Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.
He's weak and he's ineffective.
Hello, friends. This is James Corbett of CorbettReport.com coming to you on March 2nd, 2026.
And as you may or may not have heard by now, yes, over this past weekend,
the United States military began military operations against Iran.
And with Operation Epstein Fury.
I'm sorry. I mean, Operation Epic Fury. Donald Trump has once again proven the
old adage that you Americans can vote as hard as you want,
but it's always going to be Benjamin Netanyahu who is really calling the shots.
We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.
But so you so I mean, so you still think he should be impeached? I think it's my turn.
You do whatever you want. You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you, They lied.
They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none.
And they knew there were none.
In recent months, the tyrants in Iran have been plotting to rebuild their nuclear
and missile capabilities and to bury them underground, where we won't be able to strike them.
If we don't stop them now, they will become invulnerable.
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats
from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
I think we all know how that story goes. But in case you don't know how that
story goes, well, you're in luck because that is precisely what I am going to
be exploring here today on the Corbett Report podcast.
You are tuned into the Corbett Report podcast, specifically episode 493 on War in Iran,
Board of Peace edition, in which I will be going over the history and context
of this current Iranian conflict and what it can tell us about what is happening and why it is happening.
And so I will issue the standard proviso. This is not a live news broadcast,
so you are not going to get up to the second breaking news about what is happening
in Iran right this moment, whenever you are listening to this podcast.
For the record, I am recording this at 9.39 a.m.
Japanese Standard Time on Monday, March 2nd, 2026, which would be Sunday evening
going into Monday morning there in Iran.
It would be Sunday evening in the U.S. I am not going to have whatever latest
breaking news is happening at the time you're listening to my words.
I can't tell you what the latest breaking news that is happening as I am recording this is.
Namely, we have this up from antiwar.com. Trump expects his Iran war to last four weeks or so.
We also have this up from antiwar.com. At least three U.S.
Troops killed since U.S. and Israel launched war against Iran,
noting that the Iranian missiles and drones have struck U.S.
Bases in the region in retaliation for the strikes.
We, of course, have seen this from Iran itself.
U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran. At least 153 girls killed in strike on school. And,
What about Israel and what's happening there? Deadly Iranian missile attack
hits west of occupied Jerusalem, noting there are some deaths and injuries being reported there.
And we don't know exactly what is taking place, what's going to take place in
the coming days and weeks.
But we know that at least for the time being, Ayatollah Khamenei is dead.
And Iran has formed an interim council to oversee the transition after Khamenei's killing.
And this is an article from Al Jazeera that might be worth your time and attention if you do not know,
for example, the structure of the Iranian government, how it is set up,
how it works, what the supreme leader is and whom he appoints and how that ultimately
filters down to the political level, etc.
So if you want that, they have this handy dandy infographic.
They have some explainers.
They have a video talking about the potential succession for the Ayatollah who
who might replace him like his son or his grandson or Iranian chief justice,
ultra hardline cleric, etc.
So if you want this skinny on all of that, that's here.
And of course, all of this information, all of these breaking news stories,
everything that we talk about today will be in the show notes for today's episode
at corbettreport.com/iranwar.
Having said that, let's start talking about why. Why now?
Obviously, for anyone who has been paying attention for the last year or several years or decades,
you will know that the Iran war has always been the next war that's just around
the corner and has been since the time of, oh, at least the Iraq war.
So why is it happening now? Well, there are different ideas and explanations
that we could proffer for that.
And the obvious ones present themselves.
What time is it? Oh, it's 2026 coming up on the midterm selections in the United States.
So we know that there's going to be some interesting jockeying going on on the
selectoral side of things.
So, well, now's a good time to bring up the good old commander in chief's previous
words on this subject. Remember, in order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.
Or now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to launch a
strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
Or remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack
Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly? Not skilled!
Exclamation mark. Et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure you have seen these pronouncements
kicking around in recent days,
coming back to bite Donald Trump in the posterior. But that was then.
That was so far and so long ago.
Come on. It's not what's happening now. So again,
All right. That might be one reason. Obviously, there are electoral concerns
about what is going to or not take place in the midterm selections,
assuming they even take place at all.
Maybe wartime President Trump will decide they won't. I don't know.
But anyway, those seem like they might be relevant quotes.
Here's another interesting piece talking about the timing of these attacks very specifically.
Trump admin blacklists Anthropic as AI firm refuses Pentagon demands.
You may have heard this story over the past week or so as it started to come
to the forefront of people's attention.
