will push a bit back, but can you explain us also how do you see this ending?

Well, How I see this ending now is given that there have been so many, I think, reasonable diplomatic opportunities that were sabotaged.

I don't think Russia will now accept a freeze anymore of the battle lines.

I think Russia is going to keep going until they take the Donbass.

They have about 75% of it now, maybe a little bit more.

And maybe after they take Donbass, maybe then at that point, they'll agree to stop.

But from their point of view, The people of the Donbas have been at war with Kyiv, not since February, 2022, but for years before that, because in February, 2014, the government of Ukraine was overthrown and the US supported the overthrow, Russia did not support that.

Okay, there you go.

What do we know about the nature and extent o- of US intel and military involvement that would allow you, an expert on Ukraine because of all the extraordinary research and writing you've, uh, you've done, to answer the big picture question, is Ukraine America's proxy or America's partner in this war?

Oh, well, it's absolutely a proxy.

We've learned in the years since Russia invaded, uh, that the CIA built at least 10 bases inside of Ukraine in the years after the Maidan coup, that the CIA essentially rebuilt one of Ukraine's main intelligence agencies from scratch to ensure that it was under full control, that, uh, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, who's now a top aide to Zelenskyy, was essentially a CIA asset, that, uh, when he was wounded, uh, years ago, he was flown to the US and treated in a US military hospital.

That's how much of a US asset he is, and there's so many examples.

And by contrast, the Ukrainian public, from the point of view of Washington, has been something to overcome.

I mean, 2014, overthrowing a democratically elected president who had the support, if you, uh, believe US polls, of half the country and was still, uh, popular among a plurality of Ukrainian citizens.

Um, there are cables from even before the Maidan coup where US officials acknowledge that Ukrainian public opinion is the main obstacle to Ukraine joining NATO.

That would mean the Russians Swept up these dead bodies who they killed, uh, embalmed them, put them in coffins, and notified the Americans, "You can come, uh, and get them." Do we know how many people have died from the West?

[laughs]

... rise in diesel prices, first of all, I mean, again, I'm not an energy expert, but I have a strong suspicion that launching this war on Iran and causing the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has an impact.

But even if that weren't true, even if this were the result of solely the Russia-Ukraine war, which is farcical, but even if it were, it would be entirely Trump's fault.

The Trump administration literally designed the Ukrainian energy, uh, the, the, the Ukrainian attacks on Russia's energy sites.

This was, uh, unveiled about a year ago, last October.

This was reported in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, that the Trump administration had greenlit Ukraine's operation against Russian energy facilities.

And one US official told The New York Times after this started happening that, "We found something that is working," and this was causing major damage to Russia.

Has the lesson been learned, Aaron? I guess the short answer is no.

In your view, did Secretary Bessent, uh, outline, uh, a policy of economic strangulation that is l- feasible and likely to produce whatever end result Donald Trump wants, or is this more of the same White House bluster just out of the mouth of his Treasury secretary?

Yeah, I'd agree with the latter.

It's more bluster because he actually didn't impose really anything new.

It's a lot of threats, uh, including against China, of secondary sanctions, which they've done before, but every time actually there's been a, a standoff economically between Trump and China, it's Trump that has backed down.

And just because Trump is trying again to threaten Iran's trading partners with secondary sanctions, I don't see China backing down on this one.

Uh, Iran is a very trading partner f- a, a very important trading partner, uh, for China.

Uh, they buy a lot of energy from Iran, China does.

Um, does Trump think things are gonna get better between now [laughs] and election day economically?

Uh, before we get to, uh, your, uh, views on an analysis of, uh, the current state of US and Israeli, uh, relations, what happened on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives recently when Representative Angie Nixon, who is now the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate, introduced a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza?

Yeah, so last night, Angie Nixon, uh, stuns the country, wins the primary for the Democratic Senate nomination over Alexander Vindman, who is a national star.

I mean, V- Vindman, for those who don't remember, rose to fame during Ukrainegate, which was Trump's first impeachment, where Democrats targeted him for pausing a weapons shipment to Ukraine while also pressuring the government of Ukraine to assist with his political vendettas against RussiaGate and the Bidens.

And Vindman was one of the star impeachment witnesses who spoke up, uh, because he couldn't believe that Trump would dare pause a weapons shipment to Ukraine because Vindman supported the policy of arming Ukraine as it attacked Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas.

And this became [laughs] an actual scandal, and Vindman was treated as the voice of reason.

