Alastair Crooke discusses the Iran-US framework agreement and NATO's escalating strikes on Russia
Glenn Diesen interviews veteran British diplomat Alastair Crooke on his channel.
Summary
Alastair Crooke, a veteran British diplomat and founder of the Conflicts Forum Substack, joins Glenn Diesen to cover two major developments: the Iran-US framework agreement and the large-scale drone and missile strike on Moscow. Crooke argues that the framework agreement — while not a treaty — has shattered a longstanding geopolitical paradigm by treating Iran as a legitimate sovereign state, triggering deep psychological shock in Israel and a fierce internal battle in the United States between pro-Israel factions and America First supporters. On the Russia front, Crooke contends that the Moscow strike was deliberately coordinated with European trilateral meetings to reshape the narrative for Trump and push him toward backing Europe's maximalist demands on Ukraine — demands he regards as catastrophically dangerous, given that Russia will not capitulate and that no serious planning appears to exist for what an actual war with Russia would look like.
He frames Iran's partial success in resisting Western sanctions as a significant global precedent, drawing parallels to the Bandung-era sovereignty movements and arguing that Russia and China — also subject to financial choke points — are watching closely. He regards Iran's assertive defiance of those checkpoints as a model with implications well beyond the Middle East.
On the question of European escalation, the two discuss at length the failure of European strategists to ask what a war with Russia would actually look like in practical terms — whether conventional, air, ground, or nuclear — drawing a direct parallel to Israel's failure to ask what would happen if Iran survived and emerged stronger. He cites Sergey Karaganov's warning at the St. Petersburg conference that Russia would not tolerate Germany acquiring nuclear weapons and would act pre-emptively, which he regards as a serious statement rather than rhetorical posturing.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Iran-US Framework Agreement
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We have the great pleasure today of being joined by Alastair Crooke, one of the great diplomats of Britain and Europe, who are sadly in short supply these days — the good diplomat. There's a lot I wanted to ask you about today, from what's happening in Iran to the massive strike on Moscow, where Western involvement is not very subtle. But to start off with Iran — we have this memorandum of understanding, from what I understand it's been signed already, but there's a lot of secrecy around it. It has many complications. Will it be upheld by the Americans? To what extent does it shape the region? We see the US-Israel relationship is also impacted by this. Indeed, Netanyahu appears to be in a much weaker position now, but if he's pushed out, they're just rearranging the deck. Most likely his replacement will be much more hawkish. From what I understand, at least he used to have some support from some of the Arab parties. This memorandum of understanding, irrespective of whether or not it will actually be implemented, will nonetheless have a massive impact on the US, Israel, and the wider region. This is a huge question, but the issue is huge as well. I was wondering if you could address this.
Alastair Crooke: It is a huge question you've just asked, so I'll do two bits of it perhaps. First of all, I call it a framework because it's not really a treaty. It's not even really a ceasefire. It's a framework for a ceasefire. I've done five ceasefires, I think, with the Israelis and Palestinians and others, and the framework is actually often the easiest part. The hardest part is thinking about how to construct a protective zone so that things can move forward — because they will be disrupted for sure. Bombing a bus was one of the things that disrupted one of them. But equally, someone going out and saying, "Listen, we don't believe they're serious about this at all, and as soon as they do anything, we're going to hit them hard." We already have some of these elements sort of visible and approaching in the context of this framework.
Now let us look at those three headings that you talked about. The first one is about the Iranian one. You underline the controversy of this agreement in the United States, but it's important to understand that it is also controversial in Iran. There is a certain tension in Iran — understandably, because they have experienced and lived through the JCPOA, experienced when things were not upheld, and Iran was in many ways — ordinary Iranians feel — trapped into a stranglehold which they are still in.
However, yesterday evening the Supreme Leader issued a statement in which he said that although he was personally opposed to the framework agreement, he was persuaded by Pezeshkian and, I presume, Araghchi — he talked about "the honorable president" — that there would be no backsliding on the terms of the framework or on Iranian interests. Iranian interests for the Supreme Leader predominantly center, I think, around Hormuz. He regards this as being the pivot to Iran possibly removing itself from the present situation and entering into a different geopolitical context. It's as wide as that from his point of view — not just tomorrow or the day after. Hormuz is crucial. We can go into the reasons why it's geopolitical, but he sees it in those terms.