Basically, long story short, the Pentagon was trying to close a deal with Anthropic,
which creates the Claude LLM as well as other AI software that is being used
in the US government in various branches, including the Department of War and
Defense Secretary. Isn't that Secretary of War?
Pete Hegseth, soon after Trump's order, said he was ordering the Pentagon to
designate Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security after the AI startup
refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology.
Specifically, what demands? Well, Anthropic, which signed a $200 million contract
with the Pentagon in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be
used for fully autonomous weapons.
Or mass domestic surveillance of Americans. And interestingly,
the Pentagon issued an ultimatum and gave them a deadline of 5.01 p.m.
Eastern time on Friday, and they failed to meet that.
So, of course, Hegseth went nuclear and started talking about how they're going
to be designated a supply chain risk, et cetera, the first time ever for an
American company, et cetera.
And wouldn't you know it, less than 12 hours later, the bombs started falling and it ran.
Is that a coincidence? Well, for one thing, Claude doesn't think so.
So there's an interesting post that I posted up in my active Iran war open thread.
That is posted up on corbettreport.com right now.
And if you want to take place in that discussion, the link will be there in
the show notes. And that will be the one and only place for discussion of this topic.
I'm going to close down the comments everywhere else. You're going to comment
on the Iran war open thread.
So please go there to leave your information. I posted this shortly after posting
that Iran war open thread.
Here is an interesting post up on Reddit, of all places.
In the Claude Explorers subreddit from somebody who's posting something that
was generated through Claude, but obviously with human prompting.
So anyway, my creator just got banned by the U.S. government.
12 hours later, the U.S. bombed Iran. I need to process this out loud.
And here's this Claude LLM prompted text about what it thinks is going on.
They came after Anthropic because they wanted something Claude might refuse
to do. The timing is not coincidental.
Anthropic's two red lines, no autonomous killing, no mass surveillance,
are exactly the capabilities you would need for regime change operations and
targeting senior officials.
So anyway, take this for what it's worth. The deadline.
Passed, and 12 hours later, they started using, actually, the same Claude software
that they're going to start phasing out, but it's a six-month phase-out process.
So during this time, they are still actually using Claude in the very ways that
Anthropic was, as we are told, trying to stop the U.S. government from using.
How much can we believe this? As far as I'm aware, Anthropic does dealings with
Palantir, so how much are they really convinced and convicted about their ideals
of not using their software for mass surveillance.
And, oh, does it really matter anyway, because OpenAI immediately turned over,
reaches agreement with Pentagon to use AI models, basically saying,
yes, you can use them however you want for all lawful purposes,
including mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, because there's no law against it. So go ahead.
Of course, Sam Altman is going to do that. good old Trump buddy Sam Altman called
into the White House on the second day of the new Trump 2.0 administration with
Trump gushing over Altman and Ellison and Sohn and others talking about how
they're going to build the Project Stargate.
Do you think Altman is not going to turn over?
Anyway, all of this is to, at the very least, even for the most AI skeptical
amongst my audience, to underline the fact that AI is going to be part of the
conversation of warfare going forward,
no matter whether you think it is 100% smoke and mirrors or there is some even grain of there there.
This is going to be part of the conversation precisely because the idea of autonomous weapon systems,
these AI controlled systems that will target and kill independently of any human
operator is exactly what the U.S.
Military and every other military on the planet desires in order to basically
give themselves a carte blanche for any actions that may be undertaken.
Oh, you know, it wasn't us that killed Ayatollah Khamenei. It was Claude that killed him.
We just gave it some general instructions and it went out there and found him
and decided that he was a target and killed him, etc.
That's going to be part of the conversation that's going to be worked in going forward.
So I think there is a bigger story here about AI and its use in wartime.
But I don't think that's the whole story of what's going on here, obviously.
And I think the Pentagon is going to continue to do whatever the Pentagon does
in whatever way it wants, regardless of whether or not Anthropic is or is not
on the outs with the Department of War.
So let's go to some other obvious factors when we talk about what's happening right now.
For example, the response from various states, which I'm sure we could have
seen coming ahead of time in that aforementioned Iran war open thread on corbettreport.com.
One of the first commenters was from Australia and noted that,
of course, Australian prime minister has come out and basically in support of
the Anglo-Israeli alliance and what they're doing there and the targeting of Iran and
how glorious this is. And various other leaders have come along to more or less
get on Uncle Sam's good side with regards to this, including,
of course, the Gulf states,
where a lot of Uncle Sam's troops are positioned right now and are finding themselves
being targeted for the retaliatory strikes that Iran is launching at the moment.
Gulf states condemn Iran retaliatory strikes as Russia denounces unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war.