And at the time, this is back in late 2019, early 2020, I was warning that this was a disaster because, I mean, not only are we encouraging conflict in Ukraine when the US should be using its leverage to end the war there, not, you know, pause, uh, n- not impeach a president for pausing a weapons shipment.

But also, uh, this was shifting the Democrats' push to the right, where neocon voices like Vindman were elevated as voices of reason.

Right

What is that all about?

Trump's been bragging about how much money, uh, the US has made off of, uh, Venezuelan oil since kidnapping Nicolás Maduro and his wife last January.

Uh, he even said something to the effect of, "To the victor goes the spoils." But Venezuela's oil industry remains under, uh, a state of disrepair because of years of US sanctions, and a recent earthquake that caused some $37 billion in damage didn't help, um, which makes the, you know, the country h- even harder to, to function.

But Venezuela has faced production problems because its equipment has been in a state of disrepair.

It's been cut off from US refineries.

Uh, this is largely the result of a US-led sanctions campaign, as Anya Parampil of The Grayzone documents in her book, The Corporate Coup.

So although Trump's n- financial scheme with Venezuela is opaque, like, he talks about all this money that the US is making, but we don't know exactly where that money is going.

What did you find?

Right

... support to movements that ultimately helped overthrow Ukraine's democratically elected government and set off this whole crisis.

And she also wasn't even just handing out, you know, dollars to the opposition.

She also was trying to hand out orders to the government that ultimately was overthrown with US support, which is the government headed by Viktor Yanukovych, who was trying to stay neutral, who wanted to, you know, uh, deepen ties with the West, but he didn't wanna, uh, bring Ukraine into NATO, because Ukraine's own declaration of state sovereignty calls for Ukraine to be a permanently neutral state, and that was unacceptable to people like Victoria Nuland.

So Nuland was trying to essentially order Yanukovych to abandon his pledge for neutrality and to adopt a series of, uh, you know, uh, Western-backed economic reforms that would have fur- that would have isolated his own support base, which is the ethnic Russian population of the east of Ukraine.

And Yanukovych refused Nuland's orders.

That's one of the reasons why he got overthrown, and one of the reasons why Victoria Nuland was caught on tape plotting about who should take his place, or at least who should, who, who in the Ukrainian opposition should go into a power-sharing, uh, government with him as part of a deal that the US eventually helped sabotage anyway.

But on war, the Democrats went along with him.

How much of a threat is this to, uh, APAC?

I think it's a pretty big threat that you're seeing integrity, like the kind just explained, being rewarded at the ballot box.

We haven't seen this, uh, really ever happen.

So many races in such a, a short amount of time with candidates who are unapologetically standing up to APAC, not trying to water down their message, but unapologetically standing up and saying that they're not gonna be intimidated by all the traditional bullying tactics of censorship and a lot of money that go to defeating candidates who support Palestine's self-determination.

So, I think if you're the congressional leadership, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, who are totally in APAC's pocket, and APAC itself, I think all of this is worrying, and it's a really inspiring story.

Imagine, like you go from losing your job at a, at a law firm because you refuse to, uh, retract your support for free speech rights for Pal- for students who are protesting the genocide, and then you run for office.

And all the people, like the, the, like the wealthy billionaires who were behind this wave of cancellations, trying to force- trying to...

Right

Uh, what happened? And what happened when [laughs] Congressman Goldman walked into a coffee shop and was recognized?

Dan Goldman, who's the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, uh, who rose to prominence in the Democratic Party in 2019 when he served as the, uh, House impeachment lawyer for the Democrats when they targeted Trump for pausing weapons to Ukraine, uh, weapons shipping to Ukraine, while pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into the origins of Russiagate into Joe Biden.

Um, he rose to prominence then o- on a real sort of neo-con agenda where the argument was that Trump had jeopardized US national security by pausing one weapon ship into Ukraine.

And I warned at the time, this was after the collapse of Russiagate, I wrote a number of articles on this in The Nation magazine, warning that this was a bad sign of things to come for the Democrats.

If they're centering their opposition to Trump around essentially neo-con dogma that, uh, somehow arming Ukraine is good for the country and good for the world, then Democrats are in trouble because they'll be going further away from the issues that actually mobilize voters, uh, i- issues that impact their lives, like the price of groceries and so forth.

So but that was the trend, and so Dan Goldman rode that wave of Trump's first impeachment to be elected to Congress.