What I think he was doing was to put on notice not just the reformist wing in Iran but also a skeptical public that this is not going to go down the path of the JCPOA — that Iran is not simply going to allow precedents to be established and then duly expanded and expanded until the whole meaning of the framework has gone. He's basically saying: we're not going to allow them to give some sort of precedent which will allow something to happen incrementally.
The other element of course is Lebanon, and Lebanon is crucial. Iran has substantially changed its position, because Iran did not in the past — in terms of the axis of resistance — intervene directly against Israel until this last period. This was the first time they went directly and threatened to bomb heavily northern Israel. They said if Israel went ahead with its threat to flatten Dahiyeh, the suburb of Beirut, Iran would go in, run the south, and attack the northern part — from the borders right through to the Galilee. And that was of course when Trump waved in and the attacks were stopped.
Israel's Reaction and Netanyahu's Political Crisis
So that is the other part. What we're seeing now is the thing being put under test already. And then we go on to America, if you agree, just in a second. But first of all, the Israeli press this morning — the Hebrew press — is again rife with complaints and anger. Israel is in real turmoil, psychological and emotional turmoil. It's not something small to get over. It's in deep turmoil.
They see this as a huge defeat. They see the whole "great victory" narrative — which the government sold and which many Israelis bought into — that America would be flying, as they put it, wingship to wingship with the Israeli brave airmen to destroy Iran completely, that they were going to destroy Hezbollah and annex and take half of Lebanon with the permission of certain proxies in Beirut. And that narrative is still going.
Yesterday there was an attack on a ridge near Beaufort Castle, where they started to try and take more territory in the Shebaa Hills. Israel and Hezbollah attacked them with an anti-tank missile and four soldiers died, including a lieutenant colonel who was the commander of the 82nd Brigade. There is real turmoil in Israel. Everyone is saying this can't be allowed. Four dead in one day — this is outrageous. As Ben-Gvir said, "Lebanon must burn." Others have been saying similar extravagant things: Hezbollah has to suffer, we have to go in and teach them a lesson. Lebanon must burn.
I don't know what is going to happen, but Netanyahu is under huge pressure. The polls were showing the odds that he was going to win the election in March were at about 49 or 50%, and they're about 34% today. So if Trump has got problems with his poll standing in America, Netanyahu has got more. And as you know, that could imply that he ends up going to prison if this election looks as if his goose is cooked.
But that's on the basis of him doing nothing, because the politics of Israel at the moment is that if Netanyahu does nothing about Lebanon, doesn't go on the offensive in Lebanon, his election will be lost. This is wall-to-wall consensus. This is the situation facing the United States.
The Israelis also — because there is a lot of question and turmoil about what this whole thing means — even if it's not widely understood in the West, the Israelis see this as a huge turning point. A glass ceiling has cracked and broken. Trump actually took sides, prioritizing an engagement with Iran over supporting Israel's right to take half of Lebanon and occupy it and continue with its policies throughout the region.
And then Trump said things at the press conference after the G7 meeting that had never been heard in Israel before. Things never said before. He said, "You're just too heavy-handed in Beirut. I've seen the photographs. You want to kill someone and so you knock down the whole building with people living in it. This is not acceptable." We all thought it was acceptable to Trump, mind you, months ago if you'd asked people — but now apparently it's not. He said, "You're not handling it very well." And then he made the most derogatory statement. He said, "Maybe we should hand this over to al-Sharaa. He would be more sophisticated in managing Hezbollah and the Lebanon situation." In other words, he was saying maybe an ex-ISIS leader could do better than you, Netanyahu — a new Israel in Lebanon. That was an unparalleled slap to Israel.