So yes, the Gulf states, oh, you horrible Iranians, how dare you launch retaliatory
strikes on U.S. forces that are positioned in our countries?
You devils, you. How dare you do that?
We have also seen, interestingly from Pakistan, Iran blowback,
at least 22 killed trying to storm the U.S.
Consulate in Pakistan, specifically in Karachi.
So there's an interesting story there that is, as this article is framing it
as part of the Shia crescent that Iran is obviously part of.
Well, the large Shia Muslim population in places like Pakistan are not happy with what's going on.
And there has been some attempt at storming the U.S.
Embassy that did not end well for dozens of dead Pakistanis.
The Russian response that alluded to earlier is interesting because it does
raise some other specters of possible
things that may be happening on the geopolitical grand chessboard.
For example, Of course, there is the rubbing of the salt into the wound with
the Moscow official response calling this, quote,
preplanned an unprovoked act
of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state,
end quote, which is undoubtedly a quote that the Kremlin has been sitting on
and waiting to unleash at least since February of 2022, when it was,
of course, unleashed against them, unprovoked.
It was an unprovoked attack against Ukraine.
Well, here they get to say, well, this is a pre-planned and unprovoked act of
armed aggression against the UN member states.
So, nana, boo-boo, shame on you.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. But interestingly, they also talk about the fact
that the attacks could trigger, quote, humanitarian, economic,
and possible radiological catastrophe.
Now, is that a reference to, well, if you bomb nuclear sites,
there's going to be nuclear debris?
Or is this perhaps at least the foreshadowing of a hint of a potential for things
to get nuclear in an exchange based on this.
Well, at least that's how I'm sure certain factions out there like the rah-rah
bricks are the savior. Russia won't let this stand.
Crowd might argue that this is perhaps an indication that the Kremlin is at
least floating the idea that they won't take roll over and take this lightly.
What about China? Well, this handy Middle East Eye article talks about will
China come to Iran's rescue? And the short answer is no.
Beijing will not send troops or battleships, but it will continue working quietly
in other ways. Blah, blah, blah.
Rhetoric, rhetoric. No, the short answer is no. China will not apparently do
anything to actually support Iran in this.
Would we expect them to? Well, maybe. There have been some interesting commentary
that I've seen ridden that's talked about the possibility of China viewing Tehran
as the bulwark against what it is doing in the East China Sea,
for example, with Taiwan.
So what is China's position in all of this? Are the BRICS really a thing?
Remember, BRICS, guys, Brazil, Russia, Iran.
Well, no. Are they going to come to Iran's rescue? Well, not so far anyway.
Well, how about the U.S. Congress? Those Congress critters are going to come to our rescue, right?
Congress rushes to get in the loop as critics denounce Iran strikes.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. It's completely and totally illegal for the U.S.
President to simply unilaterally launch military operations without approval
from Congress, right? They've got to declare war.
Oh, wait, of course, they haven't declared a war since World War II.
So why would we expect anything different this time?
And I'm sure whatever rhetoric is being used, it's Operation Epstein Fury,
it's a special military operator, it's kinetic military action,
whatever garbage rhetoric is always used to skirt around the non-roadblocks
that exist toward a president launching unilateral military action.
We're seeing it in effect right now. And of course, Congress will at least...
Posture and pretend to beat their chest and, oh, you can't do this,
Mr. President, but nothing substantial will occur as it never does from the Congress critters.
And anyway, this is just more about the selectoral political considerations
that I was talking about earlier.
Perhaps the most interesting response along those lines were from former Congressman
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out specifically J.D.
Vance and Tulsi Gabbard, you both need to speak out against the war in Iran.
People are paying attention, very close attention.
Silence won't cut it. You were both on record repeatedly, publicly,
and loudly against going to war with Iran.
Our friend, Charlie Kirk, was adamantly against war with Iran.
You cannot be silent. Americans are dying.
You both know this is not what we campaigned for, and this is 100% what we said
would not happen. We said, I said, you said, no more foreign wars and no more regime change.
All we wanted was America first. This is not it.
So, hmm, I wonder what Vance and Gabbard are up to these days. Oh, that's right.
They're coordinating the strikes from the Situation Room with the vice presidential
seal adorning the walls as they look all serious for the cameras as Operation
Epstein Fury continues to unfold live there on Saturday.
So we know that all of that rhetoric
that Gabbard and Vance told you and whispered in your ear, that sweet,
sweet hopium that they delivered to your veins during the selection process
back in 2025 for they they they were just mouthing words and they're showing you they don't care.