And when October 7th came around, because now people like Dan Goldman were at the helm of the, uh, of the Democratic Party, that helped solidify the Democrats' position of being staunchly pro-Israel.

Is the MOU a ceasefire or a performative pause, Aaron?

How do you think, uh, Netanyahu, his supporters, and even his adversaries react to something like that, which we've never really heard in public from an American president?

I think they see it as a slap on the wrist, uh, because again, the same question with Joe Biden.

Yes, you can criticize Israel publicly, but what are you willing to do about it policy-wise? Are you going to s- stop any weapon shipments, uh, demand that Israel cease attacks, uh, demand that Israel stop u- using US military assets to carry out these attacks? Trump is not doing that.

And so therefore, these public recriminations don't really, uh, amount to much.

But they're, I don't want to totally dismiss them.

And just an, you know, it's interesting.

He's basically saying that Al-Qaeda, a former Al-Qaeda offshoot, would act more humanely than Israel in fighting a war, which I think is accurate.

Make a point, I think, Aaron, the last thing that he said, "If it were a great deal, it would be out in public."

How, how desperate is Trump for an off-ramp from the Iran war? How dangerous for him is this mess he's created?

It's extremely dangerous, but I don't think he's desperate.

I think he's just stalling for time because he doesn't want to make a deal.

I suspect he's been told that if he just holds out a little bit longer, Iran eventually will crumble because of the economic pressure it's under.

Recall that his regime change war, although it failed to overthrow the government, it did cause serious economic damage inside Iran.

They bombed industrial plants.

Millions of people have been affected by this.

Well, that price can be paid by attacking Israel or US bases.

Right

... as, as we're speaking, uh, uh, you know, uh, yesterday, US military assets in Bahrain and Kuwait were hit after the US, uh, struck an empty oil tanker.

Iran retaliated by going after US military assets and, and, uh, caused some considerable damage.

So yeah, for them to claim the war is over is just transparently false.

I do think Trump is in a corner.

He went to war, he thought he could pull off regime change.

It didn't happen.

Now, unless there's gonna be a two or three-part deal intended to produce a temporary ceasefire which will aggravate, uh, Netanyahu, who can control Israel unless Trump does what no, as you indicated earlier, Aaron, what no president has ever done?

Um, do you think he's right? Was that all part of the process that Iran requests him to make that post? Uh, and what do you make of the context of the post? 'Cause it's so different to all the reports we're getting on what's inside the MOU.

I can only speak to what I've heard from the Iranian officials I've been in touch with.

What they've said to me was that there's been a lot of back and forth, a lot of, uh, ideas and proposals have been exchanged, and that...

And I'm, I'm pretty sure this is public now too.

In terms of the arrangement on the nuclear aspect, that's gonna be delayed.

They're just trying to reach a short-term agreement now, a memorandum of, of understanding that can extend the ceasefire, uh, that will allow for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, uh, and maybe Iran will get some sanctions relief, s- some token sanctions relief.

But the major issues are still being delayed.

I kind of remember the moment when I read that post about the Abrams Accords, [laughs] 'cause it just came out of nowhere.

Am I right?

right?Uh, no, he can't in the Israeli political spectrum because they're just committed at all costs to the Greater Israel project, which requires them to constantly be at war with anybody who deters their aggression, constantly be stealing other people's land as they're doing now today in Lebanon, ordering, you know, uh, entire villages and cities to evacuate, displacing many more people after killing, according to Leb- to Lebanese Health Ministry, more than 3,000 people in Lebanon since March.

That's a huge number of, of people, and it's probably an undercount.

So Netanyahu can't make peace.

Uh, Iran will insist that any d- any deal also stop the war in Lebanon, but Israel can't do that because it wants to continue attacking Lebanon because Hezbollah still exists there, and Hezbollah resists Israeli aggression.

And Israel will never accept the globally accepted compromise to all of this, which is a really unfair compromise.

It would require Israel withdrawing from the West Bank, Gaza, and letting Palestinians have a homeland in just 22% of, of stolen Palestine, which in itself is really unfair because why should Israel even be allowed to exist in the, in the first place? It's shown itself to be keep- completely incapable of functioning as a normal state.

Yeah

What is the story, as you understand it, behind that long and detailed and well-documented piece in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, uh, documenting the horrific weaponization of, uh, sexual abuse by, uh, Israeli jailers to and upon Palestinian prisoners of such magnitude and regularity that Israeli political leadership must know about it?

There's so much to say about it.