So they are shocked by this. But they also say — and this is in the Hebrew press today, it's in Haaretz, and you can see it on our Substack because it'll be out later today — the Israelis understand that the Middle East has changed. It's a new era. There is no way that they are going to destroy Iran. It's not going to have a regime change. There's no way they can do it without the United States. The United States provides everything. They cannot attack Iran without US facilitation. Impossible. They understand that. They know that it's over, and it is a huge psychological defeat of the whole project.
Equally, the sense that this Greater Israel project — by which they assumed they could bring about Greater Israel by force of arms, irrespective of legal norms, they would just do it whether it's legal or not — this was a huge change that was introduced after the 7th of October. This idea of permanence of security. What it means is Israelis believe and have come to accept that what happened on the 7th of October was somehow a holocaust. It wasn't, but that's what they think and feel now. And they now live on the threshold of a future holocaust, and therefore Hezbollah cannot exist — it must be eliminated completely.
So they understand that Trump's words may mean that the United States is serious this time about imposing severe penalties on Israel if they go ahead and respond or retaliate in Lebanon, because this will be seen as undermining Trump and his great achievement of getting Hormuz opened. That's why I underlined that point about Hormuz and the Supreme Leader in those opening comments — Hormuz was the most important thing to the Supreme Leader and to the leadership in Iran, and Lebanon was the second. They're both connected, of course, because we are moving towards Hormuz being resolved.
But if the situation in Lebanon constitutes a breach of the ceasefire — and that's certainly the Iranian perspective, as evidenced by their refusal to attend the negotiating session on Friday — then that part of it also comes into question. And how is Trump going to respond? Because he said it out loud. It was quite surprising. Trump said, "Listen, we had to do this deal because we're running out of the reserves." I saw figures yesterday saying that in Cushing it is down to 20 million barrels in the strategic holding — in other words, they're down to the sludge at the bottom, which has no particular use anyway. It has to be treated before you can use the bottom end of a reserve like that, especially one that's in natural rock.
So then it moves on. That's really where we are with the framework. The framework — more than many Iranians expected, more than I expected — has triggered this change in the United States. Partly because of Hormuz, and partly because the economic cliff is here. Trump said it: "We had to do that because we were four weeks away from running out of oil." So it has produced this change, and has produced now a contentious battle in the United States — a huge battle between the pro-Israel Zionist groups and the Trump supporters who are insistent on what they describe as America First, not Israel First. How do they get to that point? And the midterms are coming up.
The US Domestic Battle Over Israel and the Midterms
Now, the general consensus is that this is going to be so damaging for Trump — that he's going to lose and the Republicans are going to lose. I must say I had thought that, but now I'm not so sure. Firstly, the election process for the Senate is rotational — it's not all at once. There are about 20 Republican seats that are in contention at the moment in the House. This could swing the midterms for sure. But it's not irretrievable, at least in the view of Trump and his team. Twenty seats — not all of them will switch.
Also, it's not clear — there does seem to be a sense in which the solid base of MAGA hasn't defected from Trump, because of personal loyalty more than anything else. Not because they like the war in Iran or anything else, but a personal sense of loyalty to him which has emotional overtones that are very hard to define exactly. He does have a considerable hold over people. And in many respects, because of this debate — which prominent people are pointing out — the question of whether America is in control of its own foreign policy, or whether it has delegated its foreign policy to a foreign power, is gripping the MAGA base in the aftermath of the assassination of the Christian spokesman in Mecca, and Joe Kent and others are raising this issue.
So I think there's a feeling that it may not be as catastrophic. In fact, there will be some in the Republican component who may actually think that this is no bad thing and therefore be more supportive of Trump than we thought. But now, if Netanyahu goes in and attacks Lebanon, I think it will shift to being seen not just as slapping Trump in the face but as slapping America in the face. It will be seen by MAGA — maybe not by the neocons and the Likudniks, but by many Americans who don't understand all the nuances — that there was a framework signed by Trump visibly at Versailles, and Netanyahu and Israel are blowing it up. If you see it in those simple terms, it wouldn't be surprising if this actually rebounds to Trump's advantage politically. Too early to say.