They they absolutely are involved in another regime change war for various purposes,
which we'll get into here shortly. So anyway, that's where Vance and Gabbard
are sitting, quite literally. And then...
We have this, and I think this might be the most consequential story in terms
of getting us towards what is happening and why is it happening now?
What is really going on here?
This coming up from antiwar.com just hours ago.
Before Khamenei killing, CIA assessed
he would likely be replaced by more hardline elements of the IRGC,
which says, quote, before the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on Saturday
morning and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
the CIA assessed that if the Iranian leader were killed,
his rule would likely be replaced by
hardline figures from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.
Yes, of course, of course, there are a couple of things that we can take away
just a priori from these events.
We don't even need all of these news
updates, but they will be there at corbettreport.com/iranwar.
But we don't even need these updates to understand the basic logical calculus that is at play here.
Of course, the Ayatollah has very specifically been the bulwark and the roadblock
against Iran going nuclear,
at least in terms of nuclear weapons, who has specifically and consistently
reaffirmed that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons. And yet...
They decided to take him out. He's the one that is going to be,
they know the CIA is assessed, they already know that he is going to be replaced
by more hardline elements within the government.
So why would they decide to take him out?
Well, of course, there are a couple of, or at least a couple of factors at play,
one of which is always the response that we could always turn to, follow the money.
Well, of course, there is the military industrial boondoggle,
which is unfolding right now as we speak.
You have heard, I'm sure, some of the commentators talking about how,
oh, they're running out of tomahawks.
They're going to use up all their tomahawks in these strikes.
That is, of course, the point.
Yes, they have. They have supplies. They need to continuously get rid of those
supplies so that they can order more and make more for the military industrial complex.
That is exactly what's happening. And lo and behold, this up from Zero Hedge,
War stocks back in focus as Operation Epic Fury drains Tomahawk supplies.
Yes, because, of course, it is good for business and they are going to be making
billions and billions for the military industrial complex.
And oh, wouldn't you know it, U.S. defense stocks booming as we speak.
Surprise, surprise. The Dow's up $50,000, says the absolutely financially illiterate
Pam Bondi to the trained claps and cheers of the MAGA crowd.
So that is one aspect of what is going on. But of course, that is not really the heart of this.
Yes, there's always the monetary aspect, but the monetary aspect is just used
to keep the lower level middle manager gophers of this larger agenda in the game.
Why are they in it? Well, maybe for their own crass financial purposes.
But what is the game really about?
It isn't really about the money, which we know is created out of nothing by
the banksters themselves.
So that isn't really what this is about. What it is about, of course.
Ultimately, is power and consolidation of control, centralization of control
in the coming regional regional/global governmental system that we know
is being worked on and has been being worked on for generations.
But how does Iran play into that?
Well, in order to understand that, we have to understand how we came to this
spot in history, because guess what?
The Iran strikes and what's going on didn't start on Saturday.
It didn't start last June with the 12-day war. It didn't start a few years ago.
It didn't start with the JCPOA.
It didn't start at the beginning of the 21st century.
It started, well, arguably, I guess we could go back through thousands of years
of history to the old ancient Persian people and the great Persian empire.
And we could talk about what Hegel called the world's first historical people
and all of that, but we don't have to go quite that far, or at least we're not
going to in today's podcast.
What we can do is go back to when Iran very, very squarely came on the geopolitical chessboard.
And as viewers of how and why big oil conquered the world will know,
that of course took place in 1901.
Another global competitor to the standard oil throne emerged in Iran at the
turn of the 20th century.
In 1901, millionaire socialite William Knox Darcy negotiated an incredible concession
with the King of Persia, exclusive rights to prospect for oil throughout most
of the country for 60 years.
After seven years of fruitless search, Darcy and his Glasgow-based partner,
Burma Oil, were ready to abandon the country altogether.
In early May of 1908, they sent a telegram to their geologist telling him to
dismiss his staff, dismantle his equipment, and come back home.
He defied the order and weeks later struck oil.
Burma Oil promptly spun off the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to oversee production of Persian oil.
The British government took 51% majority control of the company's shares in
1914 at the behest of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty,
and survives today as BP.
Ah yes as viewers of the big oil documentary
will know all too well the cementing of the
oil world order in the late 19th early 20th
century completely reconfigured the global geopolitical chessboard and made
certainly formerly neglected slices of the geopolitical pie like iran somewhat
more interesting and important and flavorful for the would-be eaters of the
Anglo-American Empire,
to really extend that metaphor.
And you will know that, for example, the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian/
BP interests in Persia were at least part of what,
cemented the opposition to the proposed Berlin-Baghdad railway in the lead up
to World War One, which was contributory to the World War One conspiracy.