First of all, it's worth noting that it's in the op-ed section by Nick Kristof, a opinion writer, not in the news section.

Why is that? Why wasn't, uh, New York Times re- um, editors assigning this important story of systemic sexual violence by a close US ally to a team of reporters rather than an individual op-ed writer taking it, uh, on his own and putting it in the op-ed page much too late? We're talking, what, three years into the genocide.

This has been known for a very long time.

So it's interesting that that was in the op-ed section versus the New York Times' decision early on in the genocide, late 2023, to publish that article, Screams Without Words, which alleged, uh, a mass rape campaign by Hamas on October 7th, which was, as myself and Max Blumenthal and others have shown, a complete fraud.

There was nothing to go on there.

So does he have that in reverse? Netanyahu will do whatever Trump wants, or Trump will do whatever Netanyahu wants? And what do you think Trump is talking about, Netanyahu is not treated right in Israel?

What is, give us a little bit of your background with respect to what you have already reported, and what are you now reporting about a false flag?

Well, first of all, thank you, Judge, for having me and for asking about this story, which has gone grossly undercovered by our corporate media.

So I appreciate you shining a light on it.

The top headline that I have for you in my new reporting is that the world's top chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, after years and years and years of a prolonged cover-up scandal, they've now finally admitted to concealing a critical finding that undermined allegations of a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma in April 2018.

And the allegation that Syria did commit this chemical attack is what prompted the first Trump administration to launch airstrikes on Syria.

And now years later, the top chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, has admitted that they covered up a critical finding.

And this comes out of a cover-up scandal that's been unfolding at the OPCW for a very long time.

Uh, in light of the research done by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, uh, in a piece that has infuriated, uh, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and produced nonsensical responses, is it fair to conclude that Israeli leadership at the cabinet level and Netanyahu's office are aware of the horrors that go on visited on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails?

It goes back to our initial question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I think that would be extremely hard for Trump to do, and also for Trump to unfreeze some of the assets that, uh, Iran has had stolen from them, when Trump also couldn't stop tell- t- you know, criticizing Obama for delivering palettes of cash to Iran, when really that was just stolen Iranian money [laughs] being returned.

So the idea of Trump doing the same thing, I, I find hard to believe.

And the other problem is you don't have, among Democrats, a very strong push for a diplomatic agreement.

Y- you know, you have people like Ro Khanna, who have been saying this war is, you know, illegal, we don't want a part of this, but you do have a lot of Democrats who support this.

And while it's good to diversify security with Israel, the US, South Korea, um, and China, um, there's no path that does- there, there's no logical path that doesn't involve improving relations with your big neighbor up north.

What do you know about this guy?

Max Blumenthal's take on the name is it should be called the Foundation for the Destruction of Democracies, because that's what the FDD does.

It destroys American democracy, and really democracy across the West, on behalf of Israel.

Uh, the FDD was literally founded as a de facto lobbyist for Israel.

It, it actually originally had a Hebrew name.

It was called Emek, which means, uh, in Hebrew, truth.

And its mission, its founding mission statement was to, quote, "Enhance Israel's image in North America and the public's understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations." Uh, and then it changed its name to something less Israeli-sounding, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, 'cause, you know, having a Hebrew name was too on the nose.

Yeah, what other nations? The British Navy? Do they still rule the seas? [laughs] Of course not.

But I'm just worried that this is not the best choice

if they want to avoid war.

They could give him that victory if he wanted it on the nuclear issue because they've agreed to not have a nuclear weapon.

And in Geneva, they accepted terms that were far harsher, far more constraining than the JCPOA.

So they could say that Trump – they could let Trump claim victory there.

I mean, from what I've – heard from the Iranian officials that I speak to, their position has not changed that much from Geneva.

It's true that now they want to delay talks on the nuclear issue and just focus on the Strait of Hormuz for now, reopening that and ending the U.S. blockade.

But I want to understand from you the repercussions of this war on the Republican Party in the midterms, on the rest of Trump's presidency and the presidential election as well.

That is not believable at all.

Yes.

And what I bet is happening behind the scenes, I do think there is a Trump administration effort to try to bully other countries into going along with the blockade, because if I interpret Larry Johnson's comments correctly, that the US doesn't have the capability to do it on its own.

It, it will need other people.

And if that doesn't work, uh, then Trump, I don't know what he will do.

And again, how long could he, uh, preside over the, uh, economic fallout to the entire world as a result of his blockade because this is causing serious disruptions with the energy markets and other, uh, critical supply chains.