There's undoubtedly going to be a major effort to overturn this by those committed to Israeli supremacy in the region. We don't know how that's going to turn out. Will they succeed? It'll be the first time that a president has gone up against Netanyahu — and essentially this is coming from all of Israel, all of the leaders, whether opposition leaders or across the board. They're saying — not just Ben-Gvir — they must pay, they've got to suffer, they've got to be made to pay for those poor people killed yesterday.
So if that happens, it is going to further increase the distance between the United States and Israel, and could push it towards taking some sort of measures — perhaps tentative to begin with, but some sort of measures imposed on Israel for having attempted to blow up the framework. Particularly if the Iranians respond to this by restricting — not completely, but restricting to a certain extent — the Hormuz passage. Who knows what they will do? But this would be very clearly understood as the thing that brought events to a head and brought about the framework, and that's where they might well move.
Glenn Diesen: My first thought when I saw these remarkable statements by Trump was that they fell short of action — it's just language. But on the other hand, this language matters. As you said, this is ringing through the media in Israel, putting shock waves through it. But also in the United States, all the America Firsters, the people who think like Tucker Carlson that they shouldn't put Israel first but America first — they must surely feel vindicated. They have wind in their sails at the moment. So it does change things.
Alastair Crooke: It changes so much in that way. Something has broken. A paradigm has been blown up. And it was just in this piece of paper, which as you say is not a commitment to anything particularly — it's just a framework for starting a different process. But that paradigm has been blown up because Trump visibly took sides and said so, and because of the language. The document talks about the sovereignty and the rights of sovereignty of Iran, and by implication of Lebanon too. Iran is being treated as a sovereign state and being engaged with as a sovereign state, not as a recalcitrant terrorist state. That is a change.
Yes, the language — I'm sure Trump will say, and you'll have Ted Cruz coming out and saying they're all terrorists, they're all horrible people, we have to do everything to engage them. But the fact that this language was incorporated in the document, and then Trump at the G7 spoke in a very different way about Israel and said you don't know what you're doing in Lebanon anyway so it's best if you get out of it — that is a psychological shock. The whole paradigm is broken. Israelis don't know what to do about it. Really, they don't know what to do about it. Serious Israelis are saying — as Ehud Barak is there — we will have to think about this in the aftermath, because the original strategy of Israel is broken and we have to understand that Trump is maneuvering towards a new understanding between America and Iran.
I don't know that it'll end up in an agreement or all of the elements of it, but there is a new atmosphere. Let's just call it an atmosphere. There is a new atmosphere that is coming, and he's serious about it. And he says, "I don't think that this is damaging to Israeli security." Again — wow. That is quite something to say: that America can get closer to Iran and that's not damaging to Israeli security.
And all of the strange comments he was making earlier — that Iran could be part of the Abraham Accords, and various other strange comments about Iraq — seem to imply, at least in the obscure workings of Trump's brain, that he's moving towards some sort of idea that there can be, as he calls it, perfect peace or a great peace in the Middle East. And a key element of it could be played by deescalation of the conflict with Iran — that deescalating Iran could lead to something more secure in the region. And on that he's probably right. Let's give Trump his due. Deescalation with Iran is key to a more peaceful region. The alternative that Israel presents — of just going there and destroying the country and destroying all of those groups, simply destroying and killing more people — is not a solution to stability. It's the opposite.
And I think somehow maybe this message is percolating up in Washington, amidst huge opposition, with people infuriated and on the brink of almost civil war about this. So you have all these tensions, and this fairly innocuous document comes up, and wow — tensions in Israel, massive tensions in Israel, and tensions in the United States. Strategic tension, because the forthcoming elections in the United States are going to be central about this question: who runs United States foreign policy, and in whose interest is foreign policy formulated? I think that's going to be the issue.
