. So that's basically the Iranians were predicting this beforehand. The Americans did this, uh you know, a month and a half.

Uh And Iran has borders with many countries. It's a huge country. It has It's the size of France, Britain, and Germany combined, uh even bigger. And Iran has many neighboring countries that to do with trade. And as I said, Iran is self-sufficient in in many areas.

So it's not going to work. And the United States is going to harm its own image because it's telling it's dictating terms to countries like India and China and so on. It's going to make their lives more difficult. It's going to create a worse economic situation for the world and the American people.

And people will all see this as Zionism. Zionism carries out genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. Zionism carries out unprovoked wars. Zionism is ruining our lives because they're destroying the global economy.

So this is all downhill for the American regime and the Israeli regime. The Iranians will they will outlast, no doubt about it. We've discussed this during the war. I've always said that Iran will come out on top. Why would it not come out on top now?

And Trump is people inside the United States are increasingly unhappy. And you see major commentators turning against him, pro-Trump commentators, Tucker Carlson attacking him now, and others.

You know So I see this as and if Iran is hurt, there's no doubt about it. But the Iranians know that this is a fight for their own survival. And everyone across the world is being hurt. Who is being saved? The United States is not even sparing its proxies in the Persian Gulf, who who they milk.

Trump always speaks about milking these regimes. What is he doing to them? He's destroying them. And they will not survive. I mean, when the weather grows hot, if there's war and we're getting there, they won't survive. So you know this is where we are.

For Iran, it's as being a fight for survival. They will outlast the United States where and and and the world will attack the United States for and Trump for bringing about this misery upon them. And the American and the American people will increasingly be unhappy.

I don't see a victory for the United States at any point down the road. And of course, it's not really the United States. It's the Zionist lobby. American people are the ones who are suffering. And remember, I said this last time.

If I mean, when Clinton Hillary Leverett wrote that book going to Tehran, they provided all the solutions. But instead of listening to them, they listened to the likes of Netanyahu and attacked these two people. If they just listened to them, we wouldn't be where we are today. We wouldn't have war.

We wouldn't have this energy crisis.

But you know the people are in charge of the same people who Joe Kent alluded to.

You know, it seems that also Iran, what it has done, especially on the military front, what's been so interesting to watch is you know, um a lot many people were a bit concerned, it seemed, when there was a ceasefire called because there

is a narrative that many analysts talk about when it comes to ceasefires and pauses and this sort of thing, especially when it comes to Ukraine. And of course, we've had this with Iran uh during the June 12th Day War. It's like, okay, if there's a pause, then that means the aggressors have the opportunity to rearm and rebuild.

But now as the days go by and the weeks go by, Professor Morandi, I don't know if you've noticed, but look at what has happened to oil prices. Look at the reports that have come out about the damage done to Saudi oil, to Qatari gas, to I mean, on our Kuwait's oil.

I mean, it's uh across the board, the region has been changed, seems, permanently in Delhi. Like, there's no you can't turn this back anytime soon. And this is still basically a war situation.

So any attempts to rebuild these kind of things, energy systems, amid the lack of any kind of real, genuine peace and justice um uh for for Iran seems, uh I guess, foolish to even consider.

And it seems like Iran's also been counting, similar to how Russia has been counting what the U.S. has and how much they may have in terms of things like air defenses. It seems like Iran has been doing a similar thing. They they This this ceasefire cameright around the same time that reports came out that uh the U.S.

was running out of their standoff munitions, which it's kind of the perfect time to have a ceasefire because they can't really replace these standoff munitions. And the only other option is flying closer to Iran. And we already saw, Professor Morandi, what happened when F-15s, C-130s, et cetera, flew into Iran or close to Iran.

You know, they got hit. So that that was kind of what was facing the U.S. So there seems to be also this um time on Iran's side consideration, which maybe gets underplayed, not to mention the fact that now Donald Trump is you see he's lashing out at China.