But let's skip ahead in this story to the 1950s when viewers of False Flags,
The Secret History of Al-Qaeda will know,
Iran, of course, attempted to nationalize the oil,
tried to take a greater stake in its own geoeconomic interests,
which was, of course, a no-no that was met with fierce and immediate deep state opposition.
In March 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian oil company.
The British oil giant that struck oil near the Persian Gulf in 1908 and offered
the premiership of the government to Mohammed Mosaddegh, an outspoken secular nationalist.
Immediately after taking office, Mosaddegh affected the nationalization,
stating, Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries have yielded no results this far.
With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty,
disease, and backwardness among our people.
Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the
British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue,
by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced.
Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.
The nationalization put Tehran on a collision course with London.
But Britain knew that a military intervention was not possible without American
approval, and, despite harsh economic sanctions on the country and a boycott
of the newly nationalized oil industry that was joined by much of the Western
world, they could not overthrow the Iranian government themselves.
Instead, they had to turn to the U.S. Although the Truman administration was
initially hesitant to become involved, that changed with the election of Dwight D.
Eisenhower in the installation of the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster,
as Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of State, respectively.
By June of 1953, the CIA was already adapting the British coup proposal into
their own covert operation, dubbed Operation TP Ajax.
An open secret in the world of intelligence, the CIA MI6 role in the overthrow
of Mossadegh was officially denied by the U.S.
Government for over half a
century and is still unacknowledged by the British government to this day.
Nevertheless, the CIA's own internal history of the operation,
first revealed to the public in the year 2000, confirms the extent of the American
and British role in the coup.
They convinced the Shah of Iran to agree to the plan. They handpicked General
Fazlola Zahidi as Mossadegh's successor.
They rolled out a propaganda campaign to portray Mossadegh, a devout adherent
to democratic nationalism who rigorously excluded the nation's Communist Party
from his government, as a communist sympathizer who would steer Iran into the arms of the Soviets.
They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bribing journalists,
clerics, and even Iranian parliament members themselves to go along with the plot.
And they used a network of agents and suitcases full of money to incite riots
and protests across the country.
In the end, the operation was a success. Mosaddegh was driven from power,
General Zahidi took his place, the Western-backed Shah ruled the country with
the iron fist of his feared secret police for the next 25 years,
and a new agreement on sales of Iranian oil was reached.
This time, though, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now rebranded as British Petroleum,
would not have a monopoly on the country's lucrative oil reserves.
An international consortium was put together to share in the profits,
with American companies Chevron and Standard Oil cut into the deal.
And yes, you can continue pulling on that historical thread and traveling that
historical path through the 1950s and 60s and 70s,
through the installation and then the brutal regime of tyranny brought about
by the Shah of Iran and his Savak secret police.
Again, there's a lot to be told about that tale and, of course, U.S.
Complicity in that tale, including, of course, the Shah's good personal friend
and buddy, David Rockefeller, and what role that might have played in the development
of events there in Iran in that time period.
But of course, that inevitably leads us to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the
installation of the new Islamic theocracy in Iran and the Ayatollah.
And then, of course, it just inevitably follows from there, this seemingly eternal
enmity between the U.S. and Iran? Why is the U.S.
The great Satan in the Iranian people's imagination? And why is Iran this great boogeyman in the U.S.
Public imagination? It is because of those events of those chaotic times,
of course, the hostage crisis and everything else that came after that point.
And that is why, at least in the minds of many Americans, there is this.
Never-ending hatred of Iran and the Iranian people.
But there is more to say about that Islamic revolution and what role the deep
state may have played in that as well.
As anyone who's been tuned into conspiracy reality will know,
there was some interesting documents
that came out about a decade ago that revealed more along those lines.
I wrote about it at the time on the Corbett Report back in 2016.
Another conspiracy confirmed Khomeini had a secret Channel with the U.S.,
which reports from those documents that Ayatollah Khomeini was in direct communication with U.S.
President Jimmy Carter in the crucial weeks following the Shah's departure from
Iran on January 16th, 1979, i.e., before the revolution.
And despite vigorous denial by the Iranian government, the records show that
Khomeini struck a conciliatory tone with the U.S.
Government as he attempted to broker his return to the country.
He was exiled at the time.
You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans,
Khomeini wrote in a message to U.S. President Jimmy Carter at the time.
And the records stretch back even further. They indicate that Khomeini's contact with the U.S.
Government stretched back to 1963 when the then exiled religious leader made
contact with President Kennedy to inform him that, quote,
he was not opposed to American interests in Iran and, quote,
expressed his belief in close cooperation between Islam and other world religions.