So it's a waiting game.

Do you have a new piece coming out about this?

I eventually want to get to the question of why Israel is losing to Iran, but before we actually pinpoint that question, did the US, uh, negotiators in Islamabad, in your view, engage in sincere negotiation in behalf of the United States or a disruptive negotiation in behalf of Israel?

If Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are in the mix, then the answer by default has to be that it's the latter, that this was essentially done on behalf of Israel, and that's why you [laughs] had even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that JD Vance was reporting to him, which is just an extraordinary statement for a foreign leader to make about a US vice president.

But unfortunately, it speaks to where this Trump administration is at, uh, serving the interests of no one but, uh, Netanyahu and the most fanatical elements of US power system that wanna just blow up the Middle East, uh, on behalf of Israel to expand US-Israeli hegemony.

So no, I don't think those nega-negotiations were done in good faith at all.

Uh, that's why Vance called them off very quickly when he could have continued.

There was no reason to go back home, uh, if Vance was serious about talks.

Iran had put proposals on the table.

Do the Israelis, along with the Americans, acknowledge that none, none of their military goals has been achieved by six weeks of slaughter in Iran?

Netanyahu told him what to do and think.

[laughs] I mean, that's the way it looks.

Why Trump continues to tether his political future, his presidency, to this, um, supremacist, uh, this Jewish supremacist a- apartheid state is beyond me.

Uh, but yeah, the way Netanyahu talks, it's, it's often as if, uh, him and Trump are, are co-presidents.

And one of the details in that New York Times story last week was that in the Situation Room, Trump and Netanyahu sat across from each other as if they were, you know, sort of co-leading the meeting.

And, uh, the account is that, yeah, it was Netanyahu was decisive in, in convincing Trump to do this.

Now, he lies all the time, so it's, it's hard to take anything he says seriously.

Do we know from any sources, notwithstanding the IDF censors, how badly, uh, Israel was damaged, uh, in the war?

Aaron, where are you at with all this?

Well, those stats that you relayed about Iran's remaining capacity, on top of the fact that they just shot down a U.S. fighter jet over their own territory, underscores that what's probably happening with Trump and the people around him is what happens in all major wars like this, where you just tell the president what he wants to hear.

and he's not being given an honest assessment of the war or maybe himself just doesn't want to hear an honest assessment of the war even if he's being given it he's not processing it because he's been bragging about iranian air defenses being wiped out and they have no army left and They're showing that in fact that that's not true.

And Trump's then only strategy at this point appears to me to just blow up as much Iranian infrastructure as he can, sort of out of vengeance.

He's gone after...

Steel factories, medical research centers, including a really esteemed one that's been around for more than 100 years, university campuses, residential buildings.

So if I'm looking at an endgame here, Trump in his speech this week talked about wrapping up in two or three weeks.

Do you know what the law is? Have you looked into it? Because I know it doesn't explicitly say Palestinians.

What do you feel?

I think his foremost concern right now is calming the markets, and that's why he keeps saying that he's having these great talks, and they're getting somewhere, and he's gonna wrap this up really soon.

I can't divine what's in his head anymore.

I used to think he had smart political instincts, but I think going to war, uh, against Iran in a completely unjust, unprovoked fashion has blown up, uh, that impression for me.

And there's a debate going on right now that we're having about whether or not the Trump, uh, Netanyahu war on Iran is effective.

I think we're missing a more fundamental question.

Is it right? Uh, is it just? And the fact that Iran is waging asymmetrical warfare underscores a really important point.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's Trump as well as, and, and Rubio as well as Hegseth.

And Netanyahu, who is just a career arrogant supremacist who always believes that things will go his way because he thinks he's superior, uh, as, uh, the head of the J- the Jewish supremacist state, and the backward people of the region that he's colonized, in his view, are inferior and can't fight and will crumble.

And so the theory of the case that he sold Trump on was that, yeah, we just bomb Iran, kill its leadership.

You know, if we happen to kill, uh, 160 schoolgirls, so be it.

The people will rise up and overthrow, uh, their government, and this will be over with very quickly.

That's why in the early stages, him and Trump were saying, "Take...

To the Iranian people, when we're done, take back your country." Uh, and of course, all they've done is destroy Iran's infrastructure, uh, trying to weaken the state's survival.

What, what is he talking about in this Truth Social, Iran's new regime president? Is Pezeshkian still the president?