He says, oh, China's in big trouble. Their intelligence reports that have no basis in reality about sending all these manpads to Iran are uh are are is going to happen, and they're going to be in big trouble, and we'll we'll hit them with something, economic tariffs or whatever.

Uh But nonetheless, it seems also that the Trump administration uh has big problems. It's like the oil prices continue to rise.

Now he's doing the same thing again, the Trump administration, where he targets the literal the literal thing that the oil markets and everyone in the Wall Street financial, uh big energy, big big petroleum, uh they want to see the opposite of. They don't want to see more restrictions, more blockades work.

They want to see the opposite. They want to be able to sell, sell, sell, and make their money. Trump's going after that. So and Israel's going after that, of course, as you make the good point.

So anyway, this situation seems very I guess there's this broad landscape, which I think is is getting undersold here as to why we just don't see a resumption of strikes by the United States just because the ceasefire talks fell through.

Actually, quite the contrary. All we hear is, well, now there's a blockade, and maybe the U.S. is trying to contact Iran still, and maybe the you know, we don't have any verification of those talks. But nonetheless, it's a different kind of atmosphere than where we were, what, three, uh two, three weeks ago.

I don't know if you have any uh reaction to these developments. No, you're you'reright. You're absolutely correct. And um and those who say, well, why did you accept a ceasefire to the Iranians? The Iranians are it's not as if the Iranians are on vacation now.

They're also preparing for the next round of war. And we discussed this, I think, before, when during the 12-Day War, Iran got the upper hand, and people were saying, well, why didn't they continue? Because if they continued, then the U.S. would enter the war.

And Iran saw its shortcomings and its problems during the 12-Day War that had to be addressed. And during the last eight months, they've been doing that. And today, we see that despite the immense firepower of the United States, which far outweighs that of the Israeli regime, the Iranian military is doing even better than during the 12-Day War.

Mm - hmm The Israeli regime is not a you know, a threat to Iran. Iran is much more powerful. It defeated it in you know, even though it carried out a Blitzkrieg attack on Iran, it turned the tide in days. And within nine days, they were the ones begging for a ceasefire.

Here, Iran is confronting a joint attack with all these proxies helping directly and indirectly, and the United States being far more powerful than the Israeli regime. And yet, Iran has the upper hand. There's no doubt about that. It wasn't Iran that sought a ceasefire.

So Iran, when it accepts a ceasefire, it is also working. It's not the Americans are bringing in new munitions, but so is Iran.

But the fact is that as the Americans are bringing in new new new munitions and Iran is preparing itself, the oil crisis, the LNG crisis, the fertilizer crisis, the petrochemical crisis, the lack of money being produced in these countries, these Arab family

dictatorships that goes to the U.S. stock exchange and the and the stock bond market and so on, all of this is accumulating. It is the problems are increasing by the minute, by the hour, by the day. And as I said, summer is approaching. Hot weather is approaching.

It's not going to be summer for these Arab regimes.

It's not July and August. It's it's you know, it gets very hot in May. Yeah.

And I don't know if you've also there have been reports. I know that you are aware, Professor Morandi, of the massive public turnout during the big threat that led to that I don't even know what to call it. It's always called a deadline by the Trump administration, by Donald Trump. Allright, oh, we're going to hit Iran's everything.

It's energy, it's bridges, everything. And we're going to do it all in one fell swoop in four hours. And it's going to happen 8:30 p.m. I forget what day it was. It was it was the day you know, the day that the ceasefire was called. That's what came out of it.

But Iranians in massive numbers came out and encircled their infrastructure and said, no, we're going to protect it with our very lives.

So if you do this, well, you're not OK, there we are. This is so weird.

Our image keeps on going away on the screen share. But nonetheless, we can still I think can still hear us. We are having, I think, with that situation, Professor Morandi, a scenario where Iran is also taking into consideration rebuilding.