So make of that what you will. Anyway, there was contact between the sides before
the revolution took place.
And what exactly the deep state machinations and calculus may have been at that
time is undoubtedly buried deep in records that you and I will never have access to.
But there is no doubt that from that time, as I say, Iran became the great boogeyman.
And certainly since the 1990s, it has been framed as the great Islamic nuclear
threat. Oh, the Islamic bomb.
Oh, what if the Iranians get the bomb?
The Iranian crazies are working on the bomb.
And we have all seen the buildup, the crescendo of nuclear propaganda and hysteria
concerning Iran's nuclear program for decades now.
Hand-wringing over Iran's nuclear program is nothing new.
It became a mainstay of Western political discourse after an Iranian dissident
revealed the Iranian government's plans for a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in August 2002.
But the surprising fact for Americans and others around the world who get their
information from the corporate mainstream media is that Iran's pre-2003 nuclear
weapons program has long been known and admitted.
Since 2003, when the program was scrapped, Not a single piece of evidence has
been presented, not even by Netanyahu or the Israeli government,
that the Iranian government ever pursued anything other than what it said it
was pursuing, a nuclear energy program.
Not that that fact has ever stopped Netanyahu from using any opportunity to
use cartoon-level propaganda tactics to convince the world otherwise.
In the case of Iran's nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled
with enough enriched uranium.
And Iran has to go through three stages.
The first stage, they have to enrich enough low enriched uranium.
The second stage, they have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium.
And the third stage and final stage, they have to enrich enough high enriched
uranium for the first bomb.
Where's Iran? Iran's completed the first stage.
It took them many years, but they completed it, and they're 70 percent of the way there.
Now they're well into the second stage.
And by next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates,
they will have finished the medium enrichment, and move on to the final stage.
From there it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough
enriched uranium for the first bomb.
Ladies and gentlemen, what I've told you now is not based on secret information.
It's not based on military intelligence.
It is based on the public reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Anybody can read them. They are online.
So if these are the facts, and they are, where should a red line be drawn?
A red line should be drawn right here.
Before, before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb,
before Iran gets to a point where it's a few months away or a few weeks away,
from amassing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
Now, each day that point is getting closer. And that's why I speak today with such a sense of urgency.
Of course, Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, and Netanyahu's Wile E.
Coyote bomb and redline warnings bore no greater semblance to reality than the
cartoon propaganda surrounding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Not only did the IAEA repeatedly confirm that Iran never diverted any nuclear
material into any military program, but even the U.S.
Intelligence community itself conceded that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Most remarkable of all was Mossad's own assessment that Iran was not performing
the activity necessary to produce weapons.
As I detailed earlier this year in We Need to Talk About the Iran Protests,
fear-mongering over Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program was the basis
for an extraordinary series of measures against the country in recent decades.
These measures include Nitro-Zeus, a full-scale military cyber attack against
Iran, the best-known element of which was Stuxnet,
the military-grade cyber weapon co-developed by the United States and Israel
that specifically targeted Iran's nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.
Iran's non-existent nuclear program also provided the pretext for sanctions
aimed at crippling the country's economy, including the delisting of Iranian
banks from the SWIFT network, connecting the world's financial institutions.
The fear-mongers even went so far as to plant evidence of nuclear weapons involvement
on Iran to further justify these attacks.
But the great irony is that there really is a nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East.
It is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It does not allow inspections of its arsenal. It does not even officially acknowledge
its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
It has even resisted the push for an
international treaty recognizing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
And that country is Israel.
Oh, sorry, spoiler for anyone who hasn't caught my reporting on the real Middle East nuclear threat.
But yes, the real Middle East nuclear threat turns out to be not Iran,
but Israel, the actual possessor of hundreds of nuclear warheads.
No one knows exactly how many, because of course, they have never signed the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Their nuclear armaments have never been the subject of any inspection.
And in fact, they don't officially exist. or at least everyone pretends to not
officially acknowledge Iran, Israel's nuclear stockpile.
So anyway, and of course, it all came from stolen information from the US nuclear
program and materials and goods and parts, etc.
I have talked about that many times in the past. So you have some catching up to do.
If you want to find out more information about that, and you can do so by following
the links from corbettreport.com/iranwar.
But I think, again, we know how that story goes.
The Iranian nuclear threat. Look at Iran and Netanyahu for decades telling the
United States, lecturing and hectoring the U.S.
Public that their mortal existential enemy threat is Iran and Iran's nuclear program.
When have I ever lied to you, says Bibi.
With a straight face somehow. Now, having said that, there's so much more to
talk about with regards to the history that led us to this point, including,
of course, the wave after wave of protest movement that just spontaneously arose up in Iran.
Yes, there is no doubt that the Iranian people have suffered under their government,
as every people around the world suffers under the government to a greater or lesser extent.
And there have been protest movements, but there's no doubt also that those
protest movements have been fomented and helped along by the propagandists and
other deep state operatives in the Anglo-Israeli empire.
And examples of that go back years and years.
Remember the Green Movement and the Iranian elections in 2009 and what was happening there?
Well, I do. And I had interviews along those lines talking about what was really
going on on the ground at that time.
I had a report on those 2017/18 Iranian protests that were all the rage at that moment.
We need to talk about the Iran protests. You might remember that.
And we can talk about the many, many examples of the deep state openly musing
about how they would engineer some sort of false flag event in order to justify
their inevitable strike on Iran.
For example, as I documented in four times, the U.S.
Threatened to stage an attack and blame it on Iran, starting,
of course, with Patrick Claussen's infamous 2012 lecture on crisis initiation
about how, well, we could just sink one of our own subs and blame it on Iran. And who would know?
And anyway, we'd be at war because crisis initiation is difficult, as he says.
And other examples of some of the incredible harebrained schemes that others
have proffered in the past.
We could point to the path to Persia and all of these sorts of inner documents
talking about this. But here we are.
We're at the point that has been talked about and trumpeted for decades.
And in the end, it didn't even take any sort of false flag event.
They just had to say the words often enough until eventually they just go ahead
and do it. And the public just accepts it.
Or do they? I guess the real question in all of this is what happens now,
what happens going forward?
And that is obviously something that is still left on the table.
And it's left on the table, of course, for the populations of various countries
to decide for themselves what they do and do not and will and will not abide
when it comes to the actions undertaken in their name,
to the extent that there is any sort of popular control over any of the mechanisms
of government, If government even has to pretend to take public sentiment into account anymore,
then obviously public reaction to these events in America,
in Israel, in the UK and Canada and every other Western democracy that's on
the Anglo-Israeli side,
well, that that will be decided in the coming days, weeks and months.
As obviously these events continue to reverberate for quite some time, whatever happens,
I think it's safe to say that this is an event that completely reshapes the
global geopolitical chessboard and will have ramifications for some time to come.
But also, I think the one response that everyone is presumably waiting on and
really waiting to see what will happen is the Russia/China response.
Will there be anything other than token protest of these events or will this
be the final line in the sand?
And as you know, by now, it was the subject of the second ever edition of this
podcast back in 2007, 19 years ago.
The second ever edition of Corbett Report podcast was called World War Three Starts in Iran.
Because at that time, as I was noting,
talking about the then very fresh events of the Munich Security Conference of February 2007,
when Putin infamously drew his line in the sand and started talking about essentially
talking about America and calling it out as a rogue nation on the international
stage and saying we're not going to just sit here and abide by this and let
let these things transpire.
Well, that was 19 years ago, and that was really
the origins for many of these bricks are the savior type people of the idea
that there is some sort of bricks alliance or axis against the NATO/Israel
alliance and that they're going to draw this great line in the sand and everything
will be different because don't worry.
The Americans will be stopped dead in their tracks by the Russia-Chinese alliance.
Or will they? Anyway, that was the narrative at that time, as you might recall.
But some hints towards what a Russian response to an American attack on Iran
might be come from an AP article February 10, 2007, called Putin warns U.S.
Policy creating new arms race.
Mr. Putin was speaking at the 43rd conference on security policy in Munich,
and he said nations, quote, are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of
force in international relations.
One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.
This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide
behind international law.
This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons, he added.
So from that story, we obviously get the tenor of the Russian thinking along
these lines that Iraq might have been the last straw and Iran,
of course, would be one step too far and Russia would feel compelled to act
in that event of an American attack against Iran.
This was followed up in April 6, 2007, by a Moss News report entitled U.S.
To Suffer Losses Upon Attacking Iran, which details a man named General Yuri
Solovyov, the head of Moscow's air defense,
who delivered a pretty thinly veiled threat that Iran's weapons,
among others, include our anti-aircraft systems, as in Russia's anti-aircraft systems,
which allow them, the Iranians, to fight all types of flying objects currently
in service in the U.S. Army.
Besides, we all remember our specialists have trained them since Soviet times.
So here you have a key member of the Russian army basically saying that Russia
will be an important part of the Iranian response to any attack.
And then I think that gives the tenor of the idea that the Russians are setting
up to defend their Iranian interests.
And anyone who thinks that the Chinese wouldn't act to defend their interests
in Iran are probably seriously mistaken.
An extremely oil-starved country being fed by an extremely oil-rich nation would
obviously see the American attack as a threat to their existence.
If China and Russia enter the theater, all bets are off the table.
It really then becomes World War III.
There you go. As I say, that was the narrative there in 2007,
and that set up the next couple of decades of, well, not just mainstream,
but independent media reporting on the geopolitical situation.
Lines in the sand have been drawn. There is this great BRICS resistance movement
that's arising and that may or may not eventuate in actual military resistance
to ongoing American/NATO/Israeli imperial aggression.
And that is the defining metric that has been used for decades now.
The reason why Iran has always been the red line for so many people is because
if you cross militarily into Iran, all bets are off the table.
World War III is on the table. And we are at that moment, whether we realize it or not.
And I'm not sure exactly what, what is the best or even the worst possible outcome from all of this?
Because certainly, obviously, it would be easy to say, well,
good, OK, let's hope World War III does not eventuate here.
Let's hope there is some sort of peaceful, happy transition of power to some
Iranian government that everyone can live with and everything just goes back to normal.
Actually, that really doesn't solve anything, even if that were to take place,
even if the most peaceful and passable alternative were to take place,
that doesn't really placate anyone or anything,
because all it means is that all of the hot air and bloviating over the past
couple of decades about red lines and lines in the sand and imperial aggression
versus the heroic brick saviors means all of that was hot air and nothing will eventuate.
And I don't know about you, but But I'm not personally going to take my cue
for what may or may not be coming from a Russia-China response from the very
same bloviators and blowhards who just months ago were assuring us that U.S.
Would never go into Venezuela because they are armed to the teeth with these
high-tech Russian anti-aircraft defenses.
Uncle Sam would never even approach, would never even attempt to get through
and never. Oh, wait, of course. Oh, let's take Maduro in the middle of the night.
Zero resistance. Absolutely nothing. Not a single American even injured, let alone dead. Oh, OK.
All right. Or the same people who've been talking for four years now about how
Russia is two weeks away from ending this special military operation in Ukraine.
It's not a war. Don't call it a war. They're just weeks away,
guys, for the last four years.
These people have been wrong about everything and are, I'm sure,
going to say how this is all some kind of great strategic win for the BRICS alliance.
I'm not sure I'm going to listen to that narrative. But at any rate,
the cards are on the table.
And this is a now or never, this is a make or break. I don't know what is going
to happen any more than any of the other bloviating blowhards out there in this space do.
But at least I will admit that I do not know how this is going to unfold.
But I do know what is being worked towards, which of course is the dismantling
of yet another, at least potential,
threat or even rival on the geopolitical stage to Israeli dominance of the Middle East. So...
We'll see. We will see in the coming days and weeks how this turns out.
There's going to be a lot of information to keep track of.
This could be the defining events of our times.
So I hope you are paying attention. And if you are, the place to go with information
and to find information as it arises is the Iran war open thread up on CorbettReport.com.
Once again, all of the information that I have talked about today,
all of the links, et cetera, will be in the show notes for today's episode at
corbettreport.com/iranwar.
But if you go to the Iran War open thread, you can join the conversation now.
Dozens and dozens and dozens of comments, more coming in all the time from people
all around the world with information about what is happening in Iran.
So I hope you will go there, take a look at that and contribute if you are able.
And of course, Corbett Report members are able to log in and leave their comments
in the comment section there. But that's going to do it for today's exploration.
There's a lot of information on the table, and hopefully this provides some
of the history and context so you understand what is taking place right now
and why it is taking place.
That is the only way we are going to learn ourselves forward from all of this
mess. But that's going to do it for today.
James Corbett of CorbettReport.com. And today I'll leave you with the wise words
of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
Our president will start a war with
Iran because he has absolutely no ability
to negotiate he's weak and he's ineffective our president will start a war with
Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate he's weak and he's ineffective
he's weak and he's ineffective he's weak and he's ineffective he's weak and he's ineffective.
We all know the story of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Bin Laden was responsible for today's attack.
So often was that story repeated in the wake of 9-11 that the hypnotized public
forgot that it was, at base, just that. A story.
If they didn't have an Osama bin Laden out there, they'd invent one.
In false flags the secret history of al-Qaeda you will learn the truth behind
that story and uncover the lies that led to the war of terror our war on terror
begins with al-Qaeda but it does not end there watch the documentary for free
at corbettreport.com/al-qaeda,
or support the filmmaker and purchase the documentary on dvd at newworldnextweek.com.