Trump's Shift on Iran's Ballistic Missiles
Glenn Diesen: Building on what you said, I also thought his remarks about Iran's ballistic missiles were interesting. Because in the past there was consensus around the idea that these terrorists should not be allowed to have ballistic missiles — this ballistic missile program to threaten its neighbors. This was a key component of US demands. It had to be dismantled. I saw now a speech by Trump where he was making the point that well, the Saudis have ballistic missiles, of course the Iranians have to have them as well. Suddenly, as you said, it marks a shift — they're not terrorists who illegitimately hold ballistic missiles, they are a state with basic national interests and they will have to defend themselves like everyone else. Treating them like a normal power — it is a huge step, especially in this day and age when the first objective is always to delegitimize the opponents. We delegitimize Putin, Xi, whenever we're going to go to war, we make sure we delegitimize them. And the fact that now it's going the other way is quite remarkable. It opens the door for so many in the United States to essentially apply common sense: this is a state, they have the right to basic national interests and to protect themselves. You could take it a step further — if actually we should encourage their ballistic missiles because this gives them a conventional deterrence and less reliance on nuclear deterrence. Common sense could break out. Language is powerful.
Alastair Crooke: Just to add — the whole image of Iran is essentially fighting for its sovereignty, its right to determine its own path ahead, and this is catching the imagination of much of the world. We're going back to that post-war period, the Bandung conference and all those things — independence and sovereignty. Countries have noticed: how did they do this? Well, they did this by defying the United States' attempt to put financial and tariff choke points on them. Russia has choke points. China has choke points put on them. And Iran has at least partially succeeded by taking assertive steps against those checkpoints. This is a precedent that is going to have larger tails.
The Moscow Strike and European Escalation Strategy
Glenn Diesen: I wanted to shift focus — not completely, it's still about Western wars — but as we saw with this bombing of Moscow, unprecedented, and another thing which was quite different is that in the West, the Western countries don't seem to work very hard anymore to conceal their own participation. I remember in the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you had people like Baerbock saying, "Listen, we shouldn't turn on each other — we are at war with Russia." And this was deeply problematic because we shouldn't say these things. But now we see all the weapons coming, the intelligence, the use of NATO territory, and now this massive strike — not just on Russia's nuclear deterrent, but now this massive bombing of Moscow. The NATO footprint here is very obvious. It's advertised almost. How are you seeing this? Because I guess of all things, this is what's keeping me up at night — the march towards what would be a massive war with Russia, which I can't conceive the possibility of us having any escalation control over. It would spiral very quickly into a nuclear war. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but this is madness.
Alastair Crooke: I think what you're saying is very pertinent to everything. Yes, I do. Let me just say that I think — I don't know how many drones and missiles were fired, 156 or something, into the oil refinery and parts of Moscow — this is a major step up. A major step up. And it's entirely intended to put Russians on edge, Muscovites on edge, and people in St. Petersburg on edge, feeling that they're less secure.
I think it was also coordinated with the Euro Three — France, Macron, and Merz — meeting, I think it was in London just beforehand, where they put forward their ultimatums for Russia. And then again, they deliberately brought in Zelensky to that meeting and to the European meeting. What we're seeing therefore is a major effort by Europe to change the narrative.
Macron has said, at the beginning, that he believed Trump thought Russia was a big state that would crush Ukraine easily and that it would be done quickly. This is Macron saying Russia would crush Ukraine and therefore there was not really much to do about it because it was going to happen. And then the task — and we see that Russia still hasn't crushed Ukraine — and the point of these missiles and the point of pushing Zelensky to the front of stage at these two meetings was to say to Trump: look, it's all changed. They're not on the back foot, they're on the front foot. They are winning now.
It's not true, of course. We know it's not true. It was a huge effort to get together that amount of missiles, and the attacks on refineries have done little strategic damage to Russia. The economy is not in any sort of freefall. In fact, the economy is growing and employment is increasing. So it's a false narrative. But they were intent on stage-managing it with Zelensky so that the whole of that thing was about the G7 and about the EU summit that was going to take place — that has taken place in these last days — because the summit was going to look at EU budgets and financial resources, and there's a big division in Europe about whether to agree to this huge budget being proposed by the Commission, with some states objecting.
So the aim is to push for more defense resources going to Ukraine in the first place. Secondly, to lay down the framework that Europe wants — which is ceasefire, then Britain, France, and other states of the willing will take part in peacekeeping, so NATO will move into Ukraine, Ukraine will become part of NATO and eventually the EU. And the main element of it is to bring America into this agreement and into this press — to bring America back to Europe by saying: look, we've done our part, we're doing it, look what's happening. And Zelensky was shown photographs of the cathedral and how the Russians had destroyed it — in fact it was probably a Patriot missile that misfired that did the damage, but it doesn't matter, the public relations went that way.
So yes, this is where we are moving. We will have to see how Russia has to respond. And the question is: are we moving closer to them responding in the way that Sergey Karaganov and others like Dmitri Trenin and others at the St. Petersburg conference were saying — that the only thing that will stop this escalation, every time further and further — and one of the agreements that came out of that trilateral meeting was more missiles, more drones, joint what they call co-production, which means they just ship over the parts for reassembly in Ukraine and then Ukraine fires them at Russia — how do you put a stop to this?
This is the debate in Russia. And I think it's edging closer and closer to what Karaganov's argument is. The problem is that they don't believe that Russia will react. It's all said, "Oh, that's just Putin's blah, don't take it seriously. He's not going to do anything because we're NATO, Article 5." And Putin, I think, believes that Article 5 is a bluff — that if there was an attack, America would not intervene. I think Karaganov from your program argued quite forcefully and directly that he really doubted that America would intervene even if a tactical nuclear weapon was used against a European NATO state. And Professor Mearsheimer, if I recall correctly, agreed and simply thought that the United States would not necessarily directly become involved. But both agreed also that this could lead to something much worse — that this could escalate and go up.
And I think all we've seen in these last days is Europe trying to get to the position where they have — I think it was Macron or someone — said they want to create Ukraine as the mailed fist at the front of European military and NATO militarist architecture against Russia, that it is to be the front line putting pressure on and attacking Russia from behind it.
Now I am deeply skeptical of these stories. I've said that in Moscow. I don't believe Europe has the ability to build a military architecture. You can't — when I hear 1937 or 1930, it takes tanks 20 years, supply lines, to build a round military infrastructure. Let alone they don't even have the manpower. Look at Europe, the UK — it can't even provide a naval vessel at the moment. It's got something like 40 tanks that are serviceable. The European defense structures are in a terrible state. Really terrible state. You don't change that in three years. And anyway, much of this money is just one of these bulldog boondoggles — the money is going to existing European defense contractors, their share prices are going up, and a lot of people are going to make a lot of money going in and out on insider trading on who's going to get the defense money. It's rather like what's been happening in Washington, where oil futures are traded just before Trump makes an announcement and then he makes the announcement. There's an element of this taking place in the European context too.
So I don't think it's — and what they really want, if I can make a strange comparison — it's rather akin to, if you think of Europe as being Israel: Israel is using Lebanon as an attempt to pull America into its side in a war against Iran. And Europe, in a similar way, is doing this with — just as Israel is doing attacks inside Lebanon and taking towns and leveling them — Europe is using missiles into deep Russia in order to say to America: look, we can win this. We've set the framework for it. We can win this. All we need to do is pull you into this, stand by the condition that Russia has to capitulate and withdraw from all of the sovereign territory and pay compensation and put up its officials for war crimes trials.
I mean, Europe is moving very fast in the European Council to arrange all of the means for war crimes trials and reparations — assessing and keeping lists of damage so they can charge Russia the cost. All these things. I don't think this is going to apply at all. Putin clearly understands it. I read a statement that Lavrov was going to put in Politico — a very strong account of the situation. Politico refused to publish it, I think, in the end.
Glenn Diesen: Well, the foreign ministry published it in Russia.
Alastair Crooke: Well, it's a very strong article, a very strong piece. I suggest people read it because it gives a very clear indication of where things are.
So now we know very clearly where things are. The Europeans are pulling Trump, and they were very pleased with the G7 meeting because they got him actually to sit with Zelensky and more or less agree with the European position — which is there must be an immediate ceasefire, total sovereignty return to Ukraine, all of these maximalist demands of Europe. They are maximalist. Russia would never agree to any of these. So they're trying to get this as the accepted consensus and to pull America into supporting their war — into going to war against Russia with Europe. That's been the German, French, and British aim: to get a war against Russia in which, like in the Second World War, they pull in — it was Pearl Harbor or whatever it was — they pull America into their war against Russia. It would be catastrophic. And this is the plan that is catastrophic. People should understand how dangerous it is, how catastrophic it could be. Russia will not tolerate it.
I was very struck by what was said about Germany on your program by Karaganov, who does know about the nuclear issues — he has been involved in this for years, decades. He said, "We will not tolerate Germany assuming nuclear weapons. We would eliminate it first." It was a very tough comment. I mean, we all play with sparring, I think, but I agree with you.
And what happened at the G7 and at the European meeting — no one seems to be aware, or all the talk in Europe is how disgraceful it was that Costa's chief of staff actually spoke to someone in Moscow without telling Borrell. I mean, Costa is actually the president of the Council, and in case the Europeans have forgotten, it is the member states that decide foreign policy, not the Commission and not the foreign high representative. But it wars back to them — they just go on anyway.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, but what you said before — I agree, I think this is the goal by the Europeans: to have Ukraine standing in front of them and the Americans standing behind. This is how they will seek to weaken Russia over the next years and decades. But still —
Alastair Crooke: Still — I think maybe you ought to get someone on the program who can answer this. Even in Israel now, people are saying there was no discussion about an attack on Iran. No one from the Mossad or military intelligence or anyone came when all of this was being discussed and said, "But what happens if Iran survives and emerges stronger?" Nobody said anything. And if they did think it, they kept their mouth shut.
And I think the same question should be asked of Europeans: what do you conceive a war on Russia would look like? Would it be a ground war? Would it simply be a nuclear war? How would you run it? Are you going to mass troops? Would it be a conventional war or would it be an asymmetrical war? And what would be the outcome? I mean, when you see that NATO states are practicing by building prisoner of war camps in parts of Europe — it's just nuts. But I have no sense of what Europe thinks it's trying to do beyond the big picture of putting pressure on Russia, bringing America back to Europe, getting Europe to give more money and more weapons to Ukraine. What would war with Russia mean in practical terms? Would it be an air war? Would it be a ground war? Would it just be a nuclear war? It's a question that never seems to be addressed — perhaps because no one wants to address it, just like no one in Israel wanted to say, other than "we're part of the team, we're going to go wing tip to wing tip with the Americans and destroy Iran." Wing tip to wing tip with the Americans — we're going to go in and destroy Russia.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, I think this is the problem. They often think that the war is simply going to be something low intensity that they can control. I think they often miss out on why Russia hasn't retaliated against the European countries yet or against NATO in general — because once they do, the Russians also understand that there is no escalation control anymore. It's going to be impossible, and most likely it would escalate into an all-out war where nuclear weapons could quickly be introduced. And still the idea is that if you can just push the Russians a bit more, a bit more — and once a war breaks out, like the Dutch are building camps for Russian prisoners and all this — I often make this point: how exactly do you think this war is going to play out once it starts? It's not going to be able to be controlled. The idea that Russian soldiers would go into Europe, the Europeans would capture them, send them to Dutch camps — it's just so obscene, but it's not even propaganda. They actually believe this. Otherwise, why would they build these camps? They actually think this is how the war would be fought. It does beg the question: is anyone actually behind the wheel on this one?
Alastair Crooke: That's the question. You know, it's now come out in Israel — no one was asking that sort of question. And the same thing I would say: the whole of the strategy is based on the European conviction that Russia would and must capitulate, that it would have no choice against the combined force of Europe — so many countries, such a big GDP, such military strength of NATO — that they would have no choice. And just as what happened with Iran reflected a complete misunderstanding of the nature and character of Iranians, so such a conviction that Russia was going to capitulate or would easily capitulate is a complete misunderstanding of Russia and Russia's consciousness of their history with Europe.
Glenn Diesen: Well, thank you for sharing your insights on these very depressing topics. As always, I recommend that people read your Substack, Conflicts Forum, and a link will be in the description. Thank you very much for your time.
Alastair Crooke: Thank you.