It seems like Iran is rebuilding very fast a lot of infrastructure. It's focusing deeply on the trains, the bridges, et cetera, that Israel and the U.S. struck, the civilian infrastructure. That makes a big difference. That's also a big part of preparing for war.

Yeah, you know, you can you know, prepare your strategy, get the weapons you need together. Militaryally, there's a high moraleright now in the Iranian military. So preparing for whatever next steps might be coming, reviewing intelligence, all these military things. But then there's the, like, what Prezeshkin said.

He said, no, we're we're for the people. Like, this government is doing everything it can during these negotiations process to keep people in mind.

And rebuilding infrastructure in a rapid time says sends a pretty strong message to people that this is uh this war like, the fighting back against war is not simply just about, like, missiles, drones, air defenses, fast attack ships, whatever.

Uh It's also about ensuring that people are protected to the best extent possible and that their livelihoods are protected. All of that is pretty impressive.

And it's not happening in the U.S., where you have people crying over gas prices and not knowing where they're going to be uh because they can't afford uh to get to their jobs. They can't afford their rent anymore, et cetera, because gas prices are going up 21% in a month.

So uh and we're heading toward the last five minutes here, Professor Morandi, but any uh analysis, any reaction you have to this? Because I think this contrast is uh also a stark indicator of what is possible in a war like this moving forward.

I think the biggest miscalculation of the West is their orientalist it comes from their orientalist mindset and their lack of understanding of Iranians in particular and the resilience of the Iranian people. They like to talk about the regime and how it's despised by the people.

The so-called regime that it is, that is the people.

Just like those who were in the delegation and risked their lives going to Pakistan and coming back, the people, the other people, they risked their lives, young people predominantly, risked their lives by going to these power stations, telling the Americans, no, you cannot commit

these crimes against humanity. True, Western journalists support your crimes against humanity. True, Western elites support your crimes against humanity. True, you are agents of Zionism and the Zionist lobby.

And true, you're subordinate to the Israeli regime and its genocidal leadership and its genocidal mentality. But we are going to stand firm. We're going to stand here. We're going to stand our ground.

And those young men and women, like those young men and women on the flight, they are the same. They're And so they misread Iran at all levels. And they misread Iran's capabilities because they say it's an orientalist country. You just murder the martyr, the leader, and everything falls apart.

Well, nothing fell apart. Not a single you know, someone said this to me yesterday on the flight, on the way back, or maybe in the in the train on the way back to Tehran. I don't know. I don't remember. I think it was on the train.

He said to me that, you know, not a single government official during this war, they are a target, not a single commander, not top-ranking, middle-ranking, not a single person resigned across the country in any ministry, in any, you know, not a single person left.

When we flew, all the people on the flight who were invited came. When we flew back, not a single person said, I will stay behind for a couple of days and, I don't know, go and look around Islamabad and, you know, do some sightseeing, which they could do. Not a single person did that.

And, you know, that, I think, is a and so the people held this the country together during a week when we didn't have a leader.

The people are the ones who are the the for and the armed forces, the fact that they kept firing missiles and drones and defending when they had didn't have a leader shows their competence, their sophistication, the sophistication of the state.

All of those orientalist tropes, you know, that they're just, you know, despots and everything is, you know, falls apart and they're you know, you just fire one of those sophisticated missiles of yours and everything, the whole military will collapse. All of that is gone.

Iran did something unprecedented. And, Danny, when I was in Islamabad, the Iranians were treated as heroes everywhere they went.

Mm - hmm At the hotel, the the people who who kindly cleaned the rooms, the people in the restaurant, the people at the door, the people in the at the uh media center, the drivers, everyone. I had never seen such a thing before in my life.

Like, we're just ordinary people. Mm - hmm Everyone viewed us as heroes. I mean, not like me, but like the delegation in Iran. And yeah, and in Iran and, you know, the the the, you know, the Iranian people and the Iranian leadership, it was it was extraordinary.

They were extraordinarily kind. So they're extraordinarily.

Seems like, Professor Morandi, you might have frozen. I don't know if you can hear me, but yep. Yeah, I don't know why you're frozen. Your audio isn't coming through anymore. So just give a holler when it is back.

No problem at all.

Yeah, I mean, if people people understand uh Israel, the United States, especially Israel in the region, but the United States too, uh those images of uh those videos we saw early in this war in Bahrain and elsewhere of people filming, cheering.

We saw it during the 12-Day War too in the region, Jordan, et cetera. Uh People really uh when they see a force fighting back like Iran, many people are going to support it. Uh And many people are going to uh uh align with it.

And so really what it's taking now is uh it looks like Professor Morandi has to come back and we will uh close up once he does get his final points. But uh it really what uh the the the writing on the wall, hey, here he is. Uh I was just saying to I was just yeah, I was just saying a final note.

While people in Pakistan viewed Iran as heroic and Iranians as heroes, they despised the United States. Everyone hated them. Everyone hated Vance and Witkoff and Kushner and Trump. It's universal.

Yeah And why is that the case? Because they know which side is sinister and which side is the victim. Mm - hmm So hopefully one day the American people will be able to liberate themselves from this uh this menace. Yeah, in the region too.

I was talking about the region and you know, you mentioned Pakistan, but we've been seeing videos, images of people celebrating, looking at on, you know, recording uh Iranian strikes and things like this since the 12-Day War ended in this one.

And uh and the censorship was much worse in this, uh you know, uh period, the how however long it was, over a month, six weeks of uh active kinetic war. Censorship was so bad.

But we we know, Professor Morandi, as you said, people are not they're they're they understand in the the region uh which side their governments are on, which side uh Israel and the United States fit on versus uh Iran's. And now the the region's at a tipping point.

The whole global order is at a tipping point. And it's moving in Iran's direction. It's moving in uh countries that are are are uh you know, in their own way, uh fighting back uh and doing what they can to develop independently.

And that's uh it's a it's a very dangerous uh period, I think, for the U.S. Empire.

But also, I think it shows that uh despite the hard times that we have, uh you know, we have a kind of uh roadmap that's being developed uh that is, you know, that's going to continue to be uh the bricks

are going to be continued to be laid uh for that road. And uh we're going to have to see where things go from here. But uh nonetheless, I think desperation is the word to describe where the U.S. is and Israel is at this moment in this war.

But Professor Morandi, any final thoughts as we uh close out here um today? It was a great show. No, thank you very much.

Just uh people should uh create awareness more push to create more awareness because Western media is trying to hide the reality of what's going on in Lebanon, that there's a second genocide uh initiating and Zionist expansionism is being brought about.

And Western media is trying to help them along the way. And so is social media. So we should all be more active and exposing. And of course, hopefully Iran will do what is necessary to help defeat the Zionist entity. Yeah, for sure.

Uh Lebanonright now, all eyes because especially now that this war is at the current period it's in in Iran and the forces of resistance, the ISIS resistance, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and the resistance in Lebanon, uh they're fighting for that.

They're fighting for that ceasefire to stop the wreckage that Israel is causing. Um And uh all eyes should be on it. So everyone, do do exactly what Professor Morandi says. After the show, definitely hit the like button as you leave. All the places to support this show are in the video description.

Uh You can find uh Professor Mohammed Morandi on X, and I will be putting that now in the video description of this show. Without further ado, everyone, uh I'll be back again soon. Somebody said I look really jet lagged in the uh comments.

I am very, very, very jet lagged. It's like hit me pretty hard in the last 24 hours. So I'll be back. Uh I'll let you know when, but uh it's time to rest now. So hit the like button, get the um, you know, uh, uh, uh get the video description going for all of you.

If you can hit the like button, Professor Morandi will be heard far and wide. Allright, everyone, take care, and